Author's posts
Apr 03 2010
Seeing: American Exceptionalism
[R]eality, or the world we all know, is only a description that has been pounded into you from the moment you were born.
The reality of our day-to-day life, then, consists of an endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we have learned to make in common.
I am teaching you how to see as opposed to merely looking, and stopping the world is the first step to seeing.
The sorcerer’s description of the world is perceivable. But our insistence on holding on to our standard version of reality renders us almost deaf and blind to it.
When you begin this teaching, there is another reality, that is to say, there is a sorcery description of the world, which you do not know. As a sorcerer and a teacher, I am teaching you that description. What I am doing with you consists, therefore, in setting up that unknown reality by unfolding its description, adding increasingly more complex parts as you go along.
In order to arrive at seeing one first has to stop the world. Stopping the world is indeed an appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow. In this case the set of circumstances alien to our normal flow of interpretations is the sorcery description of the world.
The precondition for stopping the world is that one has to be convinced; in other words, one has to learn the new description in a total sense, for the purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way break the dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity of our perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be questioned.
After stopping the world the next step is seeing. By that I mean what could be categorized as responding to the perceptual solicitations of a world outside the description we have learned to call reality.
The Teachings of Don Juan
by Carlos Castaneda
Apr 02 2010
Helen Thomas on Feminism, McCarthyism & the White House Press Corps
The third segment of Helen Thomas’ interview talking with Paul Jay of The Real News. In this segment Helen talks about the challenges she faced as a woman journalist in her early days as a member of the White House Press Corps, about the continuing discrimination women still face in political journalism, and about her experiences and reflections on the era of McCarthyism.
Real News Network – April 01, 2010
Transcript here
Parts 1 & 2 of this interview are here, in which Helen talked about Barack Obama’s credibility and political integrity, and about the capitulation of US media to the Bush Administration and foreign policy establishment during the run up to the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.
Apr 01 2010
Zen Wisdom
1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me for the path is narrow. In fact, just piss off and leave me alone.
2. Sex is like air. It’s not that important unless you aren’t getting any.
3. No one is listening until you fart.
4. Always remember you’re unique. Just like everyone else.
5. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
6. If you think nobody cares whether you’re alive or dead, try missing a couple of mortgage payments.
7. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.
8. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
9. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
10. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably well worth it.
Mar 31 2010
The Short Sword of State Sponsored Terrorism
Produced in 1992 for the BBC by Director Alan Frankovich, the three part documentary ‘Operation Gladio’ reveals ‘Gladio’ (Italian for Gladius, a type of Roman short sword) is a code name for a clandestine NATO “stay-behind” operation in Italy after World War II, set up ostensibly to conduct anti-communist resistance in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe.
According to a well documented and extensively referenced Wikipedia article “Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organisations, “Operation Gladio” is used as an informal name for all stay-behind organisations, sometimes called “Super NATO”.
This BBC series “is about a far-right secret army, operated by the CIA and MI6 through NATO, which killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades and other left wing groups. Known as ‘stay-behinds’ these armies were given access to military equipment which was supposed to be used for sabotage after a Soviet invasion. Instead it was used in massacres across mainland Europe as part of a CIA Strategy of Tension. Gladio killing sprees in Belgium and Italy were carried out for the purpose of frightening the national political classes into adopting U.S. policies.”
Jeffrey Kaye in a Seminal post Sunday March 28, 2010 notes that “When the invasion never occurred, the networks were not dismantled, but took on a different mission: to keep the left from gaining power in any of these states, from Sweden and Belgium to France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey and elsewhere.”
Jeff goes on in his post to note that “The sensationalistic charges have fed a number of conspiracy theories, particularly those around the existence of “false flag” government operations. Some have indicated they see the 9/11 attacks in this light, though I can’t say I have the kind of evidence to make such an assertion. But one can understand how any individual might come to seriously mistrust the U.S. government after learning of the Gladio history, which is extensive and well-documented.”
“Among other canards the Gladio story can put to rest is the silly belief that no large scale conspiracies can exist, at least in a so-called open, democratic society such as ours. And yet, Gladio proves that is not true. In fact, since the revelations of the early 1990s, there has been practically no discussion of this crucial aspect of contemporary history by U.S. historians or policy makers.”
Watch parts Two and Three below the fold…
Mar 30 2010
The Crisis of Neoliberalism
Dr. Gerard Dumenil, of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at The University of Massachusetts, is one of the world’s foremost theorists of neoliberalism and economic crises, and is the author of numerous influential books, many of which have been translated into several languages, including Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution (2004) and his forthcoming The Crisis of Neoliberalism: From the Subprime Crash to the Great Contraction.
Dumenil here talks with Paul Jay of The Real News about the history and development of neoliberal ‘economics’…
Real News Network – March 30, 2010
Transcript here
Mar 28 2010
Thanks For The Ball, Dad
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin’ home son?
I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then son
You know we’ll have a good time then
Mar 28 2010
Iraq: When Was the Last Time You Visited?
Mar 27 2010
PART 2 ADDED: Credibility: Helen Thomas on her question for Obama, & media and political integrity
Part 2 added below the fold March 28, 2:50 PM PST
In part one of his interview with Helen Thomas, longest-serving member of the White House Press Corps, The Real New Network’s Paul Jay asks her about her first question for President Obama.
The question, asking President Obama to name all the countries in the Middle-East that have nuclear weapons, was avoided by the President, who claimed to not want to “speculate”.
Thomas claims that knowledge of Israeli nukes is very public in DC and Obama’s answer shows a lack of credibility. She explains the importance of this question for U.S. policy in the region.
Finally, she confides that she has not been called on by the President since that day, but that if she does, she will ask him whether or not he has found any more information about nukes in the Middle-East since their last encounter.
Real News Network – March 27, 2010
Mar 26 2010
Espresso Party USA
ESPRESSO PARTY MISSION STATEMENT: The Espresso Party Movement gives voice to Americans who are fed up to fcuking here with the bullsh*t in government.
We recognize that the federal government is the enemy of the people, not the expression of our collective will, and that we must all participate in the process of tearing the system down and kicking ass in November 2010 in order make room for building something fcuking useful to address the challenges that we face as Americans.
As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and we will mercilessly hunt down and politically destroy those who obstruct them.
A Message From Our Founder
Mar 25 2010
The long and winding road…
Tuesday last week his doctors gave him one to two days. Thanks to all of you, I was on a plane the next morning, my sister met my flight, and we had a couple of good days of visiting with him.
He was in and out of lucidity, but he did remember that summer day in 1961 or ’62 when I was about ten and my eight year old brother and I found a great big snapping turtle in a creek in the woods behind the house in Arlington, VA, and we couldn’t get it out of the creek ourselves so we ran home and he came with us back into the woods, fished it out with a stick, and we carried it back home and kept it fed and happy for a few days, and the memory made him smile.
He was a good dad like that. He used to take us camping up in the mountains along the Shenandoah River in the summers. They were good summer days…
After he remembered all that he smiled weakly up at me and said “thanks for coming, but go home now and do your work, there is nothing more you can do here…“.
Now we’re just waiting within earshot of the telephone, but he’s proved them wrong for more than a week now, and maybe he’ll continue for awhile to prove them wrong, but today the hospital called his wife and suggested that she get there quickly, that his pulse rate is dropping pretty fast.