Category: Uncategorized

…. and I don’t just mean because I’ve lost some weight over the past few months. Though that certainly helps….

Last night I had the most amazing energy blast through me, both energy that had been stagnant and blocked (on some level) for years, and also some fresh new energy. It was one of the most intense energetic experiences (outside of playing music, which is always right up there on the intensity-o-meter) that I’ve had in months. Good-intensity, by the way. It felt fantastic, on both the releasing-old-stuff-that-I-don’t-need-anymore level as well as the nice-clean-fresh-new-energy-to-fill-the-void level.

At one point, I was observed floating up near the ceiling….heh.

But perhaps the best part of it was the connection (re-connection?) with someone very dear to me. Things feel less awkward, and a few orders of magnitude more authentic, in this moving from the slippery slopes and madness of what-ifs to the stark and pleasing immediacy of actual healing work. Whee!

There were reports floating around recently (that came from Symantec, the anti-virus company that profits from the insecure state of proprietary software) saying that Firefox has more security problems than Internet Explorer.

This may be fact.

But it misses the point entirely. To read that statement as a condemnation of Firefox (or more broadly, of any Free software) presupposes that some software will not have bugs or security problems. And that just ain’t so. All software has bugs and security problems. Period, end of report. The question is, how are those bugs and security holes responded to?

As this story points out, the fact that more holes are being found — and efficiently patched — with Firefox and other Free software applications is a strength, not a weakness.

It’s just not a strength that is easily profitted-upon. Therefore, corporations who depend on profit will throw more obfuscation out there around this issue.

Bottom line: nothing is more secure than Free software. Period.

Good question. For me, I’m not sure “belief” is quite the right word. “The most reasonable and elegant explanation for the phenomena at play in existence” is probably closer.

Just sayin’.

Because we don’t know whether or not global warming is true. Yeah, right.

Remember the mantra, the predicted effect of global warming: an overall average increase in temperature, and localized anomalies, storms that we haven’t seen in centuries.

Like, say, a category 5 hurricane smashing into a city below sea level….

I just downloaded the new t r y ^ d :: p u b l i c d o m a i n album, released under a Creative Commons license. Musically, it’s somewhat interesting in a audio-layering kind of way. Apparently the music is a long distance collaboration among the geographically-scattered members.

But perhaps more interesting is their belief in the Creative Commons way of releasing music. I must confess it’s something I’ve been very interested in doing with Freakwitch. Glad to see there are others doing it. I hope it works well for them.

I discovered two things tonight. First, dancing without a guitar in my hands feels strange.

Second, I am almost never compelled to dance to prerecorded music. And the energy throughput is much, much smaller than it is with live music and real musicians.

I think I need to learn to substitute “woman” for “guitar” to feel better about dancing when I’m not playing music… :-)

….insane lunatics willing to use nuclear weapons to enforce their will upon others. The fact that the insane lunatics are in the Pentagon is beside the point. The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon is using familiar anti-terrorist language, ie, in case we are in imminent danger of attack by WMDs we can nuke them before they attack.

Because as we all know, there is no possibility that the US Government could be wrong about some group possessing WMDs…..

I’ve been thinking more about when society and the infrastructures of capitalism collapse, and the mayhem that will ensue.

I don’t think it will be a complete collapse. People will still get together and do interesting things without a profit motive. The Free software movement is proof of that. And people are intelligent and creative. They will use technology in whatever ways occur to them as being a good idea.

Really, I think it’s going to come down to surviving the initial wave of chaos, and then finding a good community committed to mutual survival and flourishing.

Once survival — again, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — is cultivated, then joy can take root.

And that’s what it’s all about.

There are countless harrowing stories trickling out of New Orleans and other areas on the Gulf coast that were devastated. But there are several recurring themes. The authorities are using force to separate people, to divide them so that they don’t unite and work together.

This article is particularly harrowing, describing how a huge crowd of people were directed into a certain area and then fired upon by cops with guns once they approached:

We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and constitute a highly visible embarrassment to city officials. The police told us that we couldn’t stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp.

In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge to the south side of the Mississippi, where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the city.

The crowd cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation, so was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, “I swear to you that the buses are there.”

We organized ourselves, and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched past the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group, and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news.

Families immediately grabbed their few belongings, and quickly, our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, as did people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and other people in wheelchairs. We marched the two to three miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it didn’t dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions.

As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and the commander’s assurances. The sheriffs informed us that there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

Harrowing indeed.

Does anyone really believe that government officials armed with guns are really there to help unprivileged people? If you actually believe this, read on to see what happened when they had already been scattered and forced to take refuge on their own:

We organized a clean-up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom, and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas and other scraps. We even organized a food-recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was something we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. But when these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the city with food and water in the first two or three days, the desperation, frustration and ugliness would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery-powered radio, we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the city. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway. The officials responded that they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. “Taking care of us” had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking city) was accurate. Just as dusk set in, a sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces and screamed, “Get off the fucking freeway.” A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of “victims,” they saw “mob” or “riot.” We felt safety in numbers. Our “we must stay together” attitude was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of eight people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements, but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

So you can see a theme here. People band together to try to help themselves, and they are thwarted and harrassed by Cops With Guns. It also gives credence to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs arguments: when people’s basic needs are not met, they become desperate and are willing to violate an ethical code they would otherwise hold sacred, in order to survive. But when these needs are being met, people work together and become friendly and cooperative.

We can take from this that government officials fear people organizing. Divide and conquer so that the people cannot claim too much power. Given that these people cannot be divided and conquered and reprogrammed by the television sets sitting in the center stage of their living rooms any longer, they must be confronted directly, aggressively, and violently.

Through all this, I’m really beginning to appreciate the arguments of anarchist theorists; truly, the state’s primary function is to preserve its own power at the expense of the people it governs.

This site has been making its way across the blogosphere. Very interesting series of photographs and commentary from New Orleans.

EDIT: the original link was not correct, something in my cut and paste was acting strangely. And sadly, when I returned to fix the link, the page had been taken down.