Carta Blanc

The Fall and Rise of Yoosa

2011-11-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

It is morning of the final day of Ricardo Perez's eight-year term as president of the land of Yoosa. He sits at his office desk in the presidential palace, honing the farewell speech he will make at mid-day from the upper-floor balcony to the thousands of Yoosans who are gathering in the palace gardens to say goodbye. The speech will also be televised live to all Yoosans at home and in their workplaces, and to television watchers around the world.

The speech will be short because the president knows that Yoosans love him for all he's done for them. So there's no need for a long and boastful speech. The president's accomplishments during his term of office speak for themselves.

After putting the finishing touches to the speech, then reading it back to himself aloud to ensure its rhythm is how he wants it, the president puts the speech in his desk drawer, then sits back in his ergonomic chair, thinking on the last eight years. He smiles as he contemplates the changes to the nation of Yoosa he has wrought.

***

Yoosa was a mess when President Ricardo Perez had taken over from President Khalid Wahaba eight years ago. Unemployment was at Great Depression levels.The national debt was at a record high and still climbing steadily despite the historically high levels of taxes levied on the rich, who consequently had little left over to create the jobs that would put Yoosans back to work and eliminate the debt.

Yoosa's unemployed, comprising a quarter of the workforce, had little incentive to create work for themselves by starting their own businesses, because they had become too used to getting welfare and unemployment benefits while lazing about. In any case, obstacles to starting one's own business were well-nigh insuperable because of government red tape and innumerable laws applying to the workplace.

The government had become fat as never before, and was becoming fatter. Aside from all the welfare and unemployment benefits paid out interminably to Yoosa's idle and shiftless, Yoosa's armed forces were another huge burden. Yoosa was spending yearly on its armed forces as much as the rest of the world put together was spending. And there was the upkeep of the millions of prisoners that Yoosa kept in its jails. Mainly because of the drug laws, Yoosa's prisoners comprised over a quarter of the world's prisoners.

The monies that Yoosan taxpayers were spending on educating the young at state-run schools were monies wasted, because most graduates were coming out as ignorant and slack-jawed, and as indolent and drug-addled, as before they came in.

The enormity of all these problems would normally have dissuaded Ricardo Perez from running for the presidency of Yoosa. However, during his years as a businessman running his own hardware store in the little town where grew up, he had soaked himself during his evenings in the works of economic and political philosophers like Adolf Schmidt, Frederick Harper, Wilton Weedman, Ludwig von Misery, and David Stockperson.

From them he learned that government is the biggest obstacle to economic growth. Government stifles the creativity of business which is a coiled spring ready to unleash as soon as government gets out of its way. There is nothing which government does, which business cannot to do better, and much more cheaply. Hence the smaller the government, the more the efficiency, the faster the economic growth, the greater the prosperity for all.

Ricardo Perez also learned from these philosophers that by entering into business and using one's creativity to make a profit by using Market Forces to one's best advantage, one does the work of God. One's innate capacity for creativity is bestowed by God for the purpose of its being used to the best of one's ability. Hence not to be creative, and to just work for the government as a functionary, is to mock God.

Ricardo Perez emerged from his nightly studies of these learned philosophers a changed man. He now saw how simple was the solution for Yoosa to get out of its mess. Cut taxes to a fraction of what they were, shrink government to the barest minimum, and let business do its thing.

One night, Ricardo Perez dreamt that God appeared before him and said it was his mission to lead Yoosa out of its misery. He therefore entered politics and ran for president against President Khalid Wahaba, whose agenda of Big Government under the aegis of Socialism had brought about the mess that Yoosa was in.

Promising to cut taxes to almost nothing, and to shrink government to almost nothing, so it would get out of the people's way, enabling them to easily start businesses and become rich, Ricardo Perez was elected president of Yoosa. It was close, though, for Wahaba-style Socialism was deeply ingrained in the collective psyche of Yoosans.

***

Once president, Ricardo Perez found it had been easier to make campaign promises than to carry them out. Most members of Yoosa's parliament were bought and paid for by rich men whose corporations were making lots of money from government contracts. Hence President Perez's first attempts to do what he had promised Yoosans, were routinely thwarted by parliament.

The president was nothing if not determined. He ordered his most trusted confreres to dig in to the lives of all parliamentarians. He knew that most had done things, or were continuing to do things, that they'd rather their families or the public or the police not know about. A visit by masked men to a parliamentarian at his home late at night, and the brandishing of documentary evidence of his wrongdoings, was usually enough to make the parliamentarian see things the president's way and to vote accordingly.

Hence President Ricardo Perez was able during his eight years in office to do everything he'd promised. This made him unique among presidents.

***

The president dealt first with the armed forces. Why was Yoosan defence spending so large that it amounted to half the defence spending of the entire world? Who were Yoosans so afraid of? the president asked.

Apart from a small frontier force backed by some nuclear missiles, Yoosa's armed forces were dismantled. Save for those needed for the frontier force, all uniformed soldiers, airmen and sailors were dismissed and told to find real work in the private sector or start a business. Most of the guns, tanks, aeroplanes, and ships were either scrapped or sold off to any country that would buy them.

President Perez got rid of the drug laws, saying that to criminalise anyone for using a drug of his choice was incompatible with a free society. Since half of Yoosa's prisoners were in there for drug offenses, they had to be freed.

All prisons and their remaining inmates were sold to the private sector. By renting out prisoners as labour to factory-owners, the new corporate owners of prisons were now able to make them profitable, so they no longer cost the Yoosan taxpayer anything.

President Perez scrapped Yoosa's Department of Education. As with prisons, he sold all schools, colleges and universities to the private sector, which now provided for a profit all education and training for young Yoosans. The education and training to work at a McDonalds was all that was required for most jobs. Hence most young people - in order to get jobs in today's Yoosa which had exported most of its high-tech jobs overseas - needed no more than an ability to do simple arithmetic and operate a cash machine. The private sector, where most young people would end up working, was therefore better suited to provide the education and training to work in the private sector.

Since this basic education took at most a couple of years, children from ten years and up could now work full-time and make money instead of being bored to death at school. Parents wanting their children to become scientists, doctors, lawyers and whatnot, could easily afford this education for their children, thanks to drastically lower taxes from the shrinking of government.

It was in medical care that President Perez did most for ordinary Yoosans. Before he took office the costs of medical care were more than poor, and even not-so-poor, Yoosans could pay for, and by far. The government hadn't allowed Market Forces to operate in the medical field. This brought about a supply of doctors inadequate to meet demand for their services, with the consequent effect on their fees.

President Perez therefore changed the immigration laws to allow doctors from anywhere in the world to freely come to Yoosa and set up a medical practice, and to charge whatever they wanted with no interference from the Yoosan Medical Association or the government.

Doctors practicing in Yoosa increased tenfold during the presidency of Ricardo Perez. Their fees were kept in check by the same Market Forces that applied anywhere in the private sector. Hence doctors fees fell steeply. Ordinary Yoosans could now afford medical care for themselves as easily as they could for their dog or cat.

In the interests of leaner government and lower taxes, state pensions and state medical care for the old were abolished. Hence old people who had been living off state pensions before President Perez took power, now had to go back to work unless they had other means of support.

This potentially presented problems for Yoosans with old mums and dads. To enable Yoosans not to be financially burdened until late in their lives with having to keep their old mums and dads in nursing homes and hospitals, the law was changed to allow anyone not wanting to pay for the upkeep of an old mum or dad to have them euthanised. However, old mums and dads objecting to their adult children having them euthanised could escape this fate, but only on proof that they could support themselves.

***

You can't make an omelet with out breaking eggs, it is said. The eggs broken through President Perez's transforming of Yoosa were government employees, whether military or civilian, who lost their jobs, for, shrinking government to almost nothing, meant shrinking government jobs to almost none. Those thus laid off, plus those already unemployed when President Perez took office, amounted to half of Yoosa's workforce.

With unemployment at fifty percent - which was more than twice the percentage during the Great Depression - liberal beeding-heart economists like Saul Kruger and Bobby Rich had a field day. And not just a field-day, but lots of field-days. Through the medium of the great newspapers of the land, they whined day-in and day-out that President Perez was doing the exact opposite of what he should be doing to get all Yoosans working. The president should increase government spending, not decrease it, said Saul Kruger and Bobby Rich, for to increase spending is to increase demand. Demand, not supply, is what an economic recovery is all about, said Saul Kruger and Bobby Rich.

However, Ricardo Perez, man of the people, knew his fellow Yoosans better than did Saul Kruger and Bobby Rich, men of the Ivory Tower. President Perez knew that the work-ethic still flowed strongly in the bloodstreams of Yoosans. All that was needed to activate it was a prod, which came in the form of President Perez's doing away with all welfare and unemployment benefits to the jobless, who - as with the old people now without pensions - knew that they had henceforth to earn money or starve.

At first there was unrest. Throngs of the now benefit-less unemployed marched on the presidential palace, demanding that their benefits be restored. Being unarmed, they were easliy dispersed through the usual methods.

But it was protests by unemployed soldiers that were a problem, because many hadn't turned in their guns when they were dismissed. Consequently there were several attempted armed takeovers of the presidential palace. They were only put down after much blood was shed by both the security forces and the former soldiers.

Unrest, however, began waning once the seeds which President Perez had sown, began sprouting. Within weeks of welfare and unemployment benefits being done away with, the landscape and roadsides of Yoosa began being dotted with stalls set up by sellers of hot-dogs, ice-cream, fruits, vegetables, trinkets, toys, and the manifold other things that Market Forces produce when government shackles are removed. Car repair businesses began multiplying; laptop shops began appearing in large numbers; and, because larger than expected numbers of Yoosans elected to have their old mums and dads euthanised, funeral businesses expanded.

The corporate rich of Yoosa, their taxes now almost zero, had more money left over to buy more plant and equipment for their factories and to hire idle factory-workers en-masse. Soon, all Yoosans were working.

Yoosans, whether poor or rich, were showing that they still had the drive and creativity of their pioneering forefathers who had once made Yoosa the envy of the world. Courtesy of Market Forces and the abolition of Socialism, Yoosa was on the road back to greatness.

Busts of the former president, Khalid Wahaba, that Yoosans had on their mantelpieces, made way for busts of President Ricardo Perez.

***

President Perez, as he sits at his desk on the morning of his last day in office, is comforted in knowing that his vice-president, who will take over from him tomorrow, shares his economic and social views, and will continue his policies. Although a woman, Vice-President and now President-Elect Para Salin has shown she is as tough and as resolute as any man. President Perez has no doubts that when he chose her as his running mate eight years ago, he chose wisely.

It is now almost noon. The president can hear coming through his windows the crowd chanting, "Rick, Rick. We love you Rick. Don't leave us, please."

President Ricardo Perez takes his speech from his desk drawer and goes out onto the balcony..........

Send In The Drones

2010-03-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

I will speak about something which an evolutionary psychologist, Satoshi Kanazawa, wrote in the magazine, Psychology Today. He asks why "we" (America and its allies) aren't winning our various wars around the world. "We" should be winning them easily because we have far the superior technology. It should be, for "us", a "slam dunk".

But Kanazawa says there is one thing that "they" (the amorphous enemy) have more of, than us. It is hate. "They" have more hate for "us" than "we" have for "them".

Why?

Kanazawa thinks the reason is our political correctness. In the past we won our wars because we hated the enemy purely and intensely. So we called them "Japs" "Krauts" and "Gooks". We dropped bombs not only on them, but on their wives and children too. This is why we won both world wars inside four years.

But the wars which we are fighting today are without end. There is no sign that we are winning. The implication is that nothing will change unless we go back to our intense and visceral hate of former times.

If it is a fact that "they" hate us with an intensity which "we" don't reciprocate, what could be the reason? Is it because "we" have inflicted more suffering on "them" than they have inflicted on us?

Consider Iraq. Between 1991 and 2003 "we" imposed severe economic sanctions on the people of Iraq. How many Iraqis died as a result of these sanctions? Maybe up to 1.4 million. Then there was the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent guerrilla war. The numbers of dead? Perhaps 100,000; perhaps 1,000,000. Who knows exactly. Whatever the number, it is big.

Consider 9/11. A terrible day, we all agree. The 3,000 dead, a tragedy. In revenge "we" invaded Afghanistan and killed between 12,000 and 32,000 people, most of them ordinary innocent people.

"We" have killed between one and two million of "them" over the last twenty years, and "they" have killed 10,000 of "us". Therefore it's easy to see why "they" would hate "us" far more than "we" would hate "them".

Dear reader, perhaps you are an American. You live in a little house in a little town. You have the Stars and Stripes fluttering proudly in your garden. While you do your vacuuming and wash your dishes, you sing to yourself "The Star Spangled Banner" because it's the most beautiful song you ever heard.

What would you think if thousands of foreign soldiers invaded America, and that they have killed a million Americans and bombed your house? I'm sure you would feel such a hate for these foreign soldiers that you would kill them all.

Now do you understand why, in the foreign lands you occupy, your enemies might hate you with a burning intensity?

I will speak now briefly of the Drone. It is an American aeroplane with no pilot inside. The Drone is used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The "pilot" sits in a comfortable chair in an air-conditioned office in the Nevada Desert. He looks at television screens in front of him. They show the topography of the ground below the Drone. When the pilot sees people on the screen who are acting suspiciously, he presses a red button. This releases a rocket from the Drone which kills the suspect persons.

What is the problem, you might think? The people killed were merely armed combatants. Unfortunately, 30% of the people who the rockets kill are innocent civilians. If you are an American, I ask you again, what would you think if your enemies across the ocean did the same to you?

Think of the comfortable life of any "pilot" of any Drone which hovers in the skies above Afghanistan and Iraq. Good pay, regular hours, an air-conditioned office. Whenever he wishes, he can drink a bottle of ice-cold Coca Cola. For lunch in the office cafeteria he can eat a gigantic hamburger and mounds of French fries. And he can finish his meal with more ice-cold Coca Cola.

After lunch, the pilot - his stomach filled with hamburger, fries and Coca Cola - returns to his office where he continues pressing red buttons which fire the rockets at people on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At five o'clock each afternoon when the pilot returns home, his wife asks him, did you have a good day at the office?

A One-Way Ticket To Palookaville

2009-08-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

With the recent death of Bud Schulberg, we are reminded of the following soliloquy he wrote as part of his screenplay for On The Waterfront.

Many think it the equal to any of Shakespeare's soliloquies. You be the judge:

You remember that night in the Garden?
You came down to my dressing room,
And said, 'Kid, this ain't your night,
We're going for the price on Wilson'
You remember that?
'This ain't your night!'
My night!
I coulda taken Wilson apart!
So what happens?
He gets the title shot outdoors in the ballpark,
And what do I get?
A one-way ticket to Palookaville,
You was my bother, Charlie,
You shoulda looked after me a little bit,
You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit
so I wouldn't have to take them dives
for the short end money,
I coulda had class,
I coulda been a contender,
I coulda been somebody,
Instead of a bum, which is what I am,
Let's face it,
It was you, Charlie.

Will China Wake?

2009-06-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

In an article in the London Times, titled "Currency Culture Confucius: China's writ will run across the world", Martin Jacques, quoting Goldman Sachs, says that China's economy will, in 2027 (just 18 years hence) overtake America's in size; and will, in 2050, be twice as big.

Not only that. The renminbi will replace the dollar as the world's dominant currency; the international financial system will be centred in Shanghai; and Mandarin will replace English as the lingua franca.

What non-Chinese (read American) children learn in school will also change, since they will learn much more about Chinese history. For instance the voyages of Zheng He; the formation of the Qin dynasty; the inventions of the Song dynasty; and the 1949 revolution. Confucius will be regarded as a philosopher of global, not just Chinese, significance; Beijing, not New York, will be Where It's At; and Chinese traditional medicine will spread across the globe.

Last, but not least, Chinese films will exercise a growing influence on the popular imagination. So, presumably, we'll read in the National Enquirer and its like, not about whether Brad Pitt will dump Angelina Jolie and return to Jennifer Aniston; but whether Carina Lau and Tony Leung will tie the knot, and whether Zhang Ziyi, after her heart-rending beak-up with Huo Qishan, will have the fortitude to marry Vive Nevo.

In any event, the next generation, and those after, will grow up in a world in which what we now take for granted, won't be. They will learn from other cultures in a new way. They will find this quite disorienting.

A problem with all this, is that what experts predict, rarely manifests. In the 1970s, for instance, it was agreed that Japan would, in two or three decades, bestride the world like a colossus, and everyone would be speaking Japanese. Well, it didn't quite turn out that way.

And no-one predicted the computer chip, which has since revolutionised our world as have few other inventions.

As to how today's China will turn out, how about that, as its' now fast-growing economy matures, so its' rate of growth will slow? as happened with with Japan, whose formerly fast-growing economy has, since the early 1990s, grown no faster than that of any other industrialised nation. So China, although now a fast-growing power, may soon grow far more slowly, and thus will remain in America's shadow for as long as it's safe to predict.

Or how about that, as China becomes more and more prosperous, its' more and more prosperous and well-educated citizens will demand democracy, which China's authoritarian government won't grant? So a violent revolution, or even civil-war, could break-out, putting the Chinese economy severely back on its' heels, thereby throttling all thoughts of the scenario which Martin Jacques lays out.

Besides, how will fast-growing India react to a China throwing its weight around? How about that it will be India, with its parliamentary democracy and freedom of the press, which will dominate the world instead of China?

So the world's children of the future may learn, not Chinese history, but Indian; and it may be, not Mandarin, but Hindi which will become the lingua franca; and the world's financial centre may be, not Shanghai, but Mumbai; and it is Bollywood which will replace Hollywood in the world's cinematic imagination.

Thus when we read the National Enquirer and its like, it'll be not of Carina Lau and Tony Leung, but of Rani Mukherjee and Aditya Chopra, and whether they are still an item; and it'll be not of Zhang Ziyi and Vive Nevo, but of Monica Bedi and Rahul Mahajan, and whether the fling they were reported having, led to something more serious.

Japura River

2009-06-19T22:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a rather haunting and hypnotic piece, called Japura River, composed by Philip Glass, and performed by Uakti, a musical ensemble from Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Japura River is from Uakti's CD, "Aguas da Amazonia".

The original Uakti was a huge creature out of an Amazon legend. It had holes all over its body, and, whenever it ran through a forest, intriguing and exotic sounds came out of its body as the wind blew through it.

Listening to Uakti performing Japura River, while closing one's eyes, one can easily believe this.

Reflections on Sandie Shaw

2009-05-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

Early this morning (Sunday) in Moscow, Norway won the 54th Eurovision Song Contest. Norway has therefore much to celebrate. However, before getting too carried away, Norwegians should remember that the Norwegian singer, Alexander Rybak, who won with his song, Fairytale, is in fact an ethnic Belarussian, notwithstanding his growing up in Norway.

How more deliciously the people of Norway might have savoured Alexander Rybak's triumph (and Norway's) had his name been Lars Amundsen or Knut Kjellberg, or some such. But who says life's perfect?

This 54th Eurovision Song Contest has reminded me that I've thought little of this annual event since that halcyon spring evening of 1967, when I watched on television, for the only time, the Eurovision Song Contest of that year, in which Britain triumphed, when Sandie Shaw knocked 'em all dead with "Puppet on a String":

Even allowing that this was in almost antediluvian 1967, I find it still difficult to see how "Puppet on a String" knocked the Europeans so dead, that they didn't give the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest award to France's entry for that year, "La maison où j'ai grandi", sung by the exquisite Françoise Hardy, about whom, and the song, I devoted this recent posting.

To repeat what I had said in that posting, compared to "La maison où j'ai grandi", "Puppet on a String" is insipid. To give Sandie Shaw credit, she, herself, didn't think much of "Puppet on a String", but allowed her handlers to cajole her into singing it, and entering it in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest to revive her already faltering singing career. Sandie Shaw's handlers obviously knew their European audience, and so knew that their audience's appreciation of the aesthetics of music had become as aetiolated as that of their North American brothers and sisters.

As it was, Sandie Shaw never had another #1 hit after "Puppet on a String".

Now, for a good song from Sandie Shaw, here's one from 1965, "Long Live Love":

I'm sure you see, as did I, that "Puppet on a String" is to "Long Live Love"; as "God Save the Queen" is to "Land of Hope and Glory". The above video of "Long Live Love" is singular because Sandie Shaw - instead of looking happy, as singers singing are supposed to - looks downright morose; and the video's other features, like the nondescript man lounging about in a cardigan, and the decor's general air of unkemptness, make us feel as if we're in a dream.

Also, Sandie Shaw in the video sings with no shoes. This might be why she looks morose, for it can't be comfortable singing, while walking around with no shoes. On the other hand, there are other extant videos of her singing and walking around with no shoes, but she's smiling and all of that. Think too, that Sandie Shaw was known as "the barefoot pop princess of the 1960s". Which means it was her thing to sing, and walk around with no shoes. We can assume, then, that she wanted not to wear shoes because she liked not to.

So her looking morose in the video of "Long Live Love", likely had less to do with her wearing no shoes, than with her perhaps having had a bad night, or that she was striving for, like, authenticity, for, feeling morose is more normal with most of us, than feeling happy.

I've banged on for long enough about Sandie Shaw's not wearing shoes on her feet. However, I'll just add that, in August 2007, Sandie Shaw revealed that she had had corrective surgery on her feet, which she said were "ugly". It wasn't until October that same year (2007) that she could walk normally again.

I don't know, though, whether this was without, or with, shoes.

"Greed is Good"

2009-03-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

Image from Wikipedia

The most recent edition of "Rolling Stone" has a quite long article about what, in the US, led to the current financial crisis. It shows also how extremely complex are the activities of the big banks and investment houses, so complex that almost none of us, the common people, can understand them; and so complex that the Wall Street conglomerates - the ones now asking for taxpayer bail-outs - were quite easily able to bamboozle the various US government watchdog agencies into allowing them to do almost what they liked.

The article says that:

"........By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.

There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates.

By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below............".

Rolling Stone's article might best be summed up as follows: The big banks and investment houses used their legal freedoms and found legal loopholes to bet the savings of their investors at, in effect, gambling tables. And they paid for their chips, not with cash (which they didn't have), but with promissory notes. When the bets failed, they asked the American taxpayer to cover the bets - ie to pay for the chips lost.

We wouldn't have been surprised at any of what's happened since September of last year (2008), if we'd paid more attention to articles like this one in the Economist in long ago 2002, about one of the current Wall Street mendicants, American International Group (AIG).

The article included the following paragraph: "........Part of the recent fall in AIG's share price can presumably be explained by suspicions about sophisticated but opaque forms of financial engineering.

The insurer was hit with a $69m loss linked to Enron, and it is now at the centre of a dispute over off-balance-sheet partnerships held by PNC Financial, a regional American bank.

AIG is a large and growing participant in complex derivatives markets. It says that derivatives play an important part in reducing the company's overall risk.

From the outside, all that is clear is that AIG's credit exposure to derivatives is rising, from $17 billion in 1999 to $33 billion in 2000, according to the most recent annual report. Gross exposure has grown from $435 billion to $544 billion........".
As for AIG's transparency, the article said: "........The routine public filings that AIG posts with American regulators are widely considered to be unfathomable.

When challenged, AIG notes that it provides abundant disclosure, including 40 pages of densely written footnotes in its most recent annual report, as well as extraordinarily detailed statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But while the company provides great gobs of information, it is all but impossible to put them together.........".
The atmosphere inside the offices and boardrooms of AIG, as a representative Wall Street firm, is, in the Economist's piece, evocatively captured:

".........The common thread is an aggressive approach. AIG is known as an intense meritocracy, filled with people who come in early and leave late. Base pay is low, but bonuses are tied to the company's share price, which everybody at AIG seems to know at any time of the day. Every department must present an annual budget to Mr Greenberg [the chief executive] himself.

The scrutiny is brutal. Managers have been known to ask for lower spending limits—in the hope of making planned returns—only to have their requests rejected. Corporate intelligence, too, is viewed as high art. Mr Greenberg himself calls employees at every level to keep tabs on his own company.

Often, AIG appears to have better information about the workings of other companies than the companies have themselves........."

However, accusatory fingers should be pointed not at the men on Wall Street, but at the US campaign finance laws, laws now so lax that they allow the new Robber Barons to contribute such large sums to the campaign coffers of the elected - and would-be elected - representatives in the Congress, that they (the new Robber Barons) can, in effect, buy senators and congressmen.

Thus the members of Congress, beginning in the 1980s, began de-regulating the financial industry, so returning untrammelled freedom to their paymasters, the new Robber Barons, who, after all, were simply playing the game within the rules.

But the issue of mendicant executives awarding themselves luxurious bonuses, which is currently consuming the ordinary American, is not really the question, for, when compared to the total bail-out amounts, these bonuses are piffling. No, it is whether to bail-out Wall Street; or not to bail-out Wall Street. That is the question.

Man Hands On Misery To Man

2009-02-15T11:50:00.000-08:00

Copyrighted to Himalayan Academy Publications, Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii.
(Image From Wikipedia)

Few of us have our heads so stuck in the sand that we've never heard of the doctrine of reincarnation, which says, in so many words, that when we die, our spirits will be reborn in another body in order that we suffer and atone for the nasty things we did in our current life. It says we will keep dying and keep being reborn over countless lives until we finally learn all the errors of our ways, at which point we are absorbed into the Godhead, or attain Nirvana, or otherwise achieve undifferentiated eternal bliss.

The reincarnationsts say that to have to keep being reborn, and get our just desserts for the sins we committed in our past lives, ensures not only perfect justice - so that bad things happening to good people are satisfactorily explained - but also gives us an opportunity to put things right without having to roast in Hell for all eternity, the fate of wayward Christians.

And, say the reincarnationists, what else but having lived previous lives, explains a child prodigy like Mozart, who was obviously a musician in his previous life.

But is justice served if we suffer in this life for things we did in previous lives we don’t remember? It might make sense if we remembered, but we don’t.

The reincarnationists get around this by saying that the self that is reborn is an impersonal self which, nonetheless, has been annealed by all it has experienced and done in its previous lives, which represents a sort of unconscious memory. Besides, say the reincarnationists, just because we don’t remember something, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, like being born, for none of us remember being born, but we were. Yeah OK.

But the reincarnationists seem to want to shift their, like, goalposts, whenever they are trapped by their own logic, for, having used common logic to infer that we are reborn because it just wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t suffer for our sins, they are caught in a bind by the fact that we don’t remember our past lives, since it definitely isn’t fair to suffer for something we don’t remember having done.

So the arguments of the reincarnationists cannot be falsified, which bespeaks that they are not rationally held in terms of Karl Popper's Principle of Falsifiability, whereby a proposition is only valid if it can be falsified through any of the conditions supporting it changing, or being found not to be true.

The word “karma” is from Sanskrit, meaning energy, and a word much beloved by reincarnationists who, licking their chops, use it to rationalize the evil we do, which we must atone for in our next life. Thus our evil deeds create a build-up of bad karma that can only be dissipated in the following life, through atonement or suffering on the part of the perpetrator of the evil.

The problem is that punishing in this life, a doer of bad deeds which he did in a previous life, and which he is now suffering for, creates more bad karma, which, in turn, which means someone else must inflict suffering on the punisher in his next life, which creates yet more bad karma, and so on. The result is an unending string of bad karma through lifetime after lifetime after lifetime. Does this make sense?

Assuming reincarnation, it means there’s someone out there somewhere who is the reincarnated spirit of Hitler, and thus living a life of unremitting suffering, and even horror, because, unbeknownst to him, he is atoning for all the bad things Hitler did. But because his memories of being Hitler have been erased, he is a different person from Hitler, which means Hitler got off free from all the things he did.

Since, under the laws of Karma, the sufferings we undergo are our punishment for wrongs we did in our previous life, the deaths of the eleven million people who perished in Hitler’s concentration camps were their deserved punishment for the bad things they did in their previous lives. Since Karma must be allowed to run its course, we shouldn’t help anyone in trouble, or otherwise alleviate their suffering, for if we do, we are interfering with their Karma, and so are preventing them learning the lessons that will make them better beings.

So the moral implications of a belief in reincarnation are, to put it mildly, problematic.

***

Despite the logical inconsistencies of reincarnation and its dubious, if not abhorrent morality, it isn’t out of the question that it may be true, there being, after all, untold evil wherever we look.

Reincarnationists, with the desperation of drowning men, have seized on accounts of psychiatric patients hypnotically regressed by their therapists to periods before they were born, who have told of their previous lives, and even of periods between those lives. Unfortunately for the reincarnationists, most of these previous-life stories were found to be regurgitations by the patients from books they read, or films they saw.

What, then, about those few cases where there was no connection to a book or film? Well, how about that the patients were influenced by suggestions from their therapists eager to elicit the sort of information they wanted, for people under hypnosis are in a state of mind amenable to suggestions, and are also amenable to invasions from mischievous disembodied spirits.

Ian Stevenson in his book “Twenty Cases Suggesting Reincarnation” told of his researches in the Indian sub-continent into children, who remembered their past lives, which, on investigation, appeared authentic, for the details of the deceased people, whose spirits were allegedly reincarnated in the children, had been as the children described them, even though the children could not possibly have known the deceased, or about them, when they were still alive.

However, there were some cases where the deceased had died after the child was born, which ruled out reincarnation, but not an invasion by the disembodied spirit of the deceased. So this presupposed that all of the cases Stevenson investigated could have had a similar cause, namely spirit invasion, which, along with the fact that his researches were in an area of the world where a belief in reincarnation was pervasive, was why Stevenson was careful to say that his cases suggested reincarnation, so didn’t prove it.

***

The reincarnationists say smugly that most of the world’s peoples believe in reincarnation, which, if true, shouldn’t come as a surprise, since reincarnation is part and parcel of Hinduism and Buddhism, most of whose adherents live in teeming Asia. But what is surprising, is that an alleged thirty-per-cent of Americans believe in reincarnation, despite America being the most Christian nation on earth.

What could be reincarnation’s attraction among the peoples of the West? for Europeans are, similarly, being drawn to reincarnation’s lure. Could it be that, being the narcissists and egotists we who live in the West have become, we cannot bear thinking that our preciously cultivated selves will disappear like a blown-out candle? So we latch on, like engorged ticks, to any doctrine that promises us that our selves, our precious selves, will continue to live, and so we'll continue to enjoy the creature comforts and lifestyles that are as much a part of us as our arms and legs.

But we ignore that the doctrines of Hinduism and Buddhism stress that the material world is illusion, and that our personal selves, our egos, are equally illusory, to be snuffed out when we breathe no more, leaving just an impersonal self at the whim of impersonal karmic forces.

So we comfort ourselves with the western variant of reincarnation, the one espoused by the Theosophists, in which our personalities will continue, to become more perfect with each subsequent incarnation. It's all so wonderfully simple and as comforting as warm milk, never mind it not passing muster in terms of morality, justice, or logic.

And we don’t trouble to ask ourselves how it is, that, despite that we are all becoming more perfect with each successive incarnation, we seem as blood-thirsty and violent as our club-wielding forbears in the caves of fifty-thousand years ago, notwithstanding our iPhones, Blackberrys, BMWs, lap-top computers, eBook readers, Brooks Bros suits, air conditioned offices, and packaged cruise-ship holidays.

Reincarnation’s illogic extends to numbers, for the numbers of us are increasing exponentially, so that the one billion or two billions of us who inhabited the globe fifty years ago - a number that took a couple of hundred thousand years to reach - have now become six billion almost overnight, to become nine billion in another fifty years. So if we are each supposed to have lived countless many times, where have all these billions of new souls come from? for the mathematics are such that they couldn’t, and won’t, all have lived before.

And if we continue the way we are going, by polluting our planet with the consequences which Al Gore lays out in his film “An Inconvenient Truth”, we humans will, for all intents and purposes, become as extinct as the Studebaker in one hundred years or less. Which means there will be almost no bodies for all those disembodied spirits floating out there in the ether to be reincarnated into. How do the reincarnationists get around that?

***

However, reincarnation, although not making sense literally, does make eminent sense if looked at metaphorically, for we are all genetically a continuation of our forbears - a sort of reincarnation of them - since we inherited our physical characteristics from our mothers and fathers, who, in turn, inherited their physical characteristics from their mothers and fathers, and so on. The same goes for our intelligence and, to some degree, our psychology.

As to karma, the Bible puts it very well, when it says that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons to the third and the fourth generation, a dynamic captured succinctly in Philip Larkin’s famous poem, “This Be The Verse”, which says:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

But our karma isn’t restricted to what our mums and dads did to us, for it extends to the effects on us from decisions and actions taken by the leaders, and other movers and shakers on the world’s stage throughout history.

Take just the twentieth century. The First World War begot Hitler and the Second World War, the consequences of which have shaped our world of today. If Dr Alexander Fleming hadn’t discovered penicillin, or Dr Jonas Salk hadn’t come up with the polio vaccine, many of us would not be alive today, or might never have been born because the people who might have become our mums and dads would have died before they could have become our mums and dads, and so on and so on……………

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap”, says the Bible. What could encapsulate more perfectly what karma is? Our actions and words come back to haunt us, as we all know; as Hitler, about to be incinerated in his Berlin bunker, belatedly learned; and as George Bush, five years after baying "mission accomplished" to the world in a flying suit on an aircraft carrier, later realized.

This all does represent a sort of poetic justice without the need for a simple-minded bromide like reincarnation - a dogma for the self-absorbed and the half-educated. As to justice generally, who says there has to be justice? for it may merely be a concept dreamed up by jelly-bellied idealists.

How more comforting to believe we'll dwell for all eternity in the playing fields of the Lord, than that we must endure the travails of life on earth for goodness knows how many times.

Isn't once enough?

The Shape of Things to Come

2009-02-14T11:23:00.000-08:00

Amazing, innit?

Amazing to think there'll soon be more English-speakers in China than English-speakers in any country else; that the 25% of Indians who are reeely, reeely smart, is more than all of Americans; that the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn't exist in 2004; that today's learner will have 10-14 jobs before they're 38; that one week of the New York Times contains more information than anyone in the 18th century came across in all their life; that new technical information is doubling every two years; that for students doing a four-year technological degree, half what they learn in the first year will be redundant by the third.

Inside The Tent

2009-02-11T15:24:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow, February 12th, will be two hundred years to the day when Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin on a farm in southeast Hardin County, Kentucky. How appropriate it is, then, that the beginning days of Barack Obama's presidency should include the two-hundredth birthday of the man who set the slaves free. And how appropriate it is that Obama, like Lincoln, should have begun his political career as a state legislator in Springfield, Illinois. And we wonder why Obama has often compared himself to Lincoln?

As with Lincoln's, Obama's educational background was the law. However, unlike with Lincoln, Obama got to go to the prestigious Harvard Law School, whereas Lincoln was almost wholly self-educated, with only eighteen months of schooling. Lincoln was also a talented wrestler and skilled with an axe. However, there's no evidence that Obama is either a talented wrestler or skilled with an axe.

But Obama likes playing basketball, and may even be talented at it. Although Lincoln never played basketball, if only because basketball hadn't been invented when he was alive, there's every reason to think he would have been good at basketball because he was very tall (6' 4"). He would likely have at least been better at basketball than Obama, because Obama is merely 6' 1".

While Lincoln was skilled with an axe, he avoided hunting and fishing because he didn't like killing animals, even for food. And Obama seems not the sort of person who would hunt or fish because he, too, wouldn't like killing animals, even for food.

Barack Obama, as an avowed student of Lincoln, has learned lessons from how Lincoln conducted his presidency, particularly in inviting his competitors in the Democratic primaries, like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Bill Richardson, to join his administration. Add to this a prominent Bushite hold-over, Robert Gates at Defence, plus Republicans like Congressman Ray LaHood at Transport, and Senator Judd Gregg at Commerce (replacing Bill Richardson, who had withdrawn), we can see that Obama believes it's better - in the memorable words of the earthy Lyndon Johnson - to have your enemies (and rivals) "........inside the tent pissing out, rather than outside pissing in........".

Thus Obama has formed a "Team of Rivals" - the title of the book about Lincoln's administration, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, who, in an article in the Guardian (UK), says that, while Lincoln's having rivals in his cabinet worked, Obama's having rivals in his cabinet may not work, because today, unlike in Lincoln's day, we have 24-hour news channels.

As Doris Kearns Goodwin says: ".......Lincoln's cabinet meetings were fiery affairs. Members openly feuded with one another and with the president. They castigated each other as liars and scoundrels. Yet this information rarely appeared in the newspapers; we know about it through diaries and letters. In contrast, our 24-hour news cycle significantly lessens the possibility of containing dissenting opinions within the president's official circle. If internal feuds are reported by the nightly news, magnified day by day by the cable shows, dissected by countless political blogs, made fodder for late-night comedy, a modern team of rivals would collapse..........".

However, Doris Kearns Goodwin goes on to say, "........Still, by building dissent into his inner circle, Obama is more likely to question his assumptions and to weigh the consequences. The story of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation provides a telling example. In the months before he issued the historic order, he listened intently to the arguments within his cabinet over what to do about slavery. The radical members wanted Lincoln to move more quickly; the conservatives cautioned against moving at all. Lincoln realised the search for consensus could be paralysing. In 1862 he told his cabinet the time for debate was over. The time for the Proclamation had come. 'It is my conviction,' Lincoln later said, 'that, had the Proclamation been issued even six months earlier, public sentiment would not have sustained it.' Because of the heated discussions within his cabinet, his timing was perfect..........".

Lincoln, then, was the very opposite of impetuous. He knew he couldn't go too far ahead of (white) public opinion. He had to coax it, to guide it in the direction he wanted. Barack Obama, the student of Lincoln, seems, too, to be following his mentor's nuanced gradualism.

Then President-Elect Lincoln's nuanced gradualism was commented on by the Economist in its editorial of November 24th 1860, just after Lincoln's first election as president. Lincoln's circumspection had been such, that there was almost nothing in his election speeches to frighten southern slave-owners. As the Economist, addressing its English readers, said, "........our English politicians will be tempted not only to wonder at the dismay of the South, but to ask where is the gain to the Anti-Slavery cause in the election of so very moderate and cautious a Republican..........".

But the Economist went on to say, in so many words, that Lincoln was setting the tone for the eventual abolition of slavery, which could only come about when the tide of (white) public opinion would begin to turn against slavery.

As a public service, I've appended the Economist's entire editorial by cutting and pasting it in digestible paragraphs, since I suspect that you who are reading this, will find the Economist's interminably long paragraphs - which were de rigueur in all writing of that time - as tiresome to read as do I:

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13092935

The success of the Republican candidate for the Presidency in the United States will prove one of the greatest events of modern times, if it indicates, as we trust, no mere accidental fluctuation of public opinion in the direction of the Anti- Slavery cause, but the commencement of a permanent and sustained movement. It will be impossible to say how far this will prove to be as we should wish, till we see the details of the popular vote. It is a discouraging fact that the Republican President will not at first be supported by a Republican majority in either House or Congress, but there is good reason to hope that, now the tide has fairly turned, this defect may be remedied at the next Congressional elections.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that Mr Abraham Lincoln is an extreme man. His views seem to us to fall far short of what may fairly be termed even a statesmanlike Anti-Slavery creed. Few in England have the smallest sympathy with the extreme party of Abolition,—those who maintain that to hold a serf for a single day in slavery after you have the power to release him is a deadly sin,—that Washington and Jefferson deserve infamy for holding slaves themselves, and admitting any compromise on the subject into the Constitution of the United States.

This kind of fanaticism is a species of political insanity. The statesman will believe that the order of the most imperfect Government is better than anarchy, especially if it contain within it principles by which it may be gradually purified and improved. He will accept his position and use all the means within his reach to improve it. He will not throw away the only political instruments within his power because they are indelibly marked with traces of the evil he wishes to remove.

It is not, therefore, because Mr Abraham Lincoln is very far from representing the extreme party of Abolition that we call his views moderate within the limits of statesmanlike moderation. But few Englishmen, only knowing that the Anti-Slavery candidate for the Presidency has at last triumphed, would be prepared to hear what his views really are. That they have roused the South to threats of immediate secession, which in some cases at least may not improbably be in part carried into effect, will scarcely be credited when we lay before our readers what the new President's creed on the Slavery question really is.

He is not opposed to a Fugitive Slave Law, though he would modify the one actually in operation. He thinks it would be impossible to uphold the Constitution as between Slave States and Free States without some Fugitive Slave Law, so long as Slave States exist at all. He has not, we believe, declared himself as yet even in favour of prohibiting the internal Slave Trade between the different States,—a measure which is the only efficient step towards the extinction of slavery that is constitutionally within the power of Congress to effect. He has declared himself in favour of abolishing slavery within the Congressional district of Columbia (in which the capital Washington stands), but only under conditions which would entirely obliterate all the revolutionary character of the measure,—namely, that it should be done gradually,—that it should be done only with the consent of a majority of the qualified voters within the district,—and that compensation should be made to unwilling owners.

We have enumerated the three principal articles of a statesmanlike Anti-Slavery creed,—and in two of them Mr Lincoln declares himself either uncertainly, or only in favour of very modified proposals, while on the third he attaches such careful conditions to his adhesion that all its terror to the slaveowners ought to be obliterated. About two years ago he stated, in his controversy with Mr Douglas:

"I do not now, nor ever did stand in favour of the unconditional repeal of the Slave Trade Law. I have never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think, under the Constitution of the United States, the people of the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law. Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive Slave Law further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it without lessening its efficacy."

With regard to the abolition of the internal Slave Trade between the different States, Mr Lincoln says : "I am pledged to nothing about it. It is a subject to which I have not given that mature consideration that would make me feel authorised to state a position so as to hold myself entirely bound by it...I must say, however, that if I should be of opinion that Congress does possess the constitutional power to abolish the Slave Trade among the different States, I should not be in favour of the exercise of that power unless upon some conservative principle, as I conceive it, akin to what I have said in relation to the abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia."

Hearing this, some of our English politicians will be tempted not only to wonder at the dismay of the South, but to ask where is the gain to the Anti-Slavery cause in the election of so very moderate and cautious a Republican.

But, in truth, the gain is incalculable. Whatever compromises Mr Lincoln may concede to the South with respect to the limits and the right use of the Congressional or Presidential power, he stands irrevocably pledged to the principle that slavery is wrong, and that the national power, so far as it can be fairly used at all, must be used to limit, to repress, to promote its extinction.

These are his words: “I think we want and must have a national policy in regard to the institution of slavery, that acknowledges and deals with that institution as being wrong. Whoever desires the prevention of the spread of slavery and the nationalisation of that institution, yields all, when he yields to any policy that either recognises slavery as being right, or as being an indifferent thing. Nothing will make you successful but setting up a policy which shall treat the thing as being wrong.

When I say this, I do not mean to say that the General Government is charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world; but I do think that it is charged with preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrong to itself. This Government is expressly charged with the duty of providing for the general welfare. We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe—nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself. The only thing which has ever menaced the destruction of the Government under which we live, is this very thing. To repress this thing, we think, is providing for the general welfare.”

And he stands explicitly pledged to exterminate, so far as he can do so, the external Slave Trade,—and on the coast of Cuba a co-operation of English and American cruisers will effect this. He stands pledged to abolish slavery in Columbia (the district round Washington) under the conditions we have shown. He stands pledged to oppose and prohibit, so for as he can, the introduction of slavery into the Territories. And though he has refused to pledge himself to resist the admission of new Slave States, his whole influence will be exerted to give the free party in such States ample means for the fair expression of their wishes on the subject.

Yet, on the whole, no doubt the great importance of the election is less in its immediate results than in showing that the tide of public opinion is turning against slavery in the States. We must remember what this means. It is far more significant than the expression of conviction which an English election gives. The most bitter opponent of pure democracy,—and none regard its evils in a graver light than ourselves,—must admit that when the least enlightened, the worst opinion of a nation, at last after a long hesitation, declares against a national crime, the victory is more complete than it would be where the best intelligence and culture of a nation declares against it.

The more absolutely we are convinced that universal suffrage in America drowns the voice of the best educated and most refined classes in the North, the better satisfied must we be to learn from the elections there that the public opinion is turning against slavery. It shows that the dread and opposition to it has become general at a social level which might remain comparatively unaffected in England, in spite of a perfect unanimity amongst the electoral classes here. The strength of a chain is tested by its least reliable links,—and the least reliable links of the social chain in the Northern States have proved to us that they are strong enough now to resist the bribes and menaces of the Southern party.

"La maison où j'ai grandi"

2009-02-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

Françoise Hardy's is not a name we, particularly we who aren't French, will recognise instantly. This is because Françoise Hardy is no longer young, for, this coming February 17th (2009), she turns sixty-five - a senior citizen. But in the 1960s her name was on the lips of all who followed popular music.

I happened recently upon a song of Françoise Hardy's, "La maison où j'ai grandi", which I hadn't heard since 1967 - the year it came out. Thus I didn't remember it instantly. But after I'd played it a few times it all came back - not surprising since we, all of us, forget nothing. All which has happened to us since we were born, all we have learned, all those whom we have known, are stored in our minds as memories, ready to be retrieved when probed.

So I was sucked down the time tunnel to 1967, the year "La maison où j'ai grandi" (the house where I grew up) came out, and was played in homes, cafes and bars everywhere. I believe (but am not sure) that "La maison où j'ai grandi" was France's entry in the 1967 Eurovision song contest. The winner that year was Sandie Shaw's "Puppet on a String". You who know "Puppet on a String" will surely agree, after you've heard "La maison où j'ai grandi", that, compared to "La maison où j'ai grandi", "Puppet on a String" is insipid.

"La maison où j'ai grandi" is, as its name implies, a song of memories. But are they the memories of Françoise Hardy herself? If so, they must be more poignant to her now - the about-to-be sixty-five year-old - than in 1967, when she was merely twenty-three. In the song, Françoise Hardy sees in her mind her childhood home, the roses in its back garden, and the living trees. But, sadly, neither the house, roses, nor trees now exist because "....la ville est là....." (the city is there). We must assume Françoise's childhood home and the roses and trees have been torn down and bulldozed over, so a block of flats, or paved parking lot, now stands where the house, roses, and trees once did.

But Françoise had childhood friends who shared her joy in her home, with the flowers and trees, and who empathized with her when, with tears in her eyes, she knew (and so too did her friends) that everything must end, that she must leave. They told her that to leave was better than to stay, for she would discover more things out there than at home.

Nevertheless, when Françoise finally left her home she left her heart there too. However, her friends envied her luck in leaving for the bright lights of a city that never sleeps, day or night ("....une ville qui s'endort la nuit dans la lumière...."). We must assume Françoise's friends, too, would have liked to go to the big city, but their circumstances didn't let them.

But when Françoise left her childhood home she said to herself she would one day return. And one day, a long, long time after, she does, but her home has gone. She is overcome, saying, where is my house? Who knows where my house is? ("....où est ma maison?.......Qui sait où est ma maison.......?").

The trumpet sounds towards the end of "La maison où j'ai grandi" make us aware of Françoise's heartbreak. Only the most stony-hearted of us remain unmoved.

For most of us, what Françoise went through will be familiar, since we, too, will have left our mother and father and the home and town - and often country -we grew up in. We left the nest and confronted the cold big world. Some of us have survived it; some of us didn't. But almost all of us will never again see our childhood home.

But should you do so because you are curious, you'll see it will have changed if it's still there. The wide boulevard which ran past in front, has become a tatty pot-holed side-road; the palatial garden has become a mere plot, weed-covered, unkempt; the large tree at the back is half as high as it was; the house itself, through whose wide corridors you skipped and jumped, has become a nondescript bungalow; the neighbours, in whose gardens you played, have moved away or are dead. Their replacements peer at you from behind curtained windows as you lurk in the road.

You see that your childhood home had become your imaginary homeland, where you could find comfort and succour for a few minutes whenever life's slings and arrows became too much. Because you dared to visit the old house and neighbourhood, your imaginary homeland has vanished and will never come back.

"We Have Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself"

2009-01-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

Below is a video of Franklin D Roosevelt's inaugural address of 1933. Much of what he said, was echoed in what Barack Obama said in his own inaugural speech of yesterday.

We shouldn't be surprised at the similarities, mutatis mutandis, of the two speeches, since both were made when the US was sliding economically into the most turbulent of waters.

How much has really changed in the last 76 years?

Here's the Economist's take on what Roosevelt said:

It would be a pity if amidst the turmoil of current American affairs President Roosevelt's inaugural address received less than its dire approbation. Both for its brevity and its spirited determination it deserves to rank high among such utterances.

He began by saying that it was the time to state the truth frankly and boldly and to face the facts. American distress came from no failure of substance, but rather called for the stimulation, reorganisation and use of American resources, for the recognition of the over-balance of the population in the industrial centres and for an endeavour to provide better use of the land.

This task, which must be undertaken as if it were a war emergency, could be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products, by preventing the growing loss, through foreclosure, of American small homes, and by the rational planning of transportation, communications and other public utilities.

There must be strict supervision of banking, an end to speculation with other people's money, and provision for an adequate and sound currency. International trade relations were in point of time and fact necessarily secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy, but in the field of world policy he would dedicate the United States to the policy of the good neighbour, who respects himself, respects his obligations, and respects the rights of others.

The American people, he was confident, realised as never before their interdependence upon each other, and that they must give as well as take. It was to be hoped that the normal balance of legislative and executive authority would be adequate to meet the emergency, but events must call for a temporary departure from the normal balance of public procedure.

He was prepared to recommend the necessary measures, and would seek to bring them to a speedy adoption within his constitutional authority, but if Congress failed him and the emergency remained critical, he would not hesitate to ask Congress for broad executive powers such as would be given him if America were invaded by a foreign foe.

They're Here!!

2008-12-08T17:15:00.000-08:00

In early 2001 an organisation called The Disclosure Project made a presentation to journalists at the National Press Club in Washington, where twenty or so US Air Force pilots, commercial pilots, air traffic controllers, military men, intelligence men, and other men from within the military and intelligence apparatus - who had top-secret security clearances - talked about what they had seen and heard regarding UFOs in the course of their official duties.

These men (and a couple of women) leave little doubt that we on earth are being visited by extra-terrestrials, that some of their craft have crashed on earth, that alien bodies have been recovered, and that the US government in particular, and governments in general, are doing everything to keep this all a secret.

These men all stated that they are prepared to swear under oath to the US Congress that what they saw and heard is true. There are three hundred and eighty more men from within the belly of the beast of the military and intelligence apparatus, whose testimony couldn't be fitted in to this two-hour event. They also are prepared to swear under oath to Congress that what they saw and heard was true.

So far Congress hasn't held hearings, and doesn't seem likely to, because more than seven years has passed since the happening at the National Press Club.

But think of the excitement such hearings, particularly if televised, would cause in the minds of Mr and Mrs Average. It would be as exciting as was Watergate. The hearings would last over a week, and perhaps two or three, because four hundred witnesses is a lot.

That Congress has chosen not to have such hearings is one more strand of proof that governments don't want Mr and Mrs Average to know that extra-terrestrials have visited Earth, and continue to. But keeping all this secret isn't difficult because Mr and Mrs Average seem not interested in finding out, being incurious about anything outside their own bailiwick. I can testify to this, since not one - not a single solitary one - of my own friends to whom I regularly send articles and information about UFOs, and who know of my interest in them, has ever shown any vestige of interest in discussing them on the occasions I see them.

Why this monumental and puzzling incuriosity? Is it because Mr and Mrs Average believe only what Daddy (their government) says? So if Daddy says UFOs are all figments of people's imaginations, then this must be so? This seems the most reasonable explanation for Mr and Mrs Average's incuriosity, since, with the advent of Youtube and Google, there is a cornucopia - nay, a veritable Aladdin's Cave - of information at the press of a laptop key to support the facts of extraterrestrial craft and extraterrestrial beings.

What more evidence do Mr and Mrs Average need, short of extra-terrestrials actually landing on the White House lawn in a flying saucer and announcing via CNN that they're here? That no extra-terrestrials have yet done this is proof that they wish Mr and Mrs Average to continue to be oblivious to their existence, for they (the extra-terrestrials) would surely know that there are none so blind as those who do not wish to see.

Quemoy and Matsu

2008-10-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

In 1960, televised presidential debates were held for the first time. There were three of them, and they were regarded as the reason John F Kennedy became president, since he came across better through the medium of television than did Richard Nixon.

Below is a snippet from one of the debates - a snippet showing the two candidates discussing animatedly the Cold War:

This snippet makes us wonder how much has really changed since 1960. Then, as now, the US was seen to be losing its prestige in the world. Then, as now, there was a ubiquitous external enemy which would drain Americans of their precious bodily fluids if given half a chance. Then, these enemies were Communists, now they are Terrorists.

Should the Terrorists ever disappear as completely into the woodwork as did the Communists, will Americans dream up another enemy who would drain them of their precious bodily fluids if given half a chance? It seems new enemies will have to be created, otherwise there'll be no rationale to keep spending as much on the national defense (currently $650 billion a year) as the next 45 countries combined. The military-industrial complex must be maintained whatever the external situation, so if the current enemies disappear, others must be dreamed up to keep the taxpayer monies flowing in to the Pentagon.

One change from 1960, though, is that Quemoy and Matsu are no longer discussed in the American media. Americans today likely won't even have heard of Quemoy or Matsu, and might think them the latest video games should they encounter the names, Quemoy or Matsu.

The facts are that Quemoy and Matsu are two tiny islands (Quemoy is an island chain, actually) a mere handful of kilometers off the coast of mainland China (Fujian Province) but are under the jurisdiction of the government of Taiwan (Formosa). Twice (in 1954-55, and 1958-59) the People's Republic of China (the communists) carried out air and naval bombardments of Quemoy and Matsu to persuade Taiwan to cede them to the People's Republic.

But Taiwan, and its American protectors, were having none of it. In 1954 Taiwan dispatched 58,000 soldiers to Quemoy, and 15,000 to Matsu, as well as American-supplied rockets and other weaponry. All this, plus an American pledge to defend Taiwan, even with nuclear weaponry, persuaded the People's Republic to cease its bombardments in 1955.

But three years later, in 1958, the People's Republic, feeling more confident, again bombarded the two islands, and again, as in 1955, ceased doing so (in 1959) when it became apparent that the Russians (the People's Republic's fellow communists) wouldn't come to the People's Republic's aid, should US (and Taiwan) attack the People's Republic in defense of Quemoy and Matsu.

In the wording in its defense agreement with Taiwan, the US deliberately left vague whether it would defend Quemoy and Matsu should the People's Republic invade. Hence Nixon's and Kennedy's discussion about this issue in their presidential debate.

Although Quemoy and Matsu are today a non-issue, despite being still under the rule of Taiwan, who is to say they won't again become the potential flashpoint which they were in the 1950s?

Perhaps, then, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden might appropriately have been asked during their recent vice-presidential debate, what they would do should they be the president, and China invades Quemoy and Matsu.

How, particularly, would Sarah Palin have answered? Would she have been ambivalent like Kennedy? Or would she have pledged that the Hockey Moms and Joe Sixpacks of America would, you betcha, rush over to Quemoy and Matsu to defend to the death the islands' hapless denizens from the bloodthirsty invaders?

Maybe someone will ask Sarah this at her next campaign rally?

The Bail-Out - What's The Problem?

2008-09-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

As I write this, there are men, men wearing suits, important men, who, in the corridors of power in Washington D.C, are deciding what to do about all the banks, investment houses, and whatnot, which have become insolvent in recent days and weeks.

If the taxpayers of America don't bail them out, then the entire American economy - and by extension the world economy - will collapse. So say the men in suits, the ones in the corridors of power in Washington D.C.

I - for what it's worth - think these men in suits are right in their evaluation of the potential economic apocalypse arising out of these banks, investment houses, and whatnot, going under, and that something must be done about it.

Not only do I think that something must be done, so do most of those Americans who think, notwithstanding that most Americans don't think. But sufficient numbers of Americans do think, and think enough to see that they will lose their jobs and houses and everything else they hold dear, if they simply allow these banks, investment houses and whatnot, to collapse, and they do nothing to save them.

It seems then, that financial help will be forthcoming, and the amount suggested is $700 billion dollars. This does seem an awful lot of money for America's taxpayers to pay. But is it really, all things considered?

Since the number of Americans, including corporations, who file tax returns, is approximately 100 million, each American taxpayer, on average, would therefore pay an extra $7,000 when next they file their tax return.

This works out to approximately $19 dollars a day on average. But, individually, this would be a lot less for those earning low incomes, and somewhat more for those who earn as much as John McCain or Donald Trump. The important thing is that it would be, like, affordable.

Consider that Americans spend $650 billion dollars a year for their national defense. But defense against whom? since what Americans pay for their national defense is more than what the next 45 countries combined pay for their defense.

By spending $650 billion dollars a year on guns, tanks, aeroplanes, rockets, and missiles, Americans are implicitly saying that the aforesaid next 45 countries pose a dire threat to America, and would invade continental America with their armies if Americans didn't pay $650 billion a year on defense. But is this not carrying paranoia to an extreme?

Were Americans, instead of paying $650 billion a year to defend themselves, to cut this to, say, $100 billion, the chances are extremely good that these next 45 countries would still not invade America, if only because America, being cut off from Europe and Asia by large bodies of water, would be a very difficult country to invade.

I suggest, then, that to cut $550 billion a year from the national defense, would be a risk which Americans can well take, and that these saved monies could be applied to the $700 billion to bail out Wall Street. This would leave a mere $150 billion, which, in view of all I've said, is, relatively speaking, piffling.

So I'm not worried any more, and neither, dear reader, should you be.

The Aliens Are Here

2008-07-25T15:21:00.000-07:00

That extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions, but that our governments have been covering this up for over sixty years, is what Dr Edgar Mitchell, who was once an astronaut and walked on the moon, has been saying, according to a recent radio interview he gave, which you may listen to if you click here.

Admittedly, Dr Mitchell is 77, and so could be suffering from dementia. But if you listen to his interview, he doesn't sound out of his mind. Far from it.

Here's an interview with Gordon Cooper, one of the original seven US astronauts, who had his own UFO experience, which you can watch him tell of, if you click here.

While Gordon Cooper, who is now deceased, was also old when he gave his interview, he sounded lucid.

But tens of thousands of other people around the world have, over the last sixty years, seen with their own (as opposed to other people's) eyes, strange-looking, alien-seeming little people, and their spacecraft.

Most of these people (the ones who've seen the aliens and their craft) are the sorts of Solid Citizens whom you wouldn't question the truth of what they say, regardless of topic. Policemen, pilots both military and civilian, army officers, state troopers, football players, you name it - the paragons of virtue who all parents want their children to be like when they grow up - have seen strange little people with large heads, and the funny round craft they fly around in. Many of these funny round craft have been captured on film, which experts have examined and failed to find bogus.

And reports of government cover-ups of evidence of extra-terrestrial beings and their craft, are too many to go into in this posting. So the only question to ask is: What do the aliens want with us?

The Mexican and British Departments of Defense have recently seen the light, and have released to the public, evidence collected over the years of UFOs. And now the Vatican has said it's OK to believe in extra-terrestrial life. Could it be that all this loosening-up of officialdom is to prepare us, the people of Earth, for Contact? Admittedly, the US Department of Defense is as secretive about UFOs as ever. But then, this is the USA. Need I say more?

Several months ago I spoke with someone who, while in a convenience store to buy milk, saw two small people with identical expressionless faces that seemed to her inhuman. They radiated vibes which she experienced as so alien, so evil, which made her so afraid, that she had to move away from them, and to wait until they had left the store, before she paid for her purchase.

While I didn't know my interlocutor that well, she being the friend of a friend, I had little doubt she was telling the truth of what she saw and experienced. And my friend didn't doubt the veracity of her friend, my interlocutor, either.

And why I believed my interlocutor was truthful was that I had read of experiences similar to hers, experiences which my interlocutor - who has no particular interest in aliens and UFOs - said she'd never read or heard about. I had no reason to disbelieve her, and neither did my friend, who knows her much better than do I.

It's likely then, that the two malevolent-exuding, inhuman-looking little people who my interlocutor saw, and the similar beings who others have seen, who I've read about, are extra-terrestrial aliens who are already living among us.

What, then, would be their purpose? Perhaps they are part of a network of extra-terrestrial sleeper cells, which, when given the word by their masters, will disable our strategic centres of Earthly government power, and take over the governance of Earth.

Our governments may already know about this, and so have designated the Mexican and British Departments of Defense, and the Vatican, to be the organs which will emotionally prepare us for this event, and are now doing so.

Which means we may soon be under the thumb of the extra-terrestrials, who, having adjudged that we are about to destroy ourselves, will save us from ourselves.

Rumi on Intelligence

2008-07-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

Late last year I posted a piece called "What is Intelligence?", in which I dilated upon the IQ test, and what sort of intelligence it measures.

Being not too bright myself, and consequently always having done badly on IQ tests, so that I'm regarded as a half-wit, and am smiled at indulgently whenever I talk about anything outside of the quotidian, I look upon the IQ test not altogether with approbation.

I, like, feel that the IQ test doesn't tell us absolutely everything about the capacities of our minds, that there are sorts of intelligences outside the grasp of the IQ test.

So when someone sent me what the great Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī said about intelligence, I felt vindicated after I'd read it.

Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī is, by the way, known to us English-speakers simply as Rumi. He was a 13th century Persian poet, Islamic jurist, and theologian.

Here is his prose poem about intelligence:

There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of intelligence, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

Groupthink

2008-07-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

Groupthink. I haven't seen this word for some years now, but it used to be on the lips of everyone. "Groupthink" was once a neologism, come to think of it. But so long has it not been used, could it once again become a neologism?

I do realize that for a word once again to become a neologism is a contradiction in terms, is an oxymoron. But why should it not again become a neologism, particularly in the United States of Amnesia?

An example of Groupthink often trotted out in business management courses is the Bay of Pigs debacle - John F Kennedy’s decision to invade Cuba, using Cuban exiles to do this. Everyone in Kennedy’s inner circle agreed with the decision, and it was only afterwards when they were out of government that they admitted it was stupid, and had known this deep down at the time, but had suppressed their considerable doubts.

But they agreed at the time because no-one wanted to be the odd-man out, and thus forfeit the friendship of their esteemed colleagues, or be cast out of the group.

It’s only when we are expelled from the group that we tell the truth, blow the whistle. Think of John Dean in the Nixon administration, or Scott McClellan in the Bush administration. This is just for starters.

Think of other disasters like the decisions to invade Vietnam, or Iraq. Or the possible forthcoming decision to bomb Iran. They are all examples of the dangers of Groupthink.

But, you may ask, if one has to compromise one's thinking to be in a group, why be in it? A higher or necessary purpose perhaps?

Well, we are often part of a group because we have to be, like at work. But once in the group, we form personal attachments to the others in it, and we don’t want to earn their enmity by disagreeing.

But we are sometimes in a group because we choose to be in it. Feeling existentially alone and isolated, we yearn for the comfort of the group, to be in its loving embrace.

To be thrown out is to be rejected, to be deprived of love. And who wants that?

What's The Truth About Global Warming?

2008-06-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

I happened recently upon the content of a speech, "Is Global Warming a Canard?", which one John Coleman gave to the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. The core of the speech was that carbon emissions from motor cars, aeroplanes, and all of those, have little or nothing to do with global warming.

Now, I wasn't initially going to waste my time reading what John Coleman said, because, well, he's just a TV weatherman, and what the hell does a TV weatherman know about global warming compared with Al Gore? But, somehow, I did read all of what John Coleman said, and I'm glad I did because what he said made sense. Well, to little me it did.

If you, too, would like to read what John Coleman said, click here.

The following extracts spoke to me:

"...........Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.
And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.........."

"............I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t..........".

"............Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years...........".

"............The scientists endorse each other’s papers, they are summarized and voted on, and voila, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.
That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming...........?"

"...........The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns............."

I'm no scientist, so I don't know who's right: John Coleman and his ilk, or Al Gore and his ilk. But I've been around long enough to be always suspicious of the Conventional Wisdom about anything.

Why masses of us, or groups of us, agree about anything is that we don't want to be the odd men (people) out by disagreeing, even if we suspect that what we agree about is nonsense. We like to be in with the in-crowd, because not being in with the in-crowd is lonely. So we suppress our doubts.

Only when we leave the in-crowd, either voluntarily or involuntarily, do we tell the truth of what the in-crowd said and did in the smoke-filled rooms behind the closed doors. The most recent example is Scott McClellan, who, when he was George Bush's paid liar, told his lies with insouciance and aplomb, but now that he's left, he's singing a very different tune.

The global warming crusade is a huge industry, and has assumed a life of its own because too many people have a vested interest that the crusade never ends, even if it's shown that the assumptions about global warming are wrong.

The careers and reputations of too many people depend on everyone believing the conventional wisdom about global warming. Too many globe-hopping conferences, banquets, eating and drinking, speeches, books, videos, depend on the conventional wisdom of global warming. Al Gore depends on global warming.

Regarding experts, Bertrand Russell said it best, when he said that whenever the experts are agreed on anything, the opposite of it cannot be held to be certain.

Little Children

2008-02-07T18:40:00.000-08:00

I'd so have liked, today, to talk of the results from Supersaturated Tuesday, and what they mean for America and the world. But since everyone is analyzing Supersaturated Tuesday to death, and no-one is sparing a thought for the film, "Little Children", which I've just seen for the first time, and which I think superb, it seems logical for me to talk today of "Little Children", rather than of Hillary, Barack, John, Mitt, or Mike.

"Little Children's" principal character, Sarah (Kate Winslet), is a thirtyish woman, with a three-year old girl, and married to Richard, a corporate marketing man. They live comfortably in a nice big suburban house. You'd think Sarah would be happy, but she isn't, because she's bored staying home playing mother to her daughter, when she'd rather be out in the working world, utilizing her degree in literature. Sarah spends part of each day in a park watching her daughter play there in the company of other children, whose mothers - soccer-moms all - also hang around the park supervising their children, and exchanging local gossip with Sarah.

The interest of Sarah and her fellow soccer-moms is piqued by a handsome athletic-looking man (Patrick Wilson) who each day brings his infant son to play in the park. He would appear to be a stay-at-home dad, because he always comes alone with his son. Sarah one day, under the gaze of the soccer-moms, summons the courage to strike up an acquaintanceship with him. She learns his name is Brad, and that he stays home while his wife, Kathy, works as a documentary film-maker. Brad has been trying for some time to pass his bar exams to practice law, but he keeps failing. As long as this situation lasts, Kathy will be the bread-winner and Brad will look after their child.

Sarah also learns that Brad often takes his son to the community swimming-pool, so she begins taking her little daughter there too, where, away from the gazes of the soccer moms, she hopes she'll encounter Brad accidentally on purpose - and eventually she does. After meeting up this way a few times, Sarah and Brad embark upon a passionate affair.

You may at this point, dear reader, be regarding Sarah and Brad less than charitably, thinking they're not being fair to their respective spouses. However, Sarah has discovered that her husband, Richard, spends his evenings at home looking at internet porn hour after hour, something which for Sarah, is a veritable turn-off. Brad's wife, Kathy, for her part, is becoming cold and distant with Brad, denying him the marital fleshly pleasures. So we shouldn't be surprised that Sarah and Brad enjoy with each other, what they're missing in their marriages.

Brad also regularly spends long periods of time watching a bunch of teenaged skateboarders do their stuff. It seems that Brad's father had suddenly died when Brad was at the age of the skateboarders, and when he himself had skateboarded. So Brad is stuck in his teenaged years - hence his compulsion to watch teenaged skateboarders.

Brad also has a friend, Larry (Noah Emmerich) an ex-policeman, who has talked Brad into playing touch-football a couple of nights a week with a team of Larry's cronies. After these games they all go to a bar to drink and party, and to talk about what to do about a convicted paedophile, Ronnie, who, after being released from a two-year stint in jail, is now living in the community, in the house of his mother. Larry is especially obsessed by Ronnie, and arranges to have Ronnie's picture displayed everywhere, so everyone will know who he is.

And, as you watch Larry, you feel his mind contains secrets which no-one else knows. It turns out that, some years previously, he'd accidentally shot dead a child in the course of his official duties as a policeman. But what about other stuff?

As for Ronnie the paedophile, his reputation is such that on the one occasion when he visits the community swimming-pool and takes an underwater swim while wearing goggles and a snorkel, he causes such panic that everyone abandons the pool, leaving Ronnie to be escorted out by two policemen who'd been summoned. But it later turns out that Ronnie, although an adult, is psychologically a young and pathetic child, who had never done more than reveal his frontal nether regions to unsuspecting children.

"Little Children" has the feel of other films about American suburbia, like "American Beauty" and "Blue Velvet", which try to show that, under under suburbia's tranquil exterior of manicured green lawns, quiet streets, and spacious houses, turbulence bubbles. What's really going on behind the closed doors of the capacious homes you walk by on the street? What's really going on in the minds of the soccer mom's and dads? the ones who, talking out of mouths with perfect fine white teeth, say "hi" to you in the park or in the mall.

As I watched "Little Children", I wondered why it had been titled "Little Children", for although it has some little children in it, it isn't about them. Then inside my head a lightbulb switched on. Of course! It's the adults in the film, particularly the male ones, who are the little children, or at least not quite grown-up. Brad, in his financial dependence on his wife, and his fascination with skateboarding, is a perpetual adolescent. So too is Sarah's husband, Richard, in his obsession with internet porn. And Ronnie, the paedophile, has never psychologically gone beyond the child stage. And Larry and his buddies on the touch-football team, are like small boys who have been given permission by their mommies (wives) to play outside with their little friends on a couple of evenings a week.

***

That so many of "Little Children's" dramatis personae are little children at heart, perhaps reflects that we, most of us, go through our entire lives as little children, or as adolescents? Consider that when in high school we felt compelled to act and dress as our little friends did, lest they ostracize or bully us; and we lived in fear of the punishments which our teachers, or our mothers and fathers would inflict on us if we failed our exams, or were late for school in the mornings, or talked out of turn in class, or were rude to the teacher. We couldn't wait to escape home and school, in which we were confined as fearful children and rebellious adolescents. We thought that when we got a job, and paid our own way, things would be different.

Having finally escaped school, and the tentacles of our mothers and fathers, for whom we were little more than animated possessions to do their bidding, we found that the organizations which employ us, treat us little differently than did our schoolmasters or mothers and fathers. Instead of a school uniform we have a business suit; and if we don't arrive at work on time, we'll be chastised or fired; and we begin and end our coffee-breaks and lunches, not at the sound of a school bell, but of a buzzer; and if we take a day off sick, we must get a note from the doctor; and if we don't do our work exactly as the boss wants, we'll be fired.

So our workplaces are as riddled with fear and loathing, and with boredom, as were our schools. Our bosses infantilize us into behaving as fearful little children, just as our teachers, and mothers and fathers once did.

***

Sarah (Kate Winslet) belongs to a book-club which is discussing Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary". The other members of the book-club are, with one exception, women older than Sarah, who are split in their judgements of Emma Bovary, who, being stuck in a stultifying and oppressive marriage to a bourgeois doctor, chose to break free, and have passionate affairs with many men. Sarah sees in Emma's predicament, her own predicament. So Sarah takes Emma's side, saying, in so many words, that Emma was presented with a simple choice: either conform to society's mores, and be unhappy, but secure and respected; or try for happiness, but at the price of disgrace and ultimate disaster.

Is Emma's predicament that much different for so many of today's women, and also men? This question hovers over the book-club's dissection of "Madame Bovary".

One of the book club's participants is one of Sarah's soccer-mom friends from the playground She condemns Emma vehemently, calling her a disgraceful irresponsible slut. Why would this model of a suburban soccer-mom, take so personally what the fictional Emma Bovary did? one wonders.

Envy?

And Now For Something Completely Different:

The Meaning of Ron Paul (2)

2008-02-01T15:47:00.000-08:00

My last posting, about Ron Paul, led to a reader, Bobby, posting a comment saying that should Ron Paul be the Republican candidate in this year's US general election, he, Bobby, will vote for him, since he finds intrinsically appealing, Ron's down-to-earth economic message.

Since whatever Ron Paul says, and what people say about what he says, is usually provocative, Bobby's comment provoked me into writing a reponse longer than is normal in such responses.

Having written it, I considered it suitable for a separate posting, so here it is:

Hi Bobby - You've obviously been taken in by Ron Paul's economic bromides, which sound so simple - too good to be true, you might say, and they certainly are!!!

You should know that Ron is a disciple of the Austrian and Chicago schools of economics, whose high-priests include(d) Friederich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian school; and Milton Friedman of the Chicago school. The philosophies of the Austrian and Chicago schools are, by the way, for all intents and purposes the same, saying, in so many words, that taxes and the size of goverment must be kept to the bare minimum, so that the businessman can throw off his shackles, and unrestrainedly do his stuff in the glorious world of the free marketplace. Thus the economy will grow by leaps and bounds, and we'll all have good jobs, and be prosperous and happy.

If you believe all this, then I'm not surprised you'd vote for Ron. You'd be foolish not to.

Ron would take us all back to the time of the Great Crash of 1929 and before, when public sector spending in most of today's industrialized countries was a mere 10% of GDP, instead of the on-average 35% it now is. If you belonged to the rich elite, you were fine. But if you belonged to the majority who were poor, you weren't so fine. Admittedly you didn't have to pay much in taxes, but you were likely to be poor, and very possibly unemployed because joblessness was at 25% instead of the 7% or 8% it is today.

This state of affairs continued up to World War Two, when unemployment suddenly dropped to almost zero, because there was an immediate huge demand for people to make guns, tanks, and aeroplanes, and to wield them as soldiers, sailors, and airmen. So there was work for everyone, despite the work not being for the most part particularly pleasant, and often downright dangerous. But it was still work, so you never had to worry where your next crust was coming from.

Amazingly, things went on humming after the war's end, when returning soldiers demanded changes from how things were. They wanted the good life as reward for their wartime sacrifices. Goverments could only ensure this by continuing to spend at much higher rates than before the war, so to keep money flowing through the economic system. This created a continuous demand for goods and services, which in turn created a continuous need for workers and consumers.

This is called Keynesian economics - after the economist John Maynard Keynes, who said that in order to ameliorate the sharp fluctuations of business cycles, governments must pump large amounts of money into the public sector to keep up a steady demand for goods and services and maintain full employment.

So to apply Keynesian economics became the accepted practice, and, as a result, the societies of today's "developed world" transformed from being blue-collar working-class societies into white-collar middle-class ones, and brought about the greatest economic expansion in history. This is how things still are. But because people always take things for granted, many took for granted the post-war prosperity, and complained about the taxes to maintain the Keynesian economic order. So they demanded that their taxes be reduced, and governments be shrunk, so the businessman could do his thing.

But most of those who led the demands to go back to the old ways, were academics and business professionals, who were only able to become academics and business professionals because of the huge expansion of public education in the post-war Keynesian world. It's a poor reflection on post-war education, that so many emerged not knowing much of history and economics.Thus they learned no lessons from the Great Depression, among them that Capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its destruction - one of the great observations of Karl Marx. So these glib children of the Baby Boom generation didn't understand that, but for the Second World War and the huge public-sector spending it entailed, the capitalist economic system would likely not have survived, for it just wasn't working. Capitalism had to be saved from itself through goverment intervention.

But fortunately, the likes of Ron Paul and his acolytes - the ones who complain the loudest about Keynesianism - are in the minority, for most of those in charge of governments today are Keynesians. Even that arch Republican, Richard Nixon, once famously said, "We're all Keynesians now". And George Bush is also unwittingly a "Keynesian", although he would probably never admit this, assuming he knows of the word, "Keynesian", which he may not.

But if, Bobby, you've read this far, and you still aren't convinced of the merits of Keynesianism, ask yourself why, after the huge stock market crash of 1987 - a crash proportionately as large as that of 1929 - there wasn't another Great Depression? Well, it was because, thanks to the Keynesian monetary institutions and systems set up after World War Two to prevent another world-wide depression, goverments were able immediately to pump many billions of dollars into the system, to maintain an uninterrupted demand for goods and services. So, after a hiccup, the system went right on ticking, and the stock market soon recovered. Other large stock-market fluctuations have since occurred. But, again, there was no world-wide depression. So the Keynesian system must be doing something right.

So, Bobby, I feel sure you now see that Ron Paul, who rejects Keynesianism, and wants the world to return to what it was before 1929, doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to economics. This isn't to say he isn't a clever man, for he is, since he's a physician, and you must be clever to become a physician. So Ron would know much more about medicine than he would about economics. Well, yes, he's read some books about economics, the ones by Friederich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian school. But Ron's economic utterances are simply another example of a little learning being a dangerous thing.

If Ron would widen his reading to include books by the likes of John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith, he might learn how Keynesianism has saved us from economic disaster. And he might come to understand that the societies of the US and the other industrialized countries would, if they rejected Keynesianism, become as unequal as those of Indonesia, the Phillippines, Brazil, and South Africa, with their 30% unemployment rates. And he might become aware that whenever economic disparities within the industrialized countries have widened, their rate of economic growth has stagnated.

Lest you think I traduce Ron Paul unduly, I recognize that he's a good and public-spirited man who has contributed greatly to humanity by delivering many thousands of babies as an obstetrician, and performing free medical services to the poor. And his demand that the US dismantle its world-wide empire, bring all its soldiers home, and return to being the republic it once was, is wholly admirable. It is his stance on Iraq, and on US foreign entanglements, which has given him a somewhat high profile in the current presidential race. It's not his economics. And he has been a veritable breath of fresh air in the Republican debates, saying things that at least cause people to think.

You shouldn't, Bobby, take Ron Paul seriously when he says that the Department of Education, and the Federal Reserve, and the Income Tax, should be abolished. Ron can say these things, knowing he won't be elected president. If he were, perchance, the Republican front-runner, he'd be talking very differently. You can count on it.

Christopher.

And Now For Something Completely Different

The Meaning of Ron Paul

2008-01-29T16:09:00.000-08:00

I recently received an e mail from an acquaintance of mine, Jim, a corporate lawyer of comfortable means, who owns a split-level suburban home, an SUV, has a devoted wife and children, and a dog and a cat.

Jim is a registered Republican and a Ron Paul supporter, since he likes Ron's libertarianism, which advocates shrinking of the size of government to the bare minimum, so that it gets off the backs of Americans, who will once again be free to live their lives exactly as they see fit.

Jim, whose office is downtown in a large city - the name of which is irrelevant for the purposes of this posting - was recently eating lunch in a food-fair, when he was approached by an unkempt unshaven unwashed, and obviously homeless man, who asked him for spare change. Jim gave him fifty cents, and the beggar moved on to another table.

Jim, in his message to me, wondered what should be done about the increasing numbers of homeless beggars of the kind who he gave the fifty cents to.

I replied as follows:

Hi Jim - That homeless man has more freedom than you have, since he doesn't have to get up at 5.30 am every morning to go to work in the dark, and then have to work all day, and only return home again fourteen hours later, again in the dark.

And he lives in less fear than you, because he doesn't have to worry that he'll lose his big suburban house, or lose his SUV, if he gets fired, or his firm goes bankrupt. The bridge he sleeps under at night, will always be there for him to sleep under, come rain or come shine. And he never has to go through the worry of finding spaces in town to park his SUV, because he wouldn't own one. So he's much freer than you to do what he likes.

I'll remind you of what Kris Kristofferson once said, that "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".

But should you meet this homeless man again, and he complains to you about how poor he is, remind him of how much freer he is than you, and that being as free as he is, he would make Ron Paul proud, for Ron Paul - who would get rid of the Income Tax, the Department of Education, and the Federal Reserve - wants to make Americans as free as they were when the Pilgrim Fathers first landed at Plymouth Rock in 1608.

And you should furthermore tell this man that his plight has come about because the Federal government won't implement the economic policies of Ron Paul. This unfortunate man no doubt doesn't have a job because his potential employers can't afford to pay him the mandatory minimum wage, which Ron Paul would abolish. And he may not have been able to save any money by which, perhaps, to start up his own business, because his savings were eaten up by all the Income Tax he had to pay - the Income Tax which Ron Paul would also abolish.

Point out to him what Ron Paul has said about the Income Tax, that it takes billions of dollars out of the private sector, with many people giving as much as a third of what they earn to the Federal government, which inhibits job growth and penalizes productive behavior. Also, there are unnecessary privacy violations, and power gets consolidated at the federal level. Americans got along just fine without a federal income tax for its first 126 years, with the government raising revenues through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes. If Americans got along fine without the Income Tax then, why shouldn't they get along fine without it now?

If this man still isn't convinced, tell him about the Austrian School of economic thought - which so influenced Ron Paul - which says that economics is grounded in human action, that is, in the creative choices made by various individuals cooperating together under the division of labor. The tendency is to view government interference in this process of creative choice as counterproductive, and there’s an emphasis on entrepreneurship as the driving force in economic development.

Ron Paul, who recognizes that this is a huge topic, recommends several books to people, if they’re interested: "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat," Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt, "What has the Government done with our Money?" by Murray Rothbard, and "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek, to name a few. Also the writings of Ludwig von Mises, particularly the work he did with Friedrich Hayek on what’s known as the “Austrian business cycle theory.”

So, suggest to this man that he go to his nearest public library, and take out these books to read whenever he's enjoying the succour of the bridge which he sleeps under at night. Only when he has read them, will he more completely understand how much his chances of economically advancing himself were thwarted, because the Federal governments, for as far back as we can remember, didn't follow the free market policies of Ron Paul and the Austrian economic thinkers.

I hope we can meet up for golf soon.

Christopher.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

Human Traces

2008-01-15T21:54:00.000-08:00

"Human Traces", a novel by Sebastian Faulks, tells the stories of two boys, Thomas Midwinter from England, and Jacques Rebiere from France, both born in the same year, 1860. Thomas's family are bourgeois city folk, and Jacques's are poor farmers.

Add to this that Thomas can speak only a smattering of French, and Jacques no English, and you'd think they'd have nothing in common. But, amazingly, they discover they have lots to talk about when they meet by chance while Thomas is visiting France with his family. Both boys yearn to know how the human mind works. Jacques wants to learn why his older brother, Olivier, hears voices inside his head and otherwise acts crazy, so crazy that Olivier has to be chained up in a stable, sharing his living space with the farm's animals. Thomas is an aficionado of Shakespeare's plays, being so fascinated by Shakespeare's acute insights into the psychology of people, that he wants the study of the human mind to be his life's work.

Thomas and Jacques talk excitedly together, in French, throughout an entire night, at the end of which, Thomas's rudimentary French has improved so much that he can speak it almost as well as his native English - testimony to there being no substitute for total immersion in a language you wish to become the master of.

In the nineteenth century, alienism (as psychiatry was then known as) was the neccessary path to studying the human mind. I believe this path via alienism is still the case today, despite the profession of alienism receiving many a black-eye over the past decades. But to become alienists, Thomas and Jacques had first to qualify as medical doctors, which required diligent study and sacrifice, just as it would nowadays. Despite their geographic separation, they cemented their friendship over those years through letters and visits, and vowed to set up a practice together after qualifying as alienists.

Thomas, as the son of a quite well-off father, had an easier time of it than the impoverished Jacques, who could not have afforded to study over the years, but for an abbe (priest) who befriended him, becoming his mentor, and helping pay Jacques's way through medical school. After qualifying as doctors, the two young men work as interns at institutions for the insane (then quaintly called lunatic asylums), which are dirty, smelly, and noisy places, and often dangerous.

Only when their internships have ended, are Thomas and Jacques able to scrape together the means to establish an alienist practice in Austria - in a castle (schloss). I'll talk no further about the story-line because it would detract from your enjoyment of this novel should you ever read it. Were I to continue on about what Thomas and Jacques got up to after this point, this discussion of "Human Traces" would degenerate into one of those "digested reads" of novels deemed by Guardian (UK) book-reviewers as not worth the time to read.

But I'll reveal that "Human Traces", at more than six-hundred pages, with its locales encompassing England, France, Austria, California, and the plains of Africa, and covering sixty years from 1860 to 1920, is written on an epic scale. It is the very opposite of minimalist, being written as novels were written in the nineteenth century, linearly, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

So "Human Traces" is mercifully devoid of cute literary tricks like alternating between the first and third persons, and between the present and past tenses, and messing around with time, and eschewing punctuation and quotation marks - techniques which narcissistically draw attention to the novelist, and emotionally distance the reader from the words on the page.

Should you read "Human Traces" (and you should) you'll become aware of stuff you either never knew, or had forgotten. I became aware, for instance, of how daughters in English families were regarded by their fathers as little more than property to be auctioned off to potential husbands. With Thomas's older and much beloved sister, Sonia, it was no different, since she was forcefully persuaded by her father to marry a man of promising financial prospects and good family, even though she loved him not at all. But, being a dutiful Victorian-era daughter, she did as she was told, and smilingly made the best of it.

Lest you think Sonia's and Thomas's father an insensitive brute, remember that unless a young woman of that time got married by her middle to late twenties, she would live the rest of her life as a sort of non-person, whom everyone would call, when out of earshot, a spinster or old-maid. Sonia's father didn't want this for her, and he did what he did out of fatherly love.

A quite unrelated fact I'd forgotten about, but which "Human Traces" reminded me of, is that we can re-live our memories of anything we've ever done, or had done to us, or have experienced, going back, arguably, to the moment we were yanked into the world as mewling and puking slime-covered infants. We can re-live anything vividly if an electric charge is applied to the memory area of our brain.

Sebastian Faulks has Thomas attending an operation on a mental patient, involving sawing away part of the skull so the exposed brain can be prodded with an electrical probe to cure the afflicted brain-area. Amazingly the patient is conscious throughout, since the brain is nerveless, and local anaesthetic is sufficient to deal with any pain from the skull. When the electric prod touches the memory area of the patient's brain, she re-experiences an event at the seaside, where, once again she is a child, and is so happy to be with daddy at the beach. When the prod is withdrawn, the patient's vivid experience ends abruptly, and she is angry at the surgeon for taking away such a lovely experience.

When the prod is again applied to that area, the patient doesn't again experience the beach episode because the location of the area in the brain for any particular memory area is precise, as precise as the positioning of a TV satellite dish, which, if moved even a fraction of an inch, will cause the picture on the TV to disappear.

The novel deals with the human predilection to overlook facts which don't support a pet theory. Jacques has a female patient who suffers various physical pains and discomfort, which, according to his pet theory, he diagnoses as being hysterical in origin. He treats her accordingly, but her pain continues. Jacques refers her to Thomas who immediately sees there's something physical the matter, and orders her admitted to hospital where she has an emergency operation which saves her life.

Relations between Jacques and Thomas were never again the same, for Jacques, who had based his professional reputation on hysteria being the cause of almost all female physical ailments, felt permanently humiliated.

Central to "Human Traces" is the notion that psychosis - in the form of the schizophrenia of Jacques older brother, Olivier, who, like all schizophrenics, hears voices inside his head more real than the voices of anyone else - is the price we pay (or the price one-per-cent of us pay) for being human, since we are unique in the animal kingdom in having psychoses.

Given how recently our brains evolved beyond those of the other animals, and that new technology - which is what our newly evolved human brains are, in effect - almost always contains glitches, our uniquely human brains therefore contain the glitch which causes psychosis. It is this glitch which the older and simpler brains of the other animals don't have.

An analogy is the endemic back problems of one kind or another which afflict most of us. This is because we only quite recently began walking upright. A million years hence, we may have evolved to the point that back problems will be as rare as an Eskimo on a street in Timbuktu.

"Human Traces" also speculates that we humans are evolving to a higher consciousness, so that the perennial philosophical questions which so tax us, like whether there's a god, or what the meaning of life is, or how large is the universe, won't even be asked, because the answers will be self-evident to our higher-consciousness descendants of the very distant future. Given that advances in evolution begin with relatively small numbers in any species having more advanced characteristics, perhaps it is the psychics - who we "normals" hold to ridicule, but who seem able to perceive modes of existence which we "normals" can't - who are the precursors of how we'll all be in a million years. So we'll all be as psychic as Sylvia Browne now is, but we'll have to wait a million years.

"Human Traces" as a novel does have its faults, being in many respects a history of the development of psychiatry under the guise of fiction. So it's a didactic and philosophical novel, which, to the literary aesthete, would detract from its artistry.

I, for one, am not a literary aesthete, and neither perhaps, dear reader, are you, which is why you'll savour "Human Traces", and think about it for as long after you finish it, as did I.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

Its Dog Eat Dog, Rat Eat Rat

2008-01-07T17:42:00.000-08:00

I will today speak, not about Barack Obama, but about McDonald's, and it's intent to take a leaf from the book of Starbucks, by installing expresso coffee bars in all its US restaurants, which will serve lattes, capuchinos, and the various other upmarket coffees, to its customers.

On learning this, I thought immediately about the very different images associated with downmarket proletarian McDonalds, compared with upmarket professional Starbucks. When you go to McDonald's, you want simply to buy a Big Mac, wolf it down quickly, and, to help it through your esophagus, slurp down some of that warm brown water which passes for coffee at McDonald's.

I realize that in describing McDonald's fare thus, I'm doing so from my memories of when I used quite regularly eat there, when, being much younger, so much younger than today, I gave nary a thought to things like clogged arteries. Then came that day when my doctor informed me my cholesterol level was unhealthily high, and that I'd better make certain lifestyle changes pronto, else I'd be meeting the Grim Reaper earlier than planned.

An ingredient of the aforementioned lifestyle changes was no more McDonald's. So I've refrained from visiting McDonald's for over two decades, excepting perhaps once or twice in moments of weakness, when I couldn't help noticing that salads were now on offer. But I never tried them because, well, the whole purpose of going to McDonald's is not to eat a salad, but to consume a Big Mac, and fries, plus the warm brown water to wash it all down. Going to McDonald's to eat a salad makes as much sense as going to a Chinese restaurant to eat spaghetti Bolognaise.

Being a very cutting-edge Baby Boomer, I belong to that huge demographic which, too, is becoming concerned about clogged arteries, and may consequently have eschewed McDonald's as they become older. Perhaps this is why McDonald's has lost some of its earlier lustre, and now seeks to regain lost ground by offering not only salads, but coffee at least barely potable.

But McDonald's embodies uniquely American values, reflecting that food should be eaten as quickly as possible because time spent eating is time spent not working - not desirable in a society which worships work as fervently as it does God. Ray Kroc, McDonald's founder, knew that Americans go out to eat, not dine, and wish to eat as efficiently and quickly as possible. So he gave Americans what they wanted - a spotlessly clean, simple, casual and identifiable restaurant with friendly service, low prices, no waiting and no reservations.

Before he developed McDonald's, Ray Kroc was an itinerant milkshake-mixer salesman, who travelled the length and breadth of America selling milkshake multimixers. His customers included two brothers, Dick and Mac McDonald who owned a restaurant in San Bernadino, California, which offered very limited fare - hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french-fries, soft-drinks, and milk-shakes. They were offered at very low prices because the restaurant was operated so efficiently, reflected in the simple limited menu, and by eight milkshake multimixers whirring away day and night, yielding a steady stream of cash.

When Ray Kroc saw this, his mind began whirring like the multimixers he sold. He saw how this restaurant could be multiplied into a chain of them, and he pitched his idea to the McDonald brothers, who asked him, "Who could we get to open them for us?", and Kroc replied, "What about me?" This was in 1954.

So the McDonald's restaurant chain was begun, and so successfully that in 1961, Kroc persuaded the McDonald brothers into selling him the entire business for $2.7 million. The rest, as is said, is history.

Today, McDonald's has restaurants in over 114 countries, with annual world-wide sales of more than $41 billion, making it a veritable Gulliver compared to its relatively Lilliputian competitors. McDonald's expects its launch into upmarket Starbuck-style coffee, to yield an extra $1 billion a year in sales - not much, next to $41 billion - but it pays to keep competitors, like Starbucks, nervous.

Ray Kroc is long now dead, having expired in 1984, but McDonald's lives on and keeps growing - as quintessentially American as George Bush, the World Series, Mom, apple pie............and cheeseburgers.

I’m going to San Bernardino ring-a-ding-ding
Milkshake mixers that’s my thing, now
These guys bought a heap of my stuff
And I gotta see a good thing sure enough, now
Or my name’s not Kroc, that’s Kroc with a ‘k’
Like ‘crocodile’, but not spelled that way, now
It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat
Kroc-style, boom, like that

The folks line up all down the street
And I’m seeing this girl devour her meat, now
And then I get it, wham as clear as day
My pulse begins to hammer and I hear a voice say
These boys have got this down
Oughtta be a one of these in every town
These boys have got the touch
It’s clean as a whistle and it don’t cost much
Wham, bam, you don’t wait long
Shake, fries, patty, you’re gone
And how about that friendly name?
Heck, every little thing oughtta stay the same
Or my name’s not Kroc, that’s Kroc with a ‘k’
Like ‘crocodile’ but not spelt that way, now
It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat
Oh, it's dog eat dog, rat eat rat
Kroc-style, boom, like that

You gentlemen ought to expand
You’re going to need a helping hand, now
So, gentlemen, well, what about me?
We’ll make a little business history, now
Or my name’s not Kroc, call me Ray
Like ‘crocodile’, but not spelt that way, now
It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat
Kroc-style, boom, like that

Well we build it up and I buy ‘em out
But, man they made me grind it out, now
They open up a new place flipping meat
So I do, too right across the street
I got the name, I need the town
They sell up in the end, and it all shuts down
Sometimes you gotta be an s.o.b.
You wanna make a dream reality
Competition? send ‘em south
If they’re gonna drown put a hose in their mouth
Do not pass go straight to hell
I smell that meat hook smell
Or my name’s not Kroc, that’s Kroc with a ‘k’
Like ‘crocodile’, but not spelt that way, now
It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat
Oh, it's dog eat dog, rat eat rat
Kroc-style, boom, like that

What is "Intelligence"?

2007-11-27T12:10:00.000-08:00

From time to time, I transfer verbatim the comments left on this site by readers and my replies to them, and make of them a main posting, should they raise issues which I think shouldn’t moulder in obscurity in the “comments” section.

Today’s is such a posting. The comments were a response to my previous posting. A reader, Giscard, remarked on Condoleezza Rice’s so-far less than stellar performance as Secretary of State. Somehow my rejoinder meandered into what IQ tests tell us about human intelligence.

Such is the nature of conversations. Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.

Here now is the exchange between Giscard and myself:

From Giscard: It is a paradox indeed, that Condoleeza Rice, for all her education and intelligence, has not been a good secretary of state.

Consider that she has a PhD in Russian studies, was a university professor of political science, and speaks Russian, as well as German French and Spanish. This is someone who obviously knows geo-politics inside out. And she is luminously intelligent.

As a specialist in Russian affairs, she would be aware that the Russians, having been invaded so many times, not least by Napoleon and Hitler, and having their country devastated, and many millions killed as a result, are historically paranoid about foreign powers encroaching their borders. But Ms Rice signed on to an American foreign policy of extending NATO to Russia’s borders, and setting up US military bases in countries which were formerly part of the Soviet Union.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, it appeared the old animosity between the US and Russia was at an end, as Russia embraced capitalism, and was co-operating with the US in defusing old quarrels. But as the US extended its power and influence to Russia’s borders, it raised again the old Russian paranoia about foreigners, and the equivalent of the old Cold War is the result.

How could Condoleezza Rice, with all her expert knowledge about Russia, have approved such stupidity on the part of the US? The same goes with the Bush foreign policy generally - particularly in the middle-east - behind which was Condoleezza Rice, first as Bush’s foreign policy advisor, then as his Secretary of State.

I don’t understand. I just don’t.

From Christopher: The issue you raise in my mind, Giscard, is the relationship between intelligence and stupidity. Why are so many of those who our society sees as very intelligent, so obviously stupid in many ways?

It is the Received Wisdom in our modern society that IQ equals intelligence. But does it? I make bold to ask. What do we mean by “intelligence”? What does IQ actually measure?

Two classes of people who have high IQs are computer-freaks and medical doctors, since you must score high on IQ tests to get into medical school or to be allowed to study computer science. The tests value quickness and the solving of puzzles. So if you are good at this, you’ll do well on these tests, opening the way for you to become a doctor or computer-freak.

In my life I’ve spoken with many a doctor and computer-freak, and while they’ve dazzled me with their expert knowledge in their chosen field – doctors babbling about intestines, aneurisms, CAT scans, punctured ribs, heart-bypass procedures; computer-freaks babbling about modems, motherboards, CPUs, RAMs, i-Pods, and all of that. But so many seem unable to think philosophically, unable to think in an abstract way.

If I move the conversation to an abstract or philosophical level, or to subjects like politics, literature, psychology, or the arts, these doctors, these computer-freaks, are out of their depth, sounding childlike and ignorant, causing me to think there’s something lacking in their mental or emotional makeup.

I’m not saying there aren’t some who can’t talk intelligently about non-doctor or non-computer stuff, but I haven’t crossed paths with too many.

The IQ (intelligence quotient) test supposedly - by virtue of its name - measures intelligence. So if you do well on it, you’re called “intelligent” or “smart” and given lots of respect. If you don’t do well on it, you’re called “unintelligent” or dumb or a retard, or worse, and you get laughed at.

As someone who doesn’t do well on IQ tests, and is therefore considered unintelligent, dumb, or retarded, I resent these appellations because, somehow, I don’t think I’m these things. But what I’m definitely not, is a fast thinker. Although I can solve puzzles, I’m slower at this than most others.

Thus I’m not considered “intelligent”, and therefore don’t get to enjoy life’s perquisites and the respect of my peers, as do those who do well on IQ tests – like medical doctors and computer-freaks.

There has been much discussion over I don’t know how many years, about whether IQ tests actually measure “intelligence” – a word with much emotional baggage. But might it not be more accurate to say that IQ tests measure “cleverness” rather than “intelligence”, so if you do well on an IQ test, you are “clever” rather than “intelligent”?

Looking at the dictionary, I see the two words have somewhat similar definitions, but I think to be “intelligent” implies something deeper, more profound than being “clever” – a word implying something more trivial. So we speak condescendingly of someone being a “clever fellow”, or, if they are carrying cleverness to an absurd length, of being “too clever by half”.

Since IQ tests emphasize quickness and the solving of puzzles, I believe it would be more accurate to say they measure “cleverness”. So why not, then, change the name of the “IQ test” to the “CQ (cleverness quotient) test”? It would eliminate so much confusion and angry debate. Someone having a low or merely average “CQ”, could still be respected because this would say nothing about their sagacity, emotional maturity, ability to look at issues deeply, or to take the long view, for these attributes have nothing to do with quickness or speed, which are so prized by the Businessman, who is the one who shapes the values of our modern society, of which the “IQ test” is a part and parcel.

Meanwhile we will continue to worship the traditional IQ test, from which emerge the clever ones, the Smart-Alecks, the Hot-Shots, who will continue to run our governments and corporations.

So we shouldn’t be surprised when we see rampant stupidity as the normal state of affairs in all the corridors of power - no matter where in the world they are – for they are the domain of the clever and the quick, the Smart-Alecks and the Hot-Shots.

It is they - not the wise, nor the thoughtful, nor the sensitive, nor the emotionally-mature, nor the meek – who have inherited the earth.

It is they who propel us to our extinction.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

Of Blogs and Bloggers

2007-10-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

I was recently sent a link to someone who offered to increase the readership of my blogging site if I would but paste on my site some hyperlinked information, which, if clicked onto by visitors to my site, would cause the address of my blogging site to appear on the blogging sites of others who have also posted the aforementioned hyperlinked information onto their own sites.

The result would be that my blogging site address would appear on more and more of other blogging sites in an exponentially upward curve. On first ingesting this information I felt as if transported into the heavens, as I saw a glorious future for this blog, with a readership numbering in the millions. And I, as the blogger, would as a consequence – like Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy - get cards and letters from people I don’t even know, and offers coming over the phone.

Then the windmills of my mind began to whir, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel on an ever spinning reel. And what my mind said, was that the appearance of my blogging site’s address on the blogging sites of fellow bloggers, wouldn’t mean my blog would be read any more than it now is, for the reason that bloggers signing up to get their blogs onto the sites of fellow bloggers, will only do this, so their blogs will be read by the other bloggers, who, in turn, are getting their own blogs posted on the sites of yet other bloggers, so their blogs will be read by those other bloggers, who won’t read them because they are interested only in getting their own blogs read, rather than reading the blogs of others.

I thus concluded that for me to sign up to get my blog on to the sites of other bloggers, so that they read my blog, would be a waste of valuable time.

That bloggers tend not to read the blogs of their fellows might be taken as incuriosity. But we might better call it discernment, because, if truth be told, most blogs aren’t worth reading. For starters, most sites are confusing because they have so much incongruous stuff on them, one doesn’t know where to start. They have photos, drawings, advertisements, and all manner of other irrelevant information which obscures the writings of the blogger. And isn’t writing the raison d’etre of blogging?

As to the writings on blogs, most are bilge because they are badly written and boring, borne of the monumental ignorance, illiteracy, self-absorption, narcissism, and solipsism of the bloggers. “Ranting” is a favourite word among bloggers, who, proudly proclaiming that they “rant”, don’t consider that to read these seemingly interminable “rants” is, for the reader, to suffer a torture only slightly below water-boarding and the other ingenious methods used to extract secrets from the unfortunates incarcerated at Guantanamo.

While most blogs aren’t worth reading, there are some which are. These usually are blogs written by professional journalists or novelists, who therefore know how to write. But even these readable blogs tend to become repetitive and boring after a while, since, regularly to churn out pieces every day or so for the delectation of the hoi-polloi waiting impatiently for their morsel, will be to descend inevitably into hackwork and redundancy. I mean, if your predilection is American politics, there’s only so much you can say about George Bush which others haven’t already said. So what else can you unboringly write of, if all you know about is American politics?

Readers comments left on blogging sites, particularly political ones, resemble nothing so much as the bleeting of sheep, or the wimperings of subordinate wolves before the dominant alpha male. To leave a comment which doesn’t follow the ideology of the blogger or his acolytes, invites as much venom and abuse from them, as anyone professing homosexuality at a Hell’s Angel’s convention.

I’ve heard that the increase in the numbers of new bloggers has now levelled off after the mercurial rise during blogging’s first halcyon years. This could reflect either that internet surfers recognise bilge when they read it; or they would rather watch videos on YouTube or My Space, than read blogs, because, being products of an increasingly illiterate culture, they find the written word too difficult for them.

I suspect it’s a bit of both.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnaval balloon
Like a carousell that's turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it's own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that I said
Lovers walk along the shore,
Leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And a fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
As the images unwind
Like the circle that you find
In the windmills of your mind

ETs, UFOs, Crop Circles - Readers Responses

2007-10-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

My most recent posting, “Those Amazing ETs And Their Flying Machines”, evoked such passionate responses from you, my esteemed readers, that I deemed them worthy of a separate posting. So I cut and pasted them, and here they are:

From LittlePage: I'm torn between the belief that extra-terrestrials exist or don't. For example, I watched a PBS film about crop circles, and they documented many people that create fairly complex designs, and created circles for the documetary maker's film.

However, given the increasingly complex designs you mention, some may be way out of the league (and time - they have to finish during the night) for the crop-makers, and so must be explained by other means.

From Christopher: Most crop circles in England appear in July and August, when the hours of darkness are the shortest. But, given that July and August are the hottest months, does this merely mean that human crop-circle makers find the warm nights of summer more pleasant in which to do their work than during the cold rainy nights of winter? Quite possibly.

On the other hand, since the nightly hours of darkness during July and August in England are only about four hours, this doesn’t give human crop-circle makers much time to do their work undetected.

So how about that the ETs are deliberately making their very complex circles during these short nights, to show us that these circles are not of human design?

I’ve concluded, for the reasons given in my previous postings, that the mysterious lights in the night sky, which so many have seen over so many years, are manipulated by extra-terrestrial intelligences.

By means of these lights, and the crop circles, the ETs are shouting out to us (figuratively of course) that they’re here. But we don’t listen, or at least Official Science doesn’t. So we have the absurd spectacle of government-funded scientific groups searching for extra-terrestrial life, but through listening for radio signals from other civilizations Out There. These efforts have gone on for decades but have yielded nothing.

Meanwhile, under our noses, and under the nose of Official Science, we may be getting continuous signals from extra-terrestrial civilizations, but in the form of lights in the sky and crop-circles, which our scientists choose to ignore because they (the crop circles, and night lights) lie outside the belief system of Official Science.

There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see.

From Guy de Maupassant: “……..There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see……..”. I do so like this, and wish I could have written it myself.

Yes, we all of us - or nearly all of us - see only what we wish to see. But there are scientists out there who do have the courage to go where evidence leads, no matter what they're investigating.

It’s sad that most don’t remove the blinkers which prevent them seeing beyond the boundaries of their belief system, which encompasses only the “natural” world.

Were they to remove their blinkers, they might see that the “supernatural” world - which crop-circles and their like are part and parcel of – would become as much a part of the “natural” world as are lions and dogs and the Eiffel Tower.

From Christopher: I’m so honoured, Monsieur de Maupassant, that you would read my web-log, let alone comment on it.

While researching your life, I learned that in your later years, you “……developed an exaggerated love for solitude, a predilection for self-preservation, and a constant fear of death and mania of persecution……..”.

This so perfectly reflects how I am, that I think I may have been you in a previous incarnation. How happy it makes me, to feel that not only may I have been you, but, as you, I may have hob-nobbed with luminaries like Charles Swinburne, Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola, and Ivan Turgenev. I don’t remember what we all talked about, but I feel it would have been above the intellectual level of who will become the next “American Idol”, which so obsesses the majority mainstream cultural illiterates of this twenty-first century.

And to think it may have been I who authored your short-story masterpieces like “Boule de Suif” and “La Parure”. When I look at the pieces I write on this blog, and compare them to what you wrote, I cringe. But should I allow a hypnotist to regress me back to my former life as you, I might, when returned, be sufficiently inspired to write as you did, and so write pieces which will become as immortal as “Boule de Suif” and “La Parure”.

If so, I would die happy, or at least happier than you, when you, yourself, died, after you were declared insane. I can only hope I will die before I, too, am declared insane by those who think that to be a back-slapping, gregarious, hail-fellow-well-met, is to be the epitome of sanity.

Allow me, Monsieur de Maupassant, to add to what you said about the blinkered views of mainstream scientists. These views are are reinforced by fear, the fear that if they stray too far from official orthodoxy they will find themselves unemployed and standing in a soup-line – a situation not to be wished if you have a mortgage to pay, and children to feed and educate.

The foundations and corporations which fund universities through grants and scholarships, would cease their largesse if professors employed by the universities they fund, stray too far from the official orthodoxy, whether in science, politics, history, or anything else.

I should like to assure you, Monsieur de Maupassant, that by adding to your comments, I did not imply that what you said was inadequate. It’s just that, in our twenty-first-century world of cultural illiterates, one must explain things which would be assumed in a culturally literate society, as your own 19th century France may have been.

From Professor Smith – Department of Astronomy, UCLA: The chances of an extra-terrestrial civilization visiting earth are, statistically, extremely remote, given that earth is a mere tadpole swimming in a cosmic ocean of thousands of billion stars - as many stars as grains of sand on your average beach in California.

In cosmic terms we are NOTHING, I tell you, NOTHING. So we can safely conclude that no extra-terrestrials have ever visited us, and never will.

Your assertion that crop circles and lights in the sky are made by extra-terrestrials is, consequently, piffle.

Almost all UFO sightings have been rationally explained, and hoaxers long ago admitted making crop circles, and have shown how they made them. And those UFO sightings not explained, would have been, if gullible amateurs like you had made more efforts in your investigations.

You need to read more, and pontificate less.

From Christopher: I do agree with you, Professor Smith, that – as you so picturesquely put it – “……earth is a mere tadpole swimming in a cosmic ocean of thousands of billion stars…….”.

But does this necessarily mean that no extra-terrestrial civilization would know about us, or want to visit us?

If we assume any ETs having a technologically advanced civilization would be thousands, perhaps millions of years ahead of us, they might have systems in place on their planets to alert them of the presence of other advanced civilizations, no matter where in the cosmos they are.

And on being apprised of us, they might want to visit, to see if we might be a threat, or simply to discover more about us out of intellectual curiosity – an intellectual curiosity of which you seem totally bereft.

Since any half-intelligent child would be able to understand all this, I'm surprised you don't.

Your obtuseness confirms that university professors like you are no more than ossified academic hacks, without imagination, slaves to the conventional wisdom, and terrified of change.

So I won’t waste my precious time arguing with you any further.

You are NOTHING. You are FILTH. You are SCUM.

Away with you, and bother me no more.

As I look now at how I responded to Professor Smith, I wonder if I was inordinately churlish. I think I was. But this is now, and what I wrote was then, and it was then when what I wrote seemed appropriate. So it must remain, immutable, fixed for all eternity.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

Those Amazing ETs And Their Flying Machines

2007-10-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

I happened, the other day, upon a story about a UFO sighting near Shakespeare’s birthplace of Stratford-Upon-Avon, in England, where, at about 10.30 pm one evening this past July, people on the street noticed four balls of light moving over the town in formation. Then they (the balls of light) manoeuvred themselves, with three forming a triangle, and one staying just outside it. Then a fifth orb came flying towards the group at a very fast speed, then slowed, then stopped.

The orbs hovered in this position for half an hour, then moved slowly off over the horizon. Over 100 people, some with cameras, saw them. There were reportedly no stars visible in the sky just then, and the balls of light made no sound. The British Ministry of Defence reported no unusual aerial activity, implying nothing untoward was seen on any radar screens.

Sceptics - which is to say, conservatives - asserted the orbs were merely hot air balloons, fireworks, or lanterns which had broken loose from the premises of a local rugby club.

What, then, are we who weren’t there, to make of all this? If you click here, and look at the photo of the orbs, you’ll notice their positions are geometrically very precise. If you use a pencil and the edge of a piece of paper you’ll see that two sides of the triangle are the same length, and that the apex forms a right angle (90 degrees). Line your piece of paper along the three orbs which are the right point of the triangle, the orb just outside it, and the fifth orb further away, and you’ll observe they form a perfect line.

I wasn’t surprised at this degree of precision because it’s what I’ve seen in many videos of UFOs over the years. UFOs in a group often form perfect squares, rectangles or triangles, and move slowly across the sky in these formations. It’s as if there’s a controlling intelligence behind their manoeuvrings and formation. It may be the same controlling intelligence which creates crop circles, which are progressively becoming more geometrically complex.

That things can happen on earth which are caused and controlled by extra-terrestrial intelligences shouldn’t be surprising, considering we’ve landed mobile machines on the Moon and Mars, whose movements we control through radio signals from here on earth. A native Moonite or Martian might be quite nonplussed if, while out on a walk, he came across one of our machines moving around by itself, but which appeared to be intelligently controlled by something unseen. If our Moonite or Martian rushed back to tell his little friends what he’d just seen, they might tell him he was hallucinating and to seek professional help.

This brings me to a documentary film called “UFO Files – Alien Engineering” which speculates about the technology which extra-terrestrials would use in order to visit earth (and they may have already). Much of what the filmmakers - who include engineers and scientists - speculate about is based on technology we on earth have already discovered. For instance the shape and design of the US Air Force’s alien-looking stealth bomber was presaged by how some UFOs looked to those who saw them, long before the stealth bomber was even heard of.

The filmmakers opine that UFOs may get their incredible speed through nullifying gravity and using anti-matter. Scientists have already caused objects in the laboratory to move around and hover as if independent of gravity, and they (the scientists) have produced minute quantities of anti-matter. It may be possible to travel the huge distances across the cosmos by going through “wormholes”, the existence of which scientists have postulated, based on Einstein’s discovery that space is curved.

Also, to the degree that the speed of a spacecraft approaches that of light, time slows down. Thus if you travel at the speed of light over thousands of years to a planet far away, you would be the same age when you arrived on the planet as you were when you left earth. But all your friends on earth would be long dead on account of a thousand years having passed in earth-time.

Perhaps the “aliens” seen by so many of today’s earthlings are visitors from our future?

I’ll talk no more for now, so you may watch the “UFO Files – Alien Engineering”. The film lasts about 90 minutes. Because of the Youtube requirements, it’s chopped up into 10 parts, each lasting 8 to 9 minutes.

Not only do I think you’ll find it more intellectually stimulating than “American Idol”, I guarantee it.

Part One ; Part Two ; Part Three ; Part Four ; Part Five ; Part Six ; Part Seven ; Part Eight ; Part Nine ; Part Ten

Epigrams for the Working Person.

2007-09-25T19:13:00.000-07:00

Here's something to keep you interested, dear readers, until my next posting, which I hope will be soon.

*
I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
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Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
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Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.
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The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.
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To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
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When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
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The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
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A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
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A thief fell in wet cement. And broke his leg . He became a hardened criminal.
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Thieves who steal corn from a garden could be charged with stalking.
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We'll never run out of math teachers because they always multiply.
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When the smog lifts in Los Angeles , U C L A.
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The math professor went crazy with the blackboard. He did a number on it.
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The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
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The dead batteries were given out free of charge.
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If you take a laptop computer for a run you could jog your memory.
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A dentist and a manicurist fought tooth and nail.
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What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway)
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A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.
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Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
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A backward poet writes inverse.
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In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.
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A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.
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If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.
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With each marriage she got a new name and a dress.
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Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat miner.
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When a clock is really hungry it goes back four seconds.
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The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.
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A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France, resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.
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You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
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He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
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A calendar's days are numbered.
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A lot of money is tainted: 'Taint yours, and 'taint mine.*
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A boiled egg is hard to beat.
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He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
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A plateau is a high form of flattery.
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When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
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When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.
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Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
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Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
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Acupuncture: a jab well done.
*
And finally, there was the person who sent forty-two different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them. Laugh. No pun in ten did.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Over Mexican Skies

2007-09-23T05:12:00.000-07:00

On the afternoon of March 4 2004, ten thousand five hundred feet above the city of Ciudad del Carmen, in the state of Campeche, Mexico, a twin engined surveillance airplane belonging to the 501 Aerial Squadron of the Mexican Air Force, with its three crew members, was on a routine exercise of keeping a lookout for drug-smuggling airplanes by means of radar and infra-red video cameras.

Around 5.00 pm there appeared on the radar screen, and on the infra-red camera, an unknown craft. The surveillance plane moved closer so the crew could get a closer look. Then the unknown craft flew away at a very high speed, too fast for the surveillance plane to pursue it. It should be noted that the surveillance plane’s crew couldn’t actually see the unknown craft, which only the plane’s radar and infra-red cameras could detect.

Then the unknown craft reappeared on the radar and infra-red screens and it seemed to be following or chasing the surveillance plane. Then another craft appeared on the screens, and joined the first craft in its pursuit of the surveillance plane. Somewhat naturally, the crew were disconcerted, if not fearful, for, bloody hell, what could this be? Their confusion was made worse a few seconds later when even more unknown craft appeared on the radar and infra-red screens. This brought the number to eleven, which, again, the crew couldn’t actually see, but only on the radar and infra-red camera screens.

Then these strange craft enveloped the surveillance plane. What to do? Why not, thought the captain, turn out all the plane’s lights and see what happens. The lights were accordingly turned off, so everything became completely dark - except of course for the light emanating from the radar screen and infra-red camera, with their images of the unknown craft - whereupon they (the strange craft) disappeared from the radar and camera screens, never to be seen again.

The Mexican Department of Defense took this incident very seriously and investigated it thoroughly, examining the recorded images and the data, and interrogating the crew. After completing the investigation, the Mexican Department of Defense, instead of making this all a big secret - as the US Department of Defense would undoubtedly have done – went totally the other way, and, by the order of Secretary of Defense, General Clemente Vega Garcia, contacted the nationally-known journalist and UFO researcher, Jaime Maussan, and turned over to him all the relevant tapes and data, and gave him permission to interview the crew, so that he might evaluate what happened, and publicise it if he so wished.

After Maussan examined everything and talked to the crew, he gave a public presentation of his findings which you, too, can look at if you click on to the link at the bottom of this posting. But you should first know that, in his presentation, Maussan has expanded beyond the above-described incident, which we might describe as a Close Encounter of the First Kind, except that the UFOs themselves couldn’t be seen by the naked eye.

I’m led, by the way, to understand that if you point a TV remote control at a camcorder, and hold down the channel button while looking through the camcorder’s viewfinder, you’ll see the remote control’s infra-red light, even though you can’t see it with the naked eye. This may explain why the crew of the spotter plane could catch the images of the strange craft on tape, but not actually see them themselves.

I’m also informed that most of us can’t see beyond the basic spectrum of light. Some people, though, are more sensitive to the light spectrum, which might explain why they see UFOs but most of their fellow humans don’t. Just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.

I had mentioned, before I digressed, that Jaime Maussan in his public presentation of his analysis of the surveillance plane’s radar and infra red tapes, expanded on the topic by talking about other aspects of the Unseen and Unexplained. Thus there is a segment showing film of certain people being distracted by funny noises and strange phenomena, while apparently being watched by beings with sticklike bodies and large heads with large sloping eyes - the classic extra-terrestrial beings seen by abductees.

You should, however, look at this segment with the proverbial pinch of salt, since such pictures and film can be faked. Jaime Maussan, the passionate ufologist that he is, has in the past sometimes allowed his enthusiasm to cloud his judgement, has allowed valour to be the better part of discretion, and so has sometimes innocently presented films, tapes, and photos of UFOs and related phenomena as true, but which were subsequently shown to be fakes.

However this doesn’t apply to the Mexican Air Force surveillance plane’s tapes of the unknown craft it encountered, since these tapes were demonstrably genuine.

The final segment of Jaime Maussan’s presentation deals with crop circles. Just as the film footage of the surveillance plane’s tapes of the unknown craft is genuine, so also is the film footage of the crop circles, since crop circles are a fact, and what is shown of them in Maussan’s presentation is stuff most of us have seen before in other settings. But crop circles remind us all of how mysterious they are, for they aren’t all man-made.

A crop circle aficionado can quickly tell those which are man-made from those which aren’t. Inside the man-made circles the stems of the hay or wheat, or whatever, are broken – having being flattened by heavy rollers. But the non man-made circles are something else, since the plant stalks are bent over unbroken about an inch off the ground and near the stem’s first node (or knuckle).

But when these stems are put under a microscope it is found that their molecular structure, as well as many other characteristics, is somewhat different from that of plant stems outside the circle, the result of having had very intense heat directed at them, of the sort produced by microwaves or ultrasound. The same goes also with the soil inside the circles, which, like the plants, shows signs of having been on the receiving end of intense heat, and is molecularly different from soil outside the circles.

There have been over ten-thousand crop circles observed, most in England. They are usually formed at night, between two and four AM in the wee hours during the short English summer nights. The non-human entities, whatever they are, that make these crop-circles are very cunning, for they produce them under the noses of the crop-circle junkies who are looking for them. Some seekers have seen large balls of brilliant colour which project beams of light into farmer’s fields, which the next morning display a new crop circle.

In 1996, a pilot flying above Stonehenge reported nothing unusual below, but fifteen minutes later a huge 900 foot crop circle, of an extremely intricate design, had appeared next to Stonehenge.

In the matter of crop-circle designs, they are becoming progressively more complex as time goes on. You will see examples in Jaime Maussan’s video presentation.

We can only conclude that crop circles are made by intelligences we know not of, and that they are telling us they're here, but only a mere handful of us choose to notice, since the big Kahunas who own the MSM (mainstream media) and who rule over us have convinced us that we, who think non-humans make crop circles, are nut-cases, since if we all believed that mysterious intelligences Out There are monitoring us, and making crop-circles to tell us they’re here, and are flying all those UFOs which we keep seeing, this would be utterly subversive of the status quo, which the big Kahunas, whether in business or government, have a vested interest in maintaining, for without the status quo, we might become restless and begin to think, and to ask inconvenient questions of the Big Kahunas, who absolutely don't want us to do this.

Now to Jaime Maussan’s video presentation which you can watch by clicking here.

Sources:

Mexican D o D Acknowledges UFOs Over Mexico
Mexican Air Force Pilots Film UFOs
A Brief Education on Crop Circles
Plant Abnormalities
The Crop Busters
Peculiarities of Crop Circles

Why We Believe Lies

2007-09-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

Below is an article by Shankar Vedantam which appeared in the Washington Post on September 4th 2007, on why we are so gullible. I found it of great interest, and so might you, dear readers:

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "The side effects are worse than the flu" and "Only older people need flu vaccine."

When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.

Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.

The psychological insights yielded by the research, which has been confirmed in a number of peer-reviewed laboratory experiments, have broad implications for public policy. The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.

This phenomenon may help explain why large numbers of Americans incorrectly think that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in planning the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi. While these beliefs likely arose because Bush administration officials have repeatedly tried to connect Iraq with Sept. 11, the experiments suggest that intelligence reports and other efforts to debunk this account may in fact help keep it alive.

Similarly, many in the Arab world are convinced that the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was not the work of Arab terrorists but was a controlled demolition; that 4,000 Jews working there had been warned to stay home that day; and that the Pentagon was struck by a missile rather than a plane.

Those notions remain widespread even though the federal government now runs Web sites in seven languages to challenge them. Karen Hughes, who runs the Bush administration's campaign to win hearts and minds in the fight against terrorism, recently painted a glowing report of the "digital outreach" teams working to counter misinformation and myths by challenging those ideas on Arabic blogs.

A report last year by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, however, found that the number of Muslims worldwide who do not believe that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks is soaring -- to 59 percent of Turks and Egyptians, 65 percent of Indonesians, 53 percent of Jordanians, 41 percent of Pakistanis and even 56 percent of British Muslims.

Research on the difficulty of debunking myths has not been specifically tested on beliefs about Sept. 11 conspiracies or the Iraq war. But because the experiments illuminate basic properties of the human mind, psychologists such as Schwarz say the same phenomenon is probably implicated in the spread and persistence of a variety of political and social myths.

The research does not absolve those who are responsible for promoting myths in the first place. What the psychological studies highlight, however, is the potential paradox in trying to fight bad information with good information.

Schwarz's study was published this year in the journal Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, but the roots of the research go back decades. As early as 1945, psychologists Floyd Allport and Milton Lepkin found that the more often people heard false wartime rumors, the more likely they were to believe them.

The research is painting a broad new understanding of how the mind works. Contrary to the conventional notion that people absorb information in a deliberate manner, the studies show that the brain uses subconscious "rules of thumb" that can bias it into thinking that false information is true. Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency.

The experiments also highlight the difference between asking people whether they still believe a falsehood immediately after giving them the correct information, and asking them a few days later. Long-term memories matter most in public health campaigns or political ones, and they are the most susceptible to the bias of thinking that well-recalled false information is true.

The experiments do not show that denials are completely useless; if that were true, everyone would believe the myths. But the mind's bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts.

The research also highlights the disturbing reality that once an idea has been implanted in people's minds, it can be difficult to dislodge. Denials inherently require repeating the bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it.

Indeed, repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the brain's subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are true.

Many easily remembered things, in fact, such as one's birthday or a pet's name, are indeed true. But someone trying to manipulate public opinion can take advantage of this aspect of brain functioning. In politics and elsewhere, this means that whoever makes the first assertion about something has a large advantage over everyone who denies it later.

Furthermore, a new experiment by Kimberlee Weaver at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and others shows that hearing the same thing over and over again from one source can have the same effect as hearing that thing from many different people -- the brain gets tricked into thinking it has heard a piece of information from multiple, independent sources, even when it has not. Weaver's study was published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The experiments by Weaver, Schwarz and others illustrate another basic property of the mind -- it is not good at remembering when and where a person first learned something. People are not good at keeping track of which information came from credible sources and which came from less trustworthy ones, or even remembering that some information came from the same untrustworthy source over and over again. Even if a person recognizes which sources are credible and which are not, repeated assertions and denials can have the effect of making the information more accessible in memory and thereby making it feel true, said Schwarz.

Experiments by Ruth Mayo, a cognitive social psychologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, also found that for a substantial chunk of people, the "negation tag" of a denial falls off with time. Mayo's findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2004.

"If someone says, 'I did not harass her,' I associate the idea of harassment with this person," said Mayo, explaining why people who are accused of something but are later proved innocent find their reputations remain tarnished. "Even if he is innocent, this is what is activated when I hear this person's name again.

"If you think 9/11 and Iraq, this is your association, this is what comes in your mind," she added. "Even if you say it is not true, you will eventually have this connection with Saddam Hussein and 9/11."

Mayo found that rather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth. Rather than say, as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) recently did during a marathon congressional debate, that "Saddam Hussein did not attack the United States; Osama bin Laden did," Mayo said it would be better to say something like, "Osama bin Laden was the only person responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks" -- and not mention Hussein at all.

The psychologist acknowledged that such a statement might not be entirely accurate -- issuing a denial or keeping silent are sometimes the only real options.

So is silence the best way to deal with myths? Unfortunately, the answer to that question also seems to be no.

Another recent study found that when accusations or assertions are met with silence, they are more likely to feel true, said Peter Kim, an organizational psychologist at the University of Southern California. He published his study in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Myth-busters, in other words, have the odds against them.

Now we know why we’re so gullible and conformist, and therefore continue to believe nonsense even when shown it’s nonsense. Religion is as good an example as any.

But it’s not just religion, it’s everything we were told by our mothers and fathers, and rammed down our throats by society generally. For instance, girls throughout their childhood are told their object in life is to marry and become mothers. But should they, when grown, not want to marry because they see men as boorish and stupid, and not want children because they just don’t like them, or for other sensible reasons, they feel guilty nonetheless.

And boys when growing up are told they must be tough and stoic, must never cry, must be sun-loving extroverts and drink beer and love football. But should they be shy and bookish, and like to watch Ingmar Bergman films, and go for solitary walks in the rain and mist, rather than play football, and like to drink white wine, and wish, when grown-up, to study the violin rather than join the Marine Corps or become an investment banker, they’ll feel guilt all their lives.

Have any of you, dear readers, ever experienced visiting, after many decades, the neighbourhood where you played as a child, looked at the house you grew up in? Doesn’t it all seem now much smaller and shabbier than you remembered it? As a child, everything looked bigger because you were so small, everything you came across was fresh and new. In your middle-age you still remembered your childhood house as a palace, the scrubby field you once played in as lush and green, the pot-holed side-road you once skipped along as a wide boulevard.

But when you returned from your visit to where you grew up, and went back to your present life, and present home - your little Shangri-la - your nondescript childhood house returned to being a palace, the scrubby field again became lush and green, the side-road went back to being much wider and longer. Your impressions of them based on your recent visit were soon erased from your mind because they weren’t your first childhood ones.

The imaginary homeland of our childhood will live in us always.

Regarding human gullbility, Richard Dawkins, in his book “The God Delusion”, speculates about its evolutionary origins . Perhaps, he thinks, our propensity to believe anything, no matter how outragious, comes from when our distant forebears lived close to nature, so were vulnerable to attacks from wild animals and otherwise threatened by the elements. Small children not obeying their parents’ orders, in, for instance, matters of safety, because they thought it stupid, were more likely to be caught and eaten by a wild animal, than were obedient, more unquestioning children. Therefore the more gullible, the more unquestioning and conformist the child, the more likely it would survive to pass on its genes when grown-up.

This does explain so much about us.

And Now For Something Completely Different

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

It's a sliver of glass,
It is life, it's the sun,
It is night, it is death,
It's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush

The wood of the wind,
A cliff, a fall,
A scratch, a lump,
It is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free,
It's the end of the slope,
It's a beam, it's a void,
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of the strain,
The joy in your heart

The foot, the ground,
The flesh and the bone,
The beat of the road,
A slingshot's stone

A fish, a flash,
A silvery glow,
A fight, a bet,
The range of a bow

The bed of the well,
The end of the line,
The dismay in the face,
It's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike,
A point, a nail,
A drip, a drop,
The end of the tale

A truckload of bricks
in the soft morning light,
The shot of a gun
in the dead of the night

A mile, a must,
A thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme,
It's a cold, it's the mumps

The plan of the house,
The body in bed,
And the car that got stuck,
It's the mud, it's the mud

Afloat, adrift,
A flight, a wing,
A hawk, a quail,
The promise of spring

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
It's the joy in your heart

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

A snake, a stick,
It is John, it is Joe,
It's a thorn in your hand
and a cut in your toe

A point, a grain,
A bee, a bite,
A blink, a buzzard,
A sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle,
A sting, a pain,
A snail, a riddle,
A wasp, a stain

A pass in the mountains,
A horse and a mule,
In the distance the shelves
rode three shadows of blue

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone,
The end of the road,
The rest of a stump,
A lonesome road

A sliver of glass,
A life, the sun,
A knife, a death,
The end of the run

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain,
It's the joy in your heart.

God vs Science - A Forum (4)

2007-08-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation of a discussion between myself and you, gentle readers, arising out of comments left on my previous posting.

The comment below was from a reader who wanted to know my opinions on a book, “The Language of God”, written by Francis S Collins, scientist and head of the Human Genome Project, and a believing Christian to boot.

From Bubba: You've evaded talking about the Francis S Collins book, "The Language of God" for long enough.

Now will you do the decent thing and tell us all what you thought of it, and why a scientist par excellence, like Francis Collins, is a believing Christian.

We can wait no longer for the pronunciamento from you, the Oracle.

From Christopher: I do detect, Bubba, a biting sarcasm in your comment that I can’t overlook. While this way of communicating may be fine among you and your two-fisted beer-swilling buddies, it isn’t fine when you are communicating with me.

You should consider yourself privileged that I deign to respond to your comments, for you should understand that my time is taken up in corresponding with refined educated men like university professors, scientists, and theologians, not red-necked riff-raff like you.

And don’t put on airs, like using foreign-sounding phrases like “par excellence” and foreign-sounding words like “pronunciamento”, so to try to sound refined and educated. It impresses me not a whit, for you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

You’re skating on thin ice, Bubba. So don’t overdo it.

Now, to Francis S Collins. He is the head of the Human Genome Project, and indeed a scientist par excellence, and so would not likely be a practising Christian, but he is.

What brought him to Faith was his observation of the ubiquitous yearning for God in all societies around the world, and that all societies live under a moral law, whereby the people are enjoined to live good lives, to sacrifice their own life in the defence of family and society, not to murder or steal, to be kind to children and old ladies, and all of that - everything which comes under sacrifice or altruism.

While Collins acknowledges the altruism in the non-human animal kingdom, which would be explained in terms of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, he sees that human moral injunctions, altruism and willingness to sacrifice for the good of others go far beyond the norm in the animal kingdom. What would explain that so many people are good, like Oscar Schindler, who risked his life and fortune to save the lives of Jews in Nazi Germany? What would explain this omnipresent human moral order? It must come from God, who, because science has adequately explained how we all came to be through evolution, would be a God existing outside nature, and so outside space and time.

While so much evil is done by humans, what is important for Collins is that it transgresses the moral law, the moral law which is the expression of God’s ubiquitous presence.

Human altruism and goodness are, in fact, easily explained, without putting God into it. It is simply the altruism of the animal kingdom, but at a higher level, a result of our much more developed brains. Animals will sacrifice themselves for their broods or families, but the human concept of “family” has now extended to our nation or country. Therefore we will sacrifice our lives for our countries when at war, and risk our lives to save one of our fellow countrymen being run over by a train, or whatever. In the case of Oscar Schindler, the Jews he tried to save at risk to his own life, were simply his fellow Germans, and therefore his “family”.

But it is important to remember that killing other humans is quite OK if those other humans belong to countries with which our own is at war. So we kill millions of those enemy humans, including children and little babies, by dropping bombs on their cities from our aeroplanes, and we regard our pilots as big brave heroes for doing so.

Collins, the scientist, accepts Darwin’s Theory of Evolution as true, and the primitive altruism in the animal kingdom as explainable under this Theory, without the need for God. But when he considers the more advanced human altruism, which manifests in our moral code, he thinks this must be because of God.

But Collins doesn’t think to ask that if humans are part and parcel of the animal kingdom, and evolved from the same primeval slime as did animals, why should our human altruism be divinely inspired, but not the altruism of the other animals?

Collins can’t have it both ways. Either the altruism of the animal kingdom, including that of us humans, is divinely inspired, or it isn’t. Since Darwinism explains animal altruism, it follows that it explains ours, which we call our “moral code”.

Collins is also impressed by the fact that all societies yearn for God, as manifested in their religions. Surely, he reasons, this would be because there is actually a God, and people intrinsically know this.

Possibly. But how about that we humans are the only species which are self-conscious, and who therefore can contemplate our own deaths, and we find this frightening? So we invented gods who assure us there’s life after death, and if we worship them, they, these gods, will look after us in the world to come.

In terms of Occam’s Razor, this is the obvious reason for the idea of “God”. No supernatural explanation is necessary.

But If Francis S Collins still wants to believe there’s a “God” out there somewhere, no matter how bizarre the idea, there’s no harm in this, I suppose, if it gives him comfort, which he says it does. An amorphous “God”, without the trappings of sectarian religion, would belong to everyone, no matter where in the world they live, no matter their nationality, language, or skin-colour. So this amorphous “God” shouldn’t be the cause of people killing and oppressing and mutilating each other, as they now do in the name of the “God” of their particular sectarian religion.

But Collins doesn’t stop at just believing there’s a “God”. He goes the whole hog by subscribing to a religion, in his case, Christianity. Not only this, but literalist Christianity, where Jesus Christ actually was the son of God, was born to a mother through parthenogenesis, made dead people come alive, rose from the dead himself on the third day, ascended to heaven amidst swirling dust, and all of that.

Collins was much influenced by the writings of the famous Oxford don and Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis, who said in so many words that the New Testament had to be taken as literally true, so that Jesus was actually the son of God, and that he actually did and said all the stuff as depicted in the bible. If he didn’t, he was obviously a nut-case. So it was no use apologetic Christians trying to justify their Christianity to their non-believing friends by rationalizing that Christ was just an extremely wise man, and that what he said and did shouldn’t be taken literally, but metaphorically.

C.S. Lewis was having none of this. Christ was either a nut-case or he wasn’t. And if he wasn’t a nut-case, you had to swallow straight all of what was in the bible, with no questions asked.

Collins was so impressed by what Lewis said that he became an out and out Believer, no questions asked. But his not asking questions didn’t stop him rationalizing his new-found literalist beliefs, by saying that God, being beyond nature, and therefore beyond space and time, would not only know what each of us is thinking, and would therefore answer our prayers, but would also be able to interfere generally in human affairs, and did so by sending Christ into the world as his personal representative to save us from our sins.

Collins also read books by Christian authors which told him that the Gospels represented authentic eyewitness accounts of the earthly life of Christ. He also seizes on the account of a non-Christian historian of that time, Josephus, which tells of a Jewish prophet who was crucified by Pontius Pilate around 33 A.D.

But Collins ignores that the scholarship in the Christian-authored books he read is seriously disputed by biblical scholars; that none of the 27 Pagan writers who wrote about the middle-east of the time of the alleged Jesus, says anything about him; and that no serious scholar now believes that Josephus wrote what he is supposed to have written about Christ and Pontius Pilate.

We shouldn’t condemn Collins for being so gullible, for we, all of us, whether erudite scientists or humble ditch-diggers, airbrush out anything which interferes with what we wish to believe.

But Collins, in addition to being a highly educated scientist, is, by what he has done in his life, obviously a very good and moral man. But, while deciding to believe in “God”, he didn’t make a distinction between “God” and “religion”, and should have recognised that religions are inherently divisive, and that his chosen religion, Christianity, is notoriously exclusivist and divisive.

I consider that “God”, as Francis Collins sees “Him”, is a wrong way of looking at the idea of “God”, because it implies that “God” is “out there” somewhere; whereas “God”, as far as “God” can be postulated, makes more sense as existing inside each of us as the ground of our being.

So if you want to see God, all you need do is look in your bathroom mirror.

Nonetheless, “The Language of God” is very thought provoking, and I recommend it to those of you who actually read books.

But if you suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, and therefore find the reading of books to be beyond you, you can read a partial transcription of a debate, adjudicated by Time Magazine, between Francis S Collins and the biologist and prolific author, Richard Dawkins, by clicking here.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

God vs Science - A Forum (3)

2007-08-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation of a discussion which began out of readers’ comments, which I’ve copied and pasted to form my posting for today. As you will surmise from the title, what is being discussed are the eternal questions which people throughout history have puzzled over.

The first couple of comments shown below are slightly off topic, but I’ve included them nonetheless for they segue into the main subject.

The first commenter was referring to my stated wish that this site might become the venue of a sort of new Bloomsbury Set:

From Bubba: As I read the content of your recent postings, it occurs to me that you are an intellectual snob. You make references to things which ordinary two-fisted beer-swilling guys like me wouldn't know about, and which you'd surely know we wouldn't know about, like the Bloomsbury Set.

What, pray, is, or was, the Bloomsbury Set?

From Christopher: Hi Bubba – To call me an intellectual snob is an ad hominem attack, and I’ll not stand for it. I could just as easily call you a “redneck”, but I won’t, because it would drag me down to your level. But don’t count on it.

So you just watch it.

Regarding the Bloomsbury Set (or, if you like, Bloomsbury Group), it was a group of writers, poets, artists, and philosophers, who, between 1905 and 1941, met regularly at different houses situated in the Bloomsbury area of London, to discuss philosophy, art, literature, and religion.

The group was centred around Virginia Woolf, and included luminaries like Lytton Strachey, EM Forster, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, Vita Sackville West, and Stephen Spender. To be known to belong to this group conveyed prestige, as well as enormous influence in English intellectual and artistic life of that time.

Just think, Bubba, you’ve now the chance you may never have dreamed of, to be a member of a twenty-first century version of the Bloomsbury Set.

Tell this to your two-fisted, beer swilling buddies, and they’ll give you a respect you never had before.

From Professor Mangosutho Wong: As a professor of English, I'm naturally sensitive to infelicities of English usage and style in whatever I read. In this connection I noticed your phrase: "Another egregious example of Karl Popper’s Principle of Non-Falsifiabilty is shown by 9/11 conspiracy theorists......"

The way you've used "egregious" would indicate to the reader that the example of Karl Popper's Principle of Falsifiablity shown by 9/11 conspiracy theorists is egregious, rather than that the reasoning itself was egregious.

But, taking it in the context of all else you wrote, I have a hunch you meant that what was egregious was the reasoning of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Am I right? If so, you should re-write this passage

Also your phrase "....the best and the brightest minds THAT would be the envy of Charlie Rose....." might better have been written ".....the best and the brightest minds WHICH would be the envy of Charlie Rose.....".

From Christopher: Thank you, Professor Wong, for your observations about my infelicious use of the English language.

Unlike you, I never got to go to the University, and so never became educated enough to write English properly. I do try, though, and will be especially attentive to the way I write in the future, knowing that you, a professor of English, will be reading what I write with your expert critical eye.

I am indeed honoured that you would read what I write, and I hope my future writings will meet your exacting grammatical and syntactical standards.

From Bubba: You said in a recent posting, that you were in the middle of reading "The Language of God" by the scientist and believing Christian, Francis S Collins, and that you would comment on it when finished.

Have you now finished, so that we all might learn what you thought of it?

From Christopher: Yes, Bubba, I have now finished reading the Francis S Collins book. But, before I talk about it, I’’ll comment on what was said by a Dr Phil Fernandes, a believing Christian, in a debate with a Dr Michael Martin, an atheist.

You can read what Fernandes said, by clicking here.

I’m making the comments shown below, before reading Martin’s rejoinder to Fernandes, since I wish, only afterwards, to see whether Martin, a learned professor, made any of the points I wish to make.

Fernandes’ main argument for God’s existence is that the universe must have started at some point, so there must have been a First Cause, and that God is that First Cause.

“First Cause” is a nice dry impersonal academic phrase. So no-one can say there was anything before the First Cause, or that there was something that created the First Cause, because the phrase “First Cause” means nothing came before it. I have no problem with this.

But then Fernandes begins to call the First Cause “God”, and to refer to “God” as “Him”, and to give him personal attributes like being loving, and intelligent, and listening to us when we pray, and all of that. God even sits on a throne up on high, judging by Fernandes saying “……..If there is no God who sits enthroned, then Hitler will not be punished for his evil deeds……”.

So it would appear that the First Cause is actually a human-like being, or even a person.

This raises the question: Who created this person, this “God”?

Fernandes can’t have it both ways. He can have either a “First Cause” - an impersonal academic concept which therefore wouldn’t have any human qualities, like being loving, or intelligent, and therefore wouldn’t have a creator. Or he can have a “God”, who by his description, would be a magic-man somewhere out there, and therefore would have to have a creator.

So, who created “God”, this magic-man?

Fernandes tries to show that there’s no such thing as infinity, by using the analogy of infinite points between two fixed points. If there were an infinite number of points between one’s house and the bus stop, no-one would ever arrive at the bus stop. But since people do arrive at bus stops from their homes, there can’t be an infinite number of intervening points. Therefore infinity is impossible. Therefore there cannot be infinite time, and there cannot be infinite space.

But I think the example of points between two fixed points, is a false one if you want to show infinity of time and space to be impossible, since time and space don’t have two fixed points at either end. It doesn’t take too much intelligence to see that for time to stretch back to infinity, and for space to stretch out to infinity is eminently feasible. No matter how far back in time you go, we’ll never reach the beginning, and no matter far you travel in the universe we’ll never reach its boundary. Even most six-year olds would understand this.

Using Occam’s Razor, the obvious answer to how the universe began, is that it never did begin, for it always was, stretching back to infinity. If we accept the notion of the Big Bang, the heavenly bodies of the Universe, because of gravity, will eventually stop moving away from one another, and will reverse course by moving closer to each other, to the point when they will all collide, and there will be a Big Crunch, whereupon they will again move away from each other as they do now. This pattern always was, and always will be. God is completely unnecessary for all this, and will always be.

It’s all quite simple when you stop to think about it.

I think that why most people talk such nonsense about “God” is the word “God” itself. The image attached to it, for most of us, is of an old gentleman in the sky. We cannot escape from this because this was how God was presented to us when we were children.

Also, “God” has always been a “God of the gaps”. If there’s something we don’t understand – a gap in our knowledge – it must have been caused by “God”. Then when a scientific explanation fills the gap, the God-believers find another gap somewhere else, and call it “God”, until that gap, too, is explained, or filled by a scientific discovery.

And so on.

The origin of the universe is the ultimate gap, so it’s understandable that the God-believers have filled this gap with “God”.

There would have been much less confusion if, as in algebra, we could simply have called the gaps in our knowledge, “x” or “y”. Since we don’t associate “x” or “y” with being loving and intelligent, or listening to us when we say our prayers, we would be a lot less confused about things than we are. And, perhaps, we would have had no religion. So all the mass cruelty and oppression and wars and genocides carried out in the name of “God” or religion would never have happened, and we’d accordingly be much better off.

Fernandes, by saying that life with no God would be meaningless, implies that no God means no life after death. This isn’t obvious to me at all. Why can’t there be life after death, but no God?

And when Fernandes uses words like “good” and “evil” and says life must have meaning, he shows he is an anthropomorphist par excellence . Who says that life must have meaning? Why should there be such things as “good” and “evil”? These are just human expressions, and human values.

Since we all create our own experiences, we have the power to create our own meaning in our lives, and in whatever we do. It is purely subjective, having nothing to do with whether what we do is meaningful or not. What we perceive is our reality, however preposterous that reality is.

I’ve gone on long enough, but not long enough not to comment on the idea of a personal “God”, which Fernandes believes in, and which most practicing Christians also believe in. This personal God is all-knowing and all-seeing. He knows everything you are thinking, and he’s watching you all the time. No matter where you go or what you’re doing, you’re never out of his sight.

Despite God spying on you all the time, you must not only love him, but must also constantly sing his praises. Life with such a God must be like living in North Korea, with the difference that a North Korean can always escape North Korea by dying, but the Christian can never escape God, with whom he is joined at the hip for all of eternity.

And we wonder why so many Christians have mental and emotional disorders?

And Now For Something Completely Different:

God vs Science - A Forum (2)

2007-08-05T22:23:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation of a discussion arising out of comments posted on this blogging site by readers.

The intellectual level of this ongoing discussion surpasses anything else I’ve seen on other blogging sites, and this is due solely to you, dear readers.

Finally this site is attracting the attention of the best and the brightest minds that would be the envy of Charlie Rose, and I’m flattered this is so.

This site can be the venue of a new Bloomsbury Set, a safe haven for artists and intellectuals to say anything they want without fear it may seem too highbrow, for, to me, nothing can be too highbrow.

A new Bloomsbury Set………

Yes……I have a dream.

I pasted the comments below from the comments section of my previous blogging entry. May the discussion continue on many future postings.

This first comment below was a response to my impugning the veracity of the bible:

From Pastor Nebachudnezzar Jones - You don’t know what you’re talking about. Every word in the Bible, both Old Testament and New, is true. I know this because God told me so, and what He tells me, I believe unreservedly, with no “ifs” “ands” or “buts”.

If the Bible is good enough for God, it’s good enough for me, and it should be good enough for you, is what I say.

From Christopher - Being the literalist you are, Pastor Jones, you are doubtless a Young Earth Creationist, and therefore one of the 45% of Americans who thinks the earth is less than ten thousand years old; that all species were created by individual acts of divine creation; and that Adam and Eve were historical figures created by God from dust in the Garden of Eden.

You would also be one of the 45% of Americans who believe the geologic strata and the fossils within the various layers were created in a few weeks by the world-wide flood described in Genesis 6 – 9, rather than having been deposited over hundreds of millions of years.

Judging by all those books and videos found in Christian bookstores, you would also believe that no intermediate fossil forms can be found for birds, turtles, elephants, or whales, despite such fossils having been found over recent years.

And you would believe that radioactive dating of rocks and bones and such, is wrong because decay rates have changed over time, which they have not.

You have probably visited museums and theme parks which show humans frolicking with dinosaurs, since Creationists, like you, don’t accept that dinosaurs became extinct long before humans first appeared.

That 45% of Americans like you, Pastor Jones, believe all this in our technological age, is as good an example as any of truth being stranger than fiction.

From Professor Alberto Nakayama - A brilliant riposte to that charlatan pastor, I must say, Christopher.

As a scientist I would like to add to your reply, by pointing out that if the beliefs of Pastor Jones and his ilk - which would include 45% of Americans – were true, it would lead to a complete and irreversible collapse of the sciences of physics, chemistry, cosmology, geology, and biology.

What Pastor Jones and his ilk assert, is like saying two plus two doesn’t equal four.

From Christopher - As a scientist, Professor Nakayama, you’ll be gratified to know the overwhelming flood of scientific evidence in favour of evolution, is beginning to breach the defences of even intellectual dinosaurs like Pastor Jones and his ilk, so much so that they are now arguing that all of this evidence has been designed by God to mislead the Believers, to test their religious faith.

Thus all the radioactive decay clocks, all the fossils, and all of the genome sequences have been intentionally designed to make the universe seem old, much older than the ten thousand years the Creationists know it is.

God is therefore The Great Deceiver.

From Professor Khama Wacky-Brown - As a teacher of philosophy at a prestigious university, I’m interested in the text-book demonstration of Karl Popper’s Principle of Non-Falsifiabilty, as displayed in the Young Earth Creationists depiction of God as The Great Deceiver.

For the edification of any non-university-educated readers out there, Karl Popper’s Principle of Non Falsifiability says, in so many words, that a belief is irrationally held if it cannot be shown to be untrue, no matter what.

Let’s take the Young Earth Creationists assertion that the universe is only ten thousand years old. When they (the Creationists) are presented with carbon-dated evidence of the age of an object, showing it is millions of years old, they assert that rates of decay have accelerated; therefore the results of the carbon-dating must be wrong.

Then when they are shown conclusive evidence that rates of decay haven’t accelerated, the Creationists change the goalposts by saying that God faked the carbon-dating evidence presented by the scientists.

Therefore the Creationist position can never be proved wrong, as far as they’re concerned, because no evidence, however conclusive, will show them as wrong.

From Christopher - That the reasoning power of so many people who should know better, falls victim to Karl Popper’s Principle of Non-Falsifiabilty, is a sad reflection of the atrophying quality of so much of what is taught in our institutions of higher learning. So I do hope that you, Professor Wacky-Brown, as a university professor, are doing your bit to slow down this atrophying trend, although the battle, in the end, is probably lost.

Another egregious example of Karl Popper’s Principle of Non-Falsifiabilty is shown by 9/11 conspiracy theorists, who assert that the planning for 9/11 was a White House inside job. Many millions believe this, and there are thousands of 9/11 conspiracy-minded web-sites.

One of the assertions the 9/11 conspiracy theorists (“conspiracists”) make, is that a 757 jetliner didn’t crash into the Pentagon. It was, rather, a missile.

The “conspiracists” say that the hole in the wall of the Pentagon building, which the jetliner was supposed to have made, was much too small for a jetliner to have passed through.

How, then, about a missile? since Donald Rumsfeld, who saw the explosion when it happened, said what he saw, seemed like a missile. So, a missile it became, in the minds of the “conspiracists”, based on the size of the hole, and Rumsfeld’s off-the-cuff remark.

But how about that there were over 130 named witnesses who either saw a jetliner hit the Pentagon, or saw it moments before it did? Well, say the “conspiracists”, eye-witness accounts are notoriously unreliable, based on what’s happened in so many murder trials.

How about that no-one has ever come forward saying they actually saw a missile? This doesn’t mean anything, say the “conspiracists”, because the hole in the wall was big enough only for a missile. Besides, there were no crashed aircraft parts discovered in the Pentagon.

What, then, about those photos showing some damaged aircraft parts amidst the Pentagon debris? Oh, the photos were faked. What, then, about those cell-phone calls received by friends and family from some of the passengers on the hijacked plane? Oh, this doesn’t prove it hit the Pentagon. Well, then, what became of the plane if it didn’t hit the Pentagon? That’s for the government to say, not us. And on and on and on.

Now, it’s possible some of those who say they saw the plane hit the building, did so because they wanted their fifteen minutes of fame. But it’s extremely unlikely that all did. Besides, aircraft, no matter how big, are very collapsible on impact because they are built to be as light as possible, for obvious reasons.

So the airliner in question would have crumpled up as it passed through the wall, making a hole much smaller than if the aircraft wasn’t built for lightness. And engineers have shown how the jetliner would have passed through the hole. But, admittedly, other engineers have disagreed.

As a non-engineer, I can’t say which of the engineers is right, but, based on the eye-witness accounts, the engineers saying the hole was sufficiently big for a 757 jetliner to pass through, were obviously right, and the other engineers were obviously wrong.

I’ve doubtless gone on at inordinate length about all this, but I wish solely to demonstrate the non-falsifiability tendencies of the “conspiracists”, most of whom are keenly interested in politics and public affairs, and would, for the most part, belong to the well-educated professional classes.

But this hasn’t stopped them from being as irrational as died-in-the-wool Creationists.

The human capacity for self-deception is infinite.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

The Flying Purple People-Eater

Do any of us really KNOW for sure that a one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people-eater doesn't actually exist?

God vs Science - A Forum

2007-08-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

I haven’t heard from Jeremy in a while, so I’m quite worried. Consequently I’ve nothing further to report. However, I did receive some comments from readers in response to statements I made in my last missive to Jeremy, about God, religion, and the bible.

Rather than let these comments, and my replies, languish in obscurity, I thought: Why not make them the subject of my posting for today?

So here they are:

From Obadiah: When you say there’s nothing true in either the old or new testaments of the bible, can I assume this means there’s no God?

To which I replied:

No, Obadiah, you should assume nothing of the sort. If God exists, He does so independently of what the bible says.

From Nehemiah: When you quote Christopher Hitchens saying “religion poisons everything” you seem to me to be quoting it with approval.

If you, like Hitchens, think religion poisons everything, why so?

I said:

Hi Nehemiah – “Religion poisons everything” is Hitchens’ phrase, not mine, but I do agree with it.

I would go further and say that religion is the root of all evil. If there was no religion there would have been no Crusades, no Inquisition, no Holocaust, no massacres between Hindu and Muslims on the Indian sub-continent, no Indian caste-system, no South African Apartheid, no Northern Ireland conflict, no Israel-Palestine conflict, no 9/11, no 7/7, no suicide bombers, no genital mutilation of children and less child abuse………..The list is endless.

Wherever there’s religion, there’s violence, bloodshed, hatred, ignorance, bigotry and intolerance, regardless of the religion.

Think of the words of John Lennon’s wonderful song, “Imagine”:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Note particularly the line in the second verse “…..and no religion too…..”.

In my reply to Nehemiah, when I listed some of the crimes perpetuated in the name of religion, I should have added the subjugation of women, and ethnic cleansing. In the matter of ethnic cleansing, we’ve seen lots in recent years, for instance in the former Yugoslavia, and now in Iraq. But, as Richard Dawkins points out, “ethnic” cleansing should more properly be called “religious” cleansing because the cleansers and the cleansed invariably belong to different antagonistic religious faiths.

From Boaz : You’re always going on about Christians. But it isn’t Christians who are the suicide bombers, and who carried out 9/11 and 7/7. It was Muslims. Why, then, don’t you re-direct your obloquy to Muslims?

I responded thus:

Hi Boaz – If I appear to you to be going on about Christians, it’s unintentional. But to the extent I may have, it would be because I was raised a Christian, and so know more about Christianity than about other faiths.

But all religions are dangerous, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or any other. Spirituality and religion have nothing to do with the other, although spiritual people can be religious, and the other way around. But religious literalism is the very opposite of spirituality.

From what little I know of the Koran, I’ve no reason to think it less fictional than the Hebrew and Christian bibles. As Christopher Hitchens points out, the Koran is fictional even just to the extent that it incorporates material from the Old and New Testaments, which it does.

The extreme militancy of much of Islam today may be because Islam is 700 years younger than its brother religion, Christianity, and much younger still from its parent religion, Judaism. So Islam may be in the extremist stage of its life, where Christianity was, circa 1200 or 1300 AD, when it was harsh and bloodthirsty indeed (think only of the Inquisition).

While today’s suicide bombers are invariably Muslim, it shouldn’t obscure the fact that until less than a handful of years ago, Irish Catholics - Christians all - were planting bombs in Belfast and London.

But militant Christianity is once again flexing its muscles, this time in the US of A. The atmosphere is such that no-one can be elected to any elective office in the US if they don’t say they believe in God and go to church each Sunday.

Fundamentalist Christians who take the bible as literally true, dominate the Republican Party and the Bush Administration. Since rule by the religious is always bellicose, intolerant, oppressive, harsh, corrupt, and doctrinaire, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Bush Administration has turned out this way.

In the middle-east, two of the three monotheistic desert religions, Judaism and Christianity, are facing off against the other one, Islam. Already there are credible rumours of yet another attack in the near future by Christians (Americans) on Muslims (Iranians).

And so it goes…………

A Partial Bibliography:

1. The Pagan Christ – Tom Harpur.

2. The Jesus Mysteries – Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy

The above two books show that all of what constitutes the New Testament of the bible was lifted from the various Pagan religions.

3. The Bible Unearthed – Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein. This book shows that nearly all the archaeological findings in Israel and its occupied territories tell a story very different from that in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).

4. The Inquisition – Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. A brief history of the infamous Inquisition, which, incidentally, still exists - although much watered-down - under the title of The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

5. The End of Faith – Sam Harris, who makes the case that, because of all the potentially world-ending lethal weaponry sloshing around the world, religions are a luxury we can no longer afford, for obvious reasons.

6. God Is Not Great – Christopher Hitchens. Showing how religion is the cause of all today’s conflicts and bloodshed around the world.

7. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins. The pre-eminent evolutionary biologist shows that God isn’t necessary to explain who we are and how everything started.

Lest anyone think I’m being one-sided in my reading, I’m currently half-way through The Language of God, by Francis S. Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project, who is a believing Christian, and explains why he is. Perhaps I’ll talk about this book in a future posting when I’m finished reading.

Incidentally there are two human genome projects – the US government one, headed by Francis S. Collins; and the privately funded one, headed by the better known and more flamboyant Craig Venter, an avowed atheist.

And now for something completely different:

I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman

Whatever since became of Whistling Jack Smith? I sometimes wonder.

Herbert von Karajan

2007-05-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

The other night, while surfing Youtube, I happened upon a video of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony conducted by Herbert von Karajan. I hadn’t listened to Beethoven for some years, and as I watched the video I was reminded of how rollicking this symphony is, and how whistleable. And von Karajan’s trademark, conducting with eyes shut throughout, is seen to good effect, as shown here:

I hadn’t thought much about Herbert von Karajan for some years, either, but, as I watched the video, and allowed the spirit of van Beethoven and of von Karajan to take me over, I remembered a book I’d read in the early 1980s about the famous conductors, and that it had included Herbert von Karajan. Did I still have it?

When I trolled through my bookcase, there the book was. I fished it out and, after wiping away the accumulated dust of many years, I could once again read its title, “Maestro - Encounters with Conductors of Today” and the name of the writer, Helena Matheopoulos. I need hardly add that, because the book was published 25 years ago, the “Conductors of Today” would better now be described as “Conductors of Yesterday”, since many are now dead, including Herbert von Karajan.

In this, the early twenty-first century, where the current stars and starlets in our contemporary pantheon of gods and goddesses, like Brad Pitt, Britney Spears and those others whose names escape me, whose photographed and videoed faces and torsos assault our sensibilities from out of the tabloids and TV screens wherever we look, wherever we live, the notion that Herbert von Karajan was once a comparable god is difficult to imagine. But he was.

Herbert von Karajan was the ultimate in sophistication and chicness among the classical-music set. Women went gaga over his slim good looks and mesmeric light blue eyes. He was voted the Best Dressed Man in Vienna, and men everywhere emulated his sartorial style, known as the “Karajan Style” - polo-necked sweaters, an additional sweater casually knotted over the shoulders, masses of colourful socks, and watch worn facing inwards.

He flew planes, skied, mountaineered, raced yachts, drove fast cars, did yoga, practiced Zen, was a voracious reader, had a passion for all the newest technology, machines and gadgets, owned houses with swimming pools at St Moritz, St Tropez, and Salzburg – all this, in addition to being the world’s foremost orchestral conductor.

Herbert was ferociously independent, a control freak unable to compromise or bend his will to those of other men. He presided over a veritable “Karajan Empire”, which comprised the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra - of which he was Principal Conductor for Life – the Salzburg Easter, Whitsun, and Summer Festivals, films, video-cassettes, the Karajan Foundation and recordings, over which he had total control. For instance when in the recording studio he would micro-manage the sound-mixing and dubbing to ensure the finished recorded product sounded exactly the way he wanted it. In this, he was accused of manipulation. But Karajan said that music manipulated electronically was no more manipulated than music manipulated through the baton of any conductor. Who’s to argue with that?

The polished burnished orchestral sounds in von Karajan’s recordings are testimony that they are the product of electronic refining and sound-mixing to the enth degree. Speaking for myself, I think von Karajan’s sound was perfect for the lyrical melodic music of the likes of Mozart or Haydn. But essence of the raw jaggedness of Beethoven’s later symphonies isn’t caught sufficiently through the von Karajan sound.

I also think von Karajan’s tempos were often much too fast, leaving me the impression he couldn’t wait to finish. Playing allegros and allegrettos as fast as possible is all well and good, but adagios and andantes should be taken nice and slow. If you listen again to the second adagio movement of the Beethoven 7th Symphony as interpreted by von Karajan, you may feel, as did I, that slowing it down would have done wonders.

But then, what do I know? I may be on the level of the vacuous king of the German principality, as portrayed in the film “Amadeus”. When asked by Mozart how he liked one of his pieces, the king, to show he wasn’t as dumb as he looked, said, “It has too many notes”. When Mozart asked which notes he should throw out, the king said, “Oh, any few, then it’ll be perfect”.

It’s something George Bush might say.

You, who looked at the video of Karajan conducting the Beethoven 7th, may have been struck, as was I, that the orchestra was all-male. Had I watched back in 1977 when the video was made, I wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss. Interestingly, the author of “Maestro”, Helene Matheopoulos, a woman, is silent about the all-maleness of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the norm for most other orchestras when (in 1982) her book was published. When we look at today’s orchestras we see what a difference a mere twenty-five years makes. It was only when they began holding auditions behind screens so that those being auditioned couldn’t be seen by their prospective employers, that orchestras began looking different.

Returning now to Herbert von Karajan himself, it was Zen Buddhism which guided most his approach to conducting. He could only be satisfied when he felt that he and the orchestra had become One - best expressed in a passage from Eugene Herrigel’s “Zen In The Art Of Archery”:

“The Master no longer seeks, but finds. As an artist, he is the hieratic man. As a man, the artist into whose heart, in all his doing and not-doing, working and waiting, being and not-being, the Buddha gazes. The man, the art, the work – it is all one. The art of the inner work, which unlike the outer, does not forsake the artist, which he does not ‘do’ but can only ‘be’, springs from depths, of which the day knows nothing.”

We shouldn’t be surprised that von Karajan conducted with eyes shut, for he wanted to feel, not look. As he explained to Helene Matheopoulos, “…….I want to see the music stretched out before me. And I am much more with the musicians if I have my eyes shut. I feel it if someone is nervous about their entry or someone is short of breath in a long passage, and I can help them – my hand which is trained by long experience, will respond and accelerate. I never know what my hands do at the time, but the next day, a player will come and say: ‘How did you know that I was nervous or short of breath at that particular passage?’ I can never answer that………I just feel it…….”.

* * *

Heribert Ritter (Herbert) von Karajan was born on April 5, 1908, at eleven o’ clock at night, in Salzburg, Austria. His father was Dr Ernst von Karajan, chief surgeon at the main hospital in Salzburg, and, in the words of Helene Matheopoulous, a man “……….whose exceptional devotion to duty and human contact with his patients are still talked about in that institution. He once told his son (Herbert) that ‘what matters ultimately is what you give as a human being’ and the boy never forgot these words………….”.

You’d think that having a chief surgeon for a father, as Herbert’s father was, would be distinction enough for anyone, let alone for a famous conductor. But, here’s more. Herbert’s great-great grandfather, Georg Johannes Karajannis – a name of Greek provenance - was made a Knight of the Holy Roman Empire (described by many cynical historians as neither holy, Roman, nor an empire, and which comprised what is now Germany). This honour propelled him to change the family name from Karajannis to Karajan, and to add the aristocratic “von” in front.

George Johannes’s son, Theodore (who would have been Herbert’s geat-grandfather) became Professor of German Literature at the University of Vienna, President of the Antiquarian Society, and Director of the Imperial Library. Not only this, he “…………was also a passionate music lover who frequently hosted chamber music concerts at home……….”.

But Theodore, despite being most distinguished, was nonetheless a victim of prejudice, being passed over for the Deanship of the University of Vienna because of his Greek Orthodox faith. This didn’t sit well with him, so he resigned in disgust from all his posts at the University. But Theodore’s son, Max (Herbert’s grandfather) saw on which side his bread was buttered, and accordingly converted the family to Roman Catholicism.

Max von Karajan was no slouch either, for he was professor of classical literature at the University of Graz and, later on, Director of all of Austria’s public health institutions. This raises the question: How does being a professor of classical literature qualify one to be director of public health institutions? You’d think being a medical doctor might be a better qualification. But perhaps Max was a medical doctor all along, and that classical literature was merely a second string to his bow?

I have already related that Herbert’s father, Ernst, was a surgeon. But he only went into medicine because his father, Max, insisted he do so. Had Ernst been left to his own devices he would have become an actor, but because the actor’s life was so insecure, he allowed himself to be cajoled into medicine. But Ernst didn’t turn his back on the world of thespianism entirely, for he was a keen amateur actor all his life, and, amazingly (for he was a busy surgeon, after all) “………a clarinettist with the Salzburg Chamber Society which gave weekly concerts in the von Karajan home by the Salzach, next to the Oesterreicher Hof Hotel………”.

So, music was seeped into Herbert’s very marrow from the moment he was born. His musicality came also from his mother, Martha, Slovenian-born, and who, we are told, Herbert in many ways resembled. Martha particularly liked romantic music, especially that of Wagner.

But Herbert’s path into musicianship was, nonetheless, not easy, because, as a child, he was always in the shadow of his older brother, Wolfgang, who later became an organ-builder and player. Wolfgang began on the piano at age five, and Herbert followed in his footsteps, fuelled by the desire to out-perform his brother, which, we must suppose, he eventually did, for who of us has ever heard of Wolfgang von Karajan? But Herbert von Karajan? Need I say more?

Herbert was, in fact, a child musical prodigy. At age five he was judged good enough to play a Mozart Rondo at a charity concert despite not being big enough to reach the piano pedals, and at nine he gave his first public concert. He eventually found the piano too confining for his restless genius, so he took up the conductor's baton. Time and space don’t allow me to expatiate much on Herbert’s progress up music’s ladder, except to say that it was sometimes quite bumpy, inasmuch as going up ladders can be said to be “bumpy”.

Commons: Bundesarchiv

Image from Wikipedia

As one might expect, Herbert didn’t find things easy during World War 2 and in the years immediately after. To get a post as Kapellmeister of an orchestra in Nazi-era Germany, he had been required to take out a Nazi party card, despite being completely uninterested in politics, for he was devoted solely to music. His possession of this card was why the American occupiers barred him from practicing his musical craft during Germany’s and Austria’s post-war de-Nazification processes, which lasted over two years. However, this gave Herbert the time to study musical scores, and master them in preparation for when he would again be allowed to work.

And when he was, he found his path blocked, and his career plateaued, through the intrigue and machinations of the doyen of German conductors, Wilhelm Furtwängler - jealous that the much-younger Herbert might overtake him as numero uno among conductors. This was as good an example as any that politics and nastiness don't stop at the water's edge of the orchestral world.

Incidentally, I found on Youtube a short video of Furtwängler conducting the last few minutes of the Beethoven Ninth in Berlin in 1942 before an audience of bigwigs, many in Nazi and military uniforms, some visibly bearing the scars of war:

When Furtwängler died in the early 1950s, the way was clear for Herbert to ascend to classical music’s pinnacle. The rest is history.

Herbert von Karajan died on July 16th 1989 in Salzburg, the city where he’d been born 81 years earlier. When he breathed his last, did he feel his life’s work complete? Consider the following statement he once made:

Tomorrow I would like to be the companion of him who will know how to propose opera, music and poetry to the most remote and least privileged of beings on this earth. We are at zero point of a new adventure, at the stammering beginnings of a grandiose audio-visual machinery. We have not yet left harbour, and the great future is fantastic. Will I do what heaven commands me or will I need another life in order to continue the march?

Herbert von Karajan, wherever he may be now, can rest assured that the music he brought to life will live on in his videos and CDs, for the delectation of classical-music lovers everywhere 1,000 years from now, thanks to the technology to which he was in thrall.

Thoth, And The Emerald Tablets

2007-04-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

Thoth was a god worshipped by ancient Egyptians, who associated him with magic, writing, the arts, and learning. He also ensured everything was kept in balance, including Good and Evil.

Thoth was depicted with the body of a human and the head of an ibis (an Egyptian bird). The ibis having a curved beak, the Egyptians associated it with a crescent moon. Hence Thoth was also the god of the moon, and was thus also a god of the night, and complemented Ra, the god of the sun. Thoth was sometimes also shown as having the head of a baboon, a creature of the night. Thoth was also adopted by the ancient Greeks, who called him Hermes. For more on Thoth, click here.

There are writings etched on tablets, called The Emerald Tablets of Thoth, which described important aspects of human history, and were allegedly composed 36,000 years ago by an Atlantean priest-king also called Thoth (the the priest-king and the god may have been the same entity, who knows?). The priest-king Thoth, was said to have founded a colony in Egypt. Egyptian “pyramid priests” later took Thoth’s Emerald Tablets to South America, and placed them under a Mayan temple to the Sun God, in the Yucatan, Mexico.

A man called Maurice Doreal claimed to have recovered the tablets. He translated them, completing the job in 1925. You can read their entire contents by clicking here.

From a book called “Children of the Matrix” by David Icke, I’ve reproduced below some of the tablets’ more interesting passages. Read them, and ask yourself if they explain aspects of our human past any less plausibly than do the explications of our officially sanctioned evolutionists and Darwinists:

“Speak I of ancient Atlantis, speak of the days of the Kingdom of Shadows, speak of the coming of the children of shadows. Out of the great deep were they called by the wisdom of the earth-man, called for the purpose of gaining great power”.

“Far in the past before Atlantis existed, men there were who delved into darkness, using dark magic, calling up beings from the great deep below us. Forth came they into this cycle, formless were they, of another vibration, existing unseen by the children of earth-men. Only through blood could they form being, only through man could they live in the world”.

“In ages past were they conquered by the masters, driven below to the space whence they came. But some there were who remained, hidden in spaces and planes unknown to man. Live they in Atlantis as shadows, but at times they appeared among men. Aye, when the blood was offered, forth came they to dwell among men”.

“In the form of man moved they amongst us, but only to sight, were they as are men. Serpent-headed when the glamour was lifted, but appearing to man as men among men. Crept they into the councils, taking form that were like unto men. Slaying by their arts the chiefs of the kingdoms, taking their form and ruling o’er man. Only by magic could they be discovered, only by sound could their faces be seen. Sought they from the kingdom of shadows, to destroy man and rule in his place”.

“But, know ye, the Masters were mighty in magic, able to lift the veil from the face of the serpent, able to send him back to his place. Came they to man and taught him the secret, the Word that only a man can pronounce; swift then they lifted the veil from the serpent and cast him forth from place among men”.

“Yet, beware, the serpent still liveth in a place that is open, at times, to the world. Unseen they walk among thee in places where the rites have been said; again as time passes onward, shall they take the semblance of men”.

“Called, may they be, by the master who knows the white or the black, but only the white master may control and bind them while in the flesh”.

“Seek not the kingdom of shadows, for evil will surely appear, for only the master of brightness shall conquer the shadow of fear”.

“Know ye, O my brother, that fear is an obstacle great; be master of all in the brightness, the shadow will soon disappear. Hear ye, and heed my wisdom, the voice of LIGHT is clear, seek the valley of shadow and light only will appear”.

The above extracts portray a land called Atlantis, where serpent-like beings lived, who outwardly looked like humans, but could change their appearance back to the serpent-like beings they really were. They originally came from a dimension just outside ours, and could move back and forth between the two dimensions through changing the vibrations in their genes.

They had insinuated themselves into positions of earthly power, which may have threatened the peace of mind of the humans of that time. So they (the humans) had driven the serpent-beings back to their home dimension, and told them to stay there. But now the serpent-beings were attempting to return to our dimension, and quite successfully, infiltrating themselves into the human population who can't recognise them because they are human in appearance.

Well, that's my take on it!!

You might think this far-fetched, but many people around the world have told of seeing people shape-shifting before their eyes into reptile-like beings, complete with shiny scales and all of that, then shape-shifting back to human form. If you doubt this, click here.

And there is credible evidence that a continent called Atlantis once existed, which supported a civilization technologically more advanced than ours is today. Due to a climatic or geologic calamity, Atlantis sank beneath the sea, and the civilization it supported sank and disappeared with it. It has been suggested that the Antarctic land mass lying under the polar ice cap, may have been Atlantis.

The countless anomalies around the world, which our officially sanctioned and tenured scholars and scientists can’t account for, may best be explained by a scenario akin to the one I’ve discussed.

Where Have All The Leaders Gone?

2007-04-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

“Where Have All The Leaders Gone?” is the title of a just-published book, ostensibly written by Lee Iacocca, with help from Catherine Whitney, who no doubt, if push comes to shove, ghost-wrote all of it. To read an excerpt, click here.

In case you don’t know who Lee Iacocca is - and you may well not because it’s some years since Iacocca was in the public eye, and, besides, the US is sometimes, not for nothing, called the United States of Amnesia - he was a big wheel (sic) in the car industry, first as president of the Ford Motor Company, then as chairman of Chrysler.

Henry Ford ll, the Chairman of Ford, fired Iacocca in 1978, telling him as the reason, “I just don’t like you”. Iacocca then went to Chrysler as its head honcho and rescued the company from certain bankruptcy.

Iacocca liked it to be known that his name was really an acronym for I Am Chairman Of Chrysler Corporation America. Catchy, certainly. But an imaginative advertising manager might have suggested, “Things Go Better With Iacocca”, as the company’s logo. One wonders why this never came to pass.

From your reading of the above excerpt from Iacocca’s book, you will have adduced that he doesn’t think highly of George W Bush as a leader, since Bush falls woefully short in all the nine categories of leadership Iacocca thinks important – Curiosity, Creativeness, Communication, Character, Courage, Conviction, Charisma, Competency, and Common Sense. But, while these qualities may be important in business, where the object is to make a profit, Iacocca doesn’t think to ask whether they are a good thing in politics, where the object is to get re-elected.

If we accept that the object in politics is to be re-elected, then George Bush has been supremely successful, since he persuaded the American people to vote him not just once into the Oval Office, but twice. Before that, he was re-elected to a second term as governor of Texas. There’s also no record of George Bush ever having being fired from anything. In that regard, he’s one up on Lee Iacocca.

Let’s take another look at each of Iacocca’s nine categories of leadership, and see whether George Bush really steps up to the plate, so to speak. In the matter of Curiosity, Iacocca thinks Bush hasn’t any, since he doesn’t read newspapers or books. While Bush may not read newspapers, it is reliably reported that he does read books, and lots of them. For instance in the first eight months of 2006, he read 60 books, and in the first two months of this year (2007) he read 16.

This works out to two books a week. In fact he and Karl Rove - his Rasputin - are in competition to see who can read the most books in any given year. Bush has, admittedly, fallen a little behind Rove this year, since Rove in January and February read 20 books to Bush’s 16. I think we can attribute this to all the time Bush has to put in as president.

Iacocca thinks a leader must read voraciously because the world is a big complicated place. Reading two books a week is, by anyone’s standards, a lot of reading, and would qualify as voracious. Does Lee Iacocca read two books a week, as George Bush does, I wonder? And, given that voracious book-readers are avidly seeking knowledge (are curious) I think you’ll agree that George Bush, with his voracious reading of two books a week, seeks knowledge as avidly as a desiccated Arabian-desert wanderer seeks water.

Iacocca thinks a leader must be Creative, must think, like, outside the box, and he doesn’t think George Bush does this. Iacocca obviously considers that a leader, when in a bind, the sort of bind George Bush is in vis a vis Iraq, should seek a solution out of the ordinary. Realizing he was in a bind, a very big bind, George Bush asked the venerable James Baker - his father’s Secretary of State and Bush family consigliore – to put together a bi-partisan commission, aka The Fabulous Baker Boys, to recommend solutions to the Iraq bind.

The Fabulous Baker Boys recommended, in so many words, that the US begin drawing down its soldiers in Iraq, so they would all be gone by sometime 2008, and that the US should begin talking seriously with Syria and Iran about regional long term solutions to the Iraq imbroglio. And you’ll remember that everyone expected George Bush to do what the Fabulous Baker Boys suggested he do. And what did he actually do? Why, the very opposite, ordering the troop “surge” in Iraq, and promising to all and sundry that talks with Iran and Syria were a non-starter.

By doing this, George Bush couldn’t have done anything more unexpected, unorthodox, or more out-of-the-box, if he’d tried. He incurred the wrath of all his political opponents, dismayed not a few of his supporters, and went against American public opinion which had just been expressed in the mid-term congressional elections. But George Bush stuck to his decision because he thought it right.

In terms of Lee Iacocca’s categories for good leadership, Bush's decision to order the troop surge and not talk to the Syrians or Iranians would meet Iacocca’s guidelines for Character, Courage, Conviction, and, of course, Creativity, for doing the unorthodox and unexpected is the ultimate in Creativity.

What haven’t I covered in Lee Iacocca’s categories for good leadership? Communication? Does anyone not know what George Bush intends in Iraq? Does anyone not know about the troop surge and its intent? George Bush has made clear what he’s aiming for, a stable Iraq friendly to the United States by means of rendering the “insurgents” toothless. It’s quite simple and clear, and George Bush, a simple and clear man, has said time and again what he wants in Iraq. That what he wants will almost certainly not come about is neither here nor there. What is important is that George Bush communicated to the American people what he wants, and Americans have got his message.

George Bush’s communication skills have even enabled him to talk the American people into believing things that aren’t true, like Iraqi complicity in the 9/11 attacks, and that the US was under threat of attack from Iraq unless the US invaded Iraq. George Bush’s communication skills are well-nigh brilliant.

What about the quality of Charisma, which Iacocca defines as the ability to instill trust in people so they’ll follow you. George Bush said: Let us go into Afghanistan, and the American people followed. Then he said: Let us go into Iraq, and the American people followed. And more recently, he said: Let us send yet more soldiers to Iraq, and this process is well underway, and the American people, in the form of the newly elected Congress, haven’t stopped it. This implies their support, or at least their tacit support.

Consider also that in November 2004, when it was clear that things were not going at all well in Iraq, the American people gave George Bush a second term in office, which they wouldn’t have done had they not trusted him. So, in terms of trust, and getting the people to follow him, George Bush has Charisma big-time.

This leaves Competency and Common Sense as the remaining leadership qualities which Lee Iacocca considers important. In view of all you’ve read so far, it’s surely clear to you that George Bush is both competent and has common sense. Without these qualities, he wouldn’t have achieved all he’s achieved.

But, to speak specifically of the quality of Common Sense, George Bush never displayed this better than on the day of 9/11. Lee Iacocca disparages Bush’s continuing to listen to children reading to him about a pet goat for 20 minutes after he’d learned about the 9/11 attacks. Why didn’t Bush immediately get up and do something dramatic? Iacocca wants to know. Why did Bush hide out for most of the day of 9/11, instead of flying immediately to Washington and taking over from Dick Cheney who was waiting there? Iacocca wants to know.

It should be obvious to all but the half-witted, that you need time to consider what you'll do when you’re suddenly told about something of the magnitude of 9/11, and you are the President. You need a few minutes to gather your wits, and George Bush did just that. And, his wits now gathered, his common sense told him - the Common Sense needed by Great Leaders – that it would be foolish to fly immediately to Washington before a risk assessment. Only a fool for a president would have flown to Washington and risk being needlessly killed, so that Americans in their hour of need would be permanently deprived of their elected president at the helm.

So George Bush sensibly hid out, and later returned to Washington when the coast was clear, and in the following weeks and months he was being hailed by the punditry and cognoscenti as a conquering hero, the equal of Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. The rest is now history.

Lee Iacocca asks: Where have all the leaders gone? We assume he’s referring to political leaders, and to American political leaders in particular, and that they aren’t great leaders, as opposed to mediocre leaders. But he doesn’t ask: Why does a democracy, such as the US, even need great leaders, since, in a democracy, it is the empowered citizenry who do the needed things that are only done by great leaders in autocracies or dictatorships, or in business corporations, which are inherently autocratic? Whether its’ presidents are good or bad, great or not-so-great, America, like the Mississippi River, just keeps rollin’ on.

As for George Bush, whether we love him or hate him, we’ll sure miss him when he’s gone, wherever in the world we live.

Let’s just enjoy him while we may.

World's Fastest Indian

2007-02-09T23:44:00.000-08:00

“World’s Fastest Indian”, a New Zealand produced and directed film, set around 1960, stars Anthony Hopkins as Burt Munro, an elderly motorcycle aficionado who likes to tinker around with, and race, old motor bikes. He is good-natured and eccentric, and a long time resident of Invercargill New Zealand. Burt’s eccentricity manifests in him doing things like peeing every day on a lemon tree in his garden, so it’ll grow faster, and setting fire to his very overgrown and unkempt lawn, so he won’t ever again have tend to it.

Burt has an obsession to go over to far away America, where the famed salt flats of Bonneville Utah are, to try to set a new world speed record for his type of motorbike. Thanks to mortgaging his house and donations from the residents of Invercargill, Burt, together with his motor bike, is able to make his way via a tramp steamer to Los Angeles, where he buys a cheap used car, to which he attaches the bike, and sets out on the long drive north to the Bonneville Flats of Utah. He eventually arrives there after some adventures, having something to do with his not being familiar with the ways and speech of the Americans he encounters, and they being unfamiliar with the ways and speech of an elderly New Zealander.

Because Burt’s motor bike is so old - being of 1920s vintage - he has a difficult time getting the permission of the officialdom at Bonneville to race his bike there. Compared to the other vehicles there, all modern state-of-the-art racing cars, Burt’s ancient motor bike is antediluvian, and for him to get it to above 200 mph, which would constitute a new record for Burt’s type of bike, would be extremely hazardous to his physical well-being, to put it very mildly.

I won’t reveal what happens next, in case you decide to rent “World’s Fastest Indian”, which I encourage you whole-heartedly to do.

As I watched, I recalled the David-and-Goliath story from the Old Testament, where David, eschewing the armour that was offered him, and carrying only a slingshot and stones, confronted the mighty Goliath, all 9 feet 6 inches of him, who wore armour and brandished a sword. But David exploited Goliath’s Achilles heel so to speak, in this case, Goliath’s uncovered forehead, which a stone from David’s sling struck, killing Goliath immediately.

So Burt Munro, as David, with just his old motorbike - the sling and stone - challenged the Goliath of motor racing officialdom and the condescending glances of the other racers, in order to show that his faith in himself and his old motor bike would triumph in his mission to set a world’s speed record at Bonneville Flats.

The David and Goliath story is as good an example as any of a biblical fable we can use as inspiration to overcome life’s obstacles. Our slings and stones are our ability to think, and our faith in it, as we confront a society where computers have replaced raw unaided brain power.

The world of Burt Munro was the world of the ‘fifties, and as I became vicariously immersed in that world on the screen, I thought about how it compared to the world of today, and whether the world of the ‘fifties was a better world to live in than the world of today.

Many of those I’ve encountered, who grew up in the ‘fifties, can’t seem to wait to go back there - that hallowed past which, in the words of LP Hartley, is another country where people do things differently. And people did do things differently in the ‘fifties, since they didn’t have computers, the internet, e-mail, cell-phones, video games, VCRs, DVDs, CDs, or i Pods. How, we ask ourselves, could we be happy in a world where all this technology was absent?

Well, we probably wouldn’t be happy, because we would miss them. But what if we never knew about them, as those in the ‘fifties - that other country - didn’t know about them, and probably couldn’t even imagine them. Having never had them, they didn’t miss them.

When we watch movies made in the ‘fifties, or listen to the songs of that time, they seem corny and hokey to us sophisticates of the early twenty-first century. Weren’t the denizens of that ‘fifties country bored out of their minds by all that corny and hokey stuff? Some may well have been, but most thought them the ultimate in trendiness and sophistication, because they couldn’t even have contemplated the possibilities of the post-modernist films and music and art that so beguile us today.

When we look back at the generation of Americans that came of age in the ‘fifties, we see them as lambs who would be thrust a few years on, into the meat-grinder that was Vietnam, and we perhaps feel sorry for them. But we forget that the ‘fifties young people couldn’t know this, so they were happy in their innocence.

If we are to answer the question as to whether the world of the ‘fifties was better to live in than the world of today, we might ask ourselves whether people then were happier than people today. Or if they were less anxious than those today. And when we say “people” who do we mean? White people? Brown or black people? Gay people? Women of whatever colour or persuasion? Were they happier then than they are now?

As someone who grew up in the ‘fifties, I remember the polio scares every year, and I remember the seatbeltless cars, that we today would consider death-traps. I’m so grateful that we now have the polio vaccine, thanks to Dr Jonas Salk, and that we travel in safer cars. I don’t take things like this for granted. So for these, and many other reasons, I think today, at least for me and my ilk, is the best of times, even as I don’t forget that for the untold millions in Africa and Asia who go to bed hungry each night, and are refugees on the run from tyrannical and murderous regimes, today may be the worst of times.

The recent bizarre weather makes us realize that the days of reckoning for us tunnel-visioned pollyannas, as well as everyone else, may be approaching sooner than we think, as we contemplate the greenhouse effect, the ozone holes, the melting ice-caps, the floods, the overcrowding, and the coming wars with nuclear weapons.

So we may as well just live each day to the fullest, break out the booze, have a ball, and let the future take care of itself, however horrific it turns out to be. We’re all simply waiting for the musty embrace of the Grim Reaper, that’s all.

In the meantime go see “World’s Fastest Indian”. It’ll warm the cockles of your heart.

The Wisdom Of Bertrand Russell

2007-02-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

I unearthed the other day a volume that has been mouldering on one of my bookshelves for more than thirty years, called “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”. It is, as you might surmise, a collection of the essays of the English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, culled from the many books he wrote over his very long life (1872 – 1970).

Here are some of his epigrammatic insights from these essays.

“His life, for all its waywardness, had a certain consistency, reminiscent of that of the aristocratic rebels of the early nineteenth century”. His Own Obituary.

“I had a letter from an Anglican bishop not long ago in which he said that all my opinions on everything were inspired by sexual lust, and that the opinions I expressed were among the causes of the Second World War". BBC Interview with John Freeman, The Listener, March 19, 1959.

“Boredom as a factor in human behaviour has received, in my opinion, far less attention than it deserves”. The Conquest of Happiness.

“Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility”. Power: A New Social Analysis.

“In spite of the fundamental importance of economic facts in determining politics and beliefs of an age or nation, I do not think that non-economic factors can be neglected without risks of error which may be fatal in practice”. The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism.

“The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this; (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgement”. Sceptical Essays.

“I should make it my object to teach thinking, not orthodoxy, or even heterodoxy. And I should absolutely never sacrifice intellect to the fancied interest of morals”. On Education Especially in Early Childhood.

“I mean by wisdom a right conception of the ends of life. This is something which science itself does not provide. Increase of science by itself, therefore, is not enough to guarantee any genuine progress, though it provides one of the ingredients which progress requires”. The Scientific Outlook.

“Rational apprehension of dangers is necessary; fear is not”. On Education Especially in Early Childhood.

"The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as a means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection”. The Problem of China.

"Instinct, mind and spirit are all essential to a full life; each has its own excellence and its own corruption”. The Analysis of Mind.

“We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach”. Sceptical Essays.

“No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other”. Justice in War-Time.

“But if human conceit was staggered for a moment by its kinship with the ape, it soon found a way to reassert itself and that way is the ‘philosophy’ of evolution. A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress – though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known”. Our Knowledge of the External World.

“Philosophy should be piecemeal and provisional like science; final truth belongs to heaven, not to this world”. An Outline of Philosophy.

“The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction”. Sceptical Essays.

“To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true”. The Prospects of Industrial Civilization.

“If it is the devil that tempts the young to enjoy themselves, is it not the same personage that persuades the old to condemn their enjoyment? And is not condemnation perhaps merely a form of excitement appropriate to old age?” (Nobel Acceptance Speech) Human Society in Ethics and Politics.

“There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths”. Human Society in Ethics and Politics.

“There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up unfashionable errors than unfashionable truths”. Unpopular Essays.

”……the Crotonians burnt the Pythagorean school. But burning schools, or men for that matter, has always proved singularly unhelpful in stamping out unorthodoxy”. Wisdom of the West.

The Hanging Of Saddam

2007-01-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

I was recently sent the following press statement issued by Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the former Prime minister of Malasia, who is also described as a member of the International Committee for the Defence of President Saddam Hussein.

Thus Dr Mohamad’s statement won't neccessarily be without bias.

Nonetheless, it invites discussion. Here it is:

The Barbaric Lynching of President Saddam Hussein.

On the Holy day of Eid, the world watched in horror at the barbaric lynching of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, allegedly for crimes against humanity. This public murder was sanctioned by the War Criminals, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair.

This sadistic act broadcasted to the whole world is a travesty of justice, and was meant to demonstrate the imperial power of the United States and serves as a warning to peace loving peoples that we must either bow to the dictates of the Bush regime or face the consequences of a public lynching.

The lynching was also an insult to all Muslims, as it occurred on the Holy Day of Eid, whereby Muslims devote themselves to prayer and forgiveness. It is all too clear that the war criminal Bush has no sensitivities whatsoever for Muslims on their pilgrimage to Mecca. This barbaric act is a sacrilege!

The entire trial process was a mockery of justice, no less a Kangaroo Court. Defence counsels were brutally murdered, witnesses threatened and judges removed for being impartial and replaced by puppet judges. Yet, we are told that Iraq was invaded to promote democracy, freedom and justice.

A peaceful country has now been turned into a war zone. Over 500,000 children died as a result of the criminal economic sanctions, and the latest findings by the medical journal, Lancet reveals that over 650,000 Iraqis have died since the illegal invasion of 2003.

The War Criminal Bush has killed more Iraqis than President Saddam ever did, if in fact he was guilty of any crime. If President Saddam Hussein is guilty of war crimes, then the world must find Bush, Blair and Howard equally guilty and the International Criminal Court cannot but prosecute these war criminals. The inaction thus far by the International Criminal Court against Bush, Blair and Howard exposes the double standard of the said Court, when it does not hesitate to prosecute war crimes committed in Dalfur, Rwanda and Kosovo.

If we support human rights and justice, we must condemn this barbaric lynching of President Saddam Hussein. There can be no excuse whatsoever for this injustice under any circumstances. War Criminal Bush and the puppet regime in Iraq have made a mockery of the Rule of Law.

* * *

Dr Mohamad does get a couple of things wrong, like when he says George Bush has killed more Iraqis than did Saddam. According to Iraq’s ambassador (or was it deputy ambassador?) to the UN who I heard talking on CNN the other day, Saddam was responsible for killing 2 million Iraqis - quite a lot more than the mere 650,000 Iraqis whose deaths George Bush is allegedly responsible for. So, of the two monsters, Saddam would seem the bigger.

As to the hanging taking place on the Muslim holy day of Eid, the Americans did try to get the hanging postponed for at least two weeks. But the Iraqi prime minister Maliki wanted it done without delay, even if it was done on a holy day. So George Bush is innocent on that one.

But, given his culpability in the deaths of 650,000 Iraqis, George Bush would seem equally as guilty as was Saddam of crimes against humanity - as also would be Bush’s co-conspirator, Tony Blair - even though they weren’t responsible for the deaths of quite as many Iraqis as was Saddam, so that if Saddam was to hang, so too should George Bush and Tony Blair. But, by hanging Saddam, the present leaders of Iraq, as well as the Americans, showed that on a moral level they were no different from Saddam, for the premeditated hanging of someone is among the most brutal of acts.

CNN and the other American news media didn't show photos or video of the actual moment when Saddam passed over to the Other Side, on the grounds it would have been too much for the delicate sensibilities of Americans. However, given that the USA is among the very few countries that allow hangings, along with other enlightened and democratic countries such as Chad, why shouldn’t all hangings, not just Saddam’s, be in public for all to see?

Since hangings, being part of “justice”, should be seen to be done by the people for whom “justice” is carried out in the name of, does it not follow that the people must be allowed to witness all hangings, so to witness at first hand the barbarities of which they approve?

Yet More Poems Of The Great War

2006-11-20T19:06:00.000-08:00

This is the third and final instalment of poems of the First World War I’ve selected for posting on this august site. But unlike with the poems on my two previous postings (which you can read by clicking here, and here) some of the poems you’ll read below were composed by soldier-poets who did escape being killed in the trenches, and some are by poets who were women, who therefore didn’t serve in the trenches, since war is a manly pursuit, and is about the only manly pursuit today which women haven't invaded – well, not totally.

In the matter of the ending of World War One, it isn’t generally known that there was an agreed-upon elapsed time of six hours between the signing of the armistice agreement to end the fighting, and the time the guns were to stop firing. Despite the allied generals knowing they had won the war six hours before it was due to end, they continued ordering their men out of their fortified trenches to storm the German positions, simply to win extra ground which might bring the generals last minute glory. The result was that in the last six hours of the war, 10,000 men were killed who needn’t have been. Who said truth is stranger than fiction?

But has anything changed? Think about the nearly four thousand American soldiers, not to speak of the one million Iraqis who have died so far in a war cooked-up by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and others, so they could pose as heroic warriors, the better to banish to a corner of their minds that they, none of them, had not only never fought in a war, but had found ingenious ways, when young, to avoid the draft at the time of Vietnam. It’s not for nothing that the only person in the Bush inner circle who urged caution about going into Iraq was Colin Powell, a general who had actually fought in a war – in Vietnam.

When we consider the major wars of history, we think the side that won, did so, because its soldiers were braver, or its generals were smarter, or its peoples more resilient, than those of the side that lost. However, Paul Kennedy, in his book, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers”, found that in all the major wars over the last 500 years, the victors had bigger economies and greater industrial productive capacities than those of the vanquished. Therefore, because of these non-military factors, it could have been predicted that in both the world wars of the twentieth century, the allied powers would win.

The First World War was arguably the last one welcomed, when declared, by the peoples throughout the affected nations. The first poem I’ve selected, by Robert Service, reflects this.

The Call

Robert W. Service

(France August First 1914)

Far and near, high and clear,
Hark to the call of War!
Over the gorse and the golden dells,
Ringing and swinging of clamorous bells,
Praying and saying of wild farewells:
War! War! War!

High and low, all must go:
Hark to the shout of War!
Leave to the women the harvest yield;
Gird ye, men, for the sinister field;
A sabre instead of a scythe to wield:
War! Red War!

Rich and poor, lord and boor,
Hark to the blast of War!
Tinker and tailor and millionaire,
Actor in triumph and priest in prayer,
Comrades now in the hell out there,
Sweep to the fire of War!

Prince and page, sot and sage,
Hark to the roar of War!
Poet, professor and circus clown,
Chimney-sweeper and fop o' the town,
Into the pot and be melted down:
Into the pot of War!

Women all, hear the call,
The pitiless call of War!
Look your last on your dearest ones,
Brothers and husbands, fathers, sons:
Swift they go to the ravenous guns,
The gluttonous guns of War.

Everywhere thrill the air
The maniac bells of War.
There will be little of sleeping to-night;
There will be wailing and weeping to-night;
Death's red sickle is reaping to-night:
War! War! War!

I gleaned the following about Robert Service (1874 – 1958) “Robert William Service was born in Preston, Lancashire, England. After spending his childhood in Scotland he came to Canada in 1894, working for the Canadian Bank of Commerce in the Yukon for eight years.

He is world reknown for penning "The Shooting of Dan McGrew", The Cremation of Sam McGee", The Call of the Wild" and "The Spell of the Yukon" .

Less well known, but worthy of note are three other poems: "The Quitter", "Carry On!" and "Just Think!"

He was a newspaper correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkin Wars of 1912-13 and served as an ambulance driver and correspondent during World War I.

From 1914 on he lived in Europe, returning to Canada during WWII, to live in Hollywood and Vancouver, then again living in Brittany and on the French Riviera. He died in Lancieux, France.”

Although the next poem, The Old Vicarage Grantchester, by Rupert Brooke, isn’t a First World War Poem, I’ve included it because Rupert Brooke died as a soldier in this war, notwithstanding that it was from an infection; and that it may be his most famous poem; and that, in its evocation of a poetic and surreal rural England of fields and old churches and parsonages, it reflects the idealism and patriotism that spurred the young men of England to march off and die for their country.

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
(Cafe des Westens, Berlin, May 1912)

Rupert Brooke

Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow . . .
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
— Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
How the May fields all golden show,
And when the day is young and sweet,
Gild gloriously the bare feet
That run to bathe . . .
'Du lieber Gott!'

Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
And there the shadowed waters fresh
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
Temperamentvoll German Jews
Drink beer around; — and THERE the dews
Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
A slippered Hesper; and there are
Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton
Where das Betreten's not verboten.

ειθε γενοιμην . . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester! -
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . .
But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .
Still in the dawnlit waters cool
His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,
And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.
Dan Chaucer hears his river still
Chatter beneath a phantom mill.
Tennyson notes, with studious eye,
How Cambridge waters hurry by . . .
And in that garden, black and white,
Creep whispers through the grass all night;
And spectral dance, before the dawn,
A hundred Vicars down the lawn;
Curates, long dust, will come and go
On lissom, clerical, printless toe;
And oft between the boughs is seen
The sly shade of a Rural Dean . . .
Till, at a shiver in the skies,
Vanishing with Satanic cries,
The prim ecclesiastic rout
Leaves but a startled sleeper-out,
Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls,
The falling house that never falls.

God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England's the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of THAT district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
And Royston men in the far South
Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;
At Over they fling oaths at one,
And worse than oaths at Trumpington,
And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,
And there's none in Harston under thirty,
And folks in Shelford and those parts
Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,
And Coton's full of nameless crimes,
And things are done you'd not believe
At Madingley on Christmas Eve.
Strong men have run for miles and miles,
When one from Cherry Hinton smiles;
Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives,
Rather than send them to St. Ives;
Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,
To hear what happened at Babraham.
But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
There's peace and holy quiet there,
Great clouds along pacific skies,
And men and women with straight eyes,
Lithe children lovelier than a dream,
A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
And little kindly winds that creep
Round twilight corners, half asleep.
In Grantchester their skins are white;
They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;
The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth;
(And when they get to feeling old,
They up and shoot themselves, I'm told) . . .

Ah God! to see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?
Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Haslingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915) was born in Rugby, Warwickshire. A graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, he was a familiar figure in literary and political circles. His first collection of verse, Poems, was published in 1911. He entered the war as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Division, and following his participation in the Antwerp expedition he composed his five war sonnets. While sailing in the Aegean on the way to Gallipoli he died of acute blood poisoning, the result of a mosquito bite.

Wars are only made possible because men are prepared to fight in them. And they do so because, starting when they were boys, they grew up glorifying the profession of arms. The next two poems, by Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen, illustrate this:

The Next War

Robert Graves.

You young friskies who today
Jump and fight in Father’s hay
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Happy though these hours you spend,
Have they warned you how games end?
Boys, from the first time you prod
And thrust with spears of curtain-rod,
From the first time you tear and slash
Your long-bows from the garden ash,
Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,
Binding the split tops together,
From that same hour by fate you’re bound
As champions of this stony ground,
Loyal and true in everything,
To serve your Army and your King,
Prepared to starve and sweat and die
Under some fierce foreign sky,
If only to keep safe those joys
That belong to British boys,
To keep young Prussians from the soft
Scented hay of father’s loft,
And stop young Slavs from cutting bows
And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows.
Another War soon gets begun,
A dirtier, a more glorious one;
Then, boys, you’ll have to play, all in;
It’s the cruellest team will win.
So hold your nose against the stink
And never stop too long to think.
Wars don’t change except in name;
The next one must go just the same,
And new foul tricks unguessed before
Will win and justify this War.
Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage;
Courtly ministers will stop
At home and fight to the last drop;
By the million men will die
In some new horrible agony;
And children here will thrust and poke,
Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke,
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers.

Robert Graves 1895 – 1985 served as an officer in the trenches of World War One, and was seriously wounded. His autobiographical memoir “Goodbye To All That” described searingly and graphically what life was like in the trenches. His prodigious literary output of poems, essays, and historical novels included the renowned “I Claudius” and “Claudius The God”.

Wilfred Owen

Arms and the Boy

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.
For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918) was born in Ostwestry, Shropshire. Educated at the Birkenhead Institute and the University of London, he was teaching abroad when war broke out. In 1915, he returned to England in order to enlist. In May 1917, while serving in the trenches in France, he was caught in an explosion. Diagnosed with shellshock, he was sent to England in order to recover. He returned to France in August 1918, and was awarded the Military Cross two months later. On 4th November 1918, he was killed by German machine-gun fire. The first collection of his verse, Poems (1920), was edited by his friend and mentor, fellow war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

One reason men were so keen to go to war in 1914 was that their womenfolk wanted them to, not least their mothers. The next poem expresses this. As you read it, ask yourself how different the English mother in the poem is from those mothers in today’s middle-east who beseech their sons to become suicide bombers

A Mother’s Dedication

Margaret Peterson

Dear son of mine, the baby days are over,
I can no longer shield you from the earth;
Yet in my heart always I must remember
How through the dark I fought to give you birth.

Dear son of mine, by all the lives behind you;
By all our fathers fought for in the past;
In this great war to which your birth has brought you,
Acquit you well, hold you our honour fast!

God guard you, son of mine, where’er you wander;
God lead the banners under which you fight;
You are my all, I give you to the Nation,
God shall uphold you that you fight aright.

The reality of a mother’s learning of her son’s death in war is shown in the “The Hero” by Siegfried Sassoon, arguably the most famous of the First World War’s soldier-poets.

The Hero

Siegfried Sassoon.

‘Jack fell as he’d have wished,’ the Mother said,
And folded up the letter that she’d read.
‘The Colonel writes so nicely.’ Something broke
In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
She half looked up. ‘We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.’ Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He’d told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how ‘Jack’, cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he’d tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.

Here's another poem by Siegfried Sassoon

Enemies

Siegfried Sassoon

He stood alone in some queer sunless place
Where Armageddon ends. Perhaps he longed
For days he might have lived; but his young face
Gazed forth untroubled: and suddenly there thronged
Round him the hulking Germans that I shot
When for his death my brooding rage was hot.

He stared at them, half-wondering; and then
They told him how I’d killed them for his sake—
Those patient, stupid, sullen ghosts of men;
And still there seemed no answer he could make.
At last he turned and smiled. One took his hand
Because his face could make them understand.

I gleaned the following biographical about Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967) “With war on the horizon, a young Englishman whose life had heretofore been consumed with the protocol of fox-hunting, said goodbye to his idyllic life and rode off on his bicycle to join the Army. Siegfried Sassoon was perhaps the most innocent of the war poets. John Hildebidle has called Sassoon the "accidental hero." Born into a wealthy Jewish family in 1886, Sassoon lived the pastoral life of a young squire: fox-hunting, playing cricket, golfing and writing romantic verses.

Being an innocent, Sassoon's reaction to the realities of the war were all the more bitter and violent -- both his reaction through his poetry and his reaction on the battlefield (where, after the death of fellow officer David Thomas and his brother Hamo at Gallipoli, Sassoon earned the nickname "Mad Jack" for his near-suicidal exploits against the German lines -- in the early manifestation of his grief, when he still believed that the Germans were entirely to blame). As Paul Fussell said: "now he unleashed a talent for irony and satire and contumely that had been sleeping all during his pastoral youth." Sassoon also showed his innocence by going public with his protest against the war (as he grew to see that insensitive political leadership was the greater enemy than the Germans). Luckily, his friend and fellow poet Robert Graves convinced the review board that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock and he was sent instead to the military hospital at Craiglockhart where he met and influenced Wilfred Owen.

Sassoon is a key figure in the study of the poetry of the Great War: he brought with him to the war the idyllic pastoral background; he began by writing war poetry reminiscent of Rupert Brooke; he mingled with such war poets as Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden; he spoke out publicly against the war (and yet returned to it); he influenced and mentored the then unknown Wilfred Owen; he spent thirty years reflecting on the war through his memoirs; and at last he found peace in his religious faith. Some critics found his later poetry lacking in comparison to his war poems. Sassoon, identifying with Herbert and Vaughan, recognized and understood this: "my development has been entirely consistent and in character" he answered, "almost all of them have ignored the fact that I am a religious poet."

Vera Brittain, who served as a nurse behind the front lines, experienced losing in the First World War all the men in her life, including her brother and her fiancée. She wrote the following poem some years after the death of her fiancée, Roland Leyton (1895 – 1915):

Perhaps (To R.A.L)

Vera Brittain

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.

Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.

Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.

Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain
To see the passing of the dying year,
And listen to Christmas songs again,
Although You cannot hear.'

But though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.

The wiping out of almost an entire generation of young men meant that millions of women of similar age would never marry and have families - an issue dealt with in the following poem by Vera Brittain.

The Superfluous Woman

Vera Brittain

Ghosts crying down the vistas of the years,
Recalling words
Whose echoes long have died,
And kind moss grown
Over the sharp and blood-bespattered stones
Which cut our feet upon the ancient ways.

But who will look for my coming?

Long busy days where many meet and part;
Crowded aside
Remembered hours of hope;
And city streets
Grown dark and hot with eager multitudes
Hurrying homeward whither respite waits.

But who will seek me at nightfall?

Light fading where the chimneys cut the sky;
Footsteps that pass,
Nor tarry at my door.
And far away,
Behind the row of crosses, shadows black
Stretch out long arms before the smouldering sun.

But who will give me my children?

I gleaned the follwing on Vera Brittain (1893 - 1970) "She was the only daughter of Thomas Brittain, a wealthy paper manufacturer, and Edith Bervon, and was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1893.

Vera was educated at home by a governess and then at a boarding school in Surrey, where one of the teachers introduced her to the ideas of Dorothea Beale and Emily Davies. Brittain was also deeply influence by reading Women and Labour by Olive Schreiner. Vera wanted to go to university but her father believed that the main role of education was to prepare women for marriage. Eventually Thomas Brittain relented and Vera was allowed to go to Somerville College, Oxford.

In 1914 Vera met and fell in love with Roland Leighton, a friend of her only brother, Edward. On the outbreak of the First World War Roland and Edward Brittain joined the British Army. Vera also wanted to become involved in the war effort and decided to leave Somerville College and become a nurse. She joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment and served in England and in France. Vera became engaged to Ronald Leighton, in August, 1915 but four months later he was killed on the Western Front. So also was her brother, Edward Brittain, and several of her close friends.

After the Armistice Vera returned to Somerville College where she met Winifred Holtby. The two women graduated together in 1921 and they moved to London where they hoped to establish themselves as writers. Vera's first two novels, The Dark Tide (1923) and Not Without Honour (1925) sold badly and were ignored by the critics. Vera had more success with her journalism and in 1920s wrote for the feminist journal, Time and Tide. Vera also published two books on the role of women, Women's Work in Modern Britain (1928) and Halcyon or the Future of Monogamy (1929).

In the 1920s Vera's political views became more radical and she left the Liberals and joined the Labour Party. For a time she considered becoming a MP but after marrying the American academic, George Catlin, she went to live in the United States. Vera found it difficult to settle in America and after the birth of her two children, John (1927) and Shirley (1930) she moved back to England where she lived with Winifred Holtby. In her first volume of autobiography, Testament of Youth (1933) Brittain wrote about her struggle for education and her experiences as a nurse during the First World War. It was an immediate bestseller in Britain and the United States. Her companion, Winifred Holtby died in 1935 and Vera subsequently wrote about their relationship in her book Testament of Friendship. In the 1930s Brittain became a pacifist and in 1934 supported Richard Sheppard and his Peace Pledge Union and was one of its leaders during the Second World War. From September 1939 she began publishing Letters to Peace Lovers, a small journal that expressed her views on the war. This made her extremely unpopular as the journal criticised the government for bombing urban areas in Nazi Germany.

In 1943 Brittain attempted to explain her pacifism in her book Humiliation with Honour. This was followed by Seeds of Chaos, an attack on the government's policy of area bombing. After the war Vera wrote a history of the women's movement, Lady into Women (1953). Other books included a second volume of autobiography, Testament of Experience (1957), Women at Oxford (1960) and a biography of Frederick Pethick-Lawrence. A strong opponent of nuclear weapons, in 1957 Brittain joined with Kingsley Martin, J. B. Priestley, Bertrand Russell, Fenner Brockway, Victor Gollancz, Richard Acland, A. J. P. Taylor, Canon John Collins and Michael Foot to form the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Vera Brittain remained active in the peace movement until her death in 1970".

More Poems Of The Great War

2006-11-15T23:01:00.000-08:00

This continues my previous posting. So today I present more poems from the First World War. All the poems that follow are by poets who died in the trenches, which is why the war-poems by the likes of Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon – who did escape being killed - aren’t included. But I may include them in another posting.

All of these poets volunteered for the army, either because they were super-patriotic, or thought the war would be a cakewalk and so would be short and glorious. The guns began firing in August 1914, and most British soldiers thought they’d be home again by Christmas. But this doesn’t detract from the fact that millions of young men joined the army as volunteers, not least the poets.

They were all young, and filled with the bravado, foolishness, and idealism of youth. Had they been older, they may have contemplated that wars only happen because there are soldiers to fight them, and to the extent that men volunteer to fight, they make wars possible. While wars are, admittedly, fought mostly by conscripts, conscription is made respectable because lots of men enlist without being made to.

Wars are brought about by old men for young men to die in. But, to paraphrase the title of a film from around 1970, supposing they – the old men – gave a war and nobody came?

Here, then, are some more poems of The Great War:

Who Made The Law?

Leslie Coulson

Who made the Law that men should die in shadows ?
Who spake the word that blood should splash in lanes ?
Who gave it forth that gardens should be bone-yards ?
Who spread the hills with flesh, and blood, and brains ?
Who made the Law ?

Who made the Law that Death should stalk the village ?
Who spake the word to kill among the sheaves,
Who gave it forth that death should lurk in hedgerows,
Who flung the dead among the fallen leaves?
Who made the Law ?

Those who return shall find that peace endures,
Find old things old, and know the things they know,
Walk in the garden, slumber by the fireside,
Share the peace of dawn, and dream amid the dew –
Those who return.

Those who return shall till the ancient pastures,
Clean-hearted men shall guide the plough-horse reins,
Some shall grow apples and flowers in the valleys,
Some shall go courting in summer down the lanes –
THOSE WHO RETURN.

But who made the Law? the Trees shall whisper to him:
"See, see the blood - the splashes on our bark !"
Walking the meadows, he shall hear bones crackle,
And fleshless mouths shall gibber in silent lanes at dark.

Who made the Law ? At noon upon the hillside
His ears shall hear a moan, his cheeks shall feel a breath,
And all along the valleys, past gardens, croft, and homesteads,
He who made the Law,
HE who made the Law,
HE who made the Law shall walk along with Death.
WHO made the Law ?

Leslie Coulson (1889 – 1916) was born in Kilburn. Before enlisting he was a well-known Fleet Street journalist. He survived being wounded at Gallipoli in 1915, dying at the Battle of the Somme. In 1917 a collection of his poetry, From an Outpost and Other Poems, became a bestseller in England.

To Germany

Charles Hamilton Sorley

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other's dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895 – 1915) was born in Aberdeen, the son of a university professor. After attending Marlborough College he won a scholarship to University College, Oxford, but chose to defer entry to enlist in 1914. Less than a year later he was commissioned as a captain. He was killed by a sniper at the Battle of Loos. A collection of verse, Marlborough and Other Poems, was published the year after his death.

Dolores

Cyril Horne

Six of us lay in a Dugout
At ease with our limbs astretch,
And worshipped a feminine picture
Cut from a week-old ‘Sketch’.
We gazed at her silken stockings,
We studied her Cupid bow,
And we thought of the suppers we used to buy
And the girls we used to know,
And we all, in our several fashions,
Paid toll to the Lady’s charms,

From the man of a hundred passions
To the Subaltern child-in-arms.
Never the sketch of a master
So jealously kept and prized,
Never a woman of flesh and blood
So truly idealized.
And because of her tender ankle,
And her coiffure – distinctly French –
We called her ‘La Belle Dolores’ –
‘The Vivandiere of the Trench.’

Cyril Horne (1887 – 1916) was born in Scotland and was living in the United States when war was declared. He was killed by a shell while rescuing a wounded soldier near Loos. Songs of the Shrapnel Shell and Other Verse, a collection of his writing, was published in 1920.

Light After Darkness

E. Wyndham Tennant

Once more the Night, like some great dark drop-scene
Eclipsing horrors for a brief entr'acte,
Descends, lead-weighty. Now the space between,
Fringed with the eager eyes of men, is racked
By spark-tailed lights, curvetting far and high,
Swift smoke-flecked coursers, raking the black sky.

And as each sinks in ashes grey, one more
Rises to fall, and so through all the hours
They strive like petty empires by the score,
Each confident of its success and powers,
And, hovering at its zenith, each will show
Pale, rigid faces, lying dead, below.

There shall they lie, tainting the innocent air,
Until the dawn, deep veiled in mournful grey,
Sadly and quietly shall lay them bare,
The broken heralds of a doleful day.

E. Wyndham Tennant (1897 – 1916) was born in Glasgow. The recipient of a scholarship, he was studying in Oxford when war was declared when war was declared. He was killed at the Second Battle of Ypres, an early casualty of the war. His Poems was published by Oxford University Press in 1916.

The Soldier

Hamish Mann

‘Tis strange to look on a man that is dead
As he lies in the shell-swept hell
And to think that the poor black battered corpse
Once lived like you and was well.

‘Tis stranger far when you come to think
That you may soon be like him…
And it’s Fear that tugs at your trembling soul,
A Fear that is weird and grim!

Hamish Mann (1896 – 1917) was born in Broughty Ferry, Forfarshire, and was educated in Edinburgh. A veteran of the Battle of the Somme, he was wounded at Arras and died the following day. A collection of his war poetry, A Subaltern’s Musings, was published posthumously.

Returning, We Hear The Larks

Isaac Rosenberg

Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp-
On a little safe sleep.

But hark! joy-joy-strange joy.
Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks
Music showering on our upturned list'ning faces.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song-
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man's dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl's dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

Isaac Rosenberg (1890 – 1918) was born in Bristol to Russian immigrants. Though a talented poet – his first collection of verse, Night and Day, was published in 1912 – he considered himself a portrait artist. He was in South Africa – an attempt to improve his frail health – when war was declared. He returned to England and enlisted and was killed in close combat near the French village of Fampoux. The first posthumous collection of his verse, Poems, was published in 1922.

Last Song

Henry Lamont Simpson

All my songs are risen and fled away;
(Only the brave birds stay);
All my beautiful songs are broken or fled.
My poor songs could not stay
Among the filth and the weariness and the dead.

There was bloody grime on their light, white feathery wings,
(Hear how the lark still sings),
And their eyes were the eyes of dead men that I knew.
Only a madman sings
When half of his friends lie asleep for the rain and the dew.

The flowers will grow over the bones of my friends;
(The birds’ song never ends);
Winter and summer, their fair flesh turns to clay.
Perhaps before all ends
My songs will come again that have fled away.

Henry Lamont Simpson (1897 – 1918) was born in Crosby-on-Eden, Carlisle. A student at Cambridge, he became a commissioned officer in 1917. He was killed by a sniper at Strazeele, France. His only collection of poetry, Moods and Tenses, was published the year after the war ended.

Mental Cases

Wilfred Owen

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

– These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
-Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness

Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918) was born in Ostwestry, Shropshire. Educated at the Birkenhead Institute and the University of London, he was teaching abroad when war broke out. In 1915, he returned to England in order to enlist. In May 1917, while serving in the trenches in France, he was caught in an explosion. Diagnosed with shellshock, he was sent to England in order to recover. He returned to France in August 1918, and was awarded the Military Cross two months later. On 4th November 1918, he was killed by German machine-gun fire. The first collection of his verse, Poems (1920), was edited by his friend and mentor, fellow war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Poems Of The Great War

2006-11-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

On the eleventh of November 1918, at eleven in the morning, eighty-eight years ago today, the guns fell silent, to end the Great War, the “war to end all wars”. This phrase sounds quaint, even cynical, when we think of all the wars that have happened since. But at the time, people actually believed there’d be no more wars, perhaps because they had welcomed the Great War when it started - men volunteering in 1914 for the army in their millions, and women cheering and throwing flowers at the men as they marched off to the trenches in France.

Perhaps this idealism, and naivete, was why so many poets joined up, for the Great War killed more poets than any war in history, which is no doubt why the Great War produced more poetry than any war in history. But the idealism and patriotism of the poets quickly dissipated in the trenches, as they wallowed in the rain, mud, and the overwhelming stench of death. It was a war that wiped out an entire generation of the young men of Europe.

Today we look back at this war, and wonder how people could have swallowed all the patriotic propaganda so that they willingly marched off to be slaughtered en-masse. But we wonder because we are not of that time. If we had been, we would have acted and believed the same as did the people then, because to be patriotic, and willing to die for your country was the way it was, and to some extent still is, despite today’s Globalisation.

When we nowadays consider the period 1914 - 1945 in Europe, we see it simply as a European civil war, given most of Europe, as embodied in the European Union, is now, for all intents and purposes, one country.

Now, to the poets and poetry of World War One.

The following poems were written by soldier-poets when they were in the trenches in France. All died there, and they all died young. The depth and beauty of the poems is such that we can only mourn the loss of what their creators might have achieved had they been allowed to grow old.

For more poems see also More Poems of the Great War and Yet More Poems of the Great War .

I Have A Rendezvous With Death

Alan Seeger

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’t were better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear …
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Allan Seeger (1888 – 1916) was born in New York and spent much of his childhood in Mexico. Educated at Harvard, for several years he lived a bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village. He was visiting London, conducting research at the British Museum, when war was declared. He joined the French Foreign Legion and was killed in France at Belloy-en-Santerre. A collection of verse, Poems, was published a few months later.

The Soldier

Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915) was born in Rugby, Warwickshire. A graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, he was a familiar figure in literary and political circles. His first collection of verse, Poems, was published in 1911. He entered the war as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Division, and following his participation in the Antwerp expedition he composed his five war sonnets. While sailing in the Aegean on the way to Gallipoli he died of acute blood poisoning, the result of a mosquito bite.

When You See Millions Of The Mouthless Dead

Charles Hamilton Sorley

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, 'They are dead.' Then add thereto,
'Yet many a better one has died before.'
Then scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his forevermore.

Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895 – 1915) was born in Aberdeen, the son of a university professor. After attending Marlborough College he won a scholarship to University College, Oxford, but chose to defer entry to enlist in 1914. Less than a year later he was commissioned as a captain. He was killed by a sniper at the Battle of Loos. A collection of verse, Marlborough and Other Poems, was published the year after his death.

The Shell Hole

Hamish Mann

In the Shell Hole he lies, this German soldier of a year ago;
But he is not as then, accoutred, well, and eager for the foe
He hoped so soon, so utterly, to crush. His muddy skull
Lies near the mangled remnants of his corpse – wars furies thus annul
The pomp and pageantry that were its own. White rigid bones
Gape through the nauseous chaos of his clothes; the cruel stones
Hold fast the letter he was wont to clasp close to his am’rous breast.
Here ‘neath the stark, keen stars, where is no peace, no joy, nor any rest,
He lies. There, to the right, his boot, gashed by the great shell’s fiendish whim,
Retains – O horrid spectacle! – the fleshless stump that was his limb!
Vile rats and mice, and flies and lice and ghastly things that carrion know
Have made a travesty of Death of him who lived a year ago.

Hamish Mann (1896 – 1917) was born in Broughty Ferry, Forfarshire, and was educated in Edinburgh. A veteran of the Battle of the Somme, he was wounded at Arras and died the following day. A collection of his war poetry, A Subaltern’s Musings, was published posthumously.

But A Short Time To Live

Leslie Coulson

Our little hour - how swift it flies
When poppies flare and lilies smile;
How soon the fleeting minute dies,
Leaving us but a little while
To dream our dreams, to sing our song,
To pick the fruit, to pluck the flower,
The Gods - They do not give us long, -
One little hour.

Our little hour - how short it is
When love with dew eyed lovliness
Raises her lips for ours to kiss
And dies within our first caress.
Youth flickers out like wind-blown flame,
Sweets of today to-morrow sour,
For Time and Death, relentless, claim
Our little hour..

Our little hour - how short a time
To wage our wars, to fan our hates,
To take our fill of armoured crime,
To troop our banner, storm the gates.
Blood on the sword, our eyes blood-red,
Blind in our puny reign of power,
Do we forget how soon is sped
Our little hour.

Our little hour - how soon it dies;
How short a time to tell our beads,
To chant our feeble Litanies,
To think sweet thoughts, to do good deeds,
The altar lights grow pale and dim,
The bells hang silent in the tower -
So passes with the dying hymn
Our little hour.

Leslie Coulson (1889 – 1916) was born in Kilburn. Before enlisting he was a well-known Fleet Street journalist. He survived being wounded at Gallipoli in 1915, dying at the Battle of the Somme. In 1917 a collection of his poetry, From an Outpost and Other Poems, became a bestseller in England.

Rain

Edward Thomas

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be for what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

Edward Thomas (1878 – 1917) was born in London to Welsh parents. He studied at Oxford on a history scholarship. In 1899, he married the daughter of James Ashcroft Noble, a nineteenth century literary figure. Encouraged by his father-in-law, he pursued a life in letters as an author, editor, and reviewer. His first poems were written in 1914, the year before he enlisted. He was killed by a shell at Arras. Several collections of his verse were published in the years immediately following his death.

A Kiss

Bernard Freeman Trotter

She kissed me when she said good-bye--
A child's kiss, neither bold nor shy.

We had met but a few short summer hours;
Talked of the sun, the wind, the flowers,

Sports and people; had rambled through
A casual catchy song or two,

And walked with arms linked to the car
By the light of a single misty star.

(It was war-time, you see, and the streets were dark
Lest the ravishing Hun should find a mark.)

And so we turned to say good-bye;
But somehow or other, I don't know why, --

Perhaps `t was the feel of the khaki coat
(She'd a brother in Flanders then) that smote

Her heart with a sudden tenderness
Which issued in that swift caress--

Somehow, to her, at any rate
A mere hand-clasp seemed inadequate;

And so she lifted her dewey face
And kissed me--but without a trace

Of passion,--and we said good-bye...
A child's kiss,...neither bold nor shy.

My friend, I like you--it seemed to say--
Here's to our meeting again some day!
Some happier day...
Goodbye.

Bernard Freeman Trotter (1890 – 1917) was born in Toronto and spent much of his youth in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. His initial attempt to enlist thwarted by ill-health, he finally set sail for Europe in March 1916. A little over a year later Trotter was killed by a shell while serving as a Transport Officer at the Front. His only collection of poems, A Canadian Twilight and other Poems of War and Peace, was published the month after the Armistice.

Anthem For Doomed Youth

Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
- Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918) was born in Ostwestry, Shropshire. Educated at the Birkenhead Institute and the University of London, he was teaching abroad when war broke out. In 1915, he returned to England in order to enlist. In May 1917, while serving in the trenches in France, he was caught in an explosion. Diagnosed with shellshock, he was sent to England in order to recover. He returned to France in August 1918, and was awarded the Military Cross two months later. On 4th November 1918, he was killed by German machine-gun fire. The first collection of his verse, Poems (1920, was edited by his friend and mentor, fellow war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

The Ruminations Of Rummy

2006-11-09T22:40:00.000-08:00

In a world where carefully programmed, immaculately coiffed figures on our public stage, bore us to stupefaction with their soporific cliché-sodden speeches, Donald Rumsfeld, with his alligator smile, eyes glinting behind rimless spectacles, and arresting epigrams, stood out like an igloo in an Arabian desert.

Whether we loved or hated him, when Rummy spoke, we listened.

Now, as he rides off into the sunset, we’ll think of him with nostalgia, while we recall some of his spoken verse, including:

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Glass Box

You know, it's the old glass box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's—

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—

Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.

—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

A Confession

Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.

—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

Happenings

You're going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don't
happen.

It doesn't seem to bother people, they
don't—
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.

Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.
All I can tell you is,
It hasn't happened.
It's going to happen.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

The Digital Revolution

Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!
A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!

—June 9, 2001, following European trip

The Situation

Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

—Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Clarity

I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

On NATO

You may think it's something
I ought to know,
But I happen not to.
That's life.

(July 9, 2003)

On Reporters

If you do something,
Somebody's not going
To agree with it.
That's life.

(Feb. 19, 2003)

On the Budget

If you do anything,
Someone's not going
To like it and
That's life.

(May 7, 2002)

On Leaks

Look bumpy?
Sure.
But you pick up
And go on.
That's life.

(May 17, 2002)

On Democracy

People elected
Those people to office.
That's what they think, and
That's life.

(Feb. 20, 2003)

On People

They're going to have
Some impact on
What happens in that country
And that's not wrong.
That's life.

(Nov. 16, 2001)

On Criticism

It makes it complicated.
Sometimes, it makes
It difficult.
That's life.

(Sept. 11, 2003)

Guard Dogs And Teddy Bears

2006-08-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

Despite the unending carnage in the middle east, other events continue to happen in the world, such as an ill-tempered guard dog directing its anger against one of Elvis Presley’s teddy bears, as per the following news item:

“A guard dog has ripped apart a collection of rare teddy bears, including one once owned by Elvis Presley, during a rampage at a children's museum.

"He just went berserk," said Daniel Medley, general manager of the Wookey Hole Caves near Wells, England, where hundreds of bears were chewed up Tuesday night by the six-year-old Doberman pinscher named Barney.

Barney ripped the head off a brown stuffed bear once owned by the young Presley during the attack, leaving fluffy stuffing and bits of bears' limbs and heads on the museum floor. The bear, named Mabel, was made in 1909 by the German manufacturer Steiff.

The collection, valued at more than $900,000 (U.S.), included a red bear made by Farnell in 1910 and a Bobby Bruin made by Merrythought in 1936.

The bear with Elvis connections was owned by English aristocrat Benjamin Slade, who bought it at an Elvis memorabilia auction in Memphis, Tenn., and had loaned it to the museum.

"I've spoken to the bear's owner and he is not very pleased at all," Medley said.

A security guard at the museum, Greg West, said he spent several minutes chasing Barney before wrestling the dog to the ground”.

It is my belief that the dog, when seeing Elvis’s teddy bear, was reminded of the lyrics of the Elvis Presley song, “Teddy Bear”:

Baby let me be,
Your lovin teddy bear
Put a chain around my neck,
And lead me anywhere
Oh let me be
Your teddy bear.

I dont wanna be a tiger
Cause tigers play too rough
I dont wanna be a lion
cause lions aint the kind
You love enough.

Just wanna be,
your teddy bear
Put a chain around my neck
And lead me anywhere
Oh let me be
Your teddy bear.

It seems obvious that the guard dog became angry because Elvis, by saying in the song that he didn’t want to be a tiger or a lion because he wanted to be a teddy bear, was implying that, only but for his wanting to be a teddy bear, he would want to be a tiger or a lion. Which means that he, Elvis, had absolutely no interest in being a dog. The dog, somewhat naturally, considered this an insult and so took its revenge on Elvis’s teddy bear.

And the dog’s feelings of anger would not have been ameliorated by the lyrics of Elvis’s song, “Hound Dog”:

You aint nothin but a hound dog
Cryin all the time.
You aint nothin but a hound dog
Cryin all the time.
Well, you aint never caught a rabbit
And you aint no friend of mine.

When they said you was high classed,
Well, that was just a lie.
When they said you was high classed,
Well, that was just a lie.
You aint never caught a rabbit
And you aint no friend of mine.

It seems clear that the song depicts dogs as doing nothing but crying all the time, and not being able to catch a rabbit, so that Elvis would never consider a dog as a potential friend.

What self-respecting guard dog wouldn't have been insulted by this?

"Why We Fight"

2006-03-01T18:51:00.000-08:00

A few days before leaving office in January 1961, Dwight Eisenhower, in a televised farewell speech, warned his fellow Americans about something called “the military industrial complex” – a phrase that has since entered the political lexicon.

The Military Industrial Complex is the unofficial system that drives military spending by means of the "revolving door" syndrome, whereby top generals and other government officials, when they retire, go to work for the weapons manufacturers as lobbyists to persuade the government to buy their weapons of war. The more enticing the weapons, the more will be bought, and constant wars will be needed to justify purchasing all these weapons – the classic chicken-and-egg scenario.

For a president, Eisenhower’s speech was quite extraordinary, but as a former soldier who had commanded the largest army in American history, and as president during the most paranoid era of the Cold War, and who had presided over transformation of the US into a warfare state, Eisenhower knew what he was talking about. So he knew about the practice of weapons manufacturers of distributing their factories liberally around the country, and the practice of the Pentagon of doing the same with military bases, thus creating huge numbers of jobs in the states and districts of most senators and congressmen who, accordingly, have a vested interest in ensuring that monies to maintain these factories and bases keep flowing in greater and greater amounts.

And Eisenhower knew about the power of official propaganda to frighten the people into supporting a huge military establishment, the spending on which, directly and indirectly, comprised, and still comprises more than half the entire Federal budget.

Eisenhower’s military industrial complex speech is the foundation of the recently released film documentary, “Why We Fight”, that looks at why the US has invaded so many countries over the last sixty years, and how the current invasion of Iraq is justified.

Most of us, even if half comatose, should know by now that these invasions were in the service of projecting American power around the world, to protect the US’s “interests” – which are usually the “interests” of American corporations in having a nice safe world to exploit, through the CIA installing friendly foreign governments. These are, admittedly, sweeping statements, for no two situations or countries are the same, but these statements do describe what US foreign policy, at its core, is all about.

* * *

Let’s take the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Why it was done is illumined in recommendations made by a neo-conservative think-tank, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), during the Age of Clinton. The PNAC in a policy study, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century”, advocated that the US play a much larger part in the world and should, to this end, establish military bases around the world including, most particularly, permanent military bases in Iraq.

This made sense since Saudi Arabia had asked the US to close its base there, and, since Saddam had been thoroughly demonized and was therefore ripe to be taken out, what better than re-locate this base to Iraq, and then build even more there, the better to control the supply of all that oil. A pre-condition for this happy scenario would be that Saddam would have to be got rid of, and now he has been. Right now, the US is building fourteen bases in Iraq.

So anyone wanting to know why Iraq was invaded, would need to read little more than what the PNAC advocated in the interregnum between the two Bushes. And why the PNAC’s recommendations were implemented almost lock stock and barrel after 9/11, was because George W Bush, on coming to power, brought the PNAC neo-conservatives with him, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith. So when 9/11 conveniently happened, radically changing the climate of opinion overnight, it enabled the PNAC’s recommendations to become official government policy in the form of the National Security Strategy (NSS), better known as the Bush Doctrine.

What made it more imperative that Saddam be sent packing was that he was planning to sell all Iraq’s oil for euros, despite the dollar being the required medium of exchange for all oil traded on world markets. Saddam could not be allowed to do this, since other oil producers wanting to tweak the American eagle’s tail – like Russia and Venezuela – might be tempted to emulate Saddam, paving the way for the dollar to be knocked off its perch as the world’s official reserve currency, so reducing demand for the dollar so precipitously, its value might drop two thirds or more, thus reducing ordinary Americans to penury.

But Americans couldn’t be told this was why Iraq should be invaded because it would sound inordinately abstruse to probably most of them - doubtless irreversibly brain-damaged from having watched “American Idol” a few times too many - and it would sound…..well……. so sordid and self serving, thus puncturing Americans’ idea of themselves.

Everything had to be kept simple – and noble. So George Bush told his fellow Americans, and kept telling them over and over so many times that they believed him, that Saddam had helped plan 9/11, and that he had fearsome weapons that would kill Americans in their hearths and homes. By invading Iraq, Americans would not only put the execrable Saddam to the sword and destroy his fearsome weapons, they would, most importantly, bring freedom to the suffering people of Iraq.

* * *

“Why We Fight” shows the power of this simple message, for we see Americans on the street being asked why Iraq was invaded, and most (but not all) answer “Freedom”. Of course the opportunities for a documentary film-maker to distort facts are infinite. But while large swathes of the American public did see through the lies of George Bush, millions didn’t, and swallowed unquestioningly what he told them, thus providing the needed cover for him to order the attack on Iraq.

The film looks in depth at one of the gullible - a retired New York City fireman, whose son, also a fireman, had been killed on 9/11. The distraught father - who had been persuaded that Saddam was one of those behind 9/11, and desired revenge - wanted to give his son’s death some meaning. So he e mailed the Department of Defense, asking that his son’s name be inscribed on a bomb destined for use during the Iraq invasion. His request set off a flurry of inter–departmental e mails in the Pentagon.

Eventually he got a reply, saying what he asked would be done. After the bomb, named after the son, was dropped, the Pentagon e mailed the father again, apprising him of this - a message that gave him comfort.

But the father’s faith in his president was shattered some time later when, on television, he saw George Bush, while aggressively cross-questioned by a reporter at a news conference, reluctantly admit there was no evidence that Saddam helped plan 9/11. The father said that, had he known this, he would never have made his request to the Department of Defense. His disillusion with his president is almost palpable.

Millions of the formerly faithful have similarly been made to see their president as a liar. And George Bush is now paying the price.

A Junkyard Hurricane and Zipf's Law

2006-02-18T02:58:00.000-08:00

The discoverer of DNA, Francis Crick, believed life on earth came about from DNA seeded here by an alien civilization from a far-off planet. As Graham Hancock points out in his book “Supernatural” - subtitled “Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind” - Crick’s hypothesis was “………oddly similar in its essence to the cosmology of the ayahuasca-drinking Yagua Indians of the Peruvian Amazon, who told the French anthropologist Jean-Pierre Chaumeil: At the very beginning, before the birth of the earth, this earth here, our most distant ancestors lived on another earth…………..”.

Crick called his theory “panspermia”, and in case you think he was just another crazy Man-Of-Science you should know that the astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle held a similar panspermia theory. According to Graham Hancock “…………Hoyle envisaged the spores of life being carried randomly through space on great interstellar comets – rather than the intentional, intelligent dissemination favoured by Crick - but what both men had in common was the strong conviction that life was already too complex when it first appeared on earth to have evolved here. Accordingly they both believed that the first and most difficult steps – the steps from non-life to life that no scientist has ever been able to replicate – must have been taken somewhere else………………”

Our Men-Of-Science are now generally agreed that the story of earth began “………… around 4.5 billion years ago when the earth’s mass had formed as a planet orbiting the sun. For the next 600 million years it remained a molten lava fireball, but by 3.9 billion years ago cooling was sufficiently advanced to produce a thin outer crust of solid rock. It is supposed that around the same time pools of water enriched with minerals began to take shape beneath an atmosphere of simple gases. In these pools of primeval, prebiotic ‘soup’, many scientists believe that the first very primitive life-forms appeared suddenly and almost instantaneously as a result of the actual collision of molecules. Others, Crick among them, argue that ‘the odds against such instant life are beyond the astronomical – more likely than the assembly of a Boeing 707 by a hurricane in a junkyard’……………”

So then, the earth’s crust had formed 3.9 billion years ago, but just 100 million years after this – 3.8 billion years ago – there is much evidence, albeit secondary, that the earth had been colonized by bacterial life. But “…………this evidence becomes firm at 3.4 billion years ago, the date of the oldest fossilized bacteria so far discovered – still barely half a billion years after the earth’s first rocks had formed……………”

You should realize that while 100 million years, or even half a billion years, is a heck of a lot of time to little old you and me, it is nugatory in terms of evolutionary time. So for bacterial life to have evolved within so short a time is next to impossible – well, at least in the opinion of the likes of Francis Crick and Sir Fred Hoyle who knew a whole lot more science than little old you and me will ever know in our wildest dreams – know what I’m saying?

But in case you’re thinking: Why hell, what’s so complex ‘bout a li’l bitty bacteria, I’ll bet it can form faster than it takes me ter go take a crap, you should know that a bacteria is infinitely more complex than even the engine of your Humvee, because bacteria contain lots of protein molecules, each of which is made up of thousands of atoms.

As Crick explained: “…….Each protein is precisely made, with every atom in its correct place. Each type of protein forms an intricate three-dimensional structure, peculiar to itself, which allows it to carry out its catalytic or structural function. This three-dimensional structure is…………based on one or more ‘polypeptide chains’, as they are called…….(which the cell constructs) by joining together, end to end, a particular set of small molecules, the amino acids………..Surprisingly just twenty kinds of them (amino acids) are used to make proteins, and this set of twenty is exactly the same throughout nature………A protein is like a paragraph written in a twenty-letter language, the exact nature of the protein being determined by the exact order of the letters………Animals, plants, microorganisms and viruses all use the same set of twenty letters……..The set of twenty is so universal that its choice would appear to date back to very near the beginning of all living things………”

Well, if this doesn’t shake you up and make you want to go crap right now, I don’t know what will.

Hancock’s book gives a lot more of how complicated DNA is, sufficient to create the impression that for basic life to have evolved out of the primeval soup is, to put it mildly, improbable, especially when we consider that no Man-Of-Science has been able to create life in a laboratory.

As Hancock says in “Supernatural", “………….What bothered the statistician in Crick was the absolute improbability of even a single fully assembled protein made up of a long chain of amino acids emerging as a result of chance – no matter how nutritious the prebiotic soup or how many billions of years the ingredients were allowed to stew. Based on an average protein about 200 amino acids in length (others are much bigger), he calculated the odds of this happening as just one chance in a 1 followed by 260 zeros. To provide some sort of benchmark, all the atoms in the entire visible universe (not just our own galaxy) amount to a 1 followed by 80 zeros – quite a paltry number by comparison with the odds against the chance assembly of a single protein. How much less likely would it be, therefore, that life itself – which even at the bacterial level calls for complex cellular mechanisms and makes use of many proteins – could have got started through the chance collision of molecules?..............”

How, then, did evolution get off the ground? A good question indeed, since “………..there……is no evidence that any…….evolution took place anywhere on earth before the spread of the first DNA-based bacteria between about 3.9 billion and 3.4 billion years ago. The implications are obvious, but as an arch-rationalist and committed atheist it clearly pained Crick to admit that ‘the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have needed to be satisfied to get it going’……………”

Is it any wonder that Crick, in desperation, came up with his panspermia theory?

* * *

You didn’t know, did you, that most of our DNA seems superfluous, not appearing to do anything in particular. Well, I didn’t know this either until I read Graham Hancock’s “Supernatural” which tells us that the useful or coding part of DNA is involved with protein synthesis, and this coding part takes up anything between 3 and 10 percent. Therefore “………….the vast majority of DNA in our bodies does things we do not presently understand. All that we know for sure about these huge libraries of DNA – remember, we are speaking of between 90 and 97 per cent of the total – is that they contain immense amounts of information written in exactly the same language as the genetic code, but in this case not coding for the construction of proteins or any other recognised function. Some areas of such ‘non-coding text’ consist of long sequences of bases repeated over and over again, sometimes thousands of times, apparently uselessly…………”

Which brings me to Zipf’s Law, named, according to Hancock, after “……….the linguist George Zipf, who discovered it in 1939. He studied texts in many different languages and ranked the words in order of frequency……….”. What he found, regardless of the language, was that “……….a direct, exact, unvarying and utterly counter-intuitive mathematical relationship exists between the rank of a word and the actual frequency of occurrence of that word……….”

This means that in any book we read “............if the most common word in the book………appears 10,000 times, then………the tenth most common word…….will appear 1,000 times and the one hundredth most common word will appear just 100 times. The numbers will vary, obviously, from text to text dependent on overall length, but the exact mathematical proportions between rank and frequency will always turn out to be the same in any human language………….”.

What, you may ask, has this to do with DNA? Well, I’ll let Hancock explain “………..In the mid 1990s, researchers from Boston University and Harvard Medical School examined 37 DNA sequences containing at least 50,000 base pairs each, as well as two shorter sequences and one with 2.2 million base pairs. Where possible, they evaluated both coding and non-coding regions. They noticed that distinct patterns of three, four, five, six, seven and eight base pairs – comparable to individual ‘words’ – existed in all the sequences. This led them to apply two standard linguistic tests to the material. One of these was Zipf’s test, and following Zipf’s own method, the DNA ‘words’ were ranked in order of frequency and a histogram plotting the rank of each word against the actual number of times that it appeared in each ‘text’ was drawn up…….”

The results were startling, for “……….In every case where the coding regions were evaluated, they turned out not to obey Zipf’s Law. This is precisely as one would expect, since the coding regions are just codes, not languages – and are better thought of as templates for the construction of particular proteins………”

What about the non-coded or “junk” DNA? It transpired that “……….in every case where non-coding regions of DNA had been evaluated, they turned out to demonstrate a perfect Zipf Law linear plot…………”

Doesn’t this make you so excited, you want to get out your shotgun, go outside and blow holes in your neighbour’s water tank, huh? For the results of these tests clearly imply that non-coded DNA is actually an intelligent and structured language, like any human language, and so is conveying messages, since the raison d’etre of any human language is to convey messages.

* * *

What are the messages contained in the apparent language of our non-coded DNA, and who might be sending them? Who the sender is, is anyone’s guess, but the messages? Perhaps they come to us when we go into states of conciousness outside our normal everyday - the states of consciousness induced when we ingest hallucinogens like LSD or ayahuasca - for who is to say they don’t open our doors of perception at least a smidgin wider than is normal?

So it may not be mere coincidence that when the discoverer of DNA, Francis Crick, first had a vision of the DNA double helix – the one resembling two identical serpents wound around each other and facing head to tail – he was in an LSD-induced trance.

In fact many of those who’ve imbibed hallucinogens like ayahuasca or DMT have, according to Hancock “……….experienced intense visions featuring ‘threads of DNA’ and ‘spirals of DNA’………..”. And Hancock tells of “………..the American biologist who received detailed images of specific DNA sequences under the influence of ayahuasca………..”. And Hancock, himself, had his own “……….ayahuasca visions of ‘snakes that wind around each other like the DNA double helix’…………..”.

Hancock reports the experience of the anthropologist Michael Harner who, after drinking a large dose of ayahuasca during an indigenous ceremony in the Amazon “……….received a spectacular vision in which he saw dragon-like creatures that came to earth fleeing something, perhaps an enemy, ‘out in space’ after a journey that had lasted for ‘aeons’…………”

Harner reported that “………..The creatures showed me how they had created life on the planet in order to hide within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence. Before me, the magnificence of plant and animal creation and speciation – hundreds of millions of years of activity – took place on a scale and with a vividness impossible to imagine. I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside all forms of life, including man. They were the true masters of humanity and the entire planet, they told me. We humans were but the receptacles and servants of these creatures. For this reason they could speak to me from within myself. In retrospect one could say they were almost like DNA, although at that time, in 1961, I knew nothing of DNA………………..”

Compare this to the ayahuasca-induced experience of the Swiss anthropologist Jeremy Narby, who found himself “………surrounded by two gigantic boa constrictors that seemed fifty feet long. I was terrified. These enormous snakes are there, my eyes are closed and I see a spectacular world of brilliant lights, and in the middle of these hazy thoughts, the snakes start talking to me without words. They explain that I am just a human being…………”.

Were the quite similar visions of Francis Crick, Michael Harner, and Jeremy Narby merely the result of disturbed brain chemistry, or were they glimpses of a reality nice normal folks like you and me don’t have the capacity to see, unless we, too, partake of the forbidden brews or substances that take us to higher states of consciousness, opening our eyes to realities of the sort that were we to tell of them to our little friends, they would call the men in white coats to take us away?

For what it is worth, I take the side of Graham Hancock when he says: “……….It may be the case that hallucinations of the sort that convey veridical knowledge about DNA or about plants, or about how to cure a certain sickness, or about the nature of reality, are as effective a technology as bio-engineering and genetic manipulation for exploring the true potential of the legacy stored inside our cells. It may be, in other words, that the ancient teachers of mankind have been inside us all along but that we must enter altered states of consciousness in order to hear what they have to say………..”.

* * *

Giant reptilian lizard-like entities are common images in ancient etchings, carvings and tablets unearthed in Iraq and other areas of the middle east. In the view of another explorer of other-worldly phemomena, David Icke, these reptiles were the "gods" that mythologies and folklore throughout the world tell about.

These "gods" arrived from elsewhere in the solar system, and became the rulers. While they were here, they genetically manipulated and interbred with the earth's ape-like inhabitants, creating an elite hybrid species through which the "gods" would indirectly govern the earth after they left.

Icke says the distant ancestors of most of our kings, emperors, presidents and other similar figures of authority, were these ancient “gods”, so that the DNA of many, if not most of our rulers is partly reptilian. Icke also says these ancient lizard-like “gods” continue to manipulate events in the world to their benefit from a fourth dimension just outside ours.

Then there have been those many accounts where people report seeing some of our current rulers suddenly shape-shifting into lizard-like beings, then back again. The likes of George Bush senior, the Queen of England and her late mother, as well as many others of the powerful, have been observed similarly shape-shifting. And it has been proved that, for instance, the distant ancestors of the Queen of England were also the distant ancestors of the Bushes and the Gores. Investigations of the family lines of other powerful ruling families have shown similar descent from ancient kings and rulers.

David Icke says that while the current descendents of the lizard-like beings look like everyone else, what betrays them are their cold reptilian eyes. So if those in influential positions in government, like in the presidency or senate, have reptilian eyes, it bespeaks they are genetically part reptile.

Incidentally, long before I learned about all this, I had always been struck by how cold predatory and reptilian were the expressionless eyes of Al Gore and Hilary Clinton. Now that Hilary is running for president, pictures of her are here there and everywhere. Next time you see one, look at her eyes closely, and you’ll see what I mean.

Think about what Bill has had to go through all these years, waking up in the morning and seeing Hilary’s cold predatory reptilian eyes looking back at him across the pillow.

Can we wonder that he turned to Monica for comfort?