December 21, 2010 archive

How to Win Friends and Influence Nations

Reading the news of this past week, it is easy to see why the U.S. strategy in Pakistan is failing. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China was in Islamabad praising Pakistan’s efforts fighting terrorism and pledged to increase trade between the two countries, the NY Times reported.

China has not uncovered any new secret in diplomacy that is allow it such breakthroughs. Really, it almost seems as if Wen is following the advice found in the book 人性的弱点 (The Weakness of Human Nature) or as it is better know, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

Consider three of Carnegie’s key principles:

  1. 不要批評,責怪或抱怨 or don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

  2. 獻出你真實,誠懇的讚賞 or give honest and sincere appreciation.

  3. 引起別人的渴望 or arouse in the other person an eager want.

Ten Glyphs



Glyph 1

A glyph is an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written.  Several glyphs put together can make a grapheme, which is a fundamental unit in a written language (i.e. sh is a grapheme, while s and h are both glyphs).

In Japanese katakana one grapheme corresponds to a mora (roughly, a syllable).

Of course petroglyphs are not representative of any spoken language that we know of but our ancestors did probably attempt to portray stories through their creation.  And perhaps the portrayal of, if not a story, an emotional state is what I am striving for here.  I don’t usually try to do that intentionally, but how can my emotional state when I created the pieces not be a part of what results?

An American Poet from Balkh

Green (small)2

The Green Mosque is almost the only building left standing in ancient Balkh, Mother of Cities.

B2

The most popular poet in America was born here in AD 1207.

Can you make a mirror out of straw and mud?

But sweep away mud and straw

and a mirror may be revealed!

Everything that exists is an empire of delight.

Jesus was delighted by the love of God.

His donkey was delighted by oats.

You entered this world as a nameless star

and now you ask me

“How can I find my way through the night?”

Forget your name

and let the love inside you light up the sky!

“The rats are jumping ship”

  Merriam-Webster named its Word of the Year for 2010 based on the number of searches. That word is the 14th century noun “austerity”.

 If you watched 60 Minutes the other night, you would have heard New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie tell us how we have no choice but to slash wages and benefits and lay off thousands of school teachers, police, and firefighters in every state.

 You will also hear lots of economists use the phrase “competitive”, as in “the American economy needs to be more competitive in the world”. What they really mean is that we need to accept lower wages and a lower standard of living. If we do this then it will be “good for us”, that there is economic value in this.

 What is really going on is a set of false choices that even the world’s financial leaders don’t believe.

Docudharma Times Tuesday December 21




Tuesday’s Headlines:

3 billion-year-old genetic ‘fossil’ traced

USA

Auditors question TSA’s use of and spending on technology

Toyota to pay record fines for disclosure delay

Europe

Europe’s ‘last dictator’ tightens grip with crackdown on rivals

Europe Turns against Germany

Middle East

Israel accused of discrimination in occupied areas

Iran earthquake kills at least five people

Asia

Refugee debate turns toxic after boat tragedy

Japan watches nervously as China flexes its economic muscles

Africa

UN urges recognition of Ouattara as Ivory Coast leader

‘Already Flying the Flag of an Independent State’

U.S. seeks to expand ground raids in Pakistan

Military commanders see intelligence windfall in expanding campaign across border

By MARK MAZZETTI and DEXTER FILKINS  

WASHINGTON – Senior Americanmilitary commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts to root out militants there.

The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash. Story: Investigator: Billions in U.S. aid wasted in Afghanistan

The plan has not yet been approved, but military and political leaders say a renewed sense of urgency has taken hold, as the deadline approaches for the Obama administration to begin withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan.

Conflict TBI: Cognitive Rehab. Therapy Not Covered

Billions have been spent on these Wars of choice! With those Billions spent Billions were made by many, new multi-millionaires with connections were produced as well as a high priced merc private army and more. Directly and indirectly over the decade of these ongoing conflicts!  

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

–Colin Wilson



Glyph 10

Late Night Karaoke

Modern Anti War Music

I’m firmly convinced that one of the differences between the hippy counter culture of 1960s, to some extent the punk counter culture of 1980s as well, is the cultural explosion that happened opposing the war, and by and large all wars.  “DFH” has become an acronym & a cliche, but also it implies that the left is something of the past; a bit of a dinosaur. Which is somewhat true, I guess.

Today, those of us on the left, well, we still revere the music of those earlier times — for some of us we’re stuck on  Creedence Clearwater and others from the 60’s, for others it’s the Clash, and for still others it’s Public Enemy (both 1980s) , and there’s some 90’s stuff as well, although that was a fairly tame era  for  war by the US standards .  Since, I make left music right now today, I naturally went looking for other peoples stuff.

First thing I came across was this :

Anti-war songs fall flat

http://www.politico.com/news/s…

I won’t bore you with a quote from this article, but basically as the title says, the author claimed that modern anti war music was dead in the marketplace, and poked a lot of fun at Tori Amos who penned ‘Yo George,’ against Bush & war.  And at first, I thought that might well be correct, I mean again…look how focused we are on much older stuff here.

But, looking a little more; at just the stuff from the Afghan/ Iraq wars to present, I found a lot of stuff I didn’t expect–including several anti war mega hits, that politico somehow didn’t bother to mention. Eminem penned a huge selling rap song, because he didn’t want his brother to go to war.  Post punk icon Green Day has at least two recent huge anti war hits, maybe more. Old timers like Neil Young & the late Johnny Cash have recent anti war songs, and Bruce Springstein, has apparently gone far, far left from his 1970’s hayday. In fact, in genres from Afro Pop and Reggae to Alternative or Country, artists are writing left and anti war music.  Maybe what’s happening now isn’t one counter culture movement, but a whole bunch of different anti war movements–diffused out into a more diverse cultural environment.

So here’s the 40 songs I came up with, screen-grabs taken off of itunes for those who don’t have it

(my own effort at #2 on the list, after the maligned by politico, Tori Amos) :

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Spinning Wheel, Luna Seas

We get doubled off wondrous~ness tonight folks.

The shortest day of year will have passed, and the days will begin to lengthen. Usually considered the first day of winter, I consider it the half way mark to long, languid days and short sultry nights.

It is the ultimate day of renewal. The sun has returned.

Tonight between midnight and 3 am we will be treated to a full lunar eclipse as well. Mine shall likely be obscured by the incoming weather system, but when the moon rose tonight it was full and reddish.

A grand sight, indeed.

Tomorrow starts my new year, it is Midwinter’s Night Eve, Yule, a turn of the root Wheel.

Look up, look out, look in.

Yep, I’m crazy, but I’m your crazy….. and tonight I’m crazy for the moon and the sun and the shadow we make across them all.



Photobucket



S01E15 – The Merkley Proposal (Season Finale!)

cross-posted from Main Street Insider

Last week, in part one of our two-part series on filibuster reform, we examined the Constitutional Option to allow majority approval of rules changes. This week, in the 15th and final episode of Season 1,we look at the most prominent package of rules changes discussed to date. Roughly a month ago, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) circulated a “dear colleague” memo outlining a series of changes that are being strongly considered within current Democratic Caucus deliberations.

Enjoy this first season’s finale. It’s been a fun season for us and we’ll be back in January with a whole slate of brand new bills and other policy proposals to summarize!

*Full disclosure: David Waldman, our Public Affairs Director, is an active advisor to the Fix the Senate Now coalition.

The Illuminati Times

The Illusionati-I love that title and with Julian Assange fading into the yesteryear of dumbed down 30 second soundbytes of lamestream tonight of CBS I had to endure yet another suburbanite dweeb expound about the benefits of getting sexually molested just to board an airplane.

Another newly found website with a catchy title.  Oneworldscam.com

http://oneworldscam.com/

I always like to check out a new Illuminati website’s links to other Illuminati related places for checking out the Apocalyptic clock.  It’s like normal people wondering about the weather.

So much for the “lame duck” Congress, way more destructive in their “waning” years with the “Food Safety” Frankenfoods Bill.

Oh, and from an engineering based website I found out that most of the rural satellite internet providers suck so getting those “food safety” high tech Mark of the Beast 666 microchip RFID registrations?  Well, they are going to have a problem with that.

Agenda 21 is picking up in the alt news community.  It is after all my personal Armageddon story also.

http://morphcity.com/agenda-21…

And the recentness of America’s de-industrialization would rationally mean such a thing was deliberate, by design, engineered to be so.  I put that date back to 1993 with NAFTA and the naming of “developing” countries “CARBON EXEMPT” well before ConMan Big Al made Bernie Madoff Green Dweebery a household cancer.

http://www.rense.com/general92…

On a personal note tonight it’s snowing in Marxachusetts.  It’s the first snow of the year and my upchuck potential at lamestream commerical news explains the “law” about how suburban shit disturbing dweebs will get sued if some fool slips and falls on your icy walkway.  Which means if you own property it’s not yours, you have to babysit shitloads of freeloaders who can now look for the opportunity for icywalkways to slip and fall upon.  And the “news” just told a far and wide audience so.  Just like the millions of Americans who just love assuming the position or getting cancer from radiation to get on an airplane.

I like my horse.  I still need the hooded black robe but I have a whole collection of those real antique sickle things.

A history of the main American branches of globalism.