Cyclone

36″ x 36″ Acrylic and oil on canvas

“Through the expression of self I accept the different realities that exist through the masks people wear, the thoughts people think, the perspectives people see. Art opens pathways from inspiring emotions to watering the seed of evolution, it cannot be kept contained its roots are too far planted into the sediments of humanity.” -Robert Harris

San Francisco based artist Robert Harris’s artistic expressions are threaded into the blanket of human existence and are intended to inspire those who are willing to look within themselves and participate in the evolution of life. Media Roots recently conducted an exclusive interview with Robert about his style and artistic endeavors.

MR: How did you get started in art and how did you develop your style of painting?

RH: Art has always been a way of life. Throughout the years I have felt a necessity to create art. It began with drawing and discovering that I had the ability to make something out of nothing. I have made it a personal goal to dive deeper into my creative potential and continuously refine my the technical execution of my art making. A vital moment for defining my style was during a two year period where I sheltered myself from distractions and made art without the influence of other art around me. The common thread within my artwork is to inspire new perspectives and stimulate growth and change. As and artist I take responsibility as a social explorer, visionary and leader. 

MR: What mediums do you work with?

RH: I see an endless potential around art and all the materials that may be used in the creation process. I am not bound by any one materials or medium. I open to all materials as long as I can use them to shape and mold my vision.

MR: What is your favorite kind of art to work with and how do you interpret some of your favorite pieces?

RH: Visual art is like music. My favorite art depend on my mood or what is currently happening in my life. Generally speaking I enjoy art that is emotive and also technically sound. 

MR: Where do you DJ and how can people find you and your art in the bay area?

RH: Recently I have been focused on commissioned artwork. Additionally, I serve as a visual DJ though live art performances at special events including, but not limited to: wine tasting parties, celebrity concerts, art store openings, non-profit fundraisers, night club promotions, and business gatherings.

Art video promo by Robert D Harris from Robert harris on Vimeo.

This art video features the work of Robert D. Harris. The artwork creates beauty with color and intends to inspire peoples consciousness. Look for the artist showing work in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, Miami, ect.

To learn more about Robert Harris and to check out more of his art visit www.robertdharris.com

BUSINESS WIRE– Congressman Ron Paul today released the following statement on President Obama’s speech from the Oval Office last night:

“Once again, we are being told the mission has been accomplished and our brave men and women are coming back home. Though the people are hopeful they remain skeptical, and rightfully so.”

“The President’s announcement that all U.S. combat troops have left Iraq is no more believable than the ‘Mission Accomplished’ declaration was in 2003.

“The biggest problem is that success in Iraq is undefinable since the mission was never defined. The reasons given for the invasion were based on misinformation. Now, the war has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and this has contributed significantly to our economic woes.

“Forty-four hundred Americans are dead, thirty thousand severely wounded, and more than a hundred thousand are suffering from serious health problems related to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. This alone should tell us that it was not worth the investment and the needless sacrifice of our young people and the taxpayers.

“It is deceitful to imply we will avoid hostilities with this new policy. We still have to contend with:

• the 50,000 troops carrying weapons remain in Iraq

• the 100,000 contractors that remain with more expected to go to Iraq

• the 9,000 special ops personnel trained in assassinations that remain in Iraq

• a huge embassy, bigger than the Vatican, that will remain

• Dozens of military bases that will stay

• Al Qaeda organizations that did not exist before the war

• Muqtada al Sadr, a strong nationalist who has gained much political power

• The fact that Iran benefits tremendously with the Shiites now in power in Iraq and is a close ally of al Sadr

“Osama bin Laden wins by ‘proving’ that America has an agenda of occupation in the Middle East. And, we continue to walk into his trap and hand him up his best recruitment tool in his efforts to incite hatred and terrorism against the United States.

“What’s worse, President Obama made it clear last night that the troops and resources leaving Iraq will not come home to defend our country or ease our economic woes. They will instead be diverted to Afghanistan, perhaps also Pakistan and, I fear, even Iran.

“From my viewpoint we are the losers in this fool’s errand of endless war. Tragically, this new policy is not one of peace but merely a charade that will severely undermine our national security and continue us down the path to bankruptcy—a threat that we best not long ignore.”

Photo by Flickr user JohnE777

© COPYRIGHT BUSINESS WIRE, 2010

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will.  But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.  I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” – Thomas Jefferson

MEDIA ROOTS- Being free is an experience you must consciously choose to have. For example, think of the pictures you take, the poems you write, or the clever contraptions you fashion from seemingly useless materials: where does it all come from? It comes from you- not a savior, and certainly not a government. Every thought you have comes from you. You guide your body and your mind, you collect knowledge and experiences, and you fashion them to reflect upon an expression of yourself.

Free expression is your first amendment right. If that does not matter to us, than we are already slaves. Your government is obliged to defend it. I swore an oath to defend it. I did not swear an oath to a Fuhrer (Emperor), or to an institution, but rather to the idea that we are all born with unalienable rights. So when is free expression unjust? When must we obstruct it?  Can we? 

The answer lies within the mechanism chosen to produce accountability. Up until you hurt or threaten to hurt someone, your free expression cannot legally be obstructed in any way. In fact, it must be defended. So who says what is right and wrong? Our constitution gives that responsibility to a jury of our peers, and their judgment provides the mechanism for accountability. They are tasked with hearing a case and deciding if rights should be denied to an offender.  They decide the moral answer on that case and that case alone. Are all homicides equal?  Are all acts of theft the same?  Is a substance inherently wrong to possess?  Should we be forced to pay for insurance?  The moral relativity depends upon the moral compass of your peers and the circumstances for a particular case. If you don’t hurt your neighbor, then a truly free society lets you go in peace. A free society also takes nothing from its people without permission. It is alarming just how many non-violent drug offenders there are in our jails today, and how little government revenue comes from charity. 

If we have arrived at a place where we can now recognize individuals as the source of all ideas, all innovation, and all feelings, then we can see how individuals are the source of morality in this world as well. This is a key belief that any tyrant must undermine. If a tyrant hopes to enslave a free man, he must first replace this belief in an individual with promises of heaven on earth, equity, and entitlements. He must victimize, produce threats, pit groups against each other, and shake a free man’s confidence in himself. This is precisely why most local cultures in Moldova, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Uzbekistan, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine were nearly destroyed after 70 years of banned expression of their uniqueness by their leaders. Could it be that the people in those countries had ways of expressing themselves that were in fact senior to the doctrine of Russia’s former Soviet Union? How inconvenient for tyrants when a people are free in their hearts. To be free in your heart and soul is the native state of man.

We hear so much about this idea of separation of church and state. This is not actually spelled out anywhere in our Constitution, rather it’s implied by the first Amendment, which erects a wall to prevent the collusion of any church into the Republic. Consider this: your neighbor practices a religion privately in their own home, and you have no problem with it. Imagine if their beliefs became law?! Sadly, this is easily found throughout history. How do you think a church ended up in every town from Kosovo, to Moscow, Dublin, and Madrid? Perhaps it was spread through collusion followed by coercion. This is not an attack on the church or any other organized ideology. I’ll rally for any faith based system, and will protect your private and peaceful devotion to it- but I sometimes wonder where our ability to think has gone. What has come of the burnings at the stake, or of the men and women of science who believed the earth was round, or that it revolved around the sun?  People have been viciously, savagely, and tortuously attacked and murdered for simple free expression. Where else can we find this sickness?

In more recent history, the world has witnessed eugenics. Imagine if science said that depending on certain cranial measurements, DNA characteristics and genetics, you may or may not be put on a train car with a one-way ticket to extermination. That’s right, science colluded with government to round folks up and have them killed. To a lesser extent, Soviets groomed their children for certain jobs and left them no other choice for them to live their lives another way. The state decided where they would go and what they would do based upon testing and “science”.

More recently,  in December of 2009, Germany sent the fathers of eight families to jail for refusing to allow their children to attend a state mandated sexual education program. According to their statistics, children are less likely to become pregnant or contract STDs if they take the class. Apparently it’s no longer the parent’s choice of how they should teach their own children about the “birds and the bees.” Once again we see science colluding with lawmakers to make these decisions for you. 

The last institution that our Constitution sought to maintain separate from the government was the monetary system. Our founding fathers sought to establish a government that would defend and preserve a free market, one that hasn’t effectively existed in the United States since the early 1900s.  If paper money has no inherent worth, then how should we trust it to hold any value?  If I work hard expending my physical and intellectual energy, how do I know that what I’ve earned is real?  A fiat money supply system is one that allows us to trade more easily, but imagine if the world had only one legal paper money to trade?  If the supply of money were monopolized by a single organization, then no one would ever be able to hold them accountable for their actions or keep them from manipulating that system. More importantly, what type of person would seek to proliferate and influence it? 

The only universal currency that is immune to such manipulation is precious metals, and the only way to keep fiat money resistant to devaluation is to have alternatives available, as it is in the supply of any product. The suppliers compete and are held accountable by the consumers, and the next thing you know they all back their little bills with a contractual promise to pay- redeemable into something tangible. This is precisely how and why the United States dollar became the world’s reserve currency. We had a large and booming economy which was producing a lot of fiat currency, and the money was backed by gold. The departure from the gold standard was a crucial and required step for government collusion and control over your economic system- it transferred your wealth and your energy elsewhere.  Folks, that’s slavery.  It is a process of enslavement- an engineered decline and a covert transformation of a free market, and subsequently the inevitable, comfortable end of individualism.

Remain asleep if you choose.

It may be time to stop trusting your current institutions- they are not what we began with and they are certainly not what was intended. The once “free market,” the market that had once been accountable to the consumer, has been buddying up with a government that is supposed to be of you, for you. Don’t blindly trust science either. PhDs and politicians are walking hand-in-hand, like the clerics and the monarchs of 500 years prior. There are less than ten companies representing most major industries- pharmaceuticals, automobiles, banking, media, fuel… it’s not a free market that brought this lack of choice.

Americans need and crave alternatives – we demand alternatives. When will it be time for us to hold our government accountable?

The recent health care bill that was passed, which your legislators did not have time to read, is about 2000 pages long. Our Constitution, on the other hand, is only 18 pages on Microsoft Word, 12pt, Times New Roman. Demand that your religious, scientific, and economic institutions stand apart from your government as the Constitution requires. Reserve government as a conduit for accountability to each other, to which we are all subject. The fundamental ill here is not resolved by voting based on a few issues, an ideology, group identity, and certainly not on the presidency. 

The Constitution is not some neo-conservative movement. It was the first radical movement of individual liberation. It was built upon a movement away from Monarchs. Our founders were the original liberals in the true sense of the word. To liberate. To free. They provided an opportunity for every idea to be expressed, a mechanism to prevent the domination of any one person or group over the rest, and they built a Republic for Americans- Americans who are brave, noble souls and rugged individuals, willing to stand for nothing less than being a truly free human being, in every thought and with every breath.

“What we are trying in all of these discussions and talks here is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind.  Not accept things as they are, but to understand it, to go into it, to examine it, give your heart and your mind and everything that you have to find out the way of living differently, but that depends on you and not somebody else.  Because in this there is no teacher, no pupil, there is no leader, there’s no guru, there’s no master, no savior.  You yourself are the teacher, you are the pupil, you are the master, you are the guru, you are the leader.  You are everything.  And to understand is to transform what is.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Yossarian.

SALON– Earlier this month, The Cato Institute’s Unbound published my essay on America’s Surveillance State, and then invited several commentators to reply and participate in a debate of these issues.  Two of those replies were particularly critical:  this one from John Eastman, former Dean of the Chapman University School of Law (recent home to John Yoo), recently defeated GOP candidate for California Attorney General, and former clerk to right-wing judges Clarence Thomas and Michael Luttig; and this one from Paul Rosenzweig, a Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former Homeland Security official in the Bush administration.

My reply to them is now posted.  As I noted, those two responses “perfectly illustrate the continuous stream of manipulative fear-mongering over the last decade which has reduced much of the American citizenry into a meek and submissive faction for whom no asserted government power is too extreme, provided the scary menace of ‘Terrorism’ is uttered to justify it.”  For that reason, I think the discussion is quite instructive.

* * * * *

THE SURVEILLANCE STATE THRIVES ON FEAR

I’m particularly appreciative of the responses to my initial essay by John Eastman and Paul Rosenzweig. Those two replies — especially the former — perfectly illustrate the continuous stream of manipulative fear-mongering over the last decade which has reduced much of the American citizenry into a meek and submissive faction for whom no asserted government power is too extreme, provided the scary menace of “Terrorism” is uttered to justify it.

That more-surveillance-is-always-better mentality is what allows Eastman and Rosenzweig to dismiss concerns over surveillance excesses a mere four weeks after the establishment-supporting Washington Post documented that our Surveillance State is “so large, so unwieldy and so secretive” that not even top intelligence and defense officials know what it does. For those who are so fearful of Terrorism and/or so authoritarian in their desire to exploit and exaggerate that threat for greater government power, not even the construction of a “Top Secret America” — “an alternative geography of the United States” that operates in the dark and with virtually no oversight — is cause for concern.

Eastman’s essay centers around one three-word slogan: We‘re at war! For almost a full decade, this has been the all-justifying cliché for everything the U.S. Government does — from torture, renditions and due-process-free imprisonments to wars of aggression, occupations, assassination programs aimed at U.S. citizens and illegal domestic eavesdropping. Thus does Eastman thunder, with the melodrama and hysteria typical of this scare tactic: “Not once in his article does Greenwald even acknowledge that we are at war with a global enemy bent on destroying us.” A global enemy bent on destroying us! Scary: be very afraid.

By invoking The War Justification for America’s Surveillance State, Eastman wants to trigger images of America’s past glorious wars. He’s not particularly subtle about that, as he begins with a charming story of how his grandfather’s letters were censored during World War I (how censorship of a soldier deployed in a foreign war justifies surveillance of American civilians on U.S. soil is anyone’s guess). But, for several reasons, this war justification is as misleading as it is dangerous:

Continue reading about America’s Surveillance State.

Written by Glenn Greenwald

© SALON, 2010

NRC– The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.

The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry’s research department expects to continue for some time.

Belgian prisoners

Some reprieve might come from a deal with Belgium, which is facing overpopulation in its prisons. The two countries are working out an agreement to house Belgian prisoners in Dutch prisons. Some five-hundred Belgian prisoners could be transferred to the Tilburg prison by 2010.

The Netherlands would get 30 million euros in the deal, and it will allow the closing of the prisons in Rotterdam and Veenhuizen to be postponed until 2012.

© COPYRIGHT NRC, 2010

Photo by flickr user Mocvdleung