Grateful Dead

A kind wit and keen insight. He will be missed. Have a great weekend everybody!

Will it never end? 19 are now dead from the panic in the tunnel at the techno-event called Love-Parade. Over one million (Jeeez, this is making me rethink my field trip to the Polo Grounds) came to this event and the infrastructure couldn't take it. People were bottle-necked in a tunnel (no air in stifling heat) from the train station to the venue and some started climbing up escape routes and fell back into the crowd, causing the panic. Reports have it the cops were warned but did nothing. It was apparent that something was wrong in the venue but the performers were told that the show had to go on for fear of even more panic. My biggest show had to be Rich Stadium in '86'. 90,000 people. After that one I said no more. That many people increases your chances greatly of running into some kind of unpleasant scene, sooner or later. They are already warning people to expect long delays trying to get out of GG Park after SF Parks benefit.

...into cha-ching land. Tony Hayward be fired today with a $15,000,000 golden parachute. I guess he is getting his life back , unlike some others... I predicted this.... ~ I can't get no satisfaction ~

that I also predicted that psychopathic corporations bent on profit will be the death of us all. Free market proponents should be put in Sea Shepherd re-education camps in Antarctica and be prodded with a pitchfork by Paul Watson until they recant.

...on Afghanistan. Lots of heinous stuff about Afghan civilian casualties and State-sponsored help to terrorists from Pakistan and Iran. I'm left wondering how coalition forces will declare victory and leave next year. It is now very clear that the decision to attack was ill-fated and that collateral damage (civilian casualties) are causing a nationalistic backlash. This is the beginning of the end, my friend, in Afghanistan. It's over, if not next year then the year after.

The Supremes, as I've chronicled here, are now labeled the most conservative court in recent history. The decisions handed down are truly frightening. Ignore them at your own risk, the risk of living as an individual in a free society. 1) Corporations have the same rights as people 2) Miranda warning compromised There are others. The roots of fascism are coded into law.

Hope this new generation provides some inspiration for the previous two. Bravo to your young one Lilly! ~ Teach your children well ~

Thanks for the introduction to the Playing for Change Project.

PATHALAIYA/ KATHMANDU: Police on Monday interrogated Ram Bahadur Bomjan, famously known as Buddha Boy, in connection with the thrashing of local villagers by him for trying to disrupt his penance on Thursday. A squad of police, led by inspectors Rudrakanta Jha and Bhesh Raj Rijal from Bara District Police Office visited Bamjan in Halkhoriya forest, Bara, following complaints registered against him by a group of 17 vilagers. Talking to the police, Bomjan admitted to having thrashed the villagers. "Yes, I took a minor action against them because they tried to disturb me while I was meditating," he said. Refuting the victims' claimthat they mistakenly stepped into Bomjan's meditating site while searching wild vegetables, Bomjan said, “They came to this area just to disrupt my meditation." Bomjan also admitted that he had taken the villagers into his control for 24 hours. “I had to do so personally because I did not have anyone around to punish them," he said. Though Bamjan claimed he only used hands while thrashing, the villagers have said he had thrashed them with a handle of an axe continuously for three hours.

Comrade Duch, notorious prison commander where more than 10,000 died brutal deaths, was sentenced to 19 years in prison. More than one million Cambodians died in that civil war. The Khmer Rouge was a revolution run amok in the 70s with a fascist sect of Cambodians carrying out an uber Maoist 'Cultural Revolution'. People died in some pretty horrible ways. The Grateful Dead a benefit for Cambodian refugees in 1979. Duch is elderly, has been in prison and is likely to die in prison. Still, the victims felt the sentence was too lenient. The Cambodian people have not come to terms with their own recent holocaust.

...of your working in Cambodia, Badger... In what capacity? I didn't mean to imply that Cambodians were at fault for not putting this behind them. It has not been long and it is a huge task. I thought it was a given that people knew that the US sewed the seeds of this but never overestimate I guess. I too have had contacts with the Cambodian community, albeit in the US. They are a beautiful, humble people and they are haunted by their past and, as you say, working to put it behind them. Kissinger and Nixon's bumbling in Cambodia that led to this is just mind-blowing. Talk about bad karma!

...is laughing at environmentalists and putting big, fat buy recommendations on BP. Even if you're not involved in investments it is revealing to read the business pages. It can be like seeing through very different eyes. They are the enemy of every living thing on this planet and it would not be too much to say that the pursuit of money to the exclusion of all else is a dark, demonic force. Of course the profit motive is also the reason people work hard and we have technical innovation. Still, small is better consume less kill your computer and go take a walk in the woods

Greenpeace shut down 47 BP gas stations yesterday. They padlocked gates, cut electricity and hung very professionally done banners over the official BP signs.

The RichPoliticians Corporate executives Public officials I've got one to add to the list: People who work in the healthcare industry. I'm not talking about the grunts. There are people with ridiculous salaries and benefits and the excess is nothing more than a bribe from the industry to keep the whole stinky, bloated corpse animated. We need socialized health care in this country. Health is already rationed in some places. People are dying every day because their insurance won't cover the procedure. Would it be that way with a European style system? Probably, but at least the lines would be clear and consistent.

Remember those BP commercials "...at no cost to the taxpayer..." ? What a joke!!!

...have the blood on their hands, I guess. We have a similar problem, well, analagous anyway with Motorcycle Week in the nearby area of Laconia, NH. Thousands and thousands of bikers cram into a small lake area and run amok for about 2 weeks every year. The people who live there want the event out of their area but the businesses want it and you can't be elected if you are against. That is, you can't get bankrolled and sanctioned by the establishment. Not exactly the same as Duisberg. People do die every year though...

...let the bull live, don't they? Maybe Lilly knows.

NPR's environmental show that airs on Sunday evenings (in my locale) had somebody on last night from one of the more venerable, established environmental groups. He was a very well-spoken, older gentleman. The words coming out of his mouth were very radical though: Corporations are the enemy of all mankind. They are actively sabotaging climate treaties through propaganda and bribes through their lobbyists. There is no time left.

I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to have Billary for parents!

...is usually measured in blood and treasure: Iraq: (since war began 3/19/03 to 8/3/10 -- almost 7 years and 5 months) Dead: 4413 Wounded: estimated to be over 100,000 Cost: 737 Billion (real time spending clock costofwar.com) Afghanistan: (since war began 9/11/01 to 8/3/10 -- 8 years, 11 months) Dead:1216 Wounded: ?? Cost: 287.5 Billion (costofwar.com) These are the costs to the US alone. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The war was basically one family's (Bush) obsession with Saddam Hussein. Afghanistan has never been militarily conquered in it's history. The most any invader has been able to do is temporarily occupy. This war has been the Pentagon's obsession with Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. To date Bin Laden has not been captured and the Taliban has not been defeated. Evidence grows that Iran and rogue elements of the Pakistani government are bankrolling and training proxy fighting groups as well as the Taliban in that country.

I have not made a painful, side-by-side comparison of the dissent to war in America 1965-1973 and 2001-2010. This subject is worthy of research in great detail. Several points do readily come to mind, though... The precursors to war were vastly different: The Gulf of Tonkin resolution vs. 9/11. The current wars are seen as readily justified as the US homeland was attacked. In contrast to Vietnam, where the anti-war movement made serious errors in how returning veterans were treated, the current wars are popularly justified as "We have to Support the Troops". The line between support of military veterans and support of conflict has been intentionally obscured. The military is now an all-voluntary (if economic conscription is not counted) force as opposed to the Vietnam conflict in which service was demanded at the threat of prison or exile. The way the war is covered by the press: The press was still an independent force subject to military censorship in Vietnam. Now, the war coverage is completely controlled through tight access and self-censorship due to conservative tendencies of major news organizations. These same news organizations serve to reinforce the legitimacy of war through slanted reporting. FOX news must be mentioned here. FOX got it's start as a conservative, jingoistic propaganda operation of the military-industrial complex scant months before 9/11, which gave it it's major push as a national network with a viewer base. There have not been major demonstrations against the war since the lead-up to conflict in Iraq in the spring of 2003. The anti-war movement fell apart in the face of the Bush onslaught. The movement has yet to regain it's feet and may never do so due to powerful forces of primal fear continually reinforced by heavy media exposure to terrorist incidents in the US and abroad.

...There is an anti-war movement out there. I didn't mean to diminish the efforts of many, many patriotic Americans who do what they can to oppose this madness. And I am told that opposition to America's jihad is quite intense in parts of Europe. I was only trying to point out 2 things: There is a cost to war The face of protest is quite different these days I like what the leader of Wikki Leaks had to say (Simon, I think) "It's a damn war" Indeed a damn war. A low intensity conflict in which there are no major battles, simply groups of armed warriors sneaking up on one another. On the NATO side, if the conflict is extended at all, air power is called in that usually results in a lot of casualties with collateral damage. When we realize that this is not helping our cause among the natives, we strive (per McChrystal's suggestion), to change the rules of engagement so that we are able to make real progress, only to have push-back from our own forces, whom we come to find out don't give a damn about civilians or the Taliban, only wanting to leave the theater of operations in one piece. I don't fault them for that one bit, however it does point out big-time the slippery slope we are falling down. In the meantime, these mountains of desolate waste are host to wandering bands of reconnoitering commandos able to call down reaper and predator drone-fired missiles on whatever targets of opportunity they stumble upon. Americans need to see that we could have pursued this as a police action instead of a military conflict. We had the sympathy of the world and could have made these radical extremists the bad guys, even to their own people. Instead, a decision at the highest levels was made to pursue a war. This war is being fought because our "Way Of Life" is under attack. This is really the heart of the matter... In an increasingly globalized economy of post-peak oil the US cannot afford to allow the Muslim oil countries the natural economic advantage that would be theirs as oil becomes more scarce, thus entitling to ever-greater reserves of hard currency. Therefore we need to step in and try to divide the Muslims. In reality, this war is about economics and the ever-shrinking pie we all split. Other countries tend to resent it when you are 3% of the world's population and you are consuming 60% of the world's resources. I could march on with this rant but I'll stop here as I do believe what I've just stated is the heart of it. ~ I'm going off to war To fight on some foreign shore ~

is a bumpersticker seen on old, beat-up pick-up trucks around these parts. It seems that the rather sexually insecure have to make their intemtion in the sexual area perfectly clear because Vermont was first in the nation to allow civil unions and of the last couple of years gay marriage. It hasn't spoiled the place. How is it in the land of LA and SF that there is this conservative backlash? Is it hispanic machismo/Catholicism? It can't be the Oakies, there aren't enough pure bread of'em left. What gives Mary? Who is behind Prop 8 in Cali?