Letters To A Rockstar

Posted on February 14, 2011 by admin

In our world there are many views of any occurrence. If the language is shared, it helps in understanding what someone is saying. Unfortunately we are often left shaking our heads as we try to put the words of a notable person together with the history of actions we have seen over the years.  We are further confused when we see our world and it differs from a popular view by others not in our world.  When we encounter such, they must be attended to.

Here is a fine example of attending from South Africa.  A guest blog from Nadine.  The original post is “Letters To A Rockstar” and located here. Her particulars can be found here

Dear Bono,

I imagine you have woken up this morning feeling like you are either the world’s biggest idiot, or the world’s most misunderstood man. I imagine bits of both are true, so I thought maybe you might appreciate a bit of a girl-on-the-street explanation.

Right now you find yourself in a bit of a broken country. It has been twenty years but we are still healing, we’re wobbling on our feet and often failing miserably, but patriotic people like myself are hopeful. We love South Africa. We love her vibe. We love her culture. We love biltong and boerworse and braaing. We love Ouma Rusks and chocolate eclair toffees and koeksisters. And Barry Hilton and Casper De Vries. We have this country with mountains of riches to offer, all worthy of preservation. And yet so many still struggle…

We have this history that refuses to live in the past. Instead it dominates our present and threatens our future. The radicals in this country may not trek around with guns as they do in so many northern African countries, but they do have this powerful voice that sings of all these wonderful things that never get delivered. These radicals prey on the poor and uneducated masses, poisoning their minds with so many lies.  It is these people who believe that black people hating white people does not constitute racism. You’re only a racist if you hate black people. And the new message seems to be that if you’re white, you’re automatically one.

Now I will give you the benefit of the doubt and conclude that you said something stupid and have possibly been misunderstood. I will further say that in NO context WHATSOEVER is racism  or hate speech of ANY kind acceptable. It should be no more acceptable in a small private gathering as it should be in a rally to hype up the masses. What was possibly a flippant remark on your part can also be misinterpreted on the other end of the spectrum and be used as a validation for this kind of behaviour. Julius Malema scared the crap out of a lot of South Africans not too long ago. Now most of us take him with a pinch of salt and a sense of humor, but not two years ago he had us wondering about our safety. This is the man you have accidentally (I hope) aligned yourself with. I can guarantee you the man got a kick out of having Bono agree with him.

What you say is gospel to millions of people. You are a respected celebrity, and known as a man of peaceful politics and generous philanthropy. Your opinion here is out of line, and was clearly made out of complete ignorance. But you know what? Your thoughtless comment (out of context or not) made my whole country wake up and scream for what they believed was right, so as wrong as you were, and as angry and disappointed as I was yesterday, I am proud of my country for going against you and for standing up for their beliefs. Nobody bought yours.

I am extra proudly South African today.

Footnote: AfriForum has come out to say that they support Bono’s statement that it is stupid to sing these kinds of struggle songs in public. Are we supposed to be relieved by this? Shit I’m sorry but maybe I’m just so naive that I automatically thought that particular sentiment would go without saying. Never mind that this particular statement is not what we take issue with! It’s the idea that hate speech-type songs have their place in our current society AT ALL. How is it possible that this is so difficult to grasp? As for sensationalism – of COURSE there’s a crapload of sensationalism going around! Something dumb was said – and the masses rallied together and were appalled by the sentiment of it! Blame the reporters as much as you want for “quoting him out of context”  if you must, but I would just very much appreciate it if you would back your statement with the ACTUAL acceptable context. Like really – it is ok to sing about killing white people in the comfort of your home? Is THAT the acceptable context? And if I teach my kid that it’s ok to, I dunno, hate hispanic people, as long as it’s only from the comfort of his bedroom? Is this the context we’re talking about? You’re saying Bono has been “absolved” – but this absolution has come in the form of repeating the initial article almost word for word. Huh????? How does that change anything?

He said something dumb. I very much doubt he meant it that way, and yes the media lapped it up and had it’s proverbial field day. And?

You know – perhaps our ancestors wouldn’t allow black people to use the same bathroom as them, or eat in the same restaurants. Maybe they enforced a curfew. And didn’t allow them proper housing. But you know what? From that same generation came a bunch of ancestors who FOUGHT for freedom. And in THIS generation that freedom is revered and appreciated. You no longer get to sing songs about killing people. It goes completely against what many of our forefathers – black AND white – fought for.

End of story.

I leave you finally with a quote from Pastor Martin Niemoller:

“First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Visit Nadine at her blog http://www.passingtheopenwindows.co.za/

Posted in Bono, disinformation, Hate, U2, Uncategorized | Comments Off

It’s the way ” ” sees it that matters

Posted on August 22, 2010 by admin

I took a walk alongside the river one day and noted how calm and placid it looked with water flowing downstream and hardly a ripple to break the reflections.  At the same time I watched a bit of debris flow by on the surface so quickly there was no opportunity to snag it.

Every day we watch the news and hear of crime, accidents, economic turmoil and the general excitement of modern life.  We see the stories and try to make sense of why things happen.  We hear a side that seems reasonable in our experience and we accept it as the truth.  End of story, move on to the next event.

Did you ever hear the adage “To the victor belong the spoils?”  It goes along with “History is written by the winners.”

These really don’t fit with today’s egalitarian society.  We need to have an equalizer of some sort.  How about rewriting history “as it happens?”  Truth is ugly in it’s totality.  We see details that just don’t suit us and we have to hide them.  To that end we can produce a blog that puts a spin on the story.  I could tell you of a secret mission or I could tell the story of bad behavior to point your thinking in a preferred direction.

Again and again this goes on.  That is the debris on the surface of the water we watch go by but cannot stop because the flow that supports it is too strong.  Go looking for the tools that can help you grab this stuff so nobody else is bothered by it.  Stop by here from time to time.  I’ll try to give you some tools to help stop the hatemongering.

Posted in broadcasting, disinformation, propaganda | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Is that tomato really deadly?

Posted on August 21, 2010 by admin

In today’s world there is a possibility of getting a dozen different views of the same news item.  If a photographer is present, make that 3 dozen views.

If I say “TowMaaatow” and you say “TowMatooow” are we saying the same thing, or are we perhaps groaning like a sick cow?  The point I am making is the view of the writer plus the view of the reader can create bias even if there is no intent.  I tell my sons daily that what is heard and understood is of far less importance than what is actually being said.

I tell folks at a Farmers Market “There is a green tomato in the basket, please try it.”  A group of shoppers there at the same time might react with any of, say, 3 responses.  To you green is not ripe and you would consider me seriously nuts.  A green tomato to Margeaux  might mean it is time to pull out a skillet and some onions with a rasher of bacon.  What Euell Gibbons understood me to say was “here is a ripe tomato that happens to be a green when ripe variety.  Have a taste.”  How much information is provided and the experiences of the listener will produce differing responses.

Normal.

I tell you that there is a wonderful drug called digitalis that comes from a plant in the “Poisonous Nightshade” family and as a rule Poisonous Nightshade will kill kill you.  In the next breath I say “Oh, by the way, a tomato is part of the same family as Poisonous Nightshade, and probably is poisonous as well. Come to think of it, the Potato is part of the Nightshade family as well.  Those French fries and catsup will kill you!”

How much is true in that?  Consider the Solanaceae family

The family is also informally known as the nightshade- or potato family. The family includesDatura (Jimson weed), Mandragora (mandrake), belladonna (deadly nightshade), Capsicum(paprika, chili pepper), Solanum (potato, tomato, aubergine or eggplant), Nicotiana (tobacco), andPetunia (petunia). With the exception of tobacco (Nicotianoideae) and petunia (Petunioideae) most of the economically-important genera are contained in the sub-family Solanoideae.

While it is true that a diet rich in French fries and tomato catsup may contribute to a shorter lifespan, it is not due to a natural poison in any of the varieties that we grow in our gardens or farms.

We are encountering dis-information daily.  Consider the truth is there are toxic plants in the Nightshade family, but there are many healthy for us crops as well.  Apply this daily.  Think about what is said, and question it carefully before you depend on it.

Your results may vary widely.

Posted in disinformation, propaganda | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Need to Discredit someone? Claim they are a molester.

Posted on August 21, 2010 by admin

I woke this morning to a news feed saying the warrant against the wikileaks founder had been withdrawn.

?? Huh ??

I dig and came up with the following, which suggests major disinformation was being pushed as truth.  It was over in less than 24 hours.  This is apparently an attempt to discredit someone and seems to be very malicious.  What can the public expect next?

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange accused of rape

Saturday 21 August 2010 13.20 BST

Swedish authorities issue an arrest warrant for the founder of whistleblowers’ website on suspicion of rape and molestation

Prosecutors: Rape Claims against Assange Bogus

STOCKHOLM, Aug. 21, 2010

Arrest Warrants Withdrawn against WikiLeaks Founder; No Reason to Suspect He Committed Rapes, Official Says

(AP) Swedish prosecutors have withdrawn an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, saying the rape suspicions against him are unfounded.

Posted in broadcasting, propaganda | Comments Off

If nobody listened, would Glen Beck work @ Mc Donald’s next week?

Posted on August 20, 2010 by admin

I just listened to a snippet of Glen Beck heckling a bunch of 99′ers from the safety of his Secret Studio.  I noticed he tried to use a pointer like a real teacher, but he forgot the premise of teaching.

You recognize the object of discussion, you point out the interesting stuff and you ALWAYS find the positive to reinforce the lesson.  What I heard was hate and rhetoric about going out and finding a job at the local McDonald’s.

Hatemongering does nothing positive.  Instead, move to the solution side of reality.

Sorry Glen, having everyone go to work at a McDonald’s or other cheap job won’t work for a couple of good reasons.  If you work and earn a typical $50 a day and it costs you $5 a day to get back and forth to there, but it costs you $60 a day for childcare… you lose big time.  The second big thing is there are not enough jobs out there.  there has been a rise in the number unemployed, but the average hours worked has shown on ly the barest of measurable increases.  Lookie!

Lets save money by not buying the expensive things like cars and meals out and whatever else  is advertised on Beck’s program that is not necessary to survival mode, and stop buying the “stuff” everyone can “buy” from the Beck website.

Suddenly Mr. Beck has no income and he has to fire his staff.  Would he, if broke  and near penniless TODAY, go to work at McDonald’s?  Is that where he would want his staff to go?  Would there be enough slots @ McDonald’s to support them with a living wage?

There are not enough jobs for America.  Bring back Manufacturing or something that is good for the creation of money in our economy.  The economy might grow a lot faster.

Selling stuff does not create, it consumes and expands.  Tell banks to make money available for the manufacturing sector.  If they make it,  then we can buy.  That will create jobs and create money.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Obama is a Christian. Yeah, But …

Posted on August 19, 2010 by admin

Why would a persons choice of religion be of concern to others?  Some things that come to mind are to avoid offending someone else,  to compare “what I believe” with someone else.

What other reason is there?  Perhaps to express your dislike based on religious choice.  Hmmm.  That sounds a lot like bigotry.  And to spread a false belief just because you “heard it from someone else”… well that is just plain hatemongering.

Look here at a snapshot view of President Obama’s religious belief from ABC News

During the campaign, Mr. Obama’s “Fight the Smears” website wrote: “Barack Obama is a committed Christian. He was sworn into the Senate on his family Bible. He has regularly attended church with his wife and daughters for years. But shameful, shadowy attackers have been lying about Barack’s religion, claiming he is a Muslim instead of a committed Christian. When people fabricate stories about someone’s faith to denigrate them politically, that’s an attack on people of all faiths. Make sure everyone you know is aware of this deception.”

Posted in propaganda, religion | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Dr. Laura is a Victim of Hatemongering

Posted on August 18, 2010 by admin

Today Dr Laura told Larry King that she was not going to renew her contract for a radio show.  Her explanation was she could not say what she needed without attacks.  She says her First amendment rights are gone.

The question is, what is she talking about?

Dr Laura is not being told by any government agency, court, police, etc that she cannot say what she wants.  The only limit to what she can say and where is what people restrict her from saying by boycott, complaints to sponsors and general noise.

Dr. Laura is a victim of Hatemongering, but she also has no clue regarding her  First Amendment rights.  They are  intact.

Posted in broadcasting | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Hey, can Limbaugh make American Jobs?

Posted on August 17, 2010 by admin

A wonderful thing about America is the ability to say in public almost anything you like.  Some notable exceptions are yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater or “GUN” in an airport.  Common sense reigns here, but when does other speech cross the line and move into something wrong? Today we have cameras and microphones at almost any event with a celebrity or crowd of more than a dozen people.  We are buried under news peppered with snippets of information that have been separated from the context or any complete thought.

It is easy to cut a conversation down to the point that what was intended is the reverse of what was released.  It is also easy to select a single sound bite to represent a lot more.  Let us consider a bite from a true master of the Sound Bite, Rush Limbaugh.  This is from his radio show of 2 July, 2010.  Here is the transcript.

Why aren’t we growing jobs in this country like we used to?  Why aren’t we?  It’s not hard to do.  There’s all kinds of textbook evidence, real-life historical evidence of how to do it.  We’re not doing it; we’re not doing it on purpose.  It’s payback time.  All the people who are unemployed? It’s time for you to find out what it’s like to be an American all these 200 years.  “Yeah, greatest country on earth, superpower? Right.  Well, might have been for some people, but you’re going to find out what it’s been like for 200 years for some of us to be an American.  It’s payback time.”  That’s what’s going on here.

This comment has no constructive purpose, it is totally destructive.  It is Hatemongering, the purpose being to destroy the listeners confidence in the actions and policies of the current administration.

If one were to apply basic economics to Rush’s comment,  people would realize that the migration of all of these great jobs to places other than the United States meshed with the need to manufacture goods cheaper for fatter profit margins.  It is a migration that began with “made in Japan” and steamrolled through the Post LBO business environment in the United states from the Eighties till next year.

When was the last major label television manufactured in America?

Consider this snippet from 1993. Reason, August-Sept, 1993 by Brian Doherty

Zenith Electronics Corp. claims to be the only American-owned company that manufactures color TVs in the United States. In 1985 it began assembling Tvs in Mexico. During the next eight years, it moved almost all of its TV-assembly operations there. But it continued to maintain a minor assembly plant in Springfield, Missouri. A worker recently laid off by the plant says managers told employees there that “Zenith will always maintain one assembly line at the plant so Zenith can claim to be an |American manufacturer of color TVs.’”

What happened to Zenith? (LG is Lucky Goldstar, a Korean company)

1995: LG gains a 58 percent controlling stake in Zenith by buying $351 million in company stock.
1996: Company announces the layoff of 25 percent of its U.S. workforce; FCC adopts Zenith’s digital transmission technology as part of the HDTV standard.
1998: Zenith closes its last U.S. manufacturing plant.
1999: Zenith begins shipping its first HDTV sets; the company emerges from a prepackaged bankruptcy filing as a wholly owned subsidiary of LG and as purely a designer and marketer–not a manufacturer–of electronics products.

If Rush Limbaugh actually wanted to present truth, he might respond to himself with something like:

American business is all about profits.  It has no concern for the American worker, just the American consumer.

Rush seems to have no purpose in life aside from making money, and he makes his money selling hate.

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Of Greylag Geese and Crestwood Heights

Posted on August 16, 2010 by admin

Back in 1974 I moved into my 2nd year of college at Shimer College in Mt. Carroll, Illinois at the ripe old age of 15.  It was only 2,022 miles from home, my mother and 2 kid sisters and my church.

I was a kid.  A smart one, but still pretty stupid in many ways.

I had been raised to understand that to be involved in Sodomy was the most evil thing a person could do.  It was much better, in the eyes of god, to be a mass murderer and a liar than to be sexually active with another man.  Women with women were never the issue.  It was Man with Man that would cause god to rain fire and brimstone.

In high school I knew a kid that hung out with other guys.  He was homosexual.  There was a  teacher that was very popular with the students and led the Cycle across Europe trips every summer.  He was homosexual.  While this was “common knowledge” around the rural school of 2300 kids, there were the trips every summer and nobody seemed to mind.

One of the first courses at Shimer was Sociology and we explored suburban society from the viewpoint of Crestwood Heights and the depths of raw humanity via Piaget.  I began to recognize, perhaps for the first time, that we are not clones of a handful of people, but distinct individuals.  Each of us has a distinct set of experiences that make us who we are, and we still follow something internal that keeps us together.

I discovered something else.  People could like and love each other.  Race did not matter.  Social Status did not matter.  Gender did not matter.  I learned from a new freind and classmate that Kosher meant something beyond “right” and that there were some people that kept 2 sets of dishes and cookware at home and normal food like a Cheeseburger was impossible for some to eat.

I met vegetarians.  I met vegans.  I met omnivores.  And we all played pinochle and bridge and euchre.  We all sat in the same classrooms and tried to prove our instructors wrong.  It was a non-choice, they asked us to prove them wrong or to prove something else was true.

One day I was introduced to the best actor in the school, my roommate was waiting for him so he could play Prospero in the Tempest.   He was Gay.  Suddenly I discovered that all of these people around me did not care, he was Jerry from Chicago.

That was all that mattered.

I learned that sexual preference was not a matter of choice, as much as wired in.  The proof came as we discussed Piaget and learned of Greylag Geese.

It seems that many male Greylag Geese will pair off and mate with a female.  Some will pair off with another male or a male and a female, or, rarely, two females.  If it was normal for them to not have an issue with gender, why was being gay the most evil thing a person could be?  It became clear in that isolated pre-internet world, that what was significant was the who of a person, not the what.  Sexuality and sexual preferences were a real part of the natural order, but “deviant choices” were strongly rejected by many in the “normal world.”

Fast forward to a Church in Colorado Springs a few years years ago.  The preacher, Ted Haggard, was outed as a drug user that enjoyed man on man sex for several years.  It became public knowledge because he tried to destroy the rights of those in the gay community to marry.

He was in public denial of his own sexuality, and was defrocked.  It happened, in reality, because he pushed a “hate them” viewpoint against the gay community while hiding from his own community the fact he was gay.  In his church sodomy was, as in my church some 30 years earlier, the most evil of activities.

To hide his actions from the light of day Ted Haggard had become a hatemonger.  He spoke out against the evil that he himself regularly partook.  He also became a hypocrite.

A hatemongering hypocrite.

Posted in religion, sexuality | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

Religious Experience

Posted on August 15, 2010 by admin

When I was a young man in the last century, I was taught that all Catholics will go to hell.  Period.  End of discussion.

I have been a Catholic now for almost 20 years based on my personal view of where I belong in the Christian Experience.  I guess I’m going to hell.

At least I never believed I would go to hell for watching Television as one church I attended taught.

Why do the religious put rules on the believers?

In the old days, whether there was a god was secondary to doing as your peers and accepting the beliefs that were common.

Where did this come from?

I think that “In the Beginning” there was argument, dissention, and disease.

Many of the rules were promulgated to do two things.  Keep the population healthy, and keep the population under control.

Think on it.

Lepers: kick them out because the disease spreads easily.

Firewood was in short supply so meat was often not cooked to doneness as we consider it today.  Avoid that pork with parasitic worms; it is now an unclean meat.  So on and so forth.

As time progressed, Religion became of greater importance than the community.  You cannot turn off a light switch on the Sabbath because it is “Work”, but you can hire someone to do it for you.

Then there is the matter of who you can hang out with.  You cannot be with an unbeliever because they will change your views, but you must convert the unbeliever to your viewpoint, or kill him.

When did religion become a matter of life or death?  As far back as the written record will go.    “You may have all the land that is before you, but you must kill off every man woman and child living there today because they don’t believe as you do.”

Religion may teach love and compassion, but in its roots are intolerance, which was needed way back when to keep the prevailing viewpoint in control.

Religious intolerance, of any kind, can easily be hatemongering.

Posted in Peers, propaganda, religion | Tagged , , | Comments Off