FodderSight Which Way at the Fork

Jail 'Em. The American Incarceration Non-Solution. The Myth of Benefit.

2012-02-04T04:19:00.001-05:00

They're In The Jailhouse Now. *

Now What?
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Old Newgate Prison, infirmary view, Granby CT

The topic of race correlating with incarceration rates and capital punishment cases is close to the surface again, see that prejudice again addressed in an Opinion at the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/opinion/race-and-death-penalty-juries.html?scp=1&sq=race%20and%20death%20penalty%20juries&st=cse. In 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act so that inmates could question the role of race in their sentencing; and the jury selection process, and other elements of crime and punishment.
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The concept of costly, fruitless incarceration is gaining traction, this by way of update 2012. See Hartford Courant op-ed, for example. The home edition, Tom Condon editorial, is entitled, Prisons Too Costly, No Bar to Crime. The online edition, however is sanitized to remove the concept that incarceration is not a bar to crime. That allows the theory of putting people behind bars continues uninterrupted, is merely too costly. Dare not tell people it also does not work. That would attack the myth. Gendarmism: the cultural mindset that one group has the duty to monitor and control others just because. One group sees itself as more exceptional than the others, and asserts its mindset to prove it. See http://sassafrastree.blogspot.com/#!/2011/03/domestic-gendarmism-gendarmes-over.html
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1. Background. Is this true: That some ironies in our civic habits cross into self-delusion.
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The land of the free boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world.
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We have indeed attained Global Supremacy in that regard. See the 2006 Fact Sheet from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, "US Rates of Incarceration: A Global Perspective," by Christopher Hartney, at http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/pubs/2006nov_factsheet_incarceration.pdf/. More:

Our incarceration rate is 4X to 5X higher than the global average. Some of our states go 6X higher.
We are 5% of the world's total population, but we boast 23% of the world's total incarcerated people.
We put more women in jail than any other country does.
And these incarceration rates do not correlate with crime rates. We just put people in jail at a higher rate per incident overall.
Our "system" costs 42 billion a year, but inconsistently funds areas of health, safety, rehabilitation, reentry, repair. That is some $25,000 per prisoner, see below.

See also the "Global Perspective" article at a corrections professionals site, at http://://community.nicic.org/blogs/corrections_headlines/archive/2006/11/16/Global-Perspective-on-US-Incarceration-Rates.aspx
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Get precise: out of 100,000 people, Russia jails 607, Cuba 487, Singapore 360, France 88, UK 145, Canada 107, Germany 96, Sweden 78, India 31, United States 738. American exceptionalism in incarceration, in vengeance.
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2. Why do we do it?

Surplus people and unemployment - both play a role. One reason - in the old days, people were needed. Not now. People in the old days meant productivity. People could populate places. Provide labor. Countries could ship their prison populations to colonies in servitude, or just to fill it up, push the indigenous out.

We have run out of colonies as destinations for our unwanted. We have to face what all those people are doing in prison forever, and is anyone willing to prevent what brought some of them there, or is there too much satisfaction in seeing them below our station.
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We have more surplus people than factories need, and no jobs to speak of. Emptying prisons of the nonviolent, blendable inmate adds to unemployment, see discussion below, so some will oppose it for their own job security. Adding minorities to the main population increases competition, may jeopardize superior status of some, leading to more resistance to assimilation.

Myth of protection.

It may make us safer from that particular person kept inside, by definition, until the person gets out, untended, unskilled, and very pent-up. A numbers reviewer may say, without looking closely, that some countries have fewer in jail, but their quality of life is lower, measured as living standard. Or they may point out that their society has a religious system of laws that is far more harsh in certain individual cases, so fewer people offend.
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Protection? By incarceration? Not necessarily so on all counts. http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00301. Take away the religious forms of laws in theocracies that may impose a fixed punishment on a fixed act, without equity to soften or tailor the result; and look at countries without those laws, and their incarceration rate still is less. Check the other lists of countries - and find that politically "repressive" countries still incarcerate less than we do, except for Russia incarcerating more individuals specifically for robbery, see below. Incarceration is a complex matter, but must be examined, see http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_iandc...
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Capital punishment. Does capital punishment keep us safe. We thrive on capital punishment, as opposed to other countries including Romania that abolished it, see the list at "The Abuses of Punishment," by Robert Adams, now a Google book at page 150. Full address at
But it is an error-ridden, brutal system, and states without capital punishment have lower homicide rates, see Common Dreams site at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/092200-01.htm/ Protection? Not really.

Cultural hierarchy. Racism. That may be the mirror we need. Many sources cite racism - Do spend time learning about perspectives from those who see their people off to jail more than the rest of us. Meet Walidah at ://www.walidah.com/node/97/. Blacks and Hispanics: 23% of our total population, but they constitute 62% of the prison population. See Human Rights Watch at http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2002/02/26/us-incarceration-rates-reveal-striking-racial-disparities/ Also read "Blacks in Prisons" at http://www.gibbsmagazine.com/blacks_in_prisons.htm/

Do we really maneuver a penal system into cultural control mode, aimed at minorities in increasing numbers over the last century, without even lip service to "corrections." Don't solve the problems underlying. Imprison the person caught, in the problem's trap. Does it look that way?
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3. What to do?
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Reallocate the funds we are already spending.
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Get people productive again with what we spend.
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Prevention: Set the vested interests aside for a while, and consider anew if lack of safety net sustenance, basic food, clothing, shelter, healthcare insufficiency -- economics -- may underlie the activities that lead to prison. Consider whether the same or even less money spent elsewhere decreases jail. Is our ideology out of sync with reality, with our own benefit. What can anyone do to be productive if in bad health and no service? See The Economist's View at http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/11/welfare_spendin.html/. What if we find that blacks and hispanics are not naturally more criminal.
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Use the funds for community, manageable facilities. Yes, in everyone's back yard. Or next to town hall or the police station.
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4. Expect opposition.
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Think of the financial and cultural opposition to change. Look back at the Hartford Courant opinion, supra. Deleted from the online version is the proven observation that incarceration does not stop crime. Vested interests and vested points of view run the place, just like in familiar Washington , not the country's best interests in neutralizing anti-social or aggressive behavior, including by addressing root causes.
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Read about the societal forces served by incarceration, unrelated to "protection" of the society.

Old Newgate - closing it meant loss of jobs for jailers, loss of free labor in the mines underneath

Recidivism, encouraged by dysfunctional and underfunded resosurces, is green. It pays to recycle inmates. The more inmates, the more people in eternal supervision somewhere, the more jobs for other people. Is that so.
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We underestimate how this penal system works for many: for middle and low income people, it does indeed reduce unemployment, making jobs a little more available to other people. We simply put and keep people in jail where they can't look for work, for example.
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But who really counts all the related costs, including for the family outside, and the costs of supports upon release.
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Saturation law enforcement. Is the solution in a new direction - saturation law enforcement, concentrating law enforcement in poor areas. No, says this site, Neil Websdale, author of book "Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing," at page 218, address at http://books.google.com/books?id=v9sp_U861X4C&pg=PA218&lpg=PA218&dq=poverty+incarceration+rates&source=web&ots=K6tySum7pY&sig=ehKoJHjBDCU8K2OQgPC6OVaecGs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result
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Fair use scary quote:

The rise of US imprisonment rates since 1994 tends to lower unemployment. The criminal justice juggernaut and its community policing arm continually create a need for their own services, thereby increasing job opportunities for police officers, dispatchers, correctional officers, probation officers, parole officers, counselors of all kinds, and so on. Poor (increasing minority) inmates are divided from juggernaut employees, both groups rendered increasingly vulnerable by the globalization of capital. At an ideological level, the penal "solution" also provides a scapegoat, an outlet for increasingly overworked, alienated, underpaid, and angry working people.

Continue on.
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We exacerbate the problem. Read how "community policing" works, among people jobless, in a "subterranean economy," family breakdown, violence. Same page 218, from Neil Websdale's "Policing the Poor." Those observations from a Nashville housing project surveillance study.
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This site agrees -University Press of New England - no to saturation law enforcement in targeted areas, see review at http://www.upne.com/1-55553-497-X.html/, The effort is geared to manage stigmatized populations, much like the outriders or slave patrols in southern plantation areas, and the criminal justice system (this is the reviewer talking about the book) in rooted in slavery and racism systems that destroy black families and even fosters a kind of selective breeding. Civil rights gains, gone. Heavy reading. Apparently this is one of the first to assess community policing from the viewpoint of the policed, not the police.
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Conclusion:
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The Fact Sheet site and many other sites call for a review, enumerates how we got here - including "misdirected laws, policies and practices" - and those areas are not just judicial, but in the media, and politics. From whatever cultural and economic circumstances, no matter how deprived, watch us let it all drift until young men (mostly) get to acting-out and vice-drug-violence and then off to the lock-up. Not all in jail were deprived, however. That is an oversimplification. The point is - no addressing basic sustenance floors for everyone, no addressing healthcare and conditions, and watch the prison system thrive.
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Recycle inmates. It pays.
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Add religion - some have spoken up against stepping on others to reach higher yourself, others tout the faith of accumulation. Selah. But even Cain was not killed for his murder of Abel. Marked, but continuing in life, even productive.In most cases, financial restitution, shorter stays, work. Some pardoned or otherwise released people will be recidivists, but as many as we are told to fear? And what help did they have before being released, or assistance at facilities after, or even could they get a job.
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Back to the money. It costs $25,000 per year to supply a prisoner with "3 hots and a cot" and bad healthcare. The Hartford Courant op ed (Mr. Condon) finds $50,000 expended. Per client, per year.
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Compare that to what is needed to supplying people on the outside, with enough for 3 hots and a cot and good healthcare. The form can be welfare. Or a job. We enable less than $25,000 per year to them, and then pay that extra $25,000 to the ones who get caught doing what they do, poor or not. See "Charts" on poverty rates, at http://www.angelfire.com/rnb//y/poverty.htm/ Continue to read at that site about the affect of bad healthcare on all the systems we live under.
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We don't want a solution. Is that it? We know what has to be done, but then maybe we would have competition if everyone had a safety net. Better to set millions of people on the shelf, than have people on an equal footing to begin with.
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Old Newgate Prison and Coppermine, Granby, CT - profitable, with a mine beneath

We ask for it. US global supremacy in incarcerations is no accident.
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1. Stop jamming all the testosterone together. Testosterone: see http://sassafrastree.blogspot.com/2009/03/testosterone-marching-review.html#!/2009/03/testosterone-marching-review.html. For religious buffs, does that concern relate to the Basic Disobedience of "adm"the human, later the "man". He was supposed to leave his father and mother and go with his wife, but instead, she had to leave hers and come to his. That kept the testosterone in his family, no dilution out.
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2. Educate about violence: it is addictive, as entertainment -- programs about the lock-up -- and as a means to solve problems without addressing issues.
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3. Educate about form criticism, "scripture" eye for eye: cherry-picking dogma. When
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4. Offset ratings with discussion of common good. What is reported, for what reasons, shareholders or the process of a functioning democracy. What the shareholders want to see. What the ad-buyers demand. What is left for our media if we take crime off the front page, the adrenalin of others' misfortune.
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Could we at least do this: small, community based facilities, keep people productive, in touch; winnow down who really needs to be isolated in the testosterone factories we love so dear.
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Old Newgate Prison bunk cave. Looking up. Granby, CT

Last irony: Old Newgate Prison, Granby, CT. Prisoners were kept in the mines, no escape, and still a healthier, more comfortable place for people to sleep than above-ground. Steady, cool temperatures, winter and summer, away from epidemics. The folks upon release were in better shape often than those they returned to. We can't even say that. The Newgaters did not spend all their time underground - they slept there, and some mined, but others had other occupations in the yard. At night? Down the hatch.
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* In the Jailhouse Now - see and hear Blisters & Gray at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEisFhLY5MI

Looking at Thieves - Theft of Honor. Theft of Consent, Reputation, Self-Determination: Social Role

2012-02-02T16:34:00.002-05:00

Property Interest in Honor, Consent, Human Dignity

My body, my property.
Theft of a property interest is a crime.

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Mitt: update to 2012. Theft of dignity, theft of opportunity. Mitt declares that the poor deserve "maintenance" only - not opportunity. Dismiss them. Not profitable. And UConn students air a video mocking rape, assault: entire groups of people dismissed, dissed, autonomy theft. See http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc-uconn-rape-video-0202-20120201,0,2621329.story. Exploitation as fair game. Look again. Exploitation, disregard, as theft.
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Exploitation, disregard, as theft.
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Theft and the Thief. Cultures generally condemn thefts and thieves. Expand the definition, however, to include more than mere property that can be restored. This has been done as to men's honor property interests -- see duels. Extend it now more clearly to other groups of persons.
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The insidious thefts are those that take what is lost forever after: honor, reputation, autonomy, the sense of being worthy.
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Yale. Yale has had a problem in recognizing the property interest of women in their own physical autonomy: It has just issued a report on its investigation of its 52 sexual assaults, see the Yale Frat Boys episodes, against their randomly chosen "Yale sluts" at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/nyregion/in-yale-report-52-complaints-of-sexual-misconduct.html?scp=1&sq=yale%20report&st=cse. What practical effect can be expected after all this time? Shall we laugh.
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Theft - Literature. All transgression is a theft.
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Every so-called "sin" is really a type of theft, says this fine passage from "The Kite Runner," by Khaled Hosseini, Riverhead Books 2004, at page 16; also a movie now, at ://www.kiterunnermovie.com/:

" '[T]here is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. Do you understand that?' * * * * *

" 'When you kill a man, you steal a life,' Baba said. 'You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?' "
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1. Theft of Consent
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A vote is a consent. Can that consent be disproven. Consent requires e harm caused? Did the victim consent in advance to the harm occurring, in some probability? Some consents exculpate the action, by justifying it: Go to this site for an extensive discussion on misrepresentation, how any consent derived from such is not consent at all. See http://www.jstor.org/pss/2381381
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by Swiftboating-

Take one element of a situation, blow it out of proportion or ignore it, build a case on a flawed foundation, theft of honor, reputation; get in first with the bomb blast of innuendo and loudness; let the emotions jump in; keep it up, with lots of money to finance the ads; then, regardless of later facts setting the record straight, it does not matter any more. The opinion is etched.
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2. Theft by Conversion of Public Airwaves for Private Agendas - Theft of the right of a voter to a broad base of information, all sides, on which to make decisions, leaving only the ranters' rants on which to decide. Media itself being used like a kitchen spatula, turning the same egg over and over, in the same way but louder and more often, adding no ingredients, become a persuader, for a cause, not informing.
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3. Theft by Humiliation, Forced "Attentions," and, specifically, Rape. Theft of dignity, respect, human self-determination. See Hello, Fodder: Yale Frat Boys. This category includes those who define "consent" so as to condone most anything, regardless (get the yes, disregard any later no's); fodderize the one trying to get him off.
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4. Theft by Concealment, Distortion of Fact. Theft of the means by which to make a self-determined decision, by hiding and misstating information. The perpetrators:

government, see PoseJuxta: Planks for People: Theft of Consent *;
propagandists on airwaves, elsewhere. Theft by propaganda, see Hello Fodder, Propaganda Technique Listing. Find the seven propaganda technique classics there, plus FUD, or Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Go look.
commerce, selling things
is there any area of human endeavor, including religious belief, political positions, divorce, the adversarial judicial system in general, where interested parties do not conceal information unfavorable to their cause. Are we hard-wired to deceive. If so, what recourse.

All propagandists foster theft of consent.
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5. Theft of consent. Theft of complete information, and propagating dross; knowing that there will be reliance.
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This theft of consent is a classic use, and proof, of Emoticon Dominance Theory - how people are lured to form opinions and beliefs based on slanted, spun, corrupted information.
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The information may be incomplete by malignant volition -by keeping information aside, or making it up. Or - more innocently - because the facts simply were not and could not have been known better at the time. See Joy of Equivocating, Emoticon Dominance Theory.
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Are people, ordinary working people, responsible if they do not pay attention, do not have, on their own, the kind of education that enables them to spot the poop? People not paying attention, such as the consumers more interested in lifestyle at even the middle or lower, poorer classes level, is not a defense for the victimizers, because they have an affirmative obligation in the public interest to disclose all reasonably relevant facts in the political arena. This is not toothpaste. If the facts had been out there, voters may well have opened their eyes sooner. The poor: in this nation, they deserve more than mere maintenance, the ability to breathe. They deserve opportunity to get out of dependency.
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Thieves of consent also include

investment thievery - cooking books, hiding option accounting, nondisclosure of self-interest, see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/nyregion/05about.html?ref=fairfaxfinancialholdingsltd; http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/business/15hedge.html?ref=fairfaxfinancialholdingsltd;
pharmacological thievery - paint the product as fine, hide the testing, don't do the testing, knowing the FDA is in your pocket and each one probably eager to he hired by you when he or she leaves, see http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/biotech-companies-bolster-pipelines-through-deals/?scp=1&sq=big%20pharma%20misrepresentation&st=cse;
commercial transaction thievery, look into correlations into actions of Goldman Sachs, at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/goldman_sachs_group_inc/index.html?scp=1&sq=commercial%20misrepresentation&st=cse;

if Mitt is elected, who will investigate Goldman? See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/us/politics/close-ties-to-goldman-enrich-romneys-public-and-private-lives.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Goldman%20Sachs%20and%20Romney&st=cse

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What exploitation is there in any goods or services sold "buyer beware," without opportunity or meanas to investigate; and, of course; divorce asset and income distribution thievery, by nondisclosure, concealment, shaved appraisals, bullying, all that familiar ground that we know and love, with the only recourse as more court activity that breaks the bank, and the will, until somebody caves.
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Conclusion. Is exploitation just part of western capitalism's rules of the game. No big deal? No cultural impact?
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Examine exploitation culturally approved. Hear Mitt: mere maintenance is fine for the very poor; no opportunity.
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Opportunity goes to the middle, the upper that already control it.
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To be dismissed as another fie on them all. See fie as a mildly humorous concept has 1250 on, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fie. A trumped up sense of offense. A pox on all their houses. The tongue in cheek to defuse what is a real offense.
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Sexual assaualt is a dehumanization. Assault by ads to sell, not inform, discuss merit? Assault on the system. A de-democratization. Theft of consent by government in particular? Impeach them. Remove them. See Theft of Consent, Impeachable Offense.
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Thefts of consent, thefts of dignity. Those thefts foster gender and political hierarchies, taint government processes, tar ethnic and other groups. There are cultural roles that sanction thievery of those kinds, in ignoring assaults on devalued groups of people, and calling political salesmanship "free speech" -- retail politics getting a free pass on fraudulently obtaining "consent" of voters. See complete list at Hello, Fodder, Social Roles.

The currently poor get mere and more dependency, as defined by whoever is in charge. The rest may, or may not, deserve opportunity for self-betterment. Those already bettered, by whatever means, seek to keep it for themselves, and deprive those later, on the lower rungs, of course, by their own fault. Women who walk at night ask for it. The UConn rape video proves it yet again.
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At least in Murten, Switzerland, they reserve parking spots for women right by the exit.

Murten, Switzerland. Safe parking for women.

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*Theft of consent: See alphabetical Glossary, also at PoseJuxta, at PoseJuxta: Glossary (alphabetical).

Big Bain Trolls at Play. Auld acquaintance.

2012-01-14T12:15:00.003-05:00

Me-Mine Capitalism Theater

Bain-Types Troll for Disposables

I. Overture. Bain Barbershop Sings of the Disposable Gaffney 150
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Should auld acquaintance indeed be forgot?
For throw-aways. Why not?
Another one-fifty? Who cares for them.
In 20 years,
Who'll give a squat.
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Hummmmm.

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II. The play begins. Enter, Narrator; Main Bain Troller; Chorus of No-Counts

Bain Troller. Here, Roskilde, DK

Narrator (while Trolls act out scene)
Bain Trolls! Spies Gaffney.
Little shop. Guts one-fifty.
Profit! Bigger Barns!
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Who cares? Front page point?
In twenty years, they still do.
Gaffney's one-fifty.
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Who sums the Bain Dumps?
Bane-measure rewards Dumper.
Bain deaf. Bain Chop Shop.
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Bain Chop Shop. Sonderborg, DK

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Troll
Shut up, prey. I'm BIG.
Me, Big Bain Troll! Work for BIG.
Old Navy, Staples.
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Chorus of No-counts.
Thank you, Bain, thank you.
Thank you for your worshipful
Bigness. When's the vote?

Bain Boar. Ne-e-ext?
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Fn 1. The contest for The Year's Bain Look-Alike is scheduled to close in two weeks. Meanwhile, here is the front-runner, with resemblances clearly favoring the image of the great soccer player, Ibrahimovic.
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Any similarity to other persons (other than Ibrahimovic) living or dead is purely coincidental. Bainistas, see http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Ibrahimovic&qpvt=Ibrahimovic&FORM=Z7FD

The Bain tradition. Follow the law, get under, or over, or sit on the law, but it is time for Me. See similarities to other economic endeavors, highly successful in their way, in other areas of the world, see smuggling at http://www.andrewleaning.com/history-of-smuggling-on-romney-marsh

Candidates and Minority Roots. Mormonism, Roma, Not

2011-12-28T20:44:00.022-05:00

Minority Matters. Religious, Ethnic.

Any Minority.
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Romany, Romney, Roma. Assimilation.
Ongoing: Opportunity Issues for the Non-Assimilated
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The beginning is a question: Where a candidate has a possibly Roma name, and an actual Mormon religious affiliation, was there or is there a tie between Roma (vernacular "Gypsy"), and converts to Mormonism, in Europe (especially England) and here. Does where we came from, and who made it possible, stay with us. When speculating leads to a deeper interest in ethnic groups and history, is speculation worthwhile. See http://www.gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/#!http://gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/2012/01/rom-survival-role-of-secrecy-surname.html
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Evidence is ambiguous, as always. Words change, people blend. Find Saxon roots in Rumenea, now Romney, in Kent, England. See http://sassafrasthicket.blogspot.com/#!/2012/01/steered-by-navels-and-surnames-what-if.html. An interest is in how many converted from Roma to Mormon, in England and here. No information on that other than a reference to gypsies out west, see http://gypsyjib.wetpaint.com/page/Arrival+of+Gypsies+in+America. But we do see connections by surname, to that ethnic group, see the Romany Marsh, Romney Marsh now, located in Kent, see http://englandroadways.blogspot.com/#!/2012/01/cumbria-sheffield-immigration-19th-c-to.htm. Then again, there are other roots of the sound of that word, including the Saxon, above.
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But, if Romany assimilated long ago, we would not. We find a specific connection to the name Romney to the Romney Marshes of Kent, where the site also identifies the area as Romany Marshes. And -- as is also true of many of our forebears, a smuggler's haven. See this fair use reference:
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The Romany Marshes:

With some of the closest towns and villages to France, on the coast and with miles of isolated beaches and fields, the Romany Marshes made an ideal base from which smugglers operated.

See http://www.infobarrel.com/History_of_Romney_Marsh_kent
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Read more: http://www.infobarrel.com/History_of_Romney_Marsh_kent#ixzz1jC93nxlv
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There were such converts from Romani to Mormonism, and some completely assimilated, others adopted this practice or belief or that, or not at all (contact with non-Roma is penalized), as with any other group in contact with another, see the Other Religions section at http://www.radoc.net/radoc.php?doc=art_b_history_romanireligion&lang=en&articles=true.
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In particular, there were Mormon missionaries in England in the mid 19th Century, so the pathway was there. Look to the past. What were Mormons, before they became Mormon. Study Mormonism. And study the religions of the Roma, Romani, Travelers. Overview of religion, customs, history, at http://www.radoc.net/radoc.php?doc=art_b_history_romanireligion&lang=en&articles=true. Christian Romany are many, but not in the fixed church buildings. The concepts are there. Romani first encountered Christianity in Anatolia, as they moved out of the way of the Ottomans -- see site. In 1568, however, Pope Pius banished them. Nonetheless, Romani are found in the predominant religion of any area. Specific families? No way to know, so far.
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For an overview of Travelers or Roma in England, see the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/voices/history_intro.shtml. Language: Romany, Romanes. With poor conditions for working people, Mormon missionaries offered a new way of life, convert and come to America, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/immig_emig/england/south_yorkshire/article_1.shtml, and continue to the specific Mormon references in pages following. Did Roma or Travelers also become attracted to the Mormons. How to find records of that? As to any connection, only the name Romney, now prominent Mormon, is a surface similarity to Roma, Romany, Rom'nie.
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Or is the name merely Welsh. http://www.thinkbabynames.com/search/1/welsh/5. But Travelers also were, and are, throughout Wales. See http://wales.gov.uk/topics/housingandcommunity/communitycohesion/gypsytravellers/?lang=en; see also http://welshmormonhistory.org/index.php?/tasks/article/
There also is a Romney Marsh, a place beloved by smugglers, see http://www.askshepway.com/history/romney-marsh/; and a breed of sheep that do well there, despite the wet.

So far, no proof of Romney as Romany, but interesting to look. Whatever the origin of the name, it is unlikely that a known gypsy or traveler family would have been welcomed into mainstream Christian circles, see the history of rejection, persecution, and being forbidden to participate in church activities in much of Europe.
Would Mormons, themselves under attack, treat them differently, more welcoming as the large numbers of immigrants were eased over to America as Mormons,
Christian rejection -- see http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/victims/romaSinti/gypsies2.html.

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1. Ancestry dabbling. Yes, there was a substantial Traveler community at Cumbria, where Miles Romney born 1806 was from. So, things are indeed possible but not firmed up. Door is open, but no reason to keep it open for much longer.
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So far, we track the Mitt Romney ancestry to England, where Miles Romney lived (from Dalton-in-Furness or Futness? 1806) http://www.our-genealogy.com/Latter-Day-Saint-Families/Romney-Family/ancestry-romney/miles_romney.htm. That is in Cumbria, the old Dalton or Daltune from medieval days. He and his wife Elizabeth Gaskell heard a Mormon missionary in 1837 and converted and came to America, see http://www.our-genealogy.com/Latter-Day-Saint-Families/Romney-Family/ancestry-romney/miles_park_romney.htm.
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Converted from what? What ethnic, religious background? There is just statement of "middle class." No idea, and that middle class reference conflicts with other BBC site statistics that largely poor and working class converted. So still open is any connection of that Romney family with any minority or other-class group. Just the name, sounding Romanichal, Rom'nie. Miles had a son, Miles Park Romney, etc. and all that is online.
Go back. Look up traveler community at Dalton, Daltune? Cumbria? Try both. Find Romany families mentioned, http://www.golakes.co.uk/Dalton-in-Furness-Dalton-in-Furness/details/?dms=13&feature=1&venue=5052102&easi=true. Their term. There is something: Cumbria has been home since 1685 to a roma-gypsy horse fair, now famous, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10214236. There was, then, a gypsy or traveler population there. This site takes the Romney name back, still this Dalton connection, further: http://www.nwemail.co.uk/memories/us-republican-politician-mitt-romney-s-dalton-heritage-goes-back-to-1642-1.907821?referrerPath=home. George Romney born 1781, another George Romney born 1738, and Thomas Romney born 1709.

So, surely somebody would have noted where the name came from if it were Romany, but did people have to register by that group identification, or just be in churches like anybody else. England? Help out here? Wikipedia starts with Miles here, little information. When did Travelers first get to England? 1500's? Yes, see Church Network for Gypsies and Travelers, http://www.cngt.org.uk/serv02.htm. Go, England. Turn back the gears.

Romany Fair. That large fair is known as the Appleby Horse Fair, and is an event of the traveling community. It attracted 40,000 people last year. Gypsy travelers came from around the world. See "Romany" families, and Romany is their word, sounds like Romney doesnt it? at http://www.visitcumbria.com/events/appleby-fair.htm. Romany Romney.

Now comes a kind of mother-lode. Site for American Romanichals - http://americanromanichals.webeden.co.uk/. Spend time there, especially with the old newspaper and photo galleries. But if Romney born 1806 converted prior to passage to the US, he would not be listed? And did I see Miles Ronney and not Romney? Need birth records, marriage records then, that might show if any Romany is part of our Romney. I'm done. Somebody else do that.
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2. Finding a link may inform our immigration issues, that loom these days. If a candidate derives, even from long ago, from a disadvantaged group where some prospered, but many were left out, we would like to know. If religious beliefs were part of a background, we want to know. Our own are also as iffy, for those who are consistent in analysis. The name of the candidate, Romney, is examined elsewhere, and reviewed here, see http://www.gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/2011/04/candidate-romney-immigration-policy-of.html.

3. American Gypsies

What was life like, even if our particular Romneys were not ever, or eariler converted from Romanichal, in England. Many emigrated, and from oppressive conditions, see http://americanromanichals.webeden.co.uk.

Minorities enrich us. Research turned up early sources, including "American Gypsy" from 1917, and now online.

Welcome the idea of researching the past in connection with present people. What did we find. Explore roots of ethnic minorities with our current prominent Mormons, here Mitt Romney. Recognizing Immigrant Pasts. Do they shape our present. Roma, Gypsy, Romani, Rom'nie, Romanichal, Rom. Is Romney "gypsy?" We hope so. Time to highlight a group too often forked, ignored. There is no census box for Roma.
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Some Roma we already know and love: Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley.

Charlie Chaplin, Romanichal, memorial, Geneva, Switzerland

America is enriched by a strong tradition of highly successful Roma. Gypsy populations are here in many forms, discernible from surnames, cultural groups, practices, and range from earlier nomadic groups, to the well-settled and highly prosperous. See http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/migrations/gyp/gypstart.html .

Celebrate their contributions, and look to reinstalling the rungs back in the ladders that helped any earlier minority group to climb as it would. Romney as a Roma, Romnichel, Gypsy President? Roma, Romanichal, Rom'nie, Rom, http://www.reocities.com/Paris/5121/glossary.htm#R.Would that be our first? Somebody go research. Would people dare to use that, if it is so, to say that he is un-American? Many of our ancestors passed from one group to another, more favorably situated. The American Way.

First, information needed. Much more information. We will ask Joseph Smith chroniclers, and the stories behind the Book of Abraham, for example. Mormon.

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I. Information about American Gypsies (Roma)

A. Sources

B. Roma Successes (find economic prosperity in many areas including New England, and in New York State where Mormonism began; and Charlie Chaplin, and Elvis). Note many groupings, Sinti, Romnichal, etc.

C. Arrival - from the start of our nation

D. Would Mormonism be connected? see Joseph Smith, texts, stories, language

1. The word "Mormon" - origins, etymology

2. Belief system - recently, rituals women found offensive were removed -- as late as 1990. I am not sure of the status of prohibition on blacks who can't be priests (just as women are treated in mainstream some religions, ain't allowed to be priests, ah, interpretation after the fact). Do they so believe? Why? Ask Mitt.

3. Original texts that Joseph Smith is said to have translated. None survived. We are left with "interpretation" and one "translation". How to vet? What might support validity for The Book of Abraham, for example, despite some saying it was Joseph Smith's imagination. Parts maybe yes, parts maybe no. Evidence gone. There are references to Ogham language/letter symbols, like runes? What supports Joseph Smith? We find things.

II. Welcoming immigration information; would some doors open wider?
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I. Information about American Gypsies.

A. Sources.
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A new one to us is the 1917 volume by a first-hand researcher who described American Gypsies and their cultures. See online book American Gypsies, by Albert Thomas Sinclair.
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This old book offers a glimpse back in time. Come away with a new appreciation for our fellow immigrants, language, how they lived, and their economic prosperity in many areas. FN 1.
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See also http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16358/16358-h/16358-h.htm">http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16358/16358-h/16358-h.htm>
This is a longer online book, but gives a wealth of information on language, background.
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The prosperity of those New England - New York groups, however, is in contrast to others in this country in their virtually invisible poverty; and the poverty and persecution of those abroad, visible every day. See http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/victims/romaSinti/gypsies.html.

Gypsy, Rom, Romania

Minority assimilation. If minorities anywhere remain economically disadvantaged, is that their fault as flawed humans; or have vital rungs been put out of reach, the ladder distorted.

B. Successes - Roma in New England, New York State, Louisiana, coastal south, nomadic groups elsewhere. Information: Patrin, http://www.utoledo.edu/library/carlson/exhibits/DX2009/patrin.html
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For individual success stories, find Elvis Presley, Charlie Chaplin, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4lR-oZ09_g Here, we look at other American Gypsies, and the book of that name from 1917, online, see American Gypsies, by Albert Thomas Sinclair. Find many examples of the success of the gypsy (we now would say "Roma" or "Traveler", probably) population in New England and New York especially.
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That is a possible connection, because Upstate New York, Palmyra, was where Mormonism began, see http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/mormons_church_of_jesus_christ_of_latterday_saints/index.html?scp=1&sq=Mormon%20Book%20of%20Abraham&st=cse. And Palmyra NY was where a 177-year old edition of the Book of Mormon was found and auctioned off in 2007. Joseph Smith was from Palmyra, NY, see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/nyregion/20mormon.html?ref=mormonschurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints. And on to the midwest and west. And Canada. And elsewhere. Other names include Romnichal, Rom'nie, Rom, Roma, Romani, Romanichal.

Prosperity.
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Some Roma did well, it appears, in New England. Read this excerpt, fair use concerning the prosperity of some gypsies (modern term would be Roma) from chapter 13 of American Gypsies: .

" ***** Many have accumulated handsome properties. In Boston,
Somerville, Fall River, Providence, Worcester, Hartford, New Haven, Spring- field, in New England, and in many other cities of the Union, Gypsies own real estate, free and clear, worth from twenty to a hundred thousand dollars. Many have thousands of dollars in ready money, and some are money-lenders. I have full details of such cases. The very large proportion are temperate, much more so than formerly, I think. They are nearly always on good terms with every-one who comes in contact with them, and the old prejudice against their race has largely disappeared. *****"

C. Arrival
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How did they get here? On their own, or see chapter 17, in American Gypsy, history of "Egyptians" conscripted as labor from the Caribbean and British Isles, settler groups in Louisiana, etc. Find an overview of origins. Also go back to the Gutenberg book, The English Gipsies and their Language, Chapter X, Gipsies in Egypt. See http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16358/16358-h/16358-h.htm. Not so far fetched.
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Note that the US does not categorize people by ethnicity, but by country of origin, and so there is no "Gypsy" category at all. Very easy to forget uncounted people. See an outdated 1981 site, we find more on prosperous gypsies than are represented there: http://www.trivia-library.com/b/people-races-ethnicity-in-the-u-s-gypsy-americans.htm

D. Would Mormonism be connected, see Joseph Smith, texts, stories, locations. Would this be a "fit" for Roma, as other aspects of Christianity had been and probably remained.

1. "Mormon"

We are still researching the name "Mormon" in ways other than the transposition of letters as was customary in secret languages, including our own pig latin. The Book of Mormon, Mormon being the name of the prophet in question, see http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_did_the_Mormons_come_from.

Is it more? We look at language, customs, see this site for British Travelers, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16358/16358-h/16358-h.htm. Do a search there for "secret writing" and find the practice of simply transposing letters. That topic is in many sources. Mormon - Mor - Rom, ah the imagination does enjoy its own frolic.

Where else the name Mormon? Keep looking. Etymology: Joseph Smith himself coined the name from English "more" and the Egyptian (?) "mon", meaning "good.". See that at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=mormon&searchmode=none. That makes little sense. More good? More persuasive is the common custom of word reversal, Rom to Mor, and add the Mon for Mor Mon. Gypsy Good. Sherlock, here we go.

2. Belief system. Everybody's has rocky parts.

We know that Joseph Smith had his visions in about 1821. His background is patchwork, and sites go to extremes each way in which episodes to stress, as with any prominent founder of any system. See http://www.cephas-library.com/mormon/mormon_200th_birthday.html; http://www.cifs.org.au/MORMON.pdf

As to the Roma belief system itself, there is no "one". Roma have their own imprimatur on Christianity, and other belief systems. See St. Mary's in Gdansk, Poland and the Gypsy tradition of Sara la Kali, see http://polandroadways.blogspot.com/2007/09/gdansk-church-of-saint-mary-black.html#!/2007/09/gdansk-church-of-saint-mary-black.html. Mainstream religious idea origins have been part of Roma or gypsies, including Roman Catholicism, and often with to varying extents and customs, as with any other group.

Did they adopt Mormon beliefs?

That takes more work here. Beyond me. Need to go back to Palmyra NY records where Joseph Smith started Mormnism, and document the gypsy population and then who converted, if any.

At least, Mormonism's basic theological ground, apparently predating hte Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham (is that so?), would not have been a turn-off; and with ethnic connections to how it was found, and its origins (is this a stretch? read on), the compatibility likelihood rises. And many Roma were already Christian, with an expected range of Christian-like baptism and Christian belief systems, among their own rituals. See also in France, http://www.languedoc-france.info/030701a_st_sara.htm. Fundamentalist Revival Christians have found a welcome as well, see http://www.marshallindependent.com/page/content.detail/id/530808/Gypsies--part-IV.html?nav=5007

3. Original texts. A fragment of the Book of Abraham survived, see http://www.irr.org/mit/boa-papyrus-scroll.html. Interpretation without the original otherwise rules.

Joseph Smith's Golden Tablets; Book of Mormon; Book of Abraham 1835, later apparently disavowed by the group; and roots. We just have the "translations"

a. Texts.

What did they say, apart from what Joseph Smith said they said. Texts do not define a religion. Interpretation do. And interpretation engrained in custom makes the culture itself difficult to change. Some here raise as many hackles as similar treatment of women and blacks to in our other cultural and religious aspects.

Interpretations and customs can change with the times, however, see Mormon rituals that women found offensive were only recently removed in 1990, see http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/03/us/mormons-drop-rites-opposed-by-women.html.

Golden Tablets were translated by Joseph Smith, into the now Book of Mormon. Do we have it straight? see http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/mormons_church_of_jesus_christ_of_latterday_saints/index.html?scp=1&sq=Mormon%20Book%20of%20Abraham&st=cse. The tablets

b. Theology. What is the connection of the Book of Mormon with something called the Book of Abraham? Find that, at least as of 1970, at http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00B11F8385C107B93C1A9178ED85F448785F9&scp=1&sq=%22Book%20of%20Abraham%22%20mummy&st=cse. Parts have been dismissed as imagined by Joseph Smith, such as the exclusion of blacks from priesthood at the time, see article (status of issue? as of 1970, it had been reaffirmed).

In 1912, the Book of Abraham was of great interest, see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70914F83A5D13738DDDA00A94DA415B828DF1D3&scp=2&sq=%22Book%20of%20Abraham%22%20mummy&st=cse. So, if the mummy was imagined as well, what is the status of the Book of Abraham? Who followed up on that? Old Egyptian originals, translation imagined? This is out of our league. All theological claims should be carefully vetted against sources and against later cultural shapings, so we forge on.

c. Given the disclaimers as to mere imagination, why should we accept that? It is too easy. So we ask what would weigh in on the side of Joseph Smith, supporting his claims, and not mere "imagination." There are elements, laid out like in a filing cabinet, for reference.

The Lost Book of Abraham.

It was allegedly translated by Joseph Smith as far as it got (the translation is incomplete), from Egyptian papyrii, obtained through a traveling road show, with Egyptian mummies, and from an itinerant entertainment group (that in itself sounds Roma?)? See http://www.religioustolerance.org/lds_bkab.htm. See also an encyclopedic-type recounting at http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Book_of_Abraham.

The reference to Egypt again is interesting, and to the employment of some of them in carnivals. Gyptians? That connection of Gypsies to Egypt is apparently an erroneous one, http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Du-Ha/Gypsy-Americans.html, but a belief in it at the time would have given some credibility to the source of the text?

There is, however, credibility to the story of the origin of the papyrus: how it got there, and the letter-word forms. Since the original did not survive, we only have a "translation" and that in part, and translations always vary (that's why we always want the earliest, most untoyed-with text, of course).

d. Ogham.

The language of the Book of Abraham, central text of Mormonism, is said to be "Ogam" or Occam. From that, Joseph Smith did his translation.

The word itself suggests the Ogham, the Ogham script of long ago, see http://www.omniglot.com/writing/irish.htm of ancient (4th-6th Centuries in Ireland) Irish, Welsh, British writing; and even from the Sinai BC, see http://www.flavinscorner.com/excerpt.htm.

Runes of earlier cultures evolved into the stick form of Futhark, taking the language forms back and back and back, but also with overtones of gypsy use. See The Secret Languages of Ireland. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (new series). 2: 241-246.

27) Macalister, R. A. S. 1937, cited at http://web.archive.org/web/20041015002435/http://www.flavinscorner.com/reviews.htm. That is a click away from the home page at http://www.flavinscorner.com/excerpt.htm.

Use those forms and see how even our own last name, a Swedish surname, derives if we use Anglo-Saxon runes. Runes have much similarity, but also differ, so we can't say for sure, but visit our name and the story the runes tell at http://swedenroadways.blogspot.com/view/sidebar#!/2010/07/anglo-saxon-runes-ingwaz-moves-widing.html. This is a grounding for the idea of runes in the first place.
Signs and symbols of wandering people are commonplace, whether in forms of old Norse, Northern Germanic, Roma, Hobos, etc, in many nations, see page 609 at Thought Signs by Carl G. Liungman, IOS Press 1995 http://books.google.com/books?id=8s1Gl2X-DlgC&pg=PA609&lpg=PA609&dq=secret+gypsy+signs&source=bl&ots=VAzHw9qcPR&sig=c1fu9m17whGOF_t3jGLGlLVk2Io&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LBYDT76cJ-fz0gG4_rmAAg&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=secret%20gypsy%20signs&f=false. Go to page 6 for the graphics. And page 5. Looks like hieroglyphics.

Source through Mummies, perhaps a mummy case. The Book of Abraham was apparently received and translated from a papyrus from a mummy, part of a road show. Mummies seem to have been everywhere in the 19th Century - free market trafficking. The bones were ground at health spas and used medicinally, we were told in Switzerland. See http://switzerlandroadways.blogspot.com/2010/06/yverdon-les-bains-castle-baths-mummies.html#!/2010/06/yverdon-les-bains-castle-baths-mummies.html.

Now somebody go back and find the original Book of Abraham and let's see what runes, Ogham, symbols are used. How to get at that? Or is it all trust in the "translation"? Christians trust their translations, when it serves their ends, regardless of original texts, so why not Mormons? Websites address the issue, see LDS at http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_Abraham.shtml. Satisfied? The Bible itself contains only selected sources, a compromise of sorts. Interesting. The original text, however, with the original script, for either set of texts in Mormonism, but at least the oldest Paleo-Hebrew is, to check against later cultural intentional misinterpretations.

Either way, Roma or Traveler roots go back to our own origins as a country; and the traveler-roma connection is not unfeasible. Websites: American Roma at http://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/index.html;

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II. Recognition of the past.

Reconcile old religious and secular customs with the newer, include the more traditionally considered fringe, and find areas of common humanity. We propose an effort to learn more of this ethnic group, and their heritage. If Mr. Romney has a connection with Roma, Romnichal, etc., this would be a positive for immigration issues generally.
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Given the success of Roma as laid out in New England in American Gypsy from 1917, and if Mitt Romney is of that background as the name suggests, why not take pride in it and the open-door up-the-ladder tradition of America?
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It should be no pejorative to have Roma in a background, given their success in assimilation, if they assimilated (many have not) and contribution on their own.
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Question for all successful persons, especially candidates.
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Ask now, in this election year, of every candidate, for the sake of others still disadvantaged, and other minorities, what has happened to the rungs.
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For those who have not assimilated, what are the health and education needs. Many keep the low profile of groups persecuted elsewhere, and nearby, see http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2025316,00.html. Do opportunity ladders now lack rungs.

From there, go back to candidate Romney, whose family has been successful, and with strong New England roots, among other places. Romanichals or Romnichals were English Roma, for example, see http://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/index.html It sounds like solid Roma roots, building up of propertied estates, all that.

What, if any, minority group has substantially benefited from his or her largesse, whose interests he has fostered for the common good, and not through the church and not for ideology or proselytizing?
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Is the business profit margin maximization, the party image, always the core belief, allegiance? Here and abroad, look at the need: http://www.osi.hu/iep/minorities/ResBook1/Growing.htm

There are always rocky parts of origins. Own them and move on.
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Origins help explain a course, but do not define it now. Turning to Mormonism may have had nothing to do with Joseph Smith. If the Romney family was among those prosperous ones referred to in American Gypsies, they might not have been disaffected at all as a reason to convert. Needed: cultural recognition of this group, not on our census forms, but in the blood of many.

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FN 1 Follow-ups, in the nature of an ongoing filing cabinet

a. We are also interested because of the surname "Romney" with its every appearance of Roma, Rom'nie, Romnichal, Romanichal, Rom origins, and someone who wants to pay Ancestry.com to research back to the family's original conversion is welcome to do so. Remember, though, that any ancestry site puts up whatever anyone puts in - A Wiki kind of operation - so get-vet the documentation, not the mere conclusion or statement.

b. American Gypsies:
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There are accounts of gypsy conversion in the online American Gypsies, at 7. Scroll down for "Mormons", see chapter 7 there. The book cites so far gypsy populations in Mt. Desert, Maine and East Somerville, and Allston, Massachusetts, Western Massachusetts, New York (I am reading it bit by bit). The woman noted at page 7 was probably in Utah, but may well not have composed that letter home, as its piety was not in her usual tone, but conversions do spur greater commitments?

c. And, of course, the Broadway gypsy robe ceremony, see http://www.actorsequity.org/aboutequity/gypsyrobe/gypsyrobehome.asp

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d. A natural fit. Many in the Roma population -- there are many groups, and the languages also differ -- are Christian-oriented. See American Gypsy at 8, so moving to a Christian-appearing group would not be a stretch. For overall Roma topics, see Gypsies, Roma, Romani.
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e. Other surnames

The surname "Smith" itself is often listed as Roma. Joseph Smith. Founder of Mormonism. Smith: a common gypsy name, but also, of course, an occupational identifier. Which came first. Smith, Blacksmith, at deep roots, who did that job. Does it matter? Just as "Smith" is also a not-glam -- there are surnames that, even if held by others, still hold a tie to the minority then denied. See the surname Smith at http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/lookupwebpagesbytitle_rtf/tracing+gypsy+romany+and+traveller+ancestors+at+surrey+history+centre?opendocument

Try Romney. The Rom, Rom'nie, Travelers. FN 1 Romanichal -- English Travelers. See http://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/index.html.
Assimilation for many was not difficult. It could have been for survival. Travelers, we are told, often adopt the religion of the culture where they come to live, see this United Kingdom site, http://www.wsh.nhs.uk/ServicesAtoZ/CorporateServices/Chaplaincy/DirectoryofInformationonFaithsandCultures/TravellerGypsies.aspx
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As in Alice in Wonderland, ask the giant caterpillar, Who R U. How you respond informs us as to our vote. So far, we see a coldly analytic approach to giving. Some people are categorized as "dogs" dragging down the system. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/us/politics/how-harvard-shaped-mitt-romney.html?scp=1&sq=Romney%20analytical%20family%20church&st=cse. Minorities might ask, are those among the ones where the rungs have been removed? why? obviously to protect the status who climbed those rungs and got up there when the rungs were in place. Is that so? Right or rung?
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Pedigree: So far, people only want to see the glam. What has been left out? See http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/republican-candidates-have-presidential-pedigrees/?scp=1&sq=Romney%20geneology%20founders&st=cse. Ancestry has a bent to the glam.
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Romney, are you Rom? If so, go to it, let us rejoice in your success, and we look forward to your helping your brethren. America has many. See http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/migrations/gyp/gypstart.html. And a film, see http://www.americangypsy.com/the_film/full_description.html. Do your tax returns show giving other than to the church? Do they help gypsies? Your candidacy may well depend on compassion, not profits while overseeing layoffs.

Tracking Warbucks. Occupy the Contracts. Is the 1 percent 99 per cent Warbucks Generated.

2011-12-05T12:11:00.001-05:00

Tracking Warbucks.

War Fortunes and Where They Went

How do Contracts Influence War Decisions?
Occupy the Contracts.

Inordinate War returns for the 1 percent?
Rebate to the rest of us, or let profits dictate War.

What is a bail-out?

Can the government bail itself out

for long-term goals, through payments to needed industries?

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The influence of war contracts. To what extent are they a push to war, just because the materiel has been contracted for. War Pearl Harbor an act that is heinous, or predictable because we ourselves put our assets there as a lure because we had all those contracts and materiel, and we asked for it. Perhaps we misjudged the total impact of a strike; but how stupid could we be, than to put our fleet in one harbor. Yeesh.

What element of the current 1 percent derives from war contracts, bailouts of businesses still in depression, that coat-tailed out on grounds of "national need." If those now holding those fortunes did not themselves earn it, why are they entitled to keep it at the expense of the 99 percent?
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Ask: Government contracts, buttressing of what it needs, as bailout. Who is being bailed out? The nation is. Not just a company.
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What "need" was there in April-June 1941 to justify the defense contracts. Did those contracts in themselves make going to war a certainty. what else to do with all those products.

A. Companies on the contracts lists even before Pearl Harbor.
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Colt as a company name did not fare well over time. Its money went elsewhere.
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Colt Firearms Mfg. Co, Hartford. Seen better times.

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Others also diminished as a company name. But what fortunes were enabled by warfare, who amassed what, and where are they now. Does our currently spotlighted hyper-privileged 1 percent contain mostly warbucks-derivative fortunes. No? How to find out what extent, if any. We ask because we are told that the nation's 1percent represent earners, job-creators, hard workers who put in the time to make the dime. Is that so? Or are they second, third generations down the line, feeling entitled, who got a fine educational and cultural head start through war fortunes for their own line.
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B. We start with WWII, before Pearl Harbor.
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Why before Pearl Harbor? We thought we were taken by surprise, and were shocked, shocked? What decisions had already been made, by whom, why, and with what determinative result.
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1. June 28, 1941.
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The nation is looking for a way out of the Depression, and Washington has more on its mind, but not a different issue: a way out. Washington is casting more than a merely wary eye to warfare elsewhere at that time. Sudden war-type contracts: the Defense Department in overdrive.
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Visit the New York Times: June 28, 1941 -- six months before Pearl Harbor.
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Look at the war prep going on at that early date, in that one day alone in appropriations. Did the war department then have to look for an excuse to use it all? Was Pearl Harbor allowed to happen, gasp? Had the decision for war already been made, and only public opinion needed to be jolted to follow suit. See Army's Contracts in Day $17,310,990, at http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F30E11FB3E5F1A7A93CAAB178DD85F458485F9.
.
June 28, 1941 was not the first big appropriations day. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about entering the war or not on that day, critical of the wording of a congressman's query to the public on the issue, see http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/06/eleanor-roosevelt-liveblogs-world-war-ii-june-28-1941.html; the US Army Bill for 1942 was passed, see http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/jun41/f28jun41.htm; and German and Romanian soldiers kill 11,000 Jews, and Germany occupies Poland, http://www.historyorb.com/date/1941/june/28
.
2. April 5, 1941. Earlier.
.
Further and earlier defense department contracts were awarded by both Army and Navy months beforehand, on April 5, 1941, including many of the same manufacturers' names, such as the relatively small (at the time) Union Hardware in Torrington Ct, and its cleaning rods, see list below and http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10D10FB3A59167B93C7A9178FD85F458485F9&scp=7&sq=Union%20Hardware%20Torrington&st=cse http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F10D10FB3A59167B9C7A9178FD85F458485F9. See the day from different perspectives, including the government suing the AMA, see http://newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/april-5-1941-war-and-socialized-medici. With a URL "crooksandliars" it is difficult to even cite it seriously, but the issue is interesting. Find a more comprehensive April 1941 timeline at http://ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/4104int.html
.
And September 30, 1939 --
.
More, but not designated Army or Navy contracts, just "supply," see http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10914F63C5A11728DDDA90B94D1405B898FF1D3&scp=10&sq=Union%20Hardware%20Torrington&st=cse. See the day: http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1939/sep39/f30sep39.htm
.
B. How did those contract recipients fare in the long term.
.
If people made fortunes off government contracts, and are now in the 1 percent, they owe something to the 99 percent, is that so, and how to measure, if to do that. Occupy the contracts?
.
Beyond the anticipatory expenses for a desired war (what to do with those products if we decided not to go to war?) we are interested in tracking the suddenly accumulating wealth of the recipient companies. Union Hardware, for example, finally merged with somebody else in 1960 or so, see http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50F16F93E5E1A7A93C7A8178AD85F448685F9&scp=9&sq=Union%20Hardware%20Torrington&st=cse, Were those contracts really bailouts in the context of a recalcitrant Depression, in the sense of government saving-graces regardless of the long-term reason. Bail-out.
.
The government bails itself out with the bailout to the industries.
.

Bail-outs. Go to the like, not the unlike.

.
And who benefited in the long term: What of their shareholders and directors and officers -- what did the war enable them to amass in their heyday, what rolled over happily where. Are they now part of the 1 percent.
.
What happened to these companies with the sudden war contracts, what is the real result of a government "bailout" even where there is the possible urgency of war -- what else to call it. From the companies' perspectives, a bailout?
.
C. What was a thousand dollars worth then, in today's measure? Which companies then bought others, or were sold to others, at a premium. Who are the heirs? Are they mostly our 1% now, the Warbucks generation? Add Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Who is enriched?
.
D. Look up the companies. Find yours.
.
We made a little list: This is limited, as the article itself is limited, to the New York area, including Connecticut and New Jersey. From that, we mention only Connecticut companies:
.
1. Bridgeport Thermostat Co., Inc., arming wire assemblies.
2. Bullard Co., turret lathes, see each word defined at http://www.toolingu.com/definition-200160-6586-turret-lathe.html
3. Colt's Patent Firearms Mfg. Co., gun parts, small arms materiel
4. Noble and Westbrook Mfg. Co., marking machines
5. High Standard Mfg. Co., small arms materiel
6. J. L. Lucas and Son, Inc., steel boxes
7. Torrington Co., surgical needles
8. Union Hardware Co., rifle cleaning rods
9. Waterbury Clock Co., assemblies, flare fuses
10. Waterbury Farrel Foundry and Machine Co., assembly machines

What were the other preparations for war being made? For weapons and the pending wounded: it appears that the decisions had already been made. Only the people were left out of it. Perhaps they would have come on board, with full information. So why all the secrecy?
.

NYT lists gauges, cable, thread-cleaning machines and fixtures and scoops, hyraulic press assemblies, drop forgings, see drop forgings at http://www.iqsdirectory.com/forgings/drop-forging/, lab equipment, hospital supplies, job presses, coolers, splint support and foot rests, fuse plunger supports, telescopes, fiber containers, head punches, cleaning brushes, machine-gun covers, lead seals, timing devices and pressure pumps, plywood, compasses, operating gowns, head drills and spindle drills, packing cartons, rifling heads, tachometers, more drop forgings,pinches and guides and plugs and sleeves and pins, starting cranks and coils and solenoids, see solenoids at http://www.ledex.com/basics/basics.html, tank parts, wrench parts and crimping machines, packing containers, tools, steel, nitrocellulose, see nitrocellulose at http://www.answers.com/topic/nitrocellulose, glass tubes and rods, fiber containers, drills and holders and bits, flexible shielded conduits, tools again, protective ointment (for protection against the other side's nitrocellulose or fiery projectiles? see http://worldwar1worldwar2.blogspot.com/view/classic#!/2011/11/history-of-fiery-projectiles-timeline.html), hydraulic presses.

.
E. Define bailout.
.
If the government is bailing itself out, it is still a bailout; and needed. Find a new term. Why the pejorative aura to a bailout that all sides need? It is only a pejorative when profiteering for the few results over the long term. Why allow war profiteering at all? War profiteering leads to actions leading to more wars.
.
A bailout is a government contract or payment, either one, for a national long-term purpose, that requires no payback or repayment in the obtaining of the contract or payment.
.
Government contracts that permit profiteering at its expense are bailouts, especially where the company relies on the payout. It does not need to be "in trouble."
.
The April-June 1941 long term interest. Was the nation still in the Depression, or had we bootstrapped ourselves out of the Depression by magic already?
.
F. The effect of the early, even if prudent, expenditures.
.
With those expenditures, six months and more before December 7, 1941, we had to go to war somewhere and the opportunity arose with a bang. Can it be said that the government, in hiring these industries, paying them for things, to do things, was really bailing itself out for its long-term cultural, social and economic survival goals.
.
We may not want to see those prudent pre-disaster expenditures also as bailouts, but they serve as such. Now, follow Halliburton, Blackwater. Expenditures based on national "need" such as anticipated warfare, or services suddenly privatized, are bailouts but for the nation, necessity for long-term survival. Still a bailout. Is then an expenditure program for long-term economic survival also not a bail-out at all, but necessary for long-term survival.

War profiteering leads to more wars. So cut it out. War department contracts before Pearl Harbor were prudent, but also manipulative, and ushered in new eras of war profiteering.

Global Vocal Majority. World's 99 Per Cent OWSA. Occupy Wall Streets Anywhere..

2011-10-15T21:10:00.002-04:00

The New Global Vocal Majority.
Global 99 Per Cent
Occupy Wall Streets Anywhere. OWSA
.

The issue is not economic inequality; the issue is economic exploitation, manipulation of access to opportunity. Will this movement, can this movement, be co-opted by the NRA, and Armageddonists, who took over the Tea Party earlier? Join this upgraded Peasants' Revolt..

Peasants' Revolts are Newly Modern.
Revolts Seeking Dignity in Life
Rise Up Now

Simultaneously
.

Globally -- Arab Spring, European Spring, Asian Spring, to American Spring
.
Occupy the Wall Streets

Time to Cure the Causes; Not Suppress Seekers Yet Again

.
1. Yesterday. Revolts are historically ongoing. Peasants' Revolts, revolts against feudalism, colonialism, empire. Suburbs and Teas find they are small steered potatoes, compared to the real issues of human rights: dignity, sustenance, health security, opportunity. Is it time to cure, rather than suppress?
.
2. Today. Add global revolts against economic and religious suppression, disrespect, undisclosed power plays.
.
3. Tomorrow. Can the Teas and regular Republicans of our own country see their own manipulation, and join in the broader effort for human rights, not just their own cultural "superiority?" Operative summary for one viewpoint: See NYT caption that the game in politics is to control people, but not let them know they are being controlled. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/does-anyone-have-a-grip-on-the-gop.html?ref=magazine.
.
.................................................................

1. Yesterday

Protesters against economic and cultural abuses have much in common today with those yesterday. Historically, peasants revolted against feudal abuses: lack of sustenance and dignity in life, serving as chattel.
.

Slovenia, Peasants' Revolt 1515, Llubjana.

.
See sickles against castles, at Slovenia Road Ways, Peasant Revolt, at http://sloveniaroadways.blogspot.com/2007/10/ljubljana-peasant-uprising-1515-world.html.

In those days, there may not have been individual aspirations for nameless peasants. That was a concept unheard of in castle days, but the seeds were there. Disrespect, exploitation leads to instability. Is it finally time to cure the reasons driving these same-issue protests that kill so many in mind and body; or will we simply suppress it one more time. We are more articulate: protest obstructed access to opportunity, reasonable compensation for labor expended.

Trace protests against disrespect, the castle mentality. See the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, England, at http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/peasants_revolt.htm; and http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/anon1381.html. The 1798 Rebellion, Vinegar Hill, Wexford, Ireland http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/irish_reb_01.shtml. Religious-colonial-empire contexts. Croatia.

2. Today

Is a new meme spreading this global morning. Is there consciousness for a new 99%. Ninety-nine percent of the world, is that possible? Check your head, your news. Protesters take stands against the world's Wall Streets and what they represent in terms of moneymoney, at the expense of human values, the 99%. See http://www.hindustantimes.com/Occupy-Wall-St-protests-find-echo-around-the-world/Article1-757628.aspx.

Then ask: Is it time to cure the ills, rather than suppress the protesters. The issue is not income inequality, economic inequality. The issue is economic exploitation, the manipulation of access to opportunity so that those now lower than the higher cannot rise.

Earlier protest movements like the Silent Majority in Nixon's time in this country, see FN 1, had some factual validity: perhaps they were overtaxed. But that is not true now. Those who believe they are overtaxed have been lied to. Is that so?

So the Silent Majority stewed with reason. Their tax issue now, however, has been coopted by interests other than in a majority of ordinary people, and is revived as a farce. Which other earlier-valid stands, by a silent majority or a moral majority, have been co-opted in this new corporation-media era, by the NRA and Armageddonists and other hangers-on. Who will spill the beans? see FN 1 for the history, as that presentation was and is tilted for ongoing persuasion and coopting of earlier stands of the Tea Party.
.

Detractors describe protesters as only the unsophisticated, uneducated, unemployed; the exploited serf.
That suggests the solution: fund education, fund jobs.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?
The protests focus on the men behind the curtains.
Protesters now includes the working but unable to sustain self and family; or those making it but who just want to be okay until they kick the bucket. Some seek not profits, but a lifestyle that allows focus on arts, relationship, intellect, individualism. The common denominator is dignity. Without sustenance, access to opportunity, there is no dignity. Does the equivalent of the

.
What is the Tea Party response? Their leaders diss any protest but their own. So look back. Does the Tea party have more in common with Occupy Wall Street than their media want them to think. Have they already been co-opted by their own now self-serving politicians and media.
.
Some in the Tea Party or Republican mode ascribe credit for their success to the line of protests from suburban "silent majority", through the persuaded "moral majority", to a new "vocal majority" now, the Tea Party. Red State, see FN 1.
.
But they also suggest that they are the end, highest point. Not so. Even they do not know who funds them, who pulls the strings.
.

They are wrong in their assessment of the end-game as themselves.

Their protesters only touched upon cultural, religious issues, none of the base issues of causation that even they protested.

Today's protesters on Wall Street focus on an unspoken common ground between Tea Party and Occupy Wall Streeters. Can regular Republicans and Tea Partiers step back from their handlers and vet.

3. Tomorrow.

Support the focus now going deeper.

All humans
All humans have a right to a life of dignity: sustenance, health security, access to opportunity, and regardless of the orientation of which political party or its funders, or a religious group and its funders, they espouse.
Deny that to any group at the peril of the whole.
Suburban silents, aging bus-people with placards, people finding the joy of relationship with new folks, gun-carriers, the unemployed, the unsophisticated, the uneducated, all have a right to conduct their lives with the components of basic dignity.

Red State? Thank you for an interesting overview to cheer (sis-boom) the organizing ability of people on their own, and those with hidden coaches.

VegaTour, Geneva, Switzerland

But if you remain at that stage, you miss the point.

CONCLUSION. Today' s global protests hit the core of a dignified life for all, not the simplistic aspects of culture that the local US groups used to tout. The earlier Silent Majority and its tax and disrespect concerns; the later Moral Majority and its Jesus interpretation and tax concerns; all co-opted by the Vocal Majority's handlers, NRA and Armageddonists. Old over-taxation issues no longer true. Vet. What else is not true, NRA and Armageddonists?

...............................................................................
FN 1 Red State looks at Background. No open quotes, but the framework is at the asterisk * This is a free-wheeling paraphrase, commentary on an old article promoting the Tea Party but with interesting historical chronologies. To be vetted. Is this so?
.

RED STATE *

Start with Richard Nixon, president January 1969 to August 1974. His term for protesters who sat back was “the Silent Majority” -- millions of Americans who worked hard, but did not protest except to vote.
.
In that Nixon era, protesters were on the streets against the Vietnam way, and they were having sex (gasp!), taking drugs, engaged in "demonic" rock music, and changing America with its version of "radical political thought." they did not just wait until election day.
.
Nixon believed this: that the Silent Majority supported him, while the media and scholarly elites hated him and hated the Silent Majority and Nixon also. He was right at election time: in 1972, he beat George McGovern, and the "elites" he described as the media and academia became more enraged.

.

What did the enraged media do to get back? They painted the Silent Majority with pejorative colors: "hayseeds and rubes who had no idea what was right for the nation." The media further put out the Silent Majority as "unsophisticated, uneducated, middle-class and working-class drones who had no business trying to influence the direction of our nation." There was more: media attacks on "liberal socialism from Hollywood and New York" – through the media – and Washington, in its political processes.
.
Nixon was on point.
.
The Silent Majority of that day were regular folks who largely wanted to be left alone: people, say, from suburbs and little towns, rural Ameria, who paid their own way, were independent, paid taxes, and wanted little from government.
.
Nixon could well have been talking, with prescience, about the Tea Party, the newly vocal, previously "silent majority" kind of people; they protest aloud their beliefs that they are taxed too much, and the government is wasting their money and risking their future, and governmental greed and corruption also will affect their children. .
In 1984, the Silent Majority was augmented by the Moral Majority -- Reagan rode that wave right over Jimmy Carter. Jerry Falwell led, largely, that Moral Majority-entitled group who until that time, had voted for the Democrats. They were convinced, however, by Rev. Falwell, that the Democrats had abandoned them. They were convinced as well that the country needed stronger national defense in conventional ways, walls against an ongoing Soviet threat, and economic growth instead of the standstill they experienced. Have faith in God and in the moral goodness of the Republican party instead.
.
In 2010 (the date of this Red State article), enter the New Vocal Majority. They see stakes as even higher then before, and it attacks a new (projected) unholy trinity, instead of just a vague idea of differences in religion; and that unholy trinity usurps traditional religion to become personified in the (incarnate) Pelosi, Reid and Obama. Fight PRO.
.
Fight the Pro's. Fight Pelosi, Reid and Obama. The Devil's trinity supplanting all the other ideas.
Issues? Perceived fiscal abuse by democrats. Perceived national security neglect by democrats (this in 2010 after nearly a decade of republican fiscal policy and national security fiascos?)

Thus is is abuses by the democrats that

"have caused millions of American to band together not only to to create the Tea Party movement, but all sorts of other anti-big-government, anti-tax, pro-property, pro-gun and pro-Constitution movements. These people are fed up and are speaking out against the waste, fraud and abuse that is causing the economy to slide into stasis and unemployment, and moral decay that is causing myriad social crises."

Yet, continues Red State, the media elites still disrespect the New Vocal Majority and favor snobs in NY and Hollywood. The difference is that now the Reds can dominate the media. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and Grover Norquist. (Propaganda works, not fact, is that the message?).

Founders of our democracy warned "that electoral democracy could lead to an entrenched political class – like congressmen elected over and over for decades – and a greedy, rapacious entitled class that could manipulate elections to funnel money its way ".

The New Vocal Majority, however, opposes political and entitled classes both; and wants liberty instead, and not just the fleeing entitlements of a particular point in time.

The article notes that the American Revolution was supported only by some 30% of the American people. (Good point. So? The majority is not always right)

.....................................................................
* With framework thanks, creative use, to Redstate, The New Vocal Majority
www.nikitas3.com

Economic Potato. Induced Famine. History's Ace for Power. Blight it.

2011-08-24T19:53:00.001-04:00

The 21st Century's Economic Blighted Potato.

Frederick Douglas saw truths -- people can be starved into submission. http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/douglass.htm. Inconvenient, aspiring people, can be cut off at the knees, leaving power in place.

It recurs as a power issue. Economic recession, verging on depression. An induced devastation, as in Ireland
.
Economic or physical starvation for a population, or powerless sub-population, is an economic choice, not a "natural" necessity. In most cases, resources are available. Those controlling the resources, however, often and with intention, will not share.
.
Look at today's Republican "Starve the Beast", aimed against any government boost for matters that might benefit the non-donor class after the economic near-collapse caused by the Bushyears (benefits like infrastructure, and jobs).

Starve the beast.

What similarity is there in history? Ireland in the 19th Century. Right out of the Rove or Tea Party, even though they may be at odds, playbook:
.
There was plenty of food in Ireland while people were starving. See Irish Food Exports, Famine Years. See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml

Look at the "economic features " of the gaps between rich and poor, at http://irishfamine.ca/ireland/what-economic-features-in-ireland-caused-the-famine-to-be-so-terrible .

.There are also money and resources in this country while jobs and cash are out-sourced, out-banked. Who are the Republicans of today. Like those forces using Ireland for their own ends? Look up Skibbereen, Ireland, graves and memorial.
.
Go back to history.
.
Compare this ongoing program to the old British-descended powers in Ireland, and their power play, inducing famine among the indigenous by refusing to release food to the starving when the potato blight hit. See the history of the Irish Great Hunger, the Potato Famine, at http://www.irelandinformationguide.com/Irish_Potato_Famine.
.
The "gorta mor" - the great famine. Make the losers leave, or die in place.
.
All ye professors out there, see how British trade practices starved so many. See http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/nbw/pot_famine95.html
.
WikiAnswers is garbage. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Irish_immigrants_come_to_America_during_the_1800%27s. There was plenty of food. The rich would not release it, lest their profits be diminished.

Ours. The first economic collapse has been averted narrowly, and now powers want to do it again - bring to the brink, and hit the poor. Famine, famine. Induce it. Win. Parallels: Starve the Beast; to Starve the Irish Poor. Does nothing change?

Haiku Meets Boehner. Jobless Alphabet Song. Chorus of the Unfunded

2011-07-28T18:56:00.442-04:00

Step I. Haiku Meets Boehner at the Debt Ceiling.

Boehner says, Wha?

Step II. The Jobless Alphabet Song.
Simplify a viewpoint.

I. Haiku of the Jobbed

II. Jobless Alphabet Song.

..................................................

I. Haiku For the Debt Ceiling,
What to do when the Big Lie was Believed?

Haiku Meets Boehner.

Boehner says, like, what is that?

Pithy predates Tweet.

Republicans reap
Disinformation's whirlwind
Spin's Big Lie swallowed.

Fact-free persuasion
Seeds emotion-based dig-ins.
Facts then matter not.

The Mad Hatter's Teas.
Teas follow news-slants' orders.
Boehner can't complain.

................................................

II. Jobless Alphabet Song
Chorus of the Unfunded.

Budget Views. Aphabet by Tweet

Sing the Alphabet Song, like Reuben and Rachel,
to "Reuben, Reuben, I've been Thinking"

A is for abuse of process | Appointees qualified, held up ||
Temper tantrums. Filibuster! | None shall pass. We win. Hup! Hup!||

B is for the next Big Lie | Feed it, swallow, say saboteurs. ||

Consensus? Spend for productivity? || Only for me and mine, not yours.||

C is for the Constitution,| Opportunity for all.||
Access for my kind is fair chance.| Cut the rest. Non-elites crawl. ||

D is for the dumbing-down,| Effect of cuts in schools, child care.||
Keep them ignorant, says Tea folk.| Then pay them less, losers there.||

E is for old equity, | Law’s lost balance. Has gone where? ||
Overwhelmed by lure of lucre,| Brutal sneak wins, not what’s fair. ||

F is for fruits, nuts and veggies,|Out of urban poor folks’ reach. ||
Subsidize instead the fats and fructose. | Add salt, then blame: Why sick, obese? ||

G is for guns and grandiosity,| I am absolutely right.||
Fill my coffers, that's the spirit. | Blast objectors out of sight.||

H is for hebdomadal, | Each week's frame: insanity. ||
Elect a rep, get a talking-point robot.| Hold hands with the lobbies, fists for thee and me ||

I is for the newest -ism. | Fake a label, see it stick. ||
Health: a human right for me. | For you, socialism. Semantic trick. ||

J is for the jockeying, | Of those addicted to the perk, ||
That comes from secret cash for votes. | Privatize the legislator. Easy work.||

K is for the Kickapoo Joy Juice, | US, now in Asia, makes a wad. ||
Venerable Heritage of L'il Abner, reduced to profit-dross abroad. ||

L is for little Lolita. | Church, job, strangers with boytoy culture. ||
Macho fixes ceiling. Scared of wisdom. Front seat stays roadhogged by the vulture.||

M is for the money-pit | Of legislator benefits. ||
No more self-vote for their own perks. | Voters, say no. Use your wits.||

N is for the phantom Numbers, | Poll dancers spin and choose at will,||
Questions that suggest the answer,| Partisan fodder, ads and schill.||

O is for the Oath of Evil, | Outsourced jobs from that do flow. ||
Keep folks unproductive home here. | Then watch my portfolio grow. ||

P is for Propped-Up Newscasters,| Reading from the owners’ script.||
Agendas blare, opinions poison. | Facts? Not for viewers. Keep them whipped.

R is for Robert’s Rules of Disorder,| Another R! Supreme Court tilted all amok.||
Secret funds from voteless corpses. |Corporations mock free speech talk.||

S is for the sour grapes girl,| Whines about her Newsweek pic. ||
No photoshopping happened there, ducks. | The image fits. With it we'll stick. ||

Real women don't whine.

T is for the trunk show coming,| After the election’s done. ||
Open up, and see what’s in there. | Too late, voters. Who really won?||

U is for the undermining, | Of democracy’s intent. ||
Pachydermic, outside money, | Elephant trunk show! Deep in tent.||

V is for valentine-bombs bush left us.| Add to them the glue and paste,||
Of Forcers with their oaths and lockstep, | Selling ignorance and waste.||

W is for Whacking Immigrants | What if they're good and can compete? ||
If given chance, they might. So bop them.| We, as before, will win by cheat.||

X is for eXamination, | Of propaganda held so dear.||
Fund a neutral, insightful broadband.| All-day-night factcheck. Voters cheer.||

Y is for old Yankee Doodle | New logo needed for the Teas||
What is really being done to them | By secret funders making money? Ask them, please. ||

Secret Funders' Secret Logo

Z is for zed that we call Z| American superiority! ||
Need zed back in, the moral is: | World’s more than our mentality.||

...........................................................

HEARD FROM THE JOBLESS BALCONY

Call

Hatter, Mitch Mouse, we've been thinking
What a fine world this would be
If you along with your Cant-Won't Minions
Could become responsible, legislatively.

Response

No-name voters, we've been thinking
What is your priority?
We want to win! Your job is your prob.
If the country tanks, we win electively.

Member, the Unfunded Chorus of 2011, reincarnated from St. Catharine's Camera Club 1930

Propaganda Scorecard. Boaz 14; Hitler 9; IPA 7; Citizen 4. Defy Godwin's Law

2011-07-08T15:18:00.003-04:00

Analyze a Current Propaganda Technique List (Boaz 14)
Match it, since it fits, against Hitler's Tactics as Propagandist (Hitler 9)
What of his ideas echo today?

Then: What did the WWII American Institute for Propaganda Analysis list?

Defy Godwin and Look Hard at What our Political Marketers Have Learned:

No facts. Get emotions in gear first.
No debate. Don't give the other side air time.
Repeat.

1. Examine the lists of tactics
2. Define the beast
3. Apply the definition - like birding. Spot the boid.
4.

Overview.

Propaganda lists make the grade. Here, an analysis of historical propaganda techniques by list, including Adolf, and the American Institute for Propaganda Analysis. Reference: The Boaz 14 -- '14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash America' . What is best and new there? That Boaz 14 supplements the Hitler9, the IPA (Institute for Propaganda Analysis) 7 or 8, and the Citizen 4 and growing. Our interest: Tame propaganda. Boil it down. A Boaz one to watch: Projection and flipping

Godwin's Law. Godwin's law suggests that any analogy to Hitler. in the context of current political, commercial, religious, social discussion, will stop the discussion in its tracks. Clickers on the topic will tune out at seeing the Hitler words, mutter "Flake", and go elsewhere. The dysfunctional outcome, however, can be that even relevant comparisons are shunted aside. See How to Post About Nazis and Get Away With It, at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/; and the "Shut Up, Dude" reference at Urban Dictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Godwin%27s%20law.

.......................................

I. The Propaganda Lists

A. The Boaz 14

Start with the list of fourteen propaganda techniques identified as in the Fox News toolbox (list by Cynthia Boaz, Dr. Cynthia Boaz. at http://www.truth-out.org/14-propaganda-techniques-fox-news-uses-brainwash-americans/1309612678); here, in a different order to make comparisons easier, are the Boaz 14

1.    Panic-monger [see FUD, below]
2.    Divert
3.    Invoke Christian God
4.    Scapegoat [Hitler's #4]
5.    Guilt by association
6.    Populism [Hitler's #5]
7.    Disparage education
8.    Rewrite History
9.    Don't debate; character-assassinate [Hitler's #6, #7, #2]
10. Conflate (violence means strength, compassion and mutual consideration means weakness)
11. Saturate: repeat everywhere consistently all the time
12. Confuse
13. Bully
14. Project, flip * (accuse another of what you already are doing - the racist calls another a racist)

* This looks new to the other lists we found. Project and flip -- excellent analysis.

...........................................................................

B. The Hitler 9

B. Compare the Boaz 14 to the original Hitler 9 techniques, in his Mein Kampf. This is in the 1920's; list derived from his narrative of where German propaganda failed in WWI, and how to succeed thereafter. Paraphrase on your own, for understanding -- our sample paraphrase is at http://sassafrastree.blogspot.com/2011/02/unser-kampf-our-struggle-paraphrase-of.html.

Do your own paraphrase. Read Mein Kampf. Go to Chapter VI, War Propaganda. Here is our listing of Hitler's top nine

1. Instill fear [see Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, below]
2.   Spin
3. Sloganeer
4.   Scapegoat
5. Focus on the masses; ignore the intelligentsia
6.   Oppose fact-finding
7.   Oppose debate
8.   Obliterate humanitarianism
9.   Repeat, always ignoring the other side

Hitler's point of reference was WWI: The Germans did a poor job of propaganda, leading to defeat. The British did an excellent (effective) job of propaganda, leading to victory. How can Germany learn from the Brits, and succeed next time. The list of 9 is to do that.
.............................................................................

C. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis Seven to Nine (see the IPA also at Propagandacritic.com)

C Compare both lists to the 1930's-40's American Institute for Propaganda Analysis list of 7, or more like 8 at Propagandacritic.com. This was created in the context of existing German propaganda, and looming and actual WWII. Find

Word Games: Like opposing fact-finding. Spin. Ignore intelligentsia.

Name-calling
Glittering generalities,
Euphemisms

False Connections: Focus on the masses. What will convince them.

Transfer
Testimonial

Special Appeals: More focus on masses, not the intelligentsia.

Plain Folks
Bandwagon. Repeat and repeat.
Fear
and Card-Stacking. Allow no debate.

....................................................................

D. The Citizen's 4 Amendments

Add newer ones, like propaganda these ways --

1) Swiftboat. Present a highly slanted view, with a grain of sand of truth but not as it stands alone, and repeat and repeat. Or, Propaganda: Swiftboat by Literalism; apply a literal meaning to a metaphor, Propaganda by Abuse of Metaphor

2) Killer Ellipsis. Leave out the rest of someone's sentence. Publicize a sound bite, and leave out the rest of the sentence,

3) Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Add purposeful confusion. How did IBM use that against a former employee? Gene Amdahl and IBM

4) Making Things Sound Worse, Dysphemism

Starting points for more analysis:
See http://hellofodderhellobuyer.blogspot.com/2007/11/propaganda-study.html; http://www.petrginzplaces.com/2009/05/communications-persuasion-propaganda.html

...........................................................

E. The One to Watch

The most complex, given our general familiarity with most of the others, seems to be the Boaz Project and Flip -- accuse the other of doing what you are already doing.

.....................................................

II. Tools:

A. Define propaganda.

Propaganda is communication to persuade. It is a five point definition, according to the still-relevant 1954 Psychological Warfare, by Paul M A. Linebarger. Find his work listed, beginning at 1948 through 1972 editions, at http://www.psywarrior.com/books.html.

Parse the Linebarger definition of Propaganda. Propaganda consists of

Planned use,
of any form of communication, including public or mass-produced,
designed to affect the minds and emotions, and actions,
of a given group,
for a specific purpose,
whether military, commercial, or political.

Ask: Would bullying, humiliation, for social purposes fit "propaganda"? Perhaps not, but bullying is persuasive, and widespread.

Content plus manner.

B. Spot it in the Field

This is like birding. Take the handbook, spot the tactic, get the boid. Once on your life list, you are alerted and don't have to worry about it getting you first the next time.

III. Comment

Defy Godwin. To allow that prohibitive aspect of Godwin's Law to control analysis just because it has been abused, and where the reference may indeed be appropriate, rules out one of history's prime movers.

How to learn from history, if the skills of such a figure are considered off-limits solely becuase of earlier shallow and emotion-charged overuse and misuse.

So, Godwin or no, we look at Propagandist Hitler, and compare a recent propaganda technique list to Hitler's own account of his techniques. What he did as a Propagandist worked.

People were indeed persuaded, and followed. He lost not because the tactics failed, but because they worked too well. Implementation could not measure up to what was promised. But it took a war to prove that.

Take courage, defy Godwin, or operate within its penumbra of acceptability (the reference is appropriate, not reactive), and see what Hitler himself touted in Mein Kampf, Chapter VI. Who else in marketing, such a benign even funny beginning, set the stage for the Machiavellis of today. See American propaganda. Edward Bernays and progeny, on down to current psy-ops, Rove and neuro-ads.

Grand Old Drawbridge Party (GOD) Now Challenged by People Engaged for Equitable Processes (PEEPS) Renamed GOD. Grand Old Drawbridge Party. Up the Drawbridge!

2011-06-01T20:57:00.007-04:00

News Release:

GOP, now renamed Grand Old Drawbridge Party (mass-produced)

Ups the Drawbridge,
Refusing to Budge on Budget
or Debt Ceiling (itself probably an unconstitutional limit)

May Find Themselves Marooned, say PEEPs
(Not the Easter type)

Free Thinkers Outside the Moat Prepare Strategies of Circumvention.

People Engaged for Equitable Processes (PEEPs)

Dint News Services. Dateline 2011. For immediate release.

The Grand Old Party has renamed itself The Grand Old Drawbridge Party, to celebrate the successful duping of the American ordinary populace into thinking that government spending is the problem; rather than the imbalance of spending vs. revenues for real needs. The Members are, even now, holding their convention at Bodiam, England, and have brought their own crocodiles to keep the peasants out.

GOP (now renamed GOD for Grand Old Drawbridge Party) convention center. Bodiam, England

This G.O.D., the Grand Old Drawbridge Party, specializes in grotesque illogic, and has drafted as its primary platform the following logical impossibility:

That spending to foster opportunity is never authorized ideologically
That no spending is authorized ideologically if it means taking a dime more,

from those who have been enabled to hoard maximally,
after 12 years of gluttony and tax breaks
at the expense of the millions who are now job-deprived.

That increasing revenue is never the solution for meeting needs outside the immediate bloodline.
That increasing revenue for a common good is never good, whether

by tax reversion (tax reversion is not a tax increase) or increasing social security cap on earnings,
or proposing that estates over $3,000,000 escheat (limits to inheritance entitlement)

Instead, the GOD proclaims, despite its nonpayment of national bills for over a decade,

Up the Drawbridge!
The Family is Safe! That is, Our Particular Family is safe! Thank you, Washington and citizens cowed over years, for turning us into moguls.
The Heir is Safe!
The Nobles or Noble Wannabes and those who inherit rather than work are Safe!
Raise the Drawbridge!
We, the truly and palely entitled, thank you for our over twelve years of accumulations, profit-taking, income aggrandizing in huge proportions.
We are safe. Let our gratitude sustain you.
So be it. Now, may we suggest for your next vacation: Montenegro.

GOD creates a Budget. To serve itself. The Ostrog Model.

The budget model is from Montenegro, reports the party chairperson . Ostrog Monastery. Monks fleeing the Ottomans. Asked why such an unassailable height, the chairperson notes that the GOD must now now flee those they continue to fleece. In the pipeline for the coming year: revised ladders of opportunity, all lower seven rungs removed.

2012 convention site has been outsourced, and includes parking for the idiocy buses anticipated.

GOD 2012 Convention site.

However, those outside the moats are themselves organizing for effective circumvention of the self-proclaimed GODs.

PEEPs, People Engaged for Equitable Processes report record recruiting numbers.

This has been spurred largely by an email intended only for distribution secretly among the for the GODs, showing the fun of starving parents economically and so they cannot say boo even if they wanted to. No infrastructure! No education! No healthcare!

Now, climb that ladder! Say the entitled ones inside the drawn drawbridge.

Republican family planning for PEEPs.* Starve the parents.

Don't mind if we do, say the PEEPs, as they gather in their sophisticated Adirondack chairs back on the farm, and are planning for the entire country's benefit, not just their own. We await the President's Speech: The PEEPs Ace in the Hole.

Hunh, says Rove. That's silly.

So, who prevails: The Rovecashonometer, or the PEEPs.

PEEPs Convention. People Engaged for Equitable Processes

PEEPs.

We offer, O ye voters, sustainable and moral coexistence, mutual benefits, say the peasants. To accomplish such, we have a few things up our sleeves including Follow Where the Path May Lead; Leaders Do That In Wise Governance, see issues at l http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/90659/debt-ceiling-obama-congress.

Our peasant platform: Increase revenue when real needs require. Meanwhile, you, the miniminds with maxiassets, are stuck in your countinghouses; scared of us; while we enjoy the great outdoors.

...........................................................

* Skeletons in full pose can be seen at Verona, Italy Road Ways

I Did Say No. Sexual Assault During College: Offer Verbal and Physical Defense Courses

2011-04-20T10:37:00.006-04:00

Update: All the people young women meet in college are not of comparable age. Strauss-Kahn, sex bully, in at least one hotel du jour, your kind are on the prowl anywhere. Ask me.

Sexual Assault in College

No Problem. Just Report It, say Administrations.

Nuts.

Offer Defense, Not Procedures.

Focused Verbal and Physical Martial Arts

Update on the patter: Man Down, Rihanna's vengeance video, brings sexual assault reaction to a lethal level. That is not advocated here, but at least makes the issue as common as seen on TV. See http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/03/steiner.rihanna.video/

Permission to assault starts early

Previously, The New York Times merrily opined a simple ABC solution for a complex problem of sexual violence. It proposes that the seldom-reported but recurrent exploitation known as sexual assault in college years should be addressed by zero-tolerance defined as a) post-complaint notification of results, and b) not discouraging criminal complaints, and c) better training for coaches, residence hall counselors and others. See Preventing Sexual Assault: Making Campuses Safer.

Teach. Practice. Strengthen.

Ridiculous. Train girls to fight it off. Add probability of real-time consequence to the offense, so that the contemplating offender will back off. May back off. Offer independence techniques to the likely victim. This may not mean a gun - to us a gun is never the solution - but teach her well and in advance. Teach her actions. Teach her words. Teach her to scream. Beat back. Make reaction acceptable. Teach her to fend off, even if it means -- anathema to some of us, raised in an environment where no-one ever ever got obstreporous -- shouting, and kneeing.

Add to the curriculum: How to Fight Back

Focus on the woman and present opportunities for her to learn to become formidable in the no. Stop it right there.

1. Offer courses in self-defense. Push it as necessary for her own safety. Foster acceptance of women taught to defend. Knee-work. Where does the knee go, so once will be enough. Teach effective martial arts moves. Grab the pinkie, for example. Bend it back. Break it if you have to. Self-defense. Would we dare? Have we the right to inflict real injury, when boys are just being boys?

Yale in particular needs this phys ed course on campus for the Yale women. See Yale Frat Boys. Western Cultural Dhimmi. At last big media is doing some reporting, see Time. Still, Yale (our example here because it is most in the news) continues to wag fingers and say don't do that, and offers only words in courses, educating, benign nicey environment-building, see Yale Sexual Harassament Assault Resources

Turn instead to remedial direct action and self help. Call this defense approach a sport: after all, sexual assault itself is seen and treated as a sport. A game. Can you score. Did you? Would the perp think twice if she can back up her no.

2. Qualify the defense program for Title IX Beyond.

Title IX Beyond means offering, at the same time as the physical moves, the verbal martial art.

Verbal marital arts. What kinds of verbal interactions can be practiced, yes, practiced, so that the "no" is taken seriously. And learn to yell when debate must stop. Grab an ear. Whatever is nearest. Take the embarrassment of others hearing you yell. It is harder if you wait to find you can't stop it, and then try to survive emotionally the consequences of victimization. The physical strength of the other, actual or threatened, overcomes. There are psychological issues. What is consent. Theft of consent. Oh, my hell. It actually happened. I now have to stay with this person? No, you don't have to stay.

Why even open the possibility of semantics and the old boy network. Defend first. Respect the defense field. Offer it. Encourage it. To fail to teach the use of violence in the defense is to condone violence in the offense. There is a cultural swamp to fight. Go ahead. Do it. She'll get over it. Apologize later. There's no consequence no matter what she says. Change that. What if she is prepared to fight, at the time? Do damage? Sir Prize becomes Surprise. Restore the great suspended tradition.

Is the only recourse to do a quiet deathwatch over the obituaries, mildly thinking, that someday, perhaps, you might just outlive him, and then, quietly, quietly, you can say goodbye to the last shred of evidence. Riches, muscle, power, denial of the Other, the drive to Overcome. Not just in Washington.

Grief

Further the Affiant sayeth not.

............................

Photos: Austria,
Old album people, unidentified. Label your pictures, people.

Budget Sonnet. Ode to the Chopping Block. The Ideological Ax by the Numbers

2011-04-06T16:01:00.001-04:00

Budget Sonnet for the Chopping Block.
Budget's On It.

Are you on it?

Republican Budget Criticism.
How the Ideological Ax Falls.
Self-Servingly.

Poor Business Model.

Ode to Government's Shapers' Unjust Enrichment Wish Lists

The Folly of Freezing Government Revenue;
Then Setting Arbitrary Rich-Based Budgets,
Ignoring the Other Governed

Ideological budget ax; finance by arbitrary numbers. *

Sonnet for Setting a Budget.

Politico-Business People Betray Us.

Deficits: The Miseducation of the Many.

Injustice of the arrived touting "Now" -- at the expense of those still behind.

Setting budgets. A business model lists
Objectives: say, increasing revenues,
For greater profit margins (fat exists),
For use in times of hardship, surprise dues.

Behavior goals, results, and testing where.
Who overturns that simple recipe
And starts with freezing revenue so there
Can be no extra resource for true need,

And touts: We now will match that artifice
And choose which programs to be axed. We pick.
Paint common good according to our wish
Or better: It to the common good we stick.

Debate is barred. Disinform. Folk swallow.
Instead, sell guns, slogans. Fools will follow.

Needy heads roll in the Budget. Yours?

Photos: Rohrbach, Austria. (ax)
Uppsala, Sweden (some in love, religious dogma attacks, budgets and war, lose their heads). See course of other peasants revolts against the lords, at Lords infiltrate peasant ranks

Means Test for Subsidies: Commercial and Personal Disaster Subsidies. Like Welfare Needs Tests

2011-03-18T20:12:00.002-04:00

Subsidies.

Commercial, Personal, Family Disasters.
Help Money?
Not.
Hoarded Instead

The Market is Not the Decider for Moral Values
Politics is Not the Decider of Morality.

Farm subsidies, family subsidies, what difference. Subsidies. To ordinary people, the scenario logically consists of people or corporations who claim a disaster has struck, and the government should bail them out. As to farms, it takes on a different cast. Consider the board game here as a golden fleece. Not even a disaster need occur. See Haley Barbour at ://www.redstate.com/dhorowitz3/2011/02/22/haley-barbour-and-the-regressive-economics-of-farm-subsidies/. There "disaster subsidies" are termed corporate cronyism, promoted by the farm lobby.

Which farmers deserve subsidies in disaster

1. Some subsidies are for people or corporations or LLC's who decided to contribute to conservation. Is that what that is? The conservation category? Go there. See ://farm.ewg.org/

2. Some other subsidies are for people or corporations or LLC's who are in the disaster category. Does that mean risks that people who own farms voluntarily undertook just by owning farmland: risks gone bad: risks associated with the intended use of the property and the vagaries of weather, earthquake, drought, flooding, tornado, Katrina, pricing, etc., that affect what profit it makes for the owner.

a. Assume for argument that there is a disaster.

Does the system just pass out farm subsidies for "disaster" or market price reduction events, to corporations or individuals, without checking the means of the owner corporation or individual to absorb it; while checking each nickel or dime of families in their own disasters. Unemployment, off-shoring, training out of date, no mobility, education rotten thanks to all of us over decades, etc.

b. Now assume there is no disaster at all. Can that be possible? Is this a sham? Is all this political?

Check that out at http://www.redstate.com/dhorowitz3/2011/02/22/haley-barbour-and-the-regressive-economics-of-farm-subsidies/

c. Assume either way, that there is a disaster but no vetting as to who needs it; or there is no disaster and this is a dole.

Is it time to stop.

3. Stop it. Stop sham disaster subsidies: those with no disaster; and those reasonably absorbed, given the nature or nature and farming.

If we are stopping funding for children's education, reasonable daycare, health, infrastructure; should we not stop funding for those farm owners whose land encounters a disaster, when they can well afford to absorb the risk of working or holding their own land.

Where children and families need sustenance, provide it.

Vet the claimant. Heck, vet the farm lobby. Guns lobby gets a lot of press, deservedly accusatory when it comes to its active efforts to denigrate public safety (see the cute little purse pistols out now).

Vet the recipient even if there is no claim of disaster and it can't be called disaster relief. Then how is the payola categorized if not as farm disaster?

If anyone is claiming a subsidy for anything, check the legal obligation they have to the issue. Farmer: You own the land, you show the means to pay for disaster. You are an independent adult, you show the means to pay for what you are asking for.

4. Vet the farm lobby's largesse.

Go there. Find people in your community getting big money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, even. Dare you. Click on the website at www ://farm.ewg.org/, put in your zip code, and see your friends and neighbors or at least those who live in your town or suburb, who are getting all sorts of benefits simply because of

a) politics, if Haley Barbour is right; or
b) altruism an act, a status as farm owner, or as part of their desire to conserve; or
c) claimed disaster -- that would take looking at the application for the funds. Are there applications? Or are there instead just reviews of who lives in that district, who can do the most for the party, and will, or other.
d) Or are some of those merely hobby farms, not used for or needed for production particularly, just a tax category even out of the state where the person who is listed lives? Inquire.

Of the choices, we think that b) altruism, the desire to conserve, altruism in the long run even if it is a financial benefit for now, is a good thing, and we like seeing it. That kind of subsidy we think can be fine. Disclosure of the receipt by the individuals and the purpose: good, accepted. For a) politics; and c) a claimed disaster without vetting need for outside help; or d) a dodge, not so keen.

5. Normal risk cycles of an occupation vs. DISASTER.

We are not so keen on people-corporations-LLC's getting subsidies for the normal risks of active farming. It is expected that some years or series of years may be bad, followed by the boomers. Where they do get help for the bad event, why is there no payback to the government when times get good. Are you appalled at how open this is, if indeed there is not even a disaster? See ://farm.ewg.org/ What is the investigatory process? Selection? Or is it all tax?

Fund for ingenuity and opportunity

6. Differing treatment of people who are not in farming, as a dodge or for a livelihood, who are in bad times.

Look at family subsidies.

People without jobs, with children or needing other sustenance assistance, no mobility realistically out of where they are, no training available in their reach, all that.

And look at the investigations, every last dime -- are you allowed to spend food stamps for deodorant so you could go get a job? In some cases, no, with predictable results. You stink, you get no job. Can you even find fresh groceries in your area. In some cases, no, with predictable results as to fast food obesity. With predictable health and productivity results.

7. Here is a point important to us:

We as a nation investigate families in trouble, those seeking family food, shelter and medical assistance from the government in hard times and accessibility to those basics in normal times; yet, we do not investigate (we understand so far) the "need" of those people who own big farms who hit some bad years, when that is part of the deal. Farming carries no guarantees. And if this is just a tax dodge, then check out the special relationship to politics and lobby.

And the owners get subsidies. Unquestioned?

An aside: Do rural people need NPR? Yes, because the profit-market media people aren't interested.

Moral. The market is not the decider as to moral values.

Feed the people. Then the corporations, and the LLC's and the rich, if they persist in their absurd claim and it is found that there is indeed a reason, a disaster, not one that should be absorbed by the risk-taker. A new kind of hedge fund: the government backing up people's farm risks when the people have means and there is a disaster; and even when there is not and they do not but should.

Feed the skinny, if they need it

Helper people say put the money to help, not to take the place of effort, but to help when needed. Hoarder people say let me hoard. I am the hoarder. I hoard all. And if there is no disaster, give me the subsidy anyway. I want big government. I want government invervening in the food market. No privatization of food industry. We get paid big pumpkins. The buzz goes on, see ://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/586819/posts/ from 2001. And the Hillbilly Report, a Progressive Community Forum for Rural Americans, at ://www.hillbillyreport.org/

Defund hoarders.

Political Buyer's Remorse. The Role of Newfound Free Will. Changing Hats Opens Doors. Adjust the Bureau.

2011-03-05T21:29:00.006-05:00

Thoughts After The Adjustment Bureau

The Bureau Adjustment for Political Buyer's Remorse

1. Bureau Adjustment - How to adjust the corporation bureau that you bought too fast:
a. Vet the Reality
b. Truth Triage

The lady from the political flea market wonders what is underneath the corporation bureau that they sold her -- she bought so fast she hardly knew what was happening. It all sounded so good.

Now she wants to adjust that corporation bureau to see what is really there. A bureau adjustment is needed, change its position and inspect it, because they offered her some fun, friends and freebies, all paid for by unknowns at the time, but she was not concerned about who was funding her fun before the election. What does she find, now that she looks:

Here is the little old bureau. Now in her house. She thought it was for adults! Look at this thing. What use for her? It even fits on a table. Measure it against the little old 19th Century chair, also meant for smaller bums. And get scale from bits of a trip, behind. Maybe a doll cabinet? What use is this for the lady? This is a corporation bureau, for heaven's sake. Not for people at all.

Bureau you bought, with only a rear view

How could they sell her this, she thinks, now that she has it home? All they showed her was the back. Didn't even know where it came from. Her decision tree in her brain was just angled this way and that. See ://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2009/12/neuromarketings-limits-on-advertising-creativity-.html. Easy. Psy Ops can sell anybody anything.

So she bought it and got it home and then tipped it over and looked under, after the ball was over.

Egad! No bottom! The corporation bureau folks have mooned me! she gasps.

Corporation Bureau the political flea market lady bought. At home, tip it. No bottom!

Mooning does get complex in human history; been a round a long time. Pun. See Michelangelo and the Sistine. Foggy Texts.

Here, the mooning reveals that there is no foundation at all to what they sold her!

How deceiving are Appearances, as scripture says. Or doesn't. Take a corporate interest disguised as serving People. Tip the whole thing over, and see this cunning little corporation bureau was made from something else to begin with. Not original at all! Fancy that. Overside Dougles & Co?

Somebody just patched in a box from somewhere else and made a %#@!X! bureau out of it to sell at this particular flea market, and the lady bought. And we thought we were the first one. D____!

Adjust the bureau. Who made this thing anyway?

Look! And here's a drawer, with little china knobs. So you can pull it out! And put your little nothings in. Cute! Always needed that. Great way to buy a vote.

Another drawer. Looks harmless.

She continued her bureau adjustment and found several items of interest.

Whoever sold it to me, thinks she, is not virginal either in selling or making things to sell. They hid their origins. They sold a bill of goods with another agenda entirely.

See those little sticky out things like little ears at the top picture? This even was made into somebody's wall display cupboard. Nice.

Moral: People will sell at political flea markets anything they can sell. Is it really worth the commitment to the Cause when they never told you the full story? You decide. They already have your vote. They are a corporation. Do they care about you or their bottom line. Silly.

2. Doorways: Time to open some new ones. No other way to get there.

Doors will open if you follow the protocol. You have to put on a new hat, and turn the knob this way, as you are told; or venture off the grid. The risk of going through new doors: iCan you give up your tenure and substitute instead Merit. Achievement, Performance.

Egad! The risk! What if I am here in a privileged position comparatively, because of the context of my birth, accidents of fortune, and HUE, and not because I deserve it. OH, woe, thinks the lady, wringing her pale hands.

Castle Door, Bojnice, Slovakia. What lies behind?

Opening doors. Risky.

3. Hats - The Power of Headgear in Opening Doors

How can I deal with this, asks the lady from the flea market. I am told I need a new hat. I want this corporation bureau out of my life. So how to reassert my independent thinking, now that I have been sold a bill of goods. I thought I was getting an adult bureau to last a lifetime for my needs; and Igot doll stuff to stick on the wall, dummy.

Suggestion of another hat on my head. I will follow it! Change hats. Take a risk. Get out of the pattern. Wear a power hat.

Wear a particular hat and I can become the Hat's Function, she muses. Here, a Mongolian Barbecue Chef in Silkeborg, DK. Wear that hat and I will feel like a chef!

Mongolian Barbecue, Silkeborg DK

Wear this, and I can do great food. Best oriental in Scandinavia is right here in Silkeborg. but I am still stuck with this corporation bureau.

Napoleonic Bicorne, San Bernardo Pass, Alps

Wear this hat and I can move armies over mountains. The Bicorne. Napoleon made this famous, she learns, although it is the usual headgear for 18th and 19th Century officers, military and naval. Think first of a big-brimmed hat, fold up front and back and affix, perhaps with a embellishment or status cockade. Then morph it into pointy ends, stretch it out into more of a triangle, and voila.

Face the wind in a bicorne, and she would have to hold your hat. Compare to the "cocked hat" -- same thing, but worn at right angles to the shoulders, like admirals often: facing front. Face the wind, the hat will not blow off. At least, not so easily.

4. Can the lady risk putting on another hat and putting aside the political sponge role?

If she risks changing hats, putting on other hats without knowing fully what will happen, but believing doors will open; can she then put aside the sponge role. Will she quit just absorbing, absorbing what corporations tell her, and quit imbibing happily and with placards what they give out for free so she won't question whether corporations serve her interests or not?

Political sponge. Choice for Resident, USA

The risk is in what to trust. Theories of data, knowledge, how we think we know. See Bertrand Russell from the 1920's at ://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/russell1.htm/ Marxist? Isn't that bad? Is all of it bad? Nobody said issues were easy to figure out. See Belief Systems. Persuasion. See the 1920's.So why trust a corporation to tell you? They are satisfying shareholders, not the common good. Is that so?

Quadruple helix of life. Difficult to disentangle. Vet anyway.

Aha. She has found it. The key to independence.

5. The hat to wear in this situation is the Phrygian Cap.

This liberty cap originated in the middle east millennia ago, and we still use it in the Senate, the Army, State seals. Put on that hat, and look back (once it is on) at what doors will open to you. Go ahead. Turn the knob, counterclockwise.

Phrygian Cap, ancient Phrygia to today, symbolizes liberty, taking care, deities

See ://www.sacred-texts.com/sro/rrm/img/28300.jpg; see also Phrygian Cap.

The famous Phrygian cap -- DNC has advance designs on it for its political identity, is that so? See DNC Adopts Humana Freedom Capl

She tries it on. Cute!

6. Is a financial analysis all you need to know about what this country should be doing.

So she puts on the Phrgian Liberty Cap, and suddenly starts to question her corporate bureau and why it has no bottom.

Are media and corporate and secret-sponsor people that equate the American historical role as moneymaking, telling me what I need to know? See KPCB.com, with download of USA Inc., A Basic Summary of America's Financial Statements, ://www.kpcb.com/usainc/

No, they are not. Those numbers and charts are fascinating statistics, but are easily manipulated, selected, on those corporate sites geared to persuading people that all that matters in life is finances. But the approach is a fraud for the purpose it is being used. It is applicable as analysis only if the sole purpose of the national corporation is to make money for shareholders. That approach is meaningless if the analysis excludes how to increase revenues to get a job done, not just ax services.

Nuts. The lady knows that America was not made of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. There weren't any at the time, anyway.

America is of the people, by the people, for the people. Does she see a bottom line financial measure there? No. If she and the nation want to get somewhere and need money to make opportunity within reach of all people (sustenance, health, infrastructure, education, mobility), you get the revenue needed to do that. You don't drop the dream, you garner the revenue.

7. Try Revenue adjustment to meet the goals of the country.

What the corporation bureau does not want the lady to know, is that corporations figure out ways to increase revenue all the time. But the lady isn't shown revenue adjustment in the great analysis of America's balance sheet at the big corporate sites, and those who sponsor nice neat financial balance sheets. Surprise.

Just put taxes back to the Pre geo W era tax cuts, she thinks with her Phrygian hat on, and we are on our way.

Role of purpose: The purpose of the corporation decides the appropriateness of the expenditure. If the purpose is right, then get the revenue to do it.

Call this country a financial moneymaker, she goes on to herself, and we go in one direction. Call us a fiduciary nation to the degree that we allow doors to open, we increase revenue to the degree needed to do that. Then watch the economy rebound, with healthy, productive people. Will it work? See Act to Incorporate the US as a National Fiduciary Corporation

8. Specifics. Health and the Chairmen.

They don't want healthy, educated people. They might compete.

Can a nation of sick, undernourished people get anywhere? No. Is that part of the Plan here. Keep them out of competition so more goes to the top Chairmen. What else makes sense for the Plan we see going on?

Productive people produce. That is good. Keep people healthy. See chart that comes to us courtesy of an interested party, OECO, see bottom attribution. It is repeated several places on the net: is it copyrighted? Is this fair use to use this small portion of where it may happen to appear elsewhere? Tell me to take it off and I will, but this looks like public domain info to me.

The point is that we spend a fortune on healthcare and get little for it. Our life expectancy for our expenditure in healthcare is zippo. The solution is not to stop the healthcare, it is to do what is needed to see that the money goes where it is supposed to: life expectancy. Not corporations if they don't do that.

Don't cut back the healthcare. Cut back the cost that doesn't improve it. Get us up to Japan. Now, is this public domain or not?

9. Some people cannot change hats once they are sold one. It is too insecure.

There is risk in changing hats.

With a hat firmly on head, if they never change their minds, people think they get tenure, a permanent entitlement. Why risk a permanent entitlement to supremacy over others that, by changing hats, may give more freedom. Is feeling superior better than being able to do more, think more freely? Perhaps. What about a compromise: can we do a period of tenure, then a review. Even people can get divorces. Why not professions?

Tenure is like ascription, ascribed status, attributional bias often is flung in generalities at opposing camps, trait ascription bias. They will, perhaps, be in groups that ascribe to outgroups many traits and biases that may not be so at all. The group they are in has its own survival needs.

10. A hat to get to know. A turban.

What does another culture understand, and can we learn. Why fear ideas? Explore them. Analyze them.

Hatpin, Edwardian Era, Individual with Turban

Process of asserting control. Assess, vet, find doors, change hats, open doors, go in, see what's what.

CONCLUSION

The Corporate Bureau - Buyer Beware. Corporations are organizations for financial self-interest and power, regardless of a common good. Corporations offer dire balance sheets to persuade people that the public nation's must be privatized. Privatize, say they. But a setting that promotes private property do not translate to a public interest. And we have revenue to tap, now just put out of reach into private hoarding. Corporations know well how to increase revenue to meet needs: That is their business; but when it comes to acquiring public property for private gain, they don't want you to explore the fact that you coulda had revenue to keep it public.

So change hats. Out of the follower hat. Put on your Phrygian Cap.

"Bureau Adjustment".

Expand the idea. Buy a bureau at the flea market? Buyer's remorse? Vet the situation. Move the evidence around. Look for choices, Barred? Change hats. Open doors. Go through. Reclaim choices about that corporate bureau you were sold at the flea market as serving your interests, but it does nothing of the kind, and now you know.

Opening closed doors by changing hats.

The fedora, among other hats, carries an image, see ://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/nyregion/11nyc.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=FEDORA&st=cse/

Change hat, change the vetting of issues.

Move from absorbing the idea that a deficit has to be addressed by the axe. What about revenue?

Corporations are in the business of increasing revenue. They don't want you to even Think Revenue. Voters? Even changing hats to consider revenue is a risk. Once commitment to no-tax (especially for the top twopies) is made, how to change. Who can do it? You have to. On your own. Take a risk. This from the film, The Adjustment Bureau. Take your own bureau, that you just bought without full information, and find what is under, behind. It is a corporation bureau! After you realize, can you risk getting out? Can you use your free will. Tip it over and dump it? Because it is right for you? Need we allow ourselves to be governed by other agendas, neuro-persuasion? Neuro linguistic programming, ISSSFOODR? Persuasion and Psy Ops

Failure to Unmask Propaganda. Broadcasting and Cable Miss the Propaganda Boat. Unmask It.

2011-02-15T20:39:00.010-05:00

Media is Complicit in Misinformation, Disinformation

Omission, Commission

ABC, NBC, PBS, CBS, MSNBC, CNN
Failure to Unmask Propaganda;
and Omission of Opposing Views
.
Why do they Fail to Ask needed Questions;
or:

When the questions are asked,

Why do they fail to unmask on their programs the persuasion technique
of refusing to answer. Why omit reference to minority views of merit?

Two sides to a question? The persuader will not answer.

The persuader knows: Never Dilute the Message. That Confuses Mass Voters.
The persuader knows: Present a Unified Front At All Times,
Regardless of Change in Circumstance.

The persuader Fox Knows That.
The Message is never diluted with full facts, other interpretations.

1. Is failure to ask questions because the position put forth benefits owners' political views; or

2. When questions are asked, why the failure to pursue why the refusal to answer. There is a failure to research, to look at the playbooks of mental weapons of mass manipulation. Propaganda technique: refusal to ask or answer questions.

The refusal to answer questions is a persuasion tactic. Do not dilute the message with explanations, details. Do not waste time on analysis, why and wherefore, even fact. Details and nuance confuse the less educated voter, raises further questions about the rightness of the cause.

The persuaders do not need the "educated" who ask questions. Ignore them. Let them prattle on. The persuaders need only the votes of the less educated "masses", to use the old term, whether we like it or not.

Is that so?

Big Ownership. Big media channel people. Pundits who may mean well, but have not done homework. Fail to call out the political choreography. Mass persuasion techniques get a free pass. Note the repetition of the party line, but fail to all it out. Stealth privatization efforts go under media radar. unflagging repetition and distraction work.

We know the playbook for public manipulation; and the analysis that underlies it. The "masses" are slow, they will only remember after thousand-fold repetitions, and the message must not ever change regardless of circumstance because change in message weakens it.

Read for yourself: The ultimate Playbook of mass persuasion. Why the repetition of slogans, sound-bites, and the refusal to answer questions? Debate?

"[T]he masses are slowmoving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them.

"When there is a change, it must not alter the content of what the propaganda is driving at, but in the end must always say the same thing. For instance, a slogan must be presented from different angles, but the end of all remarks must always and immutably be the slogan itself. Only in this way can the propaganda have a unified and complete effect." FN 1

This idea is a senior citizen by now.

This idea is over 85-years old. And it still works. Ask: Did the Koch-Armey consultants read that before setting out on their bus-musts? What happened on those buses? Who's laughing all the way to the bank. Update on political pundits -- Chris Mathews on Hardball puts on Michelle Bachman repeating something factually indefensible on the Sunday TV comment shows, over and over again she says the same factually-wrong thing, and what does he do? He asks why she won't, and the other R's won't, answer questions about their positions. Why won't Mitch, or the Tan Man answer questions about their positions? Explore alternatives? Consider other facts. Why indeed. If they did that, the message-value of the slogan would diminish. Elementary propaganda.

Ignore the thinkers, the analysts. Just ignore them. The movement does not need them. It needs the less educated, and best to keep them that way. Does it work? Yes.

Find more about that early 1925 source, those observations on how to persuade the masses -- and we are all that -- at Unser Kampf. Paraphrase of Propaganda Section, Mein Kampf.

Chris Matthews. Go to Chapter VI of My Struggle, "Mein Kampf". Do it. The only way to counter the slogan-mass-persuaders is education, education, education. They will not answer questions. Quit trying. And nobody is calling out the process, or can. And population education as to persuasion techniques won't happen in schools or on public media, with the budget cuts. Case lost. On to 2016 because 2012 is lost to reason and analysis if nobody can counter My Struggle Chapter VI.

Nobody could even then. The reason it ultimately failed was overreaching: going too far afield from fact. This time around, there is just enough arguable fact if taken in isolation, out of context, that people could just possibly believe. Watch.

............................................

I. The Good News,
If public interest is an interest.

TV presents an Opportunity to Educate about Political Choreography.

A. Find Propaganda at Work. Watch.

Propaganda and ways It is used Without awareness, nothing changes. Topic: The Opposition Dance du Jour. Setting: The News. Flip the remote to here: Ah, find a reaction going on. What is this? Sounds like a pre-packaged drumbeat of talking points.

Flip there -- Ah, there it is again. Same phrase. Same blinking words! But what was the event that brought on the reaction? No facts about that, hardly. Just that "it" happened. A budget proposal, perhaps.

But instead of air time for context, for independent analysis of fact and merit or lack of merit as to content, we are forced to spend our valuable "news" time on some opinion-meister's drumbeat, parroted conclusions disembodied and zombied. Incoherent images but not substance, no tie-in to the actual event, little if any factual support. Ask: Do none of these people think for themselves? Must the Seven Deadlies, the Basic Seven propaganda techniques Rule?

There is a basic set of strategies, see Propaganda Study, to which more are added such as:

Switfboating, and
Purposeful Confusion. And a big one --
FUD for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. And
Repetition
Coercion in the air
Emotional hook before facts come out

Try

Card-stacking,
Glittering generalities,
Bandwagon,
Name-calling,
Testimonial,
Transfer,
Plain folks, Good ol' Dick says, just git on this here bus, honey.

Scroll up to Repetition. There it goes again -- "failure of leadership" claim seven separate spokesparrots. And name-calling -- "job-killing" this or that. There's name-calling if we ever saw it.

Repetition, relentless repetition, was a favorite of many groups seeking to instill, to get the cadres going. Can be benign -- teach the multiplication tables like that. But in politics, those sound bites are shaping our thoughts, with noise that beats and repeats in our slowmoving ears with a boom-lay-boom. And may well be more effective in persuading the educated than the uneducated, because perhaps the educated read more, go to more sources, are exposed to it more. This is not a new idea. Go back to 1973 for this one: ://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/propaganda.htm

Go back to the masters. Edward Bernays in 1928 at ://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html/

B. Get information - Could the great propagandists succeed as they do-did, if people checked them out?

Education is not necessarily a protection against propaganda -- the educated may be more exposed because they may be in a habit of checking out other sources. But without education about propaganda, there is not even the hope of people spotting it. Is it so, that folks on TV are in the moneyed pockets and won't let the secrets out, because then the persuasion may not be as effective, is that so?

Dare you. Teach people about:

://www.propagandacritic.com

://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/proptech.htm

://mason.gmu.edu/~amcdonal/Propaganda%20Techniques.html

://academic.cuesta.edu/acasupp/as/404.htm

Or is the public interest totally out, and marketing totally in.

Create issues in legislation, some with high optics like people demonstrating, sleeping in rotundas; and that little piggy gets attention. The stealth issue, such as privatization, no-bid contracts for public utilities without regard to public interest, that little piggy gets none. See My Fair Shady: Privatizer AlertUndermining public education by removing income limits on eligibility for vouchers for private school? That little piggy does not even get counted.

There is so much information out there on propaganda tactics. You can weave in this information on your own. These sites come up with a simple Google on "propaganda techniques". So on we go:

://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Propaganda_techniques

Politics and techniques

Communications, propaganda, psy ops

://propaganda.mrdonn.org/techniques.html

C. Figure it out.

What the enemy says is propaganda, what our side says is truth, is that so?

No. Wrong.

Propaganda is not just a matter of content. It is a matter of spin: the tunneling into emotion in which facts are referenced, if any; which questions are not asked, the technique steering how content is presented, using spin words and tactics to persuade people when they may not realize they are being infiltrated.

The large groups of plain folks may not know that the real question is around the corner, and they will never hear it. See ://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media/ Even noticing "propaganda" is not a full defense. It gets in anyway. Yet, even teaching that capability helps. Watch a video on it at ://vodpod.com/watch/1082331-noam-chomsky-why-propaganda-works/

So what is the opportunity?

The opportunity is to educate for the sake of a bona fide democracy, despite the new power of corporations to fund their views with sophisticated, militaristic and Neurofocus-type efficienty, see ://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2010-01-22-psychology-political-propoganda_N.htm. Look up Neurofocus.

This is not to say that propaganda cannot be used for good purposes -- we raise out kids with persuasion all the time. See its good side, as this site sees it, at ://www.kevinhogan.com/propaganda-tactics2.htm/

The sinister side. What was true then, is true now. The sinister is not far away, see the text of all texts, as a refresher, at ://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch06.htm/ Propaganda is an art.

Yes, this is from Mein Kampf -

Watch the workings: a) convincing about what is real, b) that this process is needed, and that c) the need for this process is correct. And aim for emotions.

" *** [Convince] that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself, since its function, like the poster, consists in attracting the attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect. *** "

Adolf Hitler. The intelligence of the masses is limited, says A.H., and their ability to forget is large. Use them. People get criticized for referring to A.H. and his tactics. Read A.H. yourself. It's right there. You decide.

He was like you and me. Look. The street where he lived, at Braunau am Inn. Plain folks.

Braunau am Inn, Town Gate Tower, Austria

For more on the human side, see where he was born and some of the other places he lived, at Austria Road Ways: Braunau am Inn, Leonding. Hitler.

D. Defend.

Propagandists don't want you educated.

Coercion. This path is not for you. You can tell a propagandist by his aversion to education for others. Who is it who wants to slash the funding. Bar the door to the means to get ahead. Keep the masses as the masses. Slowmoving.

So we slow movers need to educate. Wonder why the push to keep folks from getting a good education? Question answered all around you. Critical thinking is not helpful to someone who wants to use that person. No critical thinking. None.

So, teach propaganda techniques as part of all education. Name it. Spotlight the technique when you see it. That is a first defense. See ://www.systemiccoaching.com/coercion.htm/ The effects of propaganda can be limited, even if not totally protected against.

Coercion. In particular, spot coercion techniques: when the soundbites of the persuasion tend toward mind control, or brainwashing. Who is complicit? Furthering it? Do channels also enable that extreme, by airing political ads for free, as though the ad is news, pretending to critique them, when the ads instead are likely finding sympathetic viewers with each airing; the broadcaster complicit in the message, over and over again the use of "psychological pressure, undue influence, threats, anxiety, intimidation, and/or stress". Is the NRA at home?

So call out the propaganda. Tell people how it works. See ://history.howstuffworks.com/historians/propaganda.htm/ Teach America.

Point out the sound-bites prepared in advance to be applied to whatever event may occur, whatever acts may be the topic du jour. Shout it out. The political coverage is a sham. All we get is this side says that, that side says this. Give us some teaching time; some evaluative time. What facts support this or that. It is not enough to do one side one night, the other side the next. In the meantime, people absorb and become committed.

Teach your audience about propaganda, techniques, persuasion, and tell us when you find it. Too much to ask, too much to ask. We want entertainment. Back to Bernays: see ://www.prmuseum.com/bernays/bernays_1915.html

II. The Bad News.

Self-interest in persuading will stop the educating about political choreography.
.

A. Propaganda works.

Repetition. The sad part is that rat-a-tat works. I remembered the words. Repetition is an effective propaganda technique, and be sure to get the opinion out before and, better yet, instead of analysis. Sheer repetition, on the "news" -- is there no-one who will call out the propaganda going on? Here is a good one: Make no half statements that might give rise to doubts. That also from ://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch06/html

This is worth big type: Again, from A.H. up there.

"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success."

Adolf.

Mein Kampf.

Look at silly us, wanting to point out that this repetition propaganda technique in particular is already accepted as "news." The choreography of it all. Sunday morning instead of church, worship at the News Forums and hear the creeds.

And there is no leverage, to get a station owner to do anything but present a forum for posturing, instead of news.

If a broadcaster can persuade people of something, why not. Be an enabler in this dysfunctional national family of ours, providing a stage for repeating ads, repeating psy ops phrases and tactics to shape opinion. It makes money.

Glittering generalities. Political choreography extends to using words and images without defining what is meant, and who is saying what, and with what self-interest -- glittering generalities is a favored technique, go see ://retakeourgov.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70:learn-how-to-defend-capitalism&catid=1:latest&Itemid=26

Conspiracy theorists watch out. Watch as one channel newscaster after another reports an event, then -- before and instead of analyzing merit and fact -- interviews folks for "reaction." And the interviewees all say the same thing, sing the same tune. Some places are considering voter education -- see ://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100705-279245/Comelec-wants-voter-education-in-schools/ How to get adult voter education out of local papers, a few town forums (risky, with the rudeness) and on mainstream news.

Purposeful confusion. The political party choreography says it wants transparency and the good of the middle class while doing what it can to see those things do not happen. Who funds the ads? Like Alice, in our own wonderland, what do the words mean.

Disclosure bias: Most anchors on CNN and MSNBC do a decent job of presenting fact contexts; and analyzing merit. But even they fail to focus on the political choreography going on, the propaganda techniques their interviewees use.

B. What to do

Call in the FDA. We are swallowing contaminated stuff that is bad for us and making others quite rich, thank you. Truth in labeling. Packaging. Marketing. Fact and merit, or propaganda.

An age of marketing is bound to affect news, where station owners can shape how news is presented; and people will return if they like what they hear. But is there any public-interest place for educating people -- both libs and cons -- about how they are being persuaded. Will nobody call out the propaganda?

So, with news itself as part of the choreography, turn it all off. Go back to your own efforts to gather information. Are any of us clever enough to spot when we are being had? Probably not.

The principled position: Is this so: that you all are a party to propaganda if you simply pass it on without a critique. In our house, we are trying to turn you all off. We are a range of the very handicapped mentally to the possibly doing very well, thank you, intellectually. Not geniuses, but vetters.

If we all are making an effort to turn you off because you propagate propaganda, maybe it is time for you to pay attention. Then again, we don't have the Koch resources, so why pay attention to the information needs of the Nation when there is money to be made.

G'night, Rupe. Repeat that. G'night, Rupe. REPEAT THAT. G'NIGHT, RUPE.

Got that?

Rant continued. Objective news and factual evaluation information for a hungry public . What is wrong with CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, PBS, ETC plus the cables not listed. The techniques are outpacing us. Watch this one: One side couches its criticism of the other in terms that are more accurately lodged against it. Accuse the other side of being and doing what you are being and doing. Propaganda by sound-bite repetition. Say it again and again. Non-dilution. Repetition Avoidance Propaganda Technique.

How do talking points distributed even before an event, get the airwaves when they are clearly an advance sound bite regardless of what the event is.

We spent a half hour tonight, for example, trying to find facts and an objective evaluation rather than an opinion paid for by the admen. No luck. Rat-a-tat-tat. Get out of my head.

G'night, Rupe.

...................................

FN 1 Quotation. See ://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch06/html/ See its place on a timeline (Mein Kampf means My Struggle) at ://www.google.com/search?rlz=1R1GGLL_en___US387&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1134&bih=589&q=mein+kampf&btnG=Google+Search#q=mein+kampf&hl=en&sa=G&rlz=1R1GGLL_en___US387&biw=1134&bih=589&prmd=ivnsb&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=z4lbTYTSK8HcgQeeqoDmDA&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=20&ved=0CJgBEOcCMBM&fp=47f590a90a3bd571

Or do a search for Mein Kampf and look for the entry for the time-line. Modern focus has been on the political philosophy of Adolf Hitler, as the text is characterized; and on the racist and territorial invasion justification elements in the text. Overlooked is Hitler's brilliant propaganda technique analysis. Take time with it. It was published in 1925. Then take notes.

The whole thing: ://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/

PsyOps in Politics. Military Methods Cross the Line

2011-01-23T03:41:00.007-05:00

Psy Ops in Politics

Deep Persuasion.

[See also Psy Ops in Media]

Psy ops. Here, Ystad.

Psychological Operations in Politics: Election and persuasion now combines elements of military sabotage models and commercial-psychological sales research
.

How do groups with agendas prime the population pump so that people will absorb the Message. Priming the pump is needed, the positioning, the climate, so the people will welcome being persuaded of what you want, even if they are not aware what you are doing and how they are getting you on board.

For a rather dry but still spooky review of persuasion techniques, that will be expanded with other site references, see ://world-information.org/trd?trdid=M /; and Media role in effectuating the techniques. Look up Edward Bernays, referenced in the Introduction at ://world-information.org/trd/intro/; here at Bogomilia: Edward Bernays, Regiment the Public Mind

I. How to Persuade - Priming the Population Pump to Be Persuaded

A. Methodology one group would like to see happen in order to be in the best Persuasion Position (BP)

1. Develop shared myths

("MacBelieve"): a way of looking at the world. Polarize with one set of myths; propagandize with another; and demonize with yet another. Polarize, propagandize, demonize. The people who swallow are in your pocket. Where?

Acceptance of myths are vital to integrating and motivating people to maximize efficiency in the military and in a workforce. MacBelieve. That's a good name. Meme it. Make people's beliefs so uniform that any franchise non-food MacOutlet will serve the same thing, and equally non-nutritious and even harmful if over-indulged, is that so? MacBelieve.

An in-group approach is helpful: find one at this system of myths for lone-wolves and under-the-radar unaffiliated mercenary / domestic guerrilla folks, at ://www.filedownloadfull.com/forums/f7/unconventional-combative-techniques-pdf-mf-rs-r3bel-814742/ and ://www.4shared.com/u/pAj8YLyC/Franke_Schein_-_The_LoneWolf_R.html/ Guerrillas. Clearly, real guerrillas on the domestic scene would not affiliate with the NRA -- too stodgy, like a front for getting the training, then melting away.

Myths start early in life. See the Three Little Pigs at Psy Ops in Media. The Hidden Sell. There, the early version in England, 19th century, the black pig, Blacky, is the youngest, the hero, and the handsomest. Go read. How did that change coming across the pond?

2. Impose identical ways of life -- follow along closely here.

In the military, look how effective it is to build rapport among troops who are all living in the same way. Their families in unit housing, the uniforms. The same kind of pay for same kinds of work.

In the civil world, rapport by similar conditions is developed for the short term, by putting people in the same experiences, togetherness. For the long term, reduce their opportunities to branch out independently by any number of means: for example, reduce funding that increases health or opportunity. Presto -- people stuck where they are. Limiting mobility and spending possibilities molds a group. That makes it easier for those in charge to ensure that the group is maximally absorbing the group ideology about who belongs where. The Company Store.

Reduce the federal budget allocations that benefit working people.

Look at the piechart of the federal budget at ://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm/. Department of Defense 653 billion. And on and on, with the usual openings for opponents of the analysis to dispute accounting.
Bottom line: It shows the military getting 56% of the federal budget (this was 2009), and in 2011 there is not much talk of cutting back the military; and of that 56%, 18% is for past military obligations (is that retirements, or contracts entered into the, such as what? contracts for current obligations would be in the "present military" segment of 36%, and that includes 200 billion for current Iraq and Afghanistan.
That leaves 30% for all human resources, 11% for general government, and 5% for physical resources.
And those are open season for cuts for everything but the military's 56%.

And, in education, stress technical education and downplay the liberal arts. Liberal arts breed questioners, historians, people who use language to vet. Is that so? Not always. But a start of an idea about who is more conformist: technicians, or arts.

"A technical workforce breeds conformity" see Tactical Realities, Cultural Intelligence and Social Control at world-information.org/trd?trdid=M/.

Tactical Realities. Good title. A reality show for the mind. This site provides the initial framework for the analysis here, the starting point.Go from there to the CIA Guerrilla Warfare manual. Online.

All of this is hard: not an easy read. And it is equally hard to keep from immediately pointing out with interruptive anecdotes the likely manifestations of all this (the effect of concentrating wealth and health in the the few, for example, means the rest of us have to live sustenance-only, eventually, making us easier to control, is that so, or too Orwellian?)

3. Establish rapport.

Rapport affects the will and the nervous system, both. Atmosphere directly affects the power of the suggestions going on. So get thee rapport. Is this why putting gays in the open, and blacks earlier on, was so feared? The myths so painstakingly instilled about Mighty Whitey and Go Hetero (see submarine videos) were being challenged. What new myths could serve the same role, fast?

Little children going to NRA Adventure Camps. Go to the website and see all the rapport just oozing. Bellwether Haiku: Nicens Baby Tuckoo goes to Adventure-Time Camp

4. Set activity patterns

Everybody on the bus! We got demonstrations to get to! Everybody got your placards? Rehearsed how to disrupt the town meeting? Got your script? And be sure to get the names of people on other buses so you can link up with them later. We are a community here.

News: Then speed the outlets' output up. Fox is now 24/7.

All together now.

Is this lock-step how the Orient musters such rah-rah for the factory? Ideas 1-4 here? The activity regulation distracts people with the community-building so they don't notice what's happening to their human rights, if such are even recognized. Productivity, people, productivity and in this direction only.

5. Issue Directives.

Two kinds of commands, one for the immediate do it now; and the second to serve the long-term conditioning needs of the persuader. Long-term conditioning: geared to "mold public opinions, assumptions and attitudes on a long-term and widespread basis." Tactical Realities. Meet the NRA. Is there rapport there or what? Meet tax cuts for the top 2%. Force it. Get the minions used to it.

6. Set up "Socio-Political 'Cause' Groups."

Another great name. Substitute the Koch bus people. Look at the networks of otherwise "lone wolves" and "revolution preparedness" groups. Create the cause then act it out. And all this works in the commercial sales as well as in the military area. (Who is this nomenclature genius?) Look how groups within groups can grow, at Natural Pragmatism: Natural Resource Auxiliary NRA presents History of Guns NRA.

Method:

a) claim a threat and repeat (factoids) (the pitch);

b) get your group to bond with each other so they can fight it (get their attention) (Adventure Camp and Youth Programs are a good start)

c) get concrete about the cause (it was only a threat before) after the bonding, so all that bonding will have somewhere to aim (build confidence that what you said was true);

d) name the cause in more detail and point it out (factoids) (stimulate desire and push the urgency; then

e) guide the response (action - the purchase, getting on the bus).

7. Handbook.

Be sure you all are using the same playbook, buzz words

You want people to support or adopt an idea, product, and you have a lot of symbols available (force to the MP and discipline degree are available in the military; civilly, no, not here, yet).

You want people to react, obey with minimal thought. Go to Tactical Realities at ://www.tacticalreality.com. *

Why does this work? Read the site for discussion on how action impulses come from deep inside, and it takes deep persuasion to induce it.

Use language as an "instrument of the mind". Transfer the language into symbols that give rise to feelings and reflexes, not thought.

There is a "deliberate devaluation of thought" needed if people are to be part of the kind of social organization contemplated. "Subliminal psychodynamic activation." Whew. All that on the bus, Mr. Koch and Mr. Koch? The red hand.

Mere barely perceptible exposure to it later, in the conditioned person, will bring about an emotional response in the brain, and without the person being aware. So expose as many people in the country as possible to the rituals, the camaraderie, set the stage, teach the talk. So nice.

Build up some aspects of the idea you want to sell. Don't raise all the issues. Tools (see also propagandacritic.com):

repeat yourself
connection
composition. Put an Obama face on a drooly bloody joker vampire construct. Eeuuuwww.

Downplay other aspects of the idea. Tools (see also propagandacritic.com):

omit references entirely,
divert attention and/or
confuse people about it (call a health care bill "job-killing" even though some jobs will fall away but perhaps more will arise in other areas other than insurance cubicles).

Put them together and whaddaya got? Death panels. Job-killing health care bill.

B. Further ways to dominate.

Tactical Realities at ://www.tacticalreality.com goes on with discussions of memes, "memory construction" or "state-constructed memory". Mnemonics, but we knew that one. Read about the role of visual representations of extremes. Mood-dependent memory. Have a fun time on the bus, and associate good times with the doctrine being wafted over you. Will you be a critical thinker, especially if those nice people did all those nice things for you? Didn't your mother teach you to be grateful? Can minds be influenced by the state, the content, of the ionosphere, micro and other waves? Electromagnetic weaponry is the military side. Mind-modifications, mind-patterns, all routes to obedience. A good thing for a captured intelligence person, who needs to withstand efforts to extract information. Bad for a democracy if people want to retain their individuality, their individual capability to direct their own lifes, perceptions.

* Went to the site today, 3/2011. It has been blocked. Can't get into it. Off bounds now.

PsyOps in Media. The Hidden Sell.

2011-01-06T20:52:00.024-05:00

Psy Ops in Media

The Hidden Sell

Can you spot the agenda

[See also Psy Ops in Politics]

I. The Hidden Sell in how we tell children's stories

The Three Little Pigs

Here is The Three Little Pigs, as it was told in England from 1892 and 1902, see it at ://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0124.html/ This is from the second Piggy version given. It comes in turn from The Green Fairy Book by an Andrew Lang 1906, it says, and it was 7th Impression.

The piggies are:

1. Browny, the eldest, the messy pig; then

2. Whitey, the greedy pig; and

3. Blacky, the youngest and the best looking (and the hero).

They do their respective houses, Blacky's stays standing; and the villain who comes to a bad end -- at the hands of Blacky the Hero -- is a Fox and not a Wolf at all.

Read this fair use portion of the heroism of Blacky, how he saved them all. We have separated out the sentences:

" *** As soon as he was sure that their wicked enemy was really dead, and could do them no further harm, Blacky started off to rescue Browny and Whitey.

As he approached the den he heard piteous grunts and squeals from his poor little brother and sister who lived in constant terror of the fox killing and eating them.

But when they saw Blacky appear at the entrance to the den, their joy knew no bounds.

He quickly found a sharp stone and cut the cords by which they were tied to a stake in the ground, and then all three started off together for Blacky's house, where they lived happily ever after.

And Browny quite gave up rolling in the mud, and Whitey ceased to be greedy, for they never forgot how nearly these faults had brought them to an untimely end."

The End

And what do our little versions say? Is Whitey greedy and the lost middle child? Is Blacky the hero who kills the Fox and saves everyone, and is the handsomest? The coveted youngest son position, like Joseph, even. Our own cultural PR. Sales. All of it.

Mr. Disney? R U home?

Consumer Protection? RU home?

Is Originalism always what you want? The Texas text curriculum is already altering its programs to conform to this verifiable Originalism. Cultural agenda shapes the story. Don't let on it even happened.

II. The Hidden Sell in Mainstream Media

Mainstream News Interviews a New Speaker

This one happened to be Brian Williams, News Entity

There is an interview coming. Here is the politician as I see him.

Politician

Guess. Yes. We are familiar with the hue. There is news that he is the new Speaker indeed. On the news comes this, however.

Speaker on TV interview.

He is huge! With all the time afforded this interview, this job of Speaker is Really Big this year. That job was never treated so big before. And how appealing this one is made out to be. What a nice shade. Nothing odd about that. Even tilting toward blue! Maybe I can even identify with him.

By the end of the show: I believe! I believe! I vote for that guy. Compare the time spent on the last Speaker getting into office. Virtually none. No magazine cover, no breathless interviews. Must be because this one is for me and I was mistaken in liking the other one. I got not just information about a new Speaker, but an interview dedicated to sell him.

Recap: This Speaker, not the man I heard before he was Speaker, says he wants everybody to enjoy good education, stable neighborhoods, have jobs, nice food, be healthy (even if pallid), enjoy the American Dream. That's what he said, right there on TV. Education. He says that these are values that served him. He wants to bring back the America of his particular yesteryear, but with a catch.

We recall on our own from his record that he wants those things for his people, but not for aspiring ones who don't have a "neighborhood" or were not from his kind of "neighborhood."

Why are those views not investigated? We suspect that somebody in the Big Department wants to sell us this Speaker. If you trust ol' Bri, you will trust the interview. Foul ball. Needed: Some basic rules of evidence to separate out the worthy belief from the unworthy, based on what is reliable. FN 2. Rules of Evidence. Excellent training for vetting what is worth believing, and what is a sell job. Newscasts. They present evidence. People treat it as evidence, where the other side can present its counterevidence; not as a sell job where one side is heard and click it off. Hype on the screen.

III. The Process of the hidden sell, and some remedies

Control of facts presented is control of viewpoint. Explain that to viewers.

What to do when an off-camera control is in effect. How is a viewer to know? Is part of the persuasion keeping it smooth, the omissions not even creating a ripple. There may be a suspicion that media controls the color and tone of all we hear and see, that they may be just selling, not telling facts. But does that really get across.

Air time generates votes. That gets across. Reliability of facts and evidence: not just for law school. It belongs in every curriculum every age.

Why? Because this is who we get after the election, after the interview. Here is the politician after the election: what we got.

Politician after the election.

So what to do?

Make political speech like commercial speech: Truth in advertising, truth in ingredients.

This hidden sell takes the form of Air Time dedicated to some issues, some people, not others. It takes the form of the questioning: are there Apple Pie Questions, or does the interviewer delve. How to Sell a Politician. Easy. Simple Psy Ops Takes Over the News just as psy ops takes over children's stories. To serve agenda.

How to orient viewers to spin and hype in the news. Our objective:
1. Treat political speech as sales speech. Require truth in labeling, ingredients, to protect the consumer.
2. Fund a robust public interest media for 24/7 factchecks, simultaneous; and
3. Add a persuasion techniques curriculum to every class in every year of school.

Here: News spin. Omission and slant turn news into commentary, persuasion. Consider the amount of airtime awarded to certain groups, certain issues; what free advertising is offered by repeating ads on "news".

When important things are being decided, Media plays a large role in what is discussed. They control what is put out there, and how it is said, what is omitted, downplayed, body-language of the rolling eyes. It is not enough just to change channels. The channels are largely owned by people who seem to have the same interests: big business.

So let's treat their media speech like business. It is sales.

In commercial speech, there are limits to "free speech" -- there are rules to protect the consumer. Sellers must provide truth in labeling, contents, effects, side-effects, no misrepresentation.

Would that help counter the effect of special interest media controls the debate by
a) the topics it chooses to cover,
b) how it does it, and when, and
c) how much time and noise is given to it. Because individuals and corporations with special interests control the debate in those ways, they can control the verdict. If they can keep information away from the jury, spin it enough, the jury draws conclusions without even realizing what is going on.

How to recalibrate Big Media controls of time, manner and spin when all can be bought:

Needed: Robust financial support for public interest media, even a resurgent form of fairness doctrine, to better ensure full, objective information as part of political Free Speech:

Ensure reliability in the debate function of free speech

Examine the Role of Evidence in a court setting; and its Protections in the interest of a well-informed jury coming to a verdict on life and rights, important matters.

Free speech does not control what the jury hears. Reliability as determined by a judge as arbiter decides each time one side objects to what the other is offering into evidence. Examine the role of "Free Speech" in a non-court, election setting. There are no Protections in the interest of a well-informed electorate coming to a decision on life and rights, important matters. Free speech allows almost anything to be said regardless of reliability. Needed: consumer protection in political speech.

Are we so accustomed to slant that nothing surprises us. FN 1

......................................................................

FN 1.

Big Media. Since the demise of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980's, how to ensure that a voting population has the information needed to make decisions in their interest. No way. Is it true, then, that big media is more interested in persuasion than "news". Watch. Are they complicit in the persuasion activities of those who own the outlets, in what they choose to air, how they air it. Big MacBelief. FN 2

Need some consumer protection here, or watch the kids fall in line with the nice adventure-camps with the bandwagon come on board songs, and with triggers for them already. Wars for the mind. Technologies in the Wars for our Minds. See Studying Wars: Wars for the Mind. Get the skills early, so you can choose to be a mercenary at the earliest opportunity, see Persuasion industries include fostering the mercenaries among us.

Persuasion positioning and conditioning for the military: needed to make a soldier; not so needed on the outside, unless we are fostering a tribe of little guerrillas. How to re-adapt our soldiers after. That is difficult enough. How many do a lateral pirhouette into the guerilla, militia, mercenary (Blackwater types) ops because it is just too hard to adjust.

From Ochre Ogre (yes, another example of highly colored language, a snappy sound bite to go viral and persuade just by being heard), to a Wuv Me to the Real Thing and Whose Shade Gets Favored. Three easy media steps to success. Which way to the bank?

......................................................

FN 2 Basic rules of evidence. Wisdom of. Media and psy ops.

1. Evidence. Evidence is important. It is what decides guilt or innocence, liability or not. Evidence in a courtroomThis is supposed to be heard in a reliable way before decisions are made.

Newcasts present evidence. Every news cast is evidence before a jury. The people voting next time are the jury who will base their votes on what they see. Every talk show, every panel, every media presentation, every pulpy thing in the driveway, is an accumulation of evidence.

2. The problem. In a democracy, democracy's "evidence" is a wild card controlled by big media and big media's owners.

The problem is that this vital evidence, however relied upon in weighty matters that are not merely entertainment until dinner and the kids come home, is not a controlled courtroom,

There is no judge appointed or voted in, when democracy's evidence is involved, with the objective responsibility to filter out

the speculative,
hearsay,
based on matters not in "evidence",
leading the witness,
all that.

Big Media, where supposedly things are not being decided, but are only "opinion" is "free speech" -- untrammelled garbage, even, depending on the mood of the garbagor. No reliability controls.

Courts, where weighty things are indeed decided, are instead protected as to reliability: free speech has to meet criteria before the jury, the deciders, are supposed to hear and consider it.

Tentative conclusion: Trying to get truth on the media when profits and power are at stake is hopeless. There is no leverage to get anyone to seek a common good. It just took time to get here.

Will or can Democracy survive where media decides, because it is owned by those who know persuasion techniques, and are highly motivated to use it; it gives lots of air time and spin to a viewpoint they choose to give. Big media falls in line. Did they mean to? How knowing is the rank and file of the ways the presentation shapes opinion, induces conformity.

Does big media in a democracy also have an obligation, despite the owners of the media and their corporate and own pocketbook and power of sway interests, to Inform even if it goes against the owners' interest. What is Big? No easy answers, but public policy matters depend on addressing the issues. Why bother with the public when the private has the money? Good question asked and answered.

Reality: Media controls the presentation of evidence. Verdict anticipation. Easy. Speaker coverage? Of all kinds, but only some get covered. Just ease back in your chairs, and let it all wash over. Nice Bri will look out for you. And his bosses.

We know how to persuade:

Build up some aspects of the idea you want to sell. Don't raise all the issues. Tools (see also propagandacritic.com):

repeat yourself
connection
composition. Put an Obama face on a drooly bloody joker vampire construct. Eeuuuwww.

Downplay other aspects of the idea. Tools (see also propagandacritic.com):

omit references entirely,
divert attention and/or
confuse people about it (call a health care bill "job-killing" even though some jobs will fall away but perhaps more will arise in other areas other than insurance cubicles)

1. Evidence. This is supposed to be heard in a reliable way before decisions are made.

Every news cast is evidence before a jury. The people voting next time are the jury who will base their votes on what they see. Every talk show, every panel, every media presentation, every pulpy thing in the driveway, is an accumulation of evidence.

2. The problem. In a democracy, democracy's "evidence" is a wild card controlled by big media and big media's owners.

The problem is that this vital evidence, however relied upon in weighty matters that are not merely entertainment until dinner and the kids come home, is not a controlled courtroom,

There is no judge appointed or voted in, when democracy's evidence is involved, with the objective responsibility to filter out

the speculative,
hearsay,
based on matters not in "evidence",
leading the witness,
all that.

Big Media, where supposedly things are not being decided, but are only "opinion" is "free speech" -- untrammelled garbage, even, depending on the mood of the garbagor. No reliability controls.

Courts, where weighty things are indeed decided, are instead protected as to reliability: free speech has to meet criteria before the jury, the deciders, are supposed to hear and consider it.

Psy Ops. Further ways to dominate.

Tacticalreality.com. See this at Psy Ops in Politics. Democracy's Pitfall, shown here because the site is now blocked and it was interesting.

Tactical Reality - go to the site. This continues how persuasion is effectuated. Memes, "memory construction" or "state-constructed memory". Mnemonics, but we knew that one. Read about the role of visual representations of extremes. Mood-dependent memory. Have a fun time on the bus, and associate good times with the doctrine being wafted over you. Will you be a critical thinker, especially if those nice people did all those nice things for you? Didn't your mother teach you to be grateful? Can minds be influenced by the state, the content, of the ionosphere, micro and other waves? Electromagnetic weaponry is the military side. Mind-modifications, mind-patterns, all routes to obedience. A good thing for a captured intelligence person, who needs to withstand efforts to extract information. Bad for a democracy if people want to retain their individuality, their individual capability to direct their own lives, perceptions.

Update. Tried going to the site 3/2011. It has been disabled. Can't get on it any more. Are you surprised?

Reconciliation through Zoroaster. Tolerance. Common Ground for All Religions. Zarathustra Today. A Key After All?

2011-01-01T20:44:00.005-05:00

Reconciliation through Old Zoroaster
Go Back in History, old Religious Ideas.

Did earlier wise people have some ans;wers.

Religious Tolerance. Ancient Zarathrustra (Zoroaster) Model.

Global Department, Axial Age

East-West Reconciliation:

One Vehicle: History's Prior Wisdom, that Predates Christian and Much Other.

Resources of Iran, Persia, Back Then.

What Spake Zarathustra?

Why were his texts destroyed by the Institutions?
See ://www.accessnewage.com/articles/mystic/avest.htm

Is Zarathustra Still Speaking?

Can Anybody Listen any more?
See extracts at ://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/toz/toz05.htm

Allo? Allo?

The cosmic cell phone.

I. THE SUMMARY

Open proposal for tolerance reconciliation: To Iran, and the Vatican, as perhaps spokespersons for modern religious constructs East, West, Mid-East, perhaps not.

The gist: Go behind your respective Founders' institutional spokespersons, and find this common ground for coexistence: in a Persian area predecessor centuries before the Christian Era, or the Muslim; see debates as to his life span and era, see ://www.livius.org/za-zn/zarathustra/zarathustra.htm/; and long maligned because he did not espouse a religious regimentation, institution, exclusions and inclusions to be enforced by Force.

Is this the idea: As humans, you must choose between good and evil. And you must behave well as to each other. Does that mean that your choice is no-one else's business so long as no other breathing person is harmed, that you bear your own consequences, so butt out, as the sages might say? Perhaps. Peruse: ://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/toz/toz05.htm/ Extracts of The Teachings of Zoroaster, thoughts.

Ancient religious tolerance.
It may well have been Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, many centuries BC, Persia, that area, who had wiser and deeper knowledge of the human-universe condition, than those who followed their later particular Founders of Other and Now Mainstream Religious sytems.
See Cyrus the Great 600-529 BC, of Persia, a humane conqueror,

Achievements - Cyrus the Great as a leader

established peace and
did away with forced labor;
supported the release of Jews in Babylon so they could establish their homeland and rebuild the destroyed Temple;
allowed local gods to be worshipped, and
supported other captives in their desire to return,

yet he was ultimately killed in battle by the Queen of opposing forces whose son he had himself killed, see ://www.cyrusthegreat.net/;
understood by evidence at religious places (see site) to be Zoroastrian; perhaps; and highly esteemed in all the many references to him in The Book;

Intolerable idea in Zoroastrianism letting others live and minding one's own other governmental stability business. Self-determination, see perhaps a line to Athena in the somewhat later Greek systems, reduced by the Romans to her mere "virginity" and the manipulations of meanings of that at Parthenon, Athena, Partheneia, Parthia.
Nonetheless, those later followers of other Founders destroyed Zoroaster's texts and customs through the years, as threatening to their status because Zoroaster did not foster institutions and formal ritual practices that excluded others. Is that so? Job preservation? Fear of loss of influence? Lust of sway?

Where now? To find a path to religious tolerance now, millennia later, look back to the maligned Zoroaster; and Cyrus who embodied wise leadership in that same train of thought. What spake Zarathustra. Do you know? We, West and East, burned his texts. Can we know?

Ask Zarathustra, the non-prophet who could not compete with "prophets" and who had no claim to one singular pipeline to divinity.No miracle worker. Why did his ancient wisdom so frighten each institution that followed, that each vowed to destroy him but could not. Is that so? Shall we look homeward, to our mutual past?
For an interest, see ://www.zoroaster.com/ It starts, unfortunately, with a Muslim series of texts on which the persecution of the Zarathustrans was based, apparently. We in the West could find as many in The Book that also supported those crusaders as groups or individuals through the centuries who seek to root out their view of "evildoers." Move on to the philosophy.
Irony: Zarathustra may have been killed in Afghanistan, for invading nomads, see ://www.livius.org/za-zn/zarathustra/zarathustra.htm/, do humans never learn.

..............................................................................

II. THE MAIN EVENT

To Iran: The closest we find to the home territory of Persia, Cyrus the Great, esteemed in The Book; and Zarathustra:

Respect and honor to your history through Cyrus the Great, and the associations of your peoples at various times with the path of Zarathustra, named in The Book multiple times with great admiration, even as sanctified.

To the Vatican, not representative of all Christians, but perhaps useful here as the longest historical- reach spokesperson for West, Europe et ilk, perhaps not:

Respect and honor to your history through and preceding the establishment of the canon, before which time there was a hope of tolerance for non-dogmatic beliefs, different from the cannonades:

Each of you should be equally offended.

........................................................................................

III. THE WHEREAS'S

WHEREAS,

No progress has been made in human co-existence relations since Zoroaster, many centuries BC, Persia et ilk, a/k/a Zarathustra; and his Path fostering not institutions or regimentation but mutual respect and honor in dealings, see the "chieftainship of good thoughts" etc. offered herein as a rough summary, at ://www.zoroaster.com/; and

WHEREAS,

Common ground of esteem may be found by looking back, before the Founders of the major religions. Look to the interpretation that we understand was placed by Cyrus the Great in the Zoroastrian pathways to a life of honor and responsibility, productivity and joy for all as that may be interpreted by the culture, but a) none dependent by institution, b) none trod upon because of ascribed status and history of being intentionally trod upon by Big Feet; and c) equivalence of genders, see the dependency and trod upon sections herein.

WHEREAS,

The Vatican now calls for religious tolerance, see ://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/01/201111165010674598.html; and condemns abuses toward Christians, ://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=132545133/. Ironically, the gallery notes that the Vatican through the centuries hardly has a stellar record in that regard, then or now: yet

WHEREAS,

It may be argued that the Founders of main religions anywhere foster some form of human-hood despite the positions of the later dogmatists, interpreters and position-takers;

WHEREAS,

Rreligious fervors on all sides, seeking to elevate one's own particular Founder, have led to death and destruction, East and West, thus fingers point to none in particular, because on all sides equally violate the humanness of others, therefore no side is targeted; see, e.g., ://www.stanford.edu/group/wais/Individuals/NietzscheandZoroaster.htm/; and

WHEREAS,

The earliest models of actual rulers fostering human co-existence and dignity for all peoples lies in Iran itself, with its Cyrus the Great, and

WHEREAS,

It is convincingly arguable that Cyrus the Great was a Zoroastrian; and that Cyrus' principles in leadership are worth emulating in principle;

We already have global principles for co-existence that predate the major competitors in the religious arena,

The principles of non-prophet but Wise Zoroaster, a/k/a Zarathustra, Iran, Persia et ilk, and preceding the founders of The Book, or close to it; shall be established as a religious neutral for the standard for human endeavor and criminality on all four corners of the globular glob globe. Note that this requires that all peoples suspend all claims to supremacy and right to eradicate others who do not follow their own particular precepts. Ergo, West suspends claims to supremacy of JC, PBUH; Jews suspend claim to supremacy of M, PBUH; and East and Mid E suspends claims to supremacy of the P. PBUH.

Bad acts on all sides have led to unjust unjudicated supremacy activities in different areas, in terms of good faith disagreements on how to interpret texts.

The institutionally invested persons of religions subsequently set forth caused the works of the Wise Zarathustra to be destroyed in purges and book-burnings, in the interest of said professional demagogues and religious profiteers (read "lust of sway") north east south and west; including materials in institutional libraries not open to the public; each such institutionalized religion now claims supremacy, having concealed or destroyed everybody else's point of view for comparison to what they propose/force.

IV. THE THEREFORE'S

THEREFORE,

It is Globally Recommended;

1. That the United Nations shall support with all tools at its command, including propaganda and funding, the principles of Zoroaster, Zarathustra, as set forth and promulgated as the standard. All countries' and their religions and political acts as individuals acting in an official capacity, and as nations, shall be measured as culpable or not according to What Spake Zarathustra; and

2. Human, religious, gender, status and all other rights shall be deemed just or not according to basic principles of truthfulness, benevolence toward others, good thought, good act, good deed, see ://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/magus/ma254.htm

3. Global seminars shall be sponsored by every nation for every age group as to such principles, and such shall be independent of any established or wannabe institution of religious nature.

4. TV media ratings shows on magic or ersatz prophecy shall not qualify for an understanding of Zarasthustra. No appeals shall be taken to this ruling.

5. The Axial Age, the formation of main religions in a particular era, shall be required as a pass-fail course for any matriculation anywhere beyond High School or its equivalent. See ://www.thenagain.info/webchron/world/Axial.html/; ://www.religioustolerance.org/axialage.htm; ://www.usislam.org/54axial.htm
..........................................................

This Reconciliation Ground for Human Survival is sponsored by the ad hoc Committee for Everyday People Who Just Want to Live (AEPWJWTL; also known as Aep' Wuh - Ju' Wattle). Eep wuh ju watl. Zarathrustra downplayed? Why? Is he a key.

Search for the Axial Age, a period in ancient history when religions in various distant places reformed and grew with similar principles, without apparent contact -- a Great Meme. But not all agree, see http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Axial_Age

Political MIschief in Redistricting. Nefarious Gerrymander. Census: Stealth Democrats in South and West

2010-12-22T13:36:00.003-05:00

Political Mischief in Redistricting -- On and On

Redistricting Voters Out of Existence
Stealth Democrats Defend Against Nefarious Gerrymander

TROMPE NEWS FLASH. DNC Prime to the Square Root. The new census shows a shift in population from traditionally Democratic areas in the Northeast and East, to the nation's South and West. Any Democrat who has so relocated is encouraged to join the nearest Stealth Democrats Association, and refrain from firm identification of their political affiliation to any third parties not also certified members of the Association. Upon arrival, many such relocatees report that they are inundated with requests for personal political affiliation information under the guise of "polls" by groups refusing to disclose their funding.

Research into the names provided for the groups strongly suggests a connection to partisan political machines, not a new phenomenon, see ://www.albionmonitor.com/12-21-95/stealthstrategy.html/. The intent appears to be to provide gerrymander recommendations to the resident majority in those states undergoing district boundary changes. The goal of such gerrymander is to fragment the Democratic population so that they cannot form a majority in their districts.

Preliminary calculations suggest that such stealth Democrats may sway the opposing political party's turnout in areas in unsuspected ways, providing great fun in the next election. They may have moved but their allegiances remain ideologically strong: access to the tools needed for productivity for every resident in the country. These tools for productivity include healthcare, education and facts, mobility, sustenance, and freedom from fear.

Census result: Majorities in South and West seek newly relocated Stealth Democrats for purposes of Nefarious Gerrymander

Or, as recent article suggests, add more representatives -- re-enfranchise voters. See ://www.npr.org/2011/01/24/133184399/Op-Ed-America-Needs-A-Larger-Congress

No frontier. Three Strikes against Immigrants. Immigrants Lose the Geographic Game

2010-12-12T20:19:00.014-05:00

Immigrants Lose the Geographic Game

Strike 1. No frontier and its consequences.

Immigrants here have always, until now, had a frontier. Go there, start on your own.

People in our borders now have no place to go but to stay where they are; or if they are elsewhere, to come to where they may be welcomed. If we boot them out from whence they came, they will have to come back. So what to do?

Spend our money in a combination of limiting who comes in, to weed out malfeasors, if possible; then integrate those here. They are staying. No way to deport millions. Carve out Arizona and give it to Mexico.

Perhaps initiate a Bump system of employment. Employers can hire anybody who applies; but if someone with papers applies the employer must bump the undocumented.

Strike 2. Internal dissing and its consequences.

The Democratic system has dissed those it earlier welcomed, to death. Bush v. Gore.

Let power speak its will, and the court will follow. If economics and power determine judicial outcomes, what chance has the immigrant.

Respect for Court ran out right then.

The highest Court in that case became overtly political, and the tenuous balance of power, so carefully outlined, has never recovered. The judicial branch dissed the electoral system, then the legislative branch began to diss the executive; and we are waiting and hoping it does not happen full circle, that the executive finds both the judicial and the legislative more lacking than they already have.

This is like cussing out your parents. At our house, we never would even think of it, never even knew the words. Now? Ha!

Strike 3. Against the Immigrant is the Roman heritage. There find the Militaristic Authoritarian Hierarchy Approach, and its consequences.

All is stacked against the immigrant now. See how the old welcoming America absorbs, and how much, the old Roman militarism, hierarchy and empire, the whole approach morphed itself when the empire died, into the religion that was brewing at the time.

Take it over!

Shall we continue to employ the unemployed? No. We, in power, must set directions! Regardless of the religious Founder's precepts, no compassion.

Think back: Once the Church moved to Rome, the Christians from tolerant Jerusalem and the East, it was all over.

What happened to James when Paul took over. Give us back James. Thomas. Nestorians.

This was 'way back, but watch this:

Enter deadly western religious concepts to demonize others, like blasphemy, Evil-doers, Inquisitions and heretic. Our religious traditions have never recovered. To be fair, Nestorians also counted heretics, so that idea was something Rome already put in the wind. Rome, founded by wee abandoned babes nursed by the Wolf, the milk of wolfness absorbed and spewed out thereafter. Wolf in the clothing of the lamb. Is that so, or an exaggeration? Do other countries see us as the wolf or the lamb? WWII -- reluctant saviors. Now -- greed 'n grab Inc.

I guess that's it. This usually verbose person is signing off in a fit of pessimism. Only the 2% need rejoice this season.

The Piggle-Wiggle Congress Cure: Let Consequences Happen

2010-12-04T04:26:00.015-05:00

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Goes to Congress

The do-nothing Congress approach to legislation
The Radish Cure At Work
.
Let Consequences Happen
From a fine children's book.
The Revenge of the Radish
.

What to do, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Fair use of name, registered trademark copyright certified brilliance in books. * The children will not do as they are told by the people who put them there; their approach is to let consequences of bad policy simply happen. Can that be flipped? Can the do-nothing approach actually accomplish steps for the common good?

More important, can we afford to wait for the do-nothing consequences to happen, to let the radishes grow in the country's ears, before our legislature takes some action against the accumulating dirt? As an update, Occupy Wall Street is already proof of the radish cure. Do nothing and people rise up. The accumulating "dirt" is fertile soil for the World's Radishes.
.
Here is what our children are doing.In Washington DC, this Branch opposes that Branch undercuts the Other Branch. Finally, the one exhausted by efforts to reason, use compromise, gives up. Or is he using different timing, letting consequences happen as the policy-makers have chosen?

Washington Shipwreck, still in the Bushes

Says Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, from the book (skip the TV mimic fools -- even Maureen Stapleton should have known better), try the Radish Cure. The real Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was consulted by distraught parents whose child would not wash. Fine, said Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Plant radishes in the dirt. On arms, in ears, wherever. Let the radishes grow.

The child then decided it was time to wash. Responsibility, accountability. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle says, You want it? You get it. If talk and reason do not work, let the consequences happen. For those who want no spending for the public good, that may interfere with personal wealth accumulation? Skip repairing the henhouse. Let the chickens walk in the mall, and people can gather their own eggs.

Chickens downtown. Let the people gather their own eggs. Trelleborg, Sweden.

Will that change anything? No, because those insulated in their gated communities need not go downtown.
.

Legislative reaction to the radish cure they sought. Ystad, Sweden.

Is persuasion a matter of who prevails in PsyOps, or has facts and a strong correlation with truth? Edward Bernays, see http://joyofequivocating.blogspot.com/2010/01/manipulating-people-edward-bernays.html, super salesman, would say that persuasion is its own entity, and need not connect with fact. Create the facts you need.

Run your own facts up your own flagpole and see who salutes.
.

Ideology Pole, Brancusi-inspired? Brancusi? Romania

How to vet the facts up the pole? If the seller owns the media, you have little chance.

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle is considering other options, while the radishes grow. Even as we speak. This is a difficult one. Trust her. Two percent petulence. Let it be. It speaks. By way of update, the 2% is now aimed at the 1%, on Occupy Wall Street around the world, but that is better than not aiming at any percent to pay a fair share. If sense can't be talked into people, let the radishes grow. Revenge of the radish.
_______________________

* Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, by Betty MacDonald, from 1947, http://books.google.com/books?id=-0YMuW2GD-0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=mrs+piggle+wiggle&source=bl&ots=XY6ibRBnmh&sig=753bTnDImETWu6WIDmC4rRfAfIY&hl=en&ei=Pv_5TOukL4H48Ab8sPilCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false

** Also, as you get your own book, try the won't-pick-up-the-toys cure. Let them clutter until the dear kid can't even get out of his or her own room, then send up dinner on a pole, and ultimately he or she will clean up the room just to get a life. Do that in Congress.

Then ask: Negotiated agreements. Always best? No. What is the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA); and the Worst Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (WATNA). Sometimes a negotiated agreement is not best. See Getting to Yes, Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher and William Ury at ://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/example/fish7513.htm/ Let everything expire, use reconciliation, do or don't do, turn off the TV OFF OFF because all we get is slant and opinion except for PBS. Propaganda to the right of us, propaganda to the left of us, volley etc. Edward Bernays would be proud. Look him up.

Insurance Game: Elitist v. Peon. The Boehner Bop.

2010-11-17T11:08:00.005-05:00

The Teams in the Health Insurance Game.

Elitists v Peons.
Insurance Elitists Already Have Government Health Insurance
Like Congress; and the FEHP

Insurance Peons are The Restuvus; and our little hard-won no-public-option

Affordable Healthcare Act.

The Game.
Watch for The Boehner Bop
on the Head of the Peon.

Can the Peon Rally? What's the score? Who plays fair?
Who cares, says Boehner, as long as we win. Har Har.

We do.

Peons seek the Paeon

Further Plays on Words Below

Bottom line here: New Rule of the Insurance Elitist-Insurance Peon Game.

Congress shall not repeal or reduce the Affordable Healthcare Act unless they first repeal the Federal Employees' Health Benefit enabling legislation by which Federal Employees and Congress get their healthcare. And no replacing it. Then, and only then, shall anyone consider repeal or reduction of what the rest of us get.

Mitch goes after little people's healthcare

I. The Game of Insurance Elitists v. Insurance Peons.

Insurance Elite coverage.

Congress and Federal Employees enjoy healthcare through the FEHB. Subsidies, etc.

Peon coverage. The Rest of Us get what we get through the Affordable Healthcare Act, and only since March 2010, with all provisions not to be implemented until some time after 2014. It is good, better then before overall, but not the public option many of us sought. Ok. That's the Game.

FEHB - Federal Employees' Health Benefit. See it at the US Office of Personnel Management at ://www.opm.gov/insure/health/. Congress enjoys it, see ://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/02/nation/na-congress-benefits2/

Our healthcare, the Rest of Us Paeons -- the Affordable Care Act as passed in March 2010, some parts deferred. See the portal Health Reform and now the Act's website at ://www.healthcare.gov/

In favor, by way of refresher. See Wall Street Journal published opinion by David Cutler, J. Bradford Delong, and Ann Marie Marciarille, at ://online.wsj.com/article/SB122152292213639569.html/; and others in support at ://politics.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/john-farrell/2010/03/22/the-obama-healthcare-bill-explained-why-the-doctors-like-it/; and ://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000846-503544.html/

Those who opposed lost at the time, so their arguments are not repeated here because they were considered back then and found Wanting. Nonetheless, they are looking for a second bite at ours, while keeping their own Insurance Elitist coverage. And, we hear, some even complain that their Fancy Fed coverage has a teeny waiting period, like a month. Oh, dear. The inconvenience. So they keep theirs, while we are to lose ours.

New play! The Peon Crutch block by Boehner and the Big Crutch! It's the Boehner Bop! Instant Replay: Bam! There it is! But wait! The Peon Crutch is not stopped! It is standing and on the move! The crowd cheers!

II. New Rule.

Accordingly, the great benevolent dictator in the sky who looks with favor on the lesser beings, says, He Who Enjoys Federal Healthcare (the Insurance Elitists) Shall Take No Step Toward Repeal or Revision of Benefits Downward as to Insurance Peons.

Got that?

(Voice waits a minute, then repeats, from a distance:

No-o-o-o re-pe-e-e-eal or redu-u-u-u-uction of Affo-o-o-o-ordable Hea-a-a-a-althcare unless Co-o-o-o-o-ngress first repe-e-e-e-e-als the E-e-e-e-eF E-e-e-e-e-Ai-i-i-itcH B-e-e-e and does no-o-o-o-ot repla-a-a-a-ace it.

Sunrise or sunset on health. Who decides? If sunset one, sunset the other.

That means if FEHB is repealed first, without reinstatement, then everybody gets what we, the peons, get.

Wait a minute. Maybe we should get that. Watch our coverage go up then, if they have to get it, too. Or, nobody gets any affordable healthcare. Try that. And keep asking during the debate: If we need productivity here, are sick people more productive, more independent, more able to take on such jobs as may by magic appear down the road, despite the Nay-Saying to even little steps in that direction?

Off with their heads! Block them all!

III. Nomenclature: PAEON FOR THE PEONS. Roots of concepts.

A. PEON

Peon. A low-ranking person, see the Urban Dictionary at http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=peon; and note the easy way to remember -- it is ok to pee on a peon. Don't blame me. That's on the Internet.

In "Spanish America", a peon is a day laborer, unskilled farm worker (also in India). A peon is a peasant, drudge (Drudge Report? Say not so!). Or perhaps a galley slave.

B. PAEON

Now watch the fun. Add an "a" and you get PAEON.

PAEON. Also spelled Paean, Paieon, Paion.

This gets into classical education, and education is another area in need of reform upwards for our kids. Otherwise, look what they miss. Liberal arts for mental health and balance, technical courses for an earnings setting in which to enjoy your liberal arts mind.

Paeon. Paeon was the physician to the Greek gods. Look in the Iliad. Paean heals wounds for Ares and Hades. Hades! Strong medicine. The name became the surname of one Asclepius, the Healer, the one with the staff and the snake wound around. Look in the Aeneid, and all of it summarized at ://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Paion.html/ Find that Pindarus extended the name Asclepius, the Healer, to include the deliverer from evil, from calamity. Avert from pain, etc. Paeon knows the remedies for all things. Read the cited paragraph references.

Peons. Shackled. Roman variety.

So: Peons. Write this down. Your Patron Saintly One Regardless of Any Religious Orientation is Paeon -- the Healer.

Peons for Peaon.

Get Armey to pay for all the buses and placards and weeks on the road for fun and socializing, and spread the word. Just don't tell him what side you're on and why, just as he never told all those nice tea folks who he was and who would really benefit from the bus-tedness.
Get Mitch to unpurse those humorless lips he must have in there, and maybe smile at doing the right thing and not the politically dastardly for ideology's sake. Mitch. Mitch. Why worship the Ideology. Why bow to the Great Theos of the Uncreative Boxed Ones, when you have Paeon the Healer.

Then again, don't ask Mitch. He can't see beyond the cage. He thinks: Educate those tinted, sneaky folks who came across the borders that we left wide open for them for years, a real invite there, let them have healthcare they can afford, get them openly in the workforce paying social security taxes, and they might help the social security bottom line, but also that would mean competing for status with US. Can't have that.

White House Envy. Mutter mutter mumble aargh. Can't have that one in there. Nosirree. Got a plan, here. Heh heh. Now, just keep the poor out of here while I think....

IV. CONCLUSION:

Peons on the March! Get going. Repeal both or none!

Rules of this Game: There shall be no efforts to repeal the healthcare passed for all of us, until Congress first repeals in full all the healthcare available to all federal employees and Congress.

And Remember: The Theoi at ://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Paion.html/

Fodder Site Duff-Sitter Show Awards. Worst: A R-A. Best: Mystery Cheeks Rider

2010-11-01T09:19:00.003-04:00

CENTER RING

The Species Included this Show: Duff-Sitters Only

And now, the judging is complete. The crowd is hushed, the duff-sitters nervously twitch, the microphone pops: And now, ladies and gentlemen, this year's Duff-Sitter Award will name only the 1. worst in show; and 2. best in show. Those in between we wish well, and hope they choose their role models wisely.

1. The Fodder Site Duff-Sitter Show Award

WORST IN SHOW

Meet A R-A here.
How about a hug.
Wrote a letter to the Times (NYT) 11/1/2010.
Complains of joblessness, despair, loneliness,
Despite heartfelt letters and resumes.
Trips to the post office!

Fodder Site Duff-Sitter Worst in Show Award: to A R-A.* [Man Meets the Sea, does nothing]

A R-A. Pronounced Ay AR-Ay,
Minneapolis, be proud.
Your A R-A is a duff-sitter
Even though she has a law degree.
A law degree. Real tools.

Alas for this lass,
Unemployment addict, do we see? Moaner?
Complainer to the Times. She is unemployed!
Sends out heartfelt letters and resumes,
Waits in "loneliness, worthlessness and desperation."

She's mad. So sad.
Has the tools. But
Keeps 'em in a bag.

Hey, A R-A.
Locked in unproductive Be-Ha-Viors.
Rent a room.
Get out and do it.
Volunteer. Or good service at low rates.

Rent a copier. Get a phone!
Just start!
Someone seeking a non-vegetative state lawyer might even show up.
You, however, are too enthroned to (whisper) GET OUT THERE.

At least, it looks like that from here.

2. 'The Fodder Site Duff-Sitter Show Awards

BEST IN SHOW

This coveted award goes to ....
Mystery Rider!
Some on their Duffs still get places.
Make use of the Duff-time.

Like this guy.
A Life-Master whose Spirit Overcomes the Back View.
See him get out and ride!
Doesn't matter what it looks like.
Image all his own.
Deserves a full page spread!

To Fodder Site Duff-Sitter Best in Show Award. Mystery Cheeks Rider.

3. Duff-Sitters in the middle - What Might Await

The banquet, silly.

Plates for self-starters

Then again, maybe not.

Veg anyway? A R-A: Vegger Supreme.

A R-A.
Letter complainer to the Times.
Little sympathy in these times.

--------------------------------------
* Man Meets the Sea, Esbjerg, Denmark; also facetiously captioned, white man meets the sea of color, but that is another story

** Rider, either in Roskilde, Denmark, or Hamburg, Germany; we can't figure out Picasa's placement

*** The Mongolian Barbecue, Silkeborg, Denmark

A Day in the Life of Nate Rudy Asclater. Cheryl Asclater. And update.

2010-07-20T07:31:00.015-04:00

Living with Nate Rudy Asclater

Cheryl Asclater has just seen the interview that her husband, Nate Rudy Asclater, gave at Equivocating Magazine Channel. A reporter for her home town newspaper and TV channel, the Fodder News Channel, stops her at a mall and asks if he can talk with her about it on the tape. He had her comments transcribed, and she reviewed it and gave permission for this publication and use on the Air.

Cheryl's addendum: I put in an update at the end here. I'll keep putting in updates because nothing stays the same. You can publish them or not, as you like. Then that's it for me. Enough of this gun culture. It's addictive. And it may do me in. Do us in. Thanks for reading, listening, whatever. Anybody else out there feel like I do? NRA - Not Really Altruistic, that's what I say. But Nate Rudy, he goes his own way. I see this whole business as getting like church for him - religious fervor he has, for his guns. Armsism. There you go. There we go.

Signed, Cheryl.

Nate Rudy's Day

For Him and the Rest of Us

Thank heavens he's not the sort of guy to ever act out what he thinks.

To actually do all the things to people

and stuff, that he spends his day thinking about. Not my Nate Rudy!

I am the wife of Nate Rudy Asclater, and I just read the interview he gave over at Equivocating magazine. His full name is Nathaniel Rudolph Asclater, as he pointed out, and he is proud of the people that that name means.
He should have given his interview here, though, because the title here, Fodder, is closer to what I think he feels and reacts to things. Read his first, to get an idea, at Nate Rudy, Everyman.

So: He told you some things. But I'm going to tell you another angle: how much time out of his day he spends in his head, because it is starting to affect me. Real scenes he puts himself in. All these rehearsals in his head.

He doesn't watch western movies any more, but he likes the face-off. He'll turn the channels to get a big confrontation.

Nate Rudy in Red. Angry Oh Yeah

He dares you to question him, like in the picture. Even if people are watching, he'll push it.

He watches from inside. People don't know they are being watched. He thinks about what they would do if they did, or if he actually did something. It's been a while since he had a steady job. But he has looked.

Nate Rudy always watching, putting things in the sights

One of his favorites is when people don't know he is there. He will not risk getting hurt himself, but he has scenes in his head where suddenly he pops somebody. He isn't serious, I'm sure.

Nate Rudy hides away in ordinary places where he can watch.

My worry is that he'll forget the difference between thinking about something and doing it; and when he spends so much time in his head imagining what he will do, he'll find himself really doing it just to see what it is like. Is the real thing as good as it was in his head. All those rehearsals, who will do and say what, what he will do and say, have to come out sometime.

There he is!

He's right. Who would have suspected he was in there, or that he could do that from there.

Pop that bottle, Nate! Bam!

Now, get the Litterer. Littering is against the law, says Nate Rudy. Town isn't doing it, I will, says Nate Rudy.

Home? Not that bad with him. He wears his gun (used to be a security guard and was in the army once). Here is an exaggeration, because it doesn't happen all that much, but when it does, even the kids can't wait to get out of there: Pound the table, shout about something, that usually is an excuse to be loud. I go: Oh, Lord, won'tcha buy me, a Mercedes Benz, like old dead Janis Joplin, I think to myself. Hear/see at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKNq-A-OqNs/ Let it run while you go on here.

Nate sees and hears on TV about what other people do, and imagines himself doing it. A tragedy.

Uh-oh. He's out in the parking lot now. Got out of the wagon. Changes position. Spots cover.

Sniper! sniper! Nate's on it.

Yes, he tells me all this: He'll tell you what is in his head, instead of acting it out, so this is all harmless, I'm sure. He wouldn't do any of this.

He'll just tell you what he really would like to do, or what he plans to do, and that, believe me, can be scary. He seems to like that, seeing people's reactions. He'll act out more to be sure he gets all the reaction he can.

Too many signs around here! Bam! That's Nate, from below the Stop.

He doesn't like rules that stop him from doing what he wants, when he thinks he should be able to do it.

Nate Rudy! Not from the watermelons!

He gets creative with his gun. Feels strong. No end to what he can think up.

End times for this varmint. Find Nate. Nate Rudy.

Home again.

Paper's late! Ka-Poweee! Nate Rudy, problem-solver.

Lost another paper deliverer. Last seen on the lam!

He never reads papers. Once had a computer for the kids, but it's so slow and bad now. Never uses the thing.

Gets what he needs to know through his ears and eyes, the TV and the radio. Keeps on the same stations, mostly, people's opinions and HGTV where he resents what other people have, and laughs at other ones. On and on, over and over.

Nate Rudy punishes the garage because it bugs him

Where is he now.

What do you mean, the bathroom's "dated"? It's builder-standard and that's fine. It all works. Nate Rudy, I don't care!

Nate Rudy Asclater likes a ricochet shot. Watches too much HGTV

Nate! You leave those towels alone! They're your initials, Nate Rudy Asclater - NRA - don't you try one of your ricochet shots and get them, too. I'll get different colors if you want. Nate Rudy!

Don't those come out sometimes inconvenient? Yes, like I said, he has guns in the house, and wears them when he wants. We're used to it, mostly. Inception. Hunh. See ://inceptionmovie.warnerbros.com/. What is real, what is not real, how do you know, and how do you act.

You tell me where he got his ideas. I say turn off the TV and the radio, get everybody a good computer, and get people to fact check.

Asclater. Sure. Ask Later. Shoot first, ask later. Someday, someday. Everyman? That was an old play, see ://www.luminarium.org/medlit/intro.htm/ about what really counts.

Nate Rudy. Read it.

Forgot. You don't read. You do "media."

..................................................................

It's me again. That Day in the Life of Nate Rudy Asclater started something. This is Nate's wife Cheryl Asclater here, and this is a few weeks later. I have an update: Nate Rudy has gone and joined the NRA. Find somebody selling something, even to be afraid, and he'll buy. Newest trendy product. He keeps getting these guns. What can he buy next, he asks me, to defend himself. Ha. Defend himself against something that is sold by the people who tell him now he has to defend himself against the other people who bought it. See what I just found, at http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/si.2004.27.3.289?journalCode=si/ - something called, Consuming Terrorism. Just market it. Nate Rudy got himself marketed.

The NRA is not my cup of Tea, but it's his life. And here's the reason I'm writing. He's keeping a journal of his "progress" in getting educated and trained by the NRA. He really has swallowed the whole pitch. Read all about it -- Nate Rudy Joins the NRA and Keeps a Journal. Read and weep, I say. It has that old fear theory written all over it. He really got going there. It's like he's rigged up with strings.

Ha again.

Not funny, McGee, as my mother would say. What scares me is other people looking at Rudy, who don't realize he's just a guy who really likes going along, and having a group to go along with. Add a dose of be-afraid of something, and he loves it. Add a gun-skill and he eats it up. Armsism? He loves it. More adventure. A big role play. But I told him I'm not going to start in on a back and forth here on his life. He can go ahead and write his journal all he likes, but I'm out of it. He knows how I feel.

Cheryl Asclater: The way I used to feel. Nate Rudy, what's next?

FDR's Four Freedoms, Applied to the States. FDR's Four Human Freedoms, Updated

2010-07-11T06:10:00.003-04:00

Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms Address to Congress,

January 6, 1941 - Updated.

FDR's objectives include for all inhabitants of the world

1) a "good society"; and

2) a "healthy peacetime life"

(FDR's terms)

We update to include those objectives for our nation.

Note: FDR defines the Four Freedoms as essential human freedoms. *

Thus, for example, Freedom of Speech does not include, by FDR's terms,

organizational or corporate freedom of speech.

Shall citizens re-unite?

Capitol Building, Washington DC

I. The Address of President Roosevelt-Updated

President Roosevelt, will you take the podium:
President Roosevelt: Thank you (ahem).

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a NATION founded upon four essential human * freedoms.

1. The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the NATION.

2. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the NATION.

3. The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into NATIONAL terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every STATE a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the NATION.

4. The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into NATIONAL terms, means a NATION-wide reduction of FIREARMS to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no INHABITANT will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the NATION.

That is no vision of a distant millennium.

It is a definite basis for a kind of NATION attainable in our own time and generation.

That kind of NATION is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of UNREGULATED SELF-INTEREST which the SPECIAL ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL INTERESTS seek to create with the OPPOSITION TO ACCOUNTABILITY, TRANSPARENCY, OVERSIGHT, OR RESTRICTION OF THEIR ACTIVITIES.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception -- the moral order. A good society, SERVING THE COMMON GOOD, is able to face schemes of NATIONAL AND GLOBAL ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions -- without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch;

The NATIONAL order which we seek is the cooperation of ALL STATES, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of EACH ONE'S God.

Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.

Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them.

Our strength is our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

As adjusted, shown by capitals, from Congressional Record, 1941, Vol. 87, Pt. I.

II. Presidents' addresses to Congress

Presidents address Congress periodically. Those become part of the Congressional Record. Some are called the State of the Union.

On January 6, 1941 - eleven months before Pearl Harbor, but when World War II was already proceeding in Europe - President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered a speech to Congress, part of it known as the "Four Freedoms". For this portion, the Four Freedoms address, see Congressional Record Vol. 87, pt 1, at ://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/ralph/workbook/ralprs36b.htm/, Find it in a larger timeline at ://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/4101int.html/

The entire speech was much longer, addressing many national policy, military and domestic preparedness issues. For its extract, click on the link to it at ibiblio 4101, or go to this page 410106, at ://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/410106apw.html/.

By its terms, the "Four Freedoms" lays out aspirations for the world's nations. We apply it to the States.

Here, we number the freedoms, to highlight them, and tweak the address to apply specifically to our own States. Our substitutions for state or nation, instead of world, and reference to domestic use of firearms, not global use of military bombs, and phrasing the dangers we face them today (in 1941, the dangers included specific mention of concentration camps and lime pits), are shown by capitals and boldface.
Note that, by FDR's own terms, the Four Freedoms are "essential human freedoms", thus not referenced for non-humans. *

................................................................

* By the stated definition of the Four Freedoms as essential human freedoms, freedom of speech, and therefore freedom to spend to support political candidates or their causes as a kind of free speech, would not extend to corporations, non-humans. Organizations must speak through identified, accountable individuals, not in the name of the organization, anonymously. Is that so, according to FDR? The gallery cheers.

BP Laws. Flaws Squelch Equity. Sue in Mississippi?

2010-06-06T07:37:00.006-04:00

Laws for Corporations.
Heavy on the Nit-Pick Legal; Light on Equity.

Sue in Mississippi.

The People vs. BP

Get Some Recourse for the Busted Pelican

There are too many escape hatches in law. The wording, which judge interprets, spin in legislative intent, and money, money buying the ability to stay the course, wear out the little guy.

We used to separate "law" and "equity" -- the fairness side -- in Western systems. Someone aggrieved by a cruel result in law, could still apply in equity for consideration of softer issues of fairness, clean hands, laches, remedies tailored to meet a need, not just counted in money damages.

Combining the two led to law taking over, and nobody even knows equity any more.

So: Where to sue? An answer is counter-intuitive. Yet, states with historically disastrous insensitivities to the common good (that is, weighing in for the individual in a commercial activity as opposed to the public interest) may hold a key to forcing our latest incarnation of disastrous insensivities -- BP -- to heel.

Sue in a state that has maintained a separate identity for equity.

Look at Delaware - a border state that, we think, was the last to free its slaves - is that so? and South Carolina and Mississippi,* with their slavery traditions; and New Jersey, with its corruption traditions (sorry); meet Big Oil, through BP of Busted Pelican fame. All heavy in economic implication. Yet, those states have technically separate equity courts, a mindset that draws a distinction.

Of those, bring the BP cases in Mississippi. The BP matter is appropriate for hearing in a state valuing fairness. It involves as much equity as it does law. We see that BP is already making waiver of future claims a condition of receiving that first $5,000 to fisherfolk on the Gulf. Is that equitable? Like the mortgage fine print?

What is equity? See an overview of the parameters of equity at Puttin' On The Writs: Equity. Then ask, can or should we restore equity in contracts law, in anything, including statutory construction. Now equity gets short shrift. Yet, reforms are moving to put equity back in human matters, even contract, in banking, mortgages, fair dealing to people, and that is Good. How, though, to get equity for the voiceless - the Busted Pelicans of the world. To kill a pelican. No matter. Is that so?

Suggestion: Bring the lawsuits where equity will be heard on a par with law. That may mean Mississippi, with the consult of New Jersey, South Carolina, and - yes - Delaware. If Mississippi's corporate law framework is amenable (experts, this is your area - look that up at://www.courtreference.com/Mississippi-Courts.htm), sue BP in Mississippi. Promote equity jurisdiction. Corporate malfeasance requires it.

I. Mississippi as a forum of choice

Sue BP in Mississippi. That forum would invoke more clearly the equitable issues at stake here, and we all know that outside counsel will run whatever cases are brought where. They need not be limited to Mississippi-ans. We need far more for these cases than just which laws were broken; Mississippi can use the income that these cases would bring; so let's get the suits out of their comfort zone, back with natural American pop-u-lism as a counterweight to corporate greed.

Mississippi has separate equity jurisdiction that probably would not incorporate the issues here totally, but the fact of two ideas out there and one being equity, counts. At the Mississippi courtreference site, see all the court systems there, including Chancery Court.

See the headlines: To kill a pelican. Equity jurisdiction for corporate malfeasance.

In that, equity matters. conservatives can't miss the crucifixion-recollecting outline of a goo-coated victim, wings outspread, beak wide, side view. That was on Rachel Maddow. And now lots of such.

We have found four states so far that still retain separate equity courts, at least useful as educational support for the people who are used to the idea of "fairness" as a legitimate inquiry, even if it does not work.

This means stay out of Texas. Out. No cases. Not one. Keep BP cases out of Texas.

A. Mississippi is one of Equity's Hot Quartet

1. Mississippi. Why Mississippi? It sounds odd as a choice, but it is already making the acquaintance, getting a first-goo look-taste-revulsion experience. Mississippi. M-i-crookaletter-crookaletter-i-humpback-humpback-i. Deep South.

2. Delaware not so much, but Delaware knows corporations. Little Delaware. Border South. It was among the last states to free its slaves.*

3. South Carolina knows sleaze, and so does

4. New Jersey, so put them on the pro hac vice list. Ha. Pro hac vice here means for this vice.

B. Mississippi would be a fresh place to start for the Need to Legitimize Equity - literally, make it legitimate, more a part of Law.

Get out of Texas. Equity gets nowhere there. Texas is winner take all. It is time to beef back on the equity ideas.

Back in 1938, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure combined law and equity in one system, one judge or jury to hear all issues. Most states followed suit, a pun upon it. And, in the process, the emphasis went on Law, not fairness. That is the essential difference, and each has equal stature - or should - if we are talking justice and not robo-jailings.

Retaining equity jurisdiction: Chancery courts separately hearing some things. Can those be made to work well with corporate malfeasance. Delaware and Mississippi have stubbornness in their favor. They are true to their entrenchednesses, which also makes them very lovable, and we mean that. Delaware's states-rights beliefs led to its wealth in corporation matters. They wooed and got corporations to incorporate there, by giving nice laws to them. It knows the ropes.

Benefit to suing in an equity state: The people learned the difference, probably. Since the words are familiar - Chancery Court in Delaware, for example - people are used to thinking of law and equity as separate matters. Divorce, wills, trusts, corporate sometimes, they have strong equity jurisdiction and may well even be separate physically from the law courts (that also do hear equity in their matters, but it isn't given the same Naming, so slides under as damages, or sentencing stage. Equity has regard in Delaware, and probably in Mississippi. Unless Jim Crow gets in the way. Or corporate or megamillionaires. You find out. In theory, equity is supposed to get respect. Is that so?

C. Offer Mississippi its opportunity to be at the forefront of modern thinking.

An equity focus has broad reach?

In states that do not keep the equity words in the forefront, all people know is "law". Make them obey the law! They are illegal! This zygote supersedes the hostess, and don't let her forget it. So give her child support. Laws without equity are like _____________ without __________.

Law never in itself ends the matter. There remain others responsible.

Law without equity as equal focus is wrong. In our tradition, law may come up with a terrible result but still be legal - and that is why equity arose with the ability to correct the course. See://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/equity/ Have we lost that flexibility just by letting words fall away since 1938. Illegal immigrants may have come in because we condoned it for years, estoppel? with doors open, using the labor, we waited too long to fuss - laches. No clean hands. Etc.

Think of Law as the chopping off of the hand for theft of an apple. Do the deed? Pay the price.

This is what we have lost: Equity in our tradition comes in and says, yes, but: Yes, to the theft. But look at circumstances both sides, clean hands, laches, estoppel, in extremis, etc; to feed a starving brother: He keeps the hand but works for the shopkeeper squaring away the fruit at the stand (no whippings) for two months.

Theoretically, we blend law and equity appropriately by using law to prove what was done, and who did it, and what law was broken thereby. The trial. The sentencing (think criminal), or damages (think civil) is supposed to come after the deed, the doer and the law are identified and match. But on the rise are automatic sentences - limits on liability, three strikes, mandatory this and that.

We lose.

D. Mississippi is on site. And in situ.

Its people have the idea already, because there are Chancery Courts already: that equity is important and different. What do the combined mindsets of Mississippi, New Jersey, South Carolina and Delawarecontribute to pending BP litigation. They say, do equity. Not just law. We are looking at colonizers here, "http://plainmeaning.blogspot.com/2010/06/colony-by-corporation-oil-empires.html">Big Oil as colonizer", and that extreme view is close to target.

Bring your case in Mississippi. Sue BP in Mississippi. Equity jurisdiction is familiar in Chancery states. Fairness. Can it be made to count? How to restore lives, literally; lifestyles; value the pelican with the only life it had, also. For some of us, that counts.

And Mississippi is 50th of the 50 states in median income *. These cases bring money in. Where they are held does not matter to media or anything else. Just don't go to Crawford, Texas. Even media would be happier in Mississippi.

Caveat

Stop! We have not done the needed research on Mississippi, and have doubts as to its experience in these matters. Still, Federal law would bow to Mississippi only in some areas, and any case will bring in experts and specialists to litigate etc, as needed or just to run up the bills. This is just an idea from folks who believe human progress results from law and equity both; never law on its own. If we must choose, choose equity. Or is Mississippi also in the mire? Of its own making. Pro Hac Vice. For this vice. Excellent.

Education Entitlements, and HGTV Rule. Empty the Room First.

2010-04-06T10:40:00.005-04:00

I. Reforms in Education. First, Empty the Room. The HGTV Rule of Redecorating.

To redo the room, empty the room. Three boxes for the resources, including human ones:
1) Keep and use, or
2) Give away, or
3) Dumpster.

Read that again. Set the budget. Then empty the room. Let all the contracts expire. Everybody fired. Then start over on how to allocate the budget, with the kids first, not job security or benefits for the adults. What do kids need most in education. Fund the teaching and assets to do that. Weigh carefully current issues such as the child's family and cultural and economic environment as dispositive of many work ethic issues. More money to fixed institutions may not be the answer. Look at virtual education, for example, see ://blog.heritage.org/2010/05/03/virtual-education-opening-closed-doors/.

Price what first is needed. Put it and only it back in the room. What do the kids need next? Price it and place it. And so on.

Put that 15% for salaries and benefits. Period.
School year-round. Kids go 3/4 of each year, but not the same 3/4 for everyone.
Keep the high salaries, but make it an annual amount, paid weekly, for each week worked, with two weeks' vacation. During school holidays, teachers work. They are being paid $95,000 per year here, excluding retirement benefits.

Budget again. Apply that 15% cap on funding to be used for any and all salaries and benefits for adults. Need more? Do a specific wish list for all desired expenditures, and let the community decide whether to increase the budget and how: including consideration that property taxes * may need to be increased to do specifically listed additional things; and/or that more money may not be the answer at all. Here, locally: salaries plus benefits, excluding retirement, for experienced teachers at some $90,000 per year, full listing has been distributed to the town). Does that correlate with student benefit? Wouldn't most of these privileged kids do well anyway? And, in our area, home values are dropping or holding, while the grand list has no growth left, and unemployment is at 6-7% unemployment.

If the health insurance companies have to provide $85 of every $100 to patient benefit, why not school systems. That means the overhead, buildings, computers, athletic fields, books, all that, and then the $15 goes to salaries and benefits for teachers and administrators.

II. Facts before Marches

School proposed budgets are to be produced with parallel amounts to be given or cut in other town government needs. No isolated requests. **

III. The Role of the Students' and Cultural Work Ethic

Families, cultural groups, step up.The real problem is here, not with money taking the rap entirely.

There is no shortage of remedies proposed in the media for education shortfalls in performance. But in all these, culture seems most important.

Superior achievements of Asian-group children, for example.

Reconfigured high school design and curriculum at see ://www.ednews.org/articles/high-school-design-affects-student-work-ethic.html/

Sense of entitlement on the part of kids; educators; and the parents. Schools and entitlements; and work ethic. Look at the schools. See ://profpost.uc.edu/2009/02/the-teacher-student-entitlement-gap/.

Even USA Today notes the issue, see ://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-03-07-forum-students_x.htm/ Religious groups speak out against the effect of entitlements on kids' work ethic, even at their religious schools, see ://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/civilization/cc0292.htm/

So how to get that across?

IV. Control what we can - Quantify and Identify

The NEETs -- and their experience. In Britain, they count NEET's, who are (to the Brits) young people Not in Employment, Education or Training, ages 16-18). They may well say that they have not felt successful at anything since fourth grade. And their numbers are rising. See ://www.openeducation.net/2009/08/19/drop-outs-a-sign-of-the-entitlement-times/

Rename Filibuster as the Lawjack. Suggest the Danger if Process is Abused.

2010-02-15T06:04:00.012-05:00

.
Second Thought -
Filibuster as the LAWJACK

Renaming - Upgrade

Look at its roots - it fits.
The old useful hoist idea turns to heist.

Rename filibuster. Rachel Maddow, TV person, asks for it. You get a sweat-shirt and a mug if you win. See ://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/.

We propose the rename to Lawjack. Its roots, conjuring the old hoist turning into heist, make sense.

Freeboot got our early vote, with its piracy and privateering roots. But that needs an upgrade. Pirates are adventuresome, autonomous, there is a side that admires the derring-do. The self-serving opportunism has been sold in costume. See it in theaters. Not good for a rename of a serious legislative issue, with a nation's progress on the merits of issues at stake, on second thought.

Use the term lawjack instead of dull filibuster. Get at the force side, the self-serving, the opportunism side that taints the reality. Retain a form of it, but rename and contain it.

Look at the jackroots.

1. The jack as a noun. The common person. Fungible. Replaceable by even a jakke.

Jack as a noun comes from the late 1300's and meant a mechanical device, a "jakke". Jakke was an old spelling for Jack and that was a name for any "common fellow". A Jack was any nobody.

The jakke by 1570 was a thing, a device, any number of mechanical contraptions that could replace servants, see Online Etymology Dictionary at ://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=j/ Think of jack-of-all-trades. Go on to find jackdaw, jackass, Union Jack, jack s___t from the 1970's (meaning "nothing at all", says the site), Jack Frost, and the Jack in the deck of cards, and that Jack was a peasant. Jack-in-the-box, jack-knife, Jack Sprat, Jack be Nimble, Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack-o-lantern, etc. Jackdaw. Jackanape. The hoist jakke would be a kind of thing that would replace laborers like Jack. A jakke.

2. To jack as a verb. Watch the evolution.

Jack moved from noun to verb. It began meaning to abandon, or give up something, then came to mean to increase or hoist, as in jack up. Think of the jack in your car trunk; then it moved on to other meanings as laid out at ://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=j/
.

Medieval hoist, Delft tile

Meanings became violent. A wrongfulness. A taking not just up, but from.

Think modern uses of jack in nouns - the highjack, the carjack. There is fear in the concept now; someone threatens to take over from you what is rightfully yours and by force, disregarding you. It needs limits, containment. Something for nothing, and at a high cost to the targets - fear, deprivation, danger, even death so that the pirate gets his free booty. That is a danger - exciting when remote and singular, frightening when immediate and uncontrolled plural.

The helpful hoist becomes the heist.

How to determine hoist from heist. When is the motivation bona fide, for a common good; or merely power-mongering. We know that not all piracy was outlawed. The old pirates became privateers when they operated under the consent of the monarch, in boarding enemy ships during wartime. If we think of a filibuster as a form of piracy, when does a lawjack piracy stay legitimate, bona fide; and when does it become mere piracy. Motivation counts.

3. What, us worry?

Worry about the names we give things because labels count. Labels teach, shape thought, instill fear, uncertainty, doubt, hope, inspiration. Labels are powerful. Naming is powerful, in any culture. Name this child. The name "Filibuster", as Rachel Maddow points out, has become boring and off-point. No-one pays attention to its deeper meanings as our collective noses slide below the water line and we sleep. Rachel, Rachel, she's been thinking .

4. Toss the filibuster-lawjack? No.

The lawjack or filibuster is not in itself an abusive process. As a process, it has its place, as protection for a minority that bona fide a) feels it has not had an adequate airing of its proposals through no fault of its own (clean hands); and, b) believes so strongly that its view best serves the country and that disaster for the country ensues by failing to heed the minority cry, then it is a last hope. Last clear chance.

Any party can be a minority sometime.
.

Nothing left to do but filibuster? How else to get on board something? Old German print, unknown artist

Bona fides.

Always difficult. But the filibuster is no longer a way merely to permit a minority more air time for its substantive proposals, the merits of a debate; or for the occasional permission for a minority to stop the presses when it feels strongly enough. It has become license to abuse. It has become a heist: full-stop blockage and a self-serving taking that endangers the entire governmental process. That old filibuster protection, that giving an extra weapon to delay, force change, even stop a process, only flies so long as people are convinced the minority is acting for the common good. What if the minority itself has made the fog around what it is proposing, if anything; and the merits of its criticism of the majority.

Let's say a party has been so disruptive and propaganda-oriented in any efforts to conduct a civil exploration of issues, that it is counterproductive for the majority to include it in discussions. What if the Supreme Court adopted such a rule? Filibuster among the Supremes? Make every decision 6 in favor 3 against? Six to stop debate?

How to discern bona fides. Discernment. How to contain the renamed lawjack so its merits as a hoist, a booster, a heavy-lifter needed under some circumstances, are preserved while its abuses as a heist, a wrongful taking, are barred. Rachel?

Continue the speeches of merit and substance to add to a debate. But there has to be a vote built in, after reasonable time.

Go to lawjacking. The lawjack.

Jack it up, for tach it up. Buddy, gonna shut you down. Look up the Beachboys and Shut Down.

The American Pale. Economically Disposable People, Ghetto-ed by the Market Mindset. Value of a Human

2010-01-19T19:04:00.002-05:00

The Pale in America
Uses of Pales in Population, Social Controls

"Jukin' the stats" - manipulating studies and polls so nothing will change

1. Range of apps.

The Pale is an area marked by a ruling group either a) to allow a minority - or majority - to live outside it, as an indulgence, while the ruling group lived inside; or b) to force the disfavored ones are forced to live inside, while the rulers live outside. Beyond the Pale: A phrase meaning outside the acceptable, from the perspective of the accepted. Pale. Geographic Pale. Technological Pale. A Dividing Line.

Privilege can reside on either side of a Pale: same term. The point is the divider, It can be subtle: watch us proliferate gated communities in America, protecting those with and within from the barbarians without. The gap between richer and poorer. Enforced. Are charter schools enhancing that, taking away from melting and mixing pots of children, we are the in and you are the out. The public vs. the privileged. See FN 1.

Watch for undertones of skin color, is that so? The term takes on a nuance. Is it the paler who create most new Pales. Skin color; as a boundary, with social regard, mobility, access to goods and services following closely. Why the apparently global preoccupation.

A pale is also a pole. Think "impaled". Or don't.

2. Process:

Criteria, economic or ethnic or some such, define some people as inside the pale or outside. It can take statistics to justify a Pale. Public schools are so bad that we need Charter Schools. Maybe they are and we do. But watch the use of statistics - what is really being done. Watch stats justify funding for this and not for that, where change might result. Poor schools juke the stats to pretend progress where it was not - teach to the test. Watch statistics get manipulated to ensure that no real change takes place. Fudge them. Juke the stats.

3. The American Pale. Author-Journalist David Simon Investigates.

The Drug Pale. The Gang Pale. Policing our Pales. Learn more. Go to your TV or YouTube and find Bill Moyers' Journal with guest David Simon (author, journalist, TV writer-producer) from April 29, 2009. There is a discussion of how the relationship of economic need and creation of a Pale.
The people in our Pales are caught in intransigent webs: a) the drug trade, b) incarceration of the poor more and more for less and less serious offenses, c) police inability to do other than move people around, and d) no-one cares because those people are not "needed" by the mainstream economy. And e) they are and can be contained. So who cares.

At YouTube, visit ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qulcqNMHVic&feature=fvhl/.

The program is a full feature, in two parts. Do a search for him and find other videos, books, The Wire.

4. Reassess legally imposed Pales

Once sufficiently appalled, ask how to dissolve the Pale boundaries where Wall Street has no interest in them, and people without lobbyists have no power in Washington. Ask seriously if our Pales endanger our society more than addressing the problems would. Ask David Simon: He would say, we think, that we should decriminalize drugs and put the money spent on all that, and the enforcement and incarceration of petty drug pawns, into education and healthcare and hope. FC. Fat chance?

5. Who could facilitate:

Edward Bernays - father of our modern PR, specific ideas around for over a century. Do a search for him. How to muster those techniques for social problem solving, not just sales of products and politicians.

6. Who will get in the way. As in all of history, special interests. We are not altruistic, or are we.

Explore the Federalist Society (its big website has become more and more opaque - its White Papers used to be openly listed. Its Board and flagship figures. Look up its tilted use of our national treasure, the Federalist Papers. Here we cite Wikipedia because it is so hard to figure who is funding all the sites out there on the Federalist Papers. So, see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Papers/.
The point is that groups are actively creating and enforcing the American Pale, and there is no way to change course without change of heart, and FC for that.

Conclusion: The New American Pale. A Technological matter, favoring the wireless apps; and geographic in the cities and suburbs, and immigrant areas. David Simon says that the society up there does not need the poor down there any more. It makes plenty of profit without them, so why help them up.

Ignoring human need because special interest controllers do not need them for profit, not needed by the economy of the whites, the Pale? See how the attitude makes a lie of education and medical policy, all aspects of our society mouthing the American Dream while "jukin' the stats" - manipulating statistics to look like progress is made while none is.

7. How entrenched is the idea of a Pale. History.

Pales have long been part of our history. Examples:

Jews in Russia in the time of Catherine the Great were forced to live outside a Pale, 1791, and others;
Catholic indigenous Irish were forced to live beyond certain boundaries in Dublin and other counties ruled by the English invaders, including counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath, Kildare see ://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/64100.html/ and ://www.britannica.com/facts/5/205923/Calais-as-discussed-in-pale-restricted-area. See also Dublin Castle and the illustration of the early boundaries for English invader-victors at h://www.dublincastle.ie/history3.html
There is a printed reference to the term in 1657: the moral there, in that poem, is that if there is a Pale and you are supposed to stay in it, do, or die.
See also the Pale of Calais, France, 1347-1558. The English were victorious in this place across the Channel, the French resisted so long that the English king ordered six prominent citizens to be brought to him as prisoners, to be killed; but his Queen intervened, and he compromised by allowing the French to live outside the Pale; while he settled the area with English. The area? From a place called Gravelines in northern France, at the east; to a place called Wissant, in the west. "Guines, Marck" - is that the origin of Guinness of Stout fame?? Some 6-9 miles deep, going inland. See ://www.britannica.com/facts/5/205923/Calais-as-discussed-in-pale-restricted-area/. See also ://mokipedia.com/info.php?str=Pale%20of%20Calais/
Think ghettos, when the disfavored are forced to live within boundaries. Think the ultimate "Pale" - ghettos in World War II with the subsequent systematic slaughter.

We can't do away with the idea, the process, the intransigence; but we can take steps in that direction, is that so.