I was at what was called The BC Leadership Prayer Breakfast the other day in downtown Vancouver, with probably a thousand people. It included a not very good breakfast, Vancouver’s mayor, the BC Premiere and so on (being, in fact, mystical riff-raff, I was given a ticket from a friend).

I always feel that in times of remembering the environment etc., beautiful food should be part of the prayer not only in word, but in deed, a reflection of the celebration. The cooked and presumably tortured pig (sausage and bacon) was left by most, as were the tepid eggs.

Grateful always for the gift of food, my vegetarian meal, bland tofu wrapped in something green, was more confusing than edible. Some folks would say bland and tofu in the same sentence is redundant.

SPEAKING OF NOURISHMENT

Nonetheless, the Keynote speaker was a lovely man of Irish descent, and he told us some of what he had done in Cambodia for that country’s post-Khmer Rouge recovery from perhaps the second largest (and heinously incomprehensible) genocide of the century (from 1975-78), if not in history—1.7 to 2 million people killed, and some now even say more. The criminal secret bombings of Cambodia by the US—making it the most heavily bombed country in history—between 1970 and 1975 were not mentioned.

But imagine the physical and psychological scars on these Cambodian people—we humans, sisters and brothers, are something else.

What this admittedly dyslexic and bullied-in-his-childhood speaker had accomplished by bringing tons of medications into Cambodia, among other things, was indeed riveting, impressive and highly praiseworthy. He seemed like a terrific, compassionate, courageous man.

The essence of his speech was how all he had accomplished was actually through God, and how the advancement of (I’m parpahrasing) society, human rights, progress, democracy etc., was essentially a result of the “Judeo-Christian ethic.”

Fair enough. But when he said that, I couldn’t help but notice the First Nations leader beside him at the head table, Gibby Jacobs, with about ten others. I wondered how he felt about the idea that the “Judeo-Christian ethic” was the key to progress, and the democratization of civilization’s progress.

Beyond colonialism, the European World Wars with its 60 million deaths, a worldview distant in so many ways from the creation, and so many other at least nominally Christian-related offerings to civilization—my point is, so many groups are part of the story, its ugliness and its beauty—I thought of something little expressed in the press.

SISTERS AND BROTHERS

It sounds a bit South African, but a friend of mine—or at least of my sister—is deeply involved in a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that is being set up in Canada to help get the true stories out of those First Nations people who were sent to Residential Schools.

As with virtually all indigenous peoples worldwide, the aboriginal peoples of Canada were devastated by invasion and colonization, racism, war, epidemic disease, and an ongoing decimation of their spiritual beliefs which were directly tied to the land they lived on and lived off.

Residential schools were Christian schools that native (First Nations) boys or girls were taken into, and where sometimes the children were, essentially, stripped of their native language, their spiritual beliefs and even of their parents—not to mention extensive reports of abuse, both sexual and physical.

From the Anglican Church of Canada website: Residential Schools, an excerpt:

Between 1820 and 1969, the Anglican Church administered 26 Indian Residential Schools. By 1969, after taking a hard look at its relationship with Aboriginal peoples, the Church withdrew from the residential schools project and committed itself to building more just relationships with its indigenous members, as well as advocating on behalf of the indigenous population at large.

No brief overview can begin to express the complex history of the residential schools and their legacy. Most of the people involved in the schools were well motivated by the standards of their day, even though they were participants in an abusive system.

Some, according to the recollections of former students, were saintly even in that oppressive system.

Some few were predators who abused the children physically or sexually.

Most of the former students of the schools recall their experiences with pain and anger.

Some few recall their experiences fondly.

Many Aboriginal persons view with contempt the church which tried to eradicate their culture. Others retain a powerful Christian faith (often combined with Aboriginal tradition), and work within the church on behalf of justice for all native people.

For the Truth and Reconciliation government site, press here.

I think it’s admirable to have this commission, right and due, and it makes me grateful I’m a Canadian. May we all learn and get closer and more educated about history, about the present, about cultures, about ourselves. There is no cure for the material world, but a little more love is good medicine.

Love more,

Pete

The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed in British parliament on March 25, 1807—the 200th year anniversary just passing.

The slave trade did not end at this time, slaves still being supposedly held but not sold, with Britain still contributing to the trade elsewhere “directly and indirectly.”

And of course, slave labour still exists all over the world.

If you’ve got a half hour, and feel like listening to two British scholars I hadn’t actually heard of—Paul Gilroy and Weyman Bennett—talk about slavery and the co-opting or owning of the anniversary of its slow demise as a legal trade.

Both were really interesting in terms of the poltics of ignorance, capitalism, history, race and so many other “ideas” that are so confusing for so many of us.

To listen to Paul Gilroy on youtube, press here (15 min).

There’s something missing, Gilroy says:

…and the missing elephant in the room is capitalism…the slaves were pieces of property and their sufferings and their resistance offer…a deeper commentary on the idea of private property than the one that comes out of the Marixist tradition…

That history requires us to think about capitalism and to think about its continuing mutations. But there’s another point. There’s a point about the commemorations themselves as private property; the point about the critique of life as property; of humanity as property; of history as property.

The term capitalism, for me, is a dead end just like communism, liberal, democrat and all the other labels in terms of having any deep, clear or nuanced meaning, or to enhance understanding and dialogue. Still, the relentless, unconscious, violent pursuit of profit—virtually as an economic law—at the expense of masses of peoples and the environment is shocking to those not so deeply inclined.

And if you found Gilroy interesting, take a listen to Weyman Bennett, who is supposedly a “British Trotskyist,” which I am avowedly not (nor anything else, for that matter), although I wouldn’t be able to define what that is, beyond “wordy”.

I am inherently allergic to those labels, both as people use them and as they are used against people, and the Bolshevik revolution is so heinously ugly in the overthrow of another vast ugliness.

Creative and intellectual freedom are their antihistimine. All I care about is my sisters and brothers, and finding more poetry and kindness.

Nonetheless, press here for Weyman Bennett’s informative talk (20 min):

I want to argue that the major reason why they abolished slavery was because of the the revolts that took place [in Haiti and made slavery un-economic and a political disaster to continue] and because [the British] had started to look to India as a place [for] the continuation of imperialism and exploitation of places like Bangal…

…there is an attempt to divorce capitalism from slavery…the reason why we did it was because of profits, that’s what [Trinidad historian and leader] Eric Williams said. They went to Africa because they were going to steal black skins in order to make profits…

The impact of the French revolution inside Haiti—there’s a man called [Jean-Jacques] Dessalines, who was a general there, and he says (he and Toussaint [Louveture] could both read) and he says…[when] they hear there’s been a revolution inside France, they say the white masters have been overthrown by their white slaves, and they can do the same…

By the way, to understand Haiti’s ongoing struggles is perhaps to understand at least in part the ongoing foreign punishment, which has been relentless—and is not to ignore whatever self-inflicted misery has taken place—and if we could see inside life may just be for being the first colonized country to win their independence, to overthrow their masters (1803)…

At least it sometimes seems that way to me.

May we treat each other better and better, understanding the relationship, all relationships, and their temporarily eternal nature…

Pete

My friend Erynn, despairing about her country and a propos to my previous blog, sent this provocative (and I can only hope alarmist) article from Naomi Wolf.

One can see in so many ways that direct comparisons of the United States to heinous dictatorships are, overall, inaccurate (foreign policy notwithstanding).

But what Wolf is pointing out is that the seeds and symptoms are there, planted, frightening and unjust—and they are, in dangerous places and ways, bearing “strange fruit,” to quote Billie Holliday’s deceptively chilling rendition of Lewis Allen’s 1938 song.

What is vigilance? What is the tipping point? How do people—sisters and brothers—stay free, educated, compassionate, unretracted by fear, courageous and hopeful?

There are innumerable subtle and brutal techniques, I am sure, used to shatter vigilance and hope—and they are used, as the article points out.

We must believe in solidarity. Building bridges across artificial labels. Talk to people, with love.

Press here for Wolf’s article, to be informed and alarmed.

Here’s to solidarity and love, and critical thinking, and love, and never giving up—and always believing in beauty,

Pete

A song believing in our inate great potential for love and solidarity: press here, and another one, hoping for strength.

I mentioned Representative Ron Paul a few weeks ago for his independent and courageous thoughts on the banking system, the Federal Reserve and the monetary system in general.

My just-like-me American sisters and brothers, is there not another at least interesting and informative candidate (like Republican Ron Paul) found in Dennis Kucinich?

I know neither Kucinich’s or Paul’s past nor their deepest intentions, but I actually learn in a positive sense when I listen to these two. This is virtually unheard of with politicians.

Kucinich talks about several dangerous and politically untouchable subjects, from control by big business to impeachment of Cheney and Bush, to a true outsider: monetary reform.

How refreshing.

VIRTUALLY ALL THE OTHERS

Sadly, although I don’t follow it much (with no TV, no newspapers—but Internet and tons of reading), I find Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama intensely political in the worst sense of the word, unoriginal and uninspiring.

Frankly, I wish I found them appealing and inspiring, or original, because one of them will probably get in as the Democratic nominee in a country desperate for more courageous truth.

I’m not even saying Clinton and Obama don’t have decent intentions, but when I hear them I learn nothing about how the system really works, or how to be a better person—and thus assume they are either unconsciously manipulated, sold out to unseen interests or just not naturally independent or inspired.

I am inspired by courageous speakers who risk politics for principles. Standing in the “middle-of-the-road” may stop a person getting hit by cars, but who can live there and be themselves, be creative, be inspired, be original, be free?

Even their anti-war (so-called) rhetoric feels more convenient than convicted—at the very least, by their votes, it has not been progressive.

To me, Obama and Clinton feel like soft Republicans. I use the word Republican in the modern sense of the term, Big Government, Big Spending, Big Foreign Policy Aggression and Corporate Owned—and mean no offence to true conservatives, of which there are few, it seems.

The proof is, if there were more, they would literally be up-in-arms and revolting (no pun intended) against today’s holders of their namesake.

DENNIS KUCINICH

Kucinich’s independent and proactive actions (and votes) on the immoral disaster that is Iraq and its consequent pillaging of both countries, his thoughts on the environment, the poor, violence, the IMF, the World Bank and impeachment are inspired enough to at least hope that somehow sanity can be injected into a deeply bankrupted system.

WHAT’S THE BEEF?

And given yesterday’s post, I am also implored and delighted to mention the fact that Kucinich is…brace yourself…vegan (unbelievable). The man, by his actions, actually overtly cares about the welfare of animals.

It is a given, I would guess, that being vegan in Washington circles is unpopular and verging on “radical”!

Is there anything better than a big, fat, still half-breathing steak dinner with potential business partners, discussing what resources are left to be owned, and how to get them—be they water, oil, animal fat for fuel or people’s minds for control or bodies for cheap labour?

A SECOND PARTY

In my opinion, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich would do well to get together, inspire real debate about things that actually matter, instead of diversions and lies, and start their own party for at least a less bought-out America.

How about this: The-At-Least-Trying-To-Be-Honest-and-Courageous-Party.

Instinctively, I have limited faith in modern-day politicians due to a system that requires shameful and soul-destroying amounts of money and inside dealing to survive, but these two guys are at least putting independent thoughts and maybe even their own safety on the line.

Like Ron Paul, I don’t know a lot about Dennis Kucinich, but both prove that one’s partisanship has no real meaning in the modern context. They are Republican and Democrat, (ir)respectively, but they are neither, in the modern-day sense.

And who knows, could they with their beliefs provide America (and the world) with a vital and much needed second party?

In a world run by so many undemocratic institutions, a second party could at least help a little, and start raising some real questions about democracy, like: is democracy of any depth even possible given the accepted and current economic set up?

SOLIDARITY

Do we as sisters and brothers have the courage for solidarity across stupid labels, the insight, the will, to crack undemocratic corporate and hence media control of a reeling situation, not to mention an intentionally disastrous monetary system?

Imagine monetary and banking reform even being discussed—not to mention compassion and peace and honesty in a party? It’s almost implausible, and perhaps impossible. The biggest fear for the country then would be assassination of honest people by powerful interests, in my humble (and perhaps suddenly paranoid) opinion.

But at least it seems that two people are really trying to speak for the well-being of the commons—monetarily, health-wise, encouraging peace, social justice, speaking out against the World Bank, the IMF, the Federal Reserve, and even promoting, by behaviour at least, the rights of animals to not be sytematicaly and unnecessarily abused and tortured before becoming food.

Check out Kucinich here and here. I think it’s worth it. And here’s his Iraq withdrawal ideas.

Lots of love to you,

Pete

My reference to Auschwitz is of course not meant to offend anybody.

Nonetheless, Animal Farm and Auschwitz came to mind when I read an article sent to me by a friend outlining how two giant corporations plan to come to get together to make “fossil fuel” out of animals—you read right, animals.

Like the killing of Iraqi children and American soldiers isn’t enough.

Ideas like this make Al Gore’s avoidance of the profound environmental stress placed on the planet through factory cattle-farming, factory fowl-farming and factory pork-farming even more of a moral disaster (not to mention the systemic, 24 hour-a-day cruelty to billions of sentient creatures everyday—that look and feel just like our pets).

Is this the best that North American minds backed by power can come up with? How profoundly sad. And what’s crazy is that, without diligence, ideas like this—just like factory farming did—could become normal in a decade or two.

And what a surprise: it is a collaboration between mega oil company ConocoPhilips and mega meat company Tyson Foods that puts a whole new perverted twist on the concept of sustainability.

To read the article, press here. To be honest, I felt like throwing up.

Here’s a site talking about Tyson Foods’ treatment of animals (press here). It’s graphic, by the way, but it might make us think—or, even better, feel.

And what another surprise: Former United States Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was recently named to the ConocoPhilips Board of Directors.

Armitage takes his alleged threat (and nature) of “bombing Pakistan back to the stone age” to the fine company of ConocoPhilips who, as you will see, really mean it when they say on their website: “At ConocoPhillips, we believe in energy—whatever the source.”

Cutting back on our factory-farm meat consumption gives us immediate power in the fight against this abysmal cruelty, against deeper environmental degradation, against hopelessness, against profit at any cost and a push towards compassion for “for the littlest of mine.”

My instinct, for what it’s worth, is the more we as humans can do this cruelty to animals, the more humans can and will do this cruelty to humans.

As the Buddhists (and millions of others) say: May all sentient beings be happy. Indeed. Love more.

Pete

I’ve been thinking about a previous blog:

HUMAN NATURE

It is intensely humbling how caring, intelligent individuals can see things so differently—for myriad reasons including that there are actually so many valid ways to see something as thick as history, or current politics, or foreign policy.

In combination with one’s culture, and across a certain spectrum of possibilities, humans appear to have an almost unchangeable personal interface through which to decipher information.

I’m saying our nature—[perhaps] even more than our compassion, brilliance or pride—seems to guide our belief systems.

In your life, have you had to go against all your instincts and attractions to discover your worldview, your deepest conclusions on life, on politics, on religion?

Almost certainly, no.

Our worldviews may change, but simply because the original view never really felt quite right.

And when a grand switch is made (so-called!), which is rare, how often is the same militancy used in the exact opposite direction?

From an outsider looking in, I’ve seen this with the Marxist Left switch to Neo-con Right of David Horowitz, the switch from Greenpeace founder to corporate spokesperson of Patrick Moore to, even, the switch of one as illustrious as St. Paul, who was once the Christian-stoning Saul of Tarsus (I might get stoned myself for that last example).

We follow that which attracts us, resonates with our own system.

In other words, do I believe in, say, Paul Wolfowitz’s worldview but read Chomsky out of, say, guilt, because although it doesn’t appeal to my desires I know intellectually it’s morally stronger—because Chomsky virtually always speaks for those who are underdogs, disenfranchised or have no voice against greater Power?

Of course not.

I put this quote up again because I thought of three more people that have sort of switched their “labels”, again (it seems to me) to a sort of mirror-image of their former “ideologies.”

In other words, in some cases the switch is not always diametrically opposed, but incredibly similar, with the Trotskyist stamce to the neo-conservatice stance being a possible example.

For example, the Marxist “vanguard of the proletariat”—a brilliant few to lead the dumb masses—and the crushing of the worker’s unions by Lenin and Trotsky after the 1917 revolution does seem sort of neo-conservative in temperament as much as any other definable ideology—and there are a few cases of this switch.

Perhaps it’s the pointlessness of these labels that prevent me from ever feeling obliged to subscribe to some set ideology. There are so many great parts everywhere, and one’s nature is so complex and mysterious—and, god willing, profoundly fluid.

One of the people who has switched is Christopher Hitchens, from being a highly intellectual and admitted Troskyite to being, now, arguably, a sort of highly intellectual “neo-con” of (perhaps) the Paul Wolfowitz style.

Although I’m sure Hitchens doesn’t need my sympathies—I always feel a little sorry for him when I see together, simultaneously, an article and a photograph of Hitchens.

Hitchens clearly has an impressive brain—I can sometimes barely follow his syntax, in fact I barely even know what syntax is—but he doesn’t seem to know about, or perhaps care or believe in, the degrading power of endless cigarettes and booze on one’s consciousness, at least as it is explained in Eastern philosophies (the effects on the body—and brain—are well known in the West, of course).

I can’t help but wonder what could have been uncovered with a greater clarity of thought and a consciousness of a gentler sort.

Or perhaps, in the mystery of it all, Christopher couldn’t have functioned without them. He’s got plenty of reknowned company. To be human, it seems, is to have vices—beginning with breathing.

Irving Kristol, sometimes called the “godfather of neoconservatism,” was also an admitted Trotskyist.

According to neo-conservative Seymour Martin Lipset (I don’t know who he is):

From the anti-Stalinists [but Communists] who became conservatives—including James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Irving Kristol—the Right gained a political education and, in some cases, an injection of passion.

The ex-radicals! [my italics and exclamation mark at the term "ex"] brought with them the knowledge that ideological movements must have journals and magazines to articulate their perspectives. In 1955, for example, William F. Buckley, Jr., launched National Review at the urging of Willi Schlamm, a former German Communist.

In its early years, National Review was largely written and edited by the Buckley family and a handful of former Communists, Trotskyists, and socialists, such as Burnham and Chambers.

It played a major role in creating the Goldwaterite and Reaganite New Right and in stimulating an anti-Soviet foreign policy.

Irving Kristol is also the father of William Kristol, who is chairman of the always bubbly neo-conservative think tank Project for the New American Century.

The other is Arianna Huffington. I don’t know much about her, except her Huffington Post is an incredibly huge and popular blog of famous liberals (for lack of some other meaningless label).

She was also married to ultra rich Republican Michael Huffington, who had a seat in the US House of Representatives and who, at some point, admitted to being homosexual.

By Arianna’s own admission, she is a “former right-winger who has evolved into a compassionate and progressive populist.”

Instinctually, the two stances seem quite similar in terms of intensity—sort of smart, “pull up your boot straps conservatism” to smart, “some people need some help pulling up their boot straps” liberalism.

But who knows the inner workings of anybody?

Anyway, there must be countless people, but it seems at least anecdotally interesting that the switches so resemble the previous “ideology” in terms of temperament.

Please excuse my use of labels. I find them largely useless—perhaps less so and more telling for those who use them to label themselves—but I thought the process of switching to be at least thought provoking, without any clear conclusion on how or why it happens.

May we all convert to a more loving, humorous, humble, generous and worldcentric stance on life…

I know, I know, but love more anyway…

Petex

Good news and bad news.

The good news is that Uganda Rising was fortunate enough to win another award, the SEEDS OF WAR award, for films that “lay bare the seeds and mechanisms that create war…” at Durham, North Carolina’s Full Frame Film Festival.

Uganda Rising shared the award with the Devil Came on Horseback—a film I haven’t seen—but a film that reminds us of the tragedy in Darfur.

From the website:

THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK [exposes] the violence and tragedy of the genocide in Darfur…through the eyes of a lone American witness…US Marine Captain Brian Steidle during his role as a military observer with the African Union…

[The] film bears witness to unmentionable atrocities, celebrates the courage of a refugee community desperately trying to survive, while posing the question:  Why has the West not taken more urgent action to stop genocide this time?

We are grateful (the co-op that is Uganda Rising!), and hopeful more people will be aware of the plight of the Northern Ugandans and those in Darfur (Sudan borders Northern Uganda), and all people in distress.

More good news. The Northern Ugandan peace talks are staggering back to the table of broken human beings, but staggering back nonetheless—and it seems that when the talks are on, violence lessens and people begin to trust and relax again, and consider more deeply what could be, and simple and obvious things like tilling the land again.

The very bad news.

In the film we write:

Without access to farmland, the Acholi people are dependent on the World Food Program for survival. But the World Food Program is unable to get the Ugandan military to guarantee protection or commit to a schedule for the delivery of food.

PEDRO AMOLAT (World Food Program)
It is frustrating on our part because we don’t want our food to be delayed. Sometimes the average of five or six times in a month. So you can just imagine. People have to suffer unnecessarily. That means that people have to be hungry for several days.

Of the thirty countries worldwide in which the World Food Program operates, it is only in Northern Uganda that a military escort is required.

PEDRO AMOLAT (World Food Program)
In other countries you could negotiate your safe passage. Here it’s a different ball game. But we are also hoping the LRA won’t ambush us on the roads because if they really want to create problems for us, they can do so.

So the problems and roadblocks are huge—and yesterday in the news…

An excerpt:

KAMPALA, April 18 (Reuters) – The United Nations World Food programme (WFP) has said a shortage of donations has forced it to cut food rations for more than a million people uprooted by a vicious two-decade rebellion in northern Uganda.

The WFP provides emergency food to 1.3 million people displaced by fighting between the government and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels. Many are unable to till fields around their camps for fear of attack by marauding guerrillas.

“In April, WFP was forced to reduce the individual food aid package for (all of) the displaced to just 40 percent of the minimum daily energy requirement,” the WFP said in a statement late on Tuesday.

Emergency coordinator for Ugandan refugees Matthew McIvenna outlined a range of problems if the current level of rations persisted.

“Malnutrition figures, particularly the under-5s, would begin to deteriorate,” he told Reuters. “They would have to find alternatives. They could be forced into areas that aren’t safe.”

Read the entire article here.

I’m not sure what to do about it, but to try to appeal to those who can do something, anything. Do what you can to spread the word towards people who have power in places of influence—vague, but what else?

The good news is countries are starting to step up, Canada and Germany for example.

Thank you!

Is that American war in Iraq not a spiritual, physical and monetary heartbreaker, in every possible way?

May the balance be made up in Uganda, may the children eat, may hope walk on. If there are any congress people, representatives, politicians you can contact in any way, I would say it’s worth doing—just in case they haven’t heard, just in case they would or could do something.

From Uganda Rising:

So while all forms of terror bludgeon the human spirit, they also recall our mutual humanity, and can motivate an individual or group of human beings to act with remarkable compassion.

If the deeper roots of this conflict are racism, religious domination or the continued scramble for African natural resources, one can begin to see just how much compassion and strength it will take to stand up for the children of Northern Uganda.

What would it take to live as if neighbors, strangers—even enemies—are brothers and sisters? to always protect women and children? And to stand in the onslaught of every moment for something more beautiful than what we now believe in.

Supposedly more funds are due to the World Food Program in June. It’s the interim space that needs to be filled. I’ll try to find out from people smarter than myself what can be done individually and collectively in the meantime.

I wish you and all our sisters and brothers love, love, love—and food,

Pete

The great multinationals are unwilling to face the moral and economic contradictions of their own behavior—producing in low-wage dictatorships and selling to high-wage democracies. Indeed, the striking quality about global enterprises is how easily free-market capitalism puts aside its supposed values in order to do business. The conditions of human freedom do not matter to them so long as the market demand is robust. The absence of freedom, if anything, lends order and efficiency to their operations.

—William Greider

Two thick yet interesting pieces of writing that I happened to read today, from two well-known writers that, ironically, I didn’t know.

I am constantly amazed by how many countless people—friends, thinkers, scholars, dreamers—have profoundly intelligent and courageous views on the world and yet how little we still know about the human condition, human nature—or at least how impotent we are as a group to collectively make things more beautiful, more just, more loving.

By courageous, I mean they speak of the entire world, as if we are sisters and brothers.

There must be, I sometimes think, something to this impotency; part of the journey of being human, of learning to stand in and with this vast network of life, unsure of what one can do or should do, if there even are such absolutes, and yet seeing the wonder of it all, the beauty of it all.

Anyway, if you’re in the mood for a little mind stuff, the interview and the essay detail (with no connection to each other) the change in the collective thought process in America (up to but mostly) after World War II with respect to History and Economics.

Economic historian Philip Mirowski talks of the arising in economics of the neoliberal ideas of a system that supposedly transcends human nature—creating, in a way, the untouchable market, which has a life all its own.

The history piece was written by Walter Karp, a 1980’s article for Harper’s about the watering down of American history in the form of ignoring the politics of history (which is vital to understanding) and pushing on defenseless students—as we all remember, even here in Canada—the dreaded and boring Social Studies.

Called Textbook America: The Teaching of History, here is an excerpt from Karp:

Subverting the Threat of Real Political History

The most popular textbook of the period was American History, by David Saville Muzzey, first published in 1911. It was the antithesis of “industrial education” in every respect, since the grand lesson of Muzzey’s text was that politics matters greatly, and matters to every citizen.

Muzzey’s readers learned, first and foremost, that the actions of people made American history and that the high and the mighty, in fact, have power—a liberating truth in itself.
Moreover, the powerful bore constant watching, for villainy was not unknown in high places.

In Muzzey’s history President Polk, for one, was a bastard who instigated an unjust war with Mexico in order to grab some territory. Readers of Muzzey learned that democracy in America, too, bore watching. Indeed, Muzzey’s history of America is largely the history of the vicissitudes of democracy.

A Yankee Republican of the old school, Muzzey seems to have viewed all modern life as one giant menace to liberty and self-government. The major problem of the age, he warned young readers, was “the corruption of the government by the money power.” American democracy needed defending, and it had nothing to do with industrial cooperation.

Muzzey’s most successful rival was Willis Mason West, whose textbook American History and Government, published in 1913, seems to have been a rejoinder to Muzzey’s. Whereas the latter thought democracy in America had gone from a Golden Age to the dogs, West, more a man of the Left, commenced his history with the bold assertion that “democracy has as yet been tried only imperfectly among us.”

Politically divergent though they were, the two leading texts agreed on the main point. American history was essentially political history, and the dramatic theme of that history, the impulse of political life and the catalyst of action, was the struggle over democracy itself.

While texts such as these were circulating, (often in watered-down revisions), the educational leaders seem to have bided their time until they were powerful enough to eliminate from the curriculum history lessons so inconducive to “social efficiency” and so unlikely to “accommodate youngsters to existing conditions.”

All through the post-Versailles [1919] years the nascent educational establishment, backed by state legislators, strengthened its hold on the public schools and on the schools that train public-school teachers.

During those years the number of local school districts was cut from 120,000 to less than half that number. State educational commissions were established to reduce still further the formal autonomy of the remaining districts.

By a dozen different devices—licensing laws, state guidelines, and so on—control of the curriculum passed completely out of the hands of citizens and into the grip of an increasingly tight-knit, ingrown professional oligarchy.

All it needed to emasculate the lingering “Hundred Flowers” tradition was a sharp change in the political atmosphere.

[Karp describes the "Hundred Flowers" tradition: "Traditional modes of thought, the absence of an educational oligarchy, and the middle-class political revolt combined to produce a surprising result.

Although the new "industrial" pedagogy made rapid headway, America's schools, despite the united urging of big businessmen, trade unions, and leading politicians, refused to let go of history.

Instead they fortified the curriculum with the only American history texts ever used that were not intended to corrupt future citizens.

These texts flourished in the years between 1910 and 1930, which FitzGerald terms the "Hundred Flowers" era of American history texts. Written by trained historians, representing diverse points of view, the new texts, born of the Progressive revolt, were intensely political and remarkably free of cant.

Their virtues are well worth noting, because eliminating those virtues was to be the immediate task of the educational establishment, which had to put off for another generation the extinction of political history."]

With the outbreak of World War II, the oligarchy struck at once, and the tradition, FitzGerald says, came “abruptly” to an end. For the next twenty-five years every new textbook used in the schools was written on the assumption that its readers were potential subversives.

In the new textbooks, which soon swept the country, political history became a hollow and meaningless form. Politics was reduced to acts of government, and villainy in high places vanished from the past.

All American wars were now righteous and all American Presidents virtuous men who did, FitzGerald writes, “as well as could be expected given difficult circumstances.”

Imperialism, a term freely applied in the earlier texts to America’s seizure of the Philippines, was now reserved exclusively for overseas ne’er-do-wells. Jingo nationalism, refreshingly absent in the “Hundred Flowers” era, pulsated through every page of the new propaganda texts.

The full article is here.

The second article is an interview in Challenge Magazine with economic historian Philip Mirowski (Machine Dreams). Entitled A Revisionist’s View of the History of Economic Thought, here is an excerpt:

Question: In one of your recent books, you write, “I find it hard to understand economics as anything other than a subset of moral philosophy.� What do you mean by that?

Mirowski: I mean that to a large degree, orthodox economics has been developed to mimic our dominant theories of nature [my italics—I found that suddenly enlightening and simultaneously obvious—nature being something more and more distant (like a distant God, and so it goes with the "Market"].

And a lot of thinking concerning morality has to do with what some think is the relationship between nature and society or, similarly, the individual and the collective.

For example, is morality based on a natural law, independent of time and place?

Is morality rooted in human nature?

The notion that economics has at some juncture ascended to the status of a neutral natural science, just telling it like it is, and has managed to transcend its inherent moralizing tendencies that date from earliest classical political economy, seems to me about as plausible as the notion that canned statistical packages loaded on personal computers make their users objective and impartial empiricists.

Question: Where does orthodox economics fit in that?

Mirowski: Just after World War II, many American economists took the position that neoclassical economics fostered a separation of facts, or theories, from values, so that a body of neutral doctrine existed independent of the moral or ethical inclinations of the individual economist.

I have written recently about how Milton Friedman’s methodology essays promoted this idea, which made a mockery of the actual historical sequence of events whereby the Chicago School became established.

But his political opponents, such as Paul Samuelson, also partook of this credo, and a version of it spread it to subsequent generations through their textbooks.

They were all essentially united in maintaining a version of moral philosophy that had no grounding in their actual practices, as philosophers such as Hilary Putnam, Alistair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor now admit.

One potential explanation for the acceptance of this notion is that these folks subscribed to the ideal of an abstract, amoral, neutral science like physics.

If you believe that, then there must be an abstract, amoral, generic truth in economics that mimics those found in amoral nature. In my view, this notion has turned out to have been an important underlying motivation in the development of Western economics.

Just as water seeks its own level, commodities supposedly seek out their most “efficient� uses.

It’s all a bit heady…but goes on:

Question: Could you explain precisely how neoliberalism in its modern connotation differs from neoclassicism?

Mirowski: Neoclassical economics is the physics-based explanation of the economy we discussed earlier. By itself, it says nothing necessary about the government, or politics in general.

Neoliberalism was a movement to revive pro-market conservatism in the mid-twentieth century when it was at its lowest ebb, in the period just after the Great Depression.

It was superimposed on neoclassical economics. It is crucial to understand that neoliberalism does not necessarily oppose the existence of government.

Neoliberalism frequently seeks to use a strong government to foster the spread of “free market� relations everywhere.

So what that involves, among other things in economics, is portraying other kinds of social relations as though they were virtual market relations. That is where public choice theory and social choice theory enter the picture.

Neoliberalism also propounds that almost all other institutions, including corporations, are virtual markets, in the final analysis.

This helps neoliberals assert that corporations can do no wrong.

Question: But doesn’t neoliberalism generally argue for minimizing government?

Mirowski: That is more characteristic of the older conservatism.

The new liberals, what Europeans call neoliberals today, are quite willing to disparage the government in public, but the litmus test is how they treat concentrations of power in practice.

The classical libertarian sees any concentration of power as a problem for individual freedom, even in markets.

A neoliberal claims that power in the marketplace is generally irrelevant, since if it exists, it is merely the result of consumer choice. So let me give you an example.

A classical libertarian would be in favor of antitrust, since market power can obstruct free-
dom just as drastically as a totalitarian state.

A modern neoliberal would say all monopolies tend to be undone by competition anyway, so don’t worry, be happy.

They might phrase this as the proscription that the state should not interfere, but what they really mean is that the state should use its power in what I would argue is a biased fashion. [my italics]

The full interview is here.

Hope that wasn’t all too much before bed, or with your morning coffee.

Love to you, and to reality—and to think we all may have come out of some sort of magical Big Bang seed (or even before), utterly connected, yet individual, like a billion veins on the leaves from the branches of a giant oak tree, arising from the tiniest of seeds. Or who knows from where else…?

Pete

Okay, look, it’s time to play hardball. That’s right, hardball.

I’ve put the new CD on my website (as opposed to the blog) with a little write up about it. Press here to see very little, microchips being the size that they are.

YET THAT’S NOT ALL

But with my other two CDs, recorded just before the last ice age, I only put up 8 of the 11 songs on Trust, and I only put up 5 of the 10 on Breathe, as a sort of very cunning teaser to entice the hoardes of fans to buy the CD in some sort of compulsive frenzy.

The problem is, I never got around to selling the CD (or creating a frenzy), so instead I’ve posted all the songs for free. That’s right, free. Notice that cunning business sense? Just download if you feel like it, to create a long term addiction to my business acumen.

And so: AVAILABLE ONLY ON-LINE! THAT’S RIGHT! ONLY ON-LINE!

Press here for TRUST and BREATHE and the newest releases from a Band Of Sea Monkeys.

And read below for trivia. That’s right, trivia.

TRUST

From the Trust CD I put up Waiting, which is a gentle song about waiting for something to shift (like CD sales, for example) while food in the fridge goes bad and the plants all die.

Who hasn’t been there?

Shackled is a sort of Jazz thingamajig to show Shark Attack was no darn fluke, and to prove that the word ‘ante-bellum’ is more pop than previously believed.

Lord, Would It be Enough? is about how nothing ever seems to be enough—in the land of way too much—with a sort of Appalachian twang to go along with it.

BREATHE

Now Breathe, a slightly older CD, proves that I actually used to rock it out and yell things to the crowd like, “Are you guys having fun out there?” and “Thank you, Vancouver!”—that’s right, you heard me, rock and roll before the present-day devotional folk and jazz.

Some People simply shows I was struggling with mental illness during my 20s—neon Jesus signs and so on.

Flowers incorporates bits of a Yeats poem on the way out and a bridge about being Amish.

Yeah rocks pretty good for a young kid with a mullet, showing signs of life, and love, and faith and hope, if the chorus lyrics are anything to go by.

Chesterfields (I Want Her) is a growly rocker and describes, without me aware of it, the potency of karma, and falling for one who, perhaps, is not quite right for another. Paul Hyde sings background vocals on that one.

Orangutan is live off the floor with my pal Marty on guitar, doesn’t rock one iota, and my dear ol’ Nana on the talking intro—”I’ll never Grumble”—when she was a mere 97. She took a break from it all when she was 101.

That’s that. I have no more music to give, although Breathe actually had fifteen songs at one point, which I cut back to ten for the website. Being scared and young, I thought I might never record again, so I put everything on it.

That’s the whole she-bang,

Love to you,

Pete

I just saw the beginning of an interview with former Dominican Priest Matthew Fox, who was expelled by the Catholic Church after an ongoing battle with current Pope Ratzinger (and others), who was then a Cardinal, over theology. Fox is now an Anglican priest.

I read his book Original Blessing when I was in my early twenties, and it really opened up the scope of my exploration—reminding me we are allowed to choose whether we think we are more graced than cursed, and more mystic than protoplasm—for which I am immensely grateful.

Question:

Why do you think Original Sin is so central to so many people’s experience of Christianity?

Matthew Fox:

Well, firstly, the first person to come up with the term was Saint Augustine, 4th century AD. What happened in the 4th century AD? The Church took over the Empire.

So Saint Augustine became the theologian of the Empire. Empires love you to believe in Original Sin, because then you get all pretzeled-up about whether you have a right to be here or not—about whether you’re beautiful or ugly, graced or an abomination.

And so it has served the Empire for centuries.

But all kinds of great thinkers and Saints in the Creation Spiritual tradition have steered away from that concept of original sin.

Such an interesting question and interesting to hear it a day or two after the poem I posted, the cheerily titled Death Will Come, and the line:

Am I guilty of ancient sins on earth
That happened long before my birth?

If so, how and why are people guilty of events that happened before they were born? Does that not hint, almost, if not of some sort of reincarnation, at least the presence of one’s eternal soul playing some sort of eternal role, if this idea is to have anything to do with justice?

But that brings back the wild and wonderful debates of the same period, known as the Eastern heresy, discussing, I think: when does the eternal soul come into existence?—if it exists at all—and reincarnation and other ideas that are so abhored in the Western end-of-world traditions of the modern era, specifically Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

Or have I danced, life by life
Desire bound through love and strife?
Or am I simply mud and breath
Conception born and dust at death?
Look, let’s just start with what we know
We arrive, we eat, we think, we grow
But then we’re back to death alas
This mystery sure kicks my ass

I sure don’t know, but lots of love to you and all of us. May your day be filled with inspiration, wonder, joy (ananda), and love,

Pete