Ireland's Debt Servitude

 by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Originally published in the The Telegraph, November 30, 2010

Stripped to its essentials, the €85bn package imposed on Ireland by the Eurogroup and the European Central Bank is a bail-out for improvident British, German, Dutch, and Belgian bankers and creditors.

The Irish taxpayers carry the full burden, and deplete what remains of their reserve pension fund to cover a quarter of the cost.

This arrangement – I am not going to grace it with the term deal – was announced in Brussels before the elected Taoiseach of Ireland had been able to tell his own people what their fate would be.

The Taoiseach said afterwards that Brussels had squelched any idea of haircuts for senior bondholders: a lack of “political and institutional” support in his polite words: or “they hit the roof”, according to leaks.

One can see why the EU authorities reacted so vehemently. Such a move at this delicate juncture would have set off an even more dramatic chain reaction in the EMU debt markets than the one we are already seeing.

It is harder to justify why the Irish should pay the entire price for upholding the European banking system, and why they should accept ruinous terms.

I might add that if it is really true that a haircut on the senior debt of Anglo Irish, et al, would bring down the entire financial edifice of Europe, then how did any of these European banks pass their stress tests this summer, and how did the EU authorities ever let the matter reach this point? Brussels cannot have it both ways.

Anna Karina as The High Priestess

The Devil that is Desire (Why The Secret got it all wrong)

Why is that by merely wanting something, we somehow repel it? I doubt it would be possible to quantify this effect under laboratory conditions, but what human being wouldn’t agree? You only have to really want something for it to all of a sudden become elusive. Late for work and need the bus to come quickly? Need a taxi to the airport? Have a job interview and really want them to call you back? Waiting for a phone call from a potential suitor? Somehow we know that all these situations are prime candidates for frustration and anger.

It may seem like superstition, but it's a fundamental truth in life that by attaching ourselves to an outcome we lessen or even significantly reduce our chances of happiness.

The religions of the Indian sub-continent have harped on this idea for thousands of years. The Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita and the Buddhist Sutras all continually focus on relinquishing desire and attachments to people, feelings and things. They tell us to not to attach ourselves to the outcomes of our actions, just act freely. They assure us that this is the path to happiness and even enlightenment.

There is one very simple and important question to ask about the teaching of non-attachment, is it just a safer bet? By not putting your eggs in any basket are you simply assuring that none get broken? Is it in effect a coward’s path? It is not. It is the path of death, of transformation and of spiritual growth.

Non-attachment goes much deeper than just “being okay” with what happens. The key to understanding the concept of non-attachment is to focus on what is attaching itself to things, people and ideas. Becoming aware of attachment is the beginning of true consciousness. The ego is what's attaches itself, it's the glue. There is no psychological pain, frustration, heartbreak, anger or hate that the ego is not completely responsible for. The path to redemption always begins with discovering that we aren’t who we really we think we are. The hero is never really the child of his “parents”, he always winds up being some else’s child. This is mythologies way of indicating that we are not the ego.

Gautama Buddha began is spiritual path as a young prince with a beautiful wife and newborn baby. Many important seers predicted Buddha would be either a great king or a great spiritual leader. His father wanted him to be a king, so he sheltered Buddha from religious teachings and seeing anyone elderly or suffering. But at the age of 29 he accidentally saw a man dying, and Buddha became distraught. His young and beautiful wife would one day become old and decrepit and his new born baby would eventually taste death. This realization was too much for him, and he left everything to become a monk in the forest. Buddha had a major existential depression. The two paths were presented to him, and he, like all heroes, chose the path of death. So many spiritual traditions point out that there are two paths, and like Buddha, the truth lies on the difficult road.

Not to belabor the obvious, but our modern society puts so much time and energy into avoiding seeing and discussing death that we seem to be constantly running from it. One turns forty and becomes melancholy which turns into some plastic surgery, a new car, and a prescription for anti-depressants. Even our government bans photographing flag covered caskets because, God forbid, people might begin equating war with the death of its young people. Death is the only teacher; it defines us, tempering our appetites and rage. It is our better half, and the more we try and escape it, the sillier, shallower and more pathetic we become.

Of course some depressions are entirely chemical in nature and need to be treated with medication. But many are simply existential crises which if treated with introspection, will inspire growth and spiritual development. Our avoidance of the tough topics has lead to an immature society. Look at the great debates of our times and you will see few if any mature voices above the fray. We have become a society of screamers, name callers and megalomaniacs. How else can one explain Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck leading political discourse in this country? A mature person must pass through ‘the dark night of the soul’, and often more than once. It's unpleasant, eerie, foreboding and at times hopeless; but how can one be human without crossing that bridge? By trying to escape it we are running from our higher destines both individually and collectively.

Doctors need symptoms before they can cure, and people need symptoms to grow. Take romantic love for example. While it is surely one of the most wonderful feelings humans can have, only when it is lost do we actually learn and grow from it. People happily in love are like carefree drunks on a park bench. Only when their love ends can they hope to develop. Our society so longs to label and package things that it wants to take the great questions of the day and turn them into music videos. Hollywood, television, malls, pop-music, bestsellers and cheap gurus are tuning our minds into mush and our souls to silicone.

The most important transitional crisis is undoubtedly middle age. It's the point where people either return to their youth, escaping the inevitable onslaught of time, or they take the courageous turn toward death and jettison the ego and material world for something much more profound and transcendent. Jung called it the process of individuation and was not interested in patients younger than forty, finding them lacking enough existential leverage to reach deep spiritual understanding.

So how did The Secret get it wrong? First, how did it get it right. The Secret is one of the most brilliant direct marketing pieces ever created. Like all good direct response work, it strikes at deep chords in the human psyche, greed and love (sex). The classical direct response piece, like its close relative the con scheme, always has its hook in easy money. The Secret puts most direct response work, and con games, to shame with its simplicity. Simply think you have a million dollars and you will have it. As you read this ‘divine revelation’ over and over again, you are introduced to a series of gurus and inspirational speakers with websites galore ready to sell you all you need to be happy.

Basically, The Secret is a hundred pages saying “fake it till you make it” disguised as spiritual revelation, expertly packaged in a in a direct response piece promoting the products of a bunch a quacks. To top it all off, free distribution through social media on the Internet and you have a game changing piece of marketing. But apart from a very professional sales pitch, the sad thing about The Secret is that it promotes desire as a religious attribute. Don’t look beyond desire for something more profound, embrace it and become one with it. Zen Capitalism.

By allowing desire to become the person all is lost in the labyrinth of the ego, which blocks out all universal consciousness, leaving one in the dry barren place of anti-depressants, malls, cable television, McDonald's, golf clubs and of course The Secret.

The ego is a necessary element of human development. In order for us to separate from our mothers, our families, leave childhood and navigate the horrible adolescent years, we need an ego. We must make an exceptional effort to create a healthy stable ego that will feed our ambition, drive, self esteem, and allow us to make something of ourselves, find a partner and protect our loved ones. But once that process is complete, the second half of life should follow the reverse path, trading away ego for universal consciousness. The two are incompatible. The ego drags us out of infancy and childhood and finally, when we realize we are not the ego, that we are a reflection of something incomparably bigger, we must slowly allow the ego to crumble in the face of ‘the truth’.

In India, some men in their 50’s, once their children are grown become, Sadhus, ascetic wandering monks, leaving their work, status, family, in short, their egos, for the contemplative life. Some are even obligated to attend their own funerals, to reinforce the idea of becoming dead onto oneself. Many men in the west do the opposite, they find a younger wife, start a new business, and do it all over again, preferring to live two lives instead of one real one. This is the key choice in life, retold countless times in spiritual and mythological stories. The hero often has a choice between two paths, security (ego) and death (universal consciousness). Death is change; it’s the formless void from which form emerges, the knife that cuts, the bullet that wounds. Only from the perspective of middle age can one see the folly of the ego while accepting it as the ‘game of life’.

But how sad is it to see mature adults falling into the games of the ego? The Osama Bin Laden’s, the George W Bush’s, the Kim Jong- il’s, the Sadam Hussein’s and Dick Cheney’s of the world. Where is their maturity? Lost somewhere in the tremendous vortex of their egos. Egos must play out their scripts as Freud said, in business, politics and the arts, but under the watchful and restraining eye of responsible, spiritually mature adults. We should never let people lost in their egos pull the real strings. Nationalism, wars, environmental destruction, misery in places of abundant wealth are all products of the ego. Spiritually mature people don’t let oligarchs, investment banks and corporations bath in fortunes while people close at hand live in poverty.

Modern life brings many difficulties along with its wonderful achievements. It’s common now in the West to see couples having their first child almost exactly at the apex of middle age. It’s difficult to look one’s baby in the eyes and not feel the ego rise in rightful defense of the young family. Where is the time for the spirit to grow when there are mouths to feed, bills to pay and schooling to provide? How is the earth going to sustain wealthy 60 years-olds consuming like 25 year-olds? If we look at life in two parts, the first is spent in full service of the ego, raising offspring, making money, finding status, and the second is the elegant glide back into the universal from which we emerged. Unfortunately, too many people want part two to be a remake of part one, which in the end denies the greatest and most difficult fruits of life while devastating the earth and denying the world a mature, enlightened leadership. As Jesus told Martha, sister of Lazarus, who worried too much over the home, as opposed to her spiritual sister Mary. “Martha, Martha, Mary has chosen the better half, and it shall not be taken from her." What is the “better half”? It is the un-owned, un-possessed, un-speak able, un-identifiable, the void, all that is and ever was, the road less traveled, the Tao.

Of course, embracing the spiritual life is no easy task, if it where, the promise could not be so great. At mid life, people must face death and embrace it. It’s much more comfortable to flee toward security, no matter how ephemeral it is. An adult must make a great leap of faith to not only accept death, but to embrace it, bath in the sublime nectar of impermanence, brevity, change and all that is transient. Only from this place is one able to see why we are unhappy in spite of our possessions, status, money, and unending consumption. By letting go of all that sustains us, and feeds the ego, we can finally feel the euphoria of universal consciousness. Almost all traditions point a big finger in the same direction, no matter what our background, one must only look up and you will see it hanging over you, pointing you somewhere, and if that place terrifies you, than you know you are on the right path.

Robert Fisk: An American Bribe that Stinks of Appeasement

By Robert Frisk, originally published in The Independent, November 20, 2010

In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter's reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else's property would be regarded as preposterous. Three billion dollars' worth of fighter bombers in return for a temporary freeze in West Bank colonisation for a mere 90 days? Not including East Jerusalem – so goodbye to the last chance of the east of the holy city for a Palestinian capital – and, if Benjamin Netanyahu so wishes, a rip-roaring continuation of settlement on Arab land. In the ordinary sane world in which we think we live, there is only one word for Barack Obama's offer: appeasement. Usually, our lords and masters use that word with disdain and disgust.

Anyone who panders to injustice by one people against another people is called an appeaser. Anyone who prefers peace at any price, let alone a $3bn bribe to the guilty party – is an appeaser. Anyone who will not risk the consequences of standing up for international morality against territorial greed is an appeaser. Those of us who did not want to invade Afghanistan were condemned as appeasers. Those of us who did not want to invade Iraq were vilified as appeasers. Yet that is precisely what Obama has done in his pathetic, unbelievable effort to plead with Netanyahu for just 90 days of submission to international law. Obama is an appeaser.

Ten reasons why East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel

Israeli hawks say that Jerusalem is theirs because of a long, romantic national history there. Too bad it's made up

By Juan Cole, oringally published in Salon

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Council on Monday that "Jerusalem is not a settlement." He continued that the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel cannot be denied. He added that neither could the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He insisted, "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today." He said, "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital." He told his applauding audience of 7,500 that he was simply following the policies of all Israeli governments since the 1967 conquest of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

Netanyahu mixed together romantic, nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.

So here are the reasons that Netanyahu is profoundly wrong, and East Jerusalem does not belong to him.

1. In international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to its district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of civilians who are occupied, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers' country in the occupied territory. Israel's expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, its usurpation of Palestinian property there, and its settling of Israelis on Palestinian land are all gross violations of international law. Israeli claims that they are not occupying Palestinians because the Palestinians have no state are cruel and tautological. Israeli claims that they are building on empty territory are laughable. My back yard is empty, but that does not give Netanyahu the right to put up an apartment complex on it.

An Authentic American - Ron Paul 2012

Dr. Ron Paul, Congressman for Texas's 14th Congressional District interviewed by ABC's John Stossel. The interview is broken up into six parts.



Click Read More to see the other six parts.

A Modest Proposal to the Fortunate 1%

The distribution of wealth in the United States has become more and more unequal since the mid 1970’s. Wealth is not income, it's the stuff people own, houses, cars, money in the bank, stocks, bonds, etc as opposed to income which is money earned from work, rent, dividends among other things.

The United States has by far the most unequal distribution of wealth of the entire industrialized world. It is interesting that the US is the only rich, industrialized nation in the world not to have universal health care, and it is also the industrialized nation with the most unequal distribution of wealth.


Wealth is a more real indicator than income. I may go to a bar with my friends, and never buy anyone a drink, but I could have a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket. How much I spend is not a good indicator of how much I have in my wallet.

1. The top 1% of households own 38% of the wealth.
2. The wealthiest 10% of families own 85% of all outstanding stock, 85% of all financial instruments, and 90% of all business assets.
3. The bottom 20% of the population basically own nothing, they have no net worth.

But for purposes of this essay, the focus will be on the fortunate 1%. If owner occupied housing is excluded from the numbers, the top 1% own 50% of everything else. That means businesses, stock in corporations, non-owner occupied real estate, financial instruments, bonds etc. The top 1% owns 50% of the stock market. To enter into this club, you needed to have a net worth in 2004 of over $6,191,500. (From Edward Wolff , professor of economics New York University)

So when the oil companies were making record profits with oil prices at over $140 a barrel, 50% of those profits were going to the top 1% of households. When Wall Street was rolling in money during the real estate boom selling exotic derivatives on mortgaged back securities, 50% of the profits were going to the top one percent. When Wall Street collapsed into a self created black whole of bad paper, sending the world into financial chaos, 50% of the trillions sent to Wall Street in the form of a public life preserver went to the top 1% of households.

So how much do the top 1% pay in taxes? They pay about 25% of the entire tax burden, which may seem like a lot when compared to income, but not when we compare it to net worth. (American Enterprise Institute) If we look all non-tangible financial assets owned by Americans, a very ball park figure given by Dr. John Rutledge, former Reagan economic adviser, is about 150 trillion dollars. Below is a breakdown of wealth distribution compared to taxes paid by the different tier groups.

	Total Number (Millions)	Avg. Net Worth	Avg. Taxes Paid	% of Net Worth
Top 1%	1.3	$67 Million	$319,000	0.5%
Top 25%	35	$428,000	$31,000	7%
Bottom 40%	70	$4,680	$4,570	100%
Totals	112	133,000	$7,911	6%

We must also consider where our taxes go. Currently, if we include off the books expenditures like the war in Iraq, military spending is close to 25% of the Federal budget. And a simple look at US military expeditions in the 20th and 21st century makes it clear these wars were not fought to protect mainstream America from an imminent foreign danger, they were fought for the economic interests of the super elites: South Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I & II, The Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama to name a few. And if we include organizations like the CIA and their escapades in Iran, Chile, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala etc. they are clearly group of professional thugs being paid to protect the personal fortunes of the lucky 1%. Some may say “As go the super elites, so go we all” which may be true. But the point is that the whole show is being put on for their benefit and as a nation we must at least being willing to accept that.

Take the example of Israel. American Jews make up an important part of the lucky 1%, by some very broad calculations, maybe 40% of the top 1% (Forbes wealthiest 400 Americans) and they make up less than 3% of the US population. How does that translate into influence on American foreign policy? Israel has received more US foreign aid than any other country since WWII, $140 billion, about $3 billion a year. And since 1982, the US has used 32 UN Security Council vetoes against resolutions critical of Israel, more than all other vetoes of all nations combined. The Jewish elite basically use our State Department for their own, extra-national interests. And the neo-con movement, which is simply another word for an American foreign policy dedicated to protecting the interests of Israel, has entangled the US in the war in Iraq, blatantly inventing a story about WMD’s and taking advantage of the national hysteria after 9/11.

One hundred years ago, maybe even fifty years ago, these would have been arguments for revolution, reasons to takeover the means of production and topple the exploiters of the world. People then argued that the natural resources of our countries; oil, coal, natural gas, minerals, fish, etc. should be owned by all of us, not controlled by the 1%. But times have changed, ideologies have gone the way of eight track tapes and now the masses have a hard time imagining much beyond their iPhones, A-Rod, K-Rod, J-Lo, TO and what Britney Spears is wearing.

But even from this barren place of consumerist apoplexy, we can still ask our masters for a bone or two. And we, the humble, mindless, payers of unending credit card debt, student loans and upside down mortgages (50% of the interest of course is headed directly to the pockets of the 1%) respectfully ask our wise and just rulers for two things. Give us universal health care, a single payer plan. We will pay something in, make a token contribution, but you will pick up most of the tab (about $2.5 trillion), and you will also give us a complete overhaul of our primary and secondary educations, with national standards in the form of national federal tests, and very big subsidies for higher education in the form of national scholarships for promising students. Americans want to leave college without debt, and you are going to pay for it, about $75 billion a year. Let’s look at the numbers again.

Total Financial Assets of 1% Millions	Total US Health Care Costs Year in Millions	Total Borrowed US College Students Year in Millions	Estimated Cost of Federal Education Standards Exam	Total in Millions	Percent of Total Financial Assets, Fortunate 1%
$75,000,000	$2,500,000	$75,000	$5,000	$2,580,000	3.4%

How would this be paid? Basically, it would be a tax on financial assets over $1 million. The first 1 million is not taxed, and after that, it would come to about a 5% tax on non tangible assets. The top 1% will have to plan for a minor liquidity event every April, they will survive.

Why should the wise and deserving 1% be so generous with the masses? Two reasons. The first is that it will make them even richer. Who runs their corporations, makes interests payments to them, flips hamburgers in their chains of garbage food, sells and drinks their soft drinks, beer, and spirits, fights their wars, runs their governments, protects them from the violent and fulfills their every whim? The healthier and smarter the masses, the better the 1% will live. They will have better, more prompt rent payments and interest payments, more efficient soldiers to protect their investments, better and happier professionals to count their money and keep them healthy when they are feeling under the weather.

And the second reason is maybe the drugged and numb masses will sober up one day. They might turn off their televisions, forget about their sports teams, Hollywood trash and malls, and actually start to think. That is not a good thing for the 1%. Because if the 20% who have nothing decide they also have nothing to lose, it might get a little warm in the designer Italian kitchen. So here is the deal. The 1% can keep everything, only they give us top notch health insurance, basically for free, and then educate us to the hilt. The 50% they own will grow substantially, it is a good investment, and the 80% on the bottom will remain the loyal, dummied down, consuming, interest paying, TV watching imbeciles you have always known and loved.

A very modest proposal indeed.

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Did Hitler Want War?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war. Six years later, 50 million Christians and Jews had perished.
Britain was broken and bankrupt, Germany a smoldering ruin. Europe had served as the site of the most murderous combat known to man, and civilians had suffered worse horrors than the soldiers.

By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin. A hundred million Christians were under the heel of the most barbarous tyranny in history: the Bolshevik regime of the greatest terrorist of them all, Joseph Stalin. What cause could justify such sacrifices?

The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson's principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.

Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland's rescue. But why would Britain hand an unsolicited war guarantee to a junta of Polish colonels, giving them the power to drag Britain into a second war with the most powerful nation in Europe? Was Danzig worth a war?

Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn't want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany. Comes the response: The war guarantee was not about Danzig, or even about Poland. It was about the moral and strategic imperative "to stop Hitler" after he showed, by tearing up the Munich pact and Czechoslovakia with it, that he was out to conquer the world. And this Nazi beast could not be allowed to do that. If true, a fair point. Americans, after all, were prepared to use atom bombs to keep the Red Army from the Channel. But where is the evidence that Adolf Hitler, whose victims as of March 1939 were a fraction of Gen. Pinochet's, or Fidel Castro's, was out to conquer the world?

After Munich in 1938, Czechoslovakia did indeed crumble and come apart. Yet consider what became of its parts. The Sudeten Germans were returned to German rule, as they wished. Poland had annexed the tiny disputed region of Teschen, where thousands of Poles lived. Hungary's ancestral lands in the south of Slovakia had been returned to her. The Slovaks had their full independence guaranteed by Germany. As for the Czechs, they came to Berlin for the same deal as the Slovaks, but Hitler insisted they accept a protectorate. Now one may despise what was done, but how did this partition of Czechoslovakia manifest a Hitlerian drive for world conquest?

Comes the reply: If Britain had not given the war guarantee and gone to war, after Czechoslovakia would have come Poland's turn, then Russia's, then France's, then Britain's, then the United States. We would all be speaking German now. But if Hitler was out to conquer the world — Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia — why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can't get out of the Baltic Sea? If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany? Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk? Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell? Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser's fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez?

Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece? Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps. Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy, Miklos Horthy's Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso's Slovakia.

Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally. As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia? Winston Churchill was right when he called it "The Unnecessary War" — the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.

 September 2, 2009

Do those who flaunt the poppy on their lapels know that they mock the war dead?

By Robert Frisk  

Originally published in The Independent, November 5, 2011

I turned on the television in my Damascus hotel room to witness a dreary sight: all the boys and girls of BBC World wearing their little poppies again.

Bright red they were, with that particularly silly green leaf out of the top – it was never part of the original Lady Haig appeal – and not one dared to appear on screen without it. Do these pathetic men and women know how they mock the dead? I trust that Jon Snow has maintained his dignity by not wearing it.

Now I've mentioned my Dad too many times in The Independent. He died almost 20 years ago so, after today, I think it's time he was allowed to rest in peace, and that readers should in future be spared his sometimes bald wisdom. This is the last time he will make an appearance. But he had strong views about wearing the poppy. He was a soldier of the Great War, Battle of Arras 1918 – often called the Third Battle of the Somme – and the liberation of Cambrai, along with many troops from Canada. The Kaiser Wilhelm's army had charitably set the whole place on fire and he was appalled by the scorched earth policy of the retreating Germans. But of course, year after year, he would go along to the local cenotaph in Birkenhead, and later in Maidstone, where I was born 28 years after the end of his Great War, and he always wore his huge black coat, his regimental tie – 12th Battalion, the King's Liverpool Regiment – and his poppy.

In those days, it was – I recall this accurately, I think – a darker red, blood-red rather than BBC-red, larger than the sorrow-lite version I see on the BBC and without that ridiculous leaf. So my Dad would stand and I would be next to him in my Yardley Court School blazer at 10 years old and later, aged 16, in my Sutton Valence School blazer, with my very own Lady Haig poppy, its long black wire snaking through the material, sprouting from my lapel.

My Dad gave me lots of books about the Great War, so I knew about the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo before I went to school – and 47 years before I stood, amid real shellfire, in the real Sarajevo and put my feet on the very pavement footprints where Gavrilo Princip fired the fatal shots.

But as the years passed, old Bill Fisk became very ruminative about the Great War. He learned that Haig had lied, that he himself had fought for a world that betrayed him, that 20,000 British dead on the first day of the Somme – which he mercifully avoided because his first regiment, the Cheshires, sent him to Dublin and Cork to deal with another 1916 "problem" – was a trashing of human life. In hospital and recovering from cancer, I asked him once why the Great War was fought. "All I can tell you, fellah," he said, "was that it was a great waste." And he swept his hand from left to right. Then he stopped wearing his poppy. I asked him why, and he said that he didn't want to see "so many damn fools" wearing it – he was a provocative man and, sadly, I fell out with him in his old age.

What he meant was that all kinds of people who had no idea of the suffering of the Great War – or the Second, for that matter – were now ostentatiously wearing a poppy for social or work-related reasons, to look patriotic and British when it suited them, to keep in with their friends and betters and employers. These people, he said to me once, had no idea what the trenches of France were like, what it felt like to have your friends die beside you and then to confront their brothers and wives and lovers and parents. At home, I still have a box of photographs of his mates, all of them killed in 1918.

So like my Dad, I stopped wearing the poppy on the week before Remembrance Day, 11 November, when on the 11th hour of the 11 month of 1918, the armistice ended the war called Great. I didn't feel I deserved to wear it and I didn't think it represented my thoughts. The original idea came, of course, from the Toronto military surgeon and poet John McCrae and was inspired by the death of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, killed on 3 May 1915. "In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row." But it's a propaganda poem, urging readers to "take up the quarrel with the foe". Bill Fisk eventually understood this and turned against it. He was right.

I've had my share of wars, and often return to the ancient Western Front. Three years ago, I was honoured to be invited to give the annual Armistice Day Western Front memorial speech at the rebuilt Cloth Hall in Ypres. The ghost of my long-dead 2nd Lieutenant Dad was, of course, in the audience. I quoted all my favourite Great War writers, along with the last words of Nurse Edith Cavell, and received, shortly afterwards, a wonderful and eloquent letter from the daughter of that fine Great War soldier Edmund Blunden. (Read his Undertones of War, if you do nothing else in life.) But I didn't wear a poppy. And I declined to lay a wreath at the Menin Gate. This was something of which I was not worthy. Instead, while they played the last post, I looked at the gravestones on the city walls.

As a young boy, I also went to Ypres with my Dad, stayed at the "Old Tom Hotel" (it is still there, on the same side of the square as the Cloth Hall) and met many other "old soldiers", all now dead. I remember that they wanted to remember their dead comrades. But above all, they wanted an end to war. But now I see these pathetic creatures with their little sand-pit poppies – I notice that our masters in the House of Commons do the same – and I despise them. Heaven be thanked that the soldiers of the Great War cannot return today to discover how their sacrifice has been turned into a fashion appendage.

Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech

Transcript of Commencement Speech at Stanford given by Steve Jobs, May 2005

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. 


This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

The Powerful Center

Politics in America is dominated by the center, where the center goes, so goes the nation. It is time for that center to create an agenda, clear, concise and with real consequences for those will to accept the challenge of governing the nation. We have two political parties, and that is plenty. They serve their organizational and ideological purposes, but what is needed is an agenda from the middle.

Our founding fathers bequeathed us an immense privilege to be able to replace the entire House of Representatives every two years. If the center, regardless of political affiliation, supported a Five Point Agenda for the next Congress, and electronically signed a political referendum that stated they wanted these five pieces of legislation passed or they would vote out the entire House of Representatives and all Senators up for re-election a new force would be created on the political scene.


This force does not have to claim a majority of voters; it simply has to claim a large majority of the center. If one assumes that swing voters are the ones that decide who is elected, than they really “control” the nation. If they are capable of creating their own identity and political agenda, they can effectively make very important policy demands. If the swing voters make up 25% of all voters and 80% of them is enough to make “block”, then a group of voters making up only 20% of all voters could play the lead role in our political drama.

It is time that We the People started to put the screws to the powers that be, through Our government. Our government and constitution are our wealth, our fortune, our way to control and protect ourselves from financial elites that have taken over this country and put the masses to sleep with a sloppy and silly mass culture. It is time that this 20% take over the reigns of government away from super rich elites and over represented special interest groups.

The Five Points. Each point must be accomplished through a piece of legislation that clearly outlines the plan to accomplish the objectives, the funding, and the way it is to be measured. All projects must be completely funded, no deficit spending. If all Five Points are not accomplished, the 20% promises to vote against all federal incumbents, regardless of party, no exceptions.

1. Health Care

If a health care reform plan is passed in this congress, it will be evaluated to see if it meets the basic criteria for this point. If it does, than this is a gimme, if it does not, than a new piece of legislation must be passed. We want simple, clear and effective health insurance for all people in America. All who work and make above a certain threshold pay in, all who employ above a minimum number of employees pay in per employee. All those who are self employed or independently wealthy pay-in. Everyone in the country has health insurance. It is that simple. See this previous post for a complete discussion The Elusive Single-Payer Plan

2. Education

A Standardized National Test for high school seniors must be implemented as a federally administered national exam that covers ten major areas of study and would be given to all graduating high school seniors. The exam would establish national standards for the major areas of study: math, science, history, art etc. The exam would create a new national “test”, and minimum tests scores would be demanded for certain government jobs and to qualify for national scholarships. This exam would give us national standards for education without interfering in the local administration of education. It will be funded with a tax on advertising. See this previous post for a complete discussion We Need a Standardized Exam to Test all US Graduating High School Students


3. Energy

The United States needs a progressive, innovative energy policy that taxes carbon emitting forms of transportation and energy production while promoting new, clean, renewable and sustainable forms of energy. The Federal Government must take advantage of its control over GM to foment new technologies around the automobile and push this country toward leadership in that sector once again. A new type of automobile must be created with a non-combustion engine. Federally owned VC firms need to be created to fund long-term projects with seed money. Wind and solar farms need to be created, new sources explored. This will keep us competitive and help grow the economy in new sectors. This will be funded with a national gas tax as well as a tax on combustion car cylinders. See this previous post for a complete discussion Time to Send GM West


4. Foreign Policy

The foreign policy of the United States has been dominated by a blind support for the State of Israel. American foreign policy has been hijacked by a small, insignificant state and it is time that we take it back. No longer will the US have a “special relationship” with Israel. For the United States, a Palestinian man in Gaza is as much of a man, with the same potential and rights to a dignified life as an Israeli man in Tel Aviv. The United States must make a major policy shift, stating that the days of the “special relationship” are over. Our politicians must stop pandering to Israel and once again focus on the truly important players in the world, ie, China, Europe, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Mexico etc. We must stop fighting proxy wars for Israel and devoting enormous portions of our foreign aid and diplomatic efforts to a country that offers us nothing in return. Our foreign policy must begin to promote the same values overseas that we value at home. See this previous post for a complete discussion Israel, the Jews and American Foreign Policy

5. Drug Policy

The time has come for us to stop waging war on our own citizens. We need to immediately stop sending people to prison for non-violent drug crimes. The hypocrisy of allowing people to self medicate with “legal” drugs and allow their producers not only to prosper from it, but to advertise their usage, must end. We need to legalize the sale and usage of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and designer drugs. Their prices must be made at levels that will make the black market sale of them unprofitable. This will end the terrible drug wars in Latin America, stop the incarceration of non-violent drug users in America, and make us a more just, democratic and tolerant nation. Tax revenue from the sale of these drugs will go directly toward rehabilitation for all people with drug problems (alcohol, “legal” pills included) and also to large campaigns to promote healthy lifestyles. See this previous post for a complete discussion One War We Don't Need

These five pieces of legislation will change the lives of many Americans. The over forty million Americans without healthcare will have it, young men and women will stop going to jail for buying, selling or taking recreational drugs, our country will finally put its ingenuity and creativity toward creating new renewable forms of energy, our children will begin to receive a world class, challenging education and our foreign policy will finally reflect the same values we cherish at home.

This is not a smoke and mirrors agenda that is secretly promoting the interests of the 1% who control the 50%, as has happened so many times in the past. These are five things that will really change our lives and our children’s lives dramatically, while maintaining intact our sacred democratic institutions. It is time we took our country back from the super wealthy elites and very small special interests groups and give it back to the center where it belongs.

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The Emerald Tablet

Hermes Trismegistus

It is true without lying, certain and most true. That which is Below is like that which is Above and that which is Above is like that which is Below to do the miracles of the Only Thing.

And as all things have been and arose from One by the mediation of One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation. 

The Sun is its father; the Moon its mother; the Wind hath carried it in its belly; the Earth is its nurse. 

The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into Earth.

Separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, sweetly with great industry. It ascends from the Earth to the Heavens and again it descends to the Earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior.

By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations, whereof the process is here in this. 

Hence am I called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.