In this column, all that you see below are representations of my views on the world and the world I dream to be. From things I have written to the work of others.
There is just something about British left intellectuals. Christopher Hitchens fell from grace when he allowed his atheism to become a tool for Western imperialism. Now The Guardian UK's George Monbiot has pulled a Hitchens by allowing his outrage...
The following are my answers to a list of questions presented to me for a radio interview that, for whatever reason, never happened. When learning of how William Penn University was to award Paul Kagame, Rwanda's genocidal dictator, with an honora...
As each election comes many of us foolishly believe that this time voting will matter. But it's a lot like a sign I saw in a bar: "Free Beer Tomorrow."
Just as Israel is killing children in Gaza and Americans are killing children in Afghanistan, millions of decent and unsuspecting people fell prey to an imperial propaganda campaign: Kony 2012. The latest feel-good political stunt that claims to b...
??"Obama Offers to Cut Corporate Tax Rate to 28%." No, this is not a satirical piece from The Onion. This is the headline for a recent New York Times article.
The interweb is abuzz on Chris Hedges latest column, "The Cancer in Occupy." While employing hyperbole and non sequitur's to take digs at Black Bloc, Hedges has managed to alienate himself from, and piss off, many non-Black Blocers.
What exactly is “deplorable,” or “inappropriate”? Urinating on the dead bodies of people we killed in a criminal war, or the killing (i.e. war) itself?
Dallas/Forth Worth Texas Project for a Participatory Society is a network/group for anyone in the D/FW metroplex advocating parsoc. Use this network/group to find, befriend, strategize, organize and get active with others in the area.
A radical queer response to the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Originally published on the Organization for a Free Society (OFS) website on 12/28/2010.
Link: http://www.afreesociety.org/on-dont-ask-dont-tell-and-supporting-our-troops/
In 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church called “Beyond Vietnam,” where he declared that his conscience would not allow him to remain silent on the question of Vietnam, on the horrors of war, on the threat of violen...
Jensen’s treatise begins with a simple demand: “Be a man.” It ends with a defiant response: “I chose to struggle to be a human being.” The journey from masculinity to humanity is found in the candid and intelligent exploration of porn’s devastatin...
Revenue Insurance was included in the 2008 Farm Bill in a major way, in the ACRE Program and also in SURE. Now, as the 2012 Farm Bill is being debated and introduced into Congress, Revenue Insurance represents the main direction of further change...
The biggest issues in the US farm bill, both domestically and globally, are those of the Commodity Title. Historically these are multitrillion dollar market management issues, hugely affecting sustainability, (crop rotations,) farm income, food p...
Empire Incorporated. The turning and churning of the living into the dead will quite probably be the undoing of us all and will cause unquantifiable greater destruction to the natural world and all her nonhuman descendants (which is already occurr...
Putting aside morality, human and nonhuman, the corporate-capitalist-republican-democratic amalgamation, and the way of life it maintains through immense violence and abject domination has never been nor ever will be sustainable. It’s not a questi...
Arguably, many modern industries, and subsidiary industries, are inherently lethal, for each is parcel of civilization (namely the incorporation of everything, into a culture of cyclic consumption and uninterrupted waste––the turning and churning ...
Books by Jack Rasmus, Selma James, Occupy Writers, and Michael T. Klare are reviewed as well as music by Sinead O'Connor, the TV show "Treme," and films from Turkish filmmakers
I just love this piece.
Have just spent much of the day wondering why so many of our friends in Samos are so fearful about taking action and so pessimistic about what we can achieve together. Then I read this. It speaks so strongly to what ...
You have to be a sustainer to comment on this. You became a sustainer to trash the site? The least you could do is to come up with an articulate argument against the Parecon proposal.
I am an atheist. I do not believe in the existence of god's or supernatural things such as the soul, Heaven, Hell and so on. While I am as my wife calls us, "unbelifable," I do have a place in my ideal society for believers so long as they have a place for me.
Chomsky speaks about the strategic isolation of Gaza from the rest of the Palestinian territories, the continued US/Israeli crimes, the corrupt Israeli prison system, the Israeli decision to choose expansion over security and many other US backed ...
He's one of the most influential intellectuals of our age -- cited in more academic works than almost any other living scholar -- and yet many progressives are not familiar with his libertarian socialist ideas. Noam Chomsky talks about anarchism, ...
On November 29, the Canadian-Palestinian Educational Exchange (CEPAL) in commemoration of the eleventh annual United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People Ms. Olfat Mahmoud, and featured keynote speaker, Dr. Norman F...
A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn
William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos: Our Word is our Weapon
Story of Stuff, Full Version; How Things Work, About Stuff
Murray Bookchin on Anarchism and Marxism
Walden Bellow on Steps to a Post-Capitalist System
Paul Nicholson on Climate Change and Food Sovereignty
My Tastes
In this column, all that you see below are representations of my tastes. You will find what kind of music, art, interests and other things that give you further insight into my personality.
Art by Domi
Sell the Vatican, Feed the World
The Meaning of Life
Bonsai & Taiko
I used to do bonsai but Texas weather makes it too difficult. This beauty - Charley named her "Michaela" - passed away, RIP.
I made this taiko. I stained it. I hand-crafted the heads and swen them on. I tied the heads down in a nice tuning using hemp rope. A head is busted and I need to fix it. Even got some fat bachi to beat it with - which might explain the busted head!
Artophilia
Grounds Keeper Willie Van Gogh by David Barton.
Raging Bull by Lewis Tardy. This won the 2008 FW Main St Arts Festival Award for Best of Show.
Ralph Steadman is one of my favorite artists. That my wife's favorite writer is Hunter S Thompson only confirms we're perfect for each other. One of these days I will buy her one of his lithographs.
This is by George Condo, he did the art for Phish's album, The Story of the Ghost
Laughter Heals
John Cleese eulogizes Graham Chapman
Atheist melon...
Bill Hicks on Politics
Musicophilia
Loudon Wainwright - Daughter (my song for Lucy)
I am a huge T00L fan, in fact I am part of Tool Army. I have seen them live more than any other group. Their skills are breathtaking.
The songs: Don't Eat The Yellow Snow, Nanook Rubs It, St. Alphonzos Pancake Breakfeast, Father O'Blivion
I have had the privilege of seeing them live. Amy and I were front row. Absolutely amazing!
I got to see their last tour. Fucking awesome! This is Amy's song.
'We Are All Connected' (ft. Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye the Science Guy
I miss the shit out of Layne Staley.
Buddy Rich laying it down tight.
Slipknot's Joey Jordison showing how sick he is on the drums. Fast, clean and tight!
To Hold The Sun
You can find all kinds of images of people eating, holding or pinching the Sun. Some have taken pictures at angles where cranes and cacti are holding the Sun.
A Piece of Paper
I cannot think of the school but some art students were given the assigment of cutting out art pieces using one piece of paper. No ink or pencil. Amazingly gifted artists. It is art, music, language and the overall expression of our existence that is our most treasured gift.
This film by Jonathan Shockley is largely based on Thomas Ferguson's book Golden Rule. Many people appear in it, but it is based primarily on a 5 hour interview I conducted with Ferguson (with the help of 2 fellow youtubers), and on numerous appea...
This is an excerpt from the new documentary Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Politics by Jonathan Shockley. It is available to view online: http://goldenruledocumentary.blogspot.com/
Music, art, comedy, science, writing, radicalism, making the world a better place, being a good h... more
Music, art, comedy, science, writing, radicalism, making the world a better place, being a good husband, a good father, a good son, a good brother and overall good person. less
Awaiting authorization
The McGehee Library
The McGehee Library (In alphabetical order, for the most part):
We love to read, and decided to create this online bibliography so that people could use it as a resource to expand their own libraries. Our books are some of our most cherished possessions, and our (constantly expanding) collection is something we hope to pass down to daughters so that they too can develop (and cultivate) an intense love of reading.
Ironically, these aren't even all the books we have read - just the ones we own (all 625 and counting).
This past Saturday (10/24/09) Amy, Charley and I went to see the public performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller. It was put on by Thrill The World and over 4,000 zombies from around the world simultaneously dance the infamous dance. It was a lot of fun.
personal note: This passage, from the prologue to his autobiography, has been for years one of the most profound things I have ever read and identified with. It is a testament to the best of humanity.
by Bertrand Russell
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have scrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness - that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that the saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and thought it might seem too good for human life, this is what - at last - I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
