Author's posts
Aug 02 2010
Don’t Forget To Remember
Samadhi and the God-laugh of creation I found myself one night sitting back with my eyes closed and witnessing what I could never truly describe but what I can best suggest as the dynamic, uncreated, convulsing, primordial energy of the universe; the fiery, orgiastic rippling cauldron of molten prima materia, cascading about within me, and then pouring out into the world as form; and it was upon opening my eyes that I recognized what I had never conceived as plausible- that I was carrying within myself this living, undulating, cosmic clay which I was projecting out and thus manufacturing the world; which is to say, I knew then that …I was God, and that we are all God, effortlessly producing a world yet without a clue of how we are doing it. I was making everything that night. The whole thing. That is, I was making the world, but not the I who the world thought I was, not even the nobody who I was, but the I which lives before the me in all of us; the original self, casting out the glowing, red, swirling energy of creation, out of the core, out of the mind of God, out into the realm of form, figure, and content.
And let me tell you I was laughing. I was laughing a laugh I had never laughed before in my life. I was laughing God’s laugh- the God-laugh which has never known care, nor worry, nor entrapment; the God-laugh which sprays out the universe from the immanent, infinite, incomprehensible bliss of formless consciousness; the great, emancipating God-laugh of hilarious nonexpectation, disbelief, and ambitionless wonder at the impossibility and unavoidable realization that I, God, was creating the miracle of creation.
Aug 01 2010
Scott Horton Interviews Julian Assange
Posted July 30, 2010 by Youtube user AntiwarRadio (Antiwar.com/Radio/) – Scott Horton interviewed WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange:
Julian Assange, co-founder and spokesperson for WikiLeaks, discusses the 15 thousand unreleased intelligence reports from Afghanistan, efforts to get the WikiLeaks Garani massacre video ready for public release, the warning from Seymour Hersh that government officials were ready to ignore the rule of law to silence him (Assange), indications that the supposedly leaked 260,000 diplomatic cables never made it to WikiLeaks, the secret rendition program from Somalia to Kenya and how Bradley Manning’s confinement in Kuwait is essentially rendition.
Scott Horton, July 28, 2010 – transcript below
There is also an mp3 version of this interview.
Jul 31 2010
Rethink Afghanistan or Rethink 2012, Mr. Obama
From GritTV and Brave New Films, July 27th, 2010
With the release of the WikiLeaks “War Logs,” more focus has been brought to the war in Afghanistan. But will anything change? Our friends at Brave New Films have been following the war there for years, urging Americans to learn more about the situation and what’s being done in our names and with our tax dollars.
The war in Afghanistan has been spilling over into Pakistan practically since the beginning, and we bring you this selection from Brave New Films to look into this little-reported aspect of the conflict.
Jul 30 2010
Future? There’s a Future?
It’s a hour and 15 minutes. Which is not too far into the future, you say?
But you don’t have to watch it all. Just watch the first 8 or 10 minutes.
You may or may not decide to watch the rest of it, but I’ll bet you will, and you’ll be shortchanging yourself if you don’t.
If you watch the first half hour I’ll buy the drinks. You’ll want one.
Hat tip to Sagebrush Bob
Jul 29 2010
Future? What Future?
These are two of the cheerful passages in the article. If you’ve never read the whole thing I’d recommend it…
The Delusion Revolution:
We’re on the Road to Extinction and in Denial
By Robert Jensen
Imagine that you are riding comfortably on a sleek train. You look out the window and see that not too far ahead the tracks end abruptly and that the train will derail if it continues moving ahead. You suggest that the train stop immediately and that the passengers go forward on foot. This will require a major shift in everyone’s way of traveling, of course, but it appears to you to be the only realistic option; to continue barreling forward is to court catastrophic consequences. But when you propose this course of action, others who have grown comfortable riding on the train say, “Well, we like the train, and arguing that we should get off is not realistic.”
In the contemporary United States, we are trapped in a similar delusion. We are told that it is “realistic” to capitulate to the absurd idea that the systems in which we live are the only systems possible or acceptable because some people like them and wish them to continue. But what if our current level of First World consumption is exhausting the ecological basis for life? Too bad — the only “realistic” options are those that take that lifestyle as non-negotiable. What if real democracy is not possible in a nation-state with 300 million people? Too bad — the only “realistic” options are those that take this way of organizing a polity as immutable. What if the hierarchies on which our lives are based are producing extreme material deprivation for the oppressed and a kind of dull misery among the privileged? Too bad — the only “realistic” options are those that accept hierarchy as inevitable.
Let me offer a different view of reality: (1) We live in a system that, taken as a whole, is unsustainable, not only over the long haul but in the near term, and (2) unsustainable systems can’t be sustained.
How’s that for a profound theoretical insight? Unsustainable systems can’t be sustained.
Jul 27 2010
The Meaning And Ramifications Of The WikiLeaks Afghanistan Document Release
On Sunday Julian Assange through his whisteblower site WikiLeaks released what has been described as more than 90,000 secret internal US military documentary records of US military actions in Afghanistan over the past six years, sparking anger and early attempts at political ‘damage control’ from the US government. In reality the WikiLeaks release may be the biggest leak yet of documented war crimes in US history since the 1971 Pentagon Papers leak by Daniel Ellsberg.
The documents were first published online by The Guardian, the New York Times and Germany’s Der Spiegel, and include details of 144 incidents in which US and ‘coalition’ forces have killed civilians in Afghanistan and how a secret extrajudicial black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial.
The Obama White House’s immediate response came through US national security adviser James Jones.
“The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk and threaten our national security,” ABC News reported that Jones said in a statement, apparently not recognizing that neither he nor the White House is the United States, and that in reality the United States public is who Jones would prefer to keep from knowing what’s happening in Afghanistan.
Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman in their Monday War and Peace report hosted a roundtable discussion about the document release and its ramifications with independent British journalist Stephen Grey, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, former State Department official in Afghanistan Matthew Hoh, independent journalist Rick Rowley, and investigative historian Gareth Porter:
About 59 minutes – transcript below
Also see:
A Reading List to Put the WikiLeaks ‘War Logs’ in Context
Julian Assange On Why The World Needs WikiLeaks
‘Surge’ Smoke Follows Petraeus To Afpak
Jul 21 2010
Boot ’em all out!
So…..
I’m coming home today, and I get on a bus downtown heading my way. In Vancouver a large percentage of the population is Asian.
I get on the bus, and besides me and the driver virtually everyone of the 30 or so people on the bus are Asian.
In the first double seat behind the driver, under the little window sticker that says these are priority seats for elderly and handicapped persons there is a little tiny sparrow of a Chinese lady probably about 85 years old or so sitting in the aisle seat with her grocery bags, so I sit down across the aisle from her.
The bus continues on and at the next stop a fat ugly lard assed white woman about 50 or so gets on the bus who looks, with the miserable scowl on her face, for all the world like a female version of Archie Bunker but not anywhere near as good looking.
She waddles over to the little Chinese lady across from me and motions for her to move over. There is silence on the bus. Chinese lady looks at her and turns sideways in the seat to let Archie in to the window seat.
Archie starts shouting “I’m not sitting in there – shove over or move! Move!“
Jul 21 2010
Iraq: Blood on Our Hands
Blood on Our Hands
By David Swanson, July 21, 2010
The most massive and brutal crime committed on this planet during the past decade has been the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And we’re seeking to wash the blood off our hands without so much as an “Out, damn spot!” Nowadays “looking forward, not backward” is supposed to take care of everything, even as the crimes continue. What that takes care of is the leading perpetrators who begin to sense that the coast is clear and creep out of their holes to declare, as did Karl Rove this week, that their biggest mistake was not more aggressively attacking those who pointed out their crimes.
If there’s anyone who knows where that path leads, it’s probably Benjamin Ferencz, who served as Chief Prosecutor for the Einsatzgruppen Trial at Nuremberg in 1947 and who has just published the forward to a new book by Nicolas Davies called “Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.” It’s a useful moment in which to be handed this masterful account of what we’ve done, not just because the liars have been ceded the floor, but also because the crime is ongoing and we will require the proper frame of mind as each deadline for withdrawal from Iraq is violated, and because the Washington Press Corpse has begun to notice the utter irresponsibility of the people we pay to tell us what is happening in the world (not to mention to spy on us, overthrow governments, kidnap, imprison, torture, and assassinate), and because we will not end the endless war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and other places unless there is accountability.
This is also the moment in which the International Criminal Court has done something Ferencz had long worked for, and determined that it will prosecute the crime of aggressive war. Even if ithe ICC cannot go back now and prosecute the most serious such crime of recent years, it can prosecute numerous US war crimes committed during the past decade, and we can address the invasion and occupation of Iraq through courts and legislatures in such a manner as to make its repetition elsewhere more likely to result in criminal charges.