Invasion

San Francisco is being transformed by big tech companies moving their headquarters to the City. For those of us who grew up in SF, the changes are hard to swallow. In my opinion, it is not simply a growing income equality that is what troubles folks. Rather it is the change in cultural values that is hardest to accept. It seems as if those working in the tech industry are drones, working in a value system that simply hopes to "cash in" one day. As a commenter on this blog points out, it's simply speculation. San Francisco's values have not been so much about achieving financial wealth, but rather about living life with political and cultural integrity.  This is why the animosity to the tech workers is so great. In any case, I recently watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and found it eerily speaks to the change San Franciscans are experiencing today.

Thanks for watching my first video.

Blindness vs The New Death

Joan Jonas - Mirror Piece I - 1969
- Guggenheim Museum

I recently watched the film Michael Clayton for the second time. This is not just an excellent thriller, it is also a story that brilliantly reveals the way we walk through our lives ignoring the truth of injustices happening in front of us. In the film, the injustices are perpetrated by an agricultural corporation, Unorth, (Monsanto?) poisoning local ground water with the run-off of from their toxic fertilizers. The film speaks to the double-sided face of corporations, how outward marketing counters the inherent corporate culture of greed and narcissism, and how we all "buy-in" to the face of things and not the reality. The character who "wakes up" to his role in the "system" does so only by becoming "crazy."

Saul Bellow writes in his novel More Die of Heartbreak:

"In the West, the ordeal is of a new death. There aren't any words for what happens to the soul in the free world. Never mind 'rising entitlements,' never mind the luxury 'life-style.' Our buried judgment knows better. All this is seen by remote centers of consciousness, which struggle against full wakefulness. Full wakefulness would make us face up to the new death, the peculiar ordeal of our side of the world. The opening of a true consciousness to what is actually occurring would be a purgatory."

It seems that the single, core value in business these days is profitability. How did we get here?? How is it that the fight in Congress is to ensure that the only responsibility businesses have is to their own bottom line? What happened to the idea that businesses could make money and also support their workers and their local community? Yes, profits might be less, but does that matter if other values are equally important? We have literally bought the system we have, through our purchases, and we do so willingly. We put on blinders every day to the power we wield in fostering these institutions.

As Michael Clayton points out, we are all a part of this system that encourages us to be blind to our role and actions in this profitability culture. We buy their products, we vote for their politicians, we accept that paradigm. Waking up, as Bellow says, "would be a purgatory." Such consciousness is too painful. And since this evil of conscious ignorance is part of our daily lives, resisting it has become an individualized and personal battle. (The only power "we the people" have left are in unions, and this is why there is a clear and powerful attempt to break them up.)

"Evil in [Jane] Austen, as in most great fiction, lies in the inability to "see" others, hence to empathize with them. What is frightening is that this blindness can exist in the best of us as well as the worst. We are all capable of becoming the blind censor, of imposing our visions and desires on others. Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination ... "Perhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances," Bellow wrote, "is also to reach the heart of politics. The human feelings, human experiences, the human form and face, recover their proper place--the foreground." Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

Of course the corporate strangle hold on us and the media was articulated well in the speech from Network (1976).

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

But Network also provided a speech articulating the drive and fight of the individual against the status quo. It's the very essence of Occupy Wall Street.

Nothing is Simple: On Osama Bin Laden's death

I'm sorry, but i just can't abide by people dancing in the streets to this man's death. (cheerleaders in Times Square??? Give me a break!) It's such mob mentality. And everything I hate about Americans who only see the world through a lens of black and white. Things are what they are. Many religious people in the Middle East have good... reason to hate the west. Our culture produces some of the most obscene pornography and violent media images, is responsible for Abu Graib and other such horrors, and has produced a corporate culture that promotes greed and the exploitation of others. We're no angels over here. I'm not supporting violent jihab, I just think these are serious times, with serious cultural divides that require everyone to be respectful.

"There has been an outpouring of misdirected jubilation, as if a contest had been won. Nothing has been won. Unlike winning a sporting event, this doesn’t mean that our team has triumphed. Far from it. There is only one team and it is us...Our enemy is not one person or country or belief system. It is our unwillingness to feel the sorrow of others—who are none other than us." ~ Susan Piver

Republicans

"They became vain in their reasonings and their senseless heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise they became fools." ~ Romans I

heroes and/or fools?

"The person who takes one step ahead of others is a leader.
The person who takes three steps ahead of others is a martyr." anonymous quote.

A few days ago the pro-democracy political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi was released from a Myanmar jail. Coincidentally, on Friday I was reading an old New Yorker article about the recently released political prisoner Zha Jianguo in China, who was jailed nine years ago for "incitement to subvert state power." Written by his brother, Jianguo is described as a Don Quixote figure...that what he does "politically is absurd, but his idealism and his courage in their purity are beautiful." And then, of course, there is the dissident Liu Xiaobo, who is jailed in China as a political prisoner despite being awarded the Nobel laureate for his criticisms of Communism.

Ai Weiwei with his work. Photograph: Lennart Preiss

Of course it is not just political activists, but artists as well, that walk this line....most recently (last week) the artist Ai Weiwei was subjected to house arrest in his home in Beijing; and in 2008 he was beaten up by police for testifying at the trial of an activist.

What does it means to have political conviction? To be committed to ideals and to society? It makes me think about sacrifice. So few people are capable of putting their lives on the line for society, for a present or future they will not be a part of. What power does such sacrifice wield in the minds and hearts of those of us who can't or don't. What clarity of purpose for those whose inner compass guides them without doubt or remorse.

Another person who comes to mind is Bobby Sands, the IRA member who starved himself to death for what he believed in. The movie Hunger, about Sands' life and hunger strike, was one of the most powerful films I've ever seen. Directed by artist Steve McQueen, the film is crafted without dialogue, except that the first half and second halves are divided by a mid-section of dialogue between Bobby Sands and a priest, who is questioning him about his decision to go on another hunger strike. Of course it will be this hunger strike that kills him.

Priest: You're in no shape to make this call.

Bobby: It's done. It won't be stopped.

Priest: Then fuck it. Life must mean nothing to you.

Bobby: God's gonna punish me?

Priest: Well if not just for the suicide, then he'd have to punish you for stupidity.

Bobby: Aye, and you for your arrogance. 'Cause my life is a real life, not some theological exercise, some religious trick that's got fuck-all to do with living. Jesus Christ had a backbone. But, see, them disciples? Every disciple since--you're just jumping in and out of the rhetoric and dead-end semantics. You need the revolutionary, you need the cultural-political soldier to give life a pulse, to give life a direction.

Priest: That's stupid talk. You're deluded.

----

Bobby: My life means everything to me. Freedom means everything. I know you don't mean to mock me, Dom, so I'll just let all that pass. This is one of those times when we've come to a pause. It's time to keep your beliefs pure. I believe that a united Ireland is right and just. Maybe it's impossible for a man like you to understand, but having a respect for my life, a desire for freedom, an unyielding love for that belief means I can see past any doubts I may have. Putting my life on the line is not just the only thing i can do, Dom. It's the right thing.

Are these people heroes, fools, both? The Hunger dialogue asks precisely that question. Regardless, as Jianguo has said, "Character is fate." Such actions are less chosen than compelled, from the depths of a person's character. The call to act out one's vision of a righteous life is one that these men and women have answered. "To achieve democracy in a country, some people must offer their blood and lives in the struggle."  And yet, none of these people can achieve political capital unless they have supporters. And so Aung San Suu Kyi said upon her release, “I’m not going to be able to do it alone. One person alone can’t do anything as important as bringing genuine democracy to a country.”

we're all monkeys chasing coconuts

That's our culture: Drive a Volvo. Look like people on MTV where everyone's pretty and packaged and no one is struggling to pay their gas bill.....That's what punk rock's about. Not trying to fit into that disco world or arena rock world, where everything's about money. Where you buy people, you buy love, you buy Acapulco, you buy everything, and you do it by getting over on the world. I know we're all monkeys chasing coconuts, but one person's freedom and liberty is another person's oppression. ~ Dave Dictor of MDC in Gimme Something Better

 Yeah, what is this thing where people are trying to get over on the world or each other?

Underneath Brooklyn

"Wherever the entrances are, they are kept secret. There are men who know the mysteries of the old subway. But no one is willing to lead the way within it." ~

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sunday July 23, 1911

Well, one man knows all the secrets and is willing to lead you down a manhole cover, through a dirt passage, and into the cavernous space of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. Bob Diamond. Bob discovered the entrance to the tunnel in 1979, after being told by numerous "experts" of civil engineering, city history, and LIRR managers that it absolutely didn't exist. Of course it wasn't supposed to exist. But that's a longer story...


In 1844 the LIRR put train tracks down the center of Atlantic Avenue to connect goods arriving by steamship at the Red Hook ferry terminal to a railway system that was to extend to Boston. But at that time trains didn't have breaks and the manual system for slowing a train down meant you needed great distances to stop a train. When the train kept hitting people, a public outcry ensued to move the train underground. Of course, a train had never been put underground in the US. The Brooklyn Common Council met and decreed, "The right of the public is not confined to its mere surface. The land itself may be dug and fashioned so as to be made the most subservient to their accommodation." Brooklyn Daily Eagle March 7 1844 Geez....what we take for granted today!


So in came the sand hogs and masons to construct what became a 21 ft wide, 17 ft high barrel vault tunnel out of Manhattan bedrock and brick layed with Portland cement to extend from Court Street to Hicks Street. And steam driven locomotives of the LIRR moved underground in 1845 in the first instance of an NYC subway.


As early as 1847, usage of the tunnel had dropped considerably. "From mid 1845 through early 1847, the LIRR fell victim to Wall Street stock manipulations with it's attendant fare wars, unforeseen competition from its “partner” the N&W [another railroad company] acting with its former board member Vanderbilt, some possibly bad decisions by its board of directors, and last but not least, the seizure of it's one remaining steamboat [used in parts of their routes]." Bob Diamond

In 1859, the tunnel was ordered to be filled-in. However the contractor hired Electus Litchfield, who took the $130,000 and instead only filled-in the ends of the tunnel, closed the air holes to the street, and had a document signed that the whole job was done (with none the wiser). Guess sometimes a half-assed work ethic pays off.


And that's when the tunnel became legend. The tunnel was thought to be gone, but stories abounded about pirates, bootleggers, dead bodies, gangs, and spies. Of course, the best story is that John Wilkes Booth buried his diary identifying who hired him to assassinate President Lincoln behind a wall in a black tin box. Bob Diamond heard about this story on the radio, and so began his search for the legendary tunnel.


Bob's stories are remarkable, amusing, and full of surprising twists and turns. His knowledge of railroad development, New York politics, and social history is astounding. For 120 years, people have remained skeptical about the existence of the tunnel, even right up to the minutes before it's discovery. With the manhole open, and a gas company employee arising from it shaking his head, declaring there only to be a pile of dirt below, Bob had to say, "can I take a look?" His tenaciousness paid off. Once descended into the ground, he found a small hole in the dirt that he crawled through, where he discovered another dirt wall. With the assurance of certainty of the tunnel's existence, he began to dig....and dig....and came to the sealed off opening to the tunnel. Eureka.

I'm looking forward to the forthcoming documentary called "What's Behind the Wall." Archeologists are currently excavating the remaining closed off section of the tunnel. There are also hopes to revitalize plans dropped in 2000 "to rescue this tunnel and reconnect it to the waterfront" with historic trolly cars. This is a marvelous piece of New York's history that needs to be preserved and brought to light. Help the cause....go on the tour! More pictures here.

for MLK day

Words from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address worth remembering.

"bamboo 2" by tamsen ellen

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here...It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the poeple, shall not perish from the earth.

He's right, no one would have noticed the deaths at Gettysburg had it not been for his words that transformed a place and time into a "monumental" idea. "Ideas are more than battles" ~ Charles Sumner

Which American car would you buy?

A friend sent me the following article from the Huffington Post....awesome...gotta love American cars.

"I guess I've rented American cars..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/whats-good-for-cerberus-c_b_144759.html

Last night on Charlie Rose, the talking boobs (i mean heads) were having a heated debate. The guy from the NT Times was arguing for Chapter 11. The Auto Industry Rep was arguing the biggest doom and gloom if we don't give em money. But then he admitted that 25 billion wasn't really enough. And he didn't know what number would be enough. The NY Times guy was explaining that US car manufacturers BY LAW can't afford to stop producing a particular brand IF THEY WANTED TO. There are state laws that make it prohibitively expensive to close dealerships...over a million dollars a dealership. So, if they went into Chapter 11 they could re-organize for less. Hey, if it worked for uh United Airlines, Delta, Northwest, and others....it can work for the auto industry. The airlines got to shirk their debts, screw the labor unions, as well as their their employees, reorganize, and come out of Chapter 11....making lawyers rich in the process. yup, it's a lose/lose situation.

http://www.247wallst.com/2008/11/airline-chapter.html

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9591

Sign of the Times

Not my typical post...but last night my sister and I spent some time talking about the possible bailout of GM. It's a complicated issue and I don't think anyone really knows if giving the car industry money right now will really prevent them from failing, or prevent the devastation of massive joblessness.

Well, check the piece "A Sea of Unwanted Imports" in today's NY Times. Frankly, if no one's buying cars, giving GM an unlimited supply of money, let alone some tens of billions, isn't going to get them selling more cars. It's like putting the proverbial finger in the dyke hole. It really looks like we're entering a new era, people. We've stopped shopping and, won't recognize the future we're about to enter. I fear the human despair. But hopefully we will adjust to the seismic shift of having and needing less quickly, and the change will be in time (and enough) to prevent the collapse of our planet.

Change

"Broadway Protest" by Jerry Spagnoli

Back in December 2006, Barack, Michelle and eight others were in Axelrod’s office in downtown Chicago. If Barack was going to run, he had to decide quickly, a point the group made by laying out primary schedules and game plans for fund-raising and building an organization. Insights were offered from around the room.

It was Michelle, Axelrod remembers, who stopped the show. “You need to ask yourself, Why do you want to do this?” she said directly. “What are hoping to uniquely accomplish, Barack?”

Obama sat quietly for a moment, and everyone waited. “This I know: When I raise my hand and take that oath of office, I think the world will look at us differently,” he said. “And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently.”

Obama understood, through his own search for identity, how America’s seminal struggle over race was part of a wider story, of a search for dignity and hope that defined the lives of countless people throughout the world. A battered America, he felt, was ready, even anxious, to prove the truth of its sacred oaths — liberty, justice and equality. To show the world. If, through his own ambitions, he could offer his country a chance to step forward, it might rise to the occasion.

What started as a story about race became a larger story, by day’s end, about America. The transforming promise of the nation, after all, is the idea of welcoming the stranger, the outcast, to a place of limitless possibility — a place where each of us might discover our best self, be comfortable in our skin and find a home.

Excerpt from Change by Ron Suskind in NYTimes

A New Dawn

It’s shocking isn’t it?
It’s shocking to feel like the person who is steering the ship shares your values and your concerns, is thoughtful and heart-full.


It feels different doesn’t it?
Did you notice how in NYC on the 4th of November and every day since, people are looking you in the eye…like they did after 9/11?


I keep catching myself smiling. I keep realizing I still care…that it hasn’t worn off. This is my country and my president. For real.


I love this video, the spontaneous outbreak into a song that never held much meaning for me, until now. Heartbreaking it didn’t matter before. But this is a new dawn, a new day.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebGq0sUBRkU


***********************
So, astrologers have been throwing in their 2 cents about this election. Did you know that on November 4th (you can decide if it’s a coincidence) Saturn and Uranus moved into opposition, something that happens about every 40 years. What does this mean, you ask? Well…the previous two times Saturn and Uranus opposed each other was 1918-20 and 1964-67, two period that saw big cultural changes.

At the end of World War 1 distinct class privilege began to be eroded, a flu epidemic killed more people than had died in the war, women in the US agitated for the right to vote, Wall Street was bombed, there were massive strikes in major industries like steel, race riots occurred, the Russian revolution had just happened and socialist ideology was spreading. The 1960s saw immense social upheaval: riots, strikes, race struggles in Africa, and a US Presidential assassination. “In the mid-’60s the counterculture emerged as an articulate alternative to the blind pursuit of the American dream and automatic support for the overt hegemony of the military-industrial complex. For the first time in history, young people all over the world voiced their social criticism en masse.”

Currently, we’re seeing sweeping changes to our financial systems and an erosion of the complacent sense of material security we’ve had. We’re also witnessing an environmental crisis on a global scale unseen before. Check out the 'American history' article on Wikipedia.

It's conveniently divided into historical periods. One begins in 1918, at a Saturn-Uranus opposition. Another begins in 1964, at the next Saturn-Uranus opposition. Could 2009 mark another major epochal break? What else might Saturn/Uranus have in store for us? And where does Obama fit in all of this?

Well let’s look closer at Saturn and Uranus…
“Saturn is experience earned the hard way, through a trial-by-fire history of achievements and mistakes, which bestows a real-world wisdom one cannot learn through books or theories or sudden flashes of genius. Uranus is radical freshness, the electrifying pulse of innovation born from the need to try something different, once it appears those with experience have become blinded by the perspectives they've held for years. Saturn signifies tradition, a conservative approach that respects the sanctity of institutions upon which many folks' sense of stability rests. Uranus brings the change and, along with it, increased liberation for those who felt oppressed by such traditions… and what surely seems like anarchistic end-times to those plenty content with how things have always been.”

While typically Saturn is seen as restrictive while Uranus is exciting, this is a big simplification. Uranus can be destructive and cynical, and Saturn can bring calm by being containing, realistic, and stable.

What is remarkable is how Obama seems to naturally balance these opposing forces. Neither Saturn’s strict adherence to order, nor Uranus’ rebelliousness should “be allowed to unilaterally triumph at the expense of the other. Their opposition reveals the obvious pitfalls of both extremes to our immediate consciousness. The touchy challenge here is to balance between a reining-in and tightening-up of government's traditional role (Saturn) and an abrupt, dramatic reinvention of its practices to better support the needs of a changing populace (Uranus).”

If Barack Obama can pull this off this will be the shiniest new dawn of them all.

Thanks to the following sites for illuminating me
http://astrobarry.com/2008/sep2908.php
http://planetaryenergies.net/2008/10/29/the-saturn-uranus-opposition-2008-to-2010/
All pictures are courtesy of the fabulous http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/