Mindfulness is deliberately paying attention, being fully aware of what is happening both inside yourself—in your body, heart and mind—and outside yourself, in your environment. Mindfulness is awareness without judgment or criticism. p. 2
From Mindful Eating by Jan Chozen Bays
Found in my electronic chapbook.
If we understand how and why we’ve been walking the path of suffering, then we can see its opposite. The Noble Eightfold Path, the path to well-being, will reveal itself. p. 33
From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh
Of late I have been re-reading and finding deeper understanding in another Zen book: Mindful Eating by Jan Chozen Bays. I’ve only recently come to a realization, or in the Zen parlance, discovered a Dharma Gate, that does not solve my problems, but does show me a new path. I have, at least, glimpsed the opposite path to suffering.
Found in my electronic chapbook.
It’s bad enough that this goes on out in the open, but part two of this joke is that nobody’s ashamed of it in the slightest. In fact, Thomson Reuters threw the P.R.-office version of a hissy fit today after Schneiderman closed shop on their neat little revenue stream. The firm refused to permanently end the practice and defiantly insisted upon their right to sell data to whomever they want, whenever they want. From a news release:
Thomson Reuters strongly believes that news and information companies can legally distribute non-governmental data and exclusive news through services provided to fee-paying subscribers…
It is widely understood that news and information companies compete for exclusive news and differentiated content to help their customers make better informed trading and investment decisions …
Mm-hmm. Yes, there’s a socially beneficial activity, helping your customers make “better informed trading and investment decisions” two seconds faster than your other customers (read: suckers). Clearly, someone who wants to buy a two-second head start is doing so because he or she needs those extra two seconds to soberly digest market data, not because he or she wants to massively front-run the rest of the investing public using high-speed computers.
Everyone has secrets…
Everyone lies…
Who would show up in your nodes?
We don’t need to find the answer by trusting that Buddha or God created suffering for mysterious reasons. We only need to use our clear minds and our calm hearts to look deeply and see the causes. p. 33
From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh
Found in my electronic chapbook.
Over the past two weeks, I have lost count of the number of officials and government ministers who, when challenged about internet surveillance by GCHQ and the NSA, try to reassure their citizens by saying that the spooks are “only” collecting metadata, not “content”. Only two conclusions are possible from this: either the relevant spokespersons are unbelievably dumb or they are displaying a breathtaking contempt for their citizenry.
Well, Mr. President, which choice is most correct?
We have a two person mayor’s race. Well, maybe one and a half. Should we call it an election? Not really. It’s a joke.
Mayor Frank Jackson will be re-elected.
It pains me to write that. But what can I do?
Last I remember the mayor resided on the second floor of City Hall.
This mayor, however, appears to rule from five floors above.
Problem is: There is no 7th floor at City Hall.
But that’s okay. Because Mayor Jackson rules above and aloof from the city and its people. And nobody seems to care.
At many council committee meetings Jackson, then a member, would sit aside. As if his colleague had cooties. He hasn’t changed.
No need for him to be in his office anyway.
The city rolls on by itself. Or should I say shuffles.
Indeed, almost everything around here seems a wobbly.
The City Council will be cut but who could really care? If now 17, why not seven or five.
The city is steered by the same old bungling gang Continue Reading »
Normally I’m in agreement with Robert Reich. I’m not starry-eyed over the Clintons the way he continues to be, but generally I think he has his head screwed on right. When he takes House Republicans to task, however, and begins with the premise:
A basic economic principle is government ought to tax what we want to discourage, and not tax what we want to encourage.
For example, if we want less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we should tax carbon polluters. On the other hand, if we want more students from lower-income families to be able to afford college, we shouldn’t put a tax on student loans.
he misses the target.
Republicans are taxing what they want to discourage and not taxing what they want to encourage. Republicans don’t want less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — it smells like… victory — and they do want less lower-income families to be able to afford college.
The sooner that Reich, and the rest of us intelligent progressives wrap our heads around the reality that Republicans are behaving rationally in their reality, the sooner we can either get back to making progress toward an egalitarian and humane society (possible), or enlighten Republicans as to their personal delusions (possible, but not bloody likely).
In the end, Reich does detail why Republicans act as they do (their masters, the banks and polluters — in this case, the Koch brothers in particular — rake in higher short-term profits) but that ought to be the lede, not the conclusion.
What kind of journalist – or citizen – would focus more on Edward Snowden’s tonal oddities and travel drama than on the fact that top US officials have been deceitfully concealing a massive, worldwide spying apparatus being constructed with virtually no accountability or oversight? Just ponder what it says about someone who cares more about, and is angrier about, Edward Snowden’s exposure of these facts than they are about James Clapper’s falsehoods and the NSA’s excesses.
And the Bush-Obama Security Scheme rolls on…
The National Security Agency is recruiting. Journalist Madiha R Tahir asks some uncomfortable questions of the panel at the University of Wisconsin.
Tahir: “Do you consider Germany and the countries that the NSA has been spying upon to be adversaries, or are you, right now, not speaking the truth?”
NSA Recruiter 1: “You can define adversary as ‘enemy’ and, clearly, Germany is not our enemy. But would we have foreign national interests from an intelligence perspective on what’s going on across the globe? Yeah, we do.”
Tahir: “So by ‘adversaries’, you actually mean anybody and everybody. There is nobody, then, by your definition that is not an adversary. Is that correct?”
NSA Recruiter 1: “That is not correct.”
NSA Recruiter 2: “… for us, our business is apolitical, OK? We do not generate the intelligence requirements. They are levied on us … We might use the word ‘target’.”
Tahir: “I’m just surprised that for language analysts, you’re incredibly imprecise with your language. And it just doesn’t seem to be clear.”
As an undergraduate I once considered taking the Foreign Service exam and exploring the diplomatic life. I understood then that the United States has no friends, no nation that could be trusted without qualification. We live in an adversarial world.
I do not know how to fix that.
From a foreign media source:
Protests took place across the US on Thursday to demonstrate opposition to sweeping National Security Agency surveillance programs.
The events were organised by a newly hatched organisation called Restore the Fourth, named after the constitutionally guaranteed protection against illegal search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Rallies and marches took place in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, New York City, Washington DC and dozens of other US cities.
Ryan Brown, a regional leader for the San Francisco Bay protests who has been co-ordinating with national organisers, said his participation in Restore the Fourth stemmed from concern over excessive governmental power implied by the spying programs. “I see it as ethically disgusting that the government has both the opportunity and the ability … to collect the data on us individually, without a given reason other than quote-unquote ‘protecting our freedoms’,” he said.
Restore the Fourth describes itself as a “grassroots, non-partisan, non-violent movement”, according to its website. Its central demands are to ask Congress to enact reform of the Patriot Act, which has been used as legal justification for the surveillance programs, to call for the formation of a special committee to investigate the extent of the spying programs, and to hold public officials accountable if they are found to be responsible for unconstitutional surveillance efforts.
So, I just now did a check on Duck Duck Go for “Restore The Fourth.” I found lots and lots of Internet hits, but only one major news outlet: The Guardian.
Just shoot me now.
I work in a public library, and during the writing of yesterday’s column, four fellow users took phone calls in the actual library. Not answered them sotto voce before scurrying out to a less obviously unsuitable area, but conducted them in full and without shame, as though it were the most normal thing in the world.
Literally, as I am typing this, a man is on the phone at the desk facing mine, and while I won’t offer you a running commentary on how many other calls we get to by the end, I will mention that one of my fellow regulars who always takes calls in the library last week told me off for typing too loudly.
I’d like to claim that the British are much more rude in this matter, but they’re not. Not a day goes by in the library that I don’t have to tell some self-important twit that I’m not interested in hearing their half of such a fascinating conversation and that they should read the signs that say “turn off your cell phone.”
I, for one, have not yet given up the fight.
Members of Congress are very popular, one might even suggest that they’re insanely popular as evidenced by their re-election rate (somewhere above 80 percent the last time I checked).
People who wring their hands over Washington gridlock and the subbasement approval of Congress are disingenuous. Stopping wrong-headed actions is a positive action if your constituents approve. Americans love gridlock when it prevent programs, expenditures and changes of which they disapprove. The filibuster, by its very nature, is a tool of gridlock, a parliamentary conceit that allows a single individual to selfishly block the will of the majority. We cannot applaud the fictional Mr. Smith or the very real Ms. Davis on one hand for blocking bad legislation and condemn other legislatures for standing up against good legislation.
Which brings me to the Affordable Health Care Act. This past week President Barack Hussein Obama blinked. Robert Reich writes:
The official reason given by the Administration for delaying, by one year, the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employers with more than 50 full-time workers provide insurance coverage or face fines, is that employers need more time to implement it. The unofficial reason has more to do with the Republicans’ incessant efforts to bulldoze the law.
That may be true, hell, I have no reason to think it is not true, but that is beside point. The ACA was flawed on day one, and while this battle may have much more to do with opposition to President Obama than then details of the ACA, the compromises simply made the ACA a crippled law that no amount of health care can save.
Reich continues:
The longer the Affordable Care Act is delayed, the more time Republicans have to demonize it before average Americans receive its benefits and understand its importance. The GOP raged against Social Security in 1935 and made war on Medicare in 1965. But in each case Americans soon realized how critical they were to their economic security, and refused to listen.
2012, 2013 and 2014 were not, are not and will not be 1935 and 1965. The makeup of Congress today is different from the make-up nearly 40 and 70 years ago. The President simply blew his chance as universal health care. The ACA lacked the vision (and the public funding) of either Social Security or Medicare.
Can we elect a Congress next year, or a president in 2014, that will have that vision to salvage the bits of the ACA that are worth saving and bring the United States in line with the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to universal health care?
Yes we can.
Will we?
I’m less than hopeful.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. – Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. – And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Shared values are the essence of a society. They fuel not only acts of valor, such as those of these 19 young firefighters, but they also motivate people to become teachers and social workers, police officers and soldiers, librarians and city councilors.
And they generate social movements – abolition, women’s suffrage, civil rights, environmental protection.
Most human beings want to be part of something larger than themselves. They crave moral purpose and social solidarity. If we overlook this, we fail to understand the means and meaning of social progress.
So why do we keep electing sociopaths?
Several times every day, at airports across the country, passengers are trying to walk through security with loaded guns in their carry-on bags, purses or pockets, even in a boot. And, more than a decade after 9/11 raised consciousness about airline security, it’s happening a lot more often.
In the first six months of this year, Transportation Security Administration screeners found 894 guns on passengers or in their carry-on bags, a 30 percent increase over the same period last year. The TSA set a record in May for the most guns seized in one week — 65 in all, 45 of them loaded and 15 with bullets in the chamber and ready to be fired. That was 30 percent more than the previous record of 50 guns, set just two weeks earlier.
Last year TSA found 1,549 firearms on passengers attempting to go through screening, up 17 percent from the year before.
Where these people are attempting to board a plane, nearly a dozen years after box-cutter-wielding felons hijacked four aircraft, makes perfect sense.
Of the 12 airports with the most guns last year, five are in Texas: Dallas-Fort Worth International, 80 guns; George Bush Intercontinental in Houston, 52; Dallas Love Field, 37; William P. Hobby in Houston, 35, and Austin-Bergstrom International, 33. Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta had the most for any airport, at 96. Others include Phoenix Sky Harbor, 54; Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International in Florida, 42; Denver International, 39; Seattle-Tacoma International, 37; Orlando International Airport in Florida, 36, and Tampa International in Florida, 33.
The most popular excuse? “I forgot it was there.”
Riiggghhhhttttt…
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