The price of ignorance

This video was taken from this address;

The problem is that it is almost indistinguishable from real news. On CNN and FOX one sees crying women demanding the return of "their country", a place that is never defined but seems to refer to where social exclusion continues to be practiced.

This is the price for not having educated a large part of the population.



Referencias:

Video: http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/09/08
Letras ornatas: http://retrokat.com/medieval/leil.htm

Goodbye, Teddy Kennedy

Fuente


Perhaps the best of all three Kennedy brothers has left us. I can only say how sorry I am. This marks the almost-end of the great democrats, the last of those who thought that personal and collective liberty could coexist. How very sorry I am!!




Fuente

This cartoon by Zanetti, was published in the New York Times (on line). It had a different message: it decried the occult danger represented by the banking system. I modified it, first in PowerPoint to change the words, and then in Adobe Photoshop to fix some design problems. Now it denounces the dangers of Fascism that seem to be appearing again, the old phantom that once ran through Europe, but now seems more universal and more deadly.

Helen Thomas

Helen Thomas is one of Washington's most ethical and esteemed reporters. She is a Hearst White House columnist and currently writes for the Boston Channel, WCVB TV.

Murder is murder

This posting is about universal civil rights and how U.S. citizens must regain respect for international law. The news-media's capacity for double-think (term taken from Orwell’s novel, 1984) is fully developed in 2009. All of us, seem to be able to accept without apparent cognitive dissonance these two events:

1. In Raleigh, North Carolina “Federal authorities are searching for an eighth alleged member of a North Carolina group that authorities say plotted "violent jihad" overseas, prosecutors said Tuesday…. Seven other men have been arrested on charges of supporting terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder abroad" (CNN, 29th of July, 2009). I underline that this plotting is considered to be a crime.

2. “ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The United States conducted two drone missile strikes in Pakistan's South Waziristan region Wednesday, killing at least 45 people, in the latest example of expanded direct American support for Pakistan's military offensive against key Pakistani insurgent leaders” (Saeed Shah, Wed Jul 8, 2009). I understand that this killing is considered acceptable by the U.S. government and new media, even patriotic.

First of all, I want to declare that I believe all assassination to be unlawful, immoral, and inefficient as a method of social control. I do not condone either side. But people’s capacity for choosing sides and saying that the same conduct is OK when “we” do it, but criminal if “they” do it is perplexing to say the least. According to the news sources I have seen and read, if you are Moslem and want to kill people, well, you should be tried and sent to jail, or even killed outright by a drone. But if you are part of the U.S. “war effort”, it's a patriotic thing to do.

In my book, murder is murder, even when the objective is a known criminal. Civil rights is one of democracy’s chief historical conquests: everyone has a right to his/her day in court. Kings and generals do not have the right to “hit” or “put people out” –to use the latest euphemisms for homicide.

In addition to all the killing, another result of all the violence in Pakistan, in which everyone (insurgents, U.S. drone-bombing, and local armed forces) participates, is:

“Pakistan is experiencing its worst refugee crisis since partition from India in 1947, and while the world may be familiar with the tent camps that have rolled out like carpets since its operation against the Taliban started in April, the overwhelming majority of the nearly three million people who have fled live unseen in houses and schools, according to aid agencies” (Sabrina Tavernise, June 17, 2009.

This is not right.

References:

1. CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/29/north.carolina.terrorism.charges/index.html
2. Saeed Shah, McClatchy Newspapers, Wed Jul 8, 6:33 pm ET, http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/3268368
3. Sabrina Tavernise, June 17, 2009, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/world/asia/18refugee.html
4. Ornate letter: http://retrokat.com/medieval/leil.htm

Michael Jackson: a shamanic figure

Image of a sculpture in Campeche, Mexico

I admit that I’m getting to this topic a bit late when everyone else has mercifully begun to think about other things. But I’d like to ask about the explosion of feeling caused y Michael Jackson’s death.

The first days afterward, CNN didn’t talk about anything else at all, even the wars, the massacres and all that was going on in Central America. The BBC was a bit less monothematic, but even that channel dedicated hours and hours of broadcasting time to it. Internet congestion was total.

Why? There hasn’t ever been this much outpouring of grief for one person. If we compare the concentration of broadcasting time over MJ with that given to the deaths of other figures (for example: María Callas, John Lennon, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Monseñor Oscar Romero, Salvador Allende, Augusto Pinochet, Mao Zedong) we have to admit that it has been disproportional. And I do not doubt that he was an excellent singer and dancer.

In his lifetime he attracted hostility and legal aggression, almost always related to some sort of moral repudiation. Again, why?

Here is a possible answer: he was a mythic, even shamanic figure. He wasn’t a man or a woman, an adult or a child, a father or a son, a black or a white, a hero or an “abnormal”. His “moon-walk was out of this world. We could only adore him or hate him.

The shamans break up our comfortable world views. They cause terror when everything we have hidden on the other side of the looking-glass shows up in the real world outside its oniric borders.

But we need the shamans because every-day life isn’t enough. We need more than work, homework, paying bills, shopping at the grocery store and the like. We need to penetrate normal-life barriers

Maybe Michael Jackson offered that. It is interesting that fantastic figures like Harry Potter and the Hobbits are so attractive. But they are clearly fictional. Michael Jackson was real.

The need to change economic values

Murray Dobbin published an article in Rabble that was republished by Common Dreams yesterday called “Imagine: Prosperity without Growth” that brings up an old, old reflection: how to socialize the economy without jeopardizing civil rights and the possibility of personal liberties like owning things.

There are all sorts of theoretical issues involved like the need to preserve the impetus that Capitalism has given science, invention, industry, and other forms of production. It is possible that all this has just been a medium-term loan from fossil energy sources, but the system of manufacture, distribution, and in general “entitlement” that this economic arrangement has provided has been indeed dynamic and fruitful.

One thing we cannot do is think that things will go on just as they have for the last century. The Left has to get busy and invent alternatives, or we will fall into dictatorships such as the world has never known, together with massive migrations and starvation. Maybe a few of the very rich will find islands or mountain tops to hide on, but most of us will not.

It is amusing when people talk about how we will save ourselves by migrating to new oxygen-based colonies under pressurized geodesic domes on Mars. The image comes to mind of the pictures of people fighting to be included on one of the escaping helicopters leaving the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon way back when: even if these colonies were to be constructed, do all these people from Grand Rapids, Omaha and Little Rock think they will be invited along for the trip?

We have very few answers yet. The Right is bereft of ideas that aren’t dreams of reproducing the good-old-days. Mr. Dobbin said:

“The magnitude of the moral crisis of the political right is staggering. The greed, dishonesty, hubris and psychopathic disregard for the public good renders the whole business elite utterly unfit to pronounce on anything -- not even on the economy, but certainly not democracy or how we run our collective affairs."

I remember reading Paul Sweezy’s and Paul Baran’s book in the 1960´s, “Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order” that was written from a Marxist point of view about how present-day Capitalism must grow to stay alive. The viability of that underlying requirement was also challenged by the “Club of Rome” some years ago when the participants questioned our Planet’s capacity to continue to supply the necessary energy and raw materials on a long-term basis.

One thing is clear: we do not want to repeat the mistakes of the Old Socialisms like the Soviet Union and Cuba. Even China, that calls itself "Communist", is in reality, and from an ecological point of view, an unchained, uncontrolled Capitalist Frankenstein's monster. While the dangers are great, and the threats of famine and political unrest are terrifying, we have, perhaps, time to create another way to live together.

Mr. Dobbin says that we should look toward how the Canadians have solved some health and environmental issues. And he offers an Internet link to a page created by the Sustainable Development Commission. We need to reconsider quality-of-life, peaceful coexistence, health, prosperity and, in general, satisfaction.

Will our Homo-Sapian genes permit us to do this?

References:

Murray Dobbin (Published on Monday, June 22, 2009 by Rabble (Canada). “Imagine: Prosperity without Growth”, available on Common Dreams at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/22-8

Sustainable Development Commission, available at: http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/prosperity-without-growth-background.html

Image in cartoon taken from Microsoft pop art option in PowerPoint.

Discard the generals

Source of Danziger cartoon


An old question: why do people prefer violent solutions that history shows to be ineffectual? From the earliest times, conquest, colonialism, apartheid, and other forms of violent repression arouse violent liberation responses. And the undoubted heroes that make it into legend are those who find peaceful solutions to injustice: Buda, Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Fehullah Gulen, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Mother Teresa, the monks in Tibet, the anonymous boy who danced the tank to a stop in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

But somehow people continue to think they can accomplish something positive with armament.

From Manifest Destiny to the Alamo, from Korea to Vietnam, and now from Afghanistan to Pakistan, the people who sell us guns want us to use them. We fight “over there” and our kids shoot up their schoolmates "over here".

It’s time to find another way.

If a mouse in a Skinner-box always makes the wrong turn, it is
discarded as an experimental animal. Our generals always advise us to bomb’em back to the stone-age, and we follow patriotically along. Maybe we should discard some of those generals.

Obama and the Dogs of War

here is no end to war.






Chris Hedges in his article, “Becoming what we seek to destroy” says it well: We are

“ … guided by a president who once again has no experience of war and defers to the bull-necked generals and militarists whose careers, power and profits depend on expanded war, we are transformed into monsters.

This is the point: we are becoming the enemy. Every time we are confronted by the atrocities of the past, we chant, “Never again”. But we do not change.

The Pope once again decries the Nazi killings. But in the present-day, living-world the violence is the same, and the excuses are similar.

In Sri Lanka a well-fed government spokesman accuses the Tamil Tigers of killing the Tamils. This may be true, but we have heard authorities from different countries use the “human shield” excuse so many times for their massacres, it has become rhetorically suspect. The Israelis used the same language to justify the slaughter of the Palestinians. Now the United States says the killings and massive exodus en Pakistan are due to the same pretext: the “enemy” seems to practice self-immolation just to give us bad press. It is a problem of PR: the Associated Press went so far as to call the deaths “awkward”.


I am outraged, but it seems that power has a “Gatopardo” existence: the term refers to an Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. In this novel the main character, Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, negotiates and manipulates things so that his aristocratic family can continue to benefit even during Garibaldi's populist changes in the late 19th century.

In the same way, armies and arms manufacturers continue to market their wares and ply their trade even though so many of us scream bloody murder.

As always, let's enthusiastically let lose the dogs of war!

Prosperity and peace ≠ terrorism and war

But misery and revenge does equal terrorism and war


IMAGINE:

1. All that war money had been spent in the Middle East on irrigation, schools, hospitals, and the like.
2. Pakistan (and Afghanistan and Irak) had become prosperous.
3. The people had begun to demand democratic participation in their political and economic systems.
3. The ordinary Taliban supporters had decided that it was better to be prosperous. They had decided to send their kids to school, and had abandoned their armed struggle.
4. The Taliban leaders, responsible for all that violence, had been tried in legally constituted courts.
5. Those in the U.S. administration responsible for indiscriminate killing, torture, corruption, and other violence had been tried in legally constituted courts.

WOULD THE WORLD HAVE BEEN A SAFER PLACE?:

Disobey the wave!

Alter suffering yesterday in a man- (or woman-) eating traffic jam, I thought I’d post some useful techniques for avoiding so much despair.


The first is: disobey the wave!

First, an explanation. Traffic isn’t uniform. It moves in clusters or bunches as can be appreciated in a video that can be seen at this address. In slow-moving traffic the effect is more pronounced. From the air, the long string of cars looks like an expansion and compression wave, even though one’s immediate experience is just of starting and stopping the car.

We might say we obey a physical law just like any other inert particle of matter.

When I realized this, my wounded self-pride made me try to disobey the law. But then I noticed the effect my disobedience had on the cars behind me.


To achieve this we have to adopt a median speed and allow a space between our car and the one in front of us, a sort of an air-bag that grows in fast traffic and diminishes when the cars move more slowly. We are basically transmitting the wave to the empty space and for this reason we don’t have to start and stop so much. Our cars don’t over-heat and we get where we are going with less fuss and bother.

Another result is that all the cars behind us also have a more or less uniform speed.

War on Drugs

This will be a brief note about the "war on drugs".

Obama is disappointing me because I thought he would question dreadful policies like the “wars on…”. They don’t work, and the battle that is going on now in Mexico is just one more tragic example of these failures.

Obama seems to me more naive than cynical about this. For example in the recent on-line question-and-answer session where he accepted questions from the general public, his reply to the requests to legalize marihuana was almost trivial. He didn’t add the traditional “hehehehehe", but his giggling was just about audible. He acted sooo surprised that so many of his following was interested in this dubious topic.

It was not an adequate answer when thousands of Latins are suffering violent deaths related to this problem.

His contribution will be more “Black Hawks” for more war.

Who are happy with this? On one hand Sikorsky Aircraft, the company that makes them. The DEA also benefits because the justification of the whole program is the illegality of the drugs in question. And of course, the drug cartels would loose lots of money if they were legalized.

Who looses?

The victims of all that violence. Just ask the Colombians.

Nuclear Arsenals

Source

Global map of nuclear arsenals

President Barak Obama just made a very important declaration : his desire to eliminate the world’s nuclear weapons.

He admitted that his is the only country to use such arms, but he added that this is the very reason that the U.S. should lead the way to their abolition.

There are moments when one gets depressed and says that democracy doesn’t work. But then again there are luminous and honorable episodes when the system shows its marvelous capacity to correct its error and represent humanity’s most beautiful longings. And President Obama, with his profound belief in the will of the people (“Yes, we can!”) continues to fulfill our hopes.

I’m not naive: His gesture is double edged. While he shows himself to be a man of principles and humanitarian leadership, he continues the war in Afghanistan.

We have every reason to be afraid that the shining knight on his great horse of state that Barak Obama is today will end up like Lyndon Johnson did way back in the 60’s when he pushed on with the Vietnam war. The parallels are frightening: an unpopular war in a country whose corrupt government is not worth defending, an elusive, dedicated and fanatic enemy fighting in its own terrene against foreign invaders, and the inevitability of many dead U.S. soldiers.

It is true that Obama is more charismatic, a Camelot-inheritor who resembles Kennedy more than he does Johnson. And he knows how to make inspiring political gestures. But already there is an humanitarian crisis on the Afghan – Pakistani border caused by U.S., drone-delivered bombs.

I fear for how he will be able to deliver on his many promises if he, too, becomes a “war president”. But I’m not cynical either, and I applaud this man who has become an icon of the Twentieth Century’s conscience.

Pagan me

Source

The author of the blog that I copied this image from, Kim Greyson, explained it this way:

"I gave this drum to my firstborn Granddaughter who was 4 years old at the time....I really like this symbol because in addition to associations with migration and independent movements, it is sometimes suggested to represent the Triple Goddess of the three ages of womanhood. It holds a special meaning to me having made this drum as a Grandmother - for my firstborn daughter's - firstborn daughter. Another perfect path of 3."

A friend said that I am an atheist, and therefore pagan. I investigated a little and realized that what characterizes the pagans is that they are everything except monotheists. This is quite a big bunch of beliefs. I wrote him somewhat flippantly about my doubts on the matter, but now think I may develop this topic; it could be good for my spiritual spirit.

It seems that the term pagan is complex, and is not at all like those of “barbarian” or “primitive” even though it is applied to the precursors of the more abstract and complex religions. For example, it has been used to describe a supposed evolution from an archaic totemism to polytheism, and finally to monotheism. The pagans would be the first two systems of this trilogy.

Used by the Christians, the word pagan is similar to that used by the Jews to indicate the other: “gentile”, or the one the Muslims use for the same purpose: “infidel”. That is, it is a pejorative term for the outsider.

Recently nevertheless, the ethnologists have been using it to designate three groups of beliefs: a) historical polytheism like the Celtic and the Norse, b) indigenous religions such as Chinese and African folk beliefs and c) neo-paganism (like the “Wicca”). It can, consequently, refer quite complex systems of beliefs.

From a broad point of view paganism also includes Eastern and mythological religions. The Buddhists, on the other hand, really are not a proper religion; they don’t worry so much about the existence of gods, but rather about “dharma”, that is to say, truth and individual compassion. The Buddhists do recognize some divine beings, but they are not gods in an Occidental sense. Rather they are spirits that are similar to us humans, and they accompany us in our cycles of "samsara", the cycle continued of life, death and rebirth.

I had to look all this up on line.

I answered my friend in a very trivial way declaring myself to be Buddhist and Totemic. If that were true my totemism would take some transcendental ecological form (I talk to animals). Or perhaps I could identify with a reformed and informal neo-Buddhist approach. I really do not dare to describe myself as an atheist; perhaps “agnostic” is a more appropriate term.

People defend their own form of spirituality at sword-point, but it’s really a private matter, isn’t it. Cults’ obsessive/compulsive efforts to impose their own belief systems on others are just like attempts to control other people's sexuality. But this is another subject.

Dr. Michaelle Ascencio

                                                                                                                           Fuente


I went to a conference tonight in the Central University of Venezuela where Dr. Michaelle Ascencio talked about the "Splendor of Diversity". Her talk was a truly charming “splendor” where humor and good will made palatable some very serious topics.

Several important ideas stayed with me. Here is one of them: she mentioned how we recognize the inherent humanity in those around us, and when we deny this, we must pay a price. Prejudice, the rejection of another human being because of his or her inherent qualities like color or birth-conditions like culture, turns against us. As a consequece, a part of our own humanity must also be rejected: like Kafka's cockroach, we begin to loath aspects of ourselves.

I know there are characteristics that we reject in other people: their lack of honesty, their cruelty, or their lack of responsibility. But these are not inborn qualities. In fact, when we require a certain standard of behavior from or fellow beings, we probably honor their capacity to do better.

All this sounds much preachier than Michaelle’s talk did. But since the last part of the 20th century humanity has begun to see the need to eliminate the barriers between the Croats and Muslims, the northern and southern Irish, the Palestinians and the Jews, the Blacks and the Whites, the Turks and the Armenians, and all the other groups that have historical reasons to reject each other. It is important for those that harbor prejudice to see the damage they do to themselves.

Fuente


This fits in with other reflections on the subject of our common humanity: we urgently need a new "imaginary", a new source of basic culture that leads us towards Eros and away from Thanatos.




Other postings on the topic of the "imaginary" as it is and as it could be:

http://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2008/08/esperando-el-mesas-y-figuras-modernas.html

http://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2008/08/rambo.html

http://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2008/08/frankenstein.html

http://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2008/08/frankenstein.html

http://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2008/07/english-today-i-would-like-to-think.html

http://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2008/06/heroism-and-martyrdom.html

Help!

Somehow when you click to enter this blog, you have great trouble getting out again, even me, the authoress, when I check to see the appearance of what I have posted. There doesn't seem to be any way to ask the Blogger people about this. If anyone happens to see this, and knows how to fix the problem, I'd appreciate a "comment" or a note to reflexiones@live.com.

Piantao (Crazy)

Source


Here are two ballads to nuttyness. The first is a poem by George Bilgere, and the second is a tango, music by Astor Piazzolla and lyrics by Horacio Ferrer. I coppied the words in English, but the better Spanish version can be found here.


I am well aware that this blog has many fewer readers than Commondreams.org where this poem was copied from, but I liked it. So here it is, reproduced in "Thoughts".


Bridal Shower
by George Bilgere

Perhaps, in a distant café,
four or five people are talking
with the four or five people
who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in my favorite café.

And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.

And, like me, he misses the old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could take a pill for.

I liked it
when people who were talking to themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You respected people like that.

You didn't want to kill them,
as I want to kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter's bridal shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.

O person like me,
phoneless in your distant café,
I wish we could meet to discuss this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell phone,

after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,
face to face.

Piantao
by Horacio Ferrer

Recited

The afternoons in Buenos Aires have this... well, you know.
You leave your house down Arenales Avenue.
The usual : on the street and in you...
Then suddenly, from behind a tree,
I show up.

Rare mix of the next to last tramp
and the first stowaway on a trip to Venus:
a half melon on the head,
a striped shirt painted on the skin,
two leather soles nailed to the fet,
and a taxi-for-hire flag up in each hand.

You laugh! But only you can see me:
because the mannequins wink at me,
the traffic lights flash me three lights sky-blue
and the oranges at the corner grocery stand
cast their blossoms at me.
Come on!, that this way, half dancing, half flying,
I remove the melon to greet you.
I give you a little flag and I tell you...

Sung

l know I'm crazy, crazy, crazy...
don't you see the moon rolling through Callao;
a second line of astronauts and children
waltzing around me... Dance! Come! Fly!

I know I'm crazy, I'm crazy, I'm crazy...
I see Buenos Aires from a sparrow's nest;
and I saw you so sad... Come! Fly! Feel!...
the crazy desire I have for you:

Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!
As darkness sets in your porteña loneliness,
by the shores of your bedsheet I'll come
with a poem and a trombone
to keep your heart sleepless.

Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!
Like a demented acrobat I'll dive,
into the abyss of your cleavage 'till I feel
I drove your heart crazy with freedom.
You'll see!

Recited

Let's go flying, my dear.
get on my super sport illusion,
let's run over the cornices
with a swallow in the engine.
From Vieytes they applaud: "Hooray! Hooray!",
the nuts who invented Love,
and an angel, a soldier and a girl
give us a dancing waltz.

The beautiful people come out to say hello.
And crazy, but yours, I don't know!;
I cause a stridency of bells with my laugh,
and finally, I look at you, and sing softly

Sung

Love me this way I am, crazy, crazy, crazy...
climb up into my insane tenderness,
don a wig of larks on your head and fly!
Fly with me now! Come! Fly! Come!

Love me the way I am, crazy, crazy, crazy...
open up your love, we are going to attempt
the crazy magic of reviving...
Come , fly , come! Trai-lai-lai-larara!

Yelling

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
She's crazy and I'm crazy...
Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!
She's crazy and so am I.

References:
1. Clown picture: http://www.fotosearch.com/DSN020/1804923/
2. Poem by Bilgere: http://www.commondreams.org/further/only-14-you-out-there-who-remain-ambivalent-about-incessant-place-cell-phones-our-lives-need
3. Lyrics by Ferrer: http://www.planet-tango.com/lyrics/bal-loco.htm

e e comings against them all

here’s one thing they don’t know about and that’s non-violence.

At the risk of sounding too 60’s, I won’t acknowledge the source of that quote. But it’s true.

Even this progressive miracle called Obama: he continues to bomb Afghanistan and plans a military “surge” there.

But the Right is something else. It is populated by a humorless culture of death and violence, where even saving fetuses is a motive for revulsion and murder. In its terror of losing control and money, it plans again to use the same smear tactics it used on Clinton to fire up its bitter base of discontents.

The same unnamed 60’s source recommended the use of humor and love against them. In those days this ploy rapidly degenerated into ineffectual “flower power”, but in essence it was the correct approach. “They” have an insurmountable power of physical coercion, and those who try to fight fire with fire end up with the same distorted faces of hate that their opponents have. Just look at the twisted portraits of all those proponents of asymmetrical war, armed resistance movements, and military-based revolutions.

It is time to raise a critical mirror where the violent can see the reflections of their own grimaces, and open windows where fresh air, health, and empathetic caring begin to be more attractive than faux-heroic, Rambo-esque posturing against invented enemies.

So….

Here, today is e e comings


i have found what you are like

i have found what you are like
the rain,

                       (Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike

the air in utterable coolness

deeds of green thrilling light
                                              with thinned

newfragile yellows

                                     lurch and.press

-in the woods
                      which
                               stutter
                                        and
                                                  sing

And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
                                                   your kiss


Reference: Ornate letters: http://retrokat.com/medieval/leil.htm

Lights

Seemingly an early dawn,
but false,
An urban eye’s delusion:
an electric break of day.

Drawing near, snug and warm,
in the capsule of my car,

the approaching new moon, now
an arc of radiant white
that secretes the Milky Way
temporarily from sight.

Afghanistan: Obama's quagmire?

Source


A friend traveled through Afghanistan in the early 1970s: she described a quiet, gentle, hospitable people.

However the Afghans are no strangers to foreign interventions and react violently to intruders. The Pashtuns, who have lived there for about 20,000 years, have survived, outlived, and overcome the incursions of Alexander the Great and the Mongols under Genghis Khan. They simply let these conquerors pass over them, and the Mongols eventually converted to Islam. They successfully overthrew the Mogul empire in the region and resisted the British Empire's attempts to rule them.

Violence continues to pockmark the country. In the late 1970s the Russians dragged the first twentieth-century harrow of horror through the land, bombing and killing them in the hope of “liberating” them from their traditional government. To stop the Soviets, the U.S. and other governments financed and prepared the Pashtun Mujahideen (and Bin Laden) in resistance techniques. Some of these opposition forces later became what is now known as the Taliban. A civil war ensued between these latter fanatics and the other Pashtun warlords, and this struggle continues still today.

And again the Western powers are intervening. For the West these Taliban were dangerous, out-of-control rebels, like the movie character Rambo who used his military expertise against the homeland: he returned home and turned his knives and bombs against the little U.S. town of "Hope". That is, warriors trained by the Occident began to use their knowledge and weapons against their former commanders.

Now Barack Obama thinks he can win a military confrontation there. I greatly fear he will end up like Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam: in spite of his ambition to make the world a better place he was mired in brutality and finally defeated by a bunch of irregular fighters who knew how to resist high-tech warfare. His political career ended in disgrace.

There are other dangers, too. Franz Schurmann, emeritus professor at U.C. Berkeley and author of "The Mongols of Afghanistan" (Mouton, 1962) says that,

“many, if not most, rural Pashtuns are long distance migrants. They are called Koochis -- a Turkish word meaning people who migrate long distances back and forth…. If America starts a massive attack on Afghanistan to punish and overthrow the Taliban, chances are that armed Koochis will start a massive, long-distance migration south into Pakistan. This alone could easily destabilize the entire subcontinent much as what the great conqueror Babur and his armies did when they moved south from Afghanistan to found the great Mogul Dynasty in India in the 1500s.”

What’s the other option? My answer is: don’t fight. Instead of soldiers, send in thousands of civil servants, school teachers, doctors, engineers and agricultural experts. Elevate the people’s prosperity.

Of course, this tactic also has its difficulties because Obama would risk destroying a viable and fecund culture with its own ecological techniques for coexisting with nature. But that’s another story.

At any rate, I close with the words of Desmond Tutu: "Peace does not come from the barrel of a gun but is achieved when cultural differences are respected and the fundamental rights of all are recognised and upheld."

The war on drugs

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A friend sent me an article by José de Córdoba, published in The Wall Street Journal in which he reports on the conclusions of “a commission led by three former Latin American heads of state [in which they] blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point.”

The problem is that there is lots of money to be made from opposing illegal drugs, so much that legalizing them would be very bad for certain people. For example, what would happen to all those poor, unemployed DEA agents and their superiors? With the illegal market out of business, how could they justify all that military aid to Colombia? And what would happen to all the palm-greasing and corruption for local officials? And we haven’t even started to worry about the miserable fate of the jobless drug czars!

What I wrote to my friend is this:

The drug problem is similar to arms production. As long as they are in use, someone will make a pile of money producing them.

But since you can't forbid what is deeply desired you have to legislate it.

When I did my thesis on alcohol -years and years ago- I read about the Greek king Penteo who tried to forbid the Dionysian celebrations. As a result he was torn to pieces by the god's frenzied followers. It's the same with drugs: you have to permit their use under controlled circumstances or society will invent very violent ways to worship their intoxication deity.

If I were queen of the world, I'd buy all the poppy produce and the rest of the "recreational" drug materials, I'd manufacture the stuff, and I'd open centers where registered people could get it for free. They'd have to take part in therapy, health control, etc, but I'd know who they are, and I'd leave organized crime with no customers. But I'm not a queen, am I.

It's the same for the everyday guns that show up on the streets. Anyone with a gun permit would have to be in weekly group therapy. And of course, this queen wouldn't be taking her country to war all the time. I'd go to Afghanistan and those other places where everyone is so unhappy, and I'd build hospitals, schools, irrigation systems, factories….. and nobody would want to be on a suicide mission. They'd prefer to sit in a café smoking those water pipes and telling each other stories, knowing their kids are safely in school.

See also:

1. Timeline of war on drugs: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9252490
2. Awareness of the futility of the war on drugs: http://stopthedrugwar.org/
3. Former presidents blast drug repression efforts: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29145662/

Helen Thomas Vs. Obama

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Helen Thomas, the Grand Dame of Washington reporters, gave President Obama his only really difficult questions today. Reproduced from memory they were: a) Is Pakistan harboring terrorists? and b) Is there any country at all in the Middle East that currently has atomic weapons? He skipped around the essence in his answer, and then cut her off when she tried to insist.

What were the traps? In the first question the trap is clear: she wanted him to accuse Pakistan explicitly of giving safety and comfort to the Taliban. He didn’t.

But the second question was much trickier. He couldn’t say he didn’t know about Israel's atomic-weapons program; that would have been a too obvious side-step and a clear lie. He couldn’t admit that Israel has them because somehow it is forbidden to say this. In fact, a brave Israeli, Mordechai Vanunu, is in jail for revealing Israel’s nuclear program. This, of course, weakens everyone’s argument for not allowing Iran to have one, too –although, as Obama did say, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East would be disastrous for everyone.

In the entire post-conference rehash on TV (mostly CNN), nobody brought up Ms. Thomas’ question. She clearly remains head and shoulders above all the rest of those reporters.

Austerity measures, marches, and the electorate

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Naomi Klein has an article in The Nation where she describes protests around our planet motivated by “the global crisis”. She evokes for us how common citizens go out to bang their pots and pans and shout,

-“All of them must go!”

These protestors refer to the currupt corporate and governmental froth that floats over the economy and that got us into this mess. Those who suffer the consequences are the everyday, on-the-street populace. In response to financial deficits in the high economical spheres governments enact austerity measures like the elimination of funding for health and education, while the corporations reduce salaries, institute massive lay-offs, and close factories. In the meantime they continue with their czarist lifestyles.

This is only part of the problem: while economic resources concentrate way above our heads, so does power. Protest marches and political manifestations have become necessary these days. They are democratic gestures, just like the vote is.

Image: Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra: http://www.allposters.co.il/-sp/Nikolay-Aleksandrovich-Czar-Nicolas-II-with-Alexandra-in-Ancient-Muscovite-Dress-Posters_i1862920_.htm

Their own bubble....

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The "bubble" that high corporate executives have inhabited in the past few years is becoming more and more apparent. Their separation from everyday people’s needs has permitted them to justify personal lifestyles and corporate practices (private airplanes, elaborate office installations…) at the expense of the jobs and well being of just about everyone else. For example:

1. Bailed-out Wells Fargo plans Vegas Casino Junkets: http://news.bbc.co.uk/
2. Obama action due on executive pay: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7869265.stm
3. Fannie-Mae's overpaid board: http://www.truthout.org/020209A

Why should I write about this here if everyone else already has elsewhere?

Because the bubble is not just an Alice-in-Wonderland lifestyle. It is a way of life that separates "them" from “us” in almost every possible way. And since they are powerful, they can affect us in pernicious ways.

Here is an anecdote that can describe this separation. I remember years ago when traveling through México's northern desert region in a small, non-air conditioned car with three children and my husband. It was so hot we traded water-soaked towels to keep our temperatures down. The dust was everywhere. We stopped at a gas station where little, skinny, bare-foot boys were selling Chiclets and dry candy. Everyone was exhausted. Suddenly a silver motor-home pulled in and stopped; a door pulled open (sideways, like in a space-ship) and a small stairway emanated. From that apparatus, and accompanied by a puff of cold air, two slightly drunken couples that spoke English descended carrying frosty whiskey glasses tinkling with ice-cubes.

For all of us, including the barefoot kids, they could have been Martians. And I suppose we were sweaty-hot little creatures from Venus in their eyes.

At any rate we were incommensurable.

And that’s the danger. These corporate guys live somewhere else, and that is very dangerous.

Image: cartoon about CEOs: http://www.time.com/time/cartoonsoftheweek/0,29489,1876053_1839199,00.html

Source


The BBC has reported that there has been vandalism in Venezuela against a Caracas synagogue. This is truly unfortunate, a global anachronism, and an expression of xenophobic hatred that has never existed in this Caribbean nation that is famous for its tolerance, generosity and openness.

It is true that there has been a great deal of social violence here, but until now it has been associated with chance brutality, a clash of chaotic criminality. Even so, and in spite of everything, Venezuela has also been characterized by a noble vocation for peace.

Personally, I consider the aggression committed against Palestine by the Israeli leadership to be nasty, cruel, and vindictive. But this cannot be generalized to an entire people, and even less to Jews that are not Israelis. Furthermore, violence never, ever solves anything. If once I was saying, “We are all Palestinians”, now I say, “We are all Jews”, as a rejection of all xenophobic acts.

I can only hope that rapidly the Venezuelan government, the political parties, the religious affiliations and other groups will announce their opposition to hatred against any and all social groups, political factions or faiths.

Additional note: Monday, Feb 2, 2009
I only found one Venezuelan on-line news source about this, but it is restricted to subscribers: http://www.talcualdigital.com/index.html .

The Venezuelan TV channel, Globovisión has emphasized it in interview shows.

Need to write

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A friend has tried to dissuade me from posting in Spanish in these blogs. She says my grammatical errors in Spanish are esthetically challenging for her. (They aren't that bad!) But I go on in both languages because I need to write what I think. Why?

First of all, these are things that don’t come up in light chit-chat. Second they are thoughts that inhabit my brain, and if I don’t express them somehow, my frontal lobes become overpopulated. But lastly, writing is different from other linguistic experiences.

Writing is slower than speaking; one has time to think about forms of expression and to change what didn’t come out right. The logical chain is also different: all the little side comments, topic changes, snickers and chuckles, pouts, pauses, and whimpers are no longer appropriate. (Sometimes chatters make up for this with emotion signs [ :) ] or written laughter (hahahaha), but this is not really writing.) In short, thinking changes when one writes one's thoughts. It is necessary to be more concrete, more logical, and more careful with what one expresses. Emotions have to be elaborated with words.

Also, these blogs are a very nice substitute for a diary. They contain a chronology of one’s brain-streaming, and in my case, since I do social-psychological research, sometimes the kernels I post in these ethers turn into more developed work.

The presence of potential readers is a further reason to post: the little maps on the margins of these pages let me know that someone from far, far away has at least clicked on what I publish here. That person is a remote consciousness that has momentarily linked with my own. Although the communication is generally only one-way, I make up for this by reading other people’s writings, books, articles and blogs. Occasionally someone writes back to me (address: reflexiones@live.com. It is really nice when that happens.

References:
Picture of pen: http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/pen.html

Thoughts

his is a new blog, one of several I post in. The reason for beginning a new one is that the one I have always used for “midnight thoughts” has been both in English and Spanish. Now I think I will separate them because topics that might interest English-speakers may not interest those who speak Spanish.

Also I have gotten tired of always translating the same entries.

So... this is the first all-English entry.

Just to start, I'll repeat the last English entry on what has always been the English/Spanish blog: http://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/. I will continue to post in Spanish there.

Symbol for Amnesty International

Daily Kos has a short contribution by someone who calls him/herself “LithiumCola” about a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin, “The ones who walk away from Omelas”. Anybody who wants a synopsis can look up the article, but the gist is this: there is no perfect happiness without an inner, terrible secret.

It’s an idea very close to that of emptiness in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Or what Yerma yearned for -and murdered for- in García Lorca’s play. But here, LeGuin describes the emptiness in Omelas as something dark and ugly.

LithiumCola has likened it to the prison in Guantanamo: after closing the jail, s/he asks, “Where will the detainees from Guantanamo go?” S/he isn’t talking about the practical problems involved; rather it is ostensibly a need for a guilty secret: a place where evil fantasies are brought to life, somplace disowned but necessary.

This isn’t political theory; it’s deeper than that. It isn’t an excuse for non-action either. Jails are terrible places, and things happen there that we’d rather not know about. But we do know, and we tolerate them with our eyes firmly shut. Are we responding to a deep need as LeGuin would suggest?




References / Referencias
1. Article in Daily Kos / Artículo en el Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/25/194312/239/595/688925
2. Ornate letters: http://retrokat.com/medieval/leil.htm