If all of those highly trained, very well intended, professional advocates for the homeless were combined into one human being it would still lack a spine...... .The meeting at City Hall that I participated in this week, the three-hour lobbying event to end chronic homelessness in DC, was very well organized I felt. It took me a day or two to realize that although the organisers are very capable, if they were all combined into one human being it still would not have a spine, from what I saw. They are totally not oriented to going to the mat. They may play a role, but going to the mat for the homeless is not a role that they're currently going to play. Way above achieving results they Place access, being viewed favorably for future hiring positions, not upsetting their funders.... Results is on the list but it is way below a lot of other stuff. It is really important that we be aware of that.
4.30.2016
If all of those highly trained, very well intended, professional advocates for the homeless were combined into one human being it would still lack a spine...... .The meeting at City Hall that I participated in this week, the three-hour lobbying event to end chronic homelessness in DC, was very well organized I felt. It took me a day or two.......
To a friend that I just unfriended:. Friend, I have warm feelings toward you. I do not indulge, go with, follow, my warm feelings toward anyone. I am not here to be a friend with anyone. I am here to.......
To a friend that I just unfriended:. Friend, I have warm feelings toward you. I do not indulge, go with, follow, my warm feelings toward anyone. I am not here to be a friend with anyone. I am here to be a friend to those who are suffering the most on this planet. I never allow myself the luxury of making an idle comment, a casual comment, only slightly thought through comment. At least it is extremely rare. Maybe to a fault I am extremely deliberate, thorough, thoughtful, research-based, fact based, intellectually based, emotionally based, academically based. Why? Because that is all I find Hope in standing on, in me or others. I have no quarrel with others who live their lives in other ways. That's not my business. But it is absolutely my business how to manage my time and that includes managing my various web sites. If anyone is silly enough to find me an authoritative source , which has nothing to do with me always being agreeable to, or correct, or absolutely correct... but for those silly enough to find me an authoritative Source I welcome their presence. In significant part I live for their presence, and I benefit from their comments more than they know. They conduct themselves accordingly speaking with respect and deep thought before they comment. It is not important to me whether they agree or disagree, only that they are thoughtful, as in, thinking deeply thoroughly factually and honestly. Your way of being is much more normal than mine, and much more casual. As I've tried to indicate to you over the years I do not have time for that from me, you or anyone. This is why I have again unfriended you. My feelings for you are positive. But I don't have time for anyone's casual opinions, non deep, non authoritative, starting with mine. If I don't have time for it from me I surely don't have time for it from anyone else. Your friend forever, no matter what, James
4.29.2016
***** The revolution is those who are offering the very price of their lives for a more Humane world. The status quo is everything less than that. The chicken is involved, the pig is committed. I see.......
***** The revolution is those who are offering the very price of their lives for a more Humane world. The status quo is everything less than that. The chicken is involved, the pig is committed. I see almost no commitment. Those who are involved but not committed simply don't understand where we are in history, what is it stake, and what it will take. They are straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic. I have no time or interest in that. And I have no time to work with those.
***** Suddenly I feel profoundly less alone. I consider Norman Finkelstein the most important nonviolent Warrior in the last 30 or 40 years , certainly the most heroic, qualified, determined, capable.... And here he is at the top of his powers totally and completely marginalized, an outsider, rendered a non-participant by this sickest of all cultures, this most disgusting shadow of a left liberal movement. Yes, suddenly I feel much less alone. ''Norman Finkelstein on Sanders, the first intifada, BDS, and ten years of unemployment.''
The cowardice and inaction of liberals for the last 30 years or more has left the police as the s*** sweepers. Ours is the shame. The police are The Fall Guys for the Liberals criminal inaction and when it comes to the clintons, criminal actions.
The cowardice and inaction of liberals for the last 30 years or more has left the police as the s*** sweepers. Ours is the shame. The police are The Fall Guys for the Liberals criminal inaction and when it comes to the clintons, criminal actions.
4.28.2016
***** To a friend that is quite horrified at we who will write in Bernie no matter what: With all due respect friend, you seem to fail to grasp what the post below says, what my position is, what the position of such people is. Of course.......
***** To a friend that is quite horrified at we who will write in Bernie no matter what: With all due respect friend, you seem to fail to grasp what the post below says, what my position is, what the position of such people is. Of course it is your right to disagree but what I'm saying is your comments indicate you don't understand what our position is. This is probably the last time I will attempt to make it clear. If someone offers to kill my child with arsenic or a gun I would reject both of them with my very life. I stand in the way of that. Hillary is not a Democrat she is at best a moderate Republican. The Democratic party is dead, a festering cancerous corpse, thanks to Bill and Hillary the last time we gave them a chance. Beyond that, I just don't understand what you don't understand about the post below. It is very clear. You are entirely welcome to disagree. But to not grasp what is being said is really amazing to me. It is a moral duty to not cooperate with evil, and Hillary is rank evil, fascism, materialism, corporatism, thwarting the Democratic process, corruption corruption corruption corruption corruption corruption cancer cancer cancer cancer. I am not going to vote for cancer. I'm willing to die but not at my own hands. Those of us who will not vote for Clinton in doing so are voting for a rejection of the system in favor of something new. Futile? In the short term yes. It is the start of an attempted Revolution. Neville Chamberlain thought there was an easy way out. It wasn't there. The last regime in Germany before Hitler thought there was an easy way out. There wasn't. You say that passing on a vote for Hillary, not voting for Hillary, is to vote for a reversal of whatever advances under Obama... for whatever set of reasons including the cowardice of democrat citizens, he has done little more than straighten the deck chairs on the Titanic. And that's best case. One final thing, do you realize that you are part of the 10%? Most of us taking the position that we are regarding Bernie and against Hillary no matter what, are part of the 90%. Do you understand that? You in your lifetime are OK financially and will be ok financially. The 90% of us have already been locked on the lower decks of the sinking Titanic and are already starting to drown. And you want us to vote for another Captain to continue the status quo? And you don't understand why we reject that at all costs? Be well friend. I have nothing more to say to you on this.
4.27.2016
Study: At least 78% of humanitarian aid intended for Palestinians ends up in Israeli coffers
***** What is the revolution? It is not the overthrow of the current regime or system. For that to be the end we continue to let the system dictate the terms. The only true Revolution is to leave the current system, to abandoned, to ignore, the current regime, the oligarchs, the fascists, the corporations, the materialism. Gandhi was........
***** What is the revolution? It is not the overthrow of the current regime or system. For that to be the end we continue to let the system dictate the terms. The only true Revolution is to leave the current system, to abandoned, to ignore, the current regime, the oligarchs, the fascists, the corporations, the materialism. Gandhi was profoundly and absolutely right, Earth has ''enough to satisfy everyone's need, but not everyone's greed.'' And he said rightly and profoundly and absolutely true, ''The golden rule is to steadfastly refuse what [billions] cannot have.'' To leave this current economy and to enter a different economy, the Economy of the principles and practices of the healthy biological family , service because it is needed , goods because they are needed. Is this not the revolution that Gandhi and those who followed him at the time waged? It is. Is this not the revolution that Jesus waged too? It is. There is none other. Everything else, everything less, everything other than this is simply a movement to change who exploits and who is exploded. By every objective measure every form of our materialistic value system is in the final stages of destroying everything decent, all decent life on planet Earth, and therefore destroying Itself by destroying its host. It is itself unsustainable. Our lives in this sickest of all cultures are fundamentally serving me and mine, wishing no ill to others, but placing them as somehow outside of our immediate family. This is cancer. This is death. It is killing. It will kill, until it is replaced. This is why despite my deep love and affection and respect for Sanders I am not jumping on the campaign. It is not the revolution. And everything that is not the revolution is too little too late, squandering the one resource we have almost nothing left of of, time. No one except for me can prevent me from waging the revolution, abandoning the current system to every degree I am able, and entering the new economy of pure Brotherhood regardless of the personal consequences to me and mine. To do so is insane. Thank creator, I found that Insanity about 15 years ago and I find no desire to abandon it, rather only to learn to enter it more deeply, seriously, passionately, intelligently, selflessly. For the infinite joy, peace of heart, and singular hope that it is, regardless of how apparently futile.
***** This is the immortality I know to be true, the only one. It is a blessing, and a curse. This is why it is so desperately important that we learn to live lives that are constructive of good for all creation. Our being will live on doing good, or doing bad, for.......
***** This is the immortality I know to be true, the only one. It is a blessing, and a curse. This is why it is so desperately important that we learn to live lives that are constructive of good for all creation. Our being will live on doing good, or doing bad, for as long as there are those who remember. '' This is how our minds may actually live on after death
A psychologist explains how memory gives the dead a second life. ''
***** As I wrote the other day I feel like I've taken yet another huge step in the direction of understanding that the Empire is unstoppably disintegrating, hence the world we have known is disintegrating. And that is truly a blessing. The suffering will be.......
***** As I wrote the other day I feel like I've taken yet another huge step in the direction of understanding that the Empire is unstoppably disintegrating, hence the world we have known is disintegrating. And that is truly a blessing. The suffering will be such as the world has not yet seen but it is absolutely necessary. The only thing I'm pretty sure of is that we will be less crushing on creation as it unfolds. Whether a better Humanity emerges on the other side I don't know. Whether enough Humanity awakens sooner and non-violently takes charge of deliberately dismantling the Empire that is crushing everything remains to be seen, profoundly unlikely, but oh that would be building a better future. One thing for sure is that those of us who are loving will learn more everyday about how to be living with as little destruction created by ourselves as possible. There is much joy in that. This increasing Clarity is very helpful step for me. But it still leaves me to adjust to how then I am to be loving to the world. I'm working on it. I feel that it is moving me back in the direction of devoting my life to the one in a million of my sisters and brothers that are profoundly and quite purely simply agents of loving, Insanely Humane (INSHE) Warriors. Wagers of Loving. They are the healthy cells and helping them grow and infect others is maybe the only positive thing that I see to do. And trying to be one of them. Loving is quite literally the only thing that I value. And such people invariably devote their very being to getting in the way of the harm being done to the most powerless, the most innocent, the most victimized, the most abused... The Palestinians and others. That's where my family is. That is where I find them. In the way of the greatest harm. That is the only place that I feel at home.
4.26.2016
Bernie Sanders is right about poor voters: The wealthy vote more — and it’s hurting our democracy
***** “Defining political issue of our time”: NYU grad student union overwhelmingly votes to boycott Israel over violations of Palestinian human rights
4.25.2016
***** All 64 of my years have taught me that Heaven is in embracing our inescapable greed and recognizing that our only choice is between pleasure and joy, and this is what we have been missing all these centuries and that this is what Jesus was on to and tried to point us toward. If I am incorrect in this then everything I've stood on that has seemed like Heaven itself for me all.......
***** All 64 of my years have taught me that Heaven is in embracing our inescapable greed and recognizing that our only choice is between pleasure and joy, and this is what we have been missing all these centuries and that this is what Jesus was on to and tried to point us toward. If I am incorrect in this then everything I've stood on that has seemed like Heaven itself for me all these last 15 years is mistaken. I don't see how that can be. I'm okay with it if I've been mistaken, but I just don't see how that can be. It explains everything that all the great souls in history including and especially that of Jesus have been living and dying to show us. If what I am saying is in fact correct, then I am not to be admired, but to be profoundly envied, zero credit to me. You know, I think the bottom line is this, if Jesus life is the most enviable life there ever was then what I'm saying is correct, and this is how I felt about his life from the very beginning, I envied the way I thought his life must feel, to love the world so much.... If his life was just the most admirable, then I am absolutely incorrect. James. ( Pleasure is what our nervous system rewards us with when it thinks we are satisfying me and mine. Joy is what our nervous system rewards us with when it thinks we are attempting some huge good for the neediest. ) ( This is a paraphrase of a wonderful conversation I was privileged to have with a great young social worker, of a Jesuit background, here in the city recently. )
***** This is horrible. This is wrong. I'd likely do the same in year 68 of being terrorized, tortured, terminated, exterminated. And Israel, America, would have damn sure done infinitely worse infinitely sooner. 'Palestinian bus bombing targets civilians....' For Gandhi the unforgivable sin was to not protect one's loved ones by whatever means necessary.
4.24.2016
***** What I feel most certain of is that cataclysmic change as Earth has never seen before is upon us. Most centrally it is the disintegration of the corporate economic Elite ( we the 10% White colonialist ) Empire of insane materialism Crashing Down as Mother Earth refuses to support it any longer. As Mother Earth refuses.........
***** What I feel most certain of is that cataclysmic change as Earth has never seen before is upon us. Most centrally it is the disintegration of the corporate economic Elite ( we the 10% White colonialist ) Empire of insane materialism Crashing Down as Mother Earth refuses to support it any longer. As Mother Earth refuses to Shield us from our own self-destruction. At the moment I am repulsed by my inclination to try and Stave off this disintegration , repulsed because the notion of such an attempt is disgustingly futile, and because it would be to interfere with a necessary good, the dismantling of the empire that is destroying everything. But I am drawn to the notion that by way of metaphor I think of as the Jedi that we know from the movies. Individuals who had learned to become powerful channels of the force, loving, Wagers of Loving , that somehow were instrumental in allowing some measure of decency to continued among creatures. I am drawn to try and be such a Jedi, a warrior, an Insanely Humane Warrior , an INSHE Warrior and thereby, and through additional effort, to try and encourage and Foster others to do the same. What I know remains unclear within me is to what degree such Warriors can help work the miracle of humans taking the initiative in this matter of dismantling the Empire. This would be a miracle, an incredible Mercy, the potential birth of Heaven on Earth , and the only merciful way out. I see not a shadow of this happening. But I recognize it as the only major hope.
4.23.2016
Jewish anti-occupation activists arrested blocking ADL offices during Passover protest
Man Puts Dream Boat Aside, Plans to Pay for Kindergartners’ College Education Instead
***** STOP. READ. PASS ON. Edelman had always resented Israel's claim on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a symbol of Jewish liberation. Now he said this belonged to the Palestinians. NOW.
**** If nonviolence is a tactic, as near all of today's practitioners Proclaim, then it is not nonviolence. It is violence, manipulation, the attempt to get others to pay the price for what one wants. Nonviolence is loving, paying the price with one's own life.........
***** If nonviolence is a tactic, as near all of today's practitioners Proclaim, then it is not nonviolence. It is violence, manipulation, the attempt to get others to pay the price for what one wants. Nonviolence is loving, paying the price with one's own life for what one wants; it is not a tactic but a way of being, the way of non-cancerous life itself , the strategy of non-cancerous life itself. This is what we do for our children, largely, is it not? This is what we do when we want a house, or a car, or food? We don't go and try and cheat someone out of what is theirs. We don't go and try and force one to give it to us. We pay with the price of our lives, with the work of our lives, our bodies, and we seek to get what we want in that way, except in our worst moments, which may be Legion as we are taught in the sickest of all cultures. Non-violence better termed anti-violence, or better still, Loving) says that in matters of what is right and wrong, Justice, larger concerns of the human good, that we will go about securing those in the same way, paying the price with our own lives, not in the slightest trying to force others to pay for what we want. Nonviolence understood this way is The revolution, there is none other other, and it almost never has been tried. There is no other Revolution. Everything else is simply an attempt to reverse the roles of who is doing the violence and who is receiving it.
***** Why am I so actually, physically, immobilized, paralyzed, these last 3 days? Why can't I move on with full support of the campaign Sanders, Spirit Sanders, Revolution Sanders? My body and soul are in such tormented limbo. This is far from the first time I have gone through such total limbo. There......
***** Why am I so actually, physically, immobilized, paralyzed, these last 3 days? Why can't I move on with full support of the campaign Sanders, Spirit Sanders, Revolution Sanders? My body and soul are in such tormented limbo.
This is far from the first time I have gone through such total limbo. There have been periods throughout my life when I could not yet align my nervous system and its needs with the outside world. I lacked the clarity of vision and understanding. And my nature is such that I am physically unable to move forward without that clear unifying clarity as to what the world needs me to attempt, and with that Clarity I cannot be stopped, except by a bullet. I think we all have that needed, but few are as debilitated as I when I lack the clarity. This has been true since my earliest memories.
Because of this severe characteristic I have learned not to fight with this, but rather to submit to the process of regaining Clarity, understanding, purpose, mission , as I am doing now.
It is an unsettling time. It is somewhat frightening. I never know if I'll emerge on the other side. Though so far, I always have. It must be very frightening for the caterpillar to enter the Cocoon having no idea except that it is disintegrating into nothingness , no idea what is on the other side.
I think what my nervous system has known is wrong even with the Great Justice campaign Sanders, is that Justice for the 10%, and we Americans are the 10% , is not enough to live for. Is not enough to fight for. It is only for the 90%, or the bottom 10%, that life is worth fighting for.
I think my nervous system is facing that the American dream , heaven for me and mine, is death itself, is cancer, is killing everything, is Antichrist, is ungodly. No, I don't understand this in such intellectual terms but I use such intellectual terms to try and grasp what my nervous system is telling me which is much more Elemental.
When pressed very very hard Gandhi said that the force he was devoted to tapping into was, the love of a mother for her child. He did not say justice. He did not suggest that what the love of a mother equates to for her child is justice. That may be a piece, that may be a tiny piece, but it is not what the mother is concerned with. The mother wants a reduction of suffering for her child, and the increase in joy. Justice has some relationship to that but it is too distant. Justice does not equate to the love of a mother for her child, the force that I have worked to take over Within Me entirely for the joy of it, the reign of my heart over me, the reign of my soul over me.
My body has been able to go out into the miserable, Hellish, Godless, Loveless world we have created for the love of the least of these. It is telling me it is unable to do so for justice for we Americans, the world's 10%, which the man Sanders, good, Godly, righteous, just, honest is trying to lead us toward.
Nor is it even enough, so far, maybe this will change, to lead us away from the huge increase in the speed with which the future tidal Wave of suffering descends upon the world as it will with the election of anyone besides Sanders.
Does it know, is it trying to tell me, my nervous system, that the impending tidal wave of accelerated suffering is unavoidable? Unavoidable because the American Empire must and will end. Mother nature in the form of environmental cataclysm is authoring it. Not to belittle Sanders, he is a miracle, but Sanders is not leading us to disassemble American Empire.
I don't know how much longer my nervous system will be wrestling with all this. It has been having its way with me for days now or even longer. Frequently I have thought I was out of the paralysis, moving on, only to find moments later I was not. This is a very difficult juncture for me to get past. It is also a very necessary thing for me to work through, for all of us to work through.
***** The key that I see, found by all the great enviable Souls throughout history, is rooting ones being in the task of reducing the suffering, and increasing the joy, of the neediest people. This saves one from a life of destructive addiction to pleasures, joylessness, mental masturbation.
***** The key that I see, found by all the great enviable Souls throughout history, is rooting ones being in the task of reducing the suffering, and increasing the joy, of the neediest people. This saves one from a life of destructive addiction to pleasures, joylessness, mental masturbation.
4.22.2016
For the first time I'm seeing the rich, the 10%, as our mortal enemies.
For the first time I'm seeing the rich, the 10%, as our mortal enemies.
My nervous system, my body, kept me in bed for the last 2 days. I did not feel ill. Every time I tried to get .......
My nervous system, my body, kept me in bed for the last 2 days. I did not feel ill. Every time I tried to get out of bed, which was every 2 hours or so, my body said no, get back in bed. I think of the caterpillar, butterfly, cycle. It's much like much like that for me. The last month has been very stimulating, very different, democracy spring March for 10 days, two days impossible journey of cycling to get to Philadelphia in time , being publicly ridiculed in front of 450 people by the DC activist Club, being blocked by democracy spring from their Facebook page , Bernie's defeat in New York City, shockingly bad treatment at the hands of Bernie organizers , many stimulating meetings that I am now attending in the evening, a ridiculously high energy burn and output for me for the last four weeks or so.... tonight, I feel alive again for the first time in several days. Will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings. What I hope it brings is the physical and spiritual energy to be on the phone much of the day for Spirit Bernie. We'll see.
4.21.2016
***** Nonviolence is paying for what you want with your own life, not the live of others. Nonviolence, AKA unviolence, antiviolence, loving.
***** Nonviolence is paying for what you want with your own life, not the live of others. Nonviolence, AKA unviolence, antiviolence, loving.
4.20.2016
You don't do what's right because it works. You do what's right because it's right.
You don't do what's right because it works. You do what's right because it's right.
A new era of anti-occupation Judaism American Jews have long overwhelmingly supported an end to the occupation, but increasingly, we are building an organized critical mass who are also willing to push our institutions and politicians in the same direction. IfNotNow takes its Passover message of liberation to Hillel and AIPAC.
4.19.2016
***** I was wrong. This is so hard. I'm sorry. I'm having such trouble finding the path. My nervous system has been devoted for near all of my adult decades to the total turnaround of dire situations, 1st in Industry, and more recently relative to The Human Condition. Yet for years.......
***** I was wrong. This is so hard. I'm sorry. I'm having such trouble finding the path. My nervous system has been devoted for near all of my adult decades to the total turnaround of dire situations, 1st in Industry, and more recently relative to The Human Condition. Yet for years it has been inescapably clear to me that we are too far gone nationally, internationally, globally, ecologically to avoid near total catastrophe. And yet having seen this, having written of it, having for brief spurts lived it, my nervous system keeps spring back to its old measure of turning everything around for the better. Hence my horrible waffling recently on diving into Revolution Sanders, pulling out, diving in, pulling out..... I'm doing the best I can and it is not good enough at finding and Walking the right path for me. I wrote most recently of my horrible encounters with the Sanders Campaign which discouraged me from jumping in totally, or even at all, as I had expected to do. And yet now I expect to be jumping in totally. What has changed? Even days ago I was jumping in with the notion that Revolution Sanders was a significant promise. At least for the moment, my nervous system seems to have accepted that Revolution Sanders is not of significant promise because we Americans are just too selfish even those drawn to Revolution Sanders. But hearkening, yet again, for the moment at least, argh, to what Jane Goodall wrote recently, there is still much worth fighting for. Spirit Sanders I can get behind. He's a very good man. And whatever I can do to drave Spirit Sanders wherever it might go advances every cause of rescue that I am devoted to, Palestine, affordable housing, just wages, decent employment.... maybe I can sustain this footing for more than a few hours. Maybe not. I'll continue to do my best. But I expect to spend much of the rest of the day on the phone for campaign Sanders and shortly to donate what funds I can.
4.17.2016
***** I find this totally and absolutely believable, tho of course I do not know if it is true. Totally and absolutely consistent with everything that I see in this creature Hillary Clinton.... 'Secret Service agents: Hillary is a nightmare to work with'
4.16.2016
***** gigantically useful article.. 'Netanyahu responds to Leahy with a strange string of lies. The prime minister shoots off a sharply worded letter to a senior American senator who dared question Israel’s human rights record. That Netanyahu thinks anyone reading it will do anything but howl is worrying sign about his judgement.'
***** I find that wonder and awe are the ultimate Hallmarks of Life, as odd as that may seem. I find virtually no wonder and awe among the humanoids here in Washington DC, my.......
***** I find that wonder and awe are the ultimate Hallmarks of Life, as odd as that may seem. I find virtually no wonder and awe among the humanoids here in Washington DC, my sisters and brothers all. Certainly not among the intellectually, academically, over privileged. I wish I were kidding. I wish I were being cynical. And I find very little of it among my fellow humans here in the United States.