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The Guardian, one of the few newspapers in the world I respect, did something recently that was very cool. So cool that I think all newspapers should do this. Congress should do this. Judges should do this. Maybe even everybody should do this. (I said maybe we should. I actually have no plans to do this.) They published a list of their worst mistakes throughout the course of their existence, which goes back to about 1820, I think.
They backed the Confederacy during the American Civil War, that was a pretty bad one. They were quite unsympathetic to the Irish during their potato famine. They ran the Titanic story on page 9 and not the front page, totally failing to account for how popular the Titanic would become as a theme for movies. When Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, they basically said “Eh, no big deal, this isn’t going to cause any major repercussions,” they probably figured out within a year or two of trench warfare and mustard gas that they’d guessed wrong.
But the one that most people are talking about, the one about which they’ve only changed their minds recently, was their support for the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which said that Britain supported a home for the Jews in Palestine, which they were at the moment busy stealing from the Turks. It led to a lot of Jews coming in, and they eventually did establish a nation there in 1948, after kicking the British out. The rest, as they say, is history, which is kind of a dumb phrase when you think about it, because the whole thing is history.
Anyway, looking at Israel today, it is no surprise that the Guardian regrets that stance.

But, I don’t want to get bogged down on any one issue. My broader point is that it was forthright and refreshingly honest, and perhaps cathartic, for the Guardian to publish such a list. I hope the idea catches on.

I had kind of a lazy Sunday but my IT department, which is my wife, the lovely and talented Helena, was busy revamping this page. Before, it was divided just into Home and Poetry, and now we’ve got a few more selections. Don’t pay too much attention to them, mostly it was just to get a bit of clutter out of the way.
Now it’s Home, where we are now, where I write the blog of the day, Main Collection of Books, Tarot Poems, and Rheets. Four buttons. More selections!
The Main Collection contains all of the poetry books I am seriously promoting, plus The Shit Guru, my one attempt at a novel. There are 16 poetry books and I’m proud of every one. They contain poems that will entertain, that will make you think, that will expand your mind and your view of the world. That’s not an exaggeration. They did for me. I’ll be tinkering around with some lines, trying to condense into words something I’ve been thinking about, and running all the possible rhymes through my head and BLAMMO! something hits that makes perfect sense and puts a spin on it, whatever it is, that particular moment of time, space and perception, that I’d never thought of before.
There are 16 of these books of poems, and if you click on Main Collection you can read them for free. You can also buy them, which would thrill me to death, and they make lovely gifts. But, you can read them for free. Like browsing in a book store, but nobody bugs you about loitering.
Then there are the Tarot Poems. One for each card. But this page is just a preview. I can sell you a copy if you live in Prague or you can get them at the artist’s (Marie Brožová’s) gallery.
Then there are the Rheets books. I took them off the main page because they are more just a writing exercise for me and I can’t say they contain great poetry. They are the short rhymes that I write every day just to introduce this blog on Twitter and Facebook. They are also sort of a time capsule. If you want to read them, there they are.

As those who know me well may know, I am half Jewish. Mother’s side which, in the Jewish religion, is the side that counts. Also, in my youth I was quite pro-Israeli. I spent the greater part of my 20s in Israel, learned to speak the language, even had a passport and served in the IDF.
This is not something I’m proud of. In fact, when I see what’s happening in Israel today, I am downright ashamed to be Jewish. I am sure there are a lot of half Jews like me who feel the same way, and undoubtedly some of purer lineage as well. Because it is disgusting. It is inhuman.
When I saw this story on Facebook, I almost didn’t click on it, because I thought “Oh, that’s old news. That incident happened a couple of years ago. Which it may well have, but it happened again on Friday. From the article in Mondoweiss:

Hundreds of Palestinians were injured and dozens were hospitalized on Friday night across the city of Jerusalem, as Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and continued to crackdown on protests against the imminent evictions of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah. 

The height of the violence took place inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, where tens of thousands of Palestinian worshipers had gathered inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the surrounding courtyard for evening prayers on the last Friday of Ramadan. “

It’s one thing for police to violently disperse a protest demonstration. It’s still not good, but this is a different, and much worse thing. They were in a mosque. They were praying. They were already on the floor, facing down. Houses of worship are traditional places of refuge. The police are supposed to respect that. Just like “a man’s home is his castle.” Police are supposed to respect that. Now, in today’s world, there is no place the police cannot go. There is no place where people are safe.

They were in a mosque. They were praying. And it was a religious holiday. Now, I am not a religious person. That’s how I usually phrase it, because I don’t want to argue with people about religion. But, the truth is, I think religion is absurd, and anybody who believes there is an omnipotent being watching over this madness, this failure of modern civilization, is badly deluded. But, as long as they are in a church, or a mosque, or a temple praying, they are not out robbing, and killing, and raping. And they should not be arrested, or beaten.

Despite the way she works with and supports people who I think are enemies of the human race and abusers of planet Earth, e.g. Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, I still think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a bright spark in congress, and often sheds light on important issues that nobody else is paying attention to.
Yesterday, she tweeted this: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1390721335144456196 The tl/dr version (come on, people, it’s a tweet, just click on the link) is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is nothing more than a pro-business lobbying group.
I was about to comment on that with my own story of the time I reported a company I worked for to the Better Business Bureau and the first thing the BBB did was show the letter to my boss.
None of these organizations are what they seem. The federal reserve banking system (according to Wikipedia) is neither private nor governmental but somewhere in limbo between the two, and the CIA certainly seems to do things independent of any elected authority. If the WHO were actually concerned with world heath, every place in the world would have decent health care, but not everyplace does. If the World Bank and the IMF were there to maintain global stability and help poorer countries out of poverty with micro-loans, that would be a very good thing. But, if you look at who’s on the board you will see the biggest, slimiest capitalists on the face of the Earth. Think Tanks are not, as I once naively imagined, places to generate new ideas and new programs to solve humanity’s problems. They are propaganda mills, nothing more, nothing less, and the vast majority of them are on the extreme right. Most charities aren’t even real charities.
What can we trust? The sun rises every morning, the rivers continue to run, the seasons come and go, although at the moment their cycles seem a bit irregular, and the physical laws of the universe remain immutable. Other people? Sometimes, the ones we know personally. Politicians, business people, the police, TV and newspapers, never in a million fucking years.

He could have dedicated his administration to saving the environment, but so far he seems to like oil and fracking just fine. He could have dedicated his administration to world peace, but he hasn’t ended any wars, and is threatening to start a couple of new ones. He could have dedicated his administration to getting big money out of politics but that is an unlikely thing to expect from somebody who owes his political existence to that big money. He could have dedicated his administration to improving police/community relationships, ending school shootings by passing reasonable gun regulation, getting universal health care, fixing up the infrastructure, or legalizing marijuana, and any one of those things would have done a large number of people a great deal of good.
So, what does he want to do? Ban menthol cigarettes.
I did not believe this at first. I’m on several Bernie sites, so I’m in a bit of an information bubble of my own making, I admit. But, my credulity has its limits. “Menthol cigarettes?,” I thought. Even Joe Biden would not be so tone deaf, so incredibly petty. Yet, it’s true. It’s there in many mainstream media publications.
What’s next? Hawaiian Pizza? Pumpkin Spice Lattes? All you can eat buffets? Cilantro? Even Trump didn’t get so petty.
I’m pretty sure future historians will view Biden’s presidency as less that a stellar moment in American history, but with this move he risks dropping well below that. Menthol cigarettes. Harumph.