Tritorch Technologies - Forget balance, aim for truth and correct your steering when needed. Listen to all, follow none.

a fortiori

Sound and Fury

Lessons Learned

Metronome

Dashboard Security Subversion Bio-Security Subversion Idealogical Subversion Masters of War Might is Rarely Right Broken Ocean Kingdom of Crime Force Dynamics Crisis of Realization Strike at the Root Apathy Tragedy Logical Fallacies Bias Spectrum Non-Libertarian FAQ The Anti-Economy Manifest Subversion or Those You Can't Criticize Cyclical Consumption Mind Contamination Rated G Forgotten Obligation What Really Happened		Balance	Wordplay
		youtube comment: The world is full of people in immediate distress. We need to care for our brothers and sisters even if that means redistributing our own personal wealth. Jesus said to give to those who ask without expecting repayment. If that doesn't imply wealth redistribution I don't know what does. The point is that Christians are supposed to focus on spiritual things, not mammon. So economic models shouldn't be as important to us as the immediate concerns of fairness and justice and feeding the mouths with little or no means to feed themselves. The seventh edition of Grimms' fairy tales, source of Snow White, was published in 1857. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865. Collodi's Pinocchio was published in 1883. Kipling's The Jungle Book was published in 1894. If these works had been subject to Disney's hypocritical 100 year copyright prison, Disney would have had to pay for the privilege of making its feature films based on them, to say nothing of the corresponding merchandising. One wonders whether Snow White or Pinocchio would have been made at all. These are the works on which Disney built its empire, and it was able to use them because they were not subject to preposterous copyright claims. Under the terms that were in effect when Disney's version of Snow White was made, the film, its score, and all the characters and visuals associated with it, ought to have entered public domain DECADES ago. This is the point. Disney drinks deep from the well of public domain but contrives to prevent that well ever from being replenished. The easiest way to corporation is to run one. Just take a look at what the IBM's executives are doing to IBM. Or take a look at how executives across Silicon Valley have conspired together to lower employee wages. Many of these CEOs sit on each others boards and vote themselves higher pay at the expense of their workers and shareholders. Every year their pay packages balloon a little more, with each new high watermark in compensation raising the yachts of all executives (because in CEO land pay is based on what the other CEOs get) while the boat-less employees get left behind decade after decade. The corporate controlled media then jumps in and trumpets how valuable the executives are based on their completely engineered salaries (because gosh darn it, if the CEOs weren't worth that much they wouldn't be getting paid that much) and people like Jim Cramer jump to their defense like a loaded spring when those stories are challenged for being the propaganda they are. In 1950 CEOs made 20-1 the average worker. In 1980 it was 42-1. In 2000 it was 120-1. In 2014 it is 204-1. This did not happen by happy accident. -jw Introductory Note 1, 2, Introductory Note 3, 4, 5, 6 7 If we do not learn how to conserve our resources and live in harmony with nature and one another, we are going to fully decimate the delicate ecology of our home and will kill every living thing on it. This means you. This means your children. This means that angel that makes you weak at the knees when they look you in the eye. This means your family. This means your friends. This means you and every single person you hold dear dying together of starvation and disease while choking to death on poisoned air and contaminated water. It's already begun. Clean water is getting scarcer, the air is getting dirtier, soil is eroding, fish and animal populations are being decimated, life support systems are in decline. This isn't a game. Set aside your politics, prejudices, and predispositions and listen: You are the product of 3.8 billion years of slow and studious evolution. The complexity of your design is matched by nothing else in the known universe. You are a genuine miracle of science and/or God and you owe your very existence to them and this astonishing world you inhabit. I implore you, start acting like it. But if you take nothing else away from what you find here, at least take this: The earth and our survival are interlinked. Our planet can take care of us, only if we take care of our planet. By polluting it, we pollute ourselves. By hurting it we hurt ourselves. By killing it, we will kill ourselves. "Only after the last tree has been cut down, the last river poisoned, the last clear sky blackened, the last animal hunted, and the last fish caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." "There is enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed." ______________ Secondly, it is imperative that you are aware that there is a very distinct separation between your country and your government. Your awareness of this distinction is so important because it is very easy to confuse one for the other, and your government will take every opportunity to exploit this confusion in order to grant itself immunity from civilian oversight and increase its power. So how does this work and why would the government want to do this? Well government always strives for more power and doesn't want to be held to account for anything - that's just the nature of government - and if they can present themselves as being the embodiment of the country they will be able to contort any criticism directed at them into a criticism of the country itself. Such contortions then reflect the culpability for the criticism from the government back onto the individual levying it - because suddenly there's an unpatriotic traitor in our midst criticizing our country - and this effectively shields that government from civilian oversight and control while destroying the freedom of the individual. A government without oversight then just becomes more and more powerful, and the more powerful they become the less liberty the individual has. Now mix in some demagoguery and appeals to patriotism Third Reich style, and watch democracy, the rule of law, and self-determination die before your eyes. How many times do you hear it? It goes on all day long. Everyone knows everything And no one's ever wrong. ...Until later. The important thing is to just be aware that your government is trying to achieve this outcome because only when you're aware of something are you able to guard against it. Any time someone criticizes a government action (going to war, chipping away at personal liberty, etc) the government will brand that person as unpatrotic and will label them a security threat. This happened over and over again during both the Iraq and Vietnam Wars - when critique and criticism were needed the most - and this branding effort is subversive, pernicious, and when left unchecked, fatal to both freedom and democracy. Never confuse criticism for government action with criticism for the country itself no matter how you personally feel about that criticism. About that government power - a common misconception regarding the US government is that it is not the case that they start with total power and authority and the Constitution then subtracts from those powers. Under the Constitutional principle of Enumerated Powers and despite common wisdom, the government actually starts with zero power. Powers are then granted (Enumerated) by the constitution. This means that our natural rights such as the right to privacy or the right to free speech do not need to be explicitly granted to the populace - we have them by default. (The bill of rights is - quite literally - redundant and completely unnecessary.) What it does mean is that the government cannot violate those rights unless the ability to do so is explicitly granted by the Constitution - which in those cases it is not. With regard to the fourth (search and seizure) and fifth (due process) amendments - when it comes to an individual, there needs to be a genuine compelling reason to force him or her to disclose any information to the government. Conversely when it comes to the government, there needs to be a genuine compelling reason to allow any secrecy of their actions from the public. Here's the basic premise in the founding of the enlightenment model of the US: Rights were given to you by your creator, not by your government. Your government didn't give them to you so, they can't take them away. Furthermore the 9th amendment to the constitution makes these guarantees explicit. If any person in the government tries to take them away anyway, despite lacking any authority to do so, they are traitors to the citizens and must be treated as such. Our government can only legitimately have and hold power with our consent. As citizens it is our job to hold our government to account for their actions and ensure that they are working for our interests and not their own. We cannot sit back, relax, and expect the government to police itself, any more than we could give a fox the keys to the hen house and expect the chickens to be in good hands, and most importantly, we cannot allow them to brand our critique, enforcement efforts, and whistle blowing as unpatriotic and a betrayal of our country in an effort to stop them - the opposite is true. Despite what the government wants badly for you to believe, you do not serve them. They serve you. ______________ At the close of the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787, as Benjamin Franklin left the hall in Philadelphia, he was asked, “What kind of government have you given us, Dr. Franklin?” He replied: "A republic, if you can keep it." It is, was, and will always be our job to keep the government in check. If we do not, then we will end up back at square one and become slaves once again. No one is going to come to our rescue... except ourselves. So with that in mind, if in coming here you've never heard of the following: Asset Forfeiture, NSLs, ALEC, AIPAC, TPP FISA Courts, Congressional Insider Trading Judicial Standing, Deferred Prosecution Parallel Construction, Stingray Devices EO 12333, XKeyscore, COINTELPRO Pentagon Papers, Gary Webb Operation Mockingbird Operation Northwoods Operation Paperclip Project Monarch FASAB 56 MKUltra Or worse, you've heard of them but can't be bothered to care, then like it or not, you are one reason among many that we are on a one-way flight straight to Hell. To the corporations and their puppet politicians, your ignorance and apathy are worth more than all the slaves in China. Because it is your indifference that enables these bottom feeding cockroaches to thrive in the dark and rob you of your wealth and liberty. This is not political, it's universal. Both of the puppet parties you think you get to choose from every two years are completely infected by blanket webs of corruption and have long ago mortgaged their allegiance to their corporate masters. And what these leeches need more than anything to survive and thrive is a stupid, apathetic populace with red tags on their ears who will lap at their feet and believe every lie they feed them, (1984) or worse, are too busy staring at their smart phones to even care that they're being lied to. (Brave New World) The natural state of humanity is to slide into slavery and conflict. Our American bulwark against that decay was built by the blood, sweat, tears, hard work, and personal sacrifice of countless millions. These people gave everything to build the pillars of justice that protect and sustain you, and it is your responsibility to give something back and sacrifice a little in order to maintain those pillars and pass them on to the next generation. Anything less is a betrayal to those who broke their back to build the structure you are now standing on. So put down your Facebook and start paying attention to the things going on around you before that structure crumbles to nothing beneath your feet and you become a slave once again. Remember, a nation of sheep breeds a government of wolves and you get more of what you tolerate. So turn off your Goddamn TV, turn on your mind, and get out there and stop tolerating it before you wake up one morning robbed of your remaining liberty and you no longer have a choice. Someone far wiser than I once pointed out that: 'Power without oversight is the fastest route out of a democracy'. Your responsibility then, is to render that oversight. Joseph de Maistre said: 'Every citizenry has the government they deserve...' -jw There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. -Elie Wiesel The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. -Plato ______________ (When i say 'the darkness' here i actually mean 'the unknown' or 'ignorance', but neither are as poetic so i use darkness instead.) Superstition sprang from a sensible place: fear of the dark. Those who are afraid and superstitious of the dark do not venture out into it to get eaten by wolves. Those that do not get eaten by wolves pass their genes and superstition on to the next generation. Over time superstition begins to take on a life of its own: religion. Religion sprang from darkness - the fear of man... After all, what's darker than death? "Maybe one day we'll conquer our lizard brains and consign religion to the history books once and for all and then we can stick a giant flag pole in the ground and consider ourselves truly intelligent. Until then it's just another destructive hobby to keep us dancing while we figure out this whole evolved-apes thing." "Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe." -Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.E.) To surrender to ignorance and call it god is always premature, and it remains premature today. We have now mastered the creation of light - it is time to leave man's religion behind in the darkness where it belongs - and embrace our spirituality instead. -jw ______________ Author's Note: This was written from a very dark place during a very dark time in my life. I would take this down, but I think there is some truth here worth considering, and I've never liked censoring speech, and doubly so when it comes from an honest place, no matter how dark that place may be... With that in mind: brace yourself, dear reader. ______________________ The spirit of the quote from Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. applies to God as well, and no amount of cognitive dissonance is going to change that. To the religious visitors: if your lore is true and an all knowing, all powerful, alpha and omega God does indeed exist, He alone is - by his very nature - not only the source of all evil, suffering, starvation, pestilence, violence, hate, fear, and dread, but He is also culpable for doing nothing to stop these horrors when He could end them all with the wave of his hand. Because He is both the source of the sin and also allows the sin to propagate and destroy the lives of the innocent, every sin committed becomes his sin. Every starving child, every abused wife, every shattered life is a crime he has committed. Response: You just don't get it at all. God gave us autonomy to live our lives and make our own choices. If he interfered it would defeat the whole purpose. Ah, but God is all knowing is He not? Which means He knew exactly how this Divine Comedy would play out. He knew about the starving children who weep alone in the night. Knew the horrors of abuse, rape, and neglect in store for us. Knew that we would suffer and bleed and die beneath the blue-prints He laid before us. God knew all along that Adam and Eve were never going to be able to stay in Eden. Knew that they would be tempted and would ultimately succumb to the desires He instilled in them. He gave them heaven knowing all along that they would fall prey to the trap he set for them, that paradise would be lost, that they would be thrust alone, afraid, naked, and vulnerable into the wilderness. He set us loose upon the world knowing in advanced every misery each tick of the clock would bring. Eve was an innocent child who acted upon an emotion she didn't choose to have, didn't understand, and had no experience managing. When she inevitably fell prey to the urge of eating that apple (an outcome God knew about in advance) her choice unjustly affected both her, her husband, and all of her descendants. If I were to knowingly put a razorblade in front of an toddler, who would be to blame for the inevitable consequences? Me, who put the blade there knowing exactly what would happen, or the toddler who saw something shiny and picked it up? What if after I set it down I allowed a nearby evil person to encourage the little one to pick it up? What if when the baby did so, I then not only blamed the baby for the consequences, but also damned all of humanity for the baby's poor choice? There is a name for those who would do such a thing. A name for one who would give a taste of paradise only to rip it away when a test that couldn't be passed wasn't. A name for those who set others up to fail in the most pain ridden and gruesome ways: sadists. Response: How DARE you call GOD a sadist! I'm done with this! Let me remind you, God is omnipotent. He created Satan, Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and every other serial killer you've ever heard of in his image, knowing full well the pain they would inflict on others and their families. He knew in advance everything they would do with their agency, but that knowing didn't stop him from creating and unleashing them to prey on us. He created every torment of mankind, every disease, every cause of suffering. He created the kill-to-eat necessity that rules the animal kingdom, along with all the wretched laws of nature--pain, hunger, disease, fear, hatred, envy, greed--and then sat back and watched the carnage unfold exactly as he designed it to unfold. God could have made the universe behave any way he wanted. If he truly needed to test us he could have done so in ways that wouldn't have required inflicting pain and suffering on his children, but he chose not to. Calling him a monster is too kind. I am agnostic. I don't know nor claim to know whether God exists. But if one does He is not worthy of our worship and love, but rather our derision and condemnation because He alone is responsible for the train wreck of pain and suffering this world was destined to become. If God came down tomorrow and gave me irrefutable proof of His existence, far from getting on my knees and begging forgiveness for my sins, I instead would stand on my own two feet and demand the same from Him. Get off your knees and do the same. -jw ______________ And finally, before we part and you continue on your journey there is one last point to mention and it is this: despite near universal misconception, science has no opinion on whether God exists or not. Science strives to understand the world, and in doing so can only incorporate data, evidence, and theory which it can study, observe, or explain directly. As for God we have yet to see any direct evidence of the existence of one that can't be explained by other observations and experiments but if were to find irrefutable evidence of one, science would simply incorporate the existence of a creator into its models and move on with no hurt feelings. "The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice." - unknown If you consider yourself a Christian then the most important thing is sacrifice. Sacrifice your time and treasure for others and you will gain something far greater than the cost of both combined. What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? God has given you an exceedingly minute moment on this earth to prove yourself through your good deeds, and in doing so gain everlasting life in heaven. Your time here is a mere speck on the endless horizon of eternity, and by using that precious time to focus on earthly possessions instead of helping others you are making an incredibly bad bargain with what you would stand to gain otherwise. if only you would sacrifice your terrestrial wealth and comfort in the pursuit following in Christ's footsteps and doing all you can to serve and help those less fortunate. Every Sunday millions and millions of upper middle class American citizens put on expensive dress clothes and load themselves into their SUVs and drive past homeless shelters, orphanages, prisons, missions, and halfway houses on their way to a very expensive and luxurious church, where somebody tells them how to be more like Jesus. Like Jesus your only reason for being here is to serve and set good examples for others in order to prove your worth to God. By desgin, the byproduct of such a pursuit clears a path toward heaven on earth as others pay your good deeds forward, causing your kindness to propagate through society. By serving others you serve God because you bring heaven to earth and make life brighter for all of His children. Jesus showed you this path when he devoted His life and death to the benefit of others. As a Christian all you have to do is follow that path here and it will guide you to everlasting life up there. Do not make the mistake of trading heaven for earth. The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. I know, I know: most of you are eagerly awaiting the moment you can whip out your bibles and point out countless scriptures which you will argue justify your actions, but we both know you're fooling yourselves (and playing a very reckless game with eternity while you're at it). Going to church makes you a Christian no more than going to a garage makes you a car. You claim to be Christian and this makes you a disciple of Christ which means you are bound to follow in His footsteps and spread His examples and teachings to others (John 13:1-17). If you are not doing so then you either fundamentally misunderstand what it means to be Christian (unlikely because it couldn't be more obvious - but if so the good news is after reading this the path will be clear to you), or you are merely pretending to follow Him because it benefits you in some way, and how heartbreaking that must be for Him. God will reward each of us for what we have done. The question I must put to you dear reader, is what could be more fulfilling in life than filling the stomachs of those suffering in starvation? Or passing out blankets to those who are freezing? Or building houses for those without shelter? Surely you must realize that the rewards for following in His footsteps will fill you with the light of heaven, and in time you will come to learn that what you now foolishly consider to be sacrifice (surrendering your time and treasure for the betterment of others) is no sacrifice at all, but rather an elixir of salvation that reaches to the heart of your soul both here on earth and in heaven. What is a life well spent? You work hard for your money and Friday has come so you go to the movies and pluck some of that money down on a ticket for the latest serial killer thriller. You grab your popcorn and soda and snuggle yourself in your seat in anxious anticipation of the gruesome hatred that awaits you. On Sunday you will go to church and learn about Christ, but right now it's Friday and you are going to be entertained. A Man sits next to you. He seems to radiate warmth and compassion and somehow you instantly feel at peace. You look over and see the sad kindness on His face and tears of shame start streaming down your cheek. Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. How much time do you think Jesus would spend watching sex, violence, and hatred on the television? Would the notion excite Him or break His heart? If he dropped in for a visit while you were watching that serial killer thriller what do you think The Prince of Peace would say about allowing yourself to be entertained by violence, and where that path might lead? Might He suggest better ways to spend your spare time and money? Hands that help are better than lips that pray. It should not be possible for a church to exist in a community while at the same time someone seeking nourishment is going hungry in that community. So turn off all the violence, murder, and hatred emanating out of your TV that would make Jesus weep if he were sitting with you while you were enjoying it, and get out there and do good works. What are you here for? -jw ______________ When I was five I saw Nightmare on Elm Street and from that moment on my entire world got darker. It was poison to my consciousness, and it had no business being in a five year old's head. As a society we are losing our grip on what is appropriate for developing minds. There's a link to the left of this introductory note titled, "Mind Contamination Rated G". It will take you to the torture scene from Cars 2, a movie that inexplicably got a "G" rating from the MPAA. Have a look and come back to me. Imagine a newborn child's mind as a white dry erase board. It starts out empty and as time passes slowly gets filled by inputs from their senses. Everything the child sees, hears, smells, or touches makes a new mark on the board. Because the child is a blank slate each of these early marks hold a far larger significance than the ones that will come much later in life. Imagine those first marks as little seeds that will grow and shape the child's mind: their thoughts, ideas, belief systems, personality, and mental health. Now ask yourself, what kinds of marks would we want to fill that white board up with? Things like: Love, empathy, gratefulness, kindness, honor, science? Or Nightmare on Elm Street and nightmarish torture scenes? What kind of individuals do you think each one of those categories would produce? As a society, what kind of individuals do we want to produce? Guys, I implore you, this madness has to end. Let's have no more childhoods warped, twisted, and brimming with fear. Let's have no more children afraid of the dark because of a movie or show they watched (my son is 4 and has no fear of it at all). A blind person cannot see anything in their dreams. Even though their brains are wired for sight, without actual inputs from the world putting vision marks on their white boards, their minds cannot create what it means to see without experiencing it for themselves and so vision remains alien to them. Our children's minds work the same way - without the proper ingredients they will not be able to envision horrors like Freddy Kruger on their own - so for God's sake keep the violence and horror away and fill them with the light of reason instead. And for please start thinking for yourself. Just because something has a "G" rating doesn't mean it's appropriate for your child. You're not a sheep so don't let them lead you around by the nose emptying your pockets while filling your children's head up with garbage because that's what everyone else is doing. Be brave! Make your own decisions even if it means you have to stray from the herd. Hell, ESPECIALLY if it means you have to stray from the herd. Don't follow the sheep down the toilet, make your own path. -jw ______________ This page is interactive - clicking quotes may reveal hidden messages. ______________ Pictures There are pictures in my closet which spend most of their time in darkness - behind closed doors in small rooms with no windows. They are pieces of history, fighting the currents of time. One day I will open that closet and the past will come alive. My father has thousands of photos. Not much manages to escape his camera. In his home there are shelves and bookcases full of snapshots and fridges full of un-developed film. There are scanners and printers and posters. There are negatives and slides which fill boxes stacked to the ceiling in his garage. There is history captured in the net of his lens which stretches on for decades. There is time brought to a halt. Time mastered by my father. We sail the river of time and some might say our actions determine our destinations. Others might claim there is no destination. I've learned from my father that either way, it's important to remember where we've been. And so I will keep my pictures safe in my closet, and I will visit them from time to time. And I will steer my ship as best I can with the knowledge that all the good times are only a doorknob away. And I will mark my progress through the lens of my father's camera. -jw Time is the Tide And Death is the Ride And All Else in Between Is a Gabmle and a Dream Or Rather: Death, Destruction, War, Disease: Not Even the Riled Could Save Your Child Not Even the Righteous Could Put You at Ease Time flows like a river and history repeats... Did you know that our taxes don't go toward paying down the national debt at all? They merely pay the minimun balance interest payment on our government's credit card. Did you know the TSA (DHS, really) is launching new guidlines on biometric survelance on transit: if you use any sort of mass transit, trains, planes, or busses: Your face and your DNA will soon be evaluated. What shall we do to stop this? Our fouding father's said, We've given you a republic... If you can keep it. Silence, apathy, and compliance were what our founding father's feared most. (Only weeks after they slaughtered all the indigenous Indian tribes via some or the most horrifying means available a the time, (some of which invoved smallpox blankets), some of those same tribes which helped them survived those very first cold and treaturous winters by provding them with warm animal clothing before teaching them how to grow crops in the warmer weather to feed the families). Let us prove their fears wrong by NOT being complient, NOT being silent, and by taking back control by righteous and fearsome means. (Even the angels blead for GOD.) They live to divide and conquer us in order to transform us into their chattel, what follows are guides I hope will enlighten and empower us to defend and overcome their 'us vs them' tribalistic hatred fuled weapons. ______________ The tragedy of war is that the young men and women die fighting each other - rather than their real enemies back home in their capitals. -Edward Abbey ______________ Racism and bigotry are a toxic mixture of hatred and ignorance. They never build, they only destroy. Treat them accordingly. I don't care if you're black, white, straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, short, tall, fat, skinny, rich or poor. If you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you. And even if you aren't nice to me, I'll try to do my best to get to know you so we can clear up that misunderstanding. 'Due Process' exists for a very good reason: it is a bulwark against tyranny and slavery. It is the culmination of countless hard lessons learned throughout history. Asset Forfeiture guts it. Incentivized Asset Forfeiture pulverizes it. Guns are not toys, they are designed to kill. Treat them with disdain and dread the day you will ever need to use one. This should be the philosophy for all weapons: Arm the torpedoes Mr. Worf. But let's hope we don't have to use them. ______________ Power is always dangerous, it attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ______________ "Justice" is merely a middle class illusion. The rich know better, the poor know better: each from opposite directions. Justice may be blind, but that only makes her easier to, well... rob blind. ______________ If the COVID panic has shown us anything, it's that when fear comes in the front door - common sense runs out the back door. ______________ Many people I encounter are so brainwashed by media that they can't see two inches in front of their noses, and if you ever challenge them on the propaganda they find there, like Pavlov's dog they will call you a conspiracy theorist. They will then turn up their nose and walk away with a heightened sense of superiority. The term "conspiracy theory" is remarkably adept at turning off all critical thinking like a light switch in a large portion of the people I have personally met… Conditioning the public to react this way has to have been one of the most effective PSYOPs ever pushed onto the general population. It is equal parts diabolic and brilliant. -jw ______________ Many CEOs sit on each others boards and vote themselves higher pay at the expense of their workers and shareholders. Every year their pay packages balloon a little more, with each new high watermark in compensation raising the yachts of all executives (because in CEO land, pay is based on what the other CEOs get) while the boat-less employees get left behind decade after decade. The corporate controlled media then jumps in and trumpets how valuable the executives are based on their completely engineered salaries (because gosh darn it, if the CEOs weren't worth that much they wouldn't be getting paid that much) and people like Jim Cramer jump to their defense like a loaded spring when those stories are challenged for being the propaganda they are. In 1950 CEOs made 20-1 the average worker. In 1980 it was 42-1. In 2000 it was 120-1. In 2014 it is 204-1. This did not happen by happy accident. -jw ______________ Asset Forfeiture is in total violation of the Fifth Amendment which states that the government cannot take property without due process, ever. Most think that robbing someone under the color law this way is a violation of the Fourth Amendment—it’s not. The Fourth was 100% gutted the moment they saddled it with the ‘unreasonable’ clause. Subjectivity is anathema to the entire point and purpose of a right. If the lawyers had challenged Asset Forfeiture on Fifth Amendment grounds instead of Fourth from the outset, a strong case can be made that Asset Forfeiture as law would likely have never made it very far passed the first government theft. Hey, Law Enforcement Officers: when you engage in Asset Forfeiture you are breaking your oath to defend and uphold the constitution. You are also stealing from a fellow human being, and what's worse, you are stealing under the color of law, which makes you lower and more base than the criminals you are fighting. -jw ______________ It occurs to me that this whole game of characterizing people who are against mandatory vaccinations - and the vast erosion of personal liberty that entails - as, "anti-safety" or "wanna kill grandma", is really something that should be met head on. I completely reject the notion that my being against getting injected with something against my will makes me a bad person. I am pro liberty and freedom. Those who wish to violate my bodily sovereignty are anti-American, because they are against the core principles that the country is supposed to stand for - a constitutional republic, a free and open society with due process and the rule of law, a humble inward looking government constrained by checks and balances, a bulwark justice system more than strong enough to keep the tireless wolves of government and corporate tyranny at bay... But those who would force this upon us... They corrupt all of that by defending the indefensible all the while hiding behind a faux cloak of "for the greater good", which is anything but. The father of lies has inverted everything and it is far past time we stopped complying with that predatory viper's crocodile tear demands. ______________ Hmmm... so this coronavirus with a 99% percent survival rate can only be defeated by: The consolidation of state and corporate power The strip-mining of personal liberties The mandating of masks, social distancing, and stay at home orders The outlawing of criticism of public health officials, big pharma, and uncensored speech The deification of science, and the persecution of anyone debating or questioning it The proliferation of contact tracing digging into the communications, associations, and actions of all Americans The destruction of the world’s economy, supply chains, and work ethic And the repeated forced injections of untested gene expression modifying concoctions into the veins of every person on the planet? The hell with it, I'll put up with the virus, thanks. ______________ Voting Republican is like voting for a devil wearing a wig with a fake mustache. Voting Democrat is like voting for a devil wearing a hat with cheap lipstick. Both parties are puppets, held up by the same guy. One in each hand. And that guy plays America like a fiddle. Raison d'etre: The human mind - and by extension human society - houses a constant struggle between reason and negative emotion. Between the impulse to build and the urge to destroy. Between objective judgement and mindless conviction. Between light and darkness. Reason is difficult and requires training and discipline, but it can conquer hunger and poverty, neglect and fear, bias and bigotry, hatred and ignorance, materialism and greed. Reason is enlightenment. Negative emotion is often the natural feral state of our minds and we must learn to conquer it or it will conquer us. If reason is Einstein's Theory of Relativity, negative emotion is Reality TV. If reason is the Constitution of the United States, negative emotion is the manipulative gossip tabloids at the supermarket checkout counter. If reason is empathy and acceptance, negative emotion is racism and bigotry. If reason is peace and prosperity, negative emotion is war and chaos. Which end of the spectrum will you strive to achieve? -jw ______________ As far as i'm concerned patriotism has only one useful connotation: Loyalty to your fellow human beings. This means that you treat others with respect and that you do not exploit them. To all you vulture capitalists who ship your jobs to factories abroad in order to access slave labor from impoverished souls while leveraging their lax environmental laws so you can offload the cost and consequences of your pernicious externalities onto them: YOU are traitors. Forget borders, race, creed, gender, or color: we are all one people, and those who would knowingly and maliciously exploit our ignorance or desperation for personal profit are traitors to humanity. That is the true nature of patriotism: it transcends the petty trappings of tribalism. It is not blind allegiance to your imaginary state, but loyalty to your fellow human being - regardless of where they live - and to the biosphere which sustains them and makes their lives abundant and possible. Would you work or allow your children to work for hours on end in sweatshops for peanuts, breathing in - up close, day after day - the same toxic chemicals poisoning your home and farmland while the profits of your labor are funneled to the executives of the very corporations exploiting and poisoning you, your loved ones, your neighbors, your friends? If your answer is "no" then you have no right to ask or expect anyone else to do the same. -jw "I hate patriotism... I can't stand it. It's a round world last time I checked." -Bill Hicks ______________ We are entering a world run by spoiled, unskilled, trans, queer, gay, nose-ringed, tatted, hair dyed perpetual children with zero self-awareness, zero understanding or curiosity for how things work, a work ethic you couldn't find with an electron microscope, who think the world owes them everything… And who consider themselves the all-wise all-knowing arbiters of what you are allowed to say, think, feel, and do… What could go wrong? -jw On America's Wars and the Soldiers Who Fight Them There is no RATIONAL ideology or purpose possible, not for Vietnam and not for the Middle East wars. And yet, all military members who participated in all those IRRATIONAL wars are considered heroes. Don't ask me why because I don't get it. -herbivore Pro Tip: Never harm or kill someone just because your government tells you to, this means you sit out war unless you're fighting it because you believe in it, otherwise you're little more than a hired mercenary with blood on your hands and your conscience working for a group of warmongers who care nothing for you, and who would never ever put their lives on the line for you--as they expect you to do for them. Finally, for those serving in the armed forces know this: "I was just following orders" is no excuse for the atrocities you commit under orders: the Nuremberg trials proved this! So always question any order which would have you destroying lives, and if you don't get a satisfactory answer from that question, immediately throw down your weapon and sail home. You only have one soul. Be careful with it. ______________ It's not where you take things from that counts, but where you take them to. A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. If you must die, die serving something greater than yourself. Better still, live, and serve. Never doubt for a moment that a small group of people can change the world. Indeed, it has never happened any other way. The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention. It's the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing when you can do only a little. Do what you can. You must be the change you want to see in the world. - Don't tell me the sky is the limit, when there are footprints on the moon. -Paul Brandt - If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes. If only closed minds, came with closed mouths. Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open. - The more you can ignore how bad things are the better you will feel and the worse things will get. -Frank Zappa - The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ... In almost every act of our daily lives ... we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. -Edward Bernays, Master of Propaganda - You cannot comply your way out of tyranny. The conformist does what he is told regardless of what is right The moralist does what is right regardless of what he is told Be the moralist. - You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go -Suicide in the Trenches Beneath the symbol We'll all assemble Oh, how we'll fly Oh, how we'll tremble -Captain Beefheart - Ice Cream for Crow - I've seen my buddies ambushed on the left and on the right And their youthful bodies riddled by the bullets of the night Where all the rules are broken and the only law is might With our sweat we took the bunkers, with our tears we took the pain. With our blood we took the mountains & then gave them back again. Still, all of us are soldiers - we're too busy to complain. When I reach my final campground in that land beyond the sun And the great commander asks me, "Did u fight or did u run?" I'll stand both straight and tall stripped of medals, rank and gun "Sir, I followed all my orders and I did the best I could It's hard to judge the enemy and hard to tell the good Yet there's not a man among us who would not have understood We took the jungle village exactly like they said We responded to their rifle fire with everything we had And when the smoke had cleared away a 100 souls lay dead Sir, the soldier that's alive is the only one who can fight There's no other way to wage a war when the only 1 in sight That you're sure is not an enemy, is your buddy on your right When all the wars are over and i'm nothing but a ghost Count me only as a soldier who never left his post With the right to serve my country as my one and only boast When all the wars are over and the battle's finally won Count me only as a soldier who never left his gun With the right to serve my country as the only prize I've won" As we go marching on -C Company Feat Terry Nelson, Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley - If you're not ready to die for it, take the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary. -Malcolm X - Of course the people don't want war, but after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy. And it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifist for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. -Herman Goering - Nuremberg Trial 1945 Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -William Pitt You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and you run When the fast bullets fly. How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you That even Jesus would never Forgive what you do. Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Can't buy back your soul. -Bob, Masters of War - And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward. -Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 - The more we do to you,the less you seem to believe we are doing it. -Joseph Mengele, The Third Reich's Angel of Death - Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar. -Julius Caesar - Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap their citizen's brains and then later as ceremonial shrouds to bury their dead bodies in. -Arundhati Roy Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy. -Henry Kissinger The only hope you have is to accecpt the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to funciton as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends on it. -Ronald Spiers -Ronald Spiers ______________ It isn't true that there's a community of light, a bonfire of the world. Everyone carries his own, his lonely own. My light is out. There is nothing blacker than a wick. Inward, I said, I want to go home. No, not home, to the other side of home where the lights are given. It is so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shown. The world is full of dark derelicts. The better way: There comes a time for descent. Honorable retirement. Not dramatic, not punishment of self, friends or family, just good-bye. A warm bath and an open vein; a warm sea and a razor blade. -Steinbeck, Winter of Our Discontent Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there, i do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow; I am the diamond glints on snow; I am sunlight ripened on grain; I am the gentle autumn rain; When you awake and greet the dawn I am the day as it is born; I am birds in circling flight; I am the soft starlight at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry I am not there. I did not die. Leaves become most beautiful when they're about to die. The god of wine comes crashing through the headlights of a car, that, took you farther than you thought you'd ever want to go. ------------------a fortiori------------------ Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. -Inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner], I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country. -George Washington, Commenting On Torture Perfect is the enemy of good. -A lesson i've always had a difficult time embracing - Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay -The Deserted Village - If a nation expects to remain ignorant and free - it expects what never was and will never be. - We the unknowing Led by the uncaring Are denying the obvious For the avaricious We have ignored so much For so long We can be held responsible For nothing at all Each one of us is guilty of all the good we did not do. -Voltaire - Warren Buffett: 'Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.' Either way - in a Warren Buffet rent-seeking world - you will always be either fearful or greedy. In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. In most cases they are one in the same. - Greed, it built human society and it will break human society. -Dimitrios - Civilization, goes an old maxim, is only four meals away from barbarism. Once the food deliveries stop, so does law and order. We came from mud. And after 3.8 billion years of evolution, at our core is still mud. Nobody could be a divorce lawyer and doubt that. - There was a time once when 'knowledge' was seen as a rung in the ladder which leads to the floor where they keep the wisdom. Although evidently, there are some people nowadays who try to chop up the ladder - so they can feed the little fire they warm their hands over... - Future generations will look back on TVas the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad. -Kurt Vonnegut’s - The wise man knows that he does not know. And the prudent man respects what he does not control. The ancient Oracle said that i was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that i know nothing. -Socrates You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters. -Plato, Laws X - Respect is not given. It is taken. - After all is said and done, a lot more will be said than done. - If courage is contagious, ignorance is pandemic. If idiots could fly, this place would be an airport. - Wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools, because they have to say something. Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. Word to the wise ain't necessary... It's the stupid ones who need all the advice. Keep your words short and sweet, because you never know which ones you'll have to eat. Well timed silence can have far more eloquence than speech. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience. The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue. There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say in reply. -Albert Gunion Is your butt jealous of all the crap that just came out of your mouth? - Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. -Eleanor Roosevelt. Reality TV, competition, and CSI like programs are SUPER food for your Id everyone... When discussing a subject, name calling only ensures that emotional people will dig their heels in and stop listening. It guarantees that name calling will continue and no enlightenment is achieved. It opposes progress made by reason and evidence. Future generations will look back on TV as the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad. Future generations will look back on TV as the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad. Remember that the media have two basic functions. One is to indoctrinate the elites, to make sure they have the right ideas and know how to serve power. In fact, typically the elites are the most indoctrinated segment of a society, because they are the ones who are exposed to the most propaganda and actually take part in the decision-making process. For them you have the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and so on. But there's also a mass media, whose main function is just to get rid of the rest of the population—to marginalize and eliminate them, so they don't interfere with decision-making. And the press that's designed for that purpose isn't the New York Times and the Washington Post, it's sitcoms on television, and the National Enquirer, and sex and violence, and babies with three heads, and football, all that kind of stuff. - Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas? -Joseph Stalin The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. -Joseph Stalin - When i feed the poor they call me a saint. When i ask why the poor have no food they compare me to Stalin and call me a socialist. When the rich rob the poor it's called business. When the poor fight back it's called violence. There is no moral justification for accepting a salary that's three thousand times that of a care-worker, say, unless your reality is solipsistic in the absolute. Or if Ayn Rand is, to you, anything other than morally reprehensible claptrap. - When any politician, government authority, or military official speaks, replace every instance of the words "terrorism" and "socialism" with "fearmongering", and you will get an accurate portrait of what is going on. The word "terrorism" is a paper tiger utilized to frighten and thereby control and enslave us, while the word "socialism" is merely a hopeful ideal preached by the son of God Himself... one which is almost completely incompatible with the very nature God infused us with: greed, jealousy, envy, superiority, contempt. When you dream, dream about being free from the fear of exploitative terroristic notions while smiling in content at the utopian potential of socialism and a life of meaningful service making you far happier than a life of endless material pursuit. Heck, dream the ultimate dream about being freed from the shackles of greed, jealousy, envy, superiority, contempt, and living soley to make the world a better place like Jesus. But always remember these are just dreams, because the human race as a whole is incapable of any of the above on a mass scale at this point, because the gulf God created between us and Jesus is far wider than any of our egos (id) would want us - or allow us - to believe. So what will you dream about? And if those dreams are noble, what will you do to transform those dreams into positive change for the world? Because one person can change the world. Remember, like Jesus who sacrificed everything and changed the world: "You must be the change you want to see in the world". -jw - Words like "pandemic" and "terrorism" are keywords used by politicians and pundits to manipulate the populace, in the same way and for the same reasons i use the word 'milkbone' to manipulate my dog. -jw - I used to think that your reality shaped your politics. It's clear to me now that your politics shape your reality. -Jon Stewart - Neoliberalism in a nutshell: Let us exploit you or we have no use for you. But fear not. I've been assured by the .01 percent that the new company store will have a kinder, gentler machine gun hand. - The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his. -General Patton - In the nuclear age ALL men are cremated equal. War doesn't decide who's right. War decides who's left. Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. It doesn't think, it doesn't feel. It doesn't laugh or cry. All it does from dusk til dawn Is make the soldiers die. The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenseless aginst tigers than they are today when we have become defenseless against ourselves. -Arnold J. Toynbee The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. -Carl Sagan I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones. -Albert Einstein Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. -Henry David Thoreau - When Jonny comes marching home again he's unemployed, homeless, and suffering PTSD. - You strap on a gun and go strutting around some other man's country, you better be ready for some action, Jack. You better be ready for some action. People are touchy about that sort of thing. -George Carlin It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. -Smedley Butler - Our human rights record is something of note, we freed all our slaves and gave women the vote. Everyone's equal, forever, always. Unless you're one of them gays. -Stephen Lynch, America It might seem i don't think our country's so great But intolerance, bigotry, greed's what i hate Most folks are honest and decent and true Peaceful, compassionate, good thru and through That's what i means to be red, white and blue And if you don't think so screw you -Stephen Lynch, America - I have no tolerance for your intolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and the tolerance with them. -Karl Popper I don't care if you're black, white, straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, short, tall, fat, skinny, rich, or poor. if you're nice to me, i'll be nice to you. Extend your tolerance to the beliefs of others, but do not be tolerant of their corruption, exploitation, or manipulation. Disregard your blind allegiance and patriotism and look through the transparent demagoguery of those who stand to gain from your fealty and blindness. -jw I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. -Voltaire and the tolerance paradox - We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. -Second and Twenty-Fourth Paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence equal. -George Carlin America was founded by a group of slave owners who said that all men are created equal. -George Carlin It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. -Upton Sinclair A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if no one believes it. -David Stevans - Have we become so... fearful, have become so cowardly, that we would extinguish a man, simply because he holds the blood of a current enemy? -Captain Picard We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again. -Captain Picard - Power is not the means to an end. It is the end. -George Orwell When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. The world wants to see the power of our example, not the example of our power. Poor man wanna be rich Rich man wanna be king And king ain't satisfied Till he rules everything. -Bruce Springsteen, Badlands - It's dangerous to be right, when the government is wrong. When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. -Thomas Jefferson You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. -Charles Austin Beard The U.S. Constitution is flawed, but it's a whole lot better than what we have now. 'A matter of internal security.' The age-old cry of the oppressor. -Captain Picard Since when is 'public safety' the root password to the Constitution? -C. D. Tavares - They came with a bible and their religion, stole our land, murdered our tribes, crushed our spirit, and now they tell us we should be thankful to the lord for being saved. -Pontiac We wanted to ask God if he would slaughter all the Indian tribes in order for us to obtain their land and not put our own souls at risk by doing so, but we knew that God didn't work that way... So we slaughtered and plundered, and then begged God for forgiveness. Sure, you can trust the government. Just ask an Indian. - Oh the history books tell it They tell it so well The cavalries charged The Indians fell The cavalries charged The Indians died Oh but the country was young With God on its side. -Bob Dylan, With God On Our Side We sit outside and argue all night long About a God we've never seen But never fails to side with me -Primitive Radio Gods - Man created God in his own image. One the first day, man created God. - When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why i dismiss yours. -Stephen F Roberts - Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence comet evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? -Epicurus If he is infinitely good and just, what reason should we have to fear him or fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with so much weakness? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? And if he has spoken, why is the world not convinced? -Percy Bysshe Shelley Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours? -Gordon Lightfoot, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - No army has ever marched into battle thinking the creator has sided with their enemy. It would be almost unbelievable if history did not record the tragic fact that men have gone to war and cut each other's throats because they could not agree as to what was to become of them after their throats were cut. - A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum proves that faith does not prove anything. - We need religion to give grace and comfort to people living in a world torn apart by religion. -Jon Stewart The reason crucifixes work against vampires is that vampires are allergic to bullspit. -Richard Pryor I myself have performed a miracle. One time while stranded in Mexico , I came across a blind and crippled beggar in front of the Cathedral. As I reached stealthily into his cup to filch a $20 bill, his sight miraculously returned and he was not only able to walk again, but miraculously, he was able to run down the street fast enough to almost catch me. The Lord works in mysterious ways. An eskimo asks a missionary priest: If i did not know about god and sin, would i go to hell? No, said the priest, not if you did not know. Then why, asked the eskimo, did you tell me? - The actual brand of religion is irrelevant, the results are the same. Nothing brings out inhumanity like someone actually believing that they are the ally of god. An ally of god can do no wrong. Anything is justified as the will of God. Good people do good things. Bad people do bad things. But for good people to do truly bad things, you need religion. Evil is never done so completely and cheerfully as when it is done from a religious conviction : - Wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. ... in the temple and the porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. -Raymond of Aguilers, observations on the Crusades I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the almighty Creator; by defending myself against the jews, i am fighting for the Lord. I would like to thank the providence of the almighty for choosing me above all people. -Adolf Hitler - Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire Even the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. -Seneca 4BC-65AD How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is sick from overeating, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares, 'This is God's will' Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. -Napoleon Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown his own. - Your religion is a bad joke, replete with boundless hypocrisy, double standards, cover-ups, rewrites, and blinded eyes. Rose colored eyes which cannot look to the past see the oceans of blood that watered it, the savage anti-intellectualism which nurtured it, the mountains of tortured heathen bones and shredded tongues which raised it, nor the man-made hell-on-earth in which it was forged. It is a joke told to plunder and control, and the only ones not laughing in abject terror and disgust, are those same blind and brainwashed victims of that intolerant sanctimonious warmongering demagoguery: too fearful and superstitious to see the punch line. - Religion is intolerant by design, and intolerance is required for it to function. When you believe an unprovable fantastical thing, the only way to propagate that belief to thinking individuals is to violently deter and squash the consent of anyone pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. The Koran told me that no matter how much I read, how much I knew, no matter what love and compassion for people I held in my breast, no matter my intelligence, my talents ... I would never be as good as even the lowliest of men ... I was a field for a man to sow his seed. My word was not to be trusted against that of a man. I was the gateway to hell because men would desire me... How could any system of belief compete with the dignity and the respect that non-belief had to offer me? -Shabnam Nadiya - Man will never be free until the last king is strangled by the entrails of the last priest. - I like your Christ but I do not like your Christians. -Gandhi America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behaviour... In 2004, as a share of our economy, we ranked second to last, after Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid. Nearly 18 percent of Aemrican children lived in poverty (compared with, say, 8 percent in Sweden). In fact, by pretty much any measure of caring, childhood nutrition, infant mortality, access to pre-school - we come in nearly last among the rich nations, and often by a wide margin. Despite the Sixth Commandment, we are of course, the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers. Having been told to turn the other cheek, we're the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest. Teenage pregnancy? We're at the top of the charts. Personal self-diciplin - like, say, keeping your weight under control? Buying on credit? Running government deficits? Do you even need to ask? -Bill McKibben - Portrait of the Typical Modern Christian You know what my favorite thing in the world is? I'll tell you. Each week millions and millions of upper middle class American citizens put on expensive dress clothes and load themselves into their SUVs and drive past homeless shelters, orphanages, prisons, missions, and halfway houses on their way to a very expensive and luxurious church, where somebody tells them how to be more like Jesus. That is awesome, let me tell you. -Unknown Hands that help are better than lips that pray. _______________ ...our Christian forefathers, being much better read and having a much better grasp of history than the modern Christian who spends all his time in front of the Internet and the television, had no enthusiasm for war at all. Back before the Civil War, when the Christians published theological journals worth reading, two Baptist ministers writing in The Christian Review demonstrated that Christian war fever was contrary to the New Testament. Veritatis Amans, in his 1847 article "Can War, Under Any Circumstances, Be Justified on the Principles of the Christian Religion? "approached the subject from the standpoint of war being justified only in cases of self-defense. Another Baptist preacher, in an unsigned article from 1838 entitled "Wickedness of War," approached the subject from the standpoint of the nature of war in general. Both articles look to the New Testament as their authority. Amans begins: "War has ever been the scourge of the human race. The history of the past is little else than a chronicle of deadly feuds, irreconcilable hate, and exterminating warfare. The extension of empire, the love of glory, and thirst for fame, have been more fatal to men than famine or pestilence, or the fiercest elements of nature." "And what is more sad and painful, many of the wars whose desolating surges have deluged the earth, have been carried on in the name and under the sanction of those who profess the name of Christ." "It has not been till recently, that the disciples of Christ have been conscious of the enormous wickedness of war as it usually exists. And even now there are many who do not frown upon it with that disapprobation and abhorrence, which an evil of such magnitude as an unjust war deserves." "Wars of every kind may be included under two classes – offensive and defensive. Concerning the former we shall say nothing. We need not delay a moment to discuss a question so directly at variance with the dictates of conscience, and the principles of revealed religion." "But under what circumstances is war truly defensive? We reply, when its object is to repel an invasion; when there is no alternative but to submit to bondage and death, or to resist." The anonymous Baptist preacher writing in a 1838 issue of The Christian Review continues: "The war spirit is so wrought into the texture of governments, and the habits of national thinking, and even into our very festivals and pomps, that its occasional recurrence is deemed a matter of unavoidable necessity." War "contradicts the genius and intention of Christianity," "sets at nought the example of Jesus," and "is inconsistent not only with the general structure and nature of Christianity and the example of Jesus, but it violates all the express precepts of the New Testament." "Christianity requires us to seek to amend the condition of man. But war cannot do this. The world is no better for all the wars of five thousand years. Christianity, if it prevailed, would make the earth a paradise. War, where it prevails, makes it a slaughter-house, a den of thieves, a brothel, a hell. Christianity cancels the laws of retaliation. War is based upon that very principle. Christianity is the remedy for all human woes. War produces every woe known to man." "The causes of war, as well as war itself, are contrary to the gospel. It originates in the worst passions and the worst aims. We may always trace it to the thirst of revenge, the acquisition of territory, the monopoly of commerce, the quarrels of kings, the intrigues of ministers, the coercion of religious opinion, the acquisition of disputed crowns, or some other source, equally culpable; but never has any war, devised by man, been founded on holy tempers and Christian principles." "It should be remembered, that in no case, even under the Old Testament, was war appointed to decide doubtful questions, or to settle quarrels, but to inflict national punishment. They were intended, as are pestilence and famine, to chastise nations guilty of provoking God. Such is never the pretext of modern war; and if it were, it would require divine authority, which, as has just been said, would induce even members of the Peace Society to fight." The "criminality of war," as Howard Malcom, president of Georgetown College, wrote in 1845, is not "that tyrants should lead men into wars of pride and conquest," but that "the people, in governments comparatively free, should so readily lend themselves to a business in which they bear all the sufferings, can gain nothing, and may lose all." That people would act this way, Malcom says, is an "astonishment indeed." "But," he continues, "the chief wonder is that Christians, followers of the Prince of Peace, should have concurred in this mad idolatry of strife, and thus been inconsistent not only with themselves, but with the very genius of their system." The founding fathers of this country, many of whom were deists, had more sense than many twenty-first-century Christians when it came to espousing a policy of peace through non-intervention; in other words, not being "a busybody in other men's matters" (1 Pet. 4:15). George Washington: "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible." Thomas Jefferson: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none." John Quincy Adams: "America . . . goes not abroad seeking monsters to destroy." -Excepts from https://lewrockwell.com/orig4/vance1.html _______________ - Going to church makes you a Christian no more than going to a garage makes you a car. -Dr. Laurence J. Peter -jw - - Then the devil's clock struck midnight And the skies lit up again And the battlefield where heaven stood Was blown to hell again But for just one fleeting moment The answers seemed so clear Heaven's not beyond the clouds It's just beyond the fear No heaven's not beyond the clouds It's for us to find here -Garth Brooks, Belleau Wood - Never denounce Satan while lying on your deathbed... That's no time to be making enemies. A day will come when death will look in your eyes, And you will pray to the god you always denied. - And the Lord said, "Go forth and gain everlasting life". But I mistakenly went fifth, and won a toaster instead. - - The faster you run from your sins, the more exhausted you are when they catch up to you. You can run, but you'll just die tired. -Bobba Fett Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. -A warning to wayward travelers, etched on the gates of hell -Dante's Inferno Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley. If you're going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill - Colt 45 always beats four aces. Behind every great fortune there is a crime. In God we trust. All others pay cash. - Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with. - Alright, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker within your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker. -Mike McDermott, Rounders The truth is hard to swallow when you're choking on your pride... -Meat Loaf You can't lose what you don't put in the middle. Poker is a game of information and probability. Especially Texas Hold'em. There is information everyone has - the face up cards. There is information you are forced to give - your bets. And there is information others give - their bets. You can give false information, but that has a cost which is proportional to your probability to win, others' probabilities to win, and the discrepancy between the information you falsify and the truth. You have odds based on the cards on the table. Odds based on the bet you have to make versus the pot. Odds based on how many people are still in the game. And the information comes out in pieces. While these odds change. So you can change what people think their odds are by lying about what you have through your bets by either over betting or under betting. But if other players call you on your lies with better held assets you end up paying, literally. If you bluff and lose you expose your bluff because you pretended you had cards you didn't. And if you under bet to keep others staying in and collect a bigger pot, you risk them making an outlandish hand on turning over more face cards (flop, turn, or river). So you can play straight and avoid lying or passing false information. But then people eventually understand you are playing straight and can predict your cards based on your pattern of consistent information. You bet big on your big hands and people leave the pot. Bet small on your worthless hands and people take your blinds. And people figure you out. So you have to pepper in lies, but only occasionally. And that's all without trying to predict other peoples cards based on their peppered lies, feckless truths, or any of the million of combinations found in between. Poker isn't a game of chance. It's a game of predicting probabilities and lying about them. It's a game of trying to understand pattens and people. It's a game of math and emotions. It's cryptography of emotions. -ArsTechnica Comment Stopping at third base adds no more to the score than striking out. - The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back in your pocket. The poor have little. The beggars none. The rich too much... Enough? Not one. Everyone has a hole inside of them that they spend their lives desperately trying to fill with material objects. - Where there's a will, I want to be in it. The best things in life aren't things. - The young die good. We avoid risks in life so we may make it safely to death. Death must be great because no one's come back from it yet. Men talk of killing time while time quietly kills them. Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. - I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. -Samuel Clemens Some people are like slinkies. Really good for nothing, but they bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs. I want to die sleeping like my grandfather... Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car. If you die in an elevator, but sure to push the up button. We avoid risks in life So we may make it safely to death - Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and ensign "Garcia" are going on an away mission. Which one isn't coming back? I used to work at the unemployment office. I hated that job because when they fired me, I still had to show up at work the next day. - Economically speaking, it doesn't matter if it's moral or amoral. Morally speaking, it doesn't matter if it's legal or not. Legally speaking, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. Realistically speaking, it doesn't matter if it's moral, legal, or right. - Strength is being able to crush a tomato. Dexterity is being able to dodge a tomato. Constitution is being able to eat a bad tomato. Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad. Charisma is being able to sell a tomato-based fruit salad. A tomato based fruit salad is salsa! - Good judgement comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement. Experience is the worst teacher: it gives the test before presenting the lesson. Pain is the best teacher. But nobody wants to be his student. The ultimate result of shielding men from the results of folly is to fill the world with fools. The laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo The Clown. Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. - If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got. All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why. You don't know where you're going until you know where you're at So grab your coat and put on your hat and journey to seek the logic in that Give a man a match and you'll warm him for a day. Light a man on fire and you'll warm him for the rest of his life. - If wishes were horses beggars would ride, and if wishes were fishes beggars would eat, and if this world didn't suck, we'd all fall off. - There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over. If you wait till the last minute it will only take a minute. Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay. It's not the end. - The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. Keep the dream alive: hit the snooze button A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. ...On my desk I have a work station. The longest five minutes in the world are the last five minutes before the school bell rings, while the shortest five minutes are the five minutes of snooze after the alarm bell rings. Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity. -Albert Einstein - The older a man gets the farther he had to walk to school as a boy. I'll take the dream i had last night And put it in my freezer So someday long and far away When i'm an old grey geezer I'll take it out and thaw it out This lovely dream i've frozen And boil it up and sit me down And dip my old cold toes in. Live for the moments other people don't notice. - It takes nine months to make a baby no matter how many people you put on the job. Some things just take time. You can't have a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. Maternity is a matter of fact, paternity is a matter of opinion. Don't do it in the garden. Love is blind but the neighbors aren't. life (noun): A sexually transmitted disease which always ends in death; there is currently no known cure. When two people kiss what they're actually doing is creating a really long tube with a butthole on each end. I don't have a girlfriend, just a girl who would be mad if she heard me say that. -Mitch Hedberg Every cutie with a booty needs a hottie with a body. - The early bird may get the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese. You mean like the cat who ate the cheese and waited with baited breath for the mouse? It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats. Dogs think 'you bring me food, you must be God.' Cats think, 'you bring me food, I must be God.' - I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants. Vegetarians beware! You are what you eat. - If the grass is greener on the other side... fertilize your side. - The propeller is really just a big fan made to cool down the pilot in the cockpit. You can tell this because when it stops you can see the pilot start sweating excessively. - Budget: A formula for determining that you need a raise. Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math. Fine: A tax for doing wrong. Tax: A fine for doing well. If you owe the bank $10,000 it's your problem. If you owe the bank $10,000,000 it's their problem. What the big print giveth. The small print taketh away. - The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested. Communist until you get rich. Athiest until the plane starts falling. An election has transformed into an advanced auction of stolen goods. - People who live in stone houses, shouldn't throw glasses An apple a day keeps anyone away. If you throw it hard enough. -Stephen Colbert - Don't judge a book by its movie. Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded. - Dew knot trussed yore spell chequer two fined awl yore mistakes. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch dnoe at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. - If you have a barrel of sewage and add a teaspoon of fine wine, you get sewage. But if you have a barrel of fine wine and add a teaspoon of sewage, you still get sewage. - Trust: Arrives on foot. Leaves on horseback. - A black belt is born as the white belt of a beginner, then stained black by the dried blood and sweat of its owner. Somewhere, someone is practicing. And when you meet him face to face in competition, he will win. Don't give up what you want most for what you want now. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. - No man ever walks into the same river twice. For it is not the same river and he is not the same man. Man cannot remake himself without suffering for he is both the marble and the sculptor. You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters. Everything is valuable under the right conditions. To a man dying of thirst, water be more precious than gold. To a drowning man, water be of little worth and great trouble. - The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. The only people with whom you should try to get even, are those who have helped you. Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again. How do you get holy water? You boil the hell out of it. It's better to be hated for what you are, than to be loved for what you are not. - Nothing is faster than the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed. I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code. - He broke her heart, so she broke his jaw. Little's the good to sit and grieve Because the serpent tempted Eve. Better to wipe your eyes and take A club and go out and kill the snake. But if you prefer, as I suspect, To philosophize, why, then, reflect: If the cunning rascal upon the limb Hadn't tempted her she'd have tempted him. The tangled webs we weave, when at first we begin to deceive. But after we've practiced quite awhile, how vastly we improve our style. -Sir Walter Scott, and someone else - Hey there Mary, what's the story. Save my as from purgatory. Hail Mary full of grace, let us blow this goddamn place. - How many times do you hear it? It goes on all day long Everyone knows everything And no one's ever wrong - When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself. Don't deceive yourself; laughing at someone's weakness is not the way to reveal your strength. Your strength is in the help you offer, not the mockeries you deliver. The desire to criticize becomes less and less as the character is developed. It is the mark of a fine character never to be critical and to mention but rarely the faults of others. A strong character does not resist evil, but uses their strength in building the good. They know that when the light is made strong, the darkness will disappear of itself. - We ignore the ones who adore us Adore the ones who ignore us Love the ones who hurt us And hurt the ones that love us Girls are like apples...the best ones are at the top of the trees. The boys don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples that are on the ground that aren't as good, but easy. So the apples at the top think there is something wrong with them, when, in reality, they are amazing. They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree. -Pete Wentz - I met her when the world began. Or was it last July? - The theory of the multiverse suggests there are infinite parallel universes in which every possible situation is contained. This is comforting because i know that somewhere out there, you love me too. Her absence filled the world. - Ill sit and laugh with my friends at what we've all been thru, but i still catch my breath when someone mentions you. There's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing. And the price of her memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings. -Counting Crows, Mrs. Potters Lullaby - Why do we close our eyes when we pray, cry, kiss, and dream? Because the most beautiful things in life are not seen but felt only by the heart. - You asked me whose life was more important - yours or mine, and I answered 'mine'. You walked away angry, not knowing that you are my life. If I could be any part of you, i'd be your tears. To be conceived in your heart, born in your eyes, live on your cheeks, and die on your lips. - Once there was a boy who gave a girl twelve roses. Eleven of them were real, one was plastic. Then he told her he will love her until the last one dies. - When you lose someone you love, you die too, and you wait around for your body to catch up. -John Scalzi I won't disturb the slumber, of feelings that have died. If I never loved I never would have cried. -Simon & Garfunkel - I Am A Rock If I never loved, I never would have cared. The walls we build around ourselves to keep out the sadness also keep out the joy. - If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane, I'd march right up to heaven and bring you home again. -Unknown An old man kneeling all alone Plants his flowers in a garden of stone For seven years now she's been gone But his devotion is still going strong -Shenandoah, Loved Like That You wake up feeling fine. Then you remember. - 'Go to father', she said, when I asked her to wed. She knew that I knew that her father was dead. She knew that I knew what a life he had led. She knew that I knew what she meant when she said, 'Go to father.' -Unknown They were alone and afraid In a world they never made. - Hello darkness my old friend I've come to talk with you again -Simon & Garfunkel, Sound of Silence Out of the blue and into the black They give you this, but you pay for that And once you're gone, you can never come back When you're out of the blue and into the black. -Neil Young, My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) Six of one, half a dozen of the other Black guitars and plastic blues Hide behind a wall of nothing Nothing said and nothing new -Four Cords that Made a Million - In a society that has abolished all adventure, the only adventure left is to abolish that society. Those who know the torment and joy of creation, also know the pleasure and pain of destruction. Say what you want about the tenants of National Socialism Dude, at least it's an ethos. -Walter obliquely assigning virtue to Nazism in the face of Nihilism - Some men aren't looking for anything logical like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men, just want to watch the world burn. -Alfred, The Dark Knight - I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren't actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we... we are the cure. -Agent Smith, The Matrix - In my opinion life is a highly overrated phenomenon. Mars gets on perfectly fine without so much as a microorganism. See: there's the south pole beneath us now... No life. No life at all, but giant steps, nighty feet high, scoured by dust and wind into a constantly changing topographical map, flowing and shifting around the pole in ripples ten thousand years wide. Now tell me, would that be greatly improved by an oil pipeline? A shopping mall? -Dr. Manhattan, Watchmen - Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not god who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then. Free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach. -Rorschach, Watchman None of you understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me. -Rorschach, Watchman Oh, i'm sorry. I mistook me for somebody else. -Bruce Wayne Death, Destruction, War, Disease Not even the wild could save your child Not even the righteous could put you at ease -jw - Not this August nor this September -- this year you get to do what you like, but the time comes around again. It always does. Sooner or later you stick something back into your big damn old mouth again. A drink, a smoke, maybe the barrel of a shotgun... Not this August nor this September... Unfortunately this was October. -Stephen King, Secret Window, Secret Garden - This is the book I never read These are the words I never said This is the path I'll never tread These are the dreams I'll dream instead -Annie Lennox Time is the tide And death is the ride And all else in between Is a gamble and a dream -jw Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else. In such a way do the days pass--a blend of stock car racing and the never ending building of a gothic cathedral. Through the windows of my speeding car, I see all that I love falling away: books unread, jokes untold, landscapes unvisited. -Stephen Dobyns You may my glories And my estate dispose But never my sorrows Still, am I king of those -Shakespeare Pack up the moon Dismantle the sun Pour away the ocean Sweep up the wood For nothing now can ever come To any good -W.H. Auden ______________ Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up in fear and knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up hungry and knows that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running. -African Proverb The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up. Lionheart A slit cuts through the golden eye. Black as night. Sharp as sky. A coat of fire burns the day. And all the hope held by the prey. Quickly and quietly fades away. A fading hope is in the air. A needing hunger drenched with despair. The crown of power; oh, how it glows. And the beast - he fully knows. The time is now to return his soul. The strength of god. The speed of lightening. Intense fear. Frightening! The rage of a thousand starving hearts. All in tune. Tear apart. Ripping the fabric of the art. The blood glints off the teeth of fate. Time extended. Now abate. Those who witnessed, disappear. Escaping filled with mortal fear. Fed by death, the king is near. The crown, the mane, the golden shroud. Covers the body, of the proud. Canines and claws gleam in the sun. The fight is over, the proud has won. The king of creatures: this war is done. The slit, the cut, the golden eye. The blackening night, the sharpening sky. The coat, the fire, the burning day. The pray, the hope, the fading away. -jw - You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to run much faster. -Lewis Carroll - I know... no one lives in the slums because they want to. It's like this train. It can't run anywhere except where its rails take it. -Cloud Strife, Final Fantasy 7 Choice is an illusion. It does not exist. We are all rudderless ships on the ocean of fate. - She says to me, 'C'mon, We've got a long way to run.' And from the look on her face I know We won't get anywhere. She says to me, "Get in the car and drive." And I know there's no point in arguing with her. Through the night we drive Down dark roads forlorn Zooming by houses from "Kids of the Corn" And I ask her why she's running again And what she can't face this time And whether she'll ever return To the scene of so many crimes. The stars the clouds blur into the sky The grass the trees blend as we pass by But I need to know where she plans to go, where she thinks she can hide. And where she plans to run when we run out of road. -Unknown I'll sing it one last time for you Then we really have to go You've been the only thing that's right In a lifetime And I can barely look at you But every single time I do I know we'll make it anywhere Away from here Light up, light up As if you have a choice Even if you cannot hear my voice I'll be right beside you dear Louder louder And we'll run for our lives I can hardly speak I understand Why you can't raise your voice to say Slower slower We don't have time for that All I want's to find an easy way To get out of our little heads Have heart, my dear We're bound to be afraid Even if it's just for a few days Making up for all this mess -Snow Patrol, Run - Is there a cure among us From this processed sanity? I weaken with each voice that sings Now, in this world of purchase I'm going to buy back memories To awaken some old qualities Have I got a long way to run? Yeah, I run -Collective Soul, Run - (Don't stop to speak or look around Your gloves & fan are on the ground We're getting out of town We're going on the run And you're the one I want to come) Not to touch the earth Not to see the sun Nothing left to do but Run, run, run Let's run -Jim Morrison, The Celebration of the Lizard - There might be peace on the other side From your memories on the other side Nothing to lose on the other side You might not fear on the other side Light might be there on the other side The world is new on the other side So deep breath in You've waited for this Everyone wants to know If this is the answer they've been searching for All eyes on you So much to prove Whoever you were back then You won't ever be again Remember how far you've come Don't think just run... -Beth Crowley, Don't Think Just Run --------------Sound and Fury-------------- We no longer know the meaning of freedom. We have traded away everything to a false prophet. We refuse to see that belonging to a government is a fate far worse than any terrorist can reap; than any madman can sow. The word of a terrorist has no power over us. The government's word is law. In the name of security we will lose our security. In addition to the terrorist we will have the relentless uncompromising gaze of the government. The power of the people is born from its freedom, and it is the people who must be the guardians of that power. It is from our freedom that we draw the authority to force our government to abide its boundaries. Through the guise of security we are slowly allowing our government to relinquish that authority, and ultimately, the government will know no boundaries. Once we allow our freedoms to categorically run dry, we, as a people, will no longer have the authority to stand up to our government. -jw _______________ Terrorism is a low budget, low resource action intended to provoke a high resource, high budget, bankrupting reaction in the target. It uses the frenzied irrational fear of the moment as a tool to destroy both its adversaries' economy and principles in one fell swoop. It happens to work. Just look around. -jw 9/11 was a horrible thing, and every single freaking thing done in its name has been much more horrible. The fact people keep accepting it as an excuse for unacceptable things is very sad. As soon as someone tries to use 9/11 to justify yet another thing to encroach upon and destroy public rights and liberties (which is all but guaranteed anytime someone invokes 9/11), call them what they really are: terrorist sympathizer and abettor. Remember, the entire purpose behind terrorism is to instill a sense of panic and fear in a population, in order to get them to act in a certain manner, so that said... Anytime someone tries to invoke a sense of fear in the public, in order to pass some new law or legislation, they are doing the work of a terrorist. Anytime someone tries to use 9/11 to keep people afraid, to justify what is being done 'to protect people', they are doing the work of a terrorist. Anytime someone tries to claim that 'combating the terrorists' or 'protecting people from terrorists' justifies trampling all over basic constitutional rights, and the rights of the people, they are doing the work of a terrorist. -Techdirt Forum Post _______________ When someone declares "people will die" as a justification for curtailing liberty, the correct response is "what are you suggesting - that liberty isn't worth dying for? That those who sacrificed their lives for our freedoms made the wrong choice?" -Techdirt Forum Post The government should represent the will of the people and the public has a say in the risks they are willing to take in terms of what information we may receive. I, as a member of the public, am willing to risk whatever risks more transparency brings because to sacrifice transparency would be to give up an important democratic principle that national security is supposed to defend. -Techdirt Forum Post _______________ It occurs to me that this whole game of characterizing people who are against U.S. government foreign policy and the erosion of personal liberty as "anti-American" is really something that should be met head on. I completely reject the notion that my being against all of these wars of aggression, the torture, the emerging unaccountable militarized secretive thug police state, the secret courts and watch lists, the blanket warrant-less surveillance, the parallel construction and asset forfeiture -- I reject the notion that being against these atrocities makes me "anti-American". No, I am pro-American. I am in favor of the values expressed in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. Moreover, I am in favor of all the positive things to have come out of American culture: Hollywood's Golden Age of Movies, jazz music, Bob Dylan.... Writers, poets... the culture of open source software. Those things are all quintessentially American and I am in favor of them. So I am pro-American. People like you are anti-American, because you are against the core principles that the country is supposed to stand for, a constitutional republic, an open society with due process and the rule of law, a humble inward looking government constrained by checks and balances, a bulwark justice system more than strong enough to keep the tireless wolves of government and corporate tyranny at bay... But people like you... You corrupt all of that by defending the indefensible all the while hiding behind a cloak of faux patriotism. You guys nauseate me. Really. -Slashdot Forum Post In 1930 India was still under Britsh rule and it was forbidden to produce your own salt. This was the law. Some Indian guy thought this law was morally and ethically wrong and marched to the sea and produced his own salt. Back then types like you went all nuts with 'He broke the law!'. Today very few would argue that what Ghandi did was wrong. Is the case against Snowden exactly the same? No, if only because the most brilliant part of Ghandi's actions were its shear simplicity. But it does show that breaking the Law, no matter who wrote it, is not by definition the wrong thing to do. -Slashdot Forum Post By asking Snowden to do something illegal, the NSA invalidated their own contract. Under U.S. law no contract may require a person to commit an illegal act, nor may it prevent them from reporting a criminal act so long as they have first attempted to report the criminal activity using internal policies. As long as Snowden tried to get his bosses to stop the illegal wiretapping and reported their actions to his supervisor, he is protected under us whistleblower protection laws. That said this is the NSA and they seem not to care about the law, so running away is smart: to keep them from doing something illegal by punishing him for reporting the OTHER illegal things they did. -Slashdot Forum Post _______________ Peace and freedom require maintenance, yes. The natural state of humanity is to slide to slavery and conflict. The notion that the implements that preserve peace and freedom are morally equivalent to the implements that extend slavery and conflict is an absurdity believed only by imbeciles. Show me a street where the police patrol. Show me a street where they don't. You tell me which street is peaceful and free. Yet that still won't stop some idiots from bemoaning the existence of the police. Face it: civilization requires maintenance against natural, organic, self-emergent forces of decay. What do you think would happen to civilization if that maintenance effort were stopped? You only feel disdain for this maintenance effort because, safely cocooned in the ivory tower, you fail to be able and look down and see what is holding your tower up. You live a life of benefits you don't understand, and sneer at that which makes those benefits possible. You are a parasite. -Some guy from some forum somewhere This argument operates under the assumption that the 'implements that preserve peace and freedom' are always unassailable and incorruptible pockets of isolated power which can't be influenced or manipulated by lobbying (bribery) or other outside forces, or indeed, even by their own natural, organic, self-emergent forces of decay. This just isn't the case. The police can be just as abusive and tyrannical as any dictator, and even lowly street sweepers can be corrupted. Know that the maintenance effort exists, and appreciate it for all it does to make your life better. But never take your watchful eyes off of it, and never take it for granted. For those same implements that have the power to preserve your peace and freedom, also have the power to take them away. -jw The NSA granted me the authority to monitor communications world-wide using its mass surveillance systems, including within the United States. I have personally targeted individuals using these systems under both the President of the United States' Executive Order 12333 and the US Congress' FAA 702. I know the good and the bad of these systems, and what they can and cannot do, and I am telling you that without getting out of my chair, I could have read the private communications of any member of this [LIBE] committee, as well as any ordinary citizen. I swear under penalty of perjury that this is true. One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance. Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK's GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers. These efforts to interpret new powers out of vague laws is an intentional strategy to avoid public opposition and lawmakers' insistence that legal limits be respected, effects the GCHQ internally described in its own documents as "damaging public debate." Global surveillance capabilities are being used [by the United States] on a daily basis for the purpose of economic espionage. That a major goal of the US Intelligence Community is to produce economic intelligence is the worst kept secret in Washington. -Edward Snowden _______________ The illusion of freedom in America will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater. -Frank Zappa I'm just saying to any American citizen, if you want to help al-Qaida, you do so at your own peril. You can get killed in the process. You can get detained indefinitely. And when you're being questioned and you say to the interrogator, I want my lawyer, the interrogator will say, you don't have a right to a lawyer because you're a military threat. -Sen Lindsey Graham, eviscerating the US Constitution, due process, and the Justice system in one fell swoop (which all exist primarily to protect the individual against the tyranny of the state). We have become the enemy we are fighting. Please note that freedom is subject to terms and conditions. Freedom can be revoked at any time. Freedom is subject to availability. Freedom is a priveledge, not a right. Freedom does not extend to uncondoned events, beliefs, or actions. Whether you are allowed to participate will be determined at the sole discretion of the federal governing body, federal law enforcement, the state and local authorities, the whims of the police, and the discretion of judicial system. Freedom is not free. Freedom requires that there are people who are not free. If it is determined that you participate, have participated, or may participate in any act, conversation, or form of speech that is deemed unpatriotic, your freedom will be immediately revoked. What is unpatriotic will be determined on the whims of whichever authority you are interacting with at the time. Your freedom may be infringed at any time for your own protection. You are always free to do as you are told. _______________ The United States created al-Qaeda in 1979 during the cold war. We armed them with our weapons and pointed them toward the Afghani capitol with the hope that their attack would lure the USSR into the bankrupting quagmire of a land war against them. The USSR and Afghanistan were allies at the time. It worked. The USSR swept into Afghanistan to shield the Afghani people against al-Qaeda and in the catastrophic war that followed, Afghanistan was reduced to rubble and the USSR went bankrupt. And today our soldiers are still getting mauled by the leftover landmines while we go bankrupt. By the end we had completely destroyed Afghanistan--which was thriving by comparison at the time--via a proxy war with the USSR and are responsible for ushering in the brutal Taliban theocracy and transforming the countryside into the thriving terrorist breading ground it is today. Meanwhile al-Qaeda, who we armed, have been firing at us with our own weapons for the past 9 years. What we did here in Afghanistan we did for Saddam in Iraq in 1963. It's the same thing we did in Iran in 1953. And yet, when these chickens come home to roost, we still wave our little American flags in an outpouring of patriotic glee, while pretending that we are the victims of unprovoked aggression. _______________ Recent Supreme Court Decisions Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 2010: (5-4) Corporations are people and money equals speech. Result, corporations are now considered legal persons, and can spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. (It should be noted that while corporations can now spend unlimited amounts there are still limits on how much individuals can spend on candidates.) AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion 2011: (5-4) A corporation can force you to sign away your right to sue them in a class action suit. In addition, a corporation can force you to resolve your disputes through Mandatory Binding Arbitration (which they fund), instead of a regular court. Kentucky v. King 2011: (8-1) Police can now search your house without a warrant. Kelo v. City of New London 2005: (5-4) The government can now take your private property and give it to a private business to build a shopping mall or any other type of development. _______________ Terms Worth Knowing PATRIOT Act 2001/2010 - Too many constitutional violations to name, click this entry to find out more. NDAA: National Defense Authorization Act 2011 - The government can now indefinitely detain its citizens without trial. FISA: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act 2007 - Congress grants retroactive immunity to telecoms for illegally spying on American citizens. FISC: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - Secret kangaroo court where mass spying of American citizens is rubber-stamped without any visibility to the American public and no adversarial component: only the government's side of the story is ever told ... to the government. (It's a bit like the farmer asking the fox his opinion on whether they should have chicken for dinner.) ALEC: American Legislative Exchange Council - A group of corporations and special interests which write most state legislation. Net Neutrality - Current system, allows all internet traffic to be treated equally. If Net Neutrality is struck down telecoms will be able to determine which parts of the internet you can and cannot view. In addition, they will be able sell internet sites piece-meal in much the same way cable channels are sold. The internet was initially created by the armed forces, and as such was paid for by your tax dollars. The telecoms do not own it, you do. _______________ A Few Negative Human Impacts on the Environment Smog in Shanghai, 2014 BP Gulf Oil Spill, 2008 Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, 2011 Dangerous air pollution in Shanghai, 2011 Cuyahoga River catches fire, twice. 1969 Top ten most toxic places on earth, 2011 Ten more ecological disasters. There is nothing political about wanting clean air and water for yourself and your children. The liberal/conservative, left vs right arguments do not apply. If you believe otherwise then I'm afraid you've been had by those wealthy few who stand to make enormous gains from their ability to make this a political issue in your eyes. Go ahead and try to explain to future generations that it was good for the economy, when they can't farm the land, breath the air, or drink the water. _______________ Back in the '70s a Soviet general told Farley Mowat, "The difference between Soviet propaganda and American propaganda is that we don't believe ours." A big difference between then and now is that when we tortured people or detained them without trial we pretended it was our ally (South Vietnam, Iran, Israel, etc.) that was doing it and we made polite objections. When we gratuitously invaded other countries we at least had the grace to have one of our puppet government's ask us to do so. We pretended not to be developing biological and chemical weapons and ABM systems contrary to treaties that we had signed. Today we're not even pretending. We just openly torture prisoners, arrest and murder people without trial, invade on the flimsiest of blatantly false pretenses, and coldly send in taxpayer-paid mercenaries to massacre people resisting corporate theft of their lands. Perhaps the most appalling thing to me is the easy acceptance of all of this by my fellow citizens, most of whom are well aware that the government is doing these things in their name and don't care. -Slashdot Forum Post _______________ Yossarian comes to realize that Catch-22 does not actually exist, but because the powers that be claim it does, and the world believes it does, it nevertheless has potent effects. Indeed, because it does not exist there is no way it can be repealed, undone, overthrown, or denounced. The combination of force with specious & spurious legalistic justification is one of the book's primary motifs. -Catch 22 Synopsis _______________ ...There is that wonderful story in the gospel of John where the scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a women taken in adultery, and attempting to trap him, asked if the women should be stoned according to the law of Moses. Christ did not answer straight away, but rather stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he didn't hear them. The Pharisees persisted, and after a time Christ lifted himself up and answered, "he that is without sin among you, let him first cast the stone at her." And again, stooped down. For me, this seemingly distracted gesture -- the stooping down and writing on the ground -- is Christ accessing the God inside himself. Christ then delivers the line that dis-empowers his opponents - and what an extraordinary remark it is - and then stoops again to re-commune with God. What Christ shows us here, is that the creative imagination has the power to combat all enemies; that we are protected by the flow of our own inspiration. -Nick Cave, The Flesh Made Word _______________ An old Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, "A battle is raging inside me ...it is a fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorry, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. The old man fixed the children with a firm stare. "This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person as well. They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee replied: "The one you feed." _______________ There was a group of missionaries who tried to teach Aboriginal children about soccer. Those kids took to it like ducks to water - kicking the ball around all day... But after about a week, those missionaries discovered to their amazement that the kids had changed the rules of the game - in such a way that at the end of the game, both teams had the same number of goals. The Aborigines just couldn't for the love of them understand why it was that the whites had to turn literally everything into as race with ten people running - and at the end, there was one winner... And nine losers. By the way - they see themselves as custodians of nature. And they have been around for a very long time... -Unknown _______________ Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. -Carl Sagan Pi is an infinite, nonrepeating decimal - meaning that every possible number combination exists somewhere in pi. Converted into ASCII text, somewhere in that infinite string of digits is the name of every person you will ever love, the date, time, and manner of your death, and the answers to all the great questions of the universe. Converted into a bitmap, somewhere in that infinite string of digits is a pixel-perfect representation of the first thing you saw on this earth, the last thing you will see before your life leaves you, and all the moments, momentous and mundane, that will occur between those two points. All information that has ever existed or will ever exist, the DNA of every being in the universe, EVERYTHING: all contained in the ratio of a circumference and a diameter. If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. _______________ As a group of frogs was traveling through the woods, two of them fell into a deep pit. When the other frogs crowded around the pit and saw how deep it was, they told the two frogs that there was no hope left for them. However, the two frogs decided to ignore what the others were saying and they proceeded to try and jump out of the pit. Despite their efforts, the group of frogs at the top of the pit were still saying that they should just give up. That they would never make it out. Eventually, one of the frogs took heed to what the others were saying and he gave up, falling down to his death. The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out. When he got out, the other frogs said, “Did you not hear us?” The frog explained to them that he was deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time. _______________ "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don't much care where--' said Alice. 'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. '--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation. 'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.' -Alice in Wonderland -------------Lessons Learned-------------- About Learning Lessons Most lessons in life are hard learned. Wisdom does not come free. You must fall before you can walk, and the blood you spill along the way is sort of a non-negotiable payment to the proprietor of that secret knowledge. But sometimes you can bleed too much. Sometimes the lessons cost more than you bargained for, and the knowledge gained turns out to be poison. Truth and wisdom can be dangerous, and when the poison of reality infects us, we begin to build barriers and lie to ourselves to protect our fragile egos. This is an automatic self-defense mechanism, almost totally involuntary like breathing or blinking. We avoid the truth the way a skilled knife thrower avoids the pretty spinning lady strapped to the table. But every once in a while your true self is revealed to you, and depending on the strength and length of the lies you have been telling yourself, this unwanted revelation can crash your entire world down all around you. The moment when the knife stops thrilling and starts killing is the moment we all dread. So we live in fear. Always doing whatever it takes to feed the illusion and avoid situations where we must confront who we are... Instead of who we like to think we are. -jw - About Trust You never really know someone. Betrayal is always on the table. The ones you thought you knew so well can always stab you in the back. There are no barriers, no shields, no walls, no nets. There is only your trust and the chance that someone you love will cut it into pieces. Maybe you don't know the true meaning of trust, and maybe that is the problem. When you trust someone, you surrender to them a frail and delicate piece of yourself. You lower your defenses and reveal some of your heart and in doing so leave yourself naked and defenseless against the possibility that everything you think you know about them is catastrophically mistaken and at any moment a flick of their Judas blades can pierce your heart and your good intentions and shatter the world of illusion you had, up until that point, built around yourself like a protective cocoon. And all of this is just a simple matter of action and will. A digital response in a digital frontier: Yes or no or one or zero. And it is their action. Not yours. The very definition of no control. The definition of trust. -jw - About Perception I was walking on the shores of the Red Sea in Hodeidah, Yemen with a good friend. We were strolling very slowly, heads down, eyes scanning for interesting seashells. Because we were side by side, there were moments when we would both see the very same shell at the very same second. It then became a race to see which of us could grab it first. After collecting for a while, my friend and I both saw the most luminous blue shell either of us had ever seen. I was so stunned by its beauty that I hesitated just long enough for my friend to grab it out from under my grasping hand. She held it to her face and I saw as her look went from rapture to disgust. Then she threw the shell back to the sand and walked on. I immediately picked it up and I imagine the very same progression crossed my face. Awe to perplexity to disgust. It was not a shell at all, but a shell-shaped piece of plastic. The object itself had not changed one bit throughout the entire interaction. It was just what it was. -Unknown Things are rarely as bad as they seem. Despite our convictions, the plane - minus an engine, broken and bleeding oil - has still not quite crashed into the ocean. But we never believe that. We always accept the worst as a fact of life, and realign our expectations to fit a bleaker future. The moment we find out that things aren't as bad as we thought is the moment we're given a second life - A chance to fix everything. So we grab a hammer and go to work... Except most of the time what we think we're fixing was never really broken in the first place, and that's when the real damage is done. It is our lingering faith in the chaos surrounding us which ignites real chaos. -jw We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. - About Entropy and the Limits of Control It takes a well-trained architect and an entire construction crew to design and erect a building. It takes an idiot with an oil can and a match to bring one down. You can spend your whole life building something from nothing. One storm can come and blow it all away. -Martina McBride, Anyway - About Misunderstanding And Shattered Relationships We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. Man desires a world where good and evil can be clearly distinguished, for he has an innate and irresponsible desire to judge before he understands. - About Copyright Extension The seventh edition of Grimms' fairy tales, source of Snow White, was published in 1857. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865. Collodi's Pinocchio was published in 1883. Kipling's The Jungle Book was published in 1894. If these works had been subject to Disney's hypocritical 100 year copyright prison, Disney would have had to pay for the privilege of making its feature films based on them, to say nothing of the corresponding merchandising. One wonders whether Snow White or Pinocchio would have been made at all. These are the works on which Disney built its empire, and it was able to use them because they were not subject to preposterous copyright claims. Under the terms that were in effect when Disney's version of Snow White was made, the film, its score, and all the characters and visuals associated with it, ought to have entered public domain DECADES ago. This is the point. Disney drinks deep from the well of public domain but contrives to prevent that well ever from being replenished. -Techdirt Forum Post About Love Dont say the wrong thing when love is involved or love won't be involved much longer. The harder you try to hold onto something, the faster it slips through your fingers. - About Words The power of language is a dangerous thing. Words can create and destroy; build bridges with their radiance or burn them down with their defiance, while devils gleefully dance in the firelight. There are times, when you can get the best light from a burning bridge. - About Regret At 3am when sleep is hard to find there is no distance between the darkness and all of the things you want to forget. The main thing you're going to have to ask yourself is whether or not pain now (diciplin) is better than pain leter (regret). The answer - it always is. You lose yourself as a person if you have too many regrets. But if you're willing to suffer the pain of dicipline the exact opposite happens. You find yoruself as a person for unlike regret, discipline is pain that builds you up, not down. So go out and suffer a little now so you don't have to suffer forver. - About Time Time is like an ocean of sand. It will always slip through your fingers and always slip away from you. There will however, always be a small part that stays in the palm of your hand. Be thankful for that. -Unknown As the lightning strikes and the thunder rolls, the days of dreaming come and go. - About Situational Unawareness If you are going to fly to the sun, flying at night is not going to save you. - About Bad Choices I am the author of my life. Unfortunately, i'm writing in pen and can't erase my mistakes. - - About Hidden Meanings 'Can you help me with this', are, more often than not, code words for 'can you do this for me.' ^_^ - - About Miscalculation If you do something right, no one remembers. If you do something wrong, no one forgets. - - About Honor Son, in life, love, or business, always remember, you dance with the person you brought. This is a basic point of honor - you keep the commitments you made. More difficult than you thought it would be? Tough, honor it. More expensive than you estimated? Tough, honor it. See something else that's better? Tough, honor it. -Found in a forum somewhere A promise made is a debt unpaid. - About Balance One person's "balance" is another's wildly corrupt, morally bankrupt, exploitative society. The use of the word often connotes that both sides of an argument are equally fair, and equally at fault, which is impossible. Forget balance. Aim for the truth and correct your steering whenever needed. -From a forum somewhere - About Hollow Ideals It is impossible to defeat any enemy by lowering yourself to their standards. The minute you become what you are fighting is the minute the fight is lost. Regardless of who is left standing at the end. It's when the chips are down that you find out who you really are. Principles are, by their very nature, subject to neither negotiation nor compromise. Principles are like Schrodinger's cat. You can claim you have them til your blue in the face. You can even believe it. But until they are put to the test their existence is no more certain than an unobserved quantum state. -jw The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. -Martin Luther King, Jr. - About Idealism vs Realism Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they should have for dinner. Communism is a group of fat wolves harvesting the sheep in between Swedish massages. - About Choice The word "choice" tends to be hard to understand beyond a narrow scope. In capitalism (or at least in countries with a version of capitalism lacking an adequate safety net) the choice is: 1.) work, or 2.) starve. Now, that's a "choice," but in a pretty narrow sense. That's why moral and political philosophers distinguish between negative freedom and positive freedom. Both are important. Which is why even many more moderate pro-"market" libertarians advocate some type of guaranteed income or negative income tax. If you can't choose to opt out of the system (while you, say, look for a better job, or go to school, or start your own business), you don't fully have your freedom do you? The children of wealthy families, for example, always have this freedom. They can go to school without working, take time to look for a good job without starving (or even experiencing discomfort), etc. Hell, they can even screw around "finding themselves" on year-long European excursions. So, right now, many workers are faced with the choice of either 1.) working at a job that does little more than help ensure you won't starve (with the help of food stamps - a giant subsidy from taxpayers to WalMart), but provides no opportunity for advancement of even enjoyment of life, and 2.) starving. If that's your idea of freedom, that's fine. But you're probably of the ilk who argues that if a poor person were allowed to choose to, say, sell themselves into slavery or sell their vital organs, it would be a "free" choice, too. I think most people, however, have a little more nuanced idea of freedom that involves consideration of things like power, coercion, and hunger. But if you want to keep riding that far-right libertarian hobby horse, go for it. While the privileged few at or near the top, all those fortunate sons and daughters, may never have to work a day in their lives and will always live a life of luxury regardless. True freedom and choice come in degrees, with those at the top - never a slave to their needs of food and shelter - having the highest amount, and those at the bottom having the least. Freedom is a scale. -Slashdot Forum Post During my deacon training at church the 'caring ministry' part of the training distinguished between those who are broke and those who are poor. Broke people are easier to help because they are usually broke due to circumstances. Broke people once had resources but have lost them. Helping the poor is much harder because there are generational and educational barriers to overcome. -Slashdot Forum Post - About Failing Empires and Shattered Civility Our empire will fail. Corporate money and propaganda will engulf and corrupt everything around us, and what was once left of our proud justice system will shatter under the weight of plutocratic tyranny. In the name of security your right to a trial will be rescinded, your natural rights revoked, leaving nothing to stand between you and the feudal slavery of your forefathers and the intoxication of power will be complete. Programmed by corporate controlled media, decreed by a bought and paid for government, executed by mindless power mad DHS agents, concealed from civilian oversight by the cry of national security, and written by ALEC, we will tear down our regulatory structures and government institutions and denounce taxes and environmental laws, while being made completely unaware or complacent about atrocities like the Citizens United ruling and the indefinite detention of American Citizens. We will give the fox the keys to the hen house and the rich will plunder it all and our once proud civilized world will fall to ruin all around us, our government will collapse under the weight of its lies, and everything we hold dear will be lost. But we--those programmed barbaric inhabitants of that once proud civilized world--will all be too busy staring at our smartphones to notice or care. -jw - About The Forlorn Quicksand of Inevitability Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. - About Grievers of Creation I drove out to the desert. I looked to the east and there was the night and the city of torment. I looked west and there was the sterile desert and blinding sun. I turned away from the darkness and as I walked deeper into that dazzling ocean of sunlight and sand, I could feel my memories crumbling into the dust of that yellow sea. And one by one there was no more history, no more torment, no more wicked city, no more night. Step by step i walked deeper, trading away the chains of an uncompromising and brutal world for the stressless promise of the emptiness surrounding me. And as the chains fell away I watched with detached satisfaction as the shadow beneath my feet, slowly began to fade on the sand. This was what I had come for, what I traded everything for: The liberating nonexistence; the catatonic dream. The prosaic oblivion where old memories cannot survive and new memories cannot be made. That soft harmonic whisper of the clawing shackles of a wicked world crumbling to nothing in the invincible face of an endless dazzling desert. Looking ahead, I spotted God shining brightly on the horizon and I knew He too was searching for peace. And I wept at the thought of a kindred spirit. With triumph in my heart I ran to Him, but as I approached I began to realize that I could no longer remember who He was... ...And in the last moment before we both faded into blissful nothing, it struck me that God—The Griever of Creation—could no longer remember... who I was either. -jw - About Heartache and the Loss of God Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of God—wandering, wondering in hopeless night. Out here on the perimeter there are no stars. Out here we is stoned...immaculate. -Jim Morrison ----------------Metronome----------------- We wear the mask that grins and lies It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile. -Paul Laurence Dunbar By the time you swear you're his - shivering & sighing And he vows his passion is - infinite, undying Lady, make a note of this: One of you is lying -Dorothy Parker I am troubled immeasurably by your eyes I am struck by the feather of your soft reply The sound of glass speaks quick disdain And conceals what your eyes fight to explain -Jim Morrison To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. _______________ We will fight to the death To the edge of the earth It's a brave new world From the last to the first The righteous rise With burning eyes Of hatred and ill-will Madmen fed on fear and lies To beat and burn and steal It doesn't think, it doesn't feel It doesn't laugh or cry All it does from dusk till dawn Is make the soldiers die The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams Repulsive - Corrosive - Enticing - Confusing Abusive - Elusive - Provoking - Amusing Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. -Yeats Double double toil and trouble Fires burn and cauldron bubble For a charm of powerful trouble Like a hell-broth boil and bubble About about in reel and rout The death fires danced at night The water, like the witches oil Burnt green and blue and white And every witches tongue Was withered at the root They could not speak no more than if They had been choked with soot _______________ For the angel of death Spread his wings on the blast And breathed in the face Of his foe as he passed And the eyes of the sleepers Waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved And for ever grew still _______________ Here’s to our fragile mortality, guarantor of life’s lethality; both our pleasure and pain inspire the humane with the promise of finality. _______________ My captain does not answer His lips are pale and still My captain does not feel my arm He has no pulse nor will The ship is anchored safe and sound Its voyage close to done From fearful trip, the victor ship Comes in with object won But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red For on the deck my captain lies Fallen cold and dead -Walt Whitman, Oh Captain My Captain _______________ Here is the moral of Human Tales, 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past: First freedom, and then glory; when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption, -barbarianism at last; And History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page. _______________ But I being poor, I have only my dreams I have spread my dreams under your feat Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams _______________ -William Butler Yeats, Cloths of Heaven _______________ And now here we are The semaphore ending Run right along The future is pending -jw ------------------The End------------------ Though the cities start to crumble And the towers fall around us The sun is slowly fading, And it's colder than the sea It is written, from the desert, To the mountains they shall leads us By the hand and by the heart They will comfort you and me In their innocence and trusting They will teach us to be free -John Denver, Rhymes & Reasons _______________ The End This is the end beautiful friend This is the end my only friend the end Of our elaborate plans, the end Of everything that stands the end No safety or surprise the end I'll never look into your eyes again. Can you picture, what we'll be so limitless and free, desperately in need of some strangers hand in a desperate land This is the end He loved Big Brother. The Joker pointed out that people are only as good as the world allows them to be. And he is right, because there is no such thing as choice. Our goal then, should be to create a better world. The Pessimism of Intellect Final words of 1984: He loved big brother. The Optimism of Will Lavos symbolizes oblivion, that great negation of which death is only a facet. Humanity succeeds in thwarting death in Chrono Trigger by salvaging the pieces of its scattered history and creating a new meaning, a new story, in the face of certain doom. In the process, Crono and his allies learn of humanity's birth from Lavos, its evolution to suit his needs, its death throes in the year 2300 and its total extinction at the End of Time. In the end, though, the most important time is Now . As long as the human capacity to dream and to will that dream remains, choice defies fate; and thus does life defy death. K. Newton The Only Way is One The world is headed for mutiny When all we want is unity We may rise and fall but in the end, we'll meet our fate together. Creed, One So for Socrates, there's no such thing as acting against one's best judgment: There's only bad judgment. He draws an analogy with optical illusions. Like a child who thinks her thumb is bigger than the moon, we overestimate the value of nearby pleasures and underestimate the severity of their faraway consequences. We must then illustrate why this is a fallacy to educate the person in question. _______________________________________________________________________________ Shall i give you despair? https://soundcloud.com/this-american-life/534-a-not-so-simple-majority The Catholic Church has never had a problem with evolution per se, only with metaphysical naturalism, an atheistic philosophy sometimes grafted onto it. St. Thomas Aquinas intriguingly wrote, “[S]pecies, also, that are new, if any such appear, existed beforehand in various active powers; so that animals, and perhaps even new species of animals, are produced by putrefaction [i.e. distillation, development] by the power which the stars and elements received at the beginning” (Summa Theologica, I.73.1 reply 3). Species coming into being through natural causes? That sounds suspiciously like something near to evolution, from the pen of the man who is most famous for his proofs of the existence of God. And in the 13th century, no less. But evolution fits far better with Aquinas' intensely rational explication of God's causality than a God who creates over arbitrary twenty-four hour time periods. Aquinas' cosmological argument establishes that, since “from nothing nothing comes” (apologies to Lawrence Krauss, but gravity and quantum fields do not constitute “nothing"), there must exist a transcendent cause which never came into being but always is, and which relies on nothing outside of itself to explain its existence. This being, whose existence is identical to its nature, grounds all else that exists, at every moment, even time itself. That's not a being that would create, pause, and create again. For Aquinas, creation is not a process over time at all. It's not even a MOMENT in time. It's the continuous ongoing dependence of all else that exists — even time itself — upon this transcendent cause. The “days” of creation, then, refer to what Augustine called the “unfolding of generations” — natural causality at work over time. This also means that natural causality is real. It's not, as the Muslims tend to believe, an illusion (i.e. when a camel poops in a tent, it only looks like a natural cause-effect event happened. Really, it's God doing that). It's real, and it's really natural. When a bird soars through the air, its wings are shaped for flight, its muscles move those wings in just the right way to catch the air, the air is molecularly structured in such a way as to be able to hold the bird in motion between earth and sky. But it is God who keeps the bird itself and the natural laws that govern its flight and the movements of its muscles and the flowing of its blood and the structure of the air and the entire system of cause-and-effect in existence at every moment. He underlies it, upholds it, creates it, holds it in being. It is caused naturally. It is caused by God. They are different kinds of causation. Neither rules out the other. This is also why Catholics tend to be leery about “intelligent design.” The way it is usually formulated, intelligent design theory holds that God reaches into the natural order and tweaks evolution to go where he wants. But he doesn't need to do that. He underlies the natural order. He upholds it. It is what it is because of him. The idea that he needs to tweak it accepts the atheist view of the natural order as something that is not dependent on God but independent, such that it runs by itself and he needs to adjust it. That makes God just another being alongside of nature, even if a very powerful one. And it means that the natural order doesn't have the foundational, transcendent cause that it must have to exist at all. The only reason there's a debate like this over evolution is because the protestants see it as a threat to their bible-only-and-with-exacting-literalism faith. And, of course, many atheists believe that evolution somehow dispenses the need for a God (which just means that they have a Sunday school idea of God: a stern old man with a beard in the sky who is very powerful and smites you when you do wrong). Both sides see the other as a threat, and so they've been fighting for a hundred and fifty years. But the protestants would do well to read their bible a little more closely. It says very clearly in Genesis 1:24: And God said: Let the EARTH BRING FORTH the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds." It's even clearer in Genesis 1:20 and 1:21: "God also said: Let the WATERS BRING FORTH the creeping creature having life, and the fowl that may fly over the earth under the firmament of heaven. “And GOD CREATED the great whales, and every living and moving creature, WHICH THE WATERS BROUGHT FORTH, according to their kinds, and every winged fowl according to its kind. And God saw that it was good." This explicitly acknowledges both natural causality and God's causality. “God created . . . which the waters brought forth.” So I really don't know why there's a debate. Oh, and: the Big Bang was originally posited by Georges Lemaitre . . . a Catholic priest. On the Subject of the Vietnam War From my perspective as a vet, Bill Ehrhart's reflections are accurate and helpful. It's also helpful to know about the war's historical background—which none of us were told before shipping to Viet Nam, and which few vets know to this day. Prior to U.S. involvement, French colonialists had created two mass starvations in the country. The French created these starvations by forcing Vietnamese farmers (the large majority of the population) to sell their rice crops to the colonialists at low prices (primarily for export). Then, for the farmers' own subsistence, they were in effect forced to buy back from the colonialists the rice that they (the farmers) had grown—at exorbitant prices. This policy led to the effective bankruptcy and starvation of 1 million-2 million Vietnamese and accelerated the formation of Vietnamese nationalist groups (including the Viet Minh, precursor to the Viet Cong) whose aim was to liberate their country from French oppression. After World War II, without most Americans' knowledge, the US government, compelled by US business interests, began to fund the French military effort in Viet Nam. In other words, the French became the proxies of the United States. America, born out of our collective desire for our own freedom and self-determination, became the driving force behind the French oppression of the Vietnamese people. Notably, America did so after having promised the Vietnamese that we would support free and fair elections in the country—in exchange for the Viet Minh's fighting as our ally against the Japanese in Viet Nam. After WWII, we reneged on our promise. Among the 6 U.S. presidents who tried to sell the war to the largely uninformed U.S. population, only one president—General Eisenhower—told the truth: that the U.S . was in Viet Nam to protect American corporate access to the country's substantial natural resources. In 1970-71, I served as an operating room technician (U.S. Army 91st Evacuation Hospital) in Chu Lai (central Viet Nam). When not working in surgery, I'd slip through the barbed wire to visit Thanh Long (a nearby hamlet) or teach English to kids at the local Catholic school/orphanage. About 7 years ago, I spent a year as a volunteer facilitator of over a hundred peer-to-peer vets' meetings at our city's VA medical center. To a man, every one of us felt that we'd been betrayed. Some believed that we'd been betrayed by the Vietnamese. (I remember a story related by a Marine who'd been in the first group to come ashore at Da Nang. His unit was approached by villagers who offered the Marines bottled Cokes. My friend told me that his group was shocked, angered, and bewildered to later discover that the villagers had put ground glass in the Coke bottles. Like Bill Ehrhart and most of us then in Viet Nam, the Marines wondered “Don't these people realize that we're here to help them?!” Although opinions differed regarding who was at fault, the majority of vets in our VA meetings felt in some way betrayed by our own government. To date, I've encountered few vets who've been willing to assign blame to the American people who elected our government and supported the US war effort, to the American system of education (which, like the educational systems of many countries, often presents a slanted and/or incomplete view), or to our otherwise beautiful American culture, which too often looks to military force as a means to resolve our differences with other nations. The price we Americans pay for our self-imposed, self-serving ignorance is beyond calculation. People often think that our Viet Nam war cost 58,000 U.S. lives (not to mention up to 3 million Vietnamese lives). However, in the years following the war, over 150,000 Viet Nam vets have committed suicide, and countless more have suffered for four decades with failed marriages, homelessness, PTSD, depression, Agent Orange effects, and other consequences of their participation in the war. And of course our war in Viet Nam was just one example of many. Today, similar to America's Viet Nam war debate in former decades, the current national immigration debate is almost entirely framed by American's ignorance of the role that US taxpayers, the US federal government, and corrupt US business interests have played in suppressing education, economic development, and democracy in 17 countries of Latin America—a national behavior that has led to our current immigration crisis. Let us pray that our younger generations will learn the lesson that our Viet Nam war and all such adventures ultimately teach. -Bruce Smith A very close friend of my mother was a Vet. His primary job was to basically throw explosives into huts. It made no difference to his Superiors that those huts contained only children. They demanded he simply kill as many Vietnamese as possible. He said a vast majority of those huts contained at least one child, but most contained several children. He spent every waking moment of the rest of his life hearing the sounds of those children screams being replayed over and over in his head. In his suicide note, that he wrote in 1985, he stated that death was the only way he would be able to escape the sounds of those screams. Wordplay

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