The flag has been hijacked.
Standing up to your government means standing up for your country.
Not every American patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us.
The American flag has been hijacked.
These are just some of the statements that Bill Moyers made at the end of his PBS program tonight (NOW with Bill Moyers) as he explained why he was wearing an American flag pin – something he hadn’t been doing because it has become associated with support for the current administration’s policies.
The flag has been hijacked, he said, pointing to the fact that everywhere you look on Capitol Hill, a flag lapel pin adorns the suit of every lobbyist who is there trying to get tax breaks for his/her billionaire corporate clients. It is purposely visible over the political hearts of those who go around explaining that sacrifice is good – as long as they don’t have to make it.
The flag been hijacked, Moyers said. And he was taking it back.
I wish it were that simple.
Moyers’ conversation with Josesph Wilson, a former senior American diplomat who had met with Saddam Hussein and who is an expert on the Middle East, was not simple either.
To me, one of Wilson’s most important observations was regarding Hussein’s personality: Hussein is a creature of his country, Wilson stated. His world view is limited, largely by the information fed to him by his sycophants. He is a coldly rational actor, but his very logical arguments are profoundly affected by his skewed premises. In Saddam’s mind, he personifies Iraq, and that means he expects his people to die protecting him.
Wilson implied that Bush’s decision about war ignores who Hussein is, ignores the culture of which he is a product. He admits that the Iraqi people would be better off without Saddam Hussein, but a war that involves invading, conquering, and occupying Iraq is not necessarily going to accomplish what Bush thinks it will.
Millions of people on the streets have been sold a war on disarmament, Wilson explained. First, we were led to believe that this war is about the connection between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Now we’re being told that we’re going to war in order to overthrow a regime and supplant it with a democracy. The president has made it evident that this war is not so much about weapons of destruction as it is about changing the map of the Middle East -- getting rid of regimes that are problems for America and replacing them with ones that we can control. The president has made it obvious that he wants a dead Hussein, not just a disarmed Hussein. He’s left Hussein no choice.
Wilson’s discussion of what happens when you try to forcefully replace a dictatorial regime with a democracy was based on how he has seen it work – or not work – in Africa. Trying to set up a democracy in a benign environment is tough at best, Wilson said, and post-war Iraq would not be a benign environment. And, in a truly democratic election, chances are that whoever the people elect as their leader will not be pro-U.S.
Wilson suggests that there are several other steps that can be taken before embarking on a full-scale war. One of these options is using force (the precision bombing of weapons sites) for the purpose of achieving the objective of disarmament.
Instead, he said, there is talk of using “shock and awe” – several days of air assault to destroy Baghdad — sending in thousands of missiles the first day and then waiting to see what happens before sending in the next wave. What Bush wants is to destroy Hussein, and to do that, he has to destroy Iraq. And that means much of the Iraqi population.
The flag has been hijacked. So has intelligent planning and human decency.
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My dialogue with a warrior.
Several days ago, I received an email from a former miltary man who supports our government's intentions to go to war. I'm assuming that he sent out a blanket email to everyone he found on the internet who participated in yesterday's Anti-War Virtual March. I don't think he got many responses, but he did get one from me. And then the dialogue began.
His statements to me were polite, sincere, and well-articulated. The bottom line, though, is that we disagree, and we especially disagree about the necessity to question authority.
His most recent email, which linked to an article about teachers in Maine upsetting children of military personnel who might be soon shipped out to Iraq, also included this:
As my son prepares to go to war in the national guard as a helicopter pilot, I read your prose and remember the invective that spewed forth from the mouths of protesters during Viet Nam. Those protesters that ran to Canada, exercised their deferments in college or wrangled other ways to beat the draft. While the common soldier took the brunt of their abuse on their backs, truly innocent of all charges, most doing only what they were told as their responsibility as a citizen.
As I stood before the memorials near the reflection pools in Washington DC, I remembered my fallen comrades. I walked among the field of white headstones of the many who are memorialized in Arlington, I learned to appreciate the magnitude of their sacrifice. I laid in the bunker ducking the bullets and rockets overhead, I longed for the warmth and comfort of the bosom of my family. Today I send my son to war, I pray for his safe return, I remember all those who went before, I gladly walk by his side with pride, I do not relish, celebrate, or desire war, But I realize that there are times when it is necessary to right the wrongs and protect those that can not do it themselves.
This is how I responded:
We need to teach kids to hate war but not the warriors. I think that anyone who is not sensitive to the fear of a child about losing a parent to war needs immediate instruction on how to be a compassionate human being.
My belief is that the last few times, we have not gone to war to protect the innocents; we have gone to war to protect oil and other political and greed motivated interests. And this time we are going to war for the same kinds of reasons. The best way to convert other countries to democracy is to model the kind of free, open, peaceful, and democratic government that we want them to emulate. (And we are falling farther and farther away from that ideal under our current political leadership.) Physical force is never an effective way to convince anyone of anything. Children learn by watching what we do, not what we say. The world is watching us.
To defend one's family, one's city, one's country is noble. But that's not what we're asking our soldiers to do. We are asking them to invade and destroy someone else's country. We are asking them to massacre (collateral) innocents We are making our sons and daughters victims of the greed and manipulations of this country's immoral leaders. Again.
It takes courage to fight and die for what you believe in. It also takes courage to live and speak out according to one's pacifist beliefs.
It has been said that you can't have Good without Evil.
Peace and War. Life and Death. Perhaps dualities are unavoidable in the eternal human struggle. But it seems to me that it is always better to come down on the side of Life/Peace, rather than Death/War.
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No Joke
How do we know that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction?
We kept the receipts.
The joke is on all of us, and it’s not funny.
Salon’s Joe Conason asks “Why is the U.N. -- at the White House's request -- censoring 8,000 pages of Iraq's weapons declaration?” He goes on to answer his question, including pointing out that…
Evidently those documents name corporations and other entities from all those countries that supplied the Iraqi weapons industries, back when our politicians still considered Saddam Hussein preferable to the alternatives and cared little for the fate of the Kurds, the Shia and the tortured Iraqi people.
As Conason goes on to explain:
The role of Western governments and companies in arming Saddam is not exactly a secret, of course. Covert U.S. financial and military assistance to Iraq was the subject of one of the unfinished scandals of the first Bush administration -- named "Iraqgate" by William Safire, if I recall correctly. Only a few news organizations, notably the L.A. Times and the Financial Times, pursued that story aggressively, but it scared the Republicans badly. These days, they have little to fear from the docile press corps.
Time to join the movement to impeach Dubya.
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There Goes the Neighborhood
Betsy Devine has become just about my favorite blogger these days. I like her writing style, and she picks up and writes about just the things I care about.
Today, she quotes the dear and departed Mr. Fred Rogers, whose gentleness with -- and respect for -- kids is needed now more than ever. Thanks, Betsy, for sharing this quote from the AP Euology:
During the Persian Gulf War, Rogers told youngsters that "all children shall be well taken care of in this neighborhood and beyond -- in times of war and in times of peace," and he asked parents to promise their children they would always be safe.
"We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility," he said in 1994. "It's easy to say 'It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.'
"Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes."
Of course, one of my favorite Mr. Rogers Neighborhood residents was Lady Elaine Fairchilde, described here this way:
Lady Elaine Fairchilde is the neighborhood's mischief-maker. She is independent and willful, and she sometimes gets into trouble. She is lovable nonetheless, but often needs to be assured that people like her just the way she is.
Hey there, Toots. When I want something to happen, I wave my Boomerang Toomerang Soomerang and—it happens.
(If only.....)
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Welcome cool new older blogger.
He’s new blogger Jim Culleny, who links a “thanks to blogsisters” from his new weblog post that refers to this post. He emailed me to see if we might include him in Blogsister's blogroll, and of course, I had to inform him that our blogroll only links to member Blogsisters. BUT, I replied, I would be more than happy to give him some play both there and here.
Jim lives surrounded by women he loves, including two natural daughters, one stepdaughter and three granddaughters and, he says “(as you must suspect) I can’t get away with even the slightest slip into the overbearing mandom.” No wonder he likes the likes of Blogsisters!
Jim writes commentary for the Greenfield Recorder in Greenfield, Ma. And does frequent radio commentary for wfcf.fm public radio in Amherst. He’s also had work aired over National Public Radio's All Things Considered .
He says on his new blog: I'm open to new info, odd info, funny info, perplexing links, new angles on political mendacity, the tortured logic of big heads, and reports of high & low-level public screwups (for example, the loose lips of Trent Lott)...anything good citizens ought to be made aware of. Send anything you'd like. If I can use it I will.
Sure sounds like my kinda blogger! And he's a grandpa as well.
What really sold me was his linking, up front, to the following poem:
Utopia
by Wislawa Szymborska
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footsteps scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathonable life.
Welcome to the blogiverse, Jim.
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Join the American Jihad
Listening to author Walter Mosley this monring on C-Span, I hear him explain something that is totally new information for me.
He explains the Muslim concept of “Jihad” as being defined by that religion an internal struggle toward betterment, NOT a movement to vanquish enemies (as it has been portrayed by American media and the politicians who have such influence over it).
I think that we who continue to oppose Dubya’s economic, environmental, political, educational, and social service policies are doing so for the purpose of accomplishing an American Jihad. Interesting idea.
I also hear Mosley make the statement that, while America is the “architect of globalization,” Americans are not global, and most know very little about what goes on in other countries. I think that’s true.
And finally, I hear him remind us all that there is no evidence that Iraq was involved with the terrorism of 9/11. (How easily we are brainwashed by our leadership.)
Last night I caught bits and pieces of Rather’s interview with Saddam Hussein. While I have no doubt that he is a bad, bad, man, I had to admire his strategy of appearing to the rest of the world as a true statesman – asking for a globally public debate, refusing to denigrate Dubya, making the point that it is not he who is threatening to invade another sovereign country. TV watchers across the planet have to be comparing Hussein’s dignified, intelligent, relaxed demeanor with Dubya’s religion-riddled rants. Granted Saddam was playing a role, but if Dubya was smart, he’d take his enemy up on it and hold that global debate. Except that Dubya is neither smart enough to play the statesman role nor smart enough to win a debate.
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We are the Barbarians at the Gate. Again.
We are the Barbarians at the Gate, and not for the first time.
Iraq has hundreds of thousands of archaeological sites. Some 10,000 have been identified, but only a fraction have been explored. Any of them could change what we know about human history, as past excavations have done. Some have already revealed the world's earliest known villages and cities and the first examples of writing.
So begins “Oldest Human History Is at Risk,” a New York Times article by Holland Cotter, which goes on to cite the damage we’ve already done to the religious shrines and irreplaceable cultural treasures of a land and a people we, again, threaten to annihilate. Our self-righteous warring is likely to destroy places that are part of other sacred traditions as well – for example, Ur, which the Bible says is the birthplace of Abraham.
"If any of the holiest Shiite shrines at Karbala, Najaf or Kadhumain are hit, we can only expect a very angry reaction from Muslims everywhere," said Zainab Bahrani, who was born in Iraq and teaches Islamic art at Columbia University. "It would be like bombing St. Peter's in Rome."
We are the Barbarians at the Gate. Again. What makes us think that any God would want to claim us – never mind bless us!
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Goering and Bush: one voice
As emailed to me, here's a quote by Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, 1946 (from Nuremberg Diary, by G. M. Gilbert)
"Of course the people don't want war ..... That is understood. But ..... it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Every once in a while I wonder if, indeed, the form of government that offers the most equity to the most people is a benevolent dictatorship -- rule by an ethical, moral, egalitarian individual who insists on liberty, equality, fraternity, on peace and freedom, on an equitable distribution of wealth. What is it about us humans that we seem unable to build and sustain that kind of sytem for ourselves.
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Where to, now?
When I started kalilily.net about a year and a half ago, I had this idea that I’d finally have the time to experiment with becoming some sort of combination of Judith Viorst, Erma Bombeck, and Molly Ivins. I had retired from a job I usually loved to be at the disposal of my 86-year-old mother. I had always wanted to shift from writing poetry to writing personal essays, and my retired life, I hoped, would give me time to think; weblogging would give me access to an audience. Of course, I recognized that posting essays on my weblog guarantees neither fame nor fortune. Then, again, neither did writing poetry. I had nothing to lose.
What happened is that I find that really don’t have enough private time to think, to muse, to immerse myself in feelings, responses – to sink into that stillpoint where truths gather and wait for those slow teasing stirrings that find their way into words. I don’t have enough uninterrupted time to practice at the keyboard, make the kind of alphabetical music that catches the mind’s hungry eye.
Instead, it’s webloggers like Burningbird who are doing what I wanted to do – think deeply, care honestly, write thoughtfully, and make readers want to do the same in response. She thinks and writes about issues I wanted to think and write about (except, of course for those MT, RSS J2EE, EJBs, CORBA, COM/DCOM/COM+, OOAD, UMLMTS, Dynamo, MSMQ, MQ, Perl, C, PHP, C#, Delphi, Python, Smalltalk, FORTRAN, and Tcl whatevertheyare. Tech think is just not my thing.) There’s nothing I can add to what she has written -- and continues to write -- on any number of other topics.
I think I need to carve out a separate space for myself – focus on writing about issues that few webloggers have turned toward. Conscious Aging. Necessary Losses. Self-deliverance. The isolation of the elderly. Using weblogging to hold together scattered families.
These are the things facing me in my immediate life. These are the things I don't have to find time to think about because they are in my face every day. I just have to find the time to write about them.
And I know that there are others facing the same strange days. I hope that they find weblogging and find their way to me.
Once I wore the mask of the shaman,
followed the rain and flowed in the oak.
A grave of leaves marked the way of my journey.
Stones rose at my call,
and Night rode my shoulder
like an old crow, fat and familiar.
I don’t know where the rain has gone.
The sky has swept the leaves to dust
and the stones have turned to silence.
Poets and Shamans!
Where are we
now?
Categories:
No Time for Tea
--Big influx of new Blog Sisters to register and blogroll.
--Love Betsy Devine's contrasting of Alphas and Alephs. Alephs rule!
--Mom has doctor's appointments; I have physical therapy for my newly bad back.
--Taking a family member who is too sick to drive to the doctor's today.
--Have to pack up something my mother ordered from Dr. Leonard's catalog and take it to the post office.
--Cat just threw up on the rug.
--Trying to find out if there are going to be local readings from Poets Against the War on March 5 so I can sign up to read.
--My car is due for a tune-up.
--My driver's license expires in a couple of weeks and I have to go and get it renewed.
--My 89 year-old uncle is still in the hospital (again) with double pneumonia and is not doing well. I've got to get my mom and me ready to leave in case he doesn't make it this time.
--Finally finished doing my taxes, and I owe more than I thought this year. bummer.
How did I ever have time to work, take care of my kids, have a personal life, and still have time for tea?
Don't know where the time goes. Dorothea (who is half my age) doesn't know either. And btw, Dorothea, two weeks ago, I called to make an appointment for my annual physical and my doctor can't take me until July 12.
I'd better stock up on my green tea. I hope I can find the time.
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Happy Anniversary to Insiteview.
Tom Shugart is celebrating his first blogaversary and simultaneously bemoaning the slump we're all in. That is except for a few of the more popular, prolific, and penetrating bloggers like Burningbird, who, Tom speculates, must hold the record for "comments to one post." Well, Tom, I'm herewith inviting all my readers to leave you a Happy Anniversary comment and see if we can break Shelley's record. Although, given the reports from my site meter, maybe I'm not the right one to extend that invitation. Hang in there, Tom. Better days are coming. Well, better blog days, anyway. At least I hope.
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Join the VIRTUAL Anti-War March on February 26
OK. So, it's been too cold to go out and march in the real world. Here's your chance to use this technology to join your voice to all of the cold, weary, and brave protesters who actualy took to the streets. Bush says he's ignoring those protests. Let's try another tactic.
MoveOn.org is hosting an online action center to help organize a Virtual March on Washington on February 26th, sponsored by The Win Without War Coalition. You can register here to join the virtual march.
They are also launching a massive, coordinated, grassroots PR campaign, placing signs in windows, bumper stickers on cars, billboards along the streets, and ads and letters in the newspaper.
Download a poster to put in your own window.
At least register as a virtual marcher.
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Oppose Bush's War on American Women
This has definitely been lost in the war news and I thought it worth knowing.
Whether you're Right or Left on the issue of women's reproductive rights, please consider the following...
President Bush has announced his plan to appoint Dr. W. David Hager to head up the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. This position does not require Congressional approval. The FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee makes crucial decisions on matters relating to drugs used in the practice of obstetrics, gynecology and related specialties, including hormone therapy, contraception, treatment for infertility, and medical alternatives to surgical procedures for sterilization and pregnancy termination.
The committee has not met for more than two years, during which time its charter has lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration is tasked with filling all eleven positions with new members.
Dr. Hager's views of reproductive health care are far outside the mainstream of setback for reproductive technology. Dr. Hager is a practicing OB/GYN who describes himself as "pro-life" and refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women.
Hager is the author of "As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now." The book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing women with case studies from Hager's practice. In the book Dr. Hager wrote with his wife, entitled "Stress and the Woman's Body," he suggests that women who suffer from premenstrual syndrome should seek help from reading the bible and praying. As an editor and contributing author of "The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies and the Family," Dr. Hager appears to have endorsed the medically inaccurate assertion that the common birth control pill is an abortifacient.
Hagar's mission is religiously motivated. He has an ardent interest in revoking approval for mifepristone (formerly known as RU-486) as a safe and early form of medical abortion.
Hagar recently assisted the Christian Medical Association in a "citizen's petition" which calls upon the FDA to revoke its approval of mifepristone in the name of women's health. Hager's desire to overturn mifepristone's approval on religious grounds rather than scientific merit would halt the development of mifepristone as a treatment for numerous medical conditions disproportionately affecting women, including breast cancer, uterine cancer, uterine fibroid tumors, psychotic depression, bipolar depression and Cushing's syndrome. Women rely on the FDA to ensure their access to safe and effective drugs for reproductive health care including products that prevent pregnancy. For some women, such as those with certain types of diabetes and those undergoing treatment for cancer pregnancy can be a life-threatening condition.
There is widespread concern that Dr. Hager's strong religious beliefs may color his assessment of technologies that are necessary to protect women's lives or to preserve and promote women's health. Hager's track record of using religious beliefs to guide his medical decision-making makes him a dangerous and inappropriate candidate to serve as chair of this committee.
Critical drug public policy and research must not be held hostage by antiabortion politics. Members of this important panel should be appointed on the basis of science and medicine, rather than politics and religion.
American women deserve no less.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
1. SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH EVERY PERSON WHO IS CONCERNED ABOUT WOMEN'S RIGHTS.
2. OPPOSE THE PLACEMENT OF THIS MAN BY CONTACTING THE WHITE HOUSE AND TELL THEM HE IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE ON ANY LEVEL.
Please email President Bush at president@Whitehouse.gov or call the White House at (202) 456-1111 or (202) 456-1414 and say:
"I oppose the appointment of Dr. Hager to the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. Mixing religion and medicine is unacceptable. Using the FDA to promote a political agenda is inappropriate and seriously threatens women's health."
While all of our attention is riveted on Bush's global warmongering, we in the homeland are in danger of being defeated by this subversive effort.. TAKE ACTION AGAINST BUSH'S WAR ON AMERICAN WOMEN
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Birthday Pie
My mother is 87 years old today. I'm making her a birthday pie because she likes the yoghurt/jello refrigerator pies that I concoct. I usually make Key Lime, but today it will be with Peaches and Creme yoghurt and peach jello -- with some peach slices lining the bottom. Shrimp Alfredo for dinner. Food is love, right?
I trimmed her hair this morning. I have to figure out how to have a life while she's waiting for hers to end. I wonder if she's going to still be around at 97, and I wonder where I'll be when I'm her age.
Such are my thoughts on a gloomy snow-bound Tuesday with stuffy sinuses and a hunger for something that I keep satisfying with food.
Meanwhile, Molly Ivins adds to my gloom. She says
The news is not good. Osama bin Laden wants us to invade Iraq. We're at orange on the alert code. The economy is tanking. We're spending $1.08 billion a day on the military.
The president wants a $674 billion tax cut. In the first year, 50 percent of that tax cut would go the richest 1 percent of Americans and three-quarters of it would go to the richest 5 percent. In the years beyond that, the concentration at the top actually gets worse, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. To pay for that, he wants to raise the rent on subsidized housing for the poorest people in the country and break up Head Start, sending it down to the states, where governments are frantically cutting everything they can. Money to pay for everything from cleaning up Superfund sites to leaving no child behind is being slashed to pay for this obscene tax cut.
We're about to got to war with a country that hasn't fired a shot at us or anyone else. Our war plan calls for us to "shock and awe" Iraq by smashing 800 cruise missiles into Baghdad in the first 48 hours of the war. That's one every four minutes night and day. According to Harlan Ullman, the "defense intellectual" who advocates the "shock and awe" tactic, it's supposed to work like the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. That worked, all right.
During the last Gulf War, we killed 13,000 civilians directly and another 70,000 died in the aftermath from no water, no food, no electricity, no medical care, etc. I'd like to get rid of Saddam Hussein myself, but how many lives is it worth? And do they get to vote on it?
I wonder if any of us will we be around to celebrate my mother's 88th.
Categories:
Off-center.
So, yesterday, while friends and family are emailing me links to great pieces like this about Laura Bush and the Poets Against War effort, and this by Breslin about his moving experiences with the NYC anti-war protesters, and this in the Village Voice about the impact of the anti-war marches, I'm driving my mother 85 miles in minus-four-degree weather to visit my brother, her son, who has not been feeling all that well.
I've been having "discussions" with my mom about her starting to take Alzheimer medication in hopes of slowing down a process that I see starting but she refuses to acknowledge. Her brother, two years older than she, is (again) in the hospital with pneumonia because he keeps going outside in below zero weather without his coat. The really bad thing is that he now believes he is a kid back in Poland, keeps pulling his IV out, and rarely recognizes his daughter. This kind of stuff runs in families. I worry about that.
Of course, we "discuss" this most of the way down to my brother's, so when my brother comes out to help my mom out of the car and, in her usual disfunctional way, she starts yelling at him for going outside without a coat, we are off to our usual bickering start.
I'm immersed in battles -- planetary and familial, with the weather, with myself. (We're in the middle of another really bitch of a snowstorm.) I'm out of energy, out of motivation.
Today, one of my best friends calls (she's retiring next month) and tries to get me to sign up for a program at the community college where a bunch of retirees will be getting together once a week to take day trips to cool places in the region -- every Thursday for five weeks beginning the middle of May. She and I always have great times together -- used to go out and dance every Friday night -- "out on a tear" we would say -- watch out world!
Living with my mother drains me. Just agreeing to do the program with my friend makes me feel like I've climbed a mountain. But I'm going to do it, because I know that doing it will be like sledding down the other side.
Breathe, I tell myself. Have a cup of tea and a Peppridge Farm Milano (double chocolate, of course.) There will be a spring. There will be a spring.
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Thanks, Dorothea
Cold and tired as she is, Dorothea Salo -- who was out marching for peace -- found time to help me figure out (or rather remember) how to do a trackback. So this is a test run, as well as a kudo to Dorothea, who braved the cold to lend her voice to the cause of peace. I didn't make it out anywhere myself, so I appreciate her effort.
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Out of the mouths of old codgers...
It’s not only babes who remind us of our follies and failures. This from Andy Rooney’s column in my local paper today:
...No one mentions the fact that we have all the nasty weapons we accuse Iraq and North Korea of having. No one suggests we destroy our vast store of biological killers. No one is demanding that a U.N. inspection team be allowed to take an inventory of the weapons we have in sufficient quantity to wipe out all mankind…..
and
...There has been life on Earth for more than 3 billion years. Mankind has only been dominant on the planet for something like 100,000 years. Progress has been slow but we’ve made some. There’s no guarantee that life on the planet will not revert to what it was before we organized it the way it is today. Destroying the United Nations by ignoring it would be a step in that direction.
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Lebanon Protest
Sign carried by marcher at anti-war protest in Beirut, Lebanon:
STOP MAD COWBOY DISEASE!
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10 million Earthlings can’t be wrong.
Well, maybe not exactly 10 million, but there most certainly are millions of Earth’s people out in the streets of more than 600 cities today protesting Dubya’s call to war. As the reporter on CNN just reported from London, this is the first time individuals all over the planet have joined together to shout with one voice. No war! Non Guerre!
The reporters interview protesters – as many over 50 years old as under. One voice – ageless, human, insistent. No War! Non Guerre!
The protesters are not anti-American. They are anti-George W. Bush, who has become the ugliest of all Americans, gathering his supporters to press for what the people of Earth pray and chant and march and protest against.
Even the mainstream media can’t ignore today’s message from the people of Earth. No War! Non Guerre!
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Pimping for the Crone
I humbly accept the honor bestowed upon me by two feisty and formidable (and much younger) bloggers, Camilo and Robin, who named kalilily.net in their Friday Five “Pimp five of your favorite journals/blogs.” And just to top off my otherwise non-eventful Valentine’s Day (except, of course, for a call from my son b!X across the country in Portland), Monica left a Valentine Comment. My gratitude to you all. (And if I could remember how to do Trackbacks, I would have done them. Duh!)
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All-American Keystone Cops Are Still At It
"A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York," according to an ABC report.
Apparently, the CIA and FBI are pointing fingers at each other after the informant who provided them with the bogus information flunked a polygraph test. But, in usual Keystone Cops fashion, our feisty protectors continue to wave their Orange Alert flag and stumble along their path of lies.
Meanwhile, in the Big Applesauce, apparently U.S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones apparently doesn’t know much about cooking, or she would know how to make sure that a pressure cooker doesn’t explode. You DON’T confine the pressure, Judge Jones; rather you allow it to release at whatever rate it needs so that the lid doesn’t blow off.
Instead, as reported by Alternet.org, Judge Jones has ordered “that protesters in New York will be corralled together in tightly controlled police pens…” rather than “march past the UN, then west, then up through Times Square and along Seventh Avenue to Central Park,” as the organizers from United for Peace and Justice originally intended.
According to the Alternet report,
It is expected that many will seek to avoid the pens and hope to sow confusion all around Manhattan. The online discussion of such tactics, honed at past free-form protests, suggest using cell phones to coordinate splinter actions. One contributor to the NYC Indymedia Center Web site called for: "a tactical plan for wide-scale CD [civil disobedience] throughout Manhattan. This could include surprise ‘people's inspections’ of various corporate and governmental sites, traffic lockdowns, a mass die-in, street theater, prayer vigils, snowball fights, you name it. It's time to be both bold and creative. Let's transform Feb. 15 into a carnival of peace and resistance throughout Manhattan all afternoon. Save the protest pit for last call."
I’m starting to believe that Buffy’s the First, ("the original evil, the one that came before anything else") and Angel’s the boss of the Beast have taken over the minds, hearts, and souls of America’s leaders and are, literally, hell-bent on destroying all hope for America. (Has Joss Whedon been tapping into our leaders' collective unconscious?")
My thoughts will be with the protesters in NYC tomorrow. Keep the faith.
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"War, Lies, and Audiotape"
That's the title of a revealing piece by Joe Conason in salon.com that links to a full translation of the bin Laden tape and points out sections that greatly reduce the credibility of Colin Powell's interpretation.
Conason points out:
As I argue elsewhere, this tape is probably more than a signal for Islamist terrorism against the West; it is almost certainly a deliberate attempt to encourage war fever in the United States. Does anyone doubt that bin Laden prefers war to weapons inspections?
He ends with a reasonable and insightful request:
While I put together my survival kit of duct tape and canned soup, I hope an administration spokesman will explain why we are sending 150,000 troops to overthrow Saddam Hussein when we wouldn't send in 5,000 to capture or kill bin Laden.
In the words of U.S. Senator Byrd from the Senate floor today:
In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill. This Administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, International order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This Administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as a well-intentioned peacekeeper. This Administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come. Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant -- these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good.
As I post this, Dubya is speaking in Jacksonville, Floriday, revving up the troops. "Jack is Back!" he is telling them, reminding them of their ongoing battle for "Enduring Freedom." He is playing right into bin Laden's hands, who will be ecastatic, no doubt, to see us launch ourselves into a full-scale war with Iraq.
(My thanks to b!X for continuing to point me to important news links while he focuses his weblogging on his local activist activities.)
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Dowload Free Posters for Peace
Go here and here to www.truemajority.com to download posters that you can print out and display, share, etc. Do it!
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The Changing Blog Landscape
Over at Burningbird's, there's a deep discussion going on about the evolution of blogging in response to to Clay Shirky's controversial and statistic-based post on "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality".
As I commented over at Bb's,
I really don’t give a hoot about statistics, but I find that Clay Shirky’s projections of how the blog phenomenon will fall out fits pretty well with what I sense has already begun to happen. I don’t know what the big picture will look like, but the little picture (in my little piece of the non-techie blogworld) is already beginning to form. Theonetruebix.com, who started a kind of blogging way before the big rush began and templates were made widely available, recently left his “personal” weblog behind to establish two weblogs with very specific purposes. And, I have long been searching for older (over 60) bloggers, as well as caregivers of all ages who are interested in sharing through blogging. I guess I was sensing what Shirky suggests -- that "In between blogs-as-mainstream-media and blogs-as-dinner-conversation will be Blogging Classic, blogs published by one or a few people, for a moderately-sized audience, with whom the authors have a relatively engaged relationship."
My personal weblogging experience also mirrors Shirky’s suggestions. I get some hits from Google searches, but (after 15 months of blogging) most of my readers are people who know me, even non-blogger far-away friends who have always found what I have to say engaging. It’s come down to a small group, and it’s pretty much what I expected after my early brief and comment-active fling with some of the B level bloggers. As registrar for Blog Sisters, I register new female bloggers almost every day. Almost all of their weblogs are in (in Shirky words) that “long tail of weblogs with few readers.”
Whether the way the stats were gathered is accurate and valid or not, it seems to me that Shirky’s interpretation pretty much reflects what’s begun to happen with weblogging.
What we webloggers totally ignore, however, is the fact that, even if you count up all of us (from the Alphas all the way to the ones hanging onto that long tail), we are a pretty insignficant minority in the population of this planet. I have no idea what the stats are, but I'll bet that most of the non-techie people (and even some of the techies, I've found) in the world who use technology for information and communication rely on search engines, email, listervs, and chatrooms and have no idea what a weblog is.
Shirky's posted projections are worth reading, and the related conversation at Burningbird's really expands on the subject. To me, this kind of interplay reflects the best of how weblogs work.
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“PPs” and Low-Comedy-Keystone-Cops-Upper-Crust-C-Students
That’s who’s running the county, says my hero, 80-year old Kurt Vonnegut, in an interview in alternet.org.
After a good half-century of using his immense talent to shake and rattle the thinking of literate humans on this planet, Vonnegut rolls into his last decades with as much vehemence and wisdom as ever.
The classic medical text on PPs [psychopathic personalities] is "The Mask of Sanity " by Dr. Hervey Cleckley, Vonnegut explains. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! ……..What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
Go and read the whole interview, and then go and dig out your old copy of "Slaughterhouse Five".
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Plagiarizers on Parade
It seems that all those who were skeptical of the information that Colin Powell shared with the UN about Iraq's terrorist involvement were on the right track.
According to this article (and others saying the same thing)
The target is an intelligence dossier released on Monday and heralded by none other than Colin Powell at the UN as "exquisite."
Channel Four News has learnt that the bulk of the nineteen page document was copied from three different articles - one written by a graduate student.
On Monday, the day before the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell addressed the UN, Downing Street published its latest paper on Iraq.
It gives the impression of being an up to the minute intelligence-based analysis - and Mr Powell was fulsome in his praise.....
Unaware that it was a straight lift from a PHD thesis both Tony Blair and US Secretary of State Colin Powell this week paraded the dossier as quality research and a searing indictment of Saddam's regime.
Wake up, fellow Americans! How much longer are you going to let yourselves be manipulated by these immoral idiots?
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Countdown to War
New blogger Steven James (Andrea James’ dad), points me to a sobering piece in GlobalVision News Network about the shrouding of “Guernica” that includes this:
One almost wonders how long it will be before, disguised as an art project, someone wraps the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, shrouding it from toe to torch. After all it was a gift from "Old Europe," the French, and it promised a welcome to immigrants. The new administration now has different ideas about the nation of Lafayette, which bankrolled American terrorists (sorry, freedom fighters) against their legitimate government back in 1776. And as for those immigrants: the weekend's news that INS staff had been shredding visa applications and passports, while other INS staff were interning and deporting immigrants for lack of the same paperwork really sums up the merciless and xenophobic inefficiencies of the so called war on terror.
Meanwhile, I get a call from my cousin this morning to tell me that his thirty-something daughter and her brand new husband, both of whom are in the military, have had their units called up and on on their way to Iraq. We commiserate about how our kids make their own choices, and there's nothing we can do about it. My cousin, who served his time in the military (but during peace time) has always been an anti-war political liberal. His daughter opted to join ROTC to help pay for her college. She almost got called up for Desert Storm; no such luck this time.
And meanwhile, my mother is glued to CNN, distraught over the Orange Alert and urging me to go to the store and stock up on canned goods.
Like so many others, I feel suspended in some kind of limbo, powerless, anxious, waiting for yet another, and another, and another shroud to drop.
My daughter posts a video of my six-month old grandson in his Jolly Jumper, bouncing with vocal glee, totally and luckily unaware of the shroud poised to fall over his future.
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cyberfeministart
My thanks to my non-blogger artist friend Linda K, who pointed me to a cyberfeminism gallery that is one of the current features on www.artwomen.org.
ArtWomen.org began with two friends talking via e-mail, a feminist curator in Texas and a feminist art historian in Washington, D.C. We decided to use the Internet to bring artwomen together on line to talk about issues of current interest.
Featured now is an online gallery of cyberfeminist art. I won’t even try to describe the experience. At least check out the pieces linked from this page. Amazing, outstanding, cutting edge, creative womanstuff.
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I love this poem!
"This Was Once a Love Poem," by Jane Hirshfield from Given Sugar, Given Salt (Harper Collins), posted on Writer's Almanac.
This Was Once a Love Poem
This was once a love poem,
before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short,
before it found itself sitting,
perplexed and a little embarrassed,
on the fender of a parked car,
while many people passed by without turning their heads.
It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement.
It remembers choosing these shoes,
this scarf or tie.
Once, it drank beer for breakfast,
drifted its feet
in a river side by side with the feet of another.
Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy,
dropping its head so the hair would fall forward,
so the eyes would not be seen.
It spoke with passion of history, of art.
It was lovely then, this poem.
Under its chin, no fold of skin softened.
Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat.
What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall.
An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks.
The longing has not diminished.
Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat,
the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus.
Yes, it decides:
many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots.
When it finds itself disquieted
by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life,
it will touch them-one, then another-
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.
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Chip, chip, chip.
A little more than a year ago, Ashcroft had the semi-nude archetypical statues in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice covered so that they did not appear in the background of news photos – a major escalation our government’s chip, chip, chipping away at our freedom from censorship and a strong indication of the small minds of our leadership.
Last week, almost a year to date after that nefarious event,
The "Guernica" work by Pablo Picasso at the entrance of the Security Council of the United Nations has been covered with a curtain. … A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings.
From Euripides’ Trojan Women to Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five,
from the visual art of Richard James Montoya
to street art from L.A.in the 80s
,
creative artists have used their brilliance to try to make others see the grotesque and inhuman evil of murdering human beings and hiding behind manipulative political rationalizations about the need for war.
Picasso's Guernica is one of the most moving of those brilliant creations.
Propaganda is produced by both commission and omission.
Our government is manipulating our freedoms and our thinking, both by what they are covering up and what by what they are craftily publicizing.
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Marvelously Menacing Michael
I’ve known him since he was 5 years old and in kindergarten with my daughter. They were the best of friends right though college, and they still keep in touch. Neither one of them had a car or a driver’s license all through high school, and I remember driving them and their friends around as they made me laugh so hard that I could barely see where we were going. He and my daughter both went to NYU, and his folks and I followed each other down into the Village, cars packed to the rafters with guitars and stereos, to take them to them to their dorm for the first time. Several years ago, he picked my daughter and her husband up to take them out to their high school class reunion. Every once in a while I spot him in some minor role on "Law and Order" or some such series.
As I watched the "Alias" last Sunday night, there he was, marvelously menacing as a villain who leers evilly at Sydney as she emerges from the pool, skimpy bikini dripping seductively. He doesn’t last long after he follows her into her cabana; he’s just a means to the end in this episode, but I’m taken aback by his transformation – both into a grown-up man (he obviously works out) and a very good actor.
He hung in there in the New York City acting scene long after my daughter opted for a more normal life. He’s worked hard, kept his focus. And he’s been steadily employed since. He appears in the movie “Kissing Jessica Stein,” which came out last year, but which I haven’t seen yet.
I remember him as a very funny, bright, irreverent, and engaging boy. He’s turning into a mature and magnificent character actor.
It was great to see you Michael Mastro! You deserve to be seen more.
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Wandering the Labyrinth
I was leaving for a meditation workshop just as my daughter called yesterday to tell me to put on CNN. The space shuttle had crashed. I called my son b!X, but he was already up and posting.
The meditation workshop included an exercise with a labyrinth, followed by time to write. So I wrote.
Walking the Labyrinth
I remember being able to move with grace.
But not now.
I remember feeling an open heart.
But it is not now.
I yearn to find again the Now,
to let go of what I am holding,
so hard in the shadows of my heart.
The shuttle explodes, bodies shatter,
and still babies nurse
and the old wake to wonder at a new day.
I remember wonder.
I remember that it is the journey I always loved.
The surprises around corners.
No hurry. No hurry.
Don’t hurry me into history.
Let me wander this labyrinth at my own pace.
Let me dream or walk or dance
in this now moment,
this lulling silence.
Let me remember how to be
in unfettered quiet, alone,
wandering the labyrinth.
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Tragedies
"A perfect day for a landing," the news person on CNN-TV says.
How fragile our lives really are. Such a terrible tragedy! Seven lives lost and their families devastated. I hope our country's leaders are deeply bothered by the fact that war would ratchet up that loss many thousandfolds -- creating a much, much, greater tragedy.
In his announcement of the space shuttle tragedy, Bush winds up putting a major religious spin on his statement. Another tragedy for those of us religious non-believers who believe strongly that our secular leaders should refrain from insinuating their theism into their roles as government spokespeople.
It's also a tragedy that more religious leaders -- and purportedly religious government leaders -- don't share Andrew Greeley's perspective:
It is also contended that a democratic regime in Iraq would open up the possibility for other democratic governments in the Arab world. Once cannot imagine a more absurd notion...
It may well be that Western style democracy is incompatible with Arab culture. Certainly an American style democracy imposed by force of arms in Iraq is not going to persuade Arabs that they should try to imitate such a regime....
One assembles all of these reasons, overt and covert, for war, considers them together and discovers that they are as thin a tissue paper.....
Many of these young men and women we have seen bidding tearful farewlls to their families certainly will die -- thousands perhaps tens of thousands of them. Many Iraqs will die too, perhaps hundreds of thousands. Our leaders will be condemned all over the world as war criminals -- which they sure would seem to be.
And a final tragedy cited today by Molly Ivins:
The U.S. now ranks 17th, below Costa Rica and Slovenia, on the worldwide index of press freedom established by the Reporters Withough Borders.
Why would any other country want to replicate the kind of corporate-sponsored non-democracy that we have here today in America?
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