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Archive for December, 2010

John Lennon: What could the world be now?

Posted in Celebrities, History, Hopeful thoughts, Loss, love, Music I like, News, Poetry, Writers, tagged , on December 8, 2010| 12 Comments »

Yesterday I wrote about infamous dates, an appropriate topic on Pearl Harbor Day.

Today is another one of those. Although not on the same scale of lives lost or immediate consequence, December 8, 1980 saw a moment that defines a generation, and world, thirty years after the fact of an act of murder.

The death of John Lennon put paid to an era born in the sixties and dying with John.

It could be the timing was coincidental … another decade had closed and the 80’s loomed large and voracious. Flower-power was giving way to the darker, disenchanted tones of Goth, Ronald Reagan was White House-bound and the 80s stretched before us like a ladder to be climbed one pricey rung after the other.

Could it be, however, it was the event that instigated at least some of the changes?

The violent death of a gentle musician and poet at the hand of a publicity-seeking nutjob seems a demarcation point.

Perhaps my rearview mirror has fogged over the past 30 years, but I recall the decades before Dec. 8, 1980 as hopeful … angst-ridden, yes, but that angst flowed from frustration that the world wasn’t moving quite quickly enough toward the peaceful garden we could still imagine at the time.

We’d seen our share of horrors, but felt we’d learned stuff … important stuff that could and would matter. We felt it was possible to actually give peace a chance.

Greed started driving the bus in the 80s and angst turned to the stone of cynicism. As communism fell by the wayside, that perceived specter morphed into the solid form of expanding markets, multiple debt crises, famine and a whole bunch of wars.

Hippies turned into Yuppies, Porsche became the new VW van and conspicuous consumption took over where conscientious objection left off.

Even the drugs got meaner as coke and crack took the place of acid and weed and ad copy became a viable outlet for poets since the pay was so much better.

I’m guessing those who missed the world John Lennon lived and influenced will consider this a geezer ramble … revisionist history not appreciative of the wonders of the past three decades, or not appreciative enough.

Could be. Could be.

But I can’t help but wonder how different the last thirty years might have been if that fuckwad Mark Chapman had not decided to stake his claim to fame by blowing holes through one of the world’s most important proponents of thoughtful consideration and hope.

The music, alone, we’ve been robbed of has left us poorer.

So … on this day, as every 8th of December, I celebrate the life and rue the death of John Lennon, wonder and imagine …

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Infamous Dates

Posted in History, tagged , , on December 7, 2010| 7 Comments »

There was the guy who came to pick me up wearing a rabbit suit … 6’10” with ears, of white fur, fuzzy tail and floppy feet. He doesn’t qualify for this post, however, since I didn’t actually go out with him after he scared the shit out of my son (Ack! The Easter Bunny’s looking at me!) and I realized he was a nutjobfuckwad of immense proportions and far too comfortable, tip-to-toe, in polyester on an August evening.

December 7, 1941, though … that is an infamous date.

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, 1 hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to tie United States and his colleague delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.

This morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our Nation.

As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces with the unbounded determination of our people we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

A defining moment for a generation … and the final moment for thousands … sixty-nine years ago. No need for an accounting here of what followed, as we all know it wasn’t pretty.

Defining moments and infamous dates are often the points upon which we spin.

For those of us born after WWII, December 7th is just history … required reading, film fodder, a basis for free-ranging fears as the images in our minds were fed to us, not experienced first-hand.

Questions loom over what our world would look like had the outcome been different. Although it’s pretty clear Jewbacca wouldn’t be stretching out the dreidel season in Brooklyn this Hanukkah and likely those sushi-train restaurants would have popped up much earlier, one can’t help but follow threads in attempts to pick out possible patterns that might have made up today’s fabric of life.

Can we assume almost seventy years would see things smoothed over and people getting on with things in what would have to seem normal lives? Hirohito and Hitler would have died long ago even if their sides had won, that’s guaranteed, and the planet would come to be populated by people whose history books are colored in according to prevailing wisdom … crayons being one of the spoils going to victors. Perhaps our present would seem as odd, and as awful, to them as theirs does to us when we conjure images of a world ruled by Nazis and kamikaze conquistadors.

Our generation has 9/11, our “I’ll never forget where I was when” moment. And we won’t, not if we were five or fifty on that day in 2001.

We have yet to see anywhere near the end of the fallout from that attack on the US, and I wonder if sixty-nine years will reveal any clarity.

US involvement in WWII lasted less than four years. The Afghan War has now been going on for more than twice that and is now official the country’s longest in history.

And it ain’t over.

If we could jump ahead to 2070, what would be your guess as to what that world looks like?

I’m hoping my children and grandchildren have no more infamous dates to think back on in their history than the bunny-suit guy I didn’t go out with way back when … but, given our past, the present state of the world and the human inclination to grab and wield, I rather doubt that will be the case.

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Chaos: a theory

Posted in Island life, My Chinese Checkered Past, Nature, Peeps, science, Seychelles, Writers, tagged , , , on December 6, 2010| 14 Comments »

I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms. You, gods, since you are the ones who alter these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world’s first origins to my own time.

Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place. There was no Titan yet, shining his light on the world, or waxing Phoebe renewing her white horns, or the earth hovering in surrounding air balanced by her own weight, or watery Amphitrite stretching out her arms along the vast shores of the world. Though there was land and sea and air, it was unstable land, unswimmable water, air needing light. Nothing retained its shape, one thing obstructed another, because in the one body, cold fought with heat, moist with dry, soft with hard, and weight with weightless things.
~ Ovid, “Metamorphoses”

No, actually I don’t want to speak about changing bodies and I’ve spewed enough of my thoughts on Earthcentric views limiting human imagination, although Ovid does have the excuse of writing long before anyone had the technology to see stars as much more than interesting pictures in the sky.

It is, however, chaos filling my brain today … okay, most days … so imagine how thrilled I was, or wasn’t, to learn the etymology of ‘chaos’ also leads one to ‘yawn’.

Greek χάος means “gap, gaping void, chasm, abyss”, from the verb χαίνω, “gape, be wide open, etc.”, from PIE *ghen-, cognate to Old English geanian, “to gape”, whence English yawn.

Well, no bloody wonder I can have a head full of swirling shit and still be bored!

During a conversation the other day with my dear friend, Brian — he of the blog Truth is Freedom and a fab poet — he mentioned an interesting critter he described as, “chaos vital to creation”, apparently a beastie that can be traced back to ancient times and blamed for just about everything.

Some of our discussion involved various methods we’ve employed in attempts to rein chaos in long enough to force it to take form, allowing us to get on with things in ways … well … less chaotic, but throwing a lasso around “a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight; and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap” … another translation of Ovid’s words … is not only difficult, but also an effort with consequences.

The exterior manifestation of chaos ... my office.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that grabbing free-floating ephemera and wrangling it into concepts easily shared pretty much kills off the free-floaty bit and morphs any given ephemeron into engraving, nor that grabbing hold of a “ponderous weight and all discordant elements confused” might not feel too great.

If I had a choice in the matter I might very well let chaos bubble away in a primordial stewing on a back burner instead of constantly caving to the inclination to turn it into something I can serve up.

There sure are a lot of folks that can do just that, and I sometimes find myself envious of those without curiosity, people who manage to go through days and years and lifetimes never hearing the background noise, much less wondering where it comes from.

“Ever wonder why mosquitoes exist … other than as food … or vectors … or … ”

“No … fucking things … SLAP. Got any beer?”

I find it interesting that the words “random” and “hectic” are now synonymous, amongst the young and hip with excellence, excitement and … well … missing the style boat. Of course, youth is supposed to be hectic and random, and chaos fits like a sparkly glove when your biggest worry is parents reading your Tweets.

I Googled “random thoughts” and found 6,960,000 results … and managed to resist clicking on most of them in fear of the “ooooh shiny” thing since I do have work to do today … but this did nothing to advance my chaos theory that was to be the topic of this post.

Shit.

In summation, then, I’ll simply ask, “Have you seen that story about living forever? I’m really not keen on the idea, myself, and can’t help but wonder …

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Pulling Up a Chair With Aliens

Posted in Health, Hopeful thoughts, Nature, Religion, science, tagged , , on December 5, 2010| 26 Comments »

I’ve been asked to come up with some thoughts on Alien Beings … this is what spilled out.

I am often invaded by thoughts that would to someone else feel alien; weird, formless phantoms that interrupt my work and set me to following bright, shiny objects instead of concentrating on matters at hand.

And what do I do when so annexed? I pull up a chair, pour some tea … or wine, if the hour is right … and invite my visitor to settle in for a while and share whatever it is they’ve popped into to ponder with me.

Today my alien is an alien, and although alien is the most easily accessible word for this guy, he’s not actually alien in the least …

… unless, of course, we all are.

And we are. Or, at least, I am. I don’t presume to speak for anyone else and understand many are distinctly uncomfortable with any notion suggesting they’ve ever been anything else or have even the smallest shred of anything else anywhere in their makeup.

Like the legions of folks who resent the hell out of any implication there might be shared DNA between them and … say … a chimp, others are right pissed off when handed a card reading: What you see is NOT what you are.

Sputter … gasp … choke … but, but, but …

But as I said, I’m only speaking for myself here, and this is what I am, and am not: a human woman of a certain age living on a small island in the Indian Ocean on Planet Earth.

It’s true. But not the complete truth.

I am also:

1) A result of millions of years of evolution

2) A system of biological functions

3) A transport service for a bunch of other beings that digest my food, live in my eyelashes and occasionally make me feel like shit.

4) Energy

The first three are a brief sum of what I am NOW. The fourth is what I am ALWAYS.

Given our biology and our residence, albeit very brief, on Earth, it’s an easy thing to forget the bigger neighborhood. FFS … how many people in Podunk, McMiddleAmerica forget Africa? We get all wrapped up in blankets and burritos and Manolo Blahnik and begin to assume this is what it’s all about … and all there is.

Boring. Limited. And a fucking waste of time and energy if it were the case. But it’s not, at least not in my world.

And, yes, I have a world. I’d say we all do, but that would be pushing the edges of this post’s envelope since I’m sticking to just me and my alien.

We’re one and the same, you see …

I was born Sandra, but before I was Sandra I was. (Okay … maybe not before, since time is an option, but for sake of not spinning this head off my axis and setting out after another shiny object, I’m sticking to linear for reasons of convenience.) It’s very likely I was born before, in the sense that I emerged from a human woman, grew, walked around and all the stuff I do now, only under different circumstances and geography. I have memories and experiences from stuff that happened impacts stuff that happens.

Some people and places draw me, some situations terrify me, some things give comfort and others make me extremely uncomfortable and I have no doubt reasons reach back further than my years.

Because I am, for the moment, human, it is not within my realm to assimilate experiences I had when not human, nor are those relevant. For one thing this little brain I have, all biochemical and wired for NOW, couldn’t process the data, but I do get to access it once I shuck the biological shell.

Not at all Earthcentric, I don’t assume every dance I’ve been to happened here; no, I’m sure my card has been many times filled with waltzes I couldn’t presently recognize if they stomped on my toes and called me Sweetie.

This is a big-ass hanging universe … and it’s just the one we have some idea of presently … and stuck here, as I am, on this little blue marble in my skin I have a lot to deal with through my three-score-and-ten, or whatever I end up with. I’m here for reasons I knew before I arrived, but programed to forget; a set up I like to think of as my way of making sure I don’t cheat.

I’m a blob of energy … even on those days I don’t want to drag my ass out of bed … doing the Macarena through time and space paying no attention to speed limits (I thumb my nose at 186,000 miles per second), temporarily confined to quarters. I’m a single cell in a massive organism free to move about after doing whatever it is I’m to do here and now. I’m an alien being from another world doing time on Earth. I’m a harbinger of doom, a ray of hope, dark matter, bright light.

Ah … what the fuck …

As Popeye so succinctly put it: I yam what I yam.

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Oooh, look! Something shiny … it’s Julian Assange again!

Posted in Island life, News, Seychelles, The USA from the outside in, World politics, Younger men, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 4, 2010| 18 Comments »

I began the day thinking a soft post on life in Seychelles might be a good weekend time-filler, especially after all the attention yesterday’s post got, thanks to WordPress sending readers my way by the thousands. I even started putting one together, a little ditty about how somethings translate here, specifically the fact that many Seychellois think the terror on the high seas in our neck of the Indian Ocean is perpetuated by “smiley pirates”, but that will have to wait.

Yet again something shiny fluttered by … ooooh, pretty … and I’m tripping after it with some hope of figuring out what it’s all about.

Okay. Maybe Julian Assange isn’t everyone’s idea of pretty fluff … or anyone’s, for that matter … but we have already established that I think he’s cute and have extended a blogitty invite to share my view.

Turns out such an eventuality could get me in BIG trouble.

No doubt I’m right pissed off that the US Homeland Secutiry Committee could be messing with my chance for a date for New Year’s Eve, but that unwrapping an Assange under my Christmas tree would see me prosecuted under the Patriot Act! WTF?

It took this from Tom Hayden to make that point in a letter he wrote to Rep. Peter King:

I am hoping you will reconsider your call to place WikiLeaks on the list of foreign terrorist organizations. I would hope that as chair of the Homeland Security Committee you would take a more responsible approach than many of your Republican and conservative colleagues who are calling for the assassination of Julian Assange.

You and I remember the time a few short years ago when there were extreme voices opposed to a visa for Gerry Adams and calling for the designation of Sinn Fein as a terrorist organization. And you and a bipartisan coalition were willing to take a risk for peace and conflict resolution, a process that is still ongoing and regarded as a great success.

The comparison, you may say, is incorrect. In one respect, there is a huge difference, which only strengthens my point: Sinn Fein was leading a republican movement that included years of armed struggle, with thousands of British and Irish casualties. WikiLeaks is a nonviolent whistleblower organization whose only weapon is the Internet. Despite weeks of dire warnings, the WikiLeaks disclosures have caused no deaths or suffering so far, nor provoked any terrorist attacks anywhere. The organization, and its media intermediaries, have made conscious efforts to redact any references to individuals which might cause harm.

The current controversy is less about national security than about securing the official reputations of officials conducting secret warfare. As a result of the WikiLeaks documents, the American public has learned, for example, that:

* our government is deceiving the public and Congress by denying our secret bombing of Yemen;
* our Special Forces are in Pakistan;
* the CIA has directed a secret army in Afghanistan;
* there is a secret Task Force 373 conducting assassinations in Afghanistan.

These revelations do no damage to our national security. Instead, they helpfully add to public and Congressional awareness of improper and arguably illegal behavior undertaken under the cover of secrecy.

If your proposal to list WikiLeaks as a terrorist group is adopted, my understanding is that anyone offering nonviolent “material support” to WikiLeaks could be prosecuted under the Patriot Act. As you told MSNBC on Nov. 28, “we’d be able to stop anyone from helping them in any way, whether it’s making contributions, giving free legal advice, or whatever.”

Do you remember when you stood up again and again for lawyers in Northern Ireland trying to defend republicans in court? Do you remember those lawyers like Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson being assassinated as a result of their brave legal advocacy? Are you seriously recommending that any American lawyers “giving free legal advice” to Julian Assange should be prosecuted?

The New York Times has provided page upon page of coverage of the WikiLeaks materials over a period of months. Is the Times “assisting in terrorist activity” because the information is “being used by Al Qaeda”, as you put it?

Where does this end? If thousands of Americans join in the legal defense of Julian Assange or WikiLeaks will they be defined as accessories to terrorism?

I urge that you and your colleagues not overreact, not turn to scapegoating, not contribute to a climate of violence, but instead respect freedom of the press, freedom of dissent, and the right to due process under a system of law. We all need more light shed on our secret policies, not greater limitations on the public’s right to know.

Sincerely,

TOM HAYDEN 

Bravo, Tom, and I’m happy to see he’s still around even though I lost track of him way back when. Seems those years with Jane keeps him mindful of how a girl likes the idea of a date now and then without the threat of treason hanging around … or maybe his point is a bit broader. Yeah … we’ll go with that thought.

I know I’m by far not the only one appalled by the reaction to Wikileak’s latest offerings … thank the gods for that! … but although outrage is wending its way around the globe and popping up in a lot of reasonable publications, I subscribe to the Arlo Guthrie theory that says: If ya wanna end war and stuff, ya gotta sing loud.

La, la, la, la LA!

Here’s another voice, hopefully preaching to more than the choir, James Moore:

Secrecy tends to lead to disaster and there are several object lessons to study as a result of American adventures abroad. Saddam Hussein was Donald Rumsfeld’s and Ronald Reagan’s secret friend as long as he was bombing and gassing Iranians to the east. Secrecy led to Iran-Contra and back door dealing in arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, who did not have the support of the country’s population and were eventually defeated. There are, of course, countless other examples ranging from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Bay of Pigs and the information contained in the Pentagon Papers, and, uh, of course, the lies about WMD that propagated our current misadventure in Iraq. Democracy ought not be bribing and lying in the name of democracy.

The horror over WikiLeaks, which is being expressed mostly by inept diplomats, is disingenuous in the extreme. The consistent claims that lives are being endangered by the information borders on the hilarious. How many lives have been lost to erroneous, yet secret information that led to our invasion of Iraq? If WikiLeaks had been around in 2003 the public might have been well armed with information to create political resistance to W’s folly in the ancient deserts. It is, of course, of equal absurdity to suggest there is no need for clandestine operations. But taxpayers and voters tend to acquire their information after the consequences of secret government endeavors, and, obviously, that is a bit late to be of preventive value.

This debate on Democracy Now over whether or not Julian is a hero is an interesting exchange between Steven Aftergood from the “Secrecy News” and constitutional and civil rights litigator Glenn Greenwald that illustrates how even those touting transparency decide to fog the glass when it comes to Julian Assange.

The hunt is on for the man, his website is under attack, anyone helping him in any way may end up facing grave consequences … and what has he done to set the dogs on him as or more assiduously than the hounds of Bin Laden? Words. He did words. Not his words, but those written by people in positions of power now embarressed too have them read.

From the presenter of the debate:

University students are being warned about WikiLeaks. An email from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, that we read in headlines, reads—I want to do it again—quote, “Hi students,

“We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

“The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

“Regards, Office of Career Services.”

… and …

Democracy Now! has obtained the text of a memo that’s been sent to employees at USAID. This is to thousands of employees, about reading the recently released WikiLeaks documents, and it comes from the Department of State. They have also warned their own employees. This memo reads, quote, “Any classified information that may have been unlawfully disclosed and released on the Wikileaks web site was not ‘declassified’ by an appopriate authority and therefore requires continued classification and protection as such from government personnel… Accessing the Wikileaks web site from any computer may be viewed as a violation of the SF-312 agreement… Any discussions concerning the legitimacy of any documents or whether or not they are classified must be conducted within controlled access areas (overseas) or within restricted areas (USAID/Washington)… The documents should not be viewed, downloaded, or stored on your USAID unclassified network computer or home computer; they should not be printed or retransmitted in any fashion.”

That was the memo that went out to thousands of employees at USAID. The State Department has warned all their employees, you are not to access WikiLeaks, not only at the State Department, which they’ve blocked, by the way, WikiLeaks, but even on your home computers. Even if you’ve written a cable yourself, one of these cables that are in the trove of the documents, you cannot put your name in to see if that is one of the cables that has been released. This warning is going out throughout not only the government, as we see, but to prospective employees all over the country, even on their home computers.

If nothing else about the persecution of Assange scares the shit out of you, that should. ANYONE can be a target. And what directs the aim? Words.

As Captain Jack Sparrow said: Sticks and stones, Luv.

Or … for a bit more gravitas, how about this:

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Julian Assange … pallid and silver-haired … ‘shiny’ and New Year’s Eve go so well together, and before that he’d look great under my tree!

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News from NASA: Life comes in other flavors. No kidding …

Posted in Nature, News, science, tagged , , , on December 3, 2010| 275 Comments »

A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation. ~Max Gluckman

Finally!

Yes, the discovery has now been made that has expanded our version of what life is, and it’s NASA, not an organization bent on biology, that stretched the limits of living.

Seems there are, after all, life forms that don’t conform to the accepted definition … go figure … and what an eye-opener, heh?

“The definition of life has just expanded,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.”

I am so confused.

It is possible folks have actually been running on the assumption that all life everywhere must be made of the same stuff that came up with us? And … did it really need to take finding an example of something different here on Earth to get those folks to reconsider their perspective?

Well … if so, that’s just dumb.

NASA-supported researchers have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism, which lives in California’s Mono Lake, substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in the backbone of its DNA and other cellular components.

Okay. That’s one ‘rule’ down the drain then, isn’t it, since up until now the thought has been that it took six building blocks — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur — to fire up the living thang in everything from amoeba to zebra; anything not having those six basics was not considered to be alive.

As the research team’s lead scientist put it: If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?

Good question … and should be followed by: Why are we so surprised?

To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. ~Evelyn Fox Keller

I’ve spent no little time considering what “life” is made of, and have come to the conclusion that it ain’t what we think it is. In fact, it seems to me that the part of us those six blocks stack up to may be the least of what we are.

It’s the limiting nature … biology … of the human mind that makes so illusive the far reaches of consciousness, not the other way round, and it’s the consciousness that makes everything else, including the biology. It follows, then, that we are more than our physical form. We’re like tequila … whether it be rotgut or nectar de dioses … most of our potential is wasted while in the bottle.

Who’s to say that it’s not energy … light, sound, electromagnetic waves, something else that has escaped our limited notice … that’s the bit that constitutes LIFE? Biochemists, for one, I suppose, but now they’re even having to rethink.

“The idea of alternative biochemistries for life is common in science fiction,” said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “Until now a life form using arsenic as a building block was only theoretical, but now we know such life exists in Mono Lake.”

Now they know … and they know because they found something on this planet that can be weighed and measured, which is apparently what it takes.

A few things come to mind this morning … and, yes, I know I’m rambling, but I want to get this out before I settle into work, and rambling rants happen when there’s a lot of stuff rolling around in my head …

Which brings me to one thought …

I have a friend who’s a mulitple, so has many people living in one body, a situation that calls into question just how set-in-bone what the living part of us might be.

With a change of personalities in multiples, scars appear and disappear, burn marks do the same, as well as cysts! The multiple can change from being right-handed to being left-handed with ease and agility. Visual accuity can differ, so that some multiples have to carry two or three different pairs of glasses. One personality can be color blind and the other not. Even EYE COLOR can change!

I had a dream last night in which I was having a conversation with my son and my father, both of whom are, in present context, dead. Although I don’t recall much of it now, some of the images are clear. I know if I’d been hooked up to that whatitz thingy that checks brain activity it would have shown all sorts of stuff going on in my head. My question this morning is: Was my dream a result of a biochemical dance, or the other way around?

Could it be that we are surrounded by life forms we have no way of recognizing as such? Makes sense to me, but until a specimen is found on the bottom of Mono Lake … or energy materializes, sits down and gives a good accounting … we’ll keep running on the assumption that it’s all about being carbon-based.

There was a time a platypus was impossible, but … golly … turns out the little dudes are alive and well and happily doing the Monotremata thing down under, and even if we’ve never seen one, we don’t argue their existence. Could we someday be as accepting of a community of sentient invisible beings who might be hanging around us all right now?

I recognize I don’t have the background, knowledge or credentials that might allow me to grasp a lot of what is clearly over my head in the science, and I do understand why NASA folks are thrilled to their gills over the discovery of a “new life form”; it is a big deal and goes far to advance thinking. Good.

I do, however, sometimes tire of what smells like arrogance but is probably more closely related to a lack of imagination in presuming we are the standard by which all must be judged.

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Julian Assange in Red and Green

Posted in History, News, Sex, World politics, tagged , , , on December 2, 2010| 4 Comments »

I admit that my post on the hotness of Julian Assange was tongue-in-cheek … his tongue/my cheek sounds good. Yeah … I think he’s cute, so shoot me.

True, he’s not my type in the physical sense, but I’ve always been flexible when it comes to looks. It’s brains and panache that reel me in, and he’s steeped in both. Although his élan is apparently not effusive, Julian’s reserved manner only serves to make him more attractive. That he grates, and grates so effectively, helps, too.

Stealing, as he does, from the rich (powerful movers-and-shakers running the show), and giving to the poor (the rest of us slobs who are supposed to be happy being spoon-fed cud predigested by the former), there is a temptation to brand him a Robin Hood. Although I would SO love to see him in green tights … and little else … that image doesn’t sit well with a whole lotta folks and I’m staying away from it out of a hesitation to stir this pot in that direction.

And speaking of pots … there seems to be a tempest in the one with the leaks, and the reaction to oozing goo is over the top.

Interpol issuing a “red notice” for him, smacks of sour grapes, harassment and a grasp at straws since actually coming up with something he could be arrested for seems beyond the realm:

The red notice does not amount to an arrest warrant. Instead, it asks people to contact the police if they have any information about his whereabouts.

Yes, Sweden wants to “detain him for questioning” on allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion, all denied by Julian, but don’t have enough to issue a warrant for his arrest, while Australia is trying to figure out whether or not he’s broken any laws there.

If Mr Assange were arrested he could face extradition to the United States, although analysts say that because the US Espionage Act carries the maximum death penalty, nations that do not have the statute might refuse extradition.

But that assumes he’s done something to be arrested for AND that the US Espionage Act has anything to do with him.

Smear campaign? Mega-bullying? Cart-before-horse? Guilt-before-innocence? Shut him the fuck up before he releases any more shit?

Sure, some peeps are right pissed off. After all, Wikileaks has given the world a peek up the bowels of power. And how ’bout that French president chasing a rabbit around the office?

The incident is described in one of the 251,287 classified cables the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks says it has obtained and shared with several newspapers.

Gasp!

If that’s not horror enough, how about the revelation that Silvio Berlusconi is considered to be “feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader.”

OMG!

Russia has mafia issues? Nyet shit …

No doubt there’s embarrassment … and well there should be. Some of these people are disgusting, some are morons … AND they’re in charge of stuff!

Rolling out the big guns, accusations of dire consequence are bouncing all over the place, but are these real concerns … or nothing more than ramping up the ante?

After the release of an enormous haul of US defence department documents in August, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told the Washington Post: “We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the Wikileaks documents.”

… After this latest release a Pentagon official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the material involved, told the McClatchy newspaper group that even three months later the US military still had no evidence that people had died or been harmed because of information gleaned from Wikileaks documents.

A bit of historical perspective on hysterical reactions to letting people in on what actually happens in the world might help a bit, and who better to pull into the mix than Daniel Ellsberg, the man who gave us the Pentagon Papers back in 1971 and let us know what a fucking mess was happening:

The release of these papers was politically embarrassing to not only those involved in the Johnson and Kennedy administrations but also the incumbent Nixon administration. Nixon’s Oval Office tape from June 14, 1972, shows H. R. Haldeman describing the situation to Nixon:

[then cabinet-member Donald] Rumsfeld was making this point this morning. To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing…. It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the president can be wrong. John Mitchell, Nixon’s Attorney General, almost immediately issued a telegram to the Times ordering that it halt publication. The Times refused, and the government brought suit against it.

Although the Times eventually won the trial before the Supreme Court, an appellate court ordered that the Times temporarily halt further publication. This was the first successful attempt by the federal government to restrain the publication of a major newspaper since the presidency of Abraham Lincoln during the US Civil War. Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to 17 other newspapers in rapid succession. The right of the press to publish the papers was upheld in New York Times Co. v. United States.

As a response to the leaks, the Nixon administration began a campaign against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally. Aides Egil Krogh and David Young, under the supervision of John Ehrlichman, created the “White House Plumbers”, which would later lead to the Watergate burglaries.

So … what’s that thing about forgetting history and being doomed? And if I recall correctly, the White House Plumbers ended up in jail for doing shit that really was against the law.

Ellsberg’s take on Julian Assange and the present fracas:

He told the BBC’s World Today programme that US officials made that same argument every time there was a potentially embarrassing leak.

“The best justification they can find for secrecy is that lives are at stake. Actually, lives are at stake as a result of the silences and lies which a lot of these leaks reveal,” he said.

“The same charges were made against the Pentagon Papers and turned out to be quite invalid.”

For sure Julian is, unlike Ellsberg at the time, an unknown quantity and … relevant to ethnocentrics … not American, therefore out of grasp and very likely sub-human and of suspecious intent … all the more reason to tweak Interpol into Red Carding him.

A former UK ambassador to the UN adds an interesting spin:

“I don’t think it has been proven that this is dangerous to US troops, for instance. I haven’t seen that case made very clearly,” he said. “What I think this means is that we need to look at our own mechanisms for democratic accountability and foreign policy. We need to be much, much better.”

In what way is that a bad thing?

And, how about the statement from Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations”

At the very least, they will make governments like Pakistan and Yemen and others, which are collaborating with the US in the battle against terrorism, more reluctant to co-operate.

Huh? Excuse me, but would it be rude to point out that Pakistan and Yemen collaborate with EVERYONE, including terrorists? If it takes Julian Assange to make that point … well … that’s just fucking sad, and scary.

Look … I don’t presume to know much at all about any of this shit other than what I read in the news, and maybe Julian is a total dick out to subvert a wonderful working model of civilization that protects us all without lowly peasants like me and you having to know anything about how that happens. Perhaps global leaders are benevolent heroes diligently striving toward peace and freedom with no hidden agenda and no thought toward personal gain, and exposing foibles … with attribution … should be considered a mortal sin.

Yeah, right. Pull the other one.

No matter. I’d still like to have him try that thing with the green tights, and although it’s raining today the view from my bed is still fab, Jules.

For further reading, check out Andy Borowitz’s take today, this from the BBC on what happens when you piss off the big guys, and this lame move from the Swedes covering their asses.

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