The Cepia Club Blog

Review of: Speer, Albert. Infiltration: How Heinrich Himmler Schemed To Build An SS Industrial Empire. New York, MacMillan Publishing Co, Inc. 1981.

2011-12-21T18:16:00.000-06:00

Review of: Speer, Albert. Infiltration: How Heinrich Himmler Schemed To Build An SS Industrial Empire. New York, MacMillan Publishing Co, Inc. 1981.

By Tim Krenz
December 2011

Albert Speer, Hitler’s capable Minister of Armaments and War Production, began researching a book about Germany’s war industry once his 20-year prison term in Spandau ended. He switched the theme of the book when he saw what had once been secret to even him during the war. Researched and written in the late 1970s, this may have been one of the last, high-level, and personal accounts of Nazism in power, by a prime Nazi, and written by a member of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle and one of his few close associates.

Speer was convicted and sentenced to prison for his war crimes, and crimes against humanity, as a leader of Nazi aggression and as an exploiter of slave labor, including Jewish concentration camp inmates. Among the original prisoners in the first Nuremberg trial convicted in the fall of 1946, Speer escaped execution via hanging by a threaded noose of fortune.

In his better-known personal memoir of the Nazi-era in Germany, entitled Inside the Third Reich, Speer, an architect and aesthete trained in engineering and management, comes across as a deeper, more interesting co-conspirator of Nazi crimes than the usual cult-sadists, murderous cranks, and racist ideologues of the Nazi Party. (The military leadership, however, was more efficient, and far less psychologically unbalanced).

Speer could never clear whatever conscience he had about participating in the greatest of modern evils— e.g. the Holocaust and the 50 million dead in the war. He does admit he sinned against the human nature of decency and objective morality, yet his sincerity should never be tested. He was at the center of a system of evil, and he holds much responsibility for both the guilt and consequences. Indeed, in his role of Minister of Armaments & War Production, he performed a revolution in industry that kept Germany under the Nazi government fighting and in power longer.

If Speer possesses any worth at all after the sparing of the noose, then let it be the history he passed down. Infiltration is an historical insight of what would have happened if the Nazis had prevailed. Taking over duties as Minister at age 37, Speer rationalized the socialists economics of central planning and ended a poor policy of civilian consumer production that had prevailed earlier in the war. Instituting a “total war” concept to industrial production, Speer from his position as a production czar instituted a system of corporate independence and “self-responsibility” by committee (for resolving bottlenecks) according to the guidance he dictated to all manners of the war effort.

Speer for three years and 3 months, held massive power over Germany and its occupied empire, in the fields of research and development, contracting, construction and repair, production, distribution, energy, chemicals, machines and machine tools, metals and other materials, purchasing, transportation, housing, nutrition, paid employment, foreign impressed workers, and most hideously, the doomed slave labor of Russian prisoners of wars and Jewish concentration camp inmates. In pure power of economic decision-making, Speer, who stood accountable to Hitler, held as much influence as any one person in in the history of the world over the “how” and “what” a continental-sized economy (Nazi-held Europe) produced, distributed, and consumed. Speer, as much as anyone in the war or in the history of the world, was a true Baron of Industry of unparalleled proportions.

Such power over wealth product by a government minister made others jealous for their own ambitions. Enter SS Reichsführer Himmler. As head of the main security and paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party, the S.S., Himmler’s ideals for the future rested on the purification of blood and traits; of what Hitler (the oracle to Himmler’s cult) ordained as the “Aryan” race. These super-creations of scientific selection, and the surgical and industrial murder of undesirable peoples, Jews among others, would then allow creation of a German “New Order,” first in Europe, then across the world.

In a Germanic ideal of “chosen” people and “sacred” soil, within a faux Romantic-paradise of “Aryan” self-sufficiency, the empire Hitler sought would be ruled under the sadism and racial hatreds instilled in the “super-soldier-farmers” that Himmler would himself create out of the SS personnel. Himmler, a psychopath by any definition, believed that his SS empire required economic self-suffiency, and only by stripping Speer of his governmental powers and his state resources could the Nazi Party’s, through the SS, fulfill Hitler’s nightmare.

Infiltration is more than a storied power-struggle between Speer and the sadistic Himmler. Speer shows in numbers--the calculations of dollars, scores of millions of dead, hundreds of millions of slaves, vast lands and building projects—what that the ideas of a murderous and sick ideology meant for the world if Nazism had prevailed. If nothing else, the SS records used by Speer are insightful, and disturbing. If Hitler and national socialism had succeeded and not been stopped, even with greater sacrifice humanity might never have yet recovered its natural liberty. Even more disturbing, the Nazis were elected in Germany in 1932-33 over the communists as the lesser of two evils. It should instruct us today that the lesser of two evils is still evil in the end.

Review of: Roberts, Andrew. Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

2011-10-20T04:51:00.001-05:00

Review of: Roberts, Andrew. Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

By Tim Krenz

The Second World War has provided scholars and writers, readers and students, with the largest selection of written and photographic histories of any conflict in all recorded time. New revisions of old historical facts notwithstanding, the war, also known as World War Two (or “World War II”) provides more than enough memoirs, state and personal documentation, and public records and photographs, and enormous tabs of statistics to make critical and even exciting new studies filled with more concise interpretations and creditable encyclopedias of stories, data, and images.

Not to discount personable or fictional stories, the factual histories of the Second World War may never run out of new and better ideas of how things happened, or better stories of how humans acted, or better narratives of “history as it really happened” in the biggest and most difficult struggle in the human era of earth’s existence.

Perhaps this 2009 American republication (of a 2008 British release) of Andrew Roberts’ narrative of the four great architects of Allied victory is more of the same--a new twist of old history--but it is certainly one of the better available histories of how the Western Allies, the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain, et al., overcame great obstacles to prevail over Nazi-led Germany

Masters and Commanders holds together the threads of actions of two politicians still remembered today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States and British Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill, those men who masterfully manipulated others in politics, yet trusted two soldiers to lead their Allied democracies to complete military and moral victory over Germany between 1941 and 1945.

The first of the “commanders” in the book, General George C. Marshall, was promoted by President Roosevelt to the post of United States Army Chief of Staff when the European war erupted in September 1939. This promotion occurred more than two years prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s subsequent entry into the war as an active belligerent. A move recommended to the President by former superior officers of then Brigadier General Marshall, the promotion over more than a score of senior Army officers put the premium on Marshall’s gifts of leadership, vision, hard work, and operational skill.

More than the popular General Eisenhower, Marshall is rightly credited by historians as the real inexhaustible genius behind America’s unparalleled victory in Europe. In Washington and at Allied conferences meeting as the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee, Marshall was the military organizer and director of the untapped arsenals of American manpower and industry. It was Marshall, under the political tentacles of President Roosevelt, who created and equipped, out of the 144,000-man pre-war US Army, the massive 9 million-man US Army Ground Forces. Marshall ordered the Army deployed around the world, and the US Army won the ground war in Europe to American’s bittersweet burden of victory.

The other “commander” is even more obscure to the average reader than General Marshall himself. Appointed Chief of Imperial General Staff in late 1941, General (later Field Marshal) Alan Brooke spent most of his war work talking Churchill out of rash strategic decisions and meddling in military details for which the prime minister was uninformed or unskilled. The other part of Alan Brooke’s tenure as CIGS and as chair of British Chiefs of Staff Committee was preventing a rash Allied, nay mainly British, assault on the coast of France in Autumn 1942 or in 1943, whichformed main strategy of Marshall. Whereas Marshall saw a direct assault on Northwest Europe as the direct and easier road to victory, and as a relief to besieged Russia, Brooke urged, and obtained with the decision of Roosevelt who backec Churchill and Brooke, an indirect Mediterranean approach to weakening Germany in 1942 and 1943.

And in this context, the great personality and psychological sketches of the purely political-military grand strategy unfolds over the course of the Second World War. In the end, the British Empire weakened itself, and dissolved most of its possessions, in order to defeat Nazism. And in due course, as more and more American personnel, equipment, money and resources came to dominate the Western Allied Strategy, America became the dominant partner in the war, and in the post-war. Within the military policy struggles of Marshall and Brooke, i.e. the commanders, the context of how the world balance of power formed can be seen. Furthermore, without the political-economic commitments of Roosevelt or the awnry defiance of Churchill in the dark days early in the war when Britain stood alone against Nazism, this war of “warring allies” could not have been won. But what did victory mean? And was the peace in the post-war either won or maintained to the benefit of the common people, or of those allegedly “victorious” democracies?

Review of: Breaker Morant.

2011-08-02T13:46:00.000-05:00

Review of: Breaker Morant. Starring; Edward Woodward & Brian Brown. Directed by: Bruce Beresford. Adapted from the Stage Play written by Kenneth Ross. 1980. (Australian).

At the beginning of this 1980 “hidden” Australian film classic, Lieutenant Harry “Breaker” Morant, an Australian colonial volunteer in the British Army, testifies on the circumstances of the death of his friend, Captain Hunt. The information (the “intelligence”) on a group of Boer guerillas was wrong or deliberately planted. There were many, not few. They were not weary, tired and resting after recent raids against the British Empire in Southern Africa. Instead, they waited in ambush for Captain Hunt’s patrol out to destroy the “Commando.” Captain Hunt is shot down, his body later found by Lt. Morant’s patrol out avenge him. Hunt had been mutilated while still alive, his body naked of clothes.

The Boers, Dutch settlers in Southern Africa who emigrated to the “veldt” during the time of Napoleonic Wars, were simple, tough, self-sufficient farmers; ranchers, expert horseman, skilled at survival on the vast grasslands without trees and little water. The Boers also had the instincts of protecting their homes, their lands, and their liberties, for their families on isolated farms and small villages. During Great Britain’s war to subdue these stubborn farmers, although mostly ill-equipped, ill-supplied, and often hungry, the few thousand Boer insurgents formed their militia units, called “Commandos,” for ad hoc defense, or raids, against a British imperial army of one-half million men struggling to conquer them.

In this Boer War, which took place in the last two years of the 19th Century and the first few of the Twentieth, the Boers fought the British with hit and run attacks, the small-sized irregular formations, using mobility, and supported with supplies and food, and most importantly, with information, by their families, friends and neighbors. To finally “win” this war, secure the rich farm and ranch land, own the gold and diamond mines, and garrison the ports to its distant empire in the Indian Ocean, the British Army resorted to herding the Boer families into concentration camps, burning the farms, building forts, stringing thousands of yards of barbed wire, and hunting down the near-starving Commandos. In the end, the Boers got home-rule, a measure of independence within the empire. Britain could claim a “victory.” But there had to be scapegoats to account for the atrocities. Lambs had to be sacrificed.

Enter Harry Morant (played by Edward Woodward, of Tv’s The Equalizer fame), a well-known, real-life poet (this movie is largely a true story, by the way), who volunteered perhaps for adventure, honor, or boredom, but who was engaged to Captain Hunt’s sister. On trial with Morant for three counts of murder is Peter Hancock (Brian Brown who later made the movie F/X), who joined because the army paid wages during an Australian economic depression. Hancock has a wife and child to support. Also, defending his life in docket, the young George Witto naively volunteered for the Army to “see the world.” He is intoxicated with the romance of empire. He believes in it--the empire, the war, the whole ungodly thing.

In Morant’s words, this is “ a new kind of war, George. A new war for a new century.” It was the barbarities of this frustrating struggle that the plot of Breaker Morant develops. Did Morant’s understanding of Captain Hunt’s order to shoot Boer prisoners come from Morant who might lie to save his life, from Hunt on his own volition, or from a personal order delivered to Hunt by the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Kitchener? As Hunt tells Morant, in one of the flash-back scenes, “No prisoners, the gentleman’s war is over.” The court martial proceeds, and the film editing technique of well-developed story by flash-back and recall plays in this high drama with a mix of action and revealing dialogue. Such as the rules of war? “Rule .303.”

The dialogue driven court-room scenes, where major parts of the action are replayed, captures with no surprise the absurdities of the charges. All the defense witnesses have been “transferred” to India. Lord Kitchener sends an aide to testify instead of himself. Who gave the orders? That is the indictment of the court martial. But ultimately, who followed them? And why? Those two questions are the indictment of the movie against war fought against common people and amongst them. Did Morant exceed the boundaries of morality in an immoral war, fought without pity and, in the end, without rules or justice? If it was a conflict between immoral empire and the a-moral Boers who conquered Southern Africa from others, is anyone right? It probably doesn’t matter.

But scapegoats there must be for this war that took place over a hundred years ago. A movie buff need not know more than the background provided here on the actual history of the Boer War to enjoy this magnificent film. And, as mentioned, “Breaker” Morant was a real poet, and so this is a “real” story, whether in fiction or in fact. The drama is as old and as true as Sophocles. The ending is as poetically true as the verdict itself.

Review of: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Absolute Heroism in American Western Film Cinema (1962)

2011-04-09T18:40:00.000-05:00

Review of: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Absolute Heroism in American Western Film Cinema (1962)

Starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin and Vera Miles, the John Ford-directed film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance presents a powerful romantic drama on an unique facet of courage, in existential virtues what one might describe as “absolute heroism.” What rests behind this virtue of acceptance for existence only to suffer something contrary to self-interest and personal happiness ?

As the movie portrays it, absolute heroism does not only pare down the choice between one of personal gain versus the greater good. If a higher virtue exists in such an unfaltering self-sacrifice of one's own moral or even material fortune, that sacrifice of dreams, hopes, or affection can only prove itself worthy in the name of something more powerful. In this, absolute heroism only gains acceptance in self and others through the highest order of the lawful nature of human existence: the “Platinum rule.” And that rule is the denial of one's happiness to ensure the happiness of that person which we truly love.

In the beginning of the film, aged Ransom Stoddard (Stewart), a politician of international fame, returns to Shinbone, the place “where it all began,” and the scene of his famous act that set him on a career of public trusts and service by virtue of his popular slaying of the notorious brute, Liberty Valance (Marvin). Along with his wife, Hallie (Miles), whom he met as a fresh-from-school lawyer in Shinbone, the couple returned to attend the funeral of an obscure resident without fame or obituary, Tom Doniphan (Wayne). Upon passing inspection of the opened coffin, Stoddard says, “Where's his boots. . . .” Put “back on his boots, his gun belt, and his spurs.”

Unknown to the press who follow the one-time governor and ambassador and once-again Senator Stoddard to the undertaker's, the newspaper men know nothing of who Doniphan was, or why the state's favored son returns secretly to make his farewell. “I have a right to a story,” the publisher demands. With Hallie's nodding approval, Stoddard gives them the whole story, and it begins when Ranson followed Greeley's advice to “go West, young man,” and ended up dragged from a hijacked stagecoach and beaten with a silver-handled cow-whip by the villain, Valance. Found by Doniphan and his hired hand, the African-American Pompey, Stoddard is brought to Hallie for nursing after nearly dying from the beating.

Washing dishes for his keep, Stoddard plots vengeance against Valance, through lawful means, by putting him in jail, the proper and civilized way to deal with miscreants. Not so genteel or bourgeois as Stoddard, Doniphan warns the lawyer that, “Out here, a man settles his own problem,” exactly, replies Stoddard, what Valance believes. Doniphan, a hard, tough and crusted settler carving his fortune from a dry, desert land, has no use for justice with a legal fiction of legislative acts within a territorial law. Justice comes from the barrel of a gun when a crime is committed against the real or the personal property of a man or woman, or against a “super-real” property of theirs, namely the right to be left unharmed and treated honestly.

Stoddard, meek and inexperienced with guns or violence, as one of the only lawyers in the territory south of the picket-wire, becomes enraptured with the attempt to organize a territorial government aiming toward statehood. The small farmers and ranchers, raising crops, sheep, horses and cattle, desire a government to secure their property lines, to preserve their crops and herds against the free-ranging cattle barons who benefit from lawless roaming to strengthen their stock and keep them fed. In the conflicts of the movie, one of them in the fear Valance has of Doniphan, who Valance leaves alone, the conflict of love enters. Doniphan knows Hallie has moved her affections from him to Stoddard, the noble man of meek body but strong faith in law and good and justice in rightful moral acts. In the climatic breakdown of the movie, Stoddard challenges Valance to a duel on the streets of Shinbone, and wins his immortal fame as “the man who shot Liberty Valance.” Thrown into the leadership of the statehood faction at the territorial convention, Stoddard wants to leave, go home, to the Eastern states, because his faith in humanity, in decency, in the human-made acts of lawgivers failed him. Stoddard's courage to face Valance, and certain death at Valance's hands, proves truly heroic. But it was heroic in the futile and forlorn way that only luck allowed him to survive. His conscience kills him. He is only famous for killing a man.

What really happened? And who among all of these characters deserves the right to the anonymous virtues of absolute hero in this Western film American classic? As is said near the end by the publisher, and can be repeated for countless ages, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

The Next Effects Needed for a "post-historical age"

2011-04-07T07:31:00.001-05:00

Thinking about how to get to the next stage of CepiaClub as a fellowship. Obviously, a libertarian organization devoted to political liberty, market freedoms, justice in law, and a community of interests and values is what Cepiaclub aims to both promote and teach to others. We are merely trying to use humane qualities to engender a more human way of life--less oppressive of any individual or group, more open to opportunities and entrepreneurship, equality in the merits of our character and work ethic, and anchored in the principle of "only by helping others can we truly help ourselves." Peace and prosperity through awareness and more choices. It is a thoroughly difficult proposition to achieve. However, we have already started. How far will it go with others from here?

"Liberty: Living It" Workshop at LP Wisconsin Convention

2011-02-27T19:22:00.003-06:00

LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF WISCONSIN - FEBRUARY 24, 2011
CENTRAL OFFICE
V-MAIL SERVICE (715) 646-9933
EMAIL lpwicentral@gmail.com
WEBSITE www.lpwi.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

By Kevin Goins
Special Correspondent to
The CEPIA Club LLC

THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF WISCONSIN - PRACTICAL LIBERTY (LIVING IT!) WORKSHOP PLANNED FOR UPCOMING CONVENTION
The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin's annual convention will be held on April 1st & 2nd (Friday & Saturday) at the Olympia Resort & Spa, located at 1350 Royale Mile Road in Oconomowoc, WI. Discussion groups featuring candidates from the 2010 elections & a banquet featuring guest speaker Gene Cisewski (former political director) have been scheduled.
One workshop (of many) that has been planned will cover "Practical Liberty - Living It!", headed by guest speakers Terry Gray, Tom Ender & Barry Hammarback. The goal of this particular event is to help the public understand that the common principles of liberty & justice for all and those of the Libertarian Party are indeed one & the same.
"Ideas and philosophy within our ranks abound," says party spokesman Tim Krenz, "and indeed theory and principles contribute to the strength of the message of liberty & justice for all regardless of income, birth, race, gender, nationality, etc. With the current state of the Union as well as Wisconsin, the opportunity to appeal to more voters with this common message will equal future election victories for Libertarian Party candidates - all summing up to more individual liberty & less unreasonable government."

For more information regarding the convention, visit www.lpwi.org, contact Ben Olson III at (800) 236-9236 or Tim Krenz at (715) 646-9933.

Libertarian Party of Wisconsin Convention 2011--Details

2011-02-16T00:26:00.001-06:00

LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF WISCONSIN - FEBRUARY 8, 2011
CENTRAL OFFICE
V-MAIL SERVICE (715) 646-9933
EMAIL lpwicentral@gmail.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF WISCONSIN MOVES "FORWARD" WITH CONVENTION PLANS.

On Friday, April 1st & Saturday, April 2nd, the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin will hold their annual convention at the Olympia Resort & Spa in Oconomowoc, WI.
Various workshops have been scheduled for this event with topics such as health care reform & practicing libertarian principles. In addition, party candidates from the 2010 elections will lead a discussion regarding their campaigns - which resulted in garnering thousands of votes from constituents within the state of Wisconsin. Also, Gene Cisewski - former political director of the Libertarian Party USA - will be the keynote speaker at Saturday evening's banquet. The theme of Mr. Cisewski's speech will be "Liberty: Going Forward From Here".
For more information regarding the convention, visit www.lpwi.org, contact Ben Olson III at (608) 381-6572 or Tim Krenz at (715) 646-9933.

Libertarian Party
of Wisconsin
2011 Annual Convention
“Forward”
Olympia Resort & Spa 1350 Royale Mile Road ~ Oconomowoc, WI 53066
www.olympiaresort.com
MUST Say“Libertarian Party!!” for Fri. and Sat. $92 room rates (per/nite+tax) before March 1st. 262-369-4960
April 1st Royal Cellar 7:00 PM to ?--Reception
(Donation-at-door; Cash Bar) with Live Music
April 2nd (Montreal/Monaco Room)
9:00 AM -11:45 AM
Workshop I: Practical Liberty: Living IT!
(Terry Grey, Tom Ender & Barry Hammarback)
Workshop II: Candidates & Campaigns (Ben Olson III, Anthony DeCebellis & Wil Losch
“The Who, What, How, When, Where & Why for
Serving as a Libertarian Candidate and Campaign Activists”

Noon to 12:45 PM--LPWI Execom Meeting (Lunch on your own)

1 PM to 2:45 PM—LPWI Membership Meeting (Delegate with Membership)
(Door prizes, 50/50 raffle & Auctions)
3 PM to 5:30—Afternoon Speakers--
Omar Semia--“Free-market Health Care Reform—Yes it is possible, & Cheaper!”
Jim Burns (Tentative)--2012 LPUSA Presidential Candidate
Dale Carson (Invited)--”How to 'Arrest Proof' Yourself”

6 PM to 8:30 (Crown Dining Room)
($40 full package all day, includes Banquet of an Italian Buffet w/ Wine)
Key Note Speaker (Banquet Guests Only)—
Gene Cisewski (Former LPUSA Political Director “Liberty: Going Forward from Here”
(Open Reception to Follow in Royal Cellar until ?)
----------------(Cut Below this Line and Mail with Check or Money Order---------------
Convention Prices/per person--$15 Morning/Afternoon Program-only
$40 Full Package, includes Free T-Shirt (for first 60, Banquet & Key Note Speaker
For more info, visit www.lpwi.org .Send Check or Money Order with Name(s) & Address to:
LPWI P.O. 20815 Greenfield, WI 53220 Or Call Tim Krenz at 715-646-9933
Name: _______________________ Address: _______________________________________
Telephone#__________________________#Attending_____

The Sold Outs: Not Holding on the Great “Holly Rock” Tributes

2011-02-15T21:40:00.001-06:00

Sub Terra Vita
By Scipio Cepiacanus
November 30, 2010

The Sold Outs: Not Holding on the Great “Holly Rock” Tributes

In late July 2010, a warm day above 80 degrees relented to the sun-settled evening on a rainless, though wet air-humid and damp Saturday night. Near my last tour to Den Haus, in Acqua City, in a year-long effort to chronicle our “life underground,” I arrived to see the “polka rockers,” my friends, and I found a heat up band just starting to set up for their own show. The time ticked its piqued way to 10 PM, and I sat around the lollygagging crowd on the outdoor patio sucking razor blade tubes enduring our first month of smokeless taverns in our State of “Defiled.”

I sat quiet most of the moments before The Sold Outs took the stage proper to playing. Wearing well-fitted lounge tuxedos, gone fab Three, the white coats flared bird-wing lapels, trimmed all by powder-blue twined edges, baby satin in the stage lights, all-out outlined against the black stage wall. These guys from Mankato looked fun. I anticipated forward several minutes to this band, waiting to hear their opening for my friends in the “polka rockers.”

The Sold Outs played an oldie, punkified, which instantly knew as “This magic moment.” What magic summer's scene presented to me, the narrator of these notes, then began filling me with a warm thought at some of the miracles that one can see whenever we remember to look for them. Miracles exist as only the normal things in life. Such it is. I looked and I saw a bridge between a time's music past, updated and rollick-ey for now-today. The next song, “oldick” like the last, remained punksted, yet led out from the vocal lead of the five-string bass player. “My little Runaway.” Oh, how everyone runs away at some point. Reflecting more of how I run than others, the lead electric guitar player and the drummer supported a tinge of Buddy-Rock, vocalized “ahhhh,” in back up.

“I wanna hold your hand,” The Beatles covered, swirled like the old Liverpool place in this caverned crowd of Den Haus. The Sold Outs played this classic a little better than pretty good, and tempo-ed to the punky beat in half the time, it seemed. Time, it seems, goes faster, sometimes, but especially when a skippy-tappy foot dance takes one by the song.

The crowd built. Fun filled into the dark spaces of the room. Back into another goldie, from decades far, far away in a galaxy-wide space of star-studded songs, “Happy together.” The Sold Outs had me selling out to them. “Will you still love me tomorrow?” Falsetto. Dulce. The frenzy in Living a memory. The refrain. The Bridge. Forte. Fugue-ish, of a sort. Paunk-up, dance on down.

The Sold Outs might just sound to me what the radical sounds of the Fifties and Sixties might have sounded to my parents. Then, Buddy Holly was an extremist, but over 50 years we had largely forgotten why what he did was so good to the past, and great for all of us today, and so important for tomorrows. That was why his music was so enjoyable, then. Now, a band like The Sold Outs, good at what they play, and playing extra pretty special well to each other, give a little spin on that one-time legacy of great music by great artists. We cannot forget our roots. They've just updated the songs, and have fun in back-dated jackets.

Music & the Lyre of Life: The Winter Dance Airplane Crash & Our Mortal Coils

2011-02-09T21:08:00.000-06:00

Music & the Lyre of Life: The Winter Dance Airplane Crash & Our Mortal Coils

The time of the Winter Dance. The airplane crash on February 3, 1959 killed the party. Songwriter & singer Don McLean posed the immortal question for all mortal beings in “American Pie,” his tribute to the extinguished out stars who perished in the crash: Can music save your mortal soul? The engine of optimism plowed a tragic furrow in an Iowa field, the world turned upside down for the future greatness that lasted no more. Backwards in what we call history, a freak-age of enduring disillusionment came upon our generations, since memorialized like McLean's “American Pie,” by an age of defiant art in song that tried to bring a little sanity back to overwhelm the madness of it all.
Those poets believed music could save not only a mortal soul, but a dying ideal of justice in liberty.

The 1960s, '70s, and '80s experienced multiple horrors of tragic deaths, assassinations, attempted ones, and war, not just the cold ones. In that time, never did people so accessible to each other need to throw some cold water on leaders and led alike, calm down, and patiently work out some sort of providential solution for the larger, inner gap between optimism and malaise, between hope and the despair. In those thirty years between the air crash in Iowa and the “end of history” in the early '90s, I witnessed twenty of them. I recall, with much fear, how the jaws of a fateful destiny with peace or nuclear winter—whichever way it would go was uncertain—pervaded shadows on skylines like specters waiting to snatch us with radiation

These last twenty years, to winter 2010-11, the pessimism that blighted the dull gray of history in our black and white photos of the 1960s and '70s now show up as sharp tuck lines and dyed hair in vivid digital television clarity. It pervades. It invades, and it make us restless. How other starving and mutilated generations might hold the present bling-junk civilization in contempt. We're not starving yet, nor does plague reign like the horrid angel it once did. We need to lighten up, take a cold philosophical shower in the stream of thought, and reason past why we arrived at this point, and how to get beyond it.

In the dates of greed, there were the attempts on the lives of Reagan, Pope John Paul II.. One spirit crushing assassination did succeed, the one we could never Imagine, that of John Lennon. If, earlier in the age of war and worry, those February 3, 1959 deaths of musicians Holly, Valens, and the Bopper on their way to the fateful Winter Dance in Iowa, did ignite the dark spirit, that death of music, there followed in 9 years the murders of JFK, MLK2, and RFK. These men of vision, though flawed, genuinely spoke of visions of peace on earth, brotherhood,, and the end of the war which dispel innocence (Vietnam), we also got the sharp noted hopes from the lyre of minstrels, rockers, hipsters, and different, diffident shades of libertarians, in song. All need is love; peace on earth; great days of sunshine, even in a hazy, cloudy mind-fogging dope of moral depression.

So, if asked, can music save a mortal soul? Or, even can it capture the spirit of an age, creating a mass appeal for the world rather than murder of our hope, the answer had better be, “Hell, yes, music can bring us back from the coil of the rope!” Even lyric sad poems of the death of rock and roll kings, and of the giant leaders of our history, we cannot fault the attempt to right the wrongs we see, without corrupting with violence. Te rabbits in the hole of time forty years ago played chess, before mad queens, and characters in drug tripping debauchery lived the high life. But those legends at least rebelled against the anti-conformism, called the status quo suckage, and fought against tyranny.

Where have the poets gone who speak the truth about the need for optimism, if not for plain old faith? We need them now more than ever. In our case, they're here, not elsewhere. We must hear them, and not censure, those calling for a new age of truth in art. We need our legends back.

Wages for Sin: Immoral Heroism in A Western Film Epic Review of: Unforgiven. Directed by Clint Eastwood.

2011-02-01T19:42:00.000-06:00

Wages for Sin: Immoral Heroism in A Western Film Epic
Review of: Unforgiven. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Malpaso Producutions & Presented by Warner Bros. 1992.
Reviewed by Tim Krenz

In the continuing reviews of heroes and heroism in the American Western film genre, Unforgiven, directed by its star, Clint Eastwood, is an example of “immoral heroism.” Unforgiven, written as a screenplay by David Webb Peoples, borderlines an existential paradox with an evil, that is injustice, losing in a struggle with a greater evil, wrath.

Released in 1992, Unforgiven won Eastwood Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Film, and also won for Gene Hackman Best Actor in a Supporting Role (and for Joel Cox, Best Film Editing, an award for a skill far, far underestimated by casual movie fans). In all of these technical and artistic achievements, and numerous others as well, Unforgiven really has the look, feel, and even a disturbing enjoyment of an outstanding film, perhaps even to be remembered as a classic on par with Schindler's List (Spielberg), Lawrence of Arabia (Lean), Rear Window (Hitchcock), and The Godfather (Coppola). At present, Unforgiven ranks a measly 68th on the American Film Institute's Top 100 films of all time (one ahead of Tootsie). That rank is injustice, but one can expect that it should make its way closer to the Top 20 over time, as its existential message reveals so much to ponder on humanity's great questions.

As a drama on screen, Unforgiven turns the idea of epic upside down. No valor, nor courage, invades this realm of story telling. It shows in the script, the acting, the settings, the plot, the art direction, and in the unifying theme of both the overall direction and the cinematography (the combination of camera, lighting, and placements on the set in view of the audience) a sad, sorry lesson for humanity to remember. That lesson, perhaps: On the level of existence, and existential philosophy, without the choice of good or some unseen or providential hand believed to be guiding our actions, in a contest between evils, the lesser evil never wins.

Transpose this to something where people have a choice in real life, such as casting a vote. Even if a person firmly believes they choose the lesser evil, the greater evil wins and, therefore, always grows stronger. Why? May be it corrupts the purity of the whole, the unity of “The One” in Emerson's Transcendental thought? Could the lesser evil be deceptive, enticing, or promise fame or riches that appeal to more to the vanity and the greed of people, rewards that humility and hard work deny except for their own sake? Do humans fear the consequences of actions so much, that involving themselves in conflict poses a danger of being wrong, especially when a right and reasonable, defiant, stand can stop the bad (or evil) from happening?

In a Western movie, a man on a horse from nowhere, like in Eastwood's Pale Rider, or Alan Ladd's title character in Shane, is required to dispense the justice so that in exacting or enforcing a higher moral principle, the virtue of good will not become corrupted. If so, Eastwood's avenging angel in Pale Rider, or Shane redeeming his past wrongs by following his usual path of immorality, both done for the benefit of good and on behalf of good people, are akin in literature to a Greek god in a tragedy saving the world (“deus ex machina”) or the tragic hero sacrificing himself and his happiness for others.

Unforgiven has no such good people, no good intentions by anyone, no good to be redeemed from a past of corruption, and no “god-like engineered solution” to save anything of a moral or a virtue. If this story has no good guys, no “win-win” solutions, where does Eastwood's character of “William Munny” fit as an example of “immoral heroism?” As a killer-now pig-farmer who comes out of retirement, Munny seeks to collect a bounty on two cowboys who abused a prostitute in a frontier town's saloon. Munny goes in pursuit of his goal: To kill for the easy money, which he knows well how to do. He even brings along a friend, played by Morgan Freeman. Yet, the lawman “Little Bill,” (Hackman) has his own agenda. From the time Hackman lets the two cowboys go free with a fine, paid to the saloon keeper, the moral ambiguity not only clarifies: It clears toward the movie finale into an endless pool of fire and brimstone for the offer and acceptance of wages to sin, to murder.

The idea of an immoral hero means, simply, not heroic at all, but rather a false image of one; a person worshiped and revered but one that ultimately fails the test of any standard of virtue; a person who owns nothing but vice. He or she is, as historian John Keegan describes in his book, Mask of Command, IS the “false hero.” In Unforgiven, the existential conflict reduces an audience to only two options: Hope the protagonist Munny prevails to be the fitting end of a great, and important film; or, hope that somehow real people, real life, and real situations cannot or would not be like those in the movie: They are unforgivable. We could be, if we did not have hope and humanity at all.

Cepia Club Diablog--Episode 2: Dr. Love Strange and Bohrs Nukem: Stopping Terrorism in the Modern World

2011-01-17T09:54:00.001-06:00

Click to Play

Diablog is an audio with image production The Cepia Club LLC's PiK. Media Division. This episode deals with a little ;irony the phenomenon of modern terrorist, both from suicide bombers and advanced nations with nuclear weapons. It settles to a point in support of ending contradictions in policy and favoring a Libertarian International solution.

Review of: Pale Rider (1985). Produced & Directed by Clint Eastwood

2010-12-10T08:58:00.000-06:00

Review of: Pale Rider (1985). Produced & Directed by Clint Eastwood
By Tim Krenz

In the library of great American films, only the immortal John Wayne surpasses Clint Eastwood as the enduring “hero” in the genre of the Western. Eastwood's pop stardom in the 1960's and '70's proved no fluke. With chiseled jaw, granite eyes, and the bone-chilling glare that produced an imposing effect on opponents, Clint Eastwood did indeed have talent at what he did, playing the hero or anti-hero who always won in the end.

Whether playing cop Dirty Harry in more contemporary movie settings, or starring in Sergio Leone's famous “spaghetti Westerns,” (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, for example), Eastwood's acting since the early television series Raw Hide created a standard model in his early characters. Beginning in the 1980's, however, somewhere around the movie Pale Rider in 1985, Clint Eastwood crossed a professional frontier from an actor in Western and cop into a transforming career as perhaps the most accomplished movie director of American film today, and in versatile genres of topics, themes, stories and plots. Multiple Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Film attest.

Eastwood's film Pale Rider maintains a striking thematic unity, and displays a maturity of vision and film-making style. Not in the format of a pasta-cowboy surreal film, such as High Plains Drifter, though one replete with a grand whole forming much more than its parts, Pale Rider by some accounts resurrected and redefined the Western genre. Instead of the old style “cowboys and Indians” racism, the mercenary adventure, or the typical John Wayne “oater” formula film, Eastwood produced and directed the script co-written by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack and made it into a distinctly significant film on par with as a “one-man” Seven Samurai, even without the directorial flourishes of the great Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa.

Also, Pale Rider pays tribute to another great American film, in this case Shane, starring Alan Ladd in the title role. Eastwood's take on that movie tells the story on the screen without Shane's ambiguity of morals or need for redemption. Pale Rider is not so much the anti-hero of Shane, or the epic heroes myths of the Seven Samurai (or, for that matter, The Magnificent Seven starring Yul Brenner). Instead, Pale Rider is realism of existential purity, where justice prevails on the order of a final battle between good and evil, where something supernatural or omnipotent must assist good to find the courage in itself to prevail over wrong.

In short, Pale Rider creates unheroic resolution, a divine intervention where a god or an angel cannot be heroic because that is what “it” does by nature. Only humans with human shortcomings can rise beyond themselves and find that courage and honor, that determination, overcoming that inner fear, to be more than average men and women and enter the realm of hero, epic or not. The “pale rider,” identified in the movie as “the Preacher,” is beyond a human in the way the story is shown. Megan, the young woman in the movie, reads from the Bible just before seeing Eastwood's character, a passage from the Book of Revelation, Chapter 6, Verse 8: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”

The film itself is about a group of prospectors protecting their claim against an industrial gold miner trying force and fraud to get the group of small timers to abandon their lucrative claim, so that the industrialist can exploit Carver Canyon with his 19th century version of hydraulic strip mining, a process which destroys the land beyond recognition or reclamation. The Preacher, played by Eastwood, finds himself as the protector of the flock, giving the prospectors “faith,” as the industrialist laments. The robber baron, who had the prospectors and their families on the point of leaving knows that any faith in Carver Canyon makes his fraudulent attempts to steal their hopes all the more difficult.

The industrialist, a man named La Hood, calls in seven hit men gunslingers in dusters, under the employ of a craggly looking corpse, a walking undead, to dispense with the Preacher, who attempts to protect the interests of the prospectors. When the final battle nears, the Preacher goes to a nearby city to reclaim his bullet- studded gun belts from a bank safety deposit box, leaving his white preacher's collar in the box. As the pale rider, who was shown riddled with old bullet wounds mid-way through the movie, and against the seven angels of the apocalypse, The Preacher sets out to settle all.

Does faith prove great enough to right wrongs, to dispose justice on the remnants of the late lawless frontier? Well, that can be left to view the movie. Pale Rider is a quintessential mix of both New Testament, Hollywood, modern myth, and great, great symbolic movie making. Not only is the ending worth the time to watch the whole movie, the simple interplay of great film-making by Clint Eastwood holds a philosopher's bowl full of wrath and justice unleashed to contemplate.

Sub Terra Vita: The Wonderful Hearing Bleeding of Audio Parasyte's Oozing Wormlies In Song

2010-11-30T00:42:00.000-06:00

Sub Terra Vita
By Scipio Cepiacanus
November 29, 2010

The Wonderful Hearing Bleeding of Audio Parasyte's Oozing Wormlies In Song
Den Haus, Aqua City, May 30, 2010

It bit me inside my pleasure-halved brain, like a coiled Star Trek lizard biting into my cortex and giving a sonic tonic effect to the vibrating synapse in my head. I possess no rightful means or wordy deeds to describe the band Audio Parasyte this past late spring, now five or six months gone by me. I remember well what I viewed of the Den Haus crowd. I recall what and HOW I heard.

The band in which a long time friend played his raging bass, Audio Parasyte combined talents for Skipe's mentoring energy with others he taught. My waiver aged, and the songs did pass me in time. I recall not exact the words or the songs themselves. I never did understand music enough to rememorize or vomit the tune on to my own ears. Yet, the feel and the in-toned impressions remain.

Before the big show, the big Memorial Day Eve party, many friends implored, “Come, come and see.” What I saw mattered little compared to what I heard. Now, how those sounds, and the feel of that sight, made me feel then, I do wish to remember.

That night, I stood blind to others in the corners of my friendships. I chose not to see to “a band.” I chose to let the bug of Audio Parasyte dissolve conscience in the menzy of a verving thalamus massaging my social “out there.” If words do fail, let the metal music reveal to others the “funner” night in the Valley Underground everyone shared.

As metal music goes, Audio Parasyte sounded much more better than the average band. It pounded not metallical, and instead it purged the acid from the base, shedding the bass player's sweatlets swinging in all high-intensity directions. Unsinkable sound, it was, despite the oceans of water and whiskey in the room. It was, near, Metal-Titan-tic. It caused a head bang, furious, danging and dropsy in many of the audience. The frenzied downed their spilling beer and vodka faster in the move, quick to fill again before spilling their sense on the floor in the cobalt-blue wet light bullets streaming from Skipe's forehead. I, un-drinking, almost drowned in the seas of flinging souls, though Audio Parasyte's cold kelvin crisp beats kept me unsinking on the wave of crushing dancing bodies. The party, later and later in the afternight bedlam, entered into the Den Haus's hypnotic dark room's black velvet “nada-verve-and-nether-vana.”

Electricity good and in Merlin-style magic shot from metal plated string-words, wrapped in powered up effect: The instruments of enlightened metal filled the smokey lounge. We, the crowded crowd, stood or danced ghostly from those to avoid, played well and helpless in revelry in the tooled merry dronic and spirituous roaring. The Eve's song strong for Memorials ran in drum taps cadenced to honor those who had heroes pass before them. We lived because they did more than us this night; they served; and the honor bestood us to honor them.

And Audio Parasyte thundered onward after midnight. They played even slow songs in the mix of lickity quick ones, though still on the metal-Viva. “where is my dream. . . don't let go.” Pick up that heartful liquid sad puddled at your toes, I thought, as my notes say I did. Put your cleansed spirit, washed with somebody else's bloody ear-tears, on your face refreshed and new. Rebring the motion of joy, life retaken as an Excalibur extended for majestic-wielding of the good in you!! Seize the prayerful moment. Smile wide on this earth, this Terra incognito, this Sub Terra Vita, as life underground is always good when known to others. Music can save a mortal soul and immortal memory a rolling laughter. Let the god, the time, the times, or Time itself, bring a saving with a frugal sense of greatness having served the honest good in joy for others, the sense of wonder at Star Sky in May unending in friendships. Live and get life alive. Live the music like the aural parasite eating dead flesh from the cancerous sadness of the former petty painful cuts and our own ego's pride.

Young, behold not to fate, only define yourselves to be the best “you” a person can be. The spirit of other thoughts rings an ear of pedal and metal-Titan-tic amplified. We are all one, even when all but one get welcomed. The metal band symphony brought us there that night last May, and Audio Parasyte felt in me warm sustenance, in the crowded room with those few close friends in the way of a meal of sustaining regard from the few who accept “It.” Not friends from a cold leftover winter, but those who “get” what people want to be thriving on today, and expect and deserve tomorrow. Into a cusp of summer sun next day, my friends that Memorial Day remembered in the morning, and it brought to me more gratitude for living, and for being me, for I have the choice and the chance to do it.

Such was a memorable Memorial Day weekend in the St. Croix Valley Underground. Viva life!

Sub Terra Vita: Earth to Tolley(?): Commending a Count Down

2010-09-12T22:48:00.001-05:00

Sub Terra Vita
September 11, 2010
By Scipio Cepiacanus

Earth to Tolley(?): Commending a Count Down

[Foreward—My Apologies]. It happened four or five months ago and I barely remember it. Looking through some old notes I found in my sketch journal, trying like the soon-to-be 40 year detective in the mysteries of my own recent life, I look intense at the journal to formulate some answers to nag-nag questions. Who were they? From where did they come? What did their faces look like? What did they wear? I failed to record these facts, as I would want to know some of these personal and personality details when writing. After all, life in the St. Croix Valley underground depends, for me, on developing something concrete in memory. According to my notes the band impressed the hell of out of me. Beyond impressions of their music, only the answers to the above questions could make it real enough for me to relate some things better to a reader. Sonofabitch, I had hoped that what older people told me when I turned twenty or 25 years old would never happen to me: That aging, or overworked minds, or just plain wear and fear of thinking longer, does no good service to a person's memory. In seeing the band Earth to Tolley, I at least have some notes in a scribble book. [Yours Truly, Scipio Cepiacanus].

I arrived too late on a spring Saturday night at Acquaria's Den Haus to see my good friends play in their band, Wisco. As always before smoking permanently moved outdoors by law later that upcoming summer, Den Haus's tavern room filled with a low fog of dense cigarette smoke.

The Earth to Tolley show started, and I thought, like a flight director prompt, “Earth to Tolley. . . Earth to Tolley. . . BLAST OFF!!” The music, as my notes say, took my mood onto an acid-sound noodle groove, the music reminding me of wilder days when all the other people took their Hits, and I didn't need one because those “other” people could never catch up to the trips I left behind.

Without need for embellishing from my cleared and cleaned mind, I wondered if any one in the tavern would need intoxication as Earth to Tolley took eclectic music mind-melding sky high to Jupiter's moons. Mr. Spock would have gone nuts on such logic as Earth to Tolley drove their jet-hot rocket up and away, in a group playing tighter than a “Type C” Grunge Machine suit.

As could be said, beer before this sort of music trip could make one dizzy in a vertigo loop space Disneyland-plunge from the low arc of Sky Lab's last spin around our planet before its burned out crash. Heavens to Mergatroid—that was more than 30 years ago. “Earth to Tolley. . .Earth to Tolley. . . You're cleared for space walk.”

“Use Me Up!” they sang and rammed the jam on electrified sounds. A Rolling Stones cover song everyone knew, “You Can't Always Get What You Want,” welded into “Feeling Alright.” The songs, Earth to Tolley's songs, both covers and ones I'd never heard anywhere before, had grunge post-pop flash, a WOW-WA SHAAZAM(!!!), with a little skiddle bob-bop. Unique in their way, Earth to Tolley brought some new form of music life to a cultural oasis out here on Pluto's limb of the Metro entertainment solar system. Acquaria's place in the cool-spots-to-play gets even better by reputation, as Earth to Tolley played. For all that the big cities know, out and up here it gets cold and dark eight months out of the year. But in our Sub Terra Vita, our life Underground in the St. Croix Valley, nights become lightened and warmed when sun eclipses by dark to the sheer energy of a good living through great art. “Who said you can't get what you want?” I ask.“Oh, excuse me, Big Culture did. Right?”

So when rebuffed in the sub-real, the reality goes sur-real, and then it gets back to the music, back into the seeded soil of fun. And we, Captain Kirk, serve as Star Fleet space cadets in this intergalactic tone warp. “Bring us there, Earth to Tolley.” And at least they abducted me into the off world colony of their songs.

“Earth to Tolley. . . Earth to Tolley. . . spin up the candle and let's take her for a ride. Second star out, then turn left.”

Like sailing on a sober solar orbit comet's tail ice amidst a bright shimmering music of stars, bars and twittering funk heat, the band's staccato stellar space scape measures their beat. The good souls in us appeal for the pleasure of company we know not how to meet. Yet we still call ourselves neighbors, on earth or perhaps elsewhere in the future. The less formal thrills in my mind at Den Haus that spring Saturday evening allowed me to shake Polaris's hand as I glide past that north star, and then I roll rift-right on a Milky Way wave ride back through the Saturn ring express, destination home here in the Valley.

Earth to Tolley made a universal good time that night, that felt right, right then. I only regret. . .one thing. . .

THAT I WISH I COULD REMEMBER IT HAPPENING WITHOUT MY NOTES!!!!

Copyright © 2010 The Cepia Club LLC. All rights reserved.

Universe Pory Psalm From “The Alphabet Psalms” By (Posthumously) Pi Kielty

2010-08-26T10:02:00.001-05:00

Universe Pory Psalm
From “The Alphabet Psalms”
By (Posthumously) Pi Kielty
Discovered August 1, 2010
Papers Box “F”
Released August 14, 2010

Plenty of emptiful, desolate what? Absence offended none, yet one aspirating poet lacked muse devoid of sun. All wrapped; no expanse timed for no one. Heavy dense the heart without life to share. No song sang. No love yet given nor bared . Lone-ness needs two for rhyme.

Together, every nothing darkness, weighty small inner gloom, condemned non-future with dreary nowhere doom. The sole bard raised pen, arising a soulful solaced yearn. The sparking shard; the tablet smitten. That gift read as written:“Let there be light,” as time ceased its wasting dead.

Pleased, all things together, heart no longer rent, life and love, the grand poet lent.

Sub Terra Vita: DRAWATHON! From the Wellspring of Art—“Wannigan Days,” July 16, 2010

2010-08-26T09:55:00.003-05:00

Sub Terra Vita
By Scipio Cepiacanus
August 14, 2010

DRAWATHON!
From the Wellspring of Art—“Wannigan Days,” July 16, 2010

We sit on steps and chairs under a canopy on a raised concrete stage. At the back alley on Aquaria's main street, a lengthy narrow paved walk filled with umbrella-ed tables and chairs, the music--“too much modern blues”--blared on the sat-radio speakers posted high on the ICO's red m brick side to the north. On the south wall of the alley, loomed another stately oven-brick building, housing “The Safety Film.” In this cavern of the alley, a warm night's breeze of dry storm clouds made it very damp. But, lights kept our view illuminated. The dwindling four art groupies inevitably diminished to just me. By myself, I watched the 1 Am to 5 Am shift of the “Drawathon.” Bobzie and Kyrley, each masters of their own oil pastel forms, entirely different in their view, though no less expert at their sensitive drawn touch, amazed my own audience of one.

The Drawathon goes on, near sixteen hours done, almost, not quite eight to follow, to 12 noon. “Warned Again Dayz” starts for the rest of yesterday's tomorrow. Bobzie and Kyrley's started early. Earlier in the evening, my “Dayz” started by listening The Just-One-More playing his Urine show the next block over, in the back of the Side Bar on their hillside amphitheater of amplitude concrete. That now happened nine hours ago, today's yesterday even though the night prevails instead of dawn. I lived another day this night, stretching out the insomnia before into what I feel now: Living as the invisible and omniscient chronicler of this Drawathon. I feel like the Third Man in second person format, but wish to stay quiet and engage only in the general bonhomie of my friends when they break from their art.

The snack tray of butter crackers, Pepperjack and Colby cheese, hard salami and pepperoni dwindles as I munch. Bobzie and Kyrley snack on the platter as well when they step back from the narrow view of their two separate walls to get the panoramic and an artist huddle.

Kyrley returns to his parchment and scrubs away pink and orange parallelisms in order to use the back with anther piece as transparent overlay. He rotates the waxy sheet for a different perspective. As we all know, or should at some mature or clearer state in life, most things of beauty and truth depend on perspective, while lies and wickedness stand on their own for what they are: unwholesome and unlikable. But in this domain of a semi-underground set between two brick canyons, the art and the artist in their two forms before me bring nothing but positive honesty to picture poems. Both my friends, Bobzie and Kryley, have shown me for 11 and three years, respectively, that they can indeed create a thousand phrases into one notable vision. I cannot fail to hope and wonder if ever a writer could capture a thousand pictures in one solitary word.

Bobzie found that after finishing on waveless waxpaper, the new piece, no longer destined for scrap tin sheets, must revert to paper. Now, two rectangular blank white eyes stare at him from what he just drew. He stares into their void and their abyss stares back at him. No longer able to resist the pictured eyes' pouting shouts of, “WE WANT SOMETHING TO DEFINE US!!” he draws into the eyes and emerges with victorious strokes of oil pastel emotion n all around them. He has drawn into his form to be remembered and not described at this point. Not described? Why? I would never want to lessen their impact on the world upon which they yearned with undignified words. Let the audience imagine: It is their image in mirror.

Kyrley goes “aggressive” with black outlines on the flipped and rotated waxen pelt. I see, with near opaque colors doing piano forte from its backside, the former of pink and orange parallelisms. The picture on “pic-true” livens into a cross-legged, gun-totting Sky-Tek samuri, complete with horned helmet and turtle-layered armor. The warrior of art, alert, yet reposed, has his own Apocalypse black air tube popping from the vanilla orange hexa-form headdress. One hand-less arm has fitted in place of fingers a spike driven into the ground to hold the form, and perhaps all of us, to the earth and realityin the weightless time and space of the future. Kyrley then wipes the pastel from the material and starts anew. It is better this way. I just humbly revel in the privilege of seeing it, and no one else besides the three of us ever will.

Back to Bobzie's fulfilling eyeful mirror. . . . He spins to do a karate chop sketch mark on the surface on the right eye. From a nun's habit, he makes Mr. Pear-head, smiling his ivory key teeth. The finishing form, which I can now only demean with words, looks to me like sponge-cake brains popped out of the head like a misfit toy male doll smoking cigarettes on a lazy Christmas night, undelivered, but having one hell of time with scotch and women besides.

Four-fifty-six am, less 24 minutes since the last good song on the satellite radio bouncing off the canyon's red brick walls. Seven hours to go. . Still, the music is not so important. Jovial fun and positive grooves, even searching themes for me, make us fellows in a quest, but Bobzie and Kyrley share their own adventure, and soon I must leave here for them to discover what they hope to observe.;

Five-twenty-eight am. Finally, the morning drive starts on the radio. My favorite The Who song, “Eminence Front,” from the album It's Hard, sudden and sure, woke up us frustrated with what music has become since the end of the 20th Century. The two artists, Bobzie and Kryrley, inspire on a jive, juiced rhythm, and now it is going fast for them still 12 noon on their Rock'n'Draw. I am about to leave, get a little rest, and come back up here to Acquaria later this Friday morning, to “Warn Again” all who pass: Be the poet of your talent; it makes life happier. For the picture poets, Bobzie and Kyrley, I leave them to draw upon their art, the wellspring of their life.

BARTER FEST To Run with Fun, September 18th

2010-08-26T09:55:00.001-05:00

BARTER FEST To Run with Fun, September 18th

On Saturday, September 18, 2010, the Abandoned Scout Camp in Hewitt, Minnesota, will host its long-awaited BARTER FEST, sponsored by the Hewitt Lions Club For more details, including the line up of great bands like “Squib” and “The Juggernauts” from the St. Croix Valley of Wisconsin, and Hewitt's own, “Dorthy Fix,” see the flier on the front page of the August 26, 2010 Issue #35 of Freedom-Zine America .

BARTER FEST has music, has camping, and has an old fashioned swap meet, too. But BARTER FEST involves so, so much more. Great times, great fellowship, among past and soon-to-be good friends, the Abandoned Scout Camp plants a real community of like-minded souls on its birth plot for this event. The hosts offer a place where new people with multiple viewpoints can live together, and benefit all.

Time at BARTER FEST will prove a terrible thing in haste. So, just hop on over to Hewitt and take it at leisure. Yes, BARTER FEST on this upcoming September 18th holds just the newest starting line to where people no longer strangers make a fresh run at the Human Race. Come to Barter Fest!! For fellowship, fun, and unforgettable futures to come!!! Find more info at: www.abandonedscoutcamp.com .

Review of: Liston, Robert. Terrorism. New York: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1977.

2010-08-01T23:16:00.000-05:00

By Scipio Cepiacanus

This short and very insightful book by journalist Robert Liston first appeared in 1977, at a point in history when religious fanaticism within the two separate Islamic sects known as “Wahabbism” (also known as “Salafism”) and Shi'a Islam began widespread use of the methods of terrorism as a means to achieve their philosophical goals. The term “philosophical” should be read for the euphemism and propaganda it is. For terrorism as a method of war is simply a tool of implementing a political agenda, even, and especially, a religiously-inspired political agenda. Faith-based political agendas of the Islamic-type seek one end. As it applies to any denomination of religion or fanatic & ideological bent (like Marxism) that would use violence or threats of violence, the users of terrorism want their socio-political beliefs to rule over others who do not agree with them, who oppose them, or who defy the “revealed truth” of the agenda.
Terrorism is not a strategy. “Pure” strategy in its most simple form is defined as the creation and placement of material and personnel resources. “Grand” strategy remains the realm of political decision-making, a unified policy where the agendas, platforms, manifestos, and the like are decided. The achievement of the agenda demands that all efforts in peaceful or violent enterprise must lead toward the aim of the policy, otherwise peace has no meaning and war itself becomes the real enemy. War without political policy (agendas) would have no purpose, besides mass senseless murder, genocide or the complete extinction of human civilization. And terrorism does not mean a specific tactic, as a tactic would be suicide bombers blowing up school buses. If insurgency is a strategy using the resources to achieve a political policy aim, then terrorism is the active means by which an insurgency fights. Terrorism is a doctrine of activity, the direction of grand strategy, “pure” strategy, and single activities toward the unified goal, victory. Suicide squads, road-side bombs, and car bombs are the single activities terrorists take to fulfill the agenda.
Terrorism as a method of war for insurgent uprisings goes back thousands of years. The Biblical David, before he became a king, was an insurgent. Later in history, the mighty Romans fought Spanish guerrillas defying the power or Rome. In the years of Rome's occupation of Iudea (modern Israel and Palestine), the third Jewish revolt of 132-136 A.D. (or C.E., “common era”) led by Bar Kokhba required overwhelming force and patience by Rome to suppress. To define terms precisely, insurgency is conducted by guerrillas, those organized and taking arms against an enemy power. Guerrilla warfare by practice IS the use terrorism. Guerrilla-Terrorist (G.T.'s ) is symbiotic and synonymous.
Terrorism is strong violence, and also can be the threat of violence or its mere ghostly appearance, applied by one group against their enemies isolated weak points, most often government leaders or supportive civilians; small portions of the enemies military, police, and paramilitary personnel and bases; or even the enemies military equipment or capital infrastructure (like power plants, bridges, public buildings, etc).
Guerrilla-Terrorists aim early for a simple arithmetic of power, whereby they add to their power in numbers of members and civilian supporters, amounts of equipment, and credibility among neutral or third parties, and subtract the power in those same categories from whatever enemy that opposes them. G.T.s build strength to a point when they have sufficient strength to operate in wider areas of territory, using the population, friendly or otherwise, as a source of supply and money, cover for undetected movement and bases, and for information. Guerrilla-Terrorists, in order to survive and have a chance of winning their political goals through military means, need to force upon the enemy what Lawrence of Arabia described as the “geometry of an insurgency.” This geometry not only means spreading the enemy's armed and police forces over a wide physical space, where isolated small units can be overwhelmed by concentration of effort by the insurgents. It also pertains to dissipating the moral authority of the enemy over its subjects, whom it can not defend or whom it persecutes and relocates (or accidentally kills and maims) as part of an anti-terrorism campaign. And finally, the geometry helps the insurgency by making the enemy politically corrupt, and oppressive, but also, ideally, financial broke from fighting an endless war of attrition. The cost of replacing soldiers, etc. and equipment becomes too great to bear. Either the enemy is annihilated or offers negotiations.
Liston's explanations of the phenomenon of terrorism were quite receptive in 1976/77. Most terrorism before that time reflected anarchist, nationalist or Marxist political agendas, all post-modern and Industrial Age forms of politics inspired by 18th and 19th century experiences. Liston correctly surmised that religious terrorism, in particular Muslim terrorism, would dominate future global politics between the West and the East, but also the Northern vs. Southern Hemispheres. “Terrorism” as a word, Liston explains, derived from the 1792-1796 (roughly) period of The Terror during the middle of the French Revolution, when enemies of enemies, and more enemies, took power, denounced each other, and sent the unlucky ones to the guillotine. No one could foresee in the 1970s the Islamic suicide bombers, undeterred, and unwilling to negotiate; who preferred martyrdom for the causes of their religion.
In the world-wide-war against Muslim terrorists, the insurgency tactics globally of Al-Qaeda and associated affiliates follows this pattern described. Liston admonished any political policy that would give terrorism legitimacy in eyes of the public. By calling any terrorist group (friendly to the US or not) “freedom fighters,” “soldiers,” etc. causes sympathy in public opinion for terrorist. Liston suggested labeling terrorists what they are: Murderers, extortionist, vandals, and simple criminals. Fighting terrorists publicly with military means, and not by discrete special forces, law enforcement, criminal legal proceedings, etc. gives terrorist what they most desire, the status of legitimacy, which makes getting recruits, supporters, and money all the easier.
The questions Liston asks readers and leaders to consider are the same today as then. But do answers by leaders and led differ today over 1977? Liston's obscure book can at least give different viewpoints to today's readers. And the reality of war and terror today require such viewpoints to be formed and heard from all corners of society if democracy will survive an age of terror.

Time Pory Psalm

2010-07-18T00:35:00.000-05:00

From “Alphabet Psalms”
By (Posthumously) Pi Kielty
Dated: Bastille Day (Year unknown)
Discovered: July 15, 2010
Released: July 16, 2010

Time Pory Psalm

No current flowed, as undammed Time, erodes a body, a hope, a jigsaw mind. No power knowed, parting that unbuilt unseen, wakes life aware, blesses slumbered dreams.

Constant Time—forceful fraud though versed—wills all well-wished, afore time tolled untelling too soon, rebirthed. Rebridged on altered path, time not set, reigns goodness given and goodness kept.

Time's past futured, too, fulfilled; forgave lifeful, the always promising saved with outcasts unspited, all sheening unblightful. Time's own power serves itself for all humbled to kneel, unpuzzled mind, brushened hope to god. That Falled . . . rehealed.

Yet Another Hollyhock

2010-07-15T18:56:00.001-05:00

Hollyhock the Third
Scipio Cepiacanus
July 15, 2010

Alas, awake. Unlock, spring bound Hollyhock! Summertide swirls, layered drops, mists and sheets, in calm or windy twirls, feed fuel like passion for a triumph, flamed life blessed. Long armed greenish scepters ascend, give bulbed amends from winter's quiet, resting gem. July in bloom. Purply-pink, tissue thin, fingers extended petals ache sunward, then weight and waitful droop, the daytime smile frowns when dark aways bright from you. Yellow eyelets balled, bawling dust off string hair pollen ends, which feeds aborn new carried. Farthest they flew. Let seeds like songs, my shy muse, release the words silence wronged. Deeds boom vibrant affect when faithful and true.

Review of: Menon, Rajan. The End of Alliances. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.

2010-06-04T13:36:00.000-05:00

Review of: Menon, Rajan. The End of Alliances. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.

In The End of Alliances, Rajan Menon presents convincing reasons for re-ordering United States Government “grand strategy”--the over-encompassing political-economic-military policy of a nation-state—from the system implemented in the period of 1945-1955. He suggests a more sensible, economical, and less provocative security structure within 21st Century realities. Part of Menon's proposal for a more relevant grand strategy contains changes to the third rail of US foreign policy for the last 61 years: Ending the system of permanent alliances, with unlimited commitments by the United States, with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Japan and Korea (though not Australia and New Zealand ).

Menon begins with an examination of the major United States foreign policies, its grand strategy, from Independence to around 2005-6. From the founding of the republic in the War of Independence and the ratification of the Federal Constitution in 1788, through America's entry into The Great (World) War of 1914-18, Menon asserts that US policy was not one of isolationism or the surrender of its power and interests to others. Instead, the policy adopted early in the nation's history, influenced by the writings of Thomas Paine and established by the precedents of President Washington, arose from the great advantages afforded the New World by its geographic distance from the European “Old World:” That is, the barrier of the Atlantic Ocean, and complemented by the even vaster ocean of the Pacific.

In terms of military power, the United States was relatively weak and undeveloped until the temporary expansion for the 1861-1865 Civil War. For its unlimited cultural, social, economic and intellectual ability to expand and grow into a mighty power in due course, the need for peace to germinate prosperity in the Western Hemisphere was the one fundamental requirement for early America. Thus, Presidents George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson pursued a course of strict neutrality in the politics of war and peace between the empires in Europe, declaring the US the permanent friend and commercial partner of all and the lasting enemy and villain of no one.

Conflicts early in the American republic's history, in and across the Atlantic and Pacific, affected the Americas, with the United States taking its own side for its permanent interest in those European power struggles. As a commercial nation, and one particularly apt for seaborne trade to enrich it, America developed a small army at home and a small, but excellent naval force to protect its interests off-shore and overseas.

The French Revolution and the Wars of Napoleon from 1789 to 1815 involved the cradle of republican liberty in the Quasi-War against France, and in the trade and maritime wars between the French Empire and everyone else. In all the instances, America was threatened either with oppression at home, for example, the “Alien and Sedition Acts”; or its was confronted with militarism at home and wars on the North American coasts and lands: such as the enlarged army in the late 1790s, the “Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts,” and the War of 1812.

In each case, America defeated the enemies of liberty at home and resisted the enemies of its self-interest from abroad. And as nation that both benefited from foreign trade and defended itself, a short naval war was fought early in American history against the French and a longer naval war in the Mediterranean against the Barbary states of northwest Africa. America never shied away, nor should it today, in Menon's viewpoint, from exercising a cold, calculated foreign policy, one that is active and assertive in the world-wide politics of both diplomacy and war. Hence, early on America pursued a “maritime” political-economic-&-military grand strategy, and has remained an architect of maritime power politics ever since.

Against European powers tempted to reconquer lost empires in the Western Hemisphere, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams led President Monroe's effort to separate, politically, the “New World” from Europe's aggressions with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the second rail of US foreign policy. In sum, the enduring doctrine declares that events in “New World” independent republics were the sole concern and duty of the northern American republic to manage and resolve. Along with the earlier, first rail of “no Entangling Alliances” (Jefferson's words) that could draw the United States into conflicts, these two policies sought to avoid conflicts of non-American interests, conflicts in peace or war which would only harm the nation's people and destroy their liberty, and thus impoverishing the nation as well.

US interventions in the First and then Second World wars over nationalism, militarism, racism and imperialism, the shift in the perspective and beliefs of American political leaders led to permanent alliances and their dilemmas, including Soviet interference in Latin America. Regarding NATO, and the military alliances with Japan and Korea, the Cold War political-&tc. grand strategy may no longer be relevant. The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the European Union via the Maastricht treaty in 1992, and the potential of the prosperous Asian democracies to take of themselves, American foreign policy, as Menon believes, needs to undergo another paradigm shift, back to older one, but one just as self-interested and assertive in its interested as ever. Read his book, and then decide how the 21st Century world security architecture might look without America in other people's issues, and allowing America to fight its own wars at home and abroad to a victorious conclusion for liberty, prosperity, peace and equality.

Serving Our Cuase--Responsible Leadership

2010-04-30T00:31:00.000-05:00

The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin like any successful enterprise will only succeed or fail on the vision, competence, eloquence, and example of its leaders. Some people lead naturally, born to it. Some learn through doing it and lead just as well. Either way, the quality of any business comes from people willing to take charge, work as part of a team, share credit for success and accept the ultimate responsibility if anything goes wrong. Leaders lead by learning, both the positive and the negative lessons.

Party members often tell a joke that goes, “Leading libertarians is like herding cats.” The punch line, as we know, is the impossible effort to give cats direction, unless they are following their hunger. For anti-statist individuals, participation in an institution contradicts an instinct of many libertarians who believe in a natural law of liberty and want to live free of coercion or a collective consent of others, particularly from institutions over which she or he has diminishing control (government, of course, being the prime example). That even brings another joke about the philosophy of libertarianism and the state of liberty in society. “How many libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer: “None. They think it will be done by an unseen hand.”

The problem with leadership in the libertarianism starts in a “pure ideal” of why we need a world of liberty, one where any institution or even a libertarian party slows a natural existence of individual freedom and personal responsibility. Also, the pure philosophy might abhor the practical reason of why we have a political party based on individual liberty and personal responsibility. We join for different reasons, but a libertarian party fights for the conditions where free minds and free-markets can naturally create peace and prosperity.

For forty years in its existence the Libertarian Party shows only marginal success at the election polls, with the possible exception of local community, county, cooperative and school boards. On a positive note, the Libertarian Party keeps our common cause alive, keeps voters and office holders at all levels of government office more honest to liberty in the republic than otherwise could be the case. And, the Libertarian Party chips away little by little at the wall of ignorance and apathy in people who by preoccupation with family, work, etc. forget that they ARE citizens and that they must be responsible more than anyone for keeping their own liberty and freedom intact.

For the lack of full pews, however, the Libertarian Party cannot always preach to the choir and keep the faith in the faithful. Despair comes to those who wait for answers. In politics, as in life, one has to know the right question(s) to ask. Sometimes, a “Gospel of Liberty” must be shown, and not told, to others on outside afraid to look inward. The question could be in our case, “How would a Libertarian Party function best to remain pure in principle while achieving practical results of restoring a republic of liberty?”

There might be a mistake in libertarian organizations copying the successful political parties who themselves became the corruption they sought to replace. Merely copying the structures, hierarchies, methods, and forms of the ruling mega-party do not fit what a libertarian organization could, should and would ideally become in order to remain pure in its essence and successful toward its goals. Whether libertarian organizations peel into mass marketing, death by committee, stove piping lines of accountability and responsibility, or puts ambition before performance in rank, these old ways do not really fit what a party of individuals, and smarter than average individuals, can create that effectively runs a party less like a government bureaucracy and more like a profitable and reasonably efficient enterprise.

Libertarians need to create a participatory party system with less rigid procedures while keeping the accountability and guidance intact. A libertarian society would empower individual citizens taking initiative to care for their own interest best, mostly empowering by not killing positive initiative and enthusiasm. The flexible “almost non-organization” that can spread the gospel of liberty works with all the membership, the officers, the representatives, the committees, the volunteers and the affiliates and their supporters, becoming the leaders among family and friends, co-workers and neighbors by showing, not preaching, how libertarianism is lived.

LIBERTY MUST BE LIVED TO BE KEPT ALIVE. In that way, liberty as practice and libertarianism as philosophy grow stronger, in all ways—in members, resources, volunteers AND VOTES. With that example, in the home, at work, among friends, or by acts of leadership through voluntary choice in their community, libertarianism stays pure and becomes practical politics as well, if directed toward supporting Libertarian Party candidates and supporting libertarian positions on legislation and policy.

As said in the beginning, some naturally lead well; others learn from the pain of wisdom. Most often, those paths cross. Managing things in an organization (the business details for example) are simple. It just takes the minimum commitment to perform the necessary duties. Success in any enterprise comes from maximum effort used smart and with experience.

Leading in the way described, if not natural, can be nurtured. Everyone can lead somehow if trained and empowered by the identification of talent, teaching skill sets, finding the tools, and given guidance and initiative to pursue their enthusiasm. Leadership is easy to understand. At a minimum, and as always done best by example in new enterprises, the minimum requirement necessary for success is to DO THE WORK. Liberty in the world depends on it. It depends on you!

It might be necessary to look at some important, broader issues a libertarian party should consider before going further toward the goal (whatever the goal is set to be). Unfortunately, some of this gets a little sad and negative but informs better the need for a positive solution stated above. If, as libertarian political parties adopt the trappings, systems, work methods, and even political fund raising like the major parties, (albeit donations are still important; but money equaling the Megaparty treasuries is not as important if libertarians function with the leadership strengths as explained), the Libertarian Party and the liberty movement in general would repeat the cycle it is trying to break.

The very real practical fear for a party based on purist philosophy OR uncompromising pragmatism, is that an ideological revolution, inside or outside the organization, eats its own children as surely as the French and Russian revolutions destroyed those people that started them (and other ones as well). It would happen no less to or within a libertarian party or organization as it did happen to France's Third Estate or Russia's Left SRs.

The Founding Fathers of America, with time to make the right choices in a period of relative calm and settling, understood the need for limited, but stable government. Hence a loyal opposition needed opportunity to achieve power by some set of normative, acceptable, non-violent rules that all must follow. Even in the Federalists writings, while not described as parties, “factions” of different interests were expected, and in ways even encouraged, in the new American Republic. The factions were meant to provide a balance between and within the various governmental and non-governmental institutions in the Union. A fact in point, Hamilton, the primary real leader of the constitutional revolution, who wrote most eloquently about factions, was himself murdered by a leader of the opposing faction.

These examples take extreme ends but the lessons should nonetheless be generally instructive. Division in purpose or personality in any organization breeds pessimism and discontent. Negativity and non-cooperation destroys enthusiasm. Worst of all for any libertarian organization, arguments between purity and pragmatism defeat the means before the ends ever become reality.

The true lesson here? It is right to be principled, but pragmatism is acceptable and can be practical to the extent of reaching the common good for the common cause. Implacable, hostile, or resentful resistance to other views, even to the less pure ideas or more pragmatic ones on any side, leave no room for compromise. The general point can be summed up with the phrase: “Mutually assured destruction” if either of the extremes, purism or pragmatism, do not meet in the middle. And compromise between individuals within civilization, no less than within a political party or a mass organization, is necessary to prevent the inevitable end of all fanaticism with power: The destruction of both self and others.

In a society that seeks to maintain peace and prosperity for all, the loyal opposition, on both sides of the divide, must be kept satisfied with the trappings of power, namely respect and dignity for their beliefs to be voiced (even if wrong), and especially an opportunity within an agreed set of limited rules to achieve the “shackles of power.” Without the necessary conditions for both peace and prosperity to benefit from the balance of power provided by the factions of interest and factions of influence, politics fails to perform its absolute function in Natural Law: The guarantee of individual and collective liberty, freedom, justice, and citizenship for everyone and anyone, in peace with plenty.

Without the minimum guarantee existing for practical compromise, extremist tendencies for suicidal and homicidal solutions will destroy everyone in the name of purity or pragmatism. In that case, there is no hope on earth for a libertarian society to exist for anyone. The guiding principle for libertarianism must be: Liberty and justice for all, for the minority and the majority, and all the dissidents on every extreme.

St. Croix Valley Liberty Beacons Volume 6--Tim Peterson on "Why I'm Glad to Be a Libertarian"

2010-04-20T21:49:00.001-05:00

Click to Play

Wisconsin libertarian activist Timothy Peterson of Oconomowoc, speaks to the St. Croix Valley Liberty Rally in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, on March 14, 1999. His speech, "Why I'm Glad to Be a Libertarian." St. Croix Valley Liberty Beacons is a PiK. Media production of a Tim Krenz Film, presented by The Cepia Club LLC.

The Facts and the Fate of Freedom

2010-04-11T20:54:00.001-05:00

Sub Terra Vita
By Scipio Cepiacanus
April 11, 2010, Sunday, 6 PM

The Facts and the Fate of Freedom

[BE SURE TO CHECK www.pikzl.com AND www.cepiaclub.com and www.lpwi.org FOR THE FILM-VIDEO POSTINGS OF BOTH LAST YEAR'S LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF WISCONSIN CONVENTION. Available now. NEWER LIBERTARIAN VIDEOS COMING SOON—KEEP CHECKING. A FUTURE VIDEO WILL ALSO BE MR. BARRY HAMMARBACK'S SPEECH, WITH GRAPHICS AND STATISTICS, ENTITLE FACT-BASED LEGISLATION, THE SUBJECT OF THIS ESSAY].

Yesterday's Libertarian Party of Wisconsin (LPWI) convention in Oconomowoc was a great success. It was well-attended (at one count half-way through the speakers) by over 53 people. It was fun and informative, and full of fascinating fellowship with other distinct individuals who pursue their own small “l” libertarianism.

What does “libertarianism” mean in the broader philosophy and in the principles by which we live? One definition easy to understand, is that libertarianism is in essence the “Liberty to live our own lives; and to allow liberty to let others live their own lives without harm from others.” Libertarianism is just the long “smart”-word for the oldest form of law in our civilization. That law is, “Free-will that chooses to respect the rights of others in order to preserve our own.” Liberty to live is NOT license-to-kill, cheat, steal or oppress others. In fact, one of liberty's first tenets, like in medicine, is to “first do no harm, and help if you can without reward.”

Anyone with an advantage in any way can use such natural or unnatural power— size, strength, wealth, or weapons—to do unto others whatever they like, no matter the cost. They COULD, but it is the natural order of the freedom to be free by allowing EVERYONE the liberty to be fulfilled and safe in person and property. Unless everyone has those same rights, no one will have any liberty in the end. Liberty as a natural order of things, of the natural laws to self-ownership, also means one thing as the incontestable rule of civilization: If we break the natural law of liberty, in such ways as to harm other people or defraud them of their own property or right of choices, by violence or threats of violence, the law breakers must face the consequences. And the punishments in natural law are the loss of one's own liberty by due process.

In the similar line of a law of natural rights, only a person's peers formed into what Anglo-Saxon law calls a Jury can judge the innocence or degree of guilt, AND the punishments accorded, of a breaker of the law.

The discussion of the nature of liberty, and the forms it takes in a modern political-economic system, was the general theme of the convention. The process of how jurors in the system of law by rule of law determine the FACTS of a case was the summary of Barry Hammarback's speech at the April 10, 2010 LPWI convention, a speech appropriately entitled, “Fact Based Legislation.”

My friend and colleague, Mr. Barry Hammarback, is an attorney-at-law who practices in River Falls, WI, a large Pierce County city in the St. Croix Valley of Western Wisconsin that is also home to the University of Wisconsin—River Falls. Mr. Hammarback's speech looks at the statistical numbers involved in the issues like a discerning economist, or a mathematician who can see the flaws in logic, or physicist who uses numbers to prove scientifically the existence of the objective possibilities in a universe. In short, like the accomplished trial lawyer he is, Mr. Hammarback uses the numbers to show the frauds attempted by special interests and government in their political-economic policies.

Without digging into the statistics Mr. Hammarback presented in his words and on his visual presentation graphics here in this essay (STAY ATTENTIVE TO SEE THE VIDEO TO BE AVAILABLE ON www.pikzl.com AND www.lpwi.org IN A FEW WEEKS FROM THIS WRITING), Mr. Hammarback looks at the number of deaths caused since September 11, 2001 by international guerrilla-terrorism in Wisconsin and the United States, numbers which pale by a towering and undeniable number of deaths caused in that time by influenza, and not only influenza, the common flu, but by specific means of people not washing their hands with soap who spread the virus.

Next, Mr. Hammarback showed the amount of money spent on fighting terrorism inside the United States and even more narrowly in Wisconsin via its state and local legislation—ie, the use of taxpayer dollars fighting the scourge of Wisconsin's terrorism crisis. In the most damning verification of the misguided use of special interest and fear politics, Mr. Hammarback lowers the boom when he shows how little money is spent to prevent astronomical amount of deaths via the lack of washing hands (even by doctors) that cause most influenza deaths. Plain and simple, the numbers don't lie. Like all science, it is true only, or at least mostly, if it can be expressed and understood in numbers.

In addition to the wasted Wisconsin—and Federal—taxes due to fighting internal and external terrorism, Mr. Hammarback received a resounding applause when he mentioned the theft of personal liberties by such legislation passed in the US Congress and Wisconsin's very own State House and local boards designed to protect us from, terrorism. The dispute of the war against guerrilla-terrorists is not necessary here to develop or examine. But the numbers spent on internal security vs. disease prevented, the cost of lives lost to terror or that could be saved by hand soap, stagger belief. Little money is spent on plain old preventive hand soap, that can save one hundred times the lives lost every year to terrorism in Wisconsin and even the United States.

Further Mr. Hammarback has more logic and reason on his side in the numbers than just using fear of terrorism to manipulate and mismanage domestic spending inside Wisconsin. His numbers on what it would cost to use a smaller amount of money—compared to that spent “fighting” terrorism in Wisconsin—to buy plain old hand soap and invest in protective equipment (and a little promotion of common sense and safety awareness) also points out the contradictions in the new American national health care system. How much cheaper would medical costs be in total if more influenza were prevented by a-dollar-a-week purchase of plain old hand soap for each person.

Again, this is no place to debate the question of Wisconsin's commitment to support national security policy as it relates to the wars world-wide fighting guerrilla-terrorism. That could be another essay entirely, no matter what one's viewpoint, where debate and balanced analysis could be used to support similar arguments on guns vs. soap, internationally.

As far as the speech “Fact-Based Legislation,” regarding Wisconsin's legislature, Mr. Hammarback's analysis is solid. There are certainly other things, plain bad political-economic policies, where the facts, in numbers, can explain where legislation made in Wisconsin and in the United States Federal Government just DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. As in a trial, decisions should be made on facts. As a jury, we cannot dispute the facts but we can contradict the law if the law is in error, in error by trying to use force or fraud or contradict the natural law of liberty for all. Part of that natural law is theft of property by taxation or theft of liberty in order to protect us from things out of proportion to the expense required.

For a country where civic responsibilities like jury duty is a moral obligation, and a mandatory duty, to saving our freedom and preserving our way of life, we expect to hear more good common sense from Mr. Barry Hammarback. Watch his speech to be posted on www.pikzl.com and www.cepiaclub.com and on www.lpwi.org .

Finding the Common Ground

2010-04-11T20:27:00.001-05:00

Sub Terra Vita
By Scipio Cepiacanus
April 10, 2010—3:54 PM.

Finding the Common Ground

WIBA-Madison/Milwaukee radio host,, Vicki McKenna, just gave our Libertarian Party convention a great pep talk trying to have a good dialogue between opposing view points. When I talked to her in private before her speech over a soda water and soda pop in the lounge, Ms. McKenna and I took the identical position that each side in a debate has its fanatics that just cannot discuss matters affecting our common interest with humane respect. Indeed, even if someone might not connect on another person's political views or convictions, or even their religious beliefs, what is the harm of a great many people sitting down to have a cup of coffee over a butterscotch muffin. It is all about finding what makes us the same in the great concerns that makes “good” neighbors.

We are all trying to fight internal emptiness and loneliness and the fear of death and suffering of those we love and for them we belief we cannot survive if they were gone. In our private discussion over the soda and my cigarettes, Ms. McKenna is a kindred spirit to what I believe is essential for building a better neighborhood, a richer community, a more prosperous people, and perhaps a more peaceful world: Finding out that we are more similar than different; and that at least in logic, reason, fact-based dialogue, and respect for our persons AND any unreconciled opposing viewpoints.

Where is the dialogue and the “community issues” dinner table where we live—the home place around us at a moment in time? Unless we find that willingness as an entire humanity, we really are in trouble. But if we can suspend our disbelief and suspicion of each other, and finally sit at the great dinner table of the common ground in the common place, we as a humanity might not save all that we could lose anyway, but we can help each person, friend, neighbor or stranger find their path to what they really want to do and be: LIVE BETTER LIVES; and treat each other as we would want to be treated.

4:15

At the Libertarian Convention—Part I

2010-04-11T20:26:00.001-05:00

Sub Terra Vita
By Scipio Cepiacanus
April 10, 2009

At the Libertarian Convention—Part I
2:20 PM

I'm here at the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin annual convention in Oconomowoc, WI. The morning board meeting, and then the membership meeting that followed took care of business. It looks like I and my fellow committee members on the Business Committee have taken on a lot work for the next month to follow up on fixing problems or proposing action that was discussed. As a group, we recognized flaws in our management of information, dissipation of resources, lack of focused communications—both within and without the Party, and our need for leadership. Both the morning meetings were well attended.

Following the luncheon buffet here at the beautiful Olympia Resort, our convention's home base this year, we heard a speech by http://www.rootforamerica.com/, the 2008 US Vice Presidential candidate for the LPUSA, and a person of great business success, who is running for National Party chairperson. Mr. Root said his focus as chair would be on fund raising and personnel training at ever level of our organization. It is all to be directed at marketing and sales efforts. While Mr. Root is obviously a success at the level of success he has achieved in Las Vegas as an entrepreneur, I was too timid and shy to ask my question: “Politics is even more basic than local politics; IT is based on personal relationships. How do we succeed in tapping the personal message on a vote-by-vote basis in our neighborhood?”

After Mr. Root's speech, the first of six great shirts the Treasury Committee made for a limited-edition collector's auction for this sole convention sold for $40. Our attendance for the speaking events, with the admission-fees we assessed, has brought us to over fifty people at last count.

And now, seeing the good results of some great team efforts, Yuri Maltsev of the von Mises Institute is talking about micro-economy and how a true free-market (like I've told friends, a free-market is a garage sale or a lemonade stand), how more freely made contracts without government manipulation or even less manipulation, would better serve a nation of liberty. Mr. Maltsev is doing a Q&A with smart people, so I'm just listening to the smart people and typing/blogging while all this goes on around me.

There are more speakers, and I'm quite tired from a long one-two day. It is a good convention so far, so I'll try to check in later.

Movie Review: Three Days of the Condor--1975; Starring Robert Redford

2010-04-08T10:33:00.001-05:00

Review of: Three Days of the Condor. Directed by Sydney Pollack; Produced by Stanley Schneider; Co-written by James Grady (adapted from his novel, Six Days of the Condor). Starring: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson & Max von Sydow. Paramount, 1975.

In this 1975 existential realist spy-thriller directed by Sydney Pollack, why does an assassination team murder seven book worms who work at the American Literary Historical Society? What's the beef with a dime store spy novel reviewed by employee bookworm extraordinaire, Joseph Turner. It was just a cheap knock off book which was translated into Arabic, but not French; Dutch and Spanish, though not Russian?

This opens the plot in the movie, Three Days of the Condor, based on the Cold War novel, Six Days of the Condor by James Grady. Turner, played by the brisk and youthful Robert Redford, rides a motorized bicycle to work, running late as normal. He arrives and asks the society director if there was special delivery mail for him from the bosses higher up on the book report he submitted.

But this is not a normal book depository in an old New York brownstone facade. Within the upstairs offices of the literary society, in an age when computers were expensive, primitive, and took up whole rooms, this sleepy literary society has a computer that first optically scans pages of books and then checks and references the material against “real world” US Central Intelligence Agency operations, code-names, or potential traitors, recruits, or any other useful information to such an agency bound to gather, protect, and attack based on “knowing” information.

Then, by fortune's chance, Turner takes an unwatched exit from the basement full of books to the deli to pick up lunch. While Turner is gone, legendary actor Max von Sydow, playing a contract assassin named Joubert, leads a sneaky break-in of the American Literary Historical Society. In a movie full of great one-line epiphanies, excellently handled by director Pollack and the film editors, Joubert asks the computer expert, Janice, who is also Turner's girlfriend, if she would move away from the window. With the muffled sub-machine guns pointed at her, Janice says dispassionately at her fate, “I won't scream.” Joubert replies simply, “I know.”

When Turner returns to find the front security gates unlocked, he enters the brownstone to find every one murdered, and he doesn't know why. As the great mystery characters might say, “The game is afoot.” And in fact, this is a great mystery movie done in excellent spy v. spy, spy v. counter-spy, and indeed triple-dog-dare “counter-counter-spy v. everyone” plot. From the pinnacle of the bookworm murders and through some rather thrilling escapes, Turner deduces that he was the real target of the murderers and why a bookworm like he who reads books for the CIA could possibly be the cause of so much unheroic death.

Turner survives several attempts by the professional Joubert to locate and murder him while in the process the theme of the movie unravels like opaque layers of onion to the hard, pungent core. In another prophetic one-liner as “spy stuff” becomes too fancy for him, Turner says, “@$^* the Wall Street Journal!” in a statement of contempt that foreshadows the resolution of the mystery of the dime store spy novel—the one translated into languages of oil-owning nations. As in history, this story follows the markets of survival in a world running out of cheap and reachable resources. It is 1975 presaging the 21st Century scrambles for what society just wants without having to be asked if freedom is sufficient sacrifice for comfort and safety.

Turner takes Kathy Hale (played by Faye Dunaway) hostage to find a random means of survival, and Kathy takes on the Stockholm Syndrome with lustful intrigue for her captor. She looks at Turner's CIA cover business I.D. pass, which if watched closely on the screen is actually a Nazi-lightening bolt “SS” symbol (check it out closely). Together, Turner and Hale outsmart the CIA's World Trade Center-based New York branch led by Deputy Director of New York CIA, Mr. Higgins, played by Cliff Robertson. Shots of the still new-at-the-time World Trade Center show prominently in several photography-features of the film, statements portending the age of the militarized policy and security state that were warned to America by President Eisenhower in his January 1961 farewell address. But perhaps the real theme of Three Days of the Condor is the absence of clarity as to who or what is the good guy or good side. In one of the final profound epitaphs of Joubert, as to how he operates within the world of violence as a contractor (hint, hint), Max von Sydow's character says perfectly: “I don't think in terms of 'why'. . . No need to believe in either side. . . . The belief is in your own precision.”

In this movie, even unto the end where Higgins asks “Condor”/Turner, “How do you know they'll print it?” there exists no clarity nor belief worthy to find any heroes. Not even the antagonist Turner can claim the absolute purity of purpose nor hide under a profaned innocence like his murdered coworkers. Only a protagonist like Joubert, a true anti-hero, really knows what he is doing, or why it is important at all to anyone, even if it is only important for himself.

Hollyhock (Something In Defence of Free Speech)

2010-03-22T15:37:00.001-05:00

A language alive grows like a poem of life, blooming crisper red and pink like a hollyhock bud into a spreading of flower, outward from the tip of its less slight-green sturdy sinewed vine. That weather looming overwhelms in a scalding day's brief, harsh turbulent wind, rain and thundered gloom. Used precise in our day's life, with darking skies and rolling whiffs in eyesights limit, “words” flash impacting bolts to electrify fear in the low thin and charge filled air.
The plagued clipper clouds blind our sun, dim our view. Will the storm pass? Will or will not the sun shine mid-afternoon or even the fawning night's dawn reddish evening, depends on strength greater than we hold in our aged young or withered hands. Faith resides in the poetry of a language, our own or your'n, in the petal unpeeling nurtured of nature for a light of past clear time, clearer minds ahead. The holier locked remains in the life that keeps the crisper pink but softens the red in time.
'Til all the thunder, rain, and wind impassioned drift past, to let the light of reason and living free, free from the gale or the ghoulish seers, we see not the sun in this life's day, but the richer praise of the petal bears the truth on this scorched afternoon, with storm but not without the poetic tindered color of living. The hollyhock sweats the effects of its belabored survival, dripping a clear drop by clear drop when the violent lightening lightens. The passing of doom reveals a clearer, whiter sun in a hanging vapor of new blue sky.
The tinged green of static storm hangs not as nutrient nature absorbs. The whipped, now stronger vine hangs elliptic in the curve weighted ever-less by dripping drops of lashed out fury. The repose of grateful flower in its language of lighted reason, the dialogue of nature and the god-like power of time, the bud grows without relent. The relieved restraint of thirst for the repressed voice or hunger for censored food, of poetry or prose, or the language's need to speak free, the beholder of reddish pink hollyhocks against the pinkish red of dusk feels blessed.
The ravage storms pass. We remain at liberty to live another day. The poetry of a petal kept us in our faith. That all things must pass for the new beginnings of tomorrow's brilliant soft blue dawn, another growth day, for the hollyhock vine and life's fruitful, poetic way.

St. Croix Valley Liberty Beacons Vol. 5--John B. Spanton

2010-02-25T22:41:00.001-06:00

Click to Play

In 1999, Former Federal employee, Mr. John Spanton, shares his insights on the inner workings of the United States Government and how the Libertarian Party can fit itself into the larger debates and political fabrics of America heading into 21st. Century. The address occurred in St. Croix Falls, WI, as part of a Liberty Rally conducted the St. Croix Valley Liberty, a Libertarian Party of Wisconsin informal discussion group.

Review of: The Movie "Soylent Green"

2010-01-28T22:25:00.001-06:00

Review of: Soylent Green. Directed by Richard Fleischer. Based on a novel by Harry Harrison. Screenplay by Stanley Greenberg. Starring: Charleton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young, Joseph Cotton, and Chuck Connors. MGM, 1973.

By Tim Krenz

January 27, 2010

What would happen if food gets scarce and the people got too fruitful and multiplied too much? What would political and economic leaders do when a globalized civilization reaches its “limits to growth?” “What is Soylent Green?” Around the theme of what it is and why is it important, the story unfolds.

The classic sci-fi MGM production of Soylent Green, starring Charleton Heston as police detective Robert Thorn, shows a 1973 film version of such a world. It is in film what for three hundred years in real history, political and economic leaders have feared would happen: Too many people and not enough resources. In the movie, the world suffers from the greenhouse effect, an early definition of the theory of global warming. Farsighted, perhaps, or just a really good science fiction story. Besides a climate that makes food production difficult, drinkable water is just as scarce. The commodity of once abundant repast and hot showers, even electricity, all become subject to high prices which only the rich can afford.

The corporations and the government in combination (fascism, by definition) strictly control not only the entire economy, but especially the food chains to get the maximum efficiency. Robert Thorn and his police book assistant and friend, Sol Roth, produce electricity during brownouts by pedaling a stationary bike to charge the batteries that run their apartment lights. In real history, hungry people make revolutions. And as Vladimir I. Lenin said, electrification is socialism; and as the late Pi Kielty once exclaimed, keeping people in the dark, they will to bend to that power giver to see what is rationed to them, and they will be grateful. And the simple economics of this society of “Soylent,” it is all about survival in this world—dog eat dog, one could say.

In the New York setting of the movie, twenty million people unemployed on Manhattan Island alone line up in quays at the market bazaars for ersatz wafers of food manufactured from various synthetic materials, produced by Soylent Corp., and coming in pleasant colors of yellow, orange and green. And all of those unemployed, says Thorn, would like to have his job. In consequence, Thorn does his job thoroughly to retain it. The job also allows him as a cop to confiscate food, whiskey, and other things for evidence on his dinner table.

But Soylent Green, with a little ripe margarine, “taste pretty good,” according to Sol Roth, played by the venerable Edward G. Robinson. People like it, and like it so much that Soylent Green's market demand and limited amounts require it to be sold only one day. “Tuesday is Soylent Green Day.” With a half-pint of strawberries costing $150 each bottle, and beef untasted except by the likes of the lawyer and Soylent Corp. board member, Mr. Simonson, Soylent Green is an organic solution to world hunger. It's made of plankton farmed from the oceans, the last exploitable frontier on an earth otherwise clouded in the hellish pink of sunny haze days and swirling dust (which were nicely done camera filters and lighting effects in the movie).

When Simonson is murdered in his penthouse apartment in the beginning of the movie in a well-guarded building, Thorn and Sol Roth believe it involved more than random burglary. Thorn sets out to find the truth behind the murder, and Roth investigates the world Oceanic survey for the year 2020, which Thorn brings from the penthouse along with other goodies like writing paper, beef, a carrot, and two apples. The entire take of food costs over $100. Simonson was—WAS—a very rich and powerful man. Powerful forces in foul play, Thorn and Roth conclude, but why? Things get tricky when political pressure comes down on Thorn to close the case unsolved. He refuses for the very good reason: If someone said he did not do his job, well, twenty million unemployed in Manhattan would like to apply for it. Without spoiling the movie, most every sci-fi fan and everyone else knows why, and it involves the dangers of dying oceans, the oceans where plankton grows; the plankton from which Soylent Green is made.

As a sci-fi movie, Soylent Green has quaint aspects of early 1970s theories of an impoverished world, that does not advance much by 2020 in fashion or technology, due to a warming of the globe. As another of the great repertoire of Charleton Heston science fiction roles, it is almost as good as a sci-fi crime detective drama as the Maltese Falcon was for film noire detective stories. Made near 40-years ago, one wonders what larger and more relevant meaning Soylent Green has for today's world as a political-economic commentary and for societal-culture insights into the way things could very well go wrong with calculating how humanity can overcome sheer stupidity in the forms that we so very much indulge ourselves.

Cepia Club Invites Community Calendar Postings

2009-12-22T11:51:00.000-06:00

Cepia Club Invites Community Calendar Postings

As part of promoting community-centered action for positive change, cepiaclub.com invites artists, bands, poets & authors, dancers, and community non-profit groups to submit dates, times, locations and other pertinent information for posting on Cepia Club's calendar, depending on availability.

As an integrated feature within the so-called “CepiaNet,” the calendar connects to services owned by Cepia Club, including www.cepiaclub.com, www.myspace.com/cepiaclub, Facebook at “Cepia Bazaar,” Twitter at “cepiaclub,” and thecepiaclub@yahoogroups.com, among other sites and services. The Club's free on-line calendar posting offer does not, however, include any further promotional or other services.

“Cepia Club wants to assist people in the community to do things that. . .well, do fun and positive stuff,” said the Cepia Club director, Tim Krenz. “The arts, readings, concerts, exhibits—all happen on their own. The good and great things in life, the fun and positive things just happen. We can help get the word out to others. The calendar postings might help people enjoy getting to know their community and their neighbors and friends better.”

cepiaclub.com accepts calendar submissions on either its My Space or Facebook applications, or by email at thecepiaclub@yahoo.com. Calendar postings are reviewed to ensure that the nature of the events do not violate Cepia Club protocol or standards (for example, no political or commercial submissions for the free service, please). Cepia Club reserves the right to refuse or to delete the event from its calendar for any reason without penalty or explanation and holds no responsibility for the events themselves.

Iran's “Mini-Invasion” of Iraq

2009-12-22T11:50:00.000-06:00

December 20, 2009, Sunday, 5:15 PM

Iran's “Mini-Invasion” of Iraq

On the Strategic Forecasting service (STRATFOR) Friday, it was reported that Iran entered Iraqi territory and occupied an oil well (No. 4) at Faqua, in the extreme east of Iraq. Looking at the OPERATION ARTAGENES game study set-up map, it is quite striking geography that lends itself to several advantages for an Iranian incursion. The mini-invasion itself, of as an yet undetermined nature in terms of political policy, took place on the northern extremes of the great marshland in southern Iraq, around which the cities of Basra and al-Faw are the main cities, at the southern edge of the largely Shi'a-inhabited southern region of Iraq. To the front of Iran's incursion sits the Tigris river which flows from the northwest to southeast, forming the eastern edge of the Mesopotamian corridor running through the length of Iraq (the Euphrates River forms the western corridor of the fertile Mesopotamia).

As an isolated, safe, area in which to send a political message through military means and, in terms of what this Iranian incursion really is/was, i.e. an invasion, even if temporary, the Iranians choose the terrain well in which to make the statement. The swampland on the Iranian right and rear protects the left flank, and secures an easier avenue of withdrawal. Of course, the river in the front, if necessary, forms a defensible barrier against Iraq or US-Multi-National Coalition(I) counter-attack. This area under question, while providing broader geographic implications for both political policy and military strategy, was the scene of eight years of stalemated trench and chemical warfare during the Iran-Iraq war from late 1980 until 1988.

As of today, December 20th, there is some discrepancy as to whether the Iranians have withdrawn completely (hence the “is/was/”an invasion). I don't think most of the public in the US have heard of this incident, as a sampling the last three days has shown that the public is unaware. Either way, this is not a very pleasant situation and it possesses extreme danger for the US policy in the Greater Persian Gulf, as it complicates the position of a post-occupation Iraq; the Iranian action, not as irrational as may seem, also complicates the 5+1 talks two days from this writing on Iran's nuclear program, intended to define further action or sanction. Furthermore, STRATFOR today believes the incursion also meant to send a message to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to not form a separate political coalition for the March 2010 elections that separates itself from the coalition led by the Iranian-supported Islamic Supreme Council for Iraq (ISCI), a pan-Shi'a Muslim organization.

Cepia Club's first opinion on December 18th, (Friday, which was two days ago) hypothesized that the incursion might have been committed by a rogue commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). If the incursion into Faqua was directed by Iran's central authorities (either the theocratic-political Shi'a revolutionary council, which holds power over the domestic AND foreign and security policies of the country OR its civilian president, Ahmadinejad), Iran would not necessarily disavow the move. It does send an undeniable message of toughness and some certain unpredictable recklessness to the United States Government as the pronounced deadline approaches for Iran to begin dismantling its nuclear program or face further penalties.

If it was a rogue military action, Iran would most likely decline to admit it for two reasons: It would signify a lack of control over its military and, second, that its Islamic radical IRGC was forcing the government and theocracy toward confrontation in the interest of the IRGC.

The move by Iran in Faqua shows some interesting military advantages, which were partially revealed by Cepia Club's Project 6 game study (January to April 2008) called OPERATION SCIMITAR. In the SCIMITAR model simulation game (MSG), Iran launched an invasion into the same area, but as a flank protection on the swamp, around which an armored army group pivoted from the northeast (due east of Baghdad) southwest and then south, originating from the from the foothills of mountains abutting the Iran-Iraq border. In SCIMITAR, the Iranians fought a holding action to stave off an US Marine/US Army attack into the area in Iran east of Basra, through the Abadan oil production region. Iran's most critical developed oil fields are located in the Abadan region. The Iranian armored army group in the game had launched a preemptive invasion of Iraq in response to a US & British effort to gain Abadan as leverage for a cease-fire. At the same time, the US/MNC(I) attacked with air bombardment and light infantry/SOF air assault against nuclear facilities in the Zagros Mountains that run from the northwest and southeast of Tehran.

In the SCIMITAR study game, several things were clear on any preemptive Iranian invasion of Iraq as a response to a US or-other-powers' attempt to disarm Iran. First, the deployment of light infantry and IRGC special operating forces (SOF) units in the Abadan region, on the southern portion of Iran's western border with Iraq, would be sound as a means of a fighting retreat throughout the marshland area; the deployments would also facilitate and directly support a guerrilla or unconventional insurgency in Iraq's Shi'a-dominated marshland region north of Kuwait, around Basra and up into the southern portions of the Mesopotamian corridor. Such means of fighting by Iran's regular military and Iraqi Shi'a militia would threaten US & Multi-National Coalition (Iraq) lines of communication, requiring substantial rear-guard protection for US and other allied front-line operations. The dissipation of force removes the concentration for an in-depth, long-distance counter-offensive into Iran following any preemptive invasion of Iraq by Iran.

Second, with Iran's armored forces concentrated in the Zagros Mountain range southwest of Tehran, close to the Iraq border and on an axis due east of Baghdad, the armored concentration could, theoretically, withstand air attack in prepared, protective lagers long enough in the difficult terrain along the road networks of the mountains to be a factor in any political-military confrontation. It would be subject to travel interdiction by cluster-dropped mines or other obstacles, however the invasion of Iraq by the armored group was nearly useless in the game due to US air-bombardment in the plain northeast of the Tigris boundary. But the armored concentration was determined to be more useful under the following conditions, which is under testing in the OPERATION ARTAGNES game study underway now. A) If nothing else, it threatened to either be directed west toward Baghdad (“a threat-in-being” which would not have to be used). B) Toward the south to take an invasion of Iran's Abadan oil region in the flank. C) To the southeast from its position in the Zagros to protect nuclear facilities (able to use the mountains to screen movement from air interdiction and bombardment attrition). D) To turn north to repel an invasion by the Russians from Azerbaijan. E) To screen and escort a friendly Russian military intervention on behalf of defending Iran into the parts west and south of Tehran. F) Or to turn and move east to Tehran to support the theocracy against a coup, or to remove by coup, any Iranian government.

Again, relevant to the incursion of Iran into Iraq at Faqua, which is where the armored army group invaded Iraq in SCIMITAR, the game study showed it would be easier for Iran to await an invasion from the US-MNC(I) into the area north of the marshland—trading space for power; which would be necessary (to some degree) for the support of an American flank to the north of an invasion of Abadan from the axis of Basra. Presumably, a US Marine air-sea maneuver would also be involved as a southern flank protection of such an invasion from the coastal area north of Busher. Incidentally, Busher is also the located of a major Iranian nuclear research reactor built on contract by Russia. Holding Abadan and its oil production and shipment capability is still, according to Project 6 findings, the only feasible way to force Iran to give up any real desire to acquire nuclear weapons. The financial-societal squeeze of holding Abadan could overwhelm Iran's resistance to demands for decommissioning its nuclear program.

In this entire line of thinking, even if Iran has actually withdrawn or will withdraw from Faqua, –and regardless of any political message Tehran is trying to send to Washington, Tel Aviv or Baghdad itself—Iran's occupation of Faqua would work quite well as a trap. Iran has come across the border. If Iraq or US-MNC(I) retaliates or launches a preventive war to stop Iran's nuclear program, Faqua would be a very teasing bait to draw in the head of any invading force, to be scythed off. Beware misreading Faqua.

US Responses to the Iranian Incursion

On Saturday, December 19th, there has been, as mentioned, little media or public mention or reaction about Iran's mini-invasion into Iraq and occupation of Oil Well No. 4 in the vicinity of Faqua, Iraq. It was reported by STRATFOR (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.) that Iraq had deployed a unit to the area of Faqua but was holding back on further action. There were also contradicting reports on whether or not Iran had withdrawn back behind its border. Despite the fog-cloud of information on Iran's withdrawal, one of the most notable pieces of news on Saturday was the complete lack of reaction to be found emanating from Washington, D.C., or any other US official except for the commanding general of US-MNC(I), Gen. Ray Odierno. The statements made by the US general leave open a wide gap between Iranian actions and US policy toward Iran on any other issue.

Gen. Odierno said that Iran's incursion into Iraq was an issue between Iran and Iraq, and that the US would remain uninvolved. On the other hand, Gen. Odierno made explicit in the statement reported that Iran continued to provide arms, infiltration routes, money and personnel for terror units inside Iraq fighting the occupation. The general made only partially implicit in the tone of the report that such activity might correlate with the increased terror acts against occupation forces in Iraq following the end-game of the US “surge” strategy and the redeployment of the US military to locations outside Iraq's urban centers.

Cepia Club--2009--Holding Fast and Melding Fortune's Future

2009-12-20T21:45:00.001-06:00

From The Cepia Club LLC

2009—Holding Fast and Melding Fortune's Future
December 15, 2009

As a report year-in-review for The Cepia Club LLC, we title part of this article—or rather articles of faith, fidelity, friendship and fellowship—“holding fast;” because the prime element that makes the Club alive and everything that it is and can become indeed held fast in the turmoil of private lives and and global business upheaval. That irreplaceable and gratefully recognized gravity of our inner-universe, for CepiaClub's success past, present and future, is the living, breathful, vibrant and vocal help of people who worked hard for so much idealism to become realized. There is more for which CepiaClub can be grateful beyond those specific individuals who performed service, or who dedicated means by which our achievements reached the better possible outcomes. The underlined strength of CepiaClub—as both a “new model” business for liberty, prosperity, and justice—rests on the solid foundation THOSE who believe in CepiaClub.

Not only tacit words of encouragement or the implicit acts of service by many brought us to a verging year of 2010 success. For every CepiaClub participant or Cepiaglobal Associate, a band of others stands behind each one of them. And it surfaces more apparent from the dark, stormy sea line, that a future ship of civilization can be righted and set on more pacific course if all citizens in all countries stand to be recognized and counted among the humanity crying “peace and prosperity for all.” We as a species can end the insanity and bring a better world if, and only if, we all live by the principles which make for right, good, honest and fair living. Pursuing the goals of awareness and activism for such inner, self-evident goals for happiness; in freedom from fear and want; via freedom for conscience and speech; all of it in a simple sum comprise the intent and work of CepiaClub, for the short-time and the long-term.

The achievements of CepiaClub as a business in 2009 were multiple in number, diverse in character, positive in approach and productive in purpose.

First, after last winter, a desk office space was rented from Cepia Trade Bazaar located inside the Planet Supply of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. The Cepia Trade Bazaar is a mobile kiosk and a separate, but kindred, entity from The Cepia Club LLC. The trade bazaar has a month-by-month rent contract for its space in the Planet Supply, but as far as connecting within the Planet Supply mini-community and the larger and vibrant City of St. Croix Falls, the arrangement works profoundly well for all concerned. The display space for Cepia Trade Bazaar and the The Cepia Club LLC's desk within the space solved several daunting problems learned in the first year of CepiaClub's company-under-management as an LLC from 2008. Also, as part of the traveling Cepia Trade Bazaar display space at other locations, CepiaClub benefits from the greater promotion and presence under the desk-rental contract. As both workspace and meet-up space, the location within Planet Supply was a great boon since April 2009 and will continue as of this writing indefinitely, into 2010.

In late May, as our second event of note in 2009, CepiaClub took a 9-day road tour of Wisconsin, to the central and southeast parts. Not extensive in itself but covering 700 miles by car with film gear and the cameras rolling, CepiaClub asked friends and associates to ask into the camera a question they wanted answered, about life, the world, or the nature of things in general. The film, Underground Freeway, may never be edited and completed, but the trip-log, “Notes from the Underground,” written during and following the tour, can be read in the May and June 2009 portions of the CepiaClub's social-cultural blog at www.myspace.com/cepiaclub .

In July, after six months of preparation and work, CepiaClub's production and management of the music concert at Centuria's Memory Days festival was our third significant accomplishment of 2009. Sandy Bishop and her son, Henry Bishop, played an afternoon children's variety theater. The Juggernauts of Planet Supply and Polk County, Wisconsin, fame, played the mid-afternoon show. Polk County's funk-punk favorites, Squib, graced the festival that early Saturday evening with their last concert to date to a crowd that exceeded 125. And finally for the main concert, to the wild and welcome reception and fun of 400-plus concert-goers (counted at 10 PM, with scores more coming and going until the concert ended at 1:30 AM), Club-friend and favorite, Javier Trejo and his band, The Javier Trejo Trio, gave Centuria a profoundly entertaining and fun show.

CepiaClub's fourth favored success of 2009 arrived in two parts in one weekend. The combined parts were the Friday, September 25th CepiaClub Annual Dinner (our second) and the following day's St. Croix Falls Autumn Festival. The dinner on the Friday evening rebounded with great food prepared jointly by Mrs. Krenz and CepiaClub's own certified executive chef, Mr. Ross G., assisted by his able wife, Mrs. Kellie G.. The meal was Italian fare, and up to the standard of unabashed excellence on the part of the entire cooking team. All twenty-one guests voiced extreme pleasure in the great food and fellowship, the content of discourse and friendly chatter, and the open-minded, sober exchange of ideas. The event was non-business as it was just a plain old dinner party, but a dinner party that can hardly be equaled.

The Autumn Fest the next day, on the morning and afternoon of a glorious and sunny Saturday, was a dual affair for CepiaClub for the second year continuing. CepiaClub, while not involved in the event promotions, ran our own section of the Cepia Trade Bazaar kiosk in the #1 preferred vending tent. In addition, CepiaClub also had been responsible beforehand and on the day of the festival for the coordination of the live music and dance entertainment. Overall, CepiaClub's outreach at the Autumn Festival brought great dividends to us in several ways in the months since. The dividends will hopefully rebound to us in 2010 as well.

These four notable achievements in the narrow respects of The Cepia Club LLC's business accomplished several important needs for us. Among the needs fulfilled, the most important took the form of those pricey assets we gained at a remarkable low- and efficient-cost: We promoted our image and our professional competencies by performing our business and our friendship principles and commitments. Everyone involved at every step, with special commendation for Charles M. Barnard and Pwajdeur Stage, proved the entire club's competence to plan and execute difficult event and promotional services. CepiaClub, furthermore, improved our internal efficiency and cost-control procedures and management policies. We as CepiaClub profited more in goodwill than we earned in revenue, but all of these peculiar commodities and trade-offs netted our business organization out-sized gains to expenses in labor, thought, and moral capital. We evened out on our capital capacity, and now we can set better heights to soar toward goals in 2010 for growth in numbers and image, and especially for revenue.

Most critical of all the above mentioned, and to the intent and design of CepiaClub, the people involved in CepiaClub, whether volunteers, collaborators, contractors or Participants and Associates, everyone we can reach with our messages built on the themes of liberty, freedom, justice and community, all understand the underside of the ideal, the deep foundation upon which CepiaClub stands. WE associate together for the common purpose, the human need for some fulfillment, to work toward finding in ourselves the reasons to be useful to ourselves, useful for one another, to be useful to the world. Most important of all, we build from within the efforts, whatever character or function they exist, the friendships and tolerance between us; to learn and teach each other the lessons and wisdoms endowed through hard experience or by the Nature of goodness that rests inside each and every person, if all and everyone looked inside and released that goodness for others.

In other aspects of business, CepiaClub held fast on the core enterprises of public media operations. CepiaClub's friends and personnel kept that vital center alive in our broadcasting and production efforts, in our publishing enterprise, and within and without concerning the Cepiaglobal Associated Membership Program (CAMP).

This year, the PiK. Media enterprise of The Cepia Club LLC, with the able cinematography help of Mr. Erik Barstow, filmed two episodes of our flagship tv-web show, Freedom Affairs. The first guest, Ms. Mandy Hathaway told her story of her 2008 photo-journalism contract job in which she toured Tajikistan, which lies along the northern border of Afghanistan. The tv show has so far proved one of the best film projects CepiaClub has ever done, in terms of its content and skilled professionalism. The episode's theme of “Awareness Beyond Media” exemplified how people's perspectives of war and peace can change when we look into even the photographed faces and eyes of people anywhere living normal life. In the normal chores of hero-ship, Ms. Hathaway's photos of baking and breaking bread with the people of Central Asia tell a lot of how our perceptions—even CepiaClub's—can shift; one looks at different peoples in different parts of the earth not as something to be feared, but something within all of us with which we can identify in others.

(The second Freedom Affairs episode filmed this summer shall remain un-described for this article. We hope not to implode anticipation).

Also, on the PiK. Media projects, progress has gone far on the Pikzl Vision, web-casting TV home page, located at www.pikzl.com . All of our own shows, and other individual movie projects by CepiaClub throughout the past 8 years, either are already posted or will be posted in time, including some commercial advertisements we have made. Pikzl Vision contains a rather diverse mix of entertaining, informative, commercialized, and community content.

One of CepiaClub's new show launches in 2009 is the series St. Croix Valley Liberty Beacons. These feature projects provide less editorial comment and more unrevised, and raw, formats of ideas. The three SCVL Beacons completed so far since June 2009 highlight speakers appearing at the April 2009 Libertarian Party of Wisconsin's annual convention. Speaker and former Libertarian Party Vice Presidential candidate Mr. Richard V. Campagna discusses his philosophies of libertarianism, existentialism, and judicial realism. LP Congressional candidate Mr. Timothy Nerenz gives a solid introduction to his 2010 campaign. On another track, green-activist Ben Manski talks with much knowledge about the “Bring the Guard Home” effort, an attempt to limit future militarization of US foreign policy and an accompanying plan for civilian-based, active but non-provocative, defense. In the final show completed 2009 (Nerenz and Manski appeared in the same episode, Volume 2), Mr. Gary F. Storck reports on the need for and potential legalization of medical marijuana. The final show of the SCVL Beacons from the 2009 Libertarian Party convention, to be released shortly, stars speaker Mr. John Witte as he explains the status and the great potential for alternative education as a way to rectify a growing crisis in education in the United States. Watch all of these shows and more on www.pikzl.com .

On the last of the film news announcements for the 2009 year-in-review, PiK. Media in this coming Winter of 2010 plans to debut its Cepia Local News casting, formatted to show the way to a stronger community through local-based broadcast media efforts. The first newscast is slated to show some of the highlights of this 2009 report.

Last in terms of the overall PiK. Media enterprise, but on the Radio Mira web-radio pod-cast service, the expansion of the global-local entertainment and ideas by CepiaClub continue slow but steady. Already, radio links to both the BBC and NPR radio services exist on Radio Mira. But Radio Mira is also expanding its pod-cast barter and exchange with local bands, and other audio-artists, to get better exposure and more profit for all involved. For CepiaClub, yes, and the artists in particular. Not to overlook it, the CepiaClub Diablog will continue into 2010 with special readings and discussions. Stay tuned on the Radio Mira web page at www.cepiaclub.com to see its present status and future progress. Finally in regards to Radio Mira, CepiaClub still works toward the eventual goal for an open-air, licensed, low-powered radio station to cover some small part of western Wisconsin. This may be an ambitious goal, but fortune's fate will make it happen if it is meant to happen. We will keep our progress posted to all.

The other area where CepiaClub held fast and advanced in a tough economic year took place in the publishing enterprise. As seen in the pages of recent issues of Feedom-Zine America (the original publication format for this 2009 report), much has developed and improved for the zine itself, with narrower and focused content, a different presentation, a new and expanding marketing policy (for emailed, print and library copies). We hope some editorial decisions that we have taken will allow CepiaClub to promote and expand even more the Freedom-Zine America. Inside the pages of the zine, we shall make every attempt to produce the most active and widest base for “community ending public ignorance and apathy.” These are goals and CepiaClub accompanies them with a promise: To continue to do our best to serve peace and prosperity with positive ideas for productive solutions.

A premium subscription-only news and views service, Cepiaglobal (and the Cepiaglobal Associated Membership Program—CAMP) and its very own newsletter, Cepiaglobal Futures Report (CgFR), is available by invite or petition to join. As a publication centered for exclusive subscribers, Cepiaglobal published three of the futures reports in 2009, which was our target goal. Relating to current events and proprietary information on The Cepia Club LLC, CgFReports publishes important information on geo-politics and economics and assessments of the events relating to these topics. To provide the newsletter with some some solutions for subscribers, the summary of the reports always at least tries to relate the trends and forecasting of major events to the societal and cultural impacts they will have. Informed is empowered for activism. As much of what CepiaClub provides for thoughts and leadership in community efforts for peace and prosperity is generally free and available to the public, customers and clients, Cepiaglobal Futures Reports is reserved for those accepted into the associated membership program. (For details on Cepiaglobal and Cepiaglobal Futures Reports, visit www.cepiaclub.com and the Cepiaglobal web-page, or inquire at cepiaglobal@cepiaclub.com .

To CepiaClub's only chagrin for 2009, we delayed the re-introduction of our flagship policy journal, The Cepia Club Strategy Review. The last issue was in Winter 2008. As a policy journal for the general interest of humanity's peace and prosperity, it still retains a place in our publishing enterprise. CepiaClub already works on a planned reintroduction of Strategy Review (which, it might be recalled, was formerly Strategy Gazette). If CepiaClub is the average person's think-tank and meant to challenge the pre-conceived notions of foreign, defense, security and internal policy proffered by more elite institutions, Strategy Review will continue to be available on-line, in limited print copies and in any school or public library that accepts the service of copy donations offered.

As this report article on The Cepia Club LLC, and all that relates to it, comes to the conclusion, the year of 2009 really proved one of holding fast. But we do not doubt that our “fortune's fate,” moral and not necessarily financial fortune, will help us transform a little club into a mighty and powerful local resource for peace on earth and goodwill for all. Thank you, friends, or your support.

Review of NSC-68 and the Retrospective Anniversary Edition

2009-12-04T15:16:00.001-06:00

Review of: NSC-68: Forging the Strategy of Containment, with Analyses by Paul H. Nitze. S. Nelson Drew, ed. Washington D.C., Fort Lesley J. McNair: National Defense University, 1994.
By Tim Krenz

This 45th anniversary edition of one of the most significant national policy statements in the history of America contains many of the relevant documents to the larger story behind it—Presidential directives ordering the study, source materials tracking the drafting and revisions, and some 1994, post-Cold War analyses by the paper's primary author, Paul H. Nitze. National Security Council [paper]--68, NSC-68 as it is known, defined in broad strokes the course of an unified American political, economic, foreign and defense “national grand strategy” in the Cold War from Truman's approval of the study in 1950 until the whimpering last breathless gasp of the Soviet Union in December 1991.
In historical context, the need for NSC-68 arose from the disordered hodgepodge of speeches, programs, legislation, reports, summaries, and memorandums within the US Government from the period 1943-50 forming American policies in the immediate post-World War II decade. The logic behind US policies in that short period recognized an existential threat to the US, both at home and abroad. The threat arose from the policies of repression, murder, consolidation and expansionism of the Soviet Union under their Communist-Bolshevik leader, Josef Stalin. The many documents contributing to US policies ranged from George Kennan's “Sources of Soviet Conduct;” the Acheson-Lilienthal report; President Truman's “doctrine” speech to a joint session of Congress; the Clark-Elsey Report (which disappeared); George C. Marshall's speech at Harvard announcing the plan that bore his name; and even (most interestingly) in the paranoid scribblings of Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal's diaries.
Soviet foreign policy in last two years of its war-time alliance with the United States and Great Britain, and in the five years after the defeat of Nazi Germany to the approval of NSC-68, combined military threats short of war, disinformation and propaganda offensives, occupied Eastern European countries under satellite governments, and subversive affiliate clients around the globe. The disconnected attempts by the US Government to state a clear and single strategy to address the exceptional threat posed by the Soviet Union lacked focus that would apply US advantages and compensate for American weaknesses, in all the relevant fields of national policy—political, economic, societal, and cultural.
In the late 1940s, a clear division appeared within US policy-making circles. First, one school believed the Soviets posed a traditional Great Power conflict of interest in tangible national interest (territory, natural resources, population, and sovereignty). This approach to understanding international politics is called “realism,” and Kennan was the godfather of it in the late 1940s.
On the other hand, a “theological-cult” [my term] believed the conflict was an ideological struggle that pitted one philosophical interpretation of life against the other, “unholy,” way of life: that of a socialist workers utopia run by an elite and privileged dictatorship ruling via fraud and force.
In the words of Nitze, the State Department Policy Planning Staff, who wrote the actual document, needed to draft a “gospel which lends itself to preaching” (quoted by Drew, ed., p. 4). America needed a summons to willful power “so that an intelligent popular opinion may be formed” [my italics]. In a national effort of unknown length and expense, consensus was required. A “national grand strategy” defines the political necessity of a policy and the expression of the objectives to be attained. Pursuing any grand strategy takes national political unity and the commitment of resources required required to act out and fulfill any policy. To quote NSC-68 itself, “Out of this common view will develop a determination of the national will and a solid, resolute expression of that will” (NSC-68, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, v. 1, p. 254).
The difference between the pragmatic “realists”of the Kennan-type and the “theological-cult” doctrine led by Nitze possesses more than a subtle difference. Kennan, who invented the approach he called “containment,” believed that a traditional balance of power strategy aptly applied only where the Soviet Union directly threatened American national interest, as in Europe, (but without any peace-time military alliances like NATO), would be able to conserve strength, provide for low-defense budgets, increase the Western standards of living, and press back Soviet aggression by applying firm resistance ONLY in critical areas. Eventually, the Soviet system of power would crumble of its own weight and its internal contradictions of some people more equal than others. Those captive masses in the Soviet system would reject poverty, slavery and lies in favor of Western-style values and prosperity, and thus withdraw willing and willful legitimacy and support from Communist governments.
The described “theologians” did indeed emphasize the values of America's way of life in the struggle but in unlimited ways against any and all communism—anywhere; this took out of the Cold War policy prudence to go to war only when necessary, and not go where defeat or even costly victory was irrelevant, like Southeast Asia. NSC-68 also called for strong, state-manipulation of the US and global economy to pay for massive conventional armaments, improved strategic nuclear forces, and interventionist policies and military assistance to any willing allies. In the end, NSC-68 was accepted by President Truman as he simultaneously declared a National Emergency on December 16, 1950. On that date, during the beginning of the Chinese intervention in the Korean War, Truman ordered the start of what would be the most expensive four-decade-long military program in peacetime in history, as requested in NSC-68. The militarization of American policy, encouraged and protected by a military-industrial-legislative complex, had begun. Outgoing President (and five-star general and hero) Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the US about such a dangerous combination of business, votes, and a large peacetime military before leaving his own two terms in office almost exactly ten years later.
As Nitze concluded in the NSC-68 anniversary retrospective, was the Cold War about traditional strategic concerns of national independence, economic resources, societal consent, and protection of the population? Or was it necessary to build such an awesome tool of material military power to protect the intangible “American way of life?” As rising conflicts in the Indian Ocean Area (Persian Gulf and Central Asia) emerge, similar questions arise today. Would the Cold War have been over sooner through traditional pragmatic national strategies without a large peacetime military, and by using a careful, concise power of choice ONLY when and where national destiny met the need for decisive action? These are always hard questions in history and the world awaits answers.

What is Culture and Why Does It Matter?

2009-11-13T01:23:00.001-06:00

What is Culture and Why Does It Matter?

How can one define something that defies definition? To answer, “‘what is culture?’,” it just might be easier to first define what it is NOT. Before that, I would like to say one thing constructive about culture: It just happens despite everything. Culture is NOT manufactured. It cannot be owned, for it is not like private property. Hence, culture cannot be sold, nor can it be mass marketed if it is “real” culture. Like really good homemade chocolate chip cookies made by dear old Mom or Grandma, culture has the “secret ingredient” that store-bought o-highs and elfens don’t have. (If you don’t know the secret ingredient, then stop reading right now!).

Culture has a lot of parallels with art, as indeed “art” is part of culture, but not its sum. Does an artist sell a picture, a song, a poem, or a short-film in order to be famous or just to feed themselves and pay the rent? They may in fact sell a worse replica of that spirit that first inspired the idea, but no Guggenheim nor Louvre can buy the soul of she or he who created it. An artist may sell the fruit of toil, sweet, and tears of creation, but only in a deal with a mustachioed Mephisto-patron of slaves and tyranny does the artist sell the blood and placenta of creation for fame and fortune’s vinegar, spoiled wine.

Art is art if we like it. And on the other hand, culture is like art–it is what we see. What makes a ceramic chicken in a roost into a thorned crucifixion death-mask? It depends on if you look at it upside down (really, it does). Art does not define all that is culture, but it gives the sweet juice to the fruit of liberty from the tree of Life.

Culture lives, and it is what we see. It grows like a bud on a rose thorn stem, which is more colorful and vibrant than any picture–painted or photographed–can make it. And culture can be a delicious bratwurst with mustard, chopped fresh onions, and sauerkraut at the local park watching the town’s semi-pro, poorly paid baseball team. Artistry in June can take the sculpture of a former high school pitcher throwing a shut-out a block over from main street in the oak-surroundings of a field of real, not phony, dreams. There is culture in a skater on a pipe pulling off a double posey without breaking a leg. Culture, like ripe tomatoes, is pulled off a vine that runs into the dirt from which it emerged, growing from the seed, the tendering, the watering in hot, dry July to make a sandwich for lunch at home. Like a garden, culture grows where it is, on the land and it is better just for that reason. It has more flavor than we realize. Imagine an apple not of our tree, but picked a long time ago from a plexaly far, far away from home. Further imagine that apple, green, too green, almost wickedly perfect green. Dread the day it tastes soylent. For that is how culture somehow owned and not ours would taste.

Culture: picnics, the “Chickasaurus” welded by the farmer from old tools, the one-time garage band that plays in the tavern down the street, the graffiti chalk on the sidewalk downtown–These things just happen and are ordered by themselves, not any god of media or Medea. And still, I for you, dear reader, cannot define culture, despite examples, except to adamantly proclaim what it is NOT: It is not a product of others or elsewhere. Culture happens when people “keep life alive by living it,” Evgraf.

One warning to all about the Kommissars of Mass Culture, dear friends. As caveats relating to the semper Tryannus, those with Caesars lurking in their souls, we must always remind ourselves about culture: It should always make us stronger as a people, as the community where we live; it should never have use to divide us. Culture is for everyone to give and take, and to accept it or reject it. WE ARE FREE PEOPLE in minds and spirits, and in other ways as well. Culture can give us all the reasons to live better and happier. Tend the tree of Life, for with its fruit of Liberty and the juice’s delicious tastefuls, our future as humans with humanity is guaranteed.

Notes from the Underground--“Juizy Blazz Shake-Up: Drink the Music and Dance”

2009-10-07T21:33:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Underground
By Pi Kielty
July 18, 2009

“Juizy Blazz Shake-Up: Drink the Music and Dance”

It was a night like a harvest autumn, but mid-July. The summer was strange, and we all were estranged yet familiar with it. This night gathering, guided by the arc of Venus through broken, moving clouds, at dusk, moments before the Valley fireworks down the town, drew the Valley’s Underground and Topground together at den Haus for a Wannigan Days, Want-it-Again party. The Juizy Blazz Shake-Up mainlined the performance, the extra extravaganza of the annual summer party. The sky stayed partly half–half-clouds settling cold dampness and half-clear to see the starlighters in the black beveled sky. It was strange weather fitting for a strange summer.

The mixed intro revealed on a sudden that Juizy wasn’t choosey, but they chose fun. If the music was an ambrosia that feeds the feeling, then the dancing brought intoxicant nectar to the body as the band shook, around, down and upbound over the river’s olympian edge to its own temptation’s heaven.

Nothing hard to conjugate the notes, even for such untuned beat as in my demi-muse, Juizy Blazz oozed a hard beat, a thumping cord, a blast-off sax, and better than extra pretty special good organic board-keys. Juizy played the classic’s classic, “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” with a tittle tattle curiosity that beckons some to follow the Mad Hatter in a boogie down the rabbit hole, onto a Wonderland dance floor.

Happy behooves flavor, flavor multiplied by echo, echo in motion, motion in touch, and touch in soul–good spirits, some, out that night, waving in a warm cheery cherry sunshine on a humid sweaty fall night that July. The familiar things felt out of place in strange summer chill. But we all inured ourselves to ignore the sight of Undergrounders, so we remained anonymous even among our own, as milled with the Topground peoples.

Round and pound, a bar of rhythm, Rock & Roll lives in the St. Croix Valley!! The feat of shuffling feet and flaying hands, bouncing heads and a heart-hope on a looped and hooped moment in term, there seems a thousand people on the point of a superstar’s pin. “Gee-Willickers!! Mother F#$%%$, EVEN, its so crowded that soon I must make my Pi-exit!!” Yet, things were funner with a crowd, a happy unconcerned crowd, dancing loud, for dance was allowed, anytime there’s room to move in the room. “Blazz it, anyway!” There was still a great glow in a room with three hundred of one’s closest strangers. “My freaking god, its so warm, too.” Thick as fog, the people, a steamy fog, there sits and stands. But warmth, even damp, was power and energy. Outside to catch a cool breath underneath the starry sky flitting atwixt the partly-half of one sky beside another, my time near there would end. There was a band break inside as the Juizy Blazz rested and reset. “Don’t worry little Valley world. It’s late, but they’ll be back, on stage, to play you the night exhausted and flamed by languid spirits from a bottle.”

“Having Me Some Fun Tonight”? It was a refrained reminder to all to just enjoy the time, the moment in the term of life. The people shook all the more, harder, faster, longer–“Dance and don’t worry.” There’s “No Particular Place to Go,” only home at some point, even in the Underground. Juizy Blazz Shake-Up rocks, in old town and first new-school. “You were in the house when it tumbled down, weren’t you?” The brave in den Haus; such colorful people in it. The last call was called, and all called out for another dance. “One song for all you all!!” The doors would have shortly locked, but I traveled out. “Be happy people, people. Goodnight.”

Review of: Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America

2009-10-03T03:35:00.000-05:00

Review of: Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

Thomas L. Friedman, in Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution And How It Can Renew America, provides solutions for a planet Earth that cannot accommodate growing populations, and economic expectations of modern development, in the midst of massive climate change. For the last century, economic engines have been fueled by oil, gas, and coal–fossil-fuels which produce carbon emissions. Scientist, to their best estimation, believe that carbon emissions have caused the phenomenon of carbon particulates in the atmosphere creating “the greenhouse effect.” Hence why the world needs to consider alternatives to fossil-fuel based energy.

Because of these “greenhouses gases,” the earth’s eco-system is hampered in regulating the normal cooling and warming cycles. It is a fact, regardless of any opinion in denial, that climate change is occurring. Recorded and accurate climate data over almost 250 to 300 years proves it. Recorded hydro-logical data, taken from ice cores samples in Antarctica, extend back 100-200,000 years, providing stronger evidence that something is amiss. As for the “greenhouse effect,” strong evidence exists that carbon particulates play a major role in the cause of climate change. However, a lot is not known about the interplay of the factors and causes.

Regardless of any believers in the fanatic fringe on either side of the debate, the best climate models and the world’s most advanced super computers simply have no reliable methodology, data, or historical record to prove one way or another how the carbon particulates and/or other unknown facts will result in the effects. There are simply too many variables at play, and the majority of variables, simply cannot as of yet be expressed in reliable numbers, numbers being the language of science. Climate change IS happening, however. How it will turn out is at best an educated hypothesis. The best guess might be somewhere in between the poles of debate.

Something will radically change. Nonetheless, even without all the data we need,, assumptions can be made; for example, we have the technology to make some significant impact in reducing carbon emissions; such change would increase the conservation of energy and its better application; energy (since the invention of fire) is required to feed, clothe, and shelter people, and to employ them in the very basic survival functions of production and distribution; and finally, efficient energy systems of production, transfer and use are a net savings on investments over the long-term.

Friedman, who authored The World Is Flat, asserts in Hot, Flat and Crowded that the many of communication, design, production/assemly, and transportation revolutions of the last 20 years of globalized connection can be used to create a “green economy.” The goal of such a “green revolution,” as he states it, is to create an intricate mix of the communications, production/assembly, and transportation ideas in a public and private market of incentives and disincentives to create “negative carbon footprints;” i.e. green economies with maximum efficiency and less use of fossil-fuels.

Whether it is electric cars run by batteries that sell their excess idled power, or better building design and assembly to utilize maximum natural light and solar cooling and heating systems, ,many of his allegories exist in small-scale experiments or in genesis form in places around the world. The technology exists. These depend on a wide-spread use of micro-chip monitoring and control to maximize efficiency and rebuilding America’s entire electrical generation, transfer, and application grids, which are now grossly inefficient. If America seizes the moment and leads the world down this path of green economic renewal, it will provide unlimited strategic political-economic and socio-cultural advantages. But, the author warns, if another country (e.g. China) or other countries (e.g. China, India and Japan) take the lead, America would hit terminal decline as a world power.

There is more logic to go “green” than even Friedman might recognize. Even without climate change pushing an initiative for “green” technologies, green is more efficient in the use of resources. Whether water, food, goods or oil, more efficiency is ultimately more profitable. A nation using less energy to do more increases economic power. Economic power is the basis for any political power or moral ascendancy in the local community or the community of nations. At its ultimate, economic power and political power translate into military power, and if one nation has the moral will to use that power for good or ill, the United States of America needs to serve its own interests in that regard.

It might take the US’s entire yearly economic output (our GDP, or gross domestic product) every year over the course of a decade to transfer the industrial-era capital infrastructure and investment into a “green” society. But not doing so is unacceptable. One just might think of better individual, market and community education and initiatives beyond those suggested in Hot, Flat and Crowded. The world is shrinking in the globalized order. The population is rising. Things are changing, politically and economically, socially and culturally. Not enough resources or energy exist to allow every nation to achieve a middle class status with just fossil fuels. Nature might kill us if nations try the old way. However, America is poised with the skill and tech-base to do it. Better us, than anyone else!!

Juizy Blazz Shake-Up Headlines Autumn Fest-- Free Concert

2009-09-15T02:08:00.000-05:00

Juizy Blazz Shake-Up Headlines Autumn Fest--
Free Concert in St. Croix Falls

“Juizy Blazz Shake-up,” Polk County's own “hot rock'n horn” band, headlines the Autumn Fest free concert in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, Saturday, September 26th.
Autumn Fest, a buy-local, stay-sustainable, green-community initiative, is a show-case festival for events around the St. Croix Valley that weekend. The free concert, starting at 9 AM, accompanies green and sustainable vendors, local-foods, and arts and crafts, with the main attractions and concert stage located on the St. Croix Falls Scenic Overlook in the downtown area.
Juizy Blazz Shake-up capstones the fun and family fest that Satutrday, the 26th.. The day-long free concets begin in the morning at 9 AM with “The Children's Variety Theater,” a sing-along and play-along music show for kids, with Sandy Bishop performing and leading. The concert continues with the drummers from Polk County's “Tribal Spirits Drum Circle;” a noon show by area band “Relative Minor;” and the uplifting tunes of “Dave and Janel;” all preceding the “Juizy Blazz Shake-up” headline dance concert around 3 PM. For more info on the concerts or the St. Croix Falls Autumn Fest, visit www.scfbuylocal.org .

Review of:: Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience.” 1849.

2009-08-04T23:05:00.000-05:00

Review of: Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience.” 1849.

By Tim Krenz

Any creed, religious dogma, party platform—anything supposing to represent a higher, (fanciful?) truth by which we can live together by separating us from other people of other beliefs, breaks apart under its own weight, sucked by gravity into the burning atmosphere of the real world. As individuals we make mistakes, allowable by our human nature. Hence, we may define the art of politics as a compromise between competing agendas. How much damage can one wrong idea or action do? When ideas come down to the purity of their principle, the virtue of those in control of both the principle's interpretation and the enforcement of its virtues in public become nothing less than tyranny.

Henry David Thoreau's essay “Civil Disobedience” meets a critical standard in both a personal AND political philosophy. It puts only one person on the trial of their conscience between right and wrong. If right, something good can come of it, like more people following the leadership of example by choice, and not following the rules from the point of a gun. If one person is wrong, there is little consequence. In Thoreau's suggestion to oppose any injustice by government with personal, individual, and well-considered acts of peaceful, non-violent, non-cooperation, history bears out the power of “civil disobedience” in ending injustice, no matter how long it takes. The most prominent examples are Indian Independence from Great Britain (not relevant to the Hindi-Muslim civil war that followed), and the African-American Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and early 1960s..

The important lesson of history since 1849, when Thoreau wrote the essay, is, on the other hand, that injustice can build into evil; therefore, injustice must be stopped by such a personal and personalized program of action BEFORE it is institutionalized. When wrong and injustice become so permanent in their hold on power, no matter if won in a legitimate election (like the Nazis in 1932-33), the unjust state ultimately can use the legal levels of power to create an extra-legal reign of terrorism to maintain itself ( as in the French Revolution and the guillotine).

When discussing Thoreau's 1849 essay, one might compare it to The Manifesto of the Communist Party, written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. Seeing a massive movement of workers in a worker state, without government, as the final goal of their program of action to enforce their view of justice and equality, the Manifesto eventually became modified by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and even that peculiar socialist, Hitler (who modeled much of his rule after Lenin). These tyrants and murderers created not classless societies of justice, peace and equality, but elite societies where the many served as expendable slaves to serve the few at top of the state. The result of National Socialism (Nazism) was a unified state committing violent war of imprisonment extermination against whole races and nations.

In the end, like any movement with lack of open-mindedness and tolerance, those who believe they know the ONLY way others should think about or do something end up proving they had a very bad idea in the first place. Ideas, as Thomas Jefferson said, need vigorous debate—for people to decide with their own free choice; for error exposed to free examination is harmless. Liberty of choice is the first test of a government based on reason, and it secures Nature's-given rights for everyone. But this only works, as Thoreau may have said, if we are responsible in our choices. Otherwise, all governments not based on consent and compensation for everyone become tyrannies which can only maintain their platform and policies by coercion, fraud, theft and force.

The story behind the essay, “Civil Disobedience,” is easily told. Thoreau spent a night in jail (which he found educational and interesting) because he refused to pay a federal indirect tax, as authorized in the 1787 Constitution, because the tax would help pay for the United States war against Mexico. The war against Mexico from 1846 to 1848 was primarily about the extension of territory to expand slavery. Thoreau would not want to live as a slave; therefore, he would not support the enslavement of others, or wars to make it possible. Elements of both the Whig and Democratic parties supported the war, as such, in order to delay having to settle the issue of slavery in the United States once and for all. Later, General and eventual President U.S. Grant, who fought as junior officer in the Mexican War, admitted in his personal memoirs that the war against Mexico was a brazen violation decency and nothing more than a war of unprovoked aggression for profit and narrow, special interests. Thoreau took a courageous act. He did not pay his tax as the only way he could peacefully, non-violently NOT participate in the evil that was slavery or appeasement of slavery.

Compare Thoreau's peaceful action to not fund the war by his refusal to pay the tax with abolitionist John Brown. John Brown was a self-styled Christian warrior, a possessed fanatic whose sole creed had become to end slavery through the spread of violence, and indeed had committed cold-blooded murder in Kansas and insurrection against the Federal government before the war between the states. In history, Brown is seen as a dark prophet who sparked fear through violence and murder, and was the catalyst to secession and civil war—which cost over 600,000 American lives. Thoreau, meanwhile, might be seen as a forefather of a peaceful future, whereby the liberty of individuals to be left alone when not volunteering themselves and with the personal freedom of choice to live free of injustice by NOT supporting it. One can only hope that we will become closer to the better angels of the Nature which makes us human, and will keep us human and equally liable to our own flaws and poor judgment. We had best live together in liberty and freedom or we might not live on this world someday at all.

Day #9-Underground Freeway--Notes from the Underground

2009-07-08T02:22:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Underground–
Underground Freeway–Day 9, May 30, 2009
by Pi Kielty

[See author’s note on Day #7 of “Underground Freeway,” about writing notes #s 7, 8, and 9 upon returning home from the “tour d-question”].

Day #9 started well and normal, normal for the previous eight days of my journey, getting enough good rest in my little home-tent far away from home. My reasons for traveling, to be clear, were because life at home, in cramped, isolated, exhausting, tireless work and living, near destroyed my optimism. Life lived as I did for five months past lost all joy. And I knew that life without any break from a dim, skeptical viewpoint, a joyless drudge of moping onward and forward without sight of a promised land flowing with acceptance, would destroy my now harpless muse, unless I discovered a simple instrument for epic renaissance. Hence, I wanted to know the question I needed to ask, in order for an answer to be found.

I packed and loaded up in under an hour my little camp settled in the small urban residential backyard, after a wakey-wake of coffee and cigarettes. I shared the 5-way good-byes between myself and Lucky’s family, all gathered on this Saturday morning. I shot some photos of them gathered on the front door stoop. I asked them to give their questions for my project. Dawes, the four year Wonder Kid, had a simplistic one word curiosity befitting his age: “Race cars?” The Squirrel, the perceptive & precocious 17-year old born when Lucky, B., and I attended university, gave us the dreaded 30, almost 40-something “mid-life crisis” question: “If there was one thing you could change about your life, what would it be and why?” B.’s question really cut the matter of what people REALLY should want to know: “What part of the chicken do the chicken nuggets come from?” Lucky, part progressive parent, part playful responsible adult, asked, “What is your opinion of spanking?”

More hugs between us all. At last I just had to force myself to leave, or end up never wanting to leave my own mental Magic Mountain, one both safe and rejuvenating, especially in my life’s most troubled thinking-times. Five days and four nights with Lucky, one of my most trusted friends, and her family, did my spirit well. With reluctance, I drove off for the Interstate highway and points north and west. Passing the exits for Hattersville, I retraced on the way up the places I passed on the way down. Lil’ Casino sounded rough, for I pushed her to get as far as she went. The round trip back, I wished, would have nothing interesting to write about in terms of the trusty green Dodge Shadow.

After several way side rests, I stopped back at Johann’s and Ursula’s, where I originally planned to stay until Day #10. They were gone for the evening, and I left them a “sign” of a rolled smoke on their patio table to let them know I passed. It was more than four days, and less than 4 weeks. Considering the condition of Lil’ Casino after a near 1000 mile run around, and not able to give up my responsible work back home, the very work that drove me to exhaustion, I thought that going home at this point more prudent. One more stop to make, in the next city, to see the Wizard, have dinner, and make the final leg to the home Farm in Ubet Corners. So, my trip to find a “Question” for me to move onward with life would end in about three hours. Close to the end, I did not have my “Question” yet; neither a serious one nor one to lighten my summer ahead. I did elicit questions from others. I might have even built a small inventory of larger questions to build some thoughtful order in my life (see previous notes on the trip, Days #1 thru #8).

The matter of it comes down to why I left home in the middle of the night nine days before my return.

Why did I take to the road? Why did not I go on the backpacking trip instead? Holy men go to mountains. Philosophers find caves and woods to their liking, only to exit as more freakish or geekish in their appearance to the world that cannot grasp the explanations of their visions. Hipsters, drifters, vagabonds, and poets go on the road, and I was a one man carnival in a clown car spouting in through a cheap camcorder lense. Less of a writer than most, I cannot be sure if my life amounts to much of anything, before trip, B.T., or after return, A.R. In going on the Freeway Underground, as past notes might explain, there existed within an “exitinctual” crisis. Not a strong inclination, but to avoid the paradox of others I love who cannot live longer, and one loved-of-all-loves who does not want to live at all, getting away for a while beats getting away from it altogether. I said to my parents and a select few of friends that I would return. I knew on going away that I would take only what I carried with me, the most heavy and cumbersome of that freight would be me myself.

Like the saying goes, wherever I go, there I am. If we as quasi-living, sub-spiritual beings try to fix ourselves in any way besides the WHO reference by real or wannabe holy men and women, the WHO being willingness, honesty and open-mindedness (Oh, my!), then humans had best declare defeat and surrender to the inevitable. All the Bugs Bunny frets of “WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHEN, WHERE, HOW–whew!”– has improved the world a damn small bit over several millennia or eons. We are all, I suspect, a lot like me, vain, egotistical, arrogant, spoiled, and rotten children pretending to live like adults when we forget that, “We are,” as Archon Larson said, “all born human; we grow up tribal;” and we need to find our humanity again. Rest in peace, Teacher Larson.

We can all hope that somehow, someday, we can overcome ourselves. Humanity is governed by two basic characteristics of Nature: Our fear and our greed. In children and the handicapped, these inborn traits come most natural, right, and good; things pointing us toward bigger lives for better things. As innocents of an age of complete helpless dependence, when we are born, we have no other way to learn the limits or the rewards of life except by fearing for ourselves, like not getting left alone, and asking, “More, please,” for that which makes us satisfied and happy. And sometimes as children OR adults we might not even give the courtesy of a “please.” It takes great effort for humans to overcome their natural motivations for either self-preservation or singular gluttony–to keep what they’ve got or get more of it, and obtain at least some of what they have not.

Fear and greed can rule us. In moderation, “dah,” it can be a good, beneficial act. To extremes, on either end, for selfishness or self-sacrifice, it can do ourselves and many others great harm, indeed the greatest harm. I left because I sat at pole ends of this duo-poly. Looking at people who despaired despite what they have, I forgot to look at myself, too, in the same self-criticism. On the other side of my personal abyss gaping in my spirit, I could not accept those things permanently denied, and still be satisfied. From my point of view, I could only grow more resentful looking at other people who still continued in the delusion that starting with very little, they could get it all; but even more festering in my outlook, they ridiculed me because I would warn them that everything–every person, every feeling, every fleeting dream come true–was NOT permanent. As George sang, “All Things MUST Pass.” I since learned to shut up and let other people figure out that they could lose what they had. I protest my apologies for saying here so bitterly, before I explain how I renewed optimism by accident, that one thing is true: Take no one or nothing for granted. Life can be good, still. The key for me resides in reconciling a moral balance sheet. The surprise in my days since my journey has been, “If it ends even, at least I play a game of life at par.” I can do no better in expectation, for the way is set before my life by the god of life-golf and the course of fate.

I mean myself no harbinger of misery, paranoia or terror. In fact, I say without qualification, Life is good. Can it be better? even for the miserable, the wicked, the vicious, or the evil? If we hold to our optimism like children, yes, it can. Qualifying at this point, it is better that we realize our faults ourselves, for how could Hitler, Mao, or Stalin be reformed? To prove it, we need only solve one mystery of supreme faith for ourselves at some point. That mystery is: Was Judas (or Brutus, for the secular) forgiven by his victim?

After dinner with the Wizard, following a final fill-up of gas, I felt supreme aloneness in my thoughts. I remained un-“Questioned” for my own search. I never went in search of meaning of life. I instead hoped to find some purpose to explain why I do what I do. Waiting at the traffic light to go on the west bound ramp for the Interstate, an hour from home, in defeat in the “details” of life, I yelled in my cramped, packed Lil’ Casino:

“Who the hell needs me? Who the hell wants me?”

Who needs us? Who wants us? Therein reads the ultimate of fear and greed. To be left unneeded by someone or the world. To feel unwanted anywhere. We are all children of Nature in that respect. We spend our whole life growing up. We end up finding out that all we need or want is outside of us still, beyond any power we have to give it to us permanently. All things must pass. Time therefore might be its own god.

Who needs us? Who wants us? Does anyone need us when our life is bad, as much as they want us when our life is good?

The only answer possible for me at this point is that, yes, we all need each other. We all want each other, in some way, but hopefully for honest reasons; for sharing joy or enduring pain; to help not hinder; to heal and never harm.

I find it wrong for me to define my own meaning for my life. That meaning might only be found in the memory long after I fulfill my fate in any form it takes. I think of the dead friends, the deceased family, of the past eight years. Their memory lingers strong, for the good reasons, the bad ones, or the indifference of how little my living helped them. But somewhere, in some people, I hope that by living I do produce more than mere offence; that I made a difference. It might be on some days, if not all, each and every all of us, lived that day with a purpose, even anonymous to ourselves, that helped our fellow humanity.

Our fear governs us to want to be needed. Our greed compels us to need to be wanted. For myself, in search of those who need me, and letting others who want me to seek me, might be enough purpose in my personal existence to motivate the rest of a “lifestory.” Even if only the god replies to my “Question(s)”, it at least would say, “I DO.” Then I AM needed and wanted in the service of the god of active time instead of merely being.

Thus, abruptly ceased at 10:30 PM, Saturday, May 30, 2009, my journey when I parked my car at the place where I feel “home.” The Underground Freeway found the end of the path, for a rest, for now.

Day #8-Underground Freeway

2009-06-25T23:49:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Underground
Underground Freeway–Day 8, May 29, 2009
By Pi Kielty

[See author’s note on Day #7 of “Underground Freeway,” about writing notes #s 7, 8, and 9 upon returning home from the “tour d-question”].

Day Eight began with the now usual waking fresh in the morning, rustling from the tent at almost 10:30 AM. The night before, Thursday (Day Seven), enjoyed a night out, perhaps playing pool on Stelliga’s uneven table. Lucky and I stayed home with her younger child, and the older one came home as we watched movies. The movie we watched the one movie of the 21st Century to make my favorites lists, an independent flick, small budget, beautifully done, sweet and sad as simple and awesome movie making can be done. The movie, Sweetland, I suppose, entertained my dreams as I found myself thinking about it as soon as my eyes opened. I owned the dvd we watched, and the message and theme–about liberty, life, land and love–always speaks power to my spirit.

Most friends think that I think too much. Yes, I guess I do, in their point of view. For myself, it depends on the Bunny speed or tortoise crawl at which my brain accelerates. My general goal in a day of life seeks to discipline my thinking on good, positive things. It did no wrong to me the morning of the eighth day to think the good. . . not thoughts, but concerning a bright spirit, or better, and the joyful feeling of knowing that good, right and happiness in life happen in the miracles we only forgot to observe. Miracles indeed happen in untold numbers everywhere, like the miracle of new life in any animal or flower upon birth. May be indeed if birth is such a miracle in this world, death could be a happy miracle as well, but one we often fail to capture on this side of joy and suffering. Observed from another side, what happiness does a reverse birth bring parents in a world we cannot see or know? Are we afraid without remembering when we enter the old and new worlds through a womb?

I read that morning, Day 8, and into the afternoon. Lucky and her family caroused in and out of the house from lunch with her mom, to all their jobs, from school, to errands. Friday was a clear day without rain and I took advantage of my last full day in Stone Mtn. to film the neighborhood and the house. Around 3 PM, I drove the seven blocks to the downtown. Why I did not walk dumbfounds me. I guess I think typical American-like. I walked into the bookstore I briefly visited the day before, Mr. Chet’s Book Nirvana Emporium. Like the rest of Stone Mtn.’s architecture, Chet’s had a white stucco exterior, with a black trimming and accent framing, what I believed an early 1960's rural but rich small urban community found in functional yet formal design theme. Stone Mtn. looked very busy and prosperous, past and present.

As a rail junction and depot, one through which rail traffic still crawled several times day, the community most likely grew wealthy on steel track highway traffic transferring the Wisconsin and Upper Plains commerce to Chicago and vice versa. From that point of departure, a strong middle and better-off working class might have developed to give their city much of the impressions I absorbed, in design, diversity, and even the words spoken by people I met. And as all communities with hard working, successful, earlier generations have done, and located so close to the one of the largest and most advanced Universities in the nation, Stone Mtn.’s founding families (I conjectured) would have sent their latter generations to higher learning. Such is an advantage of combining natural intelligence we all possess with the ability to invest return on labor in a better education. Nothing separates wealth and poverty like education, except perhaps nutrition and addiction, (with all the attendant effects of poor diet and over-indulgence). But, again, this is a quick theory, not a thesis I can prove.

Chet’s bookstore occupied two and half floors of space, the half floor containing the military history in a cubby hole mezzanine between a full third floor above the space that appeared to be a living space. I spent over an hour browsing at this book temple, on all three floors. Chet’s Book Nirvana Emporium displayed used books, new books, rare books, collector’s antiques, many signed by someone or owned by a yoohoo of esteem. Some great collections of comic books, movie franchises, and games of those, along with the BOOKS, filled me with desire to buy the entire store. Tens of thousands of good quality paperbacks, good quality in title and bindings, filled huge floor to ceiling stacks in the well-lighted dry basement. Without question, the entire store contained as many books or more I would guess four of the public libraries back home could compile at once and together. Thank the god I have not the wealth to feed that addiction.

After browsing, I talked with Chet, a man in his late 50s who chained smoked, about his views on the world. He was well-informed, to little surprise, considering the knowledge, ideas, and peer creativity contained in book-form within his store. While not sure if Chet himself read much, he had to know something about some things at least. Chet’s views, I decided, differed in a lot of ways from mine. He, a conservative dispassionate, and a cold-hearted realist about dollars, sense, and “god,” did not offend me in any regard. I, a libertarian, internationalist, and myopic utopian-optimist, just listened more than I shared. Chet did have knowledge, and he knew facts. In the spectrum, since neither Chet like myself appeared overly successful with life in business, we got along as equals yet in different worlds of viewpoint.

As a reader of these notes might guess by now, I do read more than average. Reading fills me with facts and theories, strategems, entertainment and fictional gambits. My friend, Ozzish back home, once commented that I hungered for knowledge, as we sat among the stacks of my library in temporary placement in the basement where I live. Indeed, I have at least a few thousand titles, if not several, of books, magazines, and other diverse media of music, movies, collectibles, antiques, games, etc., just like Chet’s, but not as many since I’m not yet 40. Such is my love of knowledge and entertainment, facts, fictions, sounds, and visions–art and letters, science and not quite science.

When talking to Chet, at one point I commented how I would like to spend part of eternity in his store, since such a vast vault of accumulated thoughts in print form appealed to me as some little, but not quite entire, slice of a universal “good place for me.” Chet asked, “Do you want to buy it?” Tempting as a day dream, thank the god I do not have wealth. I would never sell any of it if I owned, in all likelihood, as I would sub-real dream a delusion that I really could read all the books in Pi’s Book Heaven Store.

I wondered after visiting that cigarette smelling store what I would trade for even more knowledge, or the opportunity to gain as much as I could in this life. That question led me to explore more about the whole matter, that of knowledge by any means, and wisdom gained through life, after which I recognized that knowledge from sources like books, people, music or films, about real things or pigments of colorful imagination, never implies experience in life itself. Experience comes by doing. In my life, paralysis can stem from too much self-Socratic dialogue, contemplation; questioning or questing every premise, every solution. When I reach mental apoplexy, my life becomes frozen, wondering whether I missed one fact, made one error, too many. A life thinking about things, and paranoia about what might happen can really happen, would keep me in bed and never up and in the greatest game of all, life itself.

Knowledge does have certain advantages. It merely predicts the “offence to what is really happening.” And without some knowledge, humanity must start from negative infinity in everything, and do it all the time, just to get to the start of zero. I hope humanity can find satisfaction that Dante already wrote the Divine Comedy; Michaelangelo sculpted David for us so we do not have to do it ourselves, though we would only do it worse than he; that Einstein solved relativity; and that Leonardo da Vinci could very damn well have done anything he pleased. The trick with my contemporary fellow humanity must be: How can we take the next step from the past within our present, to get us to the future we want it to become?

The key, I think, comes, yes, with knowledge and experience, and more of that thing called WISDOM. All that I believe at this point in life about wisdom comes down to one moral, one axiom, one axe-edged blunt instrument that can lop off the branch of naive innocence from any tree of life: That WISDOM comes more so from pain than pleasure.

If where we fail brings greater learning than the lesser evils of triumphs, then humanity still has a lot to learn. I feel old, though, because of weariness and exhaustion from catching up with the high ideals that I think should be possible in my life. How many others do not feel the same, that fewer minority who reach mid-maturity and cannot deal with themselves in honesty. My friend, “Archon Lasan” was right when he said, “We are born human, and we grow up tribal. At some point, we spend the rest of our lives trying to be human again.” May the northern lakes’ very own Jack Armstrong rest in peace, for he taught many well. May we all reach humanity.

In this ruminating on Chet’s, in the days that followed since I’ve been home, the question of Day #8 on the Underground Freeway started to gestate. It had a hard birth, and I’m more grateful now than when I was at Chet’s. We learn for some reason; we build knowledge within and collectively for some purpose. In that sum of reasoning, facts, entertainment, and the pain of experience, would we trade all to relive a smarter life, a less painful one, or even one where we found more happiness than we did? History is like a repeating record on the stereo. Are we stuck on something past which we fail to rise to the next level of human spirit? toward another song, another thought, another pleasure, our muse which truly makes us happier to be us? Do we ever learn enough in life just to be in total peace before dying? I hope I’m not the only accidental optimist in thinking we can someday do better with all we know.

Question: “What do we do with whatever wisdom we suffered to learn if few, especially those younger, have to learn the same mistakes and successes as we?”

Day #7--Underground Freeway

2009-06-13T13:15:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Underground
Underground Freeway–Thursday, Day 7, May 28, 2009
By Pi Kielty

[Author’s Note: As I returned home now 7 days ago, on Day 9 of the Underground Freeway, the final 3 notes of this “inquiry” come from my personal journal entries, and a recent memory already fading. Note #7, to warn a reader with apologies, will use a different tense than the present-tense. The final three days of my journey in search of a “Question” required a little reflection, yes, but gave way to pressing life and work which I had to resume upon returning home. With a sincere hope, days 7, 8, & 9 will not disappoint an audience too terribly much even though I write from elsewhere, off the road, back in the home Underground].

On the evening of Day 6, following the tour of Stone Mtn.’s church architecture, B., Lucky’s husband, remained at home, while Lucky and I joined a good friend of both their’s, a new friend I made that night. Bryce had an interest in history, my area of degree study in university. Bryce and I quickly engaged in discussion about obscure figures from distant times, and not so distant tragedies that befall the world in sharper episodes when reason fails to moderate illusions.

I drove both of them in Lucky’s van to a coffee shop that doubled as an empty Wednesday night tavern. Along the railroad tracks, just short of the business downtown up one hill and down another from Lucky and B.’s home, Stelliga’s was located within an old brick freight house in the restored depot of the rail yard. Inside, the coffee tavern had a high, empty ceiling, low lights dripping downward like stalagmites obscuring by the soft glare the black indoor cavern above us.

The bar occupied the far left corner of the main room, with the large landscape window to its left viewing an empty gravel marshaling yard the size of three football fields, and the two lone cars in it, the other belonging to the bartender. On the right wall, I saw the espresso machine, and on the back wall an orange oversized cooler thermos labeled with “Puggie’s Punch.” Not distracted and scarce aware of the liquor bottles lined up behind Bethesame, our blonde amiable bartender, I ordered from her an iced coffee. Lucky ordered a dark, acidy beer, and Bryce his draft in a clear bottle.

As a peculiar blend of tavern and coffee house, and empty of souls beside the four of us, I could relax enough in this easy, rather classic atmosphere of shaded red brick and old deep brown beams supporting the building like pillars of an ancient temple of Bachus married to Minerva. Inside Stelliga’s, Lucky, Bryce and I escaped the responsibilities of the real world beyond, as we played free pool on a black felt table that rolled like the hills on either side of the freight house.

We left Stelliga’s, once Bryce and Lucky drank three of their kinds of fermented fun, and I drank three strong brews of caffeinated hyper-time, “hurry up java.” Who was doing the worse drug–those who drank alcohol? Or I who pretended caffeine wasn’t a buzz?

I drove us to another near empty place uphill, in a refurbished downtown. Here, I ordered charged soda, my friends still drinking beer. My buzz on coffee lessened, and now I just enjoyed the fun. In the game room of Downer Diane’s, we failed to build a second story of a very ugly card house, on the green baize of the pool table, this one, however, costing a buck to play. We saved a dollar or two on the pool game, which my two friends would not have been able to see or play well enough anyway.

Lucky and I met a girl, here far away from our old Dodge, who years after we graduated school, drank and socialized at The Bar. Lucky and I left many old haunted beer and gin halls in Dodge behind us. Like ghosts of that past, The Bar appeared in our vivid conversation. Aubrey, with curly blonde hair, has a toddler and husband at home on this cool end of May night. Bryce channeled through the music stations on TV, and the two women and I shared stories about what was where, and what was the taste, feel, and sound in The Bar, a place of intricate and eclectic, eccentric, sensory entertainment. The Bar without exaggeration owns worldwide fame. Known without need of advertising, from Scotland to Japan, The Bar holds memories foolish and foul for me. For Lucky, I know, it gave her fun and headache pain on mornings after, demanding a bloody mary breakfast cure. For Aubrey, who knows? But what compelled her to leave family and home behind for a few hours at DD’s by herself, where she said she had never drank before?

Decades previous, before evenings in The Bar, the “guece” of my own homemade Kielty Cocktails put me in looped frames of mind that cut away layers of perception, and opened new colored pages of wonderland fiction. I escaped to other worlds, like many addicts before had done for several thousand years, and many others will do for thousands after me. The escape within became an outward isolation. In The Bar, I made no friends, and I didn’t want to make friends; hence Lucky was my only friend at times, in spite of myself, and I’ve been lucky to have her. For twenty years, she helped in repairing the reality I tried to destroy with malicious enthusiasm. Life at The Bar was not a life worth living for me, even if I pretend to reflect on the few odd accidents of fun.

I struggled for years on that binge. Whether marijuana, mushrooms, morphine or mash, and sometimes all in a single trip down a road I forgot to avoid, addiction near destroyed me. I achieved recovery from my selfish purge of all friends and feelings, family and second thoughts. For several years now, I neither drink nor indulge in anything clouding a clean conscience or the honesty of my spirit. Everyone I know who overcame the same self-imposed obstacle to living free from that in which they lost themselves, experienced the same strung out despair of losing not only themselves, but all the fun for which we all hope to fill our days. For those like me, it becomes a choice every hour, every minute, every second to live between two choices: Life and happiness or misery in living death. Death is the inevitable destiny on this side of our viewpoint. From my own poor point of view, why hasten the inevitable via uncontrolled and constant compulsion or complete intoxication, if there is only misery to be experienced? It would be better to live (then dying) while enjoying the fun, than not life as we should hope it could be: A happy life better lived than not.

Reflecting on the evening the next day, Day #7, a Thursday, I meditated on an essay I read more than 12 years ago, Leo Tolstoy’s musing on “why men stupefy themselves,” (which also applies to women). As people, we do have free-will, and for sure it is Nature’s greatest gift, greatest responsibility, and greatest curse all in one. For my mind and body, my free choice only found a more fulfilling path once I decided to not intoxicate myself with the garbage that littered my spirit. Only I could make that choice. Only others can do it for themselves. Yes, Lucky and Bryce, and a lot of my friends, find enjoyment, responsibly and irresponsibly as their personal Nature’s determine their ability to use alcohol, etc. to party for fun, or, like people like me, PARTY to perish. Some people can handle it, and still have fun. But I, almost from the start of drinking at age 17, lost the ability to have fun. It was desire to find the insatiable hunger for fun and forgetting that I fell deeper into the emptiness that has no face. People who do not seek that hunger like a starving vampire hunting for blood never think of it. It was in replacing the fun lost faster and faster every time I used that caused me to use faster and faster to try to keep it. Tolstoy explained that to me in a writing over a century old, a fellow I never knew, knew me well. Even once I knew the “irreplaceable life” remained too low as I got too high, my free-will still becomes a choice every minute to find a better way.

I never found freedom in funny fungus. An empty bag or empty bottle left me full of my guilt. The other things? Well, those rarely get mentioned in polite society. And they never come out with the impolite around. Lucky and Bryce? They had fun doing their thing. I had my fun doing mine.

On Day #7, all into the night, Lucky and I and the kids stayed home and watched movies. B. and Bryce went funnin’ at Stelliga’s. In that I found some real fun. I found in a life “uncomplexified” that simple things make me happy. Nature gives everyone, including the reformed addict, the inalienable Right to Pursue Happiness, not happiness itself. Finding it, achieving, living it, but most important, sharing the good times and fortune with others, goes back to the choices that each and everyone of us have to make. Life becomes a redux on a daily basis: Better to live the good life worth living than a poor one defined only by fulfilling selfishness. My use of anything at someone else’s expenses is a moral theft. My use of my life by living and sowing misery on me or others is theft of Nature’s most precious resource for me, which is the limited time I own everyday to live. Perhaps the “secret” I look for rests in becoming a more positive person making someone or something in the world better by my presence. Nothing ever seemed so fun as just pure, steady, simple happiness. I found I could only be happy by acceptance of reality as I found it. I do my best to refine each day of my life to the circumstances I find it, even considering the pain and grieving for loved ones hurt or dying.

I refuse to live for a cause of misery and pain! Long live optimism, faith, positive attitude, and the happy roads upon which those gates open!

As a good friend helped me frame drafting this note once I returned to work after the trip, the “Question”: “How do we find happiness? How do we enjoy life?” brought me closer to ultimate reason for my trip on the Underground Freeway. I still sought the question for the answer I lived without knowing the “why?”.Day #7, entwined with the evening of Day #6, unlocked a door barring my entry.

Centuria Memory Days BIG Show--July 11th

2009-06-02T18:52:00.001-05:00

The Cepia Club LLC
P.O. Box 214
Centuria, WI 54824

www.cepiaclub.com

May 11, 2009

Contact–Centuria, WI, Village Hall: 715-646-2300

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Trejo Headlines Centuria’s July Memory Days Concerts

Javier Trejo Band, a nation-touring “rock-out” band from the Twin Cities, highlights Centuria, Wisconsin’s Memory Days two day main street concert on Saturday, July 11th.
Hoping to leap over other community festivals in western Wisconsin’s Polk County, the village of Centuria centers its “do-it-yourself” recession-economy recovery with a daring mix of diverse entertainment and “sustainable-market” renewal.
Most important to July’s Memory Days, according to event volunteer, Tim Krenz, is the entertainment around a Friday night and an all-day Saturday concert-festival, July 10th and 11th.
“Javier is a phenomenal artist and performer. He is strongly connected to the local area through his family, friends, and concerts, and he is a talent getting big time in other parts of the country, based on his outstanding music and ability,” said Krenz.
Javier Trejo Band, who play a “psychobilly” cowboy country-punk, outlaw rock and roll, is one of five local musical acts playing Memory Days. Other acts include Friday’s entertainment, Medula Headrush, and Saturday’s stellar line up of Sandy Bishop’s Children’s Variety Family Show, folk string and dance along by The Juggernauts, and the psychedelia “funk-it” rock grunge of the area’s own, Squib.
Centuria banks on bands drawing crowds to its foods, crafts, trades, professions and farmer’s markets featured that big day, Saturday, July 11th. For more info about Centuria’s July Memory Days, the concert-festival, or the low-fee vending booths, call the Village Hall at 715-646-2300.

Centuria Memory Days, July 11th-Update

2009-06-02T18:49:00.001-05:00

The Cepia Club
P.O. Box 214
Centuria, WI 54824

www.cepiaclub.com

June 1, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact Info: Centuria Village Hall, 715-646-2300

All-Market Bazaar for Centuria’s Memory Days

Centuria, Wisconsin, will host an “all-market bazaar” for its July 10th-12th Memory Days festival.
The village-wide sales and booths, including garage and yard sales, is open to out-of-town vendors for all manners of commercial crafts, trades, professions, hobbies, civic and social associations, non-profits, and farms and coops. Charging only $10 per day for prime spots in the downtown-area streets and sidewalks, or $30 for all three days, the village All-Market Bazaar seeks to create an authentic old style swap meet, where the diversity, variety and fun adds to the attraction.
The vending permits for concession foods on sale that weekend, while open to any licensed restaurant, civic group or social association, have been set at $50 for the big Saturday party, July 11th, coinciding with the music performances on Main/Fourth Street (off WI St. Hwy 35; just three miles north of US Hwy 8). Concession food vending permits for the entire weekend are $100.
“The big day is that Saturday, July 11th,” said event volunteer Tim Krenz. “We have live performances and entertainments, including four music acts, beginning that morning at 9 AM. Opening the commercial vending to bring more interest and more attraction will hopefully bring more people to enjoy what should be a memorable weekend festival.”
The music groups referenced by Krenz include: Sandy Bishop’s Children’s Family Variety Show; local folk string band, The Juggernauts; Polk County’s funk grunge favorites, Squib; and the Midwest’s own rock & country stars, Javier Trejo Band, on national tours this year via the Twin Cities.
For more on vending opportunities or concession food permits, and Centuria’s Memory Days, call the village office at 715-646-2300.

Ralph W. Emerson--Review of "The Conduct of Life"

2009-06-02T18:45:00.002-05:00

Review of: Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Conduct of Life.” Essays & Lectures: Nature; Addresses, and Lectures; Essays : First and Second Series; Representative Men; English Traits; The Conduct of Life; Uncollected Prose. Joel Porte Wrote the Notes and Selected Texts for this Volume. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. The Library of America, 1983.

Fate. Power. Wealth. Culture. Behavior. Worship. Considerations by the Way. Beauty. Illusions. These essay titles covering 197 pages in this Ralph Waldo Emerson collection combine themselves into a thoughtful psalm book for transcendental living.
Emerson was a product of his times, the first half of the 19th Century, and a heritage commodity grown from the place he lived, the wealthy, attuned “old” New England of seaborne commerce and world travel. He also formulated his own peculiar summaries of the Transcendental philosophy from the people with whom he learned and discoursed; and, finally, from living in the spiritous shadow of “1776 and its debate on Natural laws that defined the century of revolution for popular self-government, rule by the people and not by kings (1688-1789). These essays called “The Conduct of Life” form inner meaning of Transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism, in definition, is a system of beliefs that go beyond “knowable” things. The philosophy encompasses knowledge beyond what we experience, theorize, or know by logical deduction or mathematical/scientific calculation. This knowledge beyond us takes us to the realm of Nature, the place where pure faith resides to determine what is right and what is wrong. By implication, faith in something for no reason, acceptance as a spiritual axiom of healthy living, virtue for its own sake, and humility before the power of Nature and all it contains, “transcends” humanity. We are but a big miracle (perhaps?) on a little rock in space. Ours is not to know why. Ours is to live, enjoy, and love and die. Transcendentalism is, without question, a high order of Optimism. The world and our own individual lives will go according to the way things are meant to go. We are powerless over everything outside our attitude regarding it. This is not a fatal disease, called life. Transcendental philosophy sees us really as spiritual beings having a human experience. The secret is to make the best of it for the good of all.
In this philosophy, evil does not exist. Poor choices, bad manners, lack of caring, the criminally insane, etc., yes These create the chaos from which the good of the Universe flee, leaving the emptiness where things go wrong, but still go according to the Natural laws. In the end, though, Nature refills that temporary void. The basis of transcendence rest on the principle of One. Everything connects somehow, not in relative position, but in direct cause and effect. Right and wrong as expressions of free-will, undoubtably, operate in Nature. In a unification of all, there is only one “god.” He possesses indivisible good. To create evil would be contrary to that One, that unity. If so, then Lucifer would create more power, and become the One. There would be no good, which would contradict the laws of Nature, or everything gets divided into two. Hence, there is only the One, Nature, and Nature’s order. Evil would perpetuate only disorder, which is unnatural, by definition.
In this broader system, Emerson sets out in “The Conduct of Life” nine essays the way we ought to live, if we believe in Nature and Nature’s laws. The first four essays, “Fate,” “Power,” “Wealth” and “Culture” form the “macro-civilization” rules of life. The last five essays, “Behavior,” “Worship,” “Considerations by the Way,” “Beauty” and “Illusions” constitute the “micro-individual” ways we ought to carry ourselves within the Transcendental ideals. All nine essays explain the ideals for good, sound, “pursuit of happiness”-type of living which are wholly and completely the early libertarian creeds of individual-based awareness and actions against tyranny and theft by anyone against the personal property of free people or the collective good of the whole body civic.
One of the most quotable Americans in literature, Emerson’s truisms explain how balance between each person and between each group of different beliefs can be maintained, to keep the One in Natural order. For example, he says in “Fate:” If we must accept Fate, we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character” (p. 943). In character itself, learning from others, and learning to agree to disagree, peacefully, is the foundation of human peace. “Any excess of emphasis, on part, would be corrected,”(p.944) by such an amicable parting of views. Each is allowed to think and live as they desire, so long as they do not impose by force, fraud, theft, or arbitrary power, ending rights of others to do the same.
In “Power,” each individual holds the check and balance against tyranny from any source. Within his or her hands, behold the scales of justice. This form of liberty-based republicanism, so soon after the English, American and French revolutions, requires the knowledge to exercise that right to personal and popular self-government. “A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works, and the education of the will is the flowering and result of all this geology and astronomy” [i.e., learning in general] (p. 971).
Emerson’s view of wealth holds insight for his time period and sense of place, New England. “Wealth is in application of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot” (p.989).
Yet, in culture, humanity reaches definition in the time, place, people, spirit–their age, community, wisdom, and lessons. Fate limits us, as Emerson said (p.952). It cannot teach more for that is the final end. Culture, on the other hand, allows success next time, by teaching lessons while still alive to apply them. Culture carries the transcendence forward, toward its unlimited potential for the One, the good–all of us. “Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the theory of success” (p. 1015).
For a successful future, we could use a little lesson now and then on the limits we face as people. Emerson gives many wisdoms. He would be okay even if people disagreed.

Day Six--Underground Freeway/Notes from the Underground

2009-05-30T12:45:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Underground
Underground Freeway–Day Six, May 27, 2009
By Pi Kielty

Day Six, a Wednesday, started later than the past few mornings. I arrived in Stone Mtn. on Tuesday, almost evening. I surprised Lucky when she opened the door. She knew nothing of my getting on the road last week. As will be known later, my unannounced visit has a steep relation to things present, things past. She, B., and their daughter and son, stand among my closest friends of two decades running, and I spend so little time with them the last eight years, seeing them this week for the second time since 2001. They overwhelm me with their welcomeness to this traveler losing his way, always, and lost getting into town but taking two blind turns into nowhere and landing on their doorstep. Like other things on this journey, it seems I arrived with some sort of timeliness that gives some positive reason to hope things will be alright.

I tent in the backyard so I don’t impose. B. stayed up late with me to watch an existential hero movie. This day, the sixth since leaving, started late, as said. In the morning I visited with Lucky until she left for her afternoon job. Discussing with her the reasons for coming unannounced but not unwanted, Lucky understands me because we have been like twin siblings though apart by a year. She was my “lucky broom” that swept up the mess behind me at one time. I visit now so she and I can intervene on the way trends go, to reverse the damage in my life before it all unravels past return. Lucky saved me from insanity once. She holds many of the keys closing the door to the day-mares that I open on tough occasions.

Day Six continued the drear-gray overcast of rain intermittent, and I wore sweaters under my rain smock as I sat outside. After Lucky left and before B. came home from work, I took my camera and, because of the mist-drizzle, filmed from the car.

Seeing many of them in the round about lost way I found Lucky and B.’s house, I retraced my route getting here yesterday to get footage of the churches in the country I passed on the way to town. They become the mini-theme within the theme of my tour of “Questions.”

In the parking lot of the first one, looking through the pullout view screen of my crappy 8 mm camcorder, the image I framed showed the handy work and craft of men, and some women, no doubt, in the set masonry of light, tan-brown brick. Each brick for a place, each place for a brick, the line formed on the solid square of the foundation corners, the sky grayish mortar holding the small structure on an empty, rolling driftless plain on a parcel acre of the four way road intersection. A flock dwells here brought, like all churches of the faith, together by a Shepard on Sundays and other days as required by the followers of Johnny Prophet. Atop the steeple so protest-tant in its simplicity, an ungilded off-white cross proclaimed itself for its country mile in the lowland view. Nothing of this church betrayed ostentation in presentation. The building itself possessed an austerity of small, frugal but very solid and formed for a simple function, but to endure long past the lives of its true living testament: the people’s lives in their faith to its tenets. It could not hold a gymnasium audience within it. I’m sure coffee, cake, and fellowship came from a large electric pot, a home’s kitchen, and those who knew when one got lost in their ways. No espresso or gourmet or “smiling blind” here, I like to think. Does plainlessness and simplicity betray something like a small congregation, or a poverty in pocketbooks? This sect everywhere I’ve been are noted for their for rigorous faith, among the many different “fans” of the god there exist. I shall not judged them by their building, but it had a richness of a pauper traveler’s stable. Let them believe in what they want or need to believe.

Up the road, for the other country mile past the hill behind the first church, I viewed a church so large that not even its unaesthetic architecture would disabuse a thought on its deceiving to poverty. Stone Mtn. is a Norse town, and many of its descendants would ultimate their faith by protesting faith in the alternative mainstream of the Midwest. The building set less square on its sides in a box than an elongated section upon section of angles, parallelograms, that precise masons laid for its expensive-in-detail patterned-speckled dark brown bricks, unplain the closer one examined them. The ostentation came in proportion to its size. Even if of median income, the proportion was large by possible numbers of Nordic churchgoers in a Northman town. Plain vanilla could be priced high from a calf that milks the golden cream. The structure deceived my own sense at first. It looked like any compromise of accounting: A bigger bang for the buck, but lots of bucks means one thing: MORE bangs. One wonders about the danger any faith can do to people if it is as lukewarm as Midwestern “hotdish.”

The final church I filmed was located in town, on the main street just a two or three blocks from the real downtown business district. It did not look functional for a church of mass belief, yet it possessed that universal church quality, despite the small size. A town with a demography of protestors might not settle many members upon its pews. The quality of faith, once again, does not depend on the numbers who believe it–only that those who believe, however few, do believe. In terms of the pocketbook, the church carried the quality of quality. The architecture more classic and refined, hearkened to the late 19th and early 20th Century style of Victorian design. The brick was deep red. The colors crimsoned almost as the crucifixion itself. The plaque read, “1904-2004 Dedicated to the greater glory of God.” Mosaic stained glass I imagined the high arched windows, but they in reality showed clear glass with white trimmings holding different rectangular or pined shapes. The tower on the front corner of the intersection (again on the prime intersection of four corners) rose to a prominent peak. The bells might still chime on Sunday’s massing, still, after 105 years. Yet the churches richness bespoke what measure and style of worship in this sect universal.

Perhaps some faith requires a money market or a mutual fund. Faith in something is, after all, the greatest insurance policy known, if we live in fear. Contrition does the accounting of my mind. However, I just do not see how giving pennies for penance as an indulgence adds to my balance sheet ledger of life. A poor person best forgive his fellows, or his weight in gold puts the price of peace of mind into the debt obligation he must default in the end. One may bribe a believer with a promise of reprieve, and in the pardon comes the larceny of stealing my spirit for an estate.

“Question:” “Why do we need to by to buy a brick House for god in order to worship?”

I would hope my praise speaks loudest by the silence of Judgement for those who have faith different than mine. As a critic and pauper, I will only judge the use and function of architecture. I can hope my anonymous good acts, whatever they might be, when done allow me to get closer to my god. The only real estate I really need to worship is the patch of earth upon which I stand, as long as I allow fellow humanity to stand on their own in their thoughts and words. I am, furthermore, grateful to occupy my foothold, with a heartbeat today.

Money and faith mix as bad as money and politics. Either a priest, prophets, politicians or police find ways to corrupt them. If and when my god needs my money, his oil, her body, or up to our souls, I think it would just take it without needing to ask: They belong to the god already, we simply borrow on far larger credit than a mortgage.

Day Five--Underground Freeway/Notes from the Underground

2009-05-28T23:00:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Underground
Underground Freeway–Day Five, Tuesday, May 26, 2009
By Pi Kielty

I packed my camp at the public grounds in Dark Water Falling at 10:30 AM. I drove into the little city’s center that led from the interstate freeway, past the fast foods, gas stations, and superstore.

I parked Lil’ Casino on the main street when I saw an open parking spot near a sign with arrows, one of them pointing to a side street to the left with the words “Post Office,” the real mainstay of any place that is “official” in the eyes of Midwest American civilization. I needed to buy three stamps, one to mail the letter written in sorrow to my parents the rainy night previous on my writing table in my tent.

The cloudy gray morning showered a cold, wet spring rain that landed in rapping cacophonies on my thick woodland waterproof smock. The downtown of this city harked back to the red and brown brick buildings, and some of white granite, from 60 or 70 years ago, looking sharp and “historic” after the state-wide main street restoration movement rebuilt the rustic memories into the new functioning antiques. This is how people say, “The way things used to be, in times [erroneously] simple to understand.” The window trimmings painted in sharp red, white or kelly green matched the clarity and detailing of the window painted letterings and hanging signs saying “we do this,” “we do that” and “we are this,” and “café,” “tavern,” “library,” “barber,” “bakery,” and “hardware.” The city’s downtown district looked full of commerce, and the cars driving and parked, and the people walking around, gave Dark Water Falling the human life bustle that defines a small, isolated mid-state city.

The deception of times grew greater in my city walk this morning. On a dark day like today, the store fronts Potemkin-ized, lacking depth beyond the wall, an illusion of a soul in a body. I observed too much of me looking into the glass, and did not see the plain view in my sight. Near noon on a Tuesday morning, too many buildings emanated no light. Out of that grimmer illusion, the same signs protruded attractive red and white and blue colors of an advertisement from the same “Hometown and Patriotic Real Estate Co.” What they do is sell, and so many buildings and their businesses empty of light, they were for sale because they failed. On the walk, I saw the white paper signs in the window of a corner bar, “Closed until further notice. Sorry for any inconvenience.”

I wondered how what transpires here in the downtown could have meaning for others like it. Does this foreshadow the sign of these rhymes in a requiem metered for all communities losing the soul in the life of their land and people? Twenty years ago, scholars debated the end of history, as dictatorships and police super-states fell apart. It meant the value of a vote for all, democracies everywhere. Free commerce and prosperity of plenty with no one short of food, shelter and clothing in due time, for the entire world. Freedom of speech, of worship; from fear and want. America achieving the ultimate destiny of an imperium ruling the world in the best altruistic interest for the benefit of peace and stability. NO MORE WARS of aggression, conquest, extermination, for scarcity. The end of history foretold good things in our future. The Clash of Cultures delayed, and overlooked, not thought about, nor did anyone care. The enfranchisement of decision-making power and universal wealth would prevent the conflicts of politics, the prosperity bringing a new order of peace, in excess of any foreseeable needs.

Dark Water Falling looks fine, but without the life of people and their commerce, it heads into the future, past the end of history–into the Post-History–uncertain. Fashionable, trendy, apocryphal architecture in plenty will only degenerate into ruble without the life of people to maintain them, to sustain the community. Hopefully, Dark Water Falling avoids this fate, as I hope my own community does as well. The emptiness before, in darker days of other desperate states of mind and commerce, took the patience and work to revive and rebirth. Historians call that the Great Depression. How many intervals in 80 years since brought down what built itself up before? What interventions did it require to become what now seems complete logical bankruptcy of reasonable ideas?

The “politikhans,” like governments and industry Mongol and Moghul rulers of power and wealth in history, paint sunny pictures over wrecked masterpiece canvasses of sound living, frugal society, in the contemporary wreckage of the 21st century Crisis. “Green shoots of optimism,” “recovery on its way,” “we are digging our way out of this hole,” etc., etc. etc. Do people really believe that a bottom up problem, the problem that begins with each of us, actually has a top-to-down solution? Fools are fools, but unquestioning followers always stand out more foolish.

The end of history? What comes next for people without jobs? For if no business exist, no one is hired, and no incomes made, and no money to buy things to make business profitable. The purpose of business is profit. The purpose of government is to increase, not decrease, the range of liberty to do better for ourselves. With money’s face value less than the worth of the paper, and less valuable than the metal weight o f its coin, “better off and happier” becomes more, not less, the delusion of those who believe in the ghost of the dollar goddess.

The end of history starts with make believe store fronts, make believe money, make believe busy. The dark windows of a lightless store on a heavy gray day glares back the uncertainty of our own future and spirit in a reflecting abyss of memory or dream, our lost failures. How will we wake up from a possible nightmare in the making if we do not see the reason, or take the action ourselves?

What happens to a small city, itself its own self-defined community, if business draws no life? One wonders who are the real ignorant and actual apathetic: Leaders or led; and to what degree? The end of history was in the past. The Post-History in the present invites us to the challenge to avoid a fate inevitable unless we care, unless we act, all on our own . The bad choices become now–you’re liberty exchanged for your security. You’re freedom in trade for some food. Your enslavement to the owner to get steady work.

Would people trade for fascism to be free of worry and want?

Communities of people tend the land and water their tree of life by living, and living life full to its potential. Questioning things, like political barking dog-bytes, brings more sunlight to the tree of life. Sunlight exposing the errors or lies gives the tree strength to grow the boundless fruit of liberty, the plentiful food enough for everyone.

Therefore, the “Question” for day five: “What can you and I do to be a positive good for our own life that helps all in the community of our neighbors ?”

All these questions, just to mail an honest letter of my fears to parents at home.

Day Four--Underground Freeway--Notes from the Underground

2009-05-27T02:16:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Underground
Underground Freeway–Day Four, May 25, 2009
By Pi Kielty

Day Four started at 5 AM. I slept well on Sir Thom’s couch and took the morning with vigor, a little uncertain about the “real” post-dramatic trip beginning this day. I sat on the front step adoring the cool morning wrapped in my fleece blanket waiting for the sun to extend over the hill due east on the apartment house’s road. I did morning things, reading, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. On occasion I walked back upstairs to the second floor to check email and post the day three note.

At 9 AM, Sir Thom woke, since this day the Memorial, was a holiday. Memorial Day, as it progressed transformed into the theme itself for Day Four of the Underground Freeway. When clean and I dressed for the day, in blue T-shirt under a long-sleeve lime green cotton T, jeans and slip on shoes, Sir Thom drove us to the City of Falling Waters’ Riverine Park. With the camera out the passenger window, the unextended tripod snug under my arm, I filmed the drive over the several blocks. Near the main entrance, just before The Brewery, we hit a traffic backup of big trucks and mid-range cars flowing in to the gate. Sir Thom dodged around the block-long line trying to turn left, and up the hill we climbed in the golden minivan to the high, smaller entrance. In the park, we drove further onward and we noticed one of our spirit sisters, Alice, pushing her 2 year-old son’s stroller. Sir Thom honked and we parked in the nearest lot. While the other three visited, I walked and rambled with the cam-corder. Within an amphitheater of a half-circle embankment, groving on it a cluster of trees, a crowd of families listened before a ceremony of honor, spoken from a white pillared gazebo under a circle roof of red clay tiles. Honoring the brave protectors of our values and our virtues, who died in their service, or lived longer to die with their secrets, today the roster rang the call of those passed away in the last year.

The solemn recitation told of recent old soldiers now joined with their comrades and their enemies no longer in heavenly fields of peace. The wars of youth spoke of history: World War II and Korea; and of more recent flanders of springs unrequited: Vietnam, Persian Gulf and Persian Gulf again. The honored included the peacetime sacrificers to defend, preventing other wars from the sickeling unripe blossoms of human wheat.

No poet, not Shakespeare himself, could verse such ironclad image or prosaic lyric than the simple power of cemetery interred, names of the brave unconquered and their war they survived in body and remain epic endurance in spirit after death. Today, we memorial them.

The drive back to Sir Thom’s took us roundabout, as I grabbed more footage. The thought came as Sir Thom and I prepared for parting. Servicemen and women serve, because the world makes it unavoidable. There can be only honor for that sacrifice of youth, time, family, and innocence. This draws us out to the question of why does the world, its people, its leaders of states make men and women of arms necessary? Some malice tries to possess the brother and sister under the god in slavery; steal their lands; thieve their goods and trade. Arms in woman and men demands protection, and proves right to save those within God, family and country from the evil that others do. But what malice does this bad damage the good of the human spirit? We birth as children of the god and the Nature through which it works, do we not?

Governments make wars, not people. The rich and highly educated give the orders of nations. The poor convicted fight and die. Defending oneself, and their loved ones, friends, neighbors and countryfellows, carries no blame, no dishonor, no shaming by us who do not understand. The Nature proves it right that humanity defends its own survival, by means measured in response to an aggressor. Either way, it still calculates lives weighed like so much commodity of chattel, so many ounces of silver paid for the kiss to crucify. At least one side, but never both or more sides in war, possess righteous justice for their cause. Sometimes, all sides fight in the wrong. The problem of war pervades all recorded history. No re-ordering from the top by leaders of government will change that. Only people as people, in community to community across the earth, can refuse to fight the unjust cause. People need only unite and rebel against the rich man’s wars; the wars never righteous.

We hold this demi-truth to not be so self-evident, that wars come by a vain mix of the powerful or the many holding fear as a shield, envy (as in greed) for the spear. And the powerful convince the ignorant and apathetic to build the lie to fight for the leadership’s reasons; for the young, the dispossessed, or the drafted, or drugged, to execute the “national” will.

Sir Thom and I formed the most significant “Question” on the tour’s Day Four. We do not at all mean disgrace to anyone, but in honor of those who fought so others may live long enough to achieve peace. Sir Thom hopes one day the world may get an answer to the “Question” in honor of those servicemen and women who fought wars not of their choosing, and followed orders unto heaven’s calm. For they might want us to ask for what we are all accountable to Nature in the end; for serving our brothers and sisters in the god’s world: “Why is it alright to kill anyone else if our government says its okay?”

I left Sir Thom’s twenty minutes before schedule, at 12:40 PM. I stopped on the connection highway back south to D. City to photo the largest flag I ever viewed, as big as a pole barn roof, on a pole at least 100 feet high. I pictured it from a ½ mile away, and it loomed as big. It flapped snapped in the strong May east wind to full expansion, a star-spangled red, white and blue sail on a white mainmast taller than any ship ever plied the oceans. The flag could not be set half-mast, as I could tell, from the engineering to keep it secured at all. I like to think as the Optimist that if possible, the owner of the factory before which the flag flew would have put it in the honor position if possible–in honor of those who fought and died, or fought and lived to die–on Memorial Day 2009.

I stopped in town on the way to the day’s destination, a by way town, an O-ville. I found the Central Park, which set, well, in the center of town, next to the village hall and police station, all overshadowed by the water tower–and a flag as big as a small, humble home, snap flapping a gentle, subtle taps to the emptiness of the park and town on the “extra day off” holiday.

Picnicking under the shade of a tree, and lone witness to the flag’s loud music of solitude, I questioned politely, “Do we serve our flag, its country, our heroes, or do we only take their service and better our lives with a ‘free’ holiday?”

I drove to the Orange bull, further down the interstate. I found a ready emptying campground, with a nice private site. I passed the day filming the setting of my camp, reading, writing, walking, and in thought. Nothing more of consequence could have happened after the Memorial Day I possessed, or the thoughts of peace in humanity for humanity, in a war-heavy era of our lives. The only exception to the comment was that I drafted a letter to my parents on the writing desk in my tent, and told them I loved them.

Underground Freeway--Day Three

2009-05-25T18:26:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Underground
Underground Freeway–Day Three
May 24, 2009
By Pi Kielty

Day Three started at 8 AM. Again, I slept well and long. The night air dropped below forty degrees fahrenheit, although I slept comfortable in my cocoon of warmth in the usual camping bed clothes, wrapped in a thick fleece blanket inside my nylon mummy bag. When I walked into the farm house, I woke Johann, who normally gets up and stays up at 5 AM. While the water boiled in the kettle for the coffee contraption, a forty or fifty year old three section metal tower, I packed camp over by the barn. Ursula woke at 9 AM as Johann and I drank coffee under the outside table canopy, on a fine spring morning, as the sun peaked through the high trees that grew around and up over the two story home, a slight as feathers coolish northeast wind not at all discomforting. When I pronounced Lil’ Casino packed and fit to leave, Ursula threatened me with her own hurt feelings if she and Johann and the dogs could not follow me up to fifty miles on my day’s journey to buy me breakfast. Not ever wanting to hurt her kind regards, and knowing my good friends’ sincere love for me, I accepted. Johann proclaimed her measure pure emotional “blackmail.”

Johann grabbed a map and they asked me to choose a morning direction. I chose the City of Falling Water, then I followed their Honda sport vehicle up here to a city-centered family breakfast restaurant, good and not “modern” like Saturday’s breakfast: The menu showed breakfast served all day, and listed no asparagus omelette. Instead, Johann and Ursula ordered fitting potato pancakes and I had french toast and ham.

When asked their “Question” to chronicle, Johann stuck to the theme of his Friday reminiscence of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I listened to his recap that night as I last heard the book on tape 18 years ago. Johann just wanted to chronicle: “What is six times seven?”

Ursula’s “Question,” which may prove a greater epiphany later in this journey or after, came out simply: “Will you spend the day in [the City of Falling Water]?” That seemed like her only concern about life in general this morning.

When time to leave, they gave me hugs and invited me back–tonight even–if it would convenience. They drove one way and I drove another. I placed a call and met Sir Thom and his 1 year-old son after their church service. Back at Sir Thom’s apartment, five blocks straight up from the breakfast place, I told him about my trip and the goal. He replied to stay as long as I needed and I said I accepted and would only stay one night. He has no yard for the tent, so the sofa will do just fine. When Sir Thom returned his child to the mother after Young Thom’s two day weekly visit, I took the camera, walked downtown and took footage on the way back up the hill. When I got back to my car parked across from Sir Thom’s four-plex, the guy on the front porch direct to my left asked, “What the hell you doing with the camera?” I told him, and I asked him if he had a “Question.”

“No,” he replied smiling, understanding my road trip. “I just was wondering what the camera was for.” The man, Brent, smiled again and decline to let me record what will be chronicled as his “Question.”

Mid-afternoon, Sir Thom and I invited over another of our spiritual path brothers. Deckard arrived about 5 PM on his way to his evening spiritual destination, as Sir Thom and I sat out on the front step waiting to go to ours. Sir Thom left and Deckard and I visited more until he dropped off where Sir Thom went. After the congrating up the hill, Sir Thom and I shopped for some dinner, and I added a few more things for the journey. For $19.18, I bought the following:

• Table onions (1 pack)
• Olive oil (1 bottle)
• Pork chops (2)
• Pears (2)
• Apples (2)
• Peanut Butter (1)
• Leaf lettuce (1)
• Green pepper (1)
• Potato salad (1 small tub)

(Note: From Friday mornings shopping, I forgot to add Coffee (1 small can), and a couple more pieces of fruit already listed; and another bag of tuna).

Before heading back to the apartment, Sir Thom drove me through the free zoo a couple blocks away. I made Sir Thom the dinner of pork chops, beans, potato salad, and over-saladed us by tossing a lettuce salad with chopped onions, and sliced green peppers and pears, served with ranch dressing. Later, Deckard came back from his congregating in My First Place, and the three of us laughed, visited, and had fellowship.

I asked Deckard what he wanted for his “Question.” He repeated what he said hours earlier, “There are a million questions to ask. Which one do you ask first?” Sir Thom, when I asked my friends if I could grab both their snapshots with the still camera, turned out in his computer chair, and laughing hard, inadvertently used up his “Question”: “Pi, this isn’t some shit when you’re going to do all this, with the cameras and computers, and stuff, and then go and blow your head off?”

Deckard and I laughed back as I reassured Sir Thom, “NO, no, this isn’t what its all about.”

Before leaving the property with Johann and Ursula this morning, Johann let me place a call to my parents, as I promised Mom and Dad that I would stay in touch. Getting the answering machine, they probably went to Mass, no doubt praying for me, since the word coming to me by email all says that they misunderstood my trip and why I left. That might also cause me to question my own “Question” when the final conclusion-time arrives. Later, in the early afternoon as I arrived here with Sir Thom and Young Thom, several emails awaited me on my laptop, wirelessed into Sir Thom’s network. My sister in Norway wrote me, asking me to call Mom and Dad, which I had done earlier, but also saying that she in a way understood what I was doing, and why, but not approving it except in an indirect manner. Lelia did tell me that no one knows the type of “torment” people with crossed- and re-wired brains like my kind endure. She told me to look for the answer where I already do. “None of us have ever walked in your shoes,” she said, referring to all my siblings. I find no satisfaction and no cause to gloat over my sister’s words. They humble me more than anything.

As a final part of this Day Three Underground Freeway note, my mentor/advisor, Sensii, who I thought would write a vocal, written ass-chewing, only said to take care of myself, and, like everyone else, call my parents. May be, as I begin to suspect, Day Three’s note review holds more clues to final “Question” I want to know. . .so I get a good enough answer.

Underground Freeway--Day Two

2009-05-24T16:46:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Underground
Underground Freeway–Day Two
May 23, 2009
by Pi Kielty

People emailed me their worry, their anger, their fear. I share those feelings–about what I did and what I do. In my life, from experience, when I possess over-confidence, and arrogant pride (also called, hubris), and say things are FINE is when things go awry. I rarely use the word “FINE,” except in capitalized letters. It means, in one sense: F-d up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional). I think loved ones should remain calm until something does go awry-wire.

After I wrote Day One of these Underground Freeway notes, on Friday night, at around 9:30 PM, my friends arrived home. They had gone to dinner with cousins and not camping for the weekend, like I believed. As expected, they were honestly pleased to see me, and even welcomed my tent already put up by the barn. We sat in candlelight at the round outdoor table. I explained my purpose in coming and going, what I escaped and for what I search, to return home alive and a better person. Johann and Ursala shared with me the updates of their children, their children my old college friends through whom I met Johann and Ursala originally. As they related what has happened to their family in the last two years since I last visited, I snacked a late dinner of pulled bread and tuna. Not needing to mention it, but I reassured Johann and Ursala that I did not mean to impose, that I planned to stay a night or two, talk and enjoy the company, draw a little water from the outdoor tap, and then move on to the next place. They reassured me that I was not imposing, that I was always welcome, and have been welcome for 20 years.

After I went to bed at 11 PM, an unusually early time for me, I slept deep and well for 8 hours. I could have slept 8 hours more. In the morning, with Ursala at work, Johann and I drank coffee. Despite trying to fob-off and decline, Johann insisted on treating me to breakfast at “modern” family diner in the next town, closer to The City. He and I both had the special omelette, the asparagus omelette. After we left the restaurant, he drove us in his red pick-up truck to a wholesale natural foods warehouse, owned by people of a religious community, in the next town further away from The City.

Back at the house and barn, I piddle with stuff and gear and read more Emerson. When Ursula arrived home from work I drove to The City to see my friend at her store. After a stop at the shop to go on-line, posting my note and checking my messages, and a sit a spell in the park by the river, Iarrived back at the barn and house at 5 PM.

Johann and Ursula attended a picnic, inviting me to light the twigs in the fire ring. An hour and a half before sunset, I filled the stove with white gas, and I boiled rice and cabbage for dinner. To figure out how the United States lost its several wars in Southeast Asia, one need only eat boiled rice and cabbage as their sole main meal of the day. It is filling, somewhat nutritious, but it is nonetheless a poor man’s fare. When a person has practically nothing, and nothing left but rice and cabbage, of course he and his entire people will fight toward death to keep at least what remains of their dignity and liberty from those who seek to take it away from them. For my meal, I had no spice or salt. Pump up Charlie on hot fish sauce for his rice and cabbage, and an entire invading army has one fed, very pissed off, and glad to die enemy, I’m sure.

This trip causes many questions, to be asked now, at present, and in the future upon my return–whenever that return happens. I hate myself in part for causing the anger, fear, doubt and guilt. On the contrary, I posses no ill feelings toward anyone or anything. I know and accept the anger, or hate, at me. I do understand that they have to feel what they feel, and act on it at the time and place. I committed deception, not betrayal. If it cost anyone their own money for their plans, all will be compensated–by me. I stole nothing, but disappointing trust and goodwill is an selfishism, and I accept all responsibility. My existing contract obligations remain intact, in trust, until they are settled or fulfilled, which was my sole aim for them. I took only myself away, and I made provisions to do so. All debts of honor will be repaid, as will the loan I contracted to go.

One thing should be known. Whether or not I stayed, or if I left on someone else’s journey, my spirit months ago broke– broke complete in the last two days at home–my body disintegrated, my emotions vacant. I took these things with me, to re-aborn them, and return better in all ways. However, I left my heart of love to family and friends in St. Croix Valley. I must return to it to form again whole.

People believe my object was to lose myself permanently to them, to cut my hair to spite their eyes, to indeed die “out there” alone. I intend no such thing. Why did I leave? I left not to go insane where I WAS, and to find that refill of life, with that objective look at everything away from THERE. Things can go wrong. Accidents do happen. Let all of us hope nothing bad happens, that the truly positive purpose of this adventure brings good luck.

I witnessed too much death in recent years from suffering sick to want to punish Nature and my loved ones by the supreme selfish act. Once, as a blameless bystander, a young innocent man died in my hands–expired as I touched his hand in comfort. A senseless, violent, and criminal act by a third stranger, killed him.

Selfishness may be a flaw, not entirely correctable. Sickness might possibly get cured or arrested, or put latent. I feel death, even by choice of drink or other reasons absent reason, remains far too serious and important to be decided by any individual, or a collective humanity, whether judge, jury, politician, OR scientist. The god and Nature alone weld wisdom to determine the final fates. People need to let the god alone and his power, Nature, to decide. Humanity, playing god, play as toddlers with scissors and matches. People must not dwell in the heavens, and stay in the places we can reach safe.

Notes from the Underground: Freeway Day One

2009-05-23T16:21:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Underground
On the Freeway Underground
Day One-May 22, 2009
by Pi Kielty

The Polk County Underground has gone Wisconsin, on the freeway of ideas, commerce, labor and culture. I travel to new territory, while I traverse some old to get there, to see and meet, and greet and exchange a value of my Spirit of ideal liberty for a mutually profitable transfer with others. Only by doing this will the Nature of all, I pray, replenish my song, my voice, my optimistic soul–my inner Muse.

The venture came to a rash mind, heavy from exhausted, endless struggle. At the moment I left, the bright-eyed poetry of my worship had died, existent no longer, and it was as rotted as a carrion horse the morning after its honored murder in the last battle of my own internal civil war. The steed, powerful like a Bukephelus, trust worthy like a Traveler, was my one-horse engine that kept me moving. It had noble strength, phlegmatacy; a pique, and positive pony. The last cannonade kicked it once in the forelock mane for a full, undoable measure, and I retreated to the sanctuary of a cave. That conflict ended. I start anew an insurgency of a free idea to swim as a little fish among the sea of oppressed peoples, left marooned by leaders on an inner-island in my middle-Middle America. I teach a revolution of peace, for community, by means of a simple idea–the Spirit of ideal liberty–acted on by a simple trade: My respect and friendship for yours. The war inwards ends. Long live the Revolution for Peace & Liberty!

On the Underground Freeway, I am on Day One, still. I left my last regular haunt south of home late last evening at midnight. I journeyed My First Place. I bought the following foods for $20.11

• French bread (1)
• Box cake rolls(1)
• Bag of tuna (1)
• Bag of rice (1)
• Apples (2)
• Pasta meals (2)
• Peaches (2)
• Oranges (2)
• Cabbage (2)

I slept for 7 hours on a couch at an Underground safe-house, re-packed the gear I hastily loaded an hour before my escape. The Underground housekeeper, Merle, bought me lunch of a burger, fries, and soda. I showered, loaded, and having spent exactly 12 hours in My First Place, I rambled here in Lil’ Casino, to Wisconsin’s D.C. I visited my friend at her work, and then I drove out here out of the city to a barn where I know my leave is welcome for two nights.

As I write, I drink a cup of coffee cooked in a saucepan on a white gas, single burner stove. The place is empty of a soul, as my friends must have gone for the weekend. I am alone but nearer to my peace of mind than I had been in months, or possibly years. I pitched my tent by my car. The sun canopy recedes westward. Night’s dark-lit veil of sparkling diamonds in the sky soon will be cover all.

A full inventory of what I bring with me must await more time. Like the fool I am, in sorting gear today, I realized I forgot three things I would need: mess kit, silverware, and a camping hatchet. Merle provided me a saucepan and hatchet. I can eat with twigs shaved into chop sticks. There are many sticks in the property fire-pit, a budding fire which shall remain unlit for the dryness of the month.

I do not mean to spoil my story, as indeed I possess no idea the length the journey may take, whether it will take me, or what might or might not happen. I have brought my cameras, my computer a bag of books, and a load of paper and envelopes. I left family and friends behind at home to visit other friends , and family elsewhere. I wish to meet new people, make new friends, of course, and, the god-willing–approach foul or foulness from no one nor nowhere.

More remains to write, to chronicle in the Underground Freeway notes. I should at least explain the reasons I took to the road, to sum up the causes, purpose and theme of this journey. However, I go underground with great remorse for what I reluctantly said to others to deceive the world so I start my escape from the sub-reality of life back home. I may own enough courage to leave all and everything behind, except what those things I own and carry in Lil’ Casino. Furthermore, I may be stupid enough to gamble these stakes to find a lifeful Spirit still inside me, so I can live once more, happy, loving, positive and optimistic. And I know there are knowns and unknowns I must confront, experience, or avoid, flee.
Despite a foolish bravery for these things, I confront cowardice because I fail to tell my loved ones what I feel, what I fear, and what I can and cannot do for them. I pushed myself beyond limits, but I don’t know, “WHY?”. I failed to live up to their highest happy expectations of me. I could not be who they wanted. I leave with law and my property on my side. I commit no crime in going, I have performed no sin but erred in obligation I offered. In sum, no one owns this one-man Corps of Discovery but I.

Why did I leave then? Most men who run do so for a woman. That is only part of my problem, yet not an ounce measured for the ton of justifications to go. I left no romance behind. I did, though, leave for a deep shame, shame before friends and family. It is a shame we all should share in common, whether or not almost everyone denies it in their lives. As spirits undergoing a human experience, we think we search for answers. In discussion yesterday with my very own Wizened Yoda, a discussion concerning what I feel like I must do on this journey, he told me not to seek an answer, for it only lies within. Instead, Yoda continued, “Go elsewhere so that when you return you know the Question.”

The “WHAT?” of my life is found in the answer itself: To be helpful to others. Unless I know the “WHY?”, am I really doing it for the right reasons? If not, I lived a Spirit being half formed by the god and the Nature through which it works. Everyone wants answers. We must find those on our own. Now, on Day One, it does really make sense. What is the Question for which we need the answers. “WHY?”

In this Underground Freeway voyage, I call it the search for the “Question.” I asked my friend at her work today, “What is the Question for which you want an answer?” Of course, as I believe will prove common, she answered, “Where does everyone go when they die?”

I intend to return home when appropriate. Perhaps I can stop carrying the burden of shame for humanity as an altruistic martyr by then. Return I must; return to a sick and dying friend, and to concerned others.

The Joke’s On Us: Batman The Dark Knight and the Anti-Virtues of Existential Heroism

2009-05-03T00:32:00.001-05:00

The 2008 release of The Dark Knight with Christian Bale in the starring role brings a newer, more brutal DC comic book hero into modern context. The story-line, gadgets, and realistic setting in both 2005's Batman Begins and the 2008 movie even form a slightly plausible “movie magic” that says to movie audiences, “Yeah, I buy it for the two plus hours. I’m in this world.” Beside a fantastically entertaining filming along the old film noir crime drama’s of 60 or 70 years ago, in color but very dark in cinematography, these two installments of Batman lore by director Christopher Nolan combine the “alternative realism” with some deeper philosophy of great relevance to our 21st Century society.
For a brief view of alternative realism, The Dark Knight presents a normative setting in a real looking megalopolis in modern urban lore, the city of Gotham. Indeed, the name “Gotham” itself is synonymous with dark forces of crime–social moral decay. But for the second key aspect of alternative realism, The Dark Knight presents ordinary people in most respects in twists of extraordinary circumstances, almost unreal but for the very real feel, taste, feel, sight and sounds. In short, in the time, space, theme, and people, the melting of the real and the suprareal create not surreal experiences we associate with Kafkaism, but of a subreal where people’s dreams and nightmares define them. The Batmobile, the Batsuit, the Batgadgets (sorry, there is no Bat-Shark-Repellant in either of these movies) look plausible. Yet, as with everything in these two movies, the baseline of real seems not so extraordinary.
To understand The Dark Knight, one must refer to Batman Begins. As most people know, Bruce Wayne’s parents are murdered in a senseless act of petty violence. Bruce Wayne later as an adult escapes to Asia to become a criminal in order to understand their motivation, yes, but also as an anonymous rebellion to the privilege, wealth, and expectations under which he was raised. Caught in the act of theft, Wayne is released from prison and finds a breadcrumb path to a Ninja temple high in the snowy Himalayas. Trained in the martial arts of The League of Shadows, a Ninja-monastic order dedicated to wiping out all of societies corruptions via a French Revolution-style of purification of murder in the form of a Cult of private virtue, Wayne escapes the league once he is asked to perform an execution.
Presumed dead for seven years, Wayne returns to Gotham to reclaim his trust fund and family mantle. But instead of becoming the benign wealthy benefactor of Gotham, Wayne will use his skills under the symbol of what he fears the most, bats, in order to fight the moral corruption. As billionaire bad boy, Wayne protects his secret of caped crusader. As man, he can be destroyed. As a symbol of hidden identity, Batman does whatever is necessary in order to implement his private morality as the public virtue, Gotham notably lacking any virtues in its present state. In short, Batman exists to inspire others to take action in saving, restoring or creating the public morality via their private virtue of service. The private virtue of service is the generational endowment of the Wayne family Wayne hopes to restore, in order that someday Batman is no longer necessary. (It’s easy for a Ninja-trained smart guy to be Batman with Bruce Wayne’s money). Wayne creates the existence of Batman because one is needed.
The supporting cast of the film is outstanding, particularly Michael Caine, the venerable Alfried, Morgan Freeman and the always underrated Gary Oldman. The story line in The Dark Knight, however, revolves around Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes, the latter Wayne’s boyhood romance privy to Batman’s true identity, withAaron Eckhart and Maggie Gyllenhaal playing these roles. Harvey Dent, the romantic interest of Dawes, is the “white knight” that Dawes wants for herself and Wayne wants to replace Batman. Dent is just as brave, strong and confident as Wayne/Batman, but Dent is the private virtue for public morality that Wayne needs to replace Batman, and get Dawes back in his life in the process.
Enter chaos, in the star stealing performance of the late Heath Ledger as The Joker. The Joker is part of our real world which is not talked about, only feared and best put away from society: That of the criminally insane. The criminally insane possess the faculty of logic, reason, rationale, and even genius, but operate devoid of any redeeming virtue with only an un-moral self-defined. The Joker gives an evil reason for virtue like Batman to exist. In pure form, Ledger portrays the subreal and surreal fear we all have of coming real and dominating the superreal: A dark spiritual “Concentrated” evil as protagonist, out to cause nothing but pain, suffering, disorder, and death to the world.
In this movie, the underlying theme runs along what or who is the Dark Knight and why and how is he or she necessary, the answer only revealed in the last 60 seconds of the film. In trying to understand The Joker’s motivation in order for the Wayne/Batman antagonist to stop him, Alfried explains that The Joker might have no motivation, he might want nothing, there is no mission for which he works, and no objective to be denied. Wayne cannot, and really does not, win this battle, as he would have to become The Joker himself in order to prevail. Batman would have to give up his private and public morality and public and private virtue, demeaning himself into the evil he fights–the sole reason for Batman’s existence. What happens? Watch Batman Begins, if you have not seen it, and then The Dark Knight. How does this all get resolved? And why is the existence of a Dark Knight necessary? In sum, we want to believe in Batman. We don’t want people like The Joker to exist, on film or in real life. But in tolerating the conditions that made The Joker possible, the apathetic citizens of Gotham made Batman necessary. But in tolerating the need for someone else to restore public morality through a private, self-defined virtue, the people of Gotham force Batman to become what they don’t understand. A lack of understanding anyone or the things, for good or evil, that motivate them, is the true source of all our fears.

Cepia Trade Bazaar!!! And the Renaissance of Markets

2009-05-03T00:28:00.001-05:00

Cepia Trade Bazaar has moved!! Now located in St. Croix Falls, WI (the city straddles US Hwy 8, WI State Hwys 35 & 87). Cepia Trade Bazaar is within the Planet Supply beneath the US Post Office, on the main downtown drag). A separate entity from The Cepia Club LLC-proper, Cepia Trade Bazaar sells a mixed-media of “awareness & activism” items as well as general merchandise for everyday use or simple luxury. From books and other literature, dvds and cds of “globalocal” artists, to apparel, accessories, finer foods, and more, from the many diverse things, a free-and-fair market emerges, for the public and customers to shop. Cepia Trade Bazaar specializes in home trade, fair trade, and local made offered world-wide at a competitive market price. The bazaar also carries other mainstream items.

The trade bazaar format fits into the unique “community within a community” that is Planet Supply. At the bazaar, the connections form between buyers and sellers. Members and vendors of The Cepia Club LLC-proper share their listings, and their wares as well. But public participation in the “bazaar”-market will eventually make the “meeting of the free-minds with their free-markets.”

Want something? Have something? Looking for workers? Looking for jobs? The bazaar will start slow, from where it was at in Centuria, WI, in 2008, yet what could to grow into a real brouse, or an agora, in the style of a community market that connects globalocally. Variety, diversity, sustainable and efficient–these are the bedrock principles of the Post-Historical community market.

Cepia Trade Bazaar is not a flea market. It is sort of a commodity, an exchange place, a depository for the trade of equal value of the most valuable resources–what the land and people offer together or desire for the community. The bazaar is a place to check out, just in case. In the small space at the Planet Supply, a true underground railroad to the future of economic freedom is developing.

Cepia Trade Bazaar’s official opening at Planet Supply will take place during the Sunday, April 19th concert at Planet Supply.

Don’t miss it then or after throughout the following months

Grand Theft Auto

2009-05-02T03:14:00.001-05:00

In the Obama Administration's plan to reorganize the automobile companies, GM and Chrysler, workers and their unions will receive majority or plurality ownership and the Federal government takes a significant minority stake.

This poses an interesting question: Is the government confiscating a big, private business, and handing a gift of ownership to the worker's not a creeping Marxism dawning alive and strong in the United States?

In this whole mess, workers getting a “sweet deal,” and taxpayers allowing their government to commit theft against the private property of investors, who is getting what, how much, and when in this political redistribution of wealth?

Essential Liberty: Property, Limited Governance & the Mutual Interest

2009-02-28T00:37:00.001-06:00

“. . . that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. . . errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is freely permitted to contradict them.”
    –Thomas Jefferson–
    A Bill for Establishing     Religious Freedom

     In the quote above, then-Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson set forth a core principle for a free society, a society defined as a government ruled by a free people for themselves and not for the benefit of the few. For a nation conceived through a revolution of reason for just and reasonable government, there can be no more dangerous a threat to the essential liberties of free elections, open- & fair-markets, free assembly, and freely held convictions than when truth is “by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate.” According to Jefferson’s principle, the very faith we hold relies on the natural law that “truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.”
   When dictators or ignorant “democracy” impose un-natural changes and false doctrines to benefit narrow interests, or buy constituents, with big lies or smaller ones, liberty to live within our own choice, along with the good or bad consequences, will disappear. Freedom to live by no leave within restrictions to not bother or be bothered by others, must in the end surrender complete obedience to tyranny of arbitrary rule by Fuhrer and Politburos, popes and public-private corporations.
    Jefferson followed a one-hundred year line of super-geniuses who sought a more reasonable, prosperous, just, and moral government; to overthrow royalty, nobles and priests ruling in the name of a “divine right” or “revealed scripture;” monsters claiming all men, their brides, their possessions, and their lives, as personal slaves and disposable property. If conservatives defied change in the name of their noble and religious rights, then the men who preceded and followed Jefferson–John Locke, David Hume, Voltaire, Montesque, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Burke, and Immanuel Kant–invented the philosophy of classical liberalism, which form the the main principles of today’s neo-classic libertarianism.
   In the 17th and 18th centuries, the classical liberal articles of faith stood for protecting the people from unreasonable interference in their lives; for open-, fair-, and free-markets for peaceful, prosperous commerce; and for an end to unjust wars of profit and conquest. The people had a right to govern themselves, when and if government was required, through the exercise of moral choice, reason, and representative republics. Freeing the people from the chains of slavery, giving them sole right to own their bodies, dispose of their property and to live in peace with their fellow humans and protected from religious inquisitions, posed a direct threat to kings, merchants, and churches. When a century’s gestation for the revolution of reason finally broke into an open war of rebellion between the American colonies against the king in England, the united Colonies transposed themselves into “United States” by a simple Declaration based on reason. All the founders who signed their names were traitors to King George III. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, they were not in any measure conservatives, by standards then or now. They were radicals, revolutionaries, Whigs, a.k.a. liberals in the classical sense described above. Most shocking for modern posers who claim to know more about history having never studied it much, from the evidence of letters, journals, and public acts of America’s Founding Fathers, the ones most revered and misunderstood by today’s citizens, neither believed nor preached nor in any identifiable way practiced any form of Christian divinity. Not necessarily all atheists, at the most, the ones of note adhered to Masonic or personal Deism, Providence, or a Cult of Reason. ( In fact, Jefferson had his own bible solely of the quotations of “Jesus of Nazareth”).
   Those colonists who opposed the change, by definition, were conservatives, as they believed in King George, religious oppressions, tests and taxes, and fought against American patriots in a bitter cruel, often barbarous, civil war with their neighbors. In the quirks and general ignorance of history, not much changes excepts labels with which people hope to identify themselves. Denial is a powerful constant.
   The Founding Fathers, as classical liberals believed in the natural laws, among which were included “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” They created after 11 years of trial and error a form of government where sovereignty, also called self-governance, was placed in “the People” as a whole. The framers of the Constitution institutionalized checks against rule without law or rule above the law. The practice of government emerged in a balance against the powers of competing factions (“special interests,” “lobbies,” “parties,” etc.) so that the government served the common ground of mutual interests of the country as a whole.
   Establishing a form of limited government restricted to defined powers, and prevented from interfering in areas of personal, local, or state responsibility, would produce an “empire of liberty,” a republic of reason. Such a country, as America began, had the capacity to remain strong enough in the principles of Liberty (from which the word “Libertarian” derives). It would, should, did, and still could, allow free-minds to create wide markets of free enterprise, thus creating stability and prosperity for everyone to secure FOR everyone a limited and free government. This thesis of Liberty opposes everything represented by monarchs, “corporations,” and religions of the Old Regimes before the “Spirit of 1776.”
Only through such limited governance, and directly responsive to aware and informed voters (the right to vote now franchised to everyone with citizenship, over 18, and in certain states, not convicted of a felony) would, the Founding Fathers believed, provide the means for what a later generation simplified to the Four Freedoms: Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Worship (or freedom to not worship), Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want.
   Governments cannot grant things like the Four Freedoms, or the essential liberties, or justice (though not to confuse it with legislation), and those other ever present self-evident truths. They all come from the natural laws higher than human limits. If not, then the essential liberties and things like rights to a jury of peers under due process could all easily disappear. Deriving via reason the source of those rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness & Property, from sources above humanity make all humanity equal and subject to them, even representatives, judges, and presidents nominated to government. Humanity needs governance to protect and preserve those rights for all, equally and indivisibly.
   All humanity has a mutual a mutual interest in preserving these core principles of liberty, and by implications, the tenets of Libertarian practice. If all people, or just a vocal plurality, remember and defend these principles, keep aware of the deceptions of the power, money, and dogma, and act Libertarian principles out in everyday life, then the light of reason keeps shining on those darker places where deceptions and lies grow into formidable monsters of falsehoods and dictators who betray liberty to a slow, terminal death.
   Property barters contributions to the mutual interests, for elections, for taxes for roads, etc. We own ourselves, our ideas, our possessions, our convictions. WE ARE responsible for our families and dependents. We may trust votes to a candidate, hire out our labor dearly, or contribute freely to society, if these serve our own interests in seeing the mutual interest of liberty preserved. If not served and protected, we must rebel.Copyright © 2009 The Cepia Club LLC Global Commons Fair Use Granted

Community, Not Isolationism

2009-02-04T21:04:00.001-06:00

When Cepia Club mentions
“community”, it means the value of what people and land have
together: A rooted, spiritual connection to time and place. Land and
people are one in many respects; separate the one from the other, and
a humble pride of knowing whence we came, WHERE we stand in values,
memory, joy, and family, fall away from being the focus of life. We
instinctively have in our humanity to help people. We help our family
despite our reason when family suffers from the members' mistakes or
misfortunes. We rely on our friends, and our neighbors, to sustain
the little spark of faith and life that makes the difficult at least
bearable. Community, where we identify our personal and family
interests for property, safety, society, and our natural rights to be
free men and women, is the place we want to belong, or the place we
eventually are accepted. It is loneliness, isolation, fear, and greed
that replace the “Platinum Rule of Humankind—that our only
purpose here is to be helpful to others—when we separate ourselves
from the otherwise Diamond Rule of Reality. That studded rule is, No
person can live sane, safe, sustained, and spiritual if we do not
accept that we need each other, of diverse types, to not only survive
well, but survive at all. It is in the community we build that can
give us hope as things collapse. That optimism in others is faith
hard to build, trust hard to earn Keep hope in our lives, in each
other, in our community, and help others do the same. It is our only
choice.

Brief Critique of Two Ayn Rand Articles

2009-01-09T08:27:00.001-06:00

[In response to the article “History is Against the Republicans,” a person I don’t know who is on the Yahoo! Group suggested I read two Ayn Rand articles, “Man’s Rights” and “Nature of Government.” This is a brief summary of what I thought of the articles].

In "Man's Rights," I get a little troubled with the equation of "capitalism"--then and now--with "free market." I try to explain to friends, etc. of other non-libertarian bent that capitalism as practiced is itself far too structured, regulated, and biased toward the "owners" of capital for it to be useful as a mechanism of adjusting disparity in economic opportunity. The outcomes gear too much to the structuralism that we have become rather immune to accepting. I usually say a garage sale, a lemonade stand, and the contraband economy are more accurate descriptions of how the fundamental "physics" of markets work to help all of society by maintaining an equilibrium where effort justifies the outcome, individually helping ourselves by at the same time helping others. That seems to be more of the point of how all "rights" of property are protected if we each take care of our own. I suppose it is terminology for the days in which she wrote. If so, it is my own concepts that suffer the need for definition.

Also in the essay, and in the "Nature of Government," I'm uncomfortable with the absence of a conviction for a source of legitimacy for self-government. As she rightly says, that governments and "divine right of kings" cannot be their own self-sufficient justification for rule. Therein lies the brilliance of the Dec./ Independence to establish those "natural rights" which overrule the rights of kings, parliaments, and/mobs. It makes no difference on one's spiritual beliefs or thoughts on a "creator," for or against an "order" greater than ourselves, but humanity or governments certifying their rights by unilateral declaration are equally void. Hence the problem in the US/Constitution was resolved that the entire "people" collectively were the legitimate source of power. This got rid of all the "divine absolutions," for kings or creators, and hence transcended individual desires with a collective will. And, unfortunately, 310 million people to 1 me ultimately overrules my will if by nothing else than they can all figuratively "wrestle" me to the ground, whether I am in my right or not. I usually try to tell friends, etc. that their power over me is null and void because if outnumbered even three to one, or 310 million to 100,000, the absolute truth of the matter is, as long as the Dec./Ind. remains, society's collective consent or coercion is null and void because "nature" itself is the source of legitimate "truth." But then we are all stuck arguing about that, since none of us really can bludgeon the others' beliefs about that matter. It makes me shutter everytime I have to explain to friends that the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights is irrelevant and useless because "those" monstrosities are given by the collective governments, "phony rights" which they can just as easily, and often do, withdraw.

Again, it comes down to legitimacy: "State of Nature" providing the justification for necessary government (Hobbes) or rights of nature and mutually agreed law protecting everyone from everyone else.

As far as what can be done about it, it comes down to patient education of all or waiting until such acts of universal horror (the unthinkable of nuclear war in the Middle East) cause such a POV shift that people would be eager to learn quickly how they gave up over the last 220 years their ownership of their govenrment, and bestowed their legitimacy upon a lie of a "social" contract without verification [or enforcement].

History is Against the Republican Party

2009-01-09T04:29:00.001-06:00

Historically, the Democratic Party is the "oldest" party in our two-party system, built first by Jefferson and Madison, then embedded by Jackson and van Buren. The RP was the third generation of the Hamilton-Adams faction, following from Federalists and Whigs, of which Clay and Webster were the most important bridges between the Founders and the "father" of the Republican Party, Lincoln. Until the Civil War, the Democrats, for the very, very wrong reason of slavery, and for opposition to tariffs, to public works, to "paper" currency but strong for states rights within the federalism defined by Amendment 10 under "strict constructionism," were actually the "conservatives." As all along, the Democratic Party was/is/will be strong on "bribing" to get votes under the "old" machine deal, and ever since under FDR's "New Deal" scams.

Whereas the Whigs, Free Soilers, and the "Liberty" parties were for tariffs to protect nascent industry, very right to oppose slavery (dah), but for Clay's et. al. "American System" of public works, the Republicans were, cough, cough, the "liberals." Always nationalist, the RP etc. heritage was originally for loose interpretations of the Constitution. The Republican Party was fundamentally changed by Teddy Roosevelt's Monolith of progressive intervention.

The parties have flip-flopped, and we can blame both TR and FDR for making it possible. TR gave away conservative "castles" (those core principles in the Constitution related to the Federal departments that had no right to exist) in our nation that did not belong to him, and FDR gave away the coffers which belonged to everyone.

With little to offer people the past 70 years OTHER than the pricniples of letting people have people political liberty and freer decisions over economics, GOOD things all, the RP coalition's conservative wing is constantly getting clobbered in Congressional elections by Democrats, and by neo-conservative "liberals" in the excutive branch (Nixon, and the Tale of Two Bushes). The reason? We who are conservatives and libertarians have a hard time selling the premium of liberty (political) and freedom (economic) when the "liberals" (in the DP and RP) sell at rummage sale prices their "social contract" of poverty because it is deceivingly equal and feed the cultural "beast" ("the New Age opiate of the poor and uninformed"?) its diversions and selfish indulgence to keep WE the People from what Peter is really stealing from Paul and vice versa--our sovereignty, individually and as a nation.

Epochs, Conflict and Change

2008-12-14T23:53:00.001-06:00

In the last two hundred years, four shifts form the birthing-panged process of human civilization as we have it. The first shift in question began at the end of French Revolution & Napoleonic Era. It consolidated mass industrial societies. A multipolar system of competing empires in Europe and Asia, along with America’s unique “republican” imperialism over the Western Hemisphere, governed international relations.
The second shift centered around the American Civil War (1861-1865) and America’s rise to Great Power status over the next fifty years, and an unwanted empire in the Pacific. In this epoch America prepared itself to pose its power to become THE key in the struggle between empires, old and crumbling (Russia, China, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian), new (Japan and Germany), the most powerful (Great Britain), and on the fence (France).
The third epoch, humanity’s insane civil war, was the long, interrupted conflict from 1914-1945, the First and Second World Wars. In this conflict, America and Russia under Bolshevism, emerged the most powerful, the other empires dead or dying. The World Wars were between racist superiority practicing slavery under totalitarian government and were opposed by constitutional liberal democracy and contractual markets.
The Cold War was the struggle was between America’s funny “democratic” imperialism and the Bolshevik/Soviet communist one. It was an often violent and financially costly “war” between systems and ideas of industrial government.
9/11/2001, the true end of the Cold War, was the beginning of the “Post-Historical Era,” to be a struggle between individuals and their liberty against elite classes ruling for the narrow interests of the few. The moral of this history is that the politics, economics, technology, and the very cultures changed. “Chicken and egg,” change and conflict entwine. Historians should witness this era as the defining moment whether humanity is enslaved for the benefit of the few, or whether the rights and laws of nature–life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness–shall endure, apply, and rule our future, for peace and prosperity.

Suicidal & Diplomacy: Bargaining Out of Armageddon

2008-12-11T17:44:00.002-06:00

Review of: Rhodes, Richard. Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Author Richard Rhodes clarifies the philosophical paradox of nuclear science: Discovering nuclear fission, splitting the atom to produce energy, was a fact of science bound to happen when rational, intelligent creatures pursued their curiosity about how things work. The process of discovering nature’s secret was inevitable. It was pursued, and a contribution to knowledge was made. On the other hand, turning nuclear science into a weapon of mass indiscriminate slaughter was a choice. In truth, though, creating atomic weapons in World War II, using them, and then developing thermonuclear weapons in 1954 stemmed from a cold political calculus of power governed by fear of enemies.
The political decision for the “Superbomb” occurred early in the Cold War, in 1950, when President Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen “fusion” bomb. Since the Soviets successfully tested a fission “atomic” bomb in late summer 1949, the United States, according to Truman’s logic, had to develop the Super because, logically, the Soviets would try to build one, too. Survival of the fittest in international politics became synonymous with the later-day term of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD): If one nation was killed with nuclear weapons, the other side must die in a tit-for-tat “absurd reduction” of common suicide. From 1950 onward, the US and Soviet leaders, political and military, held themselves hostage to the up to, but never exceeding, the extinction of the entire world. The cost in money was in the tens of trillions over 45 years. The cost in what was never built in terms of schools, roads, and diverse energy is not calculable at all.
Thermonuclear bombs were themselves the next logical step for scientific inquiry, in that rather than splitting atoms to attain a finite amount of energy, fission was used to “fuse” atoms–to combine them; the leftover quantity of “free” unused atoms releasing energy on magnitudes of 1000 to 10,000 times greater than the energy used to destroy Hiroshima, the first victim of nuclear combat. The Hiroshima bomb had the power of 20,000 tons of TNT (hence, 20 Kilotons, or 20 kt.).The discovery of fission might have been a natural step in human civilization, which could have assisted human development through the production of massive amounts of cheaper electricity. The hydrogen “Superbomb,” which the Soviets at one point tested in excess of 100 million tons of exploding TNT (100 megatons), had little civilian-economic relevance: For 54 years, Superbombs had been only good to THREATEN destruction of life, liberty and property if ever used with hostile intent.
What could have happened in a nuclear war is best seen by the tragic results of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, in the dead, the wounded, and those later dead or wounded from blast, fire, and radiation effects, some years or decades afterward, and on some born a generation later. The explosion, radiation pollution, long-term effects, and the political embarrassment of the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl accident in April 1986 further taught a newer generation the inherent dangers of nuclear science, even in relative peace. If such careless accidents in the peaceful use of nuclear science could cause such mayhem and damage to people and earth, what about political irrationality and carelessness involving the actual use of nuclear weapons in a hot war, by accident, or by terrorist elements?
Thus is the setting theme of Rhodes’ examination of the US-Soviet diplomacy in the 1980s for nuclear arms control and reduction, to make the world safer beyond the excessive reliance for national security on nuclear weapons and their latent threat of Armageddon. For in the end, with a weapon that could not ever be used, using them in the context of Superpower politics might exceed the basic line between life and extinction. What would be the odds of survival of anything, let alone humans?
Talking mostly about the diplomacy Ronald Reagan and his Messianic belief in being a peacemaker who stops biblical Armageddon on one side, and on the other side, Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberal reform of Soviet society to stop the money drain of the arms race, Rhodes in a readable pop-history style describes the tortuous people and the events to negotiate and end to the Cold War, and dismantling nuclear arsenals played a pivotal part in the end. The intensive exchange of proposals, negotiating formulas, and near-misses, including the October 1986 Reykjavik summit, Rhodes describes in non-technical, conversational detail. The Soviet Union in 1982 firmly believed the US was about to initiative a surprise nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders also later believed Reagan’s “Star Wars” space-based anti-missile defenses were escalation in nuclear diplomacy, would result in more arms spending to counter-act, and led to political instability. Rhodes’ book leaves one wondering how the world survived humanity’s fear and greed distributed equally between capitalist and communist elites–without nuclear holocaust becoming a reality.
In startling theater, like Reagan’s B-movie-style walk out from the Reykjavik meeting, Rhodes adds an important perspective for average readers to understand the events, the protagonists, and the antagonists who kept nuclear weapons in our life, and the descriptions fit aptly why the weapons continue to hang over humanity like the sword of Damocles. Not surprisingly, certain individuals high in the American Government in the 1980s fought to keep the weapons around and use them in war if necessary. They returned to prominence in the early 21st Century to dominate Bush Administration policy in the new wave of national security through fear in the war on the terrorists, replacing old Armageddon’s with new armies of darkness.

Orbital Dominance: Old Theories and Future Applications

2008-11-07T13:42:00.000-06:00

Review of: Salkeld, Robert. Forward by General B.A. Scriever, US Air Force (Ret.). War and Space. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, Inc.: 1970.

In this old book can be found some concepts directly related to one of four New Frontiers of Warfare: “Orbital Dominance.” It is hard to believe that this book written by Robert Salkeld near 40 years ago passed obscurely since its time. Much like Arthur C. Clarke’s rather believable fiction of humanity’s future on earth and in space, Salkeld’s writing set forth the problems involved in the nuclear arms race and the space race in the late 1960. And now, without too much publicity, a space race and an effort to achieve global supremacy via the military advantages of space for military uses has silently resumed among several nations and regional entities: The US and Russia as always, but now the European Union, China, India, Iran and Japan among the new contenders.
Far from merely the prestige of Sputnik-junk in orbit, putting one or two persons on the moon, or a scientific experiment to see how mushrooms grow in zero gravity, space in the 21st Century will provide a maximum “Smart Base” platform in which to dominate the earth below it. So with Xenophon and the Ten Thousand seizing the high ground in their Retreat 2400 years ago, the ultimate high ground for orbital communications and intelligence-surveillance assets, and even real weapons like deep penetration uranium rods, which glide along gravity’s velocity to multiply force with mass, might provide a nation’s margin of victory in future wars if they can get up “there first with the most.”
In the late 19th Century, the writings of naval historian and theorist Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan (USN) placed in the minds of politicians, voters, interest groups, ship-building industries, arms manufacturers and naval officers a first to build “sea power” aiming for maritime supremacy on the earth’s oceans. Since Mahan, and by a remarkable achievement of international diplomacy and law following the Washington Naval Conference in 1921-22, it can be argued that the United States’s “won” the Cold War and ruled the post-Cold War world as a “Supra-power” in large part due to the unparalleled global projection and striking power of the US Navy. With such a dominant, supreme navy, and the political leverage stemming from it, he who controls the oceans and airspace above it–over 70% of the earth’s surface– indeed has become the policeman of global politics. Maritime strategies, by theory, lead to the commercial advantage that forms a fuller value of “maritime supremacy” to sustain the expense of Supra-power. “Sea power” in base terms and brute force serves one component of maritime grand political strategy.
Salkeld in 1970 wrote during the point at which the US strategic advantage over the Soviet Union turned into rough parity between them. In his work, he establishes the rationale and some resolution for the problems in the pursuit of “Space Power.” Perhaps just a first step in a theory leading up to a more complete whole, Salkeld sees his thesis of strategic nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles, command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) based in space as maintaining the rough parity between the superpowers. With multiple independent re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) on single missiles, advanced technology to acquire and shoot down nuclear missiles or bombers or to locate and sink missile armed submarines, technology had made the hostage-murder-suicide pact between the US and the Soviet Union prone to possible surprise and crippling sneak attacks against the other side.
The tacit agreement rested on a theory called “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD). Because of their power, unlimited in theory and engineering, once used there might be no way of stopping the escalation of nuclear combat. The terminal end was human extinction or close to it. Hence the only way nuclear weapons would work was to never have to use them: Both sides would be destroyed. But the possibility of the new, more flexible, more numerous and more diverse weapon sub-systems opened advantages that lessened the deterrent against their use. Ultimately, it was philosophical debate with amoral hazard: “If we could destroy them first, even on a 50/50 chance, would we dare to do it?” In short, someone might be crazy enough to start a nuclear war.
The crux of deterrence and MAD depended on the hostage-murder-suicide complex. To prevent the other side from using the weapons, presumably a Pearl Harbor-like sneak attack against a nation’s strategic nuclear forces, the nation receiving the first-strike (the first-strike known in the parlance as a “Counter-force attack”) had to ensure that it retained enough functional weapons not to attack empty missile and bomber bases, but to obliterate the attacker’s cities and industrial capacities–resulting in political, economic, societal and cultural extermination of its civilization.
In the foreword to the book War and Space, retired General of the Air Force Bernard A. Schriever (Ret.), the father of the American inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), states that in the light of the Soviet strategic and naval buildup in the late 1960s, of course arms control agreements and the eventual reduction of nuclear armaments to a mutual balance of terror would be the best option. However, just in case negotiation failed to preserve the MAD and was replaced by policies that made nuclear combat possible, “it is essential that we vigorously search for other strategic capabilities to provide additional options” (v). In the politics of war and peace, the side with the most flexible choice between more and better options usually has the advantage. In history, arms limitations negotiations, and treaties and understandings not to use or base nuclear weapons in space eliminated the need to develop and deploy space-based weapons.
Salkeld in his book theorized that in the near reaches of our solar system space, the ability to hide a relatively small and undetectable orbital platform with nuclear weapons and delivery systems, a counter-force sneak attack would be in practice impossible, considering the existing and potential technologies available for MAD deterrence from space. Missile silos and bomber bases in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, etc. might be knocked out. On the other hand, the un-findable, hidden weapons in space, or on the moon, would remain to destroy Soviet society and inflict the 100 million deaths considered a sufficient deterrent threat. In this context, Salkeld develops a thought-out process for utilizing space-based deterrents as a practical reinforcement to MAD, from research and design, through deployment and standard operating procedures.
In the 21st Century, where are we left with Salkeld’s Candide-like belief that a strengthened balance of terror leads to peace and comfort on earth? Three stages of strategic (intercontinental) nuclear arms reduction have occurred since 1991, the final year of Soviet rule over Greater Russia. MIRVs got negotiated out of existence, but perhaps only temporarily. Conventional weapons have used the exponential growth of applied knowledge (circuitry, computers, alloys, and designs) for a mathematical increase in the accuracy, power, projection and efficiency of non-nuclear weapons. At present, the United States deploys the early installments of a functional ballistic missile defense (BMD), adding an opportunity to launch a counter-force sneak attack against Russian nuclear forces and destroying in-flight the “assured insurance” weapons of a Russian (or other nation) second-strike against US cities. Deterrence in nuclear weapons breaks down even further with nuclear proliferation spreading to other, smaller, poorer and more unstable nations (Pakistan, People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, etc.). The “loose nukes” long feared, those disappearing from national armories and bases, or mercenary scientists who can build them, and falling into the control of international syndicates, terrorists nets, and drug cartels is a threat that grows every day.
What looms for the rising powers such as China or India, or re-emerging powers like Germany within the EU, Russia or Japan, if they want to challenge the United States declining supremacy in the world politics of war and peace? They might see the US as immune to conventional or nuclear challenge on the seas, air and land of the earth. It would be best, from their perspective, to jump a generation over the tradition of sea power and aim for space power as discussed here for a more efficient “Smart Base” to challenge the US.
Selkald’s thesis is to use space to dominate the earth, countering the power of a navy or an air force with the “highest ground” around. In the news, one can find old, rising, and reemerging powers sending a subtle message to other governments that they see space and the theory of Orbital Dominance a key aspect of their national security strategy. But security strategy is not the ultimate form of power–hard and soft or indirect and benevolent power–without integration into a broader grand political strategy that encompasses not only the logistics of military policy (the “Smart Base:” STRATEGY IS NOTHING BUT AN EXERCISE IN LOGISTICS), but also incorporates the political system for an increase of individual liberty on the next frontier of settlement, the free-market economic advantages, the societal implications for using space in common by humanity as a whole and for the benefit of all, and finally the cultural need for peace between humans instead of genocide. These elements, by tacit understanding or international law, brings the utilization of space to the ultimate advantage of humanity. Militarization for narrow national interest benefits no one but the leadership class and the wealthy.
In the vision of a true national grand “Space Strategy,” with clearly defined political objectives, the mere militarization of space ultimately can mean the end of the natural laws of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The New War Frontier of Orbital Dominance, resembling the brute sea power of ships and weapons but with sophisticated space power of “space ships” and weapons, predicts an ability to impoverish, observe, threaten or destroy from above humanity and the natural laws that regulate the relationship between governed and government. Everything involved in the militarization of space, the high-investment in capital output to put weapons and systems in orbit, space debris from battle-damage (which harms low-orbit travel itself), and the unique ability to use the C4ISR combination as an All-Seeing Eye atop the Pratzen Heights in the timeless struggle for liberty opposed to dictatorships, should give cause, concern and pause to allowing governments to exploit space EXCEPT in the direct benefit of average people not in the leadership class.
Space around our planet, and the resources on other planets, planetoids, and objects offer too much over the next 120 years to enhance, improve, or advance the material and spiritual condition of all humanity to be used just by one country or alliance to dominate others. These huge opportunities for humanity include orbiting solar energy collectors, raw materials (even ones which can be mined to produce oxygen, nitrogen), living space, and whatever is up there to discover. Yet, inevitably, as in the current wars, rebellions and conflicts involving the United States, EU/NATO, Russia, India, Japan, China, and Iran will be fought and perhaps decisively resolved by whoever
Selkald is not as popular nor hardly as influential in the 40 years since publication of Space and War as Mahan has been for 120 years. But if anything, Selkald, if he is rediscovered, could be the Mahan-like theorist in Orbital Dominance logistics. The author did, after all, have the backing in a way of General Schriever, one of the greatest military administrative engineers of all time. So, forgotten and anonymous (even on a google search), Selkald should be re-read but not as an open and uncritical endorsement of weapons in space. There may be justification today for Space Power. There very well may have been one in 1970, but the reader should look further. What the author does do is to open the mind to both the dangers, opportunities, catastrophes and rewards that come with stewardship of the worlds around Earth. One can hope humanity uses it better than this planet, and for peace not war, solely for human liberty on the new frontier, just like pioneers did on the old ones.

Culture: Two Notes from The Underground

2008-10-28T01:49:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Underground
October 28, 2008
By Pi Kielty

[The next concert at Planet Supply is Sunday, November 2, 2008. The pot luck dinner for friends, supporters and the public wishing to see it, who want to bring some yummies to pass or grill, starts at 6 PM. Sabyre Rae Daniels & Friends, others to be announced, possibly, and the house band The Juggernauts, will all play after the community feast. So stop by Planet Supply, beneath the US Post Office in St. Croix Falls, WI, for food, fun, and good hearty music].

At Planet Supply on Monday, October 27th, the fare was a fair look at music as statement. The first performer, a solo keyboard show by the “traveler” Bass-Turd, was without error a witting, fair-well done, play on red, white, blue(RWB) extravaganza–audibly and visibly. B.T, who is running for President of the United States in 2012, although admitting a comedian schticker-angle, surrounded himself in some Old Glory lights, and a string of RWB Christmas lights. The words played on a powerful message of lost America and lost American souls in an age of ignorant and apathetic “material diabolical dialectical consumptionism” (take that Mao Zhe-Dung). B.T.’s resounding keyboard tuned to a fluttering programmed cacophony of whizzies and whirls, but it blended into a sound meld of perhaps how the great Brian Eno experimented before Eno went “Shutov” in the “Assembly,” and puked marvelous synthesized symphonies with Harold Budd. B.T. took that “One World” sound of Eno’s, reduced it to an Underground start, and launched on an under-represented audience a: “what the hell was that? I don’t know, but it was pretty cool and unexpected”-feel.
Joining the Bass-Turd on the tour is Samuel LockeWard and the Boo Hoos. The two groups are traveling on a “Ravaged Heartland Tour,” a show of support for communities in the Midwest who got hammered by disaster and devastation in The Summer of Big Rain.” It is a noble effort, the “least” they could do, or in B.T.’s phrase, one step above doing nothing, which was the least. Touring to lift the spirits of the Ravaged Heartland, and as how St. Croix Falls did not get damage from the Big Rain, the loose-fit Underground in Polk County, WI, helped set B.T. and Sam’s group off with our positive “be good to one another”-purpose. It is all about holding together and helping one another. For no matter how weird, crazy or otherwise “special” or just hip-funky we all are in the Underground, we stand together, or we sit around in big lazy couches in the Planet Supply and just listen to poets, bards, scops and troubadours who do the right thing in a different, and still hopeful, manner. The Underground did that on Monday night.
I could not stay for Samuel LockeWard and the Boo Hoos, but I listened to Sam’s solo stuff on his rather simple, hand crafted cd. Sam himself has a great grass roots song writing knack, and the cd called “Sacrilege, Treason, Treason, Treachery & Thyme,” is an adaptation of famous gospel notes put to the anti-fascists disestablishmentariamism lyrics that the Boo Hoos, “Rachel on bass, Gracie on drums,” play live. The music has a tinge of jug band staccato, but it definitely challenges the “No class” lie of Orwellian Big Brother Nomenklatucrap-deceptionism (in your face for axiomatic idiomisms, Mousey Dung).
Yes, it was a politically-incorrect Truist show at the Planet Supply–unusual for the fair normal fare of the active community, not well enough attended, but on a Monday, nonethelessism. As it is said, it is all good, when done originally and well–in the Underground.

Notes From The Underground
October 25, 2008
By Pi Kielty

[Next shows at the Planet Supply Arts & Music Venue: Monday, October 27th, 2008. The “Bass-T—s” from Las Vegas. Come and meet their band member running for US President in 2012!! Also playing, Samuel Lockeward and the Boo Hoos. Planet Supply is “underground” of the US Post Office in St. Croix Falls, WI. Doors open at 6:00 PM. Then, on Sunday, November 2nd, at 6 PM, join all for a pot luck dinner and show, featuring house band The Juggernauts, with special performers Sabyre Rae Daniels & Friends, and a lot more . . . . Bring food to share for the dinner!! All shows at the Planet Supply have a $5 suggested donation to support original and creative music!!]

The concert was avant modern, radical and experimental at the Planet Supply on Friday., October 24th. People showing up to support counter-revolution in the modern musical canons enjoyed the all-original, fascinating tunes and fuguey tones in the new “old’ school of Geek Power Age of Punk (which is quite a good thing). With a wide variation of the styles, this was a total new throw-back monk punk for the classical rebel against convention.
The fist band, Minneapolis’ the SoftRocks, played a grand acid grunge. Mike S. on lead guitar and vocals, Elliot H., the drummer with vocabulaire effects, and Matt L., who played a strangish percussion circuit along with his ‘tronic bass, performed songs from their latest album “Summer Apocalypse.” Having gone to Ohio to record this, their second album, and back from an East Coast tour, the repertoire sounds of the SoftRocks was a melodious psychedelia; warm to the ear of how the stranger afflicted the laid back, soothed yet energetic.
The second band, a reprise to the Planet Supply, PeopleAreMagnets, took their many influences of earlier eras, from Led Zeppelin to Radiohead, into a progressive-style Post Rock. Masters of ceremonies would have a hard time controlling this troupe’s musical hearing-vision. PeopleAreMagnets play mind-boggling dream moods that sounds the way clowns on zoomers would look to the keepers of deeper doors of perspective, and amused in the same way tripped clowns feel puzzled apart yet all together “complete’ on a totally different plane of consciousness. Spectrum stuff, in the spirit of old Tangerine Dream, but on an orangish-blue-purple Tang Dream of musical colors mixing smoothly in the diluted reality. People should look forward to the new cd, as yet unnamed, that Todd, Chris, Dave and Jeff will have soon. Playing out of the Minneapolis area, they add a bright bending light around Planet Supply’s alternative gravity every time they come.
The last band of the evening, the two man Young Quitters of Joe and Croix, played on the floor of the concert room, bringing their show banter into the audience, permitting participants in their own self-deprecating jokes. Complete without vocals, a guitar with two pedals and a drum set, the hard edged punk arrivistes popped off less than a dozen songs of wondrous split personae dualist rifts. It was all made an instrumental rebel bellow with rhythms as though these surgeons of punk psychology split the scalpel with ee cummings’ level of sonic meter.
Not quite the usual show at the Planet Supply, the evening performance on the Friday in question is not questionable about the new forms of music recycled in the old attitude: Anything goes for something interesting, as long as it is well-done and original, in the underground.

A Song and Sight for Optimism

2008-10-17T18:47:00.001-05:00

We live some hard times in this thing called “living.” I have found in family, friends, my work, and in my own “America” things for which to be grateful to the first cause in which I believe. I half-jest that I possess in the best and worst occasions a “Candide”-like frequent naive optimism. Nature deprives us. We know it hurts to be human. Does humanity need to hurt each other so much?
    We do have choices to make things better, if not for ourselves, then for those around us. Together, in darker times (personal or otherwise), can we not believe in us at this moment and forget the irrelevant crap that divides too many people from one another? As a favor, please watch the music video at the link below. Let’s find the optimism where we can.

High Resolution (DSL/Cable): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gT1DNZx0Dk&fmt=6

Normal Resolution (dial up or slow computer) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gT1DNZx0Dk

From the words of the Song writer, an indirect friend of mine.

    “. . .I've always found lots of things in America I would like to change. People I'd like t see advocated for more strongly. Ideals I wanted voters to think on, instead of being swayed by rhetoric and sound bites. How we treat people everyday makes a difference. How can we create or re-create a country we've loved our whole lives into something we are proud of. A country that we can, with pride state we are part of when we travel the world and receives smiles instead of jeers. . . .
    “ . . . I was shocked by how many people were so passionate about being part of the video. Well over 2/3rds of the people I asked, immediately grabbed the pen and paper, furrowed their brows, thought about it (most very briefly) and than began furiously scribbling down their feelings. Some people were so excited to write down their ideas, I had to make them write it twice, because the first was illegible.
    “This was a very profoundly inspiring process for me to go through. Feeling the sense of community and love for a country we are all part of. We may not all have much in common, but a love of country (a perfect country or busted one) was something we could indentify with. Our common-denominator.”

“word
“Mischa”

Rebuilding Civilization Requires YOU

2008-10-09T10:50:00.000-05:00

Without considering the eventual impact of the global “war we cannot name or define,” the financial coup d’etat underway against the middle and working classes is the beginning of a great re-ordering in this country. Let all America’s “average” citizens be so informed: We the People, collectively–all of us without exception–hold responsibility for the international political and financial upheaval taking place since 9/11/2001. This age will damage and endanger our core national interests and security, and in the end that of American families.
We the People as a whole thought better to stay un-informed about the reality that a few manipulated; We the People chose to fall for the destructive partisan political process. We indulged our greed to get what we could, to grab outside of our reach for more because of the fear of not getting as much as someone else. We choose our leaders poorly.
The phony choices we accept in all the false prophets and lunatics in BOTH the Republican and Democratic parties only served to divide us in our communities. Divid et imperia. We became divided over utterly irrelevant matters, and lost the simple understanding of individual liberty, family economic freedom, justice IN the law, and the truth that we all need each other’s help. These are Natural Laws & Rights. America’s independence was built around them. We forgot where we lost them! Hence shall those smarter and wealthier in this country and elsewhere conquer and rule in THEIR minority interests instead of the general good for all.
We fell victims to our own delusions: WE FIND NOW that there are limits in politics, economics, governing and morals. We broke the “silvery rule,” that is we as individuals, families, factions, and communities did not protect our very own self-interests first and foremost by protecting the common interest of all for the better good.
People can vote their own poisons for president and Congress in the same delusion as before. Wake up!! Republicans and Democrats at all levels, even unwittingly, work for the same people, and those people are not us. Examine the history and the records, and then follow the money. Remove passion, ideologies, and open the objective mind–if you dare to reason.
Multi-trillion-dollar bandages won’t help. America’s independence, our own liberties, material well-being, and our hope for an improved way of life requires a complete re-building of our civilization. We need a cultural rebellion in American thought and action, against the ignorance and apathy.
Re-building begins at the level of main street and neighborhood. Build from the bottom up. Government is better, more responsive, and a greater impact when you can walk or drive in a matter of minutes to the city, village or town hall or county seat. Autumn is the time to run for local offices in Wisconsin’s spring elections. It only requires a little paper work. Find out more and pursue it. Be the change. If not running, attend the local government meetings. Speak up. Volunteer to help improve your community–meals on wheels, neighborhood watch, the library, etc.. Do it because it helps everyone and is the right thing to do. Follow up with action. These measures, building anew in the communities and counties where the land and people meet, produce greater results than ever casting one ballot for a president. No more lesser of two evils. Choosing to help community and local government is a choice for the better, greater good.
Signed [Tim Krenz]

Into the Post-History

2008-10-01T16:23:00.000-05:00

After the fall of the Soviet Union, writer Francis Fukuyama declared "the End of History." In his view, the collapse of the Bolshevik/ Communist rule in Russia meant it was now possible to create a new order of international relations composed increasingly of nations governed by liberal democratic and capitalist institutions. Fukuyama's thesis traveled a long line of politicians and philosophers who believed that peace in the world depended on "enlightened" rather libertarian values of rule by consent of the masses, elections, trade, international law.

The world having seemed to achieve such an irreversible trend toward such institutions world-wide following Desert Storm and the fall of the Soviet empire as its indirect result, Fukuyama may have been a little too optimistic, but his core principles were nonetheless libertarian in tradition going back to Locke, Jefferson, Kant, and Mill. Yes, indeed, democratic and market processes, rules, mores, and exchanges are a path to perpetual stability in the world. The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant derived the formula in the late 18th Century. President Woodrow Wilson attempted to incorporate the principles into the "new order" following the First World War. His formula–democracy, free trade, international law, and world disarmament–as pillars of peace were the principles of both the League of Nations following that war and also the basis of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's creation of the United Nations in the last year of World War II.

To compliment his political mentor's intellectual construction of peace, Roosevelt added his "Four Freedoms" to Wilson's formula. The Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want. These Four Freedoms cemented the Alliance of the Western Democracies Great Britain and the United States in the global struggle against an unholy alliance of the ideas and practice of Nazism, Fascism, Racism and Militarism, the ideological enemies of all human history, if in different names. World War I and World War II cannot really be seen as two separate incidents due to the common enemy in the perceptions. Instead, the period from 1914 to 1945 needs to be considered in one giant whole, a thirty-one year conflict of struggle between the same forces: enlightened "classical" liberal/contemporary libertarian conceptions of human government pitted against liberties ageless enemy: Elite groups or rulers imposing a brutal, slavish, genocidal, tyranny over the minds and bodies of women and men in the service of that ruler or group. The enemy of enlightened liberty and freedom in World War I–German militarism used in the name of nationalism and autocracy–was the same enemy in World War II, but now with global partners (i.e. Nazi sympathizers and allies in South America and Asia).

At the end of World War II and the creation of the United Nations, what should have been a more manageable world had another "cold" conflict simmering from the ashes of 1914-1945: Bolshevism (or communist fascism) in Soviet Russia. The deal to dance with the devil in order to defeat Hitler's Nazis took the form of Churchill's and Roosevelt's alliance with Stalin and Stalin's one-party fascists state under Marxist-Leninism in Russia. Born of the rubble of Russia's World War I defeat to Germany, the Bolshevik/Communist Party rule ensured that the forces of democracy, markets, rule of law, and peaceful existence would not prevail until the ideological Communist brand of tyranny over the minds and bodies of women and men toppled from the crushing weight of its own lies. When Soviet rule over Greater Russia (which included the other 14 soviet socialist republics) finally ended in December 1991, the long awaited victory of libertarian values (democracy, etc.) over Nazism, Fascism, Racism and Militarism had finally been achieved after 77 years of direct and proxy hot and cold war. The hope of Fukuyama's thesis rested in the ideal that the vision of Wilson's Four Principles and Roosevelt's Four Freedoms had overcome the existential threat from the tyrants, the thieves, the immoral and the murderers. The End of History had arrived. It began in 1914 through accidental diplomacy leading immediately to tens of millions of dead and wounded. It lead further to two or three scores of millions of casualties in the next round against Hitler. Even the proxy wars like Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan caused tens of millions more in dead, wounded, and defiled. Indeed, there was hope.

A 77-year war between liberty and freedom on one side and totalitarian slavery on the other was now complete. Fukuyama indeed had reason for optimism. Never again would the mistake be repeated: From now, democracy, markets, law, and human fellowship must indeed reign over the relations of nations. If not, warmongers, thieves and slave masters in an international anarchy would be liable to destroy the world, a world with nuclear and biological weapons. If reason and "classical liberalism" did not rule from henceforth, the uncertainty of the future portended doom. Seventeen years following the lowering of the Soviet Union flag over the Kremlin, we are at the end of the End of History. What has happened? Later historians may point to the following as leading to the collapse of the enlightened, selfish age in which the world withdrew after 1991. It all ties into the very watchwords that governed U.S. policy since Wilson's intervention in the First World War in 1917. First, "democracy" was only practiced in America by the few smart enough to see that its general benefits could serve them narrowly. America's electorate became self-satisfied by the greed promised by a false dream of getting everything for free. Unfortunately, TANSTAAFL–"there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Believing they deserved things without earning them, Americans in general grew ignorant and apathetic to the costs imposed on them in creating a future debt for others to carry, in the legacies of natural rights like liberty and the natural law of vigilance to protect them. Second, the wealth exploited yesterday and today was not everlasting. Someone has to pay for the ignorance and apathy. The debt is rapidly coming due. Third, when political and economic power become concentrated, the law is also for sale. It was, and someone besides the American working-middle classes bought it. And fourth, the interaction of politics, economics, and social institutions caused the pursuit of peace through human community to surrender to the an iron law of rule by the few over the many: War is more profitable and gains more power for those few who rule than peace, peace being a general benefit spread to thinly per capita to all humanity. In short, Nazism, enslaving the masses for the narrow benefit of the ruling class, is winning again. And it is up to average people who think "liberty and freedom" to live it, to defend, and win for the future generations the right to own themselves, and to create peace and prosperity for all.

What is meant by Cepia Club's Post-History and how do people benefit? Post-History is a politics, economics, and society of people who live believing that they have natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (the pursuit, not the guarantee of it). Post-History is a time when the line must be drawn between the lovers of life, liberty and happiness and those Nazis/Fascists who seek to steal it. If we draw that line together, it can be kept. People benefit by unifying in neighborhoods, between households, in the communities where land and people meet. In order to defeat the coup d'etat against the republic, against the prosperity of average people, against the rule of law in America via the Constitution, and against the natural law and right of Creation given to all people to speech and thought without censorship and to be guaranteed the ownership of their own property (their very minds and bodies themselves most importantly), then ALL WE Americans must rebel. WE must fight with our beliefs, our hearts, our spirits, and our bodies. WE can no longer live apart if we will save ourselves. Post-History is the "New Age Now Beginning." It is the era of united rebellion, the final struggle through peaceful, positive, moral action and civil disobedience against the lies told by party politicians, false prophets, and pundits. Truth in us; Truth a weapon.

Project 6 Journal Notes: Operation Scimitar Game Study, Jan-July 2008

2008-09-09T15:08:00.001-05:00

[Author's Note: Put on the Cepia Clublog below are the original, unrevised, war game Project 6 (Cepia Games & Theory) notes on a hypothetical war between the US/Nato and Iran, et al. Much of our study had some surprising reinforcement in the news since June of this year. This was only a theoretical study of what; how; who; why; where; and perhaps when. Scipio Cepiacanus).

January 7, 2008

[This is part of continuing blog kept on Club HQ net space on The Cepia Club LLC’s Project 6: Cepia Games and Theory. Project 6 has been ongoing since 1994. We do serious model simulation building and testing. We attempt, undermanned and with very little money, to do professional-results quality forecasting. We are not war-jolly gamers. The value of Model Simulation Games is proven by think tanks and agencies that use them. Our own modeling analyses have been a large basis of our accuracy in many of our predictions for the politics of war and peace since 1998. And we have become better with the MSGaming and our predictions as time has passed. If there are doubts, then you haven’t paid heed to our stuff. (In May 2007, I used an MSG format to predict to my nephew that the Packers would win at least 10 or 11 games this year and a playoff bye. I also used an MSG to tell my nephew in late September/first week of October that Barak Obama would win Iowa. This is among other things. However, MSG forecasting is not always 100% accurate, but 60-70 % likelihood has been Project 6's norm).If anyone is interested in learning more about Cepia Project 6, see the upcoming Cepiaglobal Futures Report (free until February 29, 2008). TJK]

Operation Scimitar Set-up Study

I've been adjusting and studying the new “Operation Scimitar” game map I set up for a war against Iran and examining the options/ deployment logic all weekend. I imagine I will start play as soon as I learn all I can at this stage. With the Club strategy matrix (Informed/command, logistics/security, tactical/deception, and operational/surprise), the Al Qaeda command network has always been represented in the center quadrant, and was centered into Afghanistan since 1996 as the hq of Usama bin Ladin. AQ is a non-state, ethereal system of a political/ideological policy: In self-germinating"idea" growth.

Afghanistan/Pakistan, because of the nukes, the politics, and the geography, is more their security/logistics base. Afghanistan serves partly as a convenient tactical (not grand strategy) deception (a consumption of considerable effort on our part) to make us believe/waste/disperse a significant portion of our strength (material, political policy) there. It is a significant disproportion of effort on our part for rather small gain.

Iraq fits the paradigm in the larger context of deception, with the focus of oil ONLY as it relates to Iran and the entire Persian Gulf; the mashkrivoka--the grand strategic deception done by tactical means. The Islamists have used it conveniently, I believe at this point from the model simulations Club Project 6 has done since fall 2002, as the con-man “implement”-get us to fight for something we think we want, not what is important to them. In other words, it is blinding our policy toward that war.

Iraq was the bait and Iran is now the hook, and the entire gulf is a net trap.

As an indication of the operational surprise the Club forecasts, look at where most of the insurgency has been taking place for three years--Baghdad and points westerly of there in Anbar. Look at how we get there: The sea lines of communication in the gulf. As it goes, there is no oil in that part of Iraq, and a LOT of Sunnis tending toward or susceptible to the Salafist ideology. It is also the one-time caliphate. That has historical meaning for them, and why we find most of “them” there. But still, for the US and Europe, and our Asian friends, we engage them there to protect the access to oil.

The operational “surprise,” the Western geo-political/geo-strategic weak point in this whole war with the Islamists, I realized two days ago, (network manuever?) is in the Hejaz of the Arabian Peninsula/ the Horn of Africa / and the West Bank religious centers of Islam: With the focal point around Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem. Added to Islam’s traditional political capital of Baghdad, it forms a rough area where AQ and their grass roots allies could operate successfully while they try to close the net in the Gulf. They have lived in those deserts for millennia, began their religion, started the Prophet’s conquests. And Lawrence led their first revolution, successfully, in that exact place 90 years ago. The fact that very little is heard of the war in the Horn, or that we have gotten little if any mainstream news on Salafi/AQ activities in this general Mecca-Medina area for over a year since Ethiopia invaded Somalia with US military action, and until last week with the Kenya uprisings, is damned curious to me at this point.

It occurred to me that the Salafists terrorism BEGAN in Mecca with the "revolutionary" uprising around 1978/79 (?). Several thousand pilgrims–revolutionaries and those who joined up on the spot--were killed. The Saudi army dealt with it, brutally. Where poorly started and failed "revolutions" start might indicate where they eventually want to succeed, but failed at first, like many revolutions, to set proper conditions. So, perhaps the last 30 years that is what the Salafists have been attempting.

Finally, this particular area is where China has been most active politically, militarily (they have had at least 5000 troops in the Sudan for at least 4 or 5 years), and economically (oil deals with nations in East Africa for future development have been numerous but widely dispersed, reported in the mainstream US news, and widely ignored or underestimated). This is a grand strategic move on some level. It remains to be told to the American public. The results of however these connections play out will be fateful.

January 14, 2008; 10:50 PM

In the Operation Scimitar study underway since late December 2007, one major indicator for which look in Project 6 for the 2-week window for war against Iran is the increased deployments of Marine Air Ground Task Forces (MAGTF) to the Indian Ocean Area. These units, either as a full Marine Expeditionary Force (divisional combat teams of corps-size capability), Marine Expeditionary Brigades, or Marine Expeditionary Units–Special Operations Capable. The MEU-SOC are MAGTFs of a reinforced battalion of Marine naval & air mobile infantry, a Marine Air Group of mixed attack and transport helicopters or Vertical Short Take-off and Landing (V-STOL) aircraft. The MEU-SOC are deployed as combined rapid-reaction strike groups on board a naval squadron of a cruiser, destroyer (both Aegis anti-air/missile systems), a frigate and nuclear attack submarine with conventionally-armed Tomahawk cruise missiles are formed around a small amphibious force aircraft carrier, and the entire Navy-Marine joint task force is called an Expeditionary Strike Group under Navy rear admiral of the line or Marine Corps brigadier general.

Our OPScimitar study believes that a major deployment to the Indian Ocean Area of a several Marine Air Ground Task Forces, of several smaller units or up to the larger MEF corps-sized force, is required for any feasible war against Iran. Our Scimitar study plan calls for a “routine” force rotation of a MEF, in western Iraq presently, coming out of theater with the announced arrival of a similar or 2 MEBrigade-sized replacement force. Once the outgoing and incoming Marine units are in the vicinity off the northern Persian Gulf or in the Kuwait area, the window of opportunity a US war against Iran arrives.

In our mapped out plan (which requires an additional force “rotation” of either two army, army reserve or army National Guard infantry or armored divisions into Iraq, and the then-presence of an airborne or air assault division-sized group) the newly arriving Marine’s will have updated operational maneuver from the sea (OMS)training (by ship, by land or by air-delivered assault). The fresh Marine units would, in our forecast, land as flank protection/mobile strike groups south of the limited war objective of the marsh area of Iran abutting Iraq’s Basra. The Marine units heretofore engaged in counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, with rusty OMS skills, would follow-on by delivery into secured the secured port area of Busher, if necessary.

The prime land objective of the war, the area known as Abadan, is the Islamic Republic of Iran’s prime oil producing center. Taking it as a political bargaining chip, while sinking Iran’s navy, blockading its ports, and using aircraft, cruise missile, and special operations forces strike groups to attack Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, research forecasts, is the most feasible way for the US to achieve its overall policy goals over Iran (be they anti-nuclear proliferation or otherwise).

A Marine flank/special operations capable force south of Abadan in the coastal flats around Busher give an added strength to such a war-plan. Busher has a Russian-built nuclear research reactor. Capturing it plays into the fiction of the public relations campaign of having taken a “weapons proliferation,” but publicly acknowledged, nuclear facility. Also, the Marine expeditionary forward base allows for deep heli-borne and V-STOL commando attacks against hardened, deeply-buried bunkers in Iran’s southern mountains that are otherwise out of range for such operations and impervious to conventional air- and cruise-delivered munitions.

So, what people might be able to anticipate for their own needs for awareness and activism for preventing this war, if this plausible war should prove to actually be unnecessary, is to focus on major Marine unit deployments announced or leaving for anywhere in the Indian Ocean Area between January 1st and February 28th 2008. It was noticed this evening on a CNN leader tape that “3200" Marine families were notified January 14th of their members’ deployment this spring for Afghanistan, in the Indian Ocean Area, fitting our simulation model. Marine troops in excess of 12-13,000 over this time frame for a phased delivery in the spring of this year is the estimated indicator for which to look. Just a final reminder, it only provides a window of opportunity for a US war on Iran, not its certainty.

January 17, 2008

Game Turn 1–Day of Decision by US for OpScimitar

US in Iraq: MultiNational Coalition Corps, 3rd Corps HQ, 3rd ACR, 3rd, 4th ID, 25th LID, 1 UH-60 Regiment, 7 combat support (including artillery, anti-aircraft, Mps, engineers–bodies on the ground), 5 combat service support groups, 10th SFG (Airborne), 1/160th SOAR, I MEF (1st, 5th, 7th, 6th MEB and 3rd Marine Air Wing of 3 groups 8 squadrons of fixed and rotary wing aircraft), 1st British Airborne Brigade group (with CSS), US 5th Fleet with DesRon, CruisDesRon, 1 SSN, CVN-65 Carrier Strike Group, UK/Commonwealth (UK FF/MCM, RAN FF in Gulf of Oman), US Tactical Air Force (12 air squadrons of F-15s, F-16s, A-10s, C-130s,).

NATO-US troops in Afghan Theater of Operations: 1 equivalent NATO airborne division, 1 NATO airmobile brigade, NATO CSS, 1 NATO helicopter squadron, US 10th MD, 1 mixed air group, 1 airbase group, 2CSS, SEAL TEAM 2, 1st SFG (A). IOA/PACCOM (USN part of CENTCOM) 7th Fleet with CVN-68 CSG, 2 SSN, 1CruisDesRon, 2 ESG (2 BLT from 4th Marines), 1 P-3 Orion Squadron.

NATO-MNF/Horn of Africa (based in or around Djibouti/Red Sea/Horn) 1 French MCM, 1 Israeli SSN, 1 French SOF battalion, 2 French helicopter squadrons [1 attack, 1 lift] US Joint Task Force HOA (1 CA, 1/4th Marines in MEU-SOC/ESG mentioned in 7th Flt. off-shore reserve, 5 CIA groups).

Game Turn 1 of Operation Scimitar was D-Day in Washington, D.C.–Decision Day to go ahead with the deployment for war. Already lined up from up to D -13 GT’s (26 days), a National Guard mechanized infantry division was in the pipe to arrive in Indian Ocean Area (IOA) beginning GT-3, along with supply. On D-Day US 4th MEB (three from Mediterranean and 9th MEB (-one Battalion Landing Team on ESG) from Okinawa (using game piece 7th Marine Amphibious Brigade from the First Edition) Amphibious Ready Groups (gear only, troops fly in) were on their way. I’m keeping the 9th MEB/ARGroup in PACCOM to de-OODA Chinese strategy (see below). The option is to use 9th MEB/ARGroup to close PLAN in IOA behind them. Also, from Okinawa, MEU-Expeditionary Strike Groups (1/9th Marines) moving toward straight of Malacca. Japanese NSDF, RNZNavy, and CVN-71, 2 SSBN, 2 SSN to hold line. CV-63 CSG moving from Malacca to IOA to serve as JSOC platform. 1st Brigade Combat Team of 82nd ABD flown to Kuwait. 1st Brigade Combat Team 1st CD (Mounted) put on MSC(SL-7) fast ships. 40 Royal Marine Commando ARG/LHA and British CVH moving from Gilbratar and joined by French CV/DD Task Force carrying Marine division to Djibouti. British airfield, B & G of 22nd SAS Regiment and SBS flown to Aden to counter act a political deal to “sell” Socrata basing rights to Iran. US MSC moving to Pgulf. British supply moving to Aden from Diego Garcia.

One striking thing about this opening round of the global military phase might be why UK reduced its Iraq commitment in half in the fall of 2007: It allowed them to use its limited armed forces to deploy on D-Day toward HOA/Red Sea/Aden more capable.

In GT 1, when Iran was pretty sure the US had made a "go" decision on the war, I left only speed boats, Silkworms and Fast Attack Craft (FAC) of Iran's within the Gulf. They will use Q-ships (converted freighters and specially rigged tankers) for mine, suicide, and block ships. The subs were moved to that shed and shallow port to mine the outside of straights from east and to conduct guerrilla sub war. The fleet with two battalions marines/amphibious ships, moved into the Gulf of Oman on the way to Socrata (?) and East Africa, at this moment, Kenya is a likely emergency base. Air mobile/air borne will follow them there. From the looks of it, the Iranians are better off fighting with everything near the Gulf of Aden, and lose what they got anyway, at sea rather than waste and lose capital ships (destroyers (DD/DDG) and frigates (FF) in the confines of the Persian Gulf. The Chinese (I set up my old crayoned Pacific map last night also) decided to send supply to Sri Lanka, with an airmobile, airbase, and marine Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) meet up. The Chinese supply ships will carry things to Socrata, elsewhere (? Kenya), and to Horn.

Getting Iran's "fleet" into the open sea, to threaten Gulf of Aden/Red Sea/Suez Sea line of communication (sloc)s at least gives them a better fighting chance to delay US ops in IOA, and help AQ "burn" Hejaz per map setup study. The US, once I get the Pacific Ocean/Malaca Straights set up, will be very under the nose of the small but capable Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (no joke) in the Western Pacific (WestPac).

January 21, 2008

Four Game Turns for the Operation Scimitar study war game have been done. Aside from the US deploying by air lift (the 82nd ABD and airfields for operation from the Persian and Oman Gulf coasts), the main problem is the overall strategy concerns, first, Chinese activities off Southeast Asia/Straights of Malaca. To counter-act, the ANZUS forces are providing back end cover for the IOA. Keeping the Chinese occupied in the WestPac has fallen to the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces, while trying to keep a lid on the Taiwanese political situation of the real impending referendum on independence in that country coming up. From the point of view of strategy, Taiwan’s politics seem rather distracting Chinese efforts to deploy anything toward their real-life new base on Sri Lanka (secured in the summer/fall of 2007 by treaty).

The real problem with NATO strategy to keep lines of communication open to the IOA are in the Red Sea/Horn of Africa-AO (see previous entry for Jan. 7, 2008). The whole line presents strategic, tactical, and operational problems. There is the AQ presence in the Horn itself, with AQ having launched suicide speed boat attacks and Iran beginning to cover the Iranian/Chinese joint base at Sudan with defensive minefields in Gts-3 & 4. Beginning close to the Port Sudan base is not necessarily provocative at this point, but it makes further mining off Jiddah more practical later–moving the mining from defensive belts to strategically offensives (both in terms of grand strategy and “pure” strategy). Having deployed a British SOF task force (SAS and Special Boat Service [SBS] to Aden in GT-1, the French fleet with amphibious force has just entered the Red Sea to augment the US/NATO/French joint and combined efforts against AQ operating from Djibouti. The French marines are replacing the US Expeditionary Strike Force moving from mobile OMS-support in Gulf of Aden and toward the Gulf of Oman.

A follow-on of 40 Royal Marine Commando and 42 RMC are off the north end of Suez. As in the OIF game scenario, Egypt as a political grand strategic problem holds multiple dangers to any US/coalition action in the IOA. So far, the UK being tied to a forward operating base in Cyprus sort of ties their leg to the East Med. Another consideration is the UN/African Union peacekeeping force actually in and about to be augmented in Sudan’s Dafur. This is the ostensible reason for the French deployment to the Red Sea. To prevent too much Command and Control, etc. confusion, and with the US predominantly required for activities in the Pgulf, the Red Sea-AO will be divided thus–French have control over the deceptive stability/CT operations in Africa to the West, and the UK will assume the responsibility for operations from the Levant down the coast, including the Hejaz, and up the Gulf of Aden to the border of Oman. British experience in this area in the 1960s and 1970s (the SAS fought two “wars” in this region of Aden/Jebel Akbar), and an even longer colonial history, seems a good fit for the strategic problem, but only below Suez. Egypt is still a conundrum. Soon to be explored more fully will be Israel/Hamas/Hezbollah/Lebanon/&Syria.

March 24, 2008–Mon., 11:55 PM–

Some Stuff in the News:

After a month of inactive gaming while doing map & scenario study, I began playing Operation Scimitar again about three weeks ago.

In Gts-8 & 9, Iranian naval units, which had entered Socatra under “diplomatic” cover in Gts 3 & 4, began laying mines off the Horn of Africa. At the same time, AQ naval guerrilla-terrorists dhows and speedboats mined some of the narrows of the Gulf of Aden. Within the Red Sea itself, the Iranian ship “hidden” in Port Sudan began laying mines as well off the coast of Eritrea. The Iranian navy Fast Attack Craft (FAC) at Port Sudan had been there under the Trojan Horse Chinese peacekeeping unit deployed for the last several “real” years as part of the African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur.

In the Operation OIF back-end scenario run from 2006-07, the Port Sudan scenario had remained inactive. However, in that scenario, the Iranian navy had a forward/deep base in the southwest Indian Ocean in Mozambique. “Real” life, China and Iran do have port visit rights in Sudan and Mozambique. Mozambique proved a less than satisfactory naval-insurgent-commerce raiding base in OPOIF, but it did have some practical use.

In tonight’s news, the Comoros government has invaded a rebel-held island with AU troops in a coalition against Col. Muhamad Akar. Under the OPScimitar scenario, Iran does need some sort of deep-flank base in the IO to effectively use its naval-insurgent-commerce raiding strategy against NATO sea lines of communication coming through the Suez/Red Sea route. As the scenario was set forth, Iran had entered Socatra under a political-diplomatic cover or treaty. While I may have beefed up the Iranian expeditionary force with 2 marine battalions, an amphibious assault platform and commercial craft (designated an Hover Craft game piece), escorted by Frigate-based and a Soviet Sovremny DDG-centered (two combat vessels of same type), an FAC, and one of Iran’s two airmobile battalions-equivalent units, there was enough deception factor in the movement to concentrate a commercial airline/commercial shipping surge to deploy what was needed. The Socatra move is the “ideal,” and hence provided the necessary diplomatic reason to deploy the UK expeditionary force to Aden, since it was Aden’s willingness to allow OR inability to prevent the Iranians from establishing a feasible privateer/mine warfare base so close to the Gulf of Aden choke point.

In sum, since Mozambique worked somewhat in the Op OIF scenario, the Comoros islands situation in real life fit into the model for a diplomatic cover initiative to establish a naval guerrilla-terrorist base in the deep-flank of Allied Indian Ocean operations.

Deployments Outside of Iraq

In the Scimitar study, China has a naval-air base established by GT-9 in Sri Lanka. They have a marine battalion and amphibious assault platform (their only one), an airborne regiment, an airbase, one fighter squadron (leap-frogged through Myanmar), commercial cargo ship squadron, an FFG-based SAG, and SS basing out of Sri Lanka. In the Gulf of Thailand west of the Malacca Straights, the Chinese they operate one DDG surface action group. This represents the sum of China’s surge & expeditionary capability. It does, however, represent a huge strategic dilemma for the Allies. One commercial ship is transporting supplies (mines?) toward Socatra and Sudan.

I have not played into the scenario the Indian Navy, seeing as how in the OIF scenario back in 2006-07 chaos had reigned in Pakistan, causing Indian to watch her back. India’s navy will now enter play in GT-11 with one CVA strike group, one DDG SAG, and an FFG SAG, two SS.

The French have deployed in Djibouti an airmobile division and one French marine-brigade team ARG. Two marine ARGs are moving past Malta to secure by “proximity” the north side of Suez. The marines ARG in Djibouti is ready to secure the south of the canal. The British Expeditionary Force in Aden has one infantry brigade, the airborne brigade, the 3 Commando Brigade, 1st Armoured Division, one SAS sabre squadron, and one section of Special Boat Squadron, and an airfield with Tornados and Harriers (FRGs), plus two-battalion-sized ARGs and one battalion-sized LHAs (these three units comprise in their entire RMC 3), and the mentioned MCM/FF. In the Mediterranean, a CVH is plying between Cyprus and Sinai, and a DDG-based SAG is south of Sardinia moving east. The Italian MCM/DD and the only remaining US 6th Fleet combat unit, a DesRon off Greece, are set to contain the Russian Black Sea Fleet of a Cruiser (Light), an MCM, a Russian ARG, and combat transport unit

In the IO, the US 7th Fleet has one CSG, a MEU–SOC/ESG, and an SSN screening the Chinese on Sri Lanka from the south, covering the US/UK Diego Garcia base. Surprisingly, the only Russian navy ship in the entire capable of any long-range deployment in the IO is an SSGN prepared to plaster Diego Garcia with a massive volley of Sunburn supersonic cruise missiles. Presumably, the missiles are conventional, but I could at least play two missiles as nuclear-armed. A Cruiser Destroyer Squadron in the middle of the IO escorting an AEO replentishment group, and an SSN covering the CruisDesRon from the Socatra based Iranian Navy. A CSG lurks off Yemen covering the Gulf of Aden and Socatra from Iran and Somali-based AQ naval guerrilla-terrorist units. This carrier strike group is necessary to escort the SLOCs. Off Yemen, the final units of the National Guard division (3rd Corps) and 1st Cavalry Division (18th Corps).

Outside of Hormuz, there is the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade forming the US strategic reserve for the IO. A CSG and SSN cover the straights from the east. Inside of the Persian Gulf, the fourth surged deployed CSG in the entire IO is off the Dhubai. A CruisDesRon, an Intelligence ship, a destroyer squadron, and two Marine MEU-SOC/Expeditionary Strike Groups form the 5th combat forces.

The really interesting deployments are in the Pacific. The remainder of China’s fleet, one DDG squadron, lurks between Hainan and Taiwan. The entire ANZAC naval force of one DDG, one FFG (New Zealand), and a marine ARG patrol the Malacca from within the Indonesian seas. An airborne battalion and an Australian SAS troop are on standby for air deployment to Java. Since the US has an SSBN squadron in the north Pacific, Russia has sortied her entire Pacific Fleet (some 20-23 ships formed around 2 SSNs, 1 SS, 1 CVH, 1 DDG, 1 CGN). Japan has deployed her entire fleet (about 10 ships–DDG, FFG, CVH, and SS). The US has one MEU-SOC/ESG, one CSG, two SSBNs (playing conventionally armed C-4 Trident missiles for attacking Iran’s deep nuclear plant bunkers with sub-orbital “Excaliber” type earth penetrating, depleted-uranium explosive projectiles), 2 SSNs, an SSGN (configured with anti-ship missiles), and an MCM. On Guam, an ASM-capable b-52 squadron and the only deployed F-22 squadron provide theater air support beyond those stationed on Okinawa.

In short, except for 4 surge-capable carriers, the entire naval combat capability of the US is surged into the IO and WestPac.

As expected, the hostilities began on the high seas. In Gts-8 & 9, Soviet-built Iranian diesel subs set out mine fields in the Gulf of Oman off the border of Iran and Pakistan. The Iranians did this to protect their submarine/commerce raiding base just west of the border at Konark. When the Wizard and I were researching google earth, if some of you recall, we determined that the “sheds” at the small shallow port could have been SS and FAC pens. Mining where we did also made it easier to choke off the Hormuz lanes with surge mine warfare. In stage 3 of GT-10, the Iranian Pasdaran speedboats set out mines in the straights, at the same time that AQ terror-bombed port facilities at Jeddah that serves the cities of Mecca and Medina in the Red Sea. At the same the same time in GT 10, the British MCM/FF engaged the AQ boats off Jeddah. The unit took one mine hit, retreated to join the French CV strike group. Inside the Hormuz off Dhubai, the US CVN responded with helicopter minesweeping. The Iranians launched an F-4 to intercept the SH-60 helicopters. The CVN set on it a combat air patrol (CAP) which destroyed the Iranian fighter squadron.

Thus begins active combat in Operation Scimitar, outside of US operations in Iraq.

US and Iranian Deployments

The US Iraq “surge” rotation served as useful strategic deception to bring the required 7 Army divisions (3rd and 4th ID, two National Guard divisions, 82nd AB, 101 Airmobile, 1st Cav) and one division equivalent (173rd Airborne and 2nd and 3rd Armored Cavalry) into Iraq. These are divided into 2 armies, 3rd and 5th, and four corps (3rd, 5th under 3rd Amry in the north around Baghdad, Tikrit, and 18th and 1st corps operating out of Kuwait/Basra zone). Each corps and army has combat and combat service support units (engineers, supply, air/missile defense, and headquarters). The I Marine Expeditionary Force (4 brigades & 3rd Marine Air Wing) have redeployed from Anbar Province to Kuwait. The I MEF will operate as an army-level detached commanded by theater CentCom army group command. That makes 9 divisions or equivalents in theater. There are 7 army AH-64 battalions, 7 fighter/bomber squadrons, 2 C-130 transport squadrons, 2 Army helicopter transport battalions, three groups of Marine mixed aircraft, one air-to-air refueling wing, and one AWACS/JSTAR wing in the Persian Gulf Theater of Operations.

A Special Operating Forces brigade of 5th SFG (A) and 1/73rd Rangers are in Kuwait. The 10th SFG(A) are holding in the Kurdish north. SEAL Team 1 and a squadron of 1st SFD-Delta are in Dhubai.

Iranian deployments have not significantly changed in composition or location. However, the Armored Army Group of 6 armored divisions, one corps of 5 artillery brigades and one division of air defense units have reordered their direction of gravity, from an east-west advance on Baghdad to a northeast-southwest Axis to split the joint of 3rd and 5th armies. The Special Forces corps backed by two mixed corps of two militia, one armored, one infantry divisions (with support), are covering the Abadan, the oil-rich strategic target of the US operational battle plan.

March 26, 2008, 12:05 PM

Real News, Early pre-Hostile Engagements, Deployment Decisions and Free-Play Rules

The US 82nd Airborne, beginning GT-8, and continuing into the present GT-11, has been pursuing militia units north of Basra. This tactical operation also covers the border with Iran. Today’s “real” news about the US-Iraqi armies cracking down on Madhi army units, and al Sader’s call for a protest-sit-in yesterday and today sort of plays on this move. Just a reminder, an Iranian IRGC special forces corps of 4 brigades are positioned opposite of Basra along the Iranian border in the OPScimitar game play. In GT-10, during the Axis movement stage, an IRGC brigade actually took up an ambush position inside the Iraqi border in one of the swamp operational map hexes.

Since I normally use the German form of game play called “free play,” by which I’m looking for answers and options within the rules, the strategic deception troop/surge rotation under which the US was able to politically “deceive” a way to increase Gulf force troop levels by almost 40% beginning in GT- minus 13 looked sound. That translates into n26 days of “normal” Military sealift-required “heavy” units factored into the pre-start strategic deployment track. The Com-in-chief execute order for war began exactly GT-1. Once I had enough heavy units (non-Stryker armored units, supply, and two National Guard divisions for rear area-counter-insurgent security), flying in air mobile mech forces (2nd ACR, 101st AAD, 82nd AB) was no problem to augment more combat units in Kuwait, or at least enough to begin operations, offensive or defensive. Now, under free play, I had to restructure two sea lift units. The scenario plays better if the two remaining brigades of 1st CD were Strkyer/mech units flown in. The sea lift units were not quite beyond Aden in southern Yemen before hostilities began. Having already loaded up on supply utilizing sea lift requiring 12 game turns to be placed in the Red Sea, the switch from “new” light armor to supply allows a more follow-on supply. Without it, the US could have faced a problem: Beginning hostilities, I plan on using USTRANSCOM airlift to bring some extra Air Expeditionary support bases, followed by mission-briefed air units up to 1 Expeditionary Air Wing of 7 squadrons in two air groups (F-15s, F-16s). An entire AWACS and an entire air-to-air refueling wing were easily introduced to the Gulf by GT-9 “without notice.”

I’ve played the strategic opening phase of GT-11 just now. New rules have free played: Either side can expand supply points to modify the political random die roll. For example, if any poli-random event ends in 9-0, the US loses computer/electronic/satellite warfare supremacy. Adapting 3rd edition rules for EW jamming bonus his has a significant effect on US combat power–deploying reserves, and aircraft and ship interception. For all of my scenarios going back to 2001, c/e/s disruption also affects combat and electronic & defensive countermeasure ratings. Now, for every 10 supply points spent “bet, raised or called” between the Players A and B, a one point ship of die modifiers can be applied. For 100 supply points (a HUGE and crippling sum), Iran can buy an effect 1-0 range for automatically disruption the operational net.

One thing I tried in the 2002-2003 pre-OIF scenario (not to be confused with the 2006-07 post-mortem game analysis), I had tried to introduce Harp-like weather effects. Whether a country-wide sand storm or a strategic -hex size (280 km across) rain storm or tornado, no one can really explain to my satisfaction how weather-modification theory can actually work in an operational level context. I will only be able to guess and go with the old game metrics in free play to determine something useful for the game.

Without going into to great detail, the 2002-03 satellite warfare/ASAT rules were validated by the Chinese ASAT test of Jan. 2007. The opening Axis attacks in stage 1 will most likely involve an attempt to take out one US attack. The ‘02-03 rules will be reviewed and/or revised.

Before I actually proceed with movement and combat in stage 1 of GT-11, I would like to figure out some other geo-political/economic/social/cultural rules for influencing play. Since OPScimitar is now sufficiently large and complex anyway, and must be dismantled and moved within two weeks, it has probably told me and my readers enough about the predictive methods we forecast in late 2007 for a possible war with Iran beginning by April 30th of this year. At this point, as many Gts and study will be done for the opening phases of hostilities until I have to move for personal reasons. Like the 2006-07, the tear-down situation will photoed and filmed for reset up. In the meantime, I shall use the final week or two of this phase I matrix/model game study to figure out the geo-p/e/s/c play. Such things can include: assassinations of foreign leaders, financial, WMD, food, computer, or pathogen attacks.

One thing I should mention is the 4 brigade structure of US Army divisions since the 2003 “real” invasion of Iraq. Partly to study the matter, partly out of laziness, I was reluctant to create cutouts of a 4th brigade for every division at the beginning of the scenario. I might have been accidentally wise. After thinking about it through this 3 month study, I have resolved that the engineer/airdefense/artillery units, but not truck units representing corps support groups, I set upor did deploy during the pre-start and game scenario would have formed the bulk of the “real” converted of the engineer/etc. units into combat units. Since most of these units would have been second-tier level troops in real life, I decided to leave the units in their original formations, but with power modifications. These battalion-sized units have a 3rd edition strength of 1 for defense only purposes. Since all US units have their combat strengths doubled to reflect “network strength” (one of the things affected by “network” loss mentioned above), the “4th” brigades of each division are formed of these support units into a replica of the Combat Command C formations of World War II-era armored divisions. They are not full “double-plus” strengths of battalions. Instead they have combat OFFENSIVE-capable rating of 1. It makes some of computations for offensive attack a little complex, but it should more or less hold. I have yet to consider whether these CC-C units would have 2 for defensive-only purpose. But now at the beginning of hostilities and open combat between the US & Iran, a problem of technical “real worldism” might have resolved itself through game play.

March 27, 2008, Thu., 9:57 PM Game Turn 11-War Begins

In looking at both the strategic (Mediterrenean, IO,–WestPac, SouthWestPac) and operational maps (3rd Edition of the Gulf, Egypt/Israel/Lebanon/Jordan/Syria, Sudan/Hejaz/HOA, & Afghanistan/Pakistan), some conundrums came to light. About to start GT-11, I looked at some of the strategic issues, and saw some insights into geo-political level mentioned in the last entry. The problem concerned the only demi-great power with enough central position, conventional armed power, AND strategic nuclear forces to stymy any American/NATO move into Iran: Russia and the governments under her “near abroad” diplomacy.

To review a little, at the very beginning of the scenario, two Russian-centered armies sat poised on either side of the Caspian Sea, ready to intervene in Iran. Russian reserves stood off the north of the strategic map ready to move from military districts in Russia proper–either south toward the Caucasian/Tajik front, or West into Georgia and Ukraine. This is presumably about 25 divisions total, with army and army front support units, perhaps overestimating the number of 1st and 2nd Class motor rifle, armored, airmobile mechanized and parachute infantry divisions the still “great power” of Eurasia could muster. On the Caspian itself, the Russians had a security service customs ship.

The naval deployments in GT-1 were innocuous enough. A small, Black Sea Russian squadron of an amphibious battalion, and the components of a light CG & MCM units, and one diesel sub ( all subs in Gulf Strike editions represent one single ship, while Surface units comprise 2 or 3 ships measured in some form of power ratings and hit capacity). All told, the Black Sea squadron perhaps is overrepresented by a simulated 6-7 combat ships. To counter this possible “fleet in being,” NATO deployed a DD/MCM unit in the Aegean and maintained a US DesRon, and UK CVH, a UK SSN, and considerable air capability in Sicily and Cyprus. The “middle sea” has become important as NATO has mustered its entire civilian reserve fleet to transport units to Egypt beginning GT-9, as AQ began the active uprising in the Hejaz/Sudan/HOA/Egypt area of the Red Sea, and Hezbollah began moving forward in Lebanon in conjunction with AQ Palestinian units (heretofore undiscovered).

But the real important aspects of the naval side of the operation occurred, as briefed previously, in the WestPac. Recall in Gts-7-9, the Russians surged their entire Pacific fleet, small as it was at an overestimated 20-22 combat ships. Research has rounded this number down to a more likely 13-15 combat ships (listed previously). The move and counter move in the Western Pacific were the result of Chinese moves, and the responses of the ANZAC and Japanese on behalf of the US alliances. But it was the US strategic ballistic missile submarines that made the Russian sortie from Vladivostok around the north of the Kuriles so urgent. In addition, a Russian Surface Action Group (DDG) and patrolling nuclear attack subs were coming upon the SSBNs and SSN goalkeeper of the US, with the 2 Japanese SAGs and CVH task force covering them in the open ocean southeast of the Kyushu. Since the US battle plan for OPScimitar requires a conventional ballistic missile strike using orbital/gravity uranium (or cadmium) rods encasing conventional explosives (a mix of real and scenario capabilities), the US faced a problem. How to play down the Russian fear that an ballistic missile launch from a submerged sub would NOT be an opening attack against Russia?

The Russian armies were originally set up as a presumed potential assistance to Iran–a Russian intervention against the NATO take over of southwestern Iran, the location of Iran’s major oil reserves. Integrating geopolitical history, the “grand strategy” level of the game logic appeared with some possibilities. First, Russia’s main internal enemy is Islamic radicalism. Second, Russia’s main threat to its sovereign control over its most vulnerable territories lies in the east, the maritime provinces, not western Russia, the most heavily populated area. Third, Russia since its modern era as a great state began under Peter the Great has focused in most cases on one foreign policy: To obtain a warm water port.

So here is the game solution: A “Ribbentrop/Molotov” type pact of steel between America and Russia. The US is allowed to proceed with its invasion and disabling of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and Russia doesn’t intervene. In exchange for the guarantee that it will not object to the SSBN launch by a counter-force nuclear launch on warning, Russia stays out. Since 80% of Iran’s military is deployed along the border with Iraq, and its coastlines in and outside the Persian Gulf (it anticipated in GT-1 that Russia “had its back”), Russia is guaranteed the occupation from a line running east from Tehran due south to the port of Hormuz (it also gets Qom). Even more, they enter AFTER the war as peacekeepers with UN authority, at least at this point in the game forecast. The advantage further goes to Russia by another “Hitler/Stalin” deal: NATO removes itself from Georgia and Azerbaijan, Russia can prosecute its Chechen war without censure, “by any means necessary,” and the US and Russia “neutralize” Ukraine, not allowing it into NATO, but Russia not meddling in its affairs either. In exchange, the US gets its best “friend” against both the Islamists and the Chinese Axis.

How does this solve the other issue of China? Well, as the beginning of GT-11 is showing, China is overreaching itself by placing a “fleet in being” in the IO. That will be examined in a later game briefing.

Tonight I’ve played Action & Reaction Stage One of Game Turn 11–Full-scale war between NATO and the Islamist. The naval and air stages were quite surprising, to be discussed later. I have yet to do ground assault resolution one. Stay tuned for more details later. There is full scale activity in the Gulf, Red Sea and Afghan Areas of Operations. Only the Levant is quiet on the operational maps. Game metrics have been worked out a little.

March 28, 2008, Thu., 4:39 AM

Two hours ago, BBC announced that something on the order of, paraphrased of course that: US and Russian diplomats expressed satisfaction on their current strategic dialog, although the Russian side expressed concern over the US missile defense system.

This does not necessarily prove the likelihood or feasibility of a US/Russian “condominium” concerning the Persian Gulf, but it would be necessary at this point, according to our game model. By the way, lining up with the news items we’ve covered in this running blog since January about a possible war with Iran, the Project 6 forecasted date set last fall is, more or less, on a time-line trajectory accurate with “real world” news since late Dec. that we have predicted (increased use of air strikes in Iraq’s Anbar province, turmoil and/or AQ-suspected action in Kenya, Somalia and Sudan, the call up of the Marine Expeditionary Unit for service in the Indian Ocean Area, the recent Basra offensive, etc.). This DOES NOT mean that our model is going to become reality, i.e. that there will be a war in Iran, but the ongoing news is fitting into the model as at least some validation of our process.

The last four days, I have been reading a book called “Space Wars: A Wargaming Scenario.” It is a fictional 2010 account based on a reputedly real-world MSG called DEADSATS. The scenario/plot looks at how wargaming by US STRATCOM helps explain a future attack against space intelligence/communications/navigation systems attack. The book itself is so, so written, and not Clancy. But neither is it a poorly conceived look at such an attack in the future, or the uses of wargames. In short, a combination of Latin American narco-terrorists have hired Russian scientist on behalf of Iran to take down several US commercial, military and mixed usage satellites for their separate interests. The Russian renegade scientists have developed a microwave laser “maser” to passively burn out several vital US satellites, and have based their arrays in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

As mentioned in the Project 6 literature, the game was modified several years ago to incorporate ASAT passive/active warfare. The combination of cursory game study on the matter, and real world Project 6 research ties an interesting piece together that the Project staff (all two of us, me the gamer, and Wizard the reviewer/researcher) could not quite figure out in Jan. Last fall, Wizard suggested that Chinese activity in Tibet of the l ast couple of years might have had a strategic purpose beyond merely resettling Han ethnic Chinese in the high mountains of Tibet. The Chinese had been building a “strategic” rail/road/communications corridor into Tibet from the lower land. Wizard theorized around October 2007 that such a high elevation would be a perfect solid land platform for space operations. The high elevation and the thin air would conceivably reduce the cost of payload lift into orbit around the earth.

In Jan., Google Earth research by Wizard discovered some suspicious buildings in Lhasa. While we are not photo intelligence experts, my opinion was that the structure, located by a strong flowing river (it looked to me), appeared to be an energy production facility. Wizard’s opinion, more experienced than I, said it looked like some sort of barracks, and a large barracks complex capable of holding a few thousand military or police/paramilitary personnel. While I remain skeptical, since I noticed or recognized no surrounding parade grounds, the recent uprising and government crackdown in Tibet more reinforces Wizard’s opinion. Regardless, the other, earlier part of Wizard’s theory looks even more plausible rom reading “Space Wars.”

Tibet, even as a ground to orbit space platform, also makes ideal height and atmospheric conditions for a laser or maser arrays for passively “burning” satellites. In addition, from the current OPScimitar game, Tibet’s conventional space platform possibilities also make it ideal elevation, atmosphere, AND latitude (on par with Dushanbe in the book “Space Wars”) for active anti-satellite missiles. To note, 14 months ago, China successfully tested an ASAT weapon against one of their derelict “weather” satellites with a ground launch missile, and several weeks ago the US reaffirmed its ASAT ability with a ship-launched ASAT missile.

As will be explained, anti-missile capabilities, comparable to anti-satellite capabilities, played a role in OPScimitar earlier this evening in GT-11.

April 26, 2008, Noon

Project 6 completed the Operation Scimitar model simulation game First play on April 5th. Here are the final journal notes. However, Project 6 might re-set the OpScimitar scenario at GT-10, and continue free play with some revised situations (for example, more coalition economy of force).

May 5, 2008, 12:16 AM, Operation Scimitar Study–Ending Results, First Run.

In GT-10, the Iranians opened hostilities at sea. The Iranian navy set out mines off the Straights of Hormuz, not actually in the waterway. The strategy chosen was to surreptitiously do so as to constrain the SLOCs into the Persian Gulf, protect their ostensible diesel sub and commerce raiding craft (speedboats and disguised smaller armed merchantmen) in a secure base on the Arabian sea outside the Gulf. The Iranian naval-marine task force at Socatra and AQ naval militia also set mines in the Gulf of Aden, with the same unwise strategy of starting from the outside in. Once the attempt was made, Coalition naval forces launched a full-scale attack in the reaction segment and attacked enemy naval and naval militia units at sea and in Guerrilla-Terrorist bases on Socatra and Somalia. Unfortunately for the Iranians & AQ, most of their ships were port-side rearming with more mines. By the end of GT-11, all significant Iranian navy units in the Indian Ocean Theater were destroyed or neutralized. AQ units in the HOA and operating from Jeddah did, on the other hand, succeed in conducting effective mine and suicide boat operations in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. The Iranian diesel-electric submarines operating in the IO littoral areas were quickly dispensed. The only major successes the Iranians achieved at sea was arming merchantmen with Silkworm/Exocet missiles. They actually scored two “hits” on the US Carrier Strike Group in the Arabian Gulf with such subterfuge, severely limiting Carrier Air Wing contributions to the campaign. An estimated 2 escorts for the CSG were sunk/disabled.

In GT–11, the Iranians/AQ scored a significant achievement by a successful network attack on the US C4ISR, cutting by 20% US ratings for air-to-ground and surface-to-surface missile and bombardments. The US SSBNs in off the Pacific Coast of Japan each launched four Sea Launched Ballistic Missiles specially fit with Depleted Uranium/Titanium piles which effectively destroyed less than half of their intended targets of “nuclear bunkers”due to the network attack, which presumably would affect satellite and/or Command and Control Targeting of the SSBNs (such conventional missile capabilities were instituted by the USN in 2006). The SSBNs participated from the PACCOM because missile trajectories from there would reassure the Russians that the missiles were undeniably heading for the Persian Gulf. If SSBNs launched from the Indian Ocean toward

the north, would the Russians think it was an attack on them? The US/Russian condominium on the war, whereby Russian/CIS forces get to enter Iran as peacekeepers, thus obtaining their centuries old desires for warm water ports on the Hormuz and the Arabian sea, made possible the withdrawal of the Russian Pacific Fleet from anti-submarine operations off the Kurile Islands and guided missile submarine patrols off of Guam.

In GT-11, a US MEU -SOC in OV-22 conducted operational maneuver from the sea to an area where the 1980 Desert One fiasco had taken place. The MEU set up an isolated base and conducted raids on the remaining nuclear bunkers. SOF stationing out of the UAE used the Desert Two base as an air refueling way station in their own raids on nuclear bunkers. Disastrously as I am as a “strategist,” Desert Two was reinforced in Gts 12 & 13 by the 101 AAD, thinking it would be a good diversion to the I MEF operations through Basra and the the triphibious assault on Busher. Desert Two should have been abandoned in the next game turn once all significant nuclear bunker targets had been wiped out. It was a great drain on logistics and combat power to keep the base functioning, protected and self-defending by GT-13 and Iran had cornered in on the base deep in their rear.

Whereas the 82nd airborne had redeployed in GT-9 and 10 from their offensive in Basra against Shi’a militia (which anticipated real-time news by three weeks), the I MEF launched their offensive with 82nd AB dropping on the north flank in GT-13.

In GT-11, the Iranian armored army group launched their offensive out of the safety of the mountains, which would have protected them from coalition airpower, and moved toward Baghdad. US 5th Corps (3rd, 4th ID, 3 ACR) gave space for time, allowed US airpower to pummel the armored columns, and then in GT-13 & 14 proceeded to launch their counter-strike on the north shoulder of 18th Corps (now without 101st AAS) composed of 1st CD (whose two Stryker Brigade Combat Teams flew on GT-11), 82nd ABD, and 2nd ACR in their drive into north Abadan supporting I MEF moving through Basra. In the Basra area, the Iranian SOF division of IRGC put up stiff resistance and used the swamp-infested terrain to much advanatage. Only when outflanked by Marine units assaulting from Busher coast and 5th corps from the north forced the IRGC to retreat before cut off.

GT-15 essentially saw the coalition victorious in the ten days of war and the game was discontinued. Full game analysis of the potential and possible aspects of a real life “Operation Scimitar” scenario will follow shortly. Overall, the US ability to mask the deployments to the Gulf under a “rotation replacement,” the airtransportable nature of both armored cavalry and Stryker brigades (only two belonging to 1st CD), and the strong presence of a UK/France commitment HOA/Red Sea AO proved most decisive. Chinese naval forces never intervened because with shift if Russian allegiance and a surge by the Japanese, ANZUS navy in the Pacific forced the Chinese naval task force (2 SSNs, 1 frigate and 1DDG squadrons) to withdraw east of their new base in Sri Lanka. The Indian Navy operating to the west of the subcontintent also proved helpful as a deterrent to Chinese meddling in Iran. However, the complete key to the game’s political scenario was securing Russian connivance in the war against Iran.

July 17, 2008

[Below is a response to a friend concerning an article in Stratfor from July 15th, by George Friedman].

First, about strategic reserve: There is no reason to shift focus to another part of the globe. As far as a 'global positioning' strategy per our NOWAR outline, the Persian Gulf IS the decisive theater for the entire model--Iraq relating to China, and Iran, according to our research, to split Russia from the SCO, etc. It is not a stretch to use the Smart Base where we already are in the IO Area to continue to wage a 'maritime' strategy against all enemies, including AQ/ and the Taliban in Central Asia/Subcontinent. Therefore, the article does not hold water on the need to counter a threat elsewhere. Concerning NE Asia, the only other conceivable challenge, things are just as hamstrung for China over Mongolia/Siberia/Maritime Provinces vis-a-vis Russia as they are over North Korea's probable collapse vis-a-vis Japan and S. Korea. Furthermore, such a conflict would be naval, which Japan can assist us with, as well as Taiwan if China makes trouble there.

Finally, about the rotations of the last surge brigades out of I Theater of Ops., freispiel in OpScimitar led me to the conclusion that A) the amount of ground combat units to handle the occupation of the Abaddan area in Iran opposite Basra would be 2 brigades of Marines, an airmobile or airborne division of 3 or 4 brigades, the equivalent of an armored corps of 4 brigades and an Armored Cavalry Regiment, and two corps support units. That is 11 Combat brigade equivalents and 2 support brigade equivalents by some amateur analysis, admittedly. There should still be 15 combat brigades in Iraq indefinitely even with surge units rotating out. All but the four heavy/armor brigades needed, except Stryker components in Light armored configurations, could be easily airlifted into Iraq. NO ONE PAYS attention to three things: OpScimitar said Iraq's army would have to be capable of performing Counter-GT ops at the level of 4 division equivalents, meaning the GT insurgency would have to be held in hand. It is. Second, no pays attention to how much equipment is left behind the surge forces coming home. If it stays, it is available. THAT WAS a key component of the strategic deception to make the scenario possible. Finally, news pays attention to the number of troops---not stockpiles of equipment, combat ships in transit, and supply dumps, which are all the easiet things to hide from the media/public scrutiny.

Club Press Release: Book Initiative

2008-09-03T19:18:00.001-05:00

September 4, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cepia Club Asks For Library Book Sponsors

“Those who live liberty and do libertarianism are fond of saying, ‘there’s no free lunches,’ ” said Tim Krenz, Cepia Club manager. “Richard Campagna’s book, To Play Along the Path, is one of those mind-opening revolutions by easy reading. It shows how to live free in liberty and ignoring governments telling you that you can’t. We need to get this book in our public and high school libraries, at no cost to them. It is the start of a bigger rebellion in ideas.”
Krenz was commenting on Cepia Club’s initiative to find private party sponsors to endow their local libraries with Campagna’s new work, To Play Along the Path: The Multifarious Ps of Existential Philosophy & Practice. Campagna is respectfully known as the “Existential Optimist” among the Cepia Club.
“It is an extraordinary collection of thoughts on how to find purpose, live responsibly, and follow that age old golden rule: Be good to one another and be as helpful without reward as you can,” continued Krenz. “But the book puts that profound rule, and its difficulties, in a much needed modern context.”
Richard V. Campagna, who toured Western Wisconsin in 2004 when he ran for US Vice President, put together “in very easy to read language and ideas,” according to Krenz, a great primer for anyone who wants to choose to live independently “of the mass-pop fads, property-based religions and a government-corporate union gaining control of everything.”
“Richard and friends are doing nothing less than what Henry David Thoreau suggested in his theory of ‘civil disobedience:’ “ summed the Cepia Club manager. “If you disagree with where the world is heading, don’t participate in the insanity; be your own free-thinking person: positive, peaceful, moral, loyal. Have faith in who you are and what you can do to be part of the solution within you, your family and your community, and in the end, in your country; without political parties, exclusive ideologies or fanatical falsehoods. A person’s power begins and ends with how they exercise it. ‘E pluribus unum.” From the many, we can be a mighty and united ONE force of purpose for peace and plenty in all of human civilization.”
Krenz conceded the effort would be lucky to get copies of To Play Along the Path into the minimum of all Polk County public libraries via volunteer endowments. Campagna, the lead author and main editor of the book, will visit the St. Croix Valley on a tour September 26th thru the 28th. He will be the guest of honor at the Cepia Club roundtable dinner on Friday the 26th in Centuria, WI, and he will also appear and speak at the St. Croix Falls, WI, Autumn Fest the next day, Saturday, the 27th. For more info on the public dinner, or to help the library book endowment, call The Cepia Club LLC at 715-646-9933 or visit www.cepiaclub.com .