The King James version was translated from the Greek Septuagint about 400 years ago, and the Septuagint was translated from Hebrew by 132 B.C. Isaiah was a prophet of the 8th century, yet some additional writing in the book was probably added as late as the 6th century.
The English translators of the Greek used the word 'liberal' intentionally. It best represented the word in Greek translated by Jewish writers of the Septuagint from their own language.
The word is used in Chapter 32, and I will quote verses 1 through 8 as well as a passage from the New Testament book John 8: 36-45 in order to show the consistency between what Isaiah wrote and what Jesus said close to a millenium later.
Isaiah 32
"1Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment.
2And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
3And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken.
4The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.
5The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.
6For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
7The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.
8But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand."
John 8:32-38
"36If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
37I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.
38I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.
39They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
40But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.
41Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.
42Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
43Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.
44Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
45And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not."
American issues of Christianity, cosmology, politics, ecosphere, philosophy, contemporary history etc
3/12/12
3/10/12
Faith That Rush Limbaugh's Language Evolution Will Become More Conservative
I saw a rather funny political cartoon in a newspaper that had President Obama pushing a wheel barrow of contraceptives up to Ms. Fluke from one side, and on the other stood Rush Limbaugh calling her a slut for taking them. Ms.Fluke stood in the middle looking confused.
Limbaugh often accurately summarizes the broadcast media positions on the left-the recent interpretations of the February employment statistics are a good example with Reuters, CNN, MSNBC, and the Washington Post painting it quite differently than the Gallup Poll the day before looking at non-seasonally adjusted numbers of the unemployed actually rising to 9.1% while the administration just says it stayed the same at 8.3% out of work.
Where Rush Limbaugh does the Republican Party substantial harm is in his environmental opinions that some therefore associate with all Republicans as a pervasive opinion.
Limbaugh did use inappropriate language though, and some conservatives would probably like to roll back language use to something before Lenny Bruce hit the stage and commercial television changed beyond the standards of 'I Love Lucy'.
Limbaugh often accurately summarizes the broadcast media positions on the left-the recent interpretations of the February employment statistics are a good example with Reuters, CNN, MSNBC, and the Washington Post painting it quite differently than the Gallup Poll the day before looking at non-seasonally adjusted numbers of the unemployed actually rising to 9.1% while the administration just says it stayed the same at 8.3% out of work.
Where Rush Limbaugh does the Republican Party substantial harm is in his environmental opinions that some therefore associate with all Republicans as a pervasive opinion.
Limbaugh did use inappropriate language though, and some conservatives would probably like to roll back language use to something before Lenny Bruce hit the stage and commercial television changed beyond the standards of 'I Love Lucy'.
Zhu Xi (1130-1200).. Indeterminism and Energy
Zhu Xi was one of the better Chinese philosophers of his age, and one of the twelve classic Chinese philosphers of Chinese history. He rightly disdained fractious public service though he passed the highest Confucian civil service examine at the age of 18.
I wanted to point out a few of his ideas that seem relevant today.
He has a metaphysics with Li or nature and its indeterminate status and also energy that is called Chi in Chinese I believe. Zhu Xi also thought that the character of the leader determined the well being of the nation. With four bad Presidents in a row and bad energy policy it is easy to share an opinion that America's Li and Chi are out of phase.
Nature of course has an indeterminate quantum status from a human perspective, although in-itself it is probably part of a monistic field of some sort, and homosexual marriages aren't natural. A national policy with unnatural Li and a fossil fuel Chi or energy policy is one moving toward global warming and perhaps the heat death of humanity except for the 1% that will fly to the moon on special space ships to places with a view built by robots (probably just science fiction thought there).
Zhu Xi was an investigator of things, and would certainly have appreciated Democritus and maybe even Plato if he had known about them. Aristarchus too might have been worth reading for the neo-Confucians of the time.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/116573/Zhu-Xi
The Apostle Paul elaborated upon the metaphysics of Jesus Christ, the spirit of God and man's relationship to a transcendent social realm that shares the parameter of applying transcending values to politics and social construction. Zhu Xi of course finds the metaphysical imperative in Li or the quantum mechanical nature of reality, while the Apostle Paul looked toward the Author of the Universal phenomena for-itself.
In either case, regardless of the political criterion we look at of the Song Dynasty or of Imperial Rome and 1st century Jerusalem, human leadership fails to embody the Li or Spirit principle in relating to the transcendent within the secular, empirical world even so far as to select a social environment with a best case energy policy reinforcing the continuum of life on Earth. Without respect for nature and the quantum uncertainty constructed within flowing righteous parameters the Spiritual nature of human society tends to lead toward crashes instead of passing silently through the Berlin Walls of industry,politics and mass extinction through intelligent redesign.
I wanted to point out a few of his ideas that seem relevant today.
He has a metaphysics with Li or nature and its indeterminate status and also energy that is called Chi in Chinese I believe. Zhu Xi also thought that the character of the leader determined the well being of the nation. With four bad Presidents in a row and bad energy policy it is easy to share an opinion that America's Li and Chi are out of phase.
Nature of course has an indeterminate quantum status from a human perspective, although in-itself it is probably part of a monistic field of some sort, and homosexual marriages aren't natural. A national policy with unnatural Li and a fossil fuel Chi or energy policy is one moving toward global warming and perhaps the heat death of humanity except for the 1% that will fly to the moon on special space ships to places with a view built by robots (probably just science fiction thought there).
Zhu Xi was an investigator of things, and would certainly have appreciated Democritus and maybe even Plato if he had known about them. Aristarchus too might have been worth reading for the neo-Confucians of the time.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/116573/Zhu-Xi
The Apostle Paul elaborated upon the metaphysics of Jesus Christ, the spirit of God and man's relationship to a transcendent social realm that shares the parameter of applying transcending values to politics and social construction. Zhu Xi of course finds the metaphysical imperative in Li or the quantum mechanical nature of reality, while the Apostle Paul looked toward the Author of the Universal phenomena for-itself.
In either case, regardless of the political criterion we look at of the Song Dynasty or of Imperial Rome and 1st century Jerusalem, human leadership fails to embody the Li or Spirit principle in relating to the transcendent within the secular, empirical world even so far as to select a social environment with a best case energy policy reinforcing the continuum of life on Earth. Without respect for nature and the quantum uncertainty constructed within flowing righteous parameters the Spiritual nature of human society tends to lead toward crashes instead of passing silently through the Berlin Walls of industry,politics and mass extinction through intelligent redesign.
3/9/12
U.S. Unemployment Rate (Non-Seasonally Adjusted) Up to 9.1%
Non-seasonally adjusted unemployment in the United States reached 9.1 % in February the Gallup Poll reported.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/153161/Unemployment-February.aspx
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Underemployment is up to 19.1% in February across America.
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-money-minute-20120309,0,2599645.story
While something like 220,000 jobs were created, about 367,000 jobs were lost in the month indicating a continuation of the long term trend of down-sizing and outsourcing to China, India and elsewhere. A fundamental readjustment to capitalism that would cap the number of corporations an individual could invest in at three that might accentuate the advantage toward free enterprise and individuals instead of consolidated concentrated networked wealth for select corporations and individuals probably is recovered for substantial correction. Otherwise the best opportunity might be to get homeland security to import thousand of camels, die them black and patrol the American southwest.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/153161/Unemployment-February.aspx
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Underemployment is up to 19.1% in February across America.
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-money-minute-20120309,0,2599645.story
While something like 220,000 jobs were created, about 367,000 jobs were lost in the month indicating a continuation of the long term trend of down-sizing and outsourcing to China, India and elsewhere. A fundamental readjustment to capitalism that would cap the number of corporations an individual could invest in at three that might accentuate the advantage toward free enterprise and individuals instead of consolidated concentrated networked wealth for select corporations and individuals probably is recovered for substantial correction. Otherwise the best opportunity might be to get homeland security to import thousand of camels, die them black and patrol the American southwest.
Russia Could Learn From Alaska's Permanent Fund
Russia's Vladimir Putin could take a page from Alaska’s Permanent Fund and establish a multibillion-dollar clump of money to make small annual payments to Russians to assure a measure of political servility. Alaska's Department of Administration invests royalty payments from global natural resource extraction corporations in the market sometimes leaning heavily toward investing in the same global extraction businesses such as oil that in turn assures the state of Alaska will kick back its policies to those businesses. While Russia would need more than the 38.6 billion dollars the Alaska Permanent Fund has, even a trillion dollar fund to make a payment to its citizens once a year could grease compliant political fealty from the Kremlin's subjects.
In the long run it is useful to develop a public government that is paid for largely by global corporations in order to fundamentally be immune from political control by the electorate. The voters instead, being paid off a little go along with the mafia like administration that prefers its own proprietary policies for its preferred employees decade after decade. Such modern corporatism could be helpful for Russian political stability although it is counter-productive to global environmental and alternative to fossil fuel energy interests of the public.
The state of Alaska has no income tax, and that keeps the public and corporations happy enough though it although the government to be largely unaccountable to public will such as might exist if the public had to pay income tax and demanded a more diversified and effective government.Politicians can be elected to serve corporate interests and that of the state. Their political ideologies much be consistent with the continuity of the bureaucratic entity, oil, gas and mining development. Russia to might be able to adapt to corporatist servility and slowly develop and evil extraction industry empire bent toward destroying life on Earth through global warming.
It is a hard fact of life that voters that pay for their government themselves, and who pay for welfare benefits to their non-working fellow citizens would rather have a healthy economy with full employment and civil equal justice, and that voters that do not have little concern if their government is corrupted, decadent or an evil empire with chronically unemployed and a declining economy. Corrupt governments first seek ideological servility from their citizens before income streams are allowed to occur. Even higher educational opportunities may be finessed to extinction.
In the long run it is useful to develop a public government that is paid for largely by global corporations in order to fundamentally be immune from political control by the electorate. The voters instead, being paid off a little go along with the mafia like administration that prefers its own proprietary policies for its preferred employees decade after decade. Such modern corporatism could be helpful for Russian political stability although it is counter-productive to global environmental and alternative to fossil fuel energy interests of the public.
The state of Alaska has no income tax, and that keeps the public and corporations happy enough though it although the government to be largely unaccountable to public will such as might exist if the public had to pay income tax and demanded a more diversified and effective government.Politicians can be elected to serve corporate interests and that of the state. Their political ideologies much be consistent with the continuity of the bureaucratic entity, oil, gas and mining development. Russia to might be able to adapt to corporatist servility and slowly develop and evil extraction industry empire bent toward destroying life on Earth through global warming.
It is a hard fact of life that voters that pay for their government themselves, and who pay for welfare benefits to their non-working fellow citizens would rather have a healthy economy with full employment and civil equal justice, and that voters that do not have little concern if their government is corrupted, decadent or an evil empire with chronically unemployed and a declining economy. Corrupt governments first seek ideological servility from their citizens before income streams are allowed to occur. Even higher educational opportunities may be finessed to extinction.
3/8/12
Mitt Romney Gets Endorsement from Mississippi's Governor
Mitt Romney can use the support of the first term Republican Governor of Mississippi facing a tough election challenge essentially against the tough and determined former Senator Rick Santorum. If Romney can take the conservative southern state it may mean the end of the Rush Limbaugh News Hour (only joking-Rush Limbaugh is gaining sponsors rather than losing them, and he is getting back on track after misspeaking to call a college student testifying before a superfluous congressional committee a 'slut' last weak).
I should point out that Mr. Limbaugh is not uncommonly wrong on environmental issues. Today for instance he called Greenpeace a leftist organization. On that point he is wrong. Rush assumes in error that any organization that does not support erroneous energy and economic supply prioritization (e.g. oil) is leftist. Greenpeace like many scientific organizations is simply objective about a particular range of empirical resource use issues, and would I suppose find any sort of across the world upgrade of human use of resource within any kind of free economic system o.k.
I wondered what it might have been like to visit Europe and see the Mediterrainian basin when it was dry and the strait of Gibraltar closed a few million years ago. It would have been a few hundred degrees at the bottom and in Europe a number of odd creatures not alive today would have trod the odd forests where no humans lived-simply some primates with gleeming eyes indicating a little too much intellect sometime like the way my chess opponent program occassionally plays. Rush Limbaugh and a host of fossil fuel corporations would have been riight at home in that ecosystem advocating with Lenin's fervor for pure materialism and disregard of spirit, intelligence and wise use of resources.
Today the world hasn't so much opportunity to disregard human environmental impact as then. In the Arctic male polar bear are becoming cannibalistic because of a lack of ice and trouble capturing seals now and then eating younger males. Arctic records of the range of ice flow in the Bering, Chuckchi and Barents Sea from whaling records going back to 1850 show a steady shrinking commensurate with space satellite records in recent decades indicating the global warming trend of the ice pack. Far too many political leaders are simply dumb on the issue of human environmental impact and want to ignore the potential hell ahead they are creating for the generations of American youth a century ahead.
American ingenuity and free enterprise can be stifled by large networks of corporate power in a controlled limited access 'marketplace' ranging through numerous time zones. The President has been far too recalcitrant to lead into a reform of capitalism that would liberate free enterprise in the way that Adam Smith liberated free enterprise from aristocratic control. Concentrated wealth and power can stifle free enterprise by the intelligent masses such as exist and stop them from developing ecologically rational economic practices.
Mitt Romney may be the better of conventional politicians able to reform government and make it more effective and less costly. It will probably take a new ecological economic reformer in the post-Romney years (its difficult to say what Rick Santorum would do on government reform-perhaps take a Libertarian approach and cut everything except oil depletion allowances and defense contractor spending?).
Mississippi, Alabama, Hawaii and American Samoa vote on the 13th of March, 2012.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ap-newsbreak-miss-gov-bryant-endorses-romney-days-before-states-presidential-primary/2012/03/08/gIQASrArzR_story.html
I should point out that Mr. Limbaugh is not uncommonly wrong on environmental issues. Today for instance he called Greenpeace a leftist organization. On that point he is wrong. Rush assumes in error that any organization that does not support erroneous energy and economic supply prioritization (e.g. oil) is leftist. Greenpeace like many scientific organizations is simply objective about a particular range of empirical resource use issues, and would I suppose find any sort of across the world upgrade of human use of resource within any kind of free economic system o.k.
I wondered what it might have been like to visit Europe and see the Mediterrainian basin when it was dry and the strait of Gibraltar closed a few million years ago. It would have been a few hundred degrees at the bottom and in Europe a number of odd creatures not alive today would have trod the odd forests where no humans lived-simply some primates with gleeming eyes indicating a little too much intellect sometime like the way my chess opponent program occassionally plays. Rush Limbaugh and a host of fossil fuel corporations would have been riight at home in that ecosystem advocating with Lenin's fervor for pure materialism and disregard of spirit, intelligence and wise use of resources.
Today the world hasn't so much opportunity to disregard human environmental impact as then. In the Arctic male polar bear are becoming cannibalistic because of a lack of ice and trouble capturing seals now and then eating younger males. Arctic records of the range of ice flow in the Bering, Chuckchi and Barents Sea from whaling records going back to 1850 show a steady shrinking commensurate with space satellite records in recent decades indicating the global warming trend of the ice pack. Far too many political leaders are simply dumb on the issue of human environmental impact and want to ignore the potential hell ahead they are creating for the generations of American youth a century ahead.
American ingenuity and free enterprise can be stifled by large networks of corporate power in a controlled limited access 'marketplace' ranging through numerous time zones. The President has been far too recalcitrant to lead into a reform of capitalism that would liberate free enterprise in the way that Adam Smith liberated free enterprise from aristocratic control. Concentrated wealth and power can stifle free enterprise by the intelligent masses such as exist and stop them from developing ecologically rational economic practices.
Mitt Romney may be the better of conventional politicians able to reform government and make it more effective and less costly. It will probably take a new ecological economic reformer in the post-Romney years (its difficult to say what Rick Santorum would do on government reform-perhaps take a Libertarian approach and cut everything except oil depletion allowances and defense contractor spending?).
Mississippi, Alabama, Hawaii and American Samoa vote on the 13th of March, 2012.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ap-newsbreak-miss-gov-bryant-endorses-romney-days-before-states-presidential-primary/2012/03/08/gIQASrArzR_story.html
3/7/12
Science of Unethical Upper Classes
Even in politics the upper classes are more unethical than normal individuals. In Alaska both Senators argue for oil development universally while global warming and water pollution develop. Senator Murkowski after losing her Republican primary ran as an independent to get Democratic female voters to put her in then switched back to the Republican Party after winning. Two Democratic Senators ought ton have some ethical awareness of global warming and the loss of wildlife habitat. They are going to resume shooting grizzly and black bear from aircraft near Fairbanks to let more moose grow for human predation.
The Wall Street scams, low low taxes on the rich, globalization; these are unethical policies of the upper classes primarily dooming poor Americans to poverty and the world to mass extinction.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307145432.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
The Wall Street scams, low low taxes on the rich, globalization; these are unethical policies of the upper classes primarily dooming poor Americans to poverty and the world to mass extinction.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307145432.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
Delicate Re-Election Cycle Timing of Air War in Syria and/or Iran
President Obama is in the midst of a media development for aggressive military action against Syria. It reminds me a little of bold monkeys or baboons becoming more aggressive little by little until transitioning to swarm for attack.
The broadcast media has developed a perennial war reporting cycle evidently seeking to become embedded with whatever forces are out there in 'resistance' or rebellion to some existing political regime that might need to be changed. In the case of Syria I believe the civilian deaths would not have occurred in significant numbers as they are without media fanning flames of conflict that might lead the Sunni rebels to beleive that the United States would eventually send their 'Condor Legion' to kill the violent chickens of the Syrian Government.
In times past American foreign policy might have been more to tolerate the existence of governments that were not at war with the United States-that policy has some things going for it. Yet President Obama has a Nobel Peace Prize and a gay-friendly military in his arsenal so the Moslem Spring becomes a Moslem Year until the election cycle at least (in the U.S.A. for November 2012) with moral and media support for Sunni regime change organizers, military support and the Condor Legion air war in Libya and perhaps a next venture in Syria. There is also the loosely related problem of regime change in Iran, stopping Iranian nuclear weapons development and the possibility that Israel may act directly to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities and not wait while President Obama makes his political calculations on what more war would do for the price of gasoline and his chance of being re-elected.
The Syrian Government may deserve to become kaput for its unlikable characteristic. I am sure it isn't friendly to the tradition of British Imperialism and hasn't much oil or gas worth the time of the Condor Legion (its fun to use that term for a superior air force attacking 2nd world countries although no intention exists to say that the Obama use of American or European Air Power is fascist). The media monkey chatter for war is seemingly on a schedule that would debauche before November 7, 2012-perhaps about May or June since Senator McCain is already asking for air strikes (why couldn't he have been elected in 2008 so these things could have been accomplished more directly some might wonder-even before many civilians were killed by the Syrian Government?).
There is something to be said for a U.S. foreign policy that neither reinforces nor militarily opposes oppressive foreign governments. Perhaps some of those nations might evolve politically with modern technology and change toward a better way for freeing its people. Britain is critical of Russia and it's past, yet reasonable people understand that Britain has an imperialist past and seeks foreign natural resources to enrich itself-and the Russians seem like the biggest potential resource doners about. Here in Alaska the politicians give away natural resources to foreign corporations generally for a fraction of the value in return for being at the head of the trough of payouts that are made, while some of us may go for years without meaningful employment. Billionaires and global networks can be about as repressive to independent and free enterprise by the non-aristocrats as the Chinese Communist Party leadership that might plunder African resources and use rare species for herbal medicines.
In some respects the world is run by technocrats that can't see the woods for the trees pursuing collectively the global heat death of human prospects-but why worry? The prospects for bringing 'democracy' to Syria loom on the spring or Summer 2012 agenda and a Sunni State from Libya to Turkey might be formed that would allow greater transparency for anti-terrorist intelligence to develop and safeguard the potential development of Sharia law in New York to reverse the homosexual marriage laws and get women to cover their faces with some kind of designer rags in order to reverse over-stimulation of the human section of the biosphere.
I believe that the chess term for Syria is en prise-it is a foe piece just sticking out there waiting to be taken. Then of course as an added bonus Iran is just up the hill and unless it keeps its rhetoric down it might need to have its nuclear ambitions demolished while the demolition is good.
A war before the November election actually would be bad for President Obama's re-election prospects so he may wait until after Nov. 7 to send the Condor Legion or European proxies to obliterate Syrian Air defenses and then liberate Damascus thus freeing up Lebanon from the talons of Syrian puppet masters (not the best quality political rhetoric yet I haven much practice at that anyway). The most likely course of events would be to let it rot (Syria and Iran) and just have the media harangue American ears the rest of the year about the blood and the pathos and a journalist or two killed in action.
Real wages for younger Americans reportedly have declined by 11% compared to wages in the 1970s. The national unemployment rate is about where it was during the Carter administration, and President Obama like President Carter has an Iranian problem-even one a little more serious than the hostage taking of 1979. The Iranian nuclear weapons development program seems ready to pop a bomb or two, and Israel may want to try a go at stopping that.
The electorate may want a better, more effective policy such as can be developed in today's environment of political and economic wrong-headedness. President Obama is not a salesman of any sort, unlike President Reagan. The President seems like a stuffed suit political front-man for economic handlers that is just a time consumer liked by some insiders that are well-off. Mr. Obama does have his blackness going for him to get a few votes from the anti-white set, yet as a spoiler doing more for the economic forces of the ancien regime than to advance a new economic way in the U.S.A. he seems to do more harm to actual economic reformation than good.
The United States has many advocates for despoiling the nation's underground water reserves with fracking chemical to produce natural gas that leaves methane as a residual that is a virulent greenhouse gas worse than carbon dioxide. The nation is full of existential technocrats and corrupt broadcasters keeping the economic paradigm stupid and exclusive of Americans even while illegal aliens pile in to take jobs and demand citizenship.
Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum may have a radicalized situation to address in Syria and Iran when one or the other takes office in January 2014 that Mr. Obama has left behind.
The broadcast media has developed a perennial war reporting cycle evidently seeking to become embedded with whatever forces are out there in 'resistance' or rebellion to some existing political regime that might need to be changed. In the case of Syria I believe the civilian deaths would not have occurred in significant numbers as they are without media fanning flames of conflict that might lead the Sunni rebels to beleive that the United States would eventually send their 'Condor Legion' to kill the violent chickens of the Syrian Government.
In times past American foreign policy might have been more to tolerate the existence of governments that were not at war with the United States-that policy has some things going for it. Yet President Obama has a Nobel Peace Prize and a gay-friendly military in his arsenal so the Moslem Spring becomes a Moslem Year until the election cycle at least (in the U.S.A. for November 2012) with moral and media support for Sunni regime change organizers, military support and the Condor Legion air war in Libya and perhaps a next venture in Syria. There is also the loosely related problem of regime change in Iran, stopping Iranian nuclear weapons development and the possibility that Israel may act directly to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities and not wait while President Obama makes his political calculations on what more war would do for the price of gasoline and his chance of being re-elected.
The Syrian Government may deserve to become kaput for its unlikable characteristic. I am sure it isn't friendly to the tradition of British Imperialism and hasn't much oil or gas worth the time of the Condor Legion (its fun to use that term for a superior air force attacking 2nd world countries although no intention exists to say that the Obama use of American or European Air Power is fascist). The media monkey chatter for war is seemingly on a schedule that would debauche before November 7, 2012-perhaps about May or June since Senator McCain is already asking for air strikes (why couldn't he have been elected in 2008 so these things could have been accomplished more directly some might wonder-even before many civilians were killed by the Syrian Government?).
There is something to be said for a U.S. foreign policy that neither reinforces nor militarily opposes oppressive foreign governments. Perhaps some of those nations might evolve politically with modern technology and change toward a better way for freeing its people. Britain is critical of Russia and it's past, yet reasonable people understand that Britain has an imperialist past and seeks foreign natural resources to enrich itself-and the Russians seem like the biggest potential resource doners about. Here in Alaska the politicians give away natural resources to foreign corporations generally for a fraction of the value in return for being at the head of the trough of payouts that are made, while some of us may go for years without meaningful employment. Billionaires and global networks can be about as repressive to independent and free enterprise by the non-aristocrats as the Chinese Communist Party leadership that might plunder African resources and use rare species for herbal medicines.
In some respects the world is run by technocrats that can't see the woods for the trees pursuing collectively the global heat death of human prospects-but why worry? The prospects for bringing 'democracy' to Syria loom on the spring or Summer 2012 agenda and a Sunni State from Libya to Turkey might be formed that would allow greater transparency for anti-terrorist intelligence to develop and safeguard the potential development of Sharia law in New York to reverse the homosexual marriage laws and get women to cover their faces with some kind of designer rags in order to reverse over-stimulation of the human section of the biosphere.
I believe that the chess term for Syria is en prise-it is a foe piece just sticking out there waiting to be taken. Then of course as an added bonus Iran is just up the hill and unless it keeps its rhetoric down it might need to have its nuclear ambitions demolished while the demolition is good.
A war before the November election actually would be bad for President Obama's re-election prospects so he may wait until after Nov. 7 to send the Condor Legion or European proxies to obliterate Syrian Air defenses and then liberate Damascus thus freeing up Lebanon from the talons of Syrian puppet masters (not the best quality political rhetoric yet I haven much practice at that anyway). The most likely course of events would be to let it rot (Syria and Iran) and just have the media harangue American ears the rest of the year about the blood and the pathos and a journalist or two killed in action.
Real wages for younger Americans reportedly have declined by 11% compared to wages in the 1970s. The national unemployment rate is about where it was during the Carter administration, and President Obama like President Carter has an Iranian problem-even one a little more serious than the hostage taking of 1979. The Iranian nuclear weapons development program seems ready to pop a bomb or two, and Israel may want to try a go at stopping that.
The electorate may want a better, more effective policy such as can be developed in today's environment of political and economic wrong-headedness. President Obama is not a salesman of any sort, unlike President Reagan. The President seems like a stuffed suit political front-man for economic handlers that is just a time consumer liked by some insiders that are well-off. Mr. Obama does have his blackness going for him to get a few votes from the anti-white set, yet as a spoiler doing more for the economic forces of the ancien regime than to advance a new economic way in the U.S.A. he seems to do more harm to actual economic reformation than good.
The United States has many advocates for despoiling the nation's underground water reserves with fracking chemical to produce natural gas that leaves methane as a residual that is a virulent greenhouse gas worse than carbon dioxide. The nation is full of existential technocrats and corrupt broadcasters keeping the economic paradigm stupid and exclusive of Americans even while illegal aliens pile in to take jobs and demand citizenship.
Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum may have a radicalized situation to address in Syria and Iran when one or the other takes office in January 2014 that Mr. Obama has left behind.
3/5/12
Global Networks of Power Volume One in ebook and print
The first of a new collection of my philosophical essays on sundry and various topics of contemporary history, politics and matters of faith is now complete. I published a print and ebook version a few minutes ago at my lulu.com/garycgibson page. The book runs about a quarter million words.
http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/global-networks-of-power-volume-one/18937221
http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/global-networks-of-power-volume-one/18937221
3/4/12
The United States in 2012
The U.S. Government has made Orwellian hate crimes legislation a general entry to intervene in politically incorrect crimes upon special classes, given the military the right to exfiltrate U.S. citizens without legal review to unspecified foreign torture facilities where they may disappear forever and has forced corporate medical insurance upon all citizens as well as seeking to force all religious organizations to provide birth control paraphernalia indirectly or through insurers.
Following the attack on the rich in the World Trade Center in 2001 American democracy has been progressively stifled and wealth concentrated with onerous public debt building up along with high unemployment. The rich scorched by terrorist death took out their vengeance upon the poor and middle class of the United States while creating a ubiquitous surveillance state. They have no intention of reforming a version of capitalism in need of egalitarian upgrade.
In a year where the administration compelled homosexual marriages unto the states, military and District of Columbia supporting legislative and judicial imposition of the policy upon the people, and where federal judges have ruled against a California proposition to make marriage just heterosexual and in Arizona and elsewhere the right to verify citizenship of people encountered in routine police stops, the shape of elite federal policy is beginning to take shape in a general direction.
Following the attack on the rich in the World Trade Center in 2001 American democracy has been progressively stifled and wealth concentrated with onerous public debt building up along with high unemployment. The rich scorched by terrorist death took out their vengeance upon the poor and middle class of the United States while creating a ubiquitous surveillance state. They have no intention of reforming a version of capitalism in need of egalitarian upgrade.
In a year where the administration compelled homosexual marriages unto the states, military and District of Columbia supporting legislative and judicial imposition of the policy upon the people, and where federal judges have ruled against a California proposition to make marriage just heterosexual and in Arizona and elsewhere the right to verify citizenship of people encountered in routine police stops, the shape of elite federal policy is beginning to take shape in a general direction.
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