The Sea of the Paranoid Archipelago

Hoover-itis

The Republican Party is just itching to create a depression; it is in their blood, I guess. There is the realization that many GOP candidates did well by opposing the Bank bail-out, so they have concluded, in their own pithy limited way, that to oppose everything is the way back to power. It could also be the path to extinction, and I for one would not miss what has become of the Republican Party. Witness Senator Shelby: Shelby, however, said that a bailout of the auto industry would be "the wrong road to go down right now," and said he would prefer troubled automakers file for bankruptcy rather than get taxpayers' money. (CBS) "Some people believe that Chapter 11 bankruptcy would be a lot better management than what they have today," said Shelby (left), "where they would reorganize, they would get rid of the management that has brought them to where they are today, bloated contracts, everything that goes with it. No profits, no products to sell, to speak of. " [It's] headed down this road to oblivion. Should we intervene to slow it down, knowing it's going to happen? I say no, not for the American taxpayer.” [ Rep. Barney ] Frank disagreed: "It might be one thing to tolerate a bankruptcy if we had a lot of jobs out there, if there was prosperity. I aply the same logic to the GOP itself: let it destroy ityself entirely, finishing the job it has so well begun. Chapter 11 will be slow and laborious. The unemployment rate will climb, first with autoworkers, then with everyone connected to the industry, then those who used to sell things to the auto industry families. No problemo: chapter 11, right Senator? You do not say NO for me, Senator. You did not ever say NO to anything in the past 8 years, and by neddy-jingo, you will not say No now, when for the first time you may actually do some good. The New York Times had a stupid opinion that somehow the foreign automakers would take up the slack, leaving us with a foreign owned auto business. Firstly, the total foreign ownership of almost all manufacturing is a disease, not health for our economy. Secondly, the process referred to will take 10 years of more. And there is no guarantee that foreign owners will produce all their cars here, anyway. One of the best ways to phenomenally increase one's Wealth would be to plunge the USA into a Depression... Sit back on your funds in Switzerland and Dubai... Then move back in when things get better, and pick up everything you want, since everyone with wealth of 5 million dollars or less has been destroyed.

Forever Shoah

"Reading the Signs" sent me a poem by Paul Celan, born Paul Antschel.
He was bar Mitzvah, or a son of the Commandment, born in 1920, or thereabouts, and died in 1970, or thereabouts, by suicidal jump into the river Seine. Mr. Celan lived through the Holocaust, and the experience had great influence on him.
A great deal of the biography I read of him seems to focus on his poem "Todtnauberg", which was influenced by his readings of and meeting and discussion with Martin Heidegger, the philosopher. One motive for his journey to see Heidegger was the fact that Heidegger wrote in his "Introduction to Metaphysics" about the "greatness" of National Socialism.

Seen from the vantage point of the post-Holocaust world, such an insertion cries for explanation. However, the great Heidegger provided none, neither to posterity, nor to Celan. When Celan published his "Todtnauberg", he sent Heidegger a first edition. Heidegger responded with a perfunctory thank you note. I found this an interesting story. I have always considered Heidegger to be a whirly-gig type of philosopher, whipped across the asphalt world's pavement like a schoolboy's top.
Heidegger walked a tight-rope between heaven and the abyss: the awesomeness and the awe-fullness of creation. He finally fell into hell. End of story.

But this brings us back to the poem:
  
TENEBRAE Near are we, Lord, near and graspable. Grasped already, Lord, clawed into each other, as if each of our bodies were your body, Lord. Pray, Lord, pray to us, we are near. Wind-skewed we went there, went there to bend over pit and crater. Went to the water-trough, Lord. It was blood, it was what you shed, Lord. It shined. It cast your image into our eyes, Lord. Eyes and mouth stand so open and void, Lord. We have drunk, Lord. The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord. Pray, Lord. We are near.  

note: "tenebrae' means "shadows".  

When I first read this, I did not know Celan's history, and I gulped, "Gadfrey Daniels! What cunning deviltry is here?!" I crossed myself and hastily glanced about into the far, dark corners of the room, where demons tend to congregate - if they would do someone harm.
My immediate reaction was an image of Milton's perverse kingdom of the fallen angels, grasping and clawing, standing over the pits and bomb craters of the divine effulgence, eyeing the wasteland where they found themselves, withered trees laced with the mosses of despair.
The compulsive prayer to the Lord struck me as an obsessive and fear filled chant, aimed not at love and obedience, but at power and force, intending by the abject spectacle of the weakness of the praying vermin to compel pity in a God, whose anger has blasted them and whose anger may possibly be diminished, post-cataclysmic, in a divine state of satiety with vengeance.

I never liked the imagery of blood. Depictions of the Sacred Heart I find too, much too akin to ancient hearts of Egypt encased in mortuary alabaster jars, preserved for the sons of Horus. I do not like the religions and icons of the dead. I know Jesus died, but he lived for 33 blood-less glorious years before that! And the "water-trough" filled with blood repels me.
I do not like the translation "water-trough". I suppose it is "Trog" something something originally: Wassertrog or something............. and it is filled with blood!
And "It cast your image into our eyes, Lord."
Is there no hope?
 For instead of the Lord, in Whose image we were made, and tacitly assuming a glorious image, we have an image of the Lord reflected to our eyes by the blood within the trough! A charnel-house image of God. A God of the abattoir!
Yes. That indeed sounds like the 20th Century; like the Holocaust. I glanced and saw that the sender was "Reading the Signs". This calmed me considerably, because I know she would have no evil intention; the poem is not some spell nor incantation. It was Celan's continuation of the Holocaust, however, in a symbolic structure we call poetry.

I reacted like one who wanders into a museum dedicated to the horrors of the time, and felt the great pain behind the depiction. Yet, we cannot be forever Shoah. We must take back the control of our own Imagery. We must be the rulers of our own Symbols. At the end of World War II, the era of the Holocaust, we entered into an age we never experienced before: we had the Image of an Eternal Enemy, the USSR.

Our enemies required constant vigilance:

Increased military spending even in peace time, for there was actually no peace, Addition of the phrase "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance, for we must differentiate ourselves from the godless enemy, Propaganda and Symbolism and Imagery of the greatness and goodness and sanctity of our way of life versus that of the enemy, ...and when that Enemy fell apart, we wandered comatose...until we found a new enemy to consecrate our lives to: our lives, our souls, our works and economy.

We must end the era of Constant War; we must end the era of the Primacy of the Holocaust, the Primacy of the External Enemy; We versus Them, for God has not chosen in our day: He has not rendered one people special and set aside and beyond retribution for the sins they commit, for no sin may any more be committed in God's name.

We must leave the blood-filled trough and see the face of God .
No one ever successfully taught me where to see the face of God. I had to fight for it every year of my life, through excessive elation - when one thinks oneself so strong they need not God - and through horrific despair - when one thinks oneself unworthy of another breath.
We are running out of time. If......... If we do not break free of the Shoah, of World War II, of always searching for an Enemy to destroy and to be destroyed by, of the Religion of Blood and Blood's Passion, we shall die in the leaking catacombs of the Past, down among the vampires of our out-of-time Symbols, where even our mothers suck our blood.
This is the meaning of the trend in vampire and undead imagery in cinema. A new film "Twilight" opens this week, based on a successful series of books. It is young people as Vampires. Part of us finds glory in the National Socialism of Vampires and their absolute Power. So we fall down and worship.
Then, when the lights go up, we are back to normal, and the films have not hurt us. No, for the films are mostly a mirror we hold up to ourselves. Vampires in films do not cause our love of Death; they show us as we are, the destructive and fallen. Deus Lumen resurrexit ex tenebriis
--

Is The Holocaust Over?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-burg16-2008nov16,0,4227786.story Holocaust's unholy hold
The deeper we are stuck in our Auschwitz past, the more difficult it becomes to be free of it.
 By Avraham Burg November 16, 2008 

 ...The Shoah is so pervasive that a study conducted a few years ago in a Tel Aviv school for teachers found that more than 90% of those questioned view it as the most important experience of Jewish history. That means it is more important than the creation of the world, the exodus from Egypt, the delivering of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, the ruin of both Holy Temples, the exile, the birth of Zionism, the founding of the state or the 1967 Six-Day War...  

...I voluntarily withdrew from political life in Israel. I couldn't help feeling that Israel has become a kingdom lacking in vision and without a prophetic horizon. On the surface, everything is in order; decisions are carried out, life moves on, the ship sails along. But where is this movement heading? No one knows. The sailors are rowing without seeing anything; the lower-ranking officers are holding their eyes up to the leadership, but the leaders are not capable of seeing past each coming, rising, tumbling wave...

  ...utopian vision has fallen silent in Israel. Concerns for personal survival and well-being, as well as fear about the ongoing bloodshed and security emergencies, about Gaza and Iran and the realities of demographics and population, have silenced the moral debate and blocked the horizons of vision and creative thinking. I believe Israel must move away from trauma to trust, that we must abandon the "everything is Auschwitz" mentality and substitute for it an impulse toward liberty and democracy...  

The Past as a Mutual Panopticon Prison, wherein the Past imprisons the Present, the Present imprisons the Past, and both imprison the Future.

[No Title]

I just could not think of an appropriate title for this picture.

Friends

I have only one friend to whom I say and write what I quite actually intuit as the future. I write here as sort of a tarnished Jeremiah...sometimes. And sometimes as a supercilious observer... And sometimes as a business man... and a lover... But I do prevaricate, at least in the sense that I do not set down the exact truth IN THE WAY you are used to seeing it put down before your eyes. I do put it all down. However, I do it in such a way that people think it is STYLE rather than foresight. It is my style to throw in some outrageous metaphor...he surely cannot literally mean what he has written here?! Case in point: In Port Desespoir where live my parents in the impenetrable gloom of the clouds blown in off Fox News, there is some land where I used to work. The last ten years of that life did not give rise to any pleasant memories. When I finally was quit of it, I said to someone that there was an ancient curse on the land there, laid on it by an aboriginal shaman centuries ago. Of course, people to whom I said this believed it was my style, a bit of an exaggeration for emphasis. Well, woe to them, then. Since that time, the benevolent and local rich institution that bought the land - a benevolent despotism that broadcast money hither and yon - has done some construction work there. The contractor involved in the site renovation and stabilization of the land lost his shirt. A YMCA has been built, and the construction manager chosen to head the project apparently took off with bundles of cash intended for the sub-contractors, causing severe problems for long established local institutions. The benevolent despot had no help to offer. ( I believe their sights are set on greater prey: a future casino. Being thus beguiled by riches of Persian splendor, how could the despot be involved in his neighbors' despair?) I said to the fellow who told me this...I said that I am not witty; I say what I mean. If you choose to think me a supercilious type, sort of a Lord Peter Whimsey of the present day, so be it. I do not think I am witty. If I were witty, why is it that when I converse with people, they often seem to develop that eye-in-the-headlight look of roadway deer? What I mean is, I seem to engender comatose states so often, that I think of a "fugue" state as if it were a wind instrument, and I the master of it: a Pied Piper of amnesiac states. I say what I mean. Period. Full stop. Pause.... whatever....

Fast In Sin, Come On In

The word "fast" in the title means "steadfast" or "firm". It is my homage to Andre Lenoge this morning.

I am in mind of Mr. Lenoge - a character from the universe of Stephen King - because I have talked to a gentleman who stated, quite openly and for all the world too see and with the sure conviction of the dim-witted, that he admired George W. Bush's stubbornness. I looked at him for a bit, rather as if he were standing there 4 sheets to the wind, unbuttoned or unzipped, shirt flap falling through a vent improperly opened to public view, perhaps also as if he were examining his nasal interior - in short, I looked at him with disgust, wondering whether to reply the long way or the short way.

 I decided to do both. I said briefly, " I admire Adolf Hitler, for even as Berlin lay levelled and burnt about him, his stubbornness did not let him admit defeat." I would like to say that I let this settle in for a while. However, I have found that sayings like that do not really settle in; they rather bounce off the intended target, and roll off in smaller and smaller rebounds towards some corner of the locker room. One is left in the "paint of uncertainty", as it were ( using all basketball imagery here!!), wondering if one should say, "Get it?" So I added, "Stubbornness in defense of the indefensible is not a virtue." (I realize this pithy saying is hardly "long" or lengthy, but we shall pretend it is so for the present.) Since this combined my moral superiority with a quasi-Barry Goldwaterism, I felt as if it were time for a victory tea from the Grace Tea Company, NY, NY.
--

From The Pope

Pope Benedict has released an encyclical. I read: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2007/1201/1196375108232.html Pope says materialism and science are not the answer Saturday, December 1, 2007 ...Science "can contribute greatly to making the world and mankind more human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the world unless it is steered by forces that lie outside it," he says. "If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world," he writes. "Amid our growing knowledge of the structure of matter and in the light of ever more advanced inventions, we clearly see continuous progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature. Yet in the field of ethical awareness and moral decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man's freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew," he says. These decisions "can never simply be made for us in advance by others - if that were the case, we would no longer be free. Freedom presupposes that in fundamental decisions, every person and every generation is a new beginning." New generations may build on the moral treasury of the past "but they can also reject it, because it can never be self-evident in the same way as material inventions"... I was surprised, expecting the RC hierarchy to say something more along the lines that decisions may be made for us by others, particularly the hierarchy. I am in total agreement: Everything is always new...we create the future and we must be ready to create the best possible ones, no more thoughtless disasters.

Cantico del Sole

Cantico del Sole The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America, The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep. Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant, Now lettest thou thy servant Depart in peace. The thought of what America, The thought of what America, The thought of what America would be likeIf the Classics had a wide circulation... Oh well! It troubles my sleep. Ezra Pound

The Automaker Bailout And Infinite Negation

No one despises the present day management of the US Auto Industry more than I do. I am presently engaged in a running battle with them, refusing to pay one penny more for a new car; not one penny more than a supplier or a person who has a relative who works for GM or Ford or Chrysler.

Four years ago, I picked up a mid-summer's weekend Detroit News and read about all the wonderful SUVs. I thought to myself, "They will not be happy when the price of oil goes skyrocketing again...as it did in the 1970s." Even though many in management and on the boards had lived through the 1970s, it seemed as if they had no memory of them, collective memory or individual, and acted as if bigger was better, since (1) SUVs were not subject to CAFE standards , as were standard autos, and (3) SUVs contained more profit per unit.

Just months before Hurricane Katrina, we had a Ford salesman expostulate at us, "You're the first people to ask about fuel economy in 5 years!" And so on. So my contempt for the Auto industry and their enablers, the American people who drove and demanded the SUVs - best exemplified by that evolutionary dead-end: the Hummer Owner - is very deep. HOWEVER, Money to the Auto Industry is money to an industry which creates a product which we use, not to scheming bankers. University Types may blather all they wish about letting free markets have their way. This exemplifies the stupidity of the smart and educated: they think they have found eternal truth.
Free markets are idiots! They are no smarter than the people participating in them and running them. It is Free Men and Women that are the "invisible hands" which determine the Course and History of Nations. Markets are the faithful servants of a free society, not their rulers. Allowing some half-baked economic theory ... and note here that I consider most present day economic theory to be "half-baked", and mainly because it derives from a society that has pushed the Divine aside; in doing so, that society has doomed itself to wander for eternity, searching and never finding, a Flying Dutchman without a port... to determine the fate of nations is to abdicate our responsibility.

Free Markets that no longer function as the servants of mankind become idolatrous Molochs, which will destroy us and our children. If the Auto Industry fails - and recall that the Auto Industry was for years the paradigm of the US economy - the entire Auto Sector goes down the tube for an indeterminate period of time. Unemployment will be in double digit figure within 3 months. The recession will become a black hole. This will surpass the Great Depression. All this may be just; it may be right; it may be what the Auto Industry deserves, and it may be what academic notions of "free markets" ( curiously insulated from the lives and sufferings of the common folk) call for, BUT I suspect very much that we shall have no stomach for the despair we shall undoubtedly witness. Ask yourself, how long can I endure to wander in the wasteland...east of Eden? 
I know this partly because of the Irony I spoke of; the reversal of fortunes where the mighty are cast down from their thrones. The absolute rapidity of the destruction of the so-called American Empire ( as Karl Rove called it ) points to a long time and very deep and systemic rottenness at the core of modern American society.

The Irony of the Reversal from Neoconservative preening upon the stage of history to being thrown into the dumpster is so absolute and so clear and so quickly done, that it not only takes one's breath away, it gives one pause and wonder about God's scenario for all this. Secretary Rice comes back from the Middle East with no peace. Of course she does. Did anyone expect anything else? The condemned are not allowed to be redeemed....yet. The Tzionistische Medina of right-wing Israel drives old people from their dwellings: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7729487.stm
This is the true face of the right-wing ally of right-wing America. ...and the right-wing justifies it by : "God gave the land to the Jewish people. Full stop." But, this is not verifiable as truth, for even Jews themselves may say that Israel cannot be established before the coming of the Messiah. It is not the present truth. It is a wandering desire from the past. This world is ruled by phantasms. Economic theories parading as eternal Truth, old tales from a history long ago, arrogant attitudes, and total disregard for the Divine. Do not do your Auto bailout. Let your Society be destroyed. It certainly deserves it. Just hang on a bit longer to complete your role as enabler and accomplice..... Earn your horns as spirits of Infinite Negation.

November Harvest

This year, deer baiting, or the practice of setting out various foodstuffs for deer in a forest clearing, in order to accustom them to eating there, and to being easy targets come hunting season in November, has been outlawed.

I forget the reason.

Of course, the dealers in rotten cobs and malformed carrots and other mottled storage roots intended for deer feed protested from their roadside huts and gas stations, all to no avail. (This outcome was particularly sad, for every year along the miles of roads leading to the great killing fields, the tons and tons of roots would always offer up a few examples of bumpy and starchy storage roots which resembled Mary Magdalene or one of the Apostles. There is no limit to the creativity when one mixes booze and killing and testosterone.)

In return, this year saw the largest invasions and depradations of deer tribes across the boundaries between forest and sown, as they poured into the humble gardens of vegetables and flowers, biting off every succulent bud they could find.

Even ragged hostas, weary, torn, and snail-bit - as unattractive as ever was a plant - were consumed with epicurean relish.

...so from the fewmets in the forest will spring new flowers...

a consolation worthy of Boethius!

grace a: The Glass Doorknob

Rush 'n Recession: Childhood's End

I see where Rush Limbaugh has blamed the Recession on Obama. Interesting case of effect preceding cause. All very quantum mechanics, don't you know. It will be Mr. Limbaugh's Big Lie for years, and if he repeats it enough, it will seem as Truth to his band of quirky listeners. There is redemption in Limbaugh, but it comes as a garment woven over a warp of hate on a loom of fear. The redemption is a leap of faith to a higher prison, one where we may all be jailers, wardens, and prisoners in our imaginations. When I hear of a 60 year old man who has lost his job of 25 years, this happening a few years after building his dream house wherein he and his wife placed most of their savings, a house he cannot sell now for any price, much less anything near what it cost... I weep, but I also realize that this is the regime of human degradation in which we live. This is the Capitalism that we have had preached and praised to us from childhood on: creative and destructive capitalism, the genius of capitalism!!!!!!!! Real Economics does not require the destruction of individuals. The present day American economic theory does. Real Economics is not just based on self interest, but also on "moral and ethical" self interest. The present day American economic theory is not. A good deal of modern day American economics is cunning artifice designed to concentrate more and more wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people and institutions. It has been this way from my childhood on. Well, ....... Childhood's End. The Future is coming. Shall we grasp it with hammers of iron and tongs tempered by blood, or shall we mold it into a true community of mankind?

God's Experience Of Man

Heraclitus says that the diving being is like a playing child. By this he means, I believe, that the deity does not "work" for a living, rather he plays..meaning that there is no such thing as a matter of life or death for the deity; he just does, and it is all rather like playing: if someone dies, raise them up and play again tomorrow. He also means that there is some incredible innocence with the deity which we find hard to understand. The innocence of the child, not corrupted by evil...yet, his actions not yet coerced into working by the sweat of one's brow...just filling one's day with play, is an image we cannot deal with. Heraclitus is saying that God may be aware of man's sinfulness, but He cannot "know" this sinfulness in the same sense that man is aware of it, and sorrowfully "knows" it. Since God cannot know evil in the same way man does: that is, He cannot carry it with Him as part of his individual history of life!!; it seems God cannot experience the good that man experiences, either. if God is so innocent, then He is the paradigm of the being in an ivory tower. If a man exhibited such non-involvement in humanity, we would shun him. Yet our God does, and we assume we know Him...intimately even, although He is remote in the sense that we do not know His mind. We do not. How could we? God himself strives to relate and understand being-in-the-world , because if He were to live in the world, He would be limited, circumscribed, and prone to death. Thus, He sent his Son. He spoke to the Prophets. He created man to meditate and gain his release. There is a book titled "Towing Jehovah", wherein God comes to Earth, dies, and thus forms a rather large corpse - about the size of Baffin Island - to be removed from shipping channels. God is always coming to Earth. He is always dieing... and we are always dragging the remnants of the divine off to some dump.

Foreclosure Suicides

Two Rocks Standing Beside A Hard Place

Integrity

grace a marc l'esperance

"Uncommon Sense"

I awoke early with a Thomas Paine in the back of my mind. My common sense tells me that Barack Obama is just a man, not a miracle worker. My friends' common sense tells them this, too. In fact, just about every one's common sense tells them that Obama is not going to wave a wand of holly wood and phoenix, and magically everything will be better. All common sense. However, this is the point where I usually begin to diverge from "common sense"; that is, the point at which I begin to spout common sense, I realize that it is only words and language describing expectations previously experienced...some sort of medley or melange that passes for "knowledge". Mr. Obama is distinctly different in quality from any US leader I have laid eyes upon for at least...well, forever. I mean Reagan had charisma, but not much else. Certainly his economics was "voodoo" (no offense intended for those of Voudoun practice) and he and his wife seem to have had court astrologers. JFK had charisma and brains, but he fell short in the ethics department. Morality for the East Coast establishment has for a long time been the proprieties of the sports team of a limited number of players versus the large numbers of those in the entire "University". There was Jimmy Carter. He was very unique, but he was doomed to fall under the steamroller of the coming Republican Voodoo Economy, 1982 - 2008, 26 years approximately. LBJ was enormous, but he had no charisma. Ike is too misty in my memory, and much too much comforting to be real. Truman...FDR...all iconic images, upon whom various storms beat, about whom fires and wars raged... Perhaps Obama is a modern day worker of miracles. Miracles come from the future. The future does not yet exist...except in symbolic form; you see, I am writing about it: symbolic form. A good deal depends on how we take the possible futures and process their symbols into the Symbolic Structures of the present. If we are like the previous generations, we will crassly create a Tower of Babel from the future; as time goes on, we will build impossible structures to increase our power. Of course, to build a Tower of Babel requires the dynamic of Irony: you will build and it will crash! or it will be destroyed! or you will be driven forth, babbling in incomprehensible tongues! The dynamo of Irony joins together all the opposites: Mission Accomplished goes hand in hand with Abu Ghraib! Irony makes Odd Couples like "Overweening Arrogance" (such as exhibited by neo-conservatives) and "Tripping On History's Banana Peel" join together, as if they were two gentlemen, one 7 feet tall, the other about 5 foot 1", at their childrens' Activities Day Picnic and were entered into a three-legged race, and punctuated the racing turf with their stumbling antics: falling, struggling up, falling yet again, rolling through the mud, the large man dragging the smaller, people yelling and laughing................. If you follow what passes for "common sense" in today's world, you intrinsically embrace the power of Irony: the future will be turned against us! What struggles up, MUST come down! We seek peace, but we get war. We seek health, but we are visited by illness! We are wealthy society, yet millions starve! Free markets are the best economic system, yet every 20 years or so they are rendered immobile, while wealth is further concentrated into the hands of a few! Sin is this: a frame of mind; not the act as much as the ongoing tendency to act, and to act with no remedial measures, no correctives, no ability to be aware of one's sinfulness. "Common sense" is a frame of mind. It is how we judge things. Common sense is a way for the present to accept and work with the possible futures. If common sense leads us to provide for the hungry, tend to the ill, and visit those in prison, then that is one Reality. If common sense cynically leads us to enrich the few at the expense of the many, then that is another Reality. It is in our hands. Perhaps Mr. Obama will cause us to understand that fact. For, I tell you that what goes up need not necessarily come down. It is only our "common sense" that makes us willing accomplices in our own degradation. Strive, then, for Uncommon Sense.

EurasiaNet.org

If you want news about Central Asia, read EurasiaNet.org. It is about Central Asia, not some American media outlet repeating the party line about Kazakhstan, for example. http://www.eurasianet.org/ Here is a cartoon by Ted Rall in EurasiaNet:

US Automakers

First of all, I shall buy a new car if, and only if, I get the same deal that people on the A plan, the Z plan, a lessee coming off a lease, a supplier, et allii, get. Otherwise, I shall get a certified used car with some warranty left. ------------------------------------ The automakers want a bailout. Some people are opposed to it. They say that GM and Ford and Chrysler made bad decisions, so they should sink or swim on their own. This entire stupid country made bad decisions in the past 7 years or so. I never supported the Iraq War. I said that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I was right. Now this country is suffering for its bad decisions: economic decisions, war decisions, political decisions...you name it. The entire USA is suffering. I would bail you all out of your emotional suffering, if I could. Do not give me your crap about how you would let the automakers and the millions that depend on them go into the sewer. You did not give a plugged nickel for the Iraqis you were killing for quite a long time. You do not seem to care about the Afghani wedding parties you blast off the face of the Earth. What the heck do you Americans care about?

Bush: A Disgrace?

The Wall Street Journal and Jeffrey Scott Shapiro seem to think that the way President Bush has been treated is a disgrace. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584386627599251.html The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace What must our enemies be thinking? By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO What, indeed, must our enemies be thinking? The big minds I bump into on the street say things such as, "Say wot yer will 'bout George Bush, we have not been attacked, mainlandwise, since 2001." Well, we were first attacked on the mainland in 1993, one month after President Clinton's first inauguration. This was the first World Trade Center bombing. Say what you will about President Clinton, we were not attacked again on the mainland until September 11, 2001, just over eight month's from President Bush's first inauguration. However, we must remember that we were also attacked - non-Islamically and mainlandwise - in 1995 in the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Building. Then there was Waco in 1992 and Ruby Ridge in 1986, both of which were government attacks on civilians. So we have not been attacked by our own government since Bush became President...but this may be due to the fact that they did strip our rights from us. The abilitity to illegally wiretap must have sated the government's desire to attack. And so on. We have not been attacked, but it seems a matter of time. Our "enemies" do not have the same ability to launch attacks as we do, witness yet another attack on an Afghani wedding party last week. I think that makes five or six instances of real wedding bell blues we've inflicted on that country. Looking at the dates of the above attacks, it seems one is due sometime in 2009 or 2010. I predict it and I predict it while Bush is still in office...furthermore, I place the blame squarely at his doorstep. The man who launched an illegal war based on ridiculously vague information and which has killed a million or so people is being treated disgracefully? The man who broached the topic of torture into the White House is treated disgracefully? The man who said ol' Wall Street has one too many and needs to sober up...he has been treated disgracefully? This is the man who has now directed the nation along the path of the next generation of nuclear warheads. The man who is about to pardon Scooter Libby for lieing, Abramov for corruption, as well as VP Cheney and himself for contravening the Geneva Conventions has not been treated the way he deserves. That I shall agree with; he indeed has not been treated with the full contempt he deserves.

Poetry

I do not usually embellish this site with unseemly boughs of poetry...is it not like planting a tree or two directly in the line of sight leading to a neo-classical building? However, I could not resist the one from Fast Day 74 last week from my other site, so here goes: http://peace-weaving.blogspot.com/2008/11/fast-day-74-october-31-2008.html When I was Episcopalian, and she was young and fair, I was a very young vicar who oft fell down the stair. The elders of the kirk came to counsel me, for I was Presbyterian, as drunk as I could be. And when I turned to RC, they had an intervention, and came to our sitting room, a reverend convention. I drank until the liquor dried up all my tears, and when I turned to sobriety they'd stolen all the years.

The New Economics: Animal House

“You f***** up, you trusted us.” — Otter advising Flounder, from the film Animal House You may read this: http://www.rgemonitor.com/us-monitor/254129/new_recommendations_to_solve_our_financial_crisis_and_i_admit_that_i_was_wrong New recommendations to solve our financial crisis (and I admit that I was wrong) Fabius Maximus Oct 23, 2008 Summary: Please vote, and do so carefully! This could be one of the most important elections in American history, as continued economic crisis might require a massive (and hopefully temporary) expansion of government power — unlike anything we have seen except during wars. ...Analysis from Pisquatwa Research shows that maintaining the US System's growth required either an annual 13% increase in household debt, or an annual 5% increase in household income. Given the Republoan phobia regarding increasing household incomes, debt was chosen, and debt reached the limit of sustainability, hence the current deflationary collapse. In my view, housing prices will revert to levels of previous bottoms ie: 3X household income. With household income plunging, to 40,000/ yr. we can expect mean housing prices to drop to ~ 120,000, or a further 40%. What this will do to the banking sector need only be imagined... I seem to remember talking about bulldozing excess houses... when FDR took over in 1932, they poured milk down the sewers to drive prices up... The fat lady has not yet sung.

The New Economics

I hope that everyone reads this, in order to grasp the damage done by Reagan's Voo-Doo Economic Myth of Adma Smith's invisible hand tweaking a tiny spigot of trickle down wealth.

Markets are very smart in a very limitedf area. Outside their area of expertise, they are rather like children afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome...only a large group of influential [?] feeble minds of Republicans and conservatives have seen fit to inflict this scourge upon us.

Anyway, read the following before the election:  
http://rethinkingdevelopment.blogspot.com/2008/09/fear-hope-and-great-transformations.html  
Rethinking Development Economics
Fear, hope, and great transformations  
By LaDawn Haglund  
Thursday, 18 September 2008 

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A Free Market Macht Frei !

Alan Greenspan has apparently discovered Original Sin; i.e., the propensity of mankind to do evil...even the vaunted business class: The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-cohen/the-education-of-alan-gre_b_139115.html  
The Education of Alan Greenspan  
Donald Cohen Posted October 29, 2008 10:06 PM (EST)  

Greenspan 1963: Writing in Ayn Rand's Objectivist Newsletter, Greenspan declared as myth the idea that businessmen "would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs, fraudulent securities, and shoddy buildings. It is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product." Greenspan 2008: Testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Greenspan recanted: "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.... This modern [free market] paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year." ... In 1992, the GAO, asked by Democratic Congressman Ed Markey to study the impact of new and complex financial derivatives, concluded presciently that "The sudden failure or abrupt withdrawal from trading of any of these large U.S. dealers could cause liquidity problems in the markets and could also pose risks to others, including federally insured banks and the financial system as a whole. In some cases intervention has and could result in a financial bailout paid for or guaranteed by taxpayers."

I believe this verifies what has been said here that "trickle-down" economics was a specious justification for theft. There is trickle-down, indeed. Trickling...slowly, slowly, oh, so slowly. They even told you the truth: trickling, not flowing...not even a slow flow... a trickle, for heaven's sake! It was and is Theft. Those responsible should be held accountable. Even Reagan.

Insomnia

Will Capitalism Save Us?

Steven Forbes appears to think so. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1110/018.html Fact and Comment How Capitalism Will Save Us Steve Forbes 10.22.08, 6:00 PM ET Forbes Magazine dated November 10, 2008 He shows nothing of the sort. It is a preposterous display of erudite blathering, going nowhere, showing nothing. Read it. He recapitulates the story. The only thing it shows me is that our form of Capitalism is systemically prone to such crises every half century or so. The people who paticipate in the economy have no enduring memory nor knowledge to prevent this from happening, so it will happen over and over again. It reminds one of Asimov's Nightfall, where a civilization rises and falls again every 2,000 years when the 4 suns of its planetary system enter complete eclipse, thus driving men mad. This is not a good form of Capitalism. The fact that Greenspan may see all in hindsight, that the causes of the malaise were so easy to spot immediately after they had had their baneful effect, all this indicates that it will happen again. Even though mankind grows through suffering endured, God does not approve of egregious and superfluous suffering which we bring on by our greed. God does not approve of the neglect of the poor. God does not approve of the displacement and dispossession of the aged. The suffering brought about by this economic debacle is more than pain: it is a sin and an affront to God and His love, for He did not will that we suffer this. It was brought about by the cruel Irony our leaders constructed over the last 25 years. As great men spoke of Governments, so also do we speak of the conjunction of Government and Economy, for they are inseparable: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. The old form of Capitalism imperils our Lives, our Liberties, and our Pursuits of Happiness. It endangers our Fortunes, Families, and will degrade our Sacred Honor should we be lulled into the delusional rat-race of letting it re-establish itself for another half century danse macabre of economy.

The Shipwreck Of Conscience

In The Anchorage Daily News, I read: http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/567096.html  
Palin blessing echoed extreme strategy  
ALAN BORAAS COMMENT 
Published: October 25th, 2008 12:19 AM Last Modified: October 25th, 2008 03:15 AM

Most who watched the YouTube clip of Rev. Thomas Muthee's "laying on of hands" ritual protecting Gov. Sarah Palin from witches at least raised an eyebrow. Witchcraft is considered hocus pocus by many Americans but has a distinct cultural context in Kenya and other parts of Central Africa where Muthee is from. In pre-colonial central Africa witches were a metaphor of instability, so to be accused of witchcraft meant the individual was somehow threatening to the social order.
African witchcraft took on a similar meaning after missionaries arrived. In rural areas today social progressives are sometimes labeled witches and their accusers are often fundamentalists who hold to traditional tribal practices and reject progressive gender roles and acceptance of modernity. Witchcraft is taken quite seriously; in May of this year 11 people were burned as witches in rural Kenya. One of those killed was a teacher who represented the influence of modernity to villages.

Just why a church in Wasilla, Alaska, would adopt the language of witchcraft to express their belief in a battle of good versus evil is not clear. But even more revealing was Rev. Muthee's summary of the principles of what has come to be called Christian Nationalism, which preceded his "laying on of hands" ritual. Extreme Christian Nationalists not only believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation but that its institutions should be run entirely by fundamentalist or evangelical Christians. They believe they have a mandate to purge our institutions of "humanists" who believe that humans are in control of their own destiny, progressive Christians and non-Christians. They believe there are seven areas of society that must be controlled, the so-called Seven Mountains Strategy: church, family, education, government and law, media, arts and entertainment and business.

Muthee echoed this Christian Nationalist strategy in his Palin blessing sermon, where he stated, "When we talk about transformation of a society, a community, it's where we see God's Kingdom infiltrate ... seven areas in our society." Muthee went on to describe his version of the Seven Mountains Strategy and when he got to politics he was praying for Gov. Palin.
About 40 percent of the U.S. population describe themselves as fundamentalist or evangelical but not all subscribe to Christian Nationalism. Michelle Goldberg estimates about 10 percent to 15 percent of the U.S. adult population are Christian Nationalists. They are overwhelmingly white and Republican and make up a significant part of the "base" of the party. A number of notable spokesmen of the conservative religious right are associated with Christian Nationalist beliefs, among them Franklin Graham (but not his father Billy), Pat Robertson and Douglas Coe.

Christian Nationalism is a form of American exceptionalism -- the idea that Americans are unique because of our heritage. Christian exceptionalism dates back to Puritan leader John Winthrop. Normally exceptionalism is recognized as the unique founding of the United States built on immigrant pluralism and based on Enlightenment ideals. But Winthrop promoted a different type of exceptionalism. In his "shining city on the hill" sermon Winthrop rejected the equality of religious pluralism and affirmed instead that the United States is a Christian nation built on Christian, not Enlightenment, principles and was to be ruled by Christians.
Winthrop's Puritans also used witchcraft as a means of social control. Many of the Salem "witches" were women breaking from the established gender roles, starting farms of their own and otherwise acting independently. Those 17th century agents of modernity were burned at the stake for their actions, similar to what is happening in Kenya today. It is therefore remarkably interesting that Gov. Palin used the term exceptionalism in her debate with Sen. Biden and quoted Winthrop's "shining city on the hill" metaphor as the model for America in the world. (She actually referenced the source as Ronald Reagan, who used the phrase in his last speech as president. Reagan correctly cited Winthrop.)

Nothing she did as governor suggests Sarah Palin would conduct witch hunts or give voice to seditious Christian Nationalists were she to reach the Oval Office. On the other hand, quoting the father of Christian Nationalism and directly participating in a religious rite protecting her from witchcraft that espoused the Seven Mountains Strategy is a reason to ask questions. The real problem is that no national candidate has been so shielded from the press and scripted (and, it turns out, clothed) as Sarah Palin so it's hard to know what she believes.  

Alan Boraas is a professor of anthropology at Kenai Peninsula College. 




I have quoted the article in its entirety. I believe it is important to know the enemy's face. We have lived in a child's world of make-believe so long, we no longer know where to stand. We have let our so-called leaders destroy our nation, our lives, our families. Within the vacuum that will be created as the vessel called Leviathan: the mighty S.S. American Empire, slips into the ocean deep, we who stand in peril of the sea will be faced with the demons of the times of dissolution, those who will compel belief in " ...church, family, education, government and law, media, arts and entertainment and business." God cares nothing for your earthly concerns of the worldly church, worldly education, worldly government and law, the matters of media, arts, entertainment and business. He cares that we put away the things of childhood and embrace the creation of God in the spirit of the sermon given on the mount, that we give up everything, so that we may gain everything.
We must love the Parable and the Paradox of God's love, the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin... No more letting the Future be worked into a cruel Irony of Circumstance...where the mighty are thrust down from their towers of Babel, dragging us with them in their destruction. For, indeed, where there are no ones who believe themselves to be "mighty", then there are no thrones from which they be downcast. The horrid religion of Witchery and Compulsion will be our adversary. It is rising now. And this is from the guy who says we cannot speak to God. Well...that is yet another paradox.
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New Link: Reading The Signs

I have added a new link. I mean, not entirely, new, but newly esconced into its place of honor in the "Links List". I meant to add it before, so my intention alone renders it not entirely new. It was, so to speak, a missing link, the loss of which has now been rectified. There. Reading The Signs writes well, an action which I merely use for FX, special or otherwise mundane. Writing well is an affectation I can no longer afford, in these day of the world economic crisis. The latest post is http://readingthesigns.blogspot.com/2008/10/body-electric.html. It is about illness and wrist watches. Sort of C.S.Lewis' Witches and Wardrobes meets Analogue Watches and some sort of unnamed illness, unnamed but hovering over all the action like some terrible plague, Magic Mountain-like, a Death in Venice slow, slow dance of symptoms and recovery. Recovery there is, accompanied by great photos of trees and sunshine. It does not quite go so far as to have Arno Breker-like warriors and maidens, diaphonously garbed in exciteable areas, standing to drink in the morning sun, all the while striking poses of determination and valor, but it comes quite close. It contains the phrase "...the only thing that helps is a certain concoction of homoeopathic drops – and resting and waiting." Phrases like that resonate like bells in my head. I mean, the Anglo-Saxon, the Latin ("concoction"), and the Greek ("homeopathic") all well woven into and around each other, each tongue supporting and adding to the others, is a fine a capella martini, symphonically shaken and stirred in the soul, and as equally intoxicating. It is also the bane of those whose native tongue is not English, this seamless sewing of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Greek. It is the type of thing I shudder at when stumbling across in Arabic; a true mystery beyond ken. I mean, I have actually had Arabic speakers conjugate wrong verb forms, translate something impossibly, then say the sentence is, after all, untranslatable and cannot be understood by the head, only the heart! Now that is mystification! I am sorry, but I cannot understand a sentence in a short story by Zakaria Tamir, if you come back to me with the fact that certain passages in the Quran are obscure, or the meaning is known to God alone. Anyway, I love the writing. No witches, no wardrobes; an armoire of wonder; an advent calendar of a month of marvels to be opened one by one and enjoyed.

Counting The Days

Eugene Talmadge

We count the days until the election is over. Then we shall count the days until we have left this period of time and all memory of it behind us. I have never seen an election like this. I suppose if you are younger, all elections seem to be pretty much the same: trot out a lot of pastors and reverends, kiss their hands or condemn them to hell; avoid too much policy chit-chat; call your opponent a demon, a communist, a terrorist; operatives mutilating themselves and crying "Black guy!". I am told that the national election is redolent of campaigns in Georgia run by Eugene Talmadge in the 19302 and 1940s. When I was young, each side insulted the other Party, but the did not vilify the individual Americans running for office. Oh, McCarthy did, but that was his sole line of work: vilify, not verify.

And Talmadge was an undisguised white supremacist. His opponents could end up beig vilified by the existing Southern Vituperation of the day. This political process we have is not good. It is broken like everything else about our system. It needs an electorate that will grow up and act like adults to straighten it out.

Largesse Oblige

My Evangelical friends love to dwell on Jesus' suffering. I prefer to emphasize his creation of wine, and his expansion of a couple of loaves of bread and some fish to a feast for thousands. He gave without end. He had not the love of money, yet He did not hunger, nor did He deny food to anyone else. Jesus may have died for our sins, but He also lived for our lives.

The Story Of The Too-Big-To-Fail Grasshopper And The Ants

Too-big-to-fail is a paradox in the capitalist system. If institutions are too big to fail, and the state must periodically step in to salvage them, then we seem to have punctuated free markets; that is, free markets now and then punctuated or interrupted with periods of socialism. Punctuated socialism so far rewards those who will not manage risk, and punishes those who do, as well as people who pay taxes and save money. It is, in its essence, the story of the Grasshopper and the Ants. Only, now the industrious ants will collectively be taxed and forced to further exertions - probably in the middle of an economic "winter"; i.e., recession - in order that the too-big-to-fail Grasshopper be preserved.

My New Car Of 2008: American Automakers

For 5 weeks, I have been searching for a new car. I have restricted my search to the so-called American Automakers: GM, Ford, and Chrysler. I am not happy. They have incentives for people just coming off car leases, and the standard A/Z plans, where if you work for or have a relative who works for an the company, you get a discount or some other consideration. Message to Car Companies: I refuse to pay one penny more than the next fellow for a new car. In this economy, we have the spectacle of a bewildered old man wandering the streets, his pockets stuffed with the green, trying to give it all away to some supercilious American automaker. So far, they have acted like good Samaritans, gave him a pat on the back and a gentle nudge out the door. I have responded to wondeful ads, only to have my dreams quashed by A, or Z, or present lease. I have explicitly told dealers this. They direct me to the previously-owned lot. What I discovered is a Certified used auto with some good Warranty left is probably, dollar for dollar, a better buy than a new car. Recall that we are supposedly trying to achieve new technology for autos to reduce dependence on foreign oil ( although, now since the price of oil has fallen, people actually are wondering whether we might not just slink back to gas guzzling ). Why would I buy a new car now, when in 3 years, the tech might be very much changed? I mean, my 3 year old will be a clunker or and "old Betsy" which will immediately qualify for historical license plates. By the end of this week, I shall admit all makes of autos to my quest.

Human Nature And Regulations, Checks, And Balances

Absolutely smashing article.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-lane-and-michael-oreskes/what-the-framers-knew-and_b_136012.html What the Framers Knew and Alan Greenspan Didn't
Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes  
Posted October 19, 2008 08:27 PM (EST)

  ...The Framers left us both their document, the Constitution of the United States, and a fundamental lesson in self-government that we could all benefit from recalling: a system which counts on individuals to restrain their self-interest historically fails. But a system that anticipates and encourages the pursuit of self-interest while creating checks on it can succeed magnificently. Or as Madison put it, but what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Jim Cramer

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/business/media/20carr.html?pagewanted=1&em The Media Equation Jim Cramer Retreats Along With the Dow ...After years of selling the stock market as a reliable path to riches, Mr. Cramer came in for some brutal criticism recently from viewers and competitors. In March, he said Bear Stearns “is not in trouble.” After Bear Stearns tipped over, he wrote in his New York magazine column that the bottom had finally come. “I feel the bear has been tamed, and the worst of the clawing is over,” he said. And on Sept. 15, he hosted his friend Robert Steel, chief executive of Wachovia, and suggested that its $10.71 share price was a bargain. Two weeks later, it was at $1.84. On Oct. 6, he went on the “Today” show on NBC (which, like CNBC, is owned by NBC Universal) and said, “Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market. Right now. This week,” he told a surprised Ann Curry. “I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock markets.”... I have endless respect for Jim Cramer. I did not have any particular use for him, until one day on Meet The Press, or some other Arthurian quest (i.e., round table ) TV show had him on with the Secretary of Energy, and Cramer sat by incredulously as the Secretary proceeded to speak nonsense about Methanol. With Mr. Cramer, one should always know where one stands, and should feel good about it. This is much superior to one's relationship with such excrescences as Larry Kudlow, whose claims to the bon ton of investment, pretensions to blue bloodedness, and general condescending, paternalistic contempt for everything not in compliance with his agenda are truly worthy of retribution.

General Powell

General Powell's endorsement covered a number of events which I was not sure he would mention. He did, so, to his credit. All the nasty, racist remarks and pictures that form the consciousness of a certain segment of the country which forms the base of the Republican Party were laid out for all to see, and they were properly condemned. Once again, I state that this party has left us. The Republican Party is not the party of Barry Goldwater and Russell Kirk and William Buckley. There is a mythic narrative of the small town and its virtues and goodness. Even though one may hold up the small town story as an ideal, one must still remember that it is just that, an ideal, not necessarily a present day reality. When the Republican began their decidedly strange talk recently about small towns and the "real" state of Virginia, it was obvious they had lost touch with reality, and now considered the ideal of the small town to actually be small towns scattered about the country: as if every small town somehow were miraculously a model of civic virtue!...perhaps all due to its virtuous smallness!!?? The heat of the campaign may excuse this, and we may consider this not insanity, but heated enthusiasm. The real tragedy is that now the philosophy of the Republican Party is formulated by small minds; somehow "small town" has migrated into and become synonymous to "small mind", and we have the Falwells and the Haggees and the Parsleys of the country formulating Republican strategy; the party of Lincoln and anti-slavery becomes an empty shell whose only creativity is to dance Curious George dolls with Obama hats down the streets of Pennsylvania. McCain and Palin have no philosophy. Their message changes every day. Two weeks ago, it was Joe Six Pack, now it is Joe the Plumber. The Republican Party's philosophy sounds rather as if it were written by Edgar Guest, and a mean-spirited Guest, at that. There will be nothing left of them. After the crash, Haggee will pick up the pieces. If not Haggee, some other small mind blown large by too much stump preaching of the Bible. It will emerge a party of the very elderly, the cranks and paranoids, and those cute and chubby racists we see leering at us on the news.

Brennt Palestine?

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/8724 Settlers burn 3,000 olive trees in southern Nablus October 18, 2008 Nablus / PNN – Fires set by Israeli settlers in southern Nablus olive groves are up this year, reports journalist Ali Daraghmeh. "This year settlers south of the city of Nablus burned about 3,000 olive trees. The settlers are also burning cars and beating farmers. This week four people were hospitalized." Ghassan, a local official in municipal affairs, described "masked gunmen attacking farmers in 33 basin areas in Salfit and 39 in Nablus." Israeli settlements in the West Bank are most often built on hills and then spread down. Palestinian agricultural lands are afflicted from the initial land confiscation to the eventual threat in the basin areas. Fields just beyond those overtaken are particularly dangerous. Officials note that the coordination between the Israeli army and Palestinian residents does not provide security to the farmer. Ghassan said today, "The initial dates for protection were not abided under the pretext of the Jewish holidays and closures. We are in contact with each village under attack by settlements and monitor all ongoing damage. The reports go to the President and Prime Minister." America at present is a country of grifters and scam artists.

Our failure to secure a just end to the Palestine problem is the original sin of our incompetence. The history of the USA since WW II has been big promise and bigger failure.

We act like a nation of greedy and malevolent children who wallow in their ignorance.

Parlement Des Enfants

Churchhill falls asleep as Mr. Stanley Baldwin Speaks

The Right Gets Angry

There has been the suggestion that the Right Wing will be angry if Obama wins. I have been informed by a number of people, however, that the righties are not the only people with guns. (I am glad Miguel Azana is not running for President.) I seem to recall talking about how the Coulter-creature ( Grendels Modor ) was aiming her message like Julius Streicher used to do in Germany. It was obvious way back that righties were prone to violent behavior, and their threat of using it was to be a cudgel to get their way. Remember the posting: http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2008/04/jack-torrance-in-white-house.html "Mr. Torrance, the Democratic Party is trying to bring an outsider into this situation. They are trying to bring in a n-----r cook .

You must take care of them, Mr. Torrance. The management wonders if you can handle it?"

"White man's burden, Grady. White man's burden!"

Sin

Lust is not a sin. It is your weakness that is evil. When you lust after someone in your heart, Jesus says that you have sinned. The unspoken desire, the inarticulated action is not evil. Rather it is the tendency we have to recurring weakness that is vile. Our tendency to be weak will destroy us, unless we practice and exercise our tendency to be strong.

Past, Present, Future

I have been thinking. In a universe of conscious beings: The Past and Future are symbolic. The Present is symbol-manipulating, or symbol processing. Hence, it is non-symbolic in the sense that it is not a mere symbolic structure. However, it is deeply involved with symbols, processing them constantly. We are aware of the Present. What of symbolic activity of which we are unaware? It seems to pop in from nowhere: the activity of the subconscious. Is it symbol processing in the Past...or even in the Future? And we are a unaware not because it is somehow separate from us, rather the "Code of Awareness" we use to "Be Aware" of the Present does not exist for actions in the Past or Future. Sorry. Sometimes I feel the need to use this blog as a notebook. Carry on with what you were doing.

Cars & Banks

Yesterday was a holiday. It consisted of driving around and getting estimates on repairs to front CV joints, followed with an afternoon at the banking establishments.

The VW I drive is one of those with the disappearing engine oil. When purchased, it used natural engine oil, derived from hydrocarbons forcibly sucked from the ground. A few years later, VW had the bright idea to alert its happy customers that synthetics was the way to go; synthetic oil in the engine...if you know what's good for you.

Of course, disappearing oil, annoying as it is, is a problem one can live with, support groups are available and one can live a normal life nowadays. However, when the oil "disappears" without a trace of burning or leakage and the oil pressure gauge does not really feel like doing its job, preferring to leave the matter to the Major Alarum System, then you are in peril on the highway.

The Major Alarum System essentially is Christopher Plummer saying "Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!", accompanied by a laser display on the dashboard and a ringing of church bells, a clashing of steel, a neighing of horses, and subliminal images of peasants running on the Odessa steps.

It was designed to get your attention.

In 2007, She-who-must-be-obeyed and myself were driving on historic route 40 through southeastern Pennsylvania when the sirens went off. I looked quickly around for the mushroom cloud, quite sure it was old Conelrad itself on the crystal set, keening us to an untimely death just outside Uniontown, but it was only Major Alarum...or Major Alarm, if you prefer.

I followed the directions and pulled over and stopped the engine. I looked at the engine, checked the oil level, since the disappearing oil was the only known idiosyncrasy of the beastly automobile...at that time.

Everything was fine.

I started up again. The alarms sounded again. This time the digital display added, "...and we aren't kidding!"

We had passed the Mount Summit Inn about a mile past. We were in those lovely piles of rock that are the foothills of the Appalachians. It would be downhill for a mile or so, but if it were the oil that was the problem, cars can be driven without any oil at all for a bit; not too far, but far enough, and certainly a mile or two was feasible.

We debouched at the Summit, an historic conglomeration which had hosted Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and that treesy-birdy-woodsy guy they used to hang around with.It was a Saturday afternoon in spring and the trees and flora were the color of 2:00 PM.

The next day was the feast of All Mothers. As a rule, not only do businesses close at noon on Saturdays, but people seem to be distinctly preoccupied when the really big holidays come lumbering up the bulwarks at them. The nearest VW dealer was 50 miles away, thus requiring a tow over that distance, leaving the car in their lot without having spoken to anyone, and the hope that they could do something quickly come Monday morning and the working class returned from their Mothers' Day bacchanalia.

Not only did these events conspire against us, but upon inquiring for the names of local mechanics, we received good references for a number of fellows named Zeke, Charlie, and Bubba.

Now their names did not pose a problem. Zeke, in particular, I found to be charming. The problem was that most of these fellows not only were closed for the day, and were getting ready for a big "do" for the old lady on Mothers' Day, and were full up with work for 3 or 4 days already, but to a man they said that working on "them furrin" cars was tough: hard to get parts shipped over from Germany on tramp steamers and all that.

Now I thought, O.K., valid point maybe 40 years ago. Land O'Goshen, foreigners have been selling and manufacturing cars here for a spell now, and it really shouldn't be all that difficult.

I mean, now look, Zeke, I have stood beside your counterparts all over the bloody world, cursing the fiendish designs of American automakers, who have incorporated so many computers and chips on a car that the common man can no longer even do a basic tune-up.

So you are telling me that autos made by outlanders are beyond your abilities?

This was dodgy.

It was not a good omen.

Then, suddenly, a young lady said, "Did you try Joe yet?"

I said no. No Joe.

"He's good."

Good references. Not Angie's List, but from the heart. The young lady looked up the number, and I pounced on the phone.

Now it turns out that this Joe character had a repair shop called not "Joe's Auto Repair", nor even called "Joe's Foreign Car Repair". It was "Joe's GERMAN Car Repair"!

Not only that, but Matt, the fellow that gave me a ride back and forth, was a sort of a VW super geek-expert-knower-of-trivia, who filled the brief rides with a fully catalogued description of the ailments of VWs, with special reference to his 1991 model, which he had bought recently and was still purring along well.

It was the oil. The dealer had not used synthetic oil, sludge had built up, clogging the oil filter, denying the flow of oil to the oil pump...sort of a Domino Effect thingie that we are now so familiar with...or a Cascade Effect...and Avalanche comes to mind, too.

I felt braced to the extreme.

They fixed it Monday. They charged me 1/10 of what it would cost in the big city.

The Summit had let us stay for 1/2 price, feeling sorry for our plight.

There were no limos, nor taxis, nor any other form of transit. We had been stuck at the Summit Inn, not even being able to go 15 miles or so to see Wright's "Falling Water" nearby.

It was a good couple of days.

We hiked and enjoyed the scenery from the hills. The Mount Summit had a golf course, where some ancient rusts stood apart, remnants of the skiing boom just after World War II; before everyone went to Aspen and Vail; a sieur de Malatroit's door to the enchantment of times gone by and our oblivion of them; history of small things and small joys and the ways of mankind.

I loved it.

She-who-must-be-obeyed had formed an opinion somewhat opposite.

She called Phyllida Erskine-Brown to bewail our plight, while I talked with the people working there and learned a bit of the history. I wandered through old rooms and corridors and gazed at old posters and maps of the glory days of the Inn.

Of course, we both had an eerie sentiment of The Overlook when we went to bed, but we did stay out of room 1409, so all was good. I did write a post card to my friend, Michael, saying "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", written about 20 times, filling the blanks and scootching around the corners and margins of the card, until it looked like a mad calligraphy of Tamerlane's heirs So, having finished with the VW, now to the banks.

Of course, She-who-etc. says that I flirt too much with the ladies in the banks. Only the ladies from Delhi at our branch of Bank-too-big-to-fail seem resistant to my charms.

At one bank, a young lady and I whiled the time chatting in Arabic about the election. I said that I was voting Republican, because I just could not get enough of it. Eight years wasn't enough for me.

Of course, she broke out laughing, and so on.

At another, a young lady bank employee and I spoke of poetry and T.S.Eliot. I informed her that the line as actually written by Tommy himself was "...ends not with a bang, but a whimbrel." instead of the now usual "whimper" (sic), a whimbrel being a smallish curlew native to Europe to which Eliot took a fancy after he emigrated.

The grand tour of 3 banks took about 3 hours. Some cried at my withdrawals, so we had to sweeten things with checking deposits. Much lamentation about things in general, and the destruction of the Temple.

Times are tough.

I found that when I was gloom and doom for 2 years, everyone else was magna cum upbeat about stuff. Once Wall Street slipped on that banana peel that had been patiently laying there, and finally gotten that cream pie in the face, I felt more upbeat, but now everyone else has changed sides to pessimism.

Oh, well. It is their right to wallow in the slough of despond for awhile. I had had dibs on it for too long.

By The Way...

...in case you did not know... Our failures are germane, brotherly and sisterly. They have their mother and father the same, as the loathsome multiple births that they are. Israel and Palestine was the first child of this new era. There will be no surcease of pain until the first sibling: Israel and Palestine, is weaned from drawing at the breast of Grendels Modor, the mother of Grendel, the supernatural source of our demonic fury. We must learn to weave peace, not discord, through the loom of days. (On the Day of Atonement, an old Arab man was driving his car through a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusdalem. Jewish teens attacked him; later Arab rioters stormed through the streets. It must stop. If we can not do this, we can not do anything. This is the first test, and we failed. We have failed every test since then up to the present day, and we are continuing our perfect grade of failures.)

Arabic Philosophy

Mayasaloon has written a good piece on philosophy: http://maysaloon.blogspot.com/2008/10/colonialism-in-philosophy.html To him I wrote: Truly written. Colonialism sought to intrude into countries where there was something of value to exploit.However, they have not yet allowed themselves to make use of Arabic philosophy. To keep interest low, they portrayed Arabic philosophy as you have described in your post. We are now at the very beginning of the time when Arabic philosophy will influence Western philosophy. Since the countries wherein Arabic philosophy resides are no longer under the control of colonialism, the West finds the ideas of Arabic philosophy not quite "pukka" enough for their consumption, and the process is marked by conflict.It will continue to be of interest. note: by "pukka" here, I mean the original idea of "under cooked"; i.e., "half-baked". "Half-baked" would seem to be the appropriate insult a westerner would use to scare people away from the forests of Arabic thought: sort of a "beware! there be dragons here!"

William Ayers

Republicans ( not Conservatives...I still hold Conservatives to be in the mold of Russell Kirk and Barry Goldwater, not Jerry Falwell and John Haggee.) hate William Ayers because he has the odor of the sixties radical about him. William Ayers is a reminder of the idealism that was the Boomers' true path and true goal: a greater and better and more equitable society; an idealism the Boomers' threw away in order to become fabulously wealthy by cheating and scamming ( as seen in their foremost representatives ) and to destroy this society, by bombs or by banks. William Ayers is an affront to the Boomers, for he is a constant reminder that they sold their souls. First some sold their souls to violence. Then the rest turned their backs on their idealism. We see what that loss of soul has wrought now in the desolation spread around us.

October 10 2008: Panic Is Not An Option

We shall stand fast. Those who sought quick and easy profits panic, but we do not have that option. We have seen too much. We know that panic is a nice option, leaving you bereft of your senses, but we do not have that option. We shall stand firm, let the storm blow around us, then pick up the pieces. Faith in God the Sustainer.

Speaking With God 1

Note: To Reading the Signs: my first attempt. I would run into problems if God were to speak. For one thing, speech is used to disagree, to argue, to puzzle, to scam, and to mislead. So also have many people through history argued and mislead over what they believe God has said. If God speaks, it unfortunately is not immediately recognizable as divinely inspired truth. Unless, that is, we are born into a certain religion and learn its beliefs and symbols and icon from our earliest days. Then we may view the world and readily reach back into our accumulated fund of learning and see, hear, touch, and feel the things we have already learned and committed to memory. But this strikes me as a consistent use of symbols over time, from year to year, and not divinely inspired truth. If God were to speak, I would think He speaks to me. I would become arrogant and peremptory. I would shout heresy. I would no longer have feelings and tolerance for the lesser human beings around me, the poor ones who do not have the same privileged speech I have with God. I would pester the Deity for gifts and trinkets. I would believe everything I did was O.K. In fact, if I believed God spoke to me, my incredible arrogance would be as great as if I believed God did not exist at all, but rather all my accomplishments were due to my native genius and shining celebrity. Thus, the attitude of the Atheist and the one who thinks God speaks to him are the same. If God were to speak, I would puzzle over His meaning. I would debate the origin of His Name. I would wonder if "hawah" meant "to be" or "to fall, occur". Thus I could escape the ethical net wherein I must love my brothers and sisters. By debating...by speaking...I could evade all moral responsibility, for I could argue on and on forever about meanings, yet never live the way I should. When I wrote about Moral Relativism in http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2008/07/moral-relativism.html the gist of it was that we of the present age were so conflicted and so prone to hatred and discord that when we are presented with the Immoral in the form of dead Palestinian or Israeli children, we can not be silent in awful dread of this slaughter and discover in our silence some new way to hope, but can only perform a perfunctory moment of silence, and then determinedly return to hating and arguing. If one cannot recognize the Immoral, one cannot recognize the Moral. Hence, any talk of Moral Absolutes disappears. God disappears. What is God anymore, except a political partisan in our debates? What good is a God who speaks to an age which cannot tell right from wrong? They will turn the divine words into rhetoric and folly. Yet I fully concur that God speaks. He speaks when our life begins, before we have any ability of speech, yet we understand. God speaks in the language of life and growth, the language of His Creation and its Logic and Grammar, not human speech and its vagaries. To recapture this speech, we have to go back to the time before we spoke: when we were silent.

Osama vs. Uncle Sam

We have met the enemy, and he is us. Americans have destroyed more now than bin Laden ever could have.

October 7: Seeing The Future

Current Events First thing, the worst time in the present series of events is going to occur in the fall of 2008. I got the sense it was October 2008. Now worst does not mean that the center will not hold and everything falls apart. It just means the in a series of events, this month will have the suckiest. And it may be all our perceptions; that is, this month will be the month of our greatest fear, not necessarily the worst event. It is our consciousness of the event that will determine how bad it is. I for one did not need John McCain to start going ballistic, adding a horrendous campaign to a list of other worries. It was fated to deteriorate until the people woke up. The ongoing series of arrogant and infamous acts could have no other climax than tragedy; think of all mankind's stories along the ironical lines of the Tower of Babel...prides goes into the revolving door before a fall does. It is also fated to get better. It will not be as bad as some think, yet it will be bad enough. It will get better After October, there will be a desultory decline into recession, and some fields will lie fallow, but then, suddenly, Spring shall return. Have faith and do not, under any circumstances, give into despair. Seeing The Future Second, how does one know these things? A long time ago, it dawned on me that the only difference - grammatical difference, at least- between the past, present, and future were the tenses of the verbs we employed: I saw, I see, I shall see. This struck me as not much difference. There had to be a greater difference. I discovered the Present is the verb, alone and unmodified. The Past modifies the verb somehow ( e.g. "did") , as does the Future ( e.g. "will"). How did this indicate a deep and profound distinction between the Present Now and the Past and Future. It is but a symbol, a symbol alone in the Present and modified in the Past and the Future. Furthermore, the past is a fund of memories: ideas, pictures, images, words, stories, digital traces, all of which are symbolic. When I state " I remember seeing Barry Goldwater give his acceptance speech.", I have created a symbolic structure of words embodying a memory. If I had filmed a documentary, the symbolic structure would be the film, an amalgam of words, actions, and images. When I state " I shall see the Detroit Lions win a championship.", I have created a similar symbolic structure of words, and I could have also created a film of the shape of things to come. It is one of many possible future trends, the one above being outrageously improbable. When I state "I am seeing the sun rise over the river.", I have created a symbolic structure to communicate to you my state of being-in-the-world, my actions, my existence which right now is fully engaged in watching the sunrise. Only the Present is fully engaged in the world, and this is a non-symbolic act or state of being. Only the Present is essentialy non-symbolic as well as symbolic; the Present is our escape from our prison or castle or mansion of symbols. This is what I mean when I do a posting on "Carceri d'Invenzione", or Imaginary Prisons: an escape from the old imagery which is no longer life enhancing, rather it now stifles the living. Hence, the importance of the Present. Only in the Present can we either affect or effect Creation, the Universe in its widest sense. That is why we should try to make the Present as good as possible. God should always be good...in the present. This will thus affect the memories: the Past that we recall of this Present; and will also affect the things to come: the Future that we perceive impinging upon us. This is why I do not like referring to the Book of Revelations: all people are feeling a sense of lesser or greater doom, all people sense a great Irony or reversal as we go get a nudge off the pedestal we built for ourselves. This sense of fear is in the Present, and it is as yet non-symbolic. So to talk about this fear, we must get it a suit of clothes, so to speak, and fit it up properly to go out among the populace. Here is where we reach back in the Past, the storehouse of symbols, and grab the first thing that comes by: the Book of Revelations. Now all premonitions of the future will be symbolized by the Apocalypse: the fear being portrayed by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the struggle for the good will be armies in battle and wars against the Anti-Christ. This is not helpful most of the time. I have recounted the story of a friend with Millennial expectations, who was amazed to find his own family's life was the sole thing destroyed. Irony was here. Irony in that he thought himself to be godly, and, thus, somewhat secure from the coming wrath. Instead, he was the focus of the bad events. Irony. Picking the correct Symbols to symbolize and, thus, communicate the Past...AND FUTURE is not an easy task. Now I shall stop here, because I hear you ask: does this lunatic actually think we can foresee the future? To be very brief, my answer is yes. Our sense of fear of the future right now is one excellent example. We cannot yet communicate it because we invariably use a worn-out image set or icons or words, none of which has any validity beyond the fact that we have already invoked them hundreds and hundreds of times in our discourse, and they are easily accessible. When I say the old images have no validity, I mean they have no validity as YOU use them. For example, if old symbols and complex structures had any validity, why would I be watching the Evangelicals of America publicly breaking the law and preaching support for John McCain, the adulterer? I can only see that kind of spectacle when the Evangelicals' symbols have been twisted and perverted from eons of abuse. They go to the old memory storehouse, as usual, and pick out the shop worn items that smell of nauseating senility. Faith is alive. It is the basis of the Present, and thus the Past and Future. If I have Faith now, then God's goodness will color all the images of memory, lifting me from the depression of my past failures. If I have Faith now, then God's goodness will glorify all the possible images and words of the Future, curing me from any despair that comes from my sense of fear. As the symbols of the Future slip into the Now of the Present, they will be as roads already made straight , and our problems will be hills made low, and our lives will be valleys brought high. Amen, My Brothers and Sisters.