A Dozen Predator Drones to Pakistan: Fill 'er Up Boys!

As headlines zipped across the news ticker last week I couldn't help but ask, 'Why the hell is the U.S. giving the government of Pakistan a dozen of our most-secretive and recently effective aircraft, the now infamous Predator Drone?' After all, Pakistan is already a nuclear weapons giant, developing an effective bomb over 10 years ago in 1999.

In addition, the Pakistani government is highly unstable, extremely unpopular and headed by a U.S.-backed puppet in President Al-Zadari who is a 'softer' version of the belligerently hard-fisted military dictator Perez Musharraf who resigned in 2008amid constitutional controversies. Many Pakistanis still suspect Musharraf was involved in the assassination of political icon and opponent Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.

Meanwhile, the once-fabled but now real but small cadre of idealistic, disparate and unconnected young men tagged the foreboding "Al-Qaeda" is growing their presence and gaining once-unattainable political popularity in Pakistan.

It's not hard to remember the famous images of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983 or Kennedy, Carter, Bush I and Obama foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski pep-talking Afghan mujahadeen fighters that same year.

It doesn't take rocket science to figure out that your friends today may very well become your enemies tomorrow.

With that in mind, perhaps it isn't a great idea to give a highly unstable developing nation and almost certain future enemy our most top secret weapon. And if we don't know how to properly caretake of such a weapon with massive implications, perhaps we shouldn't even be using it ourselves.

Scott Brown: Ironically, a Neo-con Brings a Ray of Hope

Ironically, Scott Brown's recent election victory for U.S. Senate for Massachusetts has changed the outlook on national politics. In particular, in the health care debate, victory may burst the cloture-secure pro-health care industrial complex bill count, whose ramming through is still in peril. While Brown has done little to deserve the clamor and attention, the carefully groomed neo-conservative signifies a growing unrest with the continued business as usual out of Washington. Hypocrisy can no longer slide by unexcused but that doesn't necessarily mean the next dupe elected won't fool the public.

Yet, Brown who is now pitched as the "new hope" stands dangerously close to conducting politics with a fascistic edge. He has been quoted as saying "Waterboarding is enhanced interrogation. It is not torture." In an age when even children's films can emphasize the twisted logic of an imperial giant, Brown's naive statements are not those usual held high by a statesman.

The man who was 1982 Cosmopolitan magazine's "America's Sexiest Man" during his tenure at law school at Boston College is a born attention grabber and with an acting streak so convincing he may well be dangerous in his eloquent ability to woo supporters.

Meanwhile, his opponent, Martha Coakley displayed her ineptitude in campaigning and even as an even worse purveyor of ideas. While her resume read impressive, any real leadership she couldn't even come close enough to grasp. Coakley essentially, was a failed cause from the start.

While personally I can say proudly I am very happy that Brown's election means a chance to stop the unconstitutional health care "reform bill" that was paid and written for and by the very interests who work only to gain greater profits, often at the expense of the patient. But I'm hardly a fan, as his incoherent tirades lauding the War on Terror and mouthpiecing the American empire as an all-knowing force for only good reflect his ill will and possibly dark dealings.

But at least for the moment, in a day where it takes a fascist to stop a fascist, I might actually not mind having just one more around.

Haiti: Disaster Made Worse

Shocking devastation grips Haiti. Reeling from a 7+ magnitude earthquake which trapped, crushed and killed as many as 200,000 people, Haitian cities like Port-au-Prince resemble a dismantled heap of rubble much more than the familiar likenesses of themselves.

For the earthquake which ocurred one week ago, supplies to help the surviving and save the missing are still amassing and coming in. The woeful delay however is not due to any failure of logistics or lack of aid, but rather top-down mismanagement that is strangling the island to a standstill and failing to help those in need.

As the U.S. military heads up the United Nations rescue program, more emphasis is being placed on who's in charge of the rescue effort rather than who the rescue effort is hoping to help. Sadly, little aid has reached Haitians who are being kept increasingly behind automatic M4 rifles for 'protection' and also behind any credible chance of actually stemming the damage of the horrendous disaster.

While much of the management failure can be intuited by a half-asleep observor, hard evidence also confirms the failure.

On Saturday, as the wrtech stench of flesh and death still simmered in Port-au-Prince, the U.S. government delayed multitudes of aid supply planes containing valuable medicines and food for reeling inhabitants of the now toppled island. And why? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton needed the landing space and a massive security-based no-fly zone to give an address not to Haitians, but the world, in an effort to grandstand America as the almighty good-intentioned giant eager to assist the helplessly depraved Haitians.

This sort of diplomacy may have worked with President Kennedy in Berlin ("Ich bin ein Berliner"), but is far distant from achieving any world harmony and peace today.

Even worse, as reported in The Telegraph by Laingo and Leonard, French Minister of aid recovery to Haiti, Alain Joyander, recently accused Clinton and the Americans of turning the rescue effort into a subtle blueprint for occupation and a deliberate means of restoring American-enforced 'law and order' to the long ignored and impoverished nation.

To those who view Haiti as small, vulnerable and amenable to United States wishes, we must remember that Haiti stands as our greatest ally in the long historical struggle for freedom, autonomy and political independence. After becoming the second real western democracy in 1798 and overthrowing and expulsing imperial France from their island, we have many more reasons to praise Haiti than most think.

Thus, in the endless history of nations, it is essential to remember the past struggles and honor them with due respect. While more and more aid is needed desperately for Haiti, we should continue to help. But also to make sure recovery is the real goal and overlording and hoarding condemned as the most dreadful sin.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: The Ignored Holiday

America is a nation well known for having an abridged idea of holidays. Wrought by intensive non-stop labor and little time for rest, early immigrants had few designated days on which to celebrate. This trope continues into the 21st century as Americans work constantly and celebrate very little, besides the addition of tradition-based holidays to the national calendar.

Americans have about 6-7 days each year where perhaps a majority takes off work. These include: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. And interestingly enough, all of these holidays are celebrated mainly on vague notions concerning values, morality and good will.

Yet Martin Luther King, Jr. Day stands alone, unparalleled by any other day as a designation purely to remember a specific mass movement that revolutionized America. In its uniqueness, this clever holiday has much to offer America. Its importance should emphasize the courageous and upright acts of Dr. King and the vision he and millions of others strove to make reality.

To honor King, and more importantly his ideas of equality, rememberance should be the main goal of this solitary and often ignored national holiday.

Growing up as a younster in a well-insulated all-white private elementary school, Matin Luther King, Jr. Day was presented to students as a foreign, pseudo holiday.
We attented school that day in ordinary fashion, with only the minimalist attempt to observe or even discuss the achievements of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement.

One year when our lone black pupuil took the day off, our teacher politely instructed us that it was "O.K." as the student deserved it, being black and all. But what poor Mrs. Fox did not realize was its intention as a holiday for all Americans, as a lesson unto our history and the course of our nation.

Most Americans are sorely mistaken when it comes to the third Monday in January. After all, the Civil Rights Movement's whole point was equality for all, rather than the unfettered reign of the brute force of group supremacy.

If Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not celebrated and held in respect, the message screams out clearly that the Civil Rights Movement and its objectives are unimportant. So let this tract be a lesson to all people, particularly employers who need to give the holiday thought, reflection and official observance if it is to have any real meaning at all.

The Death of Struggle?

Good old fashioned hit' em hard came around down
and self-defense's right to strike lays trampled on the ground.
No one seems to notice the flag bearer fall
Our sacred values, our very own with too much gall.

Riff-raff considered unconsidered,
and those with might not ever allowed to fight.
Knock 'em down with a pre-emptive strike
Humiliate 'em all and laugh in embarassment alike.

It is hidden or maybe left behind,
but that ardent swagger's gone alright
and conformity left only to stand in its sight.

With tentacles so epic reaching ablight,
the conquering vandals cover all with fright.

Time to bring it on.
If you still have some, you may lay it on.
With broken spirit and threatened lives, will the brave
stay on through the night?

Hunter S. Thompson: Rebel Life

Hunter S. is mostly remembered for his drug-induced classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but what many of his fans do not study, although they know of his various stories published over the years for the likes of Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Scanlan's Monthy and Pageant. His in-your-face style of gonzo-journalism is staggeringly impressive and elegantly pleasing.

Describing the Kentucky Derby in "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved", Thomspon catches the essence of carnivalesque revelry taken straight from the past.

Thompson when writing about his illustrator Ralph Steadman, soliloquizes that,

"Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn't sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men's rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomiting in the urinals. 'They'll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits,' I said. 'But watch the shoes, that's the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomiting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes.'"

In exploring social unrest, Thompson enshrines the memory of hispanic martyr Ruben Salazar and eulogoizes his progressive acts in life. In "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan", Thompson bitterly describes the controversy surrounding Salazar's untimely death and explains the brutality that was turning America into a police state.

Thompson remembers,

"What the cops are saying is that Salazar got what he deserved - for a lot of reasons, but mainly because he happened to be in their way when they had to do their duty. His death was unfortunate, but if they had to do it all over again they wouldn't change a note.
This is the point they want to make. It is a local variation on the standard Mitchell-Agnew theme: Don't fuck around boy- and if you want to hang around with people who do, don't be surprised when the bill comes due- whistling in through the curtains of some darkened barroom on a sunny afternoon when the cops decide to make an example of somebody."

And in an opus of political theory, Thompson's coverage of the 1969 Aspen, Colorado mayoral election featuring Joe Edwards' bid for a pedestrian only downtown is timeless and essential reading for any political activist. Covering election-day get-out-the-vote effort and the campaign process as a whole, Thompson gives thoughtful insight into a valiant attempt to regain a small mountain town's indepedence and dignity.

In this classic piece, activism is the focus with Thompson playing well the role of campaigner and political theorist. With Thompson, all of the sudden possibilities become boundless, and solutions ready and ample.

He explains,

"Our program, basically, was to drive the real estate goons completely out of the valley: to prevent the State Highway Department from bringing a four-lane highway into the town and in fact to ban all auto traffic from every downtown street. Turn them all into grassy malls where everybody, even freaks, could do whatever's right. The cops would become trash collectors and maintenance men for a fleet of municipal bicycles, for anybody to use. No more huge, space-killing apartment buildings to block the view, from any downtown street, of anybody who might want to look up and see the mountains. No more land-rapes, no more busts for "flute-playing" or "blocking the sidewalk" ... fuck the tourists, dead-end the highway, zone the greedheads out of existence, and in general create a town where people can live like human beings, instead of slaves to some bogus sense of Progress that is driving us all mad."

"Freak Power in the Rockies" is a tour-de-force, one of Thompson's finest works.

In it all Thompson maintains his swagger and some of his satirical honesty chuckles the reader and brushes off upon them Thompson's own creative individuality. His unique interpretation of life, socciety and their ails beckons a continuing intellectual conversation on the things that make us human and the conditions we must mind, confront and deal around. The late Thompson manifests as an American hero unmatched in recent times.

His rebellious, independent nature begs each person to experience life on a new plane unhindered by learned considerations. In his effort, Thompson succeeds and teaches devotees the chaotic serenity of life.

Resolutions for 2010 and Beyond

-Support charities
-End interventions
-Eat healthier, exercise
-Audit the Federal Reserve Bank
-End polarization
-Promote pedestrian spaces
-Exalt free speech
-Expose hypocrisy
-Limit waste
-Stop War

"To manage the affairs of our world family society, we need law - not artificial, arbitrary human laws, but real law: natural absolute law that is invincible and universal." - Michio Kushi, Other Dimensions