Author Archives: mandala56

Question:  Ever thought about the intentions of terrorists?

Answer:  By definition, the purpose of terrorism is to instill terror, panic.

Question:  Ever asked yourself what terrorists hope to accomplish in the target nation?

Answer:  The terrorist assumes the result of his efforts and sacrifices will be in damages far beyond the immediate physical damage to property, injury and death caused by his actions.  He knows he can only kill a millionth or so of the metropolitan population he attacks, at best.  He knows the property damage and injury will be comparatively microscopic.

What the terrorist hopes for is on a far grander scale.  He hopes in their panic the target population will behave rashly.  He hopes they’ll alter their lifestyles, give up their freedoms, and live in terror that he’ll do it again.  Sacrifice what they are and what they have as a result of the fear he caused.

Question:  Ever considered what assumptions the terrorist makes about the population of the country being attacked?

Answer:  The terrorist assumes his target population consists of decadent cowards.  Inherent in his assumptions rests the ordinarily idiotic belief the citizens of the nation he attacks are stupid enough to feel a general threat behind the miniscule damages he causes.

It’s never worked until now.

Even in France, where the gene-pool for physical and moral courage has been systematically culled by the guillotine during the Revolution, by Napoleon I on the steppes of Russia, by Napoleon II supporting the Emperor Max in Mexico, in the trenches during WWI, by the equatorial prisons, so there was nothing left by 1940, except Marshall Petain and general collaboration with the German invaders.

Even in France, I was going to say, terrorism didn’t work.

France and other European nations were under full-scale terrorist attack for almost 40 years and they never abdicated their freedoms, never sold out their convenience to travel, never fortified their national borders.  The Europeans didn’t spend that forty years wringing their hands in despair and fear.

The terrorists sacrificed themselves for nothing.  Their terrorism didn’t work in Europe.

Meanwhile, the US was spared terrorist attacks during all those years.  Presumably, potential terrorists believed the US population, unique among the Western nations, could not be cowed.  Could not be terrorized.  Could not be intimidated into changing what they were by the microscopic threats terrorists could expect to introduce.

Then came Nine-One-One.

What a shock it must have been for them to see their dreams come true.

What a surprise to see the wrong assumptions they’d made all those years about Europeans were all true.

All true with Americans.

Jack

Morning to you.

Jeanne loaned me a few movies to watch, so I viewed one and parts of another last night.

Weird stuff going on out there in the movie world.  One of them was named, Willow, one of those flicks.  I’d call it a sort of kids movie, and adventure/romance/fantasy of sorts.

It qualifies as unusual enough to keep a person watching.  It’s a fairly stock plot moving around in the background with heroes, bad queens, sorcerers, monsters, baby-royalty having to be hidden and those protecting her going through all manner of dangers and whatnot.

But the thing that kept me watching was the characters.  This movie has a main character and a lot of secondary characters who are shorter in physical stature than the average human being.  Secondly, the dogs used for hunting and killing weren’t dogs at all, but appeared to be wart-hogs.

Otherwise, I’d rate it fairly weak, with a strong plus for imaginative in setting.

The other I partly watched was The Big Sleep, with Bogie and Lauren Bacall.  No point in me saying much about it, except watching it completely through’s on my priority list of things to do.  I haven’t seen it in a number of years and I’d forgotten how fine it is.

She also loaned me 12 Oclock High, which I also haven’t seen in a few decades.  I’m generally able to get a lot of enjoyment out of movies involving airplanes only big enough for a couple or four people to get inside, so I think it might be hokey, this one, but still worth a couple of hours watching.

Also been pondering what piece of written work on the bookshelves I’m gonna re-read next.  I’ve about milked The Songlines dry for the time being, though I’m still thinking about various aspects of it and might make another blog entry or two about permutations and thoughts still coming out of it.

Poking and prodding around the bookcases my hand came on The Sibyl, by Par Lagerkvist, as a possibility, My Name is Aram, by William Soroyan, which was the first book that wasn’t mostly pictures that I ever read.  Neither of them demanded I begin an immediate re-reading, so I kept looking after pulling them down from the shelf and stacking them near to hand.

I’m thinking Cyrano de Bergerac, by Rostand. The Confessions, by Rousseau, The Decameron, by Boccaccio, and The Big Sky, by A.B. Guthrie, are going to have to fight it out to see who gets the next re-reading.

They’re all stacked over there close at hand on top of My Name is Aram and The Sibyl.  I think I’m leaning to Cyrano at the moment, but I’ll see how the mood strikes me when I’m feeling I need to think about something besides random numbers.

Jack

More on Bruce Chatwin’s, The Songlines.I’ve completed the general re-reading of the Chatwin book I told you a bit about a few entries ago.  Now I’m doing a bit of a mop-up, studying and pondering segments.Chatwin’s main pursuits were archeology and paleontology.  However, he dovetailed into this a lifelong study of aboriginals and nomadic people.

This combination of circumstance and interest led him to investigate a number of fundamental questions about the human condition, and the human being as a biological creature.  Inevitably, some of these questions borderline on philosophy.

For instance, Chatwin’s detachment from modern man allowed him to see with stark clarity some of the fundamental differences between humans and almost every other species in the animal kingdom.  He was present at the time when discoveries of earliest man were being investigated in Africa.  He participated in the quest to learn everything possible about the lives and lifestyles of those earliest humans

In our early schooling we all discussed, considered, and were instructed on matters of how man is unique from animals.  Interestingly, the most obvious difference between human beings and almost every other species is that man kills his own kind. I don’t recall them dwelling on that trait in school.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens does so deliberately, routinely, and sometimes systematically.  He almost never does so as a source of nourishment.  In this regard, humans are almost unique among animals.  Entirely unique among ‘higher’ animals.

Chatwin wondered precisely when, and why, this singular trait revealed itself in early men.  He even examines it from the Biblical perspective of Cain and Abel.  He explores it as a possible result of the great schism of humanity, the shift by fragments from a nomadic lifestyle to an agricultural, static one.

Interestingly, Chatwin and others in their field don’t know when men began slaughtering other men.  Professor Raymond Dart’s work in the caves of South Africa, suggesting the earliest inter-species killing began with Australopithicus was discredited when more sophisticated forensic techniques were developed.  The remains Dart attributed to homicide and cannibalism were almost entirely the work of a particular large predatory cat species with a preference for human meat.

In the end, no one knows when humans began the routine and often systematic slaughter of other humans.  We only know it was an awfully long time ago.

Chatwin argues it began when men ceased being nomads and the concept of material property and possession emerged.  He makes a good case that the further humans traveled the paths of ownership, ease, wealth and static civilization, the more they wielded the sword, the guillotine, the whip, and the chains.

Jack

How to stay out of trouble in the USAcquainting yourself with behaviors to avoid:

Study the Mormon religion.

• You don’t have to adopt the spiritual tenets of that religion, but if you understand everything the religion forbids and don’t do anything forbidden by it you can depend on staying out of jail and living through your life as a healthier person than you’d have been if you hadn’t done so.
• However, you’d be well advised not to actually become a Mormon. Although it hasn’t happened in recent times, Mormons have a long history of being persecuted, threatened, having their property destroyed and confiscated, being beaten, raped, murdered and generally hated by Christians.
• Getting yourself too closely associated with the Church of the Latter Day Saints is the opposite of ‘prudent’ behavior.  Also, just to be on the safe side, stay away from Jews and blacks, too.

 

So the second avoidance behavior to adopt toward living a healthy, free life:

Do nothing to get crosswise with Christians.

• This will probably require you to adopt some behaviors you mightn’t have chosen for yourself, but it will help assure you remain free within the context of what’s left of freedom once all that other is removed.
• Support the political party that’s currently in power and call it patriotism.
• Wear a red white and blue tee-shirt so other Americans will know you’re one, also.
• Keep track of the daily news. Know who the enemies of your country (the political party in power) are, and be vocal in your hatred of those enemies. Even (especially) if the enemies of the State happen to be citizens of this nation. If you know such people, isolate yourself from them.
• Denounce them to the authorities.  Spy on them and watch for any evidence they might be potential terrorists, drug lords, or online gamblers.

Generally speaking, the behaviors I’ve described worked well in Nazi Germany, the USSR, Post-Shaw Iran, Iraq under the late-dictator, Red China, North Korea, and other countries of like mind.

They ought to serve you well here, no matter how bad things get, so long as the leaders aren’t from Cambodia.

Jack

Morning to you:

The comment by csfb on the Papillon entry pricked my memory when I was wondering what I would read next.  Songlines, by Bruce Chatwick came to hand from the bookshelf.  My copy’s a library discard in middling good shape except for half the front cover being carefully cut off by someone before I got it.

I’ve read the tome several times through the years and each time enjoyed it.  I won’t say each time it’s something new, so much as a reminder of glowing moments of the last read.

Chatwick’s work is anecdotal non-fiction.  It’s the story of network grid of songlines defining Australia before the Europeans arrived, and his attempts to learn what remains of them from the aboriginals who still remembered some as late as the 1960s.

Aboriginal traditions seem a bit unique regarding all this.  The ancients, wandering the land sang every landscape feature into existence, creating a gridwork of maplike, deeply sacred records of the landscape in songpaths.  Features, everything not yet showing themselves, they sang into the underground to lie dormant waiting for someone to sing them to the surface.

Sort of brings to mind a lot of things in my consciousness and thoughts these days involving numbers and time, but it’s also proving to be a source of a lot of sideline thinking about some lost aboriginal thinking within the US.

As for Ultra Edit, I’m five days from expiration of the trial period.  If I don’t renew it will become just so much stored clutter doing nothing on my drive.

That is one fine piece of software.  The person on one of the threads who recommended it declared it was the best software investment he’d ever made, and I believe I’d have to agree.

I’m going to miss it, but unless I break through into being somewhere I’m not yet with the numbers I’ll have to put off purchasing it.

I’ve got the wall broken out in the bathroom shower to expose the plumbing there and a lot of stopgap measures in place to keep water coming to the rest of the house, but I’m going to have to do something soon about a lot of crystalized hardware still inside the adobe wall.

Every move I’ve made thus far, everything I’ve touched in the repair saga has caused some other ancient copper or brass horror to crumble upstream.  I’m lucky to have been able to shut things down enough to keep water to the kitchen, the bathroom sink and the commode.  But it’s complicated the process of bathing….. doing that and my laundry wash in basins on the floor of the tub, which is a blessing to be able to do, but not as happy a blessing as being able to shower.

My old buddy Jerry Sires wrote a song once called, Labor Day Pump Lowering Blues.

“There wasn’t ever any doubt I’s going to lower that pump myself,

And keep that several hundred dollars

Not give it to someone else (Bad newwwwwwws Mike wails in the background)”

So Ultra Edit’s going to have to wait in line behind a lot of other things, including firewood that’s going to be needed, filling up some gas bottles to keep the front of the house warmer in a month or so, plugging some leaks the recent hailstorms knocked in the roof, catfood and groceries and skyrocketing-priced gasoline-gold to get me down off the mountain occasionally.

Unless, of course, the great computer in the sky slips a final piece or two into place and gives me a way to understand precisely the relationship between bonus balls and all those other numbers.

Great day to youse

Jack

Hi again blogsters:

Coronado’s conquest of the southwest was made in search of Cibola.  Quivara.  Seven legendary cities of gold.  The were looking for treasure of the Aztec sort.  Gold plate.  Jewelry.  Houses and streets ornamented with worked gold.

On the hard trek to Zuni from southern California they passed over some of the richest gold bearing channels in Arizona.  They passed over a fortune in minerals comparable to the Aztec conquest.

These remained undiscovered until 1849-1860, because the men who were prepared to die for gold weren’t equipped to look for it.

Had no idea what gold looked like when it hadn’t been worked by skilled miners, smelters and artists and artisans.

Weren’t accustomed to getting their hands dirty with anything but blood.

Coronado returned to Mexico a successful conquerer but a failure.  No expedition from Mexico returned to the US (now) southwest for almost half a century.

They returned to Mexico without having found a single grain of gold.

Jack

Hi blogsters:

I’ve been back reading more of Coronado’s Quest when my head gets to trying to swim upstream looking at all those numbers.

It’s a worthy piece of work.  Grove Day’s research is solid and he bases everything on direct quotes from Spanish records: memoirs of members of the expedition, Board of Inquiry reports and statements from the Church arm of the foray.  He backs this up occasionally with traditions on the Indian side, but he’s good about pointing it out to the reader when he does this.

One of the more interesting things I’d forgotten from past readings of the book was the first encounter between Apaches and Spaniards.  The army was crossing the staked plains.  The time was prior to the entry of Comanches to the area (or Navajos, Day observes, to the NW NM region).

The Apaches are described as friendly, helpful, extremely competent.  Quite a contrast to the Spanish/Mexican/Apache war that began within a century and lasted until the Apache was so penned up he couldn’t carry it on.

However, as I mentioned it was before the Comanche acquired horses and descended to the plains wiping out just about everything in their paths.  By 1843, they’d completely extinguished the Lipan Apache, which was the band Coronado probably encountered.

Interestingly, at the time of the encounter the high plains were shared between Wacos, Wichita, Teja and Apache.  All of those were either driven off the high plains, exterminated, or allied with the Comanche by the early 1800s.  The Jicarilla Apache was also backed up into N. New Mexico looking for help from the Spaniard/Mexicans to protect them from the Comanche.

Fara’on Apaches were out there too, at the time, but by the time there was much record keeping going on they were generally so few in numbers they only showed up as a criminal nuisance in Spanish records.  They vanished before 1800.

Amazing what a  simple unintended introduction of the horse to America did to stir things up.

Jack

 

Hi blogsters:

Last night I was re-reading some of A. Grove Day’s, Coronado’s Quest.  It’s a middling good history of the Spanish conquest of the American Southwest and the earliest encounters between Spaniards and Amerindians in the unexplored reaches north of Mexico.

In 1537, Pope Paul III issued a Papal Bull declaring that the Indians were human and that they couldn’t be enslaved or driven off their lands without the folks doing it having to fear excommunication from the Church.  This represented a considerable inconvenience for the Spaniards, who had a lot of work that needed doing and didn’t want to have to do it themselves.

Mexico already had a population of black slaves almost as large as the population of Spaniards, but getting more was an expensive problem involving capture and transportation, whereas the local Indians were easier to get at, so they had to find ways to circumvent the newly discovered human status.

Reading all that got me thinking.  Nowadays we’ve mostly all been declared human.  It’s lost the moxie it once had.  Almost no protection to be found anymore in just being human.

Seems to me what’s needed now is something akin to an endangered species status to get things going more along the lines his Holiness intended for the American Indians (but didn’t quite achieve).

Okay.  A person kills a bald eagle or a whooping crane, he’s going to do some serious time.  But if that same person kills a mere human being, it’s two-to-five.  That’s provided the person he kills isn’t a police officer.  Police already enjoy something akin to an endangered species status when it comes to getting himself killed.  That’s in spite of the fact that the cop shops in this country are growing almost as fast as the prisons.  (Not to mention their exclusive retirement systems and special health care systems comparable to those gravy trains the US Congress gives itself).

No.  What I’m talking about is something the man on the street can benefit from, along with his family.  Something to keep the wife and kids from getting shot on a street corner.  That sort of thing.

Something along the lines of a Papal Bull declaring particular sorts of people both non-human and of a species that’s dying out fast.

People born before 1950 might be a good place to start.

An attractive tag worn in the ear, maybe a tattoo in some obvious place to notify the casual killers on both sides of the law that need to take a miss on this one.

Wonder how a person would go about getting something like that organized.

Jack