LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME

I strongly recommend the book referred to in the title of this entry. By James Loewen, the book discloses in how many ways our high school textbooks are being distorted and censored (specially in Texas, land of the neocon stooge) so that high school students can get through all of the education most of them will ever have without being asked to engage in any real analysis of the problems existing in American society. Below are a few of the bits of info that leaped out at me in Loewen’s Chapter, ironically named, “The Land of Opportunity”.


“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” —Abraham Lincoln (p.194)

“…learning to turn off lower-class students… schools have put into practice Woodrow Wilson's recommendation: ‘We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.’ ” —Woodrow Wilson (p.198)

“Stressing how middle-class we all are is particularly problematic today, because the proportion of households earning between 75 percent and 125 percent of the median income has fallen steadily since 1967. The Reagan-Bush administrations accelerated this shrinkage of the middle class, and most families who left its ranks fell rather than rose. This is the kind of historical trend one would think history books would take as appropriate subject matter, but only four of the twelve books in my sample provide any analysis of social stratification in the United States.” —James Loewen (p.197)

HAIKU FOR TODAY (Think about it.)

If someone tells you
I love you with all my heart,
they hold back a lot.

AMERICA’S HITLERIAN NIGHTMARE OF TORTURE

Look—it’s become routine for neocons to claim that it is unfair of us more moral Americans to compare them to Hitlers, Stalins or Maos or to any of the dictators of any regime that, in the past, used torture and which many good American’s, some modern Americans notwithstanding, have always been hateful of, but the facts continue to speak for themselves. It’s not only I or any other living, good American who condemns them, it is our entire American history of the past 100 years and all its greatest spokesmen that condemns torturers and dictators. So, if they can support torturing any enemy that they decide to call an enemy, then, I suppose there is nothing protecting me from their torture, or you yourself when the time comes, that protects all of us from their torture except a common and widespread respect for the laws of humanity that defend anyone the next Bush regime decides to call a criminal.

The following is from a Newsweek article (May 5, 2008) written by Dahlia Lithwick, and as a good humanist might say, may the humane laws of America protect her. Or as one of the torturers might say, may God preserve her soul.

[SNIP]
Full and fair trials might have happened for enemy combatants, but missteps have led to a legal process that now exists solely to prove the detentions were justified; that the captives are-as former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called them—"the worst of the worst." That's a political conclusion, not a legal one, and it's why Col. Morris Davis—former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo—resigned last fall, claiming political interference had created the impression of a "rigged process stacked against the accused." Davis later told The Nation that in a conversation with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes in 2005, Haynes told him flatly, "we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We've got to have convictions."

If prisoners were illegally tortured at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, who was responsible? A memo written by John Yoo, a deputy at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel from 2002 to 2003, was declassified this month. He argued that military interrogators could subject suspected terrorists to harsh treatment as long as it didn't cause "death, organ failure or permanent damage."

Yoo's a possible contributions to torture at Guantanamo almost pale in comparison with ABC News's revelations that administration officials, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, George Tenet, Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld, met several times in the White House to discuss torture techniques for Al Qaeda suspects. The group signed off on slapping, pushing and waterboarding, in a manner "so detailed ... some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed." Days later, President George W. Bush confirmed he "approved" of these tactics.

Yet despite the fact that senior members of the Bush administration may have violated the War Crimes Act of 1996, the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, there is scant serious talk of legal accountability.
[PASTE]


Here's a haiku with a spring kigo (seasonal reference):

Winter trucks labor
in the slushy mall streets
with Spring fashions.

THIS IS THE SECRET. THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TRIED TO DO.

“If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against. He lives in “The House of Gathering.” Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.” —Carl Jung from May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude (pp.198-99).

The key word in the preceding passage is “projections”—a psychological term for the mental phenomena by which we project our own subconscious onto the world and its inhabitants. Where we see evil, we are the evil. Where we see wrong, we are that wrong. It means, in other words, that we “are what we see” out there in the world, forcing the molds from our own minds onto the formless world. Each of us creates the world he sees. I do understand that when we have caught a rapist in the act or do know that a child is being molested, we are not the doer of those deeds, but we do, in all our judgments and manipulations of others create the conditions from which other’s harmful acts grow. We lay the seeds for our own destruction with our ignorance of ourselves. When we know ourselves we can’t help but add to the world rather than subtract from it. I can’t think of a more important lesson for each and all of us to understand, for it is, if you will allow me to be so bold, the beginning of a truth we can all live with.

The osprey couple…
busily tidying up
their summer timeshare.*


*Osprey go south in the winter and return to nest in the spring.
They are birds of prey who eat fish.
One of my walks down by the Columbia River passes
a couple of man made nesting platforms
to which osprey return each year. My haiku should now make sense.

DON'T GO ANY FARTHER IF YOU'RE OFFENDED BY
HALF-NAKED, BEAUTIFUL 47 YEAR OLD WOMEN:

I fell in love with Julianne Moore when I first saw her in a very interesting movie called, Safe. Since then she has aged most gracefully and beautifully. I got to tell you, she takes my breath away still. Look for yourself, men. The photo is from a spread in the Paris Vogue:

5/14/2008:For some reason, the photo disappeared from this blog. Magic? Witches? Anyhow, if you click on her name down at the labels, she'll pop up again. I'm truly puzzled. [Minutes later.] What? Now it's back again. I give up. Here she is OR here she isn't........ [Scratch head.]




Today's kigo was "make up", the verb as well as the noun "makeup". Here's a couple of my haiku:

Tattooed lady
on a slab — all made up
nowhere to go.

Divorce —
the failure
of make up.

HEY! IT'S EARTH DAY!

I've been driving 4 and sometimes 3 cylinder cars since 1964 when I bought my first VW new for about 1,650 dollars. Is that price right? If my memory is not betraying me? Sometimes I even drove a 3 cylinder car that was designed to function on 3 cylinders. . . . Not! Actually, Mertie owned a Chevy Geo when we got together which I often drove. That was a 3 cylinder car that got up to 50 mpg on the highway and 40 in the city. It also only cost her about 5,000 dollars new. Where are those cars in this new array of fuel efficient autos that cost more than 20,000 dollars to own? See, the auto boys in Detroit made sure they got rid of all those inexpensive fuel efficient cars before they made driving a fuel efficient car a task only the rich can afford. As far as I'm concerned, Detroit has always been about selling cars to the upper-middle class and the rich. They've never made cars for the poor and lower-middle class to own. That's why I eventually abandoned those who had abandoned me and switched to foreign autos. Currently, I'm driving a Kia Rio which I paid cash for, 8,600 dollars new, but it only gets about 33 mpg on the highway and 25 mpg in the city. That's really bad compared to what I got in my Ford Aspire, the last American car I owned. I'm amazed when Detroit brags about the fuel efficiency of autos that get only what I get with my fuel-inefficient Kia Rio. We are going to have to do much better than that if we are to climb out of the pockets of the American corporations and the Arab oil cartels. But, I've noticed something also tricky-Dick about fuel efficient foreign autos. Have you noticed that when foreign automakers are trying to break into the American market, they offer autos under 10,000 dollars, but after they get into the market, they suddenly can't seem to make those autos anymore? Something about profit margins, I think.

MORAL LOGIC

One of the interesting things about classes in morality or ethics are the hypothetical situations teachers come up with to demonstrate just how complicated ethical decisions can be. You know the ones: a bus full of 30 students is driving down a steep mountain on a narrow road when suddenly they come upon a baby, crawling in the middle of the road. What should the bus driver do? Should he run over the baby, saving his 30 children? Or should he drive off the cliff and save the baby? By the way, most humans would purposefully drive off the cliff, hoping for a good result, rather than to purposefully choose to run over a single baby. Seriously—in the second case, most humans feel that they've avoiding purposely killing a child while casting their lot with fate as to the outcome. Well, anyway, something like that. Let's not niggle about the details.

To return to my point. When Bush was given this ethical test (only instead of a bus full of students, he had all the citizens of the world in his bus, and he was hypothetically driving at full speed into a brick wall, plus on both sides of the wall he had adequate room to avoid the collision), he is said to have chosen to floor the accelerator, lock the steering wheel straight ahead, and give the finger to alternate drivers running beside the bus, hoping to take over the bus driver's job. Of course, we would only expect such behavior from a young Arab terrorist, a religious fundamentalist, neither of which George Bush . . . . Well, anyway. . . .

ALWAYS KNEW HE WAS A FUNDAMENTALIST OF SOME SORT

I think the guy is half off his rocker and always has been. This claim that he makes shows he does not understand science or how it works. Plus, he probably needs some advertising dollars and some more attention. He's slipping off the radar of late and probably craves notoriety, but, of course, it does not bode well for me when I begin to question motives instead of facts. Of course his "film", according to what I hear of it, also questions motives so a little hair off the dog he's biting may seem in order.

Of course, if he thinks these things about science, we must imagine how adamant he is against religion unless, aging, he's become a convert to theism.

[SNIP]
Ben Stein "Expelled" by Humanists

For Immediate Release - Contact Fred Edwords at (202) 238-9088
fedwords@americanhumanist.org

"Anti-atheist propaganda for pseudoscience" is what the American Humanist
Association today called Ben Stein's new movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence
Allowed." Former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein is most widely recognized for
his role in the 1986 film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

Released nationwide in select theaters on April 18, "Expelled" is self-described
as a "satirical documentary." In response to this, Fred Edwords, director of
communications for the American Humanist Association and former board
member of the National Center for Science Education, said today: "It's unclear
what is being satirized. It seems more a satire of bad documentaries than of the
scientific community, which is the target of its invective. Every criticism of modern
science is punctuated by black and white footage from strident mid-twentieth
century documentaries and propaganda films as well as old Hollywood movies.
Can Ben Stein be serious? Sadly, he is!"

The film's essential claim is that the scientific community has erected a
"Berlin Wall" of sorts between Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and a
supposedly scientific rival notion of "Intelligent Design." Scientists are
doing this, the film contends, because there is secret disagreement in the
scientific community over the validity of evolution--and because an
atheistic elite wants to suppress that disagreement and rule out
any alternatives to evolutionary theory. The film also claims that
scientists and journalists who deviate from the party line are ostracized or
lose their jobs. And it concludes that the theory of evolution is
responsible for the Holocaust and leads to a devaluation of human life.

"The claim that a conspiracy of atheists has highjacked science, education,
and the media is not only ludicrous, it is offensive," declared American
Humanist Association executive director Roy Speckhardt. "Scapegoating
atheists is as bad as scapegoating any other group. Racial and religious
minorities have suffered this in the past. It's about time we learned to
stop repeating the formula."

Edwords added, "This film not only makes false claims against atheists, it
does so using a bag of dirty tricks. For example, in one scene Richard
Dawkins is shown being made up for his interview with Ben Stein. But Stein
is presented as suddenly showing up for the interview fresh off the street
and without pretense. In the credits, however, we learn that Stein had a
personal makeup artist. This is just one of the subtle techniques the film
uses, combined with a plethora of out-of-context interview footage, to put
those who Stein opposes in the worst light and those he favors in the best."

The American Humanist Association named Dawkins its 1996 Humanist of the
Year. Earlier, in 1977, the AHA issued a special document on
evolution and the teaching of creationism in public school science classes.
(See http://www.americanhumanist.org/about/affirming-evolution.html.) In
doing so it became one of the first national organizations to go public in
challenging creationism. Today's "Intelligent Design" is often recognized as
a sanitized version of that same creationism. This latter point was
understood by Judge John E. Jones III of Pennsylvania who ruled the teaching
of "intelligent design" unconstitutional in public schools in the case
called Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Jones will receive the
Humanist Religious Liberty Award from the American Humanist Association
at its national conference in early June.

Edwords concluded: "Rather than being a critique of either the scientific
community or the public schools, the statement 'No Intelligence Allowed' in
the film's title seems a better description of what Ben Stein demands of his
audience. But I don't think he can find many people willing to leave
their brains at the door. So I'm skeptical that this film could persuade
anyone not already convinced--and it probably insults the intelligence of
most of those."

* * *

The American Humanist Association (www.americanhumanist.org) advocates for
the rights and viewpoints of humanists. Founded in 1941 and headquartered in
Washington, D.C., its work is extended through more than 100 local chapters
and affiliates across America.

Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism, affirms
our responsibility to lead ethical lives of value to self and humanity.
[PASTE]

HARPER'S IS A GOOD MAGAZINE

It's been awhile since I've looked into a Harper's Magazine. One day while I was at Barnes & Noble having a latte at their Starbucks, I decided to pick up this Harper's (April 2008) because they had a cover story about "contagious cancer". That got my attention, but once into reading, I came across an informative piece of writing from Iraq via a woman who lives in Syria about all the Iraqis who are refugees in the world, millions of them. Their stories made me cry. I was surprised at myself. And there is also this biting story by artist John Berger (p.46) about the Mexican Zapatistas in which this piece about Maria Concepcion appears. So read it, and buy a Harper's if you get a chance. It's a damn fine magazine. Did I get the name in often enough? Maybe you already know that.

(SNIP)
Speaking of sincerity makes me suddenly think of a photo of a woman who is not wearing a mask. I cut the photo out of the daily newspaper La Jornada. Her name is Maria Concepcion Moreno Arteaga. Mother of six boys, whom she brought up alone. Forty-seven years old, living in a village 200 kilometers north of Mexico City, she earned her living as a washerwoman. Three years ago she was arrested by the Mexican government security forces and thrown into jail on the totally false charge of being involved in the traffic of illegal immigrants. One day Maria Concepcion found herself before six such migrants in rags, who had made it across more than half the country and were pleading for water. So she gave them water and a wedge of something to eat because, given their plight, "there was no way possible to say no”.

After being falsely charged she spent more than two years in prison. Her work in prison was the making of logos, labels for free-market clothes. With the few pesos handed over to her for this forced labor, she bought soap and toilet paper to keep clean.

The message of her eyes in the photo is: There was no way possible to say No.
(PASTE)

Photo credit to Marco Pelaez/La Jornada, Mexico

TODAY'S HAIKU: too true too

Spring birdbath:
the crows leave sparrow skulls
in the rainwater.

Frightened by the
old man in the mirror,
my hair retreats.

WALKING ON WATER

I think the picture below proves that more than a mythical Jesus can walk on water.














THE WILLOW SPRINGS STAFF

A long time ago when I was a youthful 40 or so years old, I was a founding member of a literary magazine called Willow Springs which still exists at Eastern Washington University. This is a photo of a softball game we had in the spring after we had put the second issue to press. By the time we got to this photo, the Willow Springs had a staff and a large group of supporters as you can see. I can recall a few of their names. That's Krystal Partlow standing taller than anyone else in the photo. The guy far left, crouching behind the wheel is Geoff Hayes, a longtime continuous friend. Randy Nord sports the cap in the back row. I should recall more faces to names than that of them, but I'm ashamed to say that I don't.

]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]

My bathroom reading is May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude. She must have been in her sixties when she wrote it. And I get this picture of a crabby, pissed old biddy whose religion has made her narrow, but she has openings too, like when she enjoys the musical in New York with the kids in it. I feel the same way about Walt Whitman as I plow through Reynolds' cultural biography of Whitman—crabby and narrow. Suffering individuals who roll in their suffering to prove their worth or mettle. Or their patience with those of us less cultured than they are. These two were very much like I was in my depressed, drinking years.

Now, on the other hand, there's Hass's book on The Essential Haiku. According to him, three of the basics of life for the Japanese sensibility are impermanence, suffering and contingency. Yes suffering, suffering for all of us as a regular condition of life, but there is a difference, I think, in the emphasis that a Japanese haiku writer and these two Americans (and O so many others) place on suffering. To the American Christian, mired in his lot, suffering is a way of earning his place in letters or, in the church, in God's eye. To the Zen master (and I know very little here), suffering is a condition, not to be employed to one's benefit, but to be observed, and when possible, transcended.

At my own age of 70, I'm moving into this acceptance of suffering as a natural condition, not to be endured to prove one's worth and artistic value, but just to be observed and accepted. Quite a difference between east and west, and, believe it or not, an acceptance that yields quite a bit of tranquility. Below, you'll find a little haiku I've come up with that I think meets the essentials of the haiku.

Garden party —
the slugs getting drunk
in the beer saucers.*

*Putting out saucers of beer is supposed to be an environmentally friendly way to kill the slugs who so love one's hostas. All those years in Spokane, toiling in my flower garden, is paying off in some haiku.

USUALLY MY POSTS ARE ABOUT…

politics, science and literature, but I just happened to come across these photos on the Huffpo site. Even at the ripe old age of 70 and with a little help from Viagra, I can rise to this occasion. My great grandparents from before the days of the Great Depression would not understand it at all… or would they? Or at least my wonderful great grandfather on my grandmother’s side of dad's family might respond and understand. He was a drayman who drove a team of horses for a brewery in Dayton, Ohio. Have men ever been immune to a well-turned ankle? Look at the ankle on that chick! Hey! Where is that ankle.... Never mind!

"Proving she's still an American Beauty, actress Mena Suvari looked a figure of confidence as she showed off her slim physique in a revealing bikini."



NOW FOR SOMETHING
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

The following explosive and revealing letter by a serviceman in Iraq, I got via the Huffpo site also which directed me to a website run by a fellow named Spencer Ackerman.

from ’s Ackerman's blog:

"A friend of a friend just received the following email from a junior officer serving in Iraq. It makes for especially powerful reading in the wake of the Second Sadrist Intifada. Reprinted with permission.


"[Name redacted],

"I agree that the war was a great strategic mistake. The way I see it, Saddam Hussein was a secular leader and therefore a huge stumbling block to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. Yes, he was an evil person and he was our enemy (since Gulf War I) but he was also an enemy of Bin Laden and the Shia extremists etc. If he did have WMDs, he would have used them for regional influence. He never would have given them up to terrorists or risked provoking the US by using them against us. Now, with Saddam gone we have a vaccum that can only be filled by Shia extremists who are more of a terrorist threat than Saddam.

"So I agree that coming here was a big mistake for those reasons and others. As far as things on the ground, the outlook isn't much better. In my opinion, what everyone fails to realize is that this is not a counterinsurgency. If we wanted to stay in Iraq, then it would be a counterinsurgency. But it is clear that our goal is to turn over power and pull out. So, in building our strategic endstate, it's pointless to set goals that relate to our presence in Iraq. If the "insurgency" is a function of our being there, then it is not an insurgency in terms of our endstate. For example, if one of our goals is to stop IED attacks on US forces, that is pointless. When we leave, there will be no more IED attacks on us forces. So our endstate needs to be different. We need to ask "if we left tomorrow, what would happen in Iraq?" and from there, we need to determine which of those anticipated results are unacceptable to us. Then we must aim our efforts on making sure those unacceptable results do not occur.

"When I look at the problem that way, it becomes almost impossible to find a purpose in what we do. Regardless of what we do, the Shia are going to take control. They have completely infiltrated all the security forces. The only kind of leader who could keep them in check was a tyrant like Saddam. And when the Shia take control, as soon as we leave, they are going to be as brutal as they like against the Sunni and there will be little we can do about it. That is what will happen whether we leave tomorrow or in ten years. As far as the foreign fighters, they will leave Iraq when we do. So what are we trying to accomplish here? Train the Iraqi forces? History shows that training forces in the Middle East can backfire. Any training we offer these people will find its way to our terrorist enemies.

"Things are heating up as well. The Shia are getting more aggressive. We lost a man the other day and another was seriously wounded a week or so later. We're facing a high risk with very little potential payoff. We are able to make a difference at the local level. Some of the people are very kind and appreciate our help. That is the only positive thing I can see coming out of this.

"Very Respectfully
"Junior Officer XXXX"

PS: I wonder why we have to hide the soldier's name? His disagreeing with the Bush fiasco should only get him replaced by a soldier who puppets the Bush/McCain plan like Patraeus replaced the general who disagreed with Bush. What the hell was his name? Is he still in the service?