Guest Writers
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Tuesday, June 03, 2008 - Dan Culberson COME BACK, MARIO! Now, hear me out. Political correctness (or "PC" to the cognoscente, who know that PC also stands for "personal computer") is being polite--up to a point. No, make that up to way too many points, because political correctness is also way too many other inflammatory things. Political correctness is subversive prejudice of the highest order, because it pressures people to say and write acceptable terms according to the wishes of a specific group of people, and as Confucius (551-479 B.C.) said, "Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue." (THE CONFUCIAN ANALECTS, bk. 1:3) Confucius also said, "What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the mean man seeks is in others." (IBID. 15:20) (Of course, if Confucius were around today, he might be pressured into saying "What the superior man or woman seeks is in himself or herself. What the average man or woman seeks is in others.") Political correctness is blatant censorship, because it pressures people to say and write "acceptable" things instead of what they believe. Political correctness is self-serving peer pressure, because it concerns itself more with the beliefs of a group than with the beliefs of an individual. Political correctness is mealymouthed backstabbing, because it treats minorities and disadvantaged groups with condescending disrespect. Political correctness is nonintelligent, nonthinking logic of the worst kind, because it puts more importance on words and symbols than it does on thoughts and reason. Political correctness is a creeping cancer on a freethinking society, because it metastasizes openly with each new acceptance and success. Political correctness is revisionist history of a nature worse than any practiced at the height of communism, because it is not sanctioned by any political body, but rather approved by views of the moment. Political correctness is rampant regression, because it tries to negate and prevent any new thinking and ideas. Political correctness is kneejerk, lunatic-fringe, bleeding-heart liberalism without the liberalism, because it is neither generous nor tolerant, but is in fact narrow in opinion and judgment. Political correctness should be stamped out now, because it tries to apply an adhesive bandage to a sucking chest wound of behavior rather than allowing bad ideas to die from their own inanity. Political correctness should be ridiculed for the danger of shaping public opinion by terminology instead of public discourse, because people who concentrate on using politically correct terminology are either smug, self-serving, narrow-minded nonthinkers or frightened, insecure, ineffective nonthinkers. Political correctness tries to make language objective--what is by nature subjective, because we all know by experience, reading and watching old TV shows that language changes, and there is no sense trying to establish by PC decree what is an acceptable term and what is not. Political correctness is nothing more than avoiding hurt feelings of disenfranchised minorities and smug feelings of Dudley and Denise Do-Gooders with nothing better to do. "Political correctness"--if you say it enough times it becomes distasteful, and maybe it will go away like other self-serving, condescending terms, such as "gigolo" and "floozie." "Political correctness," "politically correct" and "PC" when it means these two terms should be wiped off the face of the language, because it is anti-evolution, anti-change and anti-growth, the very things that allowed humanity to reach the position it holds today. Political correctness is also anti-humor, and who among us--PC or otherwise--can argue that humor is not good for us? Who among us from any group cannot remember when at least one term we know to be politically INcorrect is the very term used to make sense in a joke we used to laugh at in years gone by? So, who decides what terms are politically correct and what terms aren't? Is there a secret PC Police somewhere that compiles lists, much like the Thought Police in Orwell's 1984? What happened to the childhood taunt of "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me"? That was true before, and it should be true today. If it isn't, then the crybabies and wimps have taken over, and progress is lost. What happened to the Free Speech movement of the Sixties and the protests and Baby Boomer sit-ins with their nonnegotiable demands to the establishment administrations of their right to speak out freely about certain issues? Have we all now become crybabies and wimps? Is the PC movement a backlash against the excesses of the Embarrassing Sixties? If it is, then we need another Mario Savio. (Dan Culberson, the editor of TOUCHSTONE, THE BOOMERPHILE, THE AIO NEWSLETTER and BOULDER HERETIC newsletters, as well as the author of PLASTIC MAN: A Novel of the Sixties [ISBN: 978-1-4363-2027-6 (Hardcover), 978-1-4363-2026-9 (Softcover)] and AN ATHEIST'S HANDBOOK [ISBN: 1-4134-7653-8], was named a Boulder Pacesetter by the DAILY CAMERA the first year of that program, 1985, and he has been a film reviewer since 1972; he can be contacted at danculberson@juno.com by e-mail.)
Friday, February 08, 2008 - Dan Culberson CHILDREN SHOULD AGAIN BE SEEN AND NOT HEARD ------------------------------------------- Now, hear me out. We are in danger of destroying society the same way we have destroyed culture, and that is by becoming so obsessed and fascinated with youth and young people and children that all else and the interests and desires of all other, mature people will be ignored and discarded. When I was growing up in the Fifties, a common expression I heard all the time from my elders was "Children should be seen and not heard." What it meant was that young people--or more specifically, one's own offspring--were permitted to participate in adult activities, but they should not speak, make noise or draw attention to themselves, because they should not interrupt what the adults were doing, probably because their immature and uneducated thoughts were of no importance anyway. So, what happened between then and now, when children and youth get ALL the attention in our society? What made manufacturers--most noticeably Hollywood manufacturers of films and television--shift their marketing campaigns to target JUST that "holy" demographic of youth between the ages of 14 and 24? What made politicians convinced that "child molesters" and pedophiles are the worst criminals on the face of the earth and now have the fewest rights and privileges of all citizens, much less of all previously convicted criminals? And what convinced priests, preachers and other religious fanatics to direct all their energy and to do everything in their powers to "protect the children," to prevent abortions and to prohibit further stem-cell research, all in the name of respecting and protecting the "innocent" babies and potential babies? I'll tell you what happened: Baby Boomers. The largest generation up until that time came on the scene, and by the sheer powers of their numbers, reportedly 76 million in the U.S. alone, they began to get all the attention of their elders, they began to be spoiled and showered with unreasonable praise from their parents and they began to be heard as well as seen. Now, don't get me wrong. I am not BLAMING Baby Boomers for the state of society today. As I have written elsewhere ("Our booming was not your dooming," THE COLORADO DAILY, 1996), if anyone should be blamed for how this pampered generation turned out then and is acting now, it should be their PARENTS and GRANDPARENTS. It should be the War Generation and the Depression Generation, those people born between 1928 and 1946 for the parents and between 1910 and 1928 for the grandparents, who are undoubtedly the worst when it comes to spoiling children. These figures are based on using the traditional 18 years of 1946 to 1964 for the births of Baby Boomers and working backwards in 18-year intervals to include their parents and grandparents, 18 being the traditional number of years between generations. So, let us not waste our time and energy placing the blame on anyone or on any generation, but rather let us correct and reverse the situation before we allow it to destroy civilization. Thinking back to your own "wild youth," teenage years and growing up, do YOU feel comfortable with letting today's youth run the country, establish society's rules and determine the accepted morals? I think not. Teenagers are by nature childish. Preteens are not "little adults"; they are practically BABIES. "Adolescent" by definition means "emotionally or intellectually immature." Consider your own children. At what age, if any, would you have felt comfortable and confident that THEY could have "run" your family, set the rules, paid the bills and then added to the family's population by having babies of their own? To put it harshly, the inmates are running the asylum today. The children are not only being seen too prominently, but they are also shouting. Music, fashion, movies, all entertainment and our very laws themselves are all directed toward the comfort, security and safety of children, whose only contribution to society is that they spend their parents' money on their own whims before they replace the parents. The Baby Boomer generation is not quite yet running the country, but "Watch this space." William Jefferson Clinton was the first Baby Boomer president, and look what happened. George Walker Bush was the second Baby Boomer president, and look what happened next. What state will the country be in (no pun intended) and what condition will society be in by the time the first Generation-X president takes office? Will the official slogan of the country be changed to "I Want My MTV Back"? (Dan Culberson is the editor of TOUCHSTONE, THE BOOMERPHILE, THE AIO NEWSLETTER and BOULDER HERETIC newsletters, as well as the author of AN ATHEIST'S HANDBOOK [ISBN: 1-4134-7653-8] and the soon-to-be published PLASTIC MAN: A Novel of the Sixties, and can be contacted at danculberson@juno.com by e-mail.)
Tuesday, June 12, 2007 - Dan Culberson ADVANCING PERSONAL AGENDAS Now, hear me out. MAD CITY (1997) is one of those curious movies that become a touchstone for everyone, because it pushes the hot button of the "noble" idea of "the role of the press" when television news departments are more concerned about ratings than about the ethics of what they do, but because the movie tells two stories about two different people, don't listen to what anyone advancing a personal agenda has to say about it; decide for yourself what it says about society, the TV industry or entertainment in general. Some people (i.e., movie critics) said it doesn't show anything new and compared it to earlier movies no one today has seen except for film critics or historians. That comes from show-offs eager to draw attention to their own knowledge of film and people who didn't like it and are grasping for any reason to explain why. That complaint is also ludicrous now that Hollywood has run out of ideas and practically every other new release is either a remake or simply a re-release. Some people (i.e., people in the TV industry) were offended that one of their own (i.e., themselves) is criticized in the form of Max Brackett, the TV news reporter played by Dustin Hoffman who does some unethical things in the movie that no TV reporter would ever admit to having done, but all reporters have probably done in one form or another. Well, that comes from people for whom criticism of journalism is a real hot button, people who can't take criticism or else people who didn't see the movie, stay to the end or understand the change in Hoffman's character. And some people (i.e., almost everyone) who have a difficult time separating the bearer of bad news from the bad news itself criticized the movie, because it shows our modern-day messengers in a particularly bad light. Well, those feelings go back at least as far as the classic Greek tragedies, when a messenger in a play was taken offstage and actually killed--in the play, not in real life. See how easy it is to confuse reality with drama? Apparently, people want to lash out when they hear bad news, and the messenger happens to be the closest one around, but that doesn't mean the messenger CAUSED the bad news. However, hardly anyone mentions Sam Baily, the laid-off security guard played by John Travolta who takes drastic action he probably learned from watching TV and is the catalyst for the whole story. Baily represents a lot of people today who have been dealt a bad hand through no fault of their own and who feel helpless and frustrated about what to do next. But did you hear anyone complaining that Travolta's character is unrealistic or unsympathetic or that he doesn't represent the majority of hard-working, laid-off museum security guards? No, because people used this movie to advance their own agendas, just as people in the movie do. The two men are thrown together when Brackett goes to the local museum to report an uninteresting story about budget cutbacks and Baily shows up to try to get his job back. Unfortunately, Baily brings a shotgun and a bag of dynamite to get his boss's attention, the gun goes off accidentally and wounds the guard who didn't get laid off, Baily panics and seals off the museum with Brackett and a classroom of kids inside and then there is what the TV industry likes to call "a hostage situation." Baily didn't plan this to happen, he just wants his job back and he starts asking Brackett for advice. In other words, a major story falls into Brackett's lap, and he can control it to his own advantage. What would you do? So, where do you stand on the Entertainment Age--old question? Does the media just give what the public wants, or is the public gullible and malleable enough that it accepts and demands more of what the media gives them? In the Sixties, respectable newspapers compromised their ethics in order to compete with television. Today, TV news compromises its ethics in order to compete with tabloid newspapers and tabloid TV. And the tabloids compete with fiction--print, television and films; and everybody is compromising everything in order to sell their "product," all in the name of Greed. MAD CITY is just one more step in the downward spiral of everyone advancing personal agendas all in the name of Greed, and I enjoyed it. Dan Culberson is the editor of TOUCHSTONE, THE BOOMERPHILE, THE AIO NEWSLETTER and BOULDER HERETIC newsletters, as well as the author of AN ATHEIST'S HANDBOOK, and can be contacted at danculberson@juno.com by e-mail.
Sunday, May 13, 2007 - Dan Culberson NAMES WILL NEVER HURT ME Now, hear me out. When I was a boy growing up, we had a saying that we would use whenever a playground bully taunted us: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Whatever happened to that sentiment, which is nothing more than a practical use of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." That is quite a mouthful to say that the Founding Fathers gave us the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom to petition. In my lifetime, however, those freedoms have been slowly eroding away, and I blame the Baby Boomers in the Sixties and Seventies for it. Those 76 million people who were born between 1946 and 1964 came of age and realized their collective power in the Sixties and Seventies. They protested against the Establishment and changed the stodgy, conformist ways of the Fifties. They protested against the Government and take credit for ending the war in Vietnam. They exercised their rights to free speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to petition, but not always peaceably. That wasn't always their fault, either, but the instigation of the Establishment and the "Pigs," which policemen were called back then. Also in the Seventies they changed the workplace and made it more sensitive. More handicapped people were hired by Big Business, but more intolerance to free speech arrived. I once had a manager who proclaimed, "If one person has a problem, we all have a problem." In other words, the notion emerged that everyone truly was equal; that years, decades and even centuries of wrongs had to be righted; and that it had to be done immediately. Variations on the following chant were popular motivation: "What do we want?" "Justice!" "When do we want it?" "Now!" Unfortunately, this was also about the time when thoughts and assumed intentions began to be punished. The trial of the Chicago Eight began in 1969, in which the defendents Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale and Lee Weiner were essentially charged with PLANNING to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. However, the Government chose to ignore the findings of the National Commission on Violence that the Chicago police were largely responsible for those riots. This way of thinking lay the groundwork for so-called "hate crimes," for which extra punishment is awarded because the judge and jury believe they are mind readers and can tell WHY the defendant or perpetrator committed a crime. Thought Police, anyone? Calling Eric Arthur Blair, otherwise known as George Orwell. And, if thought crimes come, can political correctness be far behind? Political correctness, which more properly should be called "social correctness," is no longer in my vocabulary except as a term of empty derision, such as "God, mom and apple pie." Political correctness is nothing more than avoiding assumed hurt feelings of disenfranchised minorities and accommodating the smug sensibilities of Dudley and Doris Do-Gooders with nothing better to do. Political correctness--if you say it enough times, it will become distasteful and maybe go away with other self-serving insensitive terms such as "boy" and "girl." "Wait a minute!" you say? "'Boy' and 'girl' are perfectly good words that serve a useful purpose!" you say? That is correct, but we all know that in a certain context, those innocent words that mean "a male child from birth to puberty" and "a female child" can cause people to be offended without any act whatsoever having taken place. The context is ignored, and only the word is deemed offensive. That way, lies the end of humor. That way, lies the end of free speech. That way, lies judging people for their thoughts and not for their deeds. And how do you know what anyone is thinking, especially on such flimsy evidence as only one word or a few taken out of context? You don't, unless you are a mind reader. Or "God." Just as we can agree that you are not God, we can also agree that so-called "mind readers" are charlatans and out to trick us. The Founding Fathers gave us "free speech." Don't destroy that gift from those gods. (Dan Culberson is the editor of TOUCHSTONE, THE BOOMERPHILE, THE AIO NEWSLETTER and BOULDER HERETIC newsletters, as well as the author of AN ATHEIST'S HANDBOOK [ISBN: 1-4134-7653-8], and can be contacted at danculberson@juno.com by e-mail.)
Thursday, April 05, 2007 - Unknown from April 2007 Touchstone ----------------------------------------------------- Found on the Internet WHO'S RUNNING THIS COUNTRY AND WHAT ARE THEY READING? Anonymous ----------------------------------------------------- 1. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL is read by the people who run the country. 2. THE WASHINGTON POST is read by people who think they run the country. 3. THE NEW YORK TIMES is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles. 4. USA TODAY is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand THE NEW YORK TIMES. They do, however, like the statistics shown in pie charts. 5. THE LOS ANGELES TIMES is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country--if they could find the time--and if they didn't have to leave southern California to do it. 6. THE BOSTON GLOBE is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much. 7. The NEW YORK DAILY NEWS is read by people who aren't too sure who is running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train. 8. The NEW YORK POST is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated. 9. The MIAMI HERALD is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores. 10. The SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE is read by people who aren't sure there is a country or that anyone is running it, but, if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped, minority, gay, feminist, atheists or dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided, of course, that they are not Republicans. 11. The NATIONAL ENQUIRER is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store. AND 12. None of these is read by the guy who is running the country into the ground.
Thursday, February 08, 2007 - Dan Culberson My Cold, Dead Fingers Now, hear me out. Does it have to take an English major to explain the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution and put to rest this unjustifiable crutch of the right-wing, gun-toting fanatics and their other conservative supporters? For those of you who don't remember, Amendment II states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Even for those of you who DO remember, Amendment II states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." That is what it says word for word, comma for comma, capitalization for capitalization. Notice that the subject is "Militia," the verb is "shall not be infringed," and the SENTENCE becomes "A well regulated Militia shall not be infringed." "What about the bits between commas?" you say? Those are two appositional phrases, and an apposition is "a grammatical construction in which a noun or pronoun is followed by another that explains it." The subject, a noun (See how it works?), is followed by "being necessary to the security of a free State," AND it is followed by "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" in order to explain "a well regulated Militia," the subject of the sentence. The subject CANNOT be "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," because you cannot put a single comma between the subject and the verb of a sentence. You cannot write "The dog, ran around the yard." You CAN write "The dog, being frightened by the gunfire, ran around the yard," because now we have two commas separating the subject and the verb, and you can also write "The dog, being frightened by the gunfire, the pet of the neighbor, ran around the yard." That sentence is NOT "The pet of the neighbor, ran around the yard," because that would be ungrammatical, just as "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" is ungrammatical and therefore NOT the sentence that makes up Amendment II. "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms" is an apposition that explains the subject, "a well regulated Militia," just as the other apposition, "being necessary to the security of a free State," does. It is a "Militia" that is "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," which is necessary to the security of a free State and which shall not be infringed. In other words, the citizens of the United States have the right to keep and bear Arms in "a well regulated Militia," NOT to stockpile weapons at home and to carry a gun around with them in some Old West mentality. And what did the sheriff in the Old West do to maintain order? Do the words "Check your guns at the door" strike a familiar note? That didn't mean "Inspect your guns to ensure that they are in proper working order." That meant "Turn your guns in at the door. It's too dangerous for you to carry guns here." Now, the POSSIBILITY of everyone having a concealed weapon MIGHT deter a few criminal acts, but the PROBABILITY that hotheads and teenagers carrying a weapon could use it in a moment of unbridled emotion is far greater. Sir William Blackstone (1723-80), a British jurist and Oxford instructor who was the first at a British university to teach English law as opposed to Roman law (See how those appositions work?), wrote in his great work COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND (1765-69), "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer." I believe it is better that ten crimes be committed than one innocent victim be killed by a convenient handgun. Luke Woodham, a teenager in Pearl, Mississippi, who is spending the rest of his life in prison for murdering his mother and two fellow students in October 1997 when he was 16, kept a map on his bedroom wall with the slogan "One Nation Under My Gun." Do we want our immature, impressionable children growing up and believing this heinous claim? We used to see so-called Amendment II supporters brag "I'll give up my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers." After a moment of rage, I don't want those cold, dead fingers to be mine. (Dan Culberson is the editor of TOUCHSTONE, THE BOOMERPHILE, THE AIO NEWSLETTER and BOULDER HERETIC newsletters, as well as the author of AN ATHEIST'S HANDBOOK [ISBN: 1-4134-7653-8], and can be contacted at danculberson@juno.com by e-mail.)
Tuesday, January 02, 2007 - Dan Culberson Now, hear me out. What do the following statements have in common? "I'll tell you the truth." "Believe me." And "Have I ever lied to you?" All three of these statements depend on the listener to believe in the veracity of the speaker. Mark Twain (which wasn't his real name) is usually credited with the statement, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." However, what Twain actually wrote was, "Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.'" I have not been able to verify that Disraeli (either Benjamin, the former prime minister of Great Britain, or his father Isaac, the British author) ever wrote the statement that Twain attributes to him. No matter. If people believe Twain wrote it (which he did, although attributing its origin to someone else), that is all that counts. Truth lies (no pun intended) (no, all puns intended) in the eyes of the beholders, or the ears of the bewilderd, or the minds of the believers. And for all we know, Twain might have been deceiving his readers intentionally or unintentionally when he attributed the statement to Disraeli, intentionally if he believed attributing it to someone else gave more weight to his statement or unintentionally if he believed wrongly that Disraeli had actually written that witty comment on statistics. Our society inundates us with lies, which the dictionary defines as "an untrue statement made with intent to deceive." Society also inundates us with true statements made with the intent to deceive. Does the word "advertising" strike a familiar note? Or, as Twain also wrote, "Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising." Whenever I see a commercial on TV, my first reaction is that it is trying to deceive me. You might call that cynicism, but I call it my natural reaction to too many years of hearing about "four out of five doctors," "new and improved" and "fast, FAST, *FAST* relief!" without any supporting evidence. Or, as Twain also wrote as well, "There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it." What do you think Twain would have made of the 1999 ruling from the Colorado Court of Appeals that political candidates can say just about anything they want about another candidate and not get sued, "because voters won't take it literally anyway"? In other words, we are now supposed to assume that politicians are trying to pull the wool over our eyes, and it is up to us to figure out when a political candidate is telling the truth and when one is simply using constitutionally protected speech "in the political arena" where statements can't always be taken seriously. Twain might have dusted off a previous witticism and said, "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." That would be his cynical response. Or he might have dusted off another one and responded, "Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it." Now, at first glance you might react with enthusiastic agreement about the value of truth. However, on second glance at the second sentence, is Twain being cynical and witty, or is he being honest and truthful? Why should we be frugal with the truth? Why shouldn't we be truthful, and expect others--especially politicians--to be truthful, on every occasion? We are not children who at times need to be protected from the truth by adults who believe it is in our best interest to be shielded from the truth. WE CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH! (Thank you very much, Mr. Nicholson.) Let Twain be heard again: "It is not worth while to strain one's self to tell the truth to people who habitually discount everything you tell them, whether it is true or not." Cynical, yes, but turn it around to put the emphasis on the audience, and it can come out as, "It is not worthwhile and certainly not in our best interests to elect a politician who habitually deceives us with false or misleading statements, whether we like the candidate or not." If we expect lies, we'll get lies. Demand the truth and clean up dirty politics. (Dan Culberson is the editor of TOUCHSTONE, THE BOOMERPHILE, THE AIO NEWSLETTER and BOULDER HERETIC newsletters, as well as the author of AN ATHEIST'S HANDBOOK [ISBN: 1-4134-7653-8], and can be contacted at danculberson@juno.com by e-mail.)
Wednesday, November 01, 2006 - Dan Culberson (from: November Touchstone) ------------------------- Grumblings from the Floor THE MORNING AFTER ------------------------- Now, hear me out.The human species is an odd animal who seems to be obsessed with not only needing to know the reason for why events happen, but also needs to predict what is going to happen next.And those people whose predictions come true--which usually amount to nothing more than guesses for what they WANT to occur--love to brag afterwards about their predictions being correct, as if having guessed correctly makes them better or wiser than other people, whereas it logically means only that they were lucky in one instance.This quirk of human nature is expressed no more prominently than after an election, when every writer, political pundit, television commentator, comedian and person on the street has an opinion about why the results turned out the way they did, what they mean and what is going to happen next because of them.According to the Associated Press and Voter News Service, only 38.0% of eligible voters voted in the November 1998 elections, down from 49.0% who voted in the 1996 presidential election. (In Boulder County, more than 52% voted that year.) Only 2/5 of the people who could vote did so, and yet the morning after the election--in some cases the night of the election and in other cases before the polls had even closed--political prognosticators and elucidators were Johnny and Jennifer on the Spot in our faces telling us that because the Republicans didn't do--or weren't or didn't seem to be doing--as well as the prognosticators had predicted beforehand, this meant that "the people" were demonstrating they weren't interested in the presidential sex scandal, didn't support an impeachment and were telling Congress to get on with the business the people had elected them to do."No, it doesn't!" I yelled back at my TV set.It MEANS simply that 3/5 of eligible voters didn't vote.Perhaps SOME of those nonvoters didn't vote because they were trying to make a statement about current and past political, sexual and private events in Washington, perhaps some Republican voters switched their votes to an all-Democrat selection because of those same feelings, but I firmly believe that most voters voted exactly how they would have voted anyway, except, perhaps, for some unaffiliated voters who seem to have trouble making up their minds to begin with. I can imagine a few declared fence-sitters thinking, "I am disgusted with the President and therefore the entire Democratic party, and so I am not going to vote for any Democrats at all, including those who are running unopposed." I can just as easily imagine some other fence-sitters thinking the opposite: "I am disgusted with the way the President has been treated, I believe the Republicans are wrong to keep going after him and therefore I am going to vote a straight Democratic ticket as a means of protest." However, I cannot believe that the majority of the 38.0% of the eligible voters fall into that last category, and therefore I cannot believe the post-election elucidators who in effect said, "That is why what happened happened." It was as if I were back in college taking an English literature honors course again, listening to some crusty old professor tell the students with conviction the exact reasons Faulkner wrote every word, chose every punctuation mark, decided on every sentence length and selected every weather condition in THE SOUND AND THE FURY. It makes for interesting discussion, but unless we have Faulkner's own words telling us he made those choices, it probably didn't happen that way.And the political elucidators are trying to explain the motives of millions of voters who don't even represent the majority of U.S. citizens, not even just one author.You have heard of "self-fulfilling prophecies"? I call this post-election elucidation fanaticism "myopic hindsight." The only thing I know of that can be certain the morning after is a hangover, and in my experience you don't want to talk about it. So, let us put this past election behind us. Pigs is pigs, it was what it was and just as Popeye says, "I yam what I  yam,"we can all say, "We won some, we lost some."If we believe in the democratic process, let us strive to bring those eligible-voter percentages back up to at least 2.8%, what it was in 1960 and the highest it has been in the past 46 years for any election. That would give the morning-after elucidators some less myopic hindsight.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006 - Dan Culberson BLACK HOLES, WHITE HEAT, AND OTHER LOST CAUSES Now, hear me out. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate religious cult committed mass suicide because of their religious beliefs. Today we can feel superior and smug, because we know that they believed they were just leaving their earthly "vessels" and were going to board a spaceship that they believed was trailing behind the Hale-Bopp comet, where their true "selves" would be whisked away to eternal life and happiness. There was no scientific evidence or proof that there was such a spaceship, only the word of a charismatic preacher who changed his name and his message when it suited him and a misidentified star in one photo of the comet. Moreover, there were no firsthand reports from any people who had successfully left their bodies, been magically transported to the spaceship and either returned to tell us about life after their death or transmitted a telepathic, television or radio message back to Earth telling us about their successful voyage after death. Why not? Were those souls so selfish in their success that they chose or were told not to communicate? Or were they misguided fools with such empty lives on Earth that they were willing to kill themselves based solely on the word of someone they allowed to be their leader? The comparison with Christianity is too obvious to examine in depth, but like the Heaven's Gaters, Christians believe that they, too, have a soul that is the true essence of being, and after death their soul is magically transported to a stationary "spaceship" somewhere above us in the heavens called Heaven, where they, their souls or their true "selves" will experience eternal life and happiness. There is no scientific evidence or proof for this belief. It is all based on the faith of the believers and the word of one charismatic preacher who is known only by writings, as well as countless other preachers who made a good living by leading the flocks of sheep who have foolishly and misguidedly believed those preachers and allowed themselves to be led. Just a simple, logical examination of this theory begins to expose holes in it. If Heaven is "above" us, then it must be an enormous place, considering that no matter where we stand on Earth it is still above us. No problem. Perhaps Heaven is simply our galaxy itself, surrounding the Earth and our tiny solar system with enormous size. (This could also explain why Heaven isn't full yet, considering the huge numbers of souls that have been magically transported there since the beginning of humanity.) Another simple and obvious comparison is what happened in the Sixties and Seventies. Young Baby Boomers were convinced by charismatic and uncharismatic leaders alike to leave their lives as they knew it at home and be transported to a place called Vietnam, where many of them lost their lives in sober reality. We don't know if the souls of those sorry soldiers left their bloody vessels and were magically transported anywhere, but, if so, their final destination couldn't have been a spaceship following Hale- Bopp, because that religious cult hadn't been invented yet. Therefore, if true, their souls or "true selves" had to have gone to a place that had been identified, either Heaven (or Hell, depending on how well they had conducted their lives on Earth or on what they "believed") or some other unknown, unnamed and undiscovered or uninvented place for eternal life and happiness. I believe those poor Christian and non-Christian soldiers didn't have a soul, but if they did, I will choose to believe that their souls preceded all of us and were magically transported to the black hole that some scientists say is at the center of our galaxy. Here is a thought: Suppose there is a black hole at the center of every galaxy. Suppose that instead of one Big Bang that created the entire universe of 50 billion galaxies there were 50 billion lesser bangs that created each galaxy, and after each galaxy falls in on itself into its own black hole, another big bang creates it again. In other words, suppose that all religions and all cults and all wars are just like galaxies, and when they reach their critical mass of size, logical thinking or absurdity, they collapse into their own black hole of existence, only to be re-created, reformed and reconstituted by another charismatic or uncharismatic leader to get foolish, misguided followers to do their fighting, whether it be political, patriotic or peculiar. (Dan Culberson is the editor of TOUCHSTONE, THE BOOMERPHILE, THE AIO NEWSLETTER and BOULDER HERETIC newsletters, as well as the author of AN ATHEIST'S HANDBOOK [ISBN: 1-4134-7653-8], and can be contacted at danculberson@juno.com by e-mail.)
Sunday, July 30, 2006 - Dan Culberson Grumblings from the Floor DRIVE THAT COMPUTER! Now, hear me out. Much has been made about--and many words have been written about-- the so-called "Information Superhighway." Well, it wasn't named "superhighway" for nothing, and I'll tell you why. Contrary to the popular misconception of people unfamiliar with computers and the Internet--such as parents afraid that their children are going to see dirty pictures and politicians afraid that those parents won't vote for them in the next election unless they enact silly, useless laws designed to prevent those offspring from seeing dirty pictures--getting on the Internet with a computer is not like turning on your TV set and watching whatever happens to be showing. It's like getting in your automobile and taking the trouble to drive someplace to see what is going on. Think automobile, not TV set. Of course, for those people who associate TV sets with difficult- to-master VCRs, this analogy might come as a relief and a revelation. They might not be able to program their VCR to record Oprah or their favorite nostalgic Sixties sitcom while they are away, but they can certainly get in their family car and drive someplace in order to see some entertainment or (can you believe it?) gather some knowledge. Think of a computer as the family automobile. It's nothing more than a piece of hardware that is manufactured by different companies to a certain set of standard specifications that also comes with various options for the customer's satisfaction, just like automatic transmission, air conditioning and AM-FM radio. Now, think of computer programs as nothing more than gasoline in the automobile, oil in the engine and your ability and desire to drive someplace in order to do something. You can drive around town to do your shopping using city streets and stopping at lights or you can get on the highway and travel to another city to see a concert or to visit grandma. Depending on what you do and how you get there, your expenses will vary. Depending on what you drive, how fast you drive and how many accidents you avoid, the time it takes you to get there or even your success in getting there will vary. Think of the Internet as nothing more than a series of city streets and highways that connect and interconnect every village, town and city on every continent of the planet. Think of your computer as a personal automobile that can travel at the speed of light to get you where you want to go. However, you need to know where you want to go and what you want to do after you get there. Naturally, you can use guide books (or "search engines") to give you an idea of where to go and what to do. And think of all the available information (or Websites on the World Wide Web) as all the museums, all the shopping centers and all the seedy gin joints in all the cities of the world. Does anyone force you against your will to walk into a strip club featuring teenage hookers in Bangkok? No. You first have to travel there, find the club and then walk in through the front door.  However, your speed-of-light computer automobile allows you to make the trip from Denver to Bangkok easier and faster. Does anyone force your children to walk into the Louvre in Paris?  Well, maybe you did on your family vacation, but what about when your kids are up in their rooms taking a break from playing computer games or chatting with their friends across town or across the country or, these days, across the world? No. They first have to borrow the keys, fire up the family computer car and drive to Paris, stopping along the way to pick up a hamburger and fries in New York City. Now, think back to when you were a kid. What are the chances that you would visit the Louvre to look at oil on canvas painted by some old dead men if you were on your own and had the family automobile?  What are the chances you would go to Bangkok to look at naked women or naked men if you were capable of it and your parents had no idea what you were doing up in your room? Now, what success do you believe those old dead men in Washington have of keeping your children from going to Bangkok or of shutting down that Bangkok strip club? What chance do you have?
Monday, October 03, 2005 - Dan Culberson A SLOW DANCE OF DEATH Now, hear me out. Unless we learn to control our selfishness, self-indulgence and short-term egocentrism, we are going to realize too late that we are committing mass suicide, and there won't be enough Dr. Kervorkians around to assist us. I'm talking about killing other people because they don't believe the way we do, killing others because they don't look the way we do and killing animals either for sport or just because they get in our way. I'm talking about killing ourselves in a slow Dance of Death. The Dance of Death is an allegorical representation of the inevitability of death for all people of every age and class.  Scholars believe it originated in 13th century France, which took two forms: the "danse macabre," in which the dead lead themselves in the dance, and the personification of Death having a solemn dialogue with his victims and then leading them in a processional dance to their graves.Baby Boomers surely remember their coming-of-age experience in college where one of their rites of passage was discovering "art films," foreign films in black-and-white with hard-to-read subtitles, which weren't made to entertain so much as to inform and which caused many meaningful discussions afterwards with friends.One of the most memorable of such films was THE SEVENTH SEAL, by Ingmar Bergman. Who can forget the last scene, in which after playing chess with the Knight, Death leads his six victims in the Dance of Death across the horizon away from the dawn toward the dark lands?Well, our chess game is almost over, dawn is approaching and unless we come to our senses we should be preparing either for a vigorous dance macabre or for Death personified to lead us away from the dawn. Specifically, I'm concerned that humanity doesn't seem to realize we are all one species trying to scrabble a meaningful existence on a finite planet with finite resources, and whenever we kill another person we set in motion an exponential force of revenge that ultimately can result in a planet-wide Dance of Death. Obversely, if we keep disregarding that all organisms developed in an intricate planetary system of coexistence and codependence, if we keep killing animals and rain forests into extinction for whatever personal interests, if we keep destroying the only viable planet we have to live on, we set in motion an involutional force of suicide that ultimately will result in a slow Dance of Death of the Earth and every living thing on it.In other words, we should stop killing our neighbors because they don't believe what we believe, we should stop killing strangers because they have something we want and we should stop killing animals, trees and the land itself because we can profit in our short lifetimes from their deaths.Of course, some say "Old Mother Earth has survived this long; she can survive whatever we mere mortals do to her." Tell that to your children, who have to continue to live in the messes we make.Some say "What difference does it make if Alaska kills wolves, if Colorado kills prairie dogs, if India kills tigers; there will always be something to replace them." Tell that to the ghosts of the dodo birds, the passenger pigeons or the condors, bison and elephants who didn't survive.Of course, there are some who believe that everything has a purpose, that wars and plagues are just Mother Earth's way of preventing overpopulation, that killing species to extinction is just another example of survival of the fittest. Keep that in mind when you look down the barrel of a gun in the hands of an angry neighbor or stranger. Keep that in mind when your children no longer have water to drink, air to breathe or nonpolluted land to live on.You don't have to be religious to believe that "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" makes good sense. You don't have to be a conservationist to believe that destroying anything out of existence is a dangerous and likely fatal gamble to take with the lives of everything on this planet.You don't have to be a dodo to discover that even though Death waits for us all at the end of the chess game, the smarter we are and the more we know about the game of Life, the longer we can prolong it for everybody and every thing so that we all don't perform the Dance of Death together. Dan Culberson is the editor of TOUCHSTONE, THE BOOMERPHILE, THE AIO NEWSLETTER and BOULDER HERETIC newsletters and can be contacted at danculberson@juno.com by e-mail.I>
Thursday, August 04, 2005 - Mark Anderson Don't Occupy the Border, Please Perhaps I should preface this commentary by ballyhooing my credentials as a former member of the blame-immigrants-first lobby. I served on Pat Buchanan's Minnesota state steering committee for his 2000 campaign. When Pat's campaign stops landed him in Minnesota, I either chauffeured him or stood right behind him during his closed-to-anybody-but-the-media press conferences. In fact, Pat sipped ice water that was placed behind the podium by this very commentator. Given the maturation of the police state at warp speed over the last few years, I have felt it necessary to redact my position on border policing. Not only do I now disagree with the populist arguments of social and economic reasons for policing the border, I also disagree with any arguments that invoke "national security" as a reason to police the border. As bad as Clinton was, even I - as a Buchananite - never had the acumen to anticipate that there might be an esoteric meaning behind a border control program. But fast forward a few years and we now have things such as the CAPPS II[1] program and no-fly lists[2]. Such luminaries as Markus Wolf and Yevgeni Primakov[3] have found their way inside of the apparatus of the U.S. government. In other words: our greatest threat is politicians, not immigrants. Travel restrictions are the hallmark of repressive regimes. Given the way in which corruption and subterfuge have been oozing out of Washington, D.C., lately, any effort to "beef up" border "security" should be confronted with resistance. The East Germans were told that they needed a wall[4] to keep "fascist capitalists" out[5]. But don't forget that wall was also used to trap East Germans in[6]. The track record of the U.S. government gives me no reason to believe things would be any different here. Suppose a military draft begins tomorrow, and you become prime meat for conscription. Where would you go if you decided to leave the country? With the federal takeover of airline "security," your chances of catching an international flight would be close to zero. Canada? Maybe not, thanks to the "Smart Border Declaration."[7] Border "security" would dovetail nicely with a military draft. Having a "Berlin Wall of North America"[8] would curtail your ability to leave the country by automobile. I was infantry in the Marine Corps, and I served in a boat company - i.e., India Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines[9]. We did training packages at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado[10], riding around in the zodiacs[11]. Perhaps my training will come in handy, even though I never did go through coxswain school[12]. I don't understand why an organization that augments the federal government would choose to call itself the "Minuteman" Project. Next thing you know, people will start organizing themselves to help collect taxes on behalf of the IRS in the name of "liberty." But even worse is the hysteria that has been generated, which could provide the impetus for the politicians to send many more federal agents into the border areas, or even expand the wall[13] along the border[14]. Border control is a corollary of military conscription. When I heard Bush say that he wanted to track people leaving the country[15], I was hearing: "We want to draft your kids, and we will ensure they can't escape." Is this alarmist? Maybe. But the politicians have nobody but themselves to blame for this wariness. Regardless of what you believe the economic and social impact of immigration is, if you are antiwar and anti-draft, you should at least catechize the issue with this foresight. After reconsidering the issue, I think I would rather leave the border unmolested by politicians and federal agents. An occupied border could not only be used to keep immigrants out, but it could also be used to trap us in. It is that prospect which scares me much more than voluntary and peaceful exchange with non-federal citizens, and I now feel ashamed that I once belonged to the blame-immigrants-first lobby. Mark Anderson Mark@NoAnthraxVaccine.net www.NoAnthraxVaccine.net
Friday, April 30, 2004 - Dan Culberson THE GRAY OF BLACK AND WHITE Now, hear me out. THE FOG OF WAR is so terrific a documentary that everyone should see it--especially those who remember the Vietnam War and anyone who has concerns about what the U.S. is doing today, including the very people in the government who are making those decisions. Yes, the film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary of 2003; however, its excellence is not just in form, but also especially in content. The film is by the esteemed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris and is the result of 23 hours of interviews with Robert Strange McNamara, best known for having been Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy and President Johnson and thus considered the "architect" of the Vietnam War. However, you might be surprised to learn that McNamara's whole life seems to have been connected to war, and the subtitle of the film could very well be "The Black Art of War" instead of "Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara." McNamara's earliest memory is of the celebration at the end of World War I, the sadly and incorrectly named "War to End All Wars." During World War II, McNamara served under Curtis LeMay and actually helped plan the firebombing of Japanese cities which killed one million civilians even before the two atomic bombs that came later. And then in October 1962, General LeMay was serving under Secretary McNamara and pushed for "nuking" Cuba to solve that crisis, which undoubtedly would have caused all-out war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and very likely could have ended in the nuclear destruction of the planet. In a chilling demonstration, McNamara shows how close we came to that end. McNamara begins by stating, "The conventional wisdom is don't make the same mistake twice." The way many people see it, especially those who see this film and considering what is going on in the world today, we have failed to remember the past and are condemned to repeating it. McNamara claims that war is so complex, it is beyond the capability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. That is not true. War is the "gray" that results when nations try to solve problems that they see as "black and white." Here are McNamara's 11 "lessons": Number 11: "You can't change human nature." This implies that as human beings, we all have a common "nature," but that doesn't prevent us from killing each other, especially in war. Number 10: "Never say never." This one is rather silly, because it negates itself. Number 9: "In order to do good, you might have to engage in evil." This implies that we can identify "good" and "evil" outside a religious context, but more important, it follows the conservative way of thinking that the end justifies the means, and "That way lies Watergate!" Number 8: "Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning." Implied, but not stated, is "and change your actions accordingly." The U.S. might have changed its reasoning about the Iraq war, but we certainly haven't changed doing anything about it. Number 7: "Belief and seeing are both often wrong." This is even more true when it is religious belief. Number 6: "Get the data." This is just another way of saying "Know the facts." Number 5: "Proportionality should be a guideline in war." However, if war is the last resort of a conflict, which does the greater harm: a slow conclusion or a swift conclusion? Number 4: "Maximize efficiency." If leaders don't know this one intuitively, they shouldn't be leaders. "Even the dullest of minds is champion of the obvious." Number 3: "There is something beyond one's self." This one is fine as long as it refers to the greater good for the greater number of people and not to a religious "Supreme Being." Number 2: "Rationality will not save us." Perhaps not, but irrationality has a much greater chance of destroying us, and I doubt if a majority of people prefer that choice. And the Number 1 Lesson from the Life of Robert S. McNamara: "Empathize with your enemy." Again, the implication here should be "and change your actions accordingly," although this could be stated as "Know your enemy," and if that happens to be you, "Know yourself." If either you or your "enemy" is a religious fanatic, then perhaps all is lost, nothing good can come from war and nothing can be accomplished. THE FOG OF WAR is a chilling reminder of the gray of black and white.
Friday, April 09, 2004 - Frosty Wooldridge When President Bush Won't Enforce the Law and his Brother Breaks It Tom Brokaw admitted this week for the first time ever on network television that our southern borders are being invaded.  In excess of 2,000 illegal aliens pour across the Mexican border daily.  The running total stands at 13 million and climbing.  Illegal aliens overwhelm our health care, schools, language and infrastructure.  From California to Florida, an illegal alien invasion disrupts the foundation of America’s stability. The last four presidents have done nothing to discourage or stop the invasion.  Who benefits?  Major corporations make huge profits via cheap labor and more consumption at the expense of the American taxpayer.   But what is happening is a complete breakdown of the rule of law by our elected officials.   Bush swore on the Bible to uphold the Constitution of the United States.  His brother, Jeb, Governor of Florida, gave a solemn oath to uphold the laws of Florida and the United States.  Neither brother is doing his job.  Brother Bush I won’t uphold our immigration laws and brother Bush II is breaking federal laws. This week, Jeb Bush endorsed an illegal alien driver’s license bill, SB 1360.  Never mind that he is in violation of federal law: A person (including a group of persons, business, organization, or local government) commits a federal felony when she or he: assists an illegal alien she/he should reasonably know is illegally in the U.S. or who lacks employment authorization, by transporting, sheltering, or assisting him or her to obtain employment, or encourages that illegal alien to remain in the U.S. by referring him or her or an employer or by acting as employer or agent for an employer in any way, or knowingly assists illegal aliens due to personal convictions. Section 8 USC 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv)(b)(iii).     Jeb Bush is ‘knowingly’ assisting illegal aliens who have broken federal laws by breaking into our country.  What does he not understand about the word ‘illegal’?  Instead of supporting the laws on the books whereby he should be calling Tom Ridge’s excellent Homeland Security agents, brother Bush II wants to give illegals driver’s licenses.  Does Jeb not understand that two of the WTC bombers obtained driver’s licenses from Virginia?  Even worse, this bill 1360 is being submarined with other bills.  Jeb Bush is misleading Floridians. What Bush endorses are people who have broken our laws to gain entry into the United States.  One of his cohorts, Florida Senator Rudy Garcia, wants to give these federal felons a legal document so they can become citizens.  What about the millions of would-be immigrants who are standing in line abiding by the rule-of-law to enter the United States and become citizens?   What Garcia is advocating is anarchy.    You can’t rob a bank and then deposit your money to gain interest.  You can’t break into our country and become a citizen.  You need to go back home and do it lawfully. At least one man, Senator Mike Hairdopolos R-Melbourne said, “Undocumented people have basically cut in line.”  He wouldn’t mind giving driver’s licenses to people with legal documents.  Why was his one of the few dissenting votes?  He is the Chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.  He couldn’t afford to vote to break the law! Where does that leave the American citizen and Floridian who plays by the rules?  Who voted on the laws?  Who obeys the laws?  Was Jeb Bush voted into office by illegal aliens?  Was his oath of office meant to serve them and not Americans?  How many times can you bend, break and manipulate the rule-of-law until it no longer sustains this country?   After you answer those questions, try these on for size.  How long and how many illegal aliens can this country absorb before our systems breakdown?  How many people can Florida take before it runs out of water?  How about police protection for the growing gang activity?  How many Floridians want another five million people driving, building, adding malls, clogging highways and polluting the air, water and land? Frosty Wooldridge, teacher and author, has bicycled 100,000 miles on six continents to see overpopulation up close and ugly. Next book in June: ‘IMMIGRATION’S UNARMED INVASION—DEADLY CONSEQUENCES’
Friday, April 02, 2004 - Dan Culberson Greed is Such a Nasty Word....And With Reason(from April 2004 Touchstone) Now, hear me out. Far be it from me to join the hue and cry of the latest conservative --and assuredly Republican--attack on the idea that the Entertainment Industry creates a bad influence on our nation's youth, but perhaps one of the most influential, and therefore worst, movies made in the past 17 years has been the 1987 WALL STREET. You know the one I am talking about: Directed and co-written by Oliver Stone, starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen, and a modern-day morality tale about a young hotshot stockbroker who in essence sells his soul to become a success. However, forget the ending. Forget what happens to the characters and even the overall intended message of the theme, plot, climax and conclusion. Forget, even, that Stone was sued by the relatives of a woman who was shot March 8, 1995, during the robbery of a convenience store where she worked in Ponchatoula, LA, because the plaintiffs claimed that Stone's 1994 NATURAL BORN KILLERS influenced the couple who committed the crime. Forget everything except for one speech in WALL STREET by Douglas, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Wall Street corporate raider Gordon Gekko. In fact, forget the speech and concentrate on only one line that Gekko delivers: "Greed ... for want of a better word, is good." We will never be able to prove that this line of dialogue, this speech, this movie had an undue influence on our society's future because of a similarly unprovable influence on our youth, young hotshot stockbrokers or even crusty old politicians and other powerbrokers, but who among you is willing to take the position that greed is not at the root of what is most wrong with our society and politics today? What prompts successful achievers to work even harder to make more money than they need or can even spend in their lifetimes? What prompts professional sports figures to spurn the team and their loyal fans that created their success in order to play for another team in another city in another state? (Jerry Seinfeld has an appropriate comment about the rampant results of unrestricted free agency: "You're not rooting for a team; you're rooting for laundry.") And what prompts young idealistic politicians to sell out their ideals, dreams and good intentions once they have been elected to office? I will tell you what: Greed. To make my case more simple: Greed is for money, money is power and, as John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton (1834-1902) put it in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton on April 5, 1887, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Of course, anyone can claim (or, more likely, "protest too much," to make another literary reference) that politicians can do no good if they are not in office, and therefore they HAVE to do whatever is necessary in order to get reelected, but does anyone believe that once you start accepting "free" money from someone, some corporation or some industry that you will NOT be influenced by the source of that money? And does anyone believe that a wealthy individual or corporation or industry of wealthy corporations is NOT interested in obtaining more money and contrariwise has the best interests of the common people in mind and not personal wealth or its stockholders? I think not. "That way lies corruption!" should be the rallying cry of all concerned voters and the defense of all politicians when faced with the tempting seduction of "no strings attached" reelection contributions in the form of "soft money," political-action- committee (PAC) contributions and any money from a source that the politicians know to be less than honorable. And what did a past Colorado Republican-controlled Congress do to prove all this? Overturn the voter wishes of campaign-finance reform passed already in 1996 by increasing the amount of contributions that politicians may receive for conducting their reelection campaigns. Do you believe that most Republicans are conservative, that the interests of most Republicans lie in favor of Big Business and that the interests of Big Business are obtaining more money, more power and therefore more influence that is NOT in the interests of the common people, the people who are the backbone of the Democratic Party? Commit this rallying cry to memory: "That way lies corruption!" Once again: "That way lies corruption!" Again: "That way lies corruption!" Anyone who does NOT support campaign-finance reform is in danger of being labeled a (expletive-deleted) Republican.
Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - Frosty Wooldridge US Commits National Suicide Each day, we hear ‘body count’ reports of our soldiers killed in Iraq. Inside our nation, we hear more body counts from job losses, infectious diseases spreading among our citizens, gang wars erupting in our cities killing our friends as well as drug smugglers killing our national park rangers like Kris Eggle. The ABC’s of America’s accelerating national suicide mount with every newscast. Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw stare into the cameras without a hint of emotion as they report the quickening of this crisis in America. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall. Vandals invaded Rome by marching over the Romans’ superb road systems. Today, extremist Muslims used our own airliners in an opening salvo by hitting our World Trade Towers. You can bet terrorist cells in America scheme the next attack—perhaps a twin engine plane loaded with C-4 plastic explosives being flown into an NFL football game. Another plane could fly into the Hoover Dam at the same time. But even more sobering is what Toynbee said about how nations fall: "An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit national suicide."Today, America is committing immigration suicide. Much like the Romans, illegal aliens pour across U.S. borders at the rate of 2,200 per day. Another 4,100 legal immigrants step foot on American soil, 24/7 from 100 different countries. That equals 2.3 million annually. They’re pouring in so fast, our schools, infrastructure and language can not cope with their sheer numbers. Already at over ten million illegals, our congress, president and corporations sit in their insulated and isolated ‘luxury’ box seats in Washington, DC, while average Americans suffer the ‘body counts’. What are the signs showing this horrendous hemorrhaging of America’s national sovereignty? Every American in every state is affected. For one, our congress and president serve foreign constituents more than US citizens with H-1B and L-1 visas that have given, in the last decade, one million jobs to foreigners in India, China and Brazil. Our wages, standards of living and quality of life are being depressed. In 1965, we had 72 immigration lawyers. Today, we have 8,000 immigration lawyers serving illegal aliens by making sure every means possible is used to block deportation. Congress has done nothing to stop the flow of illegals since 9/11. Citizens in California overwhelming pass Proposition 187 to stop giving schools, food, medical care and aid to illegal aliens. It was overturned by political elites. Outsourcing and off-shoring by our corporations shuttles millions of Americans into unemployment lines. Our national language is undermined by our own leaders who are forcing us to deal with 100 languages in our schools by millions of people who have no intention of assimilating into America as citizens. What they are forming is a massive crisis of Balkanization that grows by the hour. We’re being forced into toleration of people, traditions and cultures that are at odds with America’s basic heartland values. The ABC’s of national suicide continue with escalating rates of disease from thousands of cases of leprosy, tuberculosis, hepatitis and Chagas Disease—brought into the USA by illegal aliens who avoided health screening. Not one of us can sit down at a restaurant in American today without wondering if we’re going to be the unlucky recipient of an infectious disease such as found at a Taco Bell in Denver last fall or Chi-Chi Restaurants in Pennsylvania or the hepatitis in Atlanta. These diseases are killing us. If you live in the growing enclave of 300,000 Middle Easterners in Detroit, Michigan, you will not hear English and you are only tolerated. ‘Little Kabul’ in Freemont, California might as well be a foreign city. NOTHING about it is American anymore. Manhattan Island, New York is being over run by Russians who acre creating their own ‘Leningrad’ on our soil. Anyone who has visited Los Angles will not understand or be understood by eight out of ten inhabitants. Why? Because three million illegal aliens reside in California and if you are an American, they really don’t like you. What is happening to America is a form of civil war being visited upon us by our own elected elite. Our own leaders are plotting average American citizens against this wave of illegal and legal immigrants. At current rates of this incursion, more than 115 million immigrants will be added to America in a short 50 years. The new Globalism is another form of Marxism. It reduces a citizen by economic gunpoint of sheer numbers. On the education front, a republic can not exist without an educated population with a similar moral and ethical foundation—and the same language. We are losing all four aspects of this vital factor in America. A nation that does not think and speak together can not and will not stand together. Multiculturalism is an experiment and we are the guinea pigs. Unfortunately, the experiment has already failed in dozens of other countries down through time. The middle class of America is being destroyed by this experiment. As our jobs vanish, our language is trashed, our neighborhoods invaded, our schools manipulated and our standards reduced by this influx from the Third World, we too, are reduced to living like they exist in India. By the time this experiment is in full swing, you will be lucky to obtain a minimum wage job at Wall Mart or Home Depot. You too, will learn what it’s like to live in China. I’ve been there. It is beyond depressing and spiritually exhausting to live at the lowest rung of subsistence and be at the mercy of the government for your very existence. If the middle class continues to sit back with a remote in hand, one by one, each in his or her time, will become a part of the American Body Count of national suicide. It’s time for another Boston Tea Party. You can be a part of the party by going to the following web sites. It’s your country and your children’s future. Frosty Wooldridge (frostyw@juno.com), web site: (www.frostywooldridge.com) is a teacher and author who has bicycled 100,000 miles on six continents to see overpopulation up close and ugly. His latest book is: ‘STRIKE THREE! TAKE YOUR BASE’. It shows a path for teens gasping for emotional stability after their loss of a parent through death or divorce. For more information to take action at the national level, you may go to www.numbersusa.com or write the author for local web sites to take local action in your state. Next book: ‘INCURSION INTO AMERICA: HOW MASS ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ADVERSELY AFFECTS AMERICAN CITIZENS AND COMMUNITIES’. If you have been affected by illegal immigration, write as much of your story as you like and submit it to the author for inclusion into the book. All names and places will remain private.
Sunday, November 30, 2003 - Dan Culberson Forgiveness: When Hell Freezes Over Or....... Now, hear me out. Have you ever forgiven someone for some perceived indiscretion, and do you remember how good you felt? Do you remember the feeling of love that flowed through your body? Now, have you ever refused to forgive someone for whatever indiscretion, and do you remember how you felt then, assuming you were thinking at all? Do you remember the superiority you felt and how you believed that person should be punished for whatever act committed against you? Do you remember the feeling of hatred that flowed through your body? If the purpose of punishment is to teach people a lesson so they won't commit the same indiscretion again, what is the purpose of forgiveness? Surely, it doesn't mean "What you did was wrong, but I forgive you, because it doesn't matter anymore." If we believe things matter at some point in life, but don't matter at all later in life, then how can we believe anything matters? Anyone who has raised children ought to know you can teach lessons much more readily and easily with love, understanding and forgiveness than you can with hate, superiority and punishment. Back in the Embarrassing Sixties, remember how young protesters were criticized, spat upon and sent to jail for wearing clothing that resembled the American flag? Have you noticed the jackets of the U.S. athletes at all the Winter Olympics? Have you seen ads for similar clothing that proclaims "patriotic apparel capturing the spirit of the U.S.A." ... "proudly displaying the 'Stars and Stripes'"? Do you remember Colorado congressman Phil Pankey (R-Littleton) "wrapped in an American flag made into a jacket" when the Colorado House once approved a law about U.S. flags? What happened over 40 years? Does something that mattered back then no longer matter today? No, because the Sixties protesters were just as adamantly showing their "patriotic spirit," except that their views differed from those of the "Establishment" and they were punished with extreme hatred. Now that the Establishment considers wearing the flag to be patriotic, does that mean the earlier protesters were right? Does it mean they just grew up and carried their patriotic views with them into middle age? Or does it mean that things that mattered in the past don't necessarily matter in the present? Many of those Baby Boomer protesters of the past have been forgiven now, specifically the ones who left their country and moved to Canada. Those who broke the law, committed crimes against society in support of their views and went underground have not. Apparently, they still have to be taught a lesson so they won't do it again or so others won't emulate them. Some of those protesters couldn't escape, got drafted into the Army and went to Vietnam to kill people in he name of "patriotic duty." In other words, in the Sixties it wasn't patriotic to protest war, support peace and encourage love. It was patriotic to support war, protest peace and encourage hate. Remember "My country, right or wrong"? Remember "America: Love it or Leave it!"? How many of you support those views today? Officially, we have even forgiven Vietnam. We forgive women for cutting off the penises of their husbands. We forgive them for these "preemptive strikes," because they say they were afraid of being beaten or raped. We forgive countries, but we don't forgive soldiers. A 70-year-old Colorado man who was a German soldier in WWII, who lived in the U.S. since 1956 and who married an American woman just days before the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had started deportation proceedings against him relinquished the idea of fighting for his rights and decided to return to Germany before being deported. What lesson was he being taught? Why was he being punished? What crime had he committed? He didn't protest the war his country was fighting. He didn't run away to another country to escape the draft. He didn't predict the future. Peter Mueller survived. Unfortunately, his Establishment assigned him to be a guard at a concentration camp, and we discovered this 50 years later. What was he supposed to do? Refuse? Desert? Shoot his superiors? "I was only following orders" isn't allowed as a defense. However, in the military you are forced to follow orders. If not, in wartime you can be shot. So, who are the criminals? Who needs to be punished? The protesters against war during the time of war, or the ones who peacefully follow orders and afterwards are punished during peacetime?
Monday, November 10, 2003 - Frosty Wooldridge Editor's Note: There is an Immigration Forum at Hyde Park. ILLEGAL ALIENS SPREADING DISEASES ACROSS THE USA If you travel into the Third World such as Mexico, Central and South America, you will notice that while visiting a bathroom there is a box for used toilet paper in the corner and no soap or paper towels at the lavatory. The sewage systems can not handle toilet paper so it is a habit to throw it in the box provided which is open to flies and cockroaches. Additionally, for most Third World people, washing hands is non existent. Today, in California, Florida, Georgia and spreading to other states across the nation, recent arrivals are so accustomed to throwing their used toilet paper into boxes, they throw it into trashcans. Whether they work at the counter or chopping tomatoes, they often do not wash their hands. Thousands carry head lice, leprosy, tuberculosis and hepatitis A, B, and C. Annually, an estimated 800,000 illegal aliens cross America’s southern borders while avoiding a health screening. They are not stopped or vaccinated for a host of diseases they’re bringing into America. Who is at risk? Everyone, but especially our school children when they come in contact with in-excess of three million illegal alien school children daily. What can those three million kids unknowingly transfer to our kids? Tuberculosis, five years ago, was almost non-existent in the USA. Last week, a school in Sebewaing, Michigan reported 30 children and four teachers had tested positive for tuberculosis infections. Michigan supports a large Latin illegal alien population that migrated from Mexico. In the past four years, 16,000 cases of multi drug resistant (MDR) TB, which was formerly endemic ONLY to Mexico, crossed over the borders inside the bodies of illegal aliens. These adults and their children have spread out across the country to work in fast foods and harvesting. Another outbreak occurred in Austin, Minnesota where eight police officers tested positive for tuberculosis. A similar outbreak occurred in Portland, Maine last week with 28 testing positive for tuberculosis. On November 6, 2003, at a local restaurant chain, Chi-Chi’s in Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania, illegal aliens ‘served’ up plates of infectious hepatitis A to their patrons. Over 3,000 had to receive the painful gammaglobulin shots while two Americans died. Health officials reported, "Workers may have contaminated food by failure to follow basic hygiene in cleaning hands after using the bathroom." The employees were not health screened by the restaurant chain. Another distressing disease, leprosy, long feared from Biblical times, totaled 900 cases in the USA in the past 40 years. In the past three years, according to a report from the NY Times in February, 2003, leprosy has infected over 7,000 people in the United States. It was brought in by illegal immigrants from India, Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean. Leprosy spreads by infected illegal aliens working in fast food, dish washing and hotels. Chagas Disease is brought directly from Mexico and Latin America where it has infected over 18,000,000 people. The T-Cruzi protozoan destroys heart tissue and other organs. "One can contract it by eating uncooked food contaminated with infective feces of the Vinchuca Bug. It crosses over the border in the bodies of an average of 2,200 illegal aliens daily. Whether it’s dengue fever, now in Florida, Hemmorhagic Fever coming up from Texas border towns or E-coli intestinal parasites arriving with illegal aliens from Mexico daily, every American citizen is under a form of ‘Bio Terrorism’. Tom Ridge of Homeland Security presents Americans with color coded ‘alert’ levels from Al Queda, but what he doesn’t protect us from is a mounting invasion from an ‘unarmed army’ of disease carrying illegals who are becoming just as deadly as 9/11. What can you do as a citizen? The first and most powerful defense for America would be a five-year moratorium on all immigration so this country can regain its collective breath. Our hospitals, schools and social services are being overwhelmed by an average of 2.3 million legal, illegal immigrants and their offspring each year. Too often, individual Americans neglect to exercise their citizenship. You must demand that each restaurant that you visit hire only legal American, health-screened employees. You must demand your schools examine and process every illegal alien child for head lice, TB and leprosy on a regular basis. You must press your senators, congressmen and president to put troops on our border with Mexico to stop illegal aliens from crossing. You must insist that anyone hiring illegal aliens be fined and imprisoned. Remember the Boston Tea Party? The Alamo? When their leaders did not act in their behalf, average citizens acted in defense of their country. It’s time, once again, for American citizens to stand up for our country, our way of life and our kids. Finally, you need to visit your schools, write your papers, call your TV stations, talk on radio stations and city councils to bring a discussion, debate and action as to why corporations, industry and government continue flooding our country with millions of illegal aliens who carry these deadly diseases. It’s your country, your kids and the future of this democracy that are at stake. Source for TB in Michigan: www.clickondetroit.com, 11/4/03, THUMB SCHOOLS REPORT 34 TUBERCULOSIS INFECTIONS’. Source for hepatitis in PA: www.post-gazette.com, ll/6/03, HEPATITIS OUTBREAK IN BEAVER TRIGGERS SHOTS FOR NEARLY 3,000. Source for TB in Maine: www.news.maintoday.com 11/6/03, HEALTH OFFICIALS FIGHT TB OUTBREAK Source for leprosy: LERNER, NY TIMES, 2/20/03, LEPROSY ON THE RISE IN US Source: Hemmoragic Fever, Dengue Fever, Head lice, www.fairus.org Frosty Wooldridge (frostyw@juno.com) is a teacher and author who has bicycled 100,000 miles on six continents to see overpopulation up close and ugly. His latest book is: ‘STRIKE THREE! TAKE YOUR BASE’. This book is about baseball, moms, dads, teens and the early loss of a parent through death or divorce. It shows a path for teens gasping for emotional stability after their loss. For more information to take action at the national level, you may go to www.numbersusa.com or write the author for local web sites to take local action in your state. This is your country and your kids’ future.
Thursday, October 09, 2003 - Shane Elson On the Australian Left, Carers are slaves to the current government A few years ago I was at a disability conference and during one of the coffee breaks I got into conversation with another bloke. I'll call him Bill. Bill was in his seventies and a widower. He told me his story with tears in his eyes. His wife passed away a few years prior to my meeting him and since then he had taken over the fulltime care for his 40 year old daughter. She was born with a severe intellectual disability and had physical disabilities as well. She could not be left unsupervised for extended periods, had fits of violence, was overweight and suffered from a range of medical conditions that required constant vigilance. Bill was tired. He told me that until he retired he had never known the life his wife had lived as, until then, she had to bear the full load of caring for their daughter (not to mention their other children). Bill was alone and his own mortality was staring him in the face. I can still see the tears in his eyes as he asked me, "What will happen when I'm gone?" What could I say? What can we say to all the Bills and Bettys who care for their loved ones as they negotiate the world we have allowed to emerge around us? In September this year our Prime Miniature, John Howard, attended the National Carers Conference in Canberra. He delivered the opening address and said, in part, "I want to address some remarks to the Government's approach to the enormous contributions that Carers make to the stability of our community. Social stability and social cohesion and caring for people is an integral part of Australian society". I found this to be an extraordinary turn of phrase. I'll repeat it. "Social stability and social cohesion and caring for people is an integral part of Australian society". What Howard does here is turn the emphasis away from notions of collective responsibility for those who are less fortunate than ourselves and turn it back on the individuals unfortunate enough to have to care full time for their loved ones. He says to Carers, you make an enormous contribution but that is what we expect from you as members of a stable, cohesive society. Howard has said to those who look after the most vulnerable and needy, as good Australians, it is your duty to care for your loved ones. This is nothing new and is nothing less than what we should expect from a Liberal Prime Minister, a man steeped in the principle that individualism and striving to provide the greatest return for your energy will form the basis on which collective action will emerge to benefit everyone. In Howard's limited and blinkered view of social processes, he ascribes success to individual drive and motivations and social processes as governed by the 'invisible hand' of mutual exchange unhindered by government or other interventions. In short, if left to our own devices, society will become better and all will benefit. I wonder what benefits Bill has received over the last 40 years or so? Jean Tops, the President of the Gippsland Carers Association said on her return from the conference that, "The conference heard research that full-time unpaid Carers were 60% more likely to suffer one of more than 50 debilitating illness' such as depression, heart attack and stroke than the general community." In short, the reward carers can expect from our present systems of government, be it under Liberal or Labor, is a shortened life expectancy and a lower quality of life all the while worrying over the ongoing care of their loved one after they are no longer able to support them. There are 600,000 families in Australia who care for at least one member with a disability and who are not able to access adequate care for their loved one which means that the family (in most cases the mother) is the primary carer.  These carers don't work a 38 hour week with sick pay, holiday pay, superannuation or other perks. They work 365 days a year, on call 24 hours a day for the measly sum of $43 per week in Carer's Allowance. The recent announcement that the Australian Federal Budget would be in surplus to the tune of $7 billion would be turned into a budget deficit of over $20 billion if full time, unpaid family carers took the drastic action of 'dumping' their loved ones in care (if it was available in the first place). As Jean Tops says, "This (or any) Budget surplus is only possible on the backs of the 'unpaid slave labour' of more than 600,000 full-time 'unpaid Carers' of people with profound dependent disabilities who would otherwise be in aged care nursing home beds or in supported accommodation in the 'one-size-fits all' disability group home system". So how do we respond with the Carers to John Howard's call to remember that "Social stability and social cohesion and caring for people is an integral part of Australian society"? How do we enter into the life of the Bills and Bettys who, while aging themselves, are faced with the terrible knowledge that when they do pass away, their loved one will be left to the devices of the state? Under Howard's scheme it would be other family members who would take up the caring role. Brothers, sisters, uncles or aunts, Howard would trumpet, need to remember that if they want to be responsible members of Australian society they should take up the slack in the system. But I ask you, how would you feel if one day an adult with profound and multiple disabilities was thrust upon you and you had to rearrange your lifestyle to suit them? Would you do it? Heres some startling statistics to help you understand where Howard and Costello got at least part of their budget surplus from. Over 3.6 million Australians (or 19% of the population) have a disability with handicap. Of this group 2.3 million have their primary care provided by an unpaid family carer including the provision of accommodation. Over 71% of all these carers are women and 78% of all primary carers are of workforce age (18-64). Unpaid families provide over 91% of all accommodation support for people with disabilities and while our government spent $3.7 billion on Aged Care accommodation in the '99-'00 budget they provided only $1.2 billion for disability accommodation. Jean Tops responds to these figures by saying, "At the present time there is no avenue for unpaid family Carers to seek remedy under Human Rights, Equal Opportunity or Disability Legislation because Australia currently has no Carer Recognition or Entitlement Legislation. This grossly discriminatory situation has created a society that tolerates family members being treated as 'unpaid slave labourers' without any rights." I would respond to Mrs. Tops by saying, that is exactly what Mr. Howard wants because if you and other unpaid family carers were to stand up and fight for equal rights for both yourselves and your loved ones who need care, you would be threatening the social stability and social cohesion of Australian society. As long as the systems under which we are forced to live offer no respite or opportunity to even think about the possibilities of a different way of organising our social and economic relations, then Howard and his ruling class mates (of all political shades) will continue to regard carers as nothing more than slaves. How was Howard and Costello's budget surplus won? In part by ensuring that Bill is not able to take time off and fight for his rights. However, there is another possibility here. We should not allow Bill to remain voiceless. One day it may be our turn to take on the caring roll. God forbid it should happen but a decline into dementia or other psychological change, a car accident, a work injury, or a careless jump into a s wimming pool could result in anyone of us or our loved ones suddenly being transformed from an able bodied, self reliant and self sufficient individual into a dependent, disabled burden on our families. Sure, we say, if that would happen I could never regard my child or parent as a burden so its wrong to think that. I'm sure Bill doesn't think his daughter is a burden. I'm sure he loves her and I'm sure he and his late wife know her, perhaps, better than they knew each o ther. So no, the disabled family member may not become a burden in the sense of wanting to abandon them. But I challenge you to ask anyone who has a family member with a disability and who will answer from the bottom of their heart, whether they don't have times when they ask "what if?" Its all these "what ifs" that John Howard and the ruling elites deny when they say we should do our duty for the good of the community.  Mutual obligation, under a pure interpretation of liberal philosophy, flowed both ways. For the thousands of Bills and Bettys out there, the tap of compassion has been turned off while the elites celebrate on the backs of those whose hearts are constantly breaking as they quietly, lovingly, tenderly care for the person whose life depends on them. A young boy with a disabled brother once told his mother about a dream he had. In the dream he had a fireworks rocket and when it exploded in the air the falling sparks took away everyone's disabilities.  I guess the question that arises out of this story and what troubles me is whether it is socially responsible to deny two boys and their family the right to enjoy a better quality of life because those in power want to maintain a stable and cohesive but repressive and unjust social system - at any cost. The possibility that arises out of all this is one in which we, the able bodied who are not tied down with the 365 day a year job of providing constant are, become the conduit for the voices of all the Bills and Bettys who ask, “What will happen when I'm gone?" and to use our resources, that are not sucked up in the carer role, to advocate for those who ask "what if?" We don't need to say anything. The Bills and Bettys do not need more words. They do not need more letters or advice. What they really need is action. What we need to do is to work towards throwing out the systems we currently have, that treat carers as unpaid slave labour, and replace them with ones that can provide a better chance for the Bills and Bettys to enjoy their declining years and to remove the burden from all those little boys who dream of exploding rockets and brothers who can play in their back yards with them. Figures used in this article were sourced from the Gippsland Carers Association and Carers Victoria. Shane Elson PO Box 780 Morwell VIC 3840 AUS sgels1@net-tech.com.au -61-3-5134 8556 -61-413 597 828 Shane is the Australian producer and distributor of Alternative Radio. Visit the web site www.alternativeradio.org
Tuesday, October 07, 2003 - Shane Elson "Plastic or Paper?" in Australia, as elsewhere, the symbolism is important...... I was listening to the local talk back radio while they had a conversation on the use or non-use of plastic bags in shops and how there was a 10c levy on them. There were the obligatory 'how dare they charge me' and the 'save the whales' callers. But one caller caught my attention and made me stop and think about my own experience. This caller related how the supermarkets are not geared up for anything else other than plastic bags. Having worked during my teenage years as a packer in the local supermarket in my hometown I began to think about this notion of customer service and the ubiquitous plastic bag. When I worked in the supermarket, the customer would take the items out of their trolley and slide them down the polished wooded bench where the 'checkout chick' (and they always were then) would check them off. The packer would, with a skillful flourish, crack open the large brown paper bag and begin the task of carefully packing in the goods. All the while a subtle three way conversation was going on. The check out girl and the customer would be chatting about whatever, while us young blokes doing the packing would be worrying about Mrs. Jones and how she doesn't like the Fish Fingers in the same bag as the soap - and boy would she let you know it if you did put them in together. The process was very labour intensive and part of the packer's job was to carry the groceries to the car if asked. Sometimes, the customers would even give you their car keys and tell you they would pick them up later after they had their hair done. There was a camaraderie around the check out. No flash touch screens, no real rush. Although I'll qualify that with the fact that every year the supermarket had the 'checkout games' in which teams of checkout chicks and their packers would do battle to see who could pack the fastest. But not only did you have to pack the fastest, you had to observe the 'Mrs. Jones protocols'. This meant no soap and fish fingers in the same bag. Soft items on top, fruit and meat separate and the tub of ice cream so it wouldn't leak. Nowadays it's all about 'through put' and 'price consistency' and 'efficiency' and 'customer service'. The check outs are designed as ergonomic control rooms where the customer places the goods on the conveyor belt at one end and back into their trolley, complete with plastic wrappers, at the other. There's not a lot of need to chat and even less time to do so. The whole idea is to keep the flow of cash running into the till and the humble plastic shopping bag is the retailer's greatest ally in this task. So when my partner and I started using calico bags, assembled on her sewing machine and double stitched all the way round, we began to change not only some of our own habits but also, hopefully the habits of some of those around us.  I didn't realise until I heard the caller today but we have joined the legion who are attempting to break the cycle of rushing. Because the calico bag doesn't work in the fast paced, high volume, high through-put, large capacity shopping mall check out, we are part of a group who are subtly taking back the social spaces of the check-out. My first inkling that something was changing was when, one evening, the lady behind us, watching the pile of goods grow at the end of the conveyor belt as I methodically packed in the tins, bottles and packets, began to look at her watch every two seconds. Shifting from foot to foot, she was growing more and more impatient. From the depths of my mind her actions recalled in me a response I'll call the Mr. Phillips Syndrome. You know him. He's the one who always rushes. He never says 'hello' and he counts his change before leaving the check out. While the Mr. Phillips of my check out days was probably long gone, my reaction to this behavior was predictable. I slowed down a little and upped my engagement with the young man operating the till. Now, I'll admit that probably wasn't the nicest thing to do, but it did give me a small moment of glee to realise that in the busy world of keeping the dollar circulating I could actually influence the profit margins of a large multinational and at the same time, give this obviously weary lady a moment of respite from her endless rushing about. The plastic bag represents the rush and clutter of our society. It has reshaped the social spaces of our shopping centre exits and taken away from us some of the skills of engaging. As a packer I can recall the summer holiday makers, strangers who I'd never seen before and for whom I would invent fantastic stories, the regulars who always had something to say and the Mrs. Jones' and Mr. Phillips' of my town. All these people passed through the store and through the little part of it I occupied and, for the most part, we engaged. Sure, we weren't allowed to dilly dally, but there was the opportunity to chat. 'Customer satisfaction' was not reduced to how many options there were, but to how good the conversation, which was part of the service, was. The caller on the radio this morning reminded me of all those times when I've heard the term 'customer service' and how it has become the catch cry for training us in certain practices designed to either make us spend more, or to reduce costs. It's not 'customer service' it's training us in the service of wealth capture. However, its not only our financial wealth, it's the wealth of social interactions that exist within our communities that are slowly choked out of those spaces in which we have the greatest opportunity to find out about others. The caller prompted me to think about the plastic bags that choke our water ways, kill our marine life, clog up our drains and blow over our gardens as a metaphor for the way so many of our daily habits have been trained by the capitalist imperative. The desire to 'create wealth' (whatever that means) and accumulate tokens of our success drive many of us overlook the simple things. Being a recent convert to the calico bag, perhaps my perspective is a little blurred. However, a much longer engagement with social issues make me think that the plastic bag is a good metaphor for the way our society is shaped. It comes to us (until recently) free of charge. It speeds up the time we do boring tasks (no need to converse with the pimply teenager at the check out).  It makes it easier to get around (no arms full of loose items). It can be multi-tasked (bin liner, doggy doo scoop, garden peg marker) and, when it's finished with, thrown away, forgotten or made someone else's problem. The plastic bag chokes our social interactions, kills our ability to slow down, clogs up our cupboards with empties, and blows over the gardens we so lovingly tend. While there is a place for them - and I would rather see biodegradable plastic bags than the heavy brown paper ones I used to pack - plastic bags represent a rally call to those of us who want to take back our social spaces and engage with our communities. And I haven't mentioned how the plastic bag has also become a status item, those  large ones with the 'brand' name of the shop on them. Always oversize, made of heavy duty plastic with reinforced handles, these plastic bags do more than just destroy the environment, they take away for our society, not add to it, because they remind us of the economic divisions that exist between us. The 'haves' shop 'here' while the have nots shop 'there'. While I'm not calling for some 60's / 70's style nostalgia trip or a return to the good old bad old days, I'm asking for a short moment of reflection on what the plastic bag has done not only for us, but also to us. It's made life easier to some extent, but what did it take away in the process? Shane Elson PO Box 780 Morwell VIC 3840 AUS sgels1@net-tech.com.au -61-3-5134 8556 -61-413 597 828 Shane is the Australian producer and distributor of Alternative Radio. Visit the web site www.alternativeradio.org
Sunday, September 28, 2003 - Unknown (stolen from TouchStone; thanks, Dan!) Okay, okay, he conflates Afghanistan and Iraq, drags in North Korea, slips into hyperbole, and most of this could just as easily be said about, oh, Kosovo and yet……..and yet….. The Vietnam II Preflight Check By: Author Unknown (but if you know or are the original author please come forward and take a bow!) 1. Cabal of oldsters who won't listen to outside advice? Check. 2. No understanding of ethnicity's of the many locals? Check. 3. National boundaries drawn in Europe, not by the locals? Check. 4. Unshakable faith in our superior technology? Check. 5. France secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check. 6. Russia secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check. 7. China secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check. 8. Enemy supply lines unknown? Check. 9. Sec of Def pushing a conflict the Joint Chiefs never wanted? Check. 10. Fear we'll look bad if we back down now? Check. 11. Corrupt corporate Texan in the White House? Check. 12. Land war in Asia? Check. 13. Right-wing unhappy with outcome of previous war? Check. 14. Enemy easily moves in/out of neighboring countries? Check. 15. Soldiers about to be exposed to our own chemicals? Check. 16. Daily guerrilla attacks that cannot be stopped? Check. 17. Anti-Americanism up sharply in Europe? Check. 18. B-52 bombers? Check. 19. Helicopters that clog up on the local dust? Check. 20. Infighting among the branches of the military? Check. 21. Locals that cheer us by day, hate us by night? Check. 22. Local experts ignored? Check. 23. Local politicians ignored? Check. 24. Local conflicts since before the USA has been a country? Check. 25. Much confusion over who and where the enemy is? Check. 26. Against advice, Prez won't use taxes to pay for war? Check. 27. Blue water navy ships operating in brown water? Check. 28. Use of nukes hinted at if things don't go our way? Check. 29. War unpopular at home? Check. 30. No plan in place to end involvement? Check. Vietnam II, you are cleared to taxi.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - Mark Boslough Letter to the Albuquerque Journal Monday, September 22, 2003 Letters to the Editor Who are Real Eco-Terrorists? AUTOMOBILE DEALERS are so upset by graffiti on their $70,000 Land Rovers that they have asked the FBI to investigate. The president of their association is calling it an act of "domestic terrorism." The story even made headlines in "Eco-terror Watch," the newsletter of an organization called "Stop Eco-Violence!" How did political tag artists get elevated to the status of al-Qaida, diverting strained investigative resources? My guess is that it all started when Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., wrote letters to the League of Conservation Voters, World Wildlife Fund and other environmental groups asking them to "publicly disavow the actions of eco-terrorist organizations. ..."      Coming shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, McInnis' letter said, "While the attacks of eco-vigilantes have not yet reached the magnitude of what America experienced over the last several weeks, their tactics are no less deplorable, their methods of pursuing political change no less appalling, and their use of fear and terror no less repugnant." Taking him at his word, I visited McInnis' Washington office last March and showed photographs to his staff of politically-motivated graffiti that had been scrawled on signs and spray painted across rocks on my family's Colorado property. I showed snapshots of the seedling trees that were killed by vandals who use our land for off-road recreation. I showed copies of e-mailed threats to drive off-road vehicles across a wetland we are restoring. I even showed pictures of the vigilantes themselves, winching a boulder off our private drive. After taking the law into their own hands, the posse had posted photos on their organization's Web site. The graffiti on our property did not refer to a fictional monkeywrencher, but to "R.S. 2477," the repealed law that off-road clubs think gives them access to private property. ... The political motivation was not eco-protection, but eco-exploitation. And the value of our property is less than the cost of a Land Rover. I've not heard back from McInnis, who has not so much as disavowed the actions of these groups. The FBI is not investigating. This double standard reveals an unfortunate anti-environmental bias within our government.                                                                  MARK BOSLOUGH Albuquerque
Thursday, August 07, 2003 - Clint Talbott Talbott, an editor at the Daily Camera, weighs in on the Barking Dog Issue.  Thought about reprinting it here, given that it's on the WEB anyway, but decided 'better not' given the success of my other judgments on legal issues involving me over the last decade.   http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/news_columnists/article/0,1713,BDC_2421_2165019,00.html
Sunday, August 03, 2003 - from Dark Cloud Sherri Tippi, who contributed to the Barking Dog debate, has a nice piece in the Daily Camera about her.   http://www.thedailycamera.com/bdc/county_news/article/0,1713,BDC_2423_2155762,00.html
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 - Mark Boslough Mark Boslough has a letter to Congress and additional postion papers on his new site: http://home.comcast.net/~balarat/ranch.html
Friday, July 04, 2003 - Mark Boslough Letter to Daily Camera July 3, 2003 Law opens bad can of worms Many mountain landowners, like James Hester (Open Forum, June 11), mistakenly think that RS-2477 is a law that simply protects their access across public land. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. If Hester succeeds at using RS-2477 to gain an easement, he will have also created a public road that is open to any dirt bike, ATV or monster truck. And if the road is older than his mining claim, he will end up with a motorized recreation area on his own property! Extreme off-road clubs are already attempting to use RS-2477 to seize private property without due process or just compensation. They simply look on a map, see a road, and assume RS-2477. For example, my family owns land that was patented in 1878. According to Vernon Brandt, an official representative of the Mile-Hi Jeep Club, he has a right to use our stream bed for motorized recreation. His theory is that sometime before 1878, there must have been a road from our mine down the creek into the South St. Vrain Canyon and onward to Lyons. Never mind the fact that Lyons did not exist in 1878, let alone a road in the canyon! But the Mile-Hi Jeep Club doesn't let the facts get in the way of their theory. Club members are so sure that a road existed there 125 years ago that they formed a vigilante group to re-open it. Notably, they do not seem sure enough to file a lawsuit and let a judge decide. It us just a matter of time before caravans of mud-running off-roaders graduate from harassing small landowners like me and my neighbors, and start forcing their way onto alleged RS-2477 roads through ski areas, golf courses, and gated subdivisions. When that happens I expect the Bush administration will do an about-face. MARK BOSLOUGH, Albuquerque, N.M.