Category Archives: Uncategorized

Palantir

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It is hard to describe how thoroughly depressing is Maureen Dowd’s interview with Palantir CEO Alex Karp, and its revelation of the disconnect humanity is able to make from the reality of death and destruction in modern warfare. Herman Melville’s poem on the battle of the Monitor and Merrimack during the Civil War includes “War yet shall be, but warriors/ Are now but operatives”. The glory of individual valor has been usurped by armored machines. Dr. Karp finds his personal valor in Palantir’s ability to direct Israeli air strikes against Hamas and Hezbollah fighters all across the Middle East with no more moral attachment to the death of innocent Palestinian women and children, “an acceptable level of collateral damage”, than to a “kill” on a video game computer screen. A target shooting enthusiast, Dr. Karp declares himself “an artist with a gun” who does not kill things. His information algorithms, however, do with great efficiency. For those who regard the existence of Israel (and its boundaries) as Biblical destiny, any and all opposition is the enemy. Palestinians have been in the way since day one, and they pay for it day after day. Dr. Karp and his business partner Peter Thiel are making millions with Palantir information-gathering technology being used in Israel’s war of vengeance against Hamas for challenging this hegemony and bringing the realities of war to Israeli soil. Information is a high-value commodity in today’s world, be it in war, business enterprise, or law and order (to use or to abuse). Such is capitalism’s “law” of supply and demand, privacy and conscience be damned.

-RP

Double Think

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The true official language of America today is George Orwell’s Double Speak, the ability to simultaneously believe and profess two diametrically opposed concepts. One might call it the “Yeah, but” syndrome. It was enshrined by the Founding Fathers with conflicting tenets and words in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and, spilling across multiple sectors, has become the lingua terra of all American life. There is no escaping “double thinking” everything. The result is that truth no longer has solid substance, reality no steady footing. One can shape it into any convenience one wishes it to be. Whatever one chooses to believe is all that matters. This is steeped throughout political policy, conventional morality, religious doctrine, and commercial advertising. “The more you buy, the more you save” is a prime example. Both spending and saving are regarded as being true. The simple reality is that you are spending, not saving. The free market, money is free speech, and waging war for peace each amplify conflicting words working in opposition. Life is complicated but a universal truth is that feeling powerless is a frightening, all-powerful emotion, and all stops must be pulled out to feel being right and in control. Real power is not so easily attained.

On and on

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Cultural momentum, be Chinese and Russian authoritarian imperialism or Euro-American colonial white supremacy, remain primal driving forces in world political history. The same must be said of the religious institutions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, each claiming being the favorite of God, and equally so of the global consumption of the life and riches of the Earth for survival and power. War and violence, profit and larceny, have been part and parcel of human history from its onset. As for American democracy being “a shining city on a hill”, armaments and munitions sales are soaring, fossil fuel drilling and consumption are booming, Andrew Jackson, father of the Trail of Tears, remains the face of the $20 bill, and Donald Trump aspires to an autocratic Presidency and has an avid following. The trajectory of mankind, increasingly technologically accelerated, seems ever more virally spiraling out of control, trending toward an uncertain end. The meek may well be destined to inherit the Earth or at least what is left of it. A basic law of physics states that a body in motion remains in motion until meeting a countering force. The heart of humankind is divided, at best bipolar, in imagining the future. Where we eventually land is narrowing precipitously.

RP

Disorder

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Regarded honestly, our American (and now global) psycho-social political economic configuration and underpinnings have no capacity nor inclination to realistically address global warming, the concentration of wealth, economic and climate migration, drug addiction, homelessness, misogyny, gun violence, unending (and profitable) warfare, nor universal healthcare, yet capitalist enterprise continues to be held up as the human ideal and inevitable “way of the world”. The world of finance thrives in an ethos built on the use of all available resources, human and natural. This ecology, our relationship with the world around us, is uniquely adversarial, exploitive, and destructive. “The Market” is worshipped as an all-powerful god. Those benefiting from this state of affairs, corporate and individual, have no qualms about using all their privilege, power, and wealth to maintain the status quo. Maximum profit is the “Golden Rule” of modern corporate business. Throughout history, those drawn to the allure and trappings of power and wealth have dominated the distribution of community well-being. “Overlord” is an antique term, but it is the most accurate description of today’s sociopolitical economy. Whether this is human nature or a carefully crafted manipulation to enrich a small elite class is the question of the Ages.

-RP

With God on our side

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Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all came into being in the Middle East, and there was a time adherents lived there in relative peace. It is beyond tragic that the region has become the flash point of intense economic and religious conflict. Righteousness and favor in God’s eye (in all three religions) ideally would seem to lead to charity and peace, but concepts of superiority and the allure of dominance have muscled their way into the minds of religious and political leaders. At the root of the problem is that all three religions trace their origin to the God of Abraham, by all accounts a stern, watchful, autocratic, at times vengeful entity seemingly without joy and laughter. From this beginning, the Middle East today is inevitably destined to erupt in a violent confrontation of differing interpretations of what gains the favor of a God who decreed, “thou shall have no other god above me”. Monotheism here has thus evolved into a contentious, deadly state of affairs, and while we may well indeed have a God problem (the claim of being made in his image speaks not particularly well of that God), what we actually have is a humanity problem, from which we have created a God from our own tendencies, one prone to violence, misogyny, male supremacy, a thirst for power, and penchant for war. At this core is the belief that power comes from an ability to dominate and destroy rather than one based on creativity and nurture. By definition, politics deals with the distribution of power within a society, economics on the distribution of wealth, and religion on leading a life that gains the favor of a supreme power. In today’s world, the combination of these three has become a Gordian’s Knot that intrinsically defies solution. The beliefs that Jews are God’s Chosen People, that martyrdom for Islam will be rewarded in the afterlife by Allah, and that possessing economic and military power, wealth and dominion, is God’s design for mankind are all addled misconceptions. Throughout history, civilizations and gods have come and gone. Until we truthfully acknowledge and resolve our darkest human tendencies, the future of all life on Earth remains in great peril.

RP

Disappointment

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It is disappointing that the editorial boards of both the Daily Camera and the Boulder Weekly have ignored the reality of global warming and climate change and chosen to believe in the competence of the City’s flood plan and that there are benevolent intentions in the University’s South Boulder expansion. It has long been an American ethic that the Earth exists for man to use and abuse for profit. The proposed “South Campus” site thus is seen as a wasteland awaiting development which will result in a net gain for the people of Boulder, despite the resulting increase of neighborhood traffic, during and after construction, and the loss of free access to a truly unique and irreplaceable piece of the natural world.

The truth that the proposed flood plan, paid for by all of Boulder, protects only a fraction of the homes impacted by the 2013 flood and that the real beneficiary is the University’s corporate business model, a massive rental empire allowed to operate largely tax-free, goes unnoted.

The net loss is heartbreaking for anyone truly caring for both the environment and the soul of mankind.

Vote Yes on 2F. For photos from the area, please visit notesfromtheprovinces.com/photography/ 

CU South/Just Undo It

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To the Editor:

An echinacea tea bag tag has a Vincent Van Gogh quote, “If one truly loves nature, one finds beauty everywhere.” As the area stands today, there are a thousand paintings, poems, and photographs waiting in the former wet land/gravel pit flood plain that the University wishes to develop as its “South Campus”. It is my wish everyone in Boulder, looking with Vincent’s eye, visits this site to see what will be destroyed should this project go forward. It will never be the same again. Intrinsic to its natural wonder is its open accessibility and availability of multiple footpaths to navigate the area. Again, all this will disappear if the University and the City Council have their way. Construction traffic of out-of-town workers will further clog rush hour traffic, and needed parking will consume acres of the site, And public access will disappear completely during the City’s flood mitigation efforts (which have yet to meet federal standards). Mitigating flooding of houses built on a historic flood plain may well prove to be a fool’s endeavor. My crawlspace in Martin Acres flooded not from Skunk Creek overflowing its banks, but from soil saturation and ground water rise. Rather than seeing the natural world as a source of beauty, the vision of the University and of the City seem clouded with consumer dollar signs. We must stop eating the Earth. CU South/ Just Undo It. 

RP

Self Help Manual

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To the Editor:
Solving the problems of homelessness, the concentration of wealth, racial injustice, healthcare, and climate change will require a seismic, systemic cultural shift that few view as a feasible option, but until that change is undertaken America (and the rest of the world) will continue to wallow in stubborn short-sightedness. Self sufficiency and enterprise are fine values, but when independence and freedom fail to recognize that the success of humankind in the long run rests on cooperative effort and cohesion, we land in a power hungry world of individual and environmental exploitation, increasingly divided and at odds with itself. Such is the slippery slope of capitalist theory. What is needed is an economic theory based not on banking values, but rather on humanitarian ideals.

RP

Church and State

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To the editor:

Christianity, and religion in general, has a complex and checkered history in America. Many among the first settlers were religious refugees fleeing persecution by the Church of England and seeking freedom to practice their beliefs, which included the fanatical Puritan Salem Witch Trials. The separation of Church and State was the caveat then applied to freedom of religion when both were enshrined in the Constitution.

The result is that America today is a virtual patchwork, jigsaw puzzle of religious beliefs and places of worship, all living in a relative state of accepted coexistence, albeit not without longstanding tensions between Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and now Islamic believers. There have been noteworthy crossovers between the two sectors. The Church of Latter-day Saints was forced to disavow polygamy to allow statehood for Utah and black Southern Baptist churches have been the target of White Supremacists after the passage of voting rights legislation, but peyote is now recognized as a legal sacrament for the Native American Church and we have had both a Catholic and a Black President, although JFK had to state his Catholic beliefs would not intrude into office, and Barack Obama was caught continually in America’s Black/White divide. Christianity itself, be it Protestant or Catholic, seems deeply divided over a preference for Old Testament or New Testament values, and currently the separation of Church and State is under constant attack.

Betsy DeVos, as Secretary of Education, is pushing for public funding of religious schools, and the opposition to contraception, abortion, and same-sex sexuality as interpreted in the Bible is being pressed into federal and state legislation. Catholics on the Supreme Court appear poised to upturn earlier decisions on these issues. Clearly a line esteemed by the Founding Fathers is being crossed and should be patriotically resisted. 

RP

Futures

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To the Editor:
As we sit around wondering how to fill our socially distanced days, this seems an excellent time to imagine how we might like our post-Corvid-19 life to be. Ingrained ways die hard, but there is hope that a better world can arise from the ashes of yet another failed global economy. A viral pandemic presents a far different dynamic than the 2008 financial collapse caused by the precipitous capital greed and mismanagement of the banking industries. Rather than having just one leg of the three-legged economic stool, capital. labor, and consumer, collapse, two legs have been knocked out. There are many, particularly among those nations and people who prospered most, who hope this collapsed structure of exchange can and will be rebuilt, but perhaps this is instead a golden opportunity to seek other answers to the global concentration of wealth and power in elitist classes and nations. Perhaps the Corvid-19 pandemic is not a signal of the coming End Times, but one of a new beginning for humankind. 

RP