Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.

— Dr. King

Oh, I do love a good dose of justice. I hate dogfighting. I hate all animal abuse. This lowlife dogfighter got 40 years, and will serve 30 only if he pays $100K in restitution. I hope he meets some big old boys Inside, that feel like I do about cruelty to animals.

[The State news link]

I’m writing tonight. Here’s a little W.B. Yeats…

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of “Spiritus Mundi”

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Kevin Sites is the journalist who was with the Marines that entered the mosque, and filmed the Marine who shot the injured man who was sitting against a wall. In this post to his blog, Sites tells the story of that day.

Kevin Sites Blog

So I got up kinda late; I won’t be specific, and you don’t really care. I spent a while at the computer, took my Sunday shower, and took Tasha over to play with Happy about noon. Did some reading, got a little exercise on Mom’s treadmill, had lunch downtown, checked my e-mail again, and went out on the deck Dad built. Could not believe my eyes … Look!

click to embiggen

See what I mean? Where the hell does that sun think it’s going in the middle of the day? That big yellow thing has an unnatural affection for those trees lately. I don’t even know what those trees are called – big, hormonal bushes really – but I want them to quit dragging the sun down before the day has half a chance to amount to something. I’ve got woolgathering to do, and I darn well need someplace warm, clean and well-lighted to do it.

You can’t leave these celestial bodies – not to mention abstract entities – alone for a minute anymore. Miscreants.

File this one under Gosh, I wish I could like this guy. I thought it was very cool, the way Bush waded in and got hold of his Secret Service agent. Probably the biggest cajones he’s evidenced since he climbed up on the fire engine at the WTC. (Landing on the aircraft carrier doesn’t count, for any number of reasons not germain to the point.) The point is that Bush may be many things, including a lousy president, but he’s no effete imperial dandy.

Way ta git-r-done, Dubya.

I’m posting this link to Boing Boing’s Educational Zen section because it looks like a lot of fun, and I want to waste time checking it out later. Right now, I’m feeling like a mushroom – kept in the dark and fed $–t, so I gotta get outside.

Recordnet.com News Link

The Forest Service plan for the Sierra Nevada will allow 3 times as much logging as in 2001. They’re trying to reduce fires. Well, that makes sense: they won’t burn up if you’ve already chopped them down. But I wonder if there’s any other motivation for this approach? $$$

Organizations such as Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign and Earthjustice are planning legal action.

I noticed today that they’ve got a block of parking spaces fenced off in front of the grocery store. They do this every year, to make room for their Christmas trees. Buying the family tree from Albertsons – I don’t know. Seems spiritually risky to me. … Well, I guess anything you do with love can’t be wrong.

A few years ago, I sat in the Starbucks in that shopping center, looking out at the phony lighted wreaths on the lampposts, in sight of that stand of trees, and wrote this poem … to someone long lost and gone.

HYMN OF STONES

As I sit and write to you, it’s dark.

I’m in a coffeehouse: reggae, earth tones,

teenagers. Night stands up behind

Rincon Hill like an old man rises

from beside his bed after praying.

I think of your delicate throat. There are

Christmas trees for sale outside

in the parking lot. I should mention

that I love their smell, mingled as it is

with car exhaust and tar. I remember

your face, like fog in a morning orchard;

so gentle and still and forming in my mind

until the trees begin to ring.

A soft hymn of stones

may answer from the shrouded hills,

but we will be asleep by then.

“This week, President Bush tapped Condoleezza Rice to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State, the nation’s highest cabinet post. Her performance as National Security Advisor has raised questions about her credibility and competence. Critics point to her mismanagement of crucial intelligence leading up to 9/11 and say she misled the American people about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. NOW takes a hard look at the track record of Condoleezza Rice as she prepares to become America’s top diplomat.”

Rice is lucky she didn’t work for me in Washington. She would have been back in California, looking for work, long ago. Of course, America is lucky I’m not president. I’m not qualified. But then neither is George W. Bush, so I don’t feel bad.

Bad Nooz. In the first place, the concept of “purge” has not hitherto played much part in our history, and now is no time to start. Considerable pains have been taken to protect the civil service from partisan pressure for extremely good reasons.

“Disloyalty to Bush,” or any president, is not the same as disloyalty to the country. In fact, in the intelligence biz, opposing the White House is sometimes the highest form of loyalty to country, since when we fight without good intelligence, we fight blind.

He wasn’t very old. Only about 6 years think. I remember I got him around my birthday, at CompUseless in Oxnard, one day after Dad and I went fishing at Lake Casitas. He didn’t really have a name, though among his nicknames was “little piece of shit.” That didn’t effect his stuttering personality. He wasn’t fancy either, just a basic Logitech Cordless Wheel Mouse. Not optical; in fact, for a mouse he was blind as a bat. And I don’t know the cause of death. Tomorrow, I’ll probably try a AAA batteryectomy, but I’m skeptical. In the past, he’s always given me a warning when he was feeling weak.

I don’t think I’ll replace him right away. For the time being, I had a backup in the drawer. It’s his brother, a Logitech wheel mouse with a cord. At least this one doesn’t stutter.

So it goes.