Keith is a Hero

By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC "Countdown"

Thursday 20 September 2007

A reaction to Thursday's press conference: the president was the one who interjected Gen. Petraeus into the political dialogue in the first place.

So the President, behaving a little bit more than usual, like we would all interrupt him while he was watching his favorite cartoons on the DVR, stepped before the press conference microphone and after side-stepping most of the substantive issues like the Israeli raid on Syria, in condescending and infuriating fashion, produced a big political finish that indicates, certainly, that if it wasn't already - the annual Republican witch-hunting season is underway.

"I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military."

"And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.

"And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Moveon.org or more afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military."

"That was a sorry deal."

First off, it's "Democrat-ic" party.

You keep pretending you're not a politician, so stop using words your party made up. Show a little respect.

Secondly, you could say this seriously after the advertising/mugging of Senator Max Cleland? After the swift-boating of John Kerry?

But most importantly, making that the last question?

So that there was no chance at a follow-up?

So nobody could point out, as Chris Matthews so incisively did, a week ago tonight, that you were the one who inappropriately interjected General Petraeus into the political dialogue of this nation in the first place!

Deliberately, premeditatedly, and virtually without precedent, you shanghaied a military man as your personal spokesman and now you're complaining about the outcome, and then running away from the microphone?

Eleven months ago the President's own party, the Republican National Committee, introduced this very different kind of advertisement, just nineteen days before the mid-term elections.

Bin Laden.

Al-Zawahiri's rumored quote of six years ago about having bought "suitcase bombs."

All set against a ticking clock, and finally a blinding explosion and the dire announcement:

"These are the stakes - vote, November 7th."

That one was ok, Mr. Bush?

Terrorizing your own people in hopes of getting them to vote for your own party has never brought as much as a public comment from you?

The Republican Hamstringing of Captain Max Cleland and lying about Lieutenant John Kerry met with your approval?

But a shot at General Petraeus, about whom you conveniently ignore it, was you who reduced him from four-star hero to a political hack, merits this pissy juvenile blast at the Democrats on national television?

Your hypocrisy is so vast that if we could somehow use it to fill the ranks in Iraq you could realize your dream and keep us fighting there until the year 3000.

The line between the military and the civilian government is not to be crossed.

When Douglas MacArthur attempted to make policy for the United States in Korea half a century ago, President Truman moved quickly to fire him, even though Truman knew it meant his own political suicide, and the deification of a General who history suggests had begun to lose his mind.

When George McClellan tried to make policy for the Union in the Civil War, President Lincoln finally fired his chief General, even though he knew McClellan could galvanize political opposition which he did when McClellan ran as Lincoln's presidential opponent in 1864, nearly defeating our greatest president.

Even when the conduit flowed the other way and Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to smear the Army because it wouldn't defer the service of one of McCarthy's staff aides, the entire civilian and Defense Department structures, after four years of fearful servitude, rose up against McCarthy and said "enough" and buried him.

The list is not endless but it is instructive.

Air Force General LeMay - who broke with Kennedy over the Cuban Missile Crisis and was retired.

Army General Edwin Anderson Walker - who started passing out John Birch Society leaflets to his soldiers.

Marine General Smedley Butler - who revealed to Congress the makings of a plot to remove FDR as President and for merely being approached by the plotters, was phased out of the military hierarchy.

These careers were ended because the line between the military and the civilian is not to be crossed!

Mr. Bush, you had no right to order General Petraeus to become your front man.

And he obviously should have refused that order and resigned rather than ruin his military career.

The upshot is and contrary it is, to the MoveOn advertisement he betrayed himself more than he did us.

But there has been in his actions a sort of reflexive courage, some twisted vision of duty at a time of crisis. That the man doesn't understand that serving officers cannot double as serving political ops, is not so much his fault as it is your good, exploitable, fortune.

But Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General's skirts, and today you have hidden behind the skirts of 'the planted last question' at a news conference, to indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to as much as respond.

That is not only un-American but it is dictatorial.

And in pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it.

You did it again today and you need to know how history will judge the line you just crossed.

It is a line thankfully only the first of a series that makes the military political, and the political, military.

It is a line which history shows is always the first one crossed when a democratic government in some other country has started down the long, slippery, suicidal slope towards a Military Junta.

Get back behind that line, Mr. Bush, before some of your supporters mistake your dangerous transgression, for a call to further politicize our military.

National ID cards = IBM Punchcards?

How did Hitler's machine know who was a Jew, where they lived, and where they worked? It is well known that IBM developed a punch card system for the Nazi party that created a database of who was who in Germany. Now, the Fascists in our own country desire to put into place a national ID card system. Just a thought...is there a parallel here?

General Pace says he refused to quit voluntarily

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON - In his first public comments on the Bush administration's surprise decision to replace him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace disclosed that he had turned down an offer to voluntarily retire rather than be forced out.

To quit in wartime, he said, would be letting down the troops.

Pace, responding to a question from the audience after he spoke at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., on Thursday evening, said he first heard that his expected nomination for a second two-year term was in jeopardy in mid-May. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on June 8 announced Pace was being replaced.

"One thing that was discussed was whether or not I should just voluntarily retire and take the issue off the table," Pace said, according to a transcript released Friday by his office at the Pentagon.

"I said I could not do that for one very fundamental reason," which is that no soldier or Marine in Iraq should "think — ever — that his chairman, whoever that person is, could have stayed in the battle and voluntarily walked off the battlefield.

"That is unacceptable as a leadership thing, in my mind," he added.

Pace, whose current term ends Oct. 1, said he intended to remain on the job until then. Navy Adm. Michael Mullen has been announced as President Bush's choice to succeed Pace, who is the first Marine ever to hold the military's top post.

The decision to drop Pace has fed the political debate in Washington over the Iraq war. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) caused a stir when he said Pace had failed in his job of providing Congress a candid assessment on the war. Democrats typically have shied from stinging comments about military officers, instead focusing criticism on Bush and administration policies in Iraq.

Asked for comment on Reid's statement, a spokeswoman for Pace, Marine Col. Katie Haddock, said Pace "is focused on his duties as chairman and is not going to respond to press reports on who's saying what. He will let 40 years of service speak for itself."

A Vietnam veteran, Pace indicated in his Norfolk comments that his experience in that war colored his decision not to quit voluntarily.

"The other piece for me personally was that some 40 years ago I left some guys on the battlefield in Vietnam who lost their lives following 2nd Lt. Pace," he said. "And I promised myself then that I will serve this country until I was no longer needed — that it's not my decision. I need to be told that I'm done.

"I've been told I'm done.

"I will run through the finish line on 1 October, and when I run through the finish line I will have met the mission I set for myself," he said.

Pace was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the run-up to the Iraq war and during the early years of a conflict that has dragged on far longer than the administration foresaw. In October 2005 he succeeded Air Force Gen. Richard Myers as Joint Chiefs chairman, and until recently had largely been spared the war-related criticism that senior civilian officials attracted.

The decision to sideline Pace came as a surprise, since Gates had previously indicated privately that he intended to recommend that the president re-nominate him. In his remarks in Norfolk, Pace confirmed that Gates had told him he preferred to keep him as chairman but in mid-May began to see signs of opposition on Capitol Hill.

When he announced the decision last Friday, Gates said that after consulting with members of the Senate he concluded that sticking with Pace would risk a Senate confirmation struggle focusing on the Iraq War.

"It would be a backward-looking and very contentious process," Gates said. At the same time, he made clear he had made his decision with reluctance, saying he wished it had not been necessary.

"I am no stranger to contentious confirmations, and I do not shrink from them," Gates said. "However, I have decided that at this moment in our history, the nation, our men and women in uniform and General Pace himself would not be well served by a divisive ordeal. ..."

In his remarks in Norfolk, Pace said Gates had accurately portrayed what transpired.

"He brought me in the office and sat me down and said `Pete, this is what's happening. I want to re-nominate you. I want you to know that this is what I'm beginning to hear, this is what I'm going to go do, this is how I'm going to go do it.'"

"He went out and did exactly what he said on television, and exactly what he's been saying in his interviews, which is he went out and pulsed various members of Congress and he heard back from them the things that he said that he heard," Pace said.

At that point, Pace said, he assured Gates that he was willing to go through even a contentious confirmation process.

"I also told him that what he needed to do, in my opinion, was what was best for the institution, and whatever he and the president decided was going to be best for the institution was what Pete Pace was going to do," he said. "Oh and by the way, I can read the Constitution, which says the president gets to nominate and the Senate gets to confirm, or not, and neither one of those two things is going to happen, therefore I'm not staying."

Criminalizing our Children

Go To Original

School to Prison Pipeline
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Saturday 09 June 2007

The latest news-as-entertainment spectacular is the Paris Hilton criminal justice fiasco. She's in! She's out! She's - whatever.

Far more disturbing (and much less entertaining) is the way school officials and the criminal justice system are criminalizing children and teenagers all over the country, arresting them and throwing them in jail for behavior that in years past would never have led to the intervention of law enforcement.

This is an aspect of the justice system that is seldom seen. But the consequences of ushering young people into the bowels of police precincts and jail cells without a good reason for doing so are profound.

Two months ago I wrote about a 6-year-old girl in Florida who was handcuffed by the police and taken off to the county jail after she threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class.

Police in Brooklyn recently arrested more than 30 young people, ages 13 to 22, as they walked toward a subway station, on their way to a wake for a teenage friend who had been murdered. No evidence has been presented that the grieving young people had misbehaved. No drugs or weapons were found. But they were accused by the police of gathering unlawfully and of disorderly conduct.

In March, police in Baltimore handcuffed a 7-year-old boy and took him into custody for riding a dirt bike on the sidewalk. The boy tearfully told The Baltimore Examiner, "They scared me." Mayor Sheila Dixon later apologized for the arrest.

Children, including some who are emotionally disturbed, are often arrested for acting out. Some are arrested for carrying sharp instruments that they had planned to use in art classes, and for mouthing off.

This is a problem that has gotten out of control. Behavior that was once considered a normal part of growing up is now resulting in arrest and incarceration.

Kids who find themselves caught in this unnecessary tour of the criminal justice system very quickly develop malignant attitudes toward law enforcement. Many drop out - or are forced out - of school. In the worst cases, the experience serves as an introductory course in behavior that is, in fact, criminal.

There is a big difference between a child or teenager who brings a gun to school or commits some other serious offense and someone who swears at another student or gets into a wrestling match or a fistfight in the playground. Increasingly, especially as zero-tolerance policies proliferate, children are being treated like criminals for the most minor offenses.

There should be no obligation to call the police if a couple of kids get into a fight and teachers are able to bring it under control. But now, in many cases, youngsters caught fighting are arrested and charged with assault.

A 2006 report on disciplinary practices in Florida schools showed that a middle school student in Palm Beach County who was caught throwing rocks at a soda can was arrested and charged with a felony - hurling a "deadly missile."

We need to get a grip.

The Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union has been studying this issue. "What we see routinely," said Dennis Parker, the program's director, "is that behavior that in my time would have resulted in a trip to the principal's office is now resulting in a trip to the police station."

He added that the evidence seems to show that white kids are significantly less likely to be arrested for minor infractions than black or Latino kids. The 6-year-old arrested in Florida was black. The 7-year-old arrested in Baltimore was black.

Shaquanda Cotton was black. She was the 14-year-old high school freshman in Paris, Tex., who was arrested for shoving a hall monitor. She was convicted in March 2006 of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced to a prison term of - hold your breath - up to seven years!

Shaquanda's outraged family noted that the judge who sentenced her had, just three months earlier, sentenced a 14-year-old white girl who was convicted of arson for burning down her family's home. The white girl was given probation.

Shaquanda was recently released after a public outcry over her case and the eruption of a scandal involving allegations of widespread sexual abuse of incarcerated juveniles in Texas.

This issue deserves much more attention. Sending young people into the criminal justice system unnecessarily is a brutal form of abuse with consequences, for the child and for society as a whole, that can last a lifetime.

History Repeats Itself

As someone who dabbles in history, the look at the stories of our past, I often find myself troubled with things I see in the present. I was taught as a junior in high school that: “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” Ultimately, this is a fancy way of saying that history repeats itself. For years, I doubted this. I grew up and continue to believe that people can learn from their mistakes. Furthermore, they can grow from witnessing the mistakes of others, including their parents. In fact, I must say that I believed this type of education was an essential part of being human- a vital aspect of our ever-evolving collective humanity. But when I first laid my eyes on the following letters and numbers, I scarcely could believe my eyes:

NSPD 51 and HSPD-20

These little letters and numbers will effectively mark the end of the Republic if the citizenry of the United States of America fail to rise up and peacefully overwhelm its rhetoric and those who would see it through.

These little letters and numbers are acronyms for two documents entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20."

Under these documents, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic event within the borders of our Nation. This sounds harmless enough. We are, after all, in a Post-9/11, Post-Katrina world. It would make sense to have in place a modus operandi, a way to cut through the niceties of government in order to rapidly address a variety of disasters. Let there be no doubt, if the mainstream media ever gets a hold of this, this will be the spin we are force-fed on the 6 o’clock news. In the reality-based world, however, the content of NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 suggest a far more dangerous, perhaps outright nefarious design is at work. At this time, it is now clear to me that history is again repeating itself. The year I look to for reference is 1933.

The document’s subject is euphamistically titled, “National Continuity Policy.” In it, the President states that, given the right conditions, he alone will be given the final say in “ensuring Constitutional government” during a “catastrophic emergency.” The document states that a “catostrophic emergency” is "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function," and includes "localized acts of nature, accidents, and technological or attack-related emergencies."

Just in case you missed something in the last paragraph, this document explicitly states: ”The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government." It negates any appearance of the three coequal branches of government by proclaiming there will be "a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government," which will be "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers." The President, in this scenario, would be granted the power to oversee the “coordination” of the three branches in order to "provide for orderly succession" and encourage an "appropriate transition of leadership."

Allow that to resonate in your head for a moment. George W. Bush has proclaimed that, in an emergency, he has the power to disband the Legislative and Judicial branches of the U.S. government. There is a clear parallel here between NSPD 51 and HSPD-20 and the Enabling Act of March 23, 1933. The problem is that the former legally granted dictatorial powers to Adolf Hitler.

I once thought that comparing anyone to Adolf Hitler was a stretch, an act of hyperbole. No more. Anyone who proposes this parallel now has my full attention and likely will see my head nodding in approval. I am not agreeing with them based on my political beliefs, my positions on the “Long War” (the so-called “War on Terror”), or my position on the U.S. governments support of torture. Though they surely factor into this, they are not the crux of my argument. I base my assessment simply on the facts in front of me and on other past failures of humanity. If I seem totally off base, let me make one more parallel available here. Read it, and then make your own decisions on the validity of my ideas.

On February 28, 1933, twenty-three days before the Enabling Act, the Reichstag Fire Decree was signed into law. It read:

§ Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom (habeas corpus), freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Go through and list all that was suspended by the Reichstag Fire Decree. Check off which of these rights we have already lost in this country. And after that, I dare you to tell me I’m wrong. God, I wish this were the case.

See what I mean?

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Car bombs killed nearly 200 people in Baghdad on Wednesday in the deadliest attacks in the city since U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a security crackdown aimed at halting the country's slide into civil war.

One car bomb alone in the mainly Shi'ite Sadriya neighborhood killed 140 people and wounded 150, police said, making it the worst insurgent bomb attack in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

"The street was transformed into a swimming pool of blood," Ahmed Hameed, a shopkeeper near the scene, told Reuters.... The apparently coordinated attacks -- there were four within a short space of time -- occurred hours after Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Iraq would take security control of the whole country from foreign forces by the end of the year

Freedom and Democracy

On the day we mourn as a nation for the souls at VaTech, it is vital we remember this type of suffering is a daily occurrence within the borders of Iraq. Only a fool or a blatant racist would attribute this suffering to something other than our occupation and rape of this supposedly sovereign country. Our young women and men are giving their lives for what (other than for the comradeship of their fellow soldiers)? If the above is what freedom and democracy look like, then I want no part of it.

A Girl Like Me

I first saw this piece at a presentation given at the University of New Mexico by Jeff Andrade of San Francisco State University: Caesar Chavez Institute. A Girl Like Me gets the blook boiling, which is why it has become a powerful force on youtube and other humanizing social Internet Networks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjy9q8VekmE

Pentagon Caught Red Handed in an Attempt to Frame Iran:

Pentagon Caught Red Handed in an Attempt to Frame Iran:
Iran Does Not Manufacture 81MM Mortar Shells
By Kurt Nimmo
Global Research

Tuesday 13 February 2007

Pentagon carelessness fabricating bogus "evidence" against Iran is really quite stupendous. As I wrote here yesterday, the 81mm mortar shell offered up to the complaisant corporate media as "evidence" Iran is supplying weaponry to the Shi'a of Iraq is an obvious ruse, as the date on the proffered shell does not follow the Muslim calendar and other markings are in English when it only makes sense they would appear in Persian script.

But it gets worse.

As a recent email points out, Iran does not manufacture 81mm mortar shells. According to a report offered by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, connected to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the neocon Brookings Institute, the smallest mortar produced by Iran is the 107mm M-30. This information is included in the JCSS's "Middle East Military Balance," updated last February. It can be read in this PDF file on page 15. According to JCSS, "The Middle East Military Balance has been the most authoritative source on Middle Eastern Armies since 1983." It is quite fortunate for us the hubris-filled neocons care not to double check their engineered lies-erroneously described as a "machining process"-before unleashing them on an unwitting public.

As Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told the Associated Press, the "United States has a long history in fabricating evidence," an undisputed fact more than underscored by the lead-up to the Iraq invasion when the neocons claimed Iraqi weather balloon trailers doubled as biological weapon labs and clumsily recycled a student's homework as evidence Saddam was dabbling in weapons of mass destruction.

Considering the shoddiness of the mortar ruse, it makes perfect sense so-called "experts" involved in the scam told "a large gathering of reporters" (more accurately described as script readers and errand boys) "they not be further identified," lest blame be delivered to their doorstep.

"Why are US officials hiding behind the cloak of anonymity when presenting the most detailed evidence yet that Iran is supplying anti-US forces in Iraq with weaponry?" muses Eason Jordan. "After weeks, if not months, of US official planning to present a damning 'dossier' of incriminating evidence against Iran, and after this same US administration presented us with lopsided, erroneous information about the capability and evil intentions of the Saddam Hussein regime, the best the US government can give us today is incendiary evidence presented at a Baghdad news conference by three US officials who refuse to be quoted by name?.... The American people deserve straight talk from identified US officials."

Of course, such "straight talk" will not be forthcoming-not now or after Iran is destroyed, as Iraq was destroyed before it.

Maybe, if we are lucky, at some point in the future, the names of these "experts" will emerge in the course of a new Nuremberg trial.

Addendum

Iran does not manufacture 81mm mortars-but Pakistan does. Compare the photo on this death merchant catalog page with the one offered up as "evidence" against the Iranians. Minus the nosecone and fins at the bottom, it is almost a dead ringer, excuse the metaphor (see enlargement here).

Is it possible the Pentagon neocons, in their zeal to finger the Iranians and thus kick start World War Four, as they fondly call it, are using a Pakistani mortar and attributing it to Iran? Considering the long and sordid history of collaboration between the CIA, Pentagon, and Pakistan's nefarious ISI, this is likely the case.

I'm heading to Japan

On January 4, 2007 I will be making a voyage to Kobe, Japan to student teach at the Canadian Academy. I will be on the other side of the world until, at earliest, mid-June. I expect to update this blog more frequently as my time will be soley devoted to student teaching and tutoring. My friends, students, and family will be able to contact me through this blog. I hope all is well with those who view and with those who love life.

Constitution Takes a New Hit From Senators at Gates Hearing

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120706J.shtml

Click above to go to original. The following is a collection of excerpts. Sad. Very sad. May our beloved Constitution rest in peace. 1789-2006

At Tuesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the nomination of Robert Gates to be secretary of defense, I felt as though I were paying last respects to the Constitution of the United States. But there was none of the praise customarily given to the deceased. Rather, the bouquets were fulsomely shared round about among the nominee.....

In other news, "A series of particularly brutal attacks across Baghdad Tuesday resulted in at least 54 Iraqis killed and scores wounded," according to the New York Times. The US military announced that three more American soldiers were killed Monday, adding to the 13 killed over the weekend. Ten more US soldiers were killed on Wednesday. And five Marines are expected to be charged today with the killing of 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, in the village of Haditha in November 2005.

No such bothersome details about this misbegotten war were allowed into evidence yesterday by the stuffed shirts sitting in stuffed seats in a hearing room stuffed with 80 stenographers from our domesticated press. Rather, the hearing room seemed to serve as a kind of funeral parlor for the Constitution. There were plenty of bouquets, but none smelled very genuine...

In one moment of genuine - perhaps unintended - candor, Gates indicated he thought there were no new ideas to be had in addressing the conflict in Iraq. The suggestions made public today by the Iraq Study Group tend to substantiate that sad conclusion.

How about old ideas? Like dispatching more training teams to work with Iraqi security forces. Gates said, "That certainly is an option." And he vowed to show "great deference to the judgment of generals." New emphasis on the training mission is what General John Abizaid told the committee less than three weeks ago is a "major change." Is that the "new" strategy? It is a feckless exercise, as we know from Vietnam. Been there; done that; should have known that....

This makes me wonder what may be in store for Iran, if Cheney solicits help from Gates in making the case for bombing.

CIDI, not such a new idea

Collaborative, inclusive, and differentiated instruction is not simply an intersection of methods and techniques. True, it requires we use certain methods and tactics to foment authenticating education with our students. But if this is where such instruction begins and ends, we still lack a truly effective way to educate both our students and ourselves. We would thus be less able to create and re-create our world to become a better place than the one in which we now live. If these methods and techniques were the alpha and the omega, then the ideas shared in this forum of hope would be nothing but another set of “tricks” or “tools” that we teachers can use in our classrooms. Indeed, there is something more to genuine instruction in our schools than technical reproductions of actions one reads about in a book or educational magazine. What makes Collaborative, Inclusive, and Differentiated Instruction (CIDI) powerful and authentic, is that it helps to inform a way of being that enlightens the way we practice our everyday lives. This way of being demands that we evolve to become more complete women and men in the process of that practice.

Bush Groping

Wow! This is a picture of President Bush II trying to give a massage to the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Dorothea Merkel. Me thinks that SHE thinks it is inappropriate behavior. I remember acting like this when I was thirteen...except her name was Kathy. The President of the United States should know better than this! What is this guy's short-circuit?!

Link is at: Crooks & Liars
http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/07/18/presidential-groping

Mutually Assured Destruction in the Middle East

Mutually Assured Destruction in the Middle East
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig.com

Israel's air, land and sea blockade of Lebanon, which includes jet fighter strikes against the airport in Beirut, presages a new era in the Middle East, one in which the center has collapsed and Muslim and Jewish extremists, capable only of the language of violence, determine the parameters of existence. These strikes, like the suicide bombings carried out by Islamic militants in Iraq or Israel, expose the Ahab-like self-immolation that now inflects the region. And unless it is halted soon, unless those fueling these conflicts learn to speak another language, unless they break free from an indulgence in collective necrophilia, the Middle East will slip into a death spiral.

This has been a long time coming. The Bush administration never had any interest in helping to broker Middle Eastern peace agreements. This willful negligence was seen as befriending Israel, along with the bizarre demands of the Christian right. In fact, the administration befriended only an extreme political wing in Israel that, since the death of Yitzhak Rabin, has done a pretty effective job of endangering the Jewish state by dismantling all mechanisms for peace and turning Israel into an international pariah. As the machinery of Middle Eastern diplomacy rusted shut with disuse it was gleefully replaced by harsher Israeli closures, curfews, shelling and airstrikes. Palestinians have, since Bush arrived in office, been reduced by Israel to a subsistence existence matched only by Africans'. And the tools of repression against Palestinians now match those once imposed on South African blacks by the apartheid regime, with the exception that the South Africans never sent warplanes to bomb the townships.

It is difficult to argue with those holding up bloodied corpses. Each side finds it useful to keep the supply coming.

And why should this not be so? In this binary worldview, force is the only thing Arabs understand. This logic only fuels those in the Arab world who also speak exclusively in the language of violence. The escalating repression by Israel, like the escalating repression by the American occupiers in Iraq, has become the most potent recruiting tool for Islamic extremists. It has rendered each side deaf and dumb. As those under the boot of Israel or America lose all hope for justice, as they give up on peaceful recourses to ameliorate their plight, as they fall into despair, it throws them, by default, into the hands of extremists. And as the extremists grow and their attacks became more deadly, it likewise helps silence those in Israel and the United States who call for compassion, restraint and understanding. It is difficult to argue with those holding up bloodied corpses. Each side finds it useful to keep the supply coming.

In this demented world, friend and foe need each other. Hamas and Hezbollah yearn, on some level, for Israeli airstrikes against civilians just as the hard right in Israel yearns in some dark way for suicide bombers. The indiscriminate violence of one justifies the indiscriminate violence of the other. The violence stokes the fear that is the driving force behind all messianic, violent movements-American, Jewish and Muslim. And since these groups have nothing to offer other than violence, they need fear to keep those around them compliant. The atrocities committed by one-real or imagined - make possible the atrocities of the other.

We cannot ascribe equal amounts of moral blame to all sides. Israel is the oppressor in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon. America is the oppressor in Iraq.

Does anyone in the Israeli government really believe that attacking Lebanon and killing more than 60 Lebanese civilians will ensure the freedom of the two captured Israeli soldiers? There have been hostages, including Israeli hostages, taken captive in Lebanon before, and most have been freed through long and painful negotiations. If the Israelis do believe in this violence, it is a sad indication of how out of touch they are with the world that opposes them.

We cannot ascribe equal amounts of moral blame to all sides. Israel is the oppressor in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon. America is the oppressor in Iraq. And there can be no hope for a peaceful resolution to these conflicts until Iraqis are freed from American occupation and Palestinians are allowed to build a viable state. It is the distorting and dehumanizing effects of occupation that made possible the proliferation of extremist groups that, albeit on a smaller scale, simply hand back to the occupier some of their own medicine. The numbers, after all, make clear that most of the victims are Palestinian, Iraqi and now Lebanese civilians, although the numbers game can also obscure the fact that the murder of any innocent by any group is indefensible.

This is the world of the apocalypse. It is the world where those on either extreme become indistinguishable. And if we do not find a new way to speak, and soon, there will be untold suffering-not only for many innocents in the Middle East but eventually innocents at home. It was the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that spawned and empowered Hezbollah. It was the decades-long occupation and humiliation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by Israel that spawned and empowered Hamas, and it is the brutal American occupation that has bred the legions of extremists in Iraq. And when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah promises "open war" against Israel, as he did in an address shortly after his Beirut offices were bombed, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he won't cease his attack until Israel is secure, it is time to run for cover, especially when George W. Bush is our best hope for peace.

original can be found at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060714_chris_hedges_mutually_assured_destruction/

The Fever of Patriotism

Too often, when mankind is struck with the fever of patriotism, we forget that- stripped of this patriotism- war is the worship of the necrophilic. That is to say, that war is the worship of death. We must strive to remember that these soldiers are only the parish and that the religious clerics who led them to this slaughter of our collective humanity must be the ones held accountable. We must not seek peace in the Middle East. Such rhetoric has proved ineffective for millenea. Instead, we must seek to love and to be loved. I doubt there is a soul on this planet that can do so from either side of a gun.

Race War More Overt Than Ever

Fox News anchor John Gibson last week commented on the air about how most kids in the U.S.A. are now majority non-white, mostly Latino, and that "we" better start making babies so "we" don't lose control of the U.S. Though he didn't say whites specifically, it's pretty clear that is who he meant. The only other thing I could imagine is that Disney's ride, "It's a Small World" isn't just an animatronic wonder-it doubles as a child factory. Who knew?

Watch Stephen Colbert present Gibson's ridiculousness here: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/05/17.html#a8327

AND IN OTHER FOX NEWS

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow (also of Fox) in his Briefing Room debut featured clumsy backtracking on illegal spying, crying to show his human side... and the use of the phrase “Tar Baby.” Nothin' like throwing that out there to let everybody know where you stand! To see clip: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/05/16.html#a8314

Incidentally, Tony Snow also declares racism to be over. Congratulations, everybody! Our class solved the problem! Who knew? See clip here: http://www.democrats.org/a/2006/04/tony_snow_clip.php

And furthermore, Fox's Bill O'Reilly in his "Talking Point Memo" segment lashed out at "far left thinkers" for opposing the "white power structure that controls America".
Media Matters took note of this. Click on the link: http://mediamatters.org/items/200605170006

And Halliburton is building mega prisions that can house hundreds of thousands of immigrants in an "immigrant emergency." But gee, won't they just breed there?
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7B62C8724D-AE8A-4B5C-94C7-70171315C0A0%7D&dateid=38741.5136277662-858254656

Operation Swarmer Fizzled

On Scene: How Operation Swarmer Fizzled
By Brian Bennett and Al Jallam
Time Magazine

Friday 17 March 2006

Not a shot was fired, or a leader nabbed, in a major offensive that failed to live up to its advance billing.
Four Black Hawk helicopters landed in a wheat field and dropped off a television crew, three photographers, three print reporters and three Iraqi government officials right into the middle of Operation Swarmer. Iraqi soldiers in newly painted humvees, green and red Iraqi flags stenciled on the tailgates, had just finished searching the farm populated by a half-dozen skinny cows and a woman kneading freshly risen dough and slapping it to the walls of a mud oven.

The press, flown in from Baghdad to this agricultural gridiron northeast of Samarra, huddled around the Iraqi officials and US Army commanders who explained that the "largest air assault since 2003" in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and US troops on the ground had netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra, the city north of Baghdad where the bombing of a sacred shrine recently sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. ("Air Assault" is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no air strikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What's more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the US and Iraqi commanders.

The operation, which doubled the population of the flat farmland in one single airlift, was initiated by intelligence from Iraq security forces, says Lt Col Skip Johnson commander of the 187 Battalion, 3rd Combat Brigade of the 101st Airborne. "They have the lead," he said to reporters at the second stop of the tour. But by Friday afternoon, the major targets seemed to have slipped through their fingers. Iraqi Army General Abdul Jabar says that Samarra-based insurgent leader Hamad el Taki of Mohammad's Army was thought to be in the area, and Iraqi intelligence officers were still working to compare known voice recordings and photographs with the prisoners in custody.

With the Interior Ministry's Samarra commando battalion, the soldiers had found some 300 individual pieces of weaponry like mortars, rockets and plastic explosives in six different locations inside the sparsely populated farming community of over 50 square miles and about 1,500 residents. The raids also uncovered high-powered cordless telephones used as detonators in homemade bombs, medical supplies and insurgent training manuals.

Before loading up into the helicopters for a return trip to Baghdad, Iraqi and American soldiers and some reporters helped themselves to the woman's freshly baked bread, tearing bits off and chewing it as they wandered among the cows. For most of them, it was the only thing worthwhile they'd found all day.

Walk a kilometer in their shoes.

Heard the Word of Blog?

Why do I stand with this news organization, against the will and actions of mine own government? It is because I took a moment to reflect:

If the Russian government were to seriously consider attacking and destroying CNN to curtail the reporting of their activities in Chechnya, how would I feel as a U.S. citizen? Probably not very happy.

It is not crazy to believe this actually occurred. If it is crazy to believe those who are insanely drunk with power are capable of justifing their inhumane actions via faulty logic...then call me crazy. If I am a terrorist for believing in the freedom of the press, even if that press is flawed and partially at fault for the state of affairs in my country, then call me a terrorist.

Cowards lie. Real leaders never do.

Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-OH), made a now infamous comment on the floor of the House. She "relayed" a message from Colonel Danny Bubp in response to Democratic Congressman John Murtha's call to re-evaluate US military in Iraq. The message: "Cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

This may have been a rookie mistake. Schmidt may have simply become overly excited to impress to her Republican superiors and acted inappropriately. I gave her the benefit of the doubt until she lied about it. She later claimed the message was not about Mr. Murtha- this despite the fact she mentions him by name in her speech. This brings to mind the following, which I say to her, this administration, and my fellow women and men:

"Cowards lie. Real leaders never do."

Irony is apparently one of Bush's finer qualities.

On November 9, Bush hung a medal around the slack, immobile neck of former heavyweight boxing champion--and the most famous war resister in US history--Muhammad Ali. Ali was one of a bevy of recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony. Bush, while Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld chuckled behind him, said, "Only a few athletes are ever known as the greatest in their sport, or in their time. But when you say, 'The Greatest of All Time' is in the room, everyone knows who you mean. It's quite a claim to make, but as Muhammad Ali once said, 'It's not bragging if you can back it up.' And this man backed it up.... The real mystery, I guess, is how he stayed so pretty. [Laughter.] It probably had to do with his beautiful soul. He was a fierce fighter and he's a man of peace."

When will we say "basta" or ENOUGH! to this Orwellian reality? We are all partially complicit in this disaster. May God bless all forms of life- we are all long overdue to ask for forgiveness from our fellow women and men.

No Iraqi ever left a Black family to die on the roof of their home during a flood- but our President sure did.

Pat Robertson and Kung-Fu Jesus

On today’s 700 Club, Rev. Pat Robertson took the opportunity to strongly rebuke voters in Dover, PA who removed from office school board members who supported teaching faith-based “intelligent design” and instead elected Democrats who opposed bringing up the possibility of a Creator in the school system’s science curriculum.

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”

EH?! Not all Christians behave like this man. He calls himself a Christian- that is to say, he calls himself a follower of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. If Mr. Robertson believes in the teachings of this great man, sent to us from Above, then he should attempt to live a life of love, compassion, tolerance, and what most people would consider goodness. Needless to say, 'ol Patty-boy does not live such a life. He does not speak for all Cristians. He is just another money-changer in the temple that needs his bottom kicked by a Kung-Fu fighting Jesus.

PLEASE NOTE: The first two paragraphs are not my words. They came from the website for "People For the American Way." Please take the time to visit their sight for additional information. Thank you and be well.

Mistakes We Have Made

We cannot abandon mistakes we have made. We cannot leave the scene of a tragedy. We cannot avert our eyes to the inhumane set of events put into motion before, during, and after September 11, 2001.


Yes, many of us protest against additional bloodshed. Many are arrested for doing so. These acts, while noble, are not enough. We must go out and work to wash the sins of our country and, barring success at that, make those most responsible pay dearly for what they have done. And while the innermost animal inside of me does indeed want to bring harm to men and women who propagate war, sectarianism, and hate- I know this way it cannot rightly be.

Take a Hint

THE CATASTROPHE THAT
WALKS LIKE A MAN
(WHO HAS PEED HIMSELF)

The closing comments the other night, on HBO's "REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER"



"Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

"Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

"But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a sh***y president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

"So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: 'Take a hint.' "

God & Bush

'Nuff Said

Best Butt-Kisser EVER!

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers told George W. Bush in a 1997 birthday card that he was "the best governor ever" and, in a separate note to her boss, said she hoped his twin daughters recognize their parents are "cool."

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/11/miers.ap/index.html

What is a Christian?

If one claims to act as a Christian, then he or she inevitably must follow the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. (The name of who we are supposed to follow is in the name, folks.) And God's will, if one is consider one's self Christian, includes the covenant "Thou Shall Not Kill" and "Love Thy Neighbor".

Those who proclaim they act in the Christian way and fail to do so because of the natural fallibility that within the human spirit, have every right to call themselves Christians. That is, IF they are willing to see that God's words, when interpreted through the eyes of women and men, become fallible through that very interpretation. God's Words and Will be done, become imperfect when seen through the eyes of humankind.

How arrogant must must we be to believe that we can understand the will of a Deity so far beyond our capability to comprehend. It is as as silly a belief if we were to believe that an ant understands the will of man. Man cannot truly understand the will of God, nor speak in his name without tragic consequences. This is a truth that can be found throughout history.

Bush's major speech

"One of the problems that haunted the US during the Cold War was the tendency to see all regional conflicts through the prism of the US-Soviet rivalry. As a result, conflicts were either locked in place or exaggerated. Much the same thing may be happening again in Chechnya and Palestine, to cite two cases. By lumping all of these conflicts into one global struggle, we lose sight of their individual origins and potential solutions." By James Zogby from article at:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101105M.shtml

Picture = 1000 words

Premier of Angola

SATIRE: Just thought that I would let everyone know, I have been nomintated to become the Premier of Angola. My qualifications include:

Reading the recent National Geographic about Africa.
Attending the lastest Farm Aid Conference.
I was the first son of my parents to be hired to mow their lawn.
I encouraged my fellow musicians to perform a Katrina benefit for free.
Once, I played the Powerball lottery, and won $50.

If this satire is lost on anyone, that's okay. Please refer to the following link-
The Supreme Court nominee George W. Bush just nominated, White House counsel Harriet Miers, has similar qualifications. Check out this link for more information.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4304826.stm

Not redundant, believe it or not!

Through adherence to our critically reflective ideological principles and acting on those ideologies through critically reflective methodology, which always includes ideology, our actions as educators/educands become pedagogy.

In other words…

If our methodology does not adhere to a set of critically reflective and dynamic overarching principles, then we are simply regurgitating what we were taught. We are repeating the mistakes made by those who came before us. When we regurgitate, we fail to take the actions of those who came before us into account in our actions. It is impossible to transcend our past without understanding it and integrating it into our present decisions and actions.

If we, as women and men seek to play a dynamic role in the formation of our society, we must constantly consult the seven pillars: science, market, history, culture, language, politics, and time/truth. Why? As humans we have historically avoided making critical reflection a way of life because for most, it remains a nebulous construct with fuzzy edges. While I admit structuring our thoughts via the 7 Pillars will inevitably fail some (if not all) circumstances in one way or another, they are needed to help create a system by which we can better understand our world.

AIF action.

Last week, I was involved in my first Albuquerque Interfaith Action, holding politicians accountable to the agenda of our citizens. They were to answer "yes or no" questions, ironically enough, "yes or no" and given each one to two minutes to explain why. One of them said he supported our agenda and then during his explanation pretty much said he was said yes, but he didn't support his answer. I held him accountable by pointing that out. Made this gentlemen look the fool. It was rather fun, I must admit!

Fire

By refusing to accept our fellow human beings on this great earth as human beings, our “leaders” and those who support them have systematically created a system of darkness blind to our needs. Their approach to life, made powerful only by our involvement in it, robs the humanity within us all. I say it is time for a change.

There is a buzzing I hear and feel right now. It grows louder each day and becomes more focused in its quality. I know each of us, at least subconsciously, understand what this sound is. We are responding to those who peddle the drugs of war and unnecessary suffering. We are rebelling against the idea that one man should be held superior over another. We are resisting the blind use of materialism and irresponsible capitalism to affect our lives . Why do we do this? Why do we seek to make the powerful accountable for their actions?

It is not because we are Communists. It is not because we are Socialists. It is certainly not because we hate the United States of America. It is not because we discount or take lightly the freedoms we enjoy. In fact, it is because of these freedoms that we reject their outright thievery of the human spirit. It is because of these freedoms we are able to reject their policies in new and creative ways. It is because of these freedoms we are entitled to say “Basta! Enough!” I, for one, wish to see all my fellow sisters and brothers of this world enjoy lives as full of beauty and potential as mine. I want us all to be free.

Yes, our freedoms entitle us to a great many things. But freedom does not come free. Freedom cannot be found in the bargain bin. Freedom is not a loss leader. Freedom is not a sale item. Nor is it necessary for freedom to be soaked in blood. If we are to risk true freedom, we must be ready to work for it. We must be ready to work with one another, together moving towards a more humane world.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -- Wendell Phillips, a great abolitionist said these words in the years before the American Civil War. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” It is both a profound and simple statement. But it really hits it on the head as to why we are here today.

Since arrogance eats at the human experience and makes us deaf to stories of suffering, we must seek to be humble in our mission. We must make one another accountable. We need to ascribe to a dangerous unselfishness. We need to understand that we can change the world for the better. And we need to remind each other woman and man we meet that we are capable of such action.

Do not get me wrong, we do face an uphill battle. The systems we struggle against are indeed powerful. But take comfort in knowing those systems cannot coexist with the humanizing wisdoms of justice and love. Take comfort in knowing that the new world order need not be our order. Take comfort that the fact we can transform this seemingly unending opera of war and violence, into songs of peace.

We are part of a movement. We are women and men determined to be people. We are unstoppable. For we have a fire inside of us, and I know y’all sense it, that no water can put out. Let that flame burn brightly inside each of us. Let us bring a great light to the darkness. Let us become beauty. Thank you.

Who Am I?

Who am I? What constitutes “self?” Can “I” be determined without “not-I?” What groups am I a part of? Can the groups I consider myself a part of (us) be delineated without defining “not-us?” These are some of the questions that both plague and expand the human condition today as they have throughout our short existence on this planet. The questions themselves are important and central in how humanity has historically made sense of and acted towards our individual and social consciousness. How one answers helps both self’ and not-self come to a greater understanding of our world. This is a vital tool in cognizing the knowledge of living experience we gather as we pass through from birth to death.

As an educator, I find it equally fascinating as to why each of us answers these questions in the manner that we do. Our information-rich society here in the United States of America deals constantly in answering ‘Who?’, ‘What?’, ‘Where?’, ‘When?’, and sometimes even bothers to answer ‘How?’ Rarely though are we asked to examine “Why?” and bring what our experiences to a level of critical awareness. I believe this question, more so than any other, to be the fundamental difference in how non-humans and Homo sapiens cognize and interact with our world.

When an animal as intelligent as a human being does not cognize ‘Why?’ the results can be both disastrous and incredible. As objects of our creation go, the Hoover Dam comes to mind. It is an architectural marvel, no doubt, though it continues to wreak ecological havoc throughout the Colorado River System and its tributaries. In this forum I do not speak of such objects but the very nature of our society. Those of us who seek a better, more humane world for ourselves and our brethren should examine the dynamics of sectarian objectifications of “not-us” and how those objectifications can all-too-quickly lead to an addiction to indiscriminate war and the destruction of our own magnificence.

The Price of Liberty

Class warfare is historically been denied as part of the fabric of our country. This is due partially to the proliferation of a multitude of mythologies surrounding the general American Character. The Wild West has been portrayed in cinema and television (think High Noon-type serials in the 1950s and 60s) as a place where rugged individualism could triumph over the bad guys and city-dweller elites. Good triumphed over evil and danger lurked at every corner; and you could beat it… if ‘ya’d just work haaaad enuf. Indians were portrayed as rapacious savages who murdered poor white folk at the drop of a hat. In reality it was usually the other way around. We rarely saw any Blacks in these movies, despite the fact that one in four cowboys were African American. This faux, almost dogmatized ideology-as-imagery is what today’s politicians grew up watching. Is it any wonder they ascribe to a vision of reality that discounts cultural diversity and socio-economic equality?

I am currently working on a thesis for graduate school. It revolves around the ways human beings oppress one another, a ‘web of oppression’ if you will. There are eight main parts, each cross-pollinating the next: culture, history, time, truth, the market, science (the acquisition of knowledge), and politics. In this entry, I am examining the market.

While overt discrimination is less likely to exist in the forms that it once did, new systems of oppression are conspicuously at work. These systems do not use the language we traditionally associate with racism, sexism, and the like. Instead, domesticators of women and men rely on the grafting of social Darwinism to an unchecked and bastardized version of “free-market” capitalism. Those who employ these new systems constantly reframe their inhumane rhetoric to make it sound “compassionately conservative.” A prime example of this language is seen in the proliferation of ‘quality’ over ‘equality’ in our schools. Another can be seen in how ‘excellence’ and ‘high standards’ are promoted over humane, critically aware, and liberating educational pedagogy. And while it remains unfortunate that people still use blatantly derogatory words and engage in violence against those they perceive as different, a great deal of legislation has been enacted that punishes this type of behavior. As the racist names of old become socially unacceptable, new words and concepts are used. New types of action are used to hold people down and kick them while they’re there.

Indeed, we have a new system of “Racism Without Racists,” as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva puts it in a book by the same name. In it, he reminds us that systems of overt racism have evolved into a more subtle state and continue to persist in new, more covert ways. For more on this (and a good laugh) check out Bonilla-Silva’s book.

A great deal of this neo-racism comes from the re-framing and re-cognizing of language. The expansion or contraction of language, whether written or spoken, dictates the development and evolution of society. There are those who desire to domesticate words through the contraction or redefinition of their meanings and in the process domesticate women and men. Karl Rove and his minions are a classic example of this behavior. They make their own weaknesses strengths by reframing issues and redefining reality in terms beneficial to eliminating said weakness, no matter how ridiculous and intolerant those terms might be. This method of living contains hate and malice as vehicles on the road to power held absolutely. This hatred of old reverberates through time and is capable of transcending the teachings of our greatest preachers of peace. Therefore, we must always remember that systems of oppression will always attempt to subvert our humanity, no matter what form they take. This is why we must be eternally vigilant. It is a price worth paying for liberty.

Truth- An Examination

What we today call truth is guided by an interpretation of external events that may or may not include us as actors. We are witnesses to, or participants in these events. We take them in, internalize and pass judgment on them, and finally communicate a personal interpretation of them externally. We present these ideas to others and to ourselves, pretending they are objective. We present these ideas as truth.
Often, we make the mistake of believing such truths to be self-evident. That is to say we see our truth as obvious without the need for critical reasoning. After all, what we see is what we see and we simply judge accordingly.
If this is true (ha!), I must ask: Are our self-centered perceptions of absolute truth part of natural human existence? Are are we capable of transcending that behavior? Is it possible to at least expand the concept and make it more inclusive?... less sectarian?”
I think we (collectively speaking) mistakenly see truth as absolute all too often. In the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence, we read:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident:
“that all men are created equal,
“that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
“that among these are
“Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Interestingly enough, the rough draft of the Declaration’s rough draft stated differently:

“We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.”[1]

The original version sounds immensely more inclusive and non-sectarian to me. While truth is spoken of in both versions and it is accurate that both imply a certain amount of subjectivity, in my heart and mind I feel a more intimate connection to my fellow human when the words “sacred and undeniable” are used rather than “self-evident.” “Sacred and undeniable” feels considerably less arrogant. It seems to be an idea that transcends the artificial divisions we humans use to complicate our lives and divide our oneness. Is it possible the proliferation of this original idea, being as powerful and life-affirming as it is, could help to change the current course of the river of despair we are currently running?

http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/CMathison/truths/truths.html good resource for teaching this democratic principle.
[1] http://www.duke.edu/eng169s2/group1/lex3/self-ev.htm

Where do we begin?

Where do we begin when we come to realize the severity of the atrocities being put upon the people of our world by the leaders of the United States of America, who themselves are subject to the whims and desires of the even more powerful transnational corporations? There are so many points of light! Look to the proverbial night sky; it appears as if daylight graced this midnight hour. These wars of empire must end. The current trend to cutting of aid to social programs at home and abroad must reverse itself. The slow removal of our country from the democratizing institution we know as the United Nations must stop. These acts, among others perpetuated in our name, do noting to spread democracy or show the positive potentialities of free-market capitalism to the world. It has been said these two ideas are our two greatest exports. Yet the way we advertise these products shows them to be precisely what they are: flawed ideas at best.
The way the US government has behaved, during the last five years in particular, has been contrary to the very ideas- the very foundation this country was built on. We removed ourselves from the British Empire because there were those in this land who realized that systems of men failed to provide for the masses. They understood systems of laws based on the loftiest goals of our collective humanity just might provide for those masses. There were those who faithfully believed human beings were capable of transcending the barbaric behavior that defined our past. I still believe in such a utopia. But why?
So much information available to us today tells us to be hesitant ascribing to such ideas. We are told that the age of utopias is dead. We are told that the last great battle to be waged over ideas was that between Communism and Capitalism. Capitalism won. We are often led to believe “we” won because we were right, because the ideas we build our economy upon were sound. Few times have I heard posed the question: right for whom? Rarely do I hear a critical voice ask if we were really right; few propose the idea we were simply more vicious in our beliefs and willing to sacrifice everything to win.
There are those who dare to posit such tomfoolery. They are called “radical,” “communists,” or “terrorists.” But what do these words mean? It has come time in our society to look at the very words that are used do divide and conquer us. We must seek to understand the meanings behind them. A great philosopher and educator from Brazil once said, (believe it or not, few great and original thinkers and intellectuals came from Greece) that we can define our world through words and that our world defines the meaning of our words.
I understand such ideas are not new. Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, Confucius… they were not great writers- they were eloquent speakers and unrivaled listeners. They were also people who dared to speak of the atrocities committed in our collective name. They dared speak truth to power. They dared to stand up for their right to say “This is wrong.” And they fought for our right to do the same. These great spirits, and others like them believe in humanity’s ability to love, believe, and desire to better ourselves through non-violence and mutually beneficial cooperation. Great spirits understand that our vocation- our job as human beings, is to become more fully human. We are asked by them and one another to resist the animalistic urge to take advantage of other beings so that we may inhumanely acquire more than we need. Great spirits seek to help us become more human. This is where Godliness resides: in seeking to liberate our humanity from its violent past and become ourselves liberated in the process.

Beginnings of a something not yet known.

This is a beginning. Not "the" beginning- but "a" beginning...of what I do not know.

I suppose these blogs are meant to be soap boxes, scrapbooks, self-updates on our own lives. The speed at which these lives pass before us is becoming increasingly overwhelming. Our limited perception of time is quickly accelerating beyond our current capacity to comprehend existence. These blogs can be ways to tether our thoughts...perhaps even hold down the very things that define us as human.

I know I am not alone in understanding that it has become necessary to reflect upon "self" more often. We must do this so as not to lose sight of what makes us unique. We also must begin to re-cognize how and where we fit in our world. I hope that this marks a new beginning for me, as well as for anyone bothering to share in this experience.