Moving Day
I'd been putting it off, because I'm just that much a Luddite, but I'm finally beginning to migrate and consolidate RI to our new, stable and versatile home. I'm beginning with the board, which may look a little different this morning because I stopped paying ezboard for the use of it. It's moving over here. I don't know how long it will take, because I don't know yet how incompetent I am at this sort of thing. But we'll find out.
Sorry for more disruption, but it's necessary to, as they say, serve you better.
posted by Jeff Wells at 11/03/2006 10:19:00 AM
45 Comments:
It happens just about anywhere that lakes or rivers recede. It also happens in places where glaciers recede. You're likely to see a lot of them in the next 50 years.
Hi Jeff -
Good luck with the move. Something I've wanted to ask you - where do you get the amazing illustrative material for your site? Are you an artist, or have you collected an archive of illustrations over the years?
Cheers.
Caryl
Unless it's a stock image like today's I do the illustrations myself. Takes longer than writing the post sometimes.
Jeff,
I love your site, and your art work. Keep on keeping on!
Best,
M
Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, said he couldn't say why the Bush administration allows companies to do business in the U.S. that are also in terror-sponsoring states. Two spokespeople at the State Department, Steven Pike and Carol Thompson, also said they were unable to answer that question.
http://www.aztreasury.gov/nws053105.shtml
This is the end, my friends.
"Well I came
to see
& what I found
was not alright with me.
Desperation, suffocation
& its been the same thing all along
Goodbye Babylon"
"Sgt. Santos Cardona, 32, a military policeman from Fullerton, Calif., served in 2003 and 2004 at Abu Ghraib as a military dog handler. After pictures of Cardona using the animal to threaten Iraqis were made public, he was convicted in May of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault, the equivalent of a felony in the U.S. civilian justice system. "
-snip-
" But Cardona’s physical well-being is not the only issue of concern connected to his transfer. According to former senior U.S. military officers and others interviewed by TIME, sending a convicted abuser back to Iraq to train local police sends the wrong signal at a time when the U.S. is trying to bolster the beleagured government in Baghdad, where the horrors of Abu Ghraib are far from forgotten. “If news of this deployment is accurate, it represents appallingly bad judgment,” says retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who commanded a division in the first Gulf War. “The symbolic message perceived in Iraq will likely be that the U.S. is simply insensitive to the abuse of their prisoners.” "
&
" A Flagstaff soldier who died in Iraq committed suicide after she refused to participate in interrogation techniques being practiced by her U.S. Army intelligence unit, according to a report about an Army investigation aired by a Flagstaff radio station.
U.S. Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson, 27, died Sept. 15, 2003, in Tel Afar, an Iraqi city of about 350,000 residents in the northern part of the country.
At the time, the U.S. Department of Defense listed her cause of death as a “noncombat weapons discharge.”"
-snip-
" According to KNAU, an Army investigation found that Peterson had objected to interrogation techniques that were being used on prisoners.
“She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage,” stated the KNAU report.
She was subsequently assigned to monitoring Iraqi guards at the base gate and was sent to suicide prevention training, stated the KNAU report. And on Sept. 15, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle, according to KNAU.
The KNAU report also stated that Army spokespeople for Peterson’s unit refused to describe the interrogation techniques and that all records of the techniques have been destroyed."
From the previous thread, FYI for all--addressing Charles's point about 'how they plan to rig it' this time--surprised you missed this:
News Networks Install "Quarantine Room" For Election Night: No One Gets Out With Exit Poll Info...
Washington Post | Howard Kurtz | Posted November 1, 2006 11:58 PM
In the Senate, with fewer seats in play, the math is simpler. If one or two of the most vulnerable Republicans -- in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Missouri -- win decisively, the networks will know fairly early that the Democrats won't be able to reach their magic number of six needed to take control. But even if the Democrats sweep those races -- and hold New Jersey, which is in doubt -- the networks still won't be able to forecast a Democratic takeover until enough votes are counted in Montana, where polls close at 10 p.m. Eastern. The Democrats would have to unseat Montana's embattled GOP senator, Conrad Burns, to gain control.
The biggest behind-the-scenes change in network coverage involves what has been dubbed the Quarantine Room. Determined to avoid a rerun of recent years, when its exit polls leaked out by early afternoon to the Drudge Report, Slate and other Web sites, a media consortium is allowing two people from each of the networks and the Associated Press entree to a windowless room in New York. All cellphones, laptops and BlackBerrys will be confiscated. The designated staffers will pore over the exit polls but will not be allowed to communicate with their offices until 5 p.m.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/01/news-networks-install-qu_n_33075.html
comments of note:
1. This is all a load of horshi*. The exit polls were right in Ohio, Kerry did win. The traitorous criminals who "count" and then "fix" the vote count is why the exit polls were "wrong". This Network crap is just more evidence that they will try and Fix this election's count as well. I just hope it is such a landslide that it is too much for even the diebold creeps to fix. Exit polling is used throughout The WORLD to verify elections and has decades of reliability.
2. NO polls for House races....are you KIDDING me?
The fix is in folks....brace for it!
3. Why? When the Republicans and Diebold steal the elections, they will simply say exit polls are wrong. The Dems and media will say, OK.
4. Sounds like the fix is in for the repugs. Cheating, lying and stealing have become the norm for these bushpigs.
5. Exit polls have been a part of every election for years.
Now They Are Considered Leaks ? ?
What are they trying to hide in this election?
Mike Ruppert makes me moist.
Jeff, will you be keeping the old board around (as a freebie with pop-ups, I suppose), just so that any links we've made to postings there will be accessible?
Jeff, will you be keeping the old board around
I won't be deleting it, though I will be locking it. I know the links are an issue - for the blog, too - but once we're settled I'd recommend updating as much as possible. I believe ezboard has a practice of eventually deleting inactive boards.
Way to go! I think you'll find having your own domain to be much better than relying other entities.
I'll certainly migrate with you.
Reguarding the picture, Yes its Death Valley at a place called Devils Race Track.
Very rough road to get there,but worth it. Also the theory is that when it is wet or icy then windy the rocks move around.
Usually you're not so careless with your terms.
chlamor sez:
Lessons from the Luddites
By KIRKPATRICK SALE
1 Technologies are never neutral, and some are hurtful.
2 Industrialism is always a cataclysmic process, destroying the past, roiling the present, making the future uncertain.
3 "Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines."
4 The nation-state, synergistically intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its aid and defense, making revolt futile and reform ineffectual.
5 But resistance to the industrial system, based on some grasp of moral principles and rooted in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary.
6 Politically, resistance to industrialism must force the viability of industrial society into public consciousness and debate.
◦ What purpose does this machine serve?
◦ What problem has become so great that it needs this solution?
◦ Is this invention nothing but, as Thoreau put it, an improved means to an unimproved end?
◦ Who are the winners?
◦ Who are the losers?
◦ Will this invention concentrate or disperse power, encourage or discourage self worth?
◦ Can society at large afford it?
◦ Can the biosphere?
7 Philosophically, resistance to industrialism must be embedded in an analysis--an ideology, perhaps--that is morally informed, carefully articulated and widely shared.
◦ Anthropocentrism must be opposed by the principle of biocentrism and the spiritual identification of the human with all living species and systems.
◦ Globalism must be opposed by the empowerment of the coherent bioregion and small community.
◦ Industrial capitalism must be opposed by an ecological and sustainable economy built upon accommodation and commitment to the earth.
Underground Bases, Missing Children, Extra-Terrestrials
What You Need To Know For Your Future
Hey Jeff,
Good luck with your move!
Looking forward to seeing everyone there.
Somewhere, someplace, there's a time and place for us...
handsome,
"In a murderous time,
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn."
--Stanley Kunitz, "The Testing-Tree"
Thanks, Anony, for setting the record straight in regards to the position of the Luddites. They are much maligned, and the name is often invoked in a derogatory and stigmatizing manner, if for no other reason than it is customary and fashionable to do so.
The branding of their name goes hand and hand with the branding of other groups throughout history, i.e. barbaric and hedonistic.
I'm a Luddite in spirit, unashamedly.
there's an overwhelming consensus among Americans today that Iraq has become a disaster for the United States and that it's not going to get better on the course we're now on.
Even if this is a true statement, it's a sad one, at that. The folks at this site, the majority of them, at least, are well beyond this cock and bull.
News to Josh Marshall, in case he doesn't already know, which he may. It was always meant to be a "disaster." Controlled Chaos trumps Uncontrolled Order.
Cheney himself, back in the aftermath of the 1st Gulf War, adeptly rationalized why it wasn't prudent to march on Baghdad....yet march on Baghdad 12 years later they did despite his previously well-reasoned argument. They knew the implications and went ahead anyway......because they determined a way to turn the chaos to their advantage.
Disasters for "them" are like geese laying golden eggs.
Hey Handsome,
My bad.....after reading further, I see you share the very same sentiments. I tip my hat to you, sir. You're not alone.
Yeah, I think everyone is at least mentally preparing to assume the position on "election night" come Tuesday, although there are some interesting variations in spin, perspective, and realism. Here's a little club remix, starting with Jeff's The Dissonantly Cognitive (November 25, 2004), where we get to compare
...the Ukrainian and American electoral experience.
In the Ukraine, that exit polls conflicted with election results is highly suggestive of fraud. In the United States, the same suggests exit polls should be scrapped for their unreliability.
In the Ukraine, media manipulation is said to have weighed the election in favour of the governing party. In the US, it's called "fair and balanced" coverage.
In the Ukraine, intimidation of voters taints the official outcome. In the United States, it's playing "hardball."
In the Ukraine, it doesn't strain credulity to believe the opposition leader could be poisoned. In the United States, Paul Wellstone's death was a "tragic accident."
As The New York Times reported, Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, citing "the disturbing fact that official results diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places," said "A concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities."
Journalist Greg Palast writes:
This reporter was unable to reach Senator Lugar regarding the inconsistency of official election results and exit polls in the USA; the intimidation of minority voters in Florida and Ohio; nor the failure to count two million ballots cast, half by African-American voters, in America's first post-democratic election held earlier this month. Eastern bloc observers noted that balloting in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida did not meet Ukrainian standards, but applauded America's attempt to restore democratic institutions after the overthrow of elected government in 2000.
At least they can't take our irony from us.
Leaping forward two years, we find the orange revolution meme repeating itself, albeit in the drag of sunny optimism and cheerful gullibility, in Bob Fertik's segment of the democrats.com tag-team blog, where Fertik positively gushes:
Imagine a Blue Revolution, every bit as joyous and historic as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution Lebanon, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the other democratic revolutions of recent years--right here in the United States of America. When the polls close, we propose that Democrats across the country gather outside their County Election Office for a candlelight vigil to Count Every Vote, all wearing the same color: Blue.
Isn't it just so nice and boy-scouty? Has Fertik never heard of the CIA, or does he just assume that everyone's as forthright as he is? What's the subject of his blog, anyway? Politics? Oh, well, that explains everything...
Oddly enough, however, when we get to Chip's blog at the same dem.com party, he actually displays some cynical intelligence, not to mention an election night action plan that at least tries to go a little bit deeper than wearing matching color focking suit ensembles in some candle lit goddamn vigil.
Thus spake Chip:
Make YOUR Vote Count: Participate in this CAPER
Voting is the linchpin of democracy. And democracy demands transparency, not trust. Yet, there is no meaningful transparency to our current voting process. Americans vote by secret ballot, machine, early, and absentee. It's an invitation to massive and undetectable vote fraud.
Because there is no hard proof of how we voted, the public relies on exit polls to verify election results. But, there's no transparency to exit polls, either. They are extremely vulnerable to manipulation and outright fraud. In fact, some investigators believe that the networks' exit polls have been used to support rigged election results since the 1960's. They speculate that this may have been done in exchange for increased media consolidation and other benefits for the networks. Regardless of the integrity of the polls, consider the absurdity of the situation - using exit poll data based on secret sources to verify election results based on secret ballots.
The secret ballot was sold to the voting public in the 1880's as protection against voter intimidation and vote selling. However, elected officials were vulnerable to similar threats and temptations, but they weren't voting by secret ballot. Why the double standard? What was the real deal? The use of secret ballots allowed election officials to destroy, replace, or add ballots with scant chance of getting caught. Secret ballots opened the door to undetectable vote fraud.
Most voters don't realize that before the Civil War, voting was a completely transparent process. It was only after the Civil War, as the right to vote expanded to African Americans, that the voting process itself began to recede from public view and meaningful oversight. It started with absentee voting in the 1870’s, secret ballots in the 1880’s, and voting machines in the 1890’s. Today in America, 30% of all voting is by absentee or early, 95% of all votes are machine-processed, and 100% of all ballots are secret. Making matters worse, the voting process has been outsourced to a handful of private, foreign, and multinational companies. These companies make, sell, and service voting technology.
Although the debate has been framed to target suspicion on "outside hackers" and "machine malfunctions", the bigger threat comes from "company insiders" and secretly "rigged machines". Two companies, ES&S and Diebold, which were started by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich, count 80% of all votes. These two companies dominate the market for both ballot scanners and touchscreen machines. Their employees are in a perfect position to rig elections nationwide. It can be done before, during, or after an election. Machines can be rigged on the factory floor, as well as remotely via the Internet, modem, or through wireless technology. And it all can be accomplished without the knowledge of election officials.
Given this situation, voters should not trust official election results. And candidates should wait to concede any election. Candidates need to give their supporters time to collect hard evidence of how voters voted through a ‘CITIZEN AUDIT / PARALLEL ELECTION RESULT (CAPER). This is done by volunteers passing out literature as voters enter the polls, and offering CAPER ballots as voters leave the polls. Ballots must include the voter's name, address, and signature. Ballots can be collected at the polls or in the week afterward. Voters can independently organize a CAPER at their local poll or work through a candidate. We don’t need to cover 100% of the voters or polls. Keep in mind that national surveys are based on as few as 1000 respondents for a U.S. population of 300 million people. Just do your own poll and collect as many CAPER ballots as you can. Then, send your results to the candidates, the news media, and TheLandesReport.
Candidates may not win an election challenge in a court of law, but the court of public opinion is more important in the long run. Remember, democracy demands transparency, not trust. Scrap the secrecy. Sign up and be counted.
Does the "parallel vote counting scheme" (CAPER) sound familiar? Here's a time capsule twist: the day after Jeff's Ukraine/US dissonance post, the Guardian explores the role of the US in the orange revolution (US Campaign Behind the Turmoil in Kiev, by Ian Traynor, November 26, 2004):
...while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.
and then mentions this strategy:
Apart from the student movement and the united opposition, the other key element in the democracy template is what is known as the "parallel vote tabulation", a counter to the election-rigging tricks beloved of disreputable regimes.
That’s right, folks: we’re using our democracy template to counter the election-rigging tricks of disreputable regimes. Stroke of luck we never have to worry about such things in the home of the brave, ain’t it? In the final, dizzying piece of irony, Traynor's Guardian article concludes with this prophetic instruction for fledgling democracies everywhere:
Freedom House and the Democratic party's NDI helped fund and organise the "largest civil regional election monitoring effort" in Ukraine, involving more than 1,000 trained observers. They also organised exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Mr Yushchenko an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed.
The exit polls are seen as critical because they seize the initiative in the propaganda battle with the regime, invariably appearing first, receiving wide media coverage and putting the onus on the authorities to respond.
The final stage in the US template concerns how to react when the incumbent tries to steal a lost election.
In Belarus, President Lukashenko won, so the response was minimal. In Belgrade, Tbilisi, and now Kiev, where the authorities initially tried to cling to power, the advice was to stay cool but determined and to organise mass displays of civil disobedience, which must remain peaceful but risk provoking the regime into violent suppression.
If the events in Kiev vindicate the US in its strategies for helping other people win elections and take power from anti-democratic regimes, it is certain to try to repeat the exercise elsewhere in the post-Soviet world.
The places to watch are Moldova and the authoritarian countries of central Asia.
Taking power from anti-democratic regimes? Moldova and the authoritarian countries of central Asia?! What about Florida, Ohio, and the authoritarian States of America? Why does the world assume that we practice democracy at home just because they hear us talk about spreading it overseas so much? Or is that it, it’s the repetition that makes the reality, not the facts or any requiring a memory of longer than 24 hours? It reminds me of the promo clip for Stauber and Rampton's sequel of sorts to Weapons of Mass Deception called the The Best War Ever. It's 4 minutes of lying, truth-defying, grin-your-best-shithouse-grin-while-you-defecate-on-the-truth-by-telling
-us-you're-spreading-hope-not-killing-it montage of bloody intrigue in the Iraq/Iran/Syria triangle of American interest. The thesis of the book is an old one that we just haven't exactly been encouraged to think about much:
"How are nations ruled and led into war? Politicians lie to journalists and then believe those lies when they see them in print."(--Austrian journalist Karl Wiegand, explaining the causes of the First World War.)
Yeah, so brace yourselves for the big changes a-comin'. If they've told themselves often enough that what they do is for our own good, they'll probably start to believe it themselves sooner or later, no matter what they do to us. Many, many years after the war, die hard Nazis still believed in what they were doing, first for Hitler, then for their new bosses at the Agency. I'm sure that the line between rigging an election and making it fair is a fine line indeed. The deeper weirdness is that the people start believing them too.
Maybe we could ask one 'a them foreign outfits to help us out with our whatcha-callit, demo-crassy, over here...what country is that Borat guy from?
"...Which is to say, I've come to deeply believe that our government is inimical and predatory, hopelessly corrupted and near-entirely controlled by powerful cabals we never see and don't know and whose agendas would terrify and horrify and sicken and disgust us if we were presented with actual irrefutable evidence of same."
Some more links on the pyre for you, expanded:
9-11 Insider Nicholas Rockefeller's Proprietary Cashless Society Technology and Databases
04.Nov.2006 00:14
The Very Visible Nicholas Rockefeller's Invisible Panopticon: His United Nations Aired Ideas for a Private Proprietary Database and Technology for a Global Wireless Cashless Consumer Panopticon, all under Nicholas Rockefeller, a 9-11 Insider.
9-11 "security" issues only set up wider "state driven appeal" for the his proprietary technology platform for a cashless society. 9-11 Insider Nicholas Rockefeller, predicts 9-11 justified Middle East invasions a year in advance--and only months before 9-11 sees fit as well to start up a pilot project for a cashless society. He has additionally been involved in THREE separate global people monitoring database corporations detailed below.
"The cashless society will be controlled by the Rockefellers, and it will be microwave based, wireless, and controlled off the phone tower network"--if he has his way. China is his model. See what he is doing in China below, and see how there is huge synergy between his fingers and his minions' fingers in the corporations US Search, Zebasearch, and GlobalAgora--all linked to him.
...
Nicholas Rockefeller Predicted "Event" To Trigger War Eleven Months Before 9/11
Hollywood director Russo recalls remarkable "forecast" of coming attack
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | October 28 2006
Hollywood director and documentary film maker Aaron Russo, currently receiving a wave of plaudits for his latest release, America: From Freedom to Fascism told The Alex Jones Show that Nicholas Rockefeller had personally assured him there was going to be an "event" that would trigger the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq eleven months before 9/11 took place.
Saying he had been approached many times by the Rockefellers and other members of the CFR elite in an attempt to recruit him, Russo recalled a conversation that would come home to roost on September 11, 2001.
"Here's what I do know first hand - I know that about eleven months to a year before 9/11 ever happened I was talking to my Rockefeller friend (Nicholas Rockefeller) and he said to me 'Aaron there's gonna be an event' and he never told me what the event was going to be - I'm not sure he knew what the event was going to be I don't know that he knew that," said Russo.
Russo related how Rockefeller knew precisely what the event would lead to and which countries would be militarily targeted by the elite.
"He just said there's gonna be an event and out of that event we're gonna invade Afghanistan so we can run pipelines through the Caspian sea, we can go into Iraq to take the oil and establish bases in the middle east and to make the middle east part of the new world order and we're going to go after Venezuela - that's what's going to come out of this event."
"Eleven months to a year later that's what happened....he certainly knew that something was going to happen."
"In my relationships with some of these people I can tell you that it's as evil as it really gets - this is it - this is the game," stated Russo - also relating how members of the elite were routinely obsessed by creating a world identification society where people had to carry ID cards and prove who they were at all times.
Hypothesis:
Very likely plotted through the CFR group he belongs to as a "permanent member". Co-chair of CFR then Gary Hart, was on TV, day after 9-11, saying to the CFR meeting broadcast via CSPAN, "There is a chance that the President can use this event to...[achieve]...a new world order."
And "you gotta see this":
pics:The NWO souvenir pistol, Desert Storm (Gulf War I) Glock commemorative gun, who got it
Author: you gotta see this
Date: 2005.09.25 04:14
Description: The Desert Storm (Gulf War I) Glock commemorative gun, given to NWO supporters... Desert Storm Glock: A 1991 model Glock 17 pistol engraved on the right side with "Operation Desert Storm" and on the left side with "New World Order".
BUSH SENIOR WAS GIVEN FIRST GLOCK OF THE ISSUE, A LIST OF WHO GOT THEM IS BELOW.
In the same year G. H. W. Bush's Speech to Congress, September 11, 1991, discusses his invasion of Iraq under the first United Nations 'authorization' for pre-emptive war:
"...what is at stake, is more [pauses, looks dismissive of this idea] than one small country. [Smiles.] It is a big idea. A new world order. Where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace, and security, freedom, and the rule of law.....out of these troubled times, our fifth objective, the new world order, can emerge....Now we can see a new world coming into view, a world in which there is a very real prospect of a new world order...."
And you may be interested in actually viewing this footage yourself:
VIDEO: 9-11, 1991 & 9-11, 2001: 'New World Order' goals mentioned by Bush Sr. & Gary Hart
1:21 video of Bush Senior speech about the "new world order"........on the date September, 11, 1991; and next, excerpts from CSPAN live coverage of Council on Foreign Relations press conference........on September 12, 2001.
What you will see on the video:
1. Bush Sr., Speech to Congress, September 11, 1991:
"...what is at stake, is more [pauses, looks dismissive of this idea] than one small country. [Smiles.] It is a big idea. A new world order. Where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace, and security, freedom, and the rule of law.....out of these troubled times, our fifth objective, the new world order, can emerge....Now we can see a new world coming into view, a world in which there is a very real prospect of a new world order...."
TEN YEARS LATER, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 terrorist hits on the United States, used to start pre-emptive Afghanistan invasion (troops already in the area waiting pre-9-11-01), and later used to frame "Second Gulf War" attack on Iraq. The decimation of the Bill of Rights (presently suspended under the Patriot Act) are unconstitutionally passed in the face of threats: letters filled with domestic military grade anthrax which were linked to Ft. Detrick, Maryland.
2. CSPAN, September 12, 2001, CFR co-chair Gary Hart, the day after 9-11-01:
"There is a chance that the President of the United States can use this disaster, to carry out what his father, a phrase his father used, I think, only once. And hasn't been used since. And that is a new world order."
Gary Hart was making speeches at Yale University right before 9-11 taking about the "importance of a global currency" and demoting all national and more local controlled currencies.
Gary Hart and Bush Senior "Share" Condi Rice--despite being in "different" parties--or are they?
Condi Rice actually worked for Gary Hart's 1984 and 1988 'Democratic' presidential campaigns. Then within months she is hired by winner 'Republican' George H. W. Bush.
Title: "The Korbelian view" of politics: what changed? ALBRIGHT TO CONDI both E.Euro/USSR/IRAQ
Author: korbel watch
Date: 2004.04.15 03:17
Description: A short background on one family, the Korbels, that make (and warp) your world. This is a very eerie high-level political continuity for over 100 years--or more? KORBELLIANS, AND STRAUSSIANS, AND MARSHALLITES....AND MEROVINGANS? all neocons
And just what is that Korbelian view?
intergenerational INTERNATIONALIST politics, wine/drug trade, sends FDR some champagne after Prohibition; ancestor in failed 1848 Bohemian revolution in Prague, 100 years later exactly, another Korbel a U.N representative,1948; a WWII art thief of Jewish treasures, flees to the US; father to Madeline Albright, who is, later, another U.N. representative, just like her father; then what follows: Albright's foreign policy post as Clinton's Sec. of Defense overseeing invasion of Yugoslavia (the US 'ultimatum of Rambouillet'), a little bit south of Prague. Then we have Condi who was the 'change of face to maintain policy' --because like Albright Condi specialized in USSR/Czech relations, and was taught and sponsored by Korbel: full circle. Even Korbel Champagne admits as much about the Korbel family political revolutionary origins.
It's almost as if the Korbel family has been occultly "assigned jurisdiction" over an area of the world for 100 years or more. Face it, that's what the data seems to show.
Albright was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937, shortly before the country's dismemberment by the Nazis. But although they belong to different generations and different political parties, Rice and Albright seem to share a similar "Korbelian" view of the world. As Albright left, Condi was put in a similar place, with a similar speciality: Czech/USSR area relations.
Under Korbel's guidance, both Albright and Rice made Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union their principal field of study, almost to the exclusion of other important regions, such as the Middle East and China. Both wrote books inspired by, and dedicated to, Korbel. Albright wrote her doctoral
dissertation [under her own father...] on the role of the press in Communist-dominated Czechoslovakia; Rice studied the relationship between the Soviet and Czechoslovak armies [as her father worked at the same university as Korbel as well.]
When the Czechoslovak Communists staged a coup in 1948 [centennial to the 1848 failed Prague revolution, which a Korbel was involved with], toppling a democratic government, Korbel was Czech ambassador to....Yugoslavia. [even more eerie, because his own daughter was in charge of the US/NATO attack on Yugoslavia in the 'ultimatum' of Rambouillet.]
...
Scandal in Bohemia
Korbel means "goblet, drinking cup" in Czech. And so begins the story of Frantissek (Francis) Korbel, who was born in the early 1830s in a small village in southern Bohemia, which today is the western Czech Republic.
As a young man in Prague in 1848, Francis was rumored to have fired the shot that started a revolution against the ruling monarchy, the Hapsburgs, taking part in the uprising against Prince Windiszcrec.
Francis was detained in Daliborka prison, but escaped one day by [being released from the inside] calmly walking out an unlocked gate, smoking a cigar and wearing civilian clothes brought to him by his grandmother.
Francis fled Bohemia for New York, where he began learning the art of cigar making.
Cigars and San Francisco [KORBELS PART OF ORIGINAL BOHEMIAN GROVERS? WAIT AND SEE...]
After a few years in New York, Francis became captivated by the bold and booming city of San Francisco, so Francis moved to the city and opened a storefront repairing cigar boxes. He could not afford to set up production to make new boxes, so he sent for his brothers Joseph, a metallurgist, and Anton, a forger. By 1862, F. Korbel & Bros. was so successful that the brothers began to import exotic veneers from around the world, shipping via their schooner, The Bohemia.
They built a successful manufacturing business producing materials for the building industry in San Francisco.
In the first of many setbacks from which the Korbels would rebuild and triumph, the storefront burned down and the brothers struggled to start again. Eventually, the lumber business in northern California boomed, and the Korbels invested in a number of projects, including a sawmill and property near the town of Guerneville in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County.
In the early 1870s, Francis purchased the property in partnership with a fellow entrepreneur, and brought another brother, Winsel, from Bohemia to run the business. Winsel fell ill immediately upon arriving, and died before he could begin the enterprise. So the remaining brothers bought out the partner and ran the business.
Lumber to grapevines
Once the lumber boom slowed, the brothers researched other uses for their ranch. The land was good for agriculture, including dairy, prunes, and olive trees, and was similar in nature to the Champagne region in France. In short, perfect for wine growing and making.
...
They began as provider of grapes for winemakers in the region, but soon the market was saturated with growers and so, ever resourceful, the Korbels began production of their own champagne.
...
The Tower and the Wasp
It was during this time that Francis Korbel built the "Brandy Tower," an exact replica of the tower he could see from his Daliborka prison cell back in Prague in 1848. The tower represented freedom from oppression for Francis, and true to his early activist origins, he also began publishing "The Wasp," which delivered pointed political satire and commentary.
The First Korbel Champagnes
The Korbel winery continued to grow throughout the 1880s. It was during this time that the Korbels sent for winemaker Frank Hasek in Prague to come to the United States to be their champagne master.
By the mid-1890s, the Korbels shipped their first champagnes, and by the turn of the century Korbel was an internationally known, award-winning label.
Korbel Survives Prohibition
Prohibition in the 1920s forced the permanent closing of many wineries across the country.
The performer lost in her performance
Condoleezza Rice was my graduate student, and a woman raised to excel. But she failed the American people because she forgot a higher duty than excellence: Truth.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Alan Gilbert
April 9, 2004 | The official story about Condi Rice, supported by her current tête à tête status with President George W. Bush, is that she is a conservative political activist born and bred, raised by a Republican father, whose intellectual development was formed by conservative scholars. There is obviously some truth in this story, because she has indeed joined the right wing. But there's another side to her history. As her former professor, who taught her at the University of Denver between 1975 and 1979, I am familiar with some of it.
Her intellectual trajectory, however, has not followed the simple, ever-rightward course that the White House myth proclaims.
In fact, both Korbel, and especially I, with whom she worked closely, were not only not conservatives, we were quite radical.
Korbel was a lawyer and diplomat in the Czech Republic. Unlike many East European émigrés, he grew up a left-wing Social Democrat. Many of his friends were Communists....He feared the workers, he said, but the Communists were the ones who really fought Hitler.
He spent World War II in London working for the Czech resistance, writing pro-Stalin press releases.
After the war, Korbel said, his communist friends told him it was all right "to move up the hill."
If Jan Masaryk had become president of Czechoslovakia, Josef Korbel would have been secretary of state.
The Communist coup of 1948 resulted in his exile. He was the protégé in the United States of the Council on Foreign Relations, who arranged a position at the University of Denver. [his daughter Madeline Albright is CFR as well.]
When I came to Denver, Korbel adopted me. After reading my first article in the journal Political Theory, "Salvaging Marx from Avineri," he had lunch with me, and said, "You are in exile, too."
Condi took seminars with me on Marx and Marxism, explanations of Nazism and the resistance to it in World War II, Ancient Political Thought, Justice in War, and the like. In a class, Korbel and I co-taught on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and Russia, she spoke up in the discussions, but hardly from a conservative point of view.
Condi offered her own versions of radical criticisms of mainstream views. She was, and is, unusually thoughtful.
In short, the White House story that she learned Soviet diplomacy from a conservative -- Korbel -- and that her views, as a student, augured an extreme conservative approach is simply false.
Two of my students, Condi and Heraldo Munoz, the current Chilean ambassador to the United Nations and recently president of the Security Council, applied for internships with senators. Heraldo worked for Tim Wirth and Condi for Gary Hart, both Democrats.
In 1984 and 1988, Condi worked on Hart's presidential campaigns. Today's story that she has always been a Republican is simply a myth.
According to Jendayi, Condi continued to recommend my book "Marx's Politics: Communists and Citizens," because it gave students a careful picture, of Marx's surprising, flamboyant public action in the German democratic revolution of 1848.
Initially, Condi and Jendayi were critical of liberal politicians who, needing funds from the rich and support from the mainstream press, compromised their fundamental principles and harmed ordinary people. They were also critical of conservatives. But that position has been subtly inverted over time.
Condi rose in Washington as an expert in Soviet and East European military positions. She became a protégé of Brent Scowcroft, eventually serving on the National Security Council in George H.W. Bush's administration.
With her new Republican contacts, she was also appointed to the board of Chevron. Chevron named an oil tanker the Condoleezza Rice.
It weighs down one's soul, I suspect, to have a namesake oil tanker -- perhaps the next Exxon Valdez -- floating heavily somewhere in the ocean.
The official story about Condi Rice, supported by her current tête à tête status with President George W. Bush, is that she is a conservative political activist born and bred, raised by a Republican father, whose intellectual development was formed by conservative scholars. There is obviously some truth in this story, because she has indeed joined the right wing. But there's another side to her history.
As her former professor, who taught her at the University of Denver between 1975 and 1979, I am familiar with some of it.
and yes
A BOHEMIAN GROVE CONNECTION TO THE KORBELS
KORBEL-relative PROPERTY RIGHT NEXT TO BOHEMIAN GROVE. Claude Milleresch's REDWOODS, FELLED FOR THE NEXT-DOOR BOHEMIAN GROVE GOLF COURSE.
Claude Milleresch married a Korbel daughter. Claude Milleresch sells the property to Les Korbel, the next owner, then it goes through a series of other owners.
Too cool, Jeff. And I completely understand the Luddite tendencies when it comes to computers. Though I went to multimedia school in the early 1990s, I am not and never will be an early adopter of anything in the digital world.
This place, wherever it ends up, has been one of the most interesting sites on the internet for the last couple of years. Way to keep churning it out, brilliantly. And your Photoshop work, possibly because it doesn't come as easily to you as your fluid writing style, is extraordinary.
It's moving day, and I'm taking my doggerel to lunch:
Pontificatus pontificatorum
per omnia saecula saeculorum
Tempus fugit
wa salaam
Escarole
Yam what I yam
Eating sushi, RI style,
Roadkill down the way a mile.
Suck it in with poison vodka,
Moldy cheese and a chocolate latke.
Popeye scarfs his spinach down
Brutus wears a one brow frown
Sweet pea hovers on a ledge
Wimpy gulps a hamburg hedge
Olive Oyl best of all
Cuts your bad cholesterol.
Pork chops, mutton chops, suet, chop suey,
Wu Wei’s butcher, it ain’t hooey.
Hear the blades and sinews sing,
My butterfly ate your buffalo wing.
One flew over, one flew the coup,
One had lunch with Loupe de loup,
Bugs and Elmer, Porky pig
Taz and Daffy, IN This RIG
Don’t add up to one Qaddafi.
B.Z. said it, all in all:
“When you got no place to fall,
Ain’t it hard to stumble?” If you’re tall.
Muhammad Ali deftly countered, y’all:
“Rumble, young man, rumble.”
Chickenshit colonels and chicken hawks
Talk the talk, can’t walk the walks,
Like so many mofo’s here,
Project on others the dark fear
That they see inside themselves.
Little keebler elves they ain’t,
Not so sweet and not so quaint
Smaller puds but much more taint.
Duck ‘em, jab ‘em, clinch, and feint.
Don’t know nuthin’ bowt nuffin’,
Never even ate a muffin.
Full of shit as a turkey is stuffin’
Pork rind eatin’ stage MacGuffin.
They tell you to chase after rotten fruit,
But it’s long dead and it don’t root.
Keystone cops in hot pursuit
Of their own tails.
Chasing women riding bulls,
Towers of Babel, babbling fools.
Cannot catch in their plan
Deer and dolphins, who flee from man.
If the salt lick don’t bring one, slap his hand,
Ban the bums and ban the ban.
Can the spam, boil the ham,
Dice the yam, cut the cheese,
spice up the sham,
and slurp the clam.
It’s all flim flam, man.
Time to say “So long,” Toots,
I bees gwina get on mah foots,
Go 2 da cleaners and pick up my zoots,
Chill wid mah brevren, (dat’s bretheren and reverend,
2 awl u aphidists owt dere,
Who don’t give a hoot).
So, hey, dute,
Time fo’ ta blow dis coot,
It’s been gute....
No, dat ain’t da trute,
Not gute at all, but, shoot,
Ah’ll juss spit it owt true mah toot.
Thank ah’ll eat me a piece a fruit.
N mebbe play da flute.
Almost forgot my lute.
Butt look, there’s Newt,
and Pute,
and Scoot.
Ain’t they cute?
I refute.
Under the boot.
Like soot.
It’s all moot.
Jeff,
You transitition will be a breeze, and the capabilities of the new forum software will greatly enhance/facilitate our forum discussions in ways that ezboard was never capable of. You know I am behind you 100%, and am available at any time to assist in getting you back up to cruising speed, and have significant Moderator experience to lend if need be when I fought the Alphabets and genuine wackos at CTC and elsewhere.
I'll be sending you some suggestions shortly via email. My old account we used to speak through has been closed, but you'll know me when you see me, and I'll also be on (both) boards whenever time permits.
You have an Army of supporters, and you've known it for years, so let this move be exactly what is is; bigger better stronger faster, and we're going to use it to gouge into the Sleepers until they have little choice but to face How Things Really Are. You are a powerful force unto yourself, but you have many behind you just as strong in different ways. Rally your forces, delegate responsibilities and tasks. There's a multi-level War that's been taking place for a long time, and we need to do better.
All of us.
I simply can't tell my child when the time comes and blood rains from the Sky that I could have done something more but instead indulged candy-sweet Apathy. Never hesitate to ask for assitance; few here would deny it, myself included.
And you'd better use my Cold recipe before I get royally pissed off..
:)
Cheers Jeff,
D
ps: To the Stench-ridden, Blue-Blooded Weakeners and their slaves who's once decent souls have been broken by your lies who serve you even in ignorance twisted into believing Wrong is Right:
Do your fucking worst. You always have, and it's never been good enough. You're going to have to slay Humanity itself if you want to keep that which has never been yours. I doubt there's 24 grams between the entire 1% combined, so you're already a loss, and ya'll can simply go fuck yourself like the Good Assholes you really are. I struggle against a belief in God, but in your hour of reckoing, if he's up there, he's going to rip your Kundalini out of your worthless mouths and throttle you with it himself. If that's the fate of Men who know better, I only hope I can stand there as a witness and cheer him on.
I'll even provide the ice cream bars..
Terry, if you're reading this, hurry up with your project and consider those expansions to your site we talked about, cause I think right here, right now is a great time for you both.
Punctilious Pilates is really good with words. Makes me wonder what his prose is like.
sfmike said...
Too cool, Jeff. And I completely understand the Luddite tendencies when it comes to computers. Though I went to multimedia school in the early 1990s, I am not and never will be an early adopter of anything in the digital world.
Did you happen to read Anony's comments on the use of the term Luddite? I suggest you do.
I'm sure IC will agree that our over-reliance on this equipment we use to communicate with every day is not part of the sustainable model proposed.
So, will you continue to provide periodic posts like this one outside the PHP Forum, or is it all going to be forced to the Forum, as some of the Authoritarians here have hoped?
If it is all forced to the Forum, not that it matters, I suppose, I will be looking elsewhere for my daily take. My experience with Forums has been less than satisfying. It's restrictive, and, IMHO, an impediment to improvization. It quickly becomes a clique and the "hive" mentality soon sets in. There have been no exceptions to this rule, to date, that I have witnessed.
Beware the Moderators. I'm a Harry Potter fan.....and the Moderators are the Ministry of Magic.
Richard, I know you said you are new to this posting to the internet thing, but let me assure you, once you are forced to post to a moderated forum, you are handed a straight-jacket, handcuffs, and a muzzle. Obnoxious Authoritarians control the dialogue, and if you step outside their predefined boxes, they ban you. It's not worth the mental and emotional energy.
I hope that's not the only venue. If it is, I'm afraid it will be the death of RI as we know it.....but that's just one man's opinion.
IC -
The trouble with the Orange Revolution as a model is that it was controlled by manipulators on both sides.
See, for example, SourceWatch on Freedom House -- board of trustees chaired by James Woolsey, secretary is Kenneth Adelman, members include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel P. Huntington, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dan Quayle, and other familiar names. Funded by a choice mix of all the usual suspects -- from Scaife to Soros. List of related organizations starts with the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, which is dominated by Neocons with a few old Iran-Contra figures on the side.
The secret ballots issue may be more to the point than relying on exit polls. A lack of transparency anywhere is an invitation to game the system. But with retaliation a very real threat -- if not from thugs at the polls than from employers the day after -- non-secret ballots don't look so hot right now either.
Perhaps the real issue is not so much voting itself as the fact that representative democracy scales really badly. The result is that democracy -- which was originally conceived of as direct government by the people, or failing that by personally-known representatives of each community -- is reduced to a form of consumerism, the "right" to choose between competing brand names on limited occasions and with very little actual influence over the product.
Even with the fairest elections imaginable, that wouldn't be a good recipe for self-determination -- which may be why it hasn't been exporting well to the rest of the world lately.
well, if it's going to get rid of Shrub jamming up threads I'm all for it. I 'spose he gets assigned a new place to mess up now and chalks up a partial success with RI.
Well, apparently, the fake Saddam is to be hung for War Crimes.
The Iraqi people no longer have to live in fear. The monster will finally be vanquished.
These posts used to be a lot better to read. Unfortunately this Shrubageddon DOES jam up the comments. I also think there is too much spamming going on. Why can't people just make comments, give a link, and post an excerpt. There is just too much bs going on here. Basically the Shrub crap and the spamming.
So, Starroute, are you going to vote like a good citizen?
How about you, IC?
Richard, what about you?
As I mentioned in another thread, I won't be.
The Iraqi people no longer have to live in fear. The monster will finally be vanquished.
What utter cock.
Good riddance you pathetic agent.
What utter cock.
Really!! Wow, you're quick on your feet, aren't you?
No matter how hard you try.....I refuse to make sexy romance inside of you. Maybe, if you're lucky...on the outside of you...but never on the inside.
The trouble with the Orange Revolution as a model is that it was controlled by manipulators on both sides...The secret ballots issue may be more to the point than relying on exit polls. A lack of transparency anywhere is an invitation to game the system.
starroute,
Precisely. (And that's why I "spammed" my over-long analysis, Anony.) As you've indicated, starroute (and you, too, Shrub, with the obvious sarcasm about Saddam), there's two levels of difficulty here: the revolution will be corrupted (whether or not it's televised), and the systems we have for representative government do not prevent the acquisition of unequal power & influence.
The only two movements I can think of off the top of my head that were not immediately co-opted were what Paul Hawkens of the Seattle WTO protests called the Blessed Unrest and Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement and even these only "succeeded" to the extent that they were not manipulated into something else by agents of TPTB--they have still not yet resulted in a permanent solution to the problem of government.
Is this lamentable, discouraging, and frustrating? Of course! Does it mean we should just give up? Certainly not. There are alternatives, but I'm not going to speechify anymore tonight. You guys are all, or at least mostly, intelligent enough to ponder this question on your own. We all know what doesn't work--how about discussing what might?
IC writes:
"We all know what doesn't work--how about discussing what might?"
starroute writes:
"The secret ballots issue may be more to the point than relying on exit polls."
It's important to have both (or more than two), because of the potential of one of them being corrupted. Only with some sort of adjudicated comparison does it show up--that is why the corrupt parties in the U.S. "agree" to stifle current exit polls as well as common sense issues of paper trail ballots. Texas is without them entirely, I recently read on the BradBlog.com--where straight party Green or Democratic tickets have been reported to be flipping to Republican.
They want to control the information flow from exit polls to more easily game the system of course. And it is easy to game the system when you have nothing to compare the rig to...
According to the Collier brothers in their www.votescam.com website and book, statewide electoral fraud involving corporate media and cooperative corrupt parties perhaps began in Florida by the late 1960s. It goes back to the Graham family of the Washington Post as well--buying up any of the papers in Florida that covered the story and then shutting the paper down.
"A lack of transparency anywhere is an invitation to game the system."
Yes. And a lack of multiple choices to get around gatekeeper issues is the issue. My book works toward some ideas on how to keep open multiple approaches simultaneously, without trusting or relying on any one of the approaches more than others, to keep informal parties in line with popular appeals.
starroute:
"Perhaps the real issue is not so much voting itself as the fact that representative democracy scales really badly. The result is that democracy -- which was originally conceived of as direct government by the people, or failing that by personally-known representatives of each community -- is reduced to a form of consumerism, the "right" to choose between competing brand names on limited occasions and with very little actual influence over the product."
That of course is the gatekeeping issue, which the book addresses.
The world is with you starroute. As I recently wrote, even the historically incredibly polluted U.K. now (like the U.S.A.) is reported in polls to have a "green" majority on certain points, particularly on more taxation for the most polluting commodity choices.
Starroute, one of the points toward more direct expression of this politics that really is already here would be watershed districting, which I think could be summarized for three basic points:
1. removes gerrymandering, which is more responsible than most bother to think for why the vote totals work out the way they do. The Center for Fairness and Accuracy in Voting (fairvote.org), a DC nonprofit number crunching organization about U.S. elections, noted that the most important predictor of election outcome--far above competitive quality, whose running, issues, or money spent--in 99% of the cases (really 99%--they only have had one mistake in over I think 1000 elections)--can be predicted on only one factor: who drew the biased district and who won before.
A watershed distrcting would provide as well
2. more competitive party framework in an ungerrymandered district
3. out of which, more local self-determination and the 'local wing' the ecological self-interest of an area can be expressed more directly when voters vote is valued in competition of parties instead of already pre-rigged.
Ongoing democratic risk assessment, by the very people who live in a watershed through their political choices, would be a prime suggestion for turning the state into a sustainable developmental model instead of a pre-rigged informal elite developmental/degradation model.
starroute:
"Even with the fairest elections imaginable, that wouldn't be a good recipe for self-determination --"
I'm surprised I hear starroute, the self-proclaimed optimist, guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater when the baby's still dirty after only a cursory wash. Optimal democracy is a work in progress still.
There is a whole different set of corruptions that Enlightenment level 'formal checks and balances' failed to touch because they only had in mind what we still have--an informal elitist form of republic (and the same old environmental degradation).
However, a whole different level of [1] informal and [2] ecological checks and balances are required for the different project of sustainability.
Because democratic representation issues are so important--that is why corrupt parties game the system so much.
In the U.S. anyway, the founding elites didn't even want parties to begin with.
They hated Jackson for taking 'democracy on the road' because they had to follow along as well after he did to maintain power. (See how splitting up elites is good for everyone? They compete for votes.)
Besides, back to the present, the majorities of the U.S. and U.K. (and definitely the whole world dislike) their governmental arrangements that demote health, ecological soundness, and economic sustainability.
The global financial and corporate elite strategies that they have chosen have backed them and all of us into a wall. They painted all of us into a corner once more.
An unrepresentative elitist based society is destined to fail on sustainability issues alone--though perhaps elites are paradoxically so socially isolated or arrogant that they are destined to always learn that the hard way... I think some already know this of course, though how large that group is who could say.
In other words, from the polls, it's hardly an issue anymore convincing people of the soundness of green developmentalism policies. The issue is convincing (or dividing up enough) the elites to do so--that it is in their interests to be representative and hardly in their interests to do what they are doing. However, given corruption I would argue is the motivating factor steering 'formal' institutions, it's hard to call them a leadership, than simply a form of pseudo-formalized occupation based more on gatekeeping their way into power than anything else.
The very first rule of "civics" and civic responsibility I learned was that...
"All governments are evil, but a necessary evil, nonetheless."
The wise and kindly old gentleman that taught me that in my first class in the subject, almost half a century ago, also taught me that no matter how benign or well inteded any of our political systems are, (or the laws that support them), there is always a strong whiff of "brimstone" surrounding any of our percieved needs for them or the underlying motivations that tell us that we do.
The very distinct "odour" of some sulphurous unseen caveate written upon them that always places a hefty burden on our soul each and every time we find we have to resort to them.
The inevitable price we must always pay for our pridefull indulgence in trying to collectively make ourselves somehow "better off" than we think we are, at the risk of losing just how well off we genuinely are, by attempting to change it.
We learn, of course, only through "the error of our ways" and that particular method never fails to display the very worst of them in the most graphic form possible... dividing us against ourselves beyond all reasoning or reckoning as we arrogantly pass our judgements on one another but never upon ourselves.
Now the fundamental human weaknesses that create all of our problems for us, regardless of whether they stem from selfishness, carelessness, stupidity, lack of judgemnent, or even some even momentary lapse of reason itself, are all quite common to each and every one of us. In fact they are a vital component of what actually makes us human.
Whatever genuine accomplishments our species has ever produced has only ever come from those exceedingly rare moments when we have briefly managed to rise above those weaknesses that hide all our true virtues from sight.
The shining moments that stand out from the darkness of all the rest when that larger truth of what we also are guides our actions.
Now the kinds of mistakes we make or the degree of harm, havoc, or mayhem we create with them always varies greatly but never in why we make them.
Despite any and all efforts we exert to try and fix any of those human problems themselves, we have no less of a propensity to be led astray or be betrayed by those very same weaknesses ourselves in trying to fix them and of course we always do one in one way or another.
So in trying to accurately assss any of our human problems or determine what to do, if anything, about them, the real facts about what they are and how they have genuinely occurred will invariably be obscured, misplaced, misconstured, distorted or simply left out altogether in one way or another simply because of them...hmmm?
In short all those niggling, perplexing, time-consuming and thoroughly disagreeble little "details" that are just as like as not to be viewed as getting in the way of our abilty to fix things "properly" rather than helping us to truly see or know whatever "the devil" is in them...hmmm?
Now I'm adding this to the mix here simply to point out that our human reality or the reality of being a human being in it has very little to do with any politics or laws at all and a great deal to do with that larger truth about ourselves, all of us and not just a few others we want to blame.
Those are our own weaknesses busily at work and they are only setting us up for yet another fall while they take us on our way to it...
IC said,
"We all know what doesn't work--how about discussing what might?"
As far as prosaic political solutions go, Marks proposal for watershed districting, is positive, sensible and logical. So, do not expect any instuitional backing.
Folk may take note that I seldom talk about problems. The solutions that I speak of may cause me to appear to be sophmoric, semi-literate, and near phychotic,(joke) however I prefer to consider that the zeitgeist is catching up to my pretences.
Look reality in the face now, or look at a much uglier face of reality later-our choice.
And no, saying our presedent is an idiot is not looking reality in the face. Looking at symptoms that are so far down from the origins of the causal chain it is no wonder that we fixate on trivialities. (yes, George Bush is trivial).
Shrub, in answer to your 'Am I voting' question, I'd have to say that I don't know. I've voted in every election since I turned 18 in 1980 but I no longer see much of a choice between "the puppet on the left & the puppet on the right."
I will either not vote at all this time or I will pencil in my 2 favorite write in candidates, Ben Dover & Jack Meoff.
As far as this place becoming a clique-ish lock-key forum, can't say that I actually care. Don't come here that often anymore & I primarily scroll over the bulk of the comments anyway.I will say that if the cry-baby typers who are forever bitching about your posts succeed in locking you out, in the interests of solidarity & free speech I'll consign this little site to my delete file.
I do find it amazing how a clique of marginalized outsiders who bitch about having no say-so in running their country will, at the drop of a hat, gleefully embrace censoring others.
One more reason why I'd no more trust the folk on here to run things than I would any evangelical republican homophobe.
Should George Bush and his thugs ever be tried and convicted for war crimes (never happen....I know), as is the case with the fake Saddam, I do not want them to be executed.....rather, I think a fair and just punishment would be for them to work in a Chinese or Indian Tannery the rest of their days.
Reading the thread over, it seem to me there are two possible models for thinking about government.
In one of them, government is additive -- it represents the cumulative wisdom of its members and the inherited wisdom of its founders, collective judgments smooth out the rough edges of individual partialities, and it can safely be entrusted with power that we would not willingly place in the hands of any single human.
In the other, government is subtractive -- no wiser than the lowest common denominator of its members and far too often soulless, robotic, and without moral grounding.
There are subdivisions within those attitudes, of course. Conservatives tend to believe that people are innately sinful, and that the primary purpose of government is to constrain that sinfulness. Liberals tend to believe that people are inherently well-meaning but often weak or self-interested, and that government exists to provide certain protections and assurances that allow people's best intentions to predominate.
The trouble is that all these approaches have a certain validity and serve to model certain situations well but fail dismally on others.
And depending on which you buy into, you may find yourself stuck with a conservative police state, a conservative nanny state, or a condition of corporate-libertarian unrestrained rapaciousness.
Maybe we need a balance of powers among our intellectual models as much as among our branches of government.
Er, make that "liberal nanny state." Sorry.
The home of the infamous european toxic clan, psycho urban fraggers that pawn the virtual return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory battlefields.
Just Pub, a dumb return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory comic strip by feuersturm.
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