Thursday, August 29, 2013

Here We Go Again

     Drumbeats and sword rattles, the USA is heading back again, as usual with a blindfold, into bellicosity and bloodshed. Hif Majeftie, in order not to look bad and to “stand on his principles” threatens another Congressionally unapproved venture into the affairs of another nation. His right hand hatchet man, John Kerry, former head of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, rattles his saber high-most of all, now that he is in the most powerful national position he has ever held. Nobody has yet come forth to challenge the hypocrisy of HIS “principles” yet, I notice. He also (most obviously) needs to re-read the Constitution of the United States, which states that Congress has sole responsibility to levy war, contrary to what he has most obscenely stated otherwise in recent days. But I guess if you walk around long enough with an American flag pin in your lapel, you start believing you are hot shit.
    Without proof of any sort, they insist that regime change MUST come to Syria because “obviously” it was the Syrian government who created the havoc and casualties from the gas attack... created, very likely, from chemical weapons which the USA sold to Saddam Hussein to begin with, spirited over into Syria before the UN inspections came to THAT country, and prior to the three-trillion-dollar unilateral US intervention THERE. And to support a ragtag group of rebels a large portion  of whom pledge some sort of loyalty toward our “sworn enemy” Al Qaeda. Where is the outrage, the shock of the antiwar movement at all this? Oh, right, it was “our” guy, the “peace candidate” up there blathering.  We had best Support our Commander In Chief and Support The Troops. Duh.
      The hypocrisy on all levels here is underwhelming and another example of why I just cannot believe half of the things this administration- or for that matter, the things that come spieling off the top of the heads of either major American political party nowadays. We already wasted three trillion plus in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, we risk to waste not only another trillion or two more, but to draw the entire world into a MidEast conflict.
     This  president has done absolutely none of the things I elected him to do, nor has he done any of the things I had expected him to do. Instead, he has turned into a smiley-faced “liberal” carbon copy of the man he replaced. If he'd like to get some slack from me, well he ought to give up that idea immediately- I am now firmly convinced he is a lying hypocrite and a murderer- and just another numb- nuts puppet and tool of the military-industrial complex who deserves no less than to be run off Capitol Hill on a rail, tarred and feathered. For everything this administration has done (in supporting the totalitarian ideals of the previous) as well as its own innovations on the theme, nothing short of impeachment will satisfy me.
     A president of the USA used to be “the man who kept the peace.” NOW it appears, their primary mission of course is to oversee and wage wars. Useless, generally illegal, and unconstitutional wars, based on rumors and lies and innuendos. While once it was the job of the president to ensure the prosperity of the nation, now it only appears a president exists to ensure the enmity of all other nations against it. But I know one thing. If you are against war, you ought to be against ALL war. Believing there is even such a thing as a “just” war is an offense against God AND humanity. Unless you would like the world to go up in flames, don’t lend your support, tacit or otherwise, to the murder of your brothers, your sisters, and innocents. Because that is all any of this ever leads to.
     "Because we are the cops of the world boy, we are the cops of the world"-Phil Ochs

http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/09/09/the-us-a-rogue-state-has-no-business-enforcing-international-norms/

Being President of the United States of America means never having to say you're sorry:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my-grandson.html?_r=0

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Missing the Leadership Boat on Race

    The Obama administration is finally getting a lot more scrutiny- all the scrutiny is well-deserved- for its continued instigation of a police state against the American people. Not so well noted, and maybe, slipping by on account that the other issues are "more glamorous"- was the total lack of preparation or position statements on the Supreme Court's decision against the Voting Rights Act of 1965- an act which, of course, without which this president could never have possibly even been elected.
     One big reason I did [did I, really? damn!] vote for Hif Majeftie on the first go round was an expectation that, as a native Hawai'ian, he might be of some help in pulling our nation out of its usual racial muck. Separate insular and Balkanized communities, which have as little to do with one another as possible, still seem to be the general rule in large cities and small towns across America. In Honolulu, however, one is thrust into a much more tightly knit network of diversity, and one must either deal with it, or be ostracized. My own childhood felt blessed, actually, for this experience, because it helped me to be someone who bases my consideration of the character of others due to the way I am treated, and not solely by their appearance.
     When this decision of the Supreme Court was due to be announced, was there any general policy statement offered by the White House in defense of the Voting Rights Act? No. The White House, basically, punted, and left the Act to twist in the wind. Subsequent  to the SCOTUS running back the ball for an unopposed touchdown, the WH sent out the Atty. General to make haste to attack the Texas statutes which could not have been made acceptable, without that Court opinion. And with that, we get a taste of just what sort of "leadership" is being offered here- not progressive action, but reaction. Additionally, the WH and AG might have come cleaner a LOT sooner on their "sentencing guidelines reform" as per drug laws, but instead, deferred early on to the prison industry. A little too late, actually, to give more than the appearance of trying to play politics again with the idea of civil liberties. What they take away with one hand- due process for suspects, mass surveillance of private citizens- they offer back with the other, as if to say "See? We really DO care." This strikes me as being just more grist for the mill. The Constitution is not a negotiable item, and the people of the United States have the right-as well as the duty- to hold the government and representatives of this nation accountable for their crimes against it. I suppose they think we're all too concerned with trying to get work, as so we may be- or just, happy feeding off what we're allowed to believe makes for our little lot, but Freedom and Liberty used to mean something else entirely in this nation than they do today. I would think the Buck Needs to Stop Someplace.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

BUS OF FOOLS - a new novel by Mark Lind-Hanson - AVAILABLE @ SMASHWORDS.COM

      In Bus of Fools, Guru Abbryggdd, the co-creator of the OtherNet, attempts to regain his family's lost estates and place in the House of Lords. Joined by the pretender to the throne of England, the "terrorist" Bonny Black Prince, they join forces to recapture their respective places in history and society. Along the way Guru meets a number of American tourists, in Paris on a week-long bus tour, at the intersection of belief and incredulity.
     They include: Andrew Dempster, Marin County bookseller and his poet wife Fern, out for international recognition; Inez McGillicuddy, elderly painter haunted by memories of an old friend; Hugh Baggs and his wife Ramona, quintessential "ugly American" swimming far out of his element; Tunny Bachlund, SoCal resident released from a painful job and out to see the world, and Dale Holloway, hedonistic yuppie with an appetite for kicks... 
     Bus of Fools  is the first solo (published) novel by Mark Lind-Hanson, and a sequel to Third Eye Patch. A separate sequel by co-author Kevin Donohue is in the works.
AVAILABLE at SMASHWORDS.COM

Friday, August 16, 2013

"Constitution-Free" Zones and Alphabet Soup Tyranny

Another candidate for #1 most unreported story" for 2013 is the recent revelation that the Department of Homeland Security has declared an internal border zone extending 100 miles inland of all territorial US Borders as "Constitution-free" zones, where American citizen's rights as per 1st and 2nd Amendments (and presumably,  also the 4th, 5th, and all other Articles)  are subject to arbitrary suspension at the whim of the Department's officers. Reports are already surfacing of people's electronic devices being seized, their passwords demanded, and of officers scrutinizing the private files ("papers")- of said citizens.
Orders for this had to come from someplace, (unless it all symbiotically materialized out of some weird "mission creep" over a number of past administrations) and as there is only one man sitting at the top of this entire structure of "extra-legal" activity, it can only be one man, that "Constitutional scholar" whose policies seem to have included, from the very start of his terms in office, a complete ignorance of the purpose and import of that venerable and honorable document he swore an oath to uphold. If the buck stops "Here" then someone has some rather fierce explaining to do- which as yet has not been forthcoming.
And yet, the country continues on its merry way, with massive unemployment and, what is worse, massive UNDERemployment, while the "job creators" pull strings and manipulate their ledgers to avoid the inevitable clash of their profit motive and a mandatory health insurance bill, prone to eventually fall upon the backs of everyone. I have a great solution to that- just take half the defense budget, cut it in half, yes- which means bringing back the stormtroopers from across the global empire, shutting down their posts, and putting all that logistical pork "expenditures" into the creation of a true national health program, which citizens are allowed to keep existing plans, and those who have not will be provided for. After all, "providing for the general welfare" must mean something other than welfare for the arms industry and warmongering malingerers who have inflated their cause and wrecked and looted the treasury for over a decade now. And you, stormtroopers of the Empire- are you still yet convinced you are "fighting for freedom"- when your own government forbids you to read about its recently uncovered abuses of civil liberties? A good many of Hif Majeftie's supporters remain unconvinced, and that (for some illogical reason) he ought be given "the benefit of the doubt" even here, five and a half years into his reign.
If one man is not at the top of the machinery of control of all this then where is the accountability? Is it spread out amongst the many representatives of a secret panopticon, are we all subject to their whim and possibility of "indefinite detention?"The DHS would have you think that within their 100-mile limits there are no governmental accountabilities nor responsibilities. Liberty ends just this side of the Sierras. I suppose that someone somewhere decided that the Constitution is a negotiable and revocable entity. But therein are the seeds of a tyranny, and if one man must be held accountable, then that man is indeed a tyrant.
The alphabet soup of agencies- IRS, DEA, NSA, TSA, DHS- which have co-opted this debate through their "authorization by our duly elected representatives" are both the symptoms and the arms of this infection which has overwhelmed, seemingly, the democratic process of this nation and the will of its people. It is no longer government by for and of the people, but by for and of the government. Apparently they are so scared of liberty (even pundits like David Books make bleating noises out their ass-trumpets about the "structure of" Liberty -Liberty has a STRUCTURE?) that they will demean, abuse, crush, and destroy all who would stand up and say "something just isn't right here, it won't wash, it's rotten in Denmark..." and seek to paint them as enemies of the public good rather than believers IN the public good who are both dismayed and betrayed by what they have found going on within the halls of power.
Would YOU buy a used car from this man?
Being President of the United States of America means never having to say you're sorry:

Friday, August 9, 2013

Guru's Dream (Excerpt, from Bus of Fools)

Guru dreamed that night of a giant Cloud, composed of words, bits of information, terabytes of signal channels, servers analog and digital, hovering over Earth, much like the nonmaterial Nous. The huge Cloud was yet contained within a small room, and there were probably no more than twelve of these men, wearing headlamps composed of old-time newspaper editor’s hats, and they were knocking away at the huge cloud formed of words and numbers and porcupine-like stringy spiky optic cables with picks, shovels, sledgehammers and a jackhammer.
The words were taken down and filled into little rail cars that snaked their way out of the room down several hidden alleyways to a number of terminals. These included: ShopCo, PowerCo, and DeathCo. There, three dozen more data miners took the raw ore words and smelted them down into positive integers of infodata, 24bps. The Words themselves became symbols as much as caricatures of themselves, until the rooms full of mining data analysts with their dweaky hats and palm pilots had connections. Otherwise there were no other possibilities of reaching into or even stepping out of the Cloud, until Guru and Syznic had come up with the OtherNet.
Guru woke up sweating. His best bet had been with Syznic, and he knew they had achieved what others scoffed at. There would be hell to pay in the cyberwarfare offices of Pyongyang, Beijing, Havana, and a dozen other places. An operating system that just damnably, like some heretic of the Inquisition, refuses to cooperate with any earthly political entity! It had made him a billionaire, but the price apparently was a kind of half-baked celebrity notoriety, with a hyphen or an asterisk or a slash between real Guru and The Guru They Thought They All Knew. Coming out of his shell- that many-years mask of beard and toothsome hippie look of glee in his eye– combined with his programming abilities, had put him foursquare ahead of the rest of his own competition, himself, just like Syznic.

The world leaders, however, were still in reaction. Lasher of the US was grateful to Syznic, but apologetic, and had basically continued on with running his country his way leaving Guru to go his own way as well. There was no way Guru was going to suck up and play ball with Lasher, after what Hammer had tried to do to the entire Foundation.

Read the complete chapter in its rightful context in Bus of Fools available at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/348575