Happy crossification everyone!

Easter greetings from D.M. Murdock (aka Acharya S):

Contrary to popular belief, Easter does not represent the “historical” crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In reality, the gospel tale reflects the annual “crossification” of the sun through the vernal equinox (Spring), at which time the sun is “resurrected,” as the day begins to become longer than the night.

Rather than being a “Christian” holiday, Easter celebrations date back into remotest antiquity and are found around the world, as the blossoming of spring did not escape the notice of the ancients, who revered this life-renewing time of the year, when winter had passed and the sun was “born again.” The “Pagan” Easter is also the Passover, and Jesus Christ represents not only the sun but also the Passover Lamb ritually sacrificed every year by a number of cultures, including the Egyptians, possibly as early as 4,000 years ago and continuing to this day in some places.

In care you ever think WTF? as you look east Easter bunnies and egg celebrations and how they got messed up in the risen savior, think rebirth, fertility. It’s all from the same origins – pagan rituals dating back to long before recorded history.

As I understand it, then…

The purpose of elections is to put people in office with whom we hold common views. To get elected these people have to buy TV time, and to do that they have to accept money from wealthy people, usually corporate executives.

That means that even though they side with us on the ground on important issues, our people can’t actively work for our issues while in office, or they will lose their corporate funding to an opponent.

But still, it is important to have our people in office, as the opposition are even worse people!

This is American politics in a nutshell. It is important to get your candidate in office. If that person is liberal or progressive, she cannot be effective while in office for fear of losing funding to an opponent. The only important thing is to keep her on office. Right wing candidates, on the other hand, are free while in office to be as wacky as they want to be, and never suffer loss of funding.

If you don’t vote, you don’t matter. If you do vote, you still don’t matter.

On knowing nothing and seeing even less

Jennifer Michael Hecht
One of my favorite writers is Jennifer Michael Hecht – I’ve only read two of her five books. She brings to me thoughts that I don’t or can’t access on my own. She highlights the wisdom of others in her books Doubt: A History and The Happiness Myth.

In Happiness she highlights an important point: Our brains have allowed us to survive and prosper on this planet, but not by all-encompassing vision. Rather, it is limited vision that focuses us on a few things while we ignore things that do not aid survival. We survive attacks by beasts and by each other, and threatening weather and climate. Quoting William James from Varieties of Religious Experience:

…our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go though life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus , and at a touch they are there in all their completeness….No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.

From Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception:

The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, but shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.

Continue reading “On knowing nothing and seeing even less” →

Passing notes on the Final Nine, AHIP and Romneyobamacare

It all starts and ends here
The Supreme Court is going to rule on “Obamacare” in the not-too-distant future. Just a note or two:

1. The very idea that these nine people are acting as our Mullahs, our ruling council, is offensive. They were not set up in the constitution as the final arbiter of all laws. They took that power unto themselves in Marbury. So we are governed in effect by two sets of supreme rulers – Wall Street and the Final Nine.

2. What is called “Obamacare” ought to be called “Obamainsurance”, as “care” has little to do with it.

3. And anyway, it is really nothing more than “Romneycare” written after that experiment had some good fallout. The only reason we even had a health care debate was that AHIP was ready at last with their remedy. We could have had a health care debate in 1996, 2000, 2004 and did not.

4. And anyway, it’s not really “Romneycare” but rather “AHIPcare,” as both bills were written by American Health Insurance Plans, the lobbying group for the insurance industry.

5. Romney are Obama are third-rate men who fronted for AHIP, as did Baucus, and in their time and as scripted, did Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and others.

6. It was a stage play, a Kabuki Dance. God, what a sorry cast of characters!
Continue reading “Passing notes on the Final Nine, AHIP and Romneyobamacare” →

Arizona charm

We are finishing our time in Arizona. The last week was with Bozeman friends who stayed with us. That week just blew by. We are also friends with two other couples from Bozeman who own houses down here, and have spent time with them as well.

We thought briefly about the snowbird life, and even looked at some houses, as they are ridiculously cheap down here. Then we realized that owning a house here carries with it an obligation to come here, and that would foreclose other possibilities. We quickly backed off, thanked the realtor and will probably head back to Colorado before our time in this house is up.

Continue reading “Arizona charm” →

Did Sgt. Robert Bales act alone?

Comments by participants in the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War claimed that the incident, though grisly, was not that unusual. “Free fire zones” meant that anyone breathing oxygen was a target, so that soldiers landing in the villages that day were free to kill anyone they saw, no questions asked. Only after a low-level GI, Ron Ridenhour, finally got Seymour Hersh to report on the matter did it become a scandal. And again, it must be noted, Hersh’s report includes comments from participants that the incident simply was not that unusual.

Afghan people are furious that Sgt, Bales was extradited from there to stand trial at home. Afghanistan news media is alive with reports that Bales did not act alone, was part of a coordinated effort, complete with helicopter landings and burned corpses. Could it be that that Sgt. Bale’s unit had free fire authority, and that on landing and finding no “militants” that they simply killed everyone there, My Lai style?

If so, there are many possible outcomes. One is the Calley scenario, where Bales would be allowed to take the fall, stay in jail long enough to escape public memory, and then quietly fade away. In this outcome, Bales sits quietly on trial as he is convicted, apparently penitent. News reports circulate that he was troubled, a loner, had combat stress, maybe even find high school buddies who uncover dark secrets about pornography and drugs.

What if Bales wants to put the Army on trial? That could be nasty, as the Army will not allow itself to be exposed (should the Afghan media be giving us accurate reporting). There would be no public trial, and he would be convicted, possibly executed, certainly put in solitary confinement.

Or, he might commit “suicide.” That would be the Joe Stalin solution: No person, no problem.

Hard to know what is true or factual right now. It would be wise of all of us to watch all reporting on this matter from all sources.

War, Inc.

This comes from WarIsACrime.org – I started reading it with the usual “Yeah, yeah, do go on” attitude, as if something new were about to be revealed. Turned out to be much better than I thought.

Top 10 Genius Reasons to Keep Troops in Afghanistan

1. When you’re setting a record for the longest modern war, cutting it short just increases the chances of somebody breaking your record some day.

2. When Newt Gingrich and Cal Thomas turn against a war, keeping it going will really confuse Republicans.

3. If we pull U.S. troops out after they have shot children from helicopters, kicked in doors at night, waved Nazi flags, urinated on corpses, massacred villages, and burned Korans it will look like we’re sorry they did those things.

4. U.S. tax dollars have been funding our troops, and through-payments for safe passage on roads have also been the top source of income for the Taliban. Unilaterally withdrawing that funding from both sides of a war at the same time would be unprecedented and could devastate the booming Afghan economy.

5. The government we’ve installed in Afghanistan is making progress on its torture program and drug running and now supports wife beating. But it has not yet mandated invasive ultrasounds. We cannot leave with a job half-finished.

6. We have an enormous prison full of prisoners in Afghanistan, and closing it down would distract us from our essential concentration on pretending to close Guantanamo.

7. Unless we keep “winning” in Afghanistan it will be very hard to generate enthusiasm for our wars in Syria and Iran. And with suicide the top killer of our troops, we cannot allow our men and women to be killing themselves in vain.

8. If we ended the war that created the 2001 authorization to use military force, how would we justify our special forces operations in over 100 other countries, the elimination of habeas corpus, or the legalization of murdering U.S. citizens? Besides, if we stay a few more years we might find an al Qaeda member.

9. A few hundred billion dollars a year is a small price to pay for weapons bases, a gas pipeline, huge profits for generous campaign funders, and a perfect testing ground for weapons that will be absolutely essential in our next pointless war.

10. Terror hasn’t conceded defeat yet.

The Big O

Don't ask me about my business, Kay.
As Glenn Greenwald reports, the reason we know that an American airstrike in December of 2009 killed 14 women and 21 kids is because of Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye. Consequently, Obama has him imprisoned.

Here in this country, Jeremy Scahill reports in the Nation about the imprisonment.

What are you going to do next, Big O – throw Jeremy Scahill in jail? Murder him?

Greenwald writes about the deafening silence on this side of the world about the imprisonment, the air strike itself, which the New York Times has blatantly lied about, and of course, the complicity of Democrats, who are apparently OK with murder and mayhem so long is it is their guy at the wheel.