Originally posted December 19th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Justice has been done! The U.S. Military’s pernicious ongoing discrimination against heterosexuals has been outlawed.
Now it’s all out in the open. Now straight people won’t be the only (majority) group permitted to suffer unimaginable indignities, grievous disfigurement and injuries, and painful death while protecting the business interests of those richer than they. Now straight people won’t be the only victims of propaganda that makes war seem like a really cool video game. With the repeal of the noxious “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, now gays too may be conned into believing they are heroes for sacrificing their lives in overseas police actions that provide security for no one but arms manufacturers, oil producers, and corrupt tribal politicians.
Some of our more courageous Christian brothers and sisters — like the ones brave enough to stand up for God at military funerals, reminding the parents of slain . . . → Read More: Gays in the Military
Originally posted December 11th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Rousing public sympathy for bottle-nose dolphins is easy, and it might get your documentary film lots of awards. Saving whales, polar bears, pandas, snow leopards, wolves, tigers, rhinoceroses, and imprisoned industrial fowl will get you sympathy, money, media coverage, and maybe even a little pot-stirring controversy. Championing a cause that involves something that isn’t capable of defending itself has a high rate of charitable success.
Yet when it comes to vulnerable people, our brothers and sisters in far-off places and right down the street, we’re not much interested. Raising the public consciousness, mobilizing the politicians, and getting results on behalf of millions of starving North Koreans, brutalized Sudanese, and tortured Congolese is never easy. Indeed, based on our official policies of “do nothing until our oil is in jeopardy,” we’re content to let tens of millions of human beings suffer unimaginable hardships nearly as horrifying as . . . → Read More: Are Human Beings Worth Fighting For?
Originally posted November 28th, 2010
By Michael Konik
We were once under the misapprehension that Christmas was the holiday that had become commercialized and drained of meaning. After witnessing the emergence of Black Friday as a widely understood part of the lexicon, we’re inclined to think that the Thanksgiving holiday has become just as bad.
Never mind that the whole Pilgrims and Indians thing is apocryphal at best and an enduring insult to Native Americans at worst. And never mind that the best way to avoid misery is to be in a constant state of thankfulness. What’s so unpleasant — repulsive? — about the typical American Thanksgiving is that it mirrors the worst parts of our culture. It’s not a holiday devoted to gratitude. It’s a holiday devoted to mindless consumption.
Overeating — over-consuming — is seen as a sacred duty, not a perverse commentary on the chasm between the Haves and everyone else. And . . . → Read More: Thanksgiving Thankfulness
Originally posted November 20th, 2010
By Michael Konik
With the help of advanced telescopic technology, astronomers are now able to see into the past more deeply than ever before. What they’re finding, according to the capsule reports in the newspaper, is a universe that is larger and more crowded with Earth-like objects than previously understood. If you believe in old-fashioned notions like mathematics, it’s a numeric certainty that what’s going on here, on the the third orbiter from our particular Sun, is happening someplace else, too.
God is far busier than we previously imagined, with many more souls — and gasses, and asteroids, and black holes — to look after than our human brains can comprehend. Yet one thing is certain, according to the frequent declarations one finds on email signatures, Facebook posts, and otherwise polite conversation: “God is good!”
We’re also frequently reminded by certain impolite Christians that accepting Jesus Christ as one’s . . . → Read More: The God Enigma
Originally posted November 14th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Bold prediction: Within a decade, a whole class of societal crusaders will develop and be recognized by the arbiters of culture. They will be called radicals, Luddites, crackpots. They’ll be dismissed and ridiculed. And they’ll be consistently marginalized by those with money and power. But they’ll be right.
Their main focus? Harnessing the astonishing energy and passion Americans seem to have for “protecting” innocent folks, sheilding them from dangerous temptations, such as recreational drugs. homosexual marriage, and filthy pornography — and anything else that seems to controvert “family values.” These new crusaders will apply that same misdirected evenagelical zeal into a movement to really protect Americans from corporate disease merchants.
Soon the crackpots will be calling for the dismantling and reorganization of the automotive industry and the factory food industry, two of the biggest sources of death and disease in our society.
Originally posted November 7th, 2010
By Michael Konik
In the aftermath of last week’s voting, in which Californians roundly rejected Prop 19, the initiative to decriminalize marijuana, the Los Angeles Times hinted that maybe possibly it was time to have a frank discussion about our nation’s failed drug policy. The paper, which ran editorials denouncing Prop 19, endorsed a “no” vote, and ignored eloquent voices arguing for its passage, wondered in print if perhaps there was a better way to deal with millions of Americans who, for inscrutable reasons, enjoyed marijuana for uses other than medicinal purposes.
For the record, the paper refused to print a single word about my book Reefer Gladness, preferring the strategy of pretending it does not exist, even though it’s penned by a local writer with eight volumes in print. Had they bothered to engage “Reefer” the Times would have discovered that the one premise upon which their prohibition argument rests is fundamentally . . . → Read More: Drugs Are Bad
Originally posted October 23rd, 2010
By Michael Konik
An enticing banner ad has been plastered recently all over the highly trafficked sites. It’s got a pulchritudinous brunette beaming a contented smile. She’s pretty but not too sexy, a natural gal, unthreatening and pure. The text asks viewers how they would feel if they learned that there was a newly developed chemical compound that made folks feel more joyous, increased their energy, and chased away the blues. Ask your doctor!
What if those same viewers were told that such a substance has been around for as long weeds have sprouted in soil?
Isn’t is strange, passing strange, that a century of powerful propaganda has made American society more trustworthy of substances invented in laboratories than those that can be picked off a bush? Isn’t it weird that we’re willing to endure the toxic side-effects of legal drugs and not the pleasant side-effects of illegal ones? . . . → Read More: Manufactured Versus Natural: Big Pharma Wins Again!
Originally posted October 10th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Marijuana’s earnest legislative warriors don’t want to come right out and admit it: pot makes people feel good. It’s main “side-effect” is that it makes everything feel better. It’s pleasurable. It’s fun.
Medicine is not supposed to be any of these things. To placate the angry prudes who don’t want anyone enjoying themselves too much — unless it’s during church-sponsored worship services — marijuana advocates take care to soft-pedal, if not elide entirely, from their arguments the tendency for cannabis to be wildly enjoyable. Even if you’re not taking it to treat a serious disease.
In this way, marijuana is like sex. It can be useful. It can serve a utilitarian purpose. But some of the time — most of the time? — it doesn’t, other than the purpose of giving pleasure to participants. In the eyes of moralists and orthodox religious fundamentalists, sex isn’t to . . . → Read More: Marijuana’s Dirty Little Sceret
Originally posted October 2nd, 2010
By Michael Konik
No one is surprised that among the groups opposing California’s Porposition 19, the Control, Regulate, and Tax Marijuana initiative on the November 2 ballot, are financially entrenched business organizations. The prison and law enforcement industry, which profits every time a marijuana user is branded a criminal; the beer industry, which worries that Californians will collectively discover that marijuana is far less harmful than alcoholic products; and, of course, major party politicians, who serve at the behest of their corporate benefactors — all of these factions are predictably allied against pot legalization.
How shocking — and how utterly demoralizing — to learn that some well-known (in the pot community, anyway) activists, people who helped bring medical marijuana to the state and seem to have dedicated their lives to educating the citizenry on the the benefits of kind green bud, are actively opposing Prop 19.
Originally posted September 19th, 2010
By Michael Konik
A celebrity with a record label announced recently that she had signed a talented teenager to a recording contract; album due out soon! The adolescent lad joins another teenager on the Celebrity’s label. She specializes in discovering post-pubescent stars-to-be-made; indeed, this Celebrity, Ellen DeGeneres, discovered the Filipina belter Charice Pempengco, now known as Charice, which is a lot easier to say and a lot less Filipino and therefore easier to sell to the producer’s of Glee, for whom the teenaged singing champ permitted the use of Botox on her not-yet-old-enough-to-vote-or-drink face.
Kids these days! Man, do they ever have talent! Not a day passes without someone’s home video going viral, forwarded around the globe by folks who are deeply impressed by a precocious youngster doing something that seems way beyond her years.
One of the hottest acts in the jazz-pop world right now is a 17-year-old . . . → Read More: Blame it On the Youths
Luckily for Barack Obama, news of improper shenanigans at the IRS stole attention from the week’s biggest story: that the President’s Justice Department had secretly seized call information from at least 20 phone lines belonging to Associated Press reporters, including personal cell phones and the main switchboard of the AP’s Washington bureau. While Obama thundered on about “inexcusable behavior” at the IRS, he said he would “make no apology” for his latest foray into Nixonian…
News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100.
The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend…
Were you aware that bottled water is “bad for the environment,” “bad for public water sources,” and “bad for your wallet”?
Neither were we! It’s pretty funny to think of something so obviously good – so amazing, when you think about it – as inherently evil, or something. Bottled water…
The commonly understood reason why terrorists wish to kill and maim Americans is because they hate our freedoms. That’s what’s behind all the civilian violence: they hate our freedoms. You can go ahead and enumerate all the freedoms the terrorists hate, but it doesn’t really matter which ones –freedom to…
The whole world is worried about North Korea. We’re not. We think locally. The area around which we can walk or ride our bike is our concern. We’re civic-minded that way.
Hollywood Boulevard is nearby. We walk on its sidewalks almost every day, often to access the subway, which serves…
Author James Goodale was chief counsel for the New York Times during the Nixon era. His new book, “Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles,” outlines our government’s pernicious (and ongoing) threat to media freedom. Some prescient authors get all the luck: Every morning it seems we’re greeted to [...]
