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

Rand Paul: Inching Toward U.S. Senate

One 2010 U.S. Senate candidate who raised some of the most campaign dollars out of anyone in America is Rand Paul. In a tight primary race in Kentucky Paul faces Trey Grayson, current Kentucky Secretary of State who's backed by the Republican establishment. While Grayson has raised an impressive $1.1 million so far, dark horse Rand Paul has raised $1.7 million just since he began campaigning this fall. And in a recent independent poll, Paul showed stunning competitiveness as he edged favorite Grayson by nearly 15% points amongst likely Republican voters.

Rand Paul is one of the few truly independents, unbought and unbossed, whose once dim chance of election into the Senate brightens each day. His views are nearly identical to his father's, Ron Paul, former 2008 presidential candidate. He professes libertarian views which advocate limiting the scope of the federal government, specifically by cutting taxes and anti-competitive entitlements, eliminating bureaucratic waste and maximizing individual liberty. His anti-bailout, anti-corporatist rhetoric has obviously demonstrated solidarity with a large contingency of concerned Kentuckians who are sick with the way Washington does business. It is no secret the special interest run the country and in Rand Paul, a competitive alternative to the pay-to-play state emerges.

His sensible, common-man approach to tackling perplexing issues impresses and his ability to advocate for a government run by the People trumpets good old-fashioned honesty in steep contrast to the co-opted movements whose deceptive slogans entice but offer little content.

America is ready for fresh faces, but not yet wholly competent for fresh ideas. Paul embodies the necessary new ideas which are in fact very old. But its starkly practical and prescient solutions are revolutionizing. And Paul is an excellent messenger to usher in a new era of political awareness and autonomy.

Neo-Racism and the War on Terror

On Monday, the administration of President Barack Obama announced that due to the failed Christmas Day attack on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, the Transportation Security Administration has announced the induction of mandatory full body scanning along with extra security checks and searches for people traveling to the United States from nations that are "state-sponsors of terror". Due to one alleged act of tried terror, people (including U.S. citizens) flying from Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran and Lebanon, will now be required to be essentially strip searched while similar restrictions appear to await U.S. citizens flying domestically.

A highlighted map of these marked countries almost appears like a strange elongated seatbelt band stretching across north Africa and the Middle East. Including mostly majority Muslim nations too, the TSA has upped the ante on th4e screening of the most laughable and stereotypical terror suspect. For the first time in U.S. history, race and country of origin are now the primary conditions or requirements rather to gain access to passage into the new world.

For those living in these blacklisted countries, they are now (for the first time since 19th century-style imperialism) officially internationally recognized as subhuman and inferior to the many shades of what now qualifies as white. This designation parallels another ideology remarkably similar to the last century's greatest tyrants. And not only are these people inferior, they are assumed dangerous and at that an imminent threat to all people everywhere. The preposterous notion propounded by the U.S. government is simply that that's what they get for being non-white in the wrong place.

In this wicked form of neo-racism, those inferior are assumed guilty and must first prove their innocence. If they choose not to cooperate, places like Guantanamo Bay await them.

Not only is this neo-racism bigotry at best, it's alarming to other nations who view the War on Terror as an ideological lever used ever so skillfully by the West to achieve shadowy political and economic objectives. And worse, it's a strategy bound to make fast enemies and quickly turn long time allies into ardent foes.

Perhaps the most humorous part of this debacle of white supremacist policy is that their own regulation is ultimately unenforceable as foreign nations staff and direct their own airport security in their own fashion, regardless of what President Obama may choose to pompously dictate to them. Already, journalists are reporting no change in airport security in the blacklisted countries.

There is little the U.S. can do to police the world anymore at a time when more smaller countries demand a larger voice in world affairs. While a clash may not be eminent, America in arrogance will only suffer and become a 'rogue' state as it already is in the eyes of much of the globe. While airport security is important, leaders should not play politics with the chauvinistic white supremacist policies that seek to harass, punish and harm those merely for existing as equal human beings.

U.S. Forces Attack Militants, Schoolchildren Alike in Afghanistan

In another shocking twist in the never-ending War on Terror, Jerome Starkey of The Times of London reported last week of a chilling special-operation which claimed the lives of over eight Afghanis in Ghazi Khan, a village in eastern Kunar province.

The U.S. continues to cower behind blanket-naming those among the dead in the war zone as "militant insurgents". However, upon closer examination and information gleaned from several eye witness account, it now appears that seven of those killed were children, shamelessly slaughtered after being rustled out of bed in the chambers of an Afghan boarding school.

Most damagingly, the school's headmaster reported the deliberate way in which the students ranging from ages 11 to 17 were killed. Other reports describe the students handcuffed before being summarily executed. Starkey reports that even President Hamid Karzai, the notoriously corrupt U.S. puppet acknowledged and condemned the slaying of the youngsters on his website.

In deliberately targeting civilians and minors as fair game, U.S. troops have made their situation as perennial occupiers untenable and increasingly dangerous. Little logical support can be parlayed for such actions when the nearly 100,000 strong foreign forces outnumber any still left Taliban by hundreds to one.

The War now lapses into the unnavigable, much like the Soviet-Afghan did when the effort disintegrated as early as 1983.

The history of empire is eminent and if nature has its way, little will come of a prolonged occupation already bordering on a nine years. Yet, in the new age of blowback and technological parity between strong and weak nations alike, a retaliation could be forthcoming far down the line. For a child whose best friend shed blood and cruelly paid the price, revenge for the gross atrocity will be no difficult matter. America eventually will face the repulse of such hate and malice now force-fed by our own soldiers to Afghan children.

If any morally reprehensible solution may come to sight, an investigation into the gruesome killings that occurred at Ghazi Khan must be forged. For even this small conciliation of a hearing may at the very least change attitudes to show American people do care no matter how cruel the dark special forces who portend to represent them may act.

Shrieks for Full-Body Scanners Grow

Power is unwielding and intoxicatingly opportunist so that upon each hint of possible crisis becomes a welcome chance to enact radical and sweeping change. It was Rahm Emanuel, presidential Chief of Staff who put it best when he told the Wall Street Journal, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." "And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you that you didn't think you could do before."

After the failed Christmas Day plane bombing, another fearful atmosphere of crisis now prevails. While Americans remain aware of the attack, the general non-chalance toward the so-called failed terrorist attack contrasts starkly with the behooved huffing voices on the District of Columbia's congressional floor.

News reports over the weekend indicate increased congressional calls to intervene in Department of Homeland Security policies setting Transportation Security Administration procedures of screening passengers boarding aircraft in the United States. In particular, loud voices call for legislation enacting mandatory full-body scanning of all passengers.

To those unaware, full body imaging entails passengers being X-rayed, similar to what occurs to carry-on luggage. These high-ray machines produce lifelike bodily images of subjects, literally seeing entirely through all clothing, revealing a nude image.

Yet, the TSA insists their scanning limits what remote scanners view as facial features and genitalia are blurred. The TSA also maintains viewers monitoring the scans are placed in a remote location unable to see or be seen by the photographed subject.

Legislation mandating high X-ray scan imaging whose product borders on pornographic and involves certain moral and ethical violations, if not legal crimes, should never be forced on American people simply attempting to travel. If enacted, disastrous results will follow and an even greater curtailment of liberty will ensue. Domestic and international travel will become grounded and the world will revert to an isolationism in travel far grander than ever existed during Cold War times. Full body image scanning must be stopped!

Congress' hawkish calls to punitively harass, humiliate and degrade the blameless traveling public are open warfare upon the American People. These calls remain incongruous with public opinion and imply regulations which are legally questionable and ethically bereft. If the Union is to survive intact and in spirit, liberty must be preserved. For what little remains, the Union may, as some suggest, be beyond the pale.

Interest Rate 2010: How Low Can You Go?

As 2010 brings new air to life, the Federal Reserve Bank decides to keep it like the old. Carrying record-low interest rates (for inter-bank lending), the Fed's hypocrisy reaches similar ridiculous heights. At 0.25%, the interest rate has remained rock bottom since December 2008 in an effort to stem the abruptly relaxed tide of inflation originally set to be unleashed in coincidence with the global economic meltdown of 2008-09.

The pattern mirrors a similarly eruptive time during the early '00's when interest rates held low at 3-4%, then down from the 'normal' 7-8% during the late '80s and early '90s. But what deflated interest rates really mean is that the dollar-presses will be ratched up in an effort to print out a record cache of federal reserve notes which will greater devalue the American dollar, domestically and abroad.

There is no new sign the Fed will raise interest rates, an act which would undoubtedly bring sharp inflation an harsh despair to many. But while raising interest rates would adversely affect man, putting off this ultimately necessary measure will only delay and increase the enormous burden of the fettered crisis.

Not only is it irresponsible to not account for the fabulously speculative heights of unhealthy lending, it is criminal in practice as it saddles future generations with heaps of insurmountable debt for which they never personally incurred.

The Fed's failure to address this crucial decision only unmasks their mimed benevolence and tears apart their facade of stability. It is increasingly clear the ineptitude of Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke and Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner are prolonging the economic crisis and corruptly rewarding the very entities whose criminal irresponsibility robbed the wealth of a blind nation.

It is upon the Fed for the burden of proof to fall. If interest rates are not raised the necessary 8-9% or even greater in the next year, and it is not done before foreign nations take action to dump the American dollar as the primary oil trading unit, America will face an economic collapse so grand it will make the enduring Recession look like a small down blip in the abysmal line charting economic stagnation.

The writing is on the wall. If we are to allow business to survive, it is fast time for the Fed to change how it does business.