Some excerpts from an article by Carlito Pablo in the Georgia Straight, October 22, 2009:

As recently as August 20 … Mexico decriminalized the possession for personal use of substances like marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine. Five days later, Argentina’s Supreme Court declared unconstitutional legislation that punishes possessors of marijuana with prison sentences ranging from one month to two years.

Elsewhere in Latin America, according to [Philippe] Lucas, a first-term Victoria city councillor, countries like Colombia and Peru have set aside policies that regard drug use as a criminal offence.

“We’re seeing Canada and the U.S. increasingly isolated in the maintenance of a prohibition-based policy,” Lucas told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. “Within the western world, we see examples of very successful alternatives to a law-and-order approach to substance abuse. The best recent examples are Portugal and Spain.”

The following statistics came out of the Cato Institute, which may describe itself as non-partisan, but is anything but an advocate of so-called left wing welfare state ideas (like the right isn’t statist!—has anybody seen the war bill/bail-out cost lately?). I use that Left Wing description advisedly, by the way.

The Cato Institute advocates, as a rule, free-market principles (again so-called) and libertarianism of a certain strain. Anyway, its pronunciations on recent drug policy changes in Portugal (from the GS article):

Since decriminalization in 2001, lifetime prevalence rates, which measure how many people have consumed a particular drug or drugs in their lifetime, have decreased among youth, the think tank noted in Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies.

For Portuguese aged 13 to 15 years, the [drug usage] rate fell from 14.1 percent in 2001 to 10.6 percent in 2006. Among those aged 16 to 18, the rate dropped from 27.6 percent to 21.6 percent.

With the fear of criminal punishment gone, more addicts have availed themselves of drug-substitution treatments. The number of people accessing these services rose from 6,040 in 1999 to 14,877 in 2003, an increase of 147 percent.

Drug-related deaths declined, from about 400 in 1999 to 290 in 2006, while newly reported HIV cases among drug users in Portugal diminished from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 six years later. New AIDS cases among the same group dropped from about 600 in 2000 to approximately 200 in 2006.

The percentage of drug addicts among newly diagnosed HIV and AIDS patients decreased over the same time. In 2001, HIV-positive drug users accounted for more than 50 percent of new HIV cases; this fell to 30 percent in 2006. Addicts diagnosed with AIDS made up almost 60 percent of AIDS patients in 2001; their percentage was cut to less than 40 percent in 2006.

The Cato Institute report notes that decriminalization in Portugal applies to purchase and possession for personal consumption. The allowable personal-use amount is defined as the average quantity sufficient for 10 days’ usage by one person.

Granted, Portugal is not Canada, let alone Vancouver, but the statistics are compelling. Will anything stop drug use? Clearly no. Had a drink lately? A cigarette? Coffee? Chocolate? Okay, coffee and chocolate aren’t exactly crack cocaine, but cigarettes and alcohol?

Recently I even heard (I think on CBC) that when the Russians occupied Berlin and supposedly 2 million women were raped, and some 200,000 children were born from that horror, alcohol played a massive and integral role in the soldiers’ actions. History, war, deprivation and revenge, I am sure, also chipped in.

But alcohol—and I am no prohibitionist—undoubtedly increases violent and reckless behavior, not to mention death-by-driving. Talking about cigarettes and its cost to longevity and the health care system is too known to repeat.

To finish:

In conversation, Lucas noted that although B.C., and Vancouver in particular, have a reputation for being liberal on drug use, they have the highest rate of drug-related arrests in Canada. “Out of those high rates of drug arrests, 80 percent are for personal possession—they’re not for trafficking—and 60 percent of the overall arrests are cannabis-related,” he said.

Courage to believe in harm reduction, less crime and less disease! Who would have thought that would be a hard sell? I need a drink.

Lots of love,

Pete

“If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice.”
—Malalai Joya

If you’re under stress, or having a bad day, I hope things improve—or you can wrap your mind, positively, around whatever the problems are, and even let them go, or at least get them in perspective.

I am not the best at these sorts of things.

Either way, this woman from Afghanistan—Malalai Joya—can put one’s own dilemmas in perspective in an inspiring yet utterly humbling heartbeat. And she’s so worth knowing about.

Joya is symbolic of those eternal groups of freedom-seeking people all over the world, who are never or rarely given voice in geopolitical confrontations where the deepest truths are systematically obfuscated by Power and Relentless Interests—from within or without.

Although as Joya says: “You can’t eat symbolism.”

I don’t know all of her political views (she speaks out against the Taliban and the war lords and drug lords, saying they are the same in their oppressive makeup), but she is courage incarnate, relentlessly speaking out for human rights and against the corruption and oppression in Afghanistan and from outside Afghanistan.

It must be remembered, in my opinion, that even one as remarkably courageous as Malalai can’t speak out or make change without significant solidarity. Fighting the Powers-that-be, Joya is protected in secret safe-houses, applauded privately and sometimes publicly in Afghanistan, similarly supported and backed by other Afghanis, men and women, who are also profoundly courageous. So it goes for perhaps all great voices that we know of, and the movements with which they are recognized. Solidarity, community, a belief in human rights, vital—but gathering across even differing views for bigger causes is perhaps the most vital for change.

Joya’s stance here is unequivocal:

“I realised women’s rights had been sold out completely…Most people in the West have been led to believe that the intolerance and brutality towards women in Afghanistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie. Many of the worst atrocities were committed by the fundamentalist mujahedin during the civil war between 1992 and 1996. They introduced the laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban—and now they were marching back to power, backed by the United States. They immediately went back to their old habit of using rape to punish their enemies and reward their fighters.”

Here’s the speech that first brought her to international attention.

For a quick read about Malalai, here is the Defense Committee for Malalai Joya, press here for an excerpt from her book (on the RAWA site), and here for the bio. And here’s a very recent interview on Democracy Now.

May your day be full of inspired efforts and good will, and lots of love,

Pete

If a boxer ever went as batty as Nijinsky, all the wowsers in the world would be screaming “punch-drunk.” Well, who hit Nijinsky? And why isn’t there a campaign against ballet?
—A.J. LIEBLING, “The Sweet Science”

This little essay is in written connection with the Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker.

In the making of the film Facing Ali, one of the big questions was the choosing of the boxers. It wasn’t actually that difficult a decision. There were certain criteria that I felt had to be met by the boxers’ histories in order to enhance the narrative and push the film forward—while telling both the boxers’ and Ali’s stories.

JIMMY ELLIS

In the mix of this decision was the fact that a few other boxers who had played compelling roles in Ali’s journey were no longer alive. Well, Jimmy Ellis—who was a childhood friend in Louisville, sparring partner and one-time fighter of Ali—is alive. But tragically—I heard from one of the interviewed boxers—Ellis believes his wife is still alive. She isn’t.

That is my point. The sharp-punching Jimmy Ellis suffers from pugilistic dementia (better known as “punch drunk”).

The cumulative effect of getting punched in the head is devastating for some people—one would think for all people, and surely to some degree that is true. But it is a truism that some people—and some fighters—are more deeply affected by head trauma than others, and/or have a greater genetic propensity for dementia.

And granted, dementia and its variations are not uncommon in the elderly, but head trauma can undeniably speed up the process.

JERRY QUARRY

Jerry Quarry was a popular and animated boxer—having also been a colour commentator for the sport. Quarry fought Ali twice, and was stopped twice, both times due to cuts around the eye. He reached about the same high level of pro boxing as Jimmy Ellis. In fact, Jimmy Ellis defeated Quarry by a split-decision in 1968 to receive one version of the world heavyweight championship (WBA) while Ali was in exile (and Frazier refused to be part of the box-off).

Quarry also suffered from pugilistic dementia and died at 53, reportedly from a heart attack. Two of his boxing brothers were also affected by head trauma. Mike, like Jerry, had pugilistic dementia, and his death is associated with the disease. And today, Bobby, the youngest Quarry, has Parkinson’s syndrome—the condition that haunts Ali’s physical movements.

FLOYD PATTERSON

Two-time world heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, who fought Ali twice, was well-known for his insights on the boxing game. The legendary Patterson suffered from pugilistic dementia.

Floyd once said:

“They said I was the fighter who got knocked down the most, but I also got up the most.”

And about boxing he said:

“It’s like being in love with a woman. She can be unfaithful, she can be mean, she can be cruel, but it doesn’t matter. If you love her, you want her, even though she can do you all kinds of harm. It’s the same with me and boxing. It can do me all kinds of harm but I love it.”

JIMMY YOUNG

Jimmy Young was a crafty boxer who almost defeated Ali in 1976, and would also have been a candidate for the film. Young’s awkward, cagey style made most fighters look ineffective—Young very nearly beat Ken Norton, which would have possibly led to his being awarded the vacated world heavyweight title—and he shone a clear light on Ali’s diminishing skills and insufficient preparation for fights.

Jimmy Young suffered from pugilistic dementia. He died from a heart attack at the age of 56.

Young also defeated Ron Lyle, and after an early knockout at the rock-hard hands of Earnie Shavers, in a rematch he held Shavers to a draw. It was also a Jimmy Young decision over the once-unbeatable George Foreman that stopped big George’s comback after his gargantuan lost to Ali in Zaire. All three of these fighters were in Facing Ali.

Those are a few of the warriors who would have been candidates for the film Facing Ali. Here’s to them—and hopefully for them, it was all worth it.

And lest we forget, four of the ten boxers interviewed in Facing Ali—Joe Frazier, Earnie Shavers, Leon Spinks and Ken Norton—required subtitles, despite being English speaking (Ken Norton’s speech difficulties were likely caused by a near-death car accident in 1986).

It’s a tough way to make a living.

And what’s the answer with boxing? With head injuries? I don’t know.

One of the funniest boxers of all-time was Randall “Tex” Cobb. He once said he punched Larry Holmes in the hand all night long with his head. Cobb put it this way in a Sports Illustrated article from 1983:

“If a man doesn’t want to fight, then lay down, sucker. I’m not going to have someone run my life for me. If you get a federal commission involved, all you’re going to have is a bunch of political appointees. A lot of flurry, a lot of fluff, all show and no go. I’m a whore who sells his blood instead of his ass. But that comes with the sport.”

For parents or fans, or doctors—heck, whomever wants to read about head injuries and dementia—a really interesting article from Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker called Offensive Play: How different are dogfighting and football?

My friend Ryan forwarded this to me. An excerpt:

The other major researcher looking at athletes and C.T.E. [chronic traumatic encephalopathy] is the neuropathologist Bennet Omalu. He diagnosed the first known case of C.T.E. in an ex-N.F.L. player back in September of 2002, when he autopsied the former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster. He also found C.T.E. in the former Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Andre Waters, and in the former Steelers linemen Terry Long and Justin Strzelczyk, the latter of whom was killed when he drove the wrong way down a freeway and crashed his car, at ninety miles per hour, into a tank truck. Omalu has only once failed to find C.T.E. in a professional football player, and that was a twenty-four-year-old running back who had played in the N.F.L. for only two years.

“There is something wrong with this group as a cohort,” Omalu says. “They forget things. They have slurred speech. I have had an N.F.L. player come up to me at a funeral and tell me he can’t find his way home. I have wives who call me and say, ‘My husband was a very good man. Now he drinks all the time. I don’t know why his behavior changed.’ I have wives call me and say, ‘My husband was a nice guy. Now he’s getting abusive.’ I had someone call me and say, ‘My husband went back to law school after football and became a lawyer. Now he can’t do his job. People are suing him.’ ”

It’s a difficult thing, being alive. Lao Tsu once wrote in the Tao Te Ching (2500 years ago) when football was not yet known—but boxing and dogfights were probably around:

Because we have a body, we have misfortune.

When I was younger, I had no idea what this meant.

We never know what someone else has been through. So be good to yourself, and others.

Pete

“I had never seen a case of smallpox. I don’t know how my guru knew that I could do this work. I had hair down the middle of my back, and I was wearing a white robe. Everybody in the United Nations was over 50 and wearing a business suit. I showed up at the United Nations office dressed as you would expect someone to be dressed in a monastery. I walked in and said, ‘My mystic sent me to cure smallpox.’ I was told to go home. I took the 17-hour bus ride back to the ashram and told Baba that I had failed. He said, ‘Go back.’ I did this two dozen times, making this trip back and forth. Slowly, the robe gave way to pants, then to a shirt, then to a tie, then to a haircut, and then to a resume. I learned to look like a diplomat.”
—Dr. Larry Brilliant

Is that story apocryphal, or in some way exaggerated or even made more concise? I don’t know. But either way, it’s a damn cool story, and in the early 1970s, Larry Brilliant (yes, that’s his name) and 100,000 other people in the UN-related team (that he eventually led) went door-to-door and village-to-village trying (and succeeding) to eradicate small-pox in India.

Those 100,000 workers made up “one of the largest peace-time armies ever assembled.” Now that’s solidarity.

At some part of this journey, Larry was in what he saw as a serious bind. He needed to buy hundreds of four wheel drive jeeps. But the government person who he had to go through wanted him to buy two-wheel drive jeeps, because this person’s brother owned the two-wheel drive jeep factory. But two-wheel drives wouldn’t get to the villages in monsoon season, and it was monsoon season.

So Larry had to either buy the two-wheel drive jeeps to not piss of this government worker or not buy them and piss the worker off and then have trouble with the government.

The third option—used all over the world in variations particular to a given culture, time and circumstance—was to bribe the man, something Larry had never done and didn’t want to do.

Well, Larry’s guru was Neem Karoli Baba. Larry went to talk to him, and here’s what Neem Karoli Baba said, and here’s the explanation from Larry:

“My guru [Neem Karoli Baba] sent me to Lama Govinda, who said, ‘Think things through very clearly. Ask yourself, number one, are you exaggerating? Are you exaggerating the importance of this decision and of your role in it? Are you milking the melodrama?’ [I did this today, with something infinitely less important] Whoops! I thought to myself, ‘How does this guy know?’

“Then Govinda said, ‘Once you’ve satisfied yourself that you’re not milking the melodrama, then choose the decision that’s best for the kids—and don’t worry about your hands [if they get dirtied by bribing or whatever].’

And that’s what the Gita says: Use the tools of spiritualism to clarify the mirror of your mind so that it’s not fogged over, so that you see things as they really are. Don’t let the melodrama of how seductive your importance is, or of how great the power of your decision is, beguile you into losing your ability to think things through. Then do the right thing—and to hell with everything else.

“That’s all at a very rational level. But here’s the magic: I sat down alone and cleared my mind. I concluded that yes, I had psyched myself up, sipping my own whiskey and getting into it, as I’m wont to do.

But I also decided that it really mattered that I get the government of India on my side. I could always raise more money for more jeeps, but if I antagonized that powerful secretary, he could kick the smallpox program out of India.

I was prepared to give the secretary a bribe, which was something I had never done in my life. I drove to the secretary’s office, only to find when I arrived that he had been transferred two hours earlier.

The new guy said, ‘Oh, four-wheel-drive jeeps? No problem.’

“That’s the magic part of it. That’s the inexplicable part of clearing your mind and of knowing just what to do. So now you can begin to sip your own whiskey again. Now you say, ‘God created this lucky incident just for me.’ ”

When you sober up again, you remember that you’re entitled to the joy of work, you’re just not entitled to the results [Bhagavad Gita]. “As long as you devote the outcome to God, and you don’t get confused about who the actor is, you’re going to be fine. This message is brutal.”

Who knows the hows and whys of what’s going on? Why we do and act as we do? How monumental or unmonumental every action is or isn’t?

The full article is here.

Larry Brilliant can be watched on TED. He was also executive director of Google’s philanthropy wing—a job he got through his past and through a wish on TED to build a global warning and tracking system for pandemics. After three years with Google, EBay co-founder (and Hollywood producer) Jeff Skoll hired Larry to “oversee a new fund aimed at combating a range of ills, including climate change and conflict in the Middle East.”

I got rattled by the smallest of ego-hits today, the woes-are-me, the victim story. And I sure don’t know how to change my mood, half the time, let alone the world. I know I have to flow more, and I know where (more or less). And I can change. And I can certainly learn—and keep trying.

Tons and tons and tons of love to you, and may the small thoughts in my mind, expand. I don’t drink, but I can certainly down the whiskey.

Pete

In Greek mythology, the god of medicine, Asclepios, had two daughters. Hygeia was the daughter responsible for prevention, while, Panacea was responsible for cure. Today, to the detriment of our nation’s health, we’re fixated on the idea that medicine will produce a panacea. It’s time to listen to her more powerful sister, [Sweet Prevention].
—Phillip J. Longman

It’s late, and I haven’t had a chance to read this article in full—The Health of Nations in the Washington Monthly, by Phillip J Longman—but it’s interesting, and bold. I’ll possibly comment on it more tomorrow, but tonight I’ll just put in some quotes, and a link.

Although written about the American system, many of the same policy ideas would be great for Canada, too, and help save universal health care (image if debt was also canceled):

To get an idea of how wildly ineffective our [American] health-care system is, consider this: The United States spends roughly $4,500 per person on health care each year. Costa Rica spends just $273. That small Central American country also has half as many doctors per capita as the United States. Yet the life expectancy of the average Costa Rican is virtually the same as the average American’s: 76.1 years.

How can that be? According to public health researchers, the biggest reasons are behavior and environment. Costa Ricans consume about half as many cigarettes per person as we do. Not surprisingly, they are four times less likely to die of lung cancer.

The car ownership rate in Costa Rica is a fraction of what it is in the United States. That not only means that fewer Costa Ricans die in auto accidents, but that they do a lot more walking, and hence they get more exercise.

Thanks to a much lower McDonald’s-to-citizen ratio, the average Costa Rican thrives on a traditional diet of rice, beans, fruits, vegetables, and a moderate amount of fried food—and therefore enjoys one of the world’s lowest rates of heart disease and other stress-related illnesses.

Here’s to real food. Unprocessed food. Food that still has some life in it.

McDonald’s food is perfect to store up for the apocalypse because it won’t rot. Unfortunately, food that won’t rot is pushing us towards the apocalypse.

Hey, I like that. Maybe that should be in Bartlett’s Quotations under quotes about highly processed, disease-causing fast food.

Back to the article:

Maybe it’s time to try a different approach. The biggest opportunities for improving the health of Americans—and restraining health-care costs—lie in keeping people healthy, rather than treating them once they become sick.

So instead of simply adding more benefits to a health-care system that is already financially unsustainable, or using new benefits to herd people into HMOs, why not [go against the worst aspects of profit at any cost, and ] offer a more sensible deal: Bribe people into taking better care of themselves. For instance, why not offer seniors who exercise bigger drug discounts than those who don’t?

This may sound radical, and it is.

And here’s a kicker, useful in my labour studies, and a reversal of what I thought was the main reason for extended life expectancy: medical improvements. Further to this, a middle-management friend of mine who is not instinctively pro-union (but a wonderful and fair man), told me unequivocally that a factory with a good safety record invariably is way more productive. Anyway, check this out:

A child born today can expect to live a full 30 years longer than one born in 1900. Improvements in medicine, however, played a surprisingly small role in this achievement. Public health experts agree that it contributed no more than five of those 30 years.

I’m not sure who these public health experts are, but the point is still interesting…

This [the above] may seem counterintuitive given the attention society pays to medical breakthroughs. But the changes in living and working conditions over the last century are the real reason. American cities at the turn of the last century stank of coal dust, manure, and rotting garbage. Most people still used latrines and outhouses. As recently as 1913, industrial accidents killed 23,000 Americans annually. Milk and meat were often spoiled; the water supply untreated.

The full article is here. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to read it in detail tomorrow. Hopefully, but I doubt it.

And here’s to sleep—another important health factor.

And love—and may you give and receive large amounts of it,

Petexo

Okay, a few facts of who we really are and are not (from The Unknown World): As a rule, every hour humans (yes, you and I) shed one-and-a-half million skin flakes (full of bacterial colonies), our skin surface is compacted dead cells, and dust on the floor is made up of ninety-percent dead skin cells.

But—as terrible as the thought of dust-mites may be, eating our dead skin cells etc.—said mites are actually sanitation workers, paid only by giving them enough to eat. So assuming you are not excessively itchy, and have the chance to bathe regularly, think gratefully of them, for they are doing the dirty work, by which your existence—or at least a part of it—is bearable.

And did I ever mention that a human body is made up of some ten trillion cells, while hosting 100 trillion or so foreign cells? Why are we lonely? We are not what we seem to be, or even what we see. We are way more: a veritable universe hosting countless colonies of beings, good and bad, so-called; we are less: the food of bacteria, dust-mites and other little beings, and completely unaware of their presence. How enlightened!

So who and what are we? You decide. And don’t forget to shower.

Pete

An estimated 246 million people worldwide are affected by diabetes. With a further 7 million people developing diabetes each year, that number is expected to hit 380 million by 2025 [India, I know, is having big problems with Type II diabetes, due to more and more processed food and sugar, coming with, ironically, wealth].

Based on a U.S. study, a North American child born in 2000 stands a one in three chance of being diagnosed with diabetes in his or her lifetime. In Canada, over two million Canadians have diabetes and that number is expected to reach three million by 2010 [which, in case anybody is keeping track, is about four months away].

By 2010, it’s estimated that diabetes will cost the Canadian healthcare system $15.6 billion a year and that number will rise to $19.2 billion by 2020.
—The Canadian Diabetes Association

REAL FOOD—FAR AWAY FROM THE McMAINSTREAM McLIES

As if the VIFF wasn’t enough films for a while, I got to see three more films this weekend at a little Commercial Drive film festival called the Stone Soup Film Festival (check out the films and the trailers here). The festival’s intention is to ‘explore the politics of food.’ How vital. I love the spirit of these kinds of festivals, even if they are minimally attended.

I really enjoyed the sweet and inspiring film The Truth About Farmer John.

Another startling film—revealing the horrid state of the mainstream ‘food’ we eat—was called Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days.

The results within days after the six participants—all six have diabetes—changed their diet, were astonishing. I mean, I knew from, say, the WHO that 80-90% of Type II diabetes is lifestyle induced, but these results really were something:

Simply Raw reveals, with startling clarity, that diet can reverse diabetes* and change the quality of people’s lives. The film captures the human drama and struggle of these courageous individuals making a quantum leap of faith from a traditional junk food diet to a raw vegan diet and it shows revealing moments of nurturing, compassion, and human spirit. It is a film about a life changing journey on a simply raw diet and how nature is the original medicine.

So if you have diabetes, or close to it, or you have an auntie Gertrude or a dear old dad or a flabby brother with Type II Diabetes, or whomever, however, and they are taking insulin, getting numbness in their feet, peeing way too much or losing their eye-sight, and want to change, check the film out.

I can’t recall the exact statistic, but the film suggested that the cost of diabetes in America was more than the cost of the Afghanistan War—maybe Iraq, too, I’m not sure. Of course, not the horrific cost to the Afghan or Iraqi people, but you get my point.

And further, when I see the immediate, self-empowered 100% clear potential of eating food with life in it—even if that’s not for everyone, and it certainly won’t be—simultaneously with so few doctors truly speaking out for prevention, and against companies who produce awful, processed, disease-inducing foods, I fear on so many levels that true health care is simply doomed.

Why? Because we and of course politicians just haven’t got the will or perhaps even wisdom (which is frightening) to say, blatantly, that certain foods are poisoning ourselves and our children, and should at least be marginalized to—like a Red Light District, as I have said before—a Fast Food District.

Try and cut back on the processed and nutritionally void food, and increase what’s real and good. I’m there with you, too, my friends, fighting my own demons.

I heard somewhere, paraphrasing, that if you eat untruth, you live untruth.

Lots of love, soul and health to you,

Pete

Here’s a Little Dreamer for you.

*PS This was the Simply Raw film’s disclaimer:

If you are on diabetes medication, insulin, or oral hypoglycemics, please do not attempt to come off medication without medical supervision, for the approach in this film or any other approach. If you are not on any diabetic medication, oral hypoglycemics, or insulin, then we invite you to safely explore this option on your own.

The program featured in the film at the Tree of Life Rejuvination Center is most effective with diabetes type 2 but is also very effective at increasing quality of life and reducing insulin levels for diabetes type 1. The 21 day cycle at the core of this program is also a powerful modality for hyperglycemia and pre-diabetes as well as improving quality of life for those in need of rejuvenation and healing.

It’s been a really good couple of weeks for Facing Ali at the 377 film Vancouver International Film Festival. Ali himself came up for a private screening, which was surreal and wonderful. Then the two festival screenings were sold out. Another show was added by so-called popular demand, which I thought would have about 12 people at it, but it sold out too. The Muhammad Ali mystique, charisma and popularity endures and then endures further.

Then last night, although I wasn’t there because I’m a fool, Facing Ali won the Audience Choice for best documentary—which is fun, fortunate and appreciated. Congratulations to all the wonderful and talented folks who worked on the film.

The audience chose Facing Ali (Canada/BC), directed by Pete McCormack, for the second annual documentary Audience Award, most popular nonfiction film.

These awards etc are so subjective and all that, so it’s good to be, this time, subjectively lucky.

Northernstars.ca, the Canadian Movie database wrote:

Nearly half of this year’s feature and mid-length films were non-fiction, and audiences chose Peter McCormack’s Facing Ali (BC/Canada) for the second annual Documentary Audience Award for most popular non-fiction. The festival buzz and the line-ups told us something was up for this amazing piece.

Due to a fairly busy schedule, I only saw a few other films. We Live in Public (which won at Sundance and is directed by the wonderful filmmaker Ondi Timoner, who I had a chance to spend a little time with) and The Most Dangerous Man in America, about Daniel Ellsberg and the release of the top secret so-called Pentagon Papers in the early 70s. Both films were both riveting.

Before the festival began, I also met Eva, the woman in the documentary 65 Red Roses. She has cystic fibrosis, and in the documentary, amazingly, had a full lung transplant. She was really a lovely, articulate woman, and I really wanted to see the film, but wasn’t able to. But more importantly, the film won three awards, which is fantastic.

I didn’t see the film that won best Canadian feature, either, I KILLED MY MOTHER (J’ai tué ma mere), but the director is Quebec’s Xavier Dolan, and something like 22 years old, and sounds like he could become one of those brilliant, rich, famous, genius types, another example of great Canadian talent.

I also really want to see both another people’s choice award, the documentary Soundtrack for a Revolution, about music from the civil rights movement, and the film that one for best environmental documentary, At the Edge of the World, which I think is about Paul Watson and his team’s fight for endangered whales and other vital, remarkable sisters and brothers of a different species.

In short, we’re fortunate to be in such talented and wonderful company.

What a cool and rewarding few weeks. We got big love from the audiences. Tears. Gratitude. Joy. It’s a sweet thing in a crazy, impermanent world.

Today, in fact right now, I’m actually sitting here working on a screenplay while also trying to figure out how to put a few other projects into so-called production or pre-production. What order to begin? Funding first? Shooting first? A mix? Anxiety? Fear? Courage?

An administrator I’m not, but the dreams have their own push.

Lots of love to you, and gratitude to those who came and voted. Loved doing the Q&As, as always, with my big mouth.

Pete

“It’s [the financial oversight committees] not only a farce, they’re willing to have us see it’s a farce. They [the financial and political elites] are so little afraid of public opinion and outrage that they’re not even taking steps to cover up the cover up.”
—Bill Black

The post 9/11 Shock Doctrine so clearly continues.

Even if former bank regulator Bill Black isn’t exactly accurate on everything he says—although he might be—what can one say about such a courageous, experienced, unflinching, clear-speaking individual? And don’t forget, Bill Black was one of the few who exposed the Savings and Loan scandal over a quarter century ago, which also cost tax-payers billions and billions.

What Black gives is a true attempt to inform, not a bunch of hocus-pocus manipulative jargon—utterly in contrast with the deceits and lies of mainstream Obama favorites like Larry Summers (you won’t believe the money he made for nothing, including non-expertise), Timothy Geithner and all the rest.

And at least to a degree the domino effect (I sound like an old Cold War hawk) from the bailout and ongoing gouges will reverberate for sure to Canada, and everywhere. It’s remarkable to me, jaw-dropping, shameless, a sort of cannibalism of the rabble—utterly lacking in conscience (perhaps that’s redundant), yet entirely predictable.

First, from Democracy Now:

“…the Wall Street Journal is reporting that major US banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year—a record high. But on Main Street, foreclosures are also at record levels, and the official unemployment rate is expected to top ten percent.”

BILL BLACK:

“You talked about foreclosures reaching record highs. But in fact, foreclosures, relative to delinquencies, are quite low compared to historical ratios.

In other words, banks have tons of folks who are not paying their mortgages on time, and they’re not foreclosing. And the reason they’re not foreclosing is, once you foreclose, you have to recognize losses under the accounting rules.

And the banks gimmicked the accounting rules. They put pressure on Congress, and Congress put pressure on the accounting profession to gimmick the accounting rules now about a year ago.

Now, these bonuses, of course, are paid compared to alleged profits. What happens if you understate your losses dramatically? You report much higher profits and much higher bonuses.

So this is a web of fraud, in which they are getting as much as they can before the place goes to hell in a handbasket again.“

The entire interview is so worth listening to. For me, it seems important to begin to understand the difference between the financial sector (the unreal economy which produces nothing tangible, though non-inflationary capital is always needed for important reasons) and the real economy, which produces things of actual use, but is being gutted. And the vast and sometimes vital mixing of the two economies, and the nebulous edges, of course, must be remembered.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

That is to say, of course, that real capital (not ultimately irredeemable, backed-by-nothing, inflation-causing, junk, megabyte capital or fiat capital) is essential to research and construct and continue developing, say, sustainable, alternative energy sources, and all industries. In my case, making a film, or whatever. Capital is so essential that even crap capital—fiat money, numbers in a computer made legitimate by legislation, or whatever we come to believe in as valid currency—combined with the unstoppable will of invention and creation will result in massive amounts of industry taking place for a long period of time before the floor caves in, as the last forty years have shown (since ‘71, with Nixon getting rid of the gold standard—gold backed money—known as the Nixon Shock).

But with that journey, it seems, have come inconceivable debts. As a kid, the word billions was unknown to me in terms of money. Now trillion is thrown around without blinking.

And one can’t deny that in the last forty years of the journey the US has gone from a manufacturing-led society to a consuming-led society—at least as I understand it. I believe it’s the same for Canada.

GETTING RICH AS THE SHIP GOES DOWN

It appears today, however—and without any real protest—that the financial sector is largely a mechanism full of fraudulent potential to simply and grossly enrich the elite participants in the financial sector and their elite political cohorts.

This is an intensified shift, perhaps, related to (resulting from, causing?) the ongoing shift of a manufacturing nation becoming a consuming nation. Is the latter not, by mathematical definition, ultimately doomed to eat itself?

REAL CAPITAL, REAL ECONOMY, REAL STATISTICS

As for the real economy (and I say that loosely)—if it does not start to manifest with greater intelligence and insight for sustainability, with externalities (pollution, slave wages etc) considered an essential part of the equation—will it not continue to poison and deplete its intrinsically vital natural resources while still providing blue-collar jobs, if only temporarily? It appears so?

Those natural resources, for the record, include the planet, which includes us two-legged fools.

Wow, we’re in a serious conundrum.

CONFUSING AUTHORITY WITH PARASITISM

A financial sector with this pathological imbalance of serving its elites before anything else, by definition devours potential for the real economy in countless ways. One way, one could guess, must be the ongoing devaluing of paper money via chronic bubble speculation. Or, as Volatire once said, paper money (today, megabyte money) always eventually returns to its intrinsic value—nil.

BAILING OUT APATHY

We need to lift up and support progressive, unflinching, un-bought out leaders, active implementers, and a more educated, organized, engaged, pro-community populous (I, obviously, because I’m sitting here writing a blog for no money that twelve people will read, am in this latter group).

We must somehow make sense of the ongoing pillage—and it’s so difficult and demobilizing to do so, to get traction, particular while life for so many remains decent, demanding and anesthetizing. Can we gather traction and move more in line with each other by realizing we are, differences aside, in this boat together, yet surrounded by and even swimming in, the toxic, unsustainable waters of the financial sector and the rampant pollution from the industrial sector and, also, to a great degree, consumer choices.

HOLY MOSES

And I would suggest a return to one old biblical idea, too: the forced cancellation of odious debt and its child-eating companion, compound interest, which is everywhere, and silently strangling production and ideas (which must be included) in the so-called real economy.

EMPIRE/EXPIRE

It was historian Paul Kennedy, who said a quarter century ago or so, in describing the process by which empires collapse—and is that so bad?—is they go from being largely manufacturing nations to largely consuming nations. Keep trying that on diminishing jobs and devalued dollars. Throw in debt and open-ended wars of moral questionability, and the demise picks up steam…

And yes, it would seem to me is a bad thing, because the greatness within a given country will tend to also collapse with the deep rot, as most revolutions show. And what do we learn, in our trauma, but to collapse in shock and find ourselves, once again, listening desperately and following the elites or the neo-elites?

THE CHERISHED PARASITE

But to reign in my digression, the financial sector today produces mostly a widening gap between rich and poorer, and a more and more heavily financed elite:

“…again, remember, the financial sector exists supposedly for one purpose—to help the real economy—and it’s taking billions out of the real economy in trading profits. So the combination of these things, both in the financial sector and in the real economy, means very bad things down the road, in terms of increased business failures, increased banking failures.”

Listen to the entire interview, please, and get clearer, add your own thoughts, correct my misconceptions, which are undoubtedly many. One can easily drown in abstraction. One can also fund their own collapse, and not know it.

But Black is so clear, so unflinching—and fearless. He names names. And from his past—and the fact that nobody is suing him—he appears deeply credible. So when you read or listen to this, and other sources, and if it’s in you, speak out, somehow. And get your friends to speak out. It’s a free-for-all on Wall Street, with its one-way path to the halls of political power. That, by definition, may be an aspect of democracy: the right to pillage legally. It also ruins democracy.

Fascinating, shocking, unsurprising given history and human nature. Love more,

Pete