Why are people willing to spend trillions of dollars and years of "waiting" at airports and court houses waiting to pass through "weapon" inspections, when it is thousands of times more likely that any one of us will be killed or maimed by a car than by a terrorist? Each year since 9/11/01, more pedestrians have been killed in cross-walks than in the entire death toll in the buildings attacked by terrorists.
There are Islamic Arabs all over the world. Many of them drive cars and trucks. As drivers, they are thousands of times more likely to kill and maim, than as "jihadists" or bombers. Put another way, America IS under attack, but not from Arabs. The world is under assault from manufacturers. From drivers.
Let's look at the actual numbers:
UNITED STATES - TRAFFIC DEATHS. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 42,642 Americans DIED in traffic accidents in 2006. (NHTSA was de-funded by the Bush Administration and placed in the hands of appointees with no expertise, so the numbers must be considered extremely "conservative" and unreliable on the low side.)
GLOBAL - TRAFFIC DEATHS. Traffic deaths are the fastest-rising cause of death in the world, in every nation, and exceed 1 million per year for the last 5 years. By comparison, last year's combat deaths have been estimated at 100,000. Roadways pose a greater danger to human beings than war.
VEHICLES AND RAILROAD CROSSINGS. In America, a train collides with a vehicle every two hours. It is never pretty. In 1996, there were 415 deaths and 1554 serious injuries. The average victims were sober, driving within 25 miles of their homes. Since 2004, there has been almost no "infrastructure" improvement, and the crossings are worse than ever, with more traffic exposures.
VEHICLE MILES. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in the last three years, vehicular travel has increased 170% in the last three decades in America. (The EPA was de-funded by the Bush Administration and placed in the hands of appointees with no expertise, therefore the figures should be regarded as extremely conservative.) Mobility is clearly linked to prosperity, productivity, and even freedom. However, this is not true of the vehicle mile increase in the last 6 years, during which America has suffered decreased prosperity, less vacation time, reduced productivity, and less freedom.
FATALITIES PER MILE. Curiously, in spite of dramatic improvements in vehicle safety engineering--anti-lock brakes, air bags, impact engineering, inclined roadbeds--casualties per mile traveled have not significantly fallen. (Note, fatalities are slightly decreased, but injuries have actually increased.) It appears that cell phone usage and other driver distractions have increased. In addition, the horsepower has dramatically increased. Twenty years ago the average consumer vehicle had 119 "under the hood". Now, almost doubled, to 210 horsepower. The Porsche Cayenne SUV has 520 horsepower. The 2008 Toyota Camry with 268 horsepower does zero to 60 in 5.8 seconds, equivalent to the acceleration of a racing Corvette of a generation ago. Thus, we are STILL killing and maiming people at the same pandemic rate in spite of the additional and extraordinary "safety" features.
THE MYTH OF PROSPERITY AND PRODUCTIVITY. The transportation-industrial complex dominates the lion's share of advertising, and is an important contributor to the diversification and prosperity of the world. This complex, consisting of vehicle manufacturers, roadway builders, fuels, and insurance, is also a major lobbying power. Government regulators are run by appointees of the Executive branch which has de-funded and marginalized scientific expertise across the board. Just as significantly, the complex is responsible for suppressing the facts, and promulgating distortions--for example the myth that lax regulation of transportation contributes to prosperity.
It is of course true that mobility and transport are critical to prosperity. However, it is criminal to make decisions based on only partial truths. The fact is, Medical Treatment costs have sky-rocketed. Why? More people need more care, because THEY ARE INJURED. 2.6 million Americans were injured in traffic crashes in 2006. JUST IN ONE YEAR. Many of them suffered spinal injuries which leave them in chronic pain for decades.
I was rear-ended three times in a three-year period, and I have never recovered. I live in constant pain. And my "productivity" rapidly declined, although I continue to work and appear presentable. My pain is not in any statistics. The fact that I am producing 1/10th what I used to before the accidents is not going to influence the policy of studied indifference to 2.6 million injuries per year. And the traffic deaths-- 1.2 million in the world, annually.
The suggestion that the "convenience" of taking a car to pick up groceries should include a statistically significant risk of death and maiming is insane. If I hear anyone suggest that the pain is worth twice the horsepower I will ever need, or that our nation is prosperous because it ignores traffic casualties, I am very likely going to physical with that person.
At the least I will leap up and breathe into their nostrils--and tell them that whiplash is contagious. Well, it isn't really. And I would not wish debilitating whiplash pain on anyone. Still, it might help my chronic pain to get the message out.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Nazi Gold
According to a report released by the US government in December 1997, less than 20% of the gold looted by the Nazis across Europe and placed into officially "neutral" national banks has ever been returned. Nazi officers and German government agents deposited GOLD (not including cash) into national banks in Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. Those countries' banks STILL HAVE THE GOLD.
In addition, Switzerland only recently reports that it has $475 million worth of GOLD which was removed from other countries and deposited in Swiss banks during the war. $132 million was removed from occupied Austria and Czechoslovakia, and $146 million from Jews. Argentina is also reported to have Nazi Gold, all of which it has kept.
The Report was presented to the 41-nation conference on Nazi gold, giving figures FOR THE FIRST TIME.
In a separate revelation about the origin of the looted Gold, as a result of recent investigations begun by the World Jewish Congress, newly-discovered documents now confirm that 60 tons of gold were stolen from the Jews. Does it seem just crazy that no one went after these records earlier? And that even now, only Jews themselves, the disenfranchised victims, have to put the investigation together?
To put this in perspective (?), the Allies recovered 337 tons of plundered gold, and returned all but 5.5 tons to the Central Banks of the respective countries from which the removals were traced. None of this gold went back to any individuals, although significant amounts were looted from "private persons" [Jews].
Negotiations with the "neutral" countries continue--and they continue holding over $170 million in looted gold.
These are "GOLD" figures. Not cash, or the cash from the sale proceeds raised by the Nazis when they sold the property confiscated from millions of people. Where did the cash go?
In addition, Switzerland only recently reports that it has $475 million worth of GOLD which was removed from other countries and deposited in Swiss banks during the war. $132 million was removed from occupied Austria and Czechoslovakia, and $146 million from Jews. Argentina is also reported to have Nazi Gold, all of which it has kept.
The Report was presented to the 41-nation conference on Nazi gold, giving figures FOR THE FIRST TIME.
In a separate revelation about the origin of the looted Gold, as a result of recent investigations begun by the World Jewish Congress, newly-discovered documents now confirm that 60 tons of gold were stolen from the Jews. Does it seem just crazy that no one went after these records earlier? And that even now, only Jews themselves, the disenfranchised victims, have to put the investigation together?
To put this in perspective (?), the Allies recovered 337 tons of plundered gold, and returned all but 5.5 tons to the Central Banks of the respective countries from which the removals were traced. None of this gold went back to any individuals, although significant amounts were looted from "private persons" [Jews].
Negotiations with the "neutral" countries continue--and they continue holding over $170 million in looted gold.
These are "GOLD" figures. Not cash, or the cash from the sale proceeds raised by the Nazis when they sold the property confiscated from millions of people. Where did the cash go?
Reward for Killing Taslima Nasrin is $2400
What is wrong with True Believers? Today, clerics in eastern India offered a cash reward of 100,000 rupees ($2,400) to anyone who murders TASLIMA NASRIN. This is really appealing to easy money greed, since the beautiful TASLIMA is an unarmed helpless woman without guards, army or police protection. She does not even have a political protector or the aegis of the Press. The Death Warrant is also money-grubbing on the part of the mosques, since her life is worth, frankly, millions.
TASLIMA is a writer. Novels, little stories. The novels barely touch upon any "religious" criticism. She certainly does not criticize clerics with the passion exercised by Mohammed against pretenders. Her life is worth more than Bin Laden. If the clerics seriously want to appeal to money greed, and they clearly are, surely there are a thousand money-grubbing clerics to kill a thousand Bin Laden's for the $50 million dollar reward, before even one would kill TASLIMA. They should offer at least $100 million to kill an unarmed woman.
What decent self-respecting warrior would kill an unarmed woman for less? Especially when a righteous warrior would be willing to fight honorably against a formidable and dangerous opponent for free?
I can just see the expression on the faces of the brave jihadists in heaven. And their astonishment when they come across this woman-killer among the peerage of valiant Warriors: "Ah, here is Hussein who killed the Great Devil. And Saladin, lived for years in combat against hordes of heavily-armed Crusaders. Yes. Oh, and you? What? You murdered an unarmed woman who was writing stories? For Money? Well, was it for a Lot of Money? No? Just 100,000 rupees! [Big Pause.] Do you know how that makes US look? Do you think that the Great Warriors of Heaven are assassins of women for money?"
Clearly some of the Mullahs are so deeply depraved, so caught up in hatred, they cannot be trusted to understand their own instincts. Their greed, their hysteria, their wild jeering at a person who has done them no harm, and is harmless, their need for a scapegoat in the crisis of their own management of the mosques....
The life of one TASLIMA NASRIN is worth so much more. Alive or dead, for she will never die. Never. Never. She has already entered into the pantheon. She is not threatening the clerics, not with stones or guns. She has terrified them with understanding and courage.
TASLIMA is a writer. Novels, little stories. The novels barely touch upon any "religious" criticism. She certainly does not criticize clerics with the passion exercised by Mohammed against pretenders. Her life is worth more than Bin Laden. If the clerics seriously want to appeal to money greed, and they clearly are, surely there are a thousand money-grubbing clerics to kill a thousand Bin Laden's for the $50 million dollar reward, before even one would kill TASLIMA. They should offer at least $100 million to kill an unarmed woman.
What decent self-respecting warrior would kill an unarmed woman for less? Especially when a righteous warrior would be willing to fight honorably against a formidable and dangerous opponent for free?
I can just see the expression on the faces of the brave jihadists in heaven. And their astonishment when they come across this woman-killer among the peerage of valiant Warriors: "Ah, here is Hussein who killed the Great Devil. And Saladin, lived for years in combat against hordes of heavily-armed Crusaders. Yes. Oh, and you? What? You murdered an unarmed woman who was writing stories? For Money? Well, was it for a Lot of Money? No? Just 100,000 rupees! [Big Pause.] Do you know how that makes US look? Do you think that the Great Warriors of Heaven are assassins of women for money?"
Clearly some of the Mullahs are so deeply depraved, so caught up in hatred, they cannot be trusted to understand their own instincts. Their greed, their hysteria, their wild jeering at a person who has done them no harm, and is harmless, their need for a scapegoat in the crisis of their own management of the mosques....
The life of one TASLIMA NASRIN is worth so much more. Alive or dead, for she will never die. Never. Never. She has already entered into the pantheon. She is not threatening the clerics, not with stones or guns. She has terrified them with understanding and courage.
Lonely, Un-tethered, Un-loved, as a waste of...Freedom
I seem to be surrounded by people living productive lives with warm and loving families. They really ARE thriving, although few are "ambitious" or striving. They "struggle" with minor ailments, chores, and even relationships, schedules, and occasional death. But the natives are remarkably happy. These are cheerful and helpful people. They are prepared for their lives.
Still, there is that low-level depression, some of them, only some, seem to suffer. And they do not seem to know exactly Why. In an entertainment age, they seem a bit bored. Is there almost a "waste" of Freedom here? People have it "for granted", and do not feel engaged in the urgency of its preservation?
Seeing sadness fills me with empathy and great concern. I get edgy. When I see suffering it makes me really really edgy. Every suffering person is a canary in the mine. This is Our Mine.
Fortunately, my wife and most of our family friends and neighbors do not seem to mind having an "edgy" guy in town. I am just grateful that the Inquisition and Party Members have calmed down and I do not have to fend off packs of Red Guards, wolves, lynch-parties or witch-burning villagers. Real grateful.
Still, there is that low-level depression, some of them, only some, seem to suffer. And they do not seem to know exactly Why. In an entertainment age, they seem a bit bored. Is there almost a "waste" of Freedom here? People have it "for granted", and do not feel engaged in the urgency of its preservation?
Seeing sadness fills me with empathy and great concern. I get edgy. When I see suffering it makes me really really edgy. Every suffering person is a canary in the mine. This is Our Mine.
Fortunately, my wife and most of our family friends and neighbors do not seem to mind having an "edgy" guy in town. I am just grateful that the Inquisition and Party Members have calmed down and I do not have to fend off packs of Red Guards, wolves, lynch-parties or witch-burning villagers. Real grateful.
The Two Solutions to Political Conflict
Offering "peace" or "justice" is never a Political Solution, where a conflict is in play. All sides are always in favor of general ideals, which have universal appeal. The Nazis and Saddam Hussein constantly invoked Justice, and Pol Pot made a "theme" of Peace, a leitmotif of the Killing Fields.
Conflicts tend to break down into two competing strategies, both equally available to all sides: Unity and Partition. All sides will invoke both strategies. Both sides attempt to "unify" enough people to prevail, and to "separate" themselves from those they want to be seen as fighting.
It turns out as a matter of genes, "personality" profiles, and even "culture", a person will have more in common with a large segment of the population in any part of the world, than with his or her immediate neighboring group. In other words, if you take a statistically significant group of people out of ANY fighting element, many of the individuals will have MORE IN COMMON with their assigned "enemies" than with their designated fellow-combatants.
This is why UNITY almost always makes the most "scientific" sense. However, where there is injustice, there is always the tendency to revolt, and this leads to revolution, the "separation" dynamic. For people to be free, they must free themselves FROM a coersed "unity".
In spite of the fact that the "groups" overlap, Partition remains a vital strategy, and in the absence of a political opportunity for participation of a minority group in the Unity, it should be recommended. Partition was used by European colonial powers in 1920 in Ireland, in South Asia in 1947, in Palestine in 1948, in Cyprus in 1974, and in the Balkans in the 1990's. Should it be used in Iraq? Sudan? Chechnya? Montana?
Conflicts tend to break down into two competing strategies, both equally available to all sides: Unity and Partition. All sides will invoke both strategies. Both sides attempt to "unify" enough people to prevail, and to "separate" themselves from those they want to be seen as fighting.
It turns out as a matter of genes, "personality" profiles, and even "culture", a person will have more in common with a large segment of the population in any part of the world, than with his or her immediate neighboring group. In other words, if you take a statistically significant group of people out of ANY fighting element, many of the individuals will have MORE IN COMMON with their assigned "enemies" than with their designated fellow-combatants.
This is why UNITY almost always makes the most "scientific" sense. However, where there is injustice, there is always the tendency to revolt, and this leads to revolution, the "separation" dynamic. For people to be free, they must free themselves FROM a coersed "unity".
In spite of the fact that the "groups" overlap, Partition remains a vital strategy, and in the absence of a political opportunity for participation of a minority group in the Unity, it should be recommended. Partition was used by European colonial powers in 1920 in Ireland, in South Asia in 1947, in Palestine in 1948, in Cyprus in 1974, and in the Balkans in the 1990's. Should it be used in Iraq? Sudan? Chechnya? Montana?
Holy City of Karbala, Ashura festival
As many as 2 million mostly men gathered in Karkala, south of Bagdad, just last March. They shared cell-phone and TV images of themselves, flagellating their modestly-exposed shoulders, heads, and backs with bundles of chain "zangeel", and cutting into their heads and necks, to mourn the 7th century defeat and killing of Hussein during Islam's civil war of the 7th century. The grandson of Muhammad PBUH was pushed aside by the lords of Mecca and Medina. But what is the meaning of the Ashura today? The Golden Mosque in Samarra was destroyed by Al Quada militants in February 2006. Al Quada is Sunni. Now the devotees are shouting KUL YOM ASDHURA! KUL ARD KARBAL! "Every day is Ashura! All land is Karbala!"
Americans seem to keep wondering when the Iraqis will "step up" to fight for their country. This is a terrible question. Iraqis are already fighting, bravely, thoughtfully. And savagely. They are imbedded in a history which is not taking prisoners.
The Bush-Cheney-Rove trinity will be forgiven by the merciful Arabs and the remarkably civilized Persians long before they will ever be forgiven by "religious" Americans. No follower of Jesus Christ is permitted to lie, much less to harm so many innocent people pretending to fight enemies who are in fact unscathed and strengthened. In other words, no follower of Christ would invoke Christs' name as a cover up or excuse for stupidity and greed. Bush could not "lead" a penitent to a wailing wall. Even one Word, a single Zangeel of remorse and humility, even one step toward a pilgrimage of peace, would help.
Americans seem to keep wondering when the Iraqis will "step up" to fight for their country. This is a terrible question. Iraqis are already fighting, bravely, thoughtfully. And savagely. They are imbedded in a history which is not taking prisoners.
The Bush-Cheney-Rove trinity will be forgiven by the merciful Arabs and the remarkably civilized Persians long before they will ever be forgiven by "religious" Americans. No follower of Jesus Christ is permitted to lie, much less to harm so many innocent people pretending to fight enemies who are in fact unscathed and strengthened. In other words, no follower of Christ would invoke Christs' name as a cover up or excuse for stupidity and greed. Bush could not "lead" a penitent to a wailing wall. Even one Word, a single Zangeel of remorse and humility, even one step toward a pilgrimage of peace, would help.
Animals not in the Ark: griffin, basilisk, unicorn
Unforgivable. Noah was clearly commissioned by God to float the progenitors of ALL forms of life out of harm's way. Why did Noah-thinks-he's-God turn away the majestic griffin, the intense basilisk, and the graceful unicorn? What was he thinking when he refused them entry, and let in the flies? The mosquitoes? The chiggers. The fire-ants. Ticks! Now it is reported that bed-bugs are making a big come-back. If only Noah had not taken the trouble to furnish nasty little compartments in the Arc for blood-suckers!
Give someone a fast blog; someone willing to go into harm's way....
John Paul Jones went to the Continental Congress--which was meeting in black sessions under cover of night and secrecy, with his ragged commodore hat in hand, with a plan to break the blockade imposed by the Royal Navy. The illegal body was moved to provide funds to outfit a clipper ship by these words: "Give me a fast ship. For I intend to go into harm's way!"
Someone needs to go into the face of pirates, of tyrants, of fear itself. The thing that gives me the most fear is that we are surrounded by the craven quaking paltry fear -mongered alarmists on the one hand, and the be-numbed sleeping short-termers on the other, and so very few, so few are stepping up to the plate of responsibility, the launching wharf, asking for a fast ship!
We are far more likely to be slain by ignorance as by any other means -- dysentery from bad water, vehicles that should never be built, diseases ramping up in over-crowded cities -- more are killed and maimed by these than by wars and terrorism.
Someone needs to go into the face of pirates, of tyrants, of fear itself. The thing that gives me the most fear is that we are surrounded by the craven quaking paltry fear -mongered alarmists on the one hand, and the be-numbed sleeping short-termers on the other, and so very few, so few are stepping up to the plate of responsibility, the launching wharf, asking for a fast ship!
We are far more likely to be slain by ignorance as by any other means -- dysentery from bad water, vehicles that should never be built, diseases ramping up in over-crowded cities -- more are killed and maimed by these than by wars and terrorism.
"The law" pretends to be what it is not.
At all levels of adjudication, the judge tries to appear as a "standard bearer" or even the "servant of law", as if his or her discretion was bound by its letter. Rule of Law is often presented as the alternative to a Tyrant's Will. In fact, however, the "rule of law" is not well understood. Like "justice" it is a concept that all sides invoke, simultaneously and from conflicting interests. There is universal and profound ignorance of "The Law", an abstraction, no matter how lengthy its recitation.
And if a Rule appears to apply, it has subjective exceptions which can, and often should, swallow it up. For example, there is the principle that the specific rule "prevails" over the general expression -- which is an admission that the law is swiss cheese. Semantically, words have no objective meaning - not a single word can survive deconstruction, and nor can the law.
In addition, judges are keenly aware of the maxim that "the spirit prevails over the letter" of the law, which is another way ultimately giving sway to the subjective will of the judge over any possible theoretical objectivity in the realm of semantics.
And of course, one is always left wondering what the Legislative Law-maker intended in the first place? Where lobbyists write most of our laws, where many of the laws are simply reactions to extreme cases of abuse, where there is No Lobby willing to fund objectivity, order, common sense, and "public good" where factions write the rules.
However, there are a number of institutional self-correcting mechanisms "at work" in the legal system. One is the Separation of Powers, the "independence" of the judiciary from legislative and executive power. Another is the "due process" cluster of rights in which the conflict is ventilated by professional advocates with Notice and Opportunity to respond to each other; this creates a kind of "record" or precedence which give validity to the derivative decision.
Finally, there is the concept of EPIKEIA, which dates back to Classical Greece. This is rooted in fairness -- whatever the law says, its application must go beyond mere policing its margins, or automatically spitting out a result. Epikeia commands the consideration of application: In addition to the letter of the law, the executive police work, the matching up of the facts of the case to the laws which "apply", the Epikeian Step requires consideration of the result in the particular case in its possibly unique circumstances. Without throwing out or amending the law, is it sensible and fair to apply it to the parties before the court now?
Modern courts, however, are paralyzed by the accusation of "subjectivity" -- most judges want to hide the political facts of their appointment, the lack of merit in the "choice" made in seating them. They are sensitive, after all, to the mystery of how they ended up in such a seat of power; they understandably do not invite scrutiny into that example of a process of "application". Judges cling to the appearance -- and it is pure fiction -- of "objectivity". Now, Judges rarely discuss "fairness". Chief Justice Earl Warren was one of the last great judges to test the outcome against this segment of the franchise of the court. He understood the Epikeian burden, the importance of that pause before application of the Rule, to ask if it works appropriately in the particular case.
Just as Plato wrote that "Without an Absolute, the particulars are meaningless" -- and 2500 years of philosophy is the footnote consequence, and the phenomenon of angst is as fresh today as then-- so is every judgment meaningless without Justice.
And if a Rule appears to apply, it has subjective exceptions which can, and often should, swallow it up. For example, there is the principle that the specific rule "prevails" over the general expression -- which is an admission that the law is swiss cheese. Semantically, words have no objective meaning - not a single word can survive deconstruction, and nor can the law.
In addition, judges are keenly aware of the maxim that "the spirit prevails over the letter" of the law, which is another way ultimately giving sway to the subjective will of the judge over any possible theoretical objectivity in the realm of semantics.
And of course, one is always left wondering what the Legislative Law-maker intended in the first place? Where lobbyists write most of our laws, where many of the laws are simply reactions to extreme cases of abuse, where there is No Lobby willing to fund objectivity, order, common sense, and "public good" where factions write the rules.
However, there are a number of institutional self-correcting mechanisms "at work" in the legal system. One is the Separation of Powers, the "independence" of the judiciary from legislative and executive power. Another is the "due process" cluster of rights in which the conflict is ventilated by professional advocates with Notice and Opportunity to respond to each other; this creates a kind of "record" or precedence which give validity to the derivative decision.
Finally, there is the concept of EPIKEIA, which dates back to Classical Greece. This is rooted in fairness -- whatever the law says, its application must go beyond mere policing its margins, or automatically spitting out a result. Epikeia commands the consideration of application: In addition to the letter of the law, the executive police work, the matching up of the facts of the case to the laws which "apply", the Epikeian Step requires consideration of the result in the particular case in its possibly unique circumstances. Without throwing out or amending the law, is it sensible and fair to apply it to the parties before the court now?
Modern courts, however, are paralyzed by the accusation of "subjectivity" -- most judges want to hide the political facts of their appointment, the lack of merit in the "choice" made in seating them. They are sensitive, after all, to the mystery of how they ended up in such a seat of power; they understandably do not invite scrutiny into that example of a process of "application". Judges cling to the appearance -- and it is pure fiction -- of "objectivity". Now, Judges rarely discuss "fairness". Chief Justice Earl Warren was one of the last great judges to test the outcome against this segment of the franchise of the court. He understood the Epikeian burden, the importance of that pause before application of the Rule, to ask if it works appropriately in the particular case.
Just as Plato wrote that "Without an Absolute, the particulars are meaningless" -- and 2500 years of philosophy is the footnote consequence, and the phenomenon of angst is as fresh today as then-- so is every judgment meaningless without Justice.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Without an Absolute...footnote 43: A. Personal attachments, B. Dreams, C. Beauty
The Platonic Particulars are Meaningless. And there is not a Moment to Lose.
People with time--never too much, tirelessly infinite--on their hands are necessarily confronted with the meaninglessness of their lives. Not life in general, but in particular. We draw three solutions from what others have found:
A. PERSONAL ATTACHMENTS. As gentle as starlight, the twinkling of a hot ball at far remove, there is the comfort of personal attachments. We may be born alone, sharing no limbs, no organs, or even undertanding, and yet, there is no one and nothing "complete". Everything is incomplete. Even Unity is undone. So your life has meaning in its exile from the womb, from its being part of that partition, that multiplication off the introduction of sperm and egg, that contact. And contact continues. As gentle as starlight, however great the remove.
B. DREAMS. The meaning is not only in the twinkling massage of starlight. The consciousness goes to sleep and awakens to its Dreams -- and why is this? Why is Dreaming happening? The meaning of life is bundled with the exilic mass, and sits astride the saddle of the corpus colosum, as a headless horseman holding his head, holding in his hands the meaning of his ride. In our sleep, we work out the route of our purposes. In the tidal cycle of sleep and awakening, one draws out the other, which pushes in turn. This is the hall of mirrors bespoken by poets, the reflection of of the push to pull virtual to virtual, sleep/awakening. The meaning is in the rising and falling, in the reflection of the cycle on itself.
C. BEAUTY. And why does the imagination have the ability, the desire, to appreciate moments of beauty, often so fleeting? The Inuit family trapped in the dark privations of winter, minutes from death, will resort to Art - from child-like giggle songs, to story-told scrimshandering. Beauty is a refuge in difficult times. And so the explanation for the phenomenal impulse of wealthy people to pay millions to other wealthy people to acquire mosaics made by slaves (the Greek decorations displayed in the nonpareil Roman ugly Getty Villa) and the stretched and colored canvas of poverty-ridden painters (Van Gogh). How can beauty be bought? And its accumulation is so mandatory for the powerful, not because they can, for they cannot, but because they must, for they are not living without it.
People with time--never too much, tirelessly infinite--on their hands are necessarily confronted with the meaninglessness of their lives. Not life in general, but in particular. We draw three solutions from what others have found:
A. PERSONAL ATTACHMENTS. As gentle as starlight, the twinkling of a hot ball at far remove, there is the comfort of personal attachments. We may be born alone, sharing no limbs, no organs, or even undertanding, and yet, there is no one and nothing "complete". Everything is incomplete. Even Unity is undone. So your life has meaning in its exile from the womb, from its being part of that partition, that multiplication off the introduction of sperm and egg, that contact. And contact continues. As gentle as starlight, however great the remove.
B. DREAMS. The meaning is not only in the twinkling massage of starlight. The consciousness goes to sleep and awakens to its Dreams -- and why is this? Why is Dreaming happening? The meaning of life is bundled with the exilic mass, and sits astride the saddle of the corpus colosum, as a headless horseman holding his head, holding in his hands the meaning of his ride. In our sleep, we work out the route of our purposes. In the tidal cycle of sleep and awakening, one draws out the other, which pushes in turn. This is the hall of mirrors bespoken by poets, the reflection of of the push to pull virtual to virtual, sleep/awakening. The meaning is in the rising and falling, in the reflection of the cycle on itself.
C. BEAUTY. And why does the imagination have the ability, the desire, to appreciate moments of beauty, often so fleeting? The Inuit family trapped in the dark privations of winter, minutes from death, will resort to Art - from child-like giggle songs, to story-told scrimshandering. Beauty is a refuge in difficult times. And so the explanation for the phenomenal impulse of wealthy people to pay millions to other wealthy people to acquire mosaics made by slaves (the Greek decorations displayed in the nonpareil Roman ugly Getty Villa) and the stretched and colored canvas of poverty-ridden painters (Van Gogh). How can beauty be bought? And its accumulation is so mandatory for the powerful, not because they can, for they cannot, but because they must, for they are not living without it.
Friday, August 10, 2007
IT - can we plug historical data into algorithms to predict future?
Software developers have long been offering "tools" for a broad range of issues. For example, we are offered programs which prepare taxes, assure compliance with regulations, route shipments, or even predict outcomes given different scenarios.
The Government (Bush administration) now claims it has software that can even predict terrorist strikes. In 2004, the Government Accountability Office revealed that our Administration was running over 199 "data mining projects", many of which involved private sector information provided by private aggregators. The National Security Agency has amassed a database upon which it supposedly performs pattern-based analyses to hunt for terrorists.
There is no doubt among the marketing cognicenti that mathematical algorithms can identify trends and patterns of consumer shopping habits. In addition, IT experts can match voter proclivities, and even reveal financial fraud and crime. However, can running algorithms through consumer data predict where a terrorist strike will occur? Of course not. The NSA is using an enormously expensive tool -- data mining of every citizen's private data -- which will never provide the results needed. The people supposedly assigned to "hunt terrorists" are now sidelined in unproductive but almost infinitely time-consuming endeavors.
Specifically, instead of learning Arabic or interviewing Bin Laden's relatives, huge truckloads of numbers are being "analyzed" for patterns that will never reveal who will hit what target with what type of destruction. The NSA does not need to analyze the phone calls of 300 million Americans, for any reason, ever. The fact that they admit they are doing so is an admission that they have lost their way. They need to analyze the phone calls of a few thousand "fund-raising" religious fanatics -- and again, they HAVE to learn Arabic. The fact that the Government has populated its database with information about every citizen in the United States, and is not accountable for what it is doing, raises serious concerns about "abuse of power".
Remember how Nixon compiled Tax Information concerning his "enemies". What precautions have been taken to prevent private information from being used by people in positions of power to harass their personal "enemies"? Has Rowe used the "data-mining" to compromise his enemies -- by threatening to disclose the fact that they have visited Porn Sites, etc. What safeguards against manipulation of IT by people in power are in place? Do you think Rowe has any kind of restraint that prevents him from using Consumer Information against Senators who might otherwise be troublesome if they spoke out?
As a matter of fact, Why is the Senate so silent? Recall that when Hoover took over the FBI, we now know that he maintained "files" on all of his enemies, and collected information to compromise them. He went so far as to plant "communist" agitators in Martin Luther King Jr.'s churches, and then accuse MLKJ of being a communist! Did any Senator or Congressman question Hoover's budget? There were Journalists who spoke out, only to be suppressed -- they lost their jobs, because their Editors were threatened.
There is virtually no institutional criticism from any person in any part of our Government who is questioning why we are spending billions of dollars probing into the private information of citizens, while Al Quada is still actively and successfully training terrorists all over the world. The CIA has not bothered to learn Arabic or engage the Mullahs on the subject of what the Quoran does nor does not say! All over the world, people are cheering Bin Laden -- while we seem to have elected a President who is incapable of understanding, much less directing, actions appropriate to the circumstances.
I have to go farther: Does it not appear true that the Terrorists who are penetrating our "soft" and exposed parts with the most potent and portentious threats to our safety and security are not Arabs, or Islamicists? Those people seem to be largely occupied with their own problems. The Arab warrior, blessings upon him, is a model of restraint, fairly and openly expressing himself and his intentions. The Islamicist, assuming some have read the text, is living for a hereafter, and the Quoran specifically proscribes suicide, homosexuality, and killing of innocents. Clearly the world has little to fear from Arabs or Islamicists as a whole -- a few idiots aside, who can be found in every region and under every Religion.
The group which can clearly be seen actively grabbing our stuff, and threatening our future, is the cadre gathered about the person of George W. Bush. The waste is criminal, but there is more going on than mere "waste of public resources". There is a deliberate plunder -- the billions going into "IT" is simply pouring into the coffers of these pirates -- there is simply no expectation that "analysis" of consumer data will ever pin-point a terrorist strike. The billions are being spent to enrich the Bush family, the secret Cheney corporations, and the "legacy" institutions set up to provide for Rowe and his minions.
The Government (Bush administration) now claims it has software that can even predict terrorist strikes. In 2004, the Government Accountability Office revealed that our Administration was running over 199 "data mining projects", many of which involved private sector information provided by private aggregators. The National Security Agency has amassed a database upon which it supposedly performs pattern-based analyses to hunt for terrorists.
There is no doubt among the marketing cognicenti that mathematical algorithms can identify trends and patterns of consumer shopping habits. In addition, IT experts can match voter proclivities, and even reveal financial fraud and crime. However, can running algorithms through consumer data predict where a terrorist strike will occur? Of course not. The NSA is using an enormously expensive tool -- data mining of every citizen's private data -- which will never provide the results needed. The people supposedly assigned to "hunt terrorists" are now sidelined in unproductive but almost infinitely time-consuming endeavors.
Specifically, instead of learning Arabic or interviewing Bin Laden's relatives, huge truckloads of numbers are being "analyzed" for patterns that will never reveal who will hit what target with what type of destruction. The NSA does not need to analyze the phone calls of 300 million Americans, for any reason, ever. The fact that they admit they are doing so is an admission that they have lost their way. They need to analyze the phone calls of a few thousand "fund-raising" religious fanatics -- and again, they HAVE to learn Arabic. The fact that the Government has populated its database with information about every citizen in the United States, and is not accountable for what it is doing, raises serious concerns about "abuse of power".
Remember how Nixon compiled Tax Information concerning his "enemies". What precautions have been taken to prevent private information from being used by people in positions of power to harass their personal "enemies"? Has Rowe used the "data-mining" to compromise his enemies -- by threatening to disclose the fact that they have visited Porn Sites, etc. What safeguards against manipulation of IT by people in power are in place? Do you think Rowe has any kind of restraint that prevents him from using Consumer Information against Senators who might otherwise be troublesome if they spoke out?
As a matter of fact, Why is the Senate so silent? Recall that when Hoover took over the FBI, we now know that he maintained "files" on all of his enemies, and collected information to compromise them. He went so far as to plant "communist" agitators in Martin Luther King Jr.'s churches, and then accuse MLKJ of being a communist! Did any Senator or Congressman question Hoover's budget? There were Journalists who spoke out, only to be suppressed -- they lost their jobs, because their Editors were threatened.
There is virtually no institutional criticism from any person in any part of our Government who is questioning why we are spending billions of dollars probing into the private information of citizens, while Al Quada is still actively and successfully training terrorists all over the world. The CIA has not bothered to learn Arabic or engage the Mullahs on the subject of what the Quoran does nor does not say! All over the world, people are cheering Bin Laden -- while we seem to have elected a President who is incapable of understanding, much less directing, actions appropriate to the circumstances.
I have to go farther: Does it not appear true that the Terrorists who are penetrating our "soft" and exposed parts with the most potent and portentious threats to our safety and security are not Arabs, or Islamicists? Those people seem to be largely occupied with their own problems. The Arab warrior, blessings upon him, is a model of restraint, fairly and openly expressing himself and his intentions. The Islamicist, assuming some have read the text, is living for a hereafter, and the Quoran specifically proscribes suicide, homosexuality, and killing of innocents. Clearly the world has little to fear from Arabs or Islamicists as a whole -- a few idiots aside, who can be found in every region and under every Religion.
The group which can clearly be seen actively grabbing our stuff, and threatening our future, is the cadre gathered about the person of George W. Bush. The waste is criminal, but there is more going on than mere "waste of public resources". There is a deliberate plunder -- the billions going into "IT" is simply pouring into the coffers of these pirates -- there is simply no expectation that "analysis" of consumer data will ever pin-point a terrorist strike. The billions are being spent to enrich the Bush family, the secret Cheney corporations, and the "legacy" institutions set up to provide for Rowe and his minions.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Parable of the Pounds, with Slaying for Jesus
Did Jesus exhort his followers to kill his enemies? On his way for the last time to Jerusalem, Jesus tells the Parable of the Pounds. This message is broadly delivered to the crowd, not just to Zacchaeus, his host. The wisdom character in the story -- and it is clear that it is not Jesus, but this King in his parable -- says "As for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me!" [RSVP, Luke 19:27; in Phillips, "execute them in my presence"; in NEB "slaughter". Clearly it is physical, murderous, without a tribunal, and personal.]
First, we should note that this murdering bit is unique to Luke, and not any of the other Gospel authors who tell the same story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, with all which that implies.
The ending verse appears to have no relationship to the somewhat strange "Parable of the Pounds" which Jesus has just related to people who were hanging upon his every word. Remember that this parable of the pounds, given to us only by Luke, is similar to the parable of the talents related by Matthew--25:14-30. Some scholars think that Luke combined the Matthew story with another involving gaining of a kingdom. In any event neither of the related parables, nor this synthesis, seem to need to have anyone getting slaughtered, and the risk appears unrelated to the matters at stake--talents and pounds (equivalent to the Greco-Syrian mina, or about 100 drachmas, worth 20-35 dollars).
I cannot help but mention that Christian scholars for the most part simply ignore the last verse. (Harpers' Bible Commentary 1037). Perhaps during wildly retributive episodes in the past, the good Church Fathers dearly invoked this instruction. But lately, Christians have calmed down. Not much slaying, in spite of what Jesus said.
The next thing Luke turns to in his story of Jesus' final trip to Jerusalem, with all that implies, is stealing a virgin colt for the ride into town. Did we mention going into Jerusalem, with all that implies? The sight of the city moves Jesus to tears. But other than that, it is peace and joy all around. By the time Jesus mounts the colt [in Luke it is a colt, not an ass], the crowd is rejoicing and throwing their clothing down on the ground, as they do, 2 Kings 9:13. Luke does not mention olive or palm branches, but the disciples were raising a great praise, and when Pharisees tell Jesus to rebuke the noise-makers, Jesus assures them that if the disciples were silent, then "the very stones would cry out" [RSV; "burst out cheering" Phillips]. Did we mention Jerusalem? Jesus predicts that the city would be destroyed "and they will leave not one stone upon another in you". Of course Luke is privy to fact that Rome's "final solution" was to enslave all the Jews, force them to dismantle the largest fortified city in the world, and then exile all of them, and rename Judea (the land of Jews), "Palestine".
Did we mention the great entrance into Jerusalem?
First, we should note that this murdering bit is unique to Luke, and not any of the other Gospel authors who tell the same story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, with all which that implies.
The ending verse appears to have no relationship to the somewhat strange "Parable of the Pounds" which Jesus has just related to people who were hanging upon his every word. Remember that this parable of the pounds, given to us only by Luke, is similar to the parable of the talents related by Matthew--25:14-30. Some scholars think that Luke combined the Matthew story with another involving gaining of a kingdom. In any event neither of the related parables, nor this synthesis, seem to need to have anyone getting slaughtered, and the risk appears unrelated to the matters at stake--talents and pounds (equivalent to the Greco-Syrian mina, or about 100 drachmas, worth 20-35 dollars).
I cannot help but mention that Christian scholars for the most part simply ignore the last verse. (Harpers' Bible Commentary 1037). Perhaps during wildly retributive episodes in the past, the good Church Fathers dearly invoked this instruction. But lately, Christians have calmed down. Not much slaying, in spite of what Jesus said.
The next thing Luke turns to in his story of Jesus' final trip to Jerusalem, with all that implies, is stealing a virgin colt for the ride into town. Did we mention going into Jerusalem, with all that implies? The sight of the city moves Jesus to tears. But other than that, it is peace and joy all around. By the time Jesus mounts the colt [in Luke it is a colt, not an ass], the crowd is rejoicing and throwing their clothing down on the ground, as they do, 2 Kings 9:13. Luke does not mention olive or palm branches, but the disciples were raising a great praise, and when Pharisees tell Jesus to rebuke the noise-makers, Jesus assures them that if the disciples were silent, then "the very stones would cry out" [RSV; "burst out cheering" Phillips]. Did we mention Jerusalem? Jesus predicts that the city would be destroyed "and they will leave not one stone upon another in you". Of course Luke is privy to fact that Rome's "final solution" was to enslave all the Jews, force them to dismantle the largest fortified city in the world, and then exile all of them, and rename Judea (the land of Jews), "Palestine".
Did we mention the great entrance into Jerusalem?
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
My wife loves cats and jellyfish and light.
My wife loves cats and jellyfish and light. July 31, 2007
We live with three laughing cats. Well, smiling cats, not quite laughing. I have not actually heard them chuckle, but it's as close as cat-belly gets. They smile because of Rebecca's jokes and attention to comforting details. Each cat wears two whiskered jewels above their smiling jaws. These jewels are the pigmented choroid coat of their eyes, the iridescent tapetum which gathers the palest scatters of light and communicates its shapes to the relatively enormous medula oblongata of felinity. Of course, with all these collected flickers of light, the cats cannot discern the details next to them. They need to be touched, and to hear the soft mouse-munch bird-flutter kitty-food noises which are of interest to cats. And they need to hear Rebecca's voice in order to make sense of this habitat: The way she loves them and the light.
We visited an aquarium by the sea. Rebecca stood in amazement as she beheld behind glass an armada of jellyfish gently pulsing. Their many eyes were hung on streamers, all keenly observing the details of the dangle, while at the same time gathering the scatters of light under swimming waves. Here were creatures with really no brain at all, but with perfect eyes, and some part of their tented tendrils, the persistent grace part, the hydrozoan direction toward light indifferent to fate and the tides, that part, shared an understanding with Rebecca even without her touch. There was the annointing love of the luminous to which they gently aspire.
My life is shared with Rebecca. With her, even though I am without perfect eyes, and without much light, I am able to make sense of this habitat, and as close as my belly gets, I laugh at fate, and even tides. Even...tides.
We live with three laughing cats. Well, smiling cats, not quite laughing. I have not actually heard them chuckle, but it's as close as cat-belly gets. They smile because of Rebecca's jokes and attention to comforting details. Each cat wears two whiskered jewels above their smiling jaws. These jewels are the pigmented choroid coat of their eyes, the iridescent tapetum which gathers the palest scatters of light and communicates its shapes to the relatively enormous medula oblongata of felinity. Of course, with all these collected flickers of light, the cats cannot discern the details next to them. They need to be touched, and to hear the soft mouse-munch bird-flutter kitty-food noises which are of interest to cats. And they need to hear Rebecca's voice in order to make sense of this habitat: The way she loves them and the light.
We visited an aquarium by the sea. Rebecca stood in amazement as she beheld behind glass an armada of jellyfish gently pulsing. Their many eyes were hung on streamers, all keenly observing the details of the dangle, while at the same time gathering the scatters of light under swimming waves. Here were creatures with really no brain at all, but with perfect eyes, and some part of their tented tendrils, the persistent grace part, the hydrozoan direction toward light indifferent to fate and the tides, that part, shared an understanding with Rebecca even without her touch. There was the annointing love of the luminous to which they gently aspire.
My life is shared with Rebecca. With her, even though I am without perfect eyes, and without much light, I am able to make sense of this habitat, and as close as my belly gets, I laugh at fate, and even tides. Even...tides.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Prostitute? Never met one. But I can play a few tunes....
Just got back from a trip to the District of Columbia. There are some excellent jazz clubs and sidewalk cafes. All night. And something occurred to me....
I've been all over the world, and in all but two States of the United States. Never met a "prostitute". Never been solicited. Oh, there were people dressed funny, and a guy looking for money someone else would earn, and there were people who were poor, hungry, and some just lonely and untethered. Many looked afraid, many looked like they needed help. Many had a "knowing" confidence. A few folks asked if I was "looking for a good time". I always was. So were they I suppose, and they moved on. The point is that Prostitution is a haunting, a ghost of flesh. A "sense" of "other women". http://www.drik.net/calendar2k/english/index.html. It is not fair to say it is "reality" -- it is no nowhere.
The "prostitute" is like a unicorn: rare if not entirely fictional. Granted, we push for extremes -- and there is an edge off of which, are places in which, it is impossible to be. Perhaps in a new tide of "stepfjords", or in the middle class suburbs depicted by a "John" Scissorhands, in the courtesanity we seek for balancing lives of disparity, there is this perpetual idea of paying for what we would like to want. The money does not makes it clean, so it is always something the man did not do. The money does not touch the person, so it is always something the woman is not being.
By offering our body orifices to unrelenting gods one at a time we live case by case, losing the theory, swallowing the night monsters seriatim so they go away. Following a trail, our successor covers our own tracks as we leave. Nothing so basic, so unnecessary, so un-eradicable, so common and so improper. We try to live by our instincts, but it is our instincts which try to rise above ourselves: So far, no, but -- this man will be different; this woman will satisfy me. The whip of desire turns into a whingeing complaint, the precation of hope is handed its own head on a platter of certainty as blindness fills the body and displaces the desire itself. Sensation becomes insensate.
There is no "act", no "being", no possibility of hope for consummation, no beginning and no end; hence, no Reality. This is an entire industry built upon the back of unicorns and women who are not "there". The "traffic" of sex is simply more than mere prostitution can ever bear.
The hunting/gathering tribes warring against each other around my childhood were always trying to end up with the "surplus women", the last minute attempt to get some kind of "victory" out of the effort. To get something, to come back with something. As if this part in that part was going to explain the pushing and pulling, the war-path nested in the hostility, caused by the desire, caused by the love.
When the Iroquois finally defeated the Hurons, they had captured so many widowed women, that half their warriors were actually Huron blood. When the Romans exterminated the Sabine men, they returned with Sabine women, and from that moment on, they could never return "home"; all of Rome was doomed to keep conquering, and now they were actually half Sabine when they did it.
There is that begging conversation between the egg and the sperm. You think it is Mind over Matter? The body will participate in this thought: There is the egg-flea, swimming, and the egg is the furred rock, rolling. People thrive by dancing together, rock and roll. Pay the musician, hire the hall. Ladies are free in the fireman's ball.
I've been all over the world, and in all but two States of the United States. Never met a "prostitute". Never been solicited. Oh, there were people dressed funny, and a guy looking for money someone else would earn, and there were people who were poor, hungry, and some just lonely and untethered. Many looked afraid, many looked like they needed help. Many had a "knowing" confidence. A few folks asked if I was "looking for a good time". I always was. So were they I suppose, and they moved on. The point is that Prostitution is a haunting, a ghost of flesh. A "sense" of "other women". http://www.drik.net/calendar2k/english/index.html. It is not fair to say it is "reality" -- it is no nowhere.
The "prostitute" is like a unicorn: rare if not entirely fictional. Granted, we push for extremes -- and there is an edge off of which, are places in which, it is impossible to be. Perhaps in a new tide of "stepfjords", or in the middle class suburbs depicted by a "John" Scissorhands, in the courtesanity we seek for balancing lives of disparity, there is this perpetual idea of paying for what we would like to want. The money does not makes it clean, so it is always something the man did not do. The money does not touch the person, so it is always something the woman is not being.
By offering our body orifices to unrelenting gods one at a time we live case by case, losing the theory, swallowing the night monsters seriatim so they go away. Following a trail, our successor covers our own tracks as we leave. Nothing so basic, so unnecessary, so un-eradicable, so common and so improper. We try to live by our instincts, but it is our instincts which try to rise above ourselves: So far, no, but -- this man will be different; this woman will satisfy me. The whip of desire turns into a whingeing complaint, the precation of hope is handed its own head on a platter of certainty as blindness fills the body and displaces the desire itself. Sensation becomes insensate.
There is no "act", no "being", no possibility of hope for consummation, no beginning and no end; hence, no Reality. This is an entire industry built upon the back of unicorns and women who are not "there". The "traffic" of sex is simply more than mere prostitution can ever bear.
The hunting/gathering tribes warring against each other around my childhood were always trying to end up with the "surplus women", the last minute attempt to get some kind of "victory" out of the effort. To get something, to come back with something. As if this part in that part was going to explain the pushing and pulling, the war-path nested in the hostility, caused by the desire, caused by the love.
When the Iroquois finally defeated the Hurons, they had captured so many widowed women, that half their warriors were actually Huron blood. When the Romans exterminated the Sabine men, they returned with Sabine women, and from that moment on, they could never return "home"; all of Rome was doomed to keep conquering, and now they were actually half Sabine when they did it.
There is that begging conversation between the egg and the sperm. You think it is Mind over Matter? The body will participate in this thought: There is the egg-flea, swimming, and the egg is the furred rock, rolling. People thrive by dancing together, rock and roll. Pay the musician, hire the hall. Ladies are free in the fireman's ball.
Getting Back to God the Forgotten Son and wholly irrelevant Spirit
The leadership of this bustly world is involved in many interesting things and most of them have "got it" that there is a connection, and probably a valid one, between their manifest notions of success and money. What is abundantly clear, of course, to anyone with eyes and ears picking up the signals all about, is that the leadership of the entire globe is busy doing things other than what was taught, painstakingly, by The Buddha, Jesus Christ, or Mohammad, to name but three of the "spiritual" leaders who continue to be invoked, and who could not be less relevant to anything that is happening.
Can this be any clearer? No one can miss this. The observation is Fact -- What was taught, the content, by the so-called Spiritual Guides, is now utterly forgotten if it was ever remembered, AT THE TOP. The rest of us, the fumbling masses, the tired and hungry, the lotus-eaters among us, the retired, the spun-dry, whether we "believe" or have Faith, or not, at least we must see that our Leaders, across continents, across cultures and classes, none of them have what could be called any "religious Faith".
An example? You were waiting to hear from George Bush? He has claimed that Jesus Christ, no less, is his "model" and "hero". Yet, in his Presidency, in his decision-making as the "Decisioner", has George Bush performed a single act consistent with The Message of that Messiah? What part of "War" do you not understand?
Bush makes empty claims to a "religious" basis or justification for what he has done. It is impossible that anyone, even he, could "believe" there is any connection however remote or slight between what he has done and what Christ taught.
Another example? Bin Laden, of course. He claims to invoke the Quran, and even more than Bush (who almost never cites the Bible or indicates the slightest familiarity with the Gospel text), often quotes from the Quran. Unfortunately, his "quotes" are often inapt or incorrect. Not a single line of God's guidance delivered to Mohammad justifies suicide, war against unarmed innocents, repression of women, drug-profiteering (opium in Afghanistan!), tribal slaughter among Sunni and Shiite, or even the outright theft from the Jews who were only recently hounded out of their ancient homes to the profit of the Mullahs and other hypocrites after centuries of peaceful and prosperous cohabitation with the descendants of Mohammad from Persia through Babylon all the way to Granada. Jews Greeks Arabs Scythians and other smaller groups lived for Centuries of peace, literally creating a Golden Age presided over by a poetic and Learned Islam which EARNED the laurels upon which the ignorant Wahabi "warriors" now seek to sit.
There is no doubt that Arabs are important people. Not their warriors -- their old men waving weapons. The important Arabs are the engineers. Building the most beautiful cities in the world. They will hang gardens in Babylon once again. Gilgamesh Found.
Can this be any clearer? No one can miss this. The observation is Fact -- What was taught, the content, by the so-called Spiritual Guides, is now utterly forgotten if it was ever remembered, AT THE TOP. The rest of us, the fumbling masses, the tired and hungry, the lotus-eaters among us, the retired, the spun-dry, whether we "believe" or have Faith, or not, at least we must see that our Leaders, across continents, across cultures and classes, none of them have what could be called any "religious Faith".
An example? You were waiting to hear from George Bush? He has claimed that Jesus Christ, no less, is his "model" and "hero". Yet, in his Presidency, in his decision-making as the "Decisioner", has George Bush performed a single act consistent with The Message of that Messiah? What part of "War" do you not understand?
Bush makes empty claims to a "religious" basis or justification for what he has done. It is impossible that anyone, even he, could "believe" there is any connection however remote or slight between what he has done and what Christ taught.
Another example? Bin Laden, of course. He claims to invoke the Quran, and even more than Bush (who almost never cites the Bible or indicates the slightest familiarity with the Gospel text), often quotes from the Quran. Unfortunately, his "quotes" are often inapt or incorrect. Not a single line of God's guidance delivered to Mohammad justifies suicide, war against unarmed innocents, repression of women, drug-profiteering (opium in Afghanistan!), tribal slaughter among Sunni and Shiite, or even the outright theft from the Jews who were only recently hounded out of their ancient homes to the profit of the Mullahs and other hypocrites after centuries of peaceful and prosperous cohabitation with the descendants of Mohammad from Persia through Babylon all the way to Granada. Jews Greeks Arabs Scythians and other smaller groups lived for Centuries of peace, literally creating a Golden Age presided over by a poetic and Learned Islam which EARNED the laurels upon which the ignorant Wahabi "warriors" now seek to sit.
There is no doubt that Arabs are important people. Not their warriors -- their old men waving weapons. The important Arabs are the engineers. Building the most beautiful cities in the world. They will hang gardens in Babylon once again. Gilgamesh Found.
Wisdom project - Solway's description of something BIG. I like the "larger self" part.
"I settled on a purpose for my life: the survival of wisdom. I always wanted to do something BIG, and this was the biggest anyone could ever do. It meant that not only would I have to become as wise as possible, but I would have to drag other people with me, who are my larger self. The problem was, I had only met one or two people in my whole life who had any genuine interest in truth and wisdom. So my first task was, and still is, to get people to a level where they at least have some respect for reason and truth." - Kevin Solway, http://members.optusnet.com.au/~danrowden/Profiles/kevin.htm
When Power "acts", it creates new realities...
When Bush was first sworn into the Whitehouse, I recall several interviews with staff in which the "new reality" fix was expressed--Karl Rove boasting that they intended to "cause" the future; they moved from mere prediction to creation. David Suskind reported the neo-con nonsequitur:
"When we act, we create our own reality...
We're history's actors...and you, all of you,
will be left to just study what we do".
Of course, this generative Reality is not new, it has always been the prerogative and responsibility of Power to work and ravel with "reality". What Rove missed is that Reality is a physical "what" without which his sine is non. Even if Reality is a gerund, it is interactive and reflexive. Reality is not just a plastic fundulum of "meaning different things to different people". Reality is not Rove's dog to hunt, and now it is a chicken coming to the home he ruined to roost. Rove was as wrong as those who claim there is a "Jewish Physics" or an "Oriental medicine". Sorry, it's just Physics, or Medicine, or not. Many have taken Rove's words to be merely hubristic. Actually, they show criminal culpability.
The criminal syndicate running the Whitehouse was right about many things, mostly in an ironic fashion. Our present circumstances--our Reality--IS the result of their actions. They did MAKE history, with remarkable speed and thoroughness: When Bush came into office, the US Government had a budget surplus; now, we are faced with a larger debt than all previous administrations combined. When Bush came into office, Americans could travel virtually all over the globe with a fair degree of respect and admiration; now, we are universally despised, our values viewed as "myths", and we hate ourselves. When Bush came into office, Al Qaeda's bases in Afghanistan had been bombed (while Republican's Senators screamed "wag the dog"!) and Bin Laden went into hiding; now Al Qaeda is an international franchise of forces striking at will throughout the world which has become its training ground and Bin Laden is one of the most popular and recognizable faces on the planet--an almost Christlike figure (for those who can still stomach irony).
Of course there is more. When Bush came into office, the US Constitution was viable and invoked; now it is irrelevant and moot, and made so by our own Supreme Court. Two other great democracies -- England and Israel -- have been pulled down with America by their loyalty. Desperately-needed land reform in Africa and South America has been institutionally delayed. Genocide is practiced with impunity. Drug companies and so-called "insurance" corporations have destroyed the "health care" system so that poor care has become extraordinarily dear. Manufacturing jobs are outsourced to a degree that has become a national security concern (buying tank and aircraft parts from China). The NYSE is itself propelled into a leveraged buy-out boom in which virtually all companies are takeover targets for "flipping" with cash borrowed from lenders freed of any "regulation" or accounting. The lenders themselves extend "creative" credit to "new homeowners" who cannot afford to repay the loans because the average wage is dropping. Corporate CEO's are making stratospheric salaries unrelated to actual "business" or productivity (as those words are commonly understood). Energy and power utilities have been caught pillaging consumers on a scale never before approached. Government power and assets have been put into the hands of people who have no inkling of "public service", but who do have a robust sense of self-interest.
The point is that Rove was right about "making history". We now have a history of self-defeating greed and overreaching from which recovery is not likely or even possible in the circumscribed space and foreshortened time frame left to us. If it is of any consolation, we who are about to die have the comfort of knowing that at least we did not "elect" Bush to office. Twice. He stole the election. Twice.
"When we act, we create our own reality...
We're history's actors...and you, all of you,
will be left to just study what we do".
Of course, this generative Reality is not new, it has always been the prerogative and responsibility of Power to work and ravel with "reality". What Rove missed is that Reality is a physical "what" without which his sine is non. Even if Reality is a gerund, it is interactive and reflexive. Reality is not just a plastic fundulum of "meaning different things to different people". Reality is not Rove's dog to hunt, and now it is a chicken coming to the home he ruined to roost. Rove was as wrong as those who claim there is a "Jewish Physics" or an "Oriental medicine". Sorry, it's just Physics, or Medicine, or not. Many have taken Rove's words to be merely hubristic. Actually, they show criminal culpability.
The criminal syndicate running the Whitehouse was right about many things, mostly in an ironic fashion. Our present circumstances--our Reality--IS the result of their actions. They did MAKE history, with remarkable speed and thoroughness: When Bush came into office, the US Government had a budget surplus; now, we are faced with a larger debt than all previous administrations combined. When Bush came into office, Americans could travel virtually all over the globe with a fair degree of respect and admiration; now, we are universally despised, our values viewed as "myths", and we hate ourselves. When Bush came into office, Al Qaeda's bases in Afghanistan had been bombed (while Republican's Senators screamed "wag the dog"!) and Bin Laden went into hiding; now Al Qaeda is an international franchise of forces striking at will throughout the world which has become its training ground and Bin Laden is one of the most popular and recognizable faces on the planet--an almost Christlike figure (for those who can still stomach irony).
Of course there is more. When Bush came into office, the US Constitution was viable and invoked; now it is irrelevant and moot, and made so by our own Supreme Court. Two other great democracies -- England and Israel -- have been pulled down with America by their loyalty. Desperately-needed land reform in Africa and South America has been institutionally delayed. Genocide is practiced with impunity. Drug companies and so-called "insurance" corporations have destroyed the "health care" system so that poor care has become extraordinarily dear. Manufacturing jobs are outsourced to a degree that has become a national security concern (buying tank and aircraft parts from China). The NYSE is itself propelled into a leveraged buy-out boom in which virtually all companies are takeover targets for "flipping" with cash borrowed from lenders freed of any "regulation" or accounting. The lenders themselves extend "creative" credit to "new homeowners" who cannot afford to repay the loans because the average wage is dropping. Corporate CEO's are making stratospheric salaries unrelated to actual "business" or productivity (as those words are commonly understood). Energy and power utilities have been caught pillaging consumers on a scale never before approached. Government power and assets have been put into the hands of people who have no inkling of "public service", but who do have a robust sense of self-interest.
The point is that Rove was right about "making history". We now have a history of self-defeating greed and overreaching from which recovery is not likely or even possible in the circumscribed space and foreshortened time frame left to us. If it is of any consolation, we who are about to die have the comfort of knowing that at least we did not "elect" Bush to office. Twice. He stole the election. Twice.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Remembering the Planning, Forgetting the Gotten
So often I work with detailed and fairly fast-moving plans involving inter-connected pieces. For example, I need to do A which requires B and C and C requires D and E to complete, and now A has been set aside, and now I need to do X Y Z....Meanwhile, I am hanging onto A in my memory, although it was never done, I am remembering my Plan or intention. Soon enough, that "memory" becomes what I remember. At numerous points, then, I can actually "remember" A, although I never did it. Scarey. Meanwhile, my memory of what actually took place, what actually happened while I was making the over-run Plans, starts dimming. Memories fade quite rapidly as new details and observations take up attention. What I actually "got" out of the whole layered process insofar as it is either unintended or simply superceded, then fades. My work is completely over-run: Even I do not recognize the results of what I do.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Gottlieb's TNYer review of the Atheists ascension
Not content with reviewing the most important of the post-911 string of best-selling books written by atheists, Anthony Gottlieb [for the love of God!], has also provided historical perspectives, statistical comparisons, and poll data....I summarize:
Since the World Trade Center was attacked by Islamicists on September 11, 2001, Religion has definitively fallen. Not a single saint or revivalist has arisen, from a single cognizable "Religion", with a single publication. The date is significant, however, for creating a publication outbreak for militant atheists throughout the world which had previously been peculiarly silent -- tolerant to the point of complete deference.
In 2004, THE END OF FAITH, by Sam Harris, was on the Times paperback best-seller list for 33 weeks. Then came BREAKING THE SPELL, by the evolutionist Daniel Dennett, and THE GOD DELUSION, by Richard Dawkins, a biologist and Britain's preeminent science writer. In 2006, Harris again entered the virtually un-opposed list, with his LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION. And this year, the nonpareil columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate, Christopher Hitchens has published GOD IS NOT GREAT. Gottlieb does not expressly mention this, but there is NO OPPOSITION to the "points" submitted by this triumvirate who have disposed of the virtual reality in which Religion flourishes. Of course, the biology and the economics remain intact.
And the statistics are bizarre. A significant survey in pre-911 2001 found that more than half of the Christians belief "that Jesus sinned" -- a rejection of a central dogma of their own churches. Religious polling is now established as completely untrustworthy or verifiable. Sociologists estimate that only half the Americans who report "regular church attendance" actually do so, and belief in God is almost certain to be a small minority the world over. Curiously, even non-Christians in America responded to a Newsweek poll, telling them that "they too, expected Jesus to return", possibly within the next 50 years. In a Gallup Poll, 83% of Americans believe the Bible is the Word of God, but virtually none of them have a clue what the Bible says. Most respondents do not know who preached the Sermon on the Mount, and almost none can state what point Jesus was trying to make in his last public appearance.
Gottlieb however, is able to "balance" this one-sided onslaught with history and biology -- he himself is writing a book on "nothingness". While the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa maintained apartheit, its priests also protected protestors. While Pope Pius XII appeased the Nazis, many clerics (among the Protestants as well) were almost alone in their condemnation of the thuggery which was permitted by the Intelligentsia, the Universities, the Army, the Courts, and the Political Parties. The Communists seemed just as interested in thuggery as the Nazis. In Latin America and Brazil, the "liberation theology" of the Church, has been important in safeguarding qualities which decidedly would have been lost at the hands of "atheist" conquerors and thugs. While not mentioned by Gottlief, the great work of Las Casas, Sor Juana Inez, and Armentin under the Cross of Christ in previous centuries has been the only formidable obstacle to the Sword of Tyranny. Gottlieb points out that "The idea that people would have been nicer to one another if they had never got religion...is a strange position...For if man is wicked enough to have invented religion...[to suppress others] he is surely wicked enough to have found alternative ways of making mischief." [79b]
Gottlieb points out, with no little irony, that Christians started out as the "atheists" on the scene in the early days of the Christian era. The first surviving anti-Christian polemic consisted largely as an attack on their failure to worship the accepted Gods -- referencing Celsus, ON THE TRUE DOCTRINE, 178 A.D.
Celsus proclaimed the contradictions of a "personal God" who is in fact indifferent to the triumph of wickedness over good. He did not even send his Son to help until long after many terrible things had been happening to really good people -- "Did He not care before?" This student of Plato noted that Socrates had already expressed most of the wisdom supposedly drawn from "biblical" sources, long before Christ. And continuously, ever since Celsus, Christian and Islamic mobs have sought out and destroyed tons of wonderful Pagan and secular texts.
Gottlieb reviews the work of Voltaire, one of the "fiercest critics of superstition" who was in fact a man of deep "religious feeling". The satirical tale, CANDIDE, is an attack on the idea that all is for the best in a world watched over by a concerned God -- the work was inspired by the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon which killed some 30,000 "believers" while worshipping in crumbling cathedrals. However, Voltaire was awed by the ordered beauty of the universe which he thought pointed to a supreme designer, as a watch implies a watch-maker.
Gottlieb sums up not only the systematic ideas, but also the careful presentation style, of David Hume. In the 1779 DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION Hume prized apart the analogy between the natural universe and a designed artifact. He argues that if it is necessary to ask Who made the world, it is also necessary to ask Who made the maker. But while undermining the concept of a God, and of zealotry in general, Hume avoided inflammatory statements, never replacing dogma with intolerance.
Why does Religion persist, when the arguments against Belief have been so widely published for so long a time? Hitchens says it is born of Fear. Harris holds that there is a genuine biology in play, although the creeds are meaningless. Dawkins devotes a chapter, and Dennet most of his book, to a functionalist account of Religion. However frayed, the propensity to Belief is "hard-wired".
Of course, if Belief is hard-wired, what about the large number of Non-Believers? Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College in Claremont, reviewed studies of some 50 countries with varying social pressure to believe or not believe, and puts the figure of Non-Believers at more than 500 million. While Non-Belief in a God may constitute the 4rth largest "persuasion" in the world today, it is also necessary to understand that we still may all be "believers". Looking at this landscape historically, and personally, from country to culture, and from ignorant to educated, the following facts remain clear:
(1) God does not exist.
(2) Everyone believes.
Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of suffering fools with "the intolerant zeal" which offended Hume and Gibbon 300 years ago among the Believers or their detractors known as the Philosophes. Now, the dialogue is conducted with bombs. The Improvised Explosive Devices invariably exact "collateral damage" including the loss of life and limb. Many suffer who were otherwise not interested in the conversation. The zeal which offended Hume is armed, and is not content with killing opponents. We are facing a period in which "ludicrous mammals" [Hitchens] prefer to destroy everything rather than build anything. It is not just that the "argument" is over, or that it will no longer take place. People will always argue. This is the subtle part of that "hard-wired" Belief.
The difference today is that the argument will take place in bunkers instead of gardens. Al Quada is not interested in Virgins. The Taliban is not interested in wine, women, and song -- all major constituent elements of a good conversation. The Shia and Sunni warriors are blowing up each other's communities, starting with the some of the most beautiful buildings in the world.
Of course, the Arabs are under pressure. It is demographic. It is a terrible pressure, to be faced with teenagers everywhere, and more coming. In the past, Rome endured it, the Vikings had it, the Huns went through it, and those tragic people trapped on Isla Pascua almost died from it.
Ultimately, the Arabs will reclaim the bedrock of their civilization, which is, of course, the bedrock of ALL civilized people: Wine, Women and Song! As late as 100 years after Mohammed PBUH, the Arabs were still designing the most beautiful stone, ceramics, mozaics, and fountains in the world. We know archeologically, from the evidence of the ceramics, that the Arabs made wine. We know ideologically, from the text, that neither the Bible, nor the Quran, nor any Hindu Gita, teaches anything about race hatred or bombs.
We find only evidence of the people trying to raise their families and educating their children to have a better life, here, now. Civilization has antedotes to chaos, fear, and ignorance.
Since the World Trade Center was attacked by Islamicists on September 11, 2001, Religion has definitively fallen. Not a single saint or revivalist has arisen, from a single cognizable "Religion", with a single publication. The date is significant, however, for creating a publication outbreak for militant atheists throughout the world which had previously been peculiarly silent -- tolerant to the point of complete deference.
In 2004, THE END OF FAITH, by Sam Harris, was on the Times paperback best-seller list for 33 weeks. Then came BREAKING THE SPELL, by the evolutionist Daniel Dennett, and THE GOD DELUSION, by Richard Dawkins, a biologist and Britain's preeminent science writer. In 2006, Harris again entered the virtually un-opposed list, with his LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION. And this year, the nonpareil columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate, Christopher Hitchens has published GOD IS NOT GREAT. Gottlieb does not expressly mention this, but there is NO OPPOSITION to the "points" submitted by this triumvirate who have disposed of the virtual reality in which Religion flourishes. Of course, the biology and the economics remain intact.
And the statistics are bizarre. A significant survey in pre-911 2001 found that more than half of the Christians belief "that Jesus sinned" -- a rejection of a central dogma of their own churches. Religious polling is now established as completely untrustworthy or verifiable. Sociologists estimate that only half the Americans who report "regular church attendance" actually do so, and belief in God is almost certain to be a small minority the world over. Curiously, even non-Christians in America responded to a Newsweek poll, telling them that "they too, expected Jesus to return", possibly within the next 50 years. In a Gallup Poll, 83% of Americans believe the Bible is the Word of God, but virtually none of them have a clue what the Bible says. Most respondents do not know who preached the Sermon on the Mount, and almost none can state what point Jesus was trying to make in his last public appearance.
Gottlieb however, is able to "balance" this one-sided onslaught with history and biology -- he himself is writing a book on "nothingness". While the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa maintained apartheit, its priests also protected protestors. While Pope Pius XII appeased the Nazis, many clerics (among the Protestants as well) were almost alone in their condemnation of the thuggery which was permitted by the Intelligentsia, the Universities, the Army, the Courts, and the Political Parties. The Communists seemed just as interested in thuggery as the Nazis. In Latin America and Brazil, the "liberation theology" of the Church, has been important in safeguarding qualities which decidedly would have been lost at the hands of "atheist" conquerors and thugs. While not mentioned by Gottlief, the great work of Las Casas, Sor Juana Inez, and Armentin under the Cross of Christ in previous centuries has been the only formidable obstacle to the Sword of Tyranny. Gottlieb points out that "The idea that people would have been nicer to one another if they had never got religion...is a strange position...For if man is wicked enough to have invented religion...[to suppress others] he is surely wicked enough to have found alternative ways of making mischief." [79b]
Gottlieb points out, with no little irony, that Christians started out as the "atheists" on the scene in the early days of the Christian era. The first surviving anti-Christian polemic consisted largely as an attack on their failure to worship the accepted Gods -- referencing Celsus, ON THE TRUE DOCTRINE, 178 A.D.
Celsus proclaimed the contradictions of a "personal God" who is in fact indifferent to the triumph of wickedness over good. He did not even send his Son to help until long after many terrible things had been happening to really good people -- "Did He not care before?" This student of Plato noted that Socrates had already expressed most of the wisdom supposedly drawn from "biblical" sources, long before Christ. And continuously, ever since Celsus, Christian and Islamic mobs have sought out and destroyed tons of wonderful Pagan and secular texts.
Gottlieb reviews the work of Voltaire, one of the "fiercest critics of superstition" who was in fact a man of deep "religious feeling". The satirical tale, CANDIDE, is an attack on the idea that all is for the best in a world watched over by a concerned God -- the work was inspired by the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon which killed some 30,000 "believers" while worshipping in crumbling cathedrals. However, Voltaire was awed by the ordered beauty of the universe which he thought pointed to a supreme designer, as a watch implies a watch-maker.
Gottlieb sums up not only the systematic ideas, but also the careful presentation style, of David Hume. In the 1779 DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION Hume prized apart the analogy between the natural universe and a designed artifact. He argues that if it is necessary to ask Who made the world, it is also necessary to ask Who made the maker. But while undermining the concept of a God, and of zealotry in general, Hume avoided inflammatory statements, never replacing dogma with intolerance.
Why does Religion persist, when the arguments against Belief have been so widely published for so long a time? Hitchens says it is born of Fear. Harris holds that there is a genuine biology in play, although the creeds are meaningless. Dawkins devotes a chapter, and Dennet most of his book, to a functionalist account of Religion. However frayed, the propensity to Belief is "hard-wired".
Of course, if Belief is hard-wired, what about the large number of Non-Believers? Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College in Claremont, reviewed studies of some 50 countries with varying social pressure to believe or not believe, and puts the figure of Non-Believers at more than 500 million. While Non-Belief in a God may constitute the 4rth largest "persuasion" in the world today, it is also necessary to understand that we still may all be "believers". Looking at this landscape historically, and personally, from country to culture, and from ignorant to educated, the following facts remain clear:
(1) God does not exist.
(2) Everyone believes.
Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of suffering fools with "the intolerant zeal" which offended Hume and Gibbon 300 years ago among the Believers or their detractors known as the Philosophes. Now, the dialogue is conducted with bombs. The Improvised Explosive Devices invariably exact "collateral damage" including the loss of life and limb. Many suffer who were otherwise not interested in the conversation. The zeal which offended Hume is armed, and is not content with killing opponents. We are facing a period in which "ludicrous mammals" [Hitchens] prefer to destroy everything rather than build anything. It is not just that the "argument" is over, or that it will no longer take place. People will always argue. This is the subtle part of that "hard-wired" Belief.
The difference today is that the argument will take place in bunkers instead of gardens. Al Quada is not interested in Virgins. The Taliban is not interested in wine, women, and song -- all major constituent elements of a good conversation. The Shia and Sunni warriors are blowing up each other's communities, starting with the some of the most beautiful buildings in the world.
Of course, the Arabs are under pressure. It is demographic. It is a terrible pressure, to be faced with teenagers everywhere, and more coming. In the past, Rome endured it, the Vikings had it, the Huns went through it, and those tragic people trapped on Isla Pascua almost died from it.
Ultimately, the Arabs will reclaim the bedrock of their civilization, which is, of course, the bedrock of ALL civilized people: Wine, Women and Song! As late as 100 years after Mohammed PBUH, the Arabs were still designing the most beautiful stone, ceramics, mozaics, and fountains in the world. We know archeologically, from the evidence of the ceramics, that the Arabs made wine. We know ideologically, from the text, that neither the Bible, nor the Quran, nor any Hindu Gita, teaches anything about race hatred or bombs.
We find only evidence of the people trying to raise their families and educating their children to have a better life, here, now. Civilization has antedotes to chaos, fear, and ignorance.
Riparian: "By the shores of Gitche Gumee..."
Looking back on a busy life, one can see that certain heuristic events had great "mileage" or impact. For me, the Song of Hiawatha [Longfellow]has a resonance, a pull upon me, beyond anything that can be explained or reasoned out. A child is open to influences one cannot predict, and which may even be arbitrary or contrary.
BY THE SHORES OF GITCHE GUMMEE,
BY THE SHINING BIG-SEA-WATER,
STOOD THE WIGWAM OF NOKOMIS.
DARK BEHIND IT ROSE THE FOREST,
ROSE THE BLACK AND GLOOMY PINE TREES,
ROSE THE FIRS WITH CONES UPON THEM;
BRIGHT BEFORE IT BEAT THE WATER,
BEAT THE CLEAR AND SUNNY WATER,
BEAT THE SHINING BIG-SEA-WATER.
Of course, we CAN compare and "explain" post factum.
The poem was my first reading primer. And life is
clearly a desertified jungle, famine-flood, and gitche gummee
with beatings. So many gloomy pines later --
"no quiero acordarme" [Cervantes]-- here I am "Nel mezzo del cammin
di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura" [Dante].
BY THE SHORES OF GITCHE GUMMEE,
BY THE SHINING BIG-SEA-WATER,
STOOD THE WIGWAM OF NOKOMIS.
DARK BEHIND IT ROSE THE FOREST,
ROSE THE BLACK AND GLOOMY PINE TREES,
ROSE THE FIRS WITH CONES UPON THEM;
BRIGHT BEFORE IT BEAT THE WATER,
BEAT THE CLEAR AND SUNNY WATER,
BEAT THE SHINING BIG-SEA-WATER.
Of course, we CAN compare and "explain" post factum.
The poem was my first reading primer. And life is
clearly a desertified jungle, famine-flood, and gitche gummee
with beatings. So many gloomy pines later --
"no quiero acordarme" [Cervantes]-- here I am "Nel mezzo del cammin
di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura" [Dante].
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Oloudah Equiano - ex-slave whose autobiography detailed horrors of the "Trade"
First of all, the term "Slave Trade" is not appropriate. Very little "exchange" was involved, on anyone's part. The very core of this criminal enterprise was theft and usurpation.
Secondly, we note that the existence of a "2d class" of humanity was and is impossible to justify, on any cognizable "ground" other than criminality -- to take what can be taken from those unable to prevent the taking.
I was amazed to see the name Oloudah Equiano resurrected in the film, AMAZING GRACE (written by Stephen Knight, directed by Michael Apted 2006). Equiano was one of the "disappeared" -- an accurate and brave historian of the facts, who wrote an autobiography detailing the horrors of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. And then , as was done to Frederick Douglas, and countless others, those who stole the lives of those who were enslaved, very successfully deleted the evidence. Almost. Almost.
Secondly, we note that the existence of a "2d class" of humanity was and is impossible to justify, on any cognizable "ground" other than criminality -- to take what can be taken from those unable to prevent the taking.
I was amazed to see the name Oloudah Equiano resurrected in the film, AMAZING GRACE (written by Stephen Knight, directed by Michael Apted 2006). Equiano was one of the "disappeared" -- an accurate and brave historian of the facts, who wrote an autobiography detailing the horrors of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. And then , as was done to Frederick Douglas, and countless others, those who stole the lives of those who were enslaved, very successfully deleted the evidence. Almost. Almost.
Is there a single Great Movie about our Founders?
There is no question that the Founders of the United States in the late 1700's were a brave and interesting bunch. Americans seem to recognize this fact, and its significance TO THE WORLD, by buying a huge number of books about the Founders. Does it seem odd, at all, that NOT ONE good movie has been made devoted to the achievements and sacrifices of a single one of the Founders? Methinks it would be huge, if only The Business would take the trouble to make it.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Confessions of a Bottom Feeder
Truth to tell, my reputation is bad. For one thing, this sort of "goes with the territory" for attorneys. We are drawn into conflicts where mud is currency. Even the finest characters find themselves covered with splatter, especially those with courage who are not filled with fear for their precious "reputation" as the fur begins to fly. An "attorney" who has never been savaged, never accused of ANYTHING, has probably done very little, or has never represented anyone in any kind of trouble.
Secondly, I have actually TRIED to get into trouble. I was looking for it. Interestingly, I thought lawyers had a sort of public duty to ferret out the wrong-doers. Not content with helping "victims", someone has to actually PURSUE the wrongdoer, make them accountable. Well...that is not going to go down quietly. Wrongdoers do not hesitate, in fact they are the first, to scream accusations. Oh, how "injured" they pretend to be, how the foulers cry "foul", when caught.
Finally, I STARTED my career by offending, entirely inadvertently, Justice Gardiner's highly-developed sense of self-importance. As the incorporator of the first professional "paralegal" organization in Orange County, my name was brought to his attention, and he has punished me ever since. Even now, decades after "paralegals" have become widely-accepted members of the team across every field of law practice, my name was already "associated" with an ancient impropriety -- something unauthorized THEN, albeit acceptable now.
Others are now able to benefit from the development of a more complex, layered, multi-professional practice using "paralegals". But once Justice Gardiner condemned our efforts, my career became a political football, as other judges seeking Gardiner's approval, caught the short-sighted and baseless hysteria.
As President Wilson said, if you want to make powerful enemies, just try making things better.
Hence, to shorten the long story, the reduction of my practice. From work in the office of the counsel to the President of the United States (Kalmbach's librarian when he counseled Nixon in Newport Beach), I am now picking up the cases which are resting on the bottom. And it is a surprisingly rich flow. There is more here, in the darkness, than ever meets the eye....
Secondly, I have actually TRIED to get into trouble. I was looking for it. Interestingly, I thought lawyers had a sort of public duty to ferret out the wrong-doers. Not content with helping "victims", someone has to actually PURSUE the wrongdoer, make them accountable. Well...that is not going to go down quietly. Wrongdoers do not hesitate, in fact they are the first, to scream accusations. Oh, how "injured" they pretend to be, how the foulers cry "foul", when caught.
Finally, I STARTED my career by offending, entirely inadvertently, Justice Gardiner's highly-developed sense of self-importance. As the incorporator of the first professional "paralegal" organization in Orange County, my name was brought to his attention, and he has punished me ever since. Even now, decades after "paralegals" have become widely-accepted members of the team across every field of law practice, my name was already "associated" with an ancient impropriety -- something unauthorized THEN, albeit acceptable now.
Others are now able to benefit from the development of a more complex, layered, multi-professional practice using "paralegals". But once Justice Gardiner condemned our efforts, my career became a political football, as other judges seeking Gardiner's approval, caught the short-sighted and baseless hysteria.
As President Wilson said, if you want to make powerful enemies, just try making things better.
Hence, to shorten the long story, the reduction of my practice. From work in the office of the counsel to the President of the United States (Kalmbach's librarian when he counseled Nixon in Newport Beach), I am now picking up the cases which are resting on the bottom. And it is a surprisingly rich flow. There is more here, in the darkness, than ever meets the eye....
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Theme: To screed or not to screed; why, why not?
TO NOT WRITE:
1. Great Ones do not write
For example, Jesus, Buddha, Socrates.
The more recent religious leaders who
appear to have written certain texts,
actually have an accepted tradition
to the contrary: Mohammad, Smith.
In Mohammad's case, the Quran was
dictated by him to women who could write.
He said he received the revelations
directly from the angel Gabriel.
In the case of Joseph Smith, the
Book of Mormon (1830) was a compilation of
of many ancient prophets, abridged by a
prophet historian named Mormon,
supplemented by his son Moroni (421 AD),
and revealed to Smith through translation
by two stones (the Urim and Thummim).
2. Look at the numbers. Scholars were already
at their limit in Gutenberg's day. Now, with
miles of books/writings pouring in DAILY...it
is obvious there is no great need for more.
Few can apply knowledge; few have ever
been much improved by reading of morals.
The engine of improvement has been compilations
of Science and How To Books. And it's a
bit late in the day to mark your contribution
to this deluge.
3.
TO WRITE:
1. The small and unaccomplished do not write.
As for the Great Ones who supposedly did not
write, SOMEBODY next to the Great Ones,
DID write. And it is implausible, however
it is preached, that "oral" teachings were
somehow memorized, transcribed, or taken down.
The quality of The Written is remarkable and
invariably worthwhile to someone in some function.
2. It is RELATIVELY SAFE to read and write.
As Chesterton put it:
["The Man Who Was Thursday" (7)].
..."Between us, by the peace of God,
Such truth can now be told:
Yes, there is strength in striking root,
And good in growing old.
We have found common things at last,
And marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now,
And you may safely read."
3. It is wildly therapeutic; nonpareiled.
4. Writing, with the benefits of speech, but
inside the alpha recording of a Time-Machine which
allows us to Go Back, reflect; in this sense,
it may even be "progressive", enabling one
to reflect on error and improve.
5. It is certainly collegial. You get a "jury"
of comments, many of which are breath-taking
in their insight.
1. Great Ones do not write
For example, Jesus, Buddha, Socrates.
The more recent religious leaders who
appear to have written certain texts,
actually have an accepted tradition
to the contrary: Mohammad, Smith.
In Mohammad's case, the Quran was
dictated by him to women who could write.
He said he received the revelations
directly from the angel Gabriel.
In the case of Joseph Smith, the
Book of Mormon (1830) was a compilation of
of many ancient prophets, abridged by a
prophet historian named Mormon,
supplemented by his son Moroni (421 AD),
and revealed to Smith through translation
by two stones (the Urim and Thummim).
2. Look at the numbers. Scholars were already
at their limit in Gutenberg's day. Now, with
miles of books/writings pouring in DAILY...it
is obvious there is no great need for more.
Few can apply knowledge; few have ever
been much improved by reading of morals.
The engine of improvement has been compilations
of Science and How To Books. And it's a
bit late in the day to mark your contribution
to this deluge.
3.
TO WRITE:
1. The small and unaccomplished do not write.
As for the Great Ones who supposedly did not
write, SOMEBODY next to the Great Ones,
DID write. And it is implausible, however
it is preached, that "oral" teachings were
somehow memorized, transcribed, or taken down.
The quality of The Written is remarkable and
invariably worthwhile to someone in some function.
2. It is RELATIVELY SAFE to read and write.
As Chesterton put it:
["The Man Who Was Thursday" (7)].
..."Between us, by the peace of God,
Such truth can now be told:
Yes, there is strength in striking root,
And good in growing old.
We have found common things at last,
And marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now,
And you may safely read."
3. It is wildly therapeutic; nonpareiled.
4. Writing, with the benefits of speech, but
inside the alpha recording of a Time-Machine which
allows us to Go Back, reflect; in this sense,
it may even be "progressive", enabling one
to reflect on error and improve.
5. It is certainly collegial. You get a "jury"
of comments, many of which are breath-taking
in their insight.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Hope as a Strategy (when ALL is hopeless)
ceteris paribus - all other things being equal - Pandora's Vox
THE STRATEGIC VALUE OF HOPE
Two aspects of "hope"--confidence in one's ability and the
determination to succeed--are powerful predictors of performance in
teams, but determination may play a more important role in success,
according to University of Arkansas education researcher Kathleen
Collins.
Determination is what motivates individuals to use their abilities and
may be a better predictor of success in team settings than individual
levels of confidence, Collins suggests.
In studies of graduate students working in teams, Collins and her
colleagues found that groups with higher determination scores produced
higher quality work. Groups in which individuals were more varied in
their motivation scores had poorer group performances.
"Hope is not just wishful thinking," says Collins. "When we break hope
into its components and look at the senses of motivation and ability to
reach goals, we can predict how well a group will perform." She
concludes that "hope, academic procrastination, and anxiety are
inextricably intertwined in determining achievement among cooperative
learning groups" and recommends future research focusing on "the role
that these and other personality variables play in the cooperative
learning group process."
SOURCE: University of Arkansas,
http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/10544.htm
THE STRATEGIC VALUE OF HOPE
Two aspects of "hope"--confidence in one's ability and the
determination to succeed--are powerful predictors of performance in
teams, but determination may play a more important role in success,
according to University of Arkansas education researcher Kathleen
Collins.
Determination is what motivates individuals to use their abilities and
may be a better predictor of success in team settings than individual
levels of confidence, Collins suggests.
In studies of graduate students working in teams, Collins and her
colleagues found that groups with higher determination scores produced
higher quality work. Groups in which individuals were more varied in
their motivation scores had poorer group performances.
"Hope is not just wishful thinking," says Collins. "When we break hope
into its components and look at the senses of motivation and ability to
reach goals, we can predict how well a group will perform." She
concludes that "hope, academic procrastination, and anxiety are
inextricably intertwined in determining achievement among cooperative
learning groups" and recommends future research focusing on "the role
that these and other personality variables play in the cooperative
learning group process."
SOURCE: University of Arkansas,
http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/10544.htm
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
We believe things are Better/ Worse than they are
Our ability to see the world and eachother as it is and we are is much impeded by a kind of "accelerator" within our thinking. We hear what we expect, and we expect bad news and hope for recognition for our efforts. This expectation distorts every noise coming in, and that is just the beginning. Our brain processes exigent information first. Crisis comes in with the most "interest" taken. We run with it before we know what "it" is.
The world is not so bad; of course it is worse. People are good; of course, they are divine.
The world is not so bad; of course it is worse. People are good; of course, they are divine.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Library of Congress - the Monster in the Information Room
It was burned twice -- once by the British in 1812, and once by mistake in 1952. The Library of Congress has grown into the largest library in the world, with more than 130 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 58 million manuscripts. This should give anyone who thinks they should write something...at least pauze.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Martin Luther King Jr - the genuine leader
HATE BEGETS HATE
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violaeence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken."
POWER / JUSTICE
"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."
From WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY?" 1967 address.
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violaeence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken."
POWER / JUSTICE
"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."
From WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY?" 1967 address.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Perspectives: GAMBLING
Facts concerning Gambling:
Research shows that if you "play" the games offered in Las Vegas which have the most and best "chance" for winning, and if on those games, you "play" a perfect transaction in which at each "choice-point" you select the alternative which is best for you, over time, you will still lose.
There is only one FORM of gambling in which you have a chance of benefiting: If you open up a gambling casino yourself, and lure the suckers in to just hand over money to you.
In 2007, the major hotel-casinos of Las Vegas posted their highest profit ever -- $2.1 billion, on $5.4 billion gross up from $4.5 billion in 2005, reported by the Gaming Control Board, compiled from 271 resorts.
Research shows that if you "play" the games offered in Las Vegas which have the most and best "chance" for winning, and if on those games, you "play" a perfect transaction in which at each "choice-point" you select the alternative which is best for you, over time, you will still lose.
There is only one FORM of gambling in which you have a chance of benefiting: If you open up a gambling casino yourself, and lure the suckers in to just hand over money to you.
In 2007, the major hotel-casinos of Las Vegas posted their highest profit ever -- $2.1 billion, on $5.4 billion gross up from $4.5 billion in 2005, reported by the Gaming Control Board, compiled from 271 resorts.
Perspective: The Korean Peninsula
Fact/ Trends concerning Korea:
1. The world's largest Shipyard is run by Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, South Korea. New ships, some as large as 15 stories high and 3 football fields in length, can be launched every five days. 44% of the world's largest commercial vessels are built in South Korea.
2. South Korea used to be the "farming" region, compared with the "industrial" North. Now, the South has eclipsed the North in all activities except Fawning Over Great Leader exercises.
3. Immediately after the Korean War (40+ years ago), living standards in South Korea were relatively low, with worker's earning $70/year. South Korea is now the tenth larges economy in the world, with worker's earning $16,000/year.
4. Numerous reports of slave-labor, child-labor, concentration camps, and deliberate starvation of the population have been corroborated by eye-witnesses, aerial photography, and film, concerning North Korea. There are almost no "bird calls" heard in North Korea -- a starving people have eaten all the vermin, insects, and birds.
1. The world's largest Shipyard is run by Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, South Korea. New ships, some as large as 15 stories high and 3 football fields in length, can be launched every five days. 44% of the world's largest commercial vessels are built in South Korea.
2. South Korea used to be the "farming" region, compared with the "industrial" North. Now, the South has eclipsed the North in all activities except Fawning Over Great Leader exercises.
3. Immediately after the Korean War (40+ years ago), living standards in South Korea were relatively low, with worker's earning $70/year. South Korea is now the tenth larges economy in the world, with worker's earning $16,000/year.
4. Numerous reports of slave-labor, child-labor, concentration camps, and deliberate starvation of the population have been corroborated by eye-witnesses, aerial photography, and film, concerning North Korea. There are almost no "bird calls" heard in North Korea -- a starving people have eaten all the vermin, insects, and birds.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Still think George Bush "won" the Presidential Elections?
It is now a documented fact that 100% of the Exit Polls, done by professional pollsters across the political spectrum and including the most extreme of the neo-conservative vote-mongerers, in 2000, and in 2004, came up with "results" which showed that a candidate other than Bush had won the Presidency. (In 2000, it was Gore, in 2004, it was Kerry).
The National Election Pool, which is a consortium of the five broadcase and cable networks with the Associated Press that commissions exist polls, has clearly published the data showing this fact. However, in a remarkable or at least curious inability to draw rational conclusions from this data, the NEP decided that all of the Exit Polling was somehow flawed. So they have studied the "problem" of flawed polling -- claiming that the exit pollsters had trouble getting older people to answer the surveys, or that Democrats are intrinsically more willing to participate in surveys.
In the history of Exit Polling, there are only TWO ELECTIONS which have not been accurately predicted. There are only TWO ELECTIONS in which the results as "counted" were not accurately projected from the data gathered by professional Exit Polling. Exit Polling in US Presidential Elections has not been a haphazard lark performed by amateurs since Jackson.
Why, in the face of a legion of voters who have testified that the voting machines did not respond appropriately, and with technicians logging up failed tests for the voting machines manufactured by Bush patrons, do they presume that the pollsters failed to obtain correct information? The fact that 100% of the Exit Polls had projected a NON-Bush victory, does not point to "a flaw" in the independent pollster methodology. The discrepant results clearly point to the possibility that the machines which created the "winner", are themselves flawed!
This logical conclusion is of course corroborated by the fact that the ACTUAL COUNT of the uncounted ballots in Florida in 2000 (not yet counted by the time that the Republican Registrar of Voters, declared "victory" for George Bush, but thereafter counted under the auspices of the Associated Press with bi-partizan representatives in full control) shows that Gore won the 2000 Presidential Election.
The National Election Pool, which is a consortium of the five broadcase and cable networks with the Associated Press that commissions exist polls, has clearly published the data showing this fact. However, in a remarkable or at least curious inability to draw rational conclusions from this data, the NEP decided that all of the Exit Polling was somehow flawed. So they have studied the "problem" of flawed polling -- claiming that the exit pollsters had trouble getting older people to answer the surveys, or that Democrats are intrinsically more willing to participate in surveys.
In the history of Exit Polling, there are only TWO ELECTIONS which have not been accurately predicted. There are only TWO ELECTIONS in which the results as "counted" were not accurately projected from the data gathered by professional Exit Polling. Exit Polling in US Presidential Elections has not been a haphazard lark performed by amateurs since Jackson.
Why, in the face of a legion of voters who have testified that the voting machines did not respond appropriately, and with technicians logging up failed tests for the voting machines manufactured by Bush patrons, do they presume that the pollsters failed to obtain correct information? The fact that 100% of the Exit Polls had projected a NON-Bush victory, does not point to "a flaw" in the independent pollster methodology. The discrepant results clearly point to the possibility that the machines which created the "winner", are themselves flawed!
This logical conclusion is of course corroborated by the fact that the ACTUAL COUNT of the uncounted ballots in Florida in 2000 (not yet counted by the time that the Republican Registrar of Voters, declared "victory" for George Bush, but thereafter counted under the auspices of the Associated Press with bi-partizan representatives in full control) shows that Gore won the 2000 Presidential Election.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Former NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso, and Greed
The LA Times reported a pleasant congruence of newsworthy events, in its 10/20/2006 Business Section: The Dow Jones closing above 12,000 for the first time, and the release of State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos' ruling that the former New York Stock Exchange Chairman, Richard Grasso, might be forced to return $100 million to the Exchange.
Justice Ramos made a point of basing the restitution order on the fact that Grasso was serving as Chairman, an office with "fiduciary" standards owed to the organization he purported to serve while milking it with a stratospheric "compensation package" in excess of $187.5 million per annum. The Court rejected Grasso's argument that the NYSE board made up of top Wall Street executives was "informed" and approved his pay. Interestingly, Grasso contended that he himself did not know how much he was making, a fact that Justice Ramos labelled shocking: "That a fiduciary of any institution, profit or not-for-profit, could honestly admit that he was unaware of a liability ofo over $100 million...is a clear violation [of fiduciary duties]."
In the May 2004 law suit brought by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Grasso was proved to have stocked the Board with cronies and then misled them about the magnitude of his ballooning pay, including more than $100 million in retirement benefits quietly accrued in his last few years on the "job".
Greed is not necessarily good or bad, and it is not a quality which is going to disappear, not matter how much it is condemned. However, where it is compounded with fraud -- concealments, misdirection, misrepresentation, and violation of fiduciary duties -- the act of benefitting oneself at the expense of others who are in no position to object or even realize what is happening, is simply a form of theft. It is a crime, a wrong, a violation of laws, and a distortion of the "free" market. For a "business" person to indulge in thievery, instead of exchange, is to destroy the market. His act is tantamount to market murder, in that it puts fear into the marketplace, and obstructs the transactions that otherwise would occur, killing them.
Equally shocking, however, is how LITTLE the "sanction" really is, relative to the scale of the offense. As sharply critical as Justice Ramos is of Grasso's testimony, he is still limiting the sanction to restitution. His ruling seems limited to a species of disgorgement. In other words, Grasso (and future Grasso's hiding in other grass) had NO RISK: Either he gets away with stealing, or he is caught and has to give up what he stole. Mere disgorgement is not a disincentive.
Justice Ramos made a point of basing the restitution order on the fact that Grasso was serving as Chairman, an office with "fiduciary" standards owed to the organization he purported to serve while milking it with a stratospheric "compensation package" in excess of $187.5 million per annum. The Court rejected Grasso's argument that the NYSE board made up of top Wall Street executives was "informed" and approved his pay. Interestingly, Grasso contended that he himself did not know how much he was making, a fact that Justice Ramos labelled shocking: "That a fiduciary of any institution, profit or not-for-profit, could honestly admit that he was unaware of a liability ofo over $100 million...is a clear violation [of fiduciary duties]."
In the May 2004 law suit brought by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Grasso was proved to have stocked the Board with cronies and then misled them about the magnitude of his ballooning pay, including more than $100 million in retirement benefits quietly accrued in his last few years on the "job".
Greed is not necessarily good or bad, and it is not a quality which is going to disappear, not matter how much it is condemned. However, where it is compounded with fraud -- concealments, misdirection, misrepresentation, and violation of fiduciary duties -- the act of benefitting oneself at the expense of others who are in no position to object or even realize what is happening, is simply a form of theft. It is a crime, a wrong, a violation of laws, and a distortion of the "free" market. For a "business" person to indulge in thievery, instead of exchange, is to destroy the market. His act is tantamount to market murder, in that it puts fear into the marketplace, and obstructs the transactions that otherwise would occur, killing them.
Equally shocking, however, is how LITTLE the "sanction" really is, relative to the scale of the offense. As sharply critical as Justice Ramos is of Grasso's testimony, he is still limiting the sanction to restitution. His ruling seems limited to a species of disgorgement. In other words, Grasso (and future Grasso's hiding in other grass) had NO RISK: Either he gets away with stealing, or he is caught and has to give up what he stole. Mere disgorgement is not a disincentive.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Tempting Faith - believers are being USED by religious hypocrites; corroboration.
LAT 10132006 A19, Wallsten. "President Bush's top political advisors [Rowe] privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as 'nuts' and 'goofy' while embracing them in public and using their votes to help win elections."
The reviewer, Wallsten, interviewed Paul M. Weyrich, a Bush-conservative, about Kuo's book. The Bush administration denies Kuo's account of the "faith-based" program. Speech-writer Michael Gerson claims it is "laughable", and Jim Towey, another former director of the faith-based program, claims Kuo's description is unrecognizable. However, neither critic denied that politics factored predominantly into the program which has significantly failed to supplant community needs although it hosted numerous "conferences" appealing to pastors prior to elections.
Kuo is a second insider to document the political use of religious conviction by people who are themselves not righteous ones. Kuo's observations now corroborate those of John J. DiIulio Jr, the first director of the "Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives", a uniquely Rowe-based bureaucracy formed when Bush first took office. DiIulio was the first official to resign 7 months after his appointment in the Bush-Rowe-Cheney administration, stating that the White House was run by "Mayberry Machiavellians" who put political ends over everything else.
With this published corroboration by Kuo, who made the same accusation when he resigned from the same program in 2003, it appears that the leadership of our country has been "hijacked" (to use Kuo's term) by a cabal of religious hypocrites. The Christians are being fed to the lions, at their own expense inside the arena, while the lions outside the arena are gathering with impunity. In making this analogy, no disrespect to lions is intended.
The reviewer, Wallsten, interviewed Paul M. Weyrich, a Bush-conservative, about Kuo's book. The Bush administration denies Kuo's account of the "faith-based" program. Speech-writer Michael Gerson claims it is "laughable", and Jim Towey, another former director of the faith-based program, claims Kuo's description is unrecognizable. However, neither critic denied that politics factored predominantly into the program which has significantly failed to supplant community needs although it hosted numerous "conferences" appealing to pastors prior to elections.
Kuo is a second insider to document the political use of religious conviction by people who are themselves not righteous ones. Kuo's observations now corroborate those of John J. DiIulio Jr, the first director of the "Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives", a uniquely Rowe-based bureaucracy formed when Bush first took office. DiIulio was the first official to resign 7 months after his appointment in the Bush-Rowe-Cheney administration, stating that the White House was run by "Mayberry Machiavellians" who put political ends over everything else.
With this published corroboration by Kuo, who made the same accusation when he resigned from the same program in 2003, it appears that the leadership of our country has been "hijacked" (to use Kuo's term) by a cabal of religious hypocrites. The Christians are being fed to the lions, at their own expense inside the arena, while the lions outside the arena are gathering with impunity. In making this analogy, no disrespect to lions is intended.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
The President Impeaches Himself
Columnist Al Martinez, LATimes 9/28/2006, referring to a story by Paul Richter concerning the growing alliances of people who now hate Americans:
"Richter's piece was the first time I had seen a story that laid out so clearly the predicament our cowboy leader has gotten us into. We can demand impeachment for a president's embarassing sexual dalliances but not for a president who has dragged a once respected nation into the slime. No one died when Bill Clinton reached out for Monica Lewinsky. Many have since George W. Bush reached out for Iraq."
"Richter's piece was the first time I had seen a story that laid out so clearly the predicament our cowboy leader has gotten us into. We can demand impeachment for a president's embarassing sexual dalliances but not for a president who has dragged a once respected nation into the slime. No one died when Bill Clinton reached out for Monica Lewinsky. Many have since George W. Bush reached out for Iraq."
PRJ: Insitutionalized Fraud
Washington-based SoundExchange released a list of 9000 recording artists which it claimed it was unable to locate in order to distribute $500,000 worth of "royalties". SoundExchange was creating by the recording industry to collect and distribute royalties. They could not find Rapper Mos Def, producer T-Bone Burnett, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
The artists forfeit the money to SoundExchange if not claimed.
The artists forfeit the money to SoundExchange if not claimed.
Filmed! "King Leopold's Ghost", based on the Adam Hochschild book.
In less than 10 years since 1998, an estimated 3.9 million Congolese have died in armed conflicts. This is but the latest link in the bloody chain going back to Belgium and that peculiar "king" so carefuly described by Adam Hochschild.
Leopold killed an estimated 10 million. In the 150 years since, has anyone been able to recover? Viciousness creates such a closed circle.
Congo is now gearing up for a final round of elections -- the first in 40 years. Will the people flourish? In one of the most beautiful and naturally endowed regions of our planet?
Leopold killed an estimated 10 million. In the 150 years since, has anyone been able to recover? Viciousness creates such a closed circle.
Congo is now gearing up for a final round of elections -- the first in 40 years. Will the people flourish? In one of the most beautiful and naturally endowed regions of our planet?
Moazzam Begg, a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay
The LATimes 9/29/2006 printed an article by MB who was apparently taken prisoner in January 2002 by abduction from his home in Islamabad, Pakistan. He had fled Kabul, Afghanistan where he had "helped" establish a girl's school and dig water wells. Held captive for 3 years.
The use of "Guantanamo" by this Administration to avoid the Constitution fools no one. And what is the point? How can we claim to be fighting FOR the Constitution when in fact we are ignoring it?
The use of "Guantanamo" by this Administration to avoid the Constitution fools no one. And what is the point? How can we claim to be fighting FOR the Constitution when in fact we are ignoring it?
Stateswoman Ayaan Hirsi Ali
My hat, all my hair, everything...is off to people who speak truth to fanaticism. Anybody can bad-mouth the President. But to take on the Mafioso, or the Pharisees, or to speak out against the subjugation of women, the cruelty of religious "law", and the intolerant "religions", takes even more courage, of a purer form.
The nomination of Ayaan Ali by Victor Davis Hanson for a Nobel Peace Prize is not only appropriate, but it elevates Hanson as well. He is a senior fellow and professor of military history, at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
The nomination of Ayaan Ali by Victor Davis Hanson for a Nobel Peace Prize is not only appropriate, but it elevates Hanson as well. He is a senior fellow and professor of military history, at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Asbestos, the "miracle mineral"
Silvery malleable but crisp, incredibly "useful". You could add it to almost any other material to make them stronger and more heat resistant. Long term exposure to asbestos is known to cause some terrible diseases, even in extremely small amounts. But not until the 1970's did we stop adding it to everything we could, even clothing, utensils, bedding. The last US asbestos mine closed (pause) in 2002.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Ants / myrmex - the Argentine ants as a supercolony
Of course I study ants. "Look to the Ant" is still a great admonition, and it still invokes many of the great Myths of our BELIEFS -- since almost everything everyone believes about ants is wrong. And since its arrival around 1891 in New Orleans, possibly aboard a coffee shipment from South America, the Argentine ant has been savaging the entire northern hemisphere. They are now the most common arthropod in California.
I was amazed to discover a laboratory right here at UCI devoted to the distillation of scents the ants use to communicate. The idea, I guess, is to try to convince them that they are not all members of one massive tribe. If they would feud amongst themselves like their South American cousins, perhaps the civil unrest in their colonies would allow natives to recover and flourish. On the other hand, aren't the fire ants already here as well? Given that choice, can't we suffer the Argentines?
I was amazed to discover a laboratory right here at UCI devoted to the distillation of scents the ants use to communicate. The idea, I guess, is to try to convince them that they are not all members of one massive tribe. If they would feud amongst themselves like their South American cousins, perhaps the civil unrest in their colonies would allow natives to recover and flourish. On the other hand, aren't the fire ants already here as well? Given that choice, can't we suffer the Argentines?
Obituary: Oriana Fallaci (Age 77, 2006)
Makes one proud to be a human being, to see the courage of a questioner, a person who managed to rise above the burdens of celebrity while sharpening its cutting edge. She was both fearless and glamorous. Today, we note that she was almost alone in identifying religious fanaticism for what it is -- dangerous, intolerant, and intolerable.
Oriana was born in Florence (Tuscany), raised by a family of anti-fascists, and after a career of interviewing dicators and publishing books which are landmarks of historicism (for example, Interview with History 1976) against abuses of power, she moved to NY for a provocative retirement.
A few specific watershed achievements:
* Fought with the Justice & Liberty resistance, helping guide Allied soldiers escapes during WWII, while she was a teenager (eldest of 3 daughters of Edoardo).
* She practically invented an unsettling biographical interview style, usually taking people surrounded by sycophants by surprise. Kissinger wrote that his interview with her was his single most disastrous conversation with a member of the press.
* She was shot while covering a student revolt in Mexico City.
* She used journalism to confront abuses of power she felt were inevitable, even within journalism. "For this reason I like journalism. For this reason I fear journalism."
* She understood that often those in power simply do not deserve to be there.
* 9/11 jerked her out of retirement, although she was suffering from cancer. She saw Islam as the successor (from their own text, their own writings) of Nazi fascism. She described the dynamics of the suicide population bomber -- keeping women in the kitchen concentration camp having babies for Islam while European intelligentsia accommodate the mullahs claim that the chador is for "modesty".
* In her interview with Pope John Paul II, she acknowledged her own atheism, and asked the holy father "Is it true you apologized to the sons of Allah to forgive the Crusades? But...did they ever apologize to you?" for seizing the Holy Sepulcher.
* In The Force of Reason (2004), she described the colonization of Europe by Islamicists bent on the destruction of Western values. An Italian judge ordered her to stand trial on charges of insulting a religion. The trial was aborted by her death, and her books are now best-sellers.
* She never married, but she was an unapologetic enthusiast for love.
* She never had children, but she was devoted to those who choose life over death and annihilation.
Oriana was born in Florence (Tuscany), raised by a family of anti-fascists, and after a career of interviewing dicators and publishing books which are landmarks of historicism (for example, Interview with History 1976) against abuses of power, she moved to NY for a provocative retirement.
A few specific watershed achievements:
* Fought with the Justice & Liberty resistance, helping guide Allied soldiers escapes during WWII, while she was a teenager (eldest of 3 daughters of Edoardo).
* She practically invented an unsettling biographical interview style, usually taking people surrounded by sycophants by surprise. Kissinger wrote that his interview with her was his single most disastrous conversation with a member of the press.
* She was shot while covering a student revolt in Mexico City.
* She used journalism to confront abuses of power she felt were inevitable, even within journalism. "For this reason I like journalism. For this reason I fear journalism."
* She understood that often those in power simply do not deserve to be there.
* 9/11 jerked her out of retirement, although she was suffering from cancer. She saw Islam as the successor (from their own text, their own writings) of Nazi fascism. She described the dynamics of the suicide population bomber -- keeping women in the kitchen concentration camp having babies for Islam while European intelligentsia accommodate the mullahs claim that the chador is for "modesty".
* In her interview with Pope John Paul II, she acknowledged her own atheism, and asked the holy father "Is it true you apologized to the sons of Allah to forgive the Crusades? But...did they ever apologize to you?" for seizing the Holy Sepulcher.
* In The Force of Reason (2004), she described the colonization of Europe by Islamicists bent on the destruction of Western values. An Italian judge ordered her to stand trial on charges of insulting a religion. The trial was aborted by her death, and her books are now best-sellers.
* She never married, but she was an unapologetic enthusiast for love.
* She never had children, but she was devoted to those who choose life over death and annihilation.
NEW EVANGELS, FASTEST GROWING RELIGION
Unitarian Universalists, the vastest growing religious group.
There are always two dynamics in play: The force of division, and the tendency to merge. The blue-state bible-belt which we saw exploited so relentlessly in the last political epoch is now dividing. The old familiars -- Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and Richard Land -- are giving way to the fresh charisma of the new guard -- Rick Warren, Richard Cizik, and Ted Haggard. New talking heads of the Church victorious. Even inside the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest Protestant denomination), we see the platform of Frank Page moving the discourse from the cognitive dissonance of anti-abortion pro-death penalty, anti-gay pro-marriage obsessions, to the more topical and urgent and "get real" messages, such as social justice, globalization, and stewardship of natural resources.
In the larger world, forces of Unity are clearly at work in the Church Ascendant. The fastest growing congregations in the world among all religious communities based on "choice" (not merely the number of births in countries with State religions), are the Unitarian Universalist. Maybe most people who have the "choice" of beliefs, who understand who they are as human beings, maybe everyone, is a closet Unitarian.
There are always two dynamics in play: The force of division, and the tendency to merge. The blue-state bible-belt which we saw exploited so relentlessly in the last political epoch is now dividing. The old familiars -- Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and Richard Land -- are giving way to the fresh charisma of the new guard -- Rick Warren, Richard Cizik, and Ted Haggard. New talking heads of the Church victorious. Even inside the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest Protestant denomination), we see the platform of Frank Page moving the discourse from the cognitive dissonance of anti-abortion pro-death penalty, anti-gay pro-marriage obsessions, to the more topical and urgent and "get real" messages, such as social justice, globalization, and stewardship of natural resources.
In the larger world, forces of Unity are clearly at work in the Church Ascendant. The fastest growing congregations in the world among all religious communities based on "choice" (not merely the number of births in countries with State religions), are the Unitarian Universalist. Maybe most people who have the "choice" of beliefs, who understand who they are as human beings, maybe everyone, is a closet Unitarian.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Karl Rowe is a terrorist and we offer "therapy"....
Rosa Brooks wrote a brilliant review of three books by four distinguished authorities in our society who have addressed the 9/11 attacks. Brooks is counsel to the Open Society Institute and a law professor at Georgetown University, as well as a columnist.
In June 2000, Karl Rove came up with this sound-bite: "Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said 'We will defeat our enemies'. Liberals saw what happened to us and said 'we must understand our enemies'."
Brooks is heartsick. Despite the five years that have passed since 9/11, "we're nowhere near defeating our enemies -- in large part because we've never made the slightest effort to understand them." Brooks is too willing to think Rove/Bush/Cheney have simply erred, or that they lack understanding. Big oops. No, Ms. Rosa, the cabal KNOWS what they are doing. They are billionaires now. They never tried to defeat our enemies. They ARE our enemies.
Brooks summarizes three seminal documentations:
(1) Louise Richardson, is a Harvard Dean, who was raised Catholic in northern Ireland during bad times. In WHAT TERRORISTS WANT, she distills decades of research on terrorist movements and concludes that the Bush/Cheney policy is fatally flawed. Although terrorists are filled with invective and hatred, they are not "insane". Most terrorists believe themselves to be altruistic and noble, Davids fighting Goliaths, to reference an ancient Semitic standard. The rhetoric of "evil" and the war in Iraq coupled with genuine abuses of prisoners are tactics that backfire, not only giving Osama bin Laden more recruits, but legitimacy in the "complicit communities" required to sustain them. This point is obvious, but our administration is oblivious.
(2) Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton are two members of the 9/11 Commission who are genuine leaders. {I hope the members of the Commission find their way into public office to replace the scoundrels who have stolen our elections.} In WITHOUT PRECEDENT the Commission documents, blow by blow, how the Bush administration blocked the Commission at virtually every step. At the end of the struggle to identify the facts of why we were attacked, they were forced to ask themselves why "nobody within the government had not already done so".
The Bush adminstration thwarted all efforts, even natural ones, to understand what is needed to enhance our security.
(3) Richard Posner is an appellate judge. NOT A SUICIDE PACT is his review of Constitutional norms and he analyzes the degree to which fears about terrorism should trump civil liberties. Both his historical assessments and his legal theories are provocative, and he does not address the specific threats of "terrorism", speaking broadly of "threats" and "emergencies". He acknowledges not knowing much about the terrorists we face, and has no strategy for defeating them -- an inexcusable gap of information by an author on this subject. He has an academic grasp of the Bill of Rights, but seems to believe that torture may occasionally be useful, and he favors restrictions on individual rights during emergencies without grasping the fact that ultimately this leads to abuses of power which is what our Founders, facing terrorism and instabilities more serious than ours, seemed more anxious to restrain.
Rosa Brooks' review of these three books written by mainstream authorities with legacy research was printed 9/10/2006, LA Times Book Review, R5. I wept. We are facing the loss of all we hold dear, and people of understanding seem to know why: our government has been taken over by a cabal interested in restricting our civil rights, expanding their powers, and in the name of a "war" against impoverished people and the minions of oil billionaires abroad, our own leaders are plundering our treasury.
Is it just the money? I weep for the failure to understand our enemies, foreign and domestic. Our foreign enemies are billionaires -- their soldiers are simply desparate minions. Our domestic enemies are billionaires -- their soldiers are...well, us. Our billionaires seem to be rushing to their own aid.
In June 2000, Karl Rove came up with this sound-bite: "Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said 'We will defeat our enemies'. Liberals saw what happened to us and said 'we must understand our enemies'."
Brooks is heartsick. Despite the five years that have passed since 9/11, "we're nowhere near defeating our enemies -- in large part because we've never made the slightest effort to understand them." Brooks is too willing to think Rove/Bush/Cheney have simply erred, or that they lack understanding. Big oops. No, Ms. Rosa, the cabal KNOWS what they are doing. They are billionaires now. They never tried to defeat our enemies. They ARE our enemies.
Brooks summarizes three seminal documentations:
(1) Louise Richardson, is a Harvard Dean, who was raised Catholic in northern Ireland during bad times. In WHAT TERRORISTS WANT, she distills decades of research on terrorist movements and concludes that the Bush/Cheney policy is fatally flawed. Although terrorists are filled with invective and hatred, they are not "insane". Most terrorists believe themselves to be altruistic and noble, Davids fighting Goliaths, to reference an ancient Semitic standard. The rhetoric of "evil" and the war in Iraq coupled with genuine abuses of prisoners are tactics that backfire, not only giving Osama bin Laden more recruits, but legitimacy in the "complicit communities" required to sustain them. This point is obvious, but our administration is oblivious.
(2) Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton are two members of the 9/11 Commission who are genuine leaders. {I hope the members of the Commission find their way into public office to replace the scoundrels who have stolen our elections.} In WITHOUT PRECEDENT the Commission documents, blow by blow, how the Bush administration blocked the Commission at virtually every step. At the end of the struggle to identify the facts of why we were attacked, they were forced to ask themselves why "nobody within the government had not already done so".
The Bush adminstration thwarted all efforts, even natural ones, to understand what is needed to enhance our security.
(3) Richard Posner is an appellate judge. NOT A SUICIDE PACT is his review of Constitutional norms and he analyzes the degree to which fears about terrorism should trump civil liberties. Both his historical assessments and his legal theories are provocative, and he does not address the specific threats of "terrorism", speaking broadly of "threats" and "emergencies". He acknowledges not knowing much about the terrorists we face, and has no strategy for defeating them -- an inexcusable gap of information by an author on this subject. He has an academic grasp of the Bill of Rights, but seems to believe that torture may occasionally be useful, and he favors restrictions on individual rights during emergencies without grasping the fact that ultimately this leads to abuses of power which is what our Founders, facing terrorism and instabilities more serious than ours, seemed more anxious to restrain.
Rosa Brooks' review of these three books written by mainstream authorities with legacy research was printed 9/10/2006, LA Times Book Review, R5. I wept. We are facing the loss of all we hold dear, and people of understanding seem to know why: our government has been taken over by a cabal interested in restricting our civil rights, expanding their powers, and in the name of a "war" against impoverished people and the minions of oil billionaires abroad, our own leaders are plundering our treasury.
Is it just the money? I weep for the failure to understand our enemies, foreign and domestic. Our foreign enemies are billionaires -- their soldiers are simply desparate minions. Our domestic enemies are billionaires -- their soldiers are...well, us. Our billionaires seem to be rushing to their own aid.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
PRAYER
1. Vicarious Prayer. When a Priest prayers FOR you, is it YOUR prayer? "Come let US pray" and then he or she does it all. Is that a way to talk to God? Or is he or she just talking to us?
2. Prayer en masse. A large number of people pray together. Usually "led" in prayer by a Holy Person, is this the path to God? To be on a Prayer Network with 3 million people...is this linked to God? Who is communicating? Who decides?
3. Has God ever answered Prayer?
4. Richard Peace, professor of a spiritual formation at FTS (Fuller Theological Seminary) explained nicely why we pray: "We pray because we realize that, at the core of who we are, we are incomplete. We have been created to be in touch not only with the natural, but with the supernatural. There is that longing for the divine."
That "longing for the divine". This is biodynamic. It is no mystery, it is no mere matter of "belief". It is the meat of our matter, it is our Who-ness. We pray because we realize things, and these realizations fill us with need: The vaccuum created by the inchoate consciousness of consciousness.
We long for the divine because we imagine it, and as we "see" it clothed in our own cravings, our need begins to keen. Whether gods exists or not, our need exists. Even the desire to have no desires, is a desire. What is "in touch", needs to be "in touch". Of course, there is no touch. No thing touches any thing.
5. So, prayer is IN. Prayer is the organizer, the mission statement, the operating instructions. A covenant of the spirit can be made, and perhaps should be.
6. THIS CHANGES THE ROOM: The invocutor bows his head and speaks: "Lord [Father, Vishnu, Allah, Hananim aboji, Chakami] pour out your spirit upon this place, and make it holy. Make us care for one another, and make us feel safe." Talking to US.
7. In Korea-town, Los Angeles, 500 people fill the pews of the Oriental Mission Church on Western Avenue, at 5:00 a.m. every morning.
8. John Robb, chairman of the International Prayer Council [sic], a global prayer network set up on the Net, says that he worked in 120 countries.
9. The Presidential Prayer Team, based in Phoenix, claims 3 million participants in the United States, praying daily for President Bush. This really is "proof" of something.
10. Make everything a prayer. All thoughts must be holy. Surely the extremes of righteousness are no vice. (!) Hmmm. So this is the problem. Somebody must be praying for the wrong things....and THEIR prayers are being answered. (!)
2. Prayer en masse. A large number of people pray together. Usually "led" in prayer by a Holy Person, is this the path to God? To be on a Prayer Network with 3 million people...is this linked to God? Who is communicating? Who decides?
3. Has God ever answered Prayer?
4. Richard Peace, professor of a spiritual formation at FTS (Fuller Theological Seminary) explained nicely why we pray: "We pray because we realize that, at the core of who we are, we are incomplete. We have been created to be in touch not only with the natural, but with the supernatural. There is that longing for the divine."
That "longing for the divine". This is biodynamic. It is no mystery, it is no mere matter of "belief". It is the meat of our matter, it is our Who-ness. We pray because we realize things, and these realizations fill us with need: The vaccuum created by the inchoate consciousness of consciousness.
We long for the divine because we imagine it, and as we "see" it clothed in our own cravings, our need begins to keen. Whether gods exists or not, our need exists. Even the desire to have no desires, is a desire. What is "in touch", needs to be "in touch". Of course, there is no touch. No thing touches any thing.
5. So, prayer is IN. Prayer is the organizer, the mission statement, the operating instructions. A covenant of the spirit can be made, and perhaps should be.
6. THIS CHANGES THE ROOM: The invocutor bows his head and speaks: "Lord [Father, Vishnu, Allah, Hananim aboji, Chakami] pour out your spirit upon this place, and make it holy. Make us care for one another, and make us feel safe." Talking to US.
7. In Korea-town, Los Angeles, 500 people fill the pews of the Oriental Mission Church on Western Avenue, at 5:00 a.m. every morning.
8. John Robb, chairman of the International Prayer Council [sic], a global prayer network set up on the Net, says that he worked in 120 countries.
9. The Presidential Prayer Team, based in Phoenix, claims 3 million participants in the United States, praying daily for President Bush. This really is "proof" of something.
10. Make everything a prayer. All thoughts must be holy. Surely the extremes of righteousness are no vice. (!) Hmmm. So this is the problem. Somebody must be praying for the wrong things....and THEIR prayers are being answered. (!)
"The Path to 9/11" ABC miniseries - political fiction
On the eve of the 2006 elections, the pillaging faction has unleashed a pretty darn effective tool for bringing in the votes: A surprisingly large-scale and nicely protracted projection of narrative designed to penetrate and preempt our collective "story" of September 11, 2001.
Curiously, Walt Disney Co's ABC, which breached its distribution contracts pertinent to Michael Moore's documentary FAHRENHEIT 9/11 on the eve of the 2004 election, is now actively pre-promoting and marketing, a "drama" about 9/11. Compare, Disney's deliberate effort to delay Moore from showing FAHRENHEIT until after the election, and but for Moore's extraordinary personal initiative would have succeeded. In FAHRENHEIT, President Bush was accurately depicted. He himself said and did the things he was shown to have done. By contrast, Disney is now "dramatizing" what Clinton, Madeline Albright, Sandy Berger, and other Democrats did. The "drama" is inaccurate, and Albright claims it is defamatory. (Always promising to civil litigators.) Reputation is the most valuable asset anyone has....
Twelve years after the Republican Party took control of the Federal Legislature, and a full six years after Bill Clinton was replaced by an ideological Executive cabal, the pillaging faction is blaming Clinton and the Democratic Party for its problems. This is scape-goating, pure and simple. Clinton is the Pillagers' Jew. We are all Jews now.
Curiously, Walt Disney Co's ABC, which breached its distribution contracts pertinent to Michael Moore's documentary FAHRENHEIT 9/11 on the eve of the 2004 election, is now actively pre-promoting and marketing, a "drama" about 9/11. Compare, Disney's deliberate effort to delay Moore from showing FAHRENHEIT until after the election, and but for Moore's extraordinary personal initiative would have succeeded. In FAHRENHEIT, President Bush was accurately depicted. He himself said and did the things he was shown to have done. By contrast, Disney is now "dramatizing" what Clinton, Madeline Albright, Sandy Berger, and other Democrats did. The "drama" is inaccurate, and Albright claims it is defamatory. (Always promising to civil litigators.) Reputation is the most valuable asset anyone has....
Twelve years after the Republican Party took control of the Federal Legislature, and a full six years after Bill Clinton was replaced by an ideological Executive cabal, the pillaging faction is blaming Clinton and the Democratic Party for its problems. This is scape-goating, pure and simple. Clinton is the Pillagers' Jew. We are all Jews now.
What State is Legitimate: Israel or Jordan? United States?
Among the unreconstructed physiocrats, we ask What Gives the State Legitimacy? L'Etat ce moi without the Sun King. Should "the problem" of Israel be resolved, like "the problem" of Jews? Many have tried this -- solve the real problems by creating a scapegoat which can be, successfully, bullied. Of course, a light scan of history will reveal that the scapegoat technique is at best a temporary patch. Real problems will not be solved by scapegoating, by blaming a minority group, by stealing from the weak, or...by destroying Israel. There is no Arab problem which can be solved by destroying Israel or Jews.
And yet, this idea that Israel is "a problem", continues to be a popular invocation in virtually all "Islamic" textbooks, mosques, newspapers, and websites pronouncing Arab interests. It is an "anti-semitic" perspective from the other great Semitic group.
In the previous generation, Jews who came to America changed their tribal names to try to avoid the prejudice against them in virtually all private clubs and societies. For example, I just read the obituary of Gerald "Condon", the lawyer who wrote the leading estate planning practice book that we use in California. I discovered that his family arrived from Wales, where they were not so troubled to bear the name "Cohen" for generations. But when they came to Santa Monica, the family changed its name because of the prejudice against Jews.
Now Dr. Maher Hathout, the 70 year old chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California, has been nominated by Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, to receive a "prestigious" human rights award -- from the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission. (Commissioner Donna Bojarsky.) Hathout is a man "on record" claiming to be proud of his opinions and entitlements. His opinions include referring to Hamas and Hezbollah as freedom fighters, and Israel as an "illegal apartheit entity".
Curiously, Al-Marayati claimed that Supervisors Antonovich and Yarolslavsky supported the nomination, although both supervisors denied making the endorsements.
Is Hathout entitled to his "opinions"? Of course. Is it possible to disagree with his opinions? Not really. It is impossible to oppose racism in any effective way. Extremist opinions cannot be "opposed" without growing them on both sides. Tolerance insures more of them; opposition strengthens them, and drives them to make scapegoats. Here it is again. The scapegoat. Just scratch the surface, and there it is. Right here.
How do you deal with a person who "solves" his own problems by blaming others? How do you deal with a tribe that has only learned that it must hate its cousins? Is there enough Science to do this job? Is the First Amendment enough of a solution?
Neither Science nor a First Amendment was much help to the family of Gerald Condon. They changed their name because of people who hated their tribe, blamed their tribe for everything. And the hatred is still right here. How can we free people from oppression, so that they can lead the productive lives they really want to live?
The State of Israel is more legitimate, using any historical criterion, even using the Quoranic criterian of "conquest", than the "United States", which is now run by a President who stole two elections. Our Founders warned us about the power of factions, and the loss of liberty which will result when the "checks and balances" are compromised by a takeover by One Party.
The legitimacy of all States is at issue. The "entitlement" of anyone to a racist "opinion" is not at issue: It is scientific falsity and the basis for an action sounding in a species of fraud.
And yet, this idea that Israel is "a problem", continues to be a popular invocation in virtually all "Islamic" textbooks, mosques, newspapers, and websites pronouncing Arab interests. It is an "anti-semitic" perspective from the other great Semitic group.
In the previous generation, Jews who came to America changed their tribal names to try to avoid the prejudice against them in virtually all private clubs and societies. For example, I just read the obituary of Gerald "Condon", the lawyer who wrote the leading estate planning practice book that we use in California. I discovered that his family arrived from Wales, where they were not so troubled to bear the name "Cohen" for generations. But when they came to Santa Monica, the family changed its name because of the prejudice against Jews.
Now Dr. Maher Hathout, the 70 year old chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California, has been nominated by Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, to receive a "prestigious" human rights award -- from the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission. (Commissioner Donna Bojarsky.) Hathout is a man "on record" claiming to be proud of his opinions and entitlements. His opinions include referring to Hamas and Hezbollah as freedom fighters, and Israel as an "illegal apartheit entity".
Curiously, Al-Marayati claimed that Supervisors Antonovich and Yarolslavsky supported the nomination, although both supervisors denied making the endorsements.
Is Hathout entitled to his "opinions"? Of course. Is it possible to disagree with his opinions? Not really. It is impossible to oppose racism in any effective way. Extremist opinions cannot be "opposed" without growing them on both sides. Tolerance insures more of them; opposition strengthens them, and drives them to make scapegoats. Here it is again. The scapegoat. Just scratch the surface, and there it is. Right here.
How do you deal with a person who "solves" his own problems by blaming others? How do you deal with a tribe that has only learned that it must hate its cousins? Is there enough Science to do this job? Is the First Amendment enough of a solution?
Neither Science nor a First Amendment was much help to the family of Gerald Condon. They changed their name because of people who hated their tribe, blamed their tribe for everything. And the hatred is still right here. How can we free people from oppression, so that they can lead the productive lives they really want to live?
The State of Israel is more legitimate, using any historical criterion, even using the Quoranic criterian of "conquest", than the "United States", which is now run by a President who stole two elections. Our Founders warned us about the power of factions, and the loss of liberty which will result when the "checks and balances" are compromised by a takeover by One Party.
The legitimacy of all States is at issue. The "entitlement" of anyone to a racist "opinion" is not at issue: It is scientific falsity and the basis for an action sounding in a species of fraud.
Martin Luther rose up against the Holy Roman Empire
95 Accusations in Wittenberg, perhaps invoking the 30 year War, but only AFTER the death of Luther. Somehow, while he was living, Luther kept the swords sheathed. He sought to reform, not kill.
We must do the same. Do not kill anyone, do not destroy the evidence which condemns them, their own lives. The policies, and the illicit profits, of Bush, Cheney, and Rove must be revealed, shown to be unlawful, and disgorged. All the "95 accusations", the facts must be posted on the door of every church. The hypocritical ruinous depredations of the Bush-Cheney-Rove cabal must stop.
We know that the falsities dispensed by Rove in his "72 hour squads" (operating just before the elections) are what brought the tainted "victories" to his candidates -- defeating the righteous. These falsities must become "accusations" against the perpetrators (traitors). Each lie is an Impeachment article, an indictment.
We must do the same. Do not kill anyone, do not destroy the evidence which condemns them, their own lives. The policies, and the illicit profits, of Bush, Cheney, and Rove must be revealed, shown to be unlawful, and disgorged. All the "95 accusations", the facts must be posted on the door of every church. The hypocritical ruinous depredations of the Bush-Cheney-Rove cabal must stop.
We know that the falsities dispensed by Rove in his "72 hour squads" (operating just before the elections) are what brought the tainted "victories" to his candidates -- defeating the righteous. These falsities must become "accusations" against the perpetrators (traitors). Each lie is an Impeachment article, an indictment.
One RICH MAN pays his taxes...Walter Anderson pleads guilty to $365 million tax evasion
Bloomberg News report: Walter Anderson, the 52 year old who tried to merge Mid-Atlantic Telecomm without triggering taxes, pleads guilty to TWO COUNTS of federal tax evasion, in what the prosecutors describe as the "largest personal tax evasion case in US History". Interestingly, Anderson hired numerous lawyers who enabled and participated in his evasion using off-shore "businesses", and litigated his defenses for years.
It is not coincidence that we witness corporate CEO's in unprecedented numbers perpetrating frauds, at the expense of our country, which is AT WAR. We are harmed more by the CEO culture we harbor domestically, than by the "foreigners" who hate us. For example, the Bolivians, Bopal-ians, and Islamicists may be hostile to Americans, but are the CEO's not "responsible" by their activities for this "foreign" hostility?
And we see also that these same pirates have hijacked our own institutions as well -- we are attacked by the Islamicists, but we are impoverished by our own CEOs.
Frankly, the Arab warrior is a far braver and more honest than the Anderson "executive".
It is not coincidence that we witness corporate CEO's in unprecedented numbers perpetrating frauds, at the expense of our country, which is AT WAR. We are harmed more by the CEO culture we harbor domestically, than by the "foreigners" who hate us. For example, the Bolivians, Bopal-ians, and Islamicists may be hostile to Americans, but are the CEO's not "responsible" by their activities for this "foreign" hostility?
And we see also that these same pirates have hijacked our own institutions as well -- we are attacked by the Islamicists, but we are impoverished by our own CEOs.
Frankly, the Arab warrior is a far braver and more honest than the Anderson "executive".
"Communist" Care...for the Rich
Nell Minnow, editor of Corporate Library (a shareholder rights advocate) gives an "F" rating to the publicly-traded NEWS CORP in which Rupert Murdock owns a 31.2% stake. She points out that "the people in the world best able to afford their luxury homes are the ones who don't have to pay for them." The "corporate state" subsidizes the rich.
This week NEWS CORP disclosed in an SEC filing that it paid $4.5 million in salary, and $21.2 million in bonuses. ON TOP OF THAT, it provides Murdock with a $50,500 per month housing/utilities "perk" -- another $606,000 value. According to Andrew Butcher, the NEWS CORP spokesman, this housing allowance is "for the convenience of the company" for Murdock to have a NY luxury apartment.
Clearly, "the Board" is not making decisions that could be justified by the Business Judgment Rule. The payment of a personal, and wildly excessive, expense of a highly paid executive who does not even live in NY, is inappropriate for a publicly-traded company. What is being traded is the gullibility of investors: I checked the paper -- NEWS CORP shares rose 16 cents on yesterday.
This week NEWS CORP disclosed in an SEC filing that it paid $4.5 million in salary, and $21.2 million in bonuses. ON TOP OF THAT, it provides Murdock with a $50,500 per month housing/utilities "perk" -- another $606,000 value. According to Andrew Butcher, the NEWS CORP spokesman, this housing allowance is "for the convenience of the company" for Murdock to have a NY luxury apartment.
Clearly, "the Board" is not making decisions that could be justified by the Business Judgment Rule. The payment of a personal, and wildly excessive, expense of a highly paid executive who does not even live in NY, is inappropriate for a publicly-traded company. What is being traded is the gullibility of investors: I checked the paper -- NEWS CORP shares rose 16 cents on yesterday.
HALLIBURTON FRAUD - LAWSUIT
Halliburton's spokesperson, Melissa Norcross (who is not paid nearly enough), is publicly pointing out that the civil suit filed by Mr. Allen Grayson supported by the whistleblower Julie McBride "clearly demonstrates a misinterpretation of facts as well as a lack of understanding of KBR's contractual agreements with its customer, the US Army". Ms McBride's complaints were ignored by KBR before she became a whistle-blower. McBride's safety is in jeopardy and requires an armed guard.
How can the following facts by susceptible to "misinterpretation"? (1) That KBR charges its "customer" three times the cost of Gasoline/Diesel Fuel that the Army obtains from other sources. (2) That KBR bills double-time for Internet access, food, and gym services for soldiers, according to its own (and very troubling) "accounting" figures.
How can the plaintiff be faulted for not understanding "contractual agreements" which were not disclosed, remain hidden, and were never open for "bid"?
War-profiteering used to be immoral. Now, the pious Bush-men are piling onto the billion-dollar contraband wagon.
How can the following facts by susceptible to "misinterpretation"? (1) That KBR charges its "customer" three times the cost of Gasoline/Diesel Fuel that the Army obtains from other sources. (2) That KBR bills double-time for Internet access, food, and gym services for soldiers, according to its own (and very troubling) "accounting" figures.
How can the plaintiff be faulted for not understanding "contractual agreements" which were not disclosed, remain hidden, and were never open for "bid"?
War-profiteering used to be immoral. Now, the pious Bush-men are piling onto the billion-dollar contraband wagon.
EMINEN T DOMAIN - private property rights and the future
We have a documented history of the dynamics and consequences of land development, whether administered by a government "Bureau" (eg Bureau of Land Management) or by private "homesteaders". Both forms of development have left us with disasters and a nasty Future. Ref: Fellmeth, POLITICS OF LAND.
Under the 1938 Small Tract Act, the BLM transferred thousands of small-acre parcels into private ownership. I have seen the results in San Bernardino and Imperial Counties. The desert is potted with piles of refuse, much of which is toxic (tires, motor oil), surrounding abandoned shacks.
The Classification and Multiple Use Act of 1964 classified vast areas for "recreation". This is a concept which means very different things to different people, from "hunters" (a literally extinct species superceded by Gunners) to get-rich-quick schemers, indulging perhaps the most popular form of "recreation". Over 1/7 of California has been "managed" by BLM as Multiple-Use land, often leased or sold to private parties.
We continue to face the dilemmas of How to appropriately exploit, or preserve, the Resources under our feet. The use of the powers of the government to evict or restrict owners -- the use of "blight" designations, Zoning regulations and Eminent Domain -- now driven by the hard realities of severe tax shortfalls for local governments after Proposition 13 -- has given us more layers of corruption. Ref: Greenhut, ABUSE OF POWER.
This week, as if we have no history or future, the contentious ED battle over the 17,300-acre Conaway Ranch in Yolo County, ended. The investor-developers of the pastoral island in the water delta of one of California's fastest regions are now free to build houses and sell off water rights -- although they promise not to "squander" the water supply. (!)
The Yolo County officials -- we should be thankful -- recognized that the government could not afford to "win" the Eminent Domain seizure; the FMV of the land would have been $100 million or more. We have no idea what land is WORTH. How can a government compensate an owner for its seizure?
So, what do we lack? Are we doomed to head straight to ugly in a basket of complexities which no vision of righteousness can correct?
Under the 1938 Small Tract Act, the BLM transferred thousands of small-acre parcels into private ownership. I have seen the results in San Bernardino and Imperial Counties. The desert is potted with piles of refuse, much of which is toxic (tires, motor oil), surrounding abandoned shacks.
The Classification and Multiple Use Act of 1964 classified vast areas for "recreation". This is a concept which means very different things to different people, from "hunters" (a literally extinct species superceded by Gunners) to get-rich-quick schemers, indulging perhaps the most popular form of "recreation". Over 1/7 of California has been "managed" by BLM as Multiple-Use land, often leased or sold to private parties.
We continue to face the dilemmas of How to appropriately exploit, or preserve, the Resources under our feet. The use of the powers of the government to evict or restrict owners -- the use of "blight" designations, Zoning regulations and Eminent Domain -- now driven by the hard realities of severe tax shortfalls for local governments after Proposition 13 -- has given us more layers of corruption. Ref: Greenhut, ABUSE OF POWER.
This week, as if we have no history or future, the contentious ED battle over the 17,300-acre Conaway Ranch in Yolo County, ended. The investor-developers of the pastoral island in the water delta of one of California's fastest regions are now free to build houses and sell off water rights -- although they promise not to "squander" the water supply. (!)
The Yolo County officials -- we should be thankful -- recognized that the government could not afford to "win" the Eminent Domain seizure; the FMV of the land would have been $100 million or more. We have no idea what land is WORTH. How can a government compensate an owner for its seizure?
So, what do we lack? Are we doomed to head straight to ugly in a basket of complexities which no vision of righteousness can correct?
WAR - leadership needed - Ilario Patano
Former Marine 2d Lt Ilario G Pantano was exonerated last year in a preliminary hearing conducted at Camp Lejeune, NC, of charges that he killed two Iraqi prisoners in cold blood. Although he was a veteran of the previous Persian Gulf War, serving in the front line as a sergeant, he had only been in Iraq for a few months. He had joined immediately after 9/11.
His accuser was Sgt Daniel Coburn, serving in the same rifle platoon under Lt Pantano's command. The military tribunal found that Sgt Coburn was "not credible" in his accusations. However, Pantano's military career options were ended.
Now, Pantano has written a book. Good move. It is entitled: WARLORD: NO BETTER FRIEND, NO WORSE ENEMY. The book describes the combat and the litigation.
One of the appeals of the Warrior Ethos is the fact that if you are deadly, you really can be potent as a friend. Most of us are "weak friends", and this is the place setting in which I find myself regretfully seated.
The worst that has been said of Pantano, and his response -- restraint, writing a detailed book -- convinces me of his greatness. I also notice that Pantano's former attorney, Mr. Charles W. Gittins of San Diego, is on record hoping Pantano runs for office. Attorneys know things about their clients and it's a good bet that a person who knows "things" about a former client, and having no duty or benefit to himself in expressing such a hope, would not make such an endorsement unless it was righteous.
My god it would be great to see men and women lead us who KNOW how gray and intense the choices in war can be. The LACK of military bearing on the part of Rowe/ Cheney/ Bush and their uninformed Congressional overseers may "explain" (but not justify) the chaotic disgrace which is their legacy to America.
Draft Ilario Patano into Office! Please. Now.
His accuser was Sgt Daniel Coburn, serving in the same rifle platoon under Lt Pantano's command. The military tribunal found that Sgt Coburn was "not credible" in his accusations. However, Pantano's military career options were ended.
Now, Pantano has written a book. Good move. It is entitled: WARLORD: NO BETTER FRIEND, NO WORSE ENEMY. The book describes the combat and the litigation.
One of the appeals of the Warrior Ethos is the fact that if you are deadly, you really can be potent as a friend. Most of us are "weak friends", and this is the place setting in which I find myself regretfully seated.
The worst that has been said of Pantano, and his response -- restraint, writing a detailed book -- convinces me of his greatness. I also notice that Pantano's former attorney, Mr. Charles W. Gittins of San Diego, is on record hoping Pantano runs for office. Attorneys know things about their clients and it's a good bet that a person who knows "things" about a former client, and having no duty or benefit to himself in expressing such a hope, would not make such an endorsement unless it was righteous.
My god it would be great to see men and women lead us who KNOW how gray and intense the choices in war can be. The LACK of military bearing on the part of Rowe/ Cheney/ Bush and their uninformed Congressional overseers may "explain" (but not justify) the chaotic disgrace which is their legacy to America.
Draft Ilario Patano into Office! Please. Now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)