Stephen Kastner

Shrinking Gaza, Vanishing Palestine…

Stephen Kastner — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:34:00 +0000

Do you have any idea how small Gaza is? Martin Kramer illustrates the size of Gaza by overlaying a scale outline of Gaza on maps of the cities of London, New York and Paris. While Kramer posted his January 12, 2009 article in response to exaggerations of the population density made by Gaza sympathizers, the fact remains that not many people really know how small or large Gaza is… roughly twice the size of Madison, Wisconsin – about 25 miles long, and between 4 and 7.5 miles wide, with a total area of 139 square miles and a population of 1.5 million people.

Despite attempts to justify Israel’s “defense” posture, 44.7% of the population of Gaza is comprised of children, 14 years of age and younger (CIA World Factbook). The existence of the Gaza strip itself results from an ongoing Israeli effort to eliminate Palestine entirely…

In 1946 after the conclusion of World War II, the British withdrew from their mandate of Palestine. In 1947 the UN partitioned the area into Arab and Jewish states, an arrangement rejected by the Arabs. A series of wars, followed by population expansion by the victorious Israelis has extended their control over land continuously claimed by Palestinian Arabs.

Rockets regularly launched by the Arab resistance into southern Israel from Gaza and the need to eliminate a vast collection of tunnels between Egypt and Gaza used to break the Israeli blockade… is this reason enough to justify the death of hundreds of innocent civilians, many of whom are women and children? Gideon Polya explores the exaggerations made by defenders of the latest Israeli aggression regarding the numbers of civilian deaths in Israel… and comes up with the number 23.

“Thus 23 Israelis have been killed by Occupied Palestinian rocket or mortar attacks since 2001,” according to data from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In her January 10, 2009, “Palestine: “How many deaths in Gaza is enough?” Global Voices blogger Ayesha Saldanha provides a pathway to hear directly from a large number of people living in and blogging from Gaza.

Last night, on January 13, Noam Chomsky lectured at M.I.T. regarding the current situation, “It’s not that Israel doesn’t want peace. Of course, it wants peace. Everyone wants peace. Even Hitler wanted peace.”

Illegal to own precious metals in 2009

Stephen Kastner — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:14:00 +0000

Just when you thought it couldn’t get much worse…

Operation Change for the Better!

Are you out there?

Stephen Kastner — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:42:00 +0000

“It is often hard to be a person on the planet Earth. It can be scary, overwhelming, fraught with obstacles, and most of all, inescapably lonely.” – The Rino and the Buddha

“Are You Out There”
Words and music by Dar Williams

Perhaps I am a miscreation
No one knows the truth there is no future here
And you’re the DJ speaks to my insomnia
And laughs at all I have to fear
Laughs at all I have to fear
You always play the madmen poets
Vinyl vision grungy bands
You never know who’s still awake
You never know who understands and

Are you out there, can you hear this?
Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis,
I was out here listening all the time
And though the static walls surround me
You were out there and you found me
I was out here listening all the time

Last night we drank in parking lots
And why do we drink? I guess we do it cause
And when I turned your station on
You sounded more familiar than that party was
You were more familiar than that party
It’s the first time I stayed up all night
It’s getting light I hear the birds
I’m driving home on empty streets
I think I put my shirt on backwards

Are you out there, can you hear this
Jimmy Olson , Johnny Memphis
I was out here listening all the time
And though the static walls surround me
You were out there and you found me
I was out here listening all the time

And what’s the future, who will choose it?
Politics of love and music
Underdogs who turn the tables
Indie versus major labels
There’s so much to see through
Like our parents do more drugs than we do
Oh….

Corporate parents, corporate towns
I know every TV set that has them lit
They preach that I should save the world
They pray that I won’t do a better job of it
Pray that I won’t do a better job
So tonight I turned your station on just so I’d be understood
Instead another voice said I was just too late
And just no good….

Calling Olson, Calling Memphis
I am calling, can you hear this?
I was out here listening all the time
And I will write this down
and then I will not be alone again yeah
I was out here listening
Oh yeah I was out here listening
Oh yeah I am out here listening all the time

Amerika, Inc.

Stephen Kastner — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:09:00 +0000

A recent study by the New America Foundation “places the United States at the top of the list of the world’s leading arms-selling nations in 2007, accounting for more than 45 percent of all global weapons transfers.” The Bush administration “signed arms sales agreements…worth more than $32 billion last year, including with one or more parties involved in 20 of the world’s 27 major conflicts.”

Can you connect the dots to see why the Bush Administration is buddying up to the Dalai Lama? Think of it as the latest chapter in an ongoing sales and marketing effort to create the new Taiwan-of-the-west – another place to sell billions of dollars in weaponry, should we succeed in leveraging off another chunk of China. The only exiled government of Tibet is the one we created starting in 1956 when the CIA, under a directive from the Eisenhower Administration, trained, armed and funded revolutionaries within Tibet – then abandoned them like we did in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

Initial launch

Stephen Kastner — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:17:07 +0000

It’s about 4 pm and we are expecting to get more than a foot of snow in the next 24 hours – a perfect time to start a project on my life’s work.

Human Anunnaki Anthropology – Lloyd Pye

Stephen Kastner — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 22:09:00 +0000

Ever wonder why it is that humans have only 46 sets of chromosomes while ALL other primates have 48?

It seems that we have two sets of chromosome pairs that are fused together. I wonder how that happened? It doesn’t seem to fit the Darwinian model of evolution.

The nine brightest stars of the Pleiades are named for the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygete, Celaeno and Alcyone, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione.

So, while Falun Gong practitioners believe that antagonistic space aliens are manipulating world leaders, the Hopis call the Pleiadians the Chuhukon, meaning those who cling together. They considered themselves direct descendents of the Pleiadians. The Navajos named the Pleiades the Sparkling Suns or the Delyahey, the home of the Black God. The Iroquois pray to them for happiness. The Cree claim to have come to earth from the stars in spirit form first and then became flesh and blood.

Each year a Hopi medicine man performs the green corn dance where he takes 7 ears of corn from 7 fields of the 7 clans to insure a healthy harvest. Early Dakota stories speak of the Tiyami home of the ancestors as being the Pleiades. Hopi astronomy tells us that the Pleiades rise with the sun in May and that when you die your spirit returns south to the seven sisters.

There are some remarkable drawings that appear to be luminous discs of light in Hopi petroglyphs. Photographs of Billy Meier’s Pleiadian space and beam ships look just like these rock petroglyphs from long ago.

And now we have crop circles to contend with…

Celebrating 9/11…

Stephen Kastner — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:48:00 +0000

As of Tuesday June 03, 2008 New York state had the highest cigarette taxes in the nation. Seems like a pact with the devil… or the perfect marriage between corporate profits and state revenues. Meanwhile, more than 30 other states, including Vermont, have enacted laws banning smoking in certain publicly-accessible places like bars, restaurants, and workplaces. Over 4000 chemical compounds are created by burning a cigarette, many of which are toxic and/or carcinogenic. Carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide and ammonia are all present in cigarette smoke. Forty-three known carcinogens are in mainstream smoke, sidestream smoke, or both. The list of 599 additives approved by the US Government for use in the manufacture of cigarettes is something every smoker should see.

“Once upon a time, the rich, sweetly pungent smoke of tobacco offered more than dreary old diseases like emphysema and lung cancer. It promised sophistication, sex appeal, even longevity itself. This nostalgic site is powered by the white-hot bitterness of long-term Nicotine withdrawal.”

So what does this have to do with September 11? Seven years ago almost 3,000 people died in the collapse of the Twin Towers. The image of those former towers reminds me of a pair of cigarettes, in both a literal and a figurative manner. They each represent the number of people, 1,500 who continue to die EVERY DAY from smoking-related illness. Where’s the outrage?

Books Sarah Palin attempted to ban

Stephen Kastner — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:16:00 +0000

The list of books Sarah Palin attempted to ban in Alaska:

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Ronald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

Shades of 1968…

Stephen Kastner — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:37:00 +0000

Reviewing a Brief History Of Chicago’s 1968 Democratic Convention 40 years ago, brings to mind how chaotic the world must have appeared to me at 21 years of age. Having grown up in Chicago under the cloud of the “last of the big city bosses,” the Democratic Party under Daley’s rule was accepted as a powerful machine that churned out votes and could “fix” parking tickets if you had a friend. But at that time, nationally, the Dems were wracked with dissent over the war. The California and New York delegations were in revolt, forced to sit in the back of the convention hall. A huge battle took place over the inclusion of a proposed Peace Plank in the official Party platform.

Back then, Daley and the Chicago police saw the press as the enemy, for covering the rioting – 17 reporters, including Hal Bruno (then a reporter for Newsweek, now political director for ABC) were attacked. It is amazing how much has changed in 40 years.

Now, it is up to the grassroots to circulate the news. “The rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey puts it, often remains untold in the mainstream media. With that in mind, I want to share this release from the Green Party that fills in a bunch of blanks on the recent preemptive police raids that took place in St. Paul:

On Saturday police surrounded the home of Michael Whelan, a long-time Green Party supporter, whose Arise Bookstore at one time housed the party’s office. He was host to a group of independent journalists. The police broke down doors and subjected occupants to house arrest. “You figure this would be going on in South Africa, or Russia, not in St. Paul,” Whelan said. “St. Paul is nice.”

The previous night, police had invaded a meeting space in St. Paul rented by the anarchist RNC Welcoming Committee. They seized equipment and subjected some fifty people to handcuffing and search. Next day Monica Bicking, a leading member of the organization, was jailed along with three friends, and her home in Minneapolis was boarded up for alleged violation of city codes.

Meanwhile, the group’s nonviolence consultant and trainer, Betsy Raasch-Gilman, expecting arrest, took “sanctuary” at the meetinghouse of Twin Cities Friends (Quakers). As of this morning Bicking had been released, but those arrested with her and several others remain in custody. Both Bicking and Raasch-Gilman are daughters of former Green Party candidates and present spokespeople.

According to Minnesota poet and writer Richard Broderick, who is a member of the Green Party and has also been one of its candidates, “The erosion of civil liberties and constitutionally guaranteed rights in this country makes all the eloquent calls we heard from Denver for unity and restoring the American Dream little more than hollow rhetoric.”

Despite the efforts at intimidation orchestrated by federal authorities and carried out by DFL administrations in both Hennepin and Ramsey counties, Minnesota Greens have united to bring their VP candidate, Rosa Clemente, to the Twin Cities. She addressed the antiwar marchers in St. Paul today and tonight appeared with the National Truth Commission on Poverty. She will be participating in the Poor People’s march from Mears Park tomorrow.

The 9% Factor…

Stephen Kastner — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:05:00 +0000

That’s the number of Americans who still think that Congress is doing a good job… 9%.

This weekend (July 17–20, 2008) there are two simultaneous political blogging conventions taking place in Austin, Texas. The 3rd annual gathering of what was originally the YearlyKos Convention, now known as Netroots Nation, is broadcasting live and archiving the numerous presentations as video clips on their UStream TV channel.

I am watching a live keynote speech by tech pioneer and professor Lawrence Lessig promoting the “Just say 9…” campaign. Add .09 cents to any and every campaign contribution to bring home the message that only 9% of Americans still have faith in their own system of government as represented by Congress.

“We have to solve the Democracy crisis,” before we can solve any other problems says Lessig.

Track their tweets at #NN08.

A few miles away at the Renaissance Hotel in Austin you can find the other half… RightOnline billing themselves as coming into being, “for conservatives tired of being left behind.” A first time event taking place July 18 and 19, they seek to penetrate the Web2 world from the right sphere with support from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Track their tweets at #rton08.