On Internet Censorship

"When various members of congress become upset with the content they see on the net and want to suppress it, I feel compelled to remind them that they would not be sitting where they are sitting were it not for anonymous tracks published in the 18th century that incited the Americans to revolt against the British."
~Vinton Cerf - one of the fathers of the Internet

Quote from his appearance at the 2012 World Science Festival in New York City.
Speaks directly to the Origin Story of Tom Paine's Ghost!

Towards Peace in Congo.

EGYPT

"Now, ultimately the future of Egypt will be determined by the Egyptian people. And I believe that the Egyptian people want the same things that we all want -- a better life for ourselves and our children, and a government that is fair and just and responsive. Put simply, the Egyptian people want a future that befits the heirs to a great and ancient civilization."

~ President Barack Obama

The Beehive Design Collective

Todd Simmons over at Matterdaily.org tells us about a traveling group of artists known as the Beehive Design Collective presenting their unique brand of large scale murals in Fort Collins, Colorado on December 9th. This year's exhibit is dedicated to raising public awareness about mountain top removal mining practices and the accompanying destruction of natural resources. Have you ever been in a car and seen the above bumper sticker? The fine print on it says "West Virginia  Highlands Conservancy" representing those at the forefront battling the mining companies who practice mountain top removal.  For dates, times, and locations of the exhibits see Todd's article.  TPG feels strongly for the cause the collective has chosen and as we have said before, we should all LISTEN TO LARRY!

Why has "UNION" become a dirty word?

By Kristopher Hite

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

...and on and on, as most people who attended grade-school anytime in the later half of the twentieth century probably know. This classic ballad of the American landscape was written by good old Woody Guthrie. But there is a song, most people probably do not know, that was written by this same brilliant American - the ballad of the Ludlow Massacre.

On April 20th, 1914 twenty men, women, and children were murdered in Ludlow, Colorado by the Colorado National Guard. The men in these families were part of the mine worker's union that were staging a labor strike. This struggle represents the roots of the American labor movement and unfortunately has been forgotten in recent years.



In his penetrating dissection of the recent financial meltdown and subsequent corporate power-grab Matt Taibbi makes a subtle point regarding unions and their political decline in recent decades. Taibbi describes how Bill Clinton's administration turned their back on unions simply because the Democrats were sick of loosing the fund-raising game during campaigns. Of course there has been a concerted effort by Republicans to undermine the philosophical concept of a union for the better part of the last century, but this relatively recent change in Democratic attitudes towards unions has further eroded any remaining traction unions held in the minds of the electorate.

Cornell University has an entire college dedicated to the study of industrial/labor relations. Much work here focuses on giving workers the tools they need to use leverage when undertaking collective bargaining. The college helps the research process of unions so they might identify weaknesses in corporations and exploit them in order to gain the basic rights they deserve - health care, decent pay, respect.

This is where, I think, there is a fundamental misunderstanding amongst the general public. What is the purpose of a union?

To guarantee basic rights - health care, decent pay, respect.

This is the reason I am writing about this on Tom Paine's Ghost.

People have been made to believe that unions are filled with fat lazy socialists who don't want to work. This is part of the distorting barrage of information that oozes from broadcast corporations such as the Sinclair Broadcast Group who have their tentacles wrapped around the visual cortices of the American Midwest. Some unions may have behaved improperly and over-stepped their bounds when considering the United Auto Workers Union and others. But this is no reason to disband the concept of unions altogether!

Again. The main purpose of a Union is to guarantee basic rights - health care, decent pay, respect.

Upon recommendation from a friend that attended the college of Industrial Labor Relations I began reading a book titled Global Unions. This book is the distillation of a conference held in February of 2006 regarding the past current and future role of unions on the international stage. Video of each talk given can be found here.

The main point made here, through historical perspectives and contemporary examples, is that in order for unions to be effective, from now on, they need to operate on the same scale as the multinational corporations they serve to balance.

While we approach the anniversary of the Ludlow massacre I feel obligated to breath onto the embers of understanding unions. It will be interesting to see how ideas about unions evolve in the recently bluing state of Colorado. This state has maintained an anti-union err up until very recent history. Traveling to Pueblo, CO in fall of 2008 I heard many first-hand accounts of scabs blocking the efficacy of a steel-workers strike at the Oregon Steel Mill there in the early 2000s.

On the birthday of Clarence Darrow I feel it appropriate to reignite an understanding and passion for core union precepts; basic rights - health care, decent pay, respect.

It was THAT bad

If there are any psychological handbooks out there that help rape victims cope I suggest they be handed out to every American citizen. As a country that metaphor is sadly quite apt for what happened to us over the last eight years. From the administration of a man elected on the premise of restoring morality to the white house came a clear sanction of torture. If you have not read the memoranda released by President Obama last Thursday please consider reading them to form your own opinion of whether the practices described within constitute torture.

I had heard of and even skimmed The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, I had seen previews for Taxi to the Dark Side, but I had always maintained a hope that the US government really did not use these torturous practices. I wanted to believe that this was not possible. That age of innocence ended for me yesterday as I read the last of the torture memos released by President Obama. I realized finally that it really was THAT bad.

I began the move from denial to anger.

At once I wanted justice served to individuals. I wanted to see George W. Bush in front of an international court of justice being tried for war crimes. If not George Bush then at least the person who made the legal decision to allow these practices to be carried out on our enemies, namely ninth circuit court judge Jay Bybee. After calming and talking with friends I realized that even if the person that wrote these "permission slips" for torture was convicted of sanctioning torture what justice would come of this for future generations faced with these same questions?

After ruminating on the most effective cascade of events to ensue in the wake of these memos being made public I came to one solid conclusion. A case should be brought to the supreme court, the people of the United States vs. Jay Bybee. The desired result of such a hearing would be to make clear to the world the exact definition of torture. Our supreme court justices would have a monumental task of using language to build a threshold barrier on the slippery slope between interrogation and torture. In this manner we would both serve justice and clarify the guidelines for what a civilized democracy can and cannot do under universal circumstances.

In the meantime it is our duty as a self-informing citizenry to carefully read these memos and think about their implications. One conclusion I have made is that it really was as bad as I had suspected.

If you happen to have 3 hours of extra time you might want to watch this



John Yoo - this is the name of the author of some of the torture memos. Though Jay Bybee's name appears at the top of the memos John Yoo admits in this hearing (video directly above 1 hour and 13 minutes in) drafting the document.

Better Place

Better Place: a company Robert Kennedy Jr. invests in.
The novel concept here is that the car is like a cell phone. The provider gives the consumer the car for free and charges for the energy consumed, how we now pay for minutes in cell phone plans. Revolutionary to say the least.


Another group Mr. Kennedy mentioned was Vantage Point Venture Partners. Interestingly a company my Aunt in Napa California told me about is bundled into this Vantage Point group. They are Bright Source Energy.

Malik Rahim - Black and Green

Former Black Panther - Malik Rahim - speaks softly.
His gentle words were delivered with a jolly smile punctuated by serious pauses to a group of quiet listeners at the Matter Book Store in Fort Collins, Colorado on April 2nd.

He talked about his experience fighting in Vietnam, his participation in the Black Panther movement, time served on death row, and his perpetual activism for environmental peace and justice. Born in Algiers, Louisiana, Malik witnessed first-hand the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Katrina and watched in horror as a whole segment of the US population was decimated by a lack of response on the part of the U.S. government.

He co-founded the relief group "Common Ground" that provided clean water and supplies to victims of the hurricane which later expanding to provide further assistance to those displaced by the disaster.

Mr. Rahim spoke with a twinkle in his eye that resides only in those with the best of intentions. He strove to emphasize the issues front and center in his mind, and those issues were clear. Clean air and clean water. He pointed out that with all the worry and talk about everything going wrong with the economy there are not enough people engaged in the conversation about what is going right. That the movement toward green energy and environmental sustainability should be in the forefront of world discussion. That no matter what political affiliation you have you and your offspring will perpetually need clean air and clean water. He urged that we as a nation move beyond partisan differences to a conversation where tolerance reigns and cooperation converges on these issues.

He also spoke about the status of Martin Luther King's dream; the perception and the reality of that dream. Mr. Rahim fears that having a black president merely represents the facade of the dream realized. He speculated that the dream would not be truly realized until "content of character" above all is used as the measure of elected officials, not the color of their skin. He gave a brief history lesson as well while telling the story of FDR and Upton Sinclair.

"A lot of people have been saying that Obama is the modern incarnation of FDR. Well I sure hope he is not."

At this point the crowd looked confused as their progressive hero from history was being questioned. Then he filled us in. In the 1934 gubernatorial race in California the Pulitzer prize winning author Upton Sinclair was running as a DEMOCRAT with the platform of ending poverty in California (EPIC). For purely political reasons Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled to California and campaigned for the REPUBLICAN rival Frank F. Merriam. Sinclair lost and the race went down in history as one of the most propaganda-filled elections of all time.

The point Mr. Rahim was making was this; by allowing a leader to become too heroic, the citizenry looses sight of a leader's motives and is unable to objectively judge their character. This is no way to have a functioning democracy. He followed by saying that "a weak people need a leader, a strong people need a representative."

"Mr. Obama doesn't have no magic wand, but we do. Obviously you all are awake because you are here tonight. Now go wake up others."
And that is why I share this with you.

The Second American Revolution

Why limit it to America. Why not begin the first Global Revolution?

The actor Bob Basso is no doubt filled with passion, though I feel his interpretation of Thomas Paine is misguided. If he had actually read the works of Paine he might have stumbled across these CORE ENLIGHTENMENT BELIEFS outlined in The Rights of Man. Basso's anti-immigrant slant on Paine's character is highly contrary to Paine's belief that THE STATE HAS A DUTY TO HELP THE NEEDIEST OF ITS PEOPLE.

For a man that once said "My country is the world and my religion is to do good" I find it hard to believe Paine would have agreed with all the points made here by Basso. In my mind the revolution Thomas Paine might align himself with in 2009 would be the movement for GLOBAL DEMOCRACY.

Basso's Barking rhetoric in the video above echos the Ron Paul supporters that rallied around the free market philosophy so ardently for the past two years. This form of arch libertarianism leaves out many other key aspects of the bill of rights that all Americans need to reacquaint themselves with. Basso also seems to be unhappy with President Obama. I wonder if he knows how much academic respect Obama has for Paine. Having quoted Thomas Paine in is inaugural address I think Obama might actually listen to the more enlightened aspects of this rant, especially the call for service and sacrifice!

TAX TIME - a forecast for dollars and democracy

As I used TurboTax this year to file my 2008 returns I was mesmerized by the floating green digits in the upper right corner of the window. This number represented the amount of my money the federal government would return to me this year. This floating variable turned filing into a game where I, the player, tried to see how much a I could legitimately deduct to maximize that green number. What I find disheartening about this popular system of "doing your taxes" is the absence of social-consciousness. Of course the dollar amount of the return is important to each filer but the number that should also be highlighted and in bold is the amount of money the government will actually keep. If everyone were keenly aware of this number maybe they would feel a desire to see to it that Uncle Sam spend it wisely.

I had heard the IRS was going to write their own freeware to help taxpayers e-file with ease, but because of much lobbying TurboTax convinced them not to in exchange for offering their most basic service free to customers. I laud the IRS for attempting a threat on the free market of tax preparation swindlers and I think those eager software programmers over at the IRS might still have a future.

In the movie Stranger than Fiction the character Ana Pascal (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) refuses to pay the portion of her taxes going to government works she feels contradict her moral values (i.e. IRAQ). Rather than not paying a portion of her taxes what if she lived in a world where she could tell her government exactly which government programs she'd like her taxes spent on? To serious politicians the idea of line item taxation might seem juvenile and silly but in reality there is no reason a program written by the IRS as an addendum to TurboTax could not be put into action.

Here is the idea...

After e-filing your taxes a window shows up with the amount of money to be kept by the government displayed along with two buttons. Button 1 says, "I give my federal representatives the right to decide how to spend the money paid by me in the form of Tax for the year ----." Button 2 reads "I wish to appropriate the money paid by me in taxes to the federal programs of my choosing." If the user clicks button 1 the return is filed and the user goes on having a pleasant Sunday. If the user clicks button 2 then a cascade of buttons ensues. The first page might say "I allocate X% of my total withholdings to -(a drop down list of all the departments of the federal government - defense, education, interior, etc. etc.) After passing this initial breakdown step the user would have the option of ending it or continuing to further breakdown precisely how they want their money spent. For example, say a person wanted their withholdings to go to research on Parkinson's disease they could theoretically go as far as allocating that money within the NIH. At every level of allocation the user would maintain the ability to stop and be done, allowing legislatures to step in and finish the decision making process for them. The degree of participation could be anything from 0 to 100%. What would be accomplished by this? First, a heightened awareness of what exactly the government does would permeate all who participate to even the slightest degree, and second and most importantly, this would provide real power to the people in prioritizing our national agenda. I don't know what this experiment might look like but I predict that defense spending would decline precipitously while investment in education, infrastructure, and agriculture would spike.

In the age of the internet this kind of people-powered taxation mechanism is possible. It is merely a matter of prying the power from the citadel in Washington where amassed power has grown to a sickening head over two centuries while our fledgling democracy has come into adolescence as a nation. If the founders knew what level of personal connection would someday come through this thing we call the internet they would have advocated a mechanism as I have just proposed. This mechanism fits soundly into the enlightenment precept that "Government can only be empowered by its citizens."

If you like this idea do what my grandmother always did, write your congress person and forward this article to anyone you think might listen by copying this URL into an email.

Sincerely,
Your fellow tax payer

Franklin a Fleming?

Thomas Paine came to America largely through his connection to Benjamin Franklin. Franklin provided Paine a critical letter of introduction which Paine presented in Philadelphia upon his arrival in 1774. The stories of these founders are tightly woven and many works attributed to one or the other may have been the result of conversations between the two. While Paine was the son of a staymaker (one who crafts corsets), Franklin was the son of a candle and soap maker. But the threads of their philosophical connection coalesce further as Franklin's ancestry is uncovered by modern historians. The Belgian paper Flanders Today reveals Franklin's ancestors were of Belgian (more specifically Flemish) descent. Franklin's DNA meandered to America from Flanders by way of England’s second largest city at the time - Norwich. This city is situated close to the North Sea and a "historic hotbed of religious dissent." The city was flooded with Flemish emigrants in the 1560s - mostly protestant weavers. They were fleeing persecution by a Spanish duke. Among these sartorial religious refugees were Benjamin Franklin's maternal great-great-grandparents. Though his grandfather Peter died 16 years before his birth, Franklin's writings reflect how he came to embody the "decent plainness and manly freedom" exemplified by his grandfather. The connection between clothes making and the ancestral trade of Franklin and Paine is more than serendipitous. Perhaps during the post-Renaissance middle class outgrowth crafting cloths for common people bound makers to their market and helped foster the memetic roots that would eventually rip arbitrary authority from the throne of England and place it squarely in the hands of the people. It might do the America of 2009 some good to once again start making clothes and furniture and all the myriad consumables that constitute CULTURE.

Founding Words

"The greatest threat to our democratic experiment will not come from those who would openly oppose us, but those who will silently follow us."
~Thomas Paine

An excellent site to reacquaint ourselves with the LIVING American genome.

Freedom to Write in Stone

USA Today has announced that humanists are happy about the recent supreme court decision regarding free speech. I consider myself a humanist yet I am not so happy about it.

The supreme court in essence ruled that a city government can decide which religious monuments to allow in public places. The issue at the center of this case began when a small religious group in Pleasant Grove, Utah known as the Summum church requested that the city display a three foot granite slab outlining its core principles, the "Seven Aphorisms" next to a monument listing the Ten Commandments that has stood on this public park since it was donated by eagle scouts in 1971. I have posted about this case before and you can find all the quarks surrounding this religion described in detail here.

The problem with the supreme court decision is that it allows city governments to choose which religions are allowed to mark up public places. In my mind when one religion is allowed to display their beliefs carved in stone then that automatically makes the surrounding space a public forum and therefore any person or peaceably assembled group of people have the right to place their words in that public forum as well.

As I said before...

"In the case of the Summon religion and their granite slab I feel like the only fair thing to do is tell the city of Pleasant Grove to either remove all religious writings from the public land or allow those tasteful and aesthetically pleasing views of other religions to be erected as monuments of equal size and equal real estate value. The city still has the right to refuse in this instance but has to be an equal opportunity censor."

What do you think?

Jihad against junk food

I have been waiting for a hero in the US to stand and fight for more healthful food in schools. Whenever I engage in conversation on this topic the archetype of Jamie Oliver and his "feed me better" campaign in Brittan comes up. Read his manifesto where he outlines a strategy for putting fresh local ingredients into the cafeteria. Talk about people powered media, Mr. Oliver encourages children to use their cell phone cameras to take pictures of the their school lunches and post them on his site. Internal checks to ensure the reform is happening on the ground. This could happen in the US, but living in the breadbasket of the world we have some of the largest food production lobbies on the planet. Look what we are up against.

Information Revolution

The following video is found on I want my rocky.com. This web site is dedicated to preserving the Rocky Mountain News, a paper that's been a Denver staple for 150 years and is on the verge of collapse.



The speed of information flow has increased in such an exponential fashion over the past three decades that I do not know what to tell people who make their living pressing ink to paper. It comes down to the ink and paper infrastructure rapidly going extinct. Like the fossil fuel infrastructure this arcane system will go the way of the dodo eventually. This does not mean the end of journalism however. With droves of citizen reporters we are entering an age of unprecedented interconnectedness. In the process we are tearing down the fiscal walls that were so long maintained by the information gatekeepers. The fear is that the quality of reporting will plummet without full time people devoted to investigating newsworthy stories. This is understandable, but this shift to people-powered media is the final verdict on over 50 years of media giants squandering their massive public exposure on cheap advertising and dumbed-down content. Along with print journalism, broadcast journalists are also facing the selective bottleneck of transition. But from the ashes of the fallen newspapers a gleaning meritocracy may rise, where credit will be given only where it is due and consciousness is raised at the speed of light.

As we collectively move beyond the age of corporate media may we heed the words of Edward R. Murrow and prevent a relapse of his already fulfilled prophecy told 51 years ago.



P.S. As a consequence of writing this piece I happened to stumble on this clip of young Marlon Brando playing the conga drums during and interview with Edward R. Murrow. No wonder McCarthy called these guys commies. More power to 'em.

Thomas Paine on The Writer's Almanac.

On the 233rd anniversary of the publication of Common Sense, Thomas Paine's famous pamphlet is commemorated by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. This pamphlet explained the reasons the American colonies should declare their independence from Britain and was originally published anonymously. It sold roughly 500,000 copies in its first year. Thomas Paine did not profit from the sale of his work and donated all the proceeds to provisioning the continental army thus illustrating the old adage - the pen is mightier...

Burned Iraq War Vet Makes Cameo on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve

History Deciding.

Plato wrote - "the penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves." The remorse I feel in having spent the last eight years under the tyranny of a hereditary ruler in a country founded on the abolishment of monarchy ignites the flame of revolution buried deep within my genome.

If all the lamentations from the past eight years regarding President George W. Bush were collected into a singular sonic boom of public outcry, it would pail in comparison to the echoing legacy of shame he leaves festering all over our planet. Indeed, actions (and by the same reasoning - inactions) speak louder than words. All the strong words that have been flung his way in recent history are but whispers when compared to the resounding emotion that comes from witnessing consequence first hand.

Moments into the new year, during the broadcast of Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve on ABC, a certain scene resonated and has been smoldering in my mind ever since. The cameras had turned to American Idol star Kellie Pickler, where she was surrounded by three Iraq war veterans celebrating the new year in Times Square. The man in the center was staring into the camera intensely through the skin of his face pulled taught around his cheek bones by severe third degree burns. He raised his hand and cheered at the camera, while Ms. Pickler hurried to step between him and the camera to "shield" the American public from the manifestations and real consequences of war. George W. Bush has asked that history decide if his presidency was bad or good, but someone forgot to send him the memo - nowadays history is written in real time.