The news media continues to engage in loathsome racist marginalization by ignoring Native involvement in this struggle, touting the opposition of environmentalists. With all due respect to our environmentalist allies, they were following the Indian lead, but it was Native Americans of Canada and the U.S. in the forefront of this protracted struggle, which is still far from over. Nonetheless, a major battle has been won.

The rejection of the pipeline by President Obama was a tremendous victory for tribal nations of the U.S. and Canada. Obama listened to the voices of this land’s first peoples. In early December Native leaders presented the president with the “Mother Earth Accord” that outlined the unique U.S. tribal and Canadian First Nations objections to the pipeline. In Alberta, Canada, for example, it was pointed out that the extraction of tar sands oil had already been linked to a 30 percent elevated rate of rare cancers and autoimmune diseases in First Nations communities downstream from the project.

The Mother Earth Accord was developed this past September at the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Emergency Summit. Over 20 tribal nations and private landowners, private citizens, environmental organizations and Canadian political parties endorsed the Accord in opposition to the pipeline.

There were of course, the naysayers to this decision, led by the Republicans with their typical inane, vociferating, hypocritical temerity. Perhaps, the Obama administration is finally realizing that attempting to work with them is akin to entering a Faustian compact.

Republicans contended that the project would have produced tens of thousands of jobs. Balderdash. With the exception of possibly a couple of thousand temporary construction jobs along the pipeline route from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast there was little prospective job creation. Further, latest studies estimate that the pipeline would create fewer than 100 permanent jobs. Read more…

Survival International has uncovered shocking new evidence of human rights abuses againsttribes in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, as government efforts to develop lucrative sugar cane plantations in the region intensify.

Bulldozers are flattening land near a UNESCO World Heritage Site, destroying villages andforcing local communities to give up their pastoral way of life.

Fear is growing as violence becomes commonplace and reports of beatings, rapes and arrests spread among tribes close to the Omo River.

As recently as January 2012, Survival received reports of three Bodi men being beaten to death in an Ethiopian jail.

The government is also ordering families to sell their livestock. One man told Survival, ‘My money is my cattle. My bank account is my cattle.’

Survival has exclusive photographs of a road Ethiopia’s government is building, which cuts straight through tribal land, to improve access to land clearance sites.

One Mursi man said, ‘The government is building sugar cane plantations on my land. When you see it you will cry – there are no bushes in the Omo Valley now.’

Two UN bodies have already asked Ethiopia to provide evidence that tribes are being consulted, and that current developments are not damaging the area’s cultural and natural heritage. However, Ethiopia has ignored such calls.

Survival has also received disturbing reports that Ethiopia has begun the process of forcibly resettling tribes in the Omo Valley, a tactic known as ‘villagization’.

Communities have been given one year to relocate, in a programme similar to that reported by Human Rights Watch in Ethiopia’s western Gambella region.

One Mursi man told Survival, ‘It (the government) came, took our land and told us it wants to move all the people in the Omo valley to stay in one place like a camp.’

Survival International said today, ‘The Ethiopian government is responsible for some of the most flagrant and violent human rights abuses that Survival has seen in years. By dressing up the theft of tribal land as ‘development’, it expects to get away with such atrocities. State and private investors will be the only ones to benefit from the Omo Valley sell-off, while self-sufficient tribes face destruction.’

Phil Rockstroh

Cancer, if given voice, would proclaim itself to be a believer in “free market values”…devoted to the principle of endless growth…until, of course, it would silence its own voice by killing its host.

Likewise, all life seeks limits or prematurely dooms itself.

The same holds true with addiction to unlimited economic expansion…the craving for incessant ascension is, in fact, a doomed Icarusian flight.

In our time, politics as usual has failed to address the most pressing issues of the age: The manner by which neoliberal economic agendas exploit the masses in the service of a corrupt elite, and in so doing, decimating individual hopes and aspirations, as, all the while, the environmental dangers, endemic to the unchecked system, imperil the survival of humankind.

Although, alarmingly, both political parties continue to serve the status quo: Contemporary conservatives promote–in fact, seem to outright revel in–the litanies of a gospel of global-wide destruction (in the case of religious fundamentalists even going so far as to implore the forces of heaven, with fervid prayers, to expedite doomsday’s date of arrival) by means of militarist aggression and environmental carnage–while squeamish liberals are devotees of the cliché-worshipping temple of incremental change.

From the right flank of this disastrous cosmology of convenience, Rick Santarium insists that a literal interpretation and societal application of “The Scriptures” i.e., an ad hoc collection of the laws, legends and beliefs of Middle Eastern, Bronze Age, hill country barbarians will remedy our national woes. Accordingly, what is one to make of this lovely bit of wisdom from Isaiah (13:9,15–18)?

“Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger . . . Every one that is found shall be thrust through . . . Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes . . . and their wives ravished. Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them. . . [T]hey shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.”

Lovely, huh? Surely, we’ve evolved past such barbaric sentiments. What kind of a blood-besotted people would accept such an abomination to the tenets of modern civilization and basic human decency?

Tragically, this is who: Both political parties of U.S. duopoly and their supporters, comprising a nation of people, who by large majorities support, for example, the Obama administration’s policy of warfare waged by predator drone attack. Military actions that often result in an Old Testament-style “dashing to pieces” the bodies of children.

What does it matter now to the dead whether the reason given for perpetrating these monstrous acts are based on Santarium’s psychotic concretization of religious lore or Obama’s slick, national security state rationalizations?

As neocons press the petal to the metal of the war machine, mainstream liberal apologists for the status quo, luxuriating upon the hurtling juggernaut, counsel us that any change in direction and velocity must be incremental, as they proffer other brain-dead, political clichés about the need for”civility” and “political realism” involving the criteria of sausage making.

First, clichés are zombies; they are dead to the novelty of the living moment, and they eat the brains of inspiration. They are worse than lazy thinking–they are putrefied thought. Worse, clichés will not die, because they are already dead. Burn them with fire…reduce them to ashes…let the ash mulch the soil where future inspiration will grow.

Second, an incremental approach is an utterly useless, if not delusional, response to the situation. The U.S., through the decades of the post-war era, has been moving with increasing rapidity towards becoming an outright national security/corporate authoritarian state. At this point, this much is evident regarding mainstream liberals who tout the virtues of “incremental change”: they, from their comfortable perch of privilege, do so, because they harbor scant desire to alter the present order.

Still, mainstream liberals are baffled as to why people find them so unbearable, when, in their swoons of self-regard, they believe themselves to be oh-so reasonable sorts who selflessly wish everyone the best.

If you are an advocate of incrementalism, then you co-sign the present order–and the present order consists of corporate/military/police state dominance over almost every aspect of life in the U.S. In short, “reasonable”, “well-meaning” liberals–you are complicit in crimes against human dignity when you bandy your incremental change fantasies.

This is what your reasonable, well-meaning, piecemeal approach is worth…Not a drop of blood of the innocent slaughtered in your predator drone-besotted president’s wars of imperium whose blood-drenched deeds you co-sign with your casuistry. Your faux civil pose is worth about a handful of dust. Obama apologists you can keep making excuses for dear leader–although, it strains credulity as to how anyone with a working moral compass can continue to defend him, or any leader, who has proven himself to be a stalwart defender of the dominant order.

Regarding which, the defining trait of the financial and corporate elite, who lord over the present system has proven to be an all-consuming lust for riches that an individual could not spend in a thousand lifetimes. Their concept of what constitutes acts of trade and commerce is analogous to what pornography is to erotica. Accordingly, one would regard the greedheads of the one percent with the same compassion that one grants to a porn addict, if not for the fact that acts of autoeroticism are not responsible for climate chaos nor did the activity bring down the global economy.

In contrast, this ongoing, noxious, degrading circle jerk of the elite did.

And this brings us to what is at the root of the current siege mentality of the architects and operatives of the corporate/militarist state: Below the armament-bristling surface, and at the dark heart of the subterfuge of one percenters’ yawns this abysmal psychology: If an individual insists on existing in a fortified tower of the mind, the truths of his own heart, as well as those arriving from the soul of the world, will appear to him to be acts of sedition; the longings of his own heart for compassion will be misinterpreted as signs of weakness and emotionally displaced as a malignant, paranoid fantasy in which his own desire for resonate human contact will seem to be the attack of an invading army of rebels.

By reflex (mirrored outwardly in the modus operandi of the one percent against a rising, global chorus of political protest and social unrest) he will attempt to block out and silence the admonitions of his own besieged heart, doubling down on his paranoid actions, until the fortifications in and around himself (the mass psychology of a national security state) have grown to titanic proportions.

An inhuman system that has come to stand for little but the empty perpetuation of itself, according to the metaphoric lexicon of the ancient Greeks, is tantamount to approaching existence as a Titan–and they did not mean the metaphoric designation to be taken as laudatory: The Greek poets believed an evincing of titanic traits was an anathema to human life and an affront to the gods.

According to Homer, after returning from a long military campaign, the reluctant warrior, Hector, who upon seeing his young son, Astyanax, for the first time, in a misguided attempt to bestow a hug on his son, pressed the boy, with too much force, to his armored breastplate, causing the child to cry out in pain. Upon noticing his son’s distress, Hector eased the pressure (an act of sensitivity; conversely, some father’s never notice the agony they inflict on their sons in their wrong-headed attempts to show their love).

Then Hector held the boy skyward and offered him to Zeus. We should all be so lucky.

Zeus, after all, is the father of the gods; therefore, Hector granted his son the right to choose his own unique destiny; he was given free will.

In contrast, at present, the collective fathers of this culture have given us–and we now give our own children–to the Titans of the corporate/militarist state. Titans, who, as Titans are prone to do, eat their young.

According to Greek mythology, human beings could not exist on earth until Zeus banished and imprisoned his father, Cronus, a Titan, and the other Titans to the depths of Hades.

In human terms, we call this an uprising.

At present, daily life has become defined by the caprice of titanic forces (forces that devour our humanity). Fellow human beings, we are long overdue for this: The hour has arrived to demand an end to the destructive reign of these self-serving elites who have proven, time and time again, they care nothing about the suffering they bring to humanity nor the damage they inflict on this living planet.

In our time, when feedback loops of methane gas are melting arctic ice at an exponential rate, yet the powers that be continue their pursuit of ruthless agendas that perpetuate this death-worshiping trajectory, it is evident that politics as usual has failed.

Incremental change will not slow a runaway train. Awareness and action might. In our case, at this late date, if the corporate elite, who control the agendas of the state, are not challenged and brought to heel, and soon, then there is little else left for us to do, other than become hospice workers for our doomed species.

Even the notion of (much less the cultural imperative) of constant, endless growth causes one to feel diminished. Resultantly, the imagination seeks to fall in love with limits–a process we mislabel as depression, a form of repressed grieving that brings feelings of powerlessness, but when tweaked by an active participation in confronting malignant power can be transformed into a life-vivifying vehemence to bring meaning and structure to an overly complex system.

“All around us, the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped, or created.”–Joseph Beuys

Conversely, personal devotion to a fear-bulwarked, habitually self-serving egoism, as opposed to embracing a soul-infused selfhood, creates a catastrophe of malignant greed–a disastrously narrow, resonance-bereft approach to consciousness that alone cannot carry the multiverse of the self into the world. Hence, a selfish man’s relentless obsession to possess the bounty of our planet can never assuage his sense of insecurity and emptiness, not even if all the plundered riches of the ravaged earth were laid before him for his taking.

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City.Phil is a regular contributor to Worldwidehippies. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com. Visit Phil’s website: http://philrockstroh.com/ or at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000711907499

Hepatitis C killing more Americans than HIV

Hepatitis C is a liver infection caused by a virus of the same name that is usually passed through contact with infected blood. An estimated 75 to 85 percent of infections become chronic, which can eventually cause serious diseases like cirrhosis (scarring of the liver) and liver cancer.

In one of the new studies, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that by 2007, hepatitis C was killing more Americans than HIV — the virus that causes AIDS.

In 2007, hepatitis C killed 15,100 Americans, accounting for 0.6 percent of all deaths that year. That compared with a little over 12,700 deaths related to HIV. More…

Baby boomers at elevated hepatitis C risk
UPI.com
21 (UPI) — An estimated 3.2 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C, and two-thirds of that number are baby boomers born between 1945 and 1964, researchers say. Dr. John Ward, director of the division of viral hepatitis at the Centers for the …

Raw milk debate remains contentious

Panelists on both sides of issue square off at Harvard Law forum

By William T. Hathaway

William T. Hathaway

Stan and Hannah Cooper are friends of mine from college days. Both are Jewish, but they have diametrically opposed views about Israel, and their differences have become so bitter that they’ve decided to divorce. As the three of us talked about this, it became clear that their dispute is a microcosm of the conflict that is tearing the Jewish community apart and also destroying lives in an increasingly large part of the world.

William: Your differences must have become quite serious if you’ve decided to end your marriage after all these years.

Stan: Well, these are very serious issues. If you take the Holocaust seriously, you have to support Israel. And Hannah doesn’t. If she has her way, if the people she supports come to power in Israel and the USA, they’ll stop resisting the terrorists and become holier than thou pacifists while the Arabs push the Jews into the sea and blow up half the USA. Then the pacifists will cry about what a tragedy it all is.

Well, I’m not going through another tragedy. I’m not going to see America and Israel destroyed because we didn’t have the courage to stand up to fanatics. I’m not going to have our generation go through something like our grandparent’s went through. Once is enough, once was way too many, and now we finally have to defend ourselves.

Hannah: No way am I in favor of pushing the Jews into the sea. Whenever we talk about this, you exaggerate my position. You get very thin skinned and go into your attack mode.

Stan: Yeah, I admit, I and lots of other Jews are thin skinned about this issue. But when you think about how many Jewish skins got stretched over lampshades not so long ago, it’s understandable that we might feel a tad oversensitive. My grandmother’s brother, my great uncle, got gassed in Auschwitz. And her cousin got shot in the neck in Sachsenhausen.

Hannah: You know I lost family too. They didn’t even make it to the concentration camps. They were murdered in the Kiev ghetto by the German SS. I’m not playing this down. I’ve got relatives in Israel just like you do, and I don’t want them killed. But the Zionists have tunnel vision about this issue. They focus just on one part of it — preventing another Holocaust, no matter what. But I’m convinced that what the Zionists are doing now is making another Shoah more likely. Their moral compass has got thrown off by the trauma they went through. It’s making them do things that violate the basic principles of Jewish ethics. The moral sensitivity, the qualities that make me most proud to be a Jew are getting destroyed by these Israeli militarists.

Stan: Self defense isn’t unethical. The Torah never said lie down and let people kill you. We have to survive. If we’re attacked, we have to fight back. Hannah pooh-poohs anti-Semitism, says it’s not so bad anymore, don’t be paranoid. But the fact is it’s getting much stronger, and that’s world-wide.

I’ll give you an example of something that happened to me just last year. I walked into my high school classroom one morning, and someone had written “Jews are dog shit” on the board. Some students were already in the room, and they all said it was there when they got there. I erased it, but next day it was there again, “Jews are dog shit.” Nobody saw who did it, or so they claimed. It kept happening, couple of times a week. The students still played dumb. I thought they really knew who was doing it, but I couldn’t prove it. I’d get there early, trying to catch them at it, but never could. I asked the janitors to check the room, but I don’t think they actually did. They didn’t really care.

One night about ten o’clock the doorbell rang at home. I opened the door, and a fire was burning on the front porch, a brown paper bag going up in flames. The porch is wood. I was afraid the whole house would catch fire. When I stomped out the blaze, I found out the bag was filled with dog shit, got it all over my shoes.

Next morning I go into the classroom, and on the board is “Jews house burn like dog shit.” Students just sitting there. And of course whoever did it didn’t even make it grammatical, and it was an English class.

I asked the police to watch the house, but they said they didn’t have the manpower for that. All I could do was get new smoke alarms, install motion detectors, leave lights burning all night in the yard, and increase the fire insurance on the house. Do you know what it’s like trying to fall asleep in a house that might burn down any night? I was afraid to take sleeping pills because I might not hear the smoke alarm. I was a wreck, and nobody gave a damn. Not even you, Hannah. You said it was just a prank.

Hannah: I said it was a vicious prank. But no, I didn’t think they’d actually burn down the house. They’d already achieved what they were after — they’d made your life miserable.

Stan: Well, Jews are tired of having their lives made miserable. Far worse anti-Semitic attacks than this are happening all over the world. The neo-Nazis are on the rise in Germany. Jews get beaten up in Russia. Synagogues in Paris and Rome have to be guarded by the police. All this proves that the Jews need a secure homeland, a place they can go where they’ll be safe.

And seeing how most of the world doesn’t give a damn if Israel lives or dies, that changed me. I stopped being a left-winger when I saw how they fawn over the Palestinians. They make excuses for al-Qaeda. They defend Iran. And they oppose the only progressive, democratic country in the Mideast. Left-wingers have lost whatever meaning they ever had, so I’m not one of them anymore. Their policies will destroy our freedoms.

Hannah: Our freedoms are being destroyed now under capitalism. They don’t apply to everyone anymore, only to those who don’t rock the boat. You remember what happened to that client of mine?

Stan: Right. The Arab again.

William: What happened?

Hannah: He was an agricultural science student from Morocco and spoke at an anti-war demonstration here on campus, everything legal and peaceful. The police photographed him and got the university to let them examine their file photos of foreign students. The cops identified him and searched his dormitory room, where they found a Koran, prayer rug, some ammonium fertilizer, and several Arabic language magazines, one of which had a picture of Osama bin Laden. They confiscated his computer and found he had the al-Jazeera website bookmarked and had written e-mails to people in Morocco with insulting comments about the American president. They searched his car and found a timer from a clothes dryer. And with that they arrested him for violating the Patriot Act. Front page story in the paper: “Terror Suspect Arrested, Bomb Materials Found.”

It turned out the fertilizer was for a research project he was doing, measuring plant growth rates with different types of ammonium. He had just a small amount, not enough to make a real bomb even if he’d wanted to. He took me to the greenhouse and showed me the project — twenty little pots of plants and charts for how much they’re growing.

He was working in a coin laundry near the campus, doing everything from cleaning up to simple repairs. The timer on one of the dryers was broken, so he’d taken it out. He couldn’t fix it, so he called the main office, and they told him to bring it in and they’d give him a new one. He put it in his car, where the cops found it.

They had no case at all, and it wasn’t hard to convince the district attorney of that. The university confirmed his research project, an explosives expert confirmed that the amount of fertilizer was too small, and the laundry company confirmed they’d told him to bring in the broken timer.

The DA told the cops he was going to drop the charges, but they said they had an additional lead and needed another search warrant. They got it, and when they searched his room this time, they “found” cocaine.

This student was a devout Muslim, not the cocaine type at all, very traditional and old fashioned, like yeshiva school boys used to be. I’m one hundred percent certain the cops planted the drugs. They were determined to get him on something. He was an Arab speaking out against the war and saying unflattering things about the president. That meant he was an enemy and had to be got rid of.

The DA didn’t want to believe the city’s finest would set someone up, but he did offer that if the student turned in his visa and left the country in two weeks, he’d drop the charges.

I hated to go along with this deal, but I knew the kid didn’t have a chance of getting a fair trial. He agreed and told me terrible stories about how other students had treated him. He left the USA bitter at having his education snatched away from him because of ignorant prejudice.

Stan: Like I said at the time, I’m glad you helped the guy. You saved him from jail. And all pro bono.

I think it’s terrible when innocent people get swept up in all this. But what about all the innocent Israelis who are dying and the three thousand innocent Americans in 9-11? You don’t seem to care about them.

Hannah: This idea that Israelis and Americans are innocent victims of terrorists is a myth. It’s created to justify our aggression. Just like the belief that Islamic fundamentalists are the main terrorists in the world. It’s Orwell’s Big Lie. The USA and Israel started this battle. We’ve been abusing the Arabs in all sorts of ways for decades. We’re the main terrorists. For every American killed in 9-11, we’ve already killed a hundred Muslims, and more every day. It’s the same in Israel.

The targets of 9-11 were soldiers in the Pentagon and financial managers in the World Trade Center. Both those groups are terrorists, just a subtler kind of terror. We don’t see it that way here, we just reap the benefits. We’re conditioned to think of that as normal. But what the global poor suffer under our corporations and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank is economic terror. And what they suffer under military dictatorships supported by the Pentagon is physical terror.

Even things that seem harmless to us like missionaries, pop music and movies become a form of cultural terrorism in a traditional society. The garbage that Hollywood is pouring into those countries is debasing their culture, just like it has ours. We’re used to it, but they don’t want to get used to it.

When Muslims fight back against us, we label them terrorists. But terrorism means intentionally killing innocent civilians, and the financial manipulators and Pentagon officers aren’t innocent.

But no one deserves to be killed, innocent or not. Bombing anybody is barbaric and abhorrent. The USA and Israel are dropping bombs all the time, though, and the civilians they kill are just collateral damage to them. If we do it, we have to expect that people will do it to us. Violence creates counter-violence.

From the Arab point of view, the Israelis are invaders, millions of Europeans who are pushing them off their land. It’s like what happened in America. Millions of Europeans poured in and pushed out the people who were living here. The natives defended themselves by attacking white wagon trains and settlements, killing everyone they could — men, women and children. The whites called them terrorists, savages.

Now the Arabs are fighting back. But like the Indians, their weapons aren’t nearly as powerful as the Europeans’. What was it Mike Davis said? “The car bomb is the poor man’s air force.” The rich have Stealth bombers, the poor have Toyota Corollas, both filled with explosives. The bombers are a lot bigger and kill many more people.

One of the reasons the Western powers supported the formation of Israel was that they thought the Arabs were passive, they wouldn’t defend themselves. But they’ve surprised us. They may win.

Stan: William, as a Gentile, you can’t imagine how offensive it is to me to hear drivel like this, especially from a fellow Jew … and one I’m married to.

William: You’re right, I probably can’t.

Hannah: I’m not singling out the Jews with this. They’re no worse than any other European group. Western civilization has produced more violence than any other. Our history is a chronicle of atrocities. From the Romans on, it’s been ghastly. We make Genghis Khan look like a pacifist. That’s why I think our day is passing — we’ve harmed too many other peoples, and now we deserve to go under.

But what breaks my heart is that before this the Jews hadn’t been cruel and militaristic. We were peaceful. But we’ve became just as vicious as the goyim. What a loss! Now it’s obvious that the diaspora was a blessing. We were freed of the disease of nationalism. Now we’re dying of it.

I admit that after what they’d been through, it was understandable that the Zionists would feel they needed their own country and it should be around Jerusalem. They grew up reading in the Torah that God personally gave them that land. They’re convinced it’s theirs forever. And every Passover they vow, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ They’re fixated on this area, even though it hasn’t been theirs for two thousand years.

But the fact that it’s understandable doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t justify what they’ve done to the Arabs to get the land. Their own suffering has blinded them to the suffering they’re causing others. That’s what makes it so tragic.

There are hundreds of ethnic groups in the world that don’t have their own country. But if we needed our own, the land should have been taken from the Germans. That would’ve been fair. The Arabs didn’t have anything to do with the Holocaust or with the expulsion by the Romans.

For the Zionists, Israel was a wonderful dream — a place where Jews could be safe and our culture could flourish. But it’s a terrible reality — war and the oppression of another people.

William: Do you see any way out.

Hannah: Well, I do. But this could be just wishful thinking, trying to see a glimmer of good in all this grief. It seems to me that this horrible insoluble dilemma is generating a crux of pressure, a desperate energy that may be able to spring humanity into its next stage.

Stan: And what might that be? Pray tell.

Hannah: I know this sounds grandiose and impossible, but so have a lot of major shifts in human development right before they happened. I’m hoping this is the start of our species finally outgrowing its need for group identities. Having all these groups — familial, tribal, ethnic, national — leads to battles. But now we may be getting ready to view humanity as one unified group. We could be going through the birth pains of a new era in which we realize the whole world is our family.

This terrible knot of problems in Israel/Palestine comes from group identities — religion, ethnicity, nationalism. It seems to be a knot that can’t be untangled, so we’ll have to cut through it. We’ll have to start cutting loose from these identities, leaving them behind, dismantling the structures, stop thinking of ourselves as Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, get beyond the whole deadly game of separation. This might be a long, slow process, but now is the time to start. Every step we can make in that direction will help. There’s no other way out.

The problems around Jerusalem are really a microcosm of the problems of the world. Since they’re most intense there, that’s where the breakthrough can happen. Whatever we can do to reduce the separating identities — tear down national boundaries, dissolve ethnicity, eliminate the gap between rich and poor — will bring us closer to being a human family. I’m not saying do away with differences, just divisions.

The separations have developed out of fear, because primitive life was such a struggle and humans felt so weak and vulnerable. They needed groups to survive. But now we’re at another level, and the groups have become a threat to our survival. We need to leave them behind before we can have world peace. The horrors of the Mideast could be forcing us all to this new evolutionary step.

Stan: Hosanna, Hannah! Praise the Lord! Very convincing. You’re good at arguments. That’s why you’re a good attorney. Too bad you’re not a divorce lawyer — we could save a bundle.

But the end result of all this idealism is that Israel goes down the tubes.

Hannah: Maybe so, as the first of many obsolete nations to fall apart and evolve into something more humane — a world family.

#

“The Split” is a chapter from RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War, whichpresents the experiences of war resisters, deserters, and peace activists in the USA, Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Other chapters are posted on a page of the publisher’s website athttp://media.trineday.com/radicalpeace.

William T. Hathaway is an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. His previous book, SUMMER SNOW, is the story of an American warrior in Central Asia who falls in love with a Sufi Muslim and learns from her an alternative to the military mentality. Chapters are available at www.peacewriter.org.

Occupy movement stages day of protests at US prisons

Occupy demonstrators participated in a nationwide day of action to protest against the US prison system on Monday, with demonstrations carried out at over a dozen sites across the country, including prisons in California, Chicago, Denver and New York.

The call to protest was issued by activists with the Occupy Oakland movement and was co-ordinated to coincide with waves of prison hunger strikes that began at California’s Pelican Bay prison in July. Demonstrators denounced the use of restrictive isolation units as infringement upon fundamental human rights. The hunger strikes followed a US supreme court ruling in May which stated that overcrowding in the California prison system had led to “needless suffering and death.” The court ordered the state to reduce its overall prison population from 140,000 to 110,000, which still well-exceeds the state’s maximum prison capacity.

Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer – the American hikers who were held for over a year by Iranian authorities – took part in demonstrations outside San Quentin prison in Marin County, California. Addressing the crowd, Shourd described the psychological impact of solitary confinement, saying her 14 and a half months without human contact drove her to beat the walls of her cell until her knuckles bled. Shourd noted that Nelson Mandella described the two weeks he spent in solitary confinement as the most dehumanising experience he had ever been through. More…

Bruce Springsteen takes on Wall Street
The musician’s 17th studio album explores many of the same themes as the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Bruce Springsteen is furious at Wall Street, and he funneled that anger into his newest album, “Wrecking Ball.”

The result is a collection of songs about the destruction of the American dream. You don’t get too deep into that subject before you hit the financial crisis — and Wall Street’s role in it.

“An enormous fault line cracked the American system wide open, and its repercussions are just beginning to be felt,” Springsteen said in interviews promoting the album, which comes out next month.

It’s a dark album, layered with themes of the common man versus the bankers and fat cats. Rolling Stone was streaming one song, “Shackled and Drawn,” on its website Tuesday. The song describes how life is fat and easy on “banker’s hill,” while the working man is shackled and drawn. Here’s the video for the first song from the album, “We Take Care of Our Own.” Here’s a performance of another, called “Wrecking Ball.”
More…

Occupy is back? Movement gets a TV show, issues concrete demands, begins new …
Washington Post (blog)
“Occupy protesters lose steam,”Christian Broadcasting Network wrote in January, as the last protesters in Washington’s McPherson Square were evicted. And last week, a question was posed on Yahoo Answers: “When did Occupy Wall Street lose its …

Occupy protesters vacate Las Vegas camp
Las Vegas Review – Journal
Sunshine sits Monday at the Occupy Las Vegas campsite at 4700 Paradise Road. The permit for the campsite expired at 5 pm Monday. The local chapter of the national Occupy Wall Streetmovement set up the encampment in late October.

Occupy URI trying to recruit students
Boston.com
February 20, 2012|AP Students and faculty at the University of Rhode Island have set up an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street protest group and plan to erect a tent on a campus quad as a symbol of their efforts. Mark Farnell, a student who has been …

UN nuke expert: no ‘way forward’ with Iran
VIENNA (AP) — A top U.N. nuclear official says his team could “could not find a way forward” in attempts to persuade Iran to talk about suspected secret work on atomic arms.
Herman Nackaerts of the International Atomic Energy Agency says the talks in Tehran were inconclusive, although his mission approached the talks “in a constructive spirit.”
Nackaerts spoke to reporters at Vienna airport Wednesday shortly after returning from the Iranian capital.
An IAEA statement published overnight already acknowledged the talks had failed.
Iran denies it has experimented with nuclear arms programs but has refused to cooperate with an IAEA probe on the issue for nearly four years.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
VIENNA (AP) — The U.N. nuclear agency on Wednesday acknowledged its renewed failure in trying to probe suspicions that Tehran has worked secretly on atomic arms, in a statement issued shortly after an Iranian general warned of a pre-emptive strike against any nation that threatens Iran.
More…

Five dead in shooting at spa in Atlanta suburb
(Reuters) – Five people were killed in a shooting at a health spa in an Atlanta suburb on Tuesday in what appeared to be a murder-suicide, police said.
Four people were found shot to death when officers arrived on the scene at Sujung Beauty Health and Sauna in Norcross, Georgia, Norcross police Capt. Brian Harr said.
A fifth victim was pronounced dead at a local hospital, Harr said.
He added that the shooter, who was not immediately identified, was believed to be among the dead, and that police did not consider any suspects to be at large.
He added that a weapon believed to be the one used was found at the scene.
Norcross Police Chief Warren Summers told reporters at the scene that preliminary evidence suggested the shooting may have been a murder-suicide.
“It appears that way, but we are investigating,” Summers said in comments carried by local FOX 5 television news.
More…

In an article for the Daily Mail, Lord Carey says the proposal to change the status of marriage ‘constitutes one of the greatest political power grabs in history’.

He is backing a new grassroots organisation, the Coalition For Marriage (C4M), which opposes the redefinition of marriage to include same sex couples.

The group is being launched today in response to next month’s publication of a consultation document by the equalities minister, Lib Dem Lynne Featherstone, on how to introduce same-sex marriage before 2015.

If the law is changed, Britain will become the sixth European country, after the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Spain and Norway, to recognise same-sex marriage.

Yet Downing Street, in a bid to avert a damaging rebellion by the bishops who sit in the House of Lords, has insisted that the gay marriage ceremonies will not be allowed to take place in church.

Mr Cameron is still facing a major revolt by up to 100 Conservative MPs who have threatened to vote against or abstain when the measure, which is backed by Labour and the Lib Dems, comes to the Commons.  Read more…

Alex Hibbert, 25, was trekking across the Vatnajokull ice cap with friend Finn McCann when they became trapped by storms.

Their tent had become destroyed by 80mph winds after nine days on the ice, with higher wind speeds predicted for the next day.

Mr Hibbert, a professional expedition leader, raised the alarm using his satellite phone to call his father in Portsmouth.

His father called the Solent Coastguard who passed the message to Falmouth Coastguard and initiated a rescue by Icelandic authorities.

Both men were picked up during a lull in the wind and have since continued in their expedition.

Mr Hibbert, who completed the longest unsupported polar journey in history aged 22, said he chose to contact his father owing to limited battery power. Read more…

by: Erik Hoffner

The climate justice movement also experienced a low point this year, though, when its most visible young leader, Tim DeChristopher, was sentenced to two years in prison for disrupting a federal oil and gas lease auction by peaceful means. Even though the auction was later shown to be illegal, DeChristopher’s case proceeded in a manner that made it clear that the government’s prosecutor sought to make an example of an activist who showed no remorse.

For his part, Tim saw it as a necessary action to protect his future from runaway climate change, and seemed ready to prove that his movement is unafraid of such retribution when he refused to apologize or take a plea deal. As he told Terry Tempest Williams in Orion recently, “… it’s important to make sure that the government doesn’t win in their quest to intimidate people … They’re trying to make an example out of me to scare other people into obedience.” The punishing protest is not unusual, and can result in long-term victories for those targeted, but that didn’t comfort Patrick Shea, DeChristopher’s lawyer, who said in a recent post that he’d witnessed “a miscarriage of justice, fairness, and what I believed America stood for.”

Occupiers, though, have racked up many more detentions, with 6,526 arrested in 110 US cities so far, according to OccupyArrests.com. This wave of action and reaction has keptNational Lawyers Guild (NLG) chapters and members very busy working to protect demonstrators’ constitutional rights. Founded 75 years ago to use the law to advance social justice and support progressive social movements, NLG coordinates attorneys, legal workers and law students, and provides legal briefing, case law research, legal strategy and tactical advice to activists. Over the past several months, its members have filed constitutional rights challenges, represented protesters in criminal court, trained and acted as Legal Observers®, and often provided ’round-the-clock legal advice to Occupy encampments.  More…

Worldwidehippies,

The record-breaking wind is moving about 20 million mph, or about 3
percent of the speed of light. This is nearly 10 times faster than
had ever been seen from a stellar-mass black hole.

Stellar-mass black holes are born when extremely massive stars
collapse. They typically weigh between five and 10 times the mass of
the sun. The stellar-mass black hole powering this super wind is
known as IGR J17091-3624, or IGR J17091 for short.
“This is like the cosmic equivalent of winds from a category five
hurricane,” said Ashley King from the University of Michigan, lead
author of the study published in the Feb. 20 issue of The
Astrophysical Journal Letters. “We weren’t expecting to see such
powerful winds from a black hole like this.”

The wind speed in IGR J17091 matches some of the fastest winds
generated by supermassive black holes, objects millions or billions
of times more massive.

“It’s a surprise this small black hole is able to muster the wind
speeds we typically only see in the giant black holes,” said
co-author Jon M. Miller, also from the University of Michigan. “In
other words, this black hole is performing well above its weight
class.”

Another unanticipated finding is that the wind, which comes from a
disk of gas surrounding the black hole, may be carrying away more
material than the black hole is capturing.

“Contrary to the popular perception of black holes pulling in all of
the material that gets close, we estimate up to 95 percent of the
matter in the disk around IGR J17091 is expelled by the wind,” King
said.

Unlike winds from hurricanes on Earth, the wind from IGR J17091 is
blowing in many different directions. This pattern also distinguishes
it from a jet, where material flows in highly focused beams
perpendicular to the disk, often at nearly the speed of light.

Simultaneous observations made with the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory’s Expanded Very Large Array showed a radio jet from the
black hole was not present when the ultra-fast wind was seen,
although a radio jet is seen at other times. This agrees with
observations of other stellar-mass black holes, providing further
evidence the production of winds can stifle jets.

The high speed for the wind was estimated from a spectrum made by
Chandra in 2011. Ions emit and absorb distinct features in spectra,
which allow scientists to monitor them and their behavior. A Chandra
spectrum of iron ions made two months earlier showed no evidence of
the high-speed wind, meaning the wind likely turns on and off over
time.

Astronomers believe that magnetic fields in the disks of black holes
are responsible for producing both winds and jets. The geometry of
the magnetic fields and rate at which material falls towards the
black hole must influence whether jets or winds are produced.

Worldwidehippies,NASA – IGR J17091 is a binary system in which a sun-like star orbits the
black hole. It is found in the bulge of the Milky Way galaxy, about
28,000 light years away from Earth.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the
Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra’s science
and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

How The Poor Eat: Poet Mikel K iimagining what it would be like to eat the last bite of food on Earth.

Something that has not happened to me in a long while happened today: I almost drowned. I was doing laps at the pool,and had almost reached the wall when I got a mouth full of water, and felt myself going under. Thankfully, I was able to arrest the process.

Right after the incident, a gal sitting by the pool said, “Are you alright?

“I almost drowned,” I said.

“I saw,” she said.

I wanted to say, “Well, why didn’t you jump in
and save me, or holler out to somone who would?” but I didn’t.

Patrick Thorne: You’ll never drown Mikel…when WWIII hits, you’ll still be here with Keith Richards, and cockroaches!

—————————————————–

Patrick Thorne is a hugely talented artist who is, currently, living in Orlanda, Florida. I will try to bring some of his paintings to these pages.

——————

Every time I fall.
Every time I crawl,
I get closer to standing up,
and saying my name.
———-
Could you quiet The Church Bells?
We’re trying to do our Heroin.
—————————-
Father Forgive Me

There is nothing like a beverage when you need, or want, one.
Mostly, I drink water all day. I squeeze lemon juice into it from
lemons that I acquire at the grocery store. Today, I am sucking
down a tasty beverage that comes from The Evil Corporate Monter.
—————————–

And it wasn’t enough:

Her self-titled debut album, released in 1985, sold 25 million copies worldwide. In total, she released seven albums and three film soundtracks; a winner of six Grammys, Houston sold over 200 million albums and singles worldwide. She earned 30 Billboard Awards, 22 American Music Awards and two Emmy Awards.

–From An Unkown Internet Source
———————————
Justice is weird, and, often, not just.
——————————–
My Greatest Love

This is Ava Jean. She is one of The World's Newest Inhabitants. Holding her makes you feel optimistic about life. She is Just Joan's Granddaughter. She has three wonderful, siblings, and a wonderful Mommy and Daddy. She makes everyone feel all warm, and fuzzy, inside.

I love chocolate
more than I love my love.
I love chocolate
more than money.
I love chocolate
more than hot sex.
I love chocolate
more than cars, and houses.
I am a chocolate addict,
and I’m not headed to
any sort of a meeting anytime soon.
———————————-
Life’s A Stage

In one form, or another
I will always be in front of you.
———————————-

MP3, CD, Cassette, or 8 Track?

I’m a record, and I’m playing at ya, again.
You’ve heard me before, but each time
I sound different.
———————————-
I’m Coming To Break You

I’m coming to break your heart.
I’m coming to break you in two.
You’re going to feel so much pain,
that you won’t know what to do.

I’m coming to break your heart.
I’m coming to break you in two.
I’m coming to take my roses back.
You can no longer ride in my cadillac.

Here goes you crying.
Here goes me with a smile.
I’m coming to break your heart.
I’m coming to break you in two.

I’m coming to break your heart.
I’m coming to break your heart.
(My Gangsta Rap Song).
———————————–
Not An Original Gangster

I feel like an Outlaw.
I feel like I ought to
crawl away from you.
———————————-
Keep ya head up

Keep ya head up,

Keep Ya Head Up: Just Joan is seen here taking the first sips of a morning coffee; normally she orders a side of ice with her caffeine.

if you’re fed up
Today may be bad,
and tomorrow is
looking no better,
but ya got to keep
your head up.
Ya got to keep
your head up.
Think you’ve had
enough,
things can always
get better.
Keep ya head up.
Keep ya head up
————————
I just walked the dogs, much later than I usually walk the dogs, and as I was walking over one perilous part of the journey: a torn up sidewalk, I wondered what would happen if I fell, hit my head, and passed out. Would the dogs stay with me, guard me, alert someone as to my situation, or would they wander off to see what the world around them had to offer?

———————————————————————————-

I’m eating leftover spaghetti, but The Dogs are hovering around me like
it is fresh stuff. We were going to see Snave and The Grass play tonight,
but seven hours at the hospital, today, wiped out our energy. I’ve never
been to New Orleans, which means that I have never been to Mardi Gras.
Am I doing The Math right? Joan did not have any clots in her lungs,
which is such a blessing.

-

This is Bolton, The World’s Happiest Dog. He will appear more
on these pages as time moves on. Photo by K.

—————————————

My Kind of Superstars

They were an overnight sensation
a hundred years in the making;
those blisters on their fingers
weren’t faking, but they would still
say hello to you, if they saw you out
at the local store, when they wasn’t on tour.
————————
Look Out For Me(No More).

I’m a giver, and a taker.
I’m a maker, and a faker.
I’ve made phone calls
from inside, and outside of jail.
I’ve been evicted from my home
for the choices that I made.
I’ve gone fishing without a hook
felt that I had it made.
I’ve been in love. I’ve been out of Love.
I’ve been beaten up. I’ve lied. I’ve cheated.
I’ve hitchhiked up and down the right side
of The USA.
And, here I am, today, alive, and sober.
Man, someone must be looking out for me.
——————————————-
Life Is Weird

When I’m on my knees
I’m doing what they told me
that I had to do to talk to God.
When you are on your knees
you’re doing what you please
where you please.
——————————————-

To The Clock Upon The Wall

Dale W. Miller, of The Great Band Palomar, is seen here doing what he does(besides being a great, great father, and husband. I will interview Dale, here, soon.

You get the hands of time
around the throat,
and you say, “Listen here
Mr. Hands of Time,”
you need to slow down:
“I am getting old, too fast.”
And Mr. is really scared;
he’ll promise you anything
just to get your hands off
of him, so he does, and you
let go of him. What time is it now?
——————————–
A flower was never such a flower before.

Spending all my free time you,
feeling dizzy, kind of on the edgy.
——————————–
And there were a few other places that I was
too drunk then to remember now…

Perfect

You are
perfect in God’s eyes.
Perfect.
———————————–
Loose Lipe

Goodbye for now. K is seen here getting The Bad Guy. You should always do good, and then good will happen to you. If you do bad, bad will happen to you. My fortune cookie says so. Photo by Just Joan.

When you smile,
you smile with everybody.
When I smile,
I smile alone.
———————————–
And like a Bad Hooker…State Farm doesn’t care.
———————————–
How to inhale properly? Take a nice deep breath after your pull, and then another deep breath with your nose. Itll be in there.

———————————–
My name is Mikel, and I am addicted to sushi.
———————————–
I want Rick Santorum’s Sex Life to be ‘Special,”
like he wants our Sex Lives to be ‘Special.’
———————————–
That’s it for this week. Next week will be another week.
Best To All Of You.

–MikelK
___________________________________