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November 14, 2013

TV violence: America’s dark night of the knoll

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 11:35 am

I was watching “The Mentalist” on TV recently, where some guy was being tortured, had a finger cut off with pruning shears and his face caressed with an acetylene torch. Yikes! And even during that nice little detective show “Castle,” you can always count on seeing a whole bunch of blood and guts — not to mention the torture scenes and disemboweling now available on “Elementary” and “Body of Proof” and “Revolution” and “Person of Interest” and “Scandal”. And these are just the milder prime-time television shows. I’m not even going to get into the nightmare-producing horrors of “Criminal Minds” and “Law & Order SVU” — because I can’t even bear to watch those.

And then there are all those currently-popular “undead” shows too. How many times can you torture a werewolf or drive a stake through a vampire’s heart before he or she is truly dead? Apparently a lot.

I can think of at least eight TV series off the top of my head right now that face this very problem nightly in our very own living rooms: Dracula, The Originals, Vampire Diaries, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Sleepy Hollow, Beauty and the Beast, Supernaturals. And, again, that’s not even counting cable and “True Blood”. What are America’s television viewers THINKING! Are they that hungry for blood? Apparently.

But thank goodness I can’t afford cable TV because that would mean there would be 500 more channels with 500 more new and different ways to kill people off violently and with lots of blood and torture and gore. Good grief, no wonder hardly anyone blinked when the horrendous secret tortures of Abu Ghraib, Zero Dark 30 and Palestine were exposed to America by social media http://www.roitov.com/articles/policeterror.htm. “No big deal. We see that kind of stuff on TV every night!” Americans replied.

If one were to judge the American way of life solely by what its most popular television programs are, one would think that Americans were all murderous blood-thirsty psychopathic nut cases who dream only of blood.

To quote George H.W. Bush, “The American way of life is non-negotiable.” Makes you wonder about that.

PS: And speaking of TV violence and George H.W. Bush, wouldn’t you just love it if, on his deathbed, Poppy Bush suddenly decided to make one last attempt at becoming one of the most famous men in history (in the grand tradition of John Wilkes Booth for instance — or Marcus Julius Brutus) by finally confessing to his role in the assassination of John Kennedy. Wow! That would really earn Poppy a place in our history books for sure! http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/11/06/bush-and-the-jfk-hit-part-8-prepping-a-patsy/

But what I would really love to see would be Dick Cheney doing the same thing: In a fabulous deathbed interview with Olivia Pope herself, Cheney would finally “tell all” about what he had really been doing on the day that the Twin Towers fell. Hell, even Dracula himself would come back from the Undead to watch that TV show. Me too.

I bet there’s a whole long list of creepy “Patriots” here in America, just like those creepy Patriots in “Revolution,” who know exactly where all the bodies in recent American history are buried — and these creepy guys are all getting up there in age. So if any of these shadowy “Persons of Interest” should suddenly decide that they want to add to America’s “Body of Proof,” become an “Original” and create a huge “Scandal,” now is the time!

PPS: I have just one more thing to say about the mind-numbing violence of JFK’s assassination: If it had happened today instead of 50 years ago, every SmartPhone in Dallas would have posted that video on FaceBook in a nanosecond — a la the shooting of Oscar Grant. And that grassy knoll shooter wouldn’t have stood a chance in Hell of getting away. And there couldn’t have been any slimy Warren Commission cover-ups either.

America’s shadow figures and black-ops plotters can no longer get away with the low-life garbage they used to easily pull off 50 years ago, thanks to social media. And that’s “Elementary”.

PPPS: Overheard on a military base on Veterans Day: “You gotta love America. Even our gangsters are better-armed.”

November 12, 2013

Scribe Asks: If Feeling Threatened is All It Takes…

Filed under: Uncategorized — Ye Olde Scribe @ 9:16 pm

…and there’s a HISTORY of murders to PROVE they SHOULD feel threatened.

November 6, 2013

Big shots: Four best-selling crime-novel writers talk about death

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jane Stillwater @ 1:08 pm

There are seven billion people alive on the planet today — and it’s a sure thing that every single one of us will die eventually. Death is completely unavoidable. And perhaps this cold hard fact is one reason for our universal fascination with murder-mystery novels: That they deal with the subject of death, an event that all of us face 24/7 — but which no one really knows one damn thing about.

Who can you ask about death — who has ever returned from the dead? “What was death like? Did it hurt? Is it better now? Is there an after-life? Do you like being dead? Will I survive the process?” The Bible says that Jesus came back from the dead. But probably nobody else ever has, not really — near-death experiences aside.

Death is the absolutely most important event in all of our lives (besides birth). But it is a totally unknown factor. And so we watch CSI on television and go to zombie movies and read crime novels, searching for clues.

At the 2013 BoucherCon convention in Albany last month http://bcon2013.com/, four prominent murder-mystery writers got together to discuss their craft, at a seminar called “Big Shots”. Anne Perry, Steven Hamilton, Sue Grafton and Tess Gerritsen? Yes, they are all still alive. But they certainly know where the bodies are buried!

Sue Grafton was first to speak, and told us a really funny story about the death of (wait for it) her chicken Peggy Sue. “The vet gave me a very serious look and said, ‘This hen needs a hysterectomy.’ Yeah but… Isn’t the main purpose of a chicken to lay eggs?” Then the vet billed Grafton $250 but the chicken still died. Moral here? I guess that chickens aren’t immortal either.

But as Steve Hamilton pointed out, “That’s a pretty hard-boiled story.”

“I get a lot of plot problems solved while driving,” said Tess Gerritsen, “especially while driving across Texas.” Gerritsen also plays the fiddle in an Irish-music band in Maine and is a MD. She writes best-selling medical thrillers in her spare time. Death becomes her.

Anne Perry, who lives in a small village in Scotland where there are only 500 people, has to rely on getting “an endless supply of faces, ways of walking and gestures for my novels — from watching TV.” And I bet she gets lots of ideas on how to kill people too, just by watching TV. I bet that at least 600 people meet the Grim Reaper on TV on any given day spent in Televisionland.

Hamilton writes at night, after the family has gone to bed. “The idea of me getting up and working at 6:00 am is pure science-fiction.” But all four authors prefer to write when it is quiet.

“I have to listen to my characters’ voices,” said Gerritsen.

Hamilton was having a whole bunch of trouble writing about a hero who was an urban private investigator. And then,”I heard a voice in my head saying, ‘I live in a cabin in the wilderness and I have a bullet in my heart,’ and this character, Alex McKnight, just stepped out from my mind.” And murder-mystery readers everywhere are glad that Alex did.

“I identify with characters, envision them,” said Perry, “and find their vulnerabilities. And they all have some sort of vulnerability, even the villains.”

Gerritsen added, “When I can’t get started, I wait and listen; listen to the voices most different from myself. If I were to write from my own point of view, I’d get bored. My characters are never boring.”

And all of these writers are grateful for their readers. As Hamilton put it, “I still can’t believe that people love my books.” And Grafton sees her fans as friends. At BoucherCon, I watched Grafton stand and sign books for her fans for two and a half hours straight, without any breaks.

These four authors have sold millions of books about death. So what’s my point? Have I learned more about the Big Sleep by reading these books? Not really. But I have learned that the important thing about death is to realize that I am still among the living — and, until a whole big bunch more people besides Jesus (and possibly Lazarus) come back from the dead and tell me how much fun it all is on the Other Side, I would prefer to keep it that way.

PS: If, despite being a murder-mystery lover, you are still truly curious about death and what will happen to you when you die, just keep voting for RepubliDems. They and their pals on Wall Street and War Street will have all the rest of us joining the ranks of the dead sooner rather than later, years and years before our time.

According to one right-wing publication I read recently, the whole purpose of the government shut-down is to “DeFund Obamacare!” So between trying to defund ObamaCare and shutting down government services, that alone should kill off thousands of us. The plot thickens!

However, Single-Payer healthcare could save millions of lives in America, and over one trillion dollars as well — and do all this without any computer snarl-ups or sabotage. But no one in Washington appears to be interested in Single-Payer.

PPS: And in the immortal words of Dr. Richard Webber, “We’re all going to die. We don’t get much say about how or when. But we do get to decide on how we’re going to live. So do it. Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger, kinder, more compassionate? Decide.”

***********************

I also have photos of additional authors at the conference: Johnny Shaw, Cara Black, Lisa Brackman, Robert Kroese, Kelli Stanley, Rhys Bowen, Marcia Clark, Rebecca Tope, Peter Barus, Robin Spano, Lee Goldberg and Louise Penney at http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2013/11/big-shots-four-best-selling-crime-novel.html

October 31, 2013

Fukushima: “If you knew sushi…”

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 11:20 am

OMG, I’ve just finished reading a really scary article about how even the seemingly-too-big-to-fail Pacific Ocean has become pretty much radioactive, thanks to a constant onslaught of 300 tons of nuclear-waste-contaminated water still pouring into it daily from Fukushima’s damaged nuclear reactors http://thetruthwins.com/archives/28-signs-that-the-west-coast-is-being-absolutely-fried-with-nuclear-radiation-from-fukushima.

Here’s a brief sample of power-points from that article, “28 signs that the West Coast is being absolutely fried with nuclear radiation from Fukushima”:

4. Something is causing fish all along the west coast of Canada to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.

7. Experts have found very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast.

8. One test in California found that 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna were contaminated with radiation from Fukushima.

11. Some experts believe that we could see very high levels of cancer along the west coast just from people eating contaminated fish…

18. According to a professor at Tokyo University, 3 gigabecquerels of cesium-137 are flowing into the port at Fukushima Daiichi every single day.

23. The immense amounts of nuclear radiation getting into the water in the Pacific Ocean has caused environmental activist Joe Martino to issue the following warning: “Your days of eating Pacific Ocean fish are over.”

However, as deadly-nightmarish and horrendously future-threateningly-scary as this article may be, I’ll bet you anything that it’s not going to make even a small change to Americans’ current thinking about the Pacific ocean, radioactivity in general or even eating tuna-fish sandwiches. Why not? Because whenever we Americans read about some sort of catastrophic generality like this, we tend to just shrug our shoulders and move on. “Nothing to see here, folks. Doesn’t effect me.”

This is the same kind of thinking that Americans have about climate change. We view it with alarm for about a nano-second generally — but don’t individually seem to mind a little warm weather in January as it applies to us personally. And then we happily continue to drive our gas-guzzling cars and let corporations pollute our air. “As long as it doesn’t effect me…” But the Fukushima disaster IS effecting us now. Personally. Apparently there is now even radiation in our own freaking sushi!
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/397-science/20136-how-science-is-telling-us-all-to-revolt

Americans also don’t seem to care if all those undepleted uranium bombs that War Street drops on Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Libya (and now Syria) cause horrible cancers and hideous birth defects on the other side of the world. “That doesn’t effect me either.”

But what if you love a good salmon dinner or some California rolls or a tuna-noodle casserole? Are horrible cancers and hideous birth defects going to follow you home now too?

And are you now going to have to bring a Geiger counter along with you whenever you go to the fish store to shop?

PS: Here’s even further bad news about radioactivity in the Pacific, from a recent article in CounterPunch:

“There are three major problems at Fukushima:

1. Three reactor cores are missing [!!!???!!!];

2. Radiated water has been leaking from the plant in mass quantities for 2.5 years;

3. Eleven thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, perhaps the most dangerous things ever created by humans, are stored at the plant and need to be removed. 1,533 of those are in a very precarious and dangerous position. Each of these three could result in dramatic radiation events, unlike any radiation exposure humans have ever experienced.” http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/25/the-global-threat-of-fukushima/

Holy sheep dookie! This means that the danger of an atomic explosion blowing up the planet is even greater now than it was way back in the 1950s! And the only difference between then and now seem to be that now it may actually be happening — and also that, nowadays, nobody seems to care any more.

PPS: And while we’re on the subject of slow and painful death, let’s also talk about the Reagan-Clinton-Bush-Obama administration and their one big interconnected Endless War. Exactly how are we paying for all this endless and unnecessary blood-letting? Let me count the ways:

1. War Street gets all kinds of money for drones — and that money comes directly from funds that should have gone to shore up America’s crumbling infrastructure.

2. War profiteers receive a bottomless budget allowance to blow up and gravely injure hundreds of thousands of women and children in the Middle East — and that money comes directly out of our budgets for medical care and hospitals here at home http://blackagendareport.com/content/beyond-spin-some-facts-about-affordable-care-act.

3. Wall Street sends American soldiers all over the world to act as its global corporations’ extortionists, enforcers and thugs — and this Mafia-like “protection” racket is paid for by drastic cuts to American veterans’ benefits.

4. Israeli neo-cons get billions of $$$ to endlessly reign white phosphorus down on school children in Palestine http://www.usslibertyveterans.org/files/Title%2018%20Chapter%20118%20War%20Crimes.pdf – and America’s budget for schools here at home shrinks drastically in order to pay for this illegal and brutal Occupation.

5. Oil companies steal oil routinely from other countries by using “preemptive war” — and Americans pay for these wars with $$$ cuts to our hometown fire department budgets and police funding. And now corporate lobbies are once again putting pressure on their (not our) Congressional representatives to make very serious cuts to our Social Security and MediCare in order to pay for even more endless wars for oil http://www.alternet.org/economy/nine-democratic-senators-side-gop-entitlement-cuts

6 thru 666. In the last 30 years, your lifestyle and my lifestyle have been greatly diminished in many many many other countless ways — so that Wall Street and War Street can live out their fantasy lives of aggrandizement and wealth beyond our own wildest dreams. And this sordid list of money-grubbing by the wealthy shadow figures who have their greedy fingers clandestinely dipped into America’s pockets goes on and on and on http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18278-let-the-young-and-middle-aged-tea-partiers-pay-their-own-cash-for-parents-medical-care-and-retiremnt.

But at no point, ever, do the American people ever come out on top. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/22/denmark-happiest-country_n_4070761.html

October 21, 2013

Murder mystery at the NY State Museum: A 9-11 whodunnit

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 12:33 pm

While I was in Albany, NY recently, I heard about a museum exhibit called “The Mystery of the Albany Mummies” and, according to the museum’s brochure, these two mummies have been put through every scientific test known to science so that we can now know everything about them that there is to know. Mystery solved.

And at the New York State Museum, also in Albany, there is also a huge exhibit regarding the World Trade Center and 9-11. But when I went to see that exhibit, I got more confused instead of being less confused. Two major questions immediately stood out in my mind. Or perhaps three. Or more.

First, one part of the exhibit stated that lots of personal items were found in the rubble — including jewelry, gold rings and even credit cards. Huh? Steel melted on 9-11-01 but credit cards didn’t?

Second, the exhibit made a big point about the Towers being held up by exterior steel beams, and also that the interior floors collapsed onto each other because of their weight. So the interiors of the buildings collapsed, according to the exhibit. But then why did the exterior steel girders collapse too? Under the pressure? Because they melted?

Then why didn’t the desks and toys and other paraphernalia at the exhibit collapse and melt too?

I’m confused.

Third, a lot of the items on exhibit were all covered by gray ash — but not the kind that results from burning office paper. So what kind of ash was it? The kind caused by thermite? We may never know. But some enterprising curator could solve this mystery for me in a New York minute — by just testing that freaking ash for traces of explosives. Sherlock Holmes would have done that. Or that guy from CSI. With all of those forensic crime-scene shows on TV, one would think that Americans would demand at least the same level of inquiry that Ted Danson would have delivered. But no.

Why haven’t the Twin Towers been put through the same rigorous scientific scrutiny as the Twin Mummies of Albany?

Darned if I know.

And also, if they had all those girders and fire trucks and photos on exhibit, why didn’t they also have the airplanes’ black boxes and the NORAD reports on exhibit too? And the NSA reports and the “chatter” from Dick Cheney’s war room? I wish they’d had a section devoted solely to “conspiracy theories”. And a section devoted to means, motive and opportunity as well! And why did this museum stick so closely to the “official story” even though the exhibits themselves contradicted each other?

There was also some verbiage at the exhibit about how the Twin Towers held up for an hour or so at first — until the heat from the fires melted the steel even though the jet fuel had immediately burned off. So the burning jet fuel didn’t cause the meltdown? Huh? What did I miss?

The museum’s graphic photos of the Twin Towers collapsing in on themselves showed what had to be a controlled demolition — because if even a few of the 237 steel girders holding up Towers 1 and 2 had melted even a fraction of a second faster than others, the WTC would have toppled over to one side like a child’s stack of blocks, possibly taking out the Wall Street stock exchange with it — or at least a bunch of churches, hotels, office buildings or banks. And we all know that didn’t happen. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-shutdown-of-the-u-s-government-and-debt-default-a-dress-rehearsal-for-the-privatization-of-the-federal-state-system/5354066

And then there were those horrible photos of people falling from windows, windows that would had been impossible to open by human hands but which had possibly been blown out by the explosion of the airplane fuel, taking hundreds of unwilling human beings with them too. But how many more survivors of the original explosions had been blown out through even more usually-unopenable windows when Tower 1 and Tower 2 suddenly pancaked down, evenly and synchronistically destroying 237 steel girders per floor as they went?

By this time I was almost in tears.

I finally left the exhibit sorely saddened by all those lives that had been lost — but also scratching my head in confusion.

Next I’m going to go visit the Twin Mummies — where there are scientific methods at work that I can actually follow and understand.

PS: What the freak would be the motivation for creating a “Second Pearl Harbor” and then covering it up? Perhaps it was six TRILLION dollars? That’s the amount of money that war profiteers have made (so far) from the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Egypt, etc. Means, motive and opportunity. No mystery here.

That’s $75,000 that has been paid to War Street by every single man, woman and child in America. Sounds like a huge incentive to me. And oil companies’ motives? The oil fields of Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc? And the bees still all buzzing around the oil in Iran? With Kuwait and Saudi Arabia next?

“But, Jane,” you might say, “Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are our allies. An attack on them would never happen.” You think not? Well. Saddam Hussein used to be War Street’s ally too and look what happened to him. And America used to be Big Oil’s ally as well but with six trillion dollars at stake, Big Oil clearly would have had no problems selling America out. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Anything’s possible.

PPS: By asking just a few simple questions, Paul Craig Roberts does a much better job than the NY State Museum of describing what happened on 9/11/01:

Question 1: “The national security state was defeated by a few rag tag Muslims with box cutters and a sick old man dying from renal failure while holed up in a cave in Afghanistan, and no heads rolled.” Why wasn’t anyone in our government ever held accountable for this spectacular failure?

Question 2: “Do you know what temperature self-cleaning ovens reach?” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36195.htm

PPPS: According to investigative reporter Russ Baker, “George H. W. Bush may be one of the few Americans of his generation who cannot recall exactly where he was when John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963.” And Poppy Bush had all kinds of reasons for wanting Kennedy dead. http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/10/02/bush-and-the-jfk-hit-part-3-where-was-poppy-november-22-1963/ Plus Poppy Bush was working for the CIA at the time of Kennedy’s death. And the CIA hated JFK! http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/09/16/part-1-mr-george-bush-of-the-central-intelligence-agency/

Baker also states in his articles that Grandpoppy Prescott Bush, that guy who chose being a cheerleader for the Nazis over cheering for America during WWII, also hated JFK. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

So. If Grandpoppy Bush had no qualms about apparently siding with the Nazis over his own country, and Poppy Bush had no qualms about participating in the assassination of a sitting U.S. president in cold blood, what makes us think that Baby Bush would suddenly develop qualms about assassinating the Twin Towers for fun and profit? The apple never falls far from the tree.

PPPPS: So. Twelve years later, what are we Americans finally planning to do about all these clearly still-lingering and strong doubts and suspicions? Open a new and impartial 9-11 commission scientific investigation run by Ted Danson, one that is not afraid to ask the big questions no matter where the answers might lead? A truly unbiased investigation that would finally put all of our minds to rest? Or should we just continue to do nothing and merely be grateful that we each got to pony up $75,000 to War Street — and not even more than that?

October 12, 2013

A World War II memorial in California has closed too

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — Jane Stillwater @ 4:16 pm

If there are any “Greatest Generation” vets on the west coast looking for a closed WWII memorial to protest at right now, boy do I have a good one for you. It’s the Rosie-the-Riveter National Park in Richmond, CA. Come out and protest that closing too. http://now.msn.com/betty-reid-soskin-furloughed-92-year-old-park-ranger-wants-to-get-back-to-work

During World War II, my father was in charge of the Fleet post office in the Pacific and he wrote many poignant letters home to us about what he saw and did “Over There” — and how much he missed his little family. And I in turn donated those letters to the Rosie museum. But I digress.

Like those vets that are protesting the shut-down in Washington, I too am truly pissed off that this national park is closed. And I’m also very angry that even after shutting down so many federal offices that actually benefit Americans, Congress still forces us to pay billions of dollars a day to kill women and children in the Middle East.

And we are also still allowed to pay outrageously huge salaries to those jokers in Congress who got us in this mess in the first place.

And we can, of course, still be allowed pay government welfare to agribusiness, oil barons, Monsanto — and even to loggers in our national parks (the very ones that have been shut down to us tourists).

It’s a rich person’s world we live in today. Can’t afford to buy a congressman? Then you are [poop] out of luck. Shut you down.

So here’s what we do. We take a lesson from what Rosie-the-Riveter did. We put aside our individual lives, feuds and agendas and we work together to save our country. We grow victory gardens instead of groveling to Monsanto. We reach out to each other — to the left and to the right — and we come together as a nation — proud, unbeatable America! And then we oust anyone in Congress that voted for this shut-down in the first place (and take away their elaborate pensions too!)

Because if we, the new Rosies, don’t stop this government shut-down now (and the greedy bustards behind it) then the next thing we know, these avaricious sell-outs will also be shutting down our Social Security, our MediCare (which should be for everyone, not just for the Greatest Generation), our infrastructure, our schools — and ourselves.

“But why do you work for a place that memorializes war,” I asked ranger Betty Reid Soskin one day while visiting the impressive Rosie-the-Riveter national park. And she answered that what this national park also memorializes to her is, “a whole country working together.”  http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2007/02/sidetracked-richmond-shipyards-rich.html

Moral here? “Don’t sit under the apple tree” with congressional representatives who don’t represent us! And also let’s “Accentuate the Positive” too. We Americans have been controlled by fear of “terrorists” and “the other” and “liberals” and even “wingnuts” for long enough. If our country is to survive, we MUST work together. That was Rosie’s whole message.

And now the Rosie-the-Riveter memorial in Richmond, CA, is closed too.

October 8, 2013

Benjamin Netanyahu: Major player on the world stage?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 12:37 pm

The other day I was watching the Charlie Rose show on TV, during the guest appearance of Benjamin Netanyahu. And much to my amazement, Mr. Netanyahu acted, talked and comported himself like he was the head of some huge major nation — not just a minor Middle Eastern country smaller than New Jersey.

It was as though Netanyahu thought himself to be on the same level of importance and influence as Obama or Putin — more influential by far than Britain’s prime minister, much more important than the president of France. The guy practically even shot his (very expensive, tailor-made) cuffs! http://warincontext.org/2013/10/05/video-max-blumenthal-on-goliath-life-and-loathing-in-greater-israel/

And why not? In reality, Netanyahu really IS more important than the president of the United States or even the Queen of England. When Netanyahu asks almost every major world leader to jump, that leader rapidly answers, “How high?”

What kind of Frankenstein monster have we created?

And, more important, will we mere villagers with pitchforks ever be enough to stop Netanyahu before he turns into the world’s next King Richard III? Probably not.

An average American, just your average man-on-the-street, knows instinctively that it is WRONG to kill people, to occupy other countries, to use chemical weapons on women and children and to use tanks, bombs and nuclear weapons to steal land from shopkeepers and farmers who cannot defend themselves. But psychopaths and major players on the world stage such as Netanyahu apparently don’t get this.

PS: Netanyahu is a neo-con. Never forget that. And the entire goal of any card-carrying neo-con, both in America and abroad, is not to advance Christianity or Judaism, no no no. The entire goal of every single neo-con is to make oodles of money — at our expense. “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine too.” Never forget that. http://www.roitov.com/articles/rayq.htm

Neo-cons are always happily busy creating a world consisting of haves and have-nots. And guess which ones they want us to be? If you have any doubt, just check out what life is like in a country completely dominated by the neo-con way of life: “Total militarized lunacy”. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/04/total-militarized-lunacy/

And, also, if you have happened to notice recently that the price of gold has gone steadily down lately, please thank a neo-con for that too. Neo-cons have worked very hard to make this happen. Why? Because if gold prices fall, this forces small investors to look around for other options for making a profit — like investing in Wall Street’s various ponzi schemes and casinos. And ponzi schemes and casinos can’t make money unless they have suckers to place bets. And why would a sensible person bet on Wall Street when gold is a sure thing?

PPS: New rule: Neo-cons will only be allowed to start a new war after they’ve finished their last one!

October 1, 2013

Shut down the military? Go for it!

Filed under: Uncategorized — Jane Stillwater @ 11:43 am

The government has just shut down? What a wonderful opportunity to re-set, to start again.

Shut down the military? Save six trillion dollars in just a few years, balance the budget immediately, get weaponized tanks out of our cities and stop killing people abroad? Absolutely.

Shut down the nuclear killing fields? No more deformed babies born in Kosovo and Iraq and Libya and Gaza and Afghanistan? No more possible Chernobyls and Fukashimas here in America? No more deadly stockpiles of nuclear waste being generated daily that will last long after the human race is toast? I’m so there.

Shut down the CIA? We’d have world peace within the year! No more rendition and torture camps, no more destabilization of countries with oil? I want that. Badly.

Shut down the NSA? No more spying on our phones and computers? George Orwell would heave a sigh of relief from his grave — and I certainly would too.

Shut down all those perqs to RepubliDem Congressmen? Why not. They have never earned their keep anyway.

Shut down all those subsidies to agribusiness, Monsanto, the Koch brothers’ lumber empire, etc.? Bring back the small farmer and the Lorax? Just imagine that. Wonderful.

Shut down the subsidies to Big Pharma? So we could once again afford to buy our medicine without going to Canada? I’m certainly willing to give that a try.

Shut down Homeland Security? Stop wasting money checking our junk and irradiating us at airports and making us paranoid and spending our money to run a police state? Whoopie!

Shut down the FBI and all those other agencies that didn’t protect JFK and aren’t protecting you and me but rather the corporate mega-state? And spend all their time putting citizen-protestors in jail for years and pursuing whistle-blowers but let Wall Street mega-criminals go? I have no problem with that.

Shut down MediCare? Just try it. You’ll have an army of irate old folks in wheelchairs and walkers descending on Washington with canes in our hands and blood in our eye!

Shut down Social Security? That we earned over time with our bare hands? Do you really want hundreds of thousands of truly-pissed-off senior citizens morphing into full-rebellion mode? The Greatest Generation brought down the Third Reich. And it can bring down the Fourth Reich too.

Just as soon as we find our false teeth.

 

September 29, 2013

Albany NY: Solving the mystery of public transportation

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 11:14 am

So I went off to Albany, New York, last week, to attend a convention for murder-mystery writers and readers, where I got to meet a whole bunch of my favorite writers — and have the photos to prove it too http://bcon2013.com/

But the biggest mystery in Albany, for me, was how to get around on its bus system. By the time I left that fair city, however, I was the Agatha Christie of bus schedules — but had to do a whole lot of gumshoe surveillance first, before this mystery could be solved.

Why in the world would anyone want to drive a car anywhere when taking public transportation is so much more adventurous, exciting and, er, challenging? Forget all that stuff they say about taking trains and buses because it is good for the environment. Taking public transportation is good for the soul!

Where else can you have so many adventures in so short a time? Or get lost so often? Or have so many helpful people come to your rescue? Or even meet so many interesting people? When you’re alone in the bubble of your own car, who do you meet? No one.

So I left my airport hotel (after having just spent three whole hours on the phone with AT&T, trying desperately to explain to them why I still wanted access to my Yahoo e-mail account and they were not making that possible) and went to stand at a bus stop in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts on the road to Schenectady. No buses appeared for almost an hour — so I stuck out my thumb. But no one stopped. How come people always stop to pick up Jack Reacher — but apparently a little old lady with a broken arm and struggling along with a laptop bag, a huge carry-all purse and a roll-away suitcase is far too intimidating to stop for. But I digress.

Then the bus into Albany finally came. But it was the wrong bus. But then some nice lady from the Capital District Transit Authority talked me down off the wall over the phone. “Can you see a WalMart from where you are standing?” No. “How about a Home Depot?” Yes. “Well, then, just walk two blocks north from there to the stop for the 182 bus.” Sure. But which way is north?

Another hour later, I finally got into downtown Albany with only two mistakes — all rectified by various helpful people who I met on the bus, America’s salt of the earth.

And the convention went well. I met all kinds of authors and got all kinds of free books. And also stumbled across the wonderful New York State Library’s seventh-floor computer room — with its awesome view of the Empire State Plaza and the Catskills.

The Empire State Plaza is all built in that grand Mussolini/Stalin/Mao type of imperial architecture that reminded me of the main plaza in Pyongyang, North Korea. But, hey, it was built by a Rockefeller so it’s entitled to look imperial.

Albany has a whole bunch of amazing architecture, from its old colonial buildings and amazing gingerbread state house to its modern convention center, appropriately called The Egg. Definitely worth a trip there.

But now it’s six o’clock and time to fathom the mystery of how to catch a bus out to the motel I will be staying at. But then I got lost again, ended up walking six blocks in the wrong direction and getting stranded on some dead-end freeway on-ramp, still carrying the roll-away luggage and the laptop bag and the carry-all purse — plus an additional 20 pounds of free books. And the broken left arm.

And then I got on the wrong bus. Again. “I’m sorry,” said the bus driver, “but you must have wanted the 182.” Really? “So just walk back that way another three blocks.” Really?

And then there it was, the glorious 182 bus, stopped at the light. I waved at the driver frantically. No use. “Not an official stop,” he mouthed and waved. So then I desperately and hopelessly chased the damn bus, running penguin-style on my poor painful knees for the next five (5) blocks. With the purse, the roll-away luggage, the laptop case and the new bag of books, all balanced on and/or being dragged along behind me with my one functional arm.

But then the bus got stuck in traffic — but I still wouldn’t have caught up with it if everyone on the bus hadn’t been cheering me on out the windows and forcing the driver to stop for the penguin-stepping little old lady and the roll-away luggage and the books and the laptop case and the broken arm who had just sprinted five blocks “through the traffic like a mounted cavalier,” to quote Chuck Berry.

And guess what? One of the authors from the BoucherCon convention, Robert Kroese, was on my bus too and gave me an autographed copy of his new book! http://robertkroese.com/wordpress/

Now I ask you. Would I ever have had such excellent (and mysterious) adventures if I had only just rented a car?

September 17, 2013

Shot through the heart: Why guns need to go

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — Jane Stillwater @ 11:28 am

The Washington DC Navy Yard massacre just happened. And what are the chances of something like that happening in America again? And again and again? Really good.

According to the CDC and Google, the fifth most frequent cause of death in America is “unintentional injuries” — including those inflicted by guns. The tenth most frequent cause of death in America is suicide, including those involving guns. And the 16th most frequent cause of death in America is homicide, including a whole lot of murder-by-gun. And even though NRA lobbyists now work night and day to keep the CDC from collecting statistics on the actual number of Americans shot and/or killed by guns every year, those numbers are probably right up there with the number of Americans who are killed by cancer and heart disease each year http://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-nra-kills-gun-violence-research-2013-1.

But even though, thanks to the NRA, we don’t have access to the exact statistics on deaths by gunshot, there’s still a really good chance that you and me could also be killed by a gun — one in 24,974 (and that doesn’t even include death by accidental gunshot injuries or gunshot suicides) http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/02/daily-chart-7?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/dangerofdeath.

There are definitely a lot better odds in favor of us getting killed by our fellow Americans than by terrorists (one in 20 million are the odds of us getting killed by a terrorist). Look what happened at the Navy Yard for instance. Apparently Aaron Alexis was NOT a terrorist, just another fellow-American with guns having a bad day http://www.timesreporter.com/features/x1837085526/Police-responding-to-reported-shooter-at-Navy-Yard.

Based on even the vague statistics now available, the chances of something like the Navy Yard massacre happening in America again are really really really good. And the chances of something like this happening to you and me are really good too.

PS: Last night I had a rather graphic dream informing me explicitly that the manner in which I myself would meet my own demise would be to get shot through the heart. Bam! Right in the middle of the ribcage. Dead as a doornail. That’s me.

So if Disney is right and dreams really do come true, I now know exactly how I will die. No sweet, painless “went peacefully in her sleep” good death for me. Apparently I’m gonna become just another gunshot statistic. Part of the fifth cause of death? Part of the tenth cause of death? Of the sixteenth cause of death? Or just another statistic in the next Navy Yard or Sandy Hook or Aurora or Columbine massacre? But does it really matter which category I’m gonna fall into? Dead is dead.

“But, Jane,” you might ask, “if dreams really do come true, how can you prevent yourself from meeting this sad fate?” That’s a no-brainer. Lawmakers could easily save my life (and also the lives of approximately 35,000 other Americans this year alone) simply by making guns less accessible. Works for me. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/american-gun-deaths-to-exceed-traffic-fatalities-by-2015.html

But as things now stand, with so many of my country’s armed killers abroad and so many of my country’s armed killers at home, I won’t be the only one to get shot through the heart. America will also be shot through the heart.

PS: This weekend I will be attending BoucherCon http://bcon2013.com/, a murder-mystery writers and readers convention in Albany, NY, and will be staying in some shady Sam-Spade-type hotel in a sleazy Jack-Reacher part of town. Perhaps that is where I will meet my death by gunshot? And then have hundreds of crime-novel buffs all standing around, ready to solve the Whodunnit part of my homicide! Awesome.

September 11, 2013

What if YOU spent 2/3 of your salary on guns?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — Jane Stillwater @ 1:04 pm

Imagine that you get up every morning, go off to work, work your butt off all week and then wait in happy anticipation for your paycheck on Friday. And then it arrives. But instead of getting the full amount that you’d been eagerly expecting, you only get one-third of it. “Yikes!” you exclaim in dismay. “What happened to the rest of it!”

“But don’t you remember,” says your company’s payroll clerk with a yawn, having heard all this stuff before from other employees time and again, “that you spent all the rest of your money on guns.” Guns? I bought guns? “Sure you did.”

“But what am I going to do about my rent money and my cable bill and paying off student loans and my trips to the mall and, er, not to mention food?”

“Sorry, guy, but our records show that for the past 60 years, you have definitely — and apparently voluntarily — spent at least two-thirds of your income on guns.” 60 years? The last whole freaking 60 years? I did? http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-10-2013/s-s–puf-n-stuff

“But how come I’ve never noticed it before?”

If something like this has just happened to you, you might justifiably still be in shock. But here’s some good news. You are not alone! Every single other citizen in America right now is in your exact same boat. For approximately the last 60 years, two-thirds of America’s national hard-earned income has been spent exclusively on guns. Two-thirds of all our taxes. And two-thirds of all America’s credit-card debts too. http://www.oneminuteforpeace.org/budget

“But if I had spent all that money on guns for all those years, then where are they?” you might also ask. Good question. For all the trillions of dollars that we Americans have spent on guns in the last 60 years, you would think that every single one of us would have at least one or two Glocks, a couple of semi-automatics or at least even a Deringer stashed in the back of our closets or under our beds, right?

Then you would be wrong. We’ve got nothing to show for our rash 60-year spending spree except for a couple of million corpses, a goodly part of which are women and children. And who wants a pile of dead babies stinking up the house! http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18182-republicans-are-torn-between-their-racist-hatred-of-obama-and-eternal-love-of-bombing-the-crap-out-of-the-middle-east

PS: Actually, the annual American tax budget allotment for guns is only 57% — that we know of. But who the freak even knows how much we also spend on black budgets and covert ops and foreign rendition prisons and spying on evil-doers like you and me http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.11/patton_pr.html

PPS: On September 18, I’m leaving for Albany, NY to attend a murder-mystery writers and readers convention there http://bcon2013.com/.

This trip won’t be as exciting or exotic as going to, say, Afghanistan or Iran or North Korea again, but it’s all I can afford right now — plus never forget that it is America that is the source of almost all war in the world today and therefore, if you are a war correspondent, it is always best to remember the most important crime novel assumption of all: When looking for a killer, always look close to home first http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/436-2nd-amendment-rights/19283-focus-why-is-it-easier-to-get-an-assault-weapon-than-to-vote.

September 5, 2013

Fukushima, climate change & war: Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jane Stillwater @ 8:22 pm

Yeah, I know. The Bible says that there needs to be FOUR horsemen involved if we are actually going to have a truly genuine Apocalypse — so having only three horsemen arrive at our doorstep doesn’t really count. Or does it? It certainly looks to me like only three lone riders, by working overtime and really putting their hearts and minds into the job, will actually be able to put it off all by themselves!

“And the greatest of these is…” war. Ever since mankind invented the machine gun, it’s been all downhill for us human beings. From the trenches of World War I to the jungles of Rwanda and the halls of Columbine and Sandy Hook, war has been the curse of the modern world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiMfm4my4dk.

Oops, my bad. Most of the killing in Rwanda was done with machetes. And school shootings can’t be considered real wars — just kids using adult methods to solve problems. Plus World War I was supposed to be “The war to end all war”. Fat lot of good it did there http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175743/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_africom%27s_gigantic_%22small_footprint%22.

In any case, War, our first Horseman of doom, has been doing pretty damn good for himself in the last 100 years, systematically killing hundreds of millions of people and polluting the Earth in the process. And yet people still keep falling for his sweet siren song time after time — and then always end up crashed to death on the rocks http://www.roitov.com/articles/kerry.htm

“Please, Daddy, please? Just one more war?”

“Oh all right.” And then yet another country is destroyed. And countries aren’t like crabgrass or blackberries. They don’t just grow back. Especially if undepleted uranium bombs are involved http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/making-the-world-safe-for-banksters-syria-in-the-cross-hairs-by-ellen-brown/.

So what about the other two Horsemen? One of them has obviously gone nuclear. That massive ongoing radioactive leak at Fukushima is like a grand tsunami of radiation heading our way http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23918882. Soon there will be two-headed calves being born all over the west coast of California. Enough said about that.

And climate change? Like those proverbial frogs put into hot water, we are failing to notice our Earth’s gradual temperature rise until it’s too late — and we’re all been cooked like frog-leg fricassee.

But there actually is a fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse besides the three more obvious ones I’ve included here. This one is more subtle. He may be called “Hubris” by most of us — but his nickname is “Greed”.

PS: It’s been 44 days since I broke my left arm in July, but it still really hurts. And if a mere broken arm hurts so bad, imagine how it must feel to be napalmed. Or hit with shrapnel. Or attacked by drones or undepleted uranium bombs. Or to lose your legs to a land mine. You guys up in the military-industrial complex? Stop dreaming about more and better ways to invent Death Star weapons to kill off the planet — and start developing more empathy instead.

Start imagining how you would feel if war maimed your own children — or even yourself — and then, for goodness sake, prove for the very first time that you too are actually human, let go of your greed and hubris, stop trying to play at being some false-god figure and develop some freaking compassion!

PPS: Here’s yet another example of American military-corporate Hubris: Back in 2008 when I was an embedded reporter in the Green Zone, John McCain came by and gave us media guys a little talk, running on and on about how wonderful the war on Iraq was. And now he’s back to spouting that exact same garbage about how fabulous a war on Syria would be http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2008/01/straight-talk-at-his-baghdad-press.html.

But what I didn’t understand then and still can’t understand now is how the American military-industrial complex can always act so virtuously superior regarding the use of WMDs and chemical weapons — and still keep a straight face.

To hear the White House, the media, the CIA, the RepubliDem war hawks and the corporate-driven military tell it, you would think that Syria was the very first nation in the entire world ever to use chemical weapons — as if the US had never ever used them ever before. Like we had never sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, never sprayed Kosovo with undepleted uranium, never ever gave Saddam Hussein the gas that he used on the Kurds, and never ever paid for all that white phosphorus that their Israeli buddies sprayed on school children in Gaza.

Really?

 

August 31, 2013

Back to School: Why property values rise when schools are excellent

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jane Stillwater @ 12:36 pm

I live in Berkeley. My granddaughter Mena is about to start kindergarten here — at an excellent school. But a lot of people who live in Oakland are now really really jealous because they want their kids to go to an excellent school in Berkeley too. So why live in Oakland and risk going to a crappy school? Why not just move to Berkeley? Because the property values in Berkeley are some of the highest in America and, get over it, sometimes people just can’t afford to live here unless they gots big bucks.

Berkeley is no longer the sweet little hippie town out to save the world that it used to be http://berkeley.patch.com/groups/local-connections/p/berkeley-not-in-top-7-us-hippie-towns. Now Berkeley appears to be a yuppie’s dream come true.

How ironic — that those children of hippies who were raised here, and then rebelled, became yuppies and moved to the suburbs to get away from Berzerkeley? They would never be able to afford to buy a house here now. Heck, I couldn’t even afford to live here myself if I hadn’t lived in the same place for 33 years.

But back to my hypothesis: That people move to cities and towns where the schools are good — simply because the schools ARE good.

So which comes first? The chicken or the egg? Do property values go up because the schools are good in any particular city — or do the schools become good because property values have already gone up?

I’d like to suggest a good way to find out for sure. Let’s pull all of our myriad troops out of Europe and Asia and Africa and North and South America (and most likely Australia and Antarctica too) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35977.htm and spend all those wasted trillions of dollars that we’ll then save on giving just one low-rent city in America the best schools in the entire world instead!

Let’s take Detroit for example.

If Detroit was guaranteed beyond any doubt to have the very best school system in all of the world, would YOU move there? I bet that you would. Would Mena and our family move there too? I bet you anything that we would be sorely tempted (except for the snow of course — I hate snow) http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18133-when-schools-become-dead-zones-of-the-imagination-a-critical-pedagogy-manifesto

PS: And for all you sparkling new kindergarteners throughout the world this September: Happy first day of school! And I hope that you also have the best schools and teachers in the world as well — and that they teach you love and kindness and how to think for yourselves. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/23/the-banality-of-racism-in-israel-s-most-liberal-city.html.

PPS: Berkeley Camp Tuolumne, one of the most beautiful places in the entire world, just burned to the ground in the Yosemite Rim fire. Let’s take the money we save by not invading Syria and use it to bring Camp Tuolumne back to life again. Who cares about Syria besides oil barons? I care deeply and profoundly about my lost Camp Tuolumne paradise.

PPS: Berkeley Camp Tuolumne, one of the most beautiful places in the entire world, just burned to the ground in the Yosemite Rim fire. Let’s take the money we saved by not invading Syria and use it to bring Camp Tuolumne back to life again. Who cares about Syria besides oil barons? I care deeply and profoundly about my lost Camp Tuolumne paradise.

And here’s yet another example of how far from reality America’s corporate-owned government is now: Fukushima, apparently, is about to release enough radioactive waste to contaminate the entire planet — yet what is our “government” doing about this insane catastrophe? Getting ready to bomb Syria of course. A nuclear nightmare world-wide is brewing and corporate-owned America is claiming to worry about some fake-propaganda “chemical weapons” scam in Syria instead? That’s insane. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/08/130821-fukushima-latest-leak-how-is-it-different/

A deadly radiation tsunami is heading straight toward Berkeley — yet our corporate-owned government is only busy “fixing the information” and “wagging the dog” in the Middle East? It’s March 2003 deja vu all over again, only even more stupid.

August 24, 2013

Elder cleansing: Why is the GOP killing off its own base?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 11:41 pm

The GOP has developed such a callous and cold attitude toward slashing American senior citizens’ healthcare and Social Security benefits that it almost seems like a “put granny on an ice floe” mentality — or even elder cleansing. However, these cold-hearted right-wingers, even though they seem to be totally in love with throwing the Greatest Generation under the bus, need to be very careful what they wish for. Why? Because the aging white population of America is currently the GOP’s most loyal group of supporters — and the GOP appears to be killing off its own base.

The GOP’s recent massive efforts to eliminate HUD housing subsidies for seniors and to support banksters’ heartless foreclosure efforts on America’s old folks can only mean that even more homeless seniors will soon be found dead in cardboard-box coffins under even more freeways across the land. Oops, there goes another voting block that used to be in the GOP’s pocket — unless dead souls can vote.

And how about the GOP’s death grip on raising student-loan interest rates? I recently went to a symposium on the subject and learned that, under current GOP-sponsored regulations, a whole bunch over-60 voters will actually still be paying off their student loans from out of their Social Security checks! http://imgur.com/5GvWV And just how many of those desperately cash-strapped former students will be staunch and faithful Republicans? Party loyalty doesn’t pay off at all these days.

And major funders of the GOP such as the Koch brothers, Goldman-Sachs, Citizens United, Chevron, the American Bankers Association and the Chamber of Commerce don’t seem to have a moral bone in their body when it comes to straight-out greed. More GOP voters actually die because of greedy corporate behavior than the number of Americans who were killed in the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and the Twin Towers combined. Too bad. But then most of these voters were old anyway. http://evergreenedigest.org/corporation-psychopath

And what about this new Super-NAFTA secret treaty called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that the Grand Old Party is pushing so hard through Congress right now? How is that going to effect seniors after even more of America’s wealth is pumped out of our pockets and into the rich-dude Wall Street neo-con corporatist pipeline? http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/606/198/076/

And speaking of pipelines, how many more seniors are going to croak because of the fracking water they drink? http://www.upworthy.com/imagine-if-there-was-a-town-in-the-usa-where-you-couldnt-get-any-water-its-not-imaginary-anymore-10

And when I went camping in the high Sierras with my granddaughter Mena’s pre-school class last weekend, it was very curative and relaxing http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html. Someone else did all the cooking. However, I still wouldn’t want to be camping up there 24/7 — still not willing to join the Donner Party just yet, even despite all the GOP’s good intentions toward us seniors in that direction.

The GOP’s current policies toward its senior-citizen base are clearly so non-beneficial to our health that they remind me of that old Twilight Zone episode, “How to Serve Man”.

I may be old but I’m not dead quite yet — and, GOP, I would really like to keep it that way.

PS: Who else gets benefits from government largess? Global corporations, the ultimate welfare queens. So why doesn’t the GOP slash and burn corporate “entitlements” too?

And what part of the country receives the most food stamps, welfare payments, medicaid, educational aid, unemployment benefits, hurricane relief, etc? Why it’s the Red-State south of course — another firm base for the GOP that it is also busy trying to kill off. If you are a redneck, supporting the GOP is likely to get you killed too!

August 19, 2013

Madam Jane predicts: Don’t buy any more cars

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jane Stillwater @ 11:19 am

What ever happened to America’s old economic self-reliance? And when, exactly, did my country stop being a democracy? And exactly what can just one single solitary American like me do to save America from corporate plunder? http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2?c=bl3 I know! I’ll ask Madam Jane!

So I contacted my favorite fortune teller on her hot new Facebook page.

“I keep hearing all this nasty stuff about what is going on in America today — and it scares me,” I told her. “At this point in time, America is practically a NSA police state, our military has millions of uber-weapons trained on every country in the world including our own, corporate greed rules the day, and government-subsidized oil companies and coal companies and nuclear waste companies will have totally shut down the planet within 50 years.”

“That sounds about right,” replied hash-tag-M-J. “This planet’s 50-year warranty is just about up. You’ve pretty much nailed it.”

“But despite all this,” I continued to whine, “you never, never hear anyone in a real position of power even hint or suggest that a disaster like this might be happening — or that any intelligent solutions to our problems could possibly be found. All these jokers seem to come up with during these last crucial days are plans to eliminate abortions, stand their ground, buy more guns, kill more people, pollute more air and hand over even more perqs to large corporations. That’s just stupid. So what can we do that is smart?”

“Don’t buy any more cars.” Huh? That’s it? That’s all you got?

“If people stopped buying cars, then I wouldn’t have to sit through all those TV car commercials. Just sayin’.”

“Are you trying to tell me,” I said, “that the world’s future will be safe if only I can keep away from automobile showrooms? And if I never buy a new car again, that will that save the planet?”

“Pretty much.”

I just shook my head. But then I thought, hey, why not? Doesn’t sound any more crazier than giving international corporations huge tax breaks that American small businesses can only dream of — or privatizing prisons into slave-labor sweatshops or making it a whole lot harder for us average Americans to vote (or have our votes counted). http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18112-why-do-protesters-against-egregious-environmental-and-financial-crimes-get-arrested-but-not-corporate-perpetrators

Okay. No more car-buying for me.

“And when you — and seven billion single solitary other ordinary folks just like you — finally wake up and demand a stop to the Earth’s destruction, then corporations will be forced to follow,” said Madam Jane sagely.

“But do you predict that they will?”

“Of course they won’t,” might be one prediction that M.J. could give — or else, “Damn straight they will! People aren’t stupid,” might be the other. But which will it be? The lady or the tiger?

PS: My daughter Ashley the baker just invented a buttermilk pancake/bacon cupcake with maple syrup frosting. She calls it “The Breakfast Club”. Don’t even need Madam Jane to predict that it will be a great success http://www.loveatfirstbitebakery.com/

August 7, 2013

Palestinians & Native Americans: Where the Lost Tribes of Israel meet the Via Dolorosa

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Jane Stillwater @ 2:18 pm

How many times do you ever even think about Native Americans any more? When was the last time that you have ever even seen one? Unless you live on the Pine Ridge reservation or near Chimney Rock or just saw the new Lone Ranger movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjFsNSoDZK8 or watch reruns of “F-Troop,” I bet that they never even cross your mind.

You go to work, you watch TV and you do your shopping and laundry — yet hardly ever even think twice about the fact that, wherever you are in the United States right now, entire families of Native Americans at one time used to live on the very same land where you are standing at this exact moment http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2013/05/america-place-where-israeli-neo-cons.html.

And the same thing can easily be said about Palestinians and Israelis too. Israelis hardly ever even think about Palestinians any more — except perhaps when they appear in movies attacking wagon trains or in occasional sit-coms like “Arab Labor” http://www.linktv.org/arablabor.

And yet Palestinian families at one time lived on every single inch of Israeli land http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5d6af22c768b84cc207e514bf&id=68f5f52f1f&e=8077e02509.

“Sure, Jane.” you might say, “bad stuff sometimes happens — but to the victor always goes the spoils.” Yes, I too understand the concept of Lebensraum http://www.gtr5.com/summary_of_events.htm. But that doesn’t mean that I have to brag about it or be in-your-face aggressive about applauding that it happened or even reveling in the slaughter — like some people do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etXAm-OylQQ.

“We are the red men, down-among-the dead men…” And apparently the Lost Tribes of Israel too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYc-WrbxaqM&feature=youtu.be

PS: Here’s a great new idea for a bumper sticker that should be displayed on every single vehicle in occupied Bethlehem: “JESUS WAS A PALESTINIAN!” And He was. And He too was brutally driven off his land. And His family’s direct descendants are currently being brutally driven off their land too.

Yes, the Via Dolorosa — the Trail of Tears — is still alive and well in Palestine http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/08/05/317292/1300-palestinians-to-be-ethnically-cleansed-from-their-land/.

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