Weapons of Goliath

In 1991, Noam Chomsky spoke of some of the atrocities of the first war in Iraq:

There was an awesome demonstration of this in Iraq./ Military operations were designed so that no battles took place...When U.S. troops entered Kuwait they were led by a battalion of engineers using bulldozers. These were used to bury possibly thousands of Iraqi soldiers alive in their trenches. They simply drove the bulldozers over the trenches and buried the soldiers alive. This is a horrible war crime, but nobody cares. Nonetheless, it does reveal something about U.S. military planning. If you attack someone who can defend themselves, you don't send bulldozers into battle. This makes it clear that the United States had prepared everything in such a way that there was never going to be a war. And effectively, there never was a war, only slaughter and atrocities.
-Noam Chomsky

When I hear about the graves of dead soldiers we now keep "finding"...whom should I assume put them there? Questions, questions...

The Edge

The Edge
Edge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world.

The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.


Edge: The Third Culture
The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.

Edge: The Reality Club
From 1981 through 1996, The Reality Club held its meetings in Chinese restuarants, artists lofts, the Board Rooms of Rockefeller University, The New York Academy of Sciences, and investment banking firms, ballrooms, museums, and living rooms, among other venues. In January, 1997, The Reality Club has now migrated to the Internet on Edge. Here you will find a number of today's sharpest minds taking their ideas into the bull ring knowing they will be challenged. The ethic is thinking smart vs. the anesthesiology of wisdom.

Through the years, The Reality Club has had a simple criterion for choosing speakers. We look for people whose creative work has expanded our notion of who and what we are. A few Reality Club speakers and/or Edge presenters are bestselling authors or are famous in the mass culture. Most are not. Rather, we encourage work on the cutting edge of the culture, and the investigation of ideas that have not been generally exposed. We are interested in "thinking smart;" we are not interested in the anesthesiology of "wisdom." The motto of the Club is "to arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves."

Including ideas of Stewart Brand, Brian Eno, Howard Gardner, George Lakoff, Jaron Lanier, Marvin Minsky, Todd Siler and others...

Edge: Digerati
Who are the "digerati" and why are they "the cyber elite"? They are the doers, thinkers, and writers who have tremendous influence on the emerging communication revolution. They are not on the frontier, they are the frontier.

The digerati evangelize, connect people, adapt quickly. They like to talk with their peers because it forces them to go to the top of their form and explain their most interesting new ideas. They give each other permission to be great. That's who they want to talk to about the things they are excited about because they want to see if it plays. They ask each other the questions they are asking themselves, and that's part of what makes this cyber elite work.

Advice for Democratic Candidates

Compromise is not necessarily a good thing.

The way to activate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about the results you want to create. When you make a choice, you activate vast human energies and resources, which otherwise go untapped. All too often people fail to focus their choices upon results and therefore their choices are ineffective. If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.

-Robert Fritz

Oh yes...and be like Dean!

>"...all that is left is compromise." Hmm... could he also be referring to the ersatz American Left -- which, in the main, is nothing more than those people who are not also corporations. The disinterested...although not uninterested...as some seem to mistakingly conclude. The unshowered hordes. You and me. (No, Ken Lay is not reading this.)

The High-Toned Old Christian Woman
by Wallace Stevens


Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.

Beckwith Institute Home Page

Beckwith Institute Home Page

The Official Anonymosabbatical

The Official Anonymosabbatical



Gonna take a few days off and do some genealogy research. Please hang around though. Make some coffee. Envision world peace. Raise your kundalini. Think thoughts...

Be
Peace.
-Anon

Family Love: Soldiers Want to Come Home

 

Busharoo Bonzai

 Busharoo Bonzai

The implacable George W sings these haunting words to his elusive desideratum, Saddam Hussein...aided by wonder-blogstress, Iddybud

LINK


In the cult classic, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai, there is a scene where Buckaroo, played by Peter Weller and who is a rock star, a martial arts expert, a neurosurgeon, and politically well-connected, sings the song "Since I don't have you" in a smoky lounge where sits Penny, who is beautifully played by Ellen Barkin.

Now George W. Bush is no Buckaroo Bonzai, so don't get me wrong.
He is a Lizardo...only having never possessed the cerebrum. But on second thought, maybe Lizardo only anticipates Chimpy. He is fond of calling people "Monkey-boy". But alas, that is soft science. I'll have to keep analyzing. Let me know if you discover a connection. In the meantime, enjoy Iddy's rendition of the song:

Since I don't have you - lyrics by Iddybud

Will Arianna Take On Arnold?

 
The Battle of the Accents
By Don Hazen, AlterNet
July 14, 2003

Hard to believe, but this fall those two accented icons, Greek-born Arianna Huffington and Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger, may well be battling to the wire to take the California governorship away from sad sack Gray Davis, who has embarrassed himself to near unanimous public contempt in the state.

more

Blame Bush for California's Budget Woes

 
Blame Bush for California's Budget Woes

A reiteration of what we said before...

Federal energy regulators met or exchanged phone calls with Enron Corp. executives and lobbyists 25 times during 11 months when Californians endured soaring energy prices and rolling blackouts, according to records released yesterday by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Reuters
Susan Cornwell
February 22, 2002


Shortly after taking office, President Bush waged a battle against the imposition of federal price controls in California that allowed Enron to price-gouge consumers by extending the energy crisis in California, costing the state billions of dollars. Enron reported increased revenues of almost $70 billion from the previous year.


Los Angeles Times
January 2, 2002

Iran's Got Oil. Prepare for Liberation!

 

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Cultist and Infomercial Magnate, Pat Robertson, Practices Black Magic on Supreme Court

Cultist and Infomercial Magnate, Pat Robertson, Practices Black Magic on Supreme Court

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2909105,00.html

Too left or Not Too Left? That is the question.

Too left or Not Too Left? That is the question.

Washington Post
NDOL

20 Lies About the War

20 Lies About the War
Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath. By Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker

Safely Stupid

Safely Stupid

From the Stupidfiles:

http://www.richardpoe.com/blog_single.php?rowID=118

Conservatives 330, Liberals 2,690

Liberals Outperform Conservatives in the Blogosphere

Google Search turns up wide descrepancy

Conservative Blogs on Google
Liberal Blogs on Google

Rush Limbaugh, the fat man's messiah, is fond of saying "repeat it often enough and eventually they will believe you." Well the conservatrons are at it again. This time they are claiming domination of the blogosphere...apparently since domination is the only language they speak. Don't be surprised if they started buying up liberal blogs just to balance the scales...just like they did to web businesses at the turn of the century, only to flush them down the toilet. Gotta control the information flow. Dissenting voices not good. Competing industries not good...

Of course they could, instead, multiply their rolls in blogdom...but alas that might expose them for the vacuous reactionaries they often are.

Take a look at liberal blogrolls and then conservative blogrolls. Now read and analyze each "side".

What you will notice is a certain concentricity of blogs on the right, and sadly, quite a bit of concentricity on the left now as well. People are selling out their individuality for popularity, and at a cost.

Conservatives claim to be for the individual, and yet they work in packs. They watch each other to learn what to say. Liberals are far more insouciant in this department, and tend to depend more on their native gifts to assess the situation. You do know about the situation?

More on the situation later...

Autonote

Autonote 1

Create a section which keeps track of formerly-owned domain names, and other titles and ideas that were once my babies. What have they become? Have they become anything?

Here are some that pop to mind: Green Witch Village, Virtual Bohemia, IBMW, Idea Management, Idea Consulting, Vision Coach, Omnivision, Peace Futures, Peace Goods, Nicotine Addicts Anonymous, Seers Catalog, bla bla bla....

Ahh...bobby!

Insiders to Usher Back the Sunlight

Here Comes the Sun

"In the coming weeks, we're going to be seeing folks coming out and coming forth with what they know, and it is going to be very embarrassing for the Bush administration."

DETAILS

CBS Sucks Bush's Tool

Corporate Bush Sucker is Enronned into Bullshitting America

There once was a time when people in the news service had testicular fortitude. But then the news service became the news business, and pretty soon the "news" thing will atrophy and fall off, like the weak little appendages of those sinecures who now determine clever ways to lie for power...compensated in dollars for what they lack in truth, integrity, professionalism.

One is reminded of the image of the Bush family as they waited for the election returns in 2000, and having heard some bad news, worked their magic; utilized their tool. In just minutes, the Media had heard the call. Kane had stepped into the shadow. The death knell had rung for Democracy, and power had been regained. Subreptiously.

I imagine such a call again came to CBS.

Or maybe it was the foot-stomping, door-banging thugs from Florida...
You know, the Republican operatives with the famous stench of Fascism
permeating their repugnancies. Another fine tool.

Maybe Bush or Tom DeLay directed them to the offices of CBS, and their ungentlemanly antics created paroxysms in the faculties of those pedigrees granted them the tedious task, aboriginally. Hard to know for sure. Bush's famous secrecy...

At any rate, I think one can expect another pisspoor performance by the Media over the next election cycle. They've already started. That is, if they ever stopped.

The Media is one of the most effective tools in Bush's sandbox. His best weapon, really.

But as the ancients in China warned: It is the nature of weapons to turn against their wielder...
The story

The Incredible Bulk

Jolly Mystery Solved