November 2007 archive

Blog Voices This Week 11/4/07

When I first found blogs in 2003, they were a place I felt at home and not so alone as our country beat the war drums and went on to “re-elect” (??) this criminal administration. I needed a sense of community to shore up my sanity and found it in some of the larger Democratic and progressive blogs.

Then came flame wars and I found myself detached from any particular community. But I still felt like there was something here in this land of blogtopia that I wasn’t ready to give up. So I started to venture out to some of the smaller blogs – especially those written by people who looked and lived differently from me – and found a whole new world. I sometimes feel like the globe is at my fingertips and all I have to do is sit on my couch with this screen in front of me to explore it all. That works for me – given that I’ve always leaned more towards the couch-potato kind of challenge.

So in this weekly series I’m planning to do, I’ll take you along with me and try to just scatch the surface of the wealth of information, experience, and beauty that is the blogosphere.

Sleepy Sunday Mornin’ Scribblings–NaNoWriMo

Sunday Morning…

I’m still trying to wake up. And I have a large cup of coffee sitting next to me.

Did I mention that the coffee cup is large? It’s big. And filled to the top with the brown stuff that should help me wake up.

Though as I’ve been thinking about the dream that woke me up…

Sunlight is the Best Medicine: Cuba and the Stasi

I often find discussions about Cuba frustratingly polemic. On one side are the demonizers, who see everything the Cuban government does as evil, even if it’s providing free healthcare, education, or inculcating equality as a value in Cuban society that is not going to be erased by any infusion of capital.

On the other side are the romanticizers, who  have such tight blinders on that they cannot see anything wrong with anything the Cuban government does. They refuse to admit that the central management system in Cuba suffers from severe bureaucratism, and they rationalize away the human rights abuses that certainly do take place on the island with a Bush-like excuse of, “we’ll they’re under constant threat, so they have to take tough security measures.” What, so it’s OK to torture somebody if you’re a Cuban government official but not if you’re a Bush Administration one?

Really, the only way we’re going to get a better perspective on any of this is to get rid of the idiotic embargo and restore full diplomatic relations between the two countries. That’s when the dirty laundry will also come out. Like Cuba’s relationship with the Stasi.

The mouth is about to roar.

The moral of the story usually comes at the end, but, nonconformist that I am, I’m going to jump the gun, and put it at the beginning.
And that is this:

Be careful what you wish for…

You might get it!!!

I mentioned in my Friday night diary that i would have an announcement of great social and political import.
And I do! Oh, yes…..

On the jump, of course.

Burma – Buddhism and Power

On Speaking of Faith this morning, there was a powerful interview with Ingrid Jordt about Buddhism and what’s going on in Burma.

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

Creedence Clearwater Revival


Bad Moon Rising

Docudharma Times Sunday Nov. 4

This is an Open Thread: Speaking is the only way.



USA

New Detainee Rights Weighed in Plans to Close Guantánamo

By WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: November 4, 2007


WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 – Administration officials are considering granting Guantánamo detainees substantially greater rights as part of an effort to close the detention center and possibly move much of its population to the United States, according to officials involved in the discussions.

One proposal that is being widely discussed in the administration would overhaul the procedure for determining whether detainees are properly held by granting them legal representation at detention hearings and by giving federal judges, not military officers, the power to decide whether suspects should be held.

Update on the Dharmapedia

This is just to clue you in on some features and issues with our Wiki.  To begin with some html tags are allowed.  Font sizes and colors, horizontal rules, headers etc.  That means we will be able to do some interesting layouts.

Image tags are a problem right now and the current image system is too difficult to work for us as a group.  If anyone is familiar with our particular form of wiki and can figure out a way to solve this issue it would be a welcomed effort.

We can create templates for various parts of the wiki but are just figuring that out. 

Please register an account so you can help us Beta test.  Anytime you have a question or issue just post it on the wiki or here in the blogs and you’ll be helping us to build a better system.

We have a Help section and on that help section you’ll find a link to a test page where you can try out your wiki skills.  Once you have a feel for it, join the rest of us on the real deal.

Current needs: graphics team; editors; reviewers

If you are interested in one of those volunteer positions please let us know but everyone is expected to contribute to the wiki as well as the blog, even in these early stages.

Thanks!

 

Iglesia……………………..Episode Seven

.

(Last episode)

.

After 8 hours of sitting completely motionless in a fucking bush, he stood straight up from a half lotus. He did not grunt or stretch. Or spit or scratch. He did almost yawn though. Truth be told, he was on his feet before he even really knew it. Most people have two levels of operation, conscious and unconscious. People like him had three, conscious, unconscious and duty.

Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists

Just got back, wow!  10 amazing guitarists from around the globe and Fripp heading the band.  There was an atmosphere of ritual and discipline as the 10 took to the stage.  All dressed in black, all carrying Ovation guitars, Fripp appeared to have a Gibson SG but I could be mistaken.  Fripp had his stack of devices placed between him and the audience.  He sat at his stool and worked the effects peddles and often would reach up mid-riff to tweak a setting or two.

Before the show began he had all of the guitarists read a message from him to the audience in their own tongue, the message was about respecting the performance and not taking pictures or making recordings.  Then they all walked up to the mic and read their individual statements at the same time and it sounded like an over-packed stadium, which I believe was the point.  Well someone must not of understood and tried to take a photo.  Mr. Fripp stopped the performance, went up and talked to the man and had his camera taken away, then he signaled to the others that they should walk off stage and they did.

I have deleted my diary

This is appearing in place of a diary I wrote comparing Bush and the Republicans actions on climate crisis to Hitler.

I do not wish to further offend folks, so I will just say that the recent events surrounding climate crisis have upset me. I did not feel that comparing the NUMBER of deaths that will occur do to conscious inaction on climate crisis to the NUMBER of deaths that Hitler caused was offensive. But then my past was not as affected by Hitlers actions as others. It is a mistake to disrespect the pain associated with peoples heritage in this regard.

For that I apologize.

The news out of Mexico apparently affected me on a deeper level than was wise to write about, at least in that fashion.

Bzrezinski criticized for unsportsmanlike conduct.

In an article in Salon.com on September 19, Steven Clemons describes a debate at a recent Washington dinner party attended by eighteen people at which “Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran”.

Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor to President Carter, Clemons writes, said he believed Bush’s team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was National Security Adviser to Presidents Ford and the first Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire, and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.

The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski’s or Scowcroft’s position. Scowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski’s fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner.

Load more