Category Archives: Opinion

WikiLeak Video Appears to Show U.S. Military Killing Without Cause

by Editor

Extremely graphic video that shows killing:

WikiLeaks, an organization that releases whistle-blower information, has released a 2007 video that appears to be part of a U.S. military cover-up. It shows U.S. Apache helicopter gunship crews shooting a group of men on a sidewalk that included two Reuters journalists. They also kill innocent people who arrive to help the wounded, seriously injuring two small children in the process. We can hear the helicopter gun crews begging for clearance to fire on people who are simply talking on a street corner. After killing most of them, they then beg for permission to kill a man who stops his van to render assistance to a victim (one of the journalists, in fact) who is crawling on the sidewalk.  Even if the soldiers thought the van was in fact trying to rescue wounded insurgents, so what?  Since when and under what rules of war are medical personnel or rescuers fired upon and killed for helping the wounded?  That’s a war crime.

I cannot see anything on this video that would give any sane and rational person the slightest motive for firing a weapon.  It is clear and simple murder.

After seeing this video, I think it would have been perfectly justifiable for anyone, including an American, to have taken these helicopters down.  This makes one wonder just how many attacks against American troops might actually be perfectly justifiable self-defense.  The idea that money I’ve earned actually goes into the pockets of murderous military personnel like this crew is hard to accept.  What’s really frightening is how widespread these bad soldiers must be in our military.  After all, these gunship crews are supposed to be the cream of the crop.  These soldiers should not want to live with what they did.

I think everyone should show this video on every web site in the U.S.  And we should find the men in these helicopters and on the radios and charge them with murder.  If this is how we are fighting our wars, I want no part of it.

Obama Signs Healthcare Bill – Big Fu*king Deal

by Editor

I’m for health care reform because I’m about as liberal as one can get. I would never in a million elections consider voting for a Republican candidate for any office whatsoever.  But I also have a nasty habit of biting off the political hand that feeds me and then spitting it back.  I’ve seen the rock-bottom brutal racism and stupidity of the healthcare reform opponents and the Tea Party protesters who look to me exactly like Ku Klux Klan members.  I think they need white hoods to go along with all their racial epithets and homophobic remarks.  The fact is that the United States desperately needs some kind of health reform to reign in the murderous insurance companies and protect all people, not just those who make lots of money and can afford absurdly priced, flimsy medical coverage.  Now that I’ve said that, I will also say that this country also needs a vice president who does not say ‘it’s a big fu*king deal’ on television in front of the world with his arms around the President.  His remark is shameful and not in slightest bit funny.  It put his president in an uncomfortable position during an important and historical moment.  Obama should have asked him to kindly leave the room.  Biden is a liability and needs to be dropped from the ticket in 2012.  He will be.  Watch.  All Republican campaign commercials will now feature Joe Biden saying ‘Big Fu*king Deal.’

As for the health reform law, I think it is obviously unconstitutional.  There.  I’ve said it.  I will be rejected by most of my friends now, but it’s the simple unavoidable truth.  The law’s central requirement that all Americans buy health insurance from private companies is ludicrous and will be quickly rejected by the United States Supreme Court.  Already, fourteen states have filed a lawsuit declaring the law an infringement of states’ rights.  They are correct.  Taxing Americans in order to cover them through a public policy is one thing.  But forcing them to give money to insurance companies that routinely murder people by withdrawing medicine from them is an entirely different matter.  I think Democrats are in a frenzy of forced celebration over a victory they know is somewhat temporary.  A conservative Supreme Court is going to dismantle this thing in a hurry.  The federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce does not give it the power to force people to engage in that commerce in the first place.  If I don’t want to buy something, I don’t have to buy it.  Certainly, we are all obligated to buy car insurance if we drive.  But we choose to drive.  We are free to not drive and not buy car insurance.  But the health reform law forces Americans to pay corporations… for being alive at all.

Obama did not have the courage to push a public insurance option through.  He made a deal with Murder Incorporated and he is going to pay a very steep price for this mistake.  A reform bill without public insurance coverage should have simply forced the insurance companies into strict codes of behavior.  It should not have forced every single U.S. citizen to hand cash over to these horrendous people.  No way.  It’s actually pretty shocking to see this happening during a Democratic administration.  The plan is actually this: to have Internal Revenue Service agents investigate people who don’t buy insurance and to levy penalties upon them.  That’s like a government penalty for not buying your tires at Sears.

It is not necessary to argue about the reform bill anymore.  It is law now.  But I can predict that no law requiring private medical insurance coverage is going to be on the books in two years’ time.

London Police Lose Free Speech Encounter

by Editor

The Love Police in the U.K. went to the Tower of London with their cameras and a megaphone to utilize their right to free speech. The guards at the Tower objected and called the London police. What you see in the video is the leader of the Love Police group speaking very intelligently and effectively to the lead police inspector about what the law actually says and what his rights are under that law. He successfully argues for his right to refuse to identify himself or to be searched under the Anti-Terrorism Law in the United Kingdom. What is so interesting about this video is the clear and overwhelming evidence that the police in London do not at all understand the laws they are enforcing or even which laws they are enforcing. They have clearly met more than their match in this instance and are in fact at serious risk of getting their department into liability troubles. The same problems with police are encountered here in the United States. There is the same lack of education and training in police ranks and the same willingness to try to remove basic rights from citizens.

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Kindles and Little Bookstores

by Editor | 4 Comments

I don’t understand much about the book business.  But I do know what makes a person want to go and be somewhere.  I read a good blog post at The Devil’s Accountant about the troubles small bookstores have with the existing book business and the emerging business of ebook publishing.  Small bookstores have to purchase books at wholesale for too much money and can’t make enough profit when they sell at retail.  That’s true.  But most movie theaters can’t make much money selling tickets either.  They sell candy and sodas at big markups to make good money.  In fact, there’s no such thing as the ‘movie business.’  There’s only a candy selling business that uses movies to bring you up to the candy counter.

An important point I’d also like to make about independent and small bookstores is that most of them really suck.  Seriously.  Most small bookstores are just a modest room full of books on poorly built shelves.  Dead boring.  Nothing puts me to sleep faster than a crappy independent bookstore.  Good riddance to them.  Most independent bookstores can’t hold a candle to any Barnes & Noble or a Borders.  Don’t open a bookstore if all you want to do is sell books.  You’re an idiot if you do.  And I won’t give you my money.  I’ll give it to Amazon.  They are not boring.  They are smart and interesting.  I enjoy watching them slaughter dull little bookshop owners every single day.  It’s a fascinating and wonderful bloodbath.  These booksellers are being eaten by lions and their screams are rare amusement.

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School Guy Brags About Watching Kids with Laptop Cameras

by Editor | 1 Comment

The show is called Digital Nation. This segment is called How Google Saved a School. Well, really? How did it? Come on now, Frontline. Let’s get real. There’s an assistant principal bragging on video about how he watches the students through their laptop cameras and finds out if they are using their computers inappropriately. Would it be inappropriate to stick one of his laptops straight up his smug geekster rear end? Because if I were one of these kids trying to learn in this nightmare of a prison school, that’s what I’d do and I’d just take the consequences as they came (that’s an insult, not an actual suggestion). But for now I’d recommend having a quick look at his hard drives to see exactly where he’s watching these kids. I’d certainly be curious. After all, he says the kids ‘use their laptops as a mirror,’ and that he watches them. Hmmm. Interesting, bud. How much time do you spend watching? There’s a school in Pennsylvania right now in all kinds of trouble with parents and the FBI because they are alleged to have been filming kids through laptop cameras in their own homes! That’s jail time, Ms. Principal lady. You spy on naked kids for any reason whatsoever and you get a free pass to the big house. No kidding.

These ‘educators’ are losing it in a bad way. If you’re watching a kid through a camera at school or in their home, you are one diseased nut-job and have no business being anywhere near children. Parents should not tolerate this sort of activity from a school or a school employee. They should call police in and create a very public stink. It is the job of a parent to very forcefully defend a child from this kind of surveillance.

Film: Typography

by Editor

In Ronnie Bruce’s short film Typography, poet Taylor Mali lets it all hang out about how people talk today. Hipsters. Kids. Cooliodoolios who don’t want to sound too committal about anything. Every utterance is just a little fart with a question mark at the end. ‘You know?’

I don’t happen to have this problem with sounding non-committal and all like you know laid back. I get in trouble because I talk too much like a guy who’s swinging a baseball bat. But, uh, you know, in an era of fake Bush wars and a ‘liberal’ president who tells me I’m going to have to buy insurance from a murderous private company or else… well, hmmm, like, dude, I’m swingin’ my verbal bat just as hard as I want and I’m hoping to hit someone in authority. The Tea Party folks are idiots, but there’s one thing they’ve got right. Obama is so over, he’s, like, you know… done.  Obama reminds me of a school principal.  Never says anything worth listening to.  He’s got the dullest eyes I’ve ever seen on a president.  Notice that?  Blank.  Even Bush had expression.  Always terror.  Sheer stark raving terror radiated out of Bush’s little monkey eyes.  Obama radiates the pause between pre-planned comments – the ‘umm’ moment.

Of course, when people suddenly get very clear, direct, self-assured and forceful in their statements you know what happens, right?  You get Hitler.

Barnes & Noble Nook is a Dreadful Failure

by Editor | 20 Comments

I’ve been so waiting with my bated breath and all for this magical Nook machine from Barnes & Noble.  I was in a right dither tonight about an hour and a half ago as I shoved my reading glasses into my pocket, put my regular glasses on my face and piled into my car for the short ride to my nearest Barnes & Noble bookseller.  But I stopped first at the Lenscrafters to run in and have them adjust my frames because my glasses are so new and have been drifting over lopsided all week.  So the woman there fixed them up nicely and shined them good.  Then I drove on toward my Nook encounter.

The store had a lone unit attached to an anti-theft device that scared the hell out of me because I tend to demonstrate new devices to myself until nearby customers think I’m a lunatic and I certainly didn’t want to raise any alarms.  The Nook said, ‘Press the Power Button to Wake Up.’  I spun the device around several times until I located said button embedded in the upper edge of the Nook.  I pressed it.

I waited.

Then I pressed it perhaps fourteen or fifteen times to try and make something wake up.  Then the screen went through a series of blinks, flashes and some rather frightening symbols appeared and then disappeared.  And then the machine said, ‘Press the Power Button to Wake Up.’

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What’s Wrong with Scientology’s Ideas?

by Editor | 2 Comments

I am impervious to the persuasions of all clubs, organizations and religions.  I’ve read the entire Old Testament and know that god has never spoken a single word to any living human being in history.  I’ve been in terribly close proximity to Catholic priests for extended periods of time, argued with them and sat gritting my teeth through their best attempts at mass.  You can burn all the bushes in my backyard and come down the hill with as many tablets as you like and I’ll know you’re a damned fake.  So I can watch L. Ron Hubbard speak through all six parts of the interview above and have not the slightest fear of showing up in a Scientology storefront with my wallet out.  However, I don’t really see anything terribly wrong with what Hubbard says in the interview.  What’s all the Scientology warfare really about?

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Fake Artist Sues Photographer for Taking Pics of Public Sidewalk Art

by Editor | 1 Comment

Some abject fool of an artist named Jack Mackie made a deal with the city of Seattle to embed an artwork called Dancers’ Series: Steps into a sidewalk back in 1979.  Then a photographer named Mike Hipple went and did a logical thing; he took a photograph of a public sidewalk with the artwork in it.  Now the nitwit fraudulent artist is suing him for using his artwork in a photograph!  It’s jackasses like this Mackie dude that need to be put out of business.  By this jerk’s reasoning I would have to pay royalties to all of the architects responsible for the design of every single building in the Manhattan skyline if I took a photograph of New York.  Ridiculous!  This fool is an insult to artists and intellectual property courts all over the country.

The only good thing about this Jack Mackie art is that people get to step on it.

I have an idea for a great photograph.  Someone goes up to Seattle with a jackhammer for a 4:00 am dig-and-run operation then takes a photograph of the hole that’s left and its caption reads, ‘Please Fill This Hole.’

And this would be something to do to every public artwork attached to a moronic lawsuit like Mr. Mackie’s. Every time one of these lawsuits is filed, destroy the artwork. Eventually, corporate midgets like Jack Mackie will go away.

And another thing, Mr. Mackie, I recognize the concrete incorporated in your artwork on the sidewalk.  It’s extremely distinctive.  My uncle owns the mill that made that concrete and he will expect to be compensated for the use of his concrete in your public artwork.  You owe him $600,000.  He’s coming to collect.  His name is Lou.  Smile when you open the door.

Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Docks Ship for Fun and Sun in Stricken Haiti

by Editor | 6 Comments

Perhaps the most disgusting company on the face of the planet has made itself known today: Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines has docked the cruise ship Independence of the Seas at a private beach in Haiti which is fenced off from the rest of the stricken nation, for some fun and sun along the beach.  The resort beach is about sixty miles from the devastation of Haiti’s earthquake zone and is surrounded by tall fences and armed guards.

Apparently, the cruise line company has excused its shocking act by saying that it delivered some pallets of relief supplies.  So, with millions of people injured, two hundred thousand dead, everything lying in heaps of rubble, this Royal Caribbean company thinks it can dock its ship for fun and NOT pick up survivors or provide beds and rooms for survivors or transportation for survivors.  What Royal Caribbean should be doing is running its ships back and forth to ferry people to hospitals on other islands.  That’s what a responsible company with real sailors in its employ would be doing.  How could a ship’s captain or crew live with itself after behaving in such a monstrous fashion?  How could the passengers not mutiny?  What are the names of the people on board this ship?  Let’s find out and post them on the web.

Ship photo from Bernt Rostad

Haiti May Be Providing Slave Labor to U.S. Corporations

by Editor | 2 Comments

Haitians Hang French Troops For Their Acts of Cruelty

During the earthquake crisis in Haiti I have continued to ask the same question of my friends: How, in the 21st Century, can a country so close to the richest nation on earth be so poor?  No one seems to have an answer except for Pat Robertson (who is not a friend, by the way) who suggests that the Haitians made a pact with the devil when they made the French leave.  Seems an odd way to refer to a successful uprising against slavery, doesn’t it?

Since the earthquake, I have learned that Haiti was apparently the location of the world’s first successful uprising against slavery.  They fought the French and won.  It is also the world’s oldest black republic.  It is this achievement that a person like televangelist Pat Robertson suggests is a pact with the devil.

But now it seems that U.S. corporations are using Haitian workers in sweatshop factories to manufacture goods at wages of approximately 30 cents per hour.  That must be why the tiny nation is too poor to build things that can withstand earthquakes.  It will be useful to learn how many of these factories or sweatshops/slave camps have collapsed in the earthquake.  I would imagine that there will be some investigation of such places in the near future.  Perhaps the slave trade never really ended at all, but simply changed its name to ‘cheap labor’ or ‘sweatshop’ or ‘globalism.’

Here’s a history of Haiti from Wikipedia.

Here’s an article about the U.S. role in keeping Haiti poor.

Disney has used cheap labor in Haiti.  They say so themselves right here.

I particularly like their response to a question about child labor:

Q. What is your policy on child labor?
A. Our Code of Conduct for Manufacturers prohibits child labor. Companies that make Disney-branded products must sign a contract stating that they do not and will not use child labor. Child is defined as “a person younger than 15 (or 14 where local law allows) or, if higher, the local legal minimum age for employment or the age for completing compulsory education.” If child labor is discovered in a factory, we generally seek to work with the factory, as well as the licensee that uses the factory, to identify the most feasible solution to remedy the situation as quickly as possible. This may include collaboration with government, multilateral institutions, NGOs or other companies that use the factory.

So Disney will ‘seek to work with the factory’ if it finds child labor going on. Am I the only one who’s shocked that a U.S. corporation would print such a statement of its own accord?  Because if it were me finding out about child labor, I would ‘seek to work’ a hammer into someone’s head.  For my part, I can only define very cheap labor in a very poor country where workers are threatened with reprisals if they try to improve their lot as slavery.  In fact, the more I learn about Haiti the less it looks like a country and more like a camp.

Haiti Disaster and Web Responsibility – Or Lack of It

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

Yesterday, after cruising around the Web to visit my favorite literature, poetry, film and animation web sites and blogs, I went into a profound snit about how some of our most established and respected blogs have totally ignored a major catastrophe that has and is still killing tens of thousands of people in Haiti.  It is an event that makes 9/11 seem almost totally irrelevant.  We, as a nation, spend a great deal of time thinking and talking about 9/11 and its terrorist masterminds – what their plans might be and how to stop them.  But we spend very little time thinking about the events that wipe 50,000 people out of existence within 30 seconds time.  Airport scanners.  Border security.  Laptop searches.  Photographer’s rights.  AT&T/government eavesdropping.  All of these are important, yes.  But we live in a world where people die because the earth simply shrugs them off and buries them in a pile of dirt.  That is truly frightening.  That’s something we should be working to avoid.  We should be thinking more about how to build an earthquake-resistant building than how to take nude pictures of people getting on airplanes because we’re afraid they might have a baggy-bomb shoved up under their crotch.

But what peeved me off yesterday was realizing that some well-established blogs and sites have not even so much as mentioned the Haiti disaster.  No pleas and links for donations.  No blog entries.  No pictures.  Nothing.  Not a peep.  Profound and blissful silence.  As if the tragic events of the world have no place in the literary or artistic sphere.

Some of the major blogs I read have, up to this moment, not made a single mention of the humanitarian crisis going on in Haiti (auto-served ad boxes don’t count in my estimation).  And there’s literary site, The Millions, that has seen fit to mention a video about Haiti in its ‘Curiosities’ section!  Curiosities!  The Haiti event is enormous.  Simply shocking.  Not a ‘curiosity.’  I fully understand that it is not the business of every blog or site to be conveying the news.  Sure, every blogger has his or her focus.  But the Web is the tool they are using and I think they should use it for what it’s good at in a time of crisis.  We are not on the Web to isolate, but rather to connect.  That’s why its called ‘The Web.’  It’s a very simple matter to put a link to an aid organization’s donation page on your site and it truly does help.  The proliferation of those links in times of disaster is actually one of the historic and most marvelous things about the Internet.  In fact, that use of the Internet may be the single greatest possible use behind its existence.  The ability to instantly channel financial assistance to the place where it is most needed cannot be matched by any other possible use of the worldwide network.  If you ignore this use, you have abandoned your simplest duty as a node on the network.

Contrast the behavior of these sites with a site like The Rumpus, which has been featuring Haiti information in its sidebar for days now.  Marvelous and responsible.  The Rumpus is a literary and cultural site that digs deep into some of our best writing, filmmaking, painting and music.  But they also behave as if they are looking at reality.  Someone over there saw a pile of dead people in Haiti and millions more wandering around looking for food and thought it might be a good idea to offer a little of the kind of assistance that the Internet is good at.  Two more sites that show some awareness of what’s going on are Amazon and Powell’s Books.  Two e-commerce sites!  Amazon is the crook in the room for so many literary people and publishers, but they know how to use the Internet, don’t they?  They ask for donations to help the victims of an awful world-changing event.  I am now a big fan of Amazon and of Powell’s.  Contrast the behavior of the listed sites (I have removed the list of sites that angered me – no point in pointing – just need to make the general point) to a site like Boing Boing, which consistently updates its reporting on Haiti with links and videos.  Simple, obvious and responsible Web behavior.

Of course I know that I’m leaving many good sites out.  But I’m writing here about the little circle of sites that I tend to hit on a daily basis.  And I’m mad as hell.  I’m so mad that I would delete those sites off their servers right now had I the button to do so.

Not every crisis in the world can or should be instantly covered by every blog on the Internet.  That would probably be impossible.  But when something wipes out 50,000 people at a stroke and a possible three million more are injured and six million are without food and water, well, you’ve simply got to do the least you can do which is to mention it and put a link to the Red Cross on your bloody home page.  It’s the least you can do.  Get it?

I’ve been trying to enjoy the world of literature and poetry and animation on the Web recently.  I’ve linked to articles here and there on some of these sites.  I’ve tried to make sense of some of the more esoteric and subtle thought processes that go on, especially in the world of poetry.  I think poetry is experiencing some kind of magical flourishing on the Web that is unmatched in its entire history.  But poetry that doesn’t see the pile of dead bodies in the room is written on paper that’s on fire.  Up in smoke.

You want to know how easy it is to help with your blog?  Here you go:

You can donate to the Red Cross International Response Fund.  Also, giving blood is always one of the very best things you can do because it fills the blood banks and can be used almost anywhere.

You can also donate to Doctors Without Borders, which is putting medical personnel on the ground in Haiti to assist in saving lives.

See that?  Now go get your houses in order, because if you don’t, I’m never coming to your damned blogs again.

Interrupt your reading to have a look:

No Water In Haiti After Earthquake

by Editor | 1 Comment

There’s no water in Haiti.  With approximately 6,000,000 people looking for water this is a truly horrific situation.  Many thousands more people are going to die within several days if enormous amounts of water are not somehow delivered to them.  With a single jammed airport in Port-au-Prince, it seems like a nearly impossible task.

You can donate to the Red Cross International Response Fund.  Also, giving blood is always one of the very best things you can do because it fills the blood banks and can be used almost anywhere.

You can also donate to Doctors Without Borders, which is putting medical personnel on the ground in Haiti to assist in saving lives.

Haiti Earthquake Help is Slow to Arrive

by Editor

Here’s CNN footage of survivors trying to help people trapped in collapsed buildings. Medical help is not significantly present in Haiti at the moment. It is a shame that in the western hemisphere, so close to the richest nation on earth, it takes days to get a little medical assistance into a crisis zone. We think more about war and terrorists than we do about real threats that kill hundreds of thousands of people. Shameful.

YouTube‘s CitizenTube Channel is maintaining an updating playlist of videos taken on the ground in Haiti just after the earthquake and during rescue attempts.

You can donate to the Red Cross International Response Fund.  Also, giving blood is always one of the very best things you can do because it fills the blood banks and can be used almost anywhere.

You can also donate to Doctors Without Borders, which is putting medical personnel on the ground in Haiti to assist in saving lives.

More footage from Associated Press: