Poet's Nook: "I Sit and Look Out" by Walt Whitman

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband--I see the treacherous seducer
of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
hid--I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny--I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea--I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these--All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look
out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

OneLove

:::MME:::

The Illusion of Attention

 


Inattentional blindness, also known as perceptual blindness, is failure by a person to notice some stimulus that is in plain sight. This stimulus is usually unexpected but fully visible. This typically happens because humans are overloaded with inputs. It is impossible to pay attention to every single input that is presented. A person’s attention cannot be focused on everything, and therefore, everyone experiences inattentional blindness. People can falsely believe that they do not experience inattentional blindness. This is due to the fact that they are unaware that they are missing things. Inattentional blindness also has an effect on people’s perception. (Wikipedia)


We're not as aware as we would like to believe. We all know this, but our egos love the illusion of being in control. Experiments like this mock our delusions. Our focused attention has a significant effect on how we perceive the world and, therefore, on what enters into our conscious awareness. Equally as interesting as this is what we choose not to pay attention to. For example, texting while jaywalking may deafen us to an approaching car or being totally engrossed in a book (or thought) & losing sight of everything around you. The implications are indeed enormous, from the personal to the political.

OneLove

:::MME:::

 

Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it.”
 – Political economist Frederic Bastiat, The Law [1850]

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

 On the question of his own Enlightenment the Master always remained reticent, even though the disciples tried every means to get him to talk.

All the information they had on this subject was what the Master once said to his youngest son who wanted to know what his father felt when he became Enlightened.

The answer was:  "A fool."

When the boy asked why, the Master had replied, "Well, son, it was like going to great pains to break into a house by climbing a ladder and smashing a window and then realizing later that the door of the house was open.
.

.

~  Anthony de Mello

OneLove

:::MME:::

Poet's Nook: "Balaenoptera" by Joshua Bennett

 


You can tell that this young brother feels every word he utters which is the mark of any gifted poet. Truly an inspiration, especially for our young ones. Check out this other poem he did when he revisited his old high school last year - a masterpiece! 



 

OneLove 

:::MME:::

Super Rich Kids

The average net worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans rose to a record $4.2 billion, up more than 10 percent from a year ago, while the lowest net worth came in at $1.1 billion versus $1.05 billion last year, Forbes said. This is in spite of the global economic crisis...hmmm...

Forbes recently released its 400 Richest People In America In 2012 & in usual fashion, fawns over these uber-rich folks with the irksomely  misleading Horatio Alger narrative. I  know there are many people who still believe that if one works hard enough he/she can join (or come close to) the ranks of millionaires/billionaires and live la vida loca just like in the movies and videos. Dream on.

In terms up upward mobility, the US has the lowest rates amongst wealthy nations. If you were born into poverty, your chances of escaping are slim. One highly regarded study puts it this way:



The main driver of the difference in the pattern of male inter-generational mobility in the U.S. from that of each of the other countries in our study is the low mobility out of the lowest quintile group in the United States. Indeed, it is very noticeable that while for all of the other countries persistence is particularly high in the upper tails of the distribution, in the U.S. this is reversed – with a particularly high likelihood that sons of the poorest fathers in the U.S. will remain in the lowest earnings quintile. We view this as a challenge to the popular notion of an “American exceptionalism” in economic mobility. Indeed, the combination of a high probability of American sons of the poorest fifth of fathers remaining in the lowest quintile group, the lower probability of “rags-to-riches” (poorest to richest) and slightly lower probability of “riches-to-rags” (richest to poorest), places the notion of American exceptionalism in a new light. The U.S., or at least the population of young U.S. men, seems to be distinguished from other countries by having greater low-income persistence, rather than less, having fewer very large positional changes across generations, rather than more, and possibly having a greater persistence of high income, rather than less.

 

According to a report by  United for a Fair Economy, this Forbes list of the country's richest people tells the story of a nation where being born into wealth or inheriting great sums from a departed spouse are by far the most common paths to financial fortune. This report seeks to show that the highly-touted Forbes list actually misleads about the sources of wealth and opportunity for many of those who appear on it. According to the report's authors, "Each story calculatedly glamorizes the myth of the 'self-made man' while minimizing the many other factors that enable wealth, such as tax policies, other government policies that favor the wealthy, and the importance of being born to the right family, gender and race."
 
Folks cannot seem to shake loose their myths, sad to say. I guess these illusions give them the warm fuzzies & to think or know otherwise is too mush of a downer. But what is real must be faced. Did you notice the lack of diversity on the Forbes list?  The game is so rigged. According to the UFE report I mentioned,  the growing wealth inequality is not due to any inherent brilliance or dynamism of the wealthy, but because of carefully crafted policy and legislative reforms enacted by government at the behest of the these same individuals. The report cites two examples which tells the story of how the rich are able to retain and pass along their enormous assets:

    (1)Tax rates on capital gains - These have been slashed, which especially benefits members of the Forbes list. The richest 0.1% receive half of all net increases in capital gains.

    (2) Drastic cuts to the federal estate tax -  The Bush tax cuts & Obama's compromise allow the rich to pass on more of their massive fortunes to their heirs, contributing to the growth of inequality and entrenching a class of super-wealthy m*f*ers.

Now stop dreaming. 

There is a big-ass chasm between the haves and have-nots because the system is rigged that way. Of course, every now and then you will read about a rags to riches story to give your weak-ass mind the fuzzies, but these lucky few are the exceptions. What must be examined is why things are the way they are (the rules, loopholes, tax shelters, etc) and finding ways to make our society more fair & humane. Let's go to work!

OneLove

:::MME:::

Standing Up For The Poor

Dr Cornel West & Tavis Smiley are both getting hammered by people who believe that they are doing a disservice to the country by highlighting a subject that is quite touchy and shameful to many, namely, poverty. Their detractors proclaim that they should not be bringing poverty to the fore in an election year & that they should lower the heat to ensure that Pres. Obama gets re-elected. Personally, I am sick and tired of folks - especially middle-to-upper class anuses who prefer to tow the line and allow things to remain as is, just as long as their pockets/livelihoods remain unaffected. Dr West & Mr Smiley are doing an outstanding service by exposing the underbelly of a system that is no longer responsive to the average citizen. Don't diss the messengers - listen to the message. 

OneLove

 :::MME:::

The Debt Resistors' Operations Manual

The struggle continues...Download here.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

How the West was won: "Enlightened" Christian warfare in the 19th century - Massacre of Native American women and children in Idaho

But you have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

~D.H Lawrence 

(The backdrop of this quote is the notion of the West as a terra nullius—" no man's land" - & those who pushed forward to claim and exploit this notion sought to make it so by exterminating its indigenous peoples. The reality is American West became, given how it was won, a New World heart of darkness. In how it was brought into being and incorporated into the United States of America, the West stands as a flip side to the much-paraded notion of American exceptionalism. The main instruments of its creation were violence, brutality, dishonesty and dispossession. D. H. Lawrence was spot on)

OneLove

:::MME:::

Crime Pays

New York investment bank Lehman Brothers declaring bankruptcy triggered the US financial collapse in 2008. The economic meltdown wiped out more than $11bn of personal wealth in the US. Four years on, why has Wall Street not been held accountable?(Source)

..smh..

OneLove

:::MME:::

Living in “The Greatest Nation on Earth” by Tom Engelhardt

I hope you know that, on the 11th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, you live in a country so exceptional it’s blessed by God; that, in fact, it’s -- no point in pulling punches -- “the greatest nation on earth.”  If you don’t believe me, just listen to President Obama, who used the last words of his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention to say exactly that.  And depending on your political druthers, you don’t have to believe him either.  After all, the stages of the Republican and Democratic conventions were filled with politicos insisting on the same thing.  (Who says there’s no bipartisanship in America?) 

At the Republican convention, Mitt Romney, speaking in his acceptance speech of Neil Armstrong’s first footfall on the moon, said: “Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world.” Chris Christie in his keynote speech drove home this point: “Standing strong for freedom will make the next century as great an American century as the last one.” Michelle Obama praising her husband as a great dad wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to say: “Every day [the people I meet] remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth”; and Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and secretary of state (she of double-hulled oil tanker fame) gave the Republicans a primer on foreign policy for the Romney era, and this was her version of it: “Because it just has to be -- that the most compassionate and freest country on the face of the earth -- will continue to be the most powerful!” 

And that’s just to name a few among a bevy of American exceptionalists from whom you certainly wouldn’t want to exclude Vice President Joe Biden.  After all, leaving Mongol horsemen, Apache warriors, Roman legionnaires, Napoleon’s Army, and every other war-fighter twitching in the dust, he claimed President Obama was well aware that our special forces are “the finest warriors the world has ever known.”
Think of all this as a kind of exceptional post-9/11 fever.  The more ordinary Americans worry about their country being on the “wrong track” or “in decline,” the more loudly, emphatically, aggressively (and yet defensively) politicians seem to insist, against all evidence, that we are and always will be (unless my opponent gets into office) the greatest, finest, freest etc. around.

By the way, tell that to Peter Van Buren or John Kiriakou.  Both were government officials who told the truth about bad things happening inside the government of the greatest country the universe has ever seen.  One wrote the book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People about just what a laughable mess the State Department’s “reconstruction of Iraq” turned out to be and, for doing that with remarkable honesty and wit, he is being forced into early retirement by the bureaucrats of the greatest State Department in the history of the world.  The other, a CIA agent, told reporters the truth about some of the practices of the greatest spy agency in the history of the galaxy, including acts of torture by operatives in his own agency.  As Van Buren notes in his latest post, “The Persecution of John Kiriakou,” as a result he’s going to celebrate the 9/11 anniversary with a court date the following day.

These are indications of the real state of affairs in this country 11 years after they attacked us because they “hated our freedoms.”  Now, on September 11, 2012, the national security complex is, as Van Buren indicates, beyond accountability for any crimes it may commit.  It exists in a post-legal America not available to 99% of us. 
As for our freedoms, a lack of the slightest urge to prosecute anyone who committed a crime on Washington time means that our governmental officials now have extraordinary new freedoms -- more license than 007 ever did -- to kidnap, torture, abuse, murder, surveil, and assassinate (including American citizens).  That’s a record to ponder as another September 11th rolls around and, living in the greatest nation on earth, you ask yourself: Who really won, them or us?

OneLove

:::MME:::

MME's Jam Of The Day

This piece, Aladdin's Lamp, by the great Al Jarreau went deep the first time I heard it many moons ago. It brought to the surface the existential angst I felt at the time and somehow by the end of the song, I felt liberated. Great music is indeed a healing force...

(To hear the recorded version (w/ background chorus), check here)



Just beside the door
The bold and certain hand
That turned the dragons trembled
He touched the Holy Lamp
and faintly saw his feet

And just beside the door,
His pure uncertain tears
The burden fell so tender
And in the darkest night a
Rose grew by his feet

Stand beside me now,
I've been in your place
And you've been in mine
And the only difference
is our space and time
And the only light is
somehow in the lamp
That's at your feet

Why can't you see?


But ain't it high,
ain't it holy...when you see?
And it's just times when
I'm weary worries me
Don't you know how Aladdin's
Lamp guards the night
Ten thousand candles beam
The silver stream you're searching for

Oh, friend, the words are true

I want to offer them to you.....



OneLove

:::MME:::

Reading Rant:"The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted." by Mike Lofgren

Instead of reviewing this must-read book, I will strongly advise that you take a listen to Bill Moyers' interview of the author, Mike Lofgren, a long-time Republican who describes the modern two party system as highly dysfunctional. In Lofgren's view, Republicans have not only become overly obsessed with obstructing President Obama, but wildly apocalyptic as well. The Democrats, in his view, suffer from political complacency. What a whiff of fresh air to hear a former insider come clean on what is corrupting both political parties. As many enlightened political theorists have always maintained, it matters not who is in power as long as vile, greedy plutocrats control the show. 

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

OneLove

:::MME:::

Glen Ford vs. Michael Eric Dyson on Obama’s Presidency

Quite an engaging debate with great points made on both sides. Mr Ford calls Pres. Obama the "more effective evil" for embracing right-wing policies and neutralizing effective opposition, while Mr. Dyson argues that Pres.Obama provides the best and obvious choice for progressive change within the confines of the U.S. political system. (Source)

After listening to both sides, you will understand the term living within the tension of two truths or living with both/and tensions in an either/or world. Great stuff!!

.
OneLove

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:::MME:::

MME's Jam Of The Day

Crashingly beautiful! Concha Buika and musician/producer/singer/songwriter Javier Limón  reach another level on this hypnotic piece entitled Oro Santo which appears on Javier Limon's album Mujeres de Agua. Here is the translation of this song:

Oro Santo (Blessed Gold)

 
In the penumbra of this night dark and holy,
over the tundra that fills my ever waking soul

there sounds a lament,
like a prelude to the dead hours,
hours that pass with the agonising throes of a slow death.

Silence returns to clothe me in gold, my blessing,
the memory of my grandmothers returns
to give me strength and hope,
the records that taught me to love music return,
my father returned after 20 years.

Ah! if you returned,
if you returned I’d clothe you in gold, my blessing.
I’d hush everything
so that you could hear my desperate song.

If you returned I’d clothe you in gold, my blessing.
I’d hush everything
so that you could hear my desperate song.
If you returned I’d clothe you in gold, my blessing.
I’d hush everything
so that you could hear my desperate song.
If you returned I’d clothe you in gold, my blessing.
Let the world stop turning,
so that you can hear my desperate song.

OneLove

:::MME::: 

 

The Six Stages of Climate Grief by Daphne Wysham

Now that the hottest summer on record is drawing to a close, are we any closer to admitting that climate change is upon us? If not, why not? It might have something to do with the five stages of grief. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified these stages as denial, then anger, followed by bargaining, depression, and acceptance. With record drought killing our cattle and our corn, West Nile virus sweeping the country, and Arctic ice sheets melting away, it's no surprise that millions of people are responding to these frightening signs of environmental decline in stages. Nobel Laureate Steve W. Running first proposed this frame for understanding the popular response to climate change in 2007. I'd like to go one step further and suggest a sixth stage: The Work.

Denial, the first stage of grief, can be quite comfortable. The U.S. media is in many ways co-dependent with the denialist camp. It rarely connects the dots between extreme weather events and climate change, making it easy to remain blissfully ignorant. Our politicians are also prolonging this denial stage by rarely uttering the term "climate change," as though the words themselves were obscene.

The second stage- anger- sums up the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. These talk show hosts are at their most vitriolic when they attack climate scientists or advocates of fossil fuel alternatives. Their ferocity gives license to the crazies who issue death threats against climate scientists: they would rather shoot the messenger than listen to the message.

The next stage, bargaining, comes when the deniers begin to acknowledge that global temperatures are indeed rising, but claim it's due to natural causes. Or they take a stance like ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson's- admitting climate change is a major, man-made problem, but claiming that the answer is to "adapt" to it instead of changing our behavior.

Depression is a familiar state to me and my fellow climate change activists. If the truth will set you free, the truth about climate change may set you free to take anti-depressants for the rest of your life. Every weather abnormality comes with a sense of dread. It's at this point that we lose people. Denial starts to look attractive.

Acceptance is the hardest stage, because what experts tell us lies ahead is so damn scary, it will make you want to hop into Rush Limbaugh's lap and stay there: We are surpassing all of scientists' worst-case scenarios by a long shot- we are now on track to an 11-degree Fahrenheit rise by the end of the century, according to the International Energy Agency. We've broken over 4,000 temperature records in the United States just this year, and scientists tell us record droughts, floods, storms, and forest fires all may become "the new normal."

We must accept this dreadful prognosis if we are to act appropriately. But acceptance does not mean that all is lost. After years of working through these stages, I've discovered a new sixth stage: doing The Work. This means taking courage from each other as we look this monster in the eye and fight side-by-side in the battle of a lifetime. Systemic change- not just light-bulb change- is what's required now. This must include everything from replacing the GDP as an outdated measure of progress to getting schools to teach climate science and arm the next generation with the facts.

Together, we can get a glimpse, beyond despair, of a world of transformation and rebirth that is possible if we're courageous enough to fight for it. After all, our planet will eventually restore itself to a state of equilibrium- we just have to make sure humankind is around to witness it.

 

OneLove

 

:::MME:::

Musings

 

 

 

Nothing retains its form; new shapes from old.
Nature, the great inventor, ceaselessly contrives.

In all creation, be assured, there is no death—no death,
but only change and innovation; what we people call birth

is but a different new beginning; death is but
to cease to be the same. 

 Perhaps this may have moved to that and that to this,

yet still the sum of things remains the same.

–Pythagoras

Ovid, Metamorphoses

 

OneLove

 

:::MME:::

A Fool On A Mission

I never liked Dinesh D'Souza. He represents a very dark, manipulative, vicious & anti-intellectual undercurrent that informs the dead, flea-bitten corpse that is modern day conservatism. His scholarship is shoddy to say the least & it is almost laughable to witness his nonsensical sophistry in the guise of reasoned analysis - the problem is, a number of people - mostly white, conservative Americans - take this toolbox seriously. I remember D'Souza's bullshit claim back in 1995 declaring that American racism to be dead which made him the media darling of the right-wing. I realized from that point that Dinesh had no nuts & pretty much sold his soul to the devil. I gotta give it to my man Bill Maher in this clip for putting this ding dong in check. His latest fear-mongering, anti-Obama documentary, "Obama's America" is making the rounds & gathering empty-headed fans from coast to coast who are using this film as ammunition to further attack the President. I have no problems with public intellectuals critiquing the President, but at least make it factual & not based on conjecture which is what this film is built around. D'Souza does not seem to know the difference between conjecture and theory & this to me makes him a dangerous purveyor of falsehoods, slander & blind, bigoted rage. In case you are interested in knowing the truth to D'Souza's lies that run throughout this film, check here.

OneLove

:::MME:::