Not See Evil In Cowtowne

Quality is the imprimatur which counts NOT the quantity of messages

2011-11-15T11:17:00.001-08:00

Please cease with the spam here. Because of this bulloney, these boards are in need of being dredged to prevent them from sinking into the swampy level of myspace.com Too much static versus value has transformed many of my lists into garbage.

The LinkedIn.com owner is now included within the Forbes.con list of 400 richest Americans. So he may not even care about quality these daze. Many subscribers here become appalled by the rampant nonsense postings. This deluge of your fake news has led to people terminating their enrollment with various daily lists of updates. Skimming these daily updates is NOT WORTHWHILE.

When 'members' come here... we are supposed to be appraised of legitimate events. Nobody has a need nor interest in regard to the daily blather about "shoelaces for my own personal profit." And few people at LinkedIn.com can stomach the bottom fishing of unqualified "career coaches" while these unemployed opportunists come here to go trolling for suckers. Sheesh!

Here is a proposed antidote for this vortex of the dregs. Each group which has an attraction to quality will become a closed group. Inclusion in the membership has prerequisites. Membership is revoked when some individuals become a nuisance. Quality is the imprimatur which counts. NOT the quantity of messages. Okay, everybody, is this a practical agenda?

cowtowne.blogspot.com and have a good day

We never think of us as being one of Them. We are always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. :)

a country of fat, lazy, selfish & ignorant consumers (APATHY)

2010-10-15T19:59:00.001-07:00

"apathy" is a term which comes from the Greek word "apathes," which means, "without feeling." Thus someone experiencing apathy towards a particular subject, in short, just doesn't care about that subject.

Apathy, or indifference, if you wish, has given rise to every evil in the world, regardless of how great or small. Let's look at some prime examples of apathy at work…
Apathy leads people to ignore the cries for help from Ms. Kitty Genovese as she is brutally murdered on a busy city street in 1964.

Apathy leads people to not care that the clothes on their back came from a sweat shop in Indonesia, or that the shoes on their feet were assembled by a 12 year old in Cambodia.
Apathy leads people to not care that the rich and the wealthy have utterly destroyed this country's industrial base, and turned us into a country of fat, lazy, selfish, and in all other words, ignorant consumers.

Apathy leads people to watch movies like "Food Inc," and see the disgraceful state of food production in this country, and then go out for McDonald's for dinner after the show.
Apathy leads people to ignore the fact that there are serious problems in the world such as rampant hunger and starvation, overpopulation, pollution, crime, war, disease, etc.

Apathy has given rise to the greatest failures of our time. The failure to do anything about climate change, which by the way, it is now too late to do anything substantiative. The failure to pass real, meaningful healthcare reform, like the kind much of Europe has had for over half a century already. The failure to understand the real, measurable damage being done by having a continued presence in the middle east, and around the globe as a world military superpower. The failure to accept blame as a nation for many of the present wrongs in the world.

A woman was murdered in front of dozens of witnesses on the streets of a busy city, and no one cared enough to intervene, but marching off to invade a country that has done nothing to our own is justified, because we THINK that they might have been planning SOMETHING to do with weapons of mass destruction.

A planet is crumbling in ruins with rampant disease, starvation, and overpopulation, and apparently, the only thing actually worth being worked up over is a poor 16 year old girl who wants an abortion because she was raped, or a husband who wants to turn off life support for his wife, who is in a vegetative state.

A widow is unable to pay her medical bills in what is supposed to be the "best country in the world," and peoples' views on the subject are, "Healthcare is not a right," and "I got mine, Jack! Fuck off and get your own!"

A hardworking family is being evicted from their house, because they unwittingly bought their house at the height of the housing bubble, and their politician's view of the issue is "people should be held responsible for their mistakes."

A rich man who earns a million dollars a year complains that his taxes might be raised to Clinton-Era levels, and doesn't bother to think to himself, "I'm making a million dollars a year. Some people will never make that in their lifetime." He uses his influence to persuade politicians to give him a tax break, and average Joes who work beneath him don't care. "He deserved his money" they shrug.

A president sits in his office, offering incentives (bribes) to businesses to hire more people, rather than forcing businesses to do so, and to tell those at the top of the corporate ladder to tighten their belts and do it for the good of the nation, and no one seems to care that he hasn't done this small, basic step, but rather, accuse him of doing TOO much.

An earthquake strikes a poor country, rendering it even poorer, and more desperate than before, and the most charitable thing people can think to do in this country is send over some solar powered bibles.
A massacre takes place on a daily basis in Darfur in Sudan, or in the Congo, and no one here in America seems to hear about it, much less care about it, or want to do anything about it. No, it's more important that our "brave men and women" are preoccupied in the Middle East, ensuring that our country has access to more planet-polluting oil. I mean- fighting for freedom. Yeah, that's it… freedom. The freedom to be just as fat, lazy, dumb and ignorant as we are. God knows those poor brown people in Johnny-Ay-Rab-Land need a KFC a.s.a.p.

An oil platform explodes and sinks, releasing millions of gallons of oil into an already polluted sea, and as the oil continues to gush out day after day, week after week, people care less and less, and change the channel to see how the Mets are doing this season.

Why? Because it didn't happen to them. This country would be outraged if a spill that size were to occur on land, but because it happened in Poseidon's realm and not ours, it's no biggie. Because YOU weren't the one being brutally murdered on the street, it's no big deal to see it happen to someone else. Because YOU have healthcare and haven't had any accidents so far, it's okay to not care that other people don't have healthcare, or even if you do care, you don't care very much. Because YOU aren't rich, and are dumb enough to think that you WILL be rich one day, it's okay to let rich people have everything they want. Because YOU aren't witnessing massive slaughter in your streets on a daily basis, it's okay to know that that sort of thing is happening far, far away, and you're in the comfort of your own McMansion subdivision in suburbia.

That's all apathy really is, when you get to the underlying point. Apathy towards a topic is the result of "well, it hasn't happened to me, so it doesn't matter."
A 23 year old college graduate sits on his computer, typing a reflection on apathy because he doesn't have a job, because a rich man somewhere decided that it was more important to cut budgets for social and recreational services, than raise taxes on his fellow rich men, and ensure that everyone gets a chance to work, and make a bit of money in life.

A 23 year old college graduate works as a substitute teacher once a week, and sees students in high school who know absolutely nothing about the world around them, and prefer to wallow in delusion and mindless optimism than express any real concern. That, and of course, real life is just so boring and uninteresting that why should anyone bother to learn about real, pressing issues? Smoking and watching a music video is far more important.

A 23 year old college graduate sits with his wife and the two of them ponder how people could possibly be so uncaring about their fellow man. About how people could possibly watch the world that <enables the continuation of their life -- become > raped of its resources, polluted to no end, and still expected to continue supporting us indefinitely. About how people could possibly be so… apathetic.

To quote a rather uninteresting movie starring Christian Bale, "People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy."
The only problem with that is that we HAVE dramatic examples that SHOULD shake us out of apathy, but they don't. < If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention >

So my question to you, the reader is this….
What is it going to take to get you involved in the game?
Another building blowing up?
Another oil spill?
Another school shooting?
An asteroid hitting the earth?

A virulent strain of disease that wipes out half the world's population?
What random, one-up scenario is going to be so over-the-top that it will get your attention and get you to march down the streets and demand, not just ask for, but really truly DEMAND (i.e. not go home until it's accomplished) real change in your government, in your economy, in the structure of your society, and in the world as a whole?

What is it going to take?

P.S: Holding up a picket sign doesn't seem to accomplish anything.

Red Leicester

Apathy

POSTED: 6:16 pm, October 15, 2010 COMMENT NOW!

http://blogs.alternet.org/liberalwacko/author/rusty-shackleford/

Re: RecruitCamp Experience

2010-02-11T15:52:00.001-08:00

Hola,
Location of the Camp for corpo Recruiters, por favor?
Yes, there is an allure to learning from Internet pioneers.
Yet, its a challenge to admire the signal/noise ratio.
I cannot respect the talent implementing 'confirms' and solicitations which lack
a succinct, well-crafted subject line, including dates and locations!

My advocacy here is efficiency, for saving the audience measurable time.
Any email, particularly the automated items, have an obligation
to encapsulate the agenda within the subject line.
That strategy imparts a high signal, low vagueness.
Per my opinion, that is the baseline for a professional communication.

For curious reasons, the email below forces a reader to click "register" ...
to simply acquire the location of the venue for the seminars.

Okay, thanks for listening.

PS: There are additional imperatives for web-onaughts.
Productive workers have no patience for slide shows. No tolerance for a
PCWorld.com ten-click plugola. Every Joe the Plumber jumps onto the wagon train
with home brew dis-services pertaining to some "the top ten."

Likewise, there is no thoughtful reason to supply content data within in an image file.
Those may be blocked by Outlook, for example, and by default within gmail.

Cloud.1 is my little pet buzzword, but that is a realm which already has matured into grade school.
Granted, we have minions of Luddites still hamstering along with legacy paradigms
and desktop-centric mail. Whee! That quaint stuff was deliberately, shrewdly,
excluded from the stillborn Windows 7.

Disclaimer: these opinions do not necessarily represent anything but a blog sermon.

--- original message ---
On 11 February 2010 12:55, M' at R'Blogs.com

Cookies for Global Domination

2009-11-22T12:20:00.001-08:00

The Firefox vs ie8 vs Chrome browser battle resolves to a monitoring of activity aka popularity and thus leverage for advertising which IS the monetization enabling the "free" internet. After extracting the noise, these signals are analogous to intercepting stock transactions on the way to the NYSE.

Google's Chrome browser avoids ant-agonize-ing the www Goliaths which despise Adblock, DTA, NoScript and .sol/LSO Cookie removal. Such tools cripple the metrics, tracking, content-ownership, page-views and intrinsic objectives of a free or paid experience at a domain. DMCA is only one toxic enemy of the libertarian thought that information/images "want to be free!" Global citizens in opposition to the false authority of the RIAA rebuke the travesties of Corpo lawyers suing grandmothers accused as "mass downloaders/mp3-pirateers."

'Soon' there may be an arms/techno race of Corpo versus ~harmless small fish where consumption products like manufactured news-articles, web content, movies and images would contain steganographic beacons similar to an RFID, or Zip-file Password. Meanwhile, the US blithely ignores a sober national security strategy of promoting education and development of the future generation of home grown engineers and technologists. Not all talent can be bought or offshored.

MSM is a veil for propaganda and fascism, the conjoining of Corpo and Govt interests. This week, a disempowered minority called smokers, became greater pariahs due to farcical connections between black market cigarettes and some droplets of funding to international terrorists. Empowered by RICO and Patriot Acts the Borg will proceed to deploy Chicken-Little pandering "against terrorism" to crush, deflate, deflect, taze or scrub and neuter the Outlanders. http://bit.ly/69kxnf http://bit.ly/4ntGqY WHEE!

Our lives shaped by those beliefs

2009-10-27T12:55:00.001-07:00

Beliefs and Reality (mid page at http://www.insightcourse.net/lessons/00a_course_foreword

The more coherently we believe something on all levels of consciousness, the more likely our lives will be shaped by those beliefs. The more deeply we know something to be true, the more likely we will see and experience the world in terms of that truth.

This however, does not necessarily mean that it will be true for others. Each person – through their interpretation of what happens to them throughout life – develops their own version of reality, which has varying amounts of overlap with what others believe to be reality. We may live in the same physical world, yet our beliefs about what is true and real, and our emotional experience of this world can be quite different.

Some individuals have a greater ability to influence the beliefs of those around them than others. Those who have a very strong, coherent energy field that is directed outwards generally appear dynamic and charismatic to others. They are thus more easily able to convince those around them of what they believe or know to be true. They are often considered to be great communicators and influential people. This does not necessarily mean, however, that they know "The Truth."

On the other hand, a more "shy" person or one who keeps their energy more contained or directed inward may have a level of knowingness just as strong as an outgoing charismatic person, but because of their shyness or inwardness, they are much less likely (or may not even want) to persuade others to believe as they do.

There is no ultimate right or wrong here. Whether we choose to direct our energy more outward or inward, each of us is doing what we believe to be right in each moment.

Yet the more transparent we are to ourselves and to the world around us, the more consciously we can make choices. And the more fluid we are in expanding our intelligence and beliefs, the more powerfully we can adapt to and make good use of the changes that occur in our lives and world.

.../...

It is our emotional attachment to certain beliefs
that limits us and keeps us from seeing greater realities.

73 Competency (Behaviorial) Questions [run Away!]

2008-10-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

73 Competency-Based Interview Qs

Answer Behavioral Questions in Your Job Interview

August 22, 2008 — sk
http://interviewandquestions.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/answer-behavioral-questions-in-your-job-interview/

Many employers are now doing “behavioral interviews”. Rather than focusing on your resume and reviewing your accomplishments as you have written them on paper, the “behavioral” interviewer will ask you open-ended questions that will cause you to describe real circumstances and your responses to them.

General answers about behavior are not what the employer is looking for. You must describe in detail a particular event, project, or experience and you dealt with the situation, and what the outcome was. The premise behind behavioral interviewing is that the most accurate predictor of future performance is past performance in similar situations.

What is Behavioral interviewing:

Behavioral interviewing is a technique used by employers in which the questions asked assist the employer in making predictions about a potential employee’s future success based on actual past behaviors, instead of based on responses to hypothetical questions.
In behavior-based interviews, you are asked to give specific examples of when you demonstrated particular behaviors or skills.
General answers about behavior are not what the employer is looking for. You must describe in detail a particular event, project, or experience and you dealt with the situation, and what the outcome was.

Although it will be more difficult to prepare concrete answers in advance to these interviews (as opposed to traditional ones), you can and should take some time to review your understanding of yourself, your past successes and concrete examples of your accomplishments. Work on honesty, sincerity and candidness. When you start to tell a behavioral story, the interviewer may try to sort out the details by understanding your behaviors.

The interviewer will probe for more depth, detail or understanding with questions like: “What were you thinking at that point?” or “Tell me more about what you discussed with that person.”

If you’ve told a story that’s anything but totally honest, your response will not hold up through these probes.

If you have a spouse or friend that can pose as an interviewer for you, it can be helpful for you to practice answering open-ended questions, such as the following. Have your friend probe further:

Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.
Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills.
Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
Give me an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or achieve it.
Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.
Give me a specific example of a time when you had to conform to a policy with which you did not agree.
Please discuss an important written document you were required to complete.
Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done.
Tell me about a time when you had too many things to do and you were required to prioritize your tasks.
Give me an example of a time when you had to make a split second decision.
What is your typical way of dealing with conflict? Give me an example.
Tell me about a time you were able to successfully deal with another person even when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa).
Tell me about a difficult decision you’ve made in the last year.
Give me an example of a time when something you tried to accomplish and failed.
Give me an example of when you showed initiative and took the lead.
Tell me about a recent situation in which you had to deal with a very upset customer or co-worker.
Give me an example of a time when you motivated others.
Tell me about a time when you delegated a project effectively.
Give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a problem.
Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem.
Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures.
Tell me about a time when you were forced to make an unpopular decision.
Please tell me about a time you had to fire a friend.
Describe a time when you set your sights too high (or too low).
Tell me about a time that you demonstrated initiative?
Describe a situation when have you motivated yourself to complete an assignment or task that you did not want to do?
Think about a difficult boss, professor or other person. What made him or her difficult? How did you successfully interact with this person?
Think about a complex project or assignment that you have been assigned. What approach did you take to complete it?
Tell me about the riskiest decision that you have made. What were your considerations in making that particular decision.
Can you tell me about an occasion where you needed to work with a group to get a job done? What were the challenges and difficulties and how did you face these?
Describe a situation when you or a group that you were a part of were in danger of missing a deadline. What did you do?
Tell me about a time when you worked with a person who did things very differently from you. How did you get the job done? Would you work with that person again if given the choice?
Describe your three greatest accomplishments to date.
Tell me about a situation when you had to learn something new in a short time. How did you proceed?
Can you tell me about a complex problem that you solved? Describe the process you utilized.
Give me an example of a time when you had to make a split second decision.
Give me an example of a bad decision that you made and what you learned from that mistake?
Tell me about a time when something you tried to accomplish and failed. What did you learn from that failure?
Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem. What did you learn from that mistake?
Tell me about a challenge that you successfully met.
Describe a situation when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done.
Please tell me about one or two unpopular decisions you have made. What were the positive and negative outcomes of those decisions?
What leadership positions have you held? Describe your leadership style. What aspects of your leadership style have you changed or deleted once you learned that these aspects were not successful?
Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
Summarize a situation where you successfully persuaded others to do something or to see your point of view. Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.
Give an example of when your persistence had the biggest payoff.
How have you most constructively dealt with disappointment and turned it into a learning experience? Please give me a concrete example in your life.
Tell me of a time when you had to conform to a policy with which you did not agree.
Describe a situation in which you effectively developed a solution to a problem by combining different perspectives or approaches.
Describe a time when you were faced with problems or stresses at work that tested your coping skills. What did you do?
Give an example of a time when you had to be relatively quick in coming to a decision.
Give me an example of an important goal you had to set and tell me about your progress in reaching that goal.
Describe the most creative work-related project you have completed.
Give me an example of a problem you faced on the job, and tell me how you solved it.
Tell me about a situation in the past year in which you had to deal with a very upset customer or co-worker.
Give me an example of when you had to show good leadership.

Behavioral Interview questions to test analysis skills:

Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
Give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a problem.
Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures.
What steps do you usually follow to study a problem before making a decision?

Behavioral Interview questions to test leadership skills:

Give an example of your ability to build motivation in your co-workers, classmates or a volunteer committee
What is the toughest group that you’ve had to get cooperation from? Describe how you handled it. What was the outcome?

Behavioral Interview questions to test communication skills:

Describe the most significant written document, report or presentation that you had to complete.
Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.

Technical or professional skills:

As a customer service representative, tell me about a time when you have to deal with angry customers.
As an accountant, give me an example of a time when you came across questionable accounting practices. How did you handle the situation?

Teamwork:

Describe a situation where your colleagues disagreed with your ideas. What did you do?
Tell me about a time when a colleague was not doing his share of work. What did you do?
Describe a situation in which you found your supervisor’s idea was not correct, what action did you take?

Planning and Organization:

Give an example of what you’ve done when your project plan was interrupted by unforeseen circumstances.
Describe a time when you had many projects due at the same time. What steps did you take to get them all done?

Motivation:

Give examples of your experiences in a job that were satisfying. Give examples of your experiences that were dissatisfying.
Describe a situation when you were able to have a positive influence on the actions of others.

A Bad Bank Rescue ( Mallaby of CFR @WaPo)

2008-09-21T19:00:00.000-07:00

A Bad Bank Rescue (Honest Sense from CFR's Mallaby)

By Sebastian Mallaby (FYI - his BIO and writings at CFR: http://www.cfr.org/bios/4452/ )

Sunday, September 21, 2008; Page B07 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/20/AR2008092001059.html

With truly extraordinary speed, opinion has swung behind the radical idea that the government should commit hundreds of billions in taxpayer money to purchasing dud loans from banks that aren't actually insolvent. As recently as a week ago, no public official had even mentioned this option. Now the Treasury, the Fed and congressional leaders are promising its enactment within days. The scheme has gone from invisibility to inevitability in the blink of an eye. This is extremely dangerous.

The plan is being marketed under false pretenses. Supporters have invoked the shining success of the Resolution Trust Corporation as justification and precedent. But the RTC, which was created in 1989 to clean up the wreckage of the savings-and-loan crisis, bears little resemblance to what is being contemplated now. The RTC collected and eventually sold off loans made by thrifts that had gone bust. The administration proposes to buy up bad loans before the lenders go bust. This difference raises several questions.

The first is whether the bailout is necessary. In 1989, there was no choice. The federal government insured the thrifts, so when they failed, the feds were left holding their loans; the RTC's job was simply to get rid of them. But in buying bad loans before banks fail, the Bush administration would be signing up for a financial war of choice. It would spend billions of dollars on the theory that preemption will avert the mass destruction of banks. There are cheaper ways to stabilize the system.

In the 1980s, the government did not need a strategy to decide which bad loans to take over; it dealt with anything that fell into its lap as a result of a thrift bankruptcy. But under the current proposal, the government would go out and shop for bad loans. These come in all shapes and sizes, so the government would have to judge what type of loans it wants. They are illiquid, so it's hard to know how to value them. Bad loans are weighing down the financial system precisely because private-sector experts can't determine their worth. The government would have no better handle on the problem.

In practice this means the government would make subjective choices about which bad loans to buy, and it would pay more than fair value. Billions in taxpayer money would be transferred to the shareholders and creditors of banks, and the banks from which the government bought most loans would be subsidized more than their rivals. If the government bought the most from the sickest institutions, it would be slowing the healthy process in which strong players buy up the weak, delaying an eventual recovery. The haggling over which banks got to unload the most would drag on for months. So the hope that this "systematic" plan can be a near-term substitute for ad hoc AIG-style bailouts is illusory.

Within hours of the Treasury announcement Friday, economists had proposed preferable alternatives. Their core insight is that it is better to boost the banking system by increasing its capital than by reducing its loans. Given a fatter capital cushion, banks would have time to dispose of the bad loans in an orderly fashion. Taxpayers would be spared the experience of wandering into a bad-loan bazaar and being ripped off by every merchant.

Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago suggest ways to force the banks to raise capital without tapping the taxpayers. First, the government should tell banks to cancel all dividend payments. Banks don't do that on their own because it would signal weakness; if everyone knows the dividend has been canceled because of a government rule, the signaling issue would be removed. Second, the government should tell all healthy banks to issue new equity. Again, banks resist doing this because they don't want to signal weakness and they don't want to dilute existing shareholders. A government order could cut through these obstacles.

Meanwhile, Charles Calomiris of Columbia University and Douglas Elmendorf of the Brookings Institution have offered versions of another idea. The government should help not by buying banks' bad loans but by buying equity stakes in the banks themselves. Whereas it's horribly complicated to value bad loans, banks have share prices you can look up in seconds, so government could inject capital into banks quickly and at a fair level. The share prices of banks that recovered would rise, compensating taxpayers for losses on their stakes in the banks that eventually went under.

Congress and the administration may not like the sound of these ideas. Taking bad loans off the shoulders of the banks seems like a merciful rescue; ordering banks to raise capital or buying equity stakes in them sounds like big-government meddling. But we are in the midst of a crisis, and it shouldn't matter how things sound. The Treasury plan outlined on Friday involves vast risks to taxpayers, huge complexity and no guarantee of success. There are better ways forward. smallaby@cfr.org

mothers tribute priceless art collection

2008-05-12T08:27:00.001-07:00

made me feel: grateful, blessed, fortunate... [what's often taken for granted]

This is for the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in
their arms, wiping up barf laced with Oscar Mayer wieners and cherry
Kool-Aid saying, "It's okay honey, Mommy's here."

Who have sat in rocking chairs for hours on end soothing crying babies
who can't be comforted. This is for all the mothers who show up at work
with spit-up in their hair, milk stains on their blouses or diapers in
their purse.

For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes, and all the mothers who DON'T.

This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see, and the mothers who took those babies and gave them homes.

This is for the mothers whose priceless art collection are hanging on
their refrigerator doors...and for all the mothers who froze their buns
on metal bleachers at football or soccer games instead of watching from
the warmth of their cars, so that when their kids asked, "Did you see
me, Mom?" they could say, "Of course, I wouldn't have missed it for the
world," and mean it.
This is for all the mothers who yelled at their kids in the grocery
store when they stomped their feet and screamed for ice cream before
dinner--and for all the mothers who counted to ten instead, but realize
how child abuse happens.

This is for all the mothers who sat down with their children and
explained all about making babies--and for all the (grand) mothers who
wanted to, but just couldn't find the words.

This is for all the mothers who go hungry, so their children can eat.
For all the mothers who read "Goodnight, Moon" twice a night for a
year--and then read it again "Just one more time."

This is for all the mothers who taught their children to tie their
shoelaces before they started school, and for all the mothers who opted
for Velcro instead.

This is for all the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their
daughters to sink a jump shot. This is for every mother whose head
turns automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even
though they know their own offspring are at home -- or even away at
college.

This is for all the mothers who sent their kids to school with stomach
aches, assuring them they'd be just FINE once they got there, only to
get calls from the school nurse an hour later asking them to please
pick them up. Right away.

This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, who can't find the
words to reach them. For all the mothers who bite their lips until they
bleed when their 14 year olds dye their hair green.

For all the mothers of the victims of recent school shootings, and the
mothers of those who did the shooting. For the mothers of the
survivors, and the mothers who sat in front of their TVs in horror,
hugging their child who just came home from school, safely.

This is for all the mothers who taught their children to be peaceful, and now pray they come home safely from a war.

What makes a good Mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? Broad
hips? The ability to nurse a baby, cook dinner, and sew a button on a
shirt, all at the same time? Or is it in her heart?

Is it the ache you feel when you watch your son or daughter disappear
down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time? The
jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib at 2 A.M. to
put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby?

The panic, years later, that comes again at 2 A.M. when you just want
to hear their key in the door and know they are safe again in your
home?

Or the need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you
hear news of a fire, a car accident, a child dying? The emotions of
motherhood are universal and so our thoughts are for young mothers
stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation...and mature
mothers learning to let go.

For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers, single mothers and
married mothers. Mothers with money, mothers without. This is for you
all -- for all of us.

Hang in there. In the end we can only do the best we can. Tell them every day that we love them. And pray for them.

Please pass along to all the Moms in your life.

"Home is what catches you when you fall - and we all fall."

Bonus Wisdom Thoughts 2B GREAT 2008

2008-01-04T07:49:00.001-08:00

I truly wish you the best of health, happiness, and serenity (peace of mind)
and to keep it GREAT in 2008!

some wisdom thoughts:
1. To have a purpose is the greatest gift of life.
2. If you start something---finish it.
3. Before you act, think about what effect your actions will have on others.
4. More important than seeing the future is knowing the present.
5. It is often the small actions of our daily lives that, over time, have the greatest influence on the world.
6. Those who spend their time worrying about what people think of them wouldn't worry if they knew how rarely other people think of them.
7. The easiest person to decieve is yourself.
8. To your own self be true.
9. If you don't accept defeat you cannot be defeated.
10. If you fall seven times stand up eight.
11. It is a great gift to know when to remain silent.
12. Who are we if the thoughts we think are someone else's.
13. A closed mind is infinitely more difficult to open than a closed door.
14. A crowd is the loneliest place to be.
15. It would be impossible to alter our life without first altering our thinking.
16. It is wiser to concentrate on the effort, not the outcome.
17. Anyone is entitled to have their opinion of you, but do not take it to heart. It is your own opinion of yourself that matters.
18. Life is not a matter of chance, its a matter of choice.
19. If you have one aim in life, let it be to fulfill your potential.
20. It is far wiser to know than to be known.

oops, four more (two-twelves) from my favorites bin:
The mind makes a good servant but a poor master.
You cannot change someone else, but you can influence them.
If you fail to PLAN then you plan to FAIL.

Thank God for Waking up today with a Heartbeat!

Have a Great Day / from J. Kenneth Cowtowne ( Moo! )

Facebook, Farts & Bowing to Censors Here & There & Everywhere

2008-01-04T06:15:00.000-08:00

Hello - AFAIR its kosher to post this here - the sly tech/cultural/business buffet -
from my favorite ( sorry /. ) daily read, Silicon Valley's GMSV from McKlatchy - the only news
service brave enough to report so much honest news that they .... [go learn yourself]

	http://www.siliconvalley.com/gmsvnewsletter Good Morning Silicon Valley Article Launched: 01/03/2008 By JOHN MURRELL .../... YouTube doesn't operate under a Chinese license, but the government has shown it has only to pull a lever or two to cut off access to selected outside connections (see "Remember, bowing is just another word for bending over"). And that remains the bigger point. However rich their visions and noble their intentions, companies making commitments in China simply cannot be sure that the rules won't change overnight, and change in a way that forces a new set of compromises. [story shifted to bottom]
	Q U O T E D "It's a bit like breaking wind in the elevator. Everyone suffers." -- Peter Martin of the University of Utah's Traffic Lab, author of a new study showing how drivers distracted by cell phone conversations (hands-free or not) clog up the road.
	Face plant -- data portability and Scoble's slapstick scrape: There's an important issue at the core of today's brouhaha between high-profile blogger Robert Scoble and Facebook, but the advocates of data portability may want to wait for a better case to use in pressing their point. Scoble, who proudly amassed the social site's maximum 5,000 "friends," was interested in seeing how much overlap there was between that mob and the people on his Plaxo contact management list. Facebook, like other social sites, has a vested interest in keeping you in the fold and so does not make it easy for a user to extract contact information. So Plaxo invited Scoble to alpha-test an upcoming feature for its Pulse social sharing service -- a robot script that can grab specified data fields from your Facebook friends' profiles and export them. Next thing you know, Scoble gets a form letter telling he's been tossed off Facebook for violating the terms of service and all traces of his presence have been excised from the site. As the folks at DataPortability.com will be happy to explain, there is a crying need for some open and standardized format to allow social Web users to manage and move their data around. But before we get to that, it's necessary to sort out exactly what data is whose. The data you enter yourself? That sounds like yours. The data that your "friends" enter about themselves? Well, they've shared it with you, but is it yours to export? And since you've entered into an agreement with Facebook to voluntarily add information to Facebook's database, does the company have some kind of claim as well, (not to mention some obligation to prevent one of your "friends" from exporting your contact information without letting you know)? Unfortunately, the present case is too muddled to offer any clarity. Plaxo's approach went beyond using the Facebook-supplied application interfaces in order to grab e-mail addresses, presented as an image in Facebook profiles to prevent massive harvesting for spam purposes. Plaxo employed some graphical scraping and optical character recognition to get around that, and Facebook can't have that sort of third-party programming gumming up its system. As Michael Arrington reports, the Plaxo folks knew they were playing with fire and went ahead anyway. As for Scoble, he violated terms of service he may not agree with but which have some legitimate purpose. He got caught and he got booted, and now, after promising to be good, he's back in. Such is life on the edge.. Comment on this post And if you could snap a few updates for Google Earth on the way, that'd be great: Ever since word emerged that the Google guys had cut a $2.6 million deal with NASA to base their private air force at conveniently located and uncrowded Moffett Field (see "And wait till we pay the state to add the gLane to 101"), cynics have wondered just what the public gets out of the bargain. There was some vague talk about research cooperation and putting scientific instruments aboard the four aircraft -- a Boeing 767, a Boeing 757 and a pair of Gulfstreams -- but it still looked to some like Google had just bought its way into a sweet parking spot. This afternoon, however, one of those Gulfstreams will take a handful of NASA scientists and their instruments on a 10-hour trip to the Arctic and back to observe what is expected to be a particularly bright Quadrantid meteor shower. Sergey and Larry are said to be especially interested in the data on burnout rates. Comment on this post Off topic: The winners in the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest for 2007 and the Materials Research Society's Science as Art competition (exploding nanowires!). Comment on this post
	Good Morning Silicon Valley Article Launched: 01/03/2008 02:44:15 PM PST China squeezes the tubes a little tighter By JOHN MURRELL Some big tech companies have a lot at stake in trying to extend into China and help integrate that country into the rest of the digital world, and they can argue eloquently that the benefits of their involvement outweigh the accommodations they must make to operate in a totalitarian state. Trouble is, China keeps making those justifications harder and harder. In a development sure to be of interest to Google's YouTube, the Chinese government announced today that as of Jan. 31, it will restrict the broadcast of online videos to sites owned or controlled by the state. Such sites wishing to display or allow uploads of video content can apply for a permit and must monitor the content for material that reveals national secrets, hurts the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promotes pornography. According to the rules, "Those who provide Internet video services should insist on serving the people, serve socialism ... and abide by the moral code of socialism." Those in the line of fire are trying to figure out the implications. According to the Wall Street Journal, most of China's popular video sites are privately run, and while some, like Tudou.com, are optimistically viewing the regulations as a needed clarification, Duncan Clark, chairman of advisory firm BDA (China) Ltd., said, "This directive, if implemented, would be bad news for the streaming sites. ... It's clearly a question of control of information, with political content being the No. 1 concern." The situation is even less clear for companies like YouTube, whose servers are outside of China (as opposed to those of Google's Chinese search engine, which complies with government censorship). YouTube doesn't operate under a Chinese license, but the government has shown it has only to pull a lever or two to cut off access to selected outside connections (see "Remember, bowing is just another word for bending over"). And that remains the bigger point. However rich their visions and noble their intentions, companies making commitments in China simply cannot be sure that the rules won't change overnight, and change in a way that forces a new set of compromises. Comment on this post http://www.siliconvalley.com/gmsvnewsletter [no default date indexed there yet, ooops]
	Hey, this blends with yesterday's manifesto. Fair Use Unnoticed: nobody comes here anyway and I've provided full attribution, plus I love their output and have raved about it to many friends, colleagues and even "enemies"! Ciao, Comrades, from Kenneth Cowtowne

SocNet Paradigm v01

2008-01-02T13:28:00.000-08:00

SocNet v01
Hey -- Social Networking (and bulloney like Secondlife.com, myspace.com) have overtaken many people's "real" lives. An effective paradigm for each site is my objective shared here.

LinkedIn.com is not for fluffy remarks or aliases. Corporate folk focus on what your background is and the potential application of talents and contacts towards a mission. Initially I assimilated a network with ~zero effort via 'LION' Open-Networking. An obligation of that membership cost me loads of time clicking-through the duty of approval of that evangelizing, self-designated, and savvy In-Crowd.   Not being a recruiter, nor adding my employment history and the potential thousands of fancy alumni/colleagues, I have yet to experience the true value of this tool.   Yes I currently cultivate only contacts that I've met in person or with backgrounds which surpass thresholds of quality which I can evaluate best within my own genres.

I'd recommend to everyone MeetUp.com, it is entirely social, and positive or goofy comments are pervasive. During my 3.5 years there I barely added any groups, until SEP07. Joining the best clubs in Orange County, as per my affinities, was vital for insight to the social topography, because I am evaluating jobs in Los Angeles. Sometimes I'll add "a friend" because of a pithy quote or their fascinating membership list. So my list's constituents serve as a clue/shortcut to the realm of the best clubs in disparate locales. In weaker moments I'll add a friend because they have a striking passion, a remarkable load of 'shouts' or their shown image is traditionally attractive, perhaps not even to my own preferences.
One's friend-list is public data at all these sites, but MeetUp uniquely identifies those contacts as "Mutual" when it is bilateral. There seems to be no particular stigma for self-nominated friends, although some members do shun that practice. Meetup also has a unique "Pledges" feature which I contend should be public data about one's commitment to the joined clubs/groups.

Going.com has divergent clientèle and usefulness in its five megalopolis cities.   My limited expertise here was gleaned in AUG07, and bacchanalia seemed to dominate the Chicago flavor due to shrewd party and nightclub PR agents. Going -BOS seems weighted more healthily towards cultural opportunities, although oenophiles (few vinters & even fewer fans-of Yoko) are still abundant. I've promoted the goals of this site to friends, and felt well-acquainted with the NYC, Chicago and Boston membership. The surface credentials of the BOS members are significantly more business appropriate than in the other cities, yet YMMV. Adding anyone interesting as a friend seems kosher, but the utility of such is moot at all of the sites. It seems that I do get broadcasts of items from my friends/contacts. After some R&D a clarification will be appended to this dubious documentation.

MySpace.com has bizarre overlapping constituencies and potential. Quite Left-heavy with California folks, teens, ribald humor, musician- and venue-promotion. Clicking-through on beautiful pictures can overwhelm the Firefox browser and quickly demolish my vestigial 1GB RAM at ~300 tabs - even with javascript always off for userplane, etc.   My sole agenda at myspace or at a lovable social blogging site like mindsay.com is for
political "education" of the comatose and heinously undiscerning.   Of course, talking to brickheads is almost pointless, like melting a glacier, their eyes glaze over and it is exactly like you've met one of the pod people from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."   I cultivate relationships with the wisest folks from all dimensions yet pursue (virtual?) friendship with those with the least damaging prejudices and/or open to antidotes for our cultural toxicity - the second hand smoke that's killing the entire planet.

Ciao for now from your comrade, Cowtowne

PS: perhaps someday this ephemeral coverage will include
some fascinating specialty sites like Tribe.com, Facebook, Orkut, and the amazing
Del.icio.us and Care2.com ;
indeed, some potential commentary on eHarmony, AmericanSingles,
SinglesNet, Match, LoveHappens, YahooPersonals "and more!"

Jim SFO Mill Valley backyard

2007-12-31T12:32:00.000-08:00

insomnia's toll taken... but QT-Pro "export" to web more tolerable viewing after the youtube re-compression; colors still screwed up - as in USian life... moohead & Angelita १.08min Ciao

cowtowne churches1

2007-12-25T06:23:00.000-08:00

2007-10-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

110+ Senior Military, Intelligence Service, Law Enforcement, and Government Officials

240+ Engineers and Architects

60+ Pilots and Aviation Professionals

160+ Professors Question 9/11

190+ 9/11 Survivors and Family Members

100+ Entertainment and Media Professionals

Hatred of "OTHER" Is Fascism "Thought They Were Free" by Milton Mayer

2004-09-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

	They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer How and why "decent men" became Nazis. Written by an American journalist of German\Jewish descent. Mr. Mayer provides a fascinating window into the lives, thoughts and emotions of a people caught up in the rush of the Nazi movement. It is a book that should make people pause and think -- not only about the Germans, but also about themselves. ------- === ------- === ------- The discrepancy between the kind of society many Germans thought they were building and the reality of the horror of the Third Reich presents one of the most intriguing questions of our age. "How could it -- the Holocaust -- have happened in a modern, industrialized, educated nation ? The genesis of my interest in the Third Reich lies in my search for an answer to that enigmatic question. The excerpt reproduced below is one of the most insightful I have yet discovered. I share it with you - Pass it on - Lest we forget. RCD - Web Host @ http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html Special Note February, 2003 Anyone concerned about war in Iraq should follow this link and ponder the concerns of free men in an earlier era of danger. ==> TIME Magazine 1933 MAN OF THE YEAR Cover Story: Adolf Hilter http://www.thirdreich.net/AH_Man_of_Year.html
	But Then It Was Too Late by Milton Mayer http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html "What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after1933,between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing. What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it. "This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. "You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the universe was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was "expected to" participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time." "Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. "One had no time to think. There was so much going on." "Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your "little men", your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think? "To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head. "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice - "Resist the beginnings" and "consider the end." But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn't, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might. "Your "little men," your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something - but then it was too late." "Yes," I said. "You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. "Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, "everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to you colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist." "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have. "But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to � to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait. "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked � if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in "43" had come immediately after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in "33". But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. "And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying "Jew swine," collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in � your nation, your people � is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way. "You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined. "Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done ( for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. "What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or "adjust" your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know." I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say. "I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn't an anti-Nazi. He was just � a judge. In "42" or "43", early "43", I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an "Aryan" woman. This was "race injury", something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case a bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a "nonracial" offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party "processing" which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the "nonracial" charge, in the judge's opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom. " "And the judge?" "Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience � a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That's how I heard about it.) After the "44" Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don't know." I said nothing. "Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was "defeatism." You assumed that there were lists of those who would be "dealt with" later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a "victory orgy" to "take care of" those who thought that their "treasonable attitude" had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty. "Once the war began, the government could do anything "necessary" to win it; so it was with the "final solution" of the Jewish problem, which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its "necessities" gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it." (loads of more sobering, prescient & omnipresent facts at: ) http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html by Milton Mayer