Thursday, December 30, 2010

over-stimulation

file this under "the crimes of capitalism"

I note in passing the ugliness, the sheer unpleasantness of my needed trip to Walgreens

buying the medicines my parents need

first of all: driving--a most unpleasant activity which consists in dodging enormous trucks

and is most especially painful if it is night time

ignoring the bright lights coming towards me

navigating at forty miles per hour between narrow lanes

parking, another unpleasant and frightening activity

the cold wind

beggars--official and unofficial

then within the confines of the ugly store:

bright fluorescent lighting

in-store propaganda: noise or music

over-stimulation

aggressive advertising, even a sign hanging down nearly hitting my head
telling me to buy protection from the H1 N1 virus---overbearing, invading my space....

par for the course
in the capitalist hell which calls itself The United States....

this too is misery

Footnote
message to working and middle class Americans:
your trucks enslave you
your telephones and electronic goods enslave you:
In sum as the minimum necessary possessions needed to qualify as a decent individual increases,
your life does not become better....
because all of that electronic fiddle faddle is not making you educated or informed.... nor will it ever make you contented so long as there is no democracy in the workplace, and your life is filled with insecurity--whether from fear that you might lose your job, or fear that you might not have the latest whatever.... it's a vicious circle...

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Noted in Passing....

The degraded nature of a culture may become apparent in various ways.

Ancient philosophers and psychologists alike will tell you that the emotion of awe (or reverence) is important, and under-appreciated.

Yet, the most prominent mention of "awe" in recent public discourse involved the massacre of innocents.....

ancient philosophers and psychologists?
e.g. psychologist Dacher Keltner ("Born to be Good") or the Plato scholar George Rudebusch ("Socrates")

blaming the poor

(Apology: This entry is not well structured on account of being written after my sleep was disturbed,...)

The other day I had a casual conversation with a woman working in an El Paso hospital.
I was surprised to hear her say something roughly like the following:

I am of Hispanic descent, but it bothers me when I see people here getting free medical care.
I mean my father and mother worked all their lives so they could have health care; but these
people come from Mexico and they don't...

Now, that's not exactly what she said, but the general idea is something I've heard expressed several times by different people here in the land of the free.

I suspect, however, that this is simply a fallacious inference. The people making this complaint never stop to think about damage or unfairness from the other end of the socio-economomic divide. To what extent do the super-rich receive benefits from the government in the form of tax cuts, or even government subsidies, etc.? (Consider the way in which George W. Bush earned his first million--via investing the money of wealthy friends, plus getting the benefit of a new baseball stadium built with taxpayer money.....)

[Moreover, even if someone comes from Mexico to use a USA hospital, I don't see that is necessarily wrong. The USA and Mexico have economic connections. NAFTA has damaged the Mexican economy and increased poverty, while benefitting people in the USA. Unfortunately the woman I was talking to today is not among those who benefit from NAFTA, so there is an irony here. She is as much a victim of the USA ruling class as are the people she is criticizing. So, ultimately, that's sad and a sign of successful propaganda, a political/cultural system which prevents people from seeing clearly.]

What about the freebies and perks which the super-rich get?

That's a question the complainers never seem to ponder.

(Do you tell me it's all a matter of "trickle down" economics? Sorry, that myth
is very adequately debunked in John Quiggin's Zombie Economics (2010, Princeton University Press)

There should be a name for this fallacy, but I'm not able to make one up right now.

(The rule seems to be: When in doubt about the cause of a social problem, blame the people least able to defend themselves, or blame those at the bottom of the social hierarchy...
Or, perhaps: Notice the small crimes of the poor, and ignore the larger crimes of the wealthy....
Only I'm not so sure about the assumption that the poor are actually guilty of any crime or wrong-doing when they use the system any way they can in order to simply survive... The Elephant in the room that's being ignored is: There shouldn't be any poor people AND their poverty is a consequence of the wealth of the Super-Rich!)

The error here is tantamount to focusing on a mouse that's just stolen a crumb of cheese which fell off your table .... at the same time you fail to see the hungry beast standing behind you, ready to devour you.....

(That image is not quite accurate, but it will have to do for now.)

Monday, December 27, 2010

groundless speculation

I've been watching the third season of the TV show "Doc Martin" with increasing discomfort.

I'm always a bit disturbed by the choice of an "interesting" or "exotic" locale, but I could forgive that if there were an adequate story.

Plainly DM has been holding my attention, but in the third series, there was a tendency toward a simplistic device to hold the viewers attention: surprising catastrophes.

The problem I see is that this plot device runs separate from the minds of the characters.

It is disturbing when people undergo traumatic events but their personalities do not seem to change. (Call that if you will "The Melrose Place Effect".)

Thus, one character was robbed and forced to work long hours in a factory (sweat shop?)
and acquired a rare African disease.....but in the next episode was back to normal with no evident change in his personality....

There is more to say on this score, I am sure, but at this point I am a bit disturbed. Let's just say that my opinion of the creators of this series is currently not very high. It may be "absolutely bloody hilarious" as the blurb on one CD box says, but it's a bit superficial and lacking in character development. At least the southern England scene provides pretty pictures, you may say. Damn annoying, I would say...

Saturday, December 25, 2010

capitalist style crime at an El Paso hospital

I've just returned from my fourth visit to an emergency room in the past five days...
Much could be said..
about the crap food for sale in the lobby:
coke and pepsi, assorted chips

the junk television: a "reality" cop show and ?sports?

Why should an entity devoted to health sell unhealthy food? It almost makes one think
that there is only one value--profits for the ruling class--and all else is only a means to that end. Perhaps the institutions in this society recognize health as a value only insofar as it serves to make the already wealthy wealthier.

Nor is it hard to see that paper, ink, and other resources are being wasted when we were given the identical pages about "smoking cessation" even though none of us smokes...

Someone has made a calculation that it is worth wasting the paper....

I'll bet the calculation did not include an assessment of the actual ecological consequences of, e.g., disposal of the printer cartridge.

It's built into the capitalist economic system that many consequences of actions are just not counted. As Quine would say (in a different context) they are "don't cares"....

But the consequences of our activities are real. It is madness and arrogance to ignore that fact.
So, to that extent economics as it seems to trickle down into real institutions, and insofar as it has practical consequences in a homely institution like a hospital, is an activity deserving of little, if any, praise. Certain ideas are being propagated amongst ordinary people, ideas which amount to a form of irresponsibility.

Dare I speak of hubris?

Important Caveat:
That's not to say that the individuals I encountered were especially rude or unfriendly or unhelpful, or "bad"......but when a system or institution or a society is organized according to flawed principles, individual efforts count for less than they might.

Additional Note:
Plainly "crime" in the title is being used in an extended use. On the contrary, it is precisely a flaw in the institutions that they allow us ignore real consequences of our actions, and do not designate harmful activities as "crimes". It's not counted as a crime at all or recognized as such. Harm is repeatedly done and there is no ready mechanism to recognize it, let alone discourage it. Indeed to speak of the crime in public might be considered rude...

facebook run by non-adult puritans

I've just tried to access a program or device or whatever you call it that a friend had been playing with, and it had frankly sexual content...
no nothing abusive, just fun...
(It was titled, "What are you in the mood for?"--i.e. what sort of sexual activity...)
And it was originating in the Slovak Republic.. AND CENSORED BY THE PURITAN CHILDREN AT FACEBOOK in the USA.......

I've thought many times that the USA is most backwards and even childish when it comes to sexuality, but what I am talking about now is censorship.

Moreover, when I was denied access, I received a most condescending message attempting to excuse this authoritarian, cowardly, and puritan action....
\
The people who run facebook are ignorant and uncivilized.....

Do you say: It's their personal property? So they have a "right" to deny access....You say: I should be grateful that they let me use it "for free"
Sorry, no,
It's not free. I pay for the time I use Facebook when i am forced to waste time avoiding idiotic advertising.
And, in the second place, I consider the internet a public utility, which should be in public hands.
Plainly, that's not the existing status quo, but that's because our existing societies are screwed up. Just as screwed up as USA attitudes towards sex, and the craven behavior of the facebook tyrants....

further remark: I should add that the pseudo-explanation offered when I tried to click on the link was something like this: we've thought about this a long time and decided..
To which the obvious retort is : who the hell are YOU that you can decide what I can say or think in a public space????
Moreover, the link was cancelled only with that explanation which is simply NOT a reason, but merely the equivalent of saying: TRUST US, WE KNOW WHAT' S GOOD FOR YOU....
since no supporting reasons were given, it's no better than saying "We know and you don't and we are not going to explain further...."

And, by the way, the link i was denied access to wasn't even in English.
So, the puritan North Americans really had nothing to fear.
Plainly, Slovaks have a more grown up attitude here. They weren't offended
by the frank talk about sexual activities. But it was intolerable to the primitives in
the land of the "free" (that word in that phrase is yet another joke!)....
How repulsive are the tyrants at facebook! How childish! How totalitarian!

Friday, December 24, 2010

Julian Assange

When I read the account in "The Guardian", I was troubled and thought it looked bad...
Then my second thought was: This is only one side of the story....

Then I heard an interview with Assange on Frost's show, in which Assange pointed out
that the reporter who had written the piece actually had a record of conflict
with Wikileaks and Assange himself....

and the exact selection from the women's words had been chosen to do maximum damage to Assange....

(who went on to ask: Who has the resources to know exactly which journallist would write so nagative a story?--and that seems exactly the right question...)

from a psychological point of view, I am impressed by how powerful an imprint a misleading story can have. . . . until it is corrected by further information.....

(I saw the interview through a link at "The Real News":
www.therealnews.com

Thursday, December 23, 2010

consumerist holidays

noted in passing....

.....in pissing.....

and in crapping.....

X-mas? jolly jolly jolly

Crapitalism Stinks

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

dishonor roll

It appears that you can add Apple computers to the list of cowardly entitities
and individuals who have bent before the pressure of the world's most powerful rogue state....
by deciding not to sell an application that allows access to Wikileaks.....

Cowardice is nothing new, but is never pretty.

Thus does Wikileaks provide us information about reality at many levels.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

why I love crapitalism


If we can all aspire to earn our personal own personality-defining self-piloted,
climate-destroying, resource wasting, monstrosity of glass, steel, and plastic....

why not your own personal urinal?

happy
happy
joy
joy

Monday, December 20, 2010

el paso sky

the lonely sky cried out in pain
when she was burned by the sun

the empty earth echoed in agreement

Sunday, December 19, 2010

broke a tooth

broke a tooth today
and I've got no insurance
It's saturday
and next week's a big holiday
my tough luck
but dont forget that the USA has the best health care system in the world
--I guess I'm not one of the deserving poor

balanced reporting

the thing they call "balanced reporting"
always seems
--somehow,
i don't know how--
to guarantee
that whoever had the loudest voice
before the reporting began
manages to maintain
their relative advantage;
if not to increase it!

....or...
............so..................
...................................it seems to me....................

Friday, December 17, 2010

decent work?

"In the face of the many still-pompous invocations of inalienable human rights, one might note that we still await the modest Magna Carta of decent work."

--Michael Denning,
"Wageless Life"
New Left Review 66, November -December 2010

http://www.newleftreview.org

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

"the state" part two

My knowledge or awareness of politics or political philosophy is very much a work in construction and those with more experience and knowledge may well find my remarks amateurish; nonetheless, having said that....

Having just put down Professor Levine's nice book defending socialism, I realized that my earlier remarks about the state worked primarily with a rather idealistic (if traditional) conception of the state. Within that tradition a failure by the state to deliver basic services (e.g., health care) is seen as a fundamental failure that merits complaint, or, even,
replacement of one government by another.

There is, however, another view of the state which predicts such failures, and expects them. On that view (I suppose a Marxist one), the state is always the servant of the ruling class.
(A similar result, I gather, would be predicted by Foucault.)

What is the correct view of the state? In my earlier posts, I suspect there was a tension between the more cynical, but possibly more realistic view, and the other one....

Questions about the nature of the state and the need for the state are not going to be answered by me here and now. I used to tell students that we need new institutions--more democratic ones, truly democratic ones... and I suppose what I think is: now, more than ever.

Nonetheless, from my reading of Levine's book, I see now that things are a bit more complicated. What does "more democratic institutions" really mean? I don't want to shilly shally too much here, but at this point my impression is that more democracy is not where we are heading today, which also means that the present signs are that the world is actually becoming less civilized....

Reference:
Andrew Levine, Arguing for Socialism: Theoretical Consideratons; Second edition London Verson, 1988

hell

On the totalitarian side of relationships in the capitalist workplace.....

a political theorist (a socialist no less) might say in passing, in a theoretical frame of mind,
that capitalism is not, after all, hell on earth....

but that just doesn't fit my lived experience. I've had jobs that made me feel miserable,
that entailed almost constant degradation and submission--not physical, but mental suffering--and the bland theoretical remark that capitalism is not hell on earth is false to that experience

indeed, insofar as you argue for socialism because it fosters autonomy, i find the rhetorical concession disappointing.......it was autonomy that was denied to me in two or three or more jobs over a period amounting to five or six or more years.... and those jobs (if not my life outside of work) were often a sort of hell....

(at best those jobs included limited periods of relative autonomy or non-interference from management punctuated by brutal periods of repression, to remind me and all of my colleagues who was really running the show, and how powerless we really were...--or if not exactly activities of violent repression, activities that were degrading and represented psychological warfare, degrading mandatory activities which served to ensure that one's emotions and inner life conformed to the needs of the managers and owners.....I believe what I am describing is correctly termed "totalitarian".....)

even worse
what of those people who endure material distress on account of capitalism? today more than ever there are such people

Sartre was closer to the truth in saying hell is other people
because when one's daily interaction with other people is not respectful, that is simply painful
--but, I would revise Sartre to say that when your relationships with other people are inadequate (something I don't think is inevitable) then your life does become a sort of hell....

and the scientistic side of me might like to make a remark about how certain primitive parts
of the brain are activated by social exclusion.... and reject any suggestion that "mere" social exclusion or lack of autonomy are less painful than actual physical suffering...

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

betrayal

I once told my Slovak students that the US government (Truman and company) had lied to my father about the atomic bomb... (it was not dropped on a military installation as Truman said)...

And one student surprised me with his reaction, saying something like this, "Well, the Communists lied to my parents about many things...."

As if to say that one American lie was nothing compared to the many Communist lies. Or, perhaps to say that I had no business feeling bad because every government lies. (Grow up you naive American! Politics is always dishonest!)

But the lies did not start or stop with the use of nuclear weapons on a defeated country, aimed at a civilian population....

And it is probable that my student's parents did not even believe the communist lies at the time they were uttered; but in any case, the communist regime no longer exists, while there has been continuity in the sort of government in charge in the USA, one which is happy to use violence to achieve its ends, and which increasingly cares little about the real needs of its people...

These days I often think of my father's faith in his country, his proud display of the nation's flag on national holidays, his service in World War Two, the fact that he voted in every election, and always paid his taxes....

And I think that his country failed him in many ways... but most tellingly now as he is elderly, weak, and in need of help, most of all has this country failed him by failing to provide the medical care that he needs, the medical he deserves, the medical care he was promised ....

Sunday, December 12, 2010

"the state"?

What is this thing called "the state"? Whether federal or at the regional level, the thing is supposedly acting in the interests of the people. If it does not, it is not doing what it is supposed to be. It is not supposed to be an autonomous bureaucratic entity. (I put on hold the serious worry that all bureaucratic entities have a tendency to become autonomous--if there is only a tendency, it is not inevitable. On a different construal of the claim, it is hopeless to hope for any progress in the way we organize our societies--a proposition easiest to affirm if one is comfortably situated.)

Consider the following:
from a discussion of "Medicaid" and getting help for aged parents...

"It is in the best interest of the state to give you the most conservative interpretation of the law..."

Here "conservative" means least generous or to give an interpetation which provides as little help as possible to a needy citizen.

But this situation, which the authors of this book so blandly report, is outrageous.

Governments exist for the sake of people, not the other way around.

What's being described is witholding medical assistance from those who need it...
And it is described as in the "best interest" of the state...

[digression/footnote]
(Oh yeah, another fundamental fact:
what's the purpose of medicine?
answer a: to relieve human suffering
answer b: to enrich the already rich, prolong their lives, and maintain a sufficient number of wage slaves in a complaisant position so that the ruling class has no fear of losing their unearned privileges.
Answer (a) is the correct answer; and Answer (b) seems to be the view of the powerful...)

(Do you say: there's just not enough money to go around! Someone has to suffer!
I say: Oh, yeah: Prove it! Because I do not believe it. And before you do,
tell me how much you are suffering because I suspect that you are not volunteering to suffer, but are assuming that someone else will do the suffering for you.)

Oh yeah, you already knew that health care in the USA is bad, that the government in the USA is bad... bad? how about a pile of shit ... or, more carefully, fundamentally flawed in a way that makes a mockery of any claims of democracy or concern for the well-being of ordinary people... as if the government were only, occasionally, to serve the people by accident....

(Reference: The above quoted line is from "The 36-Hour Day, fourth edition; subtitle: "A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss in Later Life", Nancy L. Mace, and Peter V. Rabins (Johns Hopkins University Press)--they have lots of titles, but it is worth recalling the words of Thomas Paine
"Titles are like circles drawn by the magician's wand, to contract the sphere of man's felicity"
Ah, but didn't Paine mean aristocratic titles? To be sure, but there is a doubt in my mind about the value of any titles.
Nonetheless, titles or no, the citizens Mace and Rabins have written a valuable book. The unhappy reality that they reflect was not created by them.....

After-thought (added 15 December)
It would appear that this entry (and undoubtedly other entries and thoughts) assumes (assume) a traditional or conventional understanding of the state... I hope to expand upon that remark in a new entry soon...

Saturday, December 11, 2010

how sick

I recall reading a while back about something called (hyper-euphemistically) adding value.

What I seem to recall is that if you take a fresh potato or apple or whatever and in some
way process it--thereby changing it from fresh food to something that used to be fresh--
it then becomes possible to make more money from selling it...

In the process the taste is destroyed and the nutritional value is severely diminished.

Yet, this is supposed to be a good thing...

What a sick system capitalism is!

Thursday, December 9, 2010

a low level

I have to confess that it is my impression that in general the level of education in the United States is very low.
Today I had a very brief interchange with a man at a medical supply store,
which I cannot reproduce verbatim as I did not record it, but it went something like this:

ME: "I know I can't buy it here, but where can I buy it?"
EL PASOAN: "You'll have to go to Store XYZ."
ME: "What? Way the heck on the other side of town? This is one of the most inconvenient cities! Hasn't anyone in this city heard of global warming?"
EL PASOAN: Childish smile.
ME: It's not a joke, but thank you.

For anyone who doesn't know, there's a good web site lots of information provided by the Historian of Science, Spencer Weart, which goes with his book, The Discovery of Global Warming:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

the public reaction to WikiLeaks

I've just read in The Guardian that six out of ten citizens of the USA think that WikiLeaks's leak of diplomatic cables have harmed the USA--"hurt the public interest". (Pew Research)

I myself don't believe that the release of the cables have harmed the interests of ordinary Americans, so I asked myself whence this difference. The cables have shown the US government to be dishonest and pushy. If that's true, then it reveals mistakes. You need to recognize mistakes in order to correct them.

In brief, I suppose that the average American (or those surveyed, at least with this particular instrument) have a different view of what diplomats are doing, or what foreign policy is....or even what the "public interest" is....

Although, of course, the questions asked are always significant....
I wonder whether something akin to a Socratic conversation--one of some length
where the participants were not timid in saying what they think or following their thoughts through to conclusions... a conversation unlike a typical press conference, but a more honest sort of conversation where the participants did not fear exposing their own or another party's errors...... might produce a different result....

And, it occurs to me that I can borrow an idea from Richard W. Miller in his Globalising Justice: The Ethics of Poverty and Power (published by Oxford UP 2010)...

Without taking the time to document Miller's view, and relying solely upon my (admittedly fallible) memory, I seem to recall that Miller defended something like the following view: Relations between the USA and other countries would be better if the USA were friendlier, if the USA treated other countries as equals in something like the spirit of true friendship..

And, from what I've read about the new leaks, the leaked cables themselves show that the USA has been most unfriendly and over-bearing in its relations with other countries...

So, are the surveyed Americans working with a flawed conception of actual US practices? Do they think that the USA has actually been a good friend to other countries? (I guess that official US gov't propaganda would go in that direction...)
OR would they outright deny a view of Miller's sort if it were explained to them?
(Part of Miller's view, as I recall, consists in showing that the USA has not been a good
friend in the past; so, the new evidence provided by WikiLeads would only be further evidence in the same direction.) Would they deny in general that friendly relations are good? Or would they only deny that US has failed to be a good friend?

But this is only a hint, not a developed thought. It makes me wish I had the time to take another look at Miller's book. Regrettably, with the demands currently placed upon my time, there is no guarantee that I will be able to do so any time soon.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

old people in Kundera.Filial Piety 3

Old people appear in Kundera's writings from time to time:

In one story, there is a pear so large it dwarfs a Russian tank---his aged mother's view....

In another, an elderly lady waves with the grace of a young girl . . . as if she had forgotten her age, as if she had forgotten that she were no longer beautiful.

These gestures and thoughts are disconnected from what we think of as "real"...
but, exactly not for that reason lesser ... on the contrary, these thoughts and movements should frighten us with the possibility that our customary vistas are more limited than we would care to imagine....

I prefer to think of them as messages from a far away land, written in a language we have not mastered, carrying a message whose importance justifies the lengthy journey the messenger has made to bring them to us. The messenger knows very well that we only partially comprehend; yet he or she tries to tell us, they must try--a hopeful ceremony of parting.

Filial Piety Part Two

The shopping mall featured on the front page of this blog was once a vital feature of my parents' lives. The day it closed was a sad one for them.

It meant that they no longer had access to certain basic items within a short distance.

That ground level absence of civilization is worthy of notice.

I'll put it differently. I was away for many years, and when I returned I found that my parents' living conditions had gotten worse. Not that they were now destitute, but that their access to basic necessities had been made more difficult. Their life had become, in some degree, less comfortable than it had been when they were young--and that is cruel because an older person is automatically weaker than an older person.

Simply put, that's not what we were taught in school. That's not what the USA advertises itself to be. It's not supposed to be a place where things get worse.

There are fancy things to say here about automobiles and shopping malls--potentially sophistic things. But the most basic fact is the diminution of living standards.

A case where hard work and effort did not pay. Quite apart from the hypocrisy, this change is, in itself, a shameful commentary on the society, the system of organization, and the badness of the people who run this country.

communism and capitalism

Communists were more honest than today's capitalists. At least they promised a rosy future. They were always building socialism--working toward a better future.

By contrast, today's capitalist propaganda says that heaven is here and now. We are all equal and there is no need to struggle for equal rights any more.

What is even more amazing is that people have been fooled into believing the lie.
Amazing or depressing, I'm not sure which....
"...I am convinced that the Americans' new status as a single superpower has caused a certain delirium in them. This is documented by the wave of self-glorifying films flooding the world, by the rhetoric of mystification used in the dirty war against Serbia, which the USA dragged Europe into; by the arrogant edging out of the UN; and by a paranoid political vision of the world as a place where villains conspire against democracy, while America self-sacrificingly watches over a threatened world as the world's policeman, equipped with the illegal Echelon planetary eavesdropping system. Only they have the moral right to decide about what is good and bad for humanity. Non-Americans make up an 'insane society', which has no right to judge them."
--Vaclav Belohradsky, Interview in Central Europe Review, Vol. 2, no.20, 22 May 2000, http://www.ce-review.org/

When John Pilger (an Australian) recently remarked that they have been reading our emails, so it's about time we could read theirs, he was implictly referring to the very same "illegal Echelon planetary eavesdropping system" that Belohradsky mentioned.

It is worth highlighting the fact that when Pilger says it's about time we could read their emails, the "we" in question refers to the whole world, and the they of "their emails" refers to a very small elite that more or less runs the planet.

(As a Spanish friend once remarked, "I wouldn't mind so much being ruled by the Americans if they at least let us vote in their elections...")

In itself that situation where they read our emails and spy on us is offensive to anyone with any fondness for democracy.

A friend recently remarked that Pilger's remark is a "fantasy".

From the standpoint of the tyrants who run the world, it might well be so-labelled--echoing equally dismissive remarks about "magical realism" in South America--but why should we take their point of view?

Pilger's astute remark is clear and to the point. It stands sharply in contrast to the vitriolic attack on Wikileaks and Julian Assange. The ferocity of the attack deserves notice; but it shouldn't lead anyone to doubt the value of what Wikileaks has done, or what Pilger has said.
Pilger's comment was, quite simply, accurate. By contrast, the energetic response to Wikileaks had more in common with a wounded elephant thrashing about than it does with anything which might be labelled "political science'.

In any case Pilger has a track record and it would be inaccurate to label him a mere fantasist...


Monday, December 6, 2010

The Equallity Trust

I've added a new link --to "The Equality Trust".

The argument being made at that site is that income inequality produces bad societies.

There is much one could say here. I take it that the authors Wilkinson and Pickett believe that they have good empirical data, and they have gotten beyond mere ideology.

What they've done is impressive, but I confess I am not a strict empiricist. What's especially interesting about their approach is that they don't just present data, but present suggestions about why it might be so and analyze it.

In any case, what is striking for me is how badly the USA fares, on a variety of measures, in comparison with other industrialized countries...

filial piety

I've been thinking unhappy thoughts these days about the failure to share resources in the United States--and, especially, the insuffiency of care for the elderly.
There is a sort of stinginess about insisting that when a person leave this world, if she or he
happens to get help that they must end their life with zero resources to pass on to a child....

The policy in fact manages to affect mainly those who are not wealthy, and that too is not good.

But, as I found myself thinking of my father who worked hard all of his life and believed in the "American Dream", and as I review his current health situation and the insufficiency of the resources to which he has access, I found myself thinking of piety-- a special sort of respect, traditionally accorded to divinities... but also in another tradition accorded to family,
and even more broadly interpreted today to apply to nature and things which fill us with awe...

And I think that in the USA there is a lack of awe for the elderly, and most especially a lack of this virtue at the Department of Aging and Disability..... ( perhaps primarily because certain legislators lack this virtue...)

Recommended Reading
"Medicaid Estate Recover Program; Receipt Acknowledgement', a form available at the homepage of The Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services;

Dacher Keltner, Born to be Good, WW Norton, New York, 2009; Chapter 12, "Awe".

Plato, The Euthyphro

After-Thought:
And, by the way, what happens if you are elderly and do not receive the medical care you need? What happens, say if you need treatment for pain, but do not receive adequate pain medicine, say, for two years? First of all, you suffer. You cannot perform your everyday activities. But, notice that, if you are retired, no employer suffers . . . . your problems do not have so great an effect on the ability of the capitalist class to increase their profits.... So, reasoning in this manner, one might suspect that the health problems of the older population would not be of great concern to the capitalist class.... but this is purely speculation....

Saturday, December 4, 2010

John Pilger on WikiLeaks

John Pilger has the most precise response I've heard yet to attempts to censor Wikileaks..

I paraphrase:

Why shouldn't we be reading government emails? They've been reading our emails for years.

Exactly right!

http://www.johnpilger.com/

(Pilger was speaking in an ABC radio Australia inteview.)

in passing

from the leaked cables at wikileaks, we learn of abuses by mercenaries in Afghanistan...

"Foreign contractors [[more accurately termed mercenaries]] hired Afghan 'dancing boys' WikiLeaks cable reveals"

It's not surprising that this happens, but it is real abuse--and it's not just puritanism when I say this...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/foreign-contractors-hired-dancing-boys


An After-thought; did I read that article right? I think it said the US Military is unable to oversee or supervise DynCorp, the company which employed the mercenaries involved in this abuse....
Let's get this straight: The US government gives money (money taken from citizens of the USA) to a private company, and then can do nothing by way of overseeing the activities of the company which operates with US-citizen money? Did I read that right? Consider the following parallel: Imagine an ordinary worker who could not be overseen! Or a teacher? That would never happen!

damn socrates

damn you socrates
always talking about shoemakers

my friend told me that shoes are the bread of civilization
and here I am
stuck in a place where the shoes are shit and the bread is worse

no end in sight

Wikileaks may be up again, but the attacks (in various forms) upon the project of making information available continue.

I myself see no cause for optimism, but only see increasing evidence that the situation in the USA (and elsewhere) is getting worse. The word "economics" has unfortunate connotations, and brings with it a variety of associations and half-thoughts or thought paths that are unhelpful. To say there is an "economic downturn" masks the urgency of the current situation, and the degree to which decisions of specific individuals are causing harm to other individuals with much less power. To parse it in terms of economics may give undeserved authority to various so-called experts and, at the same time, tends to make the problem sound more technical than it really is. If a giant kicks a midget in the stomach, the most perspicacious description of the event won't necessarily be in the language of physics.

When I try to think of parallels, I think of the Chinese Cultural Revolution because that event had sufficient power to permanently damage individual lives. Today the lives of many individuals are being ruined, permanently damaged, in order to further concentrate the power and wealth of a small minority in the USA; at the same time an enormous smoke screen is being generated to hide this fact.

Friday, December 3, 2010

wikileaks

update:
Wikileaks up
http://wikileaks.ch/reldate/2010-12-03_0.html

Wikileaks is down?
Sing a dirge.
Democracy is Dead.
Freedom is Dead.
Wikileaks is down?
No Democracy Today.
Democracy is Down.
Prices are UP.
Class Warfare is Up.
Wages are down
Jobs are down
Social Security is Under Attack
You and I are under attack (unless you belong to the ruling class)
Bad news for you and me.
Goodbye Democracy.
Hello Class Warfare
Hello Tyranny

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Wikileaks

Let's see... you tell the truth and you help people find out the truth about a very powerful and ruthless government....someone makes a phony charge against you.
whoa
not just someone
the most powerful and ruthless government in the world... (see "afterthought" below)

instead of giving the Nobel Peace Prize to people who spread the truth about wars and government and possibly thereby encourage peace

who do they give it to?

a war criminal... somone who continues wars, expands wars, uses unmanned drones to murder women and children, covers up torture, continues torture, and most definitely did not keep the promise to close Guantanamo.

Am I making this up?

hmmmm

that's the world we live in

not pretty

what kind of world is this?

an afterthought: might the attempt to smear the name of w.leaks' founder have been done independently?--ie. without prompting from the world's number one possessor of weapons of mass destruction? It is possible, but it would be a sort of coincidence that turns out to be what the country with most destructive power would have liked....could be a coincidence, .....but then we don't know... in any case the smear campaign has turned out to be ridiculous.... but the question one has to ask is whether we might not someday learn that the USA provided incentives to the Swedish government. Today we don't know that (when I wrote the above I didn't know it)... but it seems well within the realm of possibility that we shall someday find that out...

recommended reading

Andy Kroll, "How the Oligarchs Took America"
at
TomDispatch.com

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175326/tombram:_andy_kroll,_how_the_oligarchs_took_america/

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Albertsons

When I go grocery shopping it is unpleasant for a variety of reasons. I do not enjoy driving. And, there's no way I can go to a grocery store using public transport. (It would turn an 1.5 hour activity into a 3 or 4 hour time-waster.)

And quite apart from the very real fact of global warming, why would anyone want to pilot their own vehicle? Every other car must arouse at least a little caution--they call it "defensive driving"--but it is a state of permanent awareness that is actually stressful. By contrast,
if I am riding a tram or metro train I can relax and people watch or read or daydream--none of which is possible if I must pilot my individually owned resource-draining vehicle... Any real independence/mobility that you gain by owning your personal auto can be equalled by a good public transit system.


The fruit and vegetables are not fresh. Waxy apples, and even apples with little bruises,
dark spots under the bruises, and then what looks like a little mold... And by the way,

what the hell is wrong with this company called "Albertsons" that they insist on wetting fruit and vegetables---that does not keep the stuff fresh; on the contrary... How primitive and wasteful! What an insult to the intelligence of people needing to buy the stuff.

All of the bread is crap. I do buy so-called "artisan"bread because it is the same price as the so-called natural healthy bread that's mass-produced, and actually has a crust. But, it is NOT FRESH. The so-called artisan bread is actually produced in the midwestern USA and then frozen, transported to Texas, and finally microwaved before being sold.

If a food has been frozen, it is not fresh, and does not taste fresh---no matter what they say to the contrary.

Back to the BREAD: What they do is criminal! How could they do that to bread!?###*** IT is not fresh; and this claim that it is 'artisan' bread is pure poppycock. Whoever came up with that marketing label deserves a new level in a new Dante's Hell. It makes me want to throw up when I see how in the United States they serve up crap with a fancy package or a pretentious name and then charge more. --And People actually study that sort of nonsense in Universities; people are paid to teach this sophistry!!!!

But all of the food is pretty much lower quality than Europe--East or West....

And on top of that all, the obnoxious, phony holiday music.
there needs to be serious Boldstudy of this emotional blackmail and dishonesty....
It is part of a total surround of exploitative brainwashing diminishing anti-culture....
and it is most typical of American capitalism...

Hello? Happy! Happy! Happy! JOLLY! JOLLY! The Sappy Season! Yeah joy happiness bullshit. Yeah right! Sorry I see no reason to be jolly or happy or whatever. I am not entitled to tax privileges because I'm earning a quarter of a million dollars. I have NO reason to be happy. Your phony happiness is crappy, thank you very much... And I have a million reasons to be disgruntled.

Grocery shopping: a totally unpleasant experience. And the food you eat, well, it says a lot, doesn't it?--about who you are? about the kind of country you live in?

It's low quality now... and the prediction is that prices are going to go up... What do you call that? No reason to be cheerful, that's for damn sure.

About the food and everything else, I say: I deserve better. You deserve better. We all deserve better.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

LAND OF THE UNFREE

"This conversation is being recorded...."

"In order to ensure quality this conversation is being recorded..."

HUHHHH!!!????

WHAT THE??!!***expletive deleted

THIS IS TYRANNY, NOT DEMOCRACY

Monday, November 29, 2010

Class Warfare

Class Warfare; i.e. the increase of low-wage jobs with no security and no health care.....

i.e., the planned and deliberate elimination of decent jobs.... in order to increase profits...
i.e, in order to increase inequality...

i.e., in order to return to a more feudal social organization....

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6694

(Thanks to Brian Leiter at the "Leiter Reports" for drawing attention to this article.)

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Plato's "Cratylus'

Recently I received Plato's dialogue "The Cratylus" as a gift.
This allowed me to renew my memory of one of my favorite passages in Plato, which I will now paraphrase:

Pluto has a bad reputation. But, he can't be as bad as people think.

Why do people stay in the underworld? If they stay there, finally, it's got to be due to desire, not compulsion or necessity.

Desire is stronger than necessity or compulsion.

Nothing is a stronger force for a living creature than the thought that by associating with someone else this will make us better.

That's my very rough paraphrase. This is a version of the famous doctrine that "all desire is for the good", and that everything we do is done with the thought that it will make us better.

There is a bit of autobiography that is relevant here... I am sorry to say that I've not defended this thought when I might have, when I worked in high schools in Slovakia.

I was astonished to see the extent to which high school managers rely upon force and compulsion, threats. In fact it made me sick to see it.

I regret that I did not object to it more loudly.....

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Agatha Christie

Recently I enjoyed watching a BBC version of an Agatha Christie story.
At one point, something like the following dialogue occurred between a wealthy young man and a young "radical":

Angry young "radical": "Aren't you ashamed of yourself indulging in such a frivolous pastime as boating?--at a time when families are starving, when men have no work?"

Privileged Aristocrat: "Well, I don't know how to build a boat myself or take care of it, and I employ men to do it for me...."

There the conversation ended. But Agatha Christie plainly did not understand the real young "radicals" of the world because the conversation might have continued:

"But what I object to is precisely that--the fact that you--a man with no real talents--have the power to hire and fire other people. That you--a man who has no broad social vision, a man in no way better than anybody else, and maybe even worse than many--have the ability to decide where and how social resources are used."

Even today we have a so-called "crisis" because those with power are now taking resources away from the rest of us.... and this is not being done in order to create a better world, but merely to guarantee that the richest and most powerful continue to be the richest and most powerful.....

Friday, November 26, 2010

imaginary conversation

"[I]t wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing....."
---President Dwight D. Eisenhower
(Quoted in Alperovitz 1995, reference below)

a: Those South Koreans won't stand for that!

b: (silently) what is this? a sporting match?

a: Yeah, but there wont' be another nuclear war.

b: Did you know that we are the only country to ever use nuclear weapons.

(unsaid: so what are you talking about? another nuclear war? It wasn't a war; it was a massacre...)

a: ??

b: And did you know that American prisoners of war died in Nagasaki?

(correction: and Hiroshima.... and also American wives who happened to be visiting
their husbands' families when the war started)

a: That's not true. I am a history buff and I would know.

Now the conversation really does become imaginary...

b: Well, just play along with me for a moment... What if the USA is the only country
ever to use nuclear weapons, and what if our leaders lied to us about their reasons,
and what if they were willing to sacrifice innocent Americans?

How would that change your picture of history?

And would it make you so eager to see South Korea attack North Korea?

Would you be so sure that North Korea is bad? --because they have nuclear weapons.

Maybe they have nuclear weapons because they want protection against the sort of people who would use the atom bomb against their own people, if it were necessary to get what they wanted......

WARNING; the above is incomplete, inaccurate, and distant from reality.....just a fairy story...

RECOMMENDED READING (not fiction)
Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, Random House 1995.

disconnected observations

a rough list.....

In El Paso, Texas, it never rains--so, the streets become flooded when it does...
and, incidentally, it rains much more now than it used to forty years ago.,.

In El Paso, Texas, the winters are very mild (and people are always in their trucks anyway)
so, there's not much by way of winter clothing to be purchased....

And with free markets or neo-liberalism or pie-in-the-sky, you can always get a better job if you don't like the one you have, so SHUT UP!

And then since the "free market" is so efficient you can always get what people really want.
I actually can't find shoes that fit in El Paso. Therefore, the free market has decided for me that
there's no need for shoes that fit. That, again, would seem due to the disproportionate amount of time El Pasoans spend in their trucks. They don't need shoes that are good for walking
because they ride most of their lives.

And if you don't like it HERE, it's a free country, so you can just move;; so SHUT UP!

In fact any problems you may happen to have are just due to your inability to accept reality, the way things are and the way things have to be and the way things are everywhere, so shut up and stop whining!

(The latter recommendation is a favorite among people who haven't really lived anywhere else than here....)

But, apart from an unpleasant encounter two nights ago, I've found that in casual conversation with strangers I meet, most people accept some version of the claim that the economy doesn't work to serve their well-being as well as the claim that the health care system in the USA is in bad shape.....

And when I've complained about the miserable bus system, other people have mentioned better experiences in other cities of the USA.....(but then that's a selected minority of people who actually use the El Paso buses).....And I even heard one person say that there is a small group of wealthy people who really run El Paso, and that they would not like the minimum wage to get higher.....in which case El Paso rather resembles Honduras...... and in fact (they have told me) the small group of people who run El Paso want nothing to change.... Well, that was a very interesting comment....It made me think that, in this respect, El Paso is governed by the same laws as the rest of the world..... a small elite is content with the status quo, does not want change, and will do everything in their power to keep things the way they are now.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

an apt quotation

In light of recent blog entries, the following line from Keith Oatley's "Best Laid Schemes"
lept off the page at me:

"Whole structures of unconscious attitude and intention pervade cultures."

(p. 337)

possibly paranoia

Chance run ins with police or security guards... nothing serious.... aggressive drivers unfriendly to pedestrians...

Those are some of the ingredients which can lead to a minor case of paranoia.

When unbalanced by friendlier encounters, they can dominate your consciousness.

I believe that this describes my recent history in El Paso, Texas. So, readers of this blog might like to take that into account.

The damn thing is that I am a citizen of this country, speak the language, and was educated here; yet, I really do not really feel comfortable here....

And on second-thought:
Yes there are real devices of social control, and this is a very hierarchical society. This invisible daily oppression is largely invisible to the residents. Moreover, if you have a comfortable location in the overall set-up, it just doesn't bother you as much... Your being bothered is not at the center of your life, while for me these days I wouldn't exist if I weren't being bothered---or, so it can seem.... There is such a thing as the intellectual apprehension of inequality and injustice and the mere nuisance-factor in daily living, but if you are located at a higher level of the social pyramid, your daily problems are not so severe...

Just to be concrete, and, perhaps to repeat myself:
If you happen to be out at night, on foot, and a car appears from nowhere and shines very bright blinding lights on you, how do you feel? Scared? Annoyed? You are, so to speak, in their sights. In this country they could be armed.
thus have I been greeted by the El Paso Police Department on two occasions--occasions on which I had done nothing worthy of such scrutiny. Hyper-vigilance might be the term to describe their behavior....And those unpleasant experiences were exactly the goal of that police behavior--a kind of aggressive display of force, which for me stands part-for-whole demonstrating the true character of social relations in the USA.... As I've said before, I never experienced such aggressive scrutiny before. I've lived in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria, and I have been out at night many times--but never, never, never was I treated in the way I have been treated in the "land of the free".....

Moreover, some of the unpleasantness I've experienced has undoubtedly been connected to my fondness for actually going about on foot. Without a car I've been a target. And, that, too is not a human universal. It is a very specific characteristic of the country with more destructive power than any other.

Now, someone might reasonably say: But the police themselves are scared. This is a sort of defensive maneuver on their part.

And I say: Yes, I know that. I am not talking about the rationality or lack thereof of individuals. I am talking about social patterns. What sort of society has that sort of aggressive behavior? Not every one does. And you can guess the sort of society I would like to live in....

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

local scenery

The picture above is a different beer bottle, broken on the neighbor's territory...
I just don't get it. Okay, I can understand drinking beer. But, why would you break the bottles?
And why throw a bottle over the fence onto your neighbor's yard/property?

I should have taken a picture of the fence to the left. I think it's about six feet high,
so you'd have to deliberately throw the beer bottle over the fence....


I don't get it. You drink a beer, you feel good (or bad or sad?).... and then you throw the
bottle over the neighbor's fence? Is that a local custom?

a military town

Some earlier posts need to be cleaned up. I hope to get to that in the next couple of days.

I am afraid that I just had a very unpleasant experience here in El Paso, Texas. I don't think I can write about the details just now.... but it might be relevant to remind our readers that El Paso is a town with a high percentage of soldiers and ex-soldiers.

I just had a very unpleasant interchange (it can't even be called a conversation) with one
ex-soldier. It involved the police--really. Apparently my recitation of some litle known facts of history put me under suspicion....

I will only comment on one facet of the interchange now.

I heard the following, "I defended this country for twenty years."
I regret that I wasn't cool-headed to ask for the details.
I mean the United States has not fought a defensive war since World War Two
and the man who said those words was too young to be a WWII vet....


But, as I said, I wasn't cool-headed enough to make this obvious point.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

like communism only worse...

The kind of spying by private tyrannies (colloquially known as "corporations") on Michael Moore is reminiscent of Communism....
But with communism, everyone had health care...

Footnote:
"Communism" in ordinary American is a term used to refer to the political and economic system which existed in Central and Eastern Europe after World War Two until the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is arguable that it is not accurately described as "communism". For example, some commentators speak of "state capitalism". Moreover, 'communism' in the parlance of students of Marx (and I'm not one!) seems to refer to a hypothetical end-state of human development. It is also worth pointing out that scholars who read and study Marx say that Marx gave no blueprint for the creation of a better society.

With all those qualifications in mind, we might better say:

The sort of repression experienced by Michael Moore as he made "Sicko" and afterwards is similar to the repression endured by citizens of Central and Eastern Europe (e.g., Czechoslovakia) between the end of World War Two and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Insofar as the USA propaganda system teaches that the US system is diametrically opposed to the one formerly present in countries such as Czechoslovakia, it is, to say the least, greatly ironic that the repressive practices of the (so-called) Communists are used by the corporations of the USA.

Reference: See Moore's interview on "Democracy Now."

Monday, November 22, 2010

inadequacies of the US Postal Service

Coming soon:

If they can do it in Slovakia, then why not here?

Sunday, November 21, 2010

misery

There are many sorts of misery and many sorts of sadness.
The misery and sadness of aging.
An old man who was, when young, an athlete, and who today is almost crippled.
That is a very sad thing.

But in this country, this so-called "great" country, I see not only sadness,
but also disrespect, a lack of fundamental humanity,
in the absurd hierarchies of doctors and nurses and medical workers,
with their needless slavery to the corporation's greed for profits,
the greed for money and power by the already rich and powerful...
an obscene spectacle

And, then, too there are the banal and mundane stupidities,
banal and mundane obscenities of Puritanism,
such as
when I was about to cross the street,
I was stopped by a young man, a teenager, asking me if I woudn't buy
beer for him....

that is obscene. A crime against humanity by a blind society ignorant of how to live.
Why should this young man have to ask strangers in this way?
what secret dangerous wicked concoction must beer be?
Obviously it is more poisonous than I have ever guessed if it so jealously hidden, and
guarded from young adults.

So superstitious is this country in its Puritanism.

And so evil the way this puritanism feeds into an obscene glorification of the slavery which is falsely dignified with the name"work".

Then, too, at KMART I saw UGLINESS.

The workers at KMart desperately need to unionize.

I spoke with a woman there who told me THEY ARENOT ALLOWED TO DECIDE WHEN THEY WILL GO TO THE BATHROOM. They can only urinate or defacate on schedule.

That means that the corporation KMART treats them disrespectfully, in complete contempt for their dignity and autonomy as human beings.

KMART ... . yet another private tyranny in a land where only the word "democracy" is heard, while the concept, the thing itself is dead.....

Then too, signs of the greed of our ruling class are everywhere in KMArt: loud music telling me to be happy, telling me to shop... all brutal in its ugliness. . . . shameful in its disrespect.. . . I think I might stop buying in the month of December just to avoid the sounds of lying cheerfulness.........

YG's dictionary

"internet": noun; (a) A device whereby governments and the private tyrannies known as "corporations" are able to monitor the activities of citizens; (b) a high tech method whereby money moves from your pocket into the pocket of someone who needs it much less than you do, as quickly as possible; (c) a distraction

less freedom on the internet

This is just an incidental remark...
But I believe that the Internet is becoming more and more vicious.
You buy a computer and it's so designed that once you connect it to the internet, it takes you to certain places--without asking first, without giving you a chance to say no...

And lots of stuf requires registration....

more advertisements that are supposedly targeted to my "unique" profile as...
not a human being
not that
but as (forgive the obscenity)_ a "consumer" (ycccchhhhh) NO i am a citizen,
a member of a society, not merely a "shopper" yccccccchhh

and who is keeping track of where I've been?

who is keeping track of the pages I have visited?

A bad trend.

How to fight it?

Those with power and money are becoming more adept at manipulation......technology only gives them a new weapon to use in the class struggle against the rest of us.

Friday, November 19, 2010

more stupidity, still more

TANKS in Afghanistan???!!!!??????*****
some people never learn...
but others pay for their folly ...
others suffer

Thursday, November 18, 2010

a stupid country

This is a stupid country.
This afternoon I drove 24 miles (round trip) to deliver a bottle of urine to my father's kidney doctor.

This was the second time I made the trip. The first time I made the trip they refused to accept my offering because the appropriate medical worker was not present. (Apparently, they did not have a free refrigerator where I could leave the urine.)

There has got to be a better way.

On top of wasting more than an hour of my time, the whole process needlessly contributes to global warming.

This is a stupid, idiotic way to run a society.

An After-Thought: The Provincial Ethnocentrism of the West

The incident described above involved a series of interchanges with people who were, from one point of view, consistently friendly and polite.--Consistently friendly, smily and polite, yet my ease at getting done what I needed to do was not existent.

And, in general, having been away and returned to the USA, this is my consistent impression. Here in the country with the ability to cause more death and destruction than any other, politeness masks arbitrary power and does not replace it or eliminate it. (I think of the "friendly" and "polite" bouncer at KMart who I've described in previous blogs.)

Recently I spoke to a young resident of the UK who remarked in passing on the bad behavior of people in shops in the Czech Republic. I wonder if that citizen has ever experienced the blunt and intrusive and arrogant questioning style of the UK border control bureaucracy....I have.. and as I think of it now, I believe that the citizens of the UK and the citizens of the USA really have no reason to count themselve superior to Czechs or Slovaks... not on the score of the quality of human relationships.......



Wednesday, November 17, 2010

what a lousy place to live

A Bad Country and a Bad City; not a nice place to live......

This is really just a pathetically awful place to live, but my parents live here god damn it!
Don't they deserve better?
And don't their neighbors deserve better?

When I lived in Bratislava, there were three places within easy walking distance where I could buy fresh fruit and vegetables.

And, oddly enough, the fruits and vegetables were not of uniform size. Nay, sometimes they weren't even pretty to look at.

But, guess what? They tasted good! Much better than what's available at the local "Albertsons"!

And another thing. Let's talk about Walgreens. In Europe pharmacies do not sell groceries and grocery stores do not sell prescription medicines. At least not the last time I was in Vienna or Bratislava. And, I think that's a good thing. It cuts down on monopolies.

But here in El Paso, Texas, we buy food in Walgreens--and we also routinely purchase over-priced medicines which are over-priced because the government of the USA does not represent the people of the USA---but guess what? Every Sunday sale prices are advertised. And by Wednesday everything of any interest is gone--OK, let's not say 'everything', let's be careful and say: lots of stuff, or a significant amount of stuff. I wanted, e.g., today (Wednesday) to buy a sugar free breakfast cereal. God knows there are not many of those, and the one I know of was on sale.

But, guess what? This being Wednesday, when I arrived at Walgreens after a walk that may be good for myhealth but wreaks havoc on my aesthetic sense, there was (you guessed it) none of the advertised breakfast cereal! Of course, I can get something called a "rain check", but in the past fourteen months or so, I have collected a few "rain checks", and guess what? The items that I got a rain check for have not yet appeared on the store's shelves.....hmmmmm. Why the hell pretend the sale goes from Sunday to Saturday when for all practical purposes it ends on Tuesday?

Who are we kidding here? But then again, this is the organization that has the nerve to push flu vaccine with aggressive advertising (E.g. the t shirts worn by workers)... They are flaunting their social deficiency when they should be ashamed of themselves. Public health is good for everyone and it should not be for sale. Some brain cells are lacking here, or maybe there's a hole in the conceptual nets of the citizenry or maybe just the ruling class--an idea like public good is too hard to grasp? A dangerous idea? I don't know, but there must be some explanation...But, getting back to the point:

This is a bad place to live. It is not a good place to live. This is a badly run, badly managed country, and a badly managed ugly metropolitan center. (I refuse to mis-represent this mess by calling it a "city". )

(And, let's not forget, as if it weren't bad enough....that we have all this ugliness and misery at home,....on top of that we have to export death and destruction to Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and a few other countries we might mention if we had all night.....thank you very much. Nothing good or admirable about that....)

About my unpleasant walk to and from Walgreens---- the sort of thing that starves and diminishes and damages any sense of beauty, proportion, harmony, etc. etc. etc.:
I noticed (once again) the painful UGLINESS of this place again as I walked through what seemed to be mile after mile of asphalt---parking lots for cars---on my way to Walgreens....everywhere bright lights and ugly advertising....but (n.b.) the actual neighborhoods (where people, not cars, live) are poorly lit. The lighting in my neighborhood is as bad as COMMUNIST lighting--I know. I've been there.