Got your blog done?

“Yes.”

Is it a happy one?

“No.”

So you’re trying to educate our readers rather than entertain our readers?

“Yes.”

See, I’m trying to entertain our readers. Actually my blog both entertains AND educates – I warn them about the Fish Folk.

“Hmpf. We’re competing with each other. Actually, my blog is about you. I just write what you say.”

That’s cuz I’m trying to educate YOU. You don’t need no entertaining, cuz I’m entertainment enough. (And I’m also humble, crumbling and wise…)

“I write most of my blog in your voice now, Smith voice. I put Lady in quotes.”

Oh, right. I’ve noticed that.

“Maybe because I’m working on your biography.”

I’m LIVING my biography. Doesn’t make any difference. It’s all gonna be past tense some day anyway.

“Reminds me of the title of a movie, ‘My Life As a Camera.’ It occurs to me that I should write you in lower case, just like you do.”

No, I talk in upper case.

“We are our own bubble. Here, I’m going to change Noam to Gnome.”

Why?

“To be more entertaining.”

Oh, you’re a sad soul. Grasping at straws to entertain folk. How dare you sink so low. Sinking low’s MY job.

“I also have catchy titles, try and catch readers.”

Kinda like fly paper? I try a much more time-honored system. I just give them money to read. That’s where all our money’s been going; I’ve been meaning to tell you…

* * *

“The more I learn, the more I think criminalization of drugs is a way to disenfranchise people, keep a permanent underclass or a way to marginalize the opposition. It’s a tool of the rich. Same with the tax forms. It’s a way to frighten those considering political dissent.”

The rich use drugs, but seldom get caught. Occasionally you get your Rush Limbaugh, but he was caught as a result of looking into something else.

As long as you have alcohol and tobacco legal, there’s no way it’s justifiable to illegalize other drugs. Cuz the amount those two kill every year is probably a million times the others.

That’s another thing. Some of the far east countries tried to reject our cigarettes and our cigarette advertising. The WTO told them they had to accept BOTH, otherwise there would be severe sanctions.

Our new joke: eat the rich, they taste just like chicken. It’s essentially true, cuz the rich are cowardly chickens. And we outnumber them, so much. If we all stood up, they’d crumble.

“I want to live outside the system.”

I’ve been doing that my entire life, and it’s wearying.

“Actually if they disband Social Security, they’ll increase dissent. Social Security ties people to the system.”

Oh, they can’t do that. There’d be runs on Washington. The baby boomers would never put up with it: WE WANT OUR BENNIES. Saw a great political cartoon. A mass of baby boomers surrounded Bush saying, ‘Invade who you want, torture who you want, steal what you want, but leave our Social Security alone.’ That sums up American awareness right now.

“Oh, and the thing the Dems just passed. They coupled a good minimum wage hike with a hundred billion in Iraq/Afghan war funding. I remember when the Republicans said the whole war would just cost 90 billion.”

No, the Republicans said the whole war would cost 50 billion. That was their original estimate.

“Fucking assholes. I don’t trust the Democrats and the Republicans alike now. I’ve totally changed since canvassing for Kerry. I think the people who vote have good intentions but the party is rotten, corrupt. I’m voting Green next time.”

So. How many times can voters fall for the same lies? Mankind’s eternally hopeful, keeps falling for the same promises. Of course, if they bothered to do some research, they’d know in advance they were lies.

In 2003, Congress approved a 78 billion dollar supplemental cost for the war. OK? 2004, 87 billion. 2005, 82 billion. 2006, 72 billion. This year it’s a 100 billion, by the DEMS. That’s SUPPLEMENTAL. That’s saying, ‘We didn’t budget right, we need more to keep doing what we’re doing.’

This was a war that was supposed to cost 50 billion and paid for out of the oil we’d steal as we were greeted as liberators with flowers by the Iraqis. I guess Halliburton needs more money.

“What really makes me incensed is the Democrats. I thought they were going to change things. They’re the ones who approved the 100 billion budget.”

The Demo-fraidy cats.

“They’re not afraid. They’re corrupt.”

Some are both. They’re afraid they’ll be painted with the not-supporting-the-troops advertisements when they run. The only way to support the troops is to bring them home, NOW. Besides, every soldier over there right now is a war criminal.

“No, I don’t think people who are ignorant are war criminals. My brother’s over there right now. He didn’t know any better when he signed up; thought he was doing good for our country.”

NO, they are carrying out an illegal war by our government. The Nazis’ favorite excuse was, ‘We’re only following orders.’ The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal says that’s not enough. If you don’t do what’s right, you’re complicit in the crime. Every single one of our soldiers over there could be tried and convicted under the criteria for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals.

Besides a lot of our boys are fighting the government and going to jail for it. Right now, saying support the troops means giving them more money to torture, rape and murder Iraqi civilians. Ignorance is no excuse; following orders is no excuse. Torture, rape and murder are crimes. And even the cooks over there who are just feeding the torturers and murderers are complicit, cuz they’re enablers. Every single person in Congress who voted for the war funds is a war criminal. This is WRONG. And the main argument I’ve read, why the Democrats aren’t doing anything now, is they want to win the next election.

“Screw them.”

And then MAYBE, once they’ve won, MAYBE, they’ll do the right thing. Meanwhile, hundreds more American troops are going to die. Tens of thousands more Iraqis are going to die. We’ve murdered over a million Iraqi citizens already. We’ve driven another three to four million from their homes that we know about. How much blood and misery do you need before America will stand up for what’s right?

“Plus 500,000 Iraqi children killed in the nineties from Clinton’s sanctions. What we’re doing in Iraq is de facto genocide.”

Yep. And that’s just children. Who knows how many adults. Of course, as we know from Gnome, America has never stood up for what’s right, and Americans have almost never ever stood up for what’s right. They killed the Indians, they lynched the Negroes, they put the American Japanese in concentration camps during World War II. It just never stops.

Even something we all know about. Ronald Reagan’s administration used CIA planes to fly drugs from Afghanistan to sell so they could use that money to buy arms from Iran to kill South Americans. It shames me to be an American.

“I see disappointed expressions everywhere when we tell people we’re American. It’s a bummer to them. And Hamid said to tell people we’re Dutch or British. I guess former imperialists are more palatable than current ones.”

Although to be honest, I doubt there’s a serious honorable government ever, certainly not now. Governments do what they want to do. And as I.F. Stone said, ‘All governments are run by liars and nothing they say about anything should be believed.’ And Ben Franklin said, ‘There was never a good war or a bad peace.’

I just can’t believe spinelessness of the American public. Sheep in the sheep pen.

“According to our friends in education, they’re making it so that people only look to authority for the right answer. Standardized testing teaches people to parrot what they’ve been told.”

Right, they’re eviscerating the educational system. We have a whole generation educated in ignorance, to only follow orders, to not question authority, don’t think for yourself. Bush has done more damage to this country than Hitler did to Germany or Stalin did to Russia. And I despise Jimmy Carter for backing down in his statement that the Cheney Bush regime is the worst in American history.

“Carter’s unsavory. His support of the junta in El Salvador, military aid to topple democratic forces in Guatemala, supporting the Mujahadin in Afghanistan, I think he also did something bad in Indonesia.”

Plus, as you said yesterday, Gnome wrote every single president since World War II could be impeached for war crimes.

* * *

“Actually, we’re enablers. By using gas.”

We don’t drive.

“We take planes.”

Everybody’s an enabler. We’re just trying to cut down on the number of our sins. But right now we’re both sitting here with PCs on our laps, probably made with slave labor somewhere. We’re both using electricity. The thing in our favor is with the poetry, art and blogs we’re fighting the bad guys, trying to awaken some good. We’ve got rid of our cars.

“That’s the main thing there. Getting rid of our cars.”

And we make all these little adjustments, like buying one BIG bottle of plastic water rather than three of four little ones. [We're in Morocco else we wouldn't be drinking bottled water.]

If you’re alive on this planet right now, you’re part of the problem. Nobody’s guiltless. It’s just a question of degree. Hell, even Al Gore uses untold thousands of dollars every month of electricity. Ralph Nadar flies around in airplanes. There’s no way to breathe and not be part of the problem.

“It’s essentially an overpopulation problem.”

Yeah, but even when we had fewer people, we still had the strong taking from the weak, the rich ripping off the poor. I don’t care how far back you go. You had priests punishing everybody else while they screw little boys. You have CEOs marketing death to their customers in cigarettes and alcohol. It’s not just overpopulation. We’re just very badly wired, for greed, violence, selfishness. Basically, humans say, ‘Screw you. What’s in it for me?’ And they’re not gonna change. Even if they could change somewhere down the line, there’s no longer any line. Some say a hundred years, some say fifty years. I think those are both optimistic.

“I know I don’t expect to survive to an old age.”

Oh, I never did either. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Maybe God needs a finger pointer and kept me around. If that’s true, She should have picked someone else.

In spite of all this, I’m a happy person with a positive outlook.

“Ha ha.”

There ain’t much life left, but at any point in anybody’s life they could be run over by a bus.

“Ah, the magical mystery tour. The Bus of Death before the light at the end of the tunnel.”

So I live each day as joyously as I can. Do no damage, try to be good. And leave ‘em with a laugh…

“Tune in for more RANTS AND RAVES ABOUT WAR CRIMES AND GODS…”

- Lady K

THE POSITION OF THE PRIVILEGED

“A common response that I get, even on things like chat networks, is, I can’t believe anything you’re saying. It’s totally in conflict with what I’ve learned and always believed and I don’t have time to look up all those footnotes. How do I know what you’re saying is true? That’s a plausible reaction. I tell people it’s the right reaction. You shouldn’t believe what I say is true. Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It’s something you have to find out for yourself.” Noam Chomsky, “Liberating the Mind from Orthodoxies”

Read a book, The Passage and Other Stories by Mustapha El Ghazi. All four stories are about the lives of the unfortunate in Morocco. From the stories I gather dissent is punished and there is an active movement for workers rights. There is also a cultural divide, a deference to authority which criminally stigmitizes people who dissent. I’m going to write him, try to start a correspondence.

Read a new newspaper — The Casablanca Analyst — published by two Moroccan professors of English. It’s the sole English-language newspaper in Morocco. Its contents are a strange juxtaposition of naïveté and sophistication. The paper addresses globalization/imperialism in a knowing way, but puts me off with its deference to authority of native church and state.

After reading this paper, I bought the latest issue of Newsweek. I’m keeping an eye on Fareed Zakaria. I’ve slightly agreed with a couple of his pieces in the past, but now I must take his analysis with a grain of salt. I’m also shocked that Newsweek pushes him as such a nuanced “expert” given his lack of basic, basic knowledge. (Heck, I don’t know much, but at least I’m not pushing myself as an expert on international affairs.) Here’s a letter to the editor about Zakaria:

“THE USUALLY KNOWLEDGEABLE AND clearheaded Fareed Zakaria has been seriously misinformed on recent Latin American history (“Right Ideas, Wrong Time,” March 19). He says Ronald Reagan supported human rights and democracy there. Not so. Reagan’s administration supported and armed the murderous Salvadoran junta, the genocidal Guatemalan General Rios Montt, the notorious Honduran death squads and the war of terror waged against Nicaraguan civilians by the contras. George W. Bush’s neglect of the region has been, in comparison, downright benevolent.” Patricia Sitkin, Linden, California

Specialization and elitism in education and journalism is killing us. Delegation of decision-making to “experts” is killing us. Knowledge acquisition is haphazard even among the privileged. And those who are privileged enough to be educated are often the most indoctrinated. We need to educate ourselves in history, especially recent history. And we need to know what’s going on in marginalized political discourse to get a proper parallax.

We send people “over there” while deferring to authority and a misguided belief in the benevolence of our state and its “elected” representatives. We should not delegate understanding to such an extent; compartmentalization isolates us from our representatives’ actions until we’re blindsided by the consequences.

* * *

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get somewhere else–if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”
Lewis Carroll

“This quote is perfect for the decay of the middle-class lifestyle,” I tell Smith. “Mom says she’s had to work much more just to maintain her pace of life.”

“You know, there’s some figures on that. How much productivity has gone up, how much real wages have gone down, how one has to work longer. Productivity has gone UP, so we’re actually producing more per person. Yet we end up working longer for the same pay. So even without inflation, pay has gone down.”

“I know the dollar has lost a significant amount of its value just the past year. Another thing about labor – I appreciate labor-saving devices here in Morocco. I’m running just to make safe food for us. We could probably buy a refrigerator, but that’s just so wasteful.”

“No we can not. That’s out of the question. Well, wait. You know what, maybe we could stop by the electronics store. See if they have a little teeny-weeny fridge. I mean, we paid 40 dollars for a heater. Maybe we can get a similar deal for a cool space. That’s a thought.”

“It would make life a lot easier for me. I wouldn’t have to cook everything from scratch three times a day.”

Even breakfast cereal is bad for Smith; we discovered it has too much salt. And though we have peanut butter, it’s not healthy to eat bread regularly. I want Smith to have many more years with me. When we digress from healthy eating, I see the effects on him immediately. He’s more tired; his heart starts skipping.

“Let’s go check the store,” he says. “They gotta have small things, don’t they?”

“I was lying in bed this morning, getting depressed. I was thinking about all the time required to buy food and cook and keep clean here, and how I don’t have the time I want to make art and write. There are no healthy pre-packaged foods.”

“Well, that’s true anywhere.”

“Oh, not necessarily. But actually, if you buy a pre-packaged salad in the US, then you’re also using plastic, which is bad for the Earth. And there are salad bars here, but we don’t know if the vegetables have been washed. You got really really sick one day when you didn’t wash that peach. You’re 61 years old. I don’t want us to have a medical emergency in this country.”

I was thinking also about how terrible it is that we rely so much on these electric appliances. I want to minimize my consumption of energy. Also thinking about how measures of rising affluence in developing countries cite statistics of things like refrigerator ownership.

When we get to a place we must buy things and then it’s not possible to carry them with us. What a waste. When we left Marrakech, I gave Hamid my leftover spices and staples and cookware.

When we leave Essaouira we plan to give our heater and cookware to a woman we’ve met on the street. We give her money every day, but it makes me ill to think about how much we’ve spent on our comfort versus how little we’ve given her. So I hope she can take our things and sell them or use them herself.

Also thinking about what I wrote about “professional” beggars since having roamed around more. I think it’s easier for the privileged mind to write someone off by thinking of someone as a “professional” beggar. We walked the Northwest side of the medina and found gutted buildings which were inhabited. We saw camps of men outside the city wall. These people have a nook to call “home” and are not sleeping right on the streets, but they are certainly not faring well. Perhaps the cops chase them off the streets? We noticed that they were gone the day the film crew was here. To be a beggar is a horrid, hard life, not a life one would choose.

* * *

Back to the worsening condition of the American worker. I’ll end with another Chomsky quote from the same article:

“Most oppression succeeds because its legitimacy is internalized. That’s true of the most extreme cases. Take, say, slavery. It wasn’t easy to revolt if you were a slave, by any means. But if you look over the history of slavery, it was in some sense recognized as just the way things are. We’ll do the best we can under this regime. Another example, also contemporary (it’s estimated that there are some 26 million slaves in the world), is women’s rights. There the oppression is extensively internalized and accepted as legitimate and proper. It’s still true today, but it’s been true throughout history. Take working people. At one time in the U.S., in the mid-19th century, working for wage labor was considered not very different from chattel slavery. That was the slogan of the Republican Party, the banner under which northern workers went to fight in the Civil War. We’re against chattel slavery and wage slavery. Free people do not rent themselves to others. Maybe you’re forced to do it temporarily, but that’s only on the way to becoming a free person, a free man, to put it in the rhetoric of the day. You become a free man when you’re not compelled to take orders from others. That’s an Enlightenment ideal. Incidentally, this was not coming from European radicalism. There were workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, a couple of miles from where we are. You could even read editorials in the New York Times saying this around that time. It took a long time to drive into people’s heads the idea that it is legitimate to rent yourself. Now that’s unfortunately pretty much accepted. So that’s internalizing oppression. Anyone who thinks it’s legitimate to be a wage laborer is internalizing oppression in a way which would have seemed intolerable to people in the mills 150 years ago.”