FOCUS: St. Patrick's Day

Irish Blessings
"May the Lord keep you in His hand, and never close His fist too tight."

"May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a smooth road all the way to your door."

"May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you, and all your heart might desire."

"May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields, and, until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand."

An Irish Curse
"May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord himself can't find you with a telescope."

Irish Proverbs
"Don't be breaking your shin on a stool that's not in your way."

"You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was."

"Better fifty enemies outside the house than one within."

"It is easy to halve the potato where there's love."

"It's no delay to stop to edge the tool."

"It’s no use going to the goat's house to look for wool."

"Snuff at a wake is fine if there's nobody sneezing over the snuff box."

"Though honey is sweet, do not lick it off a briar."

"Everyone lays a burden on the willing horse."

"Never scald your lips with another man's porridge."

"You'll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind."

"You must cut your coat according to your cloth."

"Your son is your son until he marries, but your daughter is your daughter until you die."

"You are not a fully fledged sailor unless you have sailed under full sail, and you have not built a wall unless you have rounded a corner."

"'Tis better to buy a small bouquet and give to your friend this very day, than a bushel of roses white and red to lay on his coffin after he's dead."

Irish Toasts
"Here's to a long life and a merry one. A quick death and an easy one. A pretty girl and an honest one. A cold beer-and another one!"

"Saint Patrick was a gentleman
Who through strategy and stealth
Drove all the snakes from Ireland
Here's a drinkee to his health!
But not too many drinkees
Lest we lose ourselves and then
Forget the good Saint Patrick
And see them snakes again!”

Paddy at the Pub
Paddy had been drinking at his local Dublin pub all day and most of the night celebrating St. Patrick's Day.

Mick, the bartender says, " You'll not be drinking anymore tonight Paddy."

Paddy replies, "OK Mick, I'll be on my way then."

Paddy spins around on his stool and steps off. He falls flat on his face. "Shoite," he says and pulls himself up by the stool and dusts himself off. He takes a step towards the door and falls flat on his face, "Shoite, Shoite!"

He looks to the doorway and thinks to himself that if he can just get to the door and some fresh air he'll be fine. He belly crawls to the door and shimmies up to the door frame. He sticks his head outside and takes a deep breath of fresh air, feels much better and takes a step out onto the sidewalk and falls flat on his face. "Bi'Jesus... I'm fockin' focked," he says.

He can see his house just a few doors down, and crawls to the door, hauls himself up the door frame, opens the door and shimmies inside. He takes a look up the stairs and says "No fockin' way."

He crawls up the stairs to his bedroom door and says "I can make it to the bed."

He takes a step into the room and falls flat on his face. He says "Fock it," and falls into bed.

The next morning, his wife, Jess, comes into the room carrying a cup of coffee and says, "Get up Paddy. Did you have a bit to drink last night?"

Paddy says, "I did Jess. I was fockin' pissed. But how'd you know?"

"Mick phoned. You left your wheelchair at the pub."

To Heaven
Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

The man said, "I do Father."

The priest said, "Then stand over there against the wall."

Then the priest asked the second man, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

"Certainly, Father," was the man's reply.

"Then stand over there against the wall," said the priest.

Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and said, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

O'Toole said, "No, I don't Father."

The priest said, "I don't believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"

O'Toole said, "Oh, when I die, yes, but I thought you were getting a group together to go right now."

Malachy McCourt, The Hypocrisy of St.Patrick's Day


Celtic Fans, You'll Never Walk Alone

FOCUS: The Addiction Abyss

Recovery & Redemption or Death
"When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when it's waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye." - Hunter S. Thompson

"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." - Jean Cocteau

"I am not being flippant when I say that all of us suffer from addiction. Nor am I reducing the meaning of addiction. I mean in all truth that the psychological, neurological, and spiritual dynamics of full-fledged addiction are actively at work within every human being. The same processes that are responsible for addiction to alcohol and narcotics are also responsible for addiction to ideas, work, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, and an endless variety of other things. We are all addicts in every sense of the word. Moreover, our addictions are our own worst enemies." - Gerald May, Addiction and Grace

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.” - Carl Jung

"From the first moment I looked into that horror on September 11, into that fireball, into that explosion of horror, I knew it. I recognized an old companion. I recognized religion." - Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete

"An Addict is an Addict. It doesn't matter whether the Addict is white, black, yellow or green, rich or poor or somewhere in the middle, the most famous Person on the Planet or the most unknown. It doesn't matter whether the addiction is drugs, alcohol, crime, sex, shopping, food, gambling, television, or the fucking Flintstones. The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth." - James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

"If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house." - Jean Cocteau

"I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise. In a way, being an addict is very proactive." - Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

"Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction." - Wm. Burroughs

"The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame.
He might get burned, but he's in the game.
And once he's in, he can't go back, he'll
Beat his wings 'til he burns them black...
No, The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame. . .
The Moth don't care if The Flame is real,
'Cause Flame and Moth got a sweetheart deal.
And nothing fuels a good flirtation,
Like Need and Anger and Desperation...
No, The Moth don't care if The Flame is real. . . "
- Aimee Mann

"You cannot put a cheap band-aid on a sacred wound; there is no way through pain but to walk through it." - Robin Smith

"Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry." - Native American Saying

William Cope Moyers, Broken


From FORA.tv
A Conversation with Andre Agassi: Reflections on Tennis, Addictions, and Life (Video)

From FORA.tv
David & Nic Sheff: A Father & Son's Journey in Addiction (Video)

From C-SPAN
Methland:The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding (Video)

From YouTube
A Young Woman's Story of Self-Injury (Video)

From The Los Angeles Times
The Heroin Road: Part One - A Lethal Business Model Targets Middle America by Sam Quinones

The Heroin Road: Part Two - Black Tar Moves in and Death Follows by Sam Quinones

The Heroin Road: Part Three: The Good Life in Xalisco Can Mean Death in the United States by Sam Quinones

Living on Black Tar Heroin (Slideshow)

MASTERMIND: John O'Donohue

John O'Donohue was an Irish poet and philosopher who lived in a small cottage in the West of Ireland. He wrote several books including Anam Cara: The Book of Celtic Wisdom and Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong. John passed away on January 3, 2008. He was 52 years old. You can access his website to learn more about John and his work.

John appeared in the 2004 Masters Forum. He spoke of many deep and important things. Some are noted here.

On the Importance of Approaching Others
"One of the nice dimensions of Celtic thinking was that significant occasions or encounters should be appropriately framed. In our times, one of the things that we’re exceptionally coarse and vulgar at is the art of approaching. We have lost all sense of the reverence of approach, and many very significant things decide, I believe, not to approach us because our approach lacks expectation, appropriateness, and reverence."

On the Spirit of Approaching Others -
Beannacht: A Blessing
"On the day when the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the gray window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to waken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the curach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
and the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life."

On Wholesomeness
"The heart of the talk I want to give this morning is about wholesomeness. And the axiom is really that to awaken wholesomeness is to become fully alive, and that in turn animates all those around you. And it seems to me that the imagination is the human faculty that has a priority of loyalty to wholesomeness. Your mind splits things all the time. The mind and the understanding can’t bring together things that have been split apart, but the imagination actually can. And when your imagination comes alive, you begin to enter into your own wholesomeness."

On Imagination
“No matter how much we might deny it in the daylight world, each of us lives from our imagination. So the only difficulty, then, is in awakening the imagination, and an awakened imagination gives you entry to an enriched world of possibility. Because imagination is the great friend of possibility. Where the imagination is alive, possibility is available and active and ready to be awakened."

"It’s interesting to look back along your life and ask yourself, 'What happened to the lives I had before me once but that I didn’t choose? Where do they actually live?' One of my theories is that in some secret way your unchosen lives live themselves out, and that maybe death only comes to us, not alone when we have completed the visible life that we think we have, but that somehow the other, unchosen lives have also come to fulfillment. But that’s the magic of the imagination; the imagination can go from the facts down into the matrix of deeper possibility."

On Imagination and Leadership
"In terms of leadership, that’s what’s absolutely necessary, because a leader that doesn’t have imagination and doesn’t have access to that world of possibility always gets stuck on the surface of a given situation, whereas the leader is one who has a vision and can always see the unattended-to possibilities in a situation. Always we tend to equate the limit with the limits of what’s possible, but it never is. If you could look at limits in a creative way, the limit would always be the invitation to the beyond that you don’t know yet."

On the Qualities of a Leader

• The first quality that I would like is that a leader would have an inner life – the person wouldn’t be just an outside, external functionary.

• Secondly, they would have a quality of vulnerability. I don’t mean vulnerability in the sense that they are assailable from every corner, but when you’d look in their eyes, you would know that they knew what it was like to be vulnerable.

• A third thing I like a leader to have is a bit of solitude, a very rare thing in our times. It’s hard to find it, and a lot of people are terrified of it, and they’ll run from it, but a person that can’t endure their own demons or know them, or have a secret place where they can meet them, can’t be trusted fully in the interaction of combat, where power is the question.

• A fourth thing I like in a leader is imagination and vision. Vision is vital. A vision is something that links together the gift of your own individuality with the need that is where you are, it links gift and hunger together in a way that links the best in you toward the best in them. Vision can only be developed if you are awake to the blessings and the potential of their own mind.

• Fifth, a leader has to have character. A person who has character is someone who is not a prisoner of their own ego and limitations.

• Sixth, a leader is someone who has the gift of compassion as well as the ministry of encouragement . . . It’s amazing when you think of some of the gifts and abilities that you have, if you hadn’t got that old praise or recognition or encouragement, you might never have crossed over into your own gift.

• The last thing I think a leader should have is the quality of listening. Heidegger said that true listening is worship, and it’s amazing, actually. It’s amazing to be listened to. When you’re truly listened to, a burden and all kinds of old false layering falls away from you completely.

On Birth, the Feminine and Creativity -
Nativity
No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.

A Page of Lost Questions

• Is there someone walking home this evening through the streets of Leningrad that you have never met and never will meet, but whose life has had an incredible interest on yours?
• At the angel bar, what stories does your one tell about you?
• Supposing you were to take your heart away on your own for a day out, and that you really decided to listen to your heart, what do you think your heart would say to you?
• If you were in a conversation with your heart, and you told it how actually, factually short your life is, what would your heart make you stop from doing right now?

On Friendship
"Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition. ...in the moment of friendship, two souls suddenly recognize each other. It could be a meeting on the street, or at a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is the flash of recognition and the embers of kinship grow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing."

"We are not as near each other as we would like to imagine. Words create the bridges between us. Without them we would be lost islands. Affection, recognition and understanding travel across these fragile bridges and enable us to discover each other and awaken friendship and intimacy. Words are never just words. The range and depth of a person's soul is inevitably revealed in the quality of words she uses. When chosen with reverence and care, words not only describe what they say but also suggest what can never be said."

On Fear and Truth
"The opposite of fear is truth. And always at the heart of a fear, if you sit down with it and give it a chance to meet you and talk to you, you’ll find a truth that you’re trying to avoid. And when you enter into that level of conversation, what you’re doing is you’re trusting the wholesomeness of yourself to be able to go through this door of fear, not into destruction, but actually into a possibility that you would never otherwise have entered."

On Identity
"Identity is being reduced to biography, whereas in actual fact identity is a far more sublime, substantial, and sophisticated concept. Meister Eckhart says, 'There’s a place in your soul that neither time nor space not no creator’s thing has ever touched.' There’s a place inside you where no one has ever got to you, where no one has ever damaged you, where you have a niche of tranquility and natural serenity, and a courage and a hope that can never be taken from you. And I think that the intention of prayer, creativity, and true leadership is to somehow bring you into that place within you. This is summarized wonderfully in four lines by William Stafford in a poem from his book, Crossing Unmarked Snow:

"The things you do not have to say, make you rich.
Saying the things you do not have to say, weakens your talk.
Hearing the things you do not need to hear, dulls your hearing.
The things you know before you hear them, these are you and this is the reason that you are in the world."

From CMED Institute
A Presentation at Entering the Castle Workshop by John O'Donohue (Video)

From American Public Broadcasting
The Landscape of Inner Beauty: John O'Donohue Resources Page (Audio, Interviews & More)

A Reading of Beannacht by John O'Donohue (Slide Show)

From Harper Collins
A Reading Guide to Anam Cara

A Reading Guide to Eternal Echoes

From Personal Transformations
The Presence of Compassion: An Interview with John O’Donohue by Mary NurrieStearns

ODDS & ENDS: The Road , Darkness, Showing Up, Diversity, Learning the Hard Way, Lying, Love & Kisses, Good & Evil,

On the Road
"The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far ahead the Road has gone
And I must follow, if I can
Pursuing it with eager feet
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet
And whither then? I cannot say."
- J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

On Darkness
"And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained pale eggs of the beast. Rain fell on the towns and the fields. It fell on the tractor sheds and the labyrinth of sloughs. Rain fell on toadstools and ferns and bridges. It fell on the head of John Paul Ziller. Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clam shell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissed on the Freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled the huckleberries, ran in the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating. And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure…" - Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

On Showing Up
"It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say." - Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect

On Diversity
"Diverse groups of problem solvers - groups of people with diverse tools - consistently outperformed groups of the best and the brightest. If I formed two groups, one random (and therefore diverse) and one consisting of the best individual performers, the first group almost always did better. Diversity trumped ability." - Scott Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies Diversity

On Learning the Hard Way
"The native Americans have a magnificent tradition about scars. I have heard the tradition said this way: 'When you die, you meet the Old Hag, and she eats your scars. If you have no scars, she will eat your eyeballs, and you will be blind in the next world.' That story moves awfully fast but it certainly defends the value of scars." - Robert Bly

On Lying
"Above all, I would teach him to tell the truth. Truth-telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar." - J. Edgar Hoover

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place." - H. L. Mencken

"The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else." - George Bernard Shaw

On Love & Kisses
"The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender." - Emil Ludwig

On Good & Evil
"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Robert Sapolsky, The Uniqueness of Humans


From FORA.tv
Niall Ferguson & Peter Schwartz: On Human Progress (Video)

From Jewish World Review
The Other Evil Eye by Yaffa Ganz

From Scientific American
Does Falling in Love Make Us More Creative by Nira Liberman and Oren Shapira

MASTERMIND: Dr. George Friedman

Dr. George Friedman is the founder and head of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor). His organization, which provides geopolitical intelligence to businesses, government agencies, and other clients, has been hailed by ABC News as "often able to uncover the globe's best kept secrets and predict world-changing events in ways that no one else can." Barron’s says, "Stratfor has enjoyed an increasing vogue in recent years as a result of its heady geopolitical forecasts and many news breaks." He is the author of a recently released book, The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century.

Dr. Friedman appeared at the Masters Forum in early 2006. Here are his comments on many and varied subjects.

On American Business
"The single greatest weakness of the American business community is that it does not take seriously the exogenous event. . . The world is infinitely more complex than American businesspeople like to think."

On the Folly of Extrapolation
"It is a grave mistake to try to forecast the future by extrapolating from the present."

• In 1900, Europe was generally prosperous, at peace, and highly interdependent (thirty percent of France’s capital, for example, came from Germany). To most observers, that meant that war was nearly impossible. Books were written saying that no war in Europe could last more than six weeks.

• By 1920, war had shattered Europe, killing millions. Everything that once was solid now was gone. A communist regime ruled Russia. It had taken a million American soldiers in Europe to end the war. Germany was destroyed. Observers saw no possibility that war could reappear.

• By 1940, Germany had conquered all of continental Europe. The Nazis were allied with the Soviets and Italy. To all observers it was clear that 'the fat lady had sung' – the war was over and Germany had won.

• By 1960, Germany had lost the war. The US and the USSR were facing off in Europe, and nuclear war between those superpowers seemed practically inevitable. Since the US had never been defeated in war, it was assumed that such a conflict would be 'won' by the US.

• By 1980, the US had lost a war – in Vietnam. The US was a declining power, and the Soviets were pressing everywhere. The one thing we know in 1980 is that the US has got to make an agreement with the Soviet Union; there has to be a nuclear freeze; the United States cannot keep up this competition, its economy will collapse.

• By 2000, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the US was undergoing the largest economic expansion in its history.

"Common sense doesn’t work. You cannot extrapolate. Anyone who says that twenty years from now everything’s going to be the same only more so is going to be wrong."

On the US Economy
"It’s always a claim that in twenty years the US is going to be a third-rate power. You go back in any time frame, and the one certain common-sense conclusion is the US is finished. It never is, but it’s a conviction."

"The one striking thing about the world, particularly since 1980, is that where everyone else is in a short cycle of economic well-being, military power, and so forth, the US is in a deep, long cycle, and that cycle is ever upward."

"Go out to the Mississippi. Look at it and see the foundation of American power. This incredible river system meant that the farmers in the American Midwest didn’t have to be subsistence farmers ."

"You need a bigger framework than economics. It is useful, but it is a severely limited tool. Purely economic thinking is irrational and empirically false."

"From 1991 to 2001 there was an 'optical illusion' that the world was generally at peace, everyone could 'become an American' – the 'giddy springtime of the bourgeoisie.' But the reality was that the force field that was holding the world together, created by the influences of the US and the USSR, had collapsed."

On the US - Jihadist War
"After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the US was unprepared to respond because its military had been downsized and intelligence was sorely lacking. So President Carter arranged for counterinsurgency efforts by the mujahadeen against the USSR in Afghanistan to be funded by Saudi Arabia, using primarily Saudi fighters, and be housed in Pakistan, with training from American military specialists and the CIA. Osama bin Laden was invented by Jimmy Carter, and that’s just a small exaggeration."

"The Saudis recruited ultra religious militants to conduct the guerrilla war in Afghanistan. They became the core of Al Qaeda. Once the USSR was defeated, they perceived an opportunity to recreate the once-enormous, once-powerful Islamic empire, the Caliphate. To do that, they intended to create Islamist uprisings to overthrow Muslim governments allied with the United States. To demonstrate the weakness of those governments, they intended to show that the United States was both weak and hostile."

"September 11 was a superbly executed covert operation to strategically destabilize the United States. It could be carried out because of bin Laden’s deep understanding of how the CIA works, which he gained in Afghanistan. That put the United States in a position that required military retaliation, which was bin Laden’s goal. He wanted to give the United States a shot that it couldn’t ignore, because he wanted an American response."

"The US war in Afghanistan was arranged through key alliances: Russia provided bases in Central Asia and arranged for the US to 'rent' the Northern Alliance as its principal fighting force; Iran agreed to provide Shiite support in western Afghanistan. The Taliban was never defeated, but in most ways the first round went to the United States."

After Afghanistan
"Now there's another problem: There is a legitimate fear of nuclear attack on the US from a suitcase bomb. So what do you do? The US plan became to simultaneously attack Al Qaeda operatives throughout the world. But the US did not have the intelligence information to launch such strikes."

"To understand how Iraq comes up, you have to understand the desperation in the spring of 2002. All the good options are gone. You have to either stand and hope or do something else."

"The necessary intelligence about Al Qaeda exists, among the Pakistanis and the Saudis. Pakistan can be coerced into some cooperation, but Saudi Arabia cannot see cooperation as being in its best interests, among other reasons because it has seen the US back away from long-term engagements and Al Qaeda, which has shown its durability, has considerable support within Saudi Arabia. For the Saudis, backing the United States is backing a loser. It has to worry about Al Qaeda; it doesn’t have to worry about the US. Cooperation with the United States is too dangerous."

"So the center of gravity of the problem becomes getting the Saudis to cooperate with intelligence about Al Qaeda. In a more general sense, the US realizes that it must demonstrate more military resolve, that it must put Saudi Arabia into a strategic bind, and it must take control of the most strategic country in the region if it intends to fight a long-term war. That country, because of its borders and its air bases, is Iraq. If we take Iraq, we can own the region."

Explaining US Policy
"Here is where everything goes wrong. It’s hard to explain this policy; it’s hard to go on TV and say, 'We’re attempting to blackmail the Saudis.' So WMD was chosen as the explanation to give the American public. And in fact, everyone thought Saddam had WMD. Even Saddam thought he had WMD because he was being deceived by his scientists. He thought he had nukes."

"Further, the US did not anticipate Saddam’s follow-on war plan, which included full preparations for a guerrilla war, and the US did not – because of CIA failures compounded by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s intransigence – respond to that plan for three crucial months."

A Deal with Iran Made and Broken
"Since the US did not have enough forces to deal with the problem on the ground in Iraq, it turned to Iran, which had a lot of influence on Iraq’s Shiites. A deal was struck in which Iran kept the Shiites from rising up against the Sunnis and split them off from the jihadists. The US promised, 'In the end, we will leave you with a Shiite-dominated government.' For three years, that was our position: we were in alliance with Iran."

"And then, as the situation started to stabilize, the US 'double-crossed' Iran by backing Sunni demands in Fallujah and then by cutting a deal with Sunni elders to participate in the elections and distance themselves from the jihadists."

Iran and Nukes
"Becoming desperate as it saw its strategy of the past three years going down the drain, Iran decided it needed a strategy related to nuclear weapons for leverage against the US. Iran cannot accept a return to power of the Sunni former Baathists in Iraq, which is what the US is currently facilitating. Iran does not really seek nuclear weapons, and it knows it will not be permitted to get them, but it believes that going after them will assure American attention. Now the Iranians are pushing toward some unspecified line that would be a flash point for a crisis, trying to stay on the safe side of that line while waving their arms to convince the world they’re insane so the US will negotiate with them. The US does not want to attack Iran, so negotiations are likely."

"We could of course just give Iraq to the Iranians. What do we care who has Iraq? But the Saudis would go absolutely ballistic, because the Saudis are the mortal enemies of the Iranians."

"So it gets complicated and complicated. We want a compromise in Iraq; the Iranians want a compromise in Iraq. It’s tilted differently: we’re using as our nukes the Sunnis; they’re using as their nukes, nukes."

The US Politics of Iraq
"President Bush is unable to defend his complex strategy regarding Iraq in part because he started off with a simplistic explanation. The idea that we are fighting to bring democracy to Iraq, if by democracy you mean something like Minnesota, is kind of a whacked-out notion."

"In combination with his problems justifying his Iraq strategy, Bush almost lost his presidency after Katrina because his approval fell so low that it showed his own party was turning against him. An approval rating below 35% leads to a failed presidency. Although the President has recovered, he still faces significant challenges to his approval ratings on many fronts."

As Things Stand in Early 2006

• "Iraq is chaotic but contained: the malignant possibility of a complete breakdown into a total guerilla war against the US is gone."

• "Al Qaeda is a shattered organization: the intelligence for counteracting real terrorist threats is coming from Saudi Arabia."

• "Anti-Americanism does not translate into strategic terrorism. They hate us in the Islamic world . . . but terrorism is hard to do, and most of the trained ones are dead."

• "Iran is now a serious threat, but even the Iranian problem is containable."

• "Islam will be a problem, but not the central problem. The idea that our geopolitics will be defined ad infinitum by this 'clash of civilizations' is not true."

George Friedman, America's Domination in the 21st Century


George Friedman, Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 1


Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 2 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 3 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 4 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 5 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 6 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 7 (Video)

From Stratfor
The Next 100 Years Overture by George Friedman

Friedman on Geopolitics (Free Articles)

Burton and Stewart on Security (Free Articles)

Stratfor Video Center (Free)

FOCUS: The Sixties

"We stand today on the edge of a new frontier -- the frontier of the 1960s, a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats. The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises - it is a set of challenges." - John F. Kennedy

"All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner'." - John F Kennedy, speaking to the citizens of West Germany, June 26, 1963

"The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out." - Lance Morrow

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." - Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong, when taking
his first steps on the Moon, July 21, 1969

"It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...History is hard to know, because of all the tired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that...There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." - Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

"If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair." - Scott MacKenzie

"I still have trouble when I think about Chicago (68'). That week at the Convention changed everything I'd ever taken for granted about this country and my place in it... Everytime I tried to tell somebody what happened in Chicago I began crying, and it took me years to understand why...Chicago was the End of the Sixties, for me. The hippies, who had never really believed they were the wave of the future anyway, saw the election results as brutal confirmation of the futility of fighting the establishment on its own terms. The thrust is no longer for 'change' or 'progress' or revolution,' but merely to escape, to live on the far perimeter of a world that might have been. - Hunter S. Thompson

"He is the Willy Loman of Generation X, a traveling salesman who has the loyalty of a lizard with his tail broken off and the midnight taste of a man who'd double date with the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart." - Hunter S. Thompson, describing Bill Clinton in BBC News America

"For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part." - Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead

"The '60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great." - Abbie Hoffman

"People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas." - Bob Dylan

"The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens." - Camille Paglia

I Have a Dream, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


From FORA.tv
Don Lattin: The Harvard Psychedelic Club (Video)

From FORA.tv
Tom Brokaw, Boom! Voices of the Sixties (Video)

From FORA.tv
Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History (Video)

From Hillsdale College
Vietnam and the Rise of the New Left with Michael Medved (Video)

From The Commonwealth Club
On the Kennedy Years with David Talbot (Video)

From The Institute of Ideas
Radicalism Then and Now: The Legacy of 1968, Panel Discussion (Video)

From Grace Cathedral
Echoes of the 60s with Dr. Kathleen Frydl (Video)

From Hillsdale College
Lessons from the TET Offensive with Victor David Hanson (Video)

From C-SPAN
The Weather Underground with William Ayers and Don Strickland (Video)

ODDS & ENDS: Traveling, Ithaca, Dependency, Learning from Others, Getting Stated, Moving Along, Dreams, Colons, Simon Says, Rule of High School

Traveling
"I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train." - Tom Waits

"'Sherpa' means 'Easterner' in Tibetan; and the Sherpas who settled in Khambu about 450 years ago are a peace-loving Buddhist people from the Eastern shore of the plateau. They are also compulsive travelers; and in Sherpa-country every track is marked with cairns and prayer-flags, reminding you that Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot." - Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here?

Ithaca
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road’s a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You won’t find them on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty and a fine
emotion touches your spirit.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you won’t encounter them,
unless you carry them within your soul.

Pray that the road is long.
May there be many a summer morning, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to discover new things and to learn from scholars.

Always keep (your home in) Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to finally arrive at the island when you are old,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, filled with so much experience,
you will finally understand what an Ithaca means.
- Constantine Cavafy

"Every journey has a secret destination of which the traveler is not aware." - Martin Buber

"Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the Cloak of many Cares and the Slavery of Home, one feels once more Happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood. A journey, in fact, appeals to Imagination, to Memory, to Hope – the three Sister Graces of our moral being.” - Sir Richard Burton

"My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance - and I wanted to go for the same reason." - John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley

"Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they had believed they had." - James Hilton, Lost Horizon

"Your old home town's so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called 'Hold On'" - Tom Waits

On Dependency
"Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge." - Fritz Perls

On Learning from Others
"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

On Getting Started
"It's like making a movie: All sorts of accidental things will happen after you've set up the cameras. So you get lucky. Something will happen at the edge of the set and perhaps you start to go with that; you get some footage of that. You come into it accidentally. You set the story in motion, and as you're watching this thing begin, all these opportunities will show up." - Kurt
Vonnegut

On Moving Along
"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” - Anne Lamott

Sean Connery, A Narration of Ithaca


Randy Pausch, Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams


From Point Loma Nazarene University
An Evening with George Plimpton


From MiamiHerald.com
A Journey into My Colon . . . and Yours by Dave Barry

From the Daily Mail
A Letter to My Younger Self by Simon Cowell

From Seth Godin's Blog
The Rule of High School

FOCUS: The Universe

On the Known and Unknown Universe
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

"When the cartographers of the Middle Ages came to the end of the world as they knew it, they wrote: 'Beware: Dragons Lurk Beyond Here.'" - William Manchester, A World Lit Only By Fire

"The scientist, Roger Pemrose, was walking with some friends and talking animatedly. He fell silent only in order to cross the street. 'I remember that - as I was crossing the street - an incredible idea came to me,' Pemrose said. 'But, as soon as we reached the other side, we picked up where we left off, and I couldn't remember what I thought of just a few seconds earlier.' Late in the afternoon, Pemrose began to feel euphoric - without knowing why. 'I had the feeling that something had been revealed to me,' he said. He decided to go back over every minute of the day, and - when he remembered the moment when he was crossing the street - the idea came back to him. This time, he wrote it down. It was the theory of black holes, a revolutionary theory in modern physics. And it came back to him because Pemrose was able to recall the silence that we always fall into as we cross a street." - Paulo Coelho

"In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, Bell Lab scientists, were modifying a radio antenna so it could be used to receive signals from an early communications satellite. They tried to eliminate sources of background radio signals, but no matter what they did, they still heard residual static-like ‘noise.’ Their genius was to make the connection between the noise and new theories about big bang. They became the first people to hear the birth of the universe, winning Nobel prizes in the process." - Rick Harriman, Synectics Inc.

"A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'That fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'" - Stephen Crane

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy." - Albert Einstein

"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown." - Woody Allen

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook

"The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man." - Jack Handey

"If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle." - Dave Barry

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –
Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr., High Flight

The Known Universe



Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Pluto Files


From FORA TV
The Dance of the Universe: Are We Alone with Father George Coyne & Lynn Rothschild (Video)

From FORA TV
The Black Hole War with Leonard Susskind (Video)

From FORA TV
Death by Black Hole with Neil deGrasse Tyson (Video)

From FORA TV
Confessions of an Alien Hunter with Seth Shostak (Video)

From FORA TV
God and the Universe with Ian Morison (Video)

From The New York Times
Heaven and Nature by Russ Douthat

From NASA
Cosmology: The Study of the Universe (PDF)

MASTERMIND: Rick Warren

"I did a series of lectures for the faculty in the Kennedy School ... I started with this quote from Peter Drucker: 'The most significant sociological phenomenon of the first half of the 20th century was the rise of the corporation. The most significant sociological phenomenon of the second half of the 20th century has been the development of the large pastoral church - of the mega-church. It is the only organization that is actually working in our society.' Now Drucker has said that at least six times. I happen to know because he's my mentor. I've spent 20 years under his tutelage learning about leadership from him, and he's written it in two or three books, and he says he thinks it's [the mega-church] the only thing that really works in society." - Rick Warren

"A critical question for leaders is, 'When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?' The most dangerous traps for a leader are those near-successes where everybody says that if you just give it another big push it will go over the top. One tries it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third time. But, by then it should be obvious this will be very hard to do. So, I always advise my friend Rick Warren, 'Don't tell me what you're doing, Rick. Tell me what you stopped doing.'" - Peter Drucker, Forbes, November 19, 2004

"Lessons from business books never stick. Much better learning tools are novels, history books and biographies. For me, at least, these can really teach. Why? I suppose it's because when your imagination is engaged, when you dig the lessons out yourself and connect them to your own life, the learning goes much deeper. With that said, I give you the best book on entrepreneurship, business and investment that I've read in some time. It's not new and it's not a business book. It was written in 1995 and comes from the field of religion. It's titled The Purpose-Driven Church and was penned by Rick Warren. Warren - in 1980 and from scratch - launched Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. Under his leadership, the church has become the fastest-growing one in America. Weekends bring in an average of 15,000 worshipers. Saddleback has spawned dozens of so-called daughter churches throughout the country. Were it a business, Saddleback would be compared with Dell, Google or Starbucks. The Purpose-Driven Church has sold more than 1 million copies. Its sequel, The Purpose-Driven Life, has sold 12 million copies. Whatever you think about Warren or his religious beliefs, he has discerned a consumer need out there." - Rich Karlgaard, publisher, Forbes Magazine (Read the rest of the article here.)


Rick Warren, Big Think Interview
How Do You Organize a Mega-Church?


What Is a Purpose Driven Life?


Other Questions from the Big Think Interview (Video)

From TED
Rick Warren, A Life of Purpose (Video)

From The New Yorker
The Cellular Church: How Rick Warren Built His Ministry by Malcolm Gladwell

FOCUS: Great Questions

Some Thoughts on Questions
"A very powerful question may not have an answer at the moment it is asked. It will sit rattling in the mind for days or weeks as the person works on an answer. If the seed is planted, the answer will grow. Questions are alive." - Fran Peavey

"The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions." - Anthony Jay

"The answers you get depend upon the questions you ask." – Thomas Kuhn

"The first people had questions and they were free. The second people had answers and they became enslaved." - Wind Eagle, Native American Chief

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity." - Albert Einstein

"I'm much more interested these days in having debates about what the questions should be than I necessarily am about the solutions." - Tim Brown, IDEO CEO, The New York Times

"If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?" - Scott Adams

Some Questions
“Customer satisfaction is best measured by one simple question, 'How likely are you to recommend ____ to a friend?' - Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company

"If you weren't already in a business, would you enter it today? And if the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?" - Peter Drucker to Jack Welch, 1981

"Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?" - Steve Jobs

"Would you want your wife to pee in this place?” - Paco Underhill, Why We Buy

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'" - Douglas Adams

Scanning the Periphery
From a Masters Forum Presentation, Roch Parayre, DSI

• What have been our past blind spots?
• What is happening there now?
• Is there an instructive analogy from another industry?
• Who in your industry is skilled at picking up weak signals and acting on them ahead of competition?
• What important signals are you rationalizing away?
• What are your mavericks and authors saying?
• What are peripheral customers and competitors really thinking?
• What future surprises could hurt or help us?
• What emerging technologies could change the game?
• Is there an unthinkable scenario?
  

Questions of the Year
From TED Global 2009 by Chris Anderson

• What is an accomplished life?
• Which universe do we live in?
• Is life a mathematical equation?
• Where does motivation come from?
• Who's defining the new geopolitical map?
• How can we observe what we can't see?
• Can we design the air we breathe?
• What's the economic impact of terrorism?
• Should we fear faith?
• What makes big cities function?
• What do top-secret places look like?
• What's the true nature of modern crime?
• Can a solar-powered plane fly?
• What's the power of music?
• Can we put biodiversity in a bank?
• How does the brain create the mind?

Who Are We . . . Really?
From No Easy Victories by John Gardner

• What things are forgotten in the heat of battle?
• What values get pushed aside in the rough-and-tumble of everyday living?
• What are the goals we ought to be thinking about and never do?
• What are the facts we don’t like to face?
• What are the questions we lack the courage to ask?

Jack Welch, Q & A with Alex D'Arbeloff


From the Harvard Business School
Scanning for Threats and Opportunities by George S. Day & Paul J.H. Schoemaker

From Knowledge@Wharton
Vigilant vs. Operational Leaders (PDF)

From Bowling Green State University
A Lifetime List of Dialogue Questions by Walter Maner