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?

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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

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Source



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

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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.