http://www.graveerror.net Essays, Prose, and other Digressions Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:18:45 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last Saturday, I had the great honor of participating in a concert held at the Lijsterbes Kraainem in Brussels that combined music, painting, and literature. The idea came from my good friend and favorite contemporary classical pianist, Philippe Raskin. The story goes something like this: In 1874, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky composed ... http://www.graveerror.net/2010/03/10/pictures-at-an-exhibition-with-philippe-raskin/ This excellent ad from the ACLU, reading What will it be, Mr. President? Change or more of the same? Candidate Barack Obama vowed to change the Bush-Cheney policies and restore America's values of justice and due process. Many of us are shocked and concerned that right now, President Obama is considering reversing his ... http://www.graveerror.net/2010/03/08/what-will-it-be-mr-president/ I have been very busy lately, preparing a few interesting – though not very lucrative -- projects that I will hopefully discuss in the near future, and therefore have been missing in action. Nevertheless, I have still been thinking about many of the issues of the day, such as: Obama is ... http://www.graveerror.net/2010/02/24/mia/ If there were any doubts left whatsoever as to whether a liberal mainstream press actually existed in the United States, the Washington Post’s op-ed page once again proved itself to be overwhelmingly neo-conservative with four out of six articles, including articles by the blood thirsty, macho, war-wongering neocons Krauthammer and ... http://www.graveerror.net/2010/02/12/the-neocon-washington-post/ More than a political post, this is a post about our politics. From the recent article by Glenn Greenwald: The Lynch Mob mentality If I had the power to have one statement of fact be universally recognized in our political discussions, it would be this one: The fact that the Government labels Person X a ... http://www.graveerror.net/2010/02/05/our-lynch-mob/ If there was any doubt whether the U.S. system of government had become a Military Democracy (as opposed to a representative democracy, constitutional monarchy, corporate theocracy), the president has proposed a freeze on discretionary spending. And guess what is non-discretionary? http://www.graveerror.net/2010/01/30/military-democracy/ Regardless, I think that yesterday’s one year anniversary of President Barack H. Obama in office warrants some reflection, especially considering that I was an outspoken Obama supporter during the election. Now, one year later, I think it is safe to say that I got one thing right and one thing ... http://www.graveerror.net/2010/01/21/getting-things-right-getting-things-wrong/ This I promise is not a political post. It is about the willingness of the masses to believe whatever the government tells them (with the full support of an abetting media). Ironically, for a nation that innately distrusts the government in all things domestic, it is a blind follower of ... http://www.graveerror.net/2010/01/21/sleep-and-believe/ Here’s a very clever response by one Lily Coyle in the Minneapolis Star Tribune to Pat Robertson’s preposterous claim that Haitians had signed a pack with the Devil, resulting in the recent the earthquake (chickens roosting?): Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so ... http://www.graveerror.net/2010/01/20/a-letter-from-satan-to-pat-robertson/ A few weeks ago I wrote about the bewildering infatuation of the Spanish intelligentia with the independence from Morocco of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. What is so strange about this relationship is that the end of Spanish rule over Western Sahara in 1975, some twenty years after Spain and ... http://www.graveerror.net/2010/01/19/the-polisario-in-madrid/