“You, Mr. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.”

There’s not much to add here to Keith Olbermann’s devastating indictment of the Liar in Chief, for his brazen lies about Iran’s supposed “nucular” weapons development program. This is not just a righteous diatribe. He lays out the timeline and the chain of evidence quite clearly, which shows that George W. Bush has been consciously, deceitfully and yes, treasonously attempting to fear-monger the American people in order to build yet another bogus case for war.

Day by day, week by week, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the naked dishonesty and treachery of this emperor. Time to impeach!

peace,

Steve

I ran across this very interesting interview with John Perkins, the author of the New York Times Best Seller, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, on mediachannel.org. This book has been on my “To Read” list for some time now; I’ve got a lot of books on that list (so little time to read complete books these days), and so it was great to find this interview with Mr. Perkins—and a pretty lengthy interview it is.

In his book, John Perkins details how he served at the behest of U.S. and multinational corporations, and for the United States government (he asserts that he was screened by the National Security Agency for his job as a chief economist at the consulting firm Chas. T. Main). His primary mission, he says, was to entrap Third World nations in massive foreign debt (loaned by the World Bank, IMF and other major players in international banking), and the concomitant procurement of lucrative contracts by U.S. and multinational corporations. These poor nations were targeted, he says, strictly because they possessed resources (such as petroleum) that these corporations could exploit in return for the banking cabal’s servicing (or sometimes “forgiving”) of that crippling debt.

Perkins also outlines how the U.S. government, in concert with these banks and corporations, has been building the world’s first truly global empire, with the chief armament of its imperialist aggression being not military means (although they certainly play a role), but rather global economic warfare on a scale never before seen (but certainly contemplated and planned for decades by the currently ruling elites).

Now I know that some people will be put off by or even sneer openly at the fact that this interview was done by Al Jazeera, the Middle East media network that has been the favored propagandistic whipping boy for the Bush administration and its henchmen and acolytes. But as any serious journalist should be able to tell you, Al Jazeera has a reputation for doing a lot of serious in-depth reporting, both in the Middle East and globally. (They now have a bureau in the U.S., which produced this interview.) Certainly, they report many stories that the U.S. government would much rather not see the light of day, and which the openly compliant (and dare I say lazy) U.S. corporate media won’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

And so it’s left to Al Jazeera to feature an extensive televised interview with an author and former insider who lays bare the de facto program of global empire for the “New American Century,” to which the U.S. government and its partners in domestic and international corporatocracy (promoted as “globalization” by its NeoCon architects and propagandists, such as Tom Friedman, Paul Wolfowitz, et al.) are now so rabidly dedicated.

Those apologists and “Empire Deniers” will, of course, continue to publicly deny the obvious. They will carefully deny and obfuscate, and pontificate about “dee-MOCK-racy!” and “FREE-dom!” (“Freedom to do exactly what, and for whom?,” one might ask) while appearing before the corporate media machine, in their “on the record” moments. Occasionally, however, in an unguarded moment their unbridled enthusiasm for the mission will get the best of them. Sometimes, the truth will leak out just a bit (like that little bit of “seepage” that sometimes happens when you’re exercising hard).

“Oops… stained my shorts.”

To wit: As reported in the New York Times on October 17, 2004, Ron Susskind interviewed a senior White House aide and the following issued forth:

“… The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’“

Many will have already read this New York Times story, but I think it serves to illustrate the true agenda of our current ruling elite. It’s all about Empire now. The mission for the new century (and beyond, I would suppose) is global empire for the United States of America, and for its actual rulers—not “We The People,” but rather “We The Corporations.” This, my dear citizens, is our New Reality, as defined by our “leaders.”

So I fervently hope that those of you who are still sitting on the fence—maybe not yet convinced of the totality of the corruption and debasement of what was once the republic of the United States of America—will wake up and smell the stench that’s coming from the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and from corporate boardrooms across the land and around the world, and from the mouthpieces of the corporate media machine.

So much faux impassioned talk about “democracy” and “freedom,” and so much treachery in the shadows. So much flag waving, and so much demagoguery. So much “patriotism,” and so much blood spilled for Middle Eastern oil.

“Pay no attention to those men behind the curtain. Support the troops! Complete the mission! Buy a Hummer! See Paris Hilton!” Bread and circuses for the masses, while what’s left of our democracy burns to the ground.

Wonder not, my dear citizens, why so much of the world has lost respect for the United States of America. We were birthed as a nation opposed to empire, and now we have become what we once fought against. Now, we have become what our forefathers spilled their blood in overthrowing.

Wonder instead what our founders would think, if they were to see what we have become.

Relevant quotes:

“If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“I see in the future a great crisis approaching, which causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money-power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated into the hands of a few and the republic is destroyed.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776

“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gate is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.”
- Cicero, 45 BC

“For years the freedom of our people were really never in doubt.”
– George W. Bush

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
– Edward R. Murrow

References:

Ron Susskind, “Without a Doubt,” New York Times, 10-17-2004

Don’t tell the thought police, but I wonder sometimes what the world might look like had Beethoven and Stravinsky simply been piano players and not composers. If Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. hadn’t had the gift of writing… hell, what if Tom Jefferson had had his heart, ideas and ideals, but was illiterate? Where would we be?

For that matter, where are we? How many Jeffersons and Kings are among us now, the very answer to our woes in their breasts, unable to present themselves to the world in any more articulate way than rap, graffiti or rage, their rubber unable to meet the road because we’ve sold out their educations?

I’ll go one step further and admit to a treasonous level of scrutiny: I openly wonder how many of us credit-card-carrying, consumer-culture lemmings still possess the capacity to truly reason as patriots should, and to doubt the honor of any government that would willingly bankrupt the very educational system of its own citizens.

As Americans, it is our duty to hold the tough questions up to the light, to answer them and to create a better world. As Americans, we should all hold ourselves to the highest level of realism where governing is concerned, and not only vote realistically, but not hesitate to draft some laws, and/or abolish some.

As Americans, we must always hold a few truths to be self-evident; draft legislation (and/or riot) when we feel our patriotic voice is not heard. And as Americans in the modern world, we must always determine what is really true. Yet we, and our fellow voters, allow ourselves to get corralled into the dumbest, most obvious Hollywood-driven drivel of reasoning on such a regular basis that I call voting day “Tuesday bargains.” The selling out of America, you see… ”Tuesday Bargains” …never mind.

In the musical world, as in all other cross-sections of humanity, there are followers and there are leaders. In music, leaders are called “Composers,” “Arrangers” or “Musical Directors.” Occasionally, a “Producer” qualifies as a leader in the eyes of musicians, but never “Agents” or “Managers” or “Publishers.” These usually fall under the heading of “Opportunists” (and I’m being kind)… but I digress. This log entry regards human composing, be it the Ninth Symphony or the American Bill of Rights, and I hereby put forth this tenet: Writing is writing, creating is creating, whether it’s music, a government or the future of your child or of our world. Not only is it all the same process; it’s all intertwined. Ideas grow from ideas, good and bad.

Long ago, one of our ancestors had had enough of living in the trees just to avoid danger, and dropped to the ground to try their luck. The rubber met the road. Creating lays the groundwork for the next generation of potentials, the way the hand moves a steering wheel, manipulating destiny where possibility meets time. Any strong, needed idea that gets realized, implemented and survives is amplified in its power as the foundation for the next generation of ideas, developing that theme… it’s all a whirling, dancing mobile of likelihood and potentiality, swinging from the ceiling of our collective psyche like the stars we will never reach, try though we must.

Thwarted by bad ideas and boosted by good, we lurch forward through our millisecond here on earth, on our species’ pilgrimage toward the next big thing, all the while developing our theme, collectively and as individuals, either according to intent or despite it. Good and bad, dark and light, ignorance and awareness… they’re all tools of the cosmic rules of thematic development, and these forces are as helpless as you or I against the almighty sky. The sky, by the way, is also helpless; it’s just bigger.

What portentous words, those: thematic development. Dit-dit-dit-daa, indeed. The track of reasoning that Beethoven rode into history while discovering and developing the Fifth Symphony was the same real estate trod by Jefferson, Einstein and Gandhi. It was (and is still, for any who care to stick their necks out) one man’s tenacity to keep chasing an idea, like a ferret diving down a rabbit hole, developing and applying that idea to the point that the ripples sent out change the whole collective body of human reasoning.

The pivotal fulcrums of human development, historically, have had as their accompanying engines imagination, audacity, pragmatism… and resolve. First the wheel must be invented; then it must meet the road. Hopefully, if the idea is good, this occurs before assassination, and if the idea is bad, assassination occurs first. A cursory glance at human history unfortunately confirms that this has not always been the case.

You see, what we’re all riding on here, ALL of us, and ALL of this—this big bus of humanity, this cosmic book of cause and effect under which we all pretend to the throne—all of our accomplishments, good and bad, and the systems springing from them, good and bad, and our art, good and bad, which so vividly captures our culture, love, war, grace, our ugliness and our beauty, and throws it all against the sky like a thunderhead blazing in a sunset for all to see, past, present and future… that, and the hopes we have for our futures, especially of our children, and the framework of our collective human constitution… all of this, this US, this WHOLE ENCHILADA… it all springs from IDEAS.

Human existence owes its survival to the human inception of creativity, perhaps beginning with the IDEA of leaving the trees and walking upright. To whoever first did that, it probably just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Time, of course, grew to history, and the inevitable layers of logistical portent grew upon that decision, like so many generations of legacy, and amplified that event to such significance that we, viewing it all from today, cannot imagine things to have ever been otherwise. But ‘t ain’t so. We just lost track of how lucky we truly are. Lucky and bad-ass.

Some of those ideas, seen from the perspective of modern ineptitude, were giant. Indeed, we live in a world where one doesn’t expect to even hear in the news (corporate or otherwise) of a human capable of really, REALLY leading. To wit: Drafting a Bill of Rights, a Gettysburg Address (hastily sketched on a train), a Ninth Symphony, or an “I Have a Dream Today” speech (head wound be damned).

Imagine if the western leaders in charge today had the moxie displayed by Churchill, Roosevelt or Truman (Stalin omitted). Iraq would be three easy pieces: Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. Bring the kids back in time for lunch. Of course, no true leader would have gotten us into Iraq in the first place, any more than any truly patriotic body of voters would ever have elected such a goon (in fact we didn’t)—but I digress.

When a culture loses its ability to put forth ideas and hook the rubber up to the road, game’s over. Cultures are like animals; in that way at least, mankind has not strayed from nature. Compare a city on the surface of our planet to a virus or bacteria in a Petri dish, and the word “culture” takes on new meaning. Ideas grow, and our civilization with them. And where an animal or a species grows weak, the balance tips and another animal or species pounces on the opportunity with what can only be called “all due ferocity and joy,” to quote Steinbeck. This is as it should be, of course. This may be a difficult thought to wrap your acceptance around, but it’s true: If we’re not the fittest, we don’t deserve survival.

America first carved out a niche based on the notion of holding a few truths to be self-evident, and then grew to be the exemplar for modern governments worldwide. How did we get to where we are now? I respectfully suggest that a government for the people, by the people REQUIRES the people, with their attention span intact—not X-boxers and other tumors of consumerism.

Looking back at the last forty years—a time during which American education was strangled, hopefully not for good—I remember it as being like watching an hour hand moving, or a boa constrictor slowly choking its victim; slow enough for John Q. not to notice or raise the alarm, only the rag-tag fringe cognoscenti.

Fast forward to the result, and now all of a sudden, We The People, the world’s great shining light, have the dawning realization and horror: We The People are no longer at the top of the food chain. Animals are crouching in the night, and we can’t spell “sullewshun.”

Personally, I love America, I would gladly die defending the Constitution (as long as killing elected officials is not required—as much as I’d love to, that’s not the American way), and I think we owe it to the world to get this fucking show back on the road, and in good form. Them animals crouching in them bushes don’t like human rights, and the world needs us.

So, what’s the “sullewshun?” Obviously, we need to locate and maybe reinvent our toolbox. Making funding for education not only a constitutional right, but a constitutionally required percentage of the budget would be a good start. ARTS in education should be a goddamned mandate, with copious spending. I am a musician, and have seen music do miraculous things in environments where nothing else could have possibly saved things, so I’m admittedly and duly biased. It is true, though, that musical study results in higher academic achievement. I don’t know why that’s so, but it’s an undisputed fact.

By the same token, it’s evidently the case that being raised in a Texas oil cartel family with back-door access to the CIA and then thieving into the White House results in global instability. It seems, to this writer at least, that the more sensible road is the musical one.

It’s easy for John Q. to look back wistfully on the time when Americans were considered to be educated by world standards, and would know what to do, and care enough to do it. And John Q. would rightly say, “I wish we were still like that.” It’s also easy for one to say, “There truly were giants in THOSE days” and, “It’s a shame that solution could never happen now.”

What we forget, and all too soon in our consumer-culture brainwashing, is that we have the same blood as our ancestors. The thematic development of time may have changed our level of ignorance, but not our blood. In the past, that blood has changed not only our world, but thematic development itself, as the most fundamental aspect of any human development is sheer goddamned will—but again, I digress.

“Where are the giants now?” you may ask. The answer is in your hands. They are us, or more succinctly, they are our ACTIONS. And bear in mind: Inaction is an action. Leave your video games, young ones. Leave your corporate news, shoot your televisions, leave your consumerism and pursue the ACTUAL truth. We can do this. To quote greatness: “If not now, then when, and if not me, then whom?”

You know, I gotta say, everyone knew this would happen; it wasn’t a question of “if.” We as humans have this amazing ability to ignore instinct, and not learn from the past.

I lived in that part of the world for 23 years, and every fall these horrible, wind-driven fires would take out a few neighborhoods. One night just a few years ago, sustained 80-mile an hour winds knocked a power line down on the roof of the house upwind of the one-acre horse property I lived in, by the base of the foothills in Sylmar. The only reason my guitars, masters, gear and who knows what else wasn’t wiped out was that my roommate was unable to sleep, and went outside on a perimeter patrol.

The fire-heroes were amazing in their response time and in how effectively they shut that fire down; the neighbor’s whole house was involved, and the embers were blowing horizontally for over a hundred feet onto our property (a horse ranch with lots of open ground, but also lots dry shrubs and trees). That the whole neighborhood didn’t go is still a source of amazement to me, and I’ll never forget the surrealism of having to assure myself that I wasn’t panicking (or dreaming) during a hurried evac at 4:00 a.m.

This year was no different, except that there were so many fronts simultaneously, we had no defense. What a freaking nightmare. I haven’t been able to think clearly for a week, for stressing about my friends. I’m still waiting to hear from three people about how their homes fared; everyone else I know (or could think of) in the ravaged areas made it through OK (notwithstanding Tracy and Dave waiting so long before leaving their house in Bouquet Canyon that the flames burst out the back window of their SUV, and the three kids were in the back covered with clothes as they drove right through the flames for their very god-damned lives).

I like to think that we’ll learn. But we won’t. That people will know better than to build a city below water level, or in Tornado Alley, or along the coast, or to enact fire/brush management policies that result in things like this. But we won’t.

American Indians were never this stupid. Hate to say, “I told you so,” but I’ve never really been able to buy into this whole “western civilization” doctrine, and its attendant philosophy of domination over Nature. We either achieve balance, or we get bitch-slapped by Queen Nature, as should be the case.

If there is a silver lining here, it will be in our gaining humility as a people, and respecting The Queen, and learning that if we don’t let routine fires cleanse the land periodically, bad things happen.

(Thanks, moveon.org)

Over-saturation. Awash and armpit-deep in the slag that runs downstream from American consumer culture like toxins from a copper mine, floating on the surreal slime of propaganda that drools from the corporate news every day, I find solace in headphones. Listening to the simple American truth and substance of Aaron Copland, I quell the dizziness.

CNN is selling the DUI trial of some hotel heiress as more important than what concerns the land and its people, the same day that Glenn Beck (CNN doesn’t define his show as ‘editorial’ on the promo) goes on the air defending political conservatism—and Mormonism. God bless America, indeed.

In the same news cycle, the chimp-in-chief is threatening to veto a measure that would include woman abuse and gay-bashing as hate-crimes, but that story’s buried, and just try, America, to unravel the web between Tony Snow, Fox, CNN and the White House. I’ve taken it this far: Fox has presented the Nat’l Inquirer as an affiliate; Tony Snow comes from Fox. Now, maybe it’s just me, but I would expect that in an office previously occupied by Nobel peace-prize laureates and nominees, the thought of the National Inquirer having a connection of any kind would foster disbelief.

Evidently, where televangelist Pat Robertson’s disciples rule, reality is… well, different. What with the unification of church and state, truth has to be hunted from downwind by sleuths in cammo, or it’ll bolt. This is NOT the America our Forefathers founded, and this is NOT the truth in news they would say we should have. Copland sounds more pensive than usual in “Appalachian Spring.” Strange; it’s the same recording I’ve played a hundred times.

More importantly, in the same news cycle and also hidden from viewers, a bill has won its way to the floor of Congress which if passed will BAN paperless electronic voting machines. Golly… that sounds important. No mention on CNN of course. I found out through MoveOn.org, which is in part responsible for the bringing of this measure to the floor. In my mind at least, this measure is more important than any other. More important than the “decision” to go into Iraq; more important even than Supreme Court nominees. For the first time since 2000, there is hope that America will be back in control of America. In the headphones, the opening of “Fanfare For the Common Man” explodes its magnificent truth: a lone trumpet blazes down through the clouds over the land like shafts of sunlight breaking a storm, heralding Nature’s own glory.

MoveOn… I cannot possibly lavish enough praise for an organization so effective, so well-conceived, and whose missions are so commonly so well-executed on street level (that means in the offices of gummit, folks). Armchair patriots can sit at their computers, and actually participate in government in whatever small way. Folks with more availability are welcome and encouraged to lend a hand, of course.

For my part, I crave nothing more than to make it real and go face-to-face with legislators, doing my best to have the effect of a lightning bolt when I smell the bleeding of America… but I’m paying my daughter’s way through college with no college fund. Patriot or no, decisions affecting my time and money are mandated by that criterion.

For knuckleheads like me, who care about the Constitution but can’t afford the time (and there are a lot of us these days), Moveon.org is a god-send. The compass and sextant that was the voice of American people, upholding and defending the Constitution against foes foreign or domestic, is NOT dead. Let’s back them, and not lose our way. To the folks at MoveOn, I’d like to say thanks, whoever you are. You rock. Voices without action are just howling at the moon.

Many people are skeptical (or derisive, or indifferent) about the possibility of producing vehicles that are exponentially more fuel efficient than the petroleum-gulping status quo that we have now. Some think that efficient vehicles must by default be underpowered, under-performing and unexciting to drive. Environmentalists’ dreams to the contrary are pipe dreams, they say. Silly.

Well, the naysayers have now been proven wrong. Witness the arrival of the Tesla Roadster (it actually debuted last July), an all-electric powered car with a top speed of 135 mph, performance clocking in at 0 - 60 mph in about four seconds (almost as quick as a Lamborghini Murcielago), a driving range averaging 250 miles—and all this performance for only about one cent per mile.

Contrast that with a gasoline powered car. Let’s say you get an average of 30 miles per gallon. At around $2.60 per gallon (sometimes more), your fuel cost per mile is 8.6 cents per mile (sometimes more). So the Tesla Roadster is more than eight times as efficient—more than eight times less expensive to drive. And for those of us who are not solely motivated by self interest, there’s another great bonus: this car produces one-tenth the pollution of those gasoline powered sports cars, when you factor in the environmental burden of producing the electricity.

The naysayers will point to the $100,000 price tag of the Tesla and say, “Yeah, right. Yet another example of how you can’t produce a super-efficient car for an affordable price.” But consider this: The Tesla Roadster had an initial production run of only 100 cars. Now what if we were to give this vehicle a production run of 100,000 cars? Or maybe one million cars? Do you suppose that a car like this could be produced at an affordable price, as compared with a gasoline powered car? I think the answer is pretty obvious.

So let the Sean Hannitys, the Rush Limbaughs, the Ann Coulters and the rest of the assorted right wing pundits and camp followers snicker and make snide remarks about “those crazy, wacko environmentalists” who are supposedly living in a fantasy world. Let them proudly boast of their God-given “right” to drive 12 or 8 mile per gallon dinosaurs, belching out tons of destructive carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons. Let them have their bloody, heartless oil war. (Okay, let’s not let them have it.) I think I know who the crazy wackos are.

Check out the Tesla Roadster here. I think I want one!