To Hell With The Rules: Hillary’s Y2K Plan

Harold Ickes is an advisor to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. He is also is a top figure of the Democratic party and voted along with the rest of the Democractic National Committee to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates to the national convention. The two states had moved their primaries up to early dates in clear violation of Democratic Party rules and prompted sanctions from the national committee. Ickes is now coming out to support Clinton's position that the delegates from these states, where only she was on the ballot (all the Democratic candidates pledged to boycott campaigning in these states and Edwards and Obama were not even on the ticket), be seated at the Democratic National Convention this August.

If people thought Bush's election in 2000 stank of fraud, wait till Hillary gets these delegates seated. Her argument is that voters of these states would be getting the shaft if their delegates were not seated and that we would be undemocratically throwing their votes away. That argument might just hold water, if Hillary were arguing for a re-vote so that Mr. Obama's Supporters (and Edwards, Kucinich's and other's for that matter) might get a shot to vote for their candidates. As it is, Mrs. Clinton is asking for extra delegates that she received unfairly and against the rules of her own party.

As to how he could have voted against allowing Michigan and Florida delegations to the convention several months ago only to change his mind now, Ickes had this to say,

"There's been no change...I was not acting as an agent of Mrs. Clinton. We had promulgated rules and those rules said the timing provision ... provides for certain sanctions, automatic sanctions as a matter of fact, if a state such as Michigan or Florida violates those timing provisions."

"With respect to the stripping [the delegates], I voted as a member of the Democratic National Committee. Those were our rules and I felt I had an obligation to enforce them," he said.

Interesting...And why exactly do you no longer feel the need to enforce the rules? Could this really be as blatantly obvious as it seems? A Democratic Party official stating that he believed in rules a few months ago, but now that he is working for Hillary, he doesn't care? That's like prosecuting the mafia hard as New York State's attorney only to quit and start working as Toni Soprano's consigliere.

This whole thing stinks. Hillary for her part, hasn't said anything to make it any better,

"The rules provide for a vote at the convention to seat contested delegations...There is nothing unusual about this. Usually it takes awhile to sort all this out. That's why there are rules. If there are contested delegations, the convention votes on it."

Yes, there are rules. The rules said Florida and Michigan screwed up. Sorry, see you in another four. The rules surrounding democratic elections usually require that all the qualified candidates get a chance to be on the ballot and that by "all" we mean more than just one Senator from New York.


Quotes for this article sourced from an associated press article by Hope Yen that can be found here: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hY742M_s1ttD_ycf2Zusn1o1fD3QD8UROM680

8:31 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

No Hillary For Me

A few notes on the ongoing democratic nomination process…

First, I think we certainly need to address the primary system itself in coming years as smaller states are not given enough of a voice and lesser-known candidates are often forced out of the contest early. Chris Dodd impressed me greatly as has Dennis Kucinich, yet they have essentially disappeared. Even if they were not to go on to win the nomination, it is a disservice to us all that they were marginalized so early in the contest. They had ideas that were important and well articulated and the electorate could have gained much from having their voices in the fray, even if they remained just voices. The same goes for someone like Ron Paul on the Republican side or Ralph Nader of the Green Party in past contests. We, the electorate would benefit from hearing the views of these other candidates as would the so called front runners; it seems the most intellectually specific candidates always lack the star luster but at least if they stick around, some of their policy ideas might rub off on front runners.

Secondly, as I have voraciously devoured al the news articles pertaining to the race like the political junky I am, I have been very surprised to see how many people posting comments have mentioned how fake they think Obama sounds.
I have seen people specifically wonder why others don't see through his façade and marvel at how fake his speeches sound. More surprising to me, these comments almost invariably come from Hillary Clinton supporters and I have never found her to be a particularly "real" sounding person. Certainly, Obama's speeches today will sound a bit "constructed" to those hearing him for the first time, but that's because they are supposed to sound that way. Unlike Hillary, he is an orator; this is stylized, oratorical, rhetorical speech and it is going to sound different than regular talking.

The reason I support Obama is mainly because of the way he answered questions in interviews long before he was an official presidential contender. Way back when he was just a U.S. Senator that every political journalist was praying would enter the race. Obama would talk like a normal human being. He would answer the question in full sentences, avoid buzz words and pre-made soundbyte phrases. In other words, he sounded like an intelligent person not a carefully scripted political persona. I get the feeling that many of these critical posters had never heard Obama answer a question until he won the Iowa caucus.

If Obama sounds scripted now, it is because he is making spectacular speeches and he has a gift for oratory that this country has not seen in a president in a generation. Old Slick Willy has nothing on Obama who I would put up there with Jack Kennedy in terms of vocal prowess.

Hillary, on the other hand, has always been the exact opposite. I have never heard her utter a sentence to the press that didn't sound like duckspeak. She is always carefully controlled and contrived. Her speeches do sound a but more like a conversation, but I don't find that to be a strength; her idea of soaring oratory is to say what she normally says…only louder.

It's probably pretty obvious that I'm not a fan of Mrs. Clinton, but it isn't just the fact that she has the same boring political persona that everyone in Washington has had for as long as I can remember that turns me off to her. You see, it is Hillary's record, and that of her husband that absolutely kill it for me. We know that a vote for Hillary is a "two for one deal" in the same vein that the two pitched themselves in Bill's runs for the Whitehouse. Bill's recent campaigning on behalf of his wife seems to make it clear that they had a bargain a long time ago; him first, then her. I'm sure he caught the worst hell from Hillary over the Lewinsky debacle not so much for the infidelity (it surely was not his first) but over the possibility that it may have hurt Hillary's chances for her day in the sun. She's got his balls to the fire and he's got to make sure she wins…not to mention that fact that he wants to be back in that house as much as she does.

A lot of people would love to see Bill back in the whitehouse I know, and we can be sure that Hillary would be as close as we could get to a third term for Bill. The thing is, unlike a lot of Democrats, I never liked Bill Clinton. I think he spouted duckspeak as much as any republican. I think he got lucky in that silicon valley boosted the economy for him during his first term and managed not to crash it again until her was finished his second; it had nothing to do with him. Bill bided his time in office, trying to look good and not doing much of anything. He's a spineless wimp of a progressive and a liar to top it all off. Hillary's connection with Bill is not a strength for me, it's a contagion…

But surely I have specific reasons to hate Mr. and Mrs. Clinton? But of course. Below is a brief list of my beefs with Bill…


1.) He never admitted to using drugs and never did a thing to help shift this country's judicial policy away from the prosecution of victimless drug crimes. He must have forgotten his mescaline trips and pot smoking sessions in college...too much dope will do that to you.

2.) He openly admitted to being too scared stand up to the pentagon and get the U.S. involved in the international land mine ban (see details in Chalmers Johnson's Blowback).

3.) He continued policies of global "free trade" that hollowed out America's industrial manufacturing capacity in order to continue to support our "model" puppet state, Japan (Again, see Blowback, Japan was to America during the cold war what East Germany was to the Soviets).

4.) Bill and Madeline Albright did a lot of messed up things in the world, including the sanctions that killed millions of Iraqi civilians and the Cruise missile raid on an Al Qeada "training camp" in Sudan that was actually a pharmaceutical plant...the loss of medicine produced by that plant lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Africa (See virtually anything written by Chomsky on the Clinton administration for details on this).

5.) WACO: The Branch Davidians were nuts, but so was the way the government confronted them; heavy handed and reckless.

6.) NAFTA: and free trade in general. Bush W has made the mistake of assuming that any other country can embrace American style Democracy, Clinton and others (this is a bi-partisan issue) make the same mistake about American Capitalism. For instance, despite our use of a Japan as a "model" state, Japanese capitalism has been very, very different from our own. Historically it has not been as important for Japanese corporation to show profits as to show growth in exports to their chief trading partner, the U.S.

To think that our way is the only way, just because it worked for us is the height of Hubris. The American system is the result of hundreds of years of specific historical and cultural changes that do not exist anywhere else: when not even our Euro allies run their economies like we do (not to say they are better, just different) how do we expect cultures even further removed from our own to adopt our economic policies? I typically agree with people like Chomsky in that in the end, we don't expect other cultures to join us at the top, we simply wish to open more markets for those already atop the heap. Bill should know better…

7.) Jocelyn Elders: This one I can almost forgive him for as I know most of America would have blasted him, but where in his career did the guy ever show any spine? He could have made some defense of her...

But this is all Bill, not Hillary of course, but the problem is that much of Hillary's claims of experience stem from this time period as do a great deal of her views. I have not heard her say anything that would make be think she will do anything that differently than Bill. Even her much lauded battle for health care in the early 90's had very little to do with her and everything to do with Bill. According to an article in The American Prospect magazine entitled "The Myth of Hillary Care", Hillary was just the face on the program, it wasn't her program, she didn't design it or even have much input. Her job was just to sell it to the American people and to congress…she failed.

As far as experience goes, for me, the Bill Clinton presidency is a black mark for Hillary, not a bonus. As for her Senate Record, she lost me with the Iraq war vote. Granted, Obama might also have voted yes had he been in the Senate at that time, but he wasn't and so he didn't. She did. There is a very simple reason why: No Senator seriously contemplating a Presidential run in 2008 could afford to be on the wrong side of that vote, and the war, as wrong as it is, could have gone differently. So she said yes, so did Edwards. They both want to win and I don't care; I've seen one Clinton Presidency and it was nothing to write home about...I don't care to see another one.

1:01 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Lopsided National Security

At a recent rally in Jacksonville Florida, Senator John McCain had this to say.

"...our nation's security is our foremost obligation to our people. We all know that."


This reminded me of something I've wanted to ask hawk conservatives for a long time. How exactly do you define "National Security"? It may sound like a silly question but a great deal actually depends on how one frames the definition of national security. In my mind, national security refers to keeping various aspects of the American nation safe from damage from malevolent forces, both foreign and domestic. This obviously means protecting American citizens from harm both at home and abroad. This means protecting American infrastructure, interests and business both at home and abroad, but we all know that the reason property is to be protected is because of the people who own and depend on that property. I assume that it is important that American companies doing business overseas are protected from terrorist attack because their business affects the economy, which in turn effects me, which in turn is a factor in my continued survival. Thusly, we all hand over large proportions of our income in taxes to pay for intelligence, military operations and domestic security functions that keep American citizens safe from harm, safe from forces beyond their control.

So, I would like to ask Senator McCain: What about an influenza epidemic? Is that a threat to national security? It can kill people, harm American citizens and possibly property. It can certainly do serious damage to the American economy if enough people missed work or died, forcing companies to find new talent and to make up for delays in product delivery. Does this threat, coming from nature alone, justify the use of Federal money to treat citizens who become infected? In my view, any health issue that can be fatal to people despite their best efforts to avoid it, that has the potential to seriously disrupt families, businesses and the economy is certainly an issue that falls under the label national security. I have a similar hunch, that Senator McCain would disagree.

Senator McCain, what if terrorists released that influenza? Would that make things different? I think that there will be a great deal of difference in how someone like John McCain treats the threat of natural vector born disease versus bio-terrorism. But really, what is the difference? There is a difference in intent to be sure, terrorist mean to kill us and could unleash further attacks. Yet in the end, the functional result is that same: American citizens dying of a malevolent force outside the domain of their control. Outside the domain of anything they could really prepare for in any way, no matter how hard a worker they were, no matter how good a Christian they were.

It seems absurd to me that as much as conservatives hold up the military as some sort of God-kissed institution that deserves as much of our money as we can afford, that they cannot imagine anything resembling a national investment in healthcare. Conservatives will justify any sort of expenditure to defend the rights of multinational corporations to gain free access to a port or some resource but the notion of providing healthcare to everyone is considered evil, communist! I ask you, what is the functional difference between a dirty bomb killing one thousand New Yorkers and a virulent strain of some new disease killing one thousand New Yorkers? The difference is that in the first case, we all are supposed to pay to help respond to the crisis and in the second, it's up to the free market.

Disease is as much a foreign threat to the survival of American citizens as is a bullet. If it is right and proper for citizens to be forced to pay for a war in order to protect one another, there is no reason why we shouldn't be made to pay for health care. Conservatives make the argument that no one has a right to health care, that you cannot force doctor's to treat a person, that our current system is what enables innovation, etc, etc. I must say, I do greatly sympathize with such libertarian notions. However, I'm only applying the rules conservatives apply to national defense. After all, we are forced to pay vast percentages of our taxes to support the pentagon and in various periods of American history, citizens were forced to risk life and limb in combat to defend this country. While I don't agree with forced conscription anymore than I support forcing doctors to treat people, conservatives often cite the abolition of the draft as evidence of a virtue America has somehow lost in the past. A time when we all shared in a sense of duty to our nation...all while decrying the notion that any of us have any sort of duty to one another outside of bearing arms. Bear arms, not vaccines.

I'm not specifically arguing for socialized medicine or any particular solution so much as I am trying to point out the absurd contradiction in our notions of national security and the public domain. There may be many different solutions to our nation's healthcare problems, even solutions that might take better advantage of the free market. However, any solution that will actually cover the most vulnerable people is going to involve government subsidy, that is, public investment in public health. That is you and I, spending our money to help defend each other against threats that arise from our environment, whether or not an ideological hand is behind their release. This bizarre conservative separation of what is proper and "American" for the public to invest in and what is "socialism" is absurd given their own expectations and arguments for the primacy of national security. These are all just "investments" and if we can collectively invest in a stealth bomber (whose utility in the 21st century is debatable) then we can certainly invest in basic health care to make sure working Americans can work more hours, pay for their mortgages and buy those Christmas presents that so stimulate the economy every December.

There are those that would say that the poor will never be covered by healthcare and that the military does not exist to defend those people. They say the military-industrial complex is a self-feeding machine, an institution dedicated to propagating only itself and occasionally defending large corporate interests around the globe. I do not think that I am too intoxicated by conspiracy theory when I grant this view a great deal of reality. However, this isn't the whole story. I am willing to believe that the American people can and will, if given the opportunity, demand that our definition of national security be expanded beyond it's currently petty boundaries.

My challenge then to the hardcore libertarians and the conservatives is thus: Give me a reason, based on your own logic behind my having to pay for your war in Iraq, that you should not have to pay for my going to the doctor if I don't have the money to do so. I am willing to pay for your no-bid contract Halliburton, now how about my kidney dialysis? For if you wish to tell me that only the free market should handle the defense of Americans against disease, then I am ready to come right back and say you must hand the army over to Blackwater Inc. I will just have to save my money in order to take my kids to get glasses, and you my friend, will just have to start a piggy bank for the next petrochemical war you wish to start.

2:37 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Protecting Children From Indecent Programming....phewee!

Stop This Insanity!

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1656552120080116

This Reuters news article talks about Diane Keaton's recent use of the f-word (the word by the way, is "Fuck") while on ABC's "Good Morning America." There is apparently some confusion over whether or not the FCC can fine a network for such offhanded "offenses" which fall under the Protecting Children From Indecent Programming Act.

I would like to make a small, quiet plea to everyone in America to stop acting like superstitious little morons. While I grant that the overuse of profanity is ugly and certainly does not seem classy, this is only a convention. There is nothing intrinsically wrong about the word "fuck." Your fucking kids will not bleed out the ears if they hear the word fuck, nor will they fucking fuck before they are ready to fuck if they hear the word fuck. If Jesus really cries when he hears the word fuck, then he's a fucking hypocritical little cry-baby, he INVENTED fucking!

...But seriously folks, words are just words. It is the intent behind them that gives them meaning. If I could get across on television the same tone I use when I say "fuck" but used a different word, it would still sound banal and ugly. Meanwhile, if I say "merde" in a soft polite voice and you don't speak French, you will not flip out no matter how fundamentalist you are.

"Dirty words", like sex, are only dirty because generation after generation of parents have instilled in their children the notion that such things are dirty. Any "damaging" influence from such words comes only because of this neurotic little tradition. True, swearing like white trash make's you kids sound trashy, but I hardly think we need to be fining networks for letting a "curse" be uttered on the air. Viewers are much better morality police than the FCC will ever be; Evangelicals will stop watching Good Morning America if it starts featuring the F-bomb regularly, and other people will simply not care. Either way, to thing that "dirty words" will somehow hurt children that hear them is ridiculous. The most positive or negative influence in any child's life is going to be the way adults in their immediate environment act towards the children and one another. Trashy parents equal trashy children, no matter the amount of televangelist propaganda that may come through the boob-tube. Classy parents will raise classy kids, and an occasional fuck, bitch, asshole, cuntpunching shitwipe, cum-dribbling-pencil-dick, or some other shitty ass comment is hardly going to pervert them for life.

5:14 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Big Brother’s Little Siblings

I took my friend Simians recent blog post on surveillance and privacy as a segway to post my own little quip on something that has been bothering me for sometime, something I hope to write about at greater length in the future. When we think about privacy concerns, most of us automatically think of government or big business as the potential perpetrator. We think of Orwell's 1984, video surveillance, satellite imagery, phone taps, RFID and black vans cruising our neighborhoods with those supersensitive microphone setups like in E.T. Without a doubt, and as Simian's blog points out, "Big Brother" is in fact more of a potential threat to our liberty than ever. The potential for the abuse of any power is always greatest when the forces using that power are stressed, when the need for intelligence is actually quite high.

However, despite the Patriot Act and the advent of the so called "war on terror", it is not the United States government that has covered the streets with video cameras and connected them to a vast network for analysis, but private industry. And it is not private industry that has ordered this surveillance to serve its own purposes; rather, it has simply supplied this surveillance technology in order to meet the demand from consumers. Today, almost everyone is a node in the surveillance network because we have camera phones and use myspace, flickr, facebook or run a blog. True, every camera phone that is actually pointed at you while you walk down a city street may not take a picture, may not have someone actively watching, but the same could be said for government camera's as well. As a rule, massive amounts of surveillance data are only useful once a target has been identified, a reason to look for someone or something. The point is, the camera's and the network are there, if people choose to use them.

Of course, it can be argued that such technology in the hands of citizens is a good thing, something like an info-sphere militia, bearing cell phones and laptops as modern muskets, keeping the powers that be in line. After all, one of the earliest home video tapes to make it to the media big time was that of LA police officers beating Rodney king (Imagine if Youtube had existed then!). More recently, cellphone cameras have captured acts of police misconduct such as the repeated tasering of a UCLA student. It would seem that if anyone had something to fear, it should be those with power who could previously count on their sins only reaching a limited audience given that most Americans seem to trust their government and law enforcement officials. It's one thing to believe your mayor/sheriff/president, etc can do no wrong, that he would never solicit a prostitute or smoke crack, and quite another to support him after he has been caught on tape.

There are times however, where even the most well regulated militia can become just another armed mob and the internet is hardly "well regulated." The San Francisco Weekly, The Guardian reported a few months ago on how many new restaurant ventures were failing due to extremely poor ratings on websites like Yelp.com. Surfers often only look at the initial search results, which and sometimes only be the opinions of five or less people. If all five are very negative, it can really kill a business. While such public ratings can help keep an established restaurant in line, a new place, still getting its recipes, style and service down could easily go under before they ever get a real chance. Such places rely on the flow of curious new customers to help them cut their teeth; if they never get the chance to get going, they never get good.

Restaurants however are not exactly the most dramatic of examples so I'll give you another. Michael Richards, the Actor that portrayed "Kramer" on the show Seinfeld. For those that somehow missed it, a few months ago Mr. Richards exploded on stage launching a vicious racial tirade against two black men who had heckled him and continuing far beyond the point of being simply vulgar; the video captured on someone's cell phone shows the comedy club emptying of patrons. Richards career, which was hardly still climbing towards its apogee, has now officially buried itself in a crater of shame, the walls a sickly color of obsidian.

Now, in comparison, let's examine the case of another celebrity who was caught in a similar situation, but before the days of cell phones, youtube and TMZ.com. In the late 1970's, the singer Elvis Costello got into a drunken altercation with Stephen Stills (of Buffalo Springfield et al fame), during which he managed to launch racial slurs at both James Brown and Ray Charles. Costello made a public apology saying he had been drunk, was trying to say anything to win the argument he was in and that he had not meant what he had said. Charles is reported to have publicly forgiven Costello saying that "drunken talk isn't meant to be printed in paper" or something to that effect. Costello has been involved with racial equality organizations in the UK and suffered no long-term negative effects to his career due to his outburst, though it must be said he handled his apology with much greater sincerity and skill than Michael Richards.

I am not going to wade into the waters as far was making a judgment on the actual absolution of Costello's sins or the reasons for or against holding Michael Richards forever responsible for his. The point I would like to make is that these incidents were snapshots of these person's lives; they can hardly be considered to be constitutive of those person's entire personalities. Perhaps Richards is truly a racist asshole, then again, maybe he had been on medication for depression and schizotypal symptoms (I have no evidence for this, it is purely hypothetical) and was testing the waters by coming off them and then lost it on stage. Either way, Mr. Richards, like Mr. Costello, was having a very, very bad day that day. He made a big mistake and I think most likely, it is a good thing that he was caught in that mistake. However, what if his racial attack had been slightly less vicious? What if Richards himself had been a young comic, still trying to make it, and unsure about how far he could go in handling a heckler? It does not change the wrongness of the actions, but it does make them seem more like a mistake, you know, those things you do while you are still learning.

The thing about mistakes is that they are quintessentially human. We all make them, we all put our foot in our mouths at times and the shame we feel when we do so is what helps us not to repeat such a mistake in the future. The cost of experience is having made a great number of mistakes somewhere in one's past, it's how we learn to get better. With that in mind, perhaps my misgivings surrounding us citizen media soldiers make a bit more sense. In a society with more bandwidth on its hands than it knows what to do with, soon everything and everyone can be a target for recording and analysis. In other words, it won't just be celebrities, who have always had to face the sharp blade of public criticism, but anyone who wants to do something in the public sphere; the flipside to everyone having their fifteen minutes of fame is that even those fifteen minutes can bring you all the hellish aspects of being famous.

What this all means in the end, is that we seem to be moving to a society where a journalist who writes a story a certain political faction doesn't like may find his one embarrassing or insulting high school blog-post resurrected, a woman running for office or working with children may find that those pictures of her drunk at a club and "going wild" from twenty years before come back to haunt her or where the only candidates that can get elected to office are the purely vapid because only a purely vapid persons could have a truly clean enough slate to avoid the scrutiny of a million dedicated web-surfers and a hundred million cellphone cameras. And don't think it is only politicians are high profile persons that need worry about their past. Already many employers are scanning myspace profiles of potential employees, looking for signs of behaviors they deem unsavory. I have a number of friends who have deleted their social networking accounts for just this reason. However, just because you clean up your own myspace page doesn't mean your potential boss won't see the name tagged camera-phone pics of you drunk, naked and covered in green jelly at that St. Patrick's Day party that someone you knew put up on flickr…

Americans have a history of expecting our public figures to be a bit more than human. In the past, reporters simply did not report on things like presidential affairs and there was no way for a non-professional to get evidence of such activities. It was easy to appear more than human. Now that everyone's mistakes and flaws are out there for any to see, we are running into a major problem because people still expect their public figures to be more than the flawed human beings that they are. Worse, in the new info-sphere, even "regular folks" who never considered themselves public figures are very public figures; so long as Bank of America can check on your nightlife by checking your facebook page, you are a public figure. We are all becoming prisoners of a standard that was never supposed to extend into the "private" sphere.

In the traditional Orwellian nightmare, individual behavior, thought and expression are forever subjugated to the policies of the state, which observes and controls every aspect of daily life. Today, we might be seeing the beginnings of the sort of mob-rule democracy that our nation's founders sought to avoid by making us a republic instead of a direct democracy. Instead of being enslaved to state policy, individuals may be enslaved to something much more capricious, the court of popular opinion, bias, ignorance, and fear. We were so afraid of our big brother than we never noticed all of our other siblings. We have seen the face oppressor and it is legion, it is us.

7:50 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Cigna Health Care’s Malice Aforethought

Cigna Health Care's Malice Aforethought

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2231379,00.html

This story angered me so much I almost didn't it down to write anything about it. Certainly, a lot of people have written more at length and with greater eloquence on the subject of health care in this country. Michael Moore's "Sicko", for all its blatant propagandizing in favor of one particular solution (Universal, Government run health care), has also put many cases up in front of the public.

I hope everyone will follow the above link at read this story. I hope that after reading it, or if you are already familiar with what happened, that you would remember to vote this year. Whatever excuses you have had in the past, this year they are null and void. There is a real chance to get something to change this year...Perhaps Nataline Sarkisyan will not have died in vain in that her death at this time may act as a catalyst for a long overdue audit of the American health care system. For the love of God, please go out and vote this year.

But...don't just vote for anyone. Since very early on, I have been an Obama supporter. I am fully aware that he will not be a savior and that he will do things to piss me off but that is just politics. I have supported him because I felt he was the best agent for change with the best shot of winning a national election. However, after reading this story, I am going to re-evaluate everything. Health care is going to end up being a defining issue in this election cycle and if I get burned by a politician's false promise, I don't want it to be on this issue.

Consider the fact that virtually everyone who has talked about health care reform, from Mitt Romney (who actually DID it in Mass.), to Schwarzenegger, to Clinton and Obama has talked mainly about getting the uninsured insured. This however, is not enough. Nataline Sarkisyan was fully insured by Cigna Health Care and they refused to let her live. They refused to pay for a perfectly accepted and established medical transplant procedure because they deemed it "experimental." Personally, I hope the LA District Attorney does decide to charge Cigna with murder (how else do you define calculatingly letting a person die it order to make yourself money? I think it should be murder in the first degree...) and I think this is an excellent reminder that being insured is not enough; when it really matters, that insurance has got to pay up. Otherwise, it's just a false sense of security. That may translate into less overall stress and a statistical reduction in illness across a population (which is perhaps one explanation for better health and longevity ratings in Europe), but when it comes time to get that cancer taken care of, it won't do you much good if Chemotherapy is suddenly define as "experimental." If a person who is fully insured can be allowed to die, then what assurance does ANYONE have that they will be taken care of, unless they are independently wealthy or very famous?

I am aware of the fact that John Edwards has championed full universal government run health care for all. However, I am suspicious about this for two reasons. First, I have reservations about letting an agency that ran the Iraq war also run my health care. Secondly, I do believe that there is enough resistance left in the country against anything as directly "socialist" as universal government health care that any such measure might be defeated, giving us another situation like in '92, where the debate just disappears for fifteen years and more people die.

What I am suggesting instead, and perhaps I am revealing my own ignorance of the different plans on the table, is that everyone review what the current candidates have to say, get involved with debates and make sure we know what we are getting this time around. This health care system has GOT to change. We don't have time for visions of change and we cannot afford to have a "reform" that either fails utterly or simply drapes a facade of change overtop the current ethically bankrupt system we currently have. This is too important an issue to ignore, too important an election to sit out.

One last point as evidence in favor of assigning "malice aforethought" to Cigna: while they denied Nataline's transplant, the company's profits were up by 22% in the third quarter of 2007. Their projected income for 2008 is $1.2 Billion.

6:49 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Chanting, Dreaming.

The experience began around eleven thirty in the evening. I had taken a single 10mg dose of melatonin by way of swallowing about ten minutes prior to sitting down with my wife to perform our mantra. Perhaps more importantly, I had taken a toke about five minutes prior to sitting down for the mantra. Not having smoked in several weeks, I took one lung filling inhale, then quickly exhaled before the smoke could elicit a cough. I have a tendency to get too high, something that for the past several years has brought about a panic attack.

So I sat down on our bed with my wife and I thought to myself how the pot was just reaching maximum potency. Then I realized that could hardly be the case just yet, it was just fully saturating my brain, but that the peak effect could not be much worse…. I had the distinct fear of entering that panic mode again…the distinct thought that I just did not find MJ pleasant at all anymore…that it wasn't spiritual and that chanting might actually make me too high. Then we began.

"Oooooooooonnnnnnnggggggggggg Nnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaa MMMMMOoooooooooh!" The first exhalation. Now inhale.
"Gurudeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevi Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa MMMOoooooh!" Repeat. Feel the body respond immediately to the sonic reverberations. The nervous system, a collection ob biological oscillators, sensitive to tone, rhythm, music, harmony; adjusting itself to this new vibration. Calm.

It was amazing how swiftly my thought of panic evaporated from me. Far from feeling distracted or unable to concentrate, something that occurs all to often when trying to incorporate smoking and meditation, I felt more concentrated that ever. The thoughts that were coming to me were my divine communication for that evening and the mantra I offered with my mate, the harmonic reverberation that we mutually set loose into the atmosphere was our prayer. The words did not matter so much as the sounds, the sounds did not matter so much as they were generated, prayer being the mindful connection, offering, giving to that outside oneself. The inner-atheist watched in wonder and realized that it did not matter, all my scientific materialism, so long as I just did this.

It suddenly became very apparent to me that this was all my wife and I needed for our spiritual practice. It was the answer to the debate of how to give spiritual guidance to our children. If only we could offer this sound in this way everyday. No lectures, no dogma no indoctrination; just this act setting aside the world and purposefully, consciously joining in the sounds that are the universe. The universe is sound, vibrations, information. How do you pray, worship? Offer a part of God to God with full awareness, whatever you may judge God to be.

I became aware that my wife was not sharing in this particular revelatory experience, not that she was not offering her own worship, but that the religo-hedonic circuit that had been activated in my mind clearly had not been in hers this evening. I could have chanted forever, but she had to stop. We sat in silent Zen meditation for a few moments, all of them bliss, and then lay down on the bed.

What occurred next was fascinating as it was the most obvious and structures spiritual comedown I have ever experienced. I sensed immediately, as I lay down, that a disconnection had occurred. The light and been flicked off and the spiritual bliss changed. I had not lost my spirituality, but the quality of my thought for the next hour would wind steadily back down towards earthly matters. The air in the balloon was still quite warm, but the burner was now extinguished.

I saw in my mind's eye, all the animals of the earth making their particular cries, filling the atmosphere with prayer. Realizing how small we were, this smudge of green-blue biology on the surface of a particularly condensed chunk of matter in the midst of a vast ocean of much thinner material. This interstellar hydrogen and radiation fills all space. While I knew that the vibrations of us here on earth, in this dense, damp, dank air could never vibrate all the way to the stars, it felt as if it could do so nonetheless.

I thought about the vast expanse, going on in all directions as far as we can imagine, and then farther. I thought of the Ames's "Power of Ten" film and wondered just what would one see if one receded past the structural level of the super clusters? Those long, almost DNA like strands composed not of starts, or galaxies but of clusters of millions of galaxies, all tiny points of light. What lay beyond the level where all the universe's matter had been condensed? I realized I had slipped from the spiritual experience of unity at the singularity, to the level of cosmological existence: eternity.

What did lie beyond those vast tracks of matter? Those trenches made steep by gravity so that all matter flowed along their courses like milky rivers? SPACE! That's what space is, that expanse that makes everything else possible, the context, which underlies everything. I realized how Kant nearly got it right, how space is an innate fundamental aspect of existence. How fundamental? Try thinking of existing without any space….

But Kant wasn't a physicist was he? Now we have relativity and dark matter and dark energy and we have equations that tell us what Space is…. or do we? I realized that we forget that equations are only descriptions of the universes operations. The equation for everything written on a cocktail napkin will not generate a singularity on that piece of wood pulp, sucking the ingenious young physicist who discovered it and her date into a new parallel universe. We understand the necessity for space to exist in terms of mathematical necessity, as a context for math to even exist, but could that tell us what space was beyond the last vestiges of matter?

I realized, to my amusement, that I had stumbled upon a piece of mental graffiti. Someone, or perhaps many someones had written a psychic "I was here!" on this particular thought path. Many an acidhead had stood where I stood, at the farthest reaches of the universe and realized that no place in the universe was a backwater. Space was a unified field, the context in which everything happened. Whenever ANYTHING happened, space was there. Space you see, IS the PLACE man! Take that hippie aphorism for the foolish hilarity it is and by all means mock its campy recognition of the obvious. Yet meditate on it, really grok it in its simple and I will put it up against any ancient koan….

I wondered back from the reaches of distant space and to the realm of psychology and religion in its institutional forms. I noted how Christianity had a built in snag when it came to overcoming maladaptive behaviors. How accepting the tenant that man is by nature sinful, and that only Jesus Christ can help one overcome sin, the desire to root out the cause of "sinful behavior" is squashed. Dogma in one of its many cloaks. Certainty the surest blasphemy. Why should I analyze my aggression towards my spouse/kids/employees? I know the cause is sin, I know the cause is the devil and so I will ask for forgiveness and assistance. Motives? Let sleeping dogs lie unconscious…

And so the night went, my thoughts pinballing from one side of the tree of life to the other, through philosophy, politics, and academics down to how well I thought I had down on my exam earlier that day. I found mental calculation of my grade to be easier than I had been right after the test, made a mental note of this, and then fell asleep. It is the interesting quality of my sleep that night that I wish to leave this account with.

First, know that I do not dream (that I can recall) very often. Second, that when I do dream, I do not recall much of the dreams, nor do I usually wake up with a sense of having dreamt for a large part of the night. True to form, the exact content of that night's dreams are veiled from my recollection; by I awoke with the distinct knowledge of having had extremely important dreams. Powerful dreams. Frightening dreams.

I became aware, in the middle of a dream, of the fact that I was composing a horror story and experiencing this tale as my own nightmare. MY wife and I were in the country, in an area populated with "good ole boys." That type of place. I encountered one of them, then set him up for being visited by THEM. You know, the OTHER. The monster, the aliens, the dark force you run from in your dreams and deepest childhood paranoia of the dark. For me, this often takes the form of aliens (the abducting type) or some sort of entity from which there is no escape (my conscience warning me of a wrathful god, angry at my recent atheism? Ho ho! Or just the Freudian manifestation of the fear of death?) MY wife and I lay in are usual bed, but in the midst of brown autumn leaves in the gutter by the side of the road at the edge of some guys property. I was cold and our blankets did not keep out the chill. I was frightened and the fact that the good ole boys had lived there for a long time without any supernatural or extra terrestrial intervention did nothing to assuage my anxiety; I was writing the nightmare, and by god, those fuckers were coming!

At this point, I woke up, in our bedroom. Well, I thought I had, though the morning convinced me that I had not. I was paralyzed. I knew there were five entities in the room, that they were humanoid in outline and possessed no real substance. I was scared to open my eyes. I wanted to throw off the covers, turn on the light and confront the fear, the OTHER, call it at its face and dispel this nonsense. I was paralyzed.

It occurred to me that this was perhaps a succubus type experience. You know, the one's where a guy wakes up into that semiconscious state, the body is paralyzed (cause, well, you ARE dreaming after all) and the musty old lady of the crypt comes in and jumps the guy's bone? I did not like the idea of taking such an experience so passively, which is why I was so please to have a silver plated 9mm pistol in my right hand. The kind I always sleep with of course. I was able to (with my eyes closed!) aim and fire the pistol at these beings in my bedroom, effectively disarming them and eliminating my fear…Later, I woke up and had a wonderful day, some unmeasured amount of subconscious anxiety likely having been worked through via the dreams. I recommend it to anyone.

I think this would make an excellent Erowid report…..sweet dreams everyone.

11:36 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

A REALLY ROUGH first fiction draft...

So, what follows is a very ROUGH first section of a first draft of a longer story I am working on...Anyone who feels like it, please let me know if you like the way this is going, though for those that find it offensive, know that what I have in mind is a bit more interesting than just bashing people's tastes in music....






The Arbiter of Fate sat at his desk, reclining his pudgy bulk in high backed chair, a pair of criminally expensive headphones strapped across his bony, rigged skull. Around him, his flunky's, minor Daemons shuffled about, each carrying stacks of vinyl of various sizes either to or from The Arbiter's desk. The Arbiter had his hands behind his head, listening to the Mile's Davis's "On The Corner." A wry smile flickered across his porkish face; Miles was OK man. The cat was really all right.


Removing his headphones, The Arbiter decided to get down to business for the day, or Eon, or whatever you would like to call the timeless dimension over which he held dominion.
"Bring her in!" The Arbiter rumbled, his voice the sound of six tuba's an a contra-bass through that giant speaker of Doc Brown's in "Back to the Future." The double glass doors directly in front of The Arbiter (one which was imprinted, "His High Lord of Funk, Cool and Rock, The Arbiter of Fate") burst inwards as a blond cheerleader-looking woman was dragged screaming and crying by the minor Daemons in front of The Arbiter. Her mascara was running.


"Who are you? What the hell is going on!"? The blond cried. She looked around the room in which she found herself; the décor was strictly modern, grey granite floor, white pine paneling with stainless steel inlays and a ceiling to floor window behind The Arbiter that shown with indirect sunlight and violet clouds, a view like that from an airplane. All in all, it was the Apple Store of Steve Jobs most exalted fantasy.


"How did she die!?" Thundered The Arbiter.


"She was killed by a city bus while walking through a crosswalk that said 'Do not walk'...she was listening to her ipod and not paying attention." squealed one of the minor Daemons. The blond looked at the minions restraining her as if seeing them for the first time, her eyes grew wide in fear and she screamed!


"No, I don't want to be dead! Is this hell! Are you going to judge my life?"


"Judge your LIFE!" The Arbiter Roared, then continued at a perfectly conversational, even softer than conversational volume (proving he did in fact have an inside voice) "My dear, you have already had your life judged by lord Yamma in the underworld, don't you recall?"


"She passed out after lord Yamma passed Judgment my Lord Arbiter," Squealed a Daemon.


"I see. My dear" The Arbiter continued in a normal tone. "You have already been sentenced to a minor hell for the next two thousand years for being shallow, narcissistic, stupid and for refusing to sleep with that perfectly nice boy who was destined to be your husband."


"But, but he was gay!" The girl protested.
"Silence!" The Arbiter thundered. "That case is over and you have lost. It sucks I know but try to accept it; it REALLY makes it easier you know. What we are here to discover today, is what musical merit, or lack thereof you accumulated in your earthly life."


"Musical merit?" The girl puzzled. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"


"Of course not! You know it's not something I'm happy about. All you mortals know about are the stories of Yamma and Satan and judgments involving your moral conduct on earth...nobody bothers to fill you in that listening to unhip music can further your punishment in hell! I think it is unfair, personally, to punish you for listening to shitty music when you are not aware of the coming judgment, but I have orders from the boss you know."


"But-but I listen to GREAT music!"


"DO you now? We shall have a listen." Turning his gaze to the door behind the girl The Arbiter shouted, " Bring me her Ipod!" Daemons scrambled about outside the room, one finally skeetering inside like a cat on an ice rink, an ipod covered in a pink skin resting in its outstretched paw.


"Well, the fluffy pink skin is certainly not a good sign-"
"But it's CUTE!"


"Silence! You will not interrupt me again. The pink skin is silly, but the blood and crushed bone from your death make up for it. Let's hear what you were listening to while you died." The arbiter plugged the Ipod into his immaculate stereo system and pressed play. From the speakers rang the digitally altered voice of Britney Spears


"Come on baby one more time!" The Arbiter stopped the track and stared at the girl, who, expecting another raging outburst, cowered in the grip of her restraining Daemons. The Arbiter however, remained calm and analytical.


"So, the music you were so intent on listening to that you missed the fact that a city buss was about to turn you into meatloaf was a song written by a man as old as meatloaf and lip-synched to by the most malleable little media miscreant to ever shuffle out of the Mickey Mouse club? This isn't just terrible music, it's old terrible music and when it comes to bubblegum pop, age doesn't mellow, it just piles on the yellow as in urine from those with good taste. What were you thinking my dear?"


"I-I, I was looking for a different track! That's why I didn't see the bus! Really!"


"My dear, the very fact that this song was on your ipod at all is condemning, but I will note your excuse and we will examine some more of your ipod's content before your sentencing." The girl squirmed as The Arbiter scanned through artists and track-lists.


"Dear lord you have got to be kidding me! Nickleback!?" The arbiter seemed to swell around his mouth and cheeks as if filled with an unrestrainable anger or disgust.


"I can't listen to fun stuff all the time...you know, I had to have some serious music!"


"You call "This is how you remind me" SERIOUS music!" Bellowed The Arbiter. "That fake assed, junkie-chic Kurt Cobain wannabe that wrote a song all about how is girlfriend reminded him of what a total piece of shit he was for writing a fucking song about how his girlfriend reminded him of what a pussy-ass-boy he was for writing a song about how she reminded him of what a piece of corporate music filth he was for writing a piece of shit song to get a new girl friend who wouldn't be afraid to do anal, to him while he wept tears of whiny-boy poetry about how hard high school was for his pathetic, no-talent ass! THAT IS WHAT YOU CALL SERIOUS MUSIC!" The blond girl, now feeling like a raindrop on a blast furnace door before the raging inferno of indignation that was The Arbiter, could only cower further, wishing she were dead (or, given the circumstances, dead-ER).


"Yes?" she answered meekly.


"Oh. Well Fuck." The Arbiter answered in a more or less civilized tone.

"Here's the deal deary. Music, is much more than sex for your ears, it helps shape the nature of culture, evolution and love down there on the mortal plane and part of the reason it is all fucked up down there, is because people like you, have shitty taste in music. We are going to reeducate you before your rebirth, believe me. But first, your musical punishment." The Arbiter resumed his bellowing official sounding voice (he had a killer space echo unit installed just below his desk, killer vintage analogue shit he got from a guy named "guy-dude" while on sabbatical in New York three years before) for the passing of judgment.


"Girl, you have already been sentenced to two millennia of having molten metal poured down your throat. I hereby sentence you to wear earbuds for the first thousand of those years during which you shall listen to nothing but later Stevie Nix and Duran Duran, after which you shall be submitted to a rigorous musical reeducation plan yet to be determined. May God have mercy on your ears." With that sentence, The Arbiter slammed his ample hand on his desk in lieu of a gavel, the girl screamed and the floor dissolved beneath her feet. A smell of sulfur and a blast of steamy air filled the office as the girl and her captors fell headlong into her personal hell...already the music could be faintly heard drifting from the girls earbuds "She's got a song, sounds like she's singing, Who, who who!" The Arbiter sat for a moment after the floor rematerialized. He looked at the ipod that was still in his hand and shuddered.


"Please, take this damned thing away from me...will someone please get me a latte and a donut? And bring over that Daft Punk album I was listening to last week..."

1:54 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

MARK OF THE BEAST! 666! SPooky!

This is rich, really rich. I love that despite now being a dominant world religion instead of a little cults being fed to lions, Christianity still has sub-groups that have a conspiratorial, persecution complex...

http://berkeley.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16835475653

But this page is even richer....


http://berkeley.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2501325136

"Mondex....also known as the Verichip is the size of a grain of rice and holds ones peronal information. Th only way for it to function properly is if it is embedded in either the forehead or in the hand...specifically the right one. Once embedded it cannot be removed, if it is removed the a chemical that it contains will kill the person."

I cannot even begin to describe you retarded the person who wrote this is. 'Must be placed in the hand or forehead to function'? Please. And remember, pop rocks and diet coke will kill you...

…These people make more typing errors than I do…

9:19 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Rape Counseling; Saudi Style...

Recent headlines have given us another peek at what Islamic sharia law looks like: here's a hint: What's black, red, blue, sits in prison and is full of cum? Answer: a 19-year-old victim of a gang rape. Yes, the Saudi courts have sentenced a young married woman to two hundred strokes of the lash and six months in prison…


"Wait a minute" you should all being saying. Since when did a gang raped woman get sent to prison? Well, since the perpetrators claimed that they found her alone with a man who was not her husband with her clothes on the floor. Apparently these Saudi men had never visited the fine city of San Francisco where one quickly learns that should you find a woman sucking off six other men in a Starbucks, it does not give you license to simply hop in line; it might just be a sales display ("Star" the barrista, 'sucks'). Besides, in SF you can't even be sure she is a lady.


To be fair to the Saudi's, they did in fact sentence the perpetrators to prison sentences as well, though as far as I can tell, the men don't get whipped. Men afterall, don't get pleasure from watching other men get whipped (at least they aren't supposed to, not in Saudi Arabia).
Thankfully, our President Bush, that ever-vigilant champion of human rights is on duty, making the Saudi's know how he feels.


"I talked to King Abdullah about the Middle Eastern peace. I don't remember if that subject came up. ... He knows our position loud and clear."

Loud and clear from the mouth of Press Secretary Dana Perino, but not from the mouth of the commander in chief himself. It's this kind of bullshit that makes realize just how ridiculous evangelical politicians are. We get all kinds of rhetoric about human rights; the evils of pornography and every fetus's right to life but the chief conservative evangelical in the nation can't even directly express disgust at this sort of thing. I understand the reality of politics, how for the greater good Bush might have to keep his mouth shut. Fine, stay quiet, but then don't go stomping around the world with "holier than thou" jackboots shouting bullshit about human rights, democracy and free markets. Regime change starts with the evil fuckers you can friends asswipe.


All this is really beside the point. Countless people, many better writers than I, have eviscerated Sharia law as well as the spineless little SpEd we have for a president. There are two things about this story that really interest me and I'm sure no one else out there is going to take the time to do it so it looks like it's got to be me. Fuck.
First of all, has anyone noticed the parallel examples of punishing victims in our own country? I mean this Saudi example is an extreme case by our standards (though unfortunately, not by theirs) but we have some similar shit that goes on here in the US of A. Take drugs. And then, when you come down, take drugs metaphorically and remind yourself not to act on everything that you read so literally.


Think about how many kids die from some kind of opiod overdose, or hyperthermia/dehydration from using ecstasy or some other stupid bullshit that could have been avoided if their friends hadn't been too scared to take them to the emergency room. There are anti-drug websites out there trying to tell you that Ecstasy just randomly kills people with regular efficiency, telling these terrible stories about how kids died from the drug without medical attention and how the only way to stay safe is not to do it.
Bullshit. The risks of Ecstasy are very much along the lines of the risks involved in taking amphetamine, something several million kids do every fucking day, AT SCHOOL, because they are required to by the school nurse; Adderol IS amphetamine! But you know what the difference is? If some kid starts having an erratic heartbeat while at school because of his Adderol, the school officials are going to get him to a hospital. They aren't going give him a bong to smoke and tell him he will be alright like in some of the stories on sites like www.cathysprom.com. No, the school people will take the kid to the hospital like responsible people and then, if they resuscitate his ass, they don't charge him with possession of a drug. Guess what happens to your teenager if he does get to the hospital in time to have his life saved from a drug overdose? Yes, they book his ass and his friends who saved his life. We're very kind and understand in this country.


Worse still, I have known cases of females who were slipped a Rufee in an alcoholic drink and either date raped or managed to narrowly avoid the raping part. Either way, they tell the police and then, being under twenty-one, are given an alcohol citation. The law is the law you say. Fuck, the purpose of the law is to keep people in line (the notion that the law is there to punish people for doing wrong is alive and well, but I contend that this is really a religious notion with no place in a secular society). Don't you think that being date raped is going to keep that girl from being so careless with her drinking? It's a pretty powerful behavior modifier that whole rape thing; do you really need to charge the poor girl too? Sorry you were just minding your own business, having a little irresponsible fun when two jerkoffs decided to nearly kill, then take your virginity in exchange for giving you HIV…now here's an alcohol citation, see you in court.


I might be acting a little brashly here. In reality, people that are victims of crimes are sometimes given suspended sentences instead of the full punishment. Some judges have sympathy on someone who has just had their whole life fucked over. Some. Sometimes. A lot of it has to do on whether or not you are white and have a lot of money. The point is, while it is certainly of a different order of magnitude, the fact that we have a religiously informed theory of law here in this country, along with the moralized nature of drugs (which, ironically, may have been the origins of religion…talk about the negative consequences of drug use!) means that we often treat genuine victims the same way as the Saudi's. The crimes may differ, but it's still the same mindset. A perpetrator of a victimless crime must be punished, even if they themselves were victims of a serious crime. No wonder Bush is so reluctant to criticize King Abdullah….


The second thing I want to look at is a Reichian analysis of the whole Islamist attitude towards sex. Wilhelm Reich for those that don't know was a student of Freud's who has been lost in history because he became a little nutty in his later years. He claimed to have discovered a unique "life energy" called "orgone", something like the notion of prana in Hinduism or chi in Kung Fu. Whatever you think of Reich's later work, his early psychological stuff is brilliant. He carried on Freud's work on the libido, the unconscious and neurosis. Reich felt that the libido, that drive behind everything humans do, is naturally somewhat aggressive. That is, it is reaches outward. It is the toddler finding things and putting them in it's mouth, the child rushing out to play in the world, the teenager seeking genital release (Reich's The Function of the Orgasm is highly recommended). It isn't violent, but the libido is naturally aggressive; it seeks outwardly in order to find release. It's like a pump, pressure building, then releasing, with work getting done along with way.


The problem with repressing the libido, Reich says, is that when you do fully prevent the libido from reaching it's goal, the trapped energy it still exists, but it gets altered. It festers so to speak. You get more and more of the aggressive aspect of the drive rather than the natural releasing aspect. In respect to sex, you get exactly the sort of things we see in this Saudi rape case. A group of men so hyper-sexualized despite their conscious disdain for eroticism that the very sight of a woman alone (and perhaps naked, though we can't know for sure) sends them into a raping frenzy. It should be noted that part of Sharia law dictates that should a woman become a victim of rape, her father and male family members are obliged to rape and kill her. It's called an honor killing and while it isn't practiced by all Muslims, or even all Islamists, it's very existence speaks of a disturbing psychic attitude. Keep the woman, the source of sensuality, covered at all times. Keep sex hidden; but if it is revealed, well then, it's open season pardeners! Not just because it's "OK" at that point, but because it is your duty! You have to punish the source of sensuality for rearing its head, for sneaking around the block of repression so carefully set up in the Islamist mind and the Sharia society. This is like S&M but for real; no safewords, no fake whips no "furry" handcuffs. Think about it: a woman is raped and as her punishment for letting it happen, she (but not her attackers) gets 200 lashes? Just one more question, which I am honestly wondering the answer to: Do they strip her naked before they whip her? Something tells me that they do.

You can't get rid of sexuality by suppressing it or trying to hide it. Even adopting a more sexually equal policy, such as requiring women and men to wear the hijab (imagine THAT!) wouldn't work. Human beings are more sane when they have regular sex. It's a fact. Think how much nicer the world seems when you've just gotten laid. Why do you think there is even such a term as "make up sex"; you fuck after you make up, not at the start of a fight.


Reich had a notion of sexual economy, which is just like food economy, except with nookie. Sex needs to be exchanged by humans on a regular basis. This needn't mean that promiscuity reigns or that there is no monogamy or that some people shouldn't wait till they are 29 and married to have sex; like with anything else, sexuality varies from person to person. A person should have sex when they are ready and not before. They should have safe sex whenever they decide to have sex. They should have meaningful sex (even if you are polyamorous, the term itself describes loving multiple people, not just "fucking" them. It's an act of passion, not blowing your nose. If you want to make sex meaningless, go jerk off) But for God's sake, if the above-mentioned criteria have been met, HAVE SEX! It will do you and the world a lot of good! And stop acting like teenagers having sex with each other is a bad thing; it can be bad, but it can also be good. It's all up to the persons involved, just like sex between adults.

Sex is part of who we are, maybe more so that we can even imagine. Lord knows sex is used improperly too much, used to hurt people (and not in a fun way) rather than drawing them closer together. But exiling sex from your experience doesn't help. Adopting attitudes that treat sensuality, women and flirtatiousness as "enemies" to be struggled against only breeds violence. Stop the violence, have a screw. Do it for the children. Think of the children (and take the pill!)!


The CNN news article about the rape case can be found here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/04/bush.saudi/

5:41 PM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment