PRO-MAGNON
Blessed event:
Don MacQueen has let slip news of my candidacy for president. I will run (or shamble) if called, but not if called “late for chow.” Negotiations to secure (sic) Supervisor Smith as Catamite General have broken down: perhaps Mr. MacQueen can facilitate.
The “pro-fusion” ticket will combine elements from salient Three Stooges films and the work ethic of Caltrans and the local Edu board with holidays whenever rocks fall from heaven.
We will be proactive, pro-stupid and pro-life.
In other words, business as usual.
Bonzai!
Ignatio Hephalumpe, Fuhrer Emeritus
Bellingham, Washington
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MOVE OVER EATON
Editor,
I’m sick and tired of the AVA continually bashing the local public schools. I moved to Boonville over two years ago, and it took me about five minutes to decide that the schools here are true diamonds among schools today. I’ve spent a lot of my life in public schools in California as a student, employee, volunteer, and school board member*. I’ve never witnessed better education than is happening right here.
No one should utter an opinion unless they know what they are actually talking about. Until you spend time in the classroom trying to teach today’s students according to the current rules and regulations of our state you know very little about schools. And I don’t mean a single visit to a classroom. I mean regular assistance and involvement.
Schools cry for assistance because they need it. My youngest daughter is the teacher of second graders near Sacramento. One of her students has such severe hyperactivity issues that recently, for no reason, he leaped out and over his desk and punched another kid in the face. (During the first week of school he jumped into the bus driver’s seat as the driver walked a little girl across the street and nearly ran the two over.) Another of her students would have been labeled retarded back in the day. Sweet and innocent, three weeks ago she was sexually molested by a third grade boy at lunchtime. The parents’ responses? Pretty much nada.
As a frequent volunteer at both campuses here, I have met and worked with many students. Invariably they are polite, eager learners. The programs our students have available to them are exciting and fun. The recent weather balloon story about the rocketry club is case in point. What could be better learning? Teachers and administrators are bombarded by more and more regulations, testing time-wasters, and required curriculum. To be able to insert any creative activities at all is amazing. And it happens every day here in our schools.
My advice? Quit complaining and go volunteer! Help the teachers and administrators instead of beating them over the head with your paper. Go supervise a game or a dance yourself. Correct papers. Read to a group of children whose parents don’t speak English. Tutor a child who’s struggling with his math facts. Push a broom after lunchtime.
After you’ve spent actual, real time in the shoes of several of our educators, then have an opinion. I have a feeling I know exactly what it will be.
Alice Bonner
Boonville
PS. *Of the eight and a half years I spent on the school board of a medium sized district (4,000 students), two and a half years were productive and six were exasperating and frustrating. Why? Because during the latter period two members were there on account of their egos, professing to know more than professional educators and assuming administrative subterfuge at every turn. We still got good things done for students but progress was excruciatingly slow. Hundreds of hours of discussion and continuous split votes. 5-0 votes don’t necessarily mean unthinking board members. They often mean that the superintendent is following the direction of the board.
ms replies: “…continually bashing”? The occasional complaint about the local school system pails in comparison to the unvarnished high praise for everything school-related in School News that is prepared by a paid school staffer and runs as an uncommented-on free ad for the school system almost every week. (By the way, have you noticed that School News never has anything about academics in it?) Or does only the so-called “bashing” count? Anyway, what’s the difference between “bashing” and ordinary adult skepticism and criticism? If Boonville U. is an example of the best education around, then that explains a lot about the current state of this country. PS. We’d love to correct some papers! Bring us a batch of random (i.e., an entire class) advanced math and English assignments and we’ll immediately review, correct and grade them and provide you with a summary analysis. If they’re as good as you say, we’ll be the first to say so.
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CONSPIRACIES AS THEATER
The Editor,
The discussion on conspiracies has been most informative. While there are other Merriam-Webster definitions somehow involving collusion for evil or unlawful purposes, the one I like is “a conspiracy is a striking concurrence of tendencies, circumstances, or phenomena as though in planned accord.” Cockburn and the far right appear to have concluded that those concerned with global warming and peak oil are so in striking concurrence, each somehow for personal gain. I assume this is true as well for those raising alarms about 9/11 — book sales have surely been profitable. Interestingly though that 9/11 made a fortune for Halliburton and Cheney and he destroyed all his VP papers. It seems judgments always come down to “my expert is right, yours is wrong, and you can’t convince me otherwise.”
A series of psychological experiments have demonstrated that if we believe something to be true, any contrary arguments no matter how valid will only increasingly firm our belief. Of course, these reports may also have been part of a conspiracy in order to publish academic papers, get grants, and get promotions as with global warming research, as Cockburn and friends assert. I’m more and more concluding that commentary columnists of whatever political or economic stripe are probably serving up tripe and I am mostly discounting anything they profess simply because they are certainly seeing only a tiny fraction of what is happening and surely have prefixed beliefs that aren’t in evidence.
Yes, I think Cheney was/is a crook and could have been guilty of almost anything, but that is only my opinion. Surely doubt applies to my commentaries as well. Still, it is all great theater.
Don Sanderson
Hopland
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HOME SWEET HOME
Editor,
“Blutoville” 15 miles
A stinking Cloverdale gas station lavatory
Dented metal door, enameled walls
My favorite “color,” gloss white.
It's raining and out in the car with all its windows rolled down
A hitchhiker with dice for eyes
A dog with green lips
And a woman dressed in kelp.
Fort Bragg is another two hours out.
Yet I feel somehow I have already arrived.
M.E. Johnson
Fort Bragg
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THE 99% SOLUTION
Editor:
It is obviously true that until money is taken out of the political equation, corporate wealth and power will govern, if not own, the United States. Presently, representative democracy has become an ideological myth used to entice ordinary Americans to falsely believe in their “democratic ideals.”
This has to some extent always been the case, e.g., the “gilded age” of the late 19th century. Nevertheless, for the past three decades we have seen an enormous concentration of wealth and power, which has led to the hardship and suffering of the majority. One Republican/laissez-faire rebuttal to this is that the disadvantaged “reap what they sow,” i.e., it is their own fault. The ideology is that the disadvantaged are inferior and morally to blame for their predicament — they have chosen to be poor, which is absurd.
Another response is that the individual is the primary source of value, not society. This has led to a possessive individualism where empathy for others is blunted. But the contrary is true: Society is the primary source of value. It has taken time, effort and work by all those in the past and present to build together the society we presently have. Without a functional society there can be no individual value. Yet today, society, like our political system, is becoming increasingly dysfunctional due to the exploitation by the few of the many. And in so doing the wealthy few are actually and unwittingly destroying themselves — and the country.
The greatest danger to the United States is us — as reflected in our Congressional representatives and both political parties. Those who are indebted to and/or so ensnared by power, wealth, and greed that any notion of the common good is irrelevant. Over the past 30 years this has caused a precipitous decline. Our prison population has increased to the highest per capita in the world and “reeks of cruelty.” We condone torture and fail to bring those responsible for it to justice. We assassinate and kill American citizens without benefit of due process of law. We clandestinely use drones in foreign lands for targeted, extrajudicial assassinations without any legal justification, knowing full well the probabilities of killing innocent men, women and children. We support dictators who brutalized their own citizens. We employ the barbarism of capital punishment while the civilized world cannot believe what we do and 600,000 people around the world sign petitions to stop us. We have developed an enthusiasm and celebration for killing which is openly and mindlessly expressed by our citizens and congressional representatives — if not by our President. We employ corporate mercenaries which we euphemistically call “contractors” to maintain our “Empire.” We allow a mass media to infantalize us and accept an economic system that dehumanizes and alienates us from each other. We allow Wall Street bankers, financial institutions, corporate lobbyists and special interest groups to dictate to our congressional representatives and President what legislation and laws are to be passed to further their interests. And, at the same time, we have allowed the same institutions to forcibly remove millions of us from our homes due to a financial crisis they fraudulently initiated and which we have been unjustly forced to pay for.
During these same 30 years, corporate wealth and power has steadily increased. We have taken great steps to care for the “corporate person” — a thing. This is in keeping with our commodified society where there is a greater relationship between things than there is between people. In this process we have abandoned ourselves. It is this insidious ideology and ethical failure that is destroying the nation.
Sincerely,
Terence Bresnahan
Berkeley
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TOO MANY CRACKPOTS
Mr. Anderson:
1. Todd Walton is a writer I respect. I read and enjoyed his columns in the AVA. However, as a retired science teacher, I must respond to the obscurantist nonsense of his response to Lee Simon that appeared in the AVA on October 26, 2011 ("Crackpots, an analysis").
Mr. Walton writes that “crackpot beliefs are only crackpot to those who don't agree with those beliefs.” Bullshit.
Massimo Pigliucci writes in 'Nonsense On Stilts,' on page 304:
“What makes astrology a pseudoscience is that its theoretical structure is hopelessly flawed (e.g., constellations do not exist) and when apparently tested, it repeatedly fails the confrontation with the data.”
We can substitute “crackpot beliefs” for “pseudoscience.” I would include creationism, Scientology, Mormonism — which some wit defined as Scientology plus 150 years, and Christianity in all its incarnations — Scientology plus 2000 years, among the crackpot beliefs that plague us today.
Pigliucci concedes that “even good science is no guarantor of the truth. Science is a complex social activity carried out by limited human beings who are affected by the time and place in which they happen to live, not to mention by having a brain that evolved to solve everyday life problems, not to rationally and impartially pursue cosmic questions about the nature of things. … It is easy enough to trot out a long litany of blunders that self-assured scientists have committed over the centuries, or even very recently.” (Page 305)
However, he adds, “what all scientific inquiry has in common… are the fundamental aspects of being an investigation of nature, based on the construction of empirically verifiable theories and hypotheses. These three elements, naturalism, theory and empiricism, are what make science different from any other human activity.”
Amen. Which comes from the Hebrew word for truth.
Massimo Pigliucci is one of the smartest people in the world and 'Nonsense On Stilts' is a must read.
2. Enclosed is a check for $150. Please use it to renew the subscription of my troubled brother, Joseph D'Avey, and two other brothers or sisters in prison. You choose the recipients. You usually do this at your own expense. I would like to share the cost of providing the AVA to people who, due to the fell clutch of circumstance and the bludgeoning of chance, cannot themselves pay for a subscription at this time. Stay strong. Thanks for all you do.
Siempre adelante,
Louis Bedrock
Roselle, New Jersey
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MIDDLE-EASTERN HALLOWEEN
Editor:
The Palestinians and UNESCO—
The UN body for education, science and culture UNESCO, backed the Palestinian request for membership. In the going “107 member countries voted for the Palestinians, rejecting US and Israel pressure. Only 14 countries voted against membership, while 52 abstained. France voted in favor, Germany voted against while Britain decided to abstain, China, India, Russia, and Brazil also backed the Palestinians while Canada sided with the US and Israel.” [FT Nov 1.11:4]
The USA usually funds UNESCO with 80m a year but “will not send a 60 million payment “(WSJ Nov 1: A9) Presumably they sent 20 million already. But there is a 1990 law passed by the freedom loving US Congress “that automatically cuts funding for any agency that grants Palestinian authorities the same standing as member states.”
Now there is a US humanitarian AIPAC funded law that we didn't know about. I know a number of anti Zionists but they never mentioned that one. No matter this is a great moment for Abbas and the Palestinians.
When interviewed by a reporter, the Marxist geographer David Harvey said: “the Republican Party will do more damage to capitalism than the working class:” A wonderful observation wherein the negative is just as good at puncturing the hubris of the capitalist state as the left faction. The UNESCO vote will be wonderful news in the Arab Countries and a warning to Arab Spring(ers) that the US can't be trusted. It is one of the better events exposing the Empire.
Hamas gets 1000 prisoners for one captured (military term, kidnapping is wrong — it is captured soldier). Correctly stated 1000 Palestinian resistance fighters for one Israeli soldier. Plus the Abbas Fatah PLO faction that was put in place by Israel-US has bolted.
Why did they go the route of nonviolent diplomatic gaming? The F.T. reports this is nothing new, “The move to obtain recognition in UNESCO sets no new precedent. Other countries such as North and South Korea joined UN agencies when their applications for full membership were in dispute."[Editorial Nov. 1/2011:8]
Wall St. Journal considered the maneuver an affront to US hegemony and Zionist Israeli — the process that has gotten the Palestinians less territory, fewer and fewer homes and more walled attackable territories. Susan Rice our feminist representative to the UN, said that without direct talks, [that have disguised aggressive apartheid for 40 or was it 35 years] there will be no Palestinian State. The jibe is obvious, the gig is up, the ridiculous argument by the US that negotiations with US as mediator will get anything for the Palestinians but dead bodies after missal and drone attacks is exposed. The US face is not bloodied the Empire will remain but the kids just kicked the shines of the Gargoyles.
Abbas and Hamas have gained the day in different ways — hail to them even if they dispute each other. From out here in Empire-Disney-land it’s a double kick in the shins.
An, additional doublespeak in US foreign policy: Reagan took the US out of UNESCO and Bush put the US back in and revised the educational component. UNESCO operates in Afghanistan and does the educational work for the US. Another US war where billions were spent to kill but now without funding no more education for women.
Bully, Bully, the Mask is off. Halloween is (almost) over!
R.G. Davis
San Francisco
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MORE BILE
Editor,
Too little bile and the food doesn't break down. Romans used artichokes. It's in rock but not in stone or bone marrow, but not the bone. He never lifts a leg off the floor so I can get a leg up. I'm not a plane but I'll lift you. I'm not a river but I'm full of water. I'm not a river but let's float, nary gloat, nor bloat. I'm not a river but if I swallow you you won't be able to stir. What do elephants have that no other animal has? Baby elephants. Three legger asks a man for money. He gives each leg a quarter. What time is it? Quarter to three. Why did the girl think the cook was mean? He beat the eggs. Why do birds fly south in the winter? It's too far to walk. What animal can jump higher than the mountain? Mountains don’t jump. Nibble on dandelion greens for indigestion. Dogs eat grass. Grate the orange peel for a digestive kick in the pants. And serve a side dish of brown rice. Harvard says high fiber foods prevent ulceration. Banish the cough with bananas. Cinnamon contains volatile oils that break down fat. Chew fennel seeds to crush gas. Fennel contains terpenoid anetnole which relieves muscle spasms and encourages production of bile.
Mark Twain calls cauliflower “cabbage with a college education.”
Yours,
Diana Vance in the drizzle
Mendocino
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CRANK IT UP!
AVA Editor,
While never trisecting a triangle or squaring the circle I probably qualify as a crank in the mind of the editor of the AVA because of my subscribing to the AVA, my advanced years, and my belief in Peak Oil. Along with Galileo, Jesus Christ, Copernicus and Karl Marx, we cranks have a role to play: Replacing zinnias in our planters positioned on the rail of our deck with radishes, I discovered that the radish plant has the ability to position its leaves in such a way as to gather the maximum amount of solar radiation much like the sunflower. I’ve attached a photo showing this phenomenon.
Harold Ericsson
Harbor City
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THANKS FROM PETER’S FAMILY
To Our Community of Family & Friends:
A big 'thank you' to each and every one of you fine people who took the time to come by, call, bring hugs and food — to cry and remember with us.
All the touching condolences, flowers, cards, and thoughts will be forever remembered.
I will always remember Peter, and the love, joy, and pride he brought to me.
Your remembrances will bring smiles through the tears.
Thank you and love to you all,
Marianne Pardini
Donald & Families
Philo
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KGB IN IONE
Editor,
Here we go again. Mule Creek State prison, SNY, the most unclassy California SNY prison. The scandal machine. But let me explain. And you will agree.
On September 16, 2011, on my way to store (canteen), I was stopped and put in handcuffs and marched to C-yard program office at 9am and I was put in a dummy cage until 11am. I was duly informed that I was being locked up for written threats on staff. The correctional officer told me I was running a Sacramento investigation from what he/she heard. A covert operation at that. Shit. Here we go, CIA-KGB!
I refused to sign the lockup order, CDC 114d, until I saw the “Lt.” He finally came to see me (Lt. G. Murphy) and told me I only wanted to talk to him for ID purposes. Okay. It's got to be a CIA operation. I refused to sign for my copy of the CDC 114d and off to the ASU-hole I went (Area 51) C-12. No man's land.
On October 17, 2011, I was fully cleared of any threats on staff by, guess who? Lt. Murphy. But now I can't go back to the yard. As now all of a sudden I got an “enemy"? It was crazy. A total scam at that. I saw my CIA mole correctional officer who told me that he or she heard via reliable sources that three COs had a meeting on September 16 to see how to lock me up as the captain was not on duty and it was a Friday. So they had 72 hours to get the story straight as the captain would be back first thing Monday. But now I had a so-called “enemy,” courtesy of staff of the sitdown mafia meeting on September 16. Members only. (Ha ha.)
On October 20, 2011, I saw the warden (Warden Knipp) at ICC who told me, Do me a favor, step out while I get to the bottom of this bullshit. In so many words. After ten minutes I went back in and it was quiet as all staff, seven of them, including ISU, said nothing. The warden had the floor. After we talked, just me and Knipp, I could see he was pissed at staff for locking me up. I tried to sign a Barney Chrono, but my captain, Captain Kaplan, said no. We can't disclose who put you down as an enemy? I told him it was Dino the scumbag, chomo child abuser. So much for any confidential paperwork. (Ha ha.) (My mole CIA told me who it was.)
So the warden told me, Don't worry, I'll put you up for a transfer to two places you pick. I made two choices and that was that. Knipp said, I'll get you to a place you can program, get a job and visit your elderly parents who are in poor health. You got my word. I said, Okay Warden Knipp.
So here I sit, waiting to leave this soulless place! This place is a total shithole. They keep stuff from the warden and he only knows what is told to him. Trust me, I spoke my piece on October 20 and laid it out for the warden to hear! He agreed!
So as I said before in my prior AVA letter of October 19, this place is unclassy. Totally. Drama. Not to mention 90% sick chomos and rapos. So think twice prior to coming here. Also my family offered to hire a former FBI handwriting expert but this place said it was a CDCR rule that I was entitled to. Come on. My family wants to pay the cost and CDCR says no! Okay, whatever. Also, my mole CIA-CO, also told me that if I file a lawsuit he or she will sign a declaration and testify in court on my behalf. As he or she is transferring to another prison that is not shamelessly corrupt.
So now if this is not corrupt, then what is? Bottom line, if they don't like you or somebody smuts you up with staff, you're out of here. Also, an investigation on staff? I don't think so. But now where will be an investigation? Trust me. Let alone a major civil suit at that.
Area 51 out.
Kenny 'Irish' Callahan
Ione
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DIVEST THYSELF
Letter to the Editor
I hear a lot of verbal support for the Wall Street and other “Occupy” events.
A further demonstration of support would be to divest oneself of all holdings in corporate stock.
The class lines a being drawn.
Bruce Hering
Boonville
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MID-SPECTRUM PARADOX
Hi Todd,
Your response to my comments about your ideas about spirituality was emotionally generous and well founded. I think it is possible for us to both be correct. There is not knowing and then there is not knowing. The kind of not knowing your ascribe to science is a positive not knowing, the kind that leads to further knowledge. The kind I was thinking of is the kind of not knowing that leads to a closed mind, one that does not want to know.
They are at opposite ends of a spectrum. Most people get stuck in the middle of the spectrum; they accept science as wanting to know and being alright with not knowing any final answers. At the same time they cling to a religion (any of them) that tells them that only the deity can know what’s really going on, so not knowing is o.k.. They have (each of them) a final answer, which means, to them, that they don’t need to know anymore, because they already have the final answer.
The real paradox here is that the middle is good when you speak of moderation in all things, the middle path, and so on. But the middle is not good when it is an excuse for making no further inquiry. There are those who seek the truth and there are those who reek of it.
I enjoy your columns. They always make me want to know more.
Lee Simon
Far ‘n Away Farm in Virginia
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CRIME PAYS FOR THE 1%
Dear Editor,
Caption: Slave in arms. From North Star Shining, a pictorial history of the American slave industry.
* * *
Does this slave drawing look suspiciously like today's court, jail, prison system? Makes you wonder if modern mass imprisonment isn't a continuation of slavery.
Occupy, yes! Unfortunately if we occupy the courts we could be in irons to. Those unaccountable, the black robes, seem to own the jails and prisons. $180,000 per year plus perks judging the 99% while very dangerous criminals like Tony Hayward, former CEO of British Petroleum Co., the mortgage fraudsters, greedy bankers, federal reservists all run loose. In fact, the bailouts demonstrate that crime pays. The remedy I'd suggest: give all the prison inmates a bonus so government bailouts are fair and equitable. Remember the official position: crime pays.
Thinking about the ironic reminds me of you, Mr. Anderson, thanking the medical doctors because you didn't perish from their treatment of your prostate problem. Allopathic medicine: intrusive, dangerous and expensive. Holistic or more natural medicine offers real alternatives that succeed and are even affordable since you have to pay for them yourself. Alternative medicine, including ozone and hyperbaric oxygen treatments, electromedicine — such as Refe machines, Bob Beck blood blood purifiers, vibe machines which harmonize our bodies like ecosystems in time with the earth's own frequencies, nutritional medicine including dietary change, all can accomplish what allopathic medicine deems uncurable.
There are many alternative healers publishing newsletters and online solutions. Check out health science's Dr. Robert Rowen's (phi beta kappa) Second Opinion, Dr. Richard Chilton's American Botanical Pharmacy, Dr. Julian Whitaker's Health and Healing. Just a sampling of what's available.
Glad to see you quote Thomas Szasz. His book, 'toxic psychiatry,' is a classic debunking of the mental illness game. An older classic is Orthomolecular Medicine with an introduction by the vitamin C Nobel Prize laureate, Dr. Linus Pauling.
Glad you survived your ordeal. Getting well need not be so risky, nor so expensive. Costs keep rising for our failed medical system. Up, up, up and away — out of reach for so many.
Single-payer, yes.
Occupy.
Dorotheya Dorman
Redwood Valley
Ed reply: When the tumor that grew until it killed Steve Jobs was first discovered, the doctors wanted to take it out before it became too big and lethal. Instead, Jobs went to the quacks, and by the time he returned to proven medical science he was a dead man walking. The cadaverous practitioners of “alternative” medicine, of whom there are of course many here in quackety-quack Mendocino County, and none of whom has ever seemed more fit to me than the many more meat-eating drunks loose in the land, are right about diet and exercise but, heck, me dear old mum smoked Pall Mall non-filters and knocked down many pints of Old Crow right to the end of her days, which numbered 86 years worth, while Jim Fixx, the famous running guru, went out at age 52 with a massive heart attack while he was jogging. The point would seem to be that life hangs by a very thin thread no matter what you're throwing down your slop chute, and it's probably healthier not to spend whole hours of it dissecting your bowel movements. As for me, I'll go to my grave singing the praises of St. Mary's Hospital, San Francisco. In fact, I'm thinking of faking it so I can get back in for a week or so.
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