President Obama recently called Daesh “the face of evil.” Daesh is the terrorist group previously called ISIS or ISIL, that some called “Islamic State” or more accurately Non-Islamic State that I wanted to just call Terrorist State - but Daesh will do. Or Douche, as Stephen Colbert suggested. Bernie Sanders might be our next president, if we pull that off, but our “more likely” next President, Hillary Clinton was asked how you can “get in the heads” of such an evil and ruthless opponent. She said she doesn’t think you can. I’m not saying I’m smarter than Hillary, or would make a better president. She only had a few seconds to think of her response to this question, on the spot with all the world watching. I’ve had days, and magic, too, and no pressure except that if I can figure it out and express it, even here, I know the Counter-Example to the Terrorist State Ideology can save the world from Evil. Granted, I knew a better answer immediately than what she gave, but I’m a pacifist feminist psychedelic witch, a buddhist little monster, which gives me incredible advantages over her in insight. But even more importantly she has the pressures of the cameras, advisors and the whole world watching, and the Eyes of History, imagined judgment of ages to come and possibilities of her decisions or words leading to mistakes incurring the blame of millions. I not only don’t have those pressures, I have the same pressures working in my favor: no one is watching me or recording me, for broadcast, I have “all the time in the world”, been thinking about this for days and know the answer, like Buddha having time to sit around. My decisions and words “don’t” affect anybody the same way a presidential candidate's do. I have no “influence” except magically, but my magical influence is strong. I’ve written things that few people or no one reads, that come true. I don’t have a team of the best advisors to tell me how things are supposed to be, but in this case that is a disadvantage to her because the way things are led to where we are now. I’ve spent all my life focused on the way things should and will be, ideally, not the way things are, except with some disgust. I have a magical”network of advisors” far more powerful than hers to assist me. Media Magic is my specialty: this means Literature, Film, TV, the internet, Radio, Art, Music, the dreamworld, fairies, witches, ghosts, trolls, and magical folk everywhere are not “at my command” but we all act in concert. My style is to be aware of all the roles I might play, from audience to usher to seat-keeper, from Maestro to Virtuoso to Last Trumpet, from architect to stable-boy to stagehand. I read Phantom of the Opera last week - I could probably write this all based on themes from that but my answer was also inspired by everything that happened this week: the terrorist attacks in Lebanon and Paris and elsewhere; the Russian admission that terrorists blew up their plane and their military response; internet chat; talking to my witch friends in person; Holly Holmes beating Ronda Rousey down a pile of pegs; the first rerun of “21 Jumpstreet” I ever saw, the HT Ioki origin episode; The Rock’s “Walking Tall” movie and Bernie Sanders introducing a bill to legalize weed nationally - then the discussion of Naiz ideas like identification bracelets and internment camps, while I was in the process of writing.
The first “framework” for this edition, when it was called Telling the Truth about the Past and Future, was a story on NPR about teaching medical history, specifically the history of informed consent. How can this relate to Terrorism? You’ll see real soon - informed consent was “standardized” in response to Nazi tests and experiments on people. When the horrors of what they did, and all it led to, were addressed worldwide we came up with “rules” to make sure these things never happened again, that people would have to agree to any experiments on them. The man being interviewed was advocating that we teach medical history in medical schools, saying only 16% of them currently do. And he said this was such an important development in medical history but we need to understand the history of it to avoid the problem we fell into. He identified the problem as labeling the Nazis as evil. And before I get some reactions for saying something I am not saying, of course the Nazis were evil just as the current Terrorist State is evil just as lots of other things are evil. But the problem this doctor identified, the problem that countless other doctors fell into and still do today is why we need to teach the history and change this course. The problem is saying that the Nazis were evil and only evil people would test things on people for evil means. By seeing it this way, doctors and scientists excused themselves to do the same evil tests on people without telling them, by saying they were doing it for the greater good. They did this “for decades”, notoriously, but this even continues today, especially through the pharmaceutical industry. And of course Nazis thought they were doing “good” in their twisted way like Daesh does. The point is that we have to root out evil in everyone, including ourselves, and to do this we have to recognize how it does crop up in all of us and address it, root it out from within. On a “large scale” that affects everyone at every level, we have an evil fucking pharmaceutical industry and we need to change it. We have an evil military industrial complex and need to change it. We have an evil Drug War, an evil police system enforcing it, and an evil prison system profiting from it. We have evil oil companies, evil miseducators, evil greedy rich people, evil torturers, and evil bigots and racists and homophobes. We have an evil Republican Party coordinating and profiting from all of this and an evil corruption of the political system allowing it to happen. We have all these internal evils, nationally, and we have to stop and even greater evil in Daesh. Well, we can do that by just killing them all and continuing to kill anyone who replaces them. We can do that, sure, no problem, and good people who die trying to do that will all be heroes and martyrs and we all love that, right? I’m saying there is a better way. It comes from acknowledging that we can be evil, we have been evil, in the past, and have to be opposed to evil we may be doing now or might in the future. I have to go back and add “torturers” to my list of evils we have in America, now.
Only by addressing the evils that “we do”, only by “talking with the man in the mirror...asking him to change his ways” as the King of Pop taught us, can we end evil in the world. Everybody knows that for somebody to join Daesh they must “be” or feel like a total loser, piece of shit. It's easy for anyone to tell that whether someone joins Daesh or joins the seemingly more numerous ranks of American idiots who shoot people randomly every day, they don’t feel good about themselves. I’m not saying it's “all society’s fault” I’m saying everyone knows the people from Europe or other places who go to join the terrorists live in communities where they are persecuted by the rest of the country. Someone radicalizes them and preys upon this despair by giving them dreams of glory through violence and evil. In terrorist networks, this is like a person who meets you in person or through the internet and actively tries to convince you to be evil. With American crazy fuckers who shoot people, no one needs to “radicalize” them, personally, individually. We get “enough” - one is way too many, fuckheads - of these losers in America with a terrorist network that is not nearly as personal. All we need is conditions of despair - the general Gun Craze culture that praises and is built on violence is all the “radicalization” a desperate crazy person needs, especially since the political power and wealth of that culture through the Republicans ensures that there will be a gun in every pot, driveway, and mule in the country for that person to use. Dumbasses like Ben Carson say that if the Jews had guns there wouldn’t have been a holocaust. Dumbasses like Donald Trump say that if the Parisians had guns there wouldn’t have been an attack. What the dumbass “more gun!” argument fails to see is that if there were No Guns None of This Would Have Happened. We can get rid of guns and get rid of the problems that make people feel like they need guns, like poverty and the fear of robbery. We have to have treatment for insanity in America so people won’t go crazy and shoot other people here but we also have to end unfettered availability of guns. The right-wing political powers that insist on more guns for people and more weapons for armies are the source of the problem of violence worldwide. The fact that guns are so easy to get here surely contributes to availability worldwide. I haven’t heard where the guns come from that are used by terrorists outside of Syria and Iraq - in America they can get them anywhere, of course. But I think everyone knows that that weapons Daesh was using when they first started taking territory were American weapons they seized from the Iraqi army. I don’t know where they buy their weapons from now but I know the preponderance of guns here and loopholes in the law don’t help the situation.
Hillary can’t see Daesh’s point of view but it would be much better for everyone if she recognized how her own decision, to vote for the Iraq War, is responsible for creating them. The roots of modern radical “islamic” extremism are of course Reagan-years American funding and arming the Mujahedeen to fight the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, through the CIA and Osama Bin Laden which led to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. I’ve heard people blame Wahabi Islam for some bad ideas but I don’t know enough about it to speak to that. I do know that lots of bad ideas are out there, but if the people having them don’t aren’t given weapons and encouragement to carry them with massive funding it doesn’t turn into this. The problem with Hillary unless she changes is she is too allied with the same establishment that can’t change itself to eliminate these root causes. That is why she voted for the Iraq War when every sensible person could tell it was just Bush lying because he wanted to go to War. She just had to show she was not “shy” or something. The reason, one reason, we want a woman president is to be less likely to go to war, more likely to look for other options. We don’t need a woman who is “just as ready to go to war” as every male president before her. Bush said he went to war to stop Al Qaeda in Iraq and WMD’s but neither of those were there. There is a magical principle to manifesting what you’re trying to avoid if you go about it the wrong way and this is a perfect example. Going to war to stop phantom terrorists in Iraq has led to real terrorists in Iraq. Other decisions directly contributed to the creation of Daesh, too. A foundation for all Middle-eastern tension has been America’s financial and military support of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. That oppression has long been the backdrop for people staging war and terrorism. Specifically in Iraq, the Bush administration disbanded the army and banned all Baathists from power and many of these people founded Daesh. The American policy of torture and examples of war crimes and prisoner abuse helped fuel further the same anti-American sentiment as from our support of Israel. Furthermore, as torturers, we gain more of that image of “evil” that people can justify doing “anything” to stop us. Then we dumped a lot of weapons in the country with a brand new, sectarian and ill-trained army for Daesh to steal. We “could have” made them even worse “if” we we had been planning to create them all along, but not by much. I’m not saying it’s all a CIA ploy to make war continue to seem necessary, I’m saying these are the outcomes of saying you want to stop something without recognizing how you are contributing to it and cutting that out. You just make it worse. Yes, you create a group of “others” whom you can blame. Killing them seems the obvious solution, to destroy the evidence. But it doesn’t remove the cause. It will happen again unless we address the causes, in all of us, instead of directing bullets at “thems”.
I heard on the radio this morning that the organizer of the Paris attacks was one of the people killed in the raid yesterday. This is good and bad news. Some people mourn the loss of any life, in this case I’m sure there is a greater proportion than usual who feel glee that he is dead - I had that emotion, too, cheering at the news like a football score, “take that, motherfucker” or something. But of course the tragedy of his death beyond death or sympathy itself is that they can’t question him or somehow use him alive to disrupt other plots or even try to reform him to help find ways to reform other terrorists. The thing about disrupting plots is that while of course you want to do that you don’t want to be always focused on the fruit, not the root, of problems. You can’t overreact and make things worse or create the problems you are tying to solve. I heard on the radio about a french school in LA. They were asking the class what they thought of the attacks and the concerns these 10 year olds expressed included a fear that this could lead to more power for the right-wing xenophobic political parties in France which would just make the whole situation worse and more tense - people giving into fear and manifesting what they fear by taking the wrong course of action. We see this in Europe with the refugee crisis. They’ve known for months that they needed a more coordinated, unified approach to help hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. instead some countries put up walls and others became more overwhelmed than ever, refugees were forced to sneak around more and more which increases the likelihood of terrorist sneaking in with them. When one of the Paris attackers had doctored documents to come over as a refugee, fearmongers used this news to try to scare people of all refugees and put up more barriers to helping them. Doing the most for them, in the most cooperative fashion, will also lead to the best possible screening and screening conditions for “bad apples.” Maybe if we get really into screening, with new technology like better lie detectors, we can finally screen the terrorists out of our police force and government, too.
When we see pictures and hear stories of refugees dying it’s easy for us to say the people of the world should do more to help these people. And the only reason to be wary is fear of terrorism. Well, in America we had a crisis of kids coming across the border, fleeing the terrorism of drug cartels in South America, Central America and Mexico. These are refugees from violence and oppression, created ultimately by our own Drug War, and they are kids. You don’t even have to screen them to worry about them being terrorists, they are kids. Yet we locked them all up like they were terrorists for at least a year and mostly forgot about them - I heard a few weeks ago that some progress had been made to finally get them out of lock-up. We haven’t been hospitable to these child refugees who aren’t even dangerous, breaking our own laws that say we should do so, and now we have another debate about Syrian refugees and the smallest possibilities that some of them might be dangerous. I wonder if even some people who “might be” or might have been dangerous wouldn’t be once they got to a nice place. But the point is that you eliminate the dangers by first deciding to do the right thing, help the refugees, by leading with justice and compassion. Once we all decide to do that we will be much better at working together to make sure no one cheats the system with violent intentions. But we should be keeping everyone from cheating the system with bad intentions, in every aspect of life, including Wall Street and politics. In America we now have 23 governors saying they want to block any Syrian refugees from coming to their states, even though they don’t even have that power. The Republicans and congress have put forth legislation to make it harder for refugees even though the White House says they won’t add any safety, the system is safe enough as it is, just make it take longer and be more difficult for refugees which ultimately increases bypassing the systems which then makes it easier for terrorists to slip through by increasing unregulated channels. The best response to the crisis came from the Governor of Washington who responded to the fearful governors by saying he welcomed Syrian refugees to his state. When asked why on NPR he said it was because it was the right thing to do and explained how we need to lead with our values to do the right thing and consequently defeat the negative ideas out there, show that we are better than the fear and division the terrorists are trying to sow. The interviewer tried to scare him by asking what he would do if his decision to welcome refugees allowed a terrorist to get in and make an attack. He had a classic response referencing FDR. The man who is famous for saying that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is also the president responsible for the internment of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II. The governor said that is probably what he was thinking when he decided to do that. He was afraid, giving in to the fear of “what will people say if I don’t do this, even if it’s wrong, and something bad happens?” That was a mistake, the Governor of Washington said on the radio yesterday, and he was committed to not making the same mistake. I knew about this travesty and even studied it some in high school in AP History and in college in a Asian-American literature class. It’s one of our national shames that many people are not aware of, but you would think anyone who was aware of it would know why it is shameful. A quick Google search showed that history.com called it “one the most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American history.” Wikipedia said that it wasn’t the result of military concerns, just the racism of white people on the West Coast where there were large communities of Japanese Americans. Lest people think racism is regional in America, or that it doesn’t persist today, there was another example of media magic when I did my search. Maybe he heard the Washington Governor on the radio saying the internment was a shame, not to be repeated but decided he had a different view. Maybe he didn’t hear that at all and it’s just coincidence that he mentioned it. Before writing that sentence, all I knew was a headline I saw that the Mayor of Roanoke Virginia said yesterday that the internment of Japanese refugees was a good precedent for blocking Syrian refugees. Then I had to run an errand and heard on the radio that it is even worse than that. He seems to be proposing internment of Syrian people or Muslims in general in America. Then they reported Donald Trump suggesting even more bad things, from closing mosques to making muslims carry ID cards. That might not be the most Nazi thing he has said but it’ pretty Nazi. I’ve always said the Republicans are Nazis and I don’t think I’m exaggerating at all or diminishing the evils of the Nazis. I also say they are as bad as child molesters because everyone knows that is as bad as you can be - and their victims are children, everyone else, and the earth itself. It was simply racism and fear that caused America to put Japanese American mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers in internment camps while their sons and brothers were fighting for America in the war. As the lady they also interviewed today on NPR, who was in the camp as a baby and has bone problems and self-esteem issues now, decades later, from the malnourishment, conditions and stress of the internment camp. She said they lost everything and their bank accounts were frozen so they couldn’t even sell what they had before having to leave everything. We’ve had 70 years to learn from this mistake but some folks today don’t even know about it or worse don’t know why it is wrong. Well, here’s a lesson even dumbass Republicans can understand - would you want people locking you and your family up and taking your stuff, just because of your race or religion? NO. You wouldn’t like that. Your dumbasses complain about paying taxes and are actually, therefore, the cause of all these problems related to poverty and strife. I have to give credit to the head of a national Evangelical association who said his faith and understanding of Jesus tells him and most people he hears from to help refugees. The ones with connections to the right-wing might have the money and platforms to make people think that christians are against accepting refugees but the opposite is true. The so-called christians who support the rightwing though racist or fearful mentalities just reveal their falseness with these sentiments. The best we can hope is to identify them and help them change their minds or ridicule those mentalities until they go away.
I came back to add this after seeing Stephen Colbert tonight, Thursday night. He joked about Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush saying that we should only admit Christian refugees from Syria. Of course the situation isn’t funny and their kind of bigotry and fear creates incredible suffering. But just saying it means the joke is on them. When asked how we can know if they are christian, Jeb said “they can prove it.” When asked “how?” he said “I think they can prove it.” The sad thing is, they are proving that they aren’t christian by making these statements and representing that fear and avarice.
The reason I wanted to include “21 Jumpstreet” is because of the media magic of how it came about that I watched it and the content of the story. The other day my friend and I were talking about a dream he had with Neil Patrick Harris and we were discussing why it wasn’t necessary for him to appear in a dream, seemingly, I made a comparison to MaCaulay Culkin and then brought up Christian Slater and Johnny Depp, then we wondered if Depp had always done movies or started in TV. I remembered “21 Jumpstreet” though I had never seen an episode. The next day, yesterday, that show came on one of the rerun stations that play old shows from various decades. I watch those a lot, but this was a channel less familiar to me, I don’t think I’d seen any ads for the show. So when “21 Jumpstreet” came on as I was flipping through channels last night I watched it. The plot was that one of the young cops was in trouble for using a fake identity. Since he was a refugee, a foreigner, using fake documents, he was in trouble with the feds. His police captain had to get to the bottom of it. It turned out he had come from Vietnam as a refugee, and in the early 80’s the war had not ended long ago. He decided it would be difficult to get on the police force as a Vietnamese refugee due to security concerns so he stole a Japanese-American identity. In the end, the resolution was that his captain faked some documents that said he had tried to apply for a legal name change to the one he stole and this cleared everything up. I know this is just a TV show, a fantasy, but I know that it reflects the mood of the times. In the conservative 80’s, thirty years ago, you might expect attitudes to be more strict. Maybe in some ways they were. But for this issue about refugees, magically put before me by the media, it struck me how innocent, welcoming,helpful and forgiving “80’s America” seemed to be and how paranoid and racist we seem by comparison, today. And I know more people were more racist a generation ago, and the problem that happened is that people are generally less racist and less people are racist but the remaining racists have consolidated their power. It seems like they are numerous because they are so loud, with FOX News and Donald Trump. And of course they are numerous, there’s far too many of them, but if everyone could vote and voted they would have no power. That is one reason they are all about voter suppression. As it is, they have enough passion in their idiocy to influence the elections. The stupidity and obstinance of the Republicans they do elect end up making more and more people disenchanted with politics in general. If we could elect better people, have better discussions that actually resulted in progress in government, more people would get involved, it would get better and better. But it takes things like watching 80’s TV to realize how far we’ve strayed.
I mention Ronda Rousey because she got knocked the fuck out so bad her fall from stardom shook the world. She came hard and fell harder. I’ve been hoping for her to get her ass beat every time I see her - like Tom Brady or any other piece of shit champion who is too full of themselves, I just couldn’t wait for her to lose. I predicted her loss for her last fight, just hopefully, so I was wrong when she won. I actually gave her credit for the first time for finally beating someone without armbarring her. But as soon as I heard she was going to fight Olympic boxer Holly Holmes I figured she was trying to get some actual fighting practice in that previous fight. I also knew, for sure, that this time she would be defeated and predicted she would be knocked out in humiliating fashion. TMZ asked Dana White, the whatever he is, producer of the fight, and he said she had not underestimated Holmes and wasn’t unprepared. I guess his conclusion was that he had a bad fight and would be back, not that she was all hype. And of course he was selling the rematch. Leila Ali told TMZ that no fighter in her prime who gets beaten that bad can be a true champion. I was just pleased that she lost so bad, and I know a lot of people were. One of the reasons I was so happy about it is because I hate the attitude of people who love “champions” like Tom Brady regardless of their characters. I heard one sportscaster say, before the fight, that Rousey was the best athlete, not just in her sport, but in any sport of all time. Well, not in fighting, apparently. And in fact, time showed about that statement what I knew in an instant, it’s all hype. I disagree with anyone who thinks she is attractive, and i think that is part of the reason some people idolize her, but that’s not important, just a factor in why she gets so much hype in the first place. Some of the TMZ guys said they were shocked at how much people were glad that she lost. I’m not surprised at all. She was so boastful and disrespectful to her opponents that anyone with sensitivity could tell it was time for her to lose. And I think that’s why everyone was so happy she did, it was like justice being done or karma, what everyone knew should happen taking place. Of course it is a credit to Holmes to have beaten her so well. It wasn’t just fate, it took her effort. But Rousey’s whole undefeatable image was the result of hype and being the first star in an emerging sport. As more and better fighters come out there won’t be able to be another star who is that successful based on hype, but she will have to do it with ability. One reason people delighted in the victory for Holmes and loss for Rousey was the triumph of Ability over Hype and Arrogance. The other reason people were glad she lost is just a lesson to her for being arrogant and disrespectful. That is why Gaga tweeted “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T TOUCH GLOVES” with a picture of her being knocked out. Gaga is nice but also sensitive. This is all I will mention about Gaga in this edition of the gagablog but I think she feels the same way I do about Rousey. As an artist I have a big ego. I was always an outsider, good at school but my egotism didn’t come from feeling smart, that contributed to me feeling different, like a nerd, and in the social order that made me a lesser person. Being weird, and an artist, made that even worse. I’m glad in the long run because it made me sensitive to others who are treated as lesser people. But I resented it then and resent other examples of it since then. It makes me sympathetic to Gaga knowing she was bullied in school. The pain of it still motivates her to help others and the way she found herself and empowered herself through art and music is my main recent inspiration to do the same. It is my sense of self as an artist that is so strong, and the artist self is sensitive to others, especially to others who are victims of suffering. This is why I think people have such a gut reaction to people who are on top and act like it is entirely deserved and could only possibly be deserved by them. It reminds us of anyone who is in a superior position and acts entitled to it. That bravado is probably to cover the sense that they don’t entirely deserve it, that some of their status comes from cheating (Tom Brady), a skewed institution, cheap move and media (Rousey) or having a wealthy dad who only loans you a million dollars to start your business (Trump). The reason Republicans say they want everyone to be self-reliant is their myth that they are themselves - they don’t recognize their white privilege, they don’t give credit to the community that makes their success possible or the people they exploit. They must sense guilt for this but cover it up with this false pride and superiority and supremacy complexes. Trump is the classic example of all of this. So is the republican myth of “American exceptionalism.” It’s all bullshit, the idea that only “we” deserve to live in peace and freedom. Everybody, at heart, wants all of that pride and snobbishness to fall. Even the snobs themselves are suffering from isolating themselves from the rest of the world. They might not realize it but it's part of what makes them such assholes, this self-imposed separation from humanity, in their souls, and blocking others from necessities in favor of their luxuries, in the world. At heart, our sense of justice tells us all that we want those who have power and status, wrongly, to lose that power. The glee people felt at Rousey’s loss is nothing compared to the jubilation we will all feel when evil powers lose their grip on the country and the world and collapse. And we can all sense it coming.
I watched The Rock in “Walking Tall” and the gist of it is he returns from Iraq and the town is corrupt by a casino and sheriff protecting them. Since the cops won’t help he goes himself for justice when he finds out the casino is cheating at games, prostituting girls including his girlfriend, and selling meth to kids. He takes a shotgun or rifle, but leaves it in the truck when he gets there and takes a 4 by 4 cedar beam out of his truck and fucks the casino and security all up. He tells the jury he will run for sheriff and clean up the town if they acquit him and the whole town knows what’s going on so they do, and elect him. The next scene shows him arriving at the sheriff's station. The outgoing sheriff says they have a code of conduct and he respects his election but he can personally vouch for all the deputies. The Rock fires them all on the spot. I missed the end of it but that’s enough to make my point. We know who the bad guys are, lots of bad guys when we really think about it, and sometimes we don’t believe in ourselves or the system enough to believe we can overthrow them and turn it around. But a badass can show up, kick some ass and inspire people, clean house and start getting things done. This was a movie, but it’s so inspiring because you want things like this to happen in real life, your heart and soul want justice, the replacement of crooked cops with good ones, of a bad system with a good one. In real life, Bernie Sanders is our badass. He’s ready to lead a democratic socialist revolution to take over, change the rules of campaigns to make it easier to throw the bums out. Making college free, rethinking the military, going for green energy, getting equal pay for women and other things are the kinds of changes that can make a bad system into a good one. But the event today that made me think of associating The Rock with The Bern is that Senator Sanders introduced a bill today to legalize weed nationwide. he’s going for it, and actions like this make me think he will win. We’re all learning more and more about how good weed is for health, community, and business. The potential for national, then more worldwide legalization, are infinite and the changes will be enormous.
As I typed that last paragraph the local news reported that Anonymous has started attacking and taking down the profiles and websites of Daesh. They’ve declared war on them and committed to destroying them and exposing them. Since they do their recruitment and get support online, the newsman was repeating an official report that they said the terrorist would have to be disrupted online before they can be defeated on the ground. This told me a few things: first that the government knows that Daesh has to be taken down online but they haven’t been able to do it or focused on that. Anonymous can and is. So far they say they have destroyed 20,000 terrorist profiles. The fact that Anonymous can do this but governments can’t should tell us something about real power. They have always made attacks for justice, that I can remember. It’s reassuring to think that hackers, like artists and actors and musicians and writers, have genius and something about genius tends to be good. Yes, there are evil super geniuses, but the most prominent and seemingly powerful hackers are in Anonymous and it seems like they can protect us and hopefully the increasing government cyber capabilities can, too. But this news story seemed to suggest Anonymous is the most powerful force, currently, in this cyber realm. The fact that they’ve declared war on Daesh makes me think this is a turning point and we will see big progress towards the end of terrorism. But this will also lead to the end of all war. As we realize that military powers weren’t the solution, but cyber powers were, we can’t justify all this expenditure on weaponry. People will be more eager for a new direction for security and the military that is non-violent. Sanders can help make this shift in the military, but any smart leader will do it as it becomes clear to more people that this is the way to go. I want to say a big thank you to Anonymous for doing this. I also want to commend them for making an eerie and intimidating video. I think they are awesome enough whoever they are and it’s great that they are anonymous, with the masks, too. I might have had this thought before, one interesting thing about their mystique is it’s hard to remember them, but the weird look of the video, like a newscast with some static at one point, was the figure looked strange, tall and disproportionate and moved oddly - the overall effect hit me with a cringe as I was typing this that the figue in the video, behind the mask could be an alien. I don’t mean to suggest that they aren’t human, but then again they might not be. They could be ghosts or genies, jinn. The static gave the impression of a transmission from space. When I thought about that, I thought how that might scare the shit out of Daesh, scare some of their fighters into defecting and scare the kind of impressionable youth who might join them out of doing so. Anyway, Anonymous is awesome and I wish them luck.
All the artists, activists, visionaries, and magic folk and everyone in general are united against the evils being expressed in the modern world. I have to give credit to the witches and other magic folk of the world,especially. I talk with a chaos magic community online and we’ve been doing a spell for peace in Syria. There seems to be significant progress in many ways since we started it. I want to give those magic folk credit for helping this along. But I also know that is just one slice of a vast cake of good intentions out there magically opposing the evil. There are a few thousand people in that group, and tens of thousands of witches in other groups I am in. These are connected to millions of witches worldwide. In addition, though I don’t interact with them as much, I am in contact with millions of other little monsters through the world. We are basically an artistic revolution just beginning. The magic folk are coming into power, too, and coordinating our efforts worldwide. I believe we will become analogous to Anonymous and other guardians of the cyber dimension in the spiritual dimension. We will come together with activists and artists of other dimensions, too, and bring these dimensions together into a holistic world. Magic already connects us all, and witches and magical people exist in all cultures and traditions. The coming-together will also include being able to unite religions through the magic that connects us all with the help of these magical ambassadors from every different tradition. The most recent development since the spell was made was John Kerry announcing a plan for a ceasefire between the Syrian government and rebel forces to start in a few weeks. Previous successful spells like this in the chaos group were for he ceasefire from Valentine’s day in the Ukraine to hold and for the peace talks in Korea to succeed. So far, so good on both counts. They also did one in another group to punish that investor who gouged prices for an AIDS drug and a lot of bad stuff happened to him. This stuff works, and the more it works the more people believe in it and do it. I think it was soon after this Syrian spell was started that the Russians got more directly involved in Syria. In many ways this seemed to threaten escalating the war, not ending it. But that has changed, too. Today an American official was on the radio insisting we were not coordinating with the Russians, probably to deflect criticism from assholes who think we have to fight them, but we are sharing information for attacking Daesh without creating problems between us. The president of France is going to meet with Obama this week and Putin next week about coordinating attacks on Daesh and ending the war. Russia was slow to admit that terrorists had blown up their plane killing 224 people, and when they did admit it was terrorism I was afraid at first that they would say it was rebel forces, not Daesh, who bombed them, in response for their attacking those groups instead of Daesh, according to western media reports. But now all the reports seem to be that in response to that bombing, they are attacking Daesh. Maybe they were protecting Daesh before, focusing on the rebel groups to help support Assad and to diminish American influence. But it seems like the terrorists went to far and pissed off the wrong people. As much as I dislike war, if this war unites the world against a common enemy we might as well stay united and fix climate change and poverty and everything else. We can if we don’t mess it up along the way and end up fighting each other again. And this can be the last war, as I predicted, not because it is a world war that ends us all, but because it will be the world uniting against the ideology that leads to war and finally outgrowing it.
Daesh is the worst, most obvious example of evil in the world. I’m a pacifist but I appreciate the people who are trying to destroy them in different ways. Mine is magic and art, but I want to do more than destroy the current terrorists. I want to destroy the Terrorist State, not just this Daesh but the State of Mind that leads to terrorism and our own corrupt government and corporate structures that terrorize the world in their own special ways. But also to find the solution to dismantle the terrorist state in each of us when we are overcome by oppression or anger. We can all do this, we can all work on this. But the secret is not falling into that trap that let the doctors do what Nazi doctors did, because “they” weren’t evil. We have to face the ways we contribute to evil, allow it and support it, even unwittingly. We can see it, obviously, in Republicans, but of course they can’t see that man in the mirror. When I look at myself I feel evil for not going for my ideals more and faster. But I'm ready to make up for it. One reason I rambled on here so long is to reflect different lesser and greater aspects of evil. Another was to delay the harsh thing I have to say at the end. One reason we, Americans, should be able to understand Daesh is by taking responsibility for the chain of events that created them. But the other understanding is harder to face. It’s not like we ever want to be able to feel like they do, we don’t want to be terrorists, too, even terrorists against them. We don’t want to sink to their level. But we want to understand them, somehow. Unfortunately, as evil as they are, they are not so different from us, and it takes just a little deep self-reflection, as an American, to reveal it. One of the worst things Daesh is doing is beheading civilians and killing them in other ways. This is reprehensible to us and it should be. But we don’t have the moral high ground, as a nation. It is no way to make a nation now and there is no excuse for it being hundreds of years ago, either. The truth is, when Europeans invaded this land and when Americans expanded the country “we” killed countless civilians, millions of people, and a lot of them by beheading. This is something I’ve always had like a genetic memory of, a spiritual pain I can feel. I don’t know the details of all the horrors, but I know the creation of the country America was extremely brutal. I was reading Washington Irving’s “The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon” and it contained stories of colonists or Americans persecuting Indians which included warriors whose heads they chopped off and put on pikes. The whites did these terrible things to make the nation they felt was their destiny, or for religious reasons. Native people still live here and still face terrible poverty and oppression. The vast majority of tribes and individuals were destroyed but we’ve never really started making things right with the people left with whom we can still seek amends. We haven’t even changed the name of that damned Washington Football team. The fact that America was formed by genocides and other atrocities does not mean we can’t criticize Daesh for trying to make a country with brutality by using excuses of religion or destiny. It means we are in the position to criticize this because if we are honest about it we can see all the evils in it and all the evils it leads to. We need to destroy Daesh, we need to destroy the ideology that leads to people joining Terrorist State. And we need to recognize and destroy that in ourselves, in our country, too, and do our best to make up for it however we can and at least stop repeating it.
We can do it, we can all do it together. It has taken some terrible things but we are all coming together and as we work through it we will reveal the ways to avoid these divisions and the separations they cause and never have these problems again. Thanks, everyone, and thanks, Gaga, for keeping me focused on wonderful things and positive. I heard the terrorists are paid $700/month, regularly, and that beats the local armies paying $300/month, sporadically, about 2 months out of 5. The economic forces are why some people join Daesh, and my first reaction was why can’t we just buy them all off? It would be cheaper than what we spend on war. Of course they aren’t all in it for money but the idea is many of them are, or by necessity. More importantly, if conditions were better in other institutions, people were doing other things and making good money, it wouldn’t have that draw. That applies in poor places around the world. One hero in all of this is the Egyptian Billionaire who I think now is going to buy two islands off Greece to make a country for refugees. If more of the rich could do the same, eventually reclaiming war zones, or just employ people, hire refugees, or help develop all afflicted areas with enough means, we can turn the whole thing around. I had to put that idea out there, and thought since Gaga is rich and compassionate, always helping with big problems, maybe she will set an example by hiring refugees as dancers or artists or helping them in some other fabulous way. Gaga gets so much attention, like the numerous articles and TV mentions just about her tweet about Rousey. If she were to do something like this it would be significant and really start a trend, not only with other rich people and celebrities, but amongst everyone reminding us of our duty to each other. In addition to my creative work and magic I’m going to find out what I can do to help more directly, too. Thanks for reading any and all of this, we can kill off the bad ideas in favor of good ones if we spread them and are willing to address bad ones wherever we find them, including inside.
I was frustrated last night that I could not post this due to technical difficulties. Now, Friday morning, I am glad for the delay because I heard something on the radio and owe Ronda Rousey an apology. Apparently she not only felt the punches, the kicks, the mat, and the humiliation of that fight, but before that she was feeling the Bern. I heard that Trump had dissed her for losing, too, and it made me wary of being in agreement with him about anything. I do agree they should tax investors more, that is a least one cool thing he said. The morning show folk on the radio didn’t know or care what he said, but they were speculating it was because she had supported Bernie Sanders. I was shocked and impressed and ashamed of myself. I always thought Rousey must be Republican, I even made jokes that she would be perfect for Trump and should armbar that thing on his head. The reason I thought that was due to her look, her attitude reminding me of all the snobs and arrogant rich kid Republicans I grew up around in the South - all that stuff I was talking about previously about people acting entitled by “who they are” or something about themselves when they are really just benefiting from an unjust system. Her attitude reminded me of that. That reminded me of other people like that, and her look and attitude just made me assume she was Republican. The attitude is still repulsive to me for the same reason it is repulsive in Trump and so much of Republican mentality about so many issues. But the truth is she isn’t a Republican, so I shouldn't hold that against her, she’s better than that and I should give her credit for that. She still deserved to be knocked out, the lesson of humility that her kind of pride is begging for, but she doesn’t deserve all the glee I, or others, felt about it. I’m sure many other people’s reactions were the same as mine, that attitude reminded them of other people they didn’t like, and we felt like those figures were somehow punished as well with her downfall. I, personally, associate the attitude with Republicans, which is the worst association I can make, and I do think it is useful to focus on what is wrong with that attitude and the aspects of American culture where it is exemplified and applauded. It is the ability to press unfair advantage, from corruption in politics and business so the rich profit off everyone else with no responsibility to the unchecked brutality of the police. We all can feel all this wrongness around us, but sense no way out of it, so people like Rousey or Brady getting taken down feel like symbolic victories. This is true whether they represent “big things”, like the worst of American Ego, to me, or more specific things, like that girl you didn’t like in school. Many people don’t think about large injustices all the time, and of course many more people don’t pay any attention to fighting or have an opinion about this at all. But to me, all these major media events, and people’s reactions to them, reveal things about our state and clues to escaping the problems of it. We want the fall of the arrogant and priviliged. I was never saying Rousey wasn’t a great fighter, just that the “best ever forever” stuff was all hype. She did benefit from the privilege of being in emerging sport and bought into her own image of being the best that she didn’t realize she hadn’t been tested by the best since so many better fighters weren’t even in the sport yet. Thanks to all the hype the sport will grow quickly, so for fans it’s a great thing and she will always deserve a lot of credit for that, both in winning and losing. More talented girls will get into it and you will have a better system to determine who is really the best, with more real competition. I’m by nature opposed to fighting, but I saw the first UFC championship with some college friends when one was into it. Gracie’s winning grappling style changed the game and that’s how it works, the more people get involved the more ways the sport will develop. Rousey’s victories made it seem like an armbar contest and you knew it had to evolve beyond that. I know she has other aspects to her game but now she will have to improve them, the sport is changing. I got into watching these fights on TV late at night, ruruns, and though it is against my nature in some ways I enjoy the dynamics of it, like I like the personality interplay between poker players on TV. And I enjoy sensing the dynamics of the fight, and even some bloodlust at someone getting beaten through committing a kind of soul mistake like cockiness or disrespect. But I also notice my impressions of fighters changes as I learn more about them. Sometimes it’s an attitude or look that you know you will never cheer for them, and I’m sure they play that up to their advantage, too. It is a game and therefore the dynamics between players is fascinating, but the brutality of it makes me wonder if it is like a substitue fo war. I think some games were, literally, the substitutes for war in ancient times. But fighting is the one that most closely connects with something I’ve complained about before, the idea that we have a Blood God who decides who is right by who kills the most. To me that is the basic underlying principle of violent progressions of hisory, the ones who won the wars were supposed to win the wars, the Blood God favored them. I object to that view, I think we should act in ways that honor the Goddess, the Earth, each other and not the Blood God. On one hand I wonder, if I think this arrangement for war is evil, why can I enjoy feeling like the same principle applies to fighters, that eventually being “wrong”, cheating or being disrespectful, will be punished with a downfall? How can I feel good about that, in a ring, but say that in the world I’d still rather not settle things with war and whover gets killed most, ulitmately, were the bad guys? It does work that way, if people are bad enough then good people will band together and even do bad things to stop them. It has always worked that way.But just because that works, just because the Blood God does bring justice, eventually, after much suffering, does not mean that only way. The deeper, harder way to start but easier way to finish, is to go within first and root out the evil in ouselves.
I’m glad I had this opportunity to be proven wrong and root out some of my own evil. I was so sure Rousey was a Republican from her attitude I didn’t even think about it. While I think she does deserve people's’ scorn for having that attitude, she does not deserve the scorn we have for everyone else we associate that attitude with. I was the worst of the offenders, I accused her of being Republican. She isn’t and I apologize for that. She supports Bernie Sanders so she is awesome. I thank her for that and applaud her. Now that I know this about her, now that I know she actually cares about other people, then I feel bad at taking such delight in her humiliation. I also feel happy for her about her loss, in this sense. People say that as a fighter she should hold her head up high and show her face even when she’s beaten up. Howie on TMZ said he thought she was protecting the image for her movie career and didn’t want those images out there. I want to say that no matter what Leila Ali or people like me said, she will always have her impressive record and place in history of fighting. If she wants to fight again, I kind of hope she does, that something about that could be good for her and everyone else. But I kind of hope, more, that she does just go on to being a movie star. Being an actor will develop more aspects of her than just over-confidence, she will become a more dynamic and influential person. Knowing she has considerate political ideas, I want her influence to grow and spread and be as good and powerful as it can be. If that comes through being a better fighter and continuing to create that sport, that can be good, too. Good for you, Ronda Rousey, sorry for the mean things I said, you are awesome, a champion in more ways than one, and I wish you luck.
I was never trying to compare Rousey to Daesh. That would be wrong and completely out of line. But I was trying to draw the connection between the attitude of feeling like “God” is on your side and only on your side, that being the only one favored by destiny you can do no wrong. I am trying to compare the Republicans to Daesh, in two ways. Their policies and actions have created the conditions of poverty around the world, along with supporting oppressive regimes throughout our history, including Saddam Hussein’s, and also lead to evil wars such as in Iraq, so in most ways they are directly responsible for Daesh. But as the American exceptionalism and white supremacist crowd, they are also the inheritors of that God-given-right-to-kill, we-can-do-no-wrong, everyone else is evil, mentality of many settlers and American expansionists who committed genocide, germ warfare, and terrorism of the Indians. That was “our” Daesh and we need to own up to it and root out those mentalities just as urgently in our own culture and system, and in our own selves. And we need to realize and end the ways we are still doing it, from racist policing to power structures only protecting the rich. And pull support of Israel while their government supports the illegal settlers who are doing the same kind of thing, abusing the local Palestinians because they think their rights from God trump human laws. I heard the leader of the major settlers’ movement on the radio and that’s exactly what she said. And she can say it because the government who is supposed to enforce the law doesn’t do so, so their imaginary God’s Law does work for them. It doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it the right way to take over a city to behead and enslave everyone. Daesh is currently getting away with it so it seems like it’s working but it has to end. American companies are getting away with frakking, pollution, exploitation, experimentation on people with drugs and all sorts of evils here and around the world and it must stop. At some point, good people will rise up and destroy things that get too evil, but that is not the only way. I was getting away with dissing Ronda Rousey until I realized I was wrong and that I must stop and admit my shame. I was calling her Republican just to get my hate on, to justify all the bloodlust of wanting to see her get beaten. I was ignoring facts I could easily have found out about, just jumping to a conclusion to be mean. I know a lot of Republicans are good-hearted and well-intentioned, just misguided. But the leaders are evil and the results are evil and we need to tease out he good folks and shame the rest into obscurity. I can admit I was wrong, like I was wrong about Rousey. I welcome these opportunities to learn and grow into a better person. I hope more Republicans, terrorists, and everyone can do the same to reconsider some of their prejudices and beliefs to become bettter people. I am convinced that Republican ideals are evil but the people can be redeeme from them. Everyone know Daesh ideals are evil. We assume the people can’t be redeemed and must be killed just because we are accustomed to military solutions. But if we can assess how the same evil mentalities have affected our history and still afflict us, presently, we can deconstruct them in all of us. Many people are Republican because they are poor and feel disadvantaged and instead of blaming the system they accept the evil powers turning the blame on immigrants or social programs they disagree with. Many people are forced into it, though indoctrination by their parents or pressures from the community or perverse forms of religion. These same factors contribute to people joining Daesh: poverty, despair, indoctrination and coercion. It might be dramatically worse in Daesh, forcing people in at gunpoint and threat of death, showing children videos of beheadings and teaching them terrorism, far worse conditions of poverty and strife. But the principles are the same, rule by fear and violence,and the pathways are the same and we need to disrupt all of them, everywhere. If some people are more sympathetic to those who are forced into Daesh, maybe they can get together to help them. If others are sympathetic or able to help those who join for economic reasons, maybe they can make programs to divert these people elsewhere into doing good things. If others are sympathetic to the kids, maybe they can focus on rescuing them. If others are good at expressing themselves and are sympathetic to those swayed by ideology they can counter the ideology with better ones, especially muslim from muslim people in some cases. But we need to do this for everyone. I recognize that I can be wrong, that others can be wrong and misled, and that the most misleading force is hate. Daesh is run on hate but Republicans are running on hate, too, and we need to completely change our fuel source and energy supply. Our bombers apparently dropped leaflets that said “get out of the truck and run” on the tankers from Daesh just before bombing them, to give the civilian drivers a chance to survive. This seems like a symbol of where we are now, but we need to become better.
One of the biggest dangers of terrorism is that it will change the terrorized people and nations, that it will embolden and empower the right-wing, reactionary, fear-based political wing. This is the fear, now, in France. It is what led to the shameful decision to put Japanese Americans in internment camps. It is what led to the Patriot Act and (more) torture in America, but more than that the attacks on September 11th “legitimized” the presidency of George W Bush when the news that came out on September 10th was that Gore had really won Florida, once the full recount was in. It’s these kinds of fearful reactions, that we can’t take the time to be careful or adhere to our ideals, that make everything even worse. It’s almost like the terrorists and right wing are working together, even without knowing it, to make the most evil in the world. That is what I heard when McCain was complaining that we were working with Iran and Russia to defeat Daesh - he was really hoping for a war with them instead, too. We have to get rid of fear from both sides, at once, before it rips us all apart.
In America, I guess we are lucky to have people as stupid as Donald Trump who tells it like it is, revealing how truly awful their beliefs and ideas are. As long as we aren’t stupid enough to go for them. I’d like to think Sanders or even Clinton is a sure thing and the other side is just a show to look back on with embarrassment as a lesson, just as no one now admits to liking Bush who was wildly popular, at the time, amongst Republicans. But let's start calling it what it is, now, so we don’t take any chances. I’ve always said they were Nazis, knowing that is so provocative that some people reject it, but I believe it is true. I believe their policies are causing so much death and suffering, just more widely distributed, that it is an appropriate comparison. And now they are doing really Nazi things. A comedian on Comics Unleashed joked that he didn’t want to wear a wristband that said “Jew” because, in Hollywood he didn't think they were hurting for support and the last time his people wore something on their wrist identifying them as jews “it didn’t work out so well.” How can it be so well-known how Nazi the idea of making muslims wear identification is and yet people still cheer for it and Trump is still leading the polls? How can Republicans be suggesting internment camps and ridiculous barriers to refugees? Hopefully they will be made to feel ashamed of these ideas soon and their support will dry up, people will realize how Nazi they are being. Because at this point it’s not “like” being Nazis, you ARE being Nazis. You’re not supposed to say that on the internet, there is some rule that comparing anything to Nazis invalidates your argument because no one could be that bad. But believing that s what allows us to ignore the evil in our midst. If we can get rid of it in ourselves, in our culture, we can get rid of it in the world. Ultimately we will be rid of it either way, Justice will prevail, but it will be better the more we can work together and join together. We can help everyone we can out of bad situations and ideologies, and bomb the rest, if any. But the lesson to Daesh, in whatever form, is the same lesson to all evil. Destructive ideologies will be destroyed, they carry the seeds of their own destruction. We can help each other out of them so we don’t go down with the ship. And we are all victims of them and have access to others and unique perspectives, so if we just get together we will find infinite paths to help ourselves and create the same for others. My greatest thanks is to Gaga for exemplifying the uniting spirit and magic of art, but everyone plays a part in this, we can all help save and redeem each other from the evil within and around us. Those we see as so “other” that they are our enemies are special opportunities, challenges to change ourselves, them, and circumstances enough to get along instead of wishing for their destruction. We have to resist any desires to label people as “other”like this. We can’t make some people carry wristbands and others not, or force people into camps based on race and religion, that is wrong. I can think of two major terrorist attacks in America, the 9-11 attacks and Oklahoma City. One was carried out by muslims and the other by christians. But of course it was extremism that made them carry out attacks, not religion. Of all the millions of shootings and thousands of mass shootings, only a few of the notorious ones were committed by Muslims, and only by radical, extremist or terrorist muslims. The vast majority of gunmen in America are christian - based on that should all christians wear identification? Why not just have extremists, from any culture, wear identification? Harder to prove who they are? Then why not another angle, why not have all gun owners wear identification, or register them in some way. If you take the racism and Nazi elements out, you might have something there, Trump. Oh, he’s gone. I guess if you take out the racist and Nazi elements, all that’s left of Trump is that furry thing from the top, now scurrying across the floor...
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