Sneak Privatization of Mexico's Oil HaltedBy JOHN ROSSMexico City."The Adelitas have arrived/To defend our oil/Whoever wants to give it to the foreigners/ Will get the shit kicked out of him!" yodeled the brigades of women pouring onto the esplanade of the Mexican senate to protest a petroleum privatization measure President Felipe Calderon insists is not a petroleum privatization measure and which he sent onto the Senate for fast-track ratification at the tag end of the winter-spring session this April. Inside the small, ornate Senate, leftist legislators aligned in the Broad Progressive Front (FAP), some dressed in white oil workers’ overalls and hard hats, were camped out under pup tents arranged around the podium for the eighth straight night, paralyzing legislative activities and demanding an ample national debate on Calderon's plans to open up the nationalized petroleum corporation PEMEX to transnational investment. The hullabaloo, which has been brewing for months, exploded when rumors circulated that Calderon's right-wing PAN party and allies in the once-ruling (71 years) PRI had cooked up a secret vote approving the privatization measure - such covert maneuvering is called an "albazo" or "madruguete" here, a pre-dawn ruse to approve legislation in the dark when there is significant opposition, often behind locked doors and military and police barricades. Seizing the podiums in both houses of congress and the timely arrival of the Adelitas prevented a madruguete and derailed Calderon's plans to fast-track the privatization of PEMEX.Under the President's "energy reform" package, building and operating refineries and pipelines will be opened up to the private sector - 37 out of PEMEX's 41 divisions would be subject to partial privatization. One example: a modified form of "risk" contract, which relegates a percentage of the petroleum brought in to the private driller, and which is outlawed under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, would become the law of the land. In an analysis anti-privatizers label "catastrophic" which Calderon sent on to congress to back up his initiative, the President pinned salvation of PEMEX on deep water ("aguas profundas") drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that would necessitate the "association" of private capital.Mexico's petroleum industry was expropriated from an array of oil companies known collectively as the "Seven Sisters" in March 1938 by then-President Lazaro Cardenas, an act that remains a paragon of revolutionary nationalism throughout Latin America. But down the decades, PEMEX has subcontracted out important parts of its structure - the Exploration or PEP division in particular - to transnational drillers and service corporations like Halliburton, now its number one subcontractor, that suck billions of dollar in profits from Mexican oil each year.The appearance of the Adelitas and their male counterparts ("Los Adelitos") is the latest gamble by the left populist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) to monkey wrench the government's plans to return PEMEX to the contemporary version of the Seven Sisters. The PAN was indeed founded in 1939 to oppose Cardenas's nationalization of the oil industry.Organized by neighborhoods and by workplaces, the Adelita brigades are the lineal descendents of the groups of AMLO supporters who came together after the stolen 2006 election in a seven-week sit-in that shut down the capital's main thoroughfares. At last count (Friday April 14th), there were 41 registered brigades - 28 Adelitas and 13 Adelitos, about 50,000 citizens in all. Operating in shifts, 13,000 "brigadistas" have been encamped off and on for a week in front of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The brigades are named after significant political events - "18th of March", marking the day Cardenas expropriated the oil - or to honor social activists such as Jesus Piedra, the long-disappeared son of left senator Rosario Ibarra, and Arturo Gamiz, a 1960s guerrilla fighter. Women warriors like Leona Vicaria and Benita Galeana are similarly remembered. One brigade of Adelitas tag themselves "Enaguas Profundas" or "Deep Petticoats" - Calderon wants to drill in deep water or "aguas profundas."The creation of so large a citizens' army pledged to carry out civil disobedience to prevent the passage of legislation it thinks detrimental to the republic is unprecedented in Mexico's political history. As thousands sat down in the street to block the automobiles of PAN and PRI senators from entering the precinct last Thursday, AMLO, who often cites Dr. King and Gandhi as role models, urged non-violence: "not one window broken, not one stone thrown.""Tienen miedo porque no tenemos miedo!" the Adelitas sang back in a call and response that is always a feature of Lopez Obrador's mobilizations, "They are frightened because we are not afraid."Similar brigades, led by women, have invaded local congresses outside of Mexico City and one band of activists closed Acapulco's busy airport last week. Shutting down Mexico City's Benito Juarez International Airport is the Adelitas' ultimate threat.The Adelitas, like most of the weapons in AMLO's arsenal, are drawn from Mexico's revolutionary history. Las Adelitas were "soldaderas" or women soldiers who fought shoulder to shoulder with the men in Pancho Villa's "Division del Norte" (Northern Division) during the 1910-1919 revolution. With their long skirts, broad sombreros, bandoleers strung across their chests, and toting .22 carbines, the Adelitas were emblematic of the many courageous women who participated in that epic struggle. The first Adelita is thought to have been Adelita Velarde, a nurse from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Like "La Cucaracha", another popular anthem of Pancho Villa's irregulars, "La Adelita" is now a mainstay of Mexican folk music. The song tells of "Adelita" who fell in love with the "Sargente" (Sergeant) and went to fight with him on the frontlines against the "Federales" (government troops.) In the final verse, the Sargente swears that if Adelita should leave him, he will come for her in a "war ship" or "military train" - which may be prophetic of the Adelitas' pursuit of Calderon and his oil privatization scheme.AMLO's crusade has not been confined to one house of congress. On April 8 when the President sprung his initiative on the legislature, FAP members stormed the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies (Mexico's version of the U.S. House of Representatives) while lawmakers were preparing to grant Calderon permission to travel to New Orleans for the April 21-22 summit of the ASPAN (The North American Security and Prosperity Agreement) - Mexican presidents must solicit congress for permission to travel. ASPAN is a corollary of NAFTA that projects North American security and energy integration and Calderon was eager to attend the summit with the re-privatization of Mexican oil in hand. Suddenly, the FAPOs unfurled a 60-foot banner that announced Congress had been closed ("Clausurado") and cast it over the entire presidium, trapping president Ruth Zavaleta, who occupies Nancy Pelosi's position in the Mexican house, in its folds. Struggling to free herself of the fabric, Zavaleta reappeared with her gavel in hand but the ensuing chaos prevented her from calling for a vote on the President's travel arrangements. Eight days later, the tribune was still draped in the banner and FAP deputies had chained shut the doors of the chamber and moved the desks of the PAN legislators to the podium to barricade themselves from attempts to take it back. Zavaleta, a member of AMLO's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) but not friendly to Lopez Obrador, has called for the use of "public force" (police, military) to remove the rebel lawmakers. Thrust back into the national spotlight by the battle to head off privatization, Lopez Obrador is the target of extravagant vitriol delivered by the nation's electronic and print media reminiscent of the public lynching he was subjected to during the tumultuous 2006 presidential campaign. TV tyrant Televisa's coverage of the takeover of congress (a "kidnapping") was so venomous that thousands of Adelitas, wearing bandaleros and wielding facsimile .22s, descended on the conglomerate's Mexico City headquarters, provoking one prominent PAN politico to label them "paramilitaries."In violation of constitutional amendments banning "black" political hit pieces, a PAN front group "Better Society, Better Government", is running primetime Televisa spots comparing Lopez Obrador to Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet. PAN party president German Martinez accuses Lopez Obrador of "hiding under the skirts of women" and the EmpresorialCoordinating Council, the nation's elite business federation, takes out full-page ads blasting the AMLOs for staging a coup d'etat ("golpe de estado.")Despite the anti-AMLO media blitz - or perhaps because of it - Lopez Obrador remains the only figure on the Mexican political stage who is able to convoke tens of thousands of supporters, often with virtually no notice. Three times since March 18 when he kicked off this crusade, AMLO has filled the great Zocalo plaza, the heart of Mexico's body politic. What makes the turnouts even more impressive is the fact that Lopez Obrador has built this massive movement while his Party of the Democratic Revolution has been reducing itself to rubble. In-fighting since a corrupted March 16 party presidential election has divided the PRD down the middle - the party is roughly split between an activist wing headed by Lopez Obrador and his candidate Alejandro Encinas, and party bureaucrats who see the PRD as an instrument for political and personal advancement and seek to demobilize the Adelitas. The "Chuchus" or "New Left" eschew AMLO's rallies and sit-ins and instead conduct their own private hunger strikes to protest privatization. The Chuchus (many of their leaders are named Jesus) portray themselves as the "reasonable" left and are only too willing to "dialogue" with Calderon, a president Lopez Obrador resolutely refuses to recognize. Whoever wins, the tussle over the bones of the PRD may be a moot one - after two years of campaigning down at the grassroots, Lopez Obrador's base has grown wider than that of the party.Although Calderon's scam to fast track privatization through congress was blunted by the Adelitas and the FAPs, the PAN and the PRI - the latter a repository of seven decades of dirty tricks - still have plenty of room in which to connive. Now the PRI, seconded by Calderon's right-wing minions, proposes an uninterrupted 50 day "national" debate to be restricted to the two houses of congress with a congressional vote by mid-summer. Calderon's initiative can only pass if at least half of the PRI's 120-vote delegation goes along with the game. Even if the privatization measure eventually passes, the legislation is bound to wind up in the Mexican Supreme Court the moment it clears congress. Ironically, the Supreme Court was the instrument by which Cardenas nationalized the oil industry in the first place.Meanwhile, Lopez Obrador's people are clamoring for a very different kind of debate, one that would unfold over the next four months - 120 days - and be conducted inside and outside congress in every state and municipality in the country with the prospect of a national referendum in the fall to decide the issue - one poll has 62 per cent of those questioned opposed to the privatization of Mexico's oil. Such grassroots decision-making would be a revolutionary strophe here in the land of the "albazo" and the "madruguete."Out on the esplanade of the Senate, the Adelitas were shaking their boodies to "La Cumbia del Petrolio." There were enough pink "gorras" (baseball caps), pink hankies, and pink parasols that read "Defend Our Oil" to make Code Pink blush. Brigadista Berta Robledo, a nurse about to retire from the National Pediatric Hospital, hugged a blade of shade under the punishing mid-day sun. "Are you tired, companeras?" the companera with the bullhorn asked and Berta came to her feet with a loud "No!" "Sure the sun is hot but so what?" she responded to a gringo reporter's stupid question, "the sun can't stop us, the rain can't stop us, the cold can't stop us and you know why? Because we are right! We are fighting for our oil and for our country. This is the resistance. We don't get tired."John Ross is at home in the belly of the Monstruo writing a book about the belly of the Monstruo. If you have further information write johnross@igc.org
Featuring Jose Arguelles, Gregg Baden, William Henry, John Major Jenkins, Dennis McKenna, Daniel Pinchbeck, Whitley Strieber, Alberto Villoldo and many more.
So, do you ever get tired of being asked, “what is unschooling”? Or are you someone who keeps asking but you haven’t found a person who can really put it into words for you? Neither of you are alone! I knew that before I ever conceived my son, I would be ‘educating him at home’ and so did my hubby. I never put much thought into ‘the how’ or really much thought into ‘the why’, but it only felt natural and right.
When I became pregnant, home education is exactly what I focused on…not the fact that I was about to give birth to a child! I started reading and researching everything about homeschooling. I discovered ‘unschooling’. It made sense, because that’s the way I envisioned homeschooling to be in the first place. So, I was rather shocked when I kept finding all these resources online that were VERY ’school-at-home’ orientated. I guess being an Anarchist naturally puts me at odds with any educational system or theory that uses control of/over children to ‘produce’ results (i.e. an educated child).
I always assumed that what parents did with their children on most days before they were ’school aged’ and then sent away for 4 to 8 hours a day was unschooling. I mean, I know that no one really works at teaching their children how to talk, crawl or walk (barring some special cases) — we kind of have to figure that one out for ourselves in order to be able to communicate and interact with the Universe around us. How would this natural desire to figure things out and to explore our Universe go away if we never knew school? It doesn’t go away…until you go to school. Well, it might not go away completely, because we still (most of us) desire knowledge as adults and we find very non-mainstream ways of acquiring said knowledge at times. I have to admit though, I have been damaged by the public education system and most of those who are near and dear to me can attest to the same. As adults we spend our entire life trying to over come the damage of a childhood full of punishment and praise.
Back to unschooling. Unschooling led me to John Taylor Gatto and if ‘we’ are still naming Saints, then his name should be added to that list! Unschooling makes so much sense to me…why doesn’t it make sense to everyone else. Because everyone else has more faith in ‘experts’ than in themselves, let alone their children…not to mention that most people do not view children as real people with real feelings, thoughts and rights; they are only ’second class’ citizens who can not be trusted and need to be constantly corrected and broken like some kind of wild animal.
Respecting children as though they are real people is step one. Trusting that they know what is better for them than anyone else is step two…because I hope that you know what is better for yourself than anyone else does. Not pushing one’s own agenda onto a child or forcing them to ‘cooperate’ (read: obey without question) because you are selfish and assume that because you are bigger and older you matter more than they do is step three. Step four comes after all that…it’s when true autonomy is respected…not given, because that implies that you could take it away if you wanted. When you do not forbid something, it loses it’s appeal or never gains appeal in the first place — children can and should be trusted with EVERYTHING.
Unschooling…yes, it is in all of this rambling. Once you are at a place where you are able to put into action Steps 1-4, then it only makes sense to NOT enroll your children into ANY kind of school against their will, unless there is ABSOLUTELY NO other option. Children are unschooled from birth (or conception, depending on what team you play for) and there is no magical age at which they stop learning and wanting to learn. And right now, I have to say that if you are still reading this and saying, “yeah that’s nice, but I had to endure school and I came out alright — why shouldn’t my kids be schooled too?”, I have to say you are one selfish person to even suggest that your children deserve to endure the same pain, punishment, pressure and boredom that you endured. People try to defend school by saying that it is some kind of ‘rite of passage’, when all they are doing is trying to rationalize why they are sending their children away — even when their heart aches for them to be home and even when their children are obviously not happy and not succeeding.
I think I could maybe be swayed into believing that the school system has my child’s best interest in mind and might be more equipped to care for their education than I, if and only if, the system’s own report card was not so laughable! And if I didn’t know what the system was really there for in the first place.
Ok, so fine. Hopefully you have gotten through my very biased rant and now you are asking, but ‘how’, if there isn’t a curriculum or plan or goal of some kind in place (but there is). I’ve been trying to explain this one for awhile now. I’ve been trying to really make a fairly concise description and still get everything in there…I can’t do it. But, I can give examples of it in action and I can think of some words and I can share the words of others. One mother in New York, blogs about how she wishes she could be honest about unschooling to fulfill state requirements and she has this to say (extracted from link above):
If I could write something for this IHIP that would actually reflect some of the spirit and scope of unschooling, I would focus on the following four concepts. These are concepts that we encounter in many forms every day and that seem to flow organically from Lucia’s exploration of the world around her.
Concept 1:Information is available and abundant.
Lucia will learn that her community is rich with resources. These include, among others, public libraries, museums, colleges and universities, research centers, nature centers, theatres and performance spaces, galleries, gardens, farms, and religious institutions. She will become comfortable using these resources. Lucia will identify her own interests and learning goals. She will locate and utilize appropriate resources, critically analyze and organize available information, and apply this information in the way that best suits her needs.
Concept 2:There are as many ways to live as there are people on the planet.
Lucia will explore many cultures. She will find that ideas are expressed in many ways: verbal, visual, physical, and sonic. She will experience different concepts of family, friendship, and love. She will understand that lifestyles are shaped by many factors, both internal and external. She will come to recognize that there are many forms of government in place all over the world and that some are more participatory than others. She will develop an idea about personal freedom and individual rights. She will be concerned with issues of social justice because they affect her and the people she cares about - even some she’s never met.
Concept 3: We are part of a natural system.
Lucia will experience her life as part of a dynamic, living system. Evolution is a chance occurrence that happens in response to environmental change. It has no direction and no goal. The idea that humans are somehow separate and distinct from other living things is sorely misguided and is largely responsible for the environmental crisis in which we find ourselves today. The earth existed for billions of years before us, and it will end without us.
But before that happens Lucia will learn that natural resources are finite. Our actions have consequences. Our consumption creates pressures elsewhere. The food that sustains us is a product of the earth. The waste we generate must go somewhere. Lucia will have the power to live as a conscientious steward of the earth. She will help her family strive to reduce our negative impact on nature’s balance. This can be a challenge in our modern, technological society. It requires thought and effort. But a feeling of kinship with nature can only enhance our experience of the world, adding texture, depth, and a sense of fulfillment.
Concept 4:Everything is connected.
Lucia will notice the connections among all of the concepts above. She will see, for example, how access to information affects personal freedom, how cultural belief systems affect people’s attitudes toward the environment, how participation in government can bring about legislation to improve a community’s handling of natural resources. There are countless possibilities. And it is within these connections that Lucia’s true education lies. In making these connections, she will begin to construct new and original ideas of her own.
I can just replace my son’s name wherever ‘Lucia’ appears and I’m done…for the most part! I think this beautifully captures and explains the curriculum part of unschooling, which is LIVING A REAL LIFE and learning from it! I can not really explain it better at the moment.
“But how will they learn XXX or XXX, if they never open a XXX book or never have to raise their hands to ask permission to pee or etc.?” Well, they might not, if they don’t need to. Really, how much of what was forced down your throat during school do you remember? And more importantly, how much have you needed to know to make it ‘in the real world’? If there was a certain subject that you really loved and one that you really hated, those are the two examples that are going to come into your mind right now. The first because you were genuinely interested and the second because you were being forced to ‘learn’ something that had no revelence to your life at the time…maybe you would have been ‘better’ at say math, if you hadn’t had to ‘learn’ it until you were a teenager or out in the ‘real world’ when you needed it.
The REAL World gets a lot of attention when it comes to unschooling and naysayers. As if school is the real world! I haven’t yet come across a situation in the real world yet (mind you I am only 26 at this time), that I have been prepared for because of school. In fact, there were TONS of things that I NEVER learned in school that I have needed out here in the real world that I have had to learn post-school. This doesn’t mean that my parents and other influences in my life didn’t teach me about some of the ‘life lessons’ mentioned in the article linked to, but I wasn’t taught most of them and I can not really remember being taught them in school or if I was, the information wasn’t presented in a manner that was relevant to my present state of being. Most of the things mentioned probably shouldn’t be taught or shouldn’t be expected to be taught in schools…but really, what should schools be ‘teaching’ in the first place? I think all schools should be Free Schools — at least if children are forced into going for whatever reason they’ll have a better chance at coming out the other side practically unschooled in a public manner! Is that really possible?
I’m going to do my best to explain unschooling as this blog progresses along…be patient though, it’s not easy…like most life lessons!
On a side note: I’m fascinated by the number of Radical Unschoolers out there who are not Anarchists (quite a few are Libertarians, so that can count…I guess).
Some people who have survived a life-threatening crisis report an extraordinary experience. Near-death experience occurs with increasing frequency because of improved survival rates resulting from modern techniques of resuscitation.
The content of NDE and the effects on patients seem similar worldwide, across all cultures and times. The subjective nature and absence of a frame of reference for this experience lead to individual, cultural, and religious factors determining the vocabulary used to describe and interpret the experience.1
NDE are reported in many circumstances: cardiac arrest in myocardial infarction (clinical death), shock in postpartum loss of blood or in perioperative complications, septic or anaphylactic shock, electrocution, coma resulting from traumatic brain damage, intracerebral hemorrhage or cerebral infarction, attempted suicide, near-drowning or asphyxia, and apnea.
Such experiences are also reported by patients with serious but not immediately life-threatening diseases, in those with serious depression, or without clear cause in fully conscious people. Similar experiences to near-death ones can occur during the terminal phase of illness, and are called deathbed visions.
Identical experiences to NDE, so-called fear-death experiences, are mainly reported after situations in which death seemed unavoidable: serious traffic accidents, mountaineering accidents, or isolation such as with shipwreck.
Several theories on the origin of NDE have been proposed. Some think the experience is caused by physiological changes in the brain, such as brain cells dying as a result of cerebral anoxia.2-4 Other theories encompass a psychological reaction to approaching death,5 or a combination of such reaction and anoxia.6
Such experiences could also be linked to a changing state of consciousness (transcendence), in which perception, cognitive functioning, emotion, and sense of identity function independently from normal body-linked waking consciousness.7
People who have had an NDE are psychologically healthy; although some show non-pathological signs of dissociation.7 Such people do not differ from controls with respect to age, sex, ethnic origin, religion, or degree of religious belief.1
Studies on NDE1,3,8,9 have been retrospective and very selective with respect to patients. In retrospective studies, 5-10 years can elapse between occurrence of the experience and its investigation, which often prevents accurate assessment of physiological and pharmacological factors.
In retrospective studies, about 45%1 of adults and up to 85% of children10 who had a life-threatening illness were estimated to have had an NDE. A random investigation of more than 2000 Germans showed 4·3% to have had an NDE at a mean age of 22 years.11
Differences in estimates of frequency and uncertainty as to causes of this experience result from varying definitions of the phenomenon, and from inadequate methods of research.12
Patients' transformational processes after an NDE are very similar1,3,13-16 and encompass life-changing insight, heightened intuition, and disappearance of fear of death. Assimilation and acceptance of these changes is thought to take at least several years.15
The authors defined NDE as the reported memory of all impressions during a special state of consciousness, including specific elements such as out-of-body experience, pleasant feelings, and seeing a tunnel, a light, deceased relatives, or a life review.
They defined clinical death as a period of unconsciousness caused by insufficient blood supply to the brain because of inadequate blood circulation, breathing, or both. If, in this situation, CPR is not started within 5-10 min, irreparable damage is done to the brain and the patient will die.
The results show that medical factors cannot account for occurrence of NDE; although all patients had been clinically dead, most did not have NDE. Furthermore, seriousness of the crisis was not related to occurrence or depth of the experience.
If purely physiological factors resulting from cerebral anoxia caused NDE, most of the patients should have had this experience. Patients' medication was also unrelated to frequency of NDE. Psychological factors are unlikely to be important as fear was not associated with NDE.
Only 12% of patients had a core NDE, and this figure might be an overestimate. True frequency of the experience is likely to be about 10%, or 5% if based on number of resuscitations rather than number of resuscitated patients. Patients who survive several CPRs in hospital have a significantly higher chance of NDE.
Good short-term memory seems to be essential for remembering NDE.
Patients with memory defects after prolonged resuscitation reported fewer experiences than other patients in our study.
Forgetting or repressing such experiences in the first days after CPR was unlikely to have occurred in the remaining patients, because no relation was found between frequency of NDE and date of first interview.
However, at 2-year follow-up, two patients remembered a core NDE and two an NDE that consisted of only positive emotions that they had not reported shortly after CPR, presumably because of memory defects at that time. It is remarkable that people could recall their NDE almost exactly after 2 and 8 years.
Our finding that women have deeper experiences than men has been confirmed in two other studies,1,7 although in one,7 only in those cases in which women had an NDE resulting from disease.
Our findings show that the process of change after NDE tends to take several years to consolidate. Presumably, besides possible internal psychological processes, one reason for this has to do with society's negative response to NDE, which leads individuals to deny or suppress their experience for fear of rejection or ridicule.
Thus, social conditioning causes NDE to be traumatic, although in itself it is not a psychotraumatic experience. As a result, the effects of the experience can be delayed for years, and only gradually and with difficulty is an NDE accepted and integrated. Furthermore, the long-lasting transformational effects of an experience that lasts for only a few minutes of cardiac arrest is a surprising and unexpected finding.
Several theories have been proposed to explain NDE.
We did not show that psychological, neurophysiological, or physiological factors caused these experiences after cardiac arrest.
Neurophysiological processes must play some part in NDE. Similar experiences can be induced through electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe (and hence of the hippocampus) during neurosurgery for epilepsy,23 with high carbon dioxide levels (hypercarbia),24 and in decreased cerebral perfusion resulting in local cerebral hypoxia as in rapid acceleration during training of fighter pilots,25 or as in hyperventilation followed by valsalva manoeuvre.4
Ketamine-induced experiences resulting from blockage of the NMDA receptor,26 and the role of endorphin, serotonin, and enkephalin have also been mentioned,27 as have near-death-like experiences after the use of LSD,28 psilocarpine, and mescaline.21
These induced experiences can consist of unconsciousness, out-of-body experiences, and perception of light or flashes of recollection from the past.
These recollections, however, consist of fragmented and random memories unlike the panoramic life-review that can occur in NDE. Further, transformational processes with changing life-insight and disappearance of fear of death are rarely reported after induced experiences.
Thus, induced experiences are not identical to NDE, and so, besides age, an unknown mechanism causes NDE by stimulation of neurophysiological and neurohumoral processes at a subcellular level in the brain in only a few cases during a critical situation such as clinical death. These processes might also determine whether the experience reaches consciousness and can be recollected.
With lack of evidence for any other theories for NDE, the thus far assumed, but never proven, concept that consciousness and memories are localized in the brain should be discussed.
How could a clear consciousness outside one's body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?22
Also, in cardiac arrest the EEG usually becomes flat in most cases within about 10 s from onset of syncope.29,30 Furthermore, blind people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at the time of this experience.31 NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation.
Another theory holds that NDE might be a changing state of consciousness (transcendence), in which identity, cognition, and emotion function independently from the unconscious body, but retain the possibility of non-sensory perception.7,8,22,28,31
Lancet December 15, 2001; 358: 2039-45
DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:
The Lancet is one of the world's most respected medical journals. So when it published an article in its current edition in which scientists claim to have PROOF that humans have a life after death that exists independently of the body that it inhabits, folks are sitting up and taking notice.
Many readers of this newsletter have strong spiritual convictions about the existence of the soul, but it is wonderful to have medical science support these convictions.
If you’re a woman, or know one . . . you need to know what the GOP did to you yesterday.
If you are an employment age female, or will become one, or know one, and give the first damn about her, this story may be more important to you than any other you will learn of this year. Its facts may certainly have greater impact on your personal life than just about anything else. The irony is, it’s a story you probably did not hear, at least if you restrict your sources of news to the national television media or newspapers.
Before I relay the story, let me recap what you probably did get from the broadcast and cable media. A bear killed its handler. The kids from the El Dorado sect are headed to foster homes in Texas. And there was video of snow at Lake Tahoe. So cheap, so easy, no in depth analysis or explaining required, and, via every marketing survey the networks use to hold the American audience, it’s the sort of mind-numbing, flatulence-inducing inanity we demand.
Whatever you do, do not expect me to actually try to grasp anything more complicated! I can’t do it. And besides, I’m not interested. I like vapid. I adore simple. I crave stupid.
An interjected inquiry: Did you catch Tuesday’s (April 22) Colbert Report? His guest, Susan Jacoby, author of Age of American Unreason, humorously — though I found none of the “truthiness” the least funny — provided a brief series of anecdotes describing just how regrettable is the current state of our overwhelming ignorance, and our national anti-intellectual desire to stay that way. By way of example: one survey demonstrated how a majority cannot locate Iraq on a map or globe . . . when the name is immediately over the country! Or 2/3ds of Americans don’t know what DNA is. Or how half the population cannot name all four gospels, or tell you the name of the first book of the Bible.
But the majority can identify the characters and stars of Desperate Housewives.
Now to the news you didn’t get, but should, given the criteria noted in the first sentence above, care a great deal about.
Ms. Lilly Ledbetter was the only female supervisor in Goodyear Tire & Rubber’s tire plant in Alabama. She worked for the company 19 years. Immediately prior to her retirement Ms. Ledbetter received an anonymous tip that, throughout her career, she had been earning considerably less than any of her male counterparts. As is typical of most companies, concerning non-hourly personnel, there was a policy at the plant that, with disciplinary sanctions for violation of the policy that could include termination, individual employee personnel matters were not to be discussed. At no time had she had any way of knowing the company was in strict violation of Title VII of the US Civil Rights Act.
Upon learning she had been illegally discriminated against, Ms. Ledbetter filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Office and sued Goodyear for its illegal actions, actions the illegality of which at no time did Goodyear argue. Rather than attempt to defend a position that had no defense, Goodyear claimed the statute of limitations had run out for Ms. Ledbetter because she didn’t file within the 180 day time limit set by the law, even though she could not make a claim until she knew there had been a violation of her rights.
In every previous instance, the courts have held that the 180-day clock does not begin to tick until an employee learns he or she has been discriminated against, and the clock is reset with each new violation. Last year, the majority (all Republican members, by the way) on the US Supreme Court, the one John McCain likes so much, found for Goodyear.
Okay, okay . . . that’s water over the damn and there’s nothing anyone can do about that now, right?
WRONG!
In the United States Senate, “debate” (filibuster) of an issue can continue so long as the speaker(s) wish, or until such time as a “cloture” vote is called. Invoking cloture closes the debate, terminates the filibuster. Current senate rules now require a super-majority, or 60 votes to end debate and bring the issue to the full floor for an up or down majority vote.
Yesterday, Senate Democrats attempted to end the Republican filibuster of Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The Act would have made null last year’s Supreme Court decision. It would have made clear that tolling commences from the date the employee learns of the trespass, and the clock is reset to zero with each discriminatory paycheck. Forty-four Republicans backed the Bush administration and big-business interests, and blocked the vote to end the filibuster.
In practical terms, what this means is that, unless the Democrats win at least six more seats in November’s election, working age women and those who will turn working age within the next few years will, not only remain in constant jeopardy of discriminatory employment practices, they will have access to no legal remedy.
As I reported a few months back on the tragic ignorance of Steve, my Palm Springs’ mail carrier (Shouting at me that the Democrats have “done nothing, even though they have a majority in both houses!” “Know what a filibuster is Steve?” “They have a majority!” Steve had no clue what a filibuster was, or what he was ranting about.), the very same level of ignorance is pervasive in our country, and it is damning to the legislative notions of fair play and justice for all citizens.
How many of us know someone like Steve? A brother, perhaps? A father? Mother? Someone you work with? While they’re caught up in the utter nonsense of lapel flag pins, dodging bullets in Bosnia, whether the Ten Commandments should be erected in public squares at public expense, whether gays and lesbians should be permitted to marry, and who is and who is not an “elitist,” the mothers and daughters of America are being ravaged of basic employment rights, and the entire country is being steadily pushed to the economic precipice.
You know someone who’s going to vote GOP this fall? And while they are putting you or your spouse or your daughter and our country at dire economic and military risk by their vote, do you still consider such a one as your friend? How?
Contrary to popular belief and the sycophantic exhortations that political candidates will be showering you with, working hard, paying one’s taxes, and playing by the rules does NOT make of anyone a good citizen. Working hard helps meet one’s costs of living, getting that person from today to tomorrow morning. Paying one’s taxes helps keep the IRS off his or her back. And playing by the rules helps keep that person free from the long arm of the law. Being a good citizen means knowing at least as much about the country, its government, how it is supposed to work, and who’s doing what to whom, as what Jack Bauer is up to, one week to the next.
New Cuban President Raul Castro announced on Monday that all death sentences had been commuted to prison terms of 30 years to life, with the exception of three people charged with terrorism.
"The Council of State decided to commute the death penalty imposed on a group of prisoners," Raul Castro announced at a Communist party Central Committee meeting, in a speech broadcast by state-run television.
Castro said two Central Americans charged with hotel bombings in the 1990s that took the life of an Italian tourist, and a Cuban American charged with murder during an attempt at armed infiltration of the island, were not included and their cases were still on appeal.
"This does not mean we have eliminated the death penalty from the penal code," Raul Castro said.
He blasted the United States for allowing Cuban Americans to use its soil to launch violent attacks on the country.
"It would be irresponsible and ingenuous to renounce the dissuasive power that capital punishment has on the real terrorists, the Imperialist mercenaries," he said.
Cuba has been under pressure from human rights organizations to eliminate the death penalty, which is carried out by firing squad.
Just three people have been executed since 2000, all of them involved in a failed 2003 boat hijacking.
"This decision was not undertaken because of pressure, but as a sovereign act in line with the humanitarian and ethical conduct that has characterized the Cuban revolution from the start," he said.
Since taking over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro in February, Raul Castro has lifted a number of restrictions on daily life, from owning cell phones to entering tourist hotels.
Cuba in early March signed two important United Nations human rights agreements long opposed by Fidel Castro.
Thousands of Mexicans took to the streets of Mexico City on Sunday to protest an oil reform bill they say would lead to the privatization of the country's state-run oil company. Led by opposition lawmaker Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the demonstrators expressed their displeasure with plans to look for private capital to help fund the expansion of Pemex, Mexico's national oil company.
Professor Gustavo Indart of the University of Toronto specializes in the study of economic reform in Latin America.
Iraq's National Museum on Sunday welcomed the return of more than 700 antiquities stolen during the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion five years ago.
Golden necklaces, daggers, clay statues, pots, and other artifacts were displayed briefly during a ceremony attended by Syrian and Iraqi officials.
Syrian authorities seized the items from traffickers over the years and handed custody last week to an Iraqi delegation in Damascus.
Mohammad Abbas al-Oreibi, Iraq's acting state minister of tourism and archaeology who led the negotiations with Syria, said he plans to visit Jordan soon to persuade its authorities to turn over more than 150 items.
"This was a positive initiative taken by Syria, and we wish the same initiative to be taken by all neighboring countries," he said.
"The treasures contain very important and valuable pieces."
7,000 Years of History
Looting broke out in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities following Saddam's ouster in April 2003.
Museums were ransacked and thousands of items taken, dealing a harsh blow to collections that chronicled some 7,000 years of civilization in Mesopotamia including the ancient Babylonians, Sumerians, and Assyrians.
Iraqi and world culture officials have struggled to retrieve the treasures with little success.
Between 3,000 to 7,000 pieces are still believed missing, including about 40 to 50 that are considered to be of great historic importance, Laurent Levi-Strauss of the U.N. cultural body UNESCO said last month.
Artifacts have been recovered before, but Hassan said Syria was the first country to return such a large quantity of stolen antiquities, and officials hoped others would follow its lead.
Syria has said it arrested some of the antiquities traffickers but did not provide more details. The items recovered by Syria were packed in 17 boxes and flown back to Baghdad on Saturday, according to Dr. Muna Hassan, the head of a committee working to restore the artifacts.
The head of the Syrian Antiquities Department, Bassam Jamous, said some of the objects were from the Bronze Age and early Islamic era.
Hassan declined to put an exact value on the trove, saying only that the items were collectively worth millions of dollars.
Museum Remains Closed
Hassan said negotiations were underway with several other countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Italy for the return of more looted antiquities.
For Iraqis, the museum is an important reminder of their cultural heritage. However, the facility remains closed to the public due to violence, lack of security, and the poor condition of the building.
The U.S. military was intensely criticized for not protecting the National Museum's treasure of ancient relics and art in the weeks after Baghdad's capture, when looters roamed the city looking for anything of value.
Thieves smashed or pried open row upon row of glass cases and pilfered, or just destroyed, their contents.
The sale of stolen antiquities has allegedly helped finance Iraqi extremist groups, according to Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, the U.S. investigator who led the initial probe into the looting.
"It's the first civil rights bill of the new century of life sciences," said veteran Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts last week, after the US Senate finally passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA).
After more than a decade of political debate, GINA bans health insurers from setting premiums or denying coverage based on the results of genetic tests, as long as customers have no pre-existing disease symptoms. It is also aimed to prevent discrimination in employment decisions.
GINA is expected to be approved this week by the House of Representatives, which backed a slightly different version of the act last year, and will then be signed into law by President George W Bush.
Geneticists hope the act will usher in a new era of personalised medicine, which depends upon people being willing to take genetic tests without fear of discrimination.
"With the passage of GINA, researchers and clinicians can actively encourage Americans to participate in clinical trials and appropriate genetic testing," says Aravinda Chakravarti of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, president of the American Society of Human Genetics, in a statement.
But a legal loophole may still allow employers to view genetic test results, says Mark Rothstein, a specialist in health law at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. In the latest issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (vol 36, p 174), he warns that existing law allows employers to request medical records, which may include genetic information, after making a conditional job offer.
by Chalmers Johnson...Our excessive military expenditures did not occur over just a few short years or simply because of the Bush administration's policies. They have been going on for a very long time in accordance with a superficially plausible ideology, and have now become so entrenched in our democratic political system that they are starting to wreak havoc....
Juke Box Love Song
I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.
Langston Hughes
*
Sparks-Roger, mp3Sparks=Hasta Maсana Monsieur, mp3
*
[I suppose I'm not shocked that in a county where a director of a lib. would have an already spayed cat that had been living at the lib. sent to be killed because of the imagined and delusional fears of an anonymous asshole - that the life of a living animal is worth nothing here]
A man suspected of killing a young cat pleaded guilty to animal cruelty Monday when a judge offered to reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.
Steven Bruce Tippett is now serving a 90-day sentence in Tuolumne County Jail.
He was arrested Oct. 29, after he brought a dead cat into the Tuolumne County Animal Control office. He told staff members he was trying to put it in a box, but it kept jumping out.
He choked it after the second time, officials reported.
William Polley, a retired judge who was sitting in for Judge Eric DuTemple, offered the plea deal.
Prosecutor Jim Newkirk was disappointed with the case's resolution because Tippett has a history of violence, and drug and alcohol abuse, he said.
"I felt that the conduct was felony conduct based on Mr. Tippett's fairly lengthy criminal history," he said.
Newkirk doubts Tippett will have to serve his full sentence due to jail overcrowding. He was also not given probation.
Tippett faced a prison sentence of up to three years for the felony charge.
Elsie Sheldon, founder of Sonora Cat Rescue, said the latter was more fitting for Tippett's crime.
Members of Sonora Cat Rescue, a nonprofit group that works to spay and neuter feral cats and place some cats in homes, had followed the case from its beginning.
"He'll just be out able to kill more cats," Sheldon said.
Tippett's attorney, Clay Bedford, who pushed for reducing the charge to a misdemeanor, couldn't be reached for comment.
Man is a creature of astonishing contradictions and enormous moral range. The same species that produces fools, knaves, cowards, a massive number of mediocrities, and assorted monsters of depravity, also gives us geniuses, saints, and heroes of exemplary virtue. The spread of behavior is so vast as to be almost incomprehensible. But maybe the most interesting thing about humans is their capacity to travel from one point of the moral spectrum to another, from evil to good, and from good to indifference and often tacit acceptance of evil.
Modern-day hunters and people who callously use animals for vanity and or “recreation” (remember Michael Vick) fall into an especially troublesome category. In the vast majority of cases the person in question is simply a victim of unexamined assumptions and cultural traditions, and a pitiful lack of empathetic imagination, a total failure of compassion. Such individuals commit disgusting acts, but the baffling thing about the horrors of this world, what some call the sheer “banality of evil”, is that committing an evil act does not per se signify the person is utterly evil. People are often not only contradictory in their behavior, they also change their ways and undergo redemption. I’m not a conventionally religious person, at all, but the idea of redemption —in a secular, not Catholic form—I find powerful and touching in the extreme. For by showing that humans are indeed capable of understanding their wrongful deeds, that, despite all the muck that surrounds us, decency manages to survive somehow, and that in consequence they indeed aspire to live in peace with their conscience, because, if nothing else bad actions do in fact bother them, deny them rest, redemption underscores the possibility of a better world grounded in real peace and justice for everyone, none the least for the most exploited and brutalized creatures on this earth, the animals.
The personal document I reproduce below has special significance for me because it is about redemption, a hunter’s redemption. Although I have always been familiar with weapons of various types, I never took to the “pleasures” of shooting animals, “live targets.” I never could see the “sport” in it at all. And never will. Thus the hunter’s mind, a person who sees absolutely nothing wrong in killing a beautiful, innocent, living breathing creature for his own personal pleasure, or some other frivolous reason or pretext (and I should tell you that after more than three decades in the animal defense movement I’ve heard just about all the pro-hunting arguments ever crafted by this fraternity) remains a baffling mystery. I was therefore immensely excited when, back in 1986, when I served as editor at large for The Animals’ Agenda, the first independent US animal rights publication, I got this unsolicited testimony from Dallas Gragg, a former hunter.
Dallas’s words are effortlessly eloquent and they remain true to this day. The strong personal conscience and integrity that illuminated his journey of moral self-discovery was there all along, only momentarily suppressed by the pressures of conventionality and cultural norms. I am therefore confident you’ll find his testimony as moving as when I first read it more than 20 years ago. The truths he speaks about can never be extinguished. For they define what the transformation potential of human beings is all about. I am happy to be able to share Dallas’s story with our Cyrano audience. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for coming forward.
BY ROY DALLAS GRAGG | [Original dateline: Animals’ Agenda, November 1986]*
I WAS BORN in the mountains of North Carolina near Grandfather Mountain and Mt. Mitchell. Hunting, killing and butchering animals was a way of life for the mountain people. I killed my first hog at age eight. I had expected the animal to fall as if by magic when I squeezed the trigger of my grandfather’s old .22 caliber rifle. I was both surprised and alarmed when the animal screamed with pain and agony. “More carefully,” my uncle said, “You have to hit him in the head.” When the rifle cracked the second time, the animal fell dead.
I couldn’t sleep that night—I could still hear the animal’s screams. The adults laughed the next day when I told them it just didn’t seem right to shoot an animal when he was locked helplessly in a pen.
I dreaded October each year-that was the month when the hogs and steers were killed and butchered. Early in the morning barrels of water were heated over roaring fires to scald the animals so that their hair could be scraped off. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when a butcher knife slashed the hog’s throat and the blood ran across the ground as the pitiful animal convulsed and kicked. The air smelled of death, especially when the hogs were gutted. I noticed that the horse, a huge Clydesdale mare named Bell, would sniff the air, and with big eyes run away. She too smelled the death. I always stayed outside whenever possible because the stench of lard being boiled on the woodstove was unbearable.
However, it was always my job to turn the handle of the hand-operated sausage machine. Spring brought another dreaded time, when the man came to castrate the pigs and dehorn the cattle. I would hold my ears to shut out the sound of their agonized screams. “Don’t be a sissy-you’ll get used to it,” I was told, but I never did.
Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to JMiller@bestcyrano.org
Sundays usually brought another unpleasant task: catching a chicken and “wringing” its neck. The sight of the unfortunate creatures’ bodies jumping high in the air with a broken neck is still fresh in my mind, even though it was over thirty years ago.
To make matters worse, the butchered birds and animals had often been pets. I had a pet chicken named Red. I trained Red, a big red hen, to sit patiently on a fence post or other object for hours until I set her down. I also had a pet turkey named Fred. As is the fate of most turkeys, Fred ended up on the Thanksgiving table. The crowd roared with laughter when I said, ”I’m not thankful. Fred was my friend and I’m not going to eat him.” My cousins taunted me until I finally ate a small piece of breast, but I felt like a cannibal.
I rather enjoyed hunting because I didn’t have to butcher the birds and animals. By the time I was fourteen I was a “crack shot”. I never missed. Squirrel hunting was my favorite because the elusive gray squirrels were hard to hit. One day I grazed a big gray squirrel and he fell right in front of my dog Rex. The squirrel was putting up a furious battle against the dog who was many times its size. I sat down and thought for awhile. I couldn’t help but admire the little animal. He had wanted to live!
The mountain people often shot the red squirrels or “boomers” for shooting practice. The red squirrels were not good to eat so they were thrown away. But that didn’t sit right with me either. I doubted that God made his boomers just to shoot at.
One morning, as I sat on top of a steep hill waiting for the sun to come up and the game to start moving about, I noticed many small oak trees on the hill. Acorns are heavy, especially this variety. They were as big as chestnuts and probably weighed several ounces. I hadn’t seen this particular variety before.
I strolled down the hill and crossed a small valley to another hill and found the parent tree, a huge oak about four feet in diameter. I was puzzled. How did the acorns travel across a valley to another hill? The wind didn’t blow them, that was for sure, and floodwaters don’t run uphill. I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. It was a gray squirrel leaping from a huge oak heading across the valley. I dropped the squirrel with a single shot. Imagine my surprise when I picked up the squirrel and he had one of those huge acorns lodged in his mouth! I had been shooting the planters of the forests! On the way home I said to myself, “So that’s why God made squirrels.”
A few years later, I joined the army and became qualified as an expert rifleman. “I have never seen anyone shoot like that,” I overheard the sergeant tell the lieutenant.
“He dropped 16 men (targets) in less than 20 seconds!” Later the lieutenant said to me “You could do that in Vietnam, too. The slant-eyes are just bigger game.” But I didn’t make it to Vietnam. An ulcer got me a medical discharge and I returned home to the mountains.
I still hunted some but I thought about the squirrels. If they were nature’s planters, what were the other animals’ jobs? Later I noticed holly bushes in sheltered mountain valleys, over 20 miles from their natural growing range. It was quite obvious that birds had carried the seeds this great distance.
By the time I was thirty I had quit hunting entirely and began studying the birds and animals. I read books on ecology and the environment. And I returned to the forests—this time with a camera instead of a gun. I watched the squirrels carefully. They would always follow the same path through the trees, swinging like trapeze artists. Occasionally I would see a flying squirrel gliding silently through the trees or a ruffled grouse blasting away like a rocket.
I marked the spots where the nuts carried by squirrels fell and returned in the spring to find small trees growing in those areas. I also observed the “worthless” red squirrels burying nuts. It occurred to me that nut-bearing trees, oaks, hickories, walnuts, chestnuts and many, many others all depended on the little animals to transport their seed throughout the forests.
It should be obvious to any thinking person that nature is a powerful but delicate force. Each living thing on the planet is striving for survival in one way or another, and striving to keep its kind from becoming extinct. Various species of plants, birds and animals have survived earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, floods and many other kinds of natural catastrophes only to fall victim to uncaring humans.
Hunters are directly responsible—to name a few—for the extinction of the passenger pigeon as well as many kinds of island-dwelling birds. The buffalo very nearly became extinct after hunters [retained by commercial interests] went after them largely to wipe out the Indians’ [main] food supply. Starve’em to submission.
This strategy left more than 50 million of the great creatures on the plains to decay in the sun. Hunters have brought the mountain lion, the grizzly bear, the whooping crane, and even the symbol of our nation, the bald eagle, to the brink of extinction.
I began studying hunters from “the other side of the fence:’ When working with hunters I would ask their opinions of hunting. One hunter’s reply was, “God made animals for me to eat - what else are they good for?” Another said, “It makes me forget my troubles to hunt and fish.” I thought long and hard about his statement. Humans vent their stress and their frustrations from daily life on innocent wildlife. Hunting is a one-sided game with only one winner—human beings. This is why hunters refer to birds and animals as “game”. When the hunter has hunted down and killed an animal, he has “won” the game. More often than not, the creature is killed for pleasure instead of for food. A certain sadistic pleasure is derived by killing another creature. When a human kills an animal the act fuels his ego: he has mastered the creature by taking its life.
Why else would a trophy hunter spend thousands of dollars, hike through steaming snake- and insect-infested swamps or climb steep cliffs to kill a magnificent member of another species? Why else would he cut off the head of his victim and leave the body to rot? Why else would he take the head to a taxidermist and mount it over his fireplace? He has dominated and killed the “beast”, and therefore hangs its head up for all the world to see that he is the mighty and fearless hunter. It is nothing but fuel for the insecure ego of small men.
The hunter, with the scent of death in his nostrils, has little respect for his neighbor who enjoys seeing the creatures on his property alive. “No hunting” and “No trespassing” signs are torn down or shot full of holes. A hunting license is a permit to kill indiscriminately. Our government sells out our wildlife for the price of a hunting license. Soon after becoming an anti-hunting advocate, I found my tame mallard ducks shot and floating on their pond. They too had enjoyed living and I enjoyed them. But some pervert found pleasure in their death. Once I observed hunters exterminating a covey of Bob White quail. Their cheerful calls can no longer be heard around the small mountain community where I grew up as a child.
TRADITION is perhaps the worst enemy of the animals: even our holidays call for the killing of birds and animals. These barbaric traditions, including hunting, rodeos and other cruel sports, are taught to children and thus passed down from generation to generation. Only a little more than a century ago blacks were considered to be animals and were treated as such. Similarly. during the second World War, Jews were considered to be subhuman by the Nazis, or perhaps even subanimal, and were killed by the millions.
Even today we abuse our fellow humans through boxing, wrestling and other cruel sports. How can the perpetrators of cruelty among us be expected to respect animals when they do not even respect humans? Before we can understand animal abuse we must understand ourselves. Humanity lives not by reality but by habits— often anchored in selfishness and staggering ignorance. It is this aspect of human nature we must work against.
If my story can, in some small way, influence the traditional way of thinking and the ignorant beliefs about our fellow creatures, I would be greatly pleased. This story is to aid our fellow creatures who have long suffered at the hands of mankind. May they someday live in peace, without suffering and fear.
Roy Dallas Gragg worked as a housepainter. He used to live in Montezuma, N.C.
Patrice Greanville is Cyrano’s Journal Online editor in chief and publisher.
By GENE JOHNSONSEATTLETimothy Garon's face and arms are hauntingly skeletal, but the fluid building up in his abdomen makes the 56-year-old musician look eight months pregnant.His liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is failing. Without a new one, his doctors tell him, he will be dead in days.But Garon's been refused a spot on the transplant list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved for medical reasons."I'm not angry, I'm not mad, I'm just confused," said Garon, lying in his hospital bed a few minutes after a doctor told him the hospital transplant committee's decision Thursday.With the scarcity of donated organs, transplant committees like the one at the University of Washington Medical Center use tough standards, including whether the candidate has other serious health problems or is likely to drink or do drugs.And with cases like Garon's, they also have to consider — as a dozen states now have medical marijuana laws — if using dope with a doctor's blessing should be held against a dying patient in need of a transplant.Most transplant centers struggle with the how to deal with people who have used marijuana, said Dr. Robert Sade, director of the Institute of Human Values in Health Care at the Medical University of South Carolina."Marijuana, unlike alcohol, has no direct effect on the liver. It is however a concern ... in that it's a potential indicator of an addictive personality," Sade said.The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation's transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates.At some, people who use "illicit substances" — including medical marijuana, even in states that allow it — are automatically rejected. At others, such as the UCLA Medical Center, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months. Marijuana is illegal under federal law.Garon believes he got hepatitis by sharing needles with "speed freaks" as a teenager. In recent years, he said, pot has been the only drug he's used. In December, he was arrested for growing marijuana.Garon, who has been hospitalized or in hospice care for two months straight, said he turned to the university hospital after Seattle's Harborview Medical Center told him he needed six months of abstinence.The university also denied him, but said it would reconsider if he enrolled in a 60-day drug-treatment program. This week, at the urging of Garon's lawyer, the university's transplant team reconsidered anyway, but it stuck to its decision.Dr. Brad Roter, the Seattle physician who authorized Garon's pot use for nausea, abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.That's typically the case, said Peggy Stewart, a clinical social worker on the liver transplant team at UCLA who has researched the issue. "There needs to be some kind of national eligibility criteria," she said.The patients "are trusting their physician to do the right thing. The physician prescribes marijuana, they take the marijuana, and they are shocked that this is now the end result," she said.No one tracks how many patients are denied transplants over medical marijuana use.Pro-marijuana groups have cited a handful of cases, including at least two patient deaths, in Oregon and California, since the mid-to-late 1990s, when states began adopting medical marijuana laws.Many doctors agree that using marijuana — smoking it, especially — is out of the question post-transplant.The drugs patients take to help their bodies accept a new organ increase the risk of aspergillosis, a frequently fatal infection caused by a common mold found in marijuana and tobacco.But there's little information on whether using marijuana is a problem before the transplant, said Dr. Emily Blumberg, an infectious disease specialist who works with transplant patients at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital.Further complicating matters, Blumberg said, is that some insurers require proof of abstinence, such as drug tests, before they'll agree to pay for transplants.Dr. Jorge Reyes, a liver transplant surgeon at the UW Medical Center, said that while medical marijuana use isn't in itself a sign of substance abuse, it must be evaluated in the context of each patient."The concern is that patients who have been using it will not be able to stop," Reyes said.Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for the California chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, scoffed at that notion."Everyone agrees that marijuana is the least habit-forming of all the recreational drugs, including alcohol," Gieringer said. "And unlike a lot of prescription medications, it's nontoxic to the liver."Reyes and other UW officials declined to discuss Garon's case.But Reyes said that in addition to medical concerns, transplant committees — which often include surgeons, social workers, and nutritionists — must evaluate whether patients have the support and psychiatric health to cope with a complex post-operative regimen for the rest of their lives.Garon, the lead singer for Nearly Dan, a Steely Dan cover-band, remains charged with manufacturing weed. He insists he was following the state law, which limits patients to a "60-day supply" but doesn't define that amount."He's just a fantastic musician, and he's a great guy," said his girlfriend, Leisa Bueno. "I wish there was something we could do legally. ... I'm going to miss him terribly if he passes."___On the Net:United Nework for Organ Sharing: http://www.unos.orgGaron performing his song "Goodbye Baby": http://www.youtube.com/watch?vUJDihYn_fJA
America's top military officer has ratcheted up the pressure on Iran by issuing an unusual public warning that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action”.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, blamed the Iranian government and Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for its “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq. He said conflict with Iran would be “extremely stressing” for America’s overstretched forces, but added: “It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability.”
Mullen said he was increasingly concerned about Iran’s growing involvement in supplying munitions and training to rebel Shi’ite militias and “killing American and coalition soldiers in Iraq”.
Speaking at a Pentagon news conference late on Friday, he said recent operations in the southern port city of Basra had revealed “just how much and how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability”. A Pentagon source said the admiral’s frankness was “extremely significant” and could pave the way for some form of attack on Iran. However, Mullen said: “The solution right now still lies in using other levers of national power, including diplomatic, financial and international pressure.”
Mullen’s tough rhetoric came shortly after General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq responsible for the troop surge, briefed Congress about the “nefarious activities” of the Quds force in stirring violence in Iraq. There were a total of 923 civilian deaths in Iraq last month, the highest number since August 2007.
“We should all watch Iranian actions closely in the weeks and months ahead, as they will show the kind of relationship that Iran wishes to have with its neighbour,” Petraeus said.
Petraeus was nominated last week to take over as commander of all US forces in the Middle East from Admiral William Fallon, who resigned in March after becoming an outspoken critic of American policy towards Iran.
Petraeus has been asked to prepare a briefing on the extent of Iranian involvement in Iraq. It will include the recovery of weapons with date stamps showing that they were recently manufactured in Iran.
American officers claim that Iran is responsible for new, highly dangerous roadside bombs in Iraq and accuse Iranian-trained militants of responsibility for the deadliest rocket and mortar attacks on Baghdad’s green zone.
“The question is not if Iran is unhelpful in Iraq,” said Philip Crowley, a retired air force colonel and defence expert at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “The question is what to do about it.” Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said last Monday that Iran is “hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons”. He added that war would be “disastrous” but the military option must remain on the table. However, a senior defence source said the administration regarded Iran’s nuclear programme and its interference in Iraq as separate problems, requiring different tactics and solutions.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the Iranian-backed radical Shi’ite cleric, called on his followers at Friday prayers to stop fighting Iraqi troops and unite against “the occupiers” – US troops.
“All government, without exception, conceal from the people everything that might further their emancipation, and encourage all that degrades and demoral izes them [...] all manner of amusements of the senses [...] even physical means of stupefaction, such as tobacco and alcohol, the tax on which consti tutes one of the chief revenues of the state.”
SANTIAGO, Chile (WOMENSENEWS)--Hundreds of Chileans are planning to renounce their membership in the Roman Catholic Church on April 29 as an outcry against a major blow to the government's push for expanded access to contraception.
On April 18 Chile's Constitutional Court outlawed distribution of emergency contraception in public health clinics to women 14 and older, a policy implemented in September 2006 by the government of President Michelle Bachelet to lower teen pregnancy rates in a country where 15 percent of births are to women 18 or younger. Emergency contraception remains available in the nation's private pharmacies.
Over 10,000 people also marched in evening demonstrations to protest the court's decision Tuesday.
Mujeres Publicas, or Public Women, a women's rights group in Santiago, has used e-mail to organize the "massive apostasy," that is, an active rejection of the Catholic faith. Group members say that roughly 500 people have signed up to participate so far and they expect the figure to reach 1,000.
Participants are being asked to sign a letter requesting the Catholic Church remove their names from all records and then deliver the document to their nearest archdiocese. Women from each of Chile's 15 regions have committed to the abandonment of their faith.
...
I pulled into the church parking lot a little after 6:00 p.m., at more or less the last possible minute. The previous half hour or so I'd spent dawdling in my car outside a Goodwill department store off Route 410 in San Antonio, clinging to some inane sports talk show piping over my car radio — anything to hold off my plunge into Religion.
There was an old-fashioned white school bus in front of the church entrance, with a puddle of heavyset people milling around its swinging door. Some of these were carrying blankets and sleeping bags. My heart, already pounding, skipped a few extra beats. The church circulars had said nothing about bringing bedding. Why did I need bedding? What else had I missed?
"Excuse me," I said, walking up to an in-charge-looking man with a name tag who was standing near the front of the bus. "I see everyone has blankets. I didn't bring any. Is this going to be a problem?"
The man was about five feet one and had glassy eyes. He looked up at me and smiled queerly.
"Name?" he said.
"Collins," I said. "Matthew Collins."
He scanned his clipboard, found my name on the appropriate sheet of paper, and X-ed me out with a highlighter. "Don't worry, Matthew," he said, resting his hand on my shoulder. "A wonderful woman named Martha is going to take care of you at the ranch. You just tell her what you need when you get there."
I nodded, glancing at his hand, which was still on my shoulder. He waved me into the bus.
I had been attending the Cornerstone Church for weeks, but this was really my first day of school. I had joined Cornerstone — a megachurch in the Texas Hill Country — to get a look inside the evangelical mind-set that gave the country eight years of George W. Bush. The church's pastor, John Hagee, is one of the most influential evangelical preachers in the country — not because his ministry is so very large (although he claims up to 4.5 million viewers a week for his Sunday sermons) but because of his near-absolute conquest of a very trendy niche in the market: Christian Zionism.
The whole idea behind Christian Zionism is to align America with the nation of Israel so as to "hurry God up" in his efforts to bring about Armageddon. As Hagee tells it, only after Israel is involved in a final showdown involving a satanic army (in most interpretations, a force of Arabs led by Russians) will Christ reappear. On that happy day, Hagee and his True Believers will be whisked up to Heaven by God, while the rest of us nonbelievers are left behind on Earth to suck eggs and generally suffer various tortures.
So here I was, standing in the church parking lot, having responded to church advertisements hawking an "Encounter Weekend" — three solid days of sleep-away Christian fellowship that would teach me the "joy" of "knowing the truth" and "being set free." That had sounded harmless enough, but now that I was here and surrounded by all of these blanket-bearing people, I was nervous. When most Americans think of the Christian right, they think of scenes from television — great halls full of perfectly groomed people in pale suits and light-colored dresses, smiling and happy and full of the Holy Spirit, robotically singing hymns at the behest of some squeaky-clean pastor with a baritone voice and impossible hair. We don't get to see the utterly batshit world they live in, when the cameras are turned off and their pastors are not afraid of saying the really dumb stuff, for fear of it turning up on CNN. In American evangelical Christianity, in other words, there's a ready-for-prime-time stage act — toned down and lip-synced to match a set of PG lyrics that won't scare the advertisers — and then there's the real party backstage, where the spiritual hair really gets let down. I was about to go backstage, to personally take part in the indoctrination process for a major Southern evangelical church. Waiting to board the bus for the Encounter Weekend, I had visions of some charismatic ranch-land Jesus, stoned on beer and the Caligula director's cut and too drunk late at night to chase after the minor children, hauling me into a barn for an in-the-hay shortcut to truth and freedom. Ridiculous, of course, but I really was afraid, mostly of my own ignorance and prejudices. I had never been to something like this before, and I didn't know how to act. I badly wanted to be invisible.
The bus was nearly full, and mostly quiet. Here and there a few people sitting together or near each other huddled and chatted, but I could see right away that a great many people on the trip had come alone, like me. They were people of all sorts: younger white men in neat middle-class haircuts, a matronly Mexican woman quietly reading a romance novel, a few scattered weather-beaten black folk in secondhand clothing whom I immediately pegged as in-recovery addicts, a couple of ten-alarm soccer moms who would prove the loudest people on the bus by far, a few quiet older men of military bearing.
The one obvious conclusion anyone making a demographic study of the Cornerstone Church population would come to would be that it's a solidly middle-class crowd. These are folks who are comfortable eating off paper plates and drinking out of gallon jugs of Country Time iced tea over noisy dinners with their kids. They're people who grew up in houses with back yards and fences, people with families. This particular journey to God is not a pastime for the idle rich or the urban obnoxious.
I sat down next to a frankly obese Hispanic woman who was carrying what both looked and smelled like a paper bag full of cheeseburgers.
"Some weather we're having, with this rain," I said.
"Tell me about it!" she said, introducing herself as Maria. "It truly is an act of God that I even made it here today." She told a story about having to drive down from Austin in bad weather. God had helped her four or five steps along the way. "It just seems like God really wants me to come on this trip," she said. "Otherwise, I would never have made it."
"It looks like God is going to give us a rainstorm all the way to Tarpley," I heard a voice behind me say.
This oddly uniform style of dialogue ringing all around me made me shift in my seat. I felt nervous and unpleasantly certain that I was about to be found out. When Maria asked me why I'd come on the retreat, I bit my lip. When in Rome, I thought.
"Well," I said, "since the new year, I've just been feeling like God has been telling me that I need to get right spiritually. So here I am."
I paused, wincing inwardly. An outsider coming into this world will feel sure that the moment he coughs up one of those "God told me to put more English on my tee shot" lines, his dark game will be instantly visible to all, and he'll be made the target of one of those Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style point-and-screech mob scenes. But nothing could be further from the truth. You simply cannot go wrong praising God in this world; overdoing it is literally impossible. I would understand this better by the end of the weekend.
Maria smiled. "I feel the same way. Have you ever been to one of these Encounters?"
"No, I haven't," I said.
"Me neither," she said. "I'm really excited."
"They're wonderful," said the matronly Mexican woman in front of me, turning around. "They really change you forever."
I slunk in my seat, trying to look inconspicuous. My disguise was modeled on other men I'd seen in church — pane glasses and the very gayest blue-and-white-striped Gap polo shirt I'd been able to find that afternoon. Buried on a clearance rack next to the underwear section in a nearby mall, the Gap shirt was one of those irritating throwbacks to the Meatballs/Seventies-summer-camp-geek look, but stripped of its sartorial irony, it really just screamed Friendless Loser! — so I bought it without hesitation and tried to match it with that sheepish, ashamed-to-have-a-penis look I had seen so many other young men wearing in church. With the glasses and a slouch I hoped I was at least in the ballpark of what I thought I needed to look like, which was a slow-moving hulk of confused, shipwrecked masculinity, flailing for an Answer.
One of the implicit promises of the church is that following its program will restore to you your vigor, confidence and assertiveness, effecting, among other things, a marked and obvious physical transformation from crippled lost soul to hearty vessel of God. That's one of the reasons that it's so important for the pastors to look healthy, lusty and lustrous — they're appearing as the "after" photo in the ongoing advertisement for the church wellness cure.
In these Southern churches there are few wizened old sages such as one might find among Catholic bishops or Russian startsi. Here your church leader is an athlete, a business dynamo, a champion eater with a bull's belly, outwardly a tireless heterosexual — and if you want to know what a church beginner is supposed to look like, just make it the opposite of that. Show weakness, financial trouble, frustration with the opposite sex, and if you're overweight, be so unhealthily, and in a way that you're ashamed of. The fundamentalist formula is much less a journey from folly to wisdom than it is from weakness to strength. They don't want a near-complete personality that needs fine-tuning — they want a human jellyfish, raw clay they can transform into a vigorous instrument of God.
I was very, very, very good — at everything!" shouted our hulking ex-paratrooper pastor, Philip Fortenberry, into the barely visible mouth mike that curled around his ruddy face. "I was a Green Beret — top of the class. Six feet four, 225 pounds. A star athlete, basketball player. Starting outside linebacker on the varsity football team. . . ."
The crowd cooed as our spiritual leader rattled off his macho credentials. Our supercowboy pastor was the perfect foil for the Revenge of the Nerds-style crowd of fatties, addicts, loners and broken-home survivors populating the warehouse-size building where we were all destined to spend the next three days together. In his introductory speech, Fortenberry did everything but tape-measure his biceps. His autobiographical tale of an angry overachieving youth who fell into a young adulthood of false pride, only to rebound and be reborn as a turbocharged, Army-trained enemy of Satan ("A friend of mine once joked that he saw my picture hung up in a post office in Hell," he quipped), was to serve as the first chapter of our collective transformation — and to work it had to impress the hell out of us scraggly wanna-be's.
It did. "I'm going to start tonight by telling y'all two stories," he began.
The first was a story from his Army days, about having to take a training flight in the Pacific Northwest as a young man and being trapped in the back of the transport plane when the landing went wrong and the plane ended up crash-bouncing along the runway. "If you've ever been in the back of a C-130, you know what I mean," he said, and I saw nodding heads all through the audience. The pastor subsequently would not miss a single chance to drop the name of a piece of military equipment.
The second story was more personal. It was about being a little boy in a small Southern town whose father ran around on his mom with a local barmaid. Dad used to bring little Junior to play golf with him, keeping his arm around the barmaid in the golf cart for the entire eighteen holes; finally Dad left Mom to shack up with the barmaid in a house down the road. Dad was so busy with the barmaid that he never came to see Junior's ballgames. But from time to time he would come back home to Mom, moving back into Junior's world, turning his life upside down.
"And every time he came back," the pastor said, waving his hand up and down and his voice fairly breaking with tears, "it was like one more bounce along that runway, bouncing in that C-130, tearing my little boy's world apart."
The pastor fell silent, still using his hands to demonstrate that bouncing transport plane of fate, as he surveyed his hushed audience. Fortenberry then stood staring at his audience in full pre-weep, his eyes wrinkling with incipient tears. The grown macho man unashamedly breaking into boyish tears in public is one of the weirder features of the post-Promise Keeper Christian generation, and Fortenberry — himself a Promise Keeper, incidentally — had it down to a science. "You never came to my ballgames, Dad," he'd screech, his face wrinkling like a raisin with grief at the word "ballgames."
I heard sniffles coming from the audience.
Sensing he had his crowd in an emotionally vulnerable state, the pastor then plunged into a story about how his bitterness at his father's abandonment had pushed him, in high school, to become just about the best basketball player you could imagine. Young Fortenberry, we learned, had scored lots and lots of points in high school and had many great games.
How great were those games? Well, he told us, they were really great. Some of the stories wandered irrelevantly into the specific stats of some of those games; he also punctuated his storytelling with oddly vigorous and adept pantomimes of jumpers and hook shots. It was a weird scene, like listening to a married man wax poetic to a mistress in a roadside motel room. "But after a while I realized that all those thousands of jump shots" — here he mimicked a jump shot — "and all those thousands of moves" — he ducked his head back and forth, Tim Hardaway-style — "hadn't brought me any closer to Dad."
The program revolved around a theory that Fortenberry quickly introduced us to called "the wound." The wound theory was a piece of schlock biblical Freudianism in which everyone had one traumatic event from their childhood that had left a wound. The wound necessarily had been inflicted by another person, and bitterness toward that person had corrupted our spirits and alienated us from God. Here at the retreat we would identify this wound and learn to confront and forgive our transgressors, a process that would leave us cleansed of bitterness and hatred and free to receive the full benefits of Christ.
In the context of the wound theory, Fortenberry's tale suddenly made more sense. Being taken on that eighteen-hole golf trip with the barmaid, and watching his family ditched by Dad, had been his wound. It was a wound, Fortenberry explained, because his father's abandonment had crushed his "normal."
"And I was wounded," he whispered dramatically. "My dad had ruined my normal!"
The crowd murmured affirmatively, apparently knowing what it was to have a crushed normal.
After introducing us to the concept of wounds and normals, Fortenberry told us one last cautionary tale before sending us to our first group session. It was about a paratrooper who had done a tandem jump with a training dummy for some Army exercise or other, only to have the dummy's chute fail to open. The dummy had plunged to the ground, crashing through the trees and landing with a thud in a bush. Fortenberry's Army buddy had taken advantage of the situation to have a little joke at the expense of some other exercising soldiers on the ground who weren't privy to the fact that the troopers were jumping with dummies. The Army buddy had cried and wailed in asking where the "body" had fallen, leaving the soldiers on the ground to think that someone had just been killed.
The soldiers had felt guilty, Fortenberry explained, because they'd failed to help what they thought was a fallen comrade. Why? Because they'd been afraid to look behind the bush.
"So I'm telling you now, as you go into your groups," the pastor explained, "don't be afraid to look behind the bush."
I wrote in my binder: "LOOK BEHIND THE BUSH." Then I waited as my name was called out for group study.
The groups were segregated. Men with men, women with women. Each group was led by a life coach, who was actually a recent graduate of the program. At the beginning of the group stage, the coaches were all called up to the front of the chapel, and Fortenberry would call out the coach's name first, then the names of his group members.
My coach's name was Morgan. Morgan was a big man, ex-military, with curly black hair, a black mustache and a softening middle. He looked a little like a post-rehab version of Keith Hernandez — soft-spoken, deferential, all nose and mustache.
There were four other men in our group. Besides myself, there was José, a huge Mexican with a sheepish expression and a steam-boiler body; Aaron, a squat and alert Pennsylvanian with a clean-and-jerker's build; and Dennis, a somewhat vacant and medicated-looking man pushing forty with a bald head and stubbly beard. Dennis looked like a distantly menacing version of Homer Simpson after electroshock therapy. Seated just a few feet away from us in our tight circle, he gazed out at us like he could barely make out our faces.
Once Morgan had us all gathered together, we looked for table space in the cafeteria area of the main building. Ominously, each of the cafeteria tables had a fresh box of Kleenex resting on top of it.
"Well," Morgan said, "I think what we're going to do to start is this. I'm going to tell you my story about my wound, and then we're going to go around in a circle, and each of us is going to just tell his story. Is that OK?"
Everyone nodded. I noted with displeasure that I was seated first after Morgan in clockwise order. Already I was panicking; what kind of wound could a human cipher like myself possibly confess to?
Morgan told his story. Even a perfunctory look at my fellow group members told me that we had people here with some very serious problems, and yet Morgan's wound was a tale that wouldn't have even ruined a week of my relatively privileged childhood, much less my whole life — something about being yelled at by his dad while he was out playing with remote-controlled airplanes with his friends as a thirteen-year-old. He hammed up his trauma over the incident in classically lachrymose Iron John-in-touch-with-his-inner-boy fashion (again, there is something very odd about modern Christian men — although fiercely pro-military in their politics and prehistorically macho in their attitudes toward women's roles, on the level of day-to-day behavior they seem constantly ready to break out weeping like menopausal housewives), but his words were bouncing off a wall of unimpressed silence radiating from the group.
Blank stares. This was a tough crowd. Five minutes into our group acquaintance, we were at a full 9.5 out of 10 on the International Uncomfortable Silence scale.
Morgan turned, glanced again at my name tag and sighed.
"Well, uh, OK, then," he said. "Matthew, do you want to tell your story?"
My heart was pounding. I obviously couldn't use my real past — not only would it threaten my cover, but I was somewhat reluctant to expose anything like my real inner self to this ideologically unsettling process — but neither did I want to be trapped in a story too far from my own experience. What I settled on eventually was something that I thought was metaphorically similar to the truth about myself.
"Hello," I said, taking a deep breath. "My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes."
The group twittered noticeably. Morgan's eyes opened to tea-saucer size.
I closed my own eyes and kept going, immediately realizing what a mistake I'd made. There was no way this story was going to fly. But there was no turning back.
"He'd be sitting there in his costume, sucking down a beer and watching television," I heard myself saying. "And then sometimes, even if I just walked in front of the TV, he'd pull off one of those big shoes and just, you know — whap!"
I looked around the table and saw three flatlined, plainly indifferent psyches plus one mildly unnerved Morgan staring back at me. I could tell that my coach and former soldier had been briefly possessed by the fear that a terrible joke was being played on his group. But then I actually saw him dismissing the thought — after all, who would do such a thing? I managed to tie up my confession with a tale about turning into a drug addict in my midtwenties — at least that much was true — and being startled into sobriety and religion after learning of my estranged clown father's passing from cirrhosis.
It was a testament to how dysfunctional the group was that my story flew more or less without comment.
So it began. Our meetings were a prolonged, cyclical course of group-directed confession and healing that began on Friday evening and continued almost without interruption through Sunday afternoon. The basic gist of our group exercises was this: We were each supposed to reveal to one another what our great childhood wounds were, then write a series of essays and letters on the wound theme, taking time after the writing of each to read our work aloud. The written assignments began with an autobiography, then moved on to a letter written to our "offenders" (i.e., those who had caused our wounds), then a letter written to Jesus confessing our failure to forgive our tormentors.
Unfortunately, my one fleeting error of judgment about my circus-clown dad had left me shackled to a rank character absurdity for the rest of my stay in Texas. I soon found myself reading aloud a passage from my "autobiography" describing a period of my father's life when he quit clowning to hand out fliers in a Fudgie the Whale costume outside a Carvel ice cream store:
I laugh about it now, but once he chased me, drunk, in his Fudgie the Whale costume. He chased me into the bathroom, laid me across the toilet seat and hit me with his fins, which underneath were still a man's hands.
Again no reaction from the group, aside from an affirming nod from José at the last part — his eyes said to me, I know what you mean about those fins.
After each of these grueling exercises we would have lengthy, fifteen-to-twenty-minute sessions singing unbearably atonal Christian hymns. Then we would have teaching/Bible-study sessions led by Fortenberry on the theme of the moment (e.g., "Admit the Truth About Our Wounds") that lasted an hour or so. Then, after Fortenberry would waste at least half the session giving us the Marlboro Man highlights of his professional résumé ("I was the manager of the second-largest ranch in America, 825,000 acres. . . .") and bragging about his physical prowess ("If someone was to slug me, I could whip just about anyone here"), we would go back to the group session and confess some more. Then we would sing some more, receive more of Fortenberry's hairy lessons, and then the cycle would start all over again. There were almost no breaks or interruptions; it was a physically exhausting schedule of confession, catharsis, bad music and relentless, muscular instruction. The Saturday program began at 7:45 a.m. and did not end until ten at night; we went around the confess-sing-learn cycle five full times in one day.
We were about a third of the way through the process when I began to wonder what the hell was going on. Fortenberry's blowhard-on-crack-act/wound gobbledygook were all suspiciously secular in tone and approach. I had been hearing whispers throughout the first day or so to the effect that there was some kind of incredible supernatural religious ceremony that was going to take place at the end of the retreat ("Tighten your saddle, he's fixin' ta buck" was how "cowboy" Fortenberry put it), when we would experience "Victory and Deliverance." But as far as I could see, in the early going, most of what we were doing was simple pop-psych self-examination using New Age-y diagnostic tools of the Deepak Chopra school: Identify your problems, face your oppressors, visualize your obstacles. Be your dream job. With a little rhetorical tweaking and much better food, this could easily have been Tony Robbins instructing a bunch of Upper East Side housewives to "find your wounds" ("My husband hid my Saks card!") at a chic resort in Miami Beach or the Hamptons.
True, I could see some other angles to what was going on as well. Virtually all of the participants of the Encounter identified either one or both of their parents as their "offender," and much of what Fortenberry was talking about in his instructional sessions was how to replace the godless atmosphere of abuse or neglect that the offenders had provided us with God and the church. He was taking broken people and giving them a road map to a new set of parents, a new family — your basic cultist bait-and-switch formula for cutting old emotional ties and redirecting that psychic energy toward the desired new destination. That connection would become more overt later in the weekend, but early on, this ur-father propaganda was the only thing I could see that separated Encounter Weekend from the typical self-help dreck of the secular world.
But then, midway through Saturday, Fortenberry and the coaches started to show us glimpses of the program's end game. The wound, it turned out, was something that was inflicted upon us because of a curse, a curse that perhaps spanned generations in each of our families. Alcoholic parents abused their children, who in turn carried their parents' curse to their adult lives and became alcoholics themselves — only to have children and continue the pattern again. Now, why was that curse there to begin with? Here was where we could get into religious explanations, see the footprint of Satan, etc. We were unhappy because of earthly troubles from our childhoods, but those troubles were the work of a generational curse, inflicted upon us by devils and demons — probably for unbelief, bad behavior, disobedience, worship of the wrong gods and so on.
This little bit of semantic gymnastics helped transform all of us at the retreat from being merely fucked up to being accursed carriers of demons. Having ridden an almost entirely secular program to get our biographies out in the open in a group setting, Fortenberry could now switch his focus to the real meat and potatoes of the weekend: Satan and the devils inside us.
He started off slowly, invoking the godly curses of Genesis — the sweat on Adam's brow, the pain of Eve's childbirth, etc. — the punishments for eating of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. "How many of you women out there have had babies?" Fortenberry asked. "Can I see some hands?"
A dozen or so hands raised.
"Now, did it hurt?" he asked.
Laughter. Of course it hurt.
"Let me ask you a question," he said. "Why do alcoholics give birth to alcoholics? Why do the fatherless give birth to the fatherless?" He paused. "There are some people out there who will tell you it's genetics. It's in our genes, they say. Well, I tell you, it's not genetics. It's a generational curse!"
Fortenberry then started in on a rant against science and against scientific explanations for cycles of sin. "Take homosexuals," he said. "Every single homosexual is a sexual-abuse victim. They are not born. They are created — by pedophiles."
The crowd swallowed that one whole. One thing about this world: Once a preacher says it, it's true. No one is going to look up anything the preacher says, cross-check his facts, raise an eyebrow at something that might sound a little off. Some weeks later, I would be at a Sunday service in which Pastor John Hagee himself would assert that the Bible predicts that Jesus Christ is going to return to Earth bearing a "rod of iron" to discipline the ACLU. It goes without saying that the ACLU was not mentioned in the passage in Ezekiel he was citing — but the audience ate it up anyway. When they're away from the cameras, the preachers feel even less obligated to shackle themselves to facts of any kind. That's because they know that their audience doesn't give a shit. So long as you're telling them what they want to hear, there's no danger; your crowd will angrily dismiss any alternative explanations anyway as demonic subversion.
A team of twenty of the world's leading scientists wouldn't be able to convince so much as one person in this crowd that homosexuals are not created by pedophiles.
Fortenberry told a story about a nephew of his who called him up one night. "Both of his kids had fallen on the ground in respiratory distress, half-conscious, writhing around, gasping for air," Fortenberry said. "And I said to my nephew, I said, 'It isn't something they've done. It's something you've done.' "
The crowd murmured in assent.
"I told my nephew to look around the house," Fortenberry continued. "I said, 'Do you have a copy of Harry Potter?' And he said yes. And I said, 'That's your problem.' So I told him to go get that copy of that book, tear it in half and throw it out the window. So he does it, and guess what? Both of those kids stood up completely recovered, just like that."
He snapped his fingers, indicating the speed with which the kids had jumped up in recovery. The crowd cooed and applauded. I frowned, wondering for a minute what life must be like for a person mortally afraid of toothless commercial fairy tales. It struck me that Phil Fortenberry's nephew was probably more afraid of Harry Potter than Macbeth, which to me said a lot about this religion and about America in general.
Here I have a confession to make. It's not something that's easy to explain, but here goes. After two days of nearly constant religious instruction, songs, worship and praise — two days that for me meant an unending regimen of forced and fake responses — a funny thing started to happen to my head. There is a transformational quality in these external demonstrations of faith and belief. The more you shout out praising the Lord, singing along to those awful acoustic tunes, telling people how blessed you feel and so on, the more a sort of mechanical Christian skin starts to grow all over your real self. Even if you're a degenerate Rolling Stone reporter inwardly chuckling and busting on the whole scene — even if you're intellectually enraged by the ignorance and arrogant prejudice flowing from the mouth of a terminal-ambition case like Phil Fortenberry — outwardly you're swaying to the gospel and singing and praising and acting the part, and those outward ministrations assume a kind of sincerity in themselves. And at the same time, that "inner you" begins to get tired of the whole spectacle and sometimes forgets to protest — in my case checking out into baseball reveries and other daydreams while the outer me did the "work" of singing and praising. At any given moment, which one is the real you?
You may think you know the answer, but by my third day I began to notice how effortlessly my soft-spoken Matt-mannequin was going through his robotic motions of praise, and I was shocked. For a brief, fleeting moment I could see how under different circumstances it would be easy enough to bury your "sinful" self far under the skin of your outer Christian and to just travel through life this way. So long as you go through all the motions, no one will care who you really are underneath. And besides, so long as you are going through all the motions, never breaking the facade, who are you really? It was an incomplete thought, but it was a scary one; it was the very first time I worried that the experience of entering this world might prove to be anything more than an unusually tiring assignment. I feared for my normal.
On the final morning of the weekend, we gathered in the chapel for the Deliverance. Fortenberry, dressed in his standard Western shirt and hiked-up jeans, sauntered up to the lectern wearing a solemn and dramatic expression. "This is fixing to be the biggest spiritual battle that ninety-nine percent of you will ever face," he said. "But let me tell you something. It's already been won. It was won 2,000 years ago."
The crowd cheered. As the applause tailed, he held his hands up Mussolini-fashion, asking for quiet. The crowd complied. It was quite dramatically done, this whole business, whatever we were working toward. And at that moment, I spotted a younger kid who had been at the retreat all weekend working a soundboard for the musical parts zipping behind the crowd to some kind of dimmer panel. He turned a switch and the lights dimmed slightly; though it was morning, the light in the building suddenly turned unnatural, like the light during a partial eclipse.
Throughout the whole weekend, Fortenberry had been setting himself up as an athletic conqueror of demons. Now, on the final morning, he looked like a quarterback about to take the field before a big game. The life coaches assembled around the edges of the chapel, carrying anointing oil and bundles of small paper bags.
Fortenberry began to issue instructions. He told us that under no circumstances should we pray during the Deliverance.
"When the word of God is in your mouth," he said, "the demons can't come out of your body. You have to keep a path clear for the demon to come up through your throat. So under no circumstances pray to God. You can't have God in your mouth. You can cough, you might even want to vomit, but don't pray."
The crowd nodded along solemnly. Fortenberry then explained that he was going to read from an extremely long list of demons and cast them out individually. As he did so, we were supposed to breathe out, keep our mouths open and let the demons out.
And he began.
At first, the whole scene was pure comedy. Fortenberry was standing up at the front of the chapel, reading off a list, and the room was loudly chirping crickets back at him.
"In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of incest! In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of sexual abuse! In the name of Jesus. . . ."
After a few minutes, there was a little twittering here and there. Nothing serious. I was beginning to think the Deliverance was going to be a bust.
But then it started. Wails and cries from the audience. To my left, a young black man started writhing around in his seat. In front of me and to my right, another young black man with Coke-bottle glasses and a shock of nerdly jheri curl — a dead ringer for a young Wayne Williams — started wailing and clutching his head.
"In the name of Jesus," continued Fortenberry, "I cast out the demon of astrology!"
Coughing and spitting noises. Behind me, a bald white man started to wheeze and gurgle, like he was about to puke. Fortenberry, still reading from his list, pointed at the man. On cue, a pair of life coaches raced over to him and began to minister. One dabbed his forehead with oil and fiercely clutched his cranium; the other held a paper bag in front of his mouth.
"In the name of Jesus Christ," said Fortenberry, more loudly now, "I cast out the demon of lust!"
And the man began power-puking into his paper baggie. I couldn't see if any actual vomitus came out, but he made real hurling and retching noises.
Now the women began to pipe in. On the women's side of the chapel the noises began, and it is not hard to explain what these noises sounded like. If you've ever watched The Houston 560 or any other gangbang porn movie, that's what it sounded like, only the sounds were far more intense.
It was not difficult to figure out where the energy was coming from on that side of the room. Some of the husbands glanced nervously over in the direction of their wives.
"In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of cancer!" said Fortenberry.
"Oooh! Unnh! Unnnnnh!" wailed a woman in the front row.
"Bleeech!" puked the bald man behind me.
Within about a minute after that, the whole chapel erupted in pandemonium. About half the men and three-fourths of the women were writhing around and either play-puking or screaming. Not wanting to be a bad sport, I raised my hand for one of the life coaches to see.
"Need . . . a . . . bag," I said as he came over.
He handed me a bag.
"In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of handwriting analysis!" shouted Fortenberry.
Handwriting analysis? I jammed the bag over my mouth and started coughing, then went into a very real convulsion of disbelief as I listened to this astounding list, half-laughing and half-retching.
"In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!" Fortenberry continued. "In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of anal fissures!"
Cough, cough!
The minutes raced by. Wayne Williams was now fully prostrate, held up only by a trio of coaches, each of whom took part of his writhing body and propped it up. Another bald man in the front of the chapel was now freaking out in Linda Blair fashion, roaring and making horrific demon noises.
"Rum-balakasha-oom!" shouted Fortenberry in tongues, waving a hand in front of Linda Blair Man. "Cooom-balakasha-froom! In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of philosophy!"
Philosophy?
It was obvious that virtually everyone in the crowd was playacting to some degree or another. I was reminded of the Tolstoy story "The Kreutzer Sonata," when the male narrator described marriage as being like the bearded-lady tent in a French circus he'd seen. You pay a few francs to go in, and when you come out, and the carnival barker shouts at you, "Was that not the most amazing thing you've ever seen, monsieur?" — well, you're too ashamed to admit that you've been had, and so you nod your head and agree: Oui, monsieur, it was really something! That's how people come to say marriage is a blessing, and that's how you can get fifty-odd high school graduates puking demons into three-cent paper bags for a Deliverance.
The whole thing — the demonic expulsions, the trading of miraculous wives' tales, the crazy End Times theology based on dire predictions that come and go uneventfully once a year or so — it's all a con that is done with the consent of the conned. Which is what gives it strength. If everybody agrees to believe, it is real.
The hooting and howling went on seemingly forever. It was nearly an hour and a half before Fortenberry was done. He had cast out the demons of every ailment, crime, domestic problem and intellectual discipline on the face of the Earth. He cast out horoscopes, false gods, witches, intellectual pride, nearsightedness, everything, it seemed to me, except maybe E. coli and John Updike novels. At least four of the men and about six of the women writhed and screamed and fussed themselves into sheer physical exhaustion, collapsing in chairs by the time it was over. Several of the coaches actually had to bring Wayne Williams and the other young black man behind the chapel to subdue their demons. By then most of us men were just sitting there mute, looking around absent-mindedly, waiting for it to end. I was sitting there, clutching my demon vomit bag — perhaps the single greatest souvenir of my journalistic career — when I made the mistake of closing my mouth. A coach rushed over to me.
"Matthew!" he snapped. "Keep your mouth open! Let the demons out!"
"Oh, right!" I said. I straightened up and opened my mouth in the shape of a letter O.
Meanwhile, Fortenberry was tiring.
"I cast out . . . uh . . . In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of pornography. I cast out, in the name of Jesus, the demon of disconnect."
Fortenberry shook his head as though trying to revive himself. He had been at this for a long time. His stamina really was astounding, a testament to his military training.
Afterward, a frightening thought shot through my head. It occurred to me that over the past decades, any number of our prominent political leaders (from Jimmy Carter to Chuck Colson to W himself) had boasted publicly of their born-again experiences, broadcasting to Middle America an understanding of their personal relationships with God. But whereas once these conversions were humble things — Billy Graham whispering and putting his hand on W's shoulder in Kennebunkport, or even (in the case of Tom DeLay) a flash of recognition while watching a televangelist program — the modern version might very easily be this completely batshit holy-vomitus/demon-exorcism deal. The thought that any politician could claim this kind of experience and not be immediately disqualified from public service seemed utterly terrifying.
We were called back to chapel, and this time the drill was speaking in tongues. We were asked to come up to the front of the chapel and let a life coach anoint us with oil, hold our heads and speak to us in tongues. Fortenberry instructed us to "just let it out. Just let it out and it'll come out."
He didn't come right out and say, "Just act like you're speaking in tongues." But it was damned close. Once again, Fortenberry greased the process by telling us a story about how he'd once been at a service where folks were speaking in tongues, and he was skeptical, but it had just flown right out of him — and now it just shoots right out of him, almost on command.
I went to the front. One of the coaches grabbed me by the shoulder and sploshed a big puddle of oil on my forehead. Then he began to speak in tongues:
"Gam-bakakasha. Hoo-raaa-balalakasha. . . . Come on, Matthew, let it out."
American Christians who speak in tongues basically all try to sound like extras from the underworld set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. If you want to pull it off and sound like a natural, just imagine you're holding a rubber replica of Harrison Ford's heart in your hands: Umm-harakashaka! Loo-pa-wanneee-rakakakasha, Meester Jones!
But I didn't think of this at the time and just went another route.
"Let it out, Matthew," the coach repeated, clutching my forehead. "Just open your mouth."
I shrugged and rattled off the lyrics to the song "What is Autumn?" by the Russian rock band DDT:
What is autumn? It's the sky The crying sky below your feet. Flying about in puddles are the birds and clouds. Autumn I've not been with you for so long!
It's actually a beautiful song, but with my eyes rolled back in my head and recited in Russian it sounded demonic enough.
"Hmm, very good," my coach said. "Good job, Matthew."
I kept going, on to the next verse. "What is autumn? It's a stone. . . ."
"OK, that's good," the coach said, annoyed, moving on to the next guy.
"It's important that you practice," said Pastor Fortenberry. "It sounds silly, but when you're at home, when you have a little time, just try to let it out. You'll get used to it, and soon you'll be speaking in tongues like nobody's business!"
He then pronounced us baptized in the Holy Spirit and fully qualified now to cast out demons.
He held up his hands in triumph.
"Hallelujah!" he shouted.
The crowd jumped up, and we all threw up our hands.
"Hallelujah!"
He called out Hallelujah! again. We repeated after him. And we repeated after him again. Arms in the air. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
I felt a twinge of recognition from somewhere as I threw my arms up over and over again.
We had graduated.
By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this — once you've gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.
By the end of that weekend, Phil Fortenberry could have told us that John Kerry was a demon with clawed feet, and not one person would have so much as blinked. Because none of that politics stuff matters anyway, once you've gotten this far. All that matters is being full of the Lord and empty of demons. And since everything that is not of God is demonic, asking these people to be objective about anything else is just absurd. There is no "anything else." All alternative points of view are nonstarters. There is this "our thing," a sort of Cosa Nostra of the soul, and then there are the fires of Hell. And that's all.
Some articles demand a profound introduction. Others ... not so much. If we were a different website we might use this space to talk about how America is the biggest penis-worshiping-religion of them all. But we're not that website (in case yesterday's bowl of penises didn't tip you off). We assure you, this is no metaphor. You will find no pop psychology or vaguely phallic imagery in this article. These are religions that worship human penises. Learn from them.
#5.
The Lingam
The Lingam is the symbol of a very special part of the Hindu god Shiva's body. (Hint: It's his cock.) Within the trinity of Hinduism, Shiva is the god of destruction and change. How much of that destruction is wrought with his four arms and how much comes from his manhood? We leave that to the reader to decide.
In Hindu mythology, when Shiva is killed, the goddess Kali squats over his body, rips out and eats his organs, and then mounts his still erect manrod to complete the cycle of creation. It's also worth noting that in most Hindu art and temples, his "linga" is usually depicted without the rest of him, the disembodied member being worshiped all by itself:
The object in the foreground is a "yoni" (literally: vagina) and they are most often shown together, in full penetration:
How Big Is It?
Huge. Out of a billion or so Hindus in the world, about 100 million belong to various sects that focus on Shiva, Kali and the giant Lingam.
On Your Knees:
Worshiping the linga is pretty straightforward. First, you have to make it wet, either by pouring water or milk over it. Then just say your prayers and meditate. Smaller, pocket-sized lingas should be held in the hand and rubbed while meditating, and you're well on your way to a religious experience.
#4.
Mara Kannon Shrine, Tawarayama Japan
According to legend, about 450 years ago two local politicians in Tawarayama had such a hate-on for each other that eventually the feud came to death threats. In order to protect his family, a Mr. Oji disguised his son as a girl and hid him in the local shrine. Eventually the other guy, Mr. Sue, found the boy, cut off his head, and to prove his identity (a head isn't enough?) also severed the boy's penis.
Hearing about the killing, the locals immediately took to making wood and ceramic phalluses, to replace the boy's missing member (at this point, you have to wonder if the boy would have benefited more from a prosthetic head, but back to the story). Discovering the joy of making cocks, the locals just never stopped, eventually getting into a cock arms race with each other. Today, the woods surrounding the shrine are forested with as many stone boners as trees, all pointing gloriously up to the heavens above.
How Big Is It?
Quite respectable, thank you very much. The shrine sees thousands of visitors each year. Mostly tourists, they come from nearly every country to see the forest o' phalli, some of which stand five feet tall. The shrine is a popular destination for men suffering from erectile problems, and is even more popular with their wives.
On Your Knees:
In addition to the usual Shinto ceremony of bowing and praying, worshipers can buy smaller--and by smaller we mean life-sized--ceramic dongs to place in the shrine as an offering. After many years and thousands of visitors, the shrine is currently overflowing with them. Also, for best results, be sure to write your prayers and wishes on your cock.
Now, see if you can guess which country made our list twice.
Give up?
#3.
Hounen Fertility Festival, Komaki, Japan
Most historians agree that fertility and phallus worship existed in prehistoric central and Eastern Asia, influencing the pre-Buddhist and pre-Shinto religions of the area. The Hounen Fertility Festival has been going for so long in Komaki that no one really remembers why they do it. But boy do they do it.
How Big Is It?
Try 9-feet-long and 620 pounds, baby.
Who's a bright shining superstar now, Diggler?
On Your Knees:
Get there early every March 15. The main event starts at 2PM, but they start giving away free booze at 10AM. That's right, they start tapping barrels full of sake even before lunch. Then at 2PM, the crowd staggers to the Shinmei Shrine where the mega dong is kept.
Shinto preists then give blessings to the wavering crowd, mount the thing on their shoulders, and everyone starts down the street. When they reach the Tagata Jinja shrine, they spin the giant cock around in circles over their heads, threatening all around with 360 degrees of mega penetration. At about 4PM they place the cock in its new home, and pray for a fruitful year. And while you're at the Tagata Jinja Shrine, don't forget to rub the sacred balls for good luck:
#2.
Min, Egyptian God
Min was an ancient Egyptian god of fertility. In Egyptian art and statues, Min is always shown holding his cock with his left hand and a threshing flail in his raised right hand. A flail, in case you're wondering, is a kind of whip used to separate grain, or judging from the erection, to beat the shit out of some particularly adventurous woman who's been naughty and needs to be punished.
Min rose to prominence during the Middle Kingdom era, about 2050 BC, and by the New Kingdom era (1550 BC) he was the central figure in the Coronation Ceremony of every new Pharaoh. This involved a ritual in which the new Pharaoh would prove that he could ejaculate, and Min was there to make sure the King wasn't shooting blanks. We're not sure what the punishment was if the King couldn't fire one off, and we don't want to know.
How Big Is It?
You know, some things are more important than size. Centuries ago Egypt converted to Islam, with a few Christians and Jews thrown in, so no one really follows Min's cock anymore. But at one time Min was a principal deity of the entire Egyptian empire, with hundreds of thousands worshiping him. Today the modern city of Akhmim is built over the ruins of Min's temple, where excavation only just started in 1991, but ancient sources suggest that statues of him could be 55 feet tall or more, giving the old boy about eight feet of god rod.
On Your Knees:
At Min's temple, worshipers would rub the leaves of the Egyptian lettuce plant (Lactuca serriola), some varieties of which are tall, straight and round, and which would emit a milky white sap.
Yep, they masturbated lettuce.
The sap contained a chemical called lactucarium, which in large doses has an effect on the body similar to cocaine. At the harvest festival each year, naked, geeked-out Egyptians would play various games, the most important of which was climbing a giant pole, with special prizes for anyone who reached the top. We'd have thought the award would go to the person who could climb up and down the poll over and over again in a rhythmic motion, but we didn't write the rules.
#1.
The Flaming Thunderbolt
Above is Drukpa Kunley, a 16th century Buddhist Monk who lived in what is now the country of Bhutan, or as he was more commonly known, The Divine Madman. Kunley spent his entire life, after becoming a monk in his late teens, traveling the countryside dispensing his wisdom and enlightenment to as many young ladies as he could get his hands on.
So where's the penis in all this? Well, he promised each of them a path to Nirvana through the use of his "Flaming Thunderbolt." In case you're still confused, here's a picture of it:
Kunley eventually earned such fame that women sought him out, or at least were very willing when he showed up. And in exchange for his spiritual illumination, all of the women were required to pay him in beer.
In between, and during, his deflowering sessions, Kunley would give advice on spiritual peace, how to balance one's karma, and how to attain Buddahood. Kunley preached that sexual ecstasy and drunkenness were the best ways to transcend the illusion of the material world and become one with oneself.
"The best wine lies at the bottom of the pail/And Happiness lies below the navel." A few inches below.
After riding nearly every wife, sister and daughter in the land, Kunley eventually rode into Buddhist mythology itself. He is said to do battle with all sorts of demons and evil spirits, most of them female. In one Bhutanese legend, he defeats a demoness by beating her in the face with his penis, and then gags her with it. After she is defeated, he transforms her into a good spirit "through divine sexual play."
How Big Is It?
It's not the size, it's how you use it. Over 80 percent of Bhutan's 700,000 people are Buddhist, and nearly all of them use images of the Flaming Thunderbolt as a good luck symbol. Images of it are everywhere, most notably painted on the outside of homes and buildings to ward off bad spirits and 'the evil eye.'
On Your Knees:
The best place to become one with your inner Flaming Thunderbolt is at Kunley's Chimi Lhakhang monastery, about a three-hour drive from the capital of Thimphu. There, Monks use a large wooden phallus, carved by Kunley himself, to hit devotees over the head and bless them with it's healing powers.
How this did not become the dominant religion on Earth is impossible to understand.
From: http://carolom.wordpress.com/Posted by carolom on April 19, 2008
For those of us over 40….
Remember how the book stores once had very few Self Empowerment / alternate thinking books? How Jonathon Livingstone Seagull inspired us to fly beyond the flock…and then “I’m Okay- Your Okay” came out…I was a teenager then and didn’t really understand it but carried it around for months like an affirmation of somewhere I would be one day!
Then there was the Primal Scream by Arthur Janov who decided we had every unshed tear and soul wound trapped in our body and the sale in beanbags quadrupled as therapists across the globe created little spots for people to anguish-out their pain.
“One flew Over the Cuckoos nest ” let us all know that really, madness was quite okay and it was the drugs and Nurse Ratchetts of the world who were messing things up!
And then Shakti Gawain- once known by a much more western name caught onto the Science of Mind / New Thought teachings and packaged them in a cool and inviting format…”Creative visualisation” groups sprang up across the country and Affirmations became the newest key to making dreams come true!
Some of of us then did months / years of “Women who love too much”…”How to recognise a commitmentphobic man before he breaks your heart”…”Letters from Women who love too much” and “Ten Stupid Things Women do to Mess up their Life”……and STILL let another bad boy in because he was such an irresitable pattern to break…
Our bookshelves and the dusty boxes in the shed are an archival record of the Journey…and it continues ever onward …
Paulo Coehlo let us know that the Alchemist did not have to travel anywhere if only he had looked within…….in the Celestine Prophecy we were shown how control draaamas and Energy snatching is a way of life amongst the still-sleeping-humans…
Not to forget the maverick Richard Bandler who challenged the years of psychotherapy with something he called NLP- Neuro Linguistic Programming - where changing thought patterns and internal states became as easy as the title of his book - Using Your Brain for a Change…
Then there was the energiser bunny of the change-movement, inspired by Bandlers work…as Anthony Robbins bounced across the stage, altering states and appearing with Leeza Gibbons for years on the 2 am infomercials..
We have laid with tissues next to our Gratitude journals…we have loyally committed to ‘doing what it takes’..sometimes falling asleep witih crumpled notes to the Universe and a pile of ‘must read books’ next to our beds…
We have bought exercise books for our one-person Soul class exercises…and meditation tapes back when there were no cds/ dvds/ and mp3’s…
For some the Bible has been a consistent presence but as we have seen with the Biblical wars across the net, it is a book not without polarising emotions…
Then we expanded to reading blogs, downloading pods and vods…and Skyping and Cellphone texting…on and on and on the learning and growing and communicating expands…
Phew! Aren’t we a wonderful group of Soul School Earth students and aren’t we all blessed that the fruits of our fellow travellers and Soul School class mates becomes the nourishment and ponderings for our own journey…that still has infinitity to go……
Some days I browse in the second hand books stores and come across “I’m okay , You’re okay” or a dusty copy of “My Mother Myself” and turn the page of the old fashioned cover with a deep sense of nostalgia and gratitiude that in this dawning of the Age of Aquarius…the Age of Enlightement… we are free to CHOOSE our Soul food and each year produces more and more nourishment and food for thought….( and Yes, the astrology, psychic phenomena, astral travelling, tribal wisdom, aura reading, Silva mind development, Louise Hay -Healing empowerment books should also get a mention in the Archive…
Oh yes….some more name I have forgotten…
John Bradshaw, the dyanamic son of an alcoholic Father showing us how the sickness of the parent is visited upon the child. I still have a 10 part video series we used to use in workshops.. The local free to air community tv station had the tapes playing regularly through out the week for over a year and my mother did one of the exercises that lead her down the corridor within and into her own Awakening…
We still joke that the videos should not be watched alone as it was a frightening experience for her to meet her sad, lonely little girl whose daddy never came home from the war at 11 oclock at night with her husband snoozing on the couch next to her…
I did not read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” or “Fire in the Belly” and “Iron John” but the caring sharing guys who were a part of my life and fellow shelter workers would head off to their mens weekends with Sam Keen and Robert Bly ‘mens business’ books tucked in their back packs…
I also forgot to mention one book that impacted my priveleged white-girl world enormously when I was just 13 - “Black Like Me”, the diary of a person who changed the color of their skin and shared the reality of racism they experienced having never known it before… in order to make us white-folk really think about the set up we had created……and of course Jane Elliotts “Blue Eyes” , I bought the book, recorded the Oprah Shows and passed on the information whnever and where ever I could…
And how could I forget “Rolling Thunder” Doug Boyds acocunt of the life of the amazing medicine man Shaman who lived in the world of quantum phyiscs, time travel and communiion with Nature…
I flew out of my childhood under Jonathons Livingston Seagulls wide wings…..
Sigh….it was a time of greater silence in the world when the skies were empty of microwares, sattellites, cell phones and the zillion megawatts of electricity that fils the airwaves in these early days of the 21st century…
I feel a little nostalgic for my Frankincense , Patchouli and beads and …..oh…hang on………that’s right..I am still wearing them……
What were the books that shaped your travels ……………and have you bequeathed your library to a fitting new home once your travels in this body have passed?
Submitted by Sir Real on Sat, 04/26/2008 - 5:05pm.
GUEST: My question is how to participate as a citizen in a country in a way that would be positive rather than negative.
During the war in Viet Nam, I was in silent vigils that some people and I started.
And I felt good about that.
But I also realize that it’s very easy to get caught up in resisting and being negative.
So, I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are on that?
ABRAHAM: The ideal citizen, ... one who contributes enormously to the Well-being of the whole,
... is one who focuses so specifically on life giving projects that you act as a vortex that summons life into this dimension through you.
Some would say, “Well, you mean she shouldn’t get involved in bigger issues?”
And we say, “She can choose any issue she wants to be one of those life giving issues.”
It’s about choosing something and focusing upon it with the sheer intent of letting it summon to itself through you.
GUEST: I don’t want to see society become like those countries where women would be kept at home and not allowed to leave.
I would like to operate in my society in a way where I see to it that more freedoms in that way are preserved or enhanced.
ABRAHAM: What do you see as you look around you in this society?
You see mostly freedom.
And so, as you focus here, you can feel, as you observe, an environment that is a vibrational match to your desire.
You feel better.
As you observe another society that is not a vibrational match to your desire, you don’t feel so good.
Your role, as a productive citizen,
is to choose from those two perspectives
the one that you can feel the Energy flowing the strongest.
And, it’s not hard to figure out which one that is, is it?
You can tell by the way you feel.
Many people believe that if there are not protests, that nothing ever gets better.
And we say, well, there is accuracy to a degree.
If you don’t know what you don’t want, you could not know what you do want.
And so, it is the contrast or the diversity that helps you to formulate your decision.
And often the strongest decisions come out of the worst situations.
It’s those unbearable or deplorable things that often give the rocket of desire the greatest thrust.
But what goes wrong with so many people is, once the desire is born, then they keep looking back and trying to justify the desire by pointing out how bad things are.
And, when they look back, they just include that vibration which makes them a muted, clutter filter.
They are not a vortex that is doing any summoning toward what they want.
If you let a negative situation build that rocket of desire within you,
and you focus upon the way you want it to be,
and then you imagine that.
You dream that.
You amplify that. You look for evidence of that.
You talk about that. You script that.
You find the feeling place of that.
You imagine that.
You dream that.
You hold yourself in that vibration and you create that.
You open the vortex, single-handedly, that hundreds of thousands, millions,
then benefit from, because of your attention to the subject.
Most of you do not believe that you have that kind of power of focus.
So you gather all over the place, and then you feel crabby because you know,
from your Non-physical Perspective, the extraordinary power and value and reason that you have come here to focus.
You did not say, “I’ll come forth, but clean up everything that might bother me,
and then I’ll come.”
Instead, you said, “I’ll go forth into this contrast,
and out of it I’ll feel new desire born in me.”
When we tell you that you are on the leading edge of thought, we are not kidding you.
Here is the way it works:
So, you examine the contrast.
We are not talking about conflict.
But contrast might be conflict.
You examine the stuff, ... all the stuff.
You observe it, and out of it is born a desire,
and when that desire comes within you,
you feel it.
And as you feel that desire, then you talk about it,
and you think about it, and you think about it,
and you imagine it and you offer a vibration about it,
and then the Universe responds.
And, now you stand in a new place with a whole different set of contrasting experiences
giving birth to another desire that you then focus upon and think about
and find a feeling place of
until you are standing in a different place with a whole different set of contrasting experiences.
Sometimes we think you think that the work is to get it done.
You think the work is to get it all cleaned up.
And we say, you did not ever intend to come forth and get everything checked off the list.
You came forth to get more things on the list.
You never get it done.
Now you’re beginning to understand why we want you to enjoy the journey.
Because there is no end to this journey.
You could desire and it could be painful to you,
and you could stop desiring and you could croak.
But we promise you, that won’t be the end of you.
In your physical withdrawal from this experience,
all you get is a whole new lease on life from which you want to come forth into another physically focused environment,
so that you can begin the process again.
It is so satisfying once you begin to understand the rhythm of all of this,
and you begin to understand that the contrast is a good thing
... because the contrast gives you a new desire,
and then, as you fantasize and find the feeling place of it,
then everything in the Universe begins to respond to your vibrational output.
And then, from that new vantage point,
new contrasting experiences give birth to more desire.
And so, the fun of it is not getting to the place where the Universe yields it to you.
Although that can be fun.
But the fun of it is the birth of the desire to begin with, and then the bringing yourself into an alignment with the desire.
There is nothing more delicious than the Creative endeavor.
Friends, you have in your hands the Energy that creates worlds.
And you said, “I would like to take that powerful Energy,
and I would like to focus it through my specific physical human vortex.
So I will be a citizen in this environment,
and I will conclude as best I can from my vantage point.
And when that conclusion builds within me as that rocket of desire and I feel it,
I will revel in what this contrasting experience has produced,
because I’m on the leading edge again.
I’ve just given birth to a new desire.
I am going to focus on the desire.
I’m going to find the feeling of the desire.
I’m going to explain the desire.
I’m going to become familiar with the desire.
I’m going to become desire.
I am going to become the embodiment, ... the vibrational embodiment,
... of this desire.
I am going to radiate that desire.
It’s going to express through me so that anyone that comes into contact will feel a piece of that desire.
And, sure, Law of Attraction will manifest the heck out of it all around me,
but that’s not why I’m here.
I’m here for the experience of the Energy flowing through.
Here a blog that has been focused on this story from the start, (as has the wonderful Amy Goodman at Democracy NowDecember 03, 2006
Spetznotz Tv and The Me Nobody knows collaborated on this
documentary on the death of Sean Bell. KRS1 - respect.
To the family of Sean Bell, you have our deepest sympathy.
"A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world."~Manly Hall
Complete Lecture Series
(Torrent files)
Part IThe titles of the albums are:AlchemyAstro-TheologyAtlantean Hypothesis, TheAtom in Religion and Philosophy, TheCycle of the Phoenix, TheDoctrines of Hermes TrismegistusDoctrines of NeoplatonismEsoteric AnthropologyEsoteric Philosophy of H.P. BlavatskyExploring Dimensions of ConsciousnessFirst Principles of PhilosophyFive Paths of YogaFive-Fold Nature of the Self, TheGreat Polarities, TheGreek and Roman Deities as Personifications of Divine PrinciplesInterpreting Great Legends of the WorldInvisible Bodies of Men in Hindu PhilosophyLandmarks of Esoteric LiteratureLove Series, TheMan Grand Symbol of the MysteriesMysteries of the Cabala, TheMystery and Meaning of the Ancient RitualsNew Concepts of Therapy for Daily LivingParacelsian PhilosophyPhilosophy of Value, ThePractical Mysticism in Modern LivingPsychological Theory and PracticeSeptenaries, TheStudies in Comparative MythologyStudies in Dream SymbolismStudies in Morals & Dogma by Albert PikeStudies in Self-UnfoldmentSymbolism of the Great OperasUniverse According to Esoteric Philosophy, TheUnseen Forces That Affect Our LivesWisdom Series, TheWorlds in TransitionZen Concept of Intensity Without TensionPythagorean Theory of NumberPart IIThe individual lectures in this collection are organized by subject matter, and include the following categories:Alchemy of Attitudes (3 lectures),Ancient Mysteries & Secret Societies (5 lectures),Art & Aesthetics (5 lectures),Astrology (4 lectures),Bible & Christianity (15 lectures),Biographies (3 lectures),Buddhism (8 lectures),Classical Philosophy (4 lectures),Comparative Religion (2 lectures),Eastern Philosophy (2 lectures),Education (2 lectures),Esoteric & Metaphysical (29 lectures),Health & Healing (10 lectures),Inspirational & Mystical (14 lectures),Literature (2 lectures),Miscellaneous (18 lectures),Occult Anatomy (3 lectures),Philosophy & Religion (25 lectures),Psychology & Self-Improvement (56 lectures), andReincarnation, Karma & Life After Death (8 lectures).Between the present collection "Part Two of Complete Lecture Series" and the original "Complete Lecture Series," are contained all of the lectures by Manly Hall which have ever been made available to the public. These, together with the 6 lectures comprising the "Life in the 21st Century" album, yield a grand total of 218 lecture recordings in the present collection.http://www.manlyphall.org/http://www.myspace.com/manlypalmerhallhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Palmer_Hall
*
My Manly P. Hall Book Collection
Title - Copyright
Reincarnation the Cycle of Necessity - 1939/1941
An Introduction to Dream Interpretation - 1955
Lectures on Ancient Philosophy - 1984
Psychic Symbolism of Headaches, Insomnia, and the Upset Stomach Search for Reality Part 6- 1960
Secret Teachings of All Ages, The - 1928
Freemasonry of the Ancient Egyptians - 1937
Is Each Individual Born with a Purpose? Search for Reality Part 2 - 1960
All Seeing Eye, The - 1931
Ways of the Lonely Ones - 1945
Right Thinking - 1946
Philosophy for the Sick and Disposition and Disease - 1966
Secret of the Untroubled Mind, The - 1965
Incompatibility, a Crisis in Modern LivingHall, Manly Palmer1956
Lost Keys of Freemasonry - 1931
Most Holy Trinosophia of Comte St. Germain - 1983
Super Faculties and their Culture - 1934
*
“To learn is to live, to study is to grow, and growth is the measurement of life. The mind must be taught to think, the heart to feel, and the hands to labor. When these have been educated to their highest point, then is the time to offer them to the service of their fellowman, not before.”
~Manly Hall
*
Some knew him as an internationally famed stamp collector, many were charmed by his childhood memories from his book Growing up with Grandmother; but always he spoke to people with dignity and respect, never trying to overwhelm them with his encyclopedic knowledge of the spiritual traditions. He championed the value of an idealistic philosophical education for all in the classical tradition of Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Lord Bacon, Plato, Socrates, and all the philosophers of history who believed in a rational world soul. He wanted nothing more than to assist the great philosophers of history to fulfill their honorable plans for the nation and the planet.
*
"Hence the disciple of the Ancient Wisdom is taught to realize that man is not essentially a personality, but a spirit."
~Manly P. Hall
RIO DE JANIERO, Apr 26 (Tierramérica)
The success of pioneering efforts to reduce inequality and poverty using relatively few resources has led to an expansion in Latin America of direct aid, targeting the most vulnerable families, especially in rural areas.
Known as "conditional cash transfer", it encompasses many different strategies in more than a dozen Latin American countries. Brazil and Mexico have truly massive programmes, reaching 11.1 million and five million impoverished families, respectively, while Colombia's programme involves just 1,500 families.
The "Chile Solidario" initiative, often included in the same category, "is not comparable to other programmes in terms of amounts or objectives," like Brazil's "Family-Grant" and Mexico's "Opportunities" programmes, said Verónica Silva, executive secretary of Chile's Social Protection System.
The Chilean programme, created in 2002, now covers 290,000 families, about 40 percent of whom live in rural areas. "The proportion of participants is much higher in rural zones (the Chilean population is around 88 percent urban), because if you want to find the poorest of the poor in Chile, you have to look for an indigenous mother who is the head of a household in a rural area," Silva told Tierramérica.
The focus is on extreme poverty, which affected 5.6 percent of the Chilean population in 2000, a sector so marginalised that it falls outside the social welfare networks. The aim is to bring these families into the fold with psycho-social support and a monthly stipend, which gradually declines from 28 to eight dollars over two years.
The reduction in poverty and indigence was 20 percent for rural homes benefiting from the system, according to the latest report by the World Bank, which provides technical assistance to Chile Solidario. Official data indicate that in 2006, "for the first time, poverty rates in rural areas were below that of urban areas (12.3 and 14 percent, respectively)."
The World Bank estimates that Chile Solidario is responsible for 18 percent of the reduction of indigence and 35 percent of the decline in poverty.
Brazil's Family-Grant, created in 2003 by joining together several social programmes launched in the 1990s, achieved its goal of providing aid to 11.1 million families in 2006. It offers between 10.5 and 100 dollars a month to each family group, conditional on children's school attendance, vaccination, visits to the doctor, and adequate nutrition.
The programme achieved a 21 percent reduction in the gap between rich and poor between 1995 and 2004 -- an outcome identical to Mexico's Opportunities initiative, according to the International Poverty Centre of the United Nations Development Programme.
From 1993 to 2006, the proportion of Brazilians living below the poverty line fell from 35.3 percent to 22 percent of the population. Family-Grant and the Continued Benefit programme, a stipend for the elderly and infirm, played "a fundamental role" in that achievement, Marcelo Neri, social policy expert with the Getulio Vargas Foundation, told Tierramérica.
In 2006 alone, 5.8 million people escaped poverty, as defined by the official poverty rate, in this country of 188 million.
Poverty in rural areas fell from 63.7 to 40.9 percent between 1993 and 2006. Rural retirement pensions, guaranteed by the constitution even for informal sector workers, today offer the minimum monthly salary (245 dollars) to 7.7 million retired farm workers, which helped bring about the reduction.
Brazil’s tax burden amounts to 35 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), similar to that of rich countries, noted Neri. But the Family-Grant provides the best results with proportionally lower costs, of just 0.7 percent GDP, he added.
The Family-Grant benefits children, in contrast to pensioners, and gives a dynamic boost to the local economy, expanding the market for food produced by small farmers, which also reduces rural poverty, Neri said.
Most of the Family-Grant money that goes to families is used to buy food, which promotes family farming and smaller local commerce, said Rosani Cunha, secretary of Citizen Income at the Ministry of Social Development.
Of the families receiving the grant last year, 30.8 percent were rural, a proportion much higher than the 18 percent of Brazil's total rural population, due to the higher rate of poverty in the countryside.
The statistics show higher school attendance rates, especially in the north and northeast, the country's poorest regions, reducing the risk of poverty of future generations and giving the lie to "the laziness effect" that critics had warned of, Cunha told Tierramérica.
In Pombal, an impoverished town in the northeastern state of Paraíba, a woman who used part of the grant to raise chickens and thus was able to get off government support, became an example of initiatives for exiting the programme, she said.
Pombal, with 3,710 families receiving the grant out of a population of 33,000, has seen several hundred families leave the programme. The city government is preparing a poultry farming initiative involving a pilot group of 25 families.
The municipal registry, which includes all poor families, is "an important instrument" of integration and reinforcement of other policies, like food security and housing, which generates "synergies", city social worker Cizia Romeu said in a Tierramérica interview.
The Brazilian programme is notable for its decentralisation. The local authorities take on much of the responsibility, given that some of the conditions for receiving the grants, such as school attendance and health, depend on municipal and state governments, explained Cunha.
But it was in Mexico that the first programme of massive conditional cash transfer was launched, in 1997, under the name "Progresa", later replaced by "Oportunidades" (Opportunities), in response to the 1994-1995 economic crisis.
From 2000 to 2006, poverty in Mexico fell from 53.6 to 42.6 percent of the population, and infant mortality dropped 11 percent, thanks largely to the initiative that began with 300,000 families and today helps five million in 96,000 marginalised areas, 86 percent of them in the countryside.
Nevertheless, "it doesn't seem to have prevented emigration, and we don't see a direct impact on the rural area’s economic problems," which are the result of other factors, like credit, irrigation and land quality, but it has "helped many families to remain on their land," according to Santiago Fernández, a consultant who evaluates social programmes.
"The young people end up migrating," due to poverty and the attraction of cities and the United States, even though Opportunities "has provided improvement in the situation of many families, and the statistics show it," he said in a conversation with Tierramérica.
In Colombia, the "Families in Action" programme, launched in 2001, has a limited impact, reaching just 1,500 families, with subsidies for food and education of 8.5 to 27 dollars a month, distributed almost exclusively to mothers.
But the programme responds to a unique facet of Colombian reality: the population displaced from rural areas by the decades-long armed conflict. "The benefit was great, as if it fell from heaven," said Fernando Parra, displaced in 2001 from the southern department of Huila, with an 11-member family. He is now a community leader in Ciudad Bolívar, a poor suburb of Bogotá that is home to many who have fled the war.
"I like the programme a lot, but they aren't taking registrations now, and many people need it," lamented Rubiela Castro, who lives in Usme, a district in southeastern Bogotá.
(*Additional reporting contributed by Daniela Estrada in Chile, Diego Cevallos in Mexico and Helda Martínez in Bogotá. Originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)
Africa, Latin America to be short 500K tons of rice as Brazil becomes latest country to ban rice exports
Brazil has banned the export of rice over fears that a supply crunch and rising global prices could threaten food supplies at home. Reinhold Stephanes, Brazil's agriculture minister, said the move was in response to a number of other countries, mostly in Asia, who have also banned rice exports, causing an imbalance in the global rice market. The move came the same week as the World Food Programme said its budget deficit as a result of soaring food prices hit $755 million.
Original idea: stlive
Modifications: leprosorium.ru
Leprosorium.ru is truly a gem of Russian Internet. It’s a place where talented people meet, famous and not yet famous. It’s a unique community where users actually select their moderators through weekly elections, which mimic quite closely a real thing.
[What a killer cool idea...]The real Good Life: In a bid to become less dependent on supermarkets, the residents of Martin are working together to become as self-sufficient as possible.
Saying a lack of the witness credibility "eviscerated the people's case," Justice Arthur J. Cooperman returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts for three detectives charged in the shooting death of Sean Bell, who was gunned down outside Club Kalua 17 months ago in a hail of NYPD bullets on the eve of his wedding.
As reporters, protesters and onlookers were assembled outside State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens on Friday morning, PBA president Pat Lynch was the first to react to reporters, saying this "was a case where there is no winner and no losers, we still had a death that occurred... we still had officers who had to deal with that death." But Lynch said it sent a message to New York City police officers that says "you will get fairness" which was important to officers out on patrol because "there is never a script... we have to deal with circumstances as they come."
Calling for possible federal civil rights charges for the involved officers, Leroy Gadsden, of the Jamaica chapter of the NAACP, told WNBC Channel 4. "This is court is bankrupt when it comes to people of color."
A week into the trial, in "The Sean Bell Curveball For Cops on Trial," Sean Gardiner reported that many legal observers were puzzled by some of the strategies employed by prosecutors working for Queens DA Richard Brown.
"A week into the trial of three cops in the Sean Bell case, the prosecutors' theory that two of the cops were "acting in concert" when the bridegroom was gunned down in a hail of police bullets is striking a sour note with some observers.
For Judge Arthur Cooperman, who's hearing the case without a jury, to convict on the top counts of first- and second-degree manslaughter, he'd have to believe "that they planned it and they all had the same mind-set," says veteran defense attorney Marvyn Kornberg. "And that's ludicrous."
If anything, the prosecutors undercut their own theory during the first week of the trial by stressing the lack of planning by the accused officers' unit on the night of the shooting and the chaos that followed."
In "Guns Gone Wild," an examination of the frequency with which cops fire their weapons, and NYPD tactics in the wake of the Bell slaying, some observers questioned the efficacy of deploying details of detectives to stake out a two-bit strip club in Jamaica, Queens.
"Eugene O'Donnell, a former NYPD cop and prosecutor who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, calls such initiatives "overpolicing." "What are these cops doing in a strip bar in Jamaica at four in the morning listening to trash talk?" O'Donnell says. "You've got alcohol and drugs being used and then you have cops bringing firearms and deadly force into the picture. So you have trouble. . . . We've got to stop overpolicing everything."
The last time this happened, the Egyptians were
building the pyramids......
Now it is our turn....
This next month, starting tonight, is astrologically
EXTREMELY special, as the full moon will appear twice
in a row in Scorpio, an event that happens about once
every few thousand years, and even rarer in this
sign.
In some traditions, this moon is called the Buddha
Moon, and we get to experience it twice!
Once in April, once in May.
In honor of the Earth's enlightenment.......
First, the astronomy part:
Every month, the full moon comes along and sits in the
zodiac sign that is opposite where the sun is. So if
the sun is in Taurus, like it is now, the moon is in
Scorpio. If the sun were in Cancer, the moon would be
in Capricorn, etc.
So every month, the sun changes zodiac signs, and the
moon goes along with it.
But not this month. This lunar cycle takes place in
Scorpio for the next 2 full moons in a row!
WOW!
Ok, but what does that mean?
Well, if you are willing to get a little witchy with
me here, Scorpio is the zodiac sign that stands at
the doorway to the unseen. That is why it is the sign
of magic (and sex too in many traditions), and mystery
traditions.
So essentially, if you want to ride on the
astrological bandwagon, there is an INCREDIBLE window
open for manifestation and transmutation of energy,
since scorpio moves between realms, and can transmute
poison to nectar.
Tonight is the first full moon of the pair, and the
next one is in 28 days.
So I am inviting all my friends (and your friends) to
do a daily candlelight evening meditation to manifest
our dreams, and the kind of planet we want to be
living on globally, locally, and personally. Let's
use this window right!
The commitment, if you are in, is a 10 minute seated
meditation before bed each night. In honor of the
lunar energy, we can sit each night and call upon the
kind of world we want to see for the next 28 days till
the 2nd Scorpio moon.
The idea is:
Use the time to love the Earth and bless her (Isn't it
wonderful Earth Day falls in the midst of this
window?)
And visualize peace in the war torn places, and the
environment recovering. Literally SEE it. Visualize
lots of happy green plants!
And see our government turning around in any way you
feel called.
And also see the kind of joy and love and fulfillment
you would like in your own life.
And take a moment to connect with the amazing Scorpio
full moon, the Buddha full moon of enlightenment.
This is an incredible time to work through any old
patterns that are holding us back personally and
collectively. Remember the hundredth monkey? We can
do it now....
Open to the divine light, in yourself, and in this
glorious moonlight.
Honor the moths, that you might notice are everywhere
right now. The moths are the creatures of intuition
and feminine radiance. Honoring the feminine, we are
nurtured, and loved by the Goddess.
Let's invoke the Goddess together!
Any other rituals you feel inspired to create are so
welcome, and so needed at this time. Make up your
own! Invite friends!
**
Please pass this along to anyone you would like to
invite into the meditation train. The more of us that
participate, the stronger the energy is of what we are
manifesting.
Breathe love in...... Breathe love out.....
Your friend,
Kaia
(As inspired by a conversation with Derrick Jensen)
“There’s got to be just more to it than this;
Or tell me why do we exist?”
–Iron Maiden
Is the Western consumerist culture that we inflict upon the rest of the world truly the pinnacle of our evolution? If it is, I resign my membership in the human race. Though I don’t fear that I’ll be compelled to tender my resignation any time soon because our so-called “non-negotiable American Way of Life” is a piece of shit, for myriad reasons.
We in the Western “developed” nations, particularly in the United States, are an utter disgrace to our species. Our myopic, self-centered, jejune, hubristic, and benighted ways of examining and interacting with the rest of the world, including other human animals, non-human animals, and Mother Earth herself, are reprehensible to the point of nausea and beyond.
And why wouldn’t they be? We carry perceived entitlement to such pathological lengths that we actually believe that the world and all of its inhabitants are resources we can objectify and use to enhance and ensure our “prosperity,” “security,” and “the growth of our economy.” We are conditioned to believe ahistorical, manipulative and grossly distorted sound-bites streamed into our shriveled, atrophied cerebrums by well-coiffed, polished talking head sycophants who owe their careerist souls to a system that is destroying the world.
And why wouldn’t we US Americans believe that our “shining city upon the hill” is entitled to whatever our little hearts desire (and our $1 trillion per year military can plunder)? We are all living large thanks to the genocide our forefathers committed against the natives of Turtle Island. After all, who’s going to worry about a little thing like 10-100 million dead “red men?” Or the 100 million black slaves who contributed mightily (and involuntarily I might add) to the development of our economic juggernaut of a nation? I can already see the shoulders shrugging and people assuaging potential guilt with the shop-worn arguments that “we’ve more than made it up to them,” “you can’t change the past,” or “I wasn’t there when it happened.” Well, guess what. I’m not suggesting reparations or apologies. Fuck applying band-aids to gaping wounds. We are barbarians masquerading as enlightened Christian folk—we’ve even deluded ourselves into believing our shit smells like roses. How far do we go before we call a halt to our insanity?
Stocks of large marine animals have fallen 90% since 1950. The polar bears and penguins are drowning and disappearing in droves. Cattle, pigs, and chickens suffer unspeakable horrors in torture facilities euphemistically labeled factory farms mostly so we can get our “fast food fix” and destroy the world one burger at a time by eating at McDonald’s. 50% of the world’s tropical forests are gone and if present trends continue they will all be gone by 2090. A unique species of life goes extinct every 20 minutes.
Conscienceless sociopaths like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney routinely rise to the ultimate positions of power, visibility and responsibility in our nightmare society. We have already slaughtered over a million Iraqis in retaliation for the 3,000 people they DIDN’T kill on 9/11. Disproportionate scapegoating at its finest. Job well done, USA! (One shudders to think how many we would’ve killed had Iraqis been the actual perpetrators of the WTC bombings).
I wonder, dear reader, if you are wondering the same thing I’m wondering as I’m writing: Just what the fuck is wrong with us? We US Americans excel at paying lip service to worshipping Christ and/or the God of the Old Testament, but the truth is that our real god is Mammon. Even those who reject mainstream culture and its obsession with wealth and material possessions are forced to subjugate themselves to the almighty dollar in our filthy capitalist dog-eat-dog, winner-take-all system.
We fancy ourselves to have a monopoly on “freedom” and “decency.” In fact, we’ve mind-fucked ourselves into believing it is our “duty” to “civilize” the rest of the world. In reality we are wage and debt slaves who each play a role in perpetuating a system that is grossly immoral, exploitative, and malevolent. We export our evil via our blood-drenched foreign policy. “Get them before they get us” is our motto—even if we happen to be the equivalent of Mike Tyson pulverizing an infant. Hey, he might’ve attacked us when he grew up, right?
For those of us who haven’t had every shred of moral decency indoctrinated out of us, there is cause for some optimism. Like a pyramid balancing on its apex, capitalism is destined to topple. Linear, short-sighted, chaotic, grossly immoral, and dependent upon infinite growth in a finite world, it has already reached obsolescence in the minds of most intellectually honest critical thinkers. Its myriad victims have discovered perhaps its ultimate vulnerability: asymmetric warfare. In its insatiable thirst to commodify everything, capitalism is at odds with Mother Nature herself. If the victims of imperialism and monopoly capitalism don’t bring this son of a bitch down, the Earth will. And I feel confident that I speak for many when I state that the world will be truly blessed when our violent, hierarchal, and malignant culture of murder and mayhem is throttled to death like a perpetrator who finally encounters a victim with the means to eradicate him.
Meanwhile, we can accelerate the demise of the dominant culture, as Derrick Jensen has labeled our rotten-to-the-core Westernized, capitalistic way of being. As Jensen suggests, we need to build upon the culture of resistance that is rapidly expanding in the pre-revolutionary environment in which we find ourselves.
As the inevitable revolution or crash approaches (the power elite can only fuck the people or the environment so hard before the backlash takes them out), there are many things we can do (each according to our abilities and resources) to monkey wrench this merciless, murderous machine.
Students of history will note that all manner of people and activities are necessary to bring down a deeply entrenched rotten and oppressive establishment. Strikers, boycotters, organizers, thinkers, writers, spiritual leaders, protestors, civil disobedients, conscientious objectors, providers of resources, and groups engaged in direct action like the ALF are all essential to the success of resisting the considerable might and tenacity of those who hold a majority of the world’s wealth and power.
So, as Jensen suggests, find what you love and do it in such a way that it puts a little more wobble on that inverted pyramid.
And when the time comes, those of us who are clinging to our guns so bitterly will know what to do with them.
[Personally, I would love to see someone write a list of the kajillions of reasons why war if futile, ignorant, unevolved, NOT heroic...etc..- but this will do for now)
Since the press doesn't bother to ask key questions, here's an attempt to unravel the situation in Iraq.
Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling? And here's the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the "success" of the President's surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56% of Americans "say the United States should withdraw its military forces to avoid further casualties" and this has, as the Post notes, been a majority position since January 2007, the month that the surge was first announced. Imagine what might happen if the American public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq -- and of thinking in Washington. So, here, in an attempt to unravel the situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country:
1. Yes, the war has morphed into the U.S. military's worst Iraq nightmare: Few now remember, but before George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, top administration and Pentagon officials had a single overriding nightmare -- not chemical, but urban, warfare. Saddam Hussein, they feared, would lure American forces into "Fortress Baghdad," as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld labeled it. There, they would find themselves fighting block by block, especially in the warren of streets that make up the Iraqi capital's poorest districts.
When American forces actually entered Baghdad in early April 2003, however, even Saddam's vaunted Republican Guard units had put away their weapons and gone home. It took five years but, as of now, American troops are indeed fighting in the warren of streets in Sadr City, the Shiite slum of two and a half million in eastern Baghdad largely controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. The U.S. military, in fact, recently experienced its worst week of 2008 in terms of casualties, mainly in and around Baghdad. So, mission accomplished -- the worst fear of 2003 has now been realized.
2. No, there was never an exit strategy from Iraq because the Bush administration never intended to leave -- and still doesn't: Critics of the war have regularly gone after the Bush administration for its lack of planning, including its lack of an "exit strategy." In this, they miss the point. The Bush administration arrived in Iraq with four mega-bases on the drawing boards. These were meant to undergird a future American garrisoning of that country and were to house at least 30,000 American troops, as well as U.S. air power, for the indefinite future. The term used for such places wasn't "permanent base," but the more charming and euphemistic "enduring camp." (In fact, as we learned recently, the Bush administration refuses to define any American base on foreign soil anywhere on the planet, including ones in Japan for over 60 years, as permanent.) Those four monster bases in Iraq (and many others) were soon being built at the cost of multibillions and are, even today, being significantly upgraded. In October 2007, for instance, National Public Radio's defense correspondent Guy Raz visited Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad, which houses about 40,000 American troops, contractors, and Defense Department civilian employees, and described it as "one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures going up across this 16-square-mile fortress in the center of Iraq, all with an eye toward the next few decades."
These mega-bases, like "Camp Cupcake" (al-Asad Air Base), nicknamed for its amenities, are small town-sized with massive facilities, including PXs, fast-food outlets, and the latest in communications. They have largely been ignored by the American media and so have played no part in the debate about Iraq in this country, but they are the most striking on-the-ground evidence of the plans of an administration that simply never expected to leave. To this day, despite the endless talk about drawdowns and withdrawals, that hasn't changed. In fact, the latest news about secret negotiations for a future Status of Forces Agreement on the American presence in that country indicates that U.S. officials are calling for "an open-ended military presence" and "no limits on numbers of U.S. forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term U.S. security agreements with other countries."
3. Yes, the United States is still occupying Iraq (just not particularly effectively): In June 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), then ruling the country, officially turned over "sovereignty" to an Iraqi government largely housed in the American-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad and the occupation officially ended. However, the day before the head of the CPA, L. Paul Bremer III, slipped out of the country without fanfare, he signed, among other degrees, Order 17, which became (and, remarkably enough, remains) the law of the land. It is still a document worth reading as it essentially granted to all occupying forces and allied private companies what, in the era of colonialism, used to be called "extraterritoriality" -- the freedom not to be in any way subject to Iraqi law or jurisdiction, ever. And so the occupation ended without ever actually ending. With 160,000 troops still in Iraq, not to speak of an unknown number of hired guns and private security contractors, the U.S. continues to occupy the country, whatever the legalities might be (including a U.N. mandate and the claim that we are part of a "coalition"). The only catch is this: As of now, the U.S. is simply the most technologically sophisticated and potentially destructive of Iraq's proliferating militias -- and outside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, it is capable of controlling only the ground that its troops actually occupy at any moment.
4. Yes, the war was about oil: Oil was hardly mentioned in the mainstream media or by the administration before the invasion was launched. The President, when he spoke of Iraq's vast petroleum reserves at all, piously referred to them as the sacred "patrimony of the people of Iraq." But an administration of former energy execs -- with a National Security Advisor who once sat on the board of Chevron and had a double-hulled oil tanker, the Condoleezza Rice, named after her (until she took office), and a Vice President who was especially aware of the globe's potentially limited energy supplies -- certainly had oil reserves and energy flows on the brain. They knew, in Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's apt phrase, that Iraq was afloat on "a sea of oil" and that it sat strategically in the midst of the oil heartlands of the planet.
It wasn't a mistake that, in 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney's semi-secret Energy Task Force set itself the "task" of opening up the energy sectors of various Middle Eastern countries to "foreign investment"; or that it scrutinized "a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, together with the (non-American) oil companies scheduled to develop them"; or that, according to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, the National Security Council directed its staff "to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: 'the review of operational policies towards rogue states,' such as Iraq, and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields'"; or that the only American troops ordered to guard buildings in Iraq, after Baghdad fell, were sent to the Oil Ministry (and the Interior Ministry, which housed Saddam Hussein's dreaded secret police); or that the first "reconstruction" contract was issued to Cheney's former firm, Halliburton, for "emergency repairs" to those patrimonial oil fields. Once in charge in Baghdad, as sociologist Michael Schwartz has made clear, the administration immediately began guiding recalcitrant Iraqis toward denationalizing and opening up their oil industry, as well as bringing in the big boys.
Though rampant insecurity has kept the Western oil giants on the sidelines, the American-shaped "Iraqi" oil law quickly became a "benchmark" of "progress" in Washington and remains a constant source of prodding and advice from American officials in Baghdad. Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan put the oil matter simply and straightforwardly in his memoir in 2007: "I am saddened," he wrote, "that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." In other words, in a variation on the old Bill Clinton campaign mantra: It's the oil, stupid. Greenspan was, unsurprisingly, roundly assaulted for the obvious naiveté of his statement, from which, when it proved inconvenient, he quickly retreated. But if this administration hadn't had oil on the brain in 2002-2003, given the importance of Iraq's reserves, Congress should have impeached the President and Vice President for that.
5. No, our new embassy in Baghdad is not an "embassy": When, for more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, you construct a complex -- regularly described as "Vatican-sized" -- of at least 20 "blast-resistant" buildings on 104 acres of prime Baghdadi real estate, with "fortified working space" and a staff of at least 1,000 (plus several thousand guards, cooks, and general factotums), when you deeply embunker it, equip it with its own electricity and water systems, its own anti-missile defense system, its own PX, and its own indoor and outdoor basketball courts, volleyball court, and indoor Olympic-size swimming pool, among other things, you haven't built an "embassy" at all. What you've constructed in the heart of the heart of another country is more than a citadel, even if it falls short of a city-state. It is, at a minimum, a monument to Bush administration dreams of domination in Iraq and in what its adherents once liked to call "the Greater Middle East."
Just about ready to open, after the normal construction mishaps in Iraq, it will constitute the living definition of diplomatic overkill. It will, according to a Senate estimate, now cost Americans $1.2 billion a year just to be "represented" in Iraq. The "embassy" is, in fact, the largest headquarters on the planet for the running of an occupation. Functionally, it is also another well-fortified enduring camp with the amenities of home. Tell that to the Shiite militiamen now mortaring the Green Zone as if it were ... enemy-occupied territory.
6. No, the Iraqi government is not a government: The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has next to no presence in Iraq beyond the Green Zone; it delivers next to no services; it has next to no ability to spend its own oil money, reconstruct the country, or do much of anything else, and it most certainly does not hold a monopoly on the instruments of violence. It has no control over the provinces of northern Iraq which operate as a near-independent Kurdish state. Non-Kurdish Iraqi troops are not even allowed on its territory. Maliki's government cannot control the largely Sunni provinces of the country, where its officials are regularly termed "the Iranians" (a reference to the heavily Shiite government's closeness to neighboring Iran) and are considered the equivalent of representatives of a foreign occupying power; and it does not control the Shiite south, where power is fragmented among the militias of ISCI (the Badr Organization), Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and the armed adherents of the Fadila Party, a Sadrist offshoot, among others.
In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has been derisively nicknamed "the mayor of Kabul" for his government's lack of control over much territory outside the national capital. It would be a step forward for Maliki if he were nicknamed "the mayor of Baghdad." Right now, his troops, heavily backed by American forces, are fighting for some modest control over Shiite cities (or parts of cities) from Basra to Baghdad.
7. No, the surge is not over: Two weeks ago, amid much hoopla, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker spent two days before Congress discussing the President's surge strategy in Iraq and whether it has been a "success." But that surge -- the ground one in which an extra 30,000-plus American troops were siphoned into Baghdad and, to a lesser extent, adjoining provinces -- was by then already so over. In fact, all but about 10,000 of those troops will be home by the end of July, not because the President has had any urge for a drawdown, but, as Fred Kaplan of Slatewrote recently, "because of simple math. The five extra combat brigades, which were deployed to Iraq with the surge, each have 15-month tours of duty; the 15 months will be up in July ... and the U.S. Army and Marines have no combat brigades ready to replace them."
On the other hand, in all those days of yak, neither the general with so much more "martial bling" on his chest than any victorious World War II commander, nor the white-haired ambassador uttered a word about the surge that is ongoing -- the air surge that began in mid-2007 and has yet to end. Explain it as you will, but, with rare exceptions, American reporters in Iraq generally don't look up or more of them would have noticed that the extra air units surged into that country and the region in the last year are now being brought to bear over Iraq's cities. Today, as fighting goes on in Sadr City, American helicopters and Hellfire-missile armed Predator drones reportedly circle overhead almost constantly and air strikes of various kinds on city neighborhoods are on the rise. Yet the air surge in Iraq remains unacknowledged here and so is not a subject for discussion, debate, or consideration when it comes to our future in Iraq.
8. No, the Iraqi army will never "stand up": It can't. It's not a national army. It's not that Iraqis can't fight -- or fight bravely. Ask the Sunni insurgents. Ask the Mahdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr. It's not that Iraqis are incapable of functioning in a national army. In the bitter Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, Iraqi Shiite as well as Sunni conscripts, led by a largely Sunni officer corps, fought Iranian troops fiercely in battle after pitched battle. But from Fallujah in 2004 to today, Iraqi army (and police) units, wheeled into battle (often at the behest of the Americans), have regularly broken and run, or abandoned their posts, or gone over to the other side, or, at the very least, fought poorly. In the recent offensive launched by the Maliki government in Basra, military and police units up against a single resistant militia, the Mahdi Army, deserted in sizeable numbers, while other units, when not backed by the Americans, gave poor showings. At least 1,300 troops and police (including 37 senior police officers) were recently "fired" by Maliki for dereliction of duty, while two top commanders were removed as well.
Though American training began in 2004 and, by 2005, the President was regularly talking about us "standing down" as soon as the Iraqi Army "stood up," as Charles Hanley of the Associated Press points out, "Year by year, the goal of deploying a capable, free-standing Iraqi army has seemed to always slip further into the future." He adds, "In the latest shift, the Pentagon's new quarterly status report quietly drops any prediction of when local units will take over security responsibility for Iraq. Last year's reports had forecast a transition in 2008." According to Hanley, the chief American trainer of Iraqi forces, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, now estimates that the military will not be able to guard the country's borders effectively until 2018.
No wonder. The "Iraqi military" is not in any real sense a national military at all. Its troops generally lack heavy weaponry, and it has neither a real air force nor a real navy. Its command structures are integrated into the command structure of the U.S. military, while the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy are the real Iraqi air force and navy. It is reliant on the U.S. military for much of its logistics and resupply, even after an investment of $22 billion by the American taxpayer. It represents a non-government, is riddled with recruits from Shiite militias (especially the Badr brigades), and is riven about who its enemy is (or enemies are) and why. It cannot be a "national" army because it has, in essence, nothing to stand up for.
You can count on one thing, as long as we are "training" and "advising" the Iraqi military, however many years down the line, you will read comments like this one from an American platoon sergeant, after an Iraqi front-line unit abandoned its positions in the ongoing battle for control of parts of Sadr City: "It bugs the hell out of me. We don't see any progress being made at all. We hear these guys in firefights. We know if we are not up there helping these guys out we are making very little progress."
9. No, the U.S. military does not stand between Iraq and fragmentation: The U.S. invasion and the Bush administration's initial occupation policies decisively smashed Iraq's fragile "national" sense of self. Since then, the Bush administration, a motor for chaos and fragmentation, has destroyed the national (if dictatorial) government, allowed the capital and much of the country (as well as its true patrimony of ancient historical objects and sites) to be looted, disbanded the Iraqi military, and deconstructed the national economy. Ever since, whatever the administration rhetoric, the U.S. has only presided over the further fragmentation of the country. Its military, in fact, employs a specific policy of urban fragmentation in which it regularly builds enormous concrete walls around neighborhoods, supposedly for "security" and "reconstruction," that actually cut them off from their social and economic surroundings. And, of course, Iraq has in these years been fragmented in other staggering ways with an estimated four-plus million Iraqis driven into exile abroad or turned into internal refugees.
According to Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times, there are now at least 28 different militias in the country. The longer the U.S. remains even somewhat in control, the greater the possibility of further fragmentation. Initially, the fragmentation was sectarian -- into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite regions, but each of those regions has its own potentially hostile parts and so its points of future conflict and further fragmentation. If the U.S. military spent the early years of its occupation fighting a Sunni insurgency in the name of a largely Shiite (and Kurdish) government, it is now fighting a Shiite militia, while paying and arming former Sunni insurgents, relabeled "Sons of Iraq." Iran is also clearly sending arms into a country that is, in any case, awash in weaponry. Without a real national government, Iraq has descended into a welter of militia-controlled neighborhoods, city states, and provincial or regional semi-governments. Despite all the talk of American-supported "reconciliation," Juan Cole described the present situation well at his Informed Comment blog: "Maybe the U.S. in Iraq is not the little boy with his finger in the dike. Maybe we are workers with jackhammers instructed to make the hole in the dike much more huge."
10. No, the U.S. military does not stand between Iraq and civil war: As with fragmentation, the U.S. military's presence has, in fact, been a motor for civil war in that country. The invasion and subsequent chaos, as well as punitive acts against the Sunni minority, allowed Sunni extremists, some of whom took the name "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," to establish themselves as a force in the country for the first time. Later, U.S. military operations in both Sunni and Shiite areas regularly repressed local militias -- almost the only forces capable of bringing some semblance of security to urban neighborhoods -- opening the way for the most extreme members of the other community (Sunni suicide or car bombers and Shiite death squads) to attack. It's worth remembering that it was in the surge months of 2007, when all those extra American troops hit Baghdad neighborhoods, that many of the city's mixed or Sunni neighborhoods were most definitively "cleansed" by death squads, producing a 75-80% Shiite capital. Iraq is now embroiled in what Juan Cole has termed "three civil wars," two of which (in the south and the north) are largely beyond the reach of limited American ground forces and all of which could become far worse. The still low-level struggle between Kurds and Arabs (with the Turks hovering nearby) for the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the north may be the true explosion point to come. The U.S. military sits precariously atop this mess, at best putting off to the future aspects of the present civil-war landscape, but more likely intensifying it.
11. No, al-Qaeda will not control Iraq if we leave (and neither will Iran): The latest figures tell the story. Of 658 suicide bombings globally in 2007 (more than double those of any year in the last quarter century), 542, according to the Washington Post's Robin Wright, took place in occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly Iraq. In other words, the American occupation of that land has been a motor for acts of terrorism (as occupations will be). There was no al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia before the invasion and Iraq was no Afghanistan. The occupation under whatever name will continue to create "terrorists," no matter how many times the administration claims that "al-Qaeda" is on the run. With the departure of U.S. troops, it's clear that homegrown Sunni extremists (and the small number of foreign jihadis who work with them), already a minority of a minority, will more than meet their match in facing the Sunni mainstream. The Sunni Awakening Movement came into existence, in part, to deal with such self-destructive extremism (and its fantasies of a Taliban-style society) before the Americans even noticed that it was happening. When the Americans leave, "al-Qaeda" (and whatever other groups the Bush administration subsumes under that catch-all title) will undoubtedly lose much of their raison d'être or simply be crushed.
As for Iran, the moment the Bush administration finally agreed to a popular democratic vote in occupied Iraq, it ensured one thing -- that the Shiite majority would take control, which in practice meant religio-political parties that, throughout the Saddam Hussein years, had generally been close to, or in exile in, Iran. Everything the Bush administration has done since has only ensured the growth of Iranian influence among Shiite groups. This is surely meant by the Iranians as, in part, a threat/trump card, should the Bush administration launch an attack on that country. After all, crucial U.S. resupply lines from Kuwait run through areas near Iran and would assumedly be relatively easy to disrupt.
Without the U.S. military in Iraq, there can be no question that the Iranians would have real influence over the Shiite (and probably Kurdish) parts of the country. But that influence would have its distinct limits. If Iran overplayed its hand even in a rump Shiite Iraq, it would soon enough find itself facing some version of the situation that now confronts the Americans. As Robert Dreyfuss wrote in the Nation recently, "[D]espite Iran's enormous influence in Iraq, most Iraqis -- even most Iraqi Shiites -- are not pro-Iran. On the contrary, underneath the ruling alliance in Baghdad, there is a fierce undercurrent of Arab nationalism in Iraq that opposes both the U.S. occupation and Iran's support for religious parties in Iraq." The al-Qaedan and Iranian "threats" are, at one and the same time, bogeymen used by the Bush administration to scare Americans who might favor withdrawal and, paradoxically, realities that a continued military presence only encourages.
12. Yes, some Americans were right about Iraq from the beginning (and not the pundits either): One of the strangest aspects of the recent fifth anniversary (as of every other anniversary) of the invasion of Iraq was the newspaper print space reserved for those Bush administration officials and other war supporters who were dead wrong in 2002-2003 on an endless host of Iraq-related topics. Many of them were given ample opportunity to offer their views on past failures, the "success" of the surge, future withdrawals or drawdowns, and the responsibilities of a future U.S. president in Iraq.
Noticeably missing were representatives of the group of Americans who happened to have been right from the get-go. In our country, of course, it often doesn't pay to be right. (It's seen as a sign of weakness or plain dumb luck.) I'm speaking, in this case, of the millions of people who poured into the streets to demonstrate against the coming invasion with an efflorescence of placards that said things too simpleminded (as endless pundits assured American news readers at the time) to take seriously -- like "No Blood for Oil," "Don't Trade Lives for Oil," or ""How did U.S.A's oil get under Iraq's sand?" At the time, it seemed clear to most reporters, commentators, and op-ed writers that these sign-carriers represented a crew of well-meaning know-nothings and the fact that their collective fears proved all too prescient still can't save them from that conclusion. So, in their very rightness, they were largely forgotten.
Now, as has been true for some time, a majority of Americans, another obvious bunch of know-nothings, are deluded enough to favor bringing all U.S. troops out of Iraq at a reasonable pace and relatively soon. (More than 60% of them also believe "that the conflict is not integral to the success of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.") If, on the other hand, a poll were taken of pundits and the inside-the-Beltway intelligentsia (not to speak of the officials of the Bush administration), the number of them who would want a total withdrawal from Iraq (or even see that as a reasonable goal) would undoubtedly descend near the vanishing point. When it comes to American imperial interests, most of them know better, just as so many of them did before the war began. Even advisors to candidates who theoretically want out of Iraq are hinting that a full-scale withdrawal is hardly the proper way to go.
So let me ask you a question (and you answer it): Given all of the above, given the record thus far, who is likely to be right?
[Tomdispatch recommendations: For another numbered piece on Iraq, check out Gary Kamiya's eminently sane reprise of the Ten Commandments as applied to the launching of the 2003 invasion -- to be found at Salon.com. ("Commandment I, "Thou shalt not launch preventive wars..."; Commandment VI: "Do not allow neoconservatives anywhere near Middle East policy... Special Bill Kristol Sub-commandment VI a: Stop giving these buffoons prestigious jobs on newspaper-of-record Op-Ed pages, top magazines and television shows. They have been completely and consistently wrong about everything. Must we continue to be subjected to their pontifications?"). Also let me offer a Tomdispatch bow of thanks to Cursor.org's daily "Media Patrol" column. Someone at that site with a keen eye for the less noticed but newsworthy pieces of any day (and an always splendid set of links) makes my life so much easier, when gathering material for essays like this one.]
"An amusing and yet also depressing passage to contemplate in the light of contemporary politics"
"I do not think that explicitly showing power to be abject, despicable, Ubu-esque or simply ridiculous is a way of limiting its effects and of magically dethroning the person to whom one gives the crown. Rather, it seems to me to be a way of giving a striking form of expression to the unavoidability, the inevitability of power, which can function in its full rigor and at the extreme point of its rationality even when it is effectively discredited."
--Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France, 1974-75, p. 13
Vast amounts of money are flooding the world's commodities markets, driving up prices of staple foods like wheat and rice. Biofuels and droughts can't fully explain the recent food crisis -- hedge funds and small investors bear some responsibility for global hunger.
AFP
The Philippines will take delivery of 500,000 tons of rice in May to address its shortage. But the price has been bid up by speculators.
Not long ago, Dwight Anderson welcomed reporters with open arms. He liked to entertain them with stories from the world of big money. Anderson is a New York hedge fund manager, and as recently as last October he would talk with enthusiasm about his visits to Malaysian palm-oil plantations and Brazilian grain farms. "You could clearly see how supply was getting tight," he said.In mid-2006 Anderson was touting the "extraordinary profitability" of field crops from corn to soybeans. He was convinced that rising worldwide hunger would be synonymous with highly profitable -- and dead-certain -- investment bargains.
In search of new investments, Anderson sends dozens of his employees to visit agricultural regions around the world. Back in New York, at his company's headquarters on the 27th floor of an office building high above Park Avenue, they bet on agricultural markets from Peru to Vietnam.
But in the towers above Manhattan's urban canyons, it's easy to lose touch with the ground. Hedge fund manager John Paulson was recently celebrated for achieving a record annual profit of $3.7 billion (€2.3 billion). Those who work in this environment have only one rule: Don't disappoint profit-hungry investors.
"I'm constantly wired," Anderson used to say, back when he talked to journalists. His nickname in the industry is the "Commodities King," and his Ospraie hedge fund is the world's largest. These days, though, Anderson avoids the media. He's even kept his face out of the media by buying up rights to all photos of himself on the market. His spokesman is now paid, mainly, to say nothing.
A Broken Market?
There are plenty of questions to ask Anderson, though -- in particular about the role of international investors in the current spike in the price of staple food. Not only is there talk that investors have profited from desperate hunger in Honduras, the Philippines and Bangladesh; critics also wonder if commodity speculators are making the crisis worse.
DER SPIEGEL
Up and away
On Tuesday in Washington, DC, a regulatory body called the Commodity Futures Trading Commission held public hearings on this very question. Farmers and food producers argued that the market was "broken," suggesting that the steep rise in the price of staple crops was hurting everyone -- farmers as well as the people they feed. "The market is broken, it's out of whack," said Billy Dunavant, head of a cotton-producing firm in the United States, at the Tuesday hearing.
Regulators on the commission warned against government intervention, and no doubt fund managers like Anderson would, too. But the crisis keeps deteriorating. India and Vietnam have imposed export bans on ordinary rice. Indonesia is following suit. According to the United Nations, North Korea is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis. After unrest shook countries from Egypt and Uzbekistan to Bangladesh, thousands of South Africans took to the streets of Johannesburg last Thursday to protest high food prices. In Haiti, the prime minister was fired after riots over the price of rice.
Biofuels and global warming have been blamed for shortages driving up the price of food, and both trends have played their role. The planet's grain reserves are almost empty for a number of reasons, including global population growth and greater prosperity in some countries like India. Feed corn is in short supply because industrialized nations have used it for ethanol. Droughts -- in Australia, for example -- have devastated rice and wheat harvests. Wheat reserves worldwide are only sufficient right now to cover about 60 days of demand.
This helps to explain why commodity prices have rallied since early 2006, with the price of rice ballooning 217 percent, wheat 136 percent, corn 125 percent and soybeans 107 percent.
But classic supply and demand theory offers only a partial explanation. Sudden price hikes since last January have been alarming. The UN estimates that at least $500 million (€312 million) in immediate aid will be needed by May 1 to avoid serious famines. Agricultural scientists at the world body's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have presented a report on the world food crisis. And criticism is growing that hedge funds, index funds, pension funds and investment banks bear part of the blame.
The History of Futures
Commodity speculation spread long ago from standard products like oil and gold to anything edible and available for trade on the Chicago Futures Exchange. These days there are futures contracts for everything from wheat to oranges to pork bellies. The futures market is a traditional tool for farmers to sell their harvests ahead of time. In a futures contract, quantities, prices and delivery dates are fixed, sometimes even before crops have been planted. Futures contracts allow farmers and grain wholesalers a measure of protection against adverse weather conditions and excessive price fluctuations. They can also help a farmer plan how much to plant for a given year.
AP
The Chicago Board of Trade is the nerve center for global futures contracts.
But now speculators are taking advantage of this mechanism. They can buy futures contracts for wheat, for example, at a low price, betting that the price will go up. If the price of the grain rises by the agreed delivery date, they profit.
Some experts now believe these investors have taken over the market, buying futures at unprecedented levels and driving up short-term prices. Since last August, this mechanism has led to a doubling in the price of rice -- including the 500,000 tons that the Philippine government plans to buy in early May to address its own shortage.
Greg Warner has worked in the grain wholesaling business for more than two decades. His office sits a block away from the Chicago Futures Exchange. He's an analyst with the firm AgResource, and he says what is happening now in the wheat market is unprecedented.
"What we normally have is a predictable group of sellers and buyers -- mainly farmers and silo operators," he says. But the landscape has changed since the influx of large index funds. Fund managers seek to maximize their profits using futures contracts, and prices, says Warner, "keep climbing up and up."
He's calculated that financial investors now hold the rights to two complete annual harvests of a type of grain traded in Chicago called "soft red winter wheat."
Wagner is stunned by such developments. He sees them as evidence that capitalism is literally consuming itself.
'It's an Election Year'
Even the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington has recognized the potentially explosive nature of the issue. For Tuesday's hearing, the commission called not just on farmers but also on representatives of investment bank Goldman Sachs and major investors like Pimco and AIG to testify. One member of the commission, Bart Chilton, backed away from regulating investors, saying, "These markets have to work for all the participants. If you don't have speculators in the markets, there's no liquidity and you don't have a market." And the editor of a commodities newsletter, Dennis Gartman, flat-out denied that speculators were to blame.
"It is an election year," he said. "To think you won't have senators and congressmen blaming high prices of things on speculators is naive."
But some basic market rules seem to have stopped working. "The enormous influx of capital has resulted in the futures markets no longer reflecting supply and demand," says Todd Kemp of the US National Grain and Feed Association. Ironically, investors have placed their wildest bets on staple foods. Information about supply bottlenecks and famines at the other end of the world is not noted on market quotations.
A commodities dealer named Christoph Eibl soberly concludes that financial managers just want to "benefit from the scarcity of these commodities." Eibl's Stuttgart-based investment firm, Tiberius, manages €1 billion ($1.6 billion). His in-house experts estimate that hundreds of billions of dollars have flowed into the futures sector as a whole within the last five years, much of it for agricultural commodities. Eibl admits the whole thing demands an "ethical discussion." Some futures traders argue that they don't cause prices to rise in the real world because as a rule they never take delivery of a given crop -- other parts of the economy control the actual street price. But futures prices affect real-world behavior (such as inventory hoarding), and Eibl says that buying futures in rice, for example, "eventually causes consumer prices to rise in developing countries like Haiti."
by Bill MachonPsychiatrist Jerald Block argues in the American Journal of Psychiatry that Internet addiction should be listed in the next version of the US handbook of recognized psychiatric addictions.
He breaks down Internet addiction into three parts - excessive gaming, pornography, and emailing/texting.He defines excessive use as being associated with loss of a sense of time, and feelings of anger and tension when a computer is unavailable, among other symptoms.He cites reasearch about web addiction in South Korea, where high schoolers spend 23 hours per week gaming online. The South Korean government considers web addiction to be one of its top health priorities. Unfortunately, research in the US has produced mostly cloudy results.
by Richard SmoleyThe latest issue of my old college literary magazine, The Harvard Advocate, appeared in my mailbox a few days ago. It contains some translations of some poems by the Dalai Lama—not the current one (the Fourteenth, or if you like the XIVth), but the Sixth. He was something of a different character, I guess, from the current occupant of the post. Although since all of the Dalai Lamas are said to be the same being, incarnations of Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezig, the god of compassion, I suppose one could say that the Dalai Lama had a wild youth a few centuries back. Anyway, some samples:
If my girl could not die
there'd be no end to beer;
we'd stay in youth's haven.
In this I put my trust.
Is not my love since youth
descended from the wolves?
Once she's known skin and flesh
she bolts back to the hills.
Our tryst in the dense woods
of the southern valley
a parrot only knows,
all else are ignorant.
O parrot, please do not
repeat our secret words.
—Tsangyang Gyatso, the Sixth Dalai Lama translated by Nathan Hill with Toby Fee From TheHarvard Advocate, winter 2008
Alive Mind is pleased to support Pangea Day, which is on May 10th. Join us and filmmaker Jehane Noujaim as she uses film to explore global perspectives and tell untold stories from around the world.
Starting at 18:00 GMT on May 10, 2008, locations in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program will be broadcast – in seven languages – to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones.
The 24 short films to be featured have been selected from an international competition that generated more than 2,500 submissions from over one hundred countries. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person's eyes. The winning films will be announced in late April.
The program will also include a number of exceptional speakers and musical performers. Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, musician/activist Bob Geldof, and Iranian rock phenom Hypernova are among those taking part.Our latest initiative is our Host a Screening Program. Do you belong to a group that is interested in women and spirituality, whether wiccan, pagan, goddess, pangaian or eco feminist? Let us know and we will send you an episode gratis from the Women and Spirituality trilogy to screen for your friends. Likewise, do you belong to a group dedicated to secularism, agnosticism or atheism? Interested in the ideas of Richard Dawkins, Colin McGinn or Daniel Dennett? Let us know and we will send you a screener of three episodes from The Atheism Tapes to show and discuss. The only thing you have to provide is the pop corn, the friends and the DVD player.And last, but not least, are two exciting new publications from Alive Mind's very own Colin McGinn and Richard Smoley. Colin’s latest book, Mindfucking, promises to be a provocative read:What I really think about religion is that the less said about it the better. I'd rather discuss almost any other topic. Debating it always leaves me feeling faintly nauseated. However, religious belief does connect with a topic that does interest me: psychological manipulation. As it happens, I have a new book (very short) coming out on it next month, called--wait for it--Mindfucking. In it I analyze this concept, just as we analytic philosophers are supposed to.Read more here...
...The view of Nature as Ruin depends in part (or half‑consciously) on the concept of a Cartesian ergo sum alone in a universe where everything else is dead matter and "animals have no soul," mere meat machines. But if the human body remains part of nature or in nature, then even a consistent materialist would have to admit that nature is not quite yet dead.Science, taking over the mythic task of religion, strives to "free" consciousness from all mortal taint. Soon we'll be posthuman enough for cloning, total prosthesis, machinic immortality. But somehow a shred of nature may remain, a plague perhaps, or the great global "accident," blind Nature's revenge, meteors from outer space, etc. – "you know the score," as William Burroughs used to say.Taking the long view (and allowing for noble exceptions) science does precisely what State and Capital demand of it:-make war, make money. "Pure" science is allowed only because it might lead to technologies of death and profit-and this was just as true for the old alchemists who mutated into Isaac Newton, as for the new physicists who ripped open the structure of matter itself. Even medicine (seemingly the most altruistic of sciences) advances and progresses primarily in order to increase productivity of workers and generate a world of healthy consumers....This article is excerpted from Green Hermeticism: Alchemy and Ecology by Peter Lamborn Wilson, Christopher Bamford, and Kevin Townley, with an introduction by Zia Inayat-Khan. Publisher Lindisfarne books (www.lindisfarne.org)
The cell phone industry mobilized its behemoth defense machine calling the study a select view of existing literature. This meant that his conclusions were not in line with all the studies the industry has been funding around the world called INTERPHONE. Indeed, a casual look through Pub Med and you will see study after study refuting a link between cell phone use and brain tumors. The cell phone industry has excelled.......by Byron Richards, CCN
"I'VE SEEN THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN LITERATURE AND ITS NAME IS ROB BREZSNY."
--TOM ROBBINS(author of Another Roadside Attraction, Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All, and Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates) "The Televisionary Oracle is a book so weird it might drive you stark raving sane." --Robert Anton Wilson "Like a mutant love-child of Jack Kerouac and Anais Nin, Rob Brezsny writes with devilish humor, spiritual audacity, and erotic intensity. The Televisionary Oracle is a kick-ass gnostic tale. Prepare to be astonished." --Jay Kinney (author, Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions There are two main protagonists in THE TELEVISIONARY ORACLE, a male named Rockstar and a female named Rapunzel Blavatsky. One-third of the chapters are narrated by Rockstar in the first-person, and another one-third of the chapters are narrated by Rapunzel in the third person. The rest of the chapters are "Televisionary Oracles" -- programs broadcast by a sacred infotainment cabal which resembles what the television industry might be if it were a source of wisdom, integrity, and blessings instead of propaganda, degradation, and junk food for thought. Rockstar is an aging rock star who has been plugging away at his trade for 20 years with very modest success. He's a legend in his own mind, a fiery bard who leads his band in pagan rituals disguised as rock and roll shows. The story that Rockstar tells revolves around his encounter with Rapunzel Blavatsky. It seems that she and her gang intend to begin initiating certain selected men -- maybe even him -- into the mysteries of menstruation. Rapunzel is the chief shamanatrix of a Goddess-inflamed mystery school called the Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail. She might be the pranksterish reincarnation of Mary Magdalene and the time-traveling possessor of a ten-million-year-old television -- or else maybe just a foxy, jive-talking babe with delusions of grandeur. Her goal? To "kill the apocalypse" in the most enjoyable ways possible. To accomplish this noble aim, Rapunzel and her crew employ countless tricks that reside on the borderline between wacky performance art and sacred, kick-ass rituals. Given her high-concept mission, Rapunzel might be expected to cast herself in the role of an intellectual femme fatale. And yet her thoughtful, tender narrative reveals her to be anything but that. Compassionate, humble, lyrical in her drive to live a life that is both moral and beautiful, she is a lovable mystery. And what about those "Televisionary Oracles"? Any more hints about them? Let's just say that they're love spells designed to aid readers in debugging the black magic they've inadvertently practiced on themselves. * NOW FOR THE Q & A QUESTION. Rumor has it that the original title of your book was A Feminist Man's Guide to Picking Up Women. Is the material that tempted you to use that title still in the text? ANSWER. A lot of it, yes. As the widely published witch Starhawk commented, "This book effectively poses the question, 'Can a really horny guy achieve feminist consciousness'"? One of my goals was to create a character who embodies all the most beautiful and positive aspects of lusty virility while at the same time being a sensitive nurturer with a deep respect and reverence for women. In other words, a macho feminist. QUESTION. What do you mean when you talk about the "genocide of the imagination"? ANSWER. The word "imagination" doesn't get much respect. For many people, it connotes "make-believe," the province of children and artists. But I believe the imagination is the most important asset we all possess; it's the power to form mental pictures of things that don't exist yet. As such, it's what we use to shape our future. That's why it's so disturbing to realize that the imagination is increasingly becoming a vestigial organ. It's being pummeled into dysfunction by the numbing onslaught of generic and nihilistic images that endlessly flood from the mass media. How can you generate your own images or ask your own questions if your mind's eye is swarming with dazzling yet inane creations crafted by news and entertainment companies that possess what amounts to sleek multimillion-dollar propaganda machines? To get a sense of the growing devastation, wander around a grade school at recess. Kids' conversations will overflow with the regurgitation of stories that have been blast-furnaced into their sensitive psyches by movies, TV shows, and video games. QUESTION. Short of a medical textbook, there's probably never been a book written by a man that has dealt so extensively with the subject of menstruation. Do you have some weird fetish? ANSWER. While I am probably more at ease with actual physical menstruation than any man I know, my primary interest is in its poetic and mythic meanings. For instance, I sincerely believe that everyone, men and women alike, would reap lush rewards by honoring the menstrual cycle and dropping out of the frenetic routine for four days every month. The menstrual huts of indigenous culture were a recognition of this profound human need. They honored the value of regular escapes. QUESTION. Why is it so important to the future of daffodils and sea urchins and the jet stream, as you assert in your book, that childbirth be shown regularly in prime time? ANSWER. Giving people constant graphic reminders of the single most astounding act of creation is one of the best ways to kill the apocalypse. Keep in mind how well-hidden it is now. Compared to the easy availability of televised murders and porn on the Internet, the mysterious miracle of a child being born is an invisible taboo. QUESTION. Is your coinage of "killing the apocalypse" meant to sound like a joke? ANSWER. You make it seem like that would be a bad thing. My philosophy holds that one of the most effective weapons against evil is humor. That's why all the major religions are useless to me: At best they all regard laughter as irrelevant to the spiritual quest, whereas I give it a central place. QUESTION. But how can you "kill" the apocalypse without reinforcing the very hateful, adversarial attitudes that contribute to the possibility of apocalypse? ANSWER. You're neglecting to state the principle in its fullness. The point is to kill the apocalypse with love and beauty and truth. QUESTION. Everyone has a secret agenda. What's yours? ANSWER. To show what a moral vision would look like if it were rooted in the quest for beauty, truth, love, pleasure, and liberation instead of order, control, politeness, fear, and self-denial.
[Thanks to cent for the link]
Soaring food prices are a "massacre" of the world's poor and are creating a global nutritional crisis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday, calling it a sign that capitalism is in decline.
His comments came only hours after the United Nations' World Food Program called more expensive food a "silent tsunami" that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.
...
by Antonio Lopez...Yes, we can... but what? What is it that we can do? Propel another media creature into the White House? Have hope, change... I'm sorry but these are the most hollow and meaningless words to pervade politics since the invention of television. They are no more substantial than a product claiming it is "30% more free."
Obama strikes me as the perfect PoMo politician. As a chameleon he can be many things to many people. In "Yes, We Can!" he is clearly invoking the rhetorical style of MLK. Yet this is populism without the populous, i.e. a "movement." Yes, Obama is a big phenom among certain enthusiastic throngs, but every time I examine his views, it's like poking the Pillsbury Doughboy-- my finger just moves the fat around while he giggles in response. Obama is still an organ of corporate lobbyists and fails to challenge in any fundamental way the entrenched militarism of our system. So yes, he is very good at cribbing style, and with Will.i.am at the helm, style is in abundance. Obama has found a perfect partner for the manufacture of slick imagery and corporate pseudo culture (for more on Black Eyed Peas and selling out hip hop to Snickers, read this post).
....
So I believe we can say it's official: the "Yes, We Can!" Will.i.am-produced celebrity Obama love fest is viral, and since the video link landed in my inbox five different times in one day I figure it requires a response.
With so many good vibes and celebrity endorsements in one impressive eyeful should we let the images and words bubble through us like the temporary elation of a pill or cocktail? Makes one wonder if feeling good is all that is left of the Democratic platform.
The video itself is a quintessential artifact of the postmodern political system in which images are the map, and there is little left of the policy territory to explore. Politics have been reduced to toothpaste slogans, and this is certainly a clever one. The "Yes, We Can!" incantation rifts the Latin American protest chant, "Si, Se Puede!," and is not unlike Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" jingle-- yes it sounds great and meaningful, yet when you scratch the surface there is no there there (I don't mean to harp on my fave act PE, but as a media literacy dude I have to call it like it is). After watching the video, I'm still starved for meaning.
A neckband that translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals has been used to demonstrate a "voiceless" phone call for the first time.
With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice.
Users needn't worry about that the system voicing their inner thoughts though. Callahan says producing signals for the Audeo to decipher requires "a level above thinking". Users must think specifically about voicing words for them to be picked up by the equipment.
"I can still talk verbally at the same time," Callahan told New Scientist. "We can differentiate between when you want to talk silently, and when you want to talk out loud." That could be useful in certain situations, he says, for example when making a private call while out in public.
The system demonstrated at the TI conference can recognise only a limited set of about 150 words and phrases, says Callahan, who likens this to the early days of speech recognition software.
At the end of the year Ambient plans to release an improved version, without a vocabulary limit. Instead of recognising whole words or phrases, it should identify the individual phonemes that make up complete words.
This version will be slower, because users will need to build up what they want to say one phoneme at a time, but it will let them say whatever they want. The phoneme-based system will be aimed at people who have lost the ability to speak due to neurological diseases like ALS – also known as motor neurone disease.
The world's first "voiceless" phone call took place thanks to a neckband that converts nerve impulses into speech (footage courtesy Texas Instruments)
A Manifesto Plagiarizing and Expanding the Visions of Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose.
One
There are three types of poets: ordinary poets, great poets and seer-poets. Ordinary poets grow like mushrooms in infinite number. As most of us know, the great poets are few and far between and are also known as “born poets.” But as we will come to realize, the seer-poets are of the supreme heights. A seer is one who envisions the past, the present and the future… all at once.
True integral poets, by default, are required to be seer poets. Without an overhauling or evolving of our rationally-based languages by adding at the very least a series of numerical superscripts to nouns such as “God,” this dictum will be the umbrella for the next (and dare I say final) stage of poetry.
The integral poet must recognize perspectives, write about states and point to the moon. He or she must willingly compose koans for the good of the twenty-first century.
Not all seer poets must be, or are, integral. But as of today, all true integral poets must be, and are, seers.
Two
An integral poet has four very special names: yesterday's delight-seeker, today's delight-seer, tomorrow's delight-harbinger; and finally, of course, (my favorite) the Ground of all names: Infinity’s Delight.
At this point in history, one lucky enough to be an integral poet should never compromise (or even be asked to compromise). He or she is the manifestation of All things from the Experience of the carnal reptilian brainstem to high and higher vision-logic Illumination. If one compromises this interpretive structure, he or she instantly becomes the manifestation of a blind prophet. Which is (with all due respect) their right. But it can also be viewed as a travesty.
An integral poet (no matter the poetic forms he or she utilizes) MUST, first and foremost, currently be operating in the world-space of an integral consciousness.
In so doing he or she will no longer be completely satiated with the performative contradiction, “There is no such thing as truth.”
In so doing, he or she will no longer be completely satiated with the post-modern poet Charles Olson’s advice of jumping from perception to perception.
In so doing, he or she will no longer be completely satiated with the “first-tier” battle for dominance; but rather will embrace all previous modalities while being the North Star for evolution.
In so doing, he or she will no longer be completely satiated with form as an extension of content. The integral poet will see content as an extension of form.
In so doing, he or she will purposely evoke a trio of crucial realizations (usually in this order):
Number One: It is the poet and the poetry.
Number Two: We are the poet and the poetry.
And, finally, Number Three: I am the poet and the poetry.
The integral poet is interested in complex coherence and achieves this by nurturing a diversity of perspectives.
Which leads me to this:
Three
Integral poetry has five very special names:
Number 1: Aspiration-heart
Number 2: Inspiration-mind
Number 3: Confrontation-life
Number 4: Meditation-soul
And Number 5: Divination-Spirit
God wants to have a very, very special garden of Her own. She is asking Her integral poets to be the gardeners. She is also asking that integral poets create a garden as beautiful as possible and, at the same time, as inclusive as possible.
The integral poet will devotedly ask God if there is any esoteric purpose for the garden to be more than tolerant, more than relative, and more than beautiful.
God will respond to Her newly appointed poet-gardeners, "What is integral poetry, if not a description of My real Beauty? Do you not recall the English poet John Keats' immortal utterance: 'A thing of Beauty is a Joy forever'? Beauty and Infinity are inseparable. I want to reveal the Infinity that I am through the finite that I equally am. Therefore, I am asking you to make Me a garden of beauty unfathomable. And with a depth unsurpassable."
God will further say to Her integral poets, "My sons and daughters, once you have accomplished your task to My Satisfaction, I shall entrust you with another task. You will then be the supreme semioticians in My garden. Infinity's Beauty-lovers from the four corners of the globe shall visit and drink deeply while simultaneously realizing that they ARE the beauty of this infinite garden that all of us have created... together."
Four
Most poetry, since the turn of the 20th century, has been written under the mantra “Art for Art’s sake.” Although commendable, this mind-set has lead the world of poetry and art to a stagnant, and now unremarkable, pool of irony.
I offer a response in the form of a letter.
Dear postmodern and contemporary artists of the world:
To cut to the chase: You’re trying too hard.
Most of you seem to be dead set on becoming the next “mad genius.”
And it’s obvious.
And it’s tiring.
And, quite frankly, it’s now cliché.
When art becomes enamored with itself, it can become a form of masturbation.
And, at this point and time, most art and poetry accepted by the establishment is just playing with itself.
After nearly fifty years of little more than a series of tired translations, it’s high time for a group of integral artists to transcend and include the trendiness of self-deconstruction and call for (dare I say demand) the necessities of a global transformation.
May I be so bold as to offer a couple new mantras for the 21st century?
Here’s the first: Art for Spirit’s Sake.
Do you like it?
If so, I offer the second: Sanity is the new Crazy.
Here’s a sonnet from Suicide Dictionary written while under the spell of this mantra:
"Paradise is sleeping with jungles and stars,
It feels with two hands and a mind like your own;
It dives into Shadows and fuses with Scars,
Then centers the axis of Shadow to Bone.
These Luminous Pipers are silent but Loud,
Their song is concrete yet transparent to sight;
Content with non-dual even One is a crowd,
Yet structures are Perfect Eternal Delight.
This Portal is present and never will veer,
It’s moving with you as you’re reading this page;
No angels are winking or Rational jeers,
Just Beautiful Sanity living with change.
Nirvana is seeping through shapes made of ink,
These Statues were dead…
but then suddenly blink."
Although it may not appear so, I’m writing to you with the utmost compassion.
I keep hearing Ezra Pounds’ tortured scream from Canto CXVI: “I cannot make it cohere. I cannot make it cohere. I cannot make it cohere.” Which is, of course, the same plea from Eliot’s "Wasteland" as he sings his pains on the fragmented nature of the Good, the True and the Beautiful.
Postmodern artists of the world, I’m here to help. And I assure you there is now a way to make it cohere. Or at least come closer than we’ve been for a very long time.
Hope all is well.
Love,
Paul
Five
Ten personal statements.
1. Integral poetry I write with a technique of placing “the best words in the best order.”
2. Integral poetry I write with a technique of composing in the sequence of the musical phrase and, at times, in the sequence of the metronome.
3. Integral poetry I write to transcend the famous maxim, “No ideas but in things.”
4. Integral poetry I write to lighten your mind and enlighten your heart. It is shared between us so that you may lighten my mind and enlighten my heart. It is read to each of us lightening our hearts and enlightening our minds.
5. Integral poetry I write to replace your heart's sorrow with your soul's ecstasy. It is shared between us so that you may replace my heart’s sorrow with my soul’s ecstasy.
6. Integral poetry I write to transform your human mind-jungle into a divine heart-garden. It is read to each of us transforming our human mind-jungle into the Way of the Heart.
7. Integral poetry I write to fathom my own inner worlds and to scale my own higher worlds.
8. Integral poetry I write to see and feel Divinity's Beauty inside the heart of humanity.
9. Integral poetry I write to watch the hide-and-seek of my heart's tearing tears and my soul's blossoming smiles.
10. Integral poetry I write as a means of riding the wave of evolution.
Which leads us to this:
Six
The conclusion:
Mystical poetry, for the most part, has pointed to the Heart infinitely more than it preached to the mind.
To differentiate:
True integral poetry will point to the Heart AND the mind… while attaching to neither.
Image: "Recycled Poetry," by pupski on Flickr, used through a Creative Commons license.
Michael Fox, freelance journalist based in Latin America. He joins us on the telephone from the Paraguayan capital Asunción, where is he reporting for Free Speech Radio News and Upside Down World.
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AMY GOODMAN: A former Catholic priest once known as the Bishop of the Poor has been elected president. Fernando Lugo will be the first Paraguayan president since 1946 not to be from the conservative Colorado Party. Lugo won 41 percent of the vote, beating Blanca Ovelar, who received 31 percent. Lugo has pledged to crack down on corruption and channel Paraguay’s wealth into social programs.
PRESIDENT-ELECT FERNANDO LUGO: [translated] May we never again, in the political class of Paraguay, never again base our politics on clientism and enticements, because it has done so much to damage our national politics.
AMY GOODMAN: Lugo’s win ends more than six decades of one-party rule in Paraguay. Election officials said Sunday’s voting had the highest turnout, about 66 percent, of any presidential election since 1993.
Lugo is the first bishop ever to become president of a country. Both Paraguay and the Vatican ban clergy from seeking political office, so Lugo resigned in December 2006. Lugo says he was influenced by the liberation theology of the ’60s. He told the Associated Press he would not move to the presidential palace, remaining instead in his modest house in a middle-class suburb. He said the first lady would be his eldest sister.
Washington has signaled a willingness to work with Lugo and hailed his election as a “step forward” in Paraguay, but a State Department official told the Los Angeles Times his victory had left Washington worried about its waning influence in Latin America.
In a pre-election interview with the Los Angeles Times, Lugo noted Washington’s sometimes-contradictory role in Latin America, saying, “The United States…has sustained the great dictatorships, but afterward lifted the banner of democracy.” He went on to say Washington must acknowledge a new scenario in which Latin American governments “won’t accept any type of intervention from any country, no matter how big it is.”
For more, we turn to Michael Fox, a freelance journalist based in Latin America, joining us now on the telephone from the Paraguayan capital Asunción, where is he reporting for Free Speech Radio News and Upside Down World.
We welcome you, Michael Fox, to Democracy Now!. Talk about the significance and the background of the priest who has won the presidency.
MICHAEL FOX: You know, this is—it’s one of these really, really amazing moments here in Paraguay. Before I go onto Lugo, I just want to kind of put this into perspective. For listeners, imagine—it’s almost as if, for many Lugo supporters, as if the dictatorship, from the longtime Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship that fell in 1989, is finally coming to an end, because in 1989, when Stroessner fell, basically it was just a kind of a party share, the powers passed over to the Colorado Party, and they’ve been in power until now. So, literally, I was in the streets for the victory celebration just a few nights ago, and, you know, grandmothers, ages sixty, sixty-two, sixty-three, saying, “This is the first time in my life, you know, we’re actually—we’ve won. We can’t even believe that we’ve won. This is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Lugo is one of these people that’s kind of just jumped onto the political scene. As you said, Amy, he’s, you know, the Bishop of the Poor. He worked for many years in San Pedro, which is the northernmost and poorest province of Paraguay, working with campesino movements and in indigenous communities. He kind of came on the scene about a year and a half ago, and it’s been this movement of social movements, campesinos, political parties, that’s kind of all joined together and really supported his campaign. And it’s been extremely powerful, and people across Asunción are—you know, can’t believe he actually won.
AMY GOODMAN: How did he win?
MICHAEL FOX: He—do you mean the numbers, or how did he—how was he able to achieve his victory?
AMY GOODMAN: How—I mean, how did he come on the political scene, and what was—how did he campaign around the country? What are the major issues that he addressed?
MICHAEL FOX: Excellent. He came on the political scene about a year and a half ago. The current president, Nicanor Duarte Frutos, had done something that was unconstitutional to the constitution. He had, you know, tried to make himself party president of the Colorado Party, the longtime, longstanding Colorado Party, which he was able to do. So you basically have this kind of instantaneous large grassroots mobilization against that that came out on the streets. And this was the first time that Lugo spoke. He was always supporting grassroots social moments, but this was the first time that he was the main speaker at this event.
From there on out, you had a number of different grassroots social movements, this movement Tekojoja, which is a movement that kind of grew out of that moment, and they began to support the idea that he might actually run for president, without any possibility or ever thinking that they would actually win. He began to travel around the country, and really it kind of just brought together all of this support and all of the resignation that people had against the Colorado Party.
The Colorado Party has been in control, you know, as you mentioned, for sixty-one years. Its hundreds of thousands of representatives are members of the Colorado Party. And essentially, if you wanted before—now Lugo’s in office—but if you wanted to do anything in office, if you wanted to be an office member, you had to be a member of the Colorado Party. They essentially—it was a one—you know, it was a unilateral state.
And so, obviously, whether it’s from the left or to the right, people really kind of came out, and they said, “You know what? We want change.” And that’s why they decided to go for Lugo. The campaign, obviously, against Lugo, in terms of the fear campaign, was extremely strong. You had Nicanor Duarte Frutos who was, you know, calling out and saying that Venezuela was getting involved and that destabilizers from Venezuela were going to come here and destabilize the elections and what not. But in the end, he was victorious. And it’s really a—it could create huge change here in Paraguay.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Fox, some say Iraq saved Latin America, that with the Bush administration’s focus on Iraq, that the Latin American governments have much more reflected the base, the people in their countries, rather than pressure from the United States. Can you talk about the leftward shift of the governments of Latin America and how Father Lugo, the priest, now president, fits into that?
MICHAEL FOX: You know, it’s really interesting, and Amy, I’m glad you brought this point up, because across Latin America you have had this huge leftward shift. I mean, some of them, it’s more progressive, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, who, you know, are trying to create the new constitutions. They’re really trying to bring power and give power down to the base and flip the whole system upside-down. Now, you have other countries, like Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Tabare Vazquez in Uruguay, who are more kind of liberal democrat, but still on the left.
You know, it’s really difficult to say exactly where Lugo is going to stand. Paraguay itself is extremely, extremely important within the whole geopolitical structure of Latin America. Why? Because it’s just on the southern border of Bolivia, it’s on the western border of Brazil, the northern border of Argentina, it’s very close to Uruguay. It’s kind of the center of what is Latin America. And especially within the past couple of years, there was reports that came out a couple years ago that the United Staets was sending—had sent 500 troops to a military base here close to the Bolivian border. Now, it’s difficult to say what in these—what these changes—what will actually happen once Lugo comes into power on August 15th, whether, you know, he’ll follow along more in the lines of the footsteps of Hugo Chavez or whether he’ll line up a little bit more with Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay.
Regardless, geopolitically speaking, it’s a huge victory and especially really interesting for this country of, you know, six million people. You’re talking about a country almost the size of California, that’s tiny. And the people here, they’re not used to having—being inundated by international press. There’s like a hundred press agencies that sent people down here for the elections. And so, really, this is a huge win for the left in Latin America, and it’s going to be interesting to see how things develop in the coming months.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Fox, I want to thank you for joining us from Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, where the priest, Father Lugo, has now won the presidency, reporting for Free Speech Radio News and Upside Down World.
SN&R connected with Eugene, Oregon-based green anarchist John Zerzan for his take on modern society and mainstream environmentalism. Zerzan is a preeminent writer on anti-civilization, anarchist theory. He serves on the editorial collective of Green Anarchy, a biannual journal, and travels the world speaking with others committed to breaking down all forms of domination and moving toward a radically decentralized existence in the quest for liberation and freedom.
In terms of ecological defense, why is civilization the enemy?
You’ve got to go back that far to see the roots of the present crisis. Go back to domestication. As the late author Paul Shepard said, we’re talking about things like nanotechnology and genetic engineering and cloning that begins with agriculture. It’s implicit in the first step. Worsening environmental degradation stems from that shift to control—the domesticating move where nature becomes an object to be manipulated and dominated. So that’s getting back to a fundamental, primary motor. Oswald Spengler, a person of the right, a rather horrid person I would say, said civilization means ultimately nature’s a graveyard because it just marches forward. Or as German philosopher Martin Heidegger put it, all of nature is just the raw material for technology; it’s something to be used up. If you’re not looking at the mainspring, you’re only operating on the surface.
Is this why green anarchists criticize technology?
Technology, a lot of which is clean and shiny and looks nice on the shelf has, you might say, blood on it. It comes from the systematic use of nature as the raw materials for technology. Technology doesn’t fall from the skies. It comes from the existence of mines and smelters and assembly lines. The dominant idea the system gives us is, yes, there’s a crisis, but technology will come up with a solution. We see it as part of the problem. Technology keeps creating the problem, and then it comes around to say more technology will be the answer. We think that’s a false claim.
Should we just throw out mainstream environmentalism completely, or is there anything about it that works?
Mainstream environmentalism does not approach the problem with any depth. You’ve got Sierra Club’s Sierra magazine, the back cover is always Toyota advertisements. That’s really unbelievable. You can’t be environmentalists, in our view anyway, and say big auto companies are just great. That doesn’t make sense. We feel there are a lot of very sincere, well-meaning people in the mainstream environmental milieu. But we’re not going to get anywhere unless we use a different model instead of just hoping we’ll patch up this one. Just let it go. Al Gore says change your light bulbs, but that’s ridiculous. Even if everyone did everything he said, it would be a minor part. It’s not so much an individual, consumer choice as it is a much deeper institutional choice. Do you want a world of mass production, which devours everything and just hope for the best somehow when you can see it’s only getting worse, or do you want to try some different way?
COURTESY OF JOHN ZERZAN
How does green anarchy move beyond a human-centered outlook and lifestyle to a biocentric one?
Well, that’s the whole thing. How do we break our dependency on all these domesticated features that we’ve become accustomed to? When we talk about reconnecting with the Earth, that’s a practical challenge: How do you do that in a real way and not just in terms of ideas of critiques? And that’s a matter of looking to what techniques and tools we can use. For example, with food, there are people working with permaculture: What do they eat? What is their relationship to the actual landscape? These people are moving away from domestication. People ask what do green anarchists offer cities?—and nothing, in a sense, because ultimately we don’t think cities are tenable. I just came back from Istanbul, and you’re looking at 15 million people living in tower blocks. They’re going to be dead in about two days if the whole system crashes. We’ve got to start this movement outside or away from these artificial situations where people have no autonomy, no skills to feed themselves.
Does that relate to the anarchist idea of “primitive-future?”
If we’re going to have a future, it’ll have to be primitive to stop destroying the Earth, some kind of return to community. I’ve been writing about social dislocation and what’s been happening with society as much as with the environment, because I think that gets at the core. What we are now seeing in the most developed, most technological countries, such as this one, are these mass shootings—school shootings, mall shootings—this is really scary, this is really pathological. It’s what you get when society becomes technology and not much else. It becomes empty and meaningless and desolate and you start having people that are so nihilistic they don’t even care about life anymore. I don’t think it’s just outer nature, I think it’s our inner nature too that is having such a bad time. I’ve got grandkids, and I wonder what kind of world they’re going to live in. What have we become?
Do you find hope in any of this?
In a strange way, I’m optimistic because I think there can be a wonderful change—a big shift that’s going to come because the system doesn’t have any answers, and we can see there’s no future sticking with this, so there’s a good chance for people to get together and figure out something better.
Anarchists promote direct action over mediated or symbolic forms of resistance. What are some actions you encourage?
I’m not averse to saying I think direct action is a good thing. Damage to property, not violence against people. Things in the streets, like in Seattle in 1999, really got people’s attention. The Earth Liberation Front, when they commit arson, it draws people’s attention to just how bad it’s getting and to take up arms—and I don’t mean against people. They’ve never injured anyone—and go after these targets. We literally mean direct action, and we’ve got friends in prison because of it. Like the war [protests], there are a lot of good people in the streets but it hasn’t meant anything, the killing goes on. Maybe you’ve got to do something more than that. Maybe you’ve got to start blocking the streets. Personally, I would say it’s a dialogue in society; if that gets going, there’s huge potential. And self-sufficiency makes people stronger. If you’re vulnerable, you can’t oppose things very well, you can’t stick your neck out so far. If we’re better situated, we can be a more vigorous voice.
What is meant by a green anarchy revolution?
We don’t really use the word ‘revolution’ because we feel that’s an outdated model that hasn’t worked. But I know what you mean—what would be the turning point or big social momentum? I think that would be a critical questioning of everything and removing the things that cause the problems. So this is not a political revolution really, but a much deeper one.
ASUNCIÓN, Apr 20
Former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo was elected president in a landslide victory Sunday in Paraguay, putting an end to 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party.
With 52 percent of the ballots counted, the presidential candidate of the centre-left Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC) took 40 percent of the vote against the 31 percent garnered by governing party candidate Blanca Ovelar, who ceded defeat.
Five exit polls had previously indicated that Lugo, known as "the bishop of the poor", was three to six percentage points ahead of Ovelar, the first-ever female presidential candidate of the National Republican Alliance, better known as the Colorado Party.
"We have written a new page in the political history of our nation, and I hope we can all celebrate together," Lugo said in a press conference, although without declaring himself the winner.
"We are convinced that the people of Paraguay have a right to better conditions. We have felt it in the pain and the tears of so many mothers, the disenchantment of so many young people and the suffering of so many children," he said.
"I call on the political class as a whole to stake their bets on the country, which was once great, and which we believe will be again," he added.
Despite fears of fraud and possible disturbances, the elections went smoothly, with the exception of a few isolated incidents, according to local authorities and international election observers.
Because of Paraguay’s lengthy history of dictatorships, coups d’etat and election irregularities, hundreds of international observers were in Paraguay for Sunday’s election, including delegations from the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), whose mission was led by former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana.
"The panorama is one of complete normality, with a few minor incidents. The high turnout was outstanding. I congratulate the people of Paraguay for their civic spirit," said former Colombian foreign minister María Emma Mejía, head of the OAS delegation.
The initial estimates point to 75 percent turnout in Sunday’s polls, in which voters elected a new president and vice president, 45 senators, 80 members of the lower house, 17 governors, 214 provincial lawmakers, and 18 members of the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) Parliament.
Scuffles broke out in a few polling stations between members of the Colorado party and supporters of the opposition, leading to intervention by the police and prosecutors. However, no serious violence was reported.
The only irregularities were a few polling stations that opened late, reports of several people who tried to vote twice, and violations of the ban on publishing poll results.
But the Supreme Electoral Court reported that the system functioned perfectly, in a climate of "total normality."
Lugo, who left the priesthood in 2006 to launch his political career, emerged from APC campaign headquarters with a Paraguayan flag wrapped around his shoulders, giving a double thumbs-up.
He told his loudly cheering supporters: "This is the Paraguay I dream of, of many faces and many colours" -- an allusion to the coalition that backed his candidacy, made up of 10 political parties and 20 social organisations, trade unions and small farmers’ associations.
Thousands of Paraguayans filled the central avenue of Asunción Sunday night to celebrate the fall of the Colorado Party, which has governed Paraguay for six decades, including 35 years of dictatorship under General Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), who died in Brazil in 2006.
Even before Ovelar acknowledged defeat, voices within the Colorado Party began to speak of the need to "renew" the party.
The most biting remarks came from former vice president Luis Castiglioni, who claimed to be the victim of fraud when he lost the Colorado primaries to Ovelar in December 2006.
After casting his ballot, Castiglioni said that "after tonight, Vanguardia Colorada (his faction) has become the real Colorado Party."
He said the people had evolved more than the party leadership. "People want us to care about their lives," he said.
"Many politickers live well and concentrate on accumulating fortunes," he said. "That happens especially in my party, which suffers from a serious infection. With the help of honest people, we are going to cure the ANR."
In response to Castiglioni’s remarks, the president of the Colorado Party, José Alberto Alderete, who is close to President Nicanor Duarte, commented angrily to the press that the party’s conduct tribunal would study the measures to be taken against the former vice president.
Yesterday, the New York Times exposed a secret Pentagon campaign to infiltrate the media with pro-war propaganda.
The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of "military analysts" to spread favorable views of the war via every major news channel -- without revealing they were working from Pentagon scripts and often lobbying for major military contractors.
Spreading "covert propaganda" is illegal under federal law. Congress must investigate these military pundits and their ties to the Bush administration, defense contractors and our national news media.
Signing this letter does work. If we can get 50,000 people to join this call to Congress, they will likely take action to stop government propaganda.
The more than 75 analysts exposed by the New York Times have become fixtures of war coverage on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. The front-page article reveals the many ways that the Pentagon fed them pro-war talking points and misinformation. The White House even has a name for these covert propagandists: “message force multipliers.”
The pundits trade on their access to the media and the White House to secure high-paying jobs as lobbyists, consultants and contractors -- vying for hundreds of billions of dollars in military business generated by the war.
An administration secretly forcing favorable views via the press is not a partisan issue. This is a violation of every conceivable standard of journalism -- and possibly of federal law.
It's time the truth about the selling of this war came out. You can help make this happen.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEApril 18, 200812:46 PMCONTACT: Americans for Safe AccessASA Government Affairs Director Caren Woodson (510) 388-0546HR 5842 would reschedule marijuana for medical use, end federal interference in state lawsWASHINGTON, DC - April 18 - Congressional Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced the "Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act," HR 5842, yesterday, a bill co-sponsored by Representatives Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Sam Farr (D-CA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), and Ron Paul (R-TX). The act would change federal policy on medical marijuana in a number of ways. Specifically, HR 5842 would reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug, which cannot be prescribed, to a Schedule II drug, which would recognize the medical value of marijuana and create a regulatory framework for the FDA to begin a drug approval process for marijuana. The act would also prevent interference by the federal government in any local or state run medical marijuana program.Similar versions of HR 5842 have been introduced in prior Congressional terms, but have never made it out of committee. "It's time that the federal government take this issue seriously," said Caren Woodson, Government Affairs Director with Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a nationwide medical marijuana advocacy group working with Mr. Frank and other Members of Congress to change federal policy. "By disregarding marijuana's medical efficacy, and undermining efforts to implement state laws, the federal government is willfully placing hundreds of thousands of sick Americans in harms way." In addition to rescheduling marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), HR 5842 would provide protection from the CSA and the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) for qualified patients and caregivers in states that have legalized the use of medical marijuana. Specifically, the act prevents the CSA and FDCA from prohibiting or restricting: (1) a physician from prescribing or recommending marijuana for medical use, (2) an individual from obtaining, possessing, transporting within their state, manufacturing, or using marijuana in accordance with their state law, (3) an individual authorized under State law from obtaining, possessing, transporting within their state, or manufacturing marijuana on behalf of an authorized patient, or (4) an entity authorized under local or State law to distribute medical marijuana to authorized patients from obtaining, possessing, or distributing marijuana to such authorized patients.In December, U.S. House Judiciary Chair John Conyers stated publicly his concern about the tactics being used by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and promised oversight hearings. Since then, several California mayors have written to Conyers expressing their support for hearings, including the mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, West Hollywood, and Santa Cruz. Opposition to federal interference in state medical marijuana laws has also come from multiple city councils, members of the California Board of Equalization and the state legislature, as well as New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.Further information:Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, HR 5842: http://americansforsafeaccess.org/downloads/HR5842.pdfASA Fact Sheet on the Escalation of Harmful DEA Tactics: http://americansforsafeaccessnow.org/downloads/dea_escalation.pdfDecember 2007 Statement by House Judiciary Chair John Conyers: http://judiciary.house.gov/newscenter.aspx?A=889Letter from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to Conyers: http://www.americansforsafeaccessnow.org/downloads/Newsom_Letter_to_Conyers.pdfLetter from NM Governor Richardson to President GW Bush: http://safeaccessnow.org/downloads/richardson_letter.pdf With over 30,000 active members in more than 40 states, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is the largest national member-based organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research. ASA works to overcome political and legal barriers by creating policies that improve access to medical cannabis for patients and researchers through legislation, education, litigation, grassroots actions, advocacy and services for patients and the caregivers.
The decision by all 301,139,947 U.S. citizens to talk about something else is expected to last the more than six months leading up to the presidential election on Nov. 4. During that time, the nation has agreed to supplant all lively debates and impassioned arguments about politics with topics such as movies, music, summertime, and, in some rare cases, personal matters like family, relationships, and feelings.
The White House will not even be mentioned for at least six months.
Anything, Americans strongly reiterated, so long as it is not politics.
SIXTY countries, backed by the World Bank and most UN bodies, have called for radical changes in world farming to avert increasing regional food shortages, escalating prices and growing environmental problems.
But in a move that has led the US, Britain, Australia and Canada to withhold endorsement of the report, the authors said controversial gene modification technology was not a quick fix to feed the world's poor and argued that growing biofuel crops for vehicles threatened to increase worldwide malnutrition.
The report was issued as the UN's World Food Program called for rich countries to contribute $US500 million ($A540 million) to resolve a growing crisis that has led to staple food price rises of up to 80% in some countries, and riots in many cities. According to the World Bank, 33 countries are in danger of destabilisation and conflict following food price inflation.
The authors of the 2500-page International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development say the world produces enough food for everyone, yet more than 800 million people go hungry.
"Rising populations and incomes will intensify food demand, especially for meat and milk, which will compete for land with crops, as will biofuels," they write. "The unequal distribution of food and conflict over control of the world's dwindling natural resources presents a major political and social challenge to governments, likely to reach crisis status as climate change advances and world population expands from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050."
Robert Watson, director of the assessment and chief scientist at Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: "We have to applaud global increases in food production but not everyone has benefited." He said governments and industry focused on increasing food production, with little regard for natural resources or food security.
The report — the first significant attempt to involve governments, non-government organisations and industries from rich and poor countries — took 400 scientists four years to complete. The authors concluded that food production and the way food is traded around the world have led to unequal distribution of benefits and adverse ecological effects and are contributing to climate change.
The authors say technology should be targeted towards raising yields but also protecting soils, water and forests.
The GM industry, which helped fund the report, along with the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation, the World Health Organisation and the British and US governments, abandoned talks last year after heated debate. The scientists said they saw little role for GM in feeding the poor on a large scale.
"Assessment of the technology lags behind its development, information is anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty about possible benefits and damage is unavoidable," said the report.
Bill bars Fla. medical license for doctors who studied in Cuba
Americans who get their medical degree in Cuba would be prohibited from practicing medicine in Florida under a bill passed by the House.
The measure is aimed at students who accept scholarships from the Cuban government to attend the Latin American School of Medical Sciences in Havana. About 150 American students are currently enrolled in the school. They would be prevented from getting medical licenses in Florida if they were to move here.
The bill passed 107-3 today. It now goes to the Senate.
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Fire is His head, the sun and moon His eyes,space His ears,the Vedas His speech,the wind His breath,the universe His heart.From His feet the Earth has originated.Verily, He is the inner Self of all beings.
"Thou shalt know;Self-chosen are the woes that fall on men -How wretched, for they see not good so near,Nor hearken to its voice - few only knowThe pathway of deliverance from ill."*
The early evidence shows, however, that, while Pythagoras was famous in his own day and even 150 years later in the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was not mathematics or science upon which his fame rested. Pythagoras was famous (1) as an expert on the fate of the soul after death, who thought that the soul was immortal and went through a series of reincarnations; (2) as an expert on religious ritual; (3) as a wonder-worker who had a thigh of gold and who could be two places at the same time; (4) as the founder of a strict way of life that emphasized dietary restrictions, religious ritual and rigorous self discipline.
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Excerpts from the biographies on the Life of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius (ca 180); The Life of Pythagoras by Porphyry (ca233-306); Iamblischus of Syrian Chalci's Life of Pythagoras (ca280-333); and an Anonymous Biography on the Life of Pythagoras, Preserved by Photius (ca 820-891) in The Complete Pythagoras [offsite ebook]
Authors state that a trainer of the name of Pythagoras certainly did train his athletes on [meat], but that it was not our philosopher; for that he even forbade men to kill animals at all, much less would he have allowed his disciples to eat them, as having a right to live in common with mankind. (Diogenes, Life of Pythagoras, XII "Diet and Sacrifices" [offsite ebook])
Hearing about the killing, the locals immediately took to making wood and ceramic phalluses, to replace the boy's missing member (at this point, you have to wonder if the boy would have benefited more from a prosthetic head, but back to the story). Discovering the joy of making cocks, the locals just never stopped, eventually getting into a cock arms race with each other. Today, the woods surrounding the shrine are forested with as many stone boners as trees, all pointing gloriously up to the heavens above.
Get there early every March 15. The main event starts at 2PM, but they start giving away free booze at 10AM. That's right, they start tapping barrels full of sake even before lunch. Then at 2PM, the crowd staggers to the Shinmei Shrine where the mega dong is kept. 
You know, some things are more important than size. Centuries ago Egypt converted to Islam, with a few Christians and Jews thrown in, so no one really follows Min's cock anymore. But at one time Min was a principal deity of the entire Egyptian empire, with hundreds of thousands worshiping him. Today the modern city of Akhmim is built over the ruins of Min's temple, where excavation only just started in 1991, but ancient sources suggest that statues of him could be 55 feet tall or more, giving the old boy about eight feet of god rod.
"The best wine lies at the bottom of the pail/And Happiness lies below the navel." A few inches below.
Original idea: 
Saying a lack of the witness credibility "eviscerated the people's case," Justice Arthur J. Cooperman returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts for three detectives charged in the shooting death of Sean Bell, who was gunned down outside Club Kalua 17 months ago in a hail of NYPD bullets on the eve of his wedding.
Fernando Lugo
The perfect bow.
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"Thou shalt know;
Piece of Me
Submitted by Sir Real on Sat, 04/26/2008 - 5:05pm.GUEST: My question is how to participate as a citizen in a country in a way that would be positive rather than negative.
During the war in Viet Nam, I was in silent vigils that some people and I started. And I felt good about that.
But I also realize that it’s very easy to get caught up in resisting and being negative.
So, I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are on that?
ABRAHAM: The ideal citizen, ... one who contributes enormously to the Well-being of the whole, ... is one who focuses so specifically on life giving projects that you act as a vortex that summons life into this dimension through you.
Some would say, “Well, you mean she shouldn’t get involved in bigger issues?”
And we say, “She can choose any issue she wants to be one of those life giving issues.”
It’s about choosing something and focusing upon it with the sheer intent of letting it summon to itself through you.
GUEST: I don’t want to see society become like those countries where women would be kept at home and not allowed to leave.
I would like to operate in my society in a way where I see to it that more freedoms in that way are preserved or enhanced.
ABRAHAM: What do you see as you look around you in this society?
You see mostly freedom.
And so, as you focus here, you can feel, as you observe, an environment that is a vibrational match to your desire. You feel better.
As you observe another society that is not a vibrational match to your desire, you don’t feel so good.
Your role, as a productive citizen, is to choose from those two perspectives the one that you can feel the Energy flowing the strongest.
And, it’s not hard to figure out which one that is, is it? You can tell by the way you feel.
Many people believe that if there are not protests, that nothing ever gets better. And we say, well, there is accuracy to a degree.
If you don’t know what you don’t want, you could not know what you do want.
And so, it is the contrast or the diversity that helps you to formulate your decision. And often the strongest decisions come out of the worst situations. It’s those unbearable or deplorable things that often give the rocket of desire the greatest thrust.
But what goes wrong with so many people is, once the desire is born, then they keep looking back and trying to justify the desire by pointing out how bad things are.
And, when they look back, they just include that vibration which makes them a muted, clutter filter.
They are not a vortex that is doing any summoning toward what they want.
If you let a negative situation build that rocket of desire within you, and you focus upon the way you want it to be, and then you imagine that. You dream that.
You amplify that. You look for evidence of that. You talk about that. You script that. You find the feeling place of that. You imagine that. You dream that. You hold yourself in that vibration and you create that.
You open the vortex, single-handedly, that hundreds of thousands, millions, then benefit from, because of your attention to the subject.
Most of you do not believe that you have that kind of power of focus.
So you gather all over the place, and then you feel crabby because you know, from your Non-physical Perspective, the extraordinary power and value and reason that you have come here to focus.
You did not say, “I’ll come forth, but clean up everything that might bother me, and then I’ll come.”
Instead, you said, “I’ll go forth into this contrast, and out of it I’ll feel new desire born in me.”
When we tell you that you are on the leading edge of thought, we are not kidding you.
Here is the way it works: So, you examine the contrast. We are not talking about conflict. But contrast might be conflict. You examine the stuff, ... all the stuff. You observe it, and out of it is born a desire, and when that desire comes within you, you feel it.
And as you feel that desire, then you talk about it, and you think about it, and you think about it, and you imagine it and you offer a vibration about it, and then the Universe responds.
And, now you stand in a new place with a whole different set of contrasting experiences giving birth to another desire that you then focus upon and think about and find a feeling place of until you are standing in a different place with a whole different set of contrasting experiences.
Sometimes we think you think that the work is to get it done. You think the work is to get it all cleaned up.
And we say, you did not ever intend to come forth and get everything checked off the list. You came forth to get more things on the list. You never get it done.
Now you’re beginning to understand why we want you to enjoy the journey. Because there is no end to this journey. You could desire and it could be painful to you, and you could stop desiring and you could croak.
But we promise you, that won’t be the end of you.
In your physical withdrawal from this experience, all you get is a whole new lease on life from which you want to come forth into another physically focused environment, so that you can begin the process again.
It is so satisfying once you begin to understand the rhythm of all of this, and you begin to understand that the contrast is a good thing ... because the contrast gives you a new desire, and then, as you fantasize and find the feeling place of it, then everything in the Universe begins to respond to your vibrational output.
And then, from that new vantage point, new contrasting experiences give birth to more desire.
And so, the fun of it is not getting to the place where the Universe yields it to you. Although that can be fun.
But the fun of it is the birth of the desire to begin with, and then the bringing yourself into an alignment with the desire.
There is nothing more delicious than the Creative endeavor.
Friends, you have in your hands the Energy that creates worlds. And you said, “I would like to take that powerful Energy, and I would like to focus it through my specific physical human vortex. So I will be a citizen in this environment, and I will conclude as best I can from my vantage point.
And when that conclusion builds within me as that rocket of desire and I feel it, I will revel in what this contrasting experience has produced, because I’m on the leading edge again.
I’ve just given birth to a new desire.
I am going to focus on the desire. I’m going to find the feeling of the desire. I’m going to explain the desire. I’m going to become familiar with the desire.
I’m going to become desire.
I am going to become the embodiment, ... the vibrational embodiment, ... of this desire.
I am going to radiate that desire. It’s going to express through me so that anyone that comes into contact will feel a piece of that desire. And, sure, Law of Attraction will manifest the heck out of it all around me, but that’s not why I’m here.
I’m here for the experience of the Energy flowing through.
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-Abraham-Hicks-