2007-09-09
Here is the paradox: You need a great team of people with diverse skills to perform a symphony well, but no team has ever written a great symphony! While cross-functional teams are key players in defining and implementing incremental innovation projects, cross-functional disruptive individuals tend to be key players in defining radical innovation projects.

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."

--Ken Kesey

"A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,
Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?
those curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground
and sea,
They are in the air, they are in you."

--Guess Who  Read More

2007-09-05
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.

The Law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common.
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

English folk poem, circa 1764


"It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison, and yet not free -
to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive,
compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national
state, or of some private interest within the nation, wants him to think,
feel and act.

The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under
constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own
initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a
victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes
himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people.
His servitude is strictly objective."

Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley, 1958  Read More

2007-08-31
"...To murder the state you need strong citizens who understand their rights, have honed their abilities and stocked their mental and physical arsenal, and have adopted the quiet determination and moral confidence that often appears as fearlessness, but is not.

"We might take a lesson from the growing Iraqi insurgency and the response of that nation nearly destroyed by our pretext-laden invasion and the American neo-Jacobin possession of that country..."

"How do the Iraqi insurgents do it? How are they defending themselves from the oppressive U.S. managed state in Baghdad? How are they killing it?

"They know what they don't want, and have made a personal commitment to resist it..."

"...All are qualified to resist. None are excluded.

"French-born composer and musician Nadia Boulanger, a major influence on American music in the 20th century, once said:

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

"Liberty" is also a concept George W. Bush favors. He said "liberty" fifteen times in his 2005 inaugural speech, second only to his 25 mentions of "freedom." Bush didn't specifically advocate the murder, or even the restraint, of the state. On the other hand, perhaps he did.

"The way ahead is clear. We should promote our Great Leader's love of liberty and resist, resist, resist!" --

June 15, 2005

Karen Kwiatkowski

[link]


If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of
civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson, 1816.

REPUBLIC vs. DEMOCRACY

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
In the Pledge of Allegiance we all pledge allegiance to our Republic, not to a democracy. "Republic" is the proper description of our government, not "democracy." I invite you to join me in raising public awareness regarding that distinction.

The distinction between our Republic and a democracy is not an idle one. It has great legal significance.  Read More

2007-08-28
In a recent television program, Phil Donahue spoke with swindled employees of Enron, World,com, and other criminal corporations. Many of the workers who had been fired, without severance pay, by these companies days after the senior executives had stolen millions, were still dazed. These were well-intentioned, hard-working people who had been completely savaged by corporate fat-cats. "What can we do?" they asked.

Well, certainly the first thing American workers must do is wake up to what the Bush regime is doing: fostering and allowing corporate crime to run rampant, destroying the life savings of hundreds of people.

We must be aware that the Bush regime is actually a military dictatorship which will inevitably lead to the total destruction of our civil liberties unless we make sure that doesn't happen.

It's easy to miss the unmistakable aspects of the "High Cabal's" dictatorship if we assume that tyranny in the United States will necessarily take the same form as in, say, Nazi Germany, the communist Soviet Union, Sadam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq, or other instances of despotism.

The United States has a long and glorious history of civil rights and some amount of governance by the will of the people. So the "High Cabal's" puppet Bush regime must start from a different historical position in its insane drive toward a police state. Daily, we see the Bush-led junta demolishing Constitutional liberties with impunity. We must recognize that the old forms of military dictatorship--with jackbooted storm troopers--have been replaced with new "war on terrorism" military control of civilians.

9/11 was an unconscionable act of terror and whether the Bush regime planned and carried out that operation is still an open question. I would not be surprised if the "High Cabal" perpetrates a second terrorist act within the next year--to create a pretext for suspending all Constitutional liberties in the hysteria that would inevitably ensue. It's quite possible that the Bush-led junta will create a Weimar Germany style financial crash to usher in a complete Nazi-like police state.

One of Dubya's appointees to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission told a Detroit crowd in July 2002 that America could "forget about civil rights" if there was another terrorist attack on the United States by "the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Center."

What the Bush regime is doing is so tyrannical that we must begin immediately to act as a people to stop its deliberate destruction of our nation.

===

The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012
CHARLES J. DUNLAP, JR.

From Parameters, Winter 1992-93, pp. 2-20.


The letter that follows takes us on a darkly imagined excursion into the future. A military coup has taken place in the United States--the year is 2012--and General Thomas E. T. Brutus, Commander-in-Chief of the Unified Armed Forces of the United States, now occupies the White House as permanent Military Plenipotentiary.

His position has been ratified by a national referendum, though scattered disorders still prevail and arrests for acts of sedition are underway. A senior retired officer of the Unified Armed Forces, known here simply as Prisoner 222305759, is one of those arrested, having been convicted by court-martial for opposing the coup. Prior to his execution, he is able to smuggle out of prison a letter to an old War College classmate discussing the "Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012."

In it, he argues that the coup was the outgrowth of trends visible as far back as 1992. These trends were the massive diversion of military forces to civilian uses, the monolithic unification of the armed forces, and the insularity of the military community. His letter survives and is here presented verbatim.

It goes without saying (I hope) that the coup scenario above is purely a literary device intended to dramatize my concern over certain contemporary developments affecting the armed forces, and is emphatically not a prediction. -- The Author  Read More

2007-08-24
"Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." - President Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913)
-
During the summer and fall of 1917, Wilson tolerated and occasionally encouraged ferocious attacks on dissenters of every stripe, with the brunt of the public's wrath falling on German-Americans. Wilson did not seem to realize that his denunciations of the German government added fuel to these rancorous flames. Senator La Follette had observed that the president's distinction between the Berlin "autocracy" and its people did not make sense. Others, such as the hugely popular evangelist Billy Sunday, were even more blunt: "All this talk about not fighting the German people is a lot of bunk," Billy said.

At times, in his calls for all-out war, the president portrayed every German-American as a potential enemy. In his June 14 Flag Day address, he accused "the military masters of Germany" of sowing "unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators." Worse, these persons "seek to undermine the Government with false professions of loyalty to its principles."
-

"But from another perspective and utilizing a different analysis, the motives are not irrational at all. When one considers how these unending wars and devastations affect the primary powers that drive them -- and that benefit from them -- they tragically make all too much sense, even if that "sense" is of a kind that some of us find contemptible and entirely loathsome. Once again, I offer Robert Higgs' comments on this issue. I think the title of my earlier post admirably conveys the point, "Chaos, War, Murder and Destruction Are What They Want." Higgs:

"As a general rule for understanding public policies, I insist that there are no persistent "failed" policies. Policies that do not achieve their desired outcomes for the actual powers-that-be are quickly changed. If you want to know why the U.S. policies have been what they have been for the past sixty years, you need only comply with that invaluable rule of inquiry in politics: follow the money..."

[link]

If you want to read one altogether possible and nightmarish scenario of what might happen if we attacked Iran, I suggest this earlier piece: Unleashing Armageddon: What Then? As I explain, "What then?" is the question that neither the Bush administration nor its most vehement defenders considered with regard to Iraq, or that they appear to be thinking about in connection with Iran. Since the consequences may well be catastrophic, we ought to be talking about them now, not when it is too late -- and consider whether that is a risk we truly care to take.

Unleashing Armageddon: What then?  Read More

2007-08-19
nirvana
One entry found for nirvana.

Main Entry: nir·va·na
Pronunciation: nir-'vä-n&, (")n&r-
Function: noun
Usage: often capitalized
Etymology: Sanskrit nirvAna, literally, act of extinguishing, from nis- out + vAti it blows -- more at WIND
1 : the final beatitude that transcends suffering, karma, and samsara and is sought especially in Buddhism through the extinction of desire and individual consciousness
2 a : a place or state of oblivion to care, pain, or external reality; also : BLISS, HEAVEN b : a goal hoped for but apparently unattainable : DREAM
- nir·van·ic /-'vä-nik, -'va-/ adjective

[link]

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Got the following from msnbc who got it from newsweek who got it from someone else who got it...

Do you get it? My question to these pimps is why is America not revolting though America is revolting (As in; "Yuck are you revolting or what!?") in more ways than one!

I say: Sue the damned airports! Stupid Americanos! Mui Estupido! Well, should say stupid people of the world allowing these bastards to do this. The Marcabian invasion force is alive and well and everything is going to schedule on planet Earth. And Rowling is writing crime novels. All is good...

Smile … Or Else
‘Behavior Detection Officers’ are now watching passengers’ facial expressions for signs of danger. It’s a new level of absurdity for America.

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Patti Davis
Special to Newsweek
Updated: 12:40 p.m. ET Aug 16, 2007  Read More

2007-08-16
The War Ahead And The Way Ahead

by Charles K. Bartles, Lester W. Grau and Jacob W. Kipp
FMSO analysts

War is fought on the strategic, operational and tactical level. Although nuclear planning often dominates the military professional’s view of the strategic level of war, the strategic level of war is primarily concerned with how the entire nation supports the war and handles the war’s impact on foreign relations, domestic politics, economics, education, transport, trade, banking and taxation. The operational level of war is concerned with the management of campaigns and, in the United States Armed Forces, is conducted by echelons above Corps. The tactical level of war, in the view of the United States Armed Forces, is the business of divisions and below. As the US Army goes through transformation, there is no apparent move to adjust these levels or definitions to fit the Units of Action and Units of Employment structure.

Pinning the level of war on force size reflects the emphasis of force-on-force combat with operational planning focusing the synchronized application of combat power to break enemy formations. Since the events of 9/11, the US military has fought an inherently more complex conflict in disparate theaters against a range of opponents which seldom resemble the conventional armies of the industrial era. Fighting terrorism now means dealing with insurgencies. In these conflicts, the political dimension takes on greater import and the military response has to be shaped to fit the desired political outcome in regions that are quite distinct and profoundly different culturally from the United States and the modern West.  Read More

2007-08-16
southern style. today was 102 degrees. one puppy sick from heat exaustion the rest doing ok. take care of your animals, people, they suffer worse than we do in the heat.  Read More

2007-08-04
Despite the absence of any threat to Iran’s Jews, the Israeli media recently reported that the Israeli government has been trying to find new ways to entice Iranian Jews to Israel. The Ma’ariv newspaper pointed out that previous schemes had found few takers. There was, noted the report, “a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian Jews to leave”. According to the New York-based Forward newspaper, a campaign to convince Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel caused only 152 out of these 25,000 Jews to leave Iran between October 2005 and September 2006, and most of them were said to have emigrated for economic reasons, not political ones.  Read More