And the point of punishing the media is what now?

Regarding the article cited below:
Congress Agrees to Raise Broadcast-Indecency Fines
Conference to Decide Maximum Penalty
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 20, 2006


Okay, okay....to some this is a bigger issue than others, of course, especially if you've got young children of your own. No one's going to disagree that parents have a right to protect (or a duty to dissuade?) their children from broadcast material that's too ribald or sexual or violent for them -- but isn't that what all those religious and family-oriented channels are for, not to mention the hi-tech invention of the V-chip and the low-tech invention of being able to talk to your family in the first place about what gets watched? Doesn't having other people watching out for what your kids watch means they want to control what they see, regardless of your own choices or parental inertia or philosophy?

Not to mention keeping an eye on what other adults are allowed to see or hear....

I think the main question is what the definition of "indecency" is, and who is going to take it on themselves to establish a standard. With the penalties going this high, it's likely to eventually quash a lot more in the way of publically-broadcast material than just what most of us would agree is patently obscene or offensive....I mean, what about that controversial episode of "Postcards From Buster" that was pulled last year or so? It didn't have anything 'indecent' or 'adult' going on, but there was ire enough that a lesbian couple was shown as being 'normal' and human.

And admittedly, this is not referring to cable -- cable TV and satellite radio have argued the case well that not everyone has automatic access to them anyhow. As long as you have to subscribe to it and have the well-enough publicized option of blocking channels and ratings.....well, right, of course. Can't put a damper on paying customers....

But really, what's with the paternalism anyhow? What's with the constant protecting people against what they're likely as not to have seen already, or not be long in encountering? Since when has "realistic human behaviour" been something to be treated like a dirty little secret, when it's a dirty big reality of real life anyhow? Designated children's programming per se is already wholesome and mostly G-rated in content, and kids who have a list of established favourite shows are unlikely to veer off it (I know this from experience--other shows are just boring filler around the things you really want to watch). I'm not in favour of trashfests and tabloid-shows, mind you (most of which currently get by with bleeping out profanity and just being ambiently sleazyin their subjects), but I am worried that these heightened penalties will push more protective self-censorship of things that are only "indecent" if you're a member of the Religious Right with a moral axe to grind. So where's the official line going to be drawn when it comes to letting children (and people without cable/satellite?) be exposed to ideas and social realities that the official powers-that-be don't approve of airing on the (temporarily) open airwaves, and who's qualified to decide what things are best prohibited for the public good?

Ya callin' me an anti-humanist or somethin'?

Initial Subject: Re: "Animal rights camp to export terror" (Telegraph, UK)
Stimulus: "I'm all for treating animals well and getting rid of unnecessary torturous experiments, like cosmetics, but the truth is.. we do need animal testing for many medical problems. If you have diabetes, you can thank the chimps who were experimented on to come up with glucose balancing medicine. Ditto for thyroid medication and other medicines many of us take daily and don't think twice about. Yes, maybe we should just die and decrease the surplus population. I already hear your argument, Aurey ;-)"
Disclaimer: I never said I was in favour of PETA and similarly-aggressive groups, nor of forcing an end to all animal testing.


Heh....well, my argument is in favour of medical research, but not in
pushing the envelope of life too hard and too greedily....
I'm more in favour of having people lead healthier and more
able/fulfilling lives rather than necessarily longer ones, and I
think that more attention needs to be paid to prenatal (and pre-
procreation at all) health of both parents and child, rather than
having every extreme premature case "rescued" and put on an incubator
no matter how remotely viable. Besides, I'm also all for reducing
the chasm in quality of health care between rich and poor, and I
think that financing/resources are often far better alotted to making
sure that medical advancements and due professional attention are
made available to as many people as possible in all regions, rather
than pushing on constantly ahead on cutting-edge advancements that
will only widen the divide between those who can afford the best in
care (both necessary and elective/cosmetic) and those who can't.
And yeah, I think that PETA is scary. Personally, I don't see why so
many celebrities support/do ads for them, unless there's some sort of
a Scientology-type different angle that they're being fed. I'm
against J-Lo using fur in her fashions (as demand increases
hunting/farming, not to mention that I can't stand J-Lo anyhow),
but I don't deny its virtues as a practical covering if the
climate/weather demands, and I'm not against leather, especially not
so long as there's a meat industry in the first place that results in
hides being harvested.
[And don't try to push veganism on me as an ultimate ideal, 'cause
I'm well aware from my own and my siblings' allergies/sensitivities
that no, soy is not the answer to everything. Different people
have different needs and issues--deal with it. Personally, I was
born an omnivore.]
I think that there should be more effort in fashion/design to make
faux animal materials look convincing and wear better so that there
is less visual prestige to having 'the real thing'.

Oh, and I hate seeing roadkill on the highways where animals can't
cross any other way, and I think that game hunting these days is
hardly a credible sport, especially as culling "trophy" animals is
against the natural practice of predators. All of which falls under
the general heading of selfishness, hurry and unfair advantage. But
I know that medical research animals are generally treated well and
valued for their (albeit involuntary) contributions...well, make that
more of an "I knew that..."--because scientific research may well
have gotten more callous since its pioneering days, what with
corporate expansion and incentives. But I hardly see them getting
more humane on the whole with having to be on the defensive against
targeted ideological attacks. There needs to be a middle ground, and
neither the radicals (who want a war and are preparing for it) nor
the pharmaceutical companies (who want their profits unhampered by
public controversy) are making use of it.

Aurey

P.S.--My family's total past and current ecological affiliations
include Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Foundation,
the National Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy, the Audubon
Society, the Coalition of Concerned Scientists -- and Brookfield
Zoo. Just to be comprehensive about it.

Hmm, and just what's so bad about a pentacle....?

[Re: Wiccan Soldier's Widow Petitions for Recognition.

Original story and link to the audio of the complete story can be found at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5334805

Quoted from NPR's website, as listed above:
"All Things Considered, April 10, 2006 · The widow of a Nevada National Guardsman killed in Afghanistan wants her husband's Wiccan faith recognized. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs permits 38 religious symbols to adorn headstones and memorials, like the one commemorating Sgt. Patrick Stewart's unit. That list includes the Christian cross and even a symbol for atheists, but the government has not yet approved the Wiccan pentacle."] ============================================

The only truly fair (and definitely legal) thing to do in this case is either to allow the pentacle or take down all the crosses and everything else....otherwise there's clearly a bias and preferential treatment being given.

Now....as to WHY this is currently being denied, I think we can all clearly see that it's on account of the pentacle being assumed as evil by Christians (fundamentalists, Catholics and even-more-moderate/mainstreamers), because they count it as witchcraft/Satanism whether it's inverted or not.

But...under a truly non-establishmentarian form of law (non-preferential in terms of any religion being assumed/mandated), what one religion merely thinks of another and its symbols should not have an effect on the legal rights of that other religion to have its symbols recognized and used as a proper denotation of faith. It's
like (in business) claiming possession of someone else's trademark only to defame it. Just because some paranoid Christians may say that the pentacle means devil-worship, that doesn't mean they should be allowed to stand in the way of a fallen Wiccan soldier getting his due dignity.

ALSO...that means that even the inverted pentacle as a proper symbol of Satanism, and even a swastika as symbol of Odinism or Asatru (assuming that to be the self-chosen denotative symbol), should deserve the same right-of-use as religious symbols so long as the practiced faiths falls under the legal boundaries of 'freedom of religion'...controversial, yes, but listen:

I think that the primary societal justification of any religion's legal freedom should be this -- that its followers do not harm, molest, exploit, coerce or defame others (including among their own community) as part of the primary tenets of their belief, and that they do not advocate violence or political mandates against outsiders on account of whether they themselves follow the same beliefs, rituals or specifically cultural/moral restrictions.

If your religion holds to that, great and welcome to the free exercise and expression of it in a free world -- and if not, then why the hell should it deserve any respect or toleration as a matter of "personal belief"?

An apt word for these days: "heffalump"

Oh, you're gonna love this one that I found....it fills, I think, a sore need in today's play-it-safe-and-get-the-votes world. Here's the pitch:

'Brokeback Mountain' author angry about best-picture loss
Associated Press/Article Launched: 03/14/2006 5:39 PM PST

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Annie Proulx, whose 1997 short story inspired the film "Brokeback Mountain," has penned a scattershot blast in a British newspaper unleashing her anger over the film's best-picture Oscar loss.

Proulx criticizes Oscar voters and the Academy Awards ceremony in the 1,094-word rant, which appeared in Saturday's issue of The Guardian, a liberal paper boasting 1.2 million readers daily.

The best-picture Oscar went to "Crash," which focuses on race relations in Los Angeles.

Academy members who vote for the year's best film are "out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city," Proulx writes.

The 70-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning author points out that "Brokeback," which was nominated for eight Academy Awards, was named best picture at the Independent Spirit Awards one day before the March 5 Oscars.

"If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit choices," Proulx advises.

She even lashes out at Lionsgate, the distribution company behind "Crash."

"Rumour has it that Lionsgate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash -- excuse me -- Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline," Proulx writes.

She decries the "atmosphere of insufferable self-importance" inside the Kodak Theatre, the Oscars site, and describes the audience as a "somewhat dim LA crowd." The show, she writes, was "reminiscent of a small-town talent-show night."

"Clapping wildly for bad stuff enhances this," Proulx writes.

She notes that "Brokeback's" three Oscar wins, for original score, adapted screenplay and direction for Ang Lee put it "on equal footing with King Kong."

When Jack Nicholson announced "Crash" as the best-picture winner, "there was a gasp of shock," Proulx writes.
"It was a safe pick of `controversial film' for the heffalumps," she writes, using the elephant-like "Winnie the Pooh" character to describe academy voters.

"For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant," Proulx concludes, "play it as it lays."

Calls by The Associated Press to Proulx's Wyoming home and her literary agent, Elizabeth Darhansoff, were not immediately returned Tuesday.


So there you have it, folks....HEFFALUMP is the new word of the day!!!

Closely related to its more-famous political lookalike the mugwump (a political candidate or figure who paranoidly avoids taking any firm public stance that might jeopardize his chances of election/reelection), the heffalump also has discernable homophonic ties to the word "philistine" and "halfway" and the slang euphemism "effin'", reflecting the author's anger as an artist at the Academy voters who played it safe by choosing a film that mostly reiterated and illustrated what most civilized people know as basic concepts of human/social decency rather than actually challenging their attitudes and boundaries of acceptance, making them think too hard about something they'd often rather sweep under the carpet.

I'm not saying myself that Crash is a bad movie, mind you, but I have heard a lot of criticism of its relative simplicity/exaggeration/'preaching to the choir' on matters of racial tension. In the arts as well as in politics, actually being perceived as promoting acceptance (and the avoidance of tragedy...) of "the love that dare not speak its name" is sometimes just too big of a liability in comparison to "can't we all just get along?". One could clearly see the sociopolitical calculation in the distribution of awards, however it started and however many voters contributed to it. It was there. It is not a misperception.

And now we have a word -- a fun and fulsomely scathing word! -- to summarize in shorthand those who want to be seen as socially enlightened but won't take risks of alienating the supposedly-moral mainstream...such as every politician who says he/she supports gay rights but reserves "marriage" as a term too sacred, or demurs on the custody and raising of children as a responsibility that shouldn't be entrusted save as a last resort...everyone who believes in "separate but equal" social restrictions and freedoms; the acceptance of "private" activity so long as it's silent and invisible as any sort of real relationship or active community/part of society; the U.S. military's famous compromise of "don't ask, don't tell"; the half-hearted prosecution of crimes, allowing defenses of violence and murder as having been 'understandably' provoked by transgender deception or gay sexual solicitation/innuendo....and even the spreading trend of decriminalization/protection of "gender expression" that STILL leaves unchallenged the multiple obstacles of social sex-coding, medical probations and legal-documentation hoops and hurdles in the way of legal gender recognition....

And in religion too -- the political pandering to what's established/respected by precedent; the cliquery of even liberal monotheists as if they were all the religion that ever mattered in society; the mostly-unquestioned tenet of popular faith that social preference, if not 'official national religion' status, belongs to Christianity over-and-excluding all other faiths from serious concurrent consideration...oh, unless of course they have a well-known habit of fighting, boycotting and/or killing for the respect they want. Funny how the most uncivil religions....enh, need I continue that one...?

Yeah. Heffalumps. Unable to put their full and visible weight behind what needs to be seen, needs to be changed. Thank you, Annie Proulx -- you've made a much-needed contribution to contemporary social rhetoric, and I'll be doing my part to spread it where it needs to go.

"Black vs. Queer" government deal--aka the smart way of splintering minority power...

(also cross-referenced on other sites, including full text below for a closer look after commentary)

Re: Norcross church wants ‘tough love’ for gays

Hmmm....logic check here, anyone?

"I love homosexuals," Pleasant said. "That's why we have programs here to help them change."

Now what other group of people in the world can a person get away with saying that about? If gays were Muslims instead, there'd be the friggin' Stonewall jihad over shit like that!

And that little "Black Contract with America on Moral Values"--

In exchange for black churches focusing on defeating marriage for same-sex couples, the churches will receive money through the government's faith-based initiative programs....

--first of all it's morally obscene, and secondly why the hell is this news not being broadcast all across the country, that the GOP is essentially bribing black churches to aid in denying full civil rights to another minority group? Does it not matter because there wasn't slavery involved, just like no socio-political situation can ever be compared to Nazi Germany until you actually have mass killings and concentration camps?

The reason the Third Reich got so far in their campaigns against minorities -- ethnic, religious or "degenerate" -- is that they knew how to divide people against each other, to have them constantly vindicating themselves as good/loyal citizens and others as troublemakers who deserved what they got...the less they demanded equal rights or made themselves visibly deviant, the underlying reasoning was, the less that anyone could possibly have a problem with them....the whole "sweep yourselves under the carpet" approach, which in the case of "invisible" or semi-visible minorities has always been a convenient way of making the assimilated minorities blame those who stick out (drag queens, Hasidic Jews, butch lesbians, stereotypically effeminate gays) just for visibly sticking out.

[Reference the Daughters of Bilitis for this one...they were a groundbreaking social organization for lesbians, but they were also committed to the idea of "blending in" as feminine in dress and public behaviour as a group imperative.]

Any reasonably intelligent ruler/administration knows that the best way to maintain power is to keep the less-powerful factions fighting against each other rather than letting them see their common causes/complaints and unite against those on the top. Currently, we have a prominent number of token/exceptional black political insiders, who serve as a reassurance that the government is committed to racial equality -- even if socio-economic equality is the furthest thing from the White House's collective mind. We have a clearly expressed political desire afoot to permanently prevent same-sex marriage, even though the idea of marriage as being solely for procreation went out the window ages ago...we even have gay and lesbian commentators who say that to gain the right to marry would be a trap into the same old 'traditional-values' social system, and that maybe it shouldn't be a goal afterall.

Loyal queers...in a way, or at least being used as such, tolerated so long as there's not too much uppityness for full social equality -- look, have we not heard of this before?

In shorthand: blacks are being visibly courted through their churches, gays are being re-demonised as society's scourge (as if that ever stopped, in some areas that socially aren't even out of the nineteenth century or maybe even the seventeenth) -- and if enough blacks and other ethnic minorities feel that their socio-moral concerns are in line with those of the government -- if they have that feeling of being in good with the government on the same sympathetic ground -- then they won't notice quite so much that they're still stuck in the same old ruts as before, still prone to poverty and privation, neglect and criminal assumptions.

Notice too, that nowhere do these ministers say that black men on the "down low" ARE gay or bisexual as even a temporary/curable condition...because that would be an insult to the very image of strong/macho black masculinity that they're playing into, the same proud stereotype that made this phenomenon happen in the first place 'cause black men couldn't dare to be with each other for fear of compromising the social reputation of their race. Just like, for example....oh, gay Catholic men entering the priesthood 'cause their immigrant neighborhood communities had such a high and insular pressure towards marriage and procreation that there was no other discreet option. Same for nuns who didn't want to be mothers. Hell, all through history people have entered religious orders to get out of the babymaking demands of society.

But in black society it's not about real desires, right?--it's all the fault of the "homosexual agenda" (does it float around on its own just seducing unwary people together?) and women not putting out enough to satisfy their men (again, the supposed insatiable potency of black males--see "Aryan sexual paranoia", perhaps?). Throw AIDS
into that as a punishment-consequence (again!) and you got yourself a moral crusade....

This makes me sick. Thank you for posting it, and I hope the word gets around as quickly and thoroughly as possible that this manipulative shite is going on. People who can't see and learn from the patterns of the past before things reached their worst are far more likely to see the worst repeated.

Aureantes

============================================
[as posted in hyperlucidity -- the eternal pathology]:

In hyperlucidity@yahoogroups.com, indiscriminately_tactless wrote:
Anything I could say about this will be said. I'll just re-iterate my "Ugh," of disgust and contempt, however.

************************************************
Norcross church wants ‘tough love’ for gays
Anti-gay Rev. Lou Sheldon headlines ‘family values’ summit

By ANDREW KEEGAN
Friday, March 31, 2006

Married black women who do not have regular sex with their husbands are to blame for the "down low" and the rise of HIV infection among African Americans.

That was just one message delivered during a two-day summit on "Protecting the Biblical Institution of Marriage and Family Values," held March 25-26 at Kingdom Builders Christian Center, a large predominately black church in Norcross.

"Apostle" Jamie Pleasant presides over the congregations, which cites more than a thousand members, according to its web site. He has a doctorate degree from Georgia Tech in Business Management and started the church in 1995.

Addressing the "down-low," a term that describes married black men having sex with other men in secret, Pleasant told hundreds of worshipers March 25 that God intended man and woman to procreate.

"The marital duty is not being fulfilled," Pleasant said. "Why are we with you women? Just think about it...we have a strong sex drive. You need to do your part and keep the marriage bed pure. Whenever your husband wants sex it is your duty to say yes."

`Preachers never lie'

Rev. Lou Sheldon, chair of the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative group opposed to gay civil rights, was the guest speaker for the weekend. His organization is actively recruiting large black churches in its effort to battle the "homosexual agenda."

In January, Sheldon, who is white, and 70 black pastors who supported President George W. Bush met in Los Angeles. The summit yielded the "Black Contract with America on Moral Values," the Los Angeles Times reported. In exchange for black churches focusing on defeating marriage for same-sex couples, the churches will receive money through the government's faith-based initiative programs, the paper reported.

Sheldon, who told the Norcross congregation that he has been fighting "gay rights" since 1972, began his sermon by declaring, "Preachers never lie."

"We have a battle on our hands," Sheldon said. "The homosexuals lose every time an issue is on a ballot but more and more activist judges and legislators are supporting them. It is important that people of color speak up because the press will listen to you."

Sheldon then played a video to illustrate his point. Images of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights marches were mixed with photos of leather-clad men, drag queens and topless women marching in Pride parades.

"The homosexual excuse is `we want civil rights,'" Sheldon said after the video. "Have they ever been denied the right to vote? Have they ever had to sit in the back of a bus? They have hijacked the freedom train to Selma."

Gay adoption was also a key theme throughout Sheldon's two-hour talk.

"The homosexuals have gone from their bedrooms to the classrooms, and the press is always playing up the well-dressed homosexual helping these minority children," he said. "It is up to us to make sure our little children are not being violated."

Cries of "mercy" rang out when Sheldon claimed that 85 percent of all lesbians have been sexually molested.
"Our heart must go out to them," he said. "They don't trust men and need female counseling."

Sheldon concluded his address by telling attendees, "There is no such thing as a gay gene. It is a tragic and unfortunate learned behavior that must be stopped or homosexuality will destroy society."

`Impotent' words?

The author of "The Homosexual Agenda," Sheldon encouraged worshipers to purchase his book that is filled with statistics similar to those mentioned during his talk.

The National Black Justice Coalition, a black gay group focused on fighting both racism and homophobia, works to refute claims by anti-gay groups that the majority of African-Americans oppose same-sex marriage.

Sylvia Rhue, NBJC director of religious affairs, attended the meeting in Los Angeles this year where Sheldon addressed black church leaders.

Despite his anti-gay rhetoric, Rhue said Sheldon, 72, is not as effective as many people believe.

"His words and shenanigans are impotent, incompetent and ignorant," Rhue said. "His pronouncements shrivel and die in the light of truth and show how desperate he is. They cannot win by telling the truth and we cannot lose by telling the truth."

Jay Brown, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay political group, said Sheldon's statistics are downright lies.

"These are bogus studies being pushed by a messenger with absolutely no credibility," Brown said.

`Tough love' for gays

After the program, the leader of Kingdom Builders Christian Center told Southern Voice he does not hate gays.

"I love homosexuals," Pleasant said. "That's why we have programs here to help them change."

Pleasant equated the church's role in dealing with gays to that of a parent.

"If a child does something wrong and you spank them, it's not because you hate them," he said. "It's tough love."

Questioned on the apparent contradiction of using the civil rights message advocated by King, which included gays, in the fight against gay rights, Pleasant said that both Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King were wrong.

"While I respect everything they did for us, I truly believe what the Bible says comes first," Pleasant said. "What we're trying to do is protect society."

Pleasant said the church would work to defeat any measure it deems "un-biblical," including gay marriage and gay adoption.

Alton Pollard III, director of the black church studies program at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, said the ongoing racism of the white church and society plays an important role in why many black churches reject homosexuality.

"Stereotypes of black hypersexuality and fertility, male and female, are central to the grand reluctance of many black churchgoers to be more affirming and inclusive," Pollard said. "Black people have been blamed for every sin under the sun ... they will not willingly accept yet another."

"Thinking Like a Terrorist"....here's the reasoning about L.A.

This, regarding the FAIR media alert re the purported planned-and-foiled terrorist plot against L.A. -- as posted and commented on at hyperlucidity:

Preceding post: [Actually, I thought it sounded rather trumped up when I read the
story originally....seemed a bit too convenient an incident (and
already "foiled," moreover) to bring up as evidence that the
administration's carte blanche re civil liberties is working.
There's also one *major* flaw in the official story as I read
it.....but I'll bring that up later -- key idea though, ya gotta think like a terrorist
*convincingly* if you're going to fake a terrorist plot. Details at
11...*snicker*]


Simple thing, really....do you honestly think that a pan-Islamic
terrorist cell would target a building simply because it was "the
tallest building in Los Angeles"? And this after successfully
attacking the World Trade Center towers (symbol & center of American
financial power) and the Pentagon (symbol & center of American
military might)?

No. That's stupid. Actually, the only reason that that skyscraper
would be a target for *anything* is that a lot of Americans have a
decent amount of concern for Los Angeles and its environs because of
the cultural/commercial reputation there. We like Hollywood, in
short...and an attack on L.A. = attack on Hollywood, glamour,
creativity, ambition, freedom of the arts....well, bollocks, that
ain't a target that Al-Qaeda cares about, it's one that "we" care
about. And that's why it's a red herring to make us all sigh in
relief and trust our fates and civil liberties to the government,
because they say that they thwarted a terrorist attack.

Terrorism by definition is the methodical intimidation of a populace
through the infliction of maximum physical and
psychological/emotional damage.
Here are the main things that you have to remember about *planned
targets* for terrorism:

* They have to be prominent and/or relevant.
It does no good to attack somewhere that isn't going to be readily
recognized by the citizenry. They must have a quality of instant
and/or iconic identification, or of universal relevance to daily life
and necessity. Airplanes, sports stadiums, skyscrapers that are well-
known in and of themselves for the business that goes on in them.

* There have to be a lot of people in/around them.
Terrorism requires appreciable human carnage, so that it damages the
emotions and morale of the populace. Much as I hate the arrogance of
Mount Rushmore, it's not a useful target for terrorism. Grand
Central Station at rush-hour, though...*possible*, but trains are not
as likely as airplanes, which are far more dramatic and cause more
lasting paranoia. Airport terminals, though they may have more
potential victims, don't have as much velocity and impact to work
with.

* They have to mean something important as representative of
the "enemy" as seen by the terrorist.
The targets on 9/11 made sense, because they were embodiments of U.S. dominance/imperialism in two areas, the military and the financial/economic sectors. Unless something can be seen as a real locus of power that is being
destroyed/damaged by the attack, it is unlikely to be chosen as a target of terrorism.


So....in short, that's why I had a gut feeling that that reported
thwarting was a tale full of crap and machination. Just like the
whole purported biological warfare threat in mid-late winter before
the start of the war, with the stocking-up on plastic-wrap and duct-
tape.....and again I say unto you, bullshit (which is what I was
saying then, too, actually).

Winter's a really bad time to attempt biological warfare as a
terrorist weapon, because people aren't as likely to be congregated
together out-of-doors or in large stadiums and such, they cover
themselves more if they do, the air's much colder and/or drier and so
contagion range is likely to be shorter and breathing passages less
efficient to absorb what's in the air....in short, it's really not
that effective a season for toxic gases and such.

It's a great season for fighting in Iraq, though, as compared to
waiting until the desert warms up and the sand gets into everything
and the heat fouls up your computers and navigational instruments and
the metal of the tanks turns them into furnaces on treads...whether
you're not used to fighting in the Middle East or you are, it makes
sense to mount your technology-heavy offensives in the cooler season
as opposed to the hot season -- and that's precisely what the
U.S. administration was gunning for, in my opinion...getting the public
anxiety/fervour strong enough over this to start attacking Iraq as
soon as possible, while it was still easy going to start and maintain
a desert campaign efficiently.

At least, that's the way I see it. Thinking like a terrorist has its
advantages. So does thinking like a general who wants to get his war
on already...strategy, people, strategy...

Okay, now that we have the "cartoon wars" going on....here's a sermon.....

[forwarded from my forum hyperlucidity, where this and a lot more
gets written in drabbles as the news goes on...]
=================================================================

Personally, I think this debacle over the Danish cartoons has done
more than anything in the mind of the average rational person to
discredit the stance of those rioting and getting violent over them,
despite whatever the official statements and apologies and such have
been so far. No one religion/culture deserves special kid-glove
treatment unless all do, and we already know that the most vocal
factions in the Islamic world are unfortunately not those calling for
respect for other faiths and nations or treating them with civility.
It's more like, actually....hmm, the Republicans in Congress accusing
the Democrats of partisan politics when they vote against legislation
that is itself hostile and partisan from the start.

Now....personally, I'd like to leave any question of the United
States' virtue out of this -- we know my opinions on the war, and we
know that I have no fondness for the way that national foreign
policies have hobnobbed conveniently with princes and dictators (as
it suits their agendas) while worsening the plight of the average
working stiff in any aid-dependent nation.

But that has had nothing to do with religion...rather, religion has
been used as an excuse and a popular cause for retaliation, as much
so as national pride. It's not that kind of personal, people -- it's
not a matter of repeating the Crusades, and even there the factor of
faiths was a smaller thing than the matter of underlying greed and
striving for territorial control. Liberate the Holy Land? -- sure,
as much as we liberated Iraq...it's the same basic thing, when
ideologies are trumped up to rouse the public spirit, and governments
are just as willing to kill and suppress people of their own basic
creed (and even nation) if they happen to get in the way of the
greater plan.

But to have such a pricklish sense of vested dignity that one thinks
it justified to run amok and riot over the use of a holy figure in a
cartoon is...a bit much. A bit thin-skinned, a bit childish, a bit
spoiled in the demand for respect where none is given and much bile
is spewed on a regular basis. And, reasonable minds must admit, the
satirical points made were not devoid of truth.

If having an attitude of fanatical extremism exposed and pricked by
mere cartoons -- and this goes for ANY belief -- is too much to take,
so much that mobs must rise and chaos ensue in protest, then that
only proves that those who are quivering with outrage and fury at the
jab and the insult, hell-bent on demanding apologies and reparations
and capitulations are all the more deeply and tragically WRONG.

Strong words, right?--afterall, moral terms and absolutes aren't
supposed to be brought into the politics of nations and global
affairs anymore, not so long as hairs can be split and legalities
dissected and prerogatives claimed within the dry technical
boundaries of law. But this *is* moral, and the law has lost its
sense of moral discernment, had it bled dry by design to let
hypocrisies reign. Strong words must be used again, and strike to
the core of the matter.

Extremism is inherently wrong and pathological, no matter where it
arises and what creed (or lack thereof) it claims. Claiming
orthodoxy ("right belief") as one ideology's possession and all other
faiths, paths and philosophies as misguided, inferior, immoral and
right to destroy, is inherently wrong -- no matter from where the
impulse comes. One's beliefs may be worth dying for personally, but
they are never worth condemning others to death. Never. Claim
the "divine right" of spreading your way by force through all the
world, and you step over the line of morality. Any credo
of "manifest destiny" -- whatever its form -- is wrong, was wrong,
will always be the wrong way to conduct human affairs.

Unfortunately, though...

Unfortunately, Islam is one of those religions in the world whose
origin and history from the very start has been marked by reactionary
resentment and a quest for ascendency over the faiths and cultures
that preceded and surrounded and dominated it. In claiming
supersedence of both Judaism and Christianity by virtue of a superior
prophet and scriptures, it announced itself as being in struggle from
the start, emerging out of the inferiority complex, if you will, of
the Arabic peoples who lacked a unified and respected monotheism of
their own in a predominantly monotheistic world. Not just an
assertion of "we-too", but a "we-better-than-you" -- as with all
movements when they assert the chosenness of their mission over all
others.

And this has nothing to do with finding ultimate truth within Islam,
mind you -- I have every respect for those who can find their truth
personally and live it honourably *for themselves* -- but it is an
immensely unrefuted and uncontested point within most of the Islamic
world, that Islam must and will triumph over all faiths.

As it is within America's so-called "heartland", that American
conservative fundamentalist Christianity must and will win out in the
end (and better fight for its aims sooner than later, 'cause the
Rapture's a-comin')...but then, most of the vitriol there is aimed at
domestic purported enemies than global ones, except for enforcing
their version of "moral values" in policy wherever the U.S. holds
effective sway...

At any rate, the idea is a backwards one that badly needs fighting-
against. *Not* that there's no value in people's religions, no
transcendent worth, nothing worth preserving, but that the ingrained
idea of any one religion -- or nation, or ideology -- being supreme,
perfect, and sacrosanct from all reproach or challenge or levity MUST
be brought down wherever it exists. Because that is the root of all
fanaticism. If you've ever read or seen _The Name of the Rose_, you
might recall that the root cause of all those apocalyptically-themed
murders was to protect against the dissemination of blasphemy in the
form of laughter, with comedy, satire and travesty being perceived as
insults against the dignity of God.

Which, of course, *always* needs fierce defending by the faithful...

I remember hearing on the radio one morning a few years ago that Pope
John Paul II had chosen not to sign to a declaration of religious
human rights, on the grounds that it would compromise the Church's
missionary efforts.

No faith is supremely perfect. No institution is supremely perfect.
Anytime an ideology becomes more important than the community of
people it's applied to, it loses its way. The reason revolutions
devour their own children is that maintaining the purity and control
of a philosophy becomes more of an ideal than maintaining and
bettering the state of humanity.

So that's the thing -- really, no one should get away with putting
their own religion on so high a pedestal that they themselves can't
tolerate laughter or an unflattering truth. People who are so deadly
serious are also bloody immature, and a danger to others around
them. Idolatry at its core doesn't consist in whether or not a
picture or a statue is allowed, but in the worship and importance of
images above their realities.

In preserving the sanctity of a symbol while ignoring or violating
that which it ought to represent. In using the Ten Commandments as
an excuse for social tyranny. In taking the name of Jesus as a flag
for trampling on one's brother, or extolling the virtues of the
Virgin Mary while demeaning and repressing the women who are real and
alive in the world around. Or invoking the spectre of the Holocaust
as the one atrocity that can never ever be equalled or even compared
with, keeping it in hand as a constant justification for every deed
of oppression, violence and chauvinism thereafter. Making it a crime
to burn the American flag -- stop me if you've heard this one --
while systematically unraveling all the liberties and justice and
greater human possibilities that it was made to serve as the banner
for in the first place.

And in that respect, all those who show themselves willing to resort
to threats and violence and destruction over the implications of mere
images are truly and pathetically idolaters. They have lost the way,
whatever their way -- if ever indeed they had it.

_______________________________________________________________

[Hmm....anyone else wanna pitch in some thoughts? I know I'm being
rather bold and absolute in my assertions of truth, but hey--I ain't
gonna execute anyone for not going my way....>:)...]

Paranoid gold in a gilt-plastic world....

...which may very well be the next subtitle of this blog. I like it, and I think it likes me, and maybe just maybe it'll get me some decent attention for being all witty and such. At any rate, I know that this blog shouldn't be lying fallow, especially when I have so much stuff that I'm posting within my own groups that I need to forward here.

Update: my little news/commentary forum hyperlucidity--the eternal pathology is growing rather well, though I could always use more interested parties to get commentational with. This is a group/list for 'liminal' people who have a vested interest in current affairs and political developments but don't always have the means to cull out the news that applies to them, or to see the lines that show what it implies, where it leads on to, where it looks like things that have happened before. Patterns and history -- pretty important stuff there, no matter what minority is on the bottom or what controversy's on top. This is also where most of my best articles for here tend to come from, after a little expansion and polishing-up.

Also, I'm going to start posting more of my own poetry and fiction selections here, because it ain't much fun to just have me wittily dissecting how the world's falling apart. You might as well have a chance to see how I do think the world ought to be, or at least the more personal side of why it bothers me as it is now. If you like my writing, tell me so, and tell other people too. Even better, help me get it published...you know, I'm not too fond of the idea of sitting off in a near-deserted corner of the Internet prehumously accumulating my posthumous works.

Anyhow...yes, time for a change and time for a lot of updates and regular throwing-in of fresh material. Not trying to please anyone but to satisfy the demands of that impulse which pushes things out from thoughts to page, from one mind to another, just on the off change that something will come of their being brought to light.

Regarding The Da Vinci Code.....>:)

[Admittedly, this is a very "religious" topic, but it does have a lot
of bearing on modern politics--well, on politics and civilization and
history overall...not to mention the state of modern popular
fiction...]

Whatever other controversies there are over whether it's accurate or
cobbled-together or what, I think there's one very good reason that
the central premise of The Da Vinci Code -- the "sang real" or "royal
blood" interpretation of the Holy Grail -- makes no sense atall in
terms of Christianity, and that's that it expressly undermines
everything progressive and 'enlightened' about the principles that
Jesus taught.

I'm not going to take on the question of whether he really existed in
history or not -- from the colloquial tone and idiosyncratic events
in the Gospels, not to mention their multiple iterations, it seems
clear to me that he did, and it's common knowledge to scholars that
the story was gathered and edited after the fact. If you don't
believe that, then whatever -- he was a minor Jewish rabble-rouser in
his time so far as the Roman authorities knew, so one could hardly
demand him to have a larger footprint in their histories.

Anyone who has read the Gospels at any length will notice that Jesus
specifically rejected any idea that the claims of blood and family
were stronger than those of individual faith itself, and that many
times he said that anyone who placed father or mother or spouse or
children higher than him was "not worthy" of him, even refusing to
recognise his own mother and (adoptive) siblings once when preaching,
saying he had none. When a woman in a crowd called out, "Blessed is
the womb that bore you and the breasts that gave you suck," he
replied, "Rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep
it." I.e., blood relations get no special favours or grace on that
count alone.
Certainly, the Old Testament is full of lineages and chosen heirs and
such, but that's the prior history, not part of the original
Christian message -- and everything of the divine right of kings,
right down to Queen Elizabeth II, is founded off the Old Testament
tradition and scriptural justifications, not the New, despite this
being an accepted concept of "Christendom" for most of its history.

I'm not even going to address the issue of whether Jesus had sex with
Mary Magdalene....or any other of his disciples, for that matter, as
I think that his personal silences speak louder than later-official
words on quite a few matters of 'moral values'....but I think that
one thing that he himself would definitely not have done, given any
divine foresight, is have any issue of his own lineage, because
they would automatically (given human nature to cling to any visible
status) be regarded as superior to others and be looked to for
leadership, in a way that had nothing to do with their own personal
virtues and would undermine the entire concept of equal/paradoxical
rank in the Kingdom of Heaven, where "the first shall be last and the
last shall be first," and "he who would be master must be the servant
of all."

In the case of Islam, Mohammad's children and their marriages and
descendants complicated the matter of religious authority and its
succession immensely because of different factions both claiming
priority by virtue of a blood-relationship with the Prophet -- this
being the origin of the Sunni vs. Shi'ite strife that underlies much
Middle Eastern conflict.
In Roman Catholicism, the institution of the papacy has certainly had
much disputation and was even split between Rome and Avignon at one
time...but the consequences of that have been much diminished by
time, seeing as the feuding popes in question had no heirs/resulting
bloodlines to keep fighting over the rightful succession after one
had gained a lasting ascendancy over the other.

Apart from the inevitable claims of nepotism when one does recognise
family members as having a higher moral/religious authority (let
alone a more-divine-than-thou essential nature), it seems more
prone to subsequent corruption and/or stagnation of one's original
message (whatever it is) to let one's offspring be assumed as moral
heirs rather than choosing persons of proven understanding and
discretion. Therefore, anyone who does have a higher path of truth
to share would be wisest to never have children atall, lest they be
recognised and taken for something which they were not.

Whatever strategic errors Jesus made in his ministry (with cohorts of
the kissing kind, for example...), it is utterly against the grain of
his teachings to think that he would have himself established any
bloodline that might have served to dilute and co-opt the
significance of what he was trying to do. Moreover, even just on the
symbolic level, having the secret lie in a "royal blood" rather than
a sacred cup essentially rejects the concept of communion for that of
a categorical rank and distinction -- which highlights even more that
it is not something Jesus would have wanted nor perhaps even
permitted.....yes, and I can just see him arguing with Magdalene over
this, assuming a physical relationship there....

In the popular alternative reading of things where Jesus never died
atall but emigrated off to France instead...(and why France *anyhow*,
except by retro-adoption by the royal line there?)...well, perhaps in
a safe obscurity they might've had kids. I don't think that that
happened, though, considering how much of the significance of
Christianity rests on the whole death/resurrection idea. So maybe
there was a pregnancy and he didn't know about it before the
crucifixion....though, given the recorded events afterwards, that
hardly seems too likely....the thing is, with any grain of divine
common sense, he wouldn't have wanted there to be any known
descendants.

So, whether there were indeed any lineal descendants of Jesus of
Nazareth or not, the great secret of Christianity's cosmic
significance does not and should not lie there, in so easily gotten
and easily tarnished a thing as blood-relationship. The only
familial relationships that Jesus ever extolled in his ministry were
those of fellowship in the spirit...everything else so commonly
praised -- even his own ancestry as recounted in the 'Begat-itudes'
(little in-joke there)-- would be merely termed an accident of birth,
not a status of the spirit itself.

So--there's my little bit of Biblical exegesis on that matter, which
certainly comes down against reading too much into that novel as a
revelatory theory. I said more or less from the start of reading it
myself that it was only "second-level insight" (turning things upside-
down, where rivers are not rivers and mountains are not mountains),
even though it's fairly clear to most students of religious history
that the emergent Christian religion edited out a lot of the more
revolutionary and egalitarian aspects of the original movement in
order to present themselves in the most acceptable light as an
institution -- this including the re-subordination of women as in
traditional Jewish culture, and turning that all into canon law.
Second-level insight is easy to find, and not that difficult to
write -- any basic student of conspiracy theories knows how to play
the what-if game, if only to set up a field of alternatives to
the "official" story.

More specifically so than that, though, it is essentially untrue to
the preserved essentials of Jesus' message (all the red-letter
material in some Bibles) that its significance should be potboiled
down to a union of male and female energies (and centered on the
merely biological level, to boot) when it's fairly easily discernable
that he was getting at the transcendence of that duality, both
socially and intrapersonally.

Anyhow. You certainly don't have to believe any of this, but I think
it makes a lot more sense on a practical and a theological level than
literally believing what you read in The Da Vinci Code. On a wild
guess that most of the people who have made it a bestseller are not
given to reading primary-source material in either religion or
history, I offer this as a scripture-based clarification that
perpetuating himself genetically is never what that personage called
Jesus had in mind as any great sacred mystery for people to ooh and
aah about two millennia later.

Though, there's certainly gotta be some book out there already
speculating on cloning Jesus from his blood out of a relic....perhaps
even building a Biblical-era amusement park around it....though,
elementary chaos theory and the laws of fiction dictate that a
cloned Jesus will inevitably run amok and turn into an Antichrist....

*snickers*

Yeah, that'll make a great movie.....

__________________________________________________________________
P.S. -- Pass this on if you like, but please do make sure that I get
the blame for it.

Breed no more Bushes...

============================================================
> Report: NSA eavesdropping wider than White House admitted
> By Reuters -- http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N24215626.htm
============================================================

There's been a lot written about this since it came out, on every
side and angle of the political fence, so here's the highlights/main
opinions:

Some people say that since the primary filtering process being done
was essentially pattern recognition and not mainly/initially content
examination, that it was a completely justifiable and essential
course of action. Others say that the sheer volume of communications
data collected, plus the lack of guidelines for its (total) retention
sets a bad precedent in general for accumulating information on
citizens, since there is no guarantee limiting how it will be used,
especially seeing as this administration has also been keeping tabs
on a great many non-terrorist activities that it disapproves of.

In general, there's a fine line of technical
legality/constitutionality that has been invoked here, and even that
has proven to be untenable as a by-the-books defense....so, the
interests of leadership and national security have been highlighted,
and the need for utmost speed and efficiency therewith to pursue
them...but all this doesn't mitigate the fact that not only did Bush
avoid the normal warrants court in seeking to gain private
communications intelligence, but that he firmly and defensively
believes it his right as President, as leader, to have such
immediate powers without question. Which, no matter what sort of a
crisis we're in, does not sit well with the explicit structure of
this nation as one under a consistent and balanced-between-the-
branches rule of law (though, neither does the constant
pressure "from the White House" on the legislature to enforce its
agenda, or "from the White House" on the media to negotiate the terms
of its news exposure). As some columnists have commented, it would
have taken little time and practically no obstacles to get warrants
for these taps through the formal court already in place, so why
avoid the legal process -- unless to make a show and a sticking point
of executive authority, as he is now doing?

I suppose the most instinctive thing to say in response to all this
is, "Who does he think he is??" -- does he really believe that as
President he is above the law? And I think the answer to that is a
resounding, "Well, obviously....." -- judging from the way he has
reacted to criticism and challenges from the start of his first term,
and from the insularity and sycophantism that he cultivates (has been
cultivated to) within his circle of advisers. We have seen already
that this has had an extreme influence on policy, leading informants
from various fields to shape their reports to match the results (and
dependent agenda) known to be preferred by the administration. It
has already corrupted the stream of intelligence, and in more areas
than just the sphere of the now/still-ongoing war. Science itself,
logic itself, is under pressure to conform to the wishes of a
temporary (one hopes) regime, instead of holding to the closest
truths it can achieve. That in itself is cause for alarm, especially
in a nation where the structure and succession of power are supposed
to eliminate the perpetual dominance of any single ruler or
dynasty, and to force all politicians to stand or fall on their own
merits, not as part of a party bloc.

The American constitutional ideal of politics is that of public
service done on behalf of the people of the nation (all of them), in
allegiance to the Constitution of the United States -- and no higher
power than that. Not even God, technically, despite those who have
some crackpot idea that this country's Manifest Destiny is to become
an experiment in theocracy instead of in human reason and dignity.
Even the plan (in the Texas redistricting affair and Tom DeLay's
campaign money laundering) for a "permanent Republican majority", by
the literal terms of it, is an arrogant breach of the ideals that the
nation was based on, in spirit if not in clearly-evidential clause,
because the structure was always and ever intended to change to serve
the people, and intending to establish any nominal party or agenda
as a "permanent" controller of government flies in the face of a free
democratic system, announcing itself as a wanna-be Reich whether its
proponents will admit it or not. To an honest politician (wherever
there is such a thing) it's not about the party but about the
people's needs, and not about aggrandizing power but responding aptly
to the changes of the nation itself. The fact that so much, here,
has gone into the gathering of both power and information, clearly
angling to the needs of this administration as if it were the only
one that ever need be considered, sincerely begs the question of
whether aspiring presidents and all politicians ought not only to be
limited in their terms but prohibited from procreating at all (or
adopting, like Julius Caesar did Octavian), so as to spare the nation
the burden of supporting their family dynastic ambitions, and the
secret avuncular grooming of blood-heirs to the perceived throne.
The more obstacles that can be placed in the way of politics-as-
power, the better for us -- it should no more be an adjunct of wealth
and caste than teaching, farming or collecting the trash and doing
what best can be done with it. If that means proposing that the U.S.
Congress and all the highest federal agencies and branches be not
approached with 'family' loyalties in tow, then perchance the
seriousness of that demand would help deter those who have only their
own self-service and permanent empire-building in mind.

Rather ecclesiastical, yes, on the face of it -- though, I'm not so
stupid as to think that celibacy in itself is enforceable nor
wise...just that one not have children to pass on one's reputation
and expectations to, or that will feel obliged to give favours or
follow orders as given by a parent. Or, the (over the long term)
extended politically-influential family that bears some good fruit
and some indifferent, some bad, but all bearing the same trade name
to be grouped by. Neither am I in favour of shamelessly shilling for
one's wife's (or husband's) political career after one's own terms of
office are done.

Politics, in this country out of all others, ought never to be a
means of constructing a false royalty, nor a false sense of
superiority to the citizenry at large. And that, precisely, is the
crisis of political breedership that we have on our hands right now.

What?--you mean it's really all about getting more MONEY?

===============================================================
[commenting on this article]

Study: Illegal Immigrants Not Drawn by Jobs
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; Page A11

===============================================================

Okay, so here's how it goes -- U.S. corporations "legally" send their
factories (and jobs) south and overseas to not have to pay as much,
and Mexican illegal immigrants get themselves north so that they'll
get paid *more* (much of which they often send home to remaining
family in Mexico, effectively drawing on one national economy to
support another one)...thereby increasing competition in the U.S. for
a lessening number of labouring, factory and other semi-skilled
jobs. That part is true.

Which has led to, and will lead to more of, a decline in the general
working-class standard of living, aided and abetted by the higher
birthrates typical of people with less schooling, earlier ages of
marriage, and stronger religious/cultural mores. A 'positive' view
would be that this will help to equalize the economic conditions
between the U.S. and Mexico and the other 'Third World'/developing
nations it likes doing its business in -- but I doubt that that'll
happen peacefully, and I don't think that many people here would
consider it an improvement. [The current administration's proposal
(the "guest worker" program) of granting an effective amnesty to
people already here illegally seems to omit any clear requirements or
even polite requests/preferences (in contrast to official immigration
and visa standards, should anyone care to examine them) that the
persons thus admitted should be an asset and not a drain to the
nation's infrastructure and economy and overall productivity. [dated; research in detail if desired] Which
makes me come off sounding pretty protectionist, I suppose....but
then, the best ways to make and keep a nation strong involve
maximizing the existing population's potential -- not waging a "race
to the bottom" via mutual economic exploitation.

If anything, American companies raising wages in their foreign-based
locations (and attending to human rights for their workers, too)
would be one of the best ways possible to encourage people to stay in
their own countries and take pride in them where they are, rather
than heading off to other lands for the sake of economic opportunity
without any intended allegiance to the host nation itself. Though,
that does require a certain illogical amount of national loyalty on the part of
the so-called "multinational" corporations, to realize that their own
home country/ies' best interests are served by not taking advantage
of others' homelands. It might even require a certain amount of
loophole-closing and honesty on a global scale -- but beginning with
national governments having some dignity and pride in their own
people, and refusing to let them be exploited and sold short for the
sake of illusory economic progress -- i.e., that kind that is
currently measured out on stringent terms of domestic de-
stabilization by the IMF, but whose benefits tend to either remain in
the hands of foreign investors, or never to trickle down through the
government agencies who have been dis-encouraged (subtly or not) from
taking care of their own people's needs. Governments do not and
should not exist for the sake of serving the government's needs but
those of the people, without whom they would not exist.

And whom do corporations serve, then, in these days of borderless
buying and trading and investing and maximizing profit margins? I'm
inclined to say they're largely guided by the interests of pirates.
By which of course I mean those who intend to take all they can via
their dealings in other people's labour and goods, with as little
restraint as possible.

Though, back in the good old days, pirates risked their own lives for
their plunder (gad, it's the least they could do!), and even had
governments out hunting for them, and stiff penalties--like death--
for their crimes. These days, they have the government so in their
pocket that they're not only going unpunished but rewarded for
squeezing the most they can get out of investments they never put in
a day's labour for. Capital gains and investment dividends don't
just come from nowhere....somewhere, somehow, someone is paying far
more than they should so that someone else is paying as little as
they can get away with. And a lot of people are working for
practically nothing so that others can get money for doing no work
atall. If the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, as
any supposed representative democracy would seem to recognize, then
why tolerate the assumption that any socioeconomic elite, no matter
how powerful or pampered from birth, is exempt from the laws that
govern the less-powerful, or somehow too important to ever suffer
full penalties for their deeds, no matter whom they injure, ruin, or
even kill through their choices.

A long way of rhetoric from illegal immigrants from Mexico...but
really, maybe not. After all, everyone's just trying to get ahead,
and we ought not to let the sheer convenience of "hating the
foreigner" get in the way of seeing the underlying reasons why people
do what they do, and what's really precipitating and enabling the
situation. Those caught in the middle at the borders and in the
cities aren't the ones in control, and perhaps they ought to look a
bit harder at those that are.

Again with blaming the gays......(latest Vatican directive)

Article in question:

In Strong Terms, Rome Is to Ban Gays as Priests
By IAN FISHER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: November 23, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/international/europe/23vatican.html?
th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all
________________________________________________________

Hmm...please do note the specific wording of this declaration, as it
seems to specifically ban not only active homosexuals and those
of "deep-seated" tendencies, *but also* those who "support the so-
called 'gay culture.'" Meaning, straight allies aren't safe, and the
Vatican is definitely trying to eradicate all pro-gay/pro-acceptance
influence from the church hierarchy.

Which also means that it's official--gays are being used as
scapegoats for pederasts, when it's been stated time and time again
that pederasty and molestation are not the same thing atall as an
adult homosexual orientation. And yet....it's just so *easy* to
blame sexual orientation for this in the popular eye, when really
it's not about sex or gender at all but about control and abuse of
power over others.

Just like in prisons, dare I say, very little of these sexual abuse
scandals had anything to do with whether the priests in question was
attracted to males per se. The one thing we can state for certain is
that they were attracted to the proximity of young persons under
their religious authority, who could be easily manipulated, coerced,
and shamed into keeping quiet. That's not about sex, it's about the
lust of power--and any organization that preaches itself as
infallible and puts individual conscience in the finest of fine print
can be accurately diagnosed as being possessed by the lust of power
itself. And ridding the Roman Catholic Church of gay and open-minded
priests will not exorcise the real sickness that persists at its
bureaucratic heart.

Hmm....scapegoat, scapegoat....you know, that reminds me of something
in the Bible....:-?

My general theory of modern neo-feudalism

[NOTE: Yes, this is actually something current I'm posting from my
little newsgroup....feel free to forward/link it on, with due
credit/blame of course.]
________________________________________________________

In hyperlucidity, "K. Aurencz Zethmayr" wrote:

Yes, there has been a lot of stuff going on in the world, despite the
fact that I've posted on very little of it.

Take, for example, Bush's proposal of a pan-American free trade area,
which met with loud popular protests and a more or less tacit
division of political leaders at the recent summit in Buenos
Aires....the idea is still not settled, and it is one that bears
careful examination before being adopted, especially considering the
current state of these economies and the typical "flight patterns" of
corporations trying to maximise their profits and cut labour costs.
Unless there is an effective and relevant trade union presence in the
U.S. and a majority of other countries that might be disposed to
side with the Bush administration and sign onto this (Mexico, for
example, or anywhere else significantly dependent on the goodwill of
the U.S.), it would be a very convenient reason to outlaw
trade/employee unions altogether as an untenable obstacle to
the 'flexibility' (upward for the big guys, downward for the small)
of economic activity and interaction. That's something that bears
watching.

My general take on the direction of things is that the Bush
administration and its allies are trying to implement a neo-
feudalism -- and in case we all haven't had a thorough grounding in
medieval socioeconomics, I'll summarize:

Feudalism is a hierarchy of authority and allegiance in which the
common worker (peasant or landed serf/slave) is utterly beholden to
his direct employer, who in turn is under the thumb of a larger state
or corporate entity, who in turn (possibly skipping a few levels up
the food chain) is under the utter authority of a political,
commercial or religious leader, who are at the top all bound in a
more-or-less common collusion of interests to keep everyone else
under control--though if they are in conflict, all persons involved
are supposed to act with total loyalty and obedience to their lords
and masters. There's no appealing to anything like a universal democratic
process or outside authority (or outside judicial or legislative
trend, as Bush and some of the Supreme Court justices want to
solidify firmly, as the world gets more socially progressive in
Canada, Australia, Europe, etc.)...there's no effective standard of
values besides that which those in power choose to implement and
promote (and may or may not follow themselves). There's not even the
assumption that a ruler of one country is actually 'loyal' to that
country and its needs--he may just be playing it as a pawn for
increase of territory elsewhere, or perhaps for a nice fat golden
parachute (in the business world)--or guaranteed security for life if
he lets the corporations have their way in all things at the people's
expense.

Things like the oft-cited code of chivalry, in modern or medieval form (loyalty to lord and Church, compassion to the poor, protection of women and children, etc.), are policies (just like every set of rules and policies, pragmatically speaking) designed to officially address known, existing and commonly-accepted behaviours in their time--not to set up anything like a standard of social equality. And in the olden days, the peasant or serf did have the right to depend on the protection of his lord's fortress against raids and warfare--these days, to the contrary, there is no sense of "noblesse oblige", no responsibility in authority. The peasants are sent off to be cannon fodder in war (okay, persuaded to by circumstance--afterall, it is a volunteer army these days), and bear the brunt of every downturn that the rich can absorb and/or avoid for themselves -- and yet they are expected to remain loyal and diligent and compliant.

The communications and transportational infrastructure (*cough*
Amtrak funding *cough* HDTV conversion *cough* FOX News...) is
typically eroded or rudimentary in feudalism, making the common
populace in general dependent on the opportunities,
knowledge/attitudes and social structure of their home areas, with
radically low opportunities for regional mobility except in wholesale
moves/migrations. In addition, the 'social welfare' function in
feudalism is completely delegated to religious or private interests,
enforcing arbitrary moral standards of acceptability/compliance for
any shelter, food, medical attention or job assistance -- "parish
work", in short. This is what dismantling and/or privatizing/de-
secularizing the entire social security/welfare structure means in
end result.

Other typical social symptoms of feudalism (though not limited to it)
are: massive insularity within communities, fear/hatred of minorities
and foreigners, repression of deviancy or difference within their own
(even/especially superior deviance), low education as a norm (with
accompanying mistrust of the overeducated), early marriage/breeding,
generalized social/political/religious inferiority of women (with a
few token decoys to keep the rest in line), and blind belief in
whoever's setting the religious/political rules -- because that's all
they've got to depend on.

So....if this sounds familiar to anyone, I think I'd suggest you read
up on the Middle Ages and the things that brought about the gradual
end of the feudal system in Europe -- like religious heterodoxy,
sudden decreases of population/birthrate (thank you, Black Death and
birth control...), world exploration and broader cultural
contact/learning, widespread scientific inquiry, increases in
education and literacy, diverse sociopolitical philosophies, the
expansion of trade and commercial structure to enable small merchants
and artisans to become a solid middle class rather than dependants to
a lord (or unprotected itinerants), and the erosion of religion-based
social determinism in justifying injustice (as in "divine
right", "subhuman" races, etc.).

And support all those things at their best that stave off the "Dark
Ages" from our lives. History's still going on, and there are a lot
of ways that some people and entities are trying to turn back the
years on the rest of us...the unnerving thing, really, is how close
they are already to accomplishing it.