I was there! Wikimania 2012

Since Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC was only about five miles away, and I've been devoting far too many hours a week to editing (and even more discussing contentious edits) - how could I miss it??

FYI, the Wikimedia Foundation actually has a bunch of projects you can explore linked at the Wikimedia Foundation website including Wicktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, WikiCommons, Wikiquotes, etc.

Since I often go to big meetings and conferences after having noisily pushed some agenda or other, it was fun to go pretty much anonymously. Though I still managed to stir up a little trouble. Here are a few observations.

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales spoke during the plenary. He commented on the January 2012 Wikipedia “black out” protest where Wikipedia shut down for a whole 24 hours to protest onerous laws against copyright violations that governments and private parties could use to crush free speech on the internet. He memorably said “"When I go and visit government officials now, they’re a little bit afraid." Of course, Wikipedia doesn’t intend to become the lobbying arm of the anarchist movement, so governments don’t have to be overly afraid. On the other hand, they don't censor the tens of thousands of libertarian/anarchist/decentralist related articles either, as long as they follow general Wikipedia policies.

Evidently the State Department was not afraid, because it collaborated with Wikipedia on a simultaneous conference focusing on "Collaborative knowledge and the use of wikis in the public sector." Just as long as they don't try to confiscate Wikipedia and its sister projects as "public goods."

Speaking of which, waiting for the plenary, I was joking in my usually raucous manner with a DC Wikipedian about State Department involvement, asking “Does this mean they are NOT going to prosecute Julian Assange and WikiLeaks any more?” We laughed uproariously. The first person to ask a question during Q&A was sitting one empty seat over from me. She announced she worked for the State Department and her colleagues were all over the conference. Hmmm, was big sister giving us a warning to be careful of such effrontery?

Wikipedia’s "Gender Gap" project was recognized by inviting Mary Gardiner of The ADA Initiative, a group “dedicated to increasing the participation and status of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media. “ Yoo Ha! She repeated the statement of many powerless people trying to influence culture and politics: “Nothing about us without us.”

I wonder if she’d agree that means we must work for the very creation - or re-creation - of our political system from scratch, with women’s voices actually counting. She said it would take a 20-30% critical mass of women involved in Wiki activities before women don’t feel like token women. So now I know how many women have to be in our secessionist organizing groups!!

Of course it’s not as clear what the religious/ethnic/racial/sex orientation/etc. percentage should be for everyone to feel represented in a group when those minorities are so much smaller than 53% of the population (whatever that population might be, depending on the country or region). But the more diverse a locality, and the more representative it is of various groups, the less small minorities have to worry about representation - except of course for the general principle that representation in it itself is an easily corrupted process which tends to attract self-serving apparatchiks.

Oh, what was I wearing? My gray, red and white dress replete with playing cards - with a big “joker” on the back. Someone asked “Are you a gambler?” and I said “No, I’m only addicted to Wikipedia.”

I stayed around for the poorly attended press conference where someone (Wales?) made the very savvy point about copyright law that when the owners of the copyright (like various old TV shows and movies) won’t make the material available for consumers who want it to buy it (and perhaps he mentioned affordable price), consumers will just steal it. How much does it cost to set up a web site and download each program when you have millions of users? Ask NetFlix at $8 a month. (See this archive news link for 2012 stories about the conference.)

There were dozens of workshops and if you want to see them all go to the Wikimania 2012 Schedule.

Wikipedia is trying to come up with a more user friendly interface like Facebook or Twitter so you don’t have to learn their version of html to edit it. WikiGuru Brandon Harris gave an interesting talk on how WikiTechs intend to make Wikimedia projects a “more dynamic experience.” Including alerts from all the Wikiprojects one works on on the same page - weee, more free work for us volunteers to keep track of.

German Wikimedia was the only country group with its own booth. I figured I’d ask them directly about the urban legend I’d heard that Germans are so bureaucratic they even have to register their toasters. I’d already joked about it at a couple DC Wikipedia events so I figured I better “verify” my facts, since an internet search did not. They were surprised, saying they never heard of such a thing and that they do not even have to register their computers. Either that was a very old law that was repealed or just someone’s fabrication I fell for.

Friday I wore my black GOT LIBERTY? t-shirt, which was quite popular. I was disappointed that the Polish presenter of the talk “WikisourceLeaks - How Wikisource Can Play a Supporting Role in the Public Policy Discussion” did not show. Hope the State Department didn’t keep him out of the country! Actually the description of the discussion was pretty tame saying Wikisource is a “useful tool to re-use public information published by the public authorities.” I’ve contributed some published government documents on the government’s massacre of the Branch Davidians to Wiksource myself. I do have to wonder what WikiSource editors would do if people started dumping Wikileaks documents onto their servers? Or even a bunch of leaked material - probably delete it as copyrighted or proprietary - or “self-published original research.” Got a discussion going on Wikisource about that. What fun.

I then traveled over to “Wiki, Women and Museums” which to my dismay featured discussions of Israeli museums. I have a feeling most Israeli museums distort history to justify Israel’s land grabbing expansionist policies, human rights abuses, aggressive Israel lobbies in a number of countries, etc. I always say that Palestinians are the only people who are lied about more than women. Don’t get me started. I was on my best behavior and only wore a low key “fashion kefiyah” around my waist.

A fun session discussion was “How awful arguments are killing Wikipedia.” Discussed were bad logic and especially emotionally hysterical “pissing war” fights. (The sort of thing some of my edits seem to engender.) It was a panel with some rowdy long time editors discussing what someone described as the IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY. They agreed there wasn’t much written policy in the first few years of Wikipedia's existence, but by 2005 editors went crazing creating “nomalized rules instead of using common sense.” They opined it’s hard to get rid of rules and they hurt "newbie" editors. (Of course, I just recently argued on a Wikipedia policy page for keeping three explicit rules, so who am I to talk??)

Maybe Wikipedia needs a Sunshine Law that every year all rules (and their often lengthy explanations) go up for vote and those that don’t get some minimum number get trashed. But then we’d have to read them all!

One presenter described a study of editors' motivations which showed that in order of popularity they were: personal fulfillment, uncontrollable compulsion, agreement with the core educational mission and altruism. That's about the order of my motivation, as well.

Saturday was the Wikipedia Women’s Lunch, so I wore my “I survived FIVE thousand years of patriarchal hierarchies” t-shirt. It showed up loud and proud in the group photo.

But first I went to the “How to Motivate Older People to do Wikipedia” workshop. Of course, the target audience for most of us wanting to bring in "Seniors" (like me, boo hoo) is people older than 50 who already know how to use the computer and need something to do during their coming years of retirement. (At least til the welfare state collapses and they have to start selling their possessions on street corners.) They presented tips on how to help Seniors learn to contribute who don’t even know how to use a mouse. Number one rule: patience.

Wikipedia Women’s Lunch was great. Twice as many women showed as last year and 120 of us got up and said three words about ourselves, which actually averaged about 10. I said to great hoots of laughter: “I only need two words: CASTRATE PATRIARCHY!!” Oh, I’m such a naughty Gandhian. But the boys know I just mean it metaphorically.

CASTRATE THE STATE. Such magnificent alliteration.
Later I attended presentations on Wikihow where women editors actually are a majority, mostly because of its much friendlier user interface and community. I got the great idea of putting up some of my articles on how to organize grass roots secession groups - and they already have lots of regular articles on how to do protests. After that I caught the presentation on the WikiWomen Camp recently held in Buenos Aires and had a conversation about how crazy the "Fathers' Rights" group members can be. (While some fathers are screwed by the system in a variety of ways, others react with violent patriarchal fury to legal rulings that prevent them from completely controlling their women and children.)

Before you knew it, there we were at the closing ceremony with the Chief Archivist of the United States David Ferriero speaking. He shared a memorable quote from scholar (and 1950s quiz show cheat) Charles Van Doren who once said: “Because the world is radically new, the ideal encyclopedia should be radical, too.” A very cool description of Wikipedia and all the other projects.

Ferriero mentioned that the National Archives actually archive tweets, doubtless the more notable ones. He said that because technology changes so fast, last year's records may not be readable by this year’s technology. A frightening thought for those of us who religiously archive our stuff.

The funniest, saddest, most hair-tearing moment of his talk was when, after admitting he was amazed that he ended up in the position of Chief Archivist (inferring President Obama had appointed him), he read a long quote from Obama on transparency and openness!! I couldn’t have been the only one among the more radical Wikipedians clenching their teeth not to yell out “What about Bradley Manning and Julian Assange!” Or “Then why does Obama classify everything??”

Finally, the group of Hong Kong Wikipedians - 100% male - organizing Wikimania 2013 got up and talked about their plans. Now that should be interesting, since Hong Kong, formerly controlled by Britain (no, I never call it “Great”) is now controlled by State Capitalist/Communist China, though with a less oppressive hand than the rest of China. At some point some speaker said China IS getting better about letting people read what’s on Wikipedia and elsewhere. So Wikimania 2013 will be a challenge to their transparency and openness.

Final group picture. I’m undetectable in the back row of the big Wikipedia picture below, where I was taking pictures of the crowd. As we left the photo shoot the guys in red t'shirts on the right started chanting in real gungho macho style "USA! USA!" Ever the trouble maker I called out "Down with Imperialism!" There's only so much I can put up with in the name of encyclopedic neutrality!!!

Mary Gardiner and frontal group pics from Wikicommons.

Take a Giant Step Outside Your Mind...

Carol King's "Take a Giant Step" (outside your mind) as sung by Taj Mahal is one of my favorite consciousness raising songs. Ah, to have some good weed to smoke while listening. (And the govt wonders why I want to secede!) Some easy summertime listening...

Happy Right to Abolish Government Day!

Busy with a project I'll announce soon so will just share one of my most popular videos. Plus photo of Vermonters supporting secession in their July 4th parade:

Merry Solstice, Self-Destructive Humans...

Romney has declared he has a right to declare war WITHOUT Congress... (Romney, Candidate for King, Denies He Would Need Congress’s Approval for War - won't those protests at Mormon Temples be a hoot!)

But what does it matter. Long after we've killed ourselves off through radioactive chromosomal damage, the solstices and the equinoxes will go on, laughing at our self-destructive ways. Fun videos below.

Fall of Empires: American and Chinese Boondoggles

While watching the Transit of Venus on NASA channel and Wired.com - cleaning out my "blog it" file I found a couple things I decided to blog. The first about the U.S. empire on the verge of collapse; the second shows one reason Chinese may be just a few years behind:

* How America will collapse (by 2025): Four scenarios that could spell the end of the United States as we know it -- in the very near future... If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting. Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.

So in just a dozen years we may end up The (Loosely) Confederated Communities of America...


* The ghost towns of China: Amazing satellite images show cities meant to be home to millions lying deserted : These amazing satellite images show sprawling cities built in remote parts of China that have been left completely abandoned, sometimes years after their construction. Elaborate public buildings and open spaces are completely unused, with the exception of a few government vehicles near communist authority offices. Some estimates put the number of empty homes at as many as 64 million, with up to 20 new cities being built every year in the country's vast swathes of free land.

Just another nuke war video...

Was thinking of putting something positive and consciousness raising on the blog today; so much negative news I don't feel like reporting. So why not sum all that negative news up into where it's all heading. Those big exploding phalluses in the sky...

OK, here's something a little more positive... Just some imperfect human beings trying to stumble towards the light...

40 + Iraq/Afghanistan war vets toss medals at NATO protest

See story here. The first video has many of the very stirring speeches of 40 odd American vets who threw their military and war medals over the fence protecting buildings housing the NATO meeting in Chicago. NATO of course has been a co-conspirator with the United States in militaryaggression for more than twenty years. (At nine minutes one veteran tells about his post-war experience with protesters in the West Bank being attacked by Israeli soldiers.) The second also has much of it. Other shorter videos have some of these and other snippets, all in more closeup shots. Watch them.

When a buddy goes to the other side...

All of us 60 somethings have seen friends - and "foes" - go to the other side, especially over the last few years. I made an In Memoriam page for my buddy libertarian peacenik and draft and tax resister Bruce Baechler when in 2000, at the age of 45, he had a heart attack after an auto accident. See it here with lots of photos and his full (rather small) website as of the time of his death. Above, Bruce and Carol in Waco in September 1993 visiting the surviving Branch Davidians at the hotel where they were living at the time.

Bruce was known as an intrepid ballot access organizer and petitioner for the Libertarian Party - and a workshipper of the Goddess Maryjane. Now another buddy from that same crew, who lived out another 25 plus years, also has passed on.

John Robertson was a HOOT! He always told me I was one, so what greater compliment! Independent Political Report has an obituary if you want more details. Here's a photo of John with Marijuana legend Jack Herer.

Here's John with his beloved dog Goldie whose grave he was buried next to. Probably collecting signatures for Nancy Lord for D.C. Mayor in 1990.

And here's John and Carol at the 1993 Libertarian Convention in Salt Lake City.
See you 75 years down the road in some future revolution, Bruce and John! (I'll probably be a guy and you'll be gals, so watch out for my lothario ways!)

Libertarian Spring! Revolution in the LP

The Libertarian Party national leadership (the Libertarian National Committee) tends to swing back and forth between certain longtime pragmatic "partyarchs" with delusions of grandeur committed to winning at all costs and an ever revolving crew representing the large majority of more principled libertarians who want to get the message out - but don't intend to sell out. The latter tend not to show at the biannual national conventions quite as often as the former. (Photo grabbed from tv of Presidential Nominee Gary Johnson on the convention floor.)

This time a particularly power mad set of "libertarian" conservatives (mostly Israel supporters) - popularly known as the "cabal" - were royally trounced from the national committee that they assumed they easily would take over for a 5th year running. My BOOT ROOT (neocon Wayne Root) convention website and Libertarians for Peace press release - distributed to all delegates - certainly had some small impact on the proceedings. Root only was re-elected to one of the five at large seats on the committee because Presidential candidate Gary Johnson owed him some favors and personally endorsed him from the stage - to boos from the floor. The self-promoting and allegedly wealthy "born again Christian gambler" Root nevertheless got the lowest vote total of the five candidates.

DC delegates celebrate to left. I didn't make it myself.

Here's links to the most relevant Reason Magazine coverage: Anarchy at the Libertarian Party Convention - Still no Chair of the Libertarian National Committee - Gary Johnson: The LNC Chair Race is Exciting! Interesting! -Starchild Is Here - Geoff Neale is the new LNC Chairman The Reason reporter also has some great videos. CSPAN covered the debates and presidential voting and acceptance speeches here. Also see Bruce Majors' youtube site.

Below is THE SPEECH that turned the tide: when former Maryland libertarian Nick Sarwark called for people disgusted with the choices for chair to vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE. Enough did to defeat the other candidaes and in the next round of mostly new candidates, new candidate and former chair, principled libertarian Geoff Neale, was elected.



Less Antman's nominating speech for presidential second placer R. Lee Wrights was fantastic.



Libertarian vice presidential nominee Judge Jim Gray's nominating speech was particularly stirring - revolution every twenty years, he says, and we're overdue. (Around 17 minutes on this CPSAN video.)

Someone's unofficial poster.

However, the Libertarian Spring is not over yet. Root and his cronies still have control of the Libertarian National (Congressional OOOPS they renamed it) Campaign Committee, have got the whole donor base, and hope to rook principled libertarians out of their hard earned money to promote their "libertarian" (neo)conservative candidates. Many strategies to combat this insidious faction are being discussed. More to come.


Added later: Here's a 2004 photo of Texan Geoff Neale who in 2012 was elected for a second time as Chair of the Libertarian National Committee.

Chomosomal Damage...This is what Apocalypse looks like

A few weeks ago I startled myself awake with the words CHROMOSOMAL DAMAGE... I wrote it down, plus "leading to human extinction" and went back to sleep. But I've certainly thought about it the last few weeks and all the pollutants we are throwing into the air and water, destroying chromosomes and genes until those few babies born will be so deformed they cannot survive and the human race dies out.

Then someone sent me that wild and crazy guy Max Keiser's article: Fukushima Is Falling Apart: Are You Ready … For A Mass Extinction Event? and then I knew what I'd really been dreaming about.  Our worst nightmare from the old nuclear power nightmare days thirty years ago.  But it didn't blow up spectacularly or meltdown to the center of the earth. (At least not yet.) It just keeps up a steady stream of deadly radiation, pumped out in the air and oceans of the world day after day. (Yup, they use ocean water to cool the radioactive nuclear rod containers and much of it ends up back in the ocean.)

According to Max, depending on the fuel, one broken fuel rod leaked into the environment could over time kill almost 3 billion people - and there are 1,500 of these lying about the most damaged Fukushima reactor which easily could fall down upon them in even a small earthquake.   So if each one only kills 10 million people (x 1500 equals 15 billion) -- that's human extinction right there.

We're from the government and we are here to protect you...not from the nuclear dangers we the government created, but from the terrorist plots we the government created with our incredibly skilled undercover agent provocateurs encouraging citizen with fantasies (or wing nuts with wild dreams) to push the button on the fake bombs we the government created and lured them into using....

The Human  Epitaph will read: STUPIDITY is what killed them! Assuming the last survivor can read and write and have enough energy to write it on something semi-permanent before they fall face down in the mud...

This youtube video from the Max Keiser page is particularly fascinating since it shows the slow moving Apocalypse a month later. A couple of intrepid reporters from an alternative news service start recording in the evacuation zone, 30 km from the Fukishima plant - with their Geiger counters clicking away on the dashboard, registering in the single digits. As they approach Fukushima they see emptied towns and a friendly pack of liberated dogs at 21 km. (Surviving dog probably would eat you alive today if you got out of the car.)  They get closer and closer, through herds of aimless cows, through earthquake and tsunami damage, stopping to inspect a tsunami-wrecked truck for any dead driver. Finally 1.5 km from the plant, climbing a hill to get a view, their Geiger counters - which have been beeping away unmercifully - register 109.  We know that's bad.

  

CNN story a year later here shows damage at the plant and mentions 4000 workers are starting a 30 to 40 year cleanup process - where they are allowed to get close enough to highly radioactive debris, that is.  I want to see what those dogs' puppies look like.

The New Jim Crow - racism and war on drugs

Just happened to see author Michelle Alexander on RT.com talking about her 2010 book "The New Jim Crow" about how the war on drugs has been used so successfully to target and suppress black males, to kill, imprison and disenfranchise them. (Originally it also was used also to target white anti-war protesters, at least til they all grew up and joined the establishment.) The interview in light of the killing of Trayvon Martin by a defacto vigilante (as opposed to by a police officer where the issue would quickly be forgotten). Those of us active for decades against the war on drugs have used that expression frequently and its great to see an African-American woman writing a book about it. Somebody send a copy to our Kenyan-American president. And to all the African-American leaders not raising a really big stink about how their "Christian" religion is being used to turn black males back into defacto slaves of a heartless system. She makes the point there are more disenfranchised black males today than there were under slavery!!

Beatles Reunions - second generation

There's nothing that excites an old Beatlemaniac waiting for the Beatles to ignite the Apocalypse of Love than hearing about a Beatles reunion - even if it is just speculation about the four sons of the four horsemen getting together. (See my other Beatle-related posts.) Per this Guardian UK article: A Beatles reunion might be impossible, but music fans may yet get to see Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starkey on stage together, because the Beatles' sons have mooted the idea of starting a band. At first, it seemed like a joke. "What would you say to forming the Beatles – the Next Generation," BBC News' Ian Youngs asked James McCartney. But the young McCartney gave a surprisingly genuine response, revealing he had already discussed the concept "a little bit" with some of his fellow Fab Four heirs.

Once again for your pleasure, here's my video about going to see them twice in person in 1964:

"Riding Tehran" - Iranian women speak out

Women fighting for freedom in Iran - and opposing US/Israel military attack on them, you can be sure. (Hopefully this Antiwar.com article about Israel's 2012 attack on Iran being on hold is Correct!!)

And my music video FIGHTING FOR MY FREEDOM.

Reason covers Reason Rally March 2012

Another one I forgot to go to. "A-theist" means without god; not without spirituality, says this Student of Consciousness. "God" is just a patriarchal concept created to force people to obey the male patriarch. UGH!!

"Mass spamming lists are so yesterday..." And Stalin is so today?

SAY IT AIN'T SO: Karen De Coster on LewRockwell.com today: Mass spamming lists are so yesterday, because if folks really have something valuable to say, they will attract voluntary readership via publishing articles, blogging, using Twitter, or even posting on Facebook. Since I field about 150 emails per day at my job, and then I come home to another 200+ private emails (sometimes many more), it just isn't physically possible to respond to all of them, let alone sift through the spam.

How did I find this quote? Listening to the video Social Media and the Evolution of Consciousness trying to understand the confusing new world of political organizing using Twitter and Facebook. So I said, let's open twitter (which I rarely read) and found that article on one of the few Twitterers I'm subscribed to. Its title gave no inkling that that topic of the moment would be the content. Wow, talk about circular something or other!

Like I wrote on the youtube page of the social media video: "I'd still rather just get email and filter all the assholes into my trash without reading..."

Not to mention sometimes things float into your box that surprise and teach you something. I used to read the newspaper everyday for those two or three factoids floating in from the universe which would help evolve my knowledge of the world. (Back in the day when I also read a couple books a month.) But email, twitter, facebook, youtube and all the other sources of info just lead to shattered brain syndrome. (And don't get me started on Wikipedia.)

Not to mention they seem to help shred and splinter activist groups, leading to fewer people in a local area knowing who is doing what. (And then you have the fake Facebook groups with the similar names misleading people!!)

As I explained today to four different local "Occupy DC" groups. Each has their own web page and Facebook groups of a thousand odd people who liked them once. They have some personal interconnections. But they do not have a common email list to reach out to all those who want to hear the various opinions and alternative events without having to keep track of a dozen websites or Facebook pages; and it seems like they don't even bother to send many emails to those who ask to be on their email lists. Get a listserve, you guys, I told them. (I forgot to tell them to get phone numbers for a phone tree after the government shuts down the internet.)

IS FACEBOOK A PLOT TO DESTROY ACTIVISM?? Even if you take a course to figure out how Facebook works, a month later they change half the rules to keep you confused. No, it's just a plot to make money for the owners, and screw service to consumers that impedes that goal. Keep them confused and they'll at least accidentally click on your adverts?

Which brings me back to me original search for "consciousness" on youtube. That's where I found the "SPIRITUAL AWAKENING - Get ready for Earth changes" video below which had pretty video and music so I watched it all the way through. And of course at the end it had video of earthquakes and tsunamis and dust storms and cosmic events coming our way on or about December 21, 2012. And I thought - hmmm, maybe the big solar flare will wipe out electricity and the internet for a couple years so that those of us who survive can go back to reading books and sitting round the campfire telling stories. Now that sure would be a change in human consciousness!

Continuing to listen to Venessa Miemis talking about social media and the evolution of consciousness, she's talking about internet addiction - oh yeah! And now alternate money and self-organized democracy - alright. Now she just quoted someone who said: "Wouldn't Stalin have just loved Facebook?" Since it tells authorities who are the leaders and information hubs they can arrest to shut things down! (Of course, they also can do that with yahoogroups and private listserves run off domains, but might take a few days longer.) Let me add - use Facebook, but don't let it use you!! Enough tearing my hair out on this subject for one evening.

Jews vs. AIPAC continued

I don't want to give the impression that Jews are the only people versus AIPAC or that they should be the leaders in the fight against AIPAC and the other pro-Israel lobbies of Jews, neoconservatives and Christian Zionists. But these three individuals in my most recent video do a great job of standing up and being outrageous and honest, despite the threats of all sorts of nasty sanctions from the pro-Israel Jewish community, Zionist and even sometimes anti-Zionist. So here's the first of a couple of OCCUPY AIPAC-related videos I'm doing, as we all nervously wait to see if we'll wake up to World War III after Israel attacks Iran...

Jewish protests at AIPAC conference

Will have lots more of my own videos/pictures of AIPAC events in a few days but this was priceless! More protests below.



And here's Jon Stewart mocking AIPAC and US Politicians:

Waco, Syria and Secession

I keep coming up with what I want to say about my disgust with the Syrian government's actions when I don't have a piece of paper handy to write it down. Expressing disgust at yet another viciously repressive government - and being glad that at least U.S. tax payers aren't paying for it - just barely covers the surface.

Governments run by cliques (be they wealthy Syrian Alawites or wealthy white Christian and Jewish Americans) that mercilessly imprison, torture and kill their people - and those of other nations - when they become too uppity are the scourge of the earth. In other words, in one way or another almost all governments are.

At least today - the 19th anniversary of the government's first attack on the Branch Davidians at Waco - I was motivated to start blogging again at Vermont Commons which carries my SECEDE & SURVIVE blog. Gee, I should figure out how to get it syndicated or whatever. The entry is called: GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT SECESSION - AGAIN. Hmmm, I left off the !!!!!

In short, Waco was bad, things might get worse, the people are rising, the Occupiers and Ron Paul people got to get together and radically decentralize the federal government through secession. Yoo Haa... read details there.

Above is the cover of the book I wrote about Waco. Available in paperback and online on my personal website.

Feb 4th protest vs. War on Iran

I did make it to this one, sold buttons and even made a video!

Veterans rally for non-interventionism

As usual lately, I wasn't paying sufficient attention and missed the February 20th Troops Rally March for Ron Paul. A rally on the mall followed by a the march to the White House. Read all about it from Kelley B. Vlahos and see photos at Antiwar.com. And see videos below. Paul gets more contributions from military members than all the other candidates.

Let's build an interchange next to my gas station...

Said the congressperson...

Washington Post headline:
Congressional earmarks sometimes used to fund projects near lawmakers' properties


Thirty-three members of Congress have directed more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or within about two miles of the lawmakers’ own property, according to a Washington Post investigation.

Even Carol the Cynic was shocked by this story. Unbelievable.

Support our troops....

Hmmm, will I get indefinite detention for posting this, or for reproducing it contra the copyright notice I removed?? How can a t-shirt manufacturer produce this and expect people to honor the copyright. Har har...

Republicans: People are strange?

Searching for half-forgotten lyrics, found this big advertisement at the top of the page featuring them. HMMMMM.... Speaking just as a human being and not an ideologue, and all Mormon underwear aside... Romney is a big sexy guy, that's for sure. And I was always a fan of his father George who had to give up his presidential bid in 1967 after he admitted he'd been "brain washed" by the U.S. military into supporting the war in Vietnam!

Mitt the son is a March 12, 1947 baby, a Pices Sun, Sagittarius Moon, which my favorite Sun-Moon astrology book describes as "The Philosopher." I pray his pro-war rhetoric on Iran is to attract money and support from - or least not raise hostility of - those Israel fanatics (Jewish or Christian Zionist) who can justly be called Israel Firsters; after all there are only so many tens of million$ his Mormon supporters can contribute to their SuperPacs to counter Israel supporters' SuperPacs. I keep hoping Romney's a peace loving pussy at heart, just in case he wins. At least it will be easier to get people to protest at Mormon temples than synagogues if he turns warrior.

Now Newt Gingrich, who is the warmonger's favorite candidate, was born June 17, 1943. That makes him a Gemini Sun and Sagittarius Moon, as my book says, a "Soldier of Fortune." Brilliant but impulsive, like many Geminis he flips constantly between rational charm and explosions of insanity. Let's put his finger on the red button, if you're feeling suicidal!!!

He's heavily supported to the tune of millions by "Israel Firster" Sheldon Adelson's contributions to the SuperPac supporting Gingrich. (Read all about it here. Read about how Ron Paul people beat Gingrich at a caucus event at a Nevada "Adelson Center" with Adelson himself in attendance.) Of course, as a Gemini, who knows which way Gingrich's wind would blow if he got elected. He might knife Sheldon in the back.

Both Romney and Gingrich have freedom loving Sagittarius moons, but not enough to free ME from their tax-spend-drug and other war warrior-indefinite detention oppression.

As for Ron Paul, he's a Leo Sun, Taurus Moon - "The High and the Mighty." Stubbornly determined to get his point across, and too important to pay attention to who's writing his newsletters or accounting for his money. Or at least he was til he got burned enough about it in 1988 and 1996. Thank goodness he's a freedom fighter (for the most part) and not a statist!

So that's my alternate consciousness view of the Republican presidential candidates. As for Obama, I still have a soft spot in my heart for THE IDIOT. More government, now that's the solution to the world's problems. NO! It's the CAUSE!!! Idiot.

But then if I had Israel supporters praying for the Mossad to assassinate me - like the Atlanta Times editor who wrote the Mossad should do the job. (Some have written he was encouraged to put it up as a trial balloon to see how upset Americans would get.) Obama's admitted he's got Netanyahu calling him up every day to bug him. Really just so he doesn't forget that Israelis can kill anyone they want - including the wife and kids and mother-in-law - and get away with it. Not to mention "Samson Option" the world with their 400 nukes delivered from sea and air if they think they're going to lose too much of their stolen land...

Luckily, I only have a psycho Zionist WikiUhOh editor sending me dozens of death threats via email from time to time. Of course, the purpose of all the harassment and threats is too aggravate Israel critics so much they say something politically incorrect so they can say - see we TOLD YOU s/he is a BIGOT! Enough on that source of low conscious frustration - and occasional somewhat higher consciousness humor.

I don't blame all of the below on Obama, since he's just continuing the Demopublican U.S. Imperialist tradition of the last 100 odd years. Don't worry, if a Republican wins he'll do probably 2% better on all numbers, unless he attacks Iran and then look for 40% worse. Well, enough for today on the topics that pollute far far too much of my consciousness.
Update: Decided I should look up Obama's Sun-Moon sign. Leo with Gemini moon. Who my book describes as "the con artist." Please allow me to take back the last paragraph! Of course, George Bernard Shaw was the same combination. Maybe Obama should go into play writing when he's finished destroying the economy and the Bill of Rights.

A Health Awareness Advertisement

From Europe...

Occupies Indefinitely Detain Senator Levin

Well, an actor playing him anyway. In protest of his sponsoring the recently Indefinite Detention section of the national war bill. This video is really funny and naughty. Butprobably not as effective as either the Wikipedia Blackout or organizing a secession movement. All are bound to get you one step closer TO indefinite detention, of course.

What a PIPA SOPA world would look like...

Bravo Wikipedia for doing this! Can you imagine if we all had to clean out those borrowed pics on our blogs?? Here are some more:

# #

Update: Some of the fun graphics that came out of the protest.

Conspiracy theories - theirs and ours

I'm probably going to Congress tomorrow as part of Wikipedia blackout protest against a law that would mandate service providers to pull service - or even domain names? - from any site than anyone claims violates copyright laws. Like by posting funny pics like this above. I mean can you imagine if every blogger has to clean up all those borrowed images on every blog post - not to mention all those web pages? End of the internet world as we know it!

Anyway, the the statists have all these laws - and prosecutions - against our alleged or imagined conspiracies, and then call us conspiracy theorists for mentioning their really really really really obvious ones - like the man and the dog! At least we get a laugh - and some ignoramus might get an insight - from time to time out of it.

Happy New Year! (american slaves of the state)

Whole press release here.

Update: Obviously loudly protesting anything ''inside'' Grand Central Station is just asking for arrest. It would be more effective to do it on public sidewalk, not blocking traffic, and get arrested. But still these protesters made their point to 90,000 plus Youtube viewers.

Merry Solstice!! (the $&#! with blogging for this year)

That's my explanation for not blogging for 9 weeks. I didn't feel like it. In case anyone ever wants to know.

Feminist Parody of Startrek

CIA Assassinates Propagandists - Beck and Limbaugh next...

Geez, it was bad enough when I thought the CIA had assassinated a couple of known terrorist murderer United States citizens without a trial. Now it turns out the CIA assassinated a couple of internet propagandist U.S. citizens who merely rage against imperialism, and generally say kill the imperialists. Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, those gun loving nuts who are friendly to those terrorist tea partiers better watch out. They may be next on the list. (Not to mention even successful Gandhian secessionist propagandists should they become sufficiently effective, no matter how nonviolent!) In fact, Rick Perry better watch out, he may get elected and have to have himself assassinated!! For more details read this excellent Antiwar.com article.

Update: Rick's in luck. Turns out a secret memo found that it would be lawful to kill American citizens only if it were not feasible to take them alive. So President Rick Perry merely can order himself to be arrested. Of course, at the rate he's going, the Mormon might win. One can only hope that the Mormon will change his mind about his big plans to build up the U.S. military, just like he's changed his mind on everything else. However, Rick - he just wants to BOMB BOMB BOMB, BOMB BOMB IRAN. John McCain II.

Alternative Constitutions for Independent Communities

An online talk I gave on September 24th as part of the second Agora.IO conference. Check out my March talk Libertarian decentralism and secession strategy during the first such conference. As well as my site Secession.net.

Free the Palestinians from the concentration camps

Mahmoud Abass hands request for Palestinian statehood to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. While states applying to world governments for participation is not exactly libertarian decentralist, it's still a world consciousness raising effort regarding the 63 years of occupation of the Palestinians and the US/Israel complicity in keeping these people veritable prisoners in two concentration camps, the eastern section of which keeps shrinking as the Israelis keep stealing more land. It would be interesting to study all the impediments, internal and external, that kept this from happening 50 years ago! Here's part one of three parts of Abbas' speech.

International Peace Day

Patriarchy has thrown those who seek a nonviolent and peaceful world a bone - International Peace Day. Here's one of my videos opining on the general topic, blogged as I listen to puppet Obama blah blah blah at the United Nations...

9/11 - Great for the State!

The last time I saw the World Trade Center, driving in on the bus to New York City in the 1990s, I thought "those buildings are doomed." I remembered when terrorists tried to blow up one of the towers in 1993 and remembered reading that some terrorists wanted to bring the buildings down. It was just a matter of time.

Above is a photo of what I dreamed on June 30, 2001. A square tower of smoke over the horizon. As I write in my biography, I was convinced it was a premonition of nuclear war.
.
Around 5:30 am on June 30, 2001 I awoke abruptly from a frightening dream. It was sufficiently scary that I wrote in my diary that night: "dreamed looked out window and saw huge tower of brown smoke--realized it was a nuke bomb (no flash) and saw the shock wave coming towards me..." It wasn't until two weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks that I realized that the strange squar-ish smoke tower I saw was a World Trade Center tower and the shock wave was the emotional and political shock that resulted from the attack.

The day of the attack I was sitting at my desk, the second day of a new temporary legal secretary job, and suddenly I had the unusual desire to listen to the radio that was sitting in the corner. I turned it on and heard of the first of four terrible acts which gave the state an excuse to go to war, consolidate its power, and turn us all into potential terrorists in their little black books. I left soon after the second tower was hit because I didn't want to get stuck downtown in case they stopped running the trains.

Last Tuesday night, ten years later, I dreamed a scary dream of a bad thing happening downtown. Two days later the news blared that "intelligence" said just such a thing might happen. Hopefully, it's just government and media hype to keep us scared. Probably certain "foreign friends" trying to play nice - even if they have to make up their intelligence - as they keep pushing us to fight yet another war for their security.

Justin Raimondo has an interesting article: 9/11 and the Bizarro Effect. He writes: What if you had information that foreign government officials, utilizing their resources in the United States, were plotting to drag America into a ruinous war, using their connections with key American lawmakers and the media to get members of Congress and the public on board – what would you do? ...In a secret trial in which not even the judge was allowed to look at the evidence, FBI translator and human rights blogger Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli-American lawyer, was sentenced to 20 months in prison for the “crime” of exposing Israel’s extensive efforts to influence American policymakers to support a strike against Iran...Yes, the US routinely spies on everyone, including its ostensible allies, but this case ought to set off alarm bells: clearly our spooks are very concerned about what the Israelis are up to in this country, and have been for quite some time. Add to this the vindictive nature of Leibowitz’s prosecution, and it’s not stretching the truth to say the government is clearly panicked Israel’s covert activities in the US could become public knowledge...What apparently triggered the FBI monitoring and investigation of Antiwar.com, including myself, was our extensive coverage of Israeli covert activities in the US, particularly a number of my columns on the subject...

Yup, cover Israeli spying, and tell people about U.S. spying on Israel spying, and you must be a terrorist! Government needs enemies to pump up its power, and here we are.

I still haven't gotten around to arranging and recording this song and making the music video, but for a second times, here are the words:

They said I love you - song lyrics

It was on a bright September day
When any kind of harm seemed far away
When suddenly came horror from the sky
With little time to think or wonder why
Three thousand souls were taken.

But those who truly knew the end was near,
And called outside to those they held so dear,
Did they speak of hatred and revenge
And did they say America avenge,
No, they said I love you.

But love was just the last thing on the minds
of those who saw an opportunity to find,
A way to kill and loot and sack,
To scream of evil and attack,
And show they’re above you.

And then they carried out their wicked plans,
With weapons that are cruelest among mans,
Two countries lay in ruins, and still they try
To spread their dirty wars with dirty lies
And they think they’ve fooled you.

But those whose deaths were the excuse,
For all the murder and abuse
Did they speak of hatred and revenge
And did they say America avenge,
No, they said I love you.
No, they said I love you.
No, they said I love you.

(c) Carol Moore 2002; 2010

Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Apocalypse??

Yep, that August 23 earthquake in Virginia gave me a good scare in DC, even though it was the second strongest I felt. The first being in California in 1987 - and I left town 6 weeks later. And now we have big scary hurricane Irene charging up the coast to rip out the air conditioners and the window frames and backdoor - the house needs remodeling anyway. What next, the Beatles reunite and we have the Apocalypse of Love? A girl can dream....

UPDATE with PHOTOS: Phew, survived yet another brush with death and destruction. Yet given the ignorance of males and the females who enable it, the short term blasts and burps of the planet and the cosmos, and the inevitable entropy (run down) of our sun, let's enjoy life while we may!

The proper use of manliness

These two videos illustrate some manly things men can do without beating up women and children and other men and killing people, especially in that organized slaughter called war. Thanks to the male who sent them to me.

* * *

For a great rendition of the Greatest Show on Legs, click here.

Die-in at Syrian Embassy

Yet another protest I didn't make. But glad to see they did it. One hates to see an apolitical ophathmologist go bad, but that's what happened with Bashar al-Assad, son of a dictator, surrounded by the dictator's long-time cronies who have profited mightily off their supremacy. Syria is one more Middle East nation the British set up for failure by putting a dictator from one minority tribal group in charge of a bunch of groups that didn't want to be ruled by that group. (See "Friday of Tribes" protest below.) Kudos to the Syrian people for not going straight to civil war. Someone please let Bashar go back to practising medicine. There are lots of prisons that need good doctors.

I felt THAT sunspot's solar flare eruption

Thursday August 4th I was standing by the window, doing the dishes, thinking about the dogs and housework and sewing and working on my current civil liberties-related Wikipedia article when suddenly I felt a wave of manic energy hit me and my mind started racing: I have to organize a meeting. I have to call people up. I have to start getting back into the world!

My first thought: there must have been a big solar flare from a sunspot!  Yup, a double solar flare, the biggest one since 2003, hit the earth on Thursday. Yoo Ha! Better get my ass moving so the revolution doesn't pass me by! See my woefully outdated article Sunspot Cycles and Activist Strategy. See Secession.net - let's see how long it takes for me to update it now! -


Evidently a bunch of rioters in London felt that solar flare too. And there was an even bigger one August 9th.

Secession and the money hole

It's summer time, and the blogging is intermittent...

But I did notice that the New York Times had an interesting opinion piece on current secession movements in America called "Splitsville." Of course the statist author writes: " The men who wrote the Constitution feared secession, and didn’t allow states to leave the collective fold."

Not explicitly. More importantly, we celebrate the Fourth of July and the Declaration of Independence which says it is the right of the people to alter or abolish government, and that includes secession. Even the centralists who wrote the Constitution (whose date of ratification is barely noticed) had to add the 10th Amendment explicitly says: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

But nitpicking over constitutional law is really irrelevant when the constitution proves itself daily to be a failed experiment, one which lets special financial, corporate, labor union, welfare constituent, military and governmental interests write our laws to their advantage, destroying the economy and impoverishing those who do not receive its largess, so that many who would prefer to work are forced into the welfare constituency. Government collapse is just a matter of time, as recent debt limit quarrels illustrate. GREECE WE'RE HOT ON YOUR TAIL.

Of course, that certainty may make secessionists a little too lackadaisical - it does me!

Funny The Onion video on the topic of government waste of money below.

Whoopie whoops some fundie butt...

Whoopie Goldberg really socks it to the fundamentalist Christians who came up with the Traditional Marriage pledge signed on to by GOP-Prez candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. Until it was deleted from the pledge, this absurd statement was included: "Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

Whoopie did not mention that the family easily could be broken up by just selling off family members - since they were after all SLAVES! - that's pretty obvious to aware people. The authors and signers evidently are not very aware people. Just a bunch of White Christians itching for Jesus to come back and kill everyone who hasn't converted, including Jews in Israel so that it can become the Christian nation it was meant to be. YUK!!