JUST SAYING

 

lucio fontana

Looking at facebook this morning not long after waking, I found a video of a news broadcast in Russia from probably Moscow. It pointed out straight-forwardly as could be presented in a brief time that the Whitehouse and CIA were the aggressors in 9/11, not 19 Arabs with cell phones and box cutters. In about 15 minutes, the Russian news presentation made a case using the most convincing evidence available. The tv production spelled out that it was indeed an "inside job." None of it is new to me. It's new seeing it used in an international propaganda war. First thought: Obama recently disrespected Putin in public internationally. Putin's op-ed in the NY Times was no more than a statement that he fails to see the humor in being disrespected. Putin is a KGB martial artist. Martial arts is about avoidance, KGB martial arts is kill you in three seconds. Martial arts is a mental discipline as well as physical. Obama is a basketball player. Watching the video, I saw in my mind's eye Obama dribbling a basketball trying to get around Putin and Putin kills him. Vladimir Putin is one of the men on earth I would not challenge to a duel of any sort, physical or mental. I see Putin with superior physical and mental control and the soul of a bear. To hit him would be the same as hitting a tree. Except he'd deck you and the tree would just stand there. Whoever you are, Putin could take you out faster than Anderson Silva. Vladimir Putin is for me the image of a Bad Mutha.

 

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I remember my thought when I saw in the news Obama disrespect Putin like he did. I thought: do not challenge that man. You're a basketball player. He's a killer. W Bush disrespected Putin calling him Pootie-poot. That was Bush, with Cheney and Rummy for backup, saying fuck you, like at a fraternity beer party. Putin knew it. It was Bush Whitehouse/CIA behind 9/11, and Putin knows it. He knows Obama knows it too. Obama's silence on the matter and saying Bush "wasn't such a bad president," makes him complicit, same as the one driving the car in a drive-by.  I'm seeing Putin bring this lump under the rug out in the open. This Russian broadcast went all the way around the world. In a fighting match, I'd score Putin a direct hit, one that would send Obama staggering to catch his balance. Putin solved the Syria problem by convincing al-Assad to comply with turning over chemical agents they bought from USA to the UN. End of story. Then Obama starts publicly taking credit for it and making it into a conflict he won. It must have bent Putin over laughing, might have even spilled his vodka. I'm getting the impression nobody is counseling Obama that Putin has a whole lot more power than the American president. His house is not divided, or anyway not divided like Obama's. Putin has the power to clean Obama's clock, and he'd better start paying attention. To say we have The Bomb, they have it too. Our side pushes the button; while the missiles are in the air the other side pushes the button. End of History.

 

lucio fontana

 

 

That's calling for sensible thinking, which American government does not do. If it ever did, I don't know, but it has not demonstrated sensible thinking in my lifetime. Like in the last weeks Sen John McCain of Arizona is being heard to make a little bit of sense, leading me to believe dementia has taken away his mind, going so far off message. In his right mind, he was a parrot of Reaganism. Now he's saying, "It's not rational." Rational? When did rational become a concern to a republican? His mind is gone. It was bad before Johnson, bad before Nixon, bad before Reagan, then the Reagan Revolution took the American people on the present downhill run to the bottom. To quote Chris Hedges, "Brace yourself. The American Empire is over and the descent is going to be horrifying." I used to hope the Obama presidency might be the beginning of a turnaround from Reaganism, but it's not. Obama, I have seen, is a booster rocket for the downward run to police state. The flush occurred when the republicans stole the 2000 election out in the open, publicly, and said to we who don't like it: fuck you if you don't like it. Police state is here. Police state is now. Get it. Barak Obama gets it. He's using his power as president to assist the republican systematic lockstep dismantling of democracy in front of everybody's face on the evening news, followed by several commercials. Obviously, the American people want police state.

 

lucio fontana

 

 

Police state means white power in a time when democracy favors minorities. Shut down democracy, white man retains control. Obama cares nothing for the black people in America, same as he cares nothing for the white people. He just happens to be very good at passing tests and has a natural charisma that took him far. I'm wondering if he might not be an example of the Peter Principle: advanced to the level of his incompetence and there he stays. On the one hand, I see the republicans acting out racism on him. On the other hand, I see him challenging Putin publicly with disrespect as not an intelligent move. Of course, it's a strategy. He wouldn't do anything if it didn't have strategy behind it. He doesn't appear to have much respect for the Russian Bear is what I'm getting at. I'm curious to see the ripples that arise from this pebble thrown in the water. I would not want to be in the same room with Putin's energy. Nor would I want to be in the same room with Obama's energy. These are high energy egomaniacs whose souls are filling roles I don't want to be anywhere near. If Obama's staff has a video game idea of a Battle of the Titans, this American citizen would recommend not going there. Obama is way too vulnerable and gives me the impression he has not yet noticed. An American basketball player is no contest for a Russian KGB trained killer.

 

lucio fontana

 

 

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BELOW THE RADAR

In conversations with people I know, I hear more and more from people who most often don't talk about current events querying how to live now that democracy is gone, recession is turning into depression for the middle class, and everything we hear from government is so obviously false we don't even think about it anymore. The working class has been in depression since 1980. In this time you don't even mention the working class. The ruling class regards working class as the enemy and media keeps a lid on it. You never hear "working class" on the news. It's always middle class. However, when working class gets politically active they want police state and attach teabags to their hats. Challenged for education, the working class is so easy to manipulate they bore republican strategists who laugh at them. Obama has disappointed liberals so much by now they've lost hope for him. Used to be he had liberals for his apologists. Now, there's not much apologizing for his absence of interest in the black people, as Obama evidently identifies with his white half only he is able to see. A black man raised by white people thinks white and talks down to black people. Every time I've heard clips from his speeches to black audiences, he basically tells them to get up off their asses and get a job. Looking at it from his logic, paying any attention to black issues would only go against him. He already has the black vote and he'd lose much of his white base if he gave attention to black issues. As it turns out, he's just another republican in black face.

I and many others believed Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Rice belonged on trial for war crimes, crimes against the American people. Obama is now saying Bush wasn't such a bad president. He apologizes for the Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice administration, enforces the fascist constitution, the "patriot act," and is not undoing the police state BCRR set up. He makes police state obvious. It's been under cover creeping up on us. Now that it's here, it's out in the open, and the president is part of it. Everything we grew up being taught in school about our great democracy is false. It's a belief system from the past. The rest of the world is watching the fall of the American Empire, glad to see it go, but quaking because the economies are intertwined. Naturally, the American Empire became the world's police force when the Soviet Union fell. USA is showing itself to be a tyrant declaring pre-emptive wars on powerless poor countries that can't defend themselves---to stop them from destroying America if we don't kill at least a million of their people first, in the name of peace and liberty. US government cannot be serious saying they want to attack Syria because the government there killed a few hundred people. The US government doesn't give a shit about the dead people. They are the smokescreen. The US government is not a moral entity. It's run by corporate mind: money and power.

For some years I've been wondering how to live in this downward spiral created by the Reagan Revolution, seeing that it is not going to reverse any time soon. Not with Obama. Not with democrats. The democrats role in the Reagan Revolution is enabler. It's one party we have, the republican party. I fuss with myself looking for how to live. I have to put democracy out of my mind as an American institution, have to face it squarely that the international corporations took our government by coup, November 22, 1963, and keep us believing democracy is our state in transition to police state. Their propaganda has been so good, they have the American people wanting police state. Now that I know we are in police state and the American people are by citizenship the enemy, how do I live? In my school years I often wondered what it was like in a totalitarian country where people have limited rights. I found Gao Xingjian's ONE MAN'S BIBLE a very clear picture of living under the dark cloud of police state. You watch what you say to anybody. There, they become sheep for self-preservation; here, we become sheep out of indifference to all but the propaganda speaker in the living room, where even the laughter is not spontaneous.

All I know to do is hunker down like living in a house with a tyrant, bear with it and keep what we call a low profile. I think profile here has to do with police records. Meaning: don't attract attention. I'm approaching the end of my life in this body quite naturally, and wouldn't care a great deal if taken out for police state reasons. I recall in a film many years ago a guy about to be shot by Nazis said, "I'd rather die than live in the world you created." No shit. The formula for successful living in this world applies in police state as well as in democracy: no desires. I still have a carry-over in my belief system that the citizen matters. My mind knows better, but I've been trained from childhood to believe it was a naturally imperfect democracy, then watch it through the course of my life become a corporate police state. I still laugh when I think about the Patriot Act of 1,000+ pages, outlined, written, edited, printed, bound, boxed, delivered just in time for 9/11/01. Good timing. Isn't that called serendipity? The title tells you it's the work of scoundrels, in case anybody wondered. In my youth, it looked like great things were ahead for my country. Then the Reaganista coup of 1980 began the dismantling of our court system and democracy itself, laying the ground for police state, consciously with intent. This is not an unforeseen byproduct of the good of the people. The Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice coup of 2000 put an end to democracy and set police state in motion. Obama is playing his role like an A+ student trying harder on account of his racial disadvantage. His handlers will have him laughed at yet over the Nobel Peace Prize.

I see he's playing tough guy with Putin. I wouldn't advise him do that. Obama has a good mind. Putin has a better mind. Putin could kick Obama's ass from here to kingdom come, both physically and mentally. Obama is also POTUS. He does not represent himself, and he is conscious of it. When it comes down to living out the rest of my life in police state, it is time to rethink. I'm not one to lie down in front of a tank. I'm more like the Chinese that accept the inevitable and stay out of the way. That's an aspect of living rurally, out of the way, that I really like in this time. Jets and other military planes have been flying over the mountains in profusion the last weeks, more every day, practicing flying below the radar. This happens every time a new war is cranking up. It is telling me the next war is in the works. So I'm looking at an economy going under and the question of whether or not a new quagmire war on the next defenseless poor country in the Middle East that Saudi Arabia wants shut down. With an economy based in war, what does a country do when its economy heads downward. War. What is it good for? Keeping the economy going. Even if this was a democracy, I couldn't change any of it. For one thing I don't have the money for lobbyists and gratuities. The political world is not for me. The best thing I can do is stay at home and not concern myself with democracy or any of that old Enlightenment nonsense. The founding fathers were left wing radicals. Delete.

 

 

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PUSSY RIOT ON TRIAL

     pussy riot goes to church

I can't get those girls of Pussy Riot off my mind. When I see the young protesting in easy-target ways against militarist governments, I recall the protests of the Sixties, which were not treated nicely by law enforcement. The three women seem shocked that they were arrested. In the courtroom they seem like they can't get it out of their minds it's a joke. Arrest anywhere isn't funny. In Russia I imagine it's as unfunny as it is here. It's looking like Putin is wiping the smiles off their faces. The shame of it was that the girls were funny and cleverly outrageous. They are the people government is out of touch with, the non-rich and the non-celebrity. They were performing spontaneous street theater in Moscow. That's all they were doing. They were too naive to know what they were up against. It tells me that the girls are braver than they look. In the Sixties and Seventies European activist women had a serious demeanor about them like they majored in German Philosophy. The girls of Pussy Riot are of the new generation of punk protest. I wonder if they know how outrageous punk style is to the complacent majority. I've an idea that's the point. This trial is where they find out.


I saw that Nina Hagen made an appeal in their defense. That could make it worse. Nina Hagen has been involved in animal rights protests for some time. She had a song in the 80s, Don't Klll The Animals. Don't kill the animals, the animals are free, frE-E-E. Her video of the song was of Nina and Lina Lovitch breaking into a place where dogs were kept for lab research and setting them free in the night. Pussy Riot has a strong Nina Hagen influence in their sound and their Euro-punk attitude. They are like the next thing after Nina, herself. One aspect of punk I suspect about everybody outside punk circles doesn't get is the sense that punk has an art aesthetic pop music is lacking. It's expressed in what looks like chaos, though it's an artistic mirror image of the chaos our governments put us through. The women of Pussy Riot were protesting the complicity of church and state in keeping women down. They knew it was serious when they went into it. My guess would be that no matter how naive it seems from half way around the world, to stand up in Putin's face so blatantly like they did took some courage. They know better than I do the danger. To me, it looks considerable. If they didn't assess the danger quotient before they went into it, they certainly have by now after 5 months in prison.


I went to YouTube and looked up some of their performances. I find them immensely clever and applaud their performances. It is like Nina Hagen offspring kicking and punching the air. They use smoke devices like flares. They make a lot of noise with a clever show until they're scattered by the police. In this country the danger would be arrest and charged with conspiracy, a charge that cannot be got out of, and put away. Remember what happened to the Dixie Chicks. At a show in London they remarked that they were ashamed to be from the same state WBush was from, Texas. Bush administration shut them down. Kept their music off the air, but their concerts sold out and their cd sales were way up. In the Johnson administration, Lady Bird was having a dinner for important women when Eartha Kitt rose from her seat and made herself unwelcome by making a speech about the Vietnam war and the administration's disregard for the American people. That didn't set too well with LBJ. Eartha Kitt never appeared again on stage or film until one of the Ernest movies about Halloween a lot of years later, where she played a witch. Dylan did it right by declining his invitation to Nixon whitehouse dinner.


I googled some info on the Monday trial. It's looking bad from witnesses, people who were in the church. One old woman who sold candles inside the church was outraged beyond what her mind could handle. The women of Pussy Riot are being told to get baptized, join the church. They have drawn attention around the world to the feminist cause in Russia. Evidently, it is dire. The women doing the protesting are serious enough about it to set themselves up for arrest. Another feminist group in Moscow I found in YouTube called Femme goes about taking off their shirts and flaunting themselves topless with statements written on their skin in black ink. It tells me Russia has some feisty women. It also tells me in Russia the government resistance to feminism is more stubborn than it is here. If Putin characterizes the macho man ethic in Russia, it's a bit stronger than it is in this country. I'd guess the macho man ethic in Russia to be something about like it is in Mexico. Macho man acts like a big dog. His expression of manhood is domination of women. I know nothing about Muscovite culture, very little about punk culture, very little about women and nothing but news quips about Putin that may or may not have connection with Putin himself. He is a martial artist. I understand the Russian style of martial arts is particularly deadly. KGB. I wouldn't go up against him.


Xtreme politics. Putin knows that he can kill them, one at a time with a single touch that's placed just right. But he won't do that. He won't need to. The outcome of this trial has the potential to be very interesting. I can't fathom all the ways, but see a few. The church will decide to go with tolerance or intolerance. The latter is the tradition, but this decision is up for the world to witness with a cold eye. Putin has a decision to make for his political self-image, tolerant or intolerant. Intolerant, again, is the tradition. Russia does not mind telling the rest of the world to mind your own business. My heart is with the women on trial. I know they were having fun making absurd punk street theater with a protest edge. They're being tried for an idea of what they did, not what they did. I don't see that Sting or any American rock star appealing for their release is going to do anything but bring attention to themselves. My inclination is to pray for them in their hour of need. They're good people. They don't belong in prison. They need an award for the world's most clever protest. They were so good they were locked up. Congratulations, ladies.

     pussy riot, from the moscow times

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PUSSY RIOT PUSHING BUTTONS

     pussy riot

There are moments that I look at myself with a cold eye and feel like I've wasted a lot of time, didn't take making a living serious enough, could have done better. That thinking doesn't last long. I remind myself that I have chosen time over money, not because I had something particular to do, but because I did not want to be a part of the rat race. Money the goal? That's not good enough for me. It could have been the overwhelming amount of attention paid to the preacher in the Baptist church, fundamentalist Southern Baptist, preacher so austere who went his own way that the Southern Baptist Association rejected him for membership year after year. He was a devout Bible scholar, self-taught. Scandinavian austerity characterized his life in the fields of the Lord. He was a powerful influence on my thinking. He made a good example for me of a man living his own integrity. Possibly it's from him I came to understand the importance of living by one's own integrity. It's from him, for sure, that I never developed an interest in "the world." That is, the world of commerce.


It was several years searching for a definition of "the world" that satisfied me as something that fits. Also, by now, I'm not so sure it is all that necessary to avoid "the world," to have a spiritual life. Interpreting "the world" as gambling casinos, beer joints, liquor stores, dance places, the easy ones that get focused on the most, I wanted to know what it really meant. I tend to think of the Bank as the world, wanting is of this world, and, of course, the 7 deadly sins. The greatest reason I can see for, as they say, turning one's back to the world, is so one's dying will be easier. I'm thinking as we study the ways of the spirit and live for inner satisfaction instead of body satisfaction called pleasure, when it is time to pass over to the other side, we're already in tune. It won't be such a big transition suddenly going from ego to spirit. In the place I'm at now, I feel like there is no difference between in the body and out of the body, except presence and absence of the body/ego. For somebody whose whole identity is in the ego, it can be a major loss to see it fall away. It's the spirit that travels from lifetime to lifetime, not the ego. The ego is particular to the body and its experiences. The body gives the soul a home, like a conch shell. The ego identifies with the body. I suppose it could be said the soul animates the body the way a hand animates a glove.


The ego and the soul make an interesting divide. If it is a divide. I suppose when the soul leaves the body, it leaves ego with the body. The soul gains its experiences through the ego. I, personally, don't have a problem with ego, in that I allow and guide my ego the best I can by my own ethical standard. We have varieties of ethical standards from person to person. Every one of us lives by our own. Some are developed, some are not. We're all mixed together of various and opposing ethical standards. Putin opposed the ethical standard of the Pussy Riot girls and they opposed his ethical standard. He has power, they do not. He's letting them wallow in the mud of understanding he has power over them. They do not have power over him. Naive youngsters who think outrageous is chic went a bit far challenging the power of a macho man thug with absolute power over them. He's of a generation that does not embrace rock, esp punk street protest rock in church. Of course he does not care anything for church, but his power base does.


What I've come to see is that "the world" is inside self, not outside, like a "house of sin." I recall from the documentary of raising a baby chimpanzee in an American suburban family to see how it developed. NIM. It's the saddest story of any I know. The "psychologist" behind the study concluded after treating the little thing like an object that when it learned sign language, all it did was say, "I want...." Whatever it was, spontaneous I want. Sees something, points and says, "I want..." By the end of the film I had nothing but revulsion for the psychologist. He was so involved in the trees he lost the forest. I've been watching a baby waking up from birth on to 14 months old and walking. Baby is paying attention to words and sounds, sees everything, likes to watch the wind blow through the trees. Baby wants everything she sees. She wants to hold it and look at it, see what it is, what it does. Without using the two words, she tends to start intent for a sentence with I want, either by gesture or vocal appeal. That's the beginning of the ego, I want. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. The first 30 years of our lives are about developing the ego. Ego works like ballast in a ship, keeps us grounded, keeps us upright.





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