Happy Solstice Parade day, everybody. It’s a very peaceable event; at least, that’s what I expect.
Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin
just the facts, ma’am
It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.
– Bill Vaughan
journalist (1915-1977)
toys for terr’r
Of all the things folks might send to W to convey dissent, toy soliders wouldn’t have occurred to me, but what the heck. I would’ve suggested gold plated cow pies, but he’d probably just start hanging them in the East Room.
a force to be rekoned with
Three activists sat quietly on the tracks, a word, “peace,” spelled out in rocks just before them between the hard iron rails. A steam engine, pulling two cars loaded with weapons bound for Central America from the Concord Naval Weapons Station, rolled down the tracks. The 40 or so people attending the protest waited expectantly for the train to stop and the arrests to be made.
…Two of the protesters leapt from the tracks, but Willson couldn’t move in time. The train ran over him, severing both his legs below the knee and puncturing his skull, before leaving his mangled body on the tracks. The train did, however, stop some 500 feet down the line.
…
Nearly two decades after what Willson calls “the train assault,” he is living happily. He has withdrawn from national politics, believing the protests and pleas for policy change only reinforce a system built on the concept of empire. Instead, Willson believes localization, reduction and a simpler way of life are the tools to combat the train he said is coming for us all — global warming.
[read the story, Times-Standard Online]
I remember hearing about this on the news when it happened in September 1987. I was in law school at the time. I remember thinking good luck trying to sue anybody over this. A train is like a government: mass and momentum, moving in one direction, hard to stop and impossible to steer. The subject of this article has an even more circumspect and stoic perspective.
I don’t necessarily agree with Wilson about protests. There must be a moral imperative involved, or people wouldn’t give up their time and resources to speak out. Obviously, peace activism doesn’t pay much.
But he has a point.
Regimes like the Bush-Cheney cabal seem to take comfort and sustenance from knowing hearing the cries of the world against their crimes in progress. They seem to believe they possess a vision and mandate that the braying, bawling herd – that’s us – cannot comprehend. The more commoners, and intellectuals alike, stand against them, the more convinced they become in the recitude of their blood-dimmed folly. And in a staggering irony, they have called down the Good Shepard – the Prince of Peace – on their side of the argument.
It’s sickening, isn’t it? On one side, there are anti-Muslims, claiming Islam gives them the moral authority to massacre innocents, even their own brothers, and to teach their children nothing but to hate. On the other, anti-Christs, claiming the guidance of Him who taught us to love God with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves, and making war under His banner of love.
I don’t know much, but I know there is a God, and I know that I’m not Him. And to think I see God’s thoughts and know His will, and act as His personal agent would be utterly absurd.
I digress. The question is where can peaceful change begin. I think by teaching our children that the only legitimate government is an expression of the cooperative will of the people, that government is good for building schools and roads and not much else; that government lies compulsively and should never be trusted with our lives. And once it gets rolling, better get the hell out of its way.
play for peace
The Lysistrata Project was a reading of an ancient Greek play about women trying to stop men from fighting the Peloponnesian War. It was performed in Burlington and more than a thousand cities worldwide on March 3, 2003, just weeks before the start of the war in Iraq.
“Thousands and thousands of people have been injured and killed and had their lives ruined by this tragic event and a lot of people feel like they didn’t have power to influence something like that,” explained Lysistrata Project co-founder Kathryn Blume. “While we didn’t stop the war, we activated people all over the world by the reading of a play. I would hope that by seeing this, people would regain a little bit of hope.”
disconsolate
hypocrite
George W Bush must be one of the greatest hypocrites ever born of a woman. Certainly, he shovels more manure than any thousand pork barrel politicians.
In his weekly radio address, Bush pointed the rabbity finger of accusation at the Democrats for tax and spend policies, and promised to veto any bill that spends too much.
The administration of Bush the Lesser has been the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of this nation. Clinton left him with a surplus budget. He blew through that like it was just enough for a weekend in Vegas, and it’s all gone downhill from there. But shoot, his economic policies were in a tailspin four years ago.
Oh the war will pay for itself, they said. Meadow muffins.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some conserve put back into conservatism. I wouldn’t mind seeing some checks and balances in our economy. Balance – the middle way – is a good thing. But for this man who spends our money on a war that amounts to a whim of biblical proportions to talk about the democrats’ spending is just asinine.
…. He will not feed,
Nourish or help; and his rabbity hand
Lifted in the fading light of the hemlocks
Waves to them, gestures to the young to die.– Robert Bly
Yahoo photos is shutting down
Yahoo! photos is shutting down on 9/20/07, believe it or not. Who would’ve thought that anything at Yahoo! would be circling the drain? Here’s a good article about the situation at zdnet.com.
So you’ve got a shipload of photos on yahoo photos? No need to panic, unless you just generally enjoy freaking out. Apparently, they’re helping move stuff to other sites.
Want my advice? Get Picasa from Google. Then you can use Google’s online Picasa web albums for your photo album sharing. It’s pretty cool. Picasa is not one of the photo sites that Y! photos is helping move your stuff to. Google and Y! are rivals. So you’ll have to do some uploading, but with Picasa, it’s super easy, once you get things set up.
Picasa’s web function is for album sharing – like when you have a bunch of shots from a vacation or holiday. Flickr is probably the best for individual photos – your favorite shots. Ironically, it’s owned by Yahoo.
it’s like
It’s like, at the end, there’s this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid?
-Richard Bach, writer (1936- )
charges dropped against writer who protested cheney
Billie Letts, a writer in Tulsa OK., was arrested April 27, after she crossed a police barricade outside a Doubletree Hotel when Cheney was speaking. She carried a sign reading
Four Hundred Billion
3320 Dead
Had Enough?
Letts faced a fine of $200. But the charge was dropped because government witnessess, bless their okie hearts, didn’t show up for the trial.
“I am vehemently opposed to this war,” Letts said at the time. “I hear the total of Americans killed and Iraqis killed, and it breaks my heart.
“This war is solving nothing.”
Amen, sister.
Letts’ novels are known for their colorful characterizations of small-town Oklahoma and include “Where the Heart Is,” “Shoot the Moon” and “The Honk and Holler Opening Soon.”
“Where the Heart Is” was made into a popular motion picture starring Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman.
waste of grace
In my post Hilton screamed, I derided preoccupied Paris and entertaining people in general, for their self absorbed insistence on being the constant center of attention. The problem is coming into clearer focus. The problem is the media, the evil, weed-nibbling goats at CNN, et.al.
Over the weekend, Paris called for the media to stop obsessing with her and maybe cover the war. She said she’s a changed person who wants to make a difference. OK, she’s trying to be aan adult; I give her credit for that. So setting aside the fact that the media are already covering the war, and that a change in her life doesn’t presuppose the willingness or interest in change on the part of others, the important point is what happened next. Which gives me the chance to launch an ill-founded, half-formed tirade on someone else:
CNN has been announcing that their talking head Nancy Grace is doing a live report tonight from “Paris’ Jail” today. … Great Scott!
What a waste, what a stupid disservice to the public interest, is Nancy Grace. She’s a whole lot closer to the National Enquirer than to the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She’s a sensationalist, who brays and whines at the camera. Her presentation is that of a woman who knows she knows everything, and is prepared to pound that ridiculous conviction down your throat.
It occurs to me that we need a new cable network, for shows that pander to folks who might read the Enquirer, or the Weekly World News. They could just call it Spew, and Grace could move there, along with Larry King and all the bobbleheads from Fox News. And during the day they could run all the insipid court shows that spread like mold out of Peoples Court.
forgetting myself
Here’s your quote of the day, from the book Devices of the Soul by Steve Talbott:
“Self-forgetfulness is the reigning temptation of the technological era. This is why we so readily give our assent to the absurd proposition that a computer can add two plus two, despite the obvious fact that it can do nothing of the sort-not if we have in mind anything remotely resembling what we do when we add numbers. In the computer’s case, the mechanics of addition involve no motivation, no consciousness of the task, no mobilization of the will, no metabolic activity, no imagination. And its performance brings neither the satisfaction of accomplishment nor the strengthening of practical skills and cognitive capacities.”
Metaphor 