12/1/10 – Fearful dreams which have the purpose of getting “more” for oneself at others’ expense never satisfy. However, all dreams, when transformed to include goals of shared peace, love, appreciation, understanding, respect and support for all of life, do satisfy. 11/30/10 – Our rational, logical brains have indispensible but highly limited utility. All quality lives and human relations are inspired and supported by helpful, loving, appreciative, accepting, intuitive, spiritual motivations and intentions that arise within. 11/29/10 – When we stop struggling to “figure out,” analyze, intellectualize and speculate on the motives, goals and purposes of others and ourselves, but instead, listen to the wisdom within us, we will feel no need to fear, judge or attack ourselves and others. 11/28/10 – We are God’s expression of consciousness, creativity and love. We are God’s hands, feet, eyes and ears. All of God’s power and knowledge lies within us. We are inseparable from God, from his wholeness, presence and power throughout all creation. 11/27/10 – We can know ourselves and others as “one” only intuitively, through loving appreciation and healing acceptance. But when we try to analyze, figure out and predict ourselves and others, we forget this oneness, and begin separating, judging and attacking. 11/26/10 – When we are feeling lost, we can remind ourselves of the peaceful goals we want, seek within for guidance in creating and experiencing the perspectives, actions, feelings, outcomes and days we want, follow our inner guidance—and let all our fears go. 11/25/10 – We can safely turn our days over to God, who already knows our deepest questions and real desires, as well as our infinite potential for creating and spreading joy, and for supporting what is alive and eternal in ourselves and in all others everywhere. 11/24/10 – All the power of God, mankind and creation is accessible within each of us. We can ask and receive understanding, answers, insights, love, joy and wisdom. Within us is God’s home, where all are one. Nothing spiritual, true, real or eternal is outside us. 11/23/10 – Our self-protective, logical, rational, defensive illusions, images, concepts, arguments, explanations, excuses, justifications and projections offer us and others only guilt and pain. They offer us nothing we could ever want, and many things we don’t. 11/22/10 – Nothing good, peaceful, useful, happy, meaningful or worthy can ever come from creating defensive, guilty, judgmental images and concepts of ourselves or others, or from guessing, projecting or analyzing our own or others’ motives or intentions. 11/21/10 – Our defensive concepts, analyses, self-images and projections set up exhausting, judgmental, false rules and realities which produce only harmful fantasies and painful guilt. We can ask to replace them with an accepting, healing spiritual vision. 11/20/10 – When we let go of demands and expectations, we allow ourselves and others to be the perfect, unique, lovable, beloved eternal creations we all are. When we live and let live, and let guilt and judgment go, we rest in loving circles of giving and receiving. 11/19/10 – Until we respond to all errors and mistakes as requests for healing and help, rather than as unforgivable sins deserving of attacks, blame, anger, judgment and retribution, we cannot know God’s eternal benevolence, forgiveness, justice and love. 11/18/10 – A good way to relate well to anyone is to establish, in advance, a peaceful, loving purpose—toward everyone. All relationships go better when founded upon a goal such as the golden rule, which derives from the gentle facets and permutations of peace. 11/17/10 – Reality is not “out there,” but “in here.” Reality is not about our bodies or a world “outside” us, but instead, the eternal, spiritual truth within us, which creates and animates all things, is the source of all life and all love, and is that which never changes. 11/15/10 – We are all fellow-travelers upon a road that is often dark and difficult. Yet we can bring light and hope and love to one another when we decide to neither lead nor follow, but to walk with one another as beloved, lovable and loving friends. 11/14/10 – We’re “wrong” when we react judgmentally, defensively, adversarially or aggressively toward others who are doing the same, and feeling “right” about it. The only “right” (and effective) response to such “wrong” is healing and help. 11/14/10 - Since no person, group, party, religion, nation or leader knows all perspectives or has all the “right” answers, “wrong” arises, not just when we make mistakes, but when we attack others for their mistakes, and thus add to the sum of the world’s injustices. 11/13/10 – Satisfying, peaceful paths are those that serve us, God and all mankind, drawing us all closer in our awareness of spiritual oneness. Efforts that compete, divide and separate, or that serve one person at the expense of another, must always disappoint. 11/12/10 – A personal self-concept must be defended, lived up to, lived down, regretted, explained, built up, grieved, avenged, elaborated upon, and consistently maintained. With no self-image, we’re free to freshly recreate all our relationships, moment-to-moment. 11/11/10 – We are on our right path, doing our highest will and God’s. All spiritual paths are confusing, difficult, boulder-strewn, filled with pitfalls and detours—and unique. Our way feels sure, clear, peaceful and safe as we let our guiding inner spirit lighten our steps. 11/10/10 – We can’t know everything, so we can’t judge others fairly; and because we can’t judge fairly, the only effective, inspiring, motivating correction we can offer is one which we would want for ourselves and our own mistakes—to love, lift and let it go. 11/9/10 – Are we lost, separate, mortal creatures in brutal natural competition with each other for survival, or are we God’s single, beloved, sacred and eternal expression, his will and reflection, perfect in oneness, diversity, uniqueness, interdependence and holiness? 11/8/10 – Our seemingly insignificant contributions, stumbling steps, counterproductive setbacks and fumbling mis-directions are our perfect, unique and indispensably holy paths to awareness, sharing and celebration of God’s oneness, forgiveness and love. 11/7/10 – When we want to say or do the right thing, calm ourselves, make a decision, find new perspectives and insights, order our priorities, be happier, understand, be better—we can go within, ask our questions, and trust the loving, peaceful answers. 11/6/10 – Our hardest lesson is to let go of our own guilt, defensiveness, mistakes, struggles, wrong assumptions, misdirected efforts, incorrigibility, anger, jealousy, resentment, weariness, despair and self-condemnation—and live fully, freely, now. 11/5/10 – We can choose to experience agelessness or aging, timelessness or time, beauty or ugliness, delight or despair, spirituality or cynicism, positivity or negativity, joy or sorrow, freedom or guilt, goodness or evil, life or death, love or fear, truth or illusion. 11/4/10 – Our daily challenges, struggles and mistakes are opportunities: to ask specific questions; pray to see things differently; receive miraculous insights, wisdom and love; and become humbled, grateful, open, accepting lifters of our fellow-travelers’ burdens. 11/3/10 – We don’t have to resolve the past or know the future. All we can ever do is live fully in the present moment, and do our very best with now—the only time we ever have to give and receive love, create, heal, forgive, cherish, lift, learn, appreciate and inspire. 11/2/10 – Physical, spiritual, individual, interpersonal and planetary health and healing are inextricably interconnected and intertwined, and always miraculously support each other, as we ask for, receive, and offer forgiveness, acceptance, love, peace and gratitude. 11/1/10 – We can accept ourselves and all others as-is, without reference to the past; or we can suffer from guilt, judgment, separation, anger, blame and attack. Self and other-acceptance are interdependent keys to all healing, peace, and creative power for good. 10/31/10 – We can see, create and extend our guilt and fear outward toward a cultural delusion of division, hate and death, or we can see and heal ourselves and all others as one eternally perfect spiritual creation, by loving unconditionally in the present moment. 10/30/10 – When we pray for peaceful solutions, when we let go of a troubled past, when we trust God to work and speak and heal and love through us, nothing is impossible. 10/29/10 – We can experience the joy and peace of God once again as we let anger and judgment go. Our sense of injustice arises from a perception of temporal separation; yet God’s justice knows and expresses creation only as one, whole, perfect and eternal will. 10/28/10 – God judges his creation, not as divided and competing, but as one, whole, inseparable, timeless good. Only this holy, all-encompassing perspective of an unconditionally-loving, eternal justice can heal our perceptions of temporal injustices. 10/27/10 – We fear chaos, insanity and meaninglessness. Yet reality, truth, purpose and hope lie, not in any past mistakes, but in humankind’s capacity to see, accept, appreciate, celebrate and love, with God, his imperfect/perfect expression/creation, right now, as-is. 10/26/10 – When we put our trust in ourselves alone, we feel neither safety nor direction nor help. When we nourish, through daily spiritual practice, our safe reliance upon God, we find strength, comfort, insight, clarity, sustenance, purpose and joy everywhere. 10/25/10 – If we are not mere bodies, but instead, eternal spirits—the will and expression of a loving God—then all pain, loss, suffering and sin are mere temporal illusions. If God is love, then so are we—blameless, unconditionally loved, and safe, now and forever. 10/24/10 – When we are harshly judging ourselves, others and the world, we can ask God to judge instead, whose judgment urges us to look and see, at every moment and in each detail, the goodness, blamelessness and sacred wholeness of his perfect expression. 10/6/10 – Our eyes and brains analyze all that seems “outside” us in terms we’ve acquired from our experiences, thought and culture. It works better to see only positive, eternal, loving reality, and not react to all the rest, which is only negative illusion. 8/22/10 - God is the power, insight and comfort in which I now receive infinite gifts of present and eternal peace, acceptance and unconditional love, and return them joyfully and serenely to that-of-God, humankind, nature and self comprising the One Self of all. 8/13/10 – The most honest and meaningful truth we can communicate on any subject always reflects our highest spiritual perspectives on the unchangeable safety, innocence, value, goodness and holiness of every single one of God’s beloved eternal beings. 8/12/10 – We can use the creative power of universal mind shared by all God’s eternal expressions to build a world of truth, beauty, love, joy and healing, and not in support of destructive cultural myths of sin, fear, guilt, despair, weakness, vengeance and evil. 8/11/10 – In all our relationships, we have daily opportunities to teach through our own words and examples—and thus simultaneously to learn and to reinforce—trust, faith, honesty, gentleness, forbearance, joy, generosity, defenselessness, patience and peace. 8/10/10 – Each of us fulfills a unique, loving, peaceful work in life which is our shared will with God, who gives us what we need to accomplish it, along with trust in our own innocence, and a sense of freedom from guilt, fear, inadequacy and defensiveness. 8/9/10 – We can give only to ourselves. Exactly how best, what, when, why, to whom, and how, each of us uniquely balances our giving, is always different for each person—and always perfect. When we feel conflicted and defensive, we’ve forgotten this. 8/8/10 – What makes everything and everyone beautiful? Recognition of the sinless innocence of everything and everyone at every present moment of eternity. It is this bountiful, unconditional forgiveness which Jesus’ life teaches, exemplifies and clarifies. 8/7/10 – The most valuable, essential lesson we can teach others is our own example of joyous, guilt-free living, which holds up a mirror for the innocence of others. The most destructive, pernicious, persistent cultural myth is the belief that being human is wrong. 8/6/10 – I gratefully accept the abundant justice of an eternity of peace and oneness with God, his ever-available gifts of comfort, strength and unconditional love, and the blessings of teaching, learning from, sharing with, and loving my eternal fellow-travelers. 8/5/10 – In the sense that we are all eternal, time doesn’t matter. But thoughtful choices about our use of time can exponentially lessen suffering and add to joy. We can seek help within to spiritually order our lives and priorities, and to know the next right thing to do. 8/4/10 – What matters? Recognition of ourselves and “others” as God’s one beloved immortal perfect innocent equal creation. What doesn’t matter? Any/every/thing else— because nothing else lasts forever. We live best in time when we remember who we are. 8/3/10 – When we’re feeling unsure about how to juggle all our imagined “competing” priorities, our guiding spirit restores our trust in God, renews our courage, strength, positivity, love and peace, and reminds us that all things work together forever for good.   more »

Excerpt: Will some brilliant programmer please step up and design a google-type software program that can linguistically analyze and determine a speaker/writer’s cooperative tone and intent? Your new program could identify and distinguish among those writers/speakers whose communications promote a sense of division, partisanship, negativity, polarization, blame, attack, incivility, rudeness, destructiveness, unfriendly competition, bickering and hate—and those promoting a sense of positivity, creativity, life-affirmation, support, harmony, acceptance, forgiveness, productivity, civility, courtesy, equality of opportunity, caring, cooperation and unity. Excerpt: Your software would have endless useful and profitable applications. For immediate profitability, please consider using your product for security purposes, to helpfully ward off unfriendly attacks and attackers (of whatever kind) upon individuals and enterprises (of whatever kind.) Excerpt: Your software will stimulate lively dialogue; increase the impact and number of creative, thought-provoking, and controversial-but-civil exchanges; reduce (by virtue of indifference and neglect) the quantity and influence of divisive communications arising anywhere in the world; universally improve facility in verbal and mental processing of complexities, innuendo and nuances; and inspire us all to pull together cooperatively to resolve our common personal, local and global problems.    more »

Excerpts: Angry media xenophobes and demagogues try to scare us into believing that the world is divided into a tiny deserving few of “us” vs. a vast faceless, threatening, undeserving “them,” urging us to abandon the goal of peace and justice for all, and to put power and wealth in the hands of a few self-interested fear-mongers who guilefully “guarantee” safety through militarism. Offering the opposite message are the great leaders of our past and present, urging us to love and help one another, to give and forgive, to risk peace instead of war, and to work together for respectful, supportive conditions valuing the sanctity of human life everywhere. Truly, we cannot avoid all injustice, but we can avoid adding to its sum. Justice implies neutrality and fairness, but no judges are completely unbiased. We all see the world uniquely, based on our different backgrounds. In the face of the same legal arguments, natural, unavoidable bias is evident in the many disagreements among even our rigorously-selected highest justices. Our current justices’ life experiences are for the most part grounded in privilege and wealth. A more balanced Supreme Court would include justices whose lives reflect struggles against prejudice, poverty or disadvantage, since, in common law legal systems like our own, justices at times “make the law” by overturning precedents, regulations and legislation, with immense implications for future generations.   more »

Regarding the op-ed Obama’s China Card of 4/8/09: John Wohlstetter’s sinful offer to China of a poisoned diplomatic apple would serve only to heighten geostrategic tensions. Why aggravate our banker China, our most influential ally in negotiating with North Korea, when China could well be the very country most-motivated to partner with Obama’s smart-power, win-win efforts to find peaceful and mutually-advantageous solutions to the global problems shared-in-common by China and her trading partners, neighbors and debtors? Immense U.S. profits already accrued from China’s WTO membership will only grow during China’s historic rise—if unresolved energy shortages, climate change, nuclear proliferation, war, terrorism, trade wars, worldwide crime and disease and other such global conundrums don’t make future international trade moot. Increased enmity with China could even lead to war, which never prevents catastrophe, being itself a catastrophe. Our closest allies have with impunity violated far more UN Security Council resolutions than has North Korea. Let’s retire our lingering sentimental attachments to obsolescent strategies like sword-rattling and stick-shaking, along with defunct foreign policies that bully, threaten, and subsidize massive war-profiteering, approaches which have only moved our tiny blue planet steadily closer to nuclear nightmare.   more »

I originally titled this piece, "Rush Limbaugh is a Dangerous Destructive Simplistic Fear-Based Hateful Ignorant Terrifying Lying Demagogic Blowhard." But I like Rush Limbaugh, if not what he says, so I changed the title. Some of the things I like best about Rush Limbaugh are: his work ethic, his perseverence, his vulnerability, his gentleness, his good mind and his facility with words and ideas, his patriotism, and his loving spirit. Despite overwhelming evidence that his narrow worldview is way too confining for his large heart and fine intelligence, he seems fiercely determined so far to force unruly facts into his too-small mental paradigms, in order that he may continue to be safely "right" about whatever he's said up until now. Rush Limbaugh is afraid (as are we all) of being "wrong," and also of not-knowing, when the truth is, the more one knows, the more one knows one doesn't know. What I do know about Rush is that he means well, and that he wants very much to believe that what he's doing will work for him and for America and Americans. Certainly his past approaches have made him rich. They've also left him feeling very much alone in an angry, frightened, adoring, clueless crowd.   more »

From the looks of the many recent letters to newspapers, U.S. right-wing extremists plan to win back the presidency in 2012 by politiely offering voters a false dichotomy: we citizens will "be forced" to choose between safety and good government—i.e., “Since Bush protected us from terrorist attacks, if there is an attack on Obama’s watch, it will be Obama’s fault, so we'll have to fire him—regardless of his achievements for the people.” The truth is, terrorist attacks are quite likely nowadays, being relatively cheap, easy to carry out, and hard to prevent; examples of such atrocities are 9/11 (which occurred on Bush’s watch), the London train bombings, and the Mumbai attacks. Obama will defend our borders, go after terrorists, and work with all nations to confront and ameliorate the conditions which produce terrorism—lawlessness, violent cultures, lack of opportunity, political oppression and repression, poverty, inequality, easily-available weapons, and ongoing conflicts. But Obama’s job has not been made easier by Bush's disastrous economic legacy, nor by his ill-advised Iraq war, Guantanamo, and his record of torture, all of which have left Obama with an Al Qaeda far bigger, stronger, richer, and more dedicated than Bush ever inherited from Clinton. None of these facts matter, however, to faithless demagogues like Rush Limbaugh, who trust in lies, fear—and a timely terrorist attack—to rescue themselves and their ilk from present ignominy. I welcome your comments! Please send them to njcpace@gmail.com . Thank you! Nancy Pace :) Ps. I am working on a memoir of my years as the military brat daughter of a highly-decorated war hero (and career officer)--about the implications of those experiences for me, my family, other military families, my country and the world in general, and about my difficult transition to peace activism. I will return to full-time blogging as soon as ever I can, and until then, I know I will keep blogging sporadically because sometimes I simply cannot not write about reactions I have to things I read in the newspaper, like the above commentary.... I love blogging, and will post again soon.... Thank you for your patience to all my readers! :)   more »

(Excerpt): I went to see Quantum of Solace because I liked Daniel Craig as James Bond in Casino Royale, and because I always take my husband to opening weekends of all good new action movies. I’d already heard reviewers complain that this new Craig/Bond was insufficiently Bondish—i.e., not enough jokes, too much heavy emotion, too many similarities to other, un-Bond-like traditionally-vengeful action heroes, not enough Bond-techy gimmicks and vehicles, too few glam locales. And what to make of the movie’s weird politics? And of Bond’s lack-of-sex with his sexy new love interest? I went to see for myself....    more »

(Excerpt): It’s too late to stabilize markets using taxpayer money. The world has legitimately rejected as unreliable our current corrupt economic system and currency (read Paul Craig Roberts, among others.) No amount of taxpayer money spent by crooked politicians picking ultimate winners and losers in this crash can restore international confidence. (Excerpt): Prices won’t fall indefinitely; in today’s small world, international buyers quickly snap up values. Self-serving government bailouts complicate and postpone the day markets correct and we begin our arduous climb back to national recovery. (Excerpt): We’ll need all the FDIC and charitable money government must print to pay its bills, insure citizen trust in local banks, and prevent daily suffering—unemployment, starvation, freezing, homelessness—when the inevitably ensuing inflation has shrunk to pennies the hard-won dollars of middle and lower-class wage-earners and savers. (Excerpt): When this crash finally hits its natural bottom, we will begin again, sadder and wiser, to build a better, more stable, caring market system. Hopefully, Barack Obama, with his characteristic thoughtfulness, pragmatism and vision, will lead us capably through this terrible time, and back to greatness.   more »

(Excerpt): We are all conditioned to believe that being “right” about ourselves, our politics, traditions and religions, is more important than living and letting others live in peace. We have to be “right” about so many things—about who the bad guys are, who started it, who was at fault, what happened, who meant well and who didn’t, who did what to whom, whose ideology or form of government or religion is superior…. (Excerpt): The truth is, in this confusing world, it’s difficult to find agreement even amongst our best friends and those most “like” us, about what life is all about—what we’re doing here, and how best to look upon the world, ourselves, and one another. Even the greatest scholars realize that the more they know, the more they know they don’t know. This is why, in every conflict, humility, acceptance, mutual respect, support, and yes, forgiveness, are the wisest guides to being “right.” (Excerpt): Wars cannot prevent catastrophes; war itself is a catastrophe, as attested by all those whose lives are touched by war. Soldiers and soldiers’ families are always catastrophically exploited by war. Ninety percent of the victims of war are civilians. We who so proudly march into war have no idea what future injustices those wars will inevitably loose upon innocents on all sides.   more »

(Excerpt): Although I support Obama’s candidacy wholeheartedly, I disagree with him here, preferring Reverend Wright’s logic. With Wright, I see no moral difference between a weak, fallible organization (or individual) setting off a suicide bomb in a marketplace, and a big, powerful, fallible nation dropping an atomic bomb on a civilian population—except, of course, that powerful nations have more options. (Excerpt): War doesn’t prevent injustices. War itself is always a grievous injustice to all involved in it. Most soldiers and their families are catastrophically exploited by war. 90% of the victims of war are civilians. Unfortunately, when citizens manipulated into vindictive indignation over present and past injustices march into wars, they rarely consider all the many future injustices which that war will inevitably inflict on both sides. Whether or not we act violently, injustices occur. Whether we fight wars or rise up together in peaceful protest, some people will suffer unjustly, some will die. The Jews died in the Holocaust despite the war effort and perhaps also because of it. Europe is now united; tyrants come and go. No matter whether we choose peace, terrorism, or war, we cannot prevent all injustices. But we can avoid adding to their sum by accepting compromises, listening to all sides, and steadfastly rejecting the gravest injustice of all—war itself. (Excerpt): Too often, we prefer being “right” to living and letting others live in peace. We think we have to be right about so many things—about who’s the bad guy, who started it, who’s at fault, what happened, who meant well and who didn’t, who did what to whom, whose ideology or form of government is superior, whose religion is true, who is weird and strange and cultish and backward and disgusting, who gets to be in control, who gets to be the one with the gold who makes all the rules…. (Excerpt): When we insist on being ‘right’ rather than making the compromises necessary to live together in peace, we are making the choice of terrorism/war over freedom. What is freedom, if not the freedom to live one’s life and pursue one’s dreams in peace?   more »

(excerpt): I only know what I read in the papers, and I’m nervous about speaking up for someone who is, for the moment at least, being demonized by the Bush administration, especially someone who is currently shooting back at American forces, albeit in self-defense. But I must raise the question of whether Moqtada al-Sadr might not be one of the "good guys," a strong, spiritual leader whom world opinion should now be ecumenically supporting. (Excerpt): Al-Sadr is apparently a wildly popular leader of the Shiite poor, who, time and again, has demonstrated his commitment to peacefully resisting the overwhelmingly-superior military forces bent upon murdering him. Aside from his courageous refusal to relinquish the ancient homelands of his followers to invaders who would steal and exploit them, and his stubborn unwillingness to be assassinated, what has he done to deserve universal media condemnation and abandonment in the west? (Excerpt): Isn’t it time we reconsidered the unquestioned place we have given al-Sadr in our western pantheon of demonized enemies? He is a leader to whom the majority of Shiites in Iraq currently pledge their allegiance, one who has often turned the other cheek even while his beloved followers were being killed. Despite being repeatedly stalked, discredited, attacked, betrayed, and occasionally befriended by President Bush, his millions of followers trust him unreservedly to make their decisions for them. Shouldn’t journalists be speaking out loudly and clearly against the attacks upon him? Who are the bad guys here, and who are the good guys? (Excerpt): Currently, American forces are attacking al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in oil-rich Basra, which is right across the border from Iran. Perhaps Mr. Cheney hopes to provoke just enough Iranian retaliation for this particular aggression to finally justify his own longed-for invasion of Iran’s oil fields? Patriots in Basra and Iran share far more in common with one another than with their American attackers; surely the Iranian government cannot be expected to indefinitely contain the passions of their red-blooded youth, currently standing passively by watching while their brother-Shiites in Basra are being slaughtered.....   more »

Both Barack and Hillary say they can lead America through sweeping legislative changes, yet only Barack has a convincing plan for getting it done.///// Hillary's plan is to do what she always has, that is, to work as hard as she can, and care a lot—a strategy which has resulted in creditable incremental changes, but which promises only more-of-the-same.///// Barack’s plan for getting it done is daring, plausible, and perfectly aligned with his uniquely charismatic and inclusive leadership style.///// He will begin by bringing in so many enthusiastic new voters during the general election that he will sweep a solid majority of Democrats, like-minded Independents, and Republicans amenable to his agenda into office along with him.///// After he’s elected President, he’ll use his remarkable consensus-building abilities to transparently bridge divisions and identify workable solutions to pressing common problems. ///// Then he’ll eloquently sell his legislative package to a devoted American public, who by that time will know and trust him far more than they’ll trust opposing politicians or special interest lobbies, no matter how much money is spent on media campaigns to the contrary.///// Finally, Barack will ask his devoted followers to hound their Members of Congress, and if necessary, turn out in the streets to protest, to get his legislation passed. And they will. And he will. ///// Hillary is wonderful, but her leadership style just doesn't get it done. During fifteen years of unlimited opportunities, connections, and insider information at the center of power—eight years as First Lady and seven years as a U.S. Senator—Hillary diligently chipped away at the edges of big problems, making praiseworthy differences in many lives, all good stuff, but hardly the leadership America needs now. ///// We need a widely popular President who can articulate, orchestrate, and legislate the urgent changes mandated by a solid majority of newly-mobilized followers—a President who gets it done. ///// Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a similarly-populist President who led the country through sweeping legislative changes cherished by the American working class, told the activists who sought his support, "You've convinced me. Now go out and make me do it." They turned out to protest, and his legislation passed. ///// All through FDR’s Presidential campaign, detractors had complained loudly that he would prove a flash in the pan, "only" a great communicator, a man of “mere” words. All such complaints ended abruptly, however, on Day One, a day which, after all, turned out to be far less significant than the many other truly transformative days that followed.    more »

Hillary can’t wait to put the finishing touches on her wonderfully aggressive 60’s agenda, while Barack is at home in a tomorrow Hillary can’t visit even in her dreams.**********Hillary is thrilled with the chance to add more contributions to her amazing lifetime list, while Barack is thrilled with America’s chances for real change when he is President.**********Hillary is amazed at where she’s been and what she’s been able to accomplish, looking forward to recognition and vindication for her life’s work, while Barack envisions efficiently accomplishing today’s most pressing American policy goals and then moving forward to heal the world’s common global challenges.**********Hillary loves herself-in-power ruling over her former enemies, while Barack loves the-power-in-himself leading a unified America and world into a hopeful 21st century.**********Shall generations await coronation of Jeb Bush into an inevitable succession of Clinton and Bush kings (and queen) reigning in hubris over a 20th century past? Or will we charge our servant Barack Obama to lead us into an American future of unimaginable possibilities?   more »

(excerpt): If Obama were killed today, he would be mourned as one of our greatest and most beloved American heroes for the priceless vision he came so close to successfully pulling off—the transformation of American politics. (Excerpt): Barack Obama, like Dr. King, is at great risk for assassination, because an Obama Presidency would completely upset the applecart for all the moneyed insider special interests in America on both sides of the political aisle. And there are some scary white supremacists out there who would kill him just for being presumptuous. (Excerpt): Obama is not only popular, well-organized, politically astute, and brilliant, he is a very viable political candidate, which makes him a huge target for assassination. Historically, America kills her charismatic popular leaders, those few and rare individuals who are brave, talented, and daring enough to actually stick their necks out to serve the people instead of established interests. Obama and his family are incredibly courageous, as courageous as Dr. King and his family were. (Excerpt): What are Obama’s odds of just surviving this campaign? Of living through a two-term Presidency? Of just plain living long, and prospering? I, for one, don’t intend to wait around to support him until after he’s dead. I only hope many more Americans will soon recognize what an unusual and precious political commodity Obama is, and what a rare opportunity we have for real change, if we will come together right now under his capable leadership. (Excerpt): How many Americans once misunderstood or opposed Dr. King, who now wish that they had dropped what they were doing to walk beside him? Well, we’ve got our chance again. (Excerpt): “Barack Obama Heals Nation and World.” Yes, I can see it. And I will hope and work to see it happen.   more »

When the other Presidential candidates hear Obama’s speech in Iowa tonight (1/4/08), they cannot but feel daunted to compete with the world’s most formidable political opponent since Bill Clinton. Tenacious fighters all, yet must they wish, if for only a moment, that they too, along with the rest of us, could just sit down, shut up, and let him lead. For Obama’s spirit gives us hope, and hope has been hard to come by lately. ***** Even those hearing Obama speak for the first time tonight must recognize his brilliance, eloquence, and depth of passion, his commitment and strong faith in America. It was a soaring speech, a great speech, one for the ages. ***** Finally again, we have a leader we can follow, we can trust. I for one am ready to be led by Barack Obama. ***** I wish he could step right into Bush’s shoes. ***** By this time next week, a majority of Americans will have joined him; the rest will scramble on board soon enough. Because tonight, Obama took on the mantle of Kennedy, of Lincoln, even Dr. King, the greatest speaker and moral leader America has ever seen. ***** If you’ve not yet heard him speak, please google “YouTube,” type “Obama” in the search box, and watch any of his speeches. Tonight’s speech would be a good place to start, or the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner speech earlier in Iowa, or any campaign ad. All his speaking events are available on YouTube. ***** Governor Huckabee’s win was also one for the people, and against the entrenched political and corporate powers-that-be, because Huckabee too is a trustworthy patriot of conviction and principle, though not nearly so broad-banded as Obama. I am proud to see that, at least tonight in Iowa, American democracy, howsoever greatly outspent, still works. ***** Hillary Clinton will always be my idol and a great great public servant, but through no fault of her own, she is a partisan polarizing figure, and were she even electable, which she is not, I cannot predict for her any more success with Congress than the brilliant Nancy Pelosi. With respect to demonstrated judgment and useful experience, Obama is the wiser, humbler, and more able leader. And I am just as thrilled to have the opportunity to support a minority candidate for President as I would have been to support an equally electable and capable woman. ***** Like John Edwards, who is truly a great American, Obama is a staunch friend of the working class, yet stronger than Edwards in intellectual depth and breadth, charisma, consensus-building skills, and in holding the visionary and cooperative global perspectives America needs. ***** Republicans, Independents and Democrats of all persuasions already love Obama. No one can think of a word to say against him--they're embarrassed to, because there's nothing to say. He will make mistakes, as all leaders do, greatly tested as they are, but Barack Obama will win the Presidential election in November with the largest turnout and victory America has seen, and with the warmest well-wishes of every nation across the globe. Our best and most-beloved President may yet follow our (however well-intentioned and hapless) worst. ***** I am so moved by the courage and selflessness of this good man, this healer. God bless Barack Obama, and God bless America.   more »

Peaceful political arrangements in the Middle East are a good place to start, but real and lasting peace will come only when, one-by-one, we in the United States and Iran and Iraq and China and Israel and Palestine and everywhere else, we Christians and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and atheists alike, first humbly strive to embrace peace in our own hearts, endure injustices without adding to their sum, renounce violent resolution of conflicts, and offer to all others in this and every nation that same forgiveness, acceptance, and love we so long for ourselves (the universal “Golden Rule.”)   more »

Breach of trust Originally published in the Frederick News-Post, November 07, 2007 By Katherine Heerbrandt A week before Sen. Barbara Mikulski visited Frederick County extolling the economic promise of Fort Detrick's expansion, Keith Rhodes, chief technologist for the Government Accountability Office, told members of Congress that the proliferation of high-level biolabs raises serious questions about public safety. "The more BSL-4 labs there are, the more opportunity for mistakes and the more opportunities for release," Rhodes told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on Oct. 4. Since 9/11 the number of labs researching the most virulent pathogens -- those with no cure -- grew from two to 15. With no central oversight of the growing number of labs, and disincentives inherent in reporting safety breaches, the security and operations of BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs are in question. The oversight of these labs is "fragmented and relies on self-policing. High-risk labs have health risks for individual lab workers as well as the surrounding community. The risks due to accidental exposure or release can never be completely eliminated, and even labs within sophisticated biological research programs, including those most extensively regulated, have had and will continue to have safety failures," Rhodes said. Burning to spend the billions unleashed for biodefense research, the feds rushed to act with little consideration of the consequences. A sadly familiar refrain. The U.S. Army War College's 2005 "Assessing Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat" concludes money was spent with no analysis of the bioterrorism threat, which it called "systematically and deliberately exaggerated" by this administration. More probable than a bioterrorist attack is that we infect ourselves by theft, design or mishap. With every new lab opened, every square foot added, the risk increases, according to the GAO. The Associated Press produced an interactive map that reveals biolab breaches in the U.S. (http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/wdc/biohazards/) As recently as June, anthrax bacteria was found on a freezer handle, light switch and shoes in a changing room at USAMRIID. With stories of accidents, breaches of protocol and incompetence from biolabs emerging with disturbing regularity, Detrick's refusal to participate in a public meeting isn't surprising. Why subject itself to more national attention when biolabs are under assault? The request came from County Commissioner David Gray, who issued a statement in August saying that federal officials ignored policy in their Environmental Impact Statement by not seeking alternate sites for the labs. Detrick agreed to meet, then backed out, offering a private meeting with county commissioners. Gray wanted to bring community members and the press. Detrick declined that offer, too. Detrick has already done its duty, says spokesperson Eileen Mitchell, providing ample opportunity for public comment and complying with federal regulations. Maybe they weren't counting on anyone actually reading the EIS, but local attorney Barry Kissin and Beth Willis have made a thorough study of it, culminating in a 17-page statement including tough questions for Detrick officials. At best, the EIS is a cursory attempt to comply with federal guidelines. At worst, it ignores documented breaches and blithely concludes that any danger is "negligible." The lack of serious effort in such a critical report is yet another example of the arrogance characterizing the federal government's tactics in the name of keeping America safe from terrorists. Wave the flag and our brains shut down? Undeterred by Detrick's refusal, Gray will have his forum at 7 p.m. on Nov. 19 at Winchester Hall. But it will take more than the usual 20 to 25 regulars to convince a majority of commissioners that the EIS is severely flawed and deserves a court review. It's your last chance. Make it count. kheerbrandt@yahoo.com Please send comments to webmaster or contact us at 301-662-1177. Copyright 1997-07 Randall Family, LLC. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate or redistribute in any form. The Frederick News-Post Privacy Policy. Use of this site indicates your agreement to our Terms of Service.   more »

Why all the subterfuge and indirection? Let's just get down to it, be straightforward and direct: Instead of dragging U.S. troops, diplomats, politicians, reporters, and the rest of us citizens into the Middle East holocaust, why not just drop all our stupidly transparent political pretenses and hand over the whole bloody mess to the corporations? Let’s just give them all the depressing tasks related to stealing and controlling the oil, let them go ahead and divvy up all the various conquest-and-occupation tasks--and of course, the profits, too--but they were going to get those anyway. Our expensive, time-consuming national hand-wringing is such a waste. Why elaborately go through all those pointlessly unsettling motions of giving a damn, all those silly political and journalistic rituals intended I suppose to ease our way into Middle East hegemony—when our very professional corporations could get the job done much more efficiently and thoughtfully, well out of the public eye. Why should we Americans have to be involved at all (except of course a few staggeringly-wealthy shareholders, who can't help themselves.) Why should the rest of us even have to pull ourselves away from our video games and shopping and stuff to think about any of this distressing business? What does it have to do with us? It’s not like we have any illusions anymore that the war has anything to do with our consent, our safety, or our future well-being. We're clear already that we'll get nothing out of Bush’s endless war but more debts and enemies, so why must we also participate in all the suffering—or even watch it unfold? The corporations could easily buy up all their own weapons, hire and train their own militaries, attack and conquer (whomever), grab up their own oilfields, bribe and terrorize their own collaborators, subdue and exploit foreign populations, and write and produce their own media propaganda--as in fact they already do now--without the U.S. government and citizenry being so embarrassingly dragged into the whole mess to provide political cover. The corporations obviously don’t need our citizen support or even our (present-day) tax money. They've managed to move forward on their agenda quite nicely for many years without any of that. And if we're no help to them, we're certainly no bother to them, either, as we've clearly decided to roll over and play dead, asking polite permission for only a few brief opportunities to attempt to dignify our/their actions with silent moments of protest and mourning. Insufficient to maintain a shred of dignity? Then to heck with faking it. Just make it official, give them carte blanche. They're running the show already anyway. Let them just take whatever they want, however and whenever they want to, from whomever, wherever; they’re going to do it anyway, and the niceties of humanitarian and spiritual and political ideals be damned, because, don't forget, we’re still, by far, the biggest bully on the block, and so long as we are, such niceties aren't worth our trouble. Are they? Unless of course empire-building is not what America is about…. Unless of course we’re willing to risk peace, and turn our national will and resources toward cooperating with all the world’s peoples everywhere to end violence and solve our problems together, as one. (So let's just do it. Now.)    more »

(Excerpt): Americans express outrage at attacks on American soldiers, but turn a deaf ear to the pleas of millions of Iraqi war refugees desperate for asylum from our wars. We express indignation when an Israeli dies, but can’t be bothered to count—much less mourn—the untold Muslim victims of our Middle East wars. This double standard would shock us if the oceans of propaganda we swim in daily did not prevent our awareness of it. (Excerpt): Terrorism, like war, is a continuation of politics “by other means.” Grieving and jobless Muslim youth “join up” with terrorist forces in hopes of prevailing against regional and international foes, just as American youths patriotically join the armed services to donate their young bodies in service to their government’s many goals, and end up killing innocent strangers, or dying, or being maimed, only for the mercenary protection and expansion of far-flung corporate/economic interests. (Excerpt): Our country has never been invaded by Muslims, nor, credibly, by anyone else. We spend an annual military budget larger than the next fourteen largest nations combined--in total, 45% of the entire military spending in the whole world--on attacks on and within the homelands of foreigners who have never come anywhere near our homes. We have over 600 military bases all over the world. All this pretense of “defense” of America...even though former Secretary of State Madeline Albright guilelessly admitted after 9/11 that “…’homeland security’ is something people hadn’t really thought of before.” (Excerpt): The literate class in the Muslim world certainly blames the U.S. for oppressing Muslim states. As cruelly and certainly as war kills both body and spirit, so do economic and political exploitations kill, maim and warp lives. Western nations have been meddling politically, financially and militarily throughout the twentieth century, repressing democratic movements and political freedoms throughout all Arab nations, propping up Western-friendly dictators, failing to promote good governance and economic advancement, and neglecting to address rapidly-changing social, demographic and economic developmental challenges. Islamic extremism will continue to thrive until Muslim youth everywhere are offered real hope of political and economic improvements. (Excerpt): Angry Muslims believe that we want to weaken and divide the Arab world, shake the foundations of Islamic belief, and dismantle the structures of Muslim society—their culture, traditions, and their approaches to justice, government, rights, and freedom, however controversial. They believe we want to lead their young people astray, control and limit their use of and profit from their resources, and emasculate and neutralize all opposition to our agenda by spreading our competing western values and influence. (Excerpt): Many Muslims believe that we in the West very much want to keep their countries backward, afflicted, poor and miserable, so we can more easily exploit their riches—their oil, land and human resources. They attribute America’s historical political and economic success not to a morally, economically and politically superior system of government, but to a two-hundred year exploitation of the richest swath of virgin territory and resources that the world has ever known, on the backs of slaves and slaughtered Native Americans, using a form of government primarily supportive of the growth of wealth (the U.S. was originally settled by capitalist business ventures in Jamestown, Plymouth, etc.) and backed up by a growing military force which turned next to support for similar profitable exploitations in the third world. (Excerpt): The West’s war against Islam is considered criminally immoral by the millions of peaceful/innocent non-“enemy” Muslims who have been the “collateral damage” of western aggressions. Like Americans, Arabs have the right to keep and/or sell their resources whenever and at whatever price they prefer. They feel their only hope is to resist and endure Western onslaughts until their undeserved suffering redemptively earns them international sympathy and respect—and/or breaks the American economy—as their resistance broke the national economies of the late great Soviet and British empires. (Excerpt): Muslims pray that the U.S. will lose their political will for unending war, that media backlash from our allies will eventually convince us of endless war’s tragic and wasteful effects. A survey of 47 major nations by Pew Research recently demonstrated that “global public opinion (is) increasingly wary of the world’s dominant nations (and) disapproving of their leaders. Anti-Americanism is extensive, as it has been for the past five years…. Global support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism is shrinking, and distrust of American leadership and foreign policy is growing. Not only is there worldwide support for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but there also is considerable opposition to U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.”(Excerpt): The biggest problem with fighting an endless war on terrorism is that such a war does nothing at all to resolve the terrorist problem, while creating more terrorists. Wars on terrorism are wars no one wins and everyone loses. (Excerpt): Millions of Christians currently live in Arab countries, sharing very much the same culture as their Muslim counterparts, just as Muslims in America share much of our American culture. Unarguably, some Muslim leaders are intransigent and fearful, and some fundamentalist Muslims are as crazy as loons—just like some of our own leaders and fundamentalist Christians, who would nuke whole Arab nations right now. But just because each culture has its crazies doesn’t give anyone the right to attack all Christians or all Muslims in “self-defense.” No society can prevent all senseless, tragic injustices, but we do not have to add to their sum. (Excerpt): Religion can be misused in any land, whether Christian or Jewish or Muslim—to win votes, to gain political power and control, to further various nationalist and ethnic motives. Just as political electioneering in America relies upon familiar, emotion-stirring patriotic and Judeo/Christian words and images, politics in Arab lands come clothed in the garb of Islam. Like our own neoconservative opportunists, radical Islamic opportunists urge their political ideologies and associated plans—whether for a utopian future embracing Sharia law and rejecting secularism and all things foreign, or for world domination and a global empire run by international corporations—all these unscrupulous politicians (whether clerical or secular) urge their dark visions using religion as a motivator for change, and not the other way around. (Excerpt): The very best way to reverse Islamic terrorism, though, is step-by-step, the same way it was created, by reversing the causes of anti-Americanism and extremist violence. Step-by-step, we can move away from a foreign policy of violence-based international competition toward one embracing non-violent global cooperation. Neither approach to ending terrorism is simple, obvious or guaranteed. But only one has any chance of succeeding.   more »

(Excerpt:) I predict that unscrupulous and frightened campaign schemers and strategists within the Republican Party (such as Karl Rove) will convince their followers of the necessity of focusing the 2008 presidential campaign on xenophobia—fear of outsiders. Like all good fascists throughout history, they’ll find themselves “reluctantly forced” to flood the airways with compelling commercials, "information," "news stories," "facts" and "statistics,"convincing a nervous American public that the only thing standing between “us” and a fatal, up-close-and-personal, all-out collision with a horde of terrible “others” so not-like-us as to be sub-human, is to vote Republican. ((Excerpt:) Right-wing talk-show extremists—politicians, preachers, “experts,” business leaders—terrorists all—are already terrorizing the public with their visions of danger, scarcity, and death, hammering their variations on their single essential theme: “If you don’t vote Republican, you and your loved ones, sooner than you think, will be left alone to live and die, poor and horribly, because of “outsiders.’” Excerpt:) The great threats mankind faces today ignore borders, arising as they do from a sense of disunity. These threats, which cannot be solved competitively, but only through global cooperation, include nuclear proliferation, organized crime, poverty, infectious diseases and unsupportive health conditions and attitudes, environmental degradation, armed conflicts of all kinds, including wars both within and among nations, terrorism, the global arms trade, mass migrations, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, natural disasters, ignorance, addiction, prejudice, pornography, homelessness, hate, fear, anxiety, civic alienation, loss of morality, excessive taxation, crumbling infrastructures, more and more “enemies,” violence itself…. The list of threats without borders is long and continues to grow rapidly. (Excerpt): The only way to lick ‘em is to join ‘em. Instead of holding at arm’s length the world’s hungry, envious and angry, instead of arming dictators or beating enemies into submission, or bombing them flat, we can change the way we feel and act toward "others." We can learn to view all people as our brothers and sisters, and to see all hostile actions as a cry for help. (Excerpt:)Yes, Virginia, there really are some very bad terrorists out there, and not a few of them are currently holding top positions in the Republican Party.   more »

(excerpt): Rachel Corrie had no affection for bullies. Burning with a wish to stand up to power and deadly violence, she seemed born to resist injustice. I think she would have been just as eager to oppose Palestinians attacking innocent Israelis, were she drawn to their plight first. (Excerpt): I was saddened to think that some who cherish holocaust narratives like The Diary of Anne Frank would try to censor Rachel’s inspired voice and words for partisan reasons. I doubt any peaceful Jew seeing this play would urge such censorship. (Excerpt): Peaceful Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other Americans are often so aggressively intimidated by their own extremist factions that they rarely speak out publicly against the vengeful actions, bloody rhetoric, and sheer barbarism of all they see, on all sides. Caught within the context of a violent century’s heightened emotions, most moderates—peaceful Jews and Christians and Muslims and citizens of all nationalities everywhere—are too frightened to say “Enough” against even the extremist voices within their own groups. (Excerpt): As long as demagogues and partisan extremists freely pressure and intimidate moderates, worldwide anti-Islamism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism will continue to grow. And if the hot-blooded AIPAC successfully pushes extremists in America and Israel into another bloodbath, this time against Iran, the potential for anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Islamic blowback upon moderates in all these groups everywhere will be as terrible as the cataclysmic impact upon the direct victims of the war. (Excerpt): Extremist Jewish leaders preaching the wisdom of ten-eyes-for-an-eye, and depicting Israel as a tiny beleaguered island within a vast sea of murderous Muslims all wanting to kill Jews and “erase Israel from the map” are as repellently manipulative as extremist Palestinian leaders claiming to be merely a defenseless band of ragtag refugees confronting the combined wrath of the world’s largest and most powerful military forces, or American Christian-extremists sounding the alarm of American invasion by rapacious outsiders and infidels, or American patriots bristling with nuclear arms , self-righteously claiming to be the victims of nations working frantically to develop even a single one. (Excerpt): Violence, or violent extremism, or terrorism—that is, resorting to violence to resolve conflicts—turns out to be “the problem” itself, and not, as many have tried to persuade us, any particular ideology, ethnicity, religious tradition, or national affiliation. The burning question is always: who is committed to non-violent resolution of conflicts, and who isn’t?   more »

(excerpts): Consider: what if an imagined, vastly more powerful Muslim alliance had invaded and occupied the United States five years ago? We wouldn’t be “generating vigorous, sustained condemnation” about an occasional American suicide bomber way over in Iraq, consumed as we would we be already, here at home in America, with simple day-to-day survival, with burying and mourning our million dead brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, with caring for five times that million beloved wounded, with desperately fleeing the violence along with the millions of our fellow Americans abandoning their homes and trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and dreams anywhere else…. Just who is it, Mr. Friedman, who is “erasing basic norms of civilization” by terrorizing—Islamic suicide bombers, or our own invading and occupying armies? Both, of course. I have no doubt that many extremist Muslims are every bit as crazy as some of our very own home-grown terrified fundamentalist Christians and Jews who stand ready to nuke whole Islamic nations right now with no more questions asked. Yes, there are violent, ignorant, vengeful people everywhere, and this is a big big problem. And adding more violence, suffering, anger, and fear to all of their lives is being done to what good purpose? (Excerpts): Friedman argues that it’s up to Muslim leaders to “remove this cancer” of terrorist violence. No. It is up to western leaders to remove this cancer of military-backed hegemony, this cancer of “might makes right,” this cancer of trampling the rights and traditions of smaller and weaker peoples. Unless Mr. Friedman and I can somehow agree upon which of our children and grandchildren we’re willing to trade for a steady flow of cheap Middle Eastern oil, and which of our cities we’ll willing to exchange for bigger earnings for American stockholders, we should support leaders capable of shifting our nation and the world into to a new era of non-violent global cooperation, for the sake of all in both the east and the west.   more »

I know that there are a great many peace-loving, non-racist Jews in Israel and the U.S. who would welcome a non-apartheid government with equal civil rights for all people in Israel/Palestine, and who reject war as a way to resolve conflict as thoroughly as they reject terrorism.... I believe that Ahmadinejad has said he wants to wipe the current war-mongering/anti-Islamic regime off the map; he explained to my satisfaction that he was mistranslated--he didn't mean harm to peaceful Israelis who see Palestinians as part of a universal brotherhood.... And I also think we Americans still hope to solve our oil problem by controlling the flow and price of Iraqi (and Iranian?) oil, and that's one reason the oil companies and neocons behind Bush pushed him (sad patriotic misguided dupe that he is) into going to war in Iraq in the first place.... I think some fundamentalist Christian beliefs about Armageddon and the Apocolypse (they are too unloving to give my attention to) are behind much of the support for anti-Islamic-pro-Israel lobbying in America too....I'm sorry to think also that much of the American mainstream media is controlled by people who think like this article describes.... Sadly, most Americans think like this too, because of the brainwashed and brainwashing media.... When America asked, "Why do they hate us?" the media did not tell us.... Our truly inadequate educational system where history and civic curricula are determined by ignorant locals who are equally brainwashed must also be transformed to a more global, caring message, not the empirical, right-makes-might message, the America-is-better-and-thus-must-rule message many schools put out now.... I think all of the forces cited in the article (click on "more" below) are pushing us all to get into a catastrophic war with Iran for all of the reasons given.... But we won't, because we will all join hands around the world and our peace will overcome them....Thank you, Corvuswire, whoever you are, for your courage in writing/sharing your thoughts, most of which I agree with....I hope that the AIPAC/Anti-Defamation League will see that I love Jews but don't love hateful messages.... I believe in non-violent, caring, humanitarian solutions to world problems.... Please read this short piece (click on "more" below) and after you read it, write to njcpace@gmail.com to tell me what you think of it? Thanks.... Nancy Pace   more »

(Excerpt): My husband hates politics, but when I have a nightmare, he listens kindly to my ranting. Here’s my bad dream: President Bush suddenly dies of some inscrutable injury secretly inflicted by the next President Dick Cheney, who appoints a worthless investigative commission, goes scot-free, and uses his brief presidency to orchestrate the succession of his fave cohort-in-conspiracies-against-the-Constitution, David S. Addington. (Excerpt): The few times I have inflicted my politics upon my husband, he’s listened with resigned patience. But this time he gently suggested that I might consider dreaming about something more likely to happen than Vice-President Cheney overthrowing the government.... (Excerpt): Because no one would benefit more from an assassination than Cheney and Addington…. Because no one has done more to undermine the Constitution than Cheney and Addington, however pure their intentions in amassing great power to “save America” (their way)…. Because no one has so much to answer for, or so many wolves at their door, than Cheney and Addington…. I doubt not that Cheney and Addington are deeply unsatisfied with their measly vast powers. I’m confident that they feel increasingly marginalized by their own party, and threatened by mounting opposition from Congress, the State Department, the CIA, not a few top military brass, and even by President Bush, who recently reversed many of Cheney’s war-on-terrorism policies, who apparently is drawing back from Cheney’s influence, and who may even now be feeling the first tingles of fear in Cheney’s presence…. Am I crazy even to wonder whether Cheney and Addington would actually consider using their old military or CIA contacts to quietly engineer an insider-job presidential assassination? Apparently, neither of these men has had a single qualm about wasting hundreds of thousands of lives in the Middle East to further their purposes; what difference would one more life make, when you've spent your whole life pursuing executive power and only one man stands in your way? I admit I haven't had any real experience with power politics...but I've read Shakespeare.... Cheney has deflected negative attention in the past by creating diversions. If Congress calls Cheney’s bluff regarding non-compliance with the NARA executive order (and just why is it that Bush hasn’t stepped forward to interfere with this, hmmmm...?) or if the Justice Department crowds Cheney with BAE slush fund allegations, a presidential assassination might prove as effective and timely a diversion as a war with Iran (Cheney's other all-purpose fall-back diversion.) Here’s a great comment recently posted by “razzi” in response to an internet article about Cheney: “Let's have no game-playing with a man this dangerous who's just a heartbeat away from the presidency. Hearings on his abuse of authority and war crimes need to begin immediately and need to persist for the remainder of his term so that in the event Bush is incapacitated, the case for instant impeachment will already have been built. The evidence needed for an eventual war crimes trial after his term is over also needs to be built. This is a...man who needs to be investigated, prosecuted, and punished for what he is doing to the republic.”   more »

(Please click "MORE" below for a tidy-looking version of the following): About twenty-five years ago, if memory serves, I read the following wonderful passage by someone named Saskia Dasse. I have kept a copy of it, and ran across it again the other day.... I have followed many different paths on my search for inner/spiritual peace, although I believe anyone can learn peace by sincerely, honestly, and wholeheartedly following almost any single thoughtful and disciplined path. I have discovered that inner peace is not a permanent condition; life always brings up challenges even to the "enlightened." However, I am happy to have moved to what feels like another plane of challenges. I certainly don't expect or desire to live a life without challenges, though. Meeting challenges well and learning from them seems to me to be what a happy life is all about--not at all a riddle to be finally solved, but an adventure to be lived. (If you're alive, you'll still have good and bad days.) Nevertheless, over the years, as I have made a spiritual search a high priority, and as I have chipped away at self-improvement along my various paths and disciplines of spiritual growth, I have indeed found that (with the help of my Power/Source) I am increasingly capable of meeting and overcoming my daily and even major challenges peacefully, and far less frequently feel upset or at odds with others, or with the world. As I now read over Saskia Dasse's list of symptoms of inner peace, I am happy to report that I have made considerable progress on all of them, although each is a still-compelling goal; ( I used to be really terrible at all of them, so considerable progress is saying a lot!) Here is what I read so many years ago. (And thank you to the ungoogleable Saskia Dasse, whoever and wherever you are....) SYMPTOMS OF INNER PEACE - by Saskia Dasse Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world. Some signs and symptoms of inner peace: * A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences. * An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment. * A loss of interest in judging other people. * A loss of interest in judging self. * A loss of interest in conflict. * A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.) * Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation. * Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature. * Frequent attacks of smiling. * An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen. * An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it. WARNING: If you have some or all of the above symptoms. please be advised that your condition of inner peace may be so far advanced as to not be curable. If you are exposed to anyone exhibiting any of these symptoms, remain exposed only at your own risk. That's the end of Saski Dasse's piece. I plan a blog in which I list at least the major influences, the major paths in my life so far.... Stay tuned! :)   more »

Not that I can sing, but these two wonderful entertainers sure can. Click on "more" below, and then, below the words to the song, click on the "Dreamin 1.wav" file to hear me sing the words and melody. And please let Tim and Faith know that you've heard a peace and love song that was made just for them (and just made for them, too.... They will know how to pick up some very nice harmonies....) I hope they love it and that you'll love it, too.   more »

To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda…. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction….The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals…. We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living. -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., writing in college, 1947   more »

(I wrote this in response to a letter-to-the-editor in our local paper, which is also reprinted.) The Darfur/Sudan dispute is primarily over who will control the newly-discovered oil-rich lands of Darfur, in western Sudan. As often happens, the indigenous poor there have been ruthlessly pushed aside by voracious corporate and national interests in a typical no-holds-barred international competition for scarce valuable resources. China’s respectful diplomacy toward the legitimate Muslim government of Sudan has given the Chinese an “in” which they are very profitably exploiting. The bumbling U.S. strategy of arming Sudan’s neighbors has won us only suspicion and resentment. A mysteriously (well) funded "Save Darfur" media campaign has legitimately excited the sympathies of people everywhere to help the innocents, perhaps also to "justify" future aggressions. Historically, many illegal invasions, occupations, and wars of greed have been “sold” as rescue missions. China has much to teach the U.S. about win-win diplomacy and trade, just as the U.S. has many important and wonderful things to teach China. May we generously support peaceful international humanitarian efforts to assist the victims in Sudan, and may we use the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing to further mutual peaceful understanding, dialogue, and good will with our trading partner, China.   more »

The following thought-provoking letter-to-the-editor denouncing war protesters recently appeared in our local paper. (My response, as well as the fantastic response of my friend and neighbor, Nancy Arnold, are printed below that letter.) Please click on "MORE" below.... LOCAL PROTESTERS DESERVE RIDDANCE "On behalf of the followers of al-Qaida and militant Islamic jihadists everywhere, I would like to extend our admiration and gratitude to those extraordinary citizens who turned out downtown to show support for our efforts and to register disgust with their country’s war on terror. We share a strong common bond. We each despise George Bush, the American military and Western-style democracies. It is imperative that American resolve to fight our cause be diminished. Your assistance in that regard is greatly appreciated. It is, after all, the highest form of patriotism to give aid and comfort to your country’s enemies—especially when our sons and daughters are sacrificing their lives for your freedom." PLEASE CLICK ON "MORE" TO READ OUR TWO PUBLISHED RESPONSES TO THIS LETTER....   more »

I am so proud to say that a friend of mine wrote the following wonderful letter-to-the-editor (May 7, 2007 Frederick News-Post); in it, she said at least five things that so needed saying. She and the letter are both amazing!   more »

(Excerpt): Once upon a time, two admirable immigrant families, the Chos and the Samahas, came to live in the same Virginia town. Their different versions of the American Dream story both ended on the same day, when they each tragically lost a child to fear, in the massacre at Virginia Tech. (Excerpt): With a chance for a do-over of Cho’s life, we’d stock his schools with structured programs especially intended for minorities, immigrants, the differently-abled, and other struggling children—strong programs every bit as financially well-supported as the many programs currently supporting our most-able students, such as sports, music, and drama programs, and other mostly-top-quartile clubs. Perhaps within such a supportive program, Cho would have found relevant and sufficient friendship. With at least one friend, maybe two, or even three, maybe a small group to hang out with when times were tough, maybe he would have come out all right. And maybe not. It’s hard to imagine not having a single friend, though. (Excerpt): We’ll never know, and neither will the thirty-two Virginia Tech classmates who will remain nameless and faceless at least to him, because he murdered them in the cold blood of a youth who had no friends, who came to believe that he was all alone, feared and hated, an unwanted “alien” in his family’s chosen promised land. (Excerpt): What we can know for sure is that Americans--immigrants all, unless we’re Native Americans--along with the citizens of most other northern countries, will be happier and safer both as individuals and as nations when we finally come to accept the inevitability of today’s south-to-north global migrations (escaping starvation, terror, political oppression, war...) as a fact of life--while supporting population control; when we finally decide together how best to welcome and assimilate all the precious already-living human beings fortunate enough to arrive on our shores legally, as well as the many desperate and equally sanctified souls bravely arriving any way they can in hopes of finding the merest sustenance—or an American Dream—for their families. (Excerpt): In Matthew 25: 31-46, Jesus says: “’Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me…. As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’”   more »

(Excerpt): We need our many battlefields, our monuments, and our gravesites to some day help us remember, above all else, the monstrous insanity that once was war. One person at a time, one conflict at a time, one battlefield at a time, we are all finally learning to rise above war, and to become builders of peace.   more »

I hereby offer a hypothetical “deal” to all the many caring anti-abortion activists, such that we equally concerned anti-war activists will agree to give up all violence against the unborn, in exchange for their equivalent agreement to resist the use of violence upon those already born—whether through war, torture, abuse, poverty, neglect, anger, vengeance, retaliation, punishment, or any other form of violence. When we can all agree to respect and protect human life from all forms of violence, agreeing to use only non-violent means to resolve our conflicts, we will together build a culture of peace where respect and support for human life everywhere is the highest moral value.   more »

(Excerpt:) Why don’t we all just humbly accept that we are all destined to live and die with great mysteries and uncertainties, and that we aren’t meant to know very many things with any great deal of clarity? We can still pursue understanding, but it's more fun when we realize that whatever it is that God intends for us to do and be and have and believe on this earth—if there is indeed a God even of each of our personal understandings, and Whoever or whatever we each choose to mean by that Name—it is very evidently not likely that we will ever clearly understand everything, or anything, and will certainly never all come to the same conclusions. (Excerpt:) Especially in religious, philosophical, and political discourse, we can spend less time divided among our many differences, and instead celebrate and focus upon our many commonalities—all the universal truths upon which we can all agree, all that unites us, such as love, hope, faith (wherever we choose to put that faith), respect, responsibility, honesty, fairness, hard work, spiritual practice, community, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, purity, selflessness, peacefulness…and the rest of the long list of good things we can all agree upon which goes on forever. These ecumenical values, in all their various positive permutations and versions, can always be communally embraced, taught, admired, built upon, and warmly shared among people of all faiths and ideologies, or of no faith or ideology. Then, instead of forever being self-righteously "right"--that is, wrong--we can celebrate and embrace one another's uniqueness, and...just get along.   more »

The world needs healing. We feel divided from ourselves, from the world, and from God......Yet our own personal healing can only begin when we choose to heal others first; that’s just the way healing works. The magic that happens when we forgive others is the very thing that helps us forget and move on......Minimally, people are irritating. (This includes us!) Many will break our hearts, or even kill us. Yet, when we look at each person and each situation more gently, when we let go of our resentments, give others slack, let up on others' human mistakes, however grievous, we begin to notice that we’re not so hard on ourselves anymore either......In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.’ But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” .....Why would Jesus say this?.....He was teaching us how to heal one another and ourselves. .....So where in the world do we start, in this business of easing up on others, and ultimately, ourselves?.....We can begin by forgiving everyone else’s indifference to our own lost hopes, dreams, loves, and opportunities, our deepest sorrows and regrets. When we do, our own apathy and indifference to the plight and suffering of others everywhere will begin to dissipate......We can stop fretting about the stupid or terrible ways others obliviously act out their fears of loss, death, suffering, disappointment, humiliation, deprivation, cruelty, and loss of control—and find ourselves bravely facing and addressing our own fears.......We can overlook the foolishness people go through to hide behind their masks and walls—and find ourselves extending our hands and hearts outside our own comfort zones.......We can stop criticizing the selfishness that tears apart families and nations and our small blue planet, ruining millions of lives—and let go of our own failures of compassion, giving freely instead, as we have received......We can let go of others’ self-absorbed rudeness and anxiety (born of the belief that life-is-tough-and-then-you-die)—and find ourselves peacefully within safe, loving circles of unity and oneness......We can stop being indignant because others think they know, they’re right, they’re sure about how things should work, and how everyone should live—and become secure in our own attitudes of acceptance and humility.......We can stop disapproving of others’ mistake-ridden beliefs, traditions, politics, and cultures—and transform our own fallible and all-too-human personal belief systems and institutions......We can forgive all who frighten, hate, and angrily misuse us—and forget our own fear, hatred, anger, and abuse......We can pardon the world its smallness, ignorance, and prejudice—and find within ourselves the loving power of the whole universe.......We can absolve all who have killed or maimed our loved ones in the names of mysterious causes—and free ourselves from our own confused complicity in others’ pain......We can respect others’ blind loyalties to tribe, nation, race, ideology, religion, class, gender—and embrace our commonalities: one Life, one Love, one Self, one Source......We can bear with others’ grave and/or foolish past and future mistakes—and live joyously together in the present......We can let pass others’ weak faith—and grow closer in our shared search for understanding and peace......We can empathize with others for seeming so far from God and man—and heal our own sense of separation......We can stop blaming leaders for their many failures, and start speaking out, lifting up, taking risks, and failing and succeeding responsibly, publicly, courageously...... We can release others’ guilt for mistreating us—and drop our own defenses, treating others as we wish to be treated......We can stop hating God for messing up our lives and mis-creating the world—and start listening for His guiding Voice, and recognizing His bountiful, diverse Creation, perfect exactly as it is......We can forgive the world, reclaim our ideals and our love, and move on to heal the world as we have been healed......   more »

Saddam Hussein, who is very much one of God’s beloved, fallible children (just like the rest of us) met his death with dignity and courage.... If all such world leaders who wreak ill-conceived, reckless, needless mayhem, who destroy innocent lives in their ambitious pursuit of influence and power, deserve such grisly ends, then some of our current world leaders ought to be feeling a bit queasy just about now.... There is a lot of irony in the sad fact that we’ve spent hundreds of billions of hard-earned and greatly-needed tax dollars to kill off one violent despotic regime in Iraq, simply in order to install another one equally unpopular and equally dependent upon maintaining its power via the same undemocratic brutish means—armies and secret prisons and assassinations and torture. Why else would we need to send ever more armies into Iraq to prop them up?... The Bush administration sold us their disastrously costly war by drumming up American fears of an evil madman imminently threatening U.S. citizens, yet not only could we not find such weapons, we couldn’t even pull off a demonstrably “democratic” (i.e., fair) trial convincingly proving that Saddam Hussein indeed deserved death by hanging for even one single alleged killing spree.   more »

“America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way (in a) revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. These are the times for real choices and not false ones.” --Martin Luther King, 1967   more »

(Excerpt): I rarely slowed down long enough to feel grateful for anything I earned or accomplished, aside from the first quick momentary flush of happiness and pride before I dismissed the importance of whatever I’d done. I never even went to any of my graduation ceremonies, but instead, silently accused myself of being a slacker (“I should have done this much quicker…”) before rushing on to focus on the next thing. I had enthusiasm and talent and smarts, but a poor work ethic, no concept of goal-setting or commitment or loyalty or clear personal goals, a belief that I should know the answers already (so don't ask questions) and no understanding of doing my best. So I took little pride in anything I accomplished. Even the fact that I had accomplished something diminished its value, because I knew well my careless habits: surely if I could do something, anyone could have done it Excerpt): From both my upbringing and the pressures of a materialistic culture, I always felt that much more was expected of me than of most others, certainly more than I had ever achieved. I knew that more was expected of those to whom much was given, and indeed I had been born, if not with a gold spoon in my mouth, at least a silver one. So I always felt rushed and pushed and far behind-the-eight-ball. Taking the time to stop and savor my achievements seemed a little like false pride, considering my advantages, and anyway, although I sometimes felt conceit, I rarely felt proud. (Excerpt): I looked at life as an arbitrarily and unfairly handicapped race to a vague and impossible-to-reach finish line that was general human perfection. I was resentful of those who seemed to have an unfair “head start” on me, the girls with more money and character and possessions and direction and good habits and good sense, not to mention more adventures and fun. I rarely looked around me to notice how comparatively very lucky I was, rarely compared my good fortune with those having less than I. I was too busy focusing on all the other people who seemed to have a head start on me. It never occurred to me that life might not be a race, that each person’s goals could be finite and unique, or that where one starts or arrives is far less interesting or commendable than what one does with the time and opportunities one has. All I knew was that my life seemed very pressured, and that the broad goals of generalized human perfection seemed chaotically both mutually competitive and completely unattainable.   more »

(Excerpt): Alternatively, if we continue to spend $2 billion a week warring on Iraq, we can: “have our troops come under attack every 15 minutes; spawn new legions of terrorists who rise up against the overspending; destroy what was left of the Iraqi infrastructure; create a civil war for our own amusement and then shake our heads at their violence; traumatize the lives of innocent Iraqi children; kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people; secretly set up state-of-the-art torture chambers; use lots of toxic chemicals to ensure that the land and water are destroyed; test our latest weaponry on real live targets; illegally imprison innocent people for years; listen to the fear spin that is the Bush administration mantra; watch our national integrity rapidly erode, and feel the disintegration of our own humanity as we turn a blind eye to the crimes we commit. Now is not the time to turn that blind eye or to remain silent. Fear does not have to rule, and peace is a cost-effective and far less deadly alternative.”*   more »

Excerpt: People like to feel good about themselves, and Americans are no exception; so only a relative handful of scholarly Americans are even aware of their government’s direct historical responsibility for a century of violent regime changes in fourteen countries from Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Honduras, to South Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Excerpt: Kinzer’s brilliant decision to summarize the colorful particulars of who-what-when-where-how leading up to, during, and following each overthrow, give range to his best journalistic talents, while reducing his biographer’s breadth and historian’s bounty of facts, figures, places, and times into fourteen short, lively, memorable tales of derring-do, intrigue, overreaching, ignorance, prejudice, greed, and mayhem. Excerpt: Reading Overthrow brought to mind the darker aspects of Margaret Meade’s assertion, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has,” while adding credibility to the mounting evidence that the tragedy of today’s Middle East is indeed directly traceable to the benighted machinations of a few dedicated, powerful, and sorely misguided neocons in Washington, D.C. For each case of regime change, Kinzer implicates a small group of daring individuals usually acting for corporate interests and always with presidential authority.   more »

Here are some of my hobbies(painting, cartooning, etc.) as well as a self-portrait, and a portrait of me by my five-year-old friend, Alexa. Look for them elsewhere in my website to see/learn more.... Thank you for visiting my website! -eppyharmon   more »

Excerpt: A few months ago, I decided to watch some of the best-received war movies that came out of the Vietnam war—The Deer Hunter, The Killing Fields, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and Coming Home, as well as some recent and older ones—The Battle of Algiers, Crimson Tide, Saving Private Ryan, The Enemy Below, and Black Hawk Down. Excerpt: I found amazing agreement in all these books and movies in their moral conclusions about war, even as each offered me a unique personal perspective and story unlike any other. Excerpt: Over and over, every work expressed or implied the point of view that “their” war had been insane, cruel, hard, sad, misguided, and stupid, and that it had seemed to create far more problems than it resolved. Their actual acts of war—the killing parts—were consistently experienced as pointless, chaotic, numbing, unreasonable, inhumane, confusing, wrong--and often thrilling, in that the pointy end of the sword had actually gone into some other man.   more »

Excerpt: (W)e can watch, on one channel, various national and international leaders patiently strive to work through peaceful diplomatic channels in search of just, compassionate solutions to deadly conflicts, or we can flip over to another channel and watch Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush lambaste these same statesmen as unpatriotic pacifiers, appeasers and sympathizers. Excerpt: How could it be in our best interests for our leaders to refuse to talk with the very enemies whom they’ve told us to hate, because (as they’ve also told us) they hate us. If hate and fear are so dangerous—and they certainly are—why wouldn’t we try to improve such relationships by listening to their grievances and hearing their suggestions for peaceful solutions? Excerpt: Wars are never initiated by popular pressure, never fought from the bottom-up, but always from the top-down, at the whims of leaders who work hard to maintain their intricate ideological justifications. Excerpt: The Defense Department is currently attempting to manipulate our freedom of the press by demanding equal time for its pro-war propaganda. Happily, our free press neither answers to nor agrees with such self-serving ideas about what the job of the press should be. Excerpt: One would think the Defense Department would find our state of constant war sufficient public distraction from the embarrassing truth that we may have as much to fear from an administration capable of embracing its foes with nuclear arms, as we have from their confusingly shape-shifting enemies. Excerpt: Perhaps they hope that once we finally have a clear “enemy” to hate and fear, maybe we won’t notice that a significant contributor to our state of national insecurity is our unrepresentative, repressive, empire-building government. Excerpt: No one can avoid suffering some injustice in this well-armed and very frightened post-9/11 world, but the risk of injustice should not rush us into pre-emptive wars which always only add to the sum of the world’s injustices, while creating ever more enmity and dangers....   more »

Excerpt: Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda and other similarly militant organizations and individuals will never stop “terrorizing” until the far more wealthy, powerful, and better-armed leaders of nation-states stop sending their military and espionage forces to invade, occupy, assassinate, murder, war against, exploit, direct, victimize, and otherwise “terrorize” them. Terrorists are those who have given up on dialogue, diplomacy, and compromise, and have instead resorted to war and other kinds of violence to achieve their political goals. People who courageously stand beside their homes, defending them from invading outsiders who would threaten their way of life, are not terrorists.   more »

Excerpt: From that ragtag bunch of schoolmates of yesteryear, no doubt largely parented by penniless, uneducated laborers who braved their way across the border, came this impressive line of smiling, capable, courteous, faith-driven professionals. Excerpt: Where “Meskins” were previously relegated only to San Antonio’s lowest social classes, now they were the home-care aides who tenderly washed and fed my father, the capable nurses who treated him, the orderlies who gently attended him in hospital, the dedicated doctors who set his broken hip, the hospice workers who comforted us, the owners of the funeral home, and the directors who helped us plan his funeral. Excerpt: Hispanics now ably run much of the city, blending in with the Anglo minority attractively and patriotically. As I hurried through busy days, helpful Hispanic faces sold me groceries and hardware, delivered our packages, repaired our dishwasher, patrolled our streets, and repaired our phone. My father’s accountant was Hispanic, as was his attorney.   more »

Excerpt: In this heavily-armed world, as in all previous worlds, only one enemy has ever pressed for world domination, only one enemy strives ceaselessly to throw every nation into never-ending inhumane wars. That enemy is neither terrorist, nor fanatic, nor extremist, neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Muslim, neither Fascism, nor Nazism, nor Communism, nor globalization. Excerpt: The common enemy of mankind, the one ever urging us toward war and torture and every other kind of terror, is fear—in all its forms—fear of change, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of the unknown and unfamiliar and different, fear of want, fear of death and loss, fear of despair, fear of the past, fear of abandonment, fear of guilt and blame, fear of losing control, fear of being helpless and hurt, fear of being wrong…. Excerpt: This universal enemy of all mankind—this eternal enemy of Islam and the West alike—will always be fear itself (one name for what many traditional religions call "the devil.") Excerpt: And what is fear’s remedy? Love, in all its forms—diplomacy, dialogue, negotiation, ideas, faith, hope, trust, cooperation, cultural exchange, understanding, love, kindness, acceptance, forgiveness, peace…. Excerpt: The very concept of the word, "enemy,” is itself a fear-based mistake. Instead of “allies” and “enemies,” we could choose—both personally and nationally—to see all people everywhere, ourselves included, as variously falling intermittently into either of two very similar camps—people currently offering help, and people who currently need help. Excerpt: Until Americans stand up together in perfect love to courageously cast out fear, until we proudly support the unselfish ideals which unite us all as Americans—the values proclaiming the equality of all men and the inalienable right of all people everywhere to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—America will continue to be vulnerable to a relentless battery of fearful twenty-first century storms.   more »

Excerpt: The heartrending recent news coverage about the ghastly deaths of defenseless civilians, mostly children, in Qana, Lebanon, tells the real story of the mideast wars: random slaughter, and the relentless ruin of the loves, livelihoods, work, and hopes of thousands of innocent civilians on all sides. Nevertheless, true believers in the necessity, efficacy, and morality of war still churn out article after article arguing war's fairness and positive aspects ("Israeli Military Service Unites Generations;" "'Disproportionate' in What Moral Universe;'" "For Troops, A Sense of Moral Clarity.") For, in order to sustain the important illusion that war is moral, and to divert public attention away from war's inevitably bloody means and ends, pro-war propagandists shamefully exploit every one of the heart-swelling, toe-tapping, chest-beating moments which arise in the midst of horrific wars—all the gentlemanly charitable acts, the selfless patriotism and bravery, the beauty and idealism of youth.... Excerpt: Every soldier who ever shot, tortured, or pushed a captive out of a plane in order to obtain information necessary to protect his own knows that the cruel reality of war makes a mockery of the prettified versions held up for public viewing, the ones giving lip service to human rights, morality, and a rule of law which rests on due process, presumption of innocence, the right to legal counsel, and a fair and speedy trial. Excerpt: Any soldier who ever fought in a real shooting war knows that legal and moral niceties are suspended during the life-and-death situation that is war, hauled out only as convenient for public viewing. Snipers, for example, act instantaneously as judge, jury, and executioner to their random, anonymous suspects. Bombardiers, and missile and rocket launchers unleash hell, raining fire down equally upon all their anonymous, hapless victims.... Excerpt: To hear tell, war crimes are rare aberrations perpetrated by atypical rogues, stray criminal elements within otherwise pristine organizations. The truth is, crimes against humanity happen all the time, on both sides, during all wars, a direct result of the bloody training, means, conditions, and ends of war....   more »

I wonder if President Bush realizes that the very NAACP he plans to address in the near future recently honored beloved terrorist John Brown, who, despairing after futile peaceful efforts to abolish slavery, turned to murder, and assaulted a U.S. munitions factory at Harper’s Ferry, WV in hopes of arming uprising slaves. Brown’s raid so terrified southern slaveholders that they abandoned negotiations and seceded to protect their security and lifestyle. When Lincoln’s armies demanded union regardless of unresolved differences, southern insurgents fought back bitterly. By the end of the civil war, nearly 600,000 fellow-citizens were dead, more than 400,000 wounded. Our esteemed revolutionary forefathers also justified as “necessary” their turn to guerilla warfare and insurgency against an uncompromising king, just as sufferers of oppression today turn to violence when no legitimate forum will redress their grievances. Are terrorists ever on the right side? Is random killing of civilians ever justified? What recourse have you when your enemy has a huge army, and your small country has none, and your foes are hurting you and your family? Are all terrorists insane? Is killing only OK if you're a soldier? Whose soldier? Is John Brown admirable or despicable? Did he deserve to be hanged? Is terrorism ever justified?    more »

Excerpt: My lifelong interest in “enlightenment”—or whatever you want to call that enduring wisdom which offers relative equanimity in adversity, and acceptance of the world and its inhabitants, “as-is”—began with a childhood reading of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. I loved the gentle monk and his Little-Friend-of-all-the-World. At about the same age, I was similarly intrigued by the cloistered life depicted in the movie, The Nun’s Story. Reading my grandmother’s Bible, I observed the same spirit of love and forgiveness in the gentle teachings of Jesus, and later, in college, marveled at Gandhi’s and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s writings. As years passed, I wondered if the rare, kind, and imperturbable elders, both sick and well, rich and poor, whom I occasionally encountered were also “enlightened” beings, and if so, what wonderful secret, what key to peace and acceptance did they possess?   more »

I hope you'll click on "more" to see a political cartoon I drew this week....   more »