Last summer, the Israelis expended their wrath (again) on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with another unbalanced war, leaving, if I remember rightly, thirteen Israelis dead and about 2,000 Palestinians dead, plus thousands more wounded, Gaza City pulverized, and the American news media largely on the side, once again and predictably, of the Israelis, whose U.S.-funded anti-missile Iron Dome shot down almost all of Hamas's unguided rockets.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom I have as much sympathy as I would have for a cement block dropping on a little girl from a great height, joined a chorus of Israeli and pro-Israel voices on American TV news. American journalists in Gaza City wore flak jackets, sometimes helmets, saw rubble everywhere and watched wounded Palestinians of all ages rushed to hospitals with inadequate supplies. American journalists covering Israeli locations went bareheaded during their reports, no flak jackets (none required), and had the easy manner of men and women on assignment in an exotic locale without F-16s blowing the shit out of the buildings they were standing in. Only people with blindness caused by ideology can overlook a kill ratio of 2,000 to 13 and sympathize with the lower number over the vaster one.
I don't hate the Israeli people or the people of any nation. I do have a problem with the Israeli government and military, and U.S. support in the billions of dollars per year that makes Israel's cruelties against Palestinians possible. Israel, I've concluded, acts as a nation-sized aircraft carrier for the United States, a threat against Middle East unrest, or some of that. Netanyahu (annoyingly called "Bibi" by numerous American journalists) uses rhetoric to make it seem his country is always on the verge of doom. Yes, a country with nuclear weapons, a huge military, and run by politicians for decades who possess unrelenting hardass mentalities. While Netanyahu and his policies victimize Palestinians with war and chronic embargo, Bibi acts the victim part, supported by U.S. news media parroting the familiar line, "Israel has the right to defend herself."
I disagree. Do you ever hear that Bulgaria or Afghanistan have the right to defend themselves? Israel is the only country that this dubious line is ever said about. Why is it dubious? If someone takes a swing at you, you'll find that your body reacts in some way, maybe not with coordination, but in some manner your body takes over to deal with the aggression. Self-defense is not a right, it's an instinct. Arguably, every country has the right to defend itself, including the Gaza Strip, which has been pummeled nearly every other year by the Israelis, kept in a third, even fourth world state. Netanyahu and his supporters have terrorized Palestinians repeatedly, but according to the U.S. news media, it's the Israelis getting terrorized by Hamas, albeit with very ineffective rockets that on occasion have killed or wounded Israelis and demolished houses.
Terrorism, which the U.S. claims to be at war with, is the use of violence or the threat of violence to achieve political ends. Osama bin Laden's 9/11 attack used violence to achieve the political end of causing economic turmoil in the U.S. He figured, correctly, that U.S. politicians led by the Bush Administration would go apeshit on the world's ass, leading to endless warfare that would eventually wreck the U.S. economy.
Another consequence of this shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later viewpoint embraced by our leaders is the never-ending creation of new enemies. Do you want to see what first world weapons directed at the third world looks like? Look at images of Gaza City from Netanyahu's war last summer. What the U.S. does to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, now Syria, is that flavor of twisted metal, smashed houses, and destroyed families who got in the way. Images of victims of U.S. war violence tend not to make it to television.
The psychology of this disgusting subject is as easy to understand as basic arithmetic. The policymakers for the War on Terror, I aver, know what they're doing, because the purpose of the War is to perpetuate the War. Money and power, as with many wars, are at stake.
Thus, Obama's decision to hit Isis.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Sunday, December 28, 2014
On Good Morning America, Saturday the 27th of December, the news stream at the screen's bottom read, "Study: Marijuana use in Colorado has risen."
Really? Someone or some organization commissioned a study on that subject? They didn't
bother using deductive reasoning to figure out that a popular commodity like pot, once legalized, will be smoked and eaten more and more by a population freed from having to worry about police busts?
I've been around stoned people. I've been stoned. I've had idiotic conversations with stoned people. I've had intelligent conversations with them. I know firsthand that being stoned a lot can create over time a sense of what's-the-use-I-may-as-well-do-it-later.
In Colorado I suspect that that procrastinating spirit has risen along with legalization. One advantage to the pot smoker who lives in a non-legal state is that the challenge of purchasing pot, especially during a dry spell, can delay the satisfaction of exchanging bills for a fresh bag--a lesson in patience. The purchase, too, must be done in secret, but in Colorado pot is bought openly. It's easy, there's no dodging of the law. If one can go to the store and buy pot to smoke or eat, it's inevitable that usage of the substance will increase over time. If it was illegal to walk on the sidewalk, except in Colorado say, citizens elsewhere would tend to avoid the sidewalk, unless a few daring people were willing to chance being seen by passing cops. In Colorado, though, walking on the sidewalk this past year, let's say, has been legal, so citizens there go apeshit with it, and on Good Morning America the news stream might read, "Study: Colorado sidewalks walked on more frequently since sidewalk ban ended."
I don't suggest that the persons who studied the frequency of marijuana use in Colorado since it's been legal there are idiots, or that they were stoned when they conducted research, but if they received a grant to report on the obvious, what sane and sober group gave them the money? Is the study's real purpose the generation of evidence to show legalization's malign impact on the people of Colorado? While alcohol- and cigarette-related deaths in America continue to kill more people every year than could have fit inside the World Trade Center, marijuana remains a bugbear to straight society. Booze is fine, booze is sexy, beer is a couple on a tropical beach, pizza is Peyton Manning hawking a pie covered with Fritos, portions in restaurants and on TV ads couldn't fit inside most people's heads.
Marijuana, then, not booze, not cigarettes, not Pentagon arms dealing, not political corruption, not unhealthy eating and drinking, not the daily government propaganda, not scoundrels among the wealthy and the political elite, is the problem. Here's a study: it says the people of Colorado are smoking and eating a lot of pot. Those lazy fuckers. Do you want all of America to turn out like that?
For the record, I used to smoke pot, especially in the 1990's. Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, were also pot smokers. Bush also used cocaine and was AWOL for a prolonged period during his service with the Alabama Air National Guard. Obama smoked cigarettes, and maybe still does. Clinton, apart from the pot, fucked women other than his wife.
Everyone is flawed.
Vic Neptune
Really? Someone or some organization commissioned a study on that subject? They didn't
bother using deductive reasoning to figure out that a popular commodity like pot, once legalized, will be smoked and eaten more and more by a population freed from having to worry about police busts?
I've been around stoned people. I've been stoned. I've had idiotic conversations with stoned people. I've had intelligent conversations with them. I know firsthand that being stoned a lot can create over time a sense of what's-the-use-I-may-as-well-do-it-later.
In Colorado I suspect that that procrastinating spirit has risen along with legalization. One advantage to the pot smoker who lives in a non-legal state is that the challenge of purchasing pot, especially during a dry spell, can delay the satisfaction of exchanging bills for a fresh bag--a lesson in patience. The purchase, too, must be done in secret, but in Colorado pot is bought openly. It's easy, there's no dodging of the law. If one can go to the store and buy pot to smoke or eat, it's inevitable that usage of the substance will increase over time. If it was illegal to walk on the sidewalk, except in Colorado say, citizens elsewhere would tend to avoid the sidewalk, unless a few daring people were willing to chance being seen by passing cops. In Colorado, though, walking on the sidewalk this past year, let's say, has been legal, so citizens there go apeshit with it, and on Good Morning America the news stream might read, "Study: Colorado sidewalks walked on more frequently since sidewalk ban ended."
I don't suggest that the persons who studied the frequency of marijuana use in Colorado since it's been legal there are idiots, or that they were stoned when they conducted research, but if they received a grant to report on the obvious, what sane and sober group gave them the money? Is the study's real purpose the generation of evidence to show legalization's malign impact on the people of Colorado? While alcohol- and cigarette-related deaths in America continue to kill more people every year than could have fit inside the World Trade Center, marijuana remains a bugbear to straight society. Booze is fine, booze is sexy, beer is a couple on a tropical beach, pizza is Peyton Manning hawking a pie covered with Fritos, portions in restaurants and on TV ads couldn't fit inside most people's heads.
Marijuana, then, not booze, not cigarettes, not Pentagon arms dealing, not political corruption, not unhealthy eating and drinking, not the daily government propaganda, not scoundrels among the wealthy and the political elite, is the problem. Here's a study: it says the people of Colorado are smoking and eating a lot of pot. Those lazy fuckers. Do you want all of America to turn out like that?
For the record, I used to smoke pot, especially in the 1990's. Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, were also pot smokers. Bush also used cocaine and was AWOL for a prolonged period during his service with the Alabama Air National Guard. Obama smoked cigarettes, and maybe still does. Clinton, apart from the pot, fucked women other than his wife.
Everyone is flawed.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, December 20, 2014
The Cuban-American singer Christina Milian appeared on Brooke Baldwin's CNN show to share her reaction to President Obama's opening of relations with Cuba after fifty-five years of embargo and vitriol. With the singer was her Cuban mother, who came to the United States as a girl when Fidel Castro came to power. Christina Milian is thirty-three. She spoke of the excitement she feels about her young daughter being able to visit the "motherland." Christina's mother is also excited that things have suddenly changed.
Among Cuban-Americans there's a generational difference of views regarding Cuba. Florida's concentrated Cuban population since the 1959 revolution includes old, middle-aged, and young. The old tend to hold on to a fifty-five year old bitterness for the Brothers Castro regime. The hatred and pain expressed by them on this subject rivals Israelis' vindictiveness towards Palestinians. In U.S. foreign policy, Cuba is to the U.S. what the Gaza Strip is to Israel. Relentless propaganda, economic pressure, and overall shittiness practiced by U.S. power players against ordinary Cubans who have to deal directly with the embargo is equal in immorality to U.S.-supported policy towards Israel squeezing the Palestinians and kicking the shit out of them militarily every few years.
Obama, to his credit, has lowered the heat on this chronic and stupid Cuban situation. Some politicians on the right, like Florida's Marco Rubio, condemn the move. There's a feeling Obama has appeased a left-wing dictator (described by one pundit on MSNBC as a Stalinist--absurd, considering how many millions of his own people Stalin killed). Obama should've waited, the gripe goes, for Fidel and Raul Castro to either step down or die.
That Obama did this while Cuba has a somewhat stable government (whatever you think of it) shows that our President wasn't willing to try to use American influence (economic especially) on an unstable future Cuba without the Castros. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz grossly underestimated the financial cost of the Iraq War, concluding that Iraq's oil production would be able to foot the bill. He failed to recognize the horrendous difficulty of attempting to put a nation in chaos
on a smooth course.
Obama sided with the idea that following the same old practices with Cuba (satisfactory to the bitter old guard of Cuban exiles) was not the way to go anymore. How many times can a superpower punish a small country, and why the punishment?
In the 1950's, Fidel Castro came across as a pro-U.S. rebel. Cuba's leader, Fulgencio Batista, one of the many corrupt pieces of shit U.S. foreign policymakers have supported over the past century, ran a country friendly to the American Mafia, with its Havana casinos. Castro's treacherous switch to the red side must've inspired much of the venom against him over the years. Militant Anti-Castro Cuban exiles stirred up trouble in the early 1960's, especially after the failed attempt to retake Cuba, known as the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when President Kennedy decided to not provide air cover for the invaders. Kennedy's murder in Dallas probably had something to do with Cuba.
Contrasting this grim stuff, I'm reminded again of the singer Christina Milian in the CNN interview. Her perspective to the opening of relations between the U.S. and Cuba is one of beauty and family. She and her daughter get to meet cousins they've never seen, all of them separated by political decisions made by ambitious and, perhaps, ultimately foolish men. In the interview she spoke of Cuba's beauty, the warmth of the people, the loveliness of the beaches, the wonderful food and vibrant music. She gets to bring her little daughter there and experience what some hard cases in America call a terrible mistake, but what Christina Milian calls life.
Vic Neptune
Among Cuban-Americans there's a generational difference of views regarding Cuba. Florida's concentrated Cuban population since the 1959 revolution includes old, middle-aged, and young. The old tend to hold on to a fifty-five year old bitterness for the Brothers Castro regime. The hatred and pain expressed by them on this subject rivals Israelis' vindictiveness towards Palestinians. In U.S. foreign policy, Cuba is to the U.S. what the Gaza Strip is to Israel. Relentless propaganda, economic pressure, and overall shittiness practiced by U.S. power players against ordinary Cubans who have to deal directly with the embargo is equal in immorality to U.S.-supported policy towards Israel squeezing the Palestinians and kicking the shit out of them militarily every few years.
Obama, to his credit, has lowered the heat on this chronic and stupid Cuban situation. Some politicians on the right, like Florida's Marco Rubio, condemn the move. There's a feeling Obama has appeased a left-wing dictator (described by one pundit on MSNBC as a Stalinist--absurd, considering how many millions of his own people Stalin killed). Obama should've waited, the gripe goes, for Fidel and Raul Castro to either step down or die.
That Obama did this while Cuba has a somewhat stable government (whatever you think of it) shows that our President wasn't willing to try to use American influence (economic especially) on an unstable future Cuba without the Castros. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz grossly underestimated the financial cost of the Iraq War, concluding that Iraq's oil production would be able to foot the bill. He failed to recognize the horrendous difficulty of attempting to put a nation in chaos
on a smooth course.
Obama sided with the idea that following the same old practices with Cuba (satisfactory to the bitter old guard of Cuban exiles) was not the way to go anymore. How many times can a superpower punish a small country, and why the punishment?
In the 1950's, Fidel Castro came across as a pro-U.S. rebel. Cuba's leader, Fulgencio Batista, one of the many corrupt pieces of shit U.S. foreign policymakers have supported over the past century, ran a country friendly to the American Mafia, with its Havana casinos. Castro's treacherous switch to the red side must've inspired much of the venom against him over the years. Militant Anti-Castro Cuban exiles stirred up trouble in the early 1960's, especially after the failed attempt to retake Cuba, known as the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when President Kennedy decided to not provide air cover for the invaders. Kennedy's murder in Dallas probably had something to do with Cuba.
Contrasting this grim stuff, I'm reminded again of the singer Christina Milian in the CNN interview. Her perspective to the opening of relations between the U.S. and Cuba is one of beauty and family. She and her daughter get to meet cousins they've never seen, all of them separated by political decisions made by ambitious and, perhaps, ultimately foolish men. In the interview she spoke of Cuba's beauty, the warmth of the people, the loveliness of the beaches, the wonderful food and vibrant music. She gets to bring her little daughter there and experience what some hard cases in America call a terrible mistake, but what Christina Milian calls life.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Sony Pictures e-mails meant as private communications have been smeared across the news, embarrassing corporate executives and probably pissing off some movie stars. One thing that strikes me about some of these hacked messages: there doesn't seem to be much intelligence on display. A major Sony executive speculating about President Obama's favorite actors sticks to black actors as possibilities. Obama is black, therefore he must love Samuel L. Jackson, just like me when I think about my fellow white man, Donald Trump. Thus, John Wayne fans must also appreciate John Wayne Gacy.
(For the record, I like John Wayne, I like Samuel L. Jackson, John Wayne Gacy, though already executed, disgusts me, I have complicated mixed feelings about Barack Obama, and the sight of an orangutan's butthole is more appealing to me than ever looking at Donald Trump's smug face.)
But the Sony personal communications hack, performed, probably, by North Koreans, is blending in the news with the impending release of the Sony-produced film that started the brouhaha. The Interview, originally set for release on Christmas, deals with a CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, utilizing two civilians played by Seth Rogen and James Franco. When the film's trailer was released, North Korean authorities, aware or unaware that the film is a comedy, said the movie is an act of war. Not realizing, apparently, that calling a film an act of war is funny, the North Koreans set into motion a hacking scheme against the movie's studio. Thus, we found out, among many things, that a Sony Pictures executive doesn't like Anjelina Jolie. Join the club, some would say.
As the film's premiere nears, it's already been shorn of much of its glory. Opening night didn't feature the usual big star treatment. Hollywood, collectively speaking, seems afraid to be around this movie, what with threats issued anonymously, hinting at 9/11-style retaliation on theaters playing the movie. Theaters have responded to the threat, pulling scheduled showings of The Interview. On CNN, Kurt Loder (of past MTV fame) told Brooke Baldwin that Sony should consider putting the movie online, charging a fee to watch it. Then, I added to myself, that too can be hacked.
The film has had unintended effects on business affairs here. Five films set for release soon by Sony were put on the Internet for free viewing by the anonymous (North Korean or those working for them) hackers. Thus, the long-awaited (?) remake of Annie has been seen prematurely, for free, by unknown thousands or maybe millions of people, a technological feat made possible because Kim Jong-Un doesn't have his father's sense of humor.
Kim Jong-Il was parodied (as a marionette!) in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's masterpiece, Team America World Police. It's well known that Kim Jong-Il had a fascination with movies. He kidnapped a Japanese film director and forced him to spend a year in North Korea making the Godzilla-like epic, Pulgosari. His aim in committing the crime of kidnapping was, although wrong, artistic. His son, Kim Jong-Un, by contrast, seems set on punishing an offense taken out on the perpetrators through economic warfare. Their much-hyped (by them and by us) nuclear missile program really can't harm the United States, but they can fuck with our money. So can other countries.
It was long thought that Adolf Hitler probably hated Charles Chaplin's parody of Nazi Germany, The Great Dictator, but in interviews with Hitler's film projectionist, who kept still surviving notes on what Hitler saw and how many times he saw it, Hitler watched The Great Dictator three times, enjoying the barber chair scene with the Mussolini character a great deal. I imagine Kim Jong-Un having already seen The Interview, what with all the hacking going on. Maybe he giggled his way all the way through it.
What I don't have to imagine, because it's true, is that Sony and all the theaters backing away from the film have given in to the wishes of Kim Jong-Un.
Vic Neptune
(For the record, I like John Wayne, I like Samuel L. Jackson, John Wayne Gacy, though already executed, disgusts me, I have complicated mixed feelings about Barack Obama, and the sight of an orangutan's butthole is more appealing to me than ever looking at Donald Trump's smug face.)
But the Sony personal communications hack, performed, probably, by North Koreans, is blending in the news with the impending release of the Sony-produced film that started the brouhaha. The Interview, originally set for release on Christmas, deals with a CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, utilizing two civilians played by Seth Rogen and James Franco. When the film's trailer was released, North Korean authorities, aware or unaware that the film is a comedy, said the movie is an act of war. Not realizing, apparently, that calling a film an act of war is funny, the North Koreans set into motion a hacking scheme against the movie's studio. Thus, we found out, among many things, that a Sony Pictures executive doesn't like Anjelina Jolie. Join the club, some would say.
As the film's premiere nears, it's already been shorn of much of its glory. Opening night didn't feature the usual big star treatment. Hollywood, collectively speaking, seems afraid to be around this movie, what with threats issued anonymously, hinting at 9/11-style retaliation on theaters playing the movie. Theaters have responded to the threat, pulling scheduled showings of The Interview. On CNN, Kurt Loder (of past MTV fame) told Brooke Baldwin that Sony should consider putting the movie online, charging a fee to watch it. Then, I added to myself, that too can be hacked.
The film has had unintended effects on business affairs here. Five films set for release soon by Sony were put on the Internet for free viewing by the anonymous (North Korean or those working for them) hackers. Thus, the long-awaited (?) remake of Annie has been seen prematurely, for free, by unknown thousands or maybe millions of people, a technological feat made possible because Kim Jong-Un doesn't have his father's sense of humor.
Kim Jong-Il was parodied (as a marionette!) in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's masterpiece, Team America World Police. It's well known that Kim Jong-Il had a fascination with movies. He kidnapped a Japanese film director and forced him to spend a year in North Korea making the Godzilla-like epic, Pulgosari. His aim in committing the crime of kidnapping was, although wrong, artistic. His son, Kim Jong-Un, by contrast, seems set on punishing an offense taken out on the perpetrators through economic warfare. Their much-hyped (by them and by us) nuclear missile program really can't harm the United States, but they can fuck with our money. So can other countries.
It was long thought that Adolf Hitler probably hated Charles Chaplin's parody of Nazi Germany, The Great Dictator, but in interviews with Hitler's film projectionist, who kept still surviving notes on what Hitler saw and how many times he saw it, Hitler watched The Great Dictator three times, enjoying the barber chair scene with the Mussolini character a great deal. I imagine Kim Jong-Un having already seen The Interview, what with all the hacking going on. Maybe he giggled his way all the way through it.
What I don't have to imagine, because it's true, is that Sony and all the theaters backing away from the film have given in to the wishes of Kim Jong-Un.
Vic Neptune
On December 16, birthday of artistic greats Ludwig von Beethoven, Jane Austen, and Philip K. Dick, NBC News reported a poll stating that 45 percent of Americans favor the use of torture. This goes to show that the Senate release of their investigation into CIA torture practices during the George W. Bush Administration has had minimal effect on Americans' post-9/11 bloodthirstiness.
The report shows that innocent people were tortured and killed by U.S. military personnel acting under the direct authority of sick fucks like Dick Cheney, but it doesn't matter, because this is still the greatest country in the history of the world, and even when we err, it's all to the good. It's like when Ronald Reagan died in 2004, worshipful journalists spoke and wrote about his occasional "mistakes," citing in particular the Iran-Contra Affair, when it was discovered Reagan and some of his operators armed Iran with TOW missiles and used some of the profits to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.
Quite often the word mistake is used to describe criminal behavior. I saw a TV ad for a law firm in which a genuine customer speaks of his "mistake," meaning his DUI, and how the lawyers advertised gave him good representation. What the genuine non-actor in the ad really means is that one night he got drunk, got into his car, and his impaired and dangerous driving caught a patrol cop's attention. He made a mistake? No, he put his own life and the lives of others in danger and fortunately a cop stopped him.
This kind of thing is small when compared to matters of war, but even with the big conflicts of the world some will say, for instance, "Vietnam was a mistake." But tell that to the industrial manufacturers and arms dealers who made tons of money off of it.
Dick Cheney sat across from Chuck Todd on Meet the Press on Sunday, December 15. It was the chief propagandist of gloomy patriotic sludge meeting Chuck Todd, a smart enough journalist, but one who didn't have the balls to say to his bosses, "Why do we need to get Dick Cheney's perspective on the rightness or wrongness of torture? Isn't that like asking Hermann Goering if he would've preferred it if Nazi Germany won the war?"
Todd asked Cheney a philosophical-type question: "What is torture?"
Cheney, Giuliani-style, played a familiar card: "Torture is an American having to say goodbye to his children while trapped in a skyscraper that's been hit by a hijacked jetliner."
I'll offer my off the top of my head answer to Todd's question: Torture is the intentional inflicting of pain, psychological and physical, on a person or animal who cannot resist except through endurance and will, leaving the victim at the mercy of a release by captors.
Cheney's definition is similar to mine in that he hits on psychological torment and being trapped. He does, however, combine the idea of torture with being an innocent American. He does not point out that the American trapped in the doomed skyscraper is also a murder victim whose torment before death is a side effect of the experience, rather than the object of the experience, as was practiced by the CIA at the behest of officials like Dick Cheney.
I wonder about anyone responding to the poll mentioned above getting influenced by Cheney's 9/11-enhanced answer to Chuck Todd's question. The truth is, Cheney's post-Bush Administration career has been largely characterized by defending proven detestable activities of his eight years in the White House. Torture comes up again, Cheney appears on Fox News and the occasional other network. Same with lingering weapons of mass destruction controversies. Cheney pops up in such cases to cheerlead his conviction that Saddam Hussein had WMD, that he was a danger to the U.S., and I wonder sometimes if he really believes the shit that he says. Frankly, I think he's just a liar who's made a comfortable living for himself feeding off of the sufferings of others, a humongous tick squatting on the breath of the nation and lapping up the blood in conflict zones men like him profit from.
Vic Neptune
The report shows that innocent people were tortured and killed by U.S. military personnel acting under the direct authority of sick fucks like Dick Cheney, but it doesn't matter, because this is still the greatest country in the history of the world, and even when we err, it's all to the good. It's like when Ronald Reagan died in 2004, worshipful journalists spoke and wrote about his occasional "mistakes," citing in particular the Iran-Contra Affair, when it was discovered Reagan and some of his operators armed Iran with TOW missiles and used some of the profits to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.
Quite often the word mistake is used to describe criminal behavior. I saw a TV ad for a law firm in which a genuine customer speaks of his "mistake," meaning his DUI, and how the lawyers advertised gave him good representation. What the genuine non-actor in the ad really means is that one night he got drunk, got into his car, and his impaired and dangerous driving caught a patrol cop's attention. He made a mistake? No, he put his own life and the lives of others in danger and fortunately a cop stopped him.
This kind of thing is small when compared to matters of war, but even with the big conflicts of the world some will say, for instance, "Vietnam was a mistake." But tell that to the industrial manufacturers and arms dealers who made tons of money off of it.
Dick Cheney sat across from Chuck Todd on Meet the Press on Sunday, December 15. It was the chief propagandist of gloomy patriotic sludge meeting Chuck Todd, a smart enough journalist, but one who didn't have the balls to say to his bosses, "Why do we need to get Dick Cheney's perspective on the rightness or wrongness of torture? Isn't that like asking Hermann Goering if he would've preferred it if Nazi Germany won the war?"
Todd asked Cheney a philosophical-type question: "What is torture?"
Cheney, Giuliani-style, played a familiar card: "Torture is an American having to say goodbye to his children while trapped in a skyscraper that's been hit by a hijacked jetliner."
I'll offer my off the top of my head answer to Todd's question: Torture is the intentional inflicting of pain, psychological and physical, on a person or animal who cannot resist except through endurance and will, leaving the victim at the mercy of a release by captors.
Cheney's definition is similar to mine in that he hits on psychological torment and being trapped. He does, however, combine the idea of torture with being an innocent American. He does not point out that the American trapped in the doomed skyscraper is also a murder victim whose torment before death is a side effect of the experience, rather than the object of the experience, as was practiced by the CIA at the behest of officials like Dick Cheney.
I wonder about anyone responding to the poll mentioned above getting influenced by Cheney's 9/11-enhanced answer to Chuck Todd's question. The truth is, Cheney's post-Bush Administration career has been largely characterized by defending proven detestable activities of his eight years in the White House. Torture comes up again, Cheney appears on Fox News and the occasional other network. Same with lingering weapons of mass destruction controversies. Cheney pops up in such cases to cheerlead his conviction that Saddam Hussein had WMD, that he was a danger to the U.S., and I wonder sometimes if he really believes the shit that he says. Frankly, I think he's just a liar who's made a comfortable living for himself feeding off of the sufferings of others, a humongous tick squatting on the breath of the nation and lapping up the blood in conflict zones men like him profit from.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Prominent members of the U.S. Senate today expressed outrage over the torture tactics practiced by the CIA during the Bush Administration. Bush's reaction was caught in a sound bite in which he calls the CIA "interrogators" patriots. When some of these heroes force fed detainees by "rectal infusion," i.e. blasting solutions of food up their asses, they were being patriotic, I guess.
Dick Cheney, the Number Two during the years such dietary and other torture methods were being practiced, insists, not surprisingly, that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" worked. Both Cheney and George W. Bush exist in a prosecution-free realm granted to them by President Barack Obama, who put the kibosh on the possibility of Bush-era war criminals ever facing justice for their crimes.
The Orwellian warping of language, as in the term, "enhanced interrogation techniques," can be seen in the previous Bush era term, "enemy combatants." An enemy combatant, one with no rights, is what used to be called a prisoner of war. Prisoners of war have long-established legal protections under the Geneva Conventions. The switching of terms, prisoner of war to enemy combatant, shows how easy it is to legally commit crimes against humanity by simply substituting words. Therefore, a CIA interrogator who waterboards an "enemy combatant" is a patriot, not an evil sadistic motherfucker. And senators who, suddenly after more than a decade, find themselves outraged over the internationally illegal practices of a CIA acting on the orders of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, regard themselves as stewards of American morals, not as morally hollow apologists who've chosen for many years to not notice what's been going on in our name.
Vic Neptune
Dick Cheney, the Number Two during the years such dietary and other torture methods were being practiced, insists, not surprisingly, that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" worked. Both Cheney and George W. Bush exist in a prosecution-free realm granted to them by President Barack Obama, who put the kibosh on the possibility of Bush-era war criminals ever facing justice for their crimes.
The Orwellian warping of language, as in the term, "enhanced interrogation techniques," can be seen in the previous Bush era term, "enemy combatants." An enemy combatant, one with no rights, is what used to be called a prisoner of war. Prisoners of war have long-established legal protections under the Geneva Conventions. The switching of terms, prisoner of war to enemy combatant, shows how easy it is to legally commit crimes against humanity by simply substituting words. Therefore, a CIA interrogator who waterboards an "enemy combatant" is a patriot, not an evil sadistic motherfucker. And senators who, suddenly after more than a decade, find themselves outraged over the internationally illegal practices of a CIA acting on the orders of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, regard themselves as stewards of American morals, not as morally hollow apologists who've chosen for many years to not notice what's been going on in our name.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Fifteen years ago, worldwide anxiety over a possibility that computers wouldn't be able to handle the calendar change from 1999 to 2000 set into motion one of those end of the world-type scenarios humans regularly gravitate towards. Y2K, or year 2000, fit the mold associated with our doom-ridden fascination with round numbers. In the 990s it was believed by Christians that the world would end--the Last Judgment would occur--in 1000. 3000 will probably also be feared by our descendants, if any.
Since the Christian calendar, based on an outdated estimate of the year of Jesus Christ's birth year, is really an approximation, it's anyone's guess as to what year it actually is. And why hinge the counting of time itself on the birth, before and after, of someone so hidden to history, but brilliantly visible when it comes to the unprovable method of faith?
In 1999, I recall vividly, people freaked out over a number. On December 31 of that year my girlfriend and I had dinner at my sister's house. It was very cold. We drove home shortly before midnight, when the big power failure was supposed to happen, that is, if Y2K would not be imaginary. I felt nervous as the moment approached. This disaster scenario had been hyped in the news long enough to infuse billions of minds.
When nothing happened (except the continuation of human gullibility) my girlfriend and I were relieved, and a little pissed off, for Y2K is an example of how government and news entities can scare people. Now, whether it's the threat of terrorism, illegal immigration, drug cartels, or protestors facing cops armored like black beetles, scaring the public has become a way of doing business. When people are scared they want to do things that make them feel good and safe, like spend money. They spend money when they're not scared, too, but gun sales in and around Ferguson, Missouri, would, if it were possible, give the NRA orgasms.
Vic Neptune
Since the Christian calendar, based on an outdated estimate of the year of Jesus Christ's birth year, is really an approximation, it's anyone's guess as to what year it actually is. And why hinge the counting of time itself on the birth, before and after, of someone so hidden to history, but brilliantly visible when it comes to the unprovable method of faith?
In 1999, I recall vividly, people freaked out over a number. On December 31 of that year my girlfriend and I had dinner at my sister's house. It was very cold. We drove home shortly before midnight, when the big power failure was supposed to happen, that is, if Y2K would not be imaginary. I felt nervous as the moment approached. This disaster scenario had been hyped in the news long enough to infuse billions of minds.
When nothing happened (except the continuation of human gullibility) my girlfriend and I were relieved, and a little pissed off, for Y2K is an example of how government and news entities can scare people. Now, whether it's the threat of terrorism, illegal immigration, drug cartels, or protestors facing cops armored like black beetles, scaring the public has become a way of doing business. When people are scared they want to do things that make them feel good and safe, like spend money. They spend money when they're not scared, too, but gun sales in and around Ferguson, Missouri, would, if it were possible, give the NRA orgasms.
Vic Neptune
Friday, November 28, 2014
My favorite TV show is Inside Edition, hosted by Deborah Norville. As news goes it's snack food, but entertainment has blended with the news media these past two decades. By the time MSNBC was devoting entire news hours to the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton relationship in the late 1990s, the phenomenon I call Scaz had grown into unhealthy bloom. Scaz, a nonsensical term I coined many years ago, is the interlocking of news reporting for entertainment and rating purposes. In short, Scaz uses human societal chaos to generate profits for corporate-run entertainment and information distribution machines. Getting people to watch news in a constantly competitive environment necessitates, to some degree, the magnification of non-events into "stories."
The three big cable news networks, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC, in spite of their ideological differences, are all dedicated primarily to satisfying their stockholders and making money. All three networks are referred to as purveyors of "the twenty-four hour news cycle," an Orwellian term meaning they give out news to information-hungry viewers all the time. In fact, since approximately fifteen minutes of each hour of programming on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC is dedicated to broadcasting ads, the alleged twenty-four hour news cycle is really eighteen hours per day. Erectile dysfunction in handsome baby boomer men is not news.
Even eighteen hours per day to play with should generate some interesting and informative news programs, but what do we get? I recall a story from about five years ago that could be called "Balloon Boy Hoax." An "eccentric" father and inventor in Colorado had a little son who reportedly went missing inside the carriage of an experimental balloon that took off into the air. It seemed like the premise of the climactic moments of a Lassie movie. All three cable networks covered this potentially tragic story from morning until late in the afternoon, when the family revealed the little boy had been found on their property, safe and apparently unaware that the news-gathering organizations of three powerful corporate entities had spent hour after hour speculating about the boy's fate. The silver balloon drifted smoothly over the flat eastern Colorado countryside, coming down, finally, without a dead boy inside. All well and good.
The next day, the little boy and his family were interviewed via satellite by Meredith Vieira. The family was still regarded sympathetically by journalists and Americans generally. The interview was characterized by the "Balloon Boy" throwing up on camera. This hurl by an instant celebrity was shown on news networks over and over again. I didn't see Vieira's interview when it played, but I saw the vomiting on a loop on MSNBC that afternoon. I am not kidding. They showed that little kid puking five or six times in a row. It was news. It was Scaz.
I like Inside Edition because it lacks the pretensions of "serious" news networks. Each show, lasting about twenty-two minutes without ads, covers a variety of topics: unrest in Ferguson, Pam Anderson's revelations about being raped when young, the death of Robin Williams, scams on consumers, how to properly perform the Heimlich Maneuver, how to perform it on yourself when alone and dying, what's going on with ISIS. If you leave the room to get something to drink, by the time you return the story you were watching will have ended and the next one will be almost over.
Each story ends with a synthesized orchestral sound. It doesn't matter what the story is--the latest ISIS snuff movie, a YouTube video of a cat riding a Great Dane. Whatever the case, the same musical sound strikes, as if to say, "Ta da! You have successfully processed another hit of Scaz. Here's another!"
A week or so ago I saw the last minutes of NBC News with Brian Williams. He ended his show just like Inside Edition does; with a cute video probably snatched from YouTube. The difference between Inside Edition and the rest of American news media (most of it Scaz) could be a matter of twenty-two minutes five days per week versus eighteen hours a day, with the people using the bigger number unable to figure out what to do with it. When a Balloon Boy comes along, that's great for them. Speculation in a vacuum of knowledge is easy. Exploring why the world is so fucked up is difficult.
Vic Neptune
The three big cable news networks, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC, in spite of their ideological differences, are all dedicated primarily to satisfying their stockholders and making money. All three networks are referred to as purveyors of "the twenty-four hour news cycle," an Orwellian term meaning they give out news to information-hungry viewers all the time. In fact, since approximately fifteen minutes of each hour of programming on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC is dedicated to broadcasting ads, the alleged twenty-four hour news cycle is really eighteen hours per day. Erectile dysfunction in handsome baby boomer men is not news.
Even eighteen hours per day to play with should generate some interesting and informative news programs, but what do we get? I recall a story from about five years ago that could be called "Balloon Boy Hoax." An "eccentric" father and inventor in Colorado had a little son who reportedly went missing inside the carriage of an experimental balloon that took off into the air. It seemed like the premise of the climactic moments of a Lassie movie. All three cable networks covered this potentially tragic story from morning until late in the afternoon, when the family revealed the little boy had been found on their property, safe and apparently unaware that the news-gathering organizations of three powerful corporate entities had spent hour after hour speculating about the boy's fate. The silver balloon drifted smoothly over the flat eastern Colorado countryside, coming down, finally, without a dead boy inside. All well and good.
The next day, the little boy and his family were interviewed via satellite by Meredith Vieira. The family was still regarded sympathetically by journalists and Americans generally. The interview was characterized by the "Balloon Boy" throwing up on camera. This hurl by an instant celebrity was shown on news networks over and over again. I didn't see Vieira's interview when it played, but I saw the vomiting on a loop on MSNBC that afternoon. I am not kidding. They showed that little kid puking five or six times in a row. It was news. It was Scaz.
I like Inside Edition because it lacks the pretensions of "serious" news networks. Each show, lasting about twenty-two minutes without ads, covers a variety of topics: unrest in Ferguson, Pam Anderson's revelations about being raped when young, the death of Robin Williams, scams on consumers, how to properly perform the Heimlich Maneuver, how to perform it on yourself when alone and dying, what's going on with ISIS. If you leave the room to get something to drink, by the time you return the story you were watching will have ended and the next one will be almost over.
Each story ends with a synthesized orchestral sound. It doesn't matter what the story is--the latest ISIS snuff movie, a YouTube video of a cat riding a Great Dane. Whatever the case, the same musical sound strikes, as if to say, "Ta da! You have successfully processed another hit of Scaz. Here's another!"
A week or so ago I saw the last minutes of NBC News with Brian Williams. He ended his show just like Inside Edition does; with a cute video probably snatched from YouTube. The difference between Inside Edition and the rest of American news media (most of it Scaz) could be a matter of twenty-two minutes five days per week versus eighteen hours a day, with the people using the bigger number unable to figure out what to do with it. When a Balloon Boy comes along, that's great for them. Speculation in a vacuum of knowledge is easy. Exploring why the world is so fucked up is difficult.
Vic Neptune
Thursday, November 27, 2014
While shoveling on this Thanksgiving morning the Led Zeppelin song, "The Song Remains the Same," entered my head from memory. Disconnected parts of it played in my mind's ear as I scraped the plastic shovel against ice and pavement. Unfiltered winter sunlight made everything seem
white.
My brain's random selection of that song made as much sense as when any song enters one's head. I was, in the 1980s, familiar on a listening basis with the song. I knew the band's music well, I owned all their albums, I was very upset when I heard on the radio that Led Zeppelin's drummer John Bonham had died. Led Zeppelin's music is stored intact in my memory, even though I haven't listened to it in many years.
It's a remarkable feature of music-related memory that one can recall in detail songs one hasn't heard in decades. I've noticed this with smells, too. When I worked in a library in the 1990s I checked out books for a woman wearing the same perfume a girlfriend of mine had worn sometimes in eleventh grade. Do these interruptions of mundane experiences, like shoveling snow and working behind a desk in public, act to remind us of potent times in our lives when, since we were much younger, the possibilities were vaster?
Damned if I know. I do know that sometimes a song popping into my head can become annoying if it sticks around too long, and after smelling the perfume on that woman in the library I spent the rest of my work shift thinking about that girl in high school. She liked Led Zeppelin, and later became one of my many lost possibilities.
Vic Neptune
white.
My brain's random selection of that song made as much sense as when any song enters one's head. I was, in the 1980s, familiar on a listening basis with the song. I knew the band's music well, I owned all their albums, I was very upset when I heard on the radio that Led Zeppelin's drummer John Bonham had died. Led Zeppelin's music is stored intact in my memory, even though I haven't listened to it in many years.
It's a remarkable feature of music-related memory that one can recall in detail songs one hasn't heard in decades. I've noticed this with smells, too. When I worked in a library in the 1990s I checked out books for a woman wearing the same perfume a girlfriend of mine had worn sometimes in eleventh grade. Do these interruptions of mundane experiences, like shoveling snow and working behind a desk in public, act to remind us of potent times in our lives when, since we were much younger, the possibilities were vaster?
Damned if I know. I do know that sometimes a song popping into my head can become annoying if it sticks around too long, and after smelling the perfume on that woman in the library I spent the rest of my work shift thinking about that girl in high school. She liked Led Zeppelin, and later became one of my many lost possibilities.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Charles Manson is engaged to be married to a twenty-six year old woman who goes by the name Star. She's spent the last seven years involved with him at a distance, and has moved to California to be close to his prison home. He's eighty, bald, nuts, still showing a swastika tattoo at the point above his eyes where a bullet should have entered the day he was arrested for masterminding the 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and several others.
Star, a true believer, claims, like many other Manson admirers, that her beau is misunderstood. If it's difficult to understand how a manipulative psychopath can convince a group of lost girls that they need to commit murder for him, then I guess it's easy to misunderstand him.
According to prison rules, the couple will get to invite ten guests to the wedding, but none of the guests can be prisoners. Star's mother will not attend. It's bad enough her son-in-law will be Charles Manson, but having to congratulate the bride and that groom, inside a prison, would disgust any sensible parent.
After the wedding, presumably, Charles Manson and Star will enjoy a honeymoon, inside a prison. She's the same age as Sharon Tate was when she was stabbed to death by one of Manson's minions.
Vic Neptune
Star, a true believer, claims, like many other Manson admirers, that her beau is misunderstood. If it's difficult to understand how a manipulative psychopath can convince a group of lost girls that they need to commit murder for him, then I guess it's easy to misunderstand him.
According to prison rules, the couple will get to invite ten guests to the wedding, but none of the guests can be prisoners. Star's mother will not attend. It's bad enough her son-in-law will be Charles Manson, but having to congratulate the bride and that groom, inside a prison, would disgust any sensible parent.
After the wedding, presumably, Charles Manson and Star will enjoy a honeymoon, inside a prison. She's the same age as Sharon Tate was when she was stabbed to death by one of Manson's minions.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, November 15, 2014
I've always gotten along well with cats. I like dogs, but I don't want one for a pet. I like a four-legged friend who can act self-contained, doesn't have to go outside to relieve him- or herself. I've walked dogs, the pets of family and friends. Most of these experiences have consisted of stopping every ten feet or so while the dog sniffs something jutting from the ground. The halting nature of the walks prevents my legs from doing what they're born to do: stride long and fast. I have a friend who has two greyhounds. They pull her along--under her firm control--at high walking speeds, as if they're harnessed to a sleek buggy.
Cats, meanwhile, sleep, eat, keep themselves clean with their rough tongues, climb into litter boxes, bury their crap, and purr when content.
I know nothing about gerbils, but taking care of an animal that lives among its own shavings, inside its own litter box as it were, doesn't appeal to me. Maybe that says something about me, maybe it doesn't.
I like friendly dogs and mellow dogs. Most of these in my experience have been mongrels.
Dogs that bare teeth at me and/or spring at me as I walk past bother me intensely. I want the dogs' humans to give me ten bucks on the spot to compensate for the jolts to my nervous system. A few years ago a small but loud chained dog ran at me, the sharp noise entering my upper arms and shooting into my chest, an odd and unpleasant sensation.
"You fucker!" I yelled at the little shit.
A smiling woman opened her screen door and said, "He won't hurt you."
"He startled me," I shouted, my legs taking me farther away from someone I wanted nothing to do with.
"He's harmless!" she shouted back.
I shook my head at her and walked on, hearing her yell, "Fuck you!"
You see, cats don't do what that little dog did.
Vic Neptune
Cats, meanwhile, sleep, eat, keep themselves clean with their rough tongues, climb into litter boxes, bury their crap, and purr when content.
I know nothing about gerbils, but taking care of an animal that lives among its own shavings, inside its own litter box as it were, doesn't appeal to me. Maybe that says something about me, maybe it doesn't.
I like friendly dogs and mellow dogs. Most of these in my experience have been mongrels.
Dogs that bare teeth at me and/or spring at me as I walk past bother me intensely. I want the dogs' humans to give me ten bucks on the spot to compensate for the jolts to my nervous system. A few years ago a small but loud chained dog ran at me, the sharp noise entering my upper arms and shooting into my chest, an odd and unpleasant sensation.
"You fucker!" I yelled at the little shit.
A smiling woman opened her screen door and said, "He won't hurt you."
"He startled me," I shouted, my legs taking me farther away from someone I wanted nothing to do with.
"He's harmless!" she shouted back.
I shook my head at her and walked on, hearing her yell, "Fuck you!"
You see, cats don't do what that little dog did.
Vic Neptune
Thursday, November 13, 2014
I've rarely experienced writer's block. My fingers operate by themselves, usually, when touching lettered keys. The blogging medium, new to me, has inserted a problem into my brain. I've tried twice before this to write a third entry. I struggle with not knowing how to deal yet with an unfamiliar medium. The idea of making purposeful comments on specific subjects now seems inappropriate. I want to break up the rigidity of categories and write whatever I feel like writing.
Some might say, "It's your blog. You can do whatever you want." My thoughts, though, tend in the direction of trying to figure out what I'm going to do, followed by a seemingly casual switch to improvisation; a technique that prevails because it's more fun than mapping the imagination in advance of a creative session. Hence, the following paragraph.
Kim Kardashian's ass is in the news. A widely published photo, in censored and uncensored versions, shows the whatever-the-hell-she-is standing nude with erupting champagne, her fantastic waist lending her the appearance of a dumbbell. The image has been obviously altered, creating an impossible body, although her real ass is quite prominent. Reaction has been strong, some celebrities tweeting remarks like, "Kim, how could you?" We're supposed to be shocked by the photo, I guess. We're supposed to forget the far more grotesque and grinding presence of the Kardashians in popular culture, a family featured in alleged reality TV shows. When Kim appears in a magazine spread shaped somewhat like a Barbie Doll, this fakery is condemned.
Some might say, "It's your blog. You can do whatever you want." My thoughts, though, tend in the direction of trying to figure out what I'm going to do, followed by a seemingly casual switch to improvisation; a technique that prevails because it's more fun than mapping the imagination in advance of a creative session. Hence, the following paragraph.
Kim Kardashian's ass is in the news. A widely published photo, in censored and uncensored versions, shows the whatever-the-hell-she-is standing nude with erupting champagne, her fantastic waist lending her the appearance of a dumbbell. The image has been obviously altered, creating an impossible body, although her real ass is quite prominent. Reaction has been strong, some celebrities tweeting remarks like, "Kim, how could you?" We're supposed to be shocked by the photo, I guess. We're supposed to forget the far more grotesque and grinding presence of the Kardashians in popular culture, a family featured in alleged reality TV shows. When Kim appears in a magazine spread shaped somewhat like a Barbie Doll, this fakery is condemned.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
On NBC News yesterday a report from besieged Kobani, Syria, dealt with Kurdish women warriors fighting ISIS. One woman, nineteen years old, showed the hand grenade she keeps to kill herself in case she's ever about to be captured. This image suggests in a few seconds bravery, resistance, heroism, and a lonely fight supported ineffectually from the air by a superpower big on talk and small on non-delusional actions.
This day used to be called Armistice Day. In 1918, at eleven in the morning on Europe's muddy Western Front, on the eleventh of November, "the guns fell silent," as I'm sure someone once put it. Europe's war leaders said, in essence, "Enough." Four years of intense and pointless warfare used to add up to what came to be called, "the war to end all wars."
We call today Veterans Day now and warfare is endless. The nineteen year old Kurdish woman with the hand grenade she'll use on herself if ISIS gets close enough to her for a this or that choice does not profit from war. Those who do profit from it can't imagine the necessity of saying, "Enough."
Vic Neptune
This day used to be called Armistice Day. In 1918, at eleven in the morning on Europe's muddy Western Front, on the eleventh of November, "the guns fell silent," as I'm sure someone once put it. Europe's war leaders said, in essence, "Enough." Four years of intense and pointless warfare used to add up to what came to be called, "the war to end all wars."
We call today Veterans Day now and warfare is endless. The nineteen year old Kurdish woman with the hand grenade she'll use on herself if ISIS gets close enough to her for a this or that choice does not profit from war. Those who do profit from it can't imagine the necessity of saying, "Enough."
Vic Neptune
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