see, the world IS safer with Dems in Congress….

In the first few hours of their control of Congress, The House today passed a “9/11 security bill”, which “implements some of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.”

Whew. I feel safer.

I’ve thought for a long time that one should not base governmental policy on fiction, much to the dismay of Christian neocon nutjobs who think the Bible should tell us how to run society. So the Dems are really making a difference. Have they revoked the Patriot Act? Have they sought a true investigation into the events of 9/11 (not that it matters, but it would be nice for SOMEONE in the government to say that the 9/11 Commission report is fiction)?

No.

Instead, they will intrude upon privacy even more, as now every shipping container that enters the US is eligible to be searched without warrant.

On another note, I ran into a christian Bu$hite supporter the other day. This doesn’t often happen to me in Maine, in the circles I travel in. Whenever I encounter someone claiming to be both a Christian and a Bush supporter, I ask them this question: Can you name me one single, tangible thing that George W Bush has done in office that is in line with Christ’s teachings in the Bible?

Not one of these people has ever come up with one single answer. They always evade my question.

I can’t imagine why….

60 degrees in Maine, in January?

It’s true. I’m sitting here in Portland Maine today, and at 2:15pm it is nearly 60 degrees.

Context is everything.

As I’m sitting here next to my wide-open window enjoying this bizarre weather, I read about how
ExxonMobil was waging a tobacco-like disinformation campaign on global warming science:

“ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,” said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Director of Strategy & Policy. “A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years.”

Very much worth reading. At least today “everyone” recognizes that smoking tobacco is harmful to one’s health. When will we realize that burning too much oil is harmful to the planet’s health?

2 facts about intellectual property

So I saw 2 interesting things about intellectual property in my news readings today.

First, a blatant example of what happens when you blend draconian Information/IP policies with a neoliberal, globalized economy. From Britain:

Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington. By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

Hardly surprising, though. Gee. America wants to snoop on you. Go figure.

Second, and this is the fun one, the RIAA is suing a website called AllofMP3 for 1.65 trillion dollars. That’s not a misprint:

As part of their claim, the labels are seeking $150,000 USD for each of the 11 million songs that were downloaded from June to October 2006 from the AllofMP3.com website.

“AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York,” an unnamed “senior company official” stated. “This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws.”

Interesting question of jurisdiction, no? If Russian companies are subject to American laws, then truly we do live in an age of Empire.

and Global Warming “needs more study”. Riiiiiight……

Apparently, a giant ice shelf has snapped loose in the Arctic:

A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada’s Arctic, scientists said.

The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada’s remote north.

Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, travelled to the newly formed ice island and could not believe what he saw.

“This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years. We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead,” Vincent said today.

In 10 years of working in the region he has never seen such a dramatic loss of sea ice, he said.

The collapse was so powerful that earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away picked up tremors from it.

The Ayles Ice Shelf, roughly 66 square kilometres in area, was one of six major ice shelves remaining in Canada’s Arctic.

Atually, my favorite quote in the entire article is “the remaining ice shelves are 90 per cent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906.” Boggles the mind.

Yet more signs….

shifting again

So tonight I did two things: first, I fixed the laptop power cable (not a complete fix, more like get some more life out of it for a while… but I’m confident I can solder it for a complete fix, after a quick trip to radio shack).

Second, I launched the new freakwitch.net tonight, so I’ve been hacking WordPress a bit.

Also, the EP is finished, so go check it out. You can get it from the website above, or go to our MySpace page.

I can feel things shifting again….

My Virtual Reality

OK, I haven’t been writing much. Or reading, unless you count musical engineering forums, magazines, and books.

I have had my reality so focused on music recording as of late that my writing and research has come to a virtual standstill. I haven’t updated my notebook in almost two months. This blog has only seen 5 entries since around then, too.

My laptop is having a power supply problem. I need a new power cord (which is ridiculously expensive), and my OS install is over a year old. I’m running Firefox 1.0.7 (2.0 just came out).

I can see a shift in my Virtual Reality coming. Fix the laptop, install a new OS. Switch this site over the really amazing WordPress software.

In my abundant free time, of course.

Dental surgery, or, the difference between Democrats and Republicans

Well, I had some minor dental surgery today. And as I told a friend, a day including dental surgery is not likely to be included in your best days. Everything went fine, thanks for asking.

Last night, I told another friend that “I can’t wait to laugh sardonically at the euphoria that will sweep (sleep?) the land when the Dems regain Congress….” Turns out to be true. The Democrats regained the house, have a majority of Governorships, and are presently up 50-49 in the Senate, with only the outcome in Virginia left to decide the balance.

And to top it off, Donald Rumsfeld “resigned.”

Whee. Cue the chorus of midgets singing “Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead!”

The most interesting statistic on cnn.com’s front page, when counting the number of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents in Congress, was that there are ZERO independents on the list. This reminds me of when Nader ran in 2000, and I was convinced that there wasn’t a difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Turns out that’s not the case. My view back then was not nuanced enough.

I am now convinced that my mistake was in terms of how each party serves the power structure, which generally I prefer to call Empire. I saw clearly that both parties serve Empire as their prime function, and mistook this fact for a complete equivalency among the two parties. That’s what my mistake was.

But the difference between them is in how they serve Empire. And in general, I know believe that the function of the Republican is to push the bar of Empire, to seize, consolidate, and concentrate as much power as possible while they are in power. Then, the function of the Democrats is to maintain those newly-drawn lines of power for Empire, helping to normalize them and assimilate them into popular consciousness.

So time will tell. In the coming months, we’re going to hear a lot about “partisanism” and “party politics”… and while in general I prefer a government doing nothing because it is in a state of gridlock to the behavior of the BuShites over the past 60 years, I seriously doubt that all of a sudden the US government will become committed to ending its global waging of low-intensity warfare, its commitment to torture, its blatant servitude to corporatism, and its general disregard for the poor of the world.

I need to stop typing, I can feel the novocaine starting to wear off….

Bad Magic

OK, this is what I would call bad magic:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A Dutch woman, who had meticulously planned her own funeral after the death of her husband last year, died next to the grave in Amsterdam where she wanted to be buried, a newspaper reported.

The 65-year-old widow probably died of a heart attack while she was visiting the family grave where her name, but no date, was already inscribed, De Telegraaf daily reported Wednesday.

The woman was carrying a bag with her containing her will when she died and had already organized details of her funeral including the music she wanted played, the paper said.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the notion of “bad magic” as an extension of Sartre’s existentialist notion of “bad faith,” as applied to a modern pagan.

Bad faith, in short, is “a philosophical concept first coined by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the phenomenon wherein one denies one’s total freedom, instead choosing to behave as an inert object.”

Similarly, bad magic is where one denies one’s ability to create one’s reality, and acts as if one’s actions have no bearing on what happens.

So for this woman, to have obsessed over the details of her death arrangements, brought about (on a metaphysical level… I’m not talking about scientific cause/effect here) her own death under those circumstances.

Another way to put it: be careful what you wish for. You might get it.