Fish for Friday

Floral tile

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Reluctantly beginning to do my holiday gift shopping, I was relieved to read at the end of Susan Price's column this week that she has a virtual store. [Permanent links in sidebar; see "Blog Department Store."]

Take lots of pictures and email me some, PLEASE. God willing, I'll be here to get them. I can't imagine the world without me. Isn't that silly? Try and see if you feel that way when you think about it.

Unholy rollers

So, people who decided they didn't need belief in traditional organized religions, or a "divine" being to help them find their way through life, have decided they do need weekly meetings, rousing music, and inspirational sermons to find their way through life? "Atheist 'mega-churches' take root across US, world." If atheists are going down the road that led to major division in traditional religion—such as Islam versus Christian and Catholic versus Protestant—and the further splintering into Mormon, Baptist, Episcopalean, and so on, how long before the atheist movement goes factional? This will give atheism a bad name.

Lies, damn lies, and the FBI: "FBI calls Ph.D. FOIA research a national security risk." Excerpt:

MIT Ph.D. candidate Ryan Shapiro boasts the unusual title of the “most prolific” FOIA requester to the FBI [FOIA stands for Freedom of Information Act]. Using what Will Potter described in Mother Jones as a “a novel, legal, and highly effective approach,” Shapiro has obtained thousands upon thousands of documents for his research into government persecution of animal rights activists. [emphasis ours]
    As Potter reported, the FBI has gone so far as to call Shapiro’s entirely legal mass-FOIA-ing “irreparably damag[ing] to national security.” Much is at stake in Shapiro’s story: In its efforts to curb Shapiro’s work, the FBI may set a dangerous precedent in limiting the public’s right to government information through FOIA.

What's next, President Obama stumping on behalf of Tea Party candidates? Singer-guitarist and all-out rocker Joan Jett, who is also a vegetarian and animal-rights activist [emphasis ours], has been chosen to perform on the South Dakota state float at the upcoming Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: "South Dakota ranchers irked by Joan Jett pick for Macy's parade float." Cattle and calves are reportedly the top revenue producers in the state's $19-billion agriculture economy, and the decision has rankled some farmers and ranchers, as Jett is a well-known supporter of PETA (People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals), which promotes a vegetarian diet and opposes many livestock production practices. Maybe next year the state can land a more suitable performer; anyone know what Ronald McDonald is doing these days?

A forefather [Paul Krassner, editor and publisher of The Realist magazine (c. 1959-2001)] on media: "A Tale of Two Media Conferences, 43 Years Apart." The first conference took place in 1970. At the one this year, the keynote speaker significantly recalled that

In ’88, I was driving down the street, listening to the radio, and a news report came on that CBS had just moved their news division under the vice-president of entertainment [emphasis ours]. And I thought, "That’s it, this is the beginning of the end of any kind of media that is genuine."

Change—it sometimes seems the scariest thing around. For the past couple of centuries change has dominated the thinking and discourse of Western societies. In 1962, historian Eric Hobsbawm titled his first volume The Age of Revolution to mark how the 19th Century began with the French and Industrial revolutions. Richard Reeves notes a few of the changes in "Change Has Always Been the New Normal" and notes that focusing on technology, as The Atlantic magazine's current issue on Technology does, misses the most powerful changes—social and cultural—and sidesteps their impact. That's the scariest thing.

Many ideas once held to be true have been discarded, at least according to the mainstream's "conventional wisdom"—the divine right of kings...slavery...serfdom. Will the same hold for the idea of capitalism? "Our Invisible Revolution," by Chris Hedges. Excerpt:

I prefer a system in which our social institutions permit the citizenry to nonviolently dismiss those in authority. I prefer a system in which institutions are independent and not captive to corporate power. But we do not live in such a system....[emphasis ours]
    The corporate state seeks to maintain the fiction of our personal agency in the political and economic process. As long as we believe we are participants, a lie sustained through massive propaganda campaigns, endless and absurd election cycles and the pageantry of empty political theater, our corporate oligarchs rest easy in their private jets, boardrooms, penthouses and mansions. As the bankruptcy of corporate capitalism and globalization is exposed, the ruling elite are increasingly nervous. They know that if the ideas that justify their power die, they are finished.

In the U.S., graffiti is often condemned vandalism. But during the Arab Spring, artists say that city walls were often the only places where they could talk back to tyrants: "Art Revolution Blooms After Arab Spring."

Intersection of Muhammad Mahmud St. & Tahrir Sq., Cairo

Noam Chomsky thinks we've blown it: "Why the Rest of the World No Longer Wants to be Like U.S."

Michele Bachmann's showing it

Latest news from Washington: "Shocking Development: Republicans Shut Down Prefrontal Cortex (Borowitz Report)."




If Jesus were the GOP....

Our next generations may never see this—they're lovely and almost extinct:


Castle in Werfen, Austria:

Chateau de Chillon, Switzerland"

Neuschwanstein Castle, Germanys:

Limerick of the Week:

Tomorrow, at the exact appointed hour,
Sarah Goodly and Afshan climb a tower—
    in Chapter 2 of The Killer,
    writer Jackie Sims's thriller—
but the outcome won't be in Sarah's power.

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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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