April 24, 2014
Back when LSD was legal, traveling was really cheap!
What if you knew that every single night of your life, you could look forward to visiting, say, Tel Aviv and Tahiti? Or Paris and Pakistan? Or Kandahar and Kentucky…. Life would suddenly become a whole lot more fun.
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April 18, 2014
Adventures in taxes: “Jail or No Jail”
A friend of mine just told me about a friend of his who, for the past several years, has had to spend every single weekend of his life cooped up in jail. Every single weekend, week in and week out, this guy goes to jail — with free room and board provided at the taxpayers’ expense. “But, why?” you might ask. Because the guy steadfastly refuses to pay that portion of his federal income tax that goes toward unnecessary wars.
But many huge US-based multi-national corporations also refuse to pay any kind of federal tax at all. So shouldn’t their CEOs be spending weekends in jail as well? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voIFj8X-Mj4
Taxes are supposed to be a way that all of us Americans can pool our money together in order to buy all that expensive stuff that we couldn’t afford to buy individually. For instance, I alone cannot afford to purchase good roads, education for my granddaughter, police and fire protection, etc. all by myself. And neither can most of the rest of us either. And for this obvious reason I approve of taxation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_pR6fcELU
But apparently a lot of huge mega-corporations have refused to pool their money with our money so that we can all afford to pay for these big-ticket items. Corporatists have a better idea: “Let’s just let everyone else pay for our share.” http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/03/31/140331crbo_books_cassidy?currentPage=all And then you can hear them whispering to themselves under their breath, “Suckers.” http://www.thenation.com/blog/179357/tax-breaks-are-killing-planet
April is tax season, of course, but it is also Passover season too. And this Passover, I was once again amazed by the poetry and meaningfulness of the Haggadah ritual words recited at Seder dinners throughout the world.
According to the Haggadah, Jews everywhere strongly believe that freedom is the birthright of every human being alive — and not just Jews. “With freedom and justice for all.” Even for dark-skinned Jews in Israel and even for Christian and Muslim Palestinians. Yay! And even for us tax-paying Americans too. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/jerusalem-christians-are-latest-targets-in-recent-spate-of-price-tag-attacks-1.413848
PS: At last month’s Berkeley-Albany Bar Association luncheon, our guest speaker told us all about the latest changes that have been made in federal tax law. I madly scribbled all this stuff down on some paper napkins and here it is. Hopefully I got most of it right:
“The IRS budget for 2014 was slashed by $526 million. It now has 8,000 fewer employees — but with a much bigger workload. Last year there were 3.5 billion dollars in fraudulent tax returns. And the IRS admits that it conducted 18 percent fewer audits of major corporations last year.” Told ya.
“Not many tax laws were passed last year.” Hell, not many of any kind of laws were passed last year by this do-nothing Congress — except for a whole bunch of laws sending Big Government into our bedrooms.
“The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA), passed in 2013, permanently extends a lower tax rate on individuals with incomes of $400,000 or less. It also provides for a new 39.6% marginal rate for income in excess of the above thresholds, as well as a higher rate for net capital gains and qualified dividends. And for a phase-out of personal exemptions and itemized deductions for higher-income individuals. But even with these new increases, US tax rates are still quite low in comparison with other countries.”
“Regarding foreign income reporting, there is now a Form 8938 which requires that specified foreign financial assets must be reported.” About time for that to happen! “And the penalties are stiff if you fail to file an accurate 3938.” Good. “And there are no statutes of limitation here either. Pursuit of US taxpayers with foreign financial accounts continues to be one of the IRS’s highest priorities.” But the IRS is also trying to extend its statutes of limitation in other areas too. So be aware of that.
Regarding gay marriages, “Same-sex couples, legally married in jurisdictions that recognize their marriage, will be treated as married for all federal tax purposes.”
And apparently America’s fourth-largest tax preparation firm just got busted for fraudulent and deceptive conduct and isn’t gonna be allowed to prepare our taxes ever again. “One of the more heinous acts committed by the owner involved forging customers’ signatures on duplicate refund checks, causing collection proceedings against the customers, who knew nothing about this.”
Also, when filing out your 1040, make sure you check “child support” and not “family support” because spousal support doesn’t count as child support and apparently doesn’t get as many reductions.
“The IRS assessed FBAR penalties against a taxpayer for willingly failing to report the existence of or the income from a Swiss bank account.” And the IRS has taken a very hard line regarding overstated charitable contributions too. And California taxes its residents on their world-wide income as well.
“S corporations have done well under the new tax act — exempt from healthcare taxes, etc. They won’t be going away any time soon.” No idea what an S corporation is but apparently it is a good thing to have if you are going to pay taxes.
“And roll-overs are tricky. Be very careful. You only have 60 days.” And home offices aren’t so much the audit-trigger that they once were under the new safe harbor rule — as the IRS attempts to codify repairs and improvements to small businesses.
And then the speaker also explained a lot of stuff about ObamaCare and its effects on our taxes — but I got distracted by the cheesecake for dessert.
PPS: One tax preparer told me that I owed $600 in taxes for 2013. Another one said that I didn’t owe anything at all. Guess which one I believed?
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April 12, 2014
KrakenCon: Living in a fantasy paradise
For those of you who haven’t got a clue what KrakenCon is, it’s a semi-annual, semi-local, no-holds-barred costume parade and fan convention geared to appeal to devotees of Japanese anime comic books, TV shows and movies. And, trust me, there are a LOT of Japanese anime fans in America, most of them part of the millennial generation (I was the oldest person at KrakenCon — by about 40 years).
And this year’s KrakenCon was held in Oakland. So rather than shell out a bunch of money I don’t have and buy a plane ticket to San Diego in order to go check out ComicCon, I ended up at KrakenCon instead — where everyone is all dressed up like a cartoon character from Japan and it only cost me the price of a BART ticket to get there from Berkeley.
And as I wandered around the convention among all those hundreds of costumed anime fans, I couldn’t help asking myself, “Why are all these people so intent on escaping reality?” Well, the answer to that question is obvious, duh.
Why should so many members of the millennial generation even bother wanting to live in real time these days — and thus be forced to deal with climate change, endless war and political hypocrisy on a level that leaves our minds stunned and numb? Why deal with all that downer stuff when they can escape into a fantasy paradise filled with fun creatures like Sailor Moon and InuYasha and Squid Girl instead?
What would you do if you were under age 35?
I’ll tell you what I would do if I had been born after 1978. First off the bat, I would dump all those dirty old men on the federal Supreme Court. Dirty money. Would Kiki or Totoro or Howl put up with that kind of greed? Not for a minute!
Next I’d get rid of all those cold-hearted CEOs of huge corporations who will do anything (anything!) for money — killing off millions of innocent human beings and cute baby animals for fun and profit. Power Rangers would never do that. And neither would Asuta.
If I myself was part of the millennial generation, I’d make damn sure that no one in Congress ever took a nickel from anyone who lived on more than $50,000 per year. Yeoman democracy! That’s what I would work for. And so would Jiro Horikoshi and Naruto too. Let’s make our congressional representatives kiss our butts for a change — instead of always bending over for Wall Street.
Of course a heroic amount of the upcoming millennial generation is already doing all of this stuff right now — as well as enjoying a fantasy paradise while doing it too. And hurray for you! I salute all of you — and even fishmen and krakens do too. The fate of our entire planet rests in the hands of this generation’s idealism. “Time to release the Kraken!” http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/10/1290999/-Mitch-McConnell-wants-to-know-who-you-want-to-lead-the-Senate-It-s-time-to-release-the-kraken?detail=email
“But Jane,” you might say, “don’t these people know that anime characters aren’t really real people.” So what. Corporations aren’t really real people either.
PS: KrakenCon was totally fun. And all the hundreds of people there dressed in full anime drag must have spent weeks and months working on creating their costumes. Good for them. Who says that cottage industries are dead.
And Margaret Caragan and her truly talented special effects team from Pandora FX http://pandora-fx.com/ were also at the convention, and they promised to turn me into a zombie right there on the spot. Too late! Been there already. Already done that. http://www.ikilledthedevil.com/http://www.ikilledthedevil.com/
PPS: And another fantasy paradise that I have just recently learned about is called “Oklahoma”. Yes, the state. You read that right.
Apparently a hundred and more years ago, African-Americans, Indians and socialists in Oklahoma all banded together to try to create a place where there was no economic exploitation and no racial prejudice. But of course their fantasy of an on-going democratic egalitarian paradise in Oklahoma was never allowed to happen and, after the dust had finished settling, a large number of horrendous and brutal acts of suppression by government, corporatists and haters had left hundreds of these idealists dead, thousands of them in jail, tens of thousands of them burned out of their homes, and over a hundred thousand of them had their land seized right out from under them.
However at least we now know that, somewhere, these old-timey salt-of-the-earth Americans did at one time try to stand up for their rights and to create a fantasy paradise — in Oklahoma. And this July, Global Exchange is offering a tour of all of the places where this all happened back in the day, culminating in a trip to Woodie Guthrie’s home town. And if you want to go on this tour yourself, please sign up for it here: http://www.globalexchange.org/reality-tours#id=the-radical-tour-of-oklahoma
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April 5, 2014
America & Israel: “War is our most important product”
I just finished reading an article about how guns and munitions have become Israel’s most important export — and immediately I started thinking, “Hey, that is America’s most important export too!” http://www.roitov.com/articles/crimea.htm America and Israel now have so much in common. No wonder AIPAC is so popular here and Israelis love Americans so much. They are practically twins.
And how many other countries in the world today can make this claim: “War is our most important product!” I can’t think of a single one offhand.
But now let’s take this down a few notches — from the international level to the personal. What if the best and most important thing that I could do with my own life right now is to manufacture and sell guns too? Just call me the next Sarah Winchester!
Not to teach children, not grow crops, make music or create films, not be a religious, spiritual or moral person or even to manufacture trains, buttons or soap — screw all that pansy stuff. Just to manufacture and sell weapons and guns.
“But mommy, we had guns for dinner last night!”
“Just shut up and bite the bullet, kid.”
“Can I go over and play with Jenny? She’s got a new bike?” No she doesn’t. She’s got a new AK-47.
And what if a civil war started in America? That’s totally possible. And what if there was a civil war in Israel too — between its secular neo-cons and ultra-orthodox extremists? Also totally possible. Just think of all the profits that gun manufacturers would make from all that. “War isn’t just for foreign countries any more!” could be their slogan. A buck is a buck.
PS: Never forget that Creativity is the very best antidote for War.
Both America and Israel seem to be addicted to war right now. And this upside-down sicko attitude toward what is really important in life is going to kill off both countries (sooner or later) if they don’t watch out. But creativity is the strongest antidote for war. So let’s all help people get hooked on being creative instead of on being viscous, immoral and mean.
For one thing, creativity is a hecka lot more fun. And for another, it doesn’t leave you with PTSD the morning after either.
Wouldn’t you really rather have composed the “Ode to Joy” than to have brutally and senselessly slaughtered a million people in the Middle East? http://www.youtube.com/embed/a6W2ZMpsxhg?feature=player_embedded When I was a war correspondent in Iraq, I saw blood flowing from innocent bodies there — and, yes, I’m still bitter and pissed off about that.
How much nicer it would have been if I had been able to take a tour of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon instead.
PPS: The Flight 370 murder-mystery still continues http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/31/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1. Now the world’s various “Command” top guys are refusing to release official air-controller radio transcripts, radar data and other documents. http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/missing-mas-plane/story/malaysia-says-theres-sealed-evidence-mh370-cannot-be-made-publ. Does this sound familiar or what?
One would think that — after all these years of watching internet bloggers do their homework with regard to who was doing what to whom in Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, NYC, Palestine, Haiti, Ukraine, etc — that certain “Command” top guys would at least know how to get their stories straight by now. Americans no longer blindly accept cover stories and false flags like they did back in the 1950s with the murder of Patrice Lumumba and the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government, or in the 1960s with the Gulf of Tonkin false flag.
We American “Gladiators” have become far more sophisticated since then.
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March 28, 2014
At the LLC murder-mystery convention: Nobody’s mentioned Flight 370 so far…
While driving to a murder-mystery writers’ and readers’ convention in Monterey, CA the other day, I stopped by Silicon Valley to have lunch with my old college sweetheart. Good grief! How come I have aged so much and he hasn’t? That’s totally not fair. http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2014/
A friend of mine in Germany had emailed me that I absolutely, positively had to visit the Paris Bakery while I was in Monterey http://parisbakery.us/. Which I did. And got hooked. So much for my gluten-free diet. It’s clear that I’m gonna pay a steep price for this discrepancy when I get home. But not now! Too many eclairs, croissants and napoleons to sample. Greed triumphs over common sense. Again.
Once actually at the convention, I immediately scored my 40 pounds of free books. First things first. Greed again. Who would have thought that I was such a hoarder. But apparently I am. Who can possibly read three murder mysteries per day for a year? That’s just plain greedy. It’s like how the U.S. military collects all those countries, weapons and bombs. Hoarding. Just plain greed. Except that you can’t blow up cities and kill babies with books.
But how can I possibly begin to describe this convention? All kinds of fabulous authors spoke. And in between sessions, I ran off to the movies and saw “Omar” (you just gotta see it!), the Grand Budapest Hotel (laughed my socks off) and “Tim’s Vermeer (very interesting of course but I dozed off for a few minutes half way through — it was PBS on steroids).
My favorite authors speaking here were Lisa Brackmann, Johnny Shaw, Louise Penny, Cara Black, Brad Parks, Laurie R. King, Terry Shames, Rhys Bowen, Lee Goldberg, Sue Grafton, Sophie Littlefield, Simon Wood, Doc Macomber, Robert Kroese, Kelli Stanley…. Oh hell, they were all my favorites. http://www.lisabrackmann.com/books/rock-paper-tiger/
Except that Janet Evanovich wasn’t there.
And all of these fabulous authors gave talks and/or spoke on panels. But not even one of them mentioned the strange mystery of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines 370 — or why it went down in the southern Indian Ocean instead of landing safely in Beijing — closer to Diego Garcia than to Peking duck. That’s a hecka long way to be off course.
Anyway, my main take-away from the first day of the conference did solve one big mystery for me — why in the world do I like crime-fiction novels so much? At a panel discussing murder mysteries and social justice, one author stated that, “I never write about anything that involves social justice. My books are just straight crime novels.” Which caused a light bulb to turn on in my brain.
“Every single murder mystery ever written is always solely about social justice — or even just plain justice itself,” I replied during the Q&A. “They all have to do with bringing killers to justice. And in every single one of these books, justice is always obtained.” No wonder I like murder mysteries. I am such a big fan of Justice — with a capital J. If only we could track down all those evil killers on the national and international political scene as successfully as Sherlock Holmes or Aimee LeDuc or Kinsey Millhone or Ellie McEnroe tracked down their bad guys.
But it’s all a matter of transparency. In crime-fiction novels, transparency is always achieved eventually. But in the covert world of the CIA, the Pentagon, NSA, Washington and Wall Street, transparency sucks eggs.
And the greatest murder-mysteries of our day — deadly climate change, sleazy bankster fraud, Monsanto’s silent-but-deadly GMOs, unconscionable War Street attacks on the Middle East and the creepy neo-Nazi corporatists’ takeover of our government — may never be solved. Until it’s too late, that is. “Oh, now we know who-done-it!” we will all cry out — cry out from our graves.
PS: Meanwhile, back at the Paris Bakery, there are even more important mysteries to be solved. Should I have almond croissants or eclairs for breakfast? Or that round thingie over there with all that whipped cream?
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March 14, 2014
Land of the “Ever Young”
Three American Presidents share Irish ancestry; Presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and Obama. In recent years, that fact has made the Republicans uncomfortable, but this year, as St. Patrick’s Day approaches, their worst nightmare will bring their propensity for hypocrisy into play: the Republicans hate the Communists and they hate Obama so being forced into a binary choice will deliver an uncomfortable decision: racism or McCarthyism? The fact that some Republicans seem to be endorsing Putin over the American president in the Crimean Crisis speaks for itself.
Would it be ironic if some genealogists offered a theory that St. Reagan and Obama were related?
“It takes too long to retrain them!” is the punch line for an ethnic joke that might “get your Irish up,” if you were offended by that sort of attempts at “humor.”
Is it true that Adolph Hitler, who was a well known vegetarian, gave himself a dispensation from the usual rules by ordering corn beef and cabbage every year when Saint Patrick’s Day was celebrated at Berchtesgaden?
Is it true that one of the founding members of the Black Panthers would astound his posse by producing evidence that he held dual American and Ireland citizenship because he was born as an “Army brat” son of an American Air Force officer serving at a base on the Emerald Isle?
Ernesto Guevara Lynch’s son became known to the world as Che Guevara. You don’t find many references to that fact when St. Patrick’s Day celebrations are being held in the United States.
In the U. S. vs. Mexico war, induced by offers of higher pay than the American army paid and land grants, a group of gringos led by some Irish with military experience, fought on the side of Mexico. They were called Batallón de San Patricio (Saint Patrick’s Battalion). Many of those who survived battle were hanged (30 simultaneously) for treason. Some (urban legend?) escaped and became Mexican landowners.
In the WTF file we see that on Monday many of the employees of the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory plan to be wearing green T-shirts with the word “Diego Garcia” printed on them. When asked what they symbolize; they shrug their shoulders and say: “It’s a mystery.”
John Wayne was a member of John Ford’s “repertoire company of film makers” and many of the films featured a recurring group of actors (AKA the usual suspects”) but some of his most memorable films featured Maureen O’Hara (who made many films directed by John Ford) as his costar. The best and best known would be “The Quiet Man” from 1951, in which John Wayne sang “Wild Colonial Boy.”
[In “Ned Kelly,” Mick Jagger sings the same song. Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear what a good sound man could do making a mash up of the two versions?]
In “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Irish History and Culture,” written by Sonja Massie, readers learn (page 191) that sparks flew when William Butler Yeats met James Joyce, who, upon learning that Yeats was thirty-five years old, said: “I’ve met you too late” and elaborated the age meant that he (Joyce) wouldn’t have any influence on Yeats. Subsequently the fellow summarized Joyce by saying “Never, have I encounter so much pretension with so little to show for it.”
What is it like in Ireland? According to a reliable source, “In the summer the rain is warm; in the winter, the rain is cold.”
Aren’t sailors on the USS O’Brien the only crew in the U. S. Navy that is permitted to wear green baseball caps rather than the regulation Navy blue gear everyone else must use?
For many years, the St. Patrick Day celebration in New York City was very popular with college students because back then the State of New York had a drinking age of 18 and was surrounded by states where it was 21. Talk about “Aye, lad there’s the rub.” Eventually political pressure was used to convince New York to change it’s drinking age laws to 21.
Self-deprecating humor is a hallmark of Irish wit. St. Ronald Reagan told a story about knocking on a farmer’s door during the Iowa primary season. The local looked at the former movie actor and sputtered: “You’re . . . you’re . . . you’re.” St. Reagan tried to offer a hint: “Do the initials R. R. help?” The fellow turned and yelled into the interior of the house: “Momma, come quick and meet Roy Rogers!”
George Berkeley has been described as being the only philosopher from Ireland. He traveled to the United States. A town “near Harvard” was going to be named after him, but an error by a court clerk changed the spelling of the town to Berkley. A city in California was also named for him. The Californians weren’t content to just spell the name correctly’ it was also decided to build a better University in the city a few miles East of San Francisco.
The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in San Francisco this weekend is being touted as the 164th installment of the annual celebration.
The California town of Dublin will also have a parade this weekend.
[Note from the photo editor: We dug up some photos from a past Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Frisco.
Hat tip to a clerk at San Francisco’s Beat Museum for that obscure historical sidebar item about the Saint Patrick’s Battalion.]
William Butler Yeats wrote: “The best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Now the disk jockey will play the Rolling Stones’ “Flight 505,” the Irish Rovers’ “The Unicorn,” and he rarely does dedications, but just this once, for Clint Eastwood, he’ll play John McCormack singing “The Empty Chair.” We have to go try to solve the riddle: “Why can’t Irish employees be given a lunch break?” Have a “Sinn Fein (it’s pronounced Shin Fain and means “Ourselves alone”)” type week.
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March 13, 2014
Want to see real capitalism? Go to Haiti!
Note: Can we still post on BartBlog?
I LOVE BartBlog! It will be a very hard habit to give up.
Will there still BE a BartCop?
The world needs it more than ever!
********************
You think that all those fat-cat corporatist billionaires on Wall Street are capitalists? Not even close!
Those guys have systematically and carefully cocooned themselves inside of a risk-free, artificially-induced highly-rigged monopoly-style con-game bubble — created at great cost to salt-of-the-earth types like you and me. And inside of this fairy-tale ponzi-scheme bubble, the top dogs all cheat and steal, no one goes to jail and you and I are their shills. Welfare for the rich? Yes. Capitalism? No, no, no and no. http://www.salon.com/2014/03/07/texas_miracle_turns_out_to_involve_taxing_the_poor_to_help_the_rich_get_richer/
But just come to Haiti and you will immediately see true capitalism at work — on every street corner. Everyone here has something to sell. It’s amazing! The competition is fierce. There are no monopolies. Nothing is risk-free. There are no artificially-created safety nets. And U.S. corporate fat-cats would only last about five minutes here.
Everywhere you look in Haiti, there is someone setting up a booth or offering a handful of goods to sell or improvising a restaurant on wheels — or in a wheel barrow.
Ariana Huffington just published a book called “Thrive,” and in the opening chapter she talks about how trying to make it in the corporate world has led to very high levels of stress. http://www.scribd.com/doc/208029742/Thrive-by-Arianna-Huffington-Excerpt?secret_password=12tzqe0gw7cic5epttqj I would dearly love to see Wall Street CEOs and high-powered American executives who make 30 million-plus a year with the help of a lapdog government that they own lock stock and barrel — would love to see these spoiled brats and primadonnas get their asses kicked by the competition of trying to sell yams or used T-shirts on the streets of Port au Prince.
Within a half-hour at most, these fancy dudes would be begging to be taken back to their sweet little tax shelters and big-bank scams. “Please! I hate real-life capitalism! Get me out of here! Please!”
Haitians work their butts off making capitalism work for them!
Any fool can put together a housing-market scam if they have a trillion dollars to back them and a government to keep them out of jail. But Haitians know that they have no silver spoons in their mouths, no old-boy networks, no soft defense-industry contracts and no fleeced American taxpayers to soften their fall. If Haitians don’t make it in their own capitalist world, they die. Period.
When was the last time those welfare-for-the-rich dudes risked more than a hangnail? Libertarianism? Rugged individualism? My foot! http://billmoyers.com/episode/the-deep-state-hiding-in-plain-sight/
PS: Haiti is also the place where used T-shirts from America go to die, after they have been tossed out of our closets. There are all kinds of used T-shirts down here, that say almost anything on their fronts — and always say it in English.
PPS: Want an example of rigged “capitalism” in America? Here it is. Our judicial system happily supports deregulation on Wall Street and also supports War Street’s right to attack other countries illegally at will. Anyone with half a brain and wi-fi access knows that. But might our judges possibly go out on a limb and support net neutrality — just because American taxpayers paid for its creation? Not on your life. http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_nothing_like_a_democracy/
“But, Jane, what’s so important about net neutrality?” you might ask. It’s this: If you can’t afford to pay big bucks in order to get decent internet speed, then you are automatically being censored and controlled. It’s all about access. While down here in Haiti, I have certainly found out about that.
Down here the internet is so slow that it takes me at least two hours to put together an article, plus another three hours to get it to post on my blog, while I wait around for everything to reload. And that’s on a good day. So while all of my blog posts are being written by hand down here Haiti, I will have to wait until I get home to send them out. What a bother. Who has five hours of internet frustration to spare every day or the patience to wait and wait to reload? Not me.
The slow internet here has also slowed me down a whole lot. I don’t even want to blog anymore most of the time. And when that happens in the USA too because I can’t afford to buy fast internet speed? Then, snap! I will have been effectively shut up and shut down — without the Deep State even having to lift a finger to stop me. “Damn those pesky liberal bloggers. We’ve certainly showed them.”
But there wouldn’t be any problems with net neutrality at all back in the States if capitalism was really working there — and artificial monopolies like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. didn’t have Congress and the courts in their pockets, creating yet another expensive hidden tax on you and me. And some start-up kids with a garage-app in Mountain View would be supplying us with high speed internet for about five bucks a month.
Want another example of welfare-for-the-rich? That’s easy. American taxpayers have been forced to fork over trillions of dollars in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, Nigeria, Indonesia, Kuwait, East Timor and even Saudi Arabia so far — to pay for what are essentially the top five oil companies’ private armies. But do we ever get a tax break on the oil that these armies steal? Hell, no. Only oil companies get tax breaks. Not us. That’s welfare-for-the-rich, not capitalism. What else did you expect? http://www.salon.com/2014/03/08/35_countries_the_u_s_has_backed_international_crime_partner/
Let those slick dudes on Oil Street pay for their own freaking armies.
It never ceases to amaze me how Americans keep electing anti-capitalism government officials who do not represent our own best interests or even the best interests of our country, but keep electing moochers, schemers and con-men from the welfare-for-the-rich class instead — time and time again. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/06/maps-of-the-south-bad-place_n_4855191.html
PPPS: Paul Ryan just proved my case! The guy just made an impassioned speech to CPAC, stating that receiving welfare is humiliating and degrading. “People don’t just want a life of comfort; they want a life of dignity — of self-determination” http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-meaning-ryans-cpac-anecdote So let’s help him get America’s “communism for the rich only” 1% off of welfare and give them some “dignity” for the first time in their lives instead.
PPPPS: Like I just said, the internet limitations in Port au Prince have forced me to wait to send out this story on Haiti until I got home to Berkeley. Good to be back. But I still miss Haiti a lot!
But on March 20th I’ll be traveling again, off to Monterey, CA, to attend the annual Left Coast Crime festival, a convention of murder-mystery writers and readers — and a chance to pick up 40 pounds of free books (without having to lug them back home on an airplane) and, hopefully, to have access to fast internet service so that I can blog about all that. http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2014/
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March 11, 2014
In memory of Terrance Coppage a.k.a Bartcop
I was saddened by the news of the loss of Terry, our beloved bartcop. I know many of you are as well. I am not sure what to write, so these words come to mind:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
Steve Jobs said that before he passed away and our bartcop lived his life like that…just read any back issue and you’ll see that.
So, what can we do now? Here is my proposal:
I am an experienced copy writer, editor and researcher. I also know a few things about search engine optimization (SEO) and IT management. I am willing to offer my services pro bono to help keep this site alive. I cannot do that myself, I would need help in the IT and graphics arts areas. I think that contributing to keep bartcop alive is the best way to honor bartcop. Terry is gone, but this web site can live on as long as there are people willing to contribute.
Bartcop was the liberal blogosphere before there was one. Terry’s work was truly groundbreaking and inspirational. Everyone on the left should feel indebted to him for showing how information can be spread without the help (or hindrance) of the corporate media.
If anyone is with me on this, feel free to email me at grpatin@hotmail.com.
May the Chinaco never run dry and let’s keep the hammer pounding!
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March 7, 2014
In Memory of…
St. Peter was closing the gate when newly arrived Rufus asked, “You let HIM in?”
“Yes, the boss ordered it done.”
“You do realize he ranted all the time about organized religion and called them all kinds of names…”
“So does the boss.”
“I’m pretty sure if he wasn’t an atheist he was at least an agnostic.”
“With all the stuff said, done and claimed in his name, the boss can’t blame him. Besides, he fought off true evil: especially evil claimed to be in the name of the boss. That counted for a lot. The boss even let him put something on the gate on the way in…”
(more…)
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Unexpected Help for an existentialist
A strongly held conviction that is only an opinion can liven up an online comments section and if the idea being endorsed seems to others to be a symptom of insanity, it can lead to a rugged challenge for the person who stands alone against the entire world. Scientists managed to convince most people that Galileo was right about the world circling the sun and that the opposite explanation that the sun revolved around the world was wrong. The scientists aren’t doing as well convincing the man in the street to endorse the theory about global warming. Galileo serves as the patron saint for people who fervently believe that the Bush Dynasty will be reactivated after the next Presidential Election in 2016.
Saturday March1, 2014, seemed like it was going to be a day like any other day filled with skepticism and ridicule for any pundit who dared to offer an extreme prediction about the results of the 2016 Presidential Election in the USA. Getting just one person to endorse an outrageously illogical opinion that causes people to question your sanity seemed like a long shot. If the Pope had endorsed Galileo’s nutty theory, it would have made life a whole lot easier for the fellow who didn’t know when to shut up.
The first day of March in 2014 seemed destined to become an unforgettable day filled with those events which alter and illuminate modern history because Vladimir Putin was making it obvious to the world that he was going to disregard the American President’s opinion about the advisability of interfering in internal politics of the Ukraine but Putin had the boys in the Russian legislature backing him on that move, so he wasn’t alone.
Wasn’t Putin just implementing a variation of the reasoning behind many previous similar events in history such as St. Ronald Reagan’s valiant effort to protect American Medical Students in Granada? Don’t the Republicans endorse any attempt to replicate St. Reagan’s policy?
At the San Francisco History Expo, the Art Deco Society and the Treasure Island Museum both seemed to think that the 75th Anniversary of the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair on Treasure Island will be of interest around the world.
The Museum showed some old movie footage that informed the audience, which might have forgotten the glamour and excitement generated by Pan Am’s China Clippers, that the airline which was not a decade old had subsidized the construction of way stations where their flying boats could land for rest and refueling on their route that (eventually) connected San Francisco with China. That pioneering effort became a virtual commuter run during World War II and the fact that it had been established right before the outbreak of the hostilities between the United States and Japan was a very lucky coincidence for the Allied Nations.
Pan Am started up just as the Great (or as it used to be called: “Republican”) Depression started. By 1935, they were not only asking aircraft production companies to develop new models for them, but they could also subsidize sending men and supplies to island all across the Pacific to build facilities for hotels and support stations for flying boats at a time when many businesses were struggling to show a profit. Could Houdini have matched that phenomenal feat?
After seeing all the historical newsreel footage about the China Clippers, our appreciation for the concept of time travel was once again being honed to a fine edge. Then we experienced a moment of skepticism. Was it really a lucky coincidence? We filed away an impulse to check with our sources at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory and see if they had any material that offered an alternative explanation for that the happy coincidence of having a shuttle route between the USA and China available after Pearl Harbor was attacked. Was it more than just a coincidence?
[The New York Times reported the sudden death of Jackson Miss. Mayor Cholwe Uumumba on February 24, 2014, but after Hinds County Commissioner Kenneth Stokes called for an autopsy and Louis Farrakhan offered to pay for it, the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory is evaluating the potential for having the R&D Department formulate an explanation for the unexpected death.]
Wild speculation couched in a conspiracy theory has no place in serious history books but, like horoscopes in the daily newspaper, it does provide a modicum of entertainment value for a columnist working the pop culture beat.
We learned from the American Printing History Association (Google hint: Printing History dot Org) that a summer course for the operation of linotype machines is available and we thought taking that course might provide us with a good column topic in the coming summer.
Seeing Emperor Norton (wouldn’t he be about two hundred years old?) at the History Expo made us wonder about the potential doing an interview and column because he is almost as synonymous with San Francisco as Herb Caen was.
After our material gathering expedition to Fog City, we stopped at the Berkeley Public Library and during a brief online check (“round up the usual suspects”) we discovered that we where no longer the only person in the world who thinks that John Edward Bush (J. E. B.) will become the Republican candidate for President in 2016. Sure enough, on page one of the Week in Review Section of the Sunday New York Times for March 2, 2014, there was the headline warning the readers to brace themselves for a battle between Hilary Clinton and the Bush Dynasty’s heir apparent, Jeb Bush.
Some skeptics might think that somehow the World’s Laziest Journalist got an advanced peek at the New York Times’ columnist’s copy and rushed to post our column posted on Friday February 28 and the only defense we can offer is to make the assertion that we had been banished from a prestigious website several years ago for making the JEB prediction too prematurely.
Do members of the New York Times newsroom sit around on Friday afternoons and pounce on each and every new installment of punditry from the World’s Laziest Journalist? Let’s try an experiment. One of our more obscure insights into world affairs make the assertion that if a reader holds a photo of Howard Hughes next to a photo of the Ayatollah Rohollah Khomeini, material for a marvelous scoop will become obvious.
Now, if a writer for the Great Gray Lady hands in a column making the “has anyone noticed that Clark Kent is never around when Superman shows up?” type assertion about the image experiment; then we will have much more circumstantial evidence to support our “Friday afternoon” assertions.
Back in the day when a national TV network ran afternoon movies, we saw one that featured a fellow who faced a big dilemma. He had to tell the magic fairy which of two potential spells she should cast on his girlfriend. She would either become an ugly hag when they were alone and be seen as the most beautiful woman in the world when they were in public or she would be the most beautiful woman in the world when they were together in isolation but would be perceived as an ugly hag when they went out into society. Yikes! That could be a problem at the local pub, eh?
We have never been able to ascertain the title of that motion picture but it, in turn, provided us with a similar tough binary choice: would a writer prefer to have hundreds of thousands of voters read his political punditry or would he tell the magic fairy to give him a very limited audience that included a Vice President who was a former classmate and about a hundred nationally known pundits? What’s not to love about having a lock on the right to the claim to be “the pundit other pundits read first!”?
Some skeptical friends have cried “Coincidence!” when we pointed out to them that we have run items (such as a mention of smoking bath salts) and subsequently seen a front page article in a Sunday edition of the New York Times about that very topic.
We have often wondered why the topic of slap art isn’t being mentioned in the mainstream media, so if we announce our intention to cover the Slapocalypse 3 event on March 29 in Oakland, and if a certain daily newspaper headquartered in New York City does a feature story about it, we get to ask: “How many coincidences does it take to verify a trend-spotting hunch?”
[Note from the Photo Editor: The columnist went to the San Francisco History Expo and some snapshots of Emperor Norton was the best he could do.]
Hitler said: “The man who feels called upon to govern a people has no right to say, If you want me or summon me, I will cooperate. No, it is his duty to step forward.” Republicans will make sure J. E. B. reads this, eh?
Now, the disk jockey will play Harry Belafonte’s “Banana boat song,” Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen tons,” and Adele Dazeem’s exquisite rendering of “Let it go.” We have to go fact check the rumor that Ahmed Chalabi is masquerading as a political consultant going by the name of Paul Manafort. Have a “I gets weary” type week.
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March 4, 2014
Vodou Lounger: A tourist’s eye-view of Haiti
“Please don’t go to Haiti — it could be dangerous down there!” several worried friends begged me right before I left. But boy were they wrong. Haiti is totally fun! I never had so much fun in my life as I did this past week in Haiti. And this is my very own tourist guidebook to all the neat stuff that I’ve done down here. Not exactly the Lonely Planet. But boy am I having a good time.
The most frequently asked question before I left was, “Are you going down there to do humanitarian work?” No no no. I’m going down there to be a tourist!
To start with, I got a really great bargain deal on Expedia — $800 to fly me from SFO to Port au Prince and five nights in a convenient, clean and quiet hotel called the Diquini Guest House. This was absolutely the smartest thing that I did on this trip. Why? Because the manager of the guest house, a former member of the Haitian diaspora and long-time resident of Washington DC, took me under his wing and for a reasonable fee let me hire his driver, translated for me, kept me fed on nicely-flavored Haitian stew and rice — and then took me off to explore Port au Prince. www.diquinigh.com.
First we went to the famous Hotel Oloffson where the ghosts of past American ex-pat writers such as Graham Greene and Lillian Hellman roam its gardens, terraces and gingerbread-style balconies; where Mick Jagger and even Jacqueline Kennedy have stayed — and where the famous vudou-inspired RAM band was playing that night. http://hoteloloffson.com/
The next day we explored what is left of the 2010 earthquake ruins, from what was left of the tragically beautiful stone-filigreed huge rose window of the old cathedral and the site of the historic National Palace to various small tent cities dotting Port au Prince that still house earthquake victims today, and the ruined buildings that still have market stalls precariously tucked into whichever concrete slabs are still left standing.
“So, Jane, how is Port au Prince actually doing now, four years after the quake?” you might ask, now that I’m an actual eye-witness to the scene of the crime. It’s not doing super-good, but not doing as badly as I had expected either. Most of the tent cities are gone now — as a lot of the homeless victims have by now squashed themselves in with relatives, left for the countryside or otherwise made do.
“But what are Haitians really like?” you might ask next. You can tell what Haitians are really like by the way that they drive. There are only a handful of traffic signals in Port au Prince and even fewer rules of the road. And Haitians drive very fast. But they also drive in a way that is almost polite. Everyone wants to get where they are going (and to get there fast) — but no one wants to actually hurt anyone else. I didn’t see any road rage there. Just people trying to get by.
Basically, Haitians are just people trying to get by after having been dealt a very rough hand for a very long time, from the moment they were kidnapped from Africa and sold as slaves here — starting in 1503, just eleven years after Columbus discovered the island. And those slaves were expendable too, worked to death in a few years at most and then replaced by other new slaves.
Then after having fought for and achieved its freedom in 1804, Haiti was also constantly attacked, exploited and/or invaded for the next 200-plus years by America, Canada and various combinations of European nations. And now Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, resembling the slums of Uganda or the slums of Zimbabwe. And yet despite their poverty, which is dire and extreme, Haitians still remain stoically polite.
Next we went off to the Iron Market bazaar to buy Haitian stuff to hang on my walls when I get home. And then we drove all over Port au Prince — the grand tour. And that night we went off to Carnival in the Carrefour district. Are you jealous yet?
Carrefour’s pre-Lenten carnival was like one gigantic block party and was actually as much fun as Berkeley in the 1960s, the benchmark against I always measure how much fun something is.
I also wanted to go see San Souci and the Citadel, UNESCO world heritage sites up in Cap Haitien, but it was a seven-hour drive to get there, so we went to Fonds des Negres instead, which was only a three-hour drive, and I met a vodou master there. “No one is cursing you,” he told me. Not even the NSA? Good to know. Then he performed a candlelight ritual to help my knees get better. Then he pulled out a business card for his son who owns a botanica in SoCal who, for a price, could finish my knee treatment when I got back home http://www.felixbotanica.com/. And then the vodou master pulled out his cell phone and started texting someone. Guess the ritual was over.
And there’s also a cave in the mountains near Fonds des Negres where a “Suzan,” a vodou spirit, resides. But you have to get there by motorcycle and we didn’t have time to do all that on this day trip. So I just bought a sequin-covered vodou flag instead.
“Have you seen any zombies in Haiti?” might be your next question. Sorry, no. But on my plane ride down here, we ran into a bunch of really scary turbulence over Chicago and I thought I was going to die. So I had an epiphany. “When you are in your mother’s womb, the only way out is by going through a whole bunch of pain first — and death is also like that. First you pass through a whole bunch of pain and then, poof, you are out on the Other Side.” As a zombie? Let’s hope not.
The next day we went out searching for Jean-Bertrand Aristide http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2014/02/haiti-me-in-search-of-jean-bertrand.html and then ended the day in that famous five-star hotel in Petionville — just to see how the other 1% lives. Trust me, they are living well.
What else have I done down here? I can’t remember exactly. But I will tell you this: I have really had fun. And if you ever want to go to Haiti too, I totally recommend it highly. And, no, I’m not getting paid to say this.
PS: While in Haiti, I also watched the winter Olympics on TV — thus getting a chance to compare Port au Prince and Sochi. One city has far too little city planning and one city had far too much!
According to journalist Roi Tov, “With less than 350,000 denizens, [Sochi] has been occupied by at least 25,000 police officers, 30,000 soldiers, 8,000 special forces, and an undisclosed number of FSB agents.”
Port au Prince is nothing like that. The streets go every which-way like a patchwork quilt. But it does have one thing in common with Sochi — abuse of its fragile labor force. http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2014/02/07/3256191/migrant-abuse-wage-sochi-olympics/
And let’s also compare Port au Prince with Havana. I’m currently reading Carlos Eire’s autobiography, “Learning to Die in Miami”. Eire appears to believe with all his heart that the Castro experience was a nightmare — and yet just compare Cuba and Haiti today. Haiti has been under the thumb of American and European corporatists for ages and ages. And now, despite all its amazingly fertile soil and impressive mineral riches, Haiti is currently one of the poorest countries in the world. Seven out of ten Haitians live on less than $2 a day, according to the International Red Cross. http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/poorest-countries-in-the-world/19/
But in Havana under the Castro brothers, everyone has a good chance of getting a college education.
But, hell, most Haitians are lucky to have a chance to even get as far as fourth grade!
If Fulgencio Batista and the American corporatists who owned him back in 1959 had remained in power and Castro had never taken over Cuba, Cuba today would more than likely look just like Haiti today. And does anyone with a working brain really think that having American and European oil companies, bankers, war profiteers and neo-cons in control in Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine are going to help those countries either? Hell, just look at what those guys did to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya — and to Detroit! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq-ZmatOlvs&feature=share
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February 27, 2014
Haiti & me: In search of Jean Bertrand Aristide
When thinking about Haiti, a lot of people think first about that terrible earthquake disaster of 2010 — and also about President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. And I do too. So on my first day in Port au Prince, I toured most of the earthquake disaster areas. And on my third day there, it only seemed logical that I also attempt to meet up with the great man himself. And I actually came THIS close to doing that too!
After recovering from wandering around the Carrefour district’s Carnival celebration the night before, I then went over to check out Aristide’s house. “President Aristide is actually here today,” said the guard at the door, “but he’s not seeing visitors right now. However, you can always wave to him on our closed-circuit TV camera.” Great idea! So I smiled and waved and smiled and waved at the CCTV camera like the idiot tourist that I am.
Next I went off to visit Aristide’s Foundation Pour la Democratie and looked around there. Met some interesting diplomats, students, professors and a chicken.
Then I visited UniFA, a medical school established by Aristide in order to create more doctors in Haiti — where the ratio of Haitians to doctors is 10,000 to 1 in urban areas and 20,000 to 1 in the countryside (no wonder vodou cures are so popular here). “How many students study here?” I asked a bright-eyed first-year physician wannabe, sitting outside eating her lunch between classes. (Actually all the students here are clearly bright-eyed and diligent and idealistic — all young, gifted and Black. Go them.)
“About 700,” the student replied.
“So can you tell me how cure my sore knees?” I asked.
“No, we haven’t gotten that far in our curriculum quite yet.” Rats.
Lastly, I stopped by a large apartment building that had been constructed during Aristide’s presidency in order to house some of Port au Prince’s homeless population, right before GWB sent in the Marines. Two things about this apartment building were note-worthy. First, it was the only building for blocks around that had actually withstood the 2010 earthquake. And, second, the apartments all had two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen.
In stark contrast, directly across the street one could also see a hundred-odd new U.N. housing units — such as they were. Each family had been allocated a really really small cube-shaped one-room dwelling with no bathroom, no bedroom, no kitchen and no running water. And their shared port-a-potties were all way down the street.
So just exactly who is this guy Jean-Bertrand Aristide? And why do American neo-cons and corporatists all hate him so much? I don’t know. Maybe because Aristide doesn’t want to keep Haiti forever “barefoot and pregnant”? Maybe because Aristide, a former priest, actually tries to practice the teachings of Jesus? Your guess is as good as mine.
In any case, here’s a bit more about Aristide’s back-story for those of you who have never heard of the guy. In 2001, Aristide was democratically elected as president of Haiti, just one year after George Bush stole the 2000 American election. But, unlike GWB, Aristide’s emphasis was on inclusion and education.
In just the few years that he was president, Aristide built more schools in Haiti than had ever existed in all of its long miserable history of being controlled by U.S. interests. Aristide also devoted 20% of the nation’s budget to healthcare. Good grief! No wonder Wall Street and War Street hated him. And overthrew him too. Violently. In favor of deadly U.N. “peacekeepers” and the Marines, who immediately shot everything up and turned UniFA into a military barracks. That was back in 2004. http://www.projectcensored.org/12-another-massacre-in-haiti-by-un-troops/
And now, ten years later, Haiti has been stuck with President Michel Martelly, aka the “Neo-Cons’ Choice,” elected in the same way that the U.S. got stuck with Dubya — illegally. “He is our guy!” cries Wall Street, War Street and the Deep State. http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
And now WalMart is once again happily running sweatshops in Haiti, where workers get paid $4.56 a day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVx2dl3Hgso.
What the freak was Aristide thinking!
Surely Aristide should have known that anybody who denies WalMart access to economic slave labor is naturally gonna be in big trouble — and educating a country’s children and providing its citizens with healthcare is also a really bad idea because then countries like Haiti will no longer have a subservient labor force and a really dumb electorate — and that’s just not the corporatist way. Aristide should have known better. Even most Americans are clear on this concept, keeping their eyes down and their mouths shut. Why couldn’t Aristide do the same?
And if you still want even more information on Aristide and Haiti, here’s a great video to watch: https://ia700401.us.archive.org/20/items/FreedomIsAConstantStrugglePGMTelvueMPEG2/Freedom%20is%20a%20Constant%20Struggle_PGM-Telvue%20MPEG-2.ogv
PS: I truly love being in Haiti! It’s an amazing country. You all should all come visit it sometime. And, unlike those nasty rumors spread by neo-cons hell-bent on colonizing Haiti for fun and profit, Haiti is perfectly safe. And it’s lovely here too.
PPS: Here’s another interesting fact about Haiti: The whole population of this country has African DNA. So far, I’m the only white person I have met in all of Port au Prince. For instance, there were over 2000 people at the carnival in Carrefour last night — and only yours truly was white. And you know what? No one cared — because everyone was having such an amazingly wonderful time there, dancing in the streets, even me (except, of course, for my sore knees).
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February 21, 2014
Shhh, I finally made it to Haiti!
I was supposed to fly down to Haiti on February 12 but ice-storm Pax put an end to that plan. 3,000 flights were cancelled, including mine — which was sort of embarrassing because I had already told the world and his wife that I was going and hated to go back on my word. So when I suddenly came across another cheap flight to Port au Prince on February 20, I decided not to tell anyone I was going until I was actually really and truly there. Why jinx a good thing? Fingers crossed.
And now I really am actually here! And just saw Port au Prince up close and personal. And had goat stew for dinner. Yes!
Sure, Haiti is a third-world country — thanks mainly to the United States, Canada and France. And, sure, there are still people living in tents from the 2010 earthquake, and a lot of our money donated to Haiti has gone toward projects like building a five-star hotel and getting Baby Doc’s evil rep whitewashed. But today when I did a quick windshield survey of Port au Prince, I also saw a lot of school kids in uniforms going hopefully off to school and a lot of market women carrying on.
And I didn’t see as many homeless panhandlers here as I did back in the United States. But, like I said, Haiti is still a seriously third-world country.
Last night I slept for a half-hour on a red-eye flight from SFO to JFK.
Tonight I’m off to the Hotel Oloffson to hear the RAM band play music based on Haiti’s voudou heritage.
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February 12, 2014
Snowstorms just cancelled my trip to Haiti. No-o-o-o-o!
I have been trying to get down to Haiti ever since the 2010 earthquake — and now, four years later, I thought that I was finally going to get that chance. But no. Leaving today as planned? Not.
“Severe weather in NYC has caused your flight to Port au Prince this evening to be cancelled,” said a rep from Jet Blue. “But we can still get you down there just two and a half days later — and we can probably still get you back home as scheduled.” Oh great. Just three days in Haiti? Or I could stay longer but with no guesthouse reservations? Forget that.
Damn you, climate change! Damn your eyes.
But one good thing has come out of this. I have been reading up on Haiti. A lot. Things are not really all that rosy down there right now. Lots of people still don’t have homes, food or even access to clean water — despite all the billions that have been spent on “building back better” after the quake. Most of that money seems to have gone to outside contractors and NGOs, according to Paul Farmer in “Haiti After the Earthquake,” not toward creating local jobs.
And Baby Doc Duvalier has been back in Haiti for over three years and is still running around free and acting like George W. Bush — like all those killings and tortures they committed weren’t really real, just stuff that has been made up by disgruntled liberals. Yet nobody seems to be asking all the amputees and ghosts born from their regimes.
According to Amnesty International, “While the victims await the Court’s decision [on Baby Doc's crimes], Duvalier has been taking part in public events. Most recently, on 1 January 2014, he attended a state ceremony to celebrate Independence Day in the city of Gonaïves. Former president Prosper Avril, a close Duvalier ally who came to power following a military coup in 1988 and ruled until 1990, also was there. President Michel Martelly justified Duvalier’s and Avril’s invitations as important to promote national reconciliation.”
National reconciliation? Then perhaps we should send GWB back to Iraq so Dubya could do some hands-on “reconciliation” with the million ghosts he created there. Or we should send Obama to Pakistan and Afghanistan for even more and better “reconciliation” after all his drone strikes on weddings.
Baby Doc? Nelson Mandela he is not.
I also learned that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is now living in Port au Prince but isn’t allowed to run for office again. And who isn’t allowing him to run? One guess. The same folks who had him ousted the last time he was legally elected. Or was it the last two times he was legally elected? Wall Street and War Street.
As Jose Marti once said, “If you look at all South American countries, the ones controlled by the United States are the poorest and the least free.” And over a hundred years later, this simple fact still rings true. Just look at Honduras. Just look at Haiti.
Then I read Isobel Allende’s book that took place in Haiti back when French “Christian” slave-owners were torturing their slaves and working them to death; for fun and profit. Nowadays slavery is illegal per se in Haiti, but American corporations have now replaced French slave-owners — and they can still get Haitians to work for them for slave wages and they can still work them to death.
“But Jane,” you might say, “if Haiti is such a freaking nightmare, why in the world would you want to go there?” Great music, nice people, wonderful historical sites, fabulous beaches — and a chance to give something back to the people of Haiti after European and American “capitalists” have spent the last six centuries taking so very much away.
PS: I haven’t given up yet. Sooner or later I WILL get to Haiti. And you should come too!
And when you get there, ask Ravix Evens (ravixevens@yahoo.com) to meet you at the airport and take you straight to the Hotel Oloffson in Port au Prince — and then, later on, ask him to drive you over mountains beyond mountains to the beautiful historical city of Cap Haitien, a UNESCO world heritage site. That’s what I would have done.
Sigh.
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February 7, 2014
Why authoritarianism doesn’t work: Because nobody likes it!
I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “David and Goliath” — wherein Gladwell says that, in the course of any human interaction, there will always be a graphic curve of diminishing returns when it comes to maximizing the use of force in order to achieve one’s goals.
In other words, always punching other people’s lights out in order to get your own way can very quickly become counterproductive. Good grief, I think that Gladwell might be onto something here.
Want examples?
If the maximum use of force in order to obtain one’s goals been successful in Iraq (and assuming that said goals were to depose a dictator and not just to create chaos and steal oil), then the Bush-led invasion would never have been such a dismal failure and there never would have been such a disastrous resistance war there — one that still keeps rolling right along to this day. So much for Shock and Awe.
If maximum use of force really worked, then Europe would still be saluting Hitler.
Slavery would still be on the books in Georgia and Alabama because of all those happy slaves it created. Or, alternatively, segregation would still be a huge success and MLK would have had no effect at all on it.
Descendants of Genghis Khan would still be running Russia and China.
There would be no Child Protective Services anywhere and parents would still be beating their kids to within an inch of their lives. And I would still be lovingly obeying my mean older sister.
Women would look forward to being placed in harems and having a dozen babies each and would never demand the right to be pro-choice. “Barefoot and pregnant.” They would know their place as slaves to their husbands and not strive for anything else. Rape would not be a problem for women and girls.
Those viscous stormtroopers who illegally seized control of Palestine 65 years ago by ruthlessly wiping out hundreds of villages and slaughtering Christians and Muslims by the thousands? They would not still be getting resistance from the Occupied Territories even now. And the current Israeli neo-cons’ constant brutal “eye for an eye” faux cleverness wouldn’t have forced Al Qaeda out of the remote caves of Afghanistan where it was holed up in 2001 — and forced it into not-so-remote southern Syria where Al Qaeda is now, right at Israel’s front door.
And there would not have been 30 years of The Troubles in Northern Ireland either.
And in South America, Pinochet’s ghost would still be running Chile, Argentina’s Dirty War would have made Henry Kissinger proud, the billions Reagan spent on killing peasants in Guatemala would not have been wasted, Batista’s grandson (not Castro’s brother) would still be ruling Cuba and all those tin-pot dictators that the CIA supported in Central and South America over the years would be in Heaven right now — not in Hell. And phrases like “Banana Republic” and “Military Junta” and “Drug Cartel” would all stir our hearts with pride instead of just making us queasy.
The Soviet Union would still exist — and Afghans and Chechyans would just love being a part of it. People there would stop praising Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Baryshnikov and start even more fan clubs for Stalin.
We would have “Fascism” and “Corporatism” engraved on our dimes now instead of just that stupid old word “Liberty”. And “Mein Kampf” — not “Romeo and Juliette” — would be required reading in all American high schools.
All seven billion of us human beings, when we were babies, would have been spanked every time we cried, been locked in closets for days for the slightest infraction and would have thrived on harsh whippings — and that would have been that. And as a result we would all have grown up to become obedient citizens, not axe-murdering psychopaths.
Jesus would have been just another loser with wild ideas. Even Mohammed and the Buddha would have been buked and scorned (and sent to bed without any Last Supper). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdllgBtXPaE
Everyone in America would be happily welcoming the NSA and the militarization of our police forces with open arms right now. More tanks driving down Main Street? More surveillance on our phones? More destruction of our Constitutional rights? Bring it on!
And Baby Doc and his Tonton Macoute would still be running Haiti and Jean-Bertrand Aristide would have been laughed out of the country instead of becoming a hero almost as legendary as Toussaint L’Ouverture.
So why don’t whips and chains and oppression and torture work out so well in the long run? One would think that they would. Isn’t Fear the greatest motivator? According to Gladwell, apparently not.
And why is “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” still such a hot item? You tell me. Which way would you prefer to be treated? As a friend or as a slave? Which way of being treated would piss you off to the degree that you would take torches and pitchforks in hand rather than live under a tyrant?
PS: And speaking of Haiti, I just got a really great deal on Expedia to go to Port au Prince over Valentines Day (flight there and back and five days in a guest house in Diquini, including breakfasts, for less than I can spend if I stayed home in Berkeley — plus a night of listening to RAM at the Hotel Oloffson on February 13 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eppC82rUK3g).
Does anyone know of any other interesting (and meaningful) things that I could see and do in Haiti — on a limited budget? If so, please let me know. Or how I could get interviews with Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Paul Farmer while I am there? Or I wouldn’t mind interviewing Sean Penn again either, who I hear now lives down there — when he’s not hanging out with Charlize Theron in Malibu that is.
Or even Baby Doc?
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January 31, 2014
Quote of the Day
“Republicans blaming Barack Obama for not getting things done is like John Wilkes Booth blaming Lincoln for missing the end of the play.”
-John Fugelsang
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