You know I’m serious about that idea when I consciously choose to use the American spelling of favor. It’s favour in Canada.
Anyway, here it is, Ladies and Gentlemen:
PROPOSITION RED:
Being so far in debt (very Red)—some 11 trillion paper dollars—and now offering legislated socialism (very Red) for the desperate yet rich (via the tax-payer), we propose (me and the friends in my head) that the White House be forced to change its name to the Red House.
The proposed idea will be enacted and held until the following five demands are fulfilled:
1) Some sort of economic plan that involves intelligence on behalf of citizens, the environment and reality is put forward.
2) Until the noose (sometimes self-imposed) is removed from the tax-payers’ neck (Red with Fury and Strangulation).
3) Ideas of monetary reform and the absurdity of the never-ending printing of paper money becomes part of everyday consciousness.
4) Informative and honest information outside the usual box is offered as something that is always done—even in a small booklet. A little red book, maybe.
5) Christopher Hitchens gives up scotch. Okay, okay, Christopher Hitchens considers giving up scotch.
Anything.
Anything!
All in favour say “Red!”
Also, I like this comment from William Greider:
Formal economists will scoff, but poets often see realities the bean counters fail to recognize.
I think that’s a great idea. Imagine a poet, say Leonard Cohen—okay, he’s Canadian. But imagine if a poet had to come up with the plan.
BANK ON THIS
With handouts from lap-dog Ben Bernanke*
All the bankers keep living swanky
Citizens petition and start a mailout
An ad campaign to stop the bailout
The people cry: “Stop this deformation!
We demand monetary reformation!”
What that means I’ve not a clue
But something tells me that it’s true
Instead of the lying Fed or Obama
Why not a poet or the Dalai Lama?
In trying to fix the lies and strife
Instead of ‘Growth’ choose ‘Quality of Life!’
‘Cause what they’re selling is pure bunk
And without a change our credit’s sunk
And I know this poem is pure crap
But dammit, friends, we need a better map!
To try and figure where we’re goin’
Maybe we should call Leonard Cohen
He knows at least as much as Ben
Plus with a decent grasp of zen
He couldn’t possibly make things worse
Plus he’d do it all in verse
And if the answer he doesn’t know it?
He’ll recommend a smarter poet
Or Jeffrey Armstrong, that mystic bard
He’ll scribe those liars long and hard
Their addiction to growth and fossil fuels
In debt to economic schools
Sisters, brothers, we must think wider
As such, I’m down with William Greider
When a trillion dollars has no meaning
It’s from these liars we all need weaning
And doing so, perhaps we’ll see
A deeper truth to set us free
THE END (of something)
*Ben Bernanke is the unelected Chairman of the Federal Reserve, replacing the unelected Alan Greenspan. After decades of knowing everything, Greenspan summed up the collapse: “We’re not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance.”
Heck, my dad knew it was coming, with the banks, fractional reserve banking, the printing of unbacked money and inconceivable debt etc etc.
Keep dreaming. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” I guess that depends on what is imagined. Because somebody is imagining right now that this bailout, proposed by the people who caused the problem, might actually help.
That is actually the definition of insane.
Oh, speaking of William Greider, for those who want to be active, in conversation with Bill Moyers, he mentions a little protest on April 11th. I’m not sure what they stand for exactly, but they think not much of the current parties.
And only a moron wouldn’t agree with that, at least in part, the Messiah-ship endowed upon Barak Obama notwithstanding.
I have some genealogical history from this time—an Uncle named Elias Ashmole, Loyalist, Astrologer and Alchemist and a collector of antiquities (always a bit dodgy)—which made this historical piece from Marina Pepper in the Guardian Online, entitled G20: In memory of the Diggers, all the more interesting.
But either way, it is timely and instructive, and just goes to show you about how with Power, ‘La plus ça change…’:
After a moving account of home displacements in Britain and around the world, Marian writes:
“[In Britain last year] 40,000 homes were repossessed; this year it could be 75,000. I’m taking action for our ‘common treasury’…
And then retells a little history:
In 1649 England’s revolution was over, the King’s head was off [Charles I] and Cromwell was mad [in every sense of the term—just ask the Irish]. The common lands, instead of being opened up for the people, fell into the hands of profiteering prototype money men [wow, that's so weird and primitive. Glad it's not like that now].
Demanding only self-sufficiency [how dare they!], suggesting land be held as “a common treasury for all” [imagine!], the Diggers occupied St Georges Hill in Surrey—where the likes of Max Clifford now play golf and tennis after a hard day making squillions.
…the Diggers were beaten and in some cases hacked to death for their troubles. Nice.
In their memory and in solidarity with the world’s diaspora, I’m taking direct action with the Black Horse at the Bank of England on Wednesday. We’re carrying pillows – a symbol of our fundamental human right to shelter, and to be used in self-defence should the coppers try to “cut us down”.
What a world. Thank god for pillow carrying activists saying, “You know, this may not be right.”
And I love this line from wikipedia, about my ol’ Uncle Elias:
“In 1646–47, Ashmole made several simultaneous approaches to rich widows in the hope of securing a good marriage.”
Fantastic!
Lots of love to you and yours, and may you have shelter and tenderness…
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity…”
—William Butler Yeats
Below is a very loose description of Anarchy, that I recently read, from Noam Chomsky. Actually, it was more about the spirit of Anarchy, and where such forms of action should lead.
I was reminded of how well-suited these ideas are for the inner journey as well, and the ongoing desire for greater creativity and freedom and awareness—which may or may not involve dark chocolate. I can never make my mind up.
Either way, it’s interesting to hear an honest attempt at describing a word. Most words these days, like God, conservative, democrat or liberal, cease to have much meaning, save as a tool for manipulation of citizens who believe they have meaning. I mean Republicans are supposed to be, get this, fiscally responsible. Ha ha ha, oh my sides, make him stop!
And I think President Obama is already getting in a mess of trouble with these inconceivably back-breaking (for the tax-payer) bailout plans. I don’t think he will be able to dig himself out of what seems by instinct, at least, to be ludicrous economic theory and planning. Worse off, the theory comes from the economic theorists who contributed so blindly and ignorantly to the recent collapse in the first place. I hope not, but I think so. Trillions of dollars, literally. Insanity, no?
But anyway, the journey goes on, in body and spirit. From Chomsky:
“…since childhood, when I was haunting Anarchist bookstores and offices in New York, since from then to today, I’ve essentially understood Anarchism to be not a specific recipe for how the world should work, although it has principles, but rather as a kind of tendency in human affairs towards trying to identify structures of hierarchy, oppression, domination, wherever they may be.”
I like that phrase, “a tendency.” What isn’t? No matter how fundamentalist we get about and ideology of any form, we don’t really know that much—although I think the truth involves very dark chocolate.
“From the family to international affairs: identifying them [hierarchy, oppression, injustice etc], insisting that they justify themselves, they are not self-justifying. And if they can’t meet that burden of justification, moving to dismantling them.”
Does that not work for one’s own mind, too? The non-self-justifying comments that arise from the fire is truly astounding.
“Hence, moving towards a more free world.
Exactly where it will lead, I’m certainly not smart enough to say, and I don’t think anyone is.”
No wonder solidarity, communion, friendship, conversation, is so beautiful and important. Imagine sports, politics or direct marketing conventions without a group of people. Not pretty. But not that pretty anyway.
“Political activism is, I think, a little bit like mountain climbing. I mean you work hard, you climb a peak, and you discover to your surprise that there’s another peak back there that’s even higher that you hadn’t even known about, and you start to work on that one.
Well, yeah, that’s what things are like. There a lot of peaks out there that have not entered into our consciousness. I hope we’ll get to them but there’s a lot of work to be done before we do. As this proceeds we move kind of closer to an anarchist vision.”
How free can a person be? How clear yet filled with even more love and compassion for sisters and brothers, indeed all beings. That’s a journey. Christians and Muslims get salvation. According to the Vedas (Hinduism), we go through 8,400,000 lives (400,000 human lives) to get liberated.
That’s a lot of living, and a fair amount of dying.
Any tips, let me know. And please be kind to yourself, by occasionally making strange barking noises and tickling your own arm-pits whenever you get too serious.
I got a lovely letter asking how to download my music off the site. My friend Erin wrote this awhile back. I haven’t tested the tips, but I hope they help. Thanks, Erin.
If you want to download Pete’s songs you need to do it from the hyperlink instead of the file page
Right click (or control click, if you are MAC like me) on the link in the actual blog posting. Then click on download linked file. And there you go
The late Northrop Frye, a Canadian scholar, wrote this. I think it’s funny. I’m not sure if by “me” he is talking about humanity, or his mind, or neither. I read it as our own mind, our own ego. Anyway, he writes, from Northrop Frye Unbuttoned (pg 68):
“The reason why “Christ is in me” is not the same statement as “I am Christ” but its exact opposite is that practically all of “me” is a stupid and rebellious mob, forever setting up its own muddled leaders…The Christ in me can never be a dictator: all dictators turn out to be the Antichrist sooner or later.”
Although he may need—or, rather, may have needed—a little work on the old self-esteem, I think that’s pretty accurate, and amusing.
Yet, even to suggest there really is a relationship between oneself and the divine—that there is a divine!—that that divine spark is within us, is truly astounding when really taken to heart, pun intended. But what is ever truly revealed to, as Einstein called it, our “feeble mind”?
Either way, what a world. And here’s the lovely quote from Einstein:
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
“True mysticism is active and practical, not passive and theoretical. It is an organic life process, a something the whole self does, not something about which its intellect holds an opinion.”
—Evelyn Underhill, 1911
I’m not sure what I’m writing here or what I’m saying. Maybe habit. Some transcendental discomfort or undigested dried fruit. Who knows? The yogis say habit is our second nature. That is, we become habituated to what we think we are. From a yogic point of view, being eternal and unconfined by the temporary material body is actually our first nature.
Most of us would settle for a good sleep and a pancake breakfast with swell-humoured friends.
I can’t prove anything one way or another, but I was thinking about the human mind and how dispersive it is—scattering in myriad ways, a constant churning and chewing and following of thoughts that seem to rise, to a degree, without apparent reason.
Similarly, we as humans live in no seemingly predictable way, or consistent type of place: from igloos to caves to condos to huts to mansions and palaces. We are somehow nomadic on this earth, unsure of how or where we fit in; unsure to a large degree, for the present so-called dominant culture, how to converse with nature without killing Her; how to commune; how to relax into our time here—which is reflected, perhaps, in just how medicated modern society is—again, so-called.
Heck, we are nature, in every sense of the term. We’re microcosms of the macrocosms. I’m a rain forest, for the love of God, particularly when I dribble.
The Sanskrit, from an ancient Ayurveda text called the Caraka Samhita—Caraka is said to mean, a propos, ‘wandering physician’ or ‘wandering scholar’—says it this way:
Yatha Pinde tatha Brahmande, which means, sort of: Although I’m such a pin-head (a rough translation of pinde), I’m just like the whole Universe and beyond (Brahman).
This of course begs other questions, like Why do I worry? and Where the hell did I put my wallet?
Don’t you ever wonder where you deeply belong? Where you came from? Where you’re going? Why back hair increases with age?
In the New Testament (Luke 9:58), Jesus said:
“The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
In The Wasteland (1922), TS Eliot writes:
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
This image from Eliot—a heap of broken images—and this idea of no habitat, resounded in me years ago. I actually quoted a part of the same section in my first novel, Shelby, about a 20-year old who yearns for bigger meaning, hates himself for what he calls chronic masturbation, and has a huge crush on a large woman—or a large crush on a huge woman.
It is a work of fiction, so shut up.
Nonetheless, we are wanderers, if not on foot, in our minds. Who knows where it’s leading? Who knows who is doing the leading?
This is a lovely observation from the Christian mystic/monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968), who I think is saying, at the end of the day, relationship is what matters. With how much kindness, authenticity and compassion you, me, we treat other people, more so than what speculative conclusions we infer from the world and call reality.
“It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty with no trace of meaning left in it.
[But] Gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”
I’d recommend a really good cuddle and a warm, vegetarian soup. Top of my head.
It’s time again for those who feel this way, to breathe a little deeper, and ask that grandest of all questions. What question? Actually, I’m not quite sure, but I think it has a ‘why?’ in it.
These myriad voices of humanity [wild and profound, often indigenous, cultures] are not failed attempts at being you [or me], at being modern. They are unique facets of the human imagination. They are unique answers to a fundamental question: what does it mean to be human and alive?
And when asked that question they respond with six thousand different voices. Collectively those human voices become our repertoire for dealing with the challenges that will confront us in the ensuing millenia.
Our industrial society is scarcely three hundred years old. That shallow history shouldn’t suggest to anyone that we have all of the answers for all of the questions that will confront us in the ensuing millenia.
The myriad voices of humanity are not failed attempts at being us. They are unique answers to that fundamental question: what does it mean to be human and alive?
And there is indeed a fire burning over the earth taking with it not only plants and animals, but the legacy of humanity’s brilliance.
Right now as we sit in this room, of those six thousand languages spoken the day you were born, fully half aren’t being taught to children. So you’re living through a time when virtually half of humanity’s intellectual, social and spiritual legacy is being allowed to slip away. This does not have to happen.
These peoples are not failed attempts at being modern, quaint and colourful, and destined to fade away as a financial law. In every case these are dynamic living peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces.
That’s actually an optimistic observation, because it suggests that if human beings are the agent of cultural destruction, we can also be, and must be, the facilitators of cultural survival.
And now I will go and wonder about the miracle of what it means to be human and alive in this stupendous, inconceivable, multi-layered, multi-dimensional world utterly imbued with timeless consciousness and unfathomable intelligence. And in the words of the Lakota Sioux: mitakuye oyasin (mi-tak-wee-ah-son)—we are all related.
Nothing is more exquisite than the interior music. and all music is obviously an effort to approximate this interior music.
I never thought of that and can’t say it if is true, though yogis and contemplatives would most likely agree—and hear the song. What exactly is inner music? I’m thinking one just needs to relax deeply enough and be still deeply enough to hear it—or maybe it’s less (or more) obvious than that. I’m still trying (and trying to try in a non-trying sort of trying way—and isn’t that just part of the journey?). Now how do I put that to a melody—or a lyric for that matter…
I actually wrote a long paper called Noam Chomsky On Drugs, about the Insite safe injection site on the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, and the madness and hypocrisy of the War On Drugs. It was fascinating research. But I never heard this four-minute talk from Chomsky, largely about the perverse history of prohibition of marijuana.
Now remember, for what it’s worth, I do not use drugs. I do not even drink alcohol (maybe a sip of wine on rare occasions). But all the realities of the disaster of drug use aside (and alcohol and cigarettes are the worst), the delusion behind what we call the War On Drugs, and how we moralize against some drug use, is simply startling, fascinating and compelling in its hypocrisy.
This is from Chomsky, and he can’t even help but laugh as he describes studies in the 1930s showing the effects of marijuana on dogs—it makes them insane, evidently. One might even say barking mad. After getting stoned, all they want to do is watch TV, lick their balls and laugh at bad cat jokes (I made the last sentence up)
Here’s the kicker. According to youtube, this video is, or may be, offensive to minors! The world is insane. Have you seen the ‘kill anybody in sight’ video games minors can play with?
By the way, I hate the term minor. It’s like minor, as in not yet fully significant.
Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men [or even uncertain, not particularly intelligent men like myself] is the restatement of the obvious.
—George Orwell
Unlike the American government, the Canadian government has recently decided to deny five-time democratically elected British MP George Galloway entry into the country to speak. I don’t even think Christopher Hitchens would agree with this.
Some of Galloway’s comments, including on his website his plan to “glorify” Hezzbollah, and his comments upon meeting Saddam Hussein in 1994 and praising his “courage”, “strength” and “indefatigability” are, in my opinion, putrid, and deeply ignorant or manipulative at best. With them, I am reminded of the tragic support of Stalinist communism by many on the Left in the West in the 30s and 40s.
Of course, I also think it ridiculous to glorify most any political leader.
Galloway, for the record, has said his comments have been misinterpreted, and he was talking about the Iraqi people, not Saddam Hussein.
Either way, George Galloway, like FOX and so many others, clearly understands the necessity of shock in order to get publicity. Trust me, trying to deeply see all sides as best and honestly as possible will get very few viewers. Either that or I need to shower more often.
BLACK KETTLES
All that said, it seems to me that it’s the Canadian government’s position on Galloway, much more than Galloway’s position, that reveals the extreme bias, hypocrisy and irony—and possibly subconscious racism—of the government and mainstream media, to a degree that never ceases to startle.
And with such a limited spectrum of commentary from most newspapers, editorials and elected officials, those pundits who do argue for Galloway’s right to be let into Canada suddenly end up sounding like unstoppable ‘democrats’ and ‘free-speechers,’ regardless of their political leanings.
I don’t have the answers, god knows. And I sure don’t know the hows and the whys of it all, but this, it seems to me, is absurd.
Sure, standing up for a degree of freedom is better than none. But it’s what is so obviously left out about Terror that ultimately betrays truth and sincerity.
In short, how many mainstream media outlets mention what is fairly well laid out by former US Ambassador and White House Terrorism Task Force Director Edward Peck?
In 1985, when I was the Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Task Force on Terrorism…they asked us to come up with a definition of terrorism that could be used throughout the government. We produced about six, and in each and every case, they were rejected, because careful reading would indicate that our own country had been involved in some of those activities.
After the task force concluded its work, Congress got into it, and you can…read the U.S. definition of terrorism. And one of them…says… “international terrorism,” means “activities that,” I quote, “appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.”
…certainly, you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them. Israel is another [and this, of course, is years before the recent Gaza massacres]. And so, the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.
And I think it’s useful for people who discuss that phrase to remember that Israel was founded by terrorist organizations and terrorist leaders, Menachem Begin, who became statesmen and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
And Nasrallah [the leader of Hezzbollah] may not be the same kind of guy, but his intentions are the same. He wants to free his country from domination by another.
The Israeli army has been forced to open an investigation into the conduct of its troops in Gaza after damning testimony from its own front line soldiers revealed the killing of civilians and rules of engagement so lax that one combatant said that they amounted on occasion to “cold-blooded murder”.
The soldiers’ testimonies include accounts of an unarmed old woman being shot at a distance of 100 yards, a woman and her two children being killed after Israeli soldiers ordered them from their house into the line of fire of a sniper and soldiers clearing houses by shooting anyone they encountered on sight.
“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him,” one soldier told Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy, who asked him why a company commander ordered an elderly woman to be shot.
Recall that those murdered are more than likely people just like your mother, or grandmother, or son or sister—or you and me, regardless of the worst of people in their country. They breathe and cry and hope, and as far as we know have a limited amount of time on this planet.
Here are two definitions of terrorism from the UN. The UN Security Council Resolution 1566 defines terrorism as:
…criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.
A United Nations panel in 2005 defined terrorism as any action:
“…intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.”
Even without the revelations above, what stops what happened in Gaza (and in so many places) being labeled as terrorism—or at least State terrorism?
The final death toll was something like 1,417 Palestinians and 14 Israelis (ten Israeli soldiers, four by that god-awful term of ‘friendly fire’). Something like 926 of the 1,417 Palestinians were civilian, 437 children under the age of sixteen, 110 women and 123 elderly men. If you can stomach it, read that over again. And recall, Israeli leaders have stated they were trying to avoid citizens. Imagine the structural damage.
By any definition, was what took place a war, a battle or even a fight? If the Palestinians could defend themselves against Israel’s remarkable technology and power, it would still be awful. But as it was, they couldn’t.
With limited knowledge, I think I understand the Israeli Defense Force objective, and the brutal history—and it is one’s prerogative to justify what happened on those terms, or for genetic or political reasons—but the massacre in Gaza was, if I am at all honest with myself, simply a legislated, killing spree of massive proportions.
AS FOR GEORGE GALLOWAY IN CANADA
One could argue that it is only George Galloway’s perverse, media-friendly bluster, combined with being a British MP, that gets him on mainstream media to speak a deeper truth about terror and terrorists—that, in Power, they are everywhere.
As for Galloway’s coming to Canada, here’s a quick back and forth on English TV between George Galloway and the Jewish Defence League of Canada’s national director Meir Weinstein.
Perhaps it is ignorance or naiveté, perhaps a mix—or perhaps accurate—but either way, I, as a Canadian in Canada, feel much more of a shake of nervousness inside when I hear the Jewish Defense League director Meir Weinstein say in the following two sentences:
“We will be looking into the organizations in Canada that have invited [George Galloway], their links to terror groups as well…”
And when George Galloway replied that if he’s not allowed into Canada, he will talk from the border, Weinstein then countered:
“Therefore, if he uses those other means [talking from the border or finding a way to talk to Canadians who want to hear Galloway], we will see to it that the Canadian government will be monitoring every individual and organization that will have anything to do with it.“
“We will see to it…” Hmm.
That actually makes me—again, as a Canadian!—fleetingly aware of a nervousness to exercise free speech; the freedom to act according to my conscience, to be part of a debate without fear of harassment or being monitored, no matter how well or how non-violently I frame my comments—and regardless of how insignificant my comments are!
Galloway replied:
“These are very venal and brute threats that are being made by your guest against Christian groups and other peace groups in Canada. And that’s all you really need to know about them [the Jewish Defense League of Canada].”
And Galloway, no matter what one thinks of him, has history on his side when he says:
“[The government] will say they [Hamas or whomever] are [terrorists] today, but they won’t say it tomorrow, as you know very well.”
A tiny sample of the startlingly diverse list of accused terrorist flip-flops-and-reflops over the years include the Taliban, Muammar Gadaffi, Saddam Hussein, Menachem Begin, as mentioned earlier, Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin and, of course, Nelson Mandela. And those Western states that are never called terrorist in the mainstream media, despite exercising brutal and mass terror on countless occasions, are truly many.
And at the same time I celebrate and stand up for so many great freedoms that have been fought for by average citizens, and won, in the West. The two conditions—foreign policy terrorism and domestic freedoms—somehow, are not mutually exclusive.
This is a distressing subject to write about.
I know, from six beautiful weeks in Israel in 1999, and my many Jewish friends (including my girlfriend) and mentors in North America, and from the (fewer) people I know but like very much from the Arab countries of the Middle East, that countless (and voiceless) average citizens everywhere—sisters and brothers—ache and cry and long for peace, justice, laughter, love and other righteous things.
I was recently at the funeral of a dear friend of mine—in fact I sang at the service. He was forty-four years old. Witnessing his Iranian widow grieve in literally overwhelming sobs from the depths of her body about said it all.
No matter whose side one is on, or neither, that terrifying emotion can undoubtedly be transposed onto thousands of people in Gaza right now, who can likely barely breathe for the loss of loved ones. Of course the same goes for the few Israelis who lost loved ones in this most recent bombardment.
And the same goes for all of us. We are human. Temporary. Vulnerable. Fragile. And, as Woody Allen once said, it’s all over far too soon.
May love and peace for all people, that so many desire, increase, be remembered, before we throw whatever opinions we have into the world…
