Monthly Archives: October 2004

Disgusting

I really hate Rudy Giuliani. I've never liked that smug, lying, anti-porn, anti-kite flying bastard. But no matter what your politics are, what he said on The Today Show is absolutely vile and cowardly. This is what he said when the President was called out over the no WMDs in Iraq scandal.

"No matter how you try to blame it on the President, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"

Blaming American soldiers, who have already been royally screwed over by their government, for their government's errors, is unacceptable.

Back in TO

I've got to admit that I always like returning to Toronto, feeling the cold breeze from the lake, seeing the CN tower and the wind generator. But I'm going to miss Argentina, it was so nice to be there, and I can't wait to go back. Huge thank you to la negra and Javier who were both wonderful hosts and put on a great world class convention. It was nice seeing old and new friends again, some of them for the first time in person. You forget how nice it is to see people in real life when you live online!

I've got to quickly get some errands attended to and then I'm taking the night off and getting to work in the morning, but here is my first conversation upon returning to Canada. It was with a Kenyan guy working in the baggage retrieval area. He's K and I'm S in this transcript. The conversation starts after he notices my ears, which I had no jewelry in, giving them a very “traditional” look.

K: Are you from Africa?

S: Ha, ha, no, I'm from Canada.

K: Oh, I thought you might be from Kenya.

As I was waiting for my luggage to arrive (which it never did, but that's another story related to emergency medical care which can be told another day), he ran over to talk to me.

K: The reason I was asking is because you have ears like the Maasai, so I thought maybe you grew up in Kenya.

S: No, I grew up on a farm out in the country here in Canada. But my parents had a book about the Maasai and how they lived, and it showed picture of how they cut their ears. It moved something in me, and I cut my ears as well.

K: It looks good, have you been to Africa?

S: I'm trying to convince my wife to move there actually!

K: Where? To Kenya?

S: No, Namibia.

K: Oh, Namibia is very nice! You would like it there, good country.

Anyway, off to Patagonia first. The dates are the 10th until the 12th of January. I'll post more info with the full Argentina report for those who might be interested. It will affect your life profoudly and positively.

Bush's America; DFW

Sitting near me, here in this wireless hotspot, are a number of US soldiers. Occasionally an American (civilian) approaches them and thanks them for their service and expresses how happy they are that they made it back safely — they graciously accept, and then say “…but I have to go back in two weeks.” It's heartbreaking. These are people with lives in the United States, with families and friends who love them and that they love in return. I'm not sure that being allowed on the plane first makes up for it.

Back in America, the polls are now swinging to Bush as fear drives the election.
As you go vote, repeat after me;

"I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear's path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Fear will not carry you through the darkness. It keeps you there.

You need to think about Bush's America. Is your life better than it was four years ago? The lives of your friends? Does a $200 take rebate make up for a $9000 drop in salary? Does adding hundreds of thousands of government jobs make up for decimation of jobs in the private sector. Don't be fooled — if you look through the small window, you may see a gross gain, but look at the big picture, and it's all net losses. Losses socially, losses economically, losses of security. Everything.

I was watching DeutscheWorld, and they were interviewing a European economist who was talking about how “good” it would be for Europe if Bush was re-elected. That said, you could tell he felt a little dirty saying that, because his thesis was based on the fact that Bush is doing such damage to the US economy and US holdings abroad that the Euro will continue to become the dominant currency internationally. Americans — if your dollar becomes internationally devalued, this will deeply affect you and your quality of life. Debt control is power, and is a large part of how America has ruled much of the world for the past seventy-five years. Being on the subservient side of international debt robs a country of its liberty, in exactly the same way that high credit card debt does it to an individual.


Handcuffed protestors in a barbed-wire cage after speaking out against Bush

This is Bush's America. 2,000 arrests at the RNC. LiveJournalers being interrogated by the Secret Service for criticising Bush in their online diaries. Cutting of funding to groups who encourage condom use. Banning of abortions as the new Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade (it blows my mind that a woman would vote for Bush). Banning of BME and adult media and other “unapproved” forms of art. An economic draft as your taxes pay for high-end mercenaries and electronic weaponry to fight wars around the world, finally ended by a barrage of nuclear strikes around the world and in America.

Watch the above Eminem video. Realize this — the polls show that young people and minorities are at least polling in huge numbers for Kerry. I don't know what will happen if Bush is re-elected, but I think it's safe to say that there could be a period of social unrest in America that could easily be as dangerous as any Arab terrorist. You can't treat Americans like this and not have them eventually freak out.

Finally, I'd like to publicly repost The World According To Bush. I will be deleting this file from my servers after the election, so watch it before that! This documentary was on the Canadian news a few weeks ago. It is a damning documentary about the Bush family's corruption and alliances with evil.


WATCH THIS VIDEO!

The film is an hour and twenty minutes long, so I've captured it in two qualities; both are watchable but if you have the bandwidth I recommend the larger of the two files. They are both WMV files.

Pass it on to friends that need to see it To be clear, while this is a French documentary, it is overdubbed in English. It's interesting to note by the way which US diplomats are fluent in French (and thus dubbed), and which are speaking in English.

Patagonia 2005?

It is so wonderful here in Argentina, and the convention is great — people are so nice and friendly and happy (and good looking too). The convention is absolutely world class (although I think they're not sure that it is, but it definitely is) and I can't emphasize enough what a nice place this is. I want to come back in January for the Patagonia convention.

Americans reading this — tickets to get here are about $1000 US return, and staying here costs about 1/3 what it costs to travel in the US. So… anyone else want to come? Pain Solution might make it down for another show as well. How about a North American invasion for the Patagonia convention? You know you don't want to be sitting in the frozen north in January, wouldn't you rather be swimming in the river in the day, and at a wonderful friendly tattoo convention at night?

Those of you who've travelled with me know that it stresses me out, but I haven't felt that way on this vacation. South America is just wonderful. I'm being serious — who's coming in January?

November 2nd is getting closer

How sad is it that I'm on vacation, yet I'm still obsessively keeping up with the news? I've been thinking about that latest Osama bin Laden tape, and the conclusion that I've come to is disturbing: Osama bin Laden is a “better American” than the average American is. Why would I say something as vile as that? Look at the core of his most recent speech (video, excerpts):

Any state that does not mess with our security, has naturally guaranteed its own security. But we fought you because we are free people, we don't sleep on our oppression. We want to regain the freedom of our Muslim nation as you spill our security, we spill your security.

Remember when Americans used to fly their Don't tread on me flags? America was a free nation. It didn't mess with anyone else, and no one messed with it — because if anyone messed with America, you can bet that hellfire would rain down on them in return. This is exactly the demand for liberty that Osama is making here — “leave us alone, and we'll leave you alone.”

He's also very clear that this was not a “strike” on America — it was a retaliatory blow. After all, American corporate-military interventions in the Middle East have brutally killed far, far more civilians than were killed in the WTC strikes. It's a cycle of violence, which al Qaeda is a part of, but absolutely is not the start of. The only way for it to end is for each player to stop invading the other's territory.

The US military is now upping tours of duty to a minimum of a full year of active combat in Iraq (more), and considering that people are being promised two or three back to back tours, this is going to deeply scar and destroy tens or even hundreds of thousands of US families — and that's just the kids that come back in one piece physically. On top of the lost time and the damaged psyches, the crippling injuries being sustained in huge numbers are just devastating (more)… and wasteful. Then of course there are the growing legions of corpses (more). Can you really say they died for your benefit?

Of course, as I pointed out before, America has as little as a five year supply of oil left in domestic and otherwise accessible fields. Even if you include Canada's giant reserves, our oil is so difficult to extract from the tar sands that switching to that resource would be an economic disaster to say nothing of the nightmarish effect on the freshwater systems. Alternative fuels? Great idea, but most estimates give 2040 as the earliest date that transition could happen. Which means that America has to either get along well with the rest of the world (yeah, right!), or it's going to have to go to war with the entire world.

Maybe that's why America is continuing to build its incredibly expensive (and dubiously functional) missile shield (more), which is useful exclusively for defending against Russia and other large countries with nuclear ICBMs. Of course, Russia has laughed off the US missile shield, building hypersonic cruise missiles that should be able to punch through. NASA has been demonstrating a similar set of hypersonic missile technologies in return.

People sometimes ask me, why are you always writing about America? Why don't you write about Canada — or as Osama put it, why not about Sweden? The above should clarify. When the US, the largest economy and the largest military, goes to war with the world, there aren't going to be a lot of places on this planet that aren't damaged by that war. 50,000 nuclear bombs going off aren't going to end all life on the planet, but the damage will be immeasurable.

So who are you going to vote for on Tuesday? Maybe that traitorous anti-war message that Kerry talked in the 1970s, as much as he's forced by his PR people to hawk it up these days in light of Cheney's “he's a wuss” comments, is the right message for America… Don't tread on us… We don't want war with you, and if you strike at us, we'll fuck you up. Simple demand: we leave you alone, you leave us alone.

Now, I know there are stupid and ill-informed people right now believing that all that's going on right now is America saying “don't tread on me” (it's all about September 11th, right?). But really, you have to be pretty brain-washed to believe that, when you realize that the US has troops in nearly every nation on the planet, often supporting corrupt regimes that murder millions of people, and that the US is the world's largest — and most indiscriminate — exporter of military technology.

As has been pointed out before, the fact is that the US is not going to be invaded and no meaningful strikes are going to be made on it, short of all this insanity escalating to the point where nutcases in the old superpower regimes decide to start lobbing nukes around. And all of us should be able to see what madness that is. I'm wearing an NRA shirt right now. If I'm asked here in Buenos Aires why I would wear such a thing, my answer is simple: because I believe that the world is safer and more free when the civilians hold as much power as government.

People make themselves free. Governments, by definition, restrict freedom, when instead their only role should be to keep people from restricting each other's freedom's. Absolute sovereignty on your own territory means respecting the territory of others. The more power the people have, the more free they are. A nation that puts its defense into the hands of its people, rather than allowing corporations to build corporate armies that plunder the world, will keep its liberty intact. But an empire which builds armies and extends its control will always be under attack, will always be hated, and eventually it will fall.

That said, the whole idea of “nations” is bunk.

But that's another story.

Oh, and to give you something to think about, here's an interesting Fark comment:

1. WWII refugee Jewish people look for a home after the war.
2. Nobody, including the USA, accepts them.
3. USA hatches brilliant plan to make their bible book come true by moving Palastinians out of their homeland to re-create the Jewish nation.
4. Decades of hell follow.

Imagine that after the US economy collapses and China becomes the next global superpower that they decide to relocate the citizens of LA and San Francisco to the Mohave in order to give the better land back to the native American people. While some would find it fair, those who are relocated are bound to be bitter about it and China's meddling for generations. As much as they resist the urge, some will resort to terrorist acts as a last resort to protest what was done to them.

Bin Laden is a product of US meddling. We made him. We need to un-make him and the Bush administration is not up to the task.

Anyway… if you really want to understand American politics, you have to understand not history and what's going on in the world, but almost exclusively the science of marketing. As far as I can tell, very little in the way most people decide who to vote for has anything to with a factual understanding of what's best for them or their country, and everything to do with who's got the best advertising team.

Goebbels understood that very well also.

Meh, I'm preaching to the choir. Those of you who get it understand that the best way to be free is to be non-interventionist, well-armed, strong, and capable, but pacifist. Those of you who don't are eating a hot dog and calling me a coward for thinking war is a mistake. Of course, most of those people are sitting at home on their couches while the impoverished youth of America go overseas to have their arms blown off by poor people who are just trying to stay free themselves.

A curse will be upon those who pay for death, and that curse will unleash its fury in our lifetimes, and it will destroy far more than just the guilty.

PS. If you have not yet seen Fahrenheit 9/11 yet, you can click here to download it now.