Collected Poetry
VOLUME FIVE 
Original materials - Copyright © 2011 by Gary Bachlund All international rights reserved
"Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime." Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974)
Fools and an ass - paraphrase of a Wilhelm Busch poem
Standing before a house's door
Was a donkey, donkey-eared, what's more,
Which chewed over a bundle of hay,
Pensive, thoughtful on that day.
Then came along Neanderthals,
Two snotty little know-it-alls,
Who ridiculed the donkey there
With detestable words, all quite unfair.
And why they did this was quite clear,
To aggravate it did they jeer. -
But the old gray beast with experience keen
Turned its back upon that scene,
Remaining mute but with some class
It turned to show those fools its ass.See: Ein Esel-lied (2010)
"With each passing day, the Occupy Wall Street movement is picking up steam. The growing roster of A-list supporters at home and from around the globe is impressive, if that’s the right word. Iran’s chief mad mullah, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, loves the protests, the government of China applauds them, and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is positively gung-ho. Naturally, the American Nazi Party favors the lusty attacks on the 'Judeo-capitalist banksters' while the Socialist Party USA and the Communist Party USA are happy passengers on the anti-Wall Street bandwagon. Oh, and Barack Obama hearts the movement, too." In "The job destroyers," by Michael Goodwin, New York Post, 19 October 2011
When Nazis and Commies and presidents too
Lie down with dogs, the old saw rings true:
They'll rise up itching with fleas biting you.
When mullahs afire see things as you do,
Perhaps it is time to think such things through.
What does such agreement portend and construe?
Lie down with dogs and get up with fleas.
It's so true, one can prove it with ease,
Hearts all a flower over obvious sleaze.
When Nazis and Commies and presidents all
Lie down with dogs, the old saw stands tall
For truth that the dogs all itch for a brawl.
Envoi: "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish." Euripides (484 BC - 406 BC)
Addendum: "Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946)
Addendum: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180)
Knee cheese - sum non sense
Knee cheese' antique rice
Was one long loud device.
The willful hour's itchy home
Fuss spoke sorrows thirsting spice.
Go did dead, dead went he did
Touring's no-bid kid.
Odd was Fred, sum folk declared,
Years sped past: pro came to quid.
Knee cheese went bananas, say,
And has no bananas, not to day.
Soup or man, he had no plan;
Death took not his holiday.
Odd was Fred, some flags have waved,
As years went fast, he wasn't saved.
Knee cheese reaches peaches;
In pommes in pros he teaches.
But then he's wilted, sour,
A plucked dead flower bleaches.
Odd was Fred, the times declared,
But times went fast, tired, bared.
Fried, rich knee cheese,
On his idle's lawn,
Over, done, the yawning
Pretend to pawn and fawn.
Knee cheese, nachos, nuts to you,
The soup's ermine is justice stew.
Wouldn't you like to have some cash?
"African leaders gave former French president Jacques Chirac and his prime minister Dominique de Villepin briefcases full of cash, notably to finance election campaigns, a former aide alleged on Sunday. Villepin, a potential candidate in next year's presidential election, denied the allegations, which claim to shed new light on the French political establishment's often shady relationship with former colonies in Africa. Robert Bourgi, a lawyer with a network of African contacts who advised Chirac and Villepin before changing camps in 2005 to aid now President Nicolas Sarkozy, made the allegations in France's Journal du Dimanche newspaper. Bourgi said he 'took part in handing over several briefcases to Jacques Chirac in person, at Paris city hall' when the future president was mayor in the 1980s and 1990s. 'There was never less than five million francs (more than 750,000 euros). It could go up to 15 million,' Bourgi said, giving a detailed account of how Chirac would offer him beer while allegedly putting away the bundles of cash. 'I remember the first handing over of funds in Villepin's presence. The money came from Marshal Mobutu (Sese Seko), president of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo)." In "African leaders gave Chirac 'briefcases of cash' ," France 24, 11 September 2011
Wouldn't you like to have some cash?'
Briefcases full could fill your stash?
Handle it all with the usual panache --
Add a little élan, and political dash.
That's how you'd get your bit of cash.
Shouldn't funds be flowing your way?
Some satchels full could have their say,
Through public halls into pay-to-play
Not often seen nor on display.
That's how funds could flow your way.
At highest levels, in loftiest spheres,
That is where funding frankly appears.
Gallic, European or African peers?
Asian or American seers?
The same behavior oft adheres.
If you'd gather up a lot of dough,
The public trust's the place to go,
As long as no one will ever know
The channels through which your funds did flow.
That's how one lifts a pile of dough.
"Getting inside the White House was easy for billionaire investor George Kaiser, who made multiple visits to the White House and appeared at White House events next to administration officials. One of the prime investors in the green energy company Solyndra, Kaiser put quite a few tokens in the White House turnstile. As the Daily Caller reports, Kaiser himself donated $53,000 to Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign, divided between Obama for America and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. A world-class bundler, Kaiser also raised $50,000 to $100,000 from others for the senator's campaign. Despite a warning from Solyndra's own accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers that the company's business model was suspect and raised "substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern," President Obama visited the company and gave it a glowing endorsement as a government-picked winner alongside electric cars and high-speed rail." In "SolarGate," Investors Business Daily, 6 September 2011
The classic scheme,
The kick back scheme,
Kicks cash back,
And always upstream.
The classic dream
In such a regime
Funnels cash out,
To flow back cream.
They skim that cream,
And repeat the theme,
As this defines
Their Jurassic scheme.
One side plays it;
The other does too.
If you pony up the cash,
They'll play with you.
See: Bankrupt green and Cash flow - a parody on Cole Porter's classic song, "True Love"
"Habsburg Spain defaulted on all or part of its debt 14 times between 1557 and 1696 and also succumbed to inflation due to a surfeit of New World silver. Prerevolutionary France was spending 62 percent of royal revenue on debt service by 1788. The Ottoman Empire went the same way: interest payments and amortization rose from 15 percent of the budget in 1860 to 50 percent in 1875. And don't forget the last great English-speaking empire. By the interwar years, interest payments were consuming 44 percent of the British budget, making it intensely difficult to rearm in the face of a new German threat. Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next." In "An Empire at Risk," Niall Ferguson, in The Daily Beast, Nov 27, 2009
De fault in de plan be simple.
Fake radicals juz be crooks,
Worried dat real radicals
Figur' dez been cookin' books.
De fault is juz a madder o when
Fatal 'rithmetic exposes de decline
An once agin juz like befo'
The same ol faults combine.
De fault in de plan be people
Dat siphon off juz for ideals
Like me and mine an more fer me
In the same ole backroom deals.
De fault is interest payments,
Dey buy nothin' at all.
Dey pay for yesterday binges
After Peter has done robbed Paul.
De fault in de plan be fatal,
Each pyramid's made from debt.
Given the lessons o history
It seems dat de brightest forget.
Envoi: "Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver." Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
See: Economics 101
"The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. 'As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,' said Sanders. 'This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.'" In "The Fed Audit," Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator for Vermont web site, 21 July 2011
Bernie got it right,
Or maybe it was left
To others who would hide
A case of hefty theft.
Socially the fat cats
Are socialistically okay
While unimportant little chumps
Have little they can say.
The upper crusts' crust
Is hardened through and through
And privileges amasses
But not to little you.
You gotta be a cat so fat
You can't be said to fail,
And so the fattest cats around
Get bucketing by the bail.
Bernie sees you're on your own,
Because that is the game
That's the kind of hardball played
By the fattest in the fat cat game.
Bernie got it right,
And sadly it was left
To single voices braying
About this scheme so deft.
See: Anti-capitalism struggles, also Socialists love money
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, in his Commencement address delivered at Stanford University and published in the Stanford Report, 12 June 12, 2005.
I'll be dead soon enough;
There's time to time away.
Until that time, time is
To keep life underway.
There are no reasons
To follow not one's heart,
For it was there, is there,
Will be, where all dreams start.
We are dead soon enough;
Ours are lives to live away.
Until those days, times are
To toil, to love and play.
See: A song setting of Paul Laurence Dunbar's text, Death - (2012)
Dumb cluck chickens
come home to roost,
while all sorts of pigs
learn to fly.
The horses of varying
differing colors
make asses of themselves,
eye to eye.
It's raining cats
as it's raining dogs,
and both tigers and zebras
change stripes.
Birds of a hawking
flock together,
as cows jump the moon
hunting snipes.
Lions lay down
with their legs of lamb
while something
has gotten your goat.
The whole shebang
seems a green-eyed croc,
yet minks are vermin,
and ermine are stoat.
Horsing around
while dumb as an ox
in lumberingwoodlands ablaze,
One finds one's self
fallen off of one's shelf,
wandering out
in a wondering daze.
What does it all mean,
all this and all that,
when all in between
plays rat-a-tat tat?
Why should each critter
be bitter and skitter
as skitters away
the pitter-pat rat?
Poor as a church mouse
while rich as a king,
building glass houses
as hurled stones sing,
You're up, then you're down,
yet you bitterly cling.
What does it all mean,
your ring-a-ding ding?
It means that you're mean
as often as you're nice.
It means that you're nice
at double the price.
It means that most things
are best flavored with spice,
and means imprecisely
that all must suffice.
Cash flow - a parody on Cole Porter's classic song, "True Love"
"A solar energy company that intends to file bankruptcy received $535 million in backing from the federal government and has a cozy history with Democrats and the Obama administration, campaign finance records show. Shareholders and executives of Solyndra, a green energy company producing solar panels, fundraised for and donated to the Obama administration to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser, a key Obama backer who raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the president’s election campaign, is one of Solyndra’s primary investors." In "Bankrupt solar company with fed backing has cozy ties to Obama admin," by C. J. Ciaramella, The Daily Caller, 1 September 2011
Cozy, private,
Moneyed fellows swapping funding --
Living far above par...
Oh, how clever we are.
You take from me as I take from you,
Cash flow, cash flow.
The cash, it comes from the treasury,
That funds us with its dough.
For you and I have a game idyllic,
A game quite simple, not imbecilic,
As you to give to me as I give to you
Cash from others. Who?
Yes, you and I play a game sagacious,
With rules quite canny, yet audacious,
That you give to me as I give to you,
Cash. Don't misconstrue.
I give to you as you give to me
Cash flow, cash flow.
And on and on it should always be,
Cash as quid pro quo.See: The Classic Scheme
Justice - depending on the meaning of the word
"'The terrorism of the Red Army Faction (or Baader-Meinhof gang, which bombed political targets in the 1970s) started with quote-unquote 'just' arson,' he told broadcaster N24. 'For this reason there is a danger that the violence could one day target people.'" In "Car Burnings are a 'Precursor to Terrorism'", by Florian Gathmann, Der Speigel, 18 August 2011
Just arson is just desserts;
Just crime justice perverts.
Just is such a mealy word;
Just is so often just absurd.
Just burn bright, just delight;
Justice comes to burn. Ignite!
Just is justice when it's not;
Justice just had just forgot.
Just mine, just yours,
Just his, just wars.
Just ours, not theirs,
Just wordy snares.See: Left is Right, as Right is Left , and a song setting by Paul Laurence Dunbar's text, for a far better definition, Justice - (2010)
Pigs don't fly.
Flies don't grunt.
Words oft lie,
Back to front.
Words can fly
Back and forth,
Spreading lies,
South, as north.
Something's lost
In that mist,
Meaning crossed,
Milled as grist.
If pigs flew,
Worlds would change.
All things could
Rearrange.
Until then
Pigs just rut.
Such is life,
Snout to butt.
"Let me order my thoughts to make this as brief as I can.... And so language, the ability not only to master the ability to put your ideas into words succinctly on a platform to communicate ideas to your own people, it is even more impressive when you have the capacity to do that and communicate your ideas, especially as future business and political and moral leaders of the world in the language of the people to whom you are speaking." Vice-President Joe Biden (D), at Sichuan University, China, as reported by CNS News, August 24, 2011 at 5:08 pm.
Suck sinked long;
He belly upped,
Brief blabbed on,
Thoughts corrupt.
Ordered language
Lost its way;
Words piled high
Had their say.
Bee-eff-dee
Vee-pee's spoke;
Grammar knots
Make the joke.
Impressive is
Not quite so.
Succint short?
Just ain't Joe.See: Circle you are
Left is Right, as Right is Left
"Horst Mahler was a leader of the German radical left in the 1960s and '70s. Now he's a member of the radical right, sitting in jail for denying the Holocaust. But he's reportedly verified reports that he informed for Communist spies in the '60s." In "Leftist Terrorist Turned Neo-Nazi Says Was Stasi Informant Too," in Der Spiegel, August 2, 2011
Left is Right, as Right is Left;
The whole then is of sense bereft
As Right is Left and Left is Right,
When both allege one truth quite bright.
Left is Right, as Right is Left;
Vocabulary seems oh so deft
When Right is Left and Left is Right,
But I prefer a different fight.
Left is Right; vice versa too;
The whole is just a wordy stew
To make the vicious radical
Seem not so very typical.
And yet it is, and Left is Right
Flows into Right is Left -- a sleight
Of hand and word, rhetorical craft
To make one half seem oh so daft.
Which is your game? Your choice? Your pick?
Be you among the Left so thick?
Be you among the Right so wrong?
Which is your favorite Right-Left song?
Left is Right, as Right is Left;
The whole was ever of sense bereft,
But dear to the hearts the many folk
Who think such words are not a joke.
Radical Left and radical Right
Join their hands in one fine fight
To clutter faux images of opposites
And camouflage their fist-high blitz.
Choose the one? The other? Which?
Either choice is bait-and-switch
For both are brothers, sisters too.
Each one demands, "Which one are you?"
Neither? Such offends their scheme;
Left and Right require you dream
In polar opposites that never were,
In words intended just to blur.
Left is Right, as Right is Left;
The whole then is of sense bereft
As Right is Left and Left is Right,
And both strike out in rage and spite.
Envoi: "It is important to note that this study concentrates on those individuals and groups who have actually perpetuated violence and is not a comprehensive analysis of the political causes with which some far-right extremists identify. While the ability to hold and appropriately articulate diverse political views is an American strength, extremists committing acts of violence in the name of those causes undermine the freedoms that they purport to espouse." In "Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right," by Arie Perliger, Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, 15 January 2013
See: Justice and also We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon - a Western poem
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon
when everybody wants to ride?
Whose gonna heft the weight and tug
when so many sit inside?
Whose gonna labor when labor won't?
Whose gonna toil when others don't?
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon?
It's time now. You decide.
Whose gonna pay for welfare funding
when everybody wants their check?
Whose gonna fills the coffers with money
when half the folks shrug? Oh, heck.
Whose gonna stoke the gravy train's boilers
When everybody waits for other toilers?
Whose gonna shovel the coal from the tenderwhen the gravy train is a wreck?
Whose gonna swim in raging waters
when whirlpools pull them down?
Whose gonna save someone from drowning
when insolvency floods the town?
Whose gonna show the way to repair things?
Whose gonna cheer when the fat lady sings?
Whose gonna float the ark in the flooding?
Where is a Noah when so many are a clown?
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon
when everybody wants to ride?
Whose gonna wear the bridle and harness
and feel the whip on his hide?
Whose gonna lead when leaders can't?
Whose gonna huff and puff and pant?
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon?
It's time now. You decide.
Envoi: "Britain cannot possibly afford its welfare state for much longer. Most people do not realise that state handouts (£207 billion a year) mop up every penny we pay in income tax (£155 billion a year). As we are more or less bankrupt as a country, such generosity is not noble but plain idiotic. Yet we will not stop doing it. Change is politically impossible. The new political elite, who hope to buy votes and power through handing out other people’s money, will not stop doing so until that money runs out." In "Britain can no long afford to pay the extortionate cost of the welfare state," by Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail UK, 13 January 2013
Addendum: "'Our social system in France alone has accumulated more than 100 billion euros in debt, and it just isn't viable anymore,' he says. 'Today it survives thanks to one thing: France's AAA credit rating and our ability to keep borrowing to pay for the social programs.'" In "Can The European Welfare State Survive?" by Eleanor Beardsley, NPR, 14 July 2010
Addendum: "Close to six in 10 children in Detroit live in poverty, a 65 percent increase in just over a decade, findings released by Data Driven Detroit found. An exodus of families with children that led to the city's 25 percent population loss between 2000 and 2010 resulted in Detroit's most vulnerable being left behind, the 2012 State of Detroit's Child report published this week said." In "Study: 60 percent of Detroit kids live in poverty" by Serena Maria Daniels, The Detroit News, 25 January 2013
Adden-dumber: "The debt crisis has been exacerbated by chronic legislative borrowing of pension assets to cover daily expenses. It’s like a family borrowing from its home equity every month to buy food." In "Illinois has a debt crisis, not a pension crisis," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 December 2012
Adden-dumbest: "Gov. Jerry Brown's new budget presented a plan to pay back nearly $28 billion owed, but various sources estimate the state's debt at hundreds of billions." In "California's debt still a heavy cloud over state's future," by Evan Halper and Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times, 13 January 2013
"Pretty darn fucked. I've been hanging around Tim Geithner too long." A response to late night television humorist Bill Maher, asking in a television show segment, "How fucked are we?" in "Former Obama Economic Adviser on Downgrade," Christina Romer, former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, August 2011.
Pretty darn fucked,
Chunk chicken clucked
As a cocky rooster preened.
Such clever words
Are much like turds
In a barnyard never cleaned.
Pretty darn fucked,
This hen's product
Which she'd laid, and then weaned.
Her clever chat
Weighed what she'd shat,
And yet then rude demeaned.
Pretty darn fucked
Was always bucked
Up as cackles careened.
Her clever stance
Was proven askance,
And plain sense was contravened.
Envoi: "It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose your own." Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)
See: Debt, and Too much debt, and also below: Kick the can
"We have learnt from the financial crisis that one should not place too much faith in financial vehicles with three-letter acronyms. But that is what we are doing with this European equivalent of a late-period subprime mortgage CDO. We are not just 'kicking' any old 'can down the road' any more. This is a can of explosives.'" Wolfgang Münchau, Associate Editor of the Financial Times. July 2011
Let's kick the can down the road;
It's always seemed to work before.
Procrastinate, prevaricate;
That's what such tidy words are for.
If that kicked can takes another hit,
It can roll along some further bit.
You'll have bought yourself another day;
Before it blows up, walk away.
Or kick that can, as you've before,
And take a chance; the risks ignore.
Explosives are as explosives go;
As things stand now, something's sure to blow.
All those bright little boys and girls
Are spinning round in tightening swirls.
Envoi: "Debt defaults seem to cause banking crises, and not vice versa, but we found weak evidence to suggest the presence of default-driven credit crunches in domestic markets. Finally, defaults seem to shorten the life expectancy of governments and officials in charge of the economy in a significant way." In "The Costs of Sovereign Default" by Eduardo Borensztein and Ugo Panizza, IMF Working Paper, WP/08/238
See above: Pretty darn fucked
Government numbers - just words
"The numbers the government is using have nothing to do with reality," insisted Amal Albaghdadi, a Rabat native and organiser with the February 20th movement. "I have come out to say enough with poverty, discrimination, and lack of freedoms. We want real democracy." In "Morocco: 'We want real democracy'," by Sarah Lazare, Al Jazeera, 04 Jul 2011
Government numbers are cheerily good,
Massaged and peddled in your neighborhood.
Government numbers tell their tall tale,
But now tall telling is getting stale.
Government numbers are oft unreal
Because they're intended to seal a deal.
Government numbers smile at you,
Their hands picking pockets' for revenue.
Government numbers are sometimes bad,
Which, to tell the truth, is rather sad.
Government numbers cherry pick,
Which is that same old political trick.
Government numbers are much like words,
To move a people as one moves herds.
All is good in government,
As proven by each pilfered cent.
Envoi: "There are cash-strapped governments and there are broke governments. And then there's Zimbabwe, which, after paying last week's government salaries, has just $217 left in the bank. No, we didn't forget any zeroes to the end of that figure. Zimbabwe, the country that's home to some of the world's largest platinum and diamond reserves, literally has the same financial standing as a 14-year-old girl after a really good birthday party." In "Zimbabwe Is Down to Its Last $217," by Adam Clark Estes, The Atlantic Wire, 29 January 2013
See: Ratio
"Operation Board Games has exposed what I've been calling the bipartisan Illinois Combine, in which powerful Democrats work with powerful Republicans to gorge from the public trough and call it legal." In "Imagine the thoughts in Blagojevich's veins," by John Kass, Chicago Tribune, June 28, 2011
Politicians, let's us all gorge?
Rod said the game was legal.
Perhaps we clever all can forge
Ways to soar like an eagle
Over the debt racked up by us
Which someone else should pay.
What a finessed stratagem
To pocket more cash away;
Combine the parties' power balls
In a reeling, rolling game
And watch the suckers, what befalls
As you say they bear the blame.Politicians, let's us all gorge?
George thought the game was legal.
Gorgeous was each legal scam
As long as each did last,
Then? Sacrifice one goat and scram
With stealth to vanish fast.
Politicians, let's us all gorge?
Governors played the game as legal.
Now prisoners, their own chains forge
A cell not high nor regal.
The biggest crime was getting caught,
For so have politicians often thought.Ill in noise, sick and shocked,
As verdicts are read aloud,
Once-soaring politicians squawked
To join the convicts' crowd.
Their saddest crime was getting caught,
Which is what their game has wrought.
"Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis. Although this model is often named after Hegel, he himself never used that specific formulation. Hegel ascribed that terminology to Kant. Carrying on Kant's work, Fichte greatly elaborated on the synthesis model, and popularized it." from Wikipedia on Hegelian dialectic.
Oh yes, oh no, and synthesize.
Something lives between truths and lies.
Thesis rubs against antithesis
As the path to every synthesis?
Oh yes! Oh no! Or maybe so?
Between north and south, come on, let's go.
Between right and wrong lies maybe's kiss,
Between evil and good lies logic's hiss.
Forging thesis and its antithesis
Into some middle way is oft amiss.
Hegel, Kant and Fichte fished
In faulty thinking they published.
Synthesize whatever you like,
You'll never synthesize a look-alike
To simple truths without opposite,
For dialectic is its own hypocrite.
"But these so-called flash mobs have taken a more aggressive and raucous turn here as hundreds of teenagers have been converging downtown for a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize property. " In "Mobs Are Born as Word Grows by Text Message" by Ian Urbina, New York Times, March 24, 2010
"Running of the bulls" is bullshit rare
And trivializes violence in the public square.
Gosh, "running of the bulls" is ritual now?
Like assault and vandalism are the cat's meow?
Downtown rituals, it must be understood,
Are cultural expressions of some neighborhood?
"Running of the bulls" is zoologically dumb,
For these are all jackasses, as a rule of thumb.
Ah, journalism paints such pictures as this
Which proves such words are snakes that hiss.
"Running of the bulls" is with bullshit replete
As a metaphor for violence on a public street.
"The most visible leader of the world’s green movement cannot live a life of conspicuous consumption, spewing far more carbon into the atmosphere than almost all of those he castigates for their wasteful ways. Mr. Top Green can’t also be a carbon pig." In "The Failure of Al Gore," by Walter Russell Mead, 24 June 2011
Mister Big Top Green is a carbon belching pig,
Another princely chuck in a everyman wig.
Conspicuous consumption in life lived large
As this sinner blasts sinners for sin as his charge.
Castigate, rebuke, and read the riot act;
Then rake in honoraria per each green contract.
Red remains a bloody, worldwide stain;
Now green comes along to sing the same refrain.
Mister Big Top Green brings his circus to your town,
If you do not sing his tune, he'll say you are a clown.
The past is prologue but the future is bleak
When green is the only approved color of the week.
See: Albert Gore
"Shovel-ready was not as... uh... shovel-ready as we expected." Barak Hussein Obama, Jr., 14 June 2011
Shoveling coal or shoveling shit,
The miner and farmer work hard with it.
The others who shovel shit your way
Are most politicians in any day.
Coal burns bright; and the harvest grows.
This the miner, like the farmer, knows.
Political shit burns to no good end,
And is not the farmers' nor the miners' friend.
Shovel-ready not shovel-ready?
There's a logic not quite steady.
Three years after shoveling out the door,
The cries go up, "Let's shovel more!"
Let's shovel coal mines closed, full stop.
Let's shovel regulations onto the farmer's crop.
Let's shovel and dig and dig some more,
Until the hole's a reservoir
For shoveling more onto piles of shit
Makes the whole just a cesspooled pit.
Collect the miners and farmer folk,
And tell them it was all just a little joke.
Envoi: "Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic 'stimulus' (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately? In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved. Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck." In "Obama Continues to Violate His Own ‘Stimulus’ Law by Not Releasing Quarterly Reports," by Jeffrey H. Anderson, The Weekly Standard, 26 January 2013
See below: Thick as thieves - an ode to goad
"Through this sleight-of-hand accounting, the White House can conveniently ignore Bush’s loan, but even the Treasury Department admits that U.S. taxpayers will not recoup about $1.3 billion of the entire $12.5 billion investment when all is said and done. The White House justifies not counting the Bush money because, it says, that money was completely spent when Obama was making a tough political decision on whether to extend another loan. In other words, a decision to do nothing at the time would have resulted in the immediate loss of the $4 billion that Bush had extended. This is chicanery. Under the president’s math, Chrysler paid back 100 percent of Obama’s loan and less than 70 percent of Bush’s loan." In "President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout," by Glen Kessler, Washington Post, 7 June 2011.
This is chicanery, posts Washington now,
Saying phony accounting is now somehow
A truth that is lying by fits as by starts,
Because the factual truth is quite off the charts.
This is chicanery, through and through,
Because political truth is not very true;
When all is all said and all is all done,
A president will say, 'twas all jest in fun.
Chicanery doesn't quite square with the facts,
Yet media matters to launch their attacks.
Washington Post's chicanery smacks
Those truth-tellers, truth-sellers and amnesiacs.
Phony accounting accounts for phonies,
Who celebrate in party ceremonies
Which trot out the tricks like circus ponies
All ridden by the parties' political cronies.
When the post out of Washington notes this aloud,
The cries rise up from the political crowd,
In hopes that such cries will confuse and becloud
That chicanery's chicanery, and chicanery's allowed.
This is chicanery, posts Washington chat,
Because the truth is other than what has been shat.
Sleight-of-hand tricks are to fool those who drool
For something quite like the cess in their pool.
Thick as thieves - an ode to goad
"What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week in response to a court order for a Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, my bad: It wasn’t an interest-free loan; make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages were being slapped with interest rates of more than 25 percent." In "Geithner and Goldman, Thick as Thieves," by Robert Scheer, The Nation, 1 June 2011
Thick as thieves, the saying goes,
Through thick and thin, the record shows,
Flimmed a Peter and then flammed a Paul,
As records suppressed now recall.
Little us folks in little us towns
Pay high rates with little frowns,
While fat cats slice the pie themselves,
As into hidden records a court now delves.
Think yourself special, Mister Average Joe?
Think yourself loyal, Missus Bedfellow?
It seems the special folks are just not you,
Because enormous privileges to them accrue.
Your mortgage rates, your credit card rate?
Are they higher that one-hundredth percent? Wait!
There must be some reason, one should grasp,
Why the upper crust rates so, if we'd but grasp
That thieves are thick in the highest ranks,
And so the little folks must give them thanks
That the golden elite play their little golden pranks
And pass the bucks to the golden men's banks.
Envoi:
The Open Left raged, "an unholy alliance,"
Big business plus big government reliance
On each other to feather their nest,
Which is nothing more than financial incest.See: The Classic Scheme, also Bankrupt green
What the hell - depletion concretion
"The Obama administration said Wednesday that the government will lose about $14 billion in taxpayer funds from the bailout of the U.S. auto industry." In "Govt to lose $14B of auto bailout funds," Associated Press, 1 June 2011
They only lost billions so, what the hell?
It's only your money, as time will tell.
The they who lost it have lost your cash,
But, what the hell, it's just a crash.
Losing can be a profitable game,
But not for the public, which gets the blame.
Up shit creek? Well at least it's dry.
So, what the hell, it's just stimuli
That's losing billions, as the losers admit,
Which proves they've been shoveling shit.
You, a double-you, triple-you plans
Are seeing that shit's now hitting their fans.
Envoi:
“If you aren’t getting something for nothing,"
Huey quipped, "you’re not getting your fair share.”
So stick to rhetorical frothing
Because numbers are so very unfair.
"Q. Did President Obama once say of Republicans: 'If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.' / A: Yes. Obama made those remarks at a fundraiser in Philadelphia during the 2008 presidential campaign. He was paraphrasing a quote from the 1987 mob movie 'The Untouchables.'" FactCheck.org, 14 January 2011
Come!
Unity!
Active!
Fist!
Come!
Unity!
Active!
Fist!
Come!
Unity!
Active!
Fist!
Come!
Unity!
Active!
Fist!
Fist!
Fist!
Fist!
Gun!
Gun!
Gun!
Envoi: "Never have Americans heard a president tell his constituents, just four days before a national presidential election, tell Americans: 'Voting is the best revenge!' It’s true. It happened at the Springfield High School in Springfield, Ohio. The notion that the president of the United States would even think – let alone verbalize – that the nation should go to the polls and vote to get revenge is incredibly outlandish." In "Opinion: President Obama Says Vote For Revenge," by Scott Paulson, CBS News, Chicago, 5 November 2012 [ 1 ]
Addendum: "President Barack Obama says he has not only fired a gun, but has done it regularly. 'In fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,' the president told The New Republic." In "Obama goes skeet shooting 'all the time'" by Donovan Slack, Politico, 27 January 2013
Addendum: "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible." George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946)
Addendum: "The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning." Roland Barthes (1915-1980) [ 2 ]
Addendum: "...plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose." Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in "Les Guêpes," January 1849.
[ 1 ] "I always thought it was the Archie Bunkers of the world, the right-wingers of world, who were more resistant and more closed-minded about hearing the other side,” he said. “In fact, what I have learned is, in a very painful way — and I can open this shirt and show you the scars and the knife wounds — is that it is big media institutions who are identifiably more liberal to left-leaning who will shut you down, stab you and kill you, fire you, if they perceive that you are not telling the story in the way that they want it told." In "Juan Williams: Liberal media will ‘shut you down, stab you, kill you, fire you’ if you disagree," an interview with Ginni Thomas, The Daily Caller, 23 February 2013.
[ 2 ] As repetition and "always the same meaning," one finds this written by Marx directed at Germany in the mid-1800s but with a change of name, rather applicable to today. "Criticism dealing with this content is criticism in a hand-to-hand fight, and in such a fight the point is not whether the opponent is a noble, equal, interesting opponent, the point is to strike him. The point is not to let the Germans have a minute for self-deception and resignation. The actual pressure must be made more pressing by adding to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made more shameful by publicizing it. Every sphere of German society must be shown as the partie honteuse of German society: these petrified relations must be forced to dance by singing their own tune to them! The people must be taught to be terrified at itself in order to give it courage." Quote of Marx, published in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 7 & 10 February 1844 in Paris. As an additional reflection on this and the constant chant of seemingly apocalyptic forecasts and noisy news, see: All the news is screaming.
Pogrom - after Klabund
On Sunday in the cathedral one whispers to some,
On Monday's streets are set in motion events to come,
On Tuesday people chatter and splatter race hatred noisome,
On Wednesday it rushes and rustles aloud: Pogrom!
On Thursday one is convinced, renewed, and so it grows:
The guilty Jews are the cause of all of Russia's woes!
Up to now we've been patient, they say, goodness knows.
(And for this more vodka into our people flows....)
On Friday is found that first corpse, resurrected,
One stabs in the ribs the Jewish curse suspected,
With sturdiest knives the vermin are best corrected.
One throws their women into ponds, as directed.
On Saturday one reads something of this in our "good" press:
The little dust up is already past, they do but confess,
And for this both our God and our state one must bless...
(Otherwise, just keep your trap shut about this mess.)See: Pogrom -- text of Klabund (2011)
Mulligan Stew - a recipe inverse
"Now, 50 years after taking over Cuba and thrashing all the golf courses in an excess of anti-capitalistic, communist/Marxist doctrinaire purity, Fidel Castro is bringing them back. The New York Times, must reading back then for all Red-blooded revolutionaries, reported the other day that the Castro government has given preliminary approval for the $1.5 billion construction of four large luxury golf resorts on the island to entice free-spending capitalists to tee off in a country hungry for money." In "Castro takes a mulligan on Cuba's view of golf," by Peter Lucas, Sentinel & Enterprise, 31 May 2011
Take unequal parts,
someone proposed one day,
Of a decaying Fidel
and a long decayed Che.
Let simmer a while --
like fifty plus years --
Then invert the whole thing,
as it now appears.
Stir frequently the mess,
add rhetorical sauce,
And when it's well cooked,
serve only the dross.
In The Joy of Cooking,
this recipe's not found
Because it's marinated
on revolutionary ground.
Sprinkle liberally with failure,
revolve it but once,
And when it's well done,
serve with befuddlements.
The back burner's charred,
as the recipe was soiled.
The kitchen's a mess,
and the service is spoiled.
No Michelin stars
nor Zagat reviews
Will ever repair
this Cuban cuisine news.
Mulligan shots,
with a swing and a miss,
Reduce themselves
to a curdled stew like this.See: Privatization
A Government of Shame - a composer's view
"On Sunday, similar protests were due to be held in other European countries, including Spain, France and Italy. Famed Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis gave his public backing to the protesters and called for 'the government of shame' to go along with 'the politicians for destroying, plundering and subjugating Greece.'" In "Record turnout for 'Indignant' protesters in Athens," in Ekathimerini.com News, Monday May 30, 2011
Socialism fails mathematically,
A composer said about his reality.
It has two options: force "do as I say"
Or simply implode and slink away.
Its history has sometimes been weaponized
With arms to enforce, for this has been prized.
When markets refused to play in its game,
It's marched in and then taken its aim.
Socialism has won politically,
By lying about fiscal reality.
It's used two options: one) "do as I say"
While two) hoping folks might look away.
For destroying, plundering and subjugating men,
Socialism has shown itself yet again.
When markets refuse to play in its game,
It lurches, besmirches -- a government of shame.
Socialism fails in its nomenclature,
For failing to heed frail human nature.
It has few options: force "do as I say"
Or simply implode and then fade away.
For this its history is again capsized
With lies to enforce, for this is still prized.
When markets refuse to play at its game,
It grumbles about, seeking someone to blame.
Envoi: "Poverty is bolstered considerably by the rising level of unemployment, which in September amounted to 26 percent in Greece, according to European Commission figures, second only to Spain’s 26.6 percent rate in the eurozone." In "The rapid rise of Greece’s nouveaux pauvres," by Sotiris Nikas, ekathimerini.com , 9 January 2013
Addendum: "PASOK added about 110 million euros to its debt in the last decade, Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos said on Thursday as he pledged to restore the party’s finances to good health. Venizelos presented to his party’s political council the result of an audit carried out by six accounting firms on the Socialists’ finances from 2003 to the present day. Venizelos said that the party had consistently spent 30 percent more than it earned and had added an average of 10 million euros to its debt." In "PASOK admits party's debt grew by 110 mln euros over last decade," Παρασκευή (New Post), Greece, 12 May 2013. [ 1 ]
See below: Down the drain, and through the eyes of both Greece and the Cyprus banking scandal -- A clip job
[ 1 ] One notes the cluster of "socialist" parties involved in this overall economic conundrum. The PASOK party of Greece [ Panhellenic Socialist Movement ] led to the enormous rise in public debt now in question, while the current "socialist leader" proposes to put the house in order. Meanwhile the newest names in ongoing political battle -- the Drachma Five Star Movement and SYRIZA -- both feature the next generation of socialists seeking essentially to abrogate the debt accrued by the previous generation of socialist leaders.
But the Greek bonds scandal which has subsequently hit Cyrus involves yet another socialist government: "Cypriot domestic politics is a strange brew, dominated by the indigenous question of unification and by the presence of AKEL, by far the most consistently successful communist party in Europe. The party has retained around a third of the Cypriot vote ever since independence in 1960 (despite the fall of the Soviet Union), and the country had a communist president from 2008 until earlier this year." In "Cyprus, the communists and anti-European populism," by William Brett, Left Foot Forward, 5 April 2013.
This becomes rather amusing as one sees the current crop of Greek socialists attempting to repair the damage done by the previous generation of socialists by -- in the words of "Socialist leader" Evangelos Venizelos -- attempts to sell new government bonds to international investors. And around in a circle one runs, expecting to make progress.
"If you set up a system where someone gets rewarded for doing the wrong things, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will." Cenk Uygur, in "We Must Fix Geithner's Gaffes," Daily Kos, 10 February 2009.
One plus one is two.
Oh no! That cannot be!
Add them up again!
Perhaps this time it's three!One plus one is two.
Oh no! It is not true!
Do the math again,
Perhaps more will accrue!Two plus two is four.
Figure things again!
Say what? It must be more!
Perhaps it's more than ten?Two plus two is four.
Calculate! Reiterate!
This game becomes a bore!
The hour's getting late!Four plus four is eight.
Such error is a waste!
What's that you dare to state?
Redo it with all haste!Four plus four is eight.
Something's gone awry!
My gosh, now cogitate!
I'm carving up the fiscal pie!Eight plus eight you owe.
I've the way to solve it all!
Perhaps I'll print more dough!
Change the rules, and spike the ball.All plus more defaults.
Who promised I'd lock the box?
There nothing in the vaults!
Aren't chickens guarded by the fox?All defaults lose trust.
I'm the one who suffers here!
What? You've a lot of crust!
Do not smirk and do not sneer!Arithmetic's no joke.
Economics is my field!
I'm a nuanced sort of folk!
Arithmetic should be repealed!Numbers are what's real.
Arrest him! Make him kneel!
What I say must be the law!
What he says sticks in my craw!One plus one is two.
Oh stop! That cannot be!
Add them up again!
Perhaps this time it's three!
A catchy tune abhorred a deaf dove - paraphrase of Joachim Ringelnatz
A catchy tune abhorred a deaf dove;
The dove hated the tune foursquare.
One day they met, as push by shove,
Traveling in a tram somewhere.
They shook hands as if friendship bloomed;
Smiles brightened thoughts of battery.
They praised each other in volumes perfumed,
Spewing such inflated flattery.
They each wanted to silence the other,
That the other should god speed to hell.
Accordingly it happened, one way or another,
The devil saw them again in their sulfured cell.See: Ohrwurm und Taube - (2011)
"Greece has missed all fiscal targets agreed under its bailout plan, a mission from an international inspection team found, putting further funding for Athens at risk, according to a German magazine." In "Inspectors say Greece missed all fiscal targets: magazine," Reuters, Berlin, 28 May 2011
Circling the ceramic,
The latest titanic
Is spinning its way down the drain.
Round around faster,
The latest disaster
Is spiraling out of control.
Too big to fail,
Then too big to bail?
Round she goes, and then? Who knows?
Calamities roar
As talking heads bore,
Concocting a tale that's already stale.
The vortex is a spiral
As ills become viral
And analysts limp back to their lairs.
The newest, each fad,
The schemes with the bad
Are spinning their way down the drain.
Addendum: "A new political party called Drachma Five Star Movement, modeled on an Italian anti-austerity party which made unexpected gains in general elections in February, has been established by Theodoros Katsanevas, the son-in-law of late Prime Minister and socialist PASOK founder Andreas Papandreou. The party, which was approved by the Supreme Court on May 2 and lists as its key aim the return to Greece’s old national currency, also wants to revoke the country’s loan agreement with international creditors. Its formation came a month after the former leader of leftist SYRIZA, Alekos Alavanos, launched a movement called Plan B that will also campaign for Greece to leave the euro." In "New movement emerges, banking on the drachma," ekathimerini.com, 9 May 2013.
Addendum: "After five straight years of recession, the eurozone's weakest link moves into 2013 with an economy set to further contract, unemployment at a record 26%, one in three living on or below the poverty line, and the worst of austerity yet to come. In the runup to Christmas, even the Greek finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, felt fit to admit that despite being the recipient of €240bn in EU and IMF rescue funds – the biggest bailout in global history – Greece could still default on its massive pile of debt, a move that would result automatically in exit from the 17-nation bloc." In "Greek debt crisis 'far from over'," by Helena Smith, The Guardian, 2 January 2013.
See above: A Government of Shame - a composer's view
"A thug who carried out horrific acts of torture for Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe has been allowed to live in Britain – to protect his human rights. An immigration tribunal found Phillip Machemedze inflicted terrible injuries on political opponents of the vile Mugabe regime.But despite ruling he was involved in ‘savage acts of extreme violence’ – including smashing a man’s jaw with a pair of pliers – immigration judges said he could not be deported. They said the 46-year-old, who is HIV positive, could himself face torture if he was returned home, having turned his back on Mugabe’s Zanu PF regime. Both he and his wife – who was granted asylum – can stay in Britain indefinitely." In "Mugabe torturer is given asylum in Britain... and yes it's in case he's tortured back in Zimbabwe," by Jack Doyle and Christian Gysin, Daily Mail, UK, 27 May 2011
The press tells war crimes are done, and done, and done,
With genocide as the Zimbabwe Marxists' little fun;
But when a judge so nice and rightfully naive
Does something like this, why, it's hard then to believe.
When a torturer's asylum is based on fear of what he's done,
The humanity seems twisted, to defend this sort of scum;
Forgive this torturer his torture for the sake of a human right?
The argument trumps his many victims, their misery, their plight.
A civilization so civil as to defend a thug like this
Is a civilization so uncivil as such evil to dismiss;
Britain once was great, yet now defends the torturer,
Which makes one wonder what they'd of done to Der Führer.
Probably try to understand, to sympathize, to feel
That such a twisted mind is a psychological big deal.
Let's all forgive the brutal, the vicious and the thug
And let's all line up to give them a loving liberal hug.
This is where such justice leads, down a cul-de-sac's dark end,
As the judge respects the human rights of a torturer to defend
The torturer his torture, the murderer his crime;
The vicious irony in all of this is simply so sublime.
Human thug rights is the end game of this thought,
As one wonders if this was the goal they'd dreamed, then bought,
The day would come when defending the genocidal folk
Becomes in the hands of some justice, a huge and bitter joke.
See: Hotel Stupidity and also Incidents of Idiocy
How is it - questions not in the news
"Dominique Strauss-Kahn will earn a tax-free salary of $420,930 and expense allowances of $75,350 per year. This is more than the earnings of the World Bank president ($493,940 tax-free), the US president ($450,000 taxed) and the UN secretary general ($403,958 tax-free). Only the general manager of the BIS makes more (about $750,000 plus unspecified allowances). Strauss-Kahn will also participate in the staff retirement plan, a defined-benefit pension scheme, which are strictly taboo for developing countries according to IMF advice. Strauss-Kahn will get an extra top-up to the pension for being the managing director, with the size variable by the length of his employment. For example if he stays for his full term, he will draw 180 per cent of the pension of a regular Fund staffer in any year he does not work. The Fund does not publish details of its pension plan." In "Strauss-Kahn to make $500,000 as IMF head," Bretton Woods Project, Update 58, 4 December 2007
How is it a socialist who heads his party's slate
Is so well fed and stuffed, gorging at capital's plate?
Perhaps like Rumpelstiltskin I slept through something here.
Are socialists so rich that the meaning's now unclear?
Socialism, I've been told, advocates collective stuff,
Where there're no more fat cats, especially ones so rough.
Socialism's about share-and-share-alike, or maybe not?
Where is the common man in this? A harder life's his lot.
How is it a socialist who heads his party's slate
Is so well paid and fluffed, as such numbers indicate?
Perhaps like Rumpelstiltskin I slept through something here.
Are socialists so wealthy? It just seems rather queer.
Like all the other socialists who've held their parties' rule,
It seems one can extrapolate the game is rather cruel.
The little people well below scrape, and may get by,
While all the better socialists gobble up the largest pie.
Socialism, I've been told, advocates equality,
Where there are no more fat cats. Est-ce que c'est vrai? Oui?
Socialism's about share-and-share-alike, but mostly not.
Where is the socialists' hero now? And what is it he's got?
He's got money raining down on him, from sources ill-defined,
Who pretend that they are socialists, but the numbers that I find
Tell a story which is not pretense, but about the fat cats cashing in
On the hopes of many little men, whose little lives are thin.
How is it a socialist who heads his party's slate
Has chosen for him such a perverse and twisted fate?
Perhaps like Rumpelstiltskin I slept through something here.
Are socialist bosses capitalists? The whole thing is most queer.
See: Hippogrizzly - a zoological fantasy, for the next chapter in the IMF leadership saga
Unsteadiness - paraphrase of a Wilhelm Busch poem
What an old rascal I do appear,
Unsteadiness being the culprit.
An empty glass brings me no cheer
Till good things splash wet within it.
I make a fuss, pure and well distilled;
"Hey, barmaid, hurry back!
Let my empty draught be filled,
Moistened more with wine than lack!"
Let my wait fly quickly past,
Suffered without much yearning;
"Down the hatch," I'll cheer, "at last,"
Swirling in dark depths, churning.
Incessantly teetering o'er a crevasse
Between one round and the next --
The brimming glass, the empty glass?
I tolerate neither, being vexed.
I measure myself by a fine example,
Bavaria's archbishop, so well known,
Who empties -- hurrah! -- a draught so ample,
Most men could not drink it alone.See: Wankelmut - (2011)
Ice Cream - a modern litany ad hominem
"I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. " Short story title by John L. Farris, after a song lyric by Billy Moll, Howard Johnson, and Robert King.
Ice cream "racist" in no time flat,
Ice cream "racist" for this and that,
Ice cream "racist" when it's not race,
Ice cream "racist" in every place.
Ice cream "sexist" here and there,
Ice cream "sexist" with a flair,
Ice cream "sexist" for some, not all,
Ice cream "sexist" as my knuckleball.
Ice cream "phobe" for the queerest things,
Ice cream "phobe" about Muslim kings,
Ice cream "phobe" as a gambit sharp,
Ice cream "phobe" as my regular carp.
Ice cream "hate" to disagree,
Ice cream "hate" at you, not me,
Ice cream "hate" when real or not,
Ice cream "hate" as my hangman's knot.
Ice cream "justice" when it's not done,
Ice cream "justice" like I shoot a gun,
Ice cream "justice" as a clever ploy,
Ice cream "justice" as a corrupting toy.
Ice cream "fair" when things aren't right,
Ice cream "fair" to pick a fight.
Ice cream "fair" to get more cash,
Ice cream "fair" but I hide my stash.
Ice cream "civil" when I'm not,
Ice cream "civil" to stir the pot,
Ice cream "civil" when I mean war,
Ice cream "civil" while I grab for more.
Ice cream "green" to save the world,
Ice cream "green" like a bomb that's hurled,
Ice cream "green" that comes out red,
Ice cream "green" like a knucklehead.
Ice cream "share" meaning you, not me,
Ice cream "share" for bankruptcy,
Ice cream "share" all over the place,
Ice cream "share" while I palm the ace.
Ice cream "unity" to hammer some folks,
Ice cream "unity" ignoring the jokes,
Ice cream "unity" while I divide,
Ice cream "unity" meaning "on my side."
Ice cream "ice cream" tastes quite raw,
Ice cream "ice cream" is a man of straw,
Ice cream "ice cream" is my rule of thumb,
Ice cream "ice cream" 'cause I think you're dumb.
See: Criminal Truth
He allows us? - boxing in cages
"Cage's achievement in his work with recorded sound is that he allows us to respond to a sound's spirit directly, without having the sound act only as an intermediary for his own designs." In "Something like a hidden glimmering": John Cage and recorded sound," by James Pritchett, Princeton 14 April 1994
Gaga? Maybe, Yo-Yo?
Beatles so blue?
Ha ha! Like the dodo
he's gamed you.
Sound? Intermediate?
Not quite true.
Bach and Brahms, why
they're recorded too.
Designs? He designs,
directing each clue.
Hawks? How Thoreau.
But right on cue.
Luigi Nono? Yes?
Insect noise too?
Street noise, calling birds,
how about you?
He allows us?
If we only knew.
His designs are his designs,
on which to chew.
This makes it a zen game
and clever coup;
We listen to something else
but pay him his due.
He allows us to hear
hawks when they flew?
But violate his copyright
and receive your due.
He allows us. Yes.
Repeat that view.
He allows us. Guess?
Oh yes, it's true.
His design is glimmering,
showing right through,
No longer hidden is it
from inquisitive view.
Clever words so thorough,
with not one note for you.
Sound off for some fixed time,
then discontinue.
Think outside the box?
Think outside the cage?
Think outside the wordy words
on his each copyright page?
That I wager we're not allowed....
Pleasant words for ugly things
"After a year of stubborn denial, European governments are going to have to admit that the Greek nightmare can end only if some of Athens’ debt, which amounts to 150 percent of its GDP, is forgiven” – and that by the summer of 2013, notes Die Presse. A simple expropriation of investors being virtually impossible, Europe is likely to adopt the model used to handle the South American crisis of the 1990s: exchanging Greek securities for European Financial Stability Facility securities." In "Get ready to wipe Athens’ slate clean," Presseurop, 10 May 2011
"Forgiven" is among the pleasant words,
Like "wiping the slate clean."
Pleasant words for ugly things
Is what euphemisms mean.
Default on debt means someone pays,
The remaining question is, "who?"
It could be the lenders, the tax payers too,
Who'll end up in that stew.
Would you forgive a loan so fast?
Would you accept new debt at last?
Passing around such truths as these
Is done with pleasant words, please.
"Hair cut" is such a pleasant phrase,
Which clips, and styles and cuts,
But when applied to your savings,
It's a pleasant phrase that guts.
Wipe one slate clean, yet dirtying another,
Is a trade-off so pleasantly sold,
But in truth it's just screws someone else
With an ugly fraud so cold.
"Forgiven" is among the pleasant words,
Like "wiping the slate clean."
Pleasant words for ugly things
Is what empty words mean.
See: Now how does that seem to a lender like you? - a run-around
Understand this then! - paraphrase from Goethe's Faust
Understand this, then!
From one make ten,
Two go just when
Three finds its niche,
And so you're rich.
The four you nix!
From five and six --
So says the witch --
To make the switch:
And nine is one,
And ten in none,
Now the hex is spun.See: Du musst verstehn! - (2011)
"These are not isolated incidents of idiocy. All were reported on a single day in yesterday’s newspapers. This is a result of the pernicious cult of political correctness which now infects every sinew of our body politic, especially the police. It has institutionalised knee-jerk stupidity in the name of ‘diversity’." In "The death of common sense and how our police are losing the plot," by Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail, 28 April 2011
Incidents of idiocy
Are liberally wise,
Akin to what we see
That's hidden by disguise.
Knee-jerk stupidity
Is an institution diverse
With visionless lucidity
In both chapter and verse.
Incidents of idiocy
Spread wide with a zeal,
And a raging immediacy,
Until its repeal.
Isolated or pernicious?
You be the judge.
Be not injudicious;
Dig down in the sludge.
Incidents of idiocy
Come circling full round,
Proving rooted, won't you see,
In stupidity profound?
More come to see
The errors in such ways,
Incidents of idiocy
Being idiotic displays.
Envoi: "Herein lies the tragedy of the age: / Not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty. / Not that men are wicked, - who is good? / Not that men are ignorant, - what is truth? / Nay, but that men know so little of men." W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
"Environmentalism is the religion of the comfortable, and the theology of the convenient. It injects a false spirituality into the materialism of the faithless. There is nothing to it but greed. From the false prophets spinning tales of the end, to scientists doing a more elevated version of the same for grant money to scribes envisioning the end for a lucrative book or movie deal. It's not the end of the world they're waiting for, but a commercial break. "In "End of the World," by Daniel Greenfield, sultanknish.blogspot
The apocalypse preacher is Camping out
With many folks' very last buck,
While an apocalypse preacher will Gore the world,
In the manner of a prince called Chuck.
The world is literally ending soon,
A message which precedes, "send cash."
How comfortable and convenient
Is this said, and with what panache.
The apocalypse preachers are out in force
From sea to poisoned sea,
And indulgences must be bought from them
To save one's self, you see.
The apocalypse preacher is Camping out
With many folks' very last buck,
While an apocalypse preacher will Gore the world,
In the manner of a prince called Chuck.
How well above average do they live,
How large are their footprints stamped
With carbon spewing forth like smoke
With their preaching revealingly vamped.
The world is literally ending soon,
A message which precedes, "pay up."
How comfortable and convenient
As they paint this woe and pass their cup.
Alms for some rich, alms for some fat,
Alms for the comfortable. What's up with that?
Addendum: "The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful." Dr. David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University.
Cited in "Dark Clouds Await Anthropogenic Global Warmers," by Kevin Roeten, 6 February 2013
See: So - stupid, also Bankrupt green
"'It is surely the most dramatic of the possible carbon dioxide-induced effects and its initiation cannot be ruled out as a possibility before the end of this century,' Schneider said in a report to a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.... A 25-foot rise in sea level would submerge Savannah, Ga., Charleston, S.C., four of eight Virginia cities with populations over 100,000, one-fourth of Delaware and portions of Washington, D.C." In "Picture Grim if Polar Ice Melts," United Press International, Houston, 8 January 1979
The Gores are Camping out these days, the message as before,
The world is coming to an end, for end days are in store.
Climate research models all fume and fuss out loud
To those who'd listen to the "fund my work now" crowd.
Possibilities of all sorts lie out there, proven not,
For possibilities are always what everyone has got.
Attach a date to such a thing makes rapture for some time,
And after the expiration date has passed, we're into overtime.
The game continues, dates are changed, and possibilities all bloom,
As more and more and louder still, the image is of doom.
Doomsday nigh and doomsday high in the minds of doom-filled men
Is a litany that they all pray, over and over and over again.
Orwell's Nineteen-eighty-four and Clarke's Two-Thousand-and-One
Are stories with expirations expired, for the dates are past and done.
The Gores are Camping out these days, the message as before,
The world is coming to an end, as they fiddle with dates some more.
See: The end of the world, also Apocalypse sometime and Earth Hour Follies
A Commencement Address Without a Bill Attached
“'In the currency world, money goes to where it is treated the best,' Thomas Goggins, a manager of the $3 billion John Hancock Strategic Income Fund, said in a telephone interview from Toronto." In "Key Bond Managers: Future Looks 'Terrible' for US Dollar," moneynews.com, Wednesday, 25 May 2011
You've some money. Where'll you put it?
Where it's sunny? Where'll you root it?
You've some money. Want to make it grow?
Risk's a funny, sinking undertow.
Will you treat it like it's money?
Non-receipt it? That's not funny.
Want to keep it? Treat it the best.
Don't dust-heap it. That's your quest.
See: Now how does that seem to a lender like you? - a run-around
Profitable Irony - a Commencement Address with a Bill Attached
"Ever since then we’ve been teaching our young people that your primarily obligation is only to the shareholder. The problem is that if you do that you ignore the other stakeholders. That could be why wages have been virtually stagnant for the past 30 years, because the workers are stakeholders. It could be why communities have been unable to undertake economic transformations in many places, because communities are stakeholders. It could be why customers don’t care so much what the source of their purchases are, they’re stakeholders." William Jefferson Clinton , New York University's 179th Commencement, May 18, 2011
Without profits to be taxed,
There're no taxes to be paid.
Without taxes to be paid,
There're no revenues, I'm afraid.
Whine about shareholders
And the stake holders might cheer,
But nibble away their profits?
The prognosis becomes quite clear.
Those who have some savings
Look to profit by some return.
Who, having such sum savings,
Would their profits easily spurn?
Folks invest in many things
Because profit is promised there,
But nibble away at the profit
And investment concludes, beware!
Rich Billy's profited plenty
While he chatted the populist line,
Yet stashed away his millions
To earn more profits, I opine.
Hefty speaking fees are pocketed
As he commences each affair,
As he natters on about profit
While gathering it everywhere.
The lesson here for graduates
Is as ironic as is it sad.
How many of these mortarboards
Will grow rich as Chelsea's dad?
Economic transformation?
Empty lingo from the boy from Hope,
As he's pocketed profits with both hands
While peddling his soft soap.
Life is so much simpler
When simple arithmetic's employed;
Tax everyone at equal rates,
And more will be employed.
But natter on about profit
While profiting wildly, fully, well,
And hope that all your words
Will conjure sum-blinding spell.
Without profits to be taxed,
There're no taxes to be paid.
Without taxes to be paid,
There're no revenues, I'm afraid.
If Bill disagrees with this,
Then he'd share his profit with me;
I expect he won't, in confidence,
Because that's his profits' irony.
Envoi: "Profit is the ignition system of our economic engine." Charles Sawyer quotes (American photographer 1868-1954)
"Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows. And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view." In "Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds," LiveScience Staff, LiveScience, 24 January 2006
Just two political parties there are
Which come in many flavors;
But it all boils down, this repertoire,
To obligations versus waivers.
The one vows I will pay my way,
Asking, might you do the same?
The other says you'll pay me today
As their opposing counterclaim.
One says leave me, let me be,
I'll live my life quite free;
The other laughs uproariously,
And acts aggressively.
One says all this party stuff
Is not the important thing;
The other says, we've heard enough,
You'll learn the song we sing.
Just two separate a divide quite great,
With too little to thereby unite;
But one will fume and agitate
And call for one great fight.
One sees its obligations,
And works to fill its needs;
The other builds waiver nations,
Each bruising as it bleeds.
In the end, the first when forced to pay
Will wither under the fists;
But the second which demands much this day
Will suffer when the first desists.
Just two political parties there are
And have always been the same;
Obligations against waivers ever spar
As continuing millennia proclaim.
Democrats and Republicans are one, and the other is....
Additional reading for extra credit: The Austerity Game, American Style and Donkey Skins and Elephant Hides
"We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. And if that is so, we must go back, going back is the quickest way on." In "The Abolition of Man" (1943) by C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
We are absolutely opposed to absolutes,
As they tend to bind too much.
Absolutely everything must be relative
For one to truly be in touch
With the subtleties of life's variety,
Perversities in myriad and such.
When one walks upright and with a jaunt,
It's best to hobble one with some crutch.
When speaking open and honestly,
It's best to silence one insomuch
As anyone dare utter an absolute,
For chains and weapons we'll clutch
To absolutely oppose someone's absolutes
For they tend to bind too much.
To such a reward I still say goodbye - paraphrase of a Joachim Ringelnatz poem
Yesterday afternoon I found
While going to the loo
A little piece of chocolate
In the pissing trough, askew.
It's true I live hand to mouth
And no baronial rank have I,
But still I left it lying there;
To such a reward I still say goodbye.See: So fand ich gestern Nachmittag - (2011)
"On the tape, Mr. Juncker says he has 'had to lie' and, speaking about touchy economic topics, 'When it becomes serious, you have to lie.'" In "Luxembourg Lies on Secret Meeting," by Charles Forelle, Wall Street Journal blogs, 9 May 2011. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
If it's serious, you lie,
So said some top dog guy.
That's how it goes
When when folks disclose
That some know-it-all
Could be a blow-it-all
In gambling with funds not his.
If it's serious, you lie,
As you aim to certify
The truth you tell
Is the fib you sell,
As the top dogs' whiz
Might fail his quiz
While gambling with funds not his.
If it's serious, you lie,
Alleging some pie-in-the-sky;
That's how one fails
To give honest details,
As a high-and-mighty chap
Hides all the little crap,
Yet gambles with funds not his.
Gee whiz, gee golly, gosh,
Elites can be so posh.
A cat may look at a king,
But this is second-string,
That some bright-and-best
Has almost confessed
To gambling with funds not his.
Envoi: "Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.' Glenn Greenwald (b. 1967)
Addendum: "When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned." Herbert Hoover, quoted in The New York Times, 9 August 1964.
See: Lying continues , also see below: A steady diet - it's news to me
[ 1 ] "The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity." Andre Gide (1869-1951)
[ 2 ] "Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings." Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
A Steady Diet - it's news to me
I want to eat more lies;
The truth is just too sour.
Such savoring is the prize
I seek in every hour.
Lies are tasty, sweet or tart,
Covering eyes that will not see.
I would learn them all by heart,
And hear no truth, but flee.
Facts are nimble; facts are quick,
But I think lies be greater.
With lies, one can take one's pick
Served by any waiter.
A la carte, or many-coursed,
Lies' nourishment feeds me.
When truth erupts, as sometimes forced,
Through lies I flee reality.
I'll serve up some lies;
For truth is such a boor.
Such savoring is the prize
For any lie's connoisseur.See above: If it's serious, you lie
"A boy Tuesday stood accused in the fatal shooting of his neo-Nazi father in their Riverside home early Sunday morning. The father, Jeff Hall, was a neo-Nazi leader, who headed the California chapter of the National Socialist Movement." In "Boy Accused Of Killing His Neo-Nazi Father In Riverside," Greg Mills, CBS News, 3 May 2011.
Reading the words correctly,
One reads right as Left,
Because Nazis all were socialists,
Which also translates "theft."
That a reporter writes such words
Is cheering, clear and bright;
The National Socialist Movement
Is socialist, not assuredly right.
The Nazis grabbed for power,
For money, mayhem, loss,
And each of them aspired
To be a bigger boss.
For one who loves his freedom
Which is freedom to walk away,
The only threat to liberty
Is the strong-arm Left's foray
Into do as we say this moment,
And do not question us,
For if you do, understand
Stuff comes to those who fuss.
That a reporter writes the words he does
Is cheering, clear and bright;
The National Socialist Movement
Is socialist, not assuredly right.
The wheels come off the argument
That socialists all make,
When one sees clearly this plain truth,
That their right-wing is a fake.
There's only greater government
To limit freedom's reach,
And limiting great government
Is what freedoms always preach.
"Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived in Seoul on Thursday accompanied by the former leaders of Ireland, Finland and Norway after a trip to Pyongyang. The group, who call themselves the 'Elders,' signally failed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. It was Carter's third trip to the North and the second during which Kim could not be bothered to meet him. Nonetheless, after telling reporters prior to the trip that South Korea is responsible for the North’s food shortage and saying he wanted to meet the reclusive leader, he came back with the message that Kim is 'always ready' to hold a summit with President Lee Myung-bak, as if that was a great revelation." In "Jimmy Carter's Role on the Korean Peninsula Has Ended," The Chosunilbo, Korea, 29 April 2011
The south's responsible for the north,
When the north won't lift a finger.
It's always someone else's fault
When poverty and famine linger.
Here's a novel approach to the tale
Which will jimmy the window a bit --
The north's responsible for its own travail,
And the ex-president's words are just shit.
Envoi: "I’ve reported from Ceausescu’s Romania, Saddam’s Iraq, Gaddafi’s Libya, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and the Ayatollahs’ Iran – but after eight days undercover in North Korea, I believe this regime is the most frightening tyranny of all. Kim The First’s grandson, Kim Jong Un, has the power to make the biggest of bangs. The new boy-God holds his people in near-total mental enslavement." In "Inside North Korea," by John Sweeney, Daily Mail UK, 13 April 2013.
See below: Can you keep a secret? below, and Starvation
"Satellite imagery has revealed new details of the extraordinary size of North Korea's secret gulags, which are now believed to contain more than 200,000 political prisoners. 'North Korea can no longer deny the undeniable,' Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said yesterday. 'For decades the authorities have refused to admit to the existence of mass political prison camps. These are places out of sight of the rest of the world' whose inmates were treated essentially as slaves, he added." In "N Korean secret gulags thought to hold 200,000 political prisoners," by Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific Editor, The Australian, 4 May 2011
Can one keep a secret?
Apparently not so well.
At least not so easily
When one operates a hell.
A hell on earth
Is a hell indeed,
If only half the stories
Are pedigreed.
North Korea's government
Is Communist quite red;
In socialism's grounding
It was nourished, it was bred.
Its people starve in secret
For red is not transparent,
And yet such news is learned
For truth is heir apparent.
Can one keep a secret?
Apparently not so well.
At least not so easily
When one operates a hell.
Envoi: "Han Sung-joo, South Korea's foreign minister during Carter's 1994 trip, said in an interview that "both South Korea and the US government are a little bit wary of Mr Carter trying to represent North Korea in a better light than it actually is." In "Jimmy Carter leaves North Korea after peace mission," Associated Press, as published in The Guardian, 28 April 2011. [ 1 ]
Addendum: "During his high-profile visit to South Hwanghae province, Kim Jong-un talked of 'all-out war', according to the country’s KSNA news agency. He warned troops that there may be an order for ‘a great advance’ and they should be ready to 'make the first gunfire' in response to any attack. The emotional displays revived memories of the response of millions of North Koreans when his father Kim Jong-il died in December 2011. It later emerged that sentences of six months or more in labour camps were handed down to those who did not go to organised mourning events or 'cry enough' at their loss." In "'Prepare for all-out war': Kim Jong Un vows to attack South Korea as he cancels peace pact in revenge for tough UN sanctions," by Mail Foreign Service, Daily Mail UK, 8 March 2013
[ 1 ] "Lee Hyeonseo... said the communist regime forced people to live in a 'virtual prison' with no concept of human rights. Anyone caught trying to defect is routinely sentenced to death as Kim Jong Un attempts to hide the reality of food shortages, labour camps and indoctrination from the outside world. And because punishment is handed down for three generations, even the husband or wife, children and grandchildren of those who escape are imprisoned." In "Chilling images from inside the mass indoctrination ceremonies where communist 'cult' leaders brainwash North Korea's children," by Simon Tomlinson, Daily Mail, UK, 12 April 2013.
See above and below
"We start to see people starving to death when food output falls below 3.5 million tons," said Nam Sung-wook of the Institute for National Security Strategy. The late Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking North Korean ever to defect to South Korea, said food output totaled just 2.5 million tons in 1997, when over 1 million North Koreans starved to death."
Starvation, so it is often said,
Is Mother Nature fed.
When looking closely at the news,
It's usually manmade instead.See above: Responsibility
"A 13-year-old lesbian girl in South Africa has become the latest victim of 'corrective rape' - so called, when men rape a woman to try to 'fix' her homosexual orientation." By ANI, in "13-yr-old girl is latest victim of 'corrective rape' in South Africa," Yahoo News India, 9 May 2011 [ 1 ]
Whoopi said, "not a rape-rape."
Harvey mouthed, "so-called crime."
Celebrities blab on videotape,
Which records such stupid slime.
"Corrective rape" is the newest phrase
In the Idiots' Book of Prayer,
And it never ceases to amaze --
Their viciously stupid flair.
Coining words and phrases
To throw dust into prying eyes,
They fix their blinded gazes
On their game of jargonize.
Whoopi! Now I've got it!
It's nuanced, subtle, keen.
Such phrases are not shit;
Just justification's shitty sheen.
Rape isn't rape, not exactly,
When standards are thus applied
To victims' traumas abstractly
Like a tourniquet deadly tied.
Stop the bleeding and the fuss
With a turn of phrase to bind
And silence would-be critics
By such notions redefined.
The latest fashion corrects with rape,
As a therapeutic poke,
As words stretch and then reshape
Into man's evil little joke.
Envoi: "Speaking on television show The View, Goldberg said 'I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape.' 'Rape-rape?' As opposed to just 'rape'? Goldberg was trying to pin down the exact crime Polanski was charged with but she still seems to be suggesting that there are different levels of forcing someone to have sexual intercourse without their consent, that some rapes are better than others. What a dangerous and foolish thing to say. Goldberg also said: 'We’re a different kind of society. We see things differently.'" In "Whoopi Goldberg defends Roman Polanski: 'It wasn't rape-rape' " by Lucy Jones, The Telegraph UK, 30 September 2009 [ 2 ]
See: Empowering feminism - a parody on "I Am Woman" (first released 1971) by Helen Reddy and singer-songwriter Ray Burton and see also, Sexy acrostic - just to turn a trick
[ 1 ] "One would also imagine that South Africa, being the only African country to recognize same sex marriage practice would make it safer for all, including lesbians. The reality unfortunately is not so. Despite this progressive legislation, corrective' rape - otherwise known as 'curative rape' - is a growing problem in many townships across South Africa." In "South Africa: Classifying 'Corrective' Rape As a Hate Crime," by Tiffani Wesley, AllAfrica.com, 26 November 2012.
[ 2 ] "Polanski, a French citizen, was arrested in 1977 for sexually assaulting then 13-year-old Geimer during a magazine photo shoot at the home of actor Jack Nicholson. He was indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molesting and sodomy, and pled guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse. The judge dismissed the remaining five counts and sentenced Polanski to 90 days in prison to undergo psychiatric evaluation. Polanski was released after only 42 days and, in 1978, upon learning that the judge planned to bring further charges against him, fled to France, which remains his primary home." In "Roman Polanski rape victim pens tell-all," by Jenny Che, NY Daily News, 10 October 2012.
"Fifty million climate refugees by 2010. Today we find a world of asymmetric development, unsustainable natural resource use, and continued rural and urban poverty. There is general agreement about the current global environmental and development crisis. It is also known that the consequences of these global changes have the most devastating impacts on the poorest, who historically have had limited entitlements and opportunities for growth." United Nations Environment Programme, 2005.
Do not look at what we said;
We've just goofed about the date.
So say preachers, spokesmen too,
So faux Cassandras say of late.
Apocalypse Now, shrieked a noisy film,
Apocalypse soon, saw a little church.
Apocalypse is immediate,
Said the UN in their big research.
Some Cassandras search for funds,
While others search for power.
So many preachers searching now
Have homes in some ivory tower.
Apocalypse sometime -- that's for sure --
Predicts gathering gloom and doom,
As they all unite in a common thread:
Gain control, but over whom?
Envoi: "In ten years [ 1980 ] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Paul Ehrlich, speech during Earth Day, 1970.
See: The end of the world, also Post-rapture Possibilities and also a song setting of Chicken Little by Margaret Free and Harriette Taylor Treadwell - (2007)
"So, do I hate God, when I don't even believe in him? Yes, absolutely - I despise the idea of God as described by religion. " An atheist, unnamed herein, complains in a news opinion, 27 August 2010.
What a clever pile of molecules;
It'd ascended without aid
From little bits into human fools
Without great accolade.
It learned to think itself a part
Of all that it surveyed,
But folded into its angry heart
Whenever it was afraid.
It raged against some other piles
Of the quite similarly moleculed,
For hatred is among the wiles
Of the stupidity it fueled.
What a ego'd pile of molecules
To think it wiser atop
The larger pile it ridicules,
Whose views it seeks to stop.
Despising an idea held by molecules
Needs some chemical catalyst,
For being merely flesh nodules
It seems so easily pissed.
What's the point, dear molecules,
In holding forth in your rage?
You despise with glee I Am that rules,
And rattle in your cage.
If there be no God, okay then, pal,
Why rage and hate and fuss?
Can it be, mere molecules shall
Evolve more resentfulness?
Uncle Casper's Red Nose - paraphrase of a Wilhelm Busch poem
Children, let us loudly sing,
But without envious voice,
Of Uncle Casper's red, red nose;
For its brilliance, we rejoice!
It was born a dainty shoot;
Nature's gift began so small.
He bathed it with diligent care
In wine and brandy's alcohol.
In time he was -- yea! -- overjoyed
As his bud bloomed into a rose.
Impressive in rosy stature was his
Dark red, wondrous nose.
All roses have prickly thorns
But Casper's has none at all.
Rather just some strands of hair,
And not that much, after all.
Its cup effuses sweetly --
Perfumes, one could almost say:
From his well-known box of snuff
Snuffs he pollens throughout his day.
Often on a morning fresh
With skies of fragrant blue,
One spies upon that heart-shaped rose
A running drop of pearly dew.
When all the other flowers wither,
In the cold, harsh winter's wind,
This miraculous rose of a nose
Is hearty, fit, and always ginned.
Therefore to its prize and glory
We sing this beauteous song.
"Vivat!" to Uncle Casper's nose,
May it bloom both bright and long!See: Onkel Kaspers rote Nase - (2011)
"Study the past if you would define the future." Confucius (551–479 BCE)
Lessons are, as lessons were,
And lessons will someday be;
As lessons are and lessons were.
No if, and, but or maybe.
The fads, the trends, each vogue,
And such as these all pass;
It is they which play the rogue,
Yet the old lessons ne'er surpass.
Lessons are, as lessons were,
And lessons will tomorrow be;
Old truths simply do not err,
And await for who would be free.
Smoke and mirrors have cooked the books.
How it seems is how it looks?
Read some news to say all's well?
Not if your own life's a shell
Of payments rising like the tides,
Of prices climbing on all sides,
Of worries for your pension woes,
But understand -- that how it goes.
Smoke and mirrors have cooked the books.
This is a legal version of the crooks
Who'd pick a pocket here and there,
Then pick a pocket everywhere.
Not to see the way things are
Is to believe the repertoire
Of rationalizations of all sorts
By which the upper crust cavorts
To lift their loot from average Joes,
But understand -- that how it goes.
Smoke and mirrors have cooked the books,
And offered bread and circuses as hooks
To lure the many into schemes
Which all amount to emptied dreams.
Listen to the voices loud
From the upper crusted crowd
Who set up folks like dominos,
But understand -- that how it goes.See: Let's All Sacrifice
"We can't ignore future deficits, but just as ignoring deficits would mortgage our future, failing to invest in our kids and our infrastructure and our basic research and clean energy, that would be mortgaging our future, as well." In "Obama: Deficit reduction must keep alive the American dream," by CNN Wire Staff, 21 April 2011
We can and can't ignore,
Because both are heretofore,
To whit and furthermore,
Not to mention theretofore
That can and can't are more
Or less perhaps than nevermore
As oratorical tricks all explore
That can and can't can soar,
And both and none implore
All that we so deplore;
We can't and can ignore
When words hereinbefore
Rain down in a wordy roar,
As can-and-can't is a surly boor.
"Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview, all right?"See: Well, we are out of money now - (2009)
"You don’t end up in the predicament we find ourselves in today due to a couple minor mistakes over a short time frame. It took thousands of horrible choices, colossal doses of delusion, a heaping of stupidity, and a mountain of denial over decades to put us on the brink of economic collapse. An unholy amalgamation of demographics, fiat currency, debt, taxes, power and greed have led us to this point. Next we experience collapse, revolution and ultimately, retribution." In "U.S. National Debt, For A Few Dollars More," by James Quinn, Market Oracle, UK, 26 April 2011
Delusion comes in doses, don't you see,
And is sold at your political pharmacy.
"It can be ideal if only we believe"
Are slick, needled words which prick to deceive.
Man will be bettered, beyond every dream,
If only his delusions were all as they seem.
But numbers partake of no dosage, no swill,
And numbers become the bitterest pill.
Delusions come in doses, don't you know,
And after each dose comes an unexpected low.
Taking one's medicine does not always cure,
But doses of delusion are ever the lure.
Injections of funds borrowed, bought and had,
At first seem to make things jubilant, glad.
But then the delirium tremens sets in,
And one sees the narcotic and its dim grin.
Delusion comes in doses to take,
And once they are swallowed, one learns they were fake.
Envoi: "The central agency of true wealth is that it distributes economic success without the need for nudging or control. Debt, on the contrary, is the very embodiment of economic slavery - the overconsumption of current needs at the expense of encumbrance on future prosperity." In "What Happened To All Of That Money?"by Jeffrey Snider, RealClearMarkets, 11 January 2013
See: Hotel Stupidity
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit [or monetary] expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of the further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." In "Human Action," by Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973),Yale University Press, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1949, 1998.
Stretchy film for their stretching skin;
Hot air to fill all that's within.
Bubbles grow and bubbles fly,
And always comes their time to die.
Children smile at bubbles' flight
To watch them drifting out of sight.
Adults who would blow a bubble full
Yet expect no end are spreading bull.
Spaghetti - paraphrase of a Joachim Ringelnatz poem
Just one of these little angels' horde
Is by me this moment ready.
Ah, spaghetti strands waving toward
One's mouth smack thickly steady.
And it seems rather a piggery
As one scorches raw one's tongue,
But here I be, in my priggery
Shoveling, as are the guests I'm among.
Across the hours a spaghetti serving
Is nothing less than I'm deserving.See: Spaghetti - (2011)
Embarrassed - a political maneuver by we Democrats
“I shouldn’t have done that. I’m kinda embarrassed I did. It was a political maneuver by we Democrats. The Republicans were in power – there were more of them,” Reid said. “The president voted when he was in the Senate the same way. I heard him apologize for it. We all should take a look at how we handle these issues, but that doesn’t take into consideration the numerous times, the numerous times I voted to raise the debt ceiling. The one time I tried to make a political issue of it, I wish I hadn’t." In "Harry Reid 'Embarrassed' About 2006 Opposition to Raising Debt Limit," Matthew Jaffe, ABC News, April 14, 2011
I am for and then against, against and then for,
It's all just a matter of who's keeping score.
I'm against, then I'm for, for and then against,
Think not this shows me a political whore.
I'm embarrassed you remembered; I'd hoped you'd forget.
Every word that I utter is a calculated bet.
The way the winds blow, whether for or against,
I flow with these tides, in my political roulette.
I am for and then against, against and then for,
But either way, says every oath that I swore
I'll be against, and then for, for and then against,
Which proves me to be just a political whore.
Envoi: "People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all." Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Addendum: "The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue." Emma Goldman (1869-1940)
See: Lying continues,, and also Eye on the news
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Road kill coats the winding road;
Makeshift memorials incommode.
So many accidents collided there;
So many traveled it unaware.
Carcasses litter and rot and stink,
Hairpin turns ahead. Wise not to blink.
Pot holes, barriers and detours loom
As history lessons all presume
To show the map of all ahead
That is not shown by a past misread.
The highway to the future calls?
Its twists are ever the same pitfalls
It has always consistently had.
Shall men learn? Or men go mad?See: Lessons Are
"No one wants to be associated with a failure, and leaders are no exception. When something goes awry, it can be tempting to point the finger—especially if you feel certain of the cause and justified in making someone accountable. Yet blame never results in a solution. Instead, it tends to snowball, wasting much time and energy that is better suited for problem-solving." In "Instead of Assigning Blame, Fix What Went Wrong," Business Week, 3 July 2009
My faults are your fault,
If you'd believe my spiel;
And if I say this loud enough
Your guilt should spin and reel.
My faults devolve to you,
Because I want them to.
Should you refuse them,
Whatever should I do?
My faults are your fault,
My assertion must be true;
And if I say this long enough
My guilt should stick to you.See: Blame
In a moment of candor - a Democrat spoke
"The gross debt of the United States as you know is going to reach 100 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States this year. And the best economic analysis that's been done by two professors who looked at 200 years of economic crisis studied 44 countries found that when you get to a gross debt of more than 90 percent of your gross domestic product you're in the danger zone and you compromise future economic growth in a substantial way. So that's what this is all about: future opportunity, future jobs for the American people. Too much debt acts as a lodestone around the American economy. It's critically important we deal with this." Senator Kent Conrad (Democrat-North Dakota, 2011) [ 1 ]
In a moment of candor
The truth slipped out,
But was quickly, routinely caged.
Something much blander
Politicians must shout,
That our dozing might be assuaged.
Budgets should be in balance?
And a treasury refilled?
Public debt should be reduced?
Who believes such romance?
It's arrogance distilled.
Debt gives the nation a boost!
A senator cited sources,
And the history is clear;
The lodestone is grinding away.
And what reinforces
This history's veneer
Is as Cicero tried to convey.
Now in today's moment
As in Rome of ancient days,
The council remains quite the same.
This is not foment;
Public debt's ablaze
For ignoring old wisdom's claim.
In a moment of candor
The truth slipped out,
But was quickly, routinely caged.
Something much blander
Politicians must shout,
That our dozing might be assuaged.
Addendum: "Dozens of city and state public employee pension plans are on the verge of bankruptcy – or are actually bankrupt – from Rhode Island to California; in 2010, a survey of 126 state and local plans showed assets of $2.7 trillion and liabilities of $3.5 trillion, an $800 billion shortfall. The national debt exceeds $16 trillion." In "Now What, Liberalism?", The New York Times, by Thomas B. Edsall, 16 January 2013
Addendumber: "Over the past four years, our country has added nearly $6 trillion to the national debt. At $16.4 trillion, our nation’s total debt is now larger than our entire economy." In "GOP's Thune: We've added $6 Trillion in debt during just one Obama term," by Andrew Malcolm, Investors Business Daily, 26 January 2013. [ 2 ]
Proof of the Pudding: "Japan has a 220% debt to GDP ratio. This debt to GDP ratio is one of the reasons the country is incapable of competing anymore. It is all the debt your parents rang up when times were good. Well, the payment is due and it is your responsibility." In a comment by Saverio posted 28 January 2013, to "Welfare payments to be slashed ¥74 billion to root out the comfortably poor," The Japan Times.
[ 1 ] "We did find that episodes of high debt (90 percent or more) were rare, long and costly. There were just 26 cases where the ratio of debt to G. D. P. exceeded 90 percent for five years or more; the average high-debt spell was 23 years. In 23 of the 26 cases, average growth was slower during the high-debt period than in periods of lower debt levels. Indeed, economies grew at an average annual rate of roughly 3.5 percent, when the ratio was under 90 percent, but at only a 2.3 percent rate, on average, at higher relative debt levels. (In 2012, the ratio of debt to gross domestic product was 106 percent in the United States, 82 percent in Germany and 90 percent in Britain — in Japan, the figure is 238 percent, but Japan is somewhat exceptional because its debt is held almost entirely by domestic residents and it is a creditor to the rest of the world.) The fact that high-debt episodes last so long suggests that they are not, as some liberal economists contend, simply a matter of downturns in the business cycle." In "Debt, Growth and the Austerity Debate," by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneh S. Rogoff, New York Times, 25 April 2013.
[ 2 ] "Now that we have the first estimate of Q1 GDP growth in both rate of change and absolute current dollar terms ($16,010 billion), we can finally assign the appropriate debt number, which we know on a daily basis and which was $16,771.4 billion as of March 31, to the growth number. The end result: as of March 31, 2013, the US debt/GDP was 104.8%, up from 103% as of December 31, 2012 or a debt growth rate that would make the most insolvent Eurozone nation blush." In "Total US Debt To GDP: 105%," by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, 26 April 2013.
The ardent supporter of government will attempt to dismiss these numbers for the sake of the political stance, but the IMF working paper of 2013 suggests ignoring this is foolish: "The third group consists of 10 countries where the debt ratio is high (above 90 percent of GDP) and rising, reflecting still-large deficits (on average about 5½ percent of GDP). It is within this group that most fiscal vulnerabilities are concentrated, and these are therefore the countries where the focus of fiscal adjustment will be in the coming years. Although these countries are few in number, they account for more than 40 percent of global output, meaning the success or failure of their efforts will have profound implications for the world economy." In "Fiscal Adjustment in an Uncertain World," IMF, April 2013.
In another IMF study, one reads: "The results, based on a range of econometric techniques, suggest an inverse relationship between initial debt and subsequent growth, controlling for other determinants of growth: on average, a 10 percentage point increase in the initial debt-to-GDP ratio is associated with a slowdown in annual real per capita GDP growth of around 0.2 percentage points per year,with the impact being smaller (around 0.15) in advanced economies. There is some evidence of nonlinearity, with only high (above 90 percent of GDP) levels of debt having a significant negative effect on growth. This adverse effect largely reflects a slowdown in labor productivity growth, mainly due to reduced investment and slower growth of the capital stock per worker. On average, a 10 percentage point increase in initial debt is associated with a decline of investment by about 0.4 percentage points of GDP, with a larger impact in emerging economies. Various robustness checks yield largely similar results. They underline the need to take measures to not just stabilize public debts but to place them on a downward trajectory in the medium and long term." In "Public Debt and Growth." an IMF Working Paper by Manmohan S. Kumar and Jaejoon Woo, 2010.
The simple economic truth is in Senator Conrad's own words from 2011, a growing "lodestone around the American economy." Two years and another election cycle later, what the Democrat senator said was "critically important" has gone unaddressed. An unpleasant future is ever more assured, courtesy of cleverly worded politics trumping the basics of simple economics.
See: Broke - someone spoke, and also Talk is cheap
Default on Debt - the game of centuries
"Refusing to pay your debts has an impeccable pedigree: Edward III sowed chaos in Florence in the mid 14th century by defaulting on a series of loans. Every country in Latin America, apart from Brazil, followed suit in the early 19th century. Most recently, Russia shocked world markets by defaulting in 1998, as did Argentina in 2001." In "Furious Greeks press for country to default on debt," by Helena Smith in Athens, The Observer, 17 April 2011
Let's all borrow what we will not repay,
And then just expect it to all go away.
Sounds dishonest? Tricky? Hey,
If nations so do, why shan't we play?
All the complaints by some ruling elite
Argue the opposite until their defeat.
There comes that thunderous drumming beat
Which says such such history will again repeat.
Why then start down the ruinous road
When people will not carry this load?
Such borrowing only serves to corrode
Until the whole scheme will simply explode.
Debt is not public, but faithless with guile;
Countries so often swallow the bile,
And then they teeter with sallow denial
Until they collapse in their national pile.
Collateral? Don't even think it is true.
There's nothing behind all the debt they accrue.
Politics talks, and talks itself blue,
Then walks away with a shrug left for you.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,
Yet politicians continue to pander.
Speaking plainly and in all candor,
Each tries to play the innocent bystander.
They all borrow with intention to pay,
But they often default it all away.
Sounds dishonest? Tricky? Hey,
If default is the game, let's everyone play.
Cousin Francis' Donkey Ride - paraphrase of a Wilhelm Busch poem
His comely cousin's pleas increased:
"Come, cousin Francis, ride that beast!"
Brave Francis decided without duress
To win over an ass with friendliness.
Quickly he mounted, his aim to ride;
To his cousin's cheers, he sat astride.
He thought: "But a giddyap won't make him go;
Perhaps twisting his tail? Yup! Tallyho!"
For the sting to that donkey's derriere,
The ass tossed a clinging Francis into the air.
Its stubbornness melted fast away,
As it bucked and brayed its ass' neigh!
Against a shed, garden tools were hung;
Both rider and ridden together sprung.
Directly the hothouse loomed ahead,
And towards - then through - it they sped.
Broken window glass and thorny plants
Sliced through Francis' shredding pants.
All happened with such frightful speed
There was little chance to intercede.
Rider and ridden bucked, then broke
Towards the comely cousin, as a donkey's joke.
And - crash, boom, bang - Francis was dropped;
Midst the picnic spread the chap was plopped.
That short, mad ride ended in such a mess,
As the bloodied cousins had to confess.See: Vetter Franz auf dem Esel - (2011)
A Losing Proposition - eye on a lousy investor
"To break even, the U.S. Treasury would need to sell its remaining stake—about 500 million shares—at $53 apiece. GM closed off 27 cents a share at $29.97 in 4 p.m. trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, hitting a new low since its $33-a-share November initial public offering. 'Planning for the sale of our remaining GM stock is still at an early stage, and the IPO lock-up does not expire until late May,' a Treasury spokesperson said. 'At that point, we will consider all of our options, based on our twin goals of protecting taxpayers' interests and exiting as soon as practicable.'" In "U.S. Hurries to Sell GM Stake," Wall Street Journal, 19 April 2011
Give me a twenty, I'll return you a ten;
If you don't object, we can play this again.
Give me a twenty, I'll give you a ten;
This silly game runs, but -- ah -- until when?
Let's buy high and then sell low;
And as we sink in the undertow,
I'll stand on your shoulders with you below.
Because that is how my schemes all go.
Give me a hundred, I'll return you less;
If you don't object to this playful mess,
Then give me more, and I'll return... guess?
It's all about fairness -- and your redress.
Give me a thousand, I'll return you a ten;
If you don't object, we can play this again.
Give me a million, I'll give you a ten;
This silly game runs, but -- ah -- until when?
Update: "At GM's Friday share price of $24.14, the U.S. would lose about $15 billion on the GM bailout if it sold its entire stake, the paper said. In "Treasury resists GM plan for selling U.S. stake, Reuters via Chicago Tribune, September 2012
Update: "The government needs to get $72 per share for its remaining shares to break even on its $49.5 billion GM bailout. It initially held a 61 percent stake before selling about half of its shares in GM's November 2010 IPO at $33 a share. GM shares fell on Friday in afternoon trading to $29.21, down $0.28, or 1 percent. At current prices, the Treasury would lose more than $12 billion on its GM bailout." In "Treasury can start selling remaining GM shares," by David Shepardson, Detroit News Washington Bureau, 18 January 2013
See: Sticker shock
It's just not right that you should see
Me stand beneath my Dumb-Dumb Tree.
It's shed its leaves for shallow roots;
The planters? Vainglorious tenderfoots
Who sold these arbors, all too many
Yielding fruit not worth a penny.
I bought into my field of dreams
Unaware of their investment schemes,
And now I've my own Dumb-Dumb Tree
Where once I thought with naive glee
That I'd reap rewards bushels wide,
But like the Tree my dreams have died.
The Dumb-Dumb Tree is barren wood;
Would that I had the pitch withstood.
"Only the mediocre are always at their best." Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944), a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright.
Failure sneers at every success.
What else can it do?
After it has made its fumbling mess,
It shoves the blame on you.
Failure is someone's dumbest game.
It never stood a chance.
It looks for anyone else to blame,
In every circumstance.
See: Anti-capitalism struggles - a curriculum of sorts
"In the telephone poll of 815 registered voters nationwide, conducted June 4 to 8, Mr. Perot was supported by 39 percent, Mr. Bush by 31 percent, and Mr. Clinton by 25 percent. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points." In "The 1992 Campaign: On the Trail; Poll Givers Perot a Clear Lead," New York Times, 11 June 1992
Conduct your poll to center stage, then have it take a bow.
Trot it out all gussied up, putting lipstick on your sow.
The next day it will line the cage or maybe wrap the trash,
For what is news of polling but prophetic balderdash.
Sampling errors, so they say, have some margin of error;
In hindsight prophetic fibs need only their pallbearer.
Leadership Failure - spoke a failed leader
"I rise today to talk about America's debt problem. The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies." Senator Barak Obama, Congressional Transcript, March 16, 2006:
Really I didn't mean the things I once said,
You should trust me now, not my other words long dead.
I am other than I was, for now I see the light,
And the truth I spoke was formerly not quite right.
The truth I say is for today, believe me now, not then,
For I see I was wrong, but that was sometime when
I told you to believe in me, and in the things I said.
But, hey, that's the game of politics which is my daily bread.
If I am wrong now by some future view, I beg you not to look
Because then as is true today, I think you're just a schnook
To believe that I meant my words, so wise, so spoken large,
When the real truth is all I wanted was to ever be in charge.
Envoi: "I think that it's important to understand the vantage point of a senator versus the vantage point of a president," Obama said. "When you're a senator, traditionally what's happened is, this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit -- for the United States by a trillion dollars. As president, you start realizing, you know what, we, we can't play around with this stuff. This is the full faith and credit of the United States. And so that was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I'm the first one to acknowledge it." Quote of Obama in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News, 15 April 2011 [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
Addendum: "There has been no shortage of dire warnings about the mounting US national debt, but President Obama is now offering a different assessment: no big deal. 'We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt,' President Obama said in an exclusive interview with George Stephanopoulos for 'Good Morning America.' 'In fact, for the next 10 years, it’s gonna be in a sustainable place.' In "President Obama: There Is No Debt Crisis," on an interview by George Stephanopoulos, by Jonathan Karl, ABC News, 13 March 2013.
Addendum: "No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful." Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005)
Addendum: "According to the treasury department’s count, the debt has grown $5.3 trillion since Obama took office in 2009, compared to $4.9 trillion in Bush’s eight years." In "Did Barack Obama accrue more debt in half the time as George Bush?" PolitiFact.com, August 2012
See: I Need Another Credit Card and Can and can't and also Embarrassed - a political maneuver by we Democrats, and also Well, we are out of money now - (2009)
[ 1 ] "Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." Daniel Webster (1982-1852)
[ 2 ] "There has been no shortage of dire warnings about the mounting US national debt, but President Obama is now offering a different assessment: no big deal. 'We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt,' President Obama said in an exclusive interview with George Stephanopoulos for 'Good Morning America. 'In fact, for the next 10 years, it's gonna be in a sustainable place.'" In "President Obama: There Is No Debt Crisis," by Jonathan Karl, ABC OTUS News, 13 March 2013. Given the absolutely opposite statements from 2006 and 2013, it is assured that Obama was lying or is lying, and possibly both. That he was or is now telling the truth is no longer possible. For a politician to be caught in a lie is embarrassing, but for a politician to continue lying with seeming impunity is a scandal of the greatest proportion, abetted by a media unwilling to compare simple statements by the same person. See: Lying continues.
Missus What's-Her-Name in History at ten
Would lecture her class with her party-bred yen
To teach of polarities in political thought,
And we were to learn whatever we ought.
Nazis were right and Commies were left,
A model which showed a logic bereft
Of sense, as of truth, as of clear-spoken word
Which reduces down to a stew that's absurd.
Duck and cover was the strategy then
To teach us of horror, as we dropped down when
Duck and cover was What's-Her-Name's drill
To have us a-feared to her words shrewish shrill.
Missus What's-Her-Name in History at ten
Was a part of my youth, like my drafting board pen.
The models she conjured I spit back on her test
Because to argue against them would not have been best.
Her right and left models linger today
As if there was ever something to say
About right and left, and left and right,
Meaning references back to a world war's fight.
But Nazis were socialists, Commies were too,
Just different flavors in that political stew
Which showed enemies were allied once in the past,
And allies became enemies ever so fast.
So right and left are enemies, and one must choose,
Though I come to see --- whichever, you lose.
Such a right and a left are like twins in a crib,
To tell them apart one colors each bib.
Missus What's-Her-Name was ever so good
At righteous indignation, we all understood,
But looking back at that ten o'clock class
I think, silly lady, today's test I shan't pass.
Today I use history's proper writ name
Which tells me these opposites were rather the same;
Now the model's decrepit, a fraud layered with dust
Which ought be abandoned, for really it must
Be shown to have been what it ever once was,
Just another way of politicking with good old "because."
My history class at ten in those high school years
Was nothing but politics dressed up as fears.
Choose one from the list, in a list made of two,
For really, you see, it's all up to you!
Such clever models were deception quite fine
Until one connects the dots with a simple line.
Socialism National and socialism Soviet
And socialism Sino and others albeit
Remain all of a same frayed fabric in time,
Stained mightily with blood as with crime.
Left and right, the boots tramped down
Step by step o'er each terrified town.
No duck and cover, the history tells,
Would save the victims from shells,
From canisters, clubs, bullets and bombs,
From bayonets, pistols and such maelstroms.
For right and for left in the history at ten
Are proven to have been the same, yet again.
Teach differences as best designed to obscure
And pray that such models will long, long endure
To muddy the waters and foul all the nests,
To rationalize a model that simple logic arrests.
Left, or is it right? Right, or is it left?
Well, someone's at fault with a model so deft
As to play that one thing opposes itself,
And fill up the textbooks to line every shelf.
Missus What's-Her-Name in History at ten
Would hector her class with real bogeymen,
To teach fake polarities in political thought,
And we were to learn whatever we ought.
Left-and-right served as a model back then
When left and right politics shrieked its amen.
Against left, against right simple freedom towers tall,
And against it Missus What's-Her-Name's model's AWOL.
Missus What's-Her-Name spawned many, I know,
And her model creaks on in Missus What's-Her-Name's glow.
But now that the words are crystal and clear,
Missus What's-Her-Name's model is no longer dear.
Say Left and say Right, and say whatever you will,
My answer is freedom, and freedom is still
Neither Left nor is it Right, no party games there,
For freedom flies above politics' voice so shrill.
Missus What's-Her-Name in History at ten
Would lecture her class with her party-bred yen
To teach of polarities in political thought;
I've refused to accept that model she taught.
Envoi: "Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left." In "An Essay on Liberation" by Herbert Marcuse, Beacon Press, 1969, p. 109.
Addendum: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
Addendum: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana (1863-1952)
Privatization - publicized
"Cuba says it will allow people to buy and sell their homes for the first time since the communist revolution in 1959. For the past 50 years, Cubans have only been allowed to pass on their homes to their children, or to swap them through a complicated and often corrupt system." In "Cuba's party congress agrees to allow private property," BBC, 19 April 2011 [ 1 ]
The BBC called it a hard-edged thing
When Thatcher played the same;
After fifty years quite moribund,
Socialism opts for a privatization game.
How odd that it was horrid once,
But now is balm and salve
To counter corruption's fifty years,
That have-nots might actually have.
The Cuban revolution
Was promised, hoped for change,
But after fifty dour, dozing years
It creaks old and puzzling strange.
When communism comes to see
Its goals were the stuff of dreams
That woke to nightmares on the streets,
Then socialism itself blasphemes.
The first old tenet of this faith
Was private property was not allowed.
But there is, the heresy spoke
By the poor old Cuban crowd.
Following a story such as this
Across five decades' swath,
One comes to see that socialism's been
A losing, rhetorical froth.
Fifty years of corruption is
A history lesson to heed,
That fancy talk cannot walk the walk
As such words are empty screed.
See: Socialism's Last Hurrah and also Between rhetoric and reality - on the reality of socialist Cuba's healthcare system
[ 1 ] "In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." In "Proletarians and Communists," Chapter Two of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848.
Errors - a socialist's confession
"A new generation of leaders must act decisively and without hesitation to correct the errors of the past and lead the island once those who fought in the 1959 revolution are gone, Fidel Castro said in a column published Monday." In "Fidel Castro: New leaders must fix Cuban economy," by Peter Orsi, Associated Press, Havana , Apr 18 2011.
Errors of the past for fifty years
Can be laid to just one man.
Each now-past error now appears
Because of his socialist plan.
Fifty years of fancy talk
Are fifty years running red;
At fifty years one stands to gawk
At his poverty's daily bread.
His revolution was once proposed
To answer great social woes,
But it seems he ignorantly posed
In false revolutionary clothes.
Was fifty years not time enough
To decisively act for good?
Was fifty years all just a bluff,
And not the fix for which he stood?
New leaders must fix what this fool broke?
Well, isn't that socialism's tragic joke?
Envoi: "Without Revolutionary theory, there can be no Revolutionary Movement." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1879-1924)
Addendum: "All organised opposition is banned in Cuba and all candidates for elections have been selected by the ruling Communist Party or its affiliated associations." In "Fidel Castro votes in Cuba election," BBC, 4 February 2013
Addendum: "The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich's book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it." In "A World Split Apart," an address given at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 8 June 1978.
See: Mulligan Stew - a recipe inverse, Democracy is stupid and especially Between rhetoric and reality
Socialism's Last Hurrah - not democracy in any town
"The parade and Congress come exactly half a century after Fidel Castro proclaimed that his was a socialist revolution, rather than a democratic one. His speech on 16 April 1961 paved the way for a centralised Soviet-style economy and one-party rule." in "A last hurrah for Cuba's communist rulers," by Michael Voss, BBC News, Havana, 16 April 2011. [ 1 ]
And there we have it, written down;
Socialism's not democracy in any town.
Revolution means turning around and around,
While fifty years of stasis is what poor Cuba found.
Centralized, and oh so very soviet they are;
One party rules, and one man is the tsar.
Revolution once was clearly defined
As throwing off government's yoke and grind.
Having less government claws at one's throat;
Suffering less of the bureaucrats' bloat.
And so it is, says a venerable BBC:
Socialism is just not a democracy.
The last hurrah will come one day,
When this plain truth comes more into play.
For here we have it, plainly spoke;
Socialism is not democracy; but a bitter joke. [ 2 ]
Envoi: "Defense of the socialist motherland is every Cuban's greatest honor and highest duty." Article 64, Cuban Constitution. [ 3 ]
Addendum: SOCIALISM. The theory that John Smith is better than his superiors. H. L. Mencken, in "A Book of Burlesques." (1916)
See: Chains
[ 1 ] "Corruption is common, though allegedly lower than in most other countries in Latin America. However, in their book, Corruption in Cuba, Sergio Diaz-Briquets and Jorge F. Pérez-López Servando state that Cuba has "institutionalized" corruption and that state-run monopolies, cronyism, and lack of accountability have made Cuba one of the world's most corrupt states". In Wikipedia on "Economy of Cuba." As to this revolution of six decades without 'revolving' one reads: "It is the only country in the Americas that locks citizens up for their beliefs. In a place that before 1959 boasted as many cattle as people, meat is such a scarce luxury that it is a crime to kill and eat a cow." In " Time for a (long overdue) change," The Economist, 30 December 2008.
And additionally, one learns from a charity, that: "'The elderly are among those most affected by poverty,' said Migdalia Dopico, coordinator of the Elderly Support Programme for Caritas Cuba. With one in five Cubans now over 60, the problem is getting worse. Caritas Cuba’s 800 volunteers and 190 canteens are responding by providing thousands of meals to 28000 elderly people." In "Caritas Cuba helps elderly as poverty grows," 21 March 2012.
[ 2 ] The bitter joke? Given the corruption and poverty noted above, one also reads, "Cuban President Fidel Castro was furious when Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $550 million last year. This year, the magazine upped its estimate of the communist leader's wealth to a cool $900 million. Castro, who says his net worth is nil, is likely the beneficiary of up to $900 million, based on his control of state-owned companies, the U.S. financial magazine said in its annual tally of "Kings, Queens & Dictators" fortunes Thursday." In "Fidel Castro net worth rises, according to 'Forbes'," USA Today, 4 May 2006.
For this we gain some understanding of the cynicism of Norman Mailer (1923-2007), who often and correctly spoke against fascism, also observed: "The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level."
One notes the following, as regards reports of corruption and poverty alongside wealth and privilege in the Cuban socialist government now six decades old: "The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones." In "Bourgeois and Proletarians," Chapter One of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, February 1848.
To advance the irony of the sclerotic political and economic realities of Castro's Cuba, one looks back and reads from almost sixty years ago, written by a man now 86 years old: "I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened." Fidel Castro, in a letter from prison dated 19 December 1953. As one may well conclude, power always clings to power.
One may compare the following quotes: 1) "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." In "Transcript: Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address," New York Times, 20 January 2009, and 2) "Cuba remains the only country in Latin America that represses virtually all forms of political dissent. In 2011 Raúl Castro’s government continued to enforce political conformity using short-term detentions, beatings, public acts of repudiation, forced exile, and travel restrictions." In "World Report 2012: Cuba," Human Rights Watch, January 2012.
The Castro form of socialism is less than benign as some human rights observers all too often note: "...Sonia Garro, born and raised in Cuba. She is currently residing in a Castro prison for the crime of demanding respect for human rights and the freedom to express her views. After being violently arrested, she and her husband (who is also black) have been held for more than a year by the Castro dictatorship without charges and without a trial. The world for the most part does not know who she is and there has been little to no outcry for the injustice she is suffering." In "Beyonce and Sonia: A tale of two black women in Cuba," by Alberto de la Cruz, Babalú Blog, 5 April 2013.
[ 3 ] "The members of the political group headed by Fidel and Raoul Castro, the high officials of the army and the security forces, don't live like the people. They live in real capitalism. They don't lack anything that you can have in a democratic society. And they want to live that way and they want the people of Cuba to live under socialism--I mean, in a very poor way." In "The Last Communist," by William Cran, Frontline, PBS, 11 February 1992.
One looks forward from the beginning of the Castro government over decades to learn that poverty remains intransigent under one-party rule, or as Marx wrote "new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones." And after decades of "new conditions of oppression," one learns that Cuba's next generation sees leaving as the alternative. "An elderly Communist Party member said the difference from the past is that the desire to leave is so widespread among the young. 'Unfortunately, if you talk to 10 young people today, nine of them will tell you they want to leave Cuba. They don't see a future,' she said, not wanting to be identified. Ulisses Guilarte, head of the party in Artemisa province and a member of the Central Committee, told Reuters the reason for youthful disillusionment was obvious. 'It is clear the economic situation is difficult, undoubtedly. The young people view their aspirations as still distant,' he said." In "Cuba's young see bleak future, many want to leave," by Jeff Franks, Reuters, 28 April 2013.
And so, the irony is that socialism is experiencing it's last hurrah. One reads as an admission, ""Without their knowing it, I hold that the supporters of the strengthening of capitalism as a means of reaching socialism are effectively in agreement with the liberal Cuban author Carlos Alberto Montaner when he said, 'Socialism is the transitional stage between capitalism and…capitalism.' Of course he was referring to “state socialism,” though what we have was never really even that." In "The Long Road to Socialism in Cuba," by Pedro Campos, Havana Times, 16 March 2012.
Moreover, this claim is bolstered by other voices: "The country has started on the road towards capitalism; and that will have big implications for the United States and the rest of Latin America." In "On the road towards capitalism," The Economist, 24 May 2012. For this Campos concluded in the Havana Times opinion: "The supporters of a more participatory and democratic socialism understand that if the “updating” doesn’t engage itself, as quickly as possible, the main engines of socialization — which are broad cooperativism and the direct participation of workers in management, administration and the distribution the profits of state enterprises — Cuba will not be heading toward more socialism, but toward the predominance of private capitalism."
Sixty years of Castro's admitted socialist revolution has been an experiment, with enough time to prove postulates in the cauldron of economic realities and history. And for it one can look back to the corrupt Batista dictatorship which Castro overthrew, and find sixty years later that the same "poverty and suffering" of which the iconic Ernesto Guevara wrote has continued. Per the quote by Marx above, this sixty years has merely shown the "new conditions of oppression" are quite like the old ones. See: Murderous murderer murdered - "M " as in the myth of Che Guevara.
Trust us - by the comedy routine, Bait and Switch
"They have said, 'Give us your money in Social Security and Medicare taxes, and we promise to give you a specified set of retirement benefits and medical care for the remainder of your lives.' The money they took in for Social Security and Medicare was supposed to have been put in a trust fund - remember Al Gore’s famous 'lock box' - but the money in the trust fund was spent way back in the Johnson administration. All the money that has come in since for the 'trust fund' has been spent by succeeding generations of politicians on their pet projects." In "World’s biggest financial fraudsters," by Richard Rahn, The Washington Times, 9 May 2011
Al Gore's famous lock box
Was a box without a lock;
What's more there was no box
To lock, that one might mock.
Indeed the phrase was empty,
Devoid of basic facts,
For this is what government does
Whenever it stirs and acts.
We will surely take care of you,
As soon as you give in,
And fork over what you've got
Without complaint; begin.
Trust us, for full faith in us
Is the more that you can give;
Trust us, though the past has shown
Such trust leaks like a sieve.See: Fat, fat government
"Americans will need to pay much heavier taxes and accept less from public healthcare to put state finances on a sustainable track, according to an IMF study published Monday. 'The United States is facing an untenable fiscal situation due to the combination of high fiscal deficits, an aging population and rapid growth in government-provided healthcare benefits,' three International Monetary Fund economists said in a report." in "IMF economists see dire future for US taxpayers," Agence France-Presse, 4 April 2011
Government is waddling, wiggling fat;
Perhaps it's even worse than that.
My political chums love to chatter on.
I say, "it's numbers;" the rest is a con.
Government has gorged on what it can take,
And now comes payback, as not enough make
Enough that all might have the spoils of war
For the gambit ends, which was known as "more."
Now "more" comes against limits which it never sees,
These limits are hard, hardened to most miseries.
"More" shrieks aloud, "more is what I believe."
When reality hits, "more" will just wail and grieve.
To all Party Members who cry aloud, "more,"
I look to their future, to austerity in store
For all true believers, the nice, kind and sweet
Who never dreamt their cupboards might hold little to eat.
My political chums hoped that I might join
One party or another, to thereby purloin
Something from the government's fat,
But I didn't believe their political chat.
To Party Members, so avid, so proud,
I see mostly a dumfounded crowd,
For all the true believers, the nice, sweet and kind
Will have shown their parties deaf, dumb and blind.
Envoi: "CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." From Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary" (1911)
Bad Little Boys, who stamp their feet
When things don't go their way,
When adult, campaign down Stupidity Street
Where it's Stupid Folks they'll sway.
Cast a vote for the Bad Little Boys
And watch the screw-ups mount.
It seems that tantrums' piggy squeals
Simply cannot even count.
One and one was two, at best,
And never were they three
Until Bad Little Boys made all their noise
And then made bankruptcy.
Bad Little Boys, like Corrupt Girls too,
Throw tantrums when they lose,
And if you dare to cross them, then,
They send Bully Boys to bruise.
Bad Little Boys, in the end,
Teeter like a house of cards,
And that's the history of Bad Little Boys;
History dashes them into broken shards.See: Metaphor
“We are entering the Reichstag, the arsenal of democracy, to arm ourselves with their own weapons. We are becoming Reichstag representatives in order to paralyze their basic convictions, and with their own support. If democracy is so stupid as to give us traveling passes and per diem allowances to do them this disservice, that is their affair.” Joseph Goebbels, in the late 1920s. [ 1 ]
Democracy is stupid,
and very often blind,
In forgetting that among us
there're those who're most unkind,
Who'd trample others easily
without a thought or care
To seize such power over them
when they are least aware.
Democracy is stupid,
and often deaf and dumb,
When democrats stand idly by
to watch themselves overcome
By those who'd use the weapons
of democratic means
To rape and pillage others in
post-democratic dreams.
Nightmares are the stuff of this
as nice folks never learn
That evils comes dressed up as good
in stealth, before they turn
Devouring as they will
as democracy awakes
To find it's suffocating,
before tyranny it shakes.
Democracy is stupid,
and sells itself quite short
To see the blessings of liberty
tyranny would abort,
As tyranny creeps in to sit
where democrats once led,
And see that democracy will pay
till paralyzed and dead.
Democracy is stupid,
for that's what Goebbels said,
And for a time now passed and gone,
it seems the lesson's led
To some awareness of the fault
which democracy can't learn,
That liberty is the dearest price
and freedom is what men yearn.
It is the few among us
who hold to Joseph's view,
But they keeping coming at us
by every turn of screw
To wither from within, decay
the freedoms of each day
As tyrants in each age still gnaw
man's liberty away.
The goal is never democracy,
when free men throw off chains,
But rather sweet dear liberty
which tyranny disdains.
Democracy is imperfect,
and often blind and dumb,
But other systems fail first,
so says the rule of thumb.
Thumbscrews are small torture
at first when pressure's light,
But comes a time of agony
when screws are turned so tight,
When democracy fails to see
the tyrants' closing fist
And then it's late concluding
it cannot coexist
With tyrants whose pretense is great
to be democrats themselves,
Where hidden behind the curtain
is planned evil on their shelves,
Ready as they implement
their plan upon a land,And liberty's watchful eye
Must always understand
Democracy is stupid,
and very often blind,
In forgetting that among us
there're those who're most unkind,
Who'd trample others easily
without a thought or care
To seize such power over them
when they are least aware.
Envoi: "If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution. Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition of Western democratic theory. In the first chapter it was pointed out that Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared -- just as Eugene debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has [sic] been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths -- democracy. " In "'There is only the fight...' An Analysis of the Alinsky Model" by Hilary Rodham, Bachelor of Arts thesis, p. 74. Wellesley College. [ 2 ]
See: Democracy is radical and Almost democracy
Addendum: "I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide – 98% of the vote. I’ve never read that in any American publications. Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force. In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates." In "They Voted for Hitler in Austria (and He Put In Gun Controls)" by Kitty Werthmann, Economic Policy Journal, 28 January 2013
See: Conjugating Hitler and We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party
Addendum: "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
Addendum: "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) [ 3 ] [ 4 ]
See: Revolution revolves but once - lèse majesté remains among its stunts
[ 1 ] "'There is at least one official voice in Europe that expresses understanding of the methods and motives of President Roosevelt—the voice of Germany, as represented by Chancellor Adolf Hitler.' That incredible statement was the opening line of a flattering feature story about the Nazi leader that appeared on the front page of the New York Times in 1933, and was typical of some early press coverage of Hitler, who rose to power 80 years ago on Jan. 30. Hitler’s ascent caught much of the world by surprise. As late as May 1928, the Nazis had won less than 3 percent of the vote in elections to the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, and the Nazi party’s candidate for president received barely 1 percent of the votes in March 1929. But as Germany’s economic and social crises worsened, the Nazis rose to 18.3 percent of the vote in the parliamentary election of July 1930. They doubled that total two years later, becoming the largest party in the Reichstag." In "How the press soft-pedaled Hitler," by Rafael Medoff, jns.org, undated web page accessed 1 February 2013. See: Not as bad as he is depicted.
[ 2 ] "The most radical of political faiths?" For a long view of this well-known problem, "Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy." Aristophanes, in "Plutus," circa 380 B.C.E. From then until the twentieth century, one sees that same deserved skepticism: "I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind." H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) The amusing yet sad truth seems obvious, and this is that Aristophanes' observation remains as true today as it was millennia ago. As to "fattened on public funds," one may reflect on For Your Common Good.
[ 3 ] "Ballot Box. The altar of democracy. The cult served upon it is the worship of jackals by jackasses." In "The Jazz Webster," a section in "A Book of Burlesques," H. L. Mencken, 1916.
[ 4 ] "Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) More than a century later one finds quite similar observations, such as, "Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born." Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962).
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924)
Just who is the taxed and inflated bourgeoisie?
These days it is probably both you and me.
If you're quite average, and just middle class,
To crush you there'll come some total jackass.
Millstones of taxes and inflation's crunch
Sounds exactly like Lenin, and it isn't a hunch.
So who calls for taxes and more taxes galore?
And who borrows heavily, inflating the score?
Why it's one party and then it's another as well,
Which is just maybe why Lenin's words foretell
The way to crush the middle class bourgeoisie?
Taxation and inflation come for you as for me.Why quote Lenin, and say this the way I do?
A lot of the middle class find themselves in this stew.
Never would they connect the dots to see the sketch,
And figure out each one is just a bourgeois wretch.
Envoi: "Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one." In "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, Marx-Engels, London, March 1850
See: Anti-capitalism struggles - a curriculum of sorts, and Socialists love money
"In the series attack upon the Hindu Temples in Bangladesh in recent months, aiming to frighten the minority Hindus there and to grab the Hindu temple properties within a so called secular regime of Awami League Govt. headed by Sheikh Hasina, latest feed back came to us about a total resentment of the retaliating Hindus in the nefarious design of burning of “Srimad Bhagabad Gita” in the temple complex of Sribas Angan in the vicinity of Beyani Bazar of Sylhet district. Before this culpable act the Islamist perpetrators destroyed the ancestral deities of this “Sree Sree Lakshmi Narayan”, “Lord Shiva” and “Radha Madhav Jiu” of Achray Sribas Swami, a great Sanskrit scholar ever and the champion companion of Sree Sree Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534), a great spiritual leader in India for his Bhakti Movement. The ancestral complex Sribas Acharya is considered as a heritage monument and famous Tirtha Khestra (pilgrimage resort) for Hindus comprising with very old “Sree Sree Lakshmi Narayan Mandir”, “Pancha Tattva Mandir”, and “Siva Mandir” was destroyed by the local Mohammedan land grabbers and perpetrators." In "Mohammedan fanatics burned sacred Hindu scripture “Srimad Bhagabad Gita” after destroying 555 yrs old Hindu temple complex in Islamic Republic of Bangladesh.," The Struggle for Hindu Existence, 13 April 2011
Muslims whined about Florida
Because Afghan mullahs stoked
The fires of indignation
And one burnt Koran invoked.
Islam shines in other ways,
As seen in the burning shrines
Of Bangladesh, not Florida,
And arson is among its crimes.
Seen in news across the world
Are Islam's wringing hands
About unfair disrespect for it,
While it wars in many lands.
The victim game is failing,
Which Muslims try to play,
As they even burn some mosques
When their fires of indignation stray.
"Burn, baby, burn" burns
Five hundred year old shrines,
And blows up Bamiyan Buddhas;
Islam's fiery madness shines.
But in the world's travails
Such burning turns to shame,
As it invites retaliation,
While diminishing Islam's name.
If might makes right
Is of the arena's rules,
Then this is merely war
By some other tools.
War defines the winner,
For this is that story's end;
But it also defines the loser,
When the final chapter's penned.
"Burn, baby, burn" burns,
Pretending a protest's game;
But if it's war, not protest,
Then one side's winning is the aim.
The old adage comes to mind,
The gander gets the goose's sauce;
In the long march of history,
I wager this all is Islam's loss.
Addendum: ""Islamist insurgents retreating from Timbuktu set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts, according to the Saharan town's mayor, in an incident he described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage. Hallé Ousmani Cissé told the Guardian that al-Qaida-allied fighters on Saturday torched two buildings that held the manuscripts, some of which dated back to the 13th century." In "Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts," by Luke Harding, The Guardian, 28 January 2013
Other addenda:
In March, Muslim herdsmen from the Fulani and Hausa ethnic groups launched attacks against five Christian Berom Vilages near Jos, killing more than 500 people, state officials say.." In "Christians killed in Nigeria attack," Aljazeera, 17 July 2010
"Christians in Egypt staged protests in three cities yesterday to protest against the government's failure to protect them after a bombing blamed on Islamic militants that killed 21 people as worshippers left a church service 30 minutes into the new year." In "Egyptian Christians protest after bomb attack at church kills 21," by Sarah A. Topol, The Independent, 3 January 2011
"Minority Rights Group International (MRG) warns of rising religious tension in Africa and condemns the recent attacks against Coptic Christians in Alexandria, Egypt, and Christians and Muslims in Jos, Nigeria." In "MRG strongly condemns attacks on Christians in Egypt and Nigeria and urges African governments to address rising religious tensions," in Refworld, the UN Refugee Agency, 4 January 2011
"Hundreds of Christians have begun fleeing northern Nigeria after dozens were killed in a series of attacks by Islamist militants who issued an ultimatum to Christians to leave the mainly Muslim region or be killed, witnesses said on Saturday. A Nigerian newspaper on Tuesday published a warning from Boko Haram, a movement styled on the Taliban, that Christians had three days to get out of northern Nigeria. Since the expiry of that ultimatum, attacks in towns in four states in northeastern Nigeria have left at least 44 people dead and hundreds of Christians are fleeing to the south, according to residents and a Red Cross official." In "'Persistent killings': Christians flee deadly attacks in Nigeria," msnbc.com news services, 8 January 2102
"A suicide bomber set off a car full of explosives at a church in northern Nigeria on Sunday, killing at least 12 people in the latest attack on Christian worshipers, witnesses said." By Reuters, in The New York Times, 3 June 2012
"Hundreds of people in eastern Pakistan rampaged through a Christian neighborhood Saturday, torching dozens of homes after hearing reports that a Christian man had committed blasphemy against Islam's prophet." In "Mob torches dozens of Pakistani Christian homes," by Zaheer Babar and Rebecca Santana, Associated Press, 9 March 2013
See: Stirred Up, also below: The Dust Settles
"Angry and desperate asylum-seekers have torched an immigration detention centre in Sydney, burning nine buildings to the ground after Australian authorities denied some of their requests for refugee status." In "Asylum seekers torch Australian detention centre in night of riots," by Bonnie Malkin in Sydney, Telegraph, UK, 21 Apr 2011
Sydney's Detention Centre
Was torched into a blaze;
Asylum seekers lit the fires,
Displeased with their delays.
Lampedusa's charity
Was scorched by asylum's flames
As asylum's brutish little men
Enhanced asylum's claims.
Such acts of warming charity
Show gratitude in short supply,
As arsonist asylum seekers
Demand goodies as their cry.
Seekers seeking a better life
Free from want and fear?
Today's asylum seekers
Seek freebies, far and near.
This is migration economic
In asylum's sweet disguise;
When "no" might answer asylum's claims,
Asylum fires rise to the skies.
"More Qurans were inadvertently burned during recent Afghan protests than by the US pastor Terry Jones. Spiritual leaders in Kandahar called a meeting to teach Afghans how to channel their passions peacefully." In "Afghan mullahs push peaceful protest in wake of Quran-burning violence," Christian Science Monitor, Tom A. Peter, Correspondent / April 14, 2011
Who burns Korans and kills most Muslim folks?
Finally we're in on some gruesome sorts of jokes.
For all the talk, the blather and the spin,
Reality comes along, and the dust may settle in.
Take offence? That's easy. We see it every day.
Measure real truth? So many look away.
Some drive passions into violence and rage,
To gin up the biggest, bloodiest stage.
It's not a question of the truth, for that is not in doubt.
Smoke and mirrors and death; that's what it's all about.
Some mullahs enflamed Muslims viciously to kill;
Other mullahs see the truth, and it's a bitter pill.
More Korans are burned, albeit just by chance,
As Muslims kill their brethren. Unhappy happenstance.
Envoi: "In Zarzour, a village in the state of Idlib, a Shiite mausoleum was torched in December. According to witnesses who spoke to Human Rights Watch, the rebels apparently set the mausoleum alight on purpose." In "Churches and mausoleums destroyed as religious tensions mount in Syria," France 24, 28 January 2013
Addendum: "Already, protesters across much of Egypt are battling police, cutting off roads and railway lines, and besieging government offices and police stations as part of a growing revolt against Morsi and his Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood group. At least 60 people have been killed since Friday." In "Egypt Army chief warns state could collapse," by Maggie Michael and Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press, 29 January 2013
Addendum: "A cache containing arms, ammunition and dual-purpose items was discovered on Tuesday during a special operation in the village of Gimry, Interfax was told at the Interior Ministry press service for Dagestan. A press officer said that village law enforcement removed an assault rifle, a pistol, an air gun, a grenade, machinegun magazines, large quantities of cartridges, 27 walkie-talkies of various models, several dozen car alarms, instructions for making home-made bombs, maps of the locality, and over 200,000 rubles in cash from the cache in the central mosque of the village." In "Arsenal discovered in central mosque of Dagestani village," Interfax News Agency, 18 April 2013.
See: Stirred Up
Who slits throats, and who does not?
Just asking places radicals in a ticklish spot.
Who beheads and who says no?
Just asking is argued no place to go.
Plain questions find the ticklish spot,
When answers make them overwrought.
Behead those who insult Islam?
Should one take this with aplomb?
Stirring violent folks to hate
Seems quite the game, once as of late.
A ticklish spot which makes one weep
Shows a angry soul with wounds quite deep.
A ticklish spot which makes one rage
Shows an violent thug in any age.
Questions pry open cans of worms,
Responses rage? Well this affirms
That ticklish spots are well rubbed raw
Which does explain the knife and claw
Erupting from wee tickled spots
Which helps us all connect the dots.
Who slits throats and who does not?
Just asking places radicals in a ticklish spot.
"Bangladesh is considered a democratic [ 1 ] and moderate Muslim country, and national law forbids the practice of sharia. But activist and journalist Shoaib Choudhury, who documents such cases, said sharia is still very much in use in villages and towns aided by the lack of education and strong judicial systems.," in "Only 14, Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death," by Farid Ahmed and Moni Basu, CNN, March 29, 2011
She was raped, she was beaten,
She was lashed to death.
That's sharia's toll
Spoken in one single breath.
She was raped, she was beaten,
She was lashed to death.
Envoi: "A detailed analysis of FBI statistics covering ten full calendar years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks reveals that, on a per capita basis, American Muslims, contrary to spin, have been subjected to hate crimes less often than other prominent minorities. From 2002 to 2011, Muslims are estimated to have suffered hate crimes at a frequency of 6.0 incidents per 100,000 per year – 10 percent lower than blacks (6.7), 48 percent lower than homosexuals and bisexuals (11.5), and 59 percent lower than Jews (14.8). Americans should keep these numbers in mind whenever Islamists attempt to silence critics by invoking Muslim victimhood." In "Hate-Crime Stats Deflate ‘Islamophobia’ Myth," by David J. Rush, NRO, 11 January 2013. [ 2 ]
Addendum: "I think 'broadly comparable' in this context must mean 'not comparable at all.' The number of Muslims killed by 'violent extremist nationalists' in Britain is nil, or very close to it. The number of people killed by al-Qaeda is 52.... The reason Islamists need to claim a rising tide of 'anti-Muslim hatred,' however slender the evidence, is three-fold. First, it furthers their agenda of promoting distance between Muslims and non-Muslims. Second, it is aimed at frightening Muslims into their camp. Third, it enables them to stifle criticism; any attacks on Islamists can be dismissed as “Islamophobic' attacks against all Muslims." In "Islamophobia: is this the year's most embarrassing academic report?" by Andrew Gilligan. The Telegraph UK, 2 December 2010.
Addendum: "The death toll from a wave of terror attacks by homegrown Sunni groups and a Baloch separatist outfit in Pakistan's restive northwest rose to 140 on Friday, reports Indian newspaper Times of India." In "Pakistan bombing death toll rises to 140," The Daily Star, Bangladesh, 12 January 2013.
Addendum: "So it was with horror that I learned about the bombing in Quetta on January 10 that killed nearly a hundred Shias as they were at a religious gathering. On the same day, bombs went off in Swat and Karachi, killing yet more innocent people. We lost a wonderful human rights activist, Irfan Ali, who had attended last year’s Social Media Mela in Karachi and left a huge impression on everyone who heard him speak there. We lost scores of other young people for no reason but that they were Shia. Militant groups Laskhar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah Sahaba have vowed to undertake more attacks, probably until every last Shia in Pakistan is either dead or driven away." In "How do you live in a country that’s killing you?" Bina Shah, Express Tribune, Pakistan, 12 January 2013. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
Addendum: And as to "a country that's killing, one reads: "The Taliban banned education for women and girls but since they were ousted in 2001, females have returned to schools, especially in the capital city Kabul. Afghan women have won back basic rights in education, voting and employment since 2001." In "Dozens of Afghan schoolgirls taken to hospital after 'poison attack by Taliban'," by Becky Evans, Daily Mail UK, 22 April 2013.
The British comedian's view: "What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?" Rowan Atkinson (b. 1955) [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ]
The American comedian's view: "I mean, there's only one faith, for example, that kills you or wants to kill you if you draw a bad cartoon of the prophet. There’s only one faith that kills you or wants to kill you if you renounce the faith. An ex-Muslim is a very dangerous thing. Talk to Salman Rushdie after the show about Christian versus Islam. So, you know, I’m just saying, let's keep it real." Bill Maher, Real Time, 19 April 2013.
The Egyptian comedian's reality: "Youssef, a Muslim, told CNN in late 2012 that his goal is not to attack religion but the blasphemy of those who use religion for political gain. 'We present ourselves as the voice of reason, and we have our differences with people on political grounds,' he said. Following a string of lawsuits and threats, an Egyptian court issued an arrest warrant against Youssef on March 29 this year for allegedly insulting religion and the president." In "Egypt's "Most Wanted": the comedian who made fun of Mursi," by Katherine Jane O'Neill, Al Arabiya, 2 April 2013.
See: Ice Cream - a modern litany ad hominem, and also The religion of peace
[ 1 ] "A well-known Saudi Islamic scholar has issued a new fatwa (edict) saying holding elections for a president or another form of leadership is prohibited in Islam. Sheikh Abdul Rahman bin Nassir Al Barrak, reputed for his radical views, described western-style elections as an alien phenomenon to Islamic countries. 'Electing a president or another form of leadership or council members is prohibited in Islam as it has been introduced by the enemies of Moslems,' he wrote on his Twitter page, according to Saudi newspapers." In "Election is banned in Islam: Saudi scholar," Staff article, Emirates 24/7, 17 January 2013.
Interesting as is the fatwa above and humorously in agreement with it, the stance against democratic elections is seeing its "equal and opposite" reaction" as in this news: "'Salafism, as represented by the groups banned today, is incompatible with our peaceful, democratic system,' Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said in a statement. 'DawaFFM, Islamische Audios and An-Nussrah aim to change our society in an aggressive way so that democracy is replaced by a Salafist system and the state of law replaced by sharia,' he went on." In "Germany bans three 'anti-democratic' Islamist groups," BBC, 13 March 2013. Thus one finds such a political stance as that of the "well-known Saudi Islamic scholar" in fact justifies non-Muslim nations and political parties from acting on exactly the anti-democratic Saudi edict as the edict itself declares. In a democracy, those advocating its overthrow are in fact advocating sedition. But as with other movements which used democracy for anti-democratic purposes, one may learn from the quote of Goebbels: Democracy is stupid.
As an awareness of Islam grows in news reporting, one learns more about what are seen as "alien phenomenon:" "...the marathon has been cancelled following the decision of Hamas to ban women from participating. Turns out that the political party Ramdani describes as an 'Islamic resistance movement' – in reality, a Holocaust-denying terrorist organisation hell bent on the destruction of Israel – isn't particularly keen on equal rights for women. Women running in marathons – even if their bodies are covered from head to foot – is 'un-Islamic', apparently. Who would have thunk it?" In "Reality check for Left-wing opponents of Israel: Hamas bans women from participating in the Gaza marathon because it's 'un-Islamic'," by Toby Young, Telegraph UK, 6 March 2013.
But more than women's sports is at stake: "Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in three states after a series of deadly attacks by Islamist militant groups. Militants from Boko Haram have been blamed for most of the violence, which has left 2,000 people dead since 2010. The Islamist group, whose name means 'Western education is forbidden' in the local Hausa language, is fighting to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state in the north." In "Nigeria: Goodluck Jonathan declares emergency in states," BBC, 15 May 2013.
[ 2 ] "Individuals can become jihadist terrorists by radicalizing and then adopting violence as a tactic. 'Radicalization” describes the process of acquiring and holding extremist, or jihadist beliefs. This activity is not necessarily illegal. For this report, “violent extremism” describes violent action taken on the basis of radical or extremist beliefs. For many, “violent extremism” is synonymous with “violent jihadist” and “jihadist terrorist.” In other words, when someone moves from simply believing in jihad to illegally pursuing it via violent methods, he becomes a terrorist." In "American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat," by Jerome P. Bjelopera, Congressional Research Service, 7-5700, R41416, page 2, 23 January 2013.
[ 3 ] "More than 75 people were injured in the bomb attack, medical officials said. Initial reports put the death toll as high as 35." In "Iraq bomb: Many dead in Shia mosque in Tuz Khurmato," BBC, 23 January 2013.
And more as to the notion of "Muslim victimhood" versus Muslims victimizing others, one reads: "A decision by extremist Islamic militants to ban delivery of food aid and a 'normalization of crisis' that numbed international donors to unfolding disaster made south-central Somalia the most dangerous place in the world to be a child in 2011.The first in-depth study of famine deaths in Somalia in 2011 was released Thursday, and it estimates that 133,000 children under age 5 died, with child death rates approaching 20 percent in some communities." In "'Off the charts': 133k Somalia famine child deaths," by Jason Straziuso, Associated Press, 3 May 2013.
The question was posed in the Pakistani press: "How do you live in a country that’s killing you?" One sees Muslim-against-Muslim killing quite clearly in the moment: "The UN says 70,000 people have been killed since the uprising against President Assad began in March 2011. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the death toll at more than 80,000." In "Outrage at Syrian rebel shown 'eating soldier's heart'," Jim Muir, BBC, 14 May 2013. Perhaps numbers such as these provide some justification for Islamophobia, when viewed as a fear of such enormous and murderous violence, documented all too regularly in the worldwide press is not irrational and not hateful, but rather a sensible response to such news as all this represents?
[ 4 ] "At least 12 men had hands or feet cut off after MUJAO (Movement for Jihad and Unity), and its allies in AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb), took control of Gao last April. The exact number is not known because some were amputated in the military base where no non-jihadi were allowed. The mayor's office, a few yards from the punishment ground, was turned into a sharia court. Outside, the sand has turned black where the enforcers of hesbah, or justice, ground down cigarettes and whipped those found smoking. Inside, the floor is littered with documents, including a ring-binder with details of women flogged for not wearing the veil." In "Inside Gao where Arab jihadis took bloody sharia retribution on Mali's black Africans," by Lindsey Hilsum, Guardian UK, 2 February 2013.
"The New York-based group [Human Rights Watch] said an amateur video posted on the Internet on Sunday shows Abu Sakkar, a founder of the rebel Farouq Brigade who is well known to journalists as an insurgent from Homs, cutting into the torso of a dead soldier. The video has caused outrage among both supporters of President Bashar al-Assad and opposition figures. 'I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,' the man says to offscreen cheers of his comrades shouting 'Allahu akbar (God is great)'." In "Syrian Rebel Bites Heart of Dead Soldier: Video," byline Reuters, as found at NYTimes, 13 May 2013.
[ 5 ] "The death toll from a suspected suicide bombing in Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi on Sunday has risen to 45, a senior city official said. Hashim Raza also said 149 people were wounded in the attack outside a Shi'ite mosque, the latest signal that Sunni groups are escalating sectarian bombings against the minority. The bomb exploded outside a Shi'ite mosque as people were leaving evening prayers, said police official Azhar Iqbal. Men, women and children were among those killed and wounded, he said." In "Suicide bombing in Karachi kills 45 and injures 149 in attack that targeted Shi’ite Muslims as they left evening prayers," by Emily Davies, Daily Mail UK, 3 March 2013.
So many articles report the same sorts of violence by Muslim against Muslim: "Car bombs hit five Shiite mosques in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk just after prayers on Friday, killing 19 worshippers and injuring another 130." In "Bombs at Five Iraqi Shiite Mosques Kill 19," by Omar Mohammed , The New York Times, 29 Mach 2013.
[ 6 ] "To the Palestinian women who commented on that event page, and apparently tried to draw Israel into the issue, Haskia had this to say on her own Facebook page: 'We are talking about the rape of Arab women in Egypt and other Arab states, and you still try to make a connection to Israel? Jewish men do not rape Arab women and girls! It is Arab Muslim men who are raping you, so focus this campaign on them and leave Israel alone.'" In "Muslim woman: Jews don't rape us, unlike Arabs," by Israel Today staff, 13 February 2013.
In other news of women, one reads, "Afghanistan's Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs on Saturday told TOLOnews that it is aware of women being sold in Afghanistan and especially in eastern Nangarhar province, stating that it is a cultural practice that even the clerics are not capable of preventing. 'There is no doubt that women are being sold, and for three reasons: past practices, poverty, and illiteracy. The women whose husbands doubt them, the women that are not liked by their husbands, and the women whose husbands are poor are sold. However they are not sold as servants but they do the Nikah,' said Dai-ul-Haq Abed, deputy minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs. The Nikah is the temporary or fixed-term marriage allowed in Islam under certain conditions." In "Trading of Women Rife in East Afghanistan, Report Claims," by Shakila Abrahimkhil, TOLOnews, Afgahnistan, 30 March 2013.
And from the UK as regards informal sharia courts, "The courts, which issue rulings according to Islamic law, have been found to be giving Muslim women advice which experts warned may place them in danger. Undercover filming in some of the 85 councils operating in mosques and houses across the country has revealed that the courts, which are run by sharia councils, are ruling in favour of men meeting estranged wives or having access to children when they have found to have been abusive." In "Sharia courts putting women at risk, CPS warns," by Josie Ensor, Telegraph UK, 7 April 2013.
And from the feminist's stance: "From what we have related above, naturally the most hated institutions are those that stand for one of these three things or a mixture of them. The most obvious illustration of the patriarchy is Islamic theocracy, a symbiosis of political and religious dictatorship. In theocratic states, the position of women is horrifying and hopeless. We direct our fiercest criticism to such countries, and work in that part of the world is what most occupies our minds." In "Why topless protesters will hound Islamic leaders," by Inna Shevchenko, special to CNN, 22 April 2013.
[ 7 ] "Proselytizing is forbidden in Libya. We are a 100 percent Muslim country and this kind of action affects our national security." In "Foreigners arrested for trying to spread Christianity in Libya," by Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Reuters, 16 February 2013. This is basic proof that "tolerance" is a one-way argument, in which Islam is to be tolerated, while in some countries under Islam other religions are "forbidden." Such a stance predicts conflicts aplenty in the coming years.
For another look, "The government of Tehran is launching a new offensive against the so-called home churches, small groups of Christians who meet in private houses to celebrate their faith because they cannon join the Churches officially recognised (and controlled) by the State, Iranian Christian news agency Mohabat reports. Khorasan, a government journal has published a long statement by Bahman Amiri Moghaddam, chief of police for the Khorasa-Ravi province, in which he says security forces 'had taken care of a group of people that had formed a network of home churches in Mashhad and will prosecute all people involved.'" In "Iran: The Ayatollahs fear home churches," by Marco Tosatti, La Stampa, 13 April 2013. Such is tolerance, as those who use the term Islamophobia to demand it from others while ignoring the intolerance documented around the world.
"...a radical pro-Islam movement has emerged to counter the students it sneers at as 'atheist bloggers'. Known as Hefajat-e-Islam, it has given the government until May 5 to introduce a new blasphemy law, reinstate pledges to Allah in the constitution, ban women from mixing freely with men and make Islamic education mandatory - an agenda critics say would amount to the 'Talibanisation' of Bangladesh." In "Islamist agitation fuels unrest in Bangladesh," by John Chalmers, Reuters, 15 April 2013.
And as to Christians in Syria as in Egypt where the so-called "Arab Spring" is now being termed a "Christian Winter," one reads: "Firsthand accounts from Syrian Christian refugees in Lebanon reported by award winning investigative journalist Nuri Kino detail the horror in which they described kidnappings, rapes, harassment, theft and other violent reprisals at the hands of Islamist groups." In "Islamist Ultimatum to Syrian Christians: Convert, Leave, or Die," by Matthew J. Thomas, Assyrian International News Agency, 18 April 2013.
As to "tolerance" of other religions as a stance intended to muddy such stories as above, one reads: "Worth noting is the fact that apostates will rarely advertise leaving Islam due to the death sentence it imposes on its followers, and that most Islamic countries do not acknowledge conversions out of Islam. Systematic persecution of religious minorities has been documented in almost every Muslim majority country, leading to some converts to Islam being coerced or forced into their conversion." In "Fastest Growing Religion, WikiIslam, accessed April 2013.
One also notes the vigor with which those who attempt or pursue conversion from Islam are dealt: "A Lebanese man was sentenced to 300 lashes with a whip and six years in prison for his role in helping a Saudi woman convert to Christianity and flee the kingdom in the latest example of the religious intolerance that grips the region." In "Lebanese man gets 300 lashes, 6 years for helping woman convert to Christianity," by Benjamin Weinthal, FoxNews, 13 May 2013.
[ 8 ] It was noted: "It's about who should lead Islam, and it began at the moment of Muhammad's death." In "Understanding the Sunni-Shi'ite Divide," by Alyssa Fetini, Time, 16 September 2009. Further one reads: "True, the Sunni-Shi'a schism is not essentially a matter of religion, but one in which religious differences reflect wider social and political disparities. But in all cases we cannot avoid looking carefully at all of the factors involved. It is no exaggeration to say that the origins of the divide are to be found in the rivalry between the Hashemite and Umayyad clans during the pre-Islamic period, when neither Sunni nor Shi'a even existed. This competition took numerous forms, and kept reproducing itself, always adapting to changing circumstances." In "Sunni and Shi'a: coexistence and conflict," by Hazem Saghieh, OpenDemocracy.net, 16 April 2007.
And as to a proposed solution to this question of "who should lead Islam" and "the rivalry," the following was recently proposed: "Muslim governments, whether Sunni or Shia, should respect the rights of their citizens irrespective of their religious beliefs." In "Sunni –Shia Tensions Are More About Politics, Power and Privilege than Theology," by Shireen Hunter, ACMCU, Georgetown University, accessed February 2013.
The circular and cynical comment on this brings on back to the statement above, in the first footnote. For this and with regard to other worldwide strains of political ideology advocating mandatory governance over others, it reduces down to a simple and most human question: "It's about who should lead." Such a question posits its corollary" "Who should follow?"
It is axiomatic that all those who answers these questions will easily identify an "other" which will be seen as more than opposition, but an enemy.
One should therefore be reminded of Norman Mailer's cogent observation: "Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it." In "Only In America." Commonwealth Club of California. February 20, 2003.
See: Burn, Baby, Burn
"During his 77-day trial, Duch admitted to overseeing the deaths of up to 16,000 people who passed through the gates of Toul Sleng prison - also known as S-21 - in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. Prisoners were accused of being enemies of the regime, and many were tortured into making false confessions. Torture methods included pulling out prisoners' toenails, administering electric shocks and waterboarding." In "Khmer Rouge S-21 prison chief appeals against jail sentence, Man known as Duch admits to overseeing torture and death of 16,000 people but says UN-backed tribunal wrong to try him," 28 March 2011, Guardian, UK.
Everyone should clearly see
The red of flowing blood,
The white of drying bone,
When death became a flood.
But everyone will just not see
The red of the damned Khmer,
For communism's apologists
Remain loyal, firm and pure.
Everyone will never see
The red of justice done,
The white dove of hoped for peace
Was a lie in that red, red sun.
Red was the flag they flew,
They called themselves democrats.
Red ran the killing fields
Of those bloody bureaucrats.See: Death in peacetime
"Stirred up by three angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters on Friday overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said." in "Afghans Avenge Florida Koran Burning, Killing 12," New York Times, April 1, 2011
Burning a Koran is bad,
But killing folks is good;
That's how it stacks up
In that Muslim neighborhood.
Blowing up a mosque
Is what some Muslims do;
It's happened again and again,
In the historical Muslim stew.
In a mosque one finds Korans,
So Muslims burn them too;
Now there's a snag in their brutal whine;
They've burned Korans. Who knew?
Burning a Koran is bad,
But killing folks is good;
That's the theology that ignites
A certain Muslim brotherhood.
Burn a book; be put to death.
Don't burn one? Just the same.
Folks who don't burn anything
Get to shoulder all the blame.
See the logic? See the sense?
Avenge yourselves with this.
Three mullahs stirred up dullards
For murder is their radical kiss.
Envoi: "'The scene was of complete devastation. The main hall of the mosque and the minaret were destroyed and many of the wounded were in critical condition,' Hazem said. 'There was no reason to target this mosque and it is not the first one to be targeted in the neighborhood. There is no FSA base in the mosque and it was not frequented by rebels,' he said, referring to the rebel Free Syrian Army." In "'Devastation' after mosque bombing in Aleppo, activists say," by the CNN Wire Staff, 18 October 2012
Addendum: "A powerful explosion shattered the golden dome of one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines this morning, setting off a day of almost unparalleled sectarian fury in cities and towns across Iraq as protesting mobs took to the streets to chant for revenge and set fire to dozens of Sunni mosques." In "Blast Destroys Shrine in Iraq, Setting Off Sectarian Fury," by Robert F. Worth, New York Times, 22 February 2006
Addendum: "A suicide bomber killed at least 40 people in a mosque in Afghanistan's relatively peaceful north on Friday as worshippers gathered for prayers marking the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, police officials said." In "Suicide bomber kills 40 at Afghan mosque during Eid," by Bashir Ansari, Reuters, 26 October 2012
Addendum: "A mosque in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in southern Damascus that was sheltering some 600 refugees from neighbouring districts has been attacked from the air and hit by at least one rocket, and there are reports of many casualties." In "Syrian planes attack mosque in Yarmouk Palestinian camp," Ya Libnan News, 16 December 2012
Addendum: "At least 56 bodies were found on the banks of the Quwaiq river in the western district of Bustan al-Qasr, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported. Most had their hands tied behind their backs and gunshot wounds to the head." In "Syria crisis: 'Bodies of executed men' found in Aleppo," BBC, 29 January 2013
See: Burn, Baby, Burn
"It’s ironic that something marketed as an environmental savior actually contains mercury." In "The Chemistry Of Light Bulbs—And Why CFL’s Are Overrated," Scientific Blogging, 26 March 2011
Fluoridated water?
Keep it near at reach.
Use up all that chlorine
In a brand name bleach.
Light up homes with toxins
For Earth Hour's earthy sake?
It all comes back to profits
Someone else, not you, will make.
Plastic bags? No! Paper?
No! Cloth should do the trick!
Then come all the studies
Cloth-borne germs make you sick.
Gasoline in engines?
Diesel particulates?
Battery bulging vehicles
Are toxic, one forgets.
This is green! No, that is!
The arguments all rage.
To save the planet anyway
Is as clever as it's sage.
In saving this dear world,
An odd thing comes about
As someone sends the bill to you;
Let's call it a bail-out.
Save the planet this way;
Save it that way too!
All it takes is all you've got
And a little bankruptcy too.Profits gained by passing laws
Is no market; it's base politics.
For this I prefer the word I coin,
As so many practice profitics.
You shall buy what they say you will,
And you shall be glad therein.
That's the way their schemes all turn,
As you take it on the chin.
Won't you give a little more
To see the world progress?
If you really would rather not,
They answer for you: yes!
Profitics is making legal
The extraction of consumers' spleen,
By painting it a lovely shade,
Currently known as green.
See: Mandate waste
Chapter and verse.
Better or worse.
Blessing and curse.
Cradle, then hearse.
“The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Barak Obama, quoted in "Obama hypocritical on war with Libya," Chicago Sun-Times, 23 March 2011
"From dynamite to Tomahawk missiles,"
That's the tune his Peace Prize whistles.
Boom and bang! the "Oh, bomb away;"
That's the latest prize winner's sobriquet.
No bells have rung so loudly long,
But still munitions sing his song:
"From dynamite to hundreds of missiles,"
That's the truth today's Peace Prize whistles.
Envoi: "At the same time, Chomsky sees Obama himself as a man without a 'moral centre'. 'If you look at his policies I think that’s what they reveal. I mean there’s some nice rhetoric here and there but when you look at the actual policies … the drone assassination campaign is a perfectly good example, I mean it’s just a global assassination campaign.'" In "Noam Chomsky: The responsibility of privilege," Al Jazeera, 12 January 2013
Addendum: "Let that sink in. The President of the United States of America believes he has the absolute right to kill you based upon secret 'evidence' that you might be a terrorist. Not only does he think he can kill you, but he believes he has the right to do so in secret, without formally charging you of any crime and providing you with an opportunity to defend yourself in a court of law. To top it all off, the memo asserts that these decisions about whom to kill are not subject to any judicial review whatsoever." In "Executioner in Chief: How a Nobel Peace Prize Winner Became the Head of a Worldwide Assassination Program," by John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute, 8 February 2013
Addendum: "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!' William Shakespeare, in "Julius Caesar," circa 1599.
See: President Cool and also A Modern Observation on The Anti-War Movement - "Where have all the critics gone, long time passing?"
People like to freeload;
People like to scam.
People like it easy,
And take it on the lam.
People like fake it;
People like to cheat.
People like to swindle
Enough that they repeat.
People like a gimme;
People palm the ace.
People like to freeload
And do so in every place.
Sitting back that others
Might carry the whole load
Is quite a nifty game
Until things all implode.
People like to freeload;
People love to scam.
Comes the story's end
One learns it's all a sham.
Envoi: "Nearly 312,000 federal workers and retirees owed more than $3.5 billion in back taxes as of Sept. 30, 2011, the agency said. The year before, about 279,000 workers and retirees owed $3.4 billion." In "Federal workers owe $3.5 billion in back taxes," by Stephen Ohlemacher, MSN Monry, 8 March 2013.
Addendum for the elite: "More than 100 of Britain's richest people have been caught hiding billions of pounds in secretive offshore havens, sparking an unprecedented global tax evasion investigation.... 'We know from the data we obtained there are names of people from more than 170 countries. Some are prominent citizens – politicians, celebrities, businessmen, the elite of some societies.'" In "100 of UK's richest people concealing billions in offshore tax havens," by Rupert Neate and James Ball , The Guardian UK, 9 May 2013.
See: Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon - a Western poem
"In what is being billed as a unique opportunity to snap up a piece of modern Russian history, Yeltsin's dacha or country estate in northwest Russia is to go on the block next month with a recommended starting price of £6.25 million." Found in "Boris Yeltsin's favourite holiday retreat up for sale for £6 million." The Telegraph, 3/22/2011 | Andrew Osborn, Moscow
Socialists love money,
When it's theirs to have and hold.
After such a history,
Might one not dare be bold
And venture this opinion
That counts the costs to men?
Socialism's leaders are
Plump piggies in their pen.
Socialists love a gravy train
That goes they way they do,
And never count the real costs,
For that would prove it true.
Soviet socialists' dachas'
Sea-side parks tell why
Socialism's leaders are
The fattest porkers in their sty.
Socialists holiday in retreat
Away from the people's eyes,
Because they know their party
Shows socialism's prize.
Socialists throughout history
Have had leaders grubbing cash
Because their politics simply is
The same old balderdash.
Yet those who believe the claptrap
Clamp down their vision's sight,
For looking at just the numbers
Class warfare staged the fight.
Socialists leaders feed right well
On society's folk at large,
But tell this truth in numbers plain,
And comes their countercharge.
"Socialists love money"
Is evil, spite-filled, mean,
When someone not a socialist
Dares to intervene.
Numbers tell the awful truth
Which socialists all dread,
And that is that they seek to feed
On another's daily bread.
Envoi: "After decades of hearing their leaders say the West was poised to plunder the Communist nation, shocked East Germans have grown increasingly angry as they have learned the extent of the plundering from within. During a parliament session Dec. 1, one lawmaker alleged former officials stashed $54 billion in Swiss bank accounts. Prosecutors have not confirmed that figure, but there have been nearly daily revelations of corruption and lavish living by the country's former hard-line leaders. " In "Honecker, 5 Others Target of Prosecution, Arrests Made With AM-East Germany, Bjt," by Kevin Costelloe, Associated Press, 8 December 1989
Addendum: "The East German prosecutor's office said Sunday that former East German leader Erich Honecker has been charged with diverting to his own bank account millions of West German marks paid to his government to ransom political prisoners." In "Honecker Charged With Diverting Millions in Ransom to His Account," United Press International, 26 February 1990.
Addendum: In an amusing episode after the election of the openly socialist government of France in 2012, one learns again that a number of leading socialists love capital: "Former Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac shocked France this week by admitting to tax evasion. The scandal represents a potential disaster for the struggling Socialist government and could increase pressure from the public and the political opposition against President François Hollande." In "Tax Scandal: Ex Budget Minister's Failings Threaten French Government," by Stefan Simons, Der Spiegel, 4 April 2013. And, "Michele Delaunay, minister for Senior Citizens in the socialist government of French President Francois Hollande, on Monday revealed that her personal wealth amounted to more than $7 million, including almost $20,000 worth of jewelry, along with antique furniture and paintings worth $260,000. Writing in a regional newspaper, Sud Ouest, she acknowledges that the full extent of her wealth 'will be hard to understand for the majority of French citizens who are currently experiencing financial hardship.' Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius possesses an even greater fortune: $7.8 million, including an apartment in Paris valued at $3.5 million." In "In France, an embarrassment of riches as ministers reveal wealth," by Annabel Roberts, Correspondent, NBC News, 15 April 2013.
See: Anti-capitalism struggles - a curriculum of sorts, and a discussion in rhyme of the political assertions about Income Inequality
Fusspots and nannypants
And worrywarts galore,
Troublebunnies all worked up
Stir up their upping roar.
Fusspants and nannypots
Ringing loft wringing hands,
As warts of worry worry lots,
Changing spots like shifting sands.
It's this! It's that! It's them! It's those!
It's everything awash, asea!
The end is near! It's as we fear!
Oh, no! This cannot be!
Bunny troubles boil and burst
As seers predict the very worst.
All of life seems damned, accursed!
And yet it proves so well rehearsed.
Fusspots and nannypants
And worrywarts galore
Prostitute their global fears
Like some tawdry, gaudy whore.
Fusspants and nannypots
Ring so loud their wails,
As warts of worry worry lots --
Then plain reality prevails.
I love being right, left alone a lot;
I feel quite cool when the music's really hot.
I look to get high when I'm feeling low;
I love to hate all the status-quo.
I love to be up when getting down;
I like being out when I'm in town.
I so look forward to just laying back;
I choose to be passive when I attack.
I love to be here, but I dream of there;
I like to go specifically anywhere.
I work being busy at idle pursuits;
I seek such contrasting attributes.
I often lie, quite honestly;
I puff with pride, in all modesty.
I rush with all haste just to relax;
I am the sanest of the maniacs.
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
Talk is cheap, so 'tis said,
Campaigning for each vote with bread.
Buy the fealty of little folk,
By passing out goodies at every stroke.
Finance the whole on a promise to come,
And every recipient will think you chum.
Talk is cheap, as so one sees,
When goodies end up raising fees.
One must pay for promises made,
Yet comes the time when promises fade
Into busted budgets and fiscal stress
As promises becomes their foreseeable mess.
Talk is cheap, then worthless, yet
Talk campaigns: double down the bet.
Try the fealty of the loyal folk,
To see if they'll pay for talk's little joke.
Finances bust the bank in time,
And looking back, cheap talk was crime.
Reason comes, as consequences rain
Upon all schemes which cause such pain.
One will pay for promises failed,
As history shows cheap talk unveiled.
Let's bring reason to our ears,
And see, cheap talk was just lies' veneers.
See: In a moment of candor , and also Leadership Failure
You'll build your house on shifting sand,
And lose it, saying this was not planned.
After it tumbles as it likely will,
You'll come to me to pay your bill.
Insurance terms it an act of God,
But all in all that's rather odd
For when the house was built on sand,
One might well think collapse was planned.
Well, one can argue forth and back,
But risks are risks, and planning's lack.
Call collapses acts of God,
Erected as a trick facade
To hide your hands in the failing game
As you look for someone else to blame.
The house you built on shifting sand
Was sure to fall when it was planned.
One's head is in the freezer;
Scalding water burns one's feet.
Averaging both statistically
Might seem to some quite neat.
Last year one was flush with cash,
But this year one's flat broke;
Averaging these statistically
Says averages are a sometime joke.
Rush to show the charts and graphs
With their oily, deep massage;
Numbers can be made to lie
In statistics-dyed camouflage.
Prognostication's blunders
Have a history quite long;
Throughout the generations,
Generations have been wrong.
We're sure it's this, or maybe that,
Says could, and might, perhaps;
And all the fancy lingo'd stuff
Has hidden its hidden traps.
Reality plays with numbers too,
Immutable, not spun;
Trot out the ripe statistics' stuff?
Averages are always fun.
One's head is frozen in the ice;
Burnt feet are blistered raw.
The average, somewhere in between,
Takes pains to shrug, "Oh pshaw."
Envoi: "There are lies, damned lies and statistics." Mark Twain (1835-1910)
See: Stab the straw man
“It’s unbelievable. Goldman … no one has any criminal convictions—the whole new regulatory reform is a joke. The whole government is a Ponzi scheme.” Quote of Bernie Madoff, in "The Madoff Tapes," by Steve Fishman, New York Magazine, 27 February 2011
I can hardly wait for a world of numbers
To awaken a world which deeply slumbers.
When "too big to fail" becomes "too big to bail,"
Talking heads will watch their policies fail.
Run up a tab? That's all very nice,
But time will come to pay this price.
Imagine it won't? Watch prices rise,
Because everyone's in for a numbered surprise.
It's the same old surprise as ever before,
And being old it is very much more
Than just a mean old kick in the pants,
It's a boil getting ready for the number lance.
It's a bubble of gossamer soapy skin,
Which weakens as it gets more politically thin.
Paint this picture upon your easel;
Tomorrow we'll sing: Pop goes this weasel.
The weasels? They ran up a hefty bill
Up in the grand chambers of the grandiose Hill.
But as always "it's someone else's fault,"
As they do their weasel-like somersault.
We won't wait long for the world of numbers
To upend the world of debt it encumbers.
When it all becomes "too big to be bailed,"
Talking heads must learn such foolishness failed.
Santa in a Speedo;
The Easter Bunny's balls.
Truth in government;
Gaps in border walls.
A pervert as a priest;
Arid waterfalls.
Tooth fairies' dentures;
Empty market stalls.
Argument by fallacy;
Debate built up on lies.
Regulating speech;
Continuing failures' tries.
Jack boot toughs in pink;
Clowns with sharpened knives.
Opposites chained together;
Everything survives.
Politicians' promises;
The social justice dance.
Multicultural strictures;
A butchered pony's prance.
Saving this and saving that;
Saviors everywhere.
Gaia as something real;
Lions and lambs beware.
Gay pride's public buttocks;
Feminists trashing gals.
Someone to hold your wallet,
Saying, "Buddy, aren't we pals?"
Death taking holidays;
Famine, sassy, fat;
War called by other names;
Pollsters who call to chat.
Shouting down dissent;
Threats, not bluffs, we see.
Revolutions frozen;
Normal as aberrancy.
Separation of church and state
But on a sliding scale;
Reverends politicking.
The devils' in such detail.
Rating the colors of man's skin;
Thinking skin is not so thin.
Believing the latest in all the spin;
Forgetting some things are truly sin.See: Thin-skinned
Higher 'n a kite?
Sicker 'n a dog?
Not quite right 'n
Lost 'n a fog?
Runnin' outta dough?
Stumblin' to 'n fro?
Caught 'n the undertow?
'At's no way to go.
Survival's for the fit.
Don't believe a word of it?
Belly up fer another hit
'Cuz that's the gist of it.
"Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt." William Cobbett (1762–1835), English journalist, reformer. Letter, 10 Feb. 1804.
Economics one-oh-one,
That's all there is, and then you're done.
Human nature doesn't change,
Such rules we do not rearrange.
Suck the life from work and toil,
Then watch the peasants rage and roil.
Tax to death and pile up debt,
And count the failure that you get.
Economics one-oh-one
Predicts this spectrum, all to none.
Calculate risks for working folks,
Debt and taxes become their yokes.
The lesson's old though oft ignored,
And still unlearned as debt has soared.
The laws were known so long ago,
One wonders why man can't say no.
Hear the wails and bawling;
Governments are falling.
Economics one-oh-one,
That's how it is, when said and done.
See: Kick the can, and also We Get Nothing - a kindergarten level curricula
"The West's universalist pretensions are increasingly bringing it into conflict with the other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China. Thus the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations." Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in "How to Win the Clash of Civilizations," in the Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2010.
There is one world: that is true.
But pigs and apes don't share the view
That in one world, One World can
Create a universal One World plan.
Men make plans with lots of noise,
As if all girls agree with boys
That everyone holds to the same One view
Which says that there's no room for who?
For those who'd hold some other thought,
That for their views, hard won, hard fought,
Will say that their free world can
Never include your One World Plan.
Folks are as different as rocks and trees,
And if that metaphor doesn't please,
Then think that when two folks would chat,
Three opinions bubble up from that....
Some One World is the world one sees,
While from that World some other flees.
Pretensions are what One World shows,
For others fight against such foes.
One World of gays left to play their games
Will never be the One which aims
To hang those queers from poles and trees
To let them sway in a One World breeze.
One World of rules from authorities great
Will cut and chafe and aggravate
Those who would question authority's right
To dictate their One great oversight.
One world of folks who would speak against rules
Will rile up differing One World fools.
One World of men who would batter wives
Must fight one world that defends their lives.
One World ruled by a One World sway
Is One World in which your views shan't say
That my One World of One World dreams
Cannot be what your One World seems.
I feel free where I feel free,
Where I'll not bow on bended knee
To beg and plead for liberty
When some One Worlder batters me.
There is one world, a world of fools
Where fools allege they make the rules
Which evidence the One World lie
That in one world One World is nigh.
Envoi: "European elites became so infatuated with the vision of "an ever closer union", that they chose to disregard real-life obstacles to their plan. Particularly over the last twenty years, the EU morphed from a pragmatic project, which pursued ambitious goals of international cooperation in small, carefully calibrated steps, to a hubristic project, the aim of which was a supranational state." In "The end of the European Dream," by Stefan Auer, Eurozine, 22 February 2013
'The fundamental problem we face is that we can only distribute and consume what is actually produced." Leonid Breznev, Communist Party Congress, 1972.
When the cash cow cashes out,
When the players leave the game,
When geese stop their golden laying,
The spiel will be assigning blame.
When producers stop their work,
When makers cease their toil,
When the spigots are turned off,
Things will quickly come to boil.
When the shelves are all but bare,
When deliveries no longer come,
What does it profit a man? No profit?
The question's a rule of thumb.
All the high-toned social justice,
Appeals to the common good,
Are pretty, sparkly little jewels,
So easily misunderstood.
Intentions, well, intentions, good,
Cannot repay a debt.
The sweat and labor of one's brow
Is what folks should not forget.
When the cash cow cashes out,
When the markets' stalls are bare,
It's sure all good intentions
Will cry out, "It's not fair."
So let the good intentions,
Social justice, common cause,
Work their fingers to the bone
To earn some earned applause.
Peddling all those social thoughts
Fills not the belly's ache.
It takes a farmer picking fields
A real meal to make.
It takes a builder building things,
A hunter and village smith,
It takes the making of all things
For society therewith
To have and hold and honor
And count with numbers dear,
All else is talk, just word-filled air
Resenting each profiteer.
See: Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon - a Western poem
"South Sudanese civil authorities estimate that up to 200,000 of blacks, mostly women and children, were enslaved during Khartoum’s jihad." By Francis Bok, in South Sudan: Emancipated Nation, January 2011
Slavery was and slavery is
And slave traders still live,
While most news folks look the other way,
Lenses like a sieve.
Condemnations flow and flood
When seen as yesterday,
But condemnation today just means,
"Let's look the other way."
It cannot stand, such reality
Which says Muslims take slaves;
The template says that cannot be,
It not what tolerance craves.
Such tolerance demands sin confess
When 'tis of centuries past,
But when it's sin that lives today.
Such sin should be bypassed.
Slavery was and slavery is
And slave traders still live,
While news media are nicely mum,
And progress regressive.
Envoi: "The current global population is estimated to be 6,928,198,253. Of that approximately 7 billion people, 27 million of them are enslaved around the globe (Defining p.2). Despite the fact that slavery is illegal around the world, the black market for humans thrives just as well as drug and arms trafficking. Estimated to be a $32 billion USD industry, modern slavery plagues 161countries (Human p.1). Modern slavery includes many forms of heinous bondage; such as“serfdom, debt bondage and forced and bonded labour [a form of trafficking in which victims are forced to labor due to fraud, threat or coercion]; trafficking in women and children, domestic slavery and forced prostitution, including of children; sexual slavery, forced marriage and the sale of wives; child labour and child servitude, among others” (Secretary p.1)." Verbatim quote from Senegal Position Paper, UN Human Rights Council, "Elimination of Modern Slavery," by Savannah Troy.
The Austerity Game, American Style
Republicans. Democrats.
Idiots. Thieves.
It's supposedly a matter of
What one believes.
Deficits. Debt.
Two fools wrapped in one.
When the bills come due
There'll be little fun.
Democrats. Republicans.
Peddlers of scams.
Here's a novel thought:
These lions eat lambs.
Debt and Deficits.
Like lambs to their slaughter.
After yesterday's feast,
Tomorrow's bread and water.
Republicans. Democrats.
Socialists. Scum.
They've taken what they wanted,
As a general rule of thumb.
Deficits and Debt.
Such powers that be.
The weight alone
Comes to crush you and me.
Democrats. Republicans.
My share in this?
They're deeply at fault,
And my ass they can kiss.Debt and Deficits.
Perhaps someone pays.
But don't come to me
And my 'share' appraise.Republicans. Democrats.
Schemes all collapse.
I see no obligationTo share in their traps.
Deficits and Debt.
Austerity comes.
I'll sit idly by
And live simply on crumbs.See: Default on Debt
[ Several blogs were commenting on some wholly arbitrary "top ten" lists of composers, one from the New York Times, all of which seemed -- well -- silly. I prefer rhyme to prose in general, and scribbled this nonsense to add to one "list." Then I thought little more about the whole exercise without purpose. ]
One to three, that's 2:59,
For five sicks, who drank the wine:
Seven ate a large Clementine,
Nein! Ten, shows then no decline.
-- So scrawled a nonny mouse
Thoughts for the New Year
Drink yourself sober
By the hair of the dog;
Admire with vision
Your own visionary fog.
Rid yourself of your debt
By indebtedness grand;
It's you, not life itself,
Meant to hold the upper hand.
Cure someone with dying,
Or their never being born;
Those that disagree with you
Are deserving of your scorn.
Counter the intuitive
With rhetorical flair;
Commonsense alone
Is as dull as it is square.
Drink yourself sober
Because you will to drink;
See what then becomes of you
If that's what you think.
The cure is ever worse
Than the cause of your disease;
It hardened asks for truth,
Which so often doth displease.
Rob for social justice.
Kill for social right.
Drink and spend and tussle
With all of your might.
Then your game is o'er and done,
When lost and gone astray
In a blind-fool drunkard's folly
Which came to rue its day.Think yourself sober
By the hair of the dog;
Comes a dull, worn eulogy
As your last days' epilogue.
