Slouching Towards The Cataclysm

There is a news report in the public media which states that certain celebrities are now considered the "most influential". These include (and feature at the top) such luminaries as Leonardo de Caprio and Rosie O'Donnell.

I'm horrified.

Where are the Einsteins of our current times? Where are the people who have actual brains and have spent their time thinking clearly about our present problems and have a vision centered towards solving our world's problems? They're not here. Instead we get Rosie, a woman who oogles Tom Cruise on daytime T.V. and who spouts her views in outrageously loud and poorly thought-out tones. Instead we get an actor who has studied nothing of import and who's main talent is impersonating other people.

At the very least we should be looking at people like the musician Sting who, taking the large amounts of money he has earned as a popular music star, spends his time practicing yoga, meditating and teaching himself how to play medieval instruments in order to stretch his brain.

We are guilty of worshipping false idols and I'm afraid that perhaps our punishment for this basic fault will be as biblical as the warnings.

We need to wake up and smell the Apocalypse.

Seven Points Of Change - Necessary For The Future

1. DISMANTLE RACIALLY SELECTIVE MASS INCARCERATION, beginning with action to sunset or repeal all mandatory sentencing legislation, eliminate the differential in penalties for crack and powdered cocaine, and halt privatization of prisons and prison health services. America's prison population has multiplied eight-fold since 1970. African Americans are one-eighth of this nation, but fully half of her prisons and jails. Mass Black incarceration is a national public policy that destroys the prospects for progress in every arena of African American life.

2. AID AND EMPOWER THOSE DISPERSED AND DISPOSSESSED BY KATRINA through legislation that specifically recognizes the rights of hundreds of thousands of exiles to return to their communities under conditions of adequate housing, schools, health care, and social support. The Gov't must demand that destruction of public housing and other affordable dwellings cease, and that affordable housing be constructed for the 70 percent of uprooted residents who were renters. Not one federal dime should be spent for programs that lead to further gentrification of New Orleans. The Gov't should establish its own permanent Watchdog Unit to monitor all reconstruction activities.

3. END THE WAR IN IRAQ NOW through support of the Woolsey-Waters-Lee "Bring the Troops Home and Iraqi Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2007"; H.R. 508, and renunciation of George Bush's pre-emptive war doctrine in all its manifestations. The Bush war policy is a formula for endless global conflict, deterioration of the rule of law among nations, and growing impoverishment, indebtedness and evisceration of civil liberties at home. Further, the Gov't must resist all attempts to draw the U.S. into war with Iran, and block covert and overt U.S. schemes for "regime change" elsewhere in the world, most notably in Venezuela.

4. GET THE U.S. MILITARY OUT OF AFRICA by withholding funds and authorization for a permanent string of U.S. military bases throughout oil-rich regions of Africa, from Djibouti and Ethiopia in the east to the Gulf of Guinea in the west. In January, the White House created a Pentagon Africa Command as part of its so-called Global War on Terror, thus targeting the continent for further militarization and de-stabilization. The Gov't must create its own Watchdog Unit to monitor and expose administration plans to make Africa the next front in its wars to seize the world's resources.

5. TRANSFORM THE CITIES AND CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS through a massive program similar to the U.S. post-war Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe, or the much larger federal programs that established national infrastructure necessary for the creation of an almost exclusively white American suburbia during the same period. Integral to this project must be creation of GOOD JOBS AT GOOD WAGES for the residents of the cities, good schools to educate young people who will fill those jobs, and democratic participation of residents in the transformation of their neighborhoods and hometowns. The Gov't must unequivocally support the Employee Free Choice Act and other measures that allow employees on any job to organize unions wherever and whenever they choose.

6. ESTABLISH TRULY UNIVERSAL, SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE for all Americans, by endorsing HR 676, co-sponsored by Reps. John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich, as a first step toward a single payer system of national health insurance. 15-30% of every American health care dollar pays for advertising, shareholder profit and other non-health care costs. Medicare, Medicaid and single payer systems like the Canadian one spend 97 to 99 cents of every dollar on health care. These are the only practical ways to deliver health care to all Americans. Any proposal that further entrenches private profit further delays the advent of a genuine national health care program, thus making inevitable the unnecessary death of millions of Americans.

7. ENSURE VOTING RIGHTS through measures to require verifiable paper trails, along with enforceable guarantees that every citizen has an equal opportunity to vote, and an equal chance to see that vote counted. The 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were both thrown by the selective nullifications of tens of thousands of black votes in Florida and Ohio. The Gov't must support all measures that reinstate the franchise to persons who have served out their criminal sentences.

Time Elapse

He set up the time exposure. His camera tightly set upon
the tripod with the shutter open and the lens set wide to
capture the lines of the lightning bugs dancing around

his roses on the hot summer night. Brilliant light paths
cut into his emulsion while the dull yet beautiful roses
slowly inched their way onto the photo with their sullen

beauty caught on film through the patience of their
vegetative state, returning a glimpse towards the cycloptic
peek with an acceptance of low-light inevitability. Posing in

this way they seared an image onto his attempt at art.
Yet strangely when he returns and bathes his visaged
film in stinking fluid, he sees what was never expected

inside his long-set look. Caught within the darkened
frame of rosebush queen with yellow insectoid crown
a ghostly cat stares back at him. Whether by design

or in strange awareness understood at levels he could
never comprehend his feline ghost stands still beneath
the bush and stared at his handiwork for spectral image

capture. She of padded-foot stalk had stopped to look
upon this strange three-legged creature and paused
at length to show her limpid eyes to his metered glimpse.

Now a separate regal ghosting invades his photo and there
upon this serendipitous canvas of silver and celluloid
he sees ,frozen in partial wink, an eternity of curiosity.

~ Stuart Andrew Marshall Tanner ~

And Yet...

And yet once again we hide our bushels under a light of unreason.

And yet once again we wallow in the mistaken

self-pity of the illusion of necessity.

And yet... when we try to justify our ambitions,

we find that the stage manager has left to find a pastrami on

rye and left his drunken fool of a cousin in charge of the

cue changes so that we miss our entrance and

stumble on the risers before performing in front

of the laughing multitude.

And yet... the peanut butter sandwiches which

we packed in the mornings begin to take on

a hauntingly delicious flair when compared

to the dry semi-sandwiches jammed into

the whirl-around vending machines

we cowered before in the lobby just yesterday.

And yet... we still cannot get the beautiful

girl with the cute smile to look at us

when we wear our best outfit and do our hippest

impressions of Christopher Walken.

So Therefore...

We keep our fingers crossed when the

newsmen say that the world is going to end

and hope it will be soon so that we do not have to

endure the humiliation of trying to fit our square peg

selves into the round hole world we found ourselves in one more time.

Stuart Andrew Marshall Tanner

April '07

Once Again Corporate Amerika Tries To Shut Down Freedom

The following posting was made by my friend Scott (from Wyoming) Larson.

He says in much clearer terms what is in my mind right now. Please read.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Copyright Royalties Board has issued a ruling that will instantly kill most internet music webcasts: College Radio stations, everything on Shoutcast.com, and my personal favorite, RadioParadise.com. Also at risk are individualized webcasters such as Last.FM and Pandora.com. If you are among the millions who listen to internet radio and cherish the variety available, be aware that this decision does not require the approval of congress—it's a sordid tale but it's important to raise a cry right now. Tell your friends, contact news outlets and do what you can to generate awareness that once again big business has stuck it to the customer. The following quotes can tell it better than I can.

Kurt Hanson of RAIN wrote: http://kurthanson.com/archive/news/030207/index.shtml

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange.

RAIN has learned the rates that the Board has decided on, effective retroactively through the beginning of 2006. They are as follows:

2006 - $.0008 per play
2007 - $.0011 per play
2008 - $.0014 per play
2009 - $.0018 per play
2010 - $.0019 per play

RAIN ANALYSIS: In 2006, a well-run Internet radio station might have been able to sell two radio spots an hour at a $3 net CPM (cost-per-thousand), which would add up to .6 cents per listener-hour. Even adding in ancillary revenues from occasional video gateway ads, banner ads on the website, and so forth, total revenues per listener-hour would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range.

That math suggests that the royalty rate decision -- for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! -- is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues. (KH)

Bill Goldsmith of RadioParadise wrote:
There's a lot of talk going on in webcasting circles about what constitutes a fair performance royalty rate for Internet radio. I have a radical suggestion: how about the same amount paid by FM stations? In other words - at this point - nothing. Why do we pay these royalties when FM stations don't? Because we're providing "perfect digital copies" of individual songs to our listeners, rather than engaging in the creation of traditional radio programming. The fact that this reasoning, which is the foundation of the differentiation between analog & digital broadcasting in the DMCA, is *just not true* is rarely discussed.

When I share with my listeners the discrepancy between what we pay in performance royalties & what an FM station pays ($0) they are flabbergasted and outraged. These are people who *know* that listening to Radio Paradise is no different from listening to an FM station (except for better programming Smile and the idea that we're fundamentally different because we transmit digitally seems absurd. It seems absurd because it *is* absurd - and every time the issue comes up, my blood pressure rises all over again.

While it is possible to "rip" a radio stream into individual songs, you can do the same thing - with little more effort, and with similar results in terms of audio quality - with an analog FM broadcast. If you were to take a random sampling of, say, RIAA attorneys (or Senators) and play them a song copied from my webcast and the same song copied from an analog FM station, I doubt that they'd be able to tell the difference.

Based on the feedback I get from my listeners, only a very small percentage ever record our station for any reason, and most of them are recording blocks of programming for playback during commute times or in other situations where they don't have access to the net. The vast majority of them just turn the station on and listen, just as they would do with an FM broadcast. No wonder they are astounded to find out that Congress - under the careful guidance of the RIAA - decided back in 1998 that we were an entirely different type of service that needed to play (and pay) by an entirely different set of rules.

Is it fair that FM broadcasters pay nothing to the owners of performance copyrights? Perhaps not. In most countries, they *do* pay. But is it fair for the recording industry to try to right this supposed wrong in such a manner that it drives law-abiding business people such as myself and the other independent webcasters out of business? I think not. Perhaps the most fair solution of all would be a significantly smaller royalty (something comparable to the 3.5% or so that both webcasters and broadcasters pay to songwriters) applied to *all* forms of radio.

Will "The Unborn" Please Stand Up?

I've been studying the writings of a teacher named Adyashanti who is probably one of the most powerful individuals it has been my pleasure to meet. His writings are powerful too. I'm reading a book called "Emptiness Dancing" by him which is very easy to read but harder to delve.

One of the subjects he broaches is the question of whether life ends here or if we live after we die. Or whether there is life after life and life as we run through many lives trying to get it right.

I won't spoil the plot for you but I will state that Adyashanti brings up the concept of "the unborn" which is our very essence. This part of who we are cannot be killed because in reality it is never born. It lives always at a place which exists and existed long before the gleam entered our daddy's eyes.

We are saved already, there is no action to save us except our willingness to lay down our lives and cling instead to the eternal.

It is a powerful concept and it is one I find I'm going to have to look into over and over again.

What Is It With Cats?

Strange creatures, eh what? They go from being nuisances who make an inordinate amount of trouble, needing to be let out, needing to be let in, feeding them (which means getting my carcase out of bed at a disgustingly early hour or she will continue to pounce upon me at five minute intervals), grooming them (hold still now, I promise I'll get them burrs out of your fur without hurting you too mu...YOWCH!!), and let's not even TALK about the catbox! They go from that to being this amazingly restful bag of purrs which lies upon you chest and twitches her tail in a most appeasing manner until I forget the jerkoff life which set me to lying upon the sofa (in hopes of forgetting just how frustrated and sad you feel) in the first place.

It's a trick I can tell you. How these critters get us to take care of them and nurse them and indulge their yowls and claws and hairballs is beyond my figguring...

But I do love the way they look at you when they want you to do something and you're too dumb to know what it is...

More On The Subject Of "I'm Not As Advanced As I Hoped I Was"

There's this person who's really ignoring me. I won't go into particulars but he's decided that because I accused him of being "an idjit" (which he's not but he acted like one and I lashed out at him) he's not going to acknowledge my existence. It's a shame I guess and in the grand scheme of things in my life and the world at large it means little.

But I find that it bothers me. Which means he's won, I guess. I'm quite sure he's started the cold shoulder to punish me and I'm actually astonished to discover that it bothers me. I guess I'm not as detached and holy and I would like to believe I am. It is too bad. If I were more detached and/or less proud I could just say something like, "Gee guy, I'm sorry I pissed in your soup." and leave it at that.

I'm gonna sigh a bit about it and try to love this person for the beautiful insights into myself he's given me. Then maybe I can stop being bothered and just smile a lot. (That'll bother him! (insert smirk here))

Comments Envy

I've been visiting the blogs of friends and acquaintances and trying to understand my feelings of envy as I notice all the comments others have had to there postings. It's not FAIR!! my inner child screams. I know people read this site because I see the counter show the "hits" the site gets. Yet no one comments. I'm not worthy. My inner child, whiner that he is, pouts in the corner and sez, "Nobody loves me!"

I wonder why it is that we humans feel this overwhelming need to be appreciated. Why can't we just be honest about posting our insights and know that just by stating them we are doing ourselves a great good and leave it at that? I feel so cheap that once I noticed that I'm not "getting my share" of comments, I started to feel a dissatisfaction so profound as to leave a pit of disappointment and sadness in my stomach. I'm not as evolved a being as I thought I was.

Perhaps I could put my blog into the "no comments accepted" mode and then I could lie to myself about all those who are dying to comment and yet can't. I could invent the legions of admirers and detractors who are stymied by their inability to make a scratch upon my iconic wit and viewpoints. Then I could gloat instead of sitting in the bath feeling bereft and ignored.

Ha! Go ahead ignore me! I don't care!

Such a lie. I'm just like the rest of humanity. I am a person desiring the acclaim and affection of others hearts and just like all others I languish in solitude. I, despite all attempts to the contrary, am human.

Infinite Supply

I believe that finding that you have lack in your life is a sure sign that you aren't in touch with your inner strength. The center of our being, which is beyond our thinking mind and is beyond our ego structure, lives in a place of infinite love and from that infinite love I believe we can find infinite supply to apply to our life.

Religion won't give it to you, working harder won't give it to you, stealing from others won't give it to you.

As the frontpiece of "The Course In Miracles" says,

"Nothing that is real can be threatened, nothing that is unreal actually exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

As the holy-rollers say in their chanting... "You gotta run to the rock."

There's more than enough for you... as long as you allow it to be in your life.