WEDNESDAYS WORDS

WEDNESDAYS WORDS is a new weekly installment that ranks the most interesting, intriguing books of the week (old, new, reissues, digital, etc). Contributors represent a variety of genres and sources. Each book includes Title and publisher blurb.

Book Description
Publication Date: January 11, 2011
An insider reveals what can—and does—go wrong when companies shift production to China

In this entertaining behind-the-scenes account, Paul Midler tells us all that is wrong with our effort to shift manufacturing to China. Now updated and expanded, Poorly Made in China reveals industry secrets, including the dangerous practice of quality fade—the deliberate and secret habit of Chinese manufacturers to widen profit margins through the reduction of quality inputs. U.S. importers don’t stand a chance, Midler explains, against savvy Chinese suppliers who feel they have little to lose by placing consumer safety at risk for the sake of greater profit. This is a lively and impassioned personal account, a collection of true stories, told by an American who has worked in the country for close to two decades. Poorly Made in China touches on a number of issues that affect us all.

Poorly Made in China: An Insider’s Account of the China Production Game

Book Description
Publication Date: March 27, 2012
An exposé on how the rise of China will affect the American way of life
The End of Cheap China is a fun, riveting, must-read book not only for people doing business in China but for anyone interested in understanding the forces that are changing the world.
Many Americans know China for manufacturing cheap products, thanks largely to the country’s vast supply of low-cost workers. But China is changing, and the glut of cheap labor that has made everyday low prices possible is drying up as Chinese seek not to make iPhones, but to buy them. Shaun Rein, Founder of the China Market Research Group, puts China’s continuing transformation from producer to large-scale consumer – a process that is farther along than most economists think – under the microscope, examining eight megatrends that are catalyzing change in China and posing threats to Americans’ consumption-driven way of life.

Rein takes an engaging and informative approach to examining the extraordinary changes taking place across all levels of Chinese society, talking to everyone from Chinese billionaires and senior government officials to poor migrant workers and even prostitutes and drawing on personal stories and experiences from living in China since the 1990s as well as hard economic data. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of China’s transformation, from fast-improving Chinese companies to confident, optimistic Chinese women to the role of China’s government, and at the end breaks down key lessons for readers to take away.

The End of Cheap China shows:

How rising labor and real estate costs are forcing manufacturers of cheap Chinese products to close, relocate, or move up the value stream
How a restructuring economy moving away from exports to domestic consumption, and rising incomes will create opportunities for foreign brands to sell products in China rather than just producing there
How Chinese consumption will build pressure on the global commodities markets, causing inflation and friction with other nations
How China’s economic transformation spells the end of cheap consumption for Americans

China’s days as a low cost production center are numbered. The End of Cheap China exposes the end of America’s consumerist way of life and gives clear advice on how companies can succeed in the new world order.

The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends that Will Disrupt the World

Book Description
Publication Date: April 9, 2012

International Bestseller
One of Foreign Policy’s “21 Books to Read in 2012”
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Business Book

After a decade of rapid growth, the world’s most celebrated emerging markets are poised to slow down. Which countries will rise to challenge them?

To identify the economic stars of the future we should abandon the habit of extrapolating from the recent past and lumping wildly diverse countries together. We need to remember that sustained economic success is a rare phenomenon.

As an era of easy money and easy growth comes to a close, China in particular will cool down. Other major players including Brazil, Russia, and India face their own daunting challenges and inflated expectations. The new “breakout nations” will probably spring from the margins, even from the shadows. Ruchir Sharma, one of the world’s largest investors in emerging markets for Morgan Stanley, here identifies which are most likely to leap ahead and why.

After two decades spent traveling the globe tracking the progress of developing countries, Sharma has produced a book full of surprises: why the overpriced cocktails in Rio are a sign of revival in Detroit; how the threat of the “population bomb” came to be seen as a competitive advantage; how an industrial revolution in Asia is redefining what manufacturing can do for a modern economy; and how the coming shakeout in the big emerging markets could shift the spotlight back to the West, especially American technology and German manufacturing.

What emerges is a clear picture of the shifting balance of global economic power and how it plays out for emerging nations and for the West. In a captivating exploration studded with vignettes, Sharma reveals his rules on how to spot economic success stories. Breakout Nations is a rollicking education for anyone looking to understand where the future will happen.
12 photographs
Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles

Book Description
Publication Date: May 1, 2012
G-Zero — \JEE-ZEER-oh\ —n
A world order in which no single country or durable alliance of countries can meet the challenges of global leadership. What happens when the G20 doesn’t work and the G7 is history.

If the worst threatened—a rogue nuclear state with a horrible surprise, a global health crisis, the collapse of financial institutions from New York to Shang­hai and Mumbai—where would the world look for leadership? The United States, with its paralyzed politics and battered balance sheet? A European Union reeling from self-inflicted wounds? China’s “people’s democracy”? Perhaps Brazil, Turkey, or India, the geopolitical Rookies of the Year? Or some grand coalition of survivors, the last nations stand­ing after half a decade of recession-induced turmoil?

How about none of the above?

For the first time in seven decades, there is no single power or alliance of powers ready to take on the challenges of global leadership. A generation ago, the United States, Europe, and Japan were the world’s powerhouses, the free-market democracies that propelled the global economy forward. Today, they struggle just to find their footing.

Acclaimed geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer argues that the world is facing a leadership vacuum. The diverse political and economic values of the G20 have produced global gridlock. Now that so many challenges transcend borders—from the stability of the global economy and climate change to cyber-attacks, terrorism, and the security of food and water—the need for international cooperation has never been greater. A lack of global leadership will provoke uncertainty, volatility, competition, and, in some cases, open conflict. Bremmer explains the risk that the world will become a series of gated commu­nities as power is regionalized instead of globalized. In the generation to come, negotiations on economic and trade issues are likely to be just as fraught as recent debates over nuclear nonproliferation and climate change.

Disaster, thankfully, is never assured, and Brem­mer details where the levers of power can still be found and how to exercise them for the common good. That’s important, because the one certainty of weakened nations and enfeebled institutions is that someone will try to take advantage of them.

Every Nation for Itself offers essential insights for anyone attempting to navigate the new global play­ing field.
Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World

Book Description
Publication Date: March 23, 2012

The United States is bankrupt, flat broke. Thanks to accounting that would make Enron blush, America’s insolvency goes far beyond what our leaders are disclosing. The United States is a fiscal basket case, in worse shape than the notoriously bailed-out countries of Greece, Ireland, and others. How did this happen? In The Clash of Generations, experts Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns document our six-decade, off-balance-sheet, unsustainable financing scheme. They explain how we have balanced our longer lives on the backs of our (relatively few) children. At the same time, we’ve been on a consumption spree, saving and investing less than nothing. And that’s not to mention the evisceration of the middle class and a financial system that has proven it can’t be trusted. Kotlikoff and Burns outline grassroots strategies for saving ourselves–and especially our children–from what could be a truly catastrophic financial collapse. Kotlikoff and Burns sounded the alarm in their widely acclaimed The Coming Generational Storm, but politicians didn’t listen. Now the need for action is even more urgent. It’s up to us to demand radical reform of our tax system, our healthcare system, and our Social Security system, and to insist on better paths to investment return than those provided by Wall Street (mis)managers. Kotlikoff and Burns’s “Purple Plans” (so called because they will appeal to both Republicans and Democrats) have been endorsed by a who’s who of economists and offer a new way forward; and their revolutionary investment strategy for individuals replaces the idea of financial capital with “life decision capital.” Of course, we won’t be doing all this just for ourselves. We need to fix America’s fiscal mess before our kids inherit it.
The Clash of Generations: Saving Ourselves, Our Kids, and Our Economy

Book Description
Publication Date: April 10, 2012
Why the gold standard is due for a comeback
A reserve currency can only function as such if there is a general consensus that it provides a stable store of value. Without this trust, money, no matter what form it takes, will be abandoned–either suddenly in a crisis, or gradually over time–in favor of something else. The Golden Revolution looks at how the world is now moving rapidly toward some form of global metallic standard, in which money, at least in official, international transactions, is linked directly to gold.
The practical reality of the transition to the coming global gold standard is going to be substantially different from the global fiat monetary and financial regime of today. It is not just money that is going to change. The nature and business of banking will also be affected, as will finance in general.

Incisive and thoughtful, The Golden Revolution is a treatise on the broad effects of the current and future monetary structure
Looks at why the world is headed inexorably back towards a metallic money standard
Explores what the transition period might look like, including some historical examples of both orderly and disorderly transitions
Examines how the world of banking, finance, and investment, including asset valuation and portfolio management techniques, will work under a future gold standard and which industries, countries and markets are likely to benefit and which are likely to suffer

Full of advice on how investors can profit and protect themselves during this critical time of change, the book knows that those who are prepared will prosper, while those who aren’t stand to lose.
The Golden Revolution: How to Prepare for the Coming Global Gold Standard

Book Description
Publication Date: August 28, 2008 | Series: Rich Dad’s Advisors
“Throughout the ages, many things have been used as currency: livestock, grains, spices, shells, beads, and now paper. But only two things have ever been money: gold and silver. When paper money becomes too abundant, and thus loses its value, man always turns back to precious metals. During these times there is always an enormous wealth transfer, and it is within your power to transfer that wealth away from you or toward you.” –Michael Maloney, precious metals investment expert and historian; founder and principal, Gold & Silver, Inc.

The Advanced Guide to Investing Gold and Silver tells listeners:

The essential history of economic cycles that make gold and silver the ultimate monetary standard.
How the U.S. government is driving inflation by diluting our money supply and weakening our purchasing power
Why precious metals are one of the most profitable, easiest, and safest investments you can make
Where, when, and how to invest your money and realize maximum returns, no matter what the economy’s state
Essential advice on avoiding the middleman and taking control of your financial destiny by making your investments directly.
Rich Dad’s Advisors: Guide to Investing In Gold and Silver: Everything You Need to Know to Profit from Precious Metals Now

Book Description
Publication Date: December 13, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0982301871 | ISBN-13: 978-0982301876
Want to lose weight without counting calories, starving yourself, giving up your favorite foods, or eating bland packaged foods? Would you like to look and feel younger and healthier than you have in years without diets and exercise? If you’ve answered yes to these questions, this book is for you! JJ Smith’s revolutionary system teaches proven methods for permanent weight loss that anyone can follow, no matter her size, income level, or educational level. And the end result is a healthy, sexy, slim body.

JJ’s breakthrough weight-loss solution can help you shed pounds fast by detoxifying the body, balancing your hormones, and speeding up your metabolism. You’ll learn which foods help you stay slim and which foods cause you to get fat. If you have been on a roller-coaster ride of weight loss, you will finally be able to get off, lose weight, and stay slim for life!

You will learn how to….

Detoxify the body for fast weight loss
Drop pounds and inches fast, without grueling workouts or starvation
Lose up to 15 pounds in the first three weeks
Shed unwanted fat by eating foods you love, including carbs
Eat so you feel energetic and alive every day
Get physically active without exercising
Get rid of stubborn belly fat
Trigger your 6 fat-burning hormones to lose weight effortlessly
Eat foods that give you glowing, radiant skin

This is your last stop on the way to a new fit and healthy you! Look and feel younger than you have in years. Create your best body–NOW!
Lose Weight Without Dieting or Working Out: Discover Secrets to a Slimmer, Sexier and Healthier You

If I do say so myself, I think this is a very interesting WEDNESDAYS WORDS. It is a very finance heavy installment, all the books with one exception revolving around our current and impending financial crisis, our changing world order… and what we can do to protect ourselves.

And wraps up unexpectedly, for me as well as everyone else, with a health/diet book. I stumbled across the final title by accident, I admit it… it was the boobs (I’m so evil :), but give me a break.. the author, the cover model I believe, JJ Smith is GORGEOUS!), but once I was able to look beyond the boobs (Oh come on! Like you weren’t just looking!), I found it an incredibly intriguing sounding book.

So enjoy!

The WEDNESDAYS WORDS column is a new blog feature, appearing (you guessed it!) every Wednesday. Come back next week to see which books make the list!

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Your helpful purchases through those links, generates much appreciated pennies to keep this blog running. Your feedback and support… just way cool, and way appreciated. Thanks!

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Some memorable, one might even say memorial, movie quotes

Okay this gets a bit weirdy and ranty, so if you don’t want weirdy and ranty, skip this post and come back tomorrow when I’ll be discussing the finer arts of moose calling or some-such nonsense. 🙂

Okay… you’ve been warned.

The White Cliffs Of Dover DVD

“God will never forgive us, if we break faith with our dead again”

— Irene Dunne in her favorite film role (I concur) 1944’s THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER, set in a world at war, fighting to end future wars. Hoping the sacrifice of young lives would end there.

Short Night of Glass Dolls DVD

“It’s not Mira. Mira was a rebel. She refused sex and gold when everybody else here was lured with them, We use them as bait the whole world over. Sex and Gold. They are important because they suppress the will to resist.”

–In Aldo Lado’s surprisingly haunting and still relevant 1971 film… SHORT NIGHT OF THE GLASS DOLLS, written in a world beset with wars civil and colonial.

“The oldest person beats the drum, and the youngest go to battle. We will hold the reigns of power in the world as long as there are people willing to be killed, willing to shed their own blood. And nothing must ever be changed.”

— SHORT NIGHT OF THE GLASS DOLLS [for my full review go here]

I like those quotes. Good quotes from good films.

With an election year upon us, I’m always mightily aware of politicians and posturing.

And I’m always distinctly aware, I’ve heard it before.

Every lie before they say it. A memorial of lies one might say.

How about we try this crazy thing, instead of just remembering the ones who have died, always a worthy goal, let’s do our bit and reduce the number of people we send to join them this year, and next year, and the year after.

How’s that for a worthy memorial to war? An end to all current and future war. An end to young people dying for the posturings of old people.

Be those young people American, or Iranian, or Somalian, or Haitian, or Guatemalan…let’s consecrate ourselves to some new way, some better way, some civilized way… to live, that does not involve pitting our young people against each other in conflicts, real life Hunger Games, that they have not the slightest idea of why they are fighting.

So I’m putting on the ballot a new way to fight wars… the big mouths in this country who have a problem with big mouths in another country, the congressmen, the owners of papers, the columnists, the heads of corporations, the religious zealots, and the talk radio idiots, everyone who is quick to have others kill and torture for them… you go fight the war.

Let’s try that.

All in favor, raise your hand. 🙂 .

Let’s let the 20 and 30 year olds stay home, eff their brains out, get back to some of that age of Aquarius loving (before the 80s came to get them on the ‘me’ kick), and let them run the country.

And all you senators, all you justices, all you presidential candidates… you’ve had your time at bat, and you’ve made a perpetually regenerating and increasing mess of it…. so yeah you old, chairman of the board, want to be in charge f**ks, put on some fatigues, fill up that rucksack and you go fight the wars.

But no remote control drone bombing raids, no satellite directed death from above, no weather modification toys, no dropping mines in playgrounds (what kind of animal signs off on that? You do my friends. With every tax dollar you pay and flag you wave. You do, when you say ‘yes sir’ to terms like war power acts, and patriot acts, and laughable misnomers like homeland security… you do, we do. We did. Not anymore), not even any nuclear subs or good old grunts on the ground. No, we don’t give you any of that to wage war with, none of your cowardly, expedient toys to turn countless people into your faceless collateral damage, instead just a cage match with you old, hateful, fat f**ks in a cage with other old, hateful, fat f**ks.

We’ll give you some boxing gloves, maybe even a club or two, and you guys go at it. Work it out. Get along or kill each other, but either way, the world would be a lot better if you old manifest destiny, new world order, ‘woodrow wilson’ idolizing mfers would just die.

Because honestly, you effers have had your day, and all we have seen since the industrial revolution, is more of the same. The rich few get richer, and the rest of the people and the planet, gets raped and used up until we are clinging to a burnt out dying ball of rock.

What is the good of all your imagined power then you dumb f**ks?!!

The world can’t afford doing the same insanity that got us here, to this point, and expecting a different result. In fact that’s the definition of insanity, trying the same thing, and expecting a different result.

So give it to the young.

The world… give it to the young. They might eff up, they might not. They might find a different way, a better way. They’ll at least fall down going forward, going toward something new, which is more than any of you old ingrained effers have done in the last century and a couple decades, of mounting genocide.

Hell, maybe young people, devoid of you old people riding them to ensure they make your comfortable, beloved mistakes, they’ll even make a REAL democracy out of America, instead of a tyranny dressed as capitalism.

And as far as you old dudes and dudettes, you seekers or power and despoilers of wisdom, when you die, which is sad but more than likely a probability, that whole ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’ thing, we’ll grill a hot-dog or hamburger to you on the next memorial day.

Really we will.

Happy memorial day. 🙂

Price The White Cliffs Of Dover

Price Short Night of Glass Dolls

When even the Dream…

Well I hope everyone has had a great Friday and is gearing up for a great weekend. Though part of me, the cynical part says… how great can it be.

I’m going to ramble for a while, I’m in a rambling mood. Those of you who don’t want to be rambled at… walk away, come back tomorrow. I’ll be nice and fluffy and kind to kittens and talk about movies or books or music or somesuch.

But today, I want to ramble….

The cynical part of me says that maybe, just maybe, in an America where every damn thing is made in China (and I say that having nothing against China, beyond the obvious common sense… that says a nation that does not employ its own or produce its own, is not long for being a Nation),

—in an America where wages are down, and gas prices are astronomical, and yet the untaxed gasoline companies such as Shell and Exxon are swimming in record profits,

— where American citizens are being taxed into poverty to pay for wars domestic (the unending drug war still being America’s most profitable domestic war) and foreign, and in an America where the profits of such land grabs are used toward faster and more automated ways for killing people and toppling nations,

—and in an America where those funds are further used to build middle east Dubai pleasure nations, for the rich and corrupt to vacation in when the streets of America flow in blood boot deep, and even the dream of liberty lies screaming, when even the dream lies screaming

—in an America where offshore concentration camps are alive and well, that in such an America….

my concern is that all our great days are behind us.

At least that’s what they are selling. They are selling hard the fall of the dream of America, our attorney generals, and congressional shills, and captains of industry, and paid CNN and Fox talking heads, all those who are feeding us the lie of liberty, and sending our children out in the world to enforce tyranny, to build empire, to give to the rich… more riches, to complete a new world order…of master and slave.

And all that stands in the way of it, is this dream, is this illusion, is this hope, is this promise, that America has feverishly failed to live up to, but has it in its bones…to rise to. All that stands in the way of it… is this America.

Not the America of the politicians, the Obamas and the Romneys who would sell the calcium from your children’s teeth to make 2 cents more for their billionaire masters, not the America of the conglomerates, the Disneys, and the Time Warners and the Sonys who want even your dream of dissent to go away, not the America of your lies, but an America that says no to FOX News, no to CNN, no to programming, no to propaganda, no to the MPAA, no to the RIAA, no to congress as an enforcement arm of movie studios, no to push button wars, no to easy enemies, and constant terrors, no to an end of liberty.

Every other nation is falling like dominoes. Embracing America’s mad cancer of corporate subservience. So ironic isn’t it that all that stands between a World’s worst hour and her finest… is the source of the madness, is the America that they have divided, lied to, poisoned, sold, raped, impoverished, and brutalized. They our congress, they our corporations. But we’re still here, you and I, and the dream.

And we scare them.

We scare them deeply.

Us nothings, us nobodys. And these billionaires cannot sleep for want of trying to silence every single voice, and close every single loophole, that reminds them of all the blood they’ve spilled.

It’s funny that no matter how high you build your fortress, how far into the clouds, how lavishly you ordain it, what is ever present in your mind, is that brick, allllllll the way at the bottom of this fortress, this pyramid you’ve built, and the fear that one of those ants, at the bottom of your glorious monument, your works, will notice all the blood on that brick, and will pull on it, and it shall all come crumbling down.

It’s a thought I take comfort in, the more they ramp up the oppression. Because it’s a sea-saw, the more they push down, the more they raise us up.

Case in point…

Thousands of websites went dark last year and stayed dark. Countless more blogs. For one bogus reason or another. They want the same relative media saturation and uniformity of opinion on the internet as they have in the mass media press. They want no more SOPA defeats. No more… ramblings from the edge.

No more American patriots.

They want to shut down dissent, but all they will do, in the fullness of time and by the grace of God, whatever God you bend your knee to, … is raise us all up.

Here endeth the lesson. 🙂 .

Enemies of the State, Young Alexanders and Multi National Corporations

Ohhhh

theres got to be more
on this
road of life
there’s got to be more
than this
horror and strife
oh hhhh
there’s got to be more
On the
Road of Life

oh
there’s got to be more
than this
horror and strife

oh
there’s got to be more
than this
horror and strife

Ohhh
there’s got to be
Mooooore
on a
Road called life

–copyright 2011 HT & this blog

So I lit into Microsoft a post or so back, and deservedly so. But, while they are one of the more egregious examples of power corrupting, there is culpability enough to go around,

President Obama and the FBI- earn my unhappy face for an administration that unfortunately differed from his predecessor’s only in eloquence. In the real nuts and bolts of what he signed into law, he continued the rape of the American citizen in the interest of big business, and the expansion of both the domestic and global police state, and the dismantling of civil liberties.

Sweeping into office on the dreams and quotations of better men, men who fought FOR civil liberties, his administration, as I feared (go back to my pre-election posts) has been a staggering betrayal of every election promise, and every election speech.

But even I, am surprised to the degree, that he has utterly sold out the American people.

He is the living, walking embodiment of the talking android from Ishmael Reed’s seminal MUMBO JUMBO (get the audio book, it reorders the text and is actually an improvement). Something designed to speak the words, and have the appearance of the common man and liberty, but underneath serves those who would see the bulk of men in chains.

His latest betrayal, not just of America, but the world, is signing into law Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Which basically gives media empires sweeping, unmitigated powers to shut down anything or anyone, anywhere in the world, with the full military might of Herr Sam backing them. It’s a blank check for tyranny.

Another one.

God, seriously, I get the idea of money, I even get the idea of power, and I know Obama, and the various acronym-ed agencies, distant step-children of the Nazi SS, are but pawns for massive multi-nationals, but I don’t get the pawn part.

I mean, I don’t get the trade-off of power and money for liberty and justice.

I don’t see the value of much, if you have to give up those last two things to get it. I don’t see what good money and power does you, after you’ve betrayed every single thing and every single one.

I don’t know how you look anyone in the eye, your children, your family, when they ask you how your day was… and you have to dodge around the fact that you spent the day eliminating liberties.

Not seeing the upside to that.

To surrender one freedom, to back pedal on one liberty, to erase one right, is to spit on the sacrifice, and blood, and suffering of countless people. It is to make a mockery of every war fought, and every life lost, if the purpose of all that blood, is but more efficient tyranny.

Is that really the job you signed up for?

More efficient tyranny?

Be it warrantless wiretaps, warrantless isp, email, vehicle and cell phone monitoring. Even usage of social networks, such as the whole Cops twittering fiasco. Any liberty you think you have online, law enforcement is using as a weapon.

Every single one.

How is Nazi Germany wrong, if a Patriot Act America and an Apartheid Israel can be right?

How? What did we fight for, if we surrender everyone of our liberties to people who live and die, by every tide, and every atrocity, we fought to stem.

We fought Nazis, only to become Nazis? And we fought slavery, only to become enslaved?

Not acceptable.

Not if you wrap it in the red, white, and blue, not if you have trumpets blaring, not if you sanctify it in tales of Holocaust.

It is not acceptable.

If you came out of a Holocaust, only to become a holocaust, then you are not acceptable.

And you can call yourself the FBI, and you can call yourself America, and you can yourself patriots.

But what you are, are your grandparents betrayers, and your Grandchildrens slavers. What you are… is the problem.

Money, Power?

For this you sell your past and your future?

Money,Power?

But how much of either do you see?

You young recruit, I’m asking you. Hired to bark on command, hired to put down protestors, and spy on citizens, and kill enemies.

Is the money good? Is the power good?

Not good enough I think.

Because I think even paying lip service to liberty, and justice, you begin to know those words. And in some part of you, you seek more of the American Dream, then the tatters they are using you to make of it.

They are old. And scared. These tired dragons of Woodrow’s New World Order dream, that hire you to protect their money and their power.

But you are young, and somewhere not quite dulled by the programming, is the idea… that we can all be more, than pawns in an old game.

Money and Power.

Those are old ideas for old men. They are illusions of paper and pen. And Alexanders would have laughed at them, and put all these foolish old men to the sword.

All of them.

All the captains of Industry. The plotters of wars. The hoarders of wealth.

Alexanders would have laughed at them, and put them all to the sword.

Liberty and justice.

THESE are words to put air in your lungs, these are words to make your chin rise, and your heart swell. These are words to raise children on. These are the causes you were put here for young Alexanders.

You are not here to be a simpering old man’s dog, protecting his ip and movie rights, and his numerous illusions, you are here young Alexander, in this place, in this time, in this position… to make right the things that are wrong.

To make right, the things that are wrong.

And I so charge you, by a right and a duty that transcends multi-nationals and war machines and orbital weapons, I charge you by a higher duty, your own decency…. look at all this blood… and be moved.

And how you pleaseth God, whatever God you bend your knee to… how you pleaseth God, dispose the day.

This is why old men love wars, because it is a meat grinder for the young, so you can not rise against them, so you learn your place… in the game. Their game.

Be better than that my young Alexanders.

Be better… than them.

They speak of evolution as if it’s a dead thing.

It is not.

You are evolution.

Which is why they are in such a hurry to kill or corrupt you.

Evolve past them, and past their sad little dreams of power and money.

The day is coming, some would say it is upon us, when you will have to choose young Alexanders… what masters you follow and what masters, like rotting oaks, you fell.

Choose well, my lords.

Choose well.

Einstein and the Rights of Man

Einstein understood it best.

He understood the central conflict of our age, the conflict of man and machine.

He saw the failing behind the wonders of a new age, that we were not so much making something new, as losing something old.

“Our Technology grows faster than our humanity” he wrote on that windswept day.

And the whole of the last century, the 20th century, was an affirmation of that statement. A war of man and machine. As industrialization to cut costs and maximize profits, strove to make humans more machine like and machines more human. The capacity of humans shrank, as the limits of machines grew.

By the end of the 20th century Man was the mindless drone performing repetitive tasks, while machines were the wunderkinds and geniuses of a new age.

Einstein understood that the 20th century had become an age of tradeoffs. We stopped growing, evolving and handed it to machines to do for us.

That we had taken the magic that was within us, this glory of Shamans and Wiccas and spirits, and had traded, externalized it, taken it away from the creatures of the wet and the warm, and imbued it into a cold, stark, controllable entity of tomorrow.

The conflict of Man and Machine, the theme of the 20th century, was the displacement of wonder, the restructuring of magic.

In the 20th century we gave up trying to be heroes and holy men and decided to be predictable and comfortable.

We redefined humanity as something disposable and common.

The 20th century was ultimately a move to diminish the very rights of man. The move away from the concept of man, to other manageable concepts like worker, drone, statistic, to concepts devoid of ‘I’.

The whole push of the 20th century toward obedient machines with the adaptability of men, and adaptable men with the obedience of machines.

And if the 20th century set the stage for such a bleak and dystopian present, then the 21st century has clearly been set in motion to be the age wherein we must war over the rights of Man, and either nobly win, or meanly lose…. our Freedom.

A few true Words

Profound things I’ve recently read or reread:

“If we live all our life with lies, it becomes hard to see anything if it has nothing to do with those lies.”
– Amiri Baraka (writing as Leroi Jones at the time)

I met him today. Went to hear him speak. It is rare when the fact of a man, lives up to the myth. Mr. Baraka is such a rarity.

He spoke on many things, in his 70s, he spoke on many things, with wit and grace and humor, and something very few people fractions of his age have… with passion.

He was very much still, that young man who sought to, and to great degrees did… change worlds.

Still that Angry Young Man. And I use that phrase in its finest meaning. Not Anger that destroys, but Anger that motivates, that asks of the world to rise from burning beds. Conviction is perhaps the more accurate term, he had the conviction of that younger age of Panthers and Prophets. Of men who did, rather than discussed.

He had more energy in that 70+ year frame than in a whole city of young, confused , direction-less Black men, being herded, and in many cases running headlong, to the prisons and the graves.

The whole wheel of our society is designed around what DuBois called THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO, our schools, and entertainment and churches and urban centers and laws and fractured homes, geared to produce ignorant masses.

Why?

Control. Control has always been the fuel and the feast of the tyrannical.

A ruling class, maintains rule by concepts of supremacy and inferiority. A bigoted system doesn’t just prefer, but needs the stereotype of the thug, the menace to society, because that villain… is inferior and is easily dealt with, easily used, easily enslaved, and easily turned against his own and turned to the needs of the state.

But a Baraka, a Shabazz, this nation has fought internal wars of terrorism against the growth of such men.

Because such men, resist stereotypes. And not only do they give the lie to the concept of White Supremacy, not just by proving themselves the equals of their detractors, but they make a very compelling argument for being their betters.

The 1960s is when America, and the world was on the verge of a real… evolution. When we had in our sights the chance for growth, not of our technology, but our humanity, our conscience, our unity, our art, our peace.

And it all hinged on this idea of self determination, from China to Cuba to America to Senegal… the whole world was fighting to grow out of their fathers’ lives. And perhaps into their own.

From the Black Panthers to the Zapatistas, it was all the same fight. A fight against entrenched colonial evils, entrenched slavery. But more than that, it was a fight for evolution.

Instead of evolution however, powers and principalities won the day in the 60s, and crushed globally, but most notably in America that burgeoning social consciousness. And from that point to now, when the rule of law was put on hold, and assassination of the enemies of empire green lit, going on 50 years, we have not evolved. Our technology yes, but not our humanity, not our art, not our dreams, not our conscience.

We largely are stuck mired in the same entrenched hates, and economic folly, and capitalistic wars, of the 60s. In fact it’s worse, because our technology increasingly allows our hates and our ignorance a greater ability… to harm.

So in the 60s when we put down those Angry Young Men who spoke, before anyone else, of community based health care, and community schools, and self-love, and true community/tribal policing, and pan-national unity, when we stopped them because of their dreams and plans of Camelot… what did we stop them for?

Is the average American, whether white or black, any better than his father? I would say we are worse, sure we have toys, but we also have an America on the verge of economic, cultural and societal collapse. We are Germany, poised before the rise of Hitler.

We are poised again for Fascism. Again for Rome.

We have gone backwards since we turned our back on those young men, who pointed us to the future. We murdered them and caged them for life, and allowed the greed of the few, to condemn the many to failure.

Failure for the dream of America. Failure for the dream of something better for our children.

Your racism is a class construct used to make you a tool, make your children tools, and preserve a decaying power structure of Disney and Time Warner and Sony and Shell, to preserve a decaying, fabricated system of lords and serfs, that should have been demolished and strewn to the four winds, five decades ago.

Your racism keeps you… a slave. A nigger. That’s the war we fight. Not of name calling, or ethnicity, but of reason and ignorance. It is a fight to see the whole chess board, not just the piece you sit on. And ultimately it is a fight to evolve, and that cannot happen in a world run by multinational corporations and robber barons, in a world of unchecked capitalism/fascism.

“If we live all our life with lies, it becomes hard to see anything if it has nothing to do with those lies”

That’s why I go out and listen, and hopefully learn from these women and men who still speak the truth.

I have some hopes, that the word, in an age of orbital nuclear weapons and designer diseases… I have hope… that all of it, all of it, all the lies, all the powers, all the principalities, can begin falling like dominoes. Knocked down by men and women… who will never cease speaking… a few true words.

[p.s. Many of Mr. Baraka’s books and plays have long been out of print. He’s making them available for purchase through his recently setup website. I of course highly recommend supporting him, and owning his books. You can view his site here.]