Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Published Links: Stories, Articles and Commentaries
Published Links: Stories, Articles and Commentaries on our era of national mendacity with continuous precedence often in the law, e.g. creating the rise of permanent wars through misrepresentation and falsehoods. Conflating a massive crime of 9/11 into GWOT exhausting the wealth of the nation as well as leading country into decline and incentivizing blowback again and again.
The author has lived in Thailand and Iran which are the locations of the novel Land of the Tuk-Tuk. Fiction is sometimes dismissed as inaccurate reality, however, it may sometimes reveal what historians and others have overlooked. It is a novel infused with our world in an age where many seek vampires and aliens in outer space. The novel Land of the Tuk-Tuk is a journey here on earth that may be useful for some.
Land of the Tuk-Tuk
Saturday, November 05, 2011
"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen." Henry David Thoreau from Life Without Principle.
Now this nation has been in the thrall of the financial speculator industry of Wall Street to such an extent that it has been massively publicly funded. The decoupling of Wall Street from the center of the financial universe of the United States is essential, instead of Wall Street being America's Sun it ought to be one of its distant stars.
Why would the national political leadership allow mortgages to become a financial product called credit default swaps that would endanger the fiscal health of the nation?
Now this nation has been in the thrall of the financial speculator industry of Wall Street to such an extent that it has been massively publicly funded. The decoupling of Wall Street from the center of the financial universe of the United States is essential, instead of Wall Street being America's Sun it ought to be one of its distant stars.
Why would the national political leadership allow mortgages to become a financial product called credit default swaps that would endanger the fiscal health of the nation?
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The American people need a wake up call of information on their country so they can move forward as a country in prosperity, peace and in a more sustainable way so that the earth itself and its environment take precedence-something the American Indian and many other native peoples have known. Our foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been instigated not with deliberation but with aberration.
Monday, March 22, 2010
What do people write? What kind of a world has been created and by whom? We have all created the kind of environment we inhabit. In my view the writer is to explore accurately the kind of world we have through experience and imagination. Graham Greene said that for him there were two kinds of writing: literary or serious and entertainments. Is it possible to combine the two? Or does entertainments refer only the frivolous and enjoyable, like card tricks and magicians' antics?
George Orwell wrote that early in life he "noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper." He also wrote that "anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness." Also he wrote, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." A final quote from Orwell also rings true, "To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle."
So that struggle to see what is in front of one's large or small nose is among the most worthwhile goals for writing.
George Orwell wrote that early in life he "noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper." He also wrote that "anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness." Also he wrote, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." A final quote from Orwell also rings true, "To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle."
So that struggle to see what is in front of one's large or small nose is among the most worthwhile goals for writing.
Friday, September 25, 2009
The play Thoreau is creatively based on the life, works and words of Henry David Thoreau. The play accurately depicts Thoreau life by telescoping portions of his life in one summer. All of Thoreau's works were read as well as several biographies to write this play. Why publish a three act play you might ask. Because Thoreau's work, his writings, have pinpointed as well as clarified our world, our government and the importance of our environment. His work, therefore, is timeless and applicable to all ages.
Some of the six stories in Stellar Energies To America written as fiction are based on experience like the Vietnam War novella A Final Quietus while two stories, Animal Park (first published by Swans and can be read at my Links minus the two Emily Dickinson poems on robins that I quote before the story begins) and The Man Who Became a Box are fantasies. The two Emily Dickinson poems are included in the Fictionaut posting of the story Animal Park, Parts I & II.
However, in the story Animal Park a robin was witnessed by the author to be looking at herself repeatedly in car door mirrors. For several days in a row this robin flew to an unoccupied parked car to gaze at herself in the mirror, landing on the crevice of the window on the driver's side of the car and then flying to the opposite car door mirror. The robin became Molly. A man becoming a box is a fantasy, but in our dreams all things are possible.
Why not write those stories based on fact and experience as non-fiction you might ask. Sometimes facts alone are insufficient to highlight and bring alive the reality of the world. The citizens of a country need a perspective that encompasses a fuller picture of their country and their countrymen, not a partial and insular version.
A superpower that stumbles is inevitably led by stumblers who make mistakes and blunders with the footprint of the American people.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Honesty and Ethics Deficit
By
Molly the Robin
My name is Molly and I am an American robin. I learned to think by seeing myself in car door mirrors. I am a mother who has had several broods of hatchlings. A fellow wrote about my story in Animal Park. He only got half the story right as most people do. I use public school libraries which are often closed. I usually find windows or openings into schools. I only have to perch on a tree or bush or deck to watch television news where most Americans get their information is hardly worth the trouble most of the time.
Your society and politicians have either abandoned or neglected honesty and ethics to such a degree your honesty and ethical deficit is far greater than your national budget and debt deficits. Your two most recent wars-Vietnam and Iraq were based on falsehoods and there were no political sanctions or legal repercussions for such dishonesty, such as impeachment and removal from office or even removal of pensions and government subsidies. The embedded political parties have no intention of utilizing such measures. Impeachment and removal from office have been utilized so seldom in 250 years one might think that the American politician is among the most honorable, honest and effective elected officials the world as ever seen, making them a model for the world to follow.
Your free press, especially television news, gives the same view and impression. How fortunate for your politicians, unfortunately, it is a disaster for the American people. Change is everywhere, except for the "official political class" and all other political parties are considered false and have no legitimacy. Political monopolies are acceptable in your democracy, which is a democracy but with a wholly lopsided building that does not provide safety and security for the majority of Americans. The lopsided and unbalanced structure of the government can be corrected and improved with reconstruction.
Think of democrats and republicans as your employees. Two employees who waste your company's time, often spend money needlessly and wastefully and occasionally do their jobs well. What do you do? You fire them and replace them with people who know your concerns and accomplish their jobs effectively and efficiently. Find other political parties and create other political parties who are not mired in the agendas of lobbyists. The status quo has been failure, which your television networks dare not mention, for their game is profit, not in informing you of the information required to make informed decisions about your elected officials.
Your society uses such things as the credit report as a substitute for honesty, job skills, character when several of the people who founded the country were either heavily in debt or bankrupt and their honesty and ethics far surpasses those today with excellent credit reports who created the recent economic meltdown and causing the financial bailout by the political class who probably had more to lose financially on Wall Street than the average American.
Abandoning ethics and honesty is like setting sail on a boat with a severe leak and expecting to survive an ocean voyage without a major mishap.
The superstructure of institutions whose foundation is power and money without honesty and ethics will undoubtedly collapse through its own corruption and incompetence which are the products of an honesty and ethics deficit.
We birds learned this so I don't understand why you upright worms can't learn it. Some things are really hard to learn and maintain- your is honesty and ethical conduct-especially in your political and educational systems. Parenting too has this gap-the honesty and ethical gap for there is no insistence on honesty or ethics.
Well, I'll be flying over to a wooded area near the park where we reside. Hopefully, your kind won't cut it all down this summer for some financially profitable development project. I believe in profit without too much destruction of our home, which is planet earth.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Spendthrift Government
By
Molly the Robin
There is endless talk and miniscule reporting on national health care today. Your government is the largest in the world because it spends the most money, yet your embedded Democrats and Republicans cannot figure out a cost-effective and humane way to provide health care for all of its citizens. It means they really do not want to provide it or they are incapable of doing so. In either case the embedded political parties have shown their mismanagement of the economy and the budget for at least two generations culminating in the latest financial bailout of the greedy and corrupt financial system-yet few people have been held criminally liable. Why oh why? Is it because the corruption is embedded so deeply? The debt and deficit your government runs up only make the citizenry poorer while the government elites and the institutions and industries they favor all do quite well at the expense of the country.
When the two entrenched political parties went to war in Iraq they did not calculate the costs which now soar into the trillions of dollars adding future health care costs of the soldiers. The maimed Iraqis undoubtedly have dubious health care future.
Chronically unsuccessful workers are either fired or removed from their jobs, except in the political arena where round the clock financial and managerial mayhem are immune from change. A wall of impunity and immunity has been erected to protect them and their parties. It is a wall made up of laws, regulations and most importantly a complicit and mutually beneficial way to govern to protect them from competition. The free press generally is weak in criticizing them, for they are partners who need one another for their mutual benefit and profit. Favoritism has become an American pillar of political and economic life weaved into law.
Your Democrats and Republicans have built a wall of incompetence prohibiting other political parties from participating in your democracy. Allowing their incompetence to continue endangers the nation. A failed democracy from within causes the worst kind of abuses, for the people are mere mannequins.
Your Democrats and Republicans have built a costly and unnecessary military empire at the expense of the citizenry. Intricate and expensive military and national security strategies did not prevent the horrific day 9/11. The attack succeeded not because you spent too little on security, but because of incompetence on the part of your government. Now you are spending too much on security for little purpose against a tactic you call "war on terror". How do you have a war against a tactic by criminals?
As we birds together in the park to discuss our affairs all have a voice. We do not waste nor do we ignore or abuse our fellow creatures. Your great economy and country and natural abundance have been severely abused for a few at the expense of the many. You have no longer created a government of the people, by the people and for the people. You have created a government of the few, by the few and for the few. Fairness and justice and freedom still exist but they are relegated to smaller and smaller corners of your country.
We birds conduct our affairs fairly without favoritism. We sing our songs to praise our way of life every day.
By
Molly the Robin
There is endless talk and miniscule reporting on national health care today. Your government is the largest in the world because it spends the most money, yet your embedded Democrats and Republicans cannot figure out a cost-effective and humane way to provide health care for all of its citizens. It means they really do not want to provide it or they are incapable of doing so. In either case the embedded political parties have shown their mismanagement of the economy and the budget for at least two generations culminating in the latest financial bailout of the greedy and corrupt financial system-yet few people have been held criminally liable. Why oh why? Is it because the corruption is embedded so deeply? The debt and deficit your government runs up only make the citizenry poorer while the government elites and the institutions and industries they favor all do quite well at the expense of the country.
When the two entrenched political parties went to war in Iraq they did not calculate the costs which now soar into the trillions of dollars adding future health care costs of the soldiers. The maimed Iraqis undoubtedly have dubious health care future.
Chronically unsuccessful workers are either fired or removed from their jobs, except in the political arena where round the clock financial and managerial mayhem are immune from change. A wall of impunity and immunity has been erected to protect them and their parties. It is a wall made up of laws, regulations and most importantly a complicit and mutually beneficial way to govern to protect them from competition. The free press generally is weak in criticizing them, for they are partners who need one another for their mutual benefit and profit. Favoritism has become an American pillar of political and economic life weaved into law.
Your Democrats and Republicans have built a wall of incompetence prohibiting other political parties from participating in your democracy. Allowing their incompetence to continue endangers the nation. A failed democracy from within causes the worst kind of abuses, for the people are mere mannequins.
Your Democrats and Republicans have built a costly and unnecessary military empire at the expense of the citizenry. Intricate and expensive military and national security strategies did not prevent the horrific day 9/11. The attack succeeded not because you spent too little on security, but because of incompetence on the part of your government. Now you are spending too much on security for little purpose against a tactic you call "war on terror". How do you have a war against a tactic by criminals?
As we birds together in the park to discuss our affairs all have a voice. We do not waste nor do we ignore or abuse our fellow creatures. Your great economy and country and natural abundance have been severely abused for a few at the expense of the many. You have no longer created a government of the people, by the people and for the people. You have created a government of the few, by the few and for the few. Fairness and justice and freedom still exist but they are relegated to smaller and smaller corners of your country.
We birds conduct our affairs fairly without favoritism. We sing our songs to praise our way of life every day.
