Category Archives: Opinion

President Obama Moves Toward Fascist Ideas

by Editor | 1 Comment

Watch liberal MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow in this video.  Watch the whole thing.  She’s leading us through what may amount to the most terrifying fascist speech ever delivered to the people of the United States.  The sitting president is moving toward setting up a legal structure that will place people in ‘prolonged detention’ BEFORE they have committed any crime or have even been charged with a crime if they are determined to be a possible danger to the United States.  Maddow points out how this is the exact premise of the science fiction film Minority Report which was based upon a Philip K. Dick story.  This is a well-known liberal commentator who says at the end of the video that this Obama speech is ‘one of the most radical proposals for defying the Constitution that we have ever heard made to the American people.’

The American Civil Liberties Union has responded with short statement.

The bottom line is that this president is shocking human rights and civil liberties organizations all over the world with his rapid move toward fascism.  These are largely liberal organizations that once looked upon Mr. Obama as a welcome change from eight years of assaults on civil liberties.  They and many liberal voters in the United States are profoundly disappointed and legitimately horrified at what they are hearing from this president.

So, if you write or say something that makes someone somewhere in the Obama administration decide that you might be some sort of danger in the future, you could be arrested and held in a new separate legal structure that could keep you imprisoned indefinitely – forever.

That is a profoundly un-American and illegal idea.

The Idea of a Muse Might be Sexist

by Editor | 2 Comments

Lee Siegel has written an article in the Wall Street Journal called Where Have All the Muses Gone? Huh.  Well, let’s see if we can make a half-hearted stab at figuring that out.  Where have they all gone?  The first important thing to realize is that muses are female.  Apparently.  I’ve read through Mr. Siegel’s article and find it loaded with male artists who seem to require the subtle services of female muses.  Some of these men are even married to wives who are actual female artists but who function for Mr. Siegel and his article as ‘muses’ for their lucky men.

So it would seem that if you want to find out where all the muses have gone you would simply need to figure out where a woman would go who might be fed up with dragging her artist boyfriend or husband through the jagged ravine of his writer’s block.  I don’t know for sure but my guess is you might find her down at the municipal court house filing divorce papers.

Honestly, reading through Mr. Siegel’s article just makes me laugh.  Why doesn’t he have a single example of a female artist with a muse of her own?  It staggers the imagination to think that the world has not known a single woman artist with a male muse.  And Dante didn’t have a muse for goodness sake.  Beatrice?  Really?  Dante was a nasty little Italian man with a bone to pick with every passerby he ever ran into.  Reading Inferno is like reading through a litany of every petty wrong Dante felt he had to hold onto and seek literary revenge for.  This guy would have driven any kind of self-respecting muse straight into the nuthouse.  If I were Virgil I would have ditched him around the corner on the third level down.

You know who my muse is?  It’s Mick Jagger.

The illustration is Carl Wilhelm Friederich Oesterly’s portrait of Dante and his supposed muse Beatrice Portinari.

Word Bullets are Destabilizing Guatemala’s Government

by Editor | 1 Comment

The Guatemalan Twitter user named Jean Anleu Fernández who was arrested for making a Twitter post that suggested people should remove their money from the Banrural in order to help break the backs of corrupt politicians has been released from jail and placed under house arrest.  In the video above, you can watch as he greets his friends and makes a Twitter post while in handcuffs.  In one of the most fascinating recent examples of the battle for free expression we are watching a normal guy get persecuted by a Western nation for simply posting his thoughts on the internet.  He has been charged with inciting financial panic and attempting to cause a run on the bank.  I actually think his idea for pulling money out of the bank is a very good one and I fully support his idea.  Why not?  If Guatemala is so afraid of a run on its bank, then it either needs a new bank or a new government.  Perhaps both.  I think that, on the basis of what we are seeing in Guatemala, both the bank and the country’s government should be eliminated as quickly as possible.  The barrage of worldwide outrage toward Guatemala’s government via the internet is illustrative of the power of ‘word bullets’ to destabilize and destroy governments.  This is a fearsome power in the hands of ordinary internet users all over the globe.  It is this power that is the great weapon in the hands of all free people.  But it is also the power that will cause a dangerous reaction from governments seeking to eliminate this potent popular weapon.  I think that we are on the brink of the greatest assault on freedom of expression in history and that the assault will come primarily from free Western nations.  We are seeing it already in attempts like U.S. congressional representative Linda Sanchez’s bill to criminalize the posting of opinions on the internet that may offend anyone at all or emotionally injure a potential reader.  There is absolutely no difference between her attempt at legislation to eliminate freedom of speech and the behavior of the Guatemalan government in arresting a man for suggesting that people withdraw their own money from a bank.

Guatemala Imprisons Man for Twitter Suggestion that People Withdraw Their Money From Bank

by Editor

The government of Guatemala has arrested and imprisoned a man named Jean Anleu Fernández who posted on Twitter yesterday the following message: “The first action people should take is to remove cash from Banrural, and break the banks of corrupt people. #escandalogt”

His Twitter message was in response to the suspected involvement of the Guatemalan president in the recent assassination of a prominent lawyer who was investigating government corruption.  What we are seeing here is the new power of words.  Their power to take down a government.  The outrageous action of Guatemala has created a worldwide eruption of blog and Twitter outrage in which Anleu Fernández’ original message is being reproduced countless times.  Boing Boing is doing excellent coverage of this story.

I agree with Mr. Anleu Fernández in his suggestion that people withdraw their money from a bank that people suspect of corruption.  I would withdraw my money if I were in Guatemala.  I also think the people should probably withdraw themselves from Guatemala if at all possible since it is quite obviously moving toward total collapse.  If Guatemala thinks I’m creating panic, then I would suggest that people actually run screaming from the country because panic is exactly what should be happening there.  When police start arresting people for telling other people to pull money out of a bank, then it’s all over.

Candlelight Stories Withdraws Support of President Obama

by Editor | 2 Comments

President Barack Obama, in a stunning assault on freedom of information, has decided to object to the planned release of photographs showing abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This action by a U.S. president who ran on a platform of openness in government and who promised to change the secretive ways of the Bush administration is unconscionable and supremely disappointing.  The U.S. military, in committing acts of torture, committed crimes for which this country itself has prosecuted other nations’ soldiers.  Any photos showing these criminal acts are the property of the American people and must be released for full viewing of the facts.  The argument that releasing these photos somehow reduces the effectiveness of our troops overseas and endangers them any more than they already are is blatantly ridiculous and stretches credulity.  Soldiers are already in harm’s way because they stand in front of enemy guns.  Releasing photos of criminal acts by the military does not change this danger in the slightest.

It is very apparent that Mr. Obama has not brought much change to the White House and would rather continue certain policies of a criminal Bush administration.  On this basis, Candlelight Stories completely rejects Mr. Obama and his presidency and will no longer support him.  Candlelight Stories is convinced that Mr. Obama is a fairly effective public speaker and not much more.  We look forward to a viable Democratic candidate for the 2012 election who is not Barack Obama.

It is truly unfortunate that this country cannot seem to produce a leader with the capacity to stand up to its own military/industrial apparatus.  It is a very dangerous situation when a nation’s military tells its president not to release photos of criminal acts and that president is actually fearful enough to listen.

Western Publishers in Terror of Offending Someone

by Editor

Extremely interesting post over on the MobyLives blog called Dangerous Books about how the radical Islamic outrage over Salmon Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses has led to a pernicious self-censorship by major publishers in the West.  Iran issued a death sentence for Mr. Rushdie who stayed in hiding for many years.  Publishers and translators associated with Mr. Rushdie around the world were killed.  Kenan Malik, in his new book about the Rushdie episode, says that the publishing industry has been forever changed by fear.  Publishers in the West are no longer willing to publish works that might be considered offensive by some other group, religion, or nation.

My take on all this is simple: Dump these publishers.  Yeah.  Seriously.  Ernest Hemingway was good with a hunting rifle.  Can you imaging that guy cowering in front of some outraged religious nut job from Iran?  No.  He would have shot the imbecile down with a high-caliber metaphorical bullet.  We don’t cower with our books and our thoughts in the West.  We write them and publish them and if you get in our way with your stupid radical religious idiocy, we’ll blow you right down into the ground.  That’s it.  We need a new kind of author.  A new kind of publisher.  Fearless.  Willing to shoot.  I have no respect for an editor or a publishing house that reads a book and says, ‘Well, gee… this will inflame radicals all over the world and could lead to riots and to another bloody death threat.  Let’s not publish this.’

I want to inflame with words.  I want words that are bullets.  The fire of the intellect destroys radical religious infections.

No more Western fear.  You want to riot over my book?  Good.  Go for it.  You want to shoot me because of my book?  Go for it.  I’m firing back and I’m not going to miss.  And I’m going to win.  I’m going to steamroll right over you and your culture and turn you into my private paved road.

That’s my attitude.  Live with it – or don’t.