The Lives of Others, a film

I just watched an incredible film.

The night before that however, I watched Simon Pegg in "Paul". What a riot that was, it was a film I enjoyed very much. I saw the unrated version which was more entertaining as an adult, it's nice to hear the characters talk more naturally, swear words intact, plus, sometimes they were funny with their placement. But I'll admit it was a little off putting at times as the film had a feel more of a family movie, but then there'd be the expletive here and there which first felt out of place, then typically cracked me up.

I followed that film up the next night with 2007's, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others). What a great film. With beautiful music, a well directed, well acted cast, a great script, it was deftly tuned to be a near masterpiece, if not so.

I won't go into depth about this film as I don't want to repeat what others have already covered or to give away anything from the film, so I'll try to talk around that.

This is one of those gems that you search through many films to find. It is poignant, subtle. I love subtle films, even some films that try to be subtle, or their subtlty is over played but obvious that it was the point, though I don't like getting slugged over the head with it. Films like Amadeus, Dangerous Liaison and now, The Lives of Others.

Just before the wall goes down and the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), has everyone spying on or turning in anyone that even thinks wrong. It's like living in 1984 by George Orwell, in a bloated, paranoid fascist state where abusing the people is more important than protecting them. Behind the "Iron Curtain" where the East German Stasi secret police, whose motto was, "Schild und Schwert der Partei" (Shield and Sword of the Party), had turned a once great nation into a pale shadow of Stalin's paranoid Communist State, where people either try not to think, not to think openly, or simply try to escape from the restrctive state where even thought is a crime, or commit suicide, thus becoming one of the uncounted.

As one Stasi official says, alluding to the unrealistic tenets of their life, "We don't "blacklist" here." When of course we all know, they do.

Putting a major playwright and his reknowned actress lover under survellience, the world is turned upside down. Misperceptions happen, changes grow inside, subversion begins and you come to believe that the Artist culture in a society is indeed where change begins, where the danger is, Especially, for a regime that is fearful more of its own people, than of any true threat to the people they claim to serve and protect. It points out how in a country and government like that, the abuses by those in power, shrivel their people's personalities just so they can survive because they know they have little to control in their own decisions and lives.

I will say this about a specific element in the film. Two of the Stasi are talking together. One describes a situation when dealing with "artist types". How to "break" them. He says that you keep them up for extended periods of time, and use various interrogation techniques, etc. But what stuck in my mind and keeps echoing, as it was supposed to, was his saying that after they let the artist go, guilty or not, this process makes it so they never produce their art again.

What a horrible statement to make; yet he found it entertaining to relish in sharing with his compatriot. There are chilling elements explored in this film, but it is all delievered through mental anguish in an environment of hopelessness and dispair. It is a very good warning to all those in "free" countries to beware their leaders falling into fascists ways of governing. America too, needs to take note for some of our changes over the past decade since 9/11 are truly concerning.

The German (once East German) actor Ulrich Mühe who plays the part of the main character Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler was by the Director of this film's thought, one of Germany's (and was East Germany's) greatest actor. After the fall of the Iron Curtain he got his Stasi documents and found that in his theater company, four individuals were placed there to spy on him. He found the names of who two of them were, but the other two were lost. He also found that for years, his wife and mother of his children, was also informing on him. That brings this film to much in the same situation as that of Casablanca, where many of those foreign actors in the film had only recently escaped from WWII in Europe and felt deeply much of what their roles required.

This is in many ways, a great and amazing film. Touching and painful to watch, but beautifully done.

Getting (not) Hired at Budget Tapes and Records

Back in 1982, after working at Tower Posters in Tacoma, Washington, then worked at Records, I had finally gotten my AA degree from Ft. Steilacoom Community College (now Pierce College). I transferred to Western Washington University in Bellingham for my Bachelor of Arts and Letters in Psychology.

Fairchild AFB Parachute shop, "Last to let you down"

Now, this was after my having held a Secret level clearance for nuclear weapons in the USAF at Fairchild AFB in Spokan, WA. I ran the parachute shop on the base as an E4 (Senior Airman, the did away with E4 being a Sargeant back about then, because too many guys became Sgt.s and got out, so they tried to make it that if you were a full Sgt., then you were in more than one four year term.

I was literally being responsible for millions of dollars of equipment and people's lives, all emergency chutes, drag chutes and all the chutes the PJs, the Air Force Pararescue Team, jumped every day. I trained the riggers for the Air Force Survival School. I was responsible along with my team for maintaining radiation barriers on all our aircraft. I was responsible, the US Government affirmed that in the most important ways. Before that, in High School, I managed and hired people at the AutoView drive-in snack bar through High School. So I'm telling you, I was responsible. I was even teaching drill in 8th grade to search and rescue cadets.

So when I applied for a job at a Tower Reords competitor, Budget Tapes and Records, as Tower had no store up there, I figured that I would get the job over other lesser applicants. I don't usually think that way but this one really seemed a "no brainer". I mean I felt if I were the manager and I walked in, I would have hired me and said, Thank you.

I had waited for college until after my stint in the military (I got in at the very end of the Viet Nam era so I got a full scholarship and benefits, I was fully ready to go to Viet Nam, but after talking with my old brother's friends who were there and then the guys in the Air Force I worked with who were there, I was kind of glad I missed it.

WWU

So, when I got Western Washington University, I was considered a STRATA (STudent Returning After Time Away) student, and therefore, more experienced than 95% of the local student body.

It wasn't a very big store that I applied at, smaller than even the tape section that I had worked in at Tower Records in Tacoma. Pretty much a one man store; in fact, the manager was the only person in the store when I spoke to him about a job.

I gave the chubby, bearded, self involved smuck, my resume and talked with him. Fully expecting a job, as hey, I had worked at Tower and I ran a full shop in the Air Force, I knew I could run his store pretty much, with my eyes closed. Or drunk, high, or whatever condition my college compatriots might leave me in. He asked if I thought I could run his superstore. I said, yes, I could most definitely handle it. But he gave me a leary look. Not quite believing me. Could I do inventory? Yes, most assuredly one thing I could do, was inventory. After all, I had to do it at Tower along with everyone else, and in the service, I was responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment on a daily basis, not to mention, literally, people's lives.

But he completely blew me off. I got the feeling he didn't think I was competant enough to register his smirk though his poncy beard. As if I had no more experience than having worked at some mom and pop shop, or less, and therefore simply couldn't be up to the standard of his lame ass little company. He was actually condescending, and no, I wasn't being less than humble. I mean, I was trying to a job, right? He was a bit pompous, really. And I played into that, thinking he would like having me as an employee. All my previous bosses loved having me work for them as I always made whoever I worked for, look really good to their bosses.

But in the end, I was beyond amazed at my treatment by this pissant of a manager of a tiny crummy little store in the backwaters of Bellingham, Washington. In fact, I was downright pissed off by time I got home.

But then after I calmed down that night, I figured it would have been a crummy place to work under him anyway. It seemed obvious in hindsight that he had some kind of grudge against the Power of Tower. Tower was a powerhouse back then. And so I thought he would jump at the chance to have someone work for him with experience from a bigger store.

There was a manager of one of the Tower stores who left the company to join a new start up company. When he left he took the operations manaul for the store, something that is totally not allowed. He gave it to his new company, and eventually got laid off. Basically, they had wanted the book, not so much, him. What was interesting in that was after I got out of college I found that indeed, Tower being cool as it was, did hire him back, as a new employee, starting at the bottom again, and allowed to work his way up to manager should he so desire to stick to it. He was a nice guy, but not the brightest bulb in the pack (obviously). I never found what happened to him in the end.

But the point here is, many stores wanted what Tower had. But not bucky boy in backwater BTown.

It's good though, that one goes through this kind of experience in life. It's good to know that even though you are over qualified, you still may not get a job because you would end up working for someone who KNOWS you are more qualified than them and well, I suppose, it can be intimidating. And yes, years later, I was turned down for jobs I wanted from time to time, due to being of all things, OVER qualified. I know that, because sometimes, they would give me that as a resason for not hiring me, not to mention, I KNEW I was over qualified.

I mentioned this situation to my friend Mark, my eventual roommate and manager of the new (at the time in 1984) Tacoma Tower Video store that I worked at for a time, after gruaduating college. See, I went back to Tacoma and worked with him, my old boss from Tower Records who had run the tape section when we worked at Records. Mark eventually became one of owner/founder Russ Soloman's favorite guys to open new stores with. I remember Mark flew out and helped open the Washington D.C. store. There were others but I clearly remember that one.

We had the most theft from the tape section, as they were so easily concealable, more esay than CDs. In fact, we captured a lot of shoplifters. The team of employees we had at Tower Records Tacoma was incredible, we worked like an oiled machine when it came to backing one another up, or busting criminals. We even captured a professional team of four shoplifters once, who traveled up and down the coast, who the police new about, but no one had been able to catch at their nefarious business, though we did; but that's another story entirely. When we stopped one of them at the front door, having surrounded them with male employees, the guy had like 20 albums under his coat and no one even noticed it until the manager put his hand on the guys stomach to stop him and realized he had a lot of something under his coat.

After college, I worked with Tower for a while until I found a job in computers, a situation where I got a half time job that made four times the amount of money I was making at Tower. So yes, in the end a college education does pay. A few years later, I doubled my income again Now after years in the high tech industry, I'm nearing a six figure income. In switching careers now and going into writing, I plan on boosting that figure quite a bit again.

Anyway, Mark had a conjecture as to why that guy managing the store in Bellingham wouldn't hire me, that I found somewhat humorous....

Maybe, he couldn't get hired at a Tower Store.

Anarchists

Ever hear of Anarchists? They believe we need to destroy the current status quo and hope that what comes next is better. Or that the overarching control of the State is redundant as we can monitor and run ourselves.

Sound nuts? Well, I'm not arguing with you.

Wikipedia indicates that: "Anarchism has been variously defined by sources. Most often, the term describes the political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy, while others have defined it as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations. Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society, and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organization."


This sounds an awful lot to me like deregulation in the economy and we've all see how that works out greed takes over. The trouble I see with this kind of theory is that people are intrinsically considered "good". The trouble with that is good or not, some people tend to take all they can get and more is never enough. There in lies problem.

Of course there are other views, that Anarchy has its many forms and we only recognize some, or only the obvious ones.

We may not like the State, the controls, but they are there for a reason. The issue I have is that with a State, we don't have enough smart people in control. Without a State we have NO people in control. We are a chaos based species. We are also social based but chaos seems to rule the day when we don't have rules in place.

Someone is always going to find the negative as a positive. Taking more than they need, hurting people, controlling people, these things are always going to be abused and we need to protect the weak and those who cannot or will not, protect themselves.

In the ninteenth century, Zhuangzi wrote, "A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a Nation." This seems to true in many ways around the world. The issue is, if there is no State to rule and assign actions, people will be abused at will.

Then again, to err is human, to really foul things up takes a computer, could be applied to the State. To err is a human social group, to really foul things up takes a Sate. As the size of the group increases, the intellect decreases exponentially, also points out an issue.

You'll  notice that even in a group who has Anarchy in their names, what they are saying is not that they want anarchy but that they don't want to pay respect to authority other than themselves. This is a common thread among Anarchists. Its problems therefore, are obvious and intrinsic.

I think what all these, especially young people, are pointing out by find this attractive, is a desire for more freedom than our government is allowing us. And by their realzing that our leaders are selling out for a stable job (elected officials); big business (basically, Big Oil, and the Military / Industrial complex); and insanity (mostly fundementalists and right wingers, from what I'm seeing anyway).

It seems to me we need to lighten up. Relax. Lose some of that Puritainism that is keeping us down and making a laughing stock of us in various more "enlightened" countires. Overall, I think we're doing pretty good (other than war, oil greed, fear mongering, partisanship, etc., stuff like that). We could use to listen to the Anarchists. We don't have to follow them like the proverbial Lemmings. But everyone has something useful to say if you listen long enough. In fact, I see a lot of the right wing crowd sounding a lot more nuts than the Anarchists. I've never agreed with the Nihilsts.

On the one hand we have the Anarchists and other such types. On the other side, we have the fearful right wing and those other such types. Which is right? What, is too extreme?

But the point of both of them really is that our control (government) has gotten lost and needs to find its way again as what is important? The People... as a whole, and not the greedy powerful few.

There is no reason we can't get our act together. We just have to do it. First we need to learn and act to be more responsible for ourselves. This may take a while people, but we can do it.

Living Life

I feel I need to address the issue of "Living Life". The concept is, you shouldn't want to sit in a cubicle all day, you should "go out and Live Life!" You must have heard people say this before, or have friends who chant this like a mantra: I can't be confined. I have to go out and really, "Live Life."

Uh huh, okay. But you know something? There is a little issue with that concept. No, really. There is. Honest.

These are the types of people who want to travel, they can't possibly sit in an office or worse, a cubicle all day long. They have to go out and do "real things", and experience the world "out there". But you know what? What is it you are really doing, going out and living all that life? Having fun? Being fascinated? Experiencing novel situations?

Nope, has nothing to do with ADD, but got your attention, right?

Sounds kind of ADD doesn't it?

Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of going out and doing stuff. Traveling. Experiencing. Being titillated, fascinated, excited, satiated. I just think that if I'm out doing that, it's called a vacation. If I'm doing that a lot, like all the time, I'm on permanent vacation. If that is all one does for life, they are called "adventurers", or Explorers  maybe a "Student of Life", or some such thing.

My argument with this is that if you are doing that all the time, you really need to be doing something else, too. Document it. Write about it. Film it. Share it. Make use of it aside from your own selfish pleasures. Consider the rest of Humankind who have to slave all day every day so you can gallivant around the planet and have fun. Because if people don't do those menial, boring jobs every day, you won't be traveling around, eating food, being entertained and having fun.

Someone has to gather, cook and serve the food you buy (or for some of you, get free) as you travel. People have to supply the transportation you use to get around the planet. Someone is keeping the world healthy, and it's not you while you're doing all that traveling.

So, while you are doing all that traveling, think up some thing, some way, to give back to the world that is letting you do all this non boring, non cubicle, non office, non factory job, stuff.

Don't get me wrong, go for it. Travel. Have fun.

Just consider that maybe you are being just a bit selfish and you should try and find a way to share your experiences with those of us who cannot afford it, who have responsibilities, or who are supplying the services you are using to do your exciting traveling and experiencing.

In your travels, do something other than just have fun. Or better still, have fun adding in these kinds of pursuits. Think, "How can I make the world a better place, even if only by a little? How can I make someone I meet feel better about the world? How can I give a little of the pleasure I'm getting from all this travel, back to those people living in those (to me) exotic places that I'm visiting?"

Expend a little of your time, your personality, even your money, to those you meet who look like they could use, well... something. Something from a foreign traveler, something unique, novel, entertaining. Something from someone who has more than they will ever have. Even if they have all they will ever need, if they are part of the enjoyment you are getting from your travels, then give them something back, and I don't mean, just a tip on the bill. But a smile. A nod. Help in some way with their daily rut.

It could even be in your not saying something you were going to say; something, that might not make their day better, but remind them of how bad things really are for them. You may think that no one is understanding your words, especially if those words are English, but consider, English is one of the most common languages on this planet and the de facto language used to do business with, world wide and for many, many decades.

That "ignorant non English speaking" servant waiting on you, may just speak your language, and many people, are multilingual, I've met many Europeans for instance, who spoke four or five languages, English, typically being one of them. Consider how many countries may be on their borders, of those small countries, where they interact with "foreigners" on a daily basis. Many have been required to learn their own language in school, and English. It is normal for them to speak several languages before graduating High School.

While you are in all those other interesting and novel places, be sure to be nice to those you run into. Think about how annoying you are or might be... to them; and if not you, then how annoying so many of those other ethnocentric (typically, American), if not ignorant, or privileged types, might be. Someone needs to counteract all that nonsense.

Consider how your comments may appear to them, when you complain about your travels, your food, those indigent people you run into, when after all, you are the intruder in their country; knocking their food or amenities and consider that the "low level of quality" you are receiving for your hard earned (if it was even earned) money, may be  far enough above their own level of existence, and that they will never experience what is killing you to deal with. If you see what I'm saying.

So go. Have fun. Experience Life to your heart's content. Just remember, at some point you are just loafing and doing not a thing but stroking your own ego, or maybe just avoiding the one thing we would all like to avoid: not growing up and acting like kids for our entire life. No responsibilities. No plan. No future.

So, worry not. After all, your job in adventuring around the world is easy. All you have to do for guilt free fun, is be nice and enjoy yourself.

9/11 - Just what do we know?

So, today is the day. It's been ten years since the Twin Towers were dropped and thousands of lives were lost... and saved. There is much about memorials. And this is good, we should remember, people should find closure, commiseration, compassion. And I prefer to see the towers in all their splendor, like this:

I'm so tired of seeing them on fire, or collapsing, or someone repeating ad nauseum "we should never forget!" and all that.  Yeah, of course, goes without saying. Today, I saw a bumper sticker that said: "Demand 9/11 Truth". That is such an ignorant comment. The only Truth in that statement, is that there is more to the story than we hear discussed openly. But was there some conspiracy? Did we attack ourselves, or set ourselves up to be attacked, so we can go to war, or get oil, or whatever?

I get so annoyed with the ignorance of people with these conspiracies. Conspiracies are the domain of the ignorant who are too lazy to go find not just the truth, but what is going on. Why? Because, it takes effort, and though. Conspiracies, are for lazy people. Truth is for the people who want to know and pay attention. Did you know that most of what is going on is right in front of us, most of the time? Sometimes, surely, you have to go looking for it, but much of the time, it is all out there, you just have to choose to listen, and listen at the right times, and at the right places. It's not that difficult, just use your mind. Consider who is best to hear an unbiased report from. But bias, also leads to the truth.

Still, it's not what has happened, that we need to remember. "Remember 9/11!" Yes, and?

You see, it's what has happened, that is going on that needs to be, not so much remembered, but paid attention to; because it's an ongoing, visceral thing. Then as now you see, what is most important is, the future.

So, what we need to do is to understand what happened, not just bleed over what happened, but to understand why and how it came to be, where we are now, where we are headed, and what we can expect to come. Those, are the most important things in the here and now. Talk about what happened leads us no where. It happened. People died. People, will die again. Actually, people die all the time but no one cares. People die of starvation, lack of medicine and medical care. Group them together, however, kill a lot of people on one day, have a named bad element involved who instigated and carried it out, and now people want a response, want it never to happen again, and want accountability.

Kind of hypocritical. Don't you think? But, okay. Still, we need to protect our futures, and that means protecting our assets, our people, our economy, our way of life.

I find it annoying when people talk about things like 9/11, how they talk about it. How circumspect, how narrow and specific to the event they talk. What happened with 9/11 had to do with a lot more than 9/11. It had to do with other terrorists attacks over the years previous. It had to do with the people who were running around the world doing things, who weren't stopped, tracked down, caught or killed. It also had to do with SOP: Standard Operating Procedures, as well as, Status Quo, how things are (or were), and what was accepted as "normal".

Allow me to explain....

WWII ended and the new world began. Yes, World War Two; it ended and there was a new paradigm in the world. Relax, I'll keep this as brief as possible and if you know it, I'm sorry, if you don't, you should and you should have known this a long, long, time ago. At the point of WWII ending, rather than having Nazis and Fascists to deal with, we know had a new enemy, our old (during WWII) ally. Stalin turned out to be the murderous tyrannical, paranoid psychopath we already knew him to be.

Enter, the KGB on the world stage, as well as the CIA. The World Wide Chess game was afoot. The Brits had been playing this game with the Soviets for years and we learned from them. During WWII there was a secret organization, even before America entered the war, known as the ABC (America, Britain, Canada), fragments of which evolved into the OSS, and later, the CIA.

The KGB has now been replaced by the FSB.

OSS Shoulder Insignia

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan, the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create a new organization directly supervised by the President. The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947.

This worked out pretty well for a long time. But things began to change by circumstance and with help from the Soviets. The 50s were set up to become paranoid. Let's skip the 60s because that is a whole book in itself.  There was a lot going on in the 70s in the middle east and much of that was a left over from the end of WWII. Technology advanced exponentially since the Space Race in the 60s. We felt pretty safe in the 80s and a belief became prevalent that technology could solve all our problems. Including, the cost of espionage. A seminal mistake that continued on into the 90s and in 2011, we saw the end result of our laziness, our over inflated image of ourselves and what technology could do for us, and greed.

We believed that we had friends in the Middle East. Israel, once we started to become more aligned with them, an alignment that has been too overplayed for decades, our historical "friends" in Iran, The Shah, and in Iraq later, Saddam Hussein, and so on it went.

The CIA was allowed to grow complacent, it began to be inexperienced, understaffed, underfunded. The media played it off as a bad entity due to the mistakes made in the 60s and general fiction genres of prose and film. A favorite of the Film Industry, James Bond, in the 70s, was so poorly thought of that Roger Moore was brought in to play Bond as the buffoon. It was the only way to continue the franchise. One can indeed tell much about a society from its media, News, Film, TV/Cable, magazines, etc.

During this zombification of the CIA, we lost touch with counties in the world, what was happening, what we needed to know, how we can fix issues that were festering under the surface, and in some cases, on top of the surface. Why weren't there those inside the CIA who knew what was going on? There were, of course. Robert Baer being only one. He was one of the CIA Officers deep in the business who repeatedly ran up against the complacency of Government. Rather than follow leads, he was told to do nothing. And nothing always leads to something.

Some of the mistakes made, to spell if out for you if you haven't already gathered what those things were: We thought we could spy on the cheap; we thought we could spy using technology (satellites rather than humans gathering intel and making friends, contacts, and agents); basically, not having a functional network in EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

And so, when things were building, we had no inkling. And because of management wanting to save money, agents were cut to the bare minimum, or less; and agents who saw what was happening were told to shut up. Satellites were used for intel and it was believed that they had in depth coverage of things in reality, we later "found" were little or no intel.

The point of all this is this, in a way? We kind of did this to ourselves. Of course, we did NOT fly planes into the Twin Towers, that conspiracy theory just annoys me. But we did, misuse or sometimes abuse people, cultures, countries, and in many cases, it wasn't even America per se, but American Corporations, their greed and their lobbies that caused things to happen.

We blinded our intelligence agencies, by giving them "eyes in the sky", a technology that is incredibly useful, if used in the right ways and by knowing its limitations. We blinded our intelligence agencies by cutting funding, pulling agents, not training them appropriately, losing valuable agents from WWII and not continuing much of their wise  knowledge and tactics. And finally by putting the wrong people in charge of our intelligence. When anything is taken over by management, it is usually the sign that things are over.

9/11 was a wake up call. Finally, we had to pay attention. Europe has thought for many years that we (America) has been living in a fantasy land, deluding ourselves by our distance and two oceans on either side of us, and our power of economy and military strength, and perception by the world that we were the promised land.

When 9/11 happened, we had CIA Officers on the ground in Afghanistan within eleven days. They liaised with local tribes and military to defeat the Taliban. It wasn't clean, nor easy, but it got done. How we muddled our way though it is more a tribute to the Officers in the middle of it all, rather than our military brilliance, strategic planning or the "wisdom" of our Leaders. Our once again trying to win a war from the halls of Washington DC, as we had tried and failed to do in Viet Nam, was again preparing us for failure only inhibited by luck, perseverance, clever maneuvers and a strong indigenous military force fighting for their own country. We did not kill or even find Bin Laden for a decade; but we broke the back of the Taliban that year.

In the many years since, after trying to rebuild our intelligence infrastructure and build an entirely new national security system, possible 75% of which is useless for its intended purpose, we have indeed seen al Qaeda's back broken and the loss of all its chief leaders.

So, what does it take to win a war on Terrorism? Can we do anything about it?

Yes.

What this all comes down to is changing how we go about things, like not supporting a country (Israel) who is abusing a local populace (Palestinians). Not supporting poverty by acting on and letting people know we are trying to raise the level of existence for every man, woman and child on this planet. We need to care for everyone, not just ourselves. And we need to care, for ourselves.

A prime element in this is Education. Also, seeing that people can eat and survive, can earn a living, can find medical care, and are not abused by corporations, governments, or leaders, either with out or especially, with in, their own countries.

Sounds like a lot doesn't it? But to date, we have not even done what we could have done. And that is a key element as to why we have ended up with things as they are and as they have been. But understand that they don't need to be.

So, let's start to protect ourselves the right way. Let's start to pay attention. Only then, maybe then, we can avoid the next 9/11.

Weekend Wise Words

Be Smart! Be Brilliant!

On the topic of Entertainment....

Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.  - Media Guru, Marshall McLuhan

Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television. - American writer, Rita Mae Brown

Entertainment today constantly emphasises the message that things are wonderful the way they are. But there is another kind of cinema, which says that change is possible and necessary and it's up to you. - Filmmaker and documentarian, Wim Wenders

Except here it's more power, more energy, younger and also in Europe it's still not only entertainment. Theater or films are looked at as a moral institution. That's why maybe they're so poetic. Here it's clear entertainment. - Actor, Maximilian Schell

I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.
- Comedian, Actor, Steve Martin

I think the Internet's been a tremendous tool in terms of breaking down the power structure of information and entertainment, particularly at a time when so much information and entertainment were in the hands of so few people, with multinationals owning everything. - Actor, Comedian, "Kids in the Hall" Almun, Dave Foley

It's not an anti-sex trip. Like, we're taking sex, which is probably another half of American entertainment, sex and violence, and we're projecting it, and we're saying this is the way everything is right now. - Musician, Actor, Alice Cooper

Maybe entertainment is not supposed to be reality. - Comedian, Actor, Victoria Jackson

Have a great weekend!

Childrearing, socialism, confusion

My brother sent out an email to friends and family this week:

"ALERT: A massive sleeper cell of socialists who seek to undermine the Constitution and remake society have infiltrated our highest levels of government!" from https://secure.freedomdonations.com/

 If you are fearful of socialism in our country, go ahead, get on that web site. But I'm not sure what the issue is. A fear of socialism?

Last night I was watching the series finale of FX Channel's "Rescue Me", Denis Leary's show. In it, Leary's character Tommy, retires from the New York Fire Department after an intense history with it. In the last episode, he goes with his daughter to the park so his son can play in the playground with other kids (actually his deceased brother's son by his wife, it's a long story).

Tommy finds that things have changed since he was a kid. He is told by other parents that the toys his son brought along, are actually (basically) community property as it is a community property playground. Isn't that socialism? It would seem that is how things are going in the US now. Or they just made it up. I don't know.

But I do know, that I pretty much agree with Tommy. The other parents said that his son can play with his toys anytime he wants at home, and while he is at the public (socialist) park with other kids, he will have to get in line to play with his own toys. As they played it out in the episode, there were barbies and dolls the other children, mostly girls, brought. Tommy obviously had issues about the feminization of his son and ended up leaving, or being thrown out by the other parents, that wasn't really clear.

Still, I think there are issues about the child getting to the park and not being able to play with his own toys. I was always taught to share, which is a completely different thing than losing ownership of your own belongings. Not to mention, maybe the child isn't allowed to play with his "outside" toys when he is inside at home.

As for my brother's email, it would seem that those in congress, are only the tip of the iceberg and in reality, America has gone that direction. Frankly, we need more socialist programs, we need to understand what our government can and should be doing FOR us. For, US, for the U.S. I don't believe in a socialist government, but a government IS there to protect and support its citizenry. Not to plunge us into debt, or wars, or abuse of its citizens.

I think that is may be a moot point at this time, to cry about the nation turning socialist. It's there. But I don't think you need to worry too much. Besides things seem to find their own level. They will bounce up and down for a while, and then settle into a functional level, hopefully one that is where we need it to be.

So, you can fight all you want, hammer on the congress all you want, but what is going to happen, is already happening. So relax. Speak your mind, that will help hone the situation to a reasonable degree.

But don't delude yourself into thinking that you are going to stop it. It's too late.