JULIAN
ASSANGE 4/12/2017 41min 25 sec interview video
Fascinating. There has been a lot of idiocy going around about
Julian Assange, publisher of Wikileaks. Now we have this
interview to help us get straightened out again about him. He has
done what he perceives his job to be and does not seem to have
changed his rules. It is his job to get truth out to as many as
possible in a timely fashion once he has verified its accuracy. He
was never an advocate for Mr. Trump. It is hard to doubt
his sincerity.
Opponents speak also.
There is a download button among the other buttons on the left side
of the page if you care to watch with your local player. Right
click on "Download video" and left click on "Save link as."
I have said before, I do not care who it was who released all that
information, given that it is totally accurate. I am just glad that
somebody did it. For what my thought may be worth.
Oh, and no, I have seen no evidence and have not heard of any
evidence that Julian Assange got any troves of information about
anyone in the various Republican campaigns and did not release
them. Oh well. Their emails might not have been that interesting
anyway given that for the most part we have managed to learn by now
what kind of people they are too.
love,
Larry
sent 4/19/2017 thank you Julian Assange, I say! "Assange: CIA Director Sets 'Disturbing Precedent' with Threats Against WikiLeaks"
Thank you Julian Assange, I say! "Assange:
CIA Director Sets 'Disturbing Precedent' with Threats Against
WikiLeaks," by Nadia Prupis, staff writer, Common Dreams,
April 19, 2017
I thank Julian Assange for his courage in following the best standards of his country rather than succumbing to the ignorant or indifferent threats of some officials, for standing for the right rather than for the might. And he does speak rightly here.
I thank Julian Assange for his courage in following the best standards of his country rather than succumbing to the ignorant or indifferent threats of some officials, for standing for the right rather than for the might. And he does speak rightly here.
sent 6/5/17 The Wrong Kind of Silence
"The
Wrong Kind of Silence," by Joyce Zerwekh, Western
Friend, November/December 2013
I am inspired to mention that I disagree with some of what Joyce Zerwekh wrote, in particular the idea that refusing to answer questions is bullying. Often it is the asking of questions that is bullying. I learned in 1971 and know well that there are ways of making personal statements to give and get honest information without being demanding or suspiciously aggressive. Her writing remains well worth reading.
By the way, I know you probably have never belonged to or even attended a Friends/Quaker meeting. But you probably were taught the second of the great commandments, love your neighbor. That is all it takes to understand this one and the one I just sent a couple of minutes ago, "On Balance."
I am inspired to mention that I disagree with some of what Joyce Zerwekh wrote, in particular the idea that refusing to answer questions is bullying. Often it is the asking of questions that is bullying. I learned in 1971 and know well that there are ways of making personal statements to give and get honest information without being demanding or suspiciously aggressive. Her writing remains well worth reading.
By the way, I know you probably have never belonged to or even attended a Friends/Quaker meeting. But you probably were taught the second of the great commandments, love your neighbor. That is all it takes to understand this one and the one I just sent a couple of minutes ago, "On Balance."
sent 6/5/17 On Balance -- short and pithy
"On Balance,"
by Mary Klein, Western Friend, May/June 2017. Short and
pithy.
sent 6/2/2017 OR Books reading list for a warming world as Trump announces the United States will pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change
This is for the OR
Books reading list for a warming world as Trump announces the
United States will pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate
change. If you think
you know all about it you might buy one
or another of these as gifts for other people or just
recommend them. You could also take
this message viral.
http://www.orbooks.com/2017/05/trump-threatens-pull-paris-agreement-climate-change-reading-list/
There are many who are more hopeful than I am; who knows, they might be right. "'America's Pledge': Can States and Cities Really Address Climate Change?" by Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, June 2, 2017 : ...a way to suggest that Americans are not solely defined by their federal government"
http://www.orbooks.com/2017/05/trump-threatens-pull-paris-agreement-climate-change-reading-list/
There are many who are more hopeful than I am; who knows, they might be right. "'America's Pledge': Can States and Cities Really Address Climate Change?" by Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, June 2, 2017 : ...a way to suggest that Americans are not solely defined by their federal government"
sent 5/30/2017 (2 new videos) Noam Chomsky, Adam Curtis, Russell Brand Re: MAJOR at your own risk again: 2hr45 min BBC documentary: HyperNormalisation 2016 (YouTube) +
1. I
have just been watching an
April 24, 2017 talk with Noam Chomsky that you
can see at https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/29/noam_chomsky_in_conversation_with_amy What he has to say in his calm
matter of fact way seems to reinforce the message behind
the much more dramatic but factual BBC
documentary,
HyperNormalization
2016, that is linked
below. You can
see reviews of Noam Chomsky's latest
book at Requiem
for the American Dream: The 10
Principles of Concentration of Wealth
& Power (March 28, 2017).
This one someone
else organized and put together from
some of his talks;
he approves of and
appreciates the way it was done.
2. Russell Brand Podcast : Under the Skin , Do We Really Want Change? with Adam Curtis - YouTube 1hour17minutes April 15, 2017. The topics of that Russell Brand podcast ostensibly center around the major BBC documentary "HyperNormalisation 2016," by documentary film-maker Adam Curtis (Wikipedia link), which is linked in my message below. You might remember comedian Russell Brand and the fact that he talks very fast and seems to be wandering a lot unless you listen very closely. See sent 10/26/13 Russell Brand on Revolution. Besides a couple of comments from me, that has a link to his introduction as guest editor of the New Statesman for one month. Also see Russell Brand on Revolution, Fighting Inequality, Addiction, Militarized Policing & Noam Chomsky," Democracy Now!, November 14, 2014. If you can manage to concentrate you might find the April 15, 2017 conversation between Adam Curtis and Russell Brand fascinating.
3. With such very smart people saying that there is no common vision for a good future other than for the very wealthy, I have no idea what the point is of my giving you all this information other than for the sake of your understanding. See "You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you" The Oatmeal (helpful comic). I am not sure what good it does trying to be honest with you about the reality that I and others very much more knowledgeable and intelligent than I am seem to be seeing more and more clearly. Those who have taken the trouble to speak sure seem to think their hard work might be helpful to others, and, from the responses, that seems to be the case. I keep telling myself that the best thing for me to do after sharing this is to stop watching, take care of my health, and have as much fun as I can.
2. Russell Brand Podcast : Under the Skin , Do We Really Want Change? with Adam Curtis - YouTube 1hour17minutes April 15, 2017. The topics of that Russell Brand podcast ostensibly center around the major BBC documentary "HyperNormalisation 2016," by documentary film-maker Adam Curtis (Wikipedia link), which is linked in my message below. You might remember comedian Russell Brand and the fact that he talks very fast and seems to be wandering a lot unless you listen very closely. See sent 10/26/13 Russell Brand on Revolution. Besides a couple of comments from me, that has a link to his introduction as guest editor of the New Statesman for one month. Also see Russell Brand on Revolution, Fighting Inequality, Addiction, Militarized Policing & Noam Chomsky," Democracy Now!, November 14, 2014. If you can manage to concentrate you might find the April 15, 2017 conversation between Adam Curtis and Russell Brand fascinating.
3. With such very smart people saying that there is no common vision for a good future other than for the very wealthy, I have no idea what the point is of my giving you all this information other than for the sake of your understanding. See "You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you" The Oatmeal (helpful comic). I am not sure what good it does trying to be honest with you about the reality that I and others very much more knowledgeable and intelligent than I am seem to be seeing more and more clearly. Those who have taken the trouble to speak sure seem to think their hard work might be helpful to others, and, from the responses, that seems to be the case. I keep telling myself that the best thing for me to do after sharing this is to stop watching, take care of my health, and have as much fun as I can.
sent 5/29/2017 fake news: that 7 year old Syrian girl: "Proof That Your Government Is Lying To You And The Media Is Helping Them"
I have read this story about the seven year old Syrian girl named
Bana Alabeda a few times before in other places, without having been
offered the accompanying videos.
"Proof That Your Government Is Lying To You And The Media Is Helping Them," by Caitlyn Johnstone, Medium May 9, 2017.
That story goes well with both of the two resources I sent you last night:
sent 5/28/17 MAJOR at your own risk again: 2hr45 min BBC documentary: HyperNormalisation 2016 (YouTube) +
Happy Memorial Day.
"Proof That Your Government Is Lying To You And The Media Is Helping Them," by Caitlyn Johnstone, Medium May 9, 2017.
That story goes well with both of the two resources I sent you last night:
sent 5/28/17 MAJOR at your own risk again: 2hr45 min BBC documentary: HyperNormalisation 2016 (YouTube) +
Happy Memorial Day.
sent 5/23/2017 "Al Franken, comedian-turned-senator, takes on Donald Trump, TV-star-turned-president"; Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
"Al
Franken, comedian-turned-senator, takes on Donald Trump,
TV-star-turned-president," by Susan Page, Sioux Falls,
South Dakota's Argus Leader, part of the USA Today
network, May 23, 2017.
Let us keep a very positive eye on the great Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, who has been doing a seriously good job in Washington, as many of us were certain that he would when we supported him before. He has a book due to be published on May 30th, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate.
I noticed the Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for the first time in my life linked in an article about why much of our news is at least a bit distorted about some things because the big news media are located on the coasts. They are located on the coasts because that is where the money is, the most educated societies in which the most talented and highly paid reporters want to live. Naturally, reporters tend to be somewhat influenced by their personal surroundings. Sioux Falls, South Dakota, looks interesting, actually.
Let us keep a very positive eye on the great Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, who has been doing a seriously good job in Washington, as many of us were certain that he would when we supported him before. He has a book due to be published on May 30th, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate.
I noticed the Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for the first time in my life linked in an article about why much of our news is at least a bit distorted about some things because the big news media are located on the coasts. They are located on the coasts because that is where the money is, the most educated societies in which the most talented and highly paid reporters want to live. Naturally, reporters tend to be somewhat influenced by their personal surroundings. Sioux Falls, South Dakota, looks interesting, actually.
sent 5/9/2017 audio broadcast stories from Syria: 1.Cindy Sheehan and 2.alternatecurrentradio
These sources give a much fuller picture of life in Syria in some
places than we hear about on television in the U.S., according to
what I have heard about U.S. television.
1. If you are old enough you probably remember Cindy Sheehan, mother of Iraq War veteran Casey Sheehan who was killed in action on April 4, 2004. I remember her at least from the time she was camped out near George W. Bush's Texas ranch waiting to speak with him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Sheehan I believe I met her once at a rally in Fort Erie for a famous Buffalonian Vietnam War Conscientious Objector. I never saw any reason to doubt her honesty.
"Myth-busting Lies about Syria," by Cindy Sheehan with Eva Bartlett, Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox, April 27, 2017 (59 min audio)
I have not been aware of Cindy Sheehan's weekly broadcasts from 2009 until now. I am glad that I happened upon her link above through links from Jonathan M Harris (https://medium.com/@jonathanmharris/from-journalist-to-journalist-again-6bf3326fd504) to Eva Bartlett (https://ingaza.wordpress.com/author/evabartlett/) and then to Cindy Sheehan.
2. "Episode #184 – SUNDAY WIRE: ‘Syria’s Long War – Part 2’ with Sinan Saeed, Tom Duggan, Vanessa Beeley," alternatecurrentradio.com. "LIVE broadcast from on the ground in Syria, with host Patrick Henningsen, alongside some brilliant guests, including Syria TV producer Sinan Saeed, Syria-based British journalist Tom Duggan, and 21WIRE’s Vanessa Beeley." (3 hours 14 minutes, audio) Vanessa Beeley and http://21stcenturywire.com/ are also on the list of worthy journalists by Johnathan M Harris at Medium.
P.S. As always, my purpose in sharing all this has to do with getting help for my greedy country stopping its ongoing invasions. It is not to emphasize the refugees whose lives have already been ruined. LS
1. If you are old enough you probably remember Cindy Sheehan, mother of Iraq War veteran Casey Sheehan who was killed in action on April 4, 2004. I remember her at least from the time she was camped out near George W. Bush's Texas ranch waiting to speak with him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Sheehan I believe I met her once at a rally in Fort Erie for a famous Buffalonian Vietnam War Conscientious Objector. I never saw any reason to doubt her honesty.
"Myth-busting Lies about Syria," by Cindy Sheehan with Eva Bartlett, Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox, April 27, 2017 (59 min audio)
I have not been aware of Cindy Sheehan's weekly broadcasts from 2009 until now. I am glad that I happened upon her link above through links from Jonathan M Harris (https://medium.com/@jonathanmharris/from-journalist-to-journalist-again-6bf3326fd504) to Eva Bartlett (https://ingaza.wordpress.com/author/evabartlett/) and then to Cindy Sheehan.
2. "Episode #184 – SUNDAY WIRE: ‘Syria’s Long War – Part 2’ with Sinan Saeed, Tom Duggan, Vanessa Beeley," alternatecurrentradio.com. "LIVE broadcast from on the ground in Syria, with host Patrick Henningsen, alongside some brilliant guests, including Syria TV producer Sinan Saeed, Syria-based British journalist Tom Duggan, and 21WIRE’s Vanessa Beeley." (3 hours 14 minutes, audio) Vanessa Beeley and http://21stcenturywire.com/ are also on the list of worthy journalists by Johnathan M Harris at Medium.
P.S. As always, my purpose in sharing all this has to do with getting help for my greedy country stopping its ongoing invasions. It is not to emphasize the refugees whose lives have already been ruined. LS
sent 5/9/2017 You might want to take a shot at reconciling these two attitudes
I thought and still think that both of these are valuable.
sent 5/6/17 Inspired, I say: "How To Fight The Establishment Propaganda Machine And Win"
When I sent that one a couple of days ago I had forgotten about this one that I sent at the end of January:
sent 1/30/17 (major, brilliant, important) "The Election: Of Hate, Grief, and a New Story"
I think I perhaps I can reconcile them by being careful, perhaps a bit more careful. If you have any thoughts, I would appreciate hearing them. And you know, whether or not it is any incentive, any comments might get shared anonymously.
You might keep these readings in mind also: sent 4/30/17 readings for May 3 8pm live Swarthmore College seminar; 1 "What's wrong with political correctness?" The New Statesman 6/1/15
sent 5/6/17 Inspired, I say: "How To Fight The Establishment Propaganda Machine And Win"
When I sent that one a couple of days ago I had forgotten about this one that I sent at the end of January:
sent 1/30/17 (major, brilliant, important) "The Election: Of Hate, Grief, and a New Story"
I think I perhaps I can reconcile them by being careful, perhaps a bit more careful. If you have any thoughts, I would appreciate hearing them. And you know, whether or not it is any incentive, any comments might get shared anonymously.
You might keep these readings in mind also: sent 4/30/17 readings for May 3 8pm live Swarthmore College seminar; 1 "What's wrong with political correctness?" The New Statesman 6/1/15
sent 5/28/17 MAJOR at your own risk again: 2hr45 min BBC documentary: HyperNormalisation 2016 (YouTube) +
"HyperNormalisation
2016," a BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam
Curtis. The film was released on 16 October 2016. It's his
audience who will have the final say.--Charlie Lynn.
Intro: "Hypernormalisation: Adam Curtis plots a path from Syria to Trump, via Jane Fonda: The cult doc-maker explores the falsity of modern life in his own inimitable style. Just make sure you put enough time aside to watch it," by Charlie Lynn, October 15, 2016
Happy Memorial Day.
------------------------------------
Major intelligence--also long and complicated with detailed history: "Why Trump Won’t Find Salvation in the Middle East: The president has a coherent Middle East strategy. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to work," By Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky, Politico, May 19, 2017
love, Larry
Intro: "Hypernormalisation: Adam Curtis plots a path from Syria to Trump, via Jane Fonda: The cult doc-maker explores the falsity of modern life in his own inimitable style. Just make sure you put enough time aside to watch it," by Charlie Lynn, October 15, 2016
Happy Memorial Day.
------------------------------------
Major intelligence--also long and complicated with detailed history: "Why Trump Won’t Find Salvation in the Middle East: The president has a coherent Middle East strategy. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to work," By Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky, Politico, May 19, 2017
love, Larry
sent 2/4/17 answers by Cass Dean, "I'm a toothless old lioness, but I can still growl."
I have just encountered
Cass Dean, who describes herself as a toothless old lioness who
can still growl. I recommend starting through some of the the
list of 648 questions that she has answered and picking some of
them to read. She knows many facts about the politics between
countries--Russia and others for one major example--that I have
not seen before. She is a major writer on a number of topics.
She gives what appear to me to be reasonable and deep perspectives
on the Ukraine and Syria, two places that I have studied but not
as much. She says that she is "an indoctrinated WASP trying to
get [her] mind straight" and that she is studying Russia daily. I
do not doubt it. She provides serious reminders not to believe
anything from Fox News. https://www.quora.com/profile/Cass-Dean
Here are links to a couple of the more serious of her 648 answers:
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Russia-helping-Assad-kill-his-citizens/answer/Cass-Dean
This one may sound rather dispassionate on the part of Cass Dean in comparison to some of the propaganda that I understand that many hear on Fox News. The main problem for me is that my country is largely responsible for the existence of the civil war in Syria, and I believe that our attempts to overthrow other governments are wrong. I believe that we do owe something to our victims but that we cannot make up for our mistakes by furthering their misery with further attacks.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-everyone-think-that-Vladimir-Putins-Russia-will-dominate-the-world-through-Donald-Trump/answer/Cass-Dean
There are many more answers of varying seriousness on many topics listed at https://www.quora.com/profile/Cass-Dean
Here are links to a couple of the more serious of her 648 answers:
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Russia-helping-Assad-kill-his-citizens/answer/Cass-Dean
This one may sound rather dispassionate on the part of Cass Dean in comparison to some of the propaganda that I understand that many hear on Fox News. The main problem for me is that my country is largely responsible for the existence of the civil war in Syria, and I believe that our attempts to overthrow other governments are wrong. I believe that we do owe something to our victims but that we cannot make up for our mistakes by furthering their misery with further attacks.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-everyone-think-that-Vladimir-Putins-Russia-will-dominate-the-world-through-Donald-Trump/answer/Cass-Dean
There are many more answers of varying seriousness on many topics listed at https://www.quora.com/profile/Cass-Dean
sent 2/4/17 Action please: a new and cool tool to unseat Republicans in 2018; please take this viral
"Swing
Left and the Post-Election Surge of Progressive Activism," by
Jia Tolentino, Sojourners, January 26, 2017
swingleft.org is a new web tool for focusing on unseating House Republicans in swing districts in 2018. Please read about it. Wherever you live, you might want to help. Put in your zip code to find the nearest.
And either way, please take this viral. Because it matters. Thanks in advance.
swingleft.org is a new web tool for focusing on unseating House Republicans in swing districts in 2018. Please read about it. Wherever you live, you might want to help. Put in your zip code to find the nearest.
And either way, please take this viral. Because it matters. Thanks in advance.
sent 3/1/17 truly fabulous 50 min video: "Edward Snowden Destroys Donald Trump Presidency and Talks Russia February 6th, 2017"
truly fabulous
50 min YouTube video: "Edward Snowden Destroys Donald Trump
Presidency and Talks Russia February 6th, 2017"
Whoever wrote the title, only a short bit of this has anything to do with Mr. Trump aside from the theme, the value to our country of a free press. That is indeed a concept that it has become more and more obvious that Mr. Trump fails to understand. This 50 minutes is far better than being just about Mr. Trump. In fact it seems to have been done after the election but while there was still a chance of his being pardoned by Mr. Obama. Mr. Snowden was not counting on being pardoned, though in fact he did no harm.
If I were the jealous type I think I would be jealous of the opportunity that Edward Snowden had, and took, to be of service to his country--and of his articulate insights. On the other hand I cannot say that I have or have ever had his great courage. He does an excellent job of explaining rather quietly why it is that he is pleased with himself for having done some significant good for his country. And his wife fell in love with him all over again.
You probably really do not want to miss this face to face interview that took place with him and a reporter visiting him in person in Moscow. He would return to the United States if he were promised a fair trial where he would have the opportunity to explain himself to a jury. That is not being offered as a possibility.
Whoever wrote the title, only a short bit of this has anything to do with Mr. Trump aside from the theme, the value to our country of a free press. That is indeed a concept that it has become more and more obvious that Mr. Trump fails to understand. This 50 minutes is far better than being just about Mr. Trump. In fact it seems to have been done after the election but while there was still a chance of his being pardoned by Mr. Obama. Mr. Snowden was not counting on being pardoned, though in fact he did no harm.
If I were the jealous type I think I would be jealous of the opportunity that Edward Snowden had, and took, to be of service to his country--and of his articulate insights. On the other hand I cannot say that I have or have ever had his great courage. He does an excellent job of explaining rather quietly why it is that he is pleased with himself for having done some significant good for his country. And his wife fell in love with him all over again.
You probably really do not want to miss this face to face interview that took place with him and a reporter visiting him in person in Moscow. He would return to the United States if he were promised a fair trial where he would have the opportunity to explain himself to a jury. That is not being offered as a possibility.
sent 2/2/17 Ukraine attacks appear likely to be an effort to increase tensions between the U.S. and Russia +
Subject: "Ukraine
attacks appear likely to be an effort to increase tensions between
the U.S. and Russia: A Ukrainian military offensive into
rebel-held eastern Ukraine is giving Washington’s war hawks an
excuse to demand President Trump escalate tensions with Russia,"
by Jonathan Marshall, Consortium News, February 1, 2017
This is to remind you of the actual history of what has lately been called the Russian attack on the Ukraine/Crimea a few years ago. It really was not that way. The attack was by NATO, led by the United States. Russia coming to the rescue of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine followed upon the new U.S. backed puppet government of the Ukraine making a new law that forbade the speaking and teaching of any language but English, English being relatively unknown in eastern Ukraine. Here are a few news articles that I sent you on the topic in 2014 when the mess was going on.
Straight Talk on the U.S. and Ukraine - FPIF
This is to remind you of the actual history of what has lately been called the Russian attack on the Ukraine/Crimea a few years ago. It really was not that way. The attack was by NATO, led by the United States. Russia coming to the rescue of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine followed upon the new U.S. backed puppet government of the Ukraine making a new law that forbade the speaking and teaching of any language but English, English being relatively unknown in eastern Ukraine. Here are a few news articles that I sent you on the topic in 2014 when the mess was going on.
Straight Talk on the U.S. and Ukraine - FPIF
How The Crimean War Still Echoes Today
It's not Russia that's pushed Ukraine to the brink of war | Seumas Milne
VLAD THE BAD STEALS A MARCH ON THE WEST
What the US Media Won't Tell You About Ukraine
Ukraine in Context: What You Don't Know About a New Cold War
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/07/the-we-hate-putin-group-think/
I was upset back then about what was going on back then and still am upset about the U.S. engaging in proxy wars with Russia out of greed. And no I am not personally acquainted with any Russians. I am acquainted with one very bright woman from Serbia, married to an American. She does not think much of what we did to Kosovo. That was a serious understatement.
sent 1/21/17 please let us just stop the craziness about Russia; Ray McGovern: There is no showing that it was Putin/Russia that gave those leaked emails to Wikileaks
Ray McGovern: There is no showing that it was Putin/Russia that gave
those leaked emails to Wikileaks: "Obama
Admits Gap in Russian ‘Hack’ Case," by Ray McGovern, Consortium
News, January 20, 2017
The article is clear. Yes all countries try to get at information located in other countries. Russia does it. The United States does it. Israel certainly does it. That is not the complete list of all the countries who work at getting at information from other countries without being invited.
There is no evidence that it was Russia that passed those emails to Wikileaks or that Julian Assange had any connection to Russia. There is no evidence that Wikileaks got those emails from Russia and not from some other source, like from someone located in the United States.
There is no evidence that Russia intended the publication of those emails to the world. Obtaining the information in those emails for its own internal use could very well have been what Russia intended.
So the constant accusation that Russia intentionally "interfered with" the U.S. election has zero evidence behind it. That is one of the things that President Obama implied strongly in his careful speech of yesterday, January 20th.
Aside from hatred of Russia being a rather common old habit in this country, people who benefit most from the war industries continue to stand to benefit hugely from the continual perpetuation of that hatred and fear of Russia even without any justification other than the prospect of monetary gain and their hope of a power gain.
Of course they have provided jobs for those immoral enough to allow themselves to get sucked in. Of course limiting our attacks mainly to the use of drones and other bombings limits the number of jobs in their industries to some extent. Eric Prince's Blackwater does seem to be thriving now, however. But members of the CIA have been the U.S. citizens involved historically in invading other countries and working to undermine their leadership through the use of what might well be termed "undemocratic means." :-7
----------------------
For some of the previous intelligence that I have happened upon without looking and have sent you from Ray McGovern since 2008 see now in the archives:
sent 3/15/2015 Ukraine: humongous lies from Gen. Breedlove and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland
sent 5/20/2015 1. ... and now finally a short review on Iraq (with...); 2. comment and reply Re: From "8 Essential Lessons We Learned From the Vietnam Antiwar Movement" to Sy Hersh on Saudi Arabia
sent 11/26/2010 Ray McGovern
sent 7/28/2010 The Afghan War Diary--Wikileaks
The article is clear. Yes all countries try to get at information located in other countries. Russia does it. The United States does it. Israel certainly does it. That is not the complete list of all the countries who work at getting at information from other countries without being invited.
There is no evidence that it was Russia that passed those emails to Wikileaks or that Julian Assange had any connection to Russia. There is no evidence that Wikileaks got those emails from Russia and not from some other source, like from someone located in the United States.
There is no evidence that Russia intended the publication of those emails to the world. Obtaining the information in those emails for its own internal use could very well have been what Russia intended.
So the constant accusation that Russia intentionally "interfered with" the U.S. election has zero evidence behind it. That is one of the things that President Obama implied strongly in his careful speech of yesterday, January 20th.
Aside from hatred of Russia being a rather common old habit in this country, people who benefit most from the war industries continue to stand to benefit hugely from the continual perpetuation of that hatred and fear of Russia even without any justification other than the prospect of monetary gain and their hope of a power gain.
Of course they have provided jobs for those immoral enough to allow themselves to get sucked in. Of course limiting our attacks mainly to the use of drones and other bombings limits the number of jobs in their industries to some extent. Eric Prince's Blackwater does seem to be thriving now, however. But members of the CIA have been the U.S. citizens involved historically in invading other countries and working to undermine their leadership through the use of what might well be termed "undemocratic means." :-7
----------------------
For some of the previous intelligence that I have happened upon without looking and have sent you from Ray McGovern since 2008 see now in the archives:
sent 3/15/2015 Ukraine: humongous lies from Gen. Breedlove and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland
sent 5/20/2015 1. ... and now finally a short review on Iraq (with...); 2. comment and reply Re: From "8 Essential Lessons We Learned From the Vietnam Antiwar Movement" to Sy Hersh on Saudi Arabia
sent 11/26/2010 Ray McGovern
sent 7/28/2010 The Afghan War Diary--Wikileaks
sent 1/18/17 2 polls: Many Russians fear various possible enemies and many Americans fear Russia
"Poll
shows most Russians feel threat from external enemies," Sott.net,
January 17, 2017
"New poll shows growing number of Americans see Russia as 'imminent threat,'" Sott.net by Jason Ditz, January 16, 2017
This news is no surprise to me, especially the part about the fear building up through 2015 and 2016. Perhaps it can be said that most people who fancy themselves realists expected Hillary Clinton to win the Nov 2016 election whether they liked it or not. Hillary Clinton was building the United States and Israel up as virtuous and building Russia up as an enemy that needed to be gotten under control by whatever means while at the same time catering to the ambitions of the Saudi Arabian kings and of course playing a few games with China. Furthermore, I remind you that President Obama and Hillary Clinton and their friends--like Richard (Dick) Cheney and Robert Kagan--and other business controllers went and did exactly what the United States had promised previously not to do by establishing the countries all around the Russian border as NATO countries, enemies of Russia and now sending troops and machinery into eastern Europe. So let us all hope for a turnaround now and for a better business relationship with Russia.
I have the impression that some people who call themselves "liberals" feel a drive to push for freedom, equality, and democracy in foreign lands the like of which most of us Americans do not even have here. I say that the world is too big for us to control and that the United States trying to control the behaviors of all of the people in the world for their own good is first of all a stupid excuse propagated by greedy war mongers and very obviously creates more enemies than friends, just going by the numbers. The number of foreigners who still love us has been going right down the tubes, in fact. Let us not allow fear to drive us toward the idea that because of the situation we have already created we have to keep on making things worse."Poll shows most Russians feel threat from external enemies," Sott.net, January 17, 2017
"New poll shows growing number of Americans see Russia as 'imminent threat,'" Sott.net by Jason Ditz, January 16, 2017
This news is no surprise to me, especially the part about the fear building up through 2015 and 2016. Perhaps it can be said that most people who fancy themselves realists expected Hillary Clinton to win the Nov 2016 election whether they liked it or not. Hillary Clinton was building the United States and Israel up as virtuous and building Russia up as an enemy that needed to be gotten under control by whatever means while at the same time catering to the ambitions of the Saudi Arabian kings and of course playing a few games with China. Furthermore, I remind you that President Obama and Hillary Clinton and their friends--like Richard (Dick) Cheney and Robert Kagan--and other business controllers went and did exactly what the United States had promised previously not to do by establishing the countries all around the Russian border as NATO countries, enemies of Russia and now sending troops and machinery into eastern Europe. So let us all hope for a turnaround now and for a better business relationship with Russia.
I have the impression that some people who call themselves "liberals" feel a drive to push for freedom, equality, and democracy in foreign lands the like of which most of us Americans do not even have here. I say that the world is too big for us to control and that the United States trying to control the behaviors of all of the people in the world for their own good is first of all a stupid excuse propagated by greedy war mongers and very obviously creates more enemies than friends, just going by the numbers. The number of foreigners who still love us has been going right down the tubes, in fact. Let us not allow fear to drive us toward the idea that because of the situation we have already created we have to keep on making things worse.
"New poll shows growing number of Americans see Russia as 'imminent threat,'" Sott.net by Jason Ditz, January 16, 2017
This news is no surprise to me, especially the part about the fear building up through 2015 and 2016. Perhaps it can be said that most people who fancy themselves realists expected Hillary Clinton to win the Nov 2016 election whether they liked it or not. Hillary Clinton was building the United States and Israel up as virtuous and building Russia up as an enemy that needed to be gotten under control by whatever means while at the same time catering to the ambitions of the Saudi Arabian kings and of course playing a few games with China. Furthermore, I remind you that President Obama and Hillary Clinton and their friends--like Richard (Dick) Cheney and Robert Kagan--and other business controllers went and did exactly what the United States had promised previously not to do by establishing the countries all around the Russian border as NATO countries, enemies of Russia and now sending troops and machinery into eastern Europe. So let us all hope for a turnaround now and for a better business relationship with Russia.
I have the impression that some people who call themselves "liberals" feel a drive to push for freedom, equality, and democracy in foreign lands the like of which most of us Americans do not even have here. I say that the world is too big for us to control and that the United States trying to control the behaviors of all of the people in the world for their own good is first of all a stupid excuse propagated by greedy war mongers and very obviously creates more enemies than friends, just going by the numbers. The number of foreigners who still love us has been going right down the tubes, in fact. Let us not allow fear to drive us toward the idea that because of the situation we have already created we have to keep on making things worse."Poll shows most Russians feel threat from external enemies," Sott.net, January 17, 2017
"New poll shows growing number of Americans see Russia as 'imminent threat,'" Sott.net by Jason Ditz, January 16, 2017
This news is no surprise to me, especially the part about the fear building up through 2015 and 2016. Perhaps it can be said that most people who fancy themselves realists expected Hillary Clinton to win the Nov 2016 election whether they liked it or not. Hillary Clinton was building the United States and Israel up as virtuous and building Russia up as an enemy that needed to be gotten under control by whatever means while at the same time catering to the ambitions of the Saudi Arabian kings and of course playing a few games with China. Furthermore, I remind you that President Obama and Hillary Clinton and their friends--like Richard (Dick) Cheney and Robert Kagan--and other business controllers went and did exactly what the United States had promised previously not to do by establishing the countries all around the Russian border as NATO countries, enemies of Russia and now sending troops and machinery into eastern Europe. So let us all hope for a turnaround now and for a better business relationship with Russia.
I have the impression that some people who call themselves "liberals" feel a drive to push for freedom, equality, and democracy in foreign lands the like of which most of us Americans do not even have here. I say that the world is too big for us to control and that the United States trying to control the behaviors of all of the people in the world for their own good is first of all a stupid excuse propagated by greedy war mongers and very obviously creates more enemies than friends, just going by the numbers. The number of foreigners who still love us has been going right down the tubes, in fact. Let us not allow fear to drive us toward the idea that because of the situation we have already created we have to keep on making things worse.
sent 1/24/17 Gareth Porter: "How Clinton Defeat Derailed Syrian War"/"US intervention in Syria? Not under Trump"
Gareth
Porter: "How Clinton Defeat Derailed Syrian War," Consortium
News, January 22, 2017, also at Middle
East Eye under the title "US
intervention in Syria? Not under Trump," January 20, 2017
There is much serious information there. Some you might know, some you might not. But you probably want to know all of it, or at least where you can find it.
I have sent you a number of serious and authoritative articles by award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter in past years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Porter I am giving you below all of the articles that I have turned up and decided to send you over the past seven-plus years--all of them that turn up in my local email repository search for "Gareth," without even reading them again first. Be aware that of course they are dated, meaning that there have been later developments since they were written. For your easy reference see:
"Rigging the Coverage of Syria," by Gareth Porter, August 12, 2016. (It was the U.S. support that broke the ceasefire. Not Russia, not Assad.)
"How We Could End the Permanent War State," by Gareth Porter, WORLDBEYONDWAR.org, also at truthdig, posted September 30, 2016
"The real problem of 'getting to yes' with Iran," by Gareth Porter, Middle East Eye, February 12, 2015 (OR "print-friendly" link)
book recommendation: Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare by Gareth Porter (2014)
"New Israeli Deputy PM Undercuts Strategy of Pressure on Obama," by Gareth Porter, Inter Press News Agency, June 30, 2012
"Report Ties Dubious Iran Nuclear Docs to Israel," by Gareth Porter, Information Clearing House, June 4, 2009
There is much serious information there. Some you might know, some you might not. But you probably want to know all of it, or at least where you can find it.
I have sent you a number of serious and authoritative articles by award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter in past years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Porter I am giving you below all of the articles that I have turned up and decided to send you over the past seven-plus years--all of them that turn up in my local email repository search for "Gareth," without even reading them again first. Be aware that of course they are dated, meaning that there have been later developments since they were written. For your easy reference see:
"Rigging the Coverage of Syria," by Gareth Porter, August 12, 2016. (It was the U.S. support that broke the ceasefire. Not Russia, not Assad.)
"How We Could End the Permanent War State," by Gareth Porter, WORLDBEYONDWAR.org, also at truthdig, posted September 30, 2016
"The real problem of 'getting to yes' with Iran," by Gareth Porter, Middle East Eye, February 12, 2015 (OR "print-friendly" link)
book recommendation: Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare by Gareth Porter (2014)
"New Israeli Deputy PM Undercuts Strategy of Pressure on Obama," by Gareth Porter, Inter Press News Agency, June 30, 2012
"Report Ties Dubious Iran Nuclear Docs to Israel," by Gareth Porter, Information Clearing House, June 4, 2009
sent 1/21/17 Pete Seeger: Which Side Are You On Boys Which Side Are You On
Taking a lead from Digby:
Pete
Seeger: Which Side Are You On Boys Which Side Are You On (YouTube
link)
Just never mind any promises you thought you might have heard. "Trump’s Labor Pick, Andrew Puzder, Is Critic of Minimum Wage Increases," by Noam Scheiber, The New York Times, December 8, 2016
"Richard L. Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said Mr. Puzder was 'a man whose business record is defined by fighting against working people.'"
Along with this goes the fact that the number of states with so-called "right to work" laws is increasing. I found many business publications--doubtless supported by the Koch brothers--with articles saying that "right to work laws" are a great thing. Here from The Intercept (link) is one that says that the purpose is to weaken the unions.
And do remember that many charts have shown us that real wages have gradually declined in the United States since the 1970s. As I recall from a recent article, union membership has dropped from 25 percent in 1960 to eight (8%) percent now.
As a professional, I was supposedly above unions and minimum wage laws even though I never really got paid that much. So should I leave this one to others? Or should I honestly favor American workers over Upper Middle Class American stockholders and fight the brand spanking new president over this also? It might come down to that. Feel free to reply with a comment as always. Politely, of course.
Just never mind any promises you thought you might have heard. "Trump’s Labor Pick, Andrew Puzder, Is Critic of Minimum Wage Increases," by Noam Scheiber, The New York Times, December 8, 2016
"Richard L. Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said Mr. Puzder was 'a man whose business record is defined by fighting against working people.'"
Along with this goes the fact that the number of states with so-called "right to work" laws is increasing. I found many business publications--doubtless supported by the Koch brothers--with articles saying that "right to work laws" are a great thing. Here from The Intercept (link) is one that says that the purpose is to weaken the unions.
And do remember that many charts have shown us that real wages have gradually declined in the United States since the 1970s. As I recall from a recent article, union membership has dropped from 25 percent in 1960 to eight (8%) percent now.
As a professional, I was supposedly above unions and minimum wage laws even though I never really got paid that much. So should I leave this one to others? Or should I honestly favor American workers over Upper Middle Class American stockholders and fight the brand spanking new president over this also? It might come down to that. Feel free to reply with a comment as always. Politely, of course.
sent 4/30/17 readings for May 3 8pm live Swarthmore College seminar; 1 "What's wrong with political correctness?" The New Statesman 6/1/15
1. The New Statesman 6/1/15 "What's
wrong with political correctness?: It’s easy to criticise call-out
culture. It’s harder to look into your own heart and ask if you
can do better," by Laurie Penny.
2. The above link is from a list of five suggested readings that Professor Tim Burke put together for preparation for his seminar for Swarthmore alumni live from Swarthmore College. The rest are below. The seminar is scheduled for Wednesday, May 3, 2017, 8--9:15pm Eastern Time. The topic is "The Ethics and Pragmatics of Call-Outs and Other Social Media Practices." Probably I will not be able to participate because of a conflicting responsibility at that time. I hope that you may be able to listen by phone, because it looks like it will provide thought tools for doing a bit toward a better society just by the way you talk--unless you are perfect already, of course. Well we are all perfect, of course, but somehow we can still feel that we are changing for the better in one way or another.
You also might find the other four suggested readings on Professor Burke's list to be of interest in their own right, not to mention their being of great interest just because he selected them. They are at:
https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/a-note-on-call-out-culture
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/20/social-media-twitter-online-shame
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/the-sandy-hook-hoax.html
and https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/what-liberal-snowflakes-get-right-about-free-speech.html?_r=0
2. The above link is from a list of five suggested readings that Professor Tim Burke put together for preparation for his seminar for Swarthmore alumni live from Swarthmore College. The rest are below. The seminar is scheduled for Wednesday, May 3, 2017, 8--9:15pm Eastern Time. The topic is "The Ethics and Pragmatics of Call-Outs and Other Social Media Practices." Probably I will not be able to participate because of a conflicting responsibility at that time. I hope that you may be able to listen by phone, because it looks like it will provide thought tools for doing a bit toward a better society just by the way you talk--unless you are perfect already, of course. Well we are all perfect, of course, but somehow we can still feel that we are changing for the better in one way or another.
You also might find the other four suggested readings on Professor Burke's list to be of interest in their own right, not to mention their being of great interest just because he selected them. They are at:
https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/a-note-on-call-out-culture
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/20/social-media-twitter-online-shame
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/the-sandy-hook-hoax.html
and https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/what-liberal-snowflakes-get-right-about-free-speech.html?_r=0
sent 1/30/17 (major, brilliant, important) "The Election: Of Hate, Grief, and a New Story"
To make it easy for you, below is the entire page at http://charleseisenstein.net/hategriefandanewstory/.
The subject essay, "The Election: Of Hate, Grief, and a New Story,"
begins a short way down. You can't miss it. Most likely some or
many of the ideas will be new to you. Thank you to my wife for
having sent it to me. love, Larry (aka "Scott")
------------------------------------------
Posted on Nov 10, 2016
Normal is coming unhinged. For the last eight years it has been possible for most people (at least in the relatively privileged classes) to believe that society is sound, that the system, though creaky, basically works, and that the progressive deterioration of everything from ecology to economy is a temporary deviation from the evolutionary imperative of progress.
A Clinton Presidency would have offered four more years of that pretense. A woman President following a black President would have meant to many that things are getting better. It would have obscured the reality of continued neoliberal economics, imperial wars, and resource extraction behind a veil of faux-progressive feminism. Now that we have, in the words of my friend Kelly Brogan, rejected a wolf in sheep’s clothing in favor of a wolf in wolf’s clothing, that illusion will be impossible to maintain.
The wolf, Donald Trump (and I’m not sure he’d be offended by that moniker) will not provide the usual sugarcoating on the poison pills the policy elites have foisted on us for the last forty years. The prison-industrial complex, the endless wars, the surveillance state, the pipelines, the nuclear weapons expansion were easier for liberals to swallow when they came with a dose, albeit grudging, of LGBTQ rights under an African-American President.
I am willing to suspend my judgement of Trump and (very skeptically) hold the possibility that he will disrupt the elite policy consensus of free trade and military confrontation – major themes of his campaign. One might always hope for miracles. However, because he apparently lacks any robust political ideology of his own, it is more likely that he will fill his cabinet with neocon war hawks, Wall Street insiders, and corporate reavers, trampling the wellbeing of the working class whites who elected him while providing them their own sugar-coating of social conservatism.
The social and environmental horrors likely to be committed under President Trump are likely to incite massive civil disobedience and possibly disorder. For Clinton supporters, many of whom were halfhearted to begin with, the Trump administration could mark the end of their loyalty to our present institutions of government. For Trump supporters, the initial celebration will collide with gritty reality when Trump proves as unable or unwilling as his predecessors to challenge the entrenched systems that continually degrade their lives: global finance capital, the deep state, and their programming ideologies. Add to this the likelihood of a major economic crisis, and the public’s frayed loyalty to the existing system could snap.
We are entering a time of great uncertainty. Institutions so enduring as to seem identical to reality itself may lose their legitimacy and dissolve. It may seem that the world is falling apart. For many, that process started on election night, when Trump’s victory provoked incredulity, shock, even vertigo. “I can’t believe this is happening!”
At such moments, it is a normal response to find someone to blame, as if identifying fault could restore the lost normality, and to lash out in anger. Hate and blame are convenient ways of making meaning out of a bewildering situation. Anyone who disputes the blame narrative may receive more hostility than the opponents themselves, as in wartime when pacifists are more reviled than the enemy.
Racism and misogyny are devastatingly real in this country, but to blame bigotry and sexism for voters’ repudiation of the Establishment is to deny the validity of their deep sense of betrayal and alienation. The vast majority of Trump voters were expressing extreme dissatisfaction with the system in the way most readily available to them. (See here, here, here, here) Millions of Obama voters voted for Trump (six states who went for Obama twice switched to Trump). Did they suddenly become racists in the last four years? The blame-the-racists (the fools, the yokels…) narrative generates a clear demarcation between good (us) and evil (them), but it does violence to the truth. It also obscures an important root of racism – anger displaced away from an oppressive system and its elites and onto other victims of that system. Finally, it employs the same dehumanization of the other that is the essence of racism and the precondition for war. Such is the cost of preserving a dying story. That is one reason why paroxysms of violence so often accompany a culture-defining story’s demise.
The dissolution of the old order that is now officially in progress is going to intensify. That presents a tremendous opportunity and danger, because when normal falls apart the ensuing vacuum draws in formerly unthinkable ideas from the margins. Unthinkable ideas range from rounding up the Muslims in concentration camps, to dismantling the military-industrial complex and closing down overseas military bases. They range from nationwide stop-and-frisk to replacing criminal punishment with restorative justice. Anything becomes possible with the collapse of dominant institutions. When the animating force behind these new ideas is hate or fear, all manner of fascistic and totalitarian nightmares can ensue, whether enacted by existing powers or those that arise in revolution against them.
That is why, as we enter a period of intensifying disorder, it is important to introduce a different kind of force to animate the structures that might appear after the old ones crumble. I would call it love if it weren’t for the risk of triggering your New Age bullshit detector, and besides, how does one practically bring love into the world in the realm of politics? So let’s start with empathy. Politically, empathy is akin to solidarity, born of the understanding that we are all in this together. In what together? For starters, we are in the uncertainty together.
We are exiting an old story that explained to us the way of the world and our place in it. Some may cling to it all the more desperately as it dissolves, looking perhaps to Donald Trump to restore it, but their savior has not the power to bring back the dead. Neither would Clinton have been able to preserve America as we’d known it for too much longer. We as a society are entering a space between stories, in which everything that had seemed so real, true, right, and permanent comes into doubt. For a while, segments of society have remained insulated from this breakdown (whether by fortune, talent, or privilege), living in a bubble as the containing economic and ecological systems deteriorate. But not for much longer. Not even the elites are immune to this doubt. They grasp at straws of past glories and obsolete strategies; they create perfunctory and unconvincing shibboleths (Putin!), wandering aimlessly from “doctrine” to “doctrine” – and they have no idea what to do. Their haplessness and half-heartedness was plain to see in this election, their disbelief in their own propaganda, their cynicism. When even the custodians of the story no longer believe the story, you know its days are numbered. It is a shell with no engine, running on habit and momentum.
We are entering a space between stories. After various retrograde versions of a new story rise and fall and we enter a period of true unknowing, an authentic next story will emerge. What would it take for it to embody love, compassion, and interbeing? I see its lineaments in those marginal structures and practices that we call holistic, alternative, regenerative, and restorative. All of them source from empathy, the result of the compassionate inquiry: What is it like to be you?
It is time now to bring this question and the empathy it arouses into our political discourse as a new animating force. If you are appalled at the election outcome and feel the call of hate, perhaps try asking yourself, “What is it like to be a Trump supporter?” Ask it not with a patronizing condescension, but for real, looking underneath the caricature of misogynist and bigot to find the real person.
Even if the person you face IS a misogynist or bigot, ask, “Is this who they are, really?” Ask what confluence of circumstances, social, economic, and biographical, may have brought them there. You may still not know how to engage them, but at least you will not be on the warpath automatically. We hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not know. So let’s stop making our opponents invisible behind a caricature of evil.
We’ve got to stop acting out hate. I see no less of it in the liberal media than I do in the right-wing. It is just better disguised, hiding beneath pseudo-psychological epithets and dehumanizing ideological labels. Exercising it, we create more of it. What is beneath the hate? My acupuncturist Sarah Fields wrote to me, “Hate is just a bodyguard for grief. When people lose the hate, they are forced to deal with the pain beneath.”
I think the pain beneath is fundamentally the same pain that animates misogyny and racism – hate in a different form. Please stop thinking you are better than these people! We are all victims of the same world-dominating machine, suffering different mutations of the same wound of separation. Something hurts in there. We live in a civilization that has robbed nearly all of us of deep community, intimate connection with nature, unconditional love, freedom to explore the kingdom of childhood, and so much more. The acute trauma endured by the incarcerated, the abused, the raped, the trafficked, the starved, the murdered, and the dispossessed does not exempt the perpetrators. They feel it in mirror image, adding damage to their souls atop the damage that compels them to violence. Thus it is that suicide is the leading cause of death in the U.S. military. Thus it is that addiction is rampant among the police. Thus it is that depression is epidemic in the upper middle class. We are all in this together.
Something hurts in there. Can you feel it? We are all in this together. One earth, one tribe, one people.
We have entertained teachings like these long enough in our spiritual retreats, meditations, and prayers. Can we take them now into the political world and create an eye of compassion inside the political hate vortex? It is time to do it, time to up our game. It is time to stop feeding hate. Next time you post on line, check your words to see if they smuggle in some form of hate: dehumanization, snark, belittling, derision.., some invitation to us versus them. Notice how it feels kind of good to do that, like getting a fix. And notice what hurts underneath, and how it doesn’t feel good, not really. Maybe it is time to stop.
This does not mean to withdraw from political conversation, but to rewrite its vocabulary. It is to speak hard truths with love. It is to offer acute political analysis that doesn’t carry the implicit message of “Aren’t those people horrible?” Such analysis is rare. Usually, those evangelizing compassion do not write about politics, and sometimes they veer into passivity. We need to confront an unjust, ecocidal system. Each time we do we will receive an invitation to give in to the dark side and hate “the deplorables.” We must not shy away from those confrontations. Instead, we can engage them empowered by the inner mantra that my friend Pancho Ramos-Stierle uses in confrontations with his jailers: “Brother, your soul is too beautiful to be doing this work.” If we can stare hate in the face and never waver from that knowledge, we will access inexhaustible tools of creative engagement, and hold a compelling invitation to the haters to fulfill their beauty.
Image: Creative Commons – picture by Abhi Ryan
--
------------------------------------------
Essays
The Election: Of Hate, Grief, and a New Story
Posted on Nov 10, 2016 Normal is coming unhinged. For the last eight years it has been possible for most people (at least in the relatively privileged classes) to believe that society is sound, that the system, though creaky, basically works, and that the progressive deterioration of everything from ecology to economy is a temporary deviation from the evolutionary imperative of progress.
A Clinton Presidency would have offered four more years of that pretense. A woman President following a black President would have meant to many that things are getting better. It would have obscured the reality of continued neoliberal economics, imperial wars, and resource extraction behind a veil of faux-progressive feminism. Now that we have, in the words of my friend Kelly Brogan, rejected a wolf in sheep’s clothing in favor of a wolf in wolf’s clothing, that illusion will be impossible to maintain.
The wolf, Donald Trump (and I’m not sure he’d be offended by that moniker) will not provide the usual sugarcoating on the poison pills the policy elites have foisted on us for the last forty years. The prison-industrial complex, the endless wars, the surveillance state, the pipelines, the nuclear weapons expansion were easier for liberals to swallow when they came with a dose, albeit grudging, of LGBTQ rights under an African-American President.
I am willing to suspend my judgement of Trump and (very skeptically) hold the possibility that he will disrupt the elite policy consensus of free trade and military confrontation – major themes of his campaign. One might always hope for miracles. However, because he apparently lacks any robust political ideology of his own, it is more likely that he will fill his cabinet with neocon war hawks, Wall Street insiders, and corporate reavers, trampling the wellbeing of the working class whites who elected him while providing them their own sugar-coating of social conservatism.
The social and environmental horrors likely to be committed under President Trump are likely to incite massive civil disobedience and possibly disorder. For Clinton supporters, many of whom were halfhearted to begin with, the Trump administration could mark the end of their loyalty to our present institutions of government. For Trump supporters, the initial celebration will collide with gritty reality when Trump proves as unable or unwilling as his predecessors to challenge the entrenched systems that continually degrade their lives: global finance capital, the deep state, and their programming ideologies. Add to this the likelihood of a major economic crisis, and the public’s frayed loyalty to the existing system could snap.
We are entering a time of great uncertainty. Institutions so enduring as to seem identical to reality itself may lose their legitimacy and dissolve. It may seem that the world is falling apart. For many, that process started on election night, when Trump’s victory provoked incredulity, shock, even vertigo. “I can’t believe this is happening!”
At such moments, it is a normal response to find someone to blame, as if identifying fault could restore the lost normality, and to lash out in anger. Hate and blame are convenient ways of making meaning out of a bewildering situation. Anyone who disputes the blame narrative may receive more hostility than the opponents themselves, as in wartime when pacifists are more reviled than the enemy.
Racism and misogyny are devastatingly real in this country, but to blame bigotry and sexism for voters’ repudiation of the Establishment is to deny the validity of their deep sense of betrayal and alienation. The vast majority of Trump voters were expressing extreme dissatisfaction with the system in the way most readily available to them. (See here, here, here, here) Millions of Obama voters voted for Trump (six states who went for Obama twice switched to Trump). Did they suddenly become racists in the last four years? The blame-the-racists (the fools, the yokels…) narrative generates a clear demarcation between good (us) and evil (them), but it does violence to the truth. It also obscures an important root of racism – anger displaced away from an oppressive system and its elites and onto other victims of that system. Finally, it employs the same dehumanization of the other that is the essence of racism and the precondition for war. Such is the cost of preserving a dying story. That is one reason why paroxysms of violence so often accompany a culture-defining story’s demise.
The dissolution of the old order that is now officially in progress is going to intensify. That presents a tremendous opportunity and danger, because when normal falls apart the ensuing vacuum draws in formerly unthinkable ideas from the margins. Unthinkable ideas range from rounding up the Muslims in concentration camps, to dismantling the military-industrial complex and closing down overseas military bases. They range from nationwide stop-and-frisk to replacing criminal punishment with restorative justice. Anything becomes possible with the collapse of dominant institutions. When the animating force behind these new ideas is hate or fear, all manner of fascistic and totalitarian nightmares can ensue, whether enacted by existing powers or those that arise in revolution against them.
That is why, as we enter a period of intensifying disorder, it is important to introduce a different kind of force to animate the structures that might appear after the old ones crumble. I would call it love if it weren’t for the risk of triggering your New Age bullshit detector, and besides, how does one practically bring love into the world in the realm of politics? So let’s start with empathy. Politically, empathy is akin to solidarity, born of the understanding that we are all in this together. In what together? For starters, we are in the uncertainty together.
We are exiting an old story that explained to us the way of the world and our place in it. Some may cling to it all the more desperately as it dissolves, looking perhaps to Donald Trump to restore it, but their savior has not the power to bring back the dead. Neither would Clinton have been able to preserve America as we’d known it for too much longer. We as a society are entering a space between stories, in which everything that had seemed so real, true, right, and permanent comes into doubt. For a while, segments of society have remained insulated from this breakdown (whether by fortune, talent, or privilege), living in a bubble as the containing economic and ecological systems deteriorate. But not for much longer. Not even the elites are immune to this doubt. They grasp at straws of past glories and obsolete strategies; they create perfunctory and unconvincing shibboleths (Putin!), wandering aimlessly from “doctrine” to “doctrine” – and they have no idea what to do. Their haplessness and half-heartedness was plain to see in this election, their disbelief in their own propaganda, their cynicism. When even the custodians of the story no longer believe the story, you know its days are numbered. It is a shell with no engine, running on habit and momentum.
We are entering a space between stories. After various retrograde versions of a new story rise and fall and we enter a period of true unknowing, an authentic next story will emerge. What would it take for it to embody love, compassion, and interbeing? I see its lineaments in those marginal structures and practices that we call holistic, alternative, regenerative, and restorative. All of them source from empathy, the result of the compassionate inquiry: What is it like to be you?
It is time now to bring this question and the empathy it arouses into our political discourse as a new animating force. If you are appalled at the election outcome and feel the call of hate, perhaps try asking yourself, “What is it like to be a Trump supporter?” Ask it not with a patronizing condescension, but for real, looking underneath the caricature of misogynist and bigot to find the real person.
Even if the person you face IS a misogynist or bigot, ask, “Is this who they are, really?” Ask what confluence of circumstances, social, economic, and biographical, may have brought them there. You may still not know how to engage them, but at least you will not be on the warpath automatically. We hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not know. So let’s stop making our opponents invisible behind a caricature of evil.
We’ve got to stop acting out hate. I see no less of it in the liberal media than I do in the right-wing. It is just better disguised, hiding beneath pseudo-psychological epithets and dehumanizing ideological labels. Exercising it, we create more of it. What is beneath the hate? My acupuncturist Sarah Fields wrote to me, “Hate is just a bodyguard for grief. When people lose the hate, they are forced to deal with the pain beneath.”
I think the pain beneath is fundamentally the same pain that animates misogyny and racism – hate in a different form. Please stop thinking you are better than these people! We are all victims of the same world-dominating machine, suffering different mutations of the same wound of separation. Something hurts in there. We live in a civilization that has robbed nearly all of us of deep community, intimate connection with nature, unconditional love, freedom to explore the kingdom of childhood, and so much more. The acute trauma endured by the incarcerated, the abused, the raped, the trafficked, the starved, the murdered, and the dispossessed does not exempt the perpetrators. They feel it in mirror image, adding damage to their souls atop the damage that compels them to violence. Thus it is that suicide is the leading cause of death in the U.S. military. Thus it is that addiction is rampant among the police. Thus it is that depression is epidemic in the upper middle class. We are all in this together.
Something hurts in there. Can you feel it? We are all in this together. One earth, one tribe, one people.
We have entertained teachings like these long enough in our spiritual retreats, meditations, and prayers. Can we take them now into the political world and create an eye of compassion inside the political hate vortex? It is time to do it, time to up our game. It is time to stop feeding hate. Next time you post on line, check your words to see if they smuggle in some form of hate: dehumanization, snark, belittling, derision.., some invitation to us versus them. Notice how it feels kind of good to do that, like getting a fix. And notice what hurts underneath, and how it doesn’t feel good, not really. Maybe it is time to stop.
This does not mean to withdraw from political conversation, but to rewrite its vocabulary. It is to speak hard truths with love. It is to offer acute political analysis that doesn’t carry the implicit message of “Aren’t those people horrible?” Such analysis is rare. Usually, those evangelizing compassion do not write about politics, and sometimes they veer into passivity. We need to confront an unjust, ecocidal system. Each time we do we will receive an invitation to give in to the dark side and hate “the deplorables.” We must not shy away from those confrontations. Instead, we can engage them empowered by the inner mantra that my friend Pancho Ramos-Stierle uses in confrontations with his jailers: “Brother, your soul is too beautiful to be doing this work.” If we can stare hate in the face and never waver from that knowledge, we will access inexhaustible tools of creative engagement, and hold a compelling invitation to the haters to fulfill their beauty.
Image: Creative Commons – picture by Abhi Ryan
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