Loyalty without truth
is a trail to tyranny.
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a middle-aged George Washington
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Saturday, 9 December 2006 at 4h 19m 55s | The majority wants out in 6 months | The recent Zogby Poll has Dubya's approval rating at 30%. The
AP-Ipsos
poll
found that "just 27 percent of Americans approved of Bush's handling
of Iraq, down from his previous low of 31 percent in November."
Furthermore, in the Herald Tribune article ...
Even so, Americans are not necessarily intent on getting all U.S. troops out
right away, the poll indicated. The survey found strong support for a two-year
timetable if that's what it took to get U.S. troops out. Seventy-one percent
said they would favor a two-year timeline from now until sometime in 2008, but
when people are asked instead about a six-month timeline for withdrawal that
number drops to 60 percent.
You see how much that first sentence tries to stretch the truth : Americans
are not necessarily intent on getting all ... out right away. Not
necessarily? 71 minus 60 is only an 11 percent jump from what is already a
signifigant majority. That first sentence is misleading, and also completely
unnecessary, unless the intent is to create cognitive dissonance. Starting
with the second sentence ("The survey found...") would have been more
appropriate. Was an uber-editor involved?
As far as two more years. To do what? Train more security forces, so they can
go fight for the militias when they graduate. The Iraqi's do not want us
there. What are we gonna be able to do in 2 years, unless in 2 years we
actually do reconstruction instead of securing, fortifying, and helping
construct the 14 permanent military bases -- primeveal castles of the modern
world, conquering the savages just like the Romans and the Lords throughout
Europe during the early middle ages.
Watch as the media rats start jumping off the ship, one after despicable
one.
| Saturday, 9 December 2006 at 3h 40m 14s | Elaborating on the point | Yesterday, I made this statement, without further explanation :
The point being that one course of action is no different morally than any
other course of action.
People don't choose to do things from moral reasons. We do them because they
make
sense. If some things that make sense are also considered moral acts, then
people who act "morally" have a better understanding of what makes sense. Some
persons are confused and act "immorally." Sometimes, in the immediate moment,
there are things that seem to make a lot of sense, but later after the deed is
done, we have second thoughts about whether what happened makes sense.
Nevertheless attaching life to a scale of
extremes (between good and bad) is a misperception that becomes a blind spot.
since the world and all the people inevitably become categorized (judged)
before they are perceived.
This paradigm through which to view the cosmos is not standardized however,
because
where someone or something gets placed on the scale is completely dependent
upon
the individual's perception. Hence, we have selective morality.
Some examples :
it's okay to send some hapless
D.W.I. punk to the prison system, but not
your daughter or your friend's son, that's family
it's okay to kill arabs and
contaminate their land, but don't you even
think about touching the unborn fetus, and don't you dare blow up our spy ships
that are half-way around the world but within 1 mile of your coastline
it's okay to go to church on
Sunday, and then act like a jerk all week --
and sometimes even on Sunday too
it's okay to get mad at someone
else when they do something thing that is
disrespecful, but if you do the same thing, the other person most certainly
deserved it
you want everyone else to
experience what you would never want for
yourself, but oh well, get to the top of the food chain, ya whining baby.
It's okay to bitch about paying
taxes, and then complain about the
schools or the police or government incompetence. Man, it's not like we have
to pay for these things.
All of the above are the penultimate results of attaching life to a scale of
extremes. Afterwards comes the blindness.
We all have our scales of perception, however things are really neither good
nor bad. They just are. Things either make sense, or they don't. They are
either beneficial, or they are foolish. In this way, that which becomes
considered beneficial or foolish is determined from a rational process.
Granted it is true that people can confuse themselves about what is beneficial
and what is foolish -- haven't we all -- but these are still fairly objective
matters that permit the possibility of negotiation. There is, however, no
compromise with those attached to their mental calibration of good and bad.
Compromise is only possible when all persons put aside their scales and try to
look with fresh eyes.
| Friday, 8 December 2006 at 1h 15m 14s | The big if | If we lived in a moral version of Capitalism ...
If .. the key word.
I recall Voltaire's
Candide, which is a yarn about the idea that thinks we live in the "best of
all possible world's."
Here's the cliff notes. If you base your entire philosophy on the assumption
that letting whatever happens is the best thing to do, then your philosophy
really only excuses everything that happens. (Just like slaveowners professed
that slavery was better for the slave, or that keeping the blacks down was
better for the Southern way of life.) Yet things happen because of power
relations in society, equating these happenings with some benign natural force
merely ignores that power relations exist.
Just because people make business
decisions does not mean those decisions are the best thing for society even if
some can make a buck. They may be in the best interest of the corporations
profits, but this is akin to saying it's okay for little Johnny to beat up Joe
because Sammy paid Johnny $20 to watch. We exist as a society to keep everyone
alive and
leave the Earth for future generations. Buisness decisions that destroy the
viability of society are really self-destructive, on top of selfish, and need
to be dismantled for the good of all.
Or as Voltarie said in the mid 1700's :
"I would be glad to know which is worst, to be ravished a hundred times by
Negro pirates, to have one buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the
Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fe, to be dissected, to be
chained to an oar in a galley; and, in short, to experience all the miseries
through which every one of us hath passed, or to remain here doing nothing?"
"This," said Candide, "is a grand question."
The point being that one course of action is no different morally than any
other course of action.
Morality and capitalism (ie, money) are mutually exclusive. We can't all sit
around hoping for the moral universe to gradually evolve or suddenly appear.
Look 4,000 years in the past at human history. When has there ever been this
moral universe of benevolent wealth?
The only reason the post-war boom occurred was because millions of hard-working
Americans fought for their Unions and insisted that America live up to its
ideals. The mega-wealthy who control the corporate boardrooms would have gladly
shredded the constitution for power and more millions of dollars.
Quite frankly, the corporations are trying to destroy the government (like the
oil companies who aren't paying their royalies on federal lands, and the
companies who use Bermuda post offices to avoid paying millions of dollars in
taxes) -- along with their willing accomplices in the Bush administration.
Businesses are moving out of the country because the financiers and CEO's can
suck up extra profit for themselves. You think the extra money goes for the
workers raises. Nope.
Oh now they scream something about "needing to be competitive." However, the
federal government is supposed to be that guardian of the economy that creates
a level playing field. If companies have to compete against 25 cents and hour
labor in Vietnam, then the government is supposed to get involved.
Historically this used to occur through Tariffs, but subsidies and government
regulations are equally effective. Government can confiscate the property of
the corporation that leaves, and sell it to someone else at a lower price who
can take it over. Then a tariff can set on the company that decided to leave.
If this is coordinated with Europe and Latin America, we can effectively stop
businesses from wanting to leave.
But alas all this is called "big government extremism", because corporations
have hyjacked the agenda of the political parties (especially the Republican
party, but the Democrats have been infiltrated too) and also the news media
outlets.
Corporations go abroad because our government is not enforcing the law and is
(stupidly) permitting corporations to do whatever the hell they want. This
isn't about losing money. The companies that leave are not losing
money. This is about increasing the profits so the value of stocks can rise
higher. If the profits remain constant for 5 years, Wall Street will not be
able to fuel a bull market.
They also need the stock to rise because a whole lot of corporations have
leveraged themselves on the back of their stocks and their stock portfolios,
all assuming endless rises of stock value ... remember Dow 36,000. They can't
afford to have 5 years of constant profits. Thus they come to see transferring
their businesses to foreign contractors as an actual choice.
It is for all these reasons that we hear the fraudulent banter called "free
market." Free for whom?
And the idea that cheaper prices negate the loss of good paying jobs has been
completely refuted. Cheaper prices for commodities don't aid the
competitiveness of the upper end job markets that result, nor are all prices
in society becoming cheaper. The 30% loss of average wages is not offset by a
30% decrease in expenses. Maybe 40% off for 10% of what we spend are money ne
( which is 4% ) but what signifigance is 4% when 60% of our expenses increase
30% (which 18%) ? A net increase of 14% after a 30% loss of pay doesn't seem
like a deal to the people who actully experience this phenomenom.
Walmart workers can't even afford to shop at Walmart, and guess what? Walmart
employs 10% of the labor force.
| Tuesday, 5 December 2006 at 2h 55m 2s | It's what you don't hear that matters the most | You can tell a lot about the way news is
filtered out
of the
media is
by
looking at the big stories that do not get pursued beyond the first week ( or
day ) of coverage. Here is a brief list of the most recent :
- The Foley page sex scandal, and the Hastert involvement : hush,
hush, especially about Denny Hastert's odd living arrangement with his two gay
top staff aides -- oh, what were those whispers about Hastert fondling boys
when he was a high school wrestling coach in the latter 1970's
- Why did the CIA first and second in command (Porter Goss and Dusty Foggo)
suddenly resign when it was discovered that Shirlington Limosine Inc. was a
front company that was driving Congressman to hotels where there were poker
games and prostitutes? ... and then Shirlington Limousine gets contracts from
Homeland Security? Holy $*#@% !!!! -- shhhhh, its ah state secret.Click
here
- The President has authorized the tapping of all phones without
Judicial oversight. Despite the evidence that this will be used
politically, all is hush, hush.
- The FBI and various State officials organized a mass arrest of 11,000
known "criminals" nationwide in mid-October. How many of the 11,000 arrests
were
mistakes? What was the result of those arrests? Not one word.
- Did you know that they are building detention centers across the United
States? Yep. Various private prison corporations are building more prisons via
Homeland Security contracts. Hmm, why do we need more prisons all of a sudden?
How come this priority is far above so many other -- it would seem -- more
pressing priorities?
| Wednesday, 29 November 2006 at 2h 2m 54s | Micro-environmentalism | Many people
don't
realize the
vast
impact that
small
acts by
multiple
numbers
of people can have on the environment. Each of us minimalizes the actions we
make because we do not consider what our action does in concert with millions
of other similar actions.
Take for instance the paper cup that millions of morning coffee drinkers throw
away every day. That cup is really unnecessary, but yet so seemingly
insignifigant to each individual.
Let's do the math. say 10 million people purchase a 12 ounce paper/plastic cup
that gets thrown away every day. This cup is about 2.5 inches in diameter at
the bottom tapered to 3 inches at the top, and is roughly about 6 inches tall.
Assuming the cup can be flatten to a 6 inch radius circle (the height of the
cup, and then include the bottom piece), the area of the paper used to make
each 12 ounce cup is the area of a circle with radius 6, or 36π -- which is
about 112 square inches.
However, the actual area is 88 square inches, using a composite of an annular
ring sector and a circle piece for the bottom of the cup. (When laid flat the
outer section of the cup resembles a fat C.)
So 10,000,000 people times 88 square inches is 880,000,000 square inches or
6,111,111 square feet or 0.2192 square miles PER DAY, which is 2.93 square
inches per person in the United States per day (assuming 300,000,000 million
people.)
Newsflash. There are 365 days per year so this translates to 80 square
miles per year. In 20 years (the time between age 14 and age 34) -- which is
minimum life cycle of harvested trees -- this translates to a phenomenal 1600
square miles, which is equivalent to a square piece of land, 40 miles on each
side.
Now all of the fore-mentions assertions assume the per diem paper cup purchase
is 10 million, when in fact it
is probably much more. For example if the per day figure is really 50 million,
five
times more, then the end numbers after 20 years are 8000 square miles per year,
and a square
piece of land that is 89.4 miles on each side.
And all of this due to our modern cultural inability to bring a fucking cup to
the coffee shop.
* * *
Here's another way of looking at this.
Say at least one person throws a bottle out into the wilderness once a week for
20 years. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, then 52 times 20 is 1040
bottles. Each bottle approximates a cylinder 10
inches tall and a circular diameter of 3 inches. Since the bottle actually
tapers 60% up from the bottom, we'll assume the bottle's volume is 80% of a
cylinder : V = πR^2 * height * 0.8, which equals 3.1459*2.25*10*0.8 =
56.5486 cubic inches.
Now unless the bottle breaks, this volume will be lying on, or very near the
ground in 20 years. 1,040 times 56.5486 is 58,810.61448 cubic inches, or
408.407
cubic feet -- which is a cube 7.419 feet on each side.
However, bottles don't stack into cubes. They lay flat on the ground. Let's
assume these 1,040 bottles all lay flay, 3 inches high of the ground. Thus, we
form a rectangular solid, 3 by 3 by 10 for each bottle, 90 cubic inch space.
If we arrange the bottles 32 rows by 32 columns, the array will hold 1024
bottles. Depending on how you arrange the bottles, this is a 96 inch by 320
inch square, or 8 feet by 26.66 feet.
If the bottle toss rate per week increases to 3, then the rectangle becomes 8
by 80. When it becomes one per day (or 7 per week) then the rectangle becomes
8 by 186.66. So in twenty years, at the rate of one bottle per day, a path of
bottles that is 8 feet wide exists for 62 yards of length.
Now imagine a landscape in which 1/100 th of the square acreage is a bottle --
one bottle per 10 ft. by 10 ft. square.
So multiplying the above dimensions by 10 ( since 10 x 10 = 100), we get the
equivalent dimensions of this
perspective. ( Note: 1/10 th of the square acreage would multiply the
dimensions by the square root of 10, or 3.16.)
the dimensions based upon percent of area
|
1/100 th
|
1/10 th
|
1 per week
|
27 yds x 86 yds.
|
8 yds x 27 yds.
|
3 per week
|
27 yds x 267 yds.
|
8 yds x 80 yds.
|
7 per week
|
27 yds x 620 yds.
|
8 yds x 198 yds.
|
Look at that last row. That's either 6 football fields (1/100 th) if there is
one bottle for every 10 yard by 10 yard area, or two football fields (1/10
th) which is about one bottle for every 10 feet by 10 feet area.
I can't tell you how much it pains me to see the litter in the national parks.
It makes no sense to me, but there it is. Today I stood looking out at a green
lawn beside a children's playground (Lincoln Park, San Francisco) and every 10
square feet had at least 2 items of trash -- in part because a bum raided the
trash can and the infamous San Francisco wind blew the trash he threw on the
ground all over the place.
And that's how Americans treat nature, like drunken desperate bums completely
ignorant of the results of their actions.
| Thursday, 23 November 2006 at 1h 25m 53s | Oh. My. God. | Police: Daly City man held 16-year-old girl captive for more
than a
year
GIRL'S PARENTS THOUGHT SHE WAS A RUNAWAY
By Kelly Pakula
Published in the San Jose Mercury News
A Daly City man pleaded not guilty Tuesday after he was arrested on suspicion
of keeping a 16-year-old girl captive for more than a year in his parents'
house.
John France Gonzales, 22, is charged with multiple felonies including 68 counts
of lewd and lascivious acts on a child, 39 counts of lewd acts on a child who
is 14 or 15 years old, forcible penetration and domestic violence.
Gonzales was arrested Saturday after the girl was returned home and told her
parents about the ordeal, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney's
Office. The girl's parents' reportedly thought their daughter had run away.
Gonzales allegedly began molesting the girl in October 2002, however, it was in
2005 that he forced her to live in the basement of his parents' home, making
her have sexual relations with him and beating her, the district attorney's
office reported.
Gonzales' parents' were reportedly unaware that the girl was living in their
home.
Gonzales remains in custody in lieu of $1 million bail. He will return to court
on Dec. 29 for his preliminary hearing.
Come on y'all, get a grip.
| Thursday, 23 November 2006 at 0h 22m 40s | The Florida Congressional election in district 13 | Click here for the story in the Orlando Sentinel.
The Republican Vern Buchanan beats the Democratic candidate Christine Jennings
by 369 votes in the Florida Congression election for district 13, despite the
strange occurrence of 17,846 voters who voted but didn't cast a vote in the
Congressional election.
From the Orlando Sentinel article source:
The Sentinel reviewed records of 17,846 touch-screen ballots that included no
vote in the tightly contested 13th District congressional race to determine
whom voters selected in other major races.
The analysis of the so-called "undervotes" examined the races for U.S. Senate,
governor, attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture
commissioner.
The results showed that the undervoted ballots skewed Democratic in all of
those races, even in the three races in which the county as a whole went
Republican.
In the governor's race, for example, Republican Charlie Crist won handily in
Sarasota, easily beating Democrat Jim Davis. But on the undervoted ballots,
Davis finished ahead by almost 7 percentage points.
In the agriculture commissioner's race, Republican Charles Bronson beat
Copeland by a double-digit margin among all voters. But on the undervoted
ballots, Copeland won by about 3 percentage points.
Some questions remain
The analysis does not -- and cannot -- reveal why no congressional choice was
recorded on the ballots. It also cannot determine which candidate any single
voter might have selected had he or she made a choice.
But the strong performance of other Democrats indicates Jennings would have
found a sizable number of supporters within the group.
My question is this: how many other races were "undervoted" ? These are
voters who bothered to show up and vote, but neglected to cast a vote in the
Congressional election. Eighteen thousand ? Does that make sense to you? It
makes no sense to me, unless something funny is going on.
| Wednesday, 22 November 2006 at 23h 41m 37s | Bush twin Barbara robbed in Argentina | Click here for the story. You'll have to read Spanish.
| Tuesday, 21 November 2006 at 3h 8m 13s | The food you eat | Nowadays, none of us have any clue what it is we are
actually
eating.
Tandem
with a lack of knowledge about nutrition, science, and biology, most people do
not understand the basics of physiological processes, and are easily enticed by
something that tastes good.
For instance, a lot of people don't understand that white flour and white
sugar are both washed over with ammonia -- to separate the molasses in the
latter case, and to make the flour look white or "bleached." Tomatoes --
assuming they are not genetically modified (or organic) are sprayed with
pesticides, picked while they are green, and then blasted with Xenon gas just
before they are shipped. Most of the corn used as filler -- or from which corn
syrup is made -- is genetically modified with a gene from an E-Coli bacterum,
so that the corn can either secrete its own pesticide, or so the corn can take
twice the rate of pesticide treatment. Milk is ladden with all sorts
of residues, gbH hormones, anti-biotics, and pus from the industrialized udders
of the cows that get infections from the hyperstress the drugs cause. Since
the cows also eat genetically modified food, the diet of the cow is not natural
at all. This applies to all products derived from the milk -- like cheese and
butter. Margarine is not butter, and is actally one hydrogen-carbon molecule
different from plastic.
All of these products -- and don't get me started on fast food -- enter into
the body, and have to be dealt with by the body. Our body is filled with
chemicals : enzymes and Hydro-chloric acid to break down food, hormones
secreted by glands to regulate body processes, vitamins, proteins and fatty
acids that are just prototypes of the molecules that
help form body cells and make energy to fuel cell activity. Anything that
is "foreign" to the body is either toxic,
virulent, or benign to the body, but the body treats everything as a threat --
which puts the bodies immune system on hyper-drive. The pancreas also has to
deal with added pressures of digesting food that has no enzymes to aide in the
digestion, and also has regulate insulin production more often because of the
increase sugar load from the foods we eat. In most fast food meat products,
phosphates are added to the meat to keep the product together. Phosphates in
the blood-stream have the same effect on roaming cholesterol, sticking to them
and forming platelets.
The long-term problem of 30 plus years of this type of food could very well
explain why Americans have twice the rate of Heart-Attacks and Diabetes cases
then anywhere else in the world.
You really are what you eat.
| Tuesday, 21 November 2006 at 0h 18m 4s | Kissinger, to the rescue | Those who willfully act without sufficient preliminary
investigation
are like
proud savages jumping out of airplanes without first checking to see if the
plane is on the ground.
Or, when all else fails, send corporate petro-chemical-defense industry lackey
Henry Kissenger to Britain on Sunday to say Victory in Iraq is impossible.
Yep, after 40 years of being corrupted by the millions of retainer fees he gets
for "consulting" with corporate elites, it is Kissenger who is sent to cozy up
with the international press, which is kind of like sending Al Capone to speak
with the London Press about Tax Evasion.
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Here ... I have come ... To ... Save ... The ... Day.
|
Nowadays I have to squelch my desire to scream at the flag-waivers who jumped
on this ship of patriotism, and are so quick to jump off. Most of us never got
on that ship, because we did our homework and saw the lies. We tried to tell
you, but all we got was your irate insistence and blithe righteousness.
And now thanks to you, we have not only lost control of the region, but also
respect. We have pissed away money that got stolen by friends of elites, and
will get nothing for the billions of tax payer dollars. Reconstruction never
happen, and was half-assed whereever it was even attempted. We have forsaken
all future contracts, which are now going to Europe, Russia, and China. Our
selective intransigence about regime change brands us as selfish
hypocrites,because we support nearby dictatorships in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Nigeria, Equitorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, and Malaysia when they suit our
interest.
If you want to drown in the frozen hell of stupidity, go for it. But don't
expect me or anyone else that thinks to join you.
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