April 9, 2008 archive

Healing

Sidebar:(I told Ria the other day how much I understood her essay; I do that without fever… here is a glimpse in her honor.)

Crossposted from The Wild Wild Left

(Or how music takes me from there to here.)

We are all Gods.





don’t be afraid…

dry your eyes

lay it all down

don’t you cry

can’t you see I’m going

where I can see the sun rise?

i’ve been talking to my angel

and he says that

its alright.


Why do you love her?

She is me.

She is more me than me sometimes, she is what I aspire to be.



pretty girl, pretty girl

do you hate her cuz she’s

pieces of you?



I’m not that broken.

At least I don’t think I am.

thenwhatsyourexcusewhatsyourexcuseexcuseexcuse

Lets Talk

What better day than “hump day” to talk menstruation? But since I didn’t give Rusty the requested 72 hours warning, I’ll start off with a little humor.

This is part of an episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” that I thought was one of the funniest half hours of television I’ve ever seen. If memory serves me, Ray had audio-tapped Debra during a time he thought she was being particularly unreasonable due to PMS in order to convince her that she needed to take some pills to make his life a little easier. Not surprisingly, Debra was not pleased. Here’s what happened next:

7 minutes

black./women.:conversations

a.film.by: tiona.m. (Tiona McClodden – myspace)

April 19-20, 2008

Zami Like Me:

Queer Womyn of Color CipHER.

Celebrating womyn & all of HER identities

Host:

    Cleopatra N. LaMothe & the CipHER Project

Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 5:30pm

Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 9:00pm

Location:

    Wollman Hall
    66 W. 12th Street, Floor 5. Between 5th & 6th Ave.
    New York, NY

Suggested donation:

    $5-$10.

    But NO ONE WILL BE TURNED AWAY BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE MONEY!

Email: [email protected]

All proceeds go to the Audre Lorde Project and Youth Enrichment Center (YES) at the LGBTQ Center on 13th Street.

The conference is asking that you Please register.

Isn’t the fact that we do love more important to us as human beings than who we love?
 

Being social…..

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly he spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in,

With gently smiling jaws!

Writing is complicated for me, blogging is a disaster.  I’m very socially adept in person and actually quite outgoing when I feel like it.  People usually seem to like me despite my severely antisocial tendencies and sarcastic speech impediment….but online I’m shy, avoidant, and unsure of myself.  From reading people’s comments it seems it’s usually the other way around.  Most interact online more boldly and open than they would in person.  I guess I just happen to fall on the opposite side of things.  I’m not really concerned about how I’m perceived in person for a multitude of reasons…but for one, there is no record of myself floating around (well…) and no one I’ve known has time stamped transcripts of every conversation I’ve ever held with them….not to mention the silent audience…the whole idea quite frankly makes me uncomfortable and paranoid.

Four at Four

  1. The Los Angeles Times reports Violence in Iraq kills 2 U.S. soldiers and 11 Sadr city residents. “Today marked the fifth anniversary of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime” and “the U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers, bringing to 4,028 the number of American troops killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003”. “Today’s casualties included seven civilians killed when a mortar round or rocket hit a residential area, police said. In another part of Sadr City, projectiles hit a house and a tent erected for a funeral, killing four people. Police said it was unclear if the hits came from mortars or from U.S. helicopters, which have conducted airstrikes in the neighborhood.”

    Meanwhile, Congress isn’t going to do anything about Iraq. The LA Times reports that Democrats backing a troop pullout see the fall election as the only hope for changing U.S. policy in Iraq.

    “It is clear that we do not have the votes,” said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who was among the first Senate Democrats to push for a binding troop withdrawal timeline. “The American people are going to speak in November.”

    Kerry and other Democrats have repeatedly failed over the last year to persuade more than a few Republicans, who can block legislation in the Senate with a filibuster, to break with President Bush and force him to bring troops home.

    Not every antiwar lawmaker has accepted the futility of insisting on a congressionally mandated withdrawal.

    “We should not be waiting around,” said Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), one of the leading advocates of a pullout. “We must redeploy our troops to break the paralysis that now grips U.S. strategy in the region.”

    In the House, leaders of the influential Out of Iraq Caucus, who last year helped push congressional Democrats to back a timeline for withdrawing troops, are, like Feingold, also threatening to oppose any additional funding for the war.

    The House is scheduled to consider Bush’s next war funding request in May.

    My bold prediction: the Democrats in Congress will sell us out and give more borrowed money to Bush. They will justify it with the same lies.

  2. The New York Times reports that Dundalk, Ireland is Reconsidering energy from the town up. Dundalk’s “goal is innovation on a local scale, developing clean energy sources and reducing energy demand in a 1.5-square-mile site called a Sustainable Energy Zone. The project is part of a European Union program to encourage pilot projects that can be scaled up to regional or national levels.”

    Some of the current projects are literally high profile. The first thing a visitor spots is a wind turbine 200 feet high that has dominated the campus of the Dundalk Institute of Technology since 2005… Self-powered streetlights being tested on the campus and in the industrial park also draw curious looks because their small wind turbines and solar panels make them appear as if they are ready for liftoff.

    But most of the work is less obvious or is in the planning stage. For example, a wood-fueled system with a gas boiler backup will deliver heat and hot water to many buildings in the zone through underground pipes…

    Energy conservation in the zone means improving the insulation for both new and existing homes. And Sustainable Energy Ireland says that by 2010, renewable energy will account for at least 20 percent of the heat in the zone and at least 20 percent of the electricity used by businesses.

    Another example of a distributed, localized energy generation at the point of use. The solution to our energy problems, I believe, will not be solved by massive, centralized systems.

New Bush Rule Promotes Killing Streams & Lakes

Last week, new Bushie rules were approved to authorize using streams, wetlands and waterways as waste dump sites as long as man-made streams are “created” to replace the streams killed by the waste.  This is a faith-based rule:  Even the government admits there is no evidence that people have the godly powers to create functional ecological stream systems.  That faith is based on the greed of appeasing special corporate interests that don’t want to spend money on responsible waste disposal methods.  

This rule is not limited to mining waste, but the destruction of streams and watersheds is prevalent in Appalachia.  MTR mining has already destroyed 1,208 miles of streams in just 10 years, but greedy profiteers have since added another 535 miles.  

Delusional Children

Climate Crisis, War Crimes, The Death of our Constitution, The Economy, Political Prostitution, Political Prisoners in America, and Iraq, Iraq, Iraq:

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Perusing those links…….One would think that there was something deeply wrong, here in The Land of the Free…if one actually thought. Which apparently, those paid to do so, politicians, newsroom editors and pundits….don’t. Nothing penetrates The Bubble, or on the rare occasion it does, it is conscientiously dismissed and ignored, in favor of a mythic narrative that is self-reinforcing to the point of actual, clinical delusion. One would be led to question where the line of cognitive dissonance occurs with The Villagers, if one didn’t recognize that very little cognition is actually occurring.

Like little children who don’t want to go to school and actually learn the facts, like the Religious Right who deny science while being surrounded by its fruits, like folks afflicted with real mental delusions…nothing dissuades them from insisting on their mythological narrative. If they let actual facts into their Bubble, it would burst, leaving them bereft of the delusions and myths that they have built there dream world around.

Breaking: Pelosi to Block Vote on Colombia FTA

According to the New York Times, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will change its rules so as to block the requirement of a vote on the free trade agreement with Colombia.

Pelosi says the House will vote on the rules change policy Thursday, effectively putting off a vote on a free trade agreement that is a key priority of the Bush administration.

The president took his action. I will take mine tomorrow,” Pelosi said.

NY Times

If she succeeds, the Colombian Unfair Trade Agreement is dead for now.

More, after the fold.  

Alos in Orange:  

“The Real News” About Iraq And Foreign Policy

Did Petraeus Part Ways With The Neocons?

The Real Story examines General Petraeus’ testimony and the contending forces in Iraq

McCain’s “war on terror” remix

The Real News Network does a first take on McCain’s foreign policy view

On Tibet and Propaganda

Breakfast where the news is read

Television children fed

Unborn living, living, dead

Bullet strikes the helmet’s head

  Jim Morrison,The Unknown Soldier

PROPAGANDA- ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause

The propaganda war is on.

Free Tibet!

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Photobucket

The spontaneous demonstrations by monks in March seem to have triggered demonstrations across the world in support of religious freedom and autonomy for Tibet.

We’ve been treated to huge street demonstrations in London, Paris, and San Francisco. To extinguishing the torch in Paris. To Chinese security pushing around Sebastian Coe, who was a fantastic runner in his prime. To mountain climbers hanging flags on the Golden Gate Bridge. To demonstrations in Lhasa. To news items about the struggles of Tibet. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

But if Tibet is to be saved, and I truly hope that it will be despite fifty years of Chinese domination and oppression, if it is to be preserved in a form we can recognize as Tibetan, it seems only right that it should be saved by what are essentially Tibetan, nonviolent means.

My simple proposal has two items:

1. Please send some $$ to International Campaign For Tibet. This is the Internet so large donations aren’t required. If you give $5 or $10, and millions join you, it will help in a dramatic way. You don’t need to strain to help. Anyone can help.  There is no minimum amount.

2. Please sit quietly (eyes open or closed). Then, non-denominationally and/or theistically and/or untheistically, however you are most comfortable, inhale the suffering and oppression of all of the Tibetans, and then exhale out in place of their suffering and oppression, strong love and healing to all involved in the conflict, including the Chinese government.  Repeat this over and over until you are finished. This is called “tonglen” and is a wonderful and powerful practice for making peace. When you are finished with doing tonglen– you don’t need to do it for hours, minutes with a clear focus will work just fine– you may conclude by saying the following:

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be well.

May all beings be safe,

And may any merit from this practice go to the ocean of merit created by the Buddhas for the enlightenment of all sentient beings.

This is a road to saving Tibet. May Tibet be free.

US Water Grid Collapsing

While bloggers spend in incessant amount of time politicing this and politicing that, the country is crumbling before our very eyes. The backbone of any nation-state is its infrastructure. While other countries have made huge advancements in their transportation and energy grid, our basic utilities are falling back to pre-industrial standards.

We all know about the bridge collapses, the zeitgeist of last summer. When that was no longer a great political football to kick around, it was largely forgotten. And of course, in true American fashion, nothing was done, except some well-lit photo ops of elected leaders pretending to give a damn.

What is more striking though, is not how our energy policy is archaic, but that our most basic need of all is about to fall into utter disrepair. We can go on forever without our horseless carriages, but we can’t live a few days without water.

Yes, water. Our entire national water grid is cracked, weathered and falling apart. All across the country the nation’s cities have aging delivery systems that are in need of desperate repairs. Most of these pipes and tunnels were built in the 1800s and have long passed even the most generous of life spans.

And we have done nothing, or saved up money, to correct this issue.

Again, we are taking about water. Not some frill or excess of the American Dream. Basic drinking water.

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