No judge censored me until 2007, but the culture has made sure nothing I say gets heard all my life. It was only at age sixty-nine that the silencing became official; till then it had merely been factual, manifest.
The illusionist holds a deck of trick cards and says to his audience, "This is deck of ordinary playing cards." Lying is just one thing that illusionists do. This kleptocracy which calls itself the United States says it has free speech. It's written into a amendment to the Constitution. Note: it's not found by objective alien scientists; it's claimed: by the lawyers, the illusionist.
Information in a kleptocracy must be controlled: so nothing incriminating the illusionist can reach the audience.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
DDD versus Klep
DDD has recently been coined for the purpose of being added to pk symbology. I added it via my deschooling blog, InfoAll. The deed has given me another self-appelled nickname, General DDD.
Kleptocracies amass power by regulating information. This deschooler not only founded the world's first offering of a low-cost digital library, a low-tech social networking internet, all in 1970, but seconded as well Ivan Illich's curse against kleptocratic regulaion. DDD abbreviates a series of "De"s. DeSchool is perhaps the most obvious: but only if you understand Illich's deschooling will you see the rest. "School" was the first in a series of "professions" that Illich attacked: as non-Christian, incompatible with conviviality. His worst trouble came when he attacked his fellow priests (he got defrocked, put in Coventry, stripped of financing). His most far reaching trouble came when he attacked the health industry. The priests hadn't take it lying down, neither had the school teachers, but it was the doctors who really aroused themselves to finance his erasure. I allied myself to Illich after he'd already been disposed of by the church: just in time to get myself eclipsed as well: by the teachers, the lawyers, the doctors, the nurses, the pharmers ... the media! all with the connivance of the public.
DDD: DeSchool! DeRegulate! DeProfessionalize. It might be best in this order: DeRegulate – DeProfessionalize — DeSchool.
The General in General DDD is also significant: I echo Bucky Fuller's plea for generalists to repair damage done by over-specialization! (I also refer to General Sutter, the developer of California whose gold as well as land and livestock we stole in 1849. He promoted himself to Colonel, then General: I think that's a riot, especially since deschooling requires that I not so much as admit to a BA let alone an MA let alone a Ph.D.!) (I carry the reverse snobbism of Dr. Sagan's fellow doctors calling each other "Mister" to a new level.) (Carl Sagan addressed me as Doctor Knatz. So did Rollo May! I love it. They took correction from me!)
Back in the 1960s, Monseigneur Ivan Illich, a Roman Catholic priest, the most famous in the world apart from the Pope, said that if the Roman Catholic Church wished to become Christian, it would have to
Kleptocracies amass power by regulating information. This deschooler not only founded the world's first offering of a low-cost digital library, a low-tech social networking internet, all in 1970, but seconded as well Ivan Illich's curse against kleptocratic regulaion. DDD abbreviates a series of "De"s. DeSchool is perhaps the most obvious: but only if you understand Illich's deschooling will you see the rest. "School" was the first in a series of "professions" that Illich attacked: as non-Christian, incompatible with conviviality. His worst trouble came when he attacked his fellow priests (he got defrocked, put in Coventry, stripped of financing). His most far reaching trouble came when he attacked the health industry. The priests hadn't take it lying down, neither had the school teachers, but it was the doctors who really aroused themselves to finance his erasure. I allied myself to Illich after he'd already been disposed of by the church: just in time to get myself eclipsed as well: by the teachers, the lawyers, the doctors, the nurses, the pharmers ... the media! all with the connivance of the public.
DDD: DeSchool! DeRegulate! DeProfessionalize. It might be best in this order: DeRegulate – DeProfessionalize — DeSchool.
The General in General DDD is also significant: I echo Bucky Fuller's plea for generalists to repair damage done by over-specialization! (I also refer to General Sutter, the developer of California whose gold as well as land and livestock we stole in 1849. He promoted himself to Colonel, then General: I think that's a riot, especially since deschooling requires that I not so much as admit to a BA let alone an MA let alone a Ph.D.!) (I carry the reverse snobbism of Dr. Sagan's fellow doctors calling each other "Mister" to a new level.) (Carl Sagan addressed me as Doctor Knatz. So did Rollo May! I love it. They took correction from me!)
Back in the 1960s, Monseigneur Ivan Illich, a Roman Catholic priest, the most famous in the world apart from the Pope, said that if the Roman Catholic Church wished to become Christian, it would have to
- Give up its property
- Deprofessionalize its priesthood.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Tow Away Zone
Monotheism imagines many devils, myriad humans, multitudes of creatures for one God. I imagine a bell curve with similar numbers of devils at one end of the spectrum and similar numbers of gods at the other with zillions of ordinaries in between.
There is always a multitude of teachers ready to oppose a Galileo, just as there are many rabbis to sabotage a Jesus, and many more theological morons to back the rabbis. There are always many more priests than saints, more teachers than geniuses, more morons than teachers: though total morons, genuine basket cases will be as sparse as the true geniuses. Still: homeostasis prevails, if nature wanted humans to be smart, nature would have to smarted up the average human, not just the occasional Jesus, Bucky, pk ...
I've said all that a zillion times before, have been saying it since the 1960s at least. Today I want to add a different textured foundation stone to the structure. Half a century ago I saw a New Yorker cartoon that tickled me: cars were lined up behind a car being towed away to take the illegal double parking space as soon as the racketeering cops removed the incumbent illegal.
So, pk, what's your metaphor? What does that, gettable only by a New Yorker a mere few decades ago, have to do with homeostasis? Well, there isn't much that doesn't have to do with homeostasis, if only we would see it: the sighted can teach and teach and the blind still won't even know that teaching is being attempted: the blind have their own teachers to prevent learning!) The answer also answers why I place this post at pkKlep. We're thieves, we live on stolen land, thinking stolen ideas, believing stolen faiths.
My son says nothing can be done about it, decades after he's joined the mob in refusing to consider proposals that might have done something about it: his father's proposals, for example. So: here I am: a disciple of Ivan Illich. I wanted the schooled to give up their (perceived) privileges, so all might ascend to liberty. No, no: the schooled want their own perceived liberty, while the markets' victims continue as slaves. Put even more metaphorically, I want to give the land back to the Indians: then we might be able to begin to own land in justice, under law. Thieves making up laws, then remaking them, don't count. I wanted to take Jesus down off the cross, to end his suffering: then we might possibly find a path by which we could try to become Christian. I want to end coercive schooling, then we might find our own intelligence, our own path to learning, and survival.
But the thieves knock me down, put me on my own cross, shrieking their lies all the more hysterically: while the Third World waits in line to immigrate, to take their own place on the stolen land, repeating by rote the stolen lies, feverishly repeating false faiths: kleptocrats are so sincere in their false posturings.
There is always a multitude of teachers ready to oppose a Galileo, just as there are many rabbis to sabotage a Jesus, and many more theological morons to back the rabbis. There are always many more priests than saints, more teachers than geniuses, more morons than teachers: though total morons, genuine basket cases will be as sparse as the true geniuses. Still: homeostasis prevails, if nature wanted humans to be smart, nature would have to smarted up the average human, not just the occasional Jesus, Bucky, pk ...
I've said all that a zillion times before, have been saying it since the 1960s at least. Today I want to add a different textured foundation stone to the structure. Half a century ago I saw a New Yorker cartoon that tickled me: cars were lined up behind a car being towed away to take the illegal double parking space as soon as the racketeering cops removed the incumbent illegal.
So, pk, what's your metaphor? What does that, gettable only by a New Yorker a mere few decades ago, have to do with homeostasis? Well, there isn't much that doesn't have to do with homeostasis, if only we would see it: the sighted can teach and teach and the blind still won't even know that teaching is being attempted: the blind have their own teachers to prevent learning!) The answer also answers why I place this post at pkKlep. We're thieves, we live on stolen land, thinking stolen ideas, believing stolen faiths.
My son says nothing can be done about it, decades after he's joined the mob in refusing to consider proposals that might have done something about it: his father's proposals, for example. So: here I am: a disciple of Ivan Illich. I wanted the schooled to give up their (perceived) privileges, so all might ascend to liberty. No, no: the schooled want their own perceived liberty, while the markets' victims continue as slaves. Put even more metaphorically, I want to give the land back to the Indians: then we might be able to begin to own land in justice, under law. Thieves making up laws, then remaking them, don't count. I wanted to take Jesus down off the cross, to end his suffering: then we might possibly find a path by which we could try to become Christian. I want to end coercive schooling, then we might find our own intelligence, our own path to learning, and survival.
But the thieves knock me down, put me on my own cross, shrieking their lies all the more hysterically: while the Third World waits in line to immigrate, to take their own place on the stolen land, repeating by rote the stolen lies, feverishly repeating false faiths: kleptocrats are so sincere in their false posturings.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Time Jokes
I'm a joker, a clown, an ironist. My best joke I recently wrote may be the macroinformation implicit in nobody getting my jokes, nobody repeating them, publishing them, staging them: very few quoting them. Some of my own favorite pk jokes are jokes about time: my favorite among my Nixon letters was the joke about time (now posted at my PaulKnatz blog): Nixon could promise to have troops out of Vietnam by election time, but if he extended his presidency by rescheduling the election he could continue to wage and escalate war while promising peace: and keep his promise! All that was needed besides presidential treason was a little anti-Constitutional sabotage.
But pk isn't the only such joker. My own jokes are an imitation, sometimes pale, of Twains' and Swift's jokes, and Swift's and Twain's jokes are a pale imitation of God/Vishnu's jokes. For example, tell me a better joke than this one: the Church sells God's mercy to the people. Time is important: you have till your last breath to repent. You can sin your whole life and retain a chance of getting away with it. On the one hand God tells you, through some church, through priests, that he's a terror; but he also tells you, through that church, those priests, that he's a softie, not too bright, he can be got around: especially if you support the priests in luxury.
Of course there's one problem. Let's say it's true: God is a softie, can be got around (if you support his priests in luxury). That still leaves the question open of who are his priests! Is anyone who claims to be his priest? If I come to your door with a tambourine in my hand saying I'm collecting donations for the priests of God, how do you know what I'm actually going to do with the money? How do you know the priests sent me? And how do you know they're priests of God, and not just guys calling themselves priests of God? Their IDs: are they signed by God? or are they imprimateured by priests? And if the priests did send me, how do you know I'm not skimming? When push comes to shove, who's God gonna claim as his own? There are hundreds of churches, thousands, zillions of priests: are all of their parishioners going to be saved? Let's say you tithe the Roman Catholic Church: what if it's the priests of the Jehovah's Witnesses (and their parishioners) God proves soft toward?
OK, here's my real target: what if you support the pope and the cardinals till they're rolling in luxury, and Judgment comes, and God announces that you now have a chance to offer proof that you supported his priests: and he identifies his priests: St. Francis, Ivan Illich, Paul Knatz ... How much support did you give to St. Francis? Oh, no, don't show me your cancelled checks to the Franciscans: the Franciscans are not St. Francis! Show me a video of you handing a penny to St. Francis while he was alive! While he was preaching to the sparrows! No, no, don't show me a receipt for a gift of a million dollars to the Church in 1965; show me a video of you having Ivan Illich over for dinner after the Church defrocked him. Show me your cancelled check for covering pk's phone bill once he'd founded the Free Learning Exchange, Inc.
(It won't do to show that you put a pink breast cancer ribbon on your car: show your receipt for giving money to an actual scientist actually on a track that actually promises to cure breast cancer!) (Show me the sinner repenting with his last breath that God then rolls out the red carpet for.) (how me the priest whose parishioners are actually in heaven.)
Americans believe, without evidence, that our problems will be solved: much the way Christians believe that God will forgive them no matter how much they sin, much the way Jews believe that they are a superior people of a superior nation (same thing the Nazis believed!) In exactly the same way the smokers I've known in my lifetime have believe that they's quit smoking in time to avoid mortal lung cancer. They're dying like flies along about now, those who haven't died already. I knew one who died swearing that her smoking had nothing to do with it: she cursed the doctors, flat out called them liars for linking her addiction to her health!
Charlie Chaplin become a world icon by playing the clown that gets up each time you knock him down. But by middle age, Charlie's clown wasn't getting up again, not quite so spryly. I admit that our species has some resiliance, also that the biosphere has some resilience. Causes are complex, effects may be subtle, delayed. But in general, we're fools to believe that we can crucify every messenger God sends, that sense sends, that we can silence and punish every intelligent suggestion that we stop sinning before it's too late.
I don't think I'm the only punished teacher who'll laugh in delight when God (that is, our future experience) tells us that it's too late, we smoked ten too many cigarettes before we tapered off, that Jesus forgave us yesterday, but doesn't forgive us today.
I can't show you any of my parishioners actually in heaven: I'm not aware of having any parishioners: and if they claim to be, how come I don't know them?
Could it be that God doesn't want any humans saved? My fishing lure post suggests that God cast Jesus to us merely as a lure to feel us chomp and stomp on. I guess he throws a lot of chomp-and-stomp lures. That post suggested that then maybe God throws the lures away, chomped-and-stomped, and noone is in heaven! I also repeat: if God wants to throw me away after I too have been stomped and chomped, that's his business. I volunteered, God owes me nothing.
Funniest thing of all, perhaps: I can't show you me actually in heaven: unless you see it already: as obvious: obvious for decades, for half a century: longer.
Or no: the funniest thing of all may not be that God doesn't let anyone into heaven. The funniest thing of all may be that there is no heaven: no God: no Judgment! No awareness!!
Sentience failed. We started to develop sentience, then we stopped. We failed. So there can be no God: we stopped him from getting born.
If so: the result is still the same: we're a kleptocracy. That is its own punishment: humans claiming moral status while stealing, lying, cheating: and being imbeciles about cosmology.
But pk isn't the only such joker. My own jokes are an imitation, sometimes pale, of Twains' and Swift's jokes, and Swift's and Twain's jokes are a pale imitation of God/Vishnu's jokes. For example, tell me a better joke than this one: the Church sells God's mercy to the people. Time is important: you have till your last breath to repent. You can sin your whole life and retain a chance of getting away with it. On the one hand God tells you, through some church, through priests, that he's a terror; but he also tells you, through that church, those priests, that he's a softie, not too bright, he can be got around: especially if you support the priests in luxury.
Of course there's one problem. Let's say it's true: God is a softie, can be got around (if you support his priests in luxury). That still leaves the question open of who are his priests! Is anyone who claims to be his priest? If I come to your door with a tambourine in my hand saying I'm collecting donations for the priests of God, how do you know what I'm actually going to do with the money? How do you know the priests sent me? And how do you know they're priests of God, and not just guys calling themselves priests of God? Their IDs: are they signed by God? or are they imprimateured by priests? And if the priests did send me, how do you know I'm not skimming? When push comes to shove, who's God gonna claim as his own? There are hundreds of churches, thousands, zillions of priests: are all of their parishioners going to be saved? Let's say you tithe the Roman Catholic Church: what if it's the priests of the Jehovah's Witnesses (and their parishioners) God proves soft toward?
OK, here's my real target: what if you support the pope and the cardinals till they're rolling in luxury, and Judgment comes, and God announces that you now have a chance to offer proof that you supported his priests: and he identifies his priests: St. Francis, Ivan Illich, Paul Knatz ... How much support did you give to St. Francis? Oh, no, don't show me your cancelled checks to the Franciscans: the Franciscans are not St. Francis! Show me a video of you handing a penny to St. Francis while he was alive! While he was preaching to the sparrows! No, no, don't show me a receipt for a gift of a million dollars to the Church in 1965; show me a video of you having Ivan Illich over for dinner after the Church defrocked him. Show me your cancelled check for covering pk's phone bill once he'd founded the Free Learning Exchange, Inc.
(It won't do to show that you put a pink breast cancer ribbon on your car: show your receipt for giving money to an actual scientist actually on a track that actually promises to cure breast cancer!) (Show me the sinner repenting with his last breath that God then rolls out the red carpet for.) (how me the priest whose parishioners are actually in heaven.)
Americans believe, without evidence, that our problems will be solved: much the way Christians believe that God will forgive them no matter how much they sin, much the way Jews believe that they are a superior people of a superior nation (same thing the Nazis believed!) In exactly the same way the smokers I've known in my lifetime have believe that they's quit smoking in time to avoid mortal lung cancer. They're dying like flies along about now, those who haven't died already. I knew one who died swearing that her smoking had nothing to do with it: she cursed the doctors, flat out called them liars for linking her addiction to her health!
Charlie Chaplin become a world icon by playing the clown that gets up each time you knock him down. But by middle age, Charlie's clown wasn't getting up again, not quite so spryly. I admit that our species has some resiliance, also that the biosphere has some resilience. Causes are complex, effects may be subtle, delayed. But in general, we're fools to believe that we can crucify every messenger God sends, that sense sends, that we can silence and punish every intelligent suggestion that we stop sinning before it's too late.
I don't think I'm the only punished teacher who'll laugh in delight when God (that is, our future experience) tells us that it's too late, we smoked ten too many cigarettes before we tapered off, that Jesus forgave us yesterday, but doesn't forgive us today.
I can't show you any of my parishioners actually in heaven: I'm not aware of having any parishioners: and if they claim to be, how come I don't know them?
Could it be that God doesn't want any humans saved? My fishing lure post suggests that God cast Jesus to us merely as a lure to feel us chomp and stomp on. I guess he throws a lot of chomp-and-stomp lures. That post suggested that then maybe God throws the lures away, chomped-and-stomped, and noone is in heaven! I also repeat: if God wants to throw me away after I too have been stomped and chomped, that's his business. I volunteered, God owes me nothing.
Funniest thing of all, perhaps: I can't show you me actually in heaven: unless you see it already: as obvious: obvious for decades, for half a century: longer.
Or no: the funniest thing of all may not be that God doesn't let anyone into heaven. The funniest thing of all may be that there is no heaven: no God: no Judgment! No awareness!!
Sentience failed. We started to develop sentience, then we stopped. We failed. So there can be no God: we stopped him from getting born.
If so: the result is still the same: we're a kleptocracy. That is its own punishment: humans claiming moral status while stealing, lying, cheating: and being imbeciles about cosmology.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
The Thieving State
Government (and governments-sponsored big science) (and governments-sponsored big universities) (and governments-subsidized big business) stole my internet, years after I'd made my offers public. I made my offers in the wake of Ivan Illich's suggestions, and Illich was interpreting (macroinformation) what he (and I) found (find) implicit in the gospels of Jesus:
We should live together without interfering with each other,
(and, Technology ought to do something for us other than destroy our environment).
The thieves aided the public is letting me fall down (in Illich's, in Jesus' wake); but when I tried to get back up again, they knocked me down, and now hold me down, even though the fed finally let me out of jail, it did so only after destroying my business, my domains, and wasting my pittance of cash.
But you know what? They did it again!
I've been a conservative boy scout type all my life. As my destroyed Knatz.com recounted, I'd cry when other boys stepped on ants, I worried myself sick that a big fire at the Rockville Centre Coca Cola bottling plant was eating up oxygen we needed to breathe. I picked up my trash, I picked up your trash. ... In the '60s I cheered Bucky Fuller's advice that we recycle.
1989, flat broke from another decade of public effort (writing, god's inspired word) with no income, I landed in Sebring FL. I heard that there was a truck out on the highway that took aluminum cans for recycling. I organized a few big trash cans to receive aluminum empties. Within days the tenants' association was knocking me aside so they could gather the cans I'd made provision for. Only later did I learn that the guy on the highway paid money for the cans! My thieving neighbors probably thought I was going to sell their garbage. So they knocked me down, the same people who didn't support my internet, the same people responsible for you not having today the internet Jesus, Illich, and I designed for you. Ah, I thought. at least they're recycling. (Meantime, god, as usual, gave me visions of dead pk having license from heaven to visit (and abide) some parts of heaven and to visit (and abide) some parts of hell. I don't know what parts of heaven I'm denied, there's plenty that I'm not denied; I don't know what parts of hell I'll be denied; but there are plenty housing and torturing my many many enemies (virtually every kleptocrat on earth), where I am welcome to improvise my own private tortures on top of Satan's standards. Some devil may be burning your feet: I come along and my choice of tormentor is held captive while I piss in their mouth! bugger their eyeball! whatever.)
That aside, here's the real laugh: government (town, county, state) knocked the tenants association aside and now the state collects the recyclables. Of course they knocked the guy in the truck out on the highway too.
The government assuming monopolies of everything, stealing the numbers rackets, racetrack handicapping, snake oil sales (the pharms) ... reminds me: I loved camping in Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Hobbe Sound FL, in the 1980s while looking for an outlet to plug my typewriter into as I struggled to find a buyer for my first novel. One day after many camping visits there I rented a canoe, paddled up the Loxahatchee River, caught a few brackish water fish, and let the ranger guide me around Trapper John's old 'gator wrestling outpost. I told the story at Knatz.com: I repeat it here before reposting the K. version:
Trapper John camped on the river, way out beyond any other settler's range. The curious visited, he turned it to cash by running a little theme park: he let people look at his 'coons, he wrestled alligators for them. The state shut him down. He died, killed himself it seems. The state took over his camp, and now shows 'coons, alligators ...
And the US pretends that Sutter's Mill was actually US property, freely available to any kleptocrat despoilers. When Sutter sued, and won, the good people of San Francisco burned the court house to the ground, scattered the judges.
The state really does know where the true power (this side of Judgment) resides: and it ain't with Jesus.
What I don't know is if anybody else pays the governments for the stolen recyclables.
Harlan Ellison wrote a story about a terminator from the future comeing back in time to kill the mother of some future hero so he wouldn't get born. Hollywood made The Terminator: great movie! Ellison sees it. No doubt he thought, hey, great job; but that's mine! where's my check? He sued the bastards, he collected. Now reprints of the moie even give him a credit.
What about all my ideas that others have made millions to billions to trillions with? No, no, no. Kleptocrats can't afford to pay any reluctant kleptocrats, certainly not any anti-kleptocrats. If the road builders really paid those ancestrally responsible for the road, where would the payments end? It was an Indian path before it was a road; but it was an animal path before it was an Indian path. And how do we know it wasn't an insect path before that? and an amoeba path before that?
Why can't we just understand that etiologies are far too complex for us to excel at. It would be so easy to follow Illich's Jesus and see that no body really owns the whole of anything. So why don't we share, and not destroy, after (severely) limiting our numbers.
If we reduced the human population to say a hundred million (before nature reduces it to zero), then it would hardly matter what any surviving thieving neighbors of mine might want to steal, there'd be no municipality to steal it from them.
Individual thieves there'd still be; but no super-tribe of thieves.
(and, Technology ought to do something for us other than destroy our environment).
The thieves aided the public is letting me fall down (in Illich's, in Jesus' wake); but when I tried to get back up again, they knocked me down, and now hold me down, even though the fed finally let me out of jail, it did so only after destroying my business, my domains, and wasting my pittance of cash.
But you know what? They did it again!
I've been a conservative boy scout type all my life. As my destroyed Knatz.com recounted, I'd cry when other boys stepped on ants, I worried myself sick that a big fire at the Rockville Centre Coca Cola bottling plant was eating up oxygen we needed to breathe. I picked up my trash, I picked up your trash. ... In the '60s I cheered Bucky Fuller's advice that we recycle.
1989, flat broke from another decade of public effort (writing, god's inspired word) with no income, I landed in Sebring FL. I heard that there was a truck out on the highway that took aluminum cans for recycling. I organized a few big trash cans to receive aluminum empties. Within days the tenants' association was knocking me aside so they could gather the cans I'd made provision for. Only later did I learn that the guy on the highway paid money for the cans! My thieving neighbors probably thought I was going to sell their garbage. So they knocked me down, the same people who didn't support my internet, the same people responsible for you not having today the internet Jesus, Illich, and I designed for you. Ah, I thought. at least they're recycling. (Meantime, god, as usual, gave me visions of dead pk having license from heaven to visit (and abide) some parts of heaven and to visit (and abide) some parts of hell. I don't know what parts of heaven I'm denied, there's plenty that I'm not denied; I don't know what parts of hell I'll be denied; but there are plenty housing and torturing my many many enemies (virtually every kleptocrat on earth), where I am welcome to improvise my own private tortures on top of Satan's standards. Some devil may be burning your feet: I come along and my choice of tormentor is held captive while I piss in their mouth! bugger their eyeball! whatever.)
That aside, here's the real laugh: government (town, county, state) knocked the tenants association aside and now the state collects the recyclables. Of course they knocked the guy in the truck out on the highway too.
The government assuming monopolies of everything, stealing the numbers rackets, racetrack handicapping, snake oil sales (the pharms) ... reminds me: I loved camping in Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Hobbe Sound FL, in the 1980s while looking for an outlet to plug my typewriter into as I struggled to find a buyer for my first novel. One day after many camping visits there I rented a canoe, paddled up the Loxahatchee River, caught a few brackish water fish, and let the ranger guide me around Trapper John's old 'gator wrestling outpost. I told the story at Knatz.com: I repeat it here before reposting the K. version:
Trapper John camped on the river, way out beyond any other settler's range. The curious visited, he turned it to cash by running a little theme park: he let people look at his 'coons, he wrestled alligators for them. The state shut him down. He died, killed himself it seems. The state took over his camp, and now shows 'coons, alligators ...
And the US pretends that Sutter's Mill was actually US property, freely available to any kleptocrat despoilers. When Sutter sued, and won, the good people of San Francisco burned the court house to the ground, scattered the judges.
The state really does know where the true power (this side of Judgment) resides: and it ain't with Jesus.
What I don't know is if anybody else pays the governments for the stolen recyclables.
Harlan Ellison wrote a story about a terminator from the future comeing back in time to kill the mother of some future hero so he wouldn't get born. Hollywood made The Terminator: great movie! Ellison sees it. No doubt he thought, hey, great job; but that's mine! where's my check? He sued the bastards, he collected. Now reprints of the moie even give him a credit.
What about all my ideas that others have made millions to billions to trillions with? No, no, no. Kleptocrats can't afford to pay any reluctant kleptocrats, certainly not any anti-kleptocrats. If the road builders really paid those ancestrally responsible for the road, where would the payments end? It was an Indian path before it was a road; but it was an animal path before it was an Indian path. And how do we know it wasn't an insect path before that? and an amoeba path before that?
Why can't we just understand that etiologies are far too complex for us to excel at. It would be so easy to follow Illich's Jesus and see that no body really owns the whole of anything. So why don't we share, and not destroy, after (severely) limiting our numbers.
If we reduced the human population to say a hundred million (before nature reduces it to zero), then it would hardly matter what any surviving thieving neighbors of mine might want to steal, there'd be no municipality to steal it from them.
Individual thieves there'd still be; but no super-tribe of thieves.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Disarmament
The magician, like the priest, may know perfectly well how his patter misleads the audience, the congregation. The public may understand the journalist's word much differently than the journalist or his organ or his organ's sponsors may mean it: and the journalist and his organ and that organ's sponsors may know perfectly well how their published diction will be misread: and ride the wave: just like the magician, the priest ... the teacher, the politician ...
There was a word I was much misled by in the 1960s. I could have been warned by Jules Henry's Culture Against Man, but I didn't read more than a page of that book till its pages had yellowed and broken into sere fragments in the half-century since I bought it. What I had not guessed was that the culture's mis-manipulation of the term was chaired by my wife's mother's second husband: Dr. Emil Benoit.
Look it up, find Henry's masterpiece. You think "disarmament" would mean, you have weapons? get rid of them. Or at least, you have weapons? get rid of some of them. Of course we were talking about ourselves and the Soviets, so we knew it didn't mean, we have weapons, the Nazis won, now the Nazis are confiscating all our weapons, so they can rule, unopposed.
I'll tell you what Henry revealed, that I hadn't known, after I divulge the family complexities: I met Hilary. Divorse and remarriage had given Hilary two sets of parents. Her father was Marcus Fleming, the IMF economist. Harvard published his papers, there's a Nobel prize in economics named for him: the Fleming effect, or some such. Her mother was employed by the UN as an economist. Marcus remarried on doctor in economics also working for the World Bank, IMF. Etta remarried Professor Emile Beniot, two PhDs from Harvard, professor of economics at Columbia's graduate Business School. (And now our son goes yawing about economics! Yai!)
So: you'd think "disarmament would mean something like, "We have enough weaponry to kill every human being (and most non-human beings) twenty times over: we'll get rid of some of ours if you get rid of some of yours." That's what the public was intended to think it meant. Meanwhile the government, Columbia Business, Harvard, the WB, the IMF ... all knew perfectly well that that is not what it meant: not as reinvented by Emile and his Disarmament Committee: it meant something more like this (the figures are symbolic, I make them up):
We have one hundred billion worth of weapons. Last year we added one hundred million worth of new weapons. At this rate, we'll add one hundred fifty million next year. We acknowledge without public discussion that our Columbia and Harvard economists have transformed the nation into one in which prosperity only occurs in relation to coercive taxation and coerced government spending. Bobby and Jo and Sally may do very well without defense contracts that spend ever more, the money going to friends of the administration, but Lockheed and Dupont and Washington DC will not do very well unless we drop ever greater loads of napalm onto little gook girls across the world and far away.
So, Emile Benoit and his cronies translated "disarmament" to mean: we have one hundred billion worth of weapons. Last year we added one hundred million worth of new weapons. With disarmament, we'll only add one hundred forty-five million next year: and the moron public will think we disarmed! Ha, ha, ha.
The joke is exactly like the one I pointed out to Nixon's White House. Nixon said that he might be able to pull US troops out of Vietnam by election time, if our prisoners of war were released. A year later he said that he might be able to pull US troops out of Vietnam by Christmas time, if our prisoners of war were released. Then the next year he said the same again: by election time. Meantime years were rolling by, lots of bombs dropped on lots of people. It sounded like he was disarming; actually he was escalating his continuation of illegal war.
Knatz.com published my old letter to Nixon on the subject. I'll put it back up at paulknatz blog. Pronto.
There was a word I was much misled by in the 1960s. I could have been warned by Jules Henry's Culture Against Man, but I didn't read more than a page of that book till its pages had yellowed and broken into sere fragments in the half-century since I bought it. What I had not guessed was that the culture's mis-manipulation of the term was chaired by my wife's mother's second husband: Dr. Emil Benoit.
Look it up, find Henry's masterpiece. You think "disarmament" would mean, you have weapons? get rid of them. Or at least, you have weapons? get rid of some of them. Of course we were talking about ourselves and the Soviets, so we knew it didn't mean, we have weapons, the Nazis won, now the Nazis are confiscating all our weapons, so they can rule, unopposed.
I'll tell you what Henry revealed, that I hadn't known, after I divulge the family complexities: I met Hilary. Divorse and remarriage had given Hilary two sets of parents. Her father was Marcus Fleming, the IMF economist. Harvard published his papers, there's a Nobel prize in economics named for him: the Fleming effect, or some such. Her mother was employed by the UN as an economist. Marcus remarried on doctor in economics also working for the World Bank, IMF. Etta remarried Professor Emile Beniot, two PhDs from Harvard, professor of economics at Columbia's graduate Business School. (And now our son goes yawing about economics! Yai!)
So: you'd think "disarmament would mean something like, "We have enough weaponry to kill every human being (and most non-human beings) twenty times over: we'll get rid of some of ours if you get rid of some of yours." That's what the public was intended to think it meant. Meanwhile the government, Columbia Business, Harvard, the WB, the IMF ... all knew perfectly well that that is not what it meant: not as reinvented by Emile and his Disarmament Committee: it meant something more like this (the figures are symbolic, I make them up):
We have one hundred billion worth of weapons. Last year we added one hundred million worth of new weapons. At this rate, we'll add one hundred fifty million next year. We acknowledge without public discussion that our Columbia and Harvard economists have transformed the nation into one in which prosperity only occurs in relation to coercive taxation and coerced government spending. Bobby and Jo and Sally may do very well without defense contracts that spend ever more, the money going to friends of the administration, but Lockheed and Dupont and Washington DC will not do very well unless we drop ever greater loads of napalm onto little gook girls across the world and far away.
So, Emile Benoit and his cronies translated "disarmament" to mean: we have one hundred billion worth of weapons. Last year we added one hundred million worth of new weapons. With disarmament, we'll only add one hundred forty-five million next year: and the moron public will think we disarmed! Ha, ha, ha.
The joke is exactly like the one I pointed out to Nixon's White House. Nixon said that he might be able to pull US troops out of Vietnam by election time, if our prisoners of war were released. A year later he said that he might be able to pull US troops out of Vietnam by Christmas time, if our prisoners of war were released. Then the next year he said the same again: by election time. Meantime years were rolling by, lots of bombs dropped on lots of people. It sounded like he was disarming; actually he was escalating his continuation of illegal war.
Knatz.com published my old letter to Nixon on the subject. I'll put it back up at paulknatz blog. Pronto.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Oedipus: Klep Model
Oedipus
Hubris Meets Integrity: An Honest Model for Kleptocrats
Theme: we have the same political structure as did Rome, as did the Jews, as did Jerusalem. Jesus could get kangarooed by us just as easily as he got kangarooed by Herod, Pilat, Augustus ... you and me. I don't care if the Republicans or the Democrats of the Communists are in so long as we are ruled by hierarchies of supposed experts using proxies: human exercising judgments without demonstrating (to any but ourselves) that our judgments are worth a damn.
Cave men couldn't have crucified Jesus, or put a contract out on Luther: because cave men didn't have big complex bureaucracies the lies of which complexify at every level. Cave men could have murdered Jesus, shot arrows at him the instant he first appeared; but they wouldn't have had trials, and jails, and specialists in flogging ... We do.
I rewrite, hoping to condense, points made more than a decade ago at Knatz.com: about the myth of Oedipus.
Oedipus was born to a king and queen (in the days where every town, certainly every county, had its own king. The king and queen, superstitious like everyone else, took their babe to the temple where a prophecy was made: the little prince Oedipus would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. It's a you-can't-avoid-your-own-destiny kind of story. The royal couple try to avert the prophecy by killing their son. But of course they're squeamish, have specialists to do their work for them, priests, soldiers ... murderers. But the murderer is a softie too. He takes the kid to a border and leaves him in the "wilderness." Naturally the kid survives, is adopted by the king and queen of the next county over, raised as a prince: their prince.
Princes are trained in war, trained to be regal, haughty: ready to draw the sword at every perceived slight. So Prince Oedipus is out on the public road with his princely train, along comes some other doofus in his princely train. Get out of the way, No, you get out of the way. They fight. The younger man kills the older man. Oedipus goes about his business, thinks nothing of it.
Oedipus' foster parents hear that their neighboring kingdom has lost its king. Local royalty is being solicited to find a replacement king. Oedipus' parents volunteer Oedipus. Let's say that Oedipus real parents were the royal family of Sebring. Let's say that Oedipus' foster parents were the king and queen of Avon Park, a few miles up the road. Oedipus leaves Avon Park, his princedom, and travels south to Sebring. There's the unmanned kingdom, there's the widowed queen: unknown to him, unknown to her, his biological mother (who believes that her ill-starred son has been done away with). Oedipus does what is common to lots of cultures: as the new king he has an income, a palace. In that palace is the widow who's been there since time immemorial. He marries her. (It was their Social Security. The Arabs do the same thing, Mohammed did the same thing.)
Time passes. Plenty of kings wouldn't have bothered to sleep with their aged new queen; Oedipus and his mom had children, seem to have gotten along, must have perhaps even liked each other. So he did sleep with her, and loved her.
Oedipus is aware one year that things aren't going swimmingly with his kingdom. The priests say that it's a representation of the gods' displeasure that the murder of the late king hasn't been avenged. It's state of the nation type stuff. Oedipus responds. He commissions a committee to look into it. He'll chair the committee. Evidence trickles in, then pours. Oedipus finally realizes: he's been looking for the mother fucker: he's found him: it's he himself!
Oedipus rushes to see his queen. She's heard the news. She's seen that she and her former king's efforts to defy fate have only rebounded to kick them in the teeth. She hangs herself. Oedipus finds his dead mother, queen, consort, he takes her hair pin from her hair, he stabs his own eyes out. He can't bear to see what's happened to him, what he's done, what he's been party to.
Now: I've asked for decades, loving this story (and hating our own vanity, our own hubris): if one asked Oedipus, Did you kill your father? he'd reply, No, of course not. Maybe he'd add, How dare you? Maybe he'd play marimbas on your ribs after they'd bleached in the sun for a few years. But how could he be sure?
What if you asked him, Have you ever killed anyone? He'd say, Of course, what do you take me for? a faggot?
OK, enough of that for the moment: here's pk real point, pk's pk point:
If you ask an American, Have you killed God? They'll say, nearly all or any of them, No, of course not!
If you ask an American, Have any of your representatives killed God? They'll say, No, of course not!
If you ask an American, Have you or any of your representatives tortured any innocent party? Misappropriated their property? Not paid your bills? The first answers will be emphatic and indignant. As the questions progress, they'd become a bit more uncertain: except you wouldn't get to ask so many questions before you'd find yourself in jail, stripped of your rights, your property, your identity.
We don't know what we have and haven't done. That's why God will do the judging; not us.
Kafka has K immediately blurt on being charged, I'm innocent. But K doesn't even know what the charges are! How can he plead innocence?
Better questions are: Are your political institutions corruptible?
Have you ever looked at a Van Gogh painting in the museum? in an ad? in a movie? How is any such person not guilty?
How dare we quote Jesus? Did we pay him for the original utterance? Have we paid his disciples?
Have we paid the Father?
Are you sure? Are you sure we didn't give the money to a bunch of priests? How do we know the priests passed the money to God?
The US pays its debts to banks and to major corporations: does the US pay its debts to its enemies? To the natives whose land, ideas, institutions, culture we're stolen? To Sutter whose rout west we took, then took his gold? To Illich whose social networking we've perverted? To me whose offer of inter-networked digital libraries got stolen, and perverted?
Cave men may have murdered each other left and right (not really, or we wouldn't be here), but they didn't do atrocious things as a "nation": or as a "religion."
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Hypocrisy Laughs
Living in a kleptocracy is a bundle of laughs. One of my chuckles this morning comes from headlines about some sports medicine person testifying about possibly testifying about conversations with Lance Armstrong, years ago, when he had cancer. The rumor is that he'd confided to her that he'd taken performance enhancing drugs. McGuire, Bonds ... Clements, Armstrong ... Oh, no: people wouldn't cheat in a money mad society, would they?
And just the other week there was a story about some poor kid who confessed his way out of a golf tournament win. He'd unwittingly carried an illegal fifteenth club in his bag. No one accused him; but himself. That's what myths about the purity of golf will do to the impressionable young.
I'm reminded of the story from the Decameron where the dying old sinner confesses to a priest that he'd once had disrespectful thoughts about his mother. The priest runs around getting the old bastard declared a saint!
Spectator sports are how a society of managed consumers pretends to be active and engaged in fair competition. Did you ever look at Clements on the mound? He was cheating with every breath he took. One look: and a fair society would have DSQ'd him for life: or at least have given him the Oscar for intimidation. (Except he wasn't acting: he really would knock you down!
Friday, September 3, 2010
The Liars Paradox
In creating itself the US penned a Constitution, then added some Amendments. The first and most famous promises that Congress will make no law limiting freedom of speech.
Notice the difference between parents naming their infant daughter Chastity and journalists hailing a First Lady as chaste and anthropologists attributing chastity to a dead society.
By the time of Teddy Roosevelt our Rough Rider said the following:When compared with the suppression of anarchy every other question sinks into insignificance. The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, and his is a deeper degree of criminality than any other. No immigrant is allowed to come to our shores if he is an anarchist; and no paper published here or abroad should be permitted circulation in this country if it propagates anarchist opinions. The popular mind misquotes The exception proves the rule, misunderstanding the word proof. The phrase means put to the test, means disprove. In reason exceptions mean that a rule must be restated, improved: upgraded until there are no exceptions. But in government common sense applies: generalizations about the society need have no examples that are true!
In the 1970s Ivan Illich, my mentor's, best-sellers weren't reissued, were taken out of circulation, disappeared from libraries. My books weren't published. When I published things myself I was arrested, my domain censored, by a federal court stone deaf to all argument but its own. But never mind what the government did — we should be well used to mendacious hypocritical repressive government — what did the people do? Nothing! (What right do we have to be called people?)
Anyway, as often and long as I've thought about all of the above, I just thought of a meta-angle on it for the first time: a polity making generalizations about itself is logical nonsense! The parents can name the girl but not at her birth report on her nature as an adult. The journalist can claim anything about any luminary, but what claim to truth does journalism have? No. Anthropologists make be wrong, may be ignorant, may be prejudiced, but it's only the anthropologist who has much chance of veracity: because it's a report on something finished, not a prediction made while something is beginning or ongoing.
It's nonsense for a country to say that it has freedom of speech at its beginning. It's nonsense for a government to promise it. Freedom and government are opposites. Governments promises about freedom make as much sense as Satan's bargain with Eve: what made Eve think that Satan had Knowledge to sell? Wasn't that God's purlieu? Wasn't she buying the Brooklyn Bridge? from a non-owner?
The liar's paradox analyzes the pattern formally:
Russell, Bateson ... explain: the sentence references itself. It's a meta-statement phrased as a statement. If it's true that the statement is true, then the statement must be false: if it's false that the statement is false, the the statement must be true. The grammar misleads us to think that sense has been stated. It hasn't. All such pronouncements are formally meaningless.
When I was released from jail and sent to a halfway house run by the Salvation Army, the institution had a statement printed on the wall. It told of how the future would judge the Salvation Army's performance! (PS: None of the Salvation Army's promises were manifest in its behavior!) That's like the church telling us who's in heaven! Uh, Isn't that up to God? Shouldn't we wait till the race is over before we try cashing wagers?
So. Look at the Constitution. Sounds liberal. Look at the US's behavior. Anything but.
Read the papers. All glowing.
And now the magician while shuffling a perfectly ordinary deck of cards will make the Ace of Spades flutter down from the chandelier.
Notice the difference between parents naming their infant daughter Chastity and journalists hailing a First Lady as chaste and anthropologists attributing chastity to a dead society.
By the time of Teddy Roosevelt our Rough Rider said the following:
In the 1970s Ivan Illich, my mentor's, best-sellers weren't reissued, were taken out of circulation, disappeared from libraries. My books weren't published. When I published things myself I was arrested, my domain censored, by a federal court stone deaf to all argument but its own. But never mind what the government did — we should be well used to mendacious hypocritical repressive government — what did the people do? Nothing! (What right do we have to be called people?)
Anyway, as often and long as I've thought about all of the above, I just thought of a meta-angle on it for the first time: a polity making generalizations about itself is logical nonsense! The parents can name the girl but not at her birth report on her nature as an adult. The journalist can claim anything about any luminary, but what claim to truth does journalism have? No. Anthropologists make be wrong, may be ignorant, may be prejudiced, but it's only the anthropologist who has much chance of veracity: because it's a report on something finished, not a prediction made while something is beginning or ongoing.
It's nonsense for a country to say that it has freedom of speech at its beginning. It's nonsense for a government to promise it. Freedom and government are opposites. Governments promises about freedom make as much sense as Satan's bargain with Eve: what made Eve think that Satan had Knowledge to sell? Wasn't that God's purlieu? Wasn't she buying the Brooklyn Bridge? from a non-owner?
The liar's paradox analyzes the pattern formally:
This sentence is a lie.
Russell, Bateson ... explain: the sentence references itself. It's a meta-statement phrased as a statement. If it's true that the statement is true, then the statement must be false: if it's false that the statement is false, the the statement must be true. The grammar misleads us to think that sense has been stated. It hasn't. All such pronouncements are formally meaningless.
When I was released from jail and sent to a halfway house run by the Salvation Army, the institution had a statement printed on the wall. It told of how the future would judge the Salvation Army's performance! (PS: None of the Salvation Army's promises were manifest in its behavior!) That's like the church telling us who's in heaven! Uh, Isn't that up to God? Shouldn't we wait till the race is over before we try cashing wagers?
So. Look at the Constitution. Sounds liberal. Look at the US's behavior. Anything but.
Read the papers. All glowing.
And now the magician while shuffling a perfectly ordinary deck of cards will make the Ace of Spades flutter down from the chandelier.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Stealing Expertise
I love the scene in the movie Schindler's List where the Nazis are herding some Jews somewhere as other Nazis work on a structure, a bridge or something. The military oafs are doing things in their militarily oafish way, the blind scurrying to follow the blind, betting your life as well as their own that testosterone can substitute for intelligence without penalty. A woman among the Jews tells them they're doing it wrong and corrects them. The Nazi in charge has her shot.
I just looked the movie up at IMdb.com hoping the dialogue would be quoted. I find what must be the scene:Reiter: I'm a graduate of Civil Engineering from the University of Milan.
Amon Goeth: Ah, an educated Jew... like Karl Marx himself. Unterscharfuehrer!
Hujar: Jawohl?
Amon Goeth: Shoot her.
Reiter: Herr Kommandant! I'm only trying to do my job!
Amon Goeth: Ja, I'm doing mine. But this "quote" leaves out my favorite part! The woman is shot. Some other flunky says to the Nazi who gave the order to shoot her, But what should we do about the bridge? And the leader, this Goeth I presume, says, Do exactly as she suggested!
Ah, kleptocracy. As though it's OK to crucify Jesus so long as after we've done so Caesar Augustus tells us to do what Jesus said.
Wrong. We're still damned. Because though we steal what the dead Jesus said at thirty-three, we don't get to hear what the living Jesus might have said at thirty-four! or forty-four, or eighty-four ... But we'll always kill the golden goose, believing we've now maximized our profit.
I'm glad I've always been interrupted before anyone understood a word I was trying to say: otherwise I might have succeeded in saving you! You not knowing what I offered is my revenge!
I just looked the movie up at IMdb.com hoping the dialogue would be quoted. I find what must be the scene:
Amon Goeth: Ah, an educated Jew... like Karl Marx himself. Unterscharfuehrer!
Hujar: Jawohl?
Amon Goeth: Shoot her.
Reiter: Herr Kommandant! I'm only trying to do my job!
Amon Goeth: Ja, I'm doing mine.
Ah, kleptocracy. As though it's OK to crucify Jesus so long as after we've done so Caesar Augustus tells us to do what Jesus said.
Wrong. We're still damned. Because though we steal what the dead Jesus said at thirty-three, we don't get to hear what the living Jesus might have said at thirty-four! or forty-four, or eighty-four ... But we'll always kill the golden goose, believing we've now maximized our profit.
I'm glad I've always been interrupted before anyone understood a word I was trying to say: otherwise I might have succeeded in saving you! You not knowing what I offered is my revenge!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Belief (in Kleptocracy)
Were we cavemen it might not make much difference whether we believed in common sense gravity or in Newtonian gravity or in Einsteinian gravity.
(Common sense gravity: what goes up must come down;
Newtonian gravity: all matter is attracted to all other matter;
Einsteinian gravity: space is warped and
matter rolls to the low places.)
Ask a priest (of any of kleptocracy's many religions) and the priest may not much care either. Indeed, few priests, whether for Jahweh, Jehovah, Buddha or Baal, will see much significance in the differences among those three (or perhaps other) theories of gravity.
No. No one cares whether you believe that the God kidnapped from the Jews by the Christians "made" the world in six days six thousand years ago. Such sacred beliefs are merely practice for the patently absurd beliefs of the secular social system. You swallowed "Father knows best"? (Maybe after long ago swallowing Mother knows best?) Then you swallowed God knows best? Then we swallowed King John knows best?
Now we're supposed to believe that the teacher knows best (though her intellect is clearly very ordinary)? Now we're supposed to believe that the draft board knows best? or that Congress knows best? or, God help us, the New York Times?
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Encore Kleptocracy
Why, after it's caught lying to us, is the Church still the Church?
After they're caught buggering their altar boys (our children) why are the priests still living off the skim?
Why after traffic all stalls is the bureaucracy at the MVB still drawing salaries?
The White House still the White House? Wall Street still Wall Street? The Constitution still the Constitution?
Be patient.
The Past, the Present, won't be the Future for much longer.
After they're caught buggering their altar boys (our children) why are the priests still living off the skim?
Why after traffic all stalls is the bureaucracy at the MVB still drawing salaries?
The White House still the White House? Wall Street still Wall Street? The Constitution still the Constitution?
Be patient.
(There's nothing else to be.)
The Past, the Present, won't be the Future for much longer.
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