Lights in the Darkness…A Winter’s Solstice

Happy winter holidays! May the light of love and celebration deliver you from the darkness of the winter solstice and into the new year.

There are many among us who live to survive, without homes and the means for any reliable sustainance. Their lives are not secure enough to consider the lofty thoughts about our cosmic origins and our relationship to this wondrous cosmos. A bit of bread, some water and pillow to rest one’s head become the light in the darkness for too many among us.

We have the means to feed the world. We have the global communications technology to link the world in such a humanitarian endeavor. We have international organizations through which we may end violence and war among peoples across the globe. We have the means to develop renewable, sustainable energy to power our civilizations without severely damaging the earth’s fragile ecosystem.  Yet, we do none of these things with whole-heartedness nor vigor.  War and pestilence prevail in the world.  Dictatorships flourish.  Global climate change occurs without any great sense of urgency to deal with the consequences for people and the planet.  Poverty exists on a massive scale.  Children die of hunger and thirst, or war and aggression in many places of the world.

We have allowed, thus far in our modern world,  systemic, non-human corporate machines–technocracies comprised of mixtures of humans and vast automated systems–with the sole directive to maximize monetary profits through the exploitation of any and all resources, people and governments, to dictate the fate of our species. The exploitive nature of corporate technocracies becomes the impetus and personality of many global corporations to the detriment of humankind.  The fundamentalist belief in the mythological “free market” system is only that.  In reality, markets are manufactured, maintained, controlled and changed through the manipulations of those who control the largest corporations in the world.  Our means of accessing information, education, food, clothing and shelter, have all been bought up by massive cartels of corporate interest.  The vast majority of the governments of the world are controlled, manipulated and exploited for the interests of these massive conglomerates.  When the interests of corporations conflict with those of a human population, the population is controlled, overpowered and aggressively defanged through military aggression asserting the rights of corporate interests over populations that would seek to put their interests ahead of the corporate profiteers.  Usually, their governments, police and military are controlled, such as the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. military to establish fourteen permanent military bases in the heart of the oil-rich Middle East and to built a 600 million-dollar American embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world.

A small band of American imperialist ideologues, referred to as “Neoconservatives” pushed an agenda into Iraq that was to begin a plan to ensure that no nation or government in the world would ever challenge the sole supremacy of the United States as most powerful nation in the world.   The plan was entitled, “Project for a New American Century” and among the goals of its authors was the dismantling of over sixty governments in the world, a massive military spending campaign with the purpose to conduct at least four major theater wars in the world at any one time and win them all decisively, among other Draconian measures.  There is, obviously, nothing democratic about ensuring the persistence of an American republican empire, but those who are the true believers were looking more to maintain their stock interests in massive military arms and energy companies than they were to advance democratic or humanistic principles to the world.

The web site for the “Project for a New American Century” is no longer, although many components of the imperial agenda are being advanced through other means and other political processes.  Those who have held power in the White House over the past eight years have conducted many internationally criminal and/or subservisce activities to promote and enact their plan.  It was nothing less than an attempt to cement a fascist dictatorship into the American governmental system, a slow-brewing coup that, from all appearances, seems to have fallen flat on its face.  Those who have attempted this coup are not being held accountable, as of yet, for any of their deceptions, acts of aggression masked by lies, nor for the willful disregard for American and international laws in attempting to manipulate human populations for their ends.

Yet, there are signs of a massive change in human direction for this country, and the world.  There are signs that people aspire to something greater, and want their governments to reflect human needs in law and practice, no longer being dictated to by the whims of a handful of profiteers.

On January 20th, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the first black president of the United States.  This monumental event in human history reflects the compassion and humanitarian message of Barack Obama, it is an inspired movement that has motivated people across the nation, and across the world, with a hope of a more compassionate, understanding and benevolent consciousness among people.  Barack was able to motivate people across boundaries of race, culture, religion, class and income with a hope for change, and this change would entail pulling together the major challenges of humankind into a single massive endeavor to redesign human society through the efforts of, and for the benefit of, common people everywhere.  There is much to be done to realize the reality from the hope, but the hope and motivation of the American people, are very strong, especially because of the financial, energy, environmental issues we currently face, which all need to be addressed through a comprehensive national works program to rebuild the infrastructure of our society, to develop renewable and sustainable energy technologies, and to address the fallout of global climatge change.  Barack Obama has a vision of change in American that invites us to work together for a new American revolution, and this one will be occur, not with guns, but through reason, compassion and a desire for peace in a world of mutual respect among all people.

I look forward to this new human adventure which begins on January 20th.

MH

Has the “Wolf at the Door” Been Fed?

It’s been some time since my last post.  My last being a reaction to then-candidate John McCain’s newfound alliance with the Religious Right, vis vie through John Hagee, a popular megachurch pastor that sucks massive amounts of money from his TV and church audiences through his religious propaganda program of fear, superstition and self-righteousness.  It’s a disappointing phenomenon to behold to understand that millions of gullible people are even paying attention to such a charlatan, much less believing what he has to say.  So be it.  The “saving grace” (pun intended) is that McCain/Palin lost the election to a rational and compassionate Barack Obama, who ran a campaign for the people through brilliant organization and planning, using the communications technology of Internet and cell phone texting to reach out to a broad spectrum of individual contributers and voters.

History has been made.  We have the first half-Afro-American ever elected to president.  Much more than this, we have the first president-elect since Kennedy who can inspire masses of people, both here and abroad, with brilliant, compassionate and inclusive rhetoric that casts a spell of hope and optimism on so many of us.  May these good feelings continue.

Obama promises to “hit the ground running” after his inauguration.  Already, he has put together a good portion of his cabinet and staff, with a broad and pragmatic array of secretaries and staff to put forth, challenge and temper his ideological vision and plans for America’s recovery from economic recession, urgent environmental concerns, war and a Bush-stained international reputation.  He has my support and constructive criticism to help in any way I can.

What I find amusing within myself at this time is how much of my intellectual grounding was in opposing the New American Dark Age of the Bush era.  Now that light is pulling us to to the end of this dark tunnel, I can feel my “edge” becoming blunted.  When I was hungry, as the “Wolf at the Door” for any sense of hope, any sense of reason and human compassion coming from the White House or Congress, my focus was clear, my mind sharp, my intellect at the ready.  Now, I find that I have less of an edge, less worrry with Obama coming onto the scene.  I should still be poised for danger, because Pelosi is still Speaker of the House and Harry Reid is still majority leader in the senate.  There is still much damage that can be done, and much necessary work for Americans and the world that can be stifled with the wrong-way directions of these legislative bodies.   DId I mention the conservative Supreme Court?  How about a corporate-compliant, amoral news media industry?

The wolf, though slightly sated by optimistic hope, should not grow too complacent at this time, and should be poised to pounce, for the packs of lobbyists and pressures on Obama to foresake his vision will be great.  I will patiently crouch and wait.

Amen.

MH

Tedium ad Nauseum…And Yet, Patience is Learned

For me, there is no greater Zen Master for patience, understanding and tolerance…

…than a computer.  I know.  I know.   It isn’t human.  How can I possibly learn from a computer?  Feel for a computer?  Relate to a machine?

  Well, for one thing, it allows me to be less anthropocentric.  I can demonstrate compassion and patience, even for a non-living, inorganic machine that is only doing what it is programmed to do, with little in the way of conscious thought, save for a bit of fuzzy logic that allows some of its programs to extrapolate and learn.  There may be ideosyncratic differences twixt the languages I understand and some of my computer’s programming languages, but if I make the attempt to understand and learn what it is trying to say, I can get to know what this machine expects from me.  Most of all, the computer is an imperfect thing that is programmed to to interrupt my processes, correct my processes, and consume my time with often necessary tasks and inquiries, but with a rude and impassionate sense of timing.  This morning, for instance, was a diversion into my credit card acccount, where a merchant had double-charged me for a restaurant bill.  This consumed a half hour of extra time without resolution of the problem which is still pending.  I had hoped to spend the morning writing a longer blog post, and not about these issues.  I was also diverted into maintenance issues in my email client program, as well as tweaking my scanner/copier/printer for clearer automatic text scans.  All of these things consumed most of my two-hour vested time for computing and Internet.  I am not angry, nor disappointed, nor frustrated, for all of the diversions were necessary for various reasons and will make my computing, account management,  and online time easier for future sessions.

I have a great appreciation for the artistic minds that can focus upon a specific task, be it writing, painting or sculpting, and not be diverted by other things.  A writer with a computer must either be putting many computing processes on hold to focus on word processing, or he or she owns a MAC, which thus negates the extraneous computing updates and tweaks that seem to plague most of us Windows system users.  I write with a PC, and use the extraneous and nagging update/tweaking/bug-fixing processes as a focal point from which to write, to learn, and to report on my lessons.

I am out of time, at this point however, and I haven’t begun to express my thoughts.

Lesson learned today?  Put off until tomorrow even those things which you could have done today.

Amen.

MH Pathfinder

Crossing Platforms in Midstream…Again!

The fickled finger of fate has poked me in the eye again, and thus another Zen Master beckons to me to learn.

I was completely set on converting my HP Special Edition L2005US Lance Armstrong Livestrong laptop computer into a complete Ubuntu system. A major obstacle had been eliminated. My Broadcom wireless network card was now flashed with compatibility via Ubuntu’s hardware manager and my Canon PIXMA MP150 printer became compatible. Until today, the laptop was a dual-boot system with Ubuntu as the default and Windows Vista, which is necessary for my Quicken home and business files and professional programs not yet made for use in a Linux operating system.

For the past week, since my last post, I’ve experienced some very slow Ubuntu wireless network connection, at times not even able to connect to a single web address. Rebooting into Windows Vista resulted in the reliable and fast cable Internet connection I’ve consistently experienced in this system. A second nagging problem is apparently still not resolved in Ubuntu. That is reliable use of the Synaptics touchpad with a laptop keyboard. When typing text, the cursor jumps to another line and space…while in mid-typing. In contacting fellow users on Ubuntu forums, it is apparent that the bug still exists. None of the suggested fixes has worked.

Today, after several failed attempts to create fixes to the above two problems, I…once again…decided to remove Ubuntu from my hard drive, and restore my second partion to a second NTFS logical drive. What I did discover, along the way, is that the previous method of restoring a Windows Master Boot Record does not apply in Windows Vista. When one installs Ubuntu as the second operating system alongside a Windows Vista system, Ubuntu creates a boot-up menu called GRUB. By default, Ubuntu will start in 30 seconds, unless I click on Windows Vista from the menu.

If one decides to remove Ubuntu from the hard drives, you must first repair the Master Boot Record to allow Windows Vista to boot at startup. In order to repair the MBR (Master Boot Record), Windows is booted from the operating system DVD, then click on REPAIR YOUR COMPUTER, then click on Command Prompt. At the command prompt, type bootrec.exe /FixMbr/ It should say operation complete, or something like that. Then type “exit” and restart the computer. Windows Vista will now boot up, without any boot menu or Ubuntu as an option. After Windows Vista has booted up, click on the Start button, right-click on COMPUTER, and choose manage. From the manage console choose drive management. You will see your Windows partition, and two non-descript partions. These two partitions are the Ubuntu root and swap partitions. Right-click on each of them, and choose Delete Volume. The two blank partitions will become one. At that point, you can right-click on the blank partition and choose Format. After the partition is formatted, you will have deleted any hint of Ubuntu or whatever else was on the partition. Your system is now fully restored to a single-boot Windows Vista system.

There is no escaping the fact that Windows Vista is very superior operating system. In Internet and network functions, software compatibility, ability to use Microsoft Office’s FrontPage web editor, by far and away the easiest creative instrument for web page editing and publishing, even for those with no HTML knowledge or experience.  It’s a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor AND the FrontPage extensions allow one to make a change on one page that will ripple through relevant links to that change,  appropriately and quickly,  throughout the entire website.

Each venture away from Windows toward Ubuntu and other Linux distributions makes me appreciative that there are cooperative projects bringing operating systems and software to the developing world.  These operating systems are improving quickly.  Yet, each venture away from Windows brings me back to it, realizing how dependent we are, and how much many of us want, a universal operating system that works and performs efficiently, and does the things that we want to do with our computers.  Windows is still it.  Vista is a greatly improved product that is much more user friendly than previous versions, and with many built-in management tools to ensure that it operates smoothly with the least amount of technical problems and interruptions.

Windows Vista Home Basic on my HP Special Edition L2005US Lance Armstrong Livestrong notebook.  I added memory to bring it up to 2 gigs RAM, installed a fast 7200 rpm 80 gig hard drive and replaced the DVD burner with a Samsung DVDRW/CDRW burner.   Ubuntu will reappear from time to time, but for now, it is a single boot Windows system.  My desktop is dual boot with Ubuntu as the default operating system.

The best of both worlds, commercial and cooperative.

Amen.

MH