Bush's Apolocalypse visions dancing in his head

In todays headlines...
"President George W. Bush predicted an apocalyptic future..."
      
      My dad was obsessed with predictions of the future. I grew up with it, along with encyclopedia's of ancient symbols, societies like the Templars, Freemasons, etc. My take on prediction since a young child was "I only believe in self-fulfilling prophecies." I have gone around that block many times, trying to see it from many different points of view of others and other times, but have always had a hard time disagreeing with that initial take. It is almost self-evident to me.
            I have been thinking a lot about prophecy lately. Specifically, I can't find it now, when researching "aumakua" there was a reference to prophets of the future in Hawaii around the time of early first contact, who predicted accurate bad things. I thought, what a crappy use of fortune telling. Supposedly someone predicted they would be invaded and almost wiped out. Granted if you know political history going back far enough and looking far ahead enough, it is an easy call to make anywhere on the planet. But what good is it saying, "Hey guys, we're really about to get screwed." I mean if you are right and can see that, wouldn't it make sense in saying how to avoid it? If you can't see how to avoid it, you are not a very good prophet, just more or less a disseminator of useless and depressing information.
            So say you can change it by telling it. You can go on and on about how your prediction changed things, but pretty much if you predicted bad things and they did not happen, you will not be thought of well. In fact, unless as an idiot, you will not be thought of at all. You can predict good things though but then one doesn't really need to be prepared for good things. "Watch out or something really good will happen to you tomorrow." Granted, such positive predictions can help you get through bad times, but so can't self-help books and pretty much the entire, we're-great-no-matter-what-we-do-or-what-others-think-about-us culture we live in. All you have to do is look at your horoscope for that kind of stuff.
            If you are Bush and you predict an apocalypse, it is kind of cheating if you have something to do with starting it, never mind being the principle "lets bomb them first" proponent. But then so many others around the world too can trigger one. China, Russia, Israel, Iran, pretty much most nuclear and many non-nuclear countries could set the world off right now. It is really getting so easy to do by so many different people, predicting it is like predicting the sun might shine somewhere tomorrow and somewhere else it might rain.
            The only thing that is hard for Bush to predict in this vein and still be right is that there will be no world war in the next 20 years, that peace will prevail, common sense will begin to rule, and the world will, if not begin to disarm, then at least begin backing away warily from the brink of destruction. That would be a great prediction, not only because it is positive but because it is much harder to do and involves people he cannot control. Making people dead is not controlling them, in fact it is not controlling anything, just making fewer people to control, usually ones you did or could not anyway. Actually, it is a great sign of defeat. Ups your percentage maybe, but lowers your score.
            When I think of real power, it is not in those who can get people to kill each other off in great numbers. Too many in history have been able to do that and unfortunately many more will come because it wrongly gets the name "Great" in there at the beginning or the end of their names. To me, total power was Mahatma Gandhi. He kicked all of the "the Great"'s asses big time without firing a shot. He got an entire nation about to rip itself apart to stop, every single last person to stop fighting because he asked them to. Almost anyone can start a fire or make a political mess or disaster. People themselves are often waiting for an excuse to do something stupid and self-destructive, especially if it is profitable or fun, at least in the short term. Making everyone step back and chill until they can think straight again is something that is beyond Bush's "power". It unfortunately seems beyond his understanding as well, of it being not only a good thing, but a necessary thing. Especially because it contradicts what he has been saying, what he has been predicting, and because it is something beyond his power and requires the help of people he cannot control, only kill.

Why I choose not to speak now about the insanity in the Middleast policy of the US

          Lies reach a saturation point, and truth cannot compete or be heard. Speaking out against this at all now is fast becoming pointless. This is not as hopeless as it sounds, but reason needs calm and rationality to be heard, and to prevail. That is why there will be no breathers, no pauses for people to catch their breath. Enjoy the calm of this ceasefire while it lasts. It is most likely only the warm up act, a momentary pause before the main act of what reporters have claimed is Bush and Cheney's desire of a wider war, and others said was a deliberate attempt at triggering one, using high civilian casualties, direct targeting of UN peacekeepers, hospitals, refugee convoys, red cross vehicles, power stations, airports, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on but soon it will be as irrelevant as much else. I will write about that soon instead. What I call the international foreign policy equivalent of the LA riots, where the crimes fly so fast and furious that no one will bother to keep a count of them anymore. Since no one will be held accountable, since laws will be passed to backdate all administration wrongdoing, you won't even be able to call them crimes anymore. Enjoy the illusion that for now, they technically were illegal. For one brief shinning moment, we knew what our government did to us, did to other people as well, was wrong and illegal at the time, and only us having the power to say we choose to make it legal, we choose to call it right, that this is the most wrong we are doing, to ourselves, our children's futures, to the world, and to truth. Rewriting the past, like those in power can now do whenever they choose, means no need for accountability,no hearings, no government whistleblowers needing protection, as soon there will be no crimes to investigate, mere lapses in judgment, and the rest, like bodies in a video game, will merely vanish into thin air.
          But the peace, if it ever comes to whatever is left of the world before they are done, before they lose their iron-fisted hold on power and the American public's minds, such a peace will one day allow such reflection and truths to come out, and will shame us all for as long as humanity has a memory of what we did not do or say in these times, purely out of fear of what would happen to us if we did. But when the heat gets turned up again, approval ratings will soar faster than bodycounts and we will pass on finding the truth to other generations like we pass on to them an increasingly polluted ever less inhabitable world, greater suffering and inequalities, and our increasing pessimism that it could have or will go any other way, that this is all fate or God's plan, and not our own shortcomings fault.
          From what I have seen, those who are good, those who want peace, they are weak, they are hesitant, they are indecisive, and they are cowards compared to those who will shout down anyone who disagrees with them, beat anyone who gets in their way, and will charge the entire world headlong into a very deep abyss. As I said before and most likely others have before and since, you don't get the world you want, but you get the world you deserve. Unfortunately though, we will pass that hell on to others who have yet to do anything to deserve it, but if they follow the path and examples we have set for them, they probably will as well.

Ellsberg shouting into the wind before the hurricane makes the dumb deaf as well

Daniel Ellsberg Today (8/8/06) From CommonDreams.org reprinted from the Philidelphia Inquirer

"Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates - so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public - about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth - earlier than I did - before more lives are lost or a new war is launched."

sounds a bit like Ray McGovern in saying since 2003...
"Many former colleagues and successors are facing a dilemma all too familiar to intelligence veterans—the difficult choices that must be faced when the demands of good conscience butt up against deeply ingrained attitudes concerning secrecy, misguided notions of what is true patriotism, and understandable reluctance to put careers—and mortgages—on the line...We appeal to those still working inside the Intelligence Community to consider turning state’s evidence.”

But with the Supreme Court recently shooting down federal whistleblower protection against Bush, the Justice Department itself instead of investigating illegal programs, instead going after the reporters who print details of programs that go against the law and Constitution, Congress' idea of "oversight" is to pass any and all laws making all of Bush's violations of the law and Constitution retroactively "legal", and the Press itself willing to sit on stories for the benefit of the Adminstration, is there any reason for people to risk their lives and careers when no one has their back? What reason, besides that is the good of their country, the world, for the sake of their children growing up in by comparison relative safety and relatively free compared to the world dangers about to happen? Evidently that is not as attractive a payoff to them as getting that new sports car or vacation home. Yes, I purposely try to piss off people more respected and dangerous than myself. Maybe if they get pissed off enough, they will act as brave when going against the grain for what they know is right as they are, or think they are, when that bravery means also going along with it, and along with what they know is horribly, horribly, wrong.

Unexpected humor in the news today

Both of these I read today and kind of took me by surprise and made me laugh.
DemocracyNow.org
"And finally a new book by former U.S. ambassador Peter Galbraith has raised questions about President Bush's understanding of the Middle East. According to Galbraith, the president didn't understand as recently as 2002 that there were two major branches of Islam in Iraq -- Sunnis and Shiites. At a meeting with Iraqi Americans the president reportedly said, "I thought the Iraqis were Muslims?"
and from CommonDreams.org Pvt. Anderson said he supported the war at first but changed his mind after he was ordered to shoot at a car speeding toward his checkpoint in Baghdad. He held his fire and saw the car was carrying a family with two small children. "I did the right thing because they were innocent, but my superior said I should have fired anyway," Anderson said.
That is not the good part. Actually that is pretty sad, and sad that it is truely how people think these days. But then I came to...
Ryan Johnson, 22, of Visalia (Tulare County) is pretty confident Canada will let him and his wife, Jenna, stay, but just in case, they are researching options -- like going to Sweden.

uh... -- like not going to touch that one. But cute the way it was worded, I had to laugh.

Repeating Repetition again

One unexpected bonus of being back in America was having all of my notebooks back. I had some with me when I left and they were helpful. Once back I reread the original version of Repetition and decided to redo it for the website to include all of what was left out and put it back in its original order. It was not the best collection, nor did it have the best outtakes, but it was time to do it. While I was working on it, spending most of a day on it, I read Jonathan Schell's article version of Too Late for Empire. It uses the word repetition repeatedly, and the concept. While searching for that article to mention here, I found a similarly good one by Russell Drake from 2004. But my poetry collection called Repetition was not about political psychology, but was instead about deja vu. Here are some of the best lines including the lost end stanza of Monomania...

We search for truth but we seem to find
that beyond ourselves we still are blind

Wishes and hopes become our purposes
but even they are tangent and never stay
Wonderment and questing are all that are permanent
they are the guides which lead us on our way

There is no top or bottom, every point is exactly the same
No movement can escape this confining reality frame

Associations and relations together with us are one
Separation from observation simply cannot be done

I must watch the horrors helpless to change a thing
and sit idly through the storms that I know the future will bring

People will become more of a common mind
but it will be one that demands conformity

Many think but do not know for knowing is only faith and pride
Knowledge is the tombstone where living reasoning has died

It once had life to those it served because it was part of theirs

If I had to live again through it all I doubt I would change a thing
for pleasure made me contented but the sorrow made me think

"Question not," they say to me. "Question not and you'll be happy."
"Question all," I say to them. "Question all or be condemned."

Over and under, above is below. Neither I am, neither I know.
Yet and then, both are now. Never was I, only how.

Truths unseen are only real once understood by those who feel

pulling us toward the center from which the rest has grown,
grown out and up above and beyond whatever it alone could dream

Down beneath the deep blue sea and up above the highest tree
there are sights which I'll never see yet I will know them and they me

You've heard it all before and you'll see it all again
Even the new is familiar back from who knows when... its repetition.