"The genius of Web sites for accommodating multiple points of view is nowhere better illustrated than in the recent on-line craze for public diaries, or "blogs." The term is a shortening of Weblog -- and also the name of the easy-to-use technology available at www.blogger.com: "Push-Button Publishing for the People."...Blogs are sites maintained by individuals. Bloggers post a running diary of their thoughts and activities, and usually respond to e-mail from readers. There are thought to be as many as a million bloggers, most of them ranting and fuming on a decidedly local level. But some -- like New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan's excoriating Daily Dish, and Steve MacLaughlin's business and technology newsletter Saltire -- have become legitimate sources of news and information in their own rights."
TO DEVELOPING A UNITED FORCE -- FAST ACTION TO TAKE
Sometimes I think I can't stand being in this world, but, when I read Michael Moore, at least I know that a giant voice is speaking for me. He has my vote as the leader of this pack. I am campaigning for everyone to do as he says -- let him lead to develop a united force. After the satisfaction of hearing him tell it like it is -- re the collapse of the Democrats and thus any resistance to Bush -- in his latest mailing to his list here, you get to do something about it. Sign his petition: http://www.michaelmoore.com/petitions/peacepledge/index.php. We need one thing that all of us support, or we are just little pockets of resistance. I hope Michael Moore is THE ONE! How about cutting and pasting this and send it around?
October 1, 2002
"YOU ARE EITHER WITH US, OR YOU ARE FIRED!"
Dear Friends,
I was going to write you a letter about what a pathetic liar George W, Bush is -- but then I figured, hey, why waste your time telling you something you already know!
You already know that his planned invasion of Iraq is a ruse meant to distract the public from the real issues, those issues being the following:
1. The number of people unemployed since he "took" office has risen by 35%.
2. We had a federal SURPLUS of $281 billion when he was inaugurated; today we have a DEFICIT of $157 billion.
3. TWO MILLION jobs have been eliminated since Bush began his occupation of the Oval Office.
4. The stock market is down 34% since January of 2001.
5. Another 1.4 million people now have NO health insurance, making it a total of over 41 million Americans who can't afford to get sick.
6. Only 13 corporate crooks out of HUNDREDS have been indicted, and none of them have been the close personal friends of Mr. Bush.THOSE are the real issues facing us, not some phony excuse for a war.
But, like I said, you already know that. You know that Bush is lying through his smirk when he says Iraq has "weapons of mass destruction." He has not offered one shred of evidence to prove this. Not one! You know he is lying when he says that there is a "connection" between Saddam and bin Laden. Even members of his own administration have admitted that is not true. It's just one lie after another, and I applaud those three congressmen who went to Iraq this week and told it like it is -- and demanded that the sanctions which have already killed a half-million Iraqi children be ended. Sen. Trent Lott said "they should come home and keep their mouths shut." I say, we need more damn Democrats with that kind of courage and with mouths like that!
Which brings me to the real point of this letter. The Democrats.
I have never seen a more lame bunch of cowards and appeasers in my life. They are ready to bow down before Bush and give him what he wants to wage war against Iraq. This pathetic excuse of a party is an embarrassment to us all. The fact that they let Robert Torricelli run for re-election in New Jersey, knowing how dirty he was, shows just how capable they are of handing the Senate over to Bush and the Republicans come November. They have blown it over and over again, and lots of good people I know who keep putting their faith in the Democrats are just giving up -- and that is the worst thing to happen in a free society.
What are we going to do? Left to their own devices, the Democrats will not only hand both the House and the Senate to the Republicans in November, they will guarantee that Bush gets his second undeserved term in 2004. We must not let that happen. This year's election was theirs for the taking. Just look at the state of the union Bush gave us: Bush cronies caught stealing from the corporate till, Bush and Cheney caught breaking the law in the '90s, the economy in the toilet, and Bush failing to do the only real job he had to do since 9/11: Get bin Laden! What a disgrace! Yet the Democrats could not even find enough candidates to offer a REAL challenge to the Republicans in nearly 200 House districts for the November 5th elections. What an appalling excuse of a party.
OK, I know, there is not much we can do about this now. But we all need to get busy and ensure that this whole rotten system is rocked by the disgruntled millions come election day 2004. Otherwise, we have no right to complain.
In the meantime, we must stop the Bush attack on Iraq. We must find out now, as W says, "who is wid us and who is agin us." I am asking each of you to go to http://www.michaelmoore.com/petitions/peacepledge/index.php and sign the petition to the Democrats: "You're Either With Us Or You're Fired," informing the Democrats that whoever amongst them votes for this war, we pledge NEVER to vote for them again. I will personally see that your on-line signatures are delivered to every member of Congress. Then let's figure out together what we can do to turn things around by 2004.
Thanks for taking the time to do this. We have no other choice.
Yours,
Michael Moore
http://www.michaelmoore.com
I read a very cogent explanation of the sorry state we are in politically, explaining more about the Democrats having collapsed as the party of opposition. This is important to understand; if dissenters are to have a chance to be of influence, we need to be smart about the lay of the land. "Revolting Elites" http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/18/kuttner-r.html is by Robert Kuttner, one of the founders of "The American Prospect," my favorite political magazine.
Some excerpts:
By all accounts, we are entering a month of great national deliberation. In the main arena, the most serious foreign-policy debate since Vietnam is unfolding, with senior members of the president's own party among those articulating the most serious qualms...In the other ring of the circus, the corporate one, we also have the odd spectacle of the most powerful of elites in the role of dissenters...But something is very wrong with this picture. It is entirely an elite debate and a narrow one. What's missing are real dissent and real reform. Anybody who expects dissent and reform to emerge from the very citadels of the system misunderstands the nature of power...
Both wings of the Republican foreign-policy elite have in common a dangerous view of the United States as a go-it-alone superpower, a contempt for international institutions, a disdain for global public opinion and a willingness to overlook human-rights abuses when they are committed by military allies...
One can easily imagine congressional hearings leading to a patched-together consensus that Bush should give the Iraqi dictator one last brief chance -- this time for real -- to admit weapons inspectors. In return, Congress grants Bush authority to make war if the Iraqis refuse. So Bush gets an overwhelming and bipartisan grant of congressional support, right on the eve of the midterm elections. He then makes Saddam an offer he can't accept. And voilą! Bush has tamed both the Democrats in Congress and the menace in Iraq.
...in the case of corporate reform, the issue begs for a broader challenge. The Greenspan-Volcker version of reform, though an improvement on the worst of Enron capitalism, is a pitifully narrow sort of amelioration. At issue is not just honest corporate bookkeeping or how to make corporate CEOs slightly more accountable to shareholders. The broader issue, far beyond the ken of Greenspan and Volcker, is the governance not just of corporate boards but of capitalism. The economy isn't just one of shareholders but of stakeholders including workers and communities.
THE FURTHEST IN
Learning acceptance seems to be my special mission this lifetime. I was challenged a couple of decades ago to be the sine qua non of it in a visionary experience. The universe was waiting for one person to come into total acceptance so it could move on, and that person was me.
Having lived with this assignment for a long time, I've come to some understandings about the primal role acceptance plays. It abides in the recognition that reality just is. There is no arguing with that isness. Every moment everything is as it is in successive moments that are empty, without emotion. We are talking about the time before reactivity occurs. Where acceptance comes in, there is just isness. Then, from that emptiness, action springs. The emptiness -- the isness -- comes first. When we accept that, then, when we act, we come from the whole, rather than from one side or another.
I thought to write this after I read the last two paragraphs from "About the Author," in David Hawkins' new book, "The Eye of the I." http://www.veritaspub.com "About the Author" chronicles Hawkins' personal saga of awakening, and is so startling and moving that it's a good idea to go to the back of the book and read that first. (It also is included in his groundbreaking last book, "Power vs. Force" -- I've passed out a case of those.) He says:
"The purpose of the agonies and the dark nights of the soul then became apparent. They are so intolerable that their exquisite pain spurs one on to the extreme effort required to surmount them. When vacillation between heaven and hell becomes unendurable, the desire for existence itself has to be surrendered. Only once this is done may one finally move beyond the duality of Allness versus nothingness, beyond existence or nonexistence. There is no returning from this step, and this specter of irreversibility makes this last barrier appear to be the most formidable choice of all.
"But, in fact, in this final apocalypse of the self, the dissolution of the sole remaining duality of existence and nonexistence, identity itself dissolves in universal Divinity and no individual consciousness is left to choose. The last step, then, is taken by God."
FAVORITE BOOK
I'd like it if everybody read "The Universe is a Green Dragon," by Brian Swimme. If you're my friend, you already have -- I've passed out over 400 copies. I've also distributed a bunch of audio tapes of a reading of it that I do: http://www.theconversation.org/dragon.html. Quoting myself on my website: "More than anything now, the world needs a new story. With so many humans and so much creativity, an organizing idea is needed to bring us into coherence. Brian Swimme's incredible book brings into focus from whence we came. We did not arrive by accident, but were delivered by the living universe as its culminating activity. We are still evolving to come fully into a deep resonation with a primal force that animates the ongoing event that the universe is. Brian's books transport you. They may be the most important works of our time."
I like to know what books have been most meaningful to listmembers.
EVENTS COMING UP
COME TO THE EDGE: October 16-19, Ontario (near Riverside), California. "An extraordinary gathering of transformational leaders...Join other innovators, pioneers, visionaries, champions of change, lovers of life, people who dare to live and learn at the edge." Brian Swimme is part of the first day. http://www.starshinefoundation.org/edge.htm
DAVID HAWKINS: "The Realization of the Presence of God or Self: The Pathway to Consciousness" October 19, 1:00-5:00 pm, Agape Sanctuary, Los Angeles http://www.veritaspub.com