Deconstructing the news

they suffer for it, do they keep falling for every scam their rich oppressors and their oppressors' media pull on them? Why do they never learn their language well enough to figure things out? And why do they keep reproducing and inflicting all their stupidity and its consequences on more and more victims while stupidly denying the limitations of space? What's wrong with them?
    Well, for one thing, they're not philosophically very sharp, are they? Even though they HAVE seperate brains, functional to a point, as philosophizing mechanisms, their brains either don't work or aren't under their own control. There's no use calling that unbelievable, by the way. It's a fact.
    Thousands of years after the development of writing catalyzed a leap forward in the accumulation and supposed sharing of knowledge, hundreds of years after the invention of printing jumpstarted the worldwide spread of available knowledge, and in the midst of a computer revolution, which is expanding access to every facet of knowledge, while people have evolved technologically, and to varying degrees economically and even socially, and in some quarters politically, it IS an indisputable fact that over 99% of humanity have STILL not even slightly evolved philosophically.
     Philosophy itself has evolved. To write the documents on nottalkradio.com, I've got to have come a long way past Epicurus. But not only have not even 1% of humans come with me, almost 100% of the human race remain philosophically between cave men and the ancient Egyptians.
     People who wear clothes, drive cars, take high tech pills, do complex math problems, and can put on a show of moving printed words off a page, through their eyes, presumably through their brains, and out their mouths as real words -STILL - seldom speak coherently and, confronted by realistic discourse about any of the to-them most important ancient human delusions, apparently either can not or will not understand either what they read or what is said to them.
     Their entire pseudo understanding of the world they've lived in for a million years without ever paying any sustained coherent philosophical attention to it is faked by aping endlessly rehearsed expressions and reciting memorized slogans. But, you may say (if there IS a you out there who can read these sentences), they certainly act as if they had passionate convictions. Sure they do, but it's an act, and even the act of acting is merely copied.
     Here and there there's an inventor, one human in a thousand (you, my reader, I hope), whose brain always functions on its own and who can articulate his own ideas or analyze and corroborate the ideas of others, and maybe now and then there's a minute at a time when maybe even one out of three humans can manage a spontaneous series of coherent thoughts about something besides simple business, cars, sports, sex, cosmetics and celebrities, but for the most part, humanity's too numerous heads are, like the Scarecrow's, stuffed with shredded dictionaries and TV scripts. No wonder they're easily brain washed. If it wasn't for brain washing, they'd have no political, social, economic, ecological, or philosophical thoughts at all.
     The insidious media teach humanity that brainwashing is something weird done by the enemy to their foreign subjects, but brainwashing isn't foreign or exceptional; it's the rule everywhere. Human thought, including all appearances of serious conviction, is NORMALLY the product of brainwashing. What looks and sounds or reads like conviction is all around, as blatant as commercial packaging. But it only looks and sounds or reads like conviction. In fact, it's not. The woman on the screen who tells you the best thing to buy for your family is acting. The party hack who tells you YOUR candidate will END the scams and CHANGE the system is acting. The Secretary of State who tells you Cuba must "get its act together" is acting.
     Logically, conviction should result from hard brain work - energetic fact gathering, analysis and synthesis that prove a particular conclusion is certainly or very close to certainly true. So, finding myself surrounded by apparently passionate conviction, I ought to be able to assume that - wow! - there's a whole lot of thinking going on.
     But there's not. In fact, in the world of human thought trading (the well-named market-place of ideas), even passionate conviction is sold and bought in the ready-to-wear department. And like any other commercially packaged product, it is sold by repetitive sloganeering, not by compelling argument.
     The NORM is brainwashing. Brainwashing is the NORM. I said that twice so you'd get it, the same way normal humans get almost all their convictions. Apparently honest and earnest convictions NORMALLY get from the shelf into human heads by being routinely, relentlessly and conspicuously repeated - by the media, of course.
     So when I tell you that every time a normal human "decides" to vote for X because Y isn't "experienced" or "tough," he's parroting the media, I'm not talking about an aberration. I'm talking about something normal, and, since it's normal, examples abound.
     If you think it's outrageous that I should claim to be right and everybody else wrong, by the way, you're wrong. Why is it outrageous? The everybody else referred to believes in gods, patriotism, democracy, freedom, family values, evil, etc. etc. It's not a stunt; it's EASY to be right and everybody else wrong if your brain works. After all, I DID my real brain work. I DID think out my conclusions. And almost any logically right conclusion arising from actual thought almost always contradicts majority opinion, because majority opinions NORMALLY result not from careful thought but from brainwashing. And examples are so numerous and obvious, I don't NEED to name them.
     If I were pointing out something UNUSUAL - if I were claiming a THINKING people known for THINKING things over had somehow been fooled about ONE THING, for instance how and why they're going to vote on this or that, it might be outrageous, but I'm not.
     I'm pointing out that a people whose every apparently earnest conviction is actually a religious belief (and religion itself is the first elephant-sized example) are OF COURSE parroting their high priests, mass media and each other when they blabber phrases like "sustainable development," "property rights," "our brave men and women in uniform," "the American way," "choice of physicians," "our precious freedom," "hardworking Americans," "political experience," etc.etc.; and I'm pointing out (not claiming - pointing out) that they always conscientiously vote as they're told they'll vote and piously buy "green" products and knowingly sneer at North Korea because they're well brainwashed by the media, which NORMALLY write, produce, direct, and stage almost the entire dumb show called human thought.

Things that we lose in the news - daily

  11 June 2010, The next worst disaster: Each time you read that "this is the worst eco-disaster in US history," remember that in any developing situation records are made to be broken. There will be another "worst eco-disaster" and another and another and, while the scape-goat for the gulf oil blow-out is a British corporation, the scape-goat for the next one may be an American corporation, and while the pay-off for this one will come from the pockets of British pensioners, whose paychecks depend on investments in large corporations including British Petroleum, the next one may result in a blow-out of pension funds for Americans.

  2 May 2010, When slicks gush and goats are scaped: Torn between their duty as corporate bards to sedate the suckers and their suppressed carny barker urge to shock them, the media headline a comfortably familiar slick spreading from a spill, but halfway to a near secret subparagraph revelation that a torrent of oil is pouring from a rupture in the ocean floor (about what I guessed night before last - see below), they let slip this chimeric (Freudian?) image: "...crews struggled to contain the slick which is gushing ..." Hey! Slicks don't gush. They spread. What's gushing is a volcanic oil blow-out way way down deep under water where no amount of struggling will stop it until it empties the reservoir feeding it.
        They then more slickly scapegoat one corporation to go on hiding the general human guilt and the bigger, more alarming story. The world's not facing one company's one local mistake. This oil eruption is connected to global warming, disappearing species and rain forests and coral reefs and water tables, acid rain, dying lakes and oceans and etc. etc. The problem's not BP and one coastline. It's more and more people everywhere needing more and more resources and a greedy careless uncontrolled growth and profit driven monster system of capitalism that lives on only by destroying the eco-world to keep filling its market's evergrowing belly.

  30 April 2010, Eco-panic 60 years late: Words like frantic and ecological crisis in reference to an actual ecological crisis are strangers on the front page of the LA Times, but don't worry.
        With the Mississippi delta and all nearby game refuges and the Gulf of Mexico undeniably threatened by an underwater rupture freely spewing out oil south of New Orleans, it's hard to do, but they're still trying to convince readers this is a one-time local EVENT.
        The Exxon Valdez has to be mentioned because the public DOES know something like this has happened before. But they keep calling it a spill, just as if it were no worse than a leaking ship and NOT a torrent that could empty a subterranean oil bubble vastly bigger than the holds of a fleet of tankers into the gulf.
        The president's panic reaction, suddenly reversing his call for an offshore drilling drive, is extreme, but I assure you Obama hasn't realized that greedy capitalism's onslaught against the natural world has gone too far and has got to stop. He's just worried about his image. With luck, Sarah Palin will be worried enough about her image to shut up briefly.
        But, exept for the rare use for a few days of some usually omitted words, the reaction isn't likely to get really real real soon, or if it does it will only be because Mother Nature stages a horrendous disaster - which, of course, she will.

  30 April 2010, Americans still don't understand their own laws: Just as in the case of Proposition 8 in Calfornia, all coverage of Arizona's new anti Mexican-American law studiously shuns any reference to the obviously relevant 14th Amendment equal protection clause. The John Waynes keep talking as if there was no issue except illegal immigrants, and the protesters against the law seem incapable of clearly declaring, "Hey! We're not objecting to your barbaric treatment of immigrants. We're objecting to the way you're obviously intending to treat American citizens, depriving them of their right to equal protection under the law if they happen to LOOK like immigrants to a cop."
     And the newspapers and politicians are no better. Why is the Obama administration blathering about "unlawful preemption of the Federal Government's role in securing the country's borders," when that is NOT what the issue is, and it's a stupid issue to bring up considering that the Federal approach to border security is just as ugly as Arizona's. Obviously, they want to appeal to the stupid right by making it a right wing emotional issue and by avoiding logic. Meanwhile if there is a glimmer of awareness by the media that it is the 14th Amendment being violated, why does the Times muddle the point with reference to a "civil rights challenge asserting that the law encourages racial profiling?" Are they trying to sound politically correct?
     I think they are trying to avoid a clearly logical and legal approach, because letting the public go on thinking law is like calling for an emotional show of hands on the Jerry Springer show allows for the further dismantling of existing progressive law on emotional and religious grounds that the people will stupidly support. And very relevant to that thought, they fear a clear 14th amendment victory would collaterally knock over Proposition 8 in California and derail hopes for an equally stupid anti-abortion law which is certainly coming up next.
     For a better understanding of the logical role of a civilized state and of why the few rational law makers in US history have enacted laws limiting government authority over participating citizens, see Civil State on this website.

Real issue almost surfaces in Al Jazeera election story

  3 March 2010: Al Jazeera posted an interview this morning with two Iraqi politicians, actually two front men for the US, who were actually asked a question about the future of secularism in Iraq. It was the question that put the word in THEIR mouths, but it didn't fit very well.
     Maybe it's positive that there is even half hearted talk of a secular state in the middle east, even if the idea is wedged into the discussion with a reporter's shoe horn. But the response reported in this article WAS half hearted and, more important, pre-electoral, i.e. campaign rhetoric,
     Every note I've tried to post on Al Jazeera recommending an end to religious government in the middle east has disappeared down a hole, So I was startled to see the subject poke its nose above the nap this morning. But, no problem, it vanished quickly enough, and I don't expect to see it poke up again soon.
     The otherwise pointless blather quickly devolved to talk about politics, a non-subject the interviewees were more comfortable with. And then the reporter disgraced himself by bringing up what he apparently considered somebody's hope for more nationalism - another kind of religion. They were all over that, of course.
     Why do the politicians in countries the US is "building" look and talk so much like US politicians?
     The proper business of a would-be civilized state and its leaders should be the welfare of its people and procedures for providing them a good life, including economic and social equality, i.e. civilization.

Top story of the decade sure to stay covered up

  1 January 2010: Whether the decade's end was last night or will be next New Year's Eve, it was 10 years ago today or yesterday (I forget which) that embedded media tooting their horns about the grre-e-a-a-t stories of the 20th century all piously noted the death of Mother Teresa while every one of them forgot, discounted, or covered up the hands-down biggest story of all - the explosive and incredibly ominous growth of the human race past 2 billion, past 3 billion, past 4 billion, past 5 billion, and past 6 billion in less than 100 years.
        So it's only business as usual that the same news media that have tacitly conspired for 20 years to convince us or themselves that humans virtually stopped reproducing in the early 90's, now that their gigantic lie has been dramatically contradicted, will give us no big story this week about the fact that even the most certainly politically contaminated estimate has added another 800 million people, while more credible estimated world human nose-counts have already nearly reached another billion in only 10 years - in just the first decade of the 21st century.
        At 8:30 p.m. New Year's Day, population clock counts ranged from the US Census Bureau's rapidly growing estimate of 6,793,836,600 to University of North Carolina's somewhat faster growing estimate of 6,973,027,500. When next year's (mostly estimated) census is in, the highest estimates will certainly put world human population at over 7 billion.
        Take it from me that the highest estimate is only CLOSEST to enough, because, obviously, nobody counts all the poor people in all the shanty towns in the world. The extreme variations between "population clocks" should tell you these are wild estimates, and, since the very same insiders who are most in denial about overpopulation are the ones with most power to edit reality, setting aside community counts which serve different purposes, general population counts are always most likely to be under-counts.
        Meanwhile, wild horses were reported a couple of days ago to be overpopulating Nevada, and a fisherman, apprehended for shooting at a sea lion in the Sacramento River, told authorities "he was tired of watching the protected animals taking his fish." The first story did report that there are 18,500 wild horses in Nevada but not that there are 2 million people in the same state. The second story didn't give the number of sea lions taking the fishermen's fish in the Sacramento River OR the number of fishermen taking the sea lions' fish. But my guess is that the ratio is similar to that of horses to humans in Nevada.

You have to read between the lines of anti-China news

  25 December 2009: The story of a Chinese dissident, a Tiananmen Square veteran, going to jail for seeking 'political liberalization" may seem unambiguous to readers as well trained by their media as Pavlov's dog to frown at China and communism. But in the context of a daily flow of often near identical embedded media hit pieces against China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia (in short against any country the US State Department has designated as "evil"), even if you don't do some research, you should at least look more closely at the hit piece itself.
    I myself wish there was a single medium I could read that I knew told the truth, so I didn't have to spend hours on the computer or in the library filling in the background for every suspicious story published. I can't speak all languages and go everywhere, so I don't know, but this story resembles stories about Cuba and Venezuela and (in the 80's) Nicaragua that I DO know were grossly dishonest.
    I speak Spanish, I've traveled in 16 Latin American countries, in some of them (like Cuba) VERY extensively, and I know certainly that Cuban dissidents the US press shed crocodile tears for and glibly described as "journalists" when they were tried and jailed in 2003 were in fact willing agents of a clearly enemy foreign power (the US) passing out materials they were sent from Miami or handed in the home of the US Interests Officer in Havana, not to express their opinions but to TRY to stir up a counter revolution in the one country it would be MOST criminal to overthrow.
    I don't know that much about China. But when I read on BBC and in Al Jazeera at 1 a.m. this Christmas morning (as Americans will read in their papers later this morning or tomorrow) that the case against Liu (Xiaobo) centers on his co-authoring of a petition titled Charter 08, which calls for the protection of human rights in China and reform of the country's one-party communist system, I see some blinking red lights, as you should.
    For instance, I wonder what the very often misused word reform means. What does centers on mean - that there was some other less respectable blather all around the center? What was the tone of the petition to a Chinese ear? It was on the internet. How many people did it reach and how many of them were sophisticated enough to see through it - if by chance it needed seeing through? Lots of people nowhere nearly as credible as Tom Paine have written warped imitations of "Common Sense." Most importantly, why are the protection of human rights in China and reform of the country's one-party communist system lumped together in the news report as if the two things were equal in nature. They certainly aren't. One is perhaps innocuous. The other is subversive.
    The Al Jazeera story tells me objectively in one short paragraph that A Chinese court has sentenced a leading dissident to 11 years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power." But the possibly not very objective reporter tells me in the next paragraph that Liu Xiaobo, a 53-year-old academic, who was previously jailed over the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, had been charged for co-authoring a document appealing for political liberalization. LOOK AGAIN PLEASE! Inciting subversion and appealing for political liberalization aren't quite the same thing, are they?
    The reporter's name is Chinese, not Arab (as you'd expect for an Al Jazeera staff member) or English (as you'd expect for a translator for Al Jazeera's English edition). Could she be a Chinese dissident? US media often use Cuban dissidents, Venezuelan dissidents, Iranian dissidents, and North Korean dissidents as correspondents or as sources of supposedly reliable information about those countries. Outside sources quoted in the story include HRW (the New York based Human Rights Watch), a group I don't trust at all, which I think may have CIA connections, and the US embassy in China, which I know has CIA connections.
    At the very end of the Al Jazeera story (this is what you called buried), it is reported that The petition, which said "we should end the practice of viewing words as crimes," specifically called for the abolition of subversion in China's criminal code - the very crime for which Liu was sentenced on Friday. CALLED FOR WHAT? The abolition of subversion in China's criminal code?
     Now wait a minute! Every high school journalist learns to handle the idea that shouting the mere word "FIRE!" in a crowded theater is a crime. And don't all countries have laws against subversion? The US does. England does. I'd guess all Arab countries do. Laws against inciting a riot are considered very reasonable everywhere. Aren't they? And wouldn't you say inciting a riot is less intense than inciting nation-wide subversion? Laws against declaring war on one's own country are surely always considered reasonable by the concerned countries. Right? And wasn't Liu, by trying to stir up, justify, and lead a wave of subversion, declaring war on China? I think he was. Maybe you're well enough trained to think it's perfectly OK according to Emily Post to stir up internal subversion against a communist country. But do you expect China to agree?

Julius Caesar Obama lets slip the dogs of war

  11 November 2009: Right in the middle of today's front page was a propaganda piece headed "Why he named pullout date." I set aside my croissant and coffee, took up my pen and printed under that headline, "He didn't." He in this context meant Barack Obama, and the totally inaccurate phrase pullout date was a squinting reference to a supposed but not actual "pledge" to "pull out" U.S. troops from Afghanistan on a specified "date."
        But day before yesterday, under a banner headline, "Obama vows to break Taliban," and a margin-to-margin picture of Obama talking to West Point cadets, and another headline which first trumpeted the myth of the week: "30,000 more troops to go on 18-month timetable," I'd already caught the nose of truth poking quietly up at the very end of the lead, i.e. that...

               President Obama ... pledged to begin bringing home U.S. forces in 18 months."

        Dear reader, do you detect the built-in equivocation in that "pledge"? Hint: I put it in red. If you don't get it, you're the one whose number the media have and whom they are confidently snowing every day.
        Today, under the headline "Why he named pullout date," the truth with no asterisk or further comment was again tucked quietly in at the very end of a second column paragraph, where "The date, July 2011,..." (which isn't a date and isn't very good math, either) of the supposedly sure-thing pull-out, we're told in a low voice, will be...

               ... when the Afghan troop buildup is supposed to be working well enough against the
       Taliban-led insurgency that some troops can start to come home.

        You say you understand that. I hope so. It's simple enough. Obama is expanding the war, lengthening it by nother 18 months and more, and deepening the guagmire. That's the clear reality. But you got it from three words I dug out and highlighted for you. All the rest of the last three days of headlines and multi-page coverage have been drilling you over and over and in depth to think you believe one of two other comic-book-level improbabilities.
        This is like all the "news" coverage of the so-called healthcare debates, which relentlessly drilled you to believe there were only two options - a Democratic so-called health bill which is really an insurance subsidy bill or a Republican hijacking of the issue to repeal 50 years of social and philosophical progress. By the simple strategy of never mentioning it, the press forbade you to think of the only good option - socialized medicine.
        Now, weighed down by headlines and pix that do NOT recall those three words I've highlighted, and by whole pages of blather by generals and congressmen pretending to be war experts (just in case you thnk there is such a thing), and even by some Obama quotes reminiscent of 1940's cowboy movies sort of like, "Boys, y'all know I'm a peacable man," you're left no choice but to join a near imbecile debate about whether (1) letting the enemy know the US will quit and go home 18 months from now plays into the Taliban's hands, or (2) telling Afghanistan the US is not going to go on doing their fighting for them will get them on their toes at last and inspire our boys, too, by golly.
        If you wonder why the Republican media are supporting a Democratic president by taking him seriously, keep it in mind that old editors love reliving WWII, that Democrats ARE Republicans, and that the same people who own the government and the media also own the arms industry and the banana companies.
        Outrageous as it is to add another 18 months to a war that's too often been supposed to end in similar time spells in the past eight years, US troops are NOT going to come home in 18 months. Actually, US troops have been continuously deployed all over the world for most of my long life. And this is the same Obama talking who pledged to close Guantanamo by next month and to be out of Iraq by this coming May. He's the same Obama who's been drone bombing Pakistan for months in what amounts to a third Middle Eastern war which undoubtedly includes some clandestine troop deployment. He's the same Obama who promised to start talking in a civilized way to Iran and North Korea but certainly didn't. He's the same Obama who promised to cut off military aid to Honduras five months ago if they didn't stop doing what he secretly wanted them to do. And he's the same Obama who was expected by his constituents to end the Cuban embargo on his first day in office and to start talking intelligently to Latin American leaders who are justifiably tired of stupid American presidents he's now exactly imitating by re-occupying old military bases in Colombia in apparent preparation for ANOTHER war in Latin America.

I can't suspend my disbelief in the Times

  11 November 2009: What I'm reading today is the LA Times, but it could be almost any main stream Times, Chronicle, Bee, Examiner, Post, Herald, Record or other Republican (or "bi-partisan" Democrat) owned Daily Horn in America. It probably wouldn't change the headlines or even the front page alignment much if they all merged as, say, The Regressive Times. But the front page with almost nothing believable on it today, or the one I'm talking about, just happens to be the LA one.
     A TIME TO MOURN,
    Starting with the cutline under a top-of-the-page photo of Obama as he "passes" tribute (I wish the media would learn the English language) to the victims of the Ft. Hood shooter, what I can't believe is that he said "it was 'incomprehensible' that they were killed at home in a time of war" - at a time when HIS military is dropping bombs and shells on people through the roofs of their own houses in three countries already, and he's starting to deploy troops again in Latin America, too.
     COLUMN ONE - Life in Iran, for better, worse - Years of change test a Tehran couple's ties to each other and to the hard-line militia in which both once were true believers
     At the top left of the front page is this overly creative daily feature (COLUMN ONE) that is often just incoherent enough to suck you into turning to the jump to figure it out. Today's creation is one of the regular hit pieces all American media feel compelled to print at least weekly against Iran, China, North Korea or (most absurdly) Cuba or Venezuela to keep reminding their readers of their well taught and memorized patriotic contempt for those countries - with headlines that assume some common slander is true even though it's not known to be true. Sometimes these hit pieces sneer at the target country for transparently trying to adopt an American lifestyle and they always take advantage of the readers' often rehearsed conviction that things are dramatically bad there
     My first reaction to the sub-headline about "true believers" is that I never believe true believers - and when they switch their true belief to another true belief which the editors assumes will please me, I wonder what they got out of the deal. In this case, a narrative lead (a trick I taught my journalism students but advised them to avoid) quickly confirms my scepticism by telling me how Mr. True-believer lies to his wife that he's been helping the wounded when he's actually been wounding them and she dutifully believes his lie because "she had to." And my next reaction is that I never believe lying thugs, including supposedly waffling thugs. And I just about cease to believe the writer when I read in the next clumsily inserted paragraph that "landlocked Iran lacks a coast" to "escape" from. At this point, the reader is supposed to adopt his memorized Cuba reaction mode to convince himself he knows anything at all on which to base this innuendo. I suspect an editor inserted that paragraph.
     As the strenuously creative narrative continues, the locale unexplainably changes to the mountains, so I'm not sure if "the young man" is the same young husband when he says, "I'm a spiritual person," which just about does it for me. I never believe spiritual persons because what they truly believe isn't necessarily connected to real world experience, either before or after they change their minds.
     I went to page 19 and read the rest, learning nothing all of us don't already know or think we know about the middle east. The story's placement was obviously to keep the anti-Iran propaganda coming at us. Whether it was very narrowly or generally or only less narrowly true I don't know. I have a problem with Iran reporting. I can't go there and see for myself. I'm too old and couldn't learn the language. I have to notice that Ahmadinejad is more articulate and convincing than any American president and that his position on Iran's nuclear energy plans sounds more reasonable than Obama's and is supported by the very reliable Muhammad Al-Baradei. I'm sceptical, though, of the entire middle east, because all the governments there are so stridently religious, the Iranian president is reportedly as religious as Bush or Obama, and I not only never believe religious people, I don't believe any religious person should ever be president of any country. I don't know how many modern day Omar Khayyams there are there who'd be willing to take the job. I wish the Times would do a more honest job of educating people about Iran, but I don't believe they will.
    ARMY IN DARK ON HASAN'S E-MAILS
     This upper right corner piece is part of a series of hmm hmm guessing game stories sort of like the Simpson trial saga, in which various stern experts and men in the street speculate about whether the Ft. Hood shooting could have been prevented. I seriously don't believe it could have. But, more important, I don't believe the speculations or revelations of spooks whose job is to misinform us, and assuming we're all agreed that it's dishonest to open other people's mail, I don't know why any of us should believe people who spy on other people's E-mails.
     PANEL DRAWS LINE IN THE SEA
     Under this mid page headline, I immediately scribbled, "I don't believe you can draw a line in the sea." Or bandage it, either. Finding that the story was about a plan to "restore (some fish) species" by setting aside a few preserves, I went from amused to angry, because I don't just disbelieve, I KNOW the crash of the world wide eco-system can't be resolved by maybe preserving a species here and a species there. Nor by burning low energy light bulbs. The only way to save the eco-system is to reduce the human population and the size of the human encampment starting 60 years ago. But I DON'T BELIEVE the Times will give any space to that story any time soon.
     CALL TO ACTION ON HEALTHCARE
     This is under a picture of Bill Clinton calling Congress to action on healthcare. Except I don't believe he's talking about healthcare. I also don't believe the Times is going to stop calling it healthcare in their headlines unless there is a major readers' revolt. In this very issue, there is a rare letter to the editor that begins, "Your headline was misleading. What the House passed was insurance legislation."
    Back on Oct. 30, which is about the normal spacing between glimpses of reality in the media, the Times ghettoized together on one day (obviously to get them over with and forgotten) 8 letters from people sick and tired of headlines calling insurance company subsidization "healthcare." But in that same issue and forever before that and ever since, the Times has gone on relentlessly headlining Obama's and the Democrats' main scam as a "healthcare plan." It's not a healthcare plan. It's obviously a plan to pump money into the pockets of insurance and pharmaceutical companies while forcing the uninsured to cough up premiums they can't afford. I believe the Times will keep this deception up and will never acknowledge that most Americans, if they thought about it, would prefer socialized medicine.
     WHEN DEATH PENALTY MEANS A BETTER LIFE
     I don't believe this story is plagiarized from Fox News because it's definitely written by a Times reporter I learned not to believe when she was writing about Latin America. I think she's mainly telling the truth here, but I don't believe anyone commits murder in order to get in on the privileged living arrangement on death row, and I don't believe I care enough to pass on any of the shocking details.
     BRITISH LEADER WRITES A WRONG
     I can see quickly that the British Prime Minister was forced by public dismay to apologize for his bad handwriting and some spelling mistakes, but I can't figure out what I don't believe about this story without turning to page A20 and reading it, and I don't believe I will.

Barack Obama takes the cake as Nobel Prize winner
after already taking the prize as a ringer

  9 October 2009: I'm in accord with Le Duc Tho on the Nobel Peace Prize (which he declined because there was no peace), except that if they offered it to me, since I've been as effective as Barack Obama in my efforts to civilize the world, I'd take it, rename it the Juan Almeida Civilization Prize and pass it on to Hugo Chavez for his truly constructive leadership of the "free" world away from the capitalist jungle toward civilized socialism.
    As for Obama, he should take the Ringer Prize. He didn't end the Cuban embargo. He didn't close Guantanamo. He's not going to end the war; he's started his own new war in Pakistan. And he's about to deploy his military might to Colombia from where he may very well be planning to launch a fourth war on Latin America. He's not going to give us health care; he's going to subsidize insurance companies. He didn't bail out homebuyers; he went on bailing out mortgagers. He won't end torture; he excused it. He didn't change Bush's snarling foreign policy; he just took away the snarl and continued the same policy with a smirk. He's not going to protect us from religious laws against lifestyles and abortion; he's going to be neutral. He won't oppose regression; he'll compromise with Republicans. He's not an environmentalist; he'll protect business first. He didn't even give us the word hope, which I take it is the sole basis for his taking the prize; it was already in the dictionary, where you can still find it. He's a ringer.

Of popes and presidents

  10 July 2009: If I were a president visiting Rome, I'd try to meet Sophia Loren. It wouldn't even occur to me to visit the pope. At least, unlike Nancy Pelosi, Obama didn't have his picture taken today kissing the pope's ring. And truthfully, the story of the president at the Vatican didn't offend me as much as the inauguration day story in January of Obama starting his term by going to church to pray, because that came first, so I no longer expect anything better of him.
       But, come on! I haven't even forgiven Fidel for talking to the pope, though, in his case, I knew it was just protocol. It's not a matter of putting the pope in his place. Popes and Dalai Lamas and other imams and high priests of mysticism, denial and regressive and disruptive pseudo morality have no place in a civilized world. Neither do the kind of presidents who don't realize that. And that this is not yet a civilized world is proven by a lot of things, of course, but among them the fact that a philosophically realistic human could not run for and win a presidential office in most countries.
   And that's not just a flow to go with. We live in a real world that needs our attention, which it's not getting precisely because philosophically unrealistic humans are led by philosophically unrealistic politicians, whose blunders are chronicled by philosophically unrealistic editors and historians, and there's no appeal process apparent.

Like Bush Like Obama on North Korea

  16 June 2009:     Obama's claim that "a nuclear-armed North Korea poses a "grave threat' to the world" is insidious, since it's basically a lie and comes from another US president who is himself clearly a threat to the world. In stark contrast to the US, not just under George Bush but always and still under Obama, North Korea has no recent history of "threatening its neighbors" except in defensive rhetoric. Obama is fast adding his own warring history to a long and bloody US record, and he's the one who seems to be provoking and literally baiting North Korea. The UN should step in and Obama should shut up.
    This story reminds me of the lies told by Colin Powell and George Bush before the attack on Iraq. Why do the media always help beat the war drums? Besides quoting US hawks, honest reporters can surely find experts on North Korea as sober as Al Bareidi was on Iraq to quote. Once again, the US is usurping the UN, literally baiting North Korea, and there must be experts who can be quoted on that. Shallow news coverage helps promote shallow and bloody history.

And the wars go on

  12 June 2009: Clearly, the US is fighting ANOTHER war in Pakistan. US and US-friendly media may hide this fact behind jargon, but it's a fact. Obama continues to mirror George Bush as a double talker, in his mishandling of US foreign policy, and as a war president.

Delayed civil court trial can't excuse Guantanamo

  9 June 2009: Monday's news that one Guantanamo detainee will finally be tried in a real court in New York is OK, but I think he was chosen because he's uniquely suspected of a real crime (a blown up building) and his trial will distract readers from the fact that most inmates still in Guantanamo (never having been charged) are technically innocent and may BE innocent victims kidnapped by a rogue US state and stuck in a dungeon for years for no reason that will stand the light of a public trial.
   The still delayed closure of Guantanamo shouldn't license the American people to forget that. The US Attorney General's boast, when he announced the trial, that "the Justice Department has a long history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system, and we will bring that experience to bear in seeking justice in this case," is, given the circumstances, embarrassing.

North Korea's Rebellion Could Have Been Prevented

  27 May 2009: NORTH KOREA'S RETURN TO ARMS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED if the Obama administration had kept its promise to "change" the US stance toward the world. But only Obama's and Clinton's facial expressions changed as they went on menacing North Korea and Iran in Bush's own words. Everyone knows that kind of bluster led to the invasion of Iraq. So why wouldn't North Korea want to share Pakistan's and China's immunity from attack?
       They say they only want a deterrent and whatever Obama thinks, it would be a lot smarter to ASSUME that's true, to start "listening" as he promised he would, and to convince North Korea (and the disbelieving world) that the new "changed" US wants to join the UN and help its neighbors achieve total world nuclear disarmament, and NOT to scare anyone into starting a new arms race through continued belligerent confrontation.
        The tribal American media keep on playing this story as part of the comic book saga they've always pushed and which Obama has unfortunately fallen for. But by mistaking himself for Flash Gordon, "the leader of the free world," precisely because the world had hoped for better things from him, Obama is doing more now than George Bush did to split the world between the US and its uneasy allies on one side and a world sick and tired of US bullying on the other.

California Supreme Court Surrenders Its Credibility

  26 May 2009: Wrongly believing they were deciding who can marry, which is none of their business, the California Supreme Court this morning foolishly upheld a breach of the integrity of the Constitution they are supposed to be guarding, letting stand a lumpen inspired law that obviously violates logic and intelligent legal precedent in two ways: it carves a religious commandment into a secular constitution, and it sets one more dangerous precedent (unfortunately there are already others) by approving a law that is NOT intelligently grounded in the social and economic contract that should underlie any civilized secular state. If you don't understand that, go back to the home page and read my explanation and definition of a Civil State.
       As usual, the regressive judges were aided and abetted (and undoubtedly confused and pressured) by California media which continually characterized the controversy as a circus confrontation between the judges as moderators and the public as a Jerry Springer show type audience deciding through a volume detector which couples they liked the best. In fact, the judges should not have even considered the anti-gay mob purpose of the phrase they were being asked to OK for the Constitution. They should only have considered the legitimacy of the phrase as an unacceptable intrusion into a secular constitution. Just in case it helps promote more intelligent dialogue next time, read the article (below) which I posted yesterday.

The day before they made their stupid mistake
I vainly explained what the California Supreme Court should do

  25 May 2009: Through daily editorial telepathy, the media have been trying hard to conjure up a wrong state constitutional decision tomorrow (Tuesday, May 26) and, considering that they and the men and women who'll render the judgement belong to the same godly race, I can't hope to out-conjure them. But sometimes humans at least know the rules of their own jobs, so if the logic that's supposed to underlie both California and American law prevails, the Supreme Court will disappoint the majority tomorrow and erase the latest of many religious stains that mar their constitution.
        When I was told by an angry Christian that we had to "keep queers from getting married," I told him there's no way it hurts me, so it's none of my business. A guy who'd been arguing with him asked me, "Are you religious?" I told him I'm not, and the relevance was obvious even to the Christian. He was angry as a Christian, not as a participating member of a secular civil state.
        The purpose of law in a secular civil state is not to serve anyone's god. It's not to serve the state as a foolishly exalted deputy deity, either. It's to serve the members of the state, of course, but ONLY as participants in a social/economic contract which defines and upholds the purposes NOT of irrational and irrelevant religion but of a hopefully very rational secular civil state focused on secular civil matters.
        Librarians don't shush priests in church and orating priests don't disturb the peace in libraries. Religions are for separately superstitious subgroups crossing state lines. States are mechanisms for unified community members trying to take care of real-world civil matters together that they can't easily deal with separately. State law therefore should only regulate participation in the economic contract underlying the state and enforce the social contract that underlies the state. Economic contract matters are confused in America, but the social contract is as old as civilization and perfectly clear. I will not hurt you if you will not hurt me and therefore we will live in peace together as equal members of a civilized state. Any law that exceeds that purpose is invalid, even if it has been foolishly inserted into the state's constitution by a confused majority.
        If the Supreme Court does not tell Californians exactly that tomorrow, then the court will have failed as a mechanism of the state, just as the majority failed as members of the state when they passed Proposition 8 and inserted a primitive religious commandment into their supposedly secular constitution.
        A particular church may marry anyone it wishes but no church has the right to tell other churches or the state who to marry. Religion that doesn't violate the economic and social contract underlying the state is not the state's business, but NO state law or procedure can be tainted by religion. If the court does not tell California exactly that, then the validity and further viability of the state itself as a civilized institution will be in doubt.

The time has come,the media say
to talk of pigs with wings

  29 April 2009: Yesterday the Chronicle devoted almost half its A section to alarming headlines and contradictory news and blather about a possibly emerging flu epidemic and then headed their lead editorial, "Now is not the time to panic." Of course, I didn't read the editorial because it wasn't signed. But I e-mailed friends in San Diego, where 5 of the 3 million county residents had been diagnosed with mild cases of "swine flu" to ask if they were in a panic. They weren't. As for me, only one of probably over 40 million Californians not infected, you may not care what I think since I have not spent a minute, since September 11 2001, fearing a terrorist would strike me. But I'll tell you anyway that I think now might be a good time for a trip to Mexico.
        Oh I know. There's been either 200 or 102 or 2 deaths clearly pinned on swine flu there, and maybe 2000 milder cases (a few or very few or even fewer of which have been verified) in a national population of (approximately or possibly or maybe) about 120 million. It's the "danger zone."
        On today's front page, the Chronicle asks why - that is the Chronicle claims "puzzled" scientists are wondering with all their might WHY - there are so many more unconfirmed cases and not-certainly related deaths in Mexico than anywhere else. After puzzling myself about why they'd be asking such a stupid question, I came up with only a half dozen obvious answers, beginning with (1) it started there and (2) pigs don't fly.
        Obviously the Chronicle, like Backtrack Obama who also doesn't know what to do, is just thrashing around. To sensibly fill the big spread they think they need would require a hard squint at some facets of the problem or pseudo problem they instinctively know they don't want to touch. Too bad, because this MAY be a situation that could use some media with the brains to keep the public properly informed. I say it COULD be, because it could be.
        The most useful actual fact I dug out of the blather (it wasn't up front where it belonged) is that you can't get swine flu from eating cooked pork. A lot more of that kind of information was needed, such as, for instance, that the reason First World cases so far reported are mild is that First World people live in cleaner and less crowded conditions than poor Mexicans and have more resources when they get sick.
        I also learned in today's Chronicle that U.S. pig farmers say swine flu doesn't even come from swine; and from a number of sources since yesterday that Mexican investigators say it damn sure does but they aren't sure ANY cases in Mexico came from swine; and that they aren't sure if all or even many of the cases ARE cases; and that the Mexican government thinks the disease may come from ANOTHER country (that's called keeping your eye on the ball); and that some scientists think the disease may have already been common everywhere and is now being found because they're looking for it, so the more they look for it the more they find it, and the more it looks like a pandemic.
        To belabor a point that needs belaboring, one question the media don't have the wit or the will to answer for me is: are most cases in poor, crowded, unsanitary neighborhoods? I think so, and the reasons I'm not afraid to go to Mexico now, when I won't be tripping over a lot of other tourists, is that (1) I'll be driving alone in the clean interior of my own car, not riding a crowded bus, (2) I'll be drinking bottled water, like all tourists and all well-off Mexicans, (3) I'll eat only hot cooked foods from clean stands or in clean places where nobody looks sick, (4) I'll be staying NOT in crowded dirt-floored shanties but in clean little hotels where the sheets and pillow cases are washed daily, (5) I'll be bathing and brushing my teeth and gargling mouth wash and washing my hands regularly and cleaning my nails, etc. That is I'll be living like a first world person, as I always do, not the way the world's poor majority live. Add that (6) I'll be taking my first world health in with me, with infection and disease resistance built on a lifetime of good nutrition, that is I won't be weakened by any of the endemic diseases and conditions that plague the majority poor, and after decades of Latin American travel I won't be threatened by Montezuma's revenge, either. All this plus odds steeper than the lottery against catching swine flu at all (YET) and, apparently, odds of at least hundreds to one (probably thousands to one) that the case I catch will be mild. Add to that the fatalism of a 72-year-old seasoned traveler and realistic philosopher who knows that the death rate is 100%, anyway.
        I don't mean to foolishly guffaw at the swine flu threat. If it's not just a way to keep us from noticing what's happening in Pakistan, or a way to punish Latin America for siding with Cuba, it's at least a more real KIND of threat than most of the threats the media hype. It could turn out a number of ways, though.
        It could be a false alarm just like the bird flu and West Nile disease. Or it could be as bad as sleeping sickness or an outbreak of cholera or AIDS, devastating to certain populations but not others. It could be a worse strain of flu than the strain they say killed 50 million people once upon a time (never believe catastrophe stats) yet less disastrous because people now are more resistant. Or that could be true in the suburbs but not in the ghettos. Or it could be more deadly this time because there are so many more people living so much closer together and intermixing so much more in so many more ways. Assuming this is a poor people's disease (which I do), it's important that, along with having 6 times as many people now as in 1918, we have more than 6 times as many poor people.
        Anyway, there'll be more pandemics and if this one's not bad enough, the next one or the next one will be. During the 20 years between 1950 when, at 14, I was given my first typewriter and 1970, when I gave up hope that I, anyway, could penetrate human denial - during that time when, unlike now, I was actually on a crusade, I regularly predicted that the eco-collapse of the 21st Century (brought on by overpopulation and the overgrowth of the human encampment, exacerbated by capitalism and its necessary corollary sprawling poverty, facilitated by religion and tribalism) would include endless wars for space and "free running diseases." For free running diseases read pandemics - which has to be plural. I and others like me who struggled hopelessly to make that point back then were called "doomsayers" by media that never identified or quoted us. But now it appears that Mother Nature, who can't be ignored, is starting to make our point for us.

  13 April 2009: As protesters and police struggle in Thailand, media repeatedly interview exiled former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatr. They ask him about the turmoil, whether he'll run for election again, but they never ask him if he has a social or economic agenda. Obviously, as a politician, he tosses in the word democracy free. So what? If I were interviewing Thaksin, I'd ask him what he expects to achieve THROUGH democracy. Does he intend to redistribute wealth in Thailand? Voting is a means, not an end. What are the ends of the insurgency the media think will support him? Cleaning out the sex industry? Keeping U.S. troops out? Leveling slums and building new homes? Diminishing the power of the king? If it's not just a brawl, what's it about? The Thai story goes on and on with no reference to the issues.

  10 April 2009: Once again U.S. soldiers patrolling somebody else's streets, this time in Kabul, break down a door and murder a family and then claim they were fired on first. What were they doing there? Were these foreign troops looking for Osama bin Laden on a residential street in Kabul? If they weren't there, would there BE any firing, and if there would be, has their presence prevented it? Except for people dropping paper ballots into boxes annually, has life in Afghanistan even changed since 2001? Will Obama having his own war there change it?

  8 April 2009: An Al Jazeera story quotes the relative of a man murdered by Fujimori in Peru that Fujimori's conviction is a mile post in the "fight against impunity." The word "impunity" was well chosen by Gisela Ortiz. A president has been punished for the impunity of murdering people in his own country. Over 60 years ago, a few presidents were punished for the impunity of murdering people in other countries.

  7 April 2009:     Korea launches a sattelite. Obama starts talking about WMD's and going to the Security Council. Every day we're told and told and told that Obama talks differently than George Bush. But, regardless of his tone of voice or the expression on his face, U.S. rhetoric quoted in this story is exactly like the talk that led up to the attack on Iraq. U.S. war games in Korean waters ordered by Obama not Bush deliberately provoked a response which permitted Obama to bluster. He already has one war of his own. Does he want two? Every day we're told and told and told that Obama, unlike George Bush, "will listen." But he's not listening to North Korea's explanation that, after being called "evil" and seeing Iraq, which was also called "evil" and had no WMD's, attacked; while Pakistan, which has the A-bomb, was befriended, they felt they needed atomic weapons to immunize themselves from attack. Is Obama's supposedly changed approach more reasonable than that?

  21 March 2009:      A BBC headline shouts "Venezuelan Military Seizes Ports! Does that mean Venezuela is seizing Venezuela? BBC news reporting prejudice is too apparent. When the news is about Venezuela, rich Venezuelan friends of the U.S. who control Venezuela's biggest news media also control U.S. and British media.

  20 March 2009:      In stories on Sudan, the media never explain U.S. spokesperson Susan Rice's role. What does she have to do with Sudan's friction with the UN? The UN has a legitimate complaint against the president of Sudan. But the automatic acceptance by media of the US assumption that they have a say about everything dismays me. Why doesn't the reporter ask Rice what business she has issuing proclamations? Media don't need to explain why the world needs a strong UN. They DO need to ask why it needs NATO, and a U.S. business motivated puppet master in Washington.

  20 March 2009,      Obama offers a "new beginning" to Iran, but, just reading his lips, his stance toward Iran is the same as Bush's stance, arrogant and baseless. Apparently, all the phrase "new beginning" means is that he's changing the look on his face. Instead of frowning and demanding, he smiles and demands. But he still demands with no real authority to demand and he still makes charges without evidence. Iran's response that it's the U.S. that needs to change is reasonable.

  11 March 2009:      The last I heard from our most reliable source on atomic weapons threats, Mohammad Al Baradei, was that there is NO evidence of any intent by Iran to develop atomic weapons. Remember that ignoring Al Bareidei and other truly knowledgeable sources in 2003 was a serious mistake. U.S. accusations, now as then, amount to an irresponsible provocation, contradicting Obama's claims to a new and less arrogant way of confronting the world, including Iran.

  11 March 2009:      Another story today on China and Tibet not only assumes the Dalai Lama is telling the truth, it seems to revere him, and thus seems to be promoting theocracy. All western media take this stance. Why? Theocracy is clearly regressive. The Dalai Lama, like the pope, is clearly an atavism at best. He's also known to have been paid by the CIA for a long time (maybe he still is). Objective observers before the Chinese Revolution described Tibet as "Hell on earth" or words to that effect. U-tube reports indicated the monks killed more people in Llasa last year than the police. China is obligated to deploy police when riots are imminent. The ongoing story that constantly implies the Chinese oppressed the lamas by stopping their riot in Lhasa needs to get real.

  11 March 2009:      Tariq Aziz has been in jail since 2003, and now, finally being tried, just to cover up the injustice of jailing him, he may be convicted of war crimes that seem oddly unconnected to his job. In a world of inarticulate people and politicians, I was impressed by Tariq Aziz's clear and rational response to Colin Powell's clear nonsense at the UN Security Council meeting that led to the criminal invasion of Iraq. He vainly did his job as Iraq's press secretary well. If he also, behind the news I know anything about, ordered a political mass murder, he should be punished. But if that charge is trumped up, then he's only guilty of being an eloquent diplomat and will stay in jail until he dies for that.

  10 March 2009:      Responding to an article on Polar ice melt up to 2003 - Over 60 years ago, when there were already way too many people, I and a few others KNEW the eco-system would be collapsing NOW and predicted, among a lot of other things still not being mentioned, the melting of the ice caps. The media gate-keepers, as stubbornly blind then as they still are, scornfully called us "doomsayers" but never told their readers who we were or what we said. But we sent our message, hopelessly it seemed, TO the media, believe me. Now, Mother Nature, who can't be ignored, is finally delivering it.

A freely profitable press is not really a free press
Media rigging elections again    

  6 March 2009, The fourth estate is a miserable failure in America.Though he never used the phrase fourth estate, numerous quotations make it clear that Thomas Jefferson advocated and constitutionally secured freedom for the press precisely so media could serve as a disconnected sector of government, uncontrolled or influenced by government, able to keep the government honest by watching it and criticizing it in the interest of the people.
     Jefferson did foresee the misuse of an embedded press (he didn't use the term embedded but that was clearly what he meant), but he underestimated the force of greed in a free enterprise society and the inevitable misuse of a free enterprise press by the rich (and, yes, by other special enterest groups but mainly by the rich) and, through the rich, by the government itself, making the press in America, as a fourth estate, a miserable failure.
     The media are, right now, rigging elections again - so blatantly that you might think they'd read my exact description of their regular procedure (see 31 January below) and were trying to prove me right. The article on page 1 of yesterday's Chronicle about the "race" to win the California governor election in 2010 is so outrageously, cunningly, insidiously dishonest, I'm damned if I can see why every "news" reader above the lumpen level isn't infuriated.
     Of the 4 Democrats and 3 Republicans the media and their very fishy "Field Poll" have themselves selected and placed before the voters, only ONE has even clearly tossed in her hat. And the Chronicle disingenuously allows that that "leading" Republican, though not previously well known, "got some help from the timing of the poll because (she) has been in the news sinceannouncing her likely candidacy two weeks ago."
     I'll say. In fact, the Chronicle has been strenuously publicizing her for two weeks. But I'd bet (and win for sure) that most California Republicans who supposedly favor her have still never heard or thought of her. And I'd bet (and win) that most California Democrats specifically asked if they felt favorably or not favorably about the candidacy of Diane Feinstein (who hasn't announced her candidacy) had not been thinking about THAT. The election being rigged is a year and 8 months away, and I'd bet most Californians had no idea it was already a "race" with "favorites" already installed until the Field pollsters called and told them so.
     The most appalling thing about this sham news story, except for the actually printed quote from Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Field Poll, that "people have to be comfortable with candidates and they're comfortable with Diane Feinstein," - except for that stunning proof of the fishiness of the Field Poll, the most appalling thing is the revelation that, while 54% of Republicans telephoned refused to offer an opinion, 80% of Democrats were willing to play the game. I'm not a fan of democracy, anyway (see my definition of democracy linked on the front page), but I'm apparently more protective of it's imaginary virtue than are the true believers, including the ostentatiously pro-democracy pseudo progressives, because it's ME telling you this is not the way America's vaunted democracy is supposed to work.
     What good is democracy if THE voters don't even select the redundant insider candidates THE voters then dumbly and dutifully vote for?

The science of economics unclarified for you daily  

  17 February 2009,      While the "western" world's designated economy experts met earlier this month in a place called Davos and tried but failed to come up with a solution to world financial problems, the main yell of the protestors outside, who couldn't have been Americans, was, "YOU're the problem! Resign!" Get it? No? Try this then.
       If the media accounts of how normality became financial crisis and may now be restored if Obama's supposedly better bail-out somehow works sound like hocus pocus to you; and if the quoted comments of congressmen you know can't even speak English read like pocus hocus, should you feel dumb? Why?
       Just remember that the editors, "think" tankers, and politicians who supposedly understand what you don't understand are the same klunks who believe that digging up gold and reburying it in an official cellar makes money more valuable than beans or lumber or shoes or hard work or wisdom.
       And they're the same klunks who believe that the profiteering of a handful of U.S. billionaires at home and abroad is everybody's major interest but that environmentalists are a special interest group. They also believe the most important thing a president can do is spend trillions of your dollars proving he's tough by bombing places you never heard of and have nothing against to supposedly somehow protect you from "terrorists" you're not afraid of. They believe that a supernatural being nobody's ever seen approves of the bloody exploits of our leading klunks and the sacrifice of uniformed children to unexplainable causes so much that he'll reward us all later in heaven with some deal even better than 27 virgins apiece.
       So maybe what reads like hocus pocus to you IS hocus pocus.

Media start staging THEIR next election  

  31 January 2009, On January 12, an article on page 10 of the SF Chronicle kicked off the media's 2010 California gubernatorial election. The possessive word media's isn't a typo. It's always the media's election from start to finish.
     This was the standard start: 22 months before the vote, those who saw the article were handed, with no effort needed on their part, a ready-made line-up of THEIR preferred candidates, including some they may never have heard of, and told how they already ranked them, not as philosophical leaders, just as candidates in another exciting candidate race. There's even already a favorite. Those who missed that article will find out in the next one it's Diane Feinstein.
     The Chronicle fielded 10 Democrats and 3 Republicans for their election, no Greens or independents or socialists, though for sure once or twice between now and November of 2010, voters will hear of the media's rejects in separate stories specifically about the rejects as rejects. Voters will be constantly told what they think of the viable candidates -AS CANDIDATES - right up to election day, so they'll be prepared for the result. Don't you realize you've seen this over and over throughout your voting life?
     Just in case you've forgotten or are habitually oblivious, I explained how it works in April of '05 in a letter from Cuba about how similar the Cuban elections are to American elections in this respect. "As you certainly know," I wrote, "the rigging of American elections doesn't usually happen on election day. The voters apparently vote as they wish. But most of them (and that's all it takes in a democracy) wish what they've been trained to wish. Starting long before election day, after entrenched insiders decide which candidates are to be taken seriously and line up their pictures before you in a kind of cast-of-characters article (like the article that appeared two weeks ago, right on schedule), the embedded media then stage a very long-running, very predictable but very slick and expensive multi-media show of irrelevantly trivial and personal but effectively relentless and pervasive propaganda - a daily, hourly, up-to-the-minute smoke cloud - that goes on for months, if not years.
     "Pre-presidential election "reporting" (brainwashing) in America used to go on for only about a year, but, ever since the media were badly scared by their own loss of control when they tried (every minute every hour every day for only a year) and failed to convince Americans that Bill Clinton's sex life was grounds for impeachment, it's been a 2-year frame-up.
     "So, for at least a year but probably two years, these days, not the candidates but the much more reliable media, speaking like matching oracles from within the smoke, tell Americans every single thing they reportedly think, not about issues, almost never about what this candidate or that might do to change or adjust the system to make life better for all the participants, but just about the candidate race as a candidate race, from the beginning until voting day, when the voters do nothing but fulfill their assigned destinies. By election day, they've been literally hypnotized. A relentlessly induced paralysis of their individual and collective will stymies any urge to vote outside the box.
     "The American media, the mercenary bards of the rich, the slickest propaganda machine ever anywhere, write, direct, produce, and stage elections which always end with their type of people still in power, with hardly a word ever spoken about the purposes and functions of government and government officials, because the actual, mainly business purposes of government in America are too shallow or too shameful to reveal. Most of the world follows the American plan, often with American help (whether they want it or not)."

     An Obama supporter, drunk with euphoria, has pointed out to me that Obama's election proves that, no matter how long it takes, the voters eventually always decide who their leaders will be, but that's not what happens, and it's not what happened in the last two years.
     Two years ago, it should have been apparent to anyone that the voters would be given John McCain as a sacrificial goat, since the Republicans had to lose, and Hillary Clinton to vote for, so they could go on thinking democracy works. Though the candidates have to be safe for business, what the media sell isn't just candidates; it's democracy (see democracy in the definitions box on the front page). So not very long at all after the curtain rose, in an era when too many people were getting suspicious of America and what it was up to, a third actor was added to the cast to provide the voters a more convincing democracy show, with an exciting candidate race (they'd be told every day how exciting it was - and they were) between an acceptable woman and an acceptable black man. It was always obvious why the woman was acceptable, since Hillary was no threat at all to the status quo. In the last few weeks, it's become clearer and clearer why Barack Obama was acceptable, too.

Obama fans need to look up CHANGE  

  21 January 2009, CHANGE? Is that just a slogan or does it mean CHANGE? Come on. What change? I don't think the insiders want or will permit CHANGE.
     Obama's first act as president today was to go to a praying place and pray. Hey, that's NOT CHANGE, folks. That's a familiar staged assurance that America's insider media have written, produced, directed and staged the election of yet another religious (or pretend-religious) leader, just like in the Middle East. Of course, it's politically correct to be or pretend to be religious. But hey! Political correctness is NOT CHANGE, either. It's also the same old shit.
     CHANGE would be to move away from the fantasy world of gods and flags and anti-communism and secret agents and "tough" leaders and overwhelming military force and religiously-believed-in democracy and "free" trade and transparently stacked-deck stock markets and "THE" economy which is only the rich insiders' economy and eternal growth for the sake of business (and to hell with the eco-system} and even entrepreneurial environmentalism (thank you Mr. Gore) and other assorted politically correct posturing and - FOR A CHANGE - INSTEAD OF CONTINUING TO LIVE IN THAT FANTASY WORLD - come live with me in the real world - the one with NO god but Mother Nature - the real world that desperately needs real CHANGE, before the 80% forever poor finally get fed up with being forever poor and revolt bigtime, and before Mother Nature finally steps up her own obviously now on-going surge to the level of zero tolerance and overwhelming force.

    CHANGE, to the establishment, eternally means centrism, which always always ALWAYS means NO CHANGE that would threaten the flow of profits into the pockets of insiders who ARE the establishment. And Obama is afraid to move any further outside the rich insiders' establishment than into the other inside-the-pocket "liberal" establishment, where CHANGE has meant the same short-list of about four nice safe politically correct causes for so long now that the establishment insiders have long ago thrown the pseudo progressive "liberals" a bone and bought them by adopting and tailoring their four nice safe causes into a safe back pocket of centrism (Obama and his staged election being the best imaginable example).
     Obama? Change? Obama is on a short leash. He can talk about eventually bringing the troops home, and respecting other countries ONLY WHILE, like any Republican, staying a "tough" homeland defender and still talking "tough" about upper-class religious America's military support for upper class religious Israel and food basket charity for lower class religious Palestine. But he can't go to the UN as a member and urge the UN to persuade the Middle Eastern countries, whether they ever become democratic or not, to become civilized SECULAR states.
     Obama can mouth the word environment and play the presidential mime role in Al Gore's very conveniently one-trick-pony show about one environmental issue. But he can't direct American schools and urge the UN to persuade the world to direct all its schools to immediately start teaching all children everywhere from the first grade on that one child is enough, two is maximum, and zero is fine, too, since there is no such thing as too few people.
     Obama can talk about eventually closing Guantanamo, but he can't just close the damned place, instruct his State Department to get agreements from all the other countries involved to admit the released detainees with civilized guarantees, immediately evacuate the marines from the once-Cuban enclave and give it back to Cuba, and then go himself to Havana and meet there with all the new truly progressive Latin American leaders and LISTEN to their much less stagnant ideas about what CHANGE should really be.
     Obama and his head are being inflated to mythic proportions, just when America needs to stop talking down to the world and start looking up to the world's real new leaders like Hugo Chavez, and it actually scares me when he speaks of foreign affairs. He obviously still divides the world between them and us; he obviously means to negotiate with the foreigners more diplomatically now just so they'll do what Washington wants them to do; he obviously still thinks the bad guys designated as "evil" by his stupidest Republican predecessors are indeed the bad guys. I'm afraid he knows no more about the "foreign" world than Hillary Clinton. Maybe the appointment of an information oriented man to head the CIA means something. But, if so, why not just expeditiously close the CIA's covert meddling branch (IF they'll let him - they never even let Jimmy Carter know what they were up to) and CHANGE the department into an honest information gathering agency to re-educate him and his government for participation in a new more educated and constructive approach to domestic and world policy?
     Dumping the Republicans in America should be as great as dumping the Jihadists and Zionists in the Middle East would be. But I don't think it's going to be. Everything the new democratic leaders say seems to indicate we're going to go on having mediocre political leadership. CHANGE? I think America is more likely going to go on being SHORT CHANGED.

News from inside the ignorance bubble  

  10 January 2009 It says in today's SF Chronicle that Obama is "counting the days" until he takes over as "leader of the free world." Q#1: When was THAT election? Q#2: What is "the free world"?
    The second answer first: "the free world" was a World War II era term and then (because U.S. editors just couldn't pull their heads out of those days of neat heroes and villains and war maps and stuff) it hung on as a very inept cold war era term actually based on an old Flash Gordon serial fantasy wherein Flash's Perry-Mason-looking father was "leader of the free world" and the rest of the world was on another planet called Mongo cruelly over-lorded by a paper-doll string of Emperor Mings just begging for a good old American punch in the nose.
    Now the answer to the first question: if any such election (I mean for "leader of the free world") were held any time during at least the last half century anyplace outside the American ignorance bubble, Washington and the CIA would lose it. In fact, Obama's best bet to finally achieve the international respect neo-Roman America doesn't have and doesn't deserve would be to join the UN as a listening member. On page 10 of today's Chronicle, Pakistan's prime minister is quoted as proudly admitting the CIA is still leading THEM around by the nose. "The American CIA and Pakistani ISI have an old working relationship," he boasts. A lot of countries like Venezuela wouldn't second his probably Cheshire enthusiasm.
    The Chronicle story goes on to tell us Obama is asking his critics to send him their economic stimulus plans. Mine's filed under 11 October below, and if I find his address on You-Tube.com (the only clue provided) and send it in, I've got as much chance to reach the man himself with it as I do to reach Michael Moore (which I've vainly tried). Zero. So I suggest instead that he talk to the actual leader of the newly free Latin American world, Hugo Chavez, about re-joining the OAS as an equal member with ears as well as a mouth. The 31 Latin American countries who recently met very pointedly without the U.S. have some ideas about stimulating the economy NOT of the rich but of the rest of us.
    On the other foot, today's Al Jazeera declares that "Most Americans would stop short of tossing their footwear at the outgoing president - not wanting to spend the rest of their lives in one of his administration's secret prisons." Sounds like a wild accusation. U.S. media regularly print such stuff about Cuba, though, and Americans don't doubt it. In fact, nobody is jailed in Cuba without a trial. But this charge by Al Jazeera against Bush's U.S. isn't really far fetched. Is it?

  4 January 2009 An Al Jazeera photo today placed right beside their story of Israel invading Gaza shows George Bush on the phone. He seems to be talking to the Israeli war room. BBC yesterday reported that Bush himself had rejected a unilateral ceasefire in Palestine (that's what it's ALL called in my 1940 world atlas) and had outlined HIS conditions for a ceasefire. What if, while the SF Chronicle is front-paging nostalgic stories of twenty years ago or trying to convince us Al Gore type "green" fiddling around is already saving the world, our neo-Napoleon president declares a national emergency and suspends Obama's inauguration so he can start World War III?
    You might not have noticed his bottom of the news story declaration a few days ago, just before the Israeli bombardment began, that Israel deserves to fulfill their dream and finally win the much larger homeland they were promised in the Bible. Hey! I didn't make that up. Always read to the bottom of the story. And, while you're upgrading your reading habits, go back to 2001 and re-read Bush's proclamations about his own dream of "ending" 35-50 countries to stabilize the world for himself and his fellow insiders. He's not gone yet.

  19 December 2008,   "RUSH TO REFINANCE,"the Chronicle screamed in 60 point type at you today.
   The Chronicle screams in big type a lot these days. But it's not just to tell you what's going on, as in "INSIDERS STRIKE AGAIN." RUSH isn't an objective third person verb. Maybe it's a noun. Maybe. But it looks like the command form of the verb rush to me. Besides selling ads, the Chronicle is selling home loans.
   "Talk about economic stimulus," the "story" excitedly begins its sales pitch, while leaving out the kind of truly revolutionary counter advice this country needs.
Don't Fall For It Again!
   Already over-squeezed borrowers are being urged to put themselves back into the hands of the same cowboys who just milked them dry. In the dictated context, which reflects a situation 8 years ago, the reduced 4.5% interest rate that excites the Chronicle may have been good. But in the current context of home "owners" saddled with houses that cost 5 times what they were worth due to an era of historically unregulated greed, it's not. What's called for now and what the unfortunately suckered American home "owners" should be demanding is historic CHANGE. Not mild mannered Obama change. Really historic change.
   The Chronicle talks about $300,000, $400,000, and $600,000 houses as if those figures made sense. They don't, except as historic price gouging. The profiteers aren't the majority your vaunted democracy is supposed to represent. They're a piggish minority, and they shouldn't be bailed out. They should be brought down to earth.
   FIRST, all the overpriced houses should be devalued to their 2000 price plus a logical 8-year increase of about 2 percent a year, the same amount my pension went up each of those years and, if you're lucky, your salary went up. THEN, people who have really already paid enough for their houses should be given their titles, while people who haven't are given lower interest rates on what's left of their reduced home prices.
   Would that be messy? Sure it would. Because it's not enough. We need socialism. But, compared to the cow we have now, which is being milked by the same crooks anticipating more bail-outs in the future, at least that much would be neat enough, easy to understand, and unprecedentedly honest.

  2 November 2008,  With elections pending, I had to search to find the Chronicle's low-key one-line opposition to putting another religious taboo into the California state constitution on a grey page near the end of a throw-away tabloid insert. On page ONE, however, I was slapped in the face by another in a series of topside photo-flashy big-headed celebrations of an anti-intellectual minority having a DEMOCRATIC impact - quite a story. One that's become a regular reminder to every red-neck American Jihadist that he isn't alone and CAN secretly vote against secular government, civilization and social progress.
   This kind of stuff challenges my previous claim that the Chronicle is pushing democracy not religion. But I'm sticking to it. After all, the insiders can HAVE convenient religion, war, ecological destruction, oppression and privilege WITH and THROUGH democracy, without revealing their fleshless grinning skulls. The Chronicle is just being spectacularly clumsy because they're over-excited by what looks like another of the kind of dumb-people's backlashes that got them Ronald Reagan.
        A better story (that they'll never do) would be about how Americans who scorn the religious governments of the middle east yearn for a religious government of their own (Tom Jefferson will never know).
   But the best propaganda isn't always what the media say. It's just as often what they don't say. The biggest unreported story of them all, which, just by being totally unreported, conveniently convinces the public it doesn't matter, remains the story of the now happening collapse of the eco-system due to excess human population growth and the corollary (always profitable, which is all the media care about) growth of the human encampment. I invite you to search today's paper, yesterday's paper, all last week's and last month's papers, and all next month's papers, cover to cover. You'll find many virgin sidebar stories. But you can count on it that, in the mass media, at least, too many cars will never be driven by too many drivers, too many fish caught will never be caught by too many fishermen, too much global warming will never be caused by too many global warmers, etc. I can't help wondering how too many readers can keep swallowing the hook, the line, and the sinker with no apparent suspicion of what they're being fed.
       Maybe they don't. The only intelligent reference to overpopulation I ever see is in an occasional letter to the editor. But I'd guess no more than one out of hundreds of such letters are printed. I "guess" that because I started writing such always unpublished letters (always exactly 350 words or less, always in perfect journalistic style, I'm a retired journalism prof, remember) to the Chronicle in 1959 when I first moved to the bay area to study journalism at San Jose State. The media can't stand too many anti-sustained-growth pitches. They like Al Gore because, in their very own style, he's an insider conveniently covering up the main story with a sidebar story that, guess what, never mentions overpopulation, actually promoting a myth that a problem that's not the problem can be solved by MORE business - "green" business that will advertise in the Chronicle, WHILE the unmentioned real problem keeps outgrowing all the phony but profitable solutions.
       The next best propaganda to flagrant ommissions are sneaky insertions. Flipping past today's front page celebration of religious homo-phobics, I'm taught that those trials "in Cuba" are coming to an end. I wonder how many politically and geographically challenged readers are continually confused by Cuba's editorially apparent connection to Guantanamo. A lot, I'd guess. They're certainly always given the chance. The AP writer further slanders the island with references to iguanas, large rodents, and "turkey" vultures which he associates with the same Cuba where those awful trials are found. As a frequent traveler in Cuba, I found an iguana under my pillow once in a beautiful colonial house in Gibara, but large rodents and "turkey" vultures don't ring a bell (though of course ugly wildlife exists everywhere - including Texas). Maybe they came to Guantanamo, which (it's stupid to say it but I have to) is NOT politically part of Cuba, with the Marines.
       Mentioned in passing, along with the few journalists enduring Cuba's supposedly rodent and vulture infested terrain along with the on-dragging extra-judicial charades, are the trial of "an alleged communications specialist" (use of the word alleged keeps him from suing them for calling him a communications specialist, you see) and the "relatively minor case" (if you can conceive of a war criminal less innocuous than a communication specialist) of a 16-year-old boy whose confession was tortured out of him.
       But AP's main interest is in how many journalists aren't covering "America's 6-year attempt to try what it called 'the worst of the worst' for crimes of war." America's attempt? I thought this was just the War Department's hypocritical project. But AP calls it "America's...attempt," to convince Americans that they are all part of the war effort, which they absolutely are not. They're left out of the loop and ignorant with the help of AP.
       Way down, almost lost in the story's dregs, is this: "Only months ago, the military periodically flew dozens of print reporters, TV crews, pool photographers and sketch artists to Guantanamo Bay from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington." As my own reporter going always to Cuba alone, with no permission or assistance from AP or the Air Force, I may be the only one noticing this reminder that King George I's idea of selecting and conducting approved reporters to and around military scenes is still in effect. Of course, most readers are now OK with the concept of "embedded reporters." Aren't they? And Why? Because their news/propaganda media constantly glorify the concept, proactively discouraging them from ever thinking they might not be OK with it.
       A few pages further on, a killer smog that happened in a Pennsylvania factory town in 1948 is treated as an historical oddity, from back in the olden days when U.S. Steel was still (understandably?) naive enough to call it "an act of God." Some awful leftists proved they were wrong and "it was the first time," we are falsely told, "that people really understood..." Not any more, you're supposed to think. In fact, there's a story on BBC's Latest Headlines right now about a catastrophic mud volcano that's been inundating whole towns in Indonesia for two years, obviously caused by a gas drilling outfit that denies it and blames a small earthquake, "an act of God."
       On the next page, readers who are kept from ever suspecting that most informed people in the world consider Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Evo Morales as the good guys are treated to a tear jerking tale of how ONE woman who earns a living ironing gringo shirts may lose her job because Morales is kicking the US out of Bolivia. Of course, Bolivia suffers from historic poverty, but US media don't or won't grasp or don't want readers to ever suspect that Morales' socialist agenda may eventually eliminate poverty, while sustaining their own beloved status quo will not. In fact, this story, like all others on Bolivia, simply leaves that factor out. Instead, the reporter easily finds local capitalists to criticize Morales, measuring Bolivia's problems against their own discredited capitalist yardstick.
       Two pages further on, a headline indites "rebels (who) tighten grip over swaths of eastern Congo." WHAT they are rebelling against, WHY there is a war, WHO are the socialists, WHO are the capitalists, or IF it's in fact just tribal rivalry, WHY UN "peace keepers" are taking sides, readers will not find out. Strife in Africa, as in most of the barely reported world, is just strife - with refugees, individual suffering, all the regular stuff, but NO ISSUES. It regularly drives me nuts reading paragraph after paragraph of stories like this, looking for some reference to the issues and almost never finding any. Once in a while a sentence, but almost nothing.
       In today's Iraq story, US troop withdrawal, for about the fourth time in a week, is tied to the year 2011. Rat-tat-tat. 2011 2011 2011. When you've read that enough, you'll forget you were ever hearing 2009 2009 2009. Try to remember with little help from the media that Obama's stated target is 2010 2010 2010.
       On a lighter but still relevant note, today's TraVel section, with the V printed in red, ac-cen-tu-ates the positive and ee-lim-i-nates the negative about a place that comes across as an almost funky Peru. There's even a picture of an Inca flag. Did you know the Inca's had a flag? I didn't either. Maybe I saw it and didn't notice it. I know that, in Peru, I saw some of the worst poverty I've ever seen anywhere. Check my document, "From the Andes" on my other website. But poverty isn't to be stressed on a newspaper travel page. Pictures of Inca women selling their wares show them clean, colorful, and happy.
       I talked to the Indians a lot in Peru, because, just as in Guatemala, I found their second-language Spanish a lot like mine. Usually, the people I talked to were wearing frayed and (excuse me) dirty clothing. Except for the beggars, who aren't mentioned in today's happy story, I didn't find them bitter. But I sure as hell knew they could be dangerous and never talked to other travelers who didn't have some at least second hand mugging stories to tell.
       But this story's purpose is to promote business, even foreign business, who cares, as long as it's business. To encourage readers to part with dollars, all U.S. media regularly declare high priced restaurants cheap and $500,000 houses at last affordable again. As a practical, down-scale political tourist, I'm always amazed to read about good hotel deals in places like Cuzco for from $60 to $114 (single). I think maybe once in all my Latin American travels, in a moment of weakness, I paid $60, for a palacial colonial hotel in Antigua. I didn't record all my bills in Peru, so I don't know what I paid, but partly because I'd just come from one of the best hotels on Lake Titicaca covered with flea bites, in Cuzco I treated myself to one of the most beautiful rooms I've ever stayed in, virtually a turret, with big windows overlooking all of tile topped downtown, clean, atmospheric, gracious, for maybe $35, but I think I'd remember $35, so it probably wasn't that much.

  23 October 2008, Americans not well trained by their media might wonder why the Chronicle has been pushing the primitive Proposition 8 for three days, even providing a front page boxed display of Biblical quotations. Of course, the hysterical right's weird idea of a liberal press is wrong. The media are certainly owned and edited by and for the rich. But PC liberal conspiracy theorists are just as far off target. The media isn't above reminding readers they believe in gods and absurd godly morality. But this time the Chronicle isn't pushing religion or even straight sex. It's pushing democracy, a pill readers are so well trained to love to swallow whole, they're far beyond noticing it's daily inclusion in the lesson plan anymore. They'd feel deprived without it.
        Presenting Obama's nearly conscious though timid ideas as equal to McCain's idiot Bushisms is part of the same lesson plan. So's presenting Palin's popularity among the dumb as if popularity could validate her dumbness. And so's seriously headlining GOP uneasiness about the "peril" of a Congress dominated by one party. The thrust of the Proposition 8 story isn't that there are two significant views of an issue (and certainly not that intellectual progress might again be bogged down in primitive superstition). It's that one side's 14 point lead has gone down to an 8 point lead. The myth of democracy that has to be taught daily because it is so obviously wrong that it might easily be forgotten is that you can count up the truth - that you can elect logic. (see Democracy under definitions on the front page).
       I witnessed the tragic foisting of this insidious nonsense on revolutionary Nicaragua in 1996. The Nicas were still in some respects behind the times. American liberals had abandoned their own revolutionary integrity and embraced the "pro-democracy" cop-out six years earlier. But the Nicaraguans had bowed their heads and betrayed their pledge (here, nobody sells out or surrenders)in 1990 from weariness of war and death and injury and loss of friends and family and continuous fear of a George Bush I invasion. But by the '96 election, a modern TV extravaganza, the CIA, the US funded press, the opportunistic big shots in the FSLN, and, yeah, Jimmy Carter, had sold Nicaraguans the creed. So the pleading of honest militants that what mattered was NOT democracy but the revolution fell on enough deaf ears so that, by the numbers, falsehood, capitalism, and poverty were counted the winners again.
        You should know what I'm talking about if you noticed the media didn't tell you yesterday that home prices are almost sane again. They told you how many people are suddenly buying homes again (so you should, too - get it?). And today they don't tell you about death and pain in Iraq. They reported more body counts, the higher the count, the more significant the incident. One writer thinks a higher death count in one incident was the "most fatal" in a 365-day period. On the business page yesterday, they didn't discuss the actual need for a new downtown SF skyscraper. They told you how many feet tall it will be and how many dollars the lot cost. I know somewhere in today's paper you're told why you should watch a TV show or see a movie. Why? Because a winning number of other Americans are doing it. And again today, as yesterday and the day before, you've learned why you should consider changing your vote to McCain - because more people say they'll do that today than said so yesterday.

    11 October 2008, If I had proposed a month ago that the feds start buying the banks, I'd have been dismissed as a crank.
       So now that just such useless half measures are being taken, if I propose that, instead of buying bank stocks, they nationalize the banks, close the stock market, roll back and freeze all prices at the 2000 level subject only to fair adjustment to keep them sensibly inter-related, and set a permanent minimum and maximum annual income scale from $30,000 to $50,000, I'd be dismissed as a crank. So what? Obviously, the crank dismissers have a propensity for being wrong.
       In spite of the religious belief of philosophically challenged Americans that socialism is a naughty word, someday they'll have to finally abandon the failed capitalist game and progress maybe kicking and screaming to socialism. The solution: stop kicking and screaming and go for it - not in jerks and jolts but with dignity,with a plan, carefully and logically.
       And while you're at it, start solving the world's even more important problems by dissolving NATO and other counter-productive extra cogs in the wheel, by joining the UN not as a bully but as a member, and by promoting world-wide, Cuban style population control (they just peacefully teach everyone, without coercion, that one child is enough and two is maximum, and it works) and by moving pro-actively, as a world, away from this savage dog-eat-dog economic non-system that Americans only think they're trapped in toward civilization. As long as it's finally being admitted that "urgent and exceptional action" is called for, why not finally do the exceptional things that have been really urgently needed for a long time?
       I'm not crusading, by the way. I personally gave up the world in 1970 as beyond salvation. This is in second person for a reason. I'm saying that if YOU think the world can still be saved, then you ought to finally start demanding that your so-called leaders (obviously your misleaders) start doing the things that need to be done to save it.

    30 September 2008, "NOW WHAT?" the Chronicle screams angrily in their biggest font at their naughty readers today. Just yesterday, after all, the Chronicle told all you guys flatly, "Make no mistake," clearly meaning, "Don't make the mistake of thinking for yourselves; think what we tell you to," which was quickly clarified as that "only a quick and immense response from the federal government can prevent a historic breakdown of the financial system, one that would have ..."
   What did they mean "would have"? They meant they were trying to conjure up a win for the insiders by reporting it as a done deal, so you guys wouldn't waste time calling Congress. A left top headline above that, cunningly labeled NEWS ANALYSIS, claimed the "need" for the bill already "sways (in present tense) even former skeptics, and another head on the right top declared, again in present tense, "Many believe they must support the bill."
   Trying to sound like Roosevelt or Churchill, not as objective press but as editorial corporate media, the Chronicle itself warned you against fear while trying to scare you into believing that giving away $700 billion dollars quickly to insiders without thinking about it was the only way to go. But they failed. A flood of Americans who weren't suckered e-mailed and wrote and called Congress and said, "Hell no, we won't go for it." Congress got scared for their cushy jobs and voted down the bail-out. And the shocked Chronicle reacted with today's huge headline, a doomsday alarm trying to scare you again, trying again to tell you what you think, trying to soften you up, actually, so you won't resist the second bail-out bill, which will be a lame compromise coming up soon.
    For a whole two days now, maybe for another day or two (I won't expect more than that), this all reminds me of when the Chronicle ran equally huge headlines screaming that Americans had finally had enough of Bill Clinton's disgraceful tom-catting and weren't going to take it anymore. But it didn't work, and then, like now (for a few days now, anyway), their readers refused to be told what they thought. It was the biggest story never reported, not the Bill and Monica story, the U.S. media and their readers story, which was never reported by the media (though it certainly prompted extension of routine pre-election public brainwashing from one year to two).
    Americans were bombarded all that year, every hour of every day, with puritan propaganda until finally the media and Congress had to turn it off and surrender their impeachment dream, because the people, who may have been stupid enough to be fooled about politics and economics, at least knew ALL about sex and COULDN'T be fooled about that.
    Too bad this isn't about sex or sports or pop stars. It's about politics and economics. And a new bill faked up to look more acceptable is already on the table and being hyped to the people with Cheshire smiles. So I'll be amazed if the people's momentary good sense doesn't wash off.
    But I was already pleasantly amazed when the BBC blog board responded to THEIR bail out propaganda piece, not with the usual lumpen blather but with numerous articulate comments accurately nailing the bail out, the Republicans and Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, and even capitalism. Some writers even understood that the big bad debt was - IS - a fantasy, that the crooks were to get real money to replace the dream loot they never actually had in their hands to lose.
    It would be something if Congress, pretending to intelligently ponder an inadequately amended compromise bill to reduce the ransom, were once again flooded with e-mails and calls telling them, "Hell no! We STILL won't go for it!" I'm not expecting that, but I'll do a little for the cause here - at least for the cause of clarity - by explaining to my one or two readers how an illusion has become a real mess that's really scary but should be boldly used as a painful way to finally bring down the jungle system of capitalism. Oh yeah. I bet.
    Day before (or before that) yesterday, the media explained to you (taught you) for the umpteenth time that the crisis stems from lenders being merely "complicit in the stupid decisions to offer mortgages to home buyers who couldn't afford them." Sure. What really happened was that home buyers who rightfully wanted homes were conned into agreeing to pay 5 times what the homes were worth by crooks trying to make a killing and intending to foreclose on the first wave of suckers and then re-sell at an even more criminal price to a second wave of suckers.
    But once the first suckers had been screwed, no second wave came, and prices started dropping (they haven't stopped dropping yet and shouldn't until they get back down to earth). So the crooks, in their minds, got screwed, too. But they didn't lose $700 billion actual dollars. They failed to GET 80% of the loot they wanted - a fantasy - dream loot. Their victims couldn't pay it.
    At that point, the government should have stepped in, given the homes to the buyers, and locked up the crooks. But it was the crooks who had friends who looked the other way as they used the dream loot on their books like unhatched chickens to reinvest in other ventures, and those ventures also used the fantasy loot to pay for labor, materials, etc. So the fantasy loot was transmuted into a real mess. That's normal capitalist jungle chaos. But it got too big and obvious, so the foxy chicken guards who let it happen decided to save us all by replacing the dream loot with real money (that they're busy printing).
    Some other countries the mess has slopped into are nationalizing some of their banks. That makes sense. That's what we should be doing, just for a start, because it's past time to deep 6 capitalism, which never worked for anyone but the winners, anyway. But it's more likely the losers WILL finally be fooled again into voting against themselves again.

   September 28 2008, The estimated 1300 people who've killed themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate, according to my calculator, are not quite 1/4 as many people as have killed themselves by joining the U.S. military and going to Iraq and Afghanistan. But if you take the time period into account and divide 4600 dead soldiers by 7 years and l300 jumpers by the 71 years the bridge has been there, nearly 700 U.S. troops a year have jumped off Afghanistan and Iraq, while only 18 people a year have jumped off the bridge. Now, considering that the actual human death rate is 100%, meaning that of the well over 6 billion people alive today, assuming an average life expectancy of 65 years, even figuring an extremely bottom heavy age distribution, loosely a million people die every year, not only is it apparent that only 1 out of 55555 of them jump off the Golden Gate, it's also apparent that the entire 1/55555 would have died anyway if they hadn't made that jump.
    If anyone thinks I'm being too frivolous about such a serious subject, I remind you that, just like minorities who claim the right to joke about racism, as a human getting close to death, I have the right (and so do you) to be frivolous about death, especially in response to a mass media which constantly fakes a laughably pious attitude toward the subject, and especially when the SF Chronicle prints a headline and picture that probably unconsciously invite a realistically frivolous response, especially when that response has important implications society's insiders want to keep covered up.
    Seeing the headline in the local section today, Shoes memorialize bridge jumpers, over a picture of a whole lot of shoes, I had to ask myself, "Did they all take off their shoes before they jumped and are these their shoes?" Then, reacting rationally to the pious but incoherent read-out, "Research shows that if you can break that cycle, only for a moment, they might not do it." my second question (and I hope yours, too) had to be, "So What?" And then, seeing the cunningly misleading subhead, Support for the barrier, I had to get pissed and ask another question, "What support?" And you've gotta be unconscious if you can't guess my 4th question, in response to the insidious unquoted nonsense clearly representing the Chronicle's own fractured (at the comma - look close) editorial view:

    Though a recent unscientific online poll by the district found that 75 percent of 1,600 respondents opposed any changes to the bridge, the net (a stupid steel net to catch people) seemed to be the most attractive alternative.

    My own unscientific ongoing poll has so far failed to turn up anyone who even opposes suicide or, get this, anyone who doesn't admire and defend Dr. Kervorkian. So my fifth question could be "What world does the Chronicle editorial staff live in?" But it isn't. I know the answer. I also know the defense for this story is that it's about a media event staged by the supporters of a suicide barrier on the bridge. But that's no defense for the spectacular absence of a large philosophical feature explaining why no really rational person sees any reason to spend a fortune disfiguring the bridge. And it's no defense for the Chronicle's refusal to print ANY really realistic comment on the issue of suicide, like, for instance, the following, my own brief clear and unprintable letter to the editor:

    July 9 2008, Originally, it was going to cost $2 million to study how to waste another $2 million to disfigure the bridge so people fed up with life can't exercise their existential right to jump off. Now it's $40 to $50 million. Of course this isn't a secular state, but why should the people of a supposedly secular state spend millions to enforce a religious taboo?
    Come on! Here's a message from the real world. If you don't want anyone jumping off the Golden Gate because it's a costly and bothersome nuisance to try to drag their bodies out, then put up signs on the bridge rail telling them the unreligious truth.
    Put up a sign every 50 yards explaining that, "Hey! Hitting the water doesn't kill you. It just smashes your bones and adds a lot of pain and the panic of being a helpless cripple to the smothering horror of drowning in rude and icy saltwater!"
    And at the bottom of each sign put a number they can call to get suggestions and instructions for better ways to kill themselves.
    Better yet, pretend we really are both secular and civilized here and sell 2-pill suicide kits without a prescription in every drugstore, consisting of a sleeping pill guaranteed to put you quickly and gently into a deep enough sleep for surgery and a time-release cyanide capsule guaranteed to kill you in 3 seconds while you're sound asleep "in the privacy of your own room."
    Oops! Did I go off nearly everybody else's screen there? Sorry. I can never get used to living in a whole world of cruel and dopy mystics, intellectual cowards, and piously hypocritical politicians.

    Remember my last question that I already know the answer to was,"What world does the Chronicle editorial staff live in?" and another question I already know the answer to (which means it's ALL the Chronicle's OTHER readers who should be asking these questions) is, "Why does the Chronicle strain so hard to convince us we share their 19th century religious prejudice against suicide?"
    Since the Chronicle won't tell you, I will. It's because death postponement is big business. Population growth and development are big business. Selling life-prolonging products to lots and lots and lots more people through their youth, adulthood, middle age, and old age is big business. Religion is big busines. Denial is big business. And, not only are the Chronicle publishers and (probably) editors businessmen, their major advertisers are big businessmen. And even if it directly causes the rapidly nearing total collapse of the eco-system, big business depends on SUSTAINED growth. And to hell with all the losers who'd at least like to pick up their useless marbles and abstain from further participation in growth sustainment. Their forcibly sustained life, failure and exploitable misery are big business.
    More specifically, some insider wants the contract to build the unneeded suicide barrier. And he doesn't HAVE TO have a friend in City Government or on the Chronicle staff (though he may). The 1/10 of 1% insiders who own and run this country are all in the same general business. Whether their conspiracy is tacit or explicit, "good" business is good for all of them. So all of them (including media chiefs) try to be "good" for "good" business.
    But since you probably aren't in the club, why is the Chronicle trying so hard to convince YOU a money-making scam like the suicide barrier is something you know in your heart is needed? Come on. That's how big businessmen talk to suckers.
    P.S. Compare it to the way the Chronicle talks to you about the big business bail-out. SEE September 30 2008 above.

   September 20 2008, Back in 1982, Americans proud of their own fabled free speech were smugly critical when Margaret Thatcher blasted UK news media for covering the Falklands war objectively, but if Thatcher were in the White House, she'd be happy with U.S. media treatment of North Korea, which is so seamlessly slanted, you may be too used to it to notice.
        For instance, a Chronicle headline today (Saturday) - North Korea backing out of nuclear deal - is followed by an AP story that, instead of calling the North Koreans bad guys just assumes you know that. But, in fact, the placement of North Korea's side of the story in paragraph #9, which, if this were on the front page, would be past the jump and probably go unread, violates textbook journalism rules, though it certainly fulfills the apparent rules of normal Associated Press coverage of communist countries.
       So the propaganda in the lead, on which the headline is based (as if the Chronicle needed any help being anti-communist, too), unbalanced by the distant paragraph #9, saturates the readers' view. Re-read the headline boldfaced above and then read the beginning of the story below, paying careful attention to how coy but relentless anti-communist propaganda works.

       A rare foreign policy success for the Bush administration is imploding as North Korea backs away from pledges to abandon nuclear weapons pretty much as the president's critics on the right had warned.
       Distracted by an economic crisis at home and a series of diplomatic setbacks abroad, President Bush and his top aides are watching the collapse of a painstakingly negotiated process that just months ago seemed on track to produce a major international success and perhaps bring a final end to the Korean War before they leave office.

       Maybe you ARE so used to the pitch you don't see what's wrong with that lead. But I hope you can at least gasp without my help at the inept phrase the Korean War (possibly a Freudian slip). The Korean war!?! Holy cow! The excessive length of this graph makes me wonder if a typically inept Chronicle editor inserted the 14 words after international success. Maybe it's better not to dwell on whatever the point is.
       But before that, just in the first graph, repetition of the editorial word success is meant not to inform but to teach readers what they think. Negative words like imploding, abandoned and warned subtly support the lesson. The lie that North Korea "pledge(d)" to surrender without their own conditions being met reiterates previous lessons about North Korea you've been relentlessly handed. The reference only to unnamed critics on the right (who, I guess, "warned" Bush he couldn't trust those rats) legitimizes the rightists' narrow view, while robbing you of the less rabid views of other critics.
       The second graph is worse, because it's not the graph that, according to the rules of journalism, belongs here, and because it's not news - it's just propaganda. First AP provides Bush an alibi - that he was distracted by his other failures. Then AP itself (nobody's being quoted) praises what it calls a "painstakingly negotiated process," i.e. relentless stonewalling and name calling (on both sides but with less honesty on the Bush side), which readers are told by AP was "on track to produce a major international success." That's what AP says, which would be OK if you didn't think this was a news story and if AP wasn't such a shameless lap dog.
       But if my journalism students had printed it, besides posting this story on the wall covered with red ink, I'd have reminded them that they'd been taught that the second graph of a story citing a serious accusation should cite the response of the party being accused. And, the lesson being an important one, I'd have posted a typed example on the wall beside it, including an appropriately rewritten version of the buried paragraph #9 as the second graph.

       What's been touted as a rare foreign policy success for the Bush administration seemed to collapse Thursday when North Korea apparently backed away from pledges to abandon their nuclear weapons ambitions in response to what they called Washington's continued failure to fulfill its side of the deal.
       While White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley called the North Koreans "obstructionists," Pyongyang spokespersons declared the DPRK had given up on Washington and will "go its own way." North Korea has long demanded that the U.S. take them off it's terrorist blacklist, but the State Department has not complied.

       This is a 13-graph story with only one brief and buried nod to objectivity, preceded by numerous stories just like it, some of which strenuously painted North Korea as a pretty sordid place. I've never been there, and I don't pretend to know. Maybe North Korea is sordid. but I'm sceptical because the same kind of slander has been regularly heaped on places that I do know don't deserve it. That is, I have no reason to trust AP or any other mainstream western media, and neither do you, and the example I'm deconstructing here should at least make you wonder.
       Understand that I'm not making a case here for North Korea. I'm judging western media, especially but not only AP, because there are a lot of sordid places in the world, including parts of Texas, that they don't so strenuously slander. So their vitriolic attitude toward North Korea is an taylored thing, apparently trumped up to support George Bush, whom I certainly don't trust, and also to reinforce their weirdly vitriolic anti-communist stance, a regressive attitude I find and everybody should find contemptible.
       You should recall and take notice that AP never reminds you that the confrontation with North Korea goes back to the Korean War and includes the presence of U.S. troops in their faces ever since; that it also includes dealings with Bill Clinton who also failed to fulfill his promises; that George Bush very belligerently called North Korea part of an "axis of evil" and then gratuitously attacked another country on that supposed "axis" and seems bent on attacking another; that Bush has never threatened Pakistan, a very unstable muslim country guilty of many state approved human rights abuses, with a population that mostly doesn't like us, and prone to wage war against its neighbor, India. Since Pakistan's free pass is clearly that they have nuclear weapons, North Korea's wish for nuclear retaliatory capability makes sense. Doesn't it? Remember, my point isn't that it DOES make sense, though I think it does, but that AP makes a point of never acknowledging that it does.

   August 22 2008, BBC's carefully official and repeated reference to a "French resolution" on the Georgian conflict serves to remind us that, since the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France, the U.S. insiders and their corporations have a new puppet in the UN.
    That's interesting, but this website is and will be more interested in how obviously BBC, AP, and all the mainstream media so smoothly and loyally pander to the insiders political economic games and to their version of history and reality. Today's BBC story is as much a part of the game as George Bush whispering in Sarkozy's ear.

   THIS FEATURE HAS NOW BEGUN AND WILL CONTINUE, PROBABLY NOT DAILY (I'M GETTING TOO OLD FOR THAT) BUT REGULARLY. It will consist of a deconstruction of the news as presented by The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The New York times, and other paper and internet media as appropriate hopefully most days.

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