STEAL THIS BLOG-post (common sense in the face of brutality)

Solidarity, people!

forgive the veiled reference to
Abby Hoffman's iconic
'Steal This Book' 

Disclaimer: this is hopefully 'common sense' advice: the author is not a lawyer, and arrested protesters should turn to their attorney or the NLG for professional assistance or advice!

I write to the people in our streets and occupying OUR public property of the United States, the men and woman of OUR vast land, and our brothers and sisters overseas: this post is Vital Information and should be shared, saved, disseminated bookmarked, etc.

It could mean your SURVIVAL, in Court or... in Life.

Chapter One: your Consciousness

Simply, it's hard to remember at the street, how to be 'arrested'; make sure you have the NLG (National Lawyers' Guild) local chapter number INDELIBLY printed on your skin (forearm suggested);

Remember every cop show you ever saw: the rights being read or spoken are your Miranda Rights: 'the Right to remain silent' applies even more during a protest arrest. These will be revisited below.

Chapter Two: your Evidence

Are you, or someone with you filming an out-of-control Police 'crack-down' on nonviolent protesters?

Remember: whoever is closest to the microphone, or you on your iPhone or 4-gen phone (mine is HTC), should ALWAYS - at least ONCE per two minutes announce the TIME and DATE. Something like this:

“This is zenmud productions:
it's 23h05, I'm at 15^th and Colfax, facing northwest... this is zenmud productions: it's 23h07, I'm at 14^th and Colfax, facing south... (continuously!)”

This will establish a higher threshold for the video as legal evidence of oppressive and illegal police actions. 

For still photo shots, having a wristwatch with date serves if you can take every 10th (or less) photo with the time and date.


Chapter Three: your Opponent

You are (I presume) a non-violent civil disobedience disciple, and you want to both state your views and keep the peace amongst like-minded protesters. Yet you are an Unknown Crowd to your opponent.

With their Kevlar, Tasers, Sound Cannons, Batons, GUNS and 'team-work' (they are much more organized than you are!) they operate in synch, under 'color of the law' and yet... they are human, and will certainly be carrying a mindset that is, frankly, similar to your own emotive state. They react to pressure in various ways, and implement 'marching orders' with the verve of a Marine breaking out of the forest.

Know this.


Chapter Four: your Arrest

When things get out of control, 'the tie goes to the winner' (under State authority), and the zip-ties go around your wrists. Youtubes show how to get out of Ziptie handcuffs, but do you want to add the count of 'escape from capture' to the mysterious charges you are being charged with?

Are you being read your Miranda rights?  Do you know when those rights come in to play? That would be 'before interrogation', not necessarily the moment you are restrained. But police become expert at 'listening' and even a tirade against them may perhaps be admissible if you can't keep quiet: do that!

Read the Miranda below, from the Court Decision that created it:  

...The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he or she has the right to remain silent, and that anything the person says will be used against that person in court; the person must be clearly informed that he or she has the right to consult with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning, and that, if he or she is indigent, an attorney will be provided at no cost to represent her or him.

Your Fourth Amendment? 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Within the Fourth Amendment lays the 'Exclusionary Rule'; courts were (in more rational days) quite stringent in enforcement of police procedural rules under this clause for the admission of evidence.

Know this: seek any avenue to have the Police evidence excluded to the degree you want YOUR evidence to prevail.

And yet the Fifth Amendment stands above as your shield against speaking, especially when the Police have violated your First Amendment Right to free speech, may have illegally searched your person or property (leave VERY LITTLE in your tent, if you are that lucky), and could easily intimidate you through interrogation techniques shared around the world, epicenter ABU GHRAIB.

The Fifth Amendment give you the right against self-incrimination:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Know this.




Chapter Five: your Case

Arrested (by whom? If at all possible find out as soon as possible)? Going to prison, hopefully without abuse. End of story after booking, or whatever... (I move on to the abuse cases)


An arrest under color of Brutality? Did your Officer (or Officers) use excessive force, illegal actions or otherwise 'come unglued'? You may be a victim of an Officer under the influence of unauthorized Prescription drugs.


I used to write extensively about the international regulation of Anti-Doping regulations for the World of Sport: this body of transferable knowledge is available to anyone who brings comments forth. One impressive 'ally' in that world was Dr Gaffney, of Steroid World (another focused blog), and I am glad to find him interested in Police Abuse of Steroids as well. The link above goes to his blog's collection of various cases of demonstrated abuse by Police in America.


Several states have investigated this, but maybe no State has been more transparent about it, as has New Jersey... 


In New Jersey, The Attorney General's Steroids Study Group published its hard-hitting report only this last July (2011), and reading it is enthralling: hundreds of Police (in one State!) using their taxpayer-paid medical care to purchase (via a certain 'Dr FeelGood': named in Report) millions of dollars' worth of drugs, taken simply to improve their musculature and not for a legitimate medical reason. In the world of Sport, Athletes require a 'TUE': a Therapeutic Use Exemption; these are issued by the Medical Officer taking legal responsibility for the issuance of a Prohibited Substance found on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).



It is highly doubtful that hiring municipalities are held to a systemically wide, uniform system of employee drug testing, especially for their Police (under the 'who would think it?' theory), as is the world of sport. Yet, Police have no more right to be illegally medicated than you, I, or any Professional Cyclist, amateur or NFL players (a list in no way limited to these categories...), and...


TESTED Officers found positive and without legitimate medical 'extenuating circumstances', standing over you with a Fury in their eyes? Broken ribs, teeth, fractures or deep bruises from thrusting baton-points; sonic canyons, tear gas or flash grenades... some 'authorized' personnel may have taken their 'initiative' outside the scope of that authority.
And...

Those Officers found 'positive' for Steroids or Amphetamines, or any other 'narcotic' that they (ironically) should be prosecuting and not consuming themselves, are losing 100s of thousands of dollars in liability cases, for the Abuse they've offered victims of criminally-dangerous drug-taking Jack-booted goons (who sadly, remain the 'scabs' of the 99 percent...



It's in the report: know this.


Call the NLG (If you read Chapter One above, you should have the phone-number on your arm, in indelible ink. (Magic Marker: name and phone of 'contacts' may help if you are unconscious...!) Know these things; they are what they are because of the Country we have: for good or evil peeps...



This IS the year: I posted this elsewhere on Facebook today, on the Occupy Denver page:

"377 days until the SHIT-STORM of 2012"

people... don't waste time 'reinventing the wheel' with each idiological (intentionally misspelled) opponent who wants to WASTE your time in 'blame-games' for the sake of their egos! 


They're either in 'the trenches' with you, or bringing you protest-supplies, or sharing YouTubes and articles around the world in support of 'our' efforts, or they don't realize they are WASTING precious time, not having the benefit of an 'A' in inertia-studies...


... because...


There are TWENTY-FOUR presidential elections next year, around the world!


From USA-France-India to East Timor and Russia...


don't spin your wheels peeps!


March and Occupy...!


This is THE YEAR... three-hundred and seventy-seven days"

... tick-tock ...

___________________ we've only just begun...

SNOW all day... Snow all night?

/°/***/°/* crystelZENmud *\°\***\°\
© 2011

Lost Job, Found Occupation

Fall fell, little ZEN'rs...

It's been too long away from this certain keyboard, and we at ZEN Central are quite depressed... the Occupy movement, one day in advance of the massive October 15th Demonstration date, seems to have come full face into the JACKBOOTED predictions of no other than George Orwell, whose comments in 1984 are themselves prevoyant of the times in which we find ourselves...

It dawns on some of our experts, that the One Percent (who rule America with an iron-gloved fist bashing down on sane regulation with every legalized BRIBE they offer to Congresscritters on either side of the aisle...) well some of us think that those ultra-snobs, who have sent the better part of their moneys overseas to safe banks in cities where French or Schweitzerdeutsch is spoken (or the Bahamas, the Caymans, etc...)... well some of 'we' think that 'they' should go the way their fortunes went... into



EXILE...

So as you float your boat of state, as you drive to work, think about why the election we face in 2012 is the most important of all American history...

Because either We, the Ninety-Nine percent will win, OR 'they' will... the One percent who always win...

/°/***/°/* crystelZENmud *\°\***\°\
© 2011 a zen productions article

Time to re-think the Blog crystelZENmud

Yessirree bob, li'l ZEN'rs...

When faced with a choice of writing here, or writing on Facebook... there's a tug away from my dear old blog, and to this sexy 'new' 'Social Network'... so trust yourself, and watch as crystelZENmud takes a small short already-in-progress hiatus, to re-emerge sometime in the next month with renewed focus, writings and hopefully, videos...

Until then, enjoy the snows of Colorado, here in the end of the third week of May...

/°/***/°/* crystelZENmud *\°\***\°\
© 2011

It takes a year, sometimes: inside the US and out

Wisconsin's somehow-majority Republican Fascist anti-American War Party members fired a shot reminiscent of Adolph Hitler's first anti-union strike in 1933, today, in decoupling their fiscal responsibility Bill from their anti-union posturing, and turning same into a true fight against Labour.

So be it... yet is Wisconsin ready for a reintroduction of Hitlerian fascism?



You can read any source anywhere... and if you're reading this, welcome! What an honour to have caught your eyes for mere breaths of time, moments of life, the pulsing of bloodstreams throughout our mutual beings... yet without comments from you, gentle Readers, we at ZEN Central have no clue of your satisfaction, your inquiring mind, wanting to absorb... the nexus of momentum analysed by our trusty gnomish brains...


Something about the "Arab Street"... as Thomas Friedman used to say it, many other pundits included those words as if describing something they 'knew'. And they may by far 'know it' more than I do, but there may be a difference.


I don't want to 'understand' the "Arab Street" through any Western prism.


I'd hope to understand a small part of it, through a 'native prism'... how Libyans have found the courage, individually and 'in numbers', to affront a 'Supreme Guide qua Dictator', and forage through their own belongings to constitute the arms of a real 'Army of Liberation'... anyone who can stand up to Ca-Daffy Duck (aka Gaddafi),as this man evidently will... (photo AP) ... is worthy of governing their tribal lands, maybe even a country.


Will they be 'democratic', or some form of simple dictator (let's face reality, somewhat... it remains to be seen, in Tunisia, Egypt or Libya (if!), whether some insane Bush-dream of 'democracy' is going to 'show up' just like CNN cameras to a hurricane neighbourhood, or whether some modern alternative to both dictatorships or democracy breeds new life into Saharan countries.


Wisconsin's pressure-cooker-Legislature put that State into a clear position supporting Fascist business/government alliances that won't resolve budget problems, and also serve to provoke a strong anti-Fascist wave of discontent that is perfectly malleable as we posture ourselves this summer for the next US marathon presidential inquisition (of 'new blood').


Is Scott Martin's regurgitation of Hitler's Main Early Manoeuvres enough to pull the Wisconsin 'Arab' into the streets of Madison? A great many people question how rabid are the not-nationally-known Wisconsin Republicans, their insidiously lock-step Tea Party allies, and how far towards Berlin 1938 they could possibly move?


While Sarkozy trotted home tonight, after (mais bien sûr!) realizing his image-makers had struck a coup (he smirks, not un-Bush-like) with their suggestion that he JUMP on the Libyan-rebel bandwagon, thus allowing him to pretend that he has actually done anything substantive, the rest of the EU was prancing out of step with Napoléon Sarkozy. Tant pis, Nico!


Wisconsin? Libya? Hitler? Ca-Daffy (Duck!)? Walker?


Funny, that: Walker and his people (inside and supporters outside) are probably thinking they are the 'opposition'... but Poli Sci 101 tells us different.


Oh, for the opposites that attract... hungry Libyans long-fatigued by Ca-Daffy-ism, in a similar place with the Wisconsin pro-Labour movement, protesting the incumbent and succeeding in their principal tasks, where those go towards bettering the lives of the greater number of citizens.


This late night ramble rumbles out of this keyboard, and into your screen...

Viva Libya!
Viva 'the Street'!


/°/***/°/* crystelZENmud *\°\***\°\
© 2011

PREVIEW of TIME'S "MEN OF THE YEAR 2011" (and Women)

It's OFFICIAL! TIME magazine just announced its 2011 "Person of the Year" award, which goes to the Men of Egypt (and if TIME forgot the women, we at ZEN Central did not!)!


This isn't anti-anything...





It is the opening of a new dawn: do we owe it all to the War Criminal President? Damn I hope not...


Oh! The women of Egypt also!




Time to Party Like It's 1999! Or 'Walk Like an Egyptian' (proudly, dignified)...


A satirical look at our exciting new 2011!

/°/***/°/* crystelZENmud *\°\***\°\
© 2011

... Jack CairoACK ...

Hello Li'l ZENers, to the last Eleven Months of the Year 2011...

Some readers have queried ZEN Central about any new writings to appear, and this author appreciates every SMS, text msg, phone call or email contact: thank you all, Gentle Readers.


2010; the 'Year of Transition', with ol' ZENmud taking a chance on finding some guidance in a misguided fashion, by dwelling optimistically at one of America's poorest Web businesses. It shall remain nameless in this column.


We wouldn't want to offer even 'negative publicity' to a website which daily reinforces its -F- rating with the Better Business Bureau; which, to some marketing angels, apparently never exists (with the possible exceptions of "Bhopal//Dow", "Gulf of Mexico//BP", or even "Rocky Flats//Dow" (did we 'getcha' with that third one?)).

Titling this essay 'Jack CairoACK' may be preposterous;
it may be judicious.

Being a distant, younger literary admirer of The Original Jack Kerouac, and his Beat classic opus On The Road, with its most poignant (à moi) segment (it responds to my perpetual 'Look for America' attitude...), regarding his visit in 1949 to Sonny Lawson Field, a small baseball park located at 23rd and Welton St. in uptown Denver (being mere blocks above downtown Denver). How did America-traversing Kerouac see this wayside oasis in a more vibrant Denver (post-war)? He gave us this:

Down at 23rd and Welton a softball game was going on under floodlights which also illuminated the gas tank. A great eager crowd roared at every play. The strange young heroes of all kinds, white, colored, Mexican, pure Indian, were on the field, performing with heart-breaking earnestness....
Near me sat an old Negro who apparently watched the games every night. Next to him was an old white bum; then a Mexican family, then some girls, some boys – all humanity, the lot. Oh, the sadness of the lights that night! The young pitcher looked just like Dean. A pretty blonde in the seats looked just like Marylou. It was the Denver Night; all I did was die.

Down in Denver, down in Denver
All I did was die.

Having spent post-parental-divorce years in Denver, with (for a period of over a year) a job downtown, I spent every working morning and evening at the opposite corner, southwest: the company Van sat there, every night, in a barb-wired, chain-linked fenced-off parking lot, and I gazed over at the lights and green grass of Sonny Lawson Field. It was a demoralized, and demoralizing area when I frequented that neighborhood, hurriedly. It was my nature to walk fast to it, and retreat as quietly as possible, in those still-racially charged days.


That very year - 1976 - was when I first read On The Road, and his revelations became mine. I opened my eyes to the Soul-saturated sinews of this Dharma-Denver, now more depressed. Saying 'Five Points' in my era was rushed and hushed, yet to Kerouac it represented the 'Best Jazz between Kansas City and Los Angeles'... or was it Chi-town: Chicago? Only ghosts and phantoms of riffs gone silent, remained in the winds which wound down these concrete ribbons.


Kerouac found (in one vein) what he sought out endlessly, driven by the squeals from the stands, the 'attaboys!' from the field: America can 'play' together, sometimes, some days, even when it can't work together, or live together, or abide each other. He wrote about his Denver Night twenty-seven years before I knew he had one... nine-thousand, nine-hundred Denver Nights before.


Before the Korean War?


Before Joseph McCarthy scapegoated all of Hollywood, and J Edgar Hoover drove Charlie Chaplin into exile?


In the midst of America's return from WW II's 'racial tolerance' to our rampant, historic racism, which Jack K must certainly have experienced, the quote above points optimistically toward a too-rare tolerance in Society, to be exalted, yet Kerouac benefited from the naivété of Communist-chasing governmental players, in Congress and the FBI, in writing what assuredly would have been seen, if published some fifteen years later (for On The Road) as more subversive.

Kerouac ... CairoACK?

Across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and up-river on the Nile, Egyptians are looking à la Kerouac for the country that fulfills more realities than myths, while a mythic reality... the Mubarak-ian reality, totters.

Mubarak's universe, of course, represents autocracy repressing (or bribing) those classes of citizens in due course, to achieve some semblance of 'Egypt' that has created a stagnation (similar in fact to our US stagnation ever since Reagan breathed Oval Office oxygen), since Egypt signed its peace Treaty with Israel.


The Cairoic events of these last two weeks attracted the latest media frenzy, fed by 'Social networks' passing of first-to-second-hand information. YouTube has a video showing what may be one of the earliest feminine Cairoine's call to her countrymen for aid... for 'protection' of the women who were ready to stand for Mubarak's withdrawal from power.


Are those purported supporters, who ripped into Tuesday's and Wednesday's protesters, actually off-duty or civilian-clothed Egyptian police or military? Publicly, the Armed forces appeared to be taking a neutral stance, by saying it wouldn't strike down 'the Great People of Egypt' (thus appearing to weaken Mubarak's hold on power?). The Parisian newspaper Le Monde reports that Mubarak has 'had enough' of being President, and would gladly leave, yet fears that determination because of 'the chaos' it would leave in his parting... Yet a reader/commentator to that article (as we are all now, thanks to the Web) reminds us that NATO has spent Billions to 'support' democratic 'movements' (in Afghanistan and Iraq); are we supporting Mubarak or the 'democratization movement' in Egypt?


Thus is any CairoACK writing today, metaphorically euphorically, about the mix of Egyptians who've joined to promote redress of their economic and professional stagnation under Mubarak's near-pharonic rule? Has he found his "23rd and Welton" futbal field, where Copts, Christians and Islamic children kick their ball towards one of two goals, to the screams of parental or friendly supporters? Or is the 'street game' simpler than this supposes? Who needs a stadium of any size when Tahrir Square is serving for the manifestations? Is their game simply survival, or victoriously outlasting the Mubarak regime?


In the history of the development of the Internet, Egypt fared as well as South Africa in leading all statistics on Internet growth and density: Africa was 'wired in' from those two ends. Egypt, under former President Sadat, sought some semblance of Peace with Israel. Mubarak, who had become President upon Sadat's October, 1981 assassination, has enjoyed billions in US Aid, prime seats at 'all the right tables' in terms of geopolitical posturing, and a personal enrichment that is certainly impossible to ascertain.


While Jack Kerouac was watching baseball in North Denver, and then writing about it all, in 1949 and 1950, Hosni Mubarak was graduating ('Class of '49') from Egypt's "Egyptian Military Academy for officers ([whose] alumni include one of Mr. Sadat’s assassins)" (National Post)


Kerouac seemed to search for that 'We, the People' aspect of our American Story.


Mubarak? Pure ambition, apparently, drove him into that realm where military connections gravitate. Mubarak's fortune is estimated to be roughly 30-40 Billion dollars, and to be well-invested in the "usual Suspects' Banks". Between the US, and Switzerland, as well as Britain, much of Hosni's family nest-egg remains accessible, should any case similar to those brought against Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines be a forebearer of justice. So are Mubarak real estate holdings in London, Los Angeles, New York and Washington.


His people... (the supporters) would of course be more affluent, more travelled, more Capitalist; they would not be the type of Egyptians playing "23rd and Welton" styled futbal à la Kerouac.


The great Egyptian people may not have to go the distance many Peoples face, when seeking more-or-less pacific 'regime change'. The extent to which Mubarak's 'boys' can crack down on 'the people' (whether in or out of uniform) depends on the number of democratic demonstrators: if that grows in reaction to repression, Mubarak's Louis Vuitton luggage should be dusted off! Yet if repression chills demonstrators' numbers, resilience could be an asset for Mubarak.

A barbaric Mubarak, could bring out a hundred Ja'q CairoACKS...

... and that's a good thing ...

/°/***/°/* crystelZENmud *\°\***\°\
© 2011

Slip-Slidin' Into 2011, Slip-Slidin' Awayyyy

Thanks to gorgeous friend(s), ZEN Central has been reinvigorated and is ready to welcome in a New Year in several days...


Li'l ZENers, your Humble Narrator has fully--recovered from his 'life-transplant surgery', which extracted a beautiful set of Swiss Years, and replaced them with the ever--home'ish locale of Vail, Colorado.


As a reminder of what NOT to do, during your holiday driving, the following YouTube shows a minute and a half of pure panic for one driver, three other (previously-collided) vehicle owners, and a Canton de Genève snowplow driver...


Hold on to your chair!




Did you hold on??


Or notice the car that was 'catapulted' from the bottom of the row?!


How do the Cantonal insurers for their snowplow service enjoy watching this? Evidence of 'inadequate tires'?? Hmmmmm.


Friends in Switzie have also something beautiful to await next spring or summer: the arrival of Roger Waters' "The Wall" 2011 European Tour... anyone wanting to buy me a ticket? I'll fly for that one!


Here's a taste of his first show in Canada last September:




And a website for information on dates (if not already sold out?).


A warm Pagan Solstice Holiday wish to ZENers of any Deity's denomination or wiccan, atheist or otherwise...


Hug yourself, and ZEN hugs for all!

//**** crystelZENmud ****\\
© 2010

Batten down the Hatches...

Hello, li'l ZENers...

I missed you also, friends... ZEN Central has been highly mobile, gauging the waters, so to speak, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. These highly-scientific undertakings have given us new insights to 'water' in America, as a former raft guide who lived and lives in a dry, snow-dependant State (Colorado).


With the weekly photographic email-announcements received at ZEN Central, from NASA, a certain 'photo-map' haunts us, which displays the water temperatures in the two Oceans, and Gulf, from which hurricanes are born; check it out!

(photo credit: Japan’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer
for EOS (AMSR-E) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite)

Looks like a recipe for disaster, n'est-ce pas? Read the prediction that accompanies the photo-map above:

On May 27, 2010, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast an “active to extremely active” hurricane season for 2010. NOAA projected a 70 percent probability for 14 to 23 named storms, 8 to 14 hurricanes, and 3 to 7 major hurricanes.

Ready, Florida? Louisiana? Is this summer to be the sequel most media sources have 'predicted' since Katrina in 2005?


Years ago, we here at ZEN Central wrote a rambling piece that discussed a new way of looking at the problem of 'Global Warming', also known as 'Climate Change' OR AGW ('Anthropogenic Global Warming'). As we try often, we thought (we think we thought!) 'outside the box', and came up with a new angle, under an understandable label:

Global Humidification

See our original text here, which is not the most coherent piece this author has produced. Yet the concept remains simple: we live on a Planet that has (indubitably) a majority of its surface covered in water.


Any planet (a non-scientist would think) that is 71 percent covered in water would display the tendency, when warmed, to propel more water vapour into the atmosphere: to become more Humid.


Thus our original idea became this: is 'Global Warming' (Naysayers brushed aside for the moment, for their motivations are not shared here) the Symptom, or the Disease?


Consider a 'burn victim'; although the heat that scorched their skin was the incident, what remains is the ugly scar of the burn area. If our analogy holds, the effect (man-derived or cyclic thus normal) of 'global warming' on our Water-Planet is going to increase the overall humidity... non?


NB: when we wrote our piece, in June of 2008, there were very few 'google hits' to be found concerning 'global humidification'; however new attempts do find others, going as far back as 1991! This article, by Dr A. G. Georgiadi of the Institute of Geography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, discussed in simple terms what has become one of our central tenets:

The predicted climate warming will bring significant changes not only in the thermal regime of the Earth, but also in the regime of its atmospheric moisture cycle as well as in the zonal structure and biophysical properties of the vegetation cover. All this will lead to substantial changes in the hydrological cycle of the Earth.

"... the hydrological cycle of the Earth." (aka 'Global Humidification')... what have we seen in these nineteen years since Dr Georgiadi wrote on behalf of the Soviet scientists?


Certain alpine or mountainous zones seem to have increasingly bizarre weather/snow patterns: the Colorado Rockies experienced minimal snowfall until mid-February, and then snow began to fall which only ended at the end of May. Similar patterns were observed in the Northwestern Alps this spring, as well.


Will 'naysayers' (who tend to be 'anti-conspiracy-theorists' of the First Order: which is not to say that every topic they oppose is based in a 'conspiracy theory') persuade, through vociferous adherence to nearly-nonsensical positions, the unthinking or unknowing individual to 'scoff' at any notion of catastrophic changes? hmmm?


Behold the studies of Swiss, or global glaciers, now in retreat since the late 1880s: since the second generation of oil-users appeared on earth, and commensurate with the booming Earth population (for which one can applaud or condemn the wide transport of food via oil-burning transportation paradigms), Alpine glaciers have lost vast percentages of their surface area, and total volume. Here's what one study had to say (from the Abstract of a pay-to-view article):

A significant ice loss since the end of the 19th century was observed in the ablation area, while the changes in the accumulation area were small. We found moderate negative secular rates until the 1960s, followed by steady to positive rates for about two decades and strong ice loss starting in the 1980s which has lasted until the present. An evaluation of 19 glaciers revealed a total ice volume loss of about 13 km3 since the 1870s, of which 8.7 km3 occurred since the 1920s and 3.5 km3 since 1980. Decadal mean net balance rates for the periods 1920-60, 1960-80 and 1980-present are −0.29, −0.03 and −0.53 m a−1 w.e., respectively.
(Authors: Kääb, Andreas; Paul, Frank; Maisch, Max; Hoelzle, Martin; Haeberli, Wilfried
Source: Annals of Glaciology, Volume 34, Number 1, 1 January 2002 , pp. 362-366(5))

So, ZEN Audience, this author leaves you to ponder the long range effect of 'Global Humidification'; a profound change of the hydrological cycle on our Earth: is this a 'by-product' of AGW, or is it the real 'Disease', and 'AGW' is a symptom causing it?


Scientists? We want to hear from you, at crystelZENmud !

//**** crystelZENmud ****\\
© 2010

United Kingdom Declares Icelandic Volcano a "Terrorist Act"

You heard it here first, li'l ZENers!


For the second time in two years, Gordon Brown's government has declared the eruption of Icelandic volcanoes to be 'Terrorist Acts', and found Iceland to be violating the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001!
(or read The BBC, Guardian or TIME magazine's coverage!)


Such was their misguided resort to 'solving' problems in 2008, for the greater peril of Iceland's hard-working and hardy citizenry... and this satiric post at crystelZENmud reminds you that the interrelationships between our commercial and political entities remain ever-entwined, interlaced...


You can also explore this Icelandic site, which offers commentary on the British action(s).


Private Industry reacted yesterday, to this enforced shut-down; claims of losses were for some 35 million Euros attributed to Air France, as well as SAS, which claimed a four-day loss of some 29m Euros, and British Airways, which claimed between 17 and 26m Euros from the total 'paralysis'.


Interestingly, it appears that Air France has claimed much more than airlines whose base countries are somewhat closer to the epicenter of the volcanic clouds; is anyone going to take a fine-tooth comb to their 'subscribed losses' before granting EU aid under Article 107.2, which allows aid to entities that suffered from 'natural catastrophes' in the origin of their losses. As reported in Le Monde (en français), such aid is available on a non-discriminatory basis, "and cannot act as a disguised aid towards restructuring"...


Will Brown declare Iceland's geologically-active landscape to be a 'Terrorist threat'? Maybe he learned his lesson back in October 2008... ZENers can sleep well, tonight, if Gordon Brown didn't do it already, he probably won't pursue this fallacious course of action!

___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___

© 2010

Cannes and Beaune Film Festivals: eruptions in Iceland!

Behold! In mere weeks, another Cannes Film Festival begins... and you yawn?

:-)

Will this year's Mediterranean extravaganza be any different than those of past years? ZENers are inclined to think so... because the Président du Jury is no one other than Tim Burton.


Tim's long history of eccentricity between mind and market; his stunning series of films (which began long before Batman and Edward Scissorhands, through the immemorial Ed Wood, to his recently-released Alice in Wonderland) create fantasmagoric trails, through cinema's blossoming era of ever-more-complex digital effects, whilst weaving stories that draw from his actors their best presentations of the characters they portrayed.


Tim's genius is manifested in his low-key (and low decibel) directing talents; how successful will that talent be, as he brings together a Cannes Jury comprised of...

• Kate Beckinsale: actress from the United Kingdom;
• Giovanna Mezagiornio: Italian actress;
• Alberto Barbera: Director of the Italian National Cinema Museum;
  
• Emmanuel Carrere: French Director, author and screenwriter;
  
• Victor Erice: Spanish Director;
• Shekhar Kapur: Indian actor, Director and producer
  

As President of this Jury, Tim Burton will have the only 'American' viewpoint for a heavily-European jury; yet his unconventional methods will most likely be rather well-appreciated by the fellow jurors.


On the palate for films, is Ridley Scott's Robin Hood. The long métrage, which falls in the genre of 'we can do better than Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings!' (In its effects, scenes of running-through-woods bow-and-arrow battles, etc.... even to the casting), displays that aspect of the Cannes festival that its fans cherish so much: bringing in the spectacular... the omnipresent aspects of global marketing budgets...


For the first time in twelve years, ZENmud Central is not wired-in to the coverage of Cannes, offered by the French television channels, especially Canal+ (aka Canal Plus)...


And!


Last weekend was France's "2nd Annual International Thriller Film Festival"... the 'new kid' on the international film Festival 'block'...


While... FLASH; an Icelandic volcano eruption has paralyzed aerial traffic in the northwest regions of Europe! Airports from Geneva to Ireland are under the effect of thick dust and ash, forcing the cancellation of hundreds, if not thousands of flights... and experts on Icelandic geology are announcing that less-intense, yet nearly-continual emissions from this volcano may occur for up to a year!


How will aerial traffic be affected in the months to come, and what effects will this bring to the European tourist industry?


Hopefully, Tim and the rest of the flock of celebrity travellers to Cannes, will be able to arrive in the weeks to come! Stay inside, Euro-ZENers!

___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___

© 2010

No news in the Health Care Reform...

Evidently no one wants to be 'like the United Kingdom', when you talk about American Health Care reform.

"Why should we 'give the Government control' of this? We'll only end up paying more taxes..."

You've heard this before... from the Right or Left combined. But who knows how little that cost actually is in the UK, and! If we designed a Three-Star system (if you want to call UK's system a 'Two-Star'... not that ZEN does), could we not do so and save money in the long run?


An amazing coincidence makes studying the two systems easier... the UK is nearly exactly one-fifth of the United States' population. This makes comparing UK v USA health statistics very easy (and easier, since the summer 2008 Pound Sterling was nearly 2:1 on the Dollar (actually $1.98= £1)). Now, of course, it's different, but the sum total of statistics are still stuck in the 2008 'rut'.


Many statistics that follow are from the NHS site itself; ZEN Central takes full responsibility for any math errors derived therefrom.


REMINDER: crystelZENmud and ZENmud productions are not advocating FOR a UK-style replacement of the mixed public/private US system; we are offering a statistical comparison, to show how high USA costs are, in a trend without end for our future.

Total UK Health Care budget

The UK system, for the government-paid component, claims a 2008/9 budget that is 'more than £100Billion' (hereafter: 'B' for billion, 'T' for trillion). This link says that the total number for 2006 was £109B. Should we then deduce that the 2008/9 'stat' was an estimate? Then we can do so ourselves. Perhaps the 2008/9 number should be about £120 to 124? As a side note, it is interesting to note that, as a percentage of total spending in the UK Health system, the 'private' sector's share has dropped in recent years, from 16pc in 1997, to 12.7pc in 2006. How has that trend evolved in these last four years? Again: we do not know.


What makes writing this article to be a challenge, is the 'nose-dive' taken by the Pound Sterling, between July 2008, and February 2009: it dropped from $1.98 to a pound, to $1.42/pound by February, and then rebounded, up to a near-steady $1.64 per pound in the summer of 2009. Statistical averaging (not our forte) seems to allow a 12-month average of USD1.60=1GBP, to match (as close as we can) the offered 2008/9 UK NHS budget. Finding statistics to round up this NHS statistic, through the inclusion of private-sector care numbers, are not easily forthcoming.


So if a population one-fifth our size, spent more than £120B on health care, we could perhaps gauge the equation as this:

61M*5 ... 120B*5*1.60

And thus our population of 305M in the USA 'might have' spent (think of Obama 'subcontracting' the US HC system to the UK NHS (don't laugh too much)) 960B to offer a Universal Health System to our citizens. We can round this up to 1T (one trillion), just for fun.


But it's 'un-American' to propose UHS in the USA... and our system, at some 2.42T/year, is still admired by those who want no change. Even though Fraud exists in Medicare (theft of our taxes by criminal 'doctors, health providers 'and' patients), many people support the status quo.


In comparison, another aspect for the Capitalists to digest: our US system (which by-the-way is already running at least 46pc 'Socialist', when the term 'final payer' is used: the VA, the Native American health care system, Medicaid and Medicare... all paid by the Government, and 'are' some form of UHS within each finite sector) takes at least 17pc of our GDP to sustain itself. The chart below shows 'Selected Countries' from 2006, when the USA was running 15.3pc of GDP.



In the United Kingdom, the total (If our sources are trustworthy) is hugging the middle of this graph: they only spend 8.4pc of their economy on health care.


Where would "We, the People!" be, if our economy had an economic 'jolt' of some 5-7pc of our GDP freed from the 'evil clutches' of the Health Care Beast? Devil's advocates would mention the disruptions of employment, as floods of health care 'paper-pushers' and 'claims denial specialists' (surely NOT what they are called in their 'terms of reference' contracts) were set free from their desks... and this is valid. But would not most be finding new careers in a newly re-energized economy?


Now it seems obvious that the UK is spending much less per capita than we are, by a factor matching the GDP and budgeted numbers, nearly half.


The comments of 'nay-saying Flat-Earthers', as we've nicknamed them at ZEN Central, seem to promote 'inflexibility': are they 'conflicted' by their job, investments or status?


This is our first discourse on a long-standing national debate... maybe too late!??

___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___

© 2010

Living under ATQ

We're living under ATQ: the American Terror Quotient... the tool of capitalists to serve themselves off of your media--driven FEARS of 'terrorists' or terrorism: flues are good examples, as the governments raced to sign contracts guaranteeing their citizens the dosages required (and preferred suppliers's obscene profits...)




Given the American economic model, my Fellow Amuhricans, which never has relied on truth in advertising (unless forced to do so by legislation that won over lobbyists' efforts)... You're living under ATQ!

It's an ATQ!

___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___

© 2010

Farewell Hermance... 'allo Denver!!!

On y est, ... 'c'est partie!'


How do you avoid clichés, at those times when no words come but?

"End of an era..."
"A new door opening..."
"A new dawn rising..."

But truly... when a nearly-thirteen year chapter closes, the transition doesn't begin and end with packing or unpacking of suitcases... it doesn't shut off once the door closes on a new 'Temporary ZENworld HQ'...


The mysteries continue... are ZEN's en-route boxes being used for shooting practice, by a range of international Postal employees, who may think it's funny, the sound of glass shards tinkling to the bottom of the box each time they roll it over? (Actually, the first box, containing a wooden antique bookcase, arrived with a six-inch gash just at the upper corner of the wooden item... yet the 'damage' seemed no more than 'cardboard-"rug"-burns' from rubbing against its jolly container-mates... and the bevelled glass door seems intact!


ZEN's first Saturday... in America... in North America... in the USA, since he left his Wolf Sister newly-married to the Good Man she found.


This video is dedicated to 'US', WE the happy few, the ZEN family that knows where and how they walk amidst those whose primary function apparently is Feeding the Beast. (don't understand? Try reading Hesse's book Demian), and learn about the concept of avant-garde, and or the mere perceptions of that phenomenon.


Here's a magic moment, provided by the ZENeye... a ZENmud production...


(copyright 2009 ... another ZENmud productions)




Folks, the biorhythms announce 'nap two' for a late-Friday, early-Saturday bio-fried system... enjoy the music and lights from the Geneva Festival des arbres et lumières

___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___

© 2010

Bonus bonzai

Banks, and billions of bonuses, baby: the uncomprehending indignation manifested by the public, towards these unique financial system employees, is justified, and yet...

Another message from the ZENmud FireWatchTower

What the public has misjudged, is the nature of the game, which allows the 'system' to reward these 'traders'... massively. Most people, who watch a story on the TV news, or read related web or press articles, are indignant to read that Goldman Sachs or another enterprise has awarded its 'traders' with billions of bonus bucks. For them, these obscene amounts represent a system (and they are not wrong to think this) that has gone amok, which siphons out of the economy gross sums to reward its players: players who may have brought great profits to their clients.

A common thread woven throughout the stories relating to these bonus–babies, recounts the positions taken by CEOs of these financial institutions (which, we recall below, have been greatly aided directly or indirectly, by infusions of State Aid to survive the Catastrophe 2008), whose uniform responses offer their variant of 'panic': “... if we don't offer bonuses, the traders will leave and go (to the competition) where they can receive such compensation...”

Most readers are then left thinking that the banking system itself is putrefied, stagnating the rest of the economy (and they are not wrong to think this) by this siphoning off of 'our capital', to line the pockets of a selected few. What is not commonly known, is the true source of the imbalance, because of the nature of that industry: clients.

The ignored implicit denominator underlining these generic responses, transmitted through the fear–mongering media (FMM) regarding bonuses, is the liaison that exists between traders (or fortune managers) and clients: accumulated personal wealth.

And thus the numerator is this, making a simple equation: if a bank doesn't pay the traders for the profits generated through the fortunes they manage, the financial manager/trader would walk from that bank with their clients. The bonus system, therefore, can be 'diagnosed' as a means of rewarding these traders for their social and professional connections, which reunite the personal fortunes of the ultra–rich into large investment consortia, who (towards their trusted bankers) are loyal beyond measure, during good times.

Clients of bankers in personal fortune management often demand a plethora of services, and whether some of these pass beyond the legal is not within the scope of this article. If someone calls, a banker could spend his or her time (or that of their staff) in chartering airplanes for cargo transfers, arranging important contacts with other clients with similar business interests, or finding a reputable yacht broker. While the purchase and sale of investment instruments (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, notes, whole companies, etc.) occupies a great amount of a banker's day, the cultivation of these relationships can also require (or offer) extensive 'vacation time' on the yachts or seashore mansions, and ski lodges of these super–rich clients.

Clients with personal fortunes are more loyal to their chosen banker, than to the bank which has engaged such professionals. Any trader that has made profits for his 'family' of clients, will have accumulated substantial financial leverage, for which the payment of the annual year–end bonus is one of the most pre–eminent liens to staying with that bank.

So, while reading about traders and bonuses, don't forget who holds the power.

A bank that diminishes traders' bonuses is going to be losing those clients, whose fortunes are shepherded through good financial times and bad, as the traders 'threaten' to vacate any bank paying under–market bonuses. Confirmation of this comes from a hard–hitting French newspaper, Le Canard Enchainé (translated as: the Enchained Duck), whose translated comment would read:

Bonuses are calculated as a function of performances, those of [the trader's] desk and bank... but especially as a function of the minimal price to which [their] boss thinks [he or she] would be able to keep [them].

Rich clients, one could say, do not trust the bank, per se... they trust he or she that comes to play on their yacht... and offers advice or follows orders, with the panache that the rich pride themselves for receiving.

If we want to add 'morals' to the 'equation', and if citizens are perturbed by the perceived injustices of 'bail–outs' and taxpayer indebtedness, then the thought du jour should be projected on to those rich clients, whose 'friends in the firms' are reaping millions in bonuses for having recommended (some) bogus investment vehicles (especially in markets such as derivatives and credit default swaps).

It should be the rich clients who are upset with the
rewards given for bad investment advice.

And how a bank justifies rewards to their über–staff, who've reduced the confidence of (and in) the market regarding their offered counselling and advice, is totally unZEN...

This is pertinent to the global situation today, after the announcement by President de la République N. Sarkozy, and his Ministre de la Finance C. Lagarde, of their concept for regulation of French banks, to which they'd given the name 'bonus–malus', requiring the retention of fifty per cent of the bonuses paid out annually, to be retained for three years, and then judged against the performance of the bank in that period.

A rational concept, in sum...

Profits from better risk assessment will allow the retained bonus to be issued to the employee at the end of the three–year period, and losses from poor risk assessment allow the bank to retain those funds held (more or less) in escrow. We watch with bated breath, to see how Sarkozy's proposal is introduced at the upcoming G8 meeting to be held near Pittsburgh. As of the weekend, Germany's government announced 'support' for the concept, without detailing the width of any base of support within the entire country.

SIDEBAR: Wouldn't it have been nice to see President Obama place last month's G8 meeting at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire? The resort lodge and town in which the world witnessed the birth of the post–World War financial system, Bretton Woods could have been a symbol of the renewal for good of the capitalist financial system(s), as it once was seen to be many years ago.

Take the Goldman Sachs bonanza of bonus–bounty to its upper staff: this is the company who 'offered' its CEO, Henry Paulson, as Secretary of the Treasury, he who negotiated a 'NO–conflict–of–interest' (sarcasm mode OFF) bail–out to AIG and the others (all but its main competitor Lehman Brothers... hmmmm). His generosity with the future tax obligations of America's children, produced the last major Act of the Bush misAdministration: AIG received over one hundred Billion dollars, while the classic excuse was produced (as for Chrysler nearly twenty years ago) of its being Too Large To Fail. With this bailout, AIG was 'covered', and in a position to handle its outstanding obligations to clients. These included Goldman Sachs, who received something near eighteen Billio dollars.

Someone probably sent a sweet little memento to Mr Paulson in return for his persuasive response to a financial crisis (from both AIG and Goldman?)... Goldman Sachs didn't tarry, in rewarding its management with some (??) Billion in bonuses, announced earlier in mid–summer.

Somehow, conflict–of–interest has lost its impact in Financial America.

We, the Bankers from the United States,
in order to screw taxpayers, for
a more perfect Bonus...

___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___

© 2009