April 2008 archive

Breakfast where the news is read

Television children fed

Unborn living, living, dead

Bullet strikes the helmet’s head

  Jim Morrison,The Unknown Soldier

PROPAGANDA- ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause

The propaganda war is on.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The spontaneous demonstrations by monks in March seem to have triggered demonstrations across the world in support of religious freedom and autonomy for Tibet.

We’ve been treated to huge street demonstrations in London, Paris, and San Francisco. To extinguishing the torch in Paris. To Chinese security pushing around Sebastian Coe, who was a fantastic runner in his prime. To mountain climbers hanging flags on the Golden Gate Bridge. To demonstrations in Lhasa. To news items about the struggles of Tibet. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

But if Tibet is to be saved, and I truly hope that it will be despite fifty years of Chinese domination and oppression, if it is to be preserved in a form we can recognize as Tibetan, it seems only right that it should be saved by what are essentially Tibetan, nonviolent means.

My simple proposal has two items:

1. Please send some $$ to International Campaign For Tibet. This is the Internet so large donations aren’t required. If you give $5 or $10, and millions join you, it will help in a dramatic way. You don’t need to strain to help. Anyone can help.  There is no minimum amount.

2. Please sit quietly (eyes open or closed). Then, non-denominationally and/or theistically and/or untheistically, however you are most comfortable, inhale the suffering and oppression of all of the Tibetans, and then exhale out in place of their suffering and oppression, strong love and healing to all involved in the conflict, including the Chinese government.  Repeat this over and over until you are finished. This is called “tonglen” and is a wonderful and powerful practice for making peace. When you are finished with doing tonglen– you don’t need to do it for hours, minutes with a clear focus will work just fine– you may conclude by saying the following:

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be well.

May all beings be safe,

And may any merit from this practice go to the ocean of merit created by the Buddhas for the enlightenment of all sentient beings.

This is a road to saving Tibet. May Tibet be free.

While bloggers spend in incessant amount of time politicing this and politicing that, the country is crumbling before our very eyes. The backbone of any nation-state is its infrastructure. While other countries have made huge advancements in their transportation and energy grid, our basic utilities are falling back to pre-industrial standards.

We all know about the bridge collapses, the zeitgeist of last summer. When that was no longer a great political football to kick around, it was largely forgotten. And of course, in true American fashion, nothing was done, except some well-lit photo ops of elected leaders pretending to give a damn.

What is more striking though, is not how our energy policy is archaic, but that our most basic need of all is about to fall into utter disrepair. We can go on forever without our horseless carriages, but we can’t live a few days without water.

Yes, water. Our entire national water grid is cracked, weathered and falling apart. All across the country the nation’s cities have aging delivery systems that are in need of desperate repairs. Most of these pipes and tunnels were built in the 1800s and have long passed even the most generous of life spans.

And we have done nothing, or saved up money, to correct this issue.

Again, we are taking about water. Not some frill or excess of the American Dream. Basic drinking water.

* This is from roughly 1996 to early 1997. *

Texas, Our Texas

  As I stumble through life, I have found very few things that I actually believe in, and of those few things, I feel passionate about   even less. But there is one thing that burns in my chest like  border town chili, and that’s the thought of Texas succeeding from the lesser 49 states and becoming the “Shaft” of countries as it was always meant to be. So when I saw that the defacto government of the Republic of Texas” was having their “national” conference, I was eager as a beaver to go. What I was wanting was a spiritual awakening, a cause to fight for, a reason to blow shit up.

  Unfortunately, I received something quite different. Jay accompanied me to this convention. We were gonna cast our votes for war on the “man” that keeps Texas down. The flyer we had said that the entire state of Texas was invited, so we decided to leave early and get a good parking spot. This is the point in the story where things start to take that funny course of events in which I always seem to find myself. The convention was being held at the huge and spacious coffee room of the God damn Best Western. We strolled in to find 28 seats. If everybody from Texas shows up, I think we might need some more chairs. I got this strange  feeling in the ol’ guliver that this was not gonna be pretty.

  The guy in front of me was enthusiastically talking to his comrade in arms. Like any good writer I started eavesdropping and heard some honey of some lines. The first of which was “I don’t like the term militia, it takes all the professionalism out of it.” Out of what??!?

  If you’re gonna start a war, you had better be some form of army. Then he said that some guy in the ranks had promoted himself up a couple of ranks and he felt that he had no power to do this. That’s when it hit me like a jean claude van damme swing kick. These people, all of them, have no basis for their power. Who is he to say who can and cannot be promoted, he has no platform or origin for his rank. I know I wasn’t asked who I thought should be the president of Texas. It reminds me of a high school club gone bad, real bad. The other guy discussed with the eager little fellow how the courts are getting him for mail fraud, and how they have no jurisdiction over him because he is in the Republic of Texas, and that it is a federal court. So basically sir, you can do whatever the hell you want, and if you get caught just proclaim yourself a new nation? Huh?

  I knew the meeting was about to begin when the “real” Texas flag was ceremonially unraveled and taped to a projection screen. Now that’s class. These guys weren’t just being silly, they were being extremely silly. The meeting stalled for a while, not at two o’clock like they said. I guess they were waiting for the roughly 25 million other Texans to show.

  I hit the coffee table. These guys might not know how to throw a revolution, but they make a damn  fine cup of coffee. Then I heard a commotion in the back. Some old man was in the face of a fellow reporter, and thank God not Jay. The elder was using his own brand of logic to try and belittle the reporter. Something to this effect, “You don’t have to have a  press pass and be taking notes and doing interviews to be a reporter. You threatened me. You tricked and then threatened me.”

  The reporter had the classic what-the-hell-are-the-voices inthis-guy’s-head-telling-him look, and she was escorted out of the room. Jay leaned over and said maybe they took her out and executed her. I laughed and said I think these guys are basically harmless as long as they aren’t armed. I looked around and asked Jay, “They aren’t, are they?”

  That line of thought was interrupted when the Secretary of State said he was now gonna take roll. I thought he meant for the people of Texas who were all supposed to be here. That could take a  while. Hope he brought all the phone books to read out of. The sad part is he was actually taking role of the Council, and only 3 of 6 were there. Gee guys, if you’re not gonna show up for your own revolution, then why should I? You just can’t throw together a  revolution like Jell-O pudding. Get organized.



Best pull quotes from the meeting:

 1. “I do this for my life, my wife, and my double wide…”

 2. ” There is not enough money in this here universe to pay off the fines and court charges I have.” I asked him how much, he had a dead pan on his face and shrugged. Not enough money in the universe? Man the aliens are gonna be so pissed.

 3. “…and when them guys who wear all black and fly in on them helicopters come and try and take me away in the night, I don’t want them to see the first lady in her sleep wear, that’s why I make her wear street clothes to bed”

 4. “I mean it to, as long as you is a good ol’ boy, you’re in.” I think  it would take a small town, real small town, good ol’ boy to follow these fools.

   By now, I had become thoroughly disgusted. These monkeys were going on national television soon and they were not only going reflect badly on themselves, but on any true revolutionary group in Texas. These guys are all going to die if they try to start a  war. Their Secretary of War has no military training. Their battle  plans are on the internet for pete’s sake. Plus, I know no one who  is willing to die for this band of idiots. I really wanted to stay for the Q and A session, but when they invoked the image of the Alamo as the way they wanted to go, I had to leave. But I left a better man.

****

Post Notes: A few weeks later, these yahoos would hole up in the St. Davis Mountains in Texas in a broken down old double wide. There would be a shoot out, people and a few dogs would die. And I would make a mint selling Richard L. McLaren’s cell phone number to CNN:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f…



One Texas Secessionist Who Fled Into Mountains Is Killed

By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK

Published: May 6, 1997

A member of the militant secessionist group known as the Republic of Texas was shot and killed today in a gun battle with the Texas authorities in the Davis Mountains here.

The man was one of two group members who fled on foot on Saturday, as the police held their fire and as the republic’s leader and four other followers were surrendering. He was killed after both fugitives fired at a state police helicopter overhead and at several redbone hounds that had been tracking them. The other fugitive was not captured.

At least three of the hounds were shot by the fugitives. One was killed, two were expected to survive, and a fourth was missing late tonight, the authorities said.

In Dallas today, a 25-count Federal indictment was unsealed against the group’s leader, Richard L. McLaren, on charges related to phony Republic of Texas checks.

—-

“This indictment sends a clear message to those who try to rip off residents and then ride off into the sunset by wrapping themselves in militia doublespeak,” said Paul Coggins, the United States District Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. ”Don’t mess with Texas.”

God Bless Texas, actually.

I was reminded of something during Senator Carl Levin’s opening statement at the Armed Services committee hearing on Tuesday:

“During my recent trip to Iraq, just before the latest outbreak of violence, a senior U.S. military officer told me that when he asked an Iraqi official, “Why is it that we’re using our U.S. dollars to pay your people to clean up your towns, instead of you using your funds?” that the Iraqi replied, “As long as you are willing to pay for the cleanup, why should we do it?”

This story crystallizes the fundamental problem of our policy in Iraq. It highlights the need to change our current course in order to shift responsibility from our troops and our taxpayers to the Iraqi government, to force that government to take responsibility for their own future, politically, economically and militarily.

(snip)

But the major political steps that they need to take have not yet been taken by the Iraqis, including establishment of a framework for controlling and sharing oil revenue…”

What ever happened to the “big breakthrough” on Iraq’s oil-revenue sharing that was announced last year?

“We want to say to China, ‘We thought that the Olympic Games would help you improve your human rights record,” Tutu said. “We still hope… But what we are saying to the heads of state, to President George Bush, is, ‘For goodness sake, don’t go to the Beijing games… for the sake of our children, for the beautiful people of Tibet. Don’t go!'”

link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…

I didn’t include the # of games predicted in the table because it was 2 am and i was tired…i hope to add them in soon…