2008-04-26T06:42:01Z User 112 kamakandala@msn.com http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/ OrgSpace NewsLog

You don’t make peace by making War. There is the war with guns and there is the war with money, The weapon.

Domination.
I read a story tonight, a short story,
Written by a young woman
Of Native North Turtle Island.
A memory from age twelve.
Her father is beating her mother.
Her mother is accepting this as a part of her role.
The young woman decides that this is not the kind of life
She wants to look forward to.
She needs to break the mold and chart her own course.
She has to abandon her cultural tradition.
Not the culture of the Native, the Hispanic, the Anglo,
the Black, or the Asian.
The culture of Violence.
Leave it behind.
If you want to create Peace.
If you want to see Peace.
You have to Live It.
The culture of Violence
Is the culture of Domination.
It is the other way of Looking at the World.
Of looking every day at each person
That you are looking at.
What kind of feeling are you putting into that person?
Got something to say?
What are the guns all about?
What is the money all about?
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000221.htm 2008-04-26T06:42:01Z 2008-04-26T06:42:53Z

During those earliest Spring days, when the snow is starting to think about the river.

Kinda Quiet up here.
Kinda Nice.

JA
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000220.htm 2008-04-05T05:56:55Z 2008-04-05T05:56:55Z

Here has been one of those extra day weekends, when I get some time to rake some leaves. Here is reference to Catherine Austin Fitts who has written an insightful article about how narcodollars work in our economy. http://www.narconews.com/narcodollars1.html

Now I come to find out there’s another place
where more of her writings appear.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/features/RealDeal.html
I figure to be getting into some of those
to help refine my understandings
of how the black money works.
Catherine refers to the 1994 mystery novel
Black Money by Michael Thomas.
I’ve just read this 309 page web of characterizations
contesting over and investigating and getting killed over
the high jinks of international banking.
Quite a thrilling little story with all sorts of observations
about how the money marketing mind works.
If I can get a little bit of a handle for describing these processes,
I’ll be able to share some of this perspective with my Econ students
when we get around to studying banking.
Course they gotta learn all the basics first,
but maybe I can sprinkle a few tidbits of information
out around the edges of where the pages leave off.
All those people in that story, sounds like they’re a million miles away
from most of the things I spend most of my time thinking about.
Mostly keeping the old day-to-day going,
especially with who I have to be thinking about.
Thinking about all of those people out there doing all of that
seems like it’s farther away than the next planet over.
I guess we all got our little hobbies,
and somewhere back there a long time ago,
I got interested in wanting to know how who or what
was behind how this political-economy thing works.
Course I thought about other things too,
but this was always an abiding curiosity.
Every once in while I find some little new source of insight,
and recently it’s been through Catherine Austin Fitts
and Michael Thomas.
*-_-*-_*
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000219.htm 2008-02-19T03:58:45Z 2008-02-19T03:58:45Z

Has it been nice to live with a cozy little live fireplace through a winter! Getting on to mid-February now, and at this latitude and elevation in a river valley flowing through a desert, there’s still some cold nights ahead, but fewer than are behind us. Midwinter is gone.

Tonight was Composition One with sixteen out of twenty-two present, and I have the great pleasure to be working through two sign language translators with Deena R. who has been severely hearing impaired since a very young age. She vocalizes the language very well, and when I can get face-to-face with her and speak clearly, she understands everything I say, like there is some hearing there that she can respond to.
I’m not entirely sure about what is going on back and forth between us here, but we are both sure that our objective is for her to write a five-page research paper complete with title page, references page, and in-text citations. Then there’s Julia who wants to know if there’s a maximum number of pages since she’s already got ten and there’s still two weeks to go. I tell her fifteen. Keep it simple and concise. I am gong to get one of Maryann’s Economics courses next quarter, and she’ll be teaching Tax Accounting, which I have no background in. The schedulers were going to put me in there, and I emphasized that I was not qualified, that I would basically be learning it from scratch one chapter ahead of my students and I’m sure that is not a good idea; a teacher should know where he is taking his listeners.
So it is that I am introducing a classroom full of inquiring minds who are listening to me speak to them about inductive and deductive reasoning and syllogisms. Am I doing well with you people? I don’t know. I think that I could do better with the words that I choose, so I may try to go over that again next week. Tools for thinking. Learn something about the process of sifting through evidence to arrive at a conclusion, and then turning around and writing it all out in your own language with occasional references to sources.
These are the sources for your river, and your river is your writing. Journey to the Source.
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000218.htm 2008-02-13T08:36:11Z 2008-02-13T08:36:11Z

Nobody knows how fast the ice will melt or how much of the ice will melt, but if the methane hydrate factor is in fact a valid concern, then the prospects for a desertification of all land north of Patagonia are perhaps rather good. And if that scenario unfolds, then the last outpost for h...

Nobody knows how fast the ice will melt or how much of the ice will melt,
but if the methane hydrate factor is in fact a valid concern,
then the prospects for a desertification of all land north of Patagonia
are perhaps rather good.
And if that scenario unfolds, then the last outpost for humanity
will be whatever of the Antarctic land mass remains above water.
History of course shall continue to be written,
and the relics of ancient knowledge shall be scattered across the barren landscape.

Many forms of life will have been decimated.
Who can tell who those will be who will be the last ones?
What do you see when you walk down the street in your neighborhood?
*_-*-*-_*
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/go/dorritie/index.html#anchorContents
JA]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000217.htm 2008-02-02T20:35:30Z 2008-02-02T20:54:40Z

About the Day. The first day back to school, after two weeks away.

About the Day.
The first day back to school, after two weeks away.
Today I had some stuff for my group dynamics class,
Back and forth across the room agreeeing or dis-agreeing
About concepts of leadership. What it means? How it works?
Who is the leader? Who does the listening and who is listened to?
Not always the one who talks the longest.
Where is your balance between speaking and listening?
Then there is this afternoon closing out Group Dynamics
And formulating a class for World Cultures and Globalization.
Amazing course. What is Globalization doing to the cultures
of this very multi-cultural planet?
Do not answer this question. There are many answers.
What is the corporate mentality and how much longer
Shall it reap its profits from the slave mentality?
Super-complex, highly technological things are being created
To cement the slave population into a permanent formation.
The task is progressing, with various perturbations
From the multitudes along the way,
But nothing we couldn’t direct into another war or two or three.
Maintaining a permanent state of war around the planet can be a tricky business.
There is an actual war going on beneath all of the surface skirmishes
That are written up in the history books.
This is that old cooperation or control mantra.
Where do you want to go? Cooperation or Control?
I don’t care why.
The difference between freedom of expression,
Understanding and compassion on the one hand
And the things those are not on the other.
All in a day’s conversation
through two classrooms and several walks down the hallways,
one long, one short, and one in between.
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000216.htm 2008-01-09T08:33:25Z 2008-01-09T08:33:25Z

"Le Bateau-Lavoir was a squalid block of buildings in Montmartre, Paris situated at 13 Rue Ravignan (Place Emile Goudeau). The place is famous because at the turn of the 20th century a group of outstanding artists lived and rented artistic studios there. . . ." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

The hacienda has been consolidated into a timber and adobe room with a fireplace. A very small place to think. Put it all down in one place. Project the world through fifty years from now. Think of a little story that carries you through the next fifty years. Everybody for just a few minutes think about the viewpoint of anyone between twenty and thirty years old.
If you be reading the newspaper, what do you see be going on? What’s the deal with what’s be going on with the money? Is there somethin’ funny going on about that money? What chew mean it don’t buy as much as it’s used to? Whose in charge of this operation anyhow? Now there’s questions going on, and nobody knows what it all means, except that the times are looking dangerous. What with that climate warming and those wars for resources going on, and the political clowns dancing on the stage for our entertainment, where do I look for the avenue that leads me to peace of mind?
In the cabin with the fire. We are somewhere in the middle of the hundred years war, or for however long it takes. Would anyone like to conjecture about the possible outcomes? It looks the most messy in the heavily populated areas, particularly the urban conglomerates. The timeline is the variable. Is there any possible chance that there could develop a global peace movement of concerned citizens sufficiently influential as to attract the notice of the man behind the curtain? Or is the path to survival a matter of personal choice in deciding where one wants to be as the edifice disintegrates? Activism with the intention of changing the system, or the retreat from systems altogether?
There are billions of words out there on the world wide web keeping track of and interpreting all of the latest international developments. You can travel down a path of analysis until you are bleary eyed and blue in the face, and there is the whole story, and it is very well articulated, and tomorrow is another day.
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000215.htm 2007-12-05T17:25:39Z 2007-12-05T17:25:39Z

There's nobody on the roof. Only some glance into the sky.

There's nobody on the roof.
Only some glance into the sky.]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000214.htm 2007-08-25T21:35:35Z 2007-08-25T21:35:35Z

Something to Read this Tuesday morning. * * * _ - - _ * The Coming American Reichstag Fire http://www.populistamerica.com/the_coming_american_reichstag_fire July 30, 2007 by Phil Rockstroh In this summer of angst and grim foreboding about what further assaults against common sense and com...

Accordingly, those who have been paying attention are aware that the outward mechanisms of martial law are in place. We shudder knowing that Bush has issued an executive decree that grants him dictatorial power in the event of some nebulously defined national emergency. In addition, the knowledge nettles us that a vast network of internment camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait for those who might raise objections to the fascistic fury unloosed by the American empire's version of the Reichstag fire.
Moreover, a closer look would reveal that the inner processes by which an individual begins the act of acceptance of authoritarian excess -- the mixture of chronic passivity, boredom, low grade anxiety and unfocused rage inherent in the citizens/consumers of the corporate state that primes an individual for fascism -- have been in place for quite some time within the psyches of the American populace, both elites and hoi polloi alike. Although, don't look for torch-lit processions thronging the nation's streets and boulevards; rather, look for a Nuremberg Rally of couch-bound brownshirts.
Instead of ogling the serried ranks of jut-jawed, SS soldiers, a contemporary Leni Riefenstahl would be forced to film chubby clusters of double-chinned consumers, saluting the new order with their TV remotes. In the contemporary United States, the elation induced by the immersion of one's individual will to the mindless intoxication of the mob might only be possible, if Bush seized dictatorial control of the state while simultaneously sending out to all citizens gift certificates to Ikea.
After the catastrophes spawned by the rise of European fascism in the 1930s, a number of brilliant, original thinkers (including Hannah Arendt, Roberto Freire, Wilhelm Reich, and R. D. Laing) set out to study the phenomenon in order to learn how future calamities might be prevented. Although the methodologies and conclusions of these thinkers varied, each noted that alienation and dehumanization festered at the core of the death urge of fascism.
Nowadays, in contrast, the elites of the corporate media have proven themselves useless in this regard, believing, as they do, they constitute the thin line between the rabble at large (me and you) and the chaos begot by freedom. At present, mega-churches attract alienated suburbanites. Right wing talk show hosts misdirect their listeners alienation towards so-called illegal "aliens" and exploit their audience's sense of powerlessness (created by the rigged system of corporate capitalism) against elitist liberals (who themselves, ironically, benefit from the present system and who only want to change it to the degree that their own privilege will not be affected. In other words, not at all).
Combine the above with the American character trait of being hostile towards introspection and it becomes evident that the present disaster has been building for quite a while now. And it can (and most likely will) get worse -- far worse.
Most Americans alive today have been trained since birth to adapt to and serve the corrupt corporate structure by means of the shunning of critical thinking and have been conditioned to be in constant (empty) motion or in the thrall of mass media distraction. We have been taught that passivity is for losers, yet we find ourselves nearly powerless before the corporate/consumer/military/police/entertainment state. In this way, we serve our corporate masters; it serves the corpocracy that the lower orders refuse meaningful self-awareness. If one were to glimpse one's own illusions, then it follows one might begin to question collective delusions -- and this would upset the social order.
Those who have studied the dangers of authoritarian rule have advised us to be wary of people who carry an inner emptiness. Of course, these unfortunates yearn for the void to be filled. But with their hearts and minds mortared closed -- what makes it through the self-constructed prison is loud, stupid, and fascistic. At present, what penetrates is: Fundamentalist Sermons on Armageddon; violent video games; the empty spectacle of steroid-induced professional sports hype; the lethal fantasies of American exceptionalism; the exercise in Rock and Roll imperialism that U.S. foreign policy has become. In short, all the banal Sturm and Drang necessary to pierce those protective walls and penetrate the pervasive inner emptiness.
When the people of a culture have been conditioned to worship power -- but feel powerless -- there's trouble ahead. The elites must displace the public's rage by a demagogic sleight-of-hand such as the demonization of marginalized groups. In the US, we've been inundated by years of state and commercial propaganda that has degraded and demonized the country's permanent underclass by the labeling of them as welfare parasites and career criminals.
It has been noted that the mindset, methods, and procedures of America's punitive, profit-driven prison-industrial complex was a prototype for the systemic cruelty of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; furthermore, it is a given that those institutional affronts to human decency will have served as prototypes for the methods and procedures that will be practiced upon those who are swept-up in the purges and detainment mania following the declaration of martial law in the United States.
We push this knowledge away from us, fearing we will be paralyzed by its crushing implications. Worse, what is nearly impossible to admit is, most likely, the system crushed us long ago. Apropos, R. D. Laing averred that being able to adapt and function within an insane, authoritarian system renders one for all practical purposes insane -- only insane in a manner acceptable to a power mad ruling elite.
(Article Continues Below)
This is the knowledge we push down, every hour of everyday. Otherwise, we would be driven to admit outright that the system has crushed our individual hopes, aspirations and yearnings. We must, at all costs, keep these feelings concealed; otherwise, we might be compelled to contemplate what we have forsaken, what passions and truths we have traded away for the false sense of security that the corporate order offered us when we tacitly agreed to surrender what was most sacred, vital and alive within us. One psychological manifestation of this phenomenon is the incessant chanting of that mantra of the American corporate workforce: "I'm not my job. I'm not what I do all day long."
For a moment, meditate on the calamity implicit in such a sentiment. Because If we cannot locate and engage our true selves during our waking hours -- then who the hell are we anyway? This is a profoundly troubling circumstance. Moreover, if we've condemned our daylight selves to a void of non-being, what then remains of us?
We experience this dislocation of the life force as a sense of nebulous dread. Everything, these days, the architecture and accouterment of our lives seems so fragile and unreal; it feels as if everything could just fly apart, at any given moment. The world and our place in it seems so flimsy: an empire built of eggshells; it could all shatter in an instant.
Living on credit, the house of cards of the real estate market, jobs evaporating, most of us languishing only a couple of paychecks away from ruin: The empire is coming undone. As it is, it seems the nation is only being held together with hydrogenated fat, wheat gluten, over-extended credit and particle board. Ergo, there is one law the lawless Bush administration and their keepers from the plundering class cannot flout: the second law of thermodynamics. They won't be able to claim executive privilege to avoid the consequences of negative entropy.
In a similar vein, we, the underlings of empire, stand helpless before the prevailing madness. Individual reason rarely acts as a countervailing force to stem a drowning tide of cultural cognitive dissonance. Because the more epic and all-compassing the mistake, the more epic and all-encompassing come the rationalizations, the scapegoating and the compulsion for do-overs. If the surge isn't working as fantasized, then we'll double-dog surge you and then bomb Iran.
If police state tactics fail to alleviate a sense of anxiety, then we must construct more detainment camps, more maximum security prisons, enact more federal death penalty statutes. "Bring back the electric chair; being put to sleep, like stray pets, is too good for the traitors," the mob will rage. That's the solution, but (cognitive dissonance being what it is) we need to go bigger -- we need an electric sofa -- yet, bigger still -- an electric dining room set! "Aahh ... the smell of deep-fried dissidents in the morning."
And over the smoking corpses, let us pray. We need to pray for ... what? ... more prayer. These prayers would work, the homicidally faithful will insist -- if every single doubter was induced to drop to their knees and pray. Hence, we need prayer in the public schools. We need prayer on public transportation. We need prayer in public restrooms!
Animus, ignorance, and magical thinking are a tragic mix -- and I'm afraid that vintage of mind is the hideous wine of our times. The social criteria that gives rise to fascism is in place in the U.S. and those in positions of power have a strong interest in seeing things remain that way. All we can do is what folks (a minority) have always done ... exile or resistance.
In my opinion, both are honorable. The other options are varying degrees of "little Eichmann[ism]" -- Ward Churchill's much scorned, career purge-inducing -- but never-the-less accurate phrase. If one does the "soul work," to appropriate archetypal psychologist James Hillman's term, it is still possible to resist complicity. Training yourself to avoid lying for provisional gain is a time honored means of prevented alliances with exploitive assholes. They will avoid you, fire you, curse your name from the darkness of their inner abyss -- but this will solve the problem of dependance on them -- and you'll be forced to live by other means. Generally, one is more adaptable than one believes.
Keep yourself as healthy and as sane as possible: we're going to need you around after the inevitable collapse of the present system. Also, beware of those reductionist demons of the mind who diminish the soul-making possibilities of "mere" words. The acts of writing and reading are seen as passive; to crackpot realists, these activities seem useless, unproductive -- the feckless indulgences of a class of the thin-wristed effete.
Accordingly, Americans have all but ceased reading. Worse, they displace their feelings of self-loathing borne of their own corporately induced passivity upon writers and thinkers. If the tenets of democratic discourse are to survive, it is imperative that writers and thinkers begin to engage in a passionate defense of themselves against the kvetching armies of crackpot realists that have encircled and laid siege to our collective hearts and minds.
But don't expect to be lauded with praise for the effort. It's doubtful our adversaries will be moved by our entreaties: There cannot be a rapprochement with reality for those who have never had a relationship with it in the first place. Yet verbal imagery and depth-inducing insights are the DNA of compassionate engagement.
It is not a coincidence that George W. Bush is an inarticulate oaf. Conversely, there are many things in this world that require being touched by words, for there are occasions when words alone can suffice to take us deep and lift us up and serve to ameliorate our alienation.
It is in this spirit that I offer the words above to you; I'm traveling light; they're all I'm carrying with me, at this late hour, in these dark and dangerous times.
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000213.htm 2007-07-31T13:40:25Z 2007-07-31T13:40:25Z

Inspiration. Composite image. Courtesy: William-Adolphe Bouguereau. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_inspiration For the landscape, an unidentified digital artist somewhere out there on the www. Acknowledgements and compliments. There's a lot of writing going on out there these days. ...

Where did I leave off and where do I begin?
Saturday afternoon at the hacienda.
Sunny, hot and dry outside, and there was a nice rain two nights ago,
so the ground and the sunflowers are fresh.
Had a freshly cooked brat, with a side of freshly cooked rice, green peppers and diced tomatoes sauce flavored Italiano, and a bottle of Chardonnay, with two cigarettes with the last two glasses on the patio in the evening.
Today I’ve been to the Diamond Shamrock convenience store a half mile down the road for my ticket and my paper and my fresh jug of root beer for a float later on.
Then it’s through the Sunflower for a spontaneous German chocolate cake,
a nice fresh and firm loaf of rye bread, a little onions, cucumber, tomatoes and radish,
two fresh brats and a fresh bottle of fresh wine. Focus on Refresh.
I am refreshing my spirit of Inspiration out here at the hacienda.
There is not a house anywhere in the world that I would rather be living in
than this hacienda in the bosque of the alluvial valley.
A home at one with the land it is grounded on.
Red brick floors, skylights in wooden ceilings,
adobe walls painted white inside, adobe walls painted adobe brown on the outside, surrounded on all sides be greenery, every sense of the city out there vanished..
The whole rest of the world, right out there on the other side of the wooden gate
at the end of the gravel driveway. The blacktop starts there,
and once you’re on the blacktop,
you’re on the blacktop.
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v112/__show_article/_a000112-000212.htm 2007-07-21T22:00:33Z 2007-07-21T22:02:41Z