Dark Matter

I’m up in the middle of the night watching the rebroadcast of Bill Moyers’ documentary on how the press slipped comfortably into bed with the administration on the run-up to the war in Iraq.

If you want clear evidence of how the US was manipulated into this disaster, watch this.

I think of the administration and the press and the pundits and the jingoists…and I say again that I don’t support the death penalty, but I surely understand the yearning for it sometimes.

Just ran across this article I thought might be of some interest to some of you. It’s a bit high level in terms of detail and depth, but poses some interesting thoughts.

A discussion of “ghetto culture.”

Respond and repost, everybody.

AFA distortion attempt:

This organization tried a survey as a propaganda tool a couple of years
ago and it crashed and burned when LBGT and Friends overwhelmed their
results. Here’s another chance to tip the scales of this VERY HOMOPHOBIC
group’s town survey. The AFA (American Family Association) is expecting an
overwhelming majority of respondents to say that they would be ‘less
likely’ to do business with a company if they knew it supported the
“homosexual agenda” – whatever that is. So far, they are getting the
results they seek. Of course, they are only sending it where they will get
the expected results. Let’s change the outcome by completing the
1-question survey and sending it to everyone we know who is tired of this
archaic and hateful way of thinking.

Follow the link below to take action on this important issue.
http://www.afa.net/petitions/businesses/businesses.asp

Now, if you do this, when they ask you to confirm your vote, you’ll be registered as a member of their miserable organization. If you can stomach that (and possibly use it to do some jamming from the inside, although I just marked any future messages from them as “junk”), I suggest you go fuck em up as much as you can.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6586879.stm

Which is sad, because, you know, he just wanted to leave a tip.

::rimshot::

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For the first time in a while — since before the tour, in fact — I’ve recorded a brand new poem and posted it in my Song listing.

It’s a little ditty regarding class warfare called “So Much Depends.” I posted it here a short while back. Just a nice springtime poem. 🙂

Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

http://www.myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown

T

I’m unafraid now
of this urge to be
empty. Simulations
of men are everywhere
and I can see that inside
them there’s air and
not much else.
So from here on in
let it be known
I don’t want
to talk to anyone
who doesn’t know
that he’s also a shell —
a husk open and clean
as a closet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070420/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_neighborhood_barrier

I love the part later in the article about how the strategy for Iraq is all about reconciliation. This orta do it.

Getting ready to take off for this — hope to see you there…

NBC said the package contained a rambling and often incoherent 23-page written statement, 28 video clips and 43 photos.

“I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it,” he said.

Oh, I dunno. Personally, I kinda think that’s a good thing.

People all over the world regularly watch friends, relatives, children, parents, neighbors dying. They see dismembered, starved, sick, smelly, disfigured people live in front of them all the time without the benefit of the television filter. They see the bombs, the random gunfire, the tsunamis, the hurricanes, the sewage in the open channels of their streets carrying dysentery and cholera to them, the AIDS virus depopulating whole countries before their eyes. We don’t get all that upset about their having to see it live.

I really have no problem with this video being shown to a desensitized nation that spends more time worrying about Sanjaya than starvation. Maybe that nut in the video ranting about how his obsession with the insensitivities of the rich was leading him toward mass murder might make one person recognize a similar disaster in the making, and take steps to stop it.

As always, I have a certain level of sympathy (admittedly very small in the this case) to anyone dealing with a mental illness. And without justifying what he did, I can say that I’ve felt that way myself, often, about the shallowness of some folks with money. When I went to prep school I hated the rich kids and the legacies for their easy materialism and callous disregard for those of us not to the manor born. I get where this guy was coming from.

He was obviously, recognizably crazy; it was identified well prior to the events; people who knew used their judgement well or badly or to the best of their ability and made their choices as to how to deal. This happened.

It will happen again. We live in a world that combines great good with great evil. Get used to it. You can’t escape.

And while you’re waiting, watch the video once or twice, and remember it’s a real person in real pain who’s really, really, unbalanced in his anger toward something that is worth being angry about.

finally got everyone’s voicemails — couldn’t retrieve them while I was up there, due to some technical glitch. i wasn’t ignoring you. not that anyone said i was, but just in case anyone felt that way.

be advised that i’m not answering phones, email, or any other stuff tonight — tired, overwhelmed, and just need to hibernate and regroup.

more in the am.

I just woke up from snoozing with the TV on to hear Floyd Westerman Crow, a Lakota actor, shilling for a pain remedy of some sort (something like Ben-Gay, I think) called “Lakota.” “Try Lakota,” he said. “You have nothing to lose but your pain.”

Then I heard the computer ping out a mail alert. It was for a piece of pharmaceutical spam from Adelbert Patel, and the subject was “pork.”

Based on this I expect that any day now I’ll receive a piece of spam for “White People” headache powder from Ethelred Gupta. The subject will be “smoked sausage.”

I fly home this evening. God, I can’t wait.