Blackwater, Blackwater Run Down Through The Land, Part 2

In the photo another American dignitary (in this case Paul Bremer) enjoys real freedom out in the world.

A cricket chirps and is silent.
The guttering lamp sinks and flairs up again.
Outside the window evening rain is heard.
It is the banana plant that speaks of it first.

---Po Chu-I

Only in solitude do we find ourselves.

---Miguel De Unamuno

It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free.

---Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

I had thought the Blackwater story would just fade away like all the others. There didn't seem to be anything different about it than countless other news items about the degradation of the American soul in these years of Bush administration. The private security firm, with rightwing and evangelical roots and bucks, did just what the Rove textbook tells the Bushies to do when under scrutiny: loom bigger than they are! If Congress or the press wants to talk to you, blow them off fast with how important the work is you're doing for the American people...and you just don't have time for this nonsense. Out came the announcements that Blackwater not only provides a private army for your convenience...but a private CIA too. Total Intelligence Solutions---and we do mean TOTAL. http://www.totalintel.com/dsp_media.php What more can a good boy with an inherited fortune do? He's done it by the Book---both Rove's and Jesus'.

But type "Blackwater" in Google News Search right now, and see what comes up. Well over a month later the story lives on. Finally something has brought the press alive. This no-bid contract has captured it all. It's at the black heart of how things are done now. And Americans are ashamed and outraged...and the media knows it...and it's about time! Will anything actually get done? The status quo tumbles over itself to keep things humming along as if normal. Kucinich introduces impeachment of Cheney on the House floor yesterday, and it took the administrators an hour to quiet things down and shuffle the motion off to committee---where they hope it will disappear. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-impeach7nov07,0,2784849.story?coll=la-home-headlines But it wasn't easy. People wanted to debate. People wanted to talk. No no, was the answer, Congress is too busy with really important business to become bogged down in this petty political maneuvering. But everyone knows now such remarks from the administrators are laughable and desperate. No one can keep the lid on the corruption forever.

I write and post stuff at 4 different sites on the Net...and sometimes more, and when I sent out and put up Part 1 about Blackwater, back in September, comments started to show up at 2 of the locations. And they haven't stopped. At Blogspot the people now are launched into discussion about "pure" democracy, and what a republic is, town meetings and whether the Internet can save or advance Freedom of Speech. When this happens at a blog it can be very difficult to join in. At really big ones you can find hundreds of comments, often involving give and take among a few participants that goes on for days. It's hard for a newcomer to sort out...and usually such threads just die because there's too much scrolling, you can't find that comment you wanted to reference, and nothing's ever going to get done about it anyway. But it's wonderful to me when people let loose and express themselves somewhere! So I decided this time to start a Part 2 about Blackwater...and all the topic involves. That includes torture and waterboarding, which Mukasey says he can't discuss because he hasn't been "briefed," and the President backs him up. That includes secrecy and looting the treasury. It includes everything.

If you're looking for the energy to get started on a comment or a reply, you can't do better than Keith Olbermann's talk Monday night about viewing the Presidency as Criminal Conspiracy. Not since Tom Paine, folks!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21644133/

A gentle reminder jazzoLOG posts are at

http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v63/

http://jazzolog.blogspot.com/

http://www.upsaid.com/jazzolog/

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=52990691

FactCheck Checks Itself In...And Out

Great doubt results in great enlightenment, small doubt results in small enlightenment, no doubt results in no enlightenment.

---Yuan-Hsien

A hundred thousand worlds are flowers in the sky.
A single mind and body is moonlight in the water.
Once thinking ends and information stops,
At that moment there is no place for thought.

---Han-Shan

All wisdom comes out of one center, and the number of wisdom is one.

---Paracelsus

I thought it was a good thing when www.factcheck.org showed up a few years ago. I immediately subscribed to its occasional dispatches. A Karl Rove in power was reason enough. "Spin" was the middle name of this White House and, while acknowledged, journalists didn't seem to do much about it. We heard about "framing" your presentations so that particular words would hook your audience. We learned that "reality" is a hindrance to true economic marketfreedom. It seemed evident that lies repeated over and over finally sink in and become accepted as truth. What's a mother to do? FactCheck stepped up to the plate to test the veracity of political ads and politician claims. That seemed to be a help.

But I find I don't read everything FactCheck sends out, and sometimes I don't find the "facts" particularly convincing. I confess I probably am rooting for my good guys and don't like it much when FactCheck goes after them. The site is run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, a research group of impeccable credentials...as far as I know. So I'm glad FactCheck is around, particularly during endless campaign seasons.

But last month the Washington Post published an intriguing article that said the whole strategy of creating myths depends on the assertive statement of the story. The Post implied that by emphasizing these myths FactCheck actually is defeating its own purpose. People read the myth and that's enough to keep it going no matter how the facts check out. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR2007090300933.html?nav=emailpage

That was enough to send FactCheck to the couch and after a month of analysis, it has emerged with a special report on its soundness of mind. Beware: they've gone all the way back to Descartes and Spinoza. There's some deep slogging here, and it's perfectly possible you may emerge with the belief Spinoza invented spin. Maybe he did. That part's hazy. Anyway, here it is~~~

http://www.factcheck.org/specialreports/cognitive_science_and_factcheckorg_or_why_we.html

"Black Waters, Black Waters Run Down Through The Land"

Nobody sees a flower---really---it is so small it takes time---we haven't time---and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

---Georgia O'Keeffe

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

---Charles Dickens

We learn something by doing it. There is no other way.

---John Holt

Many of us here in the coal mining regions of Appalachia can hear Jean Ritchie's sweet voice in our imaginations by just reading her lyric in the title up there. Black water refers to the toxic sludge that kills all life in the creeks and streams near mining operations, particularly what's called mountaintop removal. Sometimes whole hillsides of the stuff falls down on top of properties owned by people for generations. Folks have been killed in those landslides, but there's little recourse since Bush made the previously banned practice legal 5 years ago.

So when I learn a good Republican Christian boy decided to name his private security company Blackwater, and stick it in North Carolina, I thought there must be some kind of---er---black humor involved. Maybe there is. Erik Prince was making the Navy Seals his career until his mother died and left him the family fortune. His sister was the chairperson of the Republican Party in Michigan, and wife to gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos. Erik moved South, set up Blackwater, and also sits on the board of Christian Freedom International, a group helping "Christians who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ". http://www.christianfreedom.org/

This was 10 years ago, when Erik was 27. Now, we learn, "Blackwater is currently the biggest of the US State Department's three private security contractors. At least 90% of its revenue comes from government contracts, two-thirds of which are no-bid contracts." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA To be well connected thus seems the best way...and maybe the only way...to really get in to the true American liberty we call global capitalism. Papa Bush introduced it as The New World Order, but wasn't that a mite Roman Empire? So the following presidents just talk about the freedom and democracy of globalization. We know quite a few families have gotten very rich from all this, but many of the rest of us look at our tax bill and feel we're financing the whole thing. Are the returns worth it?

Economist Paul Krugman yesterday called global capitalism's need for companies like Blackwater a "Hired Gun Fetish."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Tomorrow The New York Times Book Review section will offer up opinion on Naomi Klein's view of global capitalism. The work is called "The Shock Doctrine," referring specifically to CIA interrogation techniques, and is reviewed by Joseph E. Stiglitz, a university professor at Columbia, who was awarded the Nobel in economic science in 2001. His latest book is “Making Globalization Work.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html?8bu&emc=bu

As a sort of footnote to how well the United States is managing its liberation of the globe, Jane Goodall this week warned of what many saw as the problem with alternate fuels based on corn crops and such. You want corn? Developers in Brazil will just plow down what remains of the rain forest and plant it for you.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/44569/story.htm

Here are the full lyrics to Black Waters~~~

BLACK WATERS(Jean Ritchie)

I come from the mountains, Kentucky's my home,Where the wild deer and black bear so lately did roam;By cool rushing waterfalls the wildflowers dream,And through every green valley there runs a clear stream.Now there's scenes of destruction on every handAnd only black waters run down through my land.

CHORUSSad scenes of destruction on every hand,Black waters, black waters, run down through my land.

O the quail, she's a pretty bird, she sings a sweet tongue;In the roots of tall timbers she nests with her young.But the hillside explodes with the dynamite's roar,And the voices of the small birds will sound there no more;And the hillsides come a—sliding so awful and grand,And the flooding black waters rise over my land.

CHORUSSad scenes of destruction on every hand;Black waters, black waters run down through the land.

In the rising of the springtime we planted our corn,In the ending of the springtime we buried a son,In summer come a nice man, said, "Everything's fine—My employer just requires a way to his mine"—Then they threw down my mountain and covered my corn,And the grave on the hillside's a mile deeper down,And the man stands and talks with his hat in his handAs the poisonous water spreads over my land.

CHORUSSad scenes of destruction on every hand;Black waters, black waters run down through the land.

Well, I ain't got no money and not much of a home;I own my own land, but my land' s not my own.But if I had ten million thereabouts—I would buy Perry County and I'd run 'em all out!Set down on the bank with my bait in my can,And just watch the clear waters run down through my land!

CHORUSWell, wouldn't that be like the old Promised Land?Black waters, black waters no more in my land!

Source: Celebration of Life - Jean Ritchie, Geordie Music Publishing © 1971

YouTube has a video of her singing it, with pictures of the Appalachians~~~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFVdp1KJiqM

This Is Worse Than Viet Nam

People in the West are always getting ready to live.

---Chinese proverb

If you're afraid of being grabbed by God, don't look at a wall. Definitely don't sit still.

---Jiyu Kennett

When the mind is not aroused, this is discipline.
When the mind is unmoved, this is concentration.
When the mind is not obscured, this is insight.

---Hseuh-Yen

Frank Rich is a columnist for The New York Times who focuses on American politics and cultural trends. His column Sunday~~~

Will the Democrats Betray Us? By Frank Rich The New York Times
Sunday 16 September 2007

"Sir, I don't know, actually": The fact that America's surrogate commander in chief, David Petraeus, could not say whether the war in Iraq is making America safer was all you needed to take away from last week's festivities in Washington. Everything else was a verbal quagmire, as administration spin and senatorial preening fought to a numbing standoff.

Not that many Americans were watching. The country knew going in that the White House would win its latest campaign to stay its course of indefinitely shoveling our troops and treasure into the bottomless pit of Iraq. The only troops coming home alive or with their limbs intact in President Bush's troop "reduction" are those who were scheduled to be withdrawn by April anyway. Otherwise the president would have had to extend combat tours yet again, mobilize more reserves or bring back the draft.

On the sixth anniversary of the day that did not change everything, General Petraeus couldn't say we are safer because he knows we are not. Last Sunday, Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the C.I.A.'s Osama bin Laden unit, explained why. He wrote in The Daily News that Al Qaeda, under the de facto protection of Pervez Musharraf, is "on balance" more threatening today that it was on 9/11. And as goes Pakistan, so goes Afghanistan. On Tuesday, just as the Senate hearings began, Lisa Myers of NBC News reported on a Taliban camp near Kabul in an area nominally controlled by the Afghan government we installed. It is training bomb makers to attack America.

Little of this registered in or beyond the Beltway. New bin Laden tapes and the latest 9/11 memorial rites notwithstanding, we're back in a 9/10 mind-set. Bin Laden, said Frances Townsend, the top White House homeland security official, "is virtually impotent." Karen Hughes, the Bush crony in charge of America's P.R. in the jihadists' world, recently held a press conference anointing Cal Ripken Jr. our international "special sports envoy." We are once more sleepwalking through history, fiddling while the Qaeda not in Iraq prepares to burn.

This is why the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, including those more accurate than Mr. Bush's recent false analogies, can take us only so far. Our situation is graver than it was during Vietnam.

For the rest of the column~~~
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091607C.shtml

Exactly How Bush Spends Your Money

In the photo (Wong/Getty) President Bush speaks at a meeting of the Associated General Contractors of America on May 2, 2007 in Washington, DC.

As a man is, so he sees.

---William Blake

There is only one great adventure and that is inwards toward the self.

---Henry Miller

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

---Henry David Thoreau

In America we believe in the marketplace, and we expect bang for our buck. The educated consumer is more highly valued than an educated voter. The wise shopper researches the available products before making a major purchase. Sometimes we complain we have too MANY product choices---like when you need to buy some cough syrup.

We detest socialism, and the mere mention of it can get you a punch in the nose. We think it's probably wasteful, and we can't stand being told what to do. Freedom means I choose the car I drive...and whether or not I throw trash out the window.

So how is it George Bush gets away with 7 years of no-bid contracts clearly to companies that support the Republican Party with lots of cash? What is a no-bid contract anyway and where did it come from? Does no one ask this? Is presidential war powers the answer to every inquiry?

I've spent the morning with 3 articles that have appeared online during the past week, and I feel the need to share them. The first is in the current issue of Rolling Stone (#1034) with How Bush's Cronies Swindled Billions blazing across the cover. May I repeat that word again, since so many seem to blank out at high numbers? BILLIONS. Its author is Matt Taibbi, to whom I referred you last April in a piece called Oil's Final Trickle http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v63/__show_article/_a000063-000429.htm . If this journalist, still in his 30s, doesn't get a Pulitzer someday, I'll be surprised.

The next is Paul Krugman's commemorating the 2nd Anniversary last week of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans. TruthOut kindly put up the premium column yesterday. And finally there's an essay by Nat Hentoff on CIA torture. Well, this is Labor Day weekend reading to get you stirred up admittedly. It did me, and probably will give me more to talk about at the picnic than sale prices at the big boxes.

We'll start with Matt Taibbi's research. It's long and contains strong language. Rightly so!

Rollingstone.comThe Great Iraq Swindle How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury --From Issue 1034 Posted Aug 23, 2007 8:51 AM
URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle

Coincidentally, yesterday's New York Times contained a story entitled U.S. Says Company Bribed Officers for Work in Iraq. WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 — An American-owned company operating from Kuwait paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to American contracting officers in efforts to win more than $11 million in contracts, the government says in court documents...One of the officers, Maj. Gloria D. Davis, a contracting official in Kuwait, shot and killed herself in Baghdad in December 2006. Government officials say the suicide occurred a day after she admitted to an Army investigator that she had accepted at least $225,000 in bribes from the company. The United States has begun proceedings to seize Major Davis’s assets, a move her heirs are contesting.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/washington/31contract.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1188525875-4I7PNTT6o4upGy1urp1ViwMakes you wonder just what it takes to bring something like this to light, eh?

Here's Paul Krugman on more of the economics involved in cleaning up New Orleans~~~

Katrina All the Time
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 31 August 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/083107M.shtml

Katrina, Iraq, and finally Torture---the 3 pillars of the Bush legacy...and if We the People don't wise up, they could amount to the epitaph of this democratic republic. Nat Hentoff still writes about jazz and justice, bless him~~~

The Village VoiceNat HentoffHistory Will Not Absolve UsLeaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trialby Nat HentoffAugust 28th, 2007 6:30 PM
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0735,hentoff,77643,6.html

American History: The Bush Family Legacy

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Portrait of Napoléon on the Imperial Throne. 1806. Oil on canvas. Musée de l'Armée, Paris, France.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

---Franz Kafka

To learn the way it is important to be sharp and inconspicuous. When you are sharp, you are not confused by people. When you are inconspicuous, you do not contend with people. Not being confused by people, you are empty and spiritual. Not contending with people, you are serene and subtle.

---Liao-An

The best things in life are nearest. Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.

---Robert Louis Stevenson

In the past few years, many of us on the American Left have found ourselves looking for understanding to the writings of historian Juan Cole. Born in Albuquerque in 1952, John "Juan" Ricardo I. Cole is professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. Not only does he have a new book entitled Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East, but he also translates works in both Arabic and Persian, and maintains a popular weblog called Informed Comment [link] .

The other day Juan Cole posted an entry in which he offered notions of historical comparison that he couldn't help thinking about the Bush involvements in the Middle East, given what he'd learned about Napoleon. While I strongly believe the species' survival depends on learning at least something from history, I also think historical comparisons are a tricky business. Nevertheless the current Bush asked for it in his big speech the other day when he invoked Viet Nam as his latest scare tactic. If he wants comparisons, then let us hear Professor Cole's.

Yesterday Tom Englehardt posted the essay at his site, and Juan Cole is requesting any citation of it be linked to TomGram, so I'll do that. He'll be discussing his perspective this afternoon at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. Supposedly C-Span will be televising it live at 12:15 PM, and giving it an hour and a half.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174831

Heavy With Child

Karl Brulloff. Italian Woman Heavy with a Child Examining a Shirt and her Husband Making a Cradle. 1831. Watercolour on cardboard.

Let us dig our gardens and not be elsewhere;

Let us take long walks in the open air...

Let us bathe in the rivers and lakes...

Let us indulge in games...

Let us be more simple: simple and true in our gestures, in our words, and simple and true in our minds above all. Let us be ourselves.

---Robert Linssen

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

---Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't ask if I've ceased my wanderings;

already I've trampled all over the south.

Understanding should be what you yourself understand.

Mind is not someone else's mind.

---Ch'i-Chi

There is a great benefit in writing...and it's not just another chance to tell people what to do. It's not even to inform friends and relations what you've been up to. The gift of writing your words is in the opportunity to collect your thoughts and work on them thus. Maybe you'll share it, maybe you won't. Here, in this writing, I will be heartfelt.

Presently my family is enjoying the presence in our home of the lady our son has chosen totally. And she has chosen him. They have been friends throughout their schooling in this town, and in recent years discovered their feelings were true love. They felt even more freedom together in that realization, and became joyfully radiant in celebration. Everyone around them knew it to be so and benefitted in their presence. Jeroch and Karen are a couple and you can see it strongly.

A few months ago a child decided to be born out of them, and Karen carries her now to fruition in December. They have a charming house chosen for this beginning, and they await final preparations for them to move in...probably next month. In the new style of American youth---that some elders are tempted to call cart-before-the-horse---they haven't gotten around to the stupendous wedding occasion that is sure to come. For one thing, her older sister also is getting married, and Karen is deferring to her in mutual agreement to have the first wedding. And who's to say the horse can't be in the back, pushing or something?

Jeroch is spending most of the summer in an internship at the esteemed Omega Institute for Holistic Studies http://www.eomega.org/ . He's been emailing people throughout his experience about the amazing people and great sages he has met. It is clear he is growing in every direction. Karen had spent a month in Mexico earlier in the summer, receiving certification in an advanced yoga discipline. Together they are preparing for this birth, marriage and family in a most unique and individual way. Jeroch was here during the last week, and it was wonderful to enjoy their company in our home until he flew back to Rhinebeck Friday.

In the autumn and continuing, they may be able share these new skills with others as there is great interest in these things in this community of Athens. But they will support themselves simply, as Karen's university degree qualifies her for substitute teaching at this point, and Jeroch works in the managing of Crumb's Bakery, a business with rapidly expanding distribution.

For Jeroch's mom, his younger sister, and me, the challenge is to watch and participate in all this---hmmm, how shall I put it?---without worrying too much. I suppose families normally worry about each other, but the gracefulness of this caring mustn't become a burden for the loved one. I'm discovering it's hard to do. I never thought there was any special skill you had to learn to become a grandparent, but...as with the rest of life...HELLO.

When your child is in the house, you tend to do all this teaching and regulating stuff. You've only got a dozen years or so to get it all packed in there---all the traditions, the rights and wrongs, the skills, the healthy lifestyle, the work and the fun. And at some point, the kid starts wanting to do it his way and not necessarily yours...and the tension about freedom surfaces bigtime. Then the child goes, and there's this period when father and son are just these 2 guys looking across at each other. Did it end up you can be friends or are there still tensions from the battles?

I guess the grandparent time is when I get to sit down and do the learning. Perhaps there are families out there in America in the 21st Century where the children proceed to do everything they learned at home...and just live it out the same way the family did, and maybe the generations before them. But I didn't do that and I don't think my wife did either...but not as radically as I had to do things my own way. I'm sure my parents laid awake nights worrying about me, but when they let slip that they did I didn't want to hear about it. Now it's my turn.

How many problems can Dana, Ilona, and I think up that might befall these 2 angels---soon to be 3? How anxious can we become about preparing them for the unexpected pitfalls? We mustn't spread such nervousness. We need to sit quietly, we need the silent strength within, we need to pray, we need to have and show faith. There is great work and growth in grandparenting. And isn't it great if you have a kindly aunt who actually cares about and spends time with you? This has been a huge summer!

May I conclude with a section of Jeroch's writing he sent out onto the Internet a couple weeks ago? Here he is talking about something called Retreat Week...and a meditation master whom he met, and it appears what Jeroch has to tell me is just what I need to hear~~~

Adyashanti is a teacher of one of the silent retreats. "Adyashanti is a dynamic and inspiring spiritual teacher who lives an ordinary life while demonstrating an extraordinary gift for transmitting a simple truth: liberation is the birthright of us all. His teachings have been compared to those of the early Zen masters and Advaita Vedanta sages. Over the last 10 years of Adyashanti’s teaching, his sangha (spiritual community) has grown to several thousand students worldwide, and he has published three books of his teachings: The Impact of Awakening, My Secret is Silence, and Emptiness Dancing." It just so happens that the day I chose to be silent, Adyashanti was giving a staff lecture hour. These staff hours are a tremendous blessing. It is always very personal, intimate and there are always moments of deep reflection. Adyashanti is a bright, shining light of a being. He radiates a simple truth. That inner silence leads to deep realization. I think almost the entire staff attended the discussion, it was packed. Many of the other staff members had also taken vows to remain silent. We had the opportunity to ask questions of him, so I took my pen and wrote down something I had thought of that had left me very curious. After two very emotional questions that he offered extensive teachings on, he said we had time for one more. I rose my hand and to my delight he chose me. I walked up to the front of the theater and handed him my inquiry. He read it. And then read it again. And smiled. And I smiled. And a moment of infinite love passed. He spoke into the microphone and read it aloud. " I love silence, love it! But isn't silence an illusion? Everywhere I go I hear my heartbeat." I will paraphase his answer. " All is silence. Reality is an Explosion of silence. When one has the capabilty to be silent inwardly, then one will be able to hear the truth. The truth cannot be spoken, cannot be summed up through words. Your heart beat, the wind blowing in the trees" He waved his hands above his head like the wind. "This is the explosion of silence." We bowed deeply to each other for his answer had filled my heart with joy. And for the rest of the day I enjoyed the explosions of silence. I learned much from my day in silence. Much that cannot be put into words, yet. Mostly I learned how important it is that we communicate our inner most feelings. Letting out that which is at the center of our souls. The Love at the center of our being. I have only a few more days here at Omega and am taking the time to enjoy every moment of it. I hope that all of you are having wonderful experiences living the lives that you love. You are in my thoughts and prayers. Love, peace and harmony through cooperation. Jeroch

America The Vindictive

The painting is called The Indian Prisoner, created by William Gilbert Gaul, 1899.

In the scent of plum blossoms,
Ah! the sun appears---
the mountain path.

---Basho

When we have seen Reality, there is not a grain of dust which has not a sublime meaning.

---J. Vanderleeuw

It is like archers. If they start out competing, they'll never become marksmen. It is only long after practice, with no thought of winning or losing, that they can hit the target. Same with the study of the Way. If even a single thought of winning or losing appears, you will be chained by winning and losing.

---Ying-An

In one of the first essays I ever attempted online, I mentioned how I happened to come in contact with the famous folk music collector, Alan Lomax. I said at one point he called me "puritanical" and how stung I was by the remark. http://www.upsaid.com/jazzolog/index.php?action=viewcom&id=5 It still bothers me, but I've soothed myself somewhat with the balmy knowledge that he knew of my New England education---and I was aware of how he felt about New England. I've also tried---and been forced by reality---to ease up on the rigidity of my views of 30 years ago.

I'm glad that at the time I did not begin a range war with Alan, since Texas always was home to him. I doubt any Texans have been called puritanical (unless one happened to be born and educated in New England before relocating----hmmmm) but we do know something about justice in the Wild West. Whether or not the scores of Westerns I saw at the Saturday afternoon matinees gave me an accurate history, I've grown up thinking resentments are a particular weakness in the American fabric. I think we tend to be a people that transfers our problems rather than inventories them in order to change. We go to workshops that teach us to transform failures into opportunities for growth and expansion. We spin.

When I came to Southeast Ohio, I learned that until recently spanking students with big wooden paddles was legal and routine. At first I thought they were joking. No teacher ever laid a hand on me in New York, and I couldn't conceive of it. One time in Lincoln Junior High a science teacher made a kid stand in the corner on his head for a while, but that's the worst I saw. When I worked among people here, who didn't necessarily go beyond the local high school education, I was similarly amazed when they spoke of "beating" their kids, specifically the boys I guess. I didn't think it was my place to ask for details, but I thought maybe again this was a term for strict discipline but not actual physical pain. "Beating their butt" is common parlance around here among many parents.

I've been feeling that during my lifetime the American character has changed markedly and the rest of the world is noticing. Maybe we all were mistaken, having been mislead by World War II propaganda---as Clint Eastwood hints in his film Flags Of Our Fathers. We were the fun-loving Yanks liberating Europe with dollars and chewing gum. If we never were that actually---or even if we were---do others feel we now are vengeful opportunists, motivated essentially by getting more for me and mine? Do we care if injustice is done to others in our name? Do we listen intently to testimonies of people released from our "detention centers" about what was done to them for years---or don't we want to hear about it? Have we gone off the deep end and become cruel?

I've worried about this and tried to deal with it personally, convince myself the behaviors I endure everyday by others driving cars are just momentary. The aggression will fade away when the war on terror is won and we all return to normal. But maybe it's something more permanent, a trend not so easily reversed.

And so it was this morning I came upon an article in the Boston Review. Well, maybe Boston is the best place to review an oppressive morality! The title is simply Why Are There So Many Americans In Prison?, and was compiled by Glenn C. Loury who is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences in the department of economics at Brown University. A 2002 Carnegie Scholar, he brings very recent statistics to bear on how Americans are using punishment to solve problems.

http://bostonreview.net/BR32.4/loury.html

A Year Without Tagliabue

Amid hectic preparations for a move to Providence, Rhode Island, Professor of English Emeritus John Tagliabue---the muse of Bates College for more than forty years---and his wife, Grace, took time out for portraits by Phyllis Graber Jensen in the garden of Muskie Archives. The caption, a fragment from a poem in John's book New And Selected Poems: 1942-1997, reads "...a breeze hails our way,
we lift our sails;
we hold on to each other for dear life." (Bates Magazine, Spring 1998)

All of us are watchers---
of television, of time clocks,
of traffic on the freeway---but
few are observers. Everyone is
looking, not many are seeing.



---Peter M. Leschak



You ask why I live in the mountain forest,
and I smile and am silent,
And even my soul remains quiet:
It lives in the other world
Which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.



---Li Po



My nature is subdued
to what it works in,
like the dyer's hand.



---William Shakespeare

And so a year has gone by. A year without friend and poet John Tagliabue. A year without Tagliabue and the sun has shined its radiance with slight dimness. Music of the spheres has played less sparkling. The dancers whirl without shout. His death last year was certainly at his time, but it has meant a year without my teacher pushing me closer to the edge.



Besides a flutter of poems tumbling out like petals from blossoms, his letters and conversation always contained what books to read. He urged them as he did his assignments, shrugging off your foolishness if obviously you didn't read them. There were exhibits at the museums and he would tell you. Dancers and actors on the boards, and he needed to share with his own advertisements. There were foods and people from so many countries to visit. Be sure to have pad and pencil for jotting down impressions of human scenes on the train.



One time, when I was a junior at Bates College, where he taught and I learned, he decided he wanted to see Martha Graham dance in New York. It might be her very last time. We were in Maine. John had a car but he never learned to drive. Refused to. Usually his wife Grace took him somewhere he needed to be, but for some reason this time he asked a few of us students if we wanted to drive him. And we'd see La Martha of course.



As I recall there were 5 of us on the expedition. Two couples and my roommate. We would drive all day, stay one night, see the company's performance, and then drive all night back to Lewiston. I can't think how we fit in that small car. On laps I guess.



When we got to Manhattan, John had us drop him off at his sister's apartment...and then we were left on our own. This was a surprise to us, and hardly our idea of a school field trip. Don lived in New Rochelle, so he just took a train home. Paul's girl friend, like mine, was a sophomore, but he thought he could just bluff his way into a hotel room with her...and he did.



This was 1960, and I wasn't so sure I could get away with it. So Bonnie and I stayed with the car, and drove all over the place looking for a secluded spot to park for the night. Neither of us knew the City. Finally I came to a place near the water that appeared to be a kind of parking lot, at least during the day. It was deserted. Across the bay were a thousand lights...and in the bay stood the Statue of Liberty, far out there. I would later learn this was The Battery, but that's where we stayed---in our fog-windowed coupe. We were not disturbed.



Martha was wondrous, dancing one of her Greek things, but unfortunately barely able to get back up once she had lain down. I never had seen anything like this, but I knew a little about myth and things by then...and sometimes you had to go to the Underworld, and maybe that was happening. The music, also original and strange, sounded underworldly and then maybe rejoicing we were back up. I think dancers waved streamers around or got wrapped in them.



Don drove all the way back. He chainsmoked Camels or Luckys to stay awake, keeping the side vent open to flick an ash or the butt. I think I was in the front seat with him, and maybe Bonnie was up there too. John was in the middle of the back seat, and must be Paul and Carol on either side. We all slept and Don drove. At 3 AM, wherever we were, suddenly this great improvised Kabuki chant shouted. Tagliabue had stirred and needed to announce it! He always made up his own Japanese, whether dance, poem or song. After the fright, we laughed on for miles.



A Japanese friend spoke at John's Memorial Service in Providence a year ago, and said the poet always spoke to him in Japanese. Through all the years he knew him he did that, and the friend would politely reply. But finally the truth could be told: in all those years, he said, he never had understood one word John uttered. But of course that didn't matter. The meaning was clear, always beautiful and somehow about love.



Here's a poem Grace sent to me recently, carefully calligraphied as she is so expert to do~~~





With infinite Play,
with infinite Presentations



Loving to communicate,
loving to touch, to see,
to hear, to be active sensible,
loving to touch with his feet
the Divine Ground, to dance,
to read this to you, he
returned often; as often as
music in the bodies of lovers.



---John Tagliabue

The Great American Songbook

On the set of Shall We Dance, 1936, are dance director Hermes Pan, Fred Astaire, director Mark Sandrich, Ginger Rogers, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and musical director Nathaniel Shilkret.

Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time---that is the basic message.

---Pema Chodron

Awakened, I hear the one true thing---

black rain on the roof of Fukakusa temple.

---Dogen

I should be content to look at a mountain for what it is, and not as a comment on my life.

---David Ignatow

Saturday morning, and I'm delighted to read the cover story of tomorrow's New York Times Book Review. Garrison Keillor writing about George Gershwin. I've neglected to report how wonderful I thought Garrison was in the Robert Altman movie about his radio show. I had put off seeing it because Prairie Home Companion can get too cute at times, and I thought a cast of Kline and Streep and Tomlin and Harrelson might be too great a temptation in that direction. And I've heard Keillor personally is pretty aloof and out there, in his own world...so I thought probably this movie is going to be painful.

Besides, for those of us who grew up in front of a huge radio that was bigger than we were---with glowing, radiating tubes in the back that looked like a Flash Gordon outer space city---how many times had we gone to the movies to see an adaptation of a favorite radio show? Yuck! How many were any good? The Shadow? The Lone Ranger? The Fat Man? Arthur Godfrey? A wonderful voice comes out of that dumb guy? Most were about as flat as a Lux radio version of a movie.

But, except when Meryl Streep tries to loosen him up a little, Garrison Keillor is wonderful in the movie. In fact, he makes great fun of himself as someone totally out in his own world. And he nails radio when he tells Lindsay Lohan---who also is wonderful---that nothing ever ends in radio, nobody gets old, nobody ever dies.

But of course the kind of music on the show---oh god, Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly singing Bad Jokes is worth the price of admission...and by the way, The Behind-The-Scenes feature on the DVD may be better than the movie---I say, the music ain't exactly Tin Pan Alley. Tin pans galore, but we don't hear In The Still Of The Night. So why does anyone think Garrison Keillor should be reviewing a new book by Wilfred Sheed about Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Arlen, and Kern?

It's probably because, like me, Garrison grew up in the '40s and listening to radio, so what has come to be known as The Great American Songbook is imprinted in our neurons. If we're walking through Central Park with a girl, and Dancing In The Dark begins to play, we may have to turn our walk into a dance that will be legend in the minds of anyone who sees us. Those songs do that to people. They still do it...maybe more than ever. Many rock singers just have to try an album...like jazz players want that one with strings. Opera singers too...and while it used to be horrible to sit through, some of them are starting to get it. I heard Renee Fleming sing You've Changed the other day...and I had to nudge Billie Holiday over in my mind to make room for her.

So Garrison, like Guy Noir, has blues in the night in his sinews. He can set 'em up, Joe, with the rest of us. The rest of us who have heard a tune on the juke box...a tune so devastating there was nothing more to do but get up off the stool, reel toward the door, and out into the lonely night. Maybe she'll be there.

The review is here http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/books/review/Keillor-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bu&oref=slogin
or posted in full at jazzoLOG http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v63 .

Constitutional Crisis

Alessandro Pigna (1883-1903)
Paying Homage To The Emperor


The great way of the Buddhas is profound, wondrous, inconceivable; how could its practice be easy? Have you not seen how the ancients gave up their bodies and lives, abandoned their countries, cities, and families, looking upon them as like shards of tile? After that they passed eons living alone in the mountains and forests, bodies and minds like dead trees; only then did they unite with the way. Then they could use mountains and rivers for words, raise the wind and rain for a tongue, explain the great void...

---Dogen

When we speak of being highly developed spiritually, this does not mean that we float in the air. In fact, the higher we go, the more we come down to earth.

---Chogyam Trungpa

You are seeing impeachment as a constitutional crisis. Impeachment is the cure for a constitutional crisis. Don't mistake the medicine for the disease. When you have a constitutional crisis, the founders are very clear. They said there is a way to deal with this. We don't have to have a war. We don't have to raise an army and go to Washington. We have procedures in place where we can sanction a president appropriately, do what needs to be done up to the point of removing him from office and continue the republic.

---John Nichols on Bill Moyers Journal, 7/13/07

I am not a constitutional scholar. I'm not a lawyer. I might think about citizenship quite a bit, but I may be pretty much an average American. As I understand the Constitution of the United States, that qualifies me to register concern...and to do so with forceful words.

Whatever our history has been and however we managed it, a republic was established so that each citizen could have a fair chance of a voice in the conduct of government which so affect our lives. My understanding of how that works is through a series of representative assemblies from local to state through federal levels.

At the top, in Washington, DC, we have the House of Representatives and the Senate. Between them, they legislate and debate and ultimately create laws and programs that enable us to live better lives...and maybe help people in other countries too. A system of public education was considered vital to maintain an informed electorate.

But at that point the Congress must turn over the created legislation to the Executive, whose job it is to put these examples and results of the will of the people into action. Sometimes, for one reason or another, the President doesn't think he can or should do it...and he tells Congress that. Maybe they can overrule his judgment or perhaps the Supreme Court must decide who is right, according to the Constitution.

Sometimes a great threat materializes and war must be declared. The Congress does this and thus hands to the President the awesome duties of Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the country. When this happens, everyone in the nation is expected to sacrifice aspects of life and liberty to enable the President to expedite the battle quickly. All Americans know this and we have done it.

There have been instances in the histories of all nations when supreme leaders have used occasions of warfare to increase personal and family fortunes. We expect such events in a dictatorship, but it is the worst thing to happen in a republic. Here, there is no question but that the money in the Treasury is ours, kept and spent in trust by freely elected representatives. If those people are stealing our money for themselves, they must be stopped or all fails.

There is a distinct possibility our Congress acted in the fever of haste when war powers were handed over to George Bush. Troops have been dispatched, and hundreds of thousands of people may be dead...or forever maimed. Everyone in the world knows the intelligence, in the full sense of that word, was "flawed" in developing the case for war. But now that we're there, the Commander says, we have to fix stuff before we leave. He's not in a terrible hurry on this because 1) he can pass the mess onto a successor, and 2) a lot of money is still to be made by private supporters.

It seems the nation and the Congress disagree with the President, but now how do we stop him? We gave him all these powers, matters of "executive privilege," and now he claims the national security he is pledged to maintain is endangered by any investigation. Even if the powers were granted under false pretenses, what, short of the Senate storming the White House, can be done? Or is it time to storm the White House?

Last Friday, the same day Bill Moyers gave a TV hour to consider impeaching both President and Vice President to remove them from office http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07132007/transcript4.html , former presidential counsel John Dean wrote an article about the problem of Harriet Miers. It is auspicious he did so, for he held precisely the same position as Ms. Miers in an administration that was brought to collapse under the scrutiny of Congress. Mr. Dean did appear before investigation when called and told the truth to the best of his ability. Ms. Miers refused to do so.

In his article John Dean considers what the Legislature can do next. Papers have been drawn up to charge Harriet Miers with contempt of Congress, conviction for which carries fines and jailtime. But those papers must be handed over to the Executive Branch for implementation, and it was the Executive who told Miers not to show up. What now?

The article is lengthy and detailed, but concludes with this scenario~~~

Congress Needs To Protect Its Powers: Only One Way It Can Do So

Marty Lederman has prepared a nice overview analysis of what happens when officials defy a congressional subpoena. http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-would-happen-if-administration.html

Let's suppose that the House votes Miers in contempt, and the matter is sent to the U.S. Attorney. One can expect that no prosecution will be brought. During the Reagan years, the Justice Department ruled that even though the referral statute makes it the "duty" of the U.S. Attorney to take the matter to the grand jury, Congress cannot enforce that duty on the Executive Branch if the Executive Branch refuses to honor it. As noted, it would appear that under the most recent Justice memo on the subject, the White House will not permit the U.S. Attorney to prosecute the matter, and Congress has no power to overrule that by forcing the U.S. Attorney to go forward.

If the U.S. Attorney did go forward could criminal sanctions be imposed on a witness such as Harriet Miers who is (albeit willingly) following the orders of the president by refusing to honor a congressional subpoena? The issue raises serious Constitutional questions that have not been resolved by the Supreme Court. If the issue did reach the Court, how would the Court rule? Given its current conservative majority, the Justice Department and White House may be right if they have concluded that they can win before the Court, convincing at least five Justices to declare such criminal sanctions unconstitutional.

If the House votes Miers in contempt, they can also institute a civil legal action by seeking declaratory judgment from a federal court to compel enforcement of their subpoena. However, there is a growing body of law, coming from conservative jurists, calling for conflicts like this between the executive and legislative branch to be considered "political questions" that are improper for the federal courts to resolve. Thus, it seems likely that the Court might - citing the political-question doctrine - decline to take jurisdiction over this clash, thereby leaving the White House's status quo untouched. For the Bush Administration, the worse case scenario, as Lederman suggests, is simply that the courts will seek to force a political settlement.

Finally, if Miers is found in contempt, the House itself can take action against her at the bar of the House. (The Senate can similarly hold such proceedings.) Congress has the power to prosecute contumacious witnesses to require them to comply, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed this power. For example, in 1987, in Young v. U.S., Justice Antonin Scalia recognized "the narrow principle of necessity" or "self-defense" of the Congress in protecting its institutional prerogatives. Scalia said "the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches must each possess those powers necessary to protect the functioning of its own processes, although those implicit powers may take a form that appears to be nonlegislative, nonexecutive, or nonjudicial, respectively." http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=481&page=820

When all is said and done the only way Congress can protect its prerogatives is to undertake its own contempt proceedings. The parliamentary precedents of the House provide such procedures, by which Congress can effectively protect itself. There is no shortage of past instances where the Congress has held such trials. Readers may want to consult, for example, Hinds' Precedents http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=hinds_prec_vol_iii&docid=f:hinds_liii.pdf and Canon's Precedents http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=cannons_prec_vol_vi&docid=f:cannon_clxxxv.pdf . Unfortunately, however, this machinery has become a bit rusty, for these procedures have not been used since 1934.

Congress Must Avail Itself of Traditional Procedures to Compel Testimony and/or Punish Contempt

Given the clear attitude of conservative presidents, who are doing all within their power to make Congress irrelevant, Congress should turn to these underemployed precedents and put them back to work. The House and Senate Judiciary Committees should take the lead in reviving these procedures, and the Democrats' leadership should announce that they are embracing them.

If they do not, Fred Fielding has it right: Officials are absolutely immune from compelled Congressional testimony. Bush can simply tell Congress to stop sending subpoenas to his appointees. However, if Congress does engage in a little self-help at this crucial juncture, it can be sure that not only Harriet Miers, but also George Bush, will be forced to pay attention to congressional subpoenas - for the bottom line is that Congress will not need the cooperation of the other branches to enable it to conduct proper oversight.

http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/dean/20070713.html

Department Of Divine Intervention

What is in the mind of the spring wind,blowing day and night in these groves and gardens?It never asks who owns the peach and plum treesbut blows away their petals without a word.

---Ch'i-Chi

I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but caring little for it, and much more for my imperfect garden.

---Michel De Montaigne

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

---Edward Abbey

Wonkette
God Shed His Rage On Thee

God (D-Outer Space) had a special message for America on July 4: He hates you all. From coast to coast, the Lord sent his plagues down upon ye, ruining everything from that stupid A Capitol Fourth concert to simple backyard barbecues. His hate was, as always, limitless in scope and awesome in power.

He sent tornadoes and deadly lightning strikes to the National Mall, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to run screaming for shelter. Those who endured two hours of miserable huddling inside various Smithsonian buildings were finally allowed out again at 7 p.m. and forced to go through the ridiculous security checkpoints all over again. Many simply gave up, went home and wept.

In New York’s Hudson Valley, eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and across the vast waterlogged state of Texas, hundreds of patriotic fireworks spectaculars and Independence Day Parades were canceled due to ceaseless rain, tornado warnings and flooding.

Huge, deadly ocean waves off of New York’s beloved Jones Beach forced the cancellation of the July 4 fireworks show because it was too dangerous to send out the fireworks barge!

The violent, angry surf forced cancellation of major fireworks shows on the Florida coast, too. Such was the Lord’s fury that a monster wave crashed over the Daytona Beach fireworks barge and “washed more than half of the pyrotechnics off the vessel and into the water.”

In Tennessee, the popular Oak Ridge fireworks show was canceled when police learned the “shooters” were dangerous amateurs without professional fireworks licenses.

Anywhere without a deadly deluge was a broiling, drought-stricken wasteland — the entire

Southwest, South, Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes regions — and literally hundreds of local fireworks shows were called off due to the risk of apocalyptic firestorms.

http://wonkette.com/politics/dept%27-of-divine-intervention/god-shed-his-rage-on-thee-275360.php

Justice Texas Style

Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortably within the familiar.

---Poet Jane Hirshfield, whose BA from Princeton was received in its first graduating class to include women

For eight straight years George Bush hasn't displayed the slightest interest in anything we care about. And now that he's after a job that he can't get appointed to, he's like Columbus discovering America. He's found child care. He's found education. Poor George. He can't help it - he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

---Texas Governor Ann Richards, who was defeated for re-election mysteriously by George Bush's son, also named George Bush

We went from being a party of confidence and fiscal restraint and individual liberty to being the party that encouraged intervention in Terry Schiavo's case, the disastrous experience in Iraq, Katrina, and an $8.5 trillion debt. It was hogs feeding at the trough from Jack Abramoff to Karl Rove. I'm just sad and angry.

---Author Christopher Buckley, the son of National Review founder and supreme conservative William F. Buckley, Jr.

Before a television set was in every home, American families used to sit out on the front porch after dinner every evening. They'd call greetings to neighbors and watch the world go by. After that, they might set up a card table in the living room and play a game. Sometimes a game might be saved when somebody had to go to bed, and brought out to be continued the next night. Canasta games might go on for a week.

Among the board games there was Monopoly. I always had mixed feelings about that game. There was an edge to it that seemed to encourage the person who was winning to gloat and ridicule and inflict emotional pain on the others. Losing in Monopoly felt like drowning. And so I probably shouldn't have been surprised when one afternoon in 1965 as we were playing the game, my friend from Tyler, Texas, Tony Andretta, reached around to his desk, opened a drawer, took out a loaded six-shooter, and placed it on the table.

I use Tony's real name because, while it is highly unlikely he still is alive, I would love someone who knew him to discover this article and let me know whatever happened to him. We both were in our first teaching jobs at a school in The Bronx. He taught science and I, hired to teach English, ended up chairing the social studies department. He was a bit older than I was and had fought, he said, in Korea. He'd received a wound to his stomach, which for some reason never could heal and he had to change the dressing all the time. It didn't seem to slow him down much though, and he actively pursued a life of women, brawling, smoking and booze.

We were unlikely friends I guess, but somehow our differences made us curious. He came from an oil family and so this teaching stuff was just for the heck of it. Maybe there was temporary friction with his father, something like that. He'd been married a few times and always seemed on the verge of doing it again. About the gun, he told me later that's how they do things in Texas. He said he always had a gun in his glove compartment, because in Texas if a trooper pulls you over you come out shooting. One time we pretended to be federal inspectors in a Woolworth's pet department, concerned about the condition of the creatures in there. Under threat of being shut down, the manager gave us some lizards Tony wanted for his terrarium.

After a couple of years, we went our separate ways and lost track of each other. Tony lived loud and big, and could back it up. He was the first Texas male I'd ever met. In my experience, Texas women tend to be quite different from the men. Not the loud and big part, but in how liberal and democratic they like to be. I wish a couple of them still were around to comment on the Scooter Libby business.

The Bushes may run a lot of Texas but Texans know they aren't really from there. In fact, Ann Richards in that same famous 1988 speech before the Democratic Convention said, "I am delighted to be here with you this evening because after listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like." [link] But the George Bushes of the world keep trying to be the real deal, faking bravado at the Alamo until finally a Mexican soldier's bullet takes them down.

Two or 3 articles have appeared the last couple days about the Libby commute to which I'd like to refer you. The first is by William Rivers Pitt, who manages to get both the indignation and history together for folks who haven't been following this closely~~~

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070307R.shtml

The second is from the Associated Press that posted first reactions on Monday~~~

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070703/D8Q4QAK80.html

This morning's New York Times has collected comments from various attorneys and legal scholars~~~

[link]

When Christians Torture

The Torture Of St. Victor was created by an unknown painter in 1490.

O to be delivered

from the rational

into the realm of

pure song...

---Theodore Roethke

Remember these teachings, remember the clear light, the pure bright shining white light of your own nature. It is deathless.

---The Tibetan Book Of The Dead

The healthy person doesn't torture others. Generally, it's the tortured who turn into torturers.

---C.G. Jung

I've never been comfortable with the notion of the United States as a Christian nation. Even as a child, I wondered what trusting in God was doing printed on all our money. Was it supposed to be a reminder not to get too involved in the things of this earth? If so, I'm not sure that strategy has worked.

I knew no Pagans, Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus in the 1940s, but Jews were among our neighbors and family friends. A classroom assignment in the second grade in which we were supposed to write a paragraph about our family's Christmas celebration and then read it aloud reduced a Jewish friend to tears when it was his turn. He read, "In my family we have no Christmas. We have no Christmas tree. There is no Santa Claus or presents." And he put his head down on his desk and cried. That's a long time for me to remember that essay. Obviously it changed me forever.

In the 1950s during the "Red Scare" and McCarthy's era, I remember distinctly when "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. We said the pledge in school everyday, and at first nobody could get it right. The teachers finally said we didn't have to say the new thing if we didn't want to, but just be silent during the time others might say it. I still don't say it.

So it's been quite a stretch for someone as old as me and so often described as a kid who always was thinking about things to get my head around the policies my government has evolved the last quarter century. Bush described his foreign policy at first as a Crusade. He quickly was shut up, not so much because it didn't describe the spiritual nature of Globalization, as his family saw it, but because the term obviously brought back some memories for followers of Islam...and after all, some of those guys are clients.

When the first photographs from Abu Ghraib came out, I thought sure the White House game was up...and I said so. I remembered a couple of photos from Viet Nam that lost us that war, or whatever it was. But the years and months and deaths have dragged on since then. Aren't Americans affected anymore? And what of the Republican "Christian base?" How do they theologize treatment of "detainees?" Do they think about it? Do they pray for them? Do they forgive? Do they love?

As I've written before, we have a new priest at The Church of the Good Shepherd. Bill Carroll and his family have been with us a year now, and so I'm glad to let him know he's not "new" to me anymore but instead a wonderful leader and accepted easily as my personal priest. His wife Tracey is a priest too, although understandably she ministers as Mother more to their 2 children than to us right now.

Both share strong academic backgrounds and Bill clearly is a biblical scholar and Anglican historian. Sometimes his sermons reflect a prior career of lecturing to theology students...which is fine with me. Perhaps there's some of that in the message he delivered yesterday. He used as his text a line from Psalm 63, which we had chanted earlier in the service, and spent most of the sermon differentiating between an idol and an ikon. That's an important distinction to make in one's worship, in whatever religion, but why am I writing to you about it this morning?

It's because at the end, he suddenly made a connection between idolatry and the frame of mind it must take to torture someone that I find stunning. And of course it's because Christians worship Christ who was tortured to death.

http://gsathens.blogspot.com/

The US: One Big Drug Store

The family that protests together...: Richard, Dana, Ilona demonstrating against a nuclear dump they want to build down the road apiece. (Photo by Loraine McCosker)

In a single cry

the pheasant has swallowed

the fields of spring.

---Yamei

The real miracle is not to walk on water or thin air but to walk on the earth!

---Thich Nhat Hanh

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

---Charlie Parker

I went to my dentist for the semi-annual checkup yesterday, and noticed a new product in the little bag of stuff they give you afterwards. I wisecracked to the receptionist that Listerine must be sending my doctor and his family on a cruise somewhere. She was quick to reply he never takes anything from companies except the free samples. I was happy to hear that.

Whereupon I gave her an earful about my family doctor's office. I said I hadn't been in there even once in the past 2 years (and I go maybe 3 times a year---they want to get all they can out of my insurance company) when there wasn't a drug salesperson pushing pills. These people are particularly sickening, as they try to get from the reception window into the back area to unload their suitcases full of drugs and bribe the doctors. The payoffs are free dinners, trips, and various toys to be strewn all over the place with big long names of pills on them. Undoubtedly they hope some patients will steal the toys to take home and spread the word. Free advertising. The dinners are gigantic feasts, and receptionists are encouraged to have to doctor invite all their friends if they want to. This is done in brazen broad daylight in front of a room of patients, waiting hour after hour to get that prescription.

I was in there last week, for a sprained foot I wanted X-rayed, and the drug lady was suggesting perhaps the doctors would like a new restaurant this time. Maybe one in Columbus or Parkersburg, a finer one, a richer one. The receptionist said she'd ask. "And oh!" the pusher said, "did you notice my new outfit?" She did a little swirl in front of the window. "It's color coordinated with our featured capsule!" I couldn't believe my ears. "See? The same colors as (she named the drug). Even the waistband is the color of the little separating line." I felt nauseated, and nearly stood up and let her have it. This is our health system in action, and I'm about to go in an office for treatment that will pay for this woman's salary, costume, and a doctor's free vacation courtesy of pharmaceuticals.

Maybe 20 years ago or more doctors started giving us free samples of drugs they were prescribing. I appreciated that because sometimes I was sick with flu or something, and just felt like going back to bed rather than a drug store to get medication. But since then, the practice has become obscene. Is this the free market the people in power tell us is a new religion solving the world's problems? If so, I want out! I'll gather roots and herbs in the woods before I'll take any more of this horror show. Have a look at TruthOut's article on the mess from Monday afternoon~~~

Prescription Drugs: Where's the Free Market?

By Dean Baker

t r u t h o u t Columnist

Monday 04 June 2007

For the last several years The New York Times has run articles almost every week exposing abuses by the prescription drug industry. (It had two last weekend Doctor Says Drug Maker Tried to Quash His Criticism of Avandia and After Sanctions, Doctors Get Drug Company Pay.) The stories usually document indirect payoffs to doctors for prescribing drugs, such as exorbitant speaker fees, expense-paid trips to industry-sponsored seminars at resort locations, or excessive fees for participating in clinical trials. In some cases the articles document outright kickbacks, as when the NYT reported that doctors who administer an anemia drug in their office could receive tens of thousands of dollars annually in rebates from the manufacturer.

The abuses also affect the research that is used to establish a drug's safety and effectiveness. There have been many incidents in which drug companies have concealed evidence that their drugs may not be more effective than cheaper alternatives. In some cases, they have concealed evidence of negative side effects from the public and the Food and Drug Administration. And, there is the problem that drug companies often pay researchers to sign their names to articles touting the benefits of their drugs, which the researchers did not write.

Such abuses should not be surprising to anyone who appreciates the value of a competitive market. The root cause of all of these problems is government-granted patent monopolies that allow the pharmaceutical industry to sell drugs at prices that can exceed the cost of production by a factor of a hundred, or more. Last fall, Wal-Mart began selling hundreds of generic drugs for $4 per prescription. The vast majority of brand drugs could also be profitably sold for $4 per prescription, if it were not for the patent monopoly granted by the government.

As a result of patent monopolies, drug companies can sell drugs for hundreds of dollars that cost them a few dollars to manufacture. This situation invites the sort of corruption that NYT documents regularly in its pages.

Drug patents do serve a purpose: they provide an incentive to the industry to develop new drugs. However, there are other ways in which this research can be financed. The federal government already spends nearly $30 billion a year on biomedical research conducted through the National Institutes of Health. By doubling this amount, it could probably replace the research conducted by the pharmaceutical industry, most of which currently goes to develop copycat drugs (another problem of the patent system).

As another possible alternative, Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz has suggested a prize system, in which the government would buy out patents at prices determined by their usefulness. The patents would then be placed in the public domain so that all new drugs could be sold as generics.

The United States spends almost $240 billion a year on prescription drugs, which comes to $800 per person. The cost of prescription drugs are a major burden to millions of low and moderate income households as well as to the government itself, which now picks up much of the tab through Medicare and Medicaid. In addition, hundreds of millions of people in the developing world are denied access to prescription drugs because they cannot afford to pay patent-protected drug prices.

The time has long passed when we should be seriously considering alternatives to patent financed research for prescription drugs. However, the power of the pharmaceutical industry has largely kept any such discussion off the political agenda.

A recent article in The Nation triggered a debate in the blogosphere as to whether the methodology of mainstream economics prevents it from considering important issues. In the case of patent financing of prescription drug research, there are no methodological issues at stake. Economists could use the exact same models that show the losses from trade barriers on shoes and shirts to quantify the much larger economic harm from patent monopolies on prescription drugs.

Unfortunately, the political force behind protection for prescription drugs is much greater than the political force behind protection for shoes and shirts. Therefore, we can look forward to reading many more articles in the NYT about abuses in the prescription drug industry.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect's web site.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060407D.shtml

The Divine Feminine

Offering of Fruits to Moon Goddess, 1757

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (b. 1727, Venezia, d. 1804, Venezia)

There is not a petal of a flower or a blade of grass that does not configure the Way.

---Bassui

Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.

---Richard Whately

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.

---Federico Fellini

I have to be very careful here. Here I am offering up an article about a (The?) feminine perspective, and all the quotations up there are by guys. Is it a (The?) male perspective to explain things and solve problems, as those gentlemen are attempting? Women often respond by telling me what's wrong with my thinking and ignoring my solutions.

And of course there is a thin line between reporting and advocacy. I've had a whole life of trouble through advocating things, albeit worthwhile. Civil rights, anti-nukes, peace, organics, education and citizenship, cleaning up fraud and corruption, anti-consumerism. But of all the movements I tried to support, the feminine one has been the trickiest around which to maintain objectivity.

So I'm going to try just to report something here that I think may be significant and of interest having to do with what some call a particularly feminine outlook. Actually Cathy Holt is going to report it, so I'm hoping to get pretty much off the hook. I've subscribed to Cathy's occasional newsletter almost from the first day I got onto the Internet. Originally she wrote about natural foods and the alternative lifestyle, but from the vantage point of someone still struggling in the mainstream. That appealed to me because I try to do that. But a couple years ago, she decided to involve herself in an experimental community of people in North Carolina, who want off the grid and out of the rat race. As far as I know, there she has stayed...and while she doesn't write much about the struggles of such attempts, it seems to be going OK.

This article is a bit different, as she reports on a workshop she attended. Since most of the people who read what I send out---or at least skim through the ones with intriguing titles (before hitting delete)---have an interest in what direction the species seems to be headed, I'm hoping Cathy's effort will be helpful and inspiring toward hope!

EARTH & US: Sacred Activism

The Divine Feminine came to Asheville in the form of Jim Garrison and Andrew Harvey of Wisdom University. They electrified hundreds at a weekend workshop on Sacred Activism. Garrison is a theologian and philosopher, author of six books, and a proponent of the emerging "Wisdom Culture." Harvey is a Rumi scholar, worshipper of the Divine Feminine, and author of numerous books including The Direct Path.

"Wisdom is always collective," said Garrison. "Why is it that after billions of years, our species has brought all life to the brink of extinction?" This ability to destroy the world was seen as something only God could do, previously to our times. He reminded us of other times of collapse in history, when many thought that the end of the world had come. For example, in 14th century Europe, the plague killed one-quarter of Europe's population. The medieval order collapsed along with monarchy. However, in 1380, two councilmen from Florence reformed the educational system. Teaching children "civic humanism" may have been the spark that ignited the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment. At moments of great duress, the feminine wisdom takes hold, Garrison believes, adding, "We are in one of those moments now."

All the movements of the sixties and seventies have now produced a body of some 60 million people which Garrison calls "the new moral majority." Quoting Dr. Paul Rahe (another professor at Wisdom University), Garrison says that Conservatives are now about 24% of the populace (and dropping), Moderns about 50%, and Cultural Creatives are about 26% and rising. Their values:

* Personal development, spiritual growth

* Environmental protection

* Community

* Social justice

Genocide is at the basis of the power of the U.S. empire. The U.S. has broken treaties and international laws under Bush; the world community now sees the U.S. as a rogue nation. It’s up to our generation to change that, by realizing our power and using it to create social change arising from collective vision and reverence for the Earth.

Andrew Harvey, who was raised in India, first experienced the divine feminine there. "Rumi is a force of the great birth in the midst of apocalypse," he said. "Unless we transform our consciousness on every level, we'll die and take most of nature with us." He believes that our false self is showing up as fundamentalism, ecological crisis, trashy mass media, techno-addiction ("the cement garden"), insane busy-ness, and psychotic denial. The Divine Mother offers transformative wisdom now, leading to the fusion of the mystic's passion for the divine and the activist's passion for justice. "The shadow of the mystic is being without doing; the shadow of the activist is acting from indignation, demonizing the opponent, and addiction to doing," Harvey declared. "The dynamic, passionate fire of love in action will transform the Earth into a garden!"

Quoting Rumi ("the voice of the birth of mystic truth"):

The tender words we said to one another

Are stored in the secret heart of heaven.

When the world is consumed with fire,

They will descend like rain

And the world will grow green with our love.

Harvey spoke of Rumi's luminous vision of creation: "each thing filled with wisdom and beauty." The profoundest courtesy of soul is due every creation, which we must respect and cherish with deep tenderness. Harvey, who is a great lover of cats, is fond of pointing out that Rumi's cat died shortly after he did, and was buried along with him.

Real birth and transformation, Harvey said, isn't all light. It's a scary process and can only arise from the death of the false self. This is the dark night of the soul which every mystic experiences, followed by the resurrection, the liberation into the power of alignment with divine compassion. "Just as soil must be broken in order to grow food, abscesses must be pierced to heal, trees are cut to build a house, and wheat is ground on the millstone, so must we purify ourselves and abandon all arrogance, burn our egos to ash, and receive the bliss of limitless existence." Such transformation comes not from intellect, but from the sacred fire.

"Passion burns down every branch of exhaustion."

– Rumi.

"Let divine passion derange and possess you," Harvey exhorted. "Marry the human nothing with the divine everything."

Harvey led us to examine our shadow and its seven aspects of fear: fear of suffering; of looking weak & emotional; of trusting our deep instincts; of overwhelming guilt; of causing pain to others (and losing their approval); of powerlessness, helplessness; and of awakening to full power and total responsibility.

The activist often has a Messiah complex, "I have to do it all." Activists may demonize their opponents, self-righteously projecting evil onto others. They may mistake stress and burnout for glory and authenticity; they may depreciate ordinary life, preferring heroics; and they may be ungrounded in spirit. Mystics, on the other hand, may be addicted to transcendent bliss, escaping from the real, believing "I need do nothing but love." They may deny the reality of evil, and even lack compassion for the suffering of others.

Owning the shadow gives us wisdom to see our "opponents" as a manifestation of ourselves. "Knowing our own darkness is the best way of dealing with the darknesses of other people," Harvey asserted. He listed seven practices to help the activist find balance.

1. Spiritual practices: "Cool" practices of meditation, mindful breathing and walking, calming and peaceful focus on the Divine; "warm" practices to keep the heart compassionate, from Christian mysticism and Mahayana Buddhism; sacred body practices to strengthen and ground oneself, such as yoga and Tai Chi.

2. Surrender the fruits of action (non-attachment). This clears the ego out of the way and prevents discouragement when results are poor. The greatest power is in surrendering to divine intention. This was true of both Jesus and Gandhi.

3. Recognize evil, face it in oneself and in society. Evil is the conscious enjoyment of destructive power. So much human intelligence has been focused on cruelty to one another.

4. Transform anger into fierce wisdom energy. This is not demonizing others, not suppressing or repressing outrage, but transforming it into wisdom and compassion. Allow anger to arise, imagine it flows out the belly and into Kali's mouth, where she breathes it into herself to transmute. She saves the pure gold and streams it back to us as fierce wisdom with compassion.

5. Do shadow work. This means seeing the other as oneself reflected, leading to heart-broken tender compassion for all beings. "Shadow work is the ultimate form of protection." We can each claim the parts of ourselves that are like George Bush, and send healing energy to those parts. "The way out of hell is to find a child of the enemy and raise him with total love."

6. Create networks of grace. Don't wait for governments and corporations to change, but network with people everywhere. Realize you can't do it alone, and that synergy, mutual sharing of insights and resources, is the only way.

7. Challenge escapist and burnt out activism. There is great joy in inspiring, uplifting and energizing people, unleashing the energy of the creative force. When we are joyful, others can't help wanting to join us.

He closed with a powerful story from the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa. An elderly black woman offered her love to the white man who had killed her children. When asked how that was possible, she simply said, "Jesus gave me the strength."

Cathy Holt

www.kindcommunication.com

Stop the words now.

Open the window in the center of your chest

And let the spirits fly in and out.

- Rumi