Kōan Fragments of a Distorted World #8 (with a nod to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s book "Pictures of the Gone World")

1) A recent chart shows “$1 trillion wealth gain by 651 U.S. billionaires since mid-March.”[1] The Waltons, who own Walmart, are 10th, 11th, 12th on the chart. “Made in China” is an integral part of Walmart as well as the entire USEmpire economy, thus any corporate news about ‘evil’ China is “Great Power Competition” propaganda because going to war with China would take down the house of cards USE economy. MacKenzie Scott, Bezos' ex-wife, bucks the trend with “nearly $4.2 billion in gifts to 384 organizations.”[2] And btw, China's treatment of the Tibetan Peoples and their spiritual traditions is reprehensible.

China is going to the Moon “to collect rocks… and bring them back to earth for study” and as a launch-pad to Mars.[3] I’m studying rocks in the backyard and can see Mars in the night sky.

2) Intellectual Property Rights?
My mind is not for sale or rent.
Intellectual Property Rights?
What about Emotional Community Centers.

3) What have you/we learned or are learning from the corona-virus?
In other words how has it affected or changed you?
I asked some relatives that question and one replied that she has way less expectations; she has typically been a big planner, so that’s a significant change.

4) I’ve done a fair amount of open mic nights, back in the 20th century doing stand-up comedy and more recently stand-up poetry. What if we had open MIC nights where we discuss Peace because what goes under the radar – because the corporate media says ‘OMG look at this $#^%!’ – is the MIC (MilitaryIndustrialComplex) or GMIC if you add Global, which perpetrates global horrors and torture.

Also, it is delusional to blame the corona-virus as THE reason for world woes when the main reason for those woes is economical, along with the challenges many people have receiving proper preventative measures and health-care, which reverts to economical. Math so simple a first-grader could understand is that the GMIC billions plus billionaires whose wealth has increased gargantuanly since the corona-virus began spreading could ease the stresses regarding basic necessities and provide enough comforts so that many people could have a pleasant corona-virus staycation with the opportunity of doing something productive and/or helping others.

5) The Shinnecock Nation put up an electronic “monument sign” on a stretch of straight roadway – their Original lands – so they could earn some money because of poverty. NYState sued them – trying to get the sign removed – and lost, yet NYS is appealing the case.[4] Driving into NYCity there is an advertisement-flashing electronic sign just before a super-sharp turn on a bridge. Pretty stupid, but I haven’t heard a word of complaint.

Meanwhile, Gov. Cuomo considers the vaccine “the weapon that is going to win the war...”[5] But will the vaccine stop NYState from playing Cowboys and Indians?

6) One of my new fave bands is The Last Internationale. They’re doing a “War is Over Christmas Special” which admirably reads as an affirmation or acting like the future is now, yet also reads like: The war is about people fighting over Christmas being special . . . which, considering Mother Earth Day, is true. The April 22 holiday has some gatherings and awareness yet nowhere near the time, money, and energy spent; Mother Earth gets nowhere near the outpouring of gifts showered in the name of one religion’s holy man, yet all those goodies coming from the Earth. So, there is an unspoken war because Christmas is special.

7) Does “speaking truth to power” do anything when the so-called power is insane?

8) The day after Biden was officiously, er, officially virtually dubbed the new front-man for the USEmpire comes evidence that the s/election was as clean as a paid-off referee's democratic whistle: ”Court-ordered audit concludes Dominion voting machines were intentionally designed to ‘create systemic fraud’ in Michigan”[6]

I read about this kind of thing years ago in Greg Palast’s excellent book Vulture’s Picnic in which he describes PIGs:

“Pig Man #2,” a pipeline industry insider, had a good reason to be afraid. He was about to blow the whistle on a fraud, information that could blow away the XL Keystone Pipeline project. His information: The software for the crucial piece of pipeline safety equipment, the “Smart PIG,” has a flaw known to the industry but concealed from regulators.

“The flaw allows cracks, leaks and corrosion to go undetected – and that saves the industry billions of dollars in pipe replacements. But there’s a catch. Pipes with cracks and leaks can explode and kill. Federal law requires the oil and gas industry to run a PIG, a Pipeline Inspection Gauge, through big oil and gas pipelines. The robot porker, tethered to a GPS, beeps and boops as it rolls through, electronically squealing when it finds dangers. But whistleblowers told us at Channel 4 Dispatches (the “60 Minutes” of Britain) that the software is deliberately calibrated to ignore or minimize deadly problems. They know because they themselves worked on the software design team.”[7]

Meanwhile, “FDA approves new genetically modified pig for allergy-free medical and food products”[8]

The congregation will now descend with the infamous delusional words of Karl Rove aka Bush’s brain exhibiting the theater of the absurd war psychology:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Weapons of mass destruction that were never there yet millions of people turned into refugees or killed.

Pipeline leaks that WERE there and habitats destroyed.
Elections befitting of casino capitalism where the house of cards always wins.

But we know what happens to the house of cards.
And you don’t need a weatherman to know
there are strong winds forecast . . .

NOTES:
[1] See here.
[2] “With $4.2 Billion in Direct Giving, MacKenzie Scott, Formerly Bezos, 'Puts Shame to the Billionaire Class'
[3] “China Shoots the Moon”
[4] “Warriors of the Sunrise”
[5] “Cuomo: COVID-19 vaccine 'is the weapon that is going to win the war'”
[6] See here.
Also see: “Trump Still Contesting Stolen Election 2020”
[7] “The Pig in the XL Pipeline Insider reveals concealed “error”in pipeline safety equipment that could blow away the GOP’s XL pipe dream”
[8] See here.

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet at Axis of Logic, as well as a correspondent-poet for the WUSB 90.1FM radio segment “Radical Words”. In addition to his work as a writer and small press publisher, he travels a holistic mystic pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. His website is here.