Tannishblog

Increasingly over the past year, lyrics from an old Elvis Costello song arise, unbidden, from my sub conscience. The concept of the End of Days is becoming more real to me.

I’m no born-again evangelist - far from it; I don’t see a Christian Rapture in our future. I can’t help feeling, though, that people inclined to such concepts may be stacking the deck toward Armageddon just so they can stand in the ashes of civilization and scream "I told you so!"

Our teetering toward disaster coincides well with the rise in power of the Christian Right in America. Indeed, it is the policies and business interests of the God-fearing that brought us fiscal insolvency of banking institutions and corporate socialism, two un-winnable wars and a bankrupt nation. I am reminded of George Warmonger Bush in 2000 telling the press he answers to a higher father than his biological sire. I think he got his deities confused. Based upon the decisions made, our Despot-in-Chief may be chatting up the wrong dude.

Being the self-proclaimed "Decider," GWB has become the fall guy for failed policy, but he’s had plenty of help. Since November 2006, when the Democrats in congress became the majority again, I have painfully witnessed the duplicity of my Party-of-Choice. As exemplified by Nancy Pelosi’s treasonous refusal to hold our government accountable for demonstrable criminal tactics, I acknowledge the hard truth: We’re Doomed.

Even our media’s Favorite Son cannot deliver redemption to our broken civilization. Not without hard sacrifices by every American can we expect our nation to repair itself. Given the willful self-delusion of most of us, the self-absorption and greed, I can’t see that happening. no-one will sacrifice they’re lifestyle, if we can continue to pretend that lifestyle is not bourn upon the backs of the poorest nations on earth. As much as I like, and will vote for, Obama, redemption is not in his power.

I can hear the distant screams of the steeds of the four horsemen. You can too if you listen…

The inclusion of this blog in a list of outstanding Buddhist blogs is surprising. I’m grateful, but perhaps unworthy. This is not exactly a “Buddhist Blog,” despite a few tentative attempts. Its more like a collection of political, leftist whining. Even in that aspect, it’s losing steam. Perhaps that’s a (insert appropriate judgment here) thing.

Neither do I necessarily feel I am a Buddhist, although I’ve taken vows, meditate (almost) daily and make continued progress to tame the mental patterns of my youth. I yearn to make a contribution to the social and spiritual awakening of your species. Reality says such an undertaking is yet beyond me; I am a Baby Buddhist, so I must make baby steps. For now, any influence I might own is small. So I focus on small tasks to positively improve the world around me:

• I can shed my rage in realization that is has done me only harm.
• I can stop dwelling on how I believe the world ought to function, in realization that “should” is a dangerous toy.
• I can speak only praise - or nothing at all, in realization that discretion is the better part of discussion.
• I can smile more - and mean it.
• I can shed excess emotive states, saving my energy for accomplishments.
• I can be gentle and courteous, professional and honest.

Having such modest aims as a centerpiece of Buddhist practice, I am amazed by its effectiveness. Within my tiny sphere of influence I has seen how these changes affect those around me and spread out exponentially. And when I forget, I recall the opening lines of the Metta Sutra:

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove…

Such are the tentative steps of a spiritual toddler on the path toward enlightenment. Its Changing my world, One smile at a time. Most of the smiles aren’t even mine.

The real reason GWB went to the Middle East.

An American Intellectual speaks out.

We’re not afraid enough - now we need to worry about CyberArmageddon

Lastly for today: Maybe oil prices aren’t what we should be monititoring.

Accuse me of fear mongering. But some concerns ought to be shared.

Words intrigue me. That should come as no surprise. I don’t do this blogging thing for money, after all. The work I’ve been thinking about lately is:

at·ti·tude (āt’ĭ-tōōd’, -tyōōd’) n.

1. A position of the body or manner of carrying oneself: stood in a graceful attitude. See Synonyms at posture.
2. 1. A state of mind or a feeling; disposition: had a positive attitude about work.
   2. An arrogant or hostile state of mind or disposition.
3. The orientation of an aircraft’s axes relative to a reference line or plane, such as the horizon.
4. The orientation of a spacecraft relative to its direction of motion.
5. A position similar to an arabesque in which a ballet dancer stands on one leg with the other raised either in front or in back and bent at the knee.

We have attitude when we walk. A person can tell the mood of another just by watching how he moves. By paying attention to the attitude of the body, as in definition 1, one can easily guess the attitude of the mind, as in definition 2. Of course words broadcasts attitude on several levels. One’s choice of words, ones pronunciation and tonal qualities in combination convey a spectrum of attitudes in subtle and obvious ways.

People use this consciously when manipulating for a goal. That’s the nature of interaction and communication. It’s when the attitude is delivered sub-consciously that interests me. How many of us are cognizant of how we project our attitudes? How we and our attitudes are perceived?

I don’t suggest obsessing about the opinion of others. Yet people who have negative attitudes toward others might want to ponder the affect it has on others. Conversely, I one has a positive attitude towards the people in their life, one doesn’t need to be concerned with such things.

Some may not care; that’s an copping an attitude about one’s attitude. Most would say they don’t care, even convince themselves of not caring, but would be lying. And lying to oneself is perhaps the most tragic attitude one can take.

On June 19, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. A recreation of the NY Times front page article is available here.

Voting for the bill were 46 Democrats and 27 Republicans. Voting against it were 21 Democrats and six Republicans.

Except for Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, all the Democratic votes against the bill came from Southerners.

Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona voted against the bill, as he said yesterday he would. The five other Republicans opposing it all support Mr. Goldwater’s candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination.

[…]

The bill passed by the Senate outlaws discrimination in places of public accommodation, publicly owned facilities, employment and union membership and Federally aided programs. It gives the Attorney General new powers to speed school desegregation and enforce the Negro’s right to vote.

The Senate bill differs from the House measure chiefly in giving states and local communities more scope and time to deal with complaints of discrimination in hiring and public accommodations. It allows the Attorney General to initiate suits in these areas where he finds a "pattern of discrimination, but does not permit him, as did the House bill, to file suits on behalf of individuals.

As for the filibuster, it was the longest verbal blockade in congressional history. Those good-ol’-boys sure didn’t want blacks to vote. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they felt guilty about something and feared the possibility of political retribution caused by a black voting block.

Forty-three years ago, this was. Still we struggle with the same issue. TPM Muckraker notes today notes Hans von Spakovsky, a Republican nominee for commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, has testified before the Senate Rules Committee against allegations that he orchestrated the suppression of vote fraud cases against black voters in various states.

Von Spakovsky blocked a major suit against a St. Louis suburb and two other suits against rural governments in South Carolina and Georgia and halted at least two investigations of election laws that appeared to suppress minority voting, one of them in Wyoming, said Joseph Rich, the former voting rights section chief….

Monday’s letter included the first allegations that von Spakovsky torpedoed suits and investigations over alleged state, county or local laws that diminish the voting strength of African-Americans, Native Americans or other minorities or prevent them from voting altogether.

Von Spakovsky, the letter said, stripped the voting rights section chief of his authority to open investigations of discrimination without his superiors’ approval.

Some things don’t change, even when they should. All Americans deserve the right to vote. What I find notable of the extreme right activists that have our Great Experiment by the proverbial gonads, is their unuttered, unanimous definition of an American: White, wealthy and preferably Christian. Others need not apply.

This world view is as inaccurate as it is anachronistic. In the University of Chicago’s SSA magazine (of the School for Social Service Administration, Vol. 14 issue 1,) an article highlights recent research on multiracial identity and society. (Because I don’t condone the fallacy of "race," I’ll use the phrase "hyphenated Americans.") Such research avenues are new due to the changes made in the 2000 Census when respondents were able for the first time to list all ethnic groups with which they identify.

Some facts from the article: 

• As much as 20% of Americans will consider themselves as hyphenated Americans by 2050.
• Nearly a quarter of the US population in 2002 was immigrants and their children
• In the 2000 census, 2.4% of the population identified with more than one ethnic group, equaling 6.8 million respondents, 2.8 million of whom were under 18.

In the nineteenth century labels such as "mullato" and "mixed-blood" were used not only in attempt to classify the population, but to reinforce class divisions and strata. Now, while we have widened choice and expanded our visions, we still have a long way to go.

"Our people has had a mixed race people for a long time," Ann Morning, an assistant professor in the department of sociology as New York University points out. "But now that the OMB lets poeple mix-and-match in a way they didn’t in the past, sociologists and demographers are picking up the baton and thinking about the context of mixed race. Part of the reason we are acknowledging it now is that in some ways racial classification doesn’t matter. Before, race dictated who you could marry, where you could live, and it was a way to enforce class."

Racial identity is fluid, researchers have discovered, dependant upon social groups and circumstances. Gina Samuels, whose research focuses in the white-black transracial experience, is quoted in the SSA article:

"The one-drop rule says if you have any black heritage you should be identified as black. But developing an identity is more complicated than that. The idea that one racial heritage always trumps another, or that identities are fixed and don’t change, does not reflect how many multiracials develop a racial-ethnic sense of self," says Samuels, who herself is multiracial and adopted. "It is much more complex than just identifying how society views and individual, or the individual simply choosing any identity he or she wishes. It’s the individual and society operating simultaneously, at different force, and one’s daily context that shapes identity across one’s lifetime."

[…]

Samuels also found that people don’t necessarily identify themselves the same way all the time. High school students among African-American friends or family call themselves black, while with their white friends or relatives, they may say they are mixed race. "And what someone calls themselves when they are 10 may be different then when they are 30 or change again at 40," she adds.

So what of the experiences of the millions of multicultural teenagers in America? Learning one’s identity is of paramount importance during the middle school years. This can be difficult for kids of only one ethnicity. Hyphenated Americans must deal with cultural discrimination from many directions every day.

As if to illustrate the problems of acceptance for multiracial children… hard right extremists used the results (of recent research) as ammunition for their arguments for limiting immigrations and interracial relationships. "I was surprised by that reaction. That is exactly what puts these kids in trouble," says researcher Yoonsun Choi, "If people hate me because of my article, that’s okay, I’m misunderstood. But if this is what these kids have to deal with every day, then we have to do better."

Being of one ethnicity or another is not problematic. The desire to promote dominance of one racial group over another, however, is a problem - as with the legendary filibuster in 1964 and the recent allegations of vote suppression and a lack of response by appointees in key government bureaus shows. American history is full of examples of race relations be used to promote the welfare of European descendents at the expense of others. This is a huge black mark in our nations history and in the history of civilization.

I maintain that racial divisions are fictitious. The concepts of race is a tool for suppression which has no basis fact. Recent work in the field of genetics and DNA sequencing support my theory that since we all can interbreed, be must therefore be only one breed of mammal. Mankind can only progress when it removes the chains of outdated societal modes and embrace our true unity. The world is getting smaller, cultures are intermingling in ways unprecedented, strengthening our genome and merging into one race. We’ve always been that. Soon (if we don’t kill ourselves in the process,) humanity will be so mixed as to negate the conceived racial divide for good.

I can’t wait.

Aren’t you sick of war yet? Name one conflict between human powers that had any positive long-term results. World War II? We haven’t learned anything from that battle. Some people think that the holocaust never happened, and we’re still playing with nukes. Nothing positive there.

America’s Great Warmonger Bush (GWB, get it?) has plans to "modernize" our "outdated" nuclear arsenal so it can be more "flexible" in the future. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within the Department of Energy (DOE), has plans for a "Complex 2030", essentially a nuclear weapons factory.

Now what in Sam Hill do we need that for? Let me Guess:

• The world is not dangerous enough yet
• America can cash in on the expanded weapons trade with friends like Pakistan
• There aren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so we’ll send some there.
• With enough nukes, we just might get Osama by 2030
• The world will be a safer place with only white Christians left.
• Because America’s economy is too entwined with arms trade to extricate itself
• Because we’re all mad

Sick of the hyperbole, read some facts:

Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

Shundahai Network

Peace Action

Navada Desert Experience

Wes Clark

People don’t like this! Anyone out there REALLY think this is a good idea?

Impeachment is getting a lot of traction lately. www.a28.org is the latest web roots attempt at creating a notional movement to oust our ineffective leadership. Their tagline is that today, April 28th, is the first day of Impeachment Summer. I hope their right.

But I’m skeptical. The time for preparation for impeachment was last year. Gathering evidence takes time, and to begin now would only result in an outcome determined only a few weeks before the natural ending of Bush’s term. What benefit is that?

What is the current value of impeachment? The republican congress of Newt Gingrich has forever cheapened the role of impeachment in the way they used it as political leverage to lynch Bill Clinton. What he did was a personal matter, it was not a national disaster. Hurricane Katrina is a national disaster. Our misbegotten war in Iraq is a national disaster, as is the regression of stability within Afghanistan that is currently taking place. The hubris and arrogance, cheating and dishonesty of the Bush administration is a national disaster. The selective amnesia of our Attorney General (no doubt a side effect of extended use of party-line Kool-ade) is a national travesty, if not yet a disaster. These things matter far more than the sexual adventures of consenting adults.

I ponder if it wouldn’t be better to gather all possible records toward the goal of impeachment, but to delay until the administration is out of office. Then we might go after these former public diservants as the war criminals they truly are. To my mind, the charge of war crimes, held in an international arena, has more weight than a mere presidential impeachment process.

A war crimes tribunal hosted by the UN would be better. Freezing the monetary gains made by war the profiteering of Dick Cheney and pals would get their attention: money is central to their thinking. After all, this whole Iraq disaster is "just another business deal" to secure an oil sharing agreement from Iraq. Our administration will not willingly withdraw from Iraq until the fledgling government there agrees to our terms regarding the sharing of oil with the United States. Republicans have said so as recently as last week during the debate in the Senate on troop withdrawal timelines.

So I reservedly back the growing impeachment movement, unconvinced it will do any good. At the same time, I believe we must "prepare for trial" regardless of possible outcome. Please support this growing movement. It is the only way average Americans can regain a voice in our own destiny between election cycles. Even if you think, like I do, that it may be in vain. While the time is running out on impeachment, there is no statute of limitations for war criminals. We can take all the time we need.

The news cycle for the Virginia Tech tragedy is about to wind down. What has been said is all that can be said - if in indeed, it was of value at all. To mark the end of the cycle, Charles Krauthammer, as syndicated in the Chicago Tribune bemoans the politicizing of the event.

It is inevitable, I suppose, that advocates of one social policy or another will try to use the Virginia Tech massacre for their advantage. But it is simply dismaying that a serious presidential candidate should use it as the ideo- logical frame for his set-piece issues.

He then goes on to attack Barack Obama’s reaction while campaigning in Milwaukee. Barack reportedly spoke about violence in our society, expressing a need "to reflect a little bit more broadly on the degree to which we do accept violence in various forms." The other forms included references of Don Imus’ slander, among other things.

Then Charles sums up his complaint:

This whole exercise in defining violence down to include shock-jock taunts and outsourcing would normally be mere intellectual slovenliness. Doing so in the shadow of the murder of 32 innocents still unburied is tasteless, bordering on the sacrilegious.

Perhaps in the spirit of Obama’s much-heralded post-ideological politics we can agree to observe a decent interval of respectful silence before turning ineffable evil and unfathomable grief into political fodder.

Political fodder. It seems acceptable for him and his ilk to lambaste tragedy 24/7 for a whole week to sell news copy. That’s just fine, somehow. Let’s make money dissing the political fodder, while ignoring the week-long news hound feeding frenzy on the same subject.

I wonder how much money was made selling stories about the Crimes of Mr. Cho. How much money did you make selling this story, Chuck?

 The NY Times reports US troops began building a 12 foot high, 3 mile long wall to divide Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods. Just like the Berlin Wall. US Commanders say “the wall is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence.”

Residents see things differently:

A doctor in Adhamiya, Abu Hassan, said the wall would transform the residents into caged animals. “It’s unbelievable that they treat us in such an inhumane manner,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re trying to isolate us from other parts of Baghdad. The hatred will be much greater between the two sects.”

“The Native Americans were treated better than us,” he added.

That last statement is a stretch by any measure; Indigenous Americans were subject to genocide. As bad as things are in Iraq, we haven’t quite gotten there - yet.

Nonetheless, one man’s wall is another man’s cage. I bet the US got the idea from Israel. Partitioning the Palestinians has worked so well…

Speaking of Israel, shouldn’t the Jews be protesting such aggressive segregation tactics? As I recall my history, the Warsaw ghettos were created to "protect" the Jewish population suffering increased hostilities at the time. We know how that story ended, too.

While the US continues to mouth platitudes regarding benchmarks of progress by Iraqi officials, they’re taking steps to create a permanent physical embodiment of sectarianism. Sunnis should well be enraged, they’re the ones who will stand at the checkpoints in order to travel to and from work or gather groceries. They are the ones who will look out their windows to a vista of concrete block and concertina wire and wonder - now that they’re all scrunched into the New Warsaw ghetto - when the rocketry will arrive. Given all that, wouldn’t this make these arbitrary benchmarks harder to achieve?

Perhaps the US is getting desperate. Might we be running out of options, grasping at tactical straws in light of the uncontrollable situation and a dearth of planning on our part? Perhaps we’re just going through pantomimes to placate an increasingly restless American public, failing presidential job ratings, and shouts of impeachments? Perhaps we’re not protecting a minority faction so much as walling ourselves in?

Four years ago and then some, the Bushniks created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) out of fear and the need to look like something was being done about their fear. Amorphous and veiled behind a blackout of news coverage and secrecy, this huge addition to our already vast bureaucratic behemoth has

Just for giggles, I searched the following phrase in Google to see all the great and wonderful things the Wizards of DHS have been doing for our country:

"What has the Department of Homeland Security done for you?"

This is the resulting page; one article that has little actual substance. I tried a different tack:

"accomplishments of the department of homeland security"

Much to my bemused un-surprise, the Greatest Search Engine Yet Created, after years of aggregating the collective knowledge of the Known Universe, found one page of entries. A grand total of seven items, most involving testimonies of DHS officials to congress after only the first year. At least one entry is a duplicate. Nothing since then.

Has congress not bothered to monitor the fledgling agency? Perhaps the information is part of the mountain of classified documents our secretive, paranoid administration holds so tightly. Whatever the cause, information about the DHS is not the the delectation of the masses.

I ask this: What has the DHS done for you? Name five clear accomplishments of the Department of Homeland Security? I can only think of one. The politically expedient and curiously convenient thermometer of Terror Alerts. (did you know in the new Windows Vista sidebar gadgetry you can get the latest terror alert downloaded right to your desktop?) It’s not like the DHS has hammered out a smooth protocol for airport security. Besides absorbing long-standing governmental agencies like a cancer gobbles up cells, or putting spin to the impossible and impractical "problems" the DHS was supposed to be tackling, (PDF) is there anything concrete the agency has done for the People of the United States?

Well? Do you feel safer?

What is that sound… Oh. Crickets.