dadwok: Global CogniMaps aka Links-shower 07jul03-09

I was looking forward to continue my last LinkShower rant against the ERQ but, as the famous Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz has said - not in English, of course, in which it is hard, in these days of sound-bites, to come by such things - in an immortalizing line -

"In these times, my love, there are more sorrows than (those induced by) Love"

One such, of course, is a country whose map seems to have been drawn up in a corproate board-room:

This square, here gentlemen, is "Dakota", that one is, as you know, "Oregon".

This rectangle here is "Tennesse". And the one over there is "Minnesota".

Shall we now so resolve, so that the chairman can hit the gavel and we can all bivoac into the hospitality hour?...

Any hands against? None. Okay, so resolved.

The Next item on the agenda is...

I interpret what a prominent fund manager recently said to the Global Economics Correspondent for International Herald Tribune, Daniel Altman, to mean that democracy -as practiced in the U S. of A. - is an ineffective fiction, a bit of window-dressing that was meant to fool every one.

Take a listen

and tell me if you disagree.

I was, however, not surprised by that fund-manager's observation.

Years ago, Gore Vidal had quoted Richard Nixon, no less, to say more or less the same thing to listeners of a BBC Agenda program; and I quote from the transcript:

[GORE VIDAL - Richard M. Nixon - a wise as well as wicked man - said: 'The United States doesn't need a President domestically, because things run themselves. It needs one for foreign affairs'. Well, everybody misunderstood him. They thought he didn't like people, and so on - didn't want to do anything for them. He was being realistic. What he was saying was: corporate America owns the United States and it runs it, and the President is irrelevant. He's needed for foreign affairs, so he can bomb aspirin factories in the Sudan.]

And years before the Vidal interview - in one of his weekly Letter From America - the late Alistair Cooke told me that, during the weeks and weeks of deliberations that led to the final draft of the U S constitution, the word 'democracy was used but once. In pejoration.

So, now. You have the people of the U S. of A. captive to the government of the U S. of A., which, in turn, is captive to the Most Nefarious Conspiracies, aka multi-national corporations.

In our D.A.D. jargon, these MNCs are called Grunch - Google up the word if you must.

Grunch is an acronym coined by the late R Buckminster Fuller for his last book, Grunch of Giants. It is a collective noun, as in a 'pod of whales', or a 'pride of lions'.

It expands as "Gross Universal Cash Heist".

Today, you can think of it as an acronym for

Global Runaway Unconcern Neglecting Climate Harm.

Everytime the United States prepares for a Presidential election, I begin to shiver and quake.

"Which country(ies) will pay the price in blood so this guy/gal can have a good time for a few years?", a voice asks.

There was once a time when citizens of that country could stand in front of the White House and ask, "Hey, hey LBJ! How many babies did you kill today?"

It did prevent that Viet Nam 'stetson hat' from Texas from seeking a second term.

Now, when you tote up the Dad+Son Bush tenures, these other 'non-stetson' Texans have had three and a half terms.

No one stood up outside the White House to ask them about their collateral infanticide in distant lands.

And the people in the U. S. of A. claim they are an 'advanced' nation!

Advanced in what? In brutality?

Overtly, their government appears to me like that boy who uses his penknife to tear up the coccoon so the butterfly of democracy and free market will come out of Bosnia, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, N. Korea, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela - wherever - ready to fly in gratitude.... It doesn't matter if the Saudi and Pakistani non-democratic coccons are left untouched. They supposedly serve a higher purpose. - one of having double standards?

Covertly, the chicanery of Baker, Cheney and his ilk is best left to yellow journalism.

Compare the time when Lynden Baynes Johnson couldn't come out of the White house - because of the protest - with the present occupier who blithely uses "Executive privilege" to Not tell what the people's reprsentatives - the U S of A's Congress - want to know.

If the executive has such privileges that make it unaccountable, what kind of a democracy is that?

And the people? They are apparently still heady from celebrating their Independence Day to notice what their General in Iraq is saying.

To find out, click on a certain tell-tale link in the CogniMap below. He says that the coalition forces will have to stay in Iraq for several decades. This is longer at least be three times, than U S forces 'tour of napalming duty' in Agent Oranged Viet Nam.

Of course, there's no shame in that. They never really left Korea and Japan and its fifty+ years and counting.

There's also a link to a satire, with a click-enlargeable image, to get the world-view of the present White House junta.

The message from my Cerebral Information Aggregation is that war against terrorism is a smoke-screen for the global War on Democracy .

After years of producing documentaries, the Australian journalist John Pilger has a movie by that name to show US imperialism in action in Latin America Review1. Read Review1 and Review 2 on the
'The war on democracy' starring George W Bush, Hugo Chavez

Now, if you think I don't know about the good work the corporations are doing you would be wrong.

By design or accident, some remarkable work is being done by those who can free themselves for a while from the web of the bankers, financiers, brokers, accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers, and stupid analysts.

Via my short-wave, I get to track it, too.

But all this makes me sigh - and look at the tree.

The late R Buckmister Fuller pointed out that the tree was well organized to be a perennial revolutionary. Every year, it sheds its old leaves in the trust that new 'green' photo-synthesizing 'solar panels' will grow on its branches.

If you take time to notice - or listen to those who do - you can see that lots of creative destruction goes on and in around the tree at any given time.

Sit under it and you'll learn the real Chaos Theory. And the embedded Order in (apparent) Randomness.

The tree can effectively teach you Syntegrity - the Science of Orgainzations.

If humans incorporate and organize themselves like a tree, they'll need fewer high-paid MBA's. Get their real story Russell Ackoff who taught many of them at the Wharton School of Business here.

I think the coporations have to organize themselves more like those real trees, not the ones their managers and planners draw to show the 'Chain of Command' and the 'sequenced heirarchies'.

If I were hiring a manager, I'd say, "Forget the corporate ladders you've climed so far. Tell me, how many real trees have you climbed?"

                          II

I still have some energy left, after all, to do an abridged version of my anti- ERQ rant , Mark II.

On an on-line slide-show titled India -Truth Alone Triumphs *
the fourth click will get you to a 16-bulleted facts-summary along-side a "Map of India"*

14 says "Largest English-speaking nation in the world. but

2 & 3 respectively say "325 languages spoken - 1,652 dialects" and "18 official languages"

# 6 also caught my eye because, while it statisticates (I like this on-the-spur coin) print media in "21 languages" there is no mention of Net-eyeballs and SMS-thumbsters.

Aside from boggling the mind, a second look at the numbers in those bulleted facts might explain that

(a) Though India may have the largest English language users, their numbers still constitutes a low, single-digit demographic per centage; three, not in ten, but more likely, three in a hundred. You can cheat by adding 1 bit.

(b) Most of India is happily voluble and vociferous in its "325 spoken languages and 1,652 dialects". The thought of this should make the Tower of Babel look like one of those diminutive yellow cones the police use to divert traffic; and

(c) Why - even as kids having a connection to India but were born/raised abroad, say in countries where English is the first language, do well in them - we, over here, don't have spelling-bee contests in our languages.

Q. Why don't you have spelling-bee contests?

A. For a simple reason. Learning our languages does not involve spellings. Kids can write words they have never 'seen' before. Accurate listening is all that is needed.

I shall end this introduction by an example:

Feature is a Hindi newspaper link. Phonetically it is फीचर

In the first case, a child has to memorize - and always correctly reproduce - f-e-a-t-u-r-e.

In the second case, the child has no problem even if he has never 'seen' the word in print. For him, it is simply a matter of writing 'fu'+ee+chu'+ru'. (To check whether it's phonetic just say those syllables rapidly)

This is further simplified for him/her because all the letters of the alphabet, save, of course, the vowels, have an inbuilt 'u' sound.

When they need any of the other 11 vowels, a 'tag' will do. In the example aboue, there is no need to write the vowel that goes "ee". Just tagging its mark to 'fu' does it.

Once the child has learned the consonants, the 12 vowels and their tags, script-learning is over. Period. No upper and lower cases. No four ways of writing 'A'. And no 'e after c' rules for him.

Ask any child to write 'chlorotriaminoplatinouschloride' in an Indian language script and he/she'll say 'No Sweat!'

His mind is uncluttered by messages that are parallely and simultaneously 'telling' him how 'feature' should 'look' when scripted - otherwise it will be a mistake!

This child is ready to hone up his listening skills. You won't hear him quacking 'What!' as you do when you interact with a Roman scripter.

While learning to spell in the Roman script, I can almost hear the child's mind saying to itself: "Remember its f-e-a-t' as in feat and not feet . If you write f-e-e-t they'll think you are stupid."

So, we go about the 'mandated' task of stupefying and frightening the next generation; and then we expect it, collectively, to correct the mistakes we made (the Climate crisis comes to mind), to live in peace, care for the environment, make sensible choices; and without being fooled by smooth talking snake-oils salemen, vote intelligently. By imposing a non-phonetic script on their minds, we have, as far as I am concerned, programed them to fail miserably in all of the above.

A phonetic script, to me, is like a Ferrari while the nonphonetic script that requires a child to learn spellings is like one of those gas-guzzling clunkers that the great U. S. auto industry still insists on making to save the 'Free World'.

Teaching phonetic scripts would really give the kids a head start. Is it on anyone's priority list?

UNICEF, where are you? And where are you all who campaign for The Rights of The Child?.....

As you seive through the Link-shower, ponder what Tûlsidäs, a much revered and loved Hindoo saint said,

"God has become your calming Window.
Sit at it and observe the world/cosmos."

* You can download an older version from ananthapuri's blog where the fact summary appears as Slide 2.

*(I have added the quote marks because I shall have - in another blog later - something to say about these maps and how "India" is generally "viewed" here and abroad.. The late R Buckminster Fuller once described it as an "arrowhead")

* Clicking on ERQ will get you to the blog where it is expanded and explained.

Jul 10, 2007

Global CogniMaps aka Links-shower 07jul03-09

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