The Big O Express Presses on towards Trainwreck

Events may bring about the day when the charismatic demagogue will be shunned by everyone except Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers...unfortunately, this will only come about at the expense of the American people, when the Big O's administration fails to seriously confront Islamic terrorism, and we suffer the consequences. It is only a matter of time now...the clock is ticking...every tinpot dictator is grinning from ear to ear now that the socialist Democrats are running things...a great opportunity for everyone from Kim Jong-Il to the Castro brothers to run amok without fear of American opposition...of course how could a guy who thinks there is a language called Austrian and gives the British prime minister a bunch of unusable DVD's of American movies, have a chance in the real world of international politics?...not to mention his inability to stop apologizing for imaginary American faults every time he opens his mouth while overseas...an empty suit, inflated by the party-line doctrinaire media as the Savior...I guess we deserve what we get...

Get Your Wheelbarrow Ready

In the 1920's it is said Germans had to use wheelbarrows to take their money to the market to buy food, thanks to hyper-inflation...well we might as well get the wheels greased on our wheel barrels, because Obama's war on our economy is in full swing and he is spending money and printed greenbacks like there is no tomorrow...no acceptable tomorrow for our children to be sure...if we or they survive his soft-on-terrorists foreign policy...one wonders if this neo-Carter would even oppose an attack by some rogue state like Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, the list goes on...he wants to make friends with these monsters, and ditch our friends like Great Britain, Poland, Hungary...throw them to the lions in the name of better international relations with anyone who is anti-American...so get your wheelbarrows out and pump up the tire and remove the rust, you are going to need it to get to the nearest supermarket with your worthless dollars very soon...

Election 2008

What is amazing about this election was the ability of the Clinton Democrats to sabotage the economy with the sub-prime mortgage time bomb, which explodes at the end of the following Republican administration, ensuring a new Democratic one. McCain's failure to pin the tail on the donkey due to his populist stance should be shunned by Republicans from now on. And Dick Morris predicts The Great O will win a second term based on blaming his Depression-era first term on the Republicans as well. A great explanation of the liberal inspired sub-prime mess is at a site called Wolf Howling:
Take a look.

Conversations with Don Carlos

Far be it from me to drop names, but I did run into Carlos Casteneda while hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains in the late 70's...apparently we both liked to go there through the years and this time we just happened to meet. I knew what CC looked like, having attended his UCSB lecture around 1970, surrounded as he was by stern-looking local Chicano activists trying to bask in his glory. That was such a joke considering how anti-political the Don Juan teachings are. Campus political activists hated mystics and gurus who diverted people's attention away from supposed horrible social conditions to meditate on their navel and realize inner peace. And this was exactly what CC really represented to most hippies.

On this occasion in the morning I had driven up to Mulholland Drive and parked my pickup near Fireroad 25, which was my favorite jumping off place. I had come especially to practice some of Don Juan's teachings, believing them valid in those days. More specifically, I had come to try to "stop the world", which in real terms means stopping the mind, from a meditative point of view. I found myself a secluded spot off the main road and sat down for hours staring off to the east, down at Sullivan Canyon and the ridge beyond. At a certain point I seemed to achieve a certain stillness of mind combined with a sharp focusing of the view in front of me, (with a little chemical help I must admit, well, let us say, a BIG chemical help), and by the late afternoon, I got up and starting walking back in the direction of Mulholland Drive. At this point I met Carlos Castenada, accompanied by a young blonde woman, probably Kylie, one of the 4 or 5 gringa "witches" that formed the inner circle around CC from this time to his death in 1998. I recognized him right away, from the lecture, but did not show that I did. I recall how he joked in Santa Barbara how people thought he should have "long mystical feet", but being a short Peruvian with equally short feet, this was his way of kidding himself, which put people off their guard. "Anyone who makes a joke at their own expense cannot be a big liar" etc.

Anyway, I just nodded and maybe said hi and tried to walk by, being by this time worn out, dehydrated and hungry, but Carlos started talking to me. He claimed he wanted to know where the fireroad went. I really didn't know at that time, except that if you took it south and veered left you would end up, after following a narrow ridge, at Will Rogers State Park. But I knew you could take it to the right and arrive around Eagle Rock, a midpoint in the Santa Monica trail system, and from there you could find your way down to Sunset Blvd. near the ocean. So I just summerized all this by saying, "It goes to the ocean."

But then Carlos started arguing no, no, no that can't be true, and kept arguing and arguing. I just stared at him in surprise. I really didn't care. At this point I recalled an episode in one of CC's books where his supposed teacher Don Juan just looks at him and says something like, "You know I can't stand the sight of you." And CC starts whining until DJ pretends to take it back. Now I could understand this event quite well, as I was beginning to feel quite annoyed. But I did not say much, and walked away, feeling sorry for someone so cunningly obnoxious.

Since I had a buddhist teacher at that point, I was less likely to fall under his spell. Apparently CC started conducting classes at a Santa Monica bookstore around this time. It is a good thing I did not hear of it and feel tempted to participate. As it turned out in the succeeding years, during this teaching period Castenda created a classic cult consciousness among his students. Amy Wallace's The Sorceror's Apprentice is a must for an insight into the sick group psychology of those years. Geuter's Filming Castenda adds more data.

The positive result of this odd encounter was that I determined to find out once and for all where the fireroad went. So another weekend day I hiked south on Fireroad 25, veered right, and kept going down along some newly developed housing, and finally ended up at Sunset Dr. exactly at the Self Realization Fellowship lake/temple founded by Yogi Yogananda. This mystical place is only a stone's throw from the ocean. So I felt justified by my answer to Castenada after all. By this time it was near dusk and I had to call my brother to drive all the way from the San Fernando Valley to Pacific Palisades to pick me up and take me back to Mulholland Dr. so I could retreive my vehicle.

The Curse of the Prime Directive

Star Trek's big political statement revolves around the Prime Directive, especially in the Next Generation series. The essence of this law is that Federation star ships and personnel are forbidden to "interfere" with pre-warp drive cultures and planets. What this amounts to is an attempt to avoid contact with "primitive" people, for fear of altering their "sacred" path of evolution....as if such isolationism was possible in the Star Trek universe filled with money-grubbing Ferengi, haughty Cardassians, militaristic Romulans, war-crazed Klingons, and even uglier races in other quadrants. It's OK to study these backward races, but not help them in any way, or enlist them as trading partners or allies.

Such a policy would bring about the downfall of the Federation, of course. Other races would grab territory, trading rights to valuable resources, military bases, and enroll the subject peoples as slaves or soldiers. What the noble Federation turns up its nose at, its enemies will absorb and grow in strength and even diversity. The Federation will not bother to interact with these pre-warp drive cultures, leaving their fate to the tender mercies of the other advanced races it is in competition with. Such a move is like making sure Route 66, which brought many tourists to the West in the early Twentieth century, did not pass through quaint towns as Santa Fe or Indian reservations, for fear of changing them or giving them a chance to make some money. Instead it would wind through the most barren wasteland avoiding towns along the way, preventing them from benefiting from free cultural interchange with whoever wanted to travel there.

Obviously the idea behind the Prime Directive is that any contact between differing technological levels will result in the colonization of the weaker by the stronger. They will be made into a Protectorate at best. The weaker society has nothing to offer the stronger. Is this the view of human nature the idealistic Federation holds? Why not be up front and say, here we are, we want a relationship with your people, let's get started now instead of waiting until the inevitable future contact with ourselves or some other unsavory race that may decimate your planet just for fun.

Pullo and Octavian play games

The new HBO series Rome has to be commended for its fidelity to history, as compared to the other cable series about the same epoch, called Empire. The latter was full of so many historical fantasies it should have been labeled alternative history. But this latest episode of Rome is a strange way to demonstrate Octavian's capacity for ruthlessness. He and Pullo decide on their own to find out what's what with Vorenus' wife and supposed former lover. This poor guy had made love to Niobe after the army told her her husband was dead and his salary stopped coming. So he has a pretty good excuse...but Octavian and Pullo, who should have known this, tell him they are going to kill him anyway, so why not talk before they torture him. Pullo, who doesn't know how, has to take suggestions from a kid. This is meant as humor I suppose.

And so Octavian instructs Pullo to cut off the guy's thumbs for starters...and so on, and after they find out the Niobe's grand-daughter is really her own daughter, then they see red and stab him and dump his body into the aqueduct...if this was a common method of murder, the Romans should have been all poisoned in no time at all from the polluted water supply.

I suppose this scene is to show us how common brutality was in Roman times, as well as giving us a clue to Octavian's nerves of steel, which would lead him to successfully climb the ladder of power to Emperorship. On the other hand, it strikes me as rather dumb....here are two guys butting their noses into someone else's business, they are bound to make Niobe unhappy, though Pullo likes her, they kill a totally innocent person who did nothing wrong under the circumstances, they contaminate their city's water supply without a thought, the list goes on.

I suppose this is part and parcel of the "Upstairs, Downstairs" soap opera motif in which we are alternately shown how the nobility conduct themselves in some particular fashion, and then how the riffraff do it their way. Except in this case one of the upper classes is slumming, "gaining experience" so to speak. Obviously none of this can be historically verified, the idea is to take what history tells us of the famous personages of the times, and flesh them out with dramatically interesting traits and intriguing plot twists. Nothing wrong with this I suppose, but this particular example is rather disgusting.

Lists of books one should read (a beginning)

Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en…about 1800 small print pages, available in English finally from Chinese publisher...the ancient Chinese Buddhist classic about a crazy monkey with supernatural powers who brings havoc to the court of the Jade Emperor and has to be subdued by the Buddha himself, later released to provide aid to an old Chinese monk who has taken on the impossible task of traveling to the West to obtain precious Buddhist manuscripts unknown in China...based on a real historical journey...

More Neal Stephenson novels, series starting with Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon pretty interesting, hard to stop reading though long (1100 pages)

Robert Sheckley detective stories, did not know he even wrote any, such as: Draconian New York, Soma Blues, The Alternative Detective. Sheckley has been ill lately, he should be considered one of the most innovative science fiction writers of the 20th century...it is sad so few of his imaginative stories have made it to the silver screen...7th Victim comes to mind...but there are scores more worthy of being made into film...

Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels...apparently a novel of the battle of Gettysburg, which has always fascinated me

Ulysses S. Grant by Geoffrey Perret...Grant was the first modern President and did a good job despite the hatchet job done by liberal historians

A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss...cannot resist historical novels about England apparently

How the Scots Invented the Modern World...Arthur Herman...at least making a stab at this one...seems logical to me, even though I don't have any Scotch ancestry that I know of

Marking Time, The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, by Duncan Steel...so detailed it scares me, but accurate to a microsecond

The Spanish Ulcer, A History of the Peninsular War, by David Gates...to provide more solid background to Spanish/British resistance to Napoleon's invasion and occupation of Spain...after finishing The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes by Mark Urban, a real humdinger

Did I say this was only a beginning?

Don Camillo books by Giovanni Guareschi

These books of short stories about a village priest in post-war Italy and his nemesis, Peppone, the Communist mayor, are always good reading. Never doctrinal or shrill, Don Camillo is street smart and wily as he maneuvers against the latest absurd power grabs of the local Italian Communist party. There is one moving story called “Christ’s Secret Agent” in which Don Camillo sneaks into an Italian Communist tourist group visiting the Soviet Union. Peppone cannot expose him without getting himself into trouble, so Don Camillo gets to see the reality of the Worker’s Paradise of Russia for himself. In this particular story he secretly performs Catholic rituals for a Catholic family on a commune, in particular an elderly Polish grandmother, in violation of Soviet law of course.

That such simple and harmless acts are considered high treason in a totalitarian dictatorship is highlighted. One recalls the Soviet occupation of Mongolia and the subsequent extermination of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns, to know that this was standard practice in all Communist countries. This is the type of anti-religious program converts like Che Guevara relished and tried to duplicate. Even today Buddhist activity is severely limited in Vietnam, for example, and China regularly clamps down on Christian priests, while putting on a smiley face to the rest of the world.

This site has many Don Camillo stories online.

Another good site on the author of the Don Camillo books.

France owes more to Talleyrand than Napoleon

Former French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte -- Napoleon I -- in exile on Elba, blaming Talleyrand and Fouche for his predicament, said: "If I had hanged Talleyrand and Fouche, I would have been still today on the throne." When the news reached Talleyrand, he said: "Napoleon, instead of hanging me, should have listened to me."

But how could a megalomaniac listen to anyone else for advice? What Talleyrand said is true, if Old Nap had listened to him, Talleyrand could have kept him in power for decades in a Europe at peace. But as we all know, Napoleon constantly rejected Talleyrand's proposals for making peace with his defeated neighbors.

Talleyrand was ahead of his time regarding many European issues. At the Congress of Vienna he strived for the creation of a strong and independent Poland, although this was not to allowed at that time. He foresaw future Prussian aggression theatening European peace, and helped foster a German federation to counter Prussia's militancy. It was only the stupidity of yet another Napoleon who declared war on Prussia in 1870, that fatally weakened this effort to contain German aggression. Talleyrand felt France's natural ally in Europe was England and opposed the brutal policies of autocratic regimes like Russia and Austria. Compared to this, what did Napoleon stand for? Not much beyond self-glory.

Pepsi gives USA the finger??

If preliminary reports are true, (see here) it appears Ms. Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi, in a speech to Columbia Business School, used her middle finger to denote the USA's role in the world. It appears some of these multi-national companies, though started here, feel they are immune to the wrath of American consumers. They feel it is their job to tell us what supposedly the rest of the world thinks of us. What this really means, is they want to spout off their own opinion. I think Ms. Nooyi should start rewriting her resume.