Debt Brings Stress

Blame Hamilton:

"Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and encumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:455, Papers 15:393

Comedians Bomb*

The other night I went to a lecture by Albie Sachs, former Constitutional Court Justice of South Africa. Humor and Law the general topic. 

In 1988, Justice Sachs lost sight in one eye and his right arm mangled in a car bomb attack. He later survived as one of the authors of the Constitution of South Africa and spent 15 years on the Court. The talk was lighthearted and announced it would be cut short because he and others wanted to see Obama's State of the Union speech. 

He began by relating waking up in dark place, voices explaining the extent of his injuries, his reaction of self-depreciating jokes and elation of surviving. He explained this feeling in a South African way upon being released from care to his two Comrades in the ANC, one enjoyed the description and bravery, the other maintained a long face. His son was burned in an earlier bomb attack.

One questioner asked the Justice if anything could legally be considered too far beyond tastes. He told a joke of a Muslim man, by the beauty looking our his small window on a plane in flight, moved to prayer in Arabic and being joined by all the other passengers mumbling prayers, as well.

I sat in this hall with a man that helped bomb the Pentagon, according to his memoirs. His comrades blew themselves up in a Brownstone in New York. Who can remember the gentleman's name studying late in the UW Madison Math Library his fateful night? I bet Bill and Bern know. 

… and we are devoting our precious time to O-Bomb-a who hasn't stop bombing Iraqis, Palestinian, Afgani, Pakistani, Yemenese, and anywhere and anyone else the Commander in Chief wants to bomb, even US soil and citizens. 

The sacrifice of the innocents continues. I feel like getting bombed. 

Aren't we all victims of bombings?

Anyone want to stop it? Soon?

March 18, 2010 - 7th Anniversary of Iraq Invasion - Federal Plaza - 5:30pm - March to Bughouse Sq down Michigan - 6:30pm

Chicago, IL

Say Goodnight, Gracie

As we cannot control the birds that fly overhead,

We can stop them from nesting in our hair.

As evil thoughts swirl around us

Let us not allow them to nest in our hearts.

- Martin Luther, paraphrase

Hard Times To Be A Farmer

Nothing Funny to Add: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/23/dean-pierson-dairy-farmer_n_434107.html

State police in New York say an upstate dairy farmer shot and killed 51 of his milk cows in his barn before turning the rifle on himself.

Future Awaits

Stress 'em Out Early:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/exam-anxiety-can-get-you-out-of-tests-82349267.html

The University of Manitoba's disability services office last year registered 136 students who have medical certification that they suffer exam anxiety and must be accommodated with some other form of evaluation.

...from Fighting Bob

“Today the business once transacted by individuals in every community is in the control of corporations, and many of the men who once conducted an independent business are gathered into the organization, and all personal identity, and all individualities lost. Each man has become a mere cog in one of the wheels of a complicated mechanism. It is the business of the corporations to get money. It exacts but one thing of its employees: Obedience to orders. It cares not about their relations to the community, the church, society, or the family. It wants full hours and faithful service, and when they die, wear out or are discharged, it quickly replaces them with new material.

The corporation is a machine for making money, but it reduces men to the insignificance of mere numerical figures, as certainly as the private ranks of the regular army."

~ Fighting Bob La Follette, speech on the Dangers Threatening Representative Government, Mineral Point, Wisconsin, July 4, 1897

Bullyism At The Highest Levels

You Got Problems At Work?:

http://www.henrymakow.com/uncovering_occultism_in_the_ca.html

I was ultimately forced to "escape" my job--only because of my reasonable attempts to defend myself against gross incompetence, then a vicious, stupid lie, and finally, apparently, an occult attack on my very life. The strain such an experience places on a marriage is deadly, and mine did not survive.

Road Rage

Went To Work, Never Made It Home:

http://www.pioneerlocal.com/wilmette/news/1998554,wn-stab-arrest-011910-s1.article

He is survived by his wife and two children.

Stress Spreads

U.S. 10 Army Sets New Suicide Record - Again

http://uruknet.info/index.php?p=m62298&hd=&size=1&l=e

The American people, those loveable idiots who drive around with Support Our Troops ribbons on the backs of their cars, just don’t want to hear bad things about our troops.

Psychiatrist Kernan Manion, who’s treated several returning Marines, states: "Frankly, in my more than twenty-five years of clinical practice, I’ve never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness—literally, a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experiences" (h/t Antiwar Radio).

Manion continues: "There’s currently simply no terminology in the APA [American Psychiatric Association] literature for this. When you’re dealing with cumulative stress from constant guardedness because of continuous exposure to danger—multiple firefights, patrols, losses of buddies and utter exhaustion from deployment—and then you have family problems, and relationship problems, and then on top of all of that you have commanders telling you you’re nothing but a worthless piece of shit, you simply can’t think straight anymore, and who could be expected to."

On my Top Ten Playlist

Gangsters At The Pentagon Got Scared:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/13/marc-watercus-rap-song-pentagon

What prompted Hall's arrest was his sending the song to the Pentagon, ­Klimaski said. "The alarm bells rang and they said, what's going on here?"

**************************

Drug Pushers of Today:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6981217/Millions-of-patients-should-not-be-prescribed-antidepressants.html

Millions of people should not be prescribed antidepressants because their brains resist the drugs, a study has indicated.

Smoke The Hopeium

More Stress Coming Our Way:

http://news.mobile.msn.com/en-us/articles.aspx?afid=1&aid=34831989

The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned.

Severance Package

It's Shooting Season In The Workplace:

http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb/penske-former-employee-behind-273347.html?cxtype=rss_news_128746

"It is a former employee," Ryerson said of the shooter.

Anti-Loyalty Is Needed

War As The Soundtrack Of Our Lives:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=10001

“I miss my family,” reads a wall graffito captured in one of Agtmael’s photographs. “Please God forgive the lives I took and let my family be happy if I don’t go home again.”

Next to the plea someone had drawn an arrow toward the words and written in thick, black marker “Fag!!!”

*********************************

He (Arthur Koestler, EWS) emphasizes that only human beings feel no compunction about killing members of their own species and, indeed, are capable of such obscenities as human sacrifice to appease some invented deity. It is loyalty to a king or to a cause or to a religion (quite often, all three) that motivates a man to leave his home and put on a uniform and endure months or years of self-sacrifice, boredom, hunger and deprivation. Soldiers, as Koestler points out, are rarely aggressive and certainly not territorial. They have subsumed their individuality in the group, the tribe, the cult. They follow orders. They kill, not out of conviction or aggression, but on command, out of loyalty to an authority figure and identity with the group.

Sinister Forces, A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft Book Three: The Manson Secret TrineDay,2006

-Peter Levenda

Flag Ryhmes With Drag

"If ignorance is truly bliss, then why do so many Americans need Prozac?" 

-David Macgowan

Americans Have No Shame:

http://us.oneworld.net/article/368472-cancer-the-deadly-legacy-invasion-iraq

Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.

***********************

The Good Professor Chimes In:

http://www.counterpunch.org/linebaugh01082010.html

We distinguish ‘the common’ from ‘the public’. We understand the public in contrast to the private, and we understand common solidarity in contrast to individual egotism. The commons has always been an element in human production even when capitalism acquired the hoard or laid down the law. The boss might ‘mean business’ but nothing gets done without respect. Otherwise, sabotage and the shoddy result.

Work Is Bad

You Are Now "Human Capital":

http://www.henrymakow.com/by_tony_blizzard_yesterday_the.html

Now only 45% of workers are satisfied with their jobs compared to nearly 61% in 1987.

Here They Come

It's That Time Of Year:

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/gunman-kills-one-wounds-others-at-st-louis-office-building.html

Gunman opens fire at St. Louis power company

Future Is Confused

Programmed Early:

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/634536.html

The rate of children aged 2 to 5 who are given antipsychotic medications has doubled in recent years, a new study has found.

... And of course, Class Enters The Picture:

Research published online in December in the journal Health Affairs by the same research team suggested children on Medicaid are even more likely than children with private insurance to be prescribed antipsychotics.

******************************

Listen To The Lucky Man;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/6939379/Japanese-man-who-survived-two-atomic-bombs-dies.html

An outspoken critic of nuclear weapons, he told his interviewers, "The reason that I hate the atomic bomb is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings.

"I cannot understand why the world cannot understand the agony of the nuclear bombs," he added. "How can they keep developing these weapons?" In the film, which was screened at the United Nations, Yamaguchi recounts how he was stepping down from a tram around two miles from the hypocentre of the bomb that detonated above Hiroshima. He was temporarily blinded, lost the hearing in one ear and was badly burned on much of his upper body.

Upon his return to his engineering company in Nagasaki, Yamaguchi was recounting his experiences to his supervisor when the second bomb was dropped.

Take That, Levine

C'mon Team. Finish Strong For Your Own Sake:

http://www.davidswanson.org/node/2375

And the defeatism is so contagious that it will be hard for me to make it through 2010 if people don't shut up about how doomed we are. If current trends continue, by 2011 the only people showing up at forums on peace and justice will all be old enough to tell my grandparents they're too young to understand how pointless it is to try. And my grandparents are dead.

Leadership Void

A Country Of Suspended Judgement:

http://www.progress.org/2003/alinsky3.htm

PLAYBOY: The assumption behind the Administration's Silent Majority thesis is that most of the middle class is inherently conservative. How can even the most skillful organizational tactics unite them in support of your radical goals?

ALINSKY: Conservative? That's a crock of crap. Right now they're nowhere. But they can and will go either of two ways in the coming years -- to a native American fascism or toward radical social change. Right now they're frozen, festering in apathy, leading what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation:" They're oppressed by taxation and inflation, poisoned by pollution, terrorized by urban crime, frightened by the new youth culture, baffled by the computerized world around them. They've worked all their lives to get their own little house in the suburbs, their color TV, their two cars, and now the good life seems to have turned to ashes in their mouths. Their personal lives are generally unfulfilling, their jobs unsatisfying, they've succumbed to tranquilizers and pep pills, they drown their anxieties in alcohol, they feel trapped in long term endurance marriages or escape into guilt-ridden divorces. They're losing their kids and they're losing their dreams. They're alienated, depersonalized, without any feeling of participation in the political process, and they feel rejected and hopeless. Their utopia of status and security has become a tacky-tacky suburb, their split-levels have sprouted prison bars and their disillusionment is becoming terminal.