New York Publishing: worms in the big apple

First, let me apologize profusely for the Christian propaganda appearing in the Google ads on this page. Not my design, guys! The engine is just zeroing in on the discussion of Sarah Palin and her end-of-days aspirations. (Apparently, Jesus has his tickets booked, and as soon as her fundamental group have eliminated the unbelievers from the entire world ... he'll be back.)

If the Google ads get any more bloody evangelical, I'll be dropping them, because they're getting borderline ... non-Christian visitors (from the GLBTI community or not) to this blog to NOT need to be visually hammered with "experience Life in Jesus Christ," and "how should Christians respond to homosexuality within the family?" (Personally, I admit to being fascinated by the one that keeps showing up, "Was Jesus a Lunatic?" The only problem is, the landing page seems to be down. One might hope that they got so bombed with traffic after the ad started to circulate, they crashed a server. That would be solid reason for the landing page being unreachable.)

But --

This is a gay books blog, damnit! I've only made a handful of political posts, because I was so motivated by the news which found its way to my desk in the last few days, and which I covered in two or three journal entries --

Everything that can be said by me on that subject has been said! If you're here looking for the slime on Palin and McCain, I'll give you the links right here ... and then I'm going to talk about PUBLISHING for the remainder of this post!!

For the update on the impeding Apocalypse, go here:

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/president-sarah-palin-commander-in.html - "President Sarah Palin: commander-in-chief at the end of days"

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/not-gay-think-youre-safe-wrong-jewish.html -
"Not gay? Think you're safe? Wrong. Jewish, Pagan ... Sarah Palin is hunting for your hide."

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/palin-and-mccain-advocating-new-aids.html -
"Palin and McCain: advocating a new AIDS epidemic."

and for my commentary on the Californian gay marriage rights issue:

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/gay-wedding-bells-can-be-expensive.html -
"Gay wedding bells can be expensive."

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/see-what-youre-up-against.html -
"See what you're up against?"

and for gay rights seen as a sub-set of the wider field of human rights:

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/here-comes-damocles-with-his-chainsaw.html -
"Here comes Damocles with his chainsaw"

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/in-landscape-of-spring.html -
"In the landscape of spring."

And now, on to other topics which are just as aggravating in their own way, but have nothing whatever to do with politics. Don't know about you guys, but I could use a break.


Right. Now:

Publishing.



The word brings to mind images of great newspaper presses, trucks speeding in every direction, carrying shrink-wrapped bundles of brand-new paperbacks ... of agents shmoozing and oiling their way through New York book parties, of writers signing six-figure contracts, and a little while later, signing the actual books, beautiful great hardcover things, while being mobbed at B&N or Borders, and appearing on TV to promote whatever they just wrote.

Well, some of the above images are about publishing, but most are about marketing; and most of those marketing images date from the last two decades (stretch back to 1980 if you have to; but don't go back further), the quarter-century or so of the Age of Corporate Takeovers.

In this era the small publishers, which were the backbone of the industry right back to Caxton and Guttenberg, were inhaled, absorbed, digested, by big publishers. In turn, the big publishers were incorporated into the giant combines ... which were inevitably bought up by multinationals which have nothing much to do with publishing.

The small publisher is almost gone: out-competed by super-predators who can afford to throw zillions of dollars at publicity for a lousy book. Also, books are getting more and more expensive to make. (Yes, the price of gasolene has a lot to do with book prices. Transportation of product. Duh.)

A critical threshold is reached. On one side of it you have a retail price where the publishing house can pay its running costs and keep an editing staff in New York apartments ... on the other side of the line is the price readers can actually afford to pay. Exceed that price, and books stand on the shelves, they don't go through the checkouts.

Somewhere in the middle is the product (books) which have become so expensive, they're going back for pulping by the tons. They find their way onto sale tables, while readers are trawling book exchanges, looking for a decent read at a price they can afford -- or buying "used" on the Internet. Fact: Amazon.com (seen as the boogieman of the publishing world) is the planet's biggest Second Hand Book store. Why pay the $40 shelf price for a hardcover, when you can buy it used, like new, at Amazon, for $6?!

And trampled underfoot are the writers who used to be more or less complacent of their job security. With publishers closing and amalgamating everywhere, paperback royalties at (!) 7.5%, printruns getting smaller as publishers struggle to contain losses ... writers who stand around with their hands in their pockets waiting for a traditional publisher to do it all for them, pay them an advance once can actually live on, and give the nod to their next book -- well, kindly stated, they're an endangered species.

Let's look at "working" writers in the niche end of the market. Run the numbers yourself. Say, a paperback costs US$8 (what *do* they cost in the States these days?), earns you .60c (7.5%), and sells 75% of a 10,000 copy printrun. (They pulped 25%). So, you make $4500. If you're paying a mortgage and buying a car, you need to sell ten or fifteen such books per year ... but your publisher can take a maximum of two. You have a major problem. You're out there looking for a job, and your writing, which used to be your trade, has become your hobby.

Okay .. now look at it from the publisher's perspective. Let's consider a fairly major house, which publishes 60 titles per year, with printruns of 10,000 each. That's 600,000 books, from which you'd expect 25% of the retail price to return to the publisher. That's $2 per copy off the price of a paperback. Maximum income is $1.2 million ... if the whole printrun was sold, and if a lot of those books were not subject to massive discounting in the distribution trade (they are).



The fact is, 25% of all books that are cranked out by the New York publishing industry get pulped, and of those that are sold, tons land on the sale tables, and tons more are pushed through to chain stores that demand heavy discounts. The truth is, this hypothetical publisher will be lucky to see a half million as the business's annual return. Uh ... what's payroll? How many hundred grand a year editors can you support on a half million income? Oh, yeah, and what about paying the writers? Cover artists? Outsourced proofreaders?

Somewhere along the line, something went wrong. Maybe it's the price of printing. Maybe it's the fact that folks who work for big town publishers pay $4000 a month for rent on an apartment, and they need the high wages, if they're not going to starve to death. Maybe it's the distributors who needed a higher and higher cut out of the retail price, as the cost of gasoline and diesel shot skywards after the 1960s?

Whatever went wrong, don't blame it on the ordinary working writer, the loon who beats his/her brains out to produce the very best book possible, editing and proofing for weeks after writing is finished, and then sweating over the galleys ... all to earn a paycheck so small, a lot of people would wonder why they bothered.

Now, some of the rot certainly set in when the bestselling authors started to earn so much money, they themselves began to say they were overpaid. But if their books were selling in the millions, and they were getting 15% royalties off $40 hardcovers, there's nothing outrageous about these numbers. See it this way: one bestseller (like The Da Vinci Code) can prop up a major publisher for years, allowing it to survive multiple failures of other, lesser, books. Fair enough.

Hmm. So you can't lay the blame at the feet of people like Dan Brown and Daniel Steele and Wilbur Smith. They got paid in geometric proportion to the copies going out the door.

But around the same time as all this was happening at the writing and editing levels, the multinational conglomerates got hold of the publishing industry by absorbing it osmotically. Marketing experts don't know a whole hell of a lot about books, or writing. They might know what sells (in other words, they can tell you which megatrend is showing good returns right now, driven by which blockbuster movie that came out just last month). But could they tell a good book from a rotten one?

When's the last time you bought a book and found it badly written? You might not be an editor yourself, but you can spot loads of editorial changes that should have been made ... and the narrative goes off the rails a couple of times ... it didn't end properly ... it contradicted itself in a few places.

Uh huh. You probably just discovered a book that was selected by the Marketing Division. They have a megatrend they're following. Forget the fact this is a rotten book by a first-time writer ... the subject matter is spot-on. The book auction starts to roll and they can wind up paying down millions for this piece of, uh, well, sorry. Krudd.

A certain percentage of the time, they'll be right, and readers don't actually care how bad it is. It's just sufficiently like the latest movie phenomenon to sell a ton of copies. It's the surprise hit of the summer season, everyone gets bankable. But some of the time, the Marketing Division is sorta-kinda wrong. This is why books pile up on the sale tables, and 25% go through the pulping machines and are reincarnated as newspapers.

The waste factor of pulping a huge percentage of your product drives the price up. The marketing bills -- to pump books which have been chosen for their subject matter and apparent marketability, rather than their quality -- are high, and getting higher. Independent bookstores have become increasingly more rare as they're forced out by discount chainstores and on-line bargain bazaars like Amazon. This leaves the chainstores in command of pricing. And in order to offer those whopping in-store discounts, their buyers demand discounts from the publisher. Ouch! Those discounts eat into every dollar, including the writer's royalty.



Today's publishing industry is like a snake devouring its own tail. It's on the last lap -- everyone knows it can't last much longer, but the committee is still out on the question of what comes next.

The future of publishing is a monstrous question -- and I've already rattled on so long, today, that I'm out of time! So I'll pick up these threads, tomorrow, right where I'm leaving them to dangle today. In Part II (!) I'll be talking about POD, ebooks, how the hell one markets books without recourse to a bookstore or a publicist (or an advertising budget!), and where Nostrakeeganus sees the industry going in the next five or ten years.

In the meantime, if you want the whole sordid tale, in detail, see this:
http://nymag.com/news/media/50279/ - "The End: The book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after. With sales stagnating, CEO heads rolling, big-name authors playing musical chairs, and Amazon looming as the new boogeyman, publishing might have to look for its future outside the corporate world. By Boris Kachka Published Sep 14, 2008"

See you tomorrow.

Ciao for now,
MK

President Sarah Palin: commander-in-chief at the end-of-days

The hardest thing about this post was finding a starting place. The subject is vast. Too vast even for a normal-length book, let alone a blog post. The best I can do here is point you in some extraordinary directions and ask you to personally verify the things I'm going to say ... because, on face value, some of those things might sound outrageous.

The thing is, I'm a novelist, not a political commentator; this is usually a "blog about stuff," where I'm equally likely to talk about software, junk food, gay issues, movies on DVD, celebrities, writing and editing, publishing and, of course, gay books, which is where I work. I've only recently begun to dabble (or is it babble?) in the realm of politics, and specifically US politics.

Blame the impending presidential election. Or shoot for the heart of the matter, and blame my involvement on an air-head in eye-glasses who comes from the very nice town of Wasilla, Alaska. I've been there many times; it's a lovely place with great people ... except, they have this one church. Sarah Palin's church. And this was the place where the first barrow load of sh*t hit the first fan; but said manure could land in every part of the world.

I honestly wish I had the time to devote to this. If I didn't have to work (you know, earn a living, keep a roof over my head, food on the table, the lights turned on, that kind of thing), I could easily have done the investigative journalist routine, and written the book. However, before anyone asks if Keegan plans to write it: no. Don't have the time, guys; and besides, I rather suspect that a hundred such books are being written right now.

So, let's recap what we know for sure (it's all over the Internet right now; the regular news media will catch up sooner or later), as briefly as possible and then go on to the subject of election fixing.

Sarah Palin is a member of a Wasilla church that is a part of something very big, and very nasty:

The religious background of Sarah Palin is not unrelated to her bid to take the nation’s second highest office. She herself has been extremely vague about that background. Given the details, it becomes clearer perhaps why.

Sarah Palin has spent more than two and a half decades of her life as a member of an Alaska church which is part of a fanatical Christian-named cult project that is sweeping across America. Palin comes out of the most radical stream of US Born-Again Evangelism known as ‘Joel’s Army,’ an offshoot of what is called Dominionism and sometimes also called the Latter Rain cult or Manifest Sons of God. The movement deliberately attempts to remain below the radar screen.

Sarah Palin is a product of an extreme fringe of the American Evangelical movement known variously as the Third Wave Movement, also known as the New Apostolic Reformation, or as Joel's Army, a part of what is called Dominionism. Until 2002 according to their own website, Palin was a member of Wasilla Assembly of God with Senior Pastor Ed Kalnins. Online video clips of Palin speaking from the pulpit of this church are revealing. Curiously, between the time this article was begun on September 9th and the 11th, the video was removed without explanation:
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20712.htm.).

As one researcher familiar with the history of the Third Wave Movement or Dominionism describes, ‘The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form ‘Joel’s Army’ to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God.’4

The excesses of this movement were declared a heresy in 1949 by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and again condemned through Resolution 16 in 2000.

Sarah H. Leslie, a former Christian Right leader, describes the ideology of Dominionism:

‘The Gospel of Salvation is achieved by setting up the ‘Kingdom of God’ as a literal and physical kingdom to be ‘advanced’ on Earth in the present age. Some dominionists liken the New Testament Kingdom to the Old Testament Israel in ways that justify taking up the sword, or other methods of punitive judgment, to war against enemies of their kingdom.

‘Dominionists teach that men can be coerced or compelled to enter the kingdom. They assign to the Church duties and rights that belong Scripturally only to Jesus Christ. This includes the esoteric belief that believers can ‘incarnate’ Christ and function as His body on Earth to establish His kingdom rule. An inordinate emphasis is placed on man’s efforts; the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is diminished.’

Leslie quotes from Al Dager’s Vengeance Is Ours: The Church In Dominion: ‘Dominion theology is predicated upon three basic beliefs:

1) Satan usurped man’s dominion over the earth through the temptation of Adam and Eve; 2) The Church is God’s instrument to take dominion back from Satan;

3) Jesus cannot or will not return until the Church has taken dominion by gaining control of the earth’s governmental and social institutions.’

Sarah Leslie pinpoints to the central deception behind the current spread of Dominionism among various Protestant denominations across America today:

‘Dominion theology is a heresy. As such it is rarely presented as openly as the definitions above may indicate. Outside of the Reconstructionist camp, evangelical dominionism has wrapped itself in slick packages – one piece at a time – for mass-media consumption. This has been a slow process, taking several decades. Few evangelicals would recognize the word ‘dominionism’ or know what it means. This is because other terminologies have been developed which soft-sell dominionism, concealing the full scope of the agenda. Many evangelicals (and even their more conservative counterparts, the fundamentalists) may adhere to tidbits of dominionism without recognizing the error…

‘To most effectively propagate their agenda, dominionist leaders first developed new ecclesiologies, eschatologies and soteriologies for targeted audiences along the major denominational fault lines of evangelical Christianity. Then the 1990s Promise Keepers men’s movement was used as a vehicle to ‘break down the walls’, i.e., cross denominational barriers for the purpose of exporting dominionism to the wider evangelical subculture. This strategy was so effective that it reached into the mainline Protestant denominations. Dominionists have carefully selected leaders to be trained as ‘change agents’ for ‘transformation’ (dominion) in an erudite manner that belies the media stereotype of southern-talking, Bible-thumping, fundamentalist half-wits.’

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10167 ... read it all. Please.

Enter Sarah Palin, spotted years ago as a prime candidate for enlistment to be an "end-time soldier in God's army." This is the church Mrs. Palin attended for 28 years; this is the church where her pastor boasts about being a witchhunter. (You can watch videos of Palin telling proudly, how the witchhunter performed the "laying on of hands" and prayed her into office. using the power of spiritual warfare. You won't need a link for the source of this: it's everywhere on the Internet. This is stuff you already know. )

She's been Governor of Alaska for just 19 months, and was chosen to be the running mate, and veep, for a president who is very likely to die in office. He's old, reportedly frail, and already has what is described as "severe skin cancer." Upon the death of President McCain, his veep will assume the office. President Palin, Commander in Chief of God's Army at the end of days.

Is this who America needs in the oval office of the White House?

She has stated that she believes the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. As a 28-year affiliate of a sect so fanatical it was declared heretical, she will have been taught its beliefs since childhood -- therefore she must also believe that "Jesus cannot or will not return until the Church has taken dominion by gaining control of the earth’s governmental and social institutions." (See above.)

What better way to set up a real, physical Kingdom of God than to get a Dominionist into the White House, enlist the "soldiers of god" by the tens of thousands, clothe them in the uniforms of the American armed forces, and then ... well, subdue the world, one way or another.

You already know how many times the USA can "make the rubble bounce" with surplus nuclear warheads. This is a statistic, not a theory. It's been a statistic for forty years or more. And ... "Dominionists teach that men can be coerced or compelled to enter the kingdom."

Right. And you though Opus Dei was way out there.

You would wonder why in any world anyone would be even considering a vote for McCain, yet the Republicans are running just about neck and neck with the Democrats. Having read the above, if you want to give yourself the scare of your life, go here:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls/

These religious extremists (who could teach the ayatollahs a volume or two about dangerous fundamentalism, no matter the religious platform) are so close to the White House, it makes your blood run cold. Americans en masse are inclined to vote their way, and you wonder why. Ignorance? Stupidity? The genuine faith that the Kingdom of God is right around the corner, and they want to live in it, even if living there means slaughtering the 99% of humanity who don't measure up, according to Christian fundamental standards?

The thing is, I believe in the right of free speech and free thoughts. You know me. You know my novels! For my money, people can believe whatever they want -- I'd actually defend their right to believe in pink elephants wearing tutus dancing across these massive lawns on Pennsylvania Avenue. But -- the Dominionists? In order to bring the Kingdom of their specific God into reality, the rest of the world has to be conquered, physically, for real.

If the feather-heads who believed this were a bunch of simple-minded folks in Haiti or Burundi -- or any small country, gods help us! -- I wouldn't be concerned. They could believe God was made of green cheese for all it matters, because they couldn't do enough to hurt the rest of the planet.

But the Republicans are Americans, the leaders of the free world ... with enough nuclear warheads to bounce the rubble at least a dozen times over. They can hurt, badly, anyone who stands against them when the time comes to establish the Kingdom for real: "Dominionists teach that men can be coerced or compelled to enter the kingdom."

To this, add the hard fact that Republican America is 7.5 trillion dollars in debt to China -- a country which can expect to be destroyed utterly in the end-of-days war; and they're still borrowing. Of course they're still borrowing. What makes you think they intend, or expect, to pay back a red cent? The "end of days" could easily be started by simply picking a war with the Godless Horde.

Damnit, where's Jesus when you need him? He's supposed to stop this kind of thing, not ignite it and participate in it. At least, that's what I was taught when I was little. (Born Catholic, raised agnostic, woke up to what I, myself, believed while still a teen.)

There's a article you might like to read, but I'll include a small disclaimer here. Not that it's an article with an iffy pedigree -- it isn't. But it might be a damned "hard read" for a lot of people. It's a professional text, and fairly dense:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html -- "What Makes People Vote republican" by Joe Haidt -- who answers the puzzle of why, no matter what rational people say, how they say it, or how often they repeat it, massive numbers of Americans will always vote Republican.

This time, one hulluva lot of them are voting in sheer ignorance. You can't make me believe every Republican voter wants to nuke the world into submission and wait for Jesus to arrive. They couldn't be criminally insane in such numbers! (Could they?) A lot more are voting with way too much Heaven on their minds; the rest are voting on a knee-jerk, because they always vote this way, and they haven't (yet) bothered to read the fine print, find out who and what they're voting for this time.

The bottom line is, President McCain, and President Palin (due to slither into office about four or five months into 2009) are a whisker away from the White House. And if the vote is too close to be measured, well, now we enter the fascinating, frightening, enlightening realm of election rigging.

Ballot fixing. It appears to be common knowledge to American citizens that this can, has, and will happen, but for the rest of us, who might be less well acquainted with the dank, swampy underbelly of US politics, Go here:

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/2004votefraud_ohio.html

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2553

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

Don't take it up with me -- argue with Rolling Stone magazine and the rest of them.

In this post (which I swear up and down will be my LAST political post for a long time, because I find it utterly depressing), I've nominated Sarah Palin as the likely replacement for Mr. McCain, when he answers the bugle call to glory in the sky.

However, in recent days, there's been increasing protest against Mrs. Palin, and now we see the very real chance she'll be dropped as McCain's running mate, and replaced with someone else.

However, there are two thoughts I want to leave you with before I go and grab some coffee and try to get the bloody Apocalypse out of my head, so I can get back to THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE.

One: Palin has put her foot in her mouth many, many times because she hasn't had enough time for the grooming and training needed to take a really good crack at the White House. Give her four years under the tutelage of Republican puppet masters, and she'll be suave and smooth. She'll be back. Four years or eight years will lay some extra time on her, make her look more credible as a wannabe president.

Two: drop Palin next week, and she'll certainly be replaced by another one of the Republican Dominionist "change agents." McCain will still be just as old and sick. He only picked Palin as his running mate to throw the cat among the pigeons ... a woman! A sop, or a bribe, to Mrs. Clinton's camp. Now, replace Palin with a good looking, clean-cut, Christian young man with a wife and five kids, the very model of American manhood, just out of the army, gainfully employed, church-going, with a cute little Republican mom carrying an apple pie with flags sticking out of it. Only the gender of the veep changed.

Where is it written that the midwife who birthed the Apocalypse has to be female?

Tomorrow, I swear I'm going to talk about gay books.

Not gay? Think you're safe? Wrong. Jewish, Pagan ... Sarah Palin is hunting for your hide

Much of the body of this post, right now, is a re-post from http://www.wildhunt.org/2008/09/palins-anti-pagan-coreligionists.html ... and I'll be talking about this in my own next post. To date, I've only looked at Sarah Palin and the Republican religious fundamentalists from the perspective of the gay community. Frankly, it's worse than that.

You've known for some time that Palin is weird, but you probably don't know HOW weird. You knew, when she was gaffer in Wasilla, she charged rape victims for the rape kit. You know she was looking at ways to ban books. You know she and McCain will usher in a new AIDS epidemic, with their ban on condoms. Okay ... you're not gay, you're past procreating age, you don't read gay literature, you're not a rape victim, so you're saying, "I'm in the lifeboat, Jack -- pull the ladder up."

But, are you really in the lifeboat? Is there a lifeboat?

After reading the following, you will seriously doubt that any such lifeboat exists. This report comes from an American Pagan site, but it could just as easily have been reposted from an American Jewish site, an American Gay site, an American Catholic site -- or Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or Taoist, or anything other than the church to which Palin belongs. (Find out what a pagan is before you judge them. Find out what they think, believe, and say, and try to bear in mind your own Good Book's tip: "Judge not, lest ye be judged" ... wiser words were never spoken.)

Take a look at this, and squirm -- and I'll be back tomorrow, with a lot more...

9.09.2008

Palin's Anti-Pagan Coreligionists

Here I was thinking to myself that the chances of a modern Pagan angle to the Republican VP pick of Alaska's Sarah Palin would be truly minimal. Sure, you had her support of aerial wolf hunting (a cruel method that violates the ethic of "fair chase"), and her drill-happy attitudes towards ANWR, but nothing explicitly anti-Pagan had emerged. But a number of bloggers, most notably Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action, have been digging into Palin's religious background and found some disturbingly anti-Pagan connections.

"Sarah Palin's churches are actively involved in a resurgent movement that was declared heretical by the Assemblies of God in 1949. This is the same 'Spiritual Warfare' movement that was featured in the award winning movie, "Jesus Camp," which showed young children being trained to do battle for the Lord. At least three of four of Palin's churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of this movement, which is referred to as The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit or the New Apostolic Reformation. The movement is training a young "Joel's Army" to take dominion over the United States and the world."

These "Third Wave" Christians believe in supernatural powers, demon possession, curses, and ongoing spiritual warfare. Most of them are loosely grouped around C. Peter Wagner, founder of the World Prayer Center, and coiner of the term "Third Wave". Wagner believes that one of the greatest opponents to Third Wave Christian dominance is The Goddess.

"Several of their top prophets and generals of intercession spent weeks in intensive prayer to "confront the Queen of Heaven." This queen is considered by them to be one of the most powerful demons over the earth and is the Great Harlot of Mystery Babylon in Revelation ... Wagner and his group also claim that the Queen of Heaven is Diana, the pagan god of the biblical book Ephesians and the god of Mary veneration in the Roman Catholic Church."

Wagner is so serious about the "Queen of Heaven" (you know the one the ladies made cakes for) that he has written two books on the subject: "Confronting The Queen of Heaven" and "The Queen's Domain". Third Wave Christians participating in spiritual warfare against the Queen of Heaven believe their efforts (directly or indirectly) have caused earthquakes, hurricanes, large fires, and killed Princess Diana and Mother Teresa.

As for Palin herself, she spoke approvingly of being personally prayed over by Thomas Muthee just before winning governorship of Alaska. Muthee is a popular figure among Third Wavers for driving out the "spirit of witchcraft" that resided in Kiambu, Kenya.

"He and his wife committed to six months of prayer with various types of fasting before ever entering Kiambu. Their goal in prayer and fasting was to ask God to reveal the name of the demonic principality ruling over Kiambu and keeping the city under such oppression. God revealed through a vision that a spirit of witchcraft was the ruling principality there and that a number of other demonic spirits were functioning under the headship of witchcraft. An effective strategy for conquest would be to topple the spirit of witchcraft first and thus bring the coalition of evil spirits into disarray and drive them from the city."

Muthee's vision of spiritual warfare fits right in with the Third Wave's, and he has spoken at churches across America, including 10 consecutive sermons at Wasilla Assembly of God (Palin's main church until very recently). The idea of that sort of anti-witch hysteria being imported and cross-pollinating with extremist American Christianity is troubling.

While Palin has striven to present herself as a "post-denominational" Jesus follower, it should be noted that most Third Wave Christians also present themselves in this manner. Also, lest you think this article is some sort of liberal Pagan anti-Christian take-down, it should be noted that this Christian movement has been deemed heretical by several (conservative) Christian groups, including Fundamentalist Baptists.

What Pagans need to know, especially those who are considering voting Republican, is if Palin condemns or rejects the spiritual warfare teachings of the Third Wave movement. A movement that essentially espouses malicious Christian magic. Pagans have seen first hand that the religious opinions of Presidents have been used in the past by government agencies to deny us our legal rights. What would happen if our vice president thought we should be supernaturally eradicated?

... ... ...

So ends the repost. Stay with me a while longer: there's more...



Let me give you a couple of links to other pages you should look at without further ado:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/uselections/2008/09/palin-linked-el.html
... witch hunts will be "on" if these people find their way into the oval office...


http://shannynmoore.wordpress.com/2008/09/19/keith-olbermann-shannyn-moore-pastor-problem/#comments
Jewish, Israeli, or support thir community: on the above link, zero in on this comment:

I was worried about Palin’s religious views before I knew about the the pastor as witchhunter.
Palin beleives that Jews are going to Hell because they don’t believe in Jesus. She belongs to a church where the pastor could invite a “Jew” for Jesus as guest speaker. You can’t be Jewish and accept Jesus as your savior. If you are trying to convert Jews you are trying to reduce the number of Jews. Ultimately there wouldn’t be a single Jew left on the planet.
Palind also beleives that Israel plays a role in the endtimes. She supports Israel because she believes that Jews must convert for the Second Coming to happen. A Jewish state with no Jews would be the result.

Posted by "Susan" on September 20.



http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10167
Read this several times to let the details sink into your brain ... the first time you read it, you'll be so gobsmacked, a lot of them will bounce right off. Armageddon, here we come. Got your bags packed? Make sure to pack something cool (cotton breathes), because we are ALL on the express elevator leading waaaaaay down.

You wondered why the Republicans would blithely borrow trillions and trillons of dollars, and are still borrowing? They only need to win (or fix) one more election, and the Second Coming is right around the corner ... they don't have to pay back a dime.

Or, so they believe.

More tomorrow.

As through a lens ... that needs cleaning

This post was supposed to go up late yesterday, but things came up and I lost the opportunity to post again. (No, not computer headaches, or Invasion of the Rellies; I think I swallowed a Thai chili. My upper digestive tract may never be the same again.)

So here is the post, maybe fourteen hours late. I'm up to my eyeballs with politics for the time being, so I'm going to talk about something else this time.

They way we view the world is interesting in so many ways, not least of which is how the world is presented to us for viewing. That statement might seem to have the qualities of a palindrome, but think about this.

What do you really know about ... oh, say, the Battle of Britain? I use this as an example because the anniversary just went by: September 15 ... 915, if you will ... the date when Britain could reasonably be said to have won its freedom from Nazi Germany in an air war, and like 911, it's never likely to be forgotten ... so long as you're British or have the connections).

Now, about one in a million people will say, "I know everything about it, son, I bloody fought in it, you grew up in a free country because kids like me were up there in the Spitfires and Hurricanes, giving our lives to keep Hitler out of this country." An unfortunate percentage of people will say, "What battle, of where?" They can find Britain on a map (or, I hope they can!), but they're just as likely to think of the Spanish Armada as World War II, when pressed on the subject --

And by far the majority of people will say, "I saw the movie."

And a very good movie it is. Michael Caine (The Dark Knight), Christopher Plummer (National Treasure; The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus), Robert Shaw (Swashbuckler) Lawrence Olivier, Ralph Richardson , Ian McShane, and a stellar cast all elbowing for screen-time, because everyone wanted to be in this movie. Okay, it's true that Hollywood "did a number" on it: the facts had to be folded, spindled and mutilated to fit the timing, pacing and length of a motion picture -- if movie makers didn't do this, the audience would fall asleep or walk out and say, "What a rotten movie." So, sure, you can criticize the film for having been "Hollywoodized" ... but I can guarantee to you, the audience stayed awake!

The gist of this post is actually in the above paragraph. Our own history, the world, foreign cultures, other people's lives and loves, religions and traditions, are caught on film (or tape, or flash cards. Makes no difference), and then the whole "raw" capture goes through the editing process. It's digitized, color graded, edited into a sensible sequence according to a script (even documentaries have scripts; and they're often incredible complex. It can be harder to script a doco than a feature film -- ask me why, if you're interested). Parts are cut out; other parts are dramatized; old film is colorized; the sound is re-recorded; voice-over narration is added, Foley and ADL are performed...

Every part of this process is necessary to make any film -- documentary or fiction -- watchable to an audience. You can't afford to be boring; and you can't (often) afford to serve up material that's too gross, too explicit, too radically outspoken on sensitive themes, because you don't want your movie to be rated right off the screen and into the realm of under-the-counter disks sold at dark, sleazy little stores with backstreet entrances.

So the lens through which we perceive everything beyond the range of our own physical eyes (and that's 99.999% of everything) has been cut and polished by teams of professionals. The world as we see and know it is ... a presentation.

You ever notice how characters in the massive historicals have good teeth? The truth is, the heroes of Gladiator and Troy, Alexander and Kingdom of Heaven would have had teeth like the scurvy scum in Pirates of the Caribbean ... but who's going to come over all wobbly-kneed and romantic over a hero with bad teeth?

That's a really, seriously, horrifically callow case to make, isn't it? Teeth. But it makes the point fast: reality has been skewed. Of necessity.

And the same is true when you get out of the callow examples and start looking at "meaningful" presentations of the world.

What do you know about the Chinese occupation of Tibet? The movie, right? Bradley ... yum. How about your mental images of Apollo 13? Tom Hanks was great in that one. The Vietnam War? Oh, I never missed an episode of Tour of Duty ... Terrence Knox was such a hunk. (Wasn't he, though?!) Or did you see First Blood 14 times? (Woah, Sly had great pecs...) What do you know about New Zealand? Seriously! Well, for a start, you know what it looks like: Middle Earth (you saw the movies). But one would hope and pray you don't think Ancient Greece looked like a cold rainforest full of Maoris! (Though Xena and Hercules were loads of fun, with muscles, great teeth and fabulous hair galore, trust me, Greece don't look nuthin' like New Zealand.) Your take on Vikings? Antonio Banderas was terrific in that one ... or can you remember back to Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis? (And if you're saying, Kirk and Tony who? Well ... phooey.)

It's as if your windshield is so smeared by bugs, you're seeing little snippets of the world, history, culture. A Chinese movie came out recently (a foreign language film; it might not have played theaters in the States, but it did here). Mongol purports to be a bio of Genghis Khan ... and (honest) they found a way to portray him as a hero, a loving husband, devoted father, and all around staunch character. They simply left our the millions of people who were slaughtered, the enemies boiled alive, the legion of wives and concubines, and the rape victims who were so numerous and commonplace, virtually everyone whose roots are back in Europe is descended from these guys!

Creative editing puts a new and interesting face on history. Here's the problem: what you can do for Genghis Khan in 2008, you can do for Adolph Hitler in 2308 ... and in the public mind, the presentation looms large. Larger than reality, which has been lost in time. Asked, in 2315, "What's your take on Hitler?" Someone is going to say, "Oh, Manfred Schroediger was fantastic in that, I saw it eight times."

Uh huh.

So many Hollywood shows were made in British Columbia in the last 20 years, today's kids can be forgiven for thinking Peru and Turkey both look like the wooded hills right outside Vancouver ... but we'll forgive that one, cuz Richard Dean Anderson was so cute, with the long blond hair and the shy grins, right?

Now, it's perfectly true that documentary filmmakers knock themselves out to achieve Truth, and for this, I applaud them. Personally, I love documentaries; I just don't get the chance to watch very many, because few other people can watch dodos and call it a night's entertainment. (That was a barfing sound I heard from your direction, wasn't it? Admit it!)

So: how many documentary films have you seen in the last month? One? None? Right. You watch the monster feature films, as do we all, and the snazzy TV shows.

You know what the Himalayas look like: you saw Vertical Limit three times. (Chris O'Donnell was superb in it. So cute. And incidentally, it was shot on a glacier in New Zeland!!) You know much about Mahatma Gandhi? (Well, you know Ben Kingsley must wear dentures, because he took some of them out to play the part of the older Gandhi, who was missing a tooth or two. Yeh. we're back to teeth.)

What's your take on Ned Kelly? (Heath Ledger. Right? Or did you prefer Mick Jagger?) Let's stay in Australia for a second ... you know much about Australian colonial history? (You know all you need to: Magnum PI shot it with a Very Big Rifle. Seriously, Tom Selleck was great, and Quigley Downunder is one of my favorites too. But you should have watched Against The Wind instead, or as well, if you wanted to know a bit about Aussie history.)

Okay, Keegan, cut to the chase for godsakes!

The chase scene: at least as far as the vast, VAST majority of the population of this planet is concerned, we're rewriting history with good teeth and great hair; we're redrawing the map with scenic locations; we depict the religions and traditions of other regions and people in presentation form, adapted and polished to be acceptable to modern audiences ... because movies have to make money, and the censorship ghoul is breathing down the director's neck.

But, who wants to see Christian Bale as Robin Hood, with a set of rotting teeth? And Geronimo scratching his fleas? Come on, get real! Heroes have terrific teeth and no fleas, everybody knows that. Just like the the Andes and the Anatolian Plateau look like British Columbia, and Genghis Khan was as wholesome as George of the Jungle. (Woah, Brendan was sweet eyecandy there...)

Pardon me while I go watch a documentary or two.

See what you're up against?

Just a quickie here: this isn't today's post, but an "on the fly" commentary, because I have something to share ... because I just don't believe what I'm seeing. Ready for this? Yesterday's post was called "Gay wedding bells can be expensive." It was a yack-on about gay marriage rights in California, and how Brad Pitt just gave a hundred grand to fighting the opposition ... and I took a quick look at who the opposition IS, and where it's coming from.

You might not have believed me when I said it was coming from out-of-state Bible-thumpers who're pumping money into their ban-gay-marriage crusade. Well, here's your proof.

It will be costing them a fortune to do this all over the web, cuz they sure as heck didn't just target Keegan! But the nanosecond I talked about gay marriage rights in California, my Google ads did this:

Go on, click on it to see it at a readable size. It's a screen capture off the ads I saw when I took a look at my blog today. I mean, say what?!!

The coming of the Kingdom of God, and Can Jews be for Jesus, and Christians wanted?! The column ads, to the right of my body text, were just as bad. Learn Biblical Hebrew, can homosexuals be saved, and a whole bunch of TWADDLE.

Now, unless Google Adsense is giving away these bloody ads (and I don't even want to think about that...) this is costing big money. At a time when there are people starving in the world, and families living in Hooverville-style tent cities again in the US (don't know the reference? Give this a click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville and squirm), the best thing these good, God-fearing, church-going people can think of to spend their money on is bloody Google Ads aimed at social commentary blogs like Keegan, with the object in mind of taking YOUR human rights, YOUR freedoms, which ought to be constitutional, and destroying them.

For shame. Seriously, you church folks, for shame. Go feed a child. Go bail a starving, heterosexual American family with six kids out of their mortgage nightmare, get them out of a tent and back in a home. Get your heads out of other people's bedrooms and back into your church, where, if your pastor isn't telling you to do GOOD and RIGHTEOUS things for your own suffering, struggling, utterly innocent fellow Americans, you should give said pastor some funny looks, and seek your salvation elsewhere.

Okay, rant over. Soap box being put back in the cupboard. I'll be good now, I promise.

More soon -- this isn't today's post, as I said, just something that had to be shared, because maybe, like me, you won't believe what you're seeing.

TTFN, MK

Gay wedding bells can be expensive

It would be accurate, and fair, to say, America worries me ... and I have cause to be worried, because I have family there, in Texas, Alaska, California, Florida, and North Carolina. One tends to worry to a certain extent, about the future into which one's darling little nieces and nephews are growing (pause for violin music, while video-montage of stock market crashing, troops invading yet another corner of some foreign land, forest fires burning, tornadoes whirling, cities flooding, plays in background).

There's a TV comedy in this country. Folks from other parts might never have heard of it, but it's been famous for thirty years downunder. KINGSWOOD COUNTRY. I'm not making this up, and to prove it:




Now, Kingswood Country has nothing whatever to do with price of gay marriage, but the central character, Ted Bullpitt (top left; and you can guess what everyone calls him) used to have a catch-phrase.

No wonder the country's in a mess.

It's a catch-phrase you might hear quite a lot in the US, after November --and especially in California, where little snippets of news like the following (pasted over, verbatim, from Witchita Falls OnLine), can take the foundations on which your life is built, and knock them out from under you:

...California's November ballot initiative that would overturn the state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

It's the first time voters will be asked to ban same-sex marriage in a state where gay couples already have won the right to wed. Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts and California.

You've just got your life put into order, everything is grand, you're married and settled, licensed and registered, insured and mortgaged, and ... suddenly the pattern of your life is put to a vote. A vote??? Not only that, but tons of money comes pouring into your home state from other states, to fund the campaign to rewrite your life. God-botherers in other parts of the US are apparently paying millions to swing the public vote; it'll all come out in the wash in November.

A couple of posts ago, I was looking at the question of 'human rights' (and gay rights are a sub-set of human rights: we're all human. Except in DC. There seem to be a lot of aliens and mutoids and weird trans-dimensional species there; so many, in fact, that they have a name. "Pohleetish'nz." Also known as "Raypuhbleek'nz" in some, though not all, circles -- and not all of the time).

November looks like being the deadline, when the poop hits the fan, in so many ways. It's about politics both home and away, the domestic economy, the standard of the public health, national security, America's "face" abroad, stopping the spread of diseases like HIV at home (where CDC just announced that the stats for the spread of the disease are 40% underestimated every year), getting kids a better education ... and figuring out if America can still bear the name, "The land of the free."

Freedom is about ... being free. Free to ... well, to be what you are; to do what you do, and do it the way you want to. Freedom is built on that one, single foundation.

There's a saying: Charity begins at home ... justice begins next door.

Here's the news, and you gotta love it:

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Brad Pitt has donated $100,000 to fight California's November ballot initiative that would overturn the state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

And he nails down the case in clear, absolutely transparent terms:

"Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8," Pitt said Wednesday.

I'd go into court with that. I'd go to the polls with it ... in fact, California will, in about six weeks' time.

It's not about being gay, or having gay friend or relatives, or even finding gay culture chic. It's about recognizing what freedom actually means.

George Bernard Shaw wrote (I think, in Man and Superman, but I could be dead wrong there, it could have been any one of a dozen other plays; so don't quote me on the source), "I might not agree with what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it."

Same difference. The problem is (as I was saying in "Here comes Damocles with his chainsaw") that right of free speech cuts both ways and draws blood no matter where it lands. It might be your right to be gay and have a big, white gay wedding ... it's also the constitutional right of those God-botherers to speak up, and out, against you.

The next six weeks in California are going to be interesting -- for me, more interesting than the presidential campaign. Why is that?

Who lands in the White House is critical for the long-term survivability of the rest of the planet. Example: the US owes seven and a half TRILLION dollars to China (!), and Palin and McCain look forward to Armageddon; why not go pick a fight with the Chinese, so you don't have to pay back the $7,500,000,000,000.00 (goddamn, that's a lot of zeroes), and the missile exchange would be sure to bring Jesus back to take the righteous to heaven, so it's a win/win situation. Right? Omigod). However --

What the people of California decide regarding gay marriage rights in November is, in fact, more important, because an official referendum if a very accurate barometer of the public mind, public sentiment, the "collective consciousness," if I might be forgiven for misquoting Jung.

Presidents come and presidents go. Some get shot. Some start wars. Some pay off the national debt (come back, Bill, all is forgiven!) while peace spontaneously breaks out all over he world. No matter how foolish, hidebound, corrupt, or even wicked a government might turn out to be, four years later, the whole thing goes back to the country. The sandcastle gets turned back into slush, and you can start over.

[Incidentally, in Australia -- where we have what's known as a "Washminster Democracy" -- we have an additional safeguard. If or when a government has, frankly, gone bonkers, the Prime Minister can be sacked. Yes, you read that right. Dismissed. Fired. Chucked off the job. Given the bum's rush. Thank gods we have this safeguard, which is a leftover of our British Commonwealth days ... it helps to keep some of the bastards honest. And yes, it's happened: a PM was sacked, about thirty years ago.]

However, though presidents and governments come and go, the PEOPLE are the backbone, heart and soul of a nation, and it's what they think, feel and believe which counts ... because this is the quality we all have to live with. You can't vote it out in four years. You can't assassinate it. You can't debate it, impeach it or imprison it. The PEOPLE are the force which drives a nation.

And it comes down to this: Can America still wear the laurels of the "land of the free?" Or do strict, rigid conditions apply to freedom? And who sets those conditions, on what terms?

The rest of us are watching with baited breath, waiting to know how it turns out ... not what air-head in eye-glasses is going to giggle her way into the oval office when a geriatric nitwit has had a heartattack under the pressure and died ... but, what do the PEOPLE think and feel and want?

Thanks to Brad Pitt, and celebrities like him -- though it seems they haven't been as generous with their contributions (maybe they're feeling the sting of the current economic collapse?) -- there's some funding in the kitty to pay for a pro-freedom campaign. TV time, pamphlets, posters, whatever it takes.

The issue might be dressed up as "gay marriage rights," but that's just the costume it's wearing. The issue is human rights ... freedom, in the land of the free.

Fingers, toes and eyes crossed. We can only hope. If the vote goes south and it turns out there's no right of marriage for millions and millions of Americans, while there's an air-head in eye-glasses giggling and simpering and posturing in the oval office, then it will certainly be time to dig out and dust off Ted Bullpitt's catch-phrase.

Say it with me, now. Let's all say it together and get it just right ... can't hurt to practise a bit on the inflection and tone. You don't even have to say it in an Aussie accent (unless you want to). Here we go. On three: One, two ... no wonder the country's in a mess.

Hey, sounded great from here!

Cheers,

MK

In the landscape of spring

Looking back on yesterday's post, which was on the theme of human rights and the flak which one can draw for being different in any way, I was reminded of a Chinese poem.

Now, I don't know if Bruce Lee wrote this (he was an artist, calligrapher, writer and poet as well as a martial artist, actor and director ... little wonder he passed over at a very young age: he had packed three or four lifetimes into the thirty years he lived among us). But Lee certainly quoted it in his book, or in the notes for his book. If he didn't actually write it, he might have translated it (he was completely bilingual too), which means it might even be Lao Tzu or Confucius ... I wish I knew for sure: anyone??

I remember reading it about 35 years ago, being stunned by its implications, and I've never forgotten it. These few lines say it all ... for everyone on the planet, no matter what your difference is:

In the landscape of spring
The flowering branches grow naturally,
Some long, some short.

Even today, I find myself staring at those three lines ... 14 words ... and am struck as speechless as I was when I was a kid, growing up and knowing I was waaaay different from the rest of the little bast--dears. Reading those lines, you feel a tiny nub of stillness and peace inside, and if you look inward and pay attention to it, it grows until it threatens to fill you up, and you'd be ecstatic if it did.

The sensation you're feeling is acceptance. Not by your neighbors (Jill or Ron, and Bobby and Carol who live next door ... remember them from "Here comes Damocles with his chainsaw.") The acceptance you feel certainly doesn't come from anything to do with the government or legal system, either.

Now, some folks are almost certain to perceive "God(s)" in this sensation, but you'll have to exercise extreme caution if you're heading in that direction, because you'll get a big argument from the guys who sell salvation ("kindly leave a contribution on the tray").

If you were asking Keegan --? Nostrakeeganus, he say, what you're feeling is a waking up, an epiphany. Whatever, whoever, you are, you're (wait for this: hold your breath and soak it in through the pores) NATURAL. You're what eighteen billion years' worth of universal evolution (through the mechanism of eons of time, plenty of sex and inevitability of death) has made you; you're absolutely, 100%, what the Universe intended you to be at this point in time and space. Gay? Great. Black? Beautiful. Asian? Awesome. Fat? Far out! Short? Shooper! Tall? Terrific. Old? Orlright! You get the picture.

So, don't worry, be happy. So long, that is, as you know your theory of evolution, on the cosmic time-scale, the four-billion-year geological history of this planet, and Darwin's Solution to the God Hypothesis.

(Needless to say, if you've been taught, and firmly believe, Creationism, you're up the proverbial creek with no paddles in sight, even with a good pair of field glasses and two hours of fair weather. But we're not going to go there today. We went there yesterday ... and I can still feel the frustration of getting to the end of the logic train and finding -- not an answer, but a bloody great oil tanker head-on crash with a loco hauling boxcars filled with super-phosphate. To quote Edgar Montrose; KABOOM!!! So, we're not going there again. My ears are still ringing.)

Instead, we're wandering this route: the landscape of spring. It's spring here downunder, and it's fresh and beautiful. Went for a hike in the midst of it a couple of days ago, and I'd like to share the pictures.

Keep the poem in mind. Print it out and stick it on the wall above your monitor. Carry it in your wallet. (You could yell it at people who give you flak, but they'd only think you were even weirder for quoting poetry now.) So, think of the poem as you scroll down, and feel a little peace:

Here comes Damocles with his chainsaw

Anyone who knows a thing or two about Footrot Flats (and who doesn't?) will, at that remark, be running around in a frenzy, looking for a hole to jump into. And if it has a lid you can pull down on top of you, so much the better

No, this isn't a post about comics from New Zealand (though you could do worse than get acquainted with the Dog, and Wal and company ... if you like the Alaskan cartoon, Tundra, and also Bloom County, Pogo, and Calvin, you're in for a treat. Unless you already know Footrot Flats inside out of course, in which case: cheers.)

This is a post about Human Rights. And no, I don't find the subject in any way humorous, but the fact is, you very soon reach a certain line where, if you don't laugh, you'll weep tears of frustration, or possibly just scream and make a run for it, while you can get out with your sanity intact.

The most basic Human Rights would have to be the rights to breathe, eat, sleep and generally exist. Thinking comes next. You can think even if you're tied up tight and blindfolded, so long as they let you breathe and sleep, and feed you. It's WHAT you're thinking that's the problem.

And the whole Human Rights issue goes ballistic right there, with a character who's tied up and blindfolded ... but his (or her) thoughts are unassailable. Your mind is the bastion and citadel of the human organism --

Enter Damocles at stage left. He has traded in his sword for a chainsaw, and if he wasn't short of two-stroke, it would be running as he comes lurching onstage like some macabre character out of THE RUNNING MAN.

(Remember that movie? Has anyone in the USA seen the latest DVD release, which has, as one of its extras, a short documentary about the Patriot Act, and how it's going to be instrumental in bringing about the dystopian (there's that word again) SF future depicted by fictionists and treated, 25+ years ago, as a tongue-in-cheek romp? Does the US edition of the DVD even have this feature, or is it peculiar to the international disk? Can someone find out and let us know??)

So, here comes Damocles with his chainsaw, and like Wal, he's looking to make one helluva mess. And he's got plenty to work with, because what we understand as Human Rights in 2008 is a confused mish-mash of hopes, dreams, desires, fears, furies and phobias.

Consider. Jack has the right to be gay and legally marry a guy. Jill has the right to be hetero and a single parent. Jack has the right to hold down a good job where his boss knows he's in a gay marriage. Jill has the right to be a fundamentalist Christian. Jack has the right to earn good money and buy a nice car. Jill has the right to accept her pastor's edicts regarding the pill and have 11 children. Jack and his partner Bill have the right to buy the big house next door. Jill has the right to hate and fear Jack and Bill because they're openly gay, and the church has told her for years, God reviles and burns gays. Jack and Bill have the right to buy two German Shepherd puppies and have loads of fun playing in the yard. Jill has the constitutional right to own shotguns and handguns: so do Jack and Bill, come to that. Jack and Bill have the right to try to talk to her and/or her 11 children over the fence. Jill has the right of free speech, which means either cutting them dead and walking away, or shouting insults at them. Jack and Bill have the right to decide she's a rude, moronic halfwit and never talk to her again. Jill has the right to consult her pastor about what God thinks of gay people. Jill's Pastor, Ron, has the right to tell her what he understands after being indoctrinated by his teachers (he had the right to be taught this; the teachers had the right to indoctrinate him). Jill has the right to believe what Ron tells her: the world was created in six days, 6,000 years ago, the righteous go to heaven, sinners get burned, and gays are among the worst sinners who'll corrupt you and your kids, if you're not careful. Jill also has the right to be frightened, very frightened, for her 11 children (and by now she's pregnant again and thinking about getting married, though she doesn't see why she should, because Bristol isn't, and everyone thinks Bristol's cute as a bug, so what the hey). Jill has the right to want her children to grow up with God. Jack and Bill have the right to live next door and tell her they're nice guys, harmless, they love their dogs and have no interest in her 11.5 children (they can see she has a bun in the oven). Jill has the right to ask them to go away. Jack has the right to tell her to bugger off and look after her kids, because he and Bill are having a garden party for 20 (gay) pals at the weekend. Jill has the right to go back to Ron and confess how she's terrified, because The Godless Horde is invading next door. Ron has the right to make a sermon, preaching against Jack, Bill and their mates...

And now, it gets tougher. Now, 250 people from the church know Jack and Bill live nextdoor to Jill ... and they have gay parties, and Jill is scared stiff. She's just had child #12, the place is swarming with kids on one side of the fence, while there's (yeeeech!) homosexuals!!!!!! on the other side of the fence. The 250 members of the congregation are protected by their rights: they have the right to be religious, to believe the Bible, and their pastor, and love God, and stand up for what they believe in, and own automatic weapons. Jill has the right to get pregnant again, and is looking a bit plump by the time the congregation has figured out what to do. They all have the right to bear arms; half of them have shotguns, some have handguns, a few have machine pistols. They have the right to own them, and love God, and be frightened for their children, because the homosexuals!!!!! are wicked or evil or something -- just like witches used to be,which was the last time human beings were so mesmerized by religion that hate and violence started to look like viable, yea, logical, solutions.

Now, where do Human Rights come to a shuddering stop? Does someone have the right to throw a brick through your window because they don't like your sexual preference? Or because you're the wrong color to suit them? Or you attend the wrong church, or no church at all? Because you wear a pentacle? You're fat or ugly or old? You have a highly communicable, lethal disease -- like tuberculosis or golden staph?

If the answer to the brick question is "yes" (and it should NOT be), the next question is about pipe bombs, and drive-by shootings. These are actions which are untenable --

Yet the thoughts driving them, born in the bastion and citadel of the human mind, are religious fervor, love of God, fear of hell, longing for heaven. These are the very Republican "small town values" which are one's unalienable human rights ...

Until they come to be put into practise. One has the right to fear and hate, like Jill. One has NO right to act on those thoughts and feelings. One has the right to TEACH fear and hate, like Ron. But this branch of Human Rights very soon reaches the end of its rope. It don't leak far over into reality before your right to hate and fear your neighbor turns into a crime for which you'll be looking at the wrong side of the bars for 20 to life ... and in some states, you could be executed.

Like morality, Human Rights is a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways, and draws blood wherever it lands. One could suggest that "right thinking" is the way to fix it. Stop teaching fresh generations of kids to despise people for being gay (or pagan, or Muslim, or foreign, or commie, or ugly, or [fill in the blank]) and the problem will go away. But people like Ron have the right to teach what they understand, and they themselves have been taught (by others who have the right to teach) to despise and fear.

How far back can you track this reasoning? No one yet yet knows. We've passed laws making it illegal to discriminate on the bases of gender or race or religion, and those laws are slowly extending to cover sexual preference. But these fears and hates have very deep-seated cultural and religious roots. It's not been a century, yet, since such rabid fervor resulted in a pogrom that claimed six million lives; the name "Hitler" has become synonymous with "Satan" for that one. Now, street interviews with ordinary Americans reveal some folks saying, "Muslims don't belong on this planet." Yet --

Wasim has the right to be Muslim, and not be discriminated against in the workplace for his religion or his race. He has the right to have a good job, buy a nice house and have a partner and seven cats. Bobby and Carol have the right to live next door, attend church, be pro-life, and have 9 children. Jim, their pastor, had the right to be taught by elders he respects (who have the right to teach what they understand) that Muslims are evil personified. Bobby and Carol have to right to be horrified that Muslims!!!!! live next door, and they naturally consult Pastor Jim ...

Here comes Damocles with his chainsaw, and it cuts both ways, and no matter where it falls, there's going to be blood.

Hopefully we have plenty of bandaids and elastoplast in stock, because before the next few Republican years are over, we're going to need them.

But when wounds and broken bones heal, the mended tissue is stronger than it was before. Humans will make it through, and my personal hope is that it'll happen inside my own lifetime, so that I can see it.

I think I have the right to see this happen.