China's Charter 08

"China, as a major nation of the world, as one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and as a member of the UN Council on Human Rights, should be contributing to peace for humankind and progress toward human rights. Unfortunately, we stand today as the only country among the major nations that remains mired in authoritarian politics. Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting China's own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization. This must change, truly it must. The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer."


This is the English translation of perhaps one of the most important documents in modern Chinese history, by Perry Link.

I have said to friends and in columns and blogposts that if CHina awoke -- not like Napoleon warned, as in economic or political terms, but in intellectual and moral terms -- than we might very well be on the verge of a great transition in society away from the Bushes of the world and toward pragmatic, aware, compassionate and intelligent societies.

the devil strikes back

right after that last post, i went through all the times i felt i was betrayed or hurt or wronged by my best friends and felt anger and hatred rise up inside. thank God i can breathe or else i'd probably blow up. so is it best to sit down and be like YO, this is what angered me, or to work that out inside and come to terms with it and just let that shit slide?

I used to think sitting down and talking it all out helped, now I think that the internal struggle is more important. Every time me and my friends get together we do exactly that and hash through all of our hang ups and slowly i have noticed that our bonds get stronger and stronger and our ability to resist the devil gets stronger too. tribal councils are opportunities to dispel the devil yet again. We even have our own medicine-laced ceremonies to help us combat the prince of lies. its an ongoing struggle and eventually we will have to leave the ceremony behind and just do battle naked, clothed only in the iron bonds forged through repeated clashes laced with the gold of shared wonderment.

and it IS important because when i die i want to know that not only do i have enough money to keep my kids from begging, but i am on as harmonic terms as possible with my people. What will my kids want from me, my cash or my golden memories?

I have memories of a Golden Age

when empathy ruled and misunderstanding had not yet been conceived.

Isn't it amazing how women and men revolve around each other like lightning struck ions repelling and attracting each other furiously? I find myself constantly saying shit like: women are absolutely insane. and weak. and needy. and insane.

and Q kinda clued me in to what might be the reason for all of this. Indian sages remember a time called the Golden Age when gender was irrelevant and we floated in harmony with ourselves, each other and the world. This is known in the West as Eden. Time flowed and the golden sages entered a new phase, a Silver Age, in which doubt appeared and questions arose. This is described in Genesis as the coming of the snake and the realization that we were nude. After we fell, society sought to right itself in what is called the Copper Age, in which women ruled over clans and tribes. But we were not yet done falling. Communication between the sexes shattered as men wondered, why are these soft funny creatures ruling over us, the warriors and hunters? And so this last stage is the Iron Age, the age of the male. In this age, conflict and misunderstanding are rife and we are at the extreme opposite end of where we began, in the Golden Age, when one human could look at another with love and smile.

So women -- who we must all admit are closer to the divine, more in tune with the natural elements and who flow with the changing seasons on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis -- re going insane. They reflect the insanity of a fallen people. Women are barometers.

And we all have memories of a time when this wasn't the case. We carry the golden age inside and every now and then we make spectacular love, feel what our brothers and sisters are feeling, look into someone's eyes and just know and know that they know ... you know, every so often we get that good feeling baby.

So. If I am lucky enough to see the rebirth of a new society in a Golden Age of empathy then word is bond I can't wait to be divine. But i have a feeling i will live and die in the Iron Age, when all around me is conflict and lies. I can feel layers of iron peeled on a daily, then smelt back on to me when i ain't looking. We gotta remind each other of these things (love ya nicole, love ya sammy, love ya Q, love ya timmy ya punkass, love ya silly sill, love ya little man, love ya mom, love ya dad, love ya big tenz, love ya johnny, love ya doc, love ya flode, love ya anonymous ...) and i need to find the love of my life so i can drown in the romantic foolishness of an ironmonger alchemist seeking gold.

(Accepting applications for Queen.)

how my people do

this is my brother Mike Jones.

this is how he do.

bend knee and pay tribute.

Peep This

Here are some stories coming out of Matador.com ... They are doing a great job with their articles and site and I am on board for the long haul so check them out and give some feedback ... holla.

Weird Hotels around the world

International Healthcare Options

How to Deal with Haters

Support yer broke writer friends!

Laffs

I knew something would come up to brighten my day ...

The Whipping Boy

I sent a mass email out the other day to get people to sign a petition to have 1 million given to every citizen in the US by the gov. the math is of course "ridiculous" right? the idea that the gov "financed by the people" could possibly give any money to us is "absurd" and i am a goddamn fool and a hippy for even considering it. I am actually. The economics of it all is pretty simple to laugh at, as evinced by Himmler's reply:

"one million dollar bailout to every citizen? This is like the Onion
without a punch line. It would never work for many reasons. This would
cost way more than our annual GDP (a ridiculous sum of money) and
would lead to a total breakdown of society because in a capitalist
system you need poor people to exploit. If everyone's a millionaire no
one will do the shitty jobs which are necessary. Who cleans the
bathrooms? Who serves in the army? Etc

It would also plunder the dollar, bringing its value to its knees.
Because we don't have $30 trillion, adding it (printed money) to the
current money supply would make the price of everything skyrocket
unimaginably. like, loaf of bread for $300. And because the dollar is
instantly devalued and everyone around the world dumps it, you
couldn't do cool shit like buy a villa in Mexico or Thailand.

In terms of disasters this would be worse than another 9/11."

pretty cool response, huh?

Tell ya what. If I were a Wall Street banker, i would be called an idiot for asking for any less than a million. Its my impotent disgust that makes me do rash things like embarrass myself with mass emails calling for insane propositions. I should stop reading the news.

We the People of the United States are dumber than shit not because we sign silly petitions (a million signatures or more might get someone's attention ... ) but because we, like every other society throughout history and most likely deep deep into the future until we either blow up or colonize Mars, allow the rich to rape us left and right.

You wanna hear some ridiculous absurdity? Consider genocidal episodes as payback for generations of subtle, non-violent rape. Is it rape to be an insulated group of determined, hard-working people with a shared history, language and culture and a collective acknowledgment of money as the arbiter of power and an accompanying collective will to protect oneself with the power of currency?

Hippies and New Age mystics along with a large swath of hipsters, travel writers, hip hop djs and other disenfranchised disenchanted youth have been calling for a clean slate in their living rooms and coffee houses and quote the Mayans, Jesus, Astronomy and Nostradamus as proof that God has a reset button planned for us all. Well a reset button is a great flood.

We are placated for now with Obama ... he's our generation's Great Brown Hope. Its fitting that we who reject racism intellectually should place the burden of absolution for our sin of "Acceptance of Society As Is" on the shoulders of a black man.

i can't help getting angry, because i have no wife or kids or Great Work to keep my mind occupied and I have no underground posse of rebels like the Weatherman. I got Sammy and Nicole. Is it anger or jealousy?

Be honest, sasch, and tell em you wish you could commit a grand white collar crime and skip away into the sunset. Honesty is the best policy. I will always be a tragically hip, broke ass, coffee house Taoist, because for me, given the choice, sitting all day in a grove and luring butterflies onto my finger is much more preferable than sprinting with rats.

Democracy in China

Does anyone remember the Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute campaign and the Crying Indian as kids? How we were taught to throw stuff away. I think that was such a powerful and successful campaign for me because it hit me when i was young and I still carry garbage around in my pocket until i see a garbage can, not because I love the environment as much as the campaign left a deep valley in my neuron map that encoded me to do so. I feel bad if i throw stuff on the ground. Is Alex a good person now that it pains him to do wrong?

well peep this amazing documentary about an experiment in a Wuhan elementary school in which children are introduced to democracy for the first time. The whole film is available here (only in Chinese) and here too -- the PBS site with making of, bios etc.

truly amazing to watch the ideas of personal choice and individual rights play out for these little kids. The experiment is a backdrop to the choice and lack of choice they wield in their own lives. It seems to be a ridiculous endeavor given the amount of control parents and teachers exert over these kids -- while at the same time these kids struggling with the pressure to perform/conform/excel is much more instructive to them about personal choice and freedom than the "election"this documentary is supposedly about.

After the film, you can understand if the kids have a scar on their minds when thinking of democracy. A painful sore that jerked them out of their lives as parts of a whole and made them suffer scrutiny and humiliation. There is a lot of sloganeering about what democracy is, but the "truth" learned by these children is that a popularity contest brings tears and frustration.

The Bailout ...

YO:

Read this Wikipedia entry about the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act"

then go here and read through this article about where the cheddar is going ...


then get pissed.


then sign this. (and wonder if being the 40th person to do so without doing the math makes you an idiot or a hero.)

and then go on and read some Garet Garret or Noam Chomsky or just watch Fox and CNN and get even more pissed, then check your bank account and start feeling the heat hit you in the face. Call up yer buddies and see how they're doing ... skim the web a bit and find out who is getting bailed out and check out their personal sites ... you might be as mad as me by now ... then holler back at me and tell me what you found.

Obama is selling out because he believes firmly that "the People" are weak and have no voice and can influence nothing, whereas "the Establishment" in DC -- all of the people in his Cabinet and at his ear -- are the real power brokers and he would be a fool not to choose the stronger posse.

sigh. (Now i stop and look at myself)

I guess if you are getting by and saving money and got a woman that loves you don't worry about any of this shit because they ain't never gonna come for you like in the movies. And if yer broke and woman-less than go and find out why ... or become a monk and renounce all of this. (I demand action then become a cliche all in the same post ... thats what society does to you.)

to my Chinese peoples

I just had a dream of China in 2028 and it was a beautiful vision. I thought of a metaphor:

an old man who has shed his skin, thrown away his cane and run a marathon. I felt the pain of shedding skin, the anxiety of throwing away the cane, the suffering of running mile after mile, the anger when some spectators jeered from the sidelines, the shame as your friends gave up and took the easy way out and the exhilaration of crossing the finish line as a reborn man.

i miss all ya'll!

Where does all the TARP go?

This sentence here at the end of the NYT story about the failure of the auto industry bailout is probably one of the most important of the story. Its the very last sentence. A few paragraphs above this one, the "problem" of "legacy costs" (pensions and such?) incurred by Detroit because of the United Autoworkers Union is lamented.

Washington gave a bailout to the financial institutions, and did not ask a single question, the governor said, “then lay the blame for the auto industry, which is a victim of this financial meltdown, on the backs of the people who are working on the line.

(Check out their wages btw -- 55USD an hour for long time union members. Holy shit. 30 hr week? 5 day workweek? i always envisioned an autoworker as a character out of a Bruce Springsteen track ... )


and just cuz i am reading the news and its never "good," might as well plug Justin's column today on Obama's foreign policy objectives. I have been talking about the "sellout" in this blog too ... but not as much as I have been stumping for Hope. Change. I bought it, i voted for it. I attacked McCain supporters and told them they were foolz ... i suppose now, even now, all i can Hope for is "anything but Bush ..."

let me know if i am tripping ...

Broke Fat White People

Last night I was minding my own business at my man Q's house in the Pearl District when I get drunk-dialed by Sammy's ass. He came to pick me up in the broken down Daewoo that he be driving these days, half in the bag, and demanded I take him to several seedy, dark, smelly strip bars around town while he accused me of being a half-ass friend and tried to get me to commit all 20USD I have to a "certain idea." Out of that trip came yesterday's stripper post ...

but the real fantastic discovery was Sizzler's. Years and years ago my family would stop by Sizzler's on some road trip across the nation and for me it always meant massive well stocked salad bars and shrimp platters I could never finish. Steaks I had to share with my punk ass little brother.

But this time around I was sober as a judge and 31 and I got a good glimpse of the Sizzler clientele. Holy Jesus. Sad looking overweight white people living a few blocks from Portland's "infamous" 82nd street sat dejectedly shoving food into their mouths and rising cumbersomely up for another stab at the appetizers and boiled egg salad. A table of old women, combined weight 1200lbs (6 ladies), sat chomping away and chatting about who knows what. Three of the ladies scooted around the salad bar in those motorized wheelchairs for the obese and arthritic.

The waitress ... she gave me the impression of a young tittering girl wearing a fake skin stolen from a tanning salon addict. She was nervous and anxious and brought us three servings of cheese bread (oh God) and giggled way too long at every drunken slobbering piece of bullshit Sammy spat out onto the table.

I sunk into depressed, resigned silence. Reflecting on the kids I aint got, the job I just lost, the wife that used to be fine and my gut that keeps growing.

Irvine, CA and ShadySecond Street Portland. I suppose Obama being elected tells us that these slices of our society are not the majority, but I think they are. It makes me feel like a well dressed man standing on the tip of an ice berg shouting for champagne while the rest of the ship's passengers slowly freeze to death a few feet below.

Strippers

Strippers wanna be watched, stared at, lusted over and dreamt about. Strippers watch themselves in the mirror and wish they could throw some ones at their own wiggling ass. Strippers wanna sit at the bar and talk politics in their skimpy suits and be taken seriously. Strippers want elicit sex between shows in the waiting room with the skinny tattooed bus boy as they tell each other in breathless whispers about all the Johns outside wishing wishing wishing ...Strippers want a rich mysterious hunk of a man to smoke silently in the corner shadowy and lusting and be taken by surprise on the way to the car. Strippers want those coveted night shifts so the money can roll in. Strippers want you to ask them their names as you stare at them, into them, drool about them in your head and they can reply with ardor in their eyes Nisei, Emily, Lynk, Berlin, Gabi, Roxy ... Strippers want to have the sex everyone is dreaming about having as they dance ... they want to go home at the end of the night and have chocolate ice cream and a back rub from their real man as they watch Deadwood and try not to think about rent. They wanna stop worrying and just do like Cyndi said ...

Strippers want me to write this post in my dungeon as the furnace kicks in and drowns out KBOO upstairs and all i can smell is stale cigarette smoke and last week's body odor still mingling with last night's trying to be down, trying to be accepted ...

The Phantom Menace

The only good thing to come out of Lucas' last three stabs at glory is the phrase Phantom Menace, used to describe a diversion that lures the Binks of the world astray ...

Justin Raimondo is the head writer at Antiwar.com and he was the man who first got me into writing geopolitical stuff back in 2001 when his analysis of the Hainan Spy Plane Incident was so salient and clear that I just had to give him his propers. He asked me if I could write about the man on the street in China and there it was. Justin is always several pages ahead of the crowd when it comes to trends in the world, be they economic, political or any other. He just has the clear vision. And when a sane man writes in a society of insanity, well one's tone might get strident and slightly angry. There is no peace for the rational man.

Here is his latest on World Government. Check it out and holler back in five years when Obama's second term promise is a "global structure of accountabilty ..."

there is a Chinese saying I always like to whip out when dealing with regionalism vs. globalism:

"分久必和，和久必分"

which means,

"long divided must unite, long united must divide ...."

The Last Transport is Away

Saw my man Doc Possible and his girlie Therin off to the Amtrak today. Doc is headed to illi-noise to re-tool and rest before embarking on a long and drawn out trip to take over the planet via gem dealing. We stopped by the China Garden in downtown Portland and head some Tie Guanyin oolong tea amidst the Japanese maples, magnolias, holly and of course the magnificent 100+ year old Osmanthus tree at the very entrance of the garden.

Life resumes, now that my tribe has dispersed again.

And life here is great in Portland. I love this society no matter what. But sometimes I hear something or read something or see something that just sets me off.

I was thinking today as I sat in Powells about the true impact of the "Greatest Gneration" of our grandfathers and grandmothers. And this is what I have come to:

WE all have the hero that stormed the beaches inside of us, but the Baby Boomers have discarded that hero and sold out. Now they revere Granpa who was a WWII hero and hate on us, the grandkid who rebels. When the true criminal in all of this is the 40 - 60 year old who is just now realizing that all his life he stomped on his world and blamed his kids for "not getting it." and only now is he figuring out that I have more in common with a WWII vet than he ever will. I have no more sympathy for the ignorant who claim that dreamers and hippies and antiwar activists and such are "anti establishment radicals who would never fit into a corporate world" and therefore of little regard to the "world at large." Where were these fools when MLK died? When Kennedy was shot? When NIxon was elected? When the war dragged on? They hid and sold while the hippies and Panthers were incarcerated and now they hate on us as we struggle hard against the coward they want us to be ... fuck them.

any man who believes that the established corporate world at large is the reality Man has been aspiring to is deeply scarred in some way that I have no more patience to even try and comprehend. I am sick of you people. Like Genghis I feel its time you were all rooted out, made to stand before your creations and held accountable. Quit hiding in your homes, behind your jobs, inside your cars and take responsibility for the shit I and my kids will have to deal with. How stupid do you have to be to destroy your planet in the name of quick and fleeting monetary profit and then turn to the kids trying to stop you and imprison them? I suppose the righteous have to believe in God because there is no solace for the rational benevolent man on Earth. Such men end up on the trash heap of society -- either in jail, on the streets or hiding out in the woods -- praying that he'll die a happy man before "they" come to get him and throw him back to the wolves. And I am preaching to the choir. If anyone even reads this to the end they are my friends and if they don't they'll "bounce" and shake their heads at just another pissed off half-rebel typing away on a busted Mac. Cliche, says the disinterested reader. Touche, says the bored soapbox pundit.

What made me think of all of this was a report from Brooklyn in which a man was sodomized by a cop for smoking a joint on the street.

A society that would even consider the justice of such an action is fatally sick. To beat the horse: How could you possibly rationalize the criminalization of marijuana unless you are so goddamn stupid and sheltered and disregarding of any and all facts?

When was the last time a man who was high beat his wife, died of cirrhosis, drove into a family of four, started a bar brawl or some other stupid drunken act?

When was the last time someone died of lung cancer, emphysema or some other long drawn out disease because he got high too much?

This is a small microcosm of our society that speaks volumes about the overall philosophy. When Blackwater mercenaries burn down weed fields and leave tobacco growing you know the world is all out of wack. I am sick of the hypocrisy and accusing tone of the "pillars of society" whose crimes make me vomit so bad i need to head to the local marijuana dispensary to get a repreive from the nausea ...

i am so sick of the bullshit. I see a face in my mind as I rant, its a fat pink face framed by glasses with a flattop haircut and Dick Cheney grin. I am infected by him and everywhere i go -- SE Asia, Africa, China, Tibet, S. America -- i not only see his virus spreading but i realize i am a carrier. Burning myself would give them too much satidsfaction so i guess i'll rant and fume and escape jail and the streets as long as i can untill i have my wilderness enclave to hide in. I get bitter when i think of Irvine, CA and the power they wield.

so i just think of my tribe scattered across the globe and hope the antidote we carry spreads as far as the virus. Godspeed Doc and take the revolution with you baby. I got you and believe i will hold it down in Portland ... me and the choir ...

Big Business in the Prison System

Hey Ya'll here is a story I wrote for Matador.com about the privatization of the prison system in the US. It is filled with links to sites doing work on this topic, i urge you to follow the trail wherever it leads, there will be some shocking revelations for you I guarantee ....

things are going on that we hear about but the truth is always lurking like moldy drawz in the corner ...

One Second Encounters

I left the Council of the Monkey in Pai and headed north through Laos to China. The other council members headed south to bangkok for school and such ... I ran out of money in Chiang Rai on the Laos border and had to trade a bottle of Sambuca for a broken bike.

I strapped my big pickle bag to the back of this bike with bungee cords and went off on a hilly ride across Laos to the border with China at the town of Mengla. I think it was about 100km or so to get there. In my bag i had two hookahs, three bottles of Sambuca, leather supplies and oils, clothes and books and a collection of teas, herbs and other junk collected over the past three months on the road.

There are no well-off areas in Laos and the hills I was biking through are poorer than most. I had a one second encounter there ...

As I rode through one road side village, the old women mobilized and rose up on skinny legs, yelling to the huts in the back and waving their arms in excitement when they saw me. At first i too was excited and slowed to see what kind of welcome they had for me ...

then a beautiful young girl, maybe 14 or so, came rushing out of the back huts holding up her skirts. She was surrounded by yelling and gesturing young boys and old women urging her on to the road. to me. I looked at her and her face was flushed red, beautiful against her brown perfect skin and her eyes held the young bride's combination of fear and anxious excitement ...

I was shocked and attracted at the same time. I felt obligated to stop and love her even as my soul screamed "PEDAL fool!"

Who knows how many men stopped here and paid for a month's worth of food for this village with just an afternoon or two with this young girl?

I caught her eye as i pedaled away and in her eyes she showed me that she was not only dismayed but hurt.

tell me about your One Second Encounters if you can remember them ...

Irvine, CA

I had a very fine Thanksgiving Holiday with my family in SoCal (southern California) and it is about to end in a few hours. I am headed back to Portland this morning with a small band of adventurers and we all can't wait to hit up the hot springs throw bills at the pretty ladies that dance all night and clash whiskey glasses together. cuz thats what we do, we be celebrating all the time, walking paths just looking, looking breathlessly. then celebrating what we saw.

so Irvine CA is where i got my most recent look into suburban life. My man Villar and me stopped in the District, which is a huge mall complex right off the highway into Irvine, and ordered a coffee. The District has a Target, a Chik-Fill-A and an In and Out Burger joint for starters. There is Peets and a copy shop, a couple of video stores and some specialty lamp shops. Its real clean and the people that walk around seem to be alien slugs sliding across a strange landscape half-heartedly looking for their spaceship back home.

My parents say,

Hey, come meet us at the Burger King across from Target in the District.

We're like, shit, no problem

We finish our coffees and head out leisurely to the BK that should be right down the sidewalk/street ... (my family was already in Irvine with my nephew and Villar had driven me down from El Lay to meet them). Long story short cuz I am way behind on whats been going on:

Irvine is a maze of complexes called the District surrounded by neighborhoods with perfect grass and the same old cookie cutter pseudo adobe homes and everyone has an SUV that they keep running while they wait for the wife to come out so junior can watch a DVD ... the Costco gas station is constantly pumping away to feed these peoples' insecurities. They have never even pissed on a tree let alone gone camping, but they have the latest in "off road" technology.

Rolling through SoCal gave me a glimpse of what it will take to really turn the US around. The suburban sprawl is addictive, entrenched, fearful, rich and growing. If anyone has pictures or comments about the suburban empire in the US -- like them highway spring-ups and such -- please send them in so I don't have to tell the whole story here ...

I had a great time with my family. My nephew is brilliant, sweet and super cute ... a few things he said:

First meeting after a few years: "Hey Unca Saschi! its so good to see you, I love you! We haven't hung out in a while, I got all sorts of stuff, i got my lightsabers and spiderman stuff ... we're gonna do all sorts of stuff ... man its gonna be awesome ..."

Dad rolls in while we are playing "piece o' me" which is short for "you wanna piece o me?" (call for a wrestling match) and says:

Hey, you two better quit playin grabass! (grabass is dads version of piece of me) and Jason goes:

Yeah Unca Saschi! Quit grabbin my ass!

************************************

I am already back in Portland after a few days with my tribe in Oakland. Kicked it with Tenz and Aliya, Big Scott, Johnny and janica, Doc and Therin ... so we drank whiskey and hollered at each for a few days then finally drove north to Ptown ... i yapped with my main men about all the things that have changed since I turned 30 and came back to the US after a perfect 8 yrs in China ... we be movin to the next stage of things and it feels good to know I am never really alone ...