"THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE"
(Short Version)
by Mario Savioni

I would appeal to you fair brethren of this great country, the benefits of which are the inalienable rights as so dictated in our earliest document, this country's Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America (Declaration of Independence), which was "Influenced by" the Oath of Abjuration or Plakkaat van Verlatinghe of July 26, 1581, according to Wikipedia, wherein it states: "The Staten-Generaal (the General Estates, a sort of federal parliament) assert that a king is a servant of his people and should respect their laws and traditions. When he no longer does this, the people have the right to choose another ruler." While marriage, war or sale allowed control by Charles V and Philip II of, the general region of Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, a good part of the North of France (Artois, Nord) and a small part of the West of Germany, there was revolt against this control by William I of Orange, who didn't want modernization nor centralization of the decentralized medieval governmental structures, which implied "High taxes, and persecution of Protestants by the Catholic church."

The Declaration also has as its influences: "Republic spirit (Liberty and rights as central values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, rejects aristocracy and inherited political power, expects citizens to be independent and calls on them to perform civic duties, and is strongly opposed to corruption); Enlightenment philosophy (empiricism, reason, science or rationality), whereby the world would progress from a long period of doubtful tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny which they imputed to the Middle Ages, though not from religious belief; natural law, which means Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe; self-determination/moral and legal right, is that every nation is entitled to a sovereign territorial state, and that every specifically identifiable population should choose which state it belongs to (for instance by plebiscite). It implies that all nations - usually meaning an ethnic group that self-identifies as a nation - have an equal entitlement to a sovereign state. It also implies that no other form of state is morally legitimate - certainly not if it includes an ethnic group who do not wish to be included in it, such that there are universal rights of individuals (political freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech); Deism -- religious beliefs must be founded on human reason and observed features of the natural world, and that these sources reveal the existence of one God or supreme being; John Locke said a government could only be legitimate if it received the consent of the governed through a social contract and protected the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. If such consent was not given, argued Locke, citizens had a right of rebellion; Thomas Paine said in his pamphlet Common Sense that the preamble of the Declaration is influenced by the spirit of republicanism, which was used as the basic framework for liberty. In addition, it reflects Enlightenment philosophy, including the concepts of natural law, self-determination, and Deism. Ideas and even some of the phrasing were taken directly from the writings of English philosopher John Locke. Thomas Paine's Common Sense had been widely read and provided a simple, clear case for independence that many found compelling. According to Jefferson, the purpose of the Declaration was "Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."

Motivations for the declaration were simply to announce a severance from Great Britain's rule.

At this time, another King George it appears is not interested in the preservation of our rights for whom our government's purpose is to serve us and not the coffers of a taxing and a non-representative body, who would use our people to perpetuate the power of those corporate heads through acquisition of another country's resources (take, for example, Iraq/Afghanistan).

According to a Washington Post report, "Iraq Blames Sanctions for [the] Deaths [of 350,000 Children-under-5]," December 18, 1991) with intent to enslave them to our privatization of what rightly belongs to them.

What I have seen and read in our declaration speaks of a time-past that now reflects time-present, wherein for example, "Future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of [six] years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principles of freedom."

I have also read in this document these words: "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death… This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of [America]. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one person, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.

"He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation." (See: The Nuremberg Principles, wherein it states: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and [is] liable to punishment." Such crimes according to Nuremberg law include: (a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i); (b) War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill treatment or deportation to slave-labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of, or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity. (c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of, or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime."

Do we not also agree that as Thomas Jefferson outlined our rights and as our government should be so run and our military to be so confined as to be beholden to the people who it has been reported that: "All men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness…. When a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their security."

Let these be among the discretions of our current king and his henchpersons and let these violations of our and international law serve to pass judgment on him as war criminal and as anti-American, who, in effect, acts as a traitor to our forefathers' intentions.

Lying and exposing CIA operatives.

On Jan 31 2007, Jason Leopold and Marc Ash reporters for Truthout.org said that "Copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by attorneys prosecuting former White House staffer I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case."

According to the article "Cheney's Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair," it states that Cheney's notes reveals that he was "Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy this Pres. asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others."

Governmental malfeasance and torture.

On August 24, 2005, Marjorie Cohn said that the Army Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski [who] was in charge of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq when the now famous torture photographs were taken in fall of 2003, said that "Anybody who confronts this Administration or Rumsfeld or the Pentagon with a true assessment, they find themselves either out of a job, out of their positions, fired, relieved or chastised. Their career comes to an end." (See: "Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush Administration" ).

Domestic Spying before 9/11.

On January 12, 2006, Truthout.org reporter Jason Leopold said that "The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document."

In the article, "Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11," Leopold said, "These activities were begun shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and contradict his assertion that 9/11 attacks prompted his taking the step of signing the secret executive order authorizing NSA to monitor selected Americans thought to have terrorist ties."

Bush's psychological state and ties to poor decision-making.

On January 18, 2007, John P. Briggs, MD, and J.P. Briggs II, PhD wrote that "Because of a psychological dynamic swirling around deeply hidden feelings of inadequacy, the president has been driven to make increasingly incompetent and risky decisions," in the article "Bush and the Psychology of Incompetent Decisions."

Presidential abuse of power.

The New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh said that "We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11, and we should be arresting these people rather than looking the other way..."

Hersh mentioned the presidential abuse of power in an interview with a CNN interviewer on February 25, 2007 as explained on ThinkProgress.com, in an article "Hersh: Bush Funneling Money to al Qaeda-Related Groups."

Violating International law and the US Constitution.

Free-lance writer Sherwood Ross said "The Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb."

Ross, in a December 20, 2006 article entitled "Bush 'Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons' for Offensive Use" said that "Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress [said] the Pentagon 'is now gearing up to fight and "win" biological warfare' pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted 'without public knowledge and review' in 2002.

Bush's policy likeness to Hitler's.

A reader (SL) from Wisconsin submitted content for the article "The Bush Hitler Thing." He saw parallels with Bush's policies and behavior with that of Hitler. - 09 January 2004.

On Bush's smoke screen over the Effects of Global Warming.

Truthout.org UK correspondent Chris Floyd said "The good folks at AEI - whose members were instrumental in bringing us the 'splendid little war' in Iraq and are now agitating for an even more glorious bloodletting in Iran - are offering scientists and economists $10,000 each (plus extras) to tear down the IPCC report and snow job the hoi polloi into believing that the crack pipe of the Carbon Era will never be empty."

Floyd's statement comes from the article "Bush Backers Offer Payoffs to Undercut Global Warming."

Bush's selling out of the social security system to his stock market brethren.

Allan Sloan said "Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday."

In "Bush's Social Security Sleight of Hand," Sloan writes "His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years."

Constitutional Role of the President, war in Iraq, manipulation of intelligence, torture, and retaliation for criticism.

John Nichols on December 9, 2006 said that Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney accused the president of failing "To preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States; he has failed to ensure that senior members of his administration do the same; and he has betrayed the trust of the American people."

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's rationale, according to Nichols in an article entitled "A Closing Call for Impeachment" in the Nation magazine was that President George W. Bush "Disregarded the rule of law and his Constitutionally-defined responsibilities."

Bush's Actions and Blowback.

Chalmers Johnson wrote that as "A domestic democracy and a foreign imperialist," America has involved itself in does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to, and in, foreign countries. It refers specifically to retaliation for illegal operations carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public."

Johnson, in his article Empire v. Democracy: Why Nemesis Is at Our Door, said that "Operations have included the clandestine overthrow of governments various administrations did not like, the training of foreign militaries in the techniques of state terrorism, the rigging of elections in foreign countries, interference with the economic viability of countries that seemed to threaten the interests of influential American corporations, as well as the torture or assassination of selected foreigners. The fact that these actions were, at least originally, secret meant that when retaliation does come - as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 - the American public is incapable of putting the events in context."

Bush's Policies in Iraq and how it has advanced Terrorism Worldwide.

Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank said that the effect of Iraq is that "War Has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide."

In the article of the same name: "The Iraq Effect: War Has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide," Bergen and Cruickshank said "The president's argument [that terrorists would be drawn to Iraq, where they would perish] conveyed two important assumptions: First, that the threat of jihadist terrorism to U.S. interests would have been greater without the war in Iraq, and second, that the war is reducing the overall global pool of terrorists."

Bush as King and our military installations in Iraq.

According to Karen Kwiatkowski, "We are in Iraq, we have the finest military installations in the world, the newest military installations in the world, and we're not leaving them. We're not turning them over to a Shiite government, we're not turning them over to a Sunni government, and we're not turning them over to a Kurdish government. We're not doing that. They are American bases. We've got our flag there. And this is kind of the way they used to do things, I guess back in the Middle Ages. Maybe the Dark Ages. A king decided he wanted to go do something, he went and did it. And this is George Bush. We call him an elected president. I mean, he's operating much as kings have operated in the past."

Bush and the effect of his economic policies on the poor.

"The number of Americans living in deep or severe poverty has reached nearly 16 million. A new analysis by the McClatchy Newspapers found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent since 2000. During this time period, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries."

Bush and his admittance of guilt as to Geneva Convention Violations.

In an article entitled "Bush admits to CIA secret prisons" relays that "President Bush has acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons and said 14 key terrorist suspects have now been sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

On 7 September 2006, the BBC announced that "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Alleged mastermind of 9/11; believed to be the Number 3 al-Qaeda leader before he was captured in Pakistan in 2003; Abu Zubaydah: Alleged link between Osama Bin Laden and many al-Qaeda cells before his capture in Pakistan in 2002; Ramzi Binalshibh: One of the alleged masterminds of 9/11; Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin): Alleged senior leader in Jemaah Islamiah (JI); wanted by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines in connection with blasts" were incarcerated at Guantanamo.

Bush and the will of the people (free and open elections; free speech; and rule of law).

Edward M. Kennedy in his article "Demeaning Democracy," Sunday 13 August 2006, said that Cheney had gone too far when he said that the Connecticut Democratic primary might encourage the al-Qaida types who want to "Break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task."

The implication of Cheney's words, according to Kennedy was to "Insinuate that anyone who votes against them is giving aid and comfort to the terrorists."

Bush and Blaming Immigrants for Job Loss to U.S. Citizens.

San Francisco Chronicle reporter Tyche Hendricks, Tuesday, February 27, 2007 said that Californian immigrants do not hurt wages for U.S. workers. U.S.-born workers and immigrants do not compete for the same jobs, Hendricks said, nor do they depress the wages of the U.S.-born, according to a new study by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Bush and problems with the elections.

What is at stake for me is that we ensure that all get to vote and that votes cast are not manipulated in any way. There is no representation if this basic right is removed.

The thought that the Republicans would stoop so low as to deny a vote cast or to change it is to subvert the possibility for truth.

Whatever the outcome of a free and fair election it allows for all to participate. The milieu of a place where all have said their peace with that small all-important means is to ensure that our society is operating with all its capillaries and veins and that from every part of the body politic a sense of the health and welfare of the state is attended to. The aorta carries blood from the heart to all the organs and structures of the body. The vote is the blood coming back to the heart for an oxygenation of the needs and wants of a people. To deny that return is to stop the flow and a part of the heart dies. And no heart can run for long or with much vigor without all of its major systems and byways acting in full concert.

All of our voices, whether Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Constitution, Alaskan Independence Party, Aloha Aina Party, and the list goes on, almost as diverse as our individual representation of selves need to be heard. No one must go without a voice or access to the heart for its oxygenation, for its bestowal of life-sustaining information as to the health of the entire body.

And for this reason, the means to justify an end to our voting rights, as with the implementation of electronic voting machines that can be infiltrated digitally or by registering people to be Republican when they wanted to be Democrats , or any other means to a single party's end, let that not be the end we seek. But let us allow for every man or woman citizen his/her voice, which is his/her vote.

1. Jeremy Wallace said that the loss of some $18,000 votes in Sarasota, Florida, where touch screen voting took place, is an impetus for lawmakers, such as Senator Diane Feinstein, who as chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal election regulations will "Re-introduce legislation in the new year to require all voting systems to have verifiable paper trails."

2. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said "Congress, always ready with funds for needy industries, swiftly authorized $3.9 billion to upgrade the nation's election systems - with much of the money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of America's 180,000 precincts. But as midterm elections approach this November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better."

3. In a November 1, 2006 report by Michael Janofsky entitled "Diebold Demands HBO Cancel Documentary on Voting Machines," reveals the absurdity of Diebold's demands in that they call the HBO film "unfair and inaccurate," and yet the film proposes that "Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results."

4. Dan Balz and Zachary A. Goldfard said that during the Nov. 7th election, more than 80 percent of voters used electronic voting machines. They said, "Human blunders and technological glitches (in Maryland) caused long lines and delays in vote-counting." This followed ones earlier this year in Ohio, Illinois and several other states, have contributed to doubts among some experts about whether the new systems are reliable and whether election officials are adequately prepared to use them, according to Balz and Goldfarb's article "Major Problems at Polls Feared," Washington Post, 17 September 2006.

5. Rob Hall said Ohio Voting Rights Activist and Attorney Bob Fitrakis believed that "Massive voter purges in Democratic precincts may have already won Ohio elections." That was in October. As it turned out, Ted Strickland beat J. Kenneth Blackwell by approximately 24%, but only 4 million out of the 11 million inhabitants of Ohio voted.

6. Patrick Walters said that "Voter advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to stop Pennsylvania counties from using 'paperless' electronic voting machines, saying that such systems leave no paper record that could be used in the event of a recount, audit or other problem." Walters also said in the article titled "Pennsylvania Sued over Electronic Voting Machines" that "The lawsuit alleges that certifying paperless electronic voting machines violates the state's election code and constitution."

7. David Dill, Doug Jones and Barbara Simons said "Computer security expert Harri Hursti revealed serious security vulnerabilities in Diebold's software. Computer Scientist and Voting System Examiner Michael Shamos in Pennsylvania said, "'It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system.'" Dill, Jones and Simons said that "Basically, Diebold included a 'back door' in its software, according to, allowing anyone to change or modify the software.

Bush and upsetting the balance of power in the region given Iraqi Intervention.

Associated Press reported on Wednesday, December 13, 2006, that "Saudi Arabia has expressed concern that once U.S. troops leave Iraq that the controlling Shiite majority could massacre the Sunni minority, believed to comprise a large faction of the deadly insurgency that has claimed thousands of Iraqi civilian and U.S. military lives."

The report also revealed that the Saudis are not happy with proposed talks between the US and Iran. -- Mario Savioni, June 20, 2007.

“THE ARCHITECTURE OF DENSITY”

Thu, June 7, 2007 - 4:41 AM

The photographic work of Michael Wolf and Edward Burtynsky

I had a moving experience on June 6, 2007 at Robert Koch Gallery, where they are housing the works of Michael Wolf, who is a photographer living and working in the third most densely populated city in the world – Hong Kong (See: www.kochgallery.com/exhibiti...ndex.html and www.artbusiness.com/1open/fi...0507.html for examples of the work).

Besides the images of individuals in their little one-room homes “(100 x 100 (detail Rooms)”: Bunk beds, rice cooker, various plastic bags and food items and clothes, I was taken by what appear the buildings that house them.

In particular, “Architecture of Density #91” was a section of one of these maybe, 100-story buildings, with dotted air-conditioners and color schemes so beautiful with intricacy of the structure and the color applied to them.

It gave me a sunken feeling. I am an artist, and I just wouldn’t know what to paint a building of this magnitude. I realized that there is a formula that always works. Interior Designers used to talk about just “Throwing something together,” and an ex had her house painted by a man, who knew this formula and every house he painted was enviously beautiful. But, of course the fact that he didn’t give it a second thought made me shutter.

Combined with these images of people sitting in their one-room units were images of men and women who copied the great works of known artists and huge reproductions in oils that were captioned as selling often under $100. (See: www.kochgallery.com/exhibiti...ndex.html )

I was sickened by the replication, the cheapening, the poverty, and there was nothing I could do about it. It was like the effect of Photoshop or Illustrator on the art world. As a graphic and web designer, I pretty much gave up. How do you compete with formula? How do you compete with scientists who study artists and how they do art and they can replicate what was once original? Even the process itself becomes art, for it has the ability to affect me cathartically.

Artists have the hardest time justifying themselves in a world where so few have money to spend on luxuries? Abraham Maslow said that there is a hierarchy of needs. Basic needs like food and sex have to be satisfied before other, more self-reflective, needs come to the fore.

So, I thought to myself these people are just surviving, how could they possibly know or even care about the subtleties of not copying?

Even the variable of taste as a complicating element to appeal to someone who might buy was nothing compared with this. These people were building an inventory of the icons of our culture and what we, at least as artists, held in high regard.

We see the paintings in the context of the squalor that produced them. We are reminded as artists about our own squalor.

But, at the same time the whole experience imposes a dark cloud.

I feel as an artist, I have no audience. My job as a waiter seems more and more like the entirety of careers. Every dream I ever had is dependent on a long shot that seems to wade in this pool of the copycat and the low-baller.

I see myself as the tenant in these tenement skyscrapers. I see myself in Ed and Nancy Kienholz’s “Sollie 17,” (artchive.com/artchive/K/..._17.jpg.html ) where a man in his underwear occupies perhaps less then five feet, on a bed, in front of a dresser, and before a window in New York City, perhaps.

I visit my mother and find it painful given her ailments and her dreams stacked in a bedroom she can’t get into. She says “If you threw it away you’d be throwing me away.” I understand her, but I also know what it looks like to an outsider. It looks like the cluttered rooms of the Hong Kong residents. Roughly translated it is sadness. We wind down into a little hovel and because we can’t work anymore there’s no means to pay for a dentist or a doctor. The ailments crowd themselves like voices in the insanity of too much information. And in our youth, maybe we’re just too idealistic to see that it’s just a long-shot, think lottery, American Idol, pictures of people in Town and Country magazine or the movie Requiem for a Dream (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requ...or_a_Dream ).

What is the formula? Someone tell me.

Can dreams still make their way out of such small spaces? Can these odds for success be surmounted? Everything I know and think is captured in the context of two ideas: To write and to photograph. And there is nothing more of the hope I had as a kid not knowing anything about the limits of life.

There is meaninglessness in existence via these photographs, whereas people become elements in an architectural structure that replicates them as ledges or air-conditioners, windows, etc. to an effect dehumanized as an uncle once relayed that all people in the world can be contained in a structure a mile high and a mile wide.

And yet, in the context of the hierarchies established by men in light of population growth, it does not seem possible that men certainly, one man can either insure that humanity remains humane. We may kid ourselves with propaganda and “Pie in the Sky” assertions about the quality of life implicated in human systems, but inevitably there is this sadness felt by the inequalities among men that does one of two things, evokes pity or hatred.

Either response can produce a positive reaction toward wanting to repair relations or ignore them. The bigger problem remains that the problem seems so insurmountable that nothing is done. Perhaps art while testifying to insurmountability can also warn or relate to the beauty of some men’s desires to move in the positive direction.

As an economics professor once joked about the solution to overpopulation, he said if nothing is done, nature takes care of itself.

Edward T. Hall’s description of the explosions of deer’s pancreas in crowded environs relays to the inescapable fact of man’s inevitable ties to his fellow man and perhaps even more importantly to the earth.

Wolf and Edward Burtynsky (See: www.kochgallery.com/artists/...ndex.html ), another in Koch’s stable of artists, establish this fact aesthetically and realistically.

I love and need the artists and the writers. For through their visions, I can see myself. I can feel the pain inside. But, maybe our lives are just a Möbius strip, a Steve Reich recording that loops. I am getting tired making the same rounds into the city. Today, I filled out a form showing an interest in the Wolf print “Architecture of Density #91” and the “catalog” of the show as a whole.

I could not afford the $8650 Chromogenic print of “Architecture of Density #91”, which would be unframed, but it embodied the feelings I was getting.

What’s odd is why an indigenous Hong Kong artist never thought to take a picture of the building he lives in, in a manner that Wolf has portrayed.

They may not see what we see. They may have their own ideas about our unhappiness. What was odd was that an older Chinese man, perhaps from Hong Kong came in while I was viewing the work. He seemed locally-based, well-dressed in an architect’s or in a well-to-do artist’s attire, he spent very little time, dotting in out of the room and before a few images. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he proud of the work as a metaphor for an American’s worry? Was he happy to see Hong Kong itself? Was there nostalgia? He did not seem to be bothered in the least.

A woman, who was born in Hong Kong and who moved with her family a year after she was born, commented on this piece. She didn’t want to be named. She said that there is no sadness in the fact that multi-families occupy these one-room units. Instead, she said that there is pride just to be living in Hong Kong.

She said it was a step-up from China. “It’s where everyone goes,” she said with enthusiasm.

“People,” she said, “will even go hungry just to don a Rolex watch; Hong Kong is status.”

“Besides, everyone works all the time; they don’t stay at home. Hong Kong is active 24 hours a day. People only go home to go to sleep,” she said. “The people in the images are older members of the family, who wait at home for their children. Their sons or daughters work all the time.”

She said that, “Asian people are a very close-knit society;” so living in close proximity is “normal.” “There’s the elderly to take care of,” she said, “and everyone takes care of everyone else; it’s like a village. It’s just like San Francisco,” she said.

“If you go to one of those complexes in China Town,” she said, “it’s just like that.

She mentioned an aunt, who came from China. She had three children, a husband, and a grandmother. The parents lived in the living room, the children in one room and the grandmother in another. “That’s just the way it is.”

“It’s amazing you find that amazing,” she said.

It was at that point that I remembered an answer from one of the tenants to a question by Wolf. The tenant said that he liked living there because he liked his neighbors. My friend was correct. She said, that “The whole floor of people know each other. Everyone takes care of everyone’s children.” This reminded me of Aldous Huxley’s novel Island (See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_%28novel%29 ), where children are free to wander among families and simply sleep where and when they get tired at whoever’s house.

My friend did agree with me that human life was cheap in China and she said that the effect of so much available manual labor created its own social consequence. She mentioned that families were only allowed to have one child and they choose boys, often killing their daughters.

One of the things that she remembers is her mother’s announcement that the boys would be getting the family house. My friend, who is having a house built in the Oakland Hills recalled how the only leisure time she had as an adult was a few minutes sitting in her car in the parking lot of Merritt College.

She said it looks out at a beautiful view of the bay. She would attend classes before she rushed to go back to the catering business she owned. She said that she worked the restaurant during breakfast and lunch, went home to cook the food for the next day and then went back to work the dinner shift. Somewhere in this schedule, she fit in classes.

Later in life she married and she said that she and her “honey” live in San Ramon, where they share a house. But, she says that “I built the house [in the Oakland Hills] with my sister so that the sisters can have a place to go to if their relationships don’t work out”

The house is “mine,” she said. “I have worked my whole life just to have that beauty I saw from the parking lot of Merritt College. I now have a house that has a similar view.”

She talks about the benefit to a male in the family. Shrines to her grandmother may not be kept in the main house of her parents, because the house is her “Father’s house.”

She said that the logic for passing the house on to the sons was that the daughters marry outside of the family.

Noting the inequitable distribution of men to women in current China, she joked that it would be better to raise girls. “In fact, I would just raise girls,” she said “Because…just look at the dynamics.”

Inherently, she said, daughters in such circumstances would do well with all the attention.

The work of these artists embodies the fears we may feel as Americans on the down side of an Empire. America began as a beautiful idea with lots of “open space,” as my friend said and she said I didn’t have to worry about America ever having to succumb to the density of Hong Kong. “It’s such a small place,” she said.

America was established in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence. It grew to eloquent grandness with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I still fret that it seems we will not be able to shake the inevitability of one-room tenements. I am only at page 114 of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Player Piano (See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano ), but I believe I can see the future.

Wolf’s, coupled with Burtynsky’s work are very powerful. Whereas, Burtynsky had set the stage for me as early as March 1 - April 28, 2001. – Mario Savioni, 6/6/2007 12:06 AM.

Illegal Immigrants and Social Security

How do illegal aliens not contribute to America's social security system?

They pay into a system most will never benefit from since when they work, taxes are taken out of their paychecks. “Immigrant expenditures for both legal and illegal foreign-born Mexican migrants at the state and local level total $11.8 billion, and revenues total $11.6 billion, for a shortfall of about $200 million in costs for immigration, both legal and illegal. The actual purchasing power of foreign-born Mexicans is $51 billion.” (Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Day_Without_a_Mexican )

Most come here to make money because of their country’s financial havoc. Their countries are undermined by puppet dictators, who have been paid by "Highly paid professionals who cheat [these] countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.... They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign 'aid' organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. [Note that only 2 percent of the population controls half of the world's wealth]. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization." (See: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins).

They do not take our jobs. (“Study says immigrants vie with earlier arrivals; Newcomers not taking jobs from U.S.-born workers” See: Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer Wednesday, February 28, 2007 -- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/28/BAGJ9OCI0F1.DTL )

They are afraid at work and that fear bodes well for companies that hire them, because these employers can then undermine the rest of us in terms of economic or social injustice. Instead, if we treated them like the people that they are, sort of like the canaries in the mineshaft of our system blanketing the world, we will see that threatening workers is like threatening ourselves.

As Barbara Ehrenreich author of Nickel and Dimed said: “When someone works for less pay than she can live on—when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently--then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life.”

Meanwhile, the rich are getting tax breaks. “Over the ten-year period [2001-2010], the richest Americans—the best-off one percent—are slated to receive tax cuts totaling almost half a trillion dollars. The $477 billion in tax breaks the Bush administration has targeted to this elite group will average $342,000 each over the decade,” according to Citizens for Tax Justice, www.ctj.org/html/gwb0602.htm.

In addition, Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security would provide trillions of dollars in debt and billions in fees for George Bush’s wealthy donors at financial institutions, according to MoveOn.org (See: http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/SocialSecurity_WMD.pdf ).

Social security is no longer guaranteed if Bush has his way since his plan would be based on the market, which can go up and down. According to MoveOn.Org, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said that “Privatization means cuts of up to 46% in guaranteed benefits.” MoveOn.org also cites “That Social Security can meet 100% of its obligations for the next 37 years with no changes to the current system, according to the Social Security Administration itself.

Further, after 2042, the system reports it can pay more than 70% of benefits even if we do absolutely nothing… People don’t currently pay Social Security taxes on a penny of their income above $90,000 a year….What if they did? The system would be in strong shape long after 2042.”

In other words, George Bush is more dangerous to social security than illegal aliens who actually contribute to it.

Bush Co. is privatizing countries like Iraq to utilize the natural resources that don’t belong to us. And like Chevron, they’ll charge us what we can bear.

You and I represent a market as well as a worker population and soldiers to enforce their ambitions.

Companies that hire illegals do so to bottom-line all of our wages. They pit illegals against us. If we support them, we support ourselves. If we demand that they are treated well, companies will have to pay us well.

“Men who were in their thirties in 1974 had median incomes of about $40,000, while men of the same age in 2004 had median incomes of about $35,000 (adjusted for inflation). Thus, as a group, income for this generation of men is, in average, 12 percent lower than those of their father’s generation,” according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, et. al.

Whereas, the US Congressional Budget Office found “That between 1979 and 2004, the real after-tax income of the poorest one-fifth of Americans rose by nine percent, that of the richest one-fifth by 69 percent, and that of the top one percent by 176 percent.”

In addition, the office found that “Between 1978 and 2005, CEO pay increased from 35 times to nearly 262 times the average worker’s pay,” in other words, “By 2005, the typical CEO made more in an hour than a minimum-wage worker made in a month.”

From 2000-2005, according to the Pew report, the “Productivity and Income Gap Widens Dramatically,” (See: www.economicmobility.org/) whereas median income falls below 100 to say 97, productivity per hour rose to 116. From 1947-1974, productivity and income grew together. From 1974 to 2005, productivity and income grew apart; the differential by 2005 was approximately 55 points or 4 times what it was in 1974.

In other words, people worked nearly 4 times as hard as they did in 1974.

Foreign-born populations, according to the US Census, were the same for 1850 and 1997 at 9.7% of the total population, and the latest results in 2000 were 11.1 percent. In 1970, that percentage was 4.7 or 6.2 in 1980. 4.7 percent of the total population in 1970 was the lowest. The highest percentages of foreign born relative to the total populations were 14.4 in 1870; 14.8 in 1890; and 14.7 in 1910. (See: http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/twps0029.html )

It’s about class not borders.

It’s about dividing and conquering.

What’s legal? As Slavoj Zizek writes in his book The Parallax View: “In one of his short fragments, Kafka himself pointed out how the ultimate secret of the Law is that it does not exist – another case of what Lacan called the nonexistence of the big Other. This nonexistence, of course, does not simply reduce the Law to an empty imaginary chimera; rather, it makes it into an impossible Real, a void which nonetheless functions, exerts influence, causes effects, curves the symbolic space.”

We have to be careful what we support and analyze what it is we are asking when we call a person, who crosses a border without permission, an illegal.

Read What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank to see who’s representing whose interest.

Our poor, our tired, and our huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door. It sounds less and less like it’s about immigrants and more and more about our own lives.

For as Jefferson wrote to Adams is it not necessary to protect the wealthy, “Because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation, to protect themselves."

And if you know anything about Blackwater, they are preparing (See: http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20070330_jeremy_scahill_on_soldiers_of_fortune/).

Note the loss of habeas corpus (See: http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:bEotpowaDkIJ:www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15220450...nt=firefox-a .

In the end, be weary about man’s inhumanity to man. Just as you would not be inclined to treat someone poorly, as Americans we are loosing more and more of our rights. The illegals are people caught in the middle of someone else’s greed. Have pity, support them; because when we start picking bananas, sewing clothes, digging for diamonds or oil, you’ll see that it was never about a border but about class and how we treat each other. -- Mario Savioni, savioni@astound.net.