Don't Follow Leaders Who Lie to You

This statement, you would think, would be obvious. The kind of advice that moms and dads say to their kids as they grow up and that kids take to heart and follow as a way of being: Don't follow leaders who have to lie to you to get you to follow them.

Such advice can help a person in all sorts of scenarios: ditching a bad boss, leaving a questionable religious leader, walking away from a slimy investment guru.

Faced with everyday circumstances, we likely do exactly that: walk away and tell the guy lying to us to get lost.

Yet, here we are, a nation still following a chief executive of our country and his officials who continue to lie to us.

Has that innate sense of knowing we deserve better than to be lied to -- the very sense that guides us out of a sketchy car-salesman's office -- has that sense of what we accept for ourselves disappeared entirely when it comes to the running of our country?

If there's any office we should be the most wary of following when the holder is known to lie repeatedly, it is this one.

These huge, expensive, life-risking, life-taking, monumental lies -- they are lies that benefit a few elite. The war profiteers all around the world.

We are paying with our blood and the soul of our very country.

Is it that we do we not see the lies? Have we grown so accustomed to them that we cannot tell what is true anymore?

Have we heard or told so many lies in our own lives -- to make a buck, to get some insurance money, to have affair, to get out of a ticket, to get a story published, to make someone else take the fall for something we did -- that we literally have lost our sense of what truth feels like?

If so, then it's no wonder we have the administration we have -- it is an outgrowth of our own state of being.

The other alternative is that we do know exactly, deep down, that we're being lied to -- not just by our chief, but by many, many others all the way up and down the line -- but we feel powerless to do anything about it.

That truth resonates within us and we are so deeply upset by what's happening that we are almost in despair, turning to junk TV to keep us out of the abyss of horror we will know if we turn into it.

It's not so much that we're following this leadership, but that we haven't yet rebelled. We haven't yet found it within ourselves to shout "No" in a loud enough voice that it resonates throughout the universe and vibrates the liars right out of the White House and right out of Congress.

I'm asking you to find that voice now.

This is an inner turning even more than an outer one. Do you feel you deserve the truth from our government?

If you don't feel you deserve the truth, do nothing. You'll get more of the same.

But if you do feel you deserve it, say to yourself, "Enough! I deserve the truth." Just feeling and declaring that you deserve the truth will make worlds shift.

We are approaching the eve of another war, a war that has great potential to cause consequences that will uproot everything we know. If we don't find our voice to demand the truth -- from government, media and ourselves -- we will have to find the strength to face our muteness after the world we believe in collapses around our ankles.

Holding to Account

Yesterday was certainly a day for celebration. We repudiated the sickening lies and corruption. Who wouldn't celebrate the implosion of darkness? Yet already the right is on the attack to tell us to stop right where we are. No. This administration and the corrupt absolutely do need to be held to account. They need to be held to account for their fraud and conspiracy otherwise we will not have our country back. Otherwise they or others will try and do it again.

It's not just the Repubs -- I vote Democratic this time because the lock on power absolutely needed to be smashed and there are more folks of integrity in that camp at the moment. Brave people who stood up to the bullies and spoke up about the lies and fraud. People like Conyers and Waxman and Kucinich and Boxer and Watson and Waters and Winograd. That said, there are many Dems deep in the corruption cesspool and they too need to be held to account. It is our duty to shine light into all this darkness.

This is not from revenge, but from a place of standing for what we deserve and from what we know to be true. To change, we need to see the truth. We cannot move forward without the truth. There are far too many corruptions, far too many criminal activities from the top people running the country -- we need to hold the admin accountable so that the American people broadly and deeply know what was actually done to them. So they won't ever be fooled again.

As the abused, we damn well have a right to investigate and a duty to hold the abusers to account. Forgiveness comes, but you cannot completely forgive if you really have no idea what was done to you / the country / the planet -- the harm and the insult and the rape of you.

If you are drugged and raped and aren't aware of what happens to you, you are still raped. When you come to and see the torn panties and the bruises, you better believe you'd want to get the guy who did it to you off the street and to affirm that that is not what you deserve. That would be your duty as a woman. When you press charges, you stand up for all women and say, "No! You cannot violate me. There are consequences for what you did."

I don't doubt that anyone who suggests to a woman in this situation, "Why prosecute? You really don't know exactly what happened, why bother dredging it up?" could expect a swift one in the teeth. It's insulting and demeaning. It suggests that her humanity isn't important enough to stand up for. That she doesn't need to know exactly how she was degraded. That she doesn't need to understand what twisted cogs allowed someone to think that doing that was okay.

Many people in the country have only a vague sense of what has been done to them -- they have the sickening feeling of seeing those torn panties, but aren't really conscious yet of what actually happened. To those who tell us to stop, No! there are the panties, here are the bruises -- we need to know.

We still need to root out the tentacles of the fraud so we really know who is pulling the stings and how and why. It's our duty and it would help us heal these truly great wounds. Not only that, it also would help demonstrate to the world that, beyond the planes, our country has been hijacked these past years and these arrogant raiders do not and never have represented us.

Every human being should feel vindicated today. It was a stand to shred to pieces the darkness we've had shoved down our throats and it's a grand and happy day for the planet that humans in this part of the world have spoken and acted to do so.

Moral gymnastics

Bush's moral stance on stem cell research surely strikes more folks than me as absurd. For all his Bible thumping, Bush has no grasp of the book. I'm fairly certain when Moses came down with the tablet that said, "You shall not kill" I'm pretty sure it didn't mean just "you shall not kill embryos," but "you shall not kill human beings," first off (probably animals too, come to think of it). Where is Bush's moral outrage at this Iraq war that has killed by some estimates 100,000 HUMAN BEINGS?

Bush launched the war by fraud. A hundred thousand human beings have been killed. Come back to me with true grief and remorse for your role in that, Bush, and I will listen to your "moral argument" over stem cells. Until then, you are bowing down to the false idol of political gain.

An attribute of strength

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
-- Mahatma Gandhi, Indian spiritual leader (1869-1948)

Living in Fear Together or Iraq War Redux

Israel and Lebanon are at war again. The world asks themselves haven't they had enough? The slim Israeli justification for launching real war -- the capture of an Israeli soldier -- now looks as convenient as the White House's claims of WMD in Iraq. Tanya Reinhart, leading Israeli scholar and commentator, reports the Israeli army was preparing for an attack months earlier, with the goal of destroying the Hamas infrastructure and its government.

For its part, Hezbollah is the David, benefiting from the absurdity of foisting primitive rock-ets at military Goliath Israel.

"The military arrogance of Israel, the fact that Israel is bombarding a helpless country like Lebanon, destroying its infrastructure, dismantling the state, is making people more and more angry," [said Labib Kamhawi, political scientist in Amman, the Jordanian capital].

"I feel a sense of pride because of this small group of people who are capable of fighting the state of Israel and all its military power," said Fayez Smet, a criminal defense lawyer. "Whether they win or not, they are heroes." (from LA Times A Divide Deepens in Arab World)

As tragic as all the events are, the entire conflict seems to me the last gasp of macho, without real power -- a desperate flailing about. Both groups are without answers. All that remains are habits. The habit of retaliation, the habit of expanding old wounds with fresh gashes, the habit of war.

John Keegan, one of the world's foremost military historians, says in his masterpiece A History of Warfare To refuse to recognize that politics leading to war are a poisonous intoxication, we do not need to believe, like Margaret Mead, that war is an 'invention'…. All that we need to accept is that, over the course of 4000 years of experiment and repetition, warmaking has become a habit.… Unless we unlearn the habits we have taught ourselves, we shall not survive.

The habit of war prevents both sides from seeing any common ground. Neither can acknowledge that past and present horrors suffered by both sides have given them the common experience of grief, oppression and fear. Recognition that they do have such a fundamental experience in common can lead to sympathy, compassion and eventual trust. These are the conditions that lead to the peace and safety both claim to want. Both groups will wildly flail around until the other recognizes and honors the deeply human desire they share to be safe and free.

The majority of people throughout the region seem as weary of these habits of war as the world is of reading about them. It is the leaders -- without effective answers, feeling impotent to solve the problems, and benefiting from illusions of potency -- who are now resorting to macho indiscriminate demonstrations of power. These displays merely highlight their true impotence -- they don't solve anything and cause more of the grief, oppression and fear they are purportedly trying to end.

"Why should we be the only ones who live in fear?" said Muhammad Abu Oukal, a student at the Islamic University in Gaza City. "With these rockets, the Israelis feel fear, too. We will have to live in peace together, or live in fear together." (from The New York Times Rockets Create a 'Balance of Fear' With Israel, Gaza Residents Say)

I have hope that the truth of this student's last statement is now self evident, that the choice rings clearly inside enough people of the Middle East, indeed inside enough people in the world, that the leaders benefiting from world calamity will find themselves alone, abandonded, defrocked of any illusion that they are making progress.

When enough people see the truth of the manipulation, the flaccid reality of their current leaders, the opening can come to unlearn the habits we have taught ourselves.

She was a GIRL

The horror of the latest revelations from the dark swarm in Iraq: our own US soldiers plotted and carried out a gang rape of a beautiful 14-year old girl and the murder of her and her family.

According to the many reports, four soldiers break into an Iraqi family's home and take aside the beautiful 14-year old GIRL. While she listens, one soldier takes the girl's mother and father and 7-year old sister into the other room and shoots them each in the head, killing them. The soldier returns to where they're holding the girl, he lifts up her dress, gathers it around her young neck, and he and at least one other soldier rape her. When they're finished, they shoot her in the head.

They then attempt to set her body on fire to cover up the evidence.

The AP and other media say the soldiers raped and killed an "Iraqi woman." But she was NOT a woman, she was a GIRL. The military has tried to say her age was 20, but her identity card shows she was only 14 years old. Her name was Abeer Qasim Hamza, born Aug 19,1991.

We must bear responsibility for this. The hatred of our leaders breads hatred down the line. The blatant disdain and dismissal of the law exhibited by the White House gets passed along to soldiers with the MREs. The macho desperation for power and control spouted at the top reaches the rank and file. Some use these poisonous teachings to hold the thought that gang raping a beautiful Iraqi girl, worthless for anything else in their eyes, is within their right.

If it is our right, according to the White House, to defraud America and the world into launching this war that has killed so many -- and We the People allow it to persist even as we know it was a fraud -- how far off are these soldiers in their conclusion? If torture and firing nuclear bombs at will are acceptable to our leaders -- and We the People allow them to stay in power -- how far off are these soldiers?

For a moment just countenance our outrage if a foreign country overthrew our evil government, occupied Los Angeles, destroyed every decent building and infrastructure, ignited huge sectarian unrest, gave power to ultra conservative religious fanatics, and then their soldiers plotted and carried out a gang rape and murder of a beautiful 15-year old girl and her family in Sherman Oaks?

We are not Darfur! We must either identify with this family or we are dead as a country. ALL are created equal.

I must believe that we are not so unconscious. I must believe that the country of integrity that we yearn to be, that we long for, is still within us. I must believe that we will find that country within us and stand together to bring to account -- through hard-won laws that we will now uphold -- those who have perpetrated all these frauds: the elections, the war, and everything in between.


Details Emerge in Alleged Army Rape, Killings
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/02/AR2006070200673.html?referrer=emailarticle

BAGHDAD, July 2 -- Fifteen-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza was afraid, her mother confided in a neighbor.

As pretty as she was young, the girl had attracted the unwelcome attention of U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint that the girl had to pass through almost daily in their village in the south-central city of Mahmudiyah, her mother told the neighbor.

Abeer told her mother again and again in her last days that the soldiers had made advances toward her, a neighbor, Omar Janabi, said this weekend, recounting a conversation he said he had with the girl's mother, Fakhriyah, on March 10.

Fakhriyah feared that the Americans might come for her daughter at night, at their home. She asked her neighbor if Abeer might sleep at his house, with the women there.

Janabi said he agreed.

Then, "I tried to reassure her, remove some of her fear," Janabi said. "I told her, the Americans would not do such a thing."

Abeer did not live to take up the offer of shelter.

Instead, attackers came to the girl's house the next day, apparently separating Abeer from her mother, father and young sister.

(more -- follow link above)

The Flag Resurrected

Thank you, immigrant protesters, for giving us our country back.

Thank each of you for grabbing that red white and blue fabric by its balls and yanking it back to its truth.

After the current administration has so prostituted the symbol that my friend blurted, horrified when shown the latest "Liberty" flag stamp, "Do you have anything less patriotic?" to which the post office worker confided, "You have no idea how often we hear that now," -- we feel ashamed to put the flag on a humble piece of mail.

Yesterday, with tears in my eyes and lump in my throat, I watched as, resuscitated by the hands of immigrants, the flag was brought back to its proper life.


Those who are without standing stood to remind us all of the promise. The promise of America.

It takes an outsider to see what we had allowed to be trampled and shot full of holes.

The promise this country had lost thanks to this administration and their complicit lackeys in Congress and the major media: of fair treatment, opportunity for all, justice, blindness to race and class and origins. Our founding principle honors the equality of human beings. This was the noble promise we watched come close to death.

Thank God, Goddess and All There Is that it was remembered by those the country has ignored and abused.

To every person protesting yesterday, I say with all my heart on many levels, "Thank you." We've been waiting in despair, those of us who know, waiting for this.

We did not even know we were waiting. And we could not have predicted it. But now that it is here, we know -- it was what we desperately needed.

Those who are most disenfranchised had to stand up. They had to say, "Enough." They had to stand for what they deserved. They had to lose their fear.

They had to stand en masse to say they deserve honor and dignity. That they deserve it simply because they are human.

What you have done has resonated in our subconscious -- there, we've absorbed your bravery of saying each person deserves honor, that we deserve dignity. We had forgotten.

We had forgotten we were all once immigrants here looking for honor and dignity.

Each one of us now can stand for it again in our own lives with less fear, because you have shown us that it is possible.

The message will reverberate in subtle and overt ways through this country. Indeed through the Earth. I, for one, am most grateful for your gracious lesson and gift. Each step has lifted our country and returned to us its soul.

A greater gift I cannot imagine. We are deeply in your debt.

Describe the World at Peace

Many people say they want peace in the world.

But what exactly are we working toward?

The word "peace," I've come to realize over the years of putting Imagine Festival together, is neither concrete nor active in many people's perceptions.

This is important because vocabulary shapes our impression of the world in which we live.

People have words for the things they need to talk about -- or are in the habit of talking about. The Inuit, for example, famously describe snow in very precise terms most likely because precise descriptions are critical to their survival.

But beyond language reflecting our world, one linguistic theory holds we may be able to perceive only what we have language for and not be aware of things we cannot name.

The words of war in our culture are pervasive and concrete: battalion, flank, troops, skirmish, battle. We use them often in our everyday business & sports metaphors: warrior spirit, battle for supremacy, the most dangerous weapon in the offense, shotgun formations, blitz, sacks, my ideas were shot down, your criticisms were on target....

These war phases are familiar and heavily color our view of and approach to our world.

The words of peace could develop as much richness, concreteness and color, if we choose to give them such attention.

I suggest that describing peace more precisely is critical to our survival.

If the word "peace" is nebulous, it will be all the more difficult to figure out how to get there.

If we describe a location as "North America," do we turn north or south from here?

So what exactly do we mean by "peace"?

For me, the form is not the place to start in creating anything. I find it more useful to describe the experience. What would that world feel like to live in?

With that in mind, in the next blog, I will list what I consider to be the top characteristics of this world at peace.

Yes to Department of Peace

A formal Department of Peace is not only aligned with our country’s core mission, but also would be one of the fastest routes to our own well-being.

Sixty one years ago on D-Day, my uncle, of the 13th-18th Tank Regiment QMO Hussars in the British Army, was on the first tank to land on the shore of Sword Beach, Normandy. His arrival met with a rain of gunfire to drench that sand with blood and scatter the parts of his companions' bodies.

My uncle somehow survived. He returned early last June to the commemoration on the pale cream sand of a peaceful Europe – his country’s former bitter enemy, Germany, participating in the ceremonies.

BBC News reporter Alan Little, commenting on those events, reminded me: "What subsequent generations have taken for granted – peace between the European powers – was not true of the world into which these men were born. It is the achievement of their generation."

The peace in Europe we all now do take for granted was barely conceivable then, after centuries of decimating wars. But it exists now.

How? It was created by leaders who believed it possible and who worked to create the bonds of trust, cooperation and respect that allowed it not just to exist, but to flourish.

Likewise, the global economy did not pop, fully formed, out of thin air. It was built by leaders who believed it possible and worked to make it happen.

It is remarkable to me that most European nations, not long ago hurling cannonballs with frequent ferocity, now trust each other enough to share the same currency and cross borders with little more than a wave.

No less a vision is needed now. We must work toward global peace with the same determination, the same belief in its possibility.

It can be the achievement of our generation.

A formal Department of Peace practically as well as symbolically demonstrates that this country is committed to pursue and intends to build that state we would all choose – that of peace between all.

Practically, a Department of Peace would research and facilitate nonviolent solutions to domestic and international conflict.

It would support and coordinate programs that cultivate respect, that honor the capability of people to create remarkable solutions, that instill the skills necessary to work from cooperation instead of confrontation. It would coordinate proven and effective strategies that reduce violence.

In short, the Department of Peace would guide this nation to nurture the social conditions that result in a positive peace.

Symbolically, a Department of Peace is aligned with our nation's core mission. We were founded on the truth of the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Peace would open the doors to the greatest potential expansion of all of these rights.

We are at the moment predominantly a reactive nation. We wait for the heart attack before we examine our way of living. As many are now realizing, cultivating the conditions of health is a more effective strategy than hoping you can recover from a heart attack.

In the same manner, we can actively cultivate conditions of peace. They are well known. It is simply that we have yet to fully commit to them.

Creating this Department of Peace would indicate our commitment and our choice to actively pursue a more effective strategy for our long-term security that happens to coincide with our highest ideals, our grandest dream. That, surely, is how any person, and I suggest by extension any nation, feels most fulfilled.

One thing is certain: peace will not arise without the intention to create it.

Setting this intention could be the most majestic legacy this nation could ever leave.

Worth of a Human

"We were left behind on the side of the road like yesterday's trash." -- woman in the Houston shelter on Oprah's show Wednesday.

The unfolding truth of the lack of regard for the poor, especially the poor and black, has dramatically revealed itself in New Orleans. Is it right to treat human beings like yesterday's garbage?

The ugliest aspects of our prevailing attitude are coming to light -- we are seeing the consequences of a long standing bias toward wealth, the consequences of long standing racism and self interest and it is sickening most of us. We've found an infestation of cockroaches in our own supposedly pristine cupboard. The cockroaches are the beliefs that money is the only thing that matters, that race is a determinant of the value of a human being.

We knew it was there -- we didn't realize it was that bad. Guess we don't open that cupboard often enough.

Once we see the cockroaches, finally, we get to decide what to do about the infestation. We get to examine what does truly matter and what humans deserve simply because they are human.

History has propelled us toward the conclusion that human beings deserve honor and respect as a consequence of the simple truth that they are human and alive.

If that is the conclusion we draw, then we need to turn to those most disadvantaged and say we are sorry. We have not, by any means, been widely acting on that belief. Not in the day-to-day.

We also need to turn to that part of ourselves that holds the secret belief that we are not worthy of being rescued. What do I possibly have to offer this world? That part of us resides in us still. It occurred to me yesterday that much of religions are based on the very idea of the unworthy human who must be saved or made right. No wonder we feel unworthy at some deep level.

Now this seems at odds with the conclusion that humans deserve respect and honor simply because we are human. We'll have to sort that one out.

In this grand sorting out, let us be kind to one another. Let's loudly demonstrate to those from the Gulf who have been devastated that we believe they do deserve honor and dignity and respect, without condition, because they are human on this earth.

The search for new solid ground

"The people we see suffering on television are our brothers and sisters. It's incumbent on all of us, as American citizens and fellow human beings, to do our part to help them through this terrible tragedy." Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on Sept 2.

The old solid ground is giving way, sinking like New Orleans. What we thought we stood on has crumbled -- we're coming to realize this with the inescapable evidence from New Orleans and the Gulf coast after Katrina. The institutions of government do not support us as they exist now. At every level, government has demonstrated clearly that they cannot care for the most vulnerable. When that happens, we lose faith that they can care for any of us. The rumblings of that realization are vibrating through our entire culture right now. It has woken me up with nausea at 4 AM.

As a writer, I can see the metaphor our subconscious is likely grappling with: Do any of the institutions we've relied on have anything to give us? Or do we find the places we've been ordered to go barren and quickly become hell with no escape? That we're used to relying on institutions for answers makes this question deeply disturbing.

If we needed proof of our concerns about the focus of current institutions, we've received it. If we needed proof that money is the only thing we consistently value, we've got that.

This neglect manifesting dramatically is the direct result of long-standing ways of treating each other -- ways we've grown used to -- but the underlying ugliness is being made clear to us now. One example is excruciatingly painful:

Rescue 'ticket'
Posted: 6:24 p.m. ET Sept 5, 2005
CNN's Drew Griffin in New Orleans, Louisiana
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/05/scene.blog/index.html

"I am stunned by an interview I conducted with New Orleans Detective Lawrence Dupree. He told me they were trying to rescue people with a helicopter and the people were so poor they were afraid it would cost too much to get a ride and they had no money for a "ticket." Dupree was shaken telling us the story. He just couldn't believe these people were afraid they'd be charged for a rescue."

Human beings in New Orleans hold the belief that they are too poor to matter to anyone... that no one would go out of their way... that the only reason they'd be rescued is if they had enough money. Are they far wrong based on what we've seen? The squalid Superdome evacuation was interrupted on Friday when school busses pulled up so 700 well-dressed guests of the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line.

“How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?” exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage. The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9175611/page/2/

Is this the message we want our nation regularly communicating to its citizens with every daily interaction? Is this what we secretly believe too, and it utterly frightens us? Is this how we want to be?

Now we need to own our ability to respond. We need a crash course on how to evaluate and be honest with ourselves about what's going on in our own hearts. You can be sure we are not being taught these skills in school or at work. Perhaps we can make space enough to teach each other anyway.

My deepest wish is that you can make use of this vessel of Imagine Festival to find solace, comfort, connection. New solid ground, if you will. A space within which grows the belief in the capacity of the human heart and soul, a belief that we are perfectly capable and perfectly enough to take up the ability to respond to what we see with our own eyes and know with our own hearts.

Shame

We are a proud lot, we Americans. We think very highly of ourselves and our abilities. It rallies us through much adversity.

But pride becomes arrogance when we ignore our flaws, don't listen, aren't sensitive.

Now we see the third world brought to one of our most beloved cities. Our city. In many ways, one of our most central hearts of culture.

I've heard it said in my travels that New Orleans is so precious it doesn't deserve to be in the United States -- we don't appreciate it.

We, in this country, hang our heads now. We feel shame that these are our citizens, in our country. It looks like a horror in Haiti.

We have failed somewhere and we dread to look at it.

The failure of government manifests broadly, at every level.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley exclaimed, "I was shocked. We are ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested," the mayor said, barely able to contain his anger during a City Hall news conference. "We are just waiting for the call.

"The people we see suffering on television are our brothers and sisters," Daley said. "It's incumbent on all of us, as American citizens and fellow human beings, to do our part to help them through this terrible tragedy."

According to the Chicago Tribune, in the event of a disaster, the city offered to send 44 Chicago Fire Department rescue and medical personnel and their gear, more than 100 Chicago police officers, 140 Streets and Sanitation, 146 Public Health and 8 Human Services workers, and a fleet of vehicles including 29 trucks, two boats and a mobile clinic.

"So far FEMA has requested only one piece of equipment -- a tank truck to support the Illinois Emergency Response Team, which is already down there," Daley said. "The tank truck is on its way. We are awaiting further instructions from FEMA."

When government cannot care for those most vulnerable, we lose faith that it can care for any of us.

Did it not occur to planners that evacuation plans that relied on private ownership of vehicles would leave 100,000 and more behind? There are those who cannot buy a car. There are those who cannot drive.

Telling prejudices arise: From Harper's Index, August:
Number of bars visited this spring by an undercover team investigating racial discrimination: 40
Percentage of bars that charged black customers more than white customers: 40

That statistic is horrible. Something is very wrong with how we've been treating each other on a daily, basic level.

We now are forced to examine all of it. I pray we find in it a path to a better nation -- to see the brothers and sisters around us, who have always been there, on a daily, basic level.

Sinking beneath waters

The devastation of the Gulf is heartbreaking. Hopelessness and despair in the faces of so many. The stories are causing journalists to breakdown -- jaded journalists. My heart goes out to them, to us.

I had read about the catastrophe waiting to happen in New Orleans last year in the Global Warning issue of National Geographic. Here it is almost to the picture.

We could have fixed the levees -- apparently the problems were well known. But we went on with our usual lives instead.

Look folks, the earth isn't kidding around here. With global warming, storms are going to get more severe and more frequent. High water temperatures are a key ingredient in hurricanes, and ocean water temperature is increasing. Katrina was so severe in part because the water all over the Gulf was solidly hot.

We can't walk around in a stupor thinking that what we're in the habit of doing is gonna be just fine forever and ever.

Like the guy who's just had a heart attack, we're gonna have to make some changes to how we're living. The heart attack guy has to change his diet, his exercise routine, how he handles stress. We too need to change what we're doing.

They're just habits. We can form healthier ones. Find other more nurturing ways to interact with this planet.

Collectively, we can identify with the folks in New Orleans. We've had dreams of sinking beneath waters. What are those dreams trying to tell us?

We know what we need to do. We dare not ignore these warnings.

Let us not kick ourselves as the climate collapses, saying we could have averted this disaster, but we went on with our usual lives instead.

Social permission to help each other

I woke yesterday at 5:00am California time feeling very uncomfortable. What's going on, I tried to figure out. Pre-earthquake jitters? Oh... then I realized in my groggy anxiety, Katrina is about to hit land.

I turned on the television and saw Katrina's menacing red flames swirling on the radar just off land's edge.

The thought came to me in that state between sleep and wake: Earth looks pretty angry right now.

I acknowledged the anger, since that's what it looked like. God knows, Earth sure has some pretty damn good reasons to be mad, if she is. I'd be mad if I were her.

I meditated -- sent soothing thoughts to Earth and to the people of that area. Prayers for a long while till I fell off to sleep again.

When I woke three hours later, Katrina had been downgraded from a category 4 to a category 3 storm. Earth calmed down a bit.

Another thought came to me: in these huge catastrophes, we give ourselves social permission to be kind to one another, to strangers. We go about rescuing, sharing, sheltering people we don't know. As if they were important to us.

Is that what it takes for us to get it? Disasters?

It takes disasters for us to be compassionate with each other?

Just conjecture here, but since, as I said in my last post, we're set up to expect to be loved without condition, my guess is we are also set up to draw to us what we hunger for. In the current state of the world, expressions of unconditional love are so rare. Virtually the only time we see it expressed in a large way is in the middle of disasters.

If, as quantum physics suggests, the universe responds to what we're subconsciously needing, maybe in this time of widespread shutting off from each other, disasters are the only tried and true mechanism we know of to elicit widespread unconditional love. To open our hearts.

If it is, that is a damn sad state of affairs.

I say we don't need to wait for disasters to give ourselves the social food we are all craving. Let's give ourselves social permission right now to care about each other and act on it, for no other reason than it's what we're all so hungry for.

What we're doing is well worth doing

The pause in my blogging has been a regrouping, a shift in many things. Ultimately a decision on my part that what I'm doing is worth doing. What I'm pursuing is worth pursuing.

Inspired really by a Kris Kristofferson song I heard anew at a Western Beat tribute night a few months ago in a local joint, Highland Grounds -- a night conceived by Americana list goddess Bliss (www.americanarootsla.net).

"’cause I think what they've done is well worth doin'
And they'’re doin'’ it the best way that they can..."

The song's about all the great musicians in Nashville at the time (1976) that everyone was poo-pooing: Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson.... You know those legends... well, folks didn't all like them back then.

"And if you don't like Hank Williams, honey, you can kiss my ass."

I realized that on another level, the song was talking about now -- in the LA music scene first of all -- LA music is the most invigorated it's been in a decade, according to veterans, and it's all because of the renewed interest in roots and alt-country music, they tell me.

The Vaquetones, James Intveld, Mike Stinson are just a few of the talents I'm blessed to hear in this town every month...

I think that what they're doing is well worth doing.

I also realized that I needed to look at what I was doing in the same light -- that what I was doing was well worth doing and at the end of my life I would be proud of myself for pushing forward with this idea so few fully believe in or act as if it is possible.

Peace among the people on earth.

I know that it is possible. Not only that it's possible, but that it's our birthright. It's what we deserve. That's right -- we human beings deserve to be treated with honor, respect, appreciation. So do animals. So does the planet. All of us, not just some of us.

This is, I'm realizing, a radical idea.

It changes everything.

But I believe it's much more our human nature than the current predominant worldview would have us believe.

I've read psychological theories that describe how, as babies, we're set up from day one to expect to receive love, so we interpret any abuse we receive in early years as "love." Once we're grown, therefore, we create in our lives the very conditions that will recreate the abuse because our early experience wired our brains to subconsciously understand the abuse as nurturing "love."

Yikes.

So it's gonna take some rewiring. We can do that work.

The key here is that we COME IN expecting to be loved without condition.

Marianne Williamson spoke yesterday here in LA and told of a cruise she'd taken recently in Alaska. Some kayakers paddled by. All the folks on the cruise boat happily waved and the kayakers happily waved back. Wait a minute, Marianne thought, how'd you know you'd even like these guys? The observation prompted her thought that it's the natural initial tendency of human beings to treat each other like brothers and sisters.

The millennium, for example, she said, was a worldwide party -- people riding on the Subway in NYC even spoke to each other -- but the day itself wasn't different from any other day, in truth. The sole difference was, on that day, we gave ourselves social permission to treat each other like brothers and sisters. Social permission. That's all that was necessary for the natural tendency to take over.

Here's another radical idea... maybe all that's needed is to drop the BS that stops us from seeing each other as brothers and sisters.

To me, as a rose is a rose is a rose, a human is a human is a human. The species is defined by DNA -- and we all share pretty much all of it.

So I press on. Doing it the best way that I can.

The best way for me is through nurturing self worth and joy in the world. Imagine Festival is one engine for that. To open the possibility that solutions are before us all the time, we simply need to discover how to apply them. To create spaces that perhaps will help people run into the magic that is out there for them and bring it into their lives. To encourage folks to own their power. To take the steps we need to get to peace.

And to imagine beyond that... for me, peace is just the beginning.

Another Kris Kristofferson song caught my ear -- To Beat the Devil

"And you still can hear me singing to the people who don't listen
To the things that I am saying, praying someone's going to hear;
And I guess I'll die explaining how the things that they complain about
Are things they could be changing, hoping someone's goin' to care.

"I was born a lonely singer and I'm bound to die the same
But I've got to feed the hunger in my soul;
And if I never have a nickel I won't ever die of shame
’cause I don't believe that no-one wants to know!"

Thank you Kris -- I've decided not to believe that no one wants to know.

Productivity of Prostitution

The most wrenching moment during the Prevent Impaired Driving Event on Capitol Hill last week for me surprisingly had nothing to do with the event subject itself. It was my overhearing a conversation between two of our guests.

"What do you do?" one asked.

"I'm a lobbyist," said the other.

"What do you lobby for?" asked the first man.

"Whatever they pay me for," said the second.

Whatever they pay me for?! My stomach turned.

I didn't want to see who it was, didn't want to know the prostitute in our midst.

The worst blow came when the man he was talking to didn't even raise a challenge.

Couldn't he respond: "So you are one of those soulless drones who may be bought by the chemical companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the oil companies currently on a path to undermine our planet, our health and life on earth! How can you sleep at night? When you get up in the morning, what do you see in the mirror?"

I wanted to scream and shake the life out of him. Or into him.

But then I realized that's exactly how so many people I know regard their jobs -- they'll do whatever they get paid for.

The country is grinding its productivity out of widespread prostitution.

We accept subsuming our beliefs for money. We accept prostituting ourselves for money. We do what we hate for money. This has become not only acceptable, but the NORM. It's EXPECTED.

People AGREE to become parking-ticket givers. People AGREE to work for collection agencies to call people and pressure them for money they don't have. People AGREE to be attorneys for the tobacco industry.

Who likes parking tickets, or collection agency calls? Who thinks the tobacco industry is a positive force in the world?

Doing stuff we would hate to receive kills us, in my opinion.

Starting wars we would hate to have on our soil kills us too, in my opinion.

I persist in the belief that it cannot remain this way for much longer. It's an energy deficit. We spend much more energy doing stuff we hate than doing stuff we love.

I'd be willing to bet that people who work in the jobs they hate are sick and injured from all causes far more often than people doing jobs they love.

It goes without saying that it affects our souls. More practically, for those in practical mode, I also believe it directly affects productivity in a broad and wide way.

This country is not in a position to afford such effects anymore. We can't afford the depression in productivity. We can't afford the health costs either.

As far as I've read, we are teetering on the edge of economic meltdown.

We must change.

Important change like this can happen only by one person after another making a different decision, a different choice.

Choose to do only what you would agree to do without money. In your mind, take money out of the equation for a minute when choosing your actions today.

Then choose to bring to yourself money for making the choices that sit well in your heart. It's pretty much that simple.

When one person does this, he or she becomes an example and an influence to everyone he or she knows. That's how things shift. That's how the country can shift.

Changing Minds on Capitol Hill

Last week, April 6, I went to Capitol Hill with AWAKE Community to present to Congress an event intended to reinvigorate and bring together the groups involved in the effort to prevent impaired driving, the most prevalent violent crime in the country.

The event was a strong success -- many of the different groups involved in the effort to prevent drunk driving gathered in the same room together -- many for the first time.

I know, it may come as a shock, but the different organizations, due to conflicting opinions of the best approach to solve the issue and a mindset that each is competing for limited donor dollars, hate each other.

Okay, hate may be a strong word, but visceral dislike is pretty accurate.

I worked with AWAKE Community to create a film and music and art performance that would remove the us vs them view and thank personal, everyday heroes who have kept tragedies from happening.

By the end of the evening, minds were changed.

Not only did the various groups acknowledge each other, but also a deeper change occurred.

One man came up to my colleague and said, "You changed my mind -- I drink and drive, and I never listened because the messages were so holier than thou. But you guys are just like me... you've done it too and you're not afraid to be open about that. I can listen to you."

That to me was exactly what I wanted to accomplish with the film.

Shiites Walk Softly in New Landscape (LA Times)

Shiites Walk Softly in New Landscape

Shiite Islamists to shape new Iraq (Christian Science Monitor)

Yahoo! News - Shiite Islamists to shape new Iraq

Women's rights put to test in Iraq (Boston Globe)

Another article describing the situation for women in Iraq...

Boston Globe: Women's rights put to test in Iraq
By Marí­a Cristina Caballer January 30, 2005

THE FATE of Iraqi women's rights rests on the outcome of today's election. Zainab Al-Suwaij and Ala Talabani, two prominent Iraqi women leaders, say the elections will decide whether women will really become equal citizens or lose their voices.

Women are the majority in Iraq: 55 of every 100 citizens. And for the first time, the interim constitution guarantees at least a quarter of the 275 seats in Iraq's new National Assembly to women.

But Al-Suwaij and Talabani have spoken out against the efforts of some conservatives and religious extremists to limit the role of women in the new Iraq, and to impose restrictions on the feminine majority. ''Some are using violence -- shootings and car bombs -- to try to stop women from campaigning and being elected," Al-Suwaij says.

That women's rights are an explosive issue is a bitter reality for Al-Suwaij, 33, who grew up under the harsh rule of Saddam Hussein, took up arms against the Iraqi ruler, and today is working to bring democracy to a country that is struggling both with Hussein's legacy and an age-old authoritarian tradition. With her friend and comrade Talabani, Al-Suwaij has been working to ensure that freedom extends to all the population. This, they say, is a crucial moment for women in Iraq.

Before becoming a peace-wager, Al-Suwaij was a warrior -- and has the bullet scar on her cheek to prove it. At 20, during the 1991 Gulf War, she heeded the words of the first President Bush, who broadcast messages on Voice of America urging the Iraqi people to rebel against Hussein, promising US support. As an armed fighter, she helped open the gates of a prison where there was a human meat grinder for those who didn't confess. The promised support never arrived, and the battle-scarred veteran went into exile in the United States. Lately she has focused on training Iraqi women leaders about democracy. ''I called it Democracy 101," Al-Suwaij says.

As part of the program financed by $1.5 million from USAID, Al-Suwaij recently gathered 70 Iraqi women from nine provinces. Twenty-five of them are running for office in today's elections. ''Some of them have not had the opportunity to study higher education, but they are very smart and capable. Very impressive," she says.

Al-Suwaij especially admires the courage of Bedor Alyassri, 36, from Samwah. After the American occupation, Alyassri organized meetings among women, following her heart and her instincts.

''Bedor has been targeted for her work," says Al-Suwaij. ''She doesn't know exactly who is trying to assassinate her. Could be insurgents, or members of other political parties who don't like the fact that she is mobilizing many people."

Talabani, a civil engineer who has also been struggling to empower Iraqi women, was fired from her job for refusing to join Hussein's Baath party 15 years ago. After joining the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, she was detained by the Iraqi security service. In 1996, she went into exile in England and helped organize the Women's Union of Kurdistan. She recently trained 75 women in political leadership, and hopes that some will be elected today.

Even with some women guaranteed political posts today, the women of Iraq have a long way to go before Iraqi men treat them as political or social equals.
''In this first election, the candidates will be elected based upon religious orientation," Talabani said. ''This will be a party-based election, not based upon their points of view on issues or projects."

Both women fear that if extremists are elected, they might consider it a mandate to resurrect measures such as the infamous ''Resolution 137," an attempt to restrict women's rights ''by making religious Sharia family law into civil law." Al-Suwaij said Resolution 137 would not have allowed women to leave their houses without asking for permission from their husbands, while Talabani pointed out that the resolution would have allowed men to marry several women without going to a court.

Resolution 137 was defeated this past March. But today brings a fresh vote on women's status in Iraq. Talabani pointed out that Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, the man behind Resolution 137, is campaigning to become president. She strongly hopes he doesn't win.

Despite the many battles ahead, both women are hopeful; each would like someday to be president of a democratic Iraq. Then they could get some real work done.

''We, the women, are building bridges among cultural, ethnic, and religious divides," Talabani says.

Supporting Iraqi women leaders who are risking their lives to help rebuild their country should be a higher priority for the United States and the international community. It is necessary to multiply the resources being invested in this vital front. Iraqi women leaders are key players in this nation's struggle toward democracy. When the last US troops pull out, it will the Iraqi women who will try harder to keep the peace.

Marí­a Cristina Caballero is a fellow at Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership