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 17 Feb 2006 @ 11:55, by jazzolog. Government, Public Sector
The wonderful thing about Zen practice is that you get to do it whether you like it or not.
---Zen saying
When we are not sure, we are alive.
---Graham Greene
I lay on the bowsprit, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight towering above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment lost myself---actually lost my life. I was set free...dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm and the high dim-starred sky....I belonged within a unity and joy to life itself.
---Eugene O'Neill
I do not want to talk about the hunting weekend. As Joel Achenbach says the incident already has had more coverage than the landing at Normandy. What interests me are the final moments of the Britt Hume interview Wednesday on SweetMother Fox:
Q On another subject, court filings have indicated that Scooter Libby has suggested that his superiors -- unidentified -- authorized the release of some classified information. What do you know about that?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's nothing I can talk about, Brit. This is an issue that's been under investigation for a couple of years. I've cooperated fully, including being interviewed, as well, by a special prosecutor. All of it is now going to trial. Scooter is entitled to the presumption of innocence. He's a great guy. I've worked with him for a long time, have enormous regard for him. I may well be called as a witness at some point in the case and it's, therefore, inappropriate for me to comment on any facet of the case.
Q Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: There is an executive order to that effect.
Q There is.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q Have you done it?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions. The executive order --
Q You ever done it unilaterally?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to get into that. There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the President, but also includes the Vice President.
[link]
Fortunately Pete Yost, of the Associated Press, picked up on the comment yesterday...but I hardly notice the nation reeling from this announcement. Here's his account...but stick with me: I've got more questions about this~~~ [link] More >
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 29 Jan 2006 @ 10:28, by jazzolog. Government, Public Sector
To the right, books; to the left, a tea-cup. In front of me, the fireplace; behind me, the post. There is no greater happiness than this.
---Teiga
We are living in a historical period in which we understand that it is necessary for all of us to be conscious and active in our world. None of us can ignore this call to action. And yet, if we do not practice zazen, whether we call it zazen or whatever we call it and however we do it, we cannot act in any accurate way. There has been plenty of action---too much action. What we need is not more action, we need enlightened action. And this means letting go of action.
---Norman Fischer
Swallow the stars until you are one with the universe, with all-pervading universal life.
---Soen Nakagawa
Alabama artist Frank Bear illustrated support for George W. Bush as a follower of Jesus Christ by this work, titled "Our Christian President." The artist pieced together individual portraits of Jesus Christ to make the image of President Bush.
FOXNews has begun the drone repetition of the word "optimism" to prep its millions of viewers for what has become the annual crock in America known as The State Of The Union Address. Obviously I'm not responding well. And thus I place myself in my own concentration camp of negativists and boat-rockers. Such people are not well liked in America, which is why they must be put in detention. They're depressing and they slow us down. People who try to rock the boat are dangerous. Our tradition in these United States is optimism! Naysayers can go someplace else to live---like over to France for instance. More >
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4 Jan 2006 @ 20:48, by vaxen. Government, Public Sector
THE VISION OF THE FRIENDLY SOCIETY
While the politicians of the republic think up new crimes to charge Americans with, the Nationalists are pushing ahead with a positive agenda. Americans are acculturated to being pitted against each other, so the idea of a united friendly society is a fundamentally alien notion. However, anyone who brings up the possibility that a less hostile social system is even possible is laughed out of the dialogue by a cynical press, under the influence of a cynical bureaucracy.
The biggest fear of the bureaucracy of the republic is that the American people will find a common cause, in which they will find the strength to retire the republic. To postpone that inevitable impulse towards a genuine national unity, the bureaucracy constantly seeds the various ethnic groups that collectively constitute the "American people," with suspicions of each other. Often the very programs that are designed to create rivalries and jealousies carry such lofty sounding names as Affirmative Action and Desegregation. This is not an attack on the noble ideals underlying Affirmative Action or Desegregation, it is rather an acknowledgment that the programs of the republic are named in a misleading fashion, so as to distract the illiterate masses from the underlying strategy of divide and rule. More >
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21 Nov 2005 @ 07:44, by vaxen. Government, Public Sector
TOTAL POLICE STATE TAKEOVER
"All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."-- (Schoepenhouer)
-----
Socio-Political Report
Patriot Act 2: TOTAL POLICE STATE TAKEOVER
The Secret Patriot Act 2 Destroys What Is Left of American Liberty * Bush seizing dictatorial control
"The second Patriot Act is a mirror image of powers that Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler gave themselves. Whereas the First Patriot Act only gutted the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and seriously damaged the Seventh and the Tenth, the Second Patriot Act reorganizes the entire Federal government as well as many areas of state government under the dictatorial control of the Justice Department, the Office of Homeland Security and the FEMA NORTHCOM military command. The Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, also known as the Second Patriot Act is by its very structure the definition of dictatorship. ....
Usually, corrupt governments allow their citizens lots of wonderful rights on paper, while carrying out their jackbooted oppression covertly. From snatch and grab operations to warrantless searches, Patriot Act 2 is an Adolf Hitler wish list." More >
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 28 Oct 2005 @ 09:24, by jazzolog. Government, Public Sector
We must be able to let things happen in the psyche. For us, this actually is an art of which few people know anything. Consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting, and negating, and never leaving the simple growth of the psychic processes in peace. It would be simple enough, if only simplicity were not the most difficult of things.
---Carl Gustav Jung
To know that you do not know is the best.
To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.
---Lao Tzu
Give me, kind Heaven, a private station,
A mind serene for contemplation.
---John Gay
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald (L), who says he doesn't photograph well, arrives at his Washington office October 27, 2005. (REUTERS/Micah Walter)
I like to maintain dialogue with people of conservative philosophies, and several get these dispatches I send to cyberspace from time to time. Apparently a few even read them and sometimes lash back when they get mad. This is OK because usually there are other things at the heart of our friendship...and we just go back to those topics. I'm not being demeaning because there are elements of the conservative view, including the basic tenets of Hobbes, that are very convincing to me. I like best to talk with conservatives because I may be wrong about things and they help me be the first to know when I am.
There are two things I know about conservatives that come to mind this morning. One is they allow more secrecy in planning and government than I like or agree with. They respect the sanctity of the huddle. I must admit the intrusion of television technology onto the playing field can spoil the fun. I do not want to learn what the next pitch is going to be, or what the manager just whispered into the coach's ear. But politics is not a game to me, and if Cheney's energy cronies have carved up the world for their financial gain, using the public office of the Vice Presidency to do it, I want to know!
But the second conservative conviction that I think of today I do agree with and respect tremendously. Conservatives believe in playing by the rules. Fascists don't. They believe in making up rules by "necessity" as they go along. And so conservatives I've been talking to are anticipating the announcements by Fitzgerald today as much as I am. When Miers withdrew yesterday one such associate said to me, "Now we'll get a nominee to replace her so far to the right there won't be a confirmation before Christmas!" His remark helped temper my excitement. More >
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 18 Oct 2005 @ 09:49, by jazzolog. Government, Public Sector
You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.
---Li Po
Within the waters is the entire world;
There is nothing in its depths but reflections of mountains and rivers.
A fish breaks the surface and then disappears again ---
What need is there to borrow the wind and thunder?
---Ingen
The longest journey is the journey inward....
The road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
---Dag Hammarskjold
I'm not asking for sympathy, but I have to tell you I'm practically crazy after spending an hour and a half chasing the major newspapers around in their anticipation of Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald's announcement of possible indictments as early as tomorrow. So I complain if they don't cover these kinds of stories and now I complain if they all do. Google News is showing nearly 1100 entries at this hour, and nearly every one goes after a different angle. However this turns out, it has got to be among the most complicated cases the world ever has seen. Central to the complication, of course, is who's lying, who's mistaken, and who just can't remember. Having gone blank myself sometimes, either in a test or under scrutiny from a superior, I'm trying to empathize. What precisely did I intend with that behavior of mine, so casually performed, nearly 3 years ago? At what point does someone realize he has to shape up his act so that any moment of his life can withstand the public spotlight? My father always advised me to "live above suspicion," words that I've remembered but rebelliously rarely lived by.
It would be most simple to imagine Bush, Cheney and the Iraq Group huddled in a corner planning covert revenge upon Joe Wilson for blasting their WMD plot out of the water. "Of course we can get Karl and Scooter to do the job. Their specialty." Those guys are in the oil business, which clearly is a more comfortable life in these Final Days than any sort of "elected" public service job. (How well we in Ohio understand Iraqis currently wondering where all those Yes votes came from!) But who is there to testify to such a scenario? More and more Americans are finding it easy to imagine, but a case in court it does not make. Let me point out a few sites I thought were significant this morning. I think probably the best summary of where we are appears in today's Washington Post, written by Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus. More >
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4 Sep 2005 @ 15:54, by swanny. Government, Public Sector
Wow they're estimating over "10,000" dead
in New Orleans
I can't recall of ever ever hearing of
that many American Civilians being killed
at one time. Even 911 was less.
The sad truth though is that they knew this
was coming and had been predicting it.
Not sure what to make of the complacinsy then.
Did people perhaps not care that they were
about to die?
Strange..... most strange....
This is a disconnect of major proportion
it would seem that there may have been
other forces at work here then....
What I am not sure
Are we that asleep.... at the wheel....
comfortably numb....
What "other forces" may have been about...??? More >
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 16 Aug 2005 @ 07:45, by jazzolog. Government, Public Sector
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
---T.S. Eliot
Right now, do you have a phrase that goes beyond the barrier?
The writing brush comes forward and says: Daba-daba-daba-daba...
---Takuan
Just still the thoughts in your mind. It is good to do this right in the midst of disturbance.
---Yuan-Wu
Jean Hudon thinks it over amidst autumn scenery
1
Do I go too far with my headline? Let's take it a piece at a time. How about starting with the drunk part? Like any good ol' American boy, I know a little something about drunks. Been one myself---lots 'a times. I've been described, upon at least one occasion, by a highly spiritual person, as the drunkest man she'd ever seen. I've been flat on my back in a parking lot in Mayville, and couldn't figure out how to get up. So what's involved in stopping such behavior? And how do we know when someone's cured? More >
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12 Aug 2005 @ 14:05, by swanny. Government, Public Sector
AFTER THE BOMB
by a.g. jonas
Who won the cold war? Well I heard some say that the cold war wasn't necessarily won but successfully avoided and only by "luck" as it were.
I suppose it really doesn't matter somehow. The problem though was that the current state of affairs was never anticipated. No one anticipated the avoidance of the catastrophe it demanded. It perhaps was not even considered probable to arrive at our current situation so it was not planned for. No one anticipated the current reality. No one could see past the bomb, No one could even "imagine" past the bomb. John Lennon? well hmmmmm
None the less here we have arrived without a plan and without a vision and I suppose some opportunists ie: terrorists, have taken advantage of this lack of vision, leadership and foresight to impose their agendas of confusion. Thats perhaps how strong the enigma of the "bomb" was. It was perhaps a potential and power so vast that we somehow could not contain it and the imaginings it purported in us.
But here we are, like lost sheep in a post cold war, post bomb reality, a reality that defied and still seems to defy the odds. The bomb has been relatively contained or somewhat half heartedly accepted and we have in a sense transcended it for lack of a better sense but now we sort of aimlessly wander from day to day.
The Internet, that somehow was not anticipated either, even in the visionary annals say of "Startrek" and such, we have no precedence for this means of communication and whatever.
So what is this.... Is it perhaps a "success" of sorts a "mutual success" a mutual "compromise" a mutual reality. And where do we go from here. It is perhaps a blank canvas of sorts and a second chance of sorts for humanity. And an unprecedented one at that. Yet where are the visionaries, the poets with there pens, did they all take the last plane to the coast the day the planet died and they were singing bye bye miss american planet, took my chevy to the levy but the levy was....
Hmmmm just food for thought.... Nothing comes to mind at the moment except perhaps enjoying the passage of time.... and..... More >
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5 Aug 2005 @ 20:00, by gsosbee. Government, Public Sector
I hear much talk today from the president and his stooges (such as Rumsfeld) who proclaim that we Americans are fighting for world freedom; world freedom is exactly what the United States government seeks to end in order to tighten the stranglehold on the globe. See:
[link] .
Indeed, most nations of the world now begin to recognize that the United States offers no effective leadership that would give assurances that the people may realistically expect to live free of government sponsored wars, terrorism, and fascist tactics against the civilian population . John F. Kennedy sought to stop inhumane and unconstitutional killing and torturing both here in the U.S. and around the globe; he was *shot dead by elements of this nation that want to keep the people in chains; the mentality of the assassins who shot Kennedy (and who covered it up, or failed in their responsibility to get to the bottom of the murder) is the same as that mind set which rules today: the atrocious and flawed thinking by current officials of the U.S. government may be seen in the criminal activities of both the fbi and the cia as set forth in My Story In Detail at :
[link]
*On November 11,1963, James Reston of the NY Times captured the awful tone that dominated America then and now as he wrote: " America wept tonight, not alone for its dead President, but for itself; the grief was general, for somehow the worst in the nation had prevailed over the best. The indictment extended beyond the assassin, for something in the nation itself, some strain of madness and violence, had destroyed the highest symbol of law and order."
The strain of madness and violence mentioned above in the 1963 article can be seen unfetterd today and speeding in high gear as shown in the hideous and criminal antics of the fbi and the cia at home and abroad.
See Also:
[link]
_________________________________________________________
See Also:
[link]
from which the following data is noted:
America convicted of being a war criminal in 1986
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 - From: Richard - Subject: Did you know this?
Did you know that in 1986 the World Court convicted America of being a war criminal for its crimes committed in Nicaragua in '83 and '84? They insisted that America face the music, and the American government refused. And the only reason that no one could enforce the decision that the World Court came to is because America is currently the foremost superpower in the world. If that wasn't the case though, maybe America would have been bombed, and some of the people in other countries would have felt that we deserved it, just like many Americans now feel that it's unfortunate but necessary that innocent Afghani civilians are killed in the current bombings if it means that maybe bin Laden and the Taliban will be killed in the process.
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For more on fbi murderers see:
[link]
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