Music especially for my friend Martha

Enya – The Celts.

Hope you enjoy it.

Is it okay if only three people in America have freedom of speech?

The mainstream media is concentrated in a small number of corporate hands, and it is obvious to most people that it has caused a distortion of the news we receive. Well, the FCC went and did a study that confirmed this result, and then spiked the report.

Hat-tip to skippy.

Say hello

to Rasta Boys.

Open thread

It’s my anniversary tomorrow (mine, not the blog). Blogging may be light.

Support a real patriot

I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to write about Willie Nelson today. Toby Keith went on the Colbert Report last week, and said what people already suspected to be true, but openly saying this on national television made it notorious. A few days later, Willie Nelson made an appearance at a rally for Kinky Friedman in Texas and called for the decriminalization of cannabis (which Kinky Friedman, an independent candidate for Governor, supports). Shortly afterwards, police pulled Willie’s tour bus over and “discovered” a pound and a half of cannabis and two-tenths of a pound of mushrooms. Everyone in the band took responsibility for the ‘stash’ — nobody left Willie or anyone else to hang. Everyone was arrested, and then released with a citation, but serious criminal charges remain possible.

Please watch the video above (Willie comes in at about 1:20), and read what my friend, the Reverend Bud Green, suggested I write about this:

How about writing about the inhumanity of a 73-year-old musical genius being arrested at all for a plant to which he attributes his healthy state of being, far more able-bodied than the majority of his peers, and still creating music with a quality of composition, arranging and performing that proves that he isn’t hampered in any way by this cannabis plant.

Write about the fact that Willie Nelson is so creative, so inventive, so active and so lucid for a man of his age (or even a man 40 years younger,) and how this points to the fact that the government propaganda about “anti-motivational syndrome,” laziness, memory problems, physical problems, etc. don’t apply to Willie, and it could therefore be plausible to believe that they don’t affect millions of other cannabis users. [Ed. note: To the contrary, cannabis motivates many of us to be very active.]
Write about the gracious nature of these “criminals” even knowing their lives and freedom were in danger, and point out the similarity of their gentle nature to that of most of the cannabis users who are arrested. Point out the vicious nature of the violent criminals the law refuses to pursue with the same voracity they do for the cannabis user.

Write about the family love that had even older sister 75-year-old Bobbie Nelson claiming ownership of this gentle cannabis plant. Not a single one of them were ashamed of the cannabis plant.

Whatever you do, write. We have a responsibility to come to Willie’s defense if we expect him to come to ours. He deserves our help.

The Reverend Bud Green

He said it so well that I could not have written anything better.

Update: Willie in his own words, from a quote that has been widely attributed to him:

I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?

As church, so state

Can a parallel government be set up in a peaceful fashion, which does not itself rely upon coercion to gain adherents? This is only partially a musing on the question I posed a little over a week ago. It is also a very real consideration in light of the goings on in Mexico right now, and the possibility (probability) of election fraud continuing to deny many Americans a choice in their present leadership.

Simply stated, could a group of people, given sufficient numbers and breadth of support, provide for its own set of benefits and services for the benefit of the members of that group? Surely it can, but it is not simple. Membership in an organization is still possible, if the organization is not accused of violating the laws, but if the organization is oppositional to the ruling power it may be outlawed. But if a peaceful negotiation can result in a settlement, or if the political costs of suppressing the organization outweigh any nominal benefit to the regime, the organization can exist largely independently.

Let me flip this equation around and look from the perspective of being in the driver’s seat and confronting how to best deal with such an opposition party that wants a degree of independence. What are the possible costs? Would we be handing the power to overthrow the regime to the opposition? A perfectly rational response may be impossible, because the fear of this outcome so outweighs the realities of its likelihood. On the other hand, to expend political capital in an unpopular suppression action could lead to the weakening and overthrow of the regime even faster.

Peace and negotiation are best, on both sides. Work out the parameters of your relationship and avoid force in any confrontation. Whichever side does not heed this, and which is first to bring force violence into a disagreement against the other, will suffer a loss of respect for their own authority legitimacy.

Under these circumstances, your own power depends upon persuading people to belong to your organization, and inversely upon your compelling them to do so. If this seems difficult to imagine in the context of the government, consider that it is precisely how the church finally evolved after many bloody centuries.