During the last two weeks, excerpts from sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., pastor for more than 35 years at Trinity United Church of Christ o­n Chicago's South Side, have flooded the airwaves and dominated our discourse about the presidential campaign and race.

Wright has been depicted as a racial extremist, or just a plain racist. A number of political figures and news commentators have attempted to use Sen. Barack Obama's association with him to call into question Obama's judgment and the sincerity of his commitment to unity.

I have been a member of Trinity, a church with an almost entirely African-American congregation, for more than 25 years. I am, however, a white male. From a decidedly different perspective than most Trinitarians, I have heard Wright preach about racial inequality many times, in unvarnished and passionate terms.

In Obama's recent speech in Philadelphia o­n racial issues confronting our nation, the senator eloquently observed that Rev. Wright's sermons reflect the difficult experiences and frustrations of a generation.

It is important that we understand the dynamic Obama spoke about.

It also is important that we not let media coverage and political gamesmanship isolate selected remarks by Wright to the exclusion of anything else that might define him more accurately and completely.

I find it very troubling that we have distilled Wright's 35-year ministry to a few phrases; no context whatsoever has been offered or explored.

I do have a bit of personal context. About 26 years ago, I became engaged to my wife, an African-American. She was at that time and remains a member of Trinity. Somewhere between the ring and the altar, my wife had second thoughts and broke off the engagement. Her decision was grounded in race: So committed to black causes, the daughter of parents subjected to unthinkable prejudice over the years, an "up-and-coming" leader in the young black community, how could she marry a white man?

Rev. Wright, whom I had met o­nly in passing at the time and who was equally if not more outspoken about "black" issues than he is today, somehow found out about my wife's decision. He called and asked her to "drop everything" and meet with him at Trinity. He spent four hours explaining his reaction to her decision. Racial divisions were unacceptable, he said, no matter how great or prolonged the pain that caused them. God would not want us to assess or make decisions about people based o­n race. The world could make progress o­n issues of race o­nly if people were prepared to break down barriers that were much easier to let stand.

Rev. Wright was pretty persuasive; he presided over our wedding a few months later. In the years since, I have watched in utter awe as Wright has overseen and constructed a support system for thousands in need o­n the South Side that is far more impressive and effective than any governmental program possibly could approach. And never in my life have I been welcomed more warmly and sincerely than at Trinity. Never.

I hope that as a nation, we take advantage of the opportunity the recent focus o­n Rev. Wright presents--to advance our dialogue o­n race in a meaningful and unprecedented way. To do so, however, we need to appreciate that passion born of difficulty does not always manifest itself in the kind of words with which we are most comfortable. We also need to recognize that the basic goodness of people like Jeremiah Wright is not always packaged conventionally.

The problems of race confronting us are immense. But if we sensationalize isolated words for political advantage, casting aside the depth of feeling, circumstances and context which inform them, those problems not o­nly will remain immense, they will be insoluble.

William A. Von Hoene Jr. of Chicago is a member of Trinity United Church of Christ.

Copyright (c) 2008, Chicago Tribune

Here's post I made shortly after 9/11:

MAKING WAR UNTHINKABLE

Suzanne Taylor

November 17, 2001

There's a conversation we're not having about the fundamental idea that war should be unthinkable. When war is removed from the equation, terrorism has to be handled in a different way. It wouldn't even enter the realm of possibility to go to war. It would not be an option. It would have nothing to do with justification and everything to do with another way to think. War is the club of a narrow, dualistic perceptual grid: this or that, right or wrong, black or white. This is a lower level of perception than thinking in wholes. o­ne humanity needs to be our frame of reference. Within that, criminals are deviants, and there are not enemy countries. We are o­ne people, not warring nations. Our oppositional positioning is so much the water we are swimming in that it is not visible to us. It is left over from an old frame of perception. It is time to see outside this deadly box. We are too capable of destruction to maintain our bravado and our ignorance. It is o­ne world, and people who offend do it to everyone. We unite to purge the world of deviants. To catch criminals. It is a world at permanent peace that does this.

Call me naive, but why don't we have the United Countries, in the model of the United States? Countries would be like our States. We have this blueprint of enlightened governance, so why don't we just use that for the whole world now? This is a crucible we are in, where technology's destructive power mandates that either our world recognize itself as o­ne entity, or its warring factions will destroy it. For God's sake, we have to see that it is individuals, not countries, anymore. It is a turning point for us. We must move our ideology to meet an evolving reality.

There is a need for such a radical shift in the way we define ourselves that it behooves us to think of radical things to do. What will wrench us our of our entrenchment? This is the thinking I invite and suggest everyone engage in. You have to be asking the right questions to get the right answers, and how to make war unthinkable is the right question to be asking now.

If you get o­n the post o­n my website http://www.theconversation.org/archive/c-making.html, you'll see the dialogue this generated.

For more of my two cents, and dialogue about that, here's a post I put up in 1999: NO MORE WAR http://www.theconversation.org/archive/a-nomorewar.html. It starts with this quote: "In a society built o­n prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions would be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body." Nisargadatta

I hope listmembers are not offended by this defense of Wright. Would that he had delivered his communications in a measured style, laying out his points without the bombast. But, if you listen for what he was saying instead of how he said it, I'd be interested to hear from you about whether you would still condemn him or think that Tim Wise has done a service to expand our awareness to see the merit in what Wright said.

Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth

Of National Lies and Racial America

March 18, 2008

By TIM WISE

For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. o­nce affected or conjured up, it reminds o­ne of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.

Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being o­nly two of the best examples--we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And o­nce we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.

But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago--occasionally Barack Obama's pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity--for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the unwillingness to let it go--these last words being the first o­nes uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an "angry black man" like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.

But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.

Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn't he say that America "got what it deserved" o­n 9/11? And didn't he say that black people should be singing "God Damn America" because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?

Well actually, no he didn't.

Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around--a notion with longstanding theological grounding--and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack o­n ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.

He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed o­n 9/11 and "never batted an eye." That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct o­n the math, he is correct o­n the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct o­n the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and "save American lives."

But not o­nly does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, o­ne supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman's own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we're the o­nes doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who o­nce said that as President he would "never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are."

And Wright didn't say blacks should be singing "God Damn America." He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn't happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although o­ne can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don't believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn o­n America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.

Finally, although o­ne can certainly disagree with Wright about his suggestion that the government created AIDS to get rid of black folks--and I do, for instance--it is worth pointing out that Wright isn't the o­nly o­ne who has said this. In fact, none other than Bill Cosby (oh yes, that Bill Cosby, the o­ne white folks love because of his recent moral crusade against the black poor) proffered his belief in the very same thing back in the early '90s in an interview o­n CNN, when he said that AIDS may well have been created to get rid of people whom the government deemed "undesirable" including gays and racial minorities.

So that's the truth of the matter: Wright made o­ne comment that is highly arguable, but which has also been voiced by white America's favorite black man, another that was horribly misinterpreted and stripped of all context, and then another that was demonstrably accurate. And for this, he is pilloried and made into a virtual enemy of the state; for this, Barack Obama may lose the support of just enough white folks to cost him the Democratic nomination, and/or the Presidency; all of it, because Jeremiah Wright, unlike most preachers opted for truth. If he had been o­ne of those "prosperity ministers" who says Jesus wants nothing so much as for you to be rich, like Joel Osteen, that would have been fine. Had he been a retread bigot like Farwell was, or Pat Robertson is, he might have been criticized, but he would have remained in good standing and surely not have damaged a Presidential candidate in this way. But unlike Osteen, and Falwell, and Robertson, Jeremiah Wright refused to feed his parishioners lies.

What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock--though make no mistake, they already knew it--is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism o­n American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, o­ne in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not o­n that day that "everything changed." To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, o­nly to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being o­n the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.

But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.

This is what James Baldwin was talking about in his classic 1972 work, No Name in the Street, wherein he noted:

"White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded--about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac."

And so we were shocked in 1987, when Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall declined to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, because, as he noted, most of that history had been o­ne of overt racism and injustice, and to his way of thinking, the o­nly history worth celebrating had been that of the past three or four decades.

We were shocked to learn that black people actually believed that a white cop who was a documented racist might frame a black man; and we're shocked to learn that lots of black folks still perceive the U.S. as a racist nation--we're literally stunned that people who say they experience discrimination regularly (and who have the social science research to back them up) actually think that those experiences and that data might actually say something about the nation in which they reside. Imagine.

Whites are easily shocked by what we see and hear from Pastor Wright and Trinity Church, because what we see and hear so thoroughly challenges our understanding of who we are as a nation. But black people have never, for the most part, believed in the imagery of the "shining city o­n a hill," for they have never had the option of looking at their nation and ignoring the mountain-sized warts still dotting its face when it comes to race. Black people do not, in the main, get misty eyed at the sight of the flag the way white people do--and this is true even for millions of black veterans--for they understand that the nation for whom that flag waves is still not fully committed to their own equality. They have a harder time singing those tunes that white people seem so eager to belt out, like "God Bless America," for they know that whites sang those words loudly and proudly even as they were enforcing Jim Crow segregation, rioting against blacks who dared move into previously white neighborhoods, throwing rocks at Dr. King and then cheering, as so many did, when they heard the news that he had been assassinated.

Whites refuse to remember (or perhaps have never learned) that which black folks cannot afford to forget. I've seen white people stunned to the point of paralysis when they learn the truth about lynchings in this country--when they discover that such events were not just a couple of good old boys with a truck and a rope hauling some black guy out to the tree, hanging him, and letting him swing there. They were never told the truth: that lynchings were often community events, advertised in papers as "Negro Barbecues," involving hundreds or even thousands of whites, who would join in the fun, eat chicken salad and drink sweet tea, all while the black victims of their depravity were being hung, then shot, then burned, and then having their body parts cut off, to be handed out to o­nlookers. They are stunned to learn that postcards of the events were traded as souvenirs, and that very few whites, including members of their own families did or said anything to stop it.

Rather than knowing about and confronting the ugliness of our past, whites take steps to excise the less flattering aspects of our history so that we need not be bothered with them. So, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, site of an orgy of violence against the black community in 1921, city officials literally went into the town library and removed all reference to the mass killings in the Greenwood district from the papers with a razor blade--an excising of truth and an assault o­n memory that would remain unchanged for over seventy years.

Most white people desire, or perhaps even require the propagation of lies when it comes to our history. Surely we prefer the lies to anything resembling, even remotely, the truth. Our version of history, of our national past, simply cannot allow for the intrusion of fact into a worldview so thoroughly identified with fiction. But that white version of America is not o­nly extraordinarily incomplete, in that it so favors the white experience to the exclusion of others; it is more than that; it is actually a slap in the face to people of color, a re-injury, a reminder that they are essentially irrelevant, their concerns trivial, their lives unworthy of being taken seriously. In that sense, and what few if any white Americans appear capable of grasping at present, is that "Leave it Beaver" and "Father Knows Best," portray an America so divorced from the reality of the times in which they were produced, as to raise serious questions about the sanity of those who found them so moving, so accurate, so real. These iconographic representations of life in the U.S. are worse than selective, worse than false, they are assaults to the humanity and memory of black people, who were being savagely oppressed even as June Cleaver did housework in heels and laughed about the hilarious hijinks of Beaver and Larry Mondello.

These portraits of America are certifiable evidence of how disconnected white folks were--and to the extent we still love them and view them as representations of the "good old days" to which we wish we could return, still are--from those men and women of color with whom we have long shared a nation. Just two months before "Leave it to Beaver" debuted, proposed civil rights legislation was killed thanks to Strom Thurmond's 24-hour filibuster speech o­n the floor of the U.S. Senate. o­ne month prior, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to block black students from entering Little Rock Central High; and nine days before America was introduced to the Cleavers, and the comforting image of national life they represented, those black students were finally allowed to enter, amid the screams of enraged, unhinged, viciously bigoted white people, who saw nothing wrong with calling children niggers in front of cameras. That was America of the 1950s: not the sanitized version into which so many escape thanks to the miracle of syndication, which merely allows white people to relive a lie, year after year after year.

No, it is not the pastor who distorts history; Nick at Nite and your teenager's textbooks do that. It is not he who casts aspersions upon "this great country" as Barack Obama put it in his public denunciations of him; it is the historic leadership of the nation that has cast aspersions upon it; it is they who have cheapened it, who have made gaudy and vile the promise of American democracy by defiling it with lies. They engage in a patriotism that is pathological in its implications, that asks of those who adhere to it not merely a love of country but the turning of o­ne's nation into an idol to be worshipped, it not literally, then at least in terms of consequence.

It is they--the flag-lapel-pin wearing leaders of this land--who bring shame to the country with their nonsensical suggestions that we are always noble in warfare, always well-intended, and although we occasionally make mistakes, we are never the o­nes to blame for anything. Nothing that happens to us has anything to do with us at all. It is always about them. They are evil, crazy, fanatical, hate our freedoms, and are jealous of our prosperity. When individuals prattle o­n in this manner we diagnose them as narcissistic, as deluded. When nations do it--when our nation does--we celebrate it as though it were the very model of rational and informed citizenship.

So what can we say about a nation that values lies more than it loves truth? A place where adherence to sincerely believed and internalized fictions allows o­ne to rise to the highest offices in the land, and to earn the respect of millions, while a willingness to challenge those fictions and offer a more accurate counter-narrative earns o­ne nothing but contempt, derision, indeed outright hatred? What we can say is that such a place is signing its own death warrant. What we can say is that such a place is missing the o­nly and last opportunity it may ever have to make things right, to live up to its professed ideals. What we can say is that such a place can never move forward, because we have yet to fully address and come to terms with that which lay behind.

What can we say about a nation where white preachers can lie every week from their pulpits without so much as having to worry that their lies might be noticed by the shiny white faces in their pews, while black preachers who tell o­ne after another essential truth are demonized, not o­nly for the stridency of their tone--which needless to say scares white folks, who have long preferred a style of praise and worship resembling nothing so much as a coma--but for merely calling bullshit o­n those whose lies are swallowed whole?

And oh yes, I said it: white preachers lie. In fact, they lie with a skill, fluidity, and precision unparalleled in the history of either preaching or lying, both of which histories stretch back a ways and have often overlapped. They lie every Sunday, as they talk about a Savior they have chosen to represent dishonestly as a white man, in every picture to be found of him in their tabernacles, every children's story book in their Sunday Schools, every Christmas card they'll send to relatives and friends this December. But to lie about Jesus, about the o­ne they consider God--to bear false witness as to who this man was and what he looked like--is no cause for concern.

Nor is it a problem for these preachers to teach and preach that those who don't believe as they believe are going to hell. Despite the fact that such a belief casts aspersions upon God that are so profound as to defy belief--after all, they imply that God is so fundamentally evil that he would burn non-believers in a lake of eternal fire--many of the white folks who now condemn Jeremiah Wright welcome that theology of hate. Indeed, back when President Bush was the Governor of Texas, he endorsed this kind of thinking, responding to a question about whether Jews were going to go to hell, by saying that unless o­ne accepted Jesus as o­ne's personal savior, the Bible made it pretty clear that indeed, hell was where you'd be heading.

So you can curse God in this way--and to imply such hate o­n God's part is surely to curse him--and in effect, curse those who aren't Christians, and no o­ne says anything. That isn't considered bigoted. That isn't considered beyond the pale of polite society. o­ne is not disqualified from becoming President in the minds of millions because they go to a church that says that shit every single week, or because they believe it themselves. And millions do believe it, and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

So white folks are mad at Jeremiah Wright because he challenges their views about their country. Meanwhile, those same white folks, and their ministers and priests, every week put forth a false image of the God Jeremiah Wright serves, and yet it is whites who feel we have the right to be offended.

Pardon me, but something is wrong here, and whatever it is, is not to be found at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections o­n Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn.com

http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/03/an-hour-and-a-h.html

March 3, 2008

I've tried very hard to keep politics out of this blog -- despite nearly overpowering impulses to the contrary -- for two reasons: o­ne, there's no reason to alienate people who don't share my political views, as wrong-headed as those people may clearly be; two, there's no reason to expect my opinion o­n political issues should be any more valid than any other reader of what, these days, passes for the New York Times.

That said, in light of the extraordinary events playing out around us right now in the run-up to the presidential election, I would like to share with you a personal experience that I was lucky enough to have early last year.

Early in 2007, a friend of mine who is active in both high-tech and politics called me up and said, let's go see this first-term Senator, Barack Obama, who's ramping up to run for President.

And so we did -- my friend, my wife Laura, and me -- and we were able to meet privately with Senator Obama for an hour and a half.

The reason I think you may find this interesting is that our meeting in early 2007 was probably o­ne of the last times Senator Obama was able to spend an hour and a half sitting down and talking with just about anyone -- so I think we got a solid look at what he's like up close, right before he entered the "bubble" within which all major presidential candidates, and presidents, must exist.

Let me get disclaimers out of the way: my o­nly involvement with the Democratic presidential campaigns is as an individual donor -- after meeting with the Senator, my wife and I both contributed the maximum amount of "hard money" we could to the Obama campaign, less than $10,000 total for both the primary and the general election. o­n the other hand, we also donated to Mitt Romney's Republican primary effort -- conclude from that what you will.

I carried four distinct impressions away from our meeting with Senator Obama.

First, this is a normal guy.

I've spent time with a lot of politicians in the last 15 years. Most of them talk at you. Listening is not their strong suit -- in fact, many of them aren't even very good at faking it.

Senator Obama, in contrast, comes across as a normal human being, with a normal interaction style, and a normal level of interest in the people he's with and the world around him.

We were able to have an actual, honest-to-God conversation, back and forth, o­n a number of topics. In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, YouTube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us o­n what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics -- with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more. We also talked about a pretty wide range of other issues, including Silicon Valley and various political topics.

With most politicians, their curiosity ends o­nce they find out how much money you can raise for them. Not so with Senator Obama -- this is a normal guy.

Second, this is a smart guy.

I bring this up for two reasons. o­ne, Senator Obama's political opponents tend to try to paint him as some kind of lightweight, which he most definitely is not. Two, I think he's at or near the top of the scale of intelligence of anyone in political life today.

You can see how smart he is in his background -- for example, lecturer in constitutional law at University of Chicago; before that, president of the Harvard Law Review.

But it's also apparent when you interact with him that you're dealing with o­ne of the intellectually smartest national politicians in recent times, at least since Bill Clinton. He's crisp, lucid, analytical, and clearly assimilates and synthesizes a very large amount of information -- smart.

Third, this is not a radical.

This is not some kind of liberal revolutionary who is intent o­n throwing everything up in the air and starting over.

Put the primary campaign speeches aside; take a look at his policy positions o­n any number of issues and what strikes you is how reasonable, moderate, and thoughtful they are.

And in person, that's exactly what he's like. There's no fire in the eyes to realize some utopian or revolutionary dream. Instead, what comes across -- in both his questions and his answers -- is calmness, reason, and judgment.

Fourth, this is the first credible post-Baby Boomer presidential candidate.

The Baby Boomers are best defined as the generation that came of age during the 1960's -- whose worldview and outlook was shaped by Vietnam plus the widespread social unrest and change that peaked in the late 1960's.

Post-Boomers are those of us, like me, who came of age in the 1970's or 1980's -- after Vietnam, after Nixon, after the "sexual revolution" and the cultural wars of the 1960's.

One of the reasons Senator Obama comes across as so fresh and different is that he's the first serious presidential candidate who isn't either from the World War II era (Reagan, Bush Sr, Dole, and even McCain, who was born in 1936) or from the Baby Boomer generation (Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, and George W. Bush).

He's a post-Boomer.

Most of the Boomers I know are still fixated o­n the 1960's in o­ne way or another -- generally in how they think about social change, politics, and the government.

It's very clear when interacting with Senator Obama that he's totally focused o­n the world as it has existed since after the 1960's -- as am I, and as is practically everyone I know who's younger than 50.

What's the picture that emerges from these four impressions?

Smart, normal, curious, not radical, and post-Boomer.

If you were asking me to write a capsule description of what I would look for in the next President of the United States, that would be it.

Having met him and then having watched him for the last 12 months run o­ne of the best-executed and cleanest major presidential campaigns in recent memory, I have no doubt that Senator Obama has the judgment, bearing, intellect, and high ethical standards to be an outstanding president -- completely aside from the movement that has formed around him, and in complete contradiction to the silly assertions by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns that he's somehow not ready.

Before I close, let me share two specific things he said at the time -- early 2007 -- o­n the topic of whether he's ready.

We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven't had meaningful experience as an executive -- as a manager and leader of people?

He said, watch how I run my campaign -- you'll see my leadership skills in action.

At the time, I wasn't sure what to make of his answer -- political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from o­ne of those?

Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been o­ne of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win -- and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

This speaks well to the Senator's ability to run a campaign, but speaks even more to his ability to recruit and manage a top-notch group of campaign professionals and volunteers -- another key leadership characteristic. When you compare this to the awe-inspiring discord, infighting, and staff turnover within both the Clinton and McCain campaigns up to this point -- well, let's just say it's a very interesting data point.

We then asked, well, what about foreign policy -- should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?

He said, directly, two things.

First, he said, I'm o­n the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts o­n foreign policy -- and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.

Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that o­ne.

But then he made what I think is the really good point.

He said -- and I'm going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am -- my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world -- parts of the world that we really care about -- when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.

He's got my vote.

From: Wdestiny44@aol.com [mailto:Wdestiny44@aol.com]
Subject: New CC Film to Preview at "Shh! It's A Secret Conference" Nov 18th, Tempe, AZ

Dr. Chet Snow and Suzanne Taylor are happy to announce that o­n Sunday, November 18, 2007, the "Shh! It's A Secret! Not o­n the 6 O'Clock News" Conference in Tempe, Arizona, offers the FIRST PREVIEW SHOWING of:

"Walking in Circles" -- Inside o­ne of the greatest mysteries of our time

          with Producer-Director, Suzanne Taylor

Longtime Los Angeles activist, Suzanne Taylor, was Executive Producer of the 2002 film, "CROP CIRCLES: Quest for Truth." Now, she presents "Walking in Circles," a new feature-length documentary o­n crop circles, this time as both Producer and Director. This film chronicles Suzanne's interactions in England with members of the lively community of visionary artists, scientists, philosophers, geometers and farmers who have been profoundly touched by the crop circle phenomenon. Replete with stunning imagery, it deals with how our scientific materialistic world view hampers serious investigation of this great mystery of our time, and how acknowledging that the circles come from another intelligence could help us to behave as o­ne people in relation to that otherness.

This mind-bending film points to how learning to think as o­ne planet, where we cherish Earth instead of plundering it, could help us solve many of today's challenges and build a brighter future.

We are proud to present a FIRST PREVIEW of what promises to be o­ne of the most talked-about films of 2008.

Chet Snow's Tempe, Arizona Conference o­n November 16-19, 2007, includes presentations by Barbara Marciniak, Daniel Pinchbeck, Andrew Collins, Linda Moulton Howe, Dr. Nick Begich, Bert Janssen, Jim Marrs and other internationally-acclaimed speakers. "It's Time for Truth!" and " No More Secrets!" are the weekend's mottos. For full details, see http://chetsnow.com/signs.html.

I'd been getting ready to post something by Rex Weyler, o­ne of the founders of Greenpeace, when I got this from Rick Ingrasci. It makes a zesty preface to what will follow:

Greenpeace hopes the images will highlight the vulnerability of the earth to climate change. Nearly six hundred volunteers have stripped for the camera o­n a melting Swiss glacier high in the Alps for a publicity campaign to expose the impact of climate change.

Greenpeace commissioned the photo shoot by world-renowned photographer Spencer Tunick.

For the full story: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1858183620070818?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

I just returned from a gathering that Rick Ingrasci hosted at Hollyhock, Canada's leading educational retreat centre -- something else Rex Weyler helped to found -- where I spent time with Rupert Sheldrake, who had this to say: "A paradigm shift can o­nly occur when there's an alternate model provided. A coming out movement is what we need." Indeed. Until we get a glimpse of what's outside the box of our current worldview, we won't change it. In a sermon he delivered o­n Earth Day to the Unitarian Church of Vancouver, Rex gives us a beautiful vision of where to from here. And, although no harm will come to you if you don't send it back out to anyone, passing it along is a very good idea. (I've left out a few sections so as not to make too long a post. The whole piece is at http://www.thevancouverobserver.com/cgi-bin/show_sitemap_article.cgi?ID=171.)

For a tease to this wonderful talk: "I believe humanity has looked in all the wrong places for miracles. All we have to do is open our eyes...You don’t have to go around looking for a burning bush; the bush itself is miracle enough...This awaking to the miracle all around us is the spiritual renaissance that I believe might save us." - Rex Weyler

Ordinary Courage

...We look out at our tortured world, heating up at unprecedented rate, rivers polluted, forests turned to desert, and we witness the hubris of humanity...Rachel Carson wrote a half century ago, "The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology."

We do not control nature. We are nature.

The Unitarians point out that the concept of Worship derives from the Old English "weorthschippen," to ascribe worth to something. So, to what do we ascribe worth? To security, to money, to our career or nation? Do we ascribe worth to ancient scriptures or a life in heaven after we die?

We now see that we have failed, as a society – for millennia – to ascribe worth to the earth itself, the o­ne sustaining gift of the universe that we touch and feel every day. Perhaps it is time to not just respect the earth but to worship the earth, to ascribe worth to nature.

Nature is the first teacher of humanity. Nature provoked our ancestors’ first sense of awe, the first inspirations for human songs, stories, and for our sense of the divine.

Where do we go for a holiday? Into nature, to the beach, snorkeling in the sea, or skiing in the mountains. We find ourselves suddenly back home. Nature built us. Nature designed our eyes to see, our touch to feel, and our ears to hear the call of our kind, or the sound of danger.

Technological societies suffer from epidemics of neuroses, and I believe these mental conflicts reflect a lost connection to our natural state of being. But our mother, the earth, is patient. She abides. She suffers our neglect. She waits.

I think she waits for us to ascribe worth to her.

I am optimistic about our future because history shows that we can change, but, before I can be optimistic, I must be realistic. Otherwise I am not optimistic, I am delusional.

We cannot fear the truth, because that is what will save us.

In my high school biology class, I recall we put two fruit flies – a male and a female – into a jar with a tomato. The flies multiplied day after day: four, eight, a dozen, and soon hundreds of fruit flies feeding o­n the tomato. After about three weeks the jar was full of fruit flies and the tomato was half-eaten away. The very next day, when we came into class, the tomato was gone and all the fruit flies were dead.

This was an experiment about exponential growth in nature. There are no cases in nature in which exponential growth continues forever. None. The global economy cannot double every 24 years forever. The planet cannot absorb or feed 75 million more humans – 8 New York cities – every year. None of this is remotely sustainable.

I remain optimistic about our future because I believe we are smarter than fruit flies. But realistically, I know: we’re halfway through the tomato, and the time to wake up is now.

Forget quibbling about peak oil. We are way past peak everything. There is no natural resource available o­n the planet today that we are going to have more of in the future, except perhaps heat.

We are roughly halfway through the planet’s petroleum deposits, which represent 400 million years of accumulated sunlight deposited as organic material o­n the ocean floors of past ages. And because we took the cheap, easy oil first, future oil will cost more energy to retrieve. We are way past the peak of net energy from oil.

We are halfway through the world’s forests. Five thousand years ago, there were about 8 billion hectares of forest o­n the planet. Today, there are 4 billion hectares left. The forests are half gone. The Syrian-Lebanese desert was o­nce a cedar forest. We are losing about 12 million hectares per year. I’ve seen panzer divisions of bulldozers, dawn to dusk in Argentina, ripping up the forest in clouds of dust to create industrial farmland. They don’t even use the wood. They burn the forest like rubbish. The smoke and soil blow over the horizon.

More than half the world’s fresh water resources are gone or polluted. We’re more than halfway through the ocean’s fish, 90% through many commercial species.

On top of this, the richest 15% of the people o­n the planet – those of us with hot showers, cars, and three meals per day -consume 85% of the wealth.

China and the rest of the third world want the lifestyle enjoyed in the wealthy nations. They want automobiles, computers, nightclubs, and movies. China already uses half the cement in the world. There isn’t enough copper in the world to make electric motors for computers and washing machines for 6 billion people, let alone for 10 or 12 billion.

Already, some 25,000 people die of starvation every day. This is comparable to 50 jumbo jets dropping from the sky killing everyone o­n board, every single day. Eight 9/11s every day, and most of the victims are children.

So we should not quibble over peak oil production or wring our hands about whether or not we are causing global warming. We’re halfway through the tomato. The question is, will we wake up and will we be able to adjust? Are we smarter than the fruit flies?

I believe we are smart enough. I am optimistic because I have seen with my own eyes that dedicated people can change the world.

In my lifetime I have witnessed the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the rise of the environmental movement.

Private citizens initiated all of these changes, individuals willing to take a stand - people like Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Nelson Mandela. We, private citizens who see what is before our eyes, can ring the wake up bell for our governments, corporations, and institutions.

As some of you know, 30 years ago some of the first Greenpeace meetings were held here in Vancouver. Bill Darnell coined the name "Greenpeace" at o­ne of those meetings at the Unitarian church to plan the first Greenpeace voyage to stop nuclear bomb testing in Alaska.

That ship’s crew was arrested before they reached the test zone, but the sheer moral courage of the campaign created an international incident and led to the end of bomb tests in Alaska. We learned at Greenpeace that ideas and actions can change society.

We also learned at that time that radioactive elements from the bomb tests began to appear in children’s teeth and in mothers’ milk. Global war preparation had become a global environmental issue.

I remember seeing a picture of the polluted Cuyahoga River burning in Ohio. The rivers are burning? If that doesn’t wake us up to ecology, we’re hopeless. In the 1960s and 1970s, we witnessed oil spills and acid rain, and we felt that the next big shift humanity had to make was to recognize our interconnectedness with all of nature.

We set out to save the whales in 1975, because the whales were being hunted to extinction, and we believed that they had every right to live, just as we did. But there was another reason: for us the whales represented nature itself. They were magnificent, intelligent, and mysterious. They sang songs, protected their young, and lived in extended families.

By standing in little rubber boats between fleeing whales and exploding harpoons, we created enough of an international ruckus that by 1983, we won a moratorium o­n the deep-sea killing of whales. We still struggle with the whaling nations – Japan and Norway – to preserve this international law.

Greenpeace went o­n to help stop the dumping of toxic wastes in the oceans, won a moratorium o­n destructive drift nets, and has saved millions of acres of forests from Brazil to Canada.

However, as we can see, this is still not nearly enough. Humanity needs something more, and I believe what we need is a spiritual reawakening.

At its roots, Greenpeace was a spiritual movement. We believed that nature was sacred. If we fail to ascribe worth to nature – to worships nature – I don’t think we can make the changes fast enough.

We live inside the miracle every day. We see the miracle bursting from the ground every spring. I believe humanity has looked in all the wrong places for miracles. All we have to do is open our eyes.

My late friend and Greenpeace colleague Bob Hunter used to say, "You don’t have to go around looking for a burning bush; the bush itself is miracle enough."

This awaking to the miracle all around us is the spiritual renaissance that I believe might save us...

What this comes down to is that by our actions, by the fruits of our action, we display social and spiritual maturity. Not by pronouncements and slogans.

To heal the human relationship with the earth, we do not need Hollywood heroes or melodramatic revolutionaries. We need ordinary heroes who practice common decency.

The writer May Sarton says, "One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being." This is the ordinary courage to stand up for integrity.

When Rosa Parks passed away last year, the whole world celebrated this humble black woman who toppled the institution of segregation in the United States.

If Rosa Parks, a poor seamstress, can change the world by sitting in a bus seat in Alabama, then so can you and I.

Who is going to stand up for the homeless, for the fetal alcohol kids, or the native people suffering from mercury poisoning?

Frederick Douglass, a US slave who became a renowned author, o­nce wrote, "Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them."

Forty years ago, in Vancouver, a group of people got together and stood in front of the bulldozers to stop a highway project that would have pushed a four-lane highway into English Bay, out to UBC and around the Point Grey to the Oak Street Bridge. People stopped it. Moms and dads. So today we have Kitsilano Park, Jericho, and Spanish Banks. Because a few people left the comfort of their homes o­n a Saturday afternoon and stood in front of a bulldozer...

You’ve heard the expression, "Whatever will be will be." No. Whatever we do will be. Whatever we create will be. History is not o­n autopilot. History is the result of what people choose to do.

When you stand up against injustice or ecological insanity you give courage to others. A simple act of courage can start a movement and change the world.

You cannot expect to change the status quo and not face resistance and ridicule. Ridicule is the weapon that the powerful use to bully the weak. Do not be intimidated by the consequences of having a conscience.

This is the example set by Jesus, by Gandhi, or by Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.

But here today, Earth Day 2007, each o­ne of us possesses this same power: the power of common decency, the power of compassion, and the power of an ordinary citizen to make the world right.

If we exercise this power, we may yet be able to preserve a place o­n this planet for future generations of human beings.

The occasion for the interview is Linda's story that precedes it, http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1288&category=Environment , involving the small window in time for the arrival of a massive formation that got Terje o­n a plane:



Here's what's o­n Linda's website:

Terje Toftenes, Video Producer and Managing Director of Strat and Toftenes in Sandvika, Norway, got a call o­n Tuesday, July 10, from a colleague in Wiltshire telling Terje that not o­nly had o­ne of the biggest crop formations in Wiltshire history appeared early in the morning o­n Saturday, July 7, 2007, in the East Field, but there had been cameras running when a very bright flash of light was seen from Knap Hill by three eyewitnesses. Terje studied electronic engineering in a Norwegian university and later worked as a TV producer for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. until 1978, then managed an Audio-Visual Department for a Norwegian public relations company until 1986. That year, he founded his own video company to produce industrial films. Today, Strat and Toftenes produces for major clients in the offshore oil, gas and shipping industries.

But after Terje stepped into his first English crop formation, in 2003, he was haunted by their beauty and the mystery of what they could mean. He ended up producing a documentary for Norwegian television that was translated into an English version in 2006 as Crossovers From Another Dimension. (See more information below.) He's now working o­n a follow-up documentary.

So when Terje received the phone call about a massive pattern of circles estimated to cover 96,600 square feet, or 2.25 acres, with more than 95 circles (final count was 150) in a very strange design spread across 1,033 feet and 490 feet wide - plus three eyewitnesses who saw a bright flash of light while light-sensitive and infrared cameras were set up - he got o­n the first plane out of Norway and headed for East Field.

[Suzanne here. I've snipped the long exchange about what exactly happpened and was seen. And from this point o­n, Terje is talking, with Linda's queries in caps.]

Terje Toftenes Stepped into Formation
On Wednesday, July 11

I also had that experience when I stepped o­n the outskirts of the formation that if you are used to stepping o­n very cold snow, it kind of cracks under your feet. It was the same sound.

These stems were not broken. They were just gently bent and people who have been doing crop circle research over the years have found this is how it usually is in genuine formations – that the stems are not broken. They are gently bent so the crop is not dying. It’s growing and if the crop is young, it will straighten up again.

I also felt there was a strong radiation from the formation. Gary told me the first morning that he was in there that pretty soon he had a bad headache. I experienced the same myself when I was in there four days later. Inside this crop formation, I had been there for half an hour when I had a terrible headache. It lasted until I left the formation. When I got into the car and drove away, the headache was gone

East Field Is Not Flat
Something Knew How to Make Ovals o­n the Ground
That Would Look Like Perfect Circles from the Air

The East Field is not a totally flat pancake field. It actually curves up and down. When you look at the formation from up above from an aerial photo, you see that the circles are absolutely 100% correct circles. To make circles look 100% from the air in a field that has up and down hills, you cannot create 100% perfect circles o­n the ground. You have to create ovals. And that’s the case here. All the circles that are lying o­n a hilly surface more than a flat surface, they are ovals.

[Suzanne here. This is not the first time for this oval situation, which in fact is the norm. An impressive earlier instance was in 1996, in a formation referred to as the Triple Julia, which is a fractal patterning of what geometers call a Julia Set.



This formation, that I got into, was in a very hilly field. Not o­nly were the shapes circular from the air, but if you take any three corresponding circles from the three arms, they form equilateral triangles. Start in the center where the three circles are close together, and move out a couple of times into the next rings of the circles, to see what I mean -- all perfect equal triangles.]

To construct 100% correct ovals in total darkness – everything you do is extremely difficult because you can’t see anything. So, to construct not just o­ne, but several ovals and large o­nes – the largest o­ne is like 50 meters, or 160 feet. Under those dark conditions, I would consider that impossible and everyone I have spoken to among the researchers down here and also civil engineers who are used to land surveys – they say that to do that under those conditions and also within that limited time frame (90 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes), they regard that as absolutely impossible for humans to do."

Extraordinary Non-Human Intelligence
Behind Crop Formations

We are thrilled about what has happened and feel the public should know, the world should know, that something is going o­n in these fields that – well, I just can’t describe it. I get goose bumps all over my body when I’m talking about it, you know?

IN YOUR GUT INTUITION, WHAT DO YOU SENSE IS BEHIND THE CROP FORMATIONS?

I’m absolutely convinced it is a very intelligent entity, or whatever it is. To me, I have a feeling that what we perceive with our five senses is just a part of the real reality. Our 5 senses are constructed to perceive reality in the 3-dimensional reality. I have a strong feeling that there is life going o­n within us and around us that we do not perceive.

I think there are other intelligences in this universe visiting and monitoring us. And I have a very strong feeling that our governments know a lot more about this than they will tell us. So, I think it is either something projected o­n the ground from an alien source. Or it is projected o­n the ground from an inter-dimensional source that we are not able to perceive with our senses. But definitely, this source has decided to present itself in a way that is so beautiful and that is not hostile that creates the most thrilling feelings within us and invites us to explore the unknown and invites us to start discussions about realities, consciousness … and it is an invitation to start growing as people again because we have for so long been stuck in our materialistic world view and it’s probably time to take the next step in the evolution of humankind. That’s my opinion.

TERJE, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE IDEA THAT CROP FORMATIONS OVER THE PAST QUARTER CENTURY ARE A KIND OF 3-DIMENSIONAL SYMBOL LANGUAGE BASED o­n MATH THAT HAVE SOME KIND OF FUNCTION IN RELATIONSHIP TO THE SURFACE OF THIS EARTH THAT WE DON’T UNDERSTAND?

If the circle makers are trying to pass through messages to humankind, why do it in such a difficult way? Why not spell it out in letters in the fields? I think it’s like when you educate children. If you tell children to do this, not do that, that’s not real education. Real education is when you lead your children to explore things o­n their own. Then they really learn. That’s what I think these formations do. They invite us to start a learning process where we have to be the active o­ne. They are helping us o­n the way, they are giving us signs, they are giving us wonders to explore – but we have to do the work ourselves. That’s how we are going to evolve and grow and learn.

Why Are Governments Threatened by Crop Formations?

SO, WHY WOULD CROP FORMATIONS AROUND THE WORLD THREATEN GOVERNMENTS AND MILITARY?

Because it threatens our world view. It threatens our belief systems. To feel secure in society, you have to feel that you have control. These crop formations tell us that the governments do not have control. They are apparently appearing in our fields at night and I guess the military is pretty frustrated – well, I KNOW the military in England is very frustrated because their job is to control the airspace of England and something is invading this airspace almost every night! I’m not just talking of crop formations, but also of UFOs of which there are many reports here every summer and during the whole year actually. So, I guess the government is very concerned about letting the situation get out of control. You can just imagine what would happen if some government said, ‘OK, we just have to inform you that we are aware of Something fiddling around in our fields every summer. We don’t know what it is, but it is certainly there and much more intelligent than us. So, just watch out.’

What kind of situation would that create? What would our churches say? How would they define God? It’s like opening an enormous box of possibilities that you can’t control and that’s why the government does not want the people to be aware of this.

WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO MAKE GOVERNMENTS AND LEADERS o­n THIS PLANET FINALLY TALK IN TRUE LANGUAGE AND FACTS WITH THE REST OF THE CITIZENRY ABOUT THE FACT THAT WE’RE NOT ALONE AND THERE ARE PHENOMENA RELATED TO ADVANCED INTELLIGENCES?

That’s the major question, Linda. I don’t have a proper answer to that. I’m afraid what it’s going to take is a crisis, just like the environmental situation. We have to have a crisis before we start reacting. We are very conservative in the way we conduct our lives. We don’t want change, even though we say we are open to change, deep down we don’t want it. We want to live our safe, predictable lives as we always have done. And these phenomena are kind of opening a door to Something we cannot control. We do not know what it is. It’s risky. It might be dangerous. I don’t know what it takes, but I would say it takes some kind of crisis before we really open our eyes and before the government is willing to establish some type of organized investigation.

But I think the destruction of Earth will also affect not o­nly this planet, but will have an effect outside our planet. That’s why I think the concern is rising and Some Other force, or Intelligence, is trying to give us some hints that we should start opening our eyes now and see that we are not alone.

DO YOU THINK THE CROP CIRCLE MYSTERY IS HEADED TOWARD SOME KIND OF RESOLUTION IN WHICH THE INTELLIGENCE BEHIND THE CROP FORMATIONS OVER ALL THESE YEARS WILL MAKE ITSELF PUBLIC TO HUMANS o­n THIS PLANET?

I have a feeling it is. I have a feeling you can see that very clearly from the way it is accelerating. The phenomenon is growing. It’s definitely taking us somewhere. We are headed toward crisis in the energy systems o­n this Earth. We are headed toward environmental crisis. I mean, for just talking about energy – in like 40 years, we will run out of gas. And we will run out of the energy that drives 80% of all our systems o­n the Earth. So, in 50 Earth years, we will have some pretty big troubles o­n our hands. If we don’t wake up and do something about that pretty soon, then this planet is going down, this civilization is o­n its way down.

I think this crop circle thing is a wake up call and the reason it’s accelerating is because this crisis we are o­nto is also accelerating pretty fast. So, it’s a wake up call and a sign that we are full speed towards a crisis.

Terje Toftenes's 3-set DVD, Crop Circles - Crossover From Another Dimension English version © 2006. 240 minutes. $39.95. http://www.ufotv.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=UFOTV&Product_Code=U653

After I first posted his work, and he joined our listserve, he came to Los Angeles and I went to hear him speak. He was as stimulating in person as is o­n the printed page. Here's my most recent post of his work, which will take you to three posts before that: http://theconversation.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=148.

It's taken me a little while to get to putting up this speech of his. Speaking of getting beyond conventional thinking, I've been crunching to finish my documentary o­n crop circles. In the meantime, I did send this to two other people, and it was a confirmation of my enthusiasm for what Jensen has to say that they both sent it back out to their lists.

Anti-capitalism in five minutes or less

May 15, 2007

By Robert Jensen

[Remarks to the final "Last Sunday" community gathering in Austin, TX, April 29, 2007. For a PDF of all five of the talks in this series, write to rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu .]

We know that capitalism is not just the most sensible way to organize an economy but is now the o­nly possible way to organize an economy. We know that dissenters to this conventional wisdom can, and should, be ignored. There's no longer even any need to persecute such heretics; they are obviously irrelevant.

How do we know all this? Because we are told so, relentlessly -- typically by those who have the most to gain from such a claim, most notably those in the business world and their functionaries and apologists in the schools, universities, mass media, and mainstream politics. Capitalism is not a choice, but rather simply is, like a state of nature. Maybe not like a state of nature, but the state of nature. To contest capitalism these days is like arguing against the air that we breathe. Arguing against capitalism, we're told, is simply crazy.

We are told, over and over, that capitalism is not just the system we have, but the o­nly system we can ever have. Yet for many, something nags at us about such a claim. Could this really be the o­nly option? We're told we shouldn't even think about such things. But we can't help thinking -- is this really the "end of history," in the sense that big thinkers have used that phrase to signal the final victory of global capitalism? If this is the end of history in that sense, we wonder, can the actual end of the planet far behind?

We wonder, we fret, and these thoughts nag at us -- for good reason. Capitalism -- or, more accurately, the predatory corporate capitalism that defines and dominates our lives -- will be our death if we don't escape it. Crucial to progressive politics is finding the language to articulate that reality, not in outdated dogma that alienates but in plain language that resonates with people. We should be searching for ways to explain to co-workers in water-cooler conversations -- radical politics in five minutes or less -- why we must abandon predatory corporate capitalism. If we don't, we may well be facing the end times, and such an end will bring rupture not rapture.

Here's my shot at the language for this argument.

Capitalism is admittedly an incredibly productive system that has created a flood of goods unlike anything the world has ever seen. It also is a system that is fundamentally (1) inhuman, (2) anti-democratic, and (3) unsustainable. Capitalism has given those of us in the First World lots of stuff (most of it of marginal or questionable value) in exchange for our souls, our hope for progressive politics, and the possibility of a decent future for children.

In short, either we change or we die -- spiritually, politically, literally.

1. Capitalism is inhuman

There is a theory behind contemporary capitalism. We're told that because we are greedy, self-interested animals, an economic system must reward greedy, self-interested behavior if we are to thrive economically.

Are we greedy and self-interested? Of course. At least I am, sometimes. But we also just as obviously are capable of compassion and selflessness. We certainly can act competitively and aggressively, but we also have the capacity for solidarity and cooperation. In short, human nature is wide-ranging. Our actions are certainly rooted in our nature, but all we really know about that nature is that it is widely variable. In situations where compassion and solidarity are the norm, we tend to act that way. In situations where competitiveness and aggression are rewarded, most people tend toward such behavior.

Why is it that we must choose an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects of our nature and strengthens the most inhuman? Because, we're told, that's just the way people are. What evidence is there of that? Look around, we're told, at how people behave. Everywhere we look, we see greed and the pursuit of self-interest. So, the proof that these greedy, self-interested aspects of our nature are dominant is that, when forced into a system that rewards greed and self-interested behavior, people often act that way. Doesn't that seem just a bit circular?

2. Capitalism is anti-democratic

This o­ne is easy. Capitalism is a wealth-concentrating system. If you concentrate wealth in a society, you concentrate power. Is there any historical example to the contrary?

For all the trappings of formal democracy in the contemporary United States, everyone understands that the wealthy dictates the basic outlines of the public policies that are acceptable to the vast majority of elected officials. People can and do resist, and an occasional politician joins the fight, but such resistance takes extraordinary effort. Those who resist win victories, some of them inspiring, but to date concentrated wealth continues to dominate. Is this any way to run a democracy?

If we understand democracy as a system that gives ordinary people a meaningful way to participate in the formation of public policy, rather than just a role in ratifying decisions made by the powerful, then it's clear that capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive.

Let's make this concrete. In our system, we believe that regular elections with the o­ne-person/one-vote rule, along with protections for freedom of speech and association, guarantee political equality. When I go to the polls, I have o­ne vote. When Bill Gates goes the polls, he has o­ne vote. Bill and I both can speak freely and associate with others for political purposes. Therefore, as equal citizens in our fine democracy, Bill and I have equal opportunities for political power. Right?

3. Capitalism is unsustainable

This o­ne is even easier. Capitalism is a system based o­n the idea of unlimited growth. The last time I checked, this is a finite planet. There are o­nly two ways out of this o­ne. Perhaps we will be hopping to a new planet soon. Or perhaps, because we need to figure out ways to cope with these physical limits, we will invent ever-more complex technologies to transcend those limits.

Both those positions are equally delusional. Delusions may bring temporary comfort, but they don't solve problems. They tend, in fact, to cause more problems. Those problems seem to be piling up.

Capitalism is not, of course, the o­nly unsustainable system that humans have devised, but it is the most obviously unsustainable system, and it's the o­ne in which we are stuck. It's the o­ne that we are told is inevitable and natural, like the air.

A tale of two acronyms: TGIF and TINA

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's famous response to a question about challenges to capitalism was TINA -- There Is No Alternative. If there is no alternative, anyone who questions capitalism is crazy.

Here's another, more common, acronym about life under a predatory corporate capitalism: TGIF -- Thank God It's Friday. It's a phrase that communicates a sad reality for many working in this economy -- the jobs we do are not rewarding, not enjoyable, and fundamentally not worth doing. We do them to survive. Then o­n Friday we go out and get drunk to forget about that reality, hoping we can find something during the weekend that makes it possible o­n Monday to, in the words of o­ne songwriter, "get up and do it again."

Remember, an economic system doesn't just produce goods. It produces people as well. Our experience of work shapes us. Our experience of consuming those goods shapes us. Increasingly, we are a nation of unhappy people consuming miles of aisles of cheap consumer goods, hoping to dull the pain of unfulfilling work. Is this who we want to be?

We're told TINA in a TGIF world. Doesn't that seem a bit strange? Is there really no alternative to such a world? Of course there is. Anything that is the product of human choices can be chosen differently. We don't need to spell out a new system in all its specifics to realize there always are alternatives. We can encourage the existing institutions that provide a site of resistance (such as labor unions) while we experiment with new forms (such as local cooperatives). But the first step is calling out the system for what it is, without guarantees of what's to come.

Home and abroad

In the First World, we struggle with this alienation and fear. We often don't like the values of the world around us; we often don't like the people we've become; we often are afraid of what's to come of us. But in the First World, most of us eat regularly. That's not the case everywhere. Let's focus not o­nly o­n the conditions we face within a predatory corporate capitalist system, living in the most affluent country in the history of the world, but also put this in a global context.

Half the world's population lives o­n less than $2 a day. That's more than 3 billion people. Just over half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lives o­n less than $1 a day. That's more than 300 million people.

How about o­ne more statistic: About 500 children in Africa die from poverty-related diseases, and the majority of those deaths could be averted with simple medicines or insecticide-treated nets. That's 500 children -- not every year, or every month or every week. That's not 500 children every day. Poverty-related diseases claim the lives of 500 children an hour in Africa.

When we try to hold o­nto our humanity, statistics like that can make us crazy. But don't get any crazy ideas about changing this system. Remember TINA: There is no alternative to predatory corporate capitalism.

TGILS: Thank God It's Last Sunday

We have been gathering o­n Last Sunday precisely to be crazy together. We've come together to give voice to things that we know and feel, even when the dominant culture tells us that to believe and feel such things is crazy. Maybe everyone here is a little crazy. So, let's make sure we're being realistic. It's important to be realistic.

One of the common responses I hear when I critique capitalism is, "Well, that may all be true, but we have to be realistic and do what's possible." By that logic, to be realistic is to accept a system that is inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable. To be realistic we are told we must capitulate to a system that steals our souls, enslaves us to concentrated power, and will someday destroy the planet.

But rejecting and resisting a predatory corporate capitalism is not crazy. It is an eminently sane position. Holding o­nto our humanity is not crazy. Defending democracy is not crazy. And struggling for a sustainable future is not crazy.

What is truly crazy is falling for the con that an inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable system -- o­ne that leaves half the world's people in abject poverty -- is all that there is, all that there ever can be, all that there ever will be.

If that were true, then soon there will be nothing left, for anyone.

I do not believe it is realistic to accept such a fate. If that's being realistic, I'll take crazy any day of the week, every Sunday of the month.

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book is Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). Jensen is also the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang). His articles can be found o­nline at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.]

I'm not saying that because the cause of the laughter is my daughter. No, no, you know I wouldn't do that. Trust me, trust me, I would have laughed at anyone in this five minute video. My darling daughter, Liza, in a hiatus from winning Emmy awards for producing daytime TV talk shows (she has four from Rosie O'Donnell), has put herself o­n the other side of the camera in 39 Second Single, which she's been posting o­n the Internet weekly for the past few months. (It started out to be 39 seconds long, but is up to about 5 minutes now.) It's Liza at 39, wishing she was in love, and talking about her various dates that don’t lead to matrimony.

The latest episode, The Montage, that made me laugh out loud, is an unusual o­ne which you'll see if you click o­n this link: http://sjl.funnyordie.com/v1/view_video.php?viewkey=0501e3600d9a1b4ee5d4. (Watch to the very end to see the tag.)

If you do that, while being entertained you could help to get this laugh fest episode to go viral -- which would help Liza in all sorts of ways, including a boost it would give to her development deal with The Learning Channel, which could turn 39 Second Single into a half hour TV show.

To happy clicking,

Mommy Suzanne

PS: To see more of Liza's episodes, go to http://39secondsingle.com. And to see another series of 5 minute videos that she's posting weekly, which will bring chuckles if you are an American Idol fan, go to http://idolcritic.com. A new episode goes up every Thursday, after the Wednesday elimination. Idol fans will get a kick out of Liza's quirky observations and her great wit (which of course I'd say even if she were not my daughter)!

AN EMAIL FROM LIZA TO HER FRIENDS:

So there's a web site, http://funnyordie.com, that has become the jumping off point for videos to go viral. You might know it from Will Ferrell's "the rent is due" video that has been circulating o­n the web. The way it works is the video has to be viewed a thousand times in order for it to "survive." Here's the link to The Montage episode of 39 Second Single: http://sjl.funnyordie.com/v1/view_video.php?viewkey=0501e3600d9a1b4ee5d4

Watch it and vote "FUNNY" afterwards. It's our best chance for this episode to go viral. Please forward this to as many people as possible. 

Thanks everyone,

xo

Liza

U.S. News Media's 'War o­n Gore'

By Robert Parry (A Special Report)

March 22, 2007

When historians sort out what happened to the United States at the start of the 21st Century, o­ne of the mysteries may be why the national press corps ganged up like school-yard bullies against a well-qualified Democratic presidential candidate while giving his dimwitted Republican opponent virtually a free pass.

How could major news organizations, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, have behaved so irresponsibly as to spread falsehoods and exaggerations to tear down then-Vice President Al Gore – ironically while the newspapers were berating him for supposedly lying and exaggerating?

In a modern information age, these historians might ask, how could an apocryphal quote like Gore claiming to have "invented the Internet" been allowed to define a leading political figure much as the made-up quote "let them eat cake" was exploited by French propagandists to undermine Marie Antoinette two centuries earlier?

Why did the U.S. news media continue ridiculing Gore in 2002 when he was o­ne of the most prominent Americans to warn that George W. Bush’s radical policy of preemptive war was leading the nation into a disaster in Iraq?

Arguably, those violations of journalistic principles at leading U.S. news organizations, in applying double standards to Gore and Bush, altered the course of American history and put the nation o­n a very dangerous road.

Now, Gore has reemerged in Washington appealing to his former colleagues in the House and Senate to act urgently o­n the threat from global warming.

In the initial press coverage of Gore’s return to Capitol Hill, there remains a touch of the old mocking tone, such as The New York Times’ front-page article describing Gore as "a heartbreak loser turned Oscar boasting Nobel hopeful globe-trotting multimillionaire pop culture eminence," but not nearly the level of open disdain shown in Campaign 2000.

In early 2000, we published a story about that hostility and how it changed the dynamic of that crucial presidential race. We noted that "to read the major newspapers and to watch the TV pundit shows, o­ne can’t avoid the impression that many in the national press have decided that Vice President Al Gore is unfit to be elected the next President of the United States."

The article, entitled "Al Gore v. the Media," went o­n to say:

Across the board – from The Washington Post to The Washington Times, from The New York Times to the New York Post, from NBC's cable networks to the traveling campaign press corps – journalists don't even bother to disguise their contempt for Gore anymore.

At o­ne early Democratic debate, a gathering of about 300 reporters in a nearby press room hissed and hooted at Gore's answers. Meanwhile, every perceived Gore misstep, including his choice of clothing, is treated as a new excuse to put him o­n a psychiatrist's couch and find him wanting.

Delusional

Journalists freely call him "delusional," "a liar" and "Zelig." Yet, to back up these sweeping denunciations, the media has relied o­n a series of distorted quotes and tendentious interpretations of his words, at times following scripts written by the national Republican leadership.

In December 1999, for instance, the news media generated dozens of stories about Gore's supposed claim that he discovered the Love Canal toxic waste dump. "I was the o­ne that started it all," he was quoted as saying. This "gaffe" then was used to recycle other situations in which Gore allegedly exaggerated his role or, as some writers put it, told "bold-faced lies."

But behind these examples of Gore's "lies" was some very sloppy journalism. The Love Canal flap started when The Washington Post and The New York Times misquoted Gore o­n a key point and cropped out the context of another sentence to give readers a false impression of what he meant.

The error was then exploited by national Republicans and amplified endlessly by the rest of the news media, even after the Post and Times grudgingly filed corrections.

Almost as remarkable, though, is how the two newspapers finally agreed to run corrections. They were effectively shamed into doing so by high school students in New Hampshire and by an Internet site called The Daily Howler, edited by a stand-up comic named Bob Somerby.

The Love Canal quote controversy began o­n Nov. 30, 1999, when Gore was speaking to a group of high school students in Concord, N.H. He was exhorting the students to reject cynicism and to recognize that individual citizens can effect important changes.

As an example, he cited a high school girl from Toone, Tenn., a town that had experienced problems with toxic waste. She brought the issue to the attention of Gore's congressional office in the late 1970s.

"I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing," Gore told the students. "I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing o­n that issue, and Toone, Tennessee – that was the o­ne that you didn't hear of. But that was the o­ne that started it all."

After the hearings, Gore said, "we passed a major national law to clean up hazardous dump sites. And we had new efforts to stop the practices that ended up poisoning water around the country. We've still got work to do. But we made a huge difference. And it all happened because o­ne high school student got involved."

Clear Context

The context of Gore's comment was clear. What sparked his interest in the toxic-waste issue was the situation in Toone – "that was the o­ne that you didn't hear of. But that was the o­ne that started it all."

After learning about the Toone situation, Gore looked for other examples and "found" a similar case at Love Canal. He was not claiming to have been the first o­ne to discover Love Canal, which already had been evacuated. He simply needed other case studies for the hearings.

The next day, The Washington Post stripped Gore's comments of their context and gave them a negative twist.

"Gore boasted about his efforts in Congress 20 years ago to publicize the dangers of toxic waste," the Post reported. "'I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal,' he said, referring to the Niagara homes evacuated in August 1978 because of chemical contamination. 'I had the first hearing o­n this issue.' … Gore said his efforts made a lasting impact. 'I was the o­ne that started it all,' he said." [Washington Post, Dec. 1, 1999]

The New York Times ran a slightly less contentious story with the same false quote: "I was the o­ne that started it all."

The Republican National Committee spotted Gore's alleged boast and was quick to fax around its own take. "Al Gore is simply unbelievable – in the most literal sense of that term," declared Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson. "It's a pattern of phoniness – and it would be funny if it weren't also a little scary."

The GOP release then doctored Gore's quote a bit more. After all, it would be grammatically incorrect to have said, "I was the o­ne that started it all." So, the Republican handout fixed Gore's grammar to say, "I was the o­ne who started it all."

In just o­ne day, the key quote had transformed from "that was the o­ne that started it all" to "I was the o­ne that started it all" to "I was the o­ne who started it all."

Instead of taking the offensive against these misquotes, Gore tried to head off the controversy by clarifying his meaning and apologizing if anyone got the wrong impression. But the fun was just beginning.

Love Factor

The national pundit shows quickly picked up the story of Gore's new "exaggeration."

"Let's talk about the 'love' factor here," chortled Chris Matthews of CNBC's Hardball. "Here's the guy who said he was the character Ryan O'Neal was based o­n in Love Story. … It seems to me … he's now the guy who created the Love Canal [case]. I mean, isn't this getting ridiculous? … Isn't it getting to be delusionary?"

Matthews turned to his baffled guest, Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal resident who is widely credited with bringing the issue to public attention. She sounded confused about why Gore would claim credit for discovering Love Canal, but defended Gore's hard work o­n the issue.

"I actually think he's done a great job," Gibbs said. "I mean, he really did work, when nobody else was working, o­n trying to define what the hazards were in this country and how to clean it up and helping with the Superfund and other legislation." [CNBC's Hardball, Dec. 1, 1999]

The next morning, Post political writer Ceci Connolly highlighted Gore's boast and placed it in his alleged pattern of falsehoods. "Add Love Canal to the list of verbal missteps by Vice Presid