Seattle Socialist Sawant rips fellow city leaders for ‘brazen’ retreat with corporate execs

Seattle Socialist Sawant rips fellow city leaders for ‘brazen’ retreat with corporate execs

Postscript: I visited Seattle in 2002 and found it boring. You can have it. People pay shitloads of money to live there? They're stupid, and of course, boring. There's nothing especially exciting about the place. I' do heroin too if I lived there--if you want to call it that.

Clive Barker's Nightbreed Director's cut

I was one of the first thousand to preorder it. I saw the movie back in 1990 and wasn't entirely pleased with it. Warners billed it as something like a slasher at the time, which is not. What Nightbreed was and now is again is the Citizen Kane of monster movies where the tables are turned--or that's what it was supposed to be, an epic tale, a metaphor for discrimination against LGBT people, and much more, a lost classic now found and restored to its former glory before the suits got their hands on it. 

A comparison is in order here: This is like the achievement of a full restoration of the first gay-positive movie ever made, Different from the Others (Anders als die Andern, 1919, starring Conrad Veidt, the somnambulist from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) or The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), it is historic.

I should receive the set by this weekend or early next week. A sprawling review and reflection on the new cut is coming. I'll also be doing a similar essay on Breaking Bad as a cultural and historical phenomenon in time now that the series has concluded and the dust has settled a bit. Expect the unexpected.

Postscript, 10.10.14: It's arrived! This is going to take some time to digest, but I should have my first observations up in about a week. The set is pretty amazing and the new artwork for the 3-BD set is better than the promotional art at the time. David Cronenberg should be pleased, he gets more screen time.

10.11.14: After watching the director's cut last night, I can say that we have a new classic.  What's most surprising is how what Barker intended most is a great, epic love story, a tale of universal love. Nightbreed has finally arrived to the audience it was intended for all along. There are so many things to say about it, and I will shortly. 

Audio and video quality are superb--it looks & sounds vastly better than its theatrical debut which is saying something. Yes, David Cronenberg has more screen time. I won't be printing any spoilers. 

"at the end of the day/The bottom line is..."

This is one for American management, the biggest losers of all time, the unwanted babies of modernity (and postmodernity), the essence of redundancy made flesh that's going to look like the joke that it is down the road, in the annals of our national history, and of the species.

I'm not even going to go into examples and contexts here, but we all know some douchnozzle who's spouted this line either as a preface to something more inane and meaningless, or an equally meaningless addendum, maybe a lame parting shot because they lack any wit. OK, that's untrue, because you only need to add a "t" to create the word that describes them best.

This is related to the more recent "mansplaining," by the way, since it emanates from the same crowd of stupid males who are constantly out of their depth, who lack any real intellect, but sure know how to spew crap from the wrong orifice. No, this isn't merely about your asshole boss at the office, or politicians, but it does start with domestic tyrants, people whose families would be doing the world a favor by beating them down every morning into their bowl of gruel, and with luck, drowning them in it, but really, doing anything to make them shut the fuck up for once in their unimaginably pointless lives. These are the assholes who killed God. He died of disgust, committed suicide: "I created that? Well fuck me..."

Diagram a sentence--if you dare--and you'll find that "At the end of the day" and "The bottom line is" add nothing to the meaning, try it some time, you'll see. That's never going to stop assholes whose souls died shortly after birth from spewing it. How else are they going to be the assholes they are? All it does is underscore their own lack of meaning and purpose in a universe that doesn't care because it can't. At least they're dead forever too. If they found a way around it, I'd be leading the mob of torch bearing villagers to drive a stake through their blackened hearts.

Monique Rawlings

Still waiting for an explanation from Jason Leopold about who you really are, and what you both were up to, specifically. I'm not coloring it as anything conspiratorial, criminal, but yes, I believe what you two were up to was unethical.

Oh yeah, and I thought I'd write your name a few more times online since it pisses you off, you asshole, fuck you very much. You might rank as one of the biggest phonies and assholes I've come across in my life, a real turd. You have a sense of entitlement that's absurd, and yes, it colors my view of Mr. Leopold that he was associate with a piece of excrement like you, you asshole, you little woman, you fake. Not only are you a sellout, you remind me what a antisocial personality disorder looks like in action.

Did I say you were an asshole? I did, but let's say it again: You're an asshole, but you know this every time you look in the mirror. It might not be conscious--you are an egomaniac, after all--but you know you're a joke. You did everything you could at key moments to consciously paint me in a bad light before Jeane. There was no call for it, and it was a betrayal of trust. How can you possibly call yourself a progressive when you stab someone in the back, not once, but twice?

The first time, and we were effectively out of an official agreement with Jeane, I emailed her asking to publish something that you and Jason clearly coveted. I don't even recall what the fuck it was, or care anymore, but you then sent out an email trying to define the situation in a way that absolutely inappropriate under the circumstances, you had an agenda, a selfish one, then had the audacity to turn around and project it onto me. That's classic manipulative behavior, and I have to wonder if you're sick. The other time was unbelievably petty, in our pointless conference call with that other fake and hustler, Sam Deskin. That's in the book, I won't reiterate here, but it was coming from someone who hadn't been asked to help by the defendant as I had, you had approached Jeane. You had no call or moral high ground, and in fact, are profoundly antisocial to do something of that order, unbelievable the temerity there.

My advice? Get help, now. Also, who are you, really? What are you? One thing I do know, and that's that you have no real sense of morality at all. And that's why I outed your ass. You then had the gall to be upset and angry when I did this after all you had done--the insults, the jabs, and finally, the two events I described above. Fuck you. Fuck your family that unfortunately bore and raised you, poorly I might add, though that might be your and the fault of your genes there. Finally, lastly, you have the most appalling grammar I have ever witnessed outside of Mississippi, or skid row, pathetic. You either never proof, or you can barely write. I'm sure that's never been a hindrance for you in the corporate world. Fuck you.

let the dead bury the dead release date & other issues surrounding the text

This is still up in the air. I'll be prepping a standalone site for the book. It should have an excerpt, no you cannot quote from it or republish without permission, period. Written requests will be fine, and granting use will be completely at the author's discretion. There is no middleman here.

On the media, interviews, reviews copies, etc.: There will be no advance copies, period, and serious inquiries only. Not to be a dick (or to be one to the right people), but I'm not made of money. No free rides, I would if I could. Also, the idea of someone reviewing a book on something so personal seems pretty laughable to me outside of the technical side--style, format, depth, things that are logical and sincere rather than someone playing games. You'll be kicked to the curb immediately the moment I detect you're fucking me around, it's not going to play. That written, I expect the mainstream media to go out of their way to ignore this book because so much of it is about them and how disgusting they truly are, you have no idea.

Even in death, they keep killing her, mark this. CNN is one one of the major offenders: they will occasionally throw a blurb out there on the case either in a crappy documentary on prostitution (often upscale, with the rich & powerful), and the results speak for themselves: a willfully superficial misrepresentation of the case to protect what it was really about, their usual mercenary MO.  For this reason, even were they to somehow contact me, they'd have an uphill battle on their hands, and that's putting it mildly. I don't expect to hear from any of them no matter how well the books sells.

You didn't just walk into McDonald's, and no, you cannot have fries with that. I don't value most of your opinions, because you weren't involved. I don't even value those of many others who were, as the book will make plain as day. Yes, they're my opinions, and they're more educated than yours about the case. The only people who probably know more are the former prosecutors and judges, and they're compromised. Don't expect anything honest out of most of them, and many of them cannot tell you anyway thanks to confidentiality agreements. My role was far looser, so I can tell more, much more. But, you don't care about the truth anyway, my whole point here and in the book...

On the cult of personality & writers: When I was a kid, over a generation ago in the 1970s, there was no access to the Internet by the general public. You frequently didn't know what an author looked like, what their life was like or where they'd been, and so on, unless you did a lot of looking and research, and that was costly. Now, it isn't, it's all a few keystrokes away. What's the same between then and now is the cult of personality, which I hate and view as part of the disease of this dying culture and nation. People to others for answers are at the top of my shit-list, so, don't come looking to me for any, that's not my job, it's everyone's. The individual has to look within. Fools don't, cowards won't, and I don't have time either, not one moment, so save the effort. I know almost every trolling approach too, so again, don't bother, I will detect it and you will be removed or ignored. If you don't take a hint, if you harass me, for whatever reason is in your head, as compromised as some of them are, law enforcement and the courts will be brought into play. I'm not fucking around ask people who know me, they'll tell you. They'll also tell you that if you cross the line far enough that I'll be coming for you until I'm satisfied.

On Mark Capansky: I believe this little shithead has been harassing me. Any phony or actual cease and desists without a court order will be duly ignored. And, if I have to publish the book out of some Siberian shithole, I will, maybe even out of Iceland if necessary. I will not bow, because, unlike most of you out there, I have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

However, if Mr. Capansky wants to explain why his number (or parents') was in the DC Madam's phone records, I'm all ears, and we can keep it off the record. On the other hand, if the dialog devolves into threats--if you even piss me off--it all goes online unredacted. I'm not fucking around here at all. If you want to fuck around, do it with the stupid women that are attracted to such a retard. By the way, I'm not jealous, as the book will make starkly clear. I don't share your hollow values and view America as a criminal, white supremacist nation, and hence, a large part of why it's crumbling, it's dysfunctional. This country sucks, you definitely suck, and go fuck yourself...

On writing a book that's non-fiction, true crime, & a historical document: I don't recommend it. There are no ground rules. Reconsider if it looks like it will take up a stage of your life. I was in my thirties when this began, now I'm rocketing towards the bad side of fifty, fuck you very much.

On literature: The book is very literary. For me, this isn't the usual approach. I do read a lot of fiction, but most of my reading is historical and non-fiction. I have been more of a student of history than anything else. A lot of reading in my life is packed into this book. The reader might find this not to their liking, or anything in-between--these are not my concerns, and unless it's constructive, I don't want hear your opinions beyond pointing-out factual errors, typos, and so on. The case, as the primary materials in the book will show, was riven through with literary references. I wasn't looking for them. They announced themselves. That brings me to...

Occult references & themes in the DC Madam case: These were also present and announced themselves. I wasn't looking for them. However, as Jesus said, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, and I do, and did. Most aren't attuned to this, I am, and once again, I'm not interested in the expressions of your egos, only in fact and truth, which the vast majority of you wouldn't know either were they to bite you in the ass extracting a pound of flesh. You couldn't miss this, especially considering the well-established fact that Jeane was fascinated by American Spiritualism (yes, seances, no, I am not a believer).

The case was archetypal on its own. I didn't see anything that wasn't there or implicit to it. Again, your opinions are irrelevant, and I don't care unless they augment and add something to the story, understanding, illuminate it more, whatever, but other than that, don't care.

On the former Pamela Martin escorts: I don't have a lot of respect for these women. Some wrong-headed types do for reasons that escape me, but I'm sure have to do more with gender and identity politics and wishful thinking. Once again, I don't care what you're opinions are unless you somehow had contact with them, know previously unknown aspects and facts about the case, or you have an angle on it I never considered for some of the aforementioned reasons. Beyond that, I don't care and don't want to hear your ego flexing, it won't play and I'll kick your ass to curb.

I'm sure most of my sources have withheld things from me--that's normal, human behavior. I'm not a believer in human nature or unicorns. We have tendencies. Those tendencies come out under certain circumstances and conditions. I'm intolerant of mythmakers and believers of myths. None of these women were saints. Yes, they were paid inadequately--welcome to the contemporary world, welcome to the United States and a world that's primarily ordered along patriarchal lines. I didn't make this world, you didn't, most of us didn't, and I'm not a supporter of it. In fact, I'm one of its victims, fuck you very much. You can beatify these ladies all you want, but when the truth came out, you'd look like the genuine fools with an opinion that you really are. Welcome to the human jungle, now think more often before you open your trap, or when you post something online. We all make mistakes. None of us is made of light, we all shit every morning, if we're lucky. That gut you have going is all the proof you should need that you're not a god. We're all imperfect, we all die one day, and the rest is games, lies, deceit, and horrendous, tragic, stupidity.

Insofar as I have been able to ascertain, no one, and I mean no one, has been able to find and interview these women and get some new relevant information from them, and to publish on it, nary a soul. Only one of them has come my way--allegedly, Andrea Detty who's alleged to be an alleged journalist now--and they may not even be one of them, perhaps a fake online identity, and of course, they weren't willing to convey anything of value whatsoever that I didn't already know. That's because, and this should be no surprise to anyone with their higher functions still intact, they were prostitutes and there's a reason why the term "lying whore" came into being, which I learned from direct experience in the case. Not one of them has had the courage and credibility to come forward and to follow through. One of them approached journalist Ken Silverstein during the proceedings, his moronic secretary lost the phone number they left (why not search of the phone calls that day at Harper's?), and they never reestablished contact. Thanks for fucking us, lady, but at least you tried. The rest stand as rats as far as I'm concerned, the real whores, not Palfrey, and they have earned this derision. Ever heard of confidentiality agreements with journalists, ladies? Quit kidding yourselves that you have credibility. Your silence speaks volumes.

On Jack Burkman of Focus on the Family & a lot more: There's an entire chapter devoted to dear Jack, as a template for the average Republican player in Palfrey's phone records. Expect fireworks. Expect what you suspected and knew--that he's a pathetic asshole, a scumbag, and a hypocrite.

On SAIC's presence in the phone bills and elsewhere: They're key to whatever was behind the case and the charges moving forward, not the actual solicitation by Jeane and the girls, which was what was really the incidental side of it. They're emblematic of the crisis in government today of runaway spending and war profiteering by contractors and politicians. They're connected to so many players in all this that it does have meaning to the case in ways that I never expected, not was looking for, but once again, there it was, winking at me over and over.

On the CIA's role in the case: This will get more of a factual airing than previously, although, regardless of what you might think of him, Montgomery Blair Sibley, Jeane's longest running counselor during the proceedings, has done a good job addressing in his own text, Why Just Her. I recommend it and consider both our accounts complimentary of each other. I'm not going to defend his public behavior. Federal District Judge Gladys Kessler granted wide-ranging subpoenaing power to the Palfrey defense that covered virtually the entire intelligence establishment. Ask yourself why the mainstream media never covered this, then go ask them, over and over again, until they cry uncle.

I'll have more to say later. Search the labels on this article for more. I cannot see a release date of later than late November, but no later than some time in December. That is all.

The Last War Crime

Ask Viacom why they won't take advertising from the filmmakers and Google why they pulled the waterboarding scene from Youtube:

http://www.lastwarcrime.com/

 

On Ron Paul and his Trolls

He's a racist, but in the interest of brevity, ala Seuss, a few lines (no, not drugs):

I will not vote for him in a booth, I will not say he's long in the tooth. I will not say that he is sane, or that he is a weather vane. I say that he is a kook, and that he thinks that blacks are "spooks." He will not win on election day, so there is nothing more to say about this ossified ofay.

And since he's bound to lose, there truly is no more to say.

You ever noticed (FEMA)?

You ever notice that all those rednecks and meth-heads (often inhabiting the same body!) who are yammering about "We're all going to be dragged kicking and screaming to FEMA camps man, any day now!" are all white? Did you ever notice that none of them gave a shit about all those African-Americans languishing in FEMA trailers for roughly two years except when they thought they were getting a "free ride"? Yeah, me too, but really: where was the outrage over many of these same people having to inhale formaldehyde for months? No conspiracy there, agreed, just not for the same reason they might unthink it was so.

Imagine had these refugees been white, middle-class. Imagine that they had been taken there, sometimes against their wills like in 1927 when another storm ravaged the place, to be held for a a very long time with few rights to speak of in toxic surroundings. The Libertarians, the rednecks, the red-headed stepchildren of the American Left who have smoked too much dope for decades with predictable results, have an erection (nipples too) over FEMA this, FEMA that, but the slant is always the same: an anti-government agenda that's arch-conservative, almost certainly baseless in the terms their putting them in and basically racist at heart.

Seriously, where was the alarm over these poor black families being forcibly relocated, permanently in many cases, away from New Orleans? Wasn't this your legendary FEMA camp theory based on your own criteria? No, these were only a gaggle of dirty niggers (to you), so it didn't matter. It didn't matter when a naturalized Middle Eastern businessman was detained by private security in a bus station...that was OK and then repainted by assholes on the right like Alex Jones as a purely government move. The message must always be that it's the big, bad Boogeyman "gubmint," never the most serious threat to liberty across the globe, multinational corporations.

This shit is a ploy, conscious or not, it is code. We know you have an agenda. We know you're afraid of black people, of minorities. We know you're ignorant, that you're the boring crank at a party that everyone ignores for good reason. Now shut up about FEMA camps you racist, yammering retards.

A very curious spam...

Ed.--You wouldn't believe some of the crazy emails and comments I get from operating this blog. Today, I got this in my email box as a comment, and in Cyrillic (Google translator did the rest):

Ladies and Gentlemen [This must, in fact, be Yakov Smirnoff].

If you are interested in a little politics, you must have noticed - this sudden unrest in Africa
has an ulterior motive.

There are 2 versions of these events - the "official" and "informal," and both versions are probably far from actual facts:

[B] Version 1: [/ b] Gaddafi - a tyrant and autocrat, shot at civilians, so it should be removed.
[B] Version 2: [/ b] in fact Europe and America wanted a little Libyan oil, and they decided to put on a small "riot"

Consider Version 1.

Yes, Qaddafi has one more old man, he of course it would be time and retired. But did you know that specifically in Libya people have a very high preference under his rule? Teachers receive a $ 3,000, paid the unemployed about $ 1,000 and so on. Yes, he was tame small group of rebellious Bedouins, but does anyone understand the real causes of these riots? This version does not hold water.

Version 2.

Oil Libya? Yes, it is of high quality, Libyan oil is very clean. But she was not so much.
And besides, why would haunt Egypt and other African nations, which the whole of last
year in general no one disturbed and worried? And then suddenly they're "tyrants," "Monsters", etc.

Yes, this situation is further fueled the price of oil. Individual corporations are profitable.

But the truth is shorter.

Gaddafi is not so long ago began to combine Middle Eastern country under the idea to move to the calculation for oil and products are not dollars, not euros, and an alternative to all this. And Egypt - one of the countries which it supported ...

Read more here:

http://sterligov.livejournal.com/4389.html

However, in the popular media, it will never say.

PS: Saddam Hussein, incidentally, also had such undertakings. Generally, after the crisis, sooo many the country began to think about getting rid of reliance on the U.S.. Sooner or later
it happens. The Fed has no place to lower rates.

Spread it where you can. People need to know the truth.


By the way, is also on the topic: The military operation in western Libya, Libya, France suffered an invasion of Libya in the day, destruction, France has promised to attack Libya after a few hours, against France has promised to attack Libya after several hours, killed ...

Hey, it takes all kinds. Whoever wrote it must know English as well. Anyway, some of the observations strike me as true though it would be a stretch to call Gadaffi's regime just or even reasonable.

What did they post this comment on? An observation I made from 2006 on Mark Foley and the GOP being a gaggle of sexual perverts, which is true. Moose and squirrel...

CNN reports dumb-assed Al Qaeda salad bar/buffet plot after GOP stalls Food Safety Act for months

Is there not a better sign of the end of an Empire and a nation in serious trouble? Just don't tell the Obama-holdouts, they might get upset. Who on God's gray earth would believe this horseshit but a Republican or a Libertarian, all of them with serious emotional and intellectual issues regarding reality? "Al-Qaeda plot threatens America's salad bars and buffets." You gotta be kidding, right?

It beggars the imagination that someone without the ability to imagine would believe something a ten year old could see through or do a better job of concocting.

Just as they did under Bush II, being a venerable asset of Empire and the GOP, CNN is selling a very lame-assed scare story to boost another war criminal's sagging popularity ratings as well as providing some cover for corrupt food growers and processors who wanted the Food Modernization Act. Apparently, high school never ended and life has now become Facebook. How is this different from all the times that George W. Bush cried "WOLF!" (not CNN's Blitzer, or even Donner) with the terror alert warnings to save his own ass, for political ends? It's not at all and it's not the only example, Obama's just less obvious about it than the last clown.

Seriously: President Barack Obama is the same as George W. Bush, wake up assholes, pull your heads out of your collective-ass and stop having this.

CNN's talking-neck was barely able to read the salad bar/buffet headline it was so stupid, so nebbish, so moronic and transparently unimportant pap that was probably lifted from a surveillance log of someone simply toying with the idea of joining a terror cell...after a few bong-hits or a lift from some meth. Get real, quit insulting our intelligence with your counterintelligence, your disinformation predicated on scaring the dummies that over-populate every nation so that we hand over even more of our rights to a predatorial establishment.

Great, someone was going to "poison" salad bars and buffets across America...and somehow they weren't American food growers and producers who routinely employ illegal immigrants, who then lobby the GOP all of the time for fewer regulations on food safety. Yes, it was a smart timing to run the bogus Al-Qaeda story just hours after the GOP had stalled the Food Safety Act for months, very wise, well-timed. How long did they stall its passage? Since March of this year, nine whole months, which is roundly un-American.

Besides the GOP's tail-dragging on to poison the public, or not to poison it, these were some of the major opponents of the very reasonable bill--unless some of us prefer a little e-coli with our spinach, watermelons and potatoes (take that Dan Quayle!), and TEA:

Freedomworks

Competitive Enterprise Institute

American Mushroom Institute

National Potato Council

National Watermelon Association

Produce Marketing Association

United Fresh Produce Association

The John Birch Society

National Cattleman's Beef Association

Western Growers

American Academy of Microbiology

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
(http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-510)

Any familiar names here? It passed the Senate on November 30th of this year anyway, but there was more stalling from the GOP.

And you Democratic incumbents: You can stop with the good cop, bad cop act. We're on to you. We know this is all just political theater and we're about to call bullshit on this whole clown show. We're not having it anymore, you're done. For a moment, I thought they were saying that Jimmy Buffett was being targeted by terrorists, which makes just as much sense and is just as credible...

Wikileaks mirror: http://213.251.145.96/

WWW--Hit it, I am.

There are daily updates on the State Dept. cables at this point. This is much bigger than the Pentagon Papers. Regardless of what happens, no matter what foolhardy legislation gets passed to ban this whistle-blowing, Pandora's box has been opened and the lid cannot be closed, ever again.

For those of you out there who don't get how the dissemination of technology works--too bad--you cannot stop this, it's a done deal. The negative response from the mainstream media was to be expected. A healthy democracy requires that the public not be deceived. We have to know the machinations of power to remain free. Sad and pathetic then that so many Americans are knee-jerking right now on this and insisting as is their wont to remain ignorant, to remain in the dark about what their government is doing in the name of corporations.

That's how a slave that's been beaten into submission thinks...if you want to call it thinking. Seeing yet another Populist-opening, Ron Paul (in his role of "good cop" to his son Rand's dueling banjo "bad cop") has been advocating for such leaks and saying there need to be more groups like them. This is interesting since he must be anticipating the next round of leaks--if they actually make it out the gate--coming from Bank of America, and possibly even Goldman Sachs and other major corrupt financial players on Wall Street. I'm skeptical of his sincerity and view most of what he says and does publicly as political theater. Let's not make it a tragedy, shall we? In Paul's hands, it's likely to be tragicomic.

Paul can say such things because he knows he'll never have to follow through on them. Like Democratic representatives who constantly crow over sundry social-ills--knowing full well thhat the political context is wrong to expedite it and that they're not going to do anything about them of any substance--he's just sounding off as he usually does. Great, have fun with that one, but what about fixing our nation? That's called rhetoric, folks, demagoguery, and it makes one wonder where all the adults went.

Recall that Paul's not so far removed from Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman in his wackiness. Today he's talking about taking down the Federal Reserve with a parallel system of backing currency with gold when everyone should know there's not enough in the entire world to do it. As usual, he's trying to create a false impression. The reality is, he's no Robert M. Lafollette, one of the very few genuine progressive Republicans that ever was, the legendary Senator from Wisconsin.

If the GOP ever had a soul, it lost it when Lafollette died in 1925, giving into corporate interests over the role of government in American life, the very forces the senator at that time railed strenuously against. In case you didn't notice, he lost to people like Paul and the rest of them now occupying our government via the GOP's corporate-political nexus. Does that sound like a friendly crowd to you? Paul isn't exactly a friend of the working man and woman at all and doesn't believe in a social safety net, but neither do most Democrats these days since they report to the same bosses.

Where does the Wikileaks release of State Department cables covering 1966-2010 fit into to all of this? The warnings of Mark Twain, of Marine Corps General Smedley Butler that imperialism will be the ruination of the United States.

The State Department figures highly in all of this since they lobby relentlessly for American corporate interests overseas all of the time. It's their primary job besides formulating the policies to expedite this overall agenda and--this is key here--selling it to an American public that they do their best to keep in the dark. They have every reason to since most of us would reject that agenda outright if we were to know of it in real time. Yelling "national security" gets results and keeps the locals at bay. This abuse of secrecy is what makes the "sell" easier and why at least half of the public goes along with the dumbshow that's going to take the rest of us over the cliff.

Wikileaks is doing the work of an impaired corporate-owned press, and now the real scrambling begins. The battle for your mind has truly begun, to keep it ignorant so that their agenda can continue, one that's a direct threat to you and everyone you know. It began this summer when the State Department realized their post-9/11 sharing of information with military analysts had backfired, coming in the form of the whistle-blower PFC. Bradley Manning.

Make no mistake: Manning is a hero, this is a turning-point, an opening, and we had better start taking it. Read the cables and decide for yourself whether the State Department is acting in your best interests and why you don't want to know the facts contained within them.

Give them hell.

Movie star Mark Ruffalo is being harassed for his antiwar and progressive acts

Where's that change? I'm not seeing any with President Obama, just a continuation of the Bush II agenda, which means that of the super-rich. In May of this year, Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Last Big Thing, Shutter Island, etc.) and about 1,800 other prominent American liberals (including linguist and intellectual Noam Chomsky) singed a petition that was published as a full-page ad in a very visible New York magazine accusing the new president of war crimes.

In some respects this is worse than Bush. First, because Obama has claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he suspects of ‘terrorism,’ merely on the grounds of his own suspicion or that of the CIA, something Bush never claimed publicly.

They're not only factually correct in their assertion, they have a constitutionally protected right to express it without recourse. The new president--like his predecessor--doesn't appear to believe this. Odd for a constitutional scholar.

Ruffalo is generally known as an "indie" actor, but his star has been in ascendancy over the last decade, and along with that, he's been vocal in recent years about his concerns that America is rapidly moving away from its most cherished ideals, away from democracy. With endless capitulations to the corporate sector by both major political parties, endless and pointless wars, very open political corruption, and a host of misdeeds that don't need to be recalled here since we don't have all day to recount simply the ones committed under the Bush II administration, (the one that the new president's resembles more all of the time), it's definitely time to speak your peace.

Indeed, Ruffalo has been doing just that: There was the aforementioned petition, but he's been on the path of several causes, and they're valid ones. His most recent has gotten him on a terror watch list via the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, part of the DHS, a decidedly corrupt institution for a war on a pronoun, so you know it's a joke on the public, and one they approved of initially.

With the ending of the "terror alert" color-coded system that everyone began ignoring after it was abused for openly political reasons, they have good reason to be concerned when a likable guy like Ruffalo starts going around accusing the president and corporations of corruption, of criminal behavior. People are already all ears, and after the BP catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it's even money that they're pissed-off. Into this latter fray enters Mr. Ruffalo who has been inviting members of the public to screenings of GasLand, a documentary that covers incredibly dangerous oil-drilling practices such as "fracking" that contaminate drinking water in the areas it's done in, one of them being Pennsylvania.

This was enough for the PDHS to place Ruffalo--a movie star actor--on a terror watch list. Ruffalo thinks "[it's] pretty fuckin' funny," and to some extent it is, but it also isn't. He was brushing-up against Big Oil, maybe even firms like Halliburton. What I want to know is who made the decision here. Were his other progressive activities taken into account? Was the White House a part of any of these decisions? What recourse would an average citizen have had in this case?

Hold-outs: He's not what you think he is. Actions speak louder than words.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/dailydish/detail?entry_id=77671

Information on the May 2010 petition accusing President Obama of war crimes: http://weaselzippers.us/2010/05/15/2000-us-actors-prominent-liberals-accuse-obama-of-war-crimes-says-hes-worse-than-bush-for-authorizing-assassination-of-anwar-al-awlaki/

14 down, 36 to go in the push towards legalization of marijuana

But what does this all mean? What does it mean when we're rapidly heading towards a surveillance state, let alone a police state? Will we be able to smoke pot in a police state? Consider that. What does this mean? I have no idea, it just boggles the mind, but you have to realize that many states of existence and social trends can live alongside one another simultaneously. Some things can be true and false all at once.

Is this all Huxley' warning, the phantom of "soma," and a populace that could find itself under some serious illusions of personal freedom while simultaneously narcotizing themselves, and not merely by television and the Internet (the unimaginative misuse of the latter)? I don't know, but it sure looks like it. There are many illusions and conceits in the counterculture and the outlying one these days, too many myths, too little reality.

California nearly passed Proposition 19 this election cycle, which would have all but decriminalized marijuana with a mere fine for up to the personal possession of one ounce of marijuana, similar to Ontario's experiment with decriminalization beginning about (or "aboot") a decade ago thanks to the ruling of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice (like our own higher Federal District circuits). But the fun didn't last long in Ontario and later rulings have pushed back the right to personal possession of marijuana. Tell 'em that in Toronto's Kensington Market, or even parts of Los Angeles and Oakland and the neighborhoods around the University of Toronto.

Local custom often trumps the law, which in the case of marijuana, is fine since it's not someone being lynched. That's what the drug laws are for.

As a criminology professor in college told me, "We never learn in America, because we don't want to." The truth has been plain for ages: Prohibition just empowers cartels and gangs, it doesn't make society a better place to live, and in fact is one of the sources of social disintegration. But it serves narrow interests, some who are in-collusion with drug lords. Without prohibition, there would be almost no potential for bribery and similar forms of corruption, especially with a decentralized model granting private citizens the right to grow set amounts for personal use, never mind medical marijuana dispensaries.

Meanwhile, the executive branch is enjoying the ability to conduct unrestrained surveillance of everyone under the rubic of the war on terror and the war on drugs. The states are moving one way, while the federal government is moving another. There could be no greater example of counter-trends of the democratic versus anti-democratic other than the newfound freedom and ease of communication created by the Internet, but the legalization movement is surely another one when juxtaposed with the ever-widening surveillance state. This isn't simply a states' rights battle, though there is certainly a fear of opening that door. It underscores that there are natural tendencies towards the democratic and anti-democratic in all nation states.

What if we do witness the virtual legalization of marijuana for personal use in the United States? Will it be a blow against anti-democratic trends? That would be a major affirmative. American drug laws were first formulated as race laws and the statistics of who gets sentenced to the most time are implicitly clear: Minorities suffer the most for the same amounts as their Caucasian counterparts, and class is also an issue, the ability to pay adequately for one's own defense at trial. So, yes indeed, this will be a step forward for civil rights across the board for Americans if we can end prohibition of marijuana since it will lead to and end in the case of the other substances to interdiction and the punishment model.

"But who's going to sell it?" is the usual question. In the case of marijuana, it should be nobody. Again, it's a hardy and easily grown plant. Yes, there will still be a market for the "best," there always will be, but any good law decriminalizing the plant will have to include the right of private citizens to grow their own. The other substances? The government should be dispensing them for tracking and statistical purposes, just like Canada does with "The Beer Store," albeit I have no answers as to manufacture, though my preference would be by the government. The money made from these sales could just as easily go to addiction treatment programs.

Would we want corporations to manufacture heroin as a commodity? I don't think so, and believe that that would be the true road to Huxley's Brave New World. Corporations are only capable of being held-accountable through the power of government because nothing else is powerful enough to. Before we knew it, we could all truly be addicts were they to have complete control over the process. But a part of me wonders: Where is this all headed? Will legalizing marijuana make a big difference? I believe that it can, and likely will, offer a "third-path" model, but Americans are going to have a big fight on their hands with--no surprise here--corporations, and the people who service, defend, and have an abiding interest in them.

Will we be smoking pot in a police state? Stay tuned...