Seditious and Un-American

"No real American who loves this country can equate 48% of Americans who didn't vote for Bush with the enemies we are fighting. We need every one of us in the fight. That is seditious and un-American." [Anonymous Terrorism Researcher]

I've put the above quote as anonymous simply because it was made on an internet forum, and not in the direct "public light". If he makes the same statement on Fox tomorrow, I'll change it. THose who know, know. Those who dont, arent hurt by not knowing.
That bullshit aside, that is one of the best things I have ever read.
Can I get an a-FUCKING-men from the congregation?

Mettle Forged in the Fires of Chaos

I was doing some research for a paper on the London attacks of yesterday and came across the image at right on the BBC website.
The accompanying text 'Graeme Weston: "I met these two people at Tavistock Square walking to hospital. They said they were in the front carriage of the tube as it left Kings Cross when a bomb had exploded. They said they were the lucky ones.' "
I love this picture. I dont know how to say it any better, especially given the circumstance, but I do. I am struck by, and in admiration of, the strength displayed by the woman particularly. She is a pretty woman, even disheveled by stress and action and covered in the dirt and grime of fire and explosion, but there is more to her than just that. The little smile for the camera man, its sad but she is trying. Instead of freaking out, stumbling around in a daze, she and her husband/boyfriend are doing something, they understand what has happened and have accepted the sad reality of it. They are alive, and although sad and no doubt horrified, still thankful for their lives.
This is just a wonderful image of strength, and solidarity between two people (look at him looking at her, I'd take that look in admiringly and proudly too if I was hers), in the aftermath of crisis, horror.

To be a successful survivor of an event like this - or even to be a successful responder (the career field I am entering) - you have to muster this kind of strength, it is essential that you have an understanding and acceptance of the event that has just happened and the chaos going on around you. This is critical.
Human beings make decisions, especially in crisis, in a cyclical fashion. This has been defined as the Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action Loop (or OODA Loop). To make a decision one has to not only see whats happening around them, they have to orient to it, become aware of the reality of the event. In a crisis when a person is forced to make a decision quickly in a situation that involves chaos, high levels of unsurity and risks to personal safety (physical, financial, psychological/emotional, or combinations there of) their loop can get interrupted and they can fail to process critical bits of information, or even to be aware of them. Getting stuck on one majority of an event, I.E. in the London bombings focusing on "explosion, oh god, bomb, terrosim, explosion", causes this - without effective information processing, no decision can be made and panic ensues. Thats why I say its important to be Aware and Accepting of the event(s) that have happened or are happening around you, you dont have to be numb to it but you have to be able to accept it as "this is whats happening, this is reality" to effectively deal with it and handle yourself in it.
Once that is done, you can set about rational decision making and positive actions, to help yourself or to effectively carry out duties (if a first responder).
Not everyone has that mettle - especially in a world where most of us can count on someone being there to help us (I.E. those first responders who by nature of that mettle may have chosen that career). I think it is wonderful to see such a display of it as in that above photo. What a wonderful image.

(Image at right shamelessly stolen from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4660563.stm )

You Have No Right To Police Protection (Or: And Now For Something I Totally Agree With...)

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police cannot be sued for how they enforce restraining orders, ending a lawsuit by a Colorado woman who claimed police did not do enough to prevent her estranged husband from killing her three young daughters.

Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police enforcement of the court order against her husband, the court said in a 7-2 opinion.

City governments had feared that if the court ruled the other way, it would unleash a potentially devastating flood of cases that could bankrupt municipal governments.

Gonzales contended that police did not do enough to stop her estranged husband, who took the three daughters from the front yard of her home in June 1999 in violation of a restraining order.

Hours later Simon Gonzales died in a gun fight with officers outside a police station. The bodies of the three girls, ages 10, 9 and 7, were in his truck.

Gonzales argued that she was entitled to sue based on her rights under the 14th Amendment and under Colorado law that says officers shall use every reasonable means to enforce a restraining order. She contended that her restraining order should be considered property under the 14th Amendment and that it was taken from her without due process when police failed to enforce it.

"The restraining orders are not worth anything unless police officers are willing to enforce them. They are just paper," said Brian Reichel, the attorney for Gonzales. "If nothing else this case has shined the spotlight on a very important issue."

Castle Rock, Co., police contend they tried to help Gonzales. Police twice went to the estranged husband's apartment, kept an eye out for his truck and called his cellular phone and home phone.

Gonzales reached him on his cell phone, and he told her that he had taken the girls to an amusement park in nearby Denver. Gonzales contends that police should have gone to the amusement park or contacted Denver police.

The case is Castle Rock, Colo., v. Gonzales, 04-278

Maybe people will start to learn now that their own safety is their responsibility, and theirs alone.
A restraining order is like a lock - locks only keep honest people out. Restraining orders only keep honest people away. It just is a piece of paper. Like a law, it doesnt prevent anything, but it provides grounds for arrest and prosecution (punishment) for the person who does a bad thing.
If Gonzales wanted protection, she should have watched her children at all times. If her husband was enough of a threat to get a restraining order, he was enough of a threat to warrant always watching the children. A mother in that situation who puts her head in the sand about the true danger is not only a fool, she is a damned fool. Most men dont kill their kids/wives because they hate them, they kill them because they want to keep them, as a form of control.
And (can you see it coming yet?) if Gonzales was in fear of her husband to that degree, she should have gotten some self protection training, a handgun & Concealed Carry liscense and gun training, and kept that gun with her 24/7.
If you want safety, if you want security, the first step in attaining it is to drop the illusion of having it. None of us are safe, none of us are secure, and none of us ever will be perfectly - but we can plan, train, have and use tools, that greatly improve our quality of safety and security, and will for most cases bring us (and our loved ones) out safely on the other side of an event like this.

Unfortunately, most people are more comfortable with the illusion, that with actually doing for themselves. They want a baby-sitter, a state sponsored baby-sitter, in a blue uniform with a gun because the responsibility of doing for themselves is too much. I am beggining to firmly believe this, the majority of people do not want responsibility, they want to be like little kids, told what to do and molly-coddled about everything.

Blackout

The Electrical Grid is Failing

This is truly a scary article.
Anyone remember what happened in the north east US back in 2003? Yeah, that little blackout thingy.
Now imagine a bigger one.
Its coming.
Our infrastructure is falling apart. Roads are in the worst shape they have ever been in America. Oil prices are raising to cost of everything, because everything has to be transported (food, medicine, raw materials, human bodies/work force). Our critical systems are not only vulnerable to attack (see the Global Guerrillas link @ right for more...) but they are wearing down, wearing out, and the cost of servicing them is getting to be too high.
If you dont think a crash is coming, you need to look at things again.

~You vitriolic,
Patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
Psyched

It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine~

Wanderers

Back in January I posted a short commentary on a quote I read from the Eastern European Jewish tale The Angel of Losses , "... a tzaddik who searches after lost things is himself sometimes lost."
That line brought up something very near and dear to my heart, that idea of being a seeker. I have in many ways made a way out of being a seeker, both intellectually and spiritually. I have been called foolish for this, and told I will never find myself closer to the creator by being a wanderer, but that doesnt stop me. By searching, enjoying the question as much as the answer, and always pursuing the questions, I have found myself much strength and guidance.
Today I was the Fall 2004 issue of Parabola magazine (an excellent journal, easily found at most bookstores) and came across an article by Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, an American Russian Orthodox bishop, titled "The Wanderer".
In it he poses a question, "Why does the spiritual wanderer set out?"
In answering it he speaks of Saint Brendan (The navigator), an Irish monk (B. 489 D. 583, roughly) who visited placed all over the Celtic world by boat and supposedly made a great Westward voyage in a leather hulled currach. Although some say he discovered the Americas, the old tale says he sought "the Isles of the Blessed", located beyond this world. J.R.R. Tokien wrote in his poem The Death of Brendan

"The round world plunges steeply down
but on the old road goes
as an unseen bridge that on arches runs
to coasts that no man knows."

In the Bishops article this leads him to ask why Brendan journeyed west. As a possible answer he quotes the words of a friend, upon hearing the news of a mutual friends death, "I thought of the voyages of the ancient Celts in search of their 'place of Ressurection.'"
Suddenly I was reminded of what I posted yesterday, the John Donne poem. I was particularly moved by the phrase Oppenheimer took for Trinity, and had been thinking about it a lot, "As in East and West in all flat maps - and I am one - Are one, so death shall touch the Resurrection".
Donne was a priest and preacher in England, and wrote "Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness" bed-ridden with great fever (hence the first reference to Magellan, who died of fever, "Per fretum febris").
In "Hymn..." Donne makes reference to several Straits (That of Magellan, Anyan, and Gibraltar). A strait represents a tight place of passage, between to large bodies of water, literally, or figuratively we can safely say it is a reference to making the journey, from one place unto another. Perhaps as Brendan journeyed from this world to another and back again.
Going back to the article, Bishop Seraphim goes on to suggest the search for the place of our resurrection, while in simple terms in the search for the "place of one's death" or even death itself, is not just that. He says it is first of all the search for ones "End", the goal at the end of full disclosure of personal destiny.
He then brings up the image of the burning mountain, or fire on the mountain - in I Ching Hexagram 56 says "Fire on the mountain: the image of the Wanderer". In the tale of Brendan he comes, almost at the end of his voyage, through clouds to see a mountain rising from the sea, wreathed in fire, "the whole mountain from the summit to the sea seemed as one great pyre", which Tokien expressed "on its ashen head was a crown of red, where fire flamed and fell, Tall as a column in High Heavens Hall, its feet were deep as Hell..."
Moses climbed the mountain into fire, pressing on as if "into a kiln" and returns having found his End, the tablets of the Commandments, guidance and leadership for his people.
There is an old folk song, from the Southern hill country, that includes "Fire on the mountain, run boys run" (The Grateful Dead, and Charlie Daniels band, among others, have all used this in other songs). On a particularly excellent page RE the Grateful Dead's song, one commentator points out that as a child he was taught a song to encourage kids to remember their bible verses, and study lest they not go to Heaven, the song went

"There's a fire on the mountain tonight,
No place to run, no place to hide.
Where would you go if you had to die tonight?
There's a fire on the mountain tonight."

Now... that would surely work to give kids something frightening to think about as motivation for their studies, but I propose its origin and deeper meaning isnt that - "Where would you go if you had to die tonight? There's a fire on the mountain tonight" combines the image of the wanderer (fire on the mountain) with a very direct sense of movement, travel - the implication of death, finding ones end is clear, as is the implication of a resurrection, presumably in Heaven.
The idea that those reaching the term of their journey, or finding their end, find a great joy and simplicity in their now completed lives is carried in the above, and is also carried in the legend of Brendan and in "The High History of the Holy Grail" where two of its Welsh Knight guardians return to their homes to live out the last of their days simply, but happily, having found their way, and telling others "Go where we went and you will know why" (Similarly Brendan, in Tolkiens telling, says to his apprentice "find for yourself things out of mind, you will learn no more from me."

All those who truly walk a path, who seek, are wanderers, and they are not lost. Those who sit in one place, and fervently claim truth and touch with the spiritual are the lost. Wandering aimless and lost in the wilderness is not making the journey to the lands of Israel. They have found no end, and make no effort to do so, despite any claims otherwise. If they actually had, they would need no such claims, and would only encourage others to make their own journeys.
Jesus is quoted as having said "Be as passerby", but that can be directly translated as being "Be wanderers".

"... a tzaddik who searches after lost things is himself sometimes lost. And as you know, it is necessary to search in the dark, in the realm of the unknown. And with what do you search in the darkness? With the light of the soul. For the soul is a light planted in the tzaddik to seek after whatever has been lost." Reb Nachman.

Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness

There is a wonderful book (or there was, my copy must be at least thirty years old, it may be out of print) called New Mexico Place Names A Geographic Dictionary, edited by T.M Price. I was looking at it earlier, just skimming it for places I know or looked interesting, and I came across the entry for Trinity.
Now for those who dont know, Trinity (or Trinity Site) is an area of White Sands Missile Range.
The range was originally ranch land the government siezed for a weapons test site during WWII. On July 16th 1945 the area of the 3,200 square mile range that is now known as Trinity Site was the site of the worlds first atomic explosion, when J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team from the Manhattan Project detonated the "gadget" under the code-name Trinity.
In New Mexico Place Names the Trinity listing says that the name had no particular technical significance, according to Oppenheimer, but was named from a poem, Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness by English poet John Donne. The referenced line was printed and it really struck me, "As in East and West in all flat maps - and I am one - Are one, so death shall touch the Resurrection".
I can easily imagine the meaning such a passage would have had for Oppenheimer, as his concern and reservation about such destructive power grew towards the latter days of the Manhattan Project. The entire poem, in fact, seems as though it could have been -

HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESS.


SINCE I am coming to that Holy room,
Where, with Thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made Thy music ; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before ;

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die ;

I joy, that in these straits I see my west ;
For, though those currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me ? As west and east
In all flat maps—and I am one—are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.

Is the Pacific sea my home ? Or are
The eastern riches ? Is Jerusalem ?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar ?
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place ;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me ;
As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

So, in His purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord ;
By these His thorns, give me His other crown ;
And as to others' souls I preach'd Thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,
“Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down.”

Although Oppenheimer was not raised religious, I have always speculated that he was very spiritual and looked upon that in crisis as a strength. I admire that a great deal.
As someone comes so close with death, as in the act of creating a means for it (and such a great means the atomic weapon) the emergence of the spiritual is very interesting. The ties between the two go much deeper than human morality, or our need for guidance. The two are wed, parts of the same great spiritual whole. The universal truths that can help guide us when in such places of darkness can be found in many sources, and I admire someone with the strength and knowledge to have sought them out, recognized them and drawn them to himself in times of need.
When the first atomic weapon was detonated at Trinity Oppenheimer watching from a distance intoned a phrase from Hindu scripture in the Bhagavadgita, "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds."

Another, Very Large, Nail in the Coffin

Supreme Court Rules: Cities Can Sieze Private Property for Sale to Developers

I could cry.
I am upset that my government (I say mine because I am subject to them, not because I elected them or feel like I have any power over them whatsoever any longer) would take away the little bit of comfort many terminally ill people have. It saddens me.
I am upset that my government would, in a completely knee-jerk fashion, put constraints upon the first ammendment against burning the flag. As distasteful as it may be, it is still something supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution as free speech. That angers me.
But that my government would essentially deny the right of property ownership to the common man, who has no recourse against the money and influence of big business, and say that those big businesses can simply buy (or however they motivate local politicians) the siezure of any property they decide they want? I am ashamed, appalled, angry and hurt beyond words.

The Constitution is dead. Those of us who believe in it, numerous as we may be, are no match for those who power who dont. Some of us "believers" are still too damn fool to realize the very people they elected (*coughcoughdubyacoughcough*) are part of this enemy to the constitution, but even if they did, what does it matter? We the people have no power over the Supreme Court... and no politician has the spine (much-less the balls) to challenge them in any fashion.
As bad as it gets, I usually have an honest bit of (probably naive) hope. What hope is there in this?

My patriots blood runs cold, my spine aches with the strength of standing stiff against the unstoppable winds of tyranny, and the bile in my throat speaks for the acid tongues of my fore-fathers who's lifes work, freedom, is being desecrated.