jazzoLOG: Time To Go    
 Time To Go107 comments
picture20 Jan 2009 @ 11:39, by Richard Carlson

Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must remain silent.

---Ludwig Wittgenstein

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

---Naguib Mahfouz

Storm passes, watch the pines change color.
Out along the mountain, through the source,
flowers in the stream reveal Zen's meaning:
nothing in between, all words gone.

---Liu Ch'ang-Ch'ing

The art is by Erica Magnus, the mother of my daughter-in-law Karen. Please take a few moments to visit her website [link] .

This is my final post at jazzoLOG. I began the thing on February 4, 2002, at the suggestion of a friend here who thought my writing would help people get to know me. I just had accepted the invitation of another friend to join New Civilization Network, and already had run into conflict with someone. It was my inexperience with NCN Groups that was part of the problem, but at the time I really didn't understand much of anything about the site. All 3 of those people have quit this place by now.

I've continued on for 2 reasons: I found it was fun to write a Log, and I felt great potential for NCN where very interesting people from all over the world were congregating. Shortly some of us thought we had some sort of international community forming online. At the time it was a thrilling innovation, and perhaps marked new possibilities for the Internet. Maybe there was more we could do than just exchange basic information. Perhaps here was a new form of relationship.

Some had ideas about changing the technical aspects of the site to accomodate this evolution. I had no knowledge of such matters but I liked the idea of bringing this interpretation of "new civilization" to fruition. Flemming Funch, the webmaster and creator, replied that maybe yes, that could be true...but he needed to think about it. And he didn't want anybody rushing ahead; so the reins of technical control remained in his hands alone. They still do.

At the same time, an element of abrasion persisted at NCN. There were and are members who enjoy NCN for the recreation it provides...and at least some of that fun for them is the use of flames with which to engulf people who have different opinions. Disagreement can be accomplished in a number of ways, and disrespectful bullying has a great, if egomaniacal, history on the Internet...and elsewhere in America, even High Places. However, it creates a quality of anxiety at a site that makes people jumpy. It's frightening and not conducive to what many new members are seeking when they come in here.

When approached on this issue, Flemming has resisted response. He doesn't want to interfere and if people tear each other apart and some leave, so be it. Anyway, he reminds us repeatedly and constantly that this "public area" was an afterthought, and ultimately he regrets ever creating it. The emphasis of NCN is on the "network" part, not the civilization. NCN is a place for movers and shakers, entrepreneurs who have things and services for sale. As my suggesting friend said when he quit the site, NCN is a message board. It's the OLD Internet civilization of exchanging contact information and maybe arranging meetings in Malibu to schmooze.

Nearly everyone else with whom I had connection in that "community phase" has moved on too. Flemming says that's OK, because the function of NCN is to make the contact and then get on out and change the world. They go because they have better things to do than hang around chat rooms and blogs. Maybe so, but almost every one of those people has expressed resentment and disappointment upon leaving. It's rare that we see someone say, "Thanks so much NCN for providing the opportunity to meet the valuable folks who are helping me on my way! Farewell!"

Over the past year at least, jazzoLOG has suffered results of this exodus. There are new, delightful people passing through here all the time, but they rarely visit or comment at my Log. One reason I think is the abrasive contention I mentioned before. Nearly every article I write lately has drawn the kind of flames that makes my creation an unpleasant experience. I've grown ashamed of jazzoLOG here, and no longer recommend it to people. Who would want to read the insane rage of one or two members? Who cares?

Now one of those people is going through my Log deleting his comments. My work looks like a bombed site in Gaza, a shell of what it used to be. People's cries of distress at what was being said to them still hang in the air. A bulldozer has arrived and shoved down their opinions with families still inside. Perhaps old soldiers are proud of the empty shells they've created with their rockets and mortars. Maybe they can stand before such a place and say, "There used to be a school here, but what the fuck can you learn in a school anyway? Just a bunch of old cunts who can't do anything else with their lives. I'm happy I blew it up!"

So while I will not be adding anything to jazzoLOG, I'll leave it here. It's an empty, bombed-out shell but maybe it's also a monument to at least one period of the New Civilization Network. Oh and before I forget, one other thing I used to do around here is review the other Logs for publication on the splash page. Before Flemming let me do it, he had a robot thing pick the articles. Someone might tell him to put that feature back so time doesn't stop out there.

Now I have a little space left before going to work. I guess I'll use it up by celebrating both Martin Luther King Jr. and our Inauguration Day in the United States. Hey, it's the end of The Era of Ronald Reagan!

A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King

By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967
Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.

Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War

Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

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107 comments

20 Jan 2009 @ 11:53 by susannahbe : Wow...
4 different copies of the same article! I have left a comment on one of the other ones :-).  


20 Jan 2009 @ 11:55 by ursula : Okay
This is weird, what happened to my comment and Martha's that were here before Susannah's? Oh, I just found out - this article posted more than once.  


20 Jan 2009 @ 12:16 by jazzolog : Sorry, Tremendous Internet Traffic Today
which I think affected my attempts to lift the post off the platform. I'll post those other comments here~~~

20 Jan 2009 @ 11:29 by susannahbe : Hey there...
Although I haven't commented before, I just wanted to say that I shall miss reading your log, especially the ones that recount your recollections, your personal stories, your writing is very evocative and you bring the words alive.

I always very much enjoy the quotes you include too.

Why go, why not just ban the people who you don't want to comment? If you leave it open for anyone to comment, then you are not taking the control for your space that you want flemming to take for his. :-)

So what if there are spaces left when comments are deleted? That's life, some things show battle scars.

Look to the future, block the trouble makers and continue what you do so well.

Just an opinion, of course LOL.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I don't intend to reply to comments in here...but I got to my workplace and wanted to finish posting this thing---but I see it got did. I don't block, Susannahbe, nor do I delete unless the thing is really untoward. In that way I sorta agree with Ming's approach to things...although he definitely believes in the Block.

---jazz

+++++++

20 Jan 2009 @ 11:24 by medicinedreamer : Jazz
I'm sorry to read that this is it for your log, but I understand your feelings. Your input will be missed here. All the best to you on the outside and stay in touch.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
20 Jan 2009 @ 11:36 by martha : Darn
Sure wish you weren't going but as medicinedreamer said I totally understand. Thanks to the malcontent here at NCN this is another example of someone leaving. I repeatedly pointed this abuse out last month when I was attacked by this man. Ming did nothing. The abuse and manipulation will continue here which Ming condones.

I also am seriously thinking of leaving NCN and have been searching for another site to do my log.

Sure gonna miss you Jazzy. Please stay in touch.  



20 Jan 2009 @ 21:35 by quinty : Well,
having been flamed I can relate to the burn. Though I have become used to it, or, rather said, not afraid of being burned, since the web is open to many unusual people. And it's all part of the show.

But it can all become finally too crazy and frustrating, and I can understand why one would not want to continue. Strange people with their strange hostile fixations can draw a lot of energy from the patient and tolerant moderator of a site on the web. And the focus can become quite sour.

A web site is not like one's livingroom, is it? Any character can come waltzing in. I may be a character, too, so perhaps I should watch what I say. Let me make a prediction. Someday there will be classes on how to email and blog, perhaps even at the college level. Certainly in high school. Like it or not the Internet has created a new literary form, one with its own unique syntax and etiquette. And psychologists will obtain grants to study bloggers, how people behave on the web.

I didn't link up to your site merely because we knew each other in college, but because I truly enjoyed your entries and the comments accompanying them. And the quotes were also frequently wonderful. I'll miss them, and consider this too as a loss of information about what's going on in the world.

But I hope I can understand.  



24 Jan 2009 @ 09:42 by ashanti : ...
...  


24 Jan 2009 @ 12:43 by jazzolog : West Side Story
Somewhere...a place for us...

www.upsaid.com/jazzolog/

http://jazzolog.blogspot.com/

{link:http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=52990691}

and just this morning~~~

http://wulfshead.blogspot.com/  



24 Jan 2009 @ 13:28 by susannahbe : Consider ....
yourself bookmarked :-)  


25 Jan 2009 @ 08:07 by ashanti : ...
...  


25 Jan 2009 @ 11:37 by jazzolog : The Wulfshead
If there are bells and whistles involved in gaining admission to this legendary establishment, it may be you must solve various mysteries to see the wonders inside.  


25 Jan 2009 @ 14:57 by ashanti : Hahaha!!!!
LOVE it!  


28 Jan 2009 @ 19:56 by ashanti : Front Page
I guess we are going to be stuck with "Did God invent natural money?" as a lead article for eternity.......  


29 Jan 2009 @ 11:50 by martha : Yes
Ashanti, obviously ming enjoys the article! hahaha Maybe we can go a whole month with on the front page. Want to make a wager?

*********************
And on this last day of January, God and natural money still reign supreme on the front page. i guess there is a message we are missing!  



31 Jan 2009 @ 17:02 by jazzolog : It's All A Woman's Fault
From the article, ladies~~~

"When natural money was first introduced by Joseph some 4,000 years ago, he was married to Asenath the daughter of the high-priest Poti-pherah. The Bible does not explain much of her, but there are other sources. The question is how reliable they are. I do not know. The only thing that is quite clear to me, is that God is a woman, because this can be logically deducted from the creation story. She might have taken the physical shape of Asenath and this may explain why natural money came into existence 4,000 years ago when Joseph ruled Egypt."

http://www.newciv.org/news2/index.htm/_d45/_v45/__show_article/_a000009-000429.htm

Lucky Comment #13  



31 Jan 2009 @ 21:45 by martha : Every time
I read the title of this article this song comes to mind.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7rZEKClk4)

And I'll get back to about that money,she god thingy....later!  



1 Feb 2009 @ 09:36 by jazzolog : On That Note
Hello, I Must Be Going by Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers certainly is more appropriate for the NCN milieu. Now of course if Groucho resembled Sarah Brightman, from your link Martha, this long-winded farewell could be a good deal more snuggly.

http://www.allgigs.co.uk/images/object/artist/10493/Sarah_Brightman-1-250-250-85-nocrop.jpg

If this is God, where do I sign up?  



1 Feb 2009 @ 12:00 by martha : The eye of god

http://z.about.com/d/urbanlegends/1/0/-/7/eye_of_god.jpg

********************************************************

The Helix Nebula from La Silla Observatory

Explanation: Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce. The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of Aquarius and spans about 2.5 light-years. The above picture was taken by the Wide Field Imager on the 2.2-meter Telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory. A close-up of the inner edge of the Helix Nebula shows complex gas knots of unknown origin.

---added by jazzolog  



1 Feb 2009 @ 12:12 by ashanti : Will God be able to....
....fix our Front Page? It's still there. Of course its all woman's fault, we are responsible for everything, including birth and nurturing (or should be, the current world devalues that role now, and favours vicious women-on-steroids imitating men). I'm predicting we're stuck with Did God invent natural money forever.......

Awesome picture, Martha, the Eye indeed. Source?  



2 Feb 2009 @ 12:41 by martha : hahaha ashanti
great comment......I believe source is sexless and doesn't give a damn about money. Men however do give a damn about money. You do notice that all the money in the good old US of A have men on them except for the Susan B. Anthony coin. A token woman! hahaha  


2 Feb 2009 @ 14:10 by jazzolog : Babes On Bucks
or maybe bucks for babes. Martha's comment is yet more proof that the female God invented money. Obviously they have all these guys on money to prove their power over us...and to amuse and excite themselves. If men invented money, we'd have pictures of Playboy Bunnies on currency.

And Ashanti's question about "source" may not have been theological. She may have wondered merely where you got the picture. If that's it, right-click the photo, then click Properties, and the URL will show up.  



8 Feb 2009 @ 17:39 by SWAN @64.131.39.132 : Some things never change
I stumbled upon NCN during and internet search today. I haven't been here for a number of years. Was a very active member for about three years and left for the reasons mentioned in this log. I am a little surprised that this kind of activity continues...or maybe I am not.

Hello to all the friends who are still here that I connected with in the past! I hope you are all well.  



8 Feb 2009 @ 17:41 by SWAN @64.131.39.132 : P.S

"Thanks so much NCN for providing the opportunity to meet the valuable folks who are helping me on my way! Farewell!"  



8 Feb 2009 @ 18:02 by vaxen : Message Board?
Let's face it.
You can spend all the money in the world.
You can do all the big alliances and all the fancy joint ventures.
But when it comes down to the brass tacks, your mum was right.

Say please. Say thank you. Say sorry.
And say hello.  



8 Feb 2009 @ 18:41 by jazzolog : I Presume
the thank you note was from Black Swan.  


8 Feb 2009 @ 18:46 by ashanti : Yep
Sure sounds like her. I wasn't around when she left, so never really knew what went down. I do know I was away from NCN for quite a while, and when I returned, quite a few people that I had known had left - Swan being one of them.  


8 Feb 2009 @ 20:07 by vaxen : ...
Storm passes, all words gone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/25/AR2008052501779.html  



9 Feb 2009 @ 00:31 by jerryvest : Best wishes to you, Richard. You
were very supportive of my posts and encouraging when I expressed a message about my anguish about prostate cancer. I loved reading your articles and appreciate the research, investigation and quality of your entries. I'm really too busy these days to post much and only wish I had more time to comment here. Please let me know if you are posting on another site. Good bye, my friend. Jerry  


9 Feb 2009 @ 04:39 by vaxen : Yeah...

Turbo Vestri Hostilis  



9 Feb 2009 @ 08:48 by vaxen : Census?
Here we go with a bit of Samizdata. Hopefully before jazzolog exits the house...
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2009/02/is_a_white_hous.html  



9 Feb 2009 @ 10:04 by jazzolog : Jerry Vest, A True Saint
Jerry's basic sanity, both in approach and presence, ought to be a model for NCN members. I know we'll always stay in touch.

I'll say again that I am not dissolving membership in this site nor taking this Log down. I'm just not adding to it anymore nor working for what I hoped would be betterment of NCN...and that includes editing the Log entries on the front page. The reason is the activity of the very bozo, now in his happy-go-lucky polarity, currently pretending just above to be the host of this entry.  



9 Feb 2009 @ 19:59 by vaxen : Not pretending...
anything. As for bozo? Sticks and stones. I was simply giving Jerry the links to your other blogs as Jerry asked: "Please let me know if you are posting on another site." - JerryVest He had obviously not read the comment wherein you gave your links,

;) Sam gatchadwam, sam vadadwam, sam vo manamsi jnanatam...

Turbo Vestri Hostilis

"I tell you a truth, liberty is the best of all things, my son, never live under a slavish bond." – Sir William Wallace's Uncle

USN Beach Jumpers:

"To assist and support the operating forces in the conduct
of Tactical Cover and Deception in Naval Warfare"

"To plan and execute Psychological Operations in
support of commands to which it has been assigned".

"Assisting Commanders in the planning
and conduct of tactical military deception operations."

"That I am, Sonic Hedgehog," Boreas answered, "and I no longer need the title Dark King, for I shall rule over the cosmos for all eternity."

http://prowerforce.webs.com/projects/mishiranu/sonicunknown/chap16.txt  



9 Feb 2009 @ 20:59 by ursula : Jazz
well, there always is the "block" feature.  


9 Feb 2009 @ 22:19 by jazzolog : Mired In Pretense
The block is a shabby excuse for a site that attracts seekers of spiritual progress...and is loaded with all kinds of so-called therapists. Yet, people come in here specifically to ball things up and run amok in egomania. And absolutely nothing is done about it. Even civilizations that crumbled apart centuries ago fare better than this "new" place.

**Edited**  



9 Feb 2009 @ 22:24 by ursula : Because, Jazz
it allows a variety of nasty energies onto your blog - it is abusive - therefore, it transfers to those (including the general public) who read your blog. Do you enjoy playing in these energies? If not, then why permit it?  


10 Feb 2009 @ 00:55 by jazzolog : A Good Point Medsdreamer
I hadn't looked at it that way. However, I feel the "energies" of a networking site ultimately are managerial function. Ordinary citizens ought not have to be vigilantes organizing posses to hunt down the evildoers. I've never been entertained by the description of "wild west" about NCN. In this case, it may be the webmaster has been overwhelmed and lynched. So, I'm just going to shut down my little effort and move to the outskirts. In fact, I already have  


10 Feb 2009 @ 01:33 by ursula : Yes
You have the alternate places on the net, and you still have the option to control your own blog here with the block that is given to you so the webmaster doesn't have to get involved in each and every incident. It's a click of the button and you get rid of the abuse...much easier than hunting down somebody.  


10 Feb 2009 @ 05:20 by vaxen : Abuse...
in the eyes of the pre-judicial beholder alone. Kind of like Israel and the Palestinians. There are a multiple of views to any faction. You can choose to call it victimization or see it for what it really is...an attempt at dialogue.

**Edited**

AUM Shanti, Shanti...

re·doubt·able
Pronunciation: \ri-ˈdau̇-tə-bəl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English redoutable, from Anglo-French, from reduter to dread, from re- + duter to doubt
Date: 15th century

1: causing fear or alarm : formidable
2: illustrious , eminent ; broadly : worthy of respect

"when a group or a phenomena starts getting defined, we all realize that once again, we're only human beings, warts and all.. this is the time to move on, and to create another scene where there are no words to pursue and define the alien within us." - @Om* 2/4/2000  



10 Feb 2009 @ 06:03 by ursula : No, it's not
Abuse is CLEARLY DEFINED and LEGALLY DEFINED - it is NOT in the eyes of the beholder.

**Edited**  



10 Feb 2009 @ 16:25 by martha : He who will not be named...
**Edited**

Identifying a Pathological Liar

Pathological liars, or "mythomaniacs," may be suffering from histrionic personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder. The following comments basically reflect a pathological liar who has the characteristics of histrionic personality disorder.

Some characteristics:

1. Exaggerates things that are ridiculous.

2. One-upping. Whatever you do, this person can do it better. You will never top them in their own mind, because they have a concerted need to be better than everyone else. This also applies to being right. If you try to confront an individual like this, no matter how lovingly and well-intentioned you might be - this will probably not be effective. It's threatening their fantasy of themselves, so they would rather argue with you and bring out the sharp knives than admit that there's anything wrong with them.

3. They "construct" a reality around themselves. They don't value the truth, especially if they don't see it as hurting anyone. If you call them on a lie and they are backed into a corner, they will act very defensively and say ugly things (most likely but depends on personality), but they may eventually start to act like, "Well, what's the difference? You're making a big deal out of nothing!" (again, to refocus the conversation to your wrongdoing instead of theirs).

4. Because these people don't value honesty, a lot of times they will not value loyalty. So watch what you tell them. They will not only tell others, but they will embellish to make you look worse. Their loyalty is fleeting, and because they are insecure people, they will find solace in confiding to whomever is in their favor at the moment.

5. They may be somewhat of a hypochondriac. This can come in especially useful when caught in a lie, for example, they can claim that they have been sick, or that there's some mysteriously "illness" that has them all stressed out. It's another excuse tool for their behavior.

6. Obviously, they will contradict what they say. This will become very clear over time. They usually aren't smart enough to keep track of so many lies (who would be?).

Here are some ways to tell someone is a pathological liar contributed by another WikiAnswers Contributor:

They lie about even the smallest things. For example, saying "I brushed my teeth today," when they didn't.

They add exaggerations to every sentence.

They change their story all the time.

They act very defensively when you question their statements.

They believe what they say is true, when everyone else knows it isn't.

Here's an alternate "checklist":

Lies when it is very easy to tell the truth.

Lies to get sympathy, to look beter, to save their butt, etc.

Fools people at first but once they get to know him, no one believes anything they ever say.

May have a personality disorder.

Extremely manipulative.

Has been caught in lies repeatedly.

Never fesses up to the lies.

Is a legend in their own mind.
(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_can_you_tell_if_someone_is_a_pathological_liar)  



10 Feb 2009 @ 21:45 by ursula : Martha
the pathological liar's profile reminds me of Carly Simon's song about the narcissist "You're So Vain" - a legend in his own demented and depraved mind.  


10 Feb 2009 @ 22:17 by jazzolog : Deletion In Comment Above
**Edited**

There are almost no rules at NCN. Here is one: you don't flame or discuss a member insultingly on a Public Log, and this is such a Log. And it's probably not a good idea to throw up a quotation from the person you dislike (especially) without obtaining permission.

**Edited**

I celebrate a nation of laws and a civilization of justice.

**Edited**  



10 Feb 2009 @ 22:44 by vaxen : We know...
that about you, Richard.

**Edited**  



11 Feb 2009 @ 00:45 by ursula : Typical
**Edited**  


11 Feb 2009 @ 08:11 by vaxen : Heh, heh...
**Edited**

In any case jazzolog has already said that this is his last entry, pity that, so I presume this means the start of a new period in his timeline for NCN. My timeline is quite different however.

**Edited**  



11 Feb 2009 @ 12:22 by ursula : Last comment
**Edited**  


11 Feb 2009 @ 14:54 by jazzolog : The Justice Of Karma
The enforcement of law is not always a function of civic entities or occuring within borders and boundaries that some people neither recognize or respect.

**Edited**

Every member I've ever communicated with after they've quit say the same thing: what a pity this technology and platform never fulfilled its potential. There isn't another one as good anywhere...up until now.  



12 Feb 2009 @ 00:46 by martha : x
x  


12 Feb 2009 @ 01:27 by jazzolog : I Must Be Going
I feel a lot Marx Brothers tonight...but let us contemplate~~~

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

- Ayn Rand - Russian-born American Author

=
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain - American Author

=
"Come to the edge."
"We can't. We're afraid."
"Come to the edge."
"We can't. We will fall!"
"Come to the edge."
And they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.

Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918  



12 Feb 2009 @ 01:41 by ursula : and a big
HELLO to you, Jazz. http://members.tripod.com/Cleo256/marx/songs.html
Thought you could have fun with the original song.

##################################################

Our lovely shape-shifter's link takes you to Groucho's big number, which of course I was referencing in my comment above. Thank you friend, I love a good tune with which to close the show!

---jazz  



12 Feb 2009 @ 01:54 by vaxen : ...
...  


13 Feb 2009 @ 10:46 by jazzolog : Another Fine Mess You've Gotten Me Into
I may as well continue with the great old slapstick comics as I persevere in my effort to get off stage. Three individual members of NCN have flashed their conflicting views in this article's thread, and all three have requested removal of their names and references to them in the others' comments.

I tried to edit them out one by one, but it's all taking too much time and becoming increasingly impossible. The comments are starting to look like the bombed-out shells I complained about in the main entry. I think the only thing to do is delete everything that I think flames at the others. This will be subjective I suppose, and I don't have time to do it right now. I believe one of the members has formally resigned from this site, but if the other two would edit their own comments it would help me. More...and hopefully the conclusion of all this...later.  



13 Feb 2009 @ 14:31 by martha : Hey Jazz
I changed one of my comments but felt leaving up pathological liar was still quite relevent. Cheers and best to you.  


13 Feb 2009 @ 17:38 by vaxen : Bicameral...
stage 2.

Well I sympathize with jazzolog so I'll post a brief summary of some items I deem helpful towards resolving the present situation and a link to further ellucidation wherein the subject matter of 'conflict' is enlightningly discussed.


Making others "wrong" is a central aspect of bicameral stage 2. So dinging is quintessential bicameral-stage-2 behavior. The more or less automatic and unconscious reaction of feeling bad or upset after being dinged is also quintessential bicameral-stage-2 behavior. At this time, dinging is a central aspect of most, possibly all human cultures. Young humans tend to engage in a great deal of dinging, sometimes viciously so. My father was a compulsive dinger. For every good thing he said about anyone or anything, he probably said ten or more bad things. He was also a compulsive dingee with a violent temper. He seemed to live in a world full of dingers determined to ding him at every opportunity. If you work at a job, chances are that you get dinged at least once a day. If you have to deal with bureaucrats (both in government and large corporations), you may experience being dinged. You might even get frustrated -- i.e., make yourself feel frustrated!

On the back cover of 'Metaphors We Live By' by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson: Take the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR. We say: "He attacked every weak point in my argument:; "Your claims are indefensible"; "I demolished his argument." But as the authors write, "It is important that to see that we don't just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his positions and we defend our own... It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform in arguing."

I expect that by becoming more aware of the dinging phenomenon, and repeatedly dedinging yourself, you can take major steps toward transcending bicameral stage 2. I also expect that by advancing to a more conscious stage, you can become considerably more productive -- see 'The Bicameral Model of the Mind':

(a) You have largely mastered your feelings and emotions.
(b) You have the ability to critically examine every concept, every thought, every action.
(c) You strive to increase your competence in every aspect of your life.
(d) You carefully observe the results you produce, using that as feedback to improve your concepts, thoughts, communications, and actions.
(e) Producing results is paramount.

http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl12a.shtml

☼☼☼  



13 Feb 2009 @ 19:19 by ashanti : ...
...  


13 Feb 2009 @ 19:27 by susannahbe : ,
.  


13 Feb 2009 @ 20:02 by vaxen : ...
KINGSLEY WIMBUSH

"Subtle Internal Suppression"

http://www.ronsorg.org/tableofcontents/SIS%20Handling.htm  



14 Feb 2009 @ 00:27 by quinty : I remember
once becoming involved in a verbal slugfest as a kid and asking the participants to cease and desist. Instead they happily turned on me for my arrogance.

Okay.

The problem was, they were cudgeling each other verbally, drawing blood. I was embarrassed for them, for the human race, and perhaps mostly for myself.

In this particular I was actually quite innocent. So I thought I would speak up. And did. And when my uncalled for words landed in the midst of this verbal onslaught the two contenders simultaneously turned on me.

Frankly, I was quite shocked. I had thought my superiority in this matter was obvious. After all, it wasn’t me engaging in this vituperative, blood thirsty back and forth, attempting to get the better over my adversary by any means.

But since drawing blood had become the point of the exercise my interjection merely opened up a new venue. And they were not about to be put down by some intruder they didn't even know. So when the vicious verbal blood letting ended they walked away triumphant and happy, the best of friends.

Is this simply what it means to be human?

Apparently, it does. As well as many other things. We have been gifted and cursed with the possibility to be many, many things. But some of us simply can’t come up out of the mire. Some of us may even feel at home there and like it: so long as the attention doesn’t lose its focus or weaken.

A narcissistic gibberish expressive of much through nothing is mostly expressive of brain rot. Pure and simple. While we bludgeon ourselves we have more defenses than former Bush felons have to justify themselves. This truly is embarrassing for ourselves and, yes, the human race.  



14 Feb 2009 @ 03:32 by vaxen : ...
quinty...

Critical Human Problem #1: Ignorance and fear propagate faster, memetically and biologically, than reason and love.

http://www.brainsturbator.com/articles/10_ways_you_can_fight_fascism_around_the_world/  



14 Feb 2009 @ 11:08 by jazzolog : In Conclusion
hopefully. I did the editing (not easy!) and put "**Edited**" wherever I thought we were so insulting in the argument that guidelines for a Public Log were violated. The purpose of the rules is to protect those of us who have lives and careers offline that could be damaged through a casual Google search of something like this. However, I still apologize to all for the editing. I don't like tampering with people's expressed ideas.

I think the thread makes sense and that the basic disagreements still stand. Those arguments are important not only for this site, but for learning to communicate and negotiate online---which still is new territory. I think Flemming understands this, but prefers for people to duke it out by ourselves. The calming in the most recent comments shows that something has been learned in this war of flames...but there have been casualties. Maybe my Log is among them, but I mourn most the lost members of NCN over precisely this atmosphere. Anyway, I've had my say...and so Farewell, NCN jazzoLOG.

Now children, don't make me come back in here! :-)

One day Chao-chou fell down in the snow, and called out, "Help me up! Help me up!" A monk came and lay down beside him. Chao-chou got up and went away.

---Zen koan

The best way out is always through.

---Robert Frost

Truly, I say to you, whosoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.

---Luke 18: 17  



14 Feb 2009 @ 12:09 by istvan : For Valentine.
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg8Db7VNgL0 ]  


15 Feb 2009 @ 00:59 by ashanti : Epilogue for Jazzolog
...  


15 Feb 2009 @ 02:28 by Ursula @98.151.20.30 : dead zone
Now that a group of us have left in the same week, NCN will be a real dead zone. To life, love, and authenticity: Ashanti, Martha, Richard, and the other friend who has also left. Gone for good...  


15 Feb 2009 @ 03:31 by vaxen : Ashanti
Aweh my bokkie... you soeking with me? Been too long in the bossies hae ye? Leavin us dik bek? Too much dop made ya doos? Ek se Richards droe wors and the lekker company ya been keepin hae gesuip'd ya. The kerels are comin ta moer ma se poes. N.A.F.F.I., ne? Gaan vlieg in jou moer! I smaak you stukkend, voertsek!

Time for all the self righteous, the perfect, and the pure who were victimized by the "copypasta and delete monster" to collectively gloat, leave the place and go on a rut of self pity. False friend, there is a table on that mountain. Come dine with me there. You'll know me by my horns and the stench of sulpher coming forth from my glass. Repetition is one of the main techniques of propaganda. Looks like some buttons were pushed and a hidden course well fed. Go in peace, I'd like to say, but I can no longer wish you peace nor will I...

"Meat shouldn't be braaied on a braai grid. It should lie there between the hot coals, fighting for its life," Zuma

Israeli troops shot and killed zoo animals

By Ashraf Helmi, Videographer, and Megan Hirons, Photographer
Published: January 25, 2009, 23:25

http://archive.gulfnews.com/images/09/01/25/26_rg_gaza_zoo07_4.jpg

The Gaza Zoo reeks of death. But zookeeper Emad Jameel Qasim doesn't appear to react to the stench as he walks around the animals' enclosures.

A month ago, it was attracting families - he says the zoo drew up to 1,000 visitors each day. He points at the foot-long hole in the camel in one of the enclosures.

"This camel was pregnant, a missile went into her back," he tells us. "Look, look at her face. She was in pain when she died."

Around every corner, inside almost every cage are dead animals, who have been lying in their cages since the Israeli incursion.

Qasim doesn't understand why they chose to destroy his zoo. And it's difficult to disagree with him. Most of them have been shot at point blank range.

"The first thing the Israelis did was shoot at the lions - the animals ran out of their cage and into the office building. Actually they hid there."

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/09/01/26/10278858.html  



15 Feb 2009 @ 10:51 by jazzolog : Noise In The Rec Room
I really didn't want to come back in here, but it appears things just won't settle down. Ashanti, I'm sure that when I left yesterday, your comment from Friday that began with the Eliot quote still was there. Anything I edited I marked as such. Nor do I understand why Susannahbe would come in here 10 minutes later and just leave her nickname. Of course maybe she wrote something and then deleted it herself, which is what I thought may have happened. Things can be tricky with the comment box, but I don't think I went near your message, Ashanti.

Now for the remark just above. I have a rather prominent friend here who is South African. As a result we have a translation of the comment, which I am reproducing~~~

######################################
15 Feb 2009 @ 03:31 by vaxen : Ashanti
Aweh my bokkie... you soeking with me? Been too long in the bossies hae ye? Leavin us dik bek? Too much dop made ya doos? Ek se Richards droe wors and the lekker company ya been keepin hae gesuip'd ya. The kerels are comin ta moer ma se poes. N.A.F.F.I., ne? Gaan vlieg in jou moer! I smaak you stukkend, voertsek!

Time for all the self righteous, the perfect, and the pure who were victimized by the "copypasta and delete monster" to collectively gloat, leave the place and go on a rut of self pity. False friend, there is a table on that mountain. Come dine with me there. You'll know me by my horns and the stench of sulpher coming forth from my glass. Repetition is one of the main techniques of propaganda. Looks like some buttons were pushed and a hidden course well fed. Go in peace, I'd like to say, but I can no longer wish you peace nor will I...

"Meat shouldn't be braaied on a braai grid. It should lie there between the hot coals, fighting for its life," Zuma
######################################

The first and last sections are in a crude form of Afrikaans, which my friend translates as follows~~~

"Awww, my buck, are you looking for a fight? Been too long in the bush, have you? Leaving us all pissed off? Too much alcohol made you a cunt? I say Richard's dry sausage and the wonderful company you have been keeping has made you drunk. The boys are coming to assault your cunt. Go and run away, in your cunt. I like you dead, fuck off.
"'Meat should not be barbequed on a barbeque, it should lie there between the hot coals, fighting for its life' - Jacob Zuma"

Mr. Zuma has been a political figure in South Africa, and suspected of rape and corruption. His remark and a photo of him setting up the barbecue can be seen here {link:http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Politics/0,,2-7-12_2089962,00.html} . I believe Vaxen has told us in the past that he has links with the old apartheid Afrikaner intelligence community in South Africa, and recently has been doing work for them. Ashanti is South African, and her Log presented life there, political, cultural and its breathtaking natural beauty.

http://www.news24.com/Images/Photos/2007032713105627_ZumaBraai220.jpg  



15 Feb 2009 @ 16:05 by ming : Noise
Handing out death threats is of course in no way acceptable here.

Some clarifications are hopefully forthcoming, but from a quick {link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_African_slang_words|look} around on the net, it is quite apparent to me that "I smaak you stukkend" means (in current slang) something like "I love you to pieces" or "I love you to death", which is something quite different from "I like you dead". Not that the rest of the message sounds exactly friendly, but it would make some difference.  



15 Feb 2009 @ 18:25 by mortimer : yoh
# smaak - to like another person or thing
# smaak stukkend - to like very much or to love to pieces (literal meaning of stukkend). "I smaak you stukkend" = "I love you madly".

Ashanti wants to leave (or worse, attack a friend) for the copy & paste thing, then so be it. That is the weirdest reason for leaving i have heard yet. And like Vax is the one who started the flood. Ashanti must have missed it when we were flooded with all the psycho stuff. I can find hundreds of links and bring them back here for you. And there is an abundance of tirade for you to browse, all copy & pasted. Ashanti must have missed it when we were flooded with political propaganda. And what about that Jazzo politico stuff, nobody said anything about turning newciv into a political campaign for the presidency. No nobody said anything, but Jazzo whines about too many therapist here on newciv. That is a joke jazzo ennit, you HIT us hard with politics. A lot of members hit us hard with the politics. I don't see any therapists posting articles. But I see lackey members keeping up with the Jones. And you still my friend, even tho i have no confidence in any government, I accept you as you being you, doing your thing, politics. Never said a word about it until now. An what about this Rusyn courting Jazzo, that is another joke, Jazzo and Rysun do not align on any topic except one thing, they both don't like Vaxen. Read Quinty story again with that in mind.

I suggest NCN ban all of you. Ban your entire ip subnet to be sure you don't come back. Last thing NCN needs is some members turning into kamikaze pilots like you all have, no integrity. Few members messed up and you all know it, you lost respect and so now you want to destroy the whole network. kamikaze pilots. Good ridden on one hand and thank you on the other, thank you for all the fertilizer.  



15 Feb 2009 @ 21:00 by jazzolog : Noisome
The webmaster has arrived. Now we'll get some resolution and jazzoLOG can be left to sink peacefully to the bottom. Mortimer, how ya doin' buddy? As shrewd as ever.

OK, let's try the new translation~~~

"Awww, my buck, are you looking for a fight? Been too long in the bush, have you? Leaving us all pissed off? Too much alcohol made you a cunt? I say Richard's dry sausage and the wonderful company you have been keeping has made you drunk. The boys are coming to assault your cunt. Go and run away, in your cunt. I love you madly, I love you to pieces, I love you to death.
"'Meat should not be barbequed on a barbeque, it should lie there between the hot coals, fighting for its life' - Jacob Zuma"

Maybe it's like "till death do us part." Till death chops us to pieces. Possibly it's a marriage proposal! Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Or maybe we'll cut out your private parts and roast 'em...with you still attached. Do you suppose that works better than waterboarding?  



15 Feb 2009 @ 21:00 by jmarc : Gone for good
says the mirror, yet it still speaks. How strange. Gone for good, yet still here. Unless of course cyber self awareness has finally been achieved and the computer has taken on a mind of its own. If past is prologue we should know that gone for good is a very relative term and gone for good is anywhere from a day to a couple of years. I'm gone for good, but I must come back to save you all,and and totellyou that I'm gone for good, but then if things don't be goin my way why, I'll be gone for good.


Face up to it people your not gone for good. Your threatening to be gone for good if things don't go your way. WOLF!! WOLF!!! WOLF!!!!  



15 Feb 2009 @ 21:27 by jazzolog : Wuff Wuff Indeed
jmarc:. . . 2009-02-15 18:13:31
You are right Bushman, there is room for everyone, and yes, of course they will be back. At least it is to be hoped.
Sometimes you have to speak up even if it will hurt or ruin a friendship. Time heals. Yes, light and dark and all shades of grey. There's room for everyone.

Nowhere, never, and certainly not in this article have I declared myself resigned from NCN. I'm letting go of this particular feature of the site for myself. I'll comment at other Logs, maybe visit the Chats, but essentially spend a lot less time here. Obviously it hasn't worked out for me at NCN, in any way that would encourage me to work on the place or relationships in it. There are other sites where I feel more welcome. But there are some nice people here...and of course we hope more will come in.  



15 Feb 2009 @ 21:32 by bushman : lol
Um, not that I care, just thought I would mention Jazz, you copyed and pasted something from a members only area into a public log, lol.  


15 Feb 2009 @ 22:25 by jmarc : actually jazzo
I was responding to 15 Feb 2009 @ 02:28 by Ursula @98.151.20.30 not to you, but I guess you can take it as you will. No harm done on the C&P but Bushman does have a point. Rules only seem to apply here if they suit us. "Not that I care".  


15 Feb 2009 @ 23:30 by jazzolog : Time For Pruning
OK Bushman, I knew it when I did it. It was naughty. You're such a stickler for the rules. I confess. No need for torture. No need to call me a cunt. Bushman, Jmarc, you ever call someone a cunt?  


16 Feb 2009 @ 00:03 by susannahbe : Jazzolog
just an observation, you seem quite taken with the word cunt?

I think Vaxen said it once maybe twice at most in the chat rooms, but since then you must have said it at least 10 times or more (a lot of them in the public areas) while seemingly outraged at his use of it, why is that?
Respectfully
Susannah  



16 Feb 2009 @ 00:15 by bushman : :}
Um no I havent, but of course that was because my Dad would have kicked my Ass, and because Im not versed in nastiness. But anyway, I wasnt accually pointing out any peticular rule or law, hence the "Not that I care" comment.
What I was pointing out was maybe a little neticate, even though I do understand that it all depends on ones upbringing really. Like here in the USA, parents constantly tell thier kids to not put thier elbows on the table, where in France, parents constantly tell thier kids not to put thier hands in thier laps. I tend to agree with France in that I wouldnt want people Im having dinner with to feel uneasy that I might be pointing my gun at them, lol. Just my point of view. :} Also, I can agree that some rules and laws are made specificaly to be broken at any given time for what ever logical reason make breaking the rules or law a better choice. I mean in most US States, you would get a ticket for running/rolling thru a Stop sign, but a few States let it slide and others just give a warning, Hence the term "California Stop". One thing I like about AZ is they are semi flexable, like if you have CA licence plates they will give you a warning, but if you have AZ licence plates they give you a ticket, because Stop means Stop in all States. Now dont get me wrong Jazz, Im not playing Policeman, I'm jsut a concerned citizen who really dislikes it when people run Stop signs for no good reason. :}  



16 Feb 2009 @ 00:21 by jmarc : Jazzo
"In my heart I have sinned". Not lately though. How about you? (DISCLOSURE: I link to a website that does that regularly, but he calls men that. It may be a british thing).  


16 Feb 2009 @ 00:31 by jazzolog : Thank You Susannah...And Yes
I have used the term a lot. You have no idea how horrible it is for me to have it in the main entry here.

The reason is~~~it's the whole point.

"Cunt" is the most obscene insult you can deliver---to man or woman. Yes, you can call a guy a cunt. That insult was delivered, and the people thus insulted responded in protest. The result was about as limp as the webmaster's comment up above. What does that tell you about a New Civilization?

Anything goes?

I don't want that world. I've lived in it for the past quarter century, and there was nothing new about it. The women who were called cunts---because they had a different opinion of what is beautiful in life---have left. Many others have gone before them, you have no idea.

At what point, Susannah, do you stand up and say, Enough? Here, to me? Or is there a bigger issue? I wish you well in discovering the answer among your playmates at NCN.  



16 Feb 2009 @ 00:48 by susannahbe : Well...
my advice first of all (though not asked for) would be, if you find it so offensive then stop saying it and bringing it into the main area and prolonging the whole issue.

From an observers point of view, and I speak as one, it seems, to put it bluntly a little like what we here in the UK would call 'shit stirring' is that a term used in the US too? You are fanning flames and in my opinion prolonging the issue.

The word Cunt is a good old fashioned old english word for well, a womens 'cunt'
see link (http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2003/10/taboo_for_who) and here (http://floriesa.blogspot.com/2009/01/cunt.html).

It is funny what trouble 4 letters can cause, shows how mankind can create its own taboos. Perhaps it is a culteral thing. Cunt is commonly used in the UK as a swear word in much the same way as fuck is, and a lot of women have reclaimed the word cunt for their genitals preferring to other more sanitised names.

Cunt is a good honest word and if your cultural sensibilities in the US don't think that, then please for goodness sake stop saying it.

Respectfully ;-)

Susannah  



16 Feb 2009 @ 01:27 by istvan : SWEET Dreams
For the years of membership at NCN I can only come up with one conclusion (link below), and sadly say have not been either disappointed, nor impressed by the realization; we are not yet the ones "we"(maybe just me)have been waiting for. Then again, HERE WE ARE![ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQHrspjw4aA ].  


16 Feb 2009 @ 10:40 by jmarc : 7 words you cant say
on NCN. Mr. Karlin would be rolling in his grave.  


16 Feb 2009 @ 11:02 by susannahbe : jmarc
I had to google that to know what you were referring to (http://www.lyricsbox.com/george-carlin-lyrics-the-seven-words-you-can-never-say-on-tv-268qwb7.html) as I wasn't familiar with it before.  


24 Feb 2009 @ 18:28 by celestial : GOBBLES SQUABBLES.

It grieves me to see highly educated people anxious to squabble. There are consequences for everything WE do ... and say.

YOUR WORDS BE UNTO YOURSELF. "Death and life are in the power of the tongue..."  



24 Feb 2009 @ 21:15 by jazzolog : Is There A Nero In The House?
There have been more deletions and changes to this threadbare thread. I barely understand what's left myself. Well, I didn't before either.

The Webmaster has disabled the Combined News Log link for members, which I always found handy for discovering new posts and comments. He says it has been a source of abuse. I wonder how that was so.

He also promises to remove the Member Conversation Rooms (the Chats) because abuse in there has not brought forward the "spirit of NCN." That certainly is true, but I don't understand this solution to the problem. It prompted a comment by me in the Mediation Room~~~

If there is abuse of the "spirit of NCN," it follows there must be abusers. Instead of identifying the bad apples, and working out with them why the guidelines are ignored, Ming will empty all the apples out onto the ground and throw away the barrels.  



25 Feb 2009 @ 00:25 by quinty : Threadless threads....

I would gladly be a Nero. If I can have the barrels. Phhuphff on the apples.

This Mediation Room (Meditation Room?) Do they have a pool table in there?

(Since I liked some of these phrases I couldn't let them pass by, unheralded, unremarked upon, barely noticed. Except by those who read them.)

Sometimes disaster brings out the best in us. (By the way, did you hear on today's news that that hero pilot who ditched a plane in the Hudson and saved all lives onboard has lost his pension, as well as receiving a reduction in salary? He blames his - and his fellow pilots' - fall on deregulation. Something Reagan brought about many years ago.

Well, some could point out he teaches at Berkeley. And that everyone is crazy in Berkeley. But ah jee, even if he does doesn't he get some points for competence, intelligence, decency, and being a hero? Does anyone remember any incidents of like behavior during the Bush years, in the Bush White House? Where if they even tried to turn off the lights at night they probably set off the water sprinklers? And the tanks would roll down Pennsylvania Avenue?  



25 Feb 2009 @ 09:39 by jazzolog : Penniless Heroes
There are heroes sitting homeless at every American curbside these days. Yes, I never tire of reminding people Reagan's first action at President was to bust the traffic air controllers union strike. Now we don't have enough controllers...and we get a crash in Buffalo.

Since Reagan this country has been on a rampage against unions and the working class. And those dudes were the very ones to cross party lines and elect the jerk...and the Repubs afterwards. Hopefully a wakeup call is in the air. Good talking with you Quinty.  



25 Feb 2009 @ 15:37 by quinty : That for
me is what is so profoundly sad. As Thomas Frank asked, "what's the matter with Kansas?"

When Hitler rose to power, as we all know, he was not only backed by industrialists (some American) and reactionaries but by a large segment of the workingclass. Once having ridden around on a variety of commuter trains outside Frankfurt attempting to find the right connection, accompanied by a variety of German laborers smoldering emptiness and hate, I can vaguely imagine what it must have been like.

Here, well we know how the brutality expresses itself: guns, god, flag waving, immigrant bashing, on and on. As Pogo put it: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

We don’t know if Obama is going to succeed or not. But these are the people the Republican Party is reaching out to: the Jindals and Sarah Palins. No wonder they are seen as merely obstructionists, bereft of ideas, putting their bets on the large chance that Obama will fail.  



25 Feb 2009 @ 15:39 by quinty : And those who
say tax cuts and focussed spending (the Republican approach) is the answer...... Please!!!!!  


25 Feb 2009 @ 16:20 by jazzolog : Fundamentalist Reaction
My colleague here at work told me this morning that the way people flock to Obama, and especially when even Republicans last night seemed to want to get near him to shake his hand, only proves one thing: Mr. Obama is the Antichrist.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/02/24/us/25obama5_600.JPG

He's not kidding either. Watch out for the lightning!  



25 Feb 2009 @ 18:16 by b : Change for the worse
The stock market is broken and no one is trying to fix it. Fat cats who took ig blocks of treasury and preferred stock to come manage a companu waited 2 years and sold off their millions of shares while transfering assets overseas and paying off congresspersons, senators and administration beaurocrats. Now we have the messiah who will heal us all. Whining, sniveling, say you don't understand. The sky is falling, hurry up take a good whiz, its all bliss.  


25 Feb 2009 @ 18:52 by jazzolog : Churchill, Not Messiah
"After weeks of playing a Jeremiah, full of woe over a recession, President Obama finally became a Churchill in Tuesday's speech before Congress. His broad themes of reform foresee a country ready to toil and 'emerge stronger than before.'"

---Editors, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0226/p08s01-comv.html  



25 Feb 2009 @ 20:28 by swanny @70.65.25.118 : Green Bank
hmmmm
well a green bank might survive the mess
but the only one I found in my research was the Rainbow Bank of Norway?
in 1998 or so

not sure what else to say as no one seems to be listening
anymore to reason sad though the slip from reason into ?

well
just my 2 bits and thats about all I got at the moment

cheers

ed  



25 Feb 2009 @ 21:50 by vaxen : Churchill?
Obama doesn't get it ~ He is not only beholden to elite banking interests but is also their cheerleader much like George W Bush was the cheerleader for Cheney's and big oil's neocon pipedream in the middle east. This is the beginning of the end ~ for Americans will soon no longer accept this top down approach of bailing out the financial interests that caused this massive economic crisis: Allen L Roland

I voted for Obama in 2008 ~ but I voted for change and I still have not seen dramatic evidence of it . I've heard the words, as in Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress but I still haven't seen the action needed to convince me that Obama understands his mandate from the American people for true change. The top down approach of creating more bank credit for consumers who are up to their eyeballs in debt will not turn this Depression around and cause Americans to spend and inflate the same credit bubble that just burst.
But this additional outrage is really disturbing! $227 billion is going to tax havens for major banking interests while we taxpayers bail them out ~ which CBS recently exposed in this two minute video.
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/cbs-evening-news-cbs-evening-news-follow-the-money-tax-havens/868260633

Frank Rich, New York Times, once again, asks the number one question by Americans that has yet to answered : "Americans are right to wonder why there has been scant punishment for the management and boards of bailed-out banks that recklessly sliced and diced all this debt into worthless gambling chips."

Unfortunately, despite his Clintonesque pep talk last night, I see an unholy Obama allegiance emerging with the Fed and the elite banking interests which Paul Craig Roberts writes of yesterday in ICH ~

How the US Economy Was Lost

By Paul Craig Roberts

February 24, 2009

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22087.htm

Excerpts: "The bald fact is that the combination of ignorance, negligence, and ideology that permitted the crisis to happen is still present and is blocking any remedy. Either the people in power in Washington and the financial community are total dimwits or they are manipulating an opportunity to redistribute wealth from taxpayers, equity owners and pension funds to the financial sector... How long will Americans permit “their” government to rip them off for the sake of the financial interests that caused the problem? Obama’s cabinet and National Economic Council are filled with representatives of the interest groups that caused the problem. The Obama administration is not a government capable of preventing a catastrophe.... The demise of America’s productive economy left the US economy dependent on finance, in which the US remained dominant because the dollar is the reserve currency. With the departure of factories, finance went in new directions. Mortgages, which were once held in the portfolios of the issuer, were securitized. Individual mortgage debts were combined into a “security.” The next step was to strip out the interest payments to the mortgages and sell them as derivatives, thus creating a third debt instrument based on the original mortgages... This was the most shameful and most mindless form of speculation. Gamblers were betting hands that they could not cover. The US regulators had abandoned their posts. The American financial institutions abandoned all integrity. As a consequence, American financial institutions and rating agencies are trusted nowhere on earth. "

And right now we are looking at over 650 trillion dollars in derivatives bets which involves most of the major banks who can not possibly cover that indebtedness.

The first step toward financial recovery is transparency and the truth ~ Obama delivered little of either last night and the stock market and Americans will not be reassured.

Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/02/25.html  



25 Feb 2009 @ 22:02 by a-d : Swanny, Raindbow Bank of
Norway...????? whadddzthat???? any links --or explanations????

**************************************

THANKS,Swanny!...i'll be checking this link out very carefully

and I will get the book...(looks promising)
Thanks, again /A-d  



25 Feb 2009 @ 22:30 by swanny @70.65.25.118 : Ecovillage Book
Hey a-d
well it was included in this book by a fellow and honorable canadian

its a fascinating read from a fascinating and loving fellow
and we are doing it

link = http://books.google.com/books?id=HHxUoRMYjRMC

ed  



26 Feb 2009 @ 11:07 by jazzolog : Libertarian Reaction
I haven't checked whether Libertarians ended up voting for Obama or McCain, or if they voted for Ron Paul no matter what. Where they are now is where they would have been had their choice of John Kerry gotten into office last time. (At least they supported Kerry's feeble attempts to attain a recount against Bush.) And they are not alone in questioning Obama's banking connections, his military stance, and pursuit of illegal activities by the previous administration. Many progressives are on this stuff too.

I think his approach will honor actual investigation and prosecution, but he doesn't want to lead it. We had a sheriff tearing around the world bombing and torturing already, and everybody hated association with paranoid vendettas. If the Justice Department is needed by private or congressional groups, he'll call it in. I'm share Libertarian impatience about other things, but not getting the Bushies and the bad boy bankers---even though there are more of them being flushed out everyday.

A review of Orwell in the current New York Review of Books sums things up nicely~~~

"Orwell shared with Dickens a hatred of tyranny, and in his essay on the Victorian novelist distinguished two types of revolutionary. There are on the one hand the change-of-heart people, who believe that if you change human nature, all the problems of society will fall away; and, on the other, the social engineers, who believe that once you fix society—make it fairer, more democratic, less divided—then the problems of human nature will fall away. These two approaches 'appeal to different individuals, and they probably show a tendency to alternate in point of time.' Dickens was a change-of-heart man, Orwell a systems-and-structures man, not least because—as these essays confirm—he thought human beings recidivist, and beyond mere self-help. 'The central problem—how to prevent power from being abused—remains unsolved.' And until then, it is safe to predict that Orwell will remain a living writer."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22414  



26 Feb 2009 @ 16:27 by quinty : If human nature
changes it does so sluggishly. We have, I am told, more slaves in the world today than ever before. The comparison may be unfair since the world's population has also greatly increased, and slavery is banned in "advanced" democracies. But there are activists combating slavery in America, and New York City is said to have many wealthy slave owners.

Regarding the second choice mentioned above, taken by social engineers, at least it establishes a a fair framework, one from which it is possible to fight against, say, slavery. In one respect the founders of our own democratic Republic were quite brilliant: establishing checks and balances. This form of social engineering allows the abused and weak to fight back. We have seen this numerous times in our country: from slavery up to the struggle for gay human rights today.  



27 Feb 2009 @ 02:03 by a-d : We are ALL SLAVES!!!
to this http://www.heyokamagazine.com/heyoka_magazine.27.bankersmanifesto.htm...even the very very INSIDERS themselves are slaves to their own Dog Eat Dog world they created for themselves!

But I do get the drift, behind your comment...Yet I think it is a dangerous one,cauz' it lulls us to NOT SEE the TRUTH of REALITY of what's going on in our World. Or whadddduthink, Quinty, Jazzo, Anybody??  



27 Feb 2009 @ 14:41 by quinty : I think
we are slaves to our nature. Though individually we can grow, or should. Even in prison old cons can sometimes develop a philosophical view of things, reflecting on the waste of their lives.

Wake up? Easier said than done. And whose vision should we wake up to? Those who disagree with us can be most confirmed and passionate about their opinions. Just as we can be about ours.

Frankly, I'm bored with being told to "wake up." Wake up to what? Because someone holds a powerful world view, a passionate conviction, his precious view has to be the correct one? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps those repeating "wake up," as many Libertarians appear to do, need to "wake up" themselves.

And, yes, agree with me!!!!! :)  



27 Feb 2009 @ 21:47 by a-d : Yesss....
I do feel tired of & to the "whole thing" by now.... all I want is a group of loving friends in close (geophysical) proximity to my place and live in peace & harmony and JOY! No more life ADVENTURE!... only CELEBRATING Life, feeling genuine JOY to be alive and healthy and be as loving towards ALL Life (outside my own skin) as I ever can. That's really all I want today!... my prayer to Universe being: "Please, Dear Universe/GOD, give to each their OWN" ...(that would take care of "everything" ... and I/we all could (all) "live happily ever after"! : ) )  


6 Mar 2009 @ 04:14 by vaxen : Wake up!
okay... Completely wrong, but so funny I snorted: "Obama Sound Board" http://bit.ly/14TWiR  


6 Mar 2009 @ 09:25 by bimbo : hey martha
how come you attacked me tooth and claw for posting youtube in my log and here you are posting it yourself WITHOUT GIVING THE SOURCE ..
31 Jan 2009 @ 21:45 by martha : "Every time
I read the title of this article this song comes to mind.
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7rZEKClk4 )

And I'll get back to about that money,she god thingy....later!"

DON'T DO AS I DO JUST DO AS I SAY EH !
Anyway your hypocrisie aside ...


byebye Jazzolog and thanks for all .

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

You're welcome Bimbo, although I don't think I know who you are or whether we interacted here. Anyway, Martha no longer is a member of NCN I believe. She resigned a month or so ago.

---jazz

**************************************************
Martha gone ! Too bad !

We interacted Jazz.. again I thankyou.
byebye  



29 Mar 2009 @ 10:46 by magical_melody : Jazzy Jazzolog, Fare thee well

Richard, Thank you for 'Being' and having been here.

I am grateful for and appreciate all the positive interactions shared between us, just as much as as I am thankful for the times when I experienced you as being a pain in the ... because that has served my healing too. LOL!

I wish you smooth sailing, especially thru the next phase of what I perceive as being THE intense part of the healing journey now as all comes to the head globally. Many of us have long prepared for this deep and expansive ride which has taken us to the depths of human pain and which continues to take us ever higher into the heights of ecstatic love.

I trust that if it takes even the most fierce of obstacles and the most upsetting of people and circumstances to show up, that these are indeed what is necessary, as catalysts to awaken our hearts so that we can clean it all up to achieve peace and well being.

If we are willing to be 100% responsible for our part in the co-creation, and willing to do the cleaning, we will achieve peace no matter what comes to be.

Often when we do the work of cleaning or as some say clearing...others shift right along with us. Funny thing is, it's often us, who often have been waiting for someone or something to shift, when all along the power to shift was right within us. Reminds me of Dorothy, in the story,the Wizard of Oz, when Glenda the good witch told her that 'home' lived within her...and it was simply about her choosing it and calling it forth!

I also know that when our Heart is truly awakened, that our heart story will be empowered to real-ize, versus the perpetuation of our shared history.

In parting, and in response to this NCN newslog post, I invite you to briefly visit our homepage where I have posted the story and a link about Ho'Oponopono, (a Hawaiian healing system), which I have personally found to be quite extraordinary.

At the very least I encourage reading about Dr. Hew Len's story, as he shares about when he worked at the Hawaii state hospital where there was a whole ward of criminally insane patients. It was there that he was inspired to utilize this healing system - and he took 100% responsibility for what was called up in him as it related to every single individual. The result, all were totally healed. It's amazing what can happen when anyone of us is committed to take 100% responsibility.

Scroll down to the section of Ho'Oponopono:

{link:http://www.heartstory.co.nz/|A powerful question in Ho'Oponopono, What in me, has drawn to me, this person or situation?-I'm Sorry, Please forgive me, I love you and thank you}.

If you do a search on google and youtube you can find all sorts of resources about this amazing system.

Videos Interviews with {link:http://www.mabelkatz.com/mabel-katz-interviews.html#|Mabel Katz} Introducing the healing system.

{link:http://www.whatishooponopono.com/Hooponopono_Dr_Ihaleakala_Hew_Len.htm|What is Ho'Oponopono}
{link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvpoTGseaYk|How to Practice Ho Oponopono} and the {link:http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Practice-Hooponopono|Prayer}

Dr Ihaleakala Hew Len {link:http://www.hooponoponotheamericas.org/|Website}

I wish you and your family all the best. Much Love, MM!  



31 Mar 2009 @ 09:33 by jazzolog : Melody Lingers On
Thank you Magical One, and what a delight to find this comment. I do know a little bit about Ho'Oponopono, and have a friend who knows a lot. I'll get more into it---from this remote location. I've always admired you a great deal, and was anguished over the the bump in the road Max, you and I encountered. Internet communication and friendship still is very much a new frontier. I haven't quit NewCiv, but I'm just not spending a lot of time here anymore or building jazzoLOG. Apparently Ming isn't either, although he's promised new format and big changes---again. Peace.  


22 Jul 2009 @ 07:14 by jazzolog : Good Times
By Jessa Crispin

http://www.thesmartset.com/files/Images/Daily/Bookslut/ID_BS_CRISP_GOOD_AP_001.jpg

A common complaint about the Internet, whether it’s being leveled by a journalist who just lost his newspaper job or someone who found herself the target of online rage, is that it’s such a shallow, spiteful place. While it’s a ludicrous statement — the Internet is merely a medium, not anything homogeneous — the complaint is valid in large, and vocal, parts of the online world. It’s odd that in this age of loosened borders and individualism, online you can be drowned out with boos and hisses just by stating an off-center position. Sure, the idyllic promise of the Internet is that it can bring you news from around the world and expose you to people and things you never would have seen otherwise, but in reality many of us use it simply as an echo chamber.

With all the filters, communities, forums, and moderated comment sections, you never need hear an opposing viewpoint ever again. Web site forums that used to be interesting and lively can quickly turn knee-jerk and unified, with those possessing quirky senses of humor or an interesting take on things shamed into never commenting again. (There’s an entire blog devoted to former readers of Jezebel.com who were shouted off the comments for not maintaining their very particular brand of womanhood.) Complaint, criticism, and argument are less and less welcome, until a minor correction is met with unleashed fury.

It creates a warped worldview, as you can see in reading some pro-anorexia Web sites. (Or better yet, don’t. You probably don’t have the stomach for them.) But if you shut yourself off from every contrary word, it’s easy to start making declarative sentences regarding what is “good.” Not just for yourself, but for everyone else. Of course this has always existed — politicians and clergy and philosophers have always made sweeping statements about the best way to live — but it really flourishes online. Vegan communities declare that meat eaters are murderers. The child-free belittle the “breeders.” State an opinion and someone with a blog, a Twitter account, or a forum membership will accuse you of attacking their lifestyle or their marriage or Truth Itself, until a chorus of voices converge and start calling for your head to be bashed in with a rock. Not that I know from experience or anything.

This online world should be a mosaic but it is often giant blocks of black and white, right/wrong, good/bad, with no thought about what any of these ideas actually means. As we spend more and more time in isolation — headphones on during our commute, stuck in cubicles at work, watching television alone at night — the online world is becoming our main form of communication. That does not bode well for the future of human interrelations. Philosopher Richard Kraut explores these black and white regions in his new book What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being, pushing the words “good” and “bad” so far into the abstract it’s amazing they make any sense after you’re finished reading. But what he does is try to pin down a definition of goodness, working through a history of philosophy in order to determine whether such defining is even possible. Whether you think this is fascinating or totally useless probably depends on your ability to weather passages like the following:

A good cook must know about how to go right and avoid going wrong in the preparation of food. But a good person — that is, a person who is “morally worthy,” as Rawls puts it — must know something about which actions are morally right and which are morally wrong. By making this distinction between two different meanings of “right,” or two different kinds of rightness, we can make it clear that there is no contradiction in saying that when someone burned the bread he did something wrong, even though he did nothing that was wrong.

The entire book is like that, but it can be mined for interesting ideas. Which is good: to attempt to connect with others, with all the potential for pain that brings, or to rid yourself of the desire for human understanding? You’re less likely to be hurt with the latter, and if you do not care for the opinions of others it’s certainly easier to focus on your own work. The downside is that you have the potential to become a sociopath on talk radio or on a blog, not giving a second thought to who you hurt.

As painful as the book is to read, it gives us a useful working definition of “good”: that which causes a subject to flourish. That is not always the obvious. Sacrifice, discipline, and periods of pain are not pleasant, and yet they can lead to flourishing. After all, you wouldn’t say that the heirs and heiresses who clutter the sidewalks outside clubs, leaving their underwear lord knows where, lead lives free of all struggle, but they could never be described as “flourishing.” Neither are the people who seal themselves off from contradiction. When you have a forum full of girls sharing their two-digit caloric intake and pictures of their self-harm, all supporting each other in their destruction, it’s hard to know what normal is. Kraut’s definition of good requires a person to use their entire capacity for feeling and doing, and not just their capacity for pleasure, or consensus.

http://www.thesmartset.com/files/Images/Daily/Bookslut/ID_BS_CRISP_GOOD_CO_001.jpg

Then why are we so bad at figuring out what is good for us? Part of the reason is that we look outside ourselves for confirmation, when in fact, “what is good for S depends a great deal upon facts about S,” as Kraut puts it. It’s easier to follow someone else’s rules than to be the shunned one, banned from the virtual people you considered friends. Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor argue that another problem is how we confuse what might give us a cheap hit of pleasure — sex, a bout of righteous anger — with what really does bring us long-term enjoyment and other benefits: kindness. Long relegated to those virtues that seem about as appealing as eating cardboard for the fiber, they argue that being kind creates social bonds, benefits the surrounding world, and, yes, is enjoyable in and of itself. Even believing that humans are hardwired for kindness — and not that competition rules all — could affect everything from simple interactions to national policy on eldercare and the health system.

They write in On Kindness that while it’s always been a philosophical quandary as to whether man’s nature was genuinely kind or selfish, the cynics won out and convinced us that kindness is the clothing civilization forces us to wear, and that deep down we are all wild beasts. Instead of being the cooperative generous beings that primatologists and anthropologists have suggested we are, the argument goes, we need religion and laws to keep us from slicing each other open on a regular basis. Kindness, then, was relegated to your Christian duty, to be done as an item on a checklist. This is Hobbes’s idea, of course, put forth in Leviathan and his famous line about natural life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But it has been very influential in religion and science, too, as anyone swayed by Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene knows.

Phillips and Taylor argue instead that we are all born with a capacity for kindness, and for the urge to exercise it. Of course the downside of kindness is the vulnerability it creates, both to the person being kind, and the target of the kindness. It can be unpleasant, and there is a prevailing notion that vulnerability and kindness are signs of weakness — for a long time kindness was seen as the territory of weak-minded women, while competition, brutality, and selfishness were the powers of the superior man. Today independence and self-sufficiency are the true virtues, and the interdependence that comes with a kind nature is looked down upon.

And yet when have humans ever craved kindness quite so much? Phillips and Taylor write, “The modern Western adult’s fear about himself is that, to put it crudely as possible, his hatred is stronger than his love; that there is, in the British psychoanalyst Ernest Jones’s words, ‘much less love in the world than there appears to be.’” The bully who will relentlessly attack the target of his rage from the safety of a blog is often the same person railing against the lack of human decency today. Without opening up to kindness, and practicing it themselves, they will never know the particular strength that comes with interconnectivity and their own capacity for goodness.

Really what the kindness and goodness of these books comes down to is understanding. To adopt their viewpoint takes respect for people’s vulnerabilities and empathy. And kindness causes us to flourish, using Kraut’s definition of the term meaning an integration of our full potential for happiness and growth. Phillips and Taylor write, “[K]indness, fundamentally, makes life worth living; and… everything that is against kindness is an assault on our hope.” These are old-fashioned ideals, but our new technological age is crying out for them. • 8 July 2009

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jessa Crispin is editor and founder of Bookslut.com. She currently resides in Berlin.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article07080901.aspx  



22 Jul 2009 @ 20:47 by jmarc : HH on Ethics
in our time. http://www.dalailama.com/page.269.htm  


14 Aug 2009 @ 02:00 by yomero @98.160.179.64 : yawn!
just go away already..  


15 Aug 2009 @ 14:27 by jazzolog : Do You Suppose This Guy Is The Serial
Spammer, exposing himself at last? Anonymity can be so difficult.

At any rate Mr. Mero---or may I call you Yo---if we look up into the Milky Way, we see a billion stars. And beyond them, thanks to Hubble, we see 400 billion galaxies, each with more billions of stars...and probably trillions of planets orbiting. May there not be room then for a single Log, that really isn't doing anything these days, to sink slowly and eventually to the bottom of the pile?  



15 Aug 2009 @ 17:03 by a-d : I don't think "This Guy"....
...is a guy at all, Jazzo!... I think it is the Classic NCN-B---, who always gives us all ORDERS what and when to think, feel see say --and of course-- all the "What Not To's"" to us also!... I let you guess. *!* ( ..and besides, HOW DARE you OBJECT to her discret Command to you here?!? SHE , with god -given PRIVLIGE told you to pull an old rug over you and get lost... how dare you not follow HER ORDERS!?!?.... Phuih on you! ;o! ;)  


16 Aug 2009 @ 08:33 by jazzolog : Hmmmm, As Bushman Would Say
You may be right...although I'm 7 months removed from the ongoing wars at New Uncivilized Network, so I don't have a clue as to who's who anymore---and I guess I never did. That's the big yawn for me. Anyway, "yamera" has a gentler ring to it---or is that just more male chauvanism coming out? Thanks, a-d...and Peace.  


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