The Beachcomber in printing thin pieces on the Council and Credit Union has this critic at its beck and call. Chris Beck should criticize the Council instead of criticizing our civic lack. And the Beachcomber should have delved into the nuts and bolts of that $200,000 instead of just providing an excellent progress report. While noting the good work of the council, Chris neglects mention of what it did not do when K2 went on the market. It did not entertain ideas from the public on how to convert this plant to making things for island use. Not to mention profound disinterest in the Council taking a stand on health care. What’s the essential difference between a credit union and a bank? Knowing that banks don’t lend money, they create it, what’s the capital for? Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, but there is serious ignorance here about money, and it has the nation over a barrel. Fresh breeze needed, please. The Beachcomber has inadvertently beckoned, and I have innocently answered the call.

In case the last two posts read like a Chicken Little act, Last week:

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a new feature on their website called "Find Insurance Options". You just provide certain information about your family size, your age, your employment situation, your financial situation, whether you have certain disabilities or diseases, whether you now have Medicare or some other health insurance, or how long you have not had health insurance, whether you have been denied insurance, whether you are someone's dependent, a veteran? an American Indian? an Alaskan Native? etc., etc., etc. ... and the site gives you suggestions as to where and how you might find health insurance that might suit your particular needs. The head of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, tells us "This is an incredibly impressive consumer tool," (Linda Jansen)

US: Felony charges, big fines for reporting within Gulf oil spill zone: ...

There is a limit to hearing of wrongs. Of private prisons operating for profit. Of Homeland Security breaking up Latino families. Of driving blacks out of New Orleans. Of giant firms poisoning the public with bad food and dangerous packaging, endangering coal miners, and contaminating our aquifers. Of bad health care at exorbitant cost. Of collusion of the elite to steal from the rest of us. Of continued funding of the torture school at Ft. Benning, Of supporting criminal takeover of Haiti and Honduras. Of the CIA murdering people. Of police brutalizing dissidents. Of ocean drilling. Of the whole rotten stinking, stupid, meaningless wasting of our precious blue dot. At first there was awakening, then came astonishment at the pervasiveness, and finally there has come realization that the root cause is a public so hooked on technology it will not depose the criminals who control it. Now the wrongs hit me like Chinese water torture, wrong, wrong, wrong, because there is no more hope. Only one event could win some...

The question was provoked this morning by Patsy Cline singing "Dear God" in hope He would help her stop sinning. I've heard it dozens of times because it's on my 30Gigabyte iPod and never has it provoked in me a serious thought.  This time it unlatched a lifetime load of remembered old time gospel music, not literally remembered, for I never paid attention to the silly old words, but just the repetition of sin, sinners & sinning. Sin is bad. Sinners are bad people. Everybody's a sinner. People are bad. Get saved! Okay, Dear God, what are you doing to a congressman who votes to fund an egregiously immoral war, or to fund the torture school at Ft. Benning? Okay, Dear God, why to you bless judges and prosecutors who put black men in jail for a little grass stashed? Enough crass grandstanding, what is the fate of a country that cannot distinguish between good and bad?

I'll answer that. Our fate is to be blessed with technology.

The genocide in Palestine and the biocide in the Gulf of Mexico cap what we have known for a long time but have not been able to stomach, that bad money is in charge of the US. And that is not all. As an earthquake instantly vaporizes faith in solid ground the enormity of our support for the cornered wolverine of Zion and for criminal negligence in ocean drilling wipes clean the cluttered landscape of rule by law in America. The underlying rock is rule by money. It’s been money since the first pilgrim stepped on Plymouth Rock and we’ve been lied to ever since. To this day our finest protesters, ANSWER, Code Pink, Public Citizen, Planned Parenthood, you pick, send out bulletins “Tell Congress to XYZ”, “Tell Congress no more money for war”. It’s over, menwomen, put the apple pie back in the Major Brands box. The time has come to admit that we have willingly supported a government we know has been lying to us for the simple reason that capitalism has given us a season ticket to Disneyland. An opossum said it best,...

The naked menace of US-Israel and US-Corporations revealed so clearly, so forcibly, so horribly this spring is being papered over by the US media and talk shows. As example, my own family. The only one outraged is a marine biologist who specializes in sea turtles. The rest either are surviving economic crises or they believe the media. I fear that Vashon will also fail to speak out in concert against the false messaging. Certainly, Vashon has shown itself to be deaf, dumb and blind in vital matters so far.  In spite of the efforts of some dedicated and competent people we are a collective zero. We host visiting "Green" book salesmen yet have not a clue how to increase support of our own growers. We calmly ignore the encroaching police state. We put up with the insane auto commute, putting zero effort in converting Vashon to electric transport. We put up with Bangor. The problem with America is seen in all its intricacies right here on Vashon. We are beyond hope.

As one tries to recover from the sickening worship of war conducted on PBS yesterday, here is the beginning of a veterans interpretation of the meaning of Memorial Day. Link follows:

A Memorial Day Press Release from some American Veteransby Jay Janson / May 31st, 2010

We Remember War Victims of all Nations!! Mourn War on Memorial Day!

Some American veterans of wars call for a return to the healthy purpose for Memorial Day, which in Columbus, Mississippi, April 25, 1866, was to bind its town and the nation together in mourning the million-and- half soldiers who died killing each other during our tragic Civil War. A day for mourning the dead of both sides, civilian as well as military, in national fellowship intended to put an end to hatred for the other side, end lust for war to settle differences and see a United States of America restored.

 http://dissidentvoi ce.org/author/ JayJanson/

The link is to all writings...

This was offered to the Beachcomber today. I hope to be pardoned for tooting my horn on club time:

The oil in the Gulf of Mexico was not spilled. A spill can be boomed, which does not say that BP had booms ready. No, the oil in the gulf is a river of poison. Seen  that way it is something we cannot ignore as we ignore so many horrid things, the swindle, the war, Guantanimo, you know, all those things we Christians say we oppose. No, we cannot ignore the blowout. Please, now, hold the litany of helplessness and deniability also known as virtuous local interest that is trotted out at crunch times like recently when health care hit the fan of metastasized greed at which point we should have begun a local program. Instead consider that the proper response, the only feasible response Vashon can have is to get rid of gasoline driven cars and wean off of natural gas. The sun enables both goals. Spare me the reasons we cannot get started.

Repeated concern over the absence of prevention in US "health care", and its glaring absence in the debate over "reform", cannot be repeated often enough.  In the case of breast cancer this absence is particularly upsetting. Well, the reason has finally seen the light of publication in an established magazine. Hurrah for the following: The World's Wealthiest "Nonprofit" Institution Samuel S. Epstein M. D. Excerpt: The American Cancer Society is fixated on damage control— diagnosis and treatment— and basic molecular biology, with indifference or even hostility to cancer prevention. This myopic mindset is compounded by interlocking conflicts of interest...

Two pieces got my interest, the editor’s op-ed and the sincere but muddled letter from Twisdale. The dustup over the scuffle at Sporty’s was a lose-lose reporting obligation for the Beachcomber because political correctness and bigotry in the readership get in the way. Put differently, emotional conflict can’t be resolved in a newspaper. Instead and ideally, Vashon would have a degree of self-government that would include a forum for resolving disputes. Absent the Council’s dollar umbilical to the County, the Council would have had the witnesses and participants, all sober and presentable, line up in front of a full house at Bangasser Court and speak their pieces. Then the Beachcomber could weigh in, but not before. Dream on. Twisdale stresses the risk of vaccination with words I cannot summarize fairly. So I refer to her letter only to introduce the risk of vaccination using my own muddling. Here goes. The way to get a handle on current uneasiness regarding vaccination begins by partitioning vaccines into good...