Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Playing Chess With Man

Willy Wonka


Thursday, June 21, 2012

Life in These Satellite States

Wake Work Watch Shut Up Do What You're Told We Do Why Can't You ??


==================

Several years ago, circa 20??, I visited a Bank of America store in Dallas to make a deposit.  Specifically, to create a second account with them, a retirement account of some sort. I held in my pocket a bit over ten thousand dollars that I had originally accumulated in a previous positions 401k.

I laid the money, in the form of a Cashier's Check, before the banker and proceeded to answer questions -
                             Standard or Roth?        - Check
                             Married or Single?         - Check
                             Dollars or Pesos?          - Check
                             Ginger or Mary Ann?     - Czech

"Beneficiary ??"
   " _______, my niece"
  typetypetype

"Her birth date ??"
   "XX-XX-XXXX, She's seven :)."
"A minor :)"
  typetypetype

"Address ??"
   "XXX XXXX St., Texas."
  typetypetype

"Social ??"
   "Not so much now but we're hoping that'll change when she becomes a teenager." :{}
  :/

"Do you know your niece's Social Security Number ??"
   "No I do not."

pushes phone towards me
"Telephone her guardian for the number."
   "Why do you need her social security number ??"
"It is required if she is to be your beneficiary."
   "Why do you need her social security number ??"
 
retrieves phone, dials number, speaks into phone, extends phone to me
"Speak to our Legal Department, they'll explain the necessity."
   "Tim Lebsack speaking, Why do you require the Social Security number of an account beneficiary ??"
"Mr. Lebsack, it's important that we have the Social Security number to insure identification of the beneficiary.
   "I'm providing her name, current address, birth date and parent's information."
"Her Social is required."
   "No."
"No ??"
   "No." hangs up telephone receiver

"We cannot open the account without your designated beneficiary's Social Security Number."
   picks up money  "Your call."
 
:<
   exits


================

I have pondered this encounter with Bank of America many times and now realize why BOA chose this way - Power.

"They are in charge of us We are in charge you They make the rules We must follow We make the rules You must follow Damn Your lack of faith We comply You comply That is the Agreement We made You must also agree."


     Frustrating is it not, 
          When someone won't 
Take what you call a gift, 
            When people are individuals?? 





http://goo.gl/iEntG

http://goo.gl/Lvhkz



Monday, June 4, 2012

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
-- Karl Marx
(1818-1883) German philosopher, father of Communism, co-author of the 'Communist Manifesto'
Source: The Communist Manifesto, 1848.






The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation



A person who is not inwardly prepared for the use of violence against him is always weaker than the person committing the violence.



It would have been impossible to carry out this hygienic purging ... if they had to follow outdated legal processes and normal judicial procedures, so an entirely new form was adopted: extrajudicial reprisal, combining in one set of hands investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, trial, and execution of the verdict.


A convenient world outlook gives rise to a convenient juridical term: social prophylaxis.




"We draw no distinction between intention and the crime itself, and this is an instance of the superiority of Soviet legislation to bourgeois legislation."




"An inquiry is distinguished from an investigation by the fact that it is carried out to determine whether there is a basis for proceeding to an investigation."



Given the fact that the cases were always fabricated, violence and torture had to accompany them.



I smiled in pride that I had been arrested not for stealing, nor treason, nor desertion, but because I had discovered through my power of reasoning the evil secrets of .......




Those [returning] prisoners who had been in Buchenwald and survived were, in fact imprisoned for that very reason in our own camps: "How could you have survived an annihilation camp? Something doesn't smell right."








The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation



The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

______ seems somehow to have twisted around and maximized the famous declaration of that coquette Catherine the Great: he would rather that 999 innocent men should rot than miss one genuine spy.


Having lost the appetite for war, the Swedes became the most prosperous and the freest people in Europe.


It has, after all, been explained to us that the heart of the matter is not personal guilt, but social danger.


The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation


One other crime that called for execution by shooting; unauthorized return from abroad.


Lenin foresaw a time not far distant when there would be a constant rush of people to the Soviet Union from Europe, and it would be impossible to get anyone voluntarily to leave the Soviet Union for the West.


Even in freedom our people are taught to take orders from anyone in a uniform.


The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation