It astounds me when I deeply consider the food that enters a being and, through a series of mind-blowing (and organ-working) processes, sustains that being, becomes that being, literally—minus the waste, of course.

Actually, waste has also been an utterly integral aspect of life’s continuation, since, they say, blue-green algae produced oxygen (I think) as a waste, and changed the world to eventually include Reality TV, Cheetos and the Magna Carta.

Oh yeah, and love and kindness…

And to think billions of other “beings” in our body are doing most of the digestive work, and living on their share (and we don’t even say hello at the table).

How’d they get there? Migration? Invasion? Have I been colon-ized?

Ha ha, make him stop! Oh my sides.

And then to consider what our organs do to process this literal “energy” that doesn’t seem to even move on the kitchen counter.

Imagine if a carrot or a chicken could just stand up and say:

Hey, Jackass, tomorrow when you feel strong enough to walk, talk, play and forget about me…? That’s because of me. Okay? My death gave you that little extra jump on the day.

So PS: F%*k you for forgetting.

I don’t know, maybe a carrot wouldn’t swear. I was sort of imagining a carrot with a neo-cortex.

But it’s so amazing how little is said, felt and offered on behalf of the whole process unfolding—not to mention the intelligence behind it all in the first place. The universe must have an IQ of at least, what, 140, 145…?

1+1=one incomprehensible miracle…

Why on earth did it all arise this way, with whatever I am getting a shot at humanness?

Anyway, I don’t know enough about it, but with so much access to food, all the time, it’s so human to forget the relationship, to be fed, the ongoing love of that, the utter dependency we have on our next of little kin, be they plant, animal or mineral (or whatever the hell’s in a marshmallow or Cheese-Whiz).

And thus, like all good and essential miracles, certain beings with certain minds justify turning themselves into a sort of drug pusher, as if food is the ultimate addiction (which, ater breathing, perhaps it is).

In other words, certain Corporations—by the corporation’s raison d’etre—desire to control this earth given substance, the existential yet very tangible miracle that is food.

This control isn’t a conspiracy per se (although it can be, as in the tobacco industry, who profoundly conspired in 1953 to dupe the government, the medical world and the consumer).

It’s called profit and marketshare, and it is the exalted spiritual medium of our modern day world.

The process can get exceedingly unpalatable.

There is no “substantial” reason, for example, why sisters and brothers should starve—given the incredible amount of food produced every day.

I won’t give any stats today, for once, because I am a professional blogger: witty, concise and unemployed.

BUT BACK TO MONSANTO ETC

That humans do starve, though, all over the world, must at least be a subconscious clue to Corporate food producers that humans will not gather in sufficient solidarity to utterly decry and beg and fight to stop the starvation of their sisters and brothers (again given there is enough food for everyone on the planet, all the time).

This must further suggest to these Corporations (from Corpus, perhaps, meaning body, ironically) and their PR firms and lawyers and accountants that humans will not, for some strange reason, gather in sufficient solidarity to stop a few Huge Transnational Corporations from controlling all the outlets, and the quality.

These Corporations who, again, by their inherent raison d’etre, care not a wit about the best possible health for people or the planet, the gift of breastfeeding, the relationship between land, air, water and species, between a human and their food, indigenous ideas, compassion etc.

And so the human relationship with food is up for grabs (barely) as the ownership, production, distribution and selling of food becomes more and more concentrated—unlike the vitality and health content of the food.

Even if we forget the miracle of food in the moment of consumption, there’s another chance to remember when we shop, in what we’re buying.

Money speaks to the language of profit (known as “Profitish”, as spoken by the “Profitese”).

We can therfore strive with our hearts and brains to not support the unsupportable, to not sustain the unsustainable.

We are living, breathing, mysterious, inexplicable miracles, for the love of god, in relationshiop with ourselves and all that surrounds us. If you don’t believe me, put a pillow on your face and then get a large friend to sit on it.

You’ll be crying out (assuming you can push your friend off): “I get it! Relationship!” in about 48 seconds.

A short sort of primer, 6 minute video on a few ideas—genetically modified food, farmers, corporations, seeds, food, human rights—featuring Paul Hawken, Fritjof Capra and the indominatable Vandana Shiva…

Press here, and may I live in the deepest thanks for the miracle of food, in its most primordial sense, that lets me breathe, write, dream, exist, love, love, and try to love more, in this temporary being called Pete…

Love and health to you and yours,

Pete

I recently saw two films about, well, foremost, human beings, and secondly, the prison system.

After Inncocence, based on The Innocence Project, is about the journey of wrongfully imprisoned people; the second, a PBS film called Omar and Pete, is about two former criminals adjusting to life after prison.

Both films are so, so worth witnessing, considering and absorbing into one’s being, to try and feel the extreme difficulties and complexities of being human, the criminal justice system, how we all treat each other; about fear, justice and hypocrisy—and hope.

After Innocence is moving, revealing and disturbing—and beautifully told, too. And necessary. What happens to the people in the film is one of an average person’s worst nightmares.

And given that fact, one might ask, what does it say about the prison system in terms of inner-safety, rehabilitaion, reintroduction into society?

I don’t have any answers, but how could something so terrifying, due to its brutality, improve a person, except out of sheer terror?

Assuming, of course, “improvement” is what is desired by the “state.”

It is difficult to forget what Nixon’s Chief of Staff H R Haldeman allegedly wrote in his diaries:

[President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.

From the After Innocence website:

After Innocence tells the dramatic and compelling story of the exonerated – innocent men wrongfully imprisoned for decades and then released after DNA evidence proved their innocence.

The film focuses on the gripping story of seven men and their emotional journey back into society and efforts to rebuild their lives. Included are a police officer, an army sergeant and a young father sent to prison and even death row for decades for crimes they did not commit.

The men are thrust back into society with little or no support from the system that put them behind bars. While the public views exonerations as success stories—wrongs that have been righted—After Innocence shows that the human toll of wrongful imprisonment can last far longer than the sentences served.

The film raises basic questions about human rights and society’s moral obligation to the innocent and places a spotlight on the flaws in our criminal justice system that lead to wrongful conviction of the innocent.

Press here to read more.

The State, as difficult as that term is to pin down, is a disconcerting thing, with brutal potential, as we can all attest by considering Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and China etc (and maybe the US etc, to, say, blacks and other historically marginalised groups and foreign countries that have felt US military prowess).

In 1935, American A J Nock asked the following questions about the US—and they remain profoundly difficult to answer:

It appears to me that with the depletion of social power going on at the rate it is, the State-citizen should look very closely into the essential nature of the institution that is bringing it about.

He should ask himself whether he has a theory of the State, and if so, whether he can assure himself that history supports it.

He will not find this a matter that can be settled offhand; it needs a good deal of investigation, and a stiff exercise of reflective thought.

He should ask, in the first place, how the State originated, and why; it must have come about somehow, and for some purpose.

This seems an extremely easy question to answer, but he will not find it so.

Then he should ask what it is that history exhibits continuously as the State’s primary function.

Then, whether he finds that “the State” and “government” are strictly synonymous terms; he uses them as such, but are they?

Are there any invariable characteristic marks that differentiate the institution of government from the institution of the State?

Then finally he should decide whether, by the testimony of history, the State is to be regarded as, in essence, a social or an anti-social institution?

Further, one could ask: what is the “State’s” relationship to human evolution and human nature? What is in our control and what is not?

Evolutionary Biologist Robert Sapolsky, when asked: “What are our [humans] biggest misconceptions about ourselves…?”—replied:

Well, the self-serving answer I’d have to come up with is [the misconception] that our cultures and civilizations have gotten us to the point where we are free of our biology.

In my much-less-than-learned experience, I would imagine that incarceration in so many prison “compounds/intensifies/exaggerates” our biology—as does perhaps all brutality on a gradient—in the thickest Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest sense.

AT THE UTTER RISK OF BEING LAUGHED AT, MAY I ASK…

Why are we so damn sure of how another person—good or bad, so-called—should be treated?

Is it out of fear? Rationality? Cruelty? Pragmatism? Love?

In the debate—be it judicial, philosophical, pragmatic or spiritual—are we called to ask:

Who am I? (and thus you)? What does it mean to be human?

Are we as a species interconnected in any real sense? Or are we just black or white, rich or poor, liberal or conservative, straight or gay, atheist or religious etc., or any other self imposed, temporary, limited constructs?

Is there a deeper self?

Is a person really their uniform or their label or are we what we say and do—or are we even more than that?

Is their a price for our actions? Not just incarceration, but how the incarcerated are treated? Does that come back to haunt us (when I say us, I mean everyone)? How we respond to this social emergency? How we see each other?

Is what we believe in and are practicing now sustainable at all for the next generation? Or for seven generations? Beyond that?

Can we imagine a world beyond our obsession with the coming apocolypse? Is there reason too?

Are we some old Cartesian theory that approves beating the shit out of sisters and brothers—ourselves ultimately—because we see no “ghost in the machine”? Because we can’t see each other in an expanded way, beyond our limited constructs?

Do we live an eye-for-an-eye, or can we think beyond the reactive, gross response of our animal senses that barely know more than survival, more than dog fighting and killing, punishment and degradation?

Finally, can we understand anything or do anything sustainable and good for all beings without really listening?

What does it mean to listen?

Sorry, what did you say?

CHALLENGING HYPOCRISY AND FEAR

Two million, two hundred thousand Americans are in prison today—tens of thousands allegedly for marijuana. A child’s mind boggles contrasting the illegalities of marijuana to the legalities of 7 Big Tobacco CEOs saying under oath that cigarettes are not addictive and the statistically known negative-effects of alcohol:

By 1997, the latest year for which nationwide figures are available…The percentage of state and federal prisoners reporting alcohol use at the time of their offense also rose during this period, from 32 to 37 percent for state prisoners and from 11 to 20 percent for federal prisoners.

Additionally, these numbers reflect only self-reported substance abuse, which might tend to underestimate the true magnitude of the problem. Firm numbers are hard to find because of the difficulty in studying illicit behavior, but the National Institute of Justice, the research division of the US Department of Justice, has estimated that as many as 80 percent of prisoners, probationers and parolees have drug- or alcohol-related problems.

Read the PBS article Addicts Behind Bars here.

One of the wonderful lawyers in the After Innocence film—I can’t find his name—said this:

It’s not just about exonerating the innocent. It’s also about reforming all of criminal justice, because once you implement all these reforms, you’ve actually shifted the paradigm—the paradigm we’ve lived with now for forty years is one based on the presumption of guilt.

And it returns it to one based on innocence, at least until or unless proven guilty. And also one that understands just how vulnerable our criminal justice system is, just how easy it is for truly innocent people to be wrongly convicted.

The stories of all of the men are touching and disturbing. I have to put their names here just to say: they have names.

Dennis Maher of Lowell, MA

Herman Atkins of Los Angeles, CA.

Click here to read about them—it will move you.

Click here to read, understand or do more; with links to the The Life After Exoneration Program (LAEP), The Innocence Project and the Jennifer Thompson-Canin, Activist Against Eyewitness Mistaken Identification.

THE ENDLESS CHALLENGE OF BEING (A BETTER, STRONGER) HUMAN

In my trying to understand at least a certain pointless cruelty, and soul-crushing degradation inherent in such excessive incarceration (by far the highest in the world) as it relates to the War On Drugs in America, and War On Drugs-Lite version in Canada (where over 70% of the Federal budget for the Canadian War On Drugs goes into law enforcement), I was thinking about non-violent drug users who end up in prison—whose crime was using, in some ways, an abitrarily illicit substance.

One conversation in the film (of many) stuck out:

Warwick, Rhode Island police officer Scott Hornoff was released after 6 1/2 years of wrongful imprisonment for murder (the murderer, out of remorse, confessed). He had been incarcerated at the Department of Corrections, Maximum Security.

A conversation with A.T. Wall. The Director of the Department of Corrections, was revealing.

I have worked with thousands of offenders and I know it’s not so easy to get on with your life. I could see it with Scott. This is a guy who never belonged here in the first place. And I felt some obligation to try and help him out, and that’s where the friendship took root.

Scott says:

This place [prison] does change people.

Wall:

You were our test case because the question had always been: “When somebody has difficulty adjusting to life after prison, is it because of the problems they had before they came to prison or is it the experience of prison itself?”

And your case suggests the experience itself takes a toll. That’s sobering.

It’s painful to hear that Scott’s experience is, within the institution, “sobering.” Who couldn’t imagine the brutal effects of caging together often violent, uneducated and mentally ill people?

Heck, spending time in a hockey locker room shrinks a man’s consciousness.

Scott:

Innocent or guilty, people are people and I’ve definitely earned a lot from being on that side…

I was told a the facility I was at for 5 1/2 years, their job was to break everybody. To break their spirit. It wasn’t rehabilitation. There weren’t really any opportunities for people to turn themselves around or prepare themselves for reintegration.

This theme is evident throughout the film and in endless amounts of literature. Indeed, the UN (and I believe others) have attacked certain prisons in America for human rights violations.

In at least one case in the film, confessions were literally brought about by “torture.� I put the quotations on the word because that is the word that was used, and had to do with his release.

Omar and Pete follows the lives of two men who have spent much of their lives in prison, and what happens after their release from prison for crimes they did commit.

The Oscar-nominated filmmaker Tod Lending intentionally chose Baltimore because it is known to have a relatively comprehensive program for prisoners.

The film is, of course, both wonderfully revealing and heartbreaking. Lending seeks emotional impact by showing more than telling – I could learn a lot from Tod – but he tells an awful lot with what he shows.

There are, for the record, some wonderful people working in Baltimore trying to help these ex-prisoners out.

From the website:

With extraordinary cooperation from the Maryland Department of Corrections (MDOC), as well as from the subjects themselves—Leon “Omar” Mason and William “Pete” Duncan—Lending has crafted an intimate portrait of two men, battered but not beaten after lifetimes of crime and prison, seeking the inner strength to turn their lives around.

“Omar & Pete” also provides an insider’s view of innovative efforts in Maryland, and nationally through such organizations as Outreach Extensions, to build the social and community support that will allow more Omars and Petes to succeed.

But the reality in “Omar & Pete” is as stark as the one facing the film’s subjects: without that inner strength, support systems are of little avail.

Read the synopsis here.

I am reminded of India (and other countries), who have their so-called untouchables—a despicable cultural cancer, from my point of view.

The West has its drug-addicts, the mentally ill, ex-cons, ex-drug addicts and so many others who are, in so many ways—if not always legally then in spirit, and often legally—persona non grata untouchables.

Ghandi once said:

The best test of a civilised society is the way in which it treats its most vulnerable and weakest members.

Jesus once said:

Whatever you do unto the littlest [and sometimes the meanest] of mine, you do unto me.

None of this excludes discernment, but it certainly needs to include more compassion, less hypocrisy and the willingness to see ourselves in the “other.�

That said, how does one institutionalize love?

Answers are hard to come by, obviously, but to look and look again, and listen and then listen more, seems to me at least a path that leads towards acknowledging the miracle of relationship, of sister and brotherhood, in a temporary world.

Please forgive my ignorance, which is vast.

Lots of love to you and yours. May we all be a little more free and bold, compassionate and discerning,

Pete xo

The secret of death-defying poetry is that poetry is death-defying, so keep writing, you maniac of love.

The bhakti yogis of India say (or maybe it was Yogi Bear)…or was it Yogi Barely? No, no, Yogi Bear, after an intense hibernation in a cave (and this is no Boo-boo), wrote with his paw (which makes it pawetry):

If you’re not writing poetry, you’re just not getting it.

Okay, I’m paraphrasing—but wait, I’ve uncovered a riddle:

If you’re not writing poetry, you’re just not getting it
If you’re just not getting it, just write poetry.

And why stop now?

The great historian Will Durant and his wife Ariel—both of whom studied under Yogi Bear until they could no longer bear the weight—penned countless massively wonderful books (nearly twice the length of my blogs).

One of the classics Will actually wrote on his own is called Our Occidental Heritage—which is surprisingly close to Our Accidental Heritage, and that too makes sense.

On page 403, I think, he writes:

A nation, like an individual, begins with poetry, and ends with prose.

If that is true, I recommend one thing: keep writing!

And so, another poem from ol’ Petie. I love you.

Caught in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam on the freeway yesterday, somewhere around Chilliwack, coming home from a family reunion, I got to listen to the wonderful Mary Hynes on Tapestry.

Mary was interviewing Francis Collins, the exuberant co-director of the Human Genome Project and also an evangelical Christian, which verges on oxymoronic.

It was instructive to listen to him talk about evolution and faith, and Mary Hynes’ enthusiasm is always contagious. Although for reasons that will be revealed in a future blog, I didn’t hear everything they said because I was diligently counting cows off the freeway.

During the conversation, I actually felt a little sorry for Richard Dawkins, with whom Collins has previously debated.

Why sorry?

Well, not sorry, because he sure gets heard, just…I’m not sure why.

But in a scientific argument, as soon as one says—in this case, Francis Collins—that miracles are absolutely possible once one decides that a Creator lives (in this case Jesus Christ) absolutely, beyond this world, the conversation is in trouble.

Poor Dawkins, rightly, can only throw his hands in the air in despair and cry out to his best friends—spiritual adepts Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens—and billions of others:

“Well, this conversation is now nearly pointless, if not completely down the crapper, in terms of evidence and science!”

And either way, as is often the case, with the Collins/Hynes talk about the debate between science and religion, the concept of “God” is unconsciously colonized by the omission of the East’s wisdom (and madness) and indigenous folks’ stories in general, as if they don’t really exist.

Why does this happen?

Is it because of a grand yet unconscious prejudice against pygmies who wear no clothes?

Perhaps.

Or could it be because indigenous folks talked to nature and didn’t care as much about property, ownership, clergy, and the endless prodding and pillaging of the earth to find out how a rodent sweats…?

And yes, Mr Limbaugh, I concede they had their problems, too.

Is this omission an intelligent choice if one truly wants to debate between science and religion?

In the cosmological picture, it was those half-naked meditating Hindu (so-called) yogis, after all, who said we’re all energy (except the soul) and the universe is billions, if not trillions, of years old.

And yes, Mr Limbaugh, I concede they had their problems, too.

Ah, what do I know? My lower back is killing me.

But speaking of evidence or lack there of, take a read of this article from Nexus Magazine (June/July 2007) by Tony Bushby, entitled The Forged Origins of The New Testament, with the by-line:

In the fourth century, the Roman Emperor Constantine united all religious factions under one composite deity, and ordered the compilation of new and old writings into a uniform collection that became the New Testament.

I have no idea about the references of this article—though it is referenced—but I found it intriguing and a mind puller, at the least.

Some of my wonderful religious (and/or just skeptical) friends may find it otherwise, frustratingly so or angrily so, depending on their beliefs and the ability to follow the references to the source—but they may find it invigorating, too.

And I somehow get the feeling the writer, in that human way, is deeply selective with his findings.

Either way, feel free to lambaste the article with the promised fury of Hell, discount it with facts, or liberally use the word bogus without any useful refutation whatsoever—or even mumble to yourself: “I knew something was askew…”

As for me, well, life is so incredibly mysterious, and we clearly build it up, story upon story, until we’re living on a land fill of the past we call self, we call present, we call the truth.

This goes for the most basic beliefs in my life too.

For instance, for years I believed I was a shoe.

But one must keep doing, because what else can a human do?

And granted, sometimes beautiful things can grow from a land fill—so beautiful we can’t even see the land fill (though the smell tends to linger).

And on top of all that, I, as Pete, am absolutely temporary. How can this be, when I haven’t proven my point yet?

Anyway, an excerpt or two. The article begins:

What the Church doesn’t want you to know

It has often been emphasised that Christianity is unlike any other religion, for it stands or falls by certain events which are alleged to have occurred during a short period of time some 20 centuries ago.

Those stories are presented in the New Testament, and as new evidence is revealed it will become clear that they do not represent historical realities.

The Church agrees, saying: “Our documentary sources of knowledge about the origins of Christianity and its earliest development are chiefly the New Testament Scriptures, the authenticity of which we must, to a great extent, take for granted.”

(Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. iii, p. 712).

According to Bushby:

Constantine’s intention at Nicaea was to create an entirely new god for his empire who would unite all religious factions under one deity.

Presbyters were asked to debate and decide who their new god would be. Delegates argued among themselves, expressing personal motives for inclusion of particular writings that promoted the finer traits of their own special deity.

Throughout the meeting, howling factions were immersed in heated debates, and the names of 53 gods were tabled for discussion.

“As yet, no God had been selected by the council, and so they balloted in order to determine that matter… For one year and five months the balloting lasted…” (God’s Book of Eskra, Prof. S. L. MacGuire’s translation, Salisbury, 1922, chapter xlviii, paragraphs 36, 41).

At the end of that time, Constantine returned to the gathering to discover that the presbyters had not agreed on a new deity but had balloted down to a shortlist of five prospects: Caesar, Krishna, Mithra, Horus and Zeus (Historia Ecclesiastica, Eusebius, c. 325).

Constantine was the ruling spirit at Nicaea and he ultimately decided upon a new god for them.

To involve British factions, he ruled that the name of the great Druid god, Hesus, be joined with the Eastern Saviour-god, Krishna (Krishna is Sanskrit for Christ), and thus Hesus Krishna would be the official name of the new Roman god.

A vote was taken and it was with a majority show of hands (161 votes to 157) that both divinities became one God.

Following longstanding heathen custom, Constantine used the official gathering and the Roman apotheosis decree to legally deify two deities as one, and did so by democratic consent.

A new god was proclaimed and “officially” ratified by Constantine (Acta Concilii Nicaeni, 1618). That purely political act of deification effectively and legally placed Hesus and Krishna among the Roman gods as one individual composite.

That abstraction lent Earthly existence to amalgamated doctrines for the Empire’s new religion; and because there was no letter “J” in alphabets until around the ninth century, the name subsequently evolved into “Jesus Christ”.

How Bushby concluded this amalgamation of gods with such certainty, I am not sure. Clearly the discussion of those five names at the meeting—Caesar, Krishna, Mithra, Horus and Zeus—would have to be confirmed, to say the least.

Unfortunatley, I can’t seem to find my dog-eared paperback version of Eusibius’ Historia Ecclesiastica from 325 AD, anywhere. If I left it at the beach house, I am going to be furious with myself.

And wouldn’t you know it, I also have Pope Ratzinger’s cell number scribbled in the inside sleeve.

Anybody check-referenced Bushby’s claim?

I have traditionally heard the agenda of the council was to discuss the Arian controversy, debate reincarnation, figure out what to do with heretics, decide whether the communion biscuit should be whole wheat flour or enriched white and, finally, kiss Constantine’s ass as many times as possible, without being labeled by your religious peers as a “degenerate fat kinky bastard”—or worse, a pagan.

Bushby continues his complete drubbing of the legend of the Councils of Nicaea (Wikipedia’s First Council of Nicaea, for the record, takes a far less ecumenical view of the proceedings):

It was at that puerile [immature, silly] assembly, and with so many cults represented, that a total of 318 “bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, acolytes and exorcists” gathered to debate and decide upon a unified belief system that encompassed only one god (An Apology for Christianity, op. cit.).

By this time, a huge assortment of “wild texts” (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Edition, “Gospel and Gospels”) circulated amongst presbyters and they supported a great variety of Eastern and Western gods and goddesses: Jove, Jupiter, Salenus, Baal, Thor, Gade, Apollo, Juno, Aries, Taurus, Minerva, Rhets, Mithra, Theo, Fragapatti, Atys, Durga, Indra, Neptune, Vulcan, Kriste, Agni, Croesus, Pelides, Huit, Hermes, Thulis, Thammus, Eguptus, Iao, Aph, Saturn, Gitchens, Minos, Maximo, Hecla and Phernes (God’s Book of Eskra, anon., ch. xlviii, paragraph 36).

Constantine, who also for awhile believed he was a shoe, was attempting to bring these fractions together, to make his life easier as Boss Of Most Of The World, But Without Internet Access…

“Make them [the gospels] to astonish” said Constantine, and “the books were written accordingly” (Life of Constantine, vol. iv, pp. 36-39).

Eusebius amalgamated the “legendary tales of all the religious doctrines of the world together as one”, using the standard god-myths from the presbyters’ manuscripts as his exemplars.

Merging the supernatural “god” stories of Mithra and Krishna with British Culdean beliefs effectively joined the orations of Eastern and Western presbyters together “to form a new universal belief” (ibid.).

Constantine believed that the amalgamated collection of myths would unite variant and opposing religious factions under one representative story.

Eusebius then arranged for scribes to produce “fifty sumptuous copies … to be written on parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient portable form, by professional scribes thoroughly accomplished in their art” (ibid.).

“These orders,” said Eusebius, “were followed by the immediate execution of the work itself … we sent him [Constantine] magnificently and elaborately bound volumes of three-fold and four-fold forms” (Life of Constantine, vol. iv, p. 36).

They were the “New Testimonies”, and this is the first mention (c. 331) of the New Testament in the historical record.

With his instructions fulfilled, Constantine then decreed that the New Testimonies would thereafter be called the “word of the Roman Saviour God” (Life of Constantine, vol. iii, p. 29) and official to all presbyters sermonising in the Roman Empire.

He then ordered earlier presbyterial manuscripts and the records of the council “burnt” and declared that “any man found concealing writings should be stricken off from his shoulders” (beheaded) (ibid.).

As the record shows, presbyterial writings previous to the Council of Nicaea no longer exist, except for some fragments that have survived.

Why is it everybody loves to burn books, when a Presto-log is so much more effective?

One more excerpt, unchecked:

The important question then to ask is this: if the New Testament is not historical, what is it?

Dr Tischendorf provided part of the answer when he said in his 15,000 pages of critical notes on the Sinai Bible that “it seems that the personage of Jesus Christ was made narrator for many religions”.

This explains how narratives from the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, appear verbatim in the Gospels today (e.g., Matt. 1:25, 2:11, 8:1-4, 9:1-8, 9:18-26), and why passages from the Phenomena of the Greek statesman Aratus of Sicyon (271-213 BC) are in the New Testament.

Extracts from the Hymn to Zeus, written by Greek philosopher Cleanthes (c. 331-232 BC), are also found in the Gospels, as are 207 words from the Thais of Menander (c. 343-291), one of the “seven wise men” of Greece.

Quotes from the semi-legendary Greek poet Epimenides (7th or 6th century BC) are applied to the lips of Jesus Christ, and seven passages from the curious Ode of Jupiter (c. 150 BC; author unknown) are reprinted in the New Testament.

Tischendorf’s conclusion also supports Professor Bordeaux’s Vatican findings that reveal the allegory of Jesus Christ derived from the fable of Mithra, the divine son of God (Ahura Mazda) and messiah of the first kings of the Persian Empire around 400 BC.

His birth in a grotto was attended by magi who followed a star from the East. They brought “gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh” (as in Matt. 2:11) and the newborn baby was adored by shepherds. He came into the world wearing the Mithraic cap, which popes imitated in various designs until well into the 15th century.

Mithra, one of a trinity, stood on a rock, the emblem of the foundation of his religion, and was anointed with honey.

After a last supper with Helios and 11 other companions, Mithra was crucified on a cross, bound in linen, placed in a rock tomb and rose on the third day or around 25 March (the full moon at the spring equinox, a time now called Easter after the Babylonian goddess Ishtar).

The fiery destruction of the universe was a major doctrine of Mithrais—a time in which Mithra promised to return in person to Earth and save deserving souls.

Devotees of Mithra partook in a sacred communion banquet of bread and wine, a ceremony that paralleled the Christian Eucharist and preceded it by more than four centuries.

God knows what Francis Collins would make of all of this. It turns out not only humans evolve, but our religious stories evolve. Who woulda thunk? I need something definite, for the love of God!

As for Tony Bushby, at least read the entire article here before shouting jihad or dancing joyously, or collapsing into a hole of unsweetened pudding—or running madly to the Vatican to check the references.

Everybody should have the Catholic Encyclopedia handy, let alone the always accessible God’s Book of Eskra, and 1618’s summer page turner, Acta Concilii Nicaeni.

If you refuse to get through the article out of spite, anger, fear, or a lack of time, you might want to look into that.

And, as I said, as with all such human desires, and one’s desire to make their belief the truth (in this case Tony Bushby’s), one never knows what evidence is left out—and what is left out is almost always significant.

Omission reveals the intention of the writer. Which is why, as you can tell by my infernal blogs, I leave out nothing.

AND BACK TO 9/11 (of course): THE BEAT GOES ON

Interestingly, upon having written about and posted about 9/11, and specifically that talk by the architect, Richard Gage, I received emails and comments about counter-arguments, and pointing to good sites that refute a lot of the ideas that clearly also have significant validity.

I appreciate the 9/11 Truthers determination, and concede they may well be unveiling many interesting possibilities and incongruencies.

However, when one double-checks them with open-mindedness, what they leave out, because it doesn’t suit their ideas, is also frustrating, disturbing and revealing: often outright omissions and absolute contradictions.

But if I dare say, the same can go for the deniers that anything was amiss from the standard record on that awful day.

Anybody who can not admit at least the curiosity and astronomical unlikeliness of three buildings collapsing, and given that only two were hit (granted the third was damaged as photos have shown) could be at least loosely described as stubborn as hell.

And yet, strange things happen.

THERE ARE LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS ( oh yeah, and ECONOMICS, REFERENCES, FOOTNOTES AND PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS)

The truth is, I find it challenging to find human beings who truly look at varying sides and don’t have any intense emotional stake in the final conclusion.

Whey are they who just enjoy the uncovering, the search, while simultaneously caring about the journeys of their brothers and sisters?

Probably in the Amazon, popping ayahuasca.

I think it takes a few personality traits to not care so much. Indeed, I know it does. They are, as follows:

One, you can’t be terrified of dying and thus certain that someone, somewhere is constantly trying to kill you with elastic bands fired from all directions.

Two, you have to find life, ultimately, an incomprehensible mystery that can only be solved by reading Tintin’s On A Marché Sur La Lune (Explorers on the Moon), and eliminating every second letter to see what Hergé was really saying.

Believe you me, it’s not pretty.

Three, you have to have a sense of humour about your own endless stupidity, which is, according to the most recent peer-reviewed studies, endlessly stupid.

Four, you can’t believe any human is so god-like and uber-brilliant that he can control ze vorld (which of course is what he wants you to believe), while the rest of us have no means of even controlling our moods .

Five, you can’t be doing your work predominantly for money, fame or because you have recurring flaring hemmorhoids—which make you believe you hate everything whenever they flare up (if in fact hemmorhoids flare).

Six, you cannot be “absolutely certain” there is a unified theory describing exactly what the hell is going on in the world, and that only you and a few other “associates”—and the cabal that is trying to hunt you down—know what it is.

That’s it, six. A few went missing. These truths were found in an ancient pond now covered in thicket.

OKAY, OKAY

Alas, in this “end of world” zeitgeist—shoved down our throats by religion and scientists—the projections of fellow sisters and brothers seem to me remarkably intense; the conclusions of so many people, god love them, absolutely certain.

And I really do think that believing oneself to be a wild, eternal bursting soul of something or other, first and foremost, might help one not care so much about being right.

But alas again, where’s the proof of that? In the cosmic pudding, of course, which as anyone can tell after a few deep breaths and a super wide grin, is very tasty.

In sum, from the story of Christ to the truth of 9/11 (and the nightly news), human nature reveals itself over and over again. And here we are, oh weary sisters and brothers of considerable beauty, somehow, somewhere, some say, related…

I go for that.

Love way, way, way more,

Pete xox

How about a song? Hmm. Wide Open. Done

Two things:

One, I’m quite shocked and embarrassed how little I know about 78 year old Betty Krawczyk. The amount is nothing, really—and that is shameful.

And lately her name has been spinning around me, mentioned here, passing there. I’m at a family reunion in Kamloops, and lying in bed tonight, I just wanted to know more about Betty.

So I got up in the early hours and read.

Betty is a legendary and incredibly brave protester on behalf of the preservation of things beautiful, like young people’s lives (anti-Vietnam) and the environment (which tends to help young people and old people live).

She is truly heroic—in the same mould as, say, Ghandi (and I’m serious). And for defending her sustainable beliefs in people, non-violently, against the interests of big business, she has been repeatedly imprisoned.

Prison Time Served by Betty for BC Forest Defence (and us):

1994 – Clayoquot Sound – 4.5 months
2000 – Elaho Valley – 8.5 months
2002 – BC Working Forests – 10 days
2004 – Upper Walbran – 9.5 months
2006 – Eagleridge Bluffs – 2 months
2007 – Eagleridge Bluffs – 10 months

It’s shameful. Shameful.

Betty has seven children, and who knows how many grand-children (especially if you include the trees)? She’s in prison. For caring, it seems. For being passionate, it seems.

Geezuz, this “what is a crime?” question with the disgusting, disingenuous War On Drugs research I’ve been doing is really getting to me.

(Yes, that War On Drugs that, it turns out, does not stop drug use, charges the taxpayer to increase incarceration and brutality in a democracy, imprisons or further marginalizes large groups of people (mostly minorities), enriches wildly a small group of people (from the drug cartels to weapons makers) and consciously funds (but the media and politicians don’t really notice) counterinsurgency wars all over the world—a practice now being put to effective use by the Taliban, a group of people no female-loving person can stomach.)

But enough about me.

Now the other thing is this:

My dad gets on these jags that can be frustrating from time to time for the people he satellites, because that could be anybody at anytime. He has said, at different times, that the monetary system/the banking system/the judicial system/losing trial by jury/and the confusion between government and state etc is the root of all our problems.

I say, at different times, “Dad, there were even problems before the monetary/banking system, and there are other problems, and we are a complex and incomprehensible species in an incomprehensible but fascinating universe. I think there is more to it than the banking system.”

But then you read a little about it, and there’s a lot of truth to what he says. Lately a lot of the talk has been about Trial by Jury.

Now one barely, if ever, thinks about trial by jury (or its extinction)—which is no surprise, what with the constantly breaking news of Paris Hilton drinking and driving again (in defense of myself, I know nothing about Paris Hilton, either—although maybe there is nothing to know about Paris Hilton).

Basically, trial by jury is a jury of your peers to decide if what you have done is okay by society (unlike, say, the jury of white “peers” that went up against accused blacks in trials in the South in the 50s, 60s, 70s etc – that’s Jury with Trial).

And unlike trial by judge instead of trial by jury.

Well…how important could this be, right…?

So I’m reading about Betty tonight, it’s now 4:05 am—and so worth it—and I see this excerpt from her blog:

… Recently Mr. Wally Opal [a judge, I believe] on CKNW said that anybody in BC facing prison time could have a jury trial.

But when I called into the program and advised Mr. Opal that I was facing prison time on a Criminal Contempt of Court charge and wasn’t allowed a jury trial he said well, in my case the judge was quite right not to allow me a jury trial; as I was arrested under civil contempt and that civil contempt did not warrant a jury trial.

And yet here I am, once again convicted of Contempt of Court, not Civil, but Criminal, minus a jury trial, or the protections of the Criminal Code. My Lady, the very expediency of this method of depriving citizens of their lawful rights when they seek to protect the environment from corporate predators is quite remarkable.

I protest this, My Lady, and will protest it with my dying breath …

And it hit me, at around 3:45 am, as Betty rolls over trying to get comfortable, away from her family, in prison tonight, of course she doesn’t get Trial By Jury—because she’d win!

And with a win, she’d be, brace yourself, free to exercise her soul-given/democratic rights and new precedents would be set, and we’d all be a little more free (and we wouldn’t even feel it, but it would be right—and Betty would feel it).

And then democracy, and government by the people etc., etc., and so on, would be increased instead of constantly decreased.

Ah, Dad. Ah, Betty.

So here I am sitting in my beloved sister’s kitchen in this pre-dawn hour, family asleep all over the house, under-informed in my underwear (how appropriate).

Please add, teach, or comment on this—not my underwear—freedom, or Betty…

The world is massively complex, obviously. But little things do make a difference—and those who hate democracy know this very well. Those who love it know it too. Ah, common ground.

The process of learning goes on.

“Armed with yoga, stand and fight,” it says in the Bhagavad Gita, in one of my favourite and ironic lines, given Lululemon and the stereotypical meditating yogi.

But as we speak tonight, Betty Krawczyk is in what the yogis call an asana.

An asana to most people is the pose a good-looking woman (or man) stands in during a yoga class somewhere on 4th Avenue in Kitsilano, keeping her (or his) breathing calm, connected to the focus of their meditation (in Betty’s case, what is right), while the insane world spins around the soul of a human being.

So the asana or pose in a yoga class is metaphoric, a practice for when life comes in like a tidal wave.

What Betty is doing is the real thing.

In a just society, real warriors always protect the yogi, the teacher, and women (and of course children).

But Betty, as yogi/teacher/woman, is in prison. How revealing.

Oh, and isn’t it unsurprising, that Betty’s also reclaiming that indigenous idea of elder wisdom? For doing just that in a society where we shut away our elders in senior citizen homes as no longer useful in any ways we can understand (unless they made a fortune in business and will share that information with the up-and-comers) Betty is in prison, hated by her “wise” prosecutors.

For sharing the wisdom of peace, civil-disobedience, and a love of nature (which, for the record, we are), Betty is in prison, at 78. Shameful, really shameful.

The excerpt:

Krawczyk sees her work as an example for the potential political power of senior citizens. “I’m demonstrating that elder people can make their presence felt in society in a political way,” she says. “Elders are pushed aside in our culture. But the traditional role of elders is to be the moderators of society, to be stewards of the land. And I consider that my right as well as my responsibility.”

For the full article, press here.

Here’s an excerpt from Betty’s book “Hell no, We Won’t McBlo,” and her fight to non-violently protest Clayoquot Sound’s Old Growth Forests:

The Clayoquot Sound is crown land… The Clayoquot Sound does not belong to MacMillan-Bloedel to finish raping and pillaging, to continue destroying the land with clear-cutting which pollutes the salmon streams and causes landslides that kill the shellfish and forest animals.

And, if the government of this province has given over our property in some legal hocus-pocus to these environmental monsters, then they shouldn’t have.

And they have, in effect, stolen one of the last remaining rainforests in the world from the people of this country and are in the process of shipping it to Japan and the United States and Europe, and a lot of it goes simply for pulp and newsprint and toilet paper, magnificent old trees, hundreds, even thousands of years old, sacrificed for this.

I feel the same refusal to comply that had slowly built up in my heart toward the government of the United States over the wanton brutality of the Vietnam War…

The same hot anger washes over me again, bathing my innards and bitter-spicing my blood because I have witnessed the landslides, more than once now, I have lived with the body of the raped and beaten victim who tries to rise up behind the cove in the dry season but who is beaten back down under the torrents of rain in the winter…

I have seen it, lived with it, and, if this unconscionable destruction of life is legal, then it shouldn’t be… I will break the so-called law, which in this case is simply a court injunction, and I will pay the price.

For a quick but really clear bio about Betty, and to see her beautiful face, press here.

An excerpt that really hit me:

As a mother of seven with a nursing baby, Krawczyk avoided jail [in the States] but not harassment. Her husband’s security clearance [he was at NASA] might be revoked due to her anti-[Vietnam]war activities.

She began to hate her beautiful house and property, seeing it as a bribe. “If we would just shut up about the war, we could enjoy all the goodies we had…The only hitch was that I might be asked to pay for it with my son’s blood.”

Isn’t that a big truth about all we “possess”, when you get right down to it?

And for Betty’s blog from prison – Betty’s Early Edition – press here (it’s absurd even writing “blog from prison”).

And Betty, thank you for your endless belief in beauty, people, life, elders, nature, and for being my Guru tonight, at 5:31 am. Oh, and you, too, Dad.

Love way more—a million times more, as if that was all that ever mattered. As if, if you don’t, you’ll just burst from your own stupidity for not having loved more.

Love Pete xoxoxox

PS To hear Little Dreamer, press here. The line “Never fear the distant shore, for dreamers live forever more” feels right tonight.

And to hear Be Brave Tonight, press here.

I must confess, I was hopeful for the sake of sentient beings everywhere, including ourselves, that An Inconvenient Truth or The Eleventh Hour—or Ratatouille, for that matter, would mention the brutally destructive effects of factory farming on water, soil, animals and even the environment.

Alas, no. Long live Babe!

I don’t know why the food chain is left out, when changing food consumption habits by decreasing meat consumption even a little is such an immediate possibility for hundreds of millions of people.

It’s good for the environment, and it lessens the systemic misery—some might rightly say torture—of billions of animals with emotions very similar to your pet dog Rusty, or your li’l cat Mimi.

And assuming that decrease in meat is replaced with fruits and vegetables (as opposed to the deep-fried Twinkies at the Puyallup Fair), not only will billions of animals be happier, and McDonald’s will be confused and distraught, but the health of our bodies may well improve drastically.

Being a crazy radical, I fully support less diabetes, less heart disease and less debilitating obesity in children, too.

BUT STEERING THIS IN AN UDDER DIRECTION

I’m actually writing to say, although I haven’t followed the Michel Vick case at all—in fact I had never heard of him, don’t have a TV, and avoid the radio, and don’t care how far he can throw a badly shaped ball—the feeling I want to not feel, with regard to his sickness, is self-righteousness/indignation.

I want to feel sadness, for Michael Vick, the poor dogs, and the hypocrisy of the brutality that goes on everywhere.

I mean imagine living a life and being unable to feel the suffering of those animals?

ACTUALLY, THE SUFFERING OF ALL ANIMALS

This, it would seem, is where the discussion gets uncomfortable.

For better or worse, of course, the connections and comparisons between Vick’s heinous, brutal and tragic behaviour and the ongoing, systemic, 24/7/365 cruelty and eventual killing of tens of billions of animals living torturous lives in factory farms is inevitable.

I don’t even know how to compare the situations—or if they should be compared—to make the point that is somehow self evident.

In fact, one may be better off just to contemplate on the facts of both, strive to be more loving to everyone, and act according to conscience.

I can’t stop what happened with those trained dogs.

But I can, in my little way, say either no or less yes to the systemic misery of factory farm animals for food.

And that’s not easy.

Even drinking organic milk contributes to suffering.

How?

Forget the milking.

Most organic dairy cows still live short lives (5 years or so as opposed to 15) due to exhaustion from forced pregnancies and disease, their male babies go for veal or into the cattle industry, as do the dairy cows themselves when they die or are no longer profitable.

And before I sound like a soppy _______ (put label on space), it is the systemic cruelty that we need to look at.

Hunting for food is a different conversation altogether.

LIFE IS A GRADIENT (COOKER)

But with all the incomprehensibility that unfolds from these different yet somehow related acts of cruelty, a version of the point has been made, with a bunch of comments, on this blog (and probably many blogs).

You can read it and see it by pressing here.

Why such cruelty? Perhaps in parts because of human nature, worldviews, a lack of regulations enforced in the factory farms/slaughterhouses, the need to maximize profit and, of course, consumer demand.

And I do understand that what Quarterback Vick did was not only heinous but illegal.

This in comparison to factory farming, which is heinous and legal (and numbers in the tens or even hundreds of billions of beautiful animals living and dying in cruel misery every year).

But Americans were also British once, legal slavery helped build a nation and women couldn’t vote. So belief systems shift—so why not treat the animals with compassion, like our gorgeous and similarly sentient pets?

They’re feeding us, sustaining us, after all. And what a miracle that is, how that relationship works.

No food, no function.

That’s all. Garl darn it, I don’t know the answers!, but step-by-step, one can breathe, laugh, soften, discern, and keep on.

I think I need to write some poetry before I go to bed or get back to my research. Something connective.

May all meat-to-be experience a little more love and receive a little more gratitude.

And may Michael Vick, no matter what happens to him, find through therapy or love, that miraculous place inside that demands we protect beings that cannot protect themselves—against us, anyway.

We certainy have some barbarous ways, we humans.

May we all find that place a little more, too, for animals, and sisters and brothers under threat by inequity, power or misfortune.

Love more,

Pete xox

This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it Capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and everyone of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.
—Al Capone

The St. Valentine’s Day massacre of 1928 and the legacy of Al Capone-style gangsters are not the only thing that came out of prohibition. Little did I know that NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) also has its roots in prohibition.

Isn’t that cool?

An excerpt from Wikipedia:

Bootleggers needed to distribute their illicit products [alcohol], and they typically used small, fast vehicles to better evade the police.

Many of the drivers would modify their cars for speed and handling, as well as increased cargo capacity, and some of them came to love the fast-paced driving down twisty mountain roads.

One of the main ’strips’ in Knoxville, Tennessee, had its beginning as a mecca for aspiring bootlegging drivers.

Imagine how slow cars would be today if booze had always been legal. Plus there would have been no way for Al Capone to make a living.

But the point is NASCAR. So one might ask: in between bootlegging appointments, what’s the point of a souped up car?

Well, it turns out nature abhors a vaccum—and several other appliances including toaster ovens and electric can openers.

I know, that made no sense. But that empty space between bootlegging runs was soon filled with the hot air of bootlegging drivers, good ol’ boys, claiming to have “…the fastest dang car in Chunky County!”

From another source:

“These men were the real Dukes of Hazzard, only there was nothing funny about their business. Driving at high speeds at night, often with the police in pursuit, was dangerous. The penalty for losing the race was jail or loss of livelihood.”

As bootlegging boomed, the drivers began to race among themselves to see who had the fastest cars. Bootleggers raced on Sunday afternoons and then used the same car to haul moonshine Sunday night. Inevitably, people came to see the races, and racing moonshine cars became extremely popular in the backroads of the South.

And again from Wikipedia:

The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 dried up some of their business, but by then Southerners had developed a taste for moonshine, and a number of the drivers continued “runnin’ shine,” this time evading the “revenuers” who were attempting to tax their operations.

The cars continued to improve, and by the late 1940’s, races featuring these cars were being run for pride and profit.

These races were popular entertainment in the rural Southern United States, and they are most closely associated with the Wilkes County region of North Carolina. Most races in those days were of modified cars, street vehicles which were lightened and reinforced.

So, it turns out there are some grand comparisons between ol’ time prohibition and modern day prohibition.

For example, ol’ time prohibition, evidently, can be blamed for more than just a lot of killing and gangs and mafia. It can be blamed for the essence of a show even I, a young TV addict, couldn’t sit through—or just didn’t understand: the highly literate Dukes Of Hazard.

Granted, I’m from way north—and how many southerners can get a rush from Hockey Night In Canada?

Thank god we can all overcome cultural differences and agree on the majesty of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (although the predictable Road Runner was too much).

And where ol’ time prohibition gave us the Dukes of Hazard, modern prohibition (cocaine, specifically) had its counterpart.

We not only got the bootleggers from the brutal Medellin cartel, encouraged through CIA dirty work with double-dealer Manuel Noriega in Panama and brutal drug wars and addiction, we got, yes, Miami Vice—another show I was never able to sit through. What’s wrong with me!

Modern prohibition also gave us, built on drug money, the modern Miami skyline.

THE WAR ON MULLETS

And somehow, perhaps by association with the times, I can blame Miami Vice, perhaps even sue somebody, for the fact I sported a mullet for so long, and had no idea I looked like a total loser.

I’m thinking the four inch shoulder pads made the mullet less obvious.

And here’s another similarity between prohibition old and new:

Souped up cars came out of ol’ time prohibition, leading to that multi-billon dollar NASCAR business—not to mention the business of alcohol in general, alcoholism shattering lives and families, and alcohol playing a role in something like half of all deaths by driving.

But thank god alcohol is not dangerous like all those hard drugs!

And out of the modern prohibition (which isn’t modern at all) of cocaine etc. came souped up, cast off weaponry, proudly supporting the trillion dollar small arms trade business.

Illicit drugs, of course, fund countless small and dirty proxy wars, State terrorism and non-State terrorism, and the killing of millions of innocent bystanders over the decades.

With NASCAR, mostly it was hearing loss.

Now it’s countless lives—and counting. Boy, did we learn a lot from prohibition…

Nobel Laureate, super conservative economist Milton Friedman, from 1972:

But, you may say, must we accept defeat? Why not simply end the drug traffic?

That is where experience under Prohibition is most relevant. We cannot end the drug traffic…

So long as large sums of money are involved—and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal—it is literally hopeless to expect to end the traffic or even to reduce seriously its scope.

Don’t you just love tradition combined with evolution?

Love and more love,

Pete

A few years ago, the young wife (40) of a dear friend of mine tragically died of cancer, leaving behind my friend and her two beloved girls, aged sixteen and thirteen. She was a wonderful woman.

I had the honour of singing at the funeral—with another great friend.

A few days ago, during a festival of lights, with thousands of people wandering on stilts and celebrating and dancing and playing drums and lutes etc. (I’m not kidding), around a lake near to where I live, I ran into this great and talented friend of mine (we were in a band together, and he’s a percussionist of considerable passion).

He was strolling with his new girlfriend, which was heart-warming to see. She was lovely, and they seemed very happy. I spontaneously ran in for hugs. With them was a tiny little older woman, maybe 75ish, with a little black scarf around her head, and warm, wet eyes. She was the girlfriend’s mother, from Iran, visiting. She didn’t speak any English.

Forgetting whatever customs I shouldn’t have been forgetting, I spontaneously hugged her, too—yes, the mom. Her response was, well, sheer delight. She beamed and grabbed everybody’s hands nearby to say hello. I felt love radiate.

I have a mom, too!

And then it occurred to me: “These are the people who will die‚ this tiny little mother, undoubtedly grandmother by now—if Iran is bombed.”

It won’t be the leaders and it won’t be for freedom. Who really knows the intentions of so many leaders?

I heard a statistic recently: Ten percent of the people killed in WWI were civilians, in WWII 50% of the people killed were civilians, in Vietnam 70% of the people killed were civilians, and in Iraq 90% of the people killed have been civilians.

Here’s an interview with Stephen Kinzer and Ervand Abrahamian on Democracy Now from 2003, the 50th anniversary of the British and American planned and executed overthrow of the DEMOCRATICALLY elected leader of Iran, Dr Mossadegh.

An excerpt:

STEPHEN KINZER: This was a hugely important episode, and looking at it from the perspective of history, we can see that it really shaped a lot of the 50 years that have followed since then in the Middle East and beyond.

But yet, it’s an episode that most Americans don’t even know happened.

As I was writing my book [All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup And The Roots of Middle East Terror], I had the sense that I was dredging up an incident that had been largely forgotten. During my work, I realized early on that Mossadegh, the prime minister of Iran, had been the Man of the Year for Time magazine in 1951.

Does it ever end?

And another excerpt…

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: For me, the oil was important both for the United States and for Britain. It’s not just the question of oil in Iran. It was a question of control over oil internationally.

If Mossadegh had succeeded in nationalizing the British oil industry in Iran, that would have set an example and was seen at that time by the Americans as a threat to U.S. oil interests throughout the world, because other countries would do the same.

Once you have control, then you can determine how much oil you produce in your country, who you sell it to, when you sell it, and that meant basically shifting power from the oil companies, both British Petroleum, Angloversion, American companies, shifting it to local countries like Iran and Venezuela.

And in this, the U.S. had as much stake in preventing nationalization in Iran as the British did…

I think on this issue actually you see a big cultural gap between the American public and the Iranian public.

For the Iranian public, the ‘53 coup shapes basically Iranian history, as Stephen shows very much in his book. But for Americans, the ‘53 coup was something unreal for them.

It wasn’t something they were aware of. If they were aware it, it was like Jimmy Carter saying that this was ancient history. For the U.S. it may have been ancient history but for Iranians it was not.

So when the students took over the embassy [in 1979 with the overthrow of the Shah], they actually called it the “den of spies” because they knew that in ‘53 the coup had been actually plotted from the U.S. compound…That very building.

Remembering the complexities of history, whatever one’s ideology, seems to me so important.

For the entire interview, which is really worth the read, press here.

And here’s to little old ladies, with warm eyes, all over the world.

Lots of love to you and yours,

Pete xo

PS Press here to hear Blue, which was the song that was sung at the funeral. I wrote it years ago, 1991, as the first Gulf War unfolded…