Al Gore is my Jesus, my Ghandi, my Buddah, my Allah, my last hope.

More and more I am convinced that all of life is about learning how to live with this amazingly heavy and inspiring responsibility.

Wonder what’s going on?

Published on Thursday, July 6, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Written by Jeff Cohen

And yet another…war…and another….always money for war….but never enough for indispensible things like education, housing, healthcare….when will we wake up Americans?

We have to re-think our escape to canada….

For a moment there, it felt like a turn around. As if fascism, that hate that permeates American discourse, was taking it on the chin.

I got into a discussion recently about Reagan and heard it said that Reagan did more to bring down USSR than anyone else. It got me thinking - here are some of those meandering thoughts in the form of an email response. There are some interesting links included that I thought would be of interest even more than my half baked analysis of a situation that is well beyond my knowledge of history - more armchair historian than anything.

Today at the most war-glorifying, soldier-heroing ceremony ever - the ceremony that repeatedly bellowed the lies of this war of spreading freedom & democracy while protecting our freedom & democracy - we stand in the middle of the parade route and represent the voice of peace. We (including our 77 yr. old elder) are spit on, screamed at, threatened, materials snatched from our hands & ripped up, as we stand on the grounds of peace.

It’s funny, isn’t it, that when you find your self saying ‘it’s all good’; it rarely ever is.

Understandably the thought of “Controlling the Internet” appears to be a daunting task. In fact; could they do that? Isn’t there a hodgepodge of networks and technologies that is this wonderful melting pot for the whole world to share in? And it’s diversity almost impossible to control because of it’s complexity?

As of now, the simple answer to that is:
YES
They can control all of that.

Boeing-Boeing runs a story about UN World Intellectual Property Organization trying to organize worldwide censorship, ban podcasts and perform some other interesting things sake saving the market positions of current media-monopolies.
Here is an excerpt:
UN cooking podcast-killing treaty
The UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization has reconvened to discuss a treaty that will kill innovative Internet audio/video [...]

Sometimes it is the small efforts in life that add up to something much larger.

I recently came across some of the new photos of Abu Ghraib prisoners. I found myself thinking - I know that there are good people out there who are supportive of our current leadership, but I cant help but feeling that these people are truly not paying attention at a common sense level.

The last few months have seemed to be heavy to me. The other day while driving to work I heard the discussions about Iran and felt some despair about the situation. The thoughts actually popped into my head, “Just think about something else”. I immediately recoiled at this. If I do what does that say about me? Does it say that I am powerless, and that I have nothing to offer? That even my thoughts and passions have no power – even over myself?

Wow. That’s really all I can say about last night’s State of the Union. The president actually said ‘human-animal hybrids should be illegal.” No I’m not hating on the concept right now - although i think that the Christian fear of biotechnology is unfounded - but I wish to explore the absurdity and spectacular time we are living in now.

Aw heck. The good ‘ol US of A is flunking…

-eyeseetruth

911 Commission Report Card for the Bush Administration

Article on 911 commission report card

Think this says it?

How about you worry about protecting your own daughter, buddy?

I just got back from the Green Festival, and boy am I ready to take this fight to the next level.

It was in 1859, one hundred and forty-six years ago next month, that Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, and it’s been under attack ever since.

I had to re-post this list. Love DOES make a marriage.

An interesting article run today by Electronic Frontiers Foundation.

For the first time in history, a marriage equality bill has passed through a state legislature. The bill could reach Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk this week.
The Governor has indicated that he will veto this historic legislation.

Tonight I had a vision.
I’m one who acts out their vision.
I’ve decided that starting next Monday I will walk to work. I will retire my car. I will retire using oil.
I can survive without oil. Can you?
I will contact the LA Times. I will tell them what I’m doing. I [...]

For years it’s looked like “W” and his henchmen played every card right as if all things were planned on their behalf!

I’m sharing a recent column by Molly Ivins, who offers a broader analysis of the recent and continuing disasters precipitated by Hurrican Katrina. May we all contribute in some way to the changes that must follow this devastating event.

In what appears to be a rapid, horrific spiral into the surreal, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) Has Exposed the rebuilding of the 17th Street levee to be a staged Photo Op for President Bush.

Hey, Biniyam, whazzup? Are you still playing Jimi Hendrix´ stuff in dorm´s hall? You know, these were, probably, the best minutes in my life when you put meter-large loudspeakers into the hallway, switched your guitar on and palyed.

We’re facing the worst natural disaster in modern history - complete destruction of a large American city. 40% of the New Orleans national guard are in Iraq. Where is President Bush?

Are you a “dirty red”?

“While magic as I understand it is more a craft than an art or a science, the basic principle holds. The medium of magic is consciousness — one’s own consciousness, that of other people, and (more controversially, at least within the worldview of modern industrial culture) that of other-than-human entities of various kinds. The tools of magic are will, imagination, and the innate structures of consciousness itself, constellated through formal patterns of symbol and ritual. The goals of magic are defined by the individual magician.”

–John Michael Greer

Mandatory reading programs are stifling teacher and student creativity. Are we really raising “factory model” children? What impact to the reading programs that we are required to teach have on the WHOLE child?

The following comes to me via Freepress.net. It is the prepared text for Bill Moyers’ eloquent speech to the National Conference for Media Reform on May 15, 2005. The event in St. Louis was organized and hosted by Free Press.net

I want to reach into myself and into the stranger on the street and I want to lift out all that is holy and all that is the same. I want to take the mother of all road trips and discover every difference that can be pointed to between one person and another and I want to hold it up to what is sacred – beautiful, good and true about us all.

Did you know that about 2/3 of people who have never suffered from serious back pain have the same kinds of ‘abnormal’ back structures that are often blamed for chronic back pain, and that many people continue to have pain after ’successful’ surgery? Fear is a major factor in continuing the pain cycle when there are no structural problems.

Did you know that the Chief of Staff of the Bush Administration’s Council on Environmental Quality was previously a lobbyist for oil companies???

Today, I am quite concerned about the story evolving around John Bolton’s appointment to the United Nations.

It’s about rivers and dams. Powell Reservoir, known by its fans as “Lake Powell” and its enemies as “Lake Foul.” It’s the lake that drowned Glen Canyon on the Colorado River above the GC National Park, Glen Canyon, “the Place that No One Knew.”

Having posted last on the day previous to the London subway bombings I find myself writing to my blog with a changed perspective.

Gandhi, “If it is man’s privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter-dependent.”

What do you want? A headline? Just read it!

Warning! Negative thinking ahead!

The special election is coming up, and here’s something our governator is proposing for teachers…

I promise I’ll believe

Facism Anyone?

If you’ve ever wondered why people who are hurt by Bush’s policies still vote for him, or how it is that conservatives have stolen such a mind share in this country, or how we can fight their Orwellian double speak, then pick up George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant”.

So how do I categorize this first blog of my life, in Love, Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Politics?

meeting minutes transcribed during the British Prime Minister’s meeting on July 23, 2002—a full eight months PRIOR to the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003

Be very very afraid!

On the heels of the British Prime Ministers visit and call for the US to play more of an active role in reducing greenhouse gasses, a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research resigned and leaked that top White House aids were editing scientific reports to downplay the significance of the impacts of greenhouse gasses on climate change.

I was browsing News.com as I usually do every moring, and was struck by the headline SEC, meet the blogosphere This is yet another concrete example of ‘blogging’ becoming a revolutionary, mainstream channel.

Would the Watergate scandal ever have been brought to light if Nixon had appointed W. Mark Felt as director of the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover’s death?