Your Brain on Hashtags

By Mel Carriere


This is your brain.

This is your brain on hashtags.

I think most of us are old enough to remember that old anti-drug message from the late 80s, when the word hashtag had not made it into common usage yet.  It was only last year, in fact, that the term hashtag found its way into the Oxford English Dictionary.  So why does my spell checker keep underlining it?  If hashtag is good enough for Oxford I think it's a little presumptuous of the spell checker to keep telling me it's not a word.

Bit even though the original campaign associated with the above slogan had nothing to do with hashtags, the effect on mental performance is essentially the same.  Even if people are not dulling their brains with drugs, they can certainly dull their thought processes with hashtags, and extensive hashtag use may even be worse.  I mean, you can come down from drugs and still function on the job and in society, but once you get started with hashtags it's really hard to get your brain back to where it can work on its own.

This dude you see above was having a real problem thinking for himself, and after his doctor sent him in for an MRI they found out he had an enormous hashtag lodged in his cerebral cortex.  They also diagnosed him with an inoperable case of "Twitter Finger," a condition in which the index finger gets whittled down to a pencil-like point by repeated punching of the tiny "favorite" and "retweet" icons.  The doctors said that if this poor sap had reported the problem earlier they might have been able to cut out the hashtag before it got serious, but as it was it metastasized and invaded his entire brain.  Now he can't even go to the bathroom without someone hashtagging him through it.

If you've been on Twitter long enough, you know that people don't even use real words in their 140 character thoughts anymore, they simply attach whatever hashtags may be acceptable to whatever circle of friends they run with or whatever ideology they have attached themselves to.  Ideology is a wonderful thing because it relieves one of the responsibility of coming up with a uniquely individual personal philosophy, which requires far too much time for quiet contemplation.  Nobody has time to contemplate anything these days when there are all these intoxicating, hypnotizing, tantalizing, mesmerizing screens everywhere to distract our attention.

Hashtags have made the world even better because brainwashing yourself with someone else's ideology doesn't even require one to memorize any lengthy, dull, formulaic maxims, like in your mother and father's day.  All you need is to remember the appropriate handful of hashtags and you are good to go.  Actually, you don't even need to memorize the hashtags if you don't want to.  Just keep them stored in the memo pad on your phone and you can copy-paste from there, like I do.

If you run with the lefties you can pull out hashtags like #UniteBlue, #NetNeutrality, or #StopRush, and you are guaranteed immediate acceptance without ever having to enunciate a complete sentence on your own.  On the other hand, if your buddies sit across the aisle with the older, stodgier old money types, or are only over there because they are sucking up to get good jobs after graduation, hashtags like #ocra, #Benghazi and #BlameObama can get you some really good tee times at places where a working stiff like you has no place being.

Just remember not to try and make up your own hashtags.  Not only is this considered unorthodox, schismatic behavior that does not conform to the strict dictates of doctrinal purity of whatever ideology suits your fancy, but there is absolutely no need to vex your tired brain in this fashion.  Somewhere up in the cloud there is a great hashtag-making thinking machine to do this for you, and if you're lucky like the guy in the picture up there, and let's face he really is the lucky one because he really gets it, sooner or later the hashtags will dull your senses into oblivion and you'll have plenty of time for other things.


Image is from imgkid.com, with a little tweak by me.

The combustible mixture used in The Truth Bomb includes a generous portion of java from Starbucks and other corporate coffee conglomerates, and none of this is cheap.  Therefore, unless the ads to the right and above complete annoy and offend you, please investigate what my sponsors have to say.  

Bully for Labor! - Why Can't Labor Negotiate its Own Price?

By Mel Carriere

The Truth Bomb has taken a sabbatical for a little over two weeks now, and I apologize to anyone who has been following this blog in earnest.  It's not exactly like I've been taking a break from writing, it's just that there hasn't been any subject that has sparked my outrage enough to rant about it here on these pages.  This is my personal soapbox where I vent my spleen about political and social topics, but my spleen hasn't been bursting with indignation lately so there hasn't been a need to pop a writing catheter into it.

But three days ago my spleen started to look a little bit red and puffy again when I saw a Facebook post featuring a quote by Theodore Roosevelt, a former Republican President of the United States who was also, peculiarly enough by 2015 standards, a Progressive thinker.  Roosevelt caused a division within the GOP ranks in 1912 when he split with the Republicans and became the candidate of the short-lived "Bull Moose (Progressive)" party.  Along with its declaration of war on the "unholy alliance" between corrupt business and corrupt politics, the Progressive Party proposed such things workers take for granted today, such as minimum wage laws, an 8 hour workday, workmen's compensation, and limited injunctions in strikes.  Progressive thinkers today typically carry along a vial of holy water to protect themselves from spiritual contamination caused by anyone labeled with the demonic GOP tag, but at one time in this country there actually were open-minded Republicans who were fighting for the little guy and not trying to push back the clock on labor standards, as they do today.

So that's a brief synopsis of the importance of Theodore Roosevelt in history, and the Facebook post I saw about the good old rough riding Bull Moose said this:

It is essential that there should be organization of LABOR.  Capital organizes and therefore labor MUST ORGANIZE.

I'll be honest in saying that I don't know where this quote comes from.  I don't know when and where Teddy Roosevelt said it, or even if he said it at all.  Just because it's on the Internet doesn't necessarily make it real.  But the reason the quote attracted my attention is because it conforms to my own thoughts on the right of working people to organize and negotiate the price that employers pay for their services.

Labor is an essential component of the production process.  Raw materials are an essential component.  Factories, machine tools and computers are essential components, as is financial capital.

For some reason, however, economic philosophers of a conservative inclination accept the right of all these components of the production process to negotiate their own prices, except for labor.

The mine owner driving a load of iron ore to the back dock of the smelter is considered quite within his rights if he haggles over the price of that ore, or withholds it for a better price.  The industrialist providing the machinery to that factory would be called a fool if he didn't try to get the best price he could for his products.  The banker making a loan to the smelter to finance increased production is not looked at askance if he tries to get the best interest rates he can on that loan.

But for some outrageously inexplicable and unfair reason, collective bargaining by workers to get the highest price they can negotiate for their labor is met with outrage.  Union activity is looked upon by a significant portion of the American public these days as sketchy, immoral, even borderline illegal.

Furthermore, it is the working people who would benefit most from Unions who have the greatest complicity in causing their dangerous decline.  We have cut our own throats, in other words, by allowing the propaganda machine of Corporate America to plant this insidious, anti-Union worm into the minds of the voters, who are overwhelmingly workers.

We refer to many of our more affluent employers as the 1 percenters.  By extension, therefore, we are the 99 percenters.  99 percent of the vote beats 1 percent even in a Saddam Hussein sponsored election, so why do we continue to elect politicians who act contrary to our interests?  Why do we continue to allow ourselves to be brainwashed with this bogus "trickle down" theory of economics,which insists that if we leave the greedy billionaires to their own devices the accumulated wealth of these tycoons will spill over and come pouring down to the rest of us, to our great prosperity and happiness.

Today I heard a news items on the radio where Wal Mart was patting itself on the back for giving its workers a raise to 9 dollars an hour.  This isn't trickle down; this is a clogged pipe from which only an occasional drop of rusty, tainted, undrinkable water makes its way down to the thirsty masses below.  Wal Mart's move is a joke and an insult.  The corporation hiding behind the slick smiley face mask is saying to its workers  that they aren't even as good as animals.  The six Wal-Mart Waltons on the Forbes list of billionaires have a net worth of 144.7 billion.  None of that wealth would be possible except for those wage slave workers who toil away toward the ultimate comfort of the Waltons every day, and in gratitude from their magnanimous employer continue to live below the poverty line.

My favorite author and fellow Californian John Steinbeck said that the poor in America "...see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."  Therein lies the problem.

We've allowed this to happen to ourselves, my friends.  Business cannot function without us.  We've got to start organizing again  and get the bigger piece of the pie that we deserve.  "Trickle down" was a corporate lie that Ronald Reagan force fed down our throats.  Let's take a lesson from the much wiser Republican Theodore Roosevelt who said that not only is it a good idea that labor should organize, but that it is essential.  He said, in fact, that we MUST organize.

If one of the rich fat cats is letting us in on one of the secrets, I think we should pay attention.



Image attributed to:  "T Roosevelt" by Pach Brothers (photography studio) - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3f06209.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.العربية | čeština | Deutsch | English | español | فارسی | suomi | français | magyar | italiano | македонски | മലയാളം | Nederlands | polski | português | русский | slovenčina | slovenščina | Türkçe | 中文 | 中文（简体）‎ | 中文（繁體）‎ | +/−. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:T_Roosevelt.jpg#mediaviewer/File:T_Roosevelt.jpg

The combustible mixture used in The Truth Bomb includes a generous portion of java from Starbucks and other corporate coffee conglomerates, and none of this is cheap.  Therefore, unless the ads to the right and above complete annoy and offend you, please investigate what my sponsors have to say.  

I Hated Wind Farms, When Hating Wind Farms Wasn't Cool

By Mel Carriere

Oh Barbara Mandrell where are you now?  Even though I didn't like country music even a little bit when she was popular in the 80s, I had late adolescent fantasies about that woman that have absolutely nothing to do with this article except for the title of one of her most popular songs, which I have absconded with and reworked to serve as the title for this blog post.  She still looks lovely thirty years later, by the way.

I received a message via Twitter just a few moments ago, and after a frustrating day of scanning through current news items trying to find a topic I felt passionate enough to write about for THE TRUTH BOMB, this tweet finally piqued my interest enough to get my butt in front of the computer to hack out a few lines.

The tweet, from a Twitter account called "Stop These Things" (meaning, I presume Wind Farms, and not adolescent fantasies, which I still suffer from at the age of 51), read as follows:

"Intermittent wind energy kills birds, bats, doesn't reduce CO2, increases power prices & causes deep community chaos..."

I believe the part about the birds and the bats, and since I am a passionate defender of both of these creatures I'll go along with that.  The other parts I am not certain about, especially the deep community chaos, which seems like a bit of hyperbole, but I will go along with the program of "stopping these things" just to save the birds and the bats.

The point I am trying to make is that I didn't need this tweet, or any of the rising tide of tweets, blogs, editorials, sound bites, or even the resulting deep community chaos to make me dislike the wind farms.  I disliked them from the very beginning, when disliking wind farms wasn't even cool, like it is now.

I remember at one time Wind Farms were a very fashionable thing, de rigueur if you want to use a very snooty term for fashionability.  All the liberals were on board with wind energy when Obama breezed into office in 2008, and I remember Wind Farms and the so-called "renewable energy" they provide were a key component of his energy platform.

But I haven't liked these hulking, bladed monstrosities since I first saw them somewhere around Livermore in the Bay Area of California.  This was back in the mid-90s, when my Barbara Mandrell fueled fantasies were a little fresher than they are now, and even then I didn't think they were cool.  At that time I wasn't the fan of birds as I am at present, but I still couldn't help but think, as I drove past dozens, maybe hundreds of the towering spinning blade machines, that they needed a modern day Don Quixote to tilt with them and bring these unsightly dragons down.  The problem from my point of view is that they took up so much damn space.  They were a blight on the landscape from horizon to horizon.  In plain talk, they were just ugly. Surely, I asked myself, that can't be an efficient way to crank out a few watts just to run the toaster and the television set?

Little by little I was vindicated in my view of the Wind Farms.  The ornithologists and their pals were the first ones to jump on board, when they made it known that those horrible white blades covering the hillsides killed raptors such as hawks when they attempted to perch on them.  Little by little the views of the naturalists gained steam and now the hard core libs at last are starting to backpedal away from the idea of Wind Farms.  The politicians aren't so vociferous about them anymore either.

Oops!  Too late guys.  Now you've set up these eyesores everywhere.  They've built a whole slew of them east of my town of San Diego, at a place called The Tecate Divide.  And as if the Wind Farms weren't bad enough, the Solar Farms have joined in with the fun of consuming acres upon acres of fragile desert ecosystem at very little bang for the buck.  Keep driving down that Interstate 8 from San Diego, past the Tecate Divide and eventually into Arizona, and sooner or later you will come across an enormous Solar Farm sitting on the left side of the road.  It looks impressive and very high tech, but now we are being told that these Solar Farms, in addition to providing renewable energy at an enormous investment in acreage, also fry birds to a crackly crunch as they try to fly past overhead.

Maybe one of the key components of renewable energy should be that if it takes up half the county to run your refrigerator it probably isn't any good.  But I could have told you that a couple of decades ago, before the evidence from the naturalists and the anthropologists investigating the phenomenon of windmill-induced "social chaos" came pouring in.  I knew it back when those wicked thoughts of Barbara Mandrell, playing the fiddle in that tight little sequined dress of hers, were still spinning the blades of my dirty little mind...



The above image is attributed to:  "Shepherds Flat Wind Farm 2011" by Steve Wilson from Orpington, UK - flickr: More Windmills....... Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shepherds_Flat_Wind_Farm_2011.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Shepherds_Flat_Wind_Farm_2011.jpg

People as Corporate Commodities - Where Do We Draw the Line on Free Enterprise?

By Mel Carriere

I'm not the world's most enthusiastic liberal, I suppose.  I am not exactly certified for doctrinal purity on all leftist political tenets of faith, and one of the issues that separates me from the hard core reds (funny how the color red has now been co-opted by the red-state right, isn't it?) is that I believe free enterprise serves human society as long as it is recognized that we the working people, as the most essential means of production, have the right to negotiate our own price.  I mean, the guy who supplies the steel to the mill gets to haggle over how much the factory pays him, so why shouldn't the people who provide the labor to that mill also have the right to negotiate how much they will be paid, through the process of collective bargaining?  To me this is not radical politics, it's just basic economics.  We the working people are the most important means of production, and we deserve to be compensated accordingly with a living wage.

On the other hand, I believe there are certain areas in which free enterprise is utterly unsuited to fairly and efficiently allocate resources; one of these being mineral resources on public lands.  For instance; should corporations be allowed to pump oil out of publicly-owned tracts without giving a significant portion back to the American people that it belongs to?  A detestable example of corporations fleecing the American public in this fashion occurred in the late 1800s, when the companies that built the transcontinental railroads across the country were given enormous swaths of territory by the government.  To demonstrate their gratitude for this public largesse, the railroads then literally shook down small farmers for transportation fees, which shows you exactly what happens when corporations are left to their own devices, without regulation.  Instead of operating according to the principles of the free market they deliberately drive up prices through corruption, graft, collusion and monopolization.  A "level playing field" only applies to the little guy at the bottom.  The fat cats on top buy off politicians and drive competitors under through extra-legal means in order to suck all of our bank accounts dry.

I also do not think that corporations should be allowed to treat human beings as commodities either, but apparently this is exactly what is happening in the senior care industry.  The very fact that "senior care" should have the word "industry" affixed to it seems an abomination to me, but that is exactly what it has become.  In the pre-industrial revolution era societies used to take care of their elderly collectively.  Not only was there an altruistic sense of duty to tend to the needs of the loved ones who had paid their dues caring for us in the past, but the notion also existed that the hard learned wisdom of older, experienced people could be a great benefit to society.

But nowadays the elderly have been reduced to commodities that are traded on the Dow Jones, just like oil and transportation are.  Yesterday while driving to work I heard a report on KFI Los Angeles that made the little hair I have left stand on end.  The news item was relating that when senior citizens living in elder care facilities can no longer make rent payments, the nursing homes often go to the court to claim guardianship over the defaulting resident.  The court often grants power of attorney rights to the care facility, who in turn uses it to gain complete control over that elderly person's money.

This happened to a woman named Lilian Palermo in New York, and you can read the revolting details by following the link at the bottom of this article.  In summation, after her husband Mr. Palermo complained about increased co-payments and living conditions at the facility, the nursing home obtained a court order that granted them the right to seize Mrs. Palermo's assets.

I understand that a nursing home is a business with exorbitantly high operating expenses, and like any business it is survives by producing black ink on the bottom line.  I understand that a business does not exist only to perform altruistic deeds, and as such the elder care industry has to coldly calculate revenues and expenses to produce a profit.  But is it right and proper that we as a society have turned the well being of our elderly over to the unfeeling, uncompassionate hands of corporate care?  Instead of adding a trillion dollars in debt bombing Iraq into oblivion with no readily apparent benefit at all to the American people, couldn't we have taken half, a quarter, or even a tenth of that money and put it to use taking care of those among the elderly who can no longer afford to take care of themselves?

These are the remnants of the "greatest generation" we are talking about here, folks.  I regularly engage in conversation with them on my mail route, but sadly enough there are fewer and fewer every day to talk to.  These citizen heroes include the soldiers, sailors and airmen who manned the trenches and tank turrets to take down Hitler and Tojo, as well as the "Rosie the Riveters" on the home front who built  the tanks, ships and planes their men overseas required to defeat tyranny and evil.  

After Baghdad has been reduced to rubble many times over, isn't there anything at all left over for these people, or are we going to continue to allow corporate raiders fretting over the daily ticker tape to bilk the last few dollars out of their pockets?  Where have we come as a society, when even the people who loved us and cared for us in the past are reduced to tradable, disposable commodities? 

Read the New York Times Article on this Subject

Image from:  http://ualrpublicradio.org/post/arkansas-nursing-homes-receive-failing-grade-national-survey

Watered Down Commercial News Radio - What's the Agenda?

By Mel Carriere

For Christmas my youngest son gave me a phone charger for my car.  I actually asked Santa for this gift so at first I was very pleased to get it, but was a little disappointed the first day I plugged it into the cigarette lighter of my clunky 2001 Honda Civic and it produced a horrible whine on all the AM stations I listen to, a shrill high pitched buzz that is intolerable to the ears.  Since my favorite radio station is KFI Los Angeles AM 640, or should I say was, this was very disappointing.  Not being able to live with that torturous head-splitting hum gave me two choices; to either not charge the phone in the car or change over to FM, where the phone charger for some technical reason that is above my head doesn't cause that horrible sound.

Lately my phone battery barely lasts through a day of low activity, so because this online writing gig requires constant vigilance over my email and social media accounts I think it is pretty important to  maintain a good charge.  But the fact is I'm just not much of an FM radio guy.  I like music quite a bit but for some reason when I'm driving in the car I like to be yakked at, I don't like to bang my head or shake my booty.

Out of desperation the charger situation made me decide to renew my relationship with NPR, National Public Radio, a program that is broadcast out of our local KPBS station.  Several years ago I was an NPR buff, even contributing to their annual fund raising drive, but because the disc jockeys are a bit stuffy, monotone, and lacking in passion, shall we say, I found myself nodding off behind the wheel.  In order to not drive into the Sweetwater River I switched back to AM, and thought I was pretty happy at KFI Los Angeles.  KFI leans a bit to the right but at least provides a credible news report, or so I thought.

I think I thought wrong.  Since switching back to NPR I've discovered that a lot has been happening in the world that has been suppressed from the radio listening public on the corporate-owned AM channels I have been listening to.

I understand that as a commercial enterprise under the corporate umbrella of I-heart radio, KFI exists to make money for I-heart's stockholders.  The same is true for other corporate-owned radio stations.  Since most radio listeners rolling down the road at drive time are indifferent about the news, to put it lightly, what dominates the corporate wavelengths are traffic reports, local-topic sound bites, a bit of national news compressed into very tiny, tasty, highly chewable sound bites, followed by social media and movie star buzz.  A lot of social media and movie star scandal buzz.  This is apparently what people like to listen to; this is apparently what sells advertising time.  This is also pretty much what passes for news on corporate-owned radio.

Since renewing my love affair with NPR I have been reminded about a lot of things that I either forgot were happening in the world or quite frankly did not know about in the fog of all that movie star and social media buzz.  Driving home Sunday, for instance, I listened to a report about a massive terrorist attack in Nigeria that was completely overshadowed by the Charlie Hebdo affair in France.  Just now, on my way from work to Starbucks I heard an engaging lengthy discussion about child soldiers in Uganda.  The corporations long ago became bored with the war in Ukraine, and because I haven't heard anything about it for so long I just assumed it was over.  Since I plugged in my buzzy charger, however, I have also found out from NPR that this conflict is a long way from over.  In listening to NPR one learns that a lot of things are surprisingly not over.

I wonder why NPR is so roundly criticized by mostly right-wing corporate radio as being a liberal propaganda machine?  Just because the announcers all sound like garment-rending Utopian socialists doesn't mean that NPR actually has a left-wing agenda, at least none that I have been able to detect, unless simply reporting the truth in depth is a left-wing agenda.  It could also just be that Rush and his pals don't like the competition and want to destroy public radio by discrediting its impartiality.

Corporate news radio doesn't like depth.  It doesn't like detail. It wants to make us believe that we are being given the news while mostly reminding its listeners that what's her name, that Kardashian lady, is more important than 43 student protesters murdered by the government in Mexico.  Giving us too much detail and depth would be a bummer.  The true agenda of Corporate America is to keep our lives simple, superficial, and untroubled by detail; to remind us that we are ultimately consumers that have to follow trends and fads that the boardrooms on Wall Street have decided are good and safe for us.

As it turns out, it looks like I've been living in a protective cocoon for the last few years.  I guess plugging my phone charger into my clunky Honda electrical system sort of unplugged me from the Matrix.  Sometimes bad technology can be good.  In a way, I've sort of plugged my brain into that little cigarette lighter too. 

NPR logo from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR

I-heart logo from:   "IHeartRadio logo" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IHeartRadio_logo.png#mediaviewer/File:IHeartRadio_logo.png

Politics and Religion, One and the Same?

By Mel Carriere

When I was in High School I had a friend who was a Catholic.  At that time I was not one.  I eventually converted to Catholicism, but at that moment of my life I was pretty much an annoyingly vociferous evangelical who liked to thump the poor little lost souls of my friends over the head with my Bible.

Every time I would broach the subject of religion with my friend he would try to ward me off with the old adage "There are two things you should never talk about; politics and religion."  It might have been three things, actually, but I can't remember what the other thing was.  At any rate the tactic would not work.  I just wouldn't shut up.  I'm surprised we stayed friends as long as we did, but he eventually moved back to Texas and not surprisingly I have not heard from him since.  

At any rate, I've been thinking a lot lately about the bold proposals President Obama is making in the waning days of his presidency, all of which I agree with.  My problem is the timing of these measures.  Where were these ideas 6 years ago, when he had a friendly Congress that could actually pass them?  Does he really think the Republican majority in Congress we have now is going to enact a higher minimum wage, a guaranteed seven days paid sick leave per year, or family medical leave?  In his defense I guess one could say that he was busy with Obamacare in the early stages of his Presidency, but if he had really wanted there were a lot of things he could have shoved through at that stage; throwing his Presidential weight behind them.

But referring back to my opening story about my Catholic friend who told me not to talk about religion, I am hesitant about opening up President Obama to any sort of criticism here because I am afraid of offending anybody's religious sensibilities.  Excuse me Mel, I'm sure you mean political sensibilities, don't you?  No, I mean exactly what I said, because people are sometimes so devoutly, fanatically blind in their choice of political heroes that they defend them with a fervor that borders on the religious in its level of zealotry.

People's pet politicians become like gods to them; gods who are above reproach and criticism.  When things go right they bow and thank their gods for their bounty and generosity, even though the good times may only be due to the current cyclical upswing and the gods have little or nothing at all to do with it.  Conversely, when things are bad perish the blasphemous thought that we rebuke our gods; the demonic forces in the other party are most assuredly to be blamed for these calamities.

I expect to be shouted down at this point by the ranks of the militant acolytes who have ignored everything I have been talking about up until now and are going to instantly pulverize me with the reminder that the Satan worshipers on the other side of the aisle are even more fanatically devoted to their absurd, pernicious cause.  In fact, our side is completely open minded about everything.  We always just look squarely at the facts, and the facts tell us that our wonderful leader is above reproach; he can walk on water, every jug of toxic, polluted, BP oil tainted H2O that he lays hands upon turns to the sweetest of wines at his touch.  

I know there are crooks and criminals on the other side of the aisle, believe me I know.  I have written about them time and time again until the "c" key on my computer I use to write "crook" and "criminal" has now been completely worn away by my greasy fingerprints.  I mostly agree with what the "left" proposes simply because it makes more sense, but this dogmatic reverence we give to politicians just because of their party affiliation has to stop.  It clouds our minds to the true benefits and downfalls of their plans.  As my banner above reads, such dogmatic devotion is "mental murder," and is the reason why nothing ever gets done in Washington that does anybody any good.

I hope my Texas Catholic friend is reading.  If so I apologize, and I hope the Bible I beat you with as a youngster didn't leave any permanent bruises on your skull.

Image from: http://bringingtruth.com/Objections/NeverTalkAboutReligionOrPolitics.aspx

Read Mel's latest Hub Pages article honoring MLK

News Flash to Terrorists - Violence doesn't work, try something else

By Mel Carriere

A couple of times a week I try to get up a little extra early so I can hack out a few lines before I go to work.  The bad part of being a writer is the isolation and loneliness that comes with it, which is of course self-imposed.  In order to get anything done you have to exile yourself on some dark, lonely, quiet little island  where nobody with any sense is going to keep you company at 5:30 in the AM.

While editing an article I eventually sent away to Bird Watcher's Digest this morning, my bleary eyed wanderings through cyberspace somehow led me to a story on Google News.  I'll put a link to it on the bottom, but first you're going to have to slog through my exhausting rants.  The article was about the recent terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in France.  In case you are living in self-imposed news exile on your own island, Charlie Hebdo is a weekly French magazine whose offices were attacked by gunmen on January 7th.  12 innocent people were killed in the attacks, and in the process of carrying out these acts of barbarous violence the militants have now made Charlie Hebdo a household word everywhere, whereas prior to this it was relatively unknown outside of France.  Instead of getting people to denounce the publication for its rather irreverent treatment of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, Al Qaeda has now made certain that everyone who is not a militant Muslim is a fan of Charlie Hebdo.

I do not enjoy denigrating or disrespecting other people's religion, but to show my solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and their right to freedom of speech I have posted one of their magazine covers on top of this blog.  In doing this I am throwing caution to the winds.  Come and get me terrorists.  I'm a bad-ass mailman armed with a can of pepper spray and half a dozen surly dogs that will have my back in a crisis (Most, unfortunately, are only Chihuahua size or less). So bring it on!

I'm not sure what this cartoon says, my French is really not that good, but I'm pretty sure it is mocking the prophet Mohammed.  Charlie Hebdo has made a living poking fun at the prophet, and Muslim extremists have not taken kindly to this.  In 2011 Muslim militants made their first attack on this magazine, firebombing the offices after the publication took a few unappreciated liberties with Mohammed.

So after two deadly attacks, the editors and staff of Charlie Hebdo are cowering in fear, right, just like Sony Pictures did after they were threatened with acts of terrorism prior to the release of The Interview.  The creators of this magazine have got religion, admitted their wrongdoing, and are probably right now cowering in fear in one of those French caves with the bulls and stick figures carrying spears painted on the walls, right?

Wrong.  Instead of cowering in fear, reversing their position, and vowing never to desecrate the Prophet again, they have instead announced that their upcoming edition will once more feature a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.  3 million copies of this magazine will be published.  If the terrorists intended to suppress what they interpret to be disrespect toward their Prophet, they have miserably failed.

The fact is that terrorism doesn't work, and it is awful surprising to me that nobody has figured this out yet.  70 years of terrorist attacks against Israel have failed to dislodge the Jewish state from Palestine.  The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center did not cause the United States to back away from meddling with the Middle East either.  Instead, we invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq, and such was the depth of outrage after the deeds of that horrible day that I'll bet Americans would have willing to march all the way to Mecca to get revenge.  Folks tend to get upset when you murder innocent people in their own front yard; even those who may have started out sympathetic to your cause distance themselves and start calling for heads to roll.

A recently released movie named Selma gives an example of a tactic that does work, one that has been tested time and time again, and this technique is known as Civil Disobedience.  

The film's title comes from the town of Selma, Alabama, which was a key battleground in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.  Only one percent of black people were registered to vote in the South at that time, and to combat this outrage the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (Note the inclusion of the term Nonviolent in that title, please), being inspired by the ideas of passive resistance advocated by Martin Luther King (successful), who had been inspired by Gandhi (also successful), carried out protests against the white supremacists in that Alabama town.  Americans watching at home on TV were appalled by scenes of peaceful protesters being billy-clubbed, attacked by dogs, and sprayed down by firehoses.  Shortly thereafter The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law, guaranteeing the right to vote for every American, regardless of color.  Peaceful resistance won the day.

Based on the success of inspirational leaders like Martin Luther King and Gandhi, one would think Arab leaders would take a look at a page in the Civil Disobedience Manual, tug on their thickly whiskered chins a bit, and conclude that "Hey dudes this stuff really works!"  Then, in order to counteract the editorial policy of Charlie Hebdo, instead of using suicide bombs and flying airplanes into buildings they might organize a boycott, march in the streets, or stage a sit-in in front of the Charlie Hebdo Offices.  Sit-ins and boycotts are embarrassing and bad for business, and they just might have been enough to make the magazine pull the offending pictures of Mohammed.

Instead, everybody who reads French is going to want to read Charlie Hebdo now, and a few people who flunked French in High School are taking remedial glasses so they will be ready when this issue comes out.  The last part might be a little poetic license on my part, but you get the idea.  The point is that whatever the terrorists intended to do by attacking the offices of Charlie Hebdo has completely backfired.

Look up at the Scoreboard, fellas.  Civil Disobedience is kicking butt, terrorism is losing badly.  It's not even close.  Time to change the playbook.


Voice of America article can be read at:  http://www.voanews.com/content/next-charlie-hebdo-cover-to-feature-prophet-muhammad/2596227.html