Sometimes called the War on Error

Dolliver State Park, Des Moines River, Iowa - Tuesday July 11 -It has 

cooled down a little. It was in the lower eighties today. The rivers are still running bank to bank. Corn about above the waist.

The sign reads “Criminal Screening”. I have been instructed to sign in and wait. I do what am told to do, I sit down and wait. In a bullet proof cage sits the captain. He pushes a button. Doors swing open.  Doors swing shut. They are in constant motion – swoosh, ka-bang, swoosh. The state bureaucrats are being be let out to take their smoke breaks. The potential criminals, one at a time, are being  let in to have their fingers printed. The seat of government is comprised of rows of  
very similar,  buildings – white facades with green plate glass windows. They were surrounded by ledges behind which flowers grow. The primary function of raised flowerbeds is to keep terrorists at bay without being aesthetically unpleasing. In bureaucracies everything gets rationalized. The ledges also function as benches for citizens to sit on while awaiting interrogation and for bureaucrats to smoke except they usually hang about just outside the door in clusters.

There is the possibility that this may be a long drawn out process (I’ll have to get copy of my cancelled check if the paperwork has not been processed). It would be easier to just file a new application, I suppose. But what do bureaucrats do if  they fine duplicate sets? That would be a bureaucratic nightmare. A bureaucratic nightmare is soon made your nightmare. A bureaucrat knows how to put the monkey on someone else’s back. Fortunately this time all the paperwork had been properly forwarded. I am in and out.  I go home. I was lucky.

.

The ‘War on Terror’ at one time held 100,000 prisoners . For most of the original 742 detainees at Guantanamo there was no record of why they held originally been detained.  85-90% of the detainees of Abu Graahb had “no intelligence value”.

Fortress America, DC

Redoubt USA

Democracy at work

Yes citizen, state official business

            And move on, no loitering, please

Obstructing sidewalks is a crime

Beware citizen report all security breaches

Do your duty work hard and spend money

Stay out of trouble,

This is your America, home of the free

Americans be proud, wave your flags

Exercise your rights, bare arms.

This is your America, citizens

In case of emergency follow instructions

Homogenized, sanitized, capitalized.

For your protection one in ten has a secruity clearance

Fortress America

Redoubt USA

Form a single line, show an offical photo ID

DC Fortress America,

Redoubt USA

Vote but not to often

Protect democracy with concrete

What about that citizen?

Wave them flags

Hate ragheads

Tie yellow ribbons

Fortress America,

Redoubt USA

Good citizens

Be obedient, be complacent

Practice family values

If you are weak, if you have no army of your own, borrow your enemy’s army – Mark Danner

Secrecy’s primary function is to avoid accountability (and especially embarrassment). Only rarely is it to prevent harming some third party or to thwart counter-intelligence which the usual excuses for its invocation. 

The justification for the use of ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques was based on reasoning that if volunteers who could opt out when subjected to the techniques did not suffer long-term psychological harm, then detainees subjected to those same techniques “for real” would not experience them either.

No Left Turns

Left right

Right face

Turn back the clock

Tick toc

Left right

Dress right

Suitable dress

Left right

Left right

Change step

Left

Turn right

Right left

See the light

Take a flight

Left right

Left right

Do it right

At midnight

Red light

Left right

Turn tight

All night

Left right

Left right

Hep hep

Two three

Keep in step

We do not struggle as working class, we struggle against being working class, against being classified. Our struggle is not the struggle of labour; it is the struggle against labour. It is the unity of the process of classification (the unity of capital accumulation) that gives unity to our struggle, not our unity as members of a common class – John Holloway – Change the World without Taking Power, 2002 p60

The Noble Tradition of Congressional In-action

You are honor bound to reject the petition

But you can separate the petition from its prayer

And receive the petition and reject its prayer

Honor the right to petition but not its intention

Thus the debate proceeded loop hole by loop hole

And with an air of noble political sentiments

About an ignoble practice

“A decision pregnant with consequences

Of a most disastrous character”

Exhorted Senator Calhoun of South Carolina

And he rose and stalked out of the chamber

And they voted not on laying the petition on the table

But about the motion to do so

To lay on the table the motion not to receive the petition

The more of one’s wealth is obtained by plunder or extortion, the more spectacular and self-aggrandizing will be the forms in which it’s given away – David Graber – Debt, 2011

INTRINSIC SUPERIORITY

Current Loation: Lake View, Iowa - Black Hawk Lake (Tuesday July 9, 2013) - the southern most glacial lake in Iowa. I've finally found the hot weather

Acting is the opposite of living – it is as close to dying as we can get and still remain conscious. In acting we only have to be concerned with an audience. No other reality need impinge upon us. The reality of our action does exist for the audience of course and we are impacted by the reality of that audience’s sense our authenticity. Of course the audience may also be acting, in which case it is all imaginary except that we go on accumulating debts especially if there were not enough butts in the seats and there usually isn’t.

Ginny says “oh, faux surfaces. I’m going to use this in my project.” She had looked over my shoulder at the drawing. Walter called it wallpaper. “Can you make enough to cover a room?” “Sure for the right price.” I’m just saying it. I really don’t mean it. I don’t want to manufacture wallpaper any more than he wants to hang it.  Linda is house sitting at what she is calling the ‘wallpaper place from hell’. “Ever conceivable square inch is covered by custom designed wallpaper. It’s in the lease. It can’t be altered. The owners are wallpaper designers,” she tells us.  “Can we take a tour? Will you do a show and tell?”

The thunder on the prairie like the rain on the plains stays mainly in Spain

Prairie Cinema

The cottonwoods rustle

            Of eminent downpour

The show is about to begin

The horizon darkens

            The atmosphere dims

The killdeer flaps about

            Pretending a broken wing

The meadowlark sits on his fence post

            The air is cool and moist

Red-wing pecks for rements

            Of the previous summer

The big push is on

            Distant thunder rumbles

            Over the horizon

This weather can spawn tornados

            Grass fires stampede herbavoirs

Distant smoke is indistinguishable

            From a destabilization

The surround sound of the thunder

Its all so very theatrical

In cars and boudoirs everywhere but especially behind computer screens is where life is really lived, lived in absentia. Crawl out of your closets. Eyes a-twinkle. Inner child at play. Product of programs for self-esteem enhancement. The ego is envious. Jealousy and envy can be dangerous. Anonymous performance should have only limited warranties. Little enough for failure. E-money and its fool are easily parted. Reach credit limits quickly. Reach for the stars. You too can be a celebrity. Make lots of money. Buy real estate and a boat. Maybe there won’t be any regrets, but someone must pay. Sex is just one of the vicarious experiences. Did you see the clock jump? Ever tick of the atomic clock is one less moment to consume. One more payment to make. One more debt is incurred. Fraud and deception are rampant but are covered under user agreements. Click ‘I agree’. Life is so easy, but when you run out of credits you disintegrate. Just hap and circumstances on the byways to eternity. It’s all a lie. Become a top gun. Fly by wire. Headsup display. Virtual sensations. Suppressed emotions. Know where you are? Know where your children are? What does it matter, consume and die.

A global society is a society of strangers

Those that create social problems need not suffer as a result.

History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme – Mark Twain

“You’re in your minimalist phase I see”, Walter says. “No. They are goats. I can see them now. Eating grass on the side of the hill. Are there any on the back side of the hill?”  He suggest I combine goats and tornadoes in a single drawing. I like the idea. “Wait a minute,” he says, “I can see where this is going and I don’t want to see any upside down goats.” He was referring to the drawing in book seven of the goat with its feet in the air. I change the subject. “I have written something about accordions,” and I show it to him. Accordions, for Walter, are the next best thing to goats. “I don’t like either goats or accordions,” he declaims. “I just like to think about goats and accordions.” “What’s the difference.” I ask? “Did you know that the keyboard accordion was invented here?” In fact I did know that. And that goats had been used to keep the grass down where the hills were too steep to mow. There is a lot to think about when regarding either goats or accordions. You don’t have to like them to think about them. I read to him the passage about music and big women and big feet. Then he asked me if I thought that specific musical instruments might arouse erotic feelings for specific anatomical parts. I give the notion a quick thought – “umh!”  I suspected that the hurdy-gurdy might be such an instrument. On the other hand, I thought that the Theremin might have to opposite effect, i.e. suppress any erotic thoughs. “Except for Vincent Price,” Walter replied. “Your desire for Vincent or Vincent’s desire for women with big feet,” I asked him?

What is gained on the level of appearances is lost on the level of being and becoming – Raoul Vaneigem

The easiest solution to implement are generally the most egregious solution to any social problem – the objetive to isolate the elite from the problem and marginalize those impated by the problem. The problems just go away and the elite get reimbursed for their troubles.

The propensity to act is inversely related to any positive positie results from such actions.

Once upon a time factory girls had orgasms while siting at their sewing machines. Lost in the relentless and monotonous rhythm of the machine, hour after hour. The brain refused to sustain itself. It just had to have stimulation. Two or three times a day this happens says the matron. Even the young maidens lose all sense of being on occasion and are unaware of what is happening to them. They afterwards feel shame. The older women just considered it one of their few on-the-job benefits.