BartBlog

You don’t need to live in a five-bedroom big-box suburban McMansion in order to stay warm and dry in the winter. Just ask Bilbo Baggins.

Recently I attended a vigil in memory of a homeless woman who had frozen to death on the mean streets of Berkeley, CA. You wouldn’t expect something like that to happen here in Berkeley — but it did. Homeless people brought candles to the steps of City Hall in order to honor this poor woman’s memory. Someone also donated a portable space-heater to help keep the more fragile vigil-keepers warm. But in an ironic twist of fate, cops arrived and confiscated a space-heater at a vigil for a homeless person who had just frozen to death. But I digress.

With our federal government now threatening to shut down HUD subsidized housing in order to have more money to give to banksters, big oil and “war” profiteers, this sudden shift in the distribution of our tax dollars, away from the rest of us and into the pockets of the disgustingly-wealthy, could mean that approximately ten million Americans would be kicked off of HUD subsidy programs.

“Households that receive assistance comprise 9.8 million people, or roughly 3 percent of the U.S. population,” sez HUD. Imagine what it would be like if housing subsidies all suddenly disappeared? Hey, it could happen — and probably will.

If three out of every one hundred Americans suddenly found themselves on the mean streets of our country, the whole face of America the Beautiful would change overnight. https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/50782-lowincomehousing-onecolumn.pdf Suddenly there would be this swamp of homeless people around us. Cincinnati would look more like the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Seattle would look like some barrio in Mexico City. Atlanta would look like a scene out of “The Walking Dead”. And parts of Berkeley would look like a Hooverville shanty town left over from the 1930s Great Depression. Hell, all of America would look like that.

HUD subsidized housing serves as a disguise, a stage set, a prop — so that the world won’t know how poor so many Americans actually are. It’s a small price to pay. But I digress again. http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2007/01/hud-section-8-housing-revenge-of.html

What I really want to talk about is how Americans can solve this very-real housing crisis which has descended upon us like a giant black cloud, whether we have HUD subsidies or not. And I would then suggest that we solve this housing crisis by taking advice from the Hobbits. “Go small or go home!” Just sayin’.

Mike Lee, a member of the Berkeley Homeless Commission, suggests that we build lots of “tiny houses” — for a price as low as $16,000 each. http://www.forbes.com/pictures/emeg45jjkm/5-boulder-by-rocky-mountain-tiny-houses/#6c6bb4de19b9 My friend Jennifer suggests that we bring back the good old-fashioned trailer court. And I suggest that we get Frodo Baggins on the job. Problem solved.

Statistically, the most common result for a person who has a sex-change operation is unknown and just might be suicide.

We have been advised that for some Smoke Signal columns we might want to touch on topics and issues that people could use to think about while they indulge in some cannabis smoking (Is it true as they were told in the sixties that pot smoking could cause men to grow breasts).

Sure, regular readers may want the latest hemp news (or maybe a snide reference to “Comrade Trump”).

But as a fellow who assumed he was fairly well informed about the surgical transformation procedure, we were astonished to learn we had some misperceptions.

Does Chelsea Manning know a real transsexual? Or will they get the “bum’s rush” to become “transgender”?

Hadn’t we been told the change was reversible? WRONG!

Hadn’t we assumed the process was so complete that the subjects were able to have children? WRONG!

In both cases that the concept that conception was possible was erroneous. (Do the twelve year old children know this in California where they do not need parental permission  to undergo a sex change? -Walter Burns)

Has fake news taken root in the sex-change community?  (Do the parents understand the sex change is more than a gender change?-Walter Burns)

Depression and suicide can often be the result for the individuals who have “bought” the bogus information. Do we have any real statistics?

Why in the age of debates about the use of restrooms doesn’t the mainstream media clear up the ignorance and promulgate the truth about sex-change surgery?

We will try in the next few weeks to fact check reports that Canada will be the first country to legalize marijuana.

Since recreational marijuana has been legalized in California – but smoking it on the streets is still forbidden – will there be a market for private clubs where toking up will be ok?

This year will be a time for extensive changes in pop culture and we will try to monitor the shifts as we see them occur.

Should 2017 be dubbed “The Year of Fake News”?

To be continued …

After having returned back home to Berkeley last week, I assumed that I was finally finished with writing about Mexico City — but apparently not.

One of the top images from there that still keeps popping into my brain, one that I apparently brought back home in my luggage, is a flashback to Mexico City’s glorious main cathedral — and that image still haunts me. From floor to ceiling, it seemed like the whole place was garishly covered with gold. Gold. Gold everywhere you looked. So now I feel compelled to write about that.

All that wealth in just one single church. Enough gold to keep me and all of my friends in riches for the rest of our lives.

But the wealth in just this one cathedral represents only a minuscule fraction of the fabulous tons and tons of gold that Spain extracted from Latin America a few centuries ago — so much gold. Scrooge McDuck woulda gone nuts.

But what actually happened to all that gold? Did it make Spain rich? Sure, for a while. Spain used to be the richest nation on earth. But then wars were declared and squabbling began and this and that happened — and then suddenly all that wealth was gone, just gone. https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Lost-Future-World-Stillwater/dp/1532803850/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Which reminds me of the vast wealth of another nation — ours. America also used to be the richest nation on earth. Not any more. First Franklin Roosevelt died and the Dulles brothers and Richard Nixon schemed their evil schemes to steal what they could from the New Deal. https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Chessboard-Dulles-Americas-Government/dp/0062276174

And what ever happened to all that gold in Fort Knox — let alone all that gold in the Social Security slush fund. And then 9-11 happened, the most evil scheme of them all — and eleven trillion dollars in “war” blood-money suddenly began disappearing down this or that rat hole too. https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/16/donald-trump-v-the-spooks/

And now America, like Spain, is no longer the richest nation in the world. What the freak happened? This and that. http://www.mintpressnews.com/genocide-in-yemen-media-complicit-in-us-saudi-war-crimes/224106/

Mexico City still has its grand gold-encrusted cathedral to remind us tourists of what the power and glory of the old Spanish empire used to look like. But we Americans don’t even have something like that left to remind us — except perhaps the glaring monument of our gigantic national debt.

Just how effective is the power of prayer? For many of us who are poor and helpless, prayer is the only WMD that we can get our hands on.

Prayer is our AK-47, our Uzi, our nuclear missile, our Glock. It is the only defense that we have against the slings and arrows that are constantly aimed at our hearts by those more rich and powerful and brutal than we are.

In Mexico City, the Sacred Heart of Jesus has become our bunker, our NORAD, our Marine Corps and even our numbered bank account in the Caymans.

But are we — the victims, the vulnerable, the unprotected, the powerless — are we actually being armored and protected by prayer or is it just wistful thinking because we have nothing else? Who knows.

Are the poor and defenseless in places like Yemen, Ferguson, Honduras, Tibet, Syria, Ukraine, Standing Rock, Afghanistan, Gaza and Libya actually being protected by their prayers to Yahweh, Allah, God, Buddha, Shiva, the Great Spirit, etc.?

Will my own heartfelt and constant prayers for world peace ever be answered? Who the freak knows? They haven’t been so far. However, realistically, do we who are the meek and wretched of the earth really have any other choice?

And here in Mexico City, like everywhere else, the defenses of we the defenseless are limited too — and yet here in both the grand cathedrals and the humble churches by the side of the road, the defenseless grandmothers and beggars and disabled and working stiffs and vulnerable salt of the earth all continue to pray.

PS: Here’s another thing that we clearly need to pray about: America’s government!

According to The Saker, a trustworthy political blog site, there is currently a huge clash of Titans going on far above our heads — as the neo-con Deep State struggles to discredit, impeach, assassinate and/or eliminate (wait for it!) Donald J. Trump. Any way that they can. Apparently those guys really really really hate The Donald — even more than the Left in America hates him. And that’s saying a lot.

With regard to the phony intelligence document recently leaked by John McCain, The Saker warns us that, “After several rather lame false starts, the Neocons have now taken a step which can only be called a declaration of war against Donald Trump… This is a political coup d’etat.”

But. “If a coup is staged against Trump and some wannabe President à la Hillary or McCain gives the order to the National Guard or even the US Army to put down a local insurrection, we could see what we saw in Russia in 1991: a categorical refusal of the security services to shoot at their own people. That is the biggest and ultimate danger for the Neocons: the risk that if they give the order to crack down on the population, the police, security and military services might simply refuse to take action.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46202.htm

PPS: Let us also pray that the police, security services and National Guard in North Dakota finally refuse to take action against the brave Standing Rock protesters too. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/12/standing-rock-police-militarized-emergency-management-assistance-compact-north-dakota

And also let us pray for the soggy and cold protesters on the much-raided “Poor Tour” in my hometown of Berkeley, CA. They are protesting the criminalization of being homeless in America and need all the help they can get. You don’t have to go thousands of miles away to find something to pray for these days. https://www.facebook.com/firsttheycameforthehomeless/

Jack London’s book “The Road” preceded “on the Road” by half a century.

So when the San Francisco Bay Area political activist known affectionately as “Lord Gottschalk” suggested a bus tour of Hempistan we figured it was it was a diabolical plan to substitute pot for acid and plagiarize “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe.

What would have happened if Hunter S. Thompson had ever been invited to do a ride-along on Willie Nelson’s tour bus?

Doing a series of reports about a state of the union tour of the newly legalized marijuana sanitary states would be great fun but where would the funding for the adventure be found?

Who didn’t love the old film “Wild Boys on the Road”?

Tom Wolfe and friends weren’t the first group of nomads to race around the USA on a bus looking for fun and kicks.

Publicity makes the difference between a world famous book and an obscure example of a picaresque book about a traveling family such as “It isn’t a Bus” by Martha French Patterson and Sally Patterson Tubach.

How can Marijuana News attract a superstar writer to observe, analyze and comment on an attempt to out do Jack London, Jack Kerouac or Charles Kuralt?

What about Che’s book “Motorcycle Diaries”?

If the subsidized road trip isn’t feasible a pay as you go alternative plan seems required.

If the clandestine joy of pot smoking has been rendered extinct in many states what would a columnist errant do for content, while roaming about? We could ask the hippies about the best road movies of all time and perhaps inspire an “On the Road” film festival in flyover country.

What rambling rebel doesn’t have a favorite road song? (The Publisher wonders if that includes “100 bottles of beer on the wall”?)

What are the top twenty-five tunes praising white line fever?

A large number of books extol the Don Quixote quest in a motorcar since  “Wind in the Willows” was published.

Perhaps The Rolling Stoned bus tour could be a “Consumer’s Guide to the top Cannabis Dispensaries in the USA.” project?

Did the internet destroy underground newspapers or could a website today imitate online what the Berkeley Barb did during the Viet Nam war era?

Would the search for column topics make for a good cable TV program?

Tune in again next time.

In the meantime try watching the movie “Grand Theft Parson’s” for a very obscure top notch road flick.

Have a hassle free week.

To be continued.

Attending college in the early Sixties, it was very disconcerting to realize that the good guys lied extensively about the reasons for sending American troops to South Viet Nam.

The story of the magic bullet in the Warren Commission Report caused additional skepticism to become a personality trait.

Pop culture in the Sixties (50 years ago) delivered propaganda about the use of marijuana that was misleading. So what if Uncle Sam was lying to us again ?

Years  of cranking out political commentary should have inspired us to be Uberskeptical about “Official” government policies of all sorts.

But when a reliable source told this columnist that pot was a highly effective means for treating PTSD, we were shocked to think that some American politicians who had promised young men and women the best medical treatment in existence if they got wounded fighting against the commies in SE Asia were denying vets relief from PTSD.

The continued disparaging attitude for prescribing “wacky tobacky” to relieve PTSD seems quite hypocritical.

Trend spotters of all stripes can clearly see that 2017 will be a period when the voters attitude about marijuana changes rapidly and extensively. This chance to write for an online website devoted to covering the change as it happens is irresistible.

For Squares, realizing that the politicians were dishonest about the medicinal effects of pot might be a traumatic revelation.

Perhaps the gullible voters have become addicted to the politician’s prevarications?  Yah, think?

On Wednesday, January 5, we heard a report on KCBS News Radio that some researchers were restarting attempts to study the therapeutic effects of psychedelic compounds such as LSD. Similar research was brought to a screaming halt in the late Sixties from government interference with lies that LSD mutated people and drove them crazy.

Or gave them the insight to discover genetic fingerprinting and earn a Nobel Prize.

As fake news becomes more abundant in main stream media, it seems logical to think that alternative media will become more popular. Hence the chance to do the keystrokes necessary for a weekly column in 2017 has the aura of a golden opportunity.

Chronicling our efforts to separate the Pot Truth from the Anti-Hemp Propaganda  should be of interest to both old Hippies and Squares settling into retirement.

Are the fans of “Reefer Madness” really monsters like the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” or are they just free spirits who want to expose the truth?

Please come back week after week to follow our efforts to be a Don Quixote on a Truth Quest as the year of the Pot Revolution plays out.

Did building 7 just fall down all by itself?

Have an alt-med type week and chill for the inauguration.

I have been totally surprised by the sheer awesomeness of Mexico City — from a tourist’s point of view. It’s got monuments and museums and antiquities that will knock your socks off. Friendly people. Great transportation. And everything is cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. How can they do that? Easy. Mexico didn’t just spend 11 trillion dollars on weapons of mass destruction like America has.

Sure, this country has drug-war problems up in the north, in Sinaloa and Juarez. But that doesn’t seem to affect Mexico City. And if America would just eliminate its so-called “War on Drugs” and make marijuana completely legal and cocaine and heroin as legal as Oxycontin, the Mexican drug wars would be over in a heartbeat. Believe it.

Here’s me, basically a little old lady, walking the streets of downtown Mexico City after dark and being perfectly safe. And the people are awesomely helpful and friendly. Can we say any of that about most American cities? What do you think?

“But, Jane,” you might ask, “exactly what are your favorite things to see?” Crap, don’t even get me started. There’s so much stuff! The main cathedral is almost garish in its elaborate gold-leaf attempts to show off Spanish colonial power and wealth. And in the plaza outside, some Aztec shaman guy did a ritual on me that was guaranteed to give me “power and respect”. Will let you know how that one turns out.

The Museum of the Revolution is awesome! That’s how they do it down here — bandoleers and trains and Villa and Zapata. Father Hidalgo and Benito Juarez. America’s sleazy Deep State would have had to watch its back.

Then there’s Frieda Kahlu. Her museum is truly inspiring. She lived with so much physical pain that it drove her to become a great artist. And even while almost on her deathbed, she still managed to attend a rally in protest of America having just brutally and illegally seized democratic Honduras (not for the first time either — or for the last).

And all that beauty and glory of Chapultepec Palace? The Mexican branch of my familia took me there. Those rulers lived high on the hog, as my mother used to say. But where are they now? Having spent all their money on wars of aggression and weapons of mass destruction, they had nothing left for upkeep of the palace. The retro-colonial equivalent of 11 trillion dollars, all poured down the rat hole of conquest, greed and craziness. Sound familiar? Mexico’s deja vu equivalent of America’s current money-pit debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Honduras, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Africa, Haiti, Ukraine, Ferguson, Standing Rock, Berkeley (see footnote), the South China Sea, Sinaloa, etc. But I digress. https://www.newcoldwar.org/whats-really-happening-syria-consumer-fraud-lawyers-mini-primer/

The bottom line is that it’s sunny and warm and wonderful down here in Mexico City, the people are friendly, the tourist attractions are some of the best in the world and the food is really good — and cheap too. What’s not to like? So buy your plane ticket right now and get your booty on down here. Yes, I am talking to you.

Footnote: According to activist Mike Lee, Berkeley’s “Poor Tour” tent city, one that protests homelessness in America by trying to make it more visible, recently got raided by the City police. At the cost to the City of approximately $30,000 per raid and after at least five of these brutal raids that I know of, that’s $150,000 spent by the City to harass these protesters. That wasted money could have purchased at least ten “tiny homes” for Berkeley’s homeless.

Berkeley has approximately 1,000 homeless residents right now. America has approximately two million — and the number is growing. You may be next. http://www.dailycal.org/2016/10/31/old-bum-mayor-guy-mike-lee-focuses-berkeley-housing-issues/

I’m currently down here in Mexico City. It is a fabulous paradise for tourists and yet I seem to have the entire city practically all to myself. There are almost no American tourists clogging up all the awesome churches, museums, ruins, monuments and plazas down here. Plus there are no drug wars down in Mexico City either. Those rumors are false. It’s just me, having the time of my life.

Hell, Mexico City is hecka lot safer than Washington DC.

I’m not sure if the newspapers down here lie to their readers as much as the Washington Post lies to us. Can’t really tell. My Spanish isn’t all that good. “Tacos” and “enchiladas” are just about the extent of my vocabulary.

And speaking of vocabulary, I just went to the beautifully-ornate and regal central post office building down here and, no, Mexico hasn’t “privatized” it yet — unlike in America where our post offices have generally been sold off cheaply to the lowest bidder, as have our banks, our national parks, our military, our schools and God knows what all else. Even our religions have been “privatized”. http://spnews.org/index.php/k2/item/269-reviewing-2016-unresolved-problems-american-individualism-in-crisis

So I looked up the meaning of “privatization” in the dictionary and the word “carpetbagger” instantly leapt off the page. http://www.nationofchange.org/2016/12/30/get-ready-assault-social-security-washington-2017/

It doesn’t take an expert on linguistics to predict that when the RepubliDems get done with their carpetbagging in Washington, within the next ten years or so America will have nothing left to sell or steal. But, hey, you can always go visit Mexico City.

PS: I just started reading “The Devil’s Chessboard,” a biography of CIA spymaster Allen Dulles. It is a horror story. “Don’t open that door! Don’t shower alone!” The man was as evil is Hitler — and twice as sketchy. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-devils-chessboard-allen-dulles-the-cia-and-the-rise-of-americas-secret-government/5484565

Now I’m gonna have nightmares for a month. So much for light vacation reading. The only good thing about this book is that it mentions my hero Peter Dale Scott in the preface as one of its sources. https://www.amazon.com/War-Conspiracy-JFK-Deep-Politics/dp/1626360952/ref=la_B001IGJXJO_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1432267583&sr=1-2

And all those lies and screams and chain saws and slashings and horrors started by Allen Dulles during the Eisenhower administration still continue to this day — in places like Afghanistan, Honduras, Ukraine, Washington DC, Syria and, yes, even in Sinaloa.

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Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world! And while you’re at it, please buy my books! http://straitwellbooks.blogspot.com/2016/04/our-top-best-seller-right-now-is-bring.html