Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Please stop spamming me with “not one damn dime” messages telling me to not buy anything on Thursday the 20th. It's a stupid idea and it won't accomplish anything.

First of all, I live in Mexico. Before that I lived in Canada. I haven't lived in the United States for a very long time, nor do I plan to do so again any time soon. So you're wasting my time and yours writing me and insisting that I not buy anything on the day of Bush's innauguration.

Second of all, the “apathy approach” to resistance is a farce.

You might as well call it “buy twice as much stuff on Friday the 21st day”. You think the economy lives in a one day window, or that the “international media” is going to be reporting on the day that a bunch of over-spending consumers took down the President with their lack of gluttony? You think Bush gives a damn what The Guardian UK prints? He doesn't even care what the New York Times prints. Power has been seized. I feel like that dingleberry John Stossel here, but give me a break. If you do this, you can bet that the only end-effect is that those in power will be laughing at you.

If you don't buy anything on the 20th, one of two things will happen. If you then have to go and buy all those things afterwards, then you've accomplished nothing. However, if you don't, then you've illustrated that there's something fundamentally wasteful about your current spending. Fixing that is a lot more than one let's all pat ourselves on the back for doing nothing day — it's a lifestyle change that you either make for the long term, or not at all. If you can't cut down your spending, at least buy from small, local companies as much as you can though — that will make a difference.

Want to get Bush out of power through your spending and consumer profile? Don't buy from the megacorporations that put him in power. Hurt the corporation and you hurt the Republican political machine… although that would require effort and thought and even research. Who's up for it?

One of the nicest things about living in a city with a high expat population is that you're constantly bumping into interesting people. Maybe the boring ones avoid me, but every gringo I've met down here has been a fascinating character (Johnny Strike for example).

Today I talked to two new people. The first is an old (well, not old, but older than me) sixties radical (now with the new left) from San Francisco who works at The Exploratorium and is relocating down here with her husband to escape a dying regime. The second was a pilot of thirty years who after retiring swore off airplanes and moved onto a 32' single hull sailboat with his wife — in the slip “next door” to him is a couple who just finished a twelve year old circumnavigation of the globe… Oh yeah, and his brother is Norman White, an eccentric robot artist that I'm sure some people reading this must know.

So I've been thinking about this recent problem with nazis, racists, and racist aplogists on IAM. It's always interesting to note what cowards they are, hiding and snivelling and backtracking and coming up with various excuses. You'd think that some of them would have the courage to at least stand up for themselves and say “this is what I'm about, fuck you, I don't want to be on your race-trader queer-loving site” and set up their own system. But as a group they're just too stupid and pathetic to do so, and have no choice but to be servile to the people they despise because their lack of talent and ability is so absolute that they are incapable of standing independently…

It's rather hilarious to watch degenerate aryans congratulate each other and joke about it, but I suppose these sad attitudes are the products of sad lives. I guess when it comes down to it I probably feel more sorry for them than anything — it's really a pitiful existence having to live in a dark hole filled with hate and fear, boasting about your strength while you cower in weakness. The only part I find a little disturbing is how readily the average person is willing to turn a blind eye and pretend it doesn't affect them, but I suppose that's the reason that most of the crap in this world persists.

Meh, now that “the list” has been made, maybe one of these afternoons I should have myself my own little Blitzkrieg and delete every last one of them without warning or notice. Maybe I'll delete one a day, at high noon, every day for two months. That might be fun… “Racist of the day execution!” Ah, so Saudi Arabia. Maybe I'll start deleting them on their birthdays, that seems appropriately sadistic… That certainly did seem to be the consensus of most IAM members as to what should be done. So if you're an ignorant racist fuck, or you play one in real life, you might want to do that deletion before I do it for you. You're even welcome to ask for a refund for your remaining time.

Yeah, it's about time for a witchhunt.

If you're gonna kill, do it with style and a sense of humor*.

Anyway… Charles “Mr. Torture” Graner — also proud of his great white heritage — has gotten ten years in prison. That's him on the right giving the big thumbs up for his service to the United States of America. You might be surprised to hear that I think that the sentence is a load of crap. Personally I don't think he deserves even a day in prison (although he does deserve a dishonorable discharge, and probably needs some serious counselling). I think the way this whole thing has been handled shows how scared the system is of taking any blame itself.

Graner's the “ringleader”? Give me a break.

There's one of two possible scenarios. First, it could be as Graner says, and the orders came from above. Certainly there's a lot of paperwork — cough — Alberto Gonzalez — strongly suggesting that's the truth. CACI International and Titan, military contracting firms, were implicated in coordinating this torture and helped run the prisons.

The other possible scenario is that Graner and the other guards simply lost it under a stressful situation that they weren't properly trained for. For those of you who don't know the Stanford Prison Experiment story, consider reading that now. Humans are not designed to be used in this way, and they break when you try and force them. Especially cowardly racist scum like Graner. As soon as a person starts concerning themselves with the immalleable elements of their or someone else's humanity, you can say with certainty that their thinking processes have failed in some way.

Either way, blaming Graner, let alone calling him the ringleader, is deceitful. Now, maybe you're asking yourself what punishment the corporations that ran the whole thing got (since as you know, Alberto Gonzalez who laid out the legal framework for the torture was promoted to Attorney General)… that “punishment” is a new $16 million contract for CACI, and a whopping $164 million renewal for Titan — a company that is also being investigated for fraud and embezzlement of government funds.

Don't even bother trying to talk to George “God made me do it” Bush about any of this. As far as he's concerned, America is 100% behind him — the election “ratified” his actions in Iraq — so I guess that means the President has officially “blamed” Republicans? Well, thanks for all the new terrorists. That's showing moxie, Mr. President. When New York City loses another landmark, you'll really have stuck it to those liberals in the Blue States that don't know what's good for them or the nation.

So…

These were your choices America World**:

1. $100 billion and counting wasted on Iraq. Well over a thousand Americans dead, tens of thousands of Iraqis dead, and a terror breeding gound that almost guarantees more devastating attacks on the US homeland are inevitable.

       or…

2. Save $20 billion and get a world that no longer knows hunger, poverty, or preventable disease.

According to Bush and the Republican voters, America made the right choice with option number one. Do you agree? Was it the wise and prudent path? Has it kept America as that shining beacon that we all fantasize and dream and hope that it should be? I believe option two could take America to that place.

Graner gets ten years in prison, people keep dying, people keep getting rich, and the whole while Bush laughs and cracks jokes about not finding any WMDs. Who are the real criminals? And the real soulless evil? And what can be done about it***?