In this house-of-cards world that seems to be collapsing inward upon us from every conceivable angle, everyday-people seem to lie supinely in apathy watching it all come down around them. We are an indolent, intellectually lazy, bunch who collectively respond to any form of oppression or trouble with an attitude of there ain't nothin' I can do about it . I can't tell you how many times I've heard those who I love and care about the most in all the world say those words. The situation is close to dire enough to bring me storming to the battle-front from my reclusive world. Why are we allowing this to happen? Our very existence as we've known it is being systematically swept right out from beneath our supine bodies as slick as a cloth from a table, leaving us exposed, unprotected and naked, to the nefarious winds of oppressive change. For 30 years and more, some of us have seen this coming and yet, knowing it in our hearts, feeling it intuitively in our guts, we'...

It's Christmas – a time when some of us do a lot of soul-searching and reflecting in a nostalgic sort of way. And it's not that I feel old; I really don't. I'm in excellent health, comfortable with my life except for obsessing over my Zahir, and I like to think I'm pretty much up to date as a techno-user in this new world of technology and gadgets. Yeah, I've got my computers, my BlackBerry, and I do quite a lot of semi-technical work. But the thing is I don't really enjoy all this hi-tech crap any more, and so much of it seems to me to be entirely unnecessary, or even counter-productive. I think it causes stress in humans, but maybe not in rats. Yesterday my BlackBerry mysteriously lost its Internet service, and between the time it went down and the time my service was restored, I was tense, irritated, sweaty under the arms, and upset with RIM – an outfit that prides itself in its technological expertise. When I finally got to talk to a real person about th...

Barack Hussein Obama will be sworn into office as the 44th president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Maybe. But first George W. Bush must step down. My question is, will he? On December 19, 2000, less than a year into his presidency, W made this statement on national television: "A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." Yes, he offered up his nervous laugh when he said it, implying, I suppose, that he was just joking. But that nervous laugh, if you follow it through his presidency, seems not to indicate humor at all. What would it take for W to become an instant dictator? The fact is, not very much. His administration has spent eight years undermining the fabric and power of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights , usurping legislative branch power for executive branch power through various nefarious means, usually by playing the terrorism fear card, including taking unilateral illegal action under a vague interpretat...