the defeatists!

Ultimate Existential Nonsense except he thinks both are trash except thwn they aren't!

The idea that there has to be an author of a joke is properly paranoiac: it means that there has to be an “Other of the Other,” of the anonymous symbolic order, as if the very unfathomable contingent generative power of language has to be personalized, located into an agent who controls it and secretly pulls the strings. This is why, from the theological perspective, God is the ultimate jokester. -- Slavoj Zizek, "The role of jokes in becoming-man of the apes, 2018, MIT Press. 

Been on a bit of a hiatus from righting and reading anything other than noir mysteries and Cthulhu...writing and thinking about the what's going on in the world is just to depressing. Maybe Trump will decide to stop the fires in the Amazon by nuking Brazil. Maybe he'll decide to issue bounties on dead migrants trying to "sneak into" the country. Maybe the next time he leaves the White House he will declare himself King and Captain Underpants simultaneously, and drop trou in front of the press, not remembering that he went commando that day...

Anyway, I was sitting in a restaurant waiting for the steaks to arrive and ignoring my wife while glancing at my smart phone -- which says a lot about me, her and the world in general, I guess, when I say my bi-weekly copy of the highlights from MIT Press. Glancing at the contents I thought, "I ought to read that, and I ought to read that, and...'5 Jokes from Slavoj Zizek?' Zizek wrote 5 jokes? And a book about them..." 

You see, I've been trying to read Zizek for years. I find him incredibly difficult to read...and yet, I continue to read his work. There are just aspects of it that make me want to get what the hell he's talking about and be able to explain it. I've listened to him speak, and it reminds me of the better profs I took philosophy from -- humor, subtlety, madness, commitment, a bit of gentleness and a lot of passion. Then, he gets involved with Kant for 200 pages about 2 pages about 15 or so words. This is why I find it hard to read him. Yet I keep reading.

 

That's academic philosophy in a nutshell. Crispin disagrees, as he should, being a tenured professor of philosophy at a school that tried to fire him for complaining about being plagiarized by an academic professor of philosophy at another university in a non-academic philosopher way. He thought, as any rational or "Irrational Man" would think, that his response was not directed at here as a threat but as a cri de coeur about the absurdity of modern academic publishing and reputations and all the rest. If you listen to that song, by Miranda Lambert or by Fred Eaglesmith you don't hear anger -- you hear fear, frustration, and despair. Of course, the other professor felt that this was threatening and degrading and racist and sexist and probably a threat to her own sexuality. Or something. Complained to her chair, who complained to Crispin's Dean who...well, it went on from there. Crispin is still working and still sending out tweets and facebook posts and still muttering under his breath. Actually, he probably agrees with me...

Face it. Zizek is a highly respected respected academic philosopher who gets away with this stuff because he's a highly respected academic philosopher in Europe, where people know not to take him literally, but seriously. Crispin operates in a world that is bureaucratic and bizarre and does it well for the most part. If Zizek came to spend a semester at Yuppie-Wannabes On the Brandywine with Crispin, they'd both end up in jail. I would definitely send them cake with blocks of C4 in them; and, they would probably eat the C4, being actual philosophers as well as academic philosophers, and having no idea what the hell it was anyway. 

 

 

Let's invade Afghanistan because it went soooo well last time...wait, we never left!

New post. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Outsiders have trying that over and over and over with Afghanistan since Alexander the Great, and it didn't work all that well any of them.

http://www.veteranstodaynews.com/2017/05/19/not-a-particularly-bright-future/

Look out! Cleveland, etc...

 

 

Look out, Cleveland, the storm is comin' through/And it's runnin' right up on you

Look out, Houston, there'll be thunder on the hill, Bye bye, baby, don't you lie so still

Kukla Fran and Ollie

This is the year for a lot of Republicans to have a lot of bad ideas...Having the convention in Cleveland will probably not turn out so well, since the Governor will be a fringe candidate unless the powers in the party decide to do a Mark Hanna routine -- calling Karl Rove, calling the Turdblossom express!" -- and force him down the throats of a stadium and downtown district full of Trump and Cruz and Ron Paul supporters who haven't changed their watches for four years...

Chain lightnin', frightnin' as it may seem Must not be mistaken for just another dream Justice of the peace don't know his own fate But you'll go down in the shelter late

Hidin' your money won't do no good, no good Build a big wall, you know you would if you could, yeah When clouds of warnin' come into view It'll get the ol' woman right outta of her shoe ...Look Out Cleveland, Robbie Robinson,1969

And then, in Texas, the Republican district conventions leading up to Republapalooza, the state convention! are splitting so far 60-40 in terms of secession. Didn't we go through this in 2010? Hell, didn't we go through this is in 1865? As Larry Wilmore put it about Mississippi's Confederate Heritage Month celebration, "The South Lost. Why are we still dealing with this Bullshit!"

I thought every month was Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi! -- L. Wilmore

Prince and End 

 There have been a lot of articles about this one. Prince was pretty well known for not abusing recreational pharmaceuticals; he was a generally devout and practicing Jehovah's witness, which when contrasted with his music made a lot of people wonder what the hell he was talking about -- Jesus and Little Red Corvettes? The Holy Spirit and the Bossman Mr. McGee and the half naked gal on the back of his motorcycle riding around in the fields? Who is this guy? Toure is a well known African American cultural and social writer and critic, Toure wrote the book about Prince. On an appearance the evening of the day that Prince's body was discovered in Paisley Park, Toure was on a couple of shows on MSNBC. He said that Prince claimed never to have taken drugs and never to drink. Ok, that's possible for a lot of reasons...one that strikes me, is that Prince was Jerry Lee Lewis with transcendence and grace and balance, and found a way through his belief in a forgiving God to reconcile religious with sexual and musical ecstasy. Another is that a helluva lot of performers who have been around are militantly clean and sober. Try to get people like Kris Kristofferson or Eric Clapton to chug out a bottle of Cuervo or do a line of cocaine...it might be a good way to get a souvenir guitar, except that it will have been smashed over your head. They were wild and crazy, almost died, and have been strong enough to stay straight and help others. Jerry Lee, Elvis and Johnny Cash all felt that tension between head, heart and groin, struggling with it with greater and lesser success. One died on the toilet, one stayed mainly straight and as Kristofferson said about him as a member of the Highway Men, "is the father of our country." The other has survived, but is strange and outside and while not ignored, avoided. Prince skipped all that. Toure wrote a lovely and intelligent column about it in the New York Times, and if you're trying to see what success is as a rock and roll musician, his description of Prince as a man, an artist and a pilgrim is very interesting indeed. Possibly because his early years were pretty amazingly awful -- Like Merle Haggard only Mama was crazy and Daddy was an evil SOB -- he had to skip the middle years, but his story is what Bob Dylan tried to convince people his was in 1961. As he said in an interview quoted in Premier Guitar this weekend

Sure, he could be controversial; he even wrote a song about it. But that’s only because he was a true natural. “I’m not being deliberately provocative,” he told Rolling Stone in early 1981. “I’m being deliberately me. I ran away from home when I was 12. I’ve changed my address in Minneapolis 32 times, and there was a great deal of loneliness. But when I think about it, I know I’m here for a purpose, and I don’t worry about it so much.” Let’s be thankful he didn’t.

I have to say that Prince didn't click for me completely. I could admire the genius, but I thought a lot of his posturing and general shtick was over the top. I liked Little Red Corvette and 1999; I could easily take or leave Purple Rain; I loved Raspberry Beret, especially after hearing the Derailers do an amazing cover of it, and I found When Doves Cry silly. Prince was without a doubt an amazing guitarist, as well as bassist, drummer, and keyboard player. He built a team at Paisley Park that ranks up there in a lot of respects with people like Stax and the Punch Brothers. He was a good neighbor and people seemed to like him a lot in Minneapolis, even though they didn't really know him. But I saw a brief tribute to him from Eric Clapton today who calls Prince "inspirational." I think I'll close by letting Mr. Clapton, the man who basically created modern lead guitar, have the last words.

"I'm so sad about the death of Prince, he was a true genius, and a huge inspiration for me, in a very real way.... In the the eighties, I was out on the road in a massive downward spiral with drink and drugs, I saw Purple Rain in a cinema in Canada, I had no idea who he was, it was like a bolt of lightning!... In the middle of my depression, and the dreadful state of the music culture at that time it gave me hope, he was like a light in the darkness... I went back to my hotel, and surrounded by empty beer cans, wrote Holy Mother.... I can't believe he's gone...." Eric Clapton, Facebook, April 23, 2016

 

---

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” — Marcus Aurelius

Better to die 'neath an Irish Sky than at Souk or Sulieman

 

Maura Harrington of the Shell to Sea group talks about “people not having the same awareness of colonisation by the multinationals now as they had 100 years ago of colonisation by the British empire. Different imperium.” (Historian Tim Pat) Coogan wonders what 1916’s founding fathers would have thought about “the way the banks have looted this country with the consent and connivance of the political establishment. More people have committed suicide during this period of austerity than were killed during the Troubles. Thousands lose their homes every week, or else remain courtesy of vulture-capital mortgages.” Another is the promise of “cherishing all the children of the nation equally”, after the church paedophilia scandal and discovery of mass graves of orphans at Tuam. With that in mind, part of this centennial week’s celebrations has been the sound and sight of hundreds coming through the Ark children’s art centre for its “Put Yourself In the Picture” project – to paint themselves and be drawn by Ireland’s leading artists, including Brian Maguire, better known for his work in prisons. There Maguire sits, now etching not lifers in Portlaoise prison, but cheeky faces and wonky glasses in charcoal “because that’s the crucial line in the Proclamation as far as I’m concerned, about children, and it certainly isn’t happening. All that – Tuam, the church abuse of children – was the legacy of how de Valera hijacked the Rising, and forged the world in which I grew up in: Catholic, living in the dark.” -- The Guardian, April 26, 2016

 

Killing Ground 1916 - Kilmainham Prison, Co. Dublin[/caption]

April 26 is the anniversary of a couple of explosions that challenge our understanding of the world. One ultimately had an incredible impact given its absolute failure and the dismay it provoked and its results continue to unfold quietly. The other was Chernobyl and it remains. If we wonder what the Japanese really face with Fukushima, we should look to Chernobyl for...comfort? Mutant animals? Reality? Some combination of the three? 

The one that we have had time to gain if not success in gaining perspective on is the Easter Rebellion of 1916. The government of Ireland and the people of Ireland are dealing with the centennial in an interesting and perhaps effective way. The Guardian has been covering it in some depth, including coverage of the celebrations on the Eve and thus far. As Ireland and the "Irish in Exile" think about what it means, the Celtic Tiger struggles with the impact of austerity, economic meltdown, continuing conflict in Ulster with echoes in the South and the horrors of the various revelations of the iniquities of the Catholic Church in Ireland and seen against the mythical promise of 1916, it's causing a bit of confusion. Most revolutions begin with some explosion of violence in the midst of relative quiet caused by some group with a sense of usually disparate grievance. The Rising in 1916 was led by some Irish Language Mystics, Communists, Romantics, Disappointed Home Rule Advocates, an Irish American and the literary figures of Yeats and Lady Gregory.

The General Post Office and Ground Zero of the Rebellion. Admiral Nelson's Pillar to the right survived another 47 years.

The British mishandled the entire debacle -- they won the battle, "Britannia's Huns with their long range guns sailing into the foggy dew" as the ballad proclaims. They then bungled the entire aftermath using some bizarre early manifestation of tough love.

Padraig Pearse surrenders the GPO unconditionally 

The captured ringleaders Pearse, McDairmand, Connolly, and the rest executed, except for Eamon de Valera, the American who started the Irish Civil War and then haunted the country for much of the past 100 years. The General Post Office was where the gauntlet was thrown and the unconditional surrender of the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Republican Brotherhood accepted by the British. The Brits followed the surrender by forcing the captured to do a sort of rogues march through the capital. The intent was to insure that the Dubliners realized who was at fault here -- and by the time the prisoners reached their various sad destinations, what had began as a march of sadness and defeat morphed into something else: not exactly a victory march, but rather a preview of things to come.

Kilmainham Prison was the killing ground. James Connolly who had been badly wounded early in the rebellion was tied to a chair in the courtyard and then shot. Padraig Pearse supposedly whistled as he faced the firing squad; since a British Sergeant Major described that in his diary, it's got a good chance of being true; be nice to know what tune it was. Tipperary? Rising of the Moon? It's the kind of grace note that belongs in a movie, perhaps with Bono playing Pearse. There is a marvelous show on The Sundance Channel this week, Rebellion, which looks at this not from a geopolitical point of view, but from a human level.

One of the reasons the British reacted so violently was that they were in one war and saw this as a stab in the back; the Home Rule people in Ireland saw that war as a an excuse used by the English bastards to renege on granting Ireland Home Rule, and treating it as a whole and part of the commonwealth as opposed to a province of Great Britain.

The Church saw the whole thing as a horrible attack on life and property, and blamed the rebels. And, people had things happen to them -- families shattered, weddings disrupted, tenements targeted for naval gunfire along with the city center where the General Post Office and the area surrounding it were the center of the battle, women and children shot for any and new reason...we've seen the movie replayed on the news since on so many occasions it would be funny if it weren't that the blood was real.

 

The Irish National Media, RTE or Radio-Television Eire, along with various grants have funded an interesting program called "The Bloody Irish" which focuses on the rebellion, the time and the world of Dublin in 1916. Through traditional music, dance, narration by some of the principle characters, and some semi-Shakespearean exposition by key players it tells the story of the period leading up to the and through the rebellion. It's a stage show, and you may be able to catch it on PBS where I first got or on demand at PBS or possibly Amazon or Netflix. It's probably more a traditional Irish exposition -- if by traditional I can mean Abbey Theater, Yeats and Shaw and Synge. One of the voices is the retired British general officer commanding, known to the Irish as Butcher Maxwell, who remains bemused by the whole thing. What the hell were they trying to accomplish and how could they do some of it so well and some so horribly wrong?

He pardoned most of the captured, executing only the ringleaders, except the American, de Valera...and he was condemned as a butcher. Why? History? What else could he do? He was a bloody general in the bloody English Army and these bloody Irish were engaged in rebellion during war or what... What indeed? Perhaps it takes more than 100 years to figure out the meaning of a single event in a 900 or so long pageant of invasion, rebellion, oppression and religious war.

---

Chernobyl Dome Over Dome to Add 300 Years to "Safe" Decay--CNN Photo

 

Human beings are good at not learning from things they should study deeply. Chernobyl represents the same sort of situation. The flaws with Dialectical Materialism as applied to nuclear engineering and design truly came together here in April 1986.

I worked for an exceptional officer in Germany in the mid-90s. Colonel Gary Luttrell was my Group Commander and an exceptional leader and an extraordinarily good man and nice guy. We were chatting one day when his secretary was gone but he knew that First Sergeant Farrell would still have coffee, and came down to bum a cup. Turned out that Colonel Luttrell had been one of a group of nuclear engineers sent to observe and advise the Soviets after the disaster. He told me the story, and sort of lost the thread at one point, and said something like this:

"I think this was inevitable. The design was flawed, the materials were crap, the engineers were told what to do by party bureaucrats, and they were all clueless. There were some amazing acts of applied science when the bureaucrats got out of the way; there were almost continuous acts of bravery and extreme courage and it all accomplished nothing. They encased it in concrete and hope nothing else happens. God help them all..."

We then turned to something we could talk about without shuddering, in this case why I liked Emmylou Harris more than Alison Krauss.

Ukraine which has to deal with this theme park to man's hubris tried to keep people out at first but now control entry as there's a continual stream in disaster tourism there. A two hour bus ride north from Kiev, and you can see Terminator-esque city of Pripyat, a nice, relatively new Soviet city that lies abandoned and will slowly but surely decay along with the radiation. Just far faster... The initial attempt to limit the problems at the reactor basically amounted to encasing it in concrete, the famous sarcophagus. Except, of course, for the bottom of the structures. So, the core continues to do its inevitable thing, the dust and debris and irradiated dreck continue to light up the radiological night, and things like water table and downwind hazard from forest fires and blizzards remain in place.

The concrete and efforts to contain the disaster was the best that the Soviet union could provide, in a time of economic debacle, continuous shortages, the continual drain of Afghanistan while also trying to keep up with the west in the Arms Race while pretending that everything was fine.

Disinformation was a Soviet specialty, and one reason they were so good at it was that it was primarily against themselves. Who else would have kept people in Pripyat to give the impression that everything was OK for a couple of extra days, including doing the grand opening of the Ferris Wheel at the town's amusement part, only to then rush people out as fast, as panicked and as poorly organized as possible? The effects of the disaster on mental health in Ukraine and beyond are also coming to light. Stigmatization of local people and relocation of communities is blamed for widespread depression and social problems.But visitors who expect to find a charred, uninhabited wasteland are surprised when they enter the Exclusion Zone. Far from being empty, power plant workers still commute into the zone.A place of worship, the turquoise and white St. Elijah Church continues to welcome devotees. Approximately 200 people still live inside the Exclusion Zone, despite government orders to leave. --Anita Isalska, CNN, April 26, 2016

One of the things that I have found fascinating about Chernobyl is that the Soviets were so well experienced with nuclear disasters. In September 1957, there was a major disaster at Kyshtym in the eastern Urals. Dissident scientist and writer Zhores Medvedev had been stripped of his Soviet citizenship and was writing in London when the discussion turned to problems with nuclear energy, and he was amazed to learn that the west wasn't aware of any difficulties that the Soviets were having. Well, I suspect that we had some idea that something had happened, but in no detail.

This one was an example of really bad engineering and planning, where the waste of several plants was allowed to flow into a lake where the water was filtered as it would leave the lake and the contamination held in underground storage tanks cooled by pumping the lake water around them.

What could go wrong? One of the pumps failed, and the 80 ton concrete dome blown off the containment facility. Hilarity ensued. I suspect that there's a lot we can learn from this, as well as the rest, and probably won't. Human beings are good at not learning from things they should study deeply. But, if hope is not a plan both Easter 1916 and Chernobyl in their own ways show that ignorance and hubris are really terrible planning matrices.

____________

Sad, shortsighted species...

I've been very sick the last couple of weeks. One course of pretty nasty antibiotics and I started to feel better and then wham! Back to the local Stop&Doc where I got the first prescription and the office, which serves a couple of hundred people daily. They couldn't find a substitute to cover while the normal guy took some vacation. We commiserated back and forth, since I needed help; and they -- four people -- were waiting for the word to close shop and 3/4s of a day's pay.

While this was a personal problem, it got me thinking. I've had 2-4 cases of strep throat and associated problems every year since before Crispin was born. Had the tonsils out when I was 20 and the idea that no more sore throats was a total lie. However, there was a lot less misery. Still, when it gets full blown, I'm pretty useless. More so than normal, according to some. 

On the other hand, I've never had smallpox, tetanus, swine flu, diphtheria, thyroid, tetanus, rabies, rubella, shingles, malaria, plague, anthrax or any of the other stuff I've been vaccinated for. Made me wonder why this is so...

So, channeling Phil Ochs, I wrote about it.   

 

And a bomb goes off and things get confused...

While I have not yet read Masha Gessen's The Brothers, her investigation into how the Boston Marathon Bombing happened and what followed, her column in the New York Times this morning is well worth the time to read and think about for a while. Trials are usually unsatisfactory in that they focus on the guilt or innocence of the defendant. That is what the law is for. Why something happened and how it came to happen is where the problem gets more complicated, and yet gets us closer to the reality, to the thing itself. As she says:

"There are other questions, big and small. But these two are clearly essential to understanding what went wrong in Boston two years ago. Yet in the course of the trial they were barely discussed. Arguably, they shouldn’t have been. An American criminal trial is designed to assess guilt and administer justice, not to look for truth — and truth and justice are not synonymous. Sadly, other authorities have also failed to fully account for what happened or what can be done to prevent it from happening again."

Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and author. She is both Jewish by heritage if not by practice and a lesbian. Her parents brought her to the US during one of the periods when the Soviets allowed Jews to emigrate to Israel, and she holds dual-citizenship. She returned to Russia in the early 90s when it looked like perhaps things were going to achieve some sort of positive democracy and pluarlistic Society. Obviously, that didn't happen. 

Both as a journalist and as an activist, Gessen was active covering demonstrations and problems in Putin's Russia. She adopted a child with her partner, and they were happy. However, she began to find herself feeling alienated from her homeland, and found that she had problems keeping jobs and getting freelance assignments in Russia. She wrote an exceptional book about President Putin which raised her FSB profile I suspect. She then chronicled the Pussy Riot debacle, both advocating for the women and placing their actions in context. Ultimately, about two years ago as the homophobia in Russia hit crescendos similar to the 1813 Overture and the government became more and more unfriendly toward any dissent, she brought her family back to the United States. Long a contributor to the Times, which is where I first encountered her, she writes a monthly piece on the Op-Ed page as well as writing for The Guardian and other serious publications. 

I strongly recommend her work here and on Pussy Riot and on Putin as Autocrat to anyone who is interested in and open-minded about what's happening in that most troubling and confusing nation.

Kardashian influence on the world

Crusader AXE has a new piece on the Iranian deal up over at Veterans Today and while I think it's fairly reasonable, I was initially gratified to find the comments were all written not in drool or feces. Well, it went down hill, fairly quickly...Eric Holder, the Rothschilds and the Kardashians are all tied up in the minds of some of my readers. If General Jack D. Ripper hadn't gone to his reward in Dr.Strangelove, I'm sure our precious body fluids would also have been an issue...however, some decent music and a nice sort of overview for those who feel the only response to Iran-Nuclear-Tea Pary-Republican speculation and explanation is Jack Daniels mixed with absinthe and delivered intravenously.

 

Gangster Time...

Nemtsov Murder Scene Investigation

"Russia does not have a machinery of ideology or repression on the scale of the 1930s.   Mr Nemtsov did not present any plausible political threat. But the country does have plenty of the sort of scoundrels described in "The Devils", Dostoevsky's prophetic novel of moral degradation and political terrorism. “One or two generations of vice are essential now," explains that novel's chief provocateur, Petr Verkhovensky. "Monstrous, abject vice by which a man is transformed into a loathsome, cruel, egoistic reptile. That's what we need! And what's more, a little 'fresh blood' that we may get accustomed to it.” -- The Economist, 3/ 2/ 2015

"In all likelihood no one in the Kremlin actually ordered the killing— and this is part of the reason Mr. Nemtsov’s murder marks the beginning of yet another new and frightening period in Russian history. The Kremlin has recently created a loose army of avengers who believe they are acting in the country’s best interests, without receiving any explicit instructions. Despite his lack of political clout, Mr. Nemtsov was a logical first target for this menacing force."-Masha Gessen, NY Times, 3/2/2015

Russia went through a period in the 90s and the 2000s where gangster and Mafia were sort of the equivalent of man on the street. In a lot of ways, the streets of Moscow and Leningrad resembled the streets of Capone's Chicago or Wiemar Berlin and Munich.

However, there have been a lot of regime-friendly killings under the Putin-Medvedev-Putin cycle of power. The most recent, the gangland style assassination of Boris Nematov which seems to answer the question "How bad can it get?" as "Pretty damn bad" actually fits a set of data points that The Economist describes as being provided by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, indicate that since 1995, 8% of political assassinations have occurred in Russia and Eastern Europe.

What little is known about Mr Nemtsov’s death fits with other data points. Though the ideology of Mr Nemtsov’s killer is still a mystery, 29% of perpetrators are seemingly motivated by ethnic or separatist sentiments. Short-range weapons like sub-machine guns and pistols are the most popular weapon among hit men, and leaders of political movements are often the victims in such crimes. Assassinations are also common in authoritarian regimes that do not quite qualify as totalitarian. If Mr Nemtsov's murder was politically motivated, it fits a pattern. 

                       Putin and Nemtsov in less acrimonious setting

Rationally, of course, this makes little sense. Nemtsov may have been an opposition leader, but under Putin's regime, opposition hasn't meant much and is meaning less and less.

What does strike me is that Putin is becoming less and less flexible and more controlling. Anyone who has indicated his respect for Stalin and comes from the KGB is probably not envisioning a liberal democracy as a positive outcome. Nemtsov was aware of the danger, but indicated that if he was afraid, he probably wouldn't be leading an opposition party. The site of the murder is also intriguing. There is no public space around with the possible exception of Tienanmen Square that is better guarded, watched and monitored with a mix of technology and human capabilities than Red Square. The guy was walking across a bridge with his younger, Ukrainian significant other at night toward the Kremlin on the way home and somebody jumped out of a car or fired from the window and nailed him four times in the back. Not a terribly hard shot, of course; but the likelihood of doing it and getting away with it given the location and level of paranoia endemic to the occupiers of the Kremlin since Ivan the Terrible is limited. Unless it was orchestrated by the guardians of the state.

Now, the mythology of Henry II and Thomas Becket provides some illustration. Kings like Henry were rare in the Middle Ages of course, but he was something of a hands on guy on the things he was interested in -- money, taxes, power, war. He picked Becket, his drinking and whoring buddy to be the Archbishop of Canterbury largely because he figured he could trust him to do what he wanted him to do in terms of money, taxes, power and the Church. Well, once ordained, Becket began to act like an actual Archbishop. They squabbled, Becket went into exile, England got into trouble with the Pope and so on; they made a somewhat mock reconciliation, and Becket was allowed to return to England. Where, of course, he continued to act like an Archbishop; as head of the Church in England, he was a very potent symbol with a certain amount of power that to a micro-manager King. The myth is that Henry was sort of drunk, started complaining about Becket and said "Somebody go kill the sonofabitch..." or, more poetically, "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" Three knights got up from the banquet, got on their horses, and cantered off to Canterbury where they offed the Archbishop. The King didn't mean anything really and so he went through a ritual scourging, did Penance and Becket remained the symbol of conscience and duty to God first for the next 1000 years...except that when Henry VIII decided to redecorate all the churches, cathedrals, monasteries and convents to his taste, Becket was yanked from his grave and tossed out on the trash heap.

"I was born in a welfare state Ruled by bureaucracy Controlled by civil servants And people dressed in grey Got no privacy, got no liberty Cos the twentieth century people Took it all away from me." --Ray Davies

Well, as Ray Davies put it so well, "This the age of machinery/a mechanical nightmare/The wonderful world of technology/Napalm Nuclear Bombs/Biological Warfare." Putin didn't have to have a drunken brawl, he just had to mutter something or less; and, while Putin is a notorious micro manager himself, this looks like something that would have been handled autonomously by some low level manager in the FSB office charged with coordination with Skinhead/Nationalist/Bikers and Mafia Contract Killers. Makes you wonder what the cost of the man's life was? A new Harley? A Dacha formerly owned by Stalin? An autographed picture of Vladimir and Dmitri skinning a bear over a beer from Putin's own brewery?

Actually, although he's a bit younger, about my age actually, I'm starting to feel a bit of kinship with Vladimir as well as with Ray Davies. After all, we're all 20th Century Men who don't really want to be here.

Activist and human rights advocate Masha Geesen -- a Russian-American who worked in Moscow for decades but left as it became harder to make a living and fearing reprisals, had her own encounter with Mr. Putin. She described it a couple of years ago, when she was forced to resign from a job with a news magazine in Moscow. She got a call from "Putin, Vladamir, Vladamirovich..." who had a meeting set up with him, the publisher who forced her to resign, and her to discuss what had happened. Putin dictated what he thought was a fair solution and the publisher offered her back her job. She turned it down. So, she's had some direct experience.

What Masha describes in her piece in the New York Times is a not so new development in Russia, and for that matter other countries going through periods of mass change. It's worth remembering that the American Legion was involved heavily in anti-union and anti-immigrant and anti-socialist activities right after it's founding; IWW activists were lynched in Centralia Washington in the 1920s. The Red Guards of Maoist China were a volunteer party organization to protect the Revolution and Mao's vision. There were a number of organizations of reactionary forces over the centuries in Russia that may not have had official government recognition or support, but were working to protect the Kremlin against...something.

Gessen points out that Nemtsov was not a threat to Putin, to the regime or to anything. The protest movement is Russia has been utterly marginalized. Part of this is due to the patriotic fervor of a people at war responding to anyone or anything whom they perceive as standing against them -- Freedom Fries, anyone? Want some tea bags with that M14?--or that might present a threat. Part of it is the desire to show that patriotic fervor and be seen showing it. And, quite frankly, the Biker-Skinhead-Anti-gay Axis and the Mafia all have their own oars in this water. So this force is utterly unorganized and uncontrolled and doing what the various elements see as protecting the Kremlin and Mother Russia...from Mother Russia. She is clear -- Gessen was of no real interest to Putin. He may have found Nemstov an irritant and perhaps my Beer-Bear fantasy has some metaphorical value But, Masha Gessen probably calls it better:

Less than a week after that march, and just before the one he had organized, Mr. Nemtsov was gunned down while walking a bridge that spans the Moscow River right in front of the Kremlin. It is under constant camera and live surveillance. The message was clear: People will be killed in the name of the Kremlin, in plain view of the Kremlin, against the backdrop of the Kremlin, simply for daring to oppose the Kremlin.

Finding meaning in the meaningless sprawl

Possibly the most important thing I have ever written, as edited by the incomparable Erica Wissinger. In fact possibly the most important thing that has ever been written since...writing! 

 

And then, there's this. Buddy wrote a book, it's great, guitar manufacturers are stupid and private equity is total insanity...got it. 

And, just for the record, Beyonce is one of the best cover artists for blues and soul music that has ever picked up a microphone.

Cognitive dissonance is touching my soul...

Empty Food Bank in New Jersey

So the economy is growing tremendously, gas prices are down, unemployment is as good as it's been for decades, and yet the American people are unhappy and depressed. Wonder why?

Well, my first thought is that we're obviously just a bunch of spoiled first world whiners, complaining that Starbucks is out of stoppers for our extra-shot, double syrup, half-caff carmel mocha latte Venti whatever...as a stockholder in Howard Schultz's empire, I feel your pain, but in small town America and in the poorer sides of town, Starbucks has closed their nearest stores and the local Safeway is out of coffee-flavored coffee. Metaphorically speaking, of course, except that here in the California Crossroads of Opportunity, the downtown Starbucks runs out of coffee occasionally. Seriously, once or twice a year...go figure.

Cognitive dissonance. The slap to the right side of the head that gets us to think for a second, to shake up the clogged blood vessels in the brain.

However, in today's America, we are often bitch slapped back and forth for hours, and then end up focused on something completely insane and irrelevant. I had a mentor and friend commit suicide a decade ago after deciding  that what he had spent his life working for was impossible to achieve and his legacy was being poisoned by the greed and petty jealousy of his friends and family. He stopped taking his medicine for the blood pressure and other cardio-problems so he could watch what was happening around him, and told only a few people.

While not up there with Cato the Younger slicing his belly with a gladius, screwing it up, and then talking about philosophy with his friends, this was a pretty stoic way to do it. When I found out, I was not surprised; he'd done this once before but someone had talked him out of it, saying that without his example, the whole thing would be morally bankrupt. He accepted that, and then, when the enterprise was overrun by weasels and was a sinking black hole of moral bankruptcy, he did it again.

Rupert I -- 21st Centrury Moral Aribiter

 Cognitive dissonance. Je Suis Charlie is a noble sentiment, but unless you're doing something that could get you killed for standing up against power and fanaticism, you're  wearing a protest button that means nothing.

There was an interesting bit of bi-play on Twitter about this, when that exemplar of modern ethics, integrity and community  spirit, Rupert Murdoch had the gall to tweet this nonsense:  Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist  cancer they must be held responsible. --R.Murdoch, Lake of Fire, Hell

 I'll pass over the anachronistic spelling of Muslim, and stipulate that his PR department probably did it as opposed to the old racist, sexist, criminal bastard himself but  still, come on. So, the real moral conscience of the 21st Century, the former unwed mother who wrote a series of novels condemned by Christian fundamentalists for  advocating witchcraft and devil worship, J.K Rowling had the best and most telling response.  "I was born Christian. If that makes Rupert Murdoch my  responsibility, I'll auto-excommunicate."--J.K.Rowling, Hogwarts 

 When another anti-Mudochian said that "I personally never stop apologizing for the Crusades." she responded with this, "The Spanish Inquisition was my  fault, as is all Christian fundamentalist violence. Oh, and Jim Bakker."

 

 There are a number of other things getting some play that are worth reading, but the point is simple. My Shiite friend in Teheran shouldn't feel any more guilt for what  these clowns did in Paris than I feel about The Battle of Sand Creek. One of the key things to remember about this latest La Belle France tragedy is that there appear to be  two heroes -- the cop slaughtered by the terrorists and the grocery clerk who hid customers in the freezer keeping them safe from the lunatic with the gun. Both were  Muslims.

 I was driven to write this not by la affaire Charlie, but by something else. One of the organizations I am affiliated with and give money to when I can is Veterans for Change.  A grass roots organization started by a Navy Vet son of a Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant, Vets for Change does a lot to help local vets as well as serving as a point of contact for Vet nationwide and the network of Veterans Support Organizations to try and help them get assistance. Occasionally, they have to go outside to ask for money, and that's where guys like me come in. I'm not a saint, I'm not rich and I deserve no credit for this, but when I can and I'm asked, I send what I can. After all, all Veterans are members of my extended family.

 

 

 

 

The thing we should remember is the difference between not enough and more than enough is some indescribably small amount. I give what I can and wish it was more. Today, I'm just incensed. Cognitive dissonance got me, and here's why. I got a request for help from Jim Davis, the founder and CEO. Here's the relevant part.

 

Four days ago one of our sister organizations called trying to get a Veteran in New Jersey some help.  And originally we turned them down providing referrals to several other organizations and letting Laura (the Vet Service Coordinator) know she was really going to have to push hard as most simply weren’t assisting for various reasons.  Lawrence Bergjans, served two tours in Iraq as a SPC in the Army.  He is 28 years old, and he does receive 10% benefits for hearing loss and is still pending on his claim for PTSD. 

With Laura’s persistence she was pretty successful in that she raised nearly $2,000 of the $2,600 needed, and she called to ask us if we had other agencies we could refer her to call on, and we did provide her an addition 11 more in other states. Laura informed us that food pantries there were empty or had very little to offer and asked if we could assist in that area as well. We did tell her we would make the effort, but we could not promise nor could we guarantee anything. 

We did make a few calls to organizations here on the west coast as well as a few churches and we were able to have one church in Nogales assist and gave $650.00. We’re hoping we can raise an additional $40-50.00 or more to help cover food items, and Laura will be making calls on Monday to social services and try to assist Lawrence at enrolling into the welfare and food stamp programs. We’re hoping we can raise an additional $40-50.00 or more to help cover food items, and Laura will be making calls on Monday to social services and try to assist Lawrence at enrolling into the welfare and food stamp programs.

I sent a bit and apologized for not having more. Jim takes no salary from this labor of love he started when his father passed away after a deathbed request to keep fighting for Vets and their rights. He

C.Christtie -- Moral Arbiter of New Jersey

dropped a note back, and the relevant parts are these:

Thank you, and I know what you mean by tough.  Damn, just barely got the utilities here at home covered and was left a whopping 28 cents in the account.

We’ve been running into empty food pantries all over the place. I lost track of all the calls we made but roughly 70% were empty, and the rest just barely had anything but were still offering it up.I honestly don’t know what is going on with the Govt. grants either, most have not been renewed yet, and I was told by a Veteran Liaison in Congresswoman Sanchez’s office that many grants were being reviewed in committee, and it looked like they were going to make them more tougher to award grants. Doesn’t surprise me, they’re not giving up any money for Veterans and what is being given up who the hell knows where it’s going but it’s not going where intended.

 In case you're not aware of this aspect, Nogales is a border town, and not a particularly rich one (oxymoron) in Arizona. The state of Arizona ranks 41st in the US for per capita income.  New Jersey ranks 3rd in per capita income. That kind of says it all, doesn't it? One of the richest states in the country, run by a sociopathic bloated crook who likes to act tough and use his power to bully anyone who crosses him, and to get assistance for one of their "honored veterans" who is pending the PTSD call they have get assistance from a very poor city in a relatively poor state. In 2013, the per capita income for a resident of Nogales was slightly over $13000; according to the World Bank, in 2013 the average US per capita income was over $50,000.

Cognitive dissonance.  If you don't feel a bit confused by this, or angry, or disillusioned or something; if you think Murdoch has a point and Rowling is just being bitchy, well -- seek help. Or run for office as a Republican.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas is not about being a crazy sonofabitch...that's President's Day!

 

 

Latest piece from Vets: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/12/20/merry-christmas-is-what-they-tell-me/ I thought I was writing a music piece...go figure?

 

Comments are again fascinating...how anyone can go to the places my readers go from where I start amazes me and kind of scares me. Now, get in line with the 200 Mosaic laws or the Zionists will send a drone after you. 

 

Christmas should not be about being a crazy sonofabitch. That's for New Year's, President's Day and St Patrick's Day. Christmas may be about hope, peace, love overcome by futility and inadequacy and frustration -- Frank Costanza beating a man senseless trying to buy a doll for George and thus inventing Festivus, which is a logical reaction to stimulus -- but it's not about being a crazy sonofabitich conspiracy nut. Didn these people not get the memo?

 

Anyway, nobody ever wrote a good song about President's Day..except maybe this one.