Noam Chomsky on Bradley Manning

Arguing that ever since Bradley Manning's arrest in 2010 "the government has perverted the values it claims to represent," David Gespass of the National Lawyers Guild powerfully condemns "the travesty" that was today's conviction and its message: "Hypocrisy and criminality are rife in the United States government and, in its eyes, the worst criminals are those who expose such evils." With more from Esquire's Charles Pierce on the terrifying "logic of authoritarians...pursued so vigorously by a putatively democratic state."

 "There are two ways in which any government can seek to control security leaks. The first is by honesty and transparency, by allowing the public to know enough to make democratic decisions about how far is too far. That is the path that the United States, and this president, claims to follow. The second is by threatening draconian consequences to anyone who exposes questionable policies and practices to the light of day. That is the path the United States, and this administration, has chosen with the prosecution of Bradley Manning and others." (Abbey Zimet)

It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one's belly, in order to be able to save one's head ~ Mahatma Gandhi

OneLove

:::MME:::

MME's (Double) Jam of the Day

I caught Lianne La Havas in concert last week at the Baltimore Soundstage & I gotta say, she was incredible - & that's an understatement folks.  I ranted about Lianne La Havas here  and here , but who can blame me? In our media-saturated world spewing so much half-baked crap, Lianne is like a cool, gratifying draft of fresh air much like how Eryka Badu, Lauryn Hill & Maxwell were when they came on the scene back in the day. Sheer brilliance!!!

OneLove

:::MME:::

The Hijack Of The World

Part 1: The Company 




Part II: Deep State











Part III: The Strategy of Tension











Part IV: Necrophilous









Part V: Drone Nation





Part VI: (Extended Trailer)


Stay awake.... 



OneLove



 :::MME:::

Musings

A man who procrastinates his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance


OneLove

:::MME:::

Poet's Nook: "Photograph" by Lucille Clifton

 

my grandsons
    spinning in their joy

universe
keep them turning turning
black blurs against the window
of the world

for they are beautiful

and there is trouble coming
round and round and round

 .

.

.

 .

(great quotes from this remarkable writer here)

(America's violence towards its darker citizens is packed into this short but powerful piece. Spinning in their joy: we see the innocent joy of children as they fling their bodies through the world. But we know that as these black/brown bodies grow, they will lose that sense of freedom, they will be conscious always of their skin ... and the  mortal risks to their God-given right to exist).

OneLove

:::MME:::

No Innocence Left to Kill: Racism, Injustice and Explaining America to My Daughter by Tim Wise

You remember, forever and forever, that moment when you first discover the cruelties and injustices of the world, and having been ill-prepared for them, your heart breaks open.

I mean really discover them, and for yourself; not because someone else told you to see the elephant standing, gigantic and unrelenting in the middle of your room, but because you saw him, and now you know he’s there, and will never go away until you attack him, and with a vengeance.

Last night, and I am writing it down so that I will not forget — because I already know she will not — my oldest daughter, who attained the age of 12 only eleven days ago, became an American. Not in the legal sense. She was already that, born here, and — as a white child in a nation set up for people just like her — fully entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof, without much question or drama. But now she is American in the fullest and most horrible sense of that word, by which I mean she has been truly introduced to the workings of the system of which she is both a part, and, at the same time, merely an inheritor. A system that fails — with a near-unanimity almost incomprehensible to behold — to render justice to black peoples, the family of Trayvon Martin being only the latest battered by the machinations of American justice, but with all certainty not the last.

To watch her crumble, eyes swollen with tears too salty, too voluminous for her daddy to wipe away? Well now that is but the latest of my heartbreaks; to have to hold her, and tell her that everything will be OK, and to hear her respond, “No it won’t be!” Because see, even though she learned last night about injustice and even more than she knew before about the racial fault lines that divide her nation, she is still a bit too young to fully comprehend the notion of the marathon, as opposed to the sprint; to understand that this is a very long race, indeed that even 26.2 miles is but a crawl in the long distance struggle for justice. And that if she is as bothered by what she sees as it appears, well now she will have to put on some incredibly strong running shoes, because this, my dear, is the work.

This is why daddy does what he does. Now you know.

And yes, I am fully aware that there are still those who would admonish me for even suggesting this case was about race. Not just the defenders of George Zimmerman, with whom I shall deal in a moment, but even the state, whose prosecutors de-racialized this case to a point that frankly was as troubling as anything the defense tried to do. Maybe more. I mean, the defense’s job is to represent their client, and I cannot fault them for having done so successfully. But the prosecution’s job is to make it clear to the jury what the defendant did and preferably why he did it. By agreeing to a fundamentally colorblind, “this isn’t about race,” narrative, they gave away the best part of their arsenal before the war had really started.

Because anyone who still believes that this case had nothing to do with race — or worse, that it was simply a tragedy, the racial meaning of which was concocted by those whom they love to term “race hustlers” — are suffering from a delusion so profound as to call into question their capacities for rational thought. And yet still, let us try to reason with them for a second, as if they were capable of hearing it. Let’s do that for the sake of rational thought itself, as a thing we still believe in; and for our country, which some of us still believe — against all evidence — is capable of doing justice and living up to its promises. In short, let’s give this one more shot.

Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds — if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase — the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives. They must choose to leave the dots unconnected between, for instance, Martin on the one hand, and then on the other, Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell or Patrick Dorismond, or any of a number of other black men whose names — were I to list them — would take up page after page, and whose names wouldn’t mean shit to most white people even if I did list them, and that is the problem.

Oh sure, I’ve heard it all before. George Zimmerman didn’t follow Trayvon Martin because Martin was black; he followed him because he thought he might be a criminal. Yes precious, I get that. But what you don’t get — and by not getting it while still managing to somehow hold down a job and feed yourself, scare the shit out of me — is far more important. Namely, if the presumption of criminality that Zimmerman attached to Martin was so attached because the latter was black — and would not have been similarly attached to him had he been white — then the charge of racial bias and profiling is entirely appropriate.

And surely we cannot deny that the presumption of criminality was dependent on this dead child’s race can we? Before you answer, please note that even the defense did not deny this. Indeed, Zimmerman’s attorneys acknowledged in court that their client’s concerns about Martin were connected directly to the fact that previous break-ins in the neighborhood had been committed by young black males.

This is why it matters that George Zimmerman justified his following of Martin because as he put it, “these fucking punks” always get away. In other words, Zimmerman saw Martin as just another “fucking punk” up to no good, similar to those who had committed previous break-ins in the community. But why? What behavior did Martin display that would have suggested he was criminally inclined? Zimmerman’s team could produce nothing to indicate anything particularly suspicious about Martin’s actions that night. According to Zimmerman, Martin was walking in the rain, “looking around,” or “looking around at the houses.” But not looking in windows, or jiggling doorknobs or porch screens, or anything that might have suggested a possible burglar. At no point was any evidence presented by the defense to justify their client’s suspicions. All we know is that Zimmerman saw Martin and concluded that he was just like those other criminals. And to the extent there was nothing in Martin’s actions — talking on the telephone and walking slowly home from the store — that would have indicated he was another of those “fucking punks,” the only possible explanation as to why George Zimmerman would have seen him that way is because Martin, as a young black male was presumed to be a likely criminal, and for no other reason, ultimately, but color.

Which is to say, Trayvon Martin is dead because he is black and because George Zimmerman can’t differentiate — and didn’t see the need to — between criminal and non-criminal black people. Which is to say, George Zimmerman is a racist. Because if you cannot differentiate between black criminals and just plain kids, and don’t even see the need to try, apparently, you are a racist. I don’t care what your Peruvian mother says, or her white husband who married the Peruvian mother, or your brother, or your black friends, or the black girl you took to prom, or the black kids you mentored. If you see a black child and assume “criminal,” despite no behavioral evidence at all to suggest such a conclusion, you are a racist. No exceptions. That goes for George Zimmerman and for anyone reading this.

And here’s the thing: even in the evidentiary light most favorable to George Zimmerman this would remain true. Because even if we believe, as the jury did, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, there can be no question that were it not for George Zimmerman’s unfounded and racially-biased suspicions that evening, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman would be an entirely anonymous, pathetic wanna-be lawman, about whom no one would much care. It was he who initiated the drama that night. And even if you believe that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed by him, that doesn’t change.

But apparently that moral and existential truth matters little to this jury or to the white reactionaries so quick to praise their decision. To them, the fact that Martin might well have had reason to fear Zimmerman that night, might have thought he was standing his ground, confronted by someone who himself was “up to no good” is irrelevant. They are saying that black people who fight back against someone they think is creepy and who is following them, and might intend to harm them, are more responsible for their deaths than those who ultimately kill them. What they have said, and make no mistake about it, is that any white person who wants to kill a black person can follow one, confront them, maybe even provoke them; and as soon as that black person perhaps takes a swing at them, or lunges at them, the white pursuer can pull their weapon, fire, and reasonably assume that they will get away with this act. I can start drama, and if you respond to the drama I created, you are to blame, not me.

But we know, if we are remotely awake, that this same logic would never be used to protect a black person accused of such an act. Let’s travel back to 1984 shall we, and hypothetically apply this logic to the Bernhard Goetz case in a little thought experiment so as to illustrate the point.

Goetz, as you’ll recall, was the white man who, afraid of young black men because he had been previously mugged, decided to shoot several such youth on a subway. They had not threatened him. They had asked him for money, and apparently teased him a bit. But at no point did they threaten him. Nonetheless, he drew his weapon and fired several rounds into them, even (according to his own initial account, later recanted), shooting a second time at one of the young men, after saying, “You don’t look so bad, here, have another.”

Goetz, predictably, was seen as a hero by the majority of the nation’s whites, if polls and anecdotal evidence are to be believed. He was a Dirty Harry-like vigilante, fighting back against crime, and more to the point, black crime. Ultimately he too would successfully plead self-defense and face conviction only on a minor weapons charge.

But let us pretend for a second that after Goetz pulled his weapon and began to fire at the young men on that subway, one of them had perhaps pulled his own firearm. Now as it turns out none of the boys had one, but let’s just pretend. And let’s say that one of them pulled a weapon precisely because, after all, he and his friends were being fired upon and so, fearing for his life, he opted to defend himself against this deranged gunman. And let’s pretend that the young man managed to hit Goetz, perhaps paralyzing him as Goetz did, in fact, to one of his victims. Does anyone seriously believe that that young black man would have been able to press a successful self-defense claim in court the way Goetz ultimately did? Or in the court of white public opinion the way Zimmerman has? If you would answer yes to this question you are either engaged in an act of self-delusion so profound as to defy imagination, or you are so deeply committed to fooling others as to make you truly dangerous.

But we are not fooled.

We don’t even have to travel back thirty years to the Goetz case to make the point, in fact. We can stay here, with this case. If everything about that night in Sanford had been the same, but Martin, fearing this stranger following him — the latter not identifying himself at any point as Neighborhood Watch — had pulled a weapon and shot George Zimmerman out of a genuine fear that he was going to be harmed (and even if Zimmerman had confronted him in a way so as to make that fear more than speculative), would the claim of self-defense have rung true for those who are so convinced by it in this case? Would this jury have likely concluded that Trayvon had had a right to defend himself against the perceived violent intentions of George Zimmerman?

Oh, and would it have taken so long for Martin to be arrested in the first place, had he been the shooter? Would he have been granted bail? Would he have been given the benefit of the doubt the way Zimmerman was by virtually every white conservative in America of note? And remember, those white folks were rushing to proclaim the shooting of Martin justified even before there had been any claim made by Zimmerman that Trayvon had attacked him. Before anyone had heard Zimmerman’s version of the story, much of white America, and virtually its entire right flank had already decided that Martin must have been up to no good because he wore a hoodie (in the rain, imagine), and was tall (actually according to the coroner he was 5’11″ not 6’2″ or 6’4″ as some have claimed), and that because of those previous break-ins, Zimmerman had every right to confront him.

No, Martin-as-shooter would never have benefited from these public pronouncements of innocence the way Zimmerman did.

Because apparently black people don’t have a right to defend themselves. Which is why Marissa Alexander, a woman who had suffered violence at the hands of her husband (by his own admission in fact), was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison after firing a warning shot into a wall when she felt he was about to yet again harm her.

And so it continues. Year after year and case after case it continues, with black life viewed as expendable in the service of white fear, with black males in particular (but many a black female as well and plenty of Latino folk too) marked as problems to be solved, rather than as children to be nurtured. And tonight, their parents will hold them and try to assure them that everything is going to be OK, even as they will have to worry again tomorrow that their black or brown child may represent the physical embodiment of white anxiety, and pay the ultimate price for that fact, either at the hands of a random loser with a law enforcement jones, or an actual cop doing the bidding of the state. In short, they will hold their children and lie to them, at least a little — and to themselves — because who doesn’t want their child to believe that everything will be alright?

But in calmer moments these parents of color will also tell their children the truth. That in fact everything is not going to be OK, unless we make it so. That justice is not an act of wish fulfillment but the product of resistance. Because black parents know these things like they know their names, and as a matter of survival they make sure their children know them too.

And if their children have to know them, then mine must know them as well.

And now they do.

If their children are to be allowed no innocence free from these concerns, then so too must mine sacrifice some of their naiveté upon the altar of truth.

And now they have.

So to the keepers of white supremacy, I should offer this final word. You can think of it as a word of caution. My oldest daughter knows who you are and saw what you did. You have made a new enemy. One day, you might wish you hadn’t.

Tim Wise is author of many books, including his most recent, DEAR WHITE AMERICA: LETTER TO A NEW MINORITY published by City Lights.  Cornel West calls Wise “A vanilla brother in the tradition of (antiracism and antislavery fighter) John Brown,” 

A Conversation with Eduardo Galeano

One of the books I am reading right now is Eduardo Galeano's Children Of The Days-A Calendar of Human History . It is book which gives you reason to pause on numerous occasions as it beautifully mixes history with fiction, poetry and memoir.  The 365 little fragments that make up the book paint broad strokes ranging from imperialism to Hollywood, indigenous wisdom to the pharmaceutical industry. It is deeply engaging and poetic - the type of book one will take pleasure rereading countless times. Although it is arranged for each day of the year, this book of days is really for any day & there is much to absorb & reflect upon here. Great interview!

OneLove

:::MME:::

The 5 Biggest Obscenities of Capitalism Today By Paul Buchheit

Committed capitalists don't seem to recognize that people depend on each other, and that individual success is a result of collaborative effort, usually over a long period of time. The less free-market thinkers are regulated, the less they seem to care about others. They ignore the fact that America's most productive eras were driven by progressive taxes that funded entrepreneurship in the middle class. And they fail to see the deficiencies in a system that relies solely on profit-making to the exclusion of social responsibility.

Like the images of a dreaded disease, their beliefs might best be defined as obscene.

1. The Market Works. Just Wait.

Capitalists have a remarkable capacity for groundless trust in the efficiency and egalitarianism of the free market. It started with Milton Friedman's contention that "The free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people." Then on to 1998, when the New York Times cheered the breakup of the Glass-Steagall Act as having "temporarily demolished the increasingly unnecessary walls built during the Depression to separate commercial banks from investment banks and insurance companies." Post-crash, in 2009 and thereafter, the capitalists noticed cracks in the foundation, but relied on self-correction. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein assured us that "The financial system may have led us into the crisis but it will lead us out," and the Chicago Tribune echoed his sentiment: "Western-style private enterprise, despite its penchant for booms and busts, will lead the world out of the mess it led the world into."

Even after 30+ years of free-market failure for the majority of Americans, the business people refused to surrender. Growing inequality had become a certainty. But Goldman Sachs adviser Brian Griffiths explained that "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all."


2. Taxes: Who Needs Them?

"Zero!" said Honeywell CEO David Cote when asked what the corporate tax rate should be. Misinformation about taxes may have started with Arthur Laffer's napkin demonstration, which convinced Republicans for nearly forty years that lower taxes alchemistically result in higher revenues. Wealthy capitalists have come to believe that everyone benefits from tax avoidance. Said Charles Koch: "I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington."

Even the biggest tax avoider, Apple Corporation, which according to its CEO Tim Cook "has a very strong moral compass," is fanatically defended for its nonpayment, despite the fact that taxpayer money paid for the development of transistors and integrated circuits and networking hardware and software that allowed the company to exist. Rand Paul fumed, "I’m offended by the spectacle of dragging in Apple executives. What we need to do is apologize to Apple and compliment them for the job creation they’re doing."

Rand Paul may have been referring to Apple's self-congratulatory claim of 500,000 jobs added to the U.S. economy. But Apple only has 43,000 U.S. employees. It is estimated that the company makes $400,000 profit per employee while paying an average of $12 per hour for its store workers.


3. Global Warming is a Hoax

According to Republican Senator James Inhofe, it's "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He would go on to reflect, "My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous." Rick Santorum called environmentalism "one of the favorite tricks of the left," and Fox News reported that "Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago."

Those not in complete denial offer profit-centered solutions. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson calls global warming an "engineering problem" with "engineering solutions," and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce insists that "Populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological and technological adaptations." The cheery Chamber even posits that warming could be "beneficial to humans" because of reduced wintertime mortality.

Other environmental problems flash yet more dollar signs before businessmen's eyes. Larry Summers recommended outsourcing our toxic waste problem: "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to it." Regarding the water shortage, Energy & Capital suggested that "If you play it right, the results of this impending water crisis can be very good."

Monsanto stands out, below everyone else, in its report to the SEC: "We are committed to long-term environmental protection.."


4. Students Are Our Finest Product

The big names produce the biggest absurdities. A well-intentioned Bill Gates proposes quality control for the student assembly line, with video footage from the classrooms sent to evaluators to check off teaching skills.

Michelle Rhee said, "I think that we are doing the wrong thing in our society when we are congratulating mediocrity and participation." Of course students should strive to go beyond mediocrity. But education is never an individual achievement. On the contrary, great individuals are the product of people working together, sharing ideas, filling in the missing gaps in others' work.

But we hear the sounds of ca-ching rather than of society working together. Koch-funded Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast said, "We see vouchers as a major step toward the complete privatization of schooling...they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime."


5. Money Can't Buy Me Gov

Deception, delusion, denial. Capitalists have completed all the steps of their free-market program. Billionaire Kenneth Griffin believes that the wealthy "have an insufficient influence" on politics today. The Chicago Tribune concurs: "What's so terrible about the infusion of so much money into the presidential campaign?......that's not a bug but a feature...it's the sound of democracy."

It's a little like having an obscene gesture thrust in your face.

OneLove

:::MME:::

American Justice 101

 “Justice is like a train that is nearly always late”

Does it seem as if we're living in an upside-down world where what should be isn't & what shouldn't be is in fact a reality? Although strides have been made to dilute the poisons that have deformed the body politic in the U.S - thanks to the Human/Civil Rights struggles in the 50s/60s and the many contributions/sacrifices of activists/scholars/artists up to today -  the stubborn persistence of America's predilection for  injustice, inequality, criminality,  inhumanity & cynical hypocrisy continues & it does appear to me that a backward motion is already underway in huge swaths of the population.

Some accuse me of being too pessimistic & overly-critical, but if I were to collapse all of the counter-arguments I have heard one too many times, they would go something like this: "...dont' we have a black President? And isn't Don Thompson (CEO of McDonald's),  Kenneth Frazier (CEO of Merck ), Kenneth Chenault (CEO of American Express),  Ursula Burns (CEO of Xerox),  Clarence Otis (CEO of Darden Restaurants), and Roger Ferguson  (CEO of  privately held TIAA-CREF) all black? And let's not talk about all the success stories in sports/arts/ entertainment/military. Everything is on a level playing field - we're post-racial now - so enough of the tiresome  'no justice no peace' & 'we shall overcome' claptrap. I made it so they should just shut up and get a job and stop making excuses" . 

To the folks who think on this level: Put the crack pipe down.

The sad reality is, regardless of class, a black person is killed by a police officer, security guard, or vigilante (aka fake-ass cop) every 28 hours (or less). And this is not a random act of nature - it is the inevitable result of decades upon decades of institutional racism and gestapo tactics/ thinking within America's domestic security apparatus. A recent study details the grim statistics of lives cut short by the cancer at the heart of American society/culture. Today's cover on the New York Daily News sums this up with a chilling but accurate picture.  (I highly recommend listening CSPAN's interview with Michelle Alexander here).

The shockwave of this murderer's acquittal is being felt by all people of conscience the world over. We are aghast by this human tragedy & legal travesty. Alas, being young, black & male in America is like having a shooting target stamped on your back & this predicament is, to my mind, one of many indicators that this country is terminally ill for it is only in America can a dead black boy  - once alive and just walking home from a store -  go on trial for his own murder....& the way he was criminalized for defending himself was beyond words....

This just in: George Zimmerman will get his gun back following his acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin -- and his attorney believes he needs it "even more" than before.

 

Outrageous....

Unless we challenge the entire criminal justice system (and mass incarceration), there will indubitably be many more Trayvon Martins and a constant dread that next time it may be YOUR kid returning home with a drink and some candies from the corner store....

Please sign the NAACP petition to the Department of Justice seeking justice for Trayvon Martin by filing civil rights charges against  Zimmerman.

Onelove

:::MME:::

Re-examining the Past

When I was in college, I came across the writings of Dr Ivan Van Sertima in a history course & my foundation shook! Up to that point, I knew very little about African history and the little that I did know proved to be false for the most part. Dr. Van Sertima's trailblazing scholarship led many of us to continue our pursuits toward the rediscovery of African history that was virtually ignored, distorted, or perhaps purposely omitted by historians. It's funny how slowly these facts trickled into mainstream consciousness over the years. What folks like Dr. Ben-Jochannan, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, Dr Asa Hilliard, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr.Chancellor Williams & a host of others were bringing to light back in the day - which was forcefully rejected by mainstream historians - slowly became accepted as modern scientific techniques made their claims incontrovertible fact (see National Geographic, The Guardian, BBC, LiveScience). It is indeed tragic that many people of African descent can only trace back to slavery as the starting point of their history without being aware of the  cultural and scientific achievements of Africa that were eclipsed by it (slavery). European conquest pretty much did the same thing the world over, but people are awakening as the truth can never be submerged forever.....

OneLove

::MME:::

A Message For Our Youth

Young voices like this give us hope that tomorrow may not be as dark as many project it to be.... 

OneLove

 :::MME:::

A Sinking Feeling

You ever get the strange feeling that we are all spinning around in a toilet bowl to eventually get flushed down the hole, out of sight, out of mind? I do. Whenever I read or hear news items concerning the ever-increasing threats to our privacy & safety, I get that sinking feeling that this will not end well - people will realize too late that the terrain has changed & that they are now the enemy. Of course, we will continue to hear the usual drivel aimed at inciting & perpetuating fear, suspicion & hatred all in the name of  some vague "national security" claim. Don't get me wrong: there are real enemies out there. What bothers me is the noose that has been flung around the whole world making us all guilty until proven innocent. And there is some serious money to be made by this sickening enterprise & in the end, down the hole we go. 

In case you are not keeping track of all the fancy contraptions that are now part of "intelligence-gathering" game, here are a few that have some disturbing potential:

(1) X37B Space Plane - On December 11th, 2012, the US Air Force launched this wickedly flexible, undetectable robotic space plane that can stay in orbit for over a year. Since this is a highly classified asset, many speculate that it’s almost certainly a weaponized spy plane or, at least, a testbed for space surveillance gear and a launch platform for miniature spy satellites. There is a growing concern that with the launch of this craft, the military is prepping up for a crisis - real or imagined.

(2) X-47B Unmanned Combat Drone - The Navy announced on Wednesday (7/10/13) that it has successfully landed a X-47B on a carrier for the first time. This beast is not only equipped with the weapons of a fighter jet, but can fly itself on a pre-defined course while correcting for mistakes and weather - no human at the controls! I see nothing but countless innocents being shredded as unavoidable "collateral damage" in pursuit of a handful of combatants.

(3) Google Glass - In 1999, Sun CEO Scott McNealy said: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." The dipshit was prophetic. This latest device by Google is a pair of glasses with a built-in audio/video chip that captures content in real-time which to me is every stalkers dream come true. When the price of this wearable device goes down, you will hear louder and louder cries of privacy invasions /breaches of confidentiality. Spy technology in the hands of the general population is asking for trouble & really - do we need yet another destructive distraction especially in the hands of the young & disturbed? Again, the powers that be are only too happy to see this device mass-marketed as it makes it that much easier to collect data on folks.

(4) Smartphones That Can See Through Walls - Using WiFi to “see through walls” and track people when they’re moving could be a new feature on your next smartphone - yet another tool in a growing field of spy technology. A couple of years ago, Researchers at MIT's Lincoln Lab  built a radar system that can penetrate walls/roofs enough to give an "instantaneous picture of the activity on the other side." Now we're getting a commercial version to make spies of us all!  Again, this shit will not end well. The US Constitution may as well be parceled out as toilet tissue like this.

I can go on and on about this - and I didn't even mention PRISM & other invasive schemes. We all want peace & security, but is this the best way to achieve these ends? The US has become a madhouse run by sociopaths with deep pockets and deeper disdain for justice & democracy.  The global surveillance industry is estimated at $5 billion a year, so as I mentioned before, there is mountains of money to be made. The capabilities of surveillance technology have grown hugely in the past decade – in the hands of a repressive or imperial powers, this technology muffles free speech, quashes dissent and places politically-engaged citizens at the mercy of ruling powers as effectively as guns and bombs, if not more so. Surveillance technology can range from malware which infects a target computer to record every keystroke, to systems for tapping undersea fibre-optic cables in order to monitor the communications of entire populations. In countries where detention without trial, torture and extra-judicial killings are commonplace, these technologies imperil the lives of every activist and dissident fighting for decency, dignity and justice.

(Ah yes.....this strange, sinking feeling..I hope it goes away...)


OneLove


:::MME:::

Awakening the Dreamer

Part 2
Very thought-provoking...Some of my favorite thinkers are in this one. Kids of all ages should watch this and, in my opinion, should be mandatory in schools the world over given the critical state our planet is in...I especially liked Pt 2 of this documentary--powerful!

 OneLove 

:::MME:::

MME's Jam Of The Day

 

Great combination of classical violin & R&B/soul. This was done before by Nina Simone, Barry White & Love Unlimited Orchestra, Shawn Stockman (remember that classic "Visions Of A Sunset"?), Johnny Mathis, amongst others. Newcomer Marques Tolliver does a masterful job on this piece. It would be great if this flavor of R&B makes a comeback as the R&B out now is way too banal & forgettable.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Living in the Age of Distraction by Margaret Wheatley

For years I assumed that the Titanic tragedy was a result of human arrogance, the belief in the indestructibility of the newest, largest, fastest, fanciest ship of all time. But actually the Titanic went down because of distraction. Other ships had been warning about the iceberg-filled waters for days, but the Titanic’s captain changed course only slightly and did nothing to slow the ship’s speed. When the radio operator received a call from a ship that was surrounded by ice—this was less than an hour before the collision—he responded, “Shut up, shut up, I’m busy.” By the time lookouts spotted the iceberg ahead, it was too late to slow the Titanic’s momentum.  

Although overused, the Titanic is a chillingly accurate metaphor for our time. Distracted people don’t notice they are in danger. Rumi said: “Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk and this is the edge of the roof.” The evidence is plentiful these days that distracted people cause harm to themselves and to others. We read reports of fatal train accidents caused by the engineer texting and of commercial flights crashing because pilots were chatting. Pedestrians and drivers are killed because they’re on the phone or texting. We need look no further than ourselves to observe distraction. How long can you focus on any activity these days? How many pages can you read before wandering off? How many other things are you doing while you’re listening to a conference call? Have you stopped writing emails that make multiple requests because you only get a reply to the first one? Do you still take time for open-ended conversations with friends, colleagues, or your children?

An Ecosystem of Interruption Technologies

In the 1930s, T.S. Eliot wrote, “We are distracted from distraction by distraction.” It’s a perfect description of our present day. How did we get here—to this life of incessant connection but total distraction—where even if we recognize that we’re hamsters on a wheel, we can’t get off?

The answer is that our lives, relationships, and politics are being shaped by an ecosystem of interruption technologies. Between smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, we have instant and constant access to each other and to the Internet. Superficially, this seems to be a great benefit, but in practice we can now be interrupted at any time, in any place, no matter what we are doing.

Throughout history, technology interacts with its users in predictable ways: it changes behaviors, thinking processes, social norms, and even, as neuroplasticity studies show, our physical brain structure. It may be hard to accept, but the truth is that the tools we create end up controlling us.

I learned of the devouring, deterministic march of technology from the work of French philosopher, educator, and political activist Jacques Ellul. You may not have heard of him, but it was Ellul who gave us the now-trusted concept “Think globally, act locally.” Here is Ellul’s harsh clarity: Once a technology enters a culture, it takes over. It feeds on itself, assisted by eager adoption and demands for more of it. Social structures, such as values, behaviors, and politics, can’t help but organize around the new technology’s values. The predictable result is the loss of existing cultural traditions and the emergence of a new culture.

Gutenberg’s printing press, because it put information into the hands of everyday people, is credited with the rise of individualism, literacy, complex language, private contemplation, the literary tradition, and the advent of Protestantism. By 1500, just fifty years after its invention, more than twelve million books were in print in Europe (and people were already complaining that there were too many books).

Many of us would like to reject this deterministic description of human disempowerment. But we can validate how technology transforms culture by looking at what has become accepted behavior in the past few years. Do you remember when people talking out loud on a street were labeled crazy, when intense, emotional conversations were held in subdued voices in private places? Do you remember having time to think with colleagues and family to work out problems, rather than exchanging rapid-fire texts? When you used to walk into a colleague’s office to ask a question rather than fire off an email? When you enjoyed taking time for conversation rather than rushing to get the information you need right now? How many times have you been distracted as you’ve read this article?

This is evidence of how the ecosystem of interruption technologies is reshaping culture. We might still value curiosity, contemplation, privacy, conversation, and teamwork, but are these values visible in our day-to-day behaviors? The contradiction between what we value and how we behave doesn’t mean we’re hypocrites. It simply shows that technology has taken over, as it always does.

To Be Everywhere Is to Be Nowhere

Right now, you may want to call my attention to all the wonderful benefits of the Internet—it’s a revolutionary technology that makes you not only more efficient but also more effective. I agree with you. I couldn’t do my work or write a book without search engines, e-books, and email exchanges, and I couldn’t stay connected to my family when I’m traveling. However, we have to focus beyond the content, as beneficial as it is. Marshall McLuhan wrote that the content of a medium is just “the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watch- dog of the mind.” We have to notice how we are being affected by the process of texting, calling, posting, linking, searching, and scanning.

More than just creating distraction, our growing addiction to the Internet is impairing precious human capacities such as memory, concentration, pattern recognition, meaning-making, and intimacy. We are becoming more restless, more impatient, more demanding, and more insatiable, even as we become more connected and creative. We are rapidly losing the ability to think long about any- thing, even those issues we care about. We flit, moving restlessly from one link to another. It may seem like we’re in the process of discovery, but many studies now show that multimedia environments—with links, photos, videos, bottom text crawls—don’t encourage learning and retention, because so much information overloads our circuits.

Nicolas Carr, in his compelling book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, describes us as minds consumed by the medium. “The Net seizes our attention only to scatter it. We focus intensively on the medium itself on the flickering screen, but we’re distracted by the medium’s rapid-fire delivery of competing messages and stimuli.” He quotes Seneca, the Roman philosopher from two thousand years ago: “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”

Self-Manufacturing People

The Internet, by design, gives individuals the capacity to fragment information and use it how- ever they choose. Today, there are hundreds of millions of personal filters operating at cyber speed, taking others’ expressions out of context, selecting parts they like, and constructing selves for public viewing. What’s being created is millions of individual identities, brilliantly displayed. What’s being lost is a sense of collective identity, of the shared meaning that transcends the individual and brings coherence to a culture. We’re losing the capacity and will to enter into each other’s perceptions, to be curious to see the world from another point of view.

Our insatiable appetites for self-creation and self-expression have transformed us into twenty-first- century hunter-gatherers. We’ve become addicted to where the next click might lead us, so we keep hunting incessantly. Overwhelmed by inputs, caught in our self-sealing cycles, we devolve into self-manufactured people driven apart by rigid opinions and lonely for acceptance, into hungry ghosts grasping for the next new thing to satisfy us. 

I chose the word devolve very carefully.

The most dire consequence of this instant-access, information-rich world is that it has changed the very nature and role of information. In living systems, information is the source of change; Gregory Bateson defined it as that which makes a difference. Information no longer plays this mind-changing role. No matter how reputable the science, or how in-depth and thorough the investigative reporting, no matter the photos and evidence, we sort through the information with our well-formed personal filters. Information doesn’t change our minds; we use any report or evidence merely to intensify our assaults on the other’s opinions.

When we aren’t interested in disconfirming information, when we fight to protect our own opinions rather than work together for a reasonable decision, the world becomes unpredictable and random. It seems as if there’s no order, but it’s we who are the source of the chaos.

When we don’t think and discern patterns, events seem to come and go out of nowhere. We don’t prepare for natural disasters; we mock leaders who take time to make decisions as “indecisive”; we refuse to read well-developed analyses; we criticize complex legislation for its page length. At work, we demand five-minute presentations and elevator speeches to “get” whatever the issue is. If something complex requires more time to understand, we’re too busy. Just like the radio operator on the Titanic.

The world, of course, is neither random nor chaotic. It’s our lack of thinking that makes it appear so. Before many disasters, the information is there that could have prevented a tragedy. After a disaster, I wait to see how long it takes to reveal the information that was suppressed, the voices of warning that were silenced. This is always the case. Before the economic collapse, a few people saw the illusion for what it was (and were able to profit from the meltdown). One year before Katrina, the federal government had simulated just such a catastrophic hurricane, but officials failed to do the prep work specified in their action plans.

We have made this world into an unpredictable, fearful monster because we’ve refused to work with it intelligently. And the ultimate sacrifice is the future. Thinking forward is impossible for those reacting fearfully moment by moment. Tibetan cosmology includes a class of beings who “hurl the future away from themselves,” as far from their awareness as possible. Seems they saw us coming.

The Practice of Three Difficulties

 

The only antidote to this culture of interruption technologies is for us to take back control of ourselves. We cannot stop the proliferation of seductive technologies or the capacity-destroying dynamics of distraction or the techno-speed of life. But we can change our own behavior. In the eighth century, the Buddhist teacher Shantideva admonished, “The affairs of the world are endless. They only end when we stop them.” Goodness knows what was so distracting in the eighth century, but he speaks well for our time.

To restore good human capacities—thinking, meaning-making, discerning—we need to develop discipline. We need to be mindful of distraction, and disciplined enough to shut off the computer, put the phone down, make time for casual conversations, sit patiently, and listen—all without getting anxious that we’re wasting time, that we won’t get through our to-do list, that we’re missing out on something. The practice described in the Buddhist lojong (mind training) slogans as the “three difficulties” can restore sanity and capacity to our daily lives: 1) You notice the behavior. 2) You try something different. 3) You commit to practicing that new behavior until it becomes natural.

Deciding to practice non-distraction is quite difficult. At least that’s my experience. We become aware of the frantic, anxious lives of those around us. We see just how many distractions there are and how addictive our behavior has become. Then we apply the antidote: we notice our distraction, we commit to try new behaviors, and gradually we regain memory, thinking, focus, meaning, relationships. And, hopefully, we avoid the iceberg looming dead ahead.

OneLove

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Precarious Life

As Ramadan begins, more than 100 hunger-strikers in Guantánamo Bay continue their protest. More than 40 of them are being force-fed. A leaked document sets out the military instructions for force-feeding detainees. In this four-minute film made by Human Rights organisation Reprieve and award-winning director Asif Kapadia, US actor /rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), experiences the procedure. I have been a fan of Yasiin Bey/Mos Def since the 90s. He is one of a handful of artists whose conscience remains unconquered by the trappings of fame & fortune...His bold demonstration drives home a point that George Orwell observed many years ago:

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
 
Go ahead and marinate on that for a minute & you will see the world as it is.....

OneLove

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Is Edward Snowden a Hero?

Very good points raised on both sides - What's your take? In truth, the hero/traitor debate raging through the media is essentially a meaningless one to me for a number of reasons. It reduces an incredibly complex issue down to a binary question. That smells of anti-intellectualism. Also, it ignores the legal definition of treason.Treason is betrayal, simply put - but who was Snowden betraying? Certainly not his conscience. And spare me the argument of "betraying his country" - what is his country doing?  More importantly though, the question ignores the details of Snowden’s leaks in favor of some emotional identification with one side or the other - "you're either with us or against us" bullshit. I would like to think that most folks are more advanced than this...

Stay alert ...

OneLove

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Musings

OneLove

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Rotations: Jammin' with Lenny & Prince

Prince & Lenny Kravitz are the Jimi Hendrix & Sly Stones of our generation. They bring that raw, eclectic fusion of funk, rock, blues & soul & have carved out their own distinctive niche in the musical landscape. Conforming to whatever is trendy was/is never their thing - they were/are the trend for others to imitate, and so far, there are few who can match them. Even their old stuff sounds better than what's out now. Their impressive body of work will go down as some of the most dynamic music ever produced in contemporary American culture. Nuff said! Let's rock!

Have a festive & reflective 4th of July, folks! 

 OneLove

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