meeting uncle Ho

In March, 2016, my third attempt to see Ho Chi Minh was a success. I’d tried twice before then, but the first time I wasn’t wearing pants or close-toed shoes, and the second his mausoleum was closed. An intrepid young lady and I had left our Hanoi hostel early in order to arrive a few minutes before the shrine officially opened. We got to the grounds, walked through the unoccupied ticket booth, along the paved lanes, out into a large courtyard, and up to the very front of the line.

To our left rose the leader’s black-marble resting place. Ceremonial guards in white uniforms stood at its corners, guarding the entrance too. A man with a clipboard who was setting up queuing barriers looked over at us, glanced briefly at our clothing, then gestured toward the entrance, which we took as an invitation for us to enter.

Moving from the bright hot morning sun to the cool dark interior was fairly shocking, but we kept our composure and climbed the marble stairs. At each landing stood two white-clad guards at rigid attention. We took a right into the central chamber and caught our first glimpse of the deceased patriot lying within his glass and metal sarcophagus. In the viewing chamber with us were at least six guards. My companion and I were walking around the preserved statesman when an urge came over me and I paused, briefly, to give Ho Chi Minh a full bow from the spot where viewing him seemed best. As I was closing my eyes with my hands at my chest and beginning to bend forward, I saw the eyes of all visible guards go wide and snap onto me. The need to honor Vietnam’s erstwhile leader satisfied, my friend and I then quietly exited and went to find breakfast

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

what to do to help our war effort

Often over the past few months, while conversing with seemingly intelligent, apparently clear-thinking individuals, I have run into indifference and ignorance toward the fact that America is at war. For over a decade now, this nation has waged its wars in strange and distant places, battling fierce peoples in dusty villages, fighting a mysterious, shiver-inducing organization that, as would the hydra, grows new heads to replace any old heads that get lopped off, mozambiqued, or otherwise violently removed. During these conversations, my counterparts nearly always ask, “What is it that I can do, personally, to help our boys and girls win these wars that we have sent them off to wage?” To address this question, and to free my heart of much worry and consternation, here are two things that the person interested in helping America win the wars that she is waging can do: first, reduce the amount of gasoline consumed; and, second, plant a victory garden.

As to the first point, gasoline, a strategic national resource, is distilled from crude oil, which is pumped from the ground by states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen. These states not only promote and fund terrorist groups and terrorist activities, they also regularly violate their own citizens' human and civil rights. By burning gasoline in our own cars, we take it away from the cars, boats, and airplanes of the military; by burning gasoline, Americans fund terrorism, since the money we pay goes to the aforementioned states, which fund terrorism and violate basic human rights. The patriotic American wishing to avoid funding terrorism will stop driving his car.

As to the second point, ours is a fertile and rich land capable of producing great varieties of vegetables in abundant numbers. In the spirit of our forefathers, and of their father's fathers, the self-sufficient, self-respecting America will, wherever she is able to, erect and maintain a garden in which she grows anything and everything she can possibly grow. She does not purchase apples from New Zealand, cabbage from Brazil, or soybeans from the People's Republic of China – she grows these things herself, tending for her plants with loving care and patient foresight. It matters little if she maintains a single pot filled with herbs or a plot of raised beds running the entire length of her driveway; what does matter is that she honors our warriors' sacrifice by making a few sacrifices of her own.

These are but two, relatively simple things that persons can do to ween our country off of its addiction to foreign oil and artificially low prices and to free up logistical and manufacturing capacities for use in the general war effort. Perhaps we might later organize aluminum and steel drives, and set up Exchanges for Neighborhood Self-Sufficiency and Self-Reliance, but, for now, let us focus on these two primary objectives: to stop using so much damn oil, and to grow ourselves what food we ourselves consume. Please remember to spread the aloha, and to keep your heart light, and buoyant. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on dominionism & al-Qaeda

  In certain respects, the movement known as dominionism resembles the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Both are extremist religious movements made up of fanatical zealots with whom can be neither argued nor bargained. Both have the goal of dismantling the rightfully elected governmental structure that currently presides over these United States of America. Both seek to destroy the Constitution, whereas al-Qaeda acts to annihilate it, and the members of the dominionist movement plan merely to enslave it to a totalitarian theocracy allegedly spoken about in the Christian bible.

  I have read most of the Koran, Allah be praised, and the majority of the Christian bible, Amen, and from neither text was I able to glean a clear mandate to impose upon the foundations of modern, enlightened society the restrictive policies of long lost civilizations. (Such mandates can be pulled from any text, let alone religious ones, so long as pastors, imams, and priests are willing to ignore teachings of love and compassion and focus on righteous fearfulness and calculated xenophobia, as happened during the Iranian Revolution.)

  As we fight al-Qaeda around the world, the blood of our brothers and sisters pouring out on distant sands and in foreign lands, let us remember that religious fanatics are at work here in the motherland, in plain view of the American people, zealots who wish to see one of their own elected to the Presidency, all the while praying with every thing they've got to dismantle our Constitutional republic and to erect in its place a system of theocratic dictatorship. Our brave, proud troopers are battling religious extremists abroad: it is up to each American living here at home to defend the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, from any and all who may wish them harm.

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

p.s. Ghadhafi is deposed! Praise be to the Libyan people for their hard-fought, righteous victory.