The Collapse of Pretext

On March 20, Operation Iraqi Freedom will enter into it’s sixth year. It’s effects have caused yet unknown short and long-term harm to the world at large with especial significance to the Nation of Iraq.
The Department of Defense is honored as the single largest polluter on the planet, creating more hazardous waste in Iraq alone than the top five US chemical companies combined. World opinion of the US is at it’s lowest point in history with ¾ of the world’s population overtly in disfavor of American foreign policy, according to the BBC. A New York Times article from last year put the total expected cost of the war to the taxpayer at over $1.2 Trillion. 18 allied nations who were active in Iraq have since dropped out and of the current 166,000 troops active in the War only 10,500 are non-American. In fact the second largest military presence in the War after American troops are American mercenary contractors like Blackwater.
As of March 10, 3984 American combat personnel have died in Iraq and another 29,320 have been wounded according to official Pentagon reports. For the actual Iraqis, the actual figure of deaths and wounds may never be known. But the most recent estimate from September of 2007 done by the London based Opinion Research Business put the estimated Iraqi causalities at 1,220,580 (+/- 2.5%).
But lets bring it back for a moment and try to find some higher vantage point.
Following the cause and effect progression backwards we know that before any outcome can happen there most be an action to cause it, the Iraq invasion. But what causes the action? Nothing comes from nowhere just because. There is a reason a motive a logic to give meaning and purpose to the action. It is the all important ‘why’ of the thing. And it is the original, premeditated ‘why’ that we most examine for it leads to all other future ‘whys’. And those said secondary ‘whys’ are in truth nothing more than after-the-effect excuses.
Before all the retroactive pretext, before all the talk by the puppet pundits on the “success” of the surge (or purge), or before that on kicking out Al Qaeda, or even before that on how if the U.S. withdrew now Iraq would descend into chaos. There were the Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Do you remember five years ago, most of the mass media refuse to, but it really wasn’t that long ago. Much of us were in high school or middle school or the like and we may have noticed something strange in the air.
The first official mention of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction came from President Bush’s speech to the United Nations Security Council on September 12, 2002. Immediately afterwards, with the loyal intensity of a shepard’s sheep dog, every politician with aspirations to succeed joined into the consensus. Joe Liberman, Hillary Clinton, a totally bipartism effort to convince the American people of the “truth”. Iraq was a threat and must be squashed.
And we ate it up, don’t deny it we all did, me to. But it wasn’t totally our faults you know, the timing was perfect. The first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we were on edge, they merely used that edge. We would have invaded heaven and hell itself if told they were planning a terrorist attack against us.
And then again it’s unlike we were hearing any dissenting opinion from our propaganda. The universality of every news source getting behind their President (including the New York Times) cannot be underestimated. The excepted message was singular, absolutistic and coming at us from all sides.
Hell, if every source of info from our teachers to the news to our leaders to the internet was telling us with conviction in their eyes that we all should become circus clowns, I swear to you that their wouldn’t be one man, woman or child out their not juggling in flamboyant pants.
What is interesting is the speed at which this WMD argument was quickly dropped. Before the war we saw Colin Powell’s photshoped slides at the UN and the pundit arguments on our national security. But after the “boots were on the ground” and we were actually involved in the war every newspaperman wanted, the WMDs seemed to fade away.
If you look at a graph of the number of times the terms “Weapons of Mass Destruction” was seen in news articles you’ll see it peaked in September of 2002 and had already descended to less than half that level by August of 2003. By the Spring of 2005 the numbers had dropped below September 11 levels. Interestingly enough, the number of times the word “Al Qaeda” used in conjunction with “Iraq” has not once wavered since 2002 even though this supposive connection between the two has never been proven.
So what’s the truth. Aristotle once argued that there is a universal objective reality separate from all subjective opinion and perception and it should be our job to attempt to understand it.
The multinational Iraq Survey Group released in September of 2004, a year after George Bush first went to the UN, the Duelfer Report. In it it detailed in absolute fact that Saddam Hussein had ceased all nuclear and other WMD programs in 1991 due to UN sanctions. He did seem to intend to restart these programs once the sanctions were lifted but only in an offensive attack against Iran. He had zero inclination to attack the United States or any of it’s allies and was of no threat to us.
The defining reasoning that the Iraq War is based on is a lie and by extension the war in general is a lie.

But that can’t be, nothing happens for no reason at all. But if the reason we were given is a lie there should there be a truthful reason we were not given. But what is this reason?
In September of 2002, at the same time President Bush went to the UN with his intention to attack Iraq, to justify it he released his National Security Strategy which has since been come to be called the “Bush Doctrine” in remembrance of the equally infamous Monroe Doctrine. It sates, quote, “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”
The point is plane. By the authority of providence, in the post Cold War/9-11 world, the US is the singular dominant power politically as well as economically. Subsequent sections of this document go on to say that the US reserves full right to engage in preemptive war, without any need for legal permission, against any nation that may or may try to threaten this hegemony.
But what this has to do with Iraq? We’ve already stated that Saddam Hussein had no long-range plan to threaten the US. The answers are several.
The most obvious is oil. With the conquering of Iraq, either directly or through one of it’s closets allies, the United States has some control over five of the top six oil producing countries. With the remainder, Iran, currently situated between two US territories, Iraq and Afghanistan, and should thus be considered the next logical target.
The most encompassing answer may be less obvious and may border on conspiracy theory but does have some historical barring.
During the Cold War the US engaged in an offensive/defensive strategy called “containment” against the USSR. They built up military bases in key areas around the Soviet Union in West Germany, Turkey, Greenland, Japan, Finland and Israel in attempt to geographically encircle the threat. It worked pretty well for the most part.
Today the USSR is gone and Russia as of little threat, but a new player has emerged as the key opponent to the US for the next century. China.
Everyday there are more stories of the unbeatable Chinese economy with it’s unbelievable huge military to back it up (100 million strong by the more recent NATO estimates). The likeliness of China surpassing us in all fields has become near inedible in direct defiance of the Bush Doctrine.
In response the US government’s foreign policy has been reconstituted to curb this threat by brining back the old Cold War strategy of containment. Throughout Central and Southeast Asia new military bases are springing up. Indonesia, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and, of course, Afghanistan and Iraq.
What’s more with the addition of these military facilities and their location relative to the top oil producing countries means the US can effectively put a road block to China’s oil supply in a pinch or in general.
Domination is the name of the game. Political Science majors take note.

Zombies!

The day may never come. But if it does I am so ready.
Zombie Apocalypse.
I know you. Whenever you enter a new room or building you begin to gauge it’s defensibility. Are the windows shatter proof? Can you blockade the entrances? If so, then with what? And are the walls sound proof, because I know you don’t want to listen to the moan of the undead for days on end. Hard to sleep.
I’m sure you have picked out all you choice items of need. Your perfect weapon (mine: a spear or some manner of trident), your zombie comic destruction method of choice (mine: grain harvester), your perfect defensive position on campus (mine: Converse or Williams seem to fit the bill. Davis Center is a death trap. It’ll take a small army to cover all the entry points), your perfect escape route. You’ve thought of everything.
You know to avoid getting possible infectious Zombie gore on your threads. Chainsaws aren’t as useful as you’d think. Always avoid malls and dead ends.
And I bet you’ve spent many hours lying awake weighing the prospects of walking dead versus the dreaded running dead. Movies like the remake of Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later and I Am Legend have no doubt seriously messed with your plans.
And let’s face it, your excited for the challenge. Excited for the destructive possibilities setting up anti-qhoul barricades across thoroughfares, fortify homes and business against to wave after wave of hyper rabies infected cannibals from hell. Don’t worry, your not alone.
Online the growing awareness is spreading. Websites, blogs, Facebook groups are forming at record speed. Grassroots defense leagues and citizenry think tanks are popping up everywhere. Despite popular culture’s frequent attempts to blow the whistle on this maggoty problem in movies, graphic novels and non-graphic novels, those talking heads on the Potomac, who go on and on about “national security” and such Kentucky Fried Bullshit, have done nothing to meet the threat.
But whatever happens, we’re ready.

If Only

The worst part of growing up is the realization that all your more sugar induced childhood dreams are totally unattainable in this physical universe.
It started off with the basics. The Millennium Falcon, a staple of childhood fantasies. Who among us from the ages of 4 to 19, wouldn’t want basically a space-flying Winnebago that can make .5 past light speed. Then things got grandeur. Every new bit of Sci-Fi/Fantasy entertainment brought a new plethora of dreams and wants. You didn’t care that you weren’t being original with you imagination, you just wanted one of those.
Wolverine’s very handy (haha pun) claws. Pok’e’balls so you can trap innocent and freakishly destructive creatures into tiny, little, spherical cages. The Power Rangers megasaure to stomp about the sandbox with. Maybe not a time-machine though. Going back in time in the Delorian could be fun or even educational. But in general the prospect of time travel seems more hassle then it worth. The risk of becoming your own grandfather is just too great.
But then there’s lasers! From death rays to Death Stars to laser pointers there usefulness never ends. “So your going to fail me professor. Well would you like to argue with my orbiting Hyper Mega Death Cannon of Death! Bruhahaha!”
Oddly most of my dreams at the time would eventually descend into some manner of maniacal madness. Armies of minion cloans, minion robots, minion aliens, or just plain normal minions in stylish minion uniform onesies. If I was given the Ring of Power you better believe I would use that in my rise to dominance, not to mention all manner of invisible hijinks.
There are rational set backs of course. The prospects of world domination at the head of a giant robot army could be enticing. But even at 8 I could see the holes in such plans. What happens after your coup, you got to set up a stable bureaucracy, sign decrees then busy yourself with keeping insurrections down. Too much headache for someone whose chief interest at the time involves an anthill and a tube of milk based glue.
Maybe you wanted the ability to say something and something cool would happen. Like “Kamaya-Maya” or “Shazam” or “Care Bear Stare”. How often have you really hated someone and just wanted to shout “Avada Kedavra” and watch some problems disappear while far more spring up in one motion.
Some abilities would even come in handy in everyday situations. Like mind reading. Cheating in class would never be easier, just pick and choose the answer from your fellow test takers minds. Or hovering. Not that lame, hey I got wings type flying that never seemed all that plausible, I mean legitimate bobbing about like gravity is some prank and the rest of us haven’t caught the joke yet, hovering. Your trying to pick up some cute boy/girl/robot, but wait, some A+ class college athlete is moving in and there is no hope for you to compete with that. But wait, you can hover, and all the rules change.
In the end all of this daydreaming never really came to much. Most of them were infantile, immature and generally idiotic. But at least they helped kill time during Mrs. Pomegranate (that was seriously her name) dull classes. That and doodling. You got to love doodling.

The Doom of the Democrats

The core of the Democratic Party from the time unmemorable of FDR, is labor. The Unions. The wise elders behind the New Deal put the Democrats where they are today. And like every younger generation, the current Democratic leadership has forgotten everything their forbearers tried to teach them.
As one union man once said (a couple days ago actually), “It’s not that we’ve left the Democrats, the Democrats have left us.” What was once viewed as the Party for the little man against the bosses is now viewed as the slave of Silicon Valley interests, realtors who have planed out the forceful gentrification of New Orleans, corporations and the globalization for the sake of globalization forces like the World Trade Organization, that have led to millions of folks losing their livelihoods.
No longer do you hear pundits squawk about the outsourcing of jobs, the stratification of the rich against poor, the annihilation of welfare or even the war. Now all they squawk about is, well, nothing really. Obsessed with infantile ‘cultural’ issues, the so called ‘left-wing’ party’s primary strategy has become playing topical catch-up after the un-silent majorities’ crusades, instead of crafting issues for their own. They have become reactionaries to the reactionaries.
As the Democrats bend over backwards to appease right-wing fence sitters and independents, becoming ever more centrist in mind that now they’ve officially qualified for lukewarm status, the true left is fleeing in droves.
The scenario has been played out over and over in so many different places and times that it is practically a rule of nature. I’ll use Germany in the 20s and 30s as a rather rough template of what’s already happened and what’s going to happen:
The far left was big and growing bigger. The mainstream Social-Democratic party was winning votes but only under the platform that any change had to be gradual and within the bounds of the status quo for sake of realism (remember the ’06 elections). The far left grew impatient then distressed then disenfranchised then angry. They went off on their own to try and run things their own way. The Social-Democrats became terrified and the far right became entrenched The Social-Democrats sided with the far right to put down the far left in the name of order. After that bloodshed was done, the far right then killed off all the Social-Democrats and declared it the beginning of a thousand year regime, or ‘Reich’.
Are the Democrats going to win the presidential elections? Sure. But only because they’re not Republicans. The Republicans may be viewed as corrupt and elitist, but the Democrats are viewed as incompetent and elitist. The number of people fleeing the GOP is much larger then those coming to the Dems. When the Democrat President comes to power it will not take long before people realize it’s just more business as usual, more corruption, more imperialism, less jobs, and they’re going to be very very pissed off.

The Possible Reciprocal Effects of the Federal Reserve’s Monetary Policy

In response to fears about an economic slowdown, on January 30, 2008 the Federal Reserve Bank announced it would again lower it’s targeted federal funds interest rate to 3%.
Though 3% is in no way the lowest interest rates have been in recent memory (this honor going to June of 2003 when rates were a mere 1%) the uniqueness of this decision stems from the speed at which interest rates have been repeatedly cut. Only eight days earlier the Fed had lowered interest rates from 4.25% to 3.5%. In the last six months alone the Fed has announced interest rate cuts five separate times, falling from 5.25% to it’s present 3%.
As the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve Banks actions have many important repercussions over the financial market directly and the economy as a whole more indirectly. These effects and subsequent counter-effects and counter-effects for the previous counter-effects can reverberate in and out, back and forth through every facet of the economy for many quarters, and must therefore be considered with the utmost seriousness.
By consistency lowering targeted interest rates the Fed is engaging in an expansionary monetary policy. This is carried out by firstly the Fed newly printed using raw dollars to buy up bonds on the open market thus pumping these dollars into the market and increasing the money supply. This mechanism works to lower interest rates since interest rates and money supply are inversely related. A relationship due to the fact that with a larger supply of money, banks theoretically have a larger stock of capital to loan out money. If this money stock is more than the demand for lending, interest rates, acting as the price for loanable funds, will fall.
At the same time, and in the same context, the Fed is lowering the federal funds rate, the rate that banks charge each other for overnight borrowing, and the discount rate, which is the rate the Fed charges banks to borrow from it. Accordingly the banks pass on the cost changes in these rates by adjusting their lending and borrow rates. This should again aid the economy by facilitating more lending by banks into the market, and via the expected multiplier effect, further increase the money supply.
In total in the three weeks between January 14 and February 4, 2008 the estimated money supply, or M1, rose by $36 billion. With these actions, the Fed now unleashes a slew of intentional and unintentional echo like effects.
In the short run, with an excess supply of money, we can expect regular citizens to increase their consumption in all goods, since with more money in their pockets they will be inclined to spend more of it. Yet if the increase in consumption, or aggregate demand, is not able to keep up with the increase of the quantity of money, or aggregate supply, then we can expect a rise in average prices, or relative fall in worth of our currency to occur. Inflation. When there is too many dollars, like any other good, worth of that good will decrease.
Admittedly, the Fed actions cannot be considered the sole source of any inflationary pressure. It may have many causes that can often be highly esoteric yet pervasive. As John Mayard Keynes once said, the process of inflation, “engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” Yet there is nothing more direct in cause and effect terms over inflation then total money supply, which the central bank has presumably total control over.
Since 1991, percent increase in the Consumer Price Index (I.E. inflation) has stayed relatively stable at in and around 3%. For 2007 the inflation rate suddenly jumped to 4.1% from 2.5% the year previously. Prices for many other essential goods increased even faster that year. The price of food rose 4.9%, the largest since 1990. And a fact that should require no figure to remind us, energy costs rose a significant 17.4% in one year.
For everyday citizens this can be devastating. One of the many apologist arguments for inflation is that nominal wages are suppose to keep up with any increase in prices. Sadly this assumption has not proven out empirically. Between 1964 and 2004 real average wages for Americans have in truth decreased by 8.3% after inflation.
As an additional side effect to any increase in the money supply, we can expect a depreciation of the Dollar’s exchange rate for the exact same reason that it will cause inflation. More of one commodity will decrease it’s value relative to other commodities. Additionally foreign investors will see the falling American interest rates and will expect a falling returns of sale to any savings investment that they may or might have in the American financial market. Both of these factors will lead to a drop in demand for U.S. Dollars and a fall in it’s price in exchange terms accordingly.
The U.S. dollar has been in a state of steady depreciation against all other major currencies (with the exception of the Japanese Yen) for the last few years. Between February of 2003 and the February of 2008 the Dollar has lost value against the Euro by 39 cents with 15 of those cents being lost in the last year alone. More closer to home, from January of 2003 to January of 2008 the U.S. Dollar has lost 53 cents against the Canadian Dollar.
Though we can assume that due to the lengths of these periods this trend is not directly the fault of any single Federal Reserve policy, it’s recent moves will no doubt aide to expedite any existing process as recent spikes in the exchange markets have shown.
There may be a silver lining to any depreciation in the U.S. dollar though. As a currency depreciates, goods and services from that country become a bargain on world trade markets. To cash in on those savings, foreign merchants will buy from that country, increasing that country’s exports. On the domestic end of the deal, foreign products will become more expensive for local buyers leading us to decrease the amount we currently import. The net effect will lead to an increase in the trade balance of payments.
This is good news, the United States has maintained for the last two decades a noticeable trade deficit. But this export/import gap has been seen to narrow in 2007 by $46.9 Billion from the year previously thanks presumably to increased exports and decreased imports.
Additionally this pressure should aid in stemming any further Dollar depreciation. As demand for our products, and thus our currency, increases, so does the price for those products and the value of the currency that the products are marked in. The exchange rate for the dollar should stop depreciating, possible even appreciate a little bit and obtain a new stabilized equilibrium.
The irony is that increasing exports can also be inflationary in itself, since foreign importers buy our exports with their own currency, this leads to more foreign currency in the hands of private citizens. This private foreign currency eventually has to be exchanged with banks, central and otherwise, for domestic Dollars. When this exchange takes place it pumps more Dollars into the market and thereby causing some inflation. In the long run each factor and counter-factor should counterbalance each other till all dynamics stabilize at a new market equilibrium. The United States economy is so huge and unimaginable complex that any rough shock that the Federal Reserve can create for good or ill will be easily be absorbed by one market component or another, given enough time. The issue at present is how long “in the long run” means, how long before our economy reaches again some point of constancy, and whether or not that point of constancy, that point of stability, that point of equilibrium will necessarily be to our every day general advantage, or are we going to be net worse off in the end.

Bye Bye Castro, Hello What?

On February 18, the 81 year old Fidel Castro announced his resignation from the Presidency of Cuba after 49 years of rule that spanned the reign of 10 U.S. Presidents. The man who rose from a lawyer, to a revolutionary guerilla, to absolute ruler, was the thermonuclear epicenter of the hottest days of the Cold War, has retired now due to health reasons.
His legacy will be, well, that’s a really good question.
In January of 1959 he overthrew the military dictatorship of the U.S. backed Generalissimo Batista with the aid of now famous T-Shirt icon “Che” Guevara. He would then nationalize nearly $800 million in U.S. corporations’ property on the island.
A timeline released by the National Security Archives shows the C.I.A. had began planning to overthrow the Castro government of Cuba as early as ten months after the revolution. In April 1961, with the aid of about 1,400 Cuban exiles, they struck at the Bay of Pigs and were quickly pushed back into the sea. The CIA, in a weird irony, honestly expected the Cuban people to welcome a U.S. sponsored invasion, causing them spontaneously rising up against the Castro regime. Roughly the exact opposite occurred.
Not long after the failed invasion Fidel Castro declared himself and his government as “Communist” and allied himself directly with the Soviet Union. The Soviets then station thermonuclear missiles in Cuba, a mere 90 miles from American shores causing the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Crisis would end in a mutual stalemate, but at it’s height Castro personally urged the Kremlin to launch a first strike against an American city. The Kremlin refused.
For the next 46 years, and well past the end of the Cold War, the United States has, and will continue to according to the State Department, maintain an effective trade embargo against the island of Cuba. Most analysts agree that this embargo, and the fear and resource scarcity it spread among the populace, effectively ensured Castro’s monopolization of political power. In him was seen as the protective authority figure in a continuous, undeclared war against the U.S. And so he remained.
The human rights record of the Castro regime ain’t stellar by a long shot. It’s a single party country with a badly distorted freedom of speech and information. Censorship is prevalent. Many anti-government “counter-revolutionaries” have been thrown in prison or killed. Though most of these political deaths only occurred in the first years after the revolution and have subsided since then. It was a dictatorship by all classical definitions.
Yet that’s not the complete story. Cuba has one of the best public health care system in the Western Hemisphere with disease and death rates at least on par with the United States, according to the World Health Organization. Literacy rates among adults is extraordinary high, practically perfect, with a fully funded free education up through and past the university level. It’s a dystopia, but a dystopia with a comfortable standard of living.
So what now.
The reins of his regime will be passed on to Fidel’s younger brother Raul, at least for the time being. But already across the international political spectrum, those pundits characterized by the CNN/Fox News/N.Y. Times types who make their living on telling us what to think have already lay down the approved framework on how these events should be view:
Fidel Castro was a ruthless dictator, a godless Red and the transfer of power to his younger brother is highly undemocratic. What needs to happen next is for Cuba to introduce some western style Representative Republic and allow foreign companies to set up shop on the island. With Free Speech and (a most importantly) Free Market for all.
Everyone seems to think they know what’s best for Cuba, what should happen next. Whether it’s the introduction of some Neoliberal or Neoconservative Democracy or whatever have you. What seems to matter is turning Cuba into a clean slate on which they can impose their Economic-Geopolitical ideals upon.
Nobody seems to be asking the actual Cubans what they want with their country. The 11.4 million Cubans are likely a thousand times more qualified to determine their destiny than all the Harvard educated social and political scientists combined. It’s time that we (and their own government for that matter) should give them a chance to decide.
Whatever the case this is no doubt a significant turning point in world history. And the sooner we pry our eyes away from the latest campaign coverage and notice the rest of the world, the better.

Teach Us Please

As we crowd watch all the accepted student tour groups amble by let’s take a minute and remember what makes this school, and all universities for that matter, what they are. The professors.
They are the core foundation of this intuition for higher learner. It is why we came here and are paying thousands of dollars in tuition so we can be here. To learn from them.
That is why it pains me to learn about what a bum rap they are getting here at UVM. While the number of undergraduates continues to skyrocket, along with tuition and tuition revenue (up 48%), the number of newly hired full-time professors has stagnated along with their wages.
Waterman would tell us that money is tight, that they don’t have the funds to give our professors wages to match their worth. But then they go out and increase their own wages (up 207% for administration level staff), raise up a multimillion dollar student center and pay for it all by raising tuition yet again (68% above national average).
If livable wages and top quality professors are the sacrifices we have to make to get the Davis Center and pay for our 21 Vice Presidents’ six figure salaries, then I say we need to get our priorities straight.
They try to tell us that the Davis Center will allow us to be a more competitive against other schools in undergraduate enrollment. But by becoming more competitive in superficial appearances we are really becoming less competitive in substance.
The upper echelons of this university must remember that the purpose of an administrative bureaucracy is to serve the teachers and students, not the other way around.
The University of Vermont should aim to provide the best benefit and wage incentives to bring in, in large numbers, the greatest minds of today to help train the greatest minds of tomorrow. Everything else is less than secondary.

Winter Soldier Burlington

On February 28th in the Davis Center’s Silver Maple Ballroom 300 nearly students, faculty and members of the Burlington community gathered to hear the open testimonials of four Iraq War veterans on their experiences in the war.
“This is not a demonstration, not a debate, not a speakout, this is the reality of war,” table chair Jessica Zamiara said.
The event was co-organized by the newly recognized club, Students Against War and the Burlington chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War whose members gave their testimonies.
The name ‘Winter Soldier’ comes from a Thomas Paine quote, who in the winter of 1776 said, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The interpretation being that the soldier has a responsibility to the truthful service of their country, to quote the Iraq Veterans Against the War website, to, “demonstrate our patriotism by speaking out with honor and integrity instead of blindly following failed policy,” and to spread awareness to that effect.
“I don’t want to do this, but I realize we don’t have a choice, we have a responsibility to speak about we’ve seen and done,” former Army field artillerymen Drew Cameron said.
One by one the veterans recounted their stories.
“The first casualty of the war happened right next to me. He stepped on an unexploded cluster bomb. These were U.S. munitions that were dropped the night before. They are illegal under the Geneva Convention,” former U.S. Marine Matt Howard said.
Accompanied by a slideshow presentation, gradually a picture emerged about the nature of this war from the soldier’s perspective.
“Disposal of [captured enemy] ammunitions were done in close proximity of agricultural fields,” Drew Cameron said.
“We had no armor on our vehicles. We had to scavenge in the North Kuwaiti desert for scrap metal that we could use,” Mat Howard said.
When Matt Howard attempted to give food to begging Iraqi children, according to him, his commanding officer reprimanded him, saying, “’We don’t want to give the Iraqis any misconception of why we’re here.”
Matt Howard went on to mention how after being informed that there was no need for their chemical weapon safety gear, his platoon began to think, “there was something amiss when we are told that they had weapons of mass destructions and at the same time that we were safe from chemical attacks.” Later he said, “Soldiers do not ask to be lied to.”
A former Arabic linguist with Military Intelligence and current worker with the Department of Veterans Affair, Adienne Kinne, gave an inside perspective on the nature of electronic surveillance.
“Terrorist organizations made up less than 10% of our intercepts. We were given verbal waiver to monitor conversations of all NGO and aid workers, American or not. [My superiors] made no distinction between intelligence and propaganda,” Adienne Kinne said.
Under the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution warrantless searches and seizures of American citizens are illegal. Under Title 18, Chapter 121 of the US Code: Section 2712 this protection of privacy up to recently was extended to cover all wire and electronic based communications done by American citizen. Since September 11th and the U.S. Patriot Act, this title has been since amended to allow free wiretapping.
According to a Johns Hopkins study from October of 2006, roughly 600,000 Iraqis had been killed in the war up to that time. The up to date figure is currently unknown. The issues of death and civilian deaths came up. The whole room fell silent.
Matt Howard recounted what he was told before entering the town of Nazaria. “’The people of Nazaria have been told to stay in their houses, so anything that moves, we shoot it.’” After entering Nazeria, Matt Howard went on to say, “I was forced to drive over many human corpses. I witnessed many dead civilians slumped over their steering wheels.”
“Collateral damage was not an issue for us. Rules of engagement were completely dropped,” former Marine infantrymen Jon Turner said while in full dress uniform with his metals displayed, including a Purple Heart.
“My first war crime. The first man I killed,” Jon Turner said, “was innocent, he had no weapons on him, he was walking back to his house. I was later congratulated by members of my platoon and my chain of command.”
Members of that same chain of command would go on to make statements as recounted by Jon Turner, “’First person to kill someone with a knife gets four days leave when we get back.’” And, “’I just killed half the population of Northern Ramadee. F the red tape.’”
St. Michaels College student Hannah DuPart said, “I thought the stories they gave were really disturbing. But also they were really brave for giving them.”
Drew Cameron’s testimony from this hearing will be recorded into the Congressional Archives.
The other three veterans who spoke that night will go on to take their stories to the national Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan hearings in Washington DC from March 13th to 16th, where they will be joining others in presenting verbal, photographic and other evidence on the war. The event is done in the tradition of the similar 1971 Vietnam Winter Soldier hearings in which Vietnam veterans exposed their firsthand, ‘boots on the ground’ knowledge of that war.
These new hearings are being held by members of the growing organization, Iraq Veterans Against the War. According to their website, the organization is calling for a three point program of immediate withdrawal from Iraq, reparations paid to the Iraqi people and full benefits and care for all returning veterans.
Many anti-war and social justice groups from the surrounding UVM and Burlington area were represented at Winter Soldier including, but not limited to, S.L.A.P., the Peace and Justice Center and Veterans for Peace.
“I was surprised by the turnout. It really shows a lot of people care about what is at stake,” UVM freshman Nathan Wigfield said.
The president of the Will Miller Green Mountain Veterans for Peace, Bert Thompson had this to say about Iraq Veterans Against the War, “I am really exhilarated on how they are taking their experiences, what they are living with and will be living with, and making it into something positive. I embrace them.”
“I thought the event was really powerful. I left somewhat emotionally drained, but I feel invigorated and inspired by the courage of the veterans who shared their stories,” UVM sophomore Benjamin Dube said.
Jon Turner said in closing to his testimony, “I can’t take back what I’ve done. I apologies for the lives I’ve destroyed. I apologies for the families I’ve destroyed. The men I’ve killed I don’t even know their names. I don’t think I want to know their names. I was reprogrammed for destruction. I was a monster. And I will never become the monster I once was.”

Yabbermouths

I’ve officially had my fill with intellectual arguments and discussions and debates. It’s no longer arguing WITH someone that’s important but how loud you can argue AT them. People are not interested in what their theoretical opponents think or feel but merely waiting till they can get their say in, their clever little blurb that’ll wrap up the whole discussion into a neat little package. It’s not the content of a conversation anymore, but it’s ending line.
The point of debate has become a moot point. When a liberal meets a conservative, there’s no attempt to reach an understanding, there’s not even any hope of one convincing the other. It just becomes a case of two yabbermouth monkeys throwing feces at each, masturbating their egos.
Then if either yabbermouth comes out on top, liberal or conservative (who are basically the same type of people when you think about it), we can always expect them to do nothing with their words. I’m an advocate of hypocrisy but only if you self admit it (Oddly enough if you acknowledge you that are a hypocrite it’s impossible to be a hypocrite).
Logic has failed humanity. Rhetoric is more important then reality. He said she said more important then results. People’s quant little reality tunnels, the mental beer goggles we see the world through, keep on shrinking while people don’t realize that they’re closing off their minds, segregating their thoughts from information they don’t agree with. We’re so convinced our ideological maps are the territory that any possibility for a person to change his mind, to realize that they were wrong and correct it, is as remote as the Green Party winning an election (though they should).
We only think with out heads and not our senses.
Quantum Mechanics has disproved propositional logic and how systems can even be related. Steven Hawking has shown how information can be destroyed, thus how cause and effect don’t even half to be related. If A = B and B = C, then C = a punch in the mouth.
Is logic empirical? Probably not.

Pigeon Drop

One of the more lucrative cons in the swindle hierarchy is what’s called the Pigeon Drop or sometimes Fiddle Game. It’s when two con artists appear to be in competing positions when they are really in cahoots. Usually this involves the ‘Pigeon’ or mark, buying an in reality useless item from one con man at a ridiculously inflated price in hopes to sell it to the second con man, who’ll he’ll never find.
On a national stage a Pigeon Drop can get kind of interesting.
Take the TheTruth.com Organization. You’ve seen their anti-smoking adds, just rubbing our faces in how bad tobacco is to your health and how much the tobacco industry are dicks. (Activate sarcasm mode… now) “Wow, big surprise, tobacco is deadly and corporations are evil, I would have never have known this if it wasn’t for oh mighty TheTruth.com, thank you.” Please. If by now there is anyone left out there who has not heard the government propaganda against smoking and how smoking in the first, second or third hand is bad for you, then that person deserves cancer. There I said it. By now whoever is out there smoking is doing so by their own their free choice, knowing the full risks involved, so leave the smokers alone already.
Anyway my point is the TheTruth.com Organization is in truth (hahaha) funded by the ‘evil’ Tobacco Industry themselves after a federal ruling forced them to give money to advertising that would help “vilify” smoking and smokers. So next time you see one of those anti-smoking commercials, with their bastardize gorilla theatre, be aware, Truth is full of it.
As for larger issues. Have you ever gotten the impression the Republicrates and Democans kind of look alike? You shut your ears and all you see is a bunch of rich, old, fat, white men who are scared of change. The same big corporations across the board fund/lobby/bribe all candidates indiscriminately with all the giveaways, hookers, and campaign financing our politicians can take. Bernie included. The Democratic candidates plan for the Iraq War differs not one iota from Bush’s. Not one of the front-runners has any intention of withdrawal, or if they do, it’s only a partial withdrawal of combat unit leaving around a permanent occupational force. This isn’t a two party system, it’s a hydra with two fat heads… system. Yeah.

Privledge Equals Poverty

We’ve all gotten the rap when as tiny children we didn’t want to finish our supper, specifically when it tasted god-awful, that there are children starving in [insert ambiguous third world region here] and they’d love to have what we have. Though we were never really able to figure out what was the connection between the two. Then later in life we get our heads filled with America is the greatest most bestest country in the whole wide world and we should feel lucky to live in it. Now I don’t dispute any of this. World hunger is a serious problem and the United States is the most privileged. I’m just wondering why?
Lets play a thought game, a colorful thought game at that.
So imagine a playpen ball pit at Chucky Cheeses with only a set amount of those Technicolor dream balls in it. Now these playpen balls can symbolize a lot of things; power, privileged, money, food, it doesn’t matter. At rest the playpen ball level is flat, smooth and even. But add an outside force, a kid jumping in, maybe he got pushed, whatever, balls start to fly all over the place and the pit is no longer even. But more importantly, for any rise of playpen depth in one place there most correspond to an equal decrease in depth somewhere else. For every crest there is a trough. It all has to come from somewhere.
For every wealthy tycoon, there most be a far larger number of poor migrant workers to give the tycoon his position. It’s like a realpolitik version of the math games we used to play in elementary school. If there are only 5 apples and Jim has 4 of them, then Julie can only have 1 apple. Except here instead of apples we’re dealing with bullion used to buy, well, apples, among other things I guess. But mostly apples.
This is true for entire counties and civilizations. You can sip your grande chai latte and surf Facebook on you MacBook (which oddly enough I’m doing right now) but your ability to do so is dependent on somebody else in the world being in roughly the exact opposite situation. The equation most balance out for a zero net gain for the whole.
According to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund the population of the world that is living in “extreme poverty” or on less than a dollar a day is 1.5 billion with a b. Expand that to under $2 a day and the figure jumps to a little less than half the human population.
Back on the home front, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the top 1/5 of this countries’ most affluent (who I imagine all wear monocles) owns about 49.8% of all our wealth. And the difference between the rich and poor is only increasing. Between 1980 and 2003 the richest 1/20 of households saw their income increase by 132%, while the bottom 1/5 only saw an increase of 24%.
The ratio between the average CEO and employee’s wages has widened in the last fifteen years from 107;1 to 411;1. An increase of 384%. In fact if the national minimum wage in this country had kept up with the average CEO’s it would currently be $22.61 an hour. (It should be noted that the greatest portion of this increase occurred during the Clinton era, not the two Bush eras).
A simpler way to figure out income inequality (also called social stratification or “Why am I wearing rags and he’s got a damn-awesome monocle?”) is the Gini Index done by the United Nations. It’s a simple scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is perfect egalitarianism and 100 is when one person owns everything, literally everything. Most industrial countries have a Gini Index of about 20 to 30 (Denmark’s is 0.247 as an example). The United States’ is 46.9, which is comparable to Turkey, Tunisia and Mother Russia. Worse yet it’s been increasing steadily since 1972, rising over 20% in that time.
Most disturbing of all. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 35.5 million Americans were ‘food insecure’ in 2006, up 400,000 from the year before.
I’d admit all these statistics are pretty dull and tedious, but the point is things are not getting any better and will not for the foreseeable future.
Now is this just the way things are because that’s just the way things are. Of course not, it’s like saying apples fall down from trees or planets orbit suns, just because. It’s like saying that you broke up with your girlfriend because she was “just a bitch” when it really had more to do with a certain disease she caught from you, which you quincidentaly caught from her sister. There are always causes to lead to the effects.
There is a deep seeded, institutionalized error in the system itself (like your deep seeded need to hook up with your partner’s siblings) that causes all this heartache. Not the wicked deeds of a few wicked men, but the greater system itself.


NEW WORLD ORDER

As Noam Chomsky says Globalization can mean many things, some even positive, like the building of friendly relations with people international, the whole “we’re all in the same boat” deal. But in these modern contexts Economic Globalization (also called Neo-Liberalism) means the spread of the “free-trade” market system and laissez-fare economics globally. Breaking down tariffs, destroying embargos (though Cuba is still under embargo since the ‘60s for some reason), cutting governments out of the loop of things till they have zero say in their own countries economy. Till the whole world is one seamless, flat, glorious market place where we are all free to move about as we please.
Sounds wonderful doesn’t it. Well some western businessmen were so enthralled by this new cult they created such churches as the World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organization, to spread this gospel of “let the market decide everything” to the grateful masses. And if any of them noticed the inherent contradiction in a series of quasi-government groups imposing their will on other nations to deregulate and privatize that nation so their market could be free from all coercive groups, they said nothing.
The partial logic for all of this is based on the Neo-Classical school of economics, the oldest and most archaic school in that field which about 90% of all economists ascribe to in some part. It says that for some magical reason, an economy behaves at highest efficiency when there is zero interference from outside forces (I.E. government regulation). That means no welfare, no social security, no public institutions and especially no regulation or checks-n-balances over industry whatsoever. Oddly enough the same people (I.E. rich people, for hence forth referred to as ‘richies’) who would benefit most from a policy which would include tax cuts for richies are also the ones most pushing for it. These people are also the same who denounce trade unions for limiting competition but then do nothing to put a girdle on monopolies. Hmm I wonder why?
Globalization is designed to promote, no, force international competition of businesses, competition thereby promotes progress, and in the end it’s all in benefit for the consumer. Yeah. Ok. The scam there is when a company from a developed nation ‘competes’ with a company from a yetdeveloped nation, who do you think has an unfair advantage. It’s like Muhammad Ali vs. Woody Allen, who are you expecting to come out with a title. Theoretically in the long run the Woody Allen companies should benefit from the increased competition (which there is little evidence to prove), but as another economist, John Keynes, said, “In the long run we’re all dead.” That type of gradual redistributing of the wealth can take decades to work, if ever, and highly likely never. In the mean time Muhammad Ali will be exploiting Woody Allen, sucking all the life out of Woody to fill his bloated coffers like some Regan Economic vampire.
Then your assuming that multinationals who will be moving on Woody Allen like hyenas to a undefended antelope, are acting in some sort of benevolent role, shinning the light of civilization and consumerism on these backward savages. Ha! You create an entire system based on people acting in their own, and only their own, best interest (I.E. greed) it’s no surprise that the same individuals who created the system are the first to be corrupted by it. With less international regulation (thanks to the WTO) the multinationals have near free reign to take advantage of Woody Allen in any unnatural way they want.
Members of the Free-Trade cults will try to convince you their coercive policies have led to great progress in the third world (as if it’s a separate world then ours). Sure some (note: some) yetdeveloped nation have been on the up and up, but there is little direct evidence this is directly caused by either the WTO, IMF or World Bank’s policies. In fact there is far more evidence to the contrary.
Of the 76 countries that followed the World Banks ‘adjustment and reform’ programs in the 80s and 90s, only 4 ‘consistently improved their performances in inflation rates and growth.’ Several of the nations that have followed the IMF’s development scheme (emphasis on scheme or scam) have been met with extreme bouts of economic and social upheavals. Three of which are Kenya, Argentina and the former Yugoslavia. The later of which descended into a decade of civil war and genocide after the IMF decided to impose a debt repayment plan that halved the countries living standards in 2 years.
If globalization was really ‘working’ we would see empirically the closing of the gap between richest and poorest nation. Instead we have seen the exact opposite. According to the World Institute for Development Economics Research the richest 10% of the global population (9/10 of which are living in either the U.S., Europe or Japan) own roughly 85% of all the world’s wealth, while the bottom 50% own less than 1% of the wealth. And this ratio of the richest 1/5 versus poorest 1/5 has been steadily widening for decades. 30;1 in 1969, 60;1 in 1990 and 74;1 in 1998.
Nations such as those in the former Soviet Blocs have even seen their real Gross Domestic Products essentially disintegrate shortly after the introduction of ‘Free Trade’.
And while poverty is spreading to fill every corner of the globe the number of $U.S. Billionaires has been increasing exponentially. 99 in 1990, 587 in 2004, 691 in 2005 and 793 in 2006.
These inconsistencies are far too prevalent to be caused by minor errors that can be fixed through reform, Globalization as a system is designed at it’s core to work in just this way, without regard for the people it forces to be involved.
What does Globalization really mean? It means control. It means coercion. It means the lose of the independent nation’s sovereignty. It means institutionalized inequality. It means exploitation. It means 21st century colonialism. It means Imperialism.
(Interestedly enough the voting power in the IMF and World Banks of the U.S., European Union and Japan combined is far over half out over the total 182 member nations. These nations were also quincidently the chief colonial powers a hundred years ago.)


HEGEMONY AND HEMORAGING

The future looks bleak. Unless you’re a richie, then it looks awesome for a while followed eventually by bleak. By aiming to create one unified world economy at the worlds expense what has happened is that the World Trade Organization has literally outsourced stratification. When before there would be an enclosed class system of poor, middle-class and richies, now entire nations and continents have been drawn into a single world caste system of rich nations above middle nations and poor nations. The money is all going uphill.
The sad thing is only a handful of people in these richer nations are benefiting from the whole scam. The resources and wealth of an entire planet are flowing into America, Europe and Japan, but even then only the richest of the rich in the richest countries can be seen getting richer. Look around you. How has your life benefited from globalization? Besides the neat toys made in sweat shops and the coffee grown with next to slave labor, where is the benefit for you when your job is outsourced to half way around the world? This is the principal domestic byproduct of ‘Free Trade’ that you will rarely ever hear connect to it. Outsourcing of our jobs is caused directly by globalization cults and the corporate tycoons who follow them. If they see a cheap penny to be made by moving factories oversees, you better believe the faces of all the starving American children whose daddies just got canned won’t stop them.
Imagine a farmer innn… say Columbia for example. She grows a standard crop that she brings market, but thanks to globalization her produce has to compete with the same crop imported from America, which has been subsidized by the American government. Normally her government would be able to set up tariffs to protect her and the rest of the local market from such inconsistencies. But thanks to privatization and ‘Free Trade’, no such protection exists anymore. The American produce is so much cheaper that she can’t sell any of hers. Eventually she defaults on her bank loans, has to give up her farm, moves into the city to become another of the millions of migrant workers, and has to work in a sweat shop factory making some contrived bit of consumerism for an international corporation. This corporation then takes what she produced and sells it on the world market at a ridiculously inflated rate for an even more ridicules profit which goes strait to it’s stock holders.
And while all this is going on, the population of the world that is hopelessly poor and unemployed, or of so called ‘surplus labor’, is increasing. According to the United Nations, by 2030 the human population will be 8 billion with between 2 and 3 of those billions being classified ‘informal workers’ A.K.A. ‘migrant workers’ I.E. the denizens of shantytowns, slums and Dickinson nightmares the likes of which we’ve never seen, totally outside the traditional relations of production and progress.
To quote a 2003, U.N. Human Settlement Program report, “The collapse of formal urban employment in the developing world and the rise of the informal sector [the extreme impoverished] is seen as a direct function of liberalization [I.E. globalization].”
Imagine those commercials you see for the Christian Children’s Fund times a thousand. Worse yet, because of the Neo-Classical and Neo-Liberal Economics’ divestment from public housing and other welfare plans, there’s little that can be done to help them.
But let’s says these impoverished folk wish to try to better there condition, immigrate to a more prosperous country or flee to that country as a refugee from the newly created genocide in their own. Well, too bad. With all the talk of the more mystic followers of the globalization cults that goes along the lines, “a flat world economy where we are all equal citizens of the world and can move about as we please,” in the last decade we’ve seen a nationalistic strengthening of national borders against the so called, “Alien Invasion” that rivals that of the Great Wall of China. In places like the U.S., E.U. and especially Australia, to be a foreigner is a misdemeanor within itself and a refugee a capitol crime.
I know it’s hard, but let’s forget the human faces of the American whose job was outsourced, and the Columbian farmer who can’t sell her produce, and the child living in total squalor, and the ‘illegal’ shot at the border, and the stock holder who is the only beneficiary in this whole mess, and let’s look at the bigger picture for a second.
What Neo-Liberalism is gradually and silently creating is a stratified world where every individual nation is subject to it’s own individual portion of the division of labor along the supply chain. Whole nations producing nothing but agriculture, whole nations producing nothing but manufacturing goods, whole nations producing nothing but socks, and supervising it all, whole nations made up of the managerial class and their service industry (the one domestic industry that can’t be outsourced).
Nothing will be made locally anymore. Just think of how few items you see these days that can honestly say, “Made in the U.S.A.” And in that lays the crutch. The self-reliance, the self-sufficiency of whole regions will be totally non-existent. This whole glorious machine will be hopelessly addicted and absolutely reliant on the desperately fragile system of international trade and finance.
If all your are producing are cash-crops for export into the market, and the only way to get what you need is from the market, then what happens when something happens to the market? Think about it. And think about where the food you need to survive comes from.
Like all great paradigm shits, the end of our current market based one will come totally naturally with little need for provocation. Peak Oil.
The figures I’ve heard for when oil production will reach it’s historical peak and global fossil fuel reserves to be totally drained vary. Some say by 2030, others 2060. The point is it is an eventuality. Nothing will stop it. And since I’ve yet to any evidence that the political and (the far more important in our society) business leaders think in any way rationally or practically, we as a world will be totally unprepared.
With all the emphasis on ‘smaller governments’ the Neo-Cons, Neo-Classicals and Neo-Liberals have given us the ultimate in Achilles Heels, by divesting from public transportation systems and infrastructures. Without oil the post-panamax tanker ships won’t sail. Without oil the transport jets won’t fly. Without oil the tanker trucks won’t deliver across our nations highway system. Without oil, and with no system to replace it, international trade, the new lifeblood of the planet, will die. It’s like Frank Herbert’s Dune, except real, and alot more scary. Also no sandworms.
What happens next is pretty predictable. With nations requiring from one another the myriad of needs to keep civilization running, and the way to fill those needs suddenly gone, things will get icky. Starvation in most major cities. Cannibalism probably. You can’t really expect cubicle workers to know how to harvest grain. In all general chaos.
Sure I’m likely exaggerating this last prediction at bit, and the eventual fallout will be (like most times when you have dooms day prophesies) not as bad as you’d think.
But then again …… what’s to stop it?

How to Save this Country

Hokay, to begin with you can’t trust politicians. At all. If one comes into your home is best to hide the silverware and take out your 2nd Amendment because these folks will nick the fillings out of your teeth if given a chance. In fact we can expand this law to pretty much all of the well to do upper class. If it is fat, old, white, and a man chances are your in trouble. Unless it’s Santa. Then your get presents. Kinda the reverse really.
Like Christmas taking over Thanksgiving, the ’08 presidential elections has taken over 2007, and a portioned out portion of the talk surround campaign financing and lobbyist. For those who don’t know, campaign financing/lobbying is when one group of sinister fat-old-white-men with infinite power (corporations) are giving another group of fat-old-whit-men with slightly less power (lawmakers) huge sums of money to do their bidding. Examples would be WalMart, the already castrated tobacco industry and PETA. Problems arise in this seemingly as innocent as a Norman Rockwell painting situation, because fat-old-white-men group B is technically responsible for the better welfare of all Americans who might not necessarily be fat, old, white, and/or men, not just F.O.W.M group A. This is what some in the liberal media might call “corruption” or “gross besmirchment of office”.
But wait there’s more. Technically bribery of elected officials is considered covered by the 1st Amendment, the one that keeps me from in front of a firing squad if I happen to forgot my 2nd Amendment that day. So how do we rectify the two?
I have a plan. Total Abiguity, by punishment of death. This is how it works; if someone agrees with a particular political candidate and wants to give $5, $10, $300,000 in vacation getaways, he can go for it. But in no way can the candidate ever learn, or those working for her know who gave her the cash/swimming-with-dolphins. This can be done through a third party group. If the candidate ever does learn by fault of either F.O.W.M. group A or be then they can be both considered as traitors to the republic (note: Treason is still a capitol offence). It’s like secret Santa but with a twist (I’ve got it on the mind today for some reason, shut up).
In fact you can extend that treason thing to any corruption (there are several definitions to ‘corruption’ I’m using all of them) of elected or appointed public offices. Hell, you can even extend that to all those CEOs who are exporting all our jobs to other countries and then paying those people jack diddally nadda.
Anyway my point is we should be able to have a total joy ride out of freedom of speech without any repercussions. Ambiguity. Free of all responsibilities for our actions. I should be able to call people on the street “Biyada[ch]oda” (you don’t want to know what that means in Russian) and then keep on walking. Isn’t that a dream world worth building?

Go Green

Green. Green. Green.
The color of sewage. The color of rot. The color of envy. The color of money. The color of ill-gotten money. The color of corruption.
The polar caps are melting, the rainforests are burning, draughts are spreading, bio-diversity is crashing. So what do you do? Buy fair trade coffee, eat soybeans, eat vegan, eat local, use toilet paper made from recycled toilet paper, drive hybrids. Be good little consumers and buy buy buy to the bitter end. Vote with your wallet. Indulge your petty needs while the world collapses around you.
Do people really believe that whether you use Energy Star appliances or not will save the world? At this point in the game! “I’m doing what I can, every little bit counts.” Talk is cheap, but clichés are cheaper. And I hope such clichés keep them dry while their home floats away.
I think we need a little reality check to show you what the current state of our climate future is. The polar icecaps are expected to be totally melted during the Summer months by 2015. The more pessimistic guesstimates of the future say that due to the coming crises (plural) the human population will be reduced to less than 500 million by the end of the centaury.
And all of these snake-oil prevention measures and mere band-aid cures won’t save us. In fact they’ll probably going to kill us.
The technique is as old as time. A movement starts to grow powerful, strong and huge. The status quo freaks out. So they create new institutions that’ll curtail the movement, incorporate it into itself, so that the more radical aims of the movement are prevented via more moderate politics (basically throwing the movement a bone, a bone with no meat on it), and all along acting inside the normal system.
While trying to change the world by going through traditional channels of the (the free market) system people fail to see that the system itself is the cause of the problem. The companies now aiming to profit off the environmentalist buzz constitute nothing short of a scam. It is heavy capitalist industry that is polluting our planet not how long you take showers. If you keep the system intact then the problem will continue to fester.
The Hippys can go on and live in their bubbles and ivory towers, believing their Green lifestyles alone can change things as they asininely walk out over the abyss. Or they can take charge, take the initiative and make a difference for once.
The Hippys only have their credit card to loose. They have the natural world to regain.

Why I Piety my Generation

We are easily the oddest generation yet born. First in half a century to grow up without the fear of thermal-nuclear apocalypse hover over our heads like a Charlie Brown rain cloud. Raised by a combination of Play Station escapism and PTA coercion, with the paradox of the generation with the most independence and most parental micro-managing in history. Every social scientist, teacher, bleeding-heart, moral warrior, preacher and stay at home mother with too much free time fighting over the right to manipulate our development. Then we hit puberty roughly around the time of 9/11, having our entire security bubble world shattered to pieces. Compounded on that we get year after year of media burlesque shows, watching every respectable authority figure and institution in the land be reduced to the quality of the local red-light district.
Face it people. We’re pretty screwed up right here.
We are so jaded, so disenfranchised, we’ve grown up taught nothing but how little we’re worth, how little our potential is – get the degree, get a job, retire and that’s it – combined with way too much electronic stimulation, so that now we are so detached from the real world (I’m sorry but that’s the worst TV show ever) you can cut off any UVM student’s head and he/she will still hobble around from class to class like a chicken with no.. well you know.
Now I advocate heathenism, just not heathenism without a ideology, I.E. aimlessly partying until we can’t feel feelings anymore (yes, I know I stole that from Family Guy, your a dick for pointing it out).
Hollywood’s hollow trends implants some frivolous 17th century cyclical court rituals into today’s Fall wardrobes. Manufactured to force young girls to run a hamster wheel after ever changing, unattainable ideals of anorexic beuty. People Magazine is the hobgoblin of a small mind.
Looking for a name for my generation I’ve decided to go with The Generation that Missed the Millennium. Remember that, that feeling of hope at the dawning of a new age, now adays you occasionally look into the sky expecting the Four Horsemen to fly over. But even that’s not ever to happen now. No second (or first) coming. No apocalypse. No great reawakening or revolution. We missed the boat. No changes will happen. Ever again. We’ve been so caught up in dancing to the strings of our elders that we’ve missed the chance to do anything unique for ourselves.
We blew it friends. We Blew.

Why I Love Mad Scientists

All I hear from the environmentalist kids on campus is the An Inconvenient Truth, the end of the world is upon us doctrine, with the four horsemen all riding marching global warming mustangs that only get seven miles to the gallon. But what I'm not hearing are any good solutions. Yes, Of Cource, we have to reduce CO2 emitions and all that fun jazz, but that simply will not good enough. This will be over 900 new coal/oil power plants built in the next decade, and the CO2 from them alone will completely noll out the effects of Kyoto treaty, and you can't stop that. China is becoming a vapidly expanding economic power house with rapidly expanding CO2 needs, and we shouldn’t stop that. So how can we help the situation (and switching to hybrid cars is not going to do jack).

I've just read this article in Rolling Stone about this scientist named Lowell Wood who might have a dramatic and (gasp) workable solution. This guy is more or less a nut of the greatest callaber, he was the one who designed Reagan’s Star Wars defense system, so you already know the man borders on evil genius. He proposes to release ionized sulfur particles into the stratosphere (this will not cause more acid rain, by the way) over the Arctic Circle to reflect away the sun's heat. Based upon relatively sound science it can be implemented within a few years, not decades, and costing a mere $100 million compared to some of the other ideas which may cost in the 100s of billions.

Now some people might be quick to criticize this idea as 'immoral' (morals, ethics, values are bullshit, their not objective and should be considered opinionated) and that we would be 'tampering with nature'. Well what do call a few hundred million-billion tonnage of CO2! We have already crossed the line of tampering with nature and I believe in committing to something, not doing it half asked. If we're Earth’s meddlers so be it, at least now we have positive motive for our meddlings. Plus it’s only an idea, at least someone out there is at least trying come up with a solution to our imminent horrible, but likely rather balmy, destruction.

Why I Hate News People

You know what really grinds my gears, these schmuck political types who go on news shows like CNN or Fox News and blab about how 'their' opinion is the opinion most Americans hold. How sodding arrogant and full of your self do you have to be to believe your narrow little beliefs are the one true beliefs of all Americans. There are some 300,000,000 Americans so stop pretending you can speak for all of them, or a fraction of them, or even any of them. I don't care what the polls say (those polls you hear about can easily be faked) or whether your liberal or conservative (as if those are the only two types of people there are, or there is any practical difference between the two) you don't speak for anyone but yourself. SO GET OVER YOURSELVES!

Why I Hate NASA

Why does NASA bend the walls of Space/Time with their sucktasticness? I'll tell you why, they have no mision. Back in the trippy 60's they had a purpose. Beat the Russians to the moon or die trying. And that was good, a little obsessive, but good. The American people supported NASA back them days. They were heroes even, combating the cosmonauts in single combat with rockets and monkeys in shinny pajamas.
But after they trotted on the Moon five times whatt then. Nothing. NASA did absolutely nothing of any great interest for fifteen years. The only real exploration that NASA tried out between the Apollo and Space Shuttle was freaken Sky Lab, the biggest do’h move in the history, it crashed in the Australian outback. And after NASA finally got the Space Shuttle off the ground, which was in no way needed since the Saturn V series had a flawless record and was a hell of alot cheaper, in the eighties it exploded a mile up because of gross negligence on the part of their tired old administration staff. Then they fixed that problem with the shuttle, but then a shuttle launch became so routine, and generally pointless that not even the Return to Flight mission got any coverage by any media source. Not to mention the fact our heroic astronauts are starting to go crackers and plan to kill their lover’s lover while wearing a wig.
Here we are at least 15 years from the returning to the moon, over 30 years away from Mars, the Bernel Spheres and O'Neil Cylinders are at least hundred years away, the International Space Station has gone way over budget, way over deadline, and worst of all no one cares. So few in the general public gives a damn about space anymore since it seems so hopeless to put our faith in the bubbling fools at NASA. The only real hope for continued space exploration seems to lie in the hands of privet enterprise with Burt Rutan and Virgin Galactic with there little SS1, that can make it too space, and unlike the shuttle, not blow up.
So here we are in 2007 and NASA has no goal, no aspirations, and no support. And we who dream of space must put our hopes no longer in the inflexible government, but in a bunch of loonies out in the Californian desert with a dream, some money, and a lot of free time.

Why I Hate My Generation

Welcome to the first young-adult generation of the 21st century, a generation so artistically stagnant and lazy that the self appointed ‘Music’ Television can only seem to regurgitate cookie reality TV, transferring all of it’s music videos to secondary stations. Where every single music genre worth mentioning are hand me downs of hand me downs that simply are meant for our times. Like finding you fathers old bomber jacket in your attic, looks awesome, but just ain’t your size.
Hippyism (at this point it’s practically worthy of recognition by the IRS as a deductible religion) is three generations old, Punk is two (Green Day, you are not punk, until I see track lines on you retinas keep you mouth shut), Hip-Hop is over one, Techno was never real music, and even the prudish menagerie of Indie Rock had it’s brief hay day with our eldest siblings. They all reached the pinnacle of their potential but it seems still uninspired artists feel alright riding these dead art forms into the ground.
Hell, the only music genre that can even past as ‘new’, as our ‘generation’s unique voice’ is Emo, and to even refer to that corporately mass-produced, self defecating pox on the earth as a form music is a blasphemy against God’s gift of the inner ear.
Are we so starved for creativity that the only two options on the radio are lousy tribute bands of music from antiquity or trust-found babies whining about how their girlfriend dumped them for men whose hair doesn’t look like that of a surprised turkey. Even in my own bellowed SKA scene, previously upstanding bands would rather op down to do some idiotic/ironic 80’s pop song cover then spend their worthy time on expanding their sound (I’m looking at you Reel Big Fish).
Listen musicians of America, I’m not asking you to do anything that difficult, I don’t even care what you do, it could be a whole EP with nothing but washboard music and armpit sounds (that would be awesome!), just as long as it’s new.

Senate Bill #3930

They legalized torture. They have legalized torture! THEY’VE LEGALIZED ELECTRODES TO YOUR FREAKEN NIPPLES TORTURE!!!
Think the Patriot times 22,000. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 (if your pre-law and want to get all technical and stuff; Pub. L. No. 109-366, 120 Stat. 2600 (Oct. 17, 2006), enacting Chapter 47A of title 10 of the United States Code) whose official purpose is to quote, “facilitate bringing to justice terrorists and other unlawful enemy combatants through full and fair trials by military commissions, and for other purposes,” be fearful of the “other purposes” part. Cutting through the needlessly esoteric criminal justice jargon, what the laws does is give the military the right to take any “alien unlawful enemy combatant” (a term that is not adequately defined in the act) permanently detain them, torture them, suspend their right to habeas corpus, then try them in front of a “competent tribunal” whatever the hell that means, then executed in that order. You can’t even bring up the fact you were tortured during trial, meaning any confessions obtained during, say, the removal of your fingernails, are good and valid.
The act is unprecedented in United States history, going over section 810, 831, and 832 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the recently won Supreme Court decision on Hamden vs. Rumsfeld, and the four Geneva Conventions to name a few. All of which have the general theme of giving enemies in time of conflict fair and humane treatment during detention and trial.
If it’s not bad enough that this abuse can be against foreigners, due the purposely hazy wording, it is possible for any American citizen to be declared an “unlawful enemy combatant”. Just for writing this article, tomorrow some D.C. douches can abduct me, shove some barbed wire down my urethra until I confess to being a terrorist (won’t take too long, I have a low threshold for pain), indefinitely hold me, try me with no right to see the evidence against me, then execute me without running into any legal friction. This has already happened with a guy Jose Padilla, the difference is he’s not dead yet, and they didn’t use barbed wire.
Proponents of the act like G-Bush (pansy) are spewing the same tired tripe we’ve be hearing for six years. “We have the protect the motherland from the infidels ... yadda yadda yadda … they weren’t born in America so they’re evil … dadada … something about how they hate freedom .. maybe a little racism thrown in for good measure,” we’ve heard the rants enough times for them to become clichés. Personally I’m a hell of a lot more scared of a super power gone mad with infinite tools of death-construction then some angry yokels who’d lose all their support anyway if we left them alone. Civil Liberty vs. Homeland Security, they’re two contradictory ideas, and I’d rather be free then safe any day of the week.

Liberal Libertarian Libertine

I say legalize everything. Legalize every debauched, derelict, depraved, blasphemous, offensive, perverse, improper Sin in alphabetical order. Make the golden rule the only rule and making things illegal be illegal. Legalize all the drugs; Alcohol, Cocaine, Crack, Crystal Meth, DMT, Ecstasy, Hash, Heroin, LSD, Marijuana, Morphine, Mushrooms, Nicotine, Opium, Peyote, PCP, Speed, THC, Valium to name a few. As John F. Kennedy said in the movie Bubba Ho-Tep, “Let’s get Decadent!”
Borders, barriers, Berlin/Palestinian walls, they don’t nor can ever succeed. People are smatter then rules, you build taller walls they’ll build bigger trebuchets, no matter what as long as there is a buyer there will always be someone willing to sell. Black Market trading is the only true Capitalism. All the silly little Narcs can ever do is help raise the prices so the drug lords at the top gain a higher profit. Redistributing the money into hands we might necessarily want them in, like Tony Montana or that other guy. It reaches a point where the only way to win the war on drugs is to legalize all drugs and thus eliminate the evil cartels monopoly on the market. Government is bad for business and ethics.
Another issue comes up, so let’s now explain the freak-sociological law of the Snafu Principal(s). People do not trust those above them and vice versa. Both for good reasons. The ruled will always subconsciously or otherwise tell the rulers more or less what they want to here. How many times when you were a kid did you make up stories on why your little sister’s pig-tails are gone to make it sound like less your fault. Same concept. Meaning it’s theoretically impossible for those of authority to gain a totally accurate idea of the situation below them, maybe semi-accurate but never total. Those at the top get paranoid, hiring more cops and building more prisons (since it’s a police officers duty to make arrests, one naturally leads to the other). No human being can possible keep track of all the laws there is to break so creating new/more laws can only serve to creating new/more criminals.
This only creates more paranoia and even worse inter-caste communication.
So more intelligence agents are hired to spy on the citizenry, but since spys are paid to spy on everyone, including the offices of power, they soon congregate a file on every representative from every state from every district, giving them a monopoly on information and blackmail. So the now near schizophrenic state has to higher even secreter police to keep tabs on the secret police, leading eventually to a state of infinite looking over your shoulder, whose society and economy is addicted to neighbor watching neighbor.
And that’s the Snafu Principal(s). When law and order goes freaking but nuts.
It all just turns into a big, complex mess. Trapped by non-objective moralality, nutty laws, and the prudish P.T.A storm troopers of common decency. I think the only upside of the 2000 Election fiasco is that we didn’t get Tipper Gore as a first lady. To hell with principals, to hell with order, to hell with coercion. Civilization is the greatest enemy of Humanity. We’re all better off free .

Why I am going to be called a Traitor

When does national pride becomes national arrogance? Pretty often when you think about it. The whole I’m better then you. Look at my flag and muscles, their a lot better then your flag and muscles mentality that only serves to divide people up into ever increasing categories of pig headedness. You always hear, “Believe in the virtue of your country, follow your leaders.” Yeah, well if your country and leaders jumped off the Tri-Burrows Bridge would ya?
Patriotism only serves to inflate egos and deflate our independence. What is there to gain? Can I eat Patriotism when I’m cold and wear Loyalty when I’m hungry. In all honesty I’m not to fond of the way their country is heading and I’m not using the excuse I was born here to go out and root root root for the home team just because I happened to be born here.
National pride, racial pride, scene pride, group pride. It’s all the same soft drink just in different flavors. People who are too scared of themselves to think for themselves, can’t take responsibilities for themselves, so they lose themselves in a mob mentality gone mad and hope there’s some intelligent life out in the higher ups. Yawn, been there done that. Fuck that Bundle of Sticks shit, we’ve seen where these unions of will take us.
And Democracy is not much better. Whoever has the biggest voice and most pitchforks wins all the marbles. Have you ever even met a politician? The Democans and Republicrates are practically identical, you can’t trust them. At all. If one comes into your home is best to hide the silverware and take out your 2nd Amendment because these folks will nick the fillings out of your teeth if given a chance. If it is fat, old, white, and a man chances are your in trouble. Unless it’s Santa. Then your get presents. Otherwise it’s kind of the reverse. Democracy is the greatest tool of oppression. There’s no better way to install a dictator then if the dictator was voted in by a 99% approval rating. I don’t see I big difference between taxation with or without representation, I’m still getting taxed.
So then you got all these yahoos going on about “What the fore-fathers wanted for this country is…” Spare us. Unless you’re the personnel reincarnation of Samuel Adams (BEER!) shut your yabber hole. Fore-Fathers; your just dividing up loyalties (yes I know, but besides being an Anarchist I’m also a proud Hypocrite) between those of us who are still living and those who are dead long enough to have their own monuments honoring them being dead.
I’ve never met America personally, never had dinner with her or gone out bowling or nothing. Scuse me if I don’t trust an amorphous theoretical concept with some imaginary borders drawn on a map. So as of today I officially renounce my U.S. citizenship though I will still carry a U.S. passport, take advantage of and likely abuse ALL public services, and complain too often about how my rights are being impeded upon. I will define myself as the sum total of nothing because I prefer not to bind myself up in silly realities. I exist (at least I think I do) and beyond that nothing really matters. Hell, I’m not even certain I’m human, for all I know I could be a bizarre type of fungus that likes to complain too much. Just tomorrow they could tell me everything they ever thought about people was bull; gravity is an illusion, the earth is really an over baked muffin, and government is just some cheap slight of hand gimmick. Oh wait a tick, it is.
Goverments tools; borders, barriers, Berlin/Palestinian walls, they don’t nor can ever succeed. People are smatter then rules, you build taller walls they’ll build bigger trebuchets, no matter what as long as there is a buyer there will always be someone willing to sell. Black Market trading is the only true Capitalism. All the silly little Narcs can ever do is help raise the prices so the drug lords at the top gain a higher profit. Redistributing the money into hands people not might necessarily want them in, like Tony Montana or that other guy. It reaches a point where the only way to win the war on drugs is to legalize all drugs and thus eliminate the cartels (a.k.a. corporations) evil little monopoly on the market. Government is bad for business, economics and ethics.
Has anyone ever heard of the Snafu Principal, this guy Robert Anton Wilson came up with it, here it goes. People do not trust those above them and vice versa. Both for good reasons. The ruled will always subconsciously or otherwise tell the rulers more or less what they want to here. How many times when you were a kid did you make up stories on why your little sister’s pig-tails are gone to make it sound like less your fault. Same concept. Meaning it’s theoretically impossible for those of authority to gain a totally accurate idea of the situation below them, maybe semi-accurate but never total. Those at the top get paranoid, hiring more cops and building more prisons (since it’s a police officers duty to make arrests, one naturally leads to the other). No human being can possible keep track of all the laws there is to break so creating new/more laws can only serve to creating new/more criminals.
This only creates more paranoia and even worse inter-caste communication.
So more intelligence agents are hired to spy on the citizenry, but since spys are paid to spy on everyone, including the offices of power, they soon congregate a file on every representative from every state from every district, giving them a monopoly on information and blackmail. So the now near schizophrenic state has to higher even secreter police to keep tabs on the secret police, leading eventually to a state of infinite looking over your shoulder, whose society and economy is addicted to neighbor watching neighbor.
And that’s the Snafu Principal(s). When law and order goes freaking squirrel nuts.

Iraq, Land of Rainbows and Candy

So Iraq? Yeeeeaaaaahhhh….. It’s awesome to know that no matter what political party you vote into office (cough Democrats) neither one will ever live up to their campaign promises, or even acknowledge that the promises existed in the first place. In fact they seem to believe that the American people’s opinion exist because of the politicians leadership, not the other way around.
The majority of Americans what to get the hell out of Iraq. Nuts to those who still blabber about “Supporting our Troops” since the vast majority of American troops have been demanding to end this debacle since 2005. Some folk think that slapping a yellow ribbon on their car and keeping any contact with our veterans at an ambigeus arms reach of patriotism will be enough to suffice their care. When really all an Iraq veteran wants is a good hug and our reassurance that they’ll be taken care of, not to mention that they’ll be kept needlessly out of harms way.
All, 100%, unanimously, the entirety of the rest of the world with no exceptions or exaggeration think we’re so full of shit our eyes have turned brown. And, oh yeah, the actually Iraqis in questions so want us off their front lawns they’re trying to kill us!
So why isn’t it clear to the Legislative Branch that by the logic of democracy, with the whole mob rule behind this, we should be out of there two days before the day after tomorrow. Sure the president has had unlimited power since Lyndon B. to wage war at his wildest whim, but there’s still one power left to you senators out there; cut the sodding funding! It’s not pretty for certain, but it’s one sure fire way to end this reefer madness. If the generals have no more bullion, then they have to come home. And don’t think that by cutting the military’s umbilical cord it’ll leave the troops stranded, the pentagon has and always keeps an emergency “retreat” fund from day one in just such an emergency.
The Democrats have no excuse for their lethargic lax laziness.
Over a million Iraqis, civilians and otherwise, have been killed since the invasion. When does collateral damage become collateral genocide? Recent reports of decreasing rates of violence have more to do with the fact there is nobody left to kill than any nonsense about a successful troop surge. And sure Iraq was not the land of unicorns and rainbows under Sadam, that guy was a dick, but it wasn’t the land of Murdor either. In fact the reason why the Iraqi people at large were really to accept (they hated him but were willing to live with him) Sadam as their tyrant was because Iraq was one of the most prosperous states in the region, with the highest literacy rates among women in the Arabic world. Then our two subsequent invasions totally annihilated this and their (free) educational system to boot.
There were never any weapons of mass destruction. We have no reason to be there besides ridicules amounts of greed. Our ‘cut and running’ will not cause Iraq to descend into (even further) chaos; I mean it’s not as if the presence of American troops is somehow, against all evidence, the last blue line before outright cannibalism. This newest propaganda blurb in a long line of half-baked excuses by the administration is as raciest as it comes. Assuming that the Iraqi people are somehow ethnically/culturally less capable to manage their own affairs then us. That we need to come in an install Democracy at gunpoint is contradictory to the whole point of Democracy.
The sectarian violence now so overtly prevalent in Iraq (but in fact mostly, 80%, directed at Americans) did not exist before the invasion. If a pot of water wasn’t boiling before you put it on the stove, then the best way to get it to quit is to remove the fire. We’re the fire by the way.

Hollywood, Curse You

Is it something I’ve done Hollywood, did I insult you someway. Why is it every time I step out of a theatre I feel like I just got the kiss of death? I want to demand my money back but am too weak even to cause a scene. Why do you do this to me Hollywood, we use to be friends. Remember how I wasted my childhood staring at your idiot box for days without end. What’s happened to you?
Everything is a sequel, prequel, remake, or based on a book or actual events. Everything is a story of a athlete or dancer (or stomp the yarder) who tries against impossible odds to achieve his/her(but mostly his) dreams. Or maybe a cautionary story how some punk starts from the nothing works his way up the specified ladder, becomes corrupted by the power, then either ends up dead or in jail or all of his friends thinking he’s a tool. Or maybe an action movie with terrorists, that’s real relevant. Nothings original.
This was easily one of the worst summer movie seasons on record. It started with a bang, the highest grossing movie ever also one the biggest pieces of tripe ever. Spiderman 3 is the equivalent of very old swiss cheese; interesting colors to look at, but full of holes and bad in taste. Didn’t even bother seeing Shrek 3. Had to knaw off my leg during Fantastic Four 2 like a trapped coyote to survive. Transformers was passable but had more filler then a cheese Danish. If you put an infinite number of pirates in a room, with an infinite number of quills, and infinite supply of rum they still would not be able to make bow or stern out of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I spent half my time covering my ears, and the sea battle at the end was nowhere near mind blowing enough to warrant all that nonsense. I just saw the raciest trollop of The Kingdom and I finally understood why terrorists want to kill us, so that we’ll stop making masochistic nightmares like that.
And of course people defended travesties such as this saying you just got to turn your brain off to enjoy it. (!) Well some of us can’t do that! Are we so use to Hollywood’s miscarriages that we can just write off terrible movies as business as usual? They should be spending that $200 million budget on a script worth filming instead of more special effects then the O’Reilly Factor. People, we need to better our standards, else all we’ll ever get is more X-Man 3s and Norbits.

Good Cop Bad Cop

Like synthesizers and S&M in the middle 80s, television Cop Dramas are spreading across our cultural universe bringing with it a miasmic wave of sadism and masochism.
I mean, is there anything more sadistic then these 21st century Dragnet nock-offs, painting an idealized fantasized view of the criminal justice system, where self-righteous cops always catch their man. And the robbers are always the embodiment of evil in the form of a minority, or at best just a kid who made some wrong decisions and whose time in the pokey can only do him good.
What more feeds into the cloistered middle class’s self instituted paranoia and content with the status quo then this puritan dialogue of wrong-doing followed by righteous punishment where the interned, racked with his outside imposed guilt, gets religion and redeems himself.
The sheer titanic deluge of these programs on the networks could flounder Noah’s Ark. Every major city’s police department (with triple emphasis on the Apple of Bigness) has it’s own representative in prime time TV universe. Even Fox is coming out with a New Orleans cop drama, since when you think about whose best to represent a fair and balanced version of the worst quagmire on the North American continent through the eyes of the badge, you think of Fox.
Like Adam and Eve out of the garden (they had every right to eat that apple, don’t know what was Jehovah’s problem) cop shows have been fruitful and multiplied into every color under the sun. Every sub-department of the police departments gets it’s own half hour, hard hitting time-slot of doom. “Meet Officer McGovern. The in your face, gritty, streetwise mail clerk of the Yosemite Rangers Office.”
Flip through your TV guide some time, you’ll see those professional con artists called Psychic Detectives with their own program. Quirky OCDs solving mysteries. Grannies on Lifetime stopping murderers. The entrapment of child molesters a hit reality TV show. Nancy Drew with a movie coming out and the Hardy Boys on South Park (Hi-Larious episode though).
We gobble these programs right up, devouring the popcorn content and shadow-puppet morals, some of us even taking Criminal Justice as our major after watching too much CSI. But do we grow in the end?
Does society as a whole benefit from an over surplus of wannabee vigilantes bent on unquestioningly imposing the will the Most Supreme of Courts onto the free citizenry of this republic? Or do we just doom ourselves to a world where justice and revenge are inseparable, and our economy is as helplessly addicted to the Prison/Industrial Complex as it is it’s Military counterpart.
If Lady Justice is blind, then she most certainly doesn’t watch TV.

Courting the Bohemoth

The Davis Center is nice and all, don’t get me wrong, pretty nice even, but was it really all that necessary.
Was it necessary for those years of heavy construction where a literally wedge bottlenecked off Central Campus from Athletic and beyond? Was the $6 (or however much) million in our hard earned tuition really all that well spent?
We had everything that the Davis Center provides somewhere else on campus long before it was ever conceived. We had a bookstore, which is now nothing more then gravel and payment. There, if you didn’t have anything on your Cat Scratch for that Catamount baseball cap you could just walk three meters to the Cat Scratch office. In Davis center you got to walk down three stories. We had Billings Student Center. Hell I liked Billings. The kewl wooden ceiling arches and the underground passages that led to who knows where. All the quant little student clubs of little importance already they’re needed spaces. And Cook Commons was the only place you could get good mash potatoes, now the place is just blocks.
You walk into Davis and you are bombarded by sleazy commerce trying to wheedle you at of your hard earned cash. An entire bank branch to scam our UVMers into credit cards and high interest loans. A Vermont local goods shop with freaking sheep’s wool, what the hell is that? A bar?! Yeah great job Fogel trying to make us look less like a party school. It feels like the lame little brother of the Mall of America.
The whole place seems so impersonal and mean. Roman pillars holding up nothing of importance. The largest single building in Vermont with the widest set of stairs. There’s a freaken “Earth Day Flag” flying out in front to add to the hypocrisy of such a ginormous building in Vermont with air conditioning. And I swear on Odysseus’s sense of direction every time I open and close the main doors by the “Oval” it sounds like they’re laughing at me. I’m serious.
What I’m trying to say is that all this expansion isn’t necessarily a good thing. As our numbers begin to swell and our campus along with it, our school is going to lose that close nit charm that first brought us here. Friendly strangers will digress into just more faces into the crowd. And this symbol of overt centralization for the sake of centralization is just the start.