Saturday, March 17, 2007

McGovern Visits/War&Sense/Poem/Abbey

(P1) Political

George McGovern Makes Sense In Sebastopol

If only he'd beaten Nixon! Oh well, he's still a wonderfully caring and intelligent man. That George McGovern loves kids, he demonstrated speaking to the students at Analy H.S. in Sebastopol (Sonoma County) California March 16th.

McGovern, who now serves as the United Nations' global ambassador on world hunger caught my attention by pointing out that it would take a mere $5 billion a year to fund a global school lunch program which would double school enrollment in poor countries, boost academic perfomance and help cut birth rates in half (presumably those issuing from teenage pregnancies). The war in Iraq costs close to that much each month!

McGovern who was a bomber pilot in World War II, added that Iraq was "not the slightest threat to the United States," and were he president, he would bring the troops home over the next 5 weeks.

This makes me mindful of the thought-provoking documentary "Why We Fight" which features Dwight David Eisenhower and his warning against "the military-industrial complex." Stop and think: Our government is reluctant to participate in real health and anti-poverty programs because avowedly "there ain't enough money," yet that same government will spend billions and eventually trillions on armaments to feed the insatiable arms industry. Note: I will not refer to it as "defense" industry, because I challenge you to show me how any of our wars (with the possible exceptions of WWII and the Civil War) have anything to do with "defense" of this nation.

Bravo, George McGovern!


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(P2) Philosophical

About War

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious." - Major General Smedley Butler


"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." - George W. Bush, prior to the invasion of Iraq


"I cannot help but wonder what it will be like for the young men and women wounded in Iraq...For us, in 1968, it was the Bronx veterans hospital paraplegic ward, overcrowded, understaffed, rats on the ward,...urine bags overflowing...Paralyzed men lying in their own excrement...wondering how our government could spend so much money on the most lethal...advanced weaponry to kill and maim human beings but not be able to take care of its own wounded when they came home...Has any of it changed?" --Ron Kovic (recall "Born On the Fourth of July")


"No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots." - Barbara Ehrenreich


"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace." -John Lennon


"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." -Jose Narosky


(Quotations are from The Sun Magazine)

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(P3) Poetical


A Single Step


The path branches

immeasurably.

Your choice

becomes yr history.



(Richard Krech)



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Answer to the Last "Trivia" Question

Who said: "Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners."?

Answer: Edward Abbey
"When Edward Abbey died in 1989 at the age of sixty-two, the
American West lost one of its most eloquent and passionate advocates. Through his novels, essays, letters and speeches, Edward Abbey consistently voiced the belief that the West was in danger of being developed to death, and that the only solution lay in the preservation of wilderness. Abbey authored twenty-one books in his lifetime, including Desert Solitaire, The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Brave Cowboy, and The Fool's Progress. His comic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang helped inspire a whole generation of environmental activism. A writer in the mold of Twain and Thoreau, Abbey was a larger-than-life figure as big as the West itself."
-- cover text from the Edward Abbey Video

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Saturday, March 10, 2007

About Attraction/Apathy=Enemy/New Orleans Poem/Intelligent?

(P1) Philosophical

In Favor of the Law Of Attraction


Dear Friend,

While walking my dog Lady today, I pondered further on your understandable objection to positive affirmation and the law of attraction because they don't seem to be working for oppressed and suffering people in the third world:

My answer is that there is nothing wrong with the law of attraction. Were these people in a situation where they could practice it positively, it would work for them in a positive way, but where oppression takes away personal freedoms and where poverty is usually the result of greed, corruption, and oppression, personal freedom to choose is removed. Still, as was the case with Viktor Frankl in the concentration camps (Man's Search For Meaning), he survived by envisioning a different reality and made it his own. When I went to the DeYoung exhibit of the unbelievable quilt collection from the women of Gee's Bend, Alabama, I was forcefully struck by the freedom which comes from creativity. No one can suppress what goes on within. Even the slaves created great music as their way of transporting their reality to something much more inwardly sublime.

For the most part, however, when one's freedom is taken from them, the impoverished reality which they notice day in and day out becomes and remains their "vision." Of course it's not their fault. And it takes the helping vision of others to enable them to see beyond their immediate "reality." Hence the absolute wisdom in granting the Nobel Prize to Muhammad Yunus creator of the Grameen Bank who empowers people (especially women) with mini-micro loans of $100 or so to begin their own tiny weaving or similar businesses. The success of this program and others like the Namaste Bank serving Guatemala and other Latin American countries is staggeringly encouraging.

Enough soapboxing for positive vision except to say it's also the only route to world peace, and that's a whole other of my soap boxes. Encourage everyone to support the current House legislation for a US Dept of Peace! http://www.congress.org

Love,

Soapbox Eddie


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(P2) Political

Where Y'all At"?

American jazz spokesman and genius speaks also to the world we face daily and wonder what will become of it. He counsels doing something in other words participating:

"Find out where the tax money is going. Find out why something happened. Write to people. Just be a participant." Fittingly his latest song is titled, "Where Y'all At."

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(P3) Poetical

PIECES OF THE SKY

by Greg Fuchs

The wind, the water

Washed my home,

My people away,

My people wash far

Away my home.

Pieces of the sky.

The wind, the water

Took my home

Into the lake.

Home so fleeting

The pieces of the sky.

The wind and the water

Biblical lesson.

The lake came to visit

The river. The lake

Came to my house.

The wind and the water

So fleeting,

Pieces of the sky.

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Not-So-Trivia(l) Quiz

Who said the following - Press here to answer

"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners. put your answer here