Category Archives: Text

New Place

Goodbye Bicyclemark ranch… hello to the Bicyclemark HS. why HS? cause that’s what it says next to my postcode… and it stands for huis. which, shockingly, means house in dutch.

Amsterdam for non-Dutch means constant moving. This is apartment number 5 or 6 for me in the span of three years. Every six months is my average, and for an expat.. that’s not atypical. We exist on the cusp of society. In a shadow world, where housings costs more, and reading dutch contracts is nervewracking. So we don’t read them… I think.

So I must say goodbye to the ranch. Where I lived in three different apartments in the span of 1 year and a half. Goodbye to the garden where Ive raised begonias, impatients, and a flock of angry pigeons. Goodbye to centrum amsterdam, where every morning there’s a bum on your doorstep sparking up.. and bidding you a good day. Ah the memories. Perhaps Ill one day be a centrum kid again, but for the forseeable future, BM is an Oud West kid. Where turkish bakeries are plentiful, gardens grow in the back AND the front of the building, and the list of available wi-fi networks is mouth watering.

On the Bayou

You may start to see a familiar theme running through my posts lately, but this stuff is festering inside my brain and its often a point of view that I think is completely absent from public dialogue.

Sure enough today we’re talking hurricane K and nightmarish conditions in New Orleans and Alabama. – Now the way the big media companies paint the picture, it’s basically a huge disaster and lots of people need help and if you could dial bla bla bla and donate to red cross dot bla bla. And that’s basically the tone of the reporting; show images of people on roofs waving… pleading for help, show brave pretend reporter in front of pile of rubble, switch to gwbush struggling to read the statements they wrote in crayon for him. The whole time you can tell he wishes it was a war speech cause those are the only lines he knows by heart.

And so that’s it right? Nothing else to do if you’re the media and the public. WRONG.
It is more than time to ask WHY. Since they didn’t investigate before this happened, the fact that the state of Louisiana had its emergency funds and infrastructure funds cut to help pay for the Iraq quagmire, needs to be exposed. Not to mention the fact that between 35 and 40 percent of the Alabama and Lousiana national guard is in Iraq distributing freedom by the barrel of a gun. This is not just a freak act of nature, this is a deliberate and criminal camapaign by the federal government and their insane crusades around the world, which leaves the nation unprepared for emergencies.

Oh, and just one more note, as you channel surf and watch all the bullshit reporting.. take note who is most effected by all this. The POOR. Look at the people standing on their roofs, I don’t see rich white people standing ontop of their mansions… no.. it’s poor people who are normally completely ignored all year long. Well, except when they appear on one of those COPS shows. And then they condemn the looting. If my family has no water or food, and no sign of being rescued for days.. you can bet I’ll be looting my local supermarket as well.

Here’s one blogger’s angry take on it. And here’s another worth checking out.

Tsunami Update…

The way mass media chew up and spit out news, you don’t tend to get much in terms of history or updates for different issues and events. So today I’ve been combing the internets for info about the Tsunami recovery. Bet you hadn’t thought about THAT for awhile. 150,000 + died, yet it terms of news value – it couldn’t hold a candle to 9-11. Ponderous.

My search was for updates. How the recovery effort was going, across the region; how crops have been effected, how populations are coping, and if there’s any good news.

So far what Ive been able to find is that some people see a silver lining. That rice crops survived fairly well in places like Indonesia. But on the other hand, still lots of bad news, including that many people are still living in constant fear of another such disaster. Forever traumatized. To further add to the bad news about recovery list, is that in some places, like Yemen; the international community and agencies pretty much failed to notice how bad the effects were.

For all those named Katrina, such as one beautifully crazy friend of mine, you gotta love the headlines today. Including my recent favorite, cause I know she’d be proud:

Katrina may cost insurers $30 billion

Most Importantly today — go and listen to me discussing the world with Madge, a Woman of Luna, on Yeast Radio.

Taking Credit

Spin Spin Spin. It’s always about how they spin the news to make themselves look good. I’m not only talking about governments, I’m talking about all kinds of groups. And unfortunately, spin can be very dangerous, especially when it rewrites history and distorts facts.

The most recent example of this, what is going on right now in Gaza. The Israeli gov. is finally doing what they promised years ago, to leave the area in full control of the Palestinian authority. But sure enough, there’s a spin game to go with it.

Hamas and other militant groups, who have long preached that armed resistance will achieve a palestinian state, are taking these events and giving themselves credit. They give one of those unprovable statements that the Israeli withdrawal is a result of their very effective actions over the years. Of course they can say that, because it’s basically impossible to prove as even if it were true, the government would never admit such a thing.

But then you’ve got the Israeli government that claims this is their benevolent and strategic move. They say it’s necessary for security, and with the usual dose of disrespect, they refer to the Palestinian Authority as irresponsible children saying things like “you must prove you are capable of stopping terrorism… or else.”

Spin Spin Spin. Neither side wants to look weak. And the truth is… both sides are led by violent and weak politicians.

On the brighter side — Michael Moore is working on something related to Health Care in the US — I do hope it’s better than F-911 which was poor-in my opinion- in comparison with his past films.

Hypocracy and Radiation

Back in Amsterdam. Back to floating around the canals with good friends. And back to soaking in the world affairs and getting highly annoyed with events as they unfold.

I haven’t said much about the Iran nuclear issue, because I find it all so annoying and repetative. It starts to seem like every other day the UN makes a statement, the EU makes a statement, the Iranian gov. makes a statement. Repeat this process everyday for months. Of course, this is much better than, say, blowing each other up and killing people. So I’m not advocating some insane warmonger invasion.

But to put it quite simply, and I know these issues are never simple, I just think its silly for nations who have nuclear programs and who actively research new nuclear weapons (the US is working on Manhattan project II since before Clinton)…. its ironic for such nations to dictate to other nations if they can and can not research and build nuclear programs. Its makes very little sense to me, the whole concept that nations who currently have them are responsible, while nations who are trying to get nuclear technology are somehow NOT capable of handling them responsibly.

Now lets take another step back – I’m an avid anti-nuclear person. I hate the weapons, one of the worst mistakes in world history was developing them, and I despise the energy, which produces waste that is undisposable and lethal. But all that aside, looking at the world as-is, I can’t really get gung-go about this whole theory that Iran is somehow unfit to persue their nuclear program because Europe or the US, who did just that years ago, say they know what is best for these nations.

Seeing Green

Since king what’s his face of Saudi Arabia just died, Portuguese artsy-fartsy television aired a documentary about the history of Saudi Arabia, and my initial reaction is …goddam! How is it that Americans (including myself) are put through school without ever hearing about this nation that is so completely attached to and influencial on the US!

Saudis Everywhere Among the crazy things I learned from this documentary, the first Saudi king, back in the early 1900’s, actually struck a deal with one of the most extreme and powerful group of nomads ever, who believed in the strict enforcement of what they called the Mulsim religion. But here’s the catch — after the king and the nomads gained control of the entire state, with the blessing of the religious authorities, the King turned on the nomads and slaughtered many of them. Those who survived swore revenge and have periodically carried out attacks (bombs, etc) against the Saudi state well over the last 50 years. And they want to talk about Alqeada, try looking into a lil history and it becomes clear that everything we’re seeing is a repeat of the last 100 years.

The other thing I noted was the presence and the manipulation of the US government on the Saudi Kings. They’ve kept em rich, drunk, and armed since the nation was first founded. and those kings have, in turn, subjugated the entire country, squandered national wealth, and helped to create many generations of terrorists. And man is it alarming to see the amount of times the different american presidents have betrayed the Saudi government when it comes to Palestine! Talk about two currupt kingdoms in bed together… this documentary was an eye opener to a situation we already knew was bullshit.

Mostly unrelated – I think it’s a conspiracy that all the headlines about this plane crash read “Airbus Crash” instead of the flight number or the name of the airline! Seriously. think about it. Ok now stop and go watch TV.

ps — happy birthday busblog.