The Frail in the Veil

Here we have a photo of a veiled woman. Its ostensible purpose is to provide a visual means of identifying the subject, to which one can only say, “Huh?”. The paradox is almost too much to contemplate. It’s hard to say which aspect of this concept is most stupid.

First candidate: the entire women-as-property ethos. I like to respect the religious beliefs of others, but dammit, making humans cover their faces, like all the rest of the misogynist creed, wherever it is found, is just repugnant. I’m not in favor of women wearing veils unless they want to, and surprisingly few do seem to want to.

So that’s the first stupid thing. The second is: even bothering to take a picture. A principle of equal treatment? People who have no faces are afforded the same opportunity as those with faces: a means to prove or disprove their identity and their very existence. Seriously, would this picture stand up in court as a solid ID? No? Then what is it doing on this passport?

Or maybe it isn’t so stupid. “We have the technology!” was the motto of the 20th century. It won’t be the motto of the 21st century, because humans won’t be around on the planet long enough to look back on the century with nostalgia, or to identify the most characteristic slogan of that century.

So, who needs a whole face? By now we must certainly have the technology to identify an individual from a photo showing one approximate centimeter of flesh. Which many Muslim women do show. This devout lady, however, reveals nothing.

The next stupid thing is, it gives the bludg an excuse to grab more identification markers. “Yes, modest Muslim women are allowed to wear their veils to be photographed,” say the authorities. “This is why we must also have an alternate means of ID, such as fingerprints. And of course we wouldn’t want to discriminate, so that means everybody gets fingerprinted”. Still, this ID method would not capture data from bilateral amputees, so there must be retina scans… and so on, ad nauseum, ad absurdum and ad infinitum.

The fourth thing, and I won’t call it stupid because that would be offensive, but it sure does cause a person to wonder. Doesn’t Islam forbid the making of images? And specifically, images of people? But in order to move about in the modern world, the leaders of the faith apparently are willing to cut the faithful some slack. Well, why not cut them some slack in the matter of veils, infibulation and, you know, that kind of thing?

Great Lines from The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

Why isn’t The True Believer taught to 7th graders? Eric Hoffer wrote this marvelously illuminating book, and an understanding of it, achieved by even a small segment of the population, would make America a better place. It’s one of the books I always keep a copy of, around the place, in case I run across somebody who might get something out of it.

Here are some of the best quotations, all by Eric Hoffer.

The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on.

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual.

Not one of our contemporary movements was so outspoken in its antagonism toward the family as was early Christianity.

Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in life, a new future and a new identity.

It sometimes seems that mass movements are custom-made to fit the needs of the criminal – not only for the catharsis of his soul but also for the exercise of his inclinations and talents.

Not only does a mass movement depict the present as mean and miserable – it deliberately makes it so. It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial or even discreditable, and represents the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral.

The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others.

Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil.

The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness.

Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie.

However much the protesting man of words sees himself as the champion of the downtrodden and injured, the grievance which animates him is, with very few exceptions, private and personal.

In the eyes of the true believer, people who have no holy cause are without backbone and character… On the other hand, the true believers of various hues, though they view each other with mortal hatred … recognize and respect each other’s strength.

Nuclear Annihilation Insurance

1985 flyer

Note: this is the text from the 1985 flyer. The quotations are in a separate post.

There is no such thing as nuclear annihilation insurance, and anyone who thinks there could be is tragically deluded. If you have a notion that nuclear war is survivable, if you think there would be anything at the other end worth surviving for, this message is for you.

Oh, you have a shelter? Is your bomb shelter equipped to withstand 30 million degrees F?

At this very moment people are making “contingency plans.” Plans for how to keep your charge account bills coming, through the U.S. Mail which is guaranteed to be up and running with only a single day’s interruption of service. Of course everyone will have an address, due to the marvelous evacuation scheme which promises to get everyone neatly resettled within three business days after global cataclysm.

Sound like a crock? You bet it does. Do you have any conception of how pitifully, laughably inadequate the evacuation plans are? Or any idea how naïve it is to believe there will be anyplace to evacuate to, or any way of getting there? Missiles arrive within thirty minutes of launch. How far can you drive on the San Diego Freeway during the biggest rush hour in history?

Even supposing that evacuation were workable, will you be one of the refugees or one of the hosts? Even if it were possible to survive a “limited” nuclear exchange, would you want to? Will you be among the many thousands of severe burn cases, or among the walking wounded whose job it will be to nurse them?

Nuclear War – If You’ve Seen One, You’ve Seen Them All

It can’t happen, you say? Consider this:

• The nuclear policies of both superpowers rest on the concept of “unacceptable damage” at the very least.

• The purpose of NATO is to initiate nuclear warfare.

• The present administration has ignored or refused six major chances to delay our present course toward apocalypse.

• Some very intelligent people say the chance of accidental nuclear war is quite good. In 1980 it almost happened – because of the malfunction of a 46-cent computer chip.

There won’t be any veterans of WWIII. There won’t be any Time-Life Books series about it. The probability is very high that the beginning of nuclear war would lead inevitably to the end of everything.

Nuclear War – Oh, No, There Goes My Career!

If you’re not horrified by the nearness of total destruction, you haven’t been paying attention. Nuclear warfare is not cost-effective. After it there will be no markets, no goods, no customers, no profits. If you’re concerned about any other issues it behooves you to first be concerned about nuclear war. Of course it has the potential to solve a lot of social problems. No more apartheid No more conflict between pro-choice and pro-life. No choice. No life.

Wasn’t Once Enough?

As Voltaire said after the orgy, when invited to another: No thanks. “Once is philosophy, twice is perversion.” As an anonymous teenager said after trying a popular drug: “Once is curiosity, twice is stupidity.”

The worst thing happening in the world today is the belief people have been brainwashed into, that nuclear war is acceptable, necessary, even inevitable; that the “other side” wants it.

In the street a man is beating his wife. One neighbor turns up his radio and takes care to stay away from the window. Next door someone peeks out through the shade. Another neighbor picks up the phone to call the authorities, realizing too late that the line has been cut. Down the block a man stands on his porch and watches, expressionless. Someone else rushes to intervene, not heeding the risk to himself.

We each have our own way of dealing with the rightly named Unthinkable: the prospect of total devastation of the planet and the death of everything on it. We can throw ourselves into partying and turn our backs on the horror. We can let it into the fringes of consciousness and pay it with nightmares. We can kid ourselves into complacency, blind faith in the leaders who will surely take care of us and bring about a “victory” for our side. We can stare it in the face, numb as rabbits paralyzed by oncoming headlights. We can try to stop it, using any and all means at our disposal no matter how futile or hopeless the task may seem.

Give Peace a Chance

A good place to start would be a weapons freeze: Stop all testing, production, and deployment of bombs, warheads, and delivery vehicles of all types. When you consider that enough nuclear warheads already exist to blow up the world about 70 times over, freeze is not such an unreasonable proposition. Better yet, and the only acceptable course if life on earth is to continue – TOTAL MULTILATERAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT. Quite simply, take the weapons down. Dismantle them. We figured out how to put them together, surely we can figure out how to take them apart.

Making a Difference

There is no such thing as Nuclear Annihilation Insurance. Not that we can buy with money. But there are other things we can do. Virtually every profession, religion, and ethnic group has a peace group within. Examples of these specialized groups include architects, atomic scientists, atomic bomb survivors, computer experts, lawyers, Asian Americans, Constitutionalists, mothers, gays, professors, librarians, doctors, teachers, and psychologists. In Los Angeles alone there are dozens of groups working for peace. If your town has more than fifty people in it, chances are there’s a peace group.

We need to find ways to let the politicians and general on both “sides” know they do not have our permission or approval in their insane pursuit of Armageddon. We can view Threads or The Day After to get a real feel for what it is we’re dealing with here. We can educate ourselves by reading some of the many informative books on the nuclear threat and the peace alternative.

Some people create art which expresses their anti-nuclear convictions. Some alter billboards and paint slogans on walls. Thousands of people will interrupt their lives to go on a nearly year-long walk to Washington in 1986, to make the elected officials and the rest of the country and the world aware of the strength of their feelings. Thousands are arrested every year in acts of civil disobedience directed against nuclear warfare preparations. Some have gone so far as to damage missile silos and other military property in protest. Some refuse to hand over part or all of the taxes the government demands to buy our destruction. Did you know the seemingly insignificant federal excise tax on your phone bill is specifically earmarked for military use? If we continue to pay now, we will surely pay later.

There are innumerable ways to make a difference, and all of them worth trying. No idea is too wild when compared to the alternative – the end of life on this planet. One prominent scientist proposed an exchange between the superpowers of millions of children – a war prevention plan which has historical precedent.

Wake Up Today: The Future Can Still Happen

The first and most important step toward turning this mess around can happen in only one place: the mind. Your mind. Believe that reversal is possible and that insanity can be ended. Believe that the people, the citizens, of other nations don’t want nuclear warfare any more than we do. Believe that people can say no. We can say no. And that’s the only insurance we’ve got.

P. Robinson 1985

RELATED: Nuclear Annihilation Insurance Quotations

Art Teachers from Hell

Modern Dance

• I read somewhere that the guy who invented Popeye the Sailor Man was pissed off at his art teacher, who insisted that even cartoon figures had to be anatomically correct. So he drew Popeye with the big parts in the wrong places, just to thumb his nose at the rules.

• This is at Santa Monica College back in the early 1980s. For the sake of health and grace, I enroll in a Modern Dance class, but the first session feels like a ripoff. As the people gather to wait for starting time, someone is playing the piano pretty well. But when the instructor arrives, the musician leaves. The evening school budget doesn’t allow for an accompanist. So if we want music for our dance class…we can each chip in 50 cents a session, and she just happens to have a pianist in mind. Someone immediately raises the question: What about the $3 materials fee we already paid? The instructor says it’s a general fee charged in every class. Another student corrects her, saying that the materials fee is specific to each class, and many classes have no fee. By the second session I know it’s a ripoff. There are twice as many students as should be allowed to sign up – assuming, of course, that one of the basic conditions of a Modern Dance class is the ability to fling one’s limbs with abandon, and without physically assaulting another student. The place is so packed, only the front row can see what the instructor demonstrates. The rest are doomed to mimic the moves of the person in front of us, a not always reliable indicator. So for the third class meeting I show up early and stake out a place up front – to no avail. The instructor wears such a baggy, ballooning outfit, her limbs are obscured. She could be doing anything in there. This is no way to learn Modern Dance or anything else. I become, tragically, a dropout.

• I ask a friend to explain various technical things about electricity and computers. I ask a specific question and he tells me something that, while useful, is the answer to some other question that I haven’t asked yet. Meanwhile, I’m thinking it’s supposed to be the answer to the question I did ask. But it just won’t fit or make sense in that context, and I get frustrated real quick

Graphic courtesy of eggybird via this Creative Commons license

Case Study: Stupid Media

Under the “Trash Your Stylist” category, this tabloid included Sigourney Weaver with the following text:

The “Aliens” made her do it! No makeup, a shapeless dress – Sigourney’s a sci-fi sad sack at a New York bash.

First of all, I detect mascara and lip gloss, and it’s possible that Ms. Weaver used foundation also. These people want to see penciled brows, shadowed eyes, and lips of an unnatural color. To them, mascara and lip gloss aren’t makeup, in the same way that, to heroin addicts, marijuana doesn’t even rank as a drug.

She’s wearing blue, the color of the sky at oncoming night, and green, the color of growth and optimism. She looks comfortable, confident, and happy. What’s not to like?

E-graffiti

I know, I know, thousands of these things fly around the webwaves. But these are my favorites of the ones I’ve seen.

This last one is a Mad Magazine Poster

Animal Hoarding – What the Hell is That?

In which the author expresses disgust at the arrest of Ron Mason.

To “hoard” is to keep to oneself either something that other people do want – like canned meat – or something that other people don’t want – like a garage full of used plastic cups.

A hoard is a hidden supply or fund that is stored up. In wartime, hoarding is seen as very anti-social. Under military rule, people are expected to not stockpile goods for their own use, or participate in the black market, or abuse the rationing system. But in the case of wartime hoarding, we’re talking about a commodity that the government says it wants to share fairly with all the citizens (and actually wants for its soldiers and its war machine.) Cans of beans, sides of beef, gold coins, or silk stockings – you’ll notice that these are all considered desirable items. To be engaged in this type of hoarding, a person would have to hang onto a supply of something that other people want.

Well, nobody wants these damn cats. That’s the problem. These cats were thrown away by humans. They’re either abandoned domestic pets, or feral cats whose parents or grandparents were abandoned domestic pets. It would be a real good idea for any agency that claims to care about the welfare of animals, to concentrate their efforts on the people who dump their cats.

And then there’s the kind of hoarding that applies to stuff people don’t want, items that “don’t seem reasonable,” according to one of the talking heads in this video. Keeping stuff that either is, or appears to be, useless. And usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. My grandpa had a room full of little bits and pieces of wire and transistors and knobs and so on, that seemed useless to most onlookers. But he could fix your radio or TV.

Another kind of hoarding applies to stuff that people didn’t used to want, but now they do want it, and the former hoarders turn out to be astute business people. When people hoard baseball cards or comic books and then make some money off the items, we call them entrepreneurs. If they hoard paintings, we call them collectors, and shower them with praise.

Here’s a description of the pathology of the animal hoarder: “Because of their sheer numbers, these animals usually aren’t cared for properly. Many become so ill that they die or have to be euthanized.” Does this sound familiar? It sounds like an official animal shelter, to me. The point here is, by any definition you can formulate, animal shelters hoard animals. And the level of care in official shelters is not necessarily as good as what the free-lancers provide.

Admonishing any animal hoarders who happen to read their webpage, the Mayo Clinic says the critters “deserve to live healthy and happy lives, and that’s not possible if you can’t provide them with proper nutrition, sanitation and veterinary care.” So according to the medical establishment, what you’re supposed to do with the animals is hand them over to a government agency that can’t provide them with proper nutrition, sanitation, veterinary care or, in some cases, as we’ve recently seen, can’t even provide our little four-legged friends with shade to keep the sun off them.

This quote is even more ludicrous: “A hoarder fails to provide the animals with adequate food, water, sanitation, and veterinary care, and … is in denial about this inability to provide adequate care.”

You want to know who’s in denial? The police who arrest Ron Mason for providing the amenities to the cats, and then charge him with being a hoarder, which is by definition someone who fails to provide the amenities. Denial is when bureaucrats think their shelters provide better care than concerned individuals with limited means and loving hearts. Denial is believing that adequate care is something only the State is capable to provide. Denial is pretending that the killing of healthy animals, because official facilities are overcrowded, constitutes “adequate care.”

Supposedly, the societal problem here is that too many cats are running around the neighborhood. So this guy gives them a place to hang out, where they won’t annoy the neighbors. In which case, keeping them to himself is not a bad thing. It is, in fact, a very good and beneficial thing. He ought to be helped, encouraged and subsidized, not prosecuted. One of the officials in the video explains why it’s wrong for Mason to give houseroom to these animals – because “they get everything they need here.” Exactly! So they’re not out bothering the neighbors! What is the freakin’ problem?

To make compassion for animals into a crime is outrageous. They’re talking about “the recidivism rate is 100%.” All that means is, people who are willing to feed hungry cats will probably always be willing to feed hungry cats, no matter how drastically they are punished by the State. They’re making it sound like the guy is a pedophile or something.

To make compassion for animals into a disease is outrageous. This alleged mental health expert says, “They get a skewed perspective.” News flash: the people who think euthanization is preferable to living with Ron Mason are the ones with the skewed perspective. Maybe somebody should ask the cats for their opinion on the subject. The officials are talking about sentencing Mason to ongoing mental health treatment and medication. They want to “help this person be okay” by assigning him a minder who come in daily. This is an unbelievably stupid use of resources. The whole implication that something is wrong with Ron Mason is unbelievably stupid. This is Cold War era Soviet Russia bullshit. Any time a citizen does something the government doesn’t like, just label that citizen mentally ill. We’re about one step away from compulsory lobotomization.

Ron Mason doesn’t create these animals. He doesn’t manufacture them or give birth to them. On the contrary, he’s tried to stop more of them from being born, by having them neutered. Even if he wasn’t able to have all the cats operated on, there’s still more of them neutered than there would have been if he’d never taken responsibility for any of them. What’s the freakin’ problem?

The spokesperson for the authorities explains that hoarding is having a whole bunch of something. By this definition, you know who’s hoarding? Orphanages hoard children. Or at least, they used to. Maybe orphanages have disappeared, like mental institutions, which used to hoard mentally ill people, until the state closed them and let all the mentally ill people out on the street, where they are so much better off.

The California penal system hoards prisoners. They got a whole bunch of prisoners, and they want to add to the number by locking up some poor targeted civilian who takes care of cats. Who else is hoarding? The vastly overpaid and incompetent jokers who run Animal Services, that’s who. They hoard millions of tax dollars and produce nothing – certainly not services – for anybody, animal or human.

Related:

Cats, Ron Mason, and Human Health

Video of some people who have gone way overboard in response to the cats next door

and the whole story behind what you saw there

The picture on this page is by brownpau via this Creative Commons license

Cats, Ron Mason, and Human Health

Check out this video of a guy in LA being busted for having too many cats.

In the police briefing before the raid, they make this big fuss about triple gloves, and bleach footbaths, and how there’s urine and feces all over the property. Uh-huh, totally unlike the areas where their own dogs of war are housed, trained, and exercised. I’d love to hear from anybody who can verify that there are bleach footbaths in the LAPD’s K-9 facilities.

And the animals step in their own waste, the briefing officer notes, and track the germs around. I’m not crazy about that aspect of pet ownership. When a cat jumps out of the litterbox and then gets comfy on my pillow, I’m not happy. But it’s the same scenario millions of pet owners cope with in their lives. They just wash the pillowcase, or not, depending on personal taste.

You know what I worry about? People. I don’t like it when people use the toilet and neglect to wash their hands. I don’t like it when doctors go from one patient to the next without washing, and spread infection all over the hospital. I don’t it when somebody strolls over to the stove and tastes the spaghetti sauce and puts the spoon back in the pot. I don’t like it when people send their flu-sick kids to daycare. Though I certainly understand it.

The point is, more people get health problems from other people’s negligent spreading of bacteria, and polluted air and water, and from their own bad habits, than they do from animal germs. They get more health problems from eating animals than they do from taking care of animals. That’s not to say animal germs are desirable. Only that they play a relatively small part in the overall human health picture.

One uniform here talks about how having those cats is “not a sanitary way to live.” True, it’s less sanitary than maintaining a cat-free home. But – news flash – there is no sanitary way to live. It’s a shame, and we all do the best we can with it, but as long as we’re here on Planet Earth, our existence isn’t sanitary.

Threat to human health – you know what’s a threat to human health? The police. How many times do they descend like an invading army on non-violent citizens? How often do they carry out busts at the wrong address and kill innocent people? There aren’t enough electrons in this computer to cover the subject of what a threat to human health the cops are.

Excrement is a threat? Yes, it is. And the most copious source of excrement in this situation is the massive amount of bullshit spewed out from the mouths of these officials.

Related:

Animal Hoarding – What the Hell is That?

video of some people who have gone way overboard in response to the cats next door

and the whole story behind what you saw there

The picture on this page is by pkernaghan via this Creative Commons license

Patriot: a Painting

Patriot: a painting in oil by Dale Hartman

Always and Everywhere, Politics Suck – Part 2

More of The Hippest Things Anybody Ever Said About Politics

The people in Berkeley and in New York don’t need my pictures. That’s not where the battle’s going to be won. Tom Laughlin (of the Billy Jack movies)

The U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? Think about it – it was written by very smart people, it’s served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we’re not using it anymore. Jay Leno

Just because something works doesn’t mean it is desirable. Sy Leon

A piece of blank paper is the only thing in the world I have a serious ambition to control. Peter Levi

When Dick Nixon was going like this and smiling, what do you think he was telling you? ‘Fuck you four times.’ Swami X

Isn’t it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That’s how we get things done. Any opposition … is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. … Of course we’re nonpolitical. The real power always is. C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength, 1945

The government can’t give out more than it takes in, and since the process of taking and redistributing costs something, the government actually gives out less than it takes in. This is why all “share the wealth” programs are actually “share the poverty” scams. Jim Lewis

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind, it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate – and quickly. Lazarus Long

In my grandparents’ generation, they felt enlightened to know multiple languages and have lived in several lands. Now today, there are dummies who can’t even spell or speak in English properly but they feel threatened by Spanish or Korean. Everything is a threat to some people. Marc Madow

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies. Groucho Marx

From time to time, writers have engaged in politics. Its effect on them as writers has been injurious. W. Somerset Maugham

Being in politics is like being a football coach; you have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important. Eugene McCarthy

Autonomy and cooperation make government irrelevant. Luke McGuff

Think like a free man and you will not be a slave. Menander

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. H.L. Mencken

I’d be perfectly fine with all the rules and red tape if we didn’t have to wait in line for so long that the people in the line eventually develop their own regional dialect. Dennis Miller

I regard politics as a thoroughly foul, rotten world. We get nowhere through politics. It debases everything. Henry Miller

Government is the only agency that can take a useful commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it totally worthless. Ludwig von Mises

Revolutionaries’ love is not something isolated from their activities, but rather is related to their political ideals. Tina Modotti

The one must be sacrificed for the good of the many, until the many are all sacrificed, one by one. Ward Moore and Avram Davidson

Conservativism used to be defined by a fear, if not a loathing, of government. Now conservatives pay deference to the state. Bill Moyers

The enemy is not conservatism. The enemy is not liberalism. The enemy is bullshit. Lars Erik Nelson

I don’t believe democracy should have a totally professional military force. I believe the military should be in large number made up of people who don’t want to be there and will help make the generals honest. Willie Nelson

I would be willing to get along with less information about this or that officeholder’s tax return or bedroom activities if I could get him or her to speak more clearly about maters of public policy. Edwin H. Newman

To have a career you need a society to have it in. You go off and you make works of art and you present them here. You’re glad to be making a contribution. America doesn’t provide that society any more. Phil Ochs

We conservatives don’t have gulags because they aren’t tax deductible. You can’t leverage gulag assets, and gulag merchandising rights are worth zilch. P.J. O’Rourke

People took politics seriously in those days. They used to start storing up rotten eggs weeks before an election. George Orwell

History is a bloody testament that sincerity can achieve atrocities which cynicism could never conceive. Jack Parsons

With my own weapons, design and color, I have wanted to conquer the conscience of mankind, so that this knowledge can lead us each day a step ahead on the road of liberty. Pablo Picasso

I’m more comfortable allowing individuals to be stupid, than requiring they not be. Brick Pillow

Prisons and schools are baby-sitting institutions so that we don’t glut the labor market. Baba Ram Dass

It is not self-sacrifice to die protecting that which you value: If the value is great enough, you do not care to exist without it. This applies to any alleged sacrifice for those one loves. Ayn Rand

(re: NATO, IMF, World Bank, GATT, WTO)
One of the oddities of the political situation in the United States since [WWII] has been the persistent belief on some sections of the right that the creation of these and similar international institutions are threats to America; when it is these institutions – backed up by force, over and covert, which have enabled the United States to consume substantially more than its share of the world’s energy and minerals. Robin Ramsey

I don’t wave a flag for anything. I’m a musician. Keith Richards

Of course, like the cliché’ moth courting the trite candle, the lit-up libertarian runs a constant risk. Is it not finer, however, to sizzle whole in the flame of freedom than to slowly stew to pieces in one’s own diminishing juices? Tom Robbins

I don’t make jokes, I just watch the government and report the facts. Will Rogers

Liberal – one whose heart is in the right place, but whose head is not. L.A. Rollins

Events are only real in the present tense – before they happen they’re hype, and after they happen they’re spin. Douglas Rushkoff

The criminal law can be used to prevent anti-social action on the part of those who do not belong to the government. Bertrand Russell

Much of the difficulty in attempting to restructure American and other societies arises from this resistance by groups with vested interests in the status quo. Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable and is resisted. Carl Sagan

Politicians fuck with people. That’s what they do. That’s their job. Every day they get up and wonder who they’re gonna fuck with that day. They they go and do it. John Sandford

I have a friend who’s collecting unemployment insurance. This guy has never worked so hard in his life as he has to to keep this thing going. He’s down there every week, waiting in the line and getting interviews and making up all these lies about looking for jobs. If they had any idea of the effort and energy that he is expending to avoid work, I’m sure they’d give him a raise. Jerry Seinfeld

I have no country – and the more I see of countries the better I like the idea. line from film The Shanghai Gesture

From Nixon on, every paranoid suspicion about the dirty tricks of government had proved an underestimate. Samuel Shem

I suggest that we resist apparent solutions that require victims to surrender their freedom, and freedom of expression, as a means of survival. Mary Simmerling

Many hackers tend to be reflexive liars….at least the ones found in newspaper and TV news stories – [they] can be counted on to perform for the listener, telling the gullible just about anything he or she wishes to hear. The result has been that almost any claim, no matter how nonsensical, has been published. George Smith

It is part of the sordid reality of our times that Hollywood is about the only institution left in our country big and powerful enough to challenge the influence of state propaganda that controls our lives with hardly a murmur from the same journalists so incensed by Stone. (re the JFK film) Sam Smith

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion. C. P. Snow

The simple truth of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites. Thomas Sowell

As estimated by the Bureau of National Affairs, the dollar cost of corporate crime in America is over ten times greater than the combined larcenies, thefts, robberies and burglaries committed by individuals. Gerry Spence

I used to believe that a real unitary world government would be a good idea but I changed my mind because of something Lenny Bruce said about the Soviet Union- if you want to imagine what it’s like in the Soviet Union, imagine an entire country run by the phone company. Norman Spinrad

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Lysander Spooner

The average fifth-grader these days doesn’t know whether Japan is a state or a city; wonders what happens when you get to the “edge” of the United states on a map; doesn’t know, and can’t understand what a glacier is, and even believes that the government is there to protect him! Rev. Ivan Stang (The Church of the Subgenius)

Let my own life go on undisturbed, and my private affairs prosper – and I don’t give a continental whether the government is being run by a Communist, or a Seventh-Day Adventist, or a Hottentot. Gertrude Stein

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space. Gloria Steinem

That’s how the government is. It was invented to do stuff that private enterprise doesn’t bother with, which means that there is probably no reason for it. Neal Stephenson

Good health turns out to be a positive by-product of the pursuit of other things. Edward Tenner

Any country which displays more than one statue of a living politician is a country which is headed for trouble. Paul Theroux

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. Henry David Thoreau

Anyone who puts his own conscience above the state is an anarchist. Allen Thornton

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then–we elected them. Lily Tomlin

Washington is like Calcutta, full of beggars, only they wear $1500 suits and don’t say please or thank you. Traffic

Liberalism, free-thinking and open inquiry will never object to appear in company with their opposites, because they have the conceit to think that they can quell those opposites; but the opposites will not appear in conjunction with liberalism, free-thinking and open inquiry. Anthony Trollope

You may be willing to give up your rights, but I won’t let you give up MY rights. Hal Turner

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy. Mark Twain

Q. What’s the difference between God and the Government?
A. The lord giveth and the lord taketh away; the government taketh and giveth away. Unknown

A policeman’s job is easy only in a police state. Unknown

It’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. Unknown

No bird flies too high when he flies with his own wings. Unknown

You can always find free cheese in a mousetrap. Unknown

Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. Unknown

When the government tells me not to do something I feel that it’s my patriotic duty to immediately go out and do it. Rico Vaselino

The American Revolution was over in 1781; Washington wasn’t elected our first president until 1789, and he was not elected by the people in a free election but by the select, male-only Federal Constitutional Convention. Michael Ventura

There is only one party, which is People with Money. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves – in other words, they just become better tyrants. David Foster Wallace

I am so weary about having been consistently right in all my political predictions for ten years. It is so boring seeing it all happen for the second time after one has gone through it in imagination. For you and Duff and Randolph life must be all one lovely surprise after another. Evelyn Waugh

Mom and Dad are biology, but you’re most like sick
if you get your kicks from politics.
Wean yourself now. Clean your own diapers.
Watch out for shoe tiers and nose wipers.
William Wharton in Scumbler

Fraudulence has become a national virtue and is well thought of in many circles. E. B. White

Since this is my first official government rapport I have chosen to write it by hand, because my favorite government documents are handwritten and they seem to work okay. Mason Williams

The Academy…Nobody seriously thought they’d rally behind the Branch Davidians and give the documentary Oscar to Waco: Rules of Engagement, perhaps the most chilling, revealing documentary about our present police-state mentality….Why recognize a new, present villain like the ATF….when you can trot those photogenic Nazis out, year after year?…You’d think impending murders would have some clout over ones committed fifty years ago, but nooooooooooo, not to the guys who cut the checks in Emerald City. Cintra Wilson

All governments are evil in one way or another. Leonard Woolf

In my Utopia, people would more or less give up on politics. Steve Wozniak

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well. Stephen Wright

When you’ve seen one stifling transnational media conglomerate, you’re seen them all. Jamie Zawinski

I wouldn’t call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either. Edward Zehr