WHEN IN ROME

"The Romans more deadly still are they,for you find in them an arrogance which no reasonable submission can elude.Brigands of the world, they have exhausted the land with their indiscriminate plunder, and now they ransack the sea.The wealth of an enemy excites their cupidity, his poverty their lust for power.East and West have failed to glut their maw.They are unique in being so violently tempted to attack the poor as the wealthy. Robbery,butchery,rapine,with false names they call Empire and they make a wilderness and call it peace."
-Tacitus ( back to shorter quotes next time...)

aloha again, i think i have mentioned that i am a History buff as well as a news sponge.anytime i watch something about the Fall of Rome i wince at the similarities.you will too???

@SLAVERY
i have been bummed out this week after reading the MENDOCINO PAPERS Part One by Bruce Anderson.I CANNOT recommend the book, which is apparently self published, a rambling unedited jumble of facts and pointed opinions. with no chapter breaks to ease the appalling tales. did you think slavery ended after the Civil War, except for sharecropping etc,i sorta did.apparently in KALIpornia it was legal to enslave local Indians until recently, this practice did not end when the California Missions went under. as NON PERSONS local Indians had no rights or legal identity( despite living here over 12,000 years) so could be killed or raped or herded around with impunity. the MENDOCINO INDIAN WARS (sic) happened after Charles Stone and his buddy Kelsey (founder of Kelseyville in Lake County) both infamous rapists and pedophiles of Indian children, went Too Far and were captured then dismembered by local tribes. in return a Mendo Militia was authorized to raise Hell and make the earth run red with Indian blood, which they did very efficiently even unto tribes who had never heard of Stone or Kelsey....North of Santa Rosa the history of Indian affairs is UGLY!!!!
i learned some of this when i lived in Mendo ( outside Willits) five bitter years before moving back to civlization (sic).i was told by first hand hearsay that as recently as the 1950s you could buy Indian slaves in downtown Ukiah, the county seat, after Sunday church services.SIGH.

as a child my father told me to always keep a few dollars in my pocket,no matter what. i did not understand why but he PROMISED i would when i got older. two weeks ago on NPR i think, they told tales of southern states anti black VAGRANCY LAWS , that if you were an outsider hobo or black traveller with No Money in your pocket you could be sentenced by the local bigots to a virtual life sentence of hard labor at Parchment Farm or some other sweltering prison hellhole.this only ended in WWII when FDR stopped the practice to block Nazi propaganda on the subject and to send a segregated army overseas to defeat racist Facism.SIGH.

last night i watched a docu on WILD WEST TECH, the subject was Brothels and whores in the Wild West.it was ugly and grim as expected, one point i especially noted was the enslaving of Chinese women to fill the brothels of San Francisco, Silver City,Denver etc etc.a practice which continues , more or less unchanged, to this day.SIGH.

THE DOOMSDAY GAZETTE...
BOO HOO, all this week our local fishwrap and various tentacles of the MSM ( Main Stream Media) have been shedding crocodile tears about how the KALIpornia Dream is OVER! SCREW YOU ALL!!! don't sit in NYC or Atlanta and punditcize how KALIpornia is doomed just because we have a lazy and impotent misgovernment.this country survived 8 F*CKING YEARS of THE BUSH CRIME FAMILY,, we are NOT Too Big To Fail but i predict that we ,in KALIpornia,shall get past the idiocy and sleaziness of the Sacto Solons (sick) and their heartless ways.
a meeting i went to this week predicts that 23% of disabled people on IHSS in Santa Cruz County, who get help to survive Independently and escape nursing home imprisonment (people just like me frankly) will fall by the wayside and be left on their own as the Gov refuses to RAISE TAXES on the rich & wealthy energy corporation or REPEAL Porp 13 which doomed this state, along with lobbyist friendly Term Limits, to this precipitous HELL.

i was going to pontificate about the Health Care forum RANT- A -MOBS but i've bummed you out enough for one day.
the weather here is PERFECT and later me and Soul Mate are going out to see the SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE make fun of the rich & powerful & impotent.

in other news,
www.elderjusticenow.org there are currently efforts underway to pass a National Elder Abuse Law to protect the usual victims.check it out.

Mahayana namaste
semper gimpy
mega