Author: mopress

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch

My New Year’s resolution is to be more reliable than the New York Times, not simply on par with its mea culpas. But more importantly, I want to live a life worthy of the transparent universe, a world in which every human error will be transcribed, imprinted, and preserved on a Justice Department chip.

It was Yoshie Furuhashi who got me thinking about the transparent universe. Her exquisite weblog treatment of Wal-Mart included a tiny detail about dust-sized inventory chips that will be scattered over everything in the Wal-Mart distribution chain. At first the little bugs will be readable from close range, but later on, who knows? We may be able to scan them from satellite. Thanks to these dust-chips of inventory and our new satellite capabilities, we will soon be able to report planetary inventory. Every roll of toilet paper, yes, and every kilo of hash will be scrupulously reported from planting time to final flush.

So what are we going to do with Wal-Mart’s inventoried planet? Why, of course, we are going to do just what Karl Marx said to do. We’re going to democratize it and put it to work for the workers. After the revolution, there won’t be any room for Fox News on cable, because the bandwidth will be taken over by really important information, like where is the toilet paper kept, where is it being made, and which way does it travel across the Pacific Ocean, east or west?

Then we’re going to have a digital channel for income inventory, where you can see how much everybody in the world gets paid this week. Everyone who is underpaid will be linked to an employer who will then be called into the Justice Department for an explanation. Like I said, no error will be forgotten. And everyone who is overpaid (bad news for North America) will be balanced by computerized assessment, linked preferably to someone belonging to a class of people that the violator has explicitly disparaged. Ann Coulter’s capital gains, for example, will be transferred to Islamic schools. My excess earnings will go to ex-Fox pensioners such as Ann Coulter, etc.

It was A. Philip Randolph, the great radical leader of train porters and civil rights, who said that income transparency would solve the problem of democracy overnight (I read it somewhere at the Schomburg). So please stay tuned for channel Cayman-Geneva, where the holdings of all numbered accounts will finally be revealed. No more Kudlow and Cramer BS about how to be Bull-headed all the time, we’re going to have a financial channel that actually shows you where the money is, including Kudlow’s and Cramer’s.

Tracking all the kilos of pot, heroin, hash, and cocaine will also usher in a great age of freedom when it is seen who really gets most of the good stuff and all of the money. This information will also be kept on chips at the Justice Department to control for hoarding and profiteering. Bust the trusts, not the people, that’s what the newly-minted DEA badges will say. According to my NORML newsletter this week, the combined law enforcement authorities of the USA busted three quarters of a million people for pot last year. That’s 750,000 people kicked around by the state for what? Believe me, when the narco-trade goes public, that nonsense will stop.

What else? Land. Real Estate holdings. Donald Trump, you’re fired. All your luxury-schmuxury condos will be given out on the basis of who puts in the most hours for the shittiest pay. Hot, hot water, sleep-number beds, and remote-control fireplaces given out to every gal working the counter at Rite-Aid. But if you can handle the task, Donald, you could be hired for that, too. And, of course, you’d have a claim on all the excess income that I earn from say, my profits at CounterPunch.

Finally, these inventoried motion detectors are going to be good news for the sexual revolution. That sound you hear is all the hypocrisy of starched Christianity going pop. Look who’s doing it with whom. My word. And all these years, we let them guilt whip us? No more. You just know the masturbation channel is going to be a total mess.

Workers of the world, hang in there. The difference between those who point and those who get pointed at is rapidly approaching a curve. The rest of you, have a Happy New Year anyway.

DISCLAIMER: Any reference to workers revolution is intended for entertainment purposes only, and is not to be confused with inciting jihad. Apologies also to Donald Trump for naming him in the same breath with Ann Coulter. No similarities in character are intended to be imputed from such proximities of prose. The difference between the two of you is huge. Finally, to Keith Stroup, this was supposed to be a kind of thank you note for your work, but somehow I wandered off topic. Mea culpa, Keith. Enjoy.

The following speech act represents very well what counts for cool in the USA today:

“To The People Of Islam:
Just think: If we’d invaded your countries, killed your leaders and converted you to Christianity
YOU’D ALL BE OPENING CHRISTMAS PRESENTS RIGHT ABOUT NOW!
Merry Christmas”
Pasted from the Ann Coulter Homepage
anncoulter.com
Dec. 30, 2004

NOTE: Will the State Dept. consider this “inciting.” Designate anncoulter.com a terrorist org. Will Fox, etal. refuse to broadcast her opinions via satellite. Or will the double standard apply: Crusade sells, jihad incites. (No question marks needed for rhetorical questions.) –gm

From a European reader who wishes to remain anonymous:

Just spent a few boring hours going through the forum of the newspaper “Le Monde” to figure out what was the fuss about Al-Manar TV, not pretty reading, it seems like the anti-anti-Israel is really gaining ground, but anti-Israel (or anti-Zionism or plain anti-colonialism) are also closing the gap on the cultural (or for the believer racial) issue, finally claiming their Semitic identity.

Seems that the protocol of Zion are the problem indeed (since it is forbidden to publish them /sell them and read them it is difficult to figure out if they are only ridiculous or actually a problem) but one book should definitely be taken out and burnt: “The old testament” inciting hatred against most of the non-Jewish middle east, including, in the children book version against Egyptian, etc…… and promoting genocide (of the Amalek), philistines (a minister of the church reminded us that they still exist today and are called Palestinians!).

Other interesting facts collected reading “Le Monde”: 3 separate incident of anti-Jewish acts actually proven not to have been such, first one arson of a Jewish centre for which some Arab kids were actually sent to prison was in fact a accidental fire (caused with cigarettes by the security guard), the infamous non Jewish girl, not attacked by anti-Semite and lastly another arson of a Jewish building committed by a (Jewish) employee, but initially blamed by the entire political class and Israeli establishment, proof that Jews are not safe in France (who is safe or not safe anywhere?).

Occasionally “Le Monde” will remind us that most anti-Muslim act (including police brutality versus teen-ager and act committed by Jewish “terrorist” organization BETAR) are not worth publishing because they are too common, maybe one remembers in “tolerant” Holland the murder of a Muslim family (children rescued by a neighbour) by another nice European. Guess Michael Neumann published a few articles in Counterpunch along that line.

Normally I suspect that censorship is stupid and counterproductive but coupled with the right type of propaganda it is really frightening. I remember last year, the censorship of Al- Jazeera (still not allowed in Irak) and taking down Yellowtimes.org for showing pictures of dead Irakis and a link to Al- Jazeera to get more information. And more recently taking down Indymedia (not very clear where it came from and why exactly).

Sad thing is most are not even aware of the existence of Al-Manar TV and they just have in the periphery of their mind the idea that it is a terrorist organization successfully brought down by joint US_FRANCE operation, for others at least we can ask question about what is going on and may be why some people in Lebanon do not have our vision of Israel/garden of Eden, we can even wonder why exactly we have this ridiculous crusade against Islam (in the name of feminism???) we might even try to discover what Islam is about and why not that there are plenty of other religions practiced on this planet (the one with the Christmas tree, by the way, is definitely not christian) including centuries old Chinese atheism!

Happy New Year

PS: Sorry I could not resist writing all this after reading your second piece on the subject!

By Greg Moses

Texas Civil Rights Review

Winter takes the color away, but people put up lights. In my own cul de sac of the global village, the light show this year is fantastic. We have colors like I’ve never seen, electric deer that raise their lit-up heads, candy canes, icicles, y mas santas. At night the frozen ground glows in magical grace. With hope, we have electrified a dying world.

Where does this spirit come from? If you think it comes from Jesus, I get it. If you prefer a pagan yule tide, I get that, too. My own favorite story for this season of lights belongs to Africa, where the Nile River once rose and fell. By x-mas time each year, the water had fallen low, but the low ebb of the river was matched by the high hope of Horus, the baby born of Holy Mother Isis and Green God Osiris, each and every December 25.

Whether the water is low or the snow is high, x-mas in El Norte finds us asking metaphysical questions. Will we believe in the returns of Spring? Stake our cheer on nothing but the future? Or feed our fear on everything we see around us?

For Ramsey Muniz on x-mas, it is neither low water nor high snow. For Ramsey, and so many with him, it is thick walls that must be hoped through. If he had to do it all over again, says Ramsey in an interview with Rolando Garza, he’d rather not run for Governor of Texas. He’d rather serve as minister of cultura for his beloved party, La Raza Unida.

Cultura. Familia. And most important, says Ramsey, is Love.

“Let us celebrate the birth of this historic spiritual man whose destiny was to change the entire world,” writes Ramsey from Leavenworth prison. The email comes from his esposa, Irma. “It is not about a white Christmas. It is about accepting the truth of faith, charity, love, forgiveness, and spirituality. We are in the midst of a world spiritual evolution and those who open their hearts with patience and understanding will witness the resurrection of spiritual power which is greater than any other power in the world.”

Although he says nothing directly about her in this message, Ramsey’s voice reminds me who else is looking out. The Lady of Guadalupe, her resplendent image watching from the East. She is mother to all the children of Aztlan, and it would take a soul made from dry husk not to thank her that you live at this glowing cul de sac while Ramsey Muniz is locked up in Leavenworth.

If the best things come from prison, as Ramsey says, then in what way do the best things exist and why do the power-fools of this earth lock the best things away? In solitary confinement, Ramsey encountered a vision of Ricardo Flores Magón, and, having nothing more urgent at hand, they talked. Was it the same cell where Magon had been beaten to death in 1922, four years into his fourth imprisonment? Magon had coined the slogan, “Land and Liberty.” In his journal, Regeneration, he reminded Mechika readers that “emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves.”

At the Irish anarchist website, struggle, they say “No Gods, No Masters.” If you think the spirit belongs to this slogan, I get that, too. On x-mas day, the point is never to be caught without the spirit that takes you through the low water times.