Bombs blasted London England today while we were sleeping here in the US. I have many friends, family, and loved ones there, including Sir Richard, and my little cuzzie Rosie. From what I know, they are o.k. But almost one-hundred people have been reported killed so far.

The western media has already begun its barrage of half truths and propaganda. They will spend the next few weeks telling the people of “the free world,” anyone who will listen, and most will, that these are “terrorist attacks” and that “they were unwarranted, cowardly, and intolerable” and that “the perpetrators will be brought to justice.”

This western media will not print or report or mention to the people that England invaded the country of Iraq two years ago, that they have along with a few other large countries been responsible for the deaths of over one-hundred thousand Iraqis, is still bombing and occupying this country, and in fact is at war with this tiny country. they will not print or report that the attacks on England are retaliatory in any way. they will not print or report anything signaling that England is at war and all is fair in love and war etc, and that if they attack a country they might get attacked back in the process. That is what war is. and what it is all about. the media will pretend that they don't know what war is. and will act surprised and horrified and befuddled as to why London was bombed.

In the meantime we in the western world are still relatively free as long as we continue to take in and believe this rather unique form of one sided journalism. In fact, as good citizens of the free world, we are to believe that England along with the United States were justified in their invasion of Iraq, that they are not terrorists themselves, but perhaps “world police,” or “friendly liberators” or “friendly and temporary occupiers or invaders.” We are to believe if we are good citizens that the one hundred thousand or more Iraqi deaths are justified and necessary and warranted and good. and that the 100 people killed in England are not justified, not warranted, and not good. we are told to believe that the English and the US are not terrorists when they kill a hundred thousand Iraqis, but that the bombers of the UK today are terrorists.

If you are indeed a free and thinking person you are very confused by this point and find it hard to know what to believe no matter where you live in the free world. if you are a person living somewhere in the middle east or a Muslim you probably are equally confused, sad, and yet you probably know exactly what to believe. It is probably very far from that which is being reported by the western media.


[the below is something I just received from a musician friend who is a super talented mofo in the Miami music scene and an all around great cat. But he has a totally different take on it than I do or most other musicians and entertainers. I reprint it here just to show that you never can really be sure about these things... everyone has their opinion... see below for commentary from the ambassador...

Jul 08 - London Bombings
“It goes without saying that our hearts go out to our comrades in England. Once again, I have to ask: When are we gonna stop jerking around with Koran abuse investigations and start killing these Al Queda pricks? They are uncivilized Nazis; if you don''t lose sleep over what we did to the Nazis during and after WW2, I don''t know why you''re upset with anything we do to these scumbags, whether it''s in Guantanimo Bay or on the battlefield. Before you think I''m going insane by saying this, here''s a little history lesson: When the allies discovered the concentration camps in WW2, they lined up all the German guards - sometimes hundreds at a time - and machine-gunned them into ditches. No trial. No Geneva convention protections. They just rounded them up, shot them dead and threw dirt on them. Do you think they should have been tried for war crimes? Now we throw our guys in jail for putting underwear on people's heads and, as that treasonous dick Dick Durbin says, "torturing captives with loud rap music." Loud rap music? Jesus - by those standards, I'm tortured every day, since I live and drive in Miami!”]

you see? Someone can be a GREAT musician and still think this way. fucking crazy really. But people do think this way. normal everyday folk that we hang with and chill with and jam with can think this way. and that's the confusing part. This guy is a cool guy, but he is clueless. I asked him, are our American military men over in Iraq bad guys? are they evil fuckheads?’ his answer of course was no. so what makes their guys who just bombed London bad guys? don't you see that we are in a war? That the rules now are that both sides get to kill each other and as many of each other as they can till they decide to make peace? That's the only rule. We honor our service men just as they honor their servicemen. In the heart of every Iraqi, probably in the heart of every Muslim, is the same kind of admiration and hope for their soldiers to defeat us, as we have for our own soldiers. so we choose drop millions of tons of bombs and kill thousands of people at one time, and they choose to suicide bomb and throw little grenades and kill tens of people at one time because they can’t afford the ammunition that we have. that makes them terrorists? That makes them right and us wrong? don't believe the hype my brother.

he goes on to remind me of earlier attacks on the world trade towers or on the USS Cole. I go on to remind him of Vietnam, that America has been dishonest and unfair for as long people can remember since world war two... perhaps earlier... that the French were imperialists and were trying to maintain their control over Vietnam and Vietnam was trying to fight for its independence from them, just as we were from doing the same thing with England during the revolutionary war. That they even marched through the streets shouting out their own declaration of independence that they copied many lines from ours, the American declaration of independence. This is true. but instead of helping Vietnam become a democracy and excape from the colonial powers of the French dictatorship, we secerty were funneling billions of dollars in aid to the French. obviously they had cut a deal with us to cut us in on whatever natural resources they were stealing from the Vietnamese or whatever it was they were getting from them. big countries don't occupy small countries unless they have something to gain from it. that is why America Germany France Italy Spain and England are not occupying the smaller countries of Africa and why we have let them all die and starve to death by the millions over the years. because there is nothing there for us to gain. So we leave them alone. We do not occupy them. we do not colonialiize them. we do not liberate them. we do not help them. because it is not our business because we have nothing to gain from them. but Vietnam was different. Even in the face of the entire world seeing Vietnam fifght for its independence as a free democracy aginast the tyranny of France domination, the United States stood up for France and tried to defeat the Vietnamese so they would continue to be ruled and dominated by France. Finally when it appeared that France was going to lose, we told the world that the Vietnamese were communists and that communism was a scary thing. so that was our excuse. We flew half way around the world with half a million men and invaded this country that was willing to fight till the very last man to earn its independence as a free democracy. We killed over 1.3 million of them. we bombed their neighboring countries Cambodia and in the process causes so much upheaveal that we destroyed their entire governmental system and over a million people were killed in the ensuing disruptive chaos that came about there. we then bombed their other neighbor, laos, and killed hundreds of thousands of them as well. and we continued to kill millions of Vietnamese. And they continued to tell us that they were going to fight us till every man was dead because they wanted to becasoe a free country like we were. Our governemnet killed fifty thousand United States boys and men in this war and we were never threatened. We were never attacked. The people were asleep and the people let this happen. and if you study your history you will see that the United States government has bene doing this continually all over th world ever since world war two. I know its been said before but if you count it all up, the United States government has killed over 8 million people since world war two in terrorist attacks agasint other countries.

so when people say that there was no reason why some guys bombed the trade centers the first time or the uss Cole, it just means that they don't know what they are talking about. they believe everything they hear on the news. its not that we are bad people. we’re not. we’re great people. its just that we have yet to learn what our forefathers taught us in all of their books and articles and famous documents... that we the people are the important part of the equation here. not our government. When our governments gets too far out of hand, as it did with Vietnam, as it is doing now in Iraq, we need to stop them or ask them to leave. They work for us. how much death are we willing to allow? How many of our own men are we willing to lose while we sit around and watch TV and try to pretend that this isn't happening because its happening in Iraq instead of in America?

London bombings... well of course there are London bombings. And there are bound to be American bombings as well. our country has just attacked another country.



Last screening: fog of war: eleven lessons from Robert mcnamara. Talk about irony in light of current events. This movie is A MUST SEE. It is fantastic. Rent it.

Eleven lessons
Importantly, these eleven lessons that lend structure to The Fog of War were created by Errol Morris; they are not explicitly McNamara's (at the aforementioned UC Berkeley event, McNamara contended that he did not agree with Morris's interpretations in all respects). McNamara eventually went public with his own list of lessons, which can be found below.
When pushed to apply his "lessons" to the US invasion of Iraq, McNamara refused, arguing that former Secretaries of Defense should not comment on the policy of the current Secretary of Defense. McNamara suggested that other people were welcome to apply his lessons to Iraq if they wanted to, but that he would not explicitly do it, and noted that his lessons were more general than any particular military conflict (he had indeed written them some time before the Iraq war).

Robert McNamara's 11 lessons from Vietnam
• We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
• We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
• We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
• Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
• We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine…
• We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
• We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
• After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did.
• We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
• We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
• We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.
• Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.
Source: Globe and Mail, Jan. 24, 2004



Current spin: muse, origin of symmetry. And mouse on mars, brilliant stuff here. makes me want to put down the pop-rock axe and just make art music. but of course then I'll be totally broke and won't make any money from music... hey hold on, that's where I'm at now. hhhmmm....