My Honestest Post Yet

by Cory Chu-Keenan on April 12, 2011

The 400 Blows, Francois Truffaut (1959)

 

“Honestest”

I thought I was making up a preposterous new word but apparently it’s recognized by the WordPress spellcheck gods as real. “Spellcheck” on the other hand is decidedly not a word as the squiggly red lightning bolt of blog-Zeus reveals.

Doesn’t matter. The honestest thing I can say here is that I’m in a blogging slump. I have no idea where to go from here.

My personal life and family life is quite the storm at present and perhaps this is the main contributing factor.

Or maybe I burned out from the whole 9/11 Truth topic which is evidently pretty common among those of us who tackle the subject.

Or maybe I just stopped feeling like I was able to continue offering up advice online when my own life was really not the healthiest example of wellness.

Whatever the case may be, I’m stumped as to where to take Sacred Sheath from this point.

What I’ve Learned From Blogging So Far

I’ve reread all my content from start to finish (more or less) and I must say I came up with some surprisingly good stuff if I do say so myself. And I do.

The articles, “Could This Be Grace” and “3 Keys to Professionalism” is what is prompting me to write this very post right now. Sometimes we just need to take a stab and not worry too much about the outcome. Because “Fail Your Way to Success” and “Mother Ship Landing” taught me that there are no skills to learn that could ever bail you out of your present-tense situation. You kinda just have to leap. You sorta just need to pay attention to your environment. You maybe just have to Tao your way through life.

I was really surprised by the articles “Better Know Your Hacker“, “Well-Designed Kids“, and “How Cool Are You?” These three articles lay out my personal design philosophy (heavily influenced by Paul Graham, of course). I totally taught myself some parameters for design; I’m pleasantly shocked by this.

I was impressed with “You Are a Meaning Machine” and “Magic“: they’re sort of like a how-to-find-meaning and authentic human connection in the modern technological epoch commentary.

I’m very happy and honored to have contributed two guest posts to Mindful Construct, “What Emotional Intelligence Really Means” and “3 Things Your Self-Help Guru Won’t Tell You“. I think they’re funny and useful. Maybe a bit speculative at points, but still some of my best writing. (Melissa was a superb editor, by the way.)

I sort of threw a curve-ball with the three-article series on healthy diet (starting with Be Cro-Magnon About Your Health). These were spurred on by my father’s brain cancer. It actually turned out that what I wrote about diet were some of the very things that cancer survivors and cancer researchers have recommended–namely, a ketogenic diet low in sugar.

And then I really threw a monkey-wrench in the blog with 9/11 Truth, our culture’s most unutterable topic. I wound up writing a total of 12 articles on 9/11. That’s about a fourth of all my articles. The only problem was that once I started, I couldn’t stop. The topic is truly a bottomless pit, and I was falling down, down, down into it. I finally wrote a hasty article “Choosing Love In The Face of 9/11” to close Pandora’s Box and try to reclaim my life. I still have a video planned to launch for September 11th 2011, but other than that, I feel like I’m done writing about the subject, though I will never cease some form of activism.

Why I Started Sacred Sheath

Ever since I was a child I knew I wanted to be a writer. I wrote my first story when I was five. It was about a police detective searching for a murder suspect. It ended with a car chase and a bullet through the heart of the suspect. (In retrospect, the cop was a bit of a loose cannon, but I guess it was personal.)

I continued to write short stories throughout elementary, middle and high school. I even majored in Film Studies at UC Irvine with dreams of being the next Billy Wilder. After graduation I moved to L.A. and promptly threw my hands up in the air. L.A. is a harsh environment; traffic, smog, and plastic people make up the trifecta of disgust that have repelled many a hopeful artist. But it’s easy to blame external factors when in reality I just wasn’t ready to make steep personal sacrifices at the time. Plus, my writing was thematically, shall we say, immature.

So I moved back to San Francisco and ever since then my writing has taken a backseat to about a thousand other endeavors. I never stopped journaling and scrapping and doodling and outlining, but nothing cohesive ever took shape. Sacred Sheath has been the first writing project that I can say I actually published. I can say this because there’s a little blue button on my dashboard that says “Publish.”

Regardless of the loose definition of “publishing” in the information age, I still retain pride in the work I’ve produced for this site. I never did get a hold on the technical aspects of web design (CSS and PHP remain a baffling mystery), but I believe that the content of the writing stands on its own sans the bells and whistles. Sacred Sheath forced me to do work and it did its job. I’m not giving up on writing by any means, I’m just moving on to a different chapter.

I’ve been refocusing on fiction of late. It’s true that pain leads to creativity and art. And I think I need to get some narrative fiction out of my system, because it has always been my first love. Blogging has allowed me to flesh out narrative themes that I would have never been able to discover any other way.

Thank You To All Who Have Read Sacred Sheath!!!

I don’t know how many of you are out there, but I feel nothing but gratitude for this experience and I thank you for your comments, feedback and precious time. I hope I have done something to help some of you out there. I wish you well in all your endeavors. Do work. There is much to be done.

If you want to continue to follow my trains of thought, I’m starting a new tumblr blog here. I find the tumblr format to be much better suited to my level of technical ability and online commitment.

I love you guys and God Bless!

Your Friend in the Blogosphere,

Cory CK

THX 1138, George Lucas (1971)

 

{ 5 comments }

Three Unique Ways to Approach Conflict

by Cory Chu-Keenan on March 10, 2011

Your life is constantly changing.

 

And the problems you face in life are, too.

 

Obstacles may show up that you have to avoid. The terrain may change, and you will have to adapt.

 

Most of the time, we don’t have the luxury of solving problems in a still, calm environment.

 

When your life gets out of control, which is probably most of the time (or should be), you may start to skid.

 

And what do they teach you about skidding in Driver’s Ed?

 

Turn into the skid!

 

It’s counter-intuitive. Your instinct may tell you to turn the wheel away from the direction you’re careening.

 

But the only corrective maneuver that’s going to get you back in control is to turn toward the skid (and also accelerate) to regain traction.

 

Scary conflicts, problems, and crises are the way you want to turn when you’re on a path of growth.

 

The immediate thing that makes you grow is always dealing with your toughest issue first.

 

Finishing Projects

 

A functional ideology can’t go against the prevailing reality, much as you can’t drive on the wrong side of the road without causing an accident.

 

Corporate oppression cannot be annihilated. The entanglement of corporations and politicians cannot be unraveled. Just as you cannot eradicate “impure” thoughts from your mind.

 

Stop thinking on such gargantuan scales.

 

Shrink your focus down.

 

The horizon is not where your focus should be. It should be right in front of you. Your world should be measured in square inches, not square feet.

 

Stop thinking long-term when it comes to finishing projects.

 

The greatest works of art weren’t finished in a matter of days, but years.

 

Some may feel this is a reason to think long-term. But why is it, really, that great works of art take such a long time to complete?

 

Because there were about a million or more tiny little steps the artist had to take to get her art to such a high level of refinement. And she didn’t have the final product in mind the whole time. She had the minute detail, and its perfect placement, in the fore of her focus.

 

Think in inches. No… think in millimeters.

 

Focus on the project in front of you and deal with it in pieces. Think of the components, not the finished product.

 

Your Colonial Mindset

 

There’s no further room on this Earth for expansion.

 

No territorial expansion.

 

No new natural resources to extract.

 

No further material growth possible.

 

Economic growth has its limits.

 

Hence, this is why we must, by way of survival as a species, think smaller, not bigger.

 

You’re not going to be born into royalty anytime soon. You’re not going to break through the next glass ceiling.

 

But you are capable of a different kind of expansionism.

 

A final frontier that has yet to be colonized.

 

It’s time to ditch colonialism and time to embrace mindful exploration.

 

Inhale instead of exhale.

 

Cool the mind.

 

Think smaller.

 

Small details.

 

Stand out by being small.

 

Staying small.

 

And getting smaller.

 

Like an implosion.

 

Your colonial mindset is a cultural institution. Don’t try to eradicate it. Just turn it inward.

 

Life is Your Masterpiece

 

Zoom along.

 

When you lose control, confront crises head-on to regain traction.

 

But keep moving.

 

Keep your focus on the road before you. Not on the destination.

 

You’ll arrive at the finish line in due time.

 

The finish line is inside of you, not out there.

 

And you’ll realize when you arrive that the race was never meant to finish at all.

 

Three Unique Ways to Approach Conflict:

 

1. Turn into the skid.

2. Think in millimeters.

3. Expansion of the Heart and Mind.

 

Good luck, travelers!

{ 2 comments }

Choosing Love in the Face of 9/11

by Cory Chu-Keenan on January 25, 2011

The most prominent feature of 9/11 as a political idea is that there is no moderate viewpoint. America was on course to birthing a new generation of political bridge-makers before 9/11 (the promising emergence of Neo-Conservatives, Liberal Democrats who reached across the aisle in good faith, Libertarianism and its focus on economic reform, a rising popularity in Ralph Nader and his Green Party, etc.) but now the political divide is so apparently gaping, that it seems like two polarized political planets have arisen: those who view globalization as a fulfillment of John Lennon’s borderless “Imagine,” and those who see a dangerous totalitarian hell-on-Earth violently emerging. Anyone with a moderate stance finds themselves floating adrift in the space between: atomized, technocracized, deluded.

One would assume that the seeds for a violent uprising would have been sown in America considering the stark polarization apparent. But if you ever actually set foot in the American reality, you’d find that extreme points of view are not conducive to the everyday mechanisms of this covertly oppressive system.

We live in an environment ruled by symbols and signals that communicate to us on unconscious levels to value, first and foremost, paper and digital currency, and in extension, the things it buys, as premiere indicators of self-worth and success. TV, magazines, architecture, design, gadgets—all these things speak to us about what we should find important, worthwhile, and essential to our happiness.

Americans are plagued with pampered lethargy and childlike compliance. Whether this is through decades-long design by nefarious elite forces, or by tragic accident, may not be worth debating. The soil was fertile for a fringe group of powerfully-connected people to attempt to “grab” the 21st Century and claim it as their own in the form of 9/11 and the ensuing climate of fear it created.

A Unifying Framework

Four seemingly unrelated events occurred at the outset of the 21st Century:

1.   Enron, Bush’s largest campaign financer guts itself bilking thousands out of their investments

2.   The Supreme Court ignores the law in order to usher in Bush Jr. as President of our United States

3.   The Bush Tax Cuts of June 2001 greatly favor the upper echelons of class

4.   America is attacked on 9/11

This chain of events guaranteed a window where powerful people in America would have free reign to wage war, profit from war, and control the financial destiny of America and the world.

The events of post-9/11 are far easier to remember:

1.   Afghanistan invaded

2.   Iraq invaded in direct violation of Principles 1, 2 and 6(a)1 of the Nuremberg Charter and Article 54 of the Geneva Convention (Resolution 1441 fabricated by the U.N.)

3.   The Bush tax cuts of 2003

4.   The 2008 financial crisis

As you can see, the events that led up to 9/11 mirror the events that followed, though in exponentially more significant volumes.

  • Enron was a mini 2008 financial crisis
  • The 2000 election theft was a precedent for the reality of pseudo-elections that are now the norm
  • The 2001 Bush tax cuts were a mini version of the 2003 Bush tax cuts
  • 9/11 coupled with the Afghanistan war was a mini version of the “Shock and Awe” Baghdad spectacle

It’s important to familiarize yourself with the facts of 9/11 in order to understand the illegitimacy of every single one of the above-mentioned events. Exploring the hard science of 9/11, the physical and chemical aspects of the events, should catch you up to speed on the fact that these “catalyzing” terrorist events were in fact perpetrated by elite players who stood to profit from them. Qui bono, for the love of God, people, qui bono.

And So Here We Are

We’ve been slapped in the face with this unbelievable, incredible, unprecedented unifying framework that has slowly shaped us into tragic characters. Our elite leaders have transformed themselves into Empirical Megalomaniacs. Their destructive behavior has turned the masses into Directionless Sleepwalkers agonized by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders. The fringe middle class with the curiosity-quotients to research through the illusions of 9/11 have become Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists. The vast majority of the world living in Abject Poverty or in the midst of Violent Warfare do not have the resources to align themselves with a political philosophy except that of Day-to-Day Survival.

It’s really no wonder why religious people see now as the End Times, Tribulation, Revelations or you name it. Even agnostic liberals have their own names for it: Global Warming, Peak Oil, Environmental Collapse, or The End of America. And let’s not forget the techno-nightmare scenario imagined by those who believe in the Singularity.

There seems to be one thing that nearly everyone can agree on: the end is nigh.

New Beginnings

But what if all these signs of Armageddon are just more man-made tools for ideological control of the citizenry of the world, just like the aforementioned unifying framework of 9/11?

What if we’re not living at the end of the world, but at the beginning of something new?

What if like 9/11, these epic, Biblical ideas (thrust into reality) are just more sleight-of-hand from sick magicians?

What if the truth is not horrible, as the predominant culture of cynicism would have you believe, but beautiful beyond words, belief, and understanding?

Birth is violent.

What if what we’re seeing is not the destruction of the planet, but a new emergent form of life?

Are we witnessing a birth of a new culture and existence on this planet that has never been experienced before? A New Renaissance?

The Birth is unknowable. You don’t know what you’re going to get. But what you get is what you get. And you either accept it and love it with all your heart, or… I honestly don’t know what the opposite point of view would be. I wouldn’t be able to empathize with someone not loving a newborn creation.

We don’t get to choose the world that we were born into. We don’t even get to choose the parents we have. Or the siblings we have. If you think about it, did you really choose your friends? How about your lovers, or your spouse? You definitely didn’t get to choose your kids.

It’s not about getting to choose. Choice is in many ways the greatest illusion of our lives.

A very dear friend of mine once told me:

“Sometimes you don’t get to choose who you love. But you do get to choose how you love.”

If you can remember this quote through the most awful of times in your life, I guarantee that you will find the strength to get through.

Love is the Harder Choice

It’s easy for us to imagine destruction. We’ve done it forever. Hollywood has become an expert at it. Tim LaHaye has all the details about it. So does Al Gore.

But who has the details of the Birth of the Neo-Sapien?

Who is writing this essential text?

Who is leading us in the direction of Creation? Not just sustainability.

A Life Worth Living. Not just survival.

A world of Truth, Wholeness, and Vision.

A world that words can only hint at.

I don’t write a self-help blog to empower the individual with yet another layer of denial that temporarily boosts self-esteem, instills confidence, and overcomes the obstacles to life success. If you’re using denial as energy to achieve your vision of success, then you’re going to find yourself atop a shaky foundation of victory when you arrive—an unstable scaffolding of illusions that you’re going to have to ultimately dismantle to find the truth that exists only with your feet planted firmly on the Earth.

The New Birth is not about personal achievement, it’s about personal growth as your starting point on the path to living a revolutionary existence. You can’t attain influence without first discovering your own personal power, which is Self-Love.

A New Dialectic

Some say that the only real dichotomy in politics is Individualism vs. Collectivism. For instance, post-9/11 America is the fanatical extreme of Individualism. A place like North Korea is the fanatical extreme of Collectivism.

I believe the answer lies outside of even this broadest of dialectics. I believe that we have yet to create the language necessary to describe the parameters for the New Birth. It’s something that we cannot yet imagine, but I do know that it does have to do with Love.

Love is not even a suitable word for the Mega-Force that we must harness to forge a New Birth. But I believe that Love, though it may not be the answer, is the way.

And like I said before, the key is not in the what.

It’s in the how.

How are you going to choose the way you love?

How are you going to foster the faith to choose love as the way to a better you, better relationships, and a stronger community?

Self-Help for 9/11

There is no moderate viewpoint in the widening polarization of the human species. The status quo is an extreme position to align yourself with. It supports—by way of denial—war, debt, and starvation in the name of corporate profits.

The opposite end of the spectrum not only peacefully opposes the Culture of Death, but creates a new Culture of Life. It upholds a doctrine of Joy, Adventure, and Love in the name of Human Advancement.

This is not some “Age of Aquarius” fairy-tale. This is goal-setting.

As Americans, I don’t think any of us haven’t resigned to Self-Help literature for means of self-empowerment. We’re all familiar with creating the belief-system conducive to achieving success in business, relationships, and lifestyle.

We know that we’re supposed to Think and Grow Rich, adopt the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Win Friends and Influence People, Awaken the Giant Within, Eat That Frog!, and “attract” the things into our lives that we want to embody.

Let’s use these skills not to pursue pseudo-crusades that begin and end with intentions for individualistic self-gratification, but for something grander.

Ever notice that when you sacrifice yourself for your own goals, the sense of satisfaction is diminished to a masturbatory pat-on-your-own-back? A high so fleeting that you can’t wait to feel it again as soon as possible, like an addiction?

But when you make sacrifices for others, or for a cause, or for a social purpose, the feeling is joyful beyond description. A feeling that lasts. A feeling that energizes your soul. A force that changes you.

Giving is a moment that creates memories. And these memories can provide the energy for more of the same.

When you find yourself in a perpetual feedback loop of giving, this may be as close to Heaven on Earth as you can get.

The Way

A European sports car won’t. A McMansion won’t. A penthouse office won’t. A passive income won’t. Financial freedom won’t. Total authority over other humans won’t. Membership to exclusive fraternities won’t. Political power won’t. Fame won’t. Sex won’t. Spiritual perfection won’t. The latest trend won’t. The Best Movie of the Year won’t. The hottest new guru won’t.

Nothing is going to help you attain Life, Liberty, and Happiness without the constant Giving Of Your Love.

You must live your life as a personified Prophecy of Humanity in order to achieve political freedom.

Because, let’s be honest here: we’re not trying to save the world, or the rain-forest, or the rivers, or the ozone, or the topsoil, or the air.

All these things would flourish and return to their pre-Eden states in a relatively short period of time if humans vanished tomorrow.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s Ourselves that we are trying to save. It’s the Human Epic that we are trying to preserve. It’s the Human Story that we are trying to extend into the future.

The people at the pinnacle of the pyramid of power feel it necessary to create a utopia strictly for themselves leaving the majority of the rest of us behind to suffer within the rigid confines of their Culture of Death.

But I’m here to tell you that another way is possible—that the strength of your faith will determine how you choose to love.

If you live in the HOW, you will find the true power of now.

How you behave in the present is a great predictor of your future. And when you choose to love, there’s nothing scary about it.

{ 3 comments }

Conscious Hip-Hop: An Oxymoron?

by Cory Chu-Keenan on January 19, 2011

Lynching as Spectacle, Texas, 1920 (Lynching of Lige Daniels)

When we minimize the issue of racism in America we negate the majority of American history. For 400 years Blacks were enslaved on this soil building the capital that we today enjoy and call capitalism. Without those 400 years of building capital for free, we would not be the superpower nation that we are today.

Even after emancipation, free Blacks endured mass lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and widespread segregation up until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960′s. My question is, why do people want to so quickly brush racism off as ancient history, especially since zero attempts have been made to offer reparations?

When people try to say that a Black person is “playing the race card” this is a rhetorical device to minimize the importance of race in America. The Black American identity is unique to all of the world. There’s no such thing as “playing the race card” until there’s a reparations card. The issue of race must be confronted head-on at all opportunities. The “race card” is a tool to prevent debate.

As a half-Chinese, half-Caucasian male with roots in the urban Middle Class, I could never begin to comprehend or appreciate the Black experience in America. I grew up listening to Hip-Hop like most kids my age, but was what I heard through my speakers an accurate representation of Inner City Black culture?

A YouTube video creator by the name of foreverand2day has made a series of videos entitled “How Conscious Rap Creates Ignorant and Malleable People.”

He calls out such Hip-Hop artists as 2Pac, Nas, Talib Kweli, KRS-1, Dead Prez, Kanye West, Mos Def, Common, and various others outing moments where they’ve behaved hypocritically or touted messages considered dysfunctional by the author. He claims that these artists are playing their part in creating an American culture of passivity, immaturity, and authoritarianism while proclaiming themselves to be “conscious” rappers.

The author combs through lyrics, images, quotes, who they supported politically, etc, to point out these artists’ hypocrisies that he thinks should outrage us, but what he fails to comprehend is that the roots of Hip-Hop culture is the voice of the disenfranchised. The language of Hip-Hop is hyperbole, volume, and “swagger” as the natural elements of a newly born confidence and culture.

To take at face-value each and every sentence uttered or lyric penned by a rapper and point out how dangerous these points of view are to society is asking for perfection from flawed human beings with experiences that the author has never lived through. Thinking that Hip-Hop is bringing us down dangerous paths to a New World Order is a fantastical stretch. The author is aiming his arguments at the wrong persons and the wrong forces. Most importantly, he’s taking words deliberately used as artistic exaggeration and analyzing them through the lens of Socratic logic.

The author is not even using actual “conscious” rappers to prove his point.

Kanye is not. Jay-Z is not. Nas is not. 2Pac even is not. Snoop is not. None of these rappers are considered “conscious” rappers, even if they did make one or a few songs considered “conscious.”

Shooting the Messenger

It’s akin to blaming the war in Iraq on the soldiers in the Army. The problems the author is concerned with are systemic. The idea didn’t originate in the mind of Jay-Z to start making millions of dollars off of rapping about money and violence and sex. He did it because it was a smart business decision to do so. Jay-Z himself has stated that he would have been a conscious rapper if gangsta rap weren’t so lucrative. So you tell me who the real culprits are here.

Who purchased the lion’s share of the Hip-Hop albums of the Golden Era (i.e. the 90′s)? White suburbia did. The reason being that the White suburban existence was such the antithesis of authentic reality, street life, inner city poverty, and social connection that they had to latch onto something real. Gangsta rap, Conscious rap, American Black Inner City Culture became more real than the sanitized day to day life of suburbia.

Now these White Hip-Hop kids are grown and they’re wondering what happened to all their childhood idols. Specifically, they’re wondering why they idolized such extreme survivalist ideologies as those of the inner city. With a more mature perspective they are able to deconstruct the art forms they used to embrace, and they don’t like what they see. They no longer identify with Black Inner City Culture, because their new reality is Corporate Culture. So now they’re mad at 2Pac for glorifying alcohol, drugs, and partying. They’re mad at Kanye for being an egotistical man-child. They’re mad at KRS-1 for claiming that Hip-Hop should be an emergent religion. But just because Hip-Hop has failed White kids as a doctrine, doesn’t mean it’s failed everyone else.

You know who Hip-Hop hasn’t failed? Platinum rappers. They see no problem with Hip-Hop because it has catapulted them into the upper echelons of class that they would have never been able to imagine before Hip-Hop’s popularity.

And guess which sub-genre of Hip-hop just happens to sell the best: Gangsta Rap. Therefore, it’s the most produced form of the music. And it’s easy for an artist who creates mostly Gangsta Rap to claim to be Conscious by making a couple Conscious songs. And that’s where critics can proclaim, “Hypocrite.”

Real Conscious Rappers

If you just took a snapshot of Hip-Hop as it’s presented in the mainstream media, it’s easy to say that it must be a negative force. But look at who the mainstream doesn’t give airtime to:  Chuck D, KRS-1, Immortal Technique, Phoenix Orion, Aceyalone. These are all conscious hip-hop artists that use the art form for expressing reality-based topics, and they do it with highly marketable skill.

You want to lump all rappers and their sub-genres into the same group and claim that they all think the same. They don’t. They are individuals. They don’t speak with the same voice, or come from the same backgrounds, or share the exact same opinions. This kind of lumping together of a Black-dominated sub-genre is treading dangerous territory. It’s like believing that Bruce Lee and Lucy Liu share the same political viewpoints.

How come the author isn’t taking aim at other forms of Pop music? How come he isn’t coming down on other people in general from the Left who are more influential gatekeepers than rappers, such as Noam Chomsky or Alexander Cockburn? It’s easy to take shots at Americans who dropped out of the American educational system, isn’t it?

Misplaced Aim

The author uses the following ideas in his video to support his argument:

“Judgment and values are needed to distinguish between: True and False, Right and Wrong, Good and Bad.”

“Extended Childhood and Perpetual Children lead to and Ignorant and Malleable Culture.”

These are issues for bigger forces than just Hip-hop alone. ESPN keeps us as grown children. Dumb movies do too. N’Sync and all boy bands. Nostalgia movies like Transformers. Nostalgia-driven TV like Family Guy. Katy Perry is all lollipops and bikinis. It’s the Cult of Youth that we should be wary of across the board. But all this begins in kindergarten: the public education system that has been financially gutted for decades by a war-addicted federal government. Is Hip-Hop to blame for this, or simply a by-product of these forces?

The paradox the author is not seeing here is that the whole reason prominent “conscious” rappers became prominent was because they were marketable. Not because they were necessarily the most skilled emcees. So, when you take the most marketable rapper, make money off his music and image, throw money and fame at him—you don’t know what you’re going to get. You might have a person who is morally corrupt, or you might have Ghandi. Thinking that every prominent artist should be a positive role model is a fallacious train of thought. Especially when the highest selling form of Hip-Hop is the violent kind.

I think that the creator of this video is obviously a long-time consumer of Hip-Hop music. He has a relatively deep knowledge of the culture. But as I said before, I think he looks back on the figures who shaped his youth with disdain now that he sees the bigger picture and has the tools and knowledge to become politically opinionated. Unfortunately, his negative views toward an entire sub-genre are misplaced, mis-targeted, and incomplete.

I think he’s onto something at certain points when he presents an idea, but then he can’t back up the idea using concrete examples from Hip-Hop culture. I think he could construct a larger thesis where he uses specific artists from the Hip-Hop world, such as Common (the poster-boy of selling out) but short of that, his argument doesn’t really hold water, especially since he lumps KRS-1—one of the greatest rappers of all time, a Hip-Hop legend, a musical artist with one of the most positive messages the music industry has ever heard—in a group with the likes of 50 Cent and Soulja Boy. This is called guilt by association, and it’s false reasoning.

Hip-Hop is a Community

If I ever got the chance to meet The Far East Movement, I would give them a lot of love. I don’t agree with the content of their lyrics, but they made it in the industry, and I feel a kinship with Asian Americans when I see them attain positions of success. Does this mean I align myself to the values they espouse on their songs? Or does this just mean that I have a sense of ethnic pride and I embrace the community inherent?

Nobody knew what kind of president Obama was going to be before he was elected, but can you blame the Black community for having hope and faith in this nation’s first African-American President? Everybody was for Barack during the elections. Nobody wanted another Republican. Now in 2011 we see who Obama really is:  more and more of the same. But how can the author criticize a Black person for supporting Obama before now?

It’s not that I don’t believe conspiracies exist—if you’ve read my material, you know that I do—but foreverand2day’s theory and analysis are way off base. The thesis is too narrow and the supporting arguments are stretched for the author’s convenience.

If you want a real conspiracy in the music industry, research Jim Morrison of The Doors. His father was an admiral in the Navy and a key player in the false flag operation, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, that was the catalyst for The Vietnam War. That is a deep topic.

Hip-Hop is a culture that goes beyond just lyrics and persona. It emerged as a voice for the politically voiceless. But when it’s used to make massive profits by corporate forces, it becomes corrupted like all beauty does.

I believe that Hip-Hop culture, flawed as it may be, is one of the most important American institutions in existence. The music form is highly democratized and may be used as a powerful tool for free speech and emotional expression for all people regardless of race. America needs Hip-Hop today more than ever as a tool for empowerment of the people.

Hip-Hop should not be free of criticism, but it also should not be unfairly vilified and broadly dismissed. I believe the genre is currently undergoing an evolution, but just not at the mainstream level. The days of positive Hip-Hop in the mainstream are most likely gone forever, but a strong underground movement is slowly being born. We don’t know what the Hip-Hop of the next generation is going to sound like. And that’s a positive thing.

{ 0 comments }

Political Science vs. Hard Science

by Cory Chu-Keenan on January 5, 2011

When pressed on the matter, left critics like Cockburn and Chomsky allow that some conspiracies do exist but they usually are of minor importance, a distraction from the real problems of institutional and structural power. A structural analysis, as I understand it, maintains that events are determined by the larger configurations of power and interest and not by the whims of happenstance or the connivance of a few incidental political actors. There is no denying that larger structural trends impose limits on policy and exert strong pressures on leaders. But this does not mean that all important policy is predetermined. Short of betraying fundamental class interests, different leaders can pursue different courses, the effects of which are not inconsequential to the lives of millions of people. Thus, it was not foreordained that the B-52 carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos conducted by Nixon would have happened if Kennedy, or even Johnson or Humphrey, had been president. If left critics think these things make no difference in the long run, they better not tell that to the millions of Indochinese who grieve for their lost ones and for their own shattered lives.

-Michael Parenti, “The JFK Assassination II: Conspiracy Phobia on the Left” from Dirty Truths

Not essential reading.

If you don’t know anyone personally who was close to you that died on September 11th, 2001, imagine that you did.

Go back and watch all the videos you can of that day, and really imagine that your loved one died there.

Wouldn’t you do anything you possibly could to find out what happened that day, and how you can bring the real perpetrators to justice?

When prominent intellectuals tell us to focus on institutional and structural power, whatever that is, and dismiss any other type of evidence, this is by definition a narrow viewpoint that serves as an elitist, authoritarian creed that those on the left are not allowed to argue with.

We must not take a pseudo-intellectual stance on 9/11 that only analyzes in a structuralist approach the conflicts within class and power and institutions, which basically supports a “blowback”/incompetence hypothesis—the official line.

9/11 must be viewed through the lens of Hard Science. We start with physics and end with chemistry to find out what really happened that day.

Here are the facts of 9/11 that are supported by hard science, not structural political science.

1. Only 289 intact bodies out of 2700 found in the rubble. The remaining 2400 bodies were only chunks of flesh and bone and teeth. If this were a gravitational collapse, the bodies would have been flattened by the sequence of the collapsing floors, not blown to smithereens. link link

2. All of the concrete and non-metallic material found at Ground Zero was measured in microns. One micron is about the diameter of a human hair.  There was not enough kinetic energy to pulverize the concrete and building materials into this tiny size from a simple gravitational fall.

“Material less than 2.5 microns in aerodynamic diameter was 0.88-1.98% of the total mass. The largest mass concentrations were greater than 53 microns in diameter.”

3. The core is not accounted for in either of the towers’ collapses. 47 vertical steel beams could not fall victim to the gravitational force of “the upper blocks as pile drivers” to annihilate the core. Conservation of momentum in conjunction with the observation of near free-fall speed falsifies the “pile driver” hypothesis. Even if the perimeter columns were being pulled inward to the point of structural failure, the 47 core columns would still have to be accounted for in the collapse model.

4. Steel is an excellent conductor of heat. Even a 1000 degree blaze across four floors would disperse heat to adjacent (welded together) steel beams and the entire steel structure. It wouldn’t just heat a few select steel beams on a few floors of its choosing to cause “sagging” steel.

Undisputed Facts Point to the Controlled Demolition of WTC 7

5. The load-bearing wall was one of the earliest forms of construction. If, for instance, a vertical steel structure lost 50% of its load-bearing capabilities, it would distribute the load-bearing to the remaining 50%. If the load-bearing is uneven, the structure may topple, but never experience a symmetrical vertical collapse for a hundred or so floors.

6. Where are the “pile-drivers” that are claimed to be progressing the gravitational collapse from above? Four seconds into the video, the communications tower leans toward a horizontal position negating the possibility for a perfectly symmetrical collapse.


7. The Building 7 collapse model put out by NIST in 2009 is laughable. (NY Times)

cartoon by Sidney Harris

Oh, and just in case you don’t want to take my word for all this science talk, because I’m not a scientist, check out these peer-reviewed scientific publications. Three of them prove controlled demolition at the WTC. Only one proves the “pile-driver” theory. That’s 3-1. We’re winning the ballgame, and it’s on them to catch up.

Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade
Center Catastrophe

Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials

Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the
World Trade Center Destruction

Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse?—Simple
Analysis

UPDATE: I found three more…

“Discussion of ‘Progressive Collapse of the World Trade Center: A Simple Analysis’ by K.A. Seffen,” by physicist Crockett Grabbe, published in 2010 in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics, which is published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).144

“Discussion of ’Mechanics of Progressive Collapse: Learning from World Trade Center and Building Demolitions’ by Zdenek P. Bazant and Mathieu Verdure,” by chemical engineer James R. Gourley, published in 2010 in the ASCE’s Journal of Engineering Mechanics.145

“Discussion of ‘What Did and Did Not Cause Collapse of World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York?’ by Zdenek P. Bazant, Jia-Liang Le, Frank R. Greening, and David B. Benson,” by Anders Björkman, published in 2010 in the ASCE’s Journal of Engineering Mechanics.146


This is the problem with pursuing selfish ends. Eventually you get overzealous and over-ambitious, and that’s when you expose your evil intent. Embarrassing, huh?

It’s not The Constitution that protects us, really. It’s the transparency of human nature that telegraphs to us the truth about power and the weakness it brings out in all of us.

We need a new culture that can be built from the ashes of 9/11. Their plan is to build The Freedom Tower. Well, we know what their idea of freedom is, so we can all safely agree that whenever they say “freedom” it probably means death from above.

I’m tired of the Death Culture we now live in.

I propose a culture of Fundamental Revolutionary Joy.

A life of Universal Mysteries, Emancipated Expression, and Art Battles imbued with Love.

We need a new language. I mean, what do we even call this psychological condition our “leaders” exhibit? I know of no name that structuralist political science can even use to accurately describe what’s going on here.

But whatever you wanna call it—the kleptocracy, the ruling elite, the drunk-with-power, the megalomaniacs—they forgot one little thing when they decided to hatch their gutless plot of 9/11: that even if they have no ability to feel empathy, that, hah, hah, we do.

We can feel bad for other people—feel their pain and their heartache.

We can feel empathy for the first responders who have been denied badly needed health care and the over 713 who have died fighting for it.

We can feel empathy for Bob McIlvaine who lost his son in the Twin Towers and now advocates for BuildingWhat.org.

We can feel the pain of the Jersey Girls as they pressure the media to tell the true story of 9/11.

And the holes in our hearts won’t ever allow us to stop until justice is delivered to the mass murderers who orchestrated the 9/11 illusion.

We can use our emotions to guide us in the right direction—and that direction, ironically enough, leads us straight to Hard Science.

I don’t care what your degree says, or if you even have one. Don’t let the intellectuals tell you that you don’t have the brain power to understand the complexities of the mechanisms of this world. We were all born scientists. But we become doubtful of our own senses every time we listen to someone who tells us from behind his fortress of intellectualism that we’re just conspiracy theorists.

The truth is inside of you.

{ 4 comments }

We the Hip-Hop Nation…

by Cory Chu-Keenan

Are we really the descendants of revolutionaries? Just because our country was born out of revolution, doesn’t mean that we carry on this spirit centuries later. In fact, our very success as a nation—an unrivaled success worldwide and throughout world history—may be what keeps most of us in fear most of the time. We the [...]

Read it! →

O, Authority, Who Art Thou?

by Cory Chu-Keenan

If you’re planning on doing any air travel this Holiday Season prepare for your personal boundaries to be violated. Last time I checked I didn’t vote to give authority to anyone to grab my balls and fondle my mom. Much less peruse kiddie porn pics of my two year-old son. But the new TSA guidelines [...]

Read it! →

Business As Usual: The Revolution Will Be Marketed

by Cory Chu-Keenan

As you know I’m all about cashing in on 9/11 in any and every way possible, whenever and however. I’m just getting that out of the way so you understand where I’m hailing from. I recognize the “9/11 Truth Movement” to be the most lucrative niche market, i.e., cottage industry, emerging on the web, so [...]

Read it! →

You Can’t Separate Emotions From a Snuff Film: 9/11 Desensitization

by Cory Chu-Keenan

I’ve stated in past articles that it’s important for us to reinvigorate our curiosity into 9/11 leading up to its ten-year marker, and that separating emotions from the investigation will allow you to better logically deduce exactly what happened. But I notice that the deeper I delve into the subject, the angrier and sadder I [...]

Read it! →

What Do You See?: Video

by Cory Chu-Keenan
Read it! →

← Previous Entries