Loose Change Leave Me Alone

I hate this goddam film.

Loose Change.

“Did you see loose change yet?”

“What about Loose Change bm?”

One more person asks me about Loose Change… I may just snap and commit myself to a Dutch looney bin.

I hate writing off arguements as “conspiracy theories”. I think conspiracies are very important and are often the cause of something, the result of one too many secrets or inconsistancies. So I’m all in favor of investigating them. Plus, I certainly don’t just swallow what the government gives me when it comes to information, so there again, I say question the answers.

But Loose Change is another creature all together. It captivates people somehow. 5 years later and somehow people seem to have just realized that there was something very un-normal and inconsistant about the way the events of that day went down. Loose Change becomes the source of their born-again skepticism. To some extent, as I stated previously, I can understand it.

But what I can’t stand is the out-of-wack priorities. The excessive focus on the film, and the details, to see who has the right film and the right photos to prove or disprove certain stories.

The fact is, regardless if the towers were purposely demolished by some unknown entity, or destroyed by planes as a result of a government that refused to heed warnings or take any extraordinary measures to prevent them, a crime of enormous proportion has still been committed. The net result, when all is said and done, is still criminal. Loose Change can argue all it wants about how it happened and how it didnt happen, but it doesn’t change much when it comes to the end result and who was ultimately responsible for preventing or being prepared for such a situation, and they certainly were not.

Do you follow me here? I’ll try and be more clear, as many have pointed out I was not successful in doing during my last podcast: Myself, I could care less about Loose Change, and the attention it gets bothers me, because I believe it is misplaced attention. A better use of time and energy would be to come up with a strategy for holding the criminally negligent responsible. It concerns me, to some extent, when figuring out conspiracies becomes the primary goal, in place of focusing on how to address the crime.

One might say, well this is only one step, so whats wrong with that. You could argue, it is necessary to first know the truth. Fine points. But what I see thus far, since this film started out last year, is that the public watches it, argues about it, and to this point… nothing comes of it. I may just be getting ahead of myself.. but I can’t take it anymore.. I am absolutely sick of Loose Change.

Listen to the Democracy Now debate which includes the writers and you might notice there is something really wrong with these guys. Besides the holes in their arguments, their refusal to admit the slightest possibility that theyre wrong, and the constant laughing and rediculing their oppenents during the debate, for me.. all signs that these boys are simply not as legitimate as many give them credit for.

bm153 Kitschification of 911

The Kitschification of 911. The words of Phillip Roth as quoted on a recent episode of radio open source. In this program I discuss how the events of that day have been used and abused in the poorest of taste for the most shameful of activities. I also remember and asess numbers, in terms of cost of lives and resources.

On Point Episode with Howard Zinn on the Utility of War

Open Source on 9-11 literature

 

Catch Up Weekend

Everything is in a holding pattern as summer that was lost has suddenly returned to Amsterdam. Which means you play catchup. Making up for the lost time. The time you couldn’t go out on the canals, or head to a beach disc tournament and swim in the sand after dropping such a perfect throw. Therefore the podcasts and vlogs are delayed til tomorrow.

Also because I’m often told by the good people that they’re trying to catch up with me. So I’m taking some time so that the audio-visualists can do just that. But we start fresh tomorrow. Which is of course, America’s biggest cliché day. My condolences go especially to all of you media consumers and families of victims, who never asked to be constantly bombarded with manipulative speeches and related themes, every 11th day in September.

If you need escape, follow Tony who is somewhere near Utah. Otherwise, enjoy another photo of my weekend.

Brecht’s Good Person

After a very long day walking the streets of Amsterdam, I was due to meet friends at the Amsterdam Forest. I’ve seen it on maps and repeatedly ridden around it but never into it, during my over four years here. In my mind’s eye I never imagined it to be anything beyond a few scattered trees, a pond, and many bike paths. So I left very little time for getting through the forest this evening.

Was I ever wrong. Or at least, upon arrival at the forest entrance this evening, as I rode and rode, the streetlights eventually stopped, and it was just me, my dim bikelights, and the moon. Riding riding riding along a path I could barely see, so I turned off the mp3 player to hear the sounds of the tires on the ground, to determine if I was on grass, gravel, or somehow biking into the lake that seemed neverending and always just a step to my right. Allegedly I was riding to a theater, an open air theater, to see a Brecht play. But throughout the ride, as the darkness got thicker and the way back got further and further, I started to doubt I’d see any play on this night, or that there was even a theater. For a brief instance the world was flat again, and I forsaw myself falling off the edge.

But as luck, or a keen sense of direction, would have it… I eventually found the sillouettes of rows and rows of parked cars. I did my best not to ride into them, and when the rows finally ended, there began racks and racks of bikes. Hundreds of bikes, many scattered beyond my field of view, and up ahead, christmas lights strung up in the trees. I could hear what sounded like singing, or shouting, probably both… I had stumbled upon the theater.

The Good Person of Sezuan was the name of the play. And although I was tired and after the long strange ride, felt like I was stoned, the play put me into a tranz. Though the jokes in Dutch are almost always lost on me, feelings of sadness, happiness, and other character struggles came across very clearly. Lucky for me they didn’t try giving their Dutch a Chinese accent… most of them didn’t anyway.

Brecht is interesting as was this play. I understood the question, about being a good person and being taken advantage of, versus being a bad person and getting ahead in life, especially in the professional realm. I know Brecht was a Marxist, and it’s something I love to see in his plays (the few Ive seen).. in this case I saw his commentary about what capitalism forces people into and how desperate it can make people. There was also a sexual undertone, which was illustrated by the main character creating an alter ego which was a mean businessminded man who was very successful, in order to sustain her real self who was a good natured selfless girl who everyone loved and loved to take advantage of.

I was reading about how Brecht went into self imposed exile to the US. Which sounded impressive, until I read that he later faced the McArthy hearings as an accused communist and all that witchhunt. An irony which in itself sound like one of his plays.

After that, I had the long ride through the forest in the dark to ponder this post and the frisbee tournament I must play in 8 hours at the Hague.

New Look, Interesting Posts

Im still soaking in the new look. So I’ll leave you to take in the new look as well.

Lots of Amsterdam related stories to tell in the coming week. But tonight, I need to salvage whatever sleeping hours I can as a cousin is stopping over at the airport in the early morning and I must head there for tea.

In the meantime, I’d like to express how proud I am, like a proud video-father, as John has officially put up his own vlogs with himself as the star. There is no stopping him now. Look out disney.

Oh and on a more serious note, I’m reading more and more about Bolivia and the seeming political meltdown going against Evo. Or at least, that’s what it seems like. More on this one soon.

Watching and Remembering NOLA

I heard max and stacy talking about how they’d just watched the Spike Lee documentary about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. I suddenly remembered that it must have been aired on HBO already, and I could go find it on bittorent. Tonight, I’ve just finished watching parts 1 and 2 which go back over the leadup to the hurricane, and the week following, breaking it down in terms of how people lived it, how they remember it, and also how the authorities responded and their testimony about what they were thinking at the time.
It is a film that causes me to run the gamut of emotions:

Anger. Naturally, as a critical and passionate voice, I continue to find the response of the federal, state, and local government, to have been not only terrible, but a crime against humanity which should involve the president, his cabinet, and state officials, being tried right here in the Hague. But this anger isn’t all that new, what is new is the facts that come out in this documentary which I had never known… especially when it comes to the historical context where at several points in history, the city had blown up levees in poor districts to save the wealthy districts from flooding. And also how surrounding communities send their police to the county lines, armed to the teeth, to turn feeling citizens back into the city which had become uninhabitable, AT GUNPOINT!

Of course the next emotion is sadness, another logical one. I think the saddest moments for me where the dead bodies. The bloated, face-down, barely covered, left all alone, dead bodies, who didn’t have to die, and did NOT die because of the storm, but in fact, died because of the callous lack of response from the American government. Even sadder was hearing the personal accounts, sitting here staring at the face of this man as he describes his mother dying on her wheelchair at the convention center, all the time believing buses would be there any minute, as day after day passed.

Finally I felt a huge sense of admiration. There were those stories and personal accounts, of moments where people came together, reached out to care for neighbors. Did what they had to do to help others, because they knew there was no time to wait, and nothing reliable to wait for anyway. Spike Lee does an amazing job of capturing their stories, and his staff managed to get contributions from some truely honest and beautiful people.

I’m not yet finished watching. I will wait til tomorrow to see parts 3 and 4. The first half of this series has already left me with a profound sadness and a renewed drive, that people who are passed over and ignored, must have their stories heard and must be recognized as people who are valueable and worth of the same rights and priveledges as any fortune 500 son-of-an-investment banker.

Last thing I want to mention, and I know it will anger a great many who grow tired of my logic; remembering Hurricane Katrina and the criminal negligence of the American government, in a country that is supposedly so wealthy and so capable and such a great place to live…. I’m sorry but I’m reminded of why I don’t live there and I don’t want to live there. This isn’t about a man named Bush, or a political party per say, it is about an entire class of powerful people who run the nation, and have either helped create a society riddled with inequality, hatred, ignorance, desperation, disdain, and indifference.
Now I know these things exist in many places. I know the country where I live is a long ways from perfect and deserves its share of criticism as they all do. But when I sit here remembering Katrina, and each time take a closer look into the gruesome and shameful details, my one thought is — With a political class that can discard human life so easily, and a citizenry that is hardly motivated to force their leaders to admit their crimes, is that really a country where I’d like to live?