THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE IS HEARD

On this tragic day, Arianna Huffington wrote, in "Paul Wellstone: America Loses A Bold Leader", what I've been thinking:

Maybe in death Wellstone will be able to achieve what eluded him in life. He often quoted Franklin D. Roosevelt's admonition that "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." But he had not been able to convince the nation of this.

His greatest legacy would be if this tragic loss, which has so deeply affected the country, taps into the latent reserve of idealism in the American people, and, as a result, transforms both our politics and our priorities.

As the appreciations for Wellstone are gushing from the radio and on TV from everyone -- everyone -- the affirmations of a life of principles is being echoed over and over. I just keep thinking that it is perhaps ironic that we've gotten a bigger dose of inspiration to be the America of our ideals from the death and not the life of someone who, although the hero of progressives, still, in what is to such a large extent an apolitical populace, was unknown to many. When I happened to speak to a few people this morning, and informed them about the crash, I actually was surprised that these liberal minded folks had no idea who Wellstone was. And then, I was all the more struck by what all the reportage might do to the collective consciousness. The glow in the atmosphere is almost palpable, as if a wave of integrity is bathing everyone.

 

   Saturday, October 26, 2002  

GETTING REAL ABOUT BEING HUMAN IN IRAQ

Thanks to Holley Rauen for this.

"The Iraq peace Team - 'Good' Americans in Iraq", by Ramzi Kysia, an American in Iraq, is one of those gut-wrenching reads, where I can't imagine that George Bush wouldn't change his mind about invading if he saw it. How could anyone not be moved by hearing how it is for people in Iraq? How can we be so uncivilized as to treat the carnage of war as no more abhorrent than how it was when people were thrown to lions? Get it on the inside for yourself reading this, and know that as we join in inner awareness, there is an outer pressure that results. Do read the whole thing, from which I've excerpted this:

We visit a high school, and the kids want to make absolutely sure we really understand that they're not natural-born killers or terrorists. A teacher lets us know that his 8-year-old asks him every day if today's the day he's going to die...When will Americans wake up to the fact that we are not the only real people on this planet; that our security cannot depend on the insecurity of everyone else?

 

Sunday, October 27, 2002  

TWO PERSPECTIVES REACH THE SAME CONCLUSION ABOUT THE GREATEST DANGER WE ARE IN

In Daniel Pinchbeck's post shamanic-immersion time, what he perceives is a catastrophic spiral we are on, which triggered with the twin towers going down. The ultimate challenge, that we are only seeing in sideways glances now, will come from the environment.

I was thinking about this when I read this pithy piece, "Another Administration Snub" , by Molly Ivens, one of the good writers of the day. It's about Bush madness, as in the "latest in a long line of anti-woman decisions by the Bush administration. President Bush has decided not to send the $34 million approved by both houses of Congress for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). The fund provides contraception, family planning and safe births, and works against the spread of HIV and against female genital mutilation in the poorest countries of the world."

This is one of those scary things that give evidence to the extremist right wing perspectives that we are being guided by. "We don't have $34 million to save the lives of poor women, but Bush wants to spend $135 million on abstinence education, which doesn't work." The rest of this interesting piece is a tortuous trail through the wrong-headedness of preaching abstinence over giving sex-education, and the appointment of someone who is not only anti-abortion but anti-contraception to head the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. "He does not prescribe contraceptives for single women, does not do abortions, will not prescribe RU-486 and will not insert IUDs. Hager believes that headaches, PMS and eating disorders can be cured by reading Scripture." Molly Ivens comments: "I do not want this man in charge of my health policy."

As the population mounts -- "Ninety-five percent of this growth will be in Africa, Latin America and Asia" -- the stress on global resources will become severe, and here we come to the conclusion of the piece, which concurs with where Daniel Pinchbeck thinks we are headed: "While we spend trillions of dollars on weapons, the military and homeland security, the real threats -- water scarcity, climate change and population growth -- advance unchecked."

 

   Thursday, October 31, 2002  

SNIPER STORY YOU WON'T READ IN THE U.S.

Thanks to Walter Starck, who lives in Australia, for this. Walter says: "The following is from today's Financial Australian,'which is Australia's equivalent to the Wall Street Journal. It is needless to say generally conservative and pro business, like The Economist."

"Hard questions avoided in sniper case"  is a food for thought piece, raising issues I haven't seen (interesting that it's in an Australian paper, and a conservative one at that, with the Net not showing that it ran anywhere else). But the first thing to note is the matter of factness of its cynical perspective -- how the fact of the sniper being a Muslim "...excuses the Federal Government from having to deal with some of the tough questions that this case poses." In fact, the writer is telling you about what hasn't even happened yet -- such things as avoiding "a questioning of the country's notoriously lax gun laws," and giving the "administration absolution from addressing the question of whether the US military takes adequate care of its combat veterans." I was brought up somewhat short reading this presumably objective report about what will occur, but when I thought about the realities of how we run our world, by jockeying into power positions instead of looking to the greater good, it all had a ring of inevitability to it -- that "the sniper will quickly become a part of the narrative of Islamic threat," where "it will used to reinforce the need for the war on terrorism, for racial profiling of terrorist suspects, and for national unity in the face of common dangers - in other words, support for the President."

 

Friday, November 1, 2002

NOVEMBER MONTHLY REPORT (for the website)

I find it hard to get my life on a satisfying keel in the face of the enormity of the problems facing humanity, where our extinction is a realistic topic. Two days ago, Reuters reported communication among Islamic activists at a level last seen before the September 11 attacks. All my thoughts are on what to do. The saving grace that keeps sustaining me is that I can feel the wheels of evolution creaking, where we are motivated to higher good by higher bad. New realities become possibilities as passions are violently stirred to deal with the status quo.

The outrage many are expressing is starting to be heard. The New York Times reported the October 26 protest in Washington as disappointing, with attendance "in the thousands" -- typical of what the mainstream media has been doing in ignoring or downplaying any protests that have gone on. But then, I got this email :"NEW YORK TIMES DOES ABOUT-FACE ON OCTOBER 26 ANTI-WAR COVERAGE: Outraged people across the country demanded a truthful and unbiased news story." The about-face story said the march had been a beyond expectation success: "The rally was like a huge gust of wind into the sails of the antiwar movement," said Brian Becker, an organizer of the Washington protest. "Our goal was not simply to have a big demonstration, but to give the movement confidence that it could prevail. The massive turnout [between 100,000 and 200,000] showed it's legitimate, and it's big."

The media being a mirror for what's going on with watchers, it's interesting to note one telling reflection of this amped up time of challenge. Last year, on the TV show, "24," they were dealing with a potential assassination of a presidential candidate. It was replete with threats to him and to his family, and with danger to those trying to thwart the plot. This season, there is a nuclear bomb under Los Angeles, with 24 hours to defuse it. There's a hot fire under everybody this time, around a clock that will stretch out for half a year. As we watch, and consider the possible outcome, it feels to me not so unlike how it is off TV. We sit in a tinderbox. Will we burn? When will it happen? What can we do?

This "Making Sense of These Times" website is for sharing stories and perceptions, so people who think along progressive lines can experience a linkage that can help flip the understanding that our culture is stuck in, where might makes right. We look together here for how to transcend our current reality to bring about peace. How can we acquire the collective mind that moves us from separation to a oneness that concerns itself with the good of all? We need to understand the negative, and to look for how to transcend its pull. And this isn't preaching, but the demands of pure necessity.

Along with my penchant for alliance, comes my passion to engender a broad awareness of the fact that humanity isn't the only high intelligence in play. That realization will dawn if people merely pay attention to the crop circle phenomenon. We are in an expanded reality with another life form that is able to think and to design and to act in ways that are even superior to what we can do, and that realization has to change who we are. In that larger band of possibility, fascination can outweigh the aggression that we can ill afford in a world where our smarts about science have so outstripped our wisdom about spirit.

 Saturday, November 2, 2002  

MAIL ABOUT A KEY PIECE THAT'S POSTED, "A Break-in for Peace" , by Howard Zinn

From Anthony Giacchino
camden28@earthlink.net

I'm so happy that you decided to post Howard Zinn's article about the Camden 28! I'm the director of the documentary, "The Camden 28" and I just wanted to invite you to check out our website if you haven't already. Keep up the good work!

Here's my answer:

So nice to hear from you, and that a film is in the works.  I wonder if you know that I not only posted Zinn's piece, "A Break-in For Peace," but I use it as a benchmark, reminding people over and over that it points to a ray of hope in these dark times -- an encouragement that as people of good will become activated, the tide of history can turn. I like what Zinn says on your website to introduce your project:

“Like so many events throughout America’s past, the story of the Camden 28 has virtually been forgotten. Today, two filmmakers, Anthony Giacchino and David Dougherty, are working to save this history. I am supporting them because I believe that one of the worst things about the way history is taught is that it ignores or minimizes those times in history when people who are apparently powerless have gotten together, organized themselves and accomplished remarkable things. And something remarkable happened in Camden. The Camden 28 action and trial is worthy of being remembered because it will help educate the American public about civil disobedience, the importance of protest, and the citizen's role in a democracy.”

When I came to Zinn's piece on your website, I was captivated once again, and found myself unable to stop re-reading it, being as moved by it as I had been before. He has the essence of the situation nailed, I think, and I want to point out to you what he says that I didn't see echoed anywhere else on your site in the telling of the story.

I think there's something that may be even more important for us to attend to than the end result of the trial of the Camden 28, where there was an acquittal. What laid the grounds for that was that after previous trials of people who'd broken into federal buildings and destroyed draft records, where testimony was limited to being about criminal charges of breaking and entering and the like, here testimony about what caused people to act was allowed. This is funny arithmetic, where a zeitgeist isn't because there's been a vote, but because there is a tide -- here, public sentiment had turned so against the war that the very grounds of the trial shifted so that the justice could triump. It's like what we could be part of today -- it's an encouragement not to give in to feelings of hopelessness, but to keep doing what we can in big ways and small to protest the heartlessness of our day. (How telling it was, about the madness that pervades humanity, that, as Zinn tells us: "...when I testified for the Milwaukee 14 the year before, and began to talk about Henry David Thoreau's ideas on civil disobedience, the judge stopped me cold, with words I have not been able to forget: 'You can't talk about that. That's getting to the heart of the matter.'")

Tell me more about where you are with the film. I am so stoked on the significance of your story that I'd like to see if there's anything I can do to help. I've just had a difficult time as the executive producer of a feature documentary, "CROP CIRCLES: Quest for Truth," which was dealing with another subject that I think has the power to change things. I am suffering great disappointment over the result, where, despite my producer title, I did not have creative control. Feeling thwarted in my objective to make a significant impact on consciousness with that film, I've got any eye open for getting involved in something that's better.

   posted by suzanne at 4:39 PM  

 

UNTHINKABLE EMAIL ABOUT AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

From old friend and listmember Irv Thomas, who has a list of his own
irvthom@u.washington.edu

I certainly appreciate your vision and continued energy for this wearying struggle. It is hard to see anything turning the course of it. But here is a very excellent analysis -- "The president's real goal in Iraq", by Jay Bookman, deputy editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- that I wanted to make sure you see.

Here's what I wrote to Irv:

Irv, my friend, this "blueprint for Bush's foreign and defense policy," drawn in 2,000, well before 9/11, gives a horrendous perspective that I haven't really wanted to digest since you sent it a few weeks ago. I feel like I want to be an ostrich, trusting that when push comes to shove we'll do better than what is so alien to how this country was founded. Somehow we can't be this blind, can we? If the answer is yes about this "lure of empire," I don't know what to think, other than that the dark calls up the light. Can't you feel yourself constantly prodded in some interior way to come up with what combats this mad administration? I am never without that feeling, and aware that with so many sharing this sentiment we may be inspired beyond our presumed capacities to counter the prevailing negative force.

And here are some quotes from Bookman's piece:

"This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the 'American imperialists' that our enemies always claimed we were."

"Once we assert the unilateral right to act as the world's policeman, our allies will quickly recede into the background. Eventually, we will be forced to spend American wealth and American blood protecting the peace while other nations redirect their wealth to such things as health care for their citizenry."

"...an historic change in who we are as a nation, and in how we operate in the international arena. Candidate Bush certainly did not campaign on such a change. It is not something that he or others have dared to discuss honestly with the American people. To the contrary, in his foreign policy debate with Al Gore, Bush pointedly advocated a more humble foreign policy, a position calculated to appeal to voters leery of military intervention...in debating whether to invade Iraq, we are really debating the role that the United States will play in the years and decades to come."

   posted by suzanne at 5:13 PM  

EMAIL ABOUT GOING FURTHEST IN, WHERE CONSCIOUSNESS LIVES

From Rosalind Robinson
twosherpas@yahoo.com

Hi Dearie: October 24 was a good update. It echoes my own search for guidance in how to expand consciousness on a wider level. It sure seems like it has to start with defusing the fear of all these closed minds that surround us & are manipulated by the power class.

I was just thinking the other day about the 60s and how the huge conservative backlash that threatens our democracy today was brought on by the expansion of consciousness in the 60s (and how Clinton blew a gigantic opportunity to start healing this). And how there doesn't seem to be that much difference between the humiliation and disempowerment that drives Arab adolescents to their frenzied hatred of us (see today's Tom Friedman column & past columns), and the fear and powerlessness of our inner city minorities, the fear and loathing of women and/or homosexuals, the persecution of users of consciousness-expanding agents, the need to deny crop circles, and on and on. It all seems to be about fear and loss of power. The answer is somewhere in there--disarming that fear. We have to promote a larger concept of self, so we don't fear loss of that self by expansion. And it has to be secular--no priests or gurus allowed. My hope is that the Internet will be a major agent in this expansion.

I wrote to old friend, Rosalind:

Good thoughts you're sharing. "We have to promote a larger concept of self, so we don't fear loss of that self by expansion." This is at the heart of what needs to happen, for sure.

It takes a lot to shake what's entrenched. Short of something that takes out some large portion of us, I don't know anything that can move us to change our mental space quickly except the realization that there's contact with another intelligence. It is so obvious to me this is the most logical, if not the only way to make a peaceful leap. I am so disappointed that my movie was not strong enough to kick it off. This morning I got thinking about John Podesta, who wants to get UFO info declassified -- am going to try to contact him to see about any alignment. Maybe I can help him lead a parade.

The Internet figures to be a useful mechanism, with potential for getting out from the domination of all the separate interests of our win and lose world. Under the radar of the bureaucracy, something new could happen. Feels like we will come up with ways, but that we're not there yet. It's tantalizing to think about how the kind of alignment that has teeth can happen. You can feel the immediacy, for instance, of a Michael Moore, who keeps fanning flames and providing outlets, but it still feels like there are competing boxes of agitation -- sign one petition or another sort of thing. How can we put it all together to make a concerted force -- sans political mechanisms or, as you caution, gurus and priests? This isn't about following authority figures, but about a groundswell. Perhaps all those now separated islands of agitation will eventually cohere into one force -- or maybe all those separate forces will add up to a tide turning, like happened around the Viet Nam War, where now the Internet could speed that up. I don't hear any conversation about how to maximize engagements with this new magic tool. Do you?

   posted by suzanne at 5:44 PM