defeated option

Peace is the absence of conflict. The greatest conflict that mankind faces is the conflict between his natural instincts and the delusions he has created. Man’s natural instinct is to be free and independent vs. a belief that he must control or obey.

As long as mankind has the delusion he has the right to control others, he will be in conflict with others. As long as mankind has the delusion he must obey, he will be in conflict with himself. Without freedom and independence mankind cannot even choose what to believe, his speech and behavior will be dictated by others.

Obedience, control of others and punishment have absolutely nothing to do with self-defense. We can all retain the right to defend ourselves while allowing others the same right. Punishment is having absolute control over others. When someone controls others, others cannot possibly have the same right.

Surrender is to relinquish possession or control of something because of coercion or force, it is not peace. The absence of violence is an illusion of peace. The conflict is temporally put on hold, while the conquered regroup.

Living in Utopia may not be possible, but peace is an ideal and perfect place or state, where everyone lives in harmony and everything is for the best.

Peace is the absence of conflict. Peace is NOT the subduing of an enemy.

Citizen Mundi support real peace?

They’ve largely been fans of Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy, but these self-described realists are uneasy about the direction the president’s going in Afghanistan. Some very heavy hitters on that list and there’s no doubt they’ve gotten the attention of the White House.

Here’s the counterpoint letter. And by the way, do the people who sold us the Iraq war have any inkling of a sense of irony when they write:

“The situation in Afghanistan is grave and deteriorating. This is in part the legacy of an under resourced war effort that has cost us and the Afghans dearly.”

” A Pale Green Mermaid Blog”

Goods Evening,

Tonight an American artist who exemplified the isolation and loneliness of  living in urban America in his paintings,  the realist,  Edward Hopper.  Realism was a reaction to the overt emotionalism of the Romantic movement in the 1850’s.  The realists depicted what was explicitly in front of them, attempting to keep the interpretation of the image from being clouded by personal emotions.

When you look at the painting below how does it make you feel? Does it remind you of anything you have experienced in life?

Nighthawks (1942).

The most well-known of Hopper’s paintings

By placing a limited amount of figures in the painting and using subduded colors Mr. Hopper creates an atmosphere of emptiness and desolation.

Edward Hopper’s most productive period was during the 1930′ s into the early 40’s. 

Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper, Self-Portrait, 1906
Born	July 22, 1882(1882-07-22) Nyack, New York
Died	May 15, 1967 (aged 84) New York City
Nationality	American
Field	Painting
Works	Automat (1927) Chop Suey (1929) Nighthawks (1942) Office in a Small City (1953)
Influenced by	Robert Henri

Note:

Personality and vision

In more general terms, Hopper stated “Great art is the outward expression of an inner life of the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.”^[92] Though he claimed that he didn’t consciously embed psychological meaning in his paintings, he was deeply interested in Freud and the power of the subconscious mind. He wrote in 1939, “So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect.”^{[93]                      FROM WIKIPEDIA}

Have a rainbow filled weekend,

PEACE

I’ve inherited from my mother a tendency to assume, just because something horrible could happen, it will happen. Mom’s term for assuming the worst was “being realistic”. I often heard her scolding cousins and family friends who were enjoying thoughts of love and a positive future, “You are living in a fantasy world!” She was right much of the time. Reena was living in a fantasy world when she believed her criminal boyfriend could be as good as the father she longed for, who himself didn’t exist.

I didn’t want her to tell me I was living in a fantasy world. So I hid my idealistic thoughts behind a pursed “realistic” face inspired by American Goth. Eventually I lost those thoughts. I want to revive them, because the mechanism that once protected my cliché-ical flame from the wet blanket is now sabotaging the fire.

Bret Stephens, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

For a president who came into office literally selling the Audacity of Hope — not just for Americans but for all mankind — his Iran policy can so far be summed up as the timidity of “realism.” That’s realism as a theory of international relations that prescribes a foreign policy based on ostensibly rational calculations of the national interest and assumes that other nations act in similarly rational fashion. [...]

What did all this achieve? Iran’s nuclear programs are accelerating. It is testing ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication. Its support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah is unabated. Ahmadinejad stole an election in broad daylight. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blessed the result. British Embassy staff are under siege. A campaign of mass arrests and intimidation is underway and a young woman named Neda Soltan was shot in the heart simply for choosing none of the above.

Oh, and Iran still accuses the U.S. of “meddling.”

Now Mr. Obama is promising more of the same, plus the equivalent of a group hug for the demonstrators. Is this supposed to be “realism”?

To answer Stephens directly, yes, this is supposed to be realism.  Granted, the events in Iran are incredibly compelling, but as President Obama has repeatedly stressed over the past several weeks, they fall far outside of our purview.  In this case at least, it seems that the Obama administration has accepted as a matter of principle the apparently outlandish idea that the internal affairs of another nation are simply none of our business.  Stephens assails this as the “timidity of realism” (and then goes on to outline the conclusions that a more “sensible” realist – or a neoconservative – would reach),  but that’s because he doesn’t seem to understand the limits of American influence.  Take Stephens’ concluding sentences for instance:

Maybe ordinary Iranians welcome Mr. Obama’s solicitude. What they need is Mr. Obama’s spine. If that means “democracy promotion” and tough talk about “regime change,” well, it wouldn’t be the first time this president has made his predecessor’s policy his own.

Neoconservatives, like Stephens, have this curious (and incredibly arrogant) habit of completely disregarding the stated wishes of the people they wish to “save.”  Ordinary Iranians have been quite clear about what they need – noninterference from the United States – and my guess is that they have a far better understanding of their situation than Stephens does.  Again, Stephens’ mistake – and this is common to neoconservatives – is in taking an extremely optimistic and frankly magical view of the efficacy of American influence.  It simply doesn’t occur to Stephens that the United States could harm the efforts of Iranian reformers by actively siding with them.  Indeed, the fact that Stephens can endorse the previous administration’s approach to Iran in the face of overwhelming evidence of its failure is indicative of this perceptual flaw.  President Bush’s threats of regime change did little to discourage the Iranian government from pursuing nuclear weapons, and indeed, may have even provided the means through which Tehran could whip up nationalist sentiment in the service of building domestic support for a nuclear weapons program.

A careful realist approach might not be as flashy and psychologically satisfying as idealistic denunciations of a tyrannical regime, but  that’s okay, because the goal of foreign policy isn’t to make yourself feel better, it’s to advance the interests of your country.  And judging from the broad sweep of American foreign policy history since the Second World War, I think it’s safe to say that a realist approach has served us pretty damn well.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

President Obama with his latest commitment to the war in Afghanistan seems to be harking to the realists of his political and diplomatic advisors, such as Richard Holbrooke, and is readying himself to debunk the bunk of his leftist supporters of ending America’s military involvement in the hot spots of the world and adopting and continuing the bellicose policy of the former Bush administration against the terrorist extremists. In his announcement of his ‘new’ policy in Afghanistan he very closely repeated Bush’s words that as President he would not allow Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorists that the latter would use once again to attack the American homeland. Hence he clearly coupled the war in Afghanistan with America’s security and therefore made it very difficult for the anti-war movement to continue influencing the silent majority, as it did against the Bush administration, toward a pacifist position since such a position would be senseless and stupid to anyone whose life was under a direct threat. Obama therefore placed himself in a politically strong position that even an increase of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan could not erode since this is the price that America will have to pay for its security. One therefore can say “hats off to Obama,” to quote Robert Kagan from his piece in the Washington Post, for his new strategy in Afghanistan.

What is most worrying however is in verity the president’s new policy in regard to Iran. In his keen propensity to detach himself from the ‘fisticuffs’ policy of his predecessor which he considered to be wrong and politically infertile, Obama, as he had promised during the presidential campaign, is opening the door of diplomacy to the ‘Mullahcratic’ regime hoping that the latter will be susceptible to the diplomatic blandishments and calls of reason that the U.S.A. and Iran could ‘live and let live’ with each other if they had the will and wisdom to change the belligerent attitudes of the past toward each other. This is a laudable aim but the question is whether it will resonate with the Theocratic regime in Tehran. President Obama in his direct address to the Iranian people, in their new year’s day, went out of his way to praise the Islamic Republic and the cultural achievements of its people. But what is in a name when one could praise in the same terms the united republics of the USSR, the republic of Mao’s China, the republic of Cambodia under Pol Pot, and a sundry of ‘genocidal’ republics in Africa with the only difference being that the scale of atrocities are not as high in Iran as they have been with the above blood-lusted republics. But who knows, with a future nuclear armed Iran the latter could surpass them all on the scale of wickedness.

It’s this great danger that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to Western nations and to the U.S. that the latter as the supreme power in the world must prevent. And the ambition of Tehran to acquire a nuclear armoury is un-ambiguous and unyielding. Only few days ago President Ahmadinejad in his address to the Iranian people proudly proclaimed that Iran would not cease its nuclear programme as its achievement is the deserved status of a great nation. It’s obvious that Ahmadinejad took his lines directly from the speech of Obama who praised so exuberantly the Islamic Republic and its cultural achievements. But in the hope of the President that by paying homage and offering peace to the Tehran regime it would de-couple the latter from its religious fanatic nucleus and its great hate toward America, Obama shows himself to be irretrievably naive and abysmally ignorant of the duplicitous enemy he is facing.

The foremost intelligence apparatus in the Middle East the Israeli one had its chief Major General Amos Yadlin saying early this month, …”Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.” Moshe Ya’alon, a former army chief of staff, dismissed the possibility of a revitalized peace process, saying that “the jihadists interpret compromise as weakness.”(M.E.) He cited the withdrawal from Gaza four years ago which many had thought at the time it would debilitate the conflict, instead it encouraged it. And this is exactly how the Iranian leadership sees Obama’s ‘open door’ diplomacy, as a screeching sound of American weakness, as in its eyes the relative isolation of the U.S. among its allies, Russia and China and its inability to persuade the latter to take harder sanctions against them limpidly demonstrates this weakness. And this enfeeblement of the U.S. is further exemplified in Iran’s view by the North Korean defiance in its rocket launching, which, only few months ago in the last days of the Bush administration, was participating in direct talks with U.S envoys in regard to its nuclear programme–that that stalwart and hawk-eyed in foreign affairs John Bolton had predicted with characteristic insight that the talks would come to nothing. If miniscule N. Korea could so brazenly defy the U.S., in spite of the commitments it made during the negotiations, what the great Islamic Republic of Iran would do in future negotiations with the Americans?

President Obama and his close advisers are incapable of realising that an enemy who sees the United States as being politically compelled to negotiate from a weak position cannot be forced by diplomatic means to accept the demand of the Americans and their allies that Iran must cease the development of its nuclear programme. Hence Obama’s administration is setting up its tent of diplomacy in a barren desert where the Iranian diplomatic camels will come empty of any reciprocal ‘gifts’ to the peaceful and morally generous gestures of the Obama administration.

It’s inconceivable to imagine, that if not Obama, that some of his close and more astute consigliori are unable to anticipate the futility and dangers of diplomacy with a foe who considers himself to be negotiating from a position of strength. The only result that can come out from such negotiations with the Iranians is for the Americans to come out as losers from this parley or walk out of the talks with the tail in-between their legs in a scornfully embarrassed state.

This will be the fate of President Obama’s diplomatic overture with the Iranian theocratic regime as an outcome of his total inability to “know thy enemy,” a prerequisite, according to the great Chinese strategist and sage Sun Zi, in defeating one’s mortal enemy. But the final judgment on President Obama–the constitutional lawyer and former community organizer, a rookie in the art of statecraft and who in his Prague address beyond proclaiming, with humility soaked in weakness, America’s decline, indulged himself also to make some trite ‘brandy(ed)’ derisive comments about the two great statesmen Churchill and Roosevelt who defeated the Axis powers–who as a result of the pathological hate—which neutralized even the ingrained racism that many white Americans have toward blacks–that a great part of the electorate had toward Bush-Cheney and by association the Republicans, was swept by this bitter wind into the Oval Office, will be rendered by a Shakespearean Sovereign, King Lear: “Nothing comes out of nothing.”

This property is scheduled for the February 3, 2009 Philadelphia mortgage foreclosure auction.

View Larger Map
254-406
8730 Gillespie St.
65th Ward 1,808 sq. ft.
BRT# 652239112 Improvements: Residential Dwelling
JOSEPH S. BEBCO AND ELIZABETH T. MYERS A/K/A ELIZABETH MYERS
C.P. June Term, 2007 No. 002338
$98,247.97
Mark J. Udren, Esq.

This property is scheduled for the February 3, 2009 Philadelphia mortgage foreclosure auction.

View Larger Map
254-404
2950 Rorer St.
7th Ward 682.50 sq. ft.
BRT# 071522600 Improvements: Residential Property
DAVID MULLODZHANOV
C.P. April Term, 2008 No. 004179
$61,845.88
Michael T. McKeever, Esq.

This property is scheduled for the February 3, 2009 Philadelphia mortgage foreclosure auction.

View Larger Map
254-403
2045 E. Walnut Ln.
50th Ward 1,633 sq. ft.
BRT# 501347900 Improvements: Residential Property
MARIA CARMEN NATUZZI
C.P. August Term, 2008 No. 000092
$117,152.32
Michael T. McKeever, Esq.

This property is scheduled for the February 3, 2009 Philadelphia mortgage foreclosure auction.

View Larger Map
254-402
131 W. Roosevelt Blvd.
42nd Ward 1,760 sq. ft.
BRT# 422105900 Improvements: Residential Property
JAZELLE PLUMMER
C.P. May Term, 2008 No. 002297
$64,251.49
Michael T. McKeever, Esq.

To second Daniel (writing at his great blog, Pensons), insofar that Robert Gates is a conservative (and there is nothing to suggest that he isn’t), he is almost certainly a Scowcroftian conservative realist.  But I’m not terribly interested in speculating about Robert Gates’ ideological commitments, no, the much more interesting question is this: why exactly is Obama eschewing liberal foreign policy figures in favor of hawks and realists, especially considering that during the primaries, Obama was offering a genuinely liberal (although still quite mainstream) take on foreign policy. 

Although I dismissed this when Ross Douthat suggested it, recent statements by Gates – where he expressed his commitment to working within a 16-month timetable for withdrawal –  have made me cautiously optimistic that Douthat is right: Obama intends to give realists and hawks partial ownership over our eventual withdrawal from Iraq, as well as any other major foreign policy turns.  As publius details, this has several important implications:

Let’s assume, for instance, that Obama is in fact “throwing long.” That is, he wants big change – e.g., new multilateral diplomacy; negotiations with Syria and Iran; and even cuts to the grotesquely-large and corrupting military budget. If these are truly his goals, then voices like Clinton and Gates and Jones will be powerful advocates indeed. It’s not merely that they’ll provide political cover across the national political spectrum. They’ll also provide political cover to nervous Democrats who remain afraid of their own shadow on these issues. Winning over the latter is a precondition of winning over the former. (For instance, you can’t have talks with Iran if half the Senate Dems are on TV saying it’s a bad idea)

Now this might be unwarranted optimism on my part, but I think that publius’ scenario is considerably more likely than the other possibility: Obama is himself a hawk, and his rhetoric during the campaign was just that, rhetoric.  There is every indication – his informal advisors, his formal advisors, his own writings on the subject – that Obama is a foreign policy progressive/liberal, and intends to pursue a progressive foriegn policy.  And is using Gates, Clinton and Jones – each of whom is a respected, mainstream voice on foreign policy – to pursue those ends*.

*It is actually a little reminiscent of Bush, who used the credibility of perceived moderates to push through conservative policies.

Tuesday August 26, 2008 #62

 “There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.”

 ~Douglas H. Everett

We tend to classify people as dreamers or realists as though these are mutually exclusive ideas:  Those who spend their time dreaming of a better reality and those that are hard pragmatists, accepting their lot in life as fated.  And yet when you think of people who are both successful and satisfied – truly happy – they are those who have mastered the art of taking their dreams and making them real. 
 
So, dream and do – dream a better reality and make it happen through action!

Gruutaa pamoshanaas bez brokastiim – Shodien, atshkjiriibaa no vakardienas bija mazas probleemas pamosties. Vienu briidi jau domaaju, ka paarlikshu modinaataaju. Bet negribeeju padoties slinkumam un aizskaitiiju liidz desmit un ceelos vien augshaa. Atshkjiriibaa no vakardienas, kad eedu brokastis, shodien laika nepietika. Biku pa ilgi ceelos

Kaarteejaa mazaa, jautraa ideja – Vakar, kad taisiijos jau uz miegu, atkal galvaa ieshaavaas mazaa ideja. Nevareeju aizmigt, domaadam tikai par sho ideju. Tas ir pasakains briidis, kad tu sapnjo, kaa vareetu visu uztaisiit, kaa labaak pasniegt, reekjini un skaitljo. Noveelu visiem shaadas sajuutas. Man gan darbaa shiis sajuutas ir katru dienu, bet “kaifs” nezuud

Zvans no forumcinemas.lv – draugiem.lv patiik eksperimenteet un pameegjinaat visaadus variantus, kaa atvieglot lietotaaju dziivi un atvieglot administraacijas darbu. Shodien pameegjinaajaam importeet kino sadaljai bildes pa taisno no forumcinemas.lv Peec paaris stundaam man zvana Maaris (forumcinemas.lv tehniskais cilveeks) un jautaa, ko mees esam izdariijushi, ka vinjiem bremzee lapa un nav iespeejams neko izdariit. Briidi apdomaajos un teicu, ka tuuliit buus Ok. Lieta taada, ka forumcinemas.lv serveriitis neiztureeja ento miljonu izsaukumus peec vinju bildeem, kuras mees importeejaam un laidaam arii uz draugiem.lv saakumlapu. Smiekliigi, bet es ljooti atvainojos forumcinemas.lv vadiibai (riit nosuutiishu veestuli). Vismaz bija iemesls aprunaaties ar forumcienmas.lv par cilveekiem par turpmaakaas attiistiibas plaaniem. Iespeeja tachu vienmeer ir jaaizmanto

Pilns galds ar dzeltenajaam lapinjaam – Sakaraa ar to, ka man peekshnji naak spontaanaas idejas un mazie darbinji es izmantoju dzeltenaas lapinjas. Izmantoju arii prieksh taa, lai dienas laikaa sarakstiitu aktuaalos notikumus un vakaraa vinjus sheit iztirzaatu. Viss jau buutu ok, bet ja vinjas man nebuutu izmeetaatas pa visu darba galdu un nu jau maajaas viss no vinjaam midzh

Stulbs arguments – bet ja vinjsh nomirst? – Runa bija par ilgstoshu sadarbiibu ar vienu cilveeku. Gribeeju, lai lietotaajs var pakalpojumu iegaadaaties uz ilgaaku laiku, bet man pretiim “kaads” pateica argumentu – “un ja vinjsh peekshnji nomirst? ko tad?” Es paarjautaaju vai tas ir melnais humors, bet man pretiim atcirta – “Nee, es esmu reaalists”. Man galva sagriezaas otraadi. Nedaudz apmulsu, bet nu sarunu vajadzeeja pabeigt…

Horoskopi - Jaa, shis bija viens no maniem shiisdienas finalizeetajiem darbiem. Bija gruuti sanjemties, bet riit sapulciites, apraksti un saakam Bija veelviens projektinjsh, kuru aprakstiiju un nodevu diskusijaam, bet par to driizumaa, atsevishkjaa dienaa un ierakstaa

Blondiine – Ejot no darba uz sabiedrisko transportu, lai nokljuutu maajaas, pamaniiju, varbuut, ikdienishkju ainu, bet nedaudz pakjikjinaaju. Situaacija – gaajeeju paareja, kuru shkjeerso blondiine un no liikuma griezhaas aaraa jauns Mersis. Blondiine ierauga Mersi un peekshnji paar gaajeeju paareju saak leenaam, jautraakaa solii, skatoties uz shoferi laiskot paari. Shoferis saak smieties. Blondiine peekshnji atjeedzas un atgriezhas savaa aatraas gaitas kustiibaa. 3 sekundees iedomaajos situaacijas – blondiine ieseezhas mashiinaa, blondiine jau riit pie shii pasha mersedesa, vai jaunaaka, stuures brauc. Bet tas ir tikai normaali. Mees esam dazhaadi cilveeki un katram ir savs ideaals un meerkjis.

Jau otrais vakars ar nedaudz alko – vakar jaunaas idejas iespaidaa iemalkoju visiiti, shodien peec gruutas darbadienas – gaisho lemon rumu ar dzeervenju sulinju. Sajuuta lieliska. Mieriiga muuzika un atslaabums

Lai jauka jums riitdiena

 Something keeps pestering me months after watching Theo van Gogh’s ‘06/05′-May6th .  Sure, the foreign Dutch docu-drama has all the grab and controversy I would expect of familial lines connected to the revered Mr Vincent.  But there is this peculiar analogous simmering I see unfolding here in the states, and at the same time distinct mirror opposites- the world is changing yet staying the same = stupor, stagnation… fill in the blank.

The film highlights the assassination of the outspoken Dutch politician-“Prime Minister-in-waiting”  Pim Fortuyn by a zealot animal/environmental rights activist and how photojournalist, Jim De Booy gets entangled into the mix.  This would be perhaps enough to keep most audiences gazing.  Some like myself, even more than lightly engaged and questioning- wondering.

And there is so much more to this indi-film piece- circuital ironies, clandestine politics, and the surrerptitious triangulation of Fortuyn, van Gogh, and the ever increasing obscurity of the lightning rod that is Ms Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Theo was no stranger to controversy, creative iconic adulation, and livid abomination by some, especially heightened with the collaborative work done on Submission with Hirsi Ali, that some say was the ultimate nail in his coffin leading to his brutal and horrifying murder while riding his bike though the Dutch neighborhood streets.

I was surprised not to find the amount of discussion and varied review of 06/05 that seemed timely after some years of distance and perspective, but even further jarred at finding myself looking at some current socio-political divides and similarities that some in the US seem almost too comatose to pay attention to.

                            A People that bows to tyrants

                        will lose more than life & belongings

                              Then, the lights will go out.

                                 -H.M. van Randwijk-

Rant-

You cannot write a single line w/out a cosmology

a cosmogony

laid out, before all eyes

there is no part of yourself you can separate out

saying, this is memory, this is sensation

this is the work I care about, this is how I

make a living

it is whole, it is a whole, it always was whole

you do not “make” it so

there is nothing to integrate, you are presence

you are an appendage of the work, the work stems from

hangs from the heaven you create

every man / every woman carries a firmament inside

& the stars in it are not the stars in the sky

w/out imagination there is no memory

w/out imagination there is no sensation

w/out imagination there is no will, desire

history is a living weapon in yr hand

& you have imagined it, it is thus that you

“find out for yourself”

history is the dream of what can be, it is

the relation between things in a continuum

of imagination

what you find out for yourself is what you select

out of an infinite sea of possibility

no one can inhabit yr world

yet it is not lonely,

the ground of imagination is fearlessness

discourse is video tape of a movie of a shadow play

but the puppets are in yr hand

your counters in a multidimensional chess

which is divination

                            & strategy

the war that matters is the war against the imagination

all other wars are subsumed in it.

the ultimate famine is the starvation

of the imagination

it is death to be sure, but the undead

seek to inhabit someone else’s world

the ultimate claustrophobia is the syllogism

the ultimate claustrophobia is “it all adds up”

nothing adds up & nothing stands in for

anything else…

Admittedly, I haven’t been able to keep up closely with the current progression or regression within Myanmar.  But found AsiaTimes writer, F William Engdahl’s piece quite mindful for review, and in clarifying what we see isn’t always was is- exactly. 

Washington has been heavily involved with Myanmar since 1989, and both China and India, particularly Beijing, with providing billions of dollars worth of military assistance.  Maryann Keady also writes further of The India-China Prism strategically at play within Burma.  And while no one wants to see any further violence carried out in Myanmar, we also cannot be too complacent regarding the role other countries are playing in a self-effacing manner.

-ciao