(no subject)

I dreamed last night of finding a vacuum cleaner in the closet and vacuuming the apartment. I think this means it's time to spend some time cleaning.

I wish for peace. I wish for justice. I wish for human to human, heart to heart encounters. I wish for consensus to rise over democracy, for green to rise over steel, for water to rise over capitalism. I wish for life to be valued over money and corporate profit.

I wish for a lot of other things, too, but those happen to be high on my list today.

Heads-up to DC folks

It looks like I'll be jaunting down to Washington, DC the last weekend in April to meet up with my mom, who will be visiting friends. I'm not sure what my schedule will look like, but I hope to have time to see folks down there, even if just for lunch or dinner.

Better than Gallup?

Let us see

(no subject)

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary
to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very
thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why
would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when
the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one
piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in
Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany.
That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country
who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the
people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or
a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people
have some say in the matter through their elected representatives,
and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people
can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce
the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same way in any country."

The quote [...] does not appear in transcripts of the Nuremberg trials because although Goering spoke these words during the course of the proceedings, he did not offer them at his trial. His comments were made privately to Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. Gilbert kept a journal of his observations of the proceedings and his conversations with the prisoners, which he later published in the book Nuremberg Diary. The quote [...] was part of a conversation Gilbert held with a dejected Hermann Goering in his cell on the evening of 18 April 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day Easter recess.

--from http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm