On the Banks

Dueling Stossels and John Sarno

So my old high school buddy Dana Anderson told me about John Sarno's books on healing back pain, as I've had lower back troubles since the birth of my daughter (not blaming anyone!) and all the usual stuff I've known to do hasn't fixed it.  So I'm going to try this out.  Anyway, I found this great John Stossel segment about him.  I love it because the bit with Stossel's brother so beautifully illustrates the typical conventional-medicine-trained attitude toward anything "alternative."  If it hasn't been proven in a double-blind study, there's no point in even considering it.  Even though conventional medicine has not fixed the problem, and even though there's a ton of anecdotal evidence that supports it - including the evidence of your own brother's cure!  (And his brother is hardly "anti-science", BTW)  Better to continue suffering, and sit in a weird contraption for 45 minutes every day than delve into the unproven.  What a bizarre attitude to have in the face of the unknown.

 

 

 

Why to read "Why Peace" ...and how to pronounce my name

AntiWar.com's Scott Horton interviewed Marc Guttman about his recently released book "Why Peace", in which I have a chapter.  I've been remiss in not getting around to reading the other chapters, but this interview makes me eager to get started.  There are really some amazing stories in here: From victims of war, and from some of its perpetrators.  Most compelling, I think, is that many of the writers tell of their own transformations from once supporting war to now opposing it.

(And yes guys, it happens all the time.  People never know how to pronounce my name - Scott was right though, it's "Bret-nee".)

 

 

Did Obama Let You Down? There's Still Hope!

Here is the follow-up to an article I wrote soon after Obama's inauguration, in which I predicted that:

"...four years from now, an Obama presidency will not look very different from the George W. Bush presidency, or from what I imagine a John McCain presidency would bring."

I told readers that if I was wrong about this, I would re-think my beliefs "about our political system and about politics generally."  But asked them that if I turned out to be right, to please do the same.  

"I'm asking each of you to consider the seemingly bizarre proposition that there really is no significant difference between candidates offered up by the established party system; that Republican and Democrat are virtually indistinguishable; and that neither party has at heart the interests of you or me or "the American people."  I'm asking you to consider the possibility that continuing to vote for these people just helps to perpetuate the very ills you seek to cure."

None of my friends (to whom this article was addressed) officially took me up on this offer.  But I've heard from a few who have since done some re-thinking - if not of their fundamental beliefs about political systems, at least about their support for Obama.  They may not be voting for my choice in the presidential elections - happily, one will not be voting at all!  But they have been honest enough to look at the reality of what their candidate has created and decide to withdraw their support, and I respect them for that.

In my follow-up, I re-visit my specific predictions - which for the most part have come true in spades - and I urge former Obama supporters who care about things like peace, civil liberties and a functioning economy, to vote for Ron Paul.  But I also caution that:

"We should of course be wary of placing our hopes for "change" in a politician who will rule over us. Any politician. Even Ron Paul. If we want to live in peace, then we must reject the coercive violence upon which a political system is built. We cannot continue to grant individuals the right to rule over others, the monopoly to both make and enforce laws, the monopoly on "justice" and on defense – and then act surprised when those individuals use their powers to their own benefit and to our detriment."

It probably seems odd for someone who does not believe in the political process to advocate that people vote for anybody.  I've explained my support for Dr. Paul before, but yes, it is odd.  It may even be hypocritical.  Essentially, I support him because I believe that a Ron Paul presidency would save an awful lot of lives.  It would also get an awful lot of non-violent "offenders" out of cages, and would make things better in a myriad of ways, not by expanding the reach of government but by reducing it.  Of course it's possible that I'm wrong about this - I only hope we get a chance to find out.  But I've been right about politicians before.  It would be nice if those who profess to care about things like not murdering foreigners and not trampling the civil liberty of Americans would start to listen.

 

 

Goosestepping in the GDR

I took this picture back in December of 1983, when I was an exchange student in Paris.  I visited Berlin over the Christmas holidays and crossed over to East Berlin for one day.  This was in front of some memorial - I don't remember which, probably for fallen comrades who gave their lives to protect the proletariat from price competition or something.  When I showed people this photo later on, no-one else seemed to see the irony in it.

 

 

Mere Anarchy Loosed Upon the World

My contribution to "Why Peace" is online today here.  I hope it helps to clarify why I am not only against some wars, but against all war.

From the essay:

As I write this, my son is running around the house naked, even though I’ve asked him twice to put his clothes on. I can hear the bathroom sink swooshing on and off as he makes a swimming pool for his zoo animals. I weigh getting up and possibly waking his baby sister, who is sleeping on my chest, against the lesser likelihood that he will catch a cold from running around the house naked and wet. I decide to stay put. The swooshing continues.

I wonder how a man named Scott Oglesby would deal with my son’s exuberance, his lack of "respect for authority," his occasional noisiness. Last December, Oglesby, a police officer, was at Stevenson Elementary School in Bloomington, Illinois, when he heard a seven-year-old special-needs boy having a seizure. Oglesby ran into the room where the boy was being restrained by a school psychologist, shouted "you’re giving me a headache!" and grabbed the boy by the throat, holding him up in the air until he turned red, before throwing him down in a chair. Oglesby is now on "restricted duty," but no criminal charges will be filed against him.

I’d like to think that cases like Oglesby’s are rare exceptions. But every week there seems to be another story about someone being shot with a taser over a traffic violation, or for not responding the way the officer wanted them to. There was the paralyzed man thrown from his wheelchair by an officer in a Florida jail; the New York City cop who stopped a woman from driving her dying daughter to the hospital; the mentally handicapped teenager who was tasered to death after waving a stick around; and, in May of 2010, in another increasingly common militarized raid on a family’s home, the shooting death of seven-year-old Aiyana Jones as she lay sleeping next to her grandmother. (There is little doubt as to what happened because the 20 officers who burst into the girl’s home had brought with them a camera crew for a reality-TV show.)

 

Why Peace?

 

This is the cover of the soon-to-be released book "Why Peace".  I've got a chapter in it, and can't wait to read the whole thing!

 

My Review of the Steve Jobs Biography

My review of Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs is here.

From the review:

Steve Jobs' formal education and accomplishments challenged nearly every conventional notion of what a path to success should look like. A college dropout who was kicked out of the very company he founded, he valued intuition over analytical thinking and wasn't inclined to follow rules. He produced innovation after innovation while ignoring market analysis, case studies and expert advice, trusting instead to the future as he saw it.

Among the ostensibly foolish things Jobs did was to build high-end computer retail stores in expensive shopping malls. The fact that Gateway's stores had failed badly should have told him this was a bad idea, even if there hadn't been plenty of people warning it made no sense. "I give them two years before they're turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake," declared retail consultant David Goldstein, echoing a chorus of experts.

Three years later, Apple stores were averaging 5,400 visitors per week (the Gateway stores had averaged 250), and by 2010 Jobs was able to boast that the Fifth Avenue store "grosses more per square foot than any store in the world."

 

Bankster Flyer for the OWS Folk

 

I realized that I never did post a link to that flyer I was working on a few posts down.  Here it is.

 

 

 

Pasadena Apple Store, Tonight

 

 

My List Isn't As Long As Yours, But...

 

So there are a few lists of demands and grievances from the Wall Street protestors floating around the Internet now.  Those I've seen pretty much confirm what I've seen in the various clips of protestors that are circulating: That most of the protestors, while rightly outraged, don't have a clue about what caused the problems they are now outraged about, nor about what to do to fix them.  

So here's my list.  It's a lot shorter than the ones I've posted above, and I don't think it's because I've given the matter less thought than those folks have:

1.  End the Federal Reserve and replace it with nothing.

2.  Legalize competing currencies.

3.  End corporate welfare, including all bailouts and subsidies.

4.  Stop violating the First Amendment, and prosecute those officers and police officials who have violated the First Amendment rights of protestors.

Any other ideas?  I'd like to include something about reimbursing people who have lost their homes, jobs, businesses, etc. because of the government-orchestrated boom and bust.  But how would you even begin to even calculate all of that?  And who would be doing the reimbursing?  The taxpayers?  Random financial institutions?  I don't see a just way of doing this, but am open to suggestions.

Any ideas people send me that I like, I'll add to my list.  And I encourage others to come up with their own lists.