Category Archives: Opinion

Michael Moore Labor Union Speech in Madison, Wisconsin

by Cimaxion

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

Those are the words of Michael Moore and they are very true. If you want to become a bad national joke, you do what Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has done and push through a bill that destroys the right of working Americans to organize and form labor unions.

The revolt against this criminal stupidity in Wisconsin is incredible to watch. It has national importance for the future of labor and the rights of working people everywhere.

They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day — this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart — because you — yes, you, too! — might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep you head down, your nose to the grindstone, don’t rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.

Thugs Rape American Journalist in Effort to Intimidate Egypt’s Protesters

by Cimaxion | 50 Comments

Update for February 20, 2011: Several days ago, after hearing this news, I posted the following article which is my opinion in a moment of anger. I went too far and made some ridiculous generalizations about the situation in Egypt where a profound and positive change is underway. I should not have characterized a great and noble revolution the way I did based on the alleged actions of a small group. Several commenters from Egypt have been very angry with me. Though I still await the further facts and details of this episode, I do apologize for my generalization and hasty remarks about a ‘pig revolution.’ They are foolish and do not convey my support for the revolution from its first day. I have also changed the title of this post to try to more accurately reflect what probably happened in Tahrir Square during the celebrations of Mubarak’s departure. I will compose a new article that will make my true feelings clear. My opinions here are not to be taken as news. They are simply the overheated and sometimes too angry reactions of an artist. Here are my original and far too general words:

A mob of approximately two hundred Egyptian men gang-raped CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan during celebrations of the Hosni Mubarak resignation in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

This is how Egyptian men celebrate the overthrow of a dictator.

I am not obligated to consistency of opinion on this web site.  If something makes me angry I say I’m angry.  If I see pigs celebrating a false victory, I say so.  Egypt, you have apparently gone to the pigs.  Two hundred men raping a woman during celebrations in a city square speaks volumes for your civilization or lack thereof.  You are not part of an evolved world.  You are outside of the conversation between nations.  You rape.

Sure, every country has problems with rape.  But my point is that if you see this kind of brutal gang attack during a celebration of joy and victory, you’ve got a statistical certainty that you’re dealing with a brutish general population of men for whom rape is common and widespread.  You can’t walk into Times Square in New York and find 200 people willing to commit rape during a New Year’s celebration.

One dictator has been overthrown.  What comes next will very likely be worse.  A population that can place 200 rapists inside the same square to commit the same crime during a time of joy has sunk to its knees and has no business with the world of civilized nations.  How many other women were raped in the square that we don’t know about?  This problem of rape and oppression of women is rampant throughout the Middle East.  It has deep roots in the region. It seems to be the normal state of existence which is encouraged by every government, whether run by a dictator or not.  We will not see any true revolution in the Middle East until every oppressed woman turns to her rapist and stabs him in the throat.  Perhaps women of the Middle East should organize such an event through Facebook.  All women who have suffered rape arise at 4:00 am on the same day and eliminate their sleeping attackers.  Governments would surely fall almost overnight because there would be no ministers or ‘royal princes’ left to reign.

We see this revolution unfold and we see people shouting for more freedom.  But we do not see a single soul shout for women.  Instead we see Egyptian men raping them.  I will not join my fellow Americans in naively celebrating a pig revolution.

This does not mean that I do not support the revolution. I do support it. It simply means that I will not celebrate while ignoring the very serious problem of how women are treated in the Middle East. The situation is appalling and will cause revolutions to fail. You cannot have freedom and democracy where women are considered to be something less than men.

Egypt Celebrates First Victory in Revolution

by Cimaxion

Egypt has begun to put out its garbage. It’s an amazing achievement for Egyptians that I have witnessed via the news video and photos coming from Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Congratulations to all the Egyptians who wanted to be free. They forced a raping, murdering, totalitarian criminal to resign his dictatorial position. The dictator Mubarak was and is an ongoing embarrassment and deep shame to the entire Middle East and to the United States that insisted on giving him respect and credibility even while he committed murder and oppressed a great civilization. Egyptians have made an incredible start to ridding themselves of the human garbage that was and is Mubarak. It remains to be seen if Egypt can become truly free and wrest control of the nation from its military.

Hopefully, the revolution in Egypt will spread to topple the rest of the governments in the Middle East which are nearly unanimous in their willingness to allow brutal thugs and criminal royal families to rule in bitter oppression. These savage despots straight out of the Dark Ages are specialists in murder, rape and complete suppression of all ideas and expression. They also have the absolute respect and support of governments like those in the U.S.

Beyond the Middle East and its ‘royal families,’ it would be astonishing and constructive to see the people of China put their own garbage out by removing their totalitarian government. Revolution is in the twenty-first century air. No one is immune.

Egyptians Continue Arab World Revolt Against Despotic Rulers

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

In a stunning rebuke to the ongoing U.S. policy of ‘useful dialog’ with the Arab world’s collection of brutal, murdering dictators, the people of Egypt are staging one of the great revolutions in history by occupying the streets of Egypt’s major cities and burning the headquarters of the brutal and thuggish regime that has held power there for over 30 years.  It is very likely that this ongoing revolution is as significant an event as the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. All dictators and the people attached to them, whether they be Arab or otherwise, sign their own death warrants as soon as they take power, giving the people an undeniable right to eliminate them by any means necessary. The current U.S. administration shows itself to be woefully out of step with events as it insists that protesters chart a course for the future through dialog with Mubarak!  Mubarak is as dead as King Tut’s mummy.  I suspect that most of the people in Egypt recognize that President Obama has been secretly complicit in the activities of dictator Mubarak and his torture facilities.  As buildings burn in Cairo, so does U.S. policy toward the brutal, barbaric, and inhuman torturers who lead most of the Arab world.  The sad truth of the matter is that in the U.S. we have a president who completely and unreservedly supports a criminal dictator.  Shame on the U.S.  Go Egypt!

Wikileaks is Fighting World’s First True Information War

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

The United States government is attempting to physically destroy the Wikileaks organization.  The ‘Cablegate’ release of diplomatic communications has begun to reveal that Western democracies maintain shadow governments that are outside the reach of their electorates.  They appear to have a system in place that is not subject to the outcomes of elections.  For me, that is the main thing suggested by the leaks.

The Obama administration is fully engaged in a very serious information war that threatens to turn the public eye toward the inner workings of a government sliding very quickly toward a new form of corporate/government fascism.  The obvious connection between government, corporations, and the military is now under public scrutiny as we watch officials tell companies like Amazon and Paypal to cut off the Wikileaks operations.  A democratic superpower is influencing, through threats or friendly suggestion, the behavior of companies that are enormously powerful on the Internet.  It has become clear that we absolutely cannot expect any form of free expression to exist where Amazon or Paypal are concerned.  The fact that Amazon controls most of the book trade in the U.S. is an emergency and should ultimately result in a move toward a more open source form of book selling.  I would not want to be in the position of trying to sell a book on Amazon that contained thorough investigative reporting on U.S. government secrets or corruption.  One call from Joseph Lieberman could shut everything down for my book.

The important thing about the Wikileaks is that they change journalism.  They open a deep wound in the side of government that bleeds secrets, incompetence and corruption.  The wound will continue to bleed because there will always be someone willing to leak the information.  It’s simple human nature.  There will always be a place to send that information and there will always be journalists to sift through it and print it for us to read.  If this Wikileaks is killed, another will pop up.

Wikileaks is nothing more than a reporter sitting at a desk answering the phone and taking notes from a confidential source.  Wikileaks is a reporter.  President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have openly declared themselves to be extremely dangerous enemies of a free press.  They have already begun threatening university students who try to download or link to the Wikileaks data (the data is here, by  the way).  They will stop at nothing to end Wikileaks.  We should be prepared for this.  They will stop at absolutely nothing.  Just wait for the leak.  Then you’ll know.

Here’s an excellent article by John Naughton at the Guardian Newspaper about how governments now must either live with open access to information or try to shut down the net.