Yearly Archives: 2014

Individual Wealth in Perspective

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billionairehousing

By James Hall

Source: Negotium

A quaint comparison of what money can buy in today’s market has Bill Gates being able to afford every home in Boston. His $76.6 billion reported by the Washington Post or the $78.4 billion by Forbes seems a pittance when put up against John D. Rockefeller’s peak wealth of $318.3 billion (based on 2007 US dollar). According to your resident commissars over at MSNBC, “The median net worth of American households hasn’t changed much over the past decades, it’s about $20,000.” So if Gates decided to purchase all the Beantown houses, whom would he pay for the bricks and mortar? Certainly, most Americans may think of “their home is their castle”, but few actually own a debt free deed to their grand estate. No wonder the banks and financial institutions, are so fond of placing liens on real property.

The proportional context of looking at individual wealth within the relative value of global wealth is examined in the essay; It’s A “0.6%” World: Who Owns What Of The $223 Trillion In Global Wealth, seems trite. Zerohedge concludes, “The bottom line: 29 million, or 0.6% of those with any actual assets under their name, own $87.4 trillion, or 39.3% of all global assets.”

CSwealth

Here are the stunning facts:

“In 2012, 3.2 billion individuals – more than two-thirds of the global adult population – have wealth below USD 10,000, and a further one billion (23% of the adult population) are placed in the USD 10,000–100,000 range.

The average wealth holding is modest in the base and middle segments of the pyramid, total wealth amounts to USD 39 trillion, underlining the potential for new consumer trends products and for the development of financial services targeted at this often neglected segment.

The remaining 373 million adults (8% of the world) have assets exceeding USD 100,000.

And then the top of the pyramid: 29 million US dollar millionaires, a group which contains less than 1% of the world’s adult population, collectively owns nearly 40% of global household wealth.

Some 84,500 individuals are worth more than USD 50 million, and 29,000 are worth over USD 100 million.”

After absorbing this macro economic analysis, it should ease the pain that the stewardship of world wealth is in such trustworthy hands. No need to burden the masses with the weight of building wealth, when that formula for getting to the top of the financial pyramid, has room for only the few. The expert obelisk creators never meant for wealth sharing and the tools to construct one’s own prosperity are not included in your capital accumulation education. The liability of mortgage and property tax obligations to retain your edifice requires regular payments to maintain the privilege of possession. Ownership is only a conditional wealth asset.

Investopedia says 3 Simple Steps To Building Wealth are:

“You need to make it. This means that before you can begin to save or invest, you need to have a long-term source of income that’s sufficient enough to have some left over after you’ve covered your necessities.

You need to save it. Once you have an income that’s enough to cover your basics, you need to develop a proactive savings plan.

You need to invest it. Once you’ve set aside a monthly savings goal, you need to invest it prudently.”

Ordinary consumers do not build great fortunes. The elementary prescription for “getting ahead” is severely limited in thinking for a world that frequently conducts business as a blood sport. However, many of the enterprises that carve out a market for their products or services have a distinct edge over the unconnected entrepreneur. Namely, government directed and controlled startups or collaborated ventures frequently become the commercial giants of the economy. Here lays the confusion when defining wealth as an accounting device of personal ownership of assets.

In addition, governments are often in the privatization and sale of state assets. The Economists reports that the “IMF estimate that non-financial government assets average 75% of GDP in advanced economies. In most countries, these are worth more than financial assets (stakes in listed firms, sovereign-wealth and securities holdings and the like).”

Liquid cash flow and high worth individuals, especially with inside track contacts, are able to cherry pick sweet heart deals. Such opportunities, usually transfers treasure, but infrequently are engines of new wealth creation. The only guarantee is that money, made or lost depending upon the accounting needs of the vulture predator, is never an option for the normal hard working taxpayer.

Unless people accept the reality that creating and growing wealth is a noble objective that involves the widespread commerce participation of a merchant class, the outrageous disparity of the top down wealth stream will widen even more, as the top tier inclusion narrows to fewer mega-billionaires.

Global business encourages transnational conglomerates with commercially identifiable names and logos. When entire economies prevail under a business plan that eliminates any rival competition, and achieves sole market dominance, the prospects to advance the individual wealth ledger of the average person diminishes.

An opportunistic society can only exist when independent business flourishes. Government bureaucrats and corporate technocrats oppose an unambiguous free market economy. As the map of the über-billionaires illustrates, their checkbook could swallow up entire cities. However, digesting, let alone growing communities into quality environments for future generations, takes an active involvement in the wealth building process that rewards contributing players.

Without a widespread populace practicing mutually beneficial business transactions, the capacity to achieve the skills necessary to compete successfully, will never develop. Instead of making money, saving money and investing money, learn the aptitude of business as a lifelong endeavor.

The poor will always be scraping the bottom, until they learn how to advance their abilities for the betterment of their own families. The alternative to greater concentration of wealth is to initiate a viable substitute to the financial stranglehold that furthers the appetites of egomaniacs like the character, Bretton James in the movie Money Never Sleeps. In the end, the true individual wealth that anyone can attain is the sincerity and moral substance of his or her own character. Money may not snooze from making more cash, but is only a means to elevate living a life worth lived.

In such a quest, the super rich may have a net worth equivalent to one’s property, but they can never afford the essence of your family or measure of your community.

 

The Six-Hour Day

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Source: The Hipcrime Vocab

But don’t look for it in Calvinist America anytime soon, where we’re always on the hunt to ferret out “moochers:”

Gothenburg (Sweden) (AFP) – Robert Nilsson, a 25-year-old mechanic in Sweden’s second city Gothenburg, may be the harbinger of a future where people work less and still enjoy a high standard of living. He gets out of bed at the same time as everyone else, but instead of rushing to work, he takes it easy, goes for a jog, enjoys his breakfast, and doesn’t arrive at his Toyota workshop until noon, only to punch out again at 6:00 pm.

“My friends hate me. Most of them think because I work six hours, I shouldn’t be paid for eight,” Nilsson said, talking while fitting part of a rear window onto a Toyota Prius with swift, expert moves.

Sweden often stuns first-time visitors with its laid-back prosperity, making foreigners wonder how it is possible to have both lots of money and lots of leisure.

Part of the answer, according to economists, is a productive and well-educated workforce that adapts to new technologies quicker than most. Exactly how much –- or how little –- Swedes work compared with other nations is a somewhat open question.

“We have a 40-hour work week, but also we have a little more absence than many people and we start work late in life because we study longer,” said Malin Sahlen, an analyst at Timbro, a libertarian Stockholm-based think tank. In 2012, the average Swede worked a total of 1,621 hours, according to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This is more than the Netherlands with 1,381 hours, but less than Britain with 1,654 hours or the United States with 1,790 hours – and way below Chile’s 2,029 and Mexico’s 2,226 hours.

“We could work more, that’s a fact,” said Sahlen.

But far from looking to increase time spent at work, some in Sweden are out to prove that less is more and that cutting hours can boost productivity.

In an international productivity ranking by the Conference Board, a non-profit business research organisation, Sweden was already placed close to the top, coming 11th out of 61 countries. The United States was third, the Netherlands number five, and Britain number 13, whereas Chile and Mexico were both in the bottom third.

[…]

Left-wing councillor Pilhem says the concept has already proven its merits — at mechanic Nilsson’s workplace, Toyota. Toyota’s Gothenburg branch introduced the six-hour day in 2002 to make its facilities more efficient by having two shifts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, instead of a single, longer one. Nilsson confirms that in his experience a six-hour day — paid as much as eight — is more efficient because it requires fewer breaks.

“Every time you have a break, it takes 10 to 15 minutes to get back to work, because you have to see where you were when you left off,” he said.

That efficiency is reflected in the salary, as the Toyota workshop pays technicians like Nilsson 29,700 Swedish kronor (3,300 euro, $4,510) a month, well above the 25,100 kronor (2,790 euro, $3,810) national average for workers in the private sector.

“It was a huge success straight away,” said Toyota service centre manager Elisabeth Jonsson. “We saw the results, and everything was working for the staff, for the company, for the customers, so I don’t think we ever had any discussion about putting an end to it.”

Swedes test a future of less work, more play (Yahoo! News)

Clearly, laziness will turn Sweden into an impoverished, hellish dystopia. Oh, wait, that’s the U.S. I’m describing.

Here’s a Reddit page on the article. From that page:

I used to work salary at 30 hrs a week. They told me I needed to go to 40 and get a corresponding pay increase. I did not want to but they made me.

Getting in at 9am and leaving at 3pm left me so much free time that working 30 hours a week felt like a hobby. I had more time outside of work during the day than at work. Now my butt is stuck in a chair 40 hours a week still doing 30 hours a week worth of work.

Though instead of adding just 2 hours to the work day, it added more like 4.

Extra Rush hour driving time 45 mins each way instead of 15- 1 hour extra.

Necessary Lunch Break- 1 hour extra

2 hours extra at the office- 2 hrs

So, even though I got a corresponding 33% increase in pay (from 6 hrs a day to 8 hrs a day), the time it is costing me increased by 61% (from 6.5 hrs to 10.5 hrs).

So technically, by earning more I got a pay cut.

Despite my top line salary going up 33%, my earnings per hour devoted to work dropped by 17%.

Definitely not worth it.

Comedian Rik Mayall Dead at 56

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Rik

I was surprised and saddened to hear the news that counterculture comedian Rik Mayall died in his home in London yesterday. The cause of death hasn’t been released but Scotland Yard reported that it was not believed to be suspicious. Mayall was best known for his memorable roles in cult comedy shows such as “The Young Ones”, “Black Adder”, “The New Statesman” and “Bottom”. In a tribute published by The Guardian yesterday, some of his Young Ones colleagues had this to say about him:

“very, very sad and upset that we’ve lost Rik, who was inspirational, bonkers, and a great life force… a brilliant comedian and someone who made everyone else’s lives more fun. He will be really, really missed”. – Nigel Planer

“Comedy is truly great is when it comes out of nothing, and the greatest of comedians, like Rik, have that rare ability to conjure laugh after laugh, not from endless words, but from a single look or one absurd gesture … It was in his bones. Sweet Rik, much loved – what a loss.” – Alexei Sayle

“There were times when Rik and I were writing together when we almost died laughing. They were some of the most carefree, stupid days I ever had, and I feel privileged to have shared them with him. And now he’s died for real. Without me. Selfish bastard.” – Adrian Edmonson

Not sure exactly when this live performance was recorded, but though it seems to be early in his career it captures the manic energy of some of Mayall’s later roles:

The New Zealand Herald made a commendable attempt to compile some of Rik Mayall’s greatest televised moments (there’s too many to list): http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11270946

Rik Mayall’s second-to-the-last televised work before his death was as the narrator of the following animation for Channel 4 written and produced by Louis Hudson and Ian Ravenscroft called Don’t Fear Death:

The following is a clip from One By One, an intriguing but difficult to find feature film directed by Diane Jessie Miller and featuring one of Mayall’s final performances:

Who got to CNN? Network pulls scheduled interview with Donald Sterling’s beat-up mistress

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By Daniel Hopsicker

Source: Mad Cow Morning News

Donald Sterling has unsavory links with the owner of the New York City boutique hotel where his former mistress was beaten up Sunday night.

Four developments during the past few days in New York City offer dramatic evidence that questions recently raised here (and elsewhere) about the links to organized crime of real estate mogul, sexual sleazeball, casual racist, and soon-to-to-ex LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling are both serious and well-founded.

The first thing that occurred has already received lots of coverage. The woman who blew the whistle on Sterling’s casual racism, his former mistress V Stiviano, was badly beaten Sunday night by two white thugs in hoodies at a swank boutique hotel  in New York City.

Dom-V

The second development involves the venue where the beatdown occurred, whose significance remains largely unknown.  The Hotel Gansevoort, outside whose doors Stiviano was assaulted, belongs to one William Achenbaum.

Until just three weeks before being busted, Hotelier Achenbaum had “owned”— as a straw front man for the CIA—a Gulfstream II luxury jet (N987SA) that was caught carrying 4 tons of cocaine in the Yucatan as part of the same operation.

During the time  the two men controlled the plane, it made numerous trips to the U.S. base in Guantanamo, the McClatchy Newspapers group reported,  flying extraordinary renditions for the CIA. 

Achenbaum’s partner in the hotel, Arik Kislin of Long Island, whose family is repeatedly linked to the Russian Mob in published reports,  also owned the Long Beach CA air charter company, Air Rutter Intern’l, offered the Gulfstream II for charter. 

Unsavory links to the global drug trade

Are these facts at all relevant to the current tawdry Donald Sterling saga? Absolutely. Because Donald Sterling and William Achenbaum both share an unsavory link to an expatriate Saudi named Ramy El Batrawi, a longtime lieutenant of notorious CIA fixer Adnan Khashoggi. 

El Batrawi and Achenbaum both owned airplanes used in a drug trafficking enterprise in Florida between 2005-2008 that top DEA officials in Miami called an out of control “rogue operation” of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Tampa.

For his part, El Batrawi has made “fronting” for the CIA, with planes and even airlines, into a career. During Iran Contra,  he posed as the owner and president of an airline in Miami called Jetborne that secretly flew Oliver North’s TOW missiles to the mullahs in Iran.

Later court testimony, during bankruptcy proceedings, revealed that Jetborne had all along been a CIA proprietary airline.

“Closest thing to a real scandal we’re like to see hereabouts, nowadays”

In July 2003, the drug trafficking operation that DEA officials say was being protected by federal agents in the Tampa ICE Office received a second DC-9 (N12ONE), “sold” or “transferred”  or just ‘passed along” to  the operation by Ramy El Batrawi.

The operation, called Operation Mayan Jaguar, would soon blow up into the closest thing to a real scandal that anyone is likely to see in America for a long time.

It resulted in the forced sale of America’s 4th largest bank, Wachovia, after that bank was discovered to be laundering drug money from Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel used to purchase a fleet of 50 American aircraft to be used as drug planes.

Links between recent owners of the two drug planes, first discovered during an examination of FAA registration records, suggested a long-running and continuing criminal conspiracy to engage in massive drug trafficking.

Before the Gulfstream II business  was “parked” in the name of New York real estate developer Achenbaum and his partner Kislin with ties to the Russian Mob, the plane had passed through the hands of a secretive Midwestern media baron named Stephen Adams, also a Republican fund-raiser extraordinaire (he was one of the ‘elite’ Bush’s Rangers), who was personally buying over $1 million of billboard ads for George W. Bush for his 2000 Presidential election bid.

Scammers, fraudsters, grifters & bunco artists of the national security state

Adams had another business partner, Michael Farkas, whose company SkyWay owned a DC-9 (N900SA) which became the first drug plane the Tampa operation lost to a big bust in the Yucatan. 

SkyWay, the company whose DC-9 was busted in April 2006 in the Yucatan with 5.5 tons of cocaine, for example, had been founded the year before by a slippery Miami  attorney named Michael Farkas. 

According to SEC filings,  Stephen Adams and Michael Farkas jointly control Holiday RV Superstores, Inc.,  used by mastermind Adnan Khashoggi in the complicated securities fraud which stole as much as $300 million from investors and taxpayers. 

Companies Farkas controlled, like Holiday RV and Imperial Credit, were full partners in the stock manipulation scheme, along with Stephen Adams’ company, which passed on the Gulfstream II luxury jet to William Achenbaum.

In an example of extremely sloppy tradecraft, Khashoggi and El Batrawi’s partners in the massive fraud were men who’d provided planes to the drug trafficking operation, making “plausible deniability” something of a sticky wicket. 

“The complex sale of the Gulfstream II jet and its end in the Mexican jungle highlight the increasingly complicated illicit drug trade,” read the McClatchy Newspapers’ account on September 29, 2007.

From ‘whack-a-mole’ to ‘hide the pea,’ its still a sordid business

The ‘players” were an ecumenical cast of international characters:  Republican fund-raiser Adams, Saudi arms dealer Khashoggi, oligarchs in the Russian Mob,  elements of American military and civilian intelligence who populated the executive ranks at SkyWay, and a large but dirty San Diego defense contractor called Titan Corp. that would soon get even larger when it was merged into L3, one of today’s behemoth defense contractors. 

What this means, should any courageous federal prosecutor take note, is that the drug plane’s rapid series of ownership changes are nothing more than sham transactions, part of the CIA’s traditionally sophisticated game of “hide the pea” designed to conceal the aircraft’s true owners. From what we’ve begun to learn of Sterling, he appears to fit right in.

Just knowing unsavory characters who are also acquainted is hardly a crime. What involvement does Donald Sterling have in the sordid business?  

The answer comes several months after the SEC charges Ramy El-Batrawi and his boss Adnan Khashoggi, in April 2006, with masterminding a massive financial fraud that resulted in investor and taxpayer losses of more than $100 million (The figure later doubled.) 

The two Saudis were the lead actors in a massive financial fraud that earned the name Stockwalk, that complemented the drug trafficking operation by using stock from the same companies—led by Khashoggi and El Batrawi’s company, GenesisIntermedia—that had been supplying drug planes.

The ‘other’ Donald issues a bizarre press release

Donald Sterling enters the action just as the two Saudis are being hammered by bad publicity from their recent indictment, which gets so bad that both men consider going on the lam to avoid the police. Khashoggi eventually will, living quite comfortably, according to a source in Palm Beach Florida, in a guest cottage on the grounds of Donald Trump’s Mar a Largo Mansion.

At this crucial moment Sterling steps in to help stem the tide of bad publicity swamping Khashoggi and El Batrawi’s efforts to move on to another scam. Sterling, of course, has considerable public relations clout. He  regularly buys full-page ads touting his charitable achievements in the Los Angeles Times.

In early August Donald Sterling  names Ramy El Batrawi the winner of Sterling’s non-existent “Humanitarian of the Year Award” for El Batrawi’s (also non-existent) efforts to solve the problem of the homeless on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.

No one was more surprised at being named “Humanitarian of the Year” than Ramy El-Batrawi himself, judging by his reaction. He freely admits to the LA Times that he’s made no contribution of money or time to helping the homeless.

But it’s what happened in the aftermath of  the Sterling mistress beat-down that provides the biggest shock. 

Did CNN cave before the bell?

Sterling’s  former mistress V Stiviano was in New York to appear in an hour-long interview scheduled with Anderson Cooper on CNN Monday night. 

After the beating, her camp leaks to the press that Sterling’s former mistress “started getting death threats almost immediately after Sterling’s racist rants — which she recorded — were made public,” said a well-placed source to Radar Online, which was consistently out in front of the pack on the story.

“Most of the threats were made on social media, “the source continued, “and this is one of the reasons why she has scaled back her activity. It has been very scary for V, and she also hired a bodyguard.” 

But plucky Ms V is undeterred, her attorney tells reporters late Sunday night.  “Stiviano will still be on Anderson Cooper’s show Monday night. No one will intimidate her.”

Maybe no one will intimidate Stiviano. But somebody sure did get to CNN.

 A story nobody is talking about…yet

Just hours before the scheduled sit-down, and with no explanation, CNN removed Anderson Cooper from the broadcast.  Producers notified Stiviano that Cooper was unavailable, and that Chris Cuomo would now be conducting the interview. 

Stiviano immediately backed out. Thanks but no thanks, the former mistress’ replied. Nothing against Cuomo, her attorney explained. “But Anderson had previously met with V and Donald Sterling several weeks ago when he flew out to Los Angeles. Her camp has a relationship with  Anderson.” 

Makes sense.  What doesn’t make sense: Who kept Anderson Cooper from doing an interview he’d already prepared for? And why?

To put it bluntly: Who got to CNN? 

Police Commissioner comes down with virulent case of hoof in mouth

What happened next, the 4th development, is possibly the most revealing. On Monday night NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton weighs in with gratuitous comments about his feelings towards Sterling’s former mistress.  

Asked about V Stiviano’s lawyer’s claim that she was punched out by a pair of N-word-spewing punks outside a Meatpacking District hot spot on Sunday night, Bratton said he wished Donald Sterling’s infamous ex had never shown up in the Big Apple. 

“I wasn’t even aware she was in town,” he stated. “We would have hoped that she would stay on the West Coast.”

A follow-up question to Bratton I’d have loved to hear someone ask: “Commissioner Bratton, who do you mean by ‘we’?”

Up for the lead in “Vile little Man”

Don’t all victimized citizens deserve to be treated with respect by the police? Apparently, if you’ve offended someone as “connected” as Sterling, the answer is probably no.

Given Sterling’s unsavory links with William Achenbaum, owner of the New York City boutique hotel where V Stiviano was beaten up,  makes Bratton’s comments seem particularly menacing and gratuitous.   

The FBI has long touted its success in critically weakening the forces of organized crime through its efforts to break up the Mafia in New York City. 

But they clearly remain powerful enough to pull strings at CNN.

Deep Anger

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By Darren Fleet with Stefanie Krasnow

Source: Adbusters

In a better world, there’d be no reason to write this. In that world, plastic bags would be outlawed, rednecks would voluntarily stop driving those obnoxious Ford F-350s and the yogis in yuppie neighborhoods would stop believing that a hybrid SUV could save the planet. But that’s not the world we live in.

In this world, when push comes to shove, most of us are too comfortable to care, too polite to speak out. With so much at stake we need to rediscover something we lost along the way: our anger.

I’ve been around a while now and all I can say is that everything has gotten worse. Deforestation. Species extinction. Overfishing. Melting glaciers. CO2 through the roof. We won a few symbolic victories here and there, but the big picture is total loss. And that’s why this isn’t your standard a-better-world-is-possible-peace-and-love-we’re-all-in-this-together-be-the-change-you-want-to-see circle jerk that has become the cachet of an entire generation of professional activists.

I’m a child of the “awareness generation,” the one who grew up learning to reduce, reuse and recycle. I remember first learning about global warming and climate change in high school in the 90s. Back then it was called the Greenhouse Gas Effect. Most of my early environmental knowledge came from classroom videos about acid rain, slash-and-burn logging in the Amazon and the hole in the ozone layer. There was also the slogan “think globally, act locally” plastered across my Social Studies 11 class wall. Those of us who cared two cents about anything believed in that mantra religiously, even though by that point almost everything around us—the school supplies, the clothes on our backs, even the food in our stomachs—came from across an ocean.

At the same time that we were learning to be more conscientious about our market choices, the global bazaar was pried open by the WTO, NAFTA and GATT trade regimes, effectively eliminating any possibility we had to make truly environmental choices. Before we were even old enough to know about our carbon footprint, it was already ten times that of a kid in the developing world. Meanwhile, our history books were full of inspirational Gandhi, MLK and Mandela quotes, all driving home the point that change, even revolution, was sentimental, nice, easy, positive. The first time the cops threatened to arrest us at an environmental protest, we shit our pants. Turns out positivity has its limits. And that’s exactly how we got into this mess.

There’s nothing worse than interorganizational bitching, especially among environmental campaigners and NGOs. We’re like a bunch of abused children taking out our frustrations on each other when we should be unified and directing our focus elsewhere. But since we don’t have the collective gumption to stand up to the man, we squabble among ourselves; it’s the only way to release the impotent rage we all feel. Even so, I have this to say: every time I see one of my environmental heroes jump on the corporate bandwagon to say some stupid-ass shit about how there are no sides in the climate struggle—how pessimism is an affront to the imagination—my heart breaks.

Recently, best-selling environmental author, TED talker, anthropologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence Wade Davis went down that road. In an interview with a Vancouver newspaper he reflected proudly on his days as an energy company consultant, saying, “In all these resource conflicts, there are no enemies, only solutions.” This kind of well mannered sweetness, in the face of such a violent problem, is our greatest problem.

So if we’re going to get serious about disrupting an increasingly apocalyptic horizon, we’ve got to challenge the feel-good Hallmark sentiments that inundated my generation. We have to say fuck the TED talks, with their sincere but vacuous optimism. Fuck the positivity gurus claiming the world is not dying, it’s only changing. And fuck environmentalists willing to play nice with Big Oil and Big Energy, saying things like: “you’re not going to stop the tar sands. It’s naive to think you can,” as Davis recently proclaimed. This type of thinking sounds a lot like those fearful souls who thought apartheid was too entrenched to defeat, that Big Tobacco was too rich to take on, that austerity was too fixed to shake—that there’s nothing you, or I, or we can do in the face of a multi-trillion dollar industry. Truth is, nothing on this Earth is inevitable.

Last year, I watched in amazement as a group of radical First Nations scholars brought down the house in Vancouver at an academic conference called Global Power Shifts. Rather than reply with academia’s standard response when confronted with a social issue—“that’s problematic”—they had the guts to take a stand. One in particular, Dr. Glen Coulthard of the Yellowknife Dene, delivered a paper saying that folks on the front-lines of land, climate and environmental battles in Canada are tired of being told not be angry; that given the ongoing process of colonization, theft and exploitation, anger is not only the natural response, but the only moral response.

What he hinted at was a resurgent anger. Deep Anger. The type of anger that overturns tables, defends the weak from the strong, would rather die than live on its knees. Most mainstream environmentalists don’t like this kind of language. It means you have to do more than sign a petition. It means you can’t count miniscule corporate concessions as victories. It means you have to let yourself unravel a bit.

In our culture, anger is seen as impolite, brutish, violent and indulgent. It’s politically incorrect. It makes people squeamish. We’re afraid of anger like we’re afraid of obsessive passion and overt eroticism. Anger is dark and dirty, but Deep Anger is a form of empathy, care, even love.

Psychologists explain that anger is a natural and appropriate response to violating behavior, to situations where our boundaries have been crossed. Not having a say in whether or not ecocide is going to happen—and being asked to participate in a calm and nice debate about whether or not the tar sands should expand or not—is a violation of our boundaries. Yet somehow, we’re expected to smile and keep our imaginations open as if positivity were the goal of the movement.

The great irony is that, despite our civilization’s claim to reason, there is a deep irrationality, a fatal blind spot blocking out emotion and sanity. We’re so deeply in denial about what is happening to our planet that we’re risking our own extinction.

Unless humanity breaks through the denial, unless we start to get angry—fuckin’ angry—then we won’t ever be able to accept the challenge at hand. We won’t ever be able to rise up and face our planetary reality … we won’t ever be able to fight … and we won’t be able to win.

Saturday Matinee: Paprika

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satoshikon4

“Paprika” (2006) was the final feature-length anime masterpiece directed by Satoshi Kon, who died a few years later at age 46 of pancreatic cancer. Paprika is seemingly influenced by the novels of Philip K. Dick and films of Terry Gilliam, with a plot involving a radical psychotherapy treatment using a technology which allows one to view and interact with other people’s dreams. When a mysterious culprit steals the technology and uses it to cause the deaths of two scientists, it’s up to a determined detective and Paprika, a dream world avatar, to solve the mystery and prevent a chaotic merging of dreams and reality.

A How-To Guide to Eating Weed Edibles, in Response to Maureen Dowd’s Marijuana Meltdown

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Amsterdam-420-cannabis-products-window

By Ryan Nerz

Source: Fusion.net

Ten sentences in to New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd’s piece about trying marijuana edibles in Colorado (while admittedly cackling out loud), my sense of responsibility as a journalist and cannabis connoisseur kicked in. This was the sentence that triggered it: “I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours.”

Whoah! This is not as it should be, and barely even makes sense. If someone gave you an unknown glass of alcohol and told you to down it sans questions, would you? And when they revealed that it was Everclear while you coughed your lungs out, would you write an editorial about how people should be more clear about telling you what you’re drinking, even if you don’t ask? Dowd expands the conversation beyond her personal observations, and goes on to discuss the epidemic of suicides, murders and emergency room visits prompted by folks misusing edible marijuana treats in states like Colorado and Washington.

From my perspective, before we get into strategies for creating labels for pot edibles – Dowd suggests “maybe a stoned skull and bones?” – let’s start with something a bit more practical.

Here’s my step-by-step guide to eating weed edibles:

1. Don’t buy or eat an edible if it doesn’t clearly state how much THC is inside. If it’s a candy bar, it should be divided into partitions (a la a Hershey bar), and you should do the math to determine the amount of THC is in each partition.

2. If you don’t use weed regularly, start with five mg of THC. If you’re the adventurous type, try 10 mg. But no more. Then wait 30-45 minutes. How do you feel? If you feel groovy, try moving up by five mg increments – waiting a half-hour in between – but do not exceed a total of 15 mg of THC. That’s basically the equivalent of smoking a small joint of middle-grade weed on your own. That should do. 20 mg could get you into Dowd Meltdown territory.

3. If you’re a regular weed user, start with 10 mg of THC. Wait 30-45 minutes. Monitor your stoned-ness, and try moving up by 5-10 mg of THC, but don’t go past 25-30 mg of THC. If you’re approaching 40 mg of THC and you haven’t reached the orbit level you’re used to, you might just have a problem.

At the end of the article, the owner of a pot edible company makes the following observation about why warnings might not solve this weed edible overdose problem: “My kids put rocks and batteries in their mouths.”

Be an adult about edibles. If you know how much chardonnay to drink, figure out how much weed to eat. If you don’t, it’s kind of on you if you end up in the fetal position in your hotel shower.