Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

Some heavy reading.

Small motions of Civic Duty must be small. Show me the smallest observance a citizen may make. Measure from it the effort, implication, and value of reward. Combine these to interpretive metrics and play.

Plant your tongue firmly in cheek and compare across communities, then reinterpret the Police Blotter. The fact that we have them at all is pretty telling - Blotters that is. Their presence indicates "Humans Are Here." A kind of Syndrome, defined by a general rutting and bashing of various meats, minerals, and things that rot after a while anyway.

Anywhere enduring H.A.H.S. must be on guard night and day for the excessive mixing of disillusionment and Crossed H - the one from the beginning and the one from the end. Bad Crossed H can mean Home Trouble, and I certainly hope the marches planned in India are done with this in mind. The operative phrase is "gathering is not clotting even if it looks the same." Clot is monoculture bad. Gather isn't polyculture, but permaculture. Gathering in a time of hardship should be expected. It is a known process that should not be avoided by large masses of people out of fear or intimidation.

What is on trial here, anyway? The fact that disingenuous behavior exists or that we have placed the power of total communal ruin too deeply within institution? If your homeland is to be riven wouldn't it be nice to at least be party to the preamble? Waves that form out of nowhere to swamp sitting politicians simply don't form out of nowhere. That should be enough for honest citizens to refuse to be overthrown themselves by such a wave. Claiming the problem has been known long is proof that all assemblies must be peaceful - these are assemblies of people that are late to their own defense. May each act accordingly.

But we need institutions if we are to gather with regularity in any large numbers, so reforming the existing should trump burning down. It seems that the codification that allows institution is great for auditors because it can cut the most rambunctious out of sensitive positions. Those auditors had better be Tight to play that game. Rambunction goes feral and to seed soon after the heralds of disillusionment and clotting begin to sneer and ... clot. The poorly aimed cut of some past auditor, perhaps weeding out a few Public Servants that wouldn't abide corruption by which the Overseer profited, can lead directly to the filling of a People's Ark. The concept is simple. Illicit activity creates unnatural selection pressure, incorrectly denying placement to able bodied applicants who go on to form the opposition to the offenders. This is a real phenomena that can be observed when the marginalized yet able move to offer their skills to the Public Body.

It is not naturally to the good that these offended ones join their will if violence by action or reaction is accepted by them. The cumulative experience of corruption is not healed by the slaughtering of current targets. This knowledge can be expressed when families lock arms together and stand for simple justice. Do not leave the boys out to throw rocks at paper tiger bad guy. If the current targets were truly to blame you would see isolation in the criminal occurrence whether by M.O., location, or affiliation. The pattern reported in the Guardian does not indict the currently indicted. When a Public Servant goes bad you must deal with it sternly. When many Public Servants go bad you must treat them like children. Clearly it is a family problem. We know something about those in my country too.

With this in mind, is it too far for an Ally to encourage respectful public demonstration of the Indian people? Is this a step too far against the diplomatic expectation of International Relations. Could it be received as a show of faith in the core integrity of the Incumbents now turned Inquisitors?

This is the question I would send off in a bottle to the people now faced with widespread inquest. This is the sort of situation a bad ally exploits, so watch the U.S. very closely right now for her citizen's sake, my Indian friends. I like India, and I will like India more if She can help my country understand the respectful way to assist Her people.

How does a compassionate ally act at a time like this? Let's read about it in the newspapers.

"He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went."
- Matthew 21:29
        via The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, Thomas Jefferson

So the Anna Chapman dish continues to flower. Oddly, I found my heart-strings twanging out a solemn dirge as I read about Ms. Chapman's most recent public appearance. I can only wonder if her adoring audience didn't just watch their heroine have her heart torn out before the people of the Earth, the Universe, and Everything.

NY Times
AP via Google

Surely the strategists love the beautiful woman to be at repose with the image of the lion and the hue of international serenade. Surely the woman, now deemed muse of the political youth, would defy the rift of the stage to rise up singing with her people.

Is this salvation? Would Ms. Chapman, in trouble due to her long term application of Faith against odds in a shattering world, dare whisper to a single soul if she suddenly realized a misunderstanding from her earliest youth? What if it took the sight of the lion to know that it was not her lion brought, but again one with which she must bite her tongue, bind her heart, and persevere.

Even the possibility is horrific. We outsiders will likely never know without a time of signs and wonders what goes in the true hearts of our compatriots.

Ms. Chapman, wherever you are, a Blessed New Year to you. If you should read this, please pass on an American blessing to the Tiger as well. It isn't as if cursing a Tiger will chip fang or claw, though the Opposition now falling will wish otherwise. You should know better than I what to do with Bears, just make sure they are confident that Winter coats will grow thick each year and they will love you.

P.S. The best surprises are first rumors, then vapor, then true. Oh My!!!

Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.

Tonight my family has gathered. The eating is done. My nephews sang carols with the ladies, and when it was time for the men to join in we were as on-key as possible for a couple resentful former choirboys. Dishes are going into the sink. My sisters have settled in with their boys bundled in blankets to watch the Grinch, Frosty, and Santa.

Somewhere in rural Tennessee an ex-con uncle of mine has hopefully remembered to stock up on frozen meals so he doesn't have a repeat of last year, when he woke on Christmas morning to find that there was only one Hungry Man to split with his housemate and no stores open for miles.

Somewhere, every few minutes, a fellow American is checking to ensure that a certain Private is still in solitary Hell. Somewhere terrorists are plotting their revenge for crimes real and imagined. Somewhere, an African child is learning who and what America is and is all about. We can thank the private security forces and the American flags they fly at the refineries and pipelines for that. We will need to kill some of these children someday soon, and our politicians will tell us it is freedom the children hated, and that hatred is what made them take up arms. Our politicians are liars.

Tonight I have everything I need. Naturally, that is not enough anymore. I cannot heal the broken. I cannot heal the barrio. I cannot heal the wounds of life in a society of controlled neglect and premeditated ignorance that allows our industrial prison complex to thrive. Yet the words Ya Basta shall not cross these lips. It is time to finish the game.

Guilty or innocent, the form of our justice has failed the test of sanity. Our forms of discourse, appropriation, negotiation, and legislation have passed from flawed and of mortal vein to a type of perfection shared by all things that have been, and will not be again. Tonight I stand with the dispossessed and say to them - all you have seen in your American life will be thrown down and trod into the dust. The sins of our fathers are coming home.

I will not stop until the spirit of the Magna Carta is restored; the Constitution is observed; the lies of our modern history undone.

Merry Christmas if you roll that way. I'm thinking of you tonight.