A Real American in Congress!

If you missed Rep. Dennis Kucinich's speech from the Democratic National Convention 2008 last night, as I did, check this out!


Maybe this is the spark of hope we've all been waiting for, I know I sure hope so. He also has a petition up online calling for a million signatures before September 10, 2008. Please sign!

Angry About 911 Yet?

Len Hart has written another excellent article over at his blog that everyone would be better for having read. An independent group of pilots and researchers have created a rather damning view of things based on evidence obtained from the NTSB, notably the flight data recorder file from flight 77, which is the plane that allegedly struck the Pentagon. I'll leave the details to people who are much more knowledgeable than I am on the subject but I have to say it's an impressively put together case as to why flight 77 couldn't have knocked down light poles or even struck the Pentagon, among other things. I've posted a link to the presentation by Calum Douglas in the links section to the right of the blog posts. There's also a movie based on the research the group did called The Pentacon that you can watch online. It includes independent interviews of people who actually saw the path the plane took on September 11, 2001. Check it out.

If this doesn't piss people off, I'm not quite sure what will.

A New Pledge For A New Era

I pledge allegiance to the business plans,
of the United Corporations of America.
And to the bottom line,
for which it stands.
One nation, under new ownership.
Divisible for a large enough bank account.
Without Spirituality or Compassion.
With revoked rights and no Habeas Corpus.
Fuck.

Nothing much to add to this, I just got the urge to write it down. Sometimes a dark mood strikes me, and this happens to be one such time.

Ok, maybe a little something to add after all.

The more I look around me the more I see that the problem is things are just too big to be sustainable. You have these giant corporations that feel they have to grow continuously. Well, obviously there's only finite room for any kind of growth. At some point, you either have to even out and maintain, collapse or else own the whole world (but still maintain or collapse). For the life of me I try to understand but it always sounds ludicrous. When is it enough? When is a person, or even a group of them, rich enough? When does it become obvious that this kind of mentality is a sickness, this urge to own everything? How can this be a measure of a successful person, when you have it all but can't learn to share or let anyone see it? The only way we are going to move forward (no, we're really not doing it now sorry) is as a collective. Free the information, free the minds and just watch us take off. Give us something real to believe in and almost all of us would be behind it. We don't need to be owned, or deceived. We just need something real to believe in, and miraculous things could happen.

Man, sometimes I feel like an alien on my own planet.

Citizen...Educate Thyself!

Most Americans are stupid. No, really we are. I can even count myself among the idiots that comprise the general population, because up until fairly recently I was as non-interested in politics as a person can get. I always knew the government was doing some things wrong, but in general I wanted to trust the people who were supposed to be running things. Until one day I looked around me and really didn't like what I saw anymore. I heard the reasons for going after Osama Bin Laden and I even could agree with some of the basic points. But the next thing I knew, we were invading Iraq and suddenly on a crusade against Hussein. Osama-who-was-it-now? And there are far too many things surrounding the 911 attacks that just haven't been answered, not to mention the expedient destruction of all the evidence.

Now bear in mind that while I never paid much attention to politics, I have always tended to question everything. It's a basic personal tenet of mine, that you should never blindly believe in ANYTHING but instead decide for yourself after kicking out all the bias. It's hard to do in some cases, to let go of preconceptions so you can take a clear look around you, but it's never been more important for all of us to WAKE THE FUCK UP and do so. It's awesome to see the power that love for this country can generate, but it's sad to see people who are just blindly devoted to things based on a party name or something equally ephemeral. Sticking a political tag on people doesn't ever mean they are going to do what is right or even what the group says they believe in, because they are naked people under all that flashy exterior.

Next time you find yourself chanting "U.S.A!" stop and really think about why you're doing it. Just because the government says it's doing the right thing? Just because it looks like everyone else is chanting and going berserk too? I saw a comment somewhere that really drove this point home to me, and paraphrasing it went something like this "I may not believe in what the President is doing, but I will always respect him and the office". I'm sorry but that's crap, no one should respect a leader who is doing the wrong things, much less one who leads us into a war that has yet to be justified by any sort of real evidence. Respect is earned, not granted with a title. People are dying right now, being shot and blown into itsy bloody pieces. To say that we should make sure that there's a real reason for all this is a major understatement. And it's not enough to blame the government, it's the regular people also causing those deaths, you and I, by sitting and letting it happen. Look in the mirror and see the face of a murderer, and ask yourself if you can live with it. Better yet, search the internet for the photos that will never make it into your nightly news report and take a good hard look at what is going on in your name right now. And then ask yourself again if it's something you support. The time for pretending that the average citizen is blameless is long gone.

Do we need to have our brains reset to be able to tell we're not warring over terror, but over oil and the control of those parts of the world rich in it? It's like there's a road-map laid out and the government is just moving their game piece from one square to the next as long as the complacent public buys their bullshit. It's even worse than that, the current administration has shown over and over that it just doesn't care what the public thinks or even what clearly defined LAW says. When a reporter asks the President, "Yes, but you violated International Law?", (on the matter of secret bases that were conducting torture) and he responds, "Well, we disagree with them."...THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG! Something horribly, profoundly wrong that needs to be dealt with before it goes even further than it already has.

When the media itself is presenting a ONE-VIEW perspective only (with some very suspicious things happening, such as opposing views being cut off abruptly), why doesn't that raise an immediate red flag? The day that all people share the SAME view is the day you can officially say pigs fly as well, because as long as there are people there will be conflicting opinions on ALL issues. If you're hearing only one side of a story on the news or in the papers, and especially if it seems like anyone opposing that side is threatened with legal action or are silenced in other ways (like not being fairly heard in the first place), people should immediately be thrown off and suspicious of what is going on. And all of that is happening around us right now. There is plenty of information out there, if you only choose to look for it.

I call on Americans who read this to educate themselves more. Forget about the new video game, the latest flashy gadget, the damned celebrities and mega-rich who are so out of touch with reality and so in touch with their own god complexes. Forget about what others tell you patriotism is, and decide for yourself. Is it blindly following a government even when it's clear that that government is doing unconstitutional things and taking away the freedoms we used to hold precious? Or is it standing up for the ideals this country used to be about?

Even if you're very positive that our government COULDN'T POSSIBLY have anything to do with the 911 attacks, you owe it to yourself to listen to the opposition. Even if only for debates sake. Do some google searches on the subject and evaluate the situation for yourself. Look particularly at the logical and common sense approach these folks take to their arguments, on their own time and unpaid for their work. Then take a good hard look at all the money and time that has been spent by the government to debunk these arguments while never taking the time to investigate these attacks properly. Then forget all the shiny words and ask yourself what the situation really looks and feels like when both sides are taken into consideration. To me, it looks like people asking hard, and FAIR, questions are being told to just shut up and go away, without ever having their questions answered. If there's one thing I definitely can identify Americans with, it's a non-love of being told to shut up.

I'm not asking you to believe in conspiracy theories. I'm asking you only to believe in greed, the desire to hold power over others, the power of lies and psychological mass-media propaganda, the irrational fear that causes a person to hide something horrible they've done and all the things that they'll do to KEEP that horrible thing hidden. Those should be much easier ideas to believe than some vague notion that only reminds us of 'The X-Files'.

We've got to inform ourselves folks, because we're being told NOTHING.

A Machine You Say?

Greetings to all who manage to end up here!

This being my first post (first blog too) I thought I'd share where I got the name for my blog, as well as some of the reasons I find myself blogging in the first place. Some people will, no doubt, understand the blog title right away, especially Science Fiction lovers. For everyone who might not recognize the reference, please consider the following quote:

“I don’t speak,” Bijaz said. “I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own.”
Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert

Of all the things I've ever read, I think this single quote from Dune Messiah struck me most powerfully. I'd never contemplated before what language really was. It was how I let people know what I want, what I feel, my ideas on others' ideas and most of all it enabled me to know these things about other people as well. I'd never considered language before as simply another tool, however that is precisely what it is; Language is a tool that enables an idea to go from my head to yours, or vice versa.

It is a very powerful tool. It can persuade, entertain and provide valuable insight. It can also coerce, cause real pain/fear and it can mislead. It goes beyond basic 'body language' into details that you just can't convey in any other way. I'm aware of charades, but that example relies on being steeped in knowledge of language in the first place. One can't convey 'sounds like bed' and cause another person to arrive at 'red' without understanding what those concepts represent in the first place.

However, I think language is far too complicated to refer to as simply a 'tool'. I find 'machine' to be a much better description. It brings to my mind lots of little parts, assembled for the purpose of doing something none of the individual components could do alone.

I am no language expert and I am no professional writer. In fact, I tend to regard the structure of English (or any language) as a guideline only. If I can better represent the idea I'm trying to convey through means that might not be acceptable to 'the pros' then the guidelines go right out the window as far as I'm concerned. Phonetically spelling words to represent certain dialects or slang language, just as an example. Language is a machine, and sometimes I feel it's necessary to take the machine off the main road and see what it can do. If my idea is conveyed the way I intended it to be, then language has done its job.

I particularly enjoy reading 'Troll' posts on the internet. Here is the machine being put to use, no more no less. These have the desired effect on the people who respond to such posts. It's exactly as if the 'Troll' has a button that can make some people jump to the specified height; In some cases A LOT of people. Congratulations if you've ever responded to one of those posts. You were, whether you admit it or not, manipulated by someone who knew the right way to apply this machine we call language. By the way, they've gotten to me before too.

I think an understanding of what's really going on under the hood of language is more important than ever in this world today. Advertising and politics pounds on you, using psychological principles proven to work on people who are uneducated about what is happening, and a lot of times even on folks that know exactly what the commercial on T.V. is really doing. Repetition works, look at the way most of us learned our multiplication tables (in the U.S., I can't speak for other countries' educational methods) by rote repetition. That same idea is used liberally to get you to buy things, to get you to believe things, to get you to behave a certain way. In other words, it's leveraging language (exactly like internet 'Trolls' do) to achieve the desired result, which is often not what a person would choose on their own cognizance. And repetition is only a basic simple trick, there are others far worse.

In my opinion, this is an abominable practice. But the real horror is that in the U.S., and other places I'm sure, this is not only acceptable but encouraged behavior. You're the winner in this country, if you can talk people into doing things, talk people out of money or even talk people into believing things that wouldn't stand the light of logic and common sense.

Our politicians talk to us without really saying anything at all a lot of times. Just try it yourself. Take a transcript of a political speech, especially one where the politician is 'under fire' or fielding questions on a touchy subject. I guarantee you will find a lot places where the question that was asked is NEVER even answered. Instead, the trend is to immediately talk about something else which is often completely unrelated to the question asked or to obfuscate (great word that) the answer with language that consists of enormous words that most people just don't understand. This is done on purpose I can assure you, but please don't accept my opinion. My point here is to get you to think for yourself. I'm busy enough thinking for me thanks so much. Examine these speeches and press conferences for REAL content and decide for yourself. I know I have.

My purpose in this blog is to, hopefully, get more people to see through the bullshit and the big words and to continue evolving my personal understanding of the world around us. I made a comment in another blog (The Existentialist Cowboy to be exact) that there is a huge disease running rampant in this country today. I call it The Disease of Shiny Things. This is only my personal take on the situation (again I'm no expert) but it seems to me that most people would rather ignore the very real and horrible things going on around us and instead play with their iPhone, their new useless junk from home-shopping channels, etc etc etc. We're monkeys playing with shiny things instead of being responsible citizens, and it's really bitten us in the ass in a major way. American citizens are often mocked as being lazy and uninformed. But that's the goal here isn't it? To become very wealthy, surround yourself with more than you could ever possibly need or use and to mock (or even disregard) the ones who can't or won't do the same, while supporting government that enables you to gather even MORE for your personal pile to the detriment of other real people. To become a soulless robotic money-making machine, while sitting on the backs of the underpaid/undereducated people doing the real work that gets things done. THAT is the American Dream? Not to my mind it isn't.

I hope to operate this machine called language in a way that will, again hopefully, enable others to combat the machine that our government has become. But I can't do it for you and in fact no one can. It's a choice everyone has to make for themselves.

I think that about covers what I have to say for now, so thanks to anyone that has listened. Know that someone else out there cares about you and what's happening in the world we all share. You aren't alone.

Regards and Peace,
Tim