puzzlelady

Thanksgiving Day till Christmas Stay

Holiday, holyday, religion still rules,
Kids can rejoice when fests close the schools.
Who is to be thanked for a harvest so fair--
A ghost on a cloud or the farmhands’ good care?

A birth in a stable, a shortage of beds,
And even three kings had only the sheds.
That town needed many more rooms for their crowd
Or not herd more folks there than lodging allowed.

What a dumb way to count heads, all jammed in one place,
No postage, no email, no address to trace.
Show up at the town of your birth, nowhere else,
So your rulers can sort you where your origin dwells.

Send the soldiers around to kill all young boys
For fear that their threat the ruler annoys.
Such oracles maimed all rational thought,
And for millennia this nonsense is taught.

Even worse, when the mind is thus stunted and squeezed,
And obedience enforced, and actions diseased,
Blocked is “Don’t envy, don’t lie and don’t kill”.
Who gains when all lose their use of free will?

--- Kate Jones

The mind-paralyzing stranglehold of the Christian Easter narrative pushed me to compose the following:

___________________

Yearning for Immortality

For beliefs in myths, in wishful thinking’s realm,
That one assumèd resurrection every death will overwhelm,
We posit one omnipotence that hears the chosens’ plea
And orders them to kill all those who will not bend their knee.

What algorithm of the mind drives protoplasm’s striving,
Inventing thoughts and tools for physical surviving?
What flaw within the program makes room for murderous powers?
No rescue from above will come; the task is only ours.

We are not sheep, nor herds nor flocks, nor inadvertent sinners.
Upon the Universe’s spinning wheel, collaborators will be winners.

-- Kate Jones, 2017

Originally posted on Friday, February 24, 2012


The newest wrinkle in online depredation is something called "Text-enhance", a euphemism for attaching links to innocent-looking words on pages you are reading, including even your very own webpage. If you click on one of those links, an ad or survey pops up which ultimately turns into a phishing expedition for your cell phone number.

After a few of these happened to me in February 2012, I visited the Text Enhance website to see what they are up to. What a bunch of newspeak. Turns out, you have to opt out of their already planted cookie that let them invade your computer without your knowledge, rather than opt in. Even if you opt out, once you clean out your cookies they can have at you all over again, and you need to revisit each time to opt out again. In a fit of indignation, I emailed them the following:
___________________

Hello, "Text-enhancers",

I am outraged that your links appear in my own website, spontaneously, evidently selecting certain keywords to which to attach a survey message. Clicking innocently on such a link brings in a voice and overrides my viewing of the webpage. This is unacceptable!

Calling this "creating a meaningful relationship between advertisers and consumers" is like saying that rape is building a meaningful relationship between rapist and victim.

Your offering a blocking cookie that has to be renewed after every cookie clean-up is also unacceptable. You should not be able to place a link without my opting IN first.

I am most outraged that these invasions are in my own sacrosanct code. Yes, I know it does not embed itself into the HTML code itself, but it looks to viewers as though I had intended to put it there. That's like expecting me to hold down the victims while you rape them.

You are trespassing on my website and my time. This is a frontal attack, and unless you stop it immediately, we will get the wrath of the entire Internet down upon you. We stopped SOPA and PIPA. Do you think we can't swat your mosquito bites?

The messages that have invaded my viewing so far have been surveys that fish for cell phone numbers by offering "gifts". Walmart seems to be the biggest "sponsor", unless they are also having their identity stolen for this scam.

What is most objectionable is that links with double underlines at least provide a warning that there is an ad lurking behind them. The text-enhance links I am complaining about don't look different from the normal ones in my texts. They hide, camouflaged from the viewer, ready to snag the unwary.

No one wants you. You are creating resentful relationships between viewers and any alleged advertisers. This hare-brained scheme has to stop. Close up shop before others do it for you. There must be a better career for you clever hackers.

-- Kate Jones

_________________

Of course, I have received no answer back. I can only wonder how long they will continue in business. So watch for any unexpected links during your Web travels and beware of clicking on them.

Originally posted on Wednesday, May 4, 2011


I just received a "personal" email from President Obama. Here's what it said:

Kate --

If it were easy to do the big, meaningful things we believe will make our country better—if it were quick—someone would have done those things long before any of us showed up.

We've chosen to do something hard.

You know that our victories so far have been hard won: taking the difficult steps necessary to put our economy back on track, reforming Wall Street excess despite an army of lobbyists against us, and making health care more affordable and accessible despite well-organized opposition by those who profit from the status quo.

You also know we have not yet done everything we set out to do—not nearly.

But that's a reason to work harder, not to let up. That's why we're building this campaign now. And you have to take ownership of it.

So I will be direct: Can you step up and make a donation of $5 to get us started?
...

As I've spoken with supporters who are helping get this campaign started, I've met folks who are frustrated by the pace of change.

I understand that. But we knew this wouldn't be easy. The kind of change we're working for never comes easily.

Now is the time to begin again, and build the campaign that will shape our country's future.

Thank you,

Barack

............................................

Such a masterful piece of motivational tripe I could not swallow. This was my response:
............................................

Barack (and "campaign helpers"),

To make the country better, a handbook of easy ways to do it was given to us by the Founders—the Constitution—well before "we" showed up to ruin it.
You and your predecessors have, like a slippery slope, drifted from that wisdom and brought our nation to disgrace and disaster. It will get harder and harder to restore it. And you have chosen to do, not something hard, but something evil.

You have been led astray from the decent values you professed to believe in during your first campaign. You have gone farther to the dark side even than George W. Bush, whose crimes against humanity will one day be punished.

You lack the courage to admit how wrong we have become, and to take the first brave step towards making restitution to the world. America cannot be the bully to the world, to sow hatred, anger and resistance in one nation after another, and expect to survive. Our moral principles have become terminally diseased if we pursue a course of force and fraud under phony sanctimonious slogans of "humanitarian" goals.

You cannot help other countries by destroying them. If you want America to rule the world, that is a formula for global genocide. The only way to eliminate opposition is for you to kill off all those who resist. And since others want to live, too, they will continue to resist. And they have every right to do so.

Labeling people who oppose your tyrannical predations as "terrorists" only seeks to cover the fact that America has become the biggest terrorist of them all. And I won't take ownership of that.

Even if you change and repent right now, it will take generations for America to gain forgiveness and to win back the esteem and admiration we once had as the land of freedom, honor, decency, and respect for individual human rights.

You want $5 to help your new campaign? Your administration has wasted trillions of dollars of Americans' substance and future. There is no $5 available to throw into your pot to allow you to continue on this devastating course. No matter how clever the emotional manipulation and marketing of your slogans, we're not buying it anymore.

If, with one nod of your head, you can send off a killer team to execute bin Laden, you could change course with one command. It is not a big and difficult task to say, "Enough, this is not the way to go, this is not what America is about." No more violence, no more preemptive wars, no more taking sides in foreign civil wars, no matter what lobbyists scream and wave money, no matter what special interests get cut off from the trough. You cannot recover a nation's economy with only the arms manufacturers thriving. You cannot recover a nation's morale and self-respect by pumping them up emotionally with kill statistics. Enough!

Make a real change. You can do it with one nod of your head, one short declaration. Let me see actual results: apologize for our war crimes, get our troops out of every foreign country, close Guantanamo, pull back the growing police state on U.S. soil, restoring our civil liberties, and then I'll consider sending you some money.

-- Kate Jones

Originally posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2010


Change.org in January 2010 launched the 2010 "Ideas for Change in America" competition, and I just submitted an idea you might like to support. No money, just your vote. The title of the idea is "Protect Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights."

To vote for my idea, all you have to do is click on the link below and you can vote in less than 20 seconds.

The top 10 voted ideas will be presented at an event in Washington, DC, to relevant members of the Obama Administration, and then promoted to Change.org's full community of more than 1 million people. So we could have a real impact with this radical idea about unalienable rights.

Here's the text of my proposal. If you agree, please click on the link and vote. Thanks for your help!
________________________________________

All the changes and programs being promoted and passed into law aim only to help certain groups and to spend ever more government money, which is either taxed or borrowed. Both come out of the people's substance, Socialism in action. I propose that every bill before Congress be first measured against our Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights, to make sure that it does not abrogate individuals' life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (i.e., property). You may have to set up a special Congressional committee or get advice from the Supreme Court. But the first question to ask is, "Will this harm any individual?" And if the answer is Yes, cease and desist from pursuing such legislation.

Originally posted October 15, 2009


Today over 7000 bloggers are participating in Blog Action Day by posting comments on a subject of global significance to humanity: Climate Change. The unfortunate acronym of BAD notwithstanding, it's a good idea for reflection and consciousness raising.

For millions of years human life has clung precariously to our tiny marble in the sky, from barest subsistence living off the land like all the other animals, to learning in minuscule increments to adapt to existing and varying temperatures and availability of water and food and shelter.

From caves to make-shift hovels to skyscrapers; from rivers to aqueducts and aquifers and reservoirs; from foraging to agriculture; and from hunting/fishing to animal husbandry, mankind learned to put a widening safety margin between survival and flourishing.

Through the creation of language to communicate and preserve the fragile knowledge, our understanding of the natural laws at work on our planet broadened. We learned to harness energies from many sources—earth, wind, fire, and water and raw muscle power—and change the face of the land forever.
With levers and pulleys we built monumental structures. With fire from wood, coal, oil, we extended our territorial reach from icefields to scorching deserts as our nomadic ancestors explored the globe from pole to pole, not dissuaded by the vast distances of sea and land.

Through brutal conquest and pillage they took what they needed, whether natural resources or the achievements of other populations. Constant battles between population groupings both obtained and destroyed resources, material and human, in escalating numbers. Treating foreign peoples as no more than dehumanized resources to rob, kill and expropriate, the conquering hordes took land and lives with equal impunity, even unto the present day. The mutual destruction and enslavement of conquered populations, whether for free labor or extracted tribute, became entrenched into our very genes as protocols to benefit our own kind, and continues yet, allowing limited and differentiated development of societies and civilizations.

It was the discovery of electricity that gave mankind its greatest boon in advancing beyond the marauder stage, in only the last 200 years, a mere blink of an eye on the historic scale. It allowed the building of infrastructure, the unfolding of ever ascending scientific and technological marvels, from refrigeration to a national power grid and the Internet, from rural to urban habitats, from local to interplanetary transport, and, sadly, ever more sophisticated armaments with which to continue the ingrained habits of war and conquest.

To a great extent such cultural climates were molded by the planet's own conditions of climatic changes, the natural cycles of freezing and melting as its great source of received energy, the Sun, went through its own cycles of increased and decreased output.

Relatively long spells of weather within tolerable margins allowed humanity to settle into patterns of tribal, racial and national groupings and the expectation of stable conditions within the changing seasons.

There is a tendency to expect the accustomed to remain unchanged as the given, the taken-for-granted, a right. With seemingly free energy, assured food supplies, comfortable lodgings, mankind's complacency settled in for the long run. Our ability to temper, and to tamper with, natural environments lulled our communal memories of a harsher time into oblivion. Our dependence grew on an ever narrower margin of variable conditions of temperature and humidity, within which lay our ideal comfort zone for food supplies and ever-rising living standards.

As our populations expanded exponentially, the impact on our global life support system began to make itself felt. The historic process of "befouling our nest" showed its consequences in the water, earth and air. Like heedless children, mankind had proceeded on its course of expansion and exploitation until it crossed the threshold where the planet's natural processes of self-cleansing and maintaining a human-friendly equilibrium became overwhelmed.

Now we are engaged in seeking to heal our planet by reducing our habits of polluting and altering our energy use to cleaner methods. But like careless children who don't understand the chains of causality with which they play, we will meddle with nature's processes at our peril. Like petulant children throwing tantrums when deprived of what they had come to consider their rights and privileges, we urge each other to rush headlong into putative cures whose hoped-for remedial effects will have consequences we cannot predict.

Whether only we have caused global warming or cooling with our puny activities is far from certain. Solar activities that flood us with heat waves, or their absence, have far more effect on the state of our planet and our sister planets than our vehicle emissions.

Earth's life forms evolved through far more dramatic changes in soil and atmosphere all those millions of years ago. For every substance there is a customer, and we and the plants have come to a symbiotic relationship of exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide. If we befoul the air and decimate plant life beyond the plants' ability to restore, we endanger ourselves.

Our big brains need a certain minimum level of oxygen for full functioning. Air quality has degraded, especially around massive population concentrations. How has that affected our cognitive and physiological performance?

Early man as well as modern man destroyed huge swathes of forest for fire and timber, yet good wood grows far more slowly than the rate of harvesting. Forest management is a rather recent development, and not practiced everywhere. Shortsighted gain sacrifices long-term survival. Moments of truth appear only on the edge of disaster.

It is eye-opening to realize and remember that human survival everywhere depends on the quality of a few inches of topsoil. The soil in which the rainforests flourished has already given its all. It is not naturally rich for other crops. It requires massive infusions of chemical fertilizers, a self-defeating notion, and removal of trees makes the soil subject to erosion, like the horrible dustbowls of the Great Depression. Ignorance and shortsightedness will bring accelerating disasters.

More plants could easily handle our carbon emissions. It is, after all, one of the planet's most prevalent and most necessary components. The more important point is that we are polluting our life support system. We've understood the harm of forced inhalation of cigarette smoke and banned it from public areas. We have the geological evidence of the devastation caused by volcanic eruptions. We are well on our way to developing vehicles that run on cleaner energy. Necessity is the mother of innovation, and urgency begets solutions.

The quick, easy, dirty energy we have been obtaining from fossil fuels—coal, oil—has not only run its course in pushing us forward to far-spread suburban settlements and exploded commuting distances, but has brought us to the threshold of exhausted supplies. Scarcity has triggered the age-old response of appropriation by force.

To get control of dwindling oil supplies, America is at war with an escalating number of countries beneath whose soil lies the coveted resource. By a demented logic, America justifies wasting irreplaceable amounts of its wealth and lives to attack Middle Eastern countries, gashing unhealable wounds into its relationships with those other cultures and reversing centuries of diplomatic evolution. America is resorting to the same aggressive, imperialist practices she freed herself from in the name of enlightened principles of freedom from tyranny two and a half centuries ago. Not only has America betrayed its founding ideals, but has with every bomb and bullet dimmed its own reputation in the world.

The true pollution and environmental damage we've done is not to the physical environment but to the cultural/conceptual one. The fragile veneer of civilization and human values has cracked, much as the crust of the earth cracks from subterranean eruptions. The climate change we need to repair is not whether the globe's comfort zone of temperature oscillates a few more degrees than before, but the cultural climate of humans at war rather than in non-predatory cooperation.

The true enemy is neither our fellow man in other countries nor the planet's climate. The true enemy is in ourselves and our diseased ideas of rationalized mayhem and mass murder. And if we ever, in our most idealistic moments, hope to convert less humanistic governments to our model of democracy, we would fare far better by example, inspiring emulation, rather than by forcible regime change that is not an organic or spontaneous outgrowth from the indigenous cultures.

The climate change we need is not in the "carbon footprint" or tampering with the laws of nature, but in the mental/emotional climate of military boot imprints on the soil and throats of other nations. Our entire orientation of the metaphoric "wars" on terror (isolated incidents by individuals, not attacks by nation states), drugs, poverty, hunger, ignorance, or any cause du jour, is a travesty of truth-distortion and a ploy for social engineering that ineluctably leads to abrogation of individual rights by a ruling class. We become the tyrants we profess to deplore.

Climate change in the planet's physical rhythms is actually a good thing, stimulating inventiveness and letting humanity emerge into a sustainable modus vivendi and elevated consciousness. We need to be reminded that change is what brought us step by step to the evolved creatures we are now, coping by adapting to new conditions. The planet may well serve us better when dry areas become wet again, and cold regions become more hospitable.

We need to remember especially that America is primarily a land of immigrants, people who were willing to be uprooted and go where life was more promising, and where a great mixing bowl of diverse peoples learned to live together and thrive together in a new land. We need to be reminded that constructive, not destructive, practices and mutually respectful, not mutually destructive, relations are the solution to both the outer and the inner climate.

We must outgrow the predatory habits that served us as animals. They are the source of monstrous evils committed in the name of power, resources, religion, economics, security, national interest, or any other current buzzword we hold up as pretexts. These malevolent justifications pollute our spiritual climate and pervert our value system. Worse, they poison the whole world's meme pool, its storehouse of ideas and wisdom.

Let's change the climate of warmongering and remove the provocations for enmity. Obama should not be continuing an illegal war in Iraq and spreading its conflagration into adjoining lands. Congress needs to take back its duties to authorize wars and exercise its right to withdraw funds from illegal operations.
The American people need to reconcile their religious values (especially "Thou shalt not kill"; "thou shalt not steal"; "thou shalt not covet"; and "thou shalt not bear false witness [lie]") with their actions in the world. They need to learn to evaluate more critically and resist more intelligently the temptations by their "leaders" for vengeful wars against imaginary enemies.

The American people need to hold their representatives' feet to the fire of truth and not get swept up by the hysteria of false patriotism. Invest our resources in enterprises that build a less befouling infrastructure and we will accomplish both: a cleaner climate and a peaceful world.

Originally posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008:


Here is an enlightened invitation from Barack Obama for us all to tell him our vision:
_______________________________________________________

An American Moment: Your Vision
Start right now. Share your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country. Where should we start together?
______________________________________________________

Here's what I posted on their website, http://change.gov/page/s/yourvision at 10:30PM, November 12, 2008:

Dear Barack Obama,
I was delighted to see you win the election, with your hope-building words and declaration of change. We do need change, and you have the moment now to change the whole world for humanity's betterment. This is the moment you can seize and turn everything around. Disown the Bush doctrine and all his actions. The world awaits a cleaning up.

I propose that as Commander in Chief, you immediately turn our armies of war into armies of peace. Turn the weapons into plowshares now. All our troops in Iraq and elsewhere can be put to work rebuilding what Bush destroyed. Iraq's homes, buildings and infrastructure desperately need repair and reconstruction. Put our guys to work clearing, cleaning and building. They'll come home with far fewer cases of mental illness. Offer the Iraqis all the support for building they need, and are willing to accept. If they don't want us to do it, pull the troops out.

And change all the uniforms from battle gear to uniforms in hopeful or healing colors, say blue, such as doctors and nurses wear. No more killing. Put everyone to work. You can do it. We can do it. Just have the courage to denounce and renounce your predecessor's deeds. Apologize to the whole world for what he did, and assure the world that a change has come.

You'll be amazed how other countries will flock to support and help in this rebuilding plan, where they only reluctantly went along with Bush's calls for personnel who kill.

We can never bring back the dead, but their blood is on Bush's hands, not yours. Don't let the establishment drag you into their morass. You don't have to join the dark side of that force. Be our shining hero who makes the difference.

Your name will live in history as the one who brought peace to the world. Call for volunteers to go and help rebuild. You'll get many! They voted for you because they believe you can end the war, not just in Iraq but everywhere that American bullyism has spread death and destruction. Close all the bases, close Guantanamo, close down the torture and unconstitutional treatment of human beings. This is true patriotism, for love of our country and its true founding principles which Bush has betrayed.

The hellish mess Bush has put us into is not what the Constitution says is the President's job. His first duty is to uphold the Constitution. Bush and his henchmen have assassinated it. I urge you to have the courage now, at this crossroads of history, to declare peace and to stand up for doing the right thing.

Doing the right thing always leads to a better future. Certainly the housing industry will gain from so much construction to be done. Making the new peace uniforms will help the garment business. You'll create many, many jobs.

I, as an American, horrified by what the Bush administration was doing allegedly in our name and in our "interest", wept at the waste of lives and resources. A trillion-dollar war and no end in sight -- $700 billion wasted on the wrong people -- the downward spiral of our impoverishment at home and globally -- was it worth it? How much false pride can a country indulge before the fall?

Please be the change, make the change. Whatever it costs will be an asset, its value will increase. We, who were silent and helpless before the Bush juggernaut, or even approved, have to pay the dues. I will give zero for swords, but as much as possible for plowshares. The time has come, dear Barack, and our hearts and minds are with you, to take that brave step to redeeming America's reputation and rekindling Americans' love and respect for their country. Win the hearts and minds of other countries, and neither shall they make war any more.

We stand with you in this historic moment. Please let it be your first act in office: declare peace, and turn our warriors into an army of peace. Please finish the job Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began. Yes, you can. Yes, we will. This is the moment.

Fervently, -- Kate Jones