pipelines, violins, politicians, and love...

Anyone else find Obama’s SOTU mostly really good to listen to this year? I mean except for the saber rattling and nationalistic hoopla that seems to be mandatory for Western leaders? The man and his handlers have a gift for hearing the tone of the zeitgeist, even if I don’t really believe for a second that his banker friends will be letting him do much about any of that social equity and taxation of the rich stuff. He at least makes it sound like it would be a cool thing to see him doing.

MOXNews shared an OWS perspective too. Sort of.

Here in Canada, we have no charismatic leadership, sincere or not. We just have lying, cheating, heartless bastards that are about as exciting as dead fish. I hear what you're thinking, but really, I'm being kind. Our PM can’t even bring himself to tell us that he plans on completely gutting the social safety net that our country has been lauded for over the last fifty years; he goes to Davos and an economic summit, as far away as possible from the citizens he’s supposed to serve, to do it. I swear, this is karma for laughing at the US-ians for electing Dubya…

zen and the art of intentional procrastination

* Updated at the bottom

It takes a lot of effort to prioritize. There’s the judging, and the weighing, and the balancing and contrasting. One must take into consideration scenarios both probable and im-, measure the potential consequences of each choice carefully, count the cost of each path not chosen, consider the ramifications.

It’s an awful lot of work.

occupy this on Vie Hebdomaires

I'm juiced to have been given this week to fill up Vie Hebdomaires with words. Vie Hebdomaires is young, but such a cool idea, a new writer each week in a collaborative blogging effort. it will either be magic or fail beautifully. I started today with some ramblings on participating in the first few days of Occupy Vancouver.

we don't need no stinking plans...

Yesterday I posted the communiqué from the Occupy Wall Street non-group stating their one demand. Today I was thinking about what a ludicrous thing it is that the media was applying pressure for them to state what their demands were. I thought about it yesterday too, but there was no making sense of it, so I just had to let it lie.

But today I was thinking about it some more. I thought about it in the context of why that’s such a big deal, the idea of a list of demands. I thought about the meme of public consumption that encourages people to dismiss activism and dissent if it doesn’t have a set agenda – if there isn’t some stated premise or an alternate plan to “make things better”, an idea to change things to the way that the activists want things changed. I thought about how demands make activism seem like a hostage situation. How that also makes it easier to criminalize dissent the way we see that happening so much more in the “free” world.

this is our one demand

It was a busy, irresponsible summer full of visiting and hiking and revisions. But not much in the way of blogging. I’m not apologizing, I’m bragging. Just to be clear. There may or may not be in increase in posting now that the weather may or may not be getting less cooperative. Then again, there’s hockey to play.

Today, however, I came across the following - a creative, subversive, beautiful, and heart-breaking response to media complaints that the Occupy Wall Street movement has not stated specific goals. That they are just protesting, willy-nilly and all, and don’t have enough direction to their dissent. How dare they not have a published set of reasons! How dare they not have made a list!

This is their response, as copied and pasted from wilderside.wordpress.com: 

This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.

in the absence of answers

What a great day yesterday was.

Like I said yesterday, it was tear down day at the climbing gym, the day we closed early so as to strip every hold off of every wall so that the route setting geniuses can start putting up comp routes for the weekend. So we twisted bolts and climbed ladders and pealed tape from 8 to 10, 14 of us or so, in a hectic, frenetic, kinetic laugh-a-thon.

Before that, I got to do some #amrevising, working on a chapter that required more than just fixing little things, doing a line by line edit in order to take an emaciated framework and add some flesh to it. The more I revise, the more I understand how writers can have a problem letting go of a WIP, especially a first one: There’s so much learning, evolving, improving involved in the first time that, every time I come back to a chapter I haven’t touched for a month or two, I see entirely different ways to make it better.

At this rate, the manuscript will be finished never. That’s not a tenable position, so I’ve set April 21 as my mail-to-beta-readers day. I can get all picky again after that, but I have to actually set a shipping date, because the learning will never end.

 I also got to carry on my favorite ongoing internet conversation before the gym, and I got in a great (if short) session of climbing before the strip-fest began.

And then, as if all of that wasn’t enough, I was provided the bonus of listening to a repeat of this morning's Q with Jion Ghomeshi on the drive home. The part I listened to was an interview with Canadian musical icon Bruce Cockburn. I’ve never actually been a huge fan, but have always respected him. His music has never moved me miles, but his activism and integrity have.

He was talking about his visit to Afghanistan in 2009. His brother is a Captain and physician in the Canadian Armed Forces (family dinners might be interesting), and he also played a concert for the Canadian troops there. He said that the people he talked to there, members of the medical mission, believed in their role but thought it would take 30 years for it too succeed; that a place like Afghanistan would need that much time just to birth and raise a generation that had a concept of what peace might look like.

They didn’t expect that the mission there would last that long.

I thought of Greg Mortensen (Three Cups of Tea) and his effort to accomplish the same goal – a generation of Afghanis and Pakistanis that understand the concept of peace – through education. I had a hard time not contrasting the two approaches.

Cockburn talked about his other trips to war zones, both as an activist and performer. He said that he’s never gone to a war zone looking for material for his art. There are people, he said, that have a mandate to do so - journalists, writers, photographers, maybe poets – but that for him, doing so would have felt ‘inappropriate’.

But, he said, he always went with his eyes open. He went open to everything, but not looking for anything in specific. If material presented itself, he was prepared to accept it. And if it came, then it was his responsibility to apply all of his skill and craft to make the most of it.

I thought about the concept of manufactured versus organic, of counterfeit versus authentic. I thought it was a great way to view creativity – being open to the truth, and then applying every possibility of craft to take advantage of that truth. I thought about Elizabeth Taylor and how she might be as remembered for her activism (on behalf of HIV/AIDS going back way before it was fashionable) as she will be for the soap opera of her celebrity. I thought about which one I’d want to be remembered for.

It’s easy, I think, in our plastic world of intentional media confusion, our age of persuasion, to forget that people inhabit the caricatures we watch rise and fall on TV; that real people with sincere motives fight in wars that we detest. Lately, for me, it has seemed crucially important to remember how complicated everything is.

There were no conclusions to reach, none that did service to the issues. The perspective of complexity answers no questions at all, makes finite truths seem very far away, but while I sat here and nursed my sore wrists and stiff hands, the questions seemed more important than the answers anyway.

wikileaks and the emperor's new clothes

“Which country is suffering from too much freedom of speech? Name it, is there one?” Julian Assange

I didn't want to write this post. I just wanted to watch and post links. I wanted to be a spectator and hope for a good outcome. But here I am. Not writing about it was becoming a distraction that I don't need and so, in spite of the fact that it's a ridiculously complex issue, and that coverage of it in the main stream and alternate media is ubiquitous (if selective), here I am. I hope it's readable, and maybe offers a synthesis of ideas already circulating, but this is my disclaimer: I'm writing this for me. I need to process it here and go on the record. For me.

At best, I'll understand better how I really feel, the whole mess will make a bit more sense, and you'll have found something redeeming in the next many paragraphs to justify the battery power you use and the time I've stolen from you. At worst, I'll be as frustrated as I am right now, and you'll be asleep. Either way, for your entertainment, here's my brain, or maybe my brain on Wikileaks. For the record, the following is based on my understanding of the facts. I'm no journalist (nor do I want to be), or a lawyer, and I'm not doing any vast amount of fact checking beyond reading pretty much everything I can find on the subject. I'll try to avoid making gross errors of the facts, but if I do miss something, or get something wrong, it's an honest mistake. If you find such an error, please post the correction in comments and I'll update the main post.

To summarize then, Wikileaks is a journalistic enterprise dedicated to the ideals of transparency and open government. It supports these ideals by acting as a clearing house for whistle blowers, with systems from simple to sophisticated, designed to allow whistle blowers to provide Wikileaks with secret documents. Wikileaks vets the documents and then, after varying degrees of editorial perusal, they release them. They've been doing it now since 2006. Julian Assange was the original mastermind behind the idea and implementation, and he has remained the 'face' of Wikileaks throughout its existence.

While they've been operating for over three years, Wikileaks hit the big time this year with the release last spring of the Collateral Murder videos, versions both edited for length and completely unedited, of a US helicopter gunship attack on civilians that resulted in multiple deaths, including the deaths of two Reuters journalists. The video, if you haven't seen it, is graphic and disturbing. The audio of the pilots, gunners and their CO's is chilling and suggests a level of inhuman disconnect that shocked the world. Wikileaks was accused of editorializing the video, especially the length-edited version, to make the participant soldiers, and thus the US military, look as bad as possible.

They followed that up with the Afghanistan Logs, and then the Iraq Logs, two caches of military documents that provided unparalleled insight into both wars, the mentality behind the occupations, and revealed dramatically different stories and statistics than the US State Department and Pentagon had previously suggested were accurate. Finally, since the end of November, Wikileaks has been releasing in increments a cache of US diplomatic cables in what is now being called “cablegate”. In all three of the document release cases, Wikileaks has worked with major mainstream media sources, allowing seasoned journalists to scour the caches for weeks prior to public release, assist with redactions, and to help facilitate coverage and add legitimacy to their efforts, perhaps in response to the accusations of editorialization in the Collateral Murder video release. They also, in the cases of the Afghan and Iraq documents any way, invited the US government to participate in helping scour the caches and assist in redacting sensitive information that might put lives at risk, offers that were rejected.

In the summer, US Pfc Bradley Manning was arrested under suspicion of being the source of all of these leaks.

Also this summer, Assange was in Stockholm, Sweden to speak at a conference. He was later accused by two Swedish women of sex crimes under Swedish law. The allegations include sexual coercion and rape. Assange has completely denied any wrongdoing and accused the women and Swedish authorities of participating in a smear campaign against him on behalf of the US government. The lawyer for the two women says that they have no political motives. The allegations revolve around consensual sex that the women say became non-consensual, but the timeline and facts are convoluted, and the stories, so far, are just that.

Assange has now voluntarily surrendered himself to the UK police authorities in response to an international INTERPOL red notice requesting his detainment on a Swedish warrant. That warrant is not in relation to actual charges – no charges have been laid – but rather the desire of the Swedish police to speak to him IN PERSON. Suddenly that's a really big deal, even though Assange offered to make himself available in August and September, and was given permission to leave Sweden, and has offered to speak to investigators by Skype or other means since then.

The timing and circumstances are, needless to say, suspicious, and it's not hard to start drifting into conspiracy theory territory, but essentially, those are the facts and the end of the boring part. I say boring because, well, if you've been reading the news, and if you are Google-capable, then you can find it all out yourself. Go to it.

There is also a cult of personality issue here, and I despise the cult of personality. I despise unjustified fame being heaped on people of questionable character, whether it's heaped in response to talent or ability or luck or success. In a perfect world, fame would be reserved for those who were of the highest character only. But character isn't sexy. Character doesn't sell. And we do love the fall of our icons as much as the meteoric rise, don't we?

More important by far than Assange is or will ever be, is the underlying reasons and actions behind Wikileaks, and one of my frustrations is that Assange's soap opera is detracting from the message. It's the same problem I have with Black Bloc protesters that feel direct actions against postal boxes and corporate store fronts are an effective way to get an activist message of dissent across: It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of public perception, and a basically selfish and childish motivation to serve self ahead of the cause.

All of that said, the response to Wikileaks and cablegate has been electric and fierce. For the first time in such a public way, the governments of the West have embarked on an unprecedented extra-judicial attack against a non-American site, with massive Denial of Service hacker-style attacks being mounted against Wikileaks servers around the world, and pressure being applied to the “American” companies that have been hosting or allowing Wikileaks to work through them for parts of their operation. That response is a de facto admission that, as much as the US government protests that Wikileaks is only a minor inconvenience, they've really touched a nerve.

But why? What nerve have they touched? The US Government says that any disruption to diplomacy is only a minor inconvenience. If so, then why have they mobilized what amounts to an illegal attack on all things Wikileaks? An attack that, if perpetuated against the US government, would result in federal charges and aggressive prosecution. They are obviously afraid of Wikileaks far more than they are wiling to admit if they're willing to adopt the tactics of those they call cyber-terrorists to try to combat them.

I believe that the answer is obvious: Wikileaks is showing the world just how corrupt and morally vacuous our leaders actually are. As one writer put it, the emperors' clothes have just been shredded by the web, and the naked truth is that our political and plutocratic leadership is utterly devoid of anything remotely redeeming. In war, our “leaders” act like sociopaths, and incite and train soldiers to do the same, and in politics and diplomacy they act with all the aplomb and sophistication of three-year-olds fighting over the sandbox. Our leaders, in short, are not leaders at all. At least not ones worth following.

Several other pundits have also pointed out that, in the wake of the reaction to Wikileaks and Assange (especially if it is ever proven that the Swedish allegations are politically motivated), we will never be able to take self-righteous allegations against totalitarian regimes made by the West seriously again. The West has shown in the most public way that they are just as willing to suppress freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and dissent, as any of the regimes that they point at derisively to make themselves look better by comparison.

The illusion that we live in a free society has been completely stripped away. Our society may not be as oppressive as those totalitarian regimes, at least not on the surface of things, but the people in power are just as desperate to hold onto their power as any other dictator. When someone manages to pull the curtain aside, and we see not only the weak false-wizard back there, but see that the wizard is utterly naked and pathetic, those supposed leaders of the free world react with the same kind of violence and disregard for the law as any dictator does.

That we, as voters, are complicit in their tyranny just makes it a little more sad. 

Again and again, writers who see the value of what Wikileaks is doing, even if they question the details, have reiterated the concept that the best defense against Wikileaks and those who will inevitably follow it is a more open, less deceitful form of government, one that actually does work on behalf of people, and does so with transparency. If you are blameless, the logic goes, the reason for whistle blowers disappears. Even if accusations are leveled, it is easier to defend and prove innocence. 

That's a lesson that most of us are supposed to learn by grade one. I hope that Wikileaks and those who are like-minded manage to break the dysfunctional system we currently languish under so completely that re-making it becomes impossible. I hope that enough people open their eyes to the truth that we can reach a tipping point, and that this time, when the shit truly hits the fan, we can learn lessons from our history that actually stick.

I hope that Wikileaks makes it impossible for us to ignore the truth, and impossible to forget. This is, perhaps, an unrealistic hope. We've been here before under different circumstances, and supposedly we learned unforgettable lessons from those horrific times. Obviously, our ability to forget is directly proportional to our greed and selfishness and laziness. Maybe this time we can get it right. 

I know- doubtful. But then, I've been accused of being an incurable optimist before...

Sunday Rant: Wikileaks, war and wistful thoughts

It’s been a weird week, one that’s seen me off my feed, out of sorts and definitely not in any kind of groove. It’s left me feeling decidedly… wistful. It is, I have to tell you, a strange frame of mind in which to approach a Sunday Rant.

Not that there was any shortage of things to rant about this week. The United States is in the stretch run to mid-term elections, a campaign dominated by polarities and focused on voter apathy and rabidity, depending on which way you look. Late charging Democrats trying to buck the trend of mid-term decline are thankful for ex-witches and blatant bigots and homophobes, but it’s a case of hoping that the other team is more effective at shooting themselves in the foot than it is of pushing for hope like we saw a couple years ago. It does not inspire.

The latter part of the week was dominated by Wikileaks latest offering, a dump of nearly 400,000 more Afghan war documents. And with that dump, in spite of all of its disturbing statistics and revelations, Julian Assange started tending again. Stories of the internal confusion and strife within Wikileaks seem to be more captivating in some ways than the people that have and are dying over there, or the apparently common blind eyes being turned away from the casual brutality of torture, or the masses of civilian deaths.

The torture aspect caught my eye, perhaps because it was a big story in Canada last winter heading into the Olympics when our Prime Minister prorogued to avoid the shitstorm of attention our government was receiving in regards to our own complicity in Afghan torture. Instead of doing the honorable thing, Harper called it quits and closed parliament then, essentially postponing democracy until the heat died down in an “I’m taking my toys and going home” display of fear and obfuscation.

NATO's complicity in torture was a story that swayed the UK media for a while in the spring as well, so the Wikileaks documents that detail American forces also glibly documenting and then ignoring case after case of Afghani forces abusing and torturing captives is hardly a surprise. This isn’t, after all, a problem typical of any one country on either side of the conflict – it’s systemic.

Which means it’s all of us.

It seems to me that half way through the last century we humans were reaching for the brass ring in some ways, heading into a period of conflict over social justice that would dominate much of the rest of the century, creating organizations like the U.N in an attempt to move past nationalism, away from the atrocities of the first half of the century, stretching towards, perhaps, a better version of ourselves. That’s a bit of romanticism, but there was a movement, a leaning.

Better minds than mine have observed that this might not have been so much an evolution as a reaction, however. Perhaps, they suggest, we weren’t so much leaning into the light and backing away from the abyss. Perhaps the horror of what we had done – twice in less that forty years – resulted in a global revulsion, and that it was our species’ defense mechanism reaction to pursue noble causes and ideals to prove we were not the monsters we appeared to be. “Look,” we were saying to ourselves according to this argument, “we are not so bad. We have learned our lessons and will now embrace those ‘better angels of our nature.’”

But in spite of all of those cenotaphs and the reminders, “lest we forget”, we do and have.

I find the simple fact of Wikileaks, it’s existence, to be a hopeful thing. In spite of the tendency of the main-stream to try to focus on Julian Assange, in spite of his apparent need to be what he calls a lightning rod, I prefer to focus on the organization itself and on what they are trying to accomplish. While the Pentagon and US Government are looking for ways to silence them, Daniel Ellsberg, famous leaker of the Pentagon Papers that so damaged the US campaign in Viet Nam, has applauded the latest dump. He said he’s been waiting for this for forty years.

We’ve all been waiting for this for forty years, and longer.

The Pentagon says these leaks are dangerous, that they undermine operations and put the lives of sources and assets at risk. (Aside: If the danger is so total and obvious, where are all of the stories confirming the assertion?) Assange argues that there is always a risk, but that Wikileaks has made every attempt to protect human lives, and that the cause of exposing military and government dishonesty, of forcing transparency, represents a goal that justifies what risk does exist. Is this a case of the ends actually justifying the means? Or is Assange simply making the same argument that our governments and military leaders do?

The Pentagon Papers revealed a level of government and military dishonesty in regards to Viet Nam that was massive enough to derail the American war effort there and end a useless war. The story here is the same. The dishonesty continues, and our governments strive to make heroes into villains in an effort to hide their own complicity and distract us from the truth.

This quote by Barry Lopez has confounded me in wonderful ways since I first stumbled upon it a year ago. I think it goes to the heart of the matter:

"How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."

I find myself, in wistful fits like I’ve experienced this week, hoping like hell that we’ll reach a tipping point where more of us lean into the light than not, and where we’ll make choices proactively instead of reactively. Perhaps there will be collateral damage in that movement towards the light. Maybe it’s unavoidable that, in such a fucked up world, there’s no way to avoid breakage no matter how pure the intention, or how just the cause. Like Mr. Lopez says, it’s a paradox.

I remind myself that it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. It’s the leaning itself that is the goal. If we lean (I tell myself) then the light will come all on its own.

P.S. I know, not much of a rant. There was barely even any swearing. Sorry. I have more questions than answers (even more than usual) this week. But that’s not always a bad thing.

P.P.S. And this in late: One of the subjects of last week’s Rant, Alex Hundert, Canadian activist and dissident, was arrested again yesterday. The charges have not been made public.

Sunday Rant: on dissidents, criminals and Nobel awards

The Real News published this story on Saturday about Canadian activist Alex Hundert’s ongoing battle for the right to speak in the wake of the G20 debacle in June. Hundert has been an activist, and a voluble one, for many years. Watch the video to get a bigger picture of who he is and what he stands for.

He was arrested back in June in anticipation of the G20 in Toronto, preemptively targeted as one of many activist leaders in a blatant attempt to shut down protests. This, of course, didn’t work. Activists are an anarchistic lot, and while leaders do exist, their role is less to organize than to galvanize, and the dissent goes on with or without them.

This isn't just a Canadian trend. The current criminalization of dissent applies in the US too, where activists have been being rounded up, just like in Canada, while engaging in such subversive acts as questioning policy on LBGT rights, DADT repeal, the use of torture, and America’s ongoing (never-ending) war efforts. Just as it’s happening in Europe and Russia and Israel, all supposedly democratic, developed bastions of human rights.

One of the conditions of Hundert’s original $100,000 bail was to not participate in protests, so he didn’t, in spite of being a fairly obviously infringement of his right to free speech. Then he participated in a panel discussion in a lecture hall, at a university, as an invited speaker, inside, without signs, with an “I want to be here” audience.

Naturally, he was arrested for breach of bail conditions. Apparently a panel discussion is now the equivalent of a protest.

Hundert was just released, after another four weeks in custody, with an additional, coerced condition on his bail, one that makes not participating in protests seem mild in comparison. The new condition precludes him from any public discussion of his political views. A complete public gag order. He might as well be in jail, which is where he was going to stay rather than acquiesce, but they literally threatened him with solitary confinement for the duration if he didn't sign off on the condition.

Offended yet?

Meanwhile, another much more popular story this last week was the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo of China, another dissident and activist, a proponent of peaceful, non-violent dissent, a participant in the Tiananmen Square protests and a co-author of the Charter 08 document in support of democracy and civil rights in China. For writing and signing that document he was arrested, convicted of subversion of the government, and sentenced to eleven years in prison.

Except for the Chinese government, the award is applauded. The Chinese Government’s reaction (calling the award antithetical to the mandate of the Nobel Peace Prize and reaffirming their stance that Liu is a criminal) was universally frowned upon as the pathetic attempt at spin and propaganda that it is.

On October 8th, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulated Liu and joined the chorus of world leaders asking China to review Liu’s imprisonment. This was the same day that Hundert was found to be in breach of his ‘no-demonstration’ bail condition.

I guess the lesson here is that dissent in China is noble, but in Canada, the US or the rest of the “developed world”, it’s just criminal.

The hypocrisy is fucking nauseating.

This seems to clearly fall into the “we’re going to look back on this and feel pretty stupid” category. I’ve talked about this before, about our social myopia when it comes to doing the most convenient thing now while ignoring the consequences (and the irony).

So, while the world applauds Mr. Liu’s Nobel (appropriately), and he enjoys it from his cell, the Canadian dissident Alex Hundert will be appealing the coerced condition of his bail denying him free speech. He’ll do it in a month, the earliest opportunity that the law allows.

Until then he'll essentially be under house arrest, his dissident thoughts locked and ankle-braceleted inside his head, away from the flaccid, apathetic ears and minds of the Canadian public. Just as Mr. Liu is closeted away, all reference to his award banned and scoured from the Chinese internet.

But that’s the way we like it, right? If only those trouble makers would stay quiet, we seem to believe, it’d be so much easier to go about doing the bigger-better-faster-more thing, accumulating our toys and our debt, making the fat politicians and greedy capitalists happy and rich. That’s the way we do it in the developed world, right? Like in China.

You want a quote? Here’s one:

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think. - Adolf Hitler

Maybe it’s time we did more thinking.

(P.S. Micheal Bérubé shut down American Airspace this week. This makes me very sad for he is a great thinker and his blog was a wonderful experience. His last post is here.)

World Alzheimer's Day - Sept. 21 - Bloggers Unite

(This is a Bloggers Unite cross-post)

When I was nine my parents split up. My dad, the aforementioned English teacher, left and, with him, so did our family’s sole source of income.

My mom has suffered from chronic depression and anxiety her entire life, has a grade 8 education, was emancipated by fifteen, spent a brief time as a street kid (imagine that in the 50’s), and worked as a data punch processor until she met and married my dad. By the late 70’s when they split up those data punch skills were archaic and useless.

We spent about a year living on welfare.

After Dad left she never spent another night in the hospital due to her depression, perhaps in part as a result of him not being there, but I think mostly because she just told herself that she couldn't. For me.

She managed to pay the bills and the mortgage until she got a job as a graveyard supervisor at a group home for the mentally challenged. She built that job into a career by turning our house into a miniature group home. By the time I was 12, she was caring full time for two developmental challenged paranoid/schizophrenic women. That was her career, seemingly forged out of thin air, and the means by which she kept us in hot dogs and hamburgers.

We never lost the house, I was always fed, always clothed, always loved, and mostly aware of how amazing all of that was. It was, at times, challenging being a teenage boy in that house, but it was also a priceless and unique experience.

To this day, I have a hard time calculating the scale of the sacrifices she made; how much focus and effort a life of service to those two women must have taken; how hard it must have been to not give up or give in to the depression that was and still is a giant cloud over her head; how much she overcame to keep our modified family together.

Thinking about it always leaves me dumbfounded and a little fucked up for a while, but in a good way.

So when I say that she is the most courageous person I know, please understand how serious I am. She is my hero.

Mom turned seventy early this year and has, over the last year or so, been slipping (mostly) gently into the early stages of Alzheimer’s. We’ve had some bad stretches already, but adjustments to her medications have helped her come back twice now, and we’re currently holding.

I know that, realistically, it won’t last forever, but I’m thankful for the time we have, and for her continued courage.

There’s no bullshit around the house. She’s aware of what’s happening and it scares the shit out of her some days, but we talk about it when it does.

We laugh whenever possible. We remember together, and the repeated stories never seem old. She tells me that she’s proud of me and I tell her I’m more proud of her. We say ‘I love you’ all the time, more than we used to, and that’s never a bad thing.

So far it’s a pretty gentle experience and we’re thankful for that too. We know that it won’t last forever, but while it does… well, while it does we’ll be in the moment and appreciate it.

Every moment. Every story. Every hug. Every ‘I love you’. Every. Fucking. One.

Hell, she’s my hero and this is just life. You deal, right?

It’s what heroes do. My Mom taught me that…

September 21 is World Alzheimer’s Day.

Maybe your folks are fine, maybe not. Either way, be thankful for the time you have. It’s precious and too short.

Bloggers Unite - Women's Equality Day

It was about ten years ago that I had a sudden and, in hindsight, long-overdue realization: The world I lived in as a white, middle-classed male was dramatically different than the world my female friends lived in.

A friend described to me what it was like to walk in a parking lot at night; how she had to be careful to park in the light and as close to a door as possible; how every van parked beside her car made the world seem a less secure place; how she walked with her keys protruding from her fists just in case.

It was such a simple description of how our worlds were different. I never thought about cars or vans or where I parked my car, never considered where the lights were or how far I was from a door. Once the blinders were lifted by grace of her gentle clarification I found myself in a different reality.

It was a profound moment of empathy, and one I am ashamed to say I had to be led to. I've never looked at a parking lot, among many other things, the same way again.

Bloggers Unite recognizes this day, August 26, as Women's Equality Day, in honour of the United States of America's adoption of its 19th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920. It was in that year that the US provided their female citizens the right to vote, 57 years after Sweden started the ball rolling, 51 after England, 27 after New Zealand provided full voting rights to all women. The domino affect would require most of the twentieth century to work itself out. Switzerland, for the record, was a notable hold out, waiting until 1971 to grant women full voting rights under their law.

To me, the timeline and my friend's story both highlight how great a gulf there is between the laws we make and the ethics and morality we practice. In Canada, where I live, women have been considered full 'persons' and equal under the law since 1950 when full sufferage was granted.

Only sixty years ago... My mother was ten when her mother finally became a full person under the law.

I find that fact hard to process.

The international recognition of suffrage is a great accomplishment, without a doubt. But the equality our laws provide is not always mirrored in the real world. Suffrage, as huge a step as it was, is only one part of creating any real equality.

Women, on average, are still paid less than men, are still threatened and abused, are still mistreated or ignored by courts.

Women still have to be aware of vans parked beside their cars where men probably don't even notice them.

We've come a long way, but the road is only half traveled. We're nowhere near 'there' yet.

So, by all means, we should take a moment and recognize where we've come from and how much has been accomplished. But when we've caught our breath and shared a toast, perhaps remembered the brave women who have paid enormous prices to get us this far, when we've done these things it will be time to make sure our boots are tied tightly so we can start the walk again.

There's a long way to go yet.

August 26th is Bloggers Unite's Women's Equality Day.

‘Capable, generous men do not make victims, they nurture them.’ Julian Assange

Life is about making mistakes. Well, maybe not about making them, but they happen. I've made peace with that. Occasionally, I have really good days when I make good decisions in anticipation of the mistake it would be if I made another choice, hard decisions that are not efficient in terms of short term gain or ease, but rather work only when I measure in terms of how I want to look back on my life when I get to the end of it.

I was thinking about this concept on Saturday, both in personal and in societal terms, when I drove to Vancouver to participate in the CAPP solidarity march and protest demanding a full public inquiry in into the recent G8/G20 summit in Toronto. It was my own little thematic idea-track providing a context and mood to the day. I create these thematic playlists most days and, when the 'theme music' is good, when I can feel the kick drum, move with the syncopation, and lean into the melody and harmonies, I find myself edging into a sense of serendipity that I can only compare to good days in front of the keyboard clicking out the imaginary lives of the characters in my novel. It's a feeling of connectedness, something that approaches Epiphanical ecstasy at times, a dance of endorphins that makes everything feel just alright, if you know what I mean.

On these days, whether the insights feel optimistic or the clarity only provides confirmation for my pessimism, I feel like I'm in touch with something bigger. I don't attribute it to god or the universe. I know it's just a trick of biochemistry and psychological alignment, but I also don't care how or why. It's a powerful sensation and I'll take it any way I can get it.

I spent the morning walking through the Woodlands Memorial Garden. Woodlands Provincial Asylum for the Insane was an institution that operated between 1913 and 1996. At its peak it housed over 1250 people, many of whom died while incarcerated at the facility. Ideas regarding the developmentally challenged evolved a great deal through those years, but they were never really enlightened, even through the '80's and '90's when Woodlands was winding down and hundreds of patients were released without placement or support into the community. The impact on Vancouver's homeless population was enormous.

A plaque in the memorial states: “The memorial sculpture, Window Too High, represents the barred windows of the original Woodlands building that were set so high that the residents could not see out of them.” Over 300 people died while residing at Woodlands between 1920 and 1958, and were buried on the grounds. Later renovations actually desecrated these graves by using granite marker stones for patio and BBQ installations. In '99 the Memorial Garden was created and over 200 stones, only a portion of those removed, were reclaimed. Missing stones have been replaced with new plaques to commemorate and respect those that were once buried here. Only nine original graves survived the desecration. They are described as “silent sentinels” over this place that has been, in some small measure, reclaimed.

I was immediately struck, in light of that thematic sub-beat that was running through my head, by the dissonant irony that we seem to place so much emphasis on making things right in retrospect when we were (and are) so eager to participate in the desecration in the first place. I wondered how it was, in the '70's, that anyone thought it would be okay to use those stones to build patios? I wondered what failure of foresight could have justified such insensitivity.

Today, I wonder what can justify the failure of foresight we continue to practice, as individuals and as a culture, every day of our present. How do we not learn, when we are so often faced with the social and political necessity of reparation and reconciliation, to avoid the kind of callous disregard for each other that spawns the need for such campaigns of atonement?

I carried this feeling of intense species-shame into the afternoon and the protest. It seems like such a small thing to join with a couple hundred other people to walk three blocks chanting and shouting, sharing our communal outrage over the suspension of civil liberties that took place in Toronto during the weeks leading up to and through the G8/G20. A friend asked, very legitimately, “Does this really do anything?”

I found myself pondering again and again how it was that so many ISU officers thought it was okay to kick and beat people? How could McQuinty's cabinet enact the Public Protection Act with such cavalier disregard for the people they were elected to serve and then participate in the lies regarding its scope? How can Harper so consistently snub his arrogant nose at the Charter that his government is sworn to uphold? These are human beings, after all, whether that fact is always easy to remember or not in the midst of my frustration. They should be driven by the same basic understanding of respect and empathy as I am. We should all share a desire to see all people living with dignity. Is that such a radical concept?

How is it that, as a species, whether in the realm of politics, industry, finance, consumption, renewability, health care, or any of the other spheres in which we act with such short-sightedness, we seem to continue to make the same mistakes? How do we still justify decisions made in the interest of short-term profit or ease when the the obvious consequences loom at us over the horizon of tomorrow? Is our sense of duty to the future still so myopic that we think, “Oh well, fuck tomorrow. Our kids can put up a memorial one day. Let's make money and accumulate stuff while the sun shines”?

Yes, it is. That's exactly what's wrong. In our apathy or our sociopathic greed, we let these things happen. We have to own this, all of us. Getting past the self-inflicted denial is the first step.

In answer to my friend's question I had to admit that, in and of itself, the impact of the march on Saturday is marginal (especially when the mainstream media has admitted that they no longer desire to cover the G20 story and didn't even deign to send a single reporter to cover it).

But it does make a difference. After all, she came even though she hadn't heard about the march until I asked her to keep me company. We listened and learned together, shouted “shame” again and again as the three witnesses to the Toronto actions told their stories, listened to the social and NGO leaders and politicians, chanted our affirmations that, yes, this was what democracy looked like. We participated, as did the others, and the weight of our angst filled the street and Victory Park in its small way. Better that we were witness and remembered than that no-one did. Better to light a single candle, and all that, not giving into the apathy that seems to typify our culture. It is a big thing. And we were part of that.

We were part of saying that we will weigh our actions and their consequences in advance and with foresight. We will act in such a way as to not require memorial gardens one day to ease our shame. We will own it now, today, and make choices in hope of a better world and a kinder way of living. We will do this for ourselves and for our children and for theirs.

One day, maybe, our children's children will have better things to do than make up for our mistakes...

For Gaza

Let me state this plainly:

I am not anti-Israel. I believe that Israel has a right to exist as valid as any other nation state. I don't know if I would have made the same choices that were made in the late 1940's, but that's water under the bridge. Israel exists and has a right to continue to exist.

I am not pro-Palestine. I believe that the nation state is one of the poorer inventions of the human species. Show me a nation-state and I will show you an institution that will want something that someone else possesses, and will fight and kill for it if they get the opportunity.

I am not anti-Israeli. The Israeli people are a vibrant and dynamic culture with much to offer the world.

I am not pro-Hamas. Hamas, as much as the nation-state of Israel, has many crimes to answer for. I do not condone or approve of terrorism or violence no matter how much I might understand the frustration and anger that spawns it.

What I am is anti-Israeli government and policy in so much as that government and policy considers it justifiable to marginalize 1.5 million people and dictate their quality of life so that it is, at best, an existence of bare subsistence.

I am pro-Palestinian. Palestinians are a people. Like the Israelis, they have a vibrant and dynamic culture to share with the world. Like the Israelis, they deserve the opportunity to exist and flourish.

I am pro-Gaza. It is for the 1.5 million citizens of Gaza that my heart aches, that my teeth grind, that my fists clench.

They are impoverished for no reason other than an arrogant belief that one people are more worthy than another; denied the rights that we consider most basic because one culture has decreed they are less worthy; refused the basic goods required to build their homes and feed their children because a group of developed nations have decided that it is justifiable to punish an entire people for what they consider to be the sin of  poor democratic choice.

The international community of nations tout themselves as wise statesmen acting in the best interest of humanity, but they are not. Rather, they are bullies, the largest and most immature children in the playground vying for control of a global sandbox. They do not speak for me. They do not speak for you. They speak for themselves and those economic concerns that promise them fame, power and fortune.

I am anti-bully. Bullies steal from others so that they can grow fatter and bigger. They beat up those that they can to feel powerful in a vain attempt to prove their arrogance justifiable. They say that they are protecting us, but really it's more like a protection racket, an organized crime. All this can be yours,, they say, if you will just shut up and follow the program.

We cannot shut up. In the name of all of those values that our rulers give lip service to but never honor, in the name of true morals like empathy and justice and equality, in the name of simple dignity, we cannot shut up.

Instead we must remember the weak, embrace those who have been cast out and called unclean, stand up for those who cannot, dissent from the lie of the status quo. If we will not stand now for those who are beaten down, who will stand for us when we are the slaves, the marginalized, the disenfranchised?

There must be a better way, and if our 'leaders' will not seek it, then we are the ones that must demand it with more conviction, more peace, more resolve. Our leaders must be made to remember. And for that to happen, we cannot forget.

Gaza, we remember you. And we will not forget. Or rest.

‘The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.’ Charles Bukowski

I was reading the news and came across the following stories about an activist being tried for hanging a banner, a brave whistle blower from the US military being court-martialed, and another activist turning himself in to face charges relating to G20 activities that seem, on the surface of them, spurious at best. In each of these cases there seems to be an intent  on the part of authorities to prosecute to a level that is punitive simply for the sake of retaliation, simply because these people have questioned the status quo and are thereby considered threats worthy of harassment.

The case of Mr. Manning and the accusations of leaking military video footage to Wikileaks seems particularly hypocritical to me. In any other industry other than the US military or government, Manning would be protected under US whistleblower laws. Why is it that the government and military feel they should be held exempt? (Of course, corporations feel that they should be held exempt too, but that’s another blog). I would think that they should be held to higher standards than any business. After all, they are supposed to be serving the people of a given country rather than the government of said country, are they not?

And in the case of both activists we have individuals who work tirelessly not only to support worthwhile causes, but who do so while also upholding some of the cornerstone rights upon which our ‘free’ societies are based; the right to protest, to show dissent and to question the actions of our governments and institutions; to hold accountable those in whom we have entrusted our civil liberties (because the mainstream media isn’t going to be doing it any time soon). Yet they are specifically targeted as dangerous individuals. Remember when we were up in arms about how China curtails rights; how Tiananmen was an aberration and a prime example of how the West was better than the East, democracy so much more free than communism, ‘us’ so much better than ‘them’?

I no longer believe that our politicians have anything even approximating our best interests in mind. When one does come along that actually stands for anything, stands for the people they represent and for concepts and morals that are universal, they too are singled out and driven into the mud. Libby Davies should be held up as an example of a politician that still actually stands for something. The rest just seem to bend over for anyone. Instead she’s criticized, threatened, demonized. Frankly, I’d take one of her over the whole lot of the rest of them.

And that ‘rest of them’ are the ones that have co-opted the police, those supposedly sworn to serve and protect us, and turned them into a pseudo-military force enlisted to preserve the plutocracy’s hegemony at the cost of our rights and liberties. This just will not do.

It prompted me, in a thread earlier today, to ask this: “I wonder at what point individual police officers, who might be 'nice people' and all that (and I know several), become responsible for the fact that they choose to remain working for those politicos and in support of obviously compromised institutions? Where does their moral responsibility begin and their job end? "I was following orders" hasn't been a valid excuse for 65 years or so now...”

That’s my question right now? At what point do people that are in positions to support our downhill slide ask, “Is what I’m doing wrong?”  When we look back twenty or fifty years from now, will we be looking at those who served on task forces like the ISU and be asking them “How could you?” in the same way that someone must have asked that guardsman at Trent State that question. How does a cop go to Toronto, beat up a bunch of unarmed protesters, and then go home to the wife and kiddies and look them in the eye? What has to take place in that mind to think that that’s an okay thing to do?

These are people after all, the politicians, the cops, the corrupt jurists and lawyers. Ostensibly they have the same DNA as us, the same propensity for humanism, for empathy, for decency. How do they ‘get there’, that place where threatening people with cameras is okay, and where threatening detainees with rape is appropriate? Hell, I know a few cops and, from what I’ve seen of them, they’re salt of the Earth, regular people that have to do an often incredibly difficult job going after real criminals, people that live with the nightmares of what they’ve had to bear witness to; of man’s inhumanity to man. The ones I know are great people doing a shitty job. And yet, they could very easily have been among those at the G20 smacking people with batons for no good reason, splitting their eyebrows open with shields just because, stomping seated protesters on the back with their boots in support of ‘leaders’ that don’t much care about us at all.

It tempts me to hate them for that. It takes an act of will to hate the system instead and realize that they are victims of it too, albeit willing ones. I’m just left wondering how much slack those individuals should get. When do they stop being unwilling employees or good soldiers and start being criminals themselves?

'I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.' Christopher Reeve

Like a lot of people here in Canada, I spent a fair bit of time keeping an eye on the G20 Summit in Toronto last weekend, and the road show that invariably follows it around. Occurring as it did over the days leading up to the anniversary of our national independence on July 1, the events that occurred in Toronto were cast in an especially ironic light. Anyone watching, listening or reading the news coming out of TO in the days leading up to and through the summit had to be struck by the grotesque largesse of the preparations and their associated costs. Anyone with a heart had to be dismayed by what they saw the police doing in the aftermath of the vandalism that took place on Saturday. Hopefully, we were looking close enough to notice more than just that vandalism and the 'reaction' to it, because there was certainly more to the story than the mainstream media was purporting, especially here in Canada. And while there were some good stories to come out of the weekend, a few reminders of what it is we hold dear and why we fight for our freedoms, it was a sad week for international diplomacy and a sadder one for Canadian civil liberties.

I'm not going to go into detail regarding what happened over the weekend. Suffice it to say that, as always, the mainstream media didn't cover the whole story. Frankly, I'm surprised that they covered as much as they did. No, to get to a closer semblance of the truth I spent time monitoring the alternative news sources online, looking for the stories that the infotainment industry doesn't cover, sharing little pieces with friends on the social networks, and I know that the truth is still something that you have to look for as much in between the lines as anywhere else. I'll also say this: While I don't support the Black Bloc tactic as a strategy (I think it misses the point, detracts from the primary messages, and provides too much of what the Security Forces are looking for as justification for their brutality), I don't blame them either. I believe that the Black Bloc provides the Police with their best opportunity to infiltrate and act as agent provocateurs. I think there's a better way, that when we adopt the piggish and brutal tactics of our enemies, then we become as bad as them. I think that's what Gandhi and King taught, and that works for me.

I was, in turns; profoundly moved by the courage of activists and discouraged by the actions of the police; frustrated by the Black Bloc tactics and nauseated by the actual violence perpetuated by the ISU; shocked by the callous brutality of too many of the security force and encouraged in small ways when I saw some of them obviously finding their duties distasteful; horrified by the suspension of civil liberties and enraged by the cavalier attitude with which the ISU went about flouting their disdain for those legal rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights; outraged at ISU lines charging a peaceful demonstration the moment they finished singing O Canada, and buoyed by video of two courageous demonstrators trying to stop the cruiser vandals or another making a looter drop the item he was about to steal. It was a weekend of ups and downs.

The vast majority of protesters were peaceful and loud yet the ISU rained down their violence primarily on these people. Over 900 arrested over the G8/G20 and over 700 released without charges – that says something. The conditions in the detention center were by many accounts horrible, and by some utterly horrifying, including threats of rape and cavity searches completed by ISU of the opposite sex and isolation of those 'identified' as members of the LBGT community. The 5-meter rule, a supposed amendment of the 1939 Public Works Protection Act that was secretly re-enacted by the Ontario cabinet, was touted by the police as a special temporary power granted them to tackle the extra security threat. That 5-meter law turned out to be a lie that the TPS Chief Blair chuckled about, but what it really means is that thousands of illegal search and seizures were completed over the weekend without probable cause.

The phrase 'Police State' was bandied about quite a bit, and if you read the stories, watch the videos, see the pictures, you might be inclined to agree. This was a disgusting display of arrogance and near-fascist hubris on the part of the Federal and Provincial governments and the ISU.

We should be ashamed. Lots of us are - of our country, our political 'leaders', our police forces. It was a very sad weekend for civil liberty in Canada.

It was also an amazingly empowering weekend to watch too. In spite of the brutality, the lies, the suspension of rights and the illegal detentions, there were still thousands of people willing to continue the fight. And the numbers grew as the weekend went on when regular folk saw what was happening and joined the protest. It carried over into the new week too with thousands more participating in solidarity marches in Hamilton, Quebec, Montreal, Winnipeg, Regina and Vancouver.

This is the way it works. Even when the politicians and police think they've tricked us into looking bad, they forget their own ability to make themselves look worse. Their abuse doesn't make people cower in fear; it makes more people stand up. Just like fighting un-winable wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, their hubris creates more enemies than it oppresses. And a tipping point will come in time.

I like to hope that the tipping point will occur peacefully when enough people open their eyes and see the world for what it actually is and decide, goddammit, that there must be a better way. Sometimes, though, I despair that the odds of a peaceful resolution to all of this will remain slim. And then I see someone stand when it would be easier to stay down, choose peace when violence would be expected, be courageous when it would be easy to run away, and I remember why people fight for these things: because they matter and because we know they do.

I'd like to think that we can aspire to something better than the world we live in because I see individuals doing it all the time. But I wonder if we'll hit that tipping point in time. Mostly we seem bent of self-destruction, like in the parable of the scorpion and the frog – it seems to be our nature. But I see the good too and think; maybe we can hold on long enough, yell loud enough, stand firm enough to get us through to that magic point where the sane outnumber the insane and we can actually start in a better direction.

Anyway, links are below if you missed it. It's not a comprehensive list, but it'll get'cha started if you're so inclined...

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2724231020100627
http://www.newkerala.com/news/fullnews-120259.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc
http://g20.torontomobilize.org/node/173
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=784lay9401U&feature=related
http://www.straight.com/article-331174/vancouver/black-bloc-smashes-windows-causes-mayhem-toronto-g20-meeting
http://videosift.com/video/Toronto-G20-the-Shape-of-things-to-Come
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/G20/2010/06/26/14525911.html
http://www.torontosun.com/news/g20/2010/06/27/14534051.html
http://current.com/news/92515480_video-compilation-of-police-violence-at-toronto-g20.htm
http://www.blogto.com/city/2010/06/police_trap_g20_protesters_at_queen_and_spadina/
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/29/g20-chief-fence571.html
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/statica/2010/07/g8g20-communiqué-journalists-attacked-police-g20-protests
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/29/g20-oiprd-reporters-complaint.html
http://jezebel.com/5575356/g20-journalist-threatened-with-rape-violence-in-jail
http://www.straight.com/article-332050/vancouver/vancouver-protest-planned-show-solidarity-g20-detainees-black-bloc-activists
http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/photo/g20-solidarity-rally-and-protest-against-polic-repression-g20-protests-montreal/4006
http://mynews.ctv.ca/mediadetails/2886697?collection=742&offset=0&siteT

‘Can this Onion Ring get more fans than Stephen Harper?’ Facebook Fansite Page, 02.04.10

Yesterday a Facebook group started asking this very question and inviting people to join up. By the time I found it yesterday afternoon membership had already exceeded 45,000. This morning it has exceeded 64,000 fans and is growing at a rate in excess of 1000 fans per hour.

“Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.” Henry Kissinger

I have a problem with this quote, but I’ll come back to that later.

I actually looked for this one specifically because it so seemed to fit with my feelings in regards to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change last week. The activist and eco-sensitive communities are pretty much untied in their opinion that a) nothing very much worth doing got done inside the conference (although there were some pretty funny protests facilitated outside), and b) politicians are useless at anything that actually requires backbone or common sense, but have a seemingly limitless ability to get stuff done that favors big business and makes no sense whatsoever.

For me, the highlight (and paradoxically, the lowlight) of the conference was the awarding of the 2009 Fossil Award to Canada for Mr. Harper’s continued resistance to anything that smacks of even a hint of ecological responsibility. Canada, former bastion of all causes green, is now the scourge of the free world, mired in as entrenched and myopic a position as is possible, while the ‘third’ world countries, those that would seem to have the most to loose if industrial standards of polluting behavior are actually tightened in any meaningful way, are suddenly the champions of taking the high road.

Harper is a joke, a puppet of the most serious order with less integrity than your average lawyer. Oh yeah, he is a lawyer.

Let’s be clear: The means to move to a more sustainable system of energy utilization, industrialization and transportation already exists. The technology is extant, but it’s less profitable for these buffoons to move towards it in a meaningful way now because it would require a retooling of their industries. Once that retooling is done, there will be more profits than they could shake their canes at, and the process of developing even more responsible technologies would require R&D loans and prompt business startups that would make a huge difference in our stagnant economy. But the profits might not go to the right people, so damn the torpedoes and stay the course, they say. Who cares about climate change, what kind of influence our actions are having on the speed of that change, and what our inaction might result in? There are profits to be made now, dammit, and being responsible or cautious will get in the way of that.

So our politicians line their pockets with our tax dollars while they suck at the tit of commerce and industry, stealing our money now and knowing that a fat appointment to the board of a major corporation awaits them at the end of their ‘public service’, just when they start to receive their monstrous pension payments at the expense of our pension plans and medical coverage.

Any one else feeling ill yet?

Maybe all of those lawyers at the bottom of the ocean that constitute a ‘good start’ need some company.

Oh yeah, my problem with the quote? I think that Kissinger is too charitable in his percentage split. 99-1 might be more accurate.

Or maybe that’s too generous too…