Artticle about new weaopons coming out against protestors... read it and weap, dear liberty

and why, we ask... is the mainstream press ignoring this story?   You won't read it in your local news, or see this shit in the NYT....  Bob recently introduced me to
truthout.org   This should be one of the most popular sites on the internet.


Truth Out shows why we need to get new journalists in there
and forget about the mainstream media's celebrity feeding frenzy.
Organizations owned by the elite protect the elite.

TRUTHOUT ORIGINAL

  

Robocops Come to Pittsburgh

Tuesday 29 September 2009

by: Mike Ferner, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Pittsburgh police use a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD). (Photo: margaretkilljoy / flickr)

    No longer the stuff of disturbing futuristic fantasies, an arsenal of "crowd control munitions," including one that reportedly made its debut in the US, was deployed with a massive, overpowering police presence in Pittsburgh during last week's G-20 protests.

    Nearly 200 arrests were made and civil liberties groups charged the many thousands of police (transported on Port Authority buses displaying "PITTSBURGH WELCOMES THE WORLD"), from as far away as Arizona
and Florida with overreacting ... and they
had plenty of weaponry with which to do it.

    Bean bags fired from shotguns, CS (tear) gas,
grenades, batons and, according to local
news reports, for the first time on the
 streets of America, the Long
Range Acoustic Device (LRAD).

    I saw the LRAD, mounted in the turret
of an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), i
n action twice in the area of 25th, Penn
and Liberty Streets of Lawrenceville,
an old Pittsburgh neighborhood.
Blasting a shrill, piercing noise
like a high-pitched police siren on steroids, i
t quickly swept streets and sidewalks of
pedestrians, merchants and journalists,
 and drove residents into their homes,
but in neither case were any demonstrators present.
The APC, oversized and sinister for a city street,
together with lines of police in full riot
gear looking like darkly threatening
Michelin Men, made for a scene out
of a movie you didn't want to be in.

    As intimidating as this massive show of armed force and technology was, the good burghers of Pittsburgh and their fellow citizens in the Land of the Brave and Home of the Free ain't seen nothin' yet. Tear gas and pepper spray are nothing to sniff at and, indeed, have proven fatal a surprising number of times, but they have now become the old standbys compared to the list below that's already at or coming soon to a police station or National Guard headquarters near you. Proving that "what goes around, comes around," some of the new Property Protection Devices were developed by a network of federally funded, university-based research institutes like one in Pittsburgh itself, Penn State's Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies.

    * Raytheon Corp.'s Active Denial System, designed for crowd control in combat zones, uses an energy beam to induce an intolerable heating sensation, like a hot iron placed on the skin. It is effective beyond the range of small arms, in excess of 400 meters (about one-quarter mile). Company officials have been advised they could expand the market by selling a smaller, tripod-mounted version for police forces.

    * M5 Modular Crowd Control Munition, with a range of 30 meters (about 98 feet) "is similar in operation to a claymore mine, but it delivers ... a strong, nonpenetrating blow to the body with multiple sub-munitions (600 rubber balls)."

    * Long Range Acoustic Device or "The Scream," is a powerful megaphone the size of a satellite dish that can emit sound "50 times greater than the human threshold for pain" at close range, causing permanent hearing damage. The Los Angeles Times wrote that US Marines in Iraq used it in 2004. It can deliver recorded warnings in Arabic and, on command, emit a piercing tone ..." [For] most people, even if they plug their ears, [the device] will produce the equivalent of an instant migraine," says Woody Norris, chairman of American Technology Corp., the San Diego firm that produces the weapon. "It will knock [some people] on their knees." CBS News reported in 2005 that the Israeli Army first used the device in the field to break up a protest against Israel's separation wall. "Protesters covered their ears and grabbed their heads, overcome by dizziness and nausea, after the vehicle-mounted device began sending out bursts of audible, but not loud, sound at intervals of about 10 seconds.... A military official said the device emits a special frequency that targets the inner ear."

    * In "Non-Lethal Technologies: An Overview," Lewer and Davison describe a lengthy catalog of new weaponry, including the "Directed Stick Radiator," a hand-held system based on the same technology as The Scream. "It fires high intensity 'sonic bullets' or pulses of sound between 125-150db for a second or two. Such a weapon could, when fully developed, have the capacity to knock people off their feet."

    * The Penn State facility is testing a "Distributed Sound and Light Array Debilitator" a.k.a. the "puke ray." The colors and rhythm of light are absorbed by the retina and disorient the brain, blinding the victim for several seconds. In conjunction with disturbing sounds, it can make the person stumble or feel nauseated. Foreign Policy in Focus reports that the Department of Homeland Security, with $1 million invested for testing the device, hopes to see it "in the hands of thousands of policemen, border agents and National Guardsmen" by 2010.

    * Spider silk is cited in the University of Bradford's Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project, Report #4 (pg. 20) as an up-and-comer. "A research collaboration between the University of New Hampshire and the US Army Natick Research, Development and Engineering Center is looking into the use of spider silk as a non-lethal 'entanglement' material for disabling people. They have developed a method for producing recombinant spider silk protein using E. coli and are trying to develop methods to produce large quantities of these fibres."

    * New Scientist reports that the (I'm not making this up) Inertial Capacitive Incapacitator (ICI), developed by the Physical Optics Corporation of Torrance, California, uses a thin-film storage device charged during manufacture that only discharges when it strikes the target. It can be incorporated into a ring-shaped aerofoil and fired from a standard grenade launcher at low velocity, while still maintaining a flat trajectory for maximum accuracy.

    * Aiming beyond Tasers, the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, (FY 2009 budget: $1 billion) the domestic equivalent of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), plans to develop wireless weapons effective over greater distances, such as in an auditorium or sports stadium, or on a city street. One such device, the Piezer, uses piezoelectric crystals that produce voltage when they are compressed. A 12-gauge shotgun fires the crystals, stunning the target with an electric shock on impact. Lynntech of College Station, Texas, is developing a projectile Taser that can be fired from a shotgun or 40-mm grenade launcher to greatly increase the weapon's current range of seven meters.

    * "Off the Rocker and On the Floor: Continued Development of Biochemical Incapacitating Weapons," a report by the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre revealed that in 1992, the National Institute of Justice contracted with Lawrence Livermore National Lab to review clinical anesthetics for use by special ops military forces and police. The lab concluded the best option was an opioid, like fentanyl, effective at very low doses compared to morphine. Combined with a patch soaked in DMSO (dimethylsufoxide, a solvent) and fired from an air rifle, fentanyl could be delivered to the skin even through light clothing. Another recommended application for the drug was mixed with fine powder and dispersed as smoke.

    * After upgrades, the infamous "Puff the Magic Dragon" gunship from the Vietnam War is now the AC-130. "Non-Lethal Weaponry: Applications to AC-130 Gunships," observes that "With the increasing involvement of US military in operations other than war ..." the AC-130 "would provide commanders a full range of non-lethal weaponry from an airborne platform which was not previously available to them." The paper concludes in part that "As the use of non-lethal weapons increases and it becomes valid and acceptable, more options will become available."

    * Prozac and Zoloft are two of over 100 pharmaceuticals identified by the Penn State College of Medicine and the university's Applied Research Lab for further study as "non-lethal calmatives." These Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), noted the Penn State study, "... are found to be highly effective for numerous behavioral disturbances encountered in situations where a deployment of a non-lethal technique must be considered. This class of pharmaceutical agents also continues to be under intense development by the pharmaceutical industry.... New compounds under development (WO 09500194) are being designed with a faster onset of action. Drug development is continuing at a rapid rate in this area due to the large market for the treatment of depression (15 million individuals in North America).... It is likely that an SSRI agent can be identified in the near future that will feature a rapid rate of onset."

    In Pittsburgh last week, an enormously expensive show of police and weaponry, intended for "security" of the G20 delegates, simultaneously shut workers out of downtown jobs for two days, forced gasping students and residents back into their dormitories and homes, and turned journalists' press passes into quaint, obsolete reminders of a bygone time.

    Most significant of all, however, was what Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, told The Associated Press: "It's not just intimidation, it's disruption and in some cases outright prevention of peaceful protesters being able to get their message out."

»

Mike Ferner is a writer from Ohio and president of Veterans For Peace.

video of me messing around with words... faces... beauty... playing da stoner.

I actually like this video...  it is a fun step into playing with words and images and sounds altogether.  I truly look like shit in this one. No flattering light here.  The only thing missing is my fucking bald spot.  So vain I am at times.  I know how to use light, but that is not evident here.  Sorry.  I call this one, rather pretentiously, as is my way, 'If they could read my mind.'  I hope it makes you laugh, despite the poor quality of production amassed in a few moments of fucking around, late in the night, with my webcam....




out all of mThisy blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH THIS BLOG?????

I have been spending a lot of time figuring out what I want to do with the new radio show.  I am seriously thinking about calling it  THE ELVES ATTIC.  The show is going to be like a fiction reading, with comedy and new music  added in.  I am getting together a caste of characters, who I will mostly do.  Seth Green does 37 characters...  man, that is amazing.  He is a real inspiration.  I pulled all the voices out of my ass on te radio show.  We would come up with some character, and on the spot, that night on the show, I would make up a voice.  Of course, during the first half of that show, I was totally lost on seroqyl, the drug that interacted with my pain medication to drive me manic.  I was basically losing it.  A lot going on in my mind, and in fact I was much more focused on writing my book Waking Up Jesus that the radio show.  That was such a mystical experience that everything else paled.  \\

This time around, I am totally in charge ;  I have produced a few shows before, mostly literary readings and a tv show.   I like the control of being director, producer, actor, writer.  I do have a couple people who I asked to come in on the deal and give me some work.  My buddy Bob, who has some of hte most interesting things to say about politics, and is even further left that I am.  He is kind of my ideological bud.  Of course, he is also wickedly funny when he wants to be and very pissed off at the world.  The other is a freelance writer from la, who is right bow finishing up the writing of a documentary, Seal Island, which you can find on face book.  A movie with a purpose...  He is also very, very funny.  I will tape them both, and have them live when they can fit it into their schedule.  talk blog radiopays on the basis of listeners, and I should have a nice group of folk who miss Peace and Pipedreams.  I will never forget running into two wasted guys from detroit, at the beach, around 6 am.  They were swimming, had been out all night.  I knew Detroit was very into the show, so I asked them if they had heard of it... they loved the show, and it took me playing out the voice of Moon Bong Haze to convince them that I was actually on the show.  They really missed the show.  No one is going as farinto stoner humor as we are, with t exception of the masters, Cheechs and Ching, who got together to do their stoner humor, after a  twenty year break, affter listening to our show.  YEAH TOMMY CHONG... when I heard he was listening, My heart fucking started pounding.  They made me laugh so fucking hard when I was a kid.  I have not heard that stuff in twenty five years, and I still remember a few of their skits.  Me and my brothers used to do them.  So...  I will finally be getting paid for my art, again.


The set up is cool.  I will have the ability to have up to five people logged in as DJ's.  All it takes is a computer and a microphone.  They can be anywhere.  No more fucking trips to the studio for me.  I do this show from the comfort of my own little castle.

I am going to be using the blog for character development. Which translates into grotesque stales, like that of Chester Ballsonu, who seeps puss from his dozens, if not hundreds, of venereal diseases.

I have to develop a few stoner friends for MOON BONG, since I will not have the other two people from the show to play the brother and mother.  . They have both moved on, one had two kids in the last couple years and the other is working on a radio show in la, from her home here, as well as doing her stand up.

One is a nark.  We had one on the show... bad things will always happen to him.  I will also be doing the show in a way that characters will get killed in certain situations, then they will be resurrected by Christ, who of course is going to be a huge character on the show.   I have christ, johnny pain, chester, scott ridgway, Mohammed Al Bidi (he is a muslim who hates american ways, and talks about he supports terrorism;  I am going to give the radical muslim attitude.  Another is X.  He is african american, and very radical and pissed off.  \

Violence will also be a trade mark to the comedy.  Since the shows will be put on line afterwards to be downloaded, I can do story plots that extend from show to show...  One is going to be a war of the worlds type play, where Johnny Pain, with the aide of Jesus, rather accidentley take over the world.

Another thing not done before...The last third of the show will be radically different.  I am going to actually read my novel one war.  I am also going to use a lot of the revolutionary poetry.  Having them all recorded for posterity is worth me doing the show for awhile.  I have a buddy who plays guitar, and has some great recording equipment, who is going to help me make the poetry cool.  I did some wild readings for peace and pipedreams, and will do the same here.

Another main point of the show is going to be politics.  Like one segment, WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN??  Where I will explain the meaning of various philosophies that I have studied.  Just a few paragraphs that give a taste of what is really a banquet, but if I get some people interested in figuring out Wittgenstein or Nietzsche, I will have done my duty.  The coup de gra' (or however that is spelled) is going to be a segment where I tell people where all the protests will be in Chicago.  There really is nowhere in Chicago to figure this out.  So, I will bring them all in here.  I will draw the line at abortion clinic protests, but most others...  This is not going to be easy, but once I have all the contacts tracked down, I should be able to  gather the info....  This could be a great resource for the artistic community in Chicago, as well as an inspiration to people in other countries and states.


This is probably boring as hell to anyone foolish enough to read this.... I guess I am throwing this out hoping without much hope that perhaps someone out there has a good suggestion.







Check out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

scamatomologists keeping slaves....

This is a comment about Scientology on Something I didn't know...

As xenubarb already mentioned, Amnesty International is currently investigating Scientology's Sea Organization for human trafficking, but the process started in the Southern Division Offices of AI in Atlanta, Georgia. Information was sent to the Southern Division by ex-Scientologists, non-Scientologists who had worked around Sea Org members and saw some of the abuses first hand, and by longtime critics of this cult. 
They went over the information and found it very credible. They forwarded the info to their national offices in New York City where it was once again gone over with a fine tooth comb. The info was sent to AI-London Offices because the London offices have the most experience in investigating human trafficking cases. 
Scientology has been operating a slave ring by culling poor people from third world countries. They are brought to the United States; their passports and visas are confiscated---which is against the law; they are put through a brainwashing technique that includes sleep deprivation, starvation, and long hours of manual labor; they are paid $45-75 a week with $75 being the top pay no matter how long you are in the Sea Org. Many stories of physical, mental, and sexual abuse were reported to AI. 
When everything comes out about this cult, people will be shocked. There are many stories of what goes on in this cult. Many of the horror stories can be read on a website started by three young women who were raised in Scientology. If you google ex-scientology kids you will find their website. It's not for the faint of heart.  out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

The days go on and on,

 interrupted by the occasional surprise,

tragedy,

movie,

conversation...

a river that we ride from infants to old age.

we do not notice the changing landscape

the malls where there were woods

highways where there were houses

pictures on the wall take the place of the lost ones
memories of people we have known who just rode off into the horizon one day
never to be seen again


the tangling web of friends and famalies
the chains and open arms of our loves

frightened and freaked and fucking unsure of anything much at all
we listen to the news caste and accept our opinion du jour

don't look too deep boy
don't stand on the edge -of the earth and look over
into the swirling darkness and mystic whisps of what was

go to work
watch the game
get it out of your system with bears and x boxes

opinions locked away in our heart
afraid to look like the latest philosophy
demonized by association with fascists and mafioso
who wear words like socialism as badges
to pretend they are of the people
as they rape the businessmen and abuse the people

keep locked in your heart what you believe
tell others just enough to shut them up on stupid issues
play along with the Capitalists or they will let you starve
they give you no jobs then pretend you are the dead beats in an Ayn Rand novel
turn you into non-producers -- the right wing at a tea party protest wants them DEAD
along with the liberals

a sign of the madness existing out there
the loud voice of the insane drown out the civil

abandoned
i walk alone through the mental geographies
marveling at the myriad of interpretations of the goings on in this world
they mythic stories that fill our heads
the pretend that we reinforce with weekly trips to church
and one sided conversations with a silent being in the sky


man wishes to be worshiped
God wishes the law to be worshiped in his place
as his will arisen from the chaos

what does He want of a man on an obscure planet on the edge of the Milky Way?
the same as he wishes for all the universe -- that we will learn he is love
not war/not hate/not judgement

He requires no revenge
HIS world is magnificently larger than our minds could hold
our ways minute events in his majesty

the larger the picture the further into the future my mind wants to project
sooner or later the planet is going to lose the ability to sustain life
the end of all life
another dead chunk of rock circling the sun














to fall on its sword











Check out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

locating souls

HALF ASSED, UNFINISHED IDEA FOR A STORY ABOUT AN ORGANIZATION THAT LOCATES REINCARNATED SOULS, ATTEMPTING TO MONITOR THE BALANCE OF GOOD AND EVIL, SABOTAGING SOME LIVES AND ELEVATING OTHERS.  THE ACTION TAKES PLACE AFTER AN EVIL ORGANIZATION HAS DECIDED TO CREATE THE APOCOLYPSE BY CHANGING THE BALANCE OF POWER, ELEVATING THE EVIL AND MARGINALIZING THE GOOD.  PROBABLY STUPID.



The information I am about to impart is already being denied by the Church.  There is not time for their discretion anymore.  I have had to break my vows of silence and come to the aide of humanity.  Without action, taken soon, the end of humanity is assured.  For generations my family has nurtured a gift for locating reincarnated souls.  Not a parlor game at all;  a deadly serious art practiced around the world by every major religion and various secret societies.  An open secret among the clergy, built on the principal that only secrecy would allow for their missions.

Certain souls were undesirable, had to be watched.  We always believed that we were working for the forces of good, because of the crosses, the churches, the dizzying incense.   I would still believe this even now, had they not began to exterminate my family.  My kind has essentially been wiped out.  Our ancient craft lost to the generations to come.  The elaborate files from times ancient and forgotten, burned in an unholy fire  Our careful research, the ponderings and works of generations and generations, all gone now.

All that is left is stopping the ones who have taken control.  They do not want anyone stopping the triumph of evil this time.. the balance

Check out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

time to go home

everyone wants to go home

refugees, insurgents, cops, invaders and the invaded

home
forever transformed by the empty spaces of the dead

kids and mothers and fathers become a photograph
on the wall and in a place of pride/a place of pain

kneeling and screaming and pounding my fists on the floor
bothering a neighbor and maybe causing a call to the cops
a burst of protest at my own inability to change much of anything

my feelings are fascists
their way or the highway
ain't no voting on who I love and hate
only opinion that matters is my own

We only realize violence wasn't the only option
afterwards
murderers sitting in our cells
wondering how the hell we could have been so fucking stupid


i started out calling for total war for total peace
they convinced me I was destroying their country
that Iraq would fall apart without our soldiers
that there were Taliban terrorists
ready to rise up with nukes in Afganistan

took my mind into landscape of lies
where I had to close my eyes
to see the truth

send them home
send them all home

we'll talk it over once the guns are put away
and people are no longer afraid to speak their minds



























Check out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

BREAKFEST WITH THE OBAMA'S

After reading an article about town hall protesters, the president holds up the paper to Michelle, asking, "Honey, how does it feel to be a woman from the south side of Chicago who is married to Hitler?  A commie, muslim, Indonesian, anti-christ, Hitler, none-the-less."

"Not in front of the girls, Barrack."
"Daddy, are you Hitler?"
"No, dear, Daddy does not like Hitler.  He was a very, very bad man.  Daddy is your daddy.  These people like to pretend that is what I am like."
"Why?"
"Remember when we talked about bullies?"
"Yes."
"Well, they are bullies."
"Tell the teacher, daddy."
"You know what, I think I will."








Check out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

in Defense of Mayor Daley... ?? No, seriously.

There are pros and cons to everything.  I can't help but wonder if right now, as the world goes through these terrific financial convulsions, if we are not better off in Chicago with a savvy, proven Mayor?  He may not be perfect, but no one would tell you that he does not know what he is doing, or can't get anything done.  It might be more important to use his power for the city, than to stand on any supposedly higher moral ground.

I would never question his desire to do right.  You can read that on his face.  He does care.  I just feel like I come in here all the time only bitching about the Mayor, when that is hardly how I feel about him.  What is good for the city is good for the city, regardless of who's name is on the door.

I hope for him only the best....  Because, like the short story I wrote this morning, I am sick of having an opinion.  I used to have a roomate who would have nothing to do with the news, or reading about politics.  He had enough problems, he figured.  He told me had read the news for 25 years and it was always the same thing over and over.  He turned me on to the Nation, which opened my eyes a lot to the world around me with an onslaught of depressing news.

I think opinions are essential in life, of course.  We need to judge ourselves, others...  situations, strange dogs... hey, we have that faculty for a very important reason.   Odd though, most of the time I am not judging people, but then when I start writing, the very act of translating something into words brings value judgements into play.

There is no way to just say I HAVE NO OPINION all of the time.  BUT MOST OF THE TIME, THAT IS PROBABLY  THE MOST SANE REACTION TO HAVE.  When I drove cab, I tried to have no opinion of people.  I saw some things, heard some things, but unless I was in danger, I felt little reason to jump into their lives with my view.   I accept that there are all kinds of people, and that those people act all kinds of ways at different times, and it is easy to demonize someone with a couple anecdotes, but the total person is not really represented.

I would like to have this reaction to people I do not like, "I am sorry you are like that."  That is it.  No blame. Nothing.  Just acknowledged grieving over the human condition, coupled with the thought that forgiveness is forever available, even to the lowliest prison trapped alone with only his thoughts and his God.








Check out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

No Opinion : The Short Tale of Dedrick Dolotta

Dedrick  gets on the train, sits down with  his legs crossed, with his knee hovering over the seat beside in such a way that he knew the average commuter would walk past, in search of a seat by the dreamed of skinny, polite person, with no scent what-so-ever.  He was reading the Red Eye, a free paper in Chicago that sits in boxes outside of every train station, on city corners of any traffic at all.  A teaser of words with the headlines from the Tribune, but enough words for a lot of commutes.  Not his.  He skipped the sports and gossip and anything that might be boring, finishing the few stories left during the first three of the fifteen train stations he would pass on his way to work.

He collects bills.  Bill Collector.  He likes having that title on his business card.  No euphemisms for him.  There is nothing, ever, in the paper about bill collecting.  He half-assedly folds up the paper, shoves it down in a crack between the seat and the quivering wall of the train.  "Opinion."  He says the word out loud, knowing the people around him hear his words, and feeling like someone had to say it.  He was nothing if not brutally, excruciatingly, honest.   He told people the reason he had been divorced three times was because he refused to lie to the women.  "They looked like shit some day, I pointed it out.  Do better.  What the hell is wrong with telling someone to do better?   My boss rides the entire office all day about doing better -- put up new motivational posters every month, sent from a corporate supply house in New York, with phrases meant to, bottom line, make them make more money.

"What did you say?"

He turns and looks at the voice.  A pleasant enough looking guy, who thought he was talking to him when he said 'opinion.'   "I was saying the papers are just full of opinions.  No one knows for sure what is going on in the world, and if they do, it is probably not in this paper."

"Oh.  Cool."   The guy looks back down into his book.

He looks out the window and wonders if it was his opinion, or her opinion, who was correct?  His latest fling, Amanda, lived in the same apartment complex, just  someone else who was lonely, and who lived close enough for an easy intimacy to sneak up on them over the course of the last few months.  He was sick of her opinions.  He wondered if someone could have no opinions?   Just answer the rest of the questions in his life with just one phrase, "I have no opinion."

He imagines a wandering monk surprising people as he treks across the country with a sign reading, "I have no opinion."  

Opinions were dangerous, like his boss said.  He had to get money from people who did not want to give it to him, who had that money laid out for something altogether different than paying some guy for an old health club membership loan from five years ago.  If he started listening to why they needed the money, they would suck him into a 'toxic' conversation.  Toxic as in unproductive.  Can't let the customers make you unproductive, no matter how they will try to get you to listen to some story that has nothing to do with giving him a credit card number or a check by phone right then, that night. 

'My boss is now a voice in my head.  I think his words like my own thoughts.  As if he were a prophet and I am his disciple'  
The thought surprises him.  He wonders if he should write that down, maybe send it to the motivational poster company?   

THIS KIDS SHIRT SHOULD READ...

HOME SCHOOLED IN HISTORY

DADDY WRITES ABOUT THE MIGHTY WHITE PEOPLE FROM PRISON

OFF MY MED'S AGAIN

NEVER HIRE ME FOR ANYTHING EVER

NEVER MARRY ME UNLESS YOU ARE CRAZY ENOUGH TO KILL FOR ME
(a pick up line that works with certain kinds of women, and they move to Idaho and talk cryptically about how taxes are funding the Masons in their search for a lost buddha who is said to have made a wrong turn somewhere,  just generally become confused by all the technology around now, and ended up reincarnating in a computer mouse.


People like this are actually out of the revolution game.  Co-opted.  The anti-christ stuff is horrifying.  Some nut is going to get this shit in their head.  Not a nut with a capital N, one of those small nuts, who no one really notices until the big day.  Well, people notice, but they are hard to stop.  Therapists see them first, but there is little they can do unless there is a crime.  The metal health community is ill-equipped to deal with all the people who need a lot of assistance to get their shit together.  

I really like Obama, feel like he thinks and feels about the world in ways similar to me, but much more sophisticated (thank God).  We have a similar ethic, though agreeing on everything would just be stupid, right?  I am not one to get into a cult of personality.  I think about all  the things on that man's plate and my head swims.  It is enough to give a sane person an anxiety attack.  Presidents have to be a little nuts in this respect.  I applaud Obama for remaining so sane during all of this.  And he is.  This is not a man who is acting all of the time.  He believes he is the best hope for this country, and a lot of others do, too.


















Why will they just not wear honest shirts that say, TOO STUPID FOR HISTORY, or OFF MY MED'S AGAIN.

a tea bagger talking about taking up guns against liberals and non producers

That is some scary shit.  I just read a speech by one of these goof balls calling for civil war.  I guess they forget that they are firmly in the minority, and would get their asses handed to them.  I would laugh my ass off, from my liberal fiefdom in Chicago, if the right wingers suddenly tried to pull a revolution and everyone of sane mind just got their guns out and killed them off.  Bam.  Problems solved.  Sad.  This speech laid out the classic guerrilla scenario of spontaneous combustions of revolt breaking out all over.

The guys use of the term 'non-producers' is interesting too.  He wants to kill them off, along with the liberals.  Makes me think of death camps.  I forget there are actually people out there who advocate such things.  They do not get a lot of press, or they are hidden behind polite masks from most society, but there are a lot of people out there who are ready to Pogrom another. I once heard an otherwise nice 'seeming' girl say, "My mother, the social worker, says we need to kill an entire generation of blacks off."  She said it with firm conviction in her voice.

My experience with blacks is a lot of different than most white people,  I got over the us and them thing very young, and never had much of it anyways.  If anything, I was more prone toward thinking people are better than they are, not less...  The us vs them is the danger.  The taste of blood that sets off the lust of the shark.

I see these tea baggers and others as deluded into the idea that their revolution is noble.  I believe this about mine, at least some of the time.  I remember stumbling across the idea of the final solution, in my rambling dialog with myself and the word, and wondering what would I do, if the only solution to a horrendous problem, was to have a group of people killed?   I would never put such a dangerous pondering into actual practice, except as a comedic daydream venting my frustrations in my three stooges with guns fantasies.

I want to laugh this guy off.  I want to, but...  something has been festering out there in the minds of some, a diseased way of thinking that demonizes all government, and tries to give something like The Church all power.  The will of the people is what a democracy follows.  If the will of the people is to have health insurance, that hardly means they are socialist.  This issue, in my mind, requires no party affiliation.  Everyone wants health care.

The corporations and lobbies that fund these over-wrought, hateful types, use them as puppets in a show meant to convince others of their narrative.  NOT OF ANY TRUTH.  Of an entire story.  They take whatever fact they want demonized, and put it in that story.  They do not want prescription drugs to have to stand up to scrutiny about how well they work compared to cheaper drugs, so they buy a commercial to display the right-wingers who echo their message, though for entirely different reasons.  You think the right wing cares about pharmeceutical profits?  No, they are worried about birth certificates, Waco, and That Obama Character -- you know, the black one??  They say they should not be accused of being racist, but they act racist, expouse racists doctrine, and advocate a policy  that is going to have a very, very direct impact on the black community.  Blacks have much higher rates if no insurance than whites.  This has even led to some of these boofs to say this  a form or Reperation?  Forty acres and a mule, condensed down into a medicaid card.

Not that this is a race based issue.  This is a humanitarian issue.  I am merely pointing this out, because in case these red necks ever want to come to Chicago to make trouble, they should know that the blacks here are as armed as any peckerwood from out west/down south/up north....  Just kidding.  This is not a challange to my right wing, peckerwood audience.  You guys are okay, just keep watching the Care Bears and we'll up your education from there when you are ready.

I read about these guys and figure, the FBI is reading this, and more.  They must have this guy on the GPS, or they secretly approve of his actions.  You never know.  The different political parties play out there, too, I imagine.  I would think the FBI would keep watch on these types.  The ones we have to worry about are the ones that no one knows about.... but that is the thing about people who are this radical, there are some signs. You do not wake up one day and decide that stopping national healthcare is a good reason for a revolution.  This is fairly delusional to most of the free world, where they have nationalized health care.

People... I saw Obama talking about how he was trying to get people to be civil.  That was a refreshing moment for me.   Civil.  I loved the cab rides where everyone just acted civil.  Where the differences were with the facts, not the people.  Civil.  Where the messenger is never blamed.  Civil.  He went on to say the shrill voices get heard, and the civil toned is drowned out.  Yes...  this has been a problem with democrats forever, the republicans commanded the drunken passion, while we knew better.  Still, that drunken passion is powerful stuff, addictive, and it motivates people.

















Check out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

Wearing Capes

slip sliding down and through the light fantastic

tumbling fast and furious
no traction on a slick,  muddy hill
falling head-first with no idea what is at the bottom

mercifully
most days
she loves me and I love her
and that is enough solace to fill the evenings as we watch tv and eat and talk 

we have then... enough

read how positive thinking back-fires
people feel like the compliments they give themselves

are untrue .  .  .
they end up feeling worse

always  thought staying positive was a way

 to keep your head buried in the bullshit

somebody has to man the battle lines

someone has to take the stand

somebody has to feel a depressing world if it is a depressing world

some would feel this is the only honest way to react to the human tragedy

----  life is suffering

i read from the great Buddha again this week

the Dali Lama balances the hell of losing his country, his culture, his people

somehow goes on day in and out fighting his good fight

whether he wins or loses

The media saints are always bad examples of everything
wealth and fame can't help but make life easier

different/exceptional

     the truth lies not in the exceptional but with the average

     what most believe is how we supposedly govern ourselves

the average day of the average man is what most people are living

the student dies when you realize there are

these questions no one can answer for you

the questions you zone in on your entire life

never perfecting...  just incrimentally, imperceptibly, becoming...closer to true

Check out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

am i here or there?

the tv shows us a world that hides the real one

beats back the messengers
sent out

hidden by their cloaks of madness
-- the prophet's invisible crucifix

bleeding, moaning softly

as the deluded ones pass by and offer the hate that binds their illusions

the same us vs them that drove the wordless apes

that drove me to grow up with with hate for kids
from 5 miles away in Indiana

in another small town...
an idea driven into my young head by cheerleaders and pep rallies

now from a city far away
 I see how small my world was...

and how small the world of most still is...
the rivalries range from race to the nose on our face

i read myself with fear these days

battered by the realizations of who i am

what i hrave become

taunted by all the should have beens/could have beens/the lack of justice

that leads the unworthy to power

Check out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway

Sylvia the Psychic Old Hag Spewing Chunks of Shit Out Of Her Mouth On Fox

I watch the news all morning, over the top of my tiny, Acer computerscreen, in a very half-assed manner, as I check through my daily rounds of NYT, The Cult Network, Huffington Post, A Socialist site that has some great reporting, and about five other news sources that I check Daily. .  In Chicago you can get News all night, and the biggest three then have morning shows.  I skip around between 7 and 9.  Mary likes 9 more than me.  They are ever so slightly conservative, though nothing like fox.  The last hour, between 9 and 10, Fox is the only one still playing news (obviously, the cable is out again -- another financially related break down that I will fix one of these days and get it back... I dearly love Watching John Stewart and Steven Colbert - in fact, if it were not for them, and their bitting, political humor, I used to think that the entire media just sucked.  They pretend that they are objective, then show they are subjective in ways that their dense audiences do not see -- mostly, by choosing the conservatives stories and making them sound plausible,because, after all, a nightly news on a huge station is a big deal to people and they believe... audiences want everyone to be their own personal Walter Cronkite, oozing the truth through his soothing baritone.  No more.  The law about equal exposure was tossed away a few years ago, and now the news can be used however the station owner wants....   sad but honest at least.  Fox's mental trap has actually opened a lot of eyes to the whole scam of news, which is the true irony  -  their Achilles heel.

After the news today, one of those 'human intrestie, newsie shows.  The first guest comes on and I reach for the remote, then they say they have psychic Sylvia.  I watch as this badly wigged, haggard looking, over-weight Psychic Sylvia was asked a host of questions about ghosts, basically.  She instantly 'knew' the answers, rattling them off as quickly as she could so she could get to as many shills as possible (though in this case, the station was footing the bill for this scamathon.  I watch for a few minutes, my  fingers still on the computer pad...  She is asked if she can talk to ghosts about her fate.   She laughs and says, "No, they won't tell me anything about me, otherwise I would win the lotto."

I got the feeling she had said this before many times.  She was probably preempting people who might think about this?  Anyways, her answer applies to all psychics.  Damn scammers, mostly.

Now. I actually do have a slight belief in psychic phenomena, after seeing a psychic who, ironically enough, also contacted a ghost, in the presence of myself and my  brothers.  We were camping, and sitting around listen to him playing his guitar and drinking beers.  She suddenly went rigid, and a few tears began streaming down her face.  Her husband explained, "She's a psychic.  Someone is contacting her."  After about five minutes, the obviously shaken woman explained that their was a lonely ghost who wanted to contact us... this got very weird from there, and is written in other entries, about David Michael Gilbert.  The point is that she was charging no money, expecting no contact, etc..

Her experience shook her and us so much, that though I was eighteen, we asked her to walk back to my dad's camper with us.  She stopped under a tree and said the spot was powerful.  I looked up and saw a bit of rope tied to the branch, then remembered David swinging on a tire that had been there;  he smacked his head on the tree, and I had to put my arm around him and help him back to camp.  He stayed in high spirits despite what was a solid, painful, brain scrambling, complete side of his head, from chin to his head of hair, smack into an oak tree.  This was about the only time I ever held him.  I later found out his sexuality was in question... and I remembered him coming on to me on one of my frequent sleep-overs.   Anyways...  I was not going to go to far into this because it is elsewhere in the dense tombs blasting out of my fingertips.

I know I am preaching to the choir on this one.  My reader Bob feels the same way I do.  I tell people I have a very specific target audience for my work... though I try to avoid telling them that my target audience is the one guy who reads my stuff, a radical commie, living outside of St. Louis.  Thanks again, Bob.    Oh, well.

My point is that this is fraud.   The audience was asking questions of Sylvia the Psychic and she was instantly in contact with the ghosts, and gave her glib advice out as quickly as she could, to reach as many shills as possible.  Nothing like the psychic that I witnessed.  No, the mouth under the blonde wig cut somewhat like a slightly longer Beatles hair-cut from their early phase, just instantly told the questioner's that their father indeed wanted them to take that loan out on the car... or, she sends her love.  The guy who got this response thought he was being haunted by some ghost, and another wanted  to give him advice -- his passed on wife.  He wanted Sylvia the Psyhcic to be more specific, but she refused..  "No, she has no message.. other than that she loves you."   Another woman wants to ask her father something, and Syl. the Psy. laughed and told her, "Your father is rigth behind you."  The woman and her comapaignions are freaked out, kind of start and look around...

We want to believe so bad that we listen to this person, who is so obviously a scam.  One night in the cab I picked up a gypsy woman and she gave me the address of an all night psychic shop, on a popular corner, Belmont and Clark.  They are in a basement apartment in a gray, stone three flat, with a neon sign flashing int he window that they give PSYCHIC READINGS.   She is young and single and lets me know it kind of quick.  We have a nice chat, and she even offers me a free reading.  I asked her if she believed in what she did?"

She look thoughtful for a moment, said, "I didn't believe in it for awhile. When I was a teenager.  It's like a religions, you know?  The religion I was raised in."
"So you believe it now?"
"Yes."  She says this and looks down... making me wonder if she lis lying?

She was cute and I was basically single (open relationship), but I could not bring myself to take her up on the free reading.  It just would have been too weird.  Back then, I was convinced that God was a big scame by the ruling elite to control the masses  --  before I realized that though a lot of preachers are repulsive, behind thier mumbo jumbo, there is a spirit, which is more than likely would disassociate himself/herself from their deluded strictures, the flim-flam of the priests who took his words and used them for their own purposes.  Like my Jesus believed, in Waking Up Jesus.  I should write somewhere that this passage harkens back to God Emperor Of Dune, a series of books I have read over and over in my life, because time and again I went to my library and found them to be my best choice of reading -- our relationship started when I was in seventh grade.  Love those books all to hell, and still I have not bought the ones his son is writing about his father's universe. ...  so I do not know how good they are, though I know I will love them... just immersing myself in that world again is enough for me.   Royalty as kind leaders is cool compared to the reality -- look at places where they allow the royal family to lead, like Saudi Arabia, where since power is so concentrated with a patriarchal families belief system, the women are not allowed to have the power they would need to get the right to drive a car, buy her own airline tickets, etc...  all the traps that woman who have escaped from that mental trap talk about... some woman are abducted and taken there, and these laws make it almost impossible for them to escape -- same with servants, who often turn their passports over to their owners... at first they are told it is for safe keeping,though soon enough they learn that their Masters will decide when they can leave.  Now, I had a great friend from Saudi Arabia once, and he was totally cool, smoked weed and drove a sports car and chased women.  He was vastly rich, a prince.  One day he was bitching about his dad buying his little brother a Maserati.  His dad would not buy him a really nice car until he was back in his home country.  One night I was there and a bunch of Muslims came over.  They were trying to convert my friend back into being a fundamentalist.  I do not know what they had in mind, and they treated me just fine, but they took him off into a corner and preached at him for a half hour about something secretive enough that they basically whispered.  He told me that he acted one way in Ame4rica, and another in Saudi Arabia.
He also told me that he would rather see the mere ankle of a Saudi Woman, than an american one in a bikini... not that he did not like American Women.  He was very charming with everyone.   The people of Saudi Arabia may be very different than me, and our philosophies all together different, but our Common Ground is a wide field.  When in Rome, and all that,right?

He told me that they did not have to go to through customs because they were royalty.  He also told me that they would fly to countries that allowed drinking and gambling, and pick up a bunch of prostitutes, who they would do on the plane.  Then when Monday rolled around again, they would take off their jeans and t-shirts and don that gownish thing they wear.  Of course, no women were allowed on these trips.

From Psychics to religions that have become the whinsy of Royalty.  The only good thing about Al Queda is that they are fighting there to stop Royalty Rule.  They have too many jets and arms for the States to let that happen.

Actually I wish them no bad will personally, and wish they would just wake up somehow to the rights of women...  and I wish those psychics who look at the spirit as an object they are pushing on some customer would shut the hell up.  Of course, why should I get my way now, after all these years...

Go in peace, whether your religion recommends as much or not...or go in war,if the cause is just enough.. and not just the frantic dream of a few neocons, which started pushing for an invasion years before Bush got into power and decided that since Iraq threatened his dad, he wanted some revenge.. . so the tens of thousands who have died are going to get their revenge where?   Against the Republican Party in general I suppose, as society is doing with their vote.





So... let me end this wide ranging discussion of various lies we tell ourselves and others, and how they shape how we make money, present ourselves... and shape entire societies.  Too bad we give so much substance to mere shadows.













out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway