What he say.

When in despair over war in the middle east, racial tension in the Midwest, corruption in politics, I take a deep breath, relax my anger and look for humor amid chaos. My mentor in doing so is my old friend Paul Krassner. Check out this interview with him: wp.me/p2DHGh-hC 

Repuglicrats

"A perilous and unspoken accord in American politics has grown up while no one was looking, which unites the liberal left and the authoritarian right. They agree in their unquestioning support of a government without checks or oversight; and it is the Obama presidency that has cemented the agreement. The state apparatus which supports wars and the weapons industry for Republicans yields welfare and expanded entitlements for Democrats. The Democrats take to the wars indifferently but are willing to accept them for what they get in return. The Republicans hate the entitlements and all that goes by the name of welfare, but they cannot escape the charge of hypocrisy when they vote for ever-enlarging military entitlements."
 — David Bromwich, The World’s Most Important Spectator, London Review of Books

Curse them or mock them; it doesn't stop them. The war must go on.

The Goal Is Happiness

Stupid Intelligence

The cartoonist is Tuomas Koivurinne, a tattoo artist from Finland. http://tuomaskoivurinne.deviantart.com/

Event

I'll be reading from "Comedy of Terror" at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino on Friday, June 27th at 6:30 p.m. Hope to see you there.

Freedom is an Illusion

Freedom is an illusion. Ask Bill Binney who created the NSA’s mass surveillance program for digital information. According to Binney, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian state, and virtually every other nation is on the same path.

Religion and Capitalism

Life often gets in the way of the best intentions.

Religion and Capitalism are the pillars of society. They are both built on a foundation of lies.

Capitalism functions in exactly the same way as any other faith position. It is only our belief in money that makes money viable as a system.

By Nimue Brown, April 09, 2014

The answer to the question of capitalism's success depends on what you imagine capitalism was supposed to deliver in the first place. If you're part of the 1 percent holding most of the world's wealth, then I imagine capitalism looks like a raging success. If you are going hungry, homeless, seeing your landscape poisoned by fracking, or trapped in a war zone, capitalism is definitely not helping you in the slightest.
The alleged ideal of capitalism was something along the lines of "a chicken in every pot and a car on every drive"—good stuff for all, by whatever your current measure of good stuff is. The idea we were sold was that greater wealth would improve everyone's lot, and trickledown economics would raise us up so that even the poorest have a sufficiency of all things.


It just isn't happening. It never could. Capitalism by its very nature could never deliver the things we have believed it would. Capitalism is about making profit, and to make a profit you have to create a difference between the value of a thing—in terms of labor costs, production costs, and raw materials—and the price you sell it at. It is that difference that gets us into trouble, not least because the profit so often ends up in the hands of someone who did not do the work. Furthermore, when someone stockpiles money, as the super-rich do, they effectively take energy and resources out of the system, reducing what is available for everyone else. Money is just a token for barter. If we move those tokens around, we move goods, services, and opportunities around at the same time. If we put them in a big pile and lock the door, those tokens are of no use. Much of the world's wealth is locked behind the doors of the very few right now. No wonder the rest of us are struggling!
Capitalism functions in exactly the same way as any other faith position. It is only our belief in money that makes money viable as a system. It is our belief in the value of the things and our belief in the price tag that makes it work. Stocks and shares are basically about buying and selling belief and how much we are prepared to believe in the future worth of a commodity.
Modern economics (I gather from reading professor of economics Molly Scott Cato) were dreamed up before we'd figured out a lot of basic physics. Modern economics has its origins in a time when we didn't understand finite energy systems. This is why none of it works the way it is supposed to—it is based on beliefs that are largely wrong.
Anyone who spends a lot of time thinking about religion will have run up against the issue of belief. The further removed a belief is from discernible reality, the more problematic it becomes, and the more dysfunctional it is likely to be. One of the things I like about Paganism is that you can do it with very little belief at all. The seasons change, the earth goes round the sun, creating an impression of rising and setting. We live, we die. I do not need to believe anything much to engage with this. All I need is to find life valuable.
I do not believe in capitalism. I do not believe in banks. I do not believe in stocks and shares or in international currency markets. I do not believe in GDP. I do not believe in neoliberal economics.
Now dare to imagine what would happen if we all stopped believing in capitalism and, like the questioning pioneers in so many other fields of human endeavor, started asking some serious questions about how the economy works.

Nimue Brown is a Druid, comics creator, and author whose recent publications include Druidry and Meditation and a poetry collection entitled Lost Bards and Dreamers. Her further writings on Druidry can be found at her blog Druid Life and her webcomic (illustrated by her husband Tom) is hosted at Hopeless Maine.com. Nimue also writes the Patheos premium blog Pagan Leadership, providing group leaders and facilitators with practical leadership resources.

My first review. Thank you, Bruce Anderson.

Anderson Valley Advertiser
Mendocino County Today: Friday, April 4, 2014

RECOMMENDED READING: Comedy of Terror by John Fremont. The author is a long-time resident of Fort Bragg, not that this is a ‘homer’ review because I really, really liked the book. It’s a satire, a literary form always hard to bring off, and it’s a satire rooted in our area of Northern California with a recognizable series of local characters of the type we all recognize. I was chuckling throughout at passages like this one:

“Maybe she’ll know,” Wally said, pointing to a sign beside a red-and-blue-striped tent where a Psychic to the Stars channeled dead celebrities every evening at six, except when the moon was in Libra. Inside the tent, a plump, ethereal woman of late middle age stood onstage, her left arm raised as if to shield her eyes from the sun, her right hand swept behind as if fanning a fart.

“Sssh,” a patron cautioned. “She’s channeling.”

A phone rang, and the psychic to the stars took an instrument from her gown, covered the mouthpiece, and told the handful of patrons in the audience that Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy was on the line. “Who has a question for Jackie?”

“What’s the square root of forty-five?” Joe shouted. He was ignored in favor of a silver-haired woman who inquired, “Tell me, Jackie, who was your true love? Was it Jack or Ari?”

I’m feeling paranoid. I’m being denied access to sites online where I previously visited. Some of those sites are radical, albeit non-violent.

They control our communication and are on the verge of controlling our minds. I don’t see what can be done. What political system allows its citizens unfettered freedom?

If you find "Comedy of Terror" offensive, I’d like to know what offends you. 
If I mock your religion, pray for me. I will continue to make fun of your beliefs, but you'll feel better.

The president and his cronies are not caricatures. They are fictional, but just as stupid as real people. 

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; 
when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” 
--Thomas Jefferson

Comedy of Terror

Little is left of our rights as individual humans. Thieves have stripped us of our possessions, our privacy, and our dignity. Cameras and hackers, scammers and government officials, the ruling class and marketing masters, bankers and brokers, producers and protectors poke and prods our beliefs and allegiances. I worry not about myself but about fighters for social and economic justice. They must be protected, for if they stir up others they will surely be arrested.

For myself, I question everything: money and capitalism, power and the nature of existence and everything ending in –ology.

Don't think!

If you're not scared, you're not paying attention. The world is a dangerous place. Terrorists are everywhere, some closer than you think. Check under your bed, look in your medicine cabinet, read Comedy of Terror, available mid-March.