Sea Cape Cod by Michael Mosier

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the cool, cloudy and calm island of Nantucket! Great to be with you and yours on this Monday afternoon–the 30th day of March, 2015–awaiting some precipitation fairly shortly, as this little sand bar created 11,500 years ago by “the Last Great Ice Age” readies itself for yet another wonderful summer season ahead…

Happy times in Boston today as well, a real celebration of light, humor, empathy and leadership coming together at the much anticipated dedication to a new “national monument” of sort, presided over by none other than the President of the United States himself–Mr. Barack Obama–who was just heard by this reporter on a little ham radio of sorts–offering perhaps his best speech to date–as he dedicated, along with Kennedy’s and Republicans alike, the newly opened “Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate”, right next door to the hallowed JFK Museum, that will hopefully introduce young people to the ways and means of our hallowed United States Senate.   Opening up young minds to possibility and greatness; next generations comprehending just how this country survived two brutal world wars, a civil war and the assassination of our greatest leaders.

This new ‘intelligentsia’ leaving behind a legacy that will be endured forever.  Not because of Teddy Kennedy (who passed away in 2009 at the age of 77), but moreover for what he stood for.  In a word–EMPATHY.

Being able to “lend a healing hand” (please read “True Compass”, by the late, great Senator from this equally great state of Massachusetts), in America for so long, this man–”the Last Lion of the Senate”–will be remembered for that fight to do right, against all odds, eventually coming out the victor.  For even in death, that legacy of love, compassion and ‘the healing hand’ from those more fortunate in this world ring TRUE to anyone with a heart (even those with half a heart).  REAL MEN (or women), who are only looking for an avenue to do that right thing in that U.S. Senate for the good of all her people, not just that chosen few who have hijacked her and will pay a price.

After all, as President Obama just commented on in that epic speech only a few moments ago, it was Teddy’s ability to put himself in another shoe that set him apart from most of the bought and paid for Senators you may see on that famed floor today.  Not all, but let’s be real, it has become an epidemic, one that revolves around GREED at it’s very core, a core that is rotting from the inside out. 

“…when will the greed stop?” (Teddy Kennedy on the U.S. Senate floor, circa 2007).

FEAR is the modus operandi running the show in Washington D.C. in this early 21st Century.  And let no on tell you differently.  As our great President Barack Obama stated, and I only slightly paraphrase here, “…Teddy Kennedy was my friend.  His suffering was remarkable. Yet by choice he chose LOVE. Instead of becoming bitter and disillusioned with tragedy of his both brothers; horrible violent public deaths as well as the suffering of his son fighting away cancer, he found it within him to look beyond the partisan horse hockey going on in D.C., and focus in on the current needless suffering going on in today’s “modern” America.

One that has seen the rich only get rich by the Wall Street minute, while the poor, ‘enriched’ with predatory “pay day loans“, only slink away into obscurity, disillusionment and irrelevance.  Teddy truly cared for these people.  He became that man we all should strive to be–one who viewed the needs of others above his own, indeed, they outweighed his own in the end.  Fiery speeches on that U.S. Senate floor that, as President Obama said only a few minutes ago, “…sent nervous aides scrambling to find the next chart”.

Down to the pattern and color of the carpet and wall paper of the real U.S. Senate in Washington, this “Edward M. Kennedy Institute of the U.S. Senate” will offer more than just fun tour of the Kennedy family’s  long and fabled tale.  This will have a purpose, and like Teddy, that is, was and forever will be the whole point!

To live life with purpose–to have goals and aspirations that go beyond our ’self’.  Going well beyond the common trait and habit as humans to just do enough to get by.  No sir, this man was for real. Like his brother Jack said so many moons ago (Teddy truly becoming the older brother after he and Bobby passed), “…ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

My deepest hopes are that this jewel in Boston will be given a close look by coming generations, forging a new America a little more interested in what our forefathers had in mind centuries ago, one “of, by and for the people at large. One not so interested in those “special interests”, oping rather to help out “the least among US”. Starting with the poorest of the poor, ridding the country once and for all of “Citizens United”… and all of the evil therein.  “

Two quotes from the late, great Massachusetts Senator’s memoir, “True Compass” I thought relevant in today’s 21st Century American political power struggle.  One from page 394, where Kennedy interacted with then U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who was there “…to offer an eloquent tribute Jack’s memory in a 1985 fundraiser to endow the John F. Kennedy Library…I asked the president about his ranch and whether he was able to get there often.  Reagan brightened at the mention of the subject and spoke about it for fifteen minutes about how he’d had to give up his old ranch when he was elected governor of California because the taxes on it were half of his salary.  Since then, he’d found new property in a mountainous area that referred to as goat country.  Mrs. Reagan said it was full of trees and pastures, terrific for riding.”

Chapter 14   “The Shock of Silence” 1969

“…I returned to shore–to the Senate, to what was left of my world–consumed with the need to spur myself forward with activity.  Devastation about Bobby’s death–and with it, all my pent-up grief about Jack–threatened to overtake me.  My only defense for giving into it was to keep active, keep moving, keep churning forward.  I feared that despair and darkness might overtake and smother me if I slackened my drive.“

May that Divine drive be with US ALL!  God be with Teddy Kennedy now and for always! He may not be here in physical form, but his spirit is ALIVE and WELL here on the Hyannis/Hyannis Port Waterfront(s)! Thank you President Obama… have a good day!

PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the wintry mixed up island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this 28th day of March, 2015, a soggy day for ducks kind of a day here on little old Cape Cod, as we are experiencing perhaps the last of the snow for this season, although with the winter we have all endured, that might be a bit of a stretch!

Still in a self imposed corporate media blackout of sorts–attempting to ‘cut off daily the heroin supply’ of over dramatized, politically manipulated “news” from my well being; broadcasted 24/7 on the TV machine one must take a loan out to ‘get’–indeed it was a struggle, but eventually the craving wore off…

However, in the ‘awakening’ if you will, I stumbled across yet another statement made by our again, beloved 35th U.S. President, Mr. Jack Kennedy, who stated this in and around the time of the “Cuban Missal Crisis”, November 1962, a nuclear standoff at sea with the then Soviet Union that almost took the world out of order for good.

“Every man, woman and child, lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment, by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness.  The weapons of war must be abolished, before we abolish ourselves.”  JFK

.7 percent of uranium can be used for a nuclear weapon and if this ‘new world order’ has any intention on keeping a handle on the world’s nuclear history, starting with the first U.S. nuclear tests in the New Mexico desert in 1945, quickly followed by the U.S.S.R. gaining the capability in 1947, then the U.K. in 1952, followed up by France in 1960, then China in 1964, followed up by Israel in 1967, then India in 1974, then Pakistan in 1990 with North Korea rounding out the illicit grouping of world ending weapon holders, as Iran knocks on the door, it better get out the lead and start talking to one another about just how serious ‘loose nukes’ really are, hopefully as another great U.S. President, Ronald Reagan stated when attempting to work with Mr. Gorbachev, in the much publicized broker deal in Iceland that fell victim to that country’s name… “…let us free the world of nuclear weapons forever.” U.S. President Ronald Reagan

In 1985, U.S. President Ronald Reagan met with then Soviet Premier Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland and bring not only an end to the ‘Cold War’, but moreover to create a treaty between the two nations and the world at large, destroying the chance, off chance at the time, that this deathly science would not get out to the world at large, would remain mostly with ‘the super powers’ if you will, no one to give this information out to a nation who may use it for nefarious means.  Rushing forward with no regard for humanity; to an end that only spells madness, death and total destruction on a massive human scale.  The meeting failed, mostly because of a program called “Star Wars”, or “SDI”, that was mostly of science fiction rather than sound reason.  Be that as it may, because the two nations could not agree, now over forty countries have the capability or access to that .7 enriched uranium, needed to create a bomb much like the one that killed so many at the end of World War II, namely Hiroshima, and the horror therein…

Said Michail Gorbachev on that day after the two men parted ways in Iceland, “…we worked inherently well in Reykjavik, we truly opened a door and peaked beyond the horizon.”

I only hope we learned a lesson from that day not too long ago, thirty years or so.  Only a few decades before that Jack Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev staved off what would have been World War III, and just be luck did that happen.  Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy were on the same page on this one.  We should come together politically now and promote more talk, less tension, no war.  Open dialogue in this “new world order” is needed to save us from the madness of Robert Oppenheimer’s “creation” or discovery of this insane weapon of death, that must, for the sake of mankind, be eliminated from the face of the earth…

Again, I hope we are all beginning to notice a simple truth--”…we’re all in this together.  One of these men might save your life someday did you know that?” (credit “Sgt. Hulka” in the classic 1980 film “Stripes”, also starring Bill Murray who piped in, “…then again, one of them might not!”. As a collective human species, I think we can all agree that notion of forgoing reason for madness is just that…

madness.

PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the mild, rainy, thunderous island of Nantucket! Great to be with you again on this Thursday afternoon–March 26th, 2015–12:33 EDT p.m. to be precise, still in a ‘blackout’ (self imposed media blockade), I was reminded of what our beloved 35th U.S. President once said to a group of media types who seemed to have more of a say in what they SAY than they do today.  Or am I being too obtuse?

Jack Kennedy bravely stood in front of the “American Newspaper Publishing Association” on April 27th, 1961, delivering a block buster oration on just how important openness is to a society based on the FACT that that very trait is at the core of it’s own foundation.  Perhaps in those early sixties hoping to create a more open and just ‘new world order’; one that cared more about the human in humanity than the average bear, or bull as it were…

He gave what most scholars may very well agree to be the quintessential public speech on the dangers of a government that is no longer “Of, By and For the PEOPLE!” Creating a ghostly Orwellian vision of shadow and mirror, smoke and fog, straight ahead to what we have today–this new “global economy”. Not really an economy one may have learned about in “Econ 101″, no sir, this is a new economy designed to lavish and serve a small grouping of Oligarchs in this 21st Century.  In a ever warming world that works only for the uber wealthy and really no one else.  An impressive group who owns more real estate, dollars and gold than God himself. 

Although last time I checked, God does not deal in that kind of currency–at least not in this world…

Indeed, we have this ever widening GRAND CANYON gap between the haves and those who have not. All occurring right NOW on this little blue rock we all call home for the ‘moment’… But, keep that under your hat folks, for that is not to be ‘known by the general public, no sir!  This ‘ain’t one of them ‘fun facts’, or an NBC commercial with that shiny, shooting star communicating, “…the more you know?”

“…the very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society.  And we are as a people, inherently and historically, opposed to secret societies.  To secret oaths and to secret proceedings.  For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy, that relies primarily on covet means for expanding its sphere of influence.  On infiltration instead of invasion.  On subversion, instead of elections.  On intimidation, instead of free choice.  On guerrilla by night, instead of armies by day.  It is a system that has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine.  Its preparations are concealed, not published.  Its mistakes buried, not headlines.  Its dissenters silenced, not praised.  No expenditure questioned, no rumor printed, no secret revealed.” JFK

p.s., please make it a good new world order!

PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! peace~M

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the wonderfully golden sun laden, cool island of Nantucket! Great to be back with you and yours on this March 25th–2015–a Wednesday to be sure, just back from that trip to Palm Springs, California, the home to my father now whom I was blessed to see once again…

Taking this ‘time’ off from the ‘news’ of the day, literally for the past three weeks or so, something occurred to me.  A light bulb went off all of a sudden, as I heard myself utter the words, ‘what have I been reporting on for the past say seven plus years? Moreover, for what?

For what?  For posterity’s sake.  American historical posterity if it will, reporting as if is HAPPENING NOW!

Because it is…

Some of my ‘columns’ over the years have most likely ‘eliminated’ me from the off chance I might put an application into say Koch Industries to become one of their top flight puppet executive employees…  But, on the other hand, having some SPACE from that mindset, has also afforded me the unique position of looking at this whole ‘global corporate thing’ from that 35,000 foot vantage point.

On the way home from Palm Springs, great airport by the way, I was fated, luckily, to be seated next to a fine gentlemen pilot (from Tulsa, Oklahoma), who offered a great conversation, steeped and educated on everything from airplanes, the world at large, and the fine important people he has flown (information on a ‘need to know basis’), and the fact he grew up in Montana; his roots just as thick, deep and similar as mine.  As I left for my connection in Houston to make it to Boston before Midnight, I was happy to shake his hand and to get to know his heart, and wish him and “his partner” in flight (little grand daughter), the BEST of Luck and many safe flights in the  future!

And I may say that to all of my, well, five readers out there as well!  May the FORCE be with you!

LOVE being that force.

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the cool, sunny, breezy island of Nantucket! Great to be with you and yours on this 10th day of March, 2015, a very early and quiet start to the morning here on the Hyannis/Hyannis Port Waterfront(s), looking ahead to some fine weather coming up, as we say goodbye to yet another winter on this little sand bar created 11,500 years ago by the “Last Great Ice Age”…

“This is going to change rapidly”

Global Warming is real folks, and if you have read Sea Cape Cod over the past seven plus years, that epic point has been made as clear as the sky is blue.  On HBO’s hit documentary series “Vice” (Executive Producer being Bill Maher), the topic of ‘the weather’ was front and center, with global temperature and sea rise central to this past week’s show, a must SEA if one is inclined to be in the KNOW about what is truly happening to our beautiful planet as we speak.  The show also exposes the ultra right wing plutocratic arm of the U.S. government, a push by those who wish to profit off the decimation of planet earth.  A sophisticated script that serves to fool most of ‘the American people’ when it comes to this most pressing of mankind’s problems. Ever replacing TRUTH with doubt and innuendo that only muddies the ever important waters of our time, with that push to DE-legitimize what 97% of top drawer world class scientists, climatologist, physicists, glaciologists, and biologists/chemists all say (with the other 3 percent of ’scientists’ becoming no more than bought puppets like Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, bought by the likes of ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Chevron and the rest of the “Usual Suspects”), about the course of our climate and what it may mean to everyone living on said planet Earth in the not too distant future.  Give it up for “The Heartland Institute” everybody!  Lying to the American public since your grand daddy was knee high to a grass hopper!

“The earth is melting, and if this melts (Antarctica), mankind is in deep trouble.”

Holy Mountains of ice and snow shimmering in the blazing blue sky, Shane Smith, founder of “Vice”, a must watch documentary series, embarks on this odyssey to the bottom of the world to discover what is really happening with the world’s coldest continents.  “We are 500 miles from the South Pole, as you can see there’s a lot of ice.  In fact, Antarctica hold 90 percent of the world’s ice and 70% of the world’s fresh water.  The problem is NASA scientists are starting to realize that Antarctica is melting and if this melts, mankind is in deep trouble.  The melt rate in Greenland is 60 years ahead of previously held worse case scenarios, and it is speeding up.  Moreover, Antarctica is now seeing similar melt rates to that Greenland is experiencing right NOW.  From Pine Island Glacier to Kohler Glacier, the Western Antarctica ice is melting into the Amundsen Sea at alarming rates.” Mass protests world wide have erupted demanding action by world leaders to address this massive coming cataclysm, with the UN General Assembly stating recently, “…global warming is one of the biggest problems facing mankind today.”

The question Shane asks is, ‘if this is all true, why are politicians in Washington D.C. purposely lying to the American people as to the dangers posed by this epic threat?’  Fully a quarter of our citizenry don’t believe in climate change at all, and if it is it is not man made, flying in the face of empirical scientific evidence to the contrary; scientific/political consensus globally. the answer to Shane’s 64,000 dollar question may be found at the highly touted the “International Conference on Climate Change” in Las Vegas, Nevada, where the GOP snake oil salesmen bet America’s future away via blatant lies, fabrications, innuendo’s, falsehoods, fibs and whoppers, that all amount to placing doubt where TRUTH once reigned free…

Paid stooges from the oil, gas and coal industries, via the “Heartland Institute”, i.e. James Taylor, Marc Morano, Joe Bast and so many more on hand to help you understand less about your world, as they rape and pillage it in front of you!  Shane asked Joe Bast, President of the dastardly Institute of lower learning, states after being asked, ‘what do you do here at this conference on climate change?’ “…Our focus is questioning (introducing doubt like it did with big tobacco in the ’80’s…), the claim that there is a consensus. That climate change is both man made and dangerous.  We don’t see the data that backs up global warming is a crisis.” So there’s an argument that global warming is happening but that it it not a crisis?  “Yeah, there can be an impact on climate, by the human presence, but it’s probably very small.”

Some of the “fun fact” posters at the conference read like they were written by junior high school kids, with one reading as such: “NOT MAN MADE”–complete with bullet points, 1. it’s natural variation, 2. Human impact very small, 3. computer models are flawed, 4. There is no consensus… “NOT HARMFUL”– 1. past warming was beneficial, 2. no current harms, 3. future warming will be modest, 4. warmer is better…

“I think the statement speaks for itself” (credit: the great Charles Grodin in the film “Heaven Can Wait”, circa 1978).

Knowledge; universal, necessary and certain–ever evading this not your grandfather’s GOP.

The conference ‘leaders’ told it’s members/audience once again that “the vast left wing conspiracy” (with their climatologists), are in the business of selling fear.  Sorry GOP, didn’t mean to get into your area!  A very real script has been put in play by the likes of blogger Marc Morano, who has perfected this ‘message’ of climate denial-ism, disciplined and dedicated to ’staying on message’; ‘getting the word out’ to the rest of the nation, with statements like, “…quite literally there are hundreds of factors that contribute to the world’s temperature.” Following it up with, “CO2 is not the tail that wags the dog, it is not the climate control knob”.

He then went on to brag, “what I do as a blogger is then sent out to radio hosts (Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, the ‘Drudge Report’ and other haters), and television networks like FOX to Capitol Hill staffers, speech writers, Senators, Congressman and sometimes even God himself!”  Well, I made up that last part, but there is no ‘denying’ global warming is making Marc Morano a very wealthy man.

Back on planet earth, the real one, back to Antarctica and the epic ice melting action therein, according to world renown glaciologist at UC Irvine, Dr. Eric Rignot, “…the glacial (observing glacial movement in Patagonia; Marinelli Glacier, Chile), retreat is not part of the natural cycle.  In the last twenty years it retreated more than in the past century and even more.  It’s like changing the limit on the freeway from 55 mph to 550 mph.” (as thunderous booms echo into the air, glacier calving into the sea).  “These changes are staggering.  We actually don’t have any idea how fast some of these systems can react to climate warming.  We’re in for some real trouble with big-time sea level rise.”

Antarctica is massive (one and a half the size of the entire continental U.S.); all ice, rock, with some of that ice being many kilometers thick.  To get that ‘big picture’, Smith climbs aboard a re-fitted DC-8 (a NASA ‘flying laboratory’, via “Armstrong Flight Research Center”, called “Operation Ice Bridge”, with key technologies including lasers and sophisticated underwater radar that combined, give scientists the data they need to make predictions about what will most likely happen in the near future (100 years,) and beyond.  Combined with an additional ten instruments on board this highly technical aircraft, the mission is to fly at 1500 feet for twelve straight hours above the icy surface of the continent, sweeping with 3000  laser shots per second, and radar to determine ice depth even under the surface of the water, under all of that ice, “an ice penetrating radar system” (different shapes and different depths determine what melting rates are), with one scientist at the bottom of the plane stating, “…we’re mapping ice to record changes from year to year, we’ve been flying routes since 1992, giving us a good time period to see how much that ice is changing.  It is retreating quite rapidly, losing a lot of it’s surface elevation as well.”

Dr. Rignot goes on to say, “…Antarctica is starting to melt.  We have seen in the last 40 years a regime of Westerlies (winds), around Antarctica that’s stronger than the past thousand years.  So the winds are circulating faster around Antarctica.  And this tends to push the subsurface warm water closer to the glaciers and brings more warm water towards Antarctica.  If you keep that going, you’re going to push more and more ocean heat against the glacier, and the glaciers are going to retreat faster and faster.  Because so many of these glaciers in Western Antarctica are exposed to these warm ocean waters, the ice sheets are beginning to disconnect with the continent itself.”

The “grounding line” retreat at Pine Island Glacier for example, exemplifies just how much the warming oceans are eating away (from the inside out as it were), at these massive, ancient ice structures, with more and more of those unsupported ice sheets cracking off into the ocean to drift and melt away forever.  Again, Rigot stating, “…the retreat rate is enormous, a kilometer a year.  I don’t think there are glaciers retreating that fast anywhere else in the world.”

He then goes on to say this about all that growing ’sea ice’ down there, “…there’s a little confusion between land ice and sea ice.   They’re totally different entities, the expansion of sea ice in Antarctica is related to the wind regime.  Which tends to extend the sea ice cover.  The sea ice fools people, because they think that if the sea ice cover is expanding, maybe its cooler there.  But it does not work that way.”

Adding, “…Pine Island, Thwaites, and it’s neighbors, contain about one meter of global sea level rise; if that whole sector goes down to sea, it will entrain the retreat of the rest of Antarctica.  We’re talking about three to five meters of sea level rise.”

3 meters?  Would that remap the world as we know it?

“Yes, absolutely.”

Meanwhile at “Palmer Station”, the ‘hub’ of scientific activity on the continent, there has been a 3 degree increase on the Peninsula.  The research facility, housing men and women of science from all over the world, brings forth that valuable data from what is truly ‘ground zero’ for climate change, for one can see it happening literally right if front of one’s eyes.   Dr. Andrew Clark, a distinguished 40 year arctic researcher, author of 215 scholarly papers on the subject matter, and one of the preeminent experts on what is ultimately happening in Antarctica said this regarding a question of why anyone in the UK or US should concern themselves with this little corner of the world?  “…back home (UK), climate change isn’t obvious to them, here (Antarctica), you can see the whole environment changing in front of your eyes.  There are long term temperature (from many stations), records showing unequivocally that the atmosphere is warming. WE have long data from the sea saying unequivocally that the sea is warming.  WE have long term data which shows unequivocally that the behavior of the ice is changing.  It is irrefutable that the area of the Western Antarctica Peninsula has a climate that is changing.  I’m not aware of anything that can stop it now.  WE can slow the pace of damage, maybe in the very, very long term, but for future generations to come, there’s no red button, it’s going to continue.”

Who will be affected?

“Everyone! Everyone will be affected, but particularly affected will be those countries that are predominantly in low lying areas, and by the sea.  Countries like Bangladesh.”

Global studies conclude that over 300 million people will have to be accommodated by the rising sea levels.  Dr. Atiq Rahman, Executive Director, Bangladesh Centre fro Advanced Studies (co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for work on climate change), states, “…if we do not find better options, then we are entering a chaotic world, where there will be millions of people disenfranchised and dislocated, which will create a global threat that our global government system will not be able to handle.  It is going to be one of the greatest strategic challenges the planet has ever seen.  One of the reasons Bangladesh is called one of the most vulnerable countries in the world is because a little sea level rise means a lot of area penetrated. Because it is a flat, flat, flat country.  With one meter sea level rise, which is likely to happen, according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by the end of the century, about 17% of Bangladesh will be inundated by sea level rise, salt water. The impact people are already facing, in terms of destruction of water supply, their health impacts, the impact on the productivity of crops, so all of that combined together to make, basically, living untenable. “

Shane states at the end of the program, “and with the stakes so high as with sea level rise, nothing could be more important.”

“WE are being led by lesser men than ourselves.” (current U.S. VP Joe Biden)

Have a nice week ahead folks, and week end for that matter, for as of this moment, I am on vacation!  Going out to see my Dad in California for a while.  So until April 1 have a good one and don’t take any wooden nickles from FOX ‘news’; side effects are as severe as the effects carbon dioxide have on our precious environment!   Stay safe and I will hopefully SEA you soon!

PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the once again chilly, delightfully sunny island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this 7th day of March, 2015, a beautiful one on the Cape, as we all settle in for the week end, with most doing whatever it is they like to do best; whatever that may be…

But for some, in Selma, Alabama fifty years ago, that ‘lazy’ kind of day just was not flying for most in that violent, racist, segregated South.  Especially on March 7, 1965, a day that will live in infamy.  A day where Blacks marching towards a metaphorical bridge to real freedom and equality, were viciously attacked by police; tear gassed and trampled when attempting to cross a real bridge in said town, the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  A brave group of African-Americans standing up to the brutal brand of racism rampant only 50 years ago today.

On this day fifty years ago, great men like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., U.S. Congressman John Lewis (the last man alive who was at the original march in 1965), and many others marched on Selma to bring that vital and urgent message forward to a country and indeed world at large.  A world who could now see their struggles up close and personal, “TV” becoming main stream by the mid-60’s, thereby ushering in the Civil Rights movement much quicker than anticipated (Voting Rights Act passed by Congress; signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson into LAW in 1965), as it was clear many in the country had not ‘evolved’ enough to conquer their own demons of hate, racism, violent tendencies, ignorance, religious zealotry and bigotry.  Thus, the march met with a violent resistance complete with dogs, tear gas, horses running people down and water cannons, all caught 50 years ago ‘on video tape’…

President Obama and the First Family (many other dignitaries as well), are on hand and walking across that now famous bridge, as I write these words, with the President to give a speech to that “Bloody Sunday” massacre, hopefully bringing some much needed attention to what has been going down in this 21st Century America, lo OUR general attitudes and behaviors by both police and citizenry alike.   How these two seemingly separate and distinct groups interact and more should be the topic, and what WE as a people can do to improve upon that relationship; healing it rather than inciting “it” more.  For what has been noted in Ferguson, Missouri lately by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder should stun just about everyone, and that really is the point of both this march. Indeed, to remember Selma, but also march so as to not forget Ferguson either.  Or a young teenage named Michael Brown.  If we continue to go about our business like it never happened, nothing will change and that is not news to many blacks living in this wealthy nation today.  This ‘cowboys and Indians’ game of thrones policing goes on everyday for many young men of color in society today, making life unbearable for many young African-American males who are starving for a way out, for a way UP!

The GOP’s lack of interest in both history and what that history entails unto US all is both astonishing and in a word, well, kind of weird.  What are they doing instead?  “Cooking up new voter suppression schemes (laws) I’ll bet!” (credit Louis Gossett Jr. in the classic 1982 film, “An Officer and a Gentleman”).

We are all flying in the same jet!

Have a nice Saturday!

PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS!

Peace~M

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the sunny, brisk, beautiful island of Nantucket! Great to be with you once again on this spectacular day–March 6th, 2015– Hyannis/Hyannis Port Waterfront(s) looking much like a scene right of the 1965 film “Doctor Zhivago”, especially around dusk, the glowing lights around the harbor ghostly in their reverence, above and below decks of ‘yore, lightening one’s path past the boats braving winter’s worst, striding home to warmth therein. Knowing that even with that “Nightly News” on the TV; all is still right with the world…

As the ‘must watch TV‘ of the day drones on and on, God Bless them all (especially the good folks at MSNBC! FOX? That I don’t know about so much…), about the ’secrecy’ of Hillary Clinton’s private email collection for the next, oh, 15 or so months, US all grinning from ear to ear as we are forced to listen to one more ‘debate’, dissection, deliverance, discussion about the this or that regarding said emails, my God, can we be a more unfocused group of people?  Is this the grand plan?  To talk endlessly about just one more glaring ’scandal’ that does not amount to a “Hillary” of beans when all is said and done, you know, say with me, say it!  “At the end of the day”?

At ‘the end of the day’ (100 years or so from right NOW), we are going to be talking about this last “horrible” winter and say to ourselves, remember when it snowed?  Global warming is real folks and I think that topic is a bit more important for future generations than this insane discussion about electronic ‘you’ve got mail’.  At least it is to the earth’s wonderful animals and plants that share this world with US!

Yes, to those ‘little things’ I say OUR collective lack of urgency when it comes to this coming global crisis is, in a word, sad. For truly, all of the cold winds, sleet, snow and hail we feel on our faces and in our hair this winter are the glaciers of old becoming memory; ice giants millions of years in the making, now melting at exponential speeds all due to mankind’s greed and folly…

Lo, if you listen carefully and take in that   deep breath when you venture out into the wild one day by yourself, you will feel those glaciers saying goodbye.  So take it all in, because once they are gone, they are gone forever…

Have a good week end, making sure to watch as must watch FOX “news” as possible!

Just watch out for those side effects; they’ll kill ya!

PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the cold, heavily snowing at present island of Nantucket! Great to be with you, an almost blizzard like afternoon on the Hyannis/Hyannis Port Waterfront(s), as the region is experiencing more of what the English call “snow”, with Boston very likely to break the all time record of 107 inches…

2 “Unconstitutional Practices” are up for national debate once again (one real, the other fake; let’s see which one it is shall we?), as the great outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder gave perhaps the speech of a lifetime, exposing the Ferguson Police Department for who and what they really are, and more to the point, what the community of 67 percent African-Americans have been putting up with over the past decade at least, some would say a lifetime.

Statistics (numbers don’t lie), crunched via the official data taken from police records in Ferguson, Missouri, reveal these numbers, the damning percentages therein:  95% ‘jaywalking (black), 94% ‘failure to comply’ (black), 92% ‘peace disturbance’ charges (black), all culminating in 93% of all arrests, 85% of traffic stops, and 90 percent of tickets; adversely and cruelly (directly), affecting the African-American community as a whole, with this powerful AG going so far as to surmise that the reason behind these outrageous numbers all boils down to revenue. In attaining said ‘revenue’ the police violated Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, be they black, white or polka dot.  The First, Fourth and possibly the Second all under the microscope in this case.

Plus, “let the record show”, prove rather, that the department is fundamentally racist and again, proves it, via the vile emails compiled over the past few months with FPD officers, brass included, comparing the President of the United States to something that does not deserve to be dignified with any more attention, putting our elected leader in unflattering terms that will again, not be uttered here. Same said about the nasty words used against our equally great First Lady.  For to stoop that low and still claim to be ‘an officer of the law’, a ‘man’ with dignity and honor, is a little absurd, don’t you think?

The fact that the U.S. Justice Department could not bring itself to clear that very high bar that must be cleared to bring a Civil Right case to fruition against someone who obviously had “no choice” but to gun down an unarmed teenager in cold blood a few months back, killing him at point black range, leaving his body to rot in the street for four hours, yeah, we are all on board with you fella!  It was a good one that choice not to attempt to reopen that old wound.  Even though the seven to ten real eyewitnesses, did just that, “witness with their OWN eyes”!  You can make up your OWN mind about that one!

The other bombshell item that is offending our U.S. Constitution (at present), once again is apparently something that is helping save millions of lives, the dreaded “Obamacare”, to wit is once again under attack and being called unconstitutional, this time, because of a simple error in wording, these words specifically: “…established by the state’.

You see, when the bill was being written, back in the dark ages of 2009, the Affordable Care Act was supposed to be embraced by individual states to set up ‘their own insurance exchanges’ (places to buy health care on line).  But only a handful did, initially, therefore prompting the “Federal Exchanges” to pick up the slack.  Health care coverage via the ‘big, bad government’ offering subsidies to those who can’t afford coverage at all, costing US all in the long run (hence the concept to begin with!), just like those ’state exchanges’ (all same monies as it were), meant to be front and center .  All 2000 plus pages of the bill point to subsidies for poorer people who can’t afford coverage, hence the lower premiums by insurance carriers who are increasing the size and health of the overall risk pool, a win-win for both carrier and customer alike. One getting the health care coverage it needs, the other doing what insurance companies do-make money!

But here come the Benghazi raiders from hell, fresh off their little war pow-wow with Mr. Netanyahu, the much talked about lately Prime Minister of Israel, who needs a new ’schtick’, ’cause we have all heard this bit about sending boots into Iran, or Iraq, or both; back in 1996 and again in 2002, was it not “Bibi”? 

Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” onto something–does this guy age?

Yes, so the war hawks want more blood and guts and now so do 67% of ‘the American People’ (with less than 1% of those “American people signing up for ‘the army sir!’). And while we are at it, why not mess up the only thing going right in America today!  Why not bring it to the sometimes questionable (wink, wink, nudge, nudge! i.e.,”Citizens United”?), Supreme Court of the United States?  With some bogus ‘citizen’ law suit designed to throw sand in the gears of social progress when it comes to health care in this country; the delivery of it and the way we all consume it.  This ’subtitle E’, part 1, sub part A, Section 36B, ‘established by the state’, tiny, tiny oversight, a glorified typo, can not be the end of this much needed and sensible approach, at least for now, we could do better with “medicare for all”, but for now, reasonable insurance solution, a solution no one has topped with a better one thus far.  Moreover, one that is sustainable over the long haul (medical inflation).  But, to those Republicans whose ‘idea’, “Obamacare”, it really was in the first place (please Google “Heritage Foundation”/”Romney Care”-early ’90’s), the thought of Obama winning this historic win is just too much to take. You and the rest of those filthy liberal swine!  No, they would rather shoot themselves in the foot for 2016 and beyond (look to immigration), then to ever bend to reason, the ‘time’, the law, history and just good common decency!

Have a nice day everybody!

PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the sunny, pleasantly seasonal and soon to be stormy once again island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this 3rd day of March, 2015, a spectacular day out there if you happen to be anywhere on this grand sand bar created by glaciers 11,500 years ago via ‘The Great Ice Age’…

Sad news from L.A. over the past 48 hours or so, as another helpless, homeless man was gunned down by L.A.’s ‘finest’; the grizzly scene witnessed by lots of (non)people in the ’skid row’ area of Los Angeles, where allegedly this man was “living” in some sort of tent to wit he was attempting to go back into when the police clearly went after him.  The officers (five of them), harassed him as if instigating a conflict… They tackled him, “tazed” him, and then, when someone yelled out something about a gun, (reports on national news claim the homeless man was possibly going for the officer’s gun, right!), the officers made the moral decision to gun him down like a dog in the street, with the whole world looking on now in horror.

Having had some experience with this, I feel I have some street cred here.  The reality of President Obama’s task force to look into policing in this 21st Century America–prompted after the gunning down (in cold blood some say), of teenager Michael Brown from Ferguson, Missouri–was a good start.  True and impartial, independent investigations and all, body cameras (that may or may not be on at the time when they need to be…), as well as more training, especially around Black history (kudos to NYPD police commissioner Ray Kelly).

But, it does not really tackle the base root of the problem.

The reality is that this country has become a quasi-police state, where most municipalities are heavily armed via ‘appropriations’ from the Patriot Act signed into law after the attacks of 9/11, creating a new, militarized and some say dangerous department of “Homeland Security”, i.e the NSA. A law that received carte blanche from day one, given that blank check via our former Republican president George W. Bush.

Although, Republicans use it today as a political bargaining chip to ‘get that Obama’ for his legal and up until this time, rather limited use of Executive Orders; addressing our outdated and cruel immigration policies!

With that in mind, we also have become a state, a nation, a country, that incarcerates more people than any other on the face of planet earth.  Think about that for a moment… We don’t discriminate any longer either when it comes to the gender, taking more women to prison than ever before.  Why?  Because the prison industry has become just that, an industry worth billions of dollars.  So what if there are a few casualties (collateral damage), along the way like some homeless bum on the streets of L.A.?  Who cares?  WE hate the homeless!  No one is going to be going to that guys funeral.

May “Africa” rest in peace.

When Russian President Putin (indirectly or directly), ordered the hit on Boris Nemtsov (Russian politician/turned protestor, worked under former Russian President Boris Yeltsin; a very popular man who bucked the Kremlin and Putin’s overall policy of submit or die!), it exemplified to the world what we are (21st Century Western Civility) are up against here.  On the one hand, you have a kleptocratic killer posing as a president (and why not?).  A man (former KGB agent), who manipulates, lies and fabricates this world, while the West wastes precious time attempting to negotiate as if he were on the up and up. Putin’ cold heart will not bend to sanctions, or will it?

A funny word that, terrorist.  For to that homeless man who lay dying in the streets with multiple gun shot wounds, the face of terror came in the form of an ‘officer of the peace’.  A man finally relieved of his misfortune for being ‘poor’ in this 21st Century America. Humiliated and handcuffed by the same men who shot him.  For we all know, you can never be too careful?  Handcuffed by police watching him in silence, kicking; dying alone on the cold hard, poorest of the poor pavement, deep in the city of Angels.

May a few be with you now…

Lo, one could say the same of 12 year old Tamir Rice, who was infamously gunned down by Cleveland Police who, after being acquitted, indeed charged with nothing in the little boys murder, yes, after all of that, the city of Cleveland made a statement that they have since walked back, but made it anyway, summed in basic callousness “…it was the boys fault”.

Terror is in the eyes of the one being terrorized.  And who is to say what brand of terror strikes more of that precious commodity–FEAR–than the other?  A product promoted daily by mass corporate media outlets created by and for man’s entertainment?  Certainly not for his enlightenment!

We all forgot the Israeli/Gaza war just a little while back.  Ask yourself this:  were those poor, innocent, trapped, and marginalized Palestinians terrorized by the rain of missiles that killed many whose fight it was not, indeed, were those women, children and men terrorized?  A mass killing made mostly of transparent political expediency?

The fact is, most Americans have little to no knowledge of police brutality, or a list of just how many real, live American people have been killed by police, for no records exist.  That is something that MUST be changed.

For if we are going to live in a police state, we should at least have proof of such!  You know, for public consumption!

Have a nice day!

PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the cold (newly snow covered), clearing island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this second day of March, 2015, a chilly start to the day with a fresh blanket of winter’s blessing on the ground, combined with a tiny hint of Spring in the air, temperatures expected to rise to 40 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-week.

This week end in Moscow, upwards of 50,000 demonstrators turned out on Red Square to protest the brutal murder of Boris Nemtsov; a prominent, outspoken and beloved critic of Russian kleptocrat, excuse me, President Vladimir Putin, the leader of what appears to be a nation teetering on ‘failed state’ status…

President Vladimir Putin is estimated to be worth more than 200 billion dollars, a tidy sum considering he was once a lowly KGB field agent.  When the Soviet Union collapsed in and around 1989–combined with the ‘Fall of the Berlin Wall’, effectively ending the West’s great fear of communism–the now ‘free and democratic’ Russia became unglued.  A “Wild West” reborn.  For the next five years, the slow unraveling of centralized power via the Politburo created a vacuum that was quickly filled by opportunistic men in the intelligence arena/oil and gas arena/mob arena, i.e. the KGB, and thus, ransacked, raped and pillaged the country at will.  Billionaires were created overnight and so was chaos in Mother Russia.  Middle and lower classes in say “Leningrad” (now St. Petersburg), now face mass food shortages, fuel shortages, and other basic necessity shortages because of illegal and immoral actions via the likes of men named Vladimir Putin, who may or may not have ordered the hit on the popular critic of “Putin’s Russia”.  Some going further, like David Ignatius, who fear the even darker forces behind Putin, who wish to take Russia back 200 years, back to the days of the Russian Czar, which is what we really have presently…

Creating a whole new problem for the U.S. and her allies, as this naked aggression now in Ukraine, spills out onto the fields, woods and mountains of Europe.  A distinct possibility (in the near future?), with an ever darkening force clearly in control of the 21st Century Russian mind set.  Send troops to Poland?  Perhaps, but again, the reality of what Putin wants and what the West wants are two completely different things.  One wishes for stability, growth, compromise and peace.  The other wishes for conflict, instability, uncertainty and aggression. Like with the dogging problem revolving around the terror group ISIL, no one really knows what Putin’s ‘end game’ is.  Is it simply to flex machismo gone awry or is it something more cynical?  More maniacal/genocidal?

But make no mistake about it, the United States and Russian relations–due to this suspicious gunning down of a young, popular activist (may he rest in peace), in the shadow of the Kremlin at high noon several days ago–are at an all time low, almost as bad as they were during the height of the Cold War.  The nuclear weapons the Russians still possess are the most worrying aspect of this whole equation, for even though Putin is shady, he does not appear to be insane. Therefore, keeping an eye on those even darker forces hiding behind the beauty of the Bolshoi Ballet and St. Basil Cathedral is paramount to keeping the world safe from more nuclear proliferation, a threat that has not ‘gone away’ just because the Cold War has been ”won”.

With “Bibi” Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, on the ground in Washington D.C. as I write these words, getting ready for his big speech to Congress on Tuesday–much to the chagrin of President Obama and the White House worried about the delicate negotiations with Iran over it’s nuclear ambitions, critical to the stability of the Middle East and indeed the world–one has to sit back and ask, “…are we trying to throw sand into the gears of a highly effective political/diplomatic solutions regarding this delicate nuclear negotiation process with Iran?”  Or, more to the point, “…is this visit about your people in Israel or about your political career sir?”  A career and philosophy in seeming lock step with the hijacked Republican party here in the U.S., hell bent on destroying it’s own democracy with that little letter ‘d’ because some plutocrat owns them!”

Don’t forget to tip your waitresses folks!  Have a nice week!

PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M