A Buffoon, Many Ignoramuses and The Evil One

Perhaps Ted Cruz isn’t really the devil, but that’s what he made me think of when I saw him on the debate last night. What a slimy, evasive, nasty human being!

Yes, this is about that “debate.”

I don’t need to give you three guesses to figure out who’s the buffoon. I almost wrote baboon, but the great apes are much his superior. Donald Trump. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in action. He knows nothing; says nothing except insults and outrages, but will always do everything better than anybody else, obviously, because he can always call on “the best people.” He knows them. What’s most amazing about him is his absolute conviction that he’s a genius, everyone else is retarded and he can just say whatever he wants to say—usually driven by the polls.

He was given $40 million by his father. He turned it into $2 to 5 billions. If he had invested it in index funds, he would have made maybe $6 billions; in other words, he’s no genius, even at making money!

What to say about the rest of the debate crowd: Carly Fiorina is the female version of Ted Cruz, but with no knowledge of government, little of politics and a failed career as a CEO.

Marco Rubio is slick, well-spoken, attractive, but he had major problems with finances (his own), doesn’t quite know what to do about immigration, as a first generation Cuban-American, but seems to be enthusiastic about surveillance over everyone. Big Brother, here we come!

Jeb Bush: sounds like a policy wonk, is about as awkward, but made a few substantive points: bashing Muslims would be a boon for ISIL’s recruiting. His new, improved scenario for Syria/Iraq is to get Arab boots on the ground. He didn’t acknowledge that Obama’s already working on that, but Sunni Arabs are hard to come by to fight ISIL, since both the Assad regime and the Abadi regime (a slightly softened Maliki regime) have brutally discriminated against the Sunnis needed to fight against ISIL in the Sunni majority areas outside of Kurdistan. Thank you, George W for the wonderful regime change.

No one in this crowd seems to think Obama’s done anything, except bend over and offer his skinny ass. Oh, and Hillary seems never to have left the administration from the way Jeb and all the others hyphenate Obama-Hillary.

But their collective foreign policy is as scary as their domestic surveillance aspirations. Bomb them: All! Women and children? Yes.

That’s really what they mean when they say over and over that the bane of America is “political correctness.” As in abiding by international law, not targeting civilians abroad, or minorities at home. Bad. Bomb the hell out of them. And at home: target the “likely perps,” meaning blacks and Hispanics (illegals, all), and now, Middle Easterners. And surveil, surveil, surveil!

I know Rand Paul is a closet racist: to him, civil rights law is government overreach. But he did make some sense against surveillance and on foreign policy: don’t intervene: Arabs have to do it themselves, maybe with a little help. His policy position was so far out of the GOP right-wing mainstream, that his physical position, way over on the right-hand end understated how much of an outlier he is.

The opposite of outlier is Kasich: he and Bush played grown-ups.

And then there was Chris Christie, Bridge Blocker, looking like he wished he’d done it his burly self. He would shoot down Russian planes! That’s how tough he is!

Gee, we all want WWIII, the first two were so much fun!

Oh, and what was that going on in Paris? People just obsessed with the climate: don’t worry about it; they’ll go away and we’ll get back to “our oil” and now, “our internet” and bomb ISIL—and anyone near it—to smithereens. That’s how we’ll be SAFE.

War with DAESH/ISIS?

Are these the times when even the NYT promotes war? Yesterday, 12/7/15, in ‘Obama Says of Terrorist Threat: 'We Will Overcome It,’ the NYT reported on Obama’s oval office speech.

You’d think the “paper of record” would cover significant points put forward in the President’s address, but you’d be wrong. There was much about what Obama had done and was doing about Daesh*, aka Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL militarily, but no mention of his major, multilateral initiative with Russia, Iran, China, France and Saudi Arabia (number 4 of his points), in which tentative agreements have already been reached on a process to establish a cease-fire between ‘moderate’ opposition forces and the Syrian Government, with the further tentative agreement that the initial result would be an interim government. Without an agreement, no progress against Daesh is possible. Why? Arab Sunnis rebelling against both Iraqi and Syrian Shiite/Alawite dominated governments are not going to fight against Daesh, which is also Sunni Arab, though extremist thugs, until the conflict between the rest of the (Sunni) opposition is at least tentatively resolved.

Russia’s initial solution—backing Assad—won’t bring Sunnis to its side; it can drive them into the arms of Daesh.

American Republicans call for war with Daesh, inching towards US troops on the ground, but that’s precisely what Daesh wants. It would empower it to portray itself as Islam attacked by Infidels, which would make its current successful worldwide recruiting look pale by comparison.

Yes, it would lose on the battlefield, but we’ve been down that road too many times: The US lost no battles in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, but it effectively lost all three wars. Attacking Daesh directly would have the same result, but it could be global; the West, even Russia and China, could be under constant attack of the kind demonstrated in San Bernardino. We might call it Terror by Example, or Inspirational Terror, instead of a Terror Network.

Further, to demonize and alienate Muslims, as Trump and his ditto-heads advocate, would be counter-productive: it would prime Muslims all over the world, including those in the US (relatively well integrated and prosperous up until now) to be even more receptive to Daesh than its small thuggish fringe has been already.

*Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State in Syria and the Levant, but it sounds like the Arabic words for one who crushes something underfoot, or one who sows discord, hence it is intensely disliked by Daesh adherents. IS is not appropriate, since it is not a true state, only a conquest gang or a global mafia.

Gardening II: Zucchinis and Tomatoes

We’ve gone through the assault of the zucchinis. We’ve adapted a recipe called disappearing zucchini, in which you grate a large zucchini, or several medium ones, into a colander, then salt liberally and let it drain for a few hours. Press dry, or as near as possible, rinse, if too salty, then sauté with anything that makes sense, like a reduction of tomatoes, if those are also abundant at the time, or earlier, just onions, garlic and mushrooms flavored with thyme and oregano. I’ve also blackened drained zucchini cut into strips. We've picked real monsters, while trying to catch them before they grow so large; they hide.

Tomatoes have now descended upon us en masse, but unlike zucchinis, there are multitudes of uses for tomatoes. I just cooked some haddock, a rather bland fish, in a sauce of tomatoes, reduced, with onions and garlic and whatever fresh herbs are available: in this case thyme, oregano and coriander. And tomatoes in the salad, of course.

Some tomato plants look about done, others are just coming ripe, and a large ‘volunteer’ that I noticed early enough not to pull it out, is now overflowing with tomatoes, many ripe, and vying for space with one of the zucchini hills. I had thrown rotten tomatoes last year down where the volunteer grew.

The salad was an expression of my pride in getting a stand of new lettuce to grow. I watered it after dinner so that it will regenerate faster. Again, I’ve grown it in blocks, not spindly lines.

Elizabeth just made a tomato sauce from a large crop of them, but there are more sauces to come.

Crowding does work well for lettuce, but I’ve discovered that more conventional spacing makes sense for corn. I planted my corn much more closely than recommended, (abundant saved seeds made that possible) and it appears that I planted more and more thickly with each succeeding row. My last weekly planting was so cramped that I pulled out most plants, but too late; the corn plants were on their way to reverting to their pre-corn ancestor, pencil-thin stalks and miniature ears, if any at all.

My preparation for my garden, was first begun two autumns before, when we moved here. The garden enclosure held weeds as high as small trees, and a pernicious, nettle-like vine in the center that was so tough and entangled, I had to use a chainsaw to remove it. Then pulled out as many roots as I could (many still remain to pop up, even through a foot of mulch).

I covered the cleared garden with cardboard, then grass clippings and all the leaves from a large number of trees. Last fall, I gathered all the leaves from the trees again, and covered the garden with them, except where there had been a mustard patch with a multitude of seeds. I harvested an early crop of mustard greens there, but later had to pull out eight-foot tall plants going to seed. I kept just a few seed-bearers and some re-seeded plants.

The leaf cover still prevails in much of the garden; I planted individual plants by barely pushing the leaves aside to make their holes. I also dug grooves in the leaves to plant rows of seeds, even for the corn. I still have to water some things, and I watered the late lettuce and peas nightly to get them established. To increase growth, I have watered them every few days in this July-August- drought.

The drought has been severe enough that my bees couldn’t get enough nectar—or pollen—to feed their brood, and make honey. Both food sources are too dry, ergo I’ve been feeding the hive. I did so last year, and was unable to take out any honey. The hive survived the winter, only to be demolished by a bear, who had realized (before I did) that the electric fence wasn’t working.

So, the current hive is a new one created from a package of bees, one of the latest available in the Spring. But even my professional beekeeper friends with 200 hives have had to feed many of their established hives as well.

This drought is peculiar: a little rain, recently as much as 1.5 inches, and yet shallow rooted plants like grass have burned brown. There are some shady places in our yard that seem to be moist even without the rain. The drought’s effects, I think, are intensified by the dry air and hot sun.

What’s most peculiar about this drought is how local it seems to be. In the region according to the radio, we’re actually slightly above the rainfall average; our friends in Troy, about an hour north, report frequent rain; we haven’t seen it. And while we have an abundance of flowers, visited by my bees, they’re still eating my offered bee tea at an impressive rate. My local bee guru, who refers to his bees as “the girls,” says that bees don’t get hooked on easy sugar water; they’ll prefer real nectar when they can get it. I do see them at our flowers, at least through mid-morning. I’m not sure I hear them, or see them later in the day. But they’re still taking the bee tea, at more than a quart and a half a day.

Pesto next.

The Gardener: beginning a series

I long ago stopped following planting “directions, and started planting the way I thought it would work. For example, seed packets advise that you plant the tiny lettuce seeds one or two inches apart and 10” to a foot from the next row. I plant lettuce—I collect my own seeds—in clumps, thickly clustered, so that the lettuce crowds each other, stays tender and molts long after single plants. I extend my lettuce crop into July, without watering and I have an abundance of lettuce.

I have a book from the 70’s that I consult about “companion planting.” Peas dislike onions, for example; basil and tomatoes like each other. Or, at least, they supplement each other, enrich each other.

I planted one crop of potatoes in November, under a layer of fallen leaves. It was something people did up in a little Gunk’s hamlet not far from here, in the 19th century, people who lived close to the land. The potatoes are doing well, and may have benefited from the plenitude of rain in the early part of summer.

We’re now in a moderate drought that has impacted my bees most of all. I can water vegetables a little bit, and start fall peas and lettuce, because we have a well whose water is not potable. Apparently, bees can’t extract nectar from all the abundance of flowers in my yard and in two large fields with bee balm flanking me,because it’s too dry—baked, really. I’ve fed one hive about two and a half gallons of bee tea (highly sugared water with some herbal infusions). I may feed them more. Right now, the feeding bottles just hold water. I’m hoping they can tolerate municipal water.

I’m also watering by drip hose, a big, 300 year old Oak; I give it a couple of hours an evening, and it seems to be doing better. Something attacked its spring foliage, probably gypsy moth, and it has an incurable fungal coating (according to an arborist) on one hip, but watering seems to be helping flesh out its thin upper foliage.

I have a philosophy of gardening, not a dogma, but I do shy away from chemicals, from fertilizers to pesticides. Since it’s my garden, I want it free of poisons, if possible, but I do water it with the “bad” water we have in our well.

Our “bad” water is the result of an industrial cleaning plant on a nearby hill; ending more than a decade ago, it dumped its toxic waste on the ground, without safeguards. Anyway, the “plume” of trace toxics reached ground water up to a few houses beyond ours on our sparsely populated exurban road. So, Superfund/EPA cleaned up the toxics and built a municipal water plant and water lines to all of us (our predecessor here), but were able to keep existing wells, for other uses. Our plumbing was all connected, courtesy of Superfund, to the municipal water system.

I should test my well water, to see how bad it is, but I’d rather have the municipal water: there’s no cutoff if the power goes off, whereas with a well, you’re out of luck: the electric pump won’t pump. Our water comes from the same source as New York City, but is treated locally. It tastes good, although I worry about the small amount of chlorine if I want to make wine or beer.

More later.

Open Letter to Senator Schumer

Dear Senator Schumer, I was more than dismayed to read that you intended to vote against the Iran treaty.

I understand that you did much research, and spoke to many people in the Administration, as well as opponents of the treaty; I understand that you considered the position of the Israeli government, as well as our own. I even understand that you considered the concerns of your New York constituents, of which I am one.

However, your position on the treaty is extremely short-sighted. It is making the perfect enemy of the good.

Without American participation in the treaty’s enforcement, we will have the worst of alternatives: the treaty will likely still be ratified by our partners (the P4 + 1), we will still have United Nations approval; the sanctions of our partners will be lifted; the US and Israel will stand alone against it.

Or, the treaty will not pass internationally, and we will inevitably have war.

We will not get a “better” treaty. The kind of inspections regime that opponents appear to be proposing would only be agreed to by a nation that has been militarily destroyed, as was Germany and Japan in WWII.

Since we are already over-extended militarily, since we will NOT have international support if we unilaterally attack Iran, any military attempt to stop Iran from going nuclear will inevitably be counter-productive: it will push Iran into building nuclear weapons as fast as they can; it will not do more than delay nuclearization.

By contrast, the treaty would at least delay possible nuclear weapons for ten to fifteen years, and in that time Iran could become a more responsible and moderate nation, since it would have more interchange with the rest of the world. Like many other nations, it could forego developing nuclear weapons (as it claims to have done already).

Further, war with Iran would be many times worse than our ill-advised adventures into Vietnam and Iraq. Iran is several times the size of Iraq; it has an effective political system that would mobilize its population in a way that Iraq was unable to do; war with Iran would probably enable Islamic State to make greater conquests, since Iran is one of its main opponents in the region. War would radically increase the chaos in the Middle East—chaos for which we are already responsible for a good part. The US could bankrupt itself in such a war.

War would also eliminate any chance for the kind of progressive domestic policies that you and I both favor.

To oppose the treaty will ultimately not help Israel, either. It will weaken the US, and drive Iran into a much more belligerent policy towards Israel; it is now rhetorically hostile, but has been tacitly supportive of US actions against Islamic State and could become more cooperative, not less, if the US supports the treaty. Further, the unhinged ravings of former Iranian President, Ahmadinejad, do not represent current Iranian policy, nor the majority of the Iranian people, as witnessed by its more moderate current government. To oppose the treaty would strengthen, not weaken those elements in Iran most inimical to Israel and the US.

To oppose any reasonable treaty on the grounds that peace with Iran will benefit it economically, is to advocate the pauperization of a nation that could play a positive role in the region if it were welcomed and if it benefitted from full participation on the world stage.

It may be true that the treaty will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons in 15 years, but it is our best chance at prevention, especially if Iran, as a full participant in regional and world affairs is led to realize that nuclear weapons would not be in its interest.

If you vote against the treaty, I for one will do all I can to oppose your re-election to the Senate, since, to me, such a position is antithetical to the progressive politics that you claim to stand for.

Sincerely



Douglas C. Smyth

High Valley Matriarch and Maeve, the Magdalen

Olga: High Valley Matriarch 02/13/1913 to 12/06/2014

She lived to be 101 and almost ten months. She finally has been scattered, her ashes the last of her physical remains, on the land of High Valley, now known as 2Attara-High Valley, land on which she lived for 65 of her last 70 years. The dates, and months, are reminiscent of so many gravestones in old cemeteries here.

Olga’s last five years were spent at an Adult Home and the last three months in a nursing home. Many of Olga’s near acquaintances felt that she must stay at High Valley, no matter what, but we tried that for two years: it was hideously expensive, even at near minimum wages. The caregivers didn't really seem to 'get' Olga, and it turned out, her health care was poor, since she couldn’t go to the doctor without great discomfort to her and difficulty on the part of the caregiver.

When I found Island View, in Rosendale, NY, I realized she could have better care for much less, but what I didn’t realize: away from High Valley, Olga, at 94, able to walk with a walker, but already unable to carry on more than the most minimal conversations, finally could be persuaded that she wasn’t responsible for directing everyone around her. Because she wasn’t at High Valley. It had been years since she’d actually wanted to go out and see High Valley land, even the pond, although her caregiver insisted. Where she was had become unimportant to her, but she remained who she was right up until her last day. The adult home gave her peaceful years, despite her previous intent to “off myself” (her phrase), when she could no longer take care of herself.

There is a catch 22, here. In order to “off” yourself, you have to have the mental faculties necessary to plan and carry out the process, as well as the ability to make that momentous decision. Olga lost that capability about the time she had a health crisis, and her DNR instructions were not known and not followed. Those last years at Island View were at least more pleasant for her than suffering her increasing debility with caregivers who treated her like a slow learner grade school child (Olga had two Masters degrees, founded a school and ran it for 41 years, etc.).

But High Valley is her legacy—and ours. It’s now going through an interesting phase. We saw a little of it when we went to scatter Olga’s ashes there. (Where? Every place that any of us, including her grandchildren and an old friend remembered her using, outside, lingering here, gardening there, and so on).

I’d say High Valley looked very much like a work in progress: stuff everywhere, the meeting room being used as a chaotic artist’s studio, the vegetable garden emerging as a work of art, new stonework of high quality at the rear entrance to the main house and no mowing anywhere. Grass is trampled down where people walk frequently. Environmentally beneficial, I suppose. There is reconstruction going on in the main house, but 2Attara-High Valley is clearly in transition. Hard to say what Attara and his people will do. We met a few of his people: one known to High Valleyers as Ecco. Friendly and welcoming, but they left discreetly, when we began to scatter Olga.

Further, greater High Valley, i.e. all the lands my mother and I owned have been transferred to new owners, but the conservation easements prevent any additional buildings, with one exception, so the lands will stay more or less wild. Right now, all the trails have started to go back to forest.

That is my High Valley legacy, and Olga’s, but the easements were my idea, and I’m proud of the result.



Next: Maeve’s Day, 07/22/15

This is the day Mary Magdalen’s putative skull is paraded around a town in Provence, celebrating her. Her fictional creation, Maeve Rhuad, who becomes Mary Magdalen over the course of the first two books of her quartet, The Maeve Chronicles, came out in audio books downloadable, only days ago. Read by Heather O’Neill, what little I’ve heard is masterfully done by her. The books are on Audio Books, all four novels. The Passion of Mary Magdalen clocks in at over 27 hours. For anyone who loves a wonderful story (Maeve’s whole life), wonderful language, told well in a slightly Irish accent, these audio books are for you. And they’ll keep you going for a long time, whenever you want to hear them: available in most electronic media, not physical CD’s (a “Stone Age” medium now). Available at: http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B011PPLRJG&source_code=AUDORWS0714159E84 (Magdalen Rising); http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B011PPLWQ4&source_code=AUDORWS0714159E84 (Passion of Mary Magdalen); http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B011PPM39E&source_code=AUDORWS0714159E84 (Bright Dark Madonna); http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B011WBBLSK&source_code=AUDORWS0714159E84 (Red-robed Priestess)

Sorry, I'm currently unable to embed links above (you can copy and paste); I don't know why.

Strange world, isn’t it.

The Flag of the Confederacy

I’ve heard of people speak of the flag as their “heritage,” because they had a confederate General as an ancestor. It’s not so simple.

The thing about the Confederate flag is that has a much more checkered history than simply being the flag of an insurrection or separatist rebellion. The Confederate States of America existed from 1860 to 1865. The stars and bars flew over most of its member states for five years, and it was the battle flag of the Confederate army during those same years.

However, that same flag became a symbol of something else, as soon as the South was defeated. It wasn’t just the symbol of a defeated insurrection; it was the symbol of a stubborn resistance that began as soon as so-called Reconstruction, and has continued to this very day.

It was and is a symbol of White Supremacy. As such, it was a symbol to rally troops like the Ku Klux Klan, but it was not an innocent symbol, only used to make people feel good about their heritage.

The Confederate battle flag was also a symbol of White Terror, waged against black people, the former slaves. The flag-wavers hoped their flag, and what it symbolized, would intimidate blacks, in the South, and latterly, elsewhere, as well. When a group of white-robed, white-hooded white people gathered under the Confederate standard, it was intended to terrorize blacks, so that they wouldn’t ever try to do what Union sympathizers had attempted to encourage in the beginning of Reconstruction: to become fully functional citizens of a new South, and latterly of the rest of the country.

Put simply: the Confederate flag as symbol, is a symbol of White Terror.

Think about the history. When the South was defeated and the 14th and 15th Amendments were ratified, ensuring that slavery would never again be legal in the United States, the Confederate flag gained a new meaning.

The flag became symbol of segregation, Jim Crow laws, anti-miscegenation laws, the poll taxes, and all the rest, a panoply of laws and practices that insured that black people would always be ignorant, oppressed, powerless, and helpless against the power of the White-dominated states.

After the enactment of Civil Rights laws and the dismantling of legal segregation, the Federal Government’s incursion into enforcement of equal treatment and the abolition of legal difference based upon race, the Confederate flag became, again, a symbol of resistance—against an overweening Government—but along the way, it had also become, as Dylann Roof demonstrated, a symbol of racial hatred.

An example comes from, of all places, Hyde Park, NY.

West of the village of Hyde Park proper, home to FDR’s homestead, there is a campground owned and maintained by Seventh Day Adventists. Every summer, they hold large meetings there; people stay in the dorms, and come from all over the region and beyond. They are black Seventh Day Adventists. Apparently, the church is (or was) still racially divided.

One summer, perhaps three or four years ago, I noticed the house next to the campground: a small house, but with a large upstairs deck: a very large Confederate flag was draped across the upstairs space—for the whole time the campground hosted guests that summer. It must have been more important to flaunt the flag than to use the deck, since it shrouded the porch behind it. That Fall, the flag disappeared. What else could it mean than that the house’s inhabitants hated and despised the campers next door?

I have no idea whether the flag wavers in Hyde Park originally came from the South, or not. Regardless, the Confederate flag was a convenient symbol of their anger and resistance to the gathering of black people who had descended on the grounds of the land right next door.

For Dylann Roof it was a symbol of what he hoped would be the beginning of a race war, in which black people would be re-subjugated, perhaps enslaved, or even eliminated.

The Confederate flag should be consigned to museums, but it should be labeled not only as the battle flag of the Confederacy, but as a racist symbol of the failed strain of White Supremacy that still animates many warped and twisted Americans.

I hope that with the flag’s interment in museums, that the sickness of racial thinking will shrivel and die. Races never really did exist, except in peoples’ minds: they are social constructions, as the absurd “one-drop rule” demonstrates. Even Hitler’s “Aryans” weren’t “racially pure.” Germans evolved as a product of thousands of years of intermixture on the steppes of Eurasia, after all.

Hitler wasn’t even blond.

Anti-Black Terrorism in Charleston, SC

t “There is no sanctuary for any of us.” Patricia Williams Lessane: NYT oped 06/19/15

Terrorism is commonly defined as violent acts (or the threat of violent acts) intended to create fear (terror), perpetrated for an economic,[1] religious, political, or ideological goal, and which deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants…. Wikipedia.

The killing of nine black people by a very young white man in the midst of a church, in the midst of a prayer meeting was an act of terrorism. In retrospect, it was only the latest and most horrific of a series of events that appear to have the same effect, if not always the same conscious intent.

I have a black friend, educated, in a good white collar job, who has a long commute, and worries each time he gets in the car, that he could be stopped by the police, and killed, or jailed for no reason, just as many other black people have been, especially in the last several months, which began with the high profile killing of the unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO by a white policeman.

These events have likely caused nightmares in many, just because the color of their skin and features mark them as descendants of slavery.

Roof, the young murderer, apparently expressed racist sentiments freely, but we all know he is not alone, even if he may have acted alone in this case. White racism, unfortunately, is still not just a legacy, but a reality in 21st Century America.

It has now come out that the day of the shooting, June 18th, was the 193rd anniversary of the planned slave uprising by Denmark Vesey, the founder of the Mother Church, Emmanuel AME Episcopal in Charleston, SC. The anniversary marks the suppression of that uprising, that is, the suppression of one of the most significant attempts by the slaves in South Carolina to rebel. Is it likely that a high school dropout and drifter would have known that? Which raises the question: who was behind him? Who radicalized this boyish young man, and directed him to go to the church on that particular day? Who directed him to find the prominent black State Senator, Clementa Pinckney? Why did he say “I have to do this, I have to kill all of you,” who then refrained from killing one of them, so that she could report what happened? This doesn’t sound like a lone crazy. It was an act of calculated terror. Black people everywhere will have nightmares because of him, and fear for their lives wherever they are. And this comes after all the other killings: by police, vigilantes, homeowners…

The killings have as their sum, a wave of terror against black people. This is what terror is supposed to do: intimidate people who have been targeted by it. This is the intended effect of Islamic State against Shiites and Christians, and is also the intent of terrorist jihadists in the US, Europe, and the other parts of the world.

South Carolina’s capital still flies the confederate flag over a Confederate war memorial; it was not lowered, although other flags at the State Capitol were lowered to half staff in mourning.

An investigation into Roof’s connections must be made, and the root of this terrorism must be uncovered if at all possible, and stopped. This isn’t just violent racism; it’s an attempt to cow every non-white person anywhere in the US. This looks more and more like an undercover movement like the KKK after Reconstruction in the South: dedicated to re-terrorizing and subjugating the former slave population. Who knows who’s behind it, but it seems unlikely that Dylann Roof was a lone, crazy gunman acting out of his lonely, crazy fantasy of doing, what he told his captors was “something big,” on June 18th, 2015.

Apres Nous Le Deluge

Older in Sweet Spot In ref to NYT 6/15/15 The older generation is better off than any other age group, in large part because the stability of Social Security has given us all a floor upon which to float, rather than sink, in the economic tides. The extremely wealthy gained almost all of the recovery; seniors hardly. So, a class, the billionaire part of it, especially, siphoned off the good times, while the rest of Americans, with the exception of seniors, were the losers: flat or declining earnings, increased demands at work, including having no time of your own—the “flexible” labor market.

Seniors are not to blame for the declining standard of living of nearly everyone else—except for the very rich. We are only lucky that we have Social Security, and for many of us, yes, we were lucky in real estate, perhaps in investments, possibly in finding a part-time job to supplement Social Security and make possible a moderately middle class lifestyle.

We did not fund the “think tanks” that created the “conservative” agenda, although a regrettable number of seniors may have joined the resulting reactionary counter-revolution.

That money came from the same place as the money now flowing into the electoral system, through superpacs and all sorts of other “legal” ways to buy elections for their own interests. One of those interests is to somehow persuade people they don’t really want Social Security any longer: it’s Government Tyranny. Huge majorities of Americans want to inherit it, however; they don’t want to jettison it; they want to expand it.

So, what does the the NYTimes article illustrate: “American Seniors Find a Middle-class Sweet Spot? It isn’t that seniors have been greedy. So far, we’ve been lucky, Social Security and Medicare now and stable jobs in the past, and maybe even retirement pensions. That is what everyone should be getting. But everyone, not either very wealthy or a senior, took the brunt of the losses of the Great Recession and only the very wealthy gained far more than they’d lost, in the recovery. Flat incomes (in buying power) and loss of job security for the many, stability and modest gains for my generation, wildly inflated incomes engorging a very few.

Bernie Sanders is hitting chords of discontent, and well he might. Most people, even the many who are gulled by Fox and Rush, can see only worse times ahead, not better, and yet we’re still a growing economy—one of the few in the developed world.

I once taught a political science course on Revolution. The dominant theme of all the revolution scholars was relative deprivation: good times followed by the immiseration of most, especially from the middle class, combined with a sharpening class divide from the very rich, was the proximate cause for many revolutions in the past.

It could happen here. I hope not. Radical reform is better than manning the barricades.

Closet HIstorian

I majored in history in college--back in the Dark Ages, the 1950's--but decided, in my senior year (1960-61),that I didn't want to go to graduate school in history: why? Because my primary history professor gave a long, detailed lecture, clearly loving all the details, of how investigators determined where and how the Russian Royals, the Romanovs, were executed--eggshells were key. They had been lured out for a picnic,to be shot, shooting range style, in the basement. I decided, then and there, that I didn't want to go to grad school in History, ergo, I went into the Army, since the draft was rapacious at the time, and I couldn't get a job with my draft status in limbo. My only hope had been to fail the physical, but flat feet no longer disqualified me from the army, and after a faint throbbing of hope, during my physical, my "heart murmur" turned out only to be nerves, and I passed and had to go on to the Army Security Agency, the institution for which I'd been recruited, "if you can cut the mustard," my recruiter Sargent had said. Long story short, I went to Turkey, instead of waiting around for Vietnam, and ended my army career before LBJ ambushed us all, by escalating the war in that country, after campaigning against a "war in Asia." I've only taught history, when it was a combo course for a Community College, covering US history and the American political system. But I confess, in long retrospect (I last taught 19 years ago), I enjoyed the historical stories, and the details did matter. It's the story that matters, which is why history is more compelling than dry constitutional facts, but you can hang a lot of facts on a good story. I must also confess that, as a teacher, I only occasionally told stories, especially when I was teaching college-level Economics. I think I did make it interesting for my students in a maximum security prison--my favorite teaching venue. Nevertheless, the inherent shape of history permits many stories. I'm trying to figure out how to tell one, now, a little bit of personal and local history, including much suspense and angst. If I can figure out how to shape the story, I can tell it; if not, not. It has to be a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, no matter what hangs in between. A lot might, or will, if I can tell it, truthfully. It could make a good novel, which is, after all, a way of narrating history, without citing dates and names without meaning. Even a contemporary novel, perhaps, especially a contemporary novel, is an historical artifact: take Dickens, for example, writing about his contemporary London. There is no better record of Nero's Rome than the novel of Petronius Arbiter, although no dates or political events are directly recorded. That is how I'm an aspiring, closet Historian. I want to tell my history, if I can. You might learn from it; you might not. I just want to tell it, maybe just to be heard.

The World We Live In

A little history: when Lenin and his Bolsheviks created a new revolutionary state, Stalin was always helpful, willing to please, until he fully controlled the secret police. Once he controlled it, he was able to control everyone's lives in a way no ruler ever had before, partly because of the huge amount of information he amassed about everyone who mattered. The secret police mission: know what everyone is thinking. Stalin's monopoly of power was unparalleled.

Seeing "Citizen Four" on Snowden's revelations, I was reminded of how Stalin had amassed such power. But here, at least for now, the power is organized at a seemingly lower level: the management. The CIA, the FBI and now the NSA, and of course the militarized police and the DOD are each contributing to the creation of a police state even more effective than Stalin's. It hasn't quite gotten there, yet. More properly, they have not. On the other hand, no President is going to go against them: witness Obama's almost fearful expression as he says Ed Snowden should just turn himself in…he should have followed procedures…he'd get a fair trial….

Wow! I seem to remember a different Obama.

Of course we could only have the same SuperStalin for eight years, and the people would decide who would best represent them--every four, but really eight years: a new form of democracy, or the most oppressive totalitarianism ever yet devised? Technology makes it all so much easier, ultimately, for the few who amass all the wealth. They will 'brainwash' everyone to love them.

They'll control, equally, by what they know about each of you, and what they persuade you to think. That will be through the schools and the media, of course, but carefully modulated to fit all 'tendencies' in the population. So, of course there will be jobs for teachers, journalists, image-makers and attractive faces and voices, as long as they are careful. Yet, technology might make more of you redundant, anyway.

And the intelligence community would know, if even a keystroke--an eye-flick--implied DANGER.

Guantanamo and the gulags' successors will be called supermax correctionals, and life there might even be more hideous than in their predecessors'. Water boarding, pfft!

So, what can we do? On the one side are the terrorists and on the other side are the Government--and all its corporate allies, and the money behind all of them.

And we are between them.

But think about this: terrorism is used to scare most of us enough that we're willing to give up our rights, in order to be protected from them. But Snowden has revealed that the intelligence agencies, government departments and corporations gain tremendous streams of information about all of us. They say they'll only keep the records for five years, but any time your name, number, email, Facebook, etc. comes up relating to anything--a crime, a stirring of dissent, even if the connection is tenuous, then all your communications over the last five years could be mined for the crime, of dissent, at very least.

Stalin made such a spectacle of his show trials!

There are dangers, of course: the new barbarism of the Taliban, Boko Haram and now Islamic State do have appeal to those left out of, or oppressed by, global capitalism and civilization. More on that next time.

Paris Jihadi Shootings and?

Events like the Jihadi shootings in Paris, the anti-Muslim demos and movements in Europe (and corresponding prejudice here among white reactionaries), are one sign of the instability that's becoming endemic in global civilization.

Another is the fall in oil prices, created by the fracking boom here and the intentional continuation of production as usual in Saudi Arabia. Bankruptcies in Venezuela, Russia and Iran, could visit us, through bank failures caused by collapse of the trillions of dollars in fracking derivatives held by US banks. We could revisit 2008, but with oil derivatives instead of mortgage derivatives as the cause. And the new Republican Congress has just made it possible for the big banks to seize depositors' money if they're in danger of collapse!

Obvious, who funded their campaigns, isn't it?

There is no such thing as class war, except as waged by the terrorists--and that's not class; it's culture, religion, race hatred, anything but what generated it: the exploitation of the whole world by a tiny, rapacious elite.

It isn't the usual suspects of rightwing conspiracy theorists; it's the corporate class, worldwide, that has captured democracy and autocracy alike: from the US to China. Some of the elite are US bank leaders, some are CEO's of huge corporations; some are speculators riding the tide of triumphant capitalism. With few exceptions, they appear to be in 'the game' to carry off as much wealth as they can, by almost any means. Think how powerful you feel, when you make as much in an hour as an ordinary worker makes in a decade. It doesn't seem to occur to them that they are killing the goose who lays golden eggs. What will sustain an economy when there are only the wealthy and the desperate?

But, hey, there's no Marie Antoinette around here!

Are the lives of the rich and famous an open book? Celeb followers are entertained by the show biz stars: rich enough, but hardly the billionaires behind their private mansion walls: celebs are mere servants of the Rich, but intentionally not so Famous.

I've often asked the question: what will the billionaires do, when everyone else is driven to give up, or cannot survive traumatic climate change? Will they retreat to underground bunkers?

Apparently, someone is building a bunker world in Kansas; it will include everything, including a pet park, and you only need about $3 million to buy into it, not that you'd want to live in it, unless the apocalypse is imminent. After all, who would want to live in Kansas, if you can live in San Francisco, or New York, or…?

In the dark ages, when I was in graduate school, I read a piece about the possible lifestyle of the world's managers: they would live in any "beautiful place in the world," from which they could manage multi-billion dollar corporations--to exploit people all over the world. That future seems more likely daily, unless some among the politically aware can persuade the unaware and Fox-crazed to resist being ripped off by the filthy rich.