Bigotry Penetrates the US

Random slide show from my site on Fotocommunity.com

There are about 300 photographs, and growing each 1-2 wks by a few, on a wide variety of subjects, such as travel photography, landscape, still life, photo journalism, digital art, etc. If you put the mouse over the picture, the title will show up. If you click on the picture, it will connect to the fotocommunity.com site, where the picture can be viewed in larger format and, in some cases, with more descriptions - this may be interesting for some of the travel locations -.

Enjoy, and remember: you can always turn this thing off if it gets boring!

fotocommunity

UNESCO punished based on two obscure US legislations: does this serve well any of the involved parties?

Harrisburg, PA, on the verge of bankruptcy despite message from God

Two simple numbers, one big surprise – or are the Syrians safer during a revolution than the US citizens in peace time?

What bothers me about the Berkley bake sale?

My Take on the 9/11 Anniversary

One headline, so many implications: Mistrial declared in CA gay student killing trial

No picture this time: I'm too upset to post the picture of the grieving parents...

Three years ago, somewhere in California, a 14 year old student shot his 15 year old classmate in the back of his head during a class. The 15 year old was gay, who walked in high heels, used makeup, and preferred girlish outfits. At one point he past his future killer in the school hallway and allegedly said: "What's up, baby?" A few minutes before his death, the 15 year old declared that he wanted to change his name to Latisha. Allegedly, this pushed his 14 year old murderer over the edge and infuriated him enough that within a few minutes he committed the ultimate crime.

The 14 year old had evidence of Nazi inspired artifacts at his house (would you want to see me when next time my son puts up a swastika, not what the Chinese Buddhists call wan, but the clockwise one that Hitler used, above his baby picture?). His defense lawyers said that it was a school project on tolerance… WHAT?

The murderer’s friends – yes, you heard me well: he still has friends, and supporters! – claim that “prosecutors tried to sensationalize the case by calling it a hate crime by a budding white supremacist.”

When people, OK not the defense, since this is their paying job, but people of the street try to defend an act like this, they offer a glimpse into the decaying morals of the society they themselves shape.

With their action they say that if one says a word you don’t like, dresses up that does not appeal to you, or chooses a name you find offensive, you can just pull a gun and “BUMM”.

Putting it into historical perspective, they also say that the French should’ve pulled the trigger on George Sand in the early 1800s, when she began sporting men's clothing.

Even more importantly, they say that gays should be shaking in their boots because any real man with true macho intestinal fortitude may become the rightful axmen of God delivering you to your rightful place in Hell, saving the hassle for God Himself who should turn His attention instead to more worthwhile causes such as granting a sunny day for one’s beloved daughter’s wedding for which one have been fervently praying for.

I am not implying that the 14 year old was driven by religious fervor when he killed his gay classmate. But I do mean to say that a social climate that promotes gay homophobia receives tremendous encouragement from religious teaching of hate and intolerance against this group of “sinners”.

And one last troubling thought. Where did this 14 year old get the murder weapon from? Which grown-up adult is going to be punished for putting it in his hand or allowing him to access it? There is not a word about it in the news or in any courtrooms.

Shouldn’t responsible gun handling and storing and proper punishment for ignoring such basic gun safety rules be one of the highest agenda for the NRA and its steadfast supporters?

I find it stunning that a simple headline can hide so much dirt and hypocrisy in the American society. Is this the America it was meant to be?

On a stolen air conditioner and the British riots

Photo credit:
http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/slideshow/08-2011/2011/
in-pics-london/british_riots_new_09_01.jpg

Photo credit: http://a1airconditioners.com/wp-content/themes/productreview/images/LWHD1200HR-LG12000BTUWindowAirConditioner.jpg

The other day my friend, a real estate agent, came to our cherished evening bike ride in a depressed mood.

“The closing deal, I was counting on so much, fell through today,” he said. It turns out that during the final walk-through, the would-be buyer noticed that the air conditioner unit was stolen from the vacant house.

“But wouldn’t the bank cover the expense of the stolen unit?” I asked naively, then wisely affixed: “After all, it cannot cost more than $3-4,000; a sizeable chunk for the individual buyer but peanut for a bank.”

“You would think so, but no. The bank already wrote this loss off its bad debts, courtesy of the bank bail-out of 2008. The banks got their money back from us, the tax payers, and now they are free again do what they do best: to maximize their potential profit.”

“But that’s what banks are supposed to do, isn’t that?” I responded as a matter of course. My friend put me in place right away:

“Yes, but not without having to worry about the real world market pressure. Before the bail-out they would have tried to minimalize their losses, which is what current market reality would have demanded. But now, having been compensated for their losses, they want to maximize their profit; an unrealistic goal at a time when everybody else is struggling to keep afloat.”

“Everybody,” I finally caught his draft, “you mean the poor and the middle class, not the wealthy and the corporate.”

“You got it my friend,” he said. “The banks and corporations play hard core capitalism when it's time to make profit but embrace socialist principles as soon as they face losses. Once they recover however, they're are right back into bashing the social "welfare" state."

"Hmm", I said eloquently, while he continued.

"The greed of the individual has been damaging enough but now it has penetrated all levels of our social system...., and when greed can govern the most powerful forces in society, without any checks and balances, it can become truly devastating.”

“I hope you’ll make your next closing,” I said, pulling out the smartest thing I could think of.

***

And then, I hear the riots in England. Looting, burning buses and businesses in a country where I thought some of the best mannered, most imperturbable people lived.

“What is going on?” I asked myself. Well, as it turns out, the young and restless simple citizens of England first got angry at the police, but then started to think that they have the right to have what they want, just as the British bank executives got what they wanted in the form of some 80 billion pound bail-out. Somehow they don’t seem to think that the austerity measures that followed the generous banking support, should short change their desire and aspiration, so they started to take freely what apparently they thought should have been rightfully theirs to begin with.

These rioters of England have some very deplorable thought indeed, driving them into alarming, dangerous, and totally unjustifiable actions. But do they have a point; a point they pursue in whatever abhorrent fashion?

They may, and I think that notice should be taken of this possibility!

Revolutions, starting with the French, where thousands of heads fell, the Russian revolution with its own terrifying fall-out, and all subsequent social ebulliences started with some justifiable cause. The French people had no bread when they stormed the Bastille and 2,000 Russian peasants stampeded each other to death for a table clothes, a mug and a loaf of bread during their “Father Tsar’s” wedding procession just a few years before November 7, 1917.

Two events, a small and a momentous one, on two sides of a big ocean, seem to lead to the same root-problem: greed!

It is perhaps time to notice that the poor and middle class cannot be fooled forever with the promise land, the endless opportunities that await the few exceptionally gifted or lucky ones in their ranks.

We need to notice and accept that any further economical polarization of current Western societies may lead to social explosion. We are getting warning signs that the deepening economical hardship around the world needs to be shared equally by all of us: rich and poor, individuals and corporations.

Shared equally? Even more than that! The necessary sacrifices the day calls for should burden the wealthy far more than the poor and the middle class! It may help improving life starting with a stolen air conditioning unit, all the way to wide spread social unrest in the world.

Is there anyone brave and insightful enough to be looking, listening, and drawing conclusions?

On the Murdoch Empire and the slandered Democracy: Reflection on the Newsweek article "Ruppert’s red menace"

The Sun King and today's CEOs

Picture credits:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_XIV_of_France.jpg

http://82.150.138.75/up/large/409.490.6Hfsc4xiagCKSNNbzB4oNho8.jpg

Luis XIV, the Sun King, built the Palace of Versailles at a time when his royal subjects had increasingly difficult life. By the time of the French Revolution, just two generations later, the country had literally no bread to eat.

The breathtakingly pompous Palace of Versailles has over 1,000 rooms. Perhaps, if the Sun King cared about the misery of his people, a 500 room "modest cottage house" would have satisfied his greed. Who knows, if Versailles were built to be half the size, the distant relative of the Sun King, Luis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, could have saved their heads too.

And now, read the following headline:

CEO pay exceeds pre-recession level (AP)

The country, the "Main Street", as politicians like to refer to the plebs, struggles with ~9% unemployment and record real estate foreclosures. At the same time, CEOs received 24% higher compensation in 2010 than in 2009, to the tune of roughly $ 9 M average.

People proudly declare in this country that "greed" is the healthy fuel of the "American  Way".

Is it remotely possible that just a little less greed would be an environmentally healthier fuel for that "American Way"? Perhaps even for that rarely talked about "Planet Earth Way"?



AG Holder says rise in police deaths unacceptable

Image from: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/Guns.jpg

   Last year 162 police officers died in the line of duty. Very few of them were stabbed, ran over by vehicles or beaten to death.

   Most of them were shot dead.

   With guns, typically purchased legally by "low-obedient" citizens.

   Most likely citizens who, on the first place, should never have had guns in their hands legally, or otherwise.

   Holder is working with attorneys and police departments on this "issue".

   But the "issue" should not be addressed by attorneys or police departments.

  

   NO!

  

   It should be addressed by legislators who would make it a law to have thorough background checks on those who purchase guns.

   Such law would reduce the likelihood that dangerous people get access to guns.
   People who claim that they "like to kill" - as a recent murderer who killed his ex-girlfriend and her two children stated on his WEB site -, people who have psychiatric background - like Jared Loughner, whose college requested a psychiatric evaluation before considering readmission, or the Virginia Tech mass murderer had -, or those who committed crimes in the past. The criteria could be further refined, but these categories should serve as a bare-bone minimum to deny gun permits.

   Until a rationale legislative effort is made to keep guns out of the hands of unstable people, Holder can consult all the attorneys and police chiefs he wants but people will continue dying in the hands of "gun owners gone berserk".

   Until a rationale legislative effort is made to keep guns out of the hands of unstable people, the Churches can keep as many prayer vigils for the dead as they want, but people will continue dying bloody, undeserved death in the hands of lunatic gun owners.

   For the rational people it should be incontestably obvious that the practically unhindered access to guns in this country is a crime committed by an entire society.

   For Church goers it should be remembered that Jesus was not a gun owner!

   This country started two wars because nearly 3,000 of its citiezens were killed in 9/11.

   This year alone already well over 2,000 people died here in the USA from firearms.

   So, when will the war on unchecked gun ownership start?