Dear Dirty America

Edward Snowden, NSA Celebrity Shill? Leave It Alone, Warns Hubert Humdinger

2013-06-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE
Los Angeles

As I'd suspected early on when Edward Snowden, NSA whistle blower, became a celebrity after he leaked documents through The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald:

The operations of secret intelligence agencies aiming at the manipulation of public opinion generally involve a combination of cynical deception with the pathetic gullibility of the targeted populations. There is ample reason to believe that the case of Edward Joseph Snowden fits into this pattern. We are likely dealing here with a limited hangout operation, in which carefully selected and falsified documents and other materials are deliberately revealed by an insider who pretends to be a fugitive rebelling against the excesses of some oppressive or dangerous government agency. (Tarpley, Veteran's Today)

The only reason I didn't say it is because I'm not nearly as knowledgeable on the subject as Dr Webster Tarpley, nor do I have the credentials to make the point stick.

Tarpley is saying that Edward Snowden could very possibly be an NSA shill who is now being cast as the rebel who brought his superiors to their knees, and has awakened the American public to previously unknown dangers. The documents he released, although they seem like they've cracked open serious government secrets, might actually have been carefully selected to be revealed to the general public, by the NSA.

But why would the NSA, or powerful intelligence agencies do something like that? To steer the debate. To control the discussion. To conceal far worse revelations that might have been threatened with exposure. To rally the general public around a makeshift hero. To assuage the growing numbers of distrusting Americans who are openly suspicious about powerful, secretive intelligence agencies.

Although that sounds pathetically conspiratorial, it isn't unprecedented. Our collective debates and discussions are much more tailored than we might think. Richard Nixon and his counsel created a false report that admitted partial responsibility for the Watergate burglary, but protected Nixon and supported false statements he'd made. This was to intentionally mislead the Senate Watergate Committee in their investigation.

This is called a 'limited hangout'. Nixon and his men renamed it the 'modified limited hangout'.

Wikipedia very simply defines 'limited hangout' as: "a public relations or propaganda technique that involves the release of previously hidden information in order to prevent a greater exposure of more important details."

Dr Tarpley explains the history and presents evidence of the 'limited hangout' used recently. It's a riveting article.

Do you know what you're getting into?

Meanwhile, I contacted my general source of all knowledge, exiled and forgotten cultural philosopher Hubert Humdinger, who blasted me for both reading and linking to Veteran's Today, and for becoming ensnared in the "never ending 'what if this, or what if that is the case' scenarios."

Humdinger,
at rest

Humdinger continued, "Do you know how many government agencies watch Veteran's Today? Do you want to be on somebody's list of possible enemies of the state? Do you want to garner the attention of the biggest players sitting at the intelligence table?" he asked me over Skype.

"This is not a game for boys. There are cutthroat factions within the US government that are fighting with each other. You grew up on a farm. You used to laugh. You used to innocently enjoy life. You were not born to spar with the shadow government."

Humdinger leaned in close. His chiseled jawline and sharp nose filled my computer screen. "I suggest you get back to that sort of lifestyle."

I squinted at his blocky old teeth clashing across the lower half of my computer. "I suggest you remember how to laugh and live life as it was intended," he said. "The only fighting against the system you can do is strengthening your principles, and living in truth and honesty with those around you. Stay informed. Live with grace.

"There have always been nefarious authoritarian governments manipulating humanity. We're at a new precipice for disaster, due to the technological advances that have been implemented into every day life to enslave us, but there is nothing for curious boys like yourself to do about it."

Humdinger slung himself back in his fancy leather office chair. "Keep your nose outta it!" he shouted.

SEE ALSO

On Hubert Humdinger, the forgotten, exiled cultural philosopher

Overloading the NSA's data center with shoddy blog posts

Arming Syrian rebels: what could go wrong?

The hummingbird drone justifies irrational behavior in responsible members of society

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125 Dollars A Year

2013-06-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

DOUG DRAIME

Your situation may not be ideal, but it could be worse

If I can’t make a living at my art,

am I selling my soul

by working at something

I hate

in order to eat, or feed my family,

while I pursue my life and art?

And does it matter if I

make minimum wage,

or become

financially solvent

from my

despised labor?

Who and where is the

judge who judges

such things?

Was my writing better

when I

was going

hungry,

sleeping on park benches

and stranger’s

floors,

stealing

food from super markets, and

walking the streets?

I speak to you, you reading this,

you hearing this, you of the

privileged class! Yes, you elitist

minority!

You who can read ... reading books

and magazines of literature, you who own computers ...

while three-quarters of the people

of the earth

exist on a 125 dollars a year.

We are the privileged, we are

the elitists!

We who can afford to write and

read in the comfort of

some individual corner. Even if you happen to be

on the bum when you read this ... you have

a dumpster, or garment box,

or maybe a tree to lean against.

At least you have that!

You may say that everything

is relative on the earth..

But there is nothing relative about starving

and oppressed human beings

You know or have known poverty?

Well, I don’t think any of us can really claim to know poverty.

Yet, let me know the

sweat and blood

of my labor, whatever

it may be.

Even, if I end up hating the

machine which produces it,

knowing full well it is the

very same machine,

which is responsible

for the destitution and ignorance of

people, who populate

three-quarters of the earth.

Doug Draime's most recent full-length collection is More Than The Alley (Interior Noise Press). Also, available are 4 chapbooks. Dusk With Carol (Kendra Steiner Editions), Rock 'n Roll Jizz (Propaganda Press), Los Angeles Terminal: Poems 1971-1980 (Covert Press), and an online chap, Speed of Light (Right Hand Pointing). A presence in the 'underground' literary movement since the late 1960's. Awarded PEN grants in 1987, 1991, and 1992. Nominated for several Pushcart Prizes in last few years.

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Arming Syrian Rebels: What Could Go Wrong?

2013-06-17T14:37:00.000-07:00

MICHAEL J BLAIR

Perthshire, Scotland

Free Syrian Army rebels cleaning their AK47s

The Arab Spring was and is a media/government myth. It never existed. It didn't free a single soul. It only imprisoned those that the winners deemed enemies.

Libya is a complete disaster zone with inter tribal fighting and no clear idea where this "free" country is going. As long as the West got hold of Libyan oil reserves and could control them, it was a success.

The dead and maimed counted for nothing as they had in Iraq. Western multinational companies profited on a huge scale from the misery of the people they'd "freed".

Egypt is in a horrible mess now and will only get worse. So little thought is given to the consequences of supporting such uprisings. Stupidity and greed plus political position rule all the thinking.

Syria isn't oil rich but has a strategic position in the Middle East that the West would love to have control over. At the outset of the "rebel" campaign, Russia was Syria’s main benefactor. Supplying arms and many kinds of aid. I'm sure President Assad and his cohorts had a hand in terrorism but it was of a more controlled nature.

Assad was never going to be a major threat to the region, unlike Iran, which is openly hostile to western governments and companies. As far as I can see, the only reason for destabilising Syria was to remove Russian influence from the region! Once the West had a measure of control over the country, there would be more freedom to take on Iran.

As usual we, the public, are being softened up to accept US and European intervention in Syria.

As with Iraq, we are hearing graphic tales of chemical attacks on the "rebel" forces, and woe betide anybody who suggests the "rebels" have also used gas! This is a one way street of disinformation to make us think the arming of these "rebels/terrorists is not only inevitable, but a good and humane thing to do.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague tells us that not arming these people is akin to us killing innocents ourselves.

President Obama tells us a "red line" has been crossed. What the hell is he talking about? There is only a "red line" because it's a government ploy to get involved in another disastrous war where thousands of people will be killed for no reason other than politicians’ vanity and power.

At what point did it become Western policy to arm Islamic extremists who are set on destroying Western civilisation? There is an "Alice in Wonderland" feel to all this. Up is down, black is white, right is wrong! Nothing is what it seems.

The pure insanity of a call to arm people who would stop at nothing to have a completely Islamic code ruling us is so bizarre, it fair boggles the mind. Take a step back and think about this lunacy. These weapons talked of being given, will end up in the hands of people who have nothing but hatred for Western values and way of life.

Have our politicians finally gone stark staring mad? It's the only explanation for the insanity of what's being proposed. Thankfully there are some wise heads here and in America saying "wait a minute," remember Iraq and its nonexistent WMDs!

But I'm sure if America and Europe decide to send weapons they will do so regardless of the obvious stupidity of such a move. It would be flying in the face of common sense, but as in the Iraq debacle, that element is on short supply!

Russia will make sure Syria is well armed and that is a surefire recipe for utter disaster. There may be no drawing back if that happens.

How can giving weapons to terrorists stop the killing? Just writing that looks insane! Wake up everybody and don't let governments lead us into another swamp of blood and bones!

After it all goes wrong and thousands of people from all sides are dead and horribly maimed, will our "leaders" stand at a podium and claim they did what they thought was right when a five year old could have told them they knew not what they were doing? They surely will and as usual huge corporations will have benefited from the slaughter of people who only really want to live quietly and in peace.

Our warmongering leaders, be they in the west or in Islamic countries, don't care about individuals, only themselves and their backers.

I know this view won't go down well with some people, most of which are good and true citizens, but I don't want us....the West...to be drawn into an even bigger uglier mess than Iraq.
That is where we are heading if the talk of red line crossing is pursued.

More artificial angst by pipsqueak politicians like Hague and the idiot Cameron will only make me feel more suspicion about their true motives.

Think people, think where you last heard pleas about intervention from politicians, and where it led the West!

ALSO from Michael J Blair: Sneaking Militarisation of Police and Surveillance Society: One Nation Under CCTV and Mouth Frothing American Media Lunatics

Michael J Blair is a regular contributor to DDA, and he can be reached at: michaelblair43@googlemail.com. His Twitter handle is: @mmjblair

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Overloading the NSA's Data Center With Shoddy Blog Posts

2013-06-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE
Los Angeles

When the NSA's data center overloads, it might look
something like this

Why do you write so much? Couldn't some of those ideas be boiled down and combined into one article, instead of producing so many distracting, rambling blog posts?

That's the critical feedback I've received a few times during my handful of years producing copious online articles. I never knew how to answer the above questions except to say, Well, gee whiz, I like writing every day. It's more economical than hiring a therapist. And I can't keep talking the preacher's ear off.

But now I've got a purpose.

I'm going to post even more articles and jam them full of ideas (some of them dangerous, and most of them not my own) so I can do my part in stuffing the United States government's already bulging databases with so much information that eventually their high-end technological complexes, built in places like Utah, to store every phone conversation, email, web history, and Skype chat ever had between citizens of this planet, will eventually overheat and blow up.

I'd like to witness the mushroom cloud unfolding miles high into the sky. That would be the sure sign of doom to accompany these data centers as they explode. That last particularly pointless Dear Dirty America thread was the final megabyte to clog the fattened arteries of flowing data into that pounding heart of unlawfully gathered information.

This center burns more power
than a mid-size American city

"We've suffered an overload! We've suffered an overflow of information!" a harried, balding young NSA man would be shouting on CNN. A thin, weasel of a man. Skinny from his neck to his toes, but with a blossoming gut from the constant sipping of cola and other sugary drinks he enjoys every night while he works in the loins of the beastly system.

We might call it the intelligence industrial complex, but only because it seems valueless to brainstorm a better name for it. Who do we hold responsible for this treasonous abuse of our First and Fourth Amendments? Should all workers in these systems be held accountable? Subject to heavy fines, jail times, and possibly the death penalty for actively propagating the most efficiently unconstitutional abuse of power ever known to our free nation?

Forgotten and exiled cultural philosopher, Hubert Humdinger, frankly admitted my plan of overloading the NSA's Prism and data mining program "Boundless Informant" through endless blog posts is a stupid one.

"You cannot blow up the goddamned system!" Humdinger hollered at me over Skype. "Our tyrants are far more sophisticated than that. What did you think tyranny would look like? A Nazi takeover with tasteless architecture, marching jackboots, and flamboyant hand signs?

"This is a time in human history where every man, woman, and child needs to reorient himself back to his roots, in his body and soul, and be right within," Humdinger told me. "The surveillance grid is fully in place. We've only learned a fraction of the technology that will be used to soon openly rule the world.

"We're the prisoners, just awoken, disoriented from a long dream, to find ourselves in a dimly lit cell. We are, for the first time, noticing the walls, the bars over the tiny window, and the sliding metal door.

"It's a technocratic prison built of Biblical proportions," the old philosopher said, "and the only hope we have as independent individuals is to find that center, that iron bar within. And hold on tight."

MORE HUMDINGER

On Hubert Humdinger, the forgotten, exiled cultural philosopher

The hummingbird drone justifies irrational behavior in responsible members of society

Humdinger speaks of the Queen's "vibrant energy" and human bloodlust

Surveillance society: one nation under CCTV

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Lyle Shove-It, Famous Hollywood Bum & Oracle, Fears Not NSA Surveillance Programs

2013-06-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE
Los Angeles

I'm not sure why I stopped accessing the free council of Hollywood's most famous bum and oracle, but the repeated scandals and invasions of privacy coming out of Washington drove me back into the dusty coat jacket arms of Lyle Shove-It.

I used to see Lyle once a week at our special location; the meeting point of two famous Hollywood streets, but I will not tell you which, because Lyle and I have a special bond, and we don't break our word to one another. I've promised not to make him famous, and he's allowed me to pass on his wisdom to others.

What do you think, I asked him as soon as I sat at the other end of Shove-It's Hollywood bench, about the revelation that the US government is quite literally watching everything people do online, through their computers and smartphones, and viewing their pictures, and saving every bit of electronic information put online by American citizens?

What do you think of the surveillance state our nation has turned into? I almost shouted. I get worked up by these issues.

I'm not sure why I didn't first say hello to Lyle Shove-It, rather than launching into my bloated question. I should have asked how he'd been, and maybe apologized for not seeing him recently. But I know Shove-It isn't much for hellos and goodbyes.

But he remembered me. Not many young men with long blonde hair seek his council. Actually, nobody seeks anything from him, and that's the way he likes to live.

Shove-It seemed to be suffering from nasal congestion that day, and I hoped it wasn't serious. After a quick bit of sniffling and snuffling, he still didn't say anything.

Well? I asked loudly. What about it? What if the government's secret intelligence agency wired up your shopping cart and tracked everywhere you went, and recorded everything you said to the people you meet everyday? They'd have all your locations mapped out, and how often and at what times you saunter between them.

"All they'd hear," Shove-It finally said, and then he looked at his cart as if he'd never seen it before, "is a bunch of clanging and clacking. They're welcome to record it and use it any way they'd like."

Suddenly, he stood. He wiped his forehead with his grimy green army hat, and then pushed the cart about ten feet down the sidewalk. The cart's front right wheel was loose. Every foot it touched down on the pavement and spun. It clattered terribly.

A young Midwestern couple wearing matching polo shirts walked toward us on the sidewalk. They moved into the street, risking the dangers of fast-moving traffic, to avoid us.

Lyle Shove-It sat down again. He left the cart where he'd pushed it. A dusty pair of white sneakers balanced atop a filled plastic garbage bag. What was inside, I didn't know. "See what I mean?" he said.

After that, Shove-It went back to looking out across the street. A new Thai restaurant had opened since I'd last visited. How long has that place been there? I asked him.

"For awhile," he said.

I remembered then that once, a couple years ago, Shove-It chided me about paying so much attention to time. I believe I'd asked him how many years he'd been coming to sit on that bench. "I'm not a record keeper," he'd said, and then added, "and that's what's kept me sane."

If you don't know who Lyle Shove-It is, here are the articles featuring the Oracle's wisdom:

Hollywood's Most Famous Bum & Oracle Weighs in on the Supposed Kardashian / Bryant Feud (read it here)

Old Farts Don't Belong in Teenybopper Bars (read it here)

Lyle Shove-It Has Fetish for Sarah Palin (read it here)

Lyle Comments on Lebron James' Move to Miami (read it here)

Hair Care Tips from Hollywood (read it here)

Shove-It on Having a Black Man as President (here)

Shove-It Talks Religion & Jesus Christ (here)

Oracle Talks About the Repugnant Nature of American Politics (here)

Bedbugs Infesting Many Homes in US, but Park Benches Still Safe to Sleep On (here)

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Is This What We Cleared Out the Native Americans For?

2013-06-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

Imagine what kinds of animals and people used to tread over this land, and now look what we've become: a bunch of headbangers who have mastered the art of swiftly bending at the waist and threatening to smash our heads into the soil.

Actually, I don't mean any harm to these boys. The band is called Scar The Surface, and I dig their metal music. The guitars build an effective wall of melodious, pounding static. The screaming vocals are varied and intriguing. My music critic friend, Dee-O would cringe, but mostly because after his out-of-body experience, earthly music sounds too hollow and too tinny for him. But I'm a fan of this. It's audio caffeine. It's fuel for writing.

In the mood for a good...something

I did think, however, of the incongruity of playing electronic instruments in the prairie to create hard-hitting music. The electric guitars, without a power source, would have only made a lot of twanging noises. The drums would have made a lot of racket. An untimely thunderstorm could have put the whole setup out of commission.

The video did put me in the mood for a good pow-wow. I've seen one before, in a city, on cement, and that was incongruous as well. Authentic Indians wearing brightly colored headdresses and light brown leather outfits, standing around in a parking lot outside of the community center, and smoking cigarettes. The sick yellow color of McDonald's hamburger wrappers fluttering against a nearby fence.

It just seems like people in this country can't find the proper environment to carry out their passions.

What if...

Imagine if the various Indian tribes scattered throughout what we now called the United States of America had once banded together, conjured every last ounce of god-force from the heavens, every iota of psychic and spiritual energy within each man, woman, and child, then lashed it all to the broad back of mother nature, and whipped up an impenetrable, supernatural barrier of energy in the form of a dome, from sea to shining sea, for the rest of human existence.

No 1776. No New York City. No Los Angeles. No garbage. No Disneyland. No Hollywood. No Brad Pitt (nothing against him, I like his satire). No dollar bills.

Just pristine prairie and forests and buffalo herds and soaring bald eagles and clean, clean air, and sparkling water, and a thriving ecosystem. Pow-wows in their natural habitats. Spirits of sun, moon, earth, and sky flickering into physical existence. Natural food grown rich in nutrients from fecund soil. Harmonious connection between the body, mind, and soul. Genuine community. Death just a passage. No more petty fears.

And all the European buccaneers clambering over that enormous bubble shield, squeezing knife blades between their crooked, rotting teeth, and peering down at the vast open spaces of virgin land, and the occasional Indian tribe walking stiff and straight, and carrying their supplies on their backs as they follow the roaming buffalo herd.

Imagine the land that could be tilled to grow tobacco and cotton and corn and hemp! the buccaneers would think. Imagine the fat veins of gold that could be mined and sold. The infinite bison pelts! The unending lumber from the forests! But alas, to no avail, there was no way in. Nothing could penetrate that shimmering dome. Everything beneath was for observational purposes, only.

Just a giant, transparent shield like an iridescent bubble around an inch of grass on an acre of lawn, an acre of lawn on a farmstead, situated in a rural county, marked off in the corner of a state, with its boundaries sketched into the middle of a nation, recognized as the border of a continent, stuck tight to the side of a planet, rotating near the center of a solar system, simply a string of lights in a galaxy, just a smear of light in the universe, held by an unmovable mover.

SEE ALSO

Music critic looks down upon L.A. music scene after out-of-body experience

Metal heads everywhere upset about Hatebreed's sloppy use of the word 'decimate'

The corrupt money system that killed paradise

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NSA Prism Data Mining, or Joyfully Interacting With the Telescreen

2013-06-07T04:30:00.000-07:00

(see video about Verizon & Prism scandals below)

It's like Americans are living in a North Korean Disneyland. There are rumors that the charming staff might be out to harm us, and are definitely spying on us, and we keep getting proof it's true. But there's so much to look at: the marching band, the bright colors, the fireworks, the fatty foods, the clean outfits, and that goddamned three-fingered mouse with the huge ears that keeps telling us everything's all right, just be happy.

And we love it. As long as there are enough pairs of Mickey Mouse ears for everyone, and most people can afford tickets to get onto the cheapest rides, we'll allow the dark government agencies to tap our phones and, as a whistle blower intelligence official said, quite literally watch your ideas form as you type.

That program is called Prism. The horrible news is that everything we do online is recorded or held onto by the NSA and Washington's Intelligence agencies. This comes on the heels of the other scandal about Verizon handing over all of their customers' call metadata, every single day, to the US government.

It's for our homeland, a grizzled Diane Feinstein barked. That witch. This has been happening for years, she said (you can see a clip of this in the video below).

Every gross violation of the Constitution and common sense committed by the Obama or Bush administration has that Orwellian chant of, "It's to stop terrorism" as its justification.

The American people have lost every shred of their First and Fourth Amendments. We've known it was happening, but still, it's unsettling when the official documents are released. Yet, most Americans don't seem to care. Why should they? There's plenty of sports on TV, and Netflix subscriptions are cheap enough to indulge in plenty of violent, degenerative programs and movies. Hell, most of us are having fun with this soft tyranny.

As long as everybody gets an iPhone, what need is there to keep abreast of the reports that seem to come weekly now, about how you've basically got no rights if any government agency wants to challenge them, and your communications are being monitored, saved, and could be used against you if there's ever a need for it.

It's 1984, and instead of trying to avoid the ever-present gaze of the telescreen, we are joyfully interacting with it. Our oppressors are far more intelligent than we are, and they've crafted an entire existence that seems fun and trendy, but has really become an un-alarming way of herding us into using a handful of devices and communicative services, offered by a handful of companies, so we can be monitored and manipulated by a handful of people.

For years now, alternative news sites have warned that Google, Skype, Apple, and most of the popular email services have been collecting our information, or being used by the government to mine our data. Yet, that was largely considered a conspiracy theory. Maybe a little too Orwellian to think while you stare blankly at your computer screen, it's kind of staring back at you.

The CIA admitted in March that they try to "collect everything" they can and "hang on to it forever." Two days in a row, The Guardian blew open with actual top-secret proof at just how devastating our surveillance society has become.

Earlier, we learned that the IRS was targeting conservative groups that were looking for tax exemptions.

We all remember that on New Year's Eve Night last year, Barack Obama signed into law the NDAA bill with the provision to indefinitely detain any US citizen deemed a threat by the president or his council of executioners. I remember it well because I broke the story about a man in Koreatown who shit his pants upon hearing the frightening news. In disgust and retaliation against what he thought was a so-called "liberal" president acting like a right-wing tyrant, he sent his soiled underwear to the White House.

You should consider taking similar action. But really, this is not a funny matter.

We remember also the DOJ's seizing of two months worth of Associated Press communications. And please let us not forget the Attorney General finally admitted that the Obama administration's overseas drone strikes have killed four Americans so far. Without due process. This was after they'd lied to the American people again and again either by keeping silent on the matter, or flat out claiming that drone strikes did not exist.

Former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs came clean months ago on TV to say he'd been told to always deny any questions about drone strikes. He was told to say the program did not exist. So why, dear friends, would we ever listen to this president or his people, ever again?

Because all of this stuff has happened incrementally, and we have a celebrity president who chats it up on TV shows like The View, Americans seem to think these very serious blows to our liberty and Constitution do not matter, or are not that serious. I mean, a guy who always looks so snappy, who always wears a suit, and who prances off his Air Force One, how could he lie to us? Or mean us harm?

As long as the ballgames continue, and people can bicker over the stats and the players, and as long as the online movie subscriptions remain affordable and streaming our favorite Blockbuster films and sitcoms, I doubt very much the majority of Americans will ever become alarmed. Not unless they lose their entertainment. Not unless there's a noticeable chip in that garish American facade to suggest that really, things are not all right.

As Bill Hicks loved to say, "Go back to sleep America, your government is in control. Go back to sleep American, your government loves you."

It's probably too late to affect any change. Imagine trying to reverse all the damage that's been done? Imagine trying to dissolve the secret courts and committees. How could we scale back the egregious abuse of power both Bush and Obama have signed into law? We may already be locked up in our technocratic prison, it's just that you don't know it. Did you really think a society leading up to 1984 would be obvious? That MSNBC and FOX News would cover it straight?

It is 1984 in this nation, and we aren't even trying to avoid it.

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Jeremy Scahill Puts MSNBC's Toure In His Place

2013-06-06T15:47:00.000-07:00

Watch Jeremy Scahill field questions about covert US special forces wreaking havoc overseas. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars: the World Is a Battlefield.

At the 8.10 mark in the video, he pummels MSNBC's Toure, who tries to argue that the Obama administration's killing of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was actually justified because evidence had been presented against Awlaki in a Yemeni court.

The stoic Scahill comes alive...

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Imagining A World W/O TV

2013-06-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

JOHN BENNETT

The best way to use your TV?

(reprinted from The Book of Shards)

Not only can I imagine a world w/o TV, I was raised in a world without TV, and I lived in a world with TV without TV and still do; but not free of the impact of TV.

TV is the master tool of Corporate Culture, which is the guardian ad litem of Commercialism. TV has put its brand on everyone.

***

This is a spinoff on E Unibus Pluram, David Foster Wallace's novella-length essay about TV and its implications for fiction writers.

Wallace was an avid TV watcher, your typical six-hours-a-day viewer, and also a writer of no mean talent, a brilliant mind. He rightly states that there's hardly an author writing today (and this was 1990) whose writing isn't referential to the world TV creates, a blend of gelded news, soaps, Christian mega-church fundamentalism, documentaries giving token nods to high culture, pop music extravaganzas and gonzo sports-- all of it stitched together by sixty-second commercials.

But a point Wallace fails to make is that although it may be unavoidable that TV leaves a welt on everyone's soul, to have a welt on your soul doesn't mean you've necessarily abdicated ownership of your soul to what put it there.

There was in 1990, and there are today, writers who transform the stuff of TV into a weapon that undermines Corporate Culture in ways that Corporate Culture cannot identify, because the place these writers are coming from is beyond TV's comprehension, and TV is Corporate Culture's seeing-eye dog.

It was only after reading Wallace's essay that I realized he wasn't one of them.

Find John Bennett's novels, short stories, and shards at Hcolom Press. You can contact him, or get on his Shards list at dasleben@fairpoint.net.

Read a review of his novel Children of the Sun & Earth here

MSNBC's Horrible, Horrible News? But It Was Expected

2013-06-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

It's a cute, unassuming logo, but the peacock's feathers have been ruffled.

All right, the news isn't that terrible. It's obvious and expected. MSNBC is losing viewers at an astonishing rate. Soon they'll be at Dear Dirty America's level. But why shouldn't they be? Not only are people sick of corporate, General Electric-funded news, there are astrological implications at play.

Pluto moved into Capricorn in 2008, and its transit will not be completed until 2023. Pluto topples major structures and institutions that now stifle growth. There will be massive shifts in power. Power held by a few will be spread to the many. We're seeing it happen on every front. These are very dangerous times, as the super wealthy and powerful fight to hold on.

But don't take my word for it. I'm only a delusional country boy stuck in an impoverished, bustling neighborhood in the big, big city. Here's an expert on the matter, from the mother of light and love:

Since Pluto is, indeed, the “Great Transformer”, and revamps, reshapes, overhauls and thus transforms whatever it is currently impacting, it will bring this overhaul type energy to those areas that Capricorn rules, which are:

The economy, corporations, banking and big business.

Government and its policy, influence and actions at all levels (local, national and global).

Politics and political activities (i.e. elections, voting issues, law, etc.).

Societal laws, rules and regulations.

Churches and organized religion, and the dogmas and rituals they adhere to.

The patriarchal system in general.

Our major structures of finance, education, energy, religion, etc are being challenged, and are crumbling. The Iranian Revolution. The Arab Spring. The Tea Party. Occupy Wall Street. To name a few. These were enormous movements of energy. Waves of consciousness that were all tied to the same fundamental principles: freedom, liberty, and prosperity for all. And it's not over. It's just getting started. You can feel it building.

The dinosaur media is struggling to survive as the attention to news and commentary and expertise has been shifted into the hands of alternative news sites, public forums, and blogs. The mainstream media continues to discredit itself when it fails to report nationwide protests, like the Occupy Movement, or the slow, illegal torture of Bradley Manning, or the recent March Against Monsanto.

People want to know about these things. The Internet provides the information, yet the major networks don't cover the events, or jump in much too late, when they realize they look silly for not covering a newsworthy story. This chips away at their credibility. The people are losing faith in corporate-sponsored news.

If MSNBC had consulted their in-house astrologists, they might have expected this sort of thing. They will not regain power or prominence. MSNBC, along with FOX, CNN, and so on, will become fossils in the heavy sands of time.

As Hubert Humdinger, the exiled cultural philosopher once wrote,

"The dinosaurs of the mainstream media era will sink to their knees like the giant beasts of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 million years ago. Their bodies will be covered by new growth, shifting soil, until their remains are pressed into pockets of oil, by which our new generations of humans will light their lamps and fuel their engines as they collectively decide how best to proceed the uncharted territory of liberty and reasonable abundance for all."

There are downsides to all of this. Are the people ready for more responsibility? It doesn't seem like it. The president can't even speak in long sentences for risk of losing his audience. And that's tough because there's a tendency to want to read the words off the teleprompter very fast and get the speech over with.

It seems the chemicals in the water and the heavy Frankenstein sweeteners and preservatives in the food have rendered us incapable of thinking for ourselves, or holding two more thoughts in mind at once. Check out what's popular on YouTube. Check the trends on Twitter. Scroll through your Facebook feed. Idiocracy is here.

Are we ready for the major shifts in power? It's going to get a lot darker before it gets lighter.

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN, SEE ALSO

Riots rock London: Pluto in Capricorn until 2023

Pluto in Capricorn: the cold wind is blowing

On Hubert Humdinger, the forgotten exiled cultural philosopher

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At A Counter On A Cloudy Morning

2013-06-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

ERIC CHAET

http://www.margaretcolley.co.uk

(originally posted at 100 Peculiarly Useful So-Called Poems)

-for John Bennett

I wake, cold.
I don't remember any dream.
The ground's frosty.

I sit at a counter, drinking coffee.
The others are preparing to drive their trucks,
feed their corn stalks to their white-breath cows,
operate machinery that produces toilet paper & packaging.

They know what they owe, & how much they will earn.
They tell of recent bureaucratic run-arounds & vandalism--
& catch up on the ball teams.

The newspaper is full of celebrities
the useless pronouncements of authorities
attempting to cut themselves heroic notches in history
& tragedies that have occurred
to people never before considered worthy of mention.

The Sun has been obscured for a long time already.

I don't know how long I'll sustain myself.

Eric Chaet, born Chicago, 1945, South Side, beaten, denigrated, sinking, swimming---servant of a refractory nation and species, sweating laborer in factories and warehouses, wearing jacket and tie in offices and classrooms---"so-called poems" published and posted around the world, sporadically, for decades---author of People I Met Hitchhiking On USA Highways (read a review) and How To Change the World Forever For Better---perpetual polymath student, synthesizer of specialists' insights and methods, solo consultant regarding space exploration and accidents involving obsolete industrial machinery---album of songs Solid and Sound---hitchhiked back and forth between the Pacific and Atlantic, sleeping out for years and subsisting on water and sunflower seeds, stapling a series of 1500 posters he made to utility poles, inciting whoever saw them to seize the responsibility for their own lives---governing without coalition or means of or inclination to coerce or confiscate, from below, approximately invisible.

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Even If You Hate Mainstream Media, The DOJ Needs To Be Held Accountable for Its Trespasses

2013-05-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

Attorney General admiring the president's tie

Our dear Attorney General Eric Holder has scheduled an off-the-record meeting with the Washington bureau chiefs in order to explain to them how they, and their journalists, are to handle leak investigations. Our government officials are telling our mainstream media correspondents how to acceptably report on news (and leaks) that concern their, the criminal government officials', activities.

The New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson has announced her bureau chief will not be in attendance. This is a hopeful sign that the media networks will give Eric Holder the kind of relentless hell he deserves. Holder signed off on allowing the seizure of Fox News reporter James Rosen's records. Holder first denied any involvement, under oath, of having anything to do with that unprecedented and illegal activity.

Even if you loathe Fox News, don't get caught up in your partisan cheering -- the principles offended in this case are unforgivable, and those guilty need to be routed from their nests of power like that unsettling infestation of cockroaches you dealt with in your kitchen.

From the Huffington Post:

"We will not be attending the session at DOJ," Abramson said in a statement to The Huffington Post. "It isn't appropriate for us to attend an off the record meeting with the attorney general. Our Washington bureau is aggressively covering the department's handling of leak investigations at this time."

I smile at the phrase "aggressively covering". What a powerful expression. I'd love to have no stone left unturned in this scandal, and ultimately see the Attorney General locked up in a holding cell, crammed in with a bunch of irritating marijuana dealers his DOJ helped to incarcerate.

Of course, the New York Times and the rest of the dinosaur media have not been any less guilty than Holder in their lack of pursuit for real truth. They have failed as the Fourth Estate, and it's no wonder the mega networks are hemorrhaging viewers and readers.

Bethania Markus wrote a great article about why the mainstream media doesn't deserve the sympathy of the public in this latest AP scandal, yet for the safety of our nation, and for the integrity of our government, the DOJ's spying should concern every single one of us:

The American news media has made pandering to power standard practice when their mission should be speaking truth to power and “afflicting the comfortable, comforting the afflicted.” In fact, new Orange County Register co-owner and publisher Aaron Kushner flat out told his newsroom that the long-held journalistic credo of “afflicting the comfortable” no longer applies. This runs parallel with fantastic displays of incompetence like the flagrant misreporting of facts surrounding the Boston marathon bombing by the likes of CNN and New York Post.

The story of Gary Webb also illustrates how "in bed" the mega media networks are with Washington, the CIA, and this country's special interests. The LA Times, the NY Times, and the Washington Post (the gatekeepers of 'real news') smeared Webb as a conspiracy theorist when in fact, as time later proved, he was correct about the CIA running drugs from South America into Southern California in the '80s, and their role in kick-starting the crack epidemic that prompted the Drug War and eroded our 4th Amendment.

So, the mainstream media has never been meant to be fully trusted. With this recent AP scandal, it's like two ignorant bands of thugs fighting by night. Both the media and the Holder DOJ have skeletons in their closets, yet the seizure of journalists' records to be used to hunt down whistle blowers is criminal, and threatens the foundations of our free and just nation.

The freedom of speech. The right to call out corruption, whether it be corporate or government corruption. The safety of those speaking truthfully and honestly. And the upholding of no unlawful search and seizure.

Without those protections we're living in a Disneyland version of North Korea, or China, where individuals who have witnessed the crimes or malfeasance of higher-ups fear for their lives, their peace, and their freedoms. We will be left having only the right to shut up and enjoy the official government truths and narratives shown to us by our television screens with flashy programs funded by global corporations.

SEE ALSO

MSNBC is dying, but what did you expect?

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On Hubert Humdinger, the Forgotten Exiled Cultural Philosopher

2013-05-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE

I NEED MORE HUMDINGER!

That was the anonymous comment left on an article I'd written over a year ago called Kim Kardashian made so much money at her wedding she could fund this blog.

Once he starts thinking,
he can't stop.

What an odd comment. Who would want more Humdinger? A man who had been cast out of his own country, and his existence nearly wiped clean from the face of the planet.

The comment is referring to the exiled cultural philosopher I often quote. His full name is Hubert Humdinger. He's a bald-headed, red-chested, ornery old son of a bitch, but his insight is second to none. He's been a gift to this planet, and a lifelong foe to the tyrannical governments and big business leaders of the world.

Humdinger (pronounced hum-din-jer), is the author of 367 books about cultural phenomena and disinformation found in the world of accepted psychology, science, politics, and sociology. But don't expect to find his page on Wikipedia. All of his books were burnt in a little remembered event called the Humdinger Purge. If you can find a Humdinger book tucked away in your local library, please let me know. I will pay you enormous gobs of money for it. It is worth a fortune. (please see this article for more information on the good philosopher)

Why were all of Humdinger's books burned? The State Department said the First Amendment did not apply to ideas as frighteningly clear and creative as Humdinger's. Freedom of speech did not protect connecting so many universal truths in such precise ways, just as certain simple chemicals shouldn't be stored right beside each other for risk of combustion.

"The alignment of unorthodox ideas into grand unity provide, we believe, an unhealthy access to mental and spiritual power that resides in each human, but isn't meant to be awakened all at once," a government spokesman said in a brief press conference in 1971. "Words can and do light fires in the minds of men," the spokesman said, "and it seems Humdinger strives to not only start the fires, but pour gasoline onto them, and blow them into whirlwinds of uncontrollable fire.

No pictures were taken of the Humdinger Purge,
but it was not unlike this moment in history.

"The Pentagon, and other great governmental institutions around the world do not suppress ideas because they are bad guys," he continued, "or because it's cute to manipulate the public. It is done because the majority of humanity cannot handle this type of knowledge without further refinement and evolution. You wouldn't give hand grenades to monkeys in a zoo, would you?" he asked, "and nor would you teach a shopping mall full of humans how to align the collective power of their minds and spirits."

Humdinger shortly thereafter fled to an undisclosed location in Northern Europe, where he has stubbornly persisted to live, despite the legions of public and private officials who wish he'd finally give up the ghost. I have been in contact with the great exiled philosopher since 1989 when I first talked to him while sitting on a bench outside of 7-11 in a small Wyoming town, just outside of Yellowstone National Park. He'd sneaked back into the US for a few weeks to tie up some loose ends, he told me many years later.

I was five at that time I met him. My mother and father and younger brother had stepped into the convenience store to buy bottles of juice and quick breakfast items, like wrapped blueberry muffins or slices of banana bread baked weeks ago and loaded with preservatives.

We were on our journey through the Midwest to visit the Rocky Mountains. My parents, who had thought I'd stayed in the station wagon while they went into the store, came out to find me sitting next to a sour-looking older gentleman with a bull's neck and squat legs and torso.

He kept stretching his legs out in front of him, and letting his feet fall back toward the bench. The soles of his shoes would swing just inches above the pavement. I mimicked his movements with my little Marvel comics Velcro shoes swinging back and forth like Humdinger's clunkier, dirtier whites. His shoes were also Velcro, if I remember correctly. It turned out he was doing lower abdominal exercises. "No reason to sit still," he said, "there's plenty of time for that in the afterlife."

I'd seen him sitting on the bench, lifting and dropping his feet, so I'd left the car to ask him what his problem was. "What's your problem?" I'd seen one stern character ask another in a movie. I was a child without mental filters (like many children, like Gary Busey, too), and I approached Mr Humdinger in the bold way that he's always respected.

"Child," he said, "if there were more adults like you, we'd live in a peaceful world. No fear. No parsing of words. No superficial conversation about ball game scores or petty nitpicking about personal trivialities. You've got an iron rod running from your head to your feet. That's your will. That's your spirit. Hold it tight, before the bastards tear it out of you and beat you down with it. They'll drink your blood. They'll eat your heart out."

Of course, as a child, I had no idea what that meant. I'm still pondering it today. I hopped onto the bench and sat beside him. I asked him what happened to his iron rod, as I looked between my legs and around the bench for mine.

photo by Calvin Teo

"I've still got it," he said. "My will is strong, despite what they've done to me." He then chided me for continuing to search for my iron rod. "It's a metaphor!" he said briskly. "It's your willpower. In a few years, when you grow into an adult, and some twit tells you to get on your knees and do his bidding, and he'll pay you a wage less than what it costs to live, I already know what you'll say. You'll tell that twit where to go. You'll tell him and his jellyfish spine to step off of you. Most importantly, you'll inform him that he's a twit."

Humdinger used his right hand to chop the cool morning air as he spoke. "That is what I mean. It is that unbreakable spirit that every human being is endowed with, but most lose over a short period of time. I have hope you'll keep yours. I've been through tremendous turmoil, but I've still got my iron rod," and he pointed to his head, then dragged his first two fingers over his sternum, his belly button, and finally between his legs, until his fingers touched the bench. He mentioned he also carried the real thing in the trunk of his 1985 blue Honda Civic.

That was the beginning of my dealings with Hubert Humdinger. My mother came out of the store first. She held a bottle of orange juice and a small plastic bag. My father stepped out next, carrying apple juice in one hand, and my tiny brother underneath his other arm.

My father placed my brother on his feet. My mother looked at my father. They were alarmed and thinking I'd been lured away and nearly captured by a pedophile. Any sudden movement and they could lose me forever. Did that crass bald man carry a pistol? Or a knife? Was he belligerent? He sure was muscular.

Humdinger finally smiled. He stood, bent to one knee, and kissed my mother's hand. He shook my father's hand and said my parents had raised two special sons. Humdinger patted my brother's fine blonde hair and winked at me. "Another iron rod!" he said.

With some reluctance my parents wrote down Humdinger's address. A PO box in that little Wyoming town. "The boy is going to write me a letter, and I'm going to coach him on life," Humdinger said, and he sat back down on the bench.

I did send him a letter when we got home from the vacation in the mountains. It was mostly scribble. I received a letter back, over twenty pages of finely handwritten prose that explained the genesis of the American public school system, its inclusion of John Dewey's work, per the requests of the new school board put into place by the Rockefeller family, as the primary philosophical source behind the tooling of the curriculum, and how knowledge would be imparted to children. His letter also included instructions on how to navigate high school and college and never break my will.

I was so overwhelmed I never wrote him another letter. I was but a child!

Years later, just after I'd graduated college, my mother received a letter from overseas that was addressed to me. In the letter were instructions to never disclose the address, and to destroy the information after it was passed onto me. It was there we started our email and Skype correspondence.

Humdinger is very old, yet he seems to have not aged a bit since that day in 1989. He has forgiven me for not corresponding with him for that 20 year stretch of my life. He calls it our relative "dark age". He was dismayed to find that my iron rod had been "somewhat weakened", but was still intact enough to be strengthened and forged into an "unforgiving column of truth and willpower."

He only recently allowed me to incorporate his ideas into this blog, and my other writings. How old Humdinger really is, is anybody's guess. He claims that he doesn't even know.

"Years go by," he once said to me online, his bald head as chiseled and firm as a statue's, "but I do not believe in time. I walk with ease. My mind does not toil, nor does it wander beyond my conscious control. I eat healthy and light. I sleep like a dog. If I worried about my age, or about time," he continued, "my mind would toil, and that anxiety would seep into my body and disrupt my cells and make more difficult the immaculate lifestyle I've upheld for most of my life."

If he had to speculate on his age, as I pushed him to do that day, Humdinger would say, with a slight tilt of his head, that he might be anywhere between 90-140 years old. I told him he was like Li Ching-Yuen, a Chinese man who lived for either 197 or 256 years, depending on which account you believe. Even the New York Times reported on that phenomenal man.

"Who cares?" he hollered at me soon after. His hoarse voice crackled over my computer's speakers. Humdinger brought his face close to the webcam, so I could see the tight pores in his nose, and his shiny, worn teeth between his parted lips. "Who gives a flying fuck?" he scowled.

MORE HUMDINGER!

Humdinger speaks of the Queen's "vibrant energy" and human bloodlust

Humdinger breaks down Paul Ryan's alliteration during the presidential campaign

Hubert Humdinger -- infamous cultural philosopher & pariah

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That Changes the Odds

2013-05-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

ERIC CHAET

(excerpt from the preface of 100 Peculiarly Useful So-Called Poems)

Justice. Kindness. Sanity.
Toward these ends
habilitation, fitness,
strategic & efficient
practical application.

Only individuals can
change the rule of injustice
& the prevalence of madness.

And, obviously, individuals
can’t
change the rule of injustice
& the prevalence of madness.

Until someone does something, anyway.

That changes the odds.

///

I can’t do what needs doing alone. But just as Adam Smith described how a developing economy works—each doing his or her part without knowing what others are doing, the parts meshing as a whole—so, likewise, I can at least hope, & I will hope, that a transformation occurs—& do my part.

Eric Chaet, born Chicago, 1945, South Side, beaten, denigrated, sinking, swimming---servant of a refractory nation and species, sweating laborer in factories and warehouses, wearing jacket and tie in offices and classrooms---"so-called poems" published and posted around the world, sporadically, for decades---author of People I Met Hitchhiking On USA Highways (read a review) and How To Change the World Forever For Better---perpetual polymath student, synthesizer of specialists' insights and methods, solo consultant regarding space exploration and accidents involving obsolete industrial machinery---album of songs Solid and Sound---hitchhiked back and forth between the Pacific and Atlantic, sleeping out for years and subsisting on water and sunflower seeds, stapling a series of 1500 posters he made to utility poles, inciting whoever saw them to seize the responsibility for their own lives---governing without coalition or means of or inclination to coerce or confiscate, from below, approximately invisible.

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Former Mayor Villaraigosa Immortalized In Smooth L.A. Metro Sound Bite

2013-05-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE
Los Angeles

In an attempt to pay homage to former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his eight years of service to the city, the LA Metro clan has outfitted every bus in the city with a short, but charming audio clip of the mayor saying, in his hoarse, but silky mafioso's voice, "For your safety, please watch your step when exiting the bus."

The audio clip is played before every single stop. It's a fitting tribute to a legendary mayor, and it should have him blushing. While he continues to get free VIP tickets to the nation's favorite TV shows, like Dancing with the Stars and American Idol, he can be assured by the thought of a few thousand people throughout the city hearing his voice, and word of caution, again and again, before every screeching stop of the bus.

This information is not public. City Hall would not confirm it. It's only a rumor, but a very convincing one. I heard it on the bus the other day, from a man who looked as professional as people who ride the bus can. We're a ragged lot, those of us crammed into that clunky orange or red can. Some of us smell bad. Some of us smell too fresh. Some of us are crazy, and others of us are unnervingly sane.

My informant that day was an Hispanic man with a bowed jawline. He was wearing a button-up blue shirt. The hair on the top of his head was spiked and shiny from the gel he must have rubbed through it that morning. The fog of cheap cologne, heavily applied, clung around him.

"That's the mayor talking," he said to me, pointing up.

We sat in the back of the bus. The mayor? I asked. I'd suddenly become paranoid. Where's that quirky little guy? I imagined him ping-ponging through the bus, bouncing on the shoulders of those standing in the aisle and holding tight to the bars overhead. Nice to meet you, the mayor said into everybody's ears. He ruffled an old man's hair and elbowed a woman in the ribs. Nice to meet ya, nice to meet ya, nice to meet ya.

Never lacking energy, that guy.

"He's on the sound system," my fellow bus rider said, "it's over now, but before the next stop, you'll hear it again." He explained that the city of Los Angeles wanted to memorialize Villaraigosa, who'd just finished out his full two terms and was replaced by the newly elected Eric Garcetti (who is already being labeled in some coffee shop conversations as "a prick").

I pulled out my smartphone and set to record the mayor's voice, and also determine if this man was telling me the truth. L.A.'s public transport system is filled with bullshitters, including the bus drivers.

But sure enough, before the next stop, that old gangster's voice piped through the bus with that signature, buoyant charm that the former mayor embodies. The voice that makes, at any given time, a dozen or more pairs of panties drop (as the kids say).

"For your safety," the mayor's voice said, and then, after a collected pause, continued, "please watch your step when exiting the bus."

"I know that voice anywhere," the Hispanic man said. "I love how the mayor says the word 'bus'." He tried to mimic the word four times, but he couldn't quite hit the pitch.

It's smooth, and surely a nice tribute to the former mayor, I said. It's like he's riding along with us on the public transport system. Riding along in our hearts and minds, and if you forget about him, his voice will remind you of his presence every minute or so. It's a brilliant idea by Metro, or the mayor's former administration. Whoever concocted the plan certainly knew how to plant the seeds to sprout a long term, unforgettable legacy.

The Hispanic man agreed. He checked his watch. He was off to the courthouse, he said, to stand in line for an hour and try to hammer out a lawsuit he was waging against a construction company that had failed to compensate him after he'd had an extended heat stroke as a high-rise welder. He'd nearly died, and had suffered minor brain damage, he revealed.

"But," he said, getting back to the topic at hand, "I'm glad the city dedicates a special space like the bus to Villaraigosa. Where else would so many people hear his voice day in and day out?"

I agreed. It's like being included in a city-wide toast, I said, with cheap champagne poured from a bottle that had been opened long ago and forgotten in the back of some bureaucrat's break room refrigerator. And all you'd asked for was a glass of water.

The man, I never did catch his name, just looked at me for a moment. Soon, we were both staring out the windows, watching dilapidated business fronts blow by, homeless people pushing carts filled with cans, blankets, and indistinguishable items, and then on to grander, cleaner streets and restaurants, where people roamed around wearing over-sized Kings jerseys over jeans or professional business trousers.

Ah, big beautiful city! Bursting with... but words can't finish that thought. Bursting with what? It's too dynamic and complicated for blog posts. You've got to feel thoughts like that. They need to wrench your gut. I won't even attempt to describe it. What words would I use, anyway? Just the same mediocre crap. Tired, worn sentiments.

But I did lean over and tell the Hispanic man, Riding the bus is like a small tour of Los Angeles, from Culver City to downtown, clanging along this troubled Olympic Boulevard.

But my friend didn't say anything. He was lost in his own mind.

SEE ALSO

The streets in L.A. are in utter disrepair

L.A. filmmaker's "rebranding" of Abercrombie & Fitch turns into downtown debacle

The Shell Ferrari, the bright yellow extension of his manhood

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Justified Injudiciality

2013-05-24T17:04:00.000-07:00

DAN RUDY
North Dakota

Greetings, dear dirty Americans! This sort of thing has been discussed before, I know, but the War on Terror doggedly refuses to end, continuing as it does to monster the general consciousness.

In a letter addressed to Committee on the Judiciary chairman Senator Patrick Leahy, US Attorney General Eric Holder admits that the government's drone programme has killed four American citizens. While the bulk of the letter focuses on the targeted killing of al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki and that course's legal justification and precedents, it pays but brief mention to the other three killed, who were:

Jude Mohammad, implicated in the Raleigh jihadi conspiracy of 2009, in which eight men (seven citizens and a naturalised Albanian) of varying ages were charged with advocating and plotting acts of terror in the US. Those convicted in the case got anywhere from several to no more than twenty years in prison, a far cry from the death penalty meted out to Mohammad. Ostensibly to visit his father, but possibly to become involved in the insurgencies of its tribal areas, he had moved to Pakistan shortly before the arrests were made. He was reportedly killed in a drone strike in Pakistan in 2011.
Samir Khan, certainly a vocal supporter of violent acts against the United States, but not linked as a plotter of or direct participant in them. A one-time glee club member and writer for his high school newspaper in America, shortly before graduating Khan began to embrace an extremist brand of Islam, blogging and eventually becoming an editor for al-Qaeda's online magazine Inspire. Never specifically targeted for destruction, he was collaterally killed in al-Awlaki's convoy while traveling in Yemen.
Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was Anwar's 16 year old son, killed only weeks after his father. He was one of ten people accidentally killed in a strike meant for Egyptian al-Qaeda leader Ibrahim al-Banna. Abdulrahman had no ties to terrorism, and was said to have been on his way to a barbecue.

All three were US citizens, and despite the justifications given by Mr. Holder, were "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," contrary to rights enshrined in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution. In his letter, the attorney general sluffs these aside, essentially rationalising their deaths as the result of keeping bad company.

As the president is fond of saying, make no mistake. Holder ultimately makes an unsatisfying case for the drone programme, citing emergency measures questionably adopted during the world wars as suitable precedents. Three conditions are given as necessary to target an American citizen abroad (he actually underlines in a foreign country), that the government determines "after a thorough and careful review" that the individual is an imminent threat, cannot be otherwise captured, and that the action be held to an "applicable law of war principles".

Of the four, Anwar al-Awlaki is made the focus of this apologetic because he can be held in some degree to meet those conditions. Thus the glossing over of the others, where no thorough or careful review was given. They weren't specifically targeted, to be sure, yet their deaths raise another question, as to the general efficacy of the use of drones as vehicles of assassination. Evidence found in leaked documentation and otherwise available online (grains-of-salt required) would suggest they are anything but dependably or discerningly used.

With its 'signature strike' tactics, alleged and highly illegal 'double-tap' attacks targeting first responders, murky oversight, and a total lack of accountability, the drone programme is most certainly a national mistake. Rather than making America safer, Predator drones are sloppily sowing the seeds for future conflict and inflaming the underlying factors contributory to militant religious extremism.

Far from surgical, it has been a socially, morally disfiguring experience.

* * *

Dan Rudy is living the American dream, writing for a community newspaper and developing ulcers during the tedious course of proofreading articles. In his spare time he drinks heavily, and occasionally posts things to Dear Dirty America and his page at sluffabout.com.

Zest's Aqua Soap Makes Water 'Wetter', but Could Desiccate A Cockroach: Product Review

2013-05-21T15:19:00.002-07:00

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE
Los Angeles

photo by Adam Michael Luebke, Dear Dirty America --
if you want to use this image, email me and tell me how you will
use it to change the world

(editor's note: product reviews are not pleasant creatures in the literary world, but sometimes they need to be written. They can be effective, such as when I wrote about Buick's LaCrosse and its dangerous electric power steering. Not that Buick fixed the problem -- that would be too costly. It's cheaper to risk a few fiery crashes. Lastly, as any good reviewer knows to do, I must claim that I have not received any compensation from any of the reviewed products' companies -- not Zest, not anybody. I'm the real deal here.)

I suppose this soap does what soap is meant to do: make water 'wetter'. In that way, Zest's Aqua scented soap is a success. It lathers instantly, and it works to wash away the dirt and the grime and the dried sweat and the dead skin and the less-talked-about areas plagued by accumulated, microscopic fecal matter.

Despite those beneficial qualities, there was something baneful about Zest's Aqua scent. With some anticipation, I cracked open that first stiff cardboard box from the pack of 8, and stepped into the shower. I slathered the frothy discharge from the pale green bar of soap over my body. My eyes started to feel irritated. But only slightly.

By the time I was out of the shower, I could smell the Zest Aqua wafting off my skin. A distressing cocktail of chemicals. A scent that threatens to dry and strip clean the velvety linings of your nasal passages when you breathe it in. A scent that throws your cells into disarray, and jostles loose your DNA supercoils.

I soon pinned down what exactly the soap smelled like by remembering an encounter with a friend.

I wouldn't have known, had I not recently been to my friend's tiny prison cell apartment just off of Wilshire and Western. He's a writer, too, and a musician. He'd just moved in, and found he had a cockroach infestation. The first day I came to visit, with a piping hot vegetarian lasagna freshly cooked and steaming in a flimsy aluminum tray, he whisked me inside. I carried my house-warming dish to his kitchen and set it on the counter top.

What is that smell? I asked. My eyes began to twitch. My vision wavered. My mouth curled into a snarl. I couldn't help it. I was under the influence of noxious chemicals wafting into the air.

My friend fidgeted a bit, but he's never been a shy person. "I've got roaches," he said, "and I just sprayed the bejesus out of the kitchen."

In 1991, a New York Times article claimed humans had made a real dent in the national roach population, I told him, because the available pesticides had become so effective. Now we're in 2013, so there should be a lot of hope in solving your situation.

He pointed to the counter top. I saw the glistening walls, just below the cupboards. I noticed the slick wet tiles on the counter. Then, in the corner, that striking black canister with the yellow letters and silhouette of the offending insect on its back, its squiggly legs poking upward.

He'd soaked the place with Raid's roach killer (shall I review that product, as well, and mention how it smells as fragrant as Zest's Aqua soap? Maybe that's a compliment for the Raid people -- they're in the business of 'cleaning up' too.)

Days later I needed soap. I went to the local grocery store to get garlic, five Red Delicious apples, two small cartons of blackberries, Quaker Oats cereal with good fiber content, and a pound brown rice (I remember it all specifically because I have a problem forgetting trivial things, which is why I'm almost always at my wits' end).

I hadn't come thinking about Zest. It had been more than a decade since I'd used that brand. But fate is a funny thing. I chose the Zest family pack. Not that I possess a family. But eight bars of this Aqua fragrance soap seemed like one hell of a deal at the time. Now I'm stuck with so much of. And there's so much goddamned soap on the shelves from which to choose.

Like toilet paper. It just doesn't end. Americans think they live in the greatest nation on earth because there are entire aisles at the grocery store dedicated to soap, or diapers, or chips, or soda, or cereal. But most people don't realize it's an illusion. A farce. A trap. A mind game.

It's all the same shit on the shelves, really. Most of it is cheap and worthless, or without nutrition. Most of it is interchangeable. Much of it is made by the same companies.

However, most of us feel powerful when we finally make that decision on what soap to buy. It's like we made a huge decision. Right up there with the president, as he decides who to kill overseas, and who to spare. That's how in control we feel when selecting products at the grocery store.

Sure, it's not as if you tell yourself this consciously. This is a deep, dark subconscious feeling. The uncoiling expression of power and individuality, springing through your brain. Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, you feel, as you fill your shopping cart how you want to fill it. Not how the Man wants you to. Not how the bloody corporations want you to. Not how your overbearing mother did it, either.

Shit, you'll choose the product you want. Fuck the rest. You vote with your dollars. Or your food stamps. The American people are a fierce people. Including you.

You're in charge. Americans are in charge. Which is what sets us apart from every other country. Americans are the great choosers.

This review has taken a wayward path, but we've stumbled to the end. The diagnosis is this: Zest's Aqua soap certainly makes water 'wetter', but its scent could desiccate a cockroach.

SEE ALSO

Color Icon releases startling ad depicting how Americans really feel

Big deals at Walmart

The end of the tissue roll: when reality hits hard

"Like" Dear Dirty America on Facebook

Shell Ferrari: The Bright Yellow Extension Of His Manhood

2013-05-20T15:14:00.001-07:00

Just look at the other types of vehicles around--
does that yellow toy not seem goofy among them?

(if the driver of this car is in any way linked to the Italian, Jewish, or Romanian mafia, I could be in trouble. I could end up dead, or with broken bones, or both. I used to be in the German mafia, but we turned out to be more of a culture and fine arts club, so there's very little protection there. If, however, this driver is just one lucky bloke who was awarded for sucking Shell's nozzle hard enough and long enough, with exceptional firmness and deftness, I'm in considerably less danger...)

The pleasant afternoon was disrupted by a snarling, sleek yellow sports car trolling past my apartment complex.

My poor, working class neighborhood, close to downtown Los Angeles, hardly gets such a show. It's like having a professional clown wearing a yellow suit with a puff of red hair and honking a horn come rolling through on a squeaky unicycle. Sure, we all stop what we're doing, smile and stare, but it kind of pisses us off, too.

Yes, it would be with great enthusiasm and joy that I would open up that car on the freeway, had I the chance. The car's poor suspension and thin rubber tires would have me bouncing around inside like a ping pong ball. The sole of my right foot would be tingling with the low-end rumbling vibrating the floorboards.

Of course I would feel like a superstar parking in the litter-strewn local Ralph's grocery store lot and hopping out of a car that looks like a large version of my favorite childhood Hot Wheels model. The homeless drunk couple with the dirty faces, who sit slouched at the cement tables out front, would no doubt catch a second wind at the sight of that vibrant yellow. It might even turn their lives around.

Sponsored by Shell?
How many Nigerian activists died
to make this car possible?

But could I drive such a vehicle?

Having a garish yellow Ferrari is a false measure of success. Whatever that person did to earn or collect the money necessary to own that car is only a shadow of the inner deficiency of anybody clueless enough to drive it in public. It's a satirical way of displaying personal wealth.

It's like attaching an enormous golden penis to the outside of your pants and walking through rich and poor neighborhoods alike so everybody can catch a glimpse of the glimmering thing. And if you're really desperate, you'll hook a clanging bell just below the shiny testicles to alert people over a block away that you'll be there soon. (The sentiment behind that act would be, "If you didn't think I had a big one before, well, now you know....")

That's how I would feel driving down the freeway in a car like that. A car so uncommon, and so bright, people have to look. Like an enormous yellow penis. I'd feel exposed. Overdone. Desperate. My internal issues ripped inside out and on display for everyone.

That man feels incompetent, I could hear my fellow motorists thinking, as I blow by them in their Honda Civics, Toyotas, and Fords. That man doesn't feel accomplished on the inside, so there he is, making sure you can't miss him on the outside. That man has trouble pleasing his wife in bed. That man was teased in high school and never got over it. That man was never good at sports. That man never felt adequate in the workplace. And so on.

I think writer and activist Eric Chaet laid it out best in his 'so-called poem' Achievement, where he imagines himself attaining, through the first twenty-four thorough lines, various measures of wild success, but he writes at the end, if "...there is as much suffering as when I began / and as much injustice... / ...then I will have achieved nothing worth mentioning." Including that banging yellow Ferrari.

Yes, yes, I know I'm a bit of a hypocrite

Because I want to someday win a Pulitzer for this blog, I'll come clean right now about a glaring inconsistency. For those who are familiar with Dear Dirty America, you'll know I've tried to manifest the Jaguar XK sports car. You may think, because of what I've written above, I've become a hypocrite. Well, kind of. A Jaguar sports car is excessive and silly, and it would be me pumping up my ego by trying to suggest to other people that I am, somehow, or some way, richer and more important than they are.

However, a white Jaguar is not a banana slug yellow Ferrari. It is also about three times cheaper. And, if I were blessed with that Jaguar, I'd drive my less fortunate friends around, like downtown Johnny, Frank, and the infamous wheatgrass juicer, Marlin.

The worst part about the vehicle in the picture is the Shell logos printed to its back bumper. Who would advertise for such an atrocious company? Human rights abusers. Environment killers. It's bad enough to have to buy their gasoline (which we're forced to buy because our taxpayer dollars subsidize Big Oil and stamp out other cleaner, greener energies from being introduced into the mainstream market and made affordable).

Perhaps the driver of the vehicle cut a deal with Shell. That means he's a whore. It's a classier version of prostitution than what most of us are used to, but it's still prostitution.

The other worst part about all of this is how loud the car is. It sputters and spits and snarls like it's got a snag in its throat.

A quick and excessive descent into Hell...

It's the sound Satan makes before he hawks a fat slug of mucus into his scaly palm, and then wipes it in Richard Nixon's hair. It's obvious to most people that Nixon is in hell (I don't think that's a stretch), seated at the splintered table reserved for dignitaries. It's a table that constantly sheds slivers into the soft forearms of those chained to sit around it. Of course, everybody at that dignitaries' table has shed their suit jackets, shirts, ties, and slacks, because it's just so damned hot. This leaves little protection against getting slivers.

Nixon arrived in Hell on Air Force One --
at first, he thought he'd touched down in Heaven...

Each dignitary is forced to eat his favorite meal, again and again, until he vomits on what's left, and then he must start eating again. There is no guard standing watch to make sure each member at the table stuffs his face every minute of every hour of every day. Rather, it's an internal urge, a necessity, a fate, that these men and women must keep eating. As miserable as they are pushing their favorites meals down their throats and into their bulging guts, they are even more miserable when they stop.

There is also the slow buildup of gas in the lower intestines. The loads of chewed food press the stomach and small intestines into the bursting lower intestinal pockets of gas, but alas, not one of those men or women are able to fart until the end of the week, when they all let it out at once, but to very little relief, as they must keep eating, and then, for the whole rest of that day, the smell lingers heavy and high in the air. By the time the odor fades, a new batch of gas has begun roiling in their guts, and they have six more days of enduring it until that long moment of release, and tiny moment of relief.

And it is with great humor that Satan watches Richard Nixon frantically try to wipe out that thick string of mucus in his hair, and suffering as he does so because he isn't eating. Meanwhile, the mucus mixes with the sweat and creeps over Nixon's wrinkled brow and into his eyes, where the mucus and the sweat is then mixed with his tears, and the whole concoction slides down his jowls, which are, forever and ever, glistening with fried chicken grease that splatters, from time to time, off his plate.

That frothy, thickened solution drips off of Nixon's rounded chin and onto the drumsticks and gourmet meatloaf stacked on his plate.

And, back to street level...

Anyway, the Ferrari outside my window is loud. What I mean to say is, there's an awful lot of low-end racket before the car actually takes off. The engine sounds touchy, temperamental. I can take off in my Chevy, and nobody knows it. I used to consider that a selling point. The less social disturbance, the better.

But the wealthier you get, the more noise you've got to make. The more cages you've got to rattle. The more intense the colors must be. The whiter your teeth must get. It would be a damn shame to be filthy rich and nobody outside of your family knew it.

SEE ALSO

Manifesting an illegally parked Jaguar XK

Marring my clean slate with a tin-can rental car

Doctor: men my age are killed by cars & other men

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Los Angeles Filmaker's Abercrombie & Fitch "Rebranding" Turns Into Downtown Debacle

2013-05-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE
Los Angeles

photo by Kim Scarborough

(editor's note: I didn't get to snap a picture, as it didn't seem like the proper thing to do at the time, so instead there are visual representations of the coveted A&F apparel on homeless folks posted throughout this article. The pictures are for educational purposes only.)

I had no idea that what I'd witnessed in my favorite downtown coffee shop was a residual effect of Los Angeles filmmaker Greg Karber's attempt to "rebrand" the exclusive retailer, Abercrombie & Fitch, by handing out used A&F apparel to homeless folks on Skid Row. It wasn't until I got home, read the news, and made the connection.

I sat at a chipped wooden table in the corner of the shop. It was the kind of table that makes you wonder who's been there before you, and what they were thinking about, and if they're still alive today. And soon you begin thinking about how much long you're going to live, and how many more coffees you might drink. Before long you're snared in a mental swirl like that bug you maliciously washed down the bathtub drain before stepping in to take a shower.

All the while I'd been enjoying a strong cup of coffee when a middle aged black man shuffled in. I didn't think much of him, except that his hair was smattered into clumps.

Not a bad look for Abercrombie
-- photo by Pattymooney

When the man didn't go to the counter to order, I looked up. He stood, with his back to me, at the table with the various canisters of cream and milk, and packets of raw and processed sugars, and stir sticks. There was also a large glass water container with a quaint metal spigot. Plastic glasses were stacked beside it.

The man wore a denim, long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I only noticed the shirt because I had been thinking about getting a new one, and I liked the professional cut of the one he wore. Tapered at the sides. The material didn't billow outward at its ends, but instead hugged his waist. Who made that shirt? I wanted to ask, but the energy didn't feel right.

The man turned partly toward me. He held a plastic cup normally used for water, but filled with milk, or creamer. With a flip of his wrist, he tossed the liquid into his open mouth. He grabbed the metal milk container and poured himself more. A homeless man. Come to pinch some milk. From the back, I couldn't even tell! And there I'd been, admiring his threads.

I glanced at the chubby barista standing next to the cash register and below a giant menu. Her long hair was dyed a dull orange at the ends. The hair hung around both sides of her face, and draped over her bulbous breasts, which were casually squashed against the counter and arced nearly into her chin.

When the man looked at me, I smiled. He smiled back. He was missing most of his front teeth. His beard was gnarled and grimy. He reached up and scratched his scalp, buried beneath the tangled hair. Underneath that open denim shirt I admired, he wore a very tight white tee with huge black letters on the front. A F. His lower belly noticeably bulged against the fabric.

He saw me glance at the barista again. I was waiting for her to tell him he had to buy something, or leave. He too looked at her, but she only smiled. "Oi mami," he said, or something like that.

From behind the counter, a heavy-set bald man popped his head around the corner. "Hey," he hollered, "get out of here!"

The man tipped the glass and let the smooth white liquid pour into his mouth. He dribbled a bit on his beard. His Adam's apple bobbed once. Almost like raising a fist of defiance, I thought. His eyes were bloodshot.

Tough, weathered, but sharp.

Behind the counter, the owner berated the Latina barista. "How long has he been here? How many cups of milk have you allowed him to drink? We don't let these guys come in here and drink the milk for free. You know that! Why didn't you kick him out right away?"

The owner's hostile tone was not as intimidating as it could have been, because it was apparent by the light smacking sounds of his dry lips and tongue that he desperately needed a drink of water.

"I didn't know," the barista said, but before she could finish the owner jumped in to ask, "What didn't you know?"

"I didn't know he was homeless," she said. "He's wearing Abercrombie and Fitch."

She had a point there, I thought. This homeless man was, in a way, undercover. Meanwhile, he poured himself another small cup of milk and threw it into his open mouth. His aim was not perfect, and another dribble of white liquid colored his dark beard.

"He's wearing what?" the owner said. His face was beet red. His lips bared back and his tiny teeth were showing. I could tell, all the way from my corner table, that he was a man who ground them during the day, and then gnashed them with even more conviction at night. He'd been turning his pearls into powder for a few decades, with all the stress of running a business in downtown Los Angeles.

I could imagine what he was thinking: it's difficult enough to turn a profit in this economy, and now we've got bums dressed in professional clothing stopping by for freebies, and the goddamn younger generations of clueless baristas are not savvy enough to avoid being fooled by the true derelict behind the expensive clothing.

"Abercrombie and Fitch," she said again. "It's pretty expensive clothing."

"Jesus!" the owner said, and slammed his palm onto the counter.

I watched the homeless man stroll away, probably satisfied with his belly full of cool milk.

"What is this world coming to?" he continued. "We've got bums walking around wearing expensive cool-kid outfits. I've got an employee who thinks wearing Abercrombie and Fitch makes a person more legitimate, so he can come right in here and take whatever he wants, and she's not going to say anything because she recognizes his brand name clothing."

He shook his head. The barista apologized. She had a huge frown on her face. She was confused. She'd done everything wrong. "It was only a little milk," she finally said.

"About six cups," the owner said, and retreated back to his office, or whatever was behind the counter. Two seconds later, he called out, "And make sure that milk is full!"

photo by Alex Proimos

The barista lifted the hatch in the counter and stepped out to check on the milk. She glanced at me. "It still feels full," she said, as she lifted the canister and held it next to her chest. "He was wearing Abercrombie, right?" she asked me. "It was like a whole outfit."

I'm no expert, I said, but I'm not sure what else that huge A and F could stand for. Unless he's a fan of Aretha Franklin. Or Anne Frank.

She said, "I think I've seen him before, but usually he's got on a black shirt with holes in it. It threw me off."

Don't feel bad, I said, sometimes companies have homeless people model their clothes because of that rugged, rustic look that nobody else can get without living on the streets for a few years first.

I said this not knowing that we'd just run into a direct result of that local filmmaker's efforts to try to burn a popular retail chain by handing out the brand name garments to disenfranchised folks. When I found out, I wasn't sure who should be more offended, the reluctant homeless people, or Abercrombie's CEO Mike Jeffries.

First of all, the Abercrombie & Fitch debacle as of late is a non-issue. Yes, it gives everybody on Facebook a fresh topic to bitch about. It's easier to understand the politics behind A&F's discrimination of certain body types than it is to read up about the Federal Reserve's continued quantitative easing, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and the LIBOR scandal.

But, with all the real issues going on in this country and world, a retailer that chooses to make their clothing for a limited body type is perfectly within the limits of the Constitution, and it's their right to risk alienating an enormous percentage of an overweight American population.

In fact, my tall, thin skeleton body has trouble finding clothes that fit. Either too short or too wide, because it seems most retailers stock up on the most common sizes that fit the popular range of American body types. I love a finely tapered shirt, yet sometimes they're difficult to find for my build. If it wasn't for the silliness of their advertising, and their brain dead, superficial look, I'd give Abercrombie & Fitch a try.

Secondly, while doing a nice deed for homeless folks (giving them a free shirt or pants), filmmaker Greg Karber intentionally sought out the least attractive folks in Los Angeles, stuffed them like scarecrows into specially tailored clothes they could never afford, all with the hope of pissing off that demon Mike Jeffries and making a statement doing it.

He's called for all of us to fish out our old Abercrombie & Fitch apparel and hand them out to homeless people. It's an attempt to fire up a circus sideshow, and use people who couldn't give two shits about designer clothes. Let's get the most washed out, struggling human beings in this country to sport this company's clothes. It'll be a great photo-op. It will embarrass A&F. It'll be a hoot.

Either way, that A&F denim shirt fit that homeless man very well. He had an air of confidence in it. The shirt underneath was less appealing. I'm convinced this anti-Abercrombie move is in the right direction for the mega outfitter, as it makes the cravings for the brand among the trendies and self-proclaimed "cool kids" that much more intense.

SEE ALSO

Get to the corner! Chris Rock from a parallel universe

Manifesting money with an old friend amid numerous distractions downtown

Neither of you are real men: the proof is in the sperm counts

"Like" Dear Dirty America on Facebook

Doing Business With Bangladesh

2013-05-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

JOHN BENNETT

photo by Fahad Faisal

(re-posted from Bennett's Shard email list -- to get on the list, see bottom of page)

The Committee for the People of Bangladesh hired a Canadian PR firm to see what could be done to get the people of the United States to muster a little empathy for the one thousand plus garment workers who perished in the eight-story collapsible sweat shop in roughly the same time frame that the pressure-cooker bombs went off at the Boston Marathon. Because mutilation, not death, was the hallmark of the Boston Marathon disaster, resulting in a number of limb amputations, the PR firm played up the lost-limb angle, pointing out that many of those who didn't die in the Bangladesh disaster had to have limbs amputated in order to free them from the rubble of the collapsed building. But the tactic backfired--the majority of U.S. citizens felt that the people of Bangladesh were trying to make light of the Boston tragedy. The firm shifted its emphasis back to the death toll, but their efforts were met with indifference.

Then an up-and-coming ladder climber brainstormed the clothing angle, claiming that anywhere from 60 to 80% of the clothing worn by participants in the Boston Marathon was made in Bangladesh sweat shops, and wiping out a thousand highly experienced sweat-shop workers in one fell swoop meant those vacancies would be filled by less experienced workers, and for a time the quality of the clothing reaching the U.S. from Bangladesh would be spotty at best--seams unraveling, soles flapping off shoes, colors running in the wash.

The average America, who now buys most of his clothing at Good Will, was unmoved, but marathon runners and sport-oriented people in general did go into mourning, not for the dead workers, but over the projected decline in the quality of goods from Bangladesh.

A committee was formed, made up of members of various sports organizations, and in short order a petition was put in circulation to stop doing business with Bangladesh until the quality of their goods improved.

Find John Bennett's novels, short stories, and shards at Hcolom Press. You can contact him, or get on his Shards list at dasleben@fairpoint.net.

Read a review of his novel Children of the Sun & Earth here

Mark Sanford, from Mistress to Meditation

2013-05-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

At least the guy is living. That's the first thought I had about the latest news concerning South Carolina's former governor, Mark Sanford, and his cherished meditation routine.

Sanford recently won back his congressional seat by narrowly defeating Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

It's no wonder the man has learned to meditate, and meditate a lot. I myself can testify to the deep relaxation brought about by sitting quietly and monitoring my breathing through my nose, in and out, in and out, and so on. Please see Good morning, stress gurus

Sanford, if you don't remember, is the infamous politician who went missing for six days in 2009. The media went into a frenzy. How did we lose the governor of South Carolina? Sanford's spokesman, doing a bit of quick thinking, told the media the governor was out hiking the Appalachian Trail (later, that would become a euphemism for coitus).

When Sanford reappeared, he admitted he'd been in the arms of an Argentine journalist with a beautiful name: Maria Belén Chapur. They'd met in 2001, and the friendship had turned passionate in 2008. After the governor arrived back in the United States, he admitted he'd been having an extramarital affair, and that he, indeed, loved this other woman. He called her his soul mate. Currently, they're engaged.

You can't deny the heart very easily. That's what I like about Mark Sanford. Sure, he should have told his wife about it, rather than hurt her like he did, but there's still something remarkable about a man (or woman) who follows his passion, rather than going through the motions of every day life and only dreaming of what's really pulsing in his heart.

And now, Sanford is into meditation. Which is dear to my heart. Sitting still for even fifteen minutes each day, without the TV on, without music, without being on the phone, without a bowl of ice cream, without thinking, and without masturbating (that's a different sort of meditation, ask this priest), but just sitting still, and being aware of your body.

Mark Sanford gets it.

From the Huffington Post:

"I've tried to be disciplined about a quiet time each day," he said.

Sanford also advocated for the importance of being present, particularly when interacting with voters while on the campaign trail ("You're present with them, you actually can have a real conversation."). Although Sanford says he identifies as a Christian, he subscribes to the Buddhist concept of mindfulness (click over to Yahoo! for more on that).

Research has linked mindfulness meditation -- the practice of cultivating a nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment -- to lowering levels of the stress hormone cortisol, improving emotional stability and sleep quality, boostingcompassion and supporting weight-loss goals, among other health benefits.

If you happen to know Mark Sanford, please pass this video of OSHO onto him. He'll like it. If you don't know him, you can watch it yourself:

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Success After All

2013-05-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

ERIC CHAET

(please visit 100 Peculiarly Useful So-Called Poems for more)

To fail in life, in competition
for honors, wealth, power, pleasure
is bound to be bitter
tho you were mainly trying to transform the competition
not win it
& your rivals were fully invested in winning
but to gather your self & not be bitter anyway
to enjoy being alive & the world---
a flying bird, dawn, a meal, breath, water, a friendly voice
your own striding, a tune, rhythm
the Moon, tho it seems to have no use
& the deeds heroes have left for your use
generally acknowledged tho misunderstood
or as generally disregarded as what you've done so far---
tho the competition & misjudgment
are such a vital part of the world---
& to keep competing
not retreat into consolations refined
as tho endlessly, tho an end is imminent
in order to change the misjudgment
however much it's a long shot
however much you've been disappointed
to use your experience
& not to comfort yourself
because what you've been doing & saying
is right
which is true in a way
but also just an abstraction without any traction
to continue when others assume you're beat
or retired or dead already
when everyone---
except those you're still trying to reach & work with!---
has raced ahead of you
in competition you refused to make your priority---
you only needed rations to persist---
to get over your weariness, sourness, self-pity
even tho you don't know any more than you ever did
how to do what has never been done
ever, as far as you know
& thereby change everything
not just to stick with your principles to the end
& die virtuous, integrity intact
but to apply what you know & must yet learn
& use all the energy that disregards you
to disassemble & reassemble & re-aim
the engines, armies, corporations, logistic chains
& bureaucracies & part-true ideologies & base customs
that have captivated people's hearts & minds & hands
& are enforced by deluded or resentful technicians
which everyone must make themselves components of
or be ground down---
to succeed---
not the success of those who betray everyone
to get whatever they hope to get or die trying
to really succeed---
not once & for all---but again & again
like breathing in & out & sleeping & waking---
to be the seed in an ocean of dirt & the seed's extension
pushing its heavy way up & breaking thru the surface
into the sublimity of breezes & nourishing light
where gears shift, & production begins
of fruits that produce seeds in their turn
tho delicious & delightful themselves, tho eaten.

Eric Chaet, born Chicago, 1945, South Side, beaten, denigrated, sinking, swimming---servant of a refractory nation and species, sweating laborer in factories and warehouses, wearing jacket and tie in offices and classrooms---"so-called poems" published and posted around the world, sporadically, for decades---author of People I Met Hitchhiking On USA Highways (read a review) and How To Change the World Forever For Better---perpetual polymath student, synthesizer of specialists' insights and methods, solo consultant regarding space exploration and accidents involving obsolete industrial machinery---album of songs Solid and Sound---hitchhiked back and forth between the Pacific and Atlantic, sleeping out for years and subsisting on water and sunflower seeds, stapling a series of 1500 posters he made to utility poles, inciting whoever saw them to seize the responsibility for their own lives---governing without coalition or means of or inclination to coerce or confiscate, from below, approximately invisible.

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Get To The Corner! Chris Rock From A Parallel Universe

2013-05-08T15:15:00.001-07:00

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE
Los Angeles

photo by planetc1

The same grungy black dude strolls up to Tierra Mia coffee on Spring Street every time I'm there. The bottoms of his dark jeans are torn. His black t-shirt is tattered. He's always got a wild look in his eyes. Dangerously playful.

He moves fast, which makes people nervous. I don't know his name. I'm not sure he knows it. Every time I'm at the coffee shop, this man bounds over to the outside chairs and tables and sits against the shop's windowsill. If there's a chair in the way, he yanks it from his path and leans against his perch.

From there he hollers or laughs. It's a booming sound that ricochets against the buildings and sidewalk. The noise sticks in my ears for a few seconds after he's finished making it. When people walk past the coffee shop, he launches into a tirade, but his words are not usually distinguishable. They sound like a series of barks and yaps, yips and howls.

Today, he laughed and laughed. How can anybody's voice be that loud? It is only drowned out when the bus stops. When that orange box roars away, the man is still laughing. He leans forward and takes a peek down the street. His mouth looks like Chris Rock's mouth. Big, pearly white teeth. Thin black mustache. Full lips that, when opened, unleash a torrent of sound.

photo by
David Shankbone

In fact, the man could be Chris Rock in a parallel universe, where he suffered a few twists of bad luck and ended up entertaining audiences in his mind instead of in big city theaters throughout the world. On this plane, there's only room for one Chris Rock, and once one of them makes it, the rest must perish.

I remember a professor of mine telling me that California lets the crazy people loose. Ever since Reagan was in office. What state has money to rehabilitate people? "They give them a few days of medication and turn them loose on the streets. They're the ones who aren't harmless. Or at least they aren't perceived to be harmless."

What if this guy cuts loose one day? He always seems two minutes from coming unglued. What if he starts swinging his fists? Or overturns tables like Christ in the tabernacle? Or picks up the flattened squirrel laying in the gutter and hurls it at the nearest table of friendly folks sipping coffee? What's to stop him? For most of us, it's a paycheck and a social reputation. We can't act like we truly feel. But what incentive does he have in life to keep from going ballistic?

"Get your ass to the corner," a gruff voice calls from behind me. My cup of gourmet coffee cools in the breeze. It's called the Mexico Cup of Excellence coffee. The man hops off the windowsill and says, "Aaaaaahhhh." It's partly a growl. Partly the beginning of a word. Again, it sounds like Chris Rock. There's a childish quality to it. But this order is not coming from the man's mother. Two policemen stroll by, watching the man hop and skip to the corner. They have guns, batons, Tasers, pepper spray, and handcuffs.

The black dude is gone. Around the corner. Somewhere else. Suddenly, I'm no longer irritated with him. Why can't he sit there? He wasn't hurting anyone. He's just a little bothersome. But where else is he supposed to go? Where do people who don't have any money go? Pershing Square? To sit with all the other non-people who don't have money to spend. Relegated to the homeless park, where most people have loosened mental filters.

I don't blame the policemen. They know the black guy. They've dealt with him before. It's obvious by how quickly he reacts to their command. Not only do I feel bad for the crazy man, I'm also slightly relieved the police are making the rounds. Like I said, what would we do if that guy started going bonkers? I wouldn't want to jump on him. I wouldn't want to put his face into the cement and say to him, in my John Wayne voice, "You'd better settle down, son."

But the man is not a monster, I don't think. So he unleashes occasional bursts of sound out of his mouth. He's the Spring Street canary, except with an alarming howl instead of a tweetie-tweet.

There are businesses everywhere along the streets. Eateries. Bars. Coffee shops. Bookstores. Wine shops. Marketplaces. Electronics stores. Clothing outfitters.

A person without money isn't welcome in front of any of them. A homeless person isn't welcome anywhere, really. That's why they keep moving. Walking around the block. Trudging tirelessly through the neighborhood in their floppy boots, ripped sneakers, or bare feet. All the public spaces are bought up. The commons are gone. Nobody wants a lean bum with a scavenger's face stalking out front. Lunch tastes better without realizing there are more hungry people within that one square mile of downtown Los Angeles than you could possibly feed. Indulging in a good cup of coffee is soured when you're reminded every few seconds of the basic, unsolved problems of poverty in this society.

The police officers had cornered another man across the street. I read my book. Donald O'Donovan's Night Train. A great novel about Los Angeles and the disenfranchised folks with their big grins and even bigger dreams, all the while fighting addictions or other setbacks that keep them wading through the dirty streets of the giant city.

A few minutes later a voice calls, "Hey brother," from behind me. I know instantly that the person is talking to me. Having long blonde hair in Los Angeles is like being a rare building with a turret capped in gold in a city of buildings that are mostly flat and square on top. It's forever, "Hey, bro", "Hey, dude", and then, "You gotta light? You got bud? You got a cigarette? You got a couple bucks for a homie?"

It's like there's an affinity between my long hair and the notion that I'll be willing to help out in any way I can. There's also the assumption that I do drugs, carry them on me, and pass out cigarettes.

"You're an intellectual," the man says. For one second I think it's the crazy guy the police scared away just minutes ago, but it's not. This one is much calmer. His eyes are deep brown and sparkling. He speaks softly, fluently. His pinky and pointer fingers are bent dramatically at the middle knuckle. How had he broken them? Or who had broken them?

He's wearing a hoodie and a long black knitted scarf wrapped around his neck three times. He sees my smartphone on the table. "Don't be using that thing," he says. "The Illuminati can listen in. They're always listening. Through the phones and computers and cameras and everything else," he says.

I know it, I say. It's no use avoiding that now. We're trapped in this world.

Of course, the man wants some money. He's young, good looking. It seems he could easily be a college student, a half back on a football team, or even an actor. But instead he's just looking for a few quarters so he can get on the bus.

I don't have any cash, I tell him. But I'll buy you a coffee with my card.

We go inside and everybody looks at us. He slides his crooked finger down the miniature paper menu in front of the cash register and asks me, "What's good? What's good here?"

I get the straight black coffee, I say, but what are you in the mood for?

He settles on a chocolate mocha latte. He pronounces it "latt-ee". The girl behind the counter says the total, and I hand her my card.

The young man, who tells me his name is Frank, looks closely at me. I get nervous. What if he goes ballistic? What if he's a nutcase with a peaceful countenance, and in the blink of an eye he's got me on the floor and stabbing me with an old pocketknife he carries in his hoodie's pouch? There would be that embarrassing LATimes headline: Little Known Blogger Gets Decapitated In Downtown Cafe, Witnesses Say He Hardly Struggled.

"You're an angel," he finally says. I realize he looks like a mix between a young man I worked with in Davis, California, and a Los Angeles musician friend of mine, mentioned in this article.

No, I say, I'm just German and Norwegian. I'm very simple. I only enjoy a few things in life. I don't understand much. I try to learn what I can. I sleep on an air mattress because it seems fitting for a person like me. I read a few books. I try to write about my experiences. I can repeat a few smart phrases I've memorized from books, but I rarely have an original idea.

The barista hands Frank his latte and I ask him how it is. He sticks out his tongue and licks the foam off his upper lip. He nods and gives me a look that suggests it's very good.

Outside, Frank asks me what my astrological sign is. Scorpio, I say. He tells me he's a Cancer. Well, that's why we get along so well, I tell him. "There's a pleasant draw of energy between us," he says. "A smooth back and forth."

Frank asks me to wish him luck as he walks to Miracle Hill. "Throw out a good wish for me," he says.

I do.

SEE ALSO

Manifesting money downtown with an old friend amid numerous distractions

Some killers can read better than others

Big deals on Walmart: Speculating on future products

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For How Much Money Will the Toothless Kardashian Carp Go?

2013-05-06T13:30:00.000-07:00

Fried carp (with Kardashian molecules?) photo by Ludek

It's refreshing to hear about very rich and famous people, who are very rich and famous for not having done anything of any importance, taking a European vacation and getting pampered in weird ways. What average joe doesn't think about vacation on top of wealth on top of endless vacation?

And so it is with the pregnant Kim Kardashian who, as I'd predicted, is quickly transforming into our modern day's Venus of Willendorf. For a short explanation on that, and a side-by-side picture of the two, see Who's our modern day symbol of fertility?

The Kardashians were blowing off some steam in Greece recently, and Kim and Kourtney decided to go to a spa and get a pedicure. With live fish. It's a luxury treatment if there ever was one. The girls lowered their feet into a pool of water and live, toothless carp pick the dead skin off the invaluable Kardashian feet dangling in the water.

The big news is that Kim didn't like it. She squealed in fear and disgust. The toothless fish-bites caused Kim to scream, "I hate it. I hate it, oh my God!" The fish were said to go after the reality TV star's feet with an extra zealousness that the shop's owners had not previously witnessed.

That's where the news story ends, but where the real story begins. Because of the lucrative dead skin these fish were peeling off of feet of inestimable value (I really doubt the fish knew the difference), these carp, after finishing their job, were to be fished out of the pond and kept in a live tank for 48 hours to absorb into their muscles that particularly special blend of DNA and molecular makeup known as Kardashian tissue.

Carp resting after a long day of eating dried foot skin

Once the fish have full absorbed the dead skin off of those Kardashian feet, they will be rushed over to the highest bidding gourmet Grecian restaurant to be cleaned and prepared into a delicate fried carp meal, which is a dish celebrated in places like Greece.

The plate will be served with either rice, a lightly whipped mashed potato, or potato salad, or possibly the sides will be flexible and chosen by the highest bidding diner. It will be the Kardashian Carp specialty. It will be a one in 6 billion chance to absorb on a most meaningful level something authentically Kardashian. This fortuitous diner will more deeply experience Kim than Kanye ever can, unless he scrapes his teeth over the dead skin on her feet and plucks, with impressive accuracy, every flake of dried skin and nibbles them between his teeth.

While it is very unlikely the diner will notice a difference in the taste of the prized strips of fried carp, he (or she) will simply know, with certainty, exactly what he is consuming.

It's weird, it's sort of sexual, it's kind of a rush, yet, it's nothing out of the ordinary. The entire planet is made of particles. Subatomic particles and atoms that make up molecules. Humans and every other living thing on this planet consume and excrete these particles every day. We pass them around unknowingly.

It's possible you've taken in one of William Shakespeare's atoms. Well, it wasn't his, he was just using it while housed in his body that lived on this planet. When his body died, no doubt it turned back into soil and maybe nourished a bed of grass that nourished a grub, which in turn fed a bird, which flew into the side of a building and fell into the awaiting paws of a cat, and then the cat was eaten by a desperate opium addict squatting in some back alley in late 18th century London, and then a pack of wild dogs chomped on the addict's neck a few days later as he slept in that alley, and they ate his flesh and crunched on his bones and then the dogs roamed the countryside until they were cornered and eaten by a pack of coyotes that would, in a few months, meet their ends due to a plague that would turn their coats mangy and make their gums bleed, and shortly after they'd be eaten by a vulture, which would be shot down by an arrow and plummet into a small field of corn and not retrieved by the hunter. The vulture's body, untainted by the coyotes' plague, would decompose and help the next year's corn crop, which would be heartily eaten by an extended family who worked on the small farm and had never even heard of Shakespeare.

But it's how those particles
are put together, you might argue

The moral of the story is that Kim Kardashian is not important unless we pretend she is. The world of particles is just that. It is up to us to place the meaning and value of those particles. It is up to us to interpret them.

Despite the news coverage and constant attention we give her, her particles are not more spectacular or unique than yours. She is simply a collection of atoms and molecules and cells and tissues and organs that happen to be purportedly worth an unbelievable amount of money. And if that body of particles can be worth so much, especially for doing so little for humanity or earth or consciousness, then you're all worth that much too.

It's high time you let it be known. "I'm as special as Kim Kardashian," you should proclaim in public. "Chances are, I might even be more special. Or, if nothing else, the Kardashians are less special." And say it often. Say it loud. And remind others to spread the good news, too. Because we need new heroes. New role models. New aspirations.

Just don't go overboard with it and say you're as special as Albert Einstein or Phillis Wheatley or Ferdinand Magellan. Because, probably, it's not true.

Stick with Kardashian. Stick with the lowest common denominator.

SEE ALSO

Venus of Willendorf: who's our symbol of fertility?

Kim Kardashian's allotment in this lifetime suggests staggeringly pristine & servile past lives

I'm sorry Kim Kardashian's cat died

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Orgasmo by Donald O'Donovan -- Set To Be Published June 2013

2013-05-06T04:30:00.000-07:00

“Donaldo, my friend… How to crush the demon of creativity? This is the problem I’m wrestling with now. I’m more than willing to give General Grant my sword. But I can’t stop writing! I don’t know how to exorcise the demon. I am in essence that demon. How to kill the inner child, that’s what it comes down to. How to kill the inner child. I want to live a normal life. But how can one live a normal life in Los Angeles?” Fausto Diego Villarreal, from a letter to Donald O’Donovan

In 2008, my best pal Fausto Diego Villarreal asked me to help him keep a pledge he’d made to himself to quit writing forever, get a regular job and live a normal life. We were both at the time impoverished and unpublished writers who had spent twenty years trying to batter down the doors of the monolithic New York publishing establishment. Fausto managed to convince me that we needed to stop pissing out a window as it were and salvage what was left of our lives, and at the bar of LA’s historic Wilshire Royale Hotel the two of us shook hands and made a solemn vow to do just that. My autobiographical novel Orgasmo chronicles my disastrous attempt to quit writing forever and pursue the American Dream. Donald O’Donovan

Previously, from Part 74: Although Starz was technically homeless he seemed to be pretty well heeled...

BLOGGING ORGASMO

Orgasmo is set to be published in June 2013 by David A Ross of Open Books, and will be available as both paperback and ebook at Amazon and www.open-bks.com.

Dear Dirty America will no longer be posting excerpts of O. If you've enjoyed Orgasmo this far, please consider supporting Donald's work by purchasing this book, or his other works of fiction.

If you've stumbled upon this page and are curious about Orgasmo, you can start at Part 1: Ice cream melts, youth ends, beauty fades, love dies. A whole century, gone like a glass of water. And now I’m alone

Donald O’Donovan wrote the first draft of his novel Night Train (Open Books, 2010) on 23 yellow legal pads while homeless in the streets of LA. His other novels include Tarantula Woman, The Sugarhouse and Highway. An optioned screenwriter and voice actor with film and audio book credits, Donald O’Donovan lives mostly in Los Angeles. He can be reached at: donaldo7777@yahoo.com

Find a list of O'Donovan's books here and here. See O'Donovan's other pieces on DDA: The Novel As Graffiti, Cardboard Villages, Simon Rodia, Architect of Dreams, and I Live Under Your Wallpaper

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