The Way It Can Be

If the Universe was a Sudoku puzzle by Evan Palmer

2012-01-27T18:52:00.002-05:00

The object of Sudoku is to discover the numbers from 1 to 9 that align along each row, column and 3x3 box such that no number is repeated in any of the 3 constructs (row, column, 3x3 box). What if instead we had looked at a completed Suduko and realised that the above was true. We uncover an order in what appears to be a jumble of numbers. Bliss equals hidden order manifested.

What if our universe or multi-verse is created in such a way that it is in fact an unimaginably immense sudoku where "something" always adds up the same way no matter how you add it. You add up your lives across time and space. You add up all the connected lives you interact with in this life. You "add" up the entire planet. You add up our Solar System, our galaxy, other galaxies. Always the same total. What is it that adds up the same across all significant parameters?

It is not something mutable. It is not something bound in time. It is not some "thing" at all. That's why it's all alright. Always. Everywhere. And it doesn't matter what you say or do. Evil doesn't matter or Good. The whole is reflected in the part and the part reflects the whole. Fractals meet Sudoku. The boundless sea of potential meets the great manifestation machine. It's over before it began. It never began. It never ended.

If the Universe was a Sudoku puzzle, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Support his art, ideas and worldview, Order books by Evan Palmer: the novel "Oaklane Woods"; short stories "Tales Told to a Tree"; poems "40 Poem Fragments". Order via Kindle link at right of screen

Year Zero - Starting Over - The Way out of Economic Collapse by Evan Palmer

2012-01-08T11:16:00.002-05:00

This may seem naive or ignorant but it seems to be clear that an almost complete government intervention would be needed if a full-scale economic collapse occurs. Do governments have plans in place? And not just plans to control, incarcerate and pacify the general population. Plans to help people and right the economy.

Plans that control all financial and related transactions and seal all borders - physical and electronic. Plans that freeze all current financial obligations and do not permit closures, seizures or foreclosures by anyone except the federal government.

The next step is to issue a new currency. All assets will have to converted into the new currency, They would be tabulated and scrutinized as to propriety and legality. The new currency would be based on the size of the economy, number of consumers, and other relevant factors.

All financial institutions would come under supervision and, potentially, governement control to ensure that accounts are kept open and that credit is available. The government would also break up private and corporate holdings that constitute an undue concentration of power.

A quick, easy and effective means of representation is needed and can take its cue from ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy: that is, selection via lottery, one or two year terms. Leaders can be elected by the parliament by consensus as they do in the North West Territories. The current representatives are not part of the solution.

We need a plan and we need to see it and debate it.

Year Zero - Starting Over - The Way out of Economic Collapse, The Way It Can Be, Evan Palmer, http:\\twicb.blogspot.com

Super Rich have excessive power by Evan Palmer

2012-01-06T14:56:00.005-05:00

On December 5th, 2012, the Globe and Mail ran a story called "Seven Millionaire Myths" by Claire Bradley of Investopedia.com

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/household-finances/seven-millionaire-myths/article2263181/

It is basically an apology for millionaires and seeks to cast them as ordinary and like us in that they pay taxes and work for their money. But millionaires are really a red herring in this case as a million in assets is not that much. The real message of this Globe and Mail propaganda piece is to agglomerate the super rich in with the ordinary millionaires so as to be able to include them in the statements that the "rich" are being unfairly characterized in the media and we should accept the assertions in this article and applaud them and their economic contributions. Among other things, this is a roundabout way of denigrating the Occupy movement and other similar organizations or persons who call out the massive economic distortions and targeted sweet-heart policies. However, the real issue is the definition of "rich" and the undue and unreported influence of a very small "super rich" group on all levels of government, the economy and society.

Referring to a University of California study at the following website http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html which reflects American statistics for the year 2005, there is a surprising and remarkable differentiation of wealth even in the top 1%. At the very top, a mere 400 households "earn" almost $90 million dollars income per year each mostly via financial manipulations and transactions. The continuing trend of consolidation and enrichment means it's only worse now, six years down the road, especially with unnecessary and barely legal bailouts for the chief transgressors in the recent financial debacles.

The same dangerous accumulation of wealth and power is undoubtedly happening in Europe and Asia. And then, there's other incomes that can be used to amass power and influence and manipulate events - undeclared income and assets, illegal income and assets and appropriated or seized income and assets. Again, focusing on the top of the top (i.e. the top 1/5000th of 1%), there's ample scope and an expectation for massive undue power and influence including corruption in undeveloped or developing countries and globally in government or corporate sectors where key power levers are exercised. There are also rogue government agencies, especially intelligence groups, that are creating and increasing their funding and power - and they have the added benefit of sophisticated armaments and personnel - in some ways, operating in a manner similar to organized crime. There are several groups wielding undue power but the key group in the advanced nations (and thus the world) is the super rich especially when we factor in the numerous corporations they control and which provide an enormous multiplier effect on their reach and capability. The issue becomes the excessive, often unmerited, accumulation of wealth and power by the super rich and its guaranteed abuse over time which always includes a debasement and impoverishment of the 99.9%

As an aside, there is no bio of Claire Bradley at Investopedia which appears to be her main (only?) publishing venue. As of August 2010, Forbes sold Investopedia to ValueClick. Investopedia is based in Edmonton, Alberta.

Super Rich have excessive power, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

Blessed Be - Air by Evan Palmer

2011-12-27T16:32:00.007-05:00

Blessed Be the air that flows around us,

that ripples the grass and bows the flowers.

The air that lifts the birds towards the sun and pushes the

clouds in the sky and fills our lungs.

The wind that fills the sails and turns the mills and furls the

waves and fuels our life.

Blessed Be.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Support his art, ideas and worldview, Order books by Evan Palmer: the novel "Oaklane Woods"; short stories "Tales Told to a Tree"; poems "40 Poem Fragments". Order via Kindle link at right of screen

Copyright 2011 Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

PROMOTION - free kindle book tomorrow - Tales Told To A Tree by Evan Palmer

2011-12-18T10:17:00.008-05:00

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Tomorrow - the book of short stories TALES TOLD TO A TREE will be * free * on KINDLE

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OAKLANE WOODS - Amazon Kindle Book
TALES TOLD TO A TREE - Amazon Kindle Book
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Support his art, ideas and worldview, Order books by Evan Palmer: the novel "Oaklane Woods"; short stories "Tales Told to a Tree"; poems "40 Poem Fragments". Order via Kindle link at right of screen

Copyright 2011 Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

RIM executives drugged? War on RIM continues by Evan Palmer

2011-12-11T10:34:00.007-05:00

It's the excess of it that triggers suspicion.

Like the 911 attacks, 3 buildings in New York not one or even two but three including one that wasn't even hit. And then another one in Washington. And then another plane downed in Pennsylvania. It's the excess of someone catering to an audience whose attention is very difficult to get and maintain.

This RIM stuff is much smaller in scale in terms of violence but it is the same mindset that veers to excess. It has the potential of affecting tens of thousands of people and billions of dollars worth of assets and patents and destroying a competitor and buying its assets at firesale prices. Like Nortel.

The latest RIM story is that two executives went beserk on an Air Canada flight, attacking crew members, being restrained, gnawing through their restraints and forcing the pilot to divert and land at Vancouver.

How incredibly coincidental that both men would go beserk, both had to be restrained, both gnawed through their restraints. It's the "amplify effect" where it was a concern that only one RIM executive being drunk on a plane wouldn't get enough coverage so we need at least two; and, just being drunk was not enough, they had to be raging psychos; and, the plane HAD to be diverted and the unruly dangerous passengers arrested to ensure worldwide front-page coverage and more bad publicity for RIM.

Here's another take. RIM is in the cross-hairs of amoral ravenous predators who want it out of the picture, want its key assets for a pittance and want to make scads of easy money to boot. So, we want lots of distractions and both heavy blows and the death of a thousand cuts. You drop a drug into those RIM execs drinks or food that increases violent behavior. The requirement is for a drug whose effects are intensified by alcohol. Perhaps a dose of testoterone or an anti-depressant like rohypnol or methamphetamine. Something guaranteed to make the ingestor extremely violent when combined with alcohol. That they would have some alcohol on such a long flight was a certainty. And, viola, another bad news story for RIM, another shot in this specific economic war, making money along the way until the big prize falls out of the sky a la Nortel. Also, check for trading anomalies on RIM stocks for those days.

It's too late for forewarning but not too late for the strongest possible defense (which includes an offense).

RIM executives drugged? War on RIM continues, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

St Augustine's God & The Problem of Evil by Evan Palmer

2011-12-10T15:01:00.003-05:00

There is a simultaneity about everything that is both mystifying and satisfying. Matter is Energy. Energy is Matter. Matter & Energy exist as both particles and waves. God exists both in Time and outside of Time.

Augustine of Hippo devoted a great deal of effort to the problem of evil and at the risk of over-simplifying, his argument can be summarized as "All's Well That Ends Well"; that God, being outside of time, can see all of it at once and can see and know that today's evil is righted by tomorrow's good; that a future joy and contentment can atone for the present suffering and anxiety - more, that it was necessary, that one could not have followed without the other.

Can evil be viewed as the fire in the forge? That the sword of our life depends on evil for its edge and its purpose? One of our problems is that it's difficult for us to tell the difference between normal adversity and abnormal evil or that when we find ourselves in times where evil is normal, it's a directed evil armoured in self-defense and called survival.

St Augustine's God and The Problem of Evil, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

H5N1 - Five Easy Mutations by Evan Palmer

2011-12-03T18:05:00.005-05:00

There's something rotten in the Netherlands and something seriously wrong with a system that funds and encourages scientists to develop MORE contagious versions of viruses. Other labs have tried to make the H5N1 virus more contagious - it already is virulent, killing up to 60% on those infected. They failed but Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam and his team in the Netherlands succeeded.

Normally, this would be hailed as a tremendous thing but this is not a cure for anything or something that will advance the human condition. In fact, now we have the most powerful weapon in the world in some lab in western Europe. Even worse, these scientists are so selfish and inward-thinking that they want to publish their research which will allow other countries and groups including corporations to more easily develop their own world-killing viruses.

Dr. Thomas Inglesby, the director and CEO of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh was quoted as saying: "It's just a bad idea for scientists to turn a lethal virus into a lethal and highly contagious virus. And it's a second bad idea for them to publish how they did it so others can copy it."

It's much more than a bad idea. It's criminal. These people should be locked up and their labs and organizations should be fined and closed.

H5N1 - Five Easy Mutations, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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The Way Out of Shadow Banks by Evan Palmer

2011-11-05T18:12:00.009-04:00

Various individuals in various financial institutions decided they wanted to make a lot of money and that the traditional means of doing that in banking, for example by taking deposits and making loans, was not good enough. So they stepped out of the normal regulated banking system and setup their own unregulated shadow banking system. This presented society with a rigged system in that we have ineffective governance over an increasingly large segment of financial transactions and the associated dollar value.

It seems that the biggest thing going on was selling an asset (like a house) a number of times. It might have looked different but it was the same house, or fraction of that house, being sold and resold. Some of the purchasers might have thought their piece of paper or electronic entry in a broker's system was an asset but they found out differently when the house of cards started to collapse. It was revealed to be nothing more than a chain of liens where only the lien that had an actual claim on the asset was worth anything and that value held up only as long as the asset held up. If you sold the same house ten times to ten different people you would be charged with fraud. If you package it up in obscure financial jargon and do the same thing, you're a genius and you get very rich.

Off-book shadow banking should be taxed as speculation. The funds should be strictly segregated from normal banking monies. A hit in the shadow bank should not affect normal banking. It must be easy and transparent to see the shadow bank transactions and to highlight the demarcation between it and normal banking. The place in the queue for the shadow banks must be at the rear. Everyone else gets paid before the shadow bank does. Their claims can be nullified and repudiated within the regular bankruptcy process. Things like an ABS, CDO, MBS or SLO are last in line and likely to have no payout if there are problems.

Trying to bring the shadow banks into the fold of normal banking is a mistake. The main function of shadow banks is facilitate excessive leverage and casino captialism. They are a sophisticated fraud that has to be stamped out through taxation, regulation and no payouts during any bankruptcy process.

The Way Out of Shadow Banks, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright 2011 Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

The Diefenbaker Sanction by Evan Palmer

2011-10-29T17:14:00.003-04:00

The federal Conservative Party of Canada displays a dangerously dogmatic, even zealous, streak in dealing with people and programs with which it does not agree. Its tack is not only to deal with it in the here and now but to eliminate it from any potential future as well. Let's call it the Diefenbaker Sanction after the notorious 1958 cancellation of the Avro Arrow project. Not only was the project cancelled but the prototypes, production plane and line were destroyed along with the blueprints and technical data. There was such a rush to destroy the program that some workers almost risked injury or death applying acetylene torches to the planes. They quickly reassessed their approach and the planes were sawn apart. However, the production lines were cut apart with the acetylene torches. The Conservatives of the day denied it later but here we are again in 2011 with the Long Gun Registry and they are not only stopping the program but destroying all the data. Doesn't it smack of the Avro Arrow. Canada must keep the Conservatives away from substantive power because they will end up destroying anything they ideologically determine is the enemy.

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Support his art, ideas and worldview, Order books by Evan Palmer: the novel "Oaklane Woods"; short stories "Tales Told to a Tree"; poems "40 Poem Fragments". Order via Kindle link at right of screen

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OCCUPY - This is only the beginning! by Evan Palmer

2011-10-15T12:05:00.007-04:00

Pendulums swing and injustice occurs at each extreme of those swings. The OCCUPY crescendo that is building around the world is the result of everything evil that's happened and is still in the world over the last few decades. The evil deeds and the cover ups; the lies and the deliberate obfuscation; the thefts and killings and wars. People have been getting sicker of it every year and now the vast financial boondoggles in the guise of unrelenting crises has set it afire. People are burning with indignation and rage. We are facing a society and world where the practice and furtherance of fundamental liberties and freedoms is under threat when anything substantial is involved - anything beyond fluff and celebrity gossip or the party line. People don't want change, they want justice in all spheres and regions. Where justice is doing the right thing: Social justice. Financial & Fiscal justice. Criminal & Corporate justice. Environmental justice.

People are sick of it all: sick of the misguided prohibition-like war on drugs (especially where it's clear governments are involved and profiting); sick of illegitimate wars around the world by all sides; sick of government assassinations, torturing and show trials; sick of the bought-and-sold mass media that trumpets this and then that propaganda to further corporatist and government goals of enormous profits for the few; sick of stealing from the poor to give to the rich; sick of the wars on dissent.

The vile frankenstein fascist-lite capitalism we have now serves only its government and corporate masters and their lackeys. It was never free or open. It is only now when a few more larcenous greedsters were trying to crash the 1%'s gluttonous party that it finally and irrevocably woke up the 99% to the ongoing theft. But the malaise was already there and it was deep and widespread. It will not be a flash in the pan; this is only the beginning; expect us.

OCCUPY - This is only the beginning!, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

Support his art, ideas and worldview, Order books by Evan Palmer:

the novel "Oaklane Woods"; short stories "Tales Told to a Tree";

poems "40 Poem Fragments" Order via Kindle link at right of screen

Corporate Welfare Bums, Fascism and Public Indebtedness by Evan Palmer

2011-08-01T12:53:00.004-04:00

Fascism gets its legitimacy from the few corporations that are well-run for a period of time. These shining examples of competence and societal benefit are used to bolster arguments that companies should be allowed to run everything; that everything would be better if only.

Corporations demand loyalty yet give none in return. They are permitted, and typically assisted, in growing and hiring up to a point when they are considered successful and then greed and so-called competition "forces" them to outsource. Mainly, they are "forced" into outsourcing by a government of ex-and-wannabee-CEOs and confederates where if you allow one then you force the rest. The public shares the blame in indescrimately buying cheaper even if it hurts your own country, state and neighbourhood. Once you board the roller-coaster, you can't get off until it's over. The truth, however, learned over and over again, seemingly lost to memory each time: you can't feed your face while chopping off your limbs.

The US debt ceiling crisis has illustrated many things - that the world is hostage to American economics and politics is one lesson (we already knew). An observation - people really don't like being held hostage - there will be a huge backlash against the USA over the next few years. The Tea Party's intransigence has & will significantly harm America - as it loses its reserve status, for example - of course, they will bray that it's someone else's fault.

America's deeply flawed tax & money system is at the heart of the problem. A large percentage of US debt is owed internally - some to Americans themselves, some to banks (including foreign) as interest regarding the issuance of money. The Tea Party (and most of the Republican Party) is against tax increases but is it also against corporate welfare? Is it also against ending supposedly temporary tax breaks that rob the treasury of needed funds. Huge tax breaks. Ending a break is not an increase except in the incestuous world of American business and politics where these Orwellian logic bombs are commonplace. See Matt Taibbi's article for more: "Corporate Tax Holiday in Debt Ceiling Deal: Where's the Uproar?" http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/holiday-in-scambodia-20110720

What if outsourcing were re-classified as foreign aid? How would that alter the debate? What if selling foreign goods in a given region required jobs and facilties in that region? It would make sense economically (for that region) and environmentally - that would also stop the bidding wars for large facilities - you'd have to build there to sell there.

Another huge reason for the debt which was hardly mentioned in the recent budget debates are the various wars the US is engaged in. Immensely expensive wars that are illegitimate and unsuccessful. And the huge military outlay for numerous bases and apparatus. Are the military & intelligence branches of government even under control?

Not to mention the enormous cost of numerous covert and overt forms of economic warfare. Global supremacy doesn't come cheap and its fruits are lavish for the few and brutal for the many. The lines for conflict of interest are so blurred that straight-thinking is almost impossible. The world makes a plea that America retreats and retrenches for its own sake and the world's.

Corporate Welfare Bums, Fascism and Public Indebtedness, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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The Royals - Much Ado about Nothing by Evan Palmer

2011-07-24T12:47:00.006-04:00

There was a time long ago when a royal was a royal for a reason - some achievement requiring courage and guile, some extraordinary skill ... something other than being born to so-and-so. And even for those who were just born into it, there was an expectation that they would be contributing and leading as soon as practical. They would be performing important government functions (qualified or not) or missions or leading actual armies or navies into battle. And it was a vastly different world. Nowadays, royalty is merely ceremonial and a ceremonial position that depends solely on birth is nothing but a parasitic position.

The latest "Will & Kate" wedding and recent trip to Canada highlight this empty

charade. Neither of them has achieved anything of note. Nor has the Queen or any of

the so-called royal family. "Being" a so-called royal is the sole criteria and

then for Kate being selected to join this high-profile social and occasional

short-term "work" club.

This is leadership distilled down to a thin-shelled facade - form, finery and

social frippery. And for this, the United Kingdom and its Commonweath pay huge sums

on a continuing basis. People look up to these shells in gratitude and respect?

For what? For dressing up as if in another bygone era? For drivelling on about

"we're this" and "we're that"?

People will eventually wake up from this medieval trance and oust the monarchy

and return the people's assets back to them. Ceremonial positions based on merit

and limited in duration are acceptable and understandable and supportable. However,

positions and wealth and undue respect and deferrence due solely to birth have

no place in an equitable modern world.

The Royals - Much Ado about Nothing, The Way It Can Be, Evan Palmer, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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What Chemistry can teach us about Relationships by Evan Palmer

2011-06-30T21:17:00.004-04:00

People crave analogies and like magic, they find them everywhere. Most adequate or even instructive; however, some analogies are so compelling that we base our life on them.Our tireless search for answers never stops, whether the questions are valid or not, because we have convinced ourselves that we are on a search for illumination. We turn here and there, this way and that. And now, let us turn to chemistry for guidance - turning to our understanding of the physical world as manifested in its chemistry.

The key underlying principle of these bonds, both personal and chemical - is that they are powerful over short distances but weak or non-existent over longer distances. In the personal realm, various technologies can be employed to reduce the perceived or effective distance. Communication technologies are one of the important ways of reducing the perceived distance between people.

Memory is another means of diminishing distance by increasing presence. This seems to show that the perception of presence can be a solitary experience. Or possible, that its true nature is solitary but because the perception is simultanaeous and similar, we take it as common and shared. Thus, in personal relationships, anything that increases distance decreases the strength of the relationship.

In chemistry, there are three main types of bonds with one type having two subtypes: ionic, covalent (non-polar, polar) and hydrogen bonds. To equate these to people relationships, we will look for aspects that analagous to the chemical bonds.

First, ionic: this would be a relationship that involves a person (or persons) with a low "something" bonding with a person (or persons) with a high "something". This "something" can be almost anything - money, charisma, knowledge, skill, energy, connections. In chemistry these are weak bonds. By analogy then, we would expect these type of relationships to be weak. For example, a rich man befriending a poor man; a smart woman befriending an unintelligent woman.

Next are covalent bonds which involve sharing something important - in chemistry, electrons; in relationships, something important to both partners in the bond. One type of covalent bond is non-polar while the other bond type is called polar.

In a non-polar bond, we have equal sharing. In personal relationships, this would manifest as two parties sharing something that is equivalent in value or importance (not necessarily the same). For example, two people putting in significant and equal shares of capital into a venture.

In a polar bond, we have unequal sharing. In personal relationships, this would manifest as two parties sharing something that to them is significant but is not equal in value. For example, the partner with experience and contacts and the silent partner with a large investment. This highlights the time aspect of investments in a relationship - some of the value of the bond only comes into play later but is needed from the start.

In chemistry, covalent bonds are the strongest. In relationships then, the strength of the relationship is highest where each party gives and receives something significant with the other party. This would be true whether the sharing is equal or unequal as long as its significant and needed.

The last chemical bond to consider is the hydrogen bond. Like the ionic bond, it is relatively weak. It contributes to the polarity of the bond which affects its ability to bond.

In personal relationships, this would manifest itself in the person who plays a supporting role. The person who provides necessary but peripheral bonds that enable larger bonds that could not have formed on their own. For example, the introduction or recommendation that establishes one person's bona fides with another.

If the overarching and specific analogies are valid then the strongest personal relationships involve giving and receiving something significant from another. Weaker but still important relationships consist of the bonds formed between "haves" and "have nots" and "supporting" relationships. Some of these types of relationships will occur on their own but others will require an effort and, in some cases, a conscious exchange of "something" to cement and strengthen the bonds. And, the more bonds the better for those relationships one values most.

A bond that is typically considered separately is the metallic bond. This bond is not a single bond but rather a lattice of bonds. It is collective bonding - commonly thought of chemically as a matrix of positive ions held together by an ocean of negative electrons. By analogy, in personal relationships, this would be the crowd bond - for example, cheering for a sports team, or a large crowd of political or social protesters or supporters, or a rioting mob. This collective bond can range from weak to very strong.

What Chemistry can teach us about Relationships, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright 2011 Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Nortel all over again! Economic Warfare now directed at RIM by Evan Palmer

2011-06-22T21:05:00.009-04:00

Objectivity and independence are incidental bystanders in this war while deliberate campaigns of espionage, propaganda and financial maneuvering are the constant companions. Canada had better wake up to the fact that warfare, especially economic, is being waged against it and its companies.

There is no way that what happened to Nortel was natural just as there's no way that what's happening to RIM is natural. RIM was sued by an American filing cabinet company known as NTP. This tied RIM up in expensive litigation for years and resulted in an assessment of $450 million dollars in damages. This was pure out-and-out piracy and economic harassment. Then Dolby decided to try it as well. These were patent infringement suits. A so-called investors suit went public in May of this year, Who started it? Who really started it?

Anyone who has a smidgen of awareness of how intelligence agencies work will recognize the mark of the economic hit men. The CIA, NSA and other of the Amercian alphabet agencies spy full-time on their economic competitors. So do the British, French, Russian, Chinese, Israeli and others.

These operations run the gamut from simple data collection all the way to murder and huge market manipulation. CSIS should be used to investigate these type of economic actions against Canadian companies. And the results should be published and malefactors punished if possible!

For example, who are the owners and managers of NTP? What is their relationship to other high-tech communications companies, the US government, or American agencies? What about the alleged impartial analysts who are perpetually disappointed in such-and-such economic numbers? Who plays the journalists and business writers to start campaigns against this company or that. You can make money when the stock goes up and when it goes down. You can orchestrate a campaign to drive the stock price down so you can steal the company later. And its patents, its technology and staff. Or just cannibalize it and run.

RIM's numbers this quarter were good. RIM's year over year numbers could be better but then again, the whole sector is down. RIM is moving from a growth company to a legacy company. Analysts know this but are joining the feeding frenzy initiated by the few. Who's analysing which business writers are leading the charge against key companies every now and then. The ones the CIA boasted about having on every major newspaper and media outlet. Some of them are part of the ongoing economic war that's devouring entire sectors and countries. There's nothing free about the markets at the macro scale. It's out-and-out war on every front.

Where's our investigative journalists and our intelligence service? Identify and root out these attackers. Or, let the nation be picked apart for the benefit of the few and the foreign. In the meantime, hands off RIM!

Nortel all over again! Economic Warfare now directed at RIM, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http:/twicb.blogspot.com

The Coming Radicalism by Evan Palmer

2011-06-12T11:36:00.003-04:00

The coming radicalism will issue from the approximately half-billion baby boomers globally but especially from those in the so-called advanced world - Western Europe, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The counter-culture will re-emerge and a new disengagement philosophy will take hold based on an eco self-realization approach and new and emerging technologies that will support a vast decentralization and "groupization" - the creation, destruction, and modification of groupings for specific or broad purposes - which will start to replace parlimentary democracy with direct democracy and the allegedly free markets with truly voluntary currency and economic and exchange systems.

Although police and intelligence agencies like to define radicalism as associated with violence, it is not necessarily so, and in the early phases, definitely not. In addition, the progression, if there is one, varies among peoples, subgroups and cultures. In most instances, there is no progression.

The coming radicalism in the "First World" countries will feature a sustained drive for getting "more for less", being content with less and the formation of technology-enabled groupings based on compatible goals and approaches.

One of the key points of conflict is in the differing tangents from the status quo to a radical state or violence. If the forces of the status quo progress more quickly to violence versus the counterculture forces, then avoidable unjustifiable state violence will occur. All violence will serve to radicalize the parties involved. For some groups, this is the objective. For others, avoiding this is the objective. Of course, objectives can change over time.

The coming radicalism will studiously avoid violent confrontation and seek revolutionary change via technology-enablers and through the conscious acquisition and control of the required assets like internet networks and delivery companies.

Violence against property, which does not in turn endanger people, should not trigger a violent response. But, often, especially when other agendas are in play, they do engender violent responses from the police or other state forces. When violence against property occurs that does not, or cannot, harm people or living creatures, the state response must be non-violent. If it is not, it points to other objectives and agendas.

The coming radicalism will see massive and successful campaigns against corporations that oppose or impede the new emerging boomer world. GMOs and Nuclear Power stand prominently in the sights of the coming radicalism. Sophisticated non-violent techniques will develop to re-shape the economy and the media and the means of production.

It is beginning and my prediction is that it will be in full-view by 2020.

The Coming Radicalism, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

War as Theft by Evan Palmer

2011-05-29T14:46:00.007-04:00

It is instructive and eye-opening to view war as theft. That is, to consider that theft is its main purpose. War being more than a few armed skirmishes but not necessarily on a massive scale. As Gwyn Dyer pointed out in his book "War", long-duration low-intensity attacks can tally up to substantial losses over long spans of time like 10-20+ years. In some cases, almost permanent war.

The acquisitive side of war manifests itself in things done to avoid it like the paying of tribute or taxes or the giving of gifts or hostages or slaves or goods. It can appear as the right of passage through territory or across a river or over a mountain pass. It might seem like less than what a war victory might deliver but it would be quicker and cheaper than war and given the potential destruction of goods and people in a serious war, it's likely that there would be more wealth and property to apportion as well.

So, if we see or pursue policies that impoverish our neighbours, we should also see that this is laying the foundation for future conflict. On the other hand, we can definitely see instances where one side will deliberately engineer a confrontation with the express purpose of appropriating wealth and property and people to itself. This is why the winner in a war should not take land and people from the losing side as it denies potential aggressors a primary motive for the war.

We can thus look at a conflict like the American War for Independence as a means for colonial leaders and ambitious followers to seize British land and houses and goods. The land in turn was seized from natives who themselves over time may have dislocated others. This highlights a risk in claiming a given stretch of lands - your claim has to be reasonable and enforceable. A small band of people can't claim a vast tract of land and expect to maintain that claim uncontested. A small band of people may not be able to even hold onto a small tract of land but that leads us into the arena of jurisprudence and our attempts throughout history to substitute means other than war is settling disputes. Especially, but least successfully, regarding territory and people.

Using theft as our barometer, the wars in Iraq and Libya are attempts to steal oil. The war in Afghanistan's purpose is to steal rare elements and a right-of-way. And there are also wars to neutalize those who might stand in the way of our thefts and planned thefts. "Thou shall not steal", "Thou shall not lie" and "Thou shall not kill" are straight-forward commandments but we can't seem to follow them for any length of time.

War as Theft, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http:/twicb.blogspot.com

Harper Lies Because He Must by Evan Palmer

2011-04-22T17:54:00.009-04:00

Harper lies because he must. If he told the truth, the unvarnished reform-national-citizens-coalition truth, he wouldn't get elected to anything. The websites below enumerate the many falsehoods uttered by Stephen Harper and his associated Harperites and useful idiots.

www.100reasons.ca

harperlies.blogspot.com

http://www.bloggingcanadians.ca/NewDemocratBlogs/LIES_THAT_STEPHEN_HARPER_TOLD_US-1/

www.harperlied.com

Does anyone care? Has it come down to fluff and puff, kissing-up to the powerful, and making examples and scapegoats of the unfortunate? Does it exhaust all our focus and intellect just to deal with miscreants? Is dealing with miscreants the sum total of our action plan? Tough on bad guys.

Stephen Harper - He lies because he must, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http:/twicb.blogspot.com

COALITION GOVERNMENT WOULD SAVE MONEY & BETTER REPRESENT CANADIANS by Evan Palmer

2011-04-03T15:23:00.002-04:00

Harper Government is lying again. In 2004, Stephen Harper clearly asked for a chance at a coalition government led by himself. The letter he and his coalition sent is shown below and is on the public record.

"As leaders of the opposition parties, we are well aware that, given the Liberal minority government, you could be asked by the Prime Minister to dissolve the 38th Parliament at any time should the House of Commons fail to support some part of the government’s program. We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all of your options before exercising your constitutional authority. Your attention to this matter is appreciated."

-From a letter to then-Governor General Adrienne Clarkson signed by all three opposition leaders: Gilles Duceppe, Jack Layton and Stephen Harper (September 9, 2004)

Everyone knows what the letter is asking for, why it was sent to the Governor General, why all three opposition parties signed it. During that period, Harper repeated this offer in interviews with the CBC and other outlets. It was acceptable for Harper to ask for a chance to form a coalition government but not for anyone else. Harper actually shutdown parliament when someone tried to do the exact same thing he tried in 2004. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a coalition government and in attacking it, Stephen Harper is not only being hypocritical but is attacking our democratic foundation as well.

In a parliamentary government, unless you have a majority, your government is a coalition. It's only the degree of formality and extent that's up for debate. A minority government is a coalition government. If we had had a solid formal coalition then we wouldn't have needed four elections in the last seven years. We could have saved at least five hundred million dollars (low end cost for two elections), Furthermore, we would have had better representation if two or three parties were actively involved in developing and implementing government policy.

The Liberal Party and NDP should not let Harper Government re-write history or undermine our democratic options. Coalitions are legitimate and it should be explored if Canadians return another minority government because Canadians would then have clearly stated that they do not trust any party with a majority.

COALITION GOVERNMENT WOULD SAVE MONEY & BETTER REPRESENT CANADIANS, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, twicb.blogspot.com

HARPER GOVERNMENT - Fascism Lite by Evan Palmer

2011-03-26T17:15:00.007-04:00

"Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy." - wikipedia

The relentless Harper-led assault on democratic values continues. It is both a drip-drip torture in things like election funding illegalities and a full-bore frontal attack with outright lying, forgery and illegal secrecy. Appropriately, the Harper government is a one-man show with its select stable of designated hitters and spitters and attack-dog yes-men. John Baird leaps to mind.

It is a government that while appearing puritanical seems to have a suppressed attraction for corruptibles either as senators like Patrick Brazeau, former chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples or as advisors like Mr-Fixit Bruce Carson, a former bankrupt and disbarred lawyer. Harper Government has accumulated enough mini-scandals and ethical affronts that one would assume that we were looking at the decaying malodorous carcass of a 15 or 20 year run in power and not the five years worth of minority that we actually have. One can only shudder at what would happen if Harper gets a majority.

Lamentable firsts for Harper Government - first government to prorogue parliament to avoid a vote of confidence; first government in any commonweath country to be found in contempt of parliament (with a second contempt citation in the wings).

Among the many lapses in competency, Harper was supposed to fix the RCMP but chose as its leader probably the worst possible person in William Elliot. But while Harper is content is appointing ill-suited candidates to important positions, he does not shy away from removing competent but independent leaders like the AEC's regulator head Linda Keen who was fired for upholding AEC's safety protocols. On the verge of radioactive catastrophe in Japan, Harper doesn't look very prudent or intelligent on that count.

Harper Government also attacks other independent agencies like StatsCan in its war on credible public information which would enable democracy to function better but, inexplicably, not registering long guns helps and advances society. It's not coincidental that the lowest voter turnouts in Canadian electoral history have occurred during these five lost Harper Government years. The attacks also range over our top-notch diplomats as Richard Colvin found out to his dismay, first being muzzled, and then maligned and denigrated by the Harperites.

Harper and his cohorts really don't seem to like democracy. For example, Harper launches constant attacks against "coalitions" which are a perfectly legitimate expression of an election. But Harper Government doesn't want the Canadian electorate to get a government that reflects their vote. If we get another minority government, it is a strong message that Canadians want a coalition government. Attacks at specific components of a democracy are also attacks on the entire edifice. Make no mistake, Harper does not like or trust democracy. He wants a majority because that the closest thing to a dictatorship you can currently get in Canada.

It is typical of this mindset to conflate the Government of Canada with the Conservative Party - also known as Harper Government. It follows that we would see inappropriate secrecy and partisan sniping at MPs asking legitimate questions.

On top of everything, Harper Government's economic management has not been that good - they signed on for a Software Lumber deal that sees significant amounts of Canadian dollars and jobs flow south or disappear; they made the largest procurement in Canadian history for F35 fighter jets without tender and, as a result, Canada is taking planes that even the US Marine Corp says are too expensive and not what their mission needs; they took Paul Martin surpluses and turned them into enormous deficits. Harper Government's Finance Minister's budget numbers were, and are, not believeable - he was predicting a surplus when every other major foreign government forecast a deficit and then he disingenuously claimed that the surplus had suddenly and uncontrollably veered into a string of deficits. It's called lying and it's all through Harper Government.

This is a call to Canadians to vote against Harper Government and work to defeat Tory candidates in all ridings. A free Canadian society depends on it!

HARPER GOVERNMENT - Fascism Lite, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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Support his art, ideas and worldview,

Order books by Evan Palmer

the novel "Oaklane Woods"

short stories "Tales Told to a Tree"

poems "40 Poem Fragments"

Order via Kindle link at right of screen

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North, South, East, West: What's in a Name? by Evan Palmer

2011-02-20T16:51:00.006-05:00

There are descriptors added to place names or country names that function like the tip of an iceberg in alerting individuals to a substantial submerged, typically negative, situation. These exist at the national level witrh such nations as North Korea and South Korea or the former West Timor and East Timor while others appear within a given country or region like Virginia and West Virginia or North and South Dakota within the United States. They is usually one evil twin in these twosomes.

We can argue that most instances of North/South East/West land segments – the names of jurisdictions that clearly represent an area (region, state, country); that is, in an explicit relationship with another area (region, state, country) - are frought with unresolved tensions and potential future discord. This would apply to areas where people live in both of the direction-named land areas versus purely geographic entities like the North and South Atlantic oceans. Yet even then it denotes a closer relationship than the two large continents might otherwise generate.

Secession, or other types of political splits, is a common source of North/South East/West jurisdictions. For example, West Virginia came about as a result of the US Civil War and the split of the Union state of West Virginia from the Confederate state of Virgina. At a national level, the nation of South Ossetia emerged recently (and is disputed) from Georgia with the support and assistance of North Ossetia, or actually Russia. Active, long-standing disputes often lurk behind the North/South East/West monikers. Presently, a new nation may emerge from Sudan which has been in a state of civil war for decades – its currently proposed name? South Sudan. Prognosis based on the proposed name alone – very negative.

Some decades ago, there was a North and South Rhodesia. North Rhodesia became Zambia while South Rhodesia became Zimbabwe after a long armed conflict. The country named South Africa does not stand in opposition, or as a reflection of, a country called North Africa but rather it contrasts to, and contends with, the entire African continent landmass – South Africa versus Africa.

Northern Ireland versus Ireland, Upper Yemen versus Yemen, East Germany versus West Germany (now just Germany), Inner Mongolia versus Outer Mongolia – all these national names create tension and expectation and relationship usually towards a bad end.

East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) versus West Pakistan (now Pakistan) is an example of where dropping the East/West designation might have helped end the connection and prevented the short but deadly civil war which drew in a third country (India) to end it.

Would Germany have re-integrated if the West and East Germany had different names. What if Austria was called South Germany and Switzerland North Germany? Would that not have created pressure to come together? (The National Socialists did annex them anyway on the basis of their shared German heritage) Might that have in turn drawn counter-pressure?

Names have a dynamic of their own whether it's a boy named Sue or a country with a name that implies it's part of, or associated with, another country.

Fortunately, if you get away from the North/South East/West type of names, there currently appears to be either little or no tension between countries with similar names like Niger and Nigeria or Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo although they are side-by-side and share long borders and have many potential things to disagree about. The thought here is is that it would be much better if their countries' names were not so similar.

If Britain had named East Pakistan Bangladesh right away or perhaps not split the countries at all. If North or South Ossetia had a different separate name? If there hadn't been an Upper Yemen and a South Yemen? Let's think long and hard about naming any country (or internal regions or states) as the North/South, East/West, Upper/Lower, Inner/Outer of something – name it something different and separate and you may have prevented a war.

North, South, East, West: What's in a Name?, Evan Palmer, http://twicb.blogspot.com

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Support his art, ideas and worldview,
Order books by Evan Palmer

the novel "Oaklane Woods"

short stories "Tales Told to a Tree"

poems "40 Poem Fragments"

Order via Kindle link at right of screen

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Copyright 2011 Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Harper's Tories battle against "Longism" by Evan Palmer

2010-10-11T11:39:00.004-04:00

It's often difficult to decipher the Tories, mainly because they have so many secrets to keep track of and explain away - they get mixed up on their storylines, on what's to be revealed or kept quiet, on the undulating mix of fact, fiction and ideology. One of their seeming themes lately are various puzzling fights against the numerous manifestations of what we can refer to as "Longism". (No, it has nothing to do with Huey Long, one of the distressingly many heroic martryed figures from America's past)

In the case of Harper's Tories, longism is any relatively minor, but potentially emotional, issue that involves the word "long". Thus, for now, the long gun registry and the census long form and any number of long-winded, inane defenses of this or that aspect of these issues. The Tories portraying themselves as defenders of freedom. Not real freedom like protest or expression at the G8 or G20 summits but a carefully constricted freedom to answer mostly inocuous questions whose confidentiality is protected by law or to not get registered specifically for long guns.

I expect to see Tories getting excited very soon about something to do with Long Term Health Care: we shouldn't force people into it, we shouldn't mandate it or support it with tax dollars. There is also fertile anti-longism ground in taking away any favourable tax treatments for long positions in stocks, commodities or currencies: most of the Tories' wealthy donors make money on short positions and market volatility. Thus, we would have the Tories continue with strong positions against the long gun registry and the long form census but also stake out equally principled stands against long term health care and long positions in the markets.

Lastly, we ask the Tories to tackle the disturbing athletic event known as the "long jump". Athletes should not be risking injury and humiliation trying to conform to the requirements of this contrived "sport". Quick short jumps are fine but not this hernia-inducing long jump.

Down with Longism! Up with the Tories fight against it!

Harper's Tories battle against "Longism", Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright 2010 Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Much Phony Ado over the Long Gun Registry by Evan Palmer

2010-09-26T16:35:00.007-04:00

You might have been thinking that the Harper government did have some good instincts or was pursuing a couple of not-bad policies, but then they went and showed their true Reform-Republican colours by making a big deal of the long gun registry.

Yes, the cost was eye-popping and unfathomable but less so than the much shorter duration G8/G20 fiasco. The Tories, formerly anxious to portray themselves as the ally of the police, aligned against them this time because they had a more important target to set up – that is, the Toronto elites and their malign supporters; and, their victims – the poor rural citizen being treated like criminals.

There was always an implication in the Tory stance that their rural victims weren't that good at readin' and writin' and therefore making them fill out a form was a malicious imposition. And, of course, the country folk spend so much time shooting and loading and cleaning and tuning their guns, they can barely buy their ammo let alone stand in line and get and pay for a license for the dang thing.

It's never been clear from the Tory blather, if the other licenses our society requires are also to be gotten rid of. Doctors and lawyers need licenses. You need a license for your car. Do the Tory rural supporters want to get rid of that too? If they're willing to get a license for their car, why the big kerffufle over a rifle – a thing that is designed to kill?

What about the licenses for boats and planes and trains? Why do the rural folk get their hunting and fishing licenses without a squabble but balk at registering the long gun they use for hunting?

If it's okay to require a license for marriage, for liquor, for business and selling real estate and import/export and gambling, why is it a problem or an infringement of some kind to ask to register rifles and other long guns? The simple answer is “it isn't” and the real question is why they weren't being registered a long time ago. And all the so-called "fixing", both actual and proposed, of the registry has made it a hodge-podge shadow of its intended self - fix it by making it uniform and efficient.

Oh yeah, come next election, don't forget that the Tories were willing to play politics with public safety and social cohesion.

Much Phony Ado over the Long Gun Registry, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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OAKLANE WOODS by Evan Palmer

2010-08-15T18:08:00.010-04:00

Evan Palmer talks about his new novel:

“ 'Oaklane Woods' is a novel of ideas, love and spirits that emerged from a powerful image of a young girl, alone, sitting on an immense dark rock deep in a mysterious urban park. In appearance, she was not unlike the Little Mermaid of Copenhagen harbour but transported to a North American setting - the fictional Ontario city of Middleton. Another vital difference, and this impelled me to write the story, my imagined little girl was a spirit – specifically, the sad, confused and angry spirit of an abortion.”

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Comments from reviewers of (first three chapters of) “Oaklane Woods”

“Five brilliant stars. Truly excellent storytelling. I take my Tam o' Shanter off to you. Bravo!”

“I love your premise SO much. Kudos for taking on such a controversial subject. Your writing drew me in right from the start. You paint fantastic images with words..”

“..Your story really does intrigue me. This is very well written, it flows along and has a poetic feel to it. Your descriptions are particularly good I feel, they made me feel as if I was there..”

“You have a wonderful gift in playing with words and drawing the use of the English language in the most lyrical way – your command in vocabulary is obvious and your attention to detail is stupendous..”

“An eloquent, thought provoking story with fascinating characters. Wonderful imagery. Sparkling dialogue. Intense, evocative narrative.”

“Your story struck me like a bolt of lightning. Brilliant, and lost for the right words to do justice to your masterpiece..”

“This is excellent writing, lyrical, descriptive and the sort I like to read best. You've taken a subject which normally separates people along political lines and made it human again. It's what the best writing does.”

“This is beautifully written with lovely passive, almost poetic, prose..”

“What a lovely story! This is gorgeous writing and a great idea. Very bittersweet..”

“You have a beautiful, easy going way about your writing. Your descriptions are vivid and capture the mind of the reader. Very nice story.”

“Very strange... it's like reading poetry and watching an Almodovar movie. It definitely has a strong European flavour to it even though it doesn't set foot there. Maybe it's the languid dreamlike pace..”

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Click link below to buy the Amazon Kindle book “Oaklane Woods” by Evan Palmer.

http://www.amazon.com/Oaklane-Woods-ebook/dp/B003VIWP06/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC&s=digital-text&qid=1280062803&sr=8-1

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Copyright 2010 Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Skyscraper Farms by Evan Palmer

2010-08-07T15:43:00.008-04:00

The wave of the future is almost certainly going to be vertical farms. To make them work, we'll need soil for non-hydroponic crops, water, sunlight, and energy. It's not too far-fetched to envision skyscraper farms each producing enough food for tens of thousands of people. Some proposals are for every multi-story building to grow at least enough food for their own inhabitants. With in-building food production can proceed on a year-round basis, we should see significant increases in the availability, range and supply of food.

The only caveat in the overal scheme of food production is the sourcing of meat. There are new intensive herding techniques which will increase meat production. The use of marginal lands for pastures and ranching can help. There is even talk of producing a meat-like food in a factory setting in the form of growing proteins and the like and research is underway now in that area.

The websites “weburbanist” and “vertical farms” have information on this exciting area.

http://weburbanist.com/2008/03/30/5-urban-design-proposals-for-3d-city-farms-sustainable-ecological-and-agricultural-skyscrapers/

http://www.verticalfarm.com/index.html

Depending on world-wide demand, the price for food and farmland should drop. With food security, human populations should level off. Confrontations to do with food scarcity should diminish. It only seems to have an upside.

Skyscraper Farsm, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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How to Tell if He'll Stay by Evan Palmer

2010-08-07T11:55:00.013-04:00

Here's another article providing an insider's (man's) view of how to tell if he'll stay.

The key observation is that while you (the woman) may figure a lot in the initial stage as in “he's into you”, you don't play that big a role in whether he'll stay. That depends on him – on his character, his upbringing and world view. Incessantly chattering and whining doesn't help things but it's not the real reason for him leaving.

A man who sticks with you is a man who sticks to most things. He demonstrates loyalty to people and things who merit them and he will stay loyal to them through the tough stretches which is how a relationship lasts.

Men who appreciate “old” things will stick with you. Old buildings, old furniture, old cars and trucks and old lovers (you).

You want a Man who will appreciate the things that are done for him and his, and the things that are given to him especially priceless things like children and support and love and admiration. If you give him that, a thankful man will never leave.

A man who loves beauty is more likely to stay. You may think he's more likely to stray but beauty is magnified through knowledge and sharing, so the more he knows you, the more beautiful you become.

A man who has a sense of humour is more likely to stay because you've got to laugh somehow (some black humour is okay) at some things or you won't get through them.

A man who is persistent is more likely to stay because long relationships require persistence. He should like mysteries and puzzles and seeing how it turns out.

A man with a strong philosophy, spirituality or religion will stay with you because you're not everything to him and he has a positive context into which you and he fit.

A man who is an achiever will stay with you because he views a successful marriage or relationship as an achievement.

Finally, you want to find a man who genuinely likes women even though he may complain about them or make jokes at their expense.

Good luck!

How to Tell if He'll Stay, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2010 Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Taking Only What is Given by Evan Palmer

2010-08-07T11:09:00.009-04:00

There is an approach to life where one seeks to stay only on a path outlined by Nature (or God); where one eats the food that offers itself, where one lives in abodes and ways that are most natural; where things we do, including our societies, are modeled on what we see around us and our purest feelings.

There is always a question as to how much of our abilities we should use to get what (we think) we need. The appropriate extent of our co-creation.

However, what if it is as simple as what we are given is what we need. And, further, that when we strive and acquire beyond that, it not only is not needed but is not good for us; or nature and the world, as it's not healthy or sustainable.

What does it mean to take only what is given?

It would certainly mean that force is not to be used - especially against living things. If we need wood, we would take fallen branches and trees, partially burnt trees, submerged wood, wood knocked down by natural forces or pests. Stone and sand we could take as long as it didn't damage the environment or destroy animals' homes.

We would take our food as it is given to us - on a branch, on a bush or a vine, in the ground. We would eat meat that comes by way of natural death or kills by other animals and so, it would be infrequent and usually smaller portions.

Taking only what is "given" means not taking any life. The animals never voluntarily give us their lives. The trees don't agree on being cut down. They do, however, die. Animals can, in a sense, "give" us their eggs and milk in exchange for their care and protection. Or, in the same way, bees can "give" us their honey.

The "taking" should also match the "giving" in its characteristics - it would be universal as in the rain falls on all, the resulting water is for all; it would be as natural as possible - the food grows without tending, the harvest takes only what can be used and that does not negatively impact the food source and its environment. We should be grateful for what we have rather than anxious about what we think we're missing.

Taking what is given also means knowing the full extent of our gifts and abilities and our place in the universe - the knowledge of which has the greatest impact on what we do.

Taking Only What Is Given, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2010 Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

ASK by Evan Palmer

2010-05-23T13:22:00.009-04:00

ASK

It's portrayed in film and books often enough and we all know of at least one person who's lived it. That is, where the man loves the woman who also loves him (quietly) but he never gets around to asking her to marry him and someone else does and she says “yes”. And when he (the first man) eventually talks to her, usually years later, about why she married so-and-so she will invariably say because he asked (and you didn't).

Nowadays, a woman can also ask more easily but may not for the same reasons. Uncertainty, fear of rejection, fear of commitment, etc. These things can be counter-acted by other fears – fear of loss, fear of loneliness, or by positive feelings like love. Yet love, it must be admitted, is always accompanied by fear. The Self always entwined with the Other.

Asking can be a complicated affair. It is flattering to be asked. This drives many interactions – for example, donors to a cause who often feel an obligation anyway. It reflects a commitment by the asker to the person being asked. It creates a situation where it can often be difficult for the person being asked to say “no”. But it does emphasize the importance of asking. The whole dynamic is set in motion by sincere asking.

This applies to otherworldly considerations as well – if you believe in other beings like angels or guardian spirits or beneficent entities. They may be there but you have to ask for their help.

If asking someone something is part of what you want then you should do it as soon as possible with honesty and good will. We must never look back and feel that it would have all been different if we had only asked.

Ask, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, hhtp://twicb.blogspot.com
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Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Good Investigation, Bad Investigation - Colonel Russell Williams by Evan Palmer

2010-02-21T13:31:00.008-05:00

The investigators of the murder of Jessica Lloyd of Belleville, Ontario were direct & effective. They noticed tire tracks and noted some unusual characteristics about them. They took impressions. That could have been where it stayed - evidence but not connected or meaningful. They then took the brilliant step of erecting road blocks on the main nearby road on the same night the following week. They were assuming that the perpetrator was a local and that he was a creature of habit who would probably take the same road on the same day. They were right. A sharp-eyed officer noticed the tires on Col. Williams vehicle and that led to his arrest in the next few days.

Unfortunately, the investigators who did background checks into Colonel Williams were not nearly as thorough or effective in his case. The Globe and Mail turned up facts about Col. Williams which should have given the investigators and human resources officers in the Canadian military cause for concern.

For example, how common is it for a person to change their name in their late teens or early twenties?

The Globe article mentioned talking to Col. William's roommate at Upper Canada College (UCC). He's quoted as saying that Williams had no social skills, no apparent girlfriends or interest in girls or social life. Does that sound normal? Did the military investigators talk to this roommate?

By the time Williams was twenty, his mother was twice divorced. This is never a good thing for kids but for some divorce can be deeply disturbing. Again, the Globe quotes William's brother as saying the second divorce of his mother from Jerry Sovka created a huge lasting rift between Russell and his mother and brother. Yet, when he left UCC, Russell changed his name from Sovka back to Williams?

Frank Abagnale Jr., upon whom the movie "Catch Me If You Can" is based, stated that he started his life of crime (massive bank and occupational fraud) as a result of the divorce of his parents. The background check into Williams should have been looking for the negative consequences of these divorces as they can be severe.

The Toronto Star reported that Williams went to U of T's (University of Toronto) Scarborough campus, taking the same program and classes as notorious killer Paul Bernado and even being his friend. Either the military investigators didn't uncover this or found it unremarkable.

It was reported that Williams asked a neighbor about how to drop a puck for a face-off. This is someone who physically active, who's supposed to be Canadian, and yet hasn't seen a referee drop a puck enough to know how to do it himself. It indicates someone who although living in Canada for most of his life is unconnected enough to not know basic facts about our national winter sport.

On top of everything, apparently the military does not perform basic psychological evaluations such as standard tests for psychopaths or sociopaths.

Of course, keeping him out of the officer corps may not have prevented anything but it would definitely reduced his ability to operate and his cover and that may have saved a life. There's also the matter of the reputation of our Armed Forces.

Good Investigation, Bad Investigation - Colonel Russell Williams, The Way It Can Be, Evan Palmer, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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Copyright 2010
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Time to Unite the Left and Center in Canadian Politics by Evan Palmer

2009-08-15T11:27:00.007-04:00

The NDP can change their name a hundred times and it won't mean any more than a few points in the polls either way. Even if they dramatically re-align their policies to forge a new Labour type of transformation a la the UK's BLIAR, it won't work as they've never had the critical mass. If they think they can accomplish the same feat nation-wide that the Nova Scotia NDP achieved, they are dreaming.

In the old days before the Bloc and the Alliance, which was no more than a regional Western party, there was no hope of the PCs or the Alliance coming even close to power. The Liberals and NDP if they have leadership who can actually see the situation as it is, and want power to effect change, know that they must either destroy each other (and the Greens) or merge. The alternative is an endless series of minority governments.

Then they can assume power and turn their attention to withering Bloc support to the point where it re-submerges with the PQ, disappearing at the federal level, and leaving one separatist entity to deal with.

Do the Liberals have the gumption and grits to vigorously pursue a merger with the NDP? Not a word has passed Ignatief's lips. Layton keeps babbling about becoming PM. And the Green, one can only think of a conspiracy to split the left and center vote, as it can't even win a seat but can siphon off enough votes to make the NDP and Liberal lose ridings.

Can Layton shake off his ideological fetters long enough to agree on a merger with the Liberals? Like the Alliance and Progressive Conservative, they should maintain the name of the stronger entity. The unions have to accept a lesser, more informal, role as is right in a democratic society. Canadians rebel at the thought of a small group lording it over the rest be it union bosses or corporate CEOs.

Do the Liberals and the NDP want to effect change for the better? Then they need to be given power by the people. To get that power, they must merge and appeal to more people and lessen the wasted votes that are getting split. A merger is the logical next step. Otherwise, the Liberals and NDP are wasting Canadians time and money.

Time to Unite the Left and Center in Canadian Politics, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

The Mysterious Moon is Vital to Earth (2) by Evan Palmer

2009-08-02T18:25:00.004-04:00

The realization of the Moon's enormous effect on Earth, to the point where it can rightly be considered a two-body system, is followed by amazement at the web of enigma that surrounds its origins and makeup.

The space missions that went to the Moon brought back rocks and dust to analyse. In addition, unmanned landings analysed rocks and dust in situ. The Moon rocks were more than a billion years older than Earth rocks. The Moon dust which should have come from the rocks and thus been younger were, in fact, a billion years older than the Moon rocks.

These findings discredited the theory that the Moon came from the Earth - say, ripped out through an impact. It also made the theory where the Moon and the Earth formed from the same cosmic dust less likely. This left the theory that the Moon was captured by the Earth. However, this runs into difficulties given the large relative size of the Moon, about 1/4 the diameter of the Earth, and its uniquely circular orbit around the Earth. Apparently, it would have been quite difficult for the Earth to have captured the Moon in that way. Coincidently, the Moon is almost exactly the right size and distance from the Earth to allow for eclipses.

The most intriguing assertions regarding the moon deal with its origins and the myths of a time when there was no moon. Ancient Greeks state that the inhabitants of Arcadia recall a time when there was no moon as do the natives of the Bogota highlands. Is it possible that the moon was captured relatively recently?

The Mysterious Moon is Vital to Earth (2), Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

A Little Bias Goes a Long Way by Evan Palmer

2009-08-02T16:52:00.004-04:00

We've all seen charts and articles on the miracle of compound interest. That's where a small amount of interest on your principal accumulates over time into a fair bit of cash.

Well, that same principle works in a host of social situations both in favour of a given group or against them. That is not suprising and most people would state that they already know this, but what is surprising is how small that bias can be and still effect significant change over time.

In the book "Gender, Nature and Nurture" by Richard A. Lippa, a study is examined where a computer simulation was defined and run to measure the effect of a small bias (0.2) in favour of men over a 20 year period. From 50-50 at all job levels at the start of the simulation, after 20 years we see 53% of the lowest level workers are female and only 35% of the highest level workers. A slightly larger bias (0.45) yields 58% of the lowest level workers and 29% of the highest level workers being women.

We can quibble about the simulation parameters and modeling but if anything, a more accurate version would likely make the discrepancies larger.

In real-life, this translates into skewed decisions, favouritism and disadvantage. Advantaged groups, however defined, can incrementally assume control of functions within an organization, society and country. On the other hand, disadvantage can be institutionalized at a level where it's automatic and unnoticed. However, at a certain point, cries of superiority or oppression will be heard. How often, we see ourselves making claims, and asserting rights and privileges based on those claims, when in fact, what we're claiming is not rooted in our worthiness but a small monotonous systemic bias. As for the disadvantaged, hard work and talent seem to be the only credible ticket for the masses but a break-through success and model (like Obama) would help to open things up in a more dramatic fashion.

A Little Bias Goes a Long Way, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Is it Time to Breakup the RCMP? by Evan Palmer

2009-06-21T18:33:00.005-04:00

Has the time arrived when part of the solution to the problems at the RCMP is to breakup the monolith into more manageable pieces? Is the RCMP in its present form merely going to continue its siege mentality and its bouts of incompetence and dishonesty? Is the RCMP viewed by a sizeable segment of the population as a threat as much as a protection?

We have to first disabuse ourselves of the ludicrous idea that failure should be rewarded with increased powers and funding. Where we allow ourselves to be browbeaten into accepting the argument that a given failure is the result of insufficient power and authority. In the case of the RCMP and all such similar cases, sufficient authority and funding and resources were available.

Often, in fact, the best solution to continuing deep-rooted cultural problems is to reduce an organization, to break it up into smaller logical components and allow them to become finely tuned to their individual mission and excel at it.

If that approach were taken with the RCMP, the CSIS piece has already been done for many of the reasons mentioned above. CSIS still has problems but most would agree, it is better than before with a good upward outlook. Whereas, the RCMP is worse off with a downward trend.

The RCMP can be split up as follows:
(1) Its original mission as frontier police; it would police the NorthWest Territories, Nunavut & the Yukon.
(2) Canadian Border Police - land, water & air.
(3) Political & Diplomatic Protection
(4) National Police Intelligence Services
(5) Provincial Police in serviced Provinces (e.g. BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba)

The new smaller organizations can better focus on their missions, develop and maintain expertise, and work towards excellence and service. The current dysfunctional culture can improve and right itself in these new units and missions.

Is it time?

Yes.

Is it Time to Breakup the RCMP?, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Isotopes, Isotopes, Avro Arrow Redux - Harper's Conservatives Failure of Vision by Evan Palmer

2009-06-21T08:47:00.005-04:00

Given a choice, Harper will usually side with the mediocre and limiting. Canada has over 40 years of expertise in nuclear technology and medical isotopes, in particular, and Harper is content to throw it away.

Like Diefenbaker did with the Avro Arrow program, Harper will toss out the investment & the expertise and watch highly skilled Canadians leave Canada for other climes, mainly the USA. Like Diefenbaker, Harper cites cost and yet he's willing to spend many times those amounts on an illegal war in Afghanistan or paying into carmakers' pilfered pension funds.

Other jurisdictions are not so blind or pound-foolish. Australia is ramping up its ability to generate medical isotopes. Saskatchewan's premier has declared that Saskatchewan will have this ability within 3 years.

This is a serious peaceful use of nuclear technology for which demand will only increase. Of course, Harper sees that as a reason to exit the field.

It's a point to ponder as to how much of Harper can Canada take before it devolves into oblivion.

Isotopes, Isotopes, Avro Arrow Redux - Harper's Conservatives Failure of Vision, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

What Happened to the RCMP? by Evan Palmer

2009-06-20T10:27:00.005-04:00

We have always had problems with policing in democratic societies. Mainly because policing is a process that strips democratic rights from people and people don't like that. In fact, they strongly react to it.

Part of the malaise is perception. We didn't know about a lot of police corruption or brutality until fairly recently. (Other people did but kept their mouths shut) We wrongly thought it was a problem in other countries but not ours.

So-called conservatives heap blame on the media because if it wasn't reported the way it is then it wouldn't be a problem; and, by the way, criminals deserve less protection and respect. They will say that anyone the police suspect is probably a criminal and should be treated roughly.

Police services have generally made themselves more insular as they ensconce themselves in quasi-unions and nurture a siege mentality. Outreach and community store fronts are an attempt to deal with this issue but they often seem to wither away under relatively small pressures. The first loyalty of many police officers is to their fellow officers not society at large or the people that they claim to "serve and protect".

In addition, the corrupting effect of power cannot be discounted. Police can use force. They have guns, tasers, clubs, sprays, handcuffs and fists, elbows and boots. They're the biggest gang in town. Some officers get accustomed to using force first and discussion second.

Today, would we ever see the spectacle of two North West Mounted Police (NWMP) officers entering a Sioux camp filled with thousands of warriors? It has been reported that the NWMP had great respect for the Aboriginal tribes (deriving in no small part from the influence of the Metis) which was reciprocated. Nowadays, there is typically an air of grievance and menace emanating from the police.

If there had been no video of the taser assault on Robert Dziekanski, the RCMP would have lied it away as they continued to do even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Their conduct & testimony was embarrassing. It's hard to pinpoint when the unraveling of the RCMP became clear to even their staunchest supporters but the plot to burn down a barn in Quebec is as good a point in time as any. Then there was a plan to incriminate the FLQ, a violent Quebec-based separatist group. Familiar false flag propositions. This resulted in the creation of a new national intelligence service called CSIS. And now, even with an intimidating obstructionist complaint process, there have been several serious cases in the last few years.

For more on this, see wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandals_surrounding_the_RCMP RCMP scandals: Early controversies, killing of Inuit sled dogs, Theft of dynamite, break-ins, Barn-burning scandal, Theft of PQ members list, Excessive use of force at the 1997 APEC Summit, Killing of Darren Varley, Torture Scandal: The stories of Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Maher Arar, Pension fund scandal, Const. Justin Harris and the Prince George RCMP, Ian Bush Incident, Robert Dziekański Taser incident, Royal Inland Hospital Taser Incident, Allegation of political bias against Insite, Impaired driving causing death, Non-consensual cranial implants - Wiretapping the human brain.

Toronto Police Services have recently had a trial restarted that is poised to be one of the biggest police corruption exposes ever. Stonewalling and foot-dragging were the order of the day previously. Is it any wonder that respect for and cooperation with the police is shrivelling?

The OPP. The FBI. Scotland Yard. Etc. Etc. Other forces, other issues.

What is to be done? Well, one thing is certain, there's a problem and it won't go away by itself. There has to be more community involvement in policing and with the police. It has to be adequately and reliably funded and supported. There has to be better training and more emphasis on non-violent approaches and skills; and when force is required, on quick and effective physical techniques and tools that mark a return to hands-on policing. There also has to be a way for the voice of the ordinary officer to be heard in the community outside of a round of bargaining. There has to be strong fair civilian oversight over all key police functions. Less political correctness on all sides would be helpful.

Perhaps the most important requirement is being good at your job; that is, overwhelming competence including honesty, integrity, professionalism, demeanour, and comportment. This alone would solve almost all the problems and issues. Reasonable leeway and autonomy is given to this type of person by all concerned. This speeds things up; justice is still done but without undue delays and cost. And, it wouldn't hurt if we could find a modern day Sam Steele?

What Happened to the RCMP?, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogpost.com
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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Ibbitson & the Wild-Eyed by Evan Palmer

2009-04-23T19:47:00.002-04:00

The sad decline of John Ibbitson continues unabated as his stay in the United States seems to have dulled his sense of right and wrong while sharpening his desire to poke virtual sticks into the eyes of his perceived enemies.

In his April 20, 2009 article titled "Clinton, Bush booked for joint Toronto appearance", he betrays any sense of impartiality or clear-headedness when he states ".. and the wild-eyed are still trying to get Mr. Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their handling of the war on terror."

So that there is no doubt, "wild-eyed" is as good as saying "crazy" or "nuts". Yet, there are very many who must belong to Ibbitson's cadre of the deranged. For starters, the FBI, a former high profile Washington chief of staff, and a well-respected Law professor.

There was such an abundance of evidence of criminality that the FBI opened a war crimes file against Bush & Cheney after witnessing the goings-on at Guantánamo Bay.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005 asserted that there were grounds for prosecution.

And Law Professor Jonathan Turley stated "It's the indictment of all of us if we walk away from a clear war crime."

Serious mock trials were held in several places.

One was held at “Camp Democracy,” on Washington's National Mall. On Sept. 13, 2006, Ann Wright, an ex-U.S. diplomat, read the “mock” verdicts. She was also one of the five jurists who heard the evidence compiled by the Bush Crimes Commission.“Guilty” verdicts were returned. As they were in a large mock trial run in Europe.

Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who sought to prosecute Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, has also called for US President George W. Bush and his confederates to be tried for war crimes over Iraq.

Bush & Company may also get tried for other crimes like illegal wire-tapping in the US itself and illegal killings (i.e. assassinations) at home and abroad.

While we're at it, maybe all the wild-eyed people can petition for Ibbitson not to return to Canada. That's something George would do.

Ibbitson & the Wild-Eyed, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

ARA (2) - Guiding Principles

2009-04-12T11:39:00.004-04:00

ARA is the refuge, the new utopia. It may still be in the design phase. It may be on the water or under the water or under the earth or in the middle of a desert or arctic tundra. There may be more than one refuge - this one is called ARA.

In ARA, people avoid generalizations - especially about other people. They still study culture and sociology but they do not allow themselves to slip into easy prejudgments about any single person. Every person and thing is unique.

There are no broad rules or religions in ARA. There are principles and guidelines. Action will be taken against persons who are harming or injuring other people or property but it will be defensive only and measured and fair and just.

ARA embraces harmony and beneficial action. It encourages living with an open heart and generosity. ARA believes and follows Hippocrates' first directive - "Do no harm." And it applies to everything. (This also covers financial transactions)

ARA tries to balance its society and actions between a maximizing of good and potential for the most people while maximizing personal freedom. There is no collective in ARA. There are groups and communities but they are voluntary and flexible. There is no forced membership.

In ARA, defense is one of the foundations of its foreign relations. It maintains no strictly offensive weapons or systems. It specializes in non-lethal defense which would include every kind of non-military means and ways. It does allow for defensive systems or weapons that will persist or pollute.

ARA does not allow for the death penalty but it does allow for life imprisonment and exile.

You may think or say that ARA is an impossibility. That maximizing freedom inevitably leads to imbalance and every kind of strife. It could but not in ARA. It is a place where the only Rule is that there are no Rules. Every thing is faced as if for the first time. It would need adjudicators. It would need a council of the wise. It would need methodologies and techniques. But it is possible.

It may even exist now.. somewhere.

ARA (2) - Guiding Principles, The Way It Can Be, Evan Palmer, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Anatomy of a Bubble by Evan Palmer

2009-03-20T16:16:00.003-04:00

Since no-one seems to know the mechanics of a bubble to the extent that it can be prevented or even agrees that bubbles exist and should be prevented, this article is not trespassing into an experts-only credentialed speech zone (another of the myriad ways to shut people up).

The initial insight in naming this type of phenomenon a "bubble" shows that it's regarded as a temporary unsustainable thing, something that's attractive but under pressure. No-one expects it to last, only long enough to make money.

Thus, it is clear that there is a psychological element to it - untempered optimism and greed. It is future-oriented and faith-based - my tomorrow is ensured, yours not so much. It discourages critical thought. It censors and self-censors. Nay-sayers come under hostile feedback attacks - who is willing to stand in front of the steam-roller?

Another essential ingredient is a lack of effective oversight and control. People will plead ignorance or benign neglect. Innovation will obfuscate the ritualistically diligent - those who don't really want to dig and pursue and explain, only to appear so in a court at a later date. For innovation, read racket, gimmick. Most of it a dressed-up Con 101.

Bubbles also need fuel and their fuel is personal riches. Fee-based transactions, outrageous compensation formulas, profits rule and overrule. Regimes where churn itself is the engine, the trade is the asset.

They also require capital. But not normal capital flows, they need excess capital to survive. It is their oxygen. As always, excess capital leads to over-investment and asset inflation. Typically, a reservoir of value feeds the early stages of the bubble. This generates the early winners and, as every casino knows, you need them to rope in the hordes of suckers to follow.

Another aspect of bubbles is the creation of unreal capital which is usually part of the innovation. These are sold as "instruments" or "packages" or other similarly-named products. But if you examine them carefully they are not tied to anything directly.

Like other rackets, bubbles always have a time-pressure element to them and only pay out to the few. They have much in common with a shell game - the movement, the lack of knowledge, the misdirection. But this is malevolent game which uses leglisation and policy and enjoins others in the mesh. It deliberately entwines itself across sectors and countries and currencies - partly to hid its dealings, partly to spread the culpability and increase the gain. Getting 100 people to pay for the same thing is more profitable than having only 1 person paying for it.

We can nip these destructive criminal enterprises in the bud. There are telltale marks. The postulate is that every bubble has a precursor, close to it in time and technique, displaced in location and industry. The precursor is smaller but it provides evidence of the susceptibility of the environment to this phenomenon. Also, look for people making a lot of money - that's the easiest method. We can tax certain types of speculative transactions. We can strictly control or outlaw certain classes of financial instruments or transactions. How was an entire shadow banking system allowed to exist? We must pay attention to the laws & policies being enacted from the perspective of beating the system. We should always be within one remove of an asset, ideally a tangible asset.

Bubbles are destructive and to be prevented. We know how to do it. Their existence proves massive corruption in the system. So we have two problems here.

Anatomy of a Bubble, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Seeing Trees by Evan Palmer

2009-02-16T17:04:00.010-05:00

In this article, the trees are virtues and the forest is the whole from which they emerge.

Generally, a virtue is good, and a vice, which is opposed to a virtue, is bad. We, typically, don't see them existing on their own without relationships or connections or contexts. For example, seeing courage and loyalty as ideal independent virtues similar to Plato's ideal solids.

Because virtues are personal attributes, the sire of any virtue is the sense of self. A person, or personhood, manifests a virtue.

Sense of self, in turn, needs memory. The traditional memory but also tendencies, instinct & other innateness, each with their own memories possibly connected to the main traditional memory or other memories, possibly isolated. All enmeshed in a reality, an enormous web of relationships and laws transfixed by time and cravings.

This idea of memory is anchored in an uncharted ocean of speculation and ambiguous experimental results. There are persons with almost no physical brains yet they are smart and have an ability to remember indistinguishable from others with whole brains. One theory being that memories are not actually resident in our brain but rather are deciphered by our brain. It's not known exactly how memories are encoded or even if they're encoded. We typically think of them as constructed out of bits of concepts & images & words & sensations which is somehow captured in some kind of chemical & electrical soup but it's still mostly a mystery. If there is no self or no memory, there are no virtues - virtues being dependent emergent qualities.

It is something we deduce, conjured out of reflections, in actions & words & in our life-facing stance. But within the virtues themselves, at times, we wonder if there an order of precedence to them or if it matters? In living, it may not matter, but in trying to live better, it does. Say, in trying to nurture a virtue that, in fact, depends on other virtues.

Do our primal virtues simply proceed from our urge for self-preservation? Which are the finer virtues - the original primal ones or the ones farthest away on the tree of differentiation? The ones that issue forth from two or more virtues?

Many virtues like courage are defined in terms of a threat or a vice, in courage's case, fear. It's worth elaborating on the triggering threat. Fear, for example, springs from a threat to our sense of self and memory, our being. A vice like greed (or gluttony) engenders a fear of scarcity which drives a need for acquisition and a fear of loss. Again, this is a threat to being, where an aggrandized sense of self exists to which even a surfeit seems inadequate.

What does fear engender? More Fear, panic, hatred, anger. Fear can also generate Obedience. We can see more than one cause for a given virtue or state. While Fear can generate Obedience, Loyalty can also produce it. It is clear that obedience caused by loyalty would be of a different timbre and durability than that caused by fear.

So some states, like fear (causing more fear), can self-sustain themselves but like atomic fission, these states would need a critical mass. Direct threats to the self generate fear; normal fear generates the urge to flight or fight but a greater fear, will generate more fear and at a certain level will this newly augmented fear incapacitate.

The level at which incapacitation occurs will vary according to the person. Thus, virtue gets tied to a person's capacity - here, for endurance or perseverance which in turn are considered virtues - the ability to endure or persevere. And, where does that power come from? The power to endure? The power to persevere? Or, at the primal level, the power to live or to love.

It is again a question of the whole and the part where the part is a fiction created by partitioning. Yet, we see obedience or courage or loyalty. We clearly see the parts but not the whole from which it issues.

Seeing Tress, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

How to Hide Anything by Evan Palmer

2009-02-08T18:00:00.005-05:00

Hiding, covering, and obscuring comes easily to us. We do it constantly, consciously & unconsciously, for greater and lesser ends. It becomes a cause for serious concern when it gets elevated in its scope and takes on the mantle of the state. Then it jumps itself up and assumes dangerous forms like militarism and propaganda. What does militarism hide? Theft. What does propaganda hide? Truth.

But it's more than just a person hiding some thing. It's also about choice - choosing to perform actions in a way and at a time and involving things that will not attract notice. One can more easily hide when involving one self with persons or things that have no voice or when attacks are made on someone or something that has no voice or has been muted. And we in turn mute own voices. How can it be wrong if no-one objects? Paradoxically, the worst offenses engender a debilitating silence that envelopes and chokes those who come into contact with it.

It also involves a choice when interacting with persons or things that have no power or much less power than you. They can be overridden in a twinkling. We hide ourselves and our actions when we dominate or attack something that has no power. We trump their free will and dignity and if we do it fast enough no-one will know.

We can hide our actions and their consequences when we involve ourselves with people & processes that are not even visible to most people. They are technically, philosophically or intellectually wrapped in a way that most persons cannot decipher. If these things are not explained they remain hidden. This allows for impunity when people support or attack someone or something that has no visibility.

Hide it by suppressing knowledge of it - suppress witnesses, suppress reporting, suppress recording of it. You can't oppose that of which you have no knowledge. You can suppress yourself as well. It can become a reflexive society-wide action. Self-censor. Self-suppress.

Demean & demonize what you want to hide. Its real nature is covered by the hate & dirt you heap on it. You can't see it because it has been coated with venom. We don't want to know. Is that Adam's real sin? Was it knowledge or a refusal to know, a refusal to accept the truth. We only embrace self-tailored partial truths.

Hide it among other things, magnify them, minimize what is to hidden. Misdirect our attention. We can't see it for we have deliberately crowded a hundred other unimportant things around it. We would rather spend time and energy placing these distractions than looking deeply at the original thing we had.

Delay, delay delay. Spread it out over so much time that it becomes blurred and harmless, forgettable and best left alone. How to rage when all the players, both oppressors and oppressed, are dead? If it was reported and absolutely confirmed that a terrible conspiracy came to fruition some 40 years ago, what would come of it? Some huffing and puffing and then an embarrassed silence. Maybe increased vigilance today for something similar. But for how long? Truth (of this world) delayed is truth denied.

Express & publicize doubt about the information, the messengers and its importance. Impugn their reputations, threaten them, if necessary harm them, even kill them. Delay will make this less necessary. Selective removal is preferred over anything crass and obvious. We need things that can be denied and explained away. That's a here & there versus an everywhere. If it's an everywhere then we're at war and then, well, war is war.

And of course, lies, lies, and more lies and bribes and threats. This is the old stand-by. Deny, lie, delay. How obvious and yet vastly effective.

Do it more quietly. What noise? Make it look like something else. You say crime, I say accident.

We are experts at hiding things from each other and from ourselves. How else can we explain all the death and cruelty and poverty we don't see or talk about? The reasons don't matter. They are part of the hiding process. We cover something with reasons and then stand aside, or worse, we can be the ones who kill or steal.

Millions die every year as a result of things we do and don't do and we've hidden them away. We've buried them quietly under a cover of darkness and platitudes.

How to Hide Anything, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Stephen Harper Outsmarts His-self - Lies & Anger from a Would-be Autocrat by Evan Palmer

2008-12-07T21:43:00.004-05:00

Stephen is angry. He didn't get his way. Worse, he made get sidelined. Now he's really mad. Now he may even subvert parliament to get his way.

It's a peek-a-boo routine worthy of old-school burlesque - first the anger, then the lies. Sometimes seamlessly interwoven but always both there. As a former professor of economics, Harper would be expected to know more about what's needed to deal with a full-blown international financial crisis than merely attacking various "enemies" with a parochial, head-in-the-sand economic statement.

But then again, Harper is a also a former president of the Ayn-Rand-ist National Citizens Coalition (guess he didn't have a problem with coalitions then) who are against a lot of things including our national health-care system. Presumably, Harper was also against our national health-care system for his entire NCC tenure and likely some time before assuming their leadership position. Is he really for it or against it? Hard to tell with Stephen as he has this lying problem. Has he formally renounced this recent deeply-held position?

What about his former support of the Iraq war? Our Stephen wrote to the Wall Street Journal when he was the Leader of the Official Opposition to berate Canada and Canadians for not participating in what most would categorize as an illegal war. That qualifies more as a betrayal than an act of leadership. He ran to the US for approval and to cheer them on, undercutting his own country in his haste to curry favour with the self-appointed big bad wolf of the world.

Harper is the type who agrees with the individuals & groups who feel that Canada does a poor job teaching Canadian history. However, I don't think our Stephen or his reform rabble knows much about Canadian history other than the anecdotal fireside chats of Albertan premiers and the like. If they did, they would not be cuddling with the Americans - it's not something we've done in our past or admitted to or openly embraced. One of the reasons for that being America's own history of attacking and controlling every nation it thinks it can or needs to. Ask Stephen if he thinks the United Empire Loyalists were right; or, perhaps more appropriately, if they're still right?

When Stephen and his Mike Harris retreads and rabid reformers start barking that coalitions are an abomination, and that the Bloc are even worse than the Alberta separatists who'd like to build firewalls and other walls, while they tried to do the very same thing themselves, it's really too much. Lucky for them no-one knows even recent history including the news media. Stephen & Company tried to form a coalition with the NDP and the Bloc not once but twice. The naked brazenness of this type of serial lying is breathtaking and nauseating. In 2000, Stockwell Day was the leader of the Canadian Alliance (very similar to coalition) and he had a document all prepared and ready for signatures. A scant 4 years later, our Stephen tried the same thing - again without success. The NDP could not stomach allying with a bunch of nouveau fascists so it fell through.

Coalitions are infrequently used in Canada but it's available and totally legitimate especially in the cause of avoiding unnecessary elections. However, closing parliament is not legitimate. Parliament is the fundamental control on the exercise of power in our confederation. We vote for MPs. Parliament is comprised of MPs (members of parliament). How they organized themselves is distinct from what we vote for. The names of the parties were not even on the the ballot until 1960. MPs can drop out of parties. They can join other parties. They can form new parties. But, at the core, we don't vote for parties, we only vote for the MP. The rest is an assumption, a point in time.

Coalitions act as a form of representational voting in that people who voted for parties that would have not had an active role in government can participate to some degree.

Stephen has shown in his intemperate attacks on the Bloc that he does not have the grace and magnanimity to be a true leader. He can be a loathsome fear-monger posing as a leader but not a true leader. He does not lift the people up but rather he knocks the people down - who gets knocked depends on the day and the battle. Not only does Stephen not play well with others, he brooks no opposition. Perhaps living in the one party state of Alberta is part of that mindset especially the no opposition part. It's one thing to always form the government but quite another to have an unbroken series of majorities - makes one get a little loose with all that rights and accommodation stuff.

Stephen says he's worried that Canadians are not getting what they voted for. Like when they voted Reform and got Canadian Alliance? Or, when they voted Canadian Alliance or Progressive Conservatives and got the Conservatives. (Dropping the "Progressive" was telling)

Stephen won't let his Cabinet Ministers talk on their own. His underlings surreptitiously tape meetings. They manipulate campaign monies and then attack the Electoral Officer. They release secret information when it suits their political aims. It's obvious by now that they're in it for the power and they'll sing any song to get it.

They cry "less government" but that's not it at all because those various functions they decry have to be done by someone. What they really mean is not "less government", it's less "public" government. They want to privatize as much government as possible. We'll still have government but it'll be in the hands of the few and far less accountable. How do you say "conflict of interest"?

I'm afraid our dear little Stephen has shown himself to be a dissembler and a divider and there's nothing to be done but to send him home.

Stephen Harper Outsmarts His-self - Lies & Anger from a Would-be Autocrat, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http:twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

NYT's Thomas Friedman Equates Nature with "The Market" by Evan Palmer

2008-11-30T16:25:00.004-05:00

Andy Barry, CBC Radio's morning host, recently quoted Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, in another of an increasing number of live-radio faux-intellectual moments. Mr. Barry's efforts were directed at sharing what to him seemed to be observations that verged on the transcendent. (One can tell as much from who one quotes as what one quotes) In this case, Andy quotes from one of premier apologists of the American Imperium. Even some 3 decades removed, perhaps Mr. Barry is still too much of an ex-pat American to be hosting the flagship show on the flagship Canadian network and he can't help but drag us into the pontifications of one of America's key propagandists.

In the article from which Mr. Barry's reads, "The Post-Binge World", Thomas Friedman quotes from his friend, the head of EcoTech International, certainly as ominous & threatening of a corporate name as one can imagine. The head of EcoTech equates "Mother Nature" to bits of science and nothing more. "Chemistry, Biology & Physics" to be exact. There is a simple name for this way of looking at things and it is neither new nor obscure - it's called the mechanistic view. To be sure, there is no "Mother" in this "Mother Nature".

It's at this point that Thomas starts drawing parallels. In Mr. Friedman's world, a contrivance called "the market" not only exists but exists on the same scale & majesty as "Mother Nature" and with as mechanistic a heart as well. There is no deliberate mis-reporting in Thomas' domain, no skewed inflation rates or GDP or dubious debt & deficit figures. There also is no realizations or actions on the part of the largest investment banks that they could use interest rate derivatives to manipulate national and international rates. Sure, millions of small-time lemming investors can be jerked into a cascade of selling and buying, but the surreptitious suppression of commodity or gold prices is ignored. Thomas also willfully neglects to allude to the rampant conflicts of interest rotting through the whole system and the ethics-destroying complicity it not only fosters but insists upon.

Mr. Friedman's naive adherence to a mythic "market" is merely cant, a vicious ideological cant, the same kind that can refer to a million dead children as an "acceptable" loss. He may not have said that particular statement but he apologized for it, maybe even as an unstoppable force of nature. Again, Thomas is merely asserting another mechanistic viewpoint. This time he elevates this sorry patchwork of agreements and debts and contracts and a myriad of goods and services and den-of-thieves stock & commodity exchanges that we call "the market" onto the same level as his un-motherly Nature. What others call the "globalization of poverty", Thomas calls the "democratization of finance".

Thomas and his ilk offer prosperity but deliver a vast casino economy where the game is rigged in favour of the super-wealthy and their lackeys. Friedman asserts "The World is Flat" and it certainly is in the sense that it has lost its diversity and depth as it is distorted by a new-conservative house of mirrors. In this world, torture is used to protect freedom, and freedom is taken away to protect law and order and Mother Nature is the same as "The Market".

NYT's Thomas Friedman Equates Nature with "The Market", Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

If the World is created by the Songs of Whales by Evan Palmer

2008-11-29T11:43:00.003-05:00

We think we know and that's usually where the problem starts. We think we know about space and time. We think we know about our own existence. We think we know about history, identity, the reasons for things, and truth and consequences.

"Realisticism" replaces reality. Realisticism doesn't need to know the whole truth or even most of the truth. It gets mixed in with, and mixed up with, pragmaticism. "Results" become the barometer of truth and results, as we quickly discover, are very relativistic.

In the 1960s, the Milky Way was the Universe. The experts said so as did the textbooks, the newspapers and the scientists talking on the movie newsreels. This was after "E=MC2" and nuclear bombs. We knew the Universe and we described it and we taught it and it was spectacularly wrong. It is incredibly instructive to listen to old recordings of the experts as they tell us without any equivocation that the Milky Way is the Universe and describe various aspects of it including its approximate size and the number of stars inhabiting it. It was not only wrong, it was wrong in such a fundamental way that it highlights our profound ignorance of the type of which Francis Bacon warned - "a little knowledge". The heady arrogance of the slightly enlightened.

For hundreds of years we had three spatial dimensions. Then some eighty years ago, we determined that we also had had one temporal dimension the whole while but didn't realize it. This obvious theory of three spatial dimensions had the status of conviction that was so deep and hidden to us that alernatives were not even imagined let alone discussed. String or membrane theory now postulates that we might have as many as eleven dimensions. No-one really believes it. They can only exist without our noticing them because they're very small. The ramifications are enormous.

Some scientists claim that if quantum mechanics is completely true then our universe is constantly splitting off into each of the possibilities that arise in every moment so that we are actually in the flux of an incomprehensible raft of universes and selves.

Who's to say it cannot possibly be true? What about an Electric Universe? Is there another set of universes composed of anti-matter? Does Dark Energy or Matter exist? Or, other sentient beings?

Gerry O'Donnell is a remote viewer and a teacher of remote viewing who claims that whales sing the world into existence and without them the world would fade away. The idea of sound as a generative force has been around a while but has been subsumed by the more recent and forcefully promulgated idea of ours of light as that force. Is there a music of the spheres? Is it at all possible that whales could do such a thing? If we say "no" what's it based on other than ignorance. We must admit "we don't know". Our understandings must widen and deepen and lengthen as must our memories and our feelings.

If we pause long enough and deep enough, we might almost hear those haunting calls in far-off cold waters. Rather than safely saying "no", we should cautiously ask "how?"

A-U-M.

If the World is created by the Songs of Whales, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

What Market? Program Traders Feast on Other People's Wealth by Evan Palmer

2008-10-10T18:28:00.005-04:00

The market, popularly thought of as thriving industrious individuals who behave rationally and collect relevant information and make informed decisions - or not. It's not true in today's market if it ever was. Today's market is electronic and hierarchical, the small trades feed into the bigger trades feed into the trades which qualify as program trades. A standard definition being over $1 million worth of 15 or more stocks. But even that is piddling compared to the real movers and shakers.

The big investment banks employ more staff on their IT side than on their trading side. As do the hedge and mutual funds. The volumes and percentages of all trading done by a few behemoths is increasing. The danger from hackers especially well-placed insiders is far greater here than elsewhere. Siphoning off even a hundred million a day is within rounding errors. The small and decreasing circle of those who trade the bulk of the world's financial markers wield enormous unaccountable power with access to vast sums of computer entries representing value, ultimately money, goods & services. What better place from which to launder proceeds of crime and illegal black ops funds. What better place from which to manipulate the world exchanges and economies for profit and towards ends other than those publicly stated.

Who really counts in the world trading forums, who has access to the truly huge funds? Maybe 2,000, maybe 3,000. A few clicks here and there and a national economy crashes, or a company, or a currency. Jerk it up, jerk it down, make a pile. Mostly anonymous, certainly unaccountable.

Is there any control over who has the rights to trade and how much they can move? Is it right that "traders" and their host of speculators and financial jackals can ravage economies at their whim, for their own reasons, for their own benefit? Making money off of people's fear & greed, juicing it out of them just like that.

Who's driving this soon-to-be train wreck?

What Market? Program Traders Feast on Other People's Wealth, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

The Rightness of Incrementalism by Evan Palmer

2008-10-05T13:17:00.009-04:00

It's October 2008 and we're in the midst of another financial crisis. If we count wars as social crises then it's safe to say, that crisis mode is our norm. Although its impact varies.

One of the key characteristics of a financial crisis is an obvious imbalance usually in the form of an excess of one type or another. Too many sellers, too many buyers, not enough, too much product, etc.

The incrementalism I'm calling on is not just gradualism in terms of economic growth but an anti-revolutionary brake on any rapid expansion. That is, even "good" expansion which seems favourable should be measured out. We currently have all kinds of controls and visible and invisible brakes on various types of activities. This would bring that into the open and cover gaps and make it work for the benefit of the many.

We should not allow events, specifically financial events, to go their own way. Up 100%, down 300%, etc. Whatever the so-called free market dictates. It would more like up 5% or down 5%, closed for the day.

We put controls in place to regulate the numerous flows in an advanced economy. This is nothing more than prudent management. Why should we allow speculators to move vast amounts of currency and financial instruments around in a given economy or among nations and larger economic units at will?

Prudence and common sense tells us that we should not allow financial instruments to be created or allowed to enter our economy unless they are well understood - especially in their negative implications. The starting position is that a given financial instrument is probably going to have a negative effect on the ecomony over time. The onus would be to prove that this is not the case. It might be a good idea to have the creators of these instruments, if they are approved for use in a given economy, to post the equivalent of bonds that they forfeit if damages are incurred. Again, we should only allow a small number of new instruments to enter the economy with controls on how much value they can have, they can affect, etc.

Secondly, if they are permitted to enter a given economy, it should be done in a gradual and controlled way. It should also be controlled in terms of its ups and downs. We should only permit a small percentage uptick or downtick in individual stocks and indexes. If that gets exceeded, trade in that stock or index is over for the day.

Flows of currency and other financial instruments should be taxed. In addition, the flow size and its variance from day to day and week to week should be stipulated.

This is also meant to apply to wages & prices although this seems to be what is happening already to wages right now.

This is not as difficult or intrusive as it might seem. It's going on now except it's being dictated by a much smaller unaccountable group of hedge fund managers, high bank officials, government & government agencies and criminal & intelligence organizations.

Almost everything would be the same except with leeway for only small specified upward or downward movements in price, supply, and other relevant factors. The economy changes in a healthy controlled way.

Incrementalism would also apply to the money supply, taxes, government expenditures and the whole gamut. If strenously implemented, this would act as a tremendous brake on war and military expansion as they both need rapid expansion of the public debt and spending. This would also act as a brake on criminal & black-op intelligence operations spending and hopefully by extension, their extent and power.

The thing about incrementalism is that it can be implemented over a long period if that's the only way to do it. Let's bring it to the fore and make it work for us in building stable steady peace-based economies.

The Rightness of Incrementalism, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

What Puppets Can Teach Us by Evan Palmer

2008-09-01T18:21:00.009-04:00

For a long time, puppeteers were to be heard but not seen. They worked the strings above a stage or behind a curtain. The often given observation being that puppets could say things people couldn't. The audience would laugh at a puppet's remark but might shiver or cringe if it was said by a person. The less you saw of the puppeteer, the more leeway the puppet had. For a while now, however, puppeteers have come in from the shadows, and perform fully visible beside their puppets. An example of this is the hit play “Avenue Q” an adult version of Sesame Street.

Initially, the audience is distracted by the visible actors beside their puppets but then an amazing thing happens. The visible actor become invisible to the audience - but not really. The audience picks up emotional clues from the actors and projects them into the puppet yet all the while, they are not consciously seeing the actors; focusing on the puppet.

This seems to be another instance of the miracle of “attention”. We direct our attention. We decide what we're going to see and hear and care about and what is outside that periphery we don't attend.

Another thing about this phenomenon and its manifestation in a puppet play is that it is strongly analogous to what sages and mystics describe as the illusion of our life. Could it be that we play the role of a puppet and the source or Tao is the cosmic person holding all the strings, being the strings? And, that somehow we have allowed our attention to shift to our version of a puppet, this body and soul, and we don't see or hear or know that which animates us? And, we are our own audience; we all have shifted our attention to the puppet's play.

What Puppets Can Teach Us, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Olympic Bragging – Medals, Medal Counts & Other Observations by Evan Palmer

2008-08-29T18:25:00.010-04:00

Another Olympics, Beijing 2008, has finished with an especially sublime opening ceremony to remember it by. And world records by Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. Even if Michael's unlikely run seemed a little too luck-struck by half. How long was the Croatian swimmer suspended in the water about a single millimeter from the touch bar?

There has been the requisite chest thumping and teeth gnashing. Medals counts broadcast and fawned over. Reporting that probably can't help being boosterish although a few stars so overshadowed everyone else that we could cheer for them without impairing our patriotic credentials. Usain Bolt leaps to mind.

We were told ad nauseum that the USA “won” the 2008 Olympics because they won the most medals. This is almost equivalent to saying that if China won 49 gold medals and the USA won 50 bronze medals then the US “won”. In effect, we are weighting gold, silver and bronze the same which doesn't make sense even to the great unwashed hordes.

Simon Forsthye, a researcher in Brisbane, Australia has worked on several more logical ways of representing medal counts. The first mandatory step is to weight the medal count. He and others rate gold as twice the value of silver which, in turn, is rated twice the value of bronze – therefore, gold counts as 4, silver as 2 and bronze as 1.

Refer to related articles listed below:

http://www.howardwfrench.com/archives/2008/08/22/the_olympics_an_alternative_medals_table/

http://s.wsj.net/article/SB121883421021145439.html

http://simon.forsyth.net/olympicsGDP2008.html#WMSPM

We can be sure if the ranking was more favourable to the USA if it was weighted, we would have seen it that way instead. The mass audience would have been educated as required. The slant in the western media is, in this case, blatant. If they can educate people about some of the obscure “sports” they have in the Olympics like biathlon or equestrian or sailing then a simple weighted medal count is child's play.

Some argue that medal counts should only focus on gold. In fact, this is completely backwards, For some sports, where there is a lot of competition and it is therefore more difficult to place, we should have more than just 3 medals. Marathons with hundreds of runners and some other track events come to mind. For those events, 5 medals seems more appropriate. Say, a brass medal for fourth place and copper for fifth place.

Here is a partial table using data on Simon Forsythe's site. The first column showing an unweighted medal count is the tally that was almost exclusively used by the mass media. Followed by the rank if the medals are weighted (4 for gold, etc). The last 2 ranks are by population, per 1 million persons, and by GDP (per 1 trillion $). It attempts to account for population and wealth assuming that it is easier for a populous or wealthy country to compete well.

Country	RANK Unweighted Medal	RANK weighted medals	RANK Weighted medals per million POP	RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
United States	1	2	43	65
China	2	1	65	50
Russian Fed.	3	3	34	38
Great Britain	4	4	22	44
Australia	5	5	6	27
Germany	6	6	33	52
France	7	8	32	51
Korea	8	7	24	42
Italy	9	9	37	53

On the vein of Olympic sports, the Olympic head body should publish the criteria for what constitutes a “sport” or “event” including requirements such as a certain threshold of persons who actually play or participate in a given sport or event. For example, should we continue with equestrian events – very expensive with relatively few participants, it seems to qualify as the epitome of elitist events.

The weighted medal count rank is shown below. Countries like China and Jamaica with high gold medal counts benefit from this more accurate tally.

Country	RANK Unweighted Medal	RANK weighted medals	RANK Weighted medals per million POP	RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
China	2	1	65	50
United States	1	2	43	65
Russian Fed.	3	3	34	38
Great Britain	4	4	22	44
Australia	5	5	6	27
Germany	6	6	33	52
Korea	8	7	24	42
France	7	8	32	51
Italy	9	9	37	53
Japan	11	10	54	71

Using the GDP as a way of weighting medal counts does reflect at a high-level a country's ability to fund excellent training. Typically, though, GDP is not evenly allocated so we can, and do have, wealthy countries that relatively speaking underspend while some very poor countries redirect inappropriately large amounts of scarce resources to glamorous propaganda-rich events like the Olympics.

Using population also suffers from problems as a measure in that most world-class athletes train around the world. Many get scholarships and sponsorships and train in the best facilities with the best coaches wherever they may be. Being born poor does not mean anything at a certain point and at a certain level. At the highest levels, it becomes difficult to attribute where the resources used by a given athlete come from.

Another phenomenon that's been emerging for a while now is the effective buying of athletic excellence by offering citizenship and other benefits including money. This is well-funded fast-track stuff well beyond the easy immigration policies of the past.

The next 2 charts show ranking by population and by GDP. Zimbabwe would be a case in point regarding misappropriate use of funds. Their winning athlete apparently trains abroad all year.

Country	RANK Unweighted Medal	RANK weighted medals	RANK Weighted medals per million POP	RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
Jamaica	20	18	1	2
Bahamas	59	72	2	7
Iceland	81	80	3	23
Bahrain	74	61	4	24
Norway	22	21	5	36
Australia	5	5	6	27
Slovenia	40	40	7	17
New Zealand	24	26	8	20
Estonia	62	54	9	14
Mongolia	45	33	10	3

Adding a population component to the medal weighting formula seems legitimate but again if we look at poverty-stricken disease-burdened peoples, does it matter how many of them there are? Does it really contribute to their pool of top athletes?

Country	RANK Unweighted Medal	RANK weighted medals	RANK Weighted medals per million POP	RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
Zimbabwe	44	39	44	1
Jamaica	20	18	1	2
Mongolia	45	33	10	3
Cuba	12	14	13	4
Georgia	37	31	14	5
Kenya	18	17	42	6
Bahamas	59	72	2	7
Armenia	35	55	20	8
Belarus	13	16	12	9
North Korea	34	32	52	10

At the very least, the common reporting practice should become weighted medal rankings.

In the interest of demilitarizing the Games and lowering the jingoism potential, maybe the Olympics should start allowing “clubs” to compete where the clubs can have members from anywhere in the world. This would be similar to professional sports teams in that the club would have the best team they can afford and manage with the widest pool of talent possible – basically, the entire world. If they win, play club anthems and raise club flags.

On a practical note, instead of marching in nation by nation at the beginning, let's have teams / nations march in from all four stadium entrances at 60 second intervals. Over each minute, four teams enter. This has got to be the most tedious part of the opening ceremony.

Finally, people must really wonder about the cost of staging this type of spectacle. Did China really spend over $70 billion dollars?! We must pare it down dramatically. Fewer, more popular events. Perhaps 8 days instead of 16. We should think about capping spending. Revisit the idea of always holding the Olympics in Greece. Or, having a set of sites we rotate through. The games should inspire and uplift us not confuse and bankrupt us.

Olympic Bragging – Medals, Medal Counts & Other Observations, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Making Things BIGGER or smaller by Evan Palmer

2008-08-16T18:59:00.005-04:00

Their job, self-appointed or paid for, is to make us see a mountain when we're looking at a molehill and, alternately, to make us see a molehill when we're looking at a mountain. By controlling what we perceive and telling us what we perceive, they will control what we think and feel and from that, how we'll act.

How we see things is both an art and a science. There are the organs of perception. There are various aids that we have constructed to help us perceive - to see farther than we could otherwise, to hear more, to see smaller things, to detect elements and energies. Microscopes. Telescopes. Spectrometers.

There is also the psychological aspect of perception, in that, we perceive what we're conditioned to perceive; we unconsciously blind and deafen and otherwise insensate ourselves either individually or collectively to what is outside the realm of the expected.

We rarely perceive things as they are; if there is that as a real condition - "as they are"? We see them as larger or smaller or much larger or much smaller or vast or invisible. We also colour everything with our judgements and opinions and attendant feelings and thoughts.

Agendas are also in play in determining what we perceive and what it means and how important it is or how important it should be. The list of groups with claims is long, heavy with organizations (both conceptual and real) that typically comprise 1,2 or 3% of something. Small groups, vanguards whether they know it or not, whether they consider themselves as such.

Two examples: This comes into view when we look at the claims as to how many homosexuals there are in any given country. The long-standing claim was 10%; the recent census in the US has it as not far past 1%. It's important to that group to have as big a number as possible to support rights and protections that accrue more easily to a larger group. But exaggeration is eventually uncovered and may generate substantial negative feedback.

This is also on display when discussing something like the porn industry. Those in it like to claim it's vast, even that it's mainstream and it shouldn't be harassed. The US apparently produces well over 90% of the world's porn using something like 20,000 persons mainly in southern California. As a percentage of the US population, that's 0.000067 %. It may seem like porn is everywhere and everyone but it's only employing 1 person out of 15,000.

What these and other groups use to increase the impact they make on society are various types of amplification. The main type of amplification being the mass media. The mass media is a very powerful amplification tool which is why it's used extensively for propaganda and advertising. Another method of amplification is the law. If you can influence what laws are made or how they're argued or interpreted, you can amplify your opinion because you can call into its service the full force of a society.

The opposite force, minimization,occurs when groups or issues are ignored and not reported; occasionally, it's achieved by trivializing or marginalizing a group or issue. Burying it in an avalanche of other information is another way to undermine its impact.

Societal norms are the measuring stick we use when deciding what's allowable in our public and semi-public forums. In the courts, it's a moving measure and it's typically not measured very well. In the cases where the media is involved, the people who have a big effect on societal norms are the same ones who are supplying and interpreting them. Why should the public give any extra access to industries that comprise 0.000067% of the population? Coincidentally, this percentage would also apply to the very rich.

We need to take control back of our own societies. We need to be able to establish what is proper and permissible in public forums and who should have access and what controls should be permitted. Otherwise we're going to lose our public forums to small and various groups who are more aggressive and energetic in their advocacies and stakes but who represent minorities. The usurpation of the public forum should be stopped. It shouldn't be a democracy of the loudest or the most litigious. No more of the tail wagging the dog.

MAKING THINGS BIGGER OR SMALLER, Evan Palmer, The Wat It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Indivisibility and the Theory of Everything by Evan Palmer

2008-07-19T15:58:00.005-04:00

The investigation of reality starts with the idea of it because unless and until one considers reality as a concept then one will not think about its nature and whether things might not be what they appear.

We will start with a proposition that reality is a whole. Various sages and spiritual masters have stated that reality is whole and indivisible. If we take that as a starting point where does it lead us.

An indivisible reality means that separation is not possible. However, our experience is one of separation and distinction. The mechanics of creating an apparent multiplicity is the key. If everything is one, why and how, do we see and feel the many. What sustains the illusion? Is it sustained because it is a shared delusion? Is it the deliberate intention of an exceedingly powerful being, or beings, who only need our consent to enmesh us in this realm?

Regardless, the mechanics of the creation and maintenance of this detached realm of relations and multiplicity must involve techniques for masking the actual reality and a voluntary limitation of our perception and knowing, a way to circumscribe the full extent and content of this reality.

The sharing of this reality with other deluded beings and the constant validation among ourselves serves as a convincing reinforcement. The introduction of causality is a stroke of genius as are the constructs of time and space. They form an almost irrefutable bulwark of the authenticity of the realm in which we find ourselves. It impinges on us so strongly that we not only accept what we perceive as real but we feel that it is the one and only reality.

The Theory of Everything postulates that there is a single constituent thing, whether it's a string or a membrane or some other construct, out of which everything else is made. To make that theory more encompassing and to avoid dualistic interpretations, we can say that consciousness will be a component of whatever the eventual successful theory is. And, if so, we will arrive close to where the mystics are and have been: that there is one reality which derives from one source and/or force and/or substance and includes consciousness.

And, that it means that there is no separation, no individual entities, no space, no time. Further along, the indivisibility of it means there are no unknowns, no memories, no perceptions, no actions, no movement, no change.

Indivisibility and the Theory of Everything, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Professional Armies = Slow-Motion Fascism by Evan Palmer

2008-07-01T11:51:00.006-04:00

As the largest military power in the world currently, this article will focus on the use of no-draft armies in the United States.

In the 1970s, one of the key lessons that America should have been drawn from the Vietnam conflict was not to fight unjust and unnecessary wars. Instead however, one of the the lessons that was actually drawn by the Americans was to eliminate opposition by eliminating the draft.

The Vietnam-era draft and the necessity of inducting citizens from all persuasions and backgrounds ensured that there would be a lot of soldiers (and to a lesser extent, sailors and airmen) opposed to the military, the war, and its conduct of the war. It didn't stop much but it did give it attention and it did produce protest and opposition. Back then, the media wasn't totally muffled and monopolized (somewhat but not completely) so those bellows of opposition were heard.

A no-draft armed forces seemed like a solution made in heaven - to trade money for domestic peace, a large obedient armed forces, and wide latitude in exerting military might (who cares about the soldiers, they're all "volunteers"). Once this capability was established, it facilitated other complementary actions like subversion, intelligence operations, economic warfare under the guise of aids and protections for American corporations, and a new-fangled gunboat diplomacy. All of this went on before but now it was that much easier. Many other nations have adopted this all-professional armed forces approach including the United Kingdom, Canada, France.

Part of the argument is the same as that used for professionalizing Police Forces or Fire Departments - better police, better fire fighters. However, the pool of talent available for police and fire departments is substantially greater than the requirement so the quality of the recruits is typically high. This is not usually true for the Armed Forces and thus, we find that the quality of the recruits is lower and prone to being allowed to go lower under the slightest duress. Because lower quality recruits don't mesh well with an increasingly high-tech military, the non-military support component (the corporate component) must expand to address that gaping need.

An important consideration for Police recruiting is the need to draw its personnel from the general population in a way that reflects that population - for example, an all white police force in an all black neighbourhood is not a good policing scenario. Because the interaction between the policed population and the police themselves is crucial, this was a factor that could only be ignored for so long. This highlights one of the primary threats of a professional Armed Forces - it is easier for them to become disconnected from the society on whose behalf they are acting.

With corrupt political leadership having taken hold in the United States and with its intent of misusing this tremendous military force (using it for the benefit of special interest groups), America has become dependent on the honour of its military commanders to protect its nation's freedoms and rights. The original idea was that politicians controlled the armed forces, not that the military commanders would have to restrain dangerous bellicose civilian leaders.

Another of the dangers of no-draft, hired armed forces is how they offer linkages to other previously unthinkable options like corporate military support functions and to mercenaries.

Mercenaries used to be the retirees, cast-offs or renegades of various armed forces who were hired by western intelligence services to fight surreptitious wars in god-forsaken countries in Africa, Asia or South America. They are now a key component of America's war efforts in Iraq. They are taking over functions traditionally performed by the military like protecting convoys. The drivers in the convoys are likely to be highly-paid employees of well-connected campaign-contribution-dispensing military arms of corporate America. These non-military employees get paid a lot more so they're drawing away very highly and expensively trained military personnel especially for mercenary jobs. And while we have diminished control over all-professional armies, we have even less control over their mercenary allies or the military arms of corporations.

A long-standing control over armies in democratic countries was the fact that the bulk of the army was comprised of citizens and its leadership at the highest level was civilian. This is no longer true of the army itself and the civilian leadership has become compromised in a number of ways.

If the proof is in the pudding, then the all-professional armies are failing. The implementation of no-draft hired armed forces has seen it crumple under the pressure of wars against the minor nations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The so-called professionalism of the new all-professional army is called into question when its standards have to be dropped so as to allow gang members and ex-convicts to join and substance abusers to remain. Allegations abound that gangs are expanding throughout the military and using its facilities, training and resources to further gang power and profits.

The membership of the armed forces is also suspect when under the same pressures to maintain unit strength, citizens of foreign nations are allowed to join with an inducement of citizenship if they survive.

Since there was always a small professional core to a modern armed force, the creation of an all-professional armed force has merely expanded that readily-available force. If a situation was sufficiently grave, a draft would be still be instituted. Therefore, a non-conscript armed force dramatically expands that core force that can be applied quickly especially in small to medium sized conflicts. Rather than working towards peace, a sizable professional standing army acts as a destabilizing element.

The no-draft armed forces also exacerbates the divide between the civilian and military components of society where the armed forces is filled with mainly poor and lower-middle class recruits and an officer aristocracy on one side and civilians who have no connection to their mission on the other. Add to that anti-democratic mix, foreigners in the American army who want to jump the immigration queue. Ominously, the divide is shrinking because the military and military-related components of American society are increasing. With the compliant boosterism of the monopoly media, the checklist for full-blown fascism is nearing completion.

It appears that the epitaph for this stage of the American Republic is being written. Will it have been an all-professional armed forces that sent the final dominoes falling towards a real-live police state?

Professional Armies = Slow-Motion Fascism, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http;//twicb.blogspot.com

The McCain-Churian Candidate by Evan Palmer

2008-06-29T17:58:00.003-04:00

There are any number of people who should not run for public office and at the top of most lists would be persons who have been compromised. John McCain would be such a person. While we commiserate over the somewhat murky circumstances of his imprisonment and his claims of mistreatment, we are also very leery about having a person who endured five and a half years of an alleged brutal captivity as a leader, especially a powerful one.

Whether you call it behaviour modification, torture, brain-washing or plain old blackmail, when done to
the extent that it might over a period of years in a POW setting, it definitely creates doubts as to the stability and judgement of the victim. Its goals would be familiar to students of history who had read about the Inquisition. It cropped up during the time of the Soviet Union's Gulag and its spectacular and gruesome show trials as a way to ensure cooperative defendants. The United States got its first taste of it when an unexpectedly high number of soldiers captured during the Korean War were induced into making anti-American statements.

The Americans might not have been that surprised as they had already been conducting their own "brain-washing" experiments at the start of the Korean War in 1950. The now infamous Ewen Cameron snuck off to Montreal and with the despicable cooperation of McGill University and the Canadian government, devised a variety of "techniques" for erasing a personality as a first step towards re-making them.

In the 1964 movie, "The Manchurian Candidate", an American soldier in Korea, and his fellow soldiers, are brainwashed by the Koreans and Chinese. Unknown to him, he can be triggered into action, perform the action (like killing someone), and then revert to "normal" without any memory of what he did.

If ever a candidate has given the impression that he is on a hair-trigger, it's John McCain. His vulgar threatening public and semi-public outbursts against other members of Congress and his own wife do sound like someone who's under duress. His memory and logic problems could be age-related but then again they could also be torture-related. Is this really the best America can do? Where are all these defective, flawed candidates coming from?

We can give our compassion and good wishes to John McCain. We feel it prudent to maintain a little extra vigilance when he's around just in case he "loses" it. But we certainly don't want to vote for this guy. We certainly don't want to give him world-destroying weapons to play with. Let's vote for sanity and vote against John McCain.

The McCain-Churian Candidate, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Talleyrand & The Interests of the State by Evan Palmer

2008-06-28T19:12:00.005-04:00

It is without dispute that Talleyrand was a clever man, adroit with words and ideas. Even his enemies trusted his diplomatic prowess. He, and by extension France, had much success. As a result, his thoughts and advice still hold sway, particularly, among the ruling classes and their various servants.

The quote that is the focus of this article deals with diplomacy and morality: "States do not have friends, they only have interests."

While Talleyrand, in the venal ethos of the period, made a fortune in bribes and assorted undisclosed payments, he always seemed to aim for the long-term benefit of France. His vision and love of France allowed him to consider the sensibilities and needs of his neighbours and of France's own citizens. It also gave him an historical perspective that helped him navigate through regimes and revolutions. Through it all he maintained a steadfast notion of what France was and what France needed.

When someone of Talleyrand's talent and insight says "States only have interests", he will act differently than a less-qualified politician or diplomat of today. Talleyrand always sought to avoid war and made arrangements to ensure a lasting peace. Therefore, to him a defeated nation could not be humiliated and bankrupted because it would harm the peace and lead to future wars. Therefore, to him freedom of the press was a good thing as it drew the population into the process of governance and strengthened the domestic peace.

Talleyrand was a force for logic and the betterment of all (European) nations. His special focus was on the legitimacy of the state and its sovereign. This was a prime driver of Talleyrand through the negotiations at Vienna. Napoleon wrecked that "Peace" when he returned from imprisonment on Elba and got many more thousands killed in his further vain-glorious military quests. Earlier, after Napoleon invaded Russia, Talleyrand had resigned rather than continue to serve in what had become a blood-thirsty march for glory and empire.

Lesser politicians use Talleyrand's observation on a State's interests as an excuse for amoral short-sighted actions. They seem to forget that it is people who constitute a State and reflect or surmise its interests and while those interests, as Talleyrand notes, are greater than any single person or group of persons (or should be), they are nonetheless the outcome of people. States that consistently betray and bully will have no allies (or friends) but it is the State's leaders and the people who run its institutions who will bring that about. People betraying people who represent States. Circumstances change and those changes may necessitate an adjustment in a State's position or actions. It does not mean that amorality reigns and that a lack of ethics will not hurt a given nation in the mid or long-term.

In trying to emulate Talleyrand but without his genius, these sorcerer's apprentices threaten all of us, looking for any excuse to take what they see as the expedient way.

Talleyrand & The Interests of the State, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Contentment- Goal, Trap and Nothing by Evan Palmer

2008-06-28T11:14:00.004-04:00

Does your contentment come from knowing what is most important in the sense of a profound enlightenment? Or, does it stem from being satisfied with what you know; feeling that it is enough and there is no valid reason to go further?

Is it a physical contentment or psychological or a bit of both? Does it touch on the nature of the reality we find ourselves in? Is a contentment that rests on an unexplored reality certain to collapse. Even so, if its collapse was far enough in the future, most of us would take that guaranteed temporary happiness; our urge to defer as powerful as ever even when dealing with critical all-encompassing matters. Don't see it, don't hear it, don't know it. Small Picture winning over Big Picture almost every time.

Isn't that a key mental conjuring - if it's not known, it's not perceived. Inklings may make mysterious intrusions on our psyche like clouds on a distant horizon yet they're easy to ignore or to dismiss. We tell ourselves, if it was important, it wouldn't be so hazy and hard to discern. We oscillate between the obvious and the obscure without knowing either.

It boils down to different levels of contentment. Contentment can be based on ignorance, on a deliberately circumscribed notion of reality; or, it can be based only on what is truly real. And what leads to the truth is the endless asking of the question "Why?" until the words peter out and one wordless answer leads to another, each reply bigger than its predecessor until only the answer exists and then only the one and all exists. Then the authentic contentment blooms. Then the simple physical contentment completely fulfills.

Contentment- Goal, Trap and Nothing, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

People Kill People - Faster and More Easily with Guns by Evan Palmer

2008-06-22T11:51:00.008-04:00

We are in the Age of Guns. In the past, it may have been a quarterstaff or a crossbow. In the future, it may be some kind of non-lethal stun weapon. But today, it's guns.

There are many circumstances that can affect the utility of a carrying a gun. What country you live in being a prime consideration. Do you live in a war zone? Do you have a honest competent police force? Do you live in a high crime area? Do you live in a community or are you some distance from any population centre? Do you hunt for food?

However, among the invalid reasons for "needing" a gun is to be able to fight against a fascist takeover. You and your gun, or even your several guns, and a couple of good buddies, would not stand a chance. You would have to do what all the other freedom fighters had to do - steal weapons from your oppressors.

We're obviously attacking the NRA gospel of "Guns don't kill People, People Kill People". Although, unfortunately, we're approaching the day when guns will kill people, that is, guns attached to robots. At that point, which is arriving as we speak, we'll have embodied "the gun" in an entity that will initially fight wars but then inevitably can be used to subjucate populations under the cover of law and order.

Going back to the "Guns Don't Kill People" line of reasoning, let's also look at Weapons of Mass Destruction or WMDs. Could we not claim that "WMDs Don't Kill People, People Kill People"? It's quite clear that only countries without WMDs are invade-able. It's also clear that for smaller countries, nuclear weapons are mainly defensive in that they would be used to repel an invader and they don't have the delivery systems or numbers of warheads to make them into effective offensive weapons. The argument actually makes more sense at the national level. However, as the number of nuclear weaponized countries increases so does the danger. Limiting the club to those that have it now, or those who can surreptitiously impose it, will face continuing pressures as the threatened nations resist and smolder.

The only real answer to the WMD conundrum is universal disarmament. The same answer is there for small weapons like guns but its implementation may sit unattended for many more decades. Probably only getting done when a technological innovation renders guns obsolete or unacceptably crude and violent.

People Kill People - Faster and More Easily with Guns, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

PsyOps Detroit by Evan Palmer

2008-05-25T10:33:00.006-04:00

In 2005, the 40th playing of the Super Bowl came to Detroit (do they still makes cars here?), Michigan. It had been 23 years since it had been to Detroit in 1982 - basically, a generation ago. The game featured the Pittsburgh Steelers (do they still make steel here?) and the Seattle Seahawks (do they still make planes here?)

The half-time show "starred" the geriatric (yes, censor me) Rolling Stones who put on a pitiful stale performance of intensely over-played songs - how could people not retch at the sound & sight of "(I can't get no) Satisfaction" as sung by a faux-angry pathetically strutting rooster-like Jaggar? Being surrounded by his night-of-the-living-dead cohorts wheezing and bobbing with ghastly "smiles" pasted to their wrinkled drug-addled faces didn't help.

It would have been an affront at any venue - who does the NFL think their audience is anyway? But to "showcase" an ancient British band fronted by hundreds of phony young fans clapping and waving their arms in the birthplace of the Motown sound was as jolting an insult as could be delivered to a city. To be in the home of the one of the most amazing and popular musical styles of the 20th century and not to make that the centerpiece of the half-time show which is first and foremost a musical celebration boggles the mind. It's so nonsensical that one begins to wonder if this was a deliberate denigration of Detroit, even a psychological warfare operation.

Was there a massive pre-game protest campaign against this affront? Don't know - if there was it was remarkably quiet or hidden (or suppressed). Was there a boycott or post-game complaint mail-ins? There was at least one article in the local Detroit newspaper (McGraw, Bill. "JOURNAL: No R-E-S-P-E-C-T for Motown halftime"; Dec. 1, 2005, Detroit Free Press) which is no longer accessible via the internet. (surprise!) But not numerous articles and talk-shows, etc. Not numerous and loud and effective.

That it happened is bad enough. That it happened with barely a whimper of protest is worse. Detroit has its problems but it doesn't need gratuitous violence being done to its heritage and pride - which is what the Super Bowl 40 half-time "show" was. And a Motown half-time show would have been so much better!

PsyOps Dettoit, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogpsot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

The Mysterious Moon is Vital to Earth (1) by Evan Palmer

2008-05-18T19:43:00.005-04:00

Moonlight was something to be avoided in medieval times as it might induce madness. It was also to avoided during nocturnal wartime operations when darkness was needed.

Ancient cultures were very aware of the Moon as it was used to measure the months and held to affect women's menstrual cycles. In today's modern societies, it's much less of a cultural factor. Yet, the pure raw physical impacts of the Moon are staggering - to the extent that life as we know it might not exist without it.

The Moon strongly affects the oceans and seas. Estimates run from 1/3 to 1/2 of the height of the tides are a result of the Moon's gravitational pull (the rest is from the Sun). This also affects the width of the inter-tidal areas around the world. This is the boundary formed by the low and high tides and is typically an area of great diversity of life.

Earth without the Moon would rotate much faster. The Moon slows the Earth down. If the Moon was gone, the days on Earth would be around 8 hours in length and we would have 1095 of them in a year. This would have an enormous impact on life on Earth.

In addition, a faster rotation would affect the wind. We would have very little north-south air movement. Most winds would flow west to east and would be very persistent and in the range of 200 miles per hour. Continuous hurricanes and cyclones would rage throughout the tropics possibly like the Red Eye of Jupiter which is, in fact, a centuries-old hurricane.

The impact of its physical effects on humans and other of Earth's creatures is hard to predict but would be significant. After all, we're mostly water.

It has even been postulated that the Moon contributed to heating in the Earth's crust and mantle and helped trigger convection and magma flows which led to plate tectonics.

The Moon also stabilizes the Earth's wobble. Without that stabilization, Earth's tilt would move around more and this would have a tremendous impact on the seasons and weather.

We should be thankful for the Moon because without we might not be here. Who knew?

The Mysterious Moon is Vital to Earth, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Murder as Entertainment by Evan Palmer

2008-05-10T17:17:00.007-04:00

Perhaps in Elizabethan times, murder and violence were prevalent to the extent that their depiction in most of Shakespeare's plays was a reflection of their society rather than a projection. However, in out times, in advanced countries like Canada, murder is thankfully a fairly rare event, and yet, the roster of popular shows overflows with murder-mystery-like stories set in a wide range of locales and exploring a variety of work and social settings. Even shows that purport to be character-based and devoted to relationships will veer into dark and violent realms when their ratings dip. How much of this is giving people what they like and will return for more of versus catering to baser fears and impulses? Can we always prosper financially by evoking the infamous trio of fear, uncertainty and doubt, and regardless, should we?

Now, it appears that we have crossed the (story) line from where murder was evil and its perpetrators deserving of relentless pursuit and justice to where it's offered as a diversion, where the audience gets to play detective. Maybe we can blame Agatha Christie for making murder seem somewhat innocuous and as something that might interrupt an afternoon tea but not much beyond?

In addition, in our collective efforts to produce better literature, writers trying to make their villians multi-dimensional have succeeded in making some of them into cult figures and anti-heros. The absolute glut of books and movies and TV series about serial killers bears no relationship to their numbers or the threat they pose. It does bear a relationship to the fear they trigger.

Fear, the natural safety-enhancing fear we should have, should push us into action to alleviate the causes of our fears. Watching numerous works, both non-fictional and ficitonal, about that which is causing our fears in no way deals with it in a positive way. The other reason to keep watching, reading or listening to these works is because they "entertain" us. This is a choice we should not make as it means that we don't want to solve our fear problem, we'd rather continue to experience it and "enjoy" it as it were even if that enjoyment is negative. The negatives always seem more intense than the positives and we often gravitate towards intensity.

Our entertainments define us as much as anything else. If we "relax" or "unwind" by watching murder stories or playing ultra-violent video games or we get a buzz by betting large amounts of money we can't afford to lose on sporting events then we're feeding the beast in ourselves and in our society. For example, in some parts of Texas, it's entertainment to sit on your back porch and drink beer while you shoot rats. We know because that's apparently what Dubya used to do with some good ol'boys in latter days. To try to categorize any of these types of entertainment as "fun" is to trivialize murder and violence in a way that makes it more likely on our streets and homes. It may even make it easier to start illegal wars - the Iraqis may have begun to look a lot like rats, ripe for some "US of A" shock & awe.

Obviously, we need and want to be entertained but we must exercise more discrimination in what we accept as entertainment and not let jaded, spent hollywood-styled hacks and toadies twist us to their world view. Say no to "murder mystery" fun and to shows that advertise about the terror, horror and fear they will evoke. It's there but let's not make it the main course.

Murder as Entertainment, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Controlling People by Imposing Differences by Evan Palmer

2008-04-13T12:24:00.003-04:00

Visible differences in one's appearance can act as a powerful means of isolating a given person and the community to which they belong. These differences can extend to social interaction, to languages, to meals and food, to types of entertainment, to rituals and the use of symbols. It serves paradoxically both to make one stand out from the majority and to make one clearly fit into a given minority. When members of that minority are together, they all look the same, they conform.

Differences in appearance and behaviour can used to distinguish an elite military unit or a religious sect or even an entire culture. It can be used deliberately in the knowledge that it will generate group solidarity by inviting hostility from outside the differentiated group. It also serves as a means of recognition.

By controlling with whom one socializes and marries, a group can create its own "world" that tries to operate and survive and prosper within the larger human society but, at the same time, tries to minimize contact.

If a group has a belief system that arrogates to themselves, special privileges and rewards and authorities, then its method of recognizing its members becomes more important as the value of membership increases. It's a dangerous game though as the fortunes of any such self-distinguished group will wax and wane with various circumstances and obvious membership can then become a liability. It's also dangerous to society if a given self-isolating group becomes powerful in that it can wage "war" on the larger society either as a pre-emptive strike, as a taking of what's is by right theirs, or, often enough, as an act of beneficience and cleansing.

The deliberate imposition and acceptances of differences, some ostentatious, is a hostile act in disguise. It is a blatant means of social control. It serves to solidify and perpetuate in defiance of the impermanance of all things. It looks to magnify and project the group ego both within to the group and without to the world at large.

If there are no meaningful differences between people then why go out of the way to use them in a manipulative way? This is beyond fashion statements or as a method of rebellion against oppression. This is an act of creation of a "group", typically founded on dubious or unproveable claims of divine intercession, with clear and deliberate differences to foster its identity and mission, feeding a sense of superiority and danger, again to support group solidarity against anyone outside the group.

This cannot lead to a happy ending.

Controlling People by Imposing Differences, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Value, Money and The First Law of Thermodynamics by Evan Palmer

2008-04-12T19:31:00.007-04:00

"Energy cannot be created or destroyed."

Money, a form of economic energy, is a marker for value. Nothing more. And there are many other markers - for example, stocks & bonds.

If a value marker is more than one step removed from the object of value (where "object" has the broadest possible definition) then it should be considered speculative. Speculative objects should not have any standing versus a marker. They should not be permitted to affect markers. Making a currency convertible to gold or silver was a way of guaranteeing this for money.

One level of abstraction with regards to value markers is more than enough. It is difficult enough to manage that single layer of markers. Going beyond that is the realm of cheats and thieves and those who allow cheats and thieves to prosper are their accomplices. Those who deal with them - beware.

Value is a complex entity and putting a currency value on it is fraught with risk but it's safe to say that for every individual loss of value of an object there's a individual winner. It can only lose value in relation to the establishment of a current value which entails that some money changed hands. If, for whatever reason, the object drops in value then the person who received the pre-loss price is the winner and the person stuck with the depreciated value object is the loser.

There might have been fraud. There might have been insider information. There might have been external forces that caused a drop or increase in value. Regardless, there's a individual winner & loser.

What if real value in all its forms, including potential value, was like energy and it could neither be created nor destroyed but only transformed. When an object is considered to have no value, its value will have been transformed or transferred into something else. The value itself is not lost.

The creation of value would be thrown up as the way out of this limitation. People invent & improve things and that creates new wealth, increases the pie.

But what if the pie was already an almost infinite size and we insisted in seeing only one portion of it? What if all the "value" that there can be already exists and is there for us.

The trick would consist of recognizing what is of value - the thing itself or an irrefutable claim on the value object. Nothing else is worth the paper it's written on, or the terminal screen it types out on. And, of course, this doesn't really touch on all there is of value that doesn't figure into dollars and cents. The best things.

Value, Money and The First Law of Thermodynamics, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

No End in Sight by Evan Palmer

2008-04-06T11:55:00.003-04:00

"This thing cannot keep on going so that we are always going to discover more and more new laws." Richard Feynman

The search for the ultimate truth, the ultimate explanation or framework continues unabated. In some cases, it's just a job, a way to pay expenses, invested with only an occasional excitement or joy. In other cases, it's a vibrant exploration. But, regardless, it never seems to make definitive progress. Every time a complete solution seems to present itself, it opens up onto another world of knowledge.

For example, a short time ago, the 1950s, we thought and scientists agreed, that the universe consisted of "The Milky Way". For several decades that was the received knowledge.

Atoms were originally conceived as the irreducible elements out of which everything else was made. Now there's a veritable zoo of particles and quasi-forces, some verified, some half-proven but still mostly theoretical.

It has been recently posited that there is such a thing as "dark matter" and "dark energy" which is about as gigantic a revolution in understanding as is possible. It's tremendously exciting and fun in the sense of a never-ending journey but it calls into question if there really is a destination, a final stop.

When every plateau opens up onto another series of mountains and valleys but more than that, changes the journey and changes the assumptions that guided the last leg of the struggle, changes the map and the directions. Yes, we can do things at this new level but being able to do things and understanding what or how that is happening is another matter.

We have introduced the element of the observer and the possibility of the observer changing processes and changing reality. We haven't as yet allowed for the effect of non-human entities on levels or layers we haven't as yet dreamed of. Or, even an ultimate force or presence that unfolds this existence in which we find ourselves.

If each explanation is not really an explanation but merely a description; if each level we find ourselves in is actually subject to the dictates of another dimension or level; then unless we can discern that underlying or over-riding reality we'll be forever playing in a believed world, in our musings and elaborations, never actually reaching the true crux of the matter, or a complete understanding of reality and existence.

No End in Sight, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Hating Hate & Other Pastimes by Evan Palmer

2008-03-23T18:23:00.004-04:00

While Hate and Love do seem like cornucopias - endless flows of something out of nothing - it might be more useful to think of them as energies that can manifest themselves as acts upon beings, objects and conditions or states such as consciousness and feelings. Energies that need sources and mediums and propagation mechanics.

One of the routes often proposed in eradicating evil and its effects is to tackle one of its major causes - that being hate. But one of the flaws in that approach is that it addresses the instruments used such as articles or films or even speech but not the source. It's like taking a bat away from a hooligan but not dealing with the hooligan. It goes to the core - what causes hate? What gives birth to hate? What nourishes it? What makes it spread? The same can said of Love or Fear or or any of major emotions or attitudes.

A question that comes to the fore almost immediately is whether hate is a primary feeling or attitude or if it, in fact, derives from another more basic feeling. Is the foundation of attitude and feeling the more elemental, physical actions and reactions like fight or flight and hunger and cold? It seems that hate cannot just spring into existence without some impetus, some framework. Hate being the act or wish for harm or denial of good or gain to someone or something. It's very much of a struggle against someone or something that hurts you or threatens you or steals or denies you someone or something. This struggle engenders feelings of malice and anger towards this target. The blows or anticipated blows can be painful or humiliating, they damage us depending on how powerful and directed they are. They also depend on our definition of self as the larger and broader that is, the more things that can threaten us. This might be why empires hate the most - they have the most to fear.

What a different question - what do you fear? Why do you fear them/it? Why are you angry?

It's been observed that hate cannot transcend itself. It is bound to its own self-reinforcing circumference. How much more so than for fear and anger. Maybe it is in its very nature that negative feeling and attitude cannot go beyond itself because it cannot let go. Another potent wellspring of hate is indignation (a type of anger) especially when it is caused by cruelty or injustice.

Hate does not seem to spring forth on its own, it is a feeling and attitude that requires thought and conceptualization. This in turn makes the attachment to it stronger and the arguments against it weaker. The counterpoint to hate cannot merely be taking away the mediums for its expression and thereby hoping to starve it out of communities. It ignores the true source of the hate and it often gets mixed up with disapproval and disagreement. Fighting hate should not lead to a lessening of freedom. Anti-bias and anti-hate laws are not the real answer.

Society must discuss hate in a context of what is causing it, not just outlawing expressions of it. It must address injustices that feed it. The right reaction to injustice should not be hate and its entourage. There should be constructive alternatives and they must work. Lies and hopelessness also create hate. We must learn and teach how to cope with the many things that lead to hate. We must detoxify our culture. Hate, anger, and fear will destroy any society where it takes too deep a hold. Critical thinking can also serve as a potent antidote to hate. As the Buddha said: "Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else.." Whatever is enough to hurt someone else is enough to hurt you.

Hating Hate & Other Diversions, The Way It Can Be, Evan Palmer, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Sovereign Wealth Funds by Evan Palmer

2008-03-08T19:57:00.009-05:00

Sovereign Wealth Funds

Versus Super Wealthy Family Funds

Versus Hedge Funds & Private Equity

Versus Drug & Gun Money & Other Criminal Enterprise

The righteous bellows from various pseudo-nationalists about Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) have the sound of someone whose toes are being stepped on. The complaints of one gang when another gang intrudes on their turf.

If we are truly worried about SWFs then why aren't we just as worried about gigantic family trusts which are even more self-serving and counter-intuitive in their placements and investments.

If we are truly worried about SWFs then why aren't we as worried about Hedge Funds and Derivatives and other murky financial instruments that are being used to relieve people and government and businesses of their valuables.

If we are truly worried about SWFs then why aren't we as worried about the vast sums of money flowing from criminal enterprises and rogue divisions of intelligence services. As in Drugs, Guns, Pornography, Slavery and Smuggling.

And there is always ravenous shadow-seeking acquisition-hungry corporations.

Who's worried about all of them? Who's watching them? Who's fighting them?

It's only us. It can only ever be us. Desist. Resist. Insist.

Sovereign Wealth Funds, The Way It Can Be, Evan Palmer, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2007
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Our World Facing Hundreds of Tipping Points by Evan Palmer

2008-01-27T19:55:00.000-05:00

Quoting Malcolm Gladwell, a "tipping point" is "the name given to that moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass." It also refers to the point when a spinning object like a top or a planet stops spinning in a stable manner and starts to wobble and fall over. Or when that type of phenomenon occurs in society. As well, it is reminiscent of the quantum mechanics postulate - "the butterfly effect" - regarding the non-linear cumulative effects of actions and things; and "critical mass" as it applies to the moment when a nuclear reaction becomes self-sustaining.

Unfortunately, our world is facing hundreds of potential tipping points and while a tipping point can be positive or negative, the necessary focus is on the negative because almost all of them involve our survival as a species.

Such as, nuclear bombs and depleted uranium shells in their ten of thousands as missles and millions as shells and tons as radioactive dust and waste; and, as micro and mini nukes anywhere. Weapons programs gone awry all over the world spewing our their deadly possibilities in the form of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, plans, attacks, accidents and disasters; programs, likely illegal, delving into areas best not touched like weather modification and the manipulation of earth energies to facilitate or produce earth and sea quakes.

So-called technological advances like nano-technology and genetic modification speeding like runaway trains towards the inevitable canyon with its bridge out. Pollution fouling our air and water and soil, the oceans with huge dead swaths and frightening drops in key species. Coral reefs withering. Our atmosphere under seige, increases in cosmic radiation, increases in sunspot and other solar activity. Our surprisingly thin layer of topsoil being blown away and paved over though poor agricultural practices and unbridled urban development.

Resurgent diseases like tuberculosis, smallpox and leprosy becoming resistant to our drugs, and exotic ones like ebola and others not previously seen, ready to sweep like a wraith across the globe scything its victims down like fields of grass.

Climate change and disruptive weather endangering lives and food & water supplies. Our flora and fauna disappearing and sickening - bees, amphibians, numerous sea species, butterflies. Destruction of our biodiversity and seed supplies through monoculture and companies like Monsanto with their terminator seeds.

Collisions or too-close pass-bys with comets or asteroids.

Collapsing infrastructures and our over-reliance on them which sees our power, water, food, transportation, storage and distribution systems hanging by the proverbial threads. Wars, social unrest, oppression, tyranny.

Revolutionary contacts with unfriendly non-terrestial beings.

It seems that given the array of things that can go wrong, it's only a matter of time before they do and we're engulfed in a mammoth catastrophe from which there is no escape. It may be that our salvation lies in one or more of the positive tipping points. If so, we must uncover them and communicate them. We must not allow secrets and their covetous, self-righteous custodians to keep our planet from getting out of a reckoning we're not likely to survive. Zero-point energy, friendly advanced aliens, whatever good there is, we need it, we need help.

Our World Facing Hundreds of Tipping Points, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2007
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Democracy anyone? by Evan Palmer

2008-01-05T20:38:00.000-05:00

The misleading debate over Pakistan.

Some may insist that the ideal of democracy is fixed and absolute but it is evident that the definition and understanding of it moves with the times. The understanding of a person in medieval England of what the word "democracy" means would differ substantially from that of a person in 21st century France or 25th century Canada. When other cultures and religions are thrown into the mix, any potential consensus would mutatate further.

Given the complexity of any society and its institutions, is it right or fair to have outside parties deciding whether a given country is "democratic" (or "democratic enough"), and based on that to decide to unilaterally intervene in that nation's affairs? Not only might the analysis be invalid, one country's destination, priorities & values can legitimately differ from another's - it may consciously want to evolve at a slower pace and/or in a different direction.

There's been an interventionist bent in the ongoing world debate for some time now. It was called aggression during the Nuremberg trials when it was the German Reich doing it but it received a more sympathetic hearing now that America and its cowed allies have used it to justify invading Afghanistan and Iraq. It is again being used in a cynically manipulative manner to lay down the groundwork for possible action against one of (perhaps all of) Iran, Pakistan and North Korea.

The case against Pakistan involves an argument that its democracy is fractured or non-existent and that this allows for the United States to act in self-defence - in one scenario, to secure the 60-some nuclear weapons on Pakistani soil. Somehow these are a bigger threat than the tens of thousands that the US and Russia have between themselves. Or the tons of toxic DU (depleted uranium) dust fouling Iraq and via global air currents the rest of the world.

Previously, having nuclear weapons was the way to keep the United States from attacking your country. Now, if you don't tend them to America's liking, you may trigger a surreptious invasion. Of course, in this case, any intervention is a recklessly dangerous course of action because trying to assume control of another country's main defense system is an act of war and we are talking about nuclear weapons.

Democracy in Pakistan
Given that the state of a given country's democracy is not a just cause for aggression (overt or covert), is it even accurate to say that Pakistan is falling apart?

Let us begin by looking at Rawalpindi, the former interim capital and the city where Benazir Bhutto's assassination took place. It took over 11 years, from 1959 to 1970, to build the new capital of Pakistan at Islamabad. During that time, Rawalpindi, which takes its name from an ancient village of Yogis called Rawals, served as the capital. This city of over 3 million on the Potwar Plateau also serves as the General Head Quarters for the Pakistan Army and Air Force which is a continuation of its function as the key garrison city of the British Raj.

Various pundits claim that this is a city where the Pakistan Armed Forces exert almost total control and in which nothing can happen that they do not want to happen. Following this logic, the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto at the rear gate of Liaquat Bagh Park on December 27, 2007 was permitted or facilitated by the Pakistan military. Not sure if they are presumed to have been involved fixty-six years earlier in the same park in 1951 at the front entrance, when the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated. Also in Rawalpindi in 1979, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged at the instigation of General Zia who in turn was blown up in a airplane in August 1988.

Over its short history, Pakistan has been under military rule for more than 23 years. Arguably, if the United States wants to secure nuclear weapons, it would be just as happy with military rule as with a stable democracy. However, now-former General Musharaf is not immune from attack either - he has suffered 9 assassination attempts in the last 7 years - most of that time while his country was under military rule.

However, as violent as this summary appears, how does this type of record compare to other nations?

Democracy in the Rest of the World
In 1975 & again in 1981, the then president of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) was assassinated. In India, the three Gandhis were all assassinated. In the United States, there have been 19 assassination attempts on the president of which 4 were successful. In the 1970s alone, there were 5 assassination attempts on the US president - 2 attempts on Gerald Ford were within a couple of weeks of each other. When Charles de Gaulle was France's president there were some 30 assassination attempts on him. Should this have made any or all of these countries candidates for a foreign intervention?

The Future
In a universe where "free will" prevails (whether we believe it or not) then democracy or something like it must be the ideal governing framework. But the future may consist more of a self-governing individualistic mode of government where the community-giving infrastructure is the key design and everything flows from that. Perhaps a time when the larger weapons can be easily and quickly destroyed and where armies are useless and therefore obsolete. These pretentious debates about whether country-A has the right to invade country-B will be meaningless because there will be no country as such, no army, no reason to fight. "Democracy" will be so embedded everywhere as to be invisible - like the air we breath.

Democracy anyone?, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2007
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

When a Group Decision is the Answer by Evan Palmer

2008-01-03T15:38:00.000-05:00

Asking the right question is often more important than providing the right answer. When the right answer doesn't help us or improve the situation or provide insight or inspiration then we can, with some confidence, deduce that we've asked the wrong question - plain wrong, or wrongly focused or with an improper context or inaccurate supporting information.

In addition, who should address a given question or how it is to be answered should also be subject to some analysis. The PROs and CONs of group decisions typically conclude with an assertation that its utility depends on the circumstances (the acolytes of the "lone genius" or "teamism" not withstanding).

Breakthrough ideas or products are often the result of a single person or the efforts of individuals in concert or sequence. The oft-observed fact that a revolutionary idea will frequently pop up in two or more places at around the same time demonstrates the influence of the social and intellectual environment but the typically solitary nature of the analysis and insight is clear. It is likely that the intense concentration & long time frames required preclude more than a single person staying involved. Albert Einstein stated that he had deeply pondered light, quantum mechanics & relativity for ten years before his epochal theses of 1905.

A point to be made is that what we are looking at is actually several different phenomena - in one case, it's a research & development paradigm; in another case, it's a canvass of a larger population for ideas or insights or feedback; in other instances, it's a sequence of individuals each building on the previous one in a series of smaller or apparently unrelated insights or pure theorizing.

Democracy can be viewed as a group decision about the evaluation & action plans of a given person or political party or movement and what support, if any, we will give them.

In a vote, the issues are defined by the candidates based on their ideology (& morality) and bolstered by polling and surveys. Usually, there are some issues upon which the candidate is firm and others upon which they may be swayed or are uncommitted. All things being equal, the more in tune with the electorate a candidate is, the more likely they are to win given that the candidates can get their message out and that their supporters are able & willing to vote and additionally, that their supporters can make it to the correct polling station, can vote in an acceptably easy, secure and quick manner, and can have their votes fairly counted.

To subvert the voting process, a given malefactor would interfere with their opponents and some or all of these various facets: with fund-raising, with political rallies, with distribution of campaign material, with supporters, with media placement & effectiveness, with election lists, with validity of votes, with location of polling stations, with how votes are counted and recorded, with audit trails, etc. There are many links in the chain which unfortunately offers many opportunities to subvert the process.

But if we could make use of new technologies and the mindsets that are emboldened by them, we might be able to generate a continuous polling-cum-voting process by which "the people" and various designated & self-selected experts including experts in the process of analysis & evaluation could decide on courses of action. This new technique, if successfully implemented, could be used elsewhere where appropriate. Most likely areas of application would be the main group-think arenas now - general elections, juries, the "markets". Like Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds" but better. Not design by committee but using knowledge wisely. The main thrust by one or two insightful persons, the rapid incremental improvements by the well-connected "crowd".

While the danger of Maslow's phrase "When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" comes to mind, we would proceed with this venture knowing that it is only suitable for certain classes and types of problems. The telling forays into the virtual commons of problems & solutions will resonate with enough perceving individuals to provide the "proof" that the answer is valid.

It will work. What is be guarded against are those (read intelligence services and their ilk) who would subvert any tool like this that is too empowering and revealing. If we thwart them then we all can prosper.

When a Group Decision is the Answer, Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Bryan Mulroney and "The Liars Club" by Evan Palmer

2007-12-15T17:50:00.000-05:00

Mulroney, like Reagan a great communicator, highlights the danger to any democratic society of the smooth talker with at-the-ready solutions and aspirations of power. They can get away with just about anything!

Ancient cultures esteemed eloquence and in the absence of recorded histories, these orators cast the myths and legends of the people (to some extent in their own image) and were honoured and respected for it.

However, in modern societies, the orator is more a menace than a blessing as they are able to subvert and hide their wrongdoings, and that of their confederates, more easily; they also are more able to set societies against themselves as they seduce their supporters into an unwavering allegiance that inevitably slips into confrontation and disunity with others more skeptical and less enamoured.

The most skillful liars are smart, oily, manipulative and narcissistic. The very best liars don't even think they're lying and no polygraph would ever detect their untruths.

When asked under oath at a previous inquiry if he had dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber, Bryan Mulroney replied: "Well,from time to time, not very often. When he was going through Montreal, he would give me a call. We would have a cup of coffee, I think, once or twice."

No amount of contextualization can change the fact that this is a bald-faced lie. There were three envelopes of cash that went from Schreiber's hands to Mulroney's, probably without any coffee involved, one of those times in New York and another in Zurich. Even if this is a commonplace for Mulroney, it should certainly have been mentioned in his reply. Referring back to Mulroney's answer: it was more than twice, more than in Montreal and more than just coffee. It was also more than Mr. Schreiber calling Mr. Mulroney if it is true than Mr. Doucet contacted Schreiber on Mulroney's behalf. This short reply by Mr. Mulroney overflows with misrepresentation and evasion.

Frank Moores is another member of this Liars Club. Moores stated more than once that he had no involvement in what became known as the Airbus affair. However, in November 2007, the Globe & Mail, produced proof of Mr. Moores involvement in the form of a copy of a letter to Franz Josef Strauss, chairman of Airbus. Again, the most egregious of lies.

A probationary member at this point is Fred Doucet. Mr. Schreiber filed an affidavit which alleges that the former Mulroney adviser asked him to transfer Airbus funds to Mulroney's lawyer in Geneva. As with his mentor, Mr. Doucet denies this. He is quoted as categorizing it as a "fabrication".

Mulroney denies having had a lawyer in Switzerland but then adds "...except to defend himself.." There never seems to be a straight, simple answer with Mulroney or his cronies. And these contexts and backgrounds that are brought out only under duress and in dribs and drabs, almost always change the reply substantially, in fact, in many cases reverse it. So, we will wait and hope to see the truth emerge and see if "no Swiss lawyer" becomes "except when I did have one for.." and "no Airbus monies" becomes "except for those that went through Frank Moores lobbyist company" at which point they presumably ceased being Airbus monies and became Government Consultants International (GCI) monies.

It is likely that there are other Mulroney & company lies that stretch across the border into the States, to do with the FTA, to do with Meech Lake, almost anything you can think of. Anomalies that are currently on the table - the burglary of PC records involving possible offshore Schreiber-related funding for Mulroney's treacherous unseating of Joe Clark; the sale of publicly-paid-for furniture from 24 Sussex & then the hurried reimbursing when it was revealed in the newspapers; the appearance of large amounts of cash in Mulroney's possesion that was used to pay for renovations at Mulroney's Montreal abode after he left office supposedly in financial straits (while Mulroney professed surprise at Schreiber's use of cash).

Admittedly there will be a time when Mulroney's noxious personality will no longer soil his legacy and his achievements, if they are still regarded as achievements, will stand alone on their merit but it won't be any time soon. Until then, the promised public inquiry is a must and a charge of perjury should be levied for Mulroney's previous answer about his dealings with Schreiber.

Bryan Mulroney and "The Liars Club", Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2007
Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.