The Three-Ring Circus that Has Replaced the Three Branches of Government?

No matter what you think of imprisoned writer and activist, Mumia Abu Jamal, he hit the nail on the head when he told Chris Hedges,

“ What’s necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of regularity … In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and circuses. In America, what we need is ‘Housewives of Atlanta.’ We need sports. The moral stories of good cops and evil people [or evil cops and Because you have that …. there is no critical thinking in America ...”

However, since Donald Trump took office, the "illusion of normality, of regularity" grows thinner everyday,  yet because the indoctrinated public is so unable or unwilling to revise their current belief in the truth of "officialdom", and in the United States as a beacon of light, they're easily swayed by appeals to authority, to emotion, to fear, etc., and can't see through the greatest show on earth designed to distract them from the reality that their government is not even pretending to be a constitutional republic, not even pretending to be a democracy.

From Trump's absurd presidency to hysterical Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, and everything in between, it's hard to differentiate between reality and satire; reality and parody; reality and entertainment. Watching Trump's entire presidency is like watching back to back episodes of "Saturday Night Live", fill-in-the-blank reality TV,  and/or  "As the World Turns".  Perhaps, that's because what we're told is reality is, in reality, the Greatest Show on Earth, that the only thing we can be sure of is that we're being duped and indoctrinated to replace the Truth/Reality with this alternate and virtual reality  

"Bread and circuses" anchored the domestic politics of ancient Rome: feed and put on a good show to placate the masses...keep them distracted, fat and happy. However today, thanks mostly to the exponential advancement of technology, the bread isn't as important as the three-ring circus that has replaced the three branches of government. In other words, the never ending, all encompassing circus is the mainstay of global politics and President Trump gladly plays the role of puppet ring-master. What we're seeing today is a manufactured reality, a matrix conjured up by parasitical globalist wizards in order to beguile the overtaxed, over-policed, overburdened, undernourished, poisoned, traumatized, dumbed-down, plundered, indoctrinated populace. Yes, it's more important than ever to keep the masses compliant, convinced, and captivated...keep them in their place so as the prison walls turn, they don't turn in on their masters.

Keep in mind that  cultural revolution precedes political revolution.  The three-ring circus that presents as reality today wouldn't work five or six decades ago, prior to the sexualization of American society including children, prior to the destruction of the Catholic Church in the northern hemisphere, prior to the destruction of the family, prior to the "anything goes" moral relativity that has eliminated God from the public square. Directly or indirectly--through entertainment,  pop culture,  public "education", foundations, secret societies, laws, technology, etc.--the culture had to be changed to roll out the circus.

So, yes the reality show that is pretending to be started long before President Trump.  It started inching it's way  out of the closet when President-elect Donald Trump met with “Apprentice” director Mark Burnett to discuss a reality-TV-style inauguration, complete with a grand entrance by helicopter.  According to the New York Times, he didn't get his wish, however, every day since President Trump took office proves otherwise.  Think about it.  President Trump spends most of his time tweeting, golfing, watching TV...when does he have time to preside?  And if he's not presiding, who is? 

Washington DC has become the ultimate reality show of reality shows that have been created to replace...wait for it, reality, and  Brett Kavanaugh's "confirmation hearing" is just the latest episode as they continue to inundate  us with theatrics, spectacle and tabloid static. "Due-process", "presumption of innocence," "evidence" mean nothing thanks to our trial by media society, where faulty generalizations, cherry picking, circular reasoning, red herrings, appeal to authority, appeals to emotion, ad infinitum, proceed unchallenged.

Today's three ring circus is dominated by money and profit, imagery and spin, hype and personality,  guarantees that nothing in the way of real truth reaches the populace.  It is so emotionally charged and entertaining that it make you forget that you live in a police state.

“In 2016, his Republican primary opponents didn’t recognize that we are living in an age of bread and circuses, an age Donald Trump didn’t create but into which he inserted his own circus. Curiosity seekers filled the tent and loved the show.”

The sophisticates in the media thought they could beat Donald Trump at this game by burying him under waves of negative publicity. But he feeds off of it, just as he turned the Philadelphia Eagles’ White House no-show into a display of patriotic music, with the maestro at the center.

Now, fantastically, some Democrats are complaining that they can’t get their message out (the tax cut didn’t work, Medicare for all) because Donald Trump has blotted out the media sun. Gee whiz, whose fault is that?

The eclipse won’t end. The media has turned the Trump presidency into a phenomenon of constant self-absorption—their self-absorption in this one person. Donald Trump has become the biggest balloon in a political Macy’s parade of modern media’s own creation. They could let go of the ropes. But they won’t. ─ Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal

The world is truly a stage now. Everything we see is, at the very least, partially choreographed, scripted, and 99% theatrical. That those who occupy the highest or celebrated positions in government, media, academia, etc., are, more or less, mind-controlled life-time actors who live out the roles they've been chosen to play based on their talents, personalities, background, intelligence, etc. No, they don't memorize lines and they don't rehearse, and they may not even know the circumstances they will face--many do not even know they're actors-- but, ultimately, through indoctrination, trauma-based mind control, blackmail, reward, etc., they will act and react as their character. In other words, they become their character just as the greatest method actors become the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of the person they've been chosen to play. The difference, of course, being, it's a lifetime role. They live it on and even off camera for as long as needed.

Meanwhile, the global dominance that has been progressing for centuries--now that Europe is consolidated under the EU; the North American union is consolidated under NAFTA, and other more powerful "free" trade agreements consolidating the planet; the entire media consolidated under five corporations, and banks and national corporations being run by fewer and fewer multinationals--is almost complete. The final steps that are firmly establishing totalitarian global order--as they divide, confuse and confound the masses with the three-ring circus led by Trump, are being taken.

In other words, as the three-ring circus rolls out act after act, behind the scenes,  the true powers that be are consolidating even more power than they already have; each "crisis" unifying the most powerful, entrenching authority even more deeply, while they concentrate the power in the hands of the same global elite that created and designed the never ending crisis, disasters and absurdities we see everyday.  Make no mistake, there is a very definite method to their madness, a very definite order to the "chaos".

The bottom line is that the unaccountable technocracy continue to tweak the Luciferian establishment system that protects and expands a perverse culture that repudiates the most sacred tenants of civilization as we know it, blurring all distinctions between not only national borders, but between man and woman, human and machine, God and man, etc. The biggest obstacle to this new order has been and is always God so the consolidation effort must be extended to the sphere of religion because global power understands the religious nature of human beings, hence our survival of the fittest "enlightenment" with the creation of  Darwinism, scientism, humanism, transhumanism, and other isms and 'ologies, reinforced by "pop culture", "celebrity culture," etc.,that pushes our Creator to the sidelines.  This--the attempt to replace/ transform/erase the Wisdom that's written and inscribed in our hearts by our Creator --is the hidden issue that is not only ignored but, with great effort, actively suppressed by the establishment because they know their totalitarian agenda is impossible when the foundation of our hope rests upon God's Wisdom; when the multitude is animated by a spirit of understanding and unselfishness by the principles and spirit of the Gospel.

And unto man he said to man: Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom: and to depart from evil, is understanding."  

Nevertheless, as long as we're breathing, it's never too late to take back our souls from this worldly agenda. The choice is ultimately ours: Do we become obedient servants of a Godless institutional despotism or the obedient servants of a Loving and Sovereign God who created the world and everything in it?

 For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul? Mark 8:36

 

Links:
Trump Is the Symptom, Not the Disease

Read more...

Bread and Circus Soceity

With each passing day, We, the People are being crushed under the weight of an overreaching, militarized, and corrupt government that's growing exponentially, yet, most of us remain blissfully ignorant thanks, in large part, to the mainstream media, the gatekeepers who are the primary source for disseminating political, cultural, and economic ideas, but at the same time, beholden to their corporate owners.

As long as this--corporate media deception-- is allowed to continue, the political strategy, "bread and circuses" will never die. The reason? It's-- the game plan that allows the elite to do as they please uncontested by the population--as dependable as the sunrise. Especially in today's technologically distracted world of low cost infotainment and trivialities. It's rare that anyone even notices that elected officials do the exact opposite of their pre-election promises, or realize that the ruling class has become so powerful and corrupt, much more loyal to multinational corporations than to its citizen. 

“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not meant, then what ought to be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and arts will deteriorate; if morals and arts deteriorate, justice will go astray; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in hopeless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything." -- Confucius

Increasingly, we are spending more time in virtual reality, which is basically a technological extension of the humankind and/or mind, rather than in the natural environment and/or unmediated reality (At least I know I spend far too much time in virtual reality, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone).  This further enables modern day bread and circuses to blur the line between fabrication and reality, creating a vicarious modus operandi in which  people prefer quick entertainment, smoke and mirrors, and imagery to first hand participation and effort in discerning matters of substance.

“Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions–everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.” -- The Roman poet Juvenal (circa 100 A.D.)

Read more...

A Class That Rules and a Class That is Ruled.

Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt

Well, we failed that test thanks to the insidious forces that turn progress into retrogression, that culminates in a society divided into a class that rules and a class that is ruled...into a society of the very rich and the very poor.

Read more...

9/11: Indifference to What's Real and the Murder of Reality.

I distinctly remember the weather on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001: beautiful crystal clear skies as far as the eye could see. No one could've predicted what was to come...well, none of us regular people, anyway. However, things aren't always as they appear. In the background, on that beautiful morning, a category three Hurricane -Hurricane Erin- was headed toward New York City! At a whopping 500 miles in diameter, with more cyclonic energy than Hurricane Katrina! One would think the "hype every storm to the empth degree" mainstream media would've, at the very least, mentioned it. But, not a peep.

Now, as it happened, this huge hurricane spared Manhattan, by making a sharp right hand turn out toward sea. But did the national weather service know this would occur? No, not really. According to Dr. Judy Wood, author of "Where did the Towers Go", Erin was a high pressure system moving from the west, so, yes, it was predicted that it would turn; however, considering the system had already carved its path for four days without reversing position, it was clear that meteorologists didn't know when this would occur. And if the system did not turn exactly when it did, it would've "caused all sorts of storm surges" that would've undoubtedly caused flooding, as Manhattan is at sea level. Dr. Wood also said, "there were air craft carriers and other ships that were docked around Newark, and they took those out to sea because you don't want those docked when horrendous storms are hitting land."  

Here's the thing: the conditions inside the hurricane held constant for 24 hours. The air pressure, wind speed, and distance remained the same. This is an anomaly.  There are no hurricanes in recorded history that have held constant air conditions for 24 hours.

The disconnect between what really happened that day and what people believe to be true, is astonishing. In June, I blogged about the 1975 World Trade Center Fire that Burned for 3 Hours. One would think that the television talking heads who droned on and on, day after day about 9/11 would've mentioned this fire. Asked the question, why didn't the towers fall back then? After all, they are the very first skyscrapers that have disintegrated collapsed due to fire.

Questions:

Why were all the recordings of the building's demise so quiet?

It should've sounded like, as Dr. Wood said, "like it was raining dump trucks".

Where was the what should've been 210 stories of rubble?

Why did the Earth’s magnetic field dip at 8:46 a.m.?

From a set of magnetometers monitored by the University of Alaska, several instruments showed significant deviations from normal readings as the events of 9/11 were unfolding.
Where's the flood? Both towers are built into a "bathtub" on bedrock that plunges 70 feet below the water table.
Where was the seismic signal that would've reflected two 500,000 ton buildings crashing to the ground? The seismic signal was equivalent to the bottom 20 stories of Tower 1 and the bottom 16 stories of Tower 2.

Why did the ground shake for only 8 seconds once the north tower "fell", when dropping a bowling bowl from the top of one of the buildings would've shook the ground for 9.5 seconds?

Why were there no traces of toilets, filing cabinets, yet, office paper was flying everywhere? Hello? Uh..doesn't paper burn up before porcelin and steel?

What's with the bizarre toasting (totaled, not necessarily cooked) and flipping (it was the upside down cars that were in good shape, and the cars that were right side up were toasted) of 1,400 vehichles, often times in close proximity to trees, where not one leaf was disturbed? Windshields, engines, and door handles completely disappeared, leaving the shell of the car in tact.

Why do we have falling debris hitting other buildings only up to the eighteenth floor, when there were 110 stories?

Why was there instant rusting of nearby steel? That is evidence of molecular disassociation and transmutation.

Why, when the dust fell, was it coarse, and then, once, it landed, began breaking down further, becoming so fine that it started wafting up?

What caused the presence of uranium, tritium, and the presence of deuterium in the air that Dr. Thomas Cahill found after monitoring the air for 5 months after 911 at the WTC - which began after Oct. 5?
Where was the heat?  From most reports, the dust clouds were cool. No one claimed they were hot or that they were burned. Yes, things glowed, but not everything that glows is hot.
We finally saw the demise of WTC #7, but what happened to WTC buildings #3 and #6? Building #3 nano-particalized, while in WTC #6, half the building nano-particalized from the inside out!

Finally, what can transform two quarter mile tall buildings into nano-particles(invisible and permanently suspended in the atmosphere)?

Former Governor Jesse Ventura used the example of microwaving chicken on a paper plate. The chicken cooks, while the paper plate doesn't. That's the effect seen all around the WTC towers on 9/11.

Thermite?

Thermite is powdered aluminum and powdered iron rust. The buildings were steel (composed of over 98% iron) structures with aluminum cladding. If the buildings were reduced to nano particles (molecular dissociation), obviously, one would find particles of iron rust, and aluminum. Thermite cannot transform buildings into dust. So, where is the proof of thermite?

The so-called "truth" movement does not address any of these issues, yet, Dr. Wood is the only person who has conducted a thorough forensic investigation...the only one!

Mel Fabregas, the host of Veritas, quoted Vicent Bugliosi, regarding the division between what's real and what we perceive:

"We're talking about people who see what they expect to see, what they want to see, what they've been told to see, what conventional wisdom tells them to see, not what is right in front of them in its pristine condition."

This quote sums it up. This disconnect is not a matter of intelligence. Not at all. Some of the most intelligent people in the world disregard the facts in order to maintain the comfortable illusion that substitutes for reality. The vanishing point of reality (horizon) is vanishing altogether, as the silhouettes on the walls of the cave that Plato referred to in his allegory of the cave are increasingly being forced down our throats...24/7. When everything is bestowed upon us to see, what is left to be seen?

Source: Veritas with Mel Fabregas interview with Dr. Judy Wood



Link to everything you want to know about Dr. Judy Wood's Qui Tam cases JUDY WOOD on behalf of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff/Relator, vs. Defendants.

DC Docket Number: (07-cv-3314)
Docket Number: (08-3799-cv)
Supreme Court Docket Number: (09-548)

APPLIED RESEARCH ASSOCIATES, INC. (ARA),
SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL CORP.(SAIC),
UNDERWRITERS LABORATORIES, INC.,
WISS, JANNEY, ELSTNER ASSOCIATES, INC. (WJE),
ROLF JENSEN & ASSOCIATES, INC.(RJA),
COMPUTER AIDED ENGINEERING ASSOCIATES, INC.,
SIMPSON GUMPERTZ & HEGER, INC. (SGH),
SKIDMORE, OWINGS & MERRILL, LLP (SOM),
GILSANZ MURRAY STEFICEK LLP (GMS),
HUGHES ASSOCIATES, INC. (HA),
ROSENWASSER/GROSSMAN CONSULTING ENGINEERS, P.C.,
S. K. GHOSH ASSOCIATES, INC. (GA),
TENG & ASSOCIATES, INC. (TA),
AJMAL ABBASI,
EDUARDO KAUSEL,
DAVID PARKS,
DAVID SHARP,
JOSEF VAN DYCK,
KASPAR WILLIAM,
DANIELE VENEZANO,
DATASOURCE, INC.,
GEOSTAATS, INC.,
NuSTATS,

Read more...

Dear Sociopathic Government, It's Life, Stupid! Not the Fiction You Call an Economy.

We, as a people, have lost perspective of reality. We've totally bought into the belief that what gives life meaning, is based, on what you own; how much you have; whom you associate with, and your position. In other words, the one with the most wins, and the only kind of life worth living is a life lived for the acquisition of wealth, social status, position. Acquisition = success.

Therefore, most of us sincerely believe - including me at one time - that every decision government makes should be based on the premise: "it's the economy, stupid"! This so-called economy that requires each and every one of us to pay in order to live - from the time of birth - despite the fact that between nature and the advanced technology available there is more than enough to meet the basic needs of everyone on the planet.

Not to mention, most of us cannot even explain how this "ponzi scheme" of an economy works. Or how it sustains or empowers the people, because it does not. Can we eat money? Drink money? Breathe money? Wear money? What the hell is money, anyway? We can't even answer that. Why? Because it's not real. It's created out of thin air! Moreover, this debt-based money requires the creation of shortages to create value. Without debt and manufactured shortages, our economic system fails. WTF kind of system is that?

Yet, we continue to allow the powers that be to decide the overall quality of our lives based on this fiction, thus making it thee #1 priority in life, even when it destroys life. And that's exactly what our extractive economic system does. That's the way it was designed: to destroy life.

Because the more the international/American economy extracts or exploits the earth's natural resources, the more it pollutes our atmosphere, the more it plunges our planet into misery and ravages it by hunger, water shortages, flooding, and warfare...the more prosperous this economy is.

People's lives are evaluated through the market, and the lives of the poor, and now, even the middle-class are deemed practically worthless, because it's cheaper to let people die than to interfere with economic growth, and/or the profit of the elitist power structure.

The system is beyond dysfunctional.  If we have any hope of changing it, we need to revalue, re-prioritize, and redefine reality. Currently, the discourse that defines reality, especially for those who formulate public policy, is economics. The overall good of society is measured strictly by GNP/GDP, and an unsustainable rate of growth. The quality of our lives does not factor into this equation at all!

Take fracking, the hydraulic fracturing of coal gas seams and gas shale to liberate and extract natural gas. The noxious emissions emitted by this process contaminate the water table, air, and soil; but that is all but ignored because it's "good" for the economy.

This is our society. We are the nation. However, at this point, fighting back will only worsen our situation as they can declare martial law. In addition, they have covertly co-opted a good percentage of our more power-hungry citizenry by appealing to that that desire for power. Therefore, disconnecting from our system is the only way. And the only way that will work is if we, the people unite by building our local communities, which means we have to start trusting our "neighbors" rather than the ruling elite.

Who are the ruling elite? Well, who knows? But we do know who their puppets are: the mainstream media, government officials, corporate executives, attorneys, and/or the "justice" system, law enforcement, etc. Most of these people are not even aware of their "puppet" status. They're so brainwashed to accept and enforce the status quo that they operate on automatic.  They will only see the light when it is them who experience the crushing blows that the system is so adept at delivering.

The bottom line is divided we fall, and the ruling class knows that best of all.

Read more...

David Foster Wallace

Former award winning author, David Foster Wallace, possessed a renegade spirit that captured the inertia and plugged-in addictive state of our nation, in his novel "Infinite Jest", where future Americans, in a post Limbaugh-presidency world,  exercise their single freedom:  the inalienable right to consume. And if you have any question regarding how he felt about the Limbaugh presidency, here is how he summed up the Bush Administration: "The truth—as I see it—is that the previous seven years and four months of the Bush Administration have been such an unmitigated horror show of rapacity, hubris, incompetence, mendacity, corruption, cynicism and contempt for the electorate..."You get the idea. He was not a fan. 

Anyway, Wallace was one of those rare, brilliant, and highly creative, yet tortured souls, whose acute and unrelenting intelligence and awareness combined with his lifelong battle with clinical depression may have cemented his fate.

"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level person will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flame yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling" -- excerpt from "Infinite Jest"

Addressed to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College, the following is an excerpt from one of the best and most unique commencement speeches ever given:

"There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

If at this moment, you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude -- but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real -- you get the idea. But please don't worry that I'm getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called "virtues." This is not a matter of virtue -- it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.
[...]

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
[...]

Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
[...]

And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

...None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

"It’s a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you – I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out.” -- David Foster Wallace

Read more...

How Secure Is Cyberspace?

From CERT:

Cyberspace has become so woven into the fabric of our society that it's almost impossible to separate the "real" world from virtual reality without experiencing enormous loss qualitatively and quantitatively.

We shop, bank, pay bills, communicate, learn, research, plan, organize, collaborate, store photos, entertain ourselves, support ourselves, etc. in cyberspace. Our growing dependence on the virtual world presents risks and security challenges we've never seen before, so much so that securing cyberspace has become crucial to our everyday lives as well as our national security. Our nation is becoming more and more dependent on it for operating its critical infrastructures such as transportation, communication, finance, energy distribution etc. Currently our nation's vulnerability to attack and susceptibility to disaster is much too high.

The Committee on Improving Cybersecurity Research in the United States, responsible for publishing "Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace" which can be read online for free, presents a better understanding of why cyberspace is as vulnerable as it is, and the research on new technologies and policies and their effective implementation to make things safer.

Read more...

Know the "Agenda" of Your" Proxy Representation"

The representation of people through professionals whose whole career is based on the knowledge of a certain subject or field is sometimes absolutely necessary, but that doesn't mean you (the one being represented) is required to passively accept everything your representative or "expert" says and/or does. Quite the contrary, if you can speak for yourself, then you should do so, but if you must seek representation, you should speak up as well because no one knows "you" as well as you.

After reading Gore After Gore in Vanity Fair Magazine, it occurred to me that letting someone else represent or stand or act in place of you, as a substitute, proxy, or agent is a very risky enterprise considering everyone has a personal and professional "agenda." Not only that, the representative’s organized plan for matters to be attended, or things to be done on your behalf, may be based on one or a combination of many different reasons that range from selflessness, empathy, compassion, love, altruism, idealism to ambition, greed or the desire to gain financially, anger, hatred, revenge, sexual and the list goes on indefinitely, but usually falls under one or many of the categories I mentioned above. The scariest part of "agenda" is that the person serving as a representative may not be conscious that his "agenda" exists, or cognizant that it is completely at odds with the "agenda" he is aware of.

Journalism and law are perfect examples of professions that demand a certain level of objectivity.

Take for example an attorney who works for a firm. Above and beyond all else, he must zealously represent his or her client to the best of his ability, defending the rule of law our Justice system has established and he must also be mindful of the deficiencies in the administration of justice concerning the ability to afford legal representation. This attorney must also establish a career and a reputation amongst the judges and his or her peers that he will be associating with now and in the future. And then of course, there is one's personal "agenda"...conscious or subconscious, one's personal "agenda" is not supposed to play a part in representing his client, but it most certainly does for better or worse.

The problem is that many "professionals" do not admit to having a bias or that their view is somewhat limited depending on the prism of popular culture, personal experience and significant others have had on influencing the construction of their reality and belief system. Therefore, it's best that the person "representing" is as aware as he can be of his personal bias and acknowledge it so that he can recognize when it starts to interfere with his duties.

Unfortunately, many "professionals" do not admit to or are not aware of their personal bias. It's up to "us" as consumers, clients, citizens to know the person representing "us" is indeed human, and that his past, present and what he hopes for the future all will affect the quality of his representation or in a journalist's case, reporting.

Read more...