What a Year for Corporate Criminality!

By ROBERT WEISSMAN; December 29, 2008 - Counterpunch

What a year for corporate criminality and malfeasance!

As we compiled the Multinational Monitor list of the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008, it would have been easy to restrict the awardees to Wall Street firms.

But the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during 2008 either, and we didn't want them to escape justified scrutiny.

So, in keeping with our tradition of highlighting diverse forms of corporate wrongdoing, we included only one financial company on the 10 Worst list.

Here, presented in alphabetical order, are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008.

AIG: Money for Nothing

There's surely no one party responsible for the ongoing global financial crisis. But if you had to pick a single responsible corporation, there's a very strong case to make for American International Group (AIG), which has already sucked up more than $150 billion in taxpayer supports. Through "credit default swaps," AIG basically collected insurance premiums while making the ridiculous assumption that it would never pay out on a failure -- let alone a collapse of the entire market it was insuring. When reality set in, the roof caved in.

Cargill: Food Profiteers

When food prices spiked in late 2007 and through the beginning of 2008, countries and poor consumers found themselves at the mercy of the global market and the giant trading companies that dominate it. As hunger rose and food riots broke out around the world, Cargill saw profits soar, tallying more than $1 billion in the second quarter of 2008 alone.

In a competitive market, would a grain-trading middleman make super-profits? Or would rising prices crimp the middleman's profit margin? Well, the global grain trade is not competitive, and the legal rules of the global economy-- devised at the behest of Cargill and friends -- ensure that poor countries will be dependent on, and at the mercy of, the global grain traders.

Chevron: "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies"

In 2001, Chevron swallowed up Texaco. It was happy to absorb the revenue streams. It has been less willing to take responsibility for Texaco's ecological and human rights abuses.

In 1993, 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians filed a class action suit in U.S. courts, alleging that Texaco over a 20-year period had poisoned the land where they live and the waterways on which they rely, allowing billions of gallons of oil to spill and leaving hundreds of waste pits unlined and uncovered. Chevron had the case thrown out of U.S. courts, on the grounds that it should be litigated in Ecuador, closer to where the alleged harms occurred. But now the case is going badly for Chevron in Ecuador -- Chevron may be liable for more than $7 billion. So, the company is lobbying the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to impose trade sanctions on Ecuador if the Ecuadorian government does not make the case go away.

"We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this -- companies that have made big investments around the world," a Chevron lobbyist said to Newsweek in August. (Chevron subsequently stated that the comments were not approved.)

Constellation Energy: Nuclear Operators

Although it is too dangerous, too expensive and too centralized to make sense as an energy source, nuclear power won't go away, thanks to equipment makers and utilities that find ways to make the public pay and pay.

Constellation Energy Group, the operator of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland -- a company recently involved in a startling, partially derailed scheme to price gouge Maryland consumers -- plans to build a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs, potentially the first new reactor built in the United States since the near-meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.

It has lined up to take advantage of U.S. government-guaranteed loans for new nuclear construction, available under the terms of the 2005 Energy Act. The company acknowledges it could not proceed with construction without the government guarantee.

CNPC: Fueling Violence in Darfur

Sudan has been able to laugh off existing and threatened sanctions for the slaughter it has perpetrated in Darfur because of the huge support it receives from China, channeled above all through the Sudanese relationship with the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

"The relationship between CNPC and Sudan is symbiotic," notes the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights First, in a March 2008 report, "Investing in Tragedy." "Not only is CNPC the largest investor in the Sudanese oil sector, but Sudan is CNPC's largest market for overseas investment."

Oil money has fueled violence in Darfur. "The profitability of Sudan's oil sector has developed in close chronological step with the violence in Darfur," notes Human Rights First.

Dole: The Sour Taste of Pineapple

A 1988 Filipino land reform effort has proven a fraud. Plantation owners helped draft the law and invented ways to circumvent its purported purpose. Dole pineapple workers are among those paying the price.

Under the land reform, Dole's land was divided among its workers and others who had claims on the land prior to the pineapple giant. However, wealthy landlords maneuvered to gain control of the labor cooperatives the workers were required to form, Washington, D.C.-based International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) explains in an October report. Dole has slashed it regular workforce and replaced them with contract workers.

Contract workers are paid under a quota system, and earn about $1.85 a day, according to ILRF.

GE: Creative Accounting

In June, former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston reported on internal General Electric documents that appeared to show the company had engaged in a long-running effort to evade taxes in Brazil. In a lengthy report in Tax Notes International, Johnston reported on a GE subsidiary's scheme to invoice suspiciously high sales volume for lighting equipment in lightly populated Amazon regions of the country. These sales would avoid higher value added taxes (VAT) in urban states, where sales would be expected to be greater.

Johnston wrote that the state-level VAT at issue, based on the internal documents he reviewed, appeared to be less than $100 million. But, he speculated, the overall scheme could have involved much more.

Johnston did not identify the source that gave him the internal GE documents, but GE has alleged it was a former company attorney, Adriana Koeck. GE fired Koeck in January 2007 for what it says were "performance reasons."

Imperial Sugar: 14 Dead

On February 7, an explosion rocked the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, near Savannah. Days later, when the fire was finally extinguished and search-and-rescue operations completed, the horrible human toll was finally known: 14 dead, dozens badly burned and injured.

As with almost every industrial disaster, it turns out the tragedy was preventable. The cause was accumulated sugar dust, which like other forms of dust, is highly combustible.

A month after the Port Wentworth explosion, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors investigated another Imperial Sugar plant, in Gramercy, Louisiana. They found 1/4- to 2-inch accumulations of dust on electrical wiring and machinery. They found as much as 48-inch accumulations on workroom floors.

Imperial Sugar obviously knew of the conditions in its plants. It had in fact taken some measures to clean up operations prior to the explosion. The company brought in a new vice president to clean up operations in November 2007, and he took some important measures to improve conditions. But it wasn't enough. The vice president told a Congressional committee that top-level management had told him to tone down his demands for immediate action.

Philip Morris International: Unshackled

The old Philip Morris no longer exists. In March, the company formally divided itself into two separate entities: Philip Morris USA, which remains a part of the parent company Altria, and Philip Morris International. Philip Morris USA sells Marlboro and other cigarettes in the United States. Philip Morris International tramples the rest of the world.

Philip Morris International has already signaled its initial plans to subvert the most important policies to reduce smoking and the toll from tobacco-related disease (now at 5 million lives a year). The company has announced plans to inflict on the world an array of new products, packages and marketing efforts. These are designed to undermine smoke-free workplace rules, defeat tobacco taxes, segment markets with specially flavored products, offer flavored cigarettes sure to appeal to youth and overcome marketing restrictions.

Roche: "Saving lives is not our business"

The Swiss company Roche makes a range of HIV-related drugs. One of them is enfuvirtid, sold under the brand-name Fuzeon. Fuzeon brought in $266 million to Roche in 2007, though sales are declining.

Roche charges $25,000 a year for Fuzeon. It does not offer a discount price for developing countries.

Like most industrialized countries, Korea maintains a form of price controls -- the national health insurance program sets prices for medicines. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs listed Fuzeon at $18,000 a year. Korea's per capita income is roughly half that of the United States. Instead of providing Fuzeon, for a profit, at Korea's listed level, Roche refuses to make the drug available in Korea.

Korean activists report that the head of Roche Korea told them, "We are not in business to save lives, but to make money. Saving lives is not our business."

Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor and director of Essential Action.

// posted by Alice @ Tuesday, December 30, 2008 0 Comments

By Jason Miller Print This Post

12/28/08

Even the most ardent reactionaries, deluded ‘patriots,’ and apathetic cynics, whose myopic, Panglossian perspectives ensure that they continue to reflexively genuflect to the deeply criminal enterprise of American Capitalism and rationalize the savage imperialism of US foreign policy, are beginning to concede that we are in the midst of a crisis of epic proportions.

So lack of awareness, which is usually the first obstacle to solving a problem, isn’t the real enemy here. Our chief foe is a swarm of greed-driven, self-absorbed, mean-spirited locust-like human beings who are dedicated to “reforming” and perpetuating capitalism, the very system that has led us to this woeful state of environmental, economic, social, and political affairs.

Capitalism, the systemization of greed, selfishness, subjugation, and exploitation camouflaged by the narcotic of consumerism, the irresistible illusion of equal opportunity for all, and its ostensible compatibility with liberal democracy, has seduced hundreds of millions of people into ignoring its contradictions, injustices, and malevolence.

Capitalism has inflicted deep wounds upon the Earth and is the persistent infection that must be eradicated to avert the sixth mass extinction, the ongoing torture and murder of billions of non-human animals, an acceleration of Climate Change, further economic collapse, mass starvation, severe shortages of potable water, perpetual resource wars, and a host of other catastrophic events.

While much of its foul stench emanates from the United States, the foul odor of capitalism has wafted its way into the nostrils of nearly every citizen on the globe. Capitalism’s cockroach-like apologists, propagandists, beneficiaries, enforcers, and power brokers scurry in and out of nearly every nook and cranny of the planet.

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, Tant Mieux, 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

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Global and dominant as it is, capitalism is the culmination and perpetuator of a number of vile social, economic, political, and cultural elements and dynamics, many of which began rearing their ugly heads with the advent of agriculture, domestication and civilization. Starting about 10,000 years ago, as humans became “civilized,” we alienated ourselves from nature, psychologically enabling us to exploit non-human animals and savagely abuse the Earth for our enrichment, amusement and comfort.

As a collective, we human animals have hubristically determined that we are the master species, endowing ourselves with the right to dominate, enslave, torture, humiliate, murder, and eat any sentient being on the planet (with the almost universal exception being the taboo of cannibalism–which is a bit perplexing considering the numerous other evils we inflict upon one another and the fact that human over-population is a tremendous problem).

Speciesism, the mental perversion that afflicts most people–causing them to view themselves as superior to all other species, is the one of the most blatantly exploitative and reprehensible of all human ideologies. Yet it remains “socially acceptable.” Inextricably linked with the bourgeois belief in the supremacy of profit and property over life, speciesism reveals the ferocity and grotesquery of savage capitalism. Animal exploiting capitalists of all stripes, including ranchers, biomedical researchers, meat processors, egg producers, fast food restaurateurs, and their ilk spend billions of dollars on agitprop each year to ensure that both the law and those who consume their products continue to view non-human animals as property, worthy of no more consideration than a lawn-mower. In fact, many people treat their Lawn Boys far better than factory farmers treat “their” sows.

Remember that human slavery, in which certain members of the human species were reduced to the status of property, was once institutionalized. The United States, the self-proclaimed land of the free (and not coincidentally the nexus of parasitic and decaying capitalism), was one of the last “advanced” nations to abolish slavery. And abolition wouldn’t have occurred had it not been for great sacrifices by many people of conscience and a civil war. Such is the pernicious and relentlessly cruel nature of capitalism.

Patriarchy and racism were once institutionalized too. Yet despite the fact that women and minorities have made significant legal, political, and social strides, the white man still wields tremendous power in this world, much of it economic in nature.

Overt and unapologetic imperialism and colonialism may be relics of the past, but conquest and subjugation still thrive under the guise of humanitarian intervention, loans to developing nations requiring corporate-friendly economic reforms, and aid to puppet regimes amenable to the rape of their country. All this to satisfy capitalism’s insatiable appetite for new markets, cheap labor, and natural resources.

Many people are concerned about the devastating and noxious impact we humans are having upon the Earth. But thanks to corporate green-washing, the globalization of the American Way of Life, and the deep allegiance many people have to capitalism (a system that is based on infinite growth on a finite planet), the rape and plunder of Mother Nature continues at an alarming rate. Relentlessly bludgeoned by the unquestioned supremacy of capitalist “ideals,” potential solutions that might interfere significantly with growth and profit are beaten to death before they can fully emerge from the womb.

Meanwhile, anti-capitalist radicals, including Marxists, socialists, anarchists, deep environmentalists, anarcho-primitivists, animal liberationists, members of indigenous movements, feminists, and many others who recognize that the problems we face are systemic in nature and that capitalism must go, remain marginalized, persecuted, ridiculed, vilified, and perhaps worst of all, divided.

An example of the agitprop the ruling elite successfully deploys (despite its obvious absurdity) to throw the true left to the margins of society. Obama is, AT BEST, center left on the political spectrum, yet the deeply indoctrinated amongst the working class–who remain faithful to their capitalist exploiters–swallow this nonsensical portrayal of him as a communist as if it was gospel….

American Capitalism’s power elite, comprised of the upper strata of the economic, corporate, political, and military hierarchies, enjoy tremendous advantages over those who oppose them. Despite their obvious economic and military might, their most powerful weapon is actually their seemingly omnipotent abilities to prevent any ideology from challenging the national religion of capitalism, to maintain the allegiance of most of the working class, and to demonize those who dare to blaspheme against their economic rape.

In a recent interview, internationally-renowned progressive political analyst Michael Parenti described the means by which the ruling class manipulates the masses into supporting such an obviously wretched system:

“Through control of the universe of discourse, including the media, the professions, the universities, the publishing industry, many of the churches, the consumer society, the job market, and even the very socialization of our children and the prefiguring of our own perceptions, the ruling interests are able to exercise a prevailing ideological control that excludes any reasoned critique of the dominant paradigm.”

It is imperative that those of us who recognize that electing a Democrat who is a racial minority and who talks a progressive game is a band-aid, at best, and that the real solution is to drive a stake through the heart of vampiric capitalism by uniting and by finding a means to take on the corporate media in such a way that we begin winning significant numbers of hearts and minds.

Anti-capitalist academics, writers, publishers, organizers, speakers, community leaders, politicians, and activists need effective conduits through which they can meet, communicate, educate one another, derive a sense of solidarity, and coordinate their efforts.

It is essential that we break down the perceived barrier between intellectuals and activists so that we can unify against regressive forces that thrive on inequality, injustice, environmental abuse, speciesism, and hierarchy—or in other words let’s come together and crush those loathsome bastards who prosper via the domination and abuse of the Earth and its sentient inhabitants.

Derrick Jensen has called on rational people of conscience to form a culture of resistance against the soulless insanity of a status quo that empowers and rewards those who are the most sociopathic and the most devoid of empathy. And if we are to create this culture of resistance and strive to forge an egalitarian, just, ecological, non-speciesist and democratic society, it is crucial that we expand our moral circle and bring animal liberation into the fold.

Aside from the morally indefensible fact that we enslave, torture, and murder sentient beings who feel pain and fear just as we do, consider Charles Patterson’s powerful argument he advanced in Eternal Treblinka. Patterson demonstrated that there is a frighteningly thin line between the abuse, objectification, and industrial torture we routinely inflict upon cows, for example, and that which we inflict upon other members of our own species. Many of the techniques the Nazis employed in the Holocaust came directly from the livestock and meat-packing industries.

Because our delusional notion of superiority is so deeply ingrained in our psyches, even many people of good conscience ignore the fact that non-human animals, who have no voice, no legal rights, and no viable means to defend themselves, are the ultimate victims of the ‘might makes right’ capitalist mentality. As the radical front line of a culture of resistance against a brutal social structure that thrives on abuse and exploitation, we need to attack the problem at its root. Leaving racism, sexism, classism and even Zionism in the dust, speciesism is the most enduring, savage, and widely accepted of the cultural ethos that enable capitalism to thrive, as it enables morally retarded wretches to pitilessly damn billions upon billions of innocent beings to a nightmare of Hobbesian proportions.

If we truly intend to subvert the dominant rapacious paradigm and replace it with something that will serve the greater good and heal the Earth, we must put animal liberation on our agenda.

So, how can we create a formidable culture of resistance and establish animal rights as one of the pillars of the radical agenda?

The Transformative Studies Institute (TSI) at http://transformativestudies.org/, a radical educational entity that “fosters interdisciplinary research that will bridge multidisciplinary theory with activism in order to encourage community involvement that will attempt to alleviate social problems,” is sponsoring Thomas Paine’s Corner (TPC) at www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/, which partners with Cyrano’s Journal Online (www.bestcyrano.org) to provide a media platform for radical writers, scholars, poets, playwrights, activists, and groups. No significant social movement will take place if the intelligentsia is cloistered in ivory towers, alienated from the activists who need them for education and guidance. We have an abundance of theory, but a dearth of praxis. TSI and TPC intend to get ideas into the heads of those who will translate them into action!

Both TSI and TPC will work in conjunction with the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS) at http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/ to promote “critical scholarly dialogue and research on the principles and practices of animal advocacy, animal protection, and animal-related policies in the fields of social sciences and humanities.” ICAS, TSI, and TPC will push to catalyze the inclusion of animal liberation into the broader radical agenda through critical pedagogy and again through facilitating the conversion of theory into praxis.

With noted scholars, activists, thinkers, and writers such as Steve Best, William Blum, Ward Churchill, Anthony Nocella II, Richard J. White, John Asimakopoulos, Lisa Kemmerer, Gary Corseri, Jason Bayless, Michael Parenti, Adam Engel, Ed Duvin, Gore Vidal, Richard Kahn, Joe Bageant, John Steppling, and many others behind this ambitious under-taking, the project has great potential. We desperately need ventures like this one to succeed.

As Adorno wrote in Minima Moralia, “A breed of men has secretly grown up that hungers for the compulsion and restriction imposed by the absurd persistence of domination.”

Capitalism and speciesism are woven into most of the world’s cultural and socioeconomic DNA. This ensures that the sociopathic “breed of men” to which Adorno referred enjoy the perpetual existence of the “absurd persistence of domination.” Which in turn is ensuring the rapid acceleration of widespread suffering and calamitous events.

As radical scholars or activists, we face the daunting task of exterminating capitalism and speciesism. And time grows short. Yet we can find solace in the fact that resistance is NOT futile!

Jason Miller is a tenacious anti-capitalist and vegan animal liberationist. He is also the founder and editor of Thomas Paine’s Corner, associate editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online, blog director for The Transformative Studies Institute and associate editor for the Journal for Critical Animal Studies.

TSI and ICAS do not endorse the content of TPC. TPC and CJO are independent media sources for writers to express themselves in an open democratic manner. TPC, CJO, ICAS and TSI do not intend to encourage illegal/unethical activity or behavior. The information herein is solely intended for entertainment, educational, research, academic, or other lawful purposes.

// posted by Alice @ Sunday, December 28, 2008 1 Comments

"Que Huevos!" ("What Balls!") grinned Don Juanito the tailor, sipping his tea across the counter and extolling the bravery of Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter who gained instant hero status for hurling his shoes at U.S. president George Bush during a Baghdad news conference last week (Dec. 13th). "He should have thrown clown shoes - that way he wouldn't have missed Bush," Daniel the greeter chimed in. An avid wrestling fan, Daniel was impressed by Bush's stutter step dodge of the incoming missiles. "The shoes must be the weapons that Bush was looking for, no?" smiled Manuel the waiter, "now they will take all the shoes from Iraq!" Berta the nurse invited the crowd to bring their old shoes to the U.S. Embassy here to bid goodbye to George Bush.

The chatter over evening coffee was not taking place in a downtown Baghdad café but rather at the venerable La Blanca, an old quarter gathering spot here in Mexico City. This reporter, a regular customer for a quarter of a century, could not remember when events half a world away had so animated conversation around the cafeteria counter.

Indeed, Mexico, like much of what used to be hailed as the third world, was following the fortunes of the Iraqi reporter with avid interest. Televisa and TV Azteca, Mexico's two-headed television monopoly, had both led with the story two nights running on primetime news - Televisa ran footage of al Zaidi's audacious fling from three distinct angles in slow motion. La Jornada, the left daily, splashed the flying shoes frame by frame across its front page and the political cartoonists are having a field day with the shoe toss. "We need this to divert us from our troubles," chuckled Daniel. "If you are writing something please say that we thank Mr. al-Zaidi for throwing his shoes at Bush."

The conversation around the counter of La Blanca was one more proof positive that the visceral anger stirred up by George Bush during eight years of misgovernment crosses oceans and cultures. The Iraqi reporter's courageous act was a catalyst for universal rage and frustration at the Bush regime's unbridled arrogance that has been boiling over down below ever since the outgoing U.S. president stole the White House in 2000 and invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, murdering as many as million citizens of the third world, most of them, as Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos puts it, "the people the color of the earth."

Daniel's kudos for Muntadhar al-Zaidi were echoed in Middle Eastern capitals. In Damascus, a shopkeeper who would only identify himself as Muhammad to a nosy New York Times reporter was on his way to a party with friends. "This is a holiday! This is what we needed for revenge!" From the Middle East to Washington D.C., Bush's many detractors held shoe-tossing parties to demand an end to the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq and the Iraqi reporter's immediate release from prison. "To us he is a hero!" Berta the nurse saluted al-Zaidi.

There is no insult more demeaning in Arab culture then to have a shoe tossed at one's person except perhaps to be called a dog and Muntadhar al-Zaidi invoked both in throwing his left shoe at the most powerful politico on the planet. "This is for the widows and orphans and the people that died!" he shouted, tossing the right one at Bush's head. A Saudi millionaire has reportedly offered $10,000,000 USD for the hero's footwear.

Muntadhar Al-Zaidi's shoe fling has effectively penned George Bush's political epitaph. As the YouTube clips girdled the globe, the image was stamped on popular memory. Even more unflattering than the film of George Bush pere puking all over the Japanese prime minister at a state dinner, Bush Jr's shoe dodge is the picture that will accompany eight years of his genocidal administration to the grave.

The imprisonment of the al-Baghdadia television reporter by the quisling Maliki government for allegedly assaulting a foreign dignitary has sparked renewed street demonstrations in Iraq where the unpopularity of the recently ratified Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that allows U.S. occupation forces to remain in country for at least three more years, is patent.

Protestors in Sadr City where the U.S. bombed without remorse earlier this year threw their shoes at American patrols in disgust. Al-Zaidi, a former leftist student leader who admires Che Guevara, covered the bombings for Al-Baghdadia television and colleagues pin his fury at Bush on the devastation wrought by the Americans in that Shiaa-controlled slum city. Black-clad supporters of Shiaa cleric Muqtada al-Sadr whose legendary father gave his name to Sadr City, disrupted parliament demanding al-Zaidi's release.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops who came under shoe attack in the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah fired on protestors, wounding one according to press reports.

Curiously, while Iraqis of all denominations rallied to the reporter's defense, the Baghdad press pack was unimpressed by al-Zaidi's shoe scoop. Indeed, one Iraqi journalist wrestled the al-Baghdadia correspondent to the floor while Maliki's goons beat on him, breaking his hand and fracturing two of his ribs. The Prime Minister, who apparently fancies himself a press critic, condemned the shoe toss as a "savage act which is unrelated to journalism in any way." Others in the Iraqi journalism community dissed al-Zaidi's performance as "unprofessional."

Even al-Jazeera, the powerful Qatar-based TV titan, was unusually standoffish in its reportage of the celebrated incident, which the powerful Arab network seemed to suggest, reflected poorly on the integrity of "responsible" Arab media. The New York Times, a paragon of corporate journalism, looked down its nose at the great shoe fling with its usual snottiness, disdaining Muntadhar al-Zaidi's credentials as a bona fide journalist and dismissing his activism as folkloric. Reporter Timothy Williams expressed surprise that the war in Iraq was "still unpopular."

The Times and its ilk have a hard time dealing with activist journalists. Josh Wolf, the young blogger who broke the U.S. record for being jailed for his journalistic efforts (over 200 days in the federal slammer for refusing to identify participants in a San Francisco anarchist march that was attacked by the police), was treated in the corporate press as just another drug-addled adolescent. Like al-Zaidi, Brad Will, the Indymedia photojournalist cut down by Mexican cops during the Oaxaca urban rebellion in 2006, was tarred as "unprofessional", a radical activist masquerading as a reporter. As an older activist reporter covering social turmoil in Mexico, I am regularly questioned by the representatives of the corporate press for my "lack of objectivity."

The "objectivity" so championed by j-school journalists is a weapon of class war that ascribes equal weight to the wronged and the wrongers alike. Held sacrosanct by "professional" journalists who are more attentive to their own career tracks than to the righteous indignation of the victims of Bush's war on the peoples of the earth, this vaunted "objectivity" neutralizes injustice and negates responsibilities.

I tell my students that they have no "career" in journalism, only what we call here an "oficio", a responsibility to tell the stories of those who are never heard, an obligation to stand on the front lines and report the story from the peoples' side of the barricades.

Muntadhar al-Zaidi is a distinguished activist journalist. Like all those who practice this trade under the gun in the never-ending class and race war, he is painfully cognizant that you cannot cover injustice without taking sides.

Activist journalists do not grab a cab to Dachau to get the commandant's side of the story. Bush is that commandant and he deserves to be showered by our shoes for his repeated crimes against humanity. Muntadhar al-Zaidi's shoes told this story. He deserves nothing less than the Pulitzer Prize.

John Ross has El Monstruo on the canvas and is awaiting the decision of the judges. These dispatches will continue at ten-day intervals until the word is in. If you have further info write johnross@igc.org.

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, December 24, 2008 0 Comments

Today’s world is a need it right now world. Emails, text messages, and cellular telephones have made us much more accessible and our level of accountability much higher. The expectations for immediate attention are overwhelming and can negatively impact our productivity and patience.

However, learning to be more patient can increase feelings of happiness as well as reduce stress and anxiety. Patience can also improve productivity because it creates a better state of mind, a clearer state of mind, for better decision making.

Patience is becoming a lost art. We sometimes feel others becoming more impatient with us if we are not quick to answer or respond right away which will only exacerbate our own impatience. However, most things worth having take time to obtain – they take patience. Art cannot be rushed and patience cannot be lost if the picture is to be finished. Consider the following four strategies to help you restore the art of patience.

Keep the Proper Perspective

An effective way to establish the importance of keeping the proper perspective is to ask the following question which has been asked countless times before: Imagine you are looking at a 16 ounce glass that contains eight ounces of water. How full is this glass?

If your life perspective tends to be more pessimistic and impatient, your answer is half empty.

If your life perspective tends to be more optimistic and patient, your answer is half full.

Patience allows you to see the good things, the positive things in life. It helps you see the good in any situation and to realize the value that does exist.

Keeping the proper perspective makes any situation more tolerable and it provides the patience needed to wait as the rest of the glass is being filled.

Don’t Assume

Too often what you think is what you fear the most. When a particular event or situation is off in the distance, we, as humans, have the tendency to assume the worst. We assume things will not work to plan or we will be disappointed with the results.

Assumptions lead to impatience because the lack of knowledge and uncertainty can make you feel very uncomfortable. Instead, consider the facts. Look to see if there is any history that can tell you what has happened in the past in order to provide assurances for the future.

In my marriage, I sometimes assume the periods of time when our intimacy is derailed, for whatever reason, will never get back on track again. I grow impatient and frustrated.

Even though my edgy attitude and irritation were not the obstacles to our intimacy barrier in the first place, they become the obstacle because my impatience creates such a negative feeling.

I’m learning to remind myself not to assume these dry spells are nothing more than just the realities of life getting in the way. I’m still learning not to assume the worst. Mary Beth still loves me and cares for me – we are just in a busy cycle.

When I’m able to keep these assumptions at bay, and my impatience low, the intimacy is restored in a very natural and loving way.

Show Empathy

Murphy’s Law always seems to be evoked when I have to run to the bank during a short lunch break and upon arriving in the bank’s lobby I’m greeted with a very long line of other exasperated customers.

Not only does my impatience skyrocket, but so does my frustration and anxiety. Neither is good for my health, or my mood.

Rather than focusing on an inconvenient situation, take a full step back and consider how others are reacting to the same situation. When you are the one to provide the levity; the sense of humor, and can turn something negative into something positive, you are in charge of your own level of patience associated with the situation.

Showing empathy to others also helps you to see the circumstance for what it really is, not how it appears to be or feels. Empathy allows you to refocus your energy away from the feelings of impatience and on to something much more productive for everybody.

Providing empathy for others who are becoming increasingly impatient can allow you to hear some good advice coming from your own month – you just need to remember it when it’s your turn to receive it.

Excited by the Wait

The ability to reframe a situation by looking at it from a different point-of-view is another way to restore the art of patience.

Again, is the glass half-full or half-empty? Too often we want to rush through the here and now to get to the thing we are waiting for and anticipating. But rather than dreading the wait, learn to become excited by it. The waiting can be the hardest part when we forget to keep living during this time.

Often the gap of time between when you know something is going to happen and when it actually occurs can be one of the best times for self-awareness to take place. You can learn a lot about yourself during this period.

For example, the time spent in a marriage engagement can be focused on planning how you want to spend the rest of your life. If you are waiting to lose weight and improve your overall health, you can be excited by how you are taking back some control over your life.

The journey, the waiting, may have a more significant impact than the end result. Your impatience may keep you from gaining this experience. Better patience, on the other hand, can be the ideal catalyst for growth to occur.

A renaissance in the art of patience can help to create a beautiful life.

// posted by Alice @ Saturday, December 20, 2008 0 Comments

-Caroline W. Casey, Visionary Activist Astrologer

A few years ago, I attended a talk given by R.J. Stewart at the International Human and Fairy Relations Congress, an event held annually in the eastern Cascades of Washington. R.J. is a Scottish seer, musician, and author dedicated to regenerating the magical core of Western earth-centered spiritual traditions. He was speaking of the breakdown in communications between the fairy kin-dom and modern humanity, or more simply, why we can no longer easily see or communicate with fairies. He attributed this to the change in our imaginal “landscape.”

The gist of the discussion, which I have heard echoed in other talks and conversations at the many congresses I have attended over the years, is that in previous eras the human imagination was much more attuned to the mythical dimensions of Nature, to the perennial stories and characters through which Gaia dreams the world into existence. This archetypal homeland, shared by all the tribes of Creation, has provided a bandwidth of mutual intelligibility, a lingua franca, a commons of communication. A large faction of humanity has since left this commons, broken the agreement of respectful relationships, and left behind the “talking stick,” the heartfelt way to connect to others.

We moderns have created our own imaginal space. It is a skull-enclosed kingdom that plays the movie of our egoic projections, and the “rush world” we’ve created. We’ve got the electronic media buzzing and flashing through our heads, broadcasting the normalcy of a busy, busy hive mind in pursuit of purchased rewards in an advertised reality. We become saturated, overloaded, with these manipulated sounds and images, to the point where they block out and corrode access to the ancestral stratums of our humanity.

It’s very difficult for the fairies to dial into such an environment. Access is made even more challenging by our materialist assumptions that deny they, and others in the devic realm, even exist. This situation has gotten to the point where some fairies have decided to stop believing that humans exist as well! This has all done great damage to the relations between the fairies and the humans, which percolates up into our various ills of disenchantment with the world. The Human-Fairy Relations Congress was founded to address just this issue, to reestablish a positive harmonic between the realms.

As I listened to R.J. speak on the impurities of the modern imagination, I considered its relevance to my extensive work with the great Amazonian plant teacher ayahuasca. Because this decoction (concentrated tea) detoxifies both body and mind as a prelude to its higher visionary gifts, it is best to be as clear and empty as possible before you drink, to save both it, and yourself, time and trouble. The traditional advice for preparing yourself (and taking care of yourself afterwards) is to avoid what are considered to be disruptive influences, such as sex, gossip, pork, alcohol, and spicy, greasy foods.

In recent years the list has come to include such things as television, violent movies, and shopping malls. Why? Because they pollute your imagination, and on the sacred medicine, what is in your head often becomes your visionary experience, or tryp (from “tryp”-tamine). It appears the spirits use the raw material of your imagination to craft much of your experience, and the quality of the materials you provide determines, to degrees, the quality of their co-creative (with you) handiwork.. More simply, you detoxify by confronting what you’ve entered into your head.

I’ll give you an example. On one of my early trips to the Peruvian Amazon to work with the plantas Maestras (Teacher plants), our group stayed in a local hotel the night before leaving for the forest. My friend in the adjoining room flipped through the channels of late night TV, and came across a gay porno channel. She had never seen such a thing, and sat transfixed before it for close to half an hour. Sure enough, two days later, her first dose of ayahuasca took her right into the gay porno realms, which she had to deal with for most of her journey.

Another example from my own experience illustrates how tryps become influenced by the way the imaginal world is “programmed” in the weeks or months prior to a ceremony. I used to teach university classes in between my sojourns to the Amazon, and on one occasion taught a course entitled “Sociology and Philosophy of Religions” (at a Catholic college contracted to a U.S. Military base no less). I used this opportunity to study and delve deeply into the right wing Christian fundamentalist mind, the one so deeply engaged in the war against Nature. I was aided in this by a woman in the front row of the fundamentalist persuasion, who used to shield herself with her bible whenever my lectures became too blasphemous.

Upon arriving in the Amazon soon after, I thought maybe I would be brought to task to work out my relationship with this woman (who complained about me to school officials, and I never got to teach a religion class again). But no – what I found was that I was to be granted what I had “asked for.” That is to say, it appears that the spirits of the University of the Forest decided to teach me about Christian fundamentalism. And in this university you become that of which you seek to know, a kind of extreme empathy. In essence, I became a Christian fundamentalist, an experience that gratefully lasted less than two hours.

The lead up to this shapeshifting included visions of a Puritan figure, complete with Pilgrim hat. I witnessed him making a deal, a high order of black magic, with predatory forces that appear to feed on human greed, that offer the intoxication of power without responsibility. I saw this deal as the beginnings of a 500-year bad tryp for much of humanity. I saw the confluence of these forces as a black metallic dragon, a thoughtform that has been dining on prime cuts of greed, largely served up by the American dream, for centuries.

What better disguise for this thought-form than as … god. This god will give you all that you ask, all the largesse and ego inflation of empire, in simple exchange for you to cease to think for yourself, for you to go into denial of the feeling wound inflicted by raping others of their rights to a peaceful existence. This god will do your thinking, and feeling, for you! And as the adherents of this god submit to its power, the plundering continues, more enemies are created, the world becomes more chaotic, and the winged juggernaut grows more fearsome and uncontrollable.

As this scenario played itself out, I became caught in a maelstrom of fear that followed in its wake. This was compounded by the effects of living in the U.S., with the perpetual cops on the highway, airport security, the drug war, corporate mafia takeovers of government, negative media, and so on. It reached a point where I became psychically unmoored. Adrift in anti-meaning and a growing terror of insanity, I heard the whispers of “nice” people who are “right.” They invite me into their fold and want to save me. Ah, rescuers! – offering me community, support, money, maybe a wife a place in society – a chance to be … a … normal … good and godly American.

I gave into it and was welcomed by all these “right” people into their world. And there I existed for a time, all the while thinking something wasn’t quite right, but not questioning it too much as I was so glad to be at harbor. However, the incongruities grew to the point that I had to question this god, which these people didn’t like at all, and next thing you know, I vomited my way out of there.

Understanding the Imagination

Among the many teachings I carried away from this experience, I learned that when we are put into a crisis, we have essentially two choices. To either: a) use the opportunity to go deeper into self-understanding, the perennial tradition of “know thyself”; or, b) go deeper into denial, and allow other people think for us, which invariably sweeps all the shit that created the crisis under the rug for it to ferment, and create a bigger stink. No blame. Being human isn’t easy, and we are all capable, at some level, of making the choices of those we so readily judge. However, the latter choice brings with it predictably unpleasant karmic consequences, the payback of a Faustian bargain we see in the world today.

These two choices reflect two ways to understand the imagination. The more positive way defines the imagination as the ability of the mind to be creative and resourceful, the function of a spiritual faculty (as in,“Use your imagination”). The more negative one defines it as the part of the mind that subjectively distorts and fantasizes things, the function of an immature ego (as in, “You are imagining things”).

The question then becomes: To what extent is our imaginal world a house of mirrors reflecting our own fragmented self, and to what extent does it tap into the wellspring of Creation, the anima mundi, the Source of our very existence?

This question can be answered by the quality of one’s life, with misery and happiness attending each end of the imaginal spectrum. However, one can be stuck in misery and not motivated to move out of it because the fragmented self in contemporary life is considered normal, and many such normal people have no reference for a higher state of wellbeing. For those of us drawn to the prospect that there must be something better, we would do well to look for answers long exiled from our world, to such forgotten or suppressed things as fairies and gnomes – and plants that are in many ways smarter than us.

For this, we need a more holistic worldview. We must see through the cracks of the 3-D empire and surface the deeper, more inclusive layers of consciousness, where all beings exist and all is interconnected. This, to me, is the ultimate purpose of the human imagination. It is to give expression to the creative matrix of Nature, to allow the whole to become more conscious of itself. As cosmologist Richard Tarnas puts it, “The human imagination is itself part of the world’s intrinsic truth; without it the world is in some sense incomplete.”

This understanding of imagination and its applications to our lives is how we overcome what philosopher Jacob Needleman calls the “foolish realism that sees only facts of the outer world and is blind to the laws of the inner world.” It is how we can make sense of synchronicities, of the whole breaking through the trance of our separative existence. It is how we can understand inspiration, the pregnancy of the world wanting to birth itself through us. It is how we find our voice, by feeling into the collective unconscious and speaking what the community needs to hear. The whole will draw from us what is needed. This is how we come into our own power, into our humanity.

Imaginal Hygiene

It seems that while a rich, fertile imaginal life is a birthright, it has to be claimed – that is to say, the imagination has to be disciplined and developed. The carrier or the medium of imagination is our attention. Attention is energy, one that can be exercised like a muscle. The high arts of its development include the one-pointed concentration that comes of meditation, the energized focus of unselfconscious creative activity, and the merging of awareness and action in the present moment (often known as “flow”). If it is not disciplined or engaged in a healthy fascination, the attention wanders, is wasted, and often co-opted. The rise in Attention Deficit Disorders, the medicalization of a failure of the contemporary imagination and its mythos (as in, “Don’t understand it, medicate it”), is but one example. We find this reflected in the Internet as well, which has a downside of presenting information in a flurry of bits and pieces that likewise scatters our attention and weakens our skills of concentration.

A more visceral way to understand the imagination is as a clear or clogged channel, not unlike your intestines. When you feed yourself with junk ideas, become bloated with ideologies, create chronic constipation from identity fixations, and infest yourself with the parasites of media hype and its addictions, you cannot expect the nourishing flow of creativity to flow easily through your being and blush your life with its radiance. Nor can you expect to easily become as a hollow bamboo for the Goddess to play her tunes, as a hollow bone for the Great Spirit to sound his whistle. No – what is needed is to flush the system and repopulate it with the flora of rich archetypal perceptions and Divine visions. What is needed is imaginal hygiene!

Imaginal hygiene is the inner art of self-managing the imagination, to defend it from forces that compromise, pollute, colonize, shrink, and sterilize it, and to cultivate those that illuminate, expand, and nourish it. I feel knowledge of this and its application is essential to the story of human survival into the 21st century. Its practice is necessary for us to cultivate the visionary clarity and strength needed to achieve the great personal and planetary transformations that increasing numbers of us are being called to perform, for the capacity to transform is in direct proportion to the capacity to imagine.

The Ego Game

A brief overview of the “ego game” will help us understand the root causes of the sullied imagination (or as R.J. Stewart calls it, “impure”) and give us guidance on its proper care and feeding.

The immature ego is self-possessed. This creates a force field of contractions that distort everything in its range, resulting in anxieties, large and small. These are dealt with by reformulating reality to support various defense mechanisms, such as repression, denial, projection, and rationalization. This fills the imagination with memes of neurosis that interact with various other ego-based social agreements, such as basing an economy on scarcity, or national security on domination.

The resulting warps in reality can be understood as growing pains of our self-awareness. It is a form of the timeless “hero’s journey,” whereby the adolescent must leave the family to go out, be tested through ordeals, and then hopefully survive and come home matured and able to serve and revitalize the community. As a young species in the society of Nature, humanity has, to degrees, gone on a journey of separation from the Gaian community. We have been tested by the various ordeals of mind/body identification and the superiority complex that attends it. This crucible has alchemized a supple and expanding self-awareness in many of us that is leading us home.

As we, collectively, appear to be in the crisis phase of this initiatory journey, the ego-game has intensified in recent centuries. It has made us heir to a left-brain bias, which in its radiant, lopsided glory presents us with an exclusively patriarchal, rationalist, Cartesian, reductionist, and mechanistic-dominator model of existence.

Everything else, all that has been cast out of this story of progress – the body, emotions, other cultures, other eras, other forms of life, the animal kin-dom, the earth community, women, children – all become unconscious. Like buried gold, these are the elements that the impoverished imagination must rediscover to regain its wealth.

Meanwhile, the globalization of empire has created even more inventive permutations of the ego game. It has spawned opportunistic forces that feed our fantasy lives to the point of obsession. Whether it be Internet porn, celebrity gossip, social networking, or sanitized news about a war, the imagination becomes severely degraded by the toxic brew of illusory pleasures mixed up by the control systems of empire.

Cycles of Addiction

A step on the path of cleaning up this mythic mess in our heads is to make us more fully conscious of the vicious cycle of addiction symptomatic of the corrupted imagination.

If we compare the healthy imagination to a verdant and diverse forest, its compromised state is equivalent to the aftermath of a clear-cut. The vacant “land” can then be freely colonized, developed by forces with agendas all their own. I saw a telling example of this kind of this invasion when I visited Southwest China in the early 1990s. It is a traditional Chinese custom to protect houses by putting up poster-sized talismans on the front doors. Walking down the cobbled streets of one rural town, I saw posters with fierce, glaring-eyed Taoist deities brandishing swords. As the streets turned to pavement, I noticed that two Mao-hatted army men on horses had replaced the deities. Further down, I saw a poster with three uniformed members of each of the Chinese armed forces standing at attention with arsenals of weapons behind then. Finally, I came across front doors plastered with pictures of red-starred missiles.

A colonized imagination is often installed with denatured replicas of, or references to, its former self, not unlike a housing development that names itself after what it destroys, like Hawk Ridge or Woodland Park. I call this phenomenon the “Las Vegas effect.” It occurs when the sacred is used to promote secular ends, and results in a succession of diminishing returns. It’s the idea that because the sense of wellbeing based on money and its glamour bardos is inherently short-lived, the only way to prolong the satisfaction is to create ever more novel and intensified stimulations (McMansions, reality TV, boob implants, etc.) to get a rise out of ever more numbed senses. Las Vegas, as the temple city of Mammon, is busily copying the world’s sacred sites and mythic icons, including the Gaza pyramids, great Sphinx, Taj Mahal, Camelot, and Oz, in attempts to milk what imaginal juice it can from the originals to impress its visitors, who in turn need ever larger doses of spectacular spectacles to keep them coming back.

The Las Vegas effect permeates contemporary American culture, as we seem to be particularly susceptible to the con. Democracy becomes a front for imperialist aggression, peace is used to justify war (even naming missiles “Peacekeepers”), and an economy is called healthy that destroys the resources that sustain it. In the throes of what eco-theologist Thomas Berry calls a “mythic addiction” to commercial-industrial power, profit, and technological superiority, we continue to burn the bridges to the Divine and content ourselves with bridges to nowhere. Confronted with a spiritually barren culture, a meaningless cosmos, the only self-fulfillment left is to keep buying, to live to shop. The chronic attempt to satiate a spiritual hunger through empty materialism creates a viscous cycle of self-destruction, which begets more self-hatred, more desire for escape, and so it goes round in, thankfully, unsustainable fashion.

Strategies of Empire

In our attempts to keep our imaginal world healthy, and sovereign, it is useful to be aware of the various strategies the empire uses to keep us enmeshed in this cycle.

The first is the danger of the news. There is a kind of psychological warfare perpetrated through the massive amount of manipulation that passes for the news. Huge negative thought-forms are created when great numbers of people sit fascinated with the latest disaster. When we willingly allow our attention to be used to strengthen these thought-forms, we perpetuate the assumptions that the world is a fearful place. We thereby waste the energy of our attention, which could be more gainfully directed towards enlightening our lives and the world.

The second is the danger of advertising. Advertising is a form of spells. Spells comprise the magical power of language and image to effect changes in the world. When, like with advertising, they are used to compel someone to do something, they encroach on free will. They activate whatever of our energies are in the grips of consumer addiction and deplete the energies we have to counter this drive.

Advertising is one of the great tools of the corporate oligarchy to promote their mythology – not just in the commercial sphere, but also in they way they run governments. Essayist Gore Vidal identifies this quite plainly: “There’s no such thing as a war on terrorism. It’s idiotic. These are slogans. It’s advertising, which is the only art form we’ve invented and developed. It’s lies.”

However the mass media may capture your attention, its intent is to program your imagination with the storyline of its sponsors. We all know the narrative. Commentator Bill Fletcher, Jr. sums up a version this way:

“The settlers were heroes; the indigenous people were either heathens or naive primitives, but in either case they were in the way of progress. Slavery was an unfortunate episode that was cleaned up by the Civil War, though it has never been quite clear that the former slaves were ever meant to rule themselves, let alone anyone else. US foreign policy has generally been benign, nearly always driven by either a God-given imperative to improve the world or our sense that the planet would be better off with our version of capitalism and democracy.”

This is the self-image, the reality of the “real Americans” referred to by Sarah Palin, the “real Virginians” referred to by former senator George Allen. And in case you want to question this story, remember the admonition of George Bush at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit: “The American way of life is non-negotiable!”

When we allow ourselves to be implanted with such a pre-packaged narrative, we eventually become dependent on it, as it erodes the creative drive to manifest our own reality. It is not unlike a heroin addiction. Just as the body responds to heroin by slowing the production of endogenous opioids (endorphins) to the point where the body “forgets” how to produce them, an artificial reality conditions us to forget how to create our own. We then become dependent on the “reality in a box,” and at the mercy of the authorities that control the box. The withdrawal from this reality is very difficult when the creative drive to “know thyself” becomes atrophied from neglect. There are in fact few things more dangerous than a person who refuses to change his or her reality story in the face of changes that make the story impossible to maintain.

When our attention is captured, when our inner voice is silenced, a hostage mentality begins to manifest. Just as the “Stockholm Syndrome” tells us that hostages often identify with their captors as a form of psychological survival, we too easily give up our basic human rights, our prospects for a better future and all that would set us free, to be complicit with our captors. Many of us even wear leashes around our neck, called “ties,” as a sign of our subservience. Is it any wonder then that the U.S. has the world’s highest percentage of its population incarcerated? Even John McCain agrees, referring in his Oct 8, 2008 speech to Americans as “my fellow prisoners.”

The fear that underlies the hostage mentality clouds the reception of the energy currents that bring love and beauty into the world. When this happens, we become so pre-occupied with our problems, themselves the projections of a captive imagination, that we become prisoners of our own design. Cramped, confined, frustrated, and confused, we see little but our own distorted interpretations. Fear begets fear and we see terrorists of every variety, everywhere.

Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron tells a story that illustrates this. A woman once told her that her parents had a bought a house in a gated community in Florida for their retirement years. Contrary to expectations, they began to feel less safe then before. They became suspicious of every repair-person or gardener who came through the gates. They quit going to the beach for fear of the uncontrolled possibilities, and reduced their trips outside the gates to a minimum. Similarly, the paranoid post-911 federal administration has done its best to turn the whole country into a gated community, with hundreds of miles of fence building in the works along the Mexican border, the declaration of need for U.S. passports to travel in and out of Canada and Mexico, and stepped up harassment of foreign visitors.

Gardening the Imagination

Being free willed beings, we, of course, do not have to agree to all this – to live in the fear wards of the collective imagination. We can choose to live in the garden! The discovery of this not-so-secret imaginal garden comes as we bring the light of awareness to the unconscious. The world so re-integrated opens up a way of life, a path of personal and cultural renewal. In support of the garden path, what follows are just a few suggestions on how to cultivate an imagination that can flower and fruit in acts of conscious evolution.

We may want to begin with pulling out some of the more invasive weeds. This could involve turning off (or better yet, getting rid of) the TV. A kind of Frankenstein hearth fire burning in so many homes, television is probably the single biggest negative influence on the group mind today. Besides being a prime organ of propaganda, it also shapes children’s imaginations to resonate with a hyperactive reality, leaving them less able to receive and grow with the subtle teachings offered by the world of Nature.

As most of us have grown up with the TV, and similar influences, it is helpful to re-pattern ourselves by spending quality time in untrammeled natural environments. This is where we can recover communication with the normally unheard voices, where we can refine our senses and learn to use them in a more balanced ratio to one another. We live in a society dominated by visual (books and moving screens) and, to a lesser extent, audio information. Touch, smell, and taste are largely undeveloped or, more usually, numbed. With all five senses up and running in interactive relationship, we are restored to a full-spectrum ecology of knowledge and gain a much truer perception of the world. For instance, we are not fooled by things that look or sound good, but don’t feel good. We thereby become more immune to the seductive wares of reality sharks, of the glamour spells cast by the Las Vegas effect.

Working with systems of correspondences (like astrology, the I Ching, or the Tarot) educates the imagination in the language of the transpersonal layers of the psyche. Becoming fluent, or at least conversant, in the soul glyphs of the numinous realms, the apriori realities, allows us to make much greater sense of their expression in the life we see around us in the 3-D world. This helps us to read the world, to become literate in its symbology.

As Nature imparts guidance to humans most directly through visionary experience, it is wise to familiarize oneself with the proper management of altered (or more correctly, restored) states of consciousness. The occasional rite of passage, of death and rebirth, provides us with opportunity to clear away the fixations that keep our imagination anchored to an outworn sense of self. Traditionally, this is done by creating a fluid state of being, not unlike the living soup found in a chrysalis. The human being in this vulnerable state must be held and protected in some kind of safe container. However, in a fear-based culture there is no trust; if no trust, there is no letting go; if no letting go, there is no death to the old self, habits, and ways – which means that there is no rebirth. Without ego surrender, the Source waters of spirit cannot easily flow through us, cannot refresh our souls and renew our lives.

To avoid this path of stagnation, it is important to revision the universe as benevolent, as a great temple, and to live life as ceremony. These are cultural acts. They are inspired by these same Source waters (Its job), and takes perseverance, intelligence, and compassion to enact (our job). Sacralizing the world, however, is necessary for us to restore the relationships needed for us to safely, and gracefully, turn with the seasons of our lives.

Rites of passage happen collectively as well. Unfortunately, they are often reduced to the drunken revelries or staid formalities we associate with national and religious holidays. In contrast, the festivals, fairs, and similar gatherings that appear in the interstices and liminal spaces of mainstream society are often rich in the lost treasures of the imagination, for they allow the exiled archetypes, the forgotten deities, to reappear. These rise in power surges of creativity, for they carry with them the force of a system returning to wholeness, the momentum of Nature rebalancing itself. Such gatherings are significant incubators for new cultural forms, and we would do well to take advantage of them, support their evolvement and, even better, create our own.

Language is among the most important tools we have to tend the garden of our imagination. We want to work with a high ratio of verbs and metaphors, as these are the language of synergy, the magic of growth. Synergy comes when the combined action (a verb) of the parts of any ecology creates something greater than the sum (a noun) of its parts. It draws on the unifying gravity of spirit to effect wondrous, and often unexpected, results: like 1+1=3, or the alchemy of the good marriage. Jungian psychologist James Hillman illustrates something of this when he says, “For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, and boredom. Intimacy fails not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.”

The language of analysis and categorization, on the other hand, is something we need to very careful of, for it excites the ego. We are now collectively crashing our way out of (hopefully) a centuries-long bender of unregulated egoic tendencies that, enabled by the rich analytical language of English, has been chopping up the world in a rampage of self-importance. The world so languaged fuels many nasty habits of culture, such as racism, sexism, and species-ism, and rationalizes the ideologies of separation, such as fundamentalist religions and economies, which tell us to keep doing more of the same. At root, this is all a gratification strategy, for the more people or things one is separated from, the more one can place oneself in a position of being “better than” (or “less than” – the ego doesn’t care, as long as it feels secure in its attachment to who it thinks it is). It’s the divide-and-conquer approach to reality.

In contrast, a healthy imagination is fed by considering what things do have in common – by making connections, and finding similarities. Such an imagination comes to life and breathes with parables, analogies, poetry, songs, and metaphors. When we fertilize our language in this way, we synergize the world. Much like Nature brings emerging properties into being – such as the wetness that comes of combining hydrogen and oxygen, lichen from algae and fungus, and humanity from the biosphere – we, too, can synergize zeitgeists from history, grooves from jamming musicians, and great love through communion with others. These emerge as verbs, processes and relationships, transformations and motion. If we choose to speak more in verbs and surrender to their flow, we will invariably run into the rocky outcrops of nouns so prevalent in the English language.

What, then, to do with all these nouns, with their flow-impeding dualisms? Some we can leave in our wake, while others are being worked on by popular culture. “Story,” “access,” “architect,” “voice,” and “message” are just some nouns that are now converting to verbs. To me, these are more signs that our collective imagination is organicizing – returning to the garden. That words like “e-mail,” “Google,” and “Youtube” have been rapidly verb-ified, is evidence that the process is going virtual, picking up speed.

Work on (re)organicizing our reality is the growing edge of language development. To this beginning, it is useful to mow down some of the mechanistic metaphors we have inherited, such as those that have colonized time (e.g., “The engine of change,” “Time is money”) and seed our speech with those that spiral us back round to Gaian lifeways (e.g., “The tides of change,” “Time is a great healer”).

To move from Machinetime to Dreamtime, it is also useful to make a conscious effort to ascribe life to all things. Name your car; say hello to your computer (my Mac responds with a softly beating light); and ask where things live, rather than where they are. (For some guidance on this, watch episodes of Pee Wee’s Playhouse.) Though some would say this is simply projecting human traits onto things, I suggest this is more about recognizing counterparts of our own traits in other beings, a kind of “Namaste” approach to the world.

The Imaginal Commons

This leads us into the great work of the rebirth of organismic cosmologies, the true home of the spiritually evolving, heart-opening imagination. Also known as eco-cosmologies, cosmologies of resonance, “as above so below” – in these all manner of atom, molecule, element, cell, plant, animal, ancestor, and deity appear less as “others,” and more as participants in the metabolisms of nested “bodies,” not only our own, but regional ecosystems, the earth, the solar system, and beyond. These nested patterns of resonance all work by the same principles, a kind of dharma of the universe that is expounded in all the world’s great scriptures. These scriptures can as well be “read” at their source, in the living world, if one has the imaginal cognition to do so.

I’m defining this cognition as the ability to apprehend form via the vitalistic forces that create it (e.g., sacred geometry, the herbalist “doctrine of signatures”), to know the behavior of things via the spiritual energies that underlie them (e.g., astrology), and ultimately to understand the world completely transparent to its Source. It is a faculty of perception, developed by an imagination that has the vigor to come once again into the great commons of communication, and to engage in council with the tribes of Creation. For those of us who have not yet tuned into the Nature channel in this lifetime, or only cursorily touched into it through various transpersonal encounters, I would like to offer a short discussion of what this re-engagement can look like, and open up to.

The imaginal commons is a place of origin stories, tales of never-ending events. These arise through the Gaian mind as paths of creation that vision, architect, and speak the surface world into existence. The mythic is the actual world behind the real world, the “actuality” that generates “reality.” The stability of the turtle may offer itself as an island; the mercurial intelligence of foxes or river dolphins can teach us to laugh and play tricks; the carrion-eating life of condors gives lessons in recycling; the mind-expansion qualities of peyote reveals itself as a sage; and the flow to a river may connect to the streaming tears of a forlorn woman, carrying away her sorrow. The mythical dimensions of these plants, animals, and elements carry the virtues, the power, the “medicine” of their physical form.

By knowing this internal topology of the world, all manner of divination, healing, sorcery, spiritual illumination, and shapeshifting, can be effected. This is done by linking an imaginative act to the spiritual power of a thing, and then directing it with an intention. This is essentially magic, a science of similarities. It effects change by bringing things together, just as reductionist science effects change by taking things apart. This often involves bringing two things with a mythic affinity (i.e., they come from the same place) together as two strands of an analogy; this to effect remembrance in the one that has forgotten its origins and purpose (and so, is dis-ordered) by connection to the one that retains the memory.

For example, in an act of song healing, the spark of light, the longing for peace buried in so many frozen hearts, can be freed by forging a vision between it and a dawning sun. By singing of this daily event and holding the image of its inevitable rising, the spark of peace will rise as the sun, thawing and melting the heart as it climbs the sky of the mind. There are countless ways to knit the world together through such subtle activism, the potential of metaphor to bridge the world of causality and result, vibration and form.

I feel this magical science of the imagination has to be drawn upon to effect the changes needed in the world. It is a way by which poets and songwriters may reclaim their bardhood to birth stories of renewal, instead of using their talents to dramatize their neuroses. It can also involve scientists and philosophers with work on the higher calling of cosmological unification of the world, instead of feeding the academic industry that has grown up around analyzing irresolvable (and, largely, self-created) dualistic conflicts.

The commons is calling to us, the fairies from the garden are banging on our heads, and though so many of us have lost the imaginal capacity to hear, we are all feeling it at some level. Wiccan earth-activist Starhawk tells of feeling overwhelmed by the escalating crises of the world, of helplessness at the prospect of time running out. And then, in deep meditation a voice came to her, saying, “You’re a witch. Part the curtains of time and plant the seeds of change in that timeless place where change has already happened.”

We, too, need to do our activating from that timeless place, from the commons. Once tuned in, we will find that our ability to imagine our future is inseparable from Gaia imagining hers, and we will gain a direction and power to manifest positive change in the 3-D world. I trust we will find that the darkened times we are in are actually the necessary stimuli for the radical change in consciousness needed to evolve our species into something else. What is that something? Use your imagination!

Image by Creativity+Timothy K, courtesy of Creative Commons license.

// posted by Alice @ Friday, December 19, 2008 0 Comments

The election of Barack Obama not only gave the United States its first African-American president but also its first openly admitting, former pot smoker. Yes, Obama, on many occasions and in humorous ways confessed to his past experimentation with marijuana. In 2004 he spoke out in favor of marijuana decriminalization. During his primary bid, Obama spoke out in favor of drug policy reform and medical marijuana usage, but as he inched closer to the presidency his tune changed. No longer did he mention the word "decriminalization," though at least he continued to support the rights of the sick to be prescribed marijuana by their doctors. Now that he is about to obtain the powers of the presidency, and is assembling his team, our compassionate leader is rumored to be buckling under DC pressure to nominate Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad as his new Drug Czar. Ramstad is a former alchoholic; however, his compassion for the addicted does not move beyond those zombified on state-sanctioned drugs, and his stance on marijuana is just as dangerous.

We still have a chance to influence the president-elect. Spread the message wildly like a virus even to those who you assume may not be open to the idea -- you may be surprised. Represent your convictions and inner truth and flood the Obama Transition Team's website with the message of change we want in our country's drug policy. Below is a short letter if you'd like to copy and paste into the site's provided field; however, personalizing it makes it all the more effectual:

To the President-elect,

During the campaign you spoke out candidly against the United States growing incarceration rate of non-violent drug users. Please embrace the fact that this issue is very much connected to health care reform and our current economic troubles. You fully acknowledge that the War on Drugs is an utter failure and outrageously expensive. Do not forget your stated and heartfelt position on this as you assemble your Health Care team, appoint your Drug Czar officer, and guide the DEA. You understand that drug use is a health issue. Lead us in a new direction with compassion for the rights of addicts, the sick, and non-violent experimenters. Under US Law you got lucky that you were not caught during your innocent, experimental phase with marijuana. Is it fair that others may not be so lucky? You are becoming the President of the United States -- some Americans can not even go to college or find employment for doing the same exact thing you have done, and worse yet some are spending their life behind bars. Prove to us that you believe in equal opportunity for all Americans . . . and not just those that get lucky (like yourself) or have the financial means to protect themselves against these erroneous and racist laws. Do not forget about common people, and who you once were, as you ascend into political power. Make health care and drug policy reform, which are one and the same, a high priority of your administration. The public mainstream opinion on this issue is not being represented in Washington DC right now . . . it is of extreme importance that you appoint receptive, creative, and open-minded thinkers to the positions that will direct these efforts; and not people like Congressman Jim Ramstad whose positions run counter to your inner truth.

Thank you.

// posted by Alice @ Thursday, December 18, 2008 0 Comments

December 18, 2008 The following letter has been sent to the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, carrying the signatures of over 100 U.S. and foreign Latin American scholars. The letter raises serious concerns over that organization’s recently issued highly critical report on the human rights situation in Venezuela and the conduct of its president, Hugo Chavez. It is now being distributed by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs to its mailing list at the request of a number of signatories of that document. COHA’s staff is taking this step (with considerable reluctance) because it feels that it is obliged for any organization committed to social justice and democratic values, to speak out regarding the dispute now raging over HRW’s recent and very controversial report on Hugo Chavez’s human rights performance. Any reservation COHA may have had over taking issue with a sister organization was voided by the egregiously inappropriate behavior exhibited by HRW. Most specifically it was the issuance of this report and the needlessly venomous tone resorted to by HRW’s head for Latin America, Jose Miguel Vivanco. In his charges, HRW’s lead researcher and writer of the report used intemperate language and patently disingenuous tactics to field a series of anti-Chavez allegations that are excessive and inappropriate. It is not a matter that President Chavez and the Venezuelan government are above reproach—far from it. The problem is the presence of a mean-spirited tone and a lack of balance and fair play that characterizes Vivanco’s reportage and his tendentious interpretation of the alleged misdeeds of the Chavez revolution are demonstrably bereft of scale and accuracy.

The failings of Vivanco’s scholarship are strongly contested by the scholars’ letter and the research compiled by a brilliant student of contemporary Venezuela, Dr. Gregory Wilpert. His study, Smoke and Mirrors, can be found by clicking on this link: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3882#report

Vivanco demonstrates an inability to distinguish President Chavez’s bark from his bite; and it is a distortion to characterize the Venezuelan leader as a prime human rights violator, a charge which already has attracted a good deal of notoriety. In other words, Vivanco continuously confuses Chavez’ often shamelessly antic style for his otherwise solid, if brassy, democratic credentials. Of course, COHA’s pages will be opened for debate on these issues.

In continuing their discussion concerning the Vivanco’s HRW initiative regarding Chavez, the prevailing sentiment among many Latin Americanists, including those on COHA’s staff, is that some of Chavez’s critics, like the New York Times editorial board and Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post editorial page, have resorted to an unacceptable use of meretricious pseudo-evidence and naked anti-Chavez spleen to buttress their lashing out against the Venezuelan leader. According to the attached material, they also have resorted to the use of specious arguments and undeniable overkill, rather than a measured assessment and unassailable evidence, to make their case.

Some of Vivanco’s critics have come to believe that rather than making a fair-minded evaluation of Chavez’ undeniable shortcomings, Vivanco mainly has created a straw man and then proceeded to thunderously trash Chavez as a human rights violator, a thesis that the evidence he cites, will not admit. The matter is not so much Vivanco’s professional shortcomings as it is that it would be a shame if Human Rights Watch is permitted to become a replica of Freedom House, when throughout the Cold War the New York-based organization became a warehouse for duplicitous double standards, selective indignation and self-administered histrionics intent on establishing that, almost by definition, right-wing human rights derelictions are less condemnable than those of the left.

Larry Birns (COHA Director) and the COHA Staff Venezuela Scholars Letter

For Immediate Release: December 16, 2008

Contact: Professor Miguel Tinker Salas, 909-607-2920 Dr. Gregory Wilpert, 646-541-7212 Professor Greg Grandin, 347-804-6851 More Than 100 Latin America Experts Question Human Rights Watch’s Venezuela Report

Experts Highlight Exaggerations and Inaccuracies in “Politically Motivated” Study

NEW YORK, NY - In an open letter to the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, over 100 experts on Latin America criticized the organization’s recent report on Venezuela, A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela, saying that it “does not meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy, or credibility.” The signers include leading academic specialists from universities in the United States, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and a number of state universities, and academic institutions in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, México, the U.K., Venezuela and other countries. The letter cites Jose Miguel Vivanco, lead author of the report, saying “We did the report because we wanted to demonstrate to the world that Venezuela is not a model for anyone…” , as evidence of its political agenda. The letter also criticizes the report for making unsubstantiated allegations, and that some of the sources that Human Rights Watch relied on in the report are not credible.

“By publishing such a grossly flawed report, and acknowledging a political motivation in doing so, Mr. Vivanco has undermined the credibility of an important human rights organization,” the letter states.

The letter notes that numerous sources cited in the report – including opposition newspapers El Universal and El Nacional, opposition group Súmate, and a mentally unstable opposition blogger – have been known to fabricate information, making it “difficult for most readers to know which parts of the report are true and which aren’t.” The letter also argues that the Human Rights Watch report makes sweeping allegations based on scant evidence. For example, its allegation of discrimination in government services is based on just one person whose nephew claimed she was denied medicine from a government program.

The full text of the letter follows:

December 15, 2008

Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor New York, NY 10118-3299 USA

To the Board of Directors,

We write to call your attention to a report published by Human Rights Watch that does not meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy, or credibility. The document, A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela, appears to be a politically motivated essay rather than a human rights report. Indeed, the lead author of the report, Jose Miguel Vivanco, stated as much when he told the press just a few days after its publication, “We did the report because we wanted to demonstrate to the world that Venezuela is not a model for anyone…”

Clearly Mr. Vivanco is entitled to his views about Venezuela, but such statements run counter to the mission of Human Rights Watch and indeed any organization dedicated to the defense of human rights. By publishing such a grossly flawed report, and acknowledging a political motivation in doing so, Mr. Vivanco has undermined the credibility of an important human rights organization.

We do not make these charges lightly and we hope you will understand the seriousness of such grave errors in judgment. As scholars who specialize in Latin America, we rely on what are supposed to be independent, non-partisan organizations such as Human Rights Watch for factual information about human right abuses committed by governments and sometimes non-governmental actors. So do many other constituencies, including the press, government officials, and the public. It is a great loss to civil society when we can no longer trust a source such as Human Rights Watch to conduct an impartial investigation and draw conclusions based on verifiable facts.

The report makes sweeping allegations that are not backed up by supporting facts or in some cases even logical arguments. For example, the report’s most important and prominent allegation is that “discrimination on political grounds has been a defining feature of the Chávez presidency.” (p. 1) Yet the report does not show, or even attempt to show, that political discrimination either increased under the current government (as compared to past governments), or is more of a problem in Venezuela than in any other country in the world.

What is the evidence offered for such a broad generalization?

“In most cases, it was not possible to prove political discrimination—with rare exceptions, citizens were given no grounds at all for the actions taken—yet many were told informally that they were losing their jobs, contracts, or services for having signed the referendum petition [to recall President Chávez]. For example, in one case reported to Human Rights Watch, a 98-year-old woman was denied medicines that she had long received from a state development agency because, as her family was told by the program secretary, she had signed the referendum petition.” (p.21) (Italics added).

Taking services first, the above paragraph refers to an allegation that one Venezuelan citizen was denied medicines for political reasons. Amazingly, this is the only alleged instance of discrimination in government services cited in the entire 230-page report. In other words, the Barrio Adentro program has provided health services to millions of poor Venezuelans each year since 2003, and the authors found one allegation (as reported to the authors in a phone conversation with the nephew of the alleged victim) of discrimination involving one person. On this basis the authors make the sweeping generalization that “Citizens who exercised their right to call for the referendum—invoking one of the new participatory mechanisms championed by Chávez during the drafting of the 1999 Constitution—were threatened with retaliation and blacklisted from some government jobs and services.” (p. 10, italics added).

This is outrageous and completely indefensible. We do not expect a report of this nature to adhere to rigorous academic standards, but there have to be some standards.

With regard to employment, there is no doubt that there were cases where individual government officials discriminated on the grounds of employees’ political beliefs. (There were also cases of discrimination and firing of pro-government employees in the private sector, which the report mentions in a parenthesis (p.10) and does not investigate). However, the report does not show that there was any organized or systematic effort to purge the government of anti-government employees. Indeed, as anyone who is familiar with the government of Venezuela knows, after nearly ten years since the election of President Hugo Chávez, the civil service is still loaded with employees who are against the government.

The report does not demonstrate whether the firings that occurred, in both the public and private sector, were simply the result of individual actions in a highly polarized society in which the opposition spent at least four years (according to opposition leader Teodoro Petkoff) trying to dislodge the government though a military overthrow. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine that many government officials would, in such a climate, be apprehensive about employing people who are against the government. The report does not consider this possible cause of observed discrimination. Of course this would not justify such discrimination, but neither would it support the sweeping allegations of this report, which attempts to argue that the government is using its control over employment in the public sector in order to repress political opposition.

Indeed, the report’s most serious allegation of discrimination in employment concerns a case where discrimination was not based on political partisanship, but in regards to unlawful subversion that no government would, nor should tolerate: “In the aftermath of the oil strike, PDVSA purged its ranks of thousands of workers who participated in the strike.” (p.29). But as anyone who was in Venezuela at the time can attest, this was quite openly a strike to topple the government, which the opposition had succeeded in doing less than eight months earlier. The oil strike devastated the economy – which lost 24 percent of GDP in the resulting recession — and came close to achieving its goal a second time.

The report implies that public employees, in this case oil workers should have the right to strike for the overthrow of an elected government; we do not support that view. It is especially dubious when that group of employees makes up less than one percent of the labor force, and is using its control over a strategic resource – oil revenues made up nearly half of government revenues and 80 percent of export earnings — to cripple the economy and thereby reverse the result of democratic elections. The view that such a strike is “a legitimate strike” is not, to our knowledge, held by any democratic government in the world.

But most importantly with regard to the credibility of the HRW report, it is profoundly misleading for the authors to argue that “political discrimination is a defining feature” of a government that is not willing to risk the continuing employment of people who have carried out such a strike.

The report’s overwhelming reliance for factual material on opposition sources of dubious reliability also undermines its credibility and makes it difficult for most readers to know which parts of the report are true and which aren’t. The most cited source with regard to political discrimination is the newspaper El Universal. This is not only a stridently opposition newspaper, it has also, for the years during which it is cited, repeatedly fabricated news stories. For example, in a typical fabrication of the type deployed to libel government officials, El Universal reported that then Interior Minister Jesse Chacón had purchased a painting for $140,000. This turned out to be completely false. There are many examples of fabrications in El Universal, as well as other opposition sources cited by the report.

We find it troubling that a report on Human Rights depends heavily on unreliable sources. Would a report on human rights in the United States be taken seriously if it relied so heavily on Fox News, or even worse The National Enquirer? Indeed, this report ventures even further into the zone of unreliable sources and cites a mentally unstable opposition blogger as a source. (p. 20, footnote 30). This is a person who indulges not only in routine fabrications and advocates the violent overthrow of the government, but also has publicly fantasized about killing his political enemies and dumping the bodies from helicopters into the slums, and torturing others by “pour[ing] melted silver into their eyes.”

A disturbing thing about the report’s reliance on these sources is that it indicates a lack of familiarity with the subject matter, or perhaps worse, a deep political prejudice that allows the authors to see most of these sources as unproblematic. Indeed, there is only one passing indication that the newspapers El Universal and El Nacional, are opposition newspapers, and it is a reference to the past , which the reader might therefore reasonably judge to be irrelevant. On the other hand, the report refers to the newspaper Últimas Noticias as “largely sympathetic to Chávez and his government” and “a generally pro-government tabloid.” (p.70, p.89) This is a newspaper that prints articles that are harshly critical of the government on a daily basis, and according to polling data in Venezuela is seen as vastly more independent than any other major newspapers. The authors’ view of the Venezuelan media seems to mirror the view of the right-wing Venezuelan opposition, or the U.S. Right’s view of the “liberal media” in the United States.

Such profound prejudice, in which events are interpreted overwhelmingly through the lens of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, is apparent throughout the document: for example when the authors describe groups that helped organize and supported the April 2002 coup as “new organizations dedicated to the defense of democracy and the rule of law.” (p. 203).

But the worst thing about the report’s reliance on opposition sources like El Universal, El Nacional, or Súmate, is that these sources have engaged in enough fabrications as to make them unreliable sources for factual material.

In its discussion of the media, the report also paints a grossly exaggerated picture of reality, while presenting some valid criticisms of existing law and practice. It is acknowledged in footnotes buried deep within the text that the opposition still dominates both broadcast and print media (footnote 184, p.74; footnote 181, p.73). Yet the government is reproached for “having significantly shifted the balance of the media in the government’s favor” by creating pro-government TV stations since the 2002 coup, when “Chávez faced an almost entirely hostile private media.” This is an odd position for a human rights organization to take. While it would be nice if the government could create TV stations that had no bias whatsoever, isn’t it better to have some competition in the media – from left-leaning, pro-government stations – than to have a right-wing, anti-democratic, private monopoly? Especially when that right-wing monopoly had, as never before in world history, organized a military coup against a democratically elected government and led a devastating oil strike that nearly toppled the government a second time? Do the authors consider this type of media monopoly to be more protective of human rights than a media that is still dominated by the opposition but also presents some other sources of information?

The report refers repeatedly to the danger of “self-censorship,” but does not provide any examples of this actually happening. This is a major weakness in its argument, since it is not that difficult to find examples of self-censorship in response to government pressure in, for example, the U.S. media.

In the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, the Sinclair Broadcast Group of Maryland, owner of the largest chain of television stations in the U.S., planned to show a documentary that accused candidate John Kerry of betraying American prisoners during the Vietnam War. The company ordered its 62 stations to show the film during prime-time hours just two weeks before the election. Nineteen Democratic senators sent a letter to the U.S. F.C.C. http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200410/101504.html calling for an investigation into this proposed intervention by Sinclair in the campaign, and some made public statements that Sinclair’s broadcast license could be in jeopardy if it carried through with its plans. As a result of this pressure, Sinclair backed down and did not broadcast the film.

This example is directly relevant to the HRW report on Venezuela, because it shows that, in order to have a broadcast license in the United States and other democratic countries, the licensee is expected to follow certain rules and not to become a major political actor, e.g. by intervening in elections. As Vivanco himself has noted, “lack of renewal of the contract [broadcast license], per se, is not a free speech issue.” Yet this report cites the denial of RCTV’s broadcast license renewal as a simple, and indeed its primary, example of the Venezuelan government’s alleged attack on free speech. It does not seem to matter to the authors that the station had participated in a military coup and other attempts to topple the government and would not receive a broadcast license in any democratic country.

The report even uses innuendo to imply that the government is to blame for attacks on journalists, which have occurred against both opposition and pro-government journalists. The authors state that the opposition TV station Globovisión “has received warning letters from CONATEL because of the political tone of its reporting, it has been frequently refused entry to government press conferences, and its reporters and cameramen have been physically attacked and threatened by Chávez supporters.” (p. 117) The authors provide no evidence that the government in any way condoned or supported such alleged attacks.

The major media in Venezuela to this day are practically unmatched in this hemisphere, and indeed most of the world, for their vehement, unfettered, and even vicious, libelous, and violence inciting attacks on the government . While the HRW report presents a number of valid criticisms of existing law and a few cases of unwarranted intervention by government officials, it serves no legitimate purpose to hide or distort the actual state of Venezuela’s media.

The same can be said for the rest of the report, including its treatment of the judiciary. HRW has an obligation to criticize any laws or practices of the Venezuelan government that it sees as endangering human rights, and we welcome the valid criticisms that it raises in its report. But Mr. Vivanco has gravely undermined the credibility of Human Rights Watch by producing a report that, by his own admission, is politically motivated, as well as grossly exaggerated, based on unreliable sources, and advertises broad and sweeping allegations that are unsupported by the evidence.

We therefore request that HRW retract and revise its report so as to produce a credible document. Mr. Vivanco should also retract his remarks as to the political motivation for the report.

We would be glad to meet with you to discuss this issue further, and would welcome a debate with Mr. Vivanco in any public forum of his choosing, should he be willing to defend his report in public.

We hope you will consider these requests with the seriousness they deserve. Our letter is not meant as a justification for the Venezuelan government’s decision to expel the authors of the HRW report from the country. Human rights are too important to be used as a political football, as has so often been the case when Washington singles out another government as an enemy state. This is why we depend on civil society organizations for independent, non-partisan, non-political reporting and investigation.

In the spirit of sharing our concerns with our Spanish-speaking colleagues, we are having this letter translated to be circulated in Latin America.

Sincerely,

// posted by Alice @ Thursday, December 18, 2008 0 Comments

Some things are just plain wrong. One of them is the automatic 2.8 percent — or $4,700 each — pay hike members of Congress are due to receive early next year unless American citizens convince them otherwise — and quickly!

On Jan. 22, 2008, Reps. Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) attempted to prevent this Congressional “cash grab” by introducing H.R. 5087 as a measure “To prevent Members of Congress from receiving the automatic pay adjustment scheduled to take effect in 2009.”

Today, as the nation sinks deeper and deeper into an economic crisis, H.R. 5087 appears to have little to no chance of passage. The most-supported bill among three introduced to address this Congressional “cash grab,” it has only 34 co-sponsors — far short of the 218 votes necessary for passage.

While the $2.5 million cost of the raise might seem small when stacked up against the multi-billion-dollar bailouts already enacted (financial industry) and those still under consideration (Big Three Automakers), the Congressional pay raise costing taxpayers roughly $2.5 million stinks on principle alone.

That’s why American citizens — please, no illegal immigrants need chime in on this one — need to take action NOW and convince their elected officials otherwise.

If you’re as disgusted as I am about this Congressional abuse of taxpayers, CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS in Washington, D.C., and give them a piece of your mind. Threaten them with your vote. Say whatever it takes to convince them to turn off the spigot spewing cash their way.

Hat tip: The Senior Citizens League

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, December 17, 2008 0 Comments

I’ve always believed that Source/God/Universe is not neutral. My background as a former nurse really has provided proof positive of that for this ’show me’ girl. The body is so lovingly aligned with balance or what is known as homeostasis. There is nothing neutral about that and so it seems to me that everything in nature is orchestrated to seek balance. What else causes that except a loving, benevolent Universe that has our back. Frankly I’m not sure how I reconcile that with the Law of Attraction which Abraham states is neutral. For one, the so called neutral LOA does not account for the existence of absolute divine grace. So it would seem that there are other factors that surpass neutral laws.

I was so excited to actually run across a quote from one of Seth’s deleted sessions stating that God is not neutral. I include it below. Note that Ruburt is the name and male gender that Seth assigned Jane Roberts. Love, Bethie

Seth: “To begin with, a few comments about some thoughts of Ruburt’s.

He is quite correct: the universe is not neutral.

In the terms in which you understand the word, there is a God.

Obviously I am not speaking of a personification of a Superperson.

For that matter, in the terms of your language, and intellectual concepts, you will probably have to take it for granted that you cannot understand the nature of such a God.

You will know God’s actions, however, through the manifestations of the universe.

That God is not simply neutral energy, for example.

The universe is supportive.

There is a force, if you prefer, that actively loves each individual, each consciousness, and actively works to help that consciousness attain the fulfillment inherent in its nature.

Despite all misinterpretations, therefore, the universe is caring, and so is nature.

The impetus toward creativity is a loving one, and the natural processes in both body and mind as lovingly directed.

The body even lovingly seeks to follow its own nature, and is lovingly directed to do so…

…I realize you are not living in an ideal world, but we are giving that world ideas that can vastly increase peoples’ understanding.”

Deleted session, August 20, 1977

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, December 17, 2008 0 Comments

We aspire to a world community without enemy, without war. Man is not enemy of man except through lies of the State and State of the lie. Once violence is chosen as method, falsehood becomes principle. Our direct eyewitness experience shows that the State owes its existence to violence, and maintains itself by lies, coercion, and war.

Stateless society is essentially need-based, and not greed-based. It is essentially self-protecting and self-regulating, without institutionalized compulsion. So we are not going to be governed, knowing that to be governed is to be coerced and violated. We shall govern ourselves.

We must evolve to a higher level of consciousness, or die out on a wasted earth. We hold that Liberty with self-rule is a better way to that peace which is so essential for survival of the human species.

The battle is for the mind of man. The path is made by walking. We are taking steps. These words mark our footprints. We try to live by respect for life. We strive for a life that harms none.

We are declaring our birthright of individual liberty, free of State coercion. Our right to life includes the right to respect the lives of others, for we cannot live without society. Respect for life demands the right of non-cooperation in the tax-financing of State murder. We are advocates of non-political means to achieve freedom. We shall be free.

We feel that mankind is facing a moral and spiritual crisis, of which ecological, social and political problems are but symtoms of a deeper cause. We are working for solutions. We welcome ideas and participation. May you live long, live free.

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, December 17, 2008 0 Comments

From: http://urbansurvival.com/simplebots.htm

In June 2001 I began to correspond with a reader of my website who said he was willing to share access to a promising new web technology, on the condition that I protect his identity. The person related that he had been a very senior programmer with a software company in the Pacific Northwest (you can guess which company, right?) and besides being a SQL ace, he was also heavily into linguistics and a language called Prolog, which is more like an artificial intelligence language than anything else.

I was skeptical, to be sure, but a few days after we began the email exchange of ideas, he sent me a program he had written that allows a computer to be turned into speed reading tool. It was based on rapidly displaying individual words on a computer screen. He said this was a technology that he had developed and sold for a while on the Internet. He also explained how the development rights to the technology had been sold to a company ( www.ebrainspeed.com ). In essence, after looking up the patent he held for the technology, I was convinced that this fellow was for real and might be on to something with the method of looking for linguistic shift on the Internet as a tool to forecast future events.

He described how technology worked. A system of spiders, agents, and wanderers travel the Internet, much like a search engine robot, and look for particular kinds of words. It targets discussion groups, translation sites, and places were regular people post a lot of text.

When a "target word" was found, or something that was lexically similar, the web bots take a small 2048 byte snip of surrounding text and send it to a central collection point. The collected data at times approached 100 GB sample sizes and we could have used terabytes. The collected data was then filtered, using at least 7-layers of linguistic processing in Prolog, which was then reduced to numbers and then a resultant series of scatter chart plots on multiple layers of Intellicad ( http://www.cadinfo.net/icad/icadhis.htm ). Viewed over a period of time, the scatter chart points tended to coalesce into highly concentrated areas. Each dot on the scatter chart might represent one word or several hundred.

To define meanings, words or groups of words have to be reduced to their essence. You know how lowest common denominators work in fractions, right? Well the process is like looking for least common denominators among groups of words.

The core of the technology therefore is to look at how the scatter chart points cluster - condensing into high "dot density" areas which we call "entities" and then dissolving or diffusing over time as the entities change. Do a drill down into a dot and you get a series of phrases...

Our first published work in the area occurred in early July of 2001 and is available at http://www.urbansurvival.com/tip.htm.

What becomes obvious when reading about the technology is that it sometimes reads a bit like the I Ching (the Chinese Book of Changes) because the technology doesn't come out and say "go look for a terrorist attack over there" What it does is gives phrases that would be associated with how people talk about an event, or more accurately, how they change their speech to reflect their thought processes because of an event (after).

The web bot technology apparently taps in to an area of preconscious awareness. It's here that you run into the ramifications of Dean Radin's work at the Boundary Institute and the work of the Princeton Global Consciousness Project - both of which Art has talked about on his show.

The Global Consciousness Project registered what appears to have been a disturbance in "the force" or the regularly orderly operation of life associated with 9/11: http://www.boundaryinstitute.org/randomness.htm. Supposed "random" numbers generated all over the world appeared to become less random immediately prior to 9/11.

The second point is contained in Dean Radin's paper at http://www.boundaryinstitute.org/articles/timereversed.pdf ("Time-reversed human experience: Experimental evidence and implications"). The mind-bending evidence in Radin's work is that in a laboratory, people begin to react to an event as early as 6-seconds before it takes place. In other words, if you are about to show someone a horribly grotesque picture of something, they will already be physically reacting to it before the picture actually becomes visible. Up to 6-seconds, or so, and in a lab! In quantum terms, Radin's work demonstrates that people are physically able to perceive 6-seconds into the future.

Now let's flip back to September of 2001: So there I was, having just completed a sales & marketing job in San Francisco the previous week, wondering was the ABM Missile test the "world changing event" - or was there something else - and we all know that it was something else - the 9/11 terrorist attack.

The second web bot posting forecast an attack on house or assembly - but again, it was I Ching-like in wording.

Also in this timeframe, we responded to a Defense Department Broad Area Announcement - and tried to distill the concepts we've been discussing into a single PowerPoint slide. The project didn't receive funding, although we recently received a note from a venture capital group associated with government projects asking if our information could be kept on file.

Then we forecast an attack to occur the day of a commemorative event. That was the crash of American 587, and although that may eventually be blamed on excessive movement of the aircraft's vertical stabilizer, what people thought at the time was it was another terrorist attack. http://www.urbansurvival.com/webbot2.htm., There is a fair amount of noise in the outputs because we haven't had the resource to build filtering systems.

We forecast many attributes of the D.C. sniper case. This was significant because not only did we get the Army connection right, but there was also discussion of familial dysfunction. This was at a time when it was thought there was only one person involved - and the web bots got right that there was more than one. In fact, one reader sent in the right Army divisional insignia after reading the output. See http://www.urbansurvival.com/bot4.htm.

More recently, in January of 2003 the web bots were going on and on about a "maritime disaster" - which didn't make any sense to us, until the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster hit. Columbia wasn't a gem of the ocean, it was a space ship. We think of web bot outputs like holding up a sheet of paper with several hundred pinholes in it - and trying to guess what's on the other side by looking through pinholes, but just for an instant.

The most recent run we did was posted in July 2003, and was a mission-specific run designed to assess where the next terrorist attack on the U.S. might come from. As you read the following, please appreciate that the words in black were published about 50 days before the northeast power outage and that when the outage occurred, again everyone thought it was a terrorist attack: The blue text is the closeness of fit after the fact:

The [Wahabi] entity is seen as preparing an attack on a site with aspects of (South) [Niagara power flows where?] with specific references to a place where the (wood) in the (earth) {grows} {upward [perfect fit with the Falls] }. Near by will be an (energy) {plant} [bingo!] filled with {tremendous} (effort/work) [Yup!]. The target chosen for the entity has associations with a (vertical wall/ascent) [more Falls refs] near which is a (low land) or (low lying area) [ the water flows this way] from which there rises (power) [no doubt about it] and (influence/confluence) [like the confluence of the disparate pieces of the river at the Falls?] . This latter may suggest a site where a power plant sits at the base of a cliff or naturally occurring wall [ You're kidding, can we be any more precise than this?} that has the power lines rising to it. Further, there is a form of a (departure) {to the south} close by which suggests some form of transportation hub [the river was a transportation artery historically] with a main focus to the south which lies close to the chosen target [which we assume to be NYC] . Other details suggest that near to the chosen target, is a place where (heaps) of {small things} (rise upward) to some height. The number of both aspects and attributes which related to wood, and woods, and copse, suggest that there is some form of natural woodland setting near to the target. [Yes, it's a generally woody area!] This woodland is near an area where (rivers) {congregate}[Direct hit!] and the (earth) {waters} (flow together) which suggests an estuarine environment [Clear enough?]. There are also references indicating a (waste) {flow} or disposal is nearby [Turbine waste gates?] . This (waste) aspect has the attributes of {dismal} and {abysmal} as well as attributes indicating a {great} (stink/smell) [At about 10PM EDT CBC News reported cities were dumping untreated sewage into rivers in the affected area due to the power outage!].

On Saturday morning after the event, at the suggestion of several readers who had read the entire web bot work, here are some additional points of fit (again in blue) with the black text being the July early July output.

Further, there are references to (empty city) nearby the target. [One reader suggested that an electrical switchyard, with rows and rows of transformers, looks like an "empty city".] Perhaps an area of industrial park which is expected to be deserted at the time of the attack, or could even reference abandoned buildings, though the attributes are not so clear as to be able to make a definitive interpretation. [Who would have interpreted a switch yard 2 months ago?] However, that said, there are a number of words referring to (brakes), and (brake noise) and (dead man switch) and (switches/changes) [Now we're back on track, except maybe we should have gotten "breaker" rather than "brakes" - still, close enough, don't you think?] which would indicate a near by train yard. [Oh yeah, they have cranes on tracks to move the heavy gear around generating stations.] As the aspects bring up noise of the (brakes) as being able to be heard from the site of the attack, this would suggest that a busy train yard is close enough to contribute to the majority of the on-site noise. [Or you can hear the falls as they "break" over the top...] There are also some small number of references which can be interpreted towards petroleum refineries.

In addition to the (empty city) we find a number of aspects relating to (royalty) such as (king) and (courtier) which have attributes which doubly modify both these aspects as well as a primary aspect of (Mount) as in mountain or large hill. [ No question here, Niagara is the "king of falls" and it's a named place with a named "hill". I need to also mention that King's Point Ontario is very nearby.] Being linked to the aspects of (royalty) suggests that there is a named hill involved with the site which has a local connotation with (kings). There are also indicators that a (community) {project} is nearby which is associated with (social status). [This is really curious - as most people go to Niagara Falls to celebrate their honeymoons - a big change in "social status", right?] This (community) {project} has an association with (rhythmic motion) and a {centered} (wall). [Or, centered around the falls, as it turns out.] This latter could be referencing a tidal or sea wall, though this is merely a guess at this stage. [Amazing call, huh?] There are some references suggesting that the chosen target site is very noisy. [Yeah I'd call the site noisy too...]

Further, the entity suggests that there are (steps) involved with the attack, though these are not steps as in stairs but rather are to be interpreted as a many small movements or actions which will be necessary for the attack to be successful. This further suggests that the [Wahabi] entity is planning a significant action which will involve some level of coordination with many parts. [Time will tell on this part.] The other references within this data set further amplify this idea in that the aspects return to the idea of (step by step), (small incremental movements) {bring success}. Oddly, a large component of these aspects include other aspects relating to (drunkenness) or (inebriated). These are modified and amplified by references to (not sober), (stay sober), and (advancing intoxication). This data set includes attributes indicating some need to avoid speed or haste in that the attributes include {step by step}, {steady progress}, (do not) {overleap}.

A series of curious references to (blind) and (darkness) also are part of the attack plan as seen by the model. [Darkness? Like the power going out???!!!] These references also include aspects of (blindly deluded), (tricked), (exhaustion), (blind impulse), (fear of darkness), (leap) {into the dark} and other aspects relating to lack of sight. [Again, absolutely correct: on Thursday evening NYC was basically blinded, tricked and exhausted by the event!]

The sample size for this run was unusually small - and that may have helped get the fit so good. It's hard telling.

Where does the technology stand today? Both Cliff and I are not able to pursue the project further because of personal and economic reasons. The personal reason is that to sit down and work through even the distilled data is a terribly taxing process on Cliff. Picture working on word riddles for a week of 14-hour days... it's very difficult to do. Especially when there's no "right answer" therefore everything has to be checked and rechecked.

Then there's the cost. Bot runs are one-off programming events. So you can spend a month or so building the mission and deploying it. Once deployed you need serious bandwidth - T-1 or better to collect the data and then you need lots of server space to run the Prolog on. This type of processing is not easily adaptable to shared computing like SETI - and developing that would take time anyway.

We also know that the Chinese have a similar project - because we have swept their source code during our runs. The difference is they are doing larger data samples.

We apologize that our data is not as neat and as well preserved as one might hope. Part of that is because I've been through two computers since we started this, and Cliff has been through a couple of ISP's...some of the early files were lost, although most of the outputs were logged in to a dot mil computer so timestamps are available - and some of the information was sent upstream within the military, although we were probably looked at as a couple of software "wingnuts".

Do we have a theory of how it works? Sort of. It's like changes in language precede large emotional events. The larger the emotional impact of an event, the more advance notice the bots seem to give.

If you picture some pin holes in a piece of paper - and you imagine being able to look through each pinhole for a fraction of a second - with the objective of seeing the future on the other side of the paper - that's where the web bots are today.

Ever since Plato's Allegory of the Cave, people have sensed that odd things go on at the archetype level of consciousness. The web bots are an attempt to use the high data density of the internet to sample language and seek linguistic shifts that we believe may precede events. The initial results suggest that language shifts on a macro level begin to occur 45 to 90 days before society-changing events. We believe we've demonstrated, most recently with the Northeast Power Outage forecast, that changes in language do indeed precede events - on a far grander scale than Dean Radin's work first suggested - and these language changes are available by sampling routine internet traffic.

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, December 17, 2008 2 Comments

Members of the Stop CAFTA Coalition, along with allies in Central America and the Dominican Republic, have compiled a report that describes the trends and impacts of the first three years of the U.S.-Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). The report, titled "DR-CAFTA: Effects and Alternatives” is the third in a series of reports by the Stop CAFTA Coalition; the first was published in September 2006 and the second in September 2007.

"We believe that the results of CAFTA demonstrate the failure of 'free' trade and justify a definitive split with this model by the incoming Obama Administration," said Burke Stansbury of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), a member of the coalition. "Not only should the Democratic Congress reject pending agreements such as the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, but the party in power should take this opportunity to introduce a new trade policy based on human rights, and economic, social and environmental sustainability."

According to Elliott Jones at the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, an editor of the report, "The articles included in the report show that the negative impacts of CAFTA in these countries are not simply 'growing pains,' or the inevitable transitional problems associated with altering a country’s economic system; they are fundamental flaws in the economic theory that drives CAFTA and will likely not improve."

The agreement is still new in many of the signatory countries, but certain trends which have emerged throughout the monitoring process have either continued or been exacerbated. Patterns of growing inequality and ongoing poverty within the signatory countries have only become more extreme, contrary to the promises of supporters of the agreement. According to Katherine Hoyt of the Nicaragua Network, "unless there is a significant shift in the economic model, employment opportunities will continue to be scarce, agricultural prices will continue to fall, the poor will become poorer, and immigration will increase."

The report also illuminates other trade agreements, either proposed or already in effect that relate to Central America and provide possible alternatives to CAFTA's model. ALBA is a cooperative trade agreement that focuses on development and mutually beneficial policies, eschewing the false promises of neoliberalism. The Association Agreement with the European Union shows less promise, but allows for a semblance of cooperation among the Central American countries it affects, and includes clauses relating to cooperation and sustainability, which are missing entirely from CAFTA.

The report concludes with a "Pledge for Trade Justice" developed by the coalition which calls for, among other things: democratic participation and transparency during trade negotiations; provisions that work to protect the dignified lives of small farmers, indigenous communities, and women; strengthened core labor and environmental standards; provisions permitting debt cancellation; and a guarantee that public services like health care, education and potable water will remain public and accessible to poor communities.

According to Jennifer DeLury Ciplet of the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA), "The coalition will work with our partners in Central America to continue challenging privatization, mega-projects, and other devastating policies associated with CAFTA, with the hope of ultimately pushing the Obama Administration to suspend this failed agreement and bring about an alternative."

Via Upside Down World, Dec. 8

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, December 17, 2008 0 Comments

Creative visualization is simply:

1. Choosing a thought of something I would like to experience. 2. Deliberately thinking that thought until it invokes hopeful emotion in me. 3. Bringing this thought and feeling to mind several times a day, with the intent that I will thus attract the envisioned scenario to me.

HOW DOES A THOUGHT BECOME A THING? In the Jane Roberts’ books, Seth says “When we think a thought, electromagnetic energy units (EEUs) are generated. When we concentrate on an idea or desire, the intensity of the EEUs is so great that a portion of our own consciousness is actually imparted to the form. The greater the intensity of our emotion relative to that thought, the sooner the mass (the physical form corresponding to our thought) enters our experience.”

I keep an ongoing list of things I want to achieve in my life, and I am always adding to it. Every day, I do a few minutes of creative visualization for every item on my list, imagining it and doing it in my mind with the preferred outcome, so the thought comes easier next time. I have learned that the more familiar I am with thinking a particular thought, the closer I am to achieving it. As Abraham-Hicks says, “when it seems like the having of it is the next logical step, it will be”.

Every day, have an intent in mind and energize it with thought several times daily. Create the scenario in your mind of what you would like to experience, then envision fully experiencing it, with full emotion and appreciation during the visualization. Do this several times daily, a few minutes at a time.

Creative visualization is a powerful technology and it is documented in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Gregg Braden in his book The Isaiah Effect, calls it “a lost form of prayer”; a form where you bring to your conscious awareness - with full feeling and emotion - the knowing that what you desire has already been granted. See http://www.greggbraden.com/newsletter/2000.html

HOW DO YOU FOCUS INTENT? Focused intent? What does that mean? You focus your intent when you are thinking of something you’d like to see happen in the future and going over it in your mind until you are actively imagining it happen. You know you are focused intently when you begin to emotionally feel as if it is taking place. You are focused intently when you begin to have quick glimpses and insights from an observer’s standpoint. Focused intent is the basis for creative visualization as well and we do it all the time whether we think we do or not.

HOW DO I KNOW I’M DOING IT RIGHT? A lot of people think there’s some big involved procedure, some specific correct technique for things like meditation, creative visualization, “seeing” in your mind’s eye or attracting what you want. The truth is, it’s easier than you think. Your intent has the most to do with it. If it is your intent to sit in meditation and gain insight, just bringing those words to mind and saying them to yourself sends out a big signal which the Universe responds to. Just taking the time to sit quietly and bring some thoughts to mind will activate your intuition and call forth creative ideas on all areas of your life. You don’t have to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of an altar to meditate or visualize, unless that particularly inspires you to stay focused. It does me.

IS ONE TECHNIQUE BETTER THAN ANOTHER? You can stand at your driveway while watering the yard at sundown and spend a few moments thinking what the perfect world would be like, what it would feel like. What would the perfect job feel like? Or the perfect relationship? How would it be if the whole family got along great? What kind of things would you do together? How would it feel if you were robustly healthy and woke up each day with lots of vitality, and plenty of money to spend? What activities would you want to do? You don’t have to have a special chair and sit in it 20 minutes twice a day in order to meditate or do a little creative visualization, or “prepaving” as Abraham-Hicks calls it. Just spending a little time sending a few thoughts ahead every day is a powerful technique in itself. A little conscious, focused thought goes a long way in smoothing the ruffles of a busy life, as well.

MAKE 2009 YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL YEAR YET If you didn’t reach your highest potential in 2008, you might want to do things a little differently this year. Spend a little time each day thinking about what you’d like to be doing a few years down the road. Make sure to schedule in plenty of recreation time in 2009, since it’s when we’re relaxed and having fun that we are in a receptive mindset to come up with lots of creative ideas. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and burnt out, if you feel you don’t have 5 minutes in the day free to yourself, that’s a good sign that you need to take a week off. Trust me on this one. If you think you can’t afford to take a week off work without pay, trust me that you will over time earn back much more than that week’s salary just from the relaxation and ideas and insights that can come during that week.

SETTING YOUR INTENTION FOR THE NEW YEAR If you’ve got some intentions for the upcoming year, good for you ~ you’ve already begun to create your own reality. If you haven’t come up with any intentions yet, don’t beat yourself up for it. A few intentions might be to read a little inspirational writing of a spiritual nature every day; contemplate what you’d like your next move to be on the career ladder; consider who do you know that has a job you’d like and who has a lifestyle you’d like? What differences do you see between you and them? A good intention might be to add vitality to your body as you get a little older. Find something fun to do that gets you out of breath and has you moving your arms and legs a lot. I know you still have that old frisbee around, so take it out and toss it at sunset every day. Put a basketball hoop up. A good intention might be to eat more live foods, more fresh vegetables. A good intention for the year 2009 might be to set an intention. You can start anywhere and anytime. Remember, every new moment begins right now and every thought we think and every word we say helps form our experience and create our reality.

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, December 17, 2008 0 Comments

Attend the non-partisan 2009 Inaugural Peace Ball on Jan. 20^th With Special Guest Host Harry Belafonte Your donation will help Democracy Now! build a new home!

A limited number of tickets for this sold-out event are available for a $1000 donation!

For a donation of $1000, you can celebrate this extraordinary moment in history with food, laughter, music and dance, as peacemakers from all over the globe gather for this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

These are the last tickets left (the Peace Ball has a waiting list of hundreds). We're offering the first group of tickets at $1000 each; the donation level could go up with the next offering.

You will be united with hundreds of friends who believe in, support and work tirelessly for peace, social justice -- and independent media. Confirmed speakers include Alice Walker, Amy Goodman, Eve Ensler, Barbara Ehrenreich, Howard Zinn, Dick Gregory, Laura Flanders, and with performances by Jackson Browne, Michael Franti, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Toshi Reagon, Fertile Ground, Kate Clinton, and Holly Near.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 7:00 pm until Midnight Smithsonian Institution National Postal Museum Next to Union Station Washington, D.C.

Yes, I'd like to help Democracy Now! build a new home -- and attend the 2009 Peace Ball.

Click here <http://democracynow.org/peaceball> to make a tax-deductible donation of $1000 per ticket to attend the best party in 2009! Credit card purchases only. Your tickets will be available at the door; identification required for pick-up.

No, unfortunately, I can't attend, but I would like to make a tax-deductible donation to support Democracy Now! Click here <http://democracynow.org/donate/pb09> to donate.

For more details on the 2009 Peace Ball, visit http://www.peaceball.org

Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.

// posted by Alice @ Monday, December 15, 2008 0 Comments

Published: December 11 2008 20:02 | Last updated: December 11 2008 20:02

Financial markets are supposed to allocate capital and monitor that it is used to good effect. They are supposed to be rewarded when they do that job well, but bear the consequences when they fail. The markets failed. Wall Street’s focus on quarterly returns encouraged the short-sighted behaviour that contributed to their own demise and that of America’s manufacturing, including the automotive industry. Today, they are asking to escape accountability. We should not allow it.

What needs to be done is to help the automakers get a fresh start and allow them to focus on producing good cars rather than trying to juggle their books to meet past obligations.

With financial restructuring, the real assets do not disappear. Equity investors (who failed to fulfil their responsibility of oversight) lose everything; bondholders get converted into equity owners and may lose substantial amounts. Freed of the obligation to pay interest, the carmakers will be in a better position. Taxpayer dollars will go far further. Moral hazard – the undermining of incentives – will be averted: a strong message will be sent.

Some will talk of the pension funds and others that will suffer. Yes, but that is true of every investment that has diminished. The government may need to help some pension funds but it is better to do so directly, than via massive bail-outs hoping that a little of the money trickles down to the “widows and orphans”. Some will say that bankruptcy will undermine confidence in America’s cars. It is the cars and carmakers themselves – and the dismal performance of their executives – that have undermined confidence. With industry experts saying $125bn (€94bn, £84bn) or more will be needed, with bail-out fatigue setting in, why should US consumers believe that a $15bn gift will do the trick of a turnround?

It is more plausible that confidence will be restored if the industry is freed of the burden of interest payments and is given a fresh start. Modern cars are complex technological products and the US has demonstrated its strength in advanced technology. US workers, working for Japanese carmakers, have shown their hard work can produce cars that are desirable. America’s managers too have demonstrated their managerial skills in many other areas...........

// posted by Alice @ Friday, December 12, 2008 0 Comments

India Vows No Retaliation

NEW DELHI — Calling Pakistan the epicenter of terrorist attacks against India, the Indian foreign minister on Thursday urged the government there to do more than detain leaders of extremist groups, even as he all but ruled out the prospect of a military confrontation.

Rather, India’s foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, told members of Parliament that India would take time to turn off the tap of support for militant groups operating across the border, and that war was “no solution.”

“We shall have to patiently confront it,” he said. “We have no intention to be provoked.”

In Pakistan, the government signaled limited moves against a charity widely believed to act as a front for the militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, that Indian and American intelligence officials say was behind the Mumbai attacks last month. Security officials surrounded the home of Hafiz Saeed, a founder of both the militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

“Police have encircled the house of Hafiz Saeed in Lahore and told him he cannot go out of the home,” said Abdullah Montazir, his spokesman, according to Reuters. “They have told him detention orders will be formally served to him shortly.

Mr. Mukherjee, speaking in Parliament’s first session since the three-day siege of Mumbai, reiterated India’s demand for Pakistan to hand over about 40 fugitives and suspects whom it says are taking shelter in Pakistan. His comments seemed to avoid directly criticizing the president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, and his democratically elected government.

Shortly after the Mumbai attacks, Mr. Zardari described the terror suspects as “nonstate actors” over whom the Pakistani government had no control. On Thursday, that statement met with a stinging retort from Mr. Mukherjee.

“Are they nonstate actors coming from heaven, or they are coming from a different planet?” Mr. Mukherjee asked. “Nonstate actors are operating from a particular country. What we are most respectfully submitting, suggesting to the government of Pakistan: Please act. Mere expression of intention is not adequate.”

It was India’s first response to Pakistan’s crackdown on camps and leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, accused in the Mumbai attacks that killed 163 people, along with 9 gunmen. Pakistani officials in Islamabad announced the arrests earlier this week.

In Islamabad, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said Pakistan “has taken note” of the United Nations Security Council declaration late Wednesday that a charity based in Pakistan, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, was a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba and subject to United Nations sanctions including the freezing of its assets and a travel ban on four of its leaders. One leader was Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, whom the Pakistani government said it arrested Sunday.

The Security Council committee also added Mr Saeed, the Lashkar and Jamaat founder, to a list of people and organizations linked to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

A statement from Mr. Gilani’s office said he told the American deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte, that Pakistan “would fulfill its international obligations,” Reuters reported. The Interior Ministry issued a statement saying Jamaat-ud-Dawa would be put under monitoring and its offices sealed if necessary, Reuters said.

In Lahore on Thursday, Mr. Saeed, the founder of the group, criticized the United Nations’ decision, saying that his charity was a legitimate organization with no links to terrorism, Agence France-Presse reported. Mr. Saeed publicly disowned Lashkar-e-Taiba after it was outlawed by Pakistan in 2002.

“The Security Council took this decision without giving any us any opportunity to respond,” Mr. Saeed said, according to the agency. “We are not prepared to accept this decision, which was taken in haste. We do not accept terrorism, killing innocent people, or carrying out suicide attacks. This has always been our stand.”

On Wednesday, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, praised the actions taken by the Pakistani authorities, but noted that the United States viewed the actions only as initial measures to deal with the crisis.

“These are first steps, and so there are more steps to follow,” Admiral Mullen told reporters in Washington. “But they’ve moved pretty quickly with respect to these arrests, with respect to shutting down some of the camps. And all of that, I think, is very positive.”

Mr. Mukherjee on Thursday also delivered a message to allies and rivals abroad: India would not be dragged into discussions about Kashmir, which the minister described as a domestic problem.

“This is not an India-Pakistan issue,” he said, referring to the attacks. “This is not an issue related to Jammu and Kashmir. This is a part of global terrorism.”

The home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, announced an overhaul of the nation’s intelligence network in a speech to Parliament on Thursday, fulfilling a pledge from the government in the immediate aftermath of the siege. Mr. Chidambaram, the country’s principal law enforcement official, had previously acknowledged lapses in the security forces’ preparedness for the attacks.

He said “the finger of suspicion” points at “our neighbor,” clearly meaning Pakistan. Mr. Chidambaram succeeded Shivraj Patil, who resigned after the attacks in Mumbai.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party also pledged Thursday to stand by the government. “We should not be fooled by this kind of operation,” Lal Krishna Advani, the opposition leader, said of Pakistan’s response so far.

The Indian security forces’ slow response to the attack “exposed their lack of intelligence and lax approach to law and order,” said Farhana Ali, a South Asia terrorism expert and former analyst for RAND Corporation, which researches policy and security issues.

The intelligence restructuring will bolster the coast guard and maritime forces, strengthen intelligence agencies with new personnel, establish a national investigative center and set up training courses for antiterrorism officers, police units and commando squads.

The violence in Mumbai began on the night of Nov. 26 and ended more than 60 hours later when the last of the gunmen was killed in a shootout with elite Indian commandos. The assault on the city was apparently staged, the Indian police have said, by a squad of 10 gunmen who used boats to approach Mumbai.

Nine militants were killed and one was captured.

Since the attacks, there has been an outpouring of anger across India.

Last week, tens of thousands of citizens stormed the Gateway of India, a famed waterfront monument near the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, one of the sites attacked, venting anger at their elected leaders. There were similar protests in New Delhi and the southern technology hubs of Bangalore and Hyderabad. All were organized spontaneously, with word spread through text messages and social networking Web sites like Facebook.

Indian citizens and police officials alike have expressed concern about follow-on attacks by terrorists who might have escaped during the mayhem of the assault.

The Indian police said they had foiled an attempt to destroy landmarks and wreak havoc in Mumbai early this year, breaking up a cell of Pakistani and Indian men.

The foiled plot also involved Lashkar-e-Taiba, which suggested that the militant group conceived its plan long in advance and has deeper contacts with radical Indian Muslims than investigators have been willing to concede. It also pointed out another significant security lapse by Indian intelligence and police forces, who months ago had glimpses of a blueprint for the Mumbai attacks and even a strong indication of the intended targets.

// posted by Alice @ Thursday, December 11, 2008 0 Comments

You've wanted it, waited for it, and now it's finally here! The RS anthology, Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age (Tarcher/Penguin) is about to hit book stores near you. The anthology features many of your favorite contributors and articles from the site, covering a diverse array of topics forging the frontiers of conscioussness. It makes for a great post-holiday gift, both for yourself and your fellow aspiring evolutionaries. The release date is December 26 and you can help our transformational community make a buzz in the publishing world by pre-ordering the book. This lands us on the radar of book stores and distributors, as well as helping our chances of making "bestseller lists." Of course, you can pre-order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powell's Books. The best option is to order the anthology at your local shop (independent ideally) and see if they'll order for you, and maybe stock a few extra copies.

Here's what the cover jacket says about the book:

"This fresh and thought-provoking anthology draws together some of today’s most celebrated visionaries, thinkers, and pioneers in the field of evolving consciousness— exploring topics from shamanism to urban homesteading, the legacy of Carlos Castaneda to Mayan predictions for the year 2012, and new paths in direct political action and human sexuality.

"Toward 2012 highlights some of the most challenging, intelligent pieces published on the acclaimed website Reality Sandwich. It is coedited by Daniel Pinchbeck, the preeminent voice on 2012, and online pioneer Ken Jordan, and features original works from Stanislav Grof, John Major Jenkins, and Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky); interviews with Abbie Hoffman and artist Alex Grey; and a new introduction by Pinchbeck.

"Here are ideas that trace the arc of our evolution in consciousness, lifestyles, and communities as we draw closer to a moment in time that portends ways of living that are different from anything we have expected or experienced."

• Daniel Pinchbeck's blog

// posted by Alice @ Thursday, December 11, 2008 0 Comments

My Trip to Cuba in 1998

I was seeing a psychiatrist when I finally decided that the time had come to smuggle $50,000 of my own money into Cuba, and it’s a good thing I was seeing him, because I’d almost decided to talk to some other folks about it before leaving. Fortunately, I mentioned to Doctor X that I intended to talk about the main purpose of my trip, and he suggested that I shut up completely about my smuggling plan, forthwith.

Not that I thought any of my family or friends were untrustworthy. But I was considering informing the travel organization I was going with to Cuba about carrying concealed cash on the trip. But for Doctor X, I might have blabbed; and the travel organization might have scotched my going with them; and I might have lost the resolution to do the deed.

So mum it was, and My Trip to Cuba in 1998 was by far the most wonderful trip of my life. Some day I hope to describe more of it in detail. Here, however, I’ll just describe a humorous event – virtually a trope – that occurred to me going through Cancun customs; and an epiphany I experienced at the Havana airport; and an encounter I had with an old boxer I met in Santiago.

Leaving America for Cancun, Mexico, and entering Cuba from Cancun, Mexico was no sweat in 1998. But entering Cancun from America was another matter. If the Mexican authorities discovered you were carrying 50 long to anywhere, without declaring it, you’d lose the money and likely spend time in jail. And it was the first time I’d ever smuggled anything across an international border. Consequently, I was in a state of suspended frenzy when my turn came to approach the counter and talk to the inspector I’d been compulsively eyeing while standing in line.

Suddenly I was fumbling at everything, including my laughing attempt to converse in Spanish. Nonetheless, after a minute the guy told me to pass on through. I probably flashed something like a smile of appreciation, as I gathered my stuff together and passed on through. Then wave after wave of relief started coursing through me, and I regained consciousness of my moving legs, and of the fact that I was holding my little bag over my shoulder and pulling my big bag on it’s little trolley wheels. Then I became conscious of something else, a voice, not yelling but saying loudly and forcefully, “Senor!!, Senor!!” Yeah, it was directed at ME. At MY back. At me and my life-long dream of smuggling as much money as I could afford to Cuba - para La Gente Cubana, Fidel, y Che.

I turned, a broken shell of a man, and staring at the floor retraced my steps from the counter. Yes, the shouting official was the man who had just allowed me to pass on through. And I wasn’t even focusing on the man’s face when I heard him say, “So Sorry, Senor! You left your passport here on the desk.”

The epiphany occurred more than 12 hours later, in Cuba.

I cleared Mexican customs about 9 AM but my flight to Cuba didn’t leave until midnight. Those nine hours passed like so many minutes. The rest of the group gradually showed up around the Aero Cubana section of the airport, and we greeted and got to know each other. Some of them were sort of self-consciously wondering if those Mexican guys over there, or any of the strangers hanging around, were observing our growing group waiting to line up at the Aero Cubana counter. But my priority status of place and obviously happy self-confidence reassured them. Finally, the plane started loading, with all of us, and with a very varied lot of other passengers. And our little four-engine propjet took off into the darkness.

The flight over the unseen ocean blackness was exhilarating and mysterious, and time itself seemed suspended, as they say. I simply do not remember any conversations I had with my fellow passengers, although I remember talking as well as looking and spacing out in wonderment. I remember seeing clouds below, but no lights were visible until we broke through over Havana itself. God, it was beautiful. And just as suddenly, someone gave a cheer and everyone in the plane seemed to be chattering and laughing while looking around and fastening their seat-belts. And the joy didn’t dissipate; in fact, everyone was getting MORE ramped up, as the airport runways emerged below. The plane set down bumpily, taxied for a short time, and stopped in front of the main building.

My epiphany occurred upon reading the words, still scrawled on the airport’s main building: “Patria es Humanidad”.

The tour group’s itinerary was to spend a day in Havana; then to fly to Santiago de Cuba at the eastern end of the island and spend a couple of days in Santiago and its environs (including the Rio de Plata); then to drive back to Havana by bus, over two or three days, and spend several days in Havana before flying back to Cancun.

Well, that first night, I was so nervous in the hotel in Havana with my $50,000 that I couldn’t sleep. So I hid the money in my room and went out walking around 4 AM -- to view the incredible Spanish colonial architecture and the occasional Cuban couple and the monument of the invasion party’s boat, The Granma, located several blocks from our hotel.

Four or fives hours later, while the rest of the tour group bussed to and visited the Museum of the Revolution, I took a taxi to the Cuban Institute that worked with my travel group, and delivered the cash to a very busy, and surprised, and grateful Cuban lady there. Then I re-joined the group for lunch. We saw sights in Havana the rest of the day. No one asked why I’d missed the morning bus, and I saw no call to tell anyone about what I’d done. The next day we flew to Santiago.

My pre-dawn sightseeing had worked out so perfectly in Havana that I got up and went out before dawn in Santiago. Santiago was a small town compared to Havana, and our hotel overlooked the main square, dominated by a great church to the hotel’s left. I walked down one of the small streets exiting the square. There were no Spanish colonial buildings and instead of deserted, the streets contained occasional workers going to work early, or leaving a bar late, but mainly it was very quiet. No one seemed to notice me; I carried nothing in my hands; and I had only a few pesos in my pocket. July in Cuba is warm, and I was in shirtsleeves.

Suddenly, a small figure accosted me with his hand out for money. I gave him some, and we talked, in broken Spanish and broken English. I can’t remember two words we said, but I discovered he’d been a featherweight in the 1950’s, and he’d persuaded two American promoters to take him to the states and fight. He said he only fought six times, in Florida, and returned to Cuba very disappointed. The American promoters were just crooks and con men. I sympathized, and then invited him to come to the hotel veranda that afternoon at 5PM sharp, and to drink a mojito with me. We parted most amicably.

Several hours later, the group took a morning tour-bus trip around Santiago, and we ate lunch on the road. Then we returned to the hotel, and everyone disembarked for naps and/or afternoon activities by ourselves before our scheduled evening tour-bus trip would leave, at 5:30PM sharp. I tried to nap and couldn’t, so I strolled around the hotel’s environs a while and then hit the veranda around 4 PM, in the shade like the Cubans in the square below. God it was bright and peaceful and beautiful. And my first mojito was incomparably delicious.

As I recall, I was on only my second one when I saw my boxer acquaintance on the street below, heading toward the steps up to the veranda. I greeted him warmly and with relief that he’d actually come. He sat down with relief from exertion in the hot afternoon sum, sweating profusely. I ordered two mojitos, and we continued our conversation about boxing in the United States in the 1950’s. I told him how my father had boxed in college in the 1930’s, and how he took me to see Golden Gloves fights in San Antonio when I was in high school in the 1950’s, and once, to see the great Willie Pep in the San Antonio Auditorium. When the old boxer heard me say Willie Pep’s name, he smiled and told me the American promoters had told him they could get him a fight with Willie Pep. He said his promoters never mentioned Pep’s name again, but just took advantage of him, and how he spent up the tiny purses he got paid, adding that he returned to Cuba totally broke. I commiserated again, and we began talking about living conditions in Cuba at the time, seven years after the “Special Period in Peacetime” of personal sacrifice began, after the USSR became Russia again. The old boxer was bitter about his monthly unemployment payment, and explained that its insufficiency explained his panhandling strangers in the early morning.

Then I noticed several other tour-group members on the veranda, and I realized the evening sightseeing was getting itself together. The old boxer and I continued talking about present-day Cuba, and I ordered two more mojitos. After the drinks came, the light-bulb finally went off.

I asked the boxer if he’d ever heard the funny way some American aficionados of boxing referred to the sport. He said no. “La deportiva dulce,” I told him (the sweet sport.) The word “dulce” was hardly out of my mouth before my companion erupted in a guffaw, the only time I’d heard him laugh. And he was still laughing and smiling as I got up from the table, tears in my eyes, and left to get organized with the group.