Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son
And listen closely to what I say
And if you do this
It will help you some sunny dayTake your time – don’t live too fast
Troubles will come and they will pass
Go find a woman and you’ll find love
And don’t forget son
There is someone up above(chorus)
And be a simple kind of man
Be something you love and understand
Be a simple kind of man.
Won’t you do this for me son
If you can?Forget your lust for the rich mans gold
All that you need is in your soul
And you can do this if you try
All that I want for you my son
Is to be satisfied(chorus)
Boy, don’t you worry – you’ll find yourself
Follow your heart and nothing else
And you can do this if you try
All I want for you my son
Is to be satisfied
Feb 12 2008
Mama Told Me
Feb 12 2008
House Update; Note to Friends
I have been busy for a couple days, my neighbor & I helping a woman who has been abused get out of her house, and counseling her.
I haven’t been online as much as I should.
Then as I came on tonite, my husband got a call, his 89 yr old Mom isn’t answering her phone. Without going into it, he left to go there; usually annoyed when she pulls this shit, instead, grim faced and quiet; sure this is it.
So I won’t be able to diary-sit as I should.
You all raised (with mlw) almost 450 bucks towards saving my home.
I LOVE you all for it.
I cannot find the essay Tigana was so kind to make for me, but in a quick check of deleted shit, I saw there was some sort of disagreement.
I haven’t the strength or the will to read thru it, I will say both Edgar and Tigana have become beloveds of mine in how they have both treated me from day one here. I pray you work it out. Life is way too short to let a quick decisions and minute irritations block the fact how kind everyone here is.
I still may lose this place, band aide in place for a second; and people around me may be dying. If any of you died, I wouldn’t remember your one ass-hat moment; I would remember all the kind things.
Any way with that and the 2 guys from mlw who donated 100 each by mail, I got almost 600$ against the 2 grand we owe since my husband got laid off.
We took out a credit card (fucking high fees) something I have always opposed against the rest in his Mom’s name. We have a month to replace it. 1400$, fuck.
I appreciate every minute, every penny.
We are so not very out of any woods yet.
2 house payments behind, laid off, trying to find work…
But we have a reprieve for the moment and I think I may have a new house cleaning job….
Anyway, every donated penny you gave is loved and appreciated, we would not have made it w/o it. (they wouldn’t give his Mom more than 1 G) and we are only 400 bucks short.
I can scrape that in two weeks, I presume.
So, please, and thank you all.
I think we will make it, and I will keep you updated.
But stop the donations for now, I feel too guilty; as my original essay said, people have it worse.
Your thoughts, energies, prayers, and other are entirely welcomed.
The best favor you could do for me, in this, not my home communioty, but one that has shown so much love?
Love eachother, forgive & live.
Admittedly, I intentionally missed the drama. Admittedly I chose to. I HAVE to be involved in meta where I’m an admin; here, I do not.
I am just too damned old to hear my beloveds fight or care why.
You are all good, this is a fine community.
love you, that is all.
Feb 12 2008
Show Trials: 6 Gitmo Detainees Face Death
(wow. it’s time. to figure out how to stop these bastards. – promoted by pfiore8)
A Gitmo Detainee
Let the Gitmo show “trials” begin. Let the Bushites promote fear of “terrorism” in behalf of McCain. Let those who have been waterboarded be convicted on statements they made under torture. Let the US show the entire world that it’s mired in its barbarianism and that it will kill to advance a partisan political agenda. Let yet another national disgrace unfold.
Join me across the wire.
Killing to advance a partisan political agenda isn’t exactly new. Two of the most glaring examples: Ricky Ray Rector and Karla Faye Tucker. And now the eventual killing of 6 Gitmo detainees– even if they are convicted executions will not be possible for years– is planned. Notice when this announcement was made. It’s been 6+ years since the incident, and the detainees have been in custody for more than 5 years. But the election season is upon us, and the Republican front runner believes that terrorism is his most powerful issue. Is this the earliest moment when the announcement could have been made that the death penalty would be sought? Of course not. But what better political time to announce this.
Today’s New York Times tells part of the story:
Six Guantánamo detainees who are accused of central roles in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will be shown all the evidence against them and will be afforded the same rights as American soldiers accused of crimes, the Pentagon said Monday as it announced the charges against them.
Military prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the six Guantánamo detainees on charges including conspiracy and murder “in violation of the law of war,” attacking civilians and civilian targets, terrorism and support of terrorism, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann of the Air Force, legal adviser to the Defense Department’s Office of Military Commissions, said at a Pentagon news briefing.
General Hartmann said it would be up to the trial judge how to handle evidence obtained through controversial interrogation techniques like “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning. Critics have said the harsh techniques, which are believed to have been used on several of the defendants, amount to torture.
As expected, the six include Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former Qaeda operations chief who has described himself as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
The Military Commission system has not yet had a single “trial.” The one case in which there was a disposition, David Hicks, involved a guilty plea. So nobody knows whether the commission system works or how it works in practice and none of the procedures has been tested in an actual “trial.” And, of course, the decision to seek the death penalty was announced before any of the charges were translated and served on the accused. So the additional complications of having a death penalty trial, let alone the 6 announced at this moment, haven’t been worked out. Today’s dramatic announcement means that a previously untested, unused procedure will now be invoked for the first time to decide if the six live or die.
This should spark a worldwide firestorm of criticism:
The decision to seek the death penalty will no doubt increase the international focus on the case and present new challenges to the troubled military commission system that has yet to begin a single trial. The death penalty is an issue that has caused friction for decades between the United States and many of its allies who consider capital punishment barbaric.
“The system hasn’t been able to handle the less-complicated cases it has been presented with to date,” said David Glazier, a former Navy officer who is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Forget that the commission hasn’t been used yet. Not once. In today’s announcement, to no one’s surprise, General Hartmann emphasized the procedural safeguards the accused would supposedly have:
General Hartmann said he could not predict when actual trials would begin, but that pretrial procedures would take several months at least. He said the accused will enjoy the same rights that members of the American military enjoy, and that the proceedings will be “as completely open as possible,” notwithstanding the occasional need to protect classified information.
In no sense will the proceedings be secret, the general said. “Every piece of evidence, every stitch of evidence, every whiff of evidence” will be available to the defendants, General Hartmann said.
Some officials briefed on the case have said the prosecutors view their task in seeking convictions for the Sept. 11 attacks as a historic challenge. A special group of military and Justice Department lawyers has been working on the case for several years.
Evidently a speedy trial isn’t one of the rights the detainees have. Nor is the freedom from torture. Nor is the suppression of statements extracted under torture or evidence derived from the fruits of torture. And it remains to be seen exactly what kind of cross examination and confrontation rights the detainees have. And what kind of rights the detainees have to call witnesses in their own behalf. And what kind of non-secret, public “trial” they will receive behind the wire in Guantanamo. General Hartmann’s statements aside, there’s more to due process than receiving the evidence against the accused. A whole lot more.
Put simply, today’s announcement should be widely condemned for its barbarity. And for its obvious political motivations. This a complete disgrace.
Update: (2/11/08, 3:35 pm ET): This article was picked up by The Independent’s Newsblog. It’s a small world after all.
Feb 12 2008
Why do I blog?
Some of the discussion in my essay from yesterday caused me to think a little more deeply about why I blog. I must admit that those reasons have changed and developed over time. I know that it differs for each person, and it’s probably true that their reasons for blogging might have changed over time as well. That being said, blogging is different for everyone, some people like to get the most followers (some even use things like this instagram followers service to help them become more popular), whilst others prefer to just blog about what they like and don’t care about their social media followers. But I’d like to talk a bit about my thoughts today, knowing they might change later.
Probably like most of us, my reasons for blogging are tied to the way I think and the kind of person I am. One thing that’s been true of me all my life is that I like to dig deep and ask tough questions about the big picture. That’s why Nightprowlkitty has dubbed me “Pandora.” Yeah, I’m always trying to open the box and see what’s inside.
Another way of looking at that is a story I’ve heard so long that I have forgotten its origins. If someone knows, please tell me in the comments. Anyway, the story is about two people who notice there are dead bodies flowing down a river. They furiously work to rescue the bodies until one notices the other is leaving. When asked why, the person responds that they are going upstream to see what’s causing all this. I’ve always been one that wants to head “upstream.” In my professional life, I work to support those who spend their days trying to “rescue the bodies.” But I also spend a fair amount of time trying to understand the root causes. I think both actions are needed. Its just that I’m better suited for the later.
All this reminds me of a wonderful poem that has, at times, been a lifesaver for me. Its from the Northwest Native American tradition. The author is unknown, but it has been translated by David Wagoner.
Lost
What do I do when I’m lost in the forest?
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
I don’t think any of us would dispute the fact that we in this country are lost. What I hear in this poem is that we need to pay a kind of radical attention to the world in order to understand where we are and find our way.
To bring this to political terms, I have always been a strong advocate for impeachment. That’s why I was so intrigued by an article written by Gary Kamiya about six months ago titled Why Bush Hasn’t Been Impeached. Here are a few snips:
Bush’s warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche. The emotional force behind America’s support for the Iraq war, the molten core of an angry, resentful patriotism, is still too hot for Congress, the media and even many Americans who oppose the war, to confront directly. It’s a national myth. It’s John Wayne. To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness — come to terms with it, understand it and reject it. And we’re not ready to do that.
Bush tapped into a deep American strain of fearful, reflexive bellicosity, which Congress and the media went along with for a long time and which has remained largely unexamined to this day. Congress, the media and most of the American people have yet to turn decisively against Bush because to do so would be to turn against some part of themselves.
A society without memory, driven by ephemeral emotions, which demands no consistency from its leaders but only gusty patriotism, is a society that is not about to engage in the painful self-examination that impeachment would mean.
I firmly believe that until we find a way to come to terms with this violent self-righteousness, nothing much will change, not matter how loudly we yell.
So I blog to learn, have my thinking challenged, and to find the support necessary to keep on keepin on. But mostly I blog to see if we can find ways to go upstream and locate some of the root causes of what is happening in our communities, our country and our world.
Feb 12 2008
Pony Party: Anonymous
And here’s a group of people dedicated to taking down those they perceive as batshit crazy.
Feb 11 2008
Looking Back…
(10 pm est – the NOLA bloggers are a noble breed! – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
Here is another look back at the first few months post-Federal Flood here in New Orleans. At the time Betts and I were in SoCal, and the only way for me to “be with” Gentilly was to use an e-list.
This letter started a movement to build a community association, and ultimately it did. (Just not exactly my version of the dream.)
Maybe it’s just a melancholy nature, maybe it’s inherent memory of things, but I’ve started looking back at some of my writings post-Deluge and what has become of my observations. Maybe I’m just searching old ammo to try to stop what I am beginning to see in the UNOP (Unified New Orleans Plan stuffs, especially the limited performance demographically within these “meetings”.
I wrote this to Gentilly After Katrina on Samhain, 2005. These are my thoughts that helped to start the GCIA. Now that all of us in the city are in Phase Two of the rebuilding torture, I hope that this reminds us all of what we aspired to accomplish when we got involved with the recessitation of New Orleans.
Dear Gentilly folks,
In Life, we all must live within the circumstances of
our own individual existences… that’s a given. It IS
the way of the World.
For those who for whatever reason will not return, may
you find peace and prosperity in a new place. May it
bring you joy, and may the hurts of what happened to
New Orleans and yourselves be soothed over the coming
years.
Myself… we’re going back, even if it means that our
little house becomes Imladris, the “Last Homely House”
on the edge of a modern day Dresden. Our lamps will
shine, and yes, I will be heartbroken to not see a
mirroring gleam in the shadows, but we will go back
home.
Many of us shall.
Yes, even with our limited resources and years
remaining, putting our lives into the hole so to
speak, we will return to rebuild this city, and it
will become the wonder of the 21st Century. New
Orleans shall become the example of what can be done
when the Spirit is called upon. It will be a memorial
to the soul of a wonderful collection of people that
the modern world rarely sees: New Orleans culture.
This is what makes up “History”, and anything less is
an insult to the memory of those who built the place
and survived through almost three hundred years of
various misfortunes and Blessings.
I stated this concept before on this list… those who
wish to rebuild must band together in order to survive
the next few years. We need to have the strength that
comes from a chorus of voices in the face overwhelming
odds and modern-day demands. Vox clamantis in Deserto,
(the Voice crying in the Wilderness”), will not
suffice in our situation.
Take a look at the banality of what passes for life in
most of our cities… cold, cruel, and cultureless.
Everything is the same, and everyone has the same
nameless identities. They are all exchangable and
discardable.
Does that sound like anything we had here in this
city?
Is this all that Life is supposed to be?
Shall the cheap triteness of Post-Modern civilization
be the only thing that our descendants ever know?
Doesn’t work for me, just as it doesn’t work for many
others.
The problems of Old New Orleans, (graft, corruption,
enforced poverty, segregation.), in many ways have
died with the Katrina disaster. New visions will lead
to a better city, a city where every human being, no
matter who or what they “are”, will be welcomed and
valued. A place that is truly a “City upon a Hill”.
It can only happen if we speak and act, not the fools
and stupid concepts that led us to this disaster over
the many decades…
We are the ones who can create an equitable society.
We shall be the people that control their destinies.
We are the Spirits that will say, “No more”, to those
who just use folks up and throw them away.
All of us, no matter one’s particular situation in
Life, are worth more than that.
Let’s get this baby up and running, rebuild Gentilly,
and help restore the Spirit of the city we all love
and cherish. I’m ready.
Her Blessings!
Morwen Madrigal,
Sugar Hill
Feb 11 2008
OK, Hillary, where are YOUR activists?
Noting that “my husband never did well in caucus states either,” Clinton argued that caucuses are “primarily dominated by activists” and that “they don’t represent the electorate, we know that.”
Now, I don’t care which candidate you support–personally, I support Obama, but that’s neither here nor there for the purposes of this post.
The fact that any candidate for the Democratic nomination can openly dismiss activists in such condescending terms is shocking. Senator Clinton apparently thinks that people who actually care enough about issues and are invested enough in a candidate to actually go out and suspend the routine of their daily lives to try to make a difference for the causes and candidates they support are in some way hijacking the “will of the electorate.”
More below…
And that attitude from the political establishment, my friends (and no, I’m not John McCain), is exactly what drove us to the blogosphere in the first place. We were tired of being dismissed as irrelevant, or out of the mainstream. We were tired of our voices being ignored, and we were tired of being told by other people what we could think and how we could think it.
The whole point of the online revolution we have been trying to lead is that we want to see a Democratic Party that welcomes new blood, fresh ideas and innovative ways of getting voters informed and, yes, turning them into activists for all the causes, issues and candidates they care about. Senator Clinton–and, apparently, many others within the Democratic Party establishment–just don’t want to see that happen.
And as far as Senator Clinton is concerned, this statement is merely in keeping with the whole dust-up about Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson. The whole firestorm about Senator Clinton’s “it takes a president” comment centered around whether her comments were racist. I argued in a diary on the Big Orange a month ago that it would have been racist only if Senator Clinton had argued that what LBJ did was wrong:
The main reason I do not want to see Senator Clinton as the nominee is that her entire campaign has communicated the idea that she is above the people, that our opinions are irrelevant next to her awesome power as an executive, and that we should simply trust her to do what’s right because she has experience. I’d have you notice that when Senator Clinton made her comments about MLK and LBJ, she did not say anything that would distinguish what she would do as president from what Senator Obama would do as president. Instead, the only distinction that was being discussed was the importance of movement building vs. the power of the presidency.
And with her latest statement regarding activists supposedly subverting the will of the electorate, she has merely confirmed her position on this issue. But I think it would be important for Senator Clinton to remember a few things:
It was activists who led the revolt against the British Crown.
It was activists who gave their lives in the abolitionist movement.
It was activists who founded and led the civil rights movement.
It was activists who helped end the war in Vietnam.
It was activists who gave women the right to vote.
It is activists who are currently ending the marginalization of our gay brothers and sisters.
The list goes on and on.
While this post may seem like it’s a polemic against Senator Clinton, it really goes beyond that. What we’re fighting here is a battle to see whether people who actually give a damn about things will have their voices heard, or whether they will be categorically dismissed as irrelevant compared to those who feel entitled to take their seats in the halls of power.
I know which side I’m on.
Feb 11 2008
False Flag Time
It’s the impressions from a picture thing again. This man actually enjoys it, a reincarnation of a torture master out of the Spanish inquisition. Some twist of Satanic fate leaves me with the distinct impression human suffering gives this man sexual gratification.
Most of the time the evil impressions only come the first time I see it. Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Leo Strauss were among the evil minions. This time I have seen his picture before yet this particular one emanates and evil more powerful than Gonzales. I would like to think of it as a developing asset, a useful tool in sizing people up. Preparation for the future crisis.
Chertoff+Nazi 96,200 Google hits!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…
http://answers.yahoo.com/quest…
http://www.rumormillnews.com/c…
Homeboy Assholiansim.
http://www.infragard.net/
Hon. Chertoff? No, like John Edwards, the psychic who talks to the dead, your eyes Sir are a mirror of your evil soul.