I’ve been living in Japan permanently — yes, as a permanent resident of the country — for ten years. Been here on and off — mostly on — for almost fifteen years.
My expectations have slowly come into line. There’s quite a bit different about life in Asia and since I live in farm country, much of that relates to . . . you guessed it . . . farming.
Simple example: Back in my home state of Michigan, I saw a lot of corn growing. Here they grow rice and soybeans. When I lived in California, it meant oranges. They grow some oranges here but also lots of persimmons! I really love persimmons, have even written about them.
Recognizing all of those fascinating differences, a recent development here really took me by surprise. I never expected to see anyone in Japan raising . . . [ drumroll ] . . . COTTON!
Yes, literally right near my house is the world headquarters for a new enterprise.
Samurai Jeans world headquarters!
Not just plain old cotton, mind you, but ORGANIC COTTON.
There are several fields, all within walking distance, where they are growing the stuff.
Do they actually use cotton these days? I thought with all of the wondrous synthetic fabrics available now, using cotton and wool and the rest of nature’s bounty was confined to tribal communities in third-world countries with unpronounceable names.
Well . . . I was SO WRONG!
Turns out — my wife and some Google searches informing me — that not only is cotton still popular, it is much preferred by discerning folks, people in the know who look down their noses at apparel made from spandex, polyester, nylon, Gore-Tex, Dacron, polypropylene, acrylic and polyvinyl chloride. In fact, increasing numbers of health-conscious folks suggest it is the direct contact with the skin by these petroleum-based products which is responsible for the exponential increase in cancer, diabetes, immune dysfunction, allergies, and other “modern industrial” diseases. Is it a coincidence that these pathologies made a dramatic entrance front-and-center on the world stage at the exact same time as the massive, over-arching introduction of “chemistry” into all aspects of modern life?
These are certainly important questions. No doubt about it, the debates around pros and cons of technology will continue to rage on. Since there’s so much money being made, it’s doubtful we’ll ever get a straight reading on any of this.
Even so, I know exactly what to do!
I’m going to be the first on the block to own a brand new pair of organic cotton Samurai jeans! Better safe than sorry. If I can look sharp as well, even better!
I’ve commented several times before about the temples and shrines here in Japan. Some context would be helpful.
For six years, as a young boy, I went to Catholic school. Every day we filed into the church for Mass. Then, of course, as required to be good Catholics and in good standing with the Lord, we went to Mass on Sundays. Six days a week I sat through the most uninspiring, boring, frankly meaningless ritual imaginable. Back then, the Mass was in Latin. So I didn’t have a clue what was being said, and certainly didn’t care. Ugh!
It’s easy to understand that because of this forced “spiritual” exercise — which was about as spiritual as doing calisthenics — I eventually completely soured on religion, at least as it was practiced in much of the West. When the summer I turned 15 came around, I couldn’t handle priests, nuns, Sunday Missals, rosaries, confession, communion, churches, hymns, Masses, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory . . . NONE OF IT. I left the Catholic Church and never looked back.
I pretty much avoided churches from that point on. Of course, there was the occasional church wedding and out of respect for the new bride and groom, yes, I inserted myself reluctantly into the house of the Lord. Likewise, out of respect for history and aesthetics, I experienced the unparalleled scale and majesty of a host of cathedrals in Europe, even a couple in U.S., not there to pray but to fill my senses with the glory and awe of inspired architects, artists, and sculptors.
Then in 2006, I started to seriously see the world, much of my travels taking me to Asia. The spiritual vibrations were totally different. Buddhism and Hinduism pretty much set the tone for these countries. I discovered and experienced not just completely different theologies, but a totally unique — to my Western-nurtured sensibilities — psychological space. It was more personal, more introspective, more comfortable, more satisfying.
Going to a shrine or temple for me now is one of life’s simple pleasures. So last weekend, we went to Kogenji Temple in nearby Tamba. It’s not a particularly fancy or spectacular temple but it’s very popular this time of year for it’s maple trees.
It’s difficult and probably intellectually sloppy to make generalizations about religions and religious practices. I just know that spiritual sensibilities are extremely different here — about 180º opposite to my “American” religious experience.
Rather than go into a comparative theological exegesis, which would be long, most likely tedious, and risk after an exhaustive trudge being unwieldy or misleading, let me make a point with some very personal observations and stories.
When I was in Los Angeles working as a recording engineer and music producer, I became obsessed with watching televangelists. I don’t have to say more. You know what that scamming is all about. “Just put your hands on the TV screen and feel the power of the Lord. Then write me a check. God will make sure it comes back to you tenfold. So the more you give me, the more you get back from the bounteous blessings of the Savior!” There was on guy in particular I loved to watch. Peter Popoff was fantastic! He got busted but I guess he’s still at it. He’s a millionaire many times over. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into Heaven.” Hmm. Who said that? David Copperfield?
Going way back . . .
I can’t say what things are like now. But when I was a boy, I remember that the Sunday services ALWAYS included collecting donations. At a point about 2/3rds of the way through the Mass, ushers would shove these collection baskets aisle-by-aisle in front of every congregant, unmistakably signaling it was time to pony up. Of course, the requisite sermons at each service also always included appeals for money.
“You think holy water grows on trees? Come on, you cheap bastard!”
I have to say, the final straw for me was my father’s funeral. My mother had died 2 1/2 months earlier. I was still in shock. 14 years old. Both parents dead. As if I didn’t already have a lot of grief to bear, I sat and listened to the priest give the eulogy. You’ve seen this in the movies. Coffin at the front. Holy man in robes trying to give comfort and meaning to the tragedy. Well, the priest at my dad’s funeral decided to use the opportunity — since he had a nice captive audience, trembling, crying, with their defenses down — to talk about the renovations they had planned for the church. And guess what? They needed money! Yes, a great way to pay tribute to the corpse sealed up and ready to bury — we’d go from there to the cemetery in a procession of cars with little funeral flags on their antennas — was to spring for a nice donation to the current Building Fund Drive. I can’t describe how much I hated the man.
Okay, enough of all that “context”. Now we set our time machine to ‘The Present’ . . .
While there are donation boxes in the Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Japan, making it easy to give financial support to their care and upkeep, NEVER does a monk solicit money. There are fees attached to, for example, them coming to your house to perform some ritual. But the rituals themselves don’t reference such material matters. Even Jesus preached (I’m paraphrasing) rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Spirit is spiritual. Money is material. If Christians knew about His teaching, then somewhere along the line, it was forgotten. Or buried. Maybe it’s in my father’s coffin.
Having grown up in a major city — beautiful Detroit, Michigan — I never experienced the agricultural cycle, the annual rotation of planting, growing, harvesting. We of course had seasons, rather dramatic seasons since Michigan is so far north and has some very cold winters. But the whole “growing food” thing was a blank slate.
Since living in rural Japan, not only have I discovered the overall cycle but am further educated in the idea of seasonal crops. Everything doesn’t grow at the same time, nor does it become available for human consumption at the same time.
I know what you’re thinking: DUH! Don’t laugh. I helped to rebuild an 8-cylinder Ford engine when I was in high school. I just never never got to around to planting tomatoes or corn, much less soybeans or rice.
Moving on to my big announcement, we just harvested the most recent item to appear on Mother Nature’s Day-Timer — or maybe she has an iCalendar these days, who knows?
Yes . . . [ drumroll ] . . . we just dug out of the ground our crop of SWEET POTATOES!
I say ‘we’ but that’s a stretch of the truth. I’m afraid that inserting a shovel into the soft earth and removing the sometimes huge tubers is above my pay grade. I did other grunt work while my wife Masumi, and her daughter Izumi, did the precision extraction. Here they are at work . . .
Knowledge is power. Fertilizer helps a lot too.
Nothing more to say. I don’t want you readers to get overexcited by my earthshaking news.
Wait! Actually, I’ll add one final comment, something that surprised me. We don’t wash the newly exposed sweet potatoes. Yes, we leave a coating of dirt on them. Apparently, they can last a very long time, not decaying or rotting, if a fine coat of soil remains on their surface. Thinking back on how as a boy, growing up poor, I only took a bath once a week, despite always being covered with a fine layer of dirt. I now see the wisdom of my very lax standard of personal hygiene.
I’m well aware of the deluge of lies, misinformation, disinformation, historical amnesia, ideological bias, and pure tribal hatred for Russia and Vladimir Putin, which saturates the media, with any mention of Russia, Ukraine, NATO, and the EU, by politicians, celebrities, commentators, every talking head who gets shoved in our faces via TV and the internet.
I’m going to make an audacious, totally irrefutable, unequivocal statement about all of this: There is absolutely no excuse for the ignorance which has become the new normal for our fake thought leaders and authorities. Moreover, there is no excuse for any thinking person, any citizen who can read at a high school level — any of us everyday folks — to be taken in by the current phony narrative about Russia and its relationship to the U.S.
It is degrading and insulting to the intelligence and common decency of anyone with a functioning brain to be so callously manipulated, so frightened, so stampeded into the group-think which unabashedly promotes hatred, suspicion, divisiveness, fear; requires unwavering agreement, silencing anyone from even asking sensible, obvious questions; which embraces perpetual war, even casually talks about nuclear war; which demands absolute, unbending loyalty and obedience, our bowing down to leaders and self-anointed authorities who are provably either clinically insane or colossally incompetent . . . or both.
The good news is we don’t have to go along with this charade.
Finding out the truth is simple. It will require: 1) turning off your TV, and taking a healthy break from social media, internet news, Twitter, chat groups, YouTube and its numerous spinoffs; and 2) reading three books.
These three books are not difficult to read. They are extremely well-written, accessible, full of vital facts, information, and explanations. They are not ponderous academic works. Read with genuine curiosity and open-mindedness, they are pleasurable reading.
I do have to caution you. Because much of what you’ll discover will not fit the “official narrative” — which last time I checked was 99 and 44/100 percent pure fabrication — you’re going to have your eyebrows raised quite a few times; you might occasionally get upset — because discovering people you trusted have been lying through their teeth is never pleasant; you will probably, and justifiably so, have a lot of thinking and rethinking to do. But trust me, it will be worth every minute of it. I believe much of what now troubles and puzzles you, what now leaves you confused and stressed about current crises and the prospects for major war, your understandable fears about the coming economic meltdown and what are the real causes for such a catastrophe, questions about who runs our country and what drives its current self-destructive policies, will finally get some sensible answers. At least you’ll understand why we’re in the mess we’re in, and have a good idea what needs to be done . . . for your own good and that of your family and community.
Here are the three books:
Just today I finished the late Stephen F. Cohen’s War With Russia? Sadly he passed away a little over two years ago. This was his last book. It’s an incredible work. He could have written it yesterday, because everything he says is totally relevant today, perhaps even more so. From the publisher: “Prescient and even more relevant than when originally released in 2019, this Memorial Edition of War With Russia? provides keen perspective to help readers understand the current Ukraine crisis. Are we in a new Cold War with Russia? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? War With Russia? answers these questions and more.”
Ron Ridenour was born in the US Military Empire, 1939. After four years in the Air Force, in 1961 he rejected the American Dream, and has since acted as an anti-war, anti-racist and solidarity radical activist (Long Hot Summer, 1964, in Mississippi; Wounded Knee AIM 1973; anti-Vietnam war coordinator in Los Angeles). He has lived in many countries and worked as a journalist-editor-author-translator for five decades, including for Cuba’s Editorial José Martí and Prensa Latina (1988-96). His The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert is truly a seminal work, a must read for anyone who wants a solid understanding of how Russia became “the enemy”, plunging us into a second Cold War, the ugly fruits of which we now see in Ukraine.
We often heard it said that truth wins out. Yes, the truth will set us free.
That’s true. But only if we can get to it. In an age of false flags and fake news, psyops like MKUltra and Operation Gladio, coupled with the wholesale capture of “official” media — e.g. the New York Times and Washington Post — by the national security agencies, it most certainly isn’t always easy. At least in terms of the accelerating hostility and potential hot war between the US and Russia, I’ve tried to make it much easier.
If these books make you angry, that’s a good sign. It means you’re a rational, sensible, caring, morally sound person.
Just got another 5-star review posted all over the book-o-sphere. Here it is on Amazon, showing up four days ago:
“Noah is on the run after becoming the innocent suspect in a terrorist bus bombing in a dystopian, extremely near, future US, in which society is on the verge of political, economic (and astronomical) implosion. Noah is an everyman and you see the world through his trusting and rather loving eyes as he races across the country through communes, bee farms, burning man, the hacker-saboteur political underground, and eventually winds up face to face with the highest reaches of deep state power, which turn out to be all too intimate and familial. It’s all very serious, and occasionally quite dark. Except it’s funny as hell. Rachel is an immensely witty and readable writer, whose verbal flights are always aimed at evocation (I’ve never read as vivid a description of burning man) and laughter. It’s a comic political picaresque, equal emphasis on comedy and politics, without a single dull page. Why haven’t you heard of it? Because it’s too good and too much fun, that’s why.” – brecht (reviewer)
Mind you, I wrote this book almost seven years ago. Specific incidents aside, as whacky and outrageously funny as it apparently is, I think it’s astonishing how well it captures the absurdity and circus-like environment of our current politics.
If you want a good laugh to dispel some of the anxiety and pessimism which saturates the media and political landscape, take it for a spin.
Whether you like, love or hate classical music, please watch at least one of the videos below. I have things to say about them which I think will astonish you. So fasten your seat belts, sit back, and let the music flow through you like cannabis oil aroma therapy.
Okay. Ready? Here’s the scoop …
These are junior high school students, at a school in Fukushima. Yes, that Fukushima, where the massive earthquake in 2011 caused the nuclear reactors to melt down. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.
Instead, let me get to what I want you good folks to wrap your heads around. First …
Being junior high school students, everyone except the conductor is 13-15 years old. Not seasoned adults. Not college graduates. Young adolescents! What talent, eh?
It gets better: This is not a special school for music or any other area of study. It’s not some private school for rich kids — yes, we have exclusive, private schools here in Japan just like practically every other developed country. This particular school is no such uppity institution. No folks . . . THIS IS A PUBLIC SCHOOL!
And here is, what in my mind is the most jaw-dropping aspect of this tale: Participating in this choral orchestra is not part of the official school curriculum. This is not a music class. The students are not getting any credit for this. Everything, the individual mastering of the instruments, the hours of practice, the orchestra and vocal rehearsals, the concert performance, is purely voluntary. It’s an AFTER-SCHOOL CLUB!
I recall my school had a French Club, Photography Club, a Glee Club, an Astronomy Club. It’s just like that. Only these junior high kids, as members of this club, are performing — at a sophisticated level — Mozart and Bach.
What do you think? Honestly? Aren’t you a bit impressed?
I have to admit: I’m awestruck! Almost at a loss for words . . . but not quite.
Here are my final thoughts: The world is going through some very strange and difficult times. Technology, political turmoil, economic crises, environmental crises, leadership crises. We can’t keep up with it all. Unfortunately, young people get totally blindsided by all of this. They’re dropped into a world not of their making, facing catastrophes that were in the works before they were in the womb. Supposedly, societies do what they can to bring the young up to speed and equip them to take the reins when their time comes.
U.S. schools are a more relaxed educational environment.
Supposedly, societies do what they can to bring the young up to speed and equip them to take the reins when their time comes. In the U.S., as with every highly-developed Western nation, it is the public education system which provides the basic skills and knowledge needed to function in the world.
Now, I’m hardly in a position to judge the current state of public schools in the U.S., which by far the majority of young people there attend for 12+ years at minimum. True, I went to public school for 6 years but that was around 200 years ago, give or take a few decades. Moreover, as you probably know, I haven’t lived in the U.S. for sixteen years. Meaning, I can’t overcome either the generational gap or the geographical gap. So I’ll let you folks be my eyes and ears on this.
Here’s a straightforward question for you American readers: How are things going there?
Is anything resembling what you see in the above videos occurring there?
I know I have trouble imagining it. But that’s just me.
It seems like here in Japan we’re always having some holiday or festival. There sure is a lot going on to keep the smiles fresh and the video cameras rolling.
I’ve written before — in fact feature it in LIVE FROM JAPAN! — about the festival we just had this past weekend. This year, it was slightly scaled down from what has been held in the past, presumably because of Covid-19. We don’t really have much of a crisis over the dread bioweapon but Japan plays on the side of cautious.
We spent most of our time on what’s nicknamed “Merchant Street”, a narrow and extremely charming roadway which looks the way it did a century ago, especially since the city last summer buried all of the electrical and communication cabling underground. Wheeled portable shrines (as opposed to ones carried by twenty to thirty inebriated celebrants) paraded up and down the street. In the carriage on top, children played flutes, chimes and various rhythm instruments. Since the vehicles have no steering mechanism — true to a design that must go back a few centuries — they have to be elevated and rotated by hand to change direction.
Rather than try to describe this unorthodox procedure, it’ll be much easier to just show you.
After rolling up and down Merchant Street, the seven or eight wheeled shrines then headed toward the center of town, where they similarly paraded the greater length of our main street. People were in town from all over, both for the festival and to buy soybeans, an item Tambasasayama is famous across Japan for.
One final aside. Because the main street in town still has electrical wires criss-crossing its entire length, there is a tall crown which must be removed from the portable shrines. They are called ‘hoko’ and are displayed in storefronts along the way. They look like the one pictured here.
“You can magnify a single bacteria a thousand times but it will not tell you that your entire herd is missing or that everything is dying on the farm.”
The point is that when we’re too focused on the so-called details, we often miss what’s truly important to understand what’s going on.
This is an old story, chicanery that has been used without pause from the onset of human communication. The misapplication of “focus” is used by tricksters, hucksters, hustlers, politicians, and other consummate liars, on a regular basis to keep us from stepping back and getting a full appreciation of a situation — the big picture, a fuller more truthful and useful understanding. It’s used by racists to generate hatred. By citing a few bad apples they convince us the whole orchard is rotten. It’s used by salesmen to direct our attention to some apparent necessity, often illusory, in order to pry open our wallets for the purchase of some superfluous, overvalued item. It’s used by propagandists and their allies in the media to misinform and twist our view of ourselves and the world we live in. Via calculated cherry-picking the truth, lying by omission, even making up “facts”, we are enlisted for an agenda which if fully understood, we would never support, would probably oppose. As a subset of that, it’s used by warmongers to convince us of the nobility, justice, essential goodness of all sorts of horrors they inflict on the world. We save the lives three school children in a remote village, failing to mention we killed 100,000 innocent civilians to get there.
If we take a long step back and look at how our country got to be so rich, so powerful, so respected and feared, if we are honest with ourselves, completely objective, attentive and balanced, there is only one possible conclusion we can draw . . .
The overall trajectory of U.S. foreign policy is that of a predator, a conqueror, a colonial oppressor.
There is nothing in the historical record of the last 100 years which contradicts this.
There is no example of voluntary retreat. There has never been an apology for the death and destruction wantonly inflicted on other countries. Except for a steady stream of self-flattering virtue signaling about justice and human rights, we’ve never made up for the grotesque theft of the labors and entire lives stolen from the millions of people we’ve enslaved over the entire course of our existence. This now includes the use of prison labor in our bloated system of corporate incarceration. There have been no reparations for the wars the U.S. has prosecuted, for the enormous social, economic, and political damage resulting from both military and non-military aggression by the U.S. against other nations. The U.S. has countless times covertly and overtly violated international law, broken treaties and its trusted word. It has turned truth on its head to justify its aggression and sometimes outright theft of money and resources, 1) falsely claiming its “national security” is under threat; 2) falsely portraying its military campaigns and economic terrorism as mitigation for human rights abuses, e.g. the public relations charade mockingly called Responsibility to Protect (R2P); 3) falsely accusing other countries of treaty violations to justify its own treaty violations; 4) hypocritically utilizing terrorist groups it claims to condemn for proxy wars against its perceived enemies; 5) bullying, instituting sanctions, blockades and embargoes, starving whole populations of essential food and medicines, self-righteously declaring itself judge and jury in determining how other sovereign nations and their people must act or be condemned and isolated for violating some model of proper behavior — a rules-based order — which the U.S. itself ignores when inconvenient or unprofitable for the corporate interests the government loyally represents and serves.
The War on Terror, among the most egregious frauds perpetrated under the banner of Pax Americana, has been a War of Terror by the #1 terrorist country in the world — the U.S. itself. The unnecessary and illegal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, now Ukraine, to name the most prominent ones, have caused the greatest refugee crises in history. Taiwan is next on the assembly line of horrors generated by our belligerence, arrogance, and recklessness.
What do we take from this? What’s the lesson?
The message is clear: Any attempt at repairing U.S. foreign policy requires a complete reversal of priorities which are currently baked into our economy, politics, social and political system.
And such a reversal of priorities must necessarily require eliminating from positions of power any and all proponents of global hegemony, world conquest, indispensability, “American exceptionalism”, total spectrum dominion. Our current geopolitical agenda only produces one trajectory: imperial conquest. This trajectory only embraces one mechanism: War in all of its contemporary manifestations: war on other countries, war on economies, war on social structures, war on people (including its own), war on families, war on human rights, war on the environment, war on the truth.
Returning to our discussion of the “details”, meaning the focus on single, easily spun and manipulated events and public posturing. Questioning and challenging what the U.S. does in its relationship with the rest of the world by only targeting individual incidents, single moments in time, each supposedly a unique crisis — as it mysteriously just pops up out of nowhere and spoils our good time like some party crasher — is a pointless and futile task, a fool’s errand . . . A HUGE WASTE OF ENERGY AND TIME.
How many times do we need to be reminded of this? We question the wisdom and necessity of invading the tiny island nation of Grenada, we get Panama and the first Iraq war, then Kosovo. We object to the war on Afghanistan, we get a war both on Afghanistan and Iraq. We condemn the Iraq War and we get Libya and Syria and Sudan and Yemen. How many times do we need to be reminded that any calls for basic civility, diplomacy, restraint, peace, are scoffed at — if even noticed — are mocked and dismissed as childish fantasy and unhinged idealism, the stuff of hippies and dreamers? How often does the current power elite have to make it clear that for them confrontation, aggression, and war are the answers to every question?
The latest crisis to monopolize our attention — and admittedly it’s a whopper! — being used to obfuscate America’s real and ultimately self-destructive agenda, is the Ukraine war. Starting this war has been in the works for decades.* Further proof of the West’s real intent — a major drawn-out conflict which will weaken and ultimately destroy Russia — is the refusal by US and its NATO lapdogs to negotiate, have any conversation with Russia. Boris Johnson — a pathetic servile sheepdog if there ever was one — flew to Kiev and told Zelensky to pull out of peace talks and refuse any further discussion with Russia to resolve the situation. Zelensky is being generously rewarded by Washington DC to follow orders, toe the line, and sacrifice unnecessarily tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives in support of US/NATO thuggery. He’s got millions in the bank now, luxury homes far from the conflict zone, and presumably access to the best comedy writers in America, should he decide to return to his real calling, that of a buffoon TV comic.
Any cursory review of the actual events which made this mess inevitable leads to an indisputable conclusion: The “special operation”, as Russia calls it, is not naked Russian aggression, or as the media reminds us every ten seconds, an “unprovoked” attack. It is a reaction by Russia to calculated provocations, intimidations, a program engineered over at least a half a century — though hatred of Russia by the West goes back much further — ultimately intended to destroy Russia as a nation, then plunder it. It is the direct result of a highly-sophisticated, multi-layered strategy for imperial conquest, sometimes subtle and always covert, by the US and its puppet institution NATO . . . destroy, conquer, subjugate, pillage. It’s not Russia that’s circled the continental U.S. with military bases. It’s the U.S. and its puppet allies that have tried to construct a noose around Russia. The US by its own admission put $5 billion into creating turmoil and installing a US/NATO-friendly puppet regime in Kiev. The Ukraine coup of 2014 was nothing more than a tightening of the military noose around Russia and a ham-fisted attempt at stealing Russia’s major naval base in Sevastopol. That plot, of course, was foiled when Crimea decided by referendum to again become part of Russia.
Next in line — as if destroying and conquering Russia is just a day’s work — is China. This likewise is nothing new. The subjugation of China has been a work in progress for two centuries. The effort by the West+1 (the +1 being Japan) from 1839 to 1949 is referred to by the Chinese as the Century of Humiliation. China has never forgotten or forgiven. Why should it? Why shouldn’t it protect itself from future humiliation and plunder? The long history of racist, imperial aggression by the Western-led colonialists is what drives China’s distrust of the U.S. and its current partners in crime (Australia, Japan, Canada, the NATO lapdogs). As with Russia, China is not rattling its sabers across the planet. Understandably it is attempting to construct an impregnable defense framework against more anticipated Western colonial incursions. It’s not China performing FONOPS (Freedom of Navigation Operations) in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, off the coast of California and Virginia, not even around Hawaii and Alaska. It’s not China that has surrounded the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and other NATO countries with military bases. It is the U.S. in concert with its obsequious puppets that have encircled China with a huge array of forward-positioned bases, staffed and armed to the teeth with offensive weaponry. Japan alone has 56 U.S. bases. There are close to 30,000 active duty military persons in Okinawa alone.
It is imperative that the citizens of the U.S. who are still sane and capable of making their own rational judgments, understand that the obvious, truly frightening, unavoidable, but completely unnecessary result of our present course with Russia and China is WAR, WAR, AND MORE WAR — potentially nuclear war and the end of human life on this planet!
And putting aside death and destruction, as if tens of millions of deaths and ruined lives is just collateral inconvenience, for us now and future generations right here at home, our current trajectory guarantees more waste, an evisceration of our individual and national potential, a squandering of our vast human, national and economic resources, all in pursuit of the unattainable, undesirable, pathological insane goal of world domination!
During discussion of the most recent budget cycle, we might have detected the usual barely audible pleas for restraint and rationality, from the small chorus of voices attempting to alert the public exactly how skewed our funding priorities are. These are the same appeals we’ve been hearing year-after-year: Reduce the DOD budget, then repair the infrastructure, fix health care, take care of the planet, put the people back in the equation. The result of the “negotiations”? The defense budget increased to an all-time high, with Republicans and Democrats adding billions more than the White House requested, the grandstanding gas bags from both major parties competing for bragging rights over who is most responsible for this unconscionable bloat.
Did we vote for this? Do we really need more weapons of war, more military bases, more ships and submarines, more bombers and fighter jets, more missiles and nuclear bombs?
Or put another way . . .
Does the sturdy, proud individualism we claim defines us as a people have to equate to mass murder and destruction across the globe? World War III? Nuclear annihilation?
Is this what we as Americans stand for?
I think not.
This regime of perpetual war and global domination is the work of madmen, power-drunk sociopaths who’ve grabbed and now maintain absolute control of our foreign policy. They are empire-obsessed megalomaniacs who’ve seized the initiative and are the architects of the Great Imperial Project — the U.S. as absolute imperial master of the Earth. They have without any consent by an informed citizenry, established the disastrous direction of the country, and are now taking us to a final denouement, an epic clash with two other major nuclear powers. To say ‘this will not end well’ ranks as the greatest understatement in history.
I repeat: There is nothing in the historical record of the last 100 years — some historians go back to the very early days of our republic — which offers any hope that our constant beating of the war drums will magically stop. That the trajectory of imperial conquest, and all the misadventures and war crimes which follow from that, will spontaneously reverse. Whether it’s the Monroe Doctrine or manifest destiny or the Wolfowitz Doctrine or R2P or Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard or charter for the Project for the New American Century, whatever form the justification and rationalizations take, the direction is clear and ghastly: The promise of aggression, chaos, and carnage, distinguishes itself as the only promise the U.S. will keep.
I’m baffled why anti-war activists can’t see this. Right now the U.S. is a beast. The nature of the beast is war. The beast is merciless, relentless, unforgiving, amoral, sociopathic, homicidal. If we don’t slay the beast, the beast will continue to do just what such a creature does. Negotiating with the beast is impossible. Taming the beast is impossible. Even slowing down the beast will only insignificantly temper the pace of its ravaging ways.
Many well-intentioned individuals over decades have been appealing to the better nature and better instincts of U.S. leadership. The reality is, it has neither. Nor does it show signs of common decency or common sense.
There is only one option: Removing from power those who now embrace threats, intimidation, confrontation, violence, and ultimately military conflict as the only mechanisms for dealing with the rest of the world.
Removing ALL OF THOSE now in power! They are all culpable. They are all complicit.
Yes, the world is a dangerous place. But those now in control of our governing institutions systematically and systemically make it a more dangerous place. They are not protecting us. They are not even protecting our nation. They are dooming America to a horrifying and catastrophic fate. Either they go away or the U.S. itself will go away. It won’t be a pretty sight. Manifest destiny will be manifest implosion and collapse. Or total annihilation in the war to end all wars, which will fulfill that hope by ending everything.
* You might consider looking at my The Peace Dividend book, written six years ago, which exposes the unhinged geopolitical agenda which made this conflict inevitable.
Language and grammar are dynamic; ever-evolving; adapting to new usage, current trends and fads. There’s no reason to pass judgment on this, as many academics and publishers of dictionaries might presume to do. You can’t set language and punctuation in stone any more than you can declare that the sun will shine every Monday or outlaw oxidation.
While it didn’t really catch on, it did address a gap in our ability to have a final punctuation mark reflect the entire mood and intent of the language that preceded it. It’s a combination of a question mark and an exclamation point, allowing a statement to both act as a query and express awe, amazement, excitement, marvel, wonder, approval, acclaim, shock, and so on.
What in the world is going on with the Catholic Church and organ trafficking?!
Now, I should have been able to put an interrobang at the end of that exclamatory question, but as I said, it didn’t really catch on. At least, I can’t find it on the keyboard of my laptop.
The point is, as useful as something might potentially be for language and grammar, it’s actually impossible to dictate use and guarantee general acceptance.
So now I’m about to attempt the impossible.
Yes, I’ve come up with a new punctuation mark!
And without intending to blow my horn, bring undeserved attention to my genius, or capitalize on your gullibility as a reader of my articles, I’d like to say unequivocally that this innovative punctuation mark, aside from any other merits it might have, completely and thoroughly sums up the current mood — fear? despair? cynicism? resignation? — of a huge segment of the people living on the planet, the ones who have some idea what a horrible mess we as a species are now in.
Here it is . . .
Does it look familiar? It should.
An important question: Will it be useful?
A more important question: How long will it be around?
Maybe the best question we can ask: If my new punctuation mark really does work, really captures the zeitgeist of our troubled times, how long will we be around to use it?
(Sure wish I had that damn interrobang on my computer. I could have used it at the end of that last question.)
Why should this come as a surprise? The ruling elite has over five decades contributed millions of dollars, tens of thousands of hours, gone to great lengths to take our democracy apart, skew the laws to maximize their profits, marginalize and silence opposition, reduce the voice of everyday citizens to a pathetic whimper, perhaps worst of all, promoted war and ecological destruction, bringing us face-to-face to possible human extinction. And we should expect to undo all of this with an article here and there, a few comments, and some Twitter and Facebook posts?
I don’t mean to criticize or mock anyone. But I get this all of the time and every time I’m truly astounded that well-meaning, concerned progressives think there’s some quick and easy defense to the wrecking ball taken to the building blocks of our “democracy” and the value system that underpins it, and to repair the colossal damage already done by the oligarchs to our current quality of life and potential for a decent and harmonious future.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen and everything in between, there’s a lot of work to be done. And with some reservations, I’m inspired by the enormous amount of energy and time devoted by the few sane activists among us.
Unfortunately, almost all of that energy and time is completely wasted. It isn’t going anywhere and never will without some serious rethinking and creative strategizing.
Change is impossible without “the people” and the vast majority of people are pretty much left scratching their heads at BLM, woke, cancel culture, Antifa, QAnon, Proud Boys, build back better, and especially the incapacitating, binary weaponizing of everything into left vs. right, Republican vs. Democrat, and all related iterations: liberal vs. conservative, Trump vs. Biden/Sanders/Clinton.
Here’s the main problem as I see it. People vote against their own interests because they’re overwhelmed, confused, misdirected, brainwashed. They step into the voting booth thinking they’re voting for one thing and end up getting the opposite. The science of messing with people’s minds has surpassed quantum physics in sophistication. Soon we’ll all be implanted with neural interfaces and directly turned into clueless, obedient drones. But that’s for another article.
What I try to do is introduce issue-by-issue some genuine clarity. Remove any possible ambiguity or misinterpretation. If you want this, then do that. To the point of this article, if you want to know if the candidate you’re voting for is truly on your side, then perform a simple, straightforward, sensible test. You can and will know. The result will be a clear and unambiguous ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
That in a nutshell is the whole idea behind the electoral strategy I’ve been talking about for ten years. Another topic for yet another piece, as if I hadn’t already written three books and hundreds of such articles already. But for now let me quickly reiterate, the candidate contract electoral strategy represents issue-by-issue clarity and real choice. A candidate is either for the proposed change, or against it. He or she signs on the dotted line making their commitment crystal clear. If they sign, we know where they stand. If they don’t sign we know where they stand. In either case, we as voters know exactly what to do.
Why don’t current activist demands for real change ever make a difference?
Two reasons . . .
FIRST: They are directed at the wrong people. They are directed at those in power who are not listening, will not act, will never listen, will never act favorably. We only need to look at the record to know this is true. Very legitimate, extremely popular reforms simply NEVER GET DONE. Do I need to mention a few?
• Decent good-paying jobs
• Fair, equitable, livable wages
• Health care reform (Medicare4all)
• Serious attention to climate change
• Election reform (getting $$s out of politics)
• Law enforcement and comprehensive prison reform
• Ending the wars (reversing military expansion)
• Comprehensive immigration reform
Mind you, there are huge consensuses on these and similar issues. How do we know what these areas of agreements are? There’s no mystery. Poll after poll, year after year, point to pretty much the same things. Without exception, concerns about the economy are at the top of the list. People now more than ever are struggling. The American Dream is fading and prospects for the future are becoming increasingly bleak.
SECOND: Many activists are personally committed to a cause, feel enormous passion for that cause, can’t imagine a world without it, can’t imagine any decent, aware human being being opposed to that cause.
Unfortunately, they’re often wrong and despite their best efforts, nothing changes, nor will it ever change. Either the object of their devotion is unpopular and/or it simply doesn’t even get noticed. There’s not sufficient public awareness, perhaps little enthusiasm, for whatever they’re promoting. Such niche issues are important and can be addressed when we have a Congress and White House listening to and on the side of the people. But until we put in power who actually represent the interests of the vast majority of citizens — NOT those of the ruling elite, Wall Street, the MIC, big banks and big corporations — NOTHING WILL GET DONE for the people. PERIOD!
These two undercurrents are intertwined and synergistic . . . in the worst possible way. Making impassioned pleas to our elected officials when they’re not listening is a non-starter and enormous waste of energy and resources. Focusing on issues which have little popular support ends up discrediting activists and knee-capping more promising activism, all too often turning the majority of citizens off. This not only drives away support, but infects the citizenry with cynicism about anything positive ever getting done. Predictably, resignation and apathy sets in. Just look around. Look at the comments we see on articles like this. Hopelessness is growing. Surrender is the new pandemic.
The system is rigged … AGAINST US, WE THE PEOPLE.
It’s certainly foolhardy to think that the people who benefit from the rigging are going to unrig it. They will continue to do what they’ve been doing. Serving themselves. Ignoring us. They will thrive. We will suffer.
Maybe naively I believe we can refocus, unite, change things. Maybe foolishly I believe we can rock the boat enough to get the scoundrels on board into the drink, without sinking the ship.
But I don’t think so.
We can fight this but we have to work together.
So what do we do?
First, we apply the Ultimate Wedge Issue Test. What is that? There are certain issues which are crucial to the survival of our nation as a democracy which “promotes the general welfare.” The test determines who is in favor of a nation that works for everyone, not just a privileged elite, and who is too selfish, myopic or misinformed to want what is the foundation of our society … equality, justice, peace, harmony, opportunity.
This is the wedge. Either you’re for working together as a society . . . or you’re for continuing on the road to oligarchy, tyranny, fascism. This applies both to citizen voters and candidates for office.
I sincerely believe that the majority of citizens want a country that works for everybody.
Issue-by-issue we find out what we as citizens think is important, then issue-by-issue we see which candidates are willing to commit to getting the job done.
We only vote for those candidates who are on the side of the vast majority of Americans.
No excuses. No compromise. No exceptions.
While applying the “wedge test”, we always keep in mind, this has nothing to do with party or label or ideology. It’s strictly about where candidates come down on those items which the vast majority of citizens have targeted as essential — in most cases things we’ve needed all along — things across the board that haven’t been getting done.
As I said, we all already know what these issues are. And we know those now in office have not nor will they ever support us in promoting and instituting the necessary reforms, such that WE THE PEOPLE get what’s long overdue . . . a fair stake in the vast wealth, blessings, and opportunities of the allegedly richest country in history.
Not just talk about it. Not just say pretty words and make empty campaign promises. Not just continue to spew out sound bites and pleasant-sounding word salad so we will again trust them, fall for their shallow rhetoric, and vote these hypocrites back into office.
It’s that simple. I didn’t say easy. No way will this be easy. But it’s certainly simple.
It starts with us no longer being gullible fools. Those in power will continue to lie to us, continue rigging the system in their favor and that of their patrons, the privileged elite, if we let them.
But we can stop this right now. By getting serious about installing a government of the people, by the people, for the people. By electing “people’s candidates” who have proven themselves worthy of our vote.
Life In Japan: Cotton Balls
I’ve been living in Japan permanently — yes, as a permanent resident of the country — for ten years. Been here on and off — mostly on — for almost fifteen years.
My expectations have slowly come into line. There’s quite a bit different about life in Asia and since I live in farm country, much of that relates to . . . you guessed it . . . farming.
Simple example: Back in my home state of Michigan, I saw a lot of corn growing. Here they grow rice and soybeans. When I lived in California, it meant oranges. They grow some oranges here but also lots of persimmons! I really love persimmons, have even written about them.
Recognizing all of those fascinating differences, a recent development here really took me by surprise. I never expected to see anyone in Japan raising . . . [ drumroll ] . . . COTTON!
Yes, literally right near my house is the world headquarters for a new enterprise.
Not just plain old cotton, mind you, but ORGANIC COTTON.
There are several fields, all within walking distance, where they are growing the stuff.
Do they actually use cotton these days? I thought with all of the wondrous synthetic fabrics available now, using cotton and wool and the rest of nature’s bounty was confined to tribal communities in third-world countries with unpronounceable names.
Well . . . I was SO WRONG!
Turns out — my wife and some Google searches informing me — that not only is cotton still popular, it is much preferred by discerning folks, people in the know who look down their noses at apparel made from spandex, polyester, nylon, Gore-Tex, Dacron, polypropylene, acrylic and polyvinyl chloride. In fact, increasing numbers of health-conscious folks suggest it is the direct contact with the skin by these petroleum-based products which is responsible for the exponential increase in cancer, diabetes, immune dysfunction, allergies, and other “modern industrial” diseases. Is it a coincidence that these pathologies made a dramatic entrance front-and-center on the world stage at the exact same time as the massive, over-arching introduction of “chemistry” into all aspects of modern life?
These are certainly important questions. No doubt about it, the debates around pros and cons of technology will continue to rage on. Since there’s so much money being made, it’s doubtful we’ll ever get a straight reading on any of this.
Even so, I know exactly what to do!
I’m going to be the first on the block to own a brand new pair of organic cotton Samurai jeans! Better safe than sorry. If I can look sharp as well, even better!