The companion of a mirror

I say good night to I in the mirror,

and the mirror says good night right back.

It's companionship couldn't be clearer

I enjoy the company of my creaking house,

and the odd sounds in the night.

The House talks to me when no one is around.

and I talk to it in turn.

And when I think of loved ones who passed,

I set a candle in my window to burn.

 

Oh, my little dog is companion enough,

and I am companion to my self.

And, I've friends who lend a hand when it's tough,

I am grateful to them for my mental health.

 

No man is an Island, a Rock, Dunn said,

But I think he understood we are more like a ship instead.

We need our ports and we need our journeys,

We need our trials and we need to rest and be repaired.

I am lonely for missing dear friends long gone,

And sometimes I sing that despairing song.

But their voices are alive within my mind

And I hold onto them tightly in my heart.

Christopher H. Holte

The Arrogant Monkeys

Once there was a tribe of monkeys who thought they were so clever. God saw them and wanted to warn them, so he cut off their beautiful tails. They being the arrogant monkeys they were just congratulated themselves on how fine they looked without tails and what fine monkeys they were. They didn't learn anything. But learned to hang from branches with their hands and race through the trees.

So God punished them by taking away their trees and surrounding them with lions, panthers and bears. And now they were very afraid because monkeys without trees have nowhere to run when the predators come. So they banded together and stood up all the time to watch for the predators and learned to throw rocks at them. They learned to fight off predators with sticks and stones and after a while they started congratulating themselves on how tall and strong they were and were even more arrogant at being able to stand straight and look far away for enemies. They hadn't learned a thing.

So God punished them by giving them all scabies and taking away their fur. So they learned to use their sticks to kill animals and wear their skins or build shelters from them. And they began killing things for sport and taking animals and making them do their work for them. Once again they hadn't learned a thing.

So God sent fire to them to burn their huts and burn their food. But the clever monkeys took the fire and kept it and even learned how to make fire from rocks and sticks. They started cooking food and eating it. And they lived like locusts on the land eating what they chose and using the fires to keep predators from eating them. They congratulated each other on their wisdom and learned to sit around the fires jabbering at each other and to call that talking. They became very dangerous. Not just to themselves but to all the animals and plants of the world. At that point they began calling themselves humans.

God next tried flood. But one of them built a giant boat and brought his livestock and goods on it. And after this the strange monkeys got even more arrogant.

God had tried fire, and rain, flood and earthquake, but at length after all these punishments God showed them a poisonous rock. And told them never to gather all those rocks in one place. Being the arrogant monkeys they were the monkeys of course gathered the rocks in one place and they called it Fukushima. Naturally the rocks grew very hot and melted and killed all the monkeys. And God was very sad and he wasn't sure what to do because they killed everything else too.

Shana Tova.

Turkey's Role in settling Mideast Conflict

There are many great examples of peace making. All of them required leadership. Not always of a single individual, but always of a vision that switched from pre-programmed default behavior to more universal concepts. All of them involved uniting previously separate people into a more functional whole. Examples are Egypt where the Northern Kingdom was united with the Southern Kingdom creating a peaceful kingdom for more than 3000 years. Hammarubi's Babylon where disparate city states were united and came to be under a uniform civil code which aimed at ending the constant tribal warfare that had been the previous state of human relations. And we have many other examples, including Saladin's defeat of the Crusaders and revival of the middle east

And the successes of the Ottoman Empire, which may have been enabled by Ottoman arms, but were secured by Ottoman justice and relative tolerance of subject people. For example when the Greeks in what had been the Byzantine Empire were forced to choose between "Franks" who came to "help" them by looting and for a time conquering the Byzantine Capital, the Greeks wound up preferring Ottoman rule to Frankish rule. Why? Because the Ottomans were (relatively) more fair than the Roman led Franks. The Ottoman Empire was created through justice and tolerance and foundered on corruption and intolerance.

When the British were contemplating the oil resources in the Middle East, their first thought was to preserve the Turkish Empire. They changed their minds when the Turks sided with the Germans during World War I and because they and the French's greed and hubris overcame any common sense about the long term future of the mideast. We now know that foresight was better than implementation. The best solution for the Middle East would have been to transform the Turkish Empire into something like a commonwealth Union modeled on the British. All this talk about a "Caliphate" would be moot if they'd been able to do this. The Turks already were a "caliphate".

The Brits practiced divide and Rule in creating future nation states instead. Syria, Iraq and Jordan were more lines on a map than divisions respecting the actual people living there. Creating Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states was simply a means to get hold of the oil in the ground in those places or ports. They eschewed a General Government that could respect the needs of all the people in the area to work together and engage in commerce; and that could serve as a place of appeal for problems between local people and each other, ethnic and religious conflict, was eliminated in exchange for nation states that were too small to be universal and too large to be fair to principles of local rule. It is time to correct that gross error. Without a functional general government, with a constitution, basic rights and representation of all parties the mideast has been a chaotic place since. The Sunnis rightfully dream of a Caliphate. The Shia rightfully fear it.

Turkey could play a role in rectifying this. The Turks, the Persians and all the ethnicities that are among them and in Syria and Iraq, should have local rights to elect their own local governors and to representation in local government and in higher orders of organization. The mideast needs it's own Union that respects Mideast History and analogous to the European Union. Turkey could help birth that.

Key is a system that respects local autonomy and that reduces religious power to a local affair. One that provides and governs transportation, infrastructure, ports, trade and mutual self defense to it's members. It should guarantee religious freedom, freedom of speech and similar.

The Scholar's Role in settling the conflicts of the Middle East

I have a book called "Interpreting Difficult Texts" by Clark M. Williamson, written by a theological scholar which is actually about how to interpret anti-semitic Christian Texts. The book makes a great parallel text to my other Book "Verus Israel" by Marcel Simon which talks about the genesis of Christian anti-semitism in the Early Church in the estrangement between Jews and what was originally a Jewish Messianic Sect. I've done a lot of reading on exegesis and religious interpretation and found that every religion has it's texts with problematic passages.

I bring this up because there are "problematic passages" in Muslim teachings too, and there is a duty for religious scholars and ministers (in broad sense including Rabbis, Imams, Priests, or anyone who preaches and teaches religion for a living) to understand that texts are preached in a context, that contexts change, that many of them are themselves interpretations of other texts. And that divine word passes through human beings. So when a person says "this is what God said" it doesn't mean that G-d is instructing folks to do the same thing now. That is a problematic thing, hence the author referring to it as "interpreting difficult texts." If the Five Books of Moses admonish Israel to "Blot out the Name of Amalek", whether or not anyone or any group can be considered "Amalek" in our own day another matter. Joseph Smith labeled settlers on their way to California as "Amalek" and his General took him seriously and infamously massacred a caravan. All religions have problematic passages. All religious sages, except those who've been thoroughly mythologized, are imperfect human beings at some level.

Mohammed preached some things that modern angry fools are taking into a destructive, revanchist absurd implementation. He preached some things that were moderate or advanced in his own time, but act to repress women and are injust in our time. Times change, and our understanding of both justice and the divine evolve with times. If any text is infallible, it is infallible in it's original context. Jews once insisted that the Torah was infallible. With time they've interpreted the difficult passages to be more just in execution. Christians once attacked the Torah as fallible and their "New Testament" as infallible. They tend to ignore their own teachings but still cling to that claim.

Muslims, likewise, need to recognize that holding women down in the name of the prophet is wrong. That cutting off heads is repugnant. That cutting off hands is injustice. And that we don't need to return to the 7th century. If a preacher issues a religious holding, that doesn't mean it's infallible. It's his opinion! Mohammed's Mecca teachings should apply in this day. His Medina teachings and his efforts to conquer the world didn't produce that much good for his people in the long run. In fact religious chauvinism and conflict has brought only suffering. The Caliph of Baghdad was conquered by the Mongols because he was greedy and corrupt[and didn't do a good job defending his kingdom], not because he was either irreligious (thought that might have played a part) or God's representative on Earth. Catholic dogmatism led to good people being burned at the stake. The protestant reformation led to darkness for millions. We've all been rebuked. None of us owns G-d. Some even believe there is no G-d or that he's turned his face from us. This is just the message that the ineffable seems to be sending us in this day. I hope my muslim brothers and sisters will start to listen. A spiritual struggle is a political struggle, but it is first a spiritual struggle. To hear truth and light, not darkness and hate.

I've come to admire the Sufi, the culture of Islam, and the history of the Muslim States. At its best religion exalts us and uplifts us. I am a human being who loves all religions, but I don't want to become a Muslim and I'd never even consider going deeper into my research until I'm sure they truly are a "religion of peace" and have shed hatred and can respect non-Muslims. I both admire and Critique all the Fearless leaders. The Caliphs, the Sheikhs, the Kings, the Emperors, Tsars, Pashas, Kings of Kings, Caudillos, Dictators. My own feelings are based on exegesis of the story of the Golden Man in the Book of Daniel and throughout subsequent Jewish and Christian Literature, to Ozymandias. What kind of monuments, eroding in the sand, do we want if none remain to admire them?

Clark M. Williamson bio: http://www.disciplesworldmagazine.com/node/5260

Verus Israel:http://books.google.com/books/about/Verus_Israel.html?id=90YwAAAAYAAJ

Reading David Stockman's Deformations

From reading David Stockman's book "The Great Deformation" one wouldn't know his central role in the triumph of Reaganomics in the early 80's. The book drips with condemnations and loathing for his Master, but also is loaded with time honored elitist con arguments from the Point of View of Wall Street and the countries established "old wealth". Reading him is valuable however, because unlike his fellow con artists Stockman has a habit of being relatively honest and is usually factual. For that reason I'm reading him with a figurative red pencil. His book is worth reading if one is able to read it critically. He's famous for an article "The Education of David Stockman" where he dissed his own Administration's policy.

"The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America Hardcover – April 2, 2013 by David A. Stockman (Author)"

David Stockman was one of the architects of Reaganomics. He is famous/infamous for both his sales statements and his disclosures. He was an early defector from wholesale support for Reaganomics, but this book demonstrates that he did so because Reaganomics wasn't conservative enough! He is famous for example for articulating the "Starve the Beast" concept in a conversation with Frederick Hayek. I didn't find any mention of Hayek in this book or even of this conversation but Hayek hovers in his language and conceptualization (possibly because he covered it in his previous books).

Instead he dismisses Reaganomics as another form of Keynesianism. Keynes didn't advocate deficit spending except in the limited temporary circumstance of a liquidity trap, but he attacks Keynesianism savagely, including his own Military Keynesian adventures as Reagan's Budget Director. Indeed, he attacks just about every administration from Roosevelt on and spreads his bile at everyone from Roosevelt to Nixon and onward. Some of it is masterful. Some of it reflects the Neo-liberal, Hayekian Point of View that infuses his book.

He writes about Reagan and Wall Street, sometimes, as if he wasn't there. But he worked at Blackstone and later his own company "Heartland" during much of the period he covers. He seems to pine for the days of sound money when the dollar was backed by Gold but he took advantage of the bubble swindles happening all around him. He also experienced first hand the offshoring and decline of US manufacturing. He ran a manufacturing company "Collins and Aikman" that eventually filed for Chapter ll bankruptcy. He was sued by SEC for manipulating statements. He seems to have avoided indictment because our system is so corrupt that much of the corruption is perfectly legal, and he lost money on the company too.

On the other hand he mostly correctly dissects the sheer dishonesty and greed of our current system, especially at high levels. He correctly identifies the corruption and misdirection that was the execution of TARP. And skewers the reality that TARP bailed out crooks and failed to protect their victims. He loads his book with a lot of history, which is extremely informative. He might be coming at the issues from the right, but he's also skewering people who, right or left, are scoundrels; and telling on the hypocrisy and hubris of people who claim to be conservatives, but are really just cons.

Like I said I'm reading the book with a red pencil as his knives he aims at Progressive economic politics really skewer his own con artist allies. When he talks about "statist" and reckless spending, he's talking about folks who use the same language he's using, play the same games, and belong in the same prisons.

More to come (hopefully)....

Next Chapter: Introduction to the Good Money Debate

A Prayer

All I want is to save one person,

to see one change,

that doesn't burn my eyes.

Lord can you stop the lies?

Part of a Twitter post: [https://twitter.com/daveydreadnot/status/512391963778510849]

Why the Confederacy was Unconstitutional

Just for the heck of it. These are some of the reasons the Federal Government had the right to put down the Secessionist/insurrectionists of the 1860's:

Constitution says:

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."

This means the confederacy was unconstitutional on it's face.

"No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Control of the Congress."

This means that the New York Port Authority may be behaving unconstitutionally.

"No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."

Of course once the North invaded the South they had a right to defend themselves. But since they had no right to form the confederacy in the first place, they had no right to raise the armies they raised either.

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

They had no right to leave the United States without the permission of the rest of us.

Which is why Abraham Lincoln had a difficult time with the diplomacy of the Civil War. Had he granted them bellicose status as if they were a nation that would have ratified their leaving. Of course West Virginia only had the right to become a State without the permission of the Rest of Virginia by the rest of Virginia seceding. By seceding the rest of Virginia was breaking the law and so West Virginia had a right to claim it was the true Virginia, though the constitution is clear otherwise:

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."

I guess one day West Virginia ought to put a resolution to vote in Virginia to ratify it's existence.