The Lysistrata Project

"The human race is at a crossroads. We must choose either the paradigm of money values and violence, or the paradigm of life values and nonviolence... can we save humanity from itself?"
                                                                        
 --
Alice Walker

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The Lysistrata Project is dedicated to bridging the spiritual, social activist and women's communities, and through our combined economic and creative power humanizing the global agenda.

Begun in June 2002 in the wake of both the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Bush administration's bombing of Afghanistan, The Lysistrata Project recognizes that in the widening spiral of escalation now gripping our world, each act of violence, blamed on the previous one, necessarily begets another. "An eye for an eye," Gandhi said, "leaves the whole world blind."

We are part of the rising tide for true Peace born of the balance, both inward and outward, of our feminine and masculine energies. People over profit, woman's full worth over controlled reproductive function, and partnership/ diplomacy over war/dominance are outcomes calling for a heroic alliance.

We honor the hundreds of millions of people globally who actively sought to prevent the attack on Iraq. And we stand with those committed to ending its occupation, the Bush experiment with American empire, the indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians, the dehumanization of war prisoners, U.S. troops and Iraqi fighters alike, and in particular the targetted rape of women.

The Lysistrata Project, guided by Gandhian principles of nonviolence and economics, seeks inventive solutions. As a resource, it features pages on fiscal and societal costs of war, and the ties between oil, multinational corporations, the subordination of women and the desecration of our Earth --and how to transform our world.

"Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak... Non-violence is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.”
                                                  --Cesar Chavez

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The motivation underlying our activism for social change must be transformed from anger and despair to compassion and love. It is not to deny the legitimacy of noble anger or outrage at injustice of any kind. Rather, we seek to work for love, rather than against evil. We need to adopt compassion and love as our foundational intention, and do whatever inner work is required to implement this intention. Even if our outward actions remain the same, there is a major difference in results if our underlying intention supports love rather than defeating evil."

Will Keepin, Satyana Institute

 

 

 

 

 

Vipassana Meditation


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Declaration of what we stand for
Implementing the vision
Oasis TV highlights The Lysistrata Projects
Winona LaDuke On Native American Activists Throughout History
A Hopi Elder Speaks
Path to a world free from want and fear
The original meaning and power of Mother's Day
Shut Up And Vibrate Already
This image expresses our sadness . . .
John Brady Kiesling: U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation
What would Martin do?
Charlotte Aldebron: 12-year-old girl's speech at peace rally
The Circle Game is an Endless Game
Becoming Peacemakers
The Lysistrata Strategy
Ten Ways Women will be Affected by a War in Iraq
Ten Reasons Why Militarism is Bad for Reproductive Freedom
War is a gendered activity
We are either going to have a democracy ...
Our two halves -- spiritual and activist
Open letter to Oprah Winfrey
War is an extreme form of criminality
Taking back our American flag
Compare for yourself: Evolution of Bush agenda for Iraq invasion
Julia Ward Howe: "Arise, then, women of this day!"
A parable for our times
Pledge of Allegiance to the Family of Earth
Why using our combined economic power is a must
War and oil
Who is Lysistrata?
Thank you!

"If ever the world sees a time when women shall come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a power such as the world has never known."

                          --Matthew Arnold
                             British Poet, 1822-1888

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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    Theatre-based

 

 

 

 

Declaration of what we stand for

WE support international cooperation, diplomacy and an independent United Nations. We reject unilateral pre-emptive strikes, war for the sake of profit and dominance, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction including the use of landmines, the targeted rape of women, and the killing and maiming of innocent civilians. For these reasons we specifically reject the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This in no way implies support for Saddam Hussein whose crimes need to be dealt with by the International Court of Justice.

WE feel deep concern for the young men and women serving in the military and support their returning to their homes safely as soon as possible. We reject policies that place them unduly in harm's way, and regret all loss of life.

WE support a just and sustainable economy that recognizes the labor of all workers, including homemakers and immigrants, and the interests of children, elders and the displaced. We reject a Darwinian economy that makes expendable vulnerable segments of society. Because we believe that our strongest voice is our combined economic power, we call for economic sanctions against war.

WE support the Constitution of the United States with its Bill of Rights, including the right to peaceful dissent, and its system of checks and balances. We reject its corruption to allow erosion of our civil rights and the dangerous amassing of power in an unrestrained presidency.

WE support equal representation and participation in government, the Congress and Assembly, with a proportionate voice for women and minorities. We reject the political campaign process dependent on wealth and alliance with powerful special interest groups.

WE support reproductive rights, family planning services and sex education for all women and girls. We reject the patriarchal agenda of strategically managing our wombs for purposes other than our own. We further acknowledge that forcing unwanted pregnancies to term, while a general suppression of the rights of all women, primarily affects poor women. Statistics show a strong correlation between such reproductive management and the poverty of women. And throughout history women's wombs have been managed for the creation of a surplus workforce of low-wage earners--precisely the same group providing a steady supply of combat troops.

WE support businesses and corporations that contribute to and are accountable to society. We reject the legal structures that allow multinational corporations to wield powers that exploit workers, pollute the environment, and traffic in an unscrupulous arms trade that perpetuates war.

WE support a practical reverence for our planet Earth and the ecological systems that sustain us, and a recognition that her natural resources belong equally to all her inhabitants. We reject the destruction of her ancient forests, the poisoning of oceans and rivers, the maltreatment of animals, the privatization of water and crop seeds, and the polluting of the very air we breathe.

WE support a meaningful political process with debates open to third parties, instant run-off voting that permits the casting of votes for a first and second choice of candidates, eliminating both a winner-take-all situation and the need for run-off elections, and full protection of every citizen's right to vote. We reject election fraud that robs the votes of the poor and powerless, and thwarts the will of the people.

WE support an independent news media committed to the full analysis of local, national and world situations necessary for decision-making by an informed public, and committed also to reporting positive news. We reject media dependent on the dictates of its multinational corporate owners driven by profit, fear mongering, war propaganda, and sensationalist violence.

WE support a secure and peaceful homeland for all people, and self-determination for all indigenous peoples. Without minimizing the struggle for independence of any other peoples --and because it is central to world peace-- we acknowledge the long and bitter legacy of persecution and displacement that tears at the heart of our Jewish and Palestinian sisters and brothers, and we grieve with both. We call for a Palestinian state along with the state of Israel, and are thankful for the many individuals and groups who are working for an equitable solution.

WE support legal and enforced protections of women's and children's rights. We are deeply sorrowed by the global trafficking in women and children for forced prostitution, labor and soldiering, and we reject all violence against women and children.

WE support equal rights and security for all. We reject the present "special registration" policy of the Immigration Service which persecutes and detains our neighbors of Middle Eastern descent and of the Islamic faith, and call on all people of conscience to stand with them in solidarity

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Implementing the vision

The Lysistrata Project calls for a unified voice for Peace. It espouses

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THE LYSISTRATA PROJECTS

By Bobby Heart, OasisTV

January 26,2003



NEW YORK CITY and SAN FRANCISCO--January 26, 2003 (OTVNewswire)--Two distinct ventures, each inspired by the iconoclastic heroine of the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, are taking bold and unique initiatives to help galvanize the peace movement.

Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata in the third century BC. The play tells the story of Athenian women who, fed up with the Peloponnesian War, barricade themselves in the Acropolis and go on a sex strike to force their husbands to vote for peace with Sparta. The name of the play's heroine, Lysistrata, means "releaser of war."

Yes, the forces behind each Lysistrata Project are women, and though their respective projects were launched independently of one another, they are spiritually linked - and, in fact, digitally hyperlinked on their websites.

LysistrataProject.com

The Lysistrata Project (New York City) is coordinating the first worldwide theatrical event for peace. On March 3, 2003, actors and other theater professionals are donating their time and talent to mount live stage readings of Lysistrata. As of today, more than 150 readings in over 15 countries are planned, from Argentina to Singapore.


LysistrataProject.com

In the United States alone, just about every state is represented. Many will have readings in more than one city; and in several cities, actors plan to hold the event in more than one venue.

Two New York actresses, Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower, hatched the idea for the Lysistrata Project earlier this month. Blume, who earlier had contemplated writing a screenplay adaptation of Lysistrata, was inspired to create the project at New York's Theaters Against War (THAW) in December 2002 as the Bush war machine against Iraq was accelerating.

Kathryn Blume is a long-time actor and environmentalist. In addition to appearances Off-Broadway, in regional theater productions and movies, she has worked for environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and Forest Watch. She's also taught yoga, acting, Shakespeare, and public speaking in schools and venues across the country. Blume toured Macedonia with a Balkan music group, works as a Life Coach, and is an ordained Minister with the Universal Life Church. She divides her time between New York City and Vermont, where she shares a home with her husband and their emotionally needy cat, Toast.

Sharron Bower attributes her steely resolve to coordinate the Lysistrata Project to her politically active mother, adventurous father, and the strong women she's often portrayed on stage who stood up against injustice. Since moving to New York almost four years ago from the American South, she's worked in television, independent film and theatre. She's also a volunteer camp counselor, and the Resident Casting Director at The Mint Theater in New York City. Before attending graduate school in Texas, Bower worked as an editor at an advertising firm, where she met her husband, graphic designer Mark Greene.

Less than a month after launching the website, their project has already snowballed into what promises to be an international cultural event for world peace. As Blume and Bower eloquently state, "By its very nature, live performance fosters not only open communication, but compassion: We see ourselves reflected in a play, and the emerging human truths remind us how like one another we all are."

New York's Lysistrata Project is a call to action, actively encouraging both professional and amateur actors - and the general public -- to join them on March 3, 2003 by producing or attending a reading of Lysistrata locally, in every part of the world. Contact Kathryn Blume for planning productions in New York City (Telephone: 802-233-5856) and Sharron Bower for planning productions elsewhere (Telephone: 917-655-0926).

LysistrataProject.org

Lysistrata Project (San Francisco) is 3,000 miles away from New York's Lysistrata Project but the two undertakings share the same ideals, if not the same modus operandi. This West Coast venture is an amazing Internet resource combining the collective energy of three powerful, contemporary social movements: Women, Spirituality and World Peace. It's the brainchild of Lisa Dollar, a writer, poet, spiritual activist and schoolteacher.


LysistrataProject.org

Simply put, Lisa looked at the state of the world following 9-11 and realized she had to do something. After a nine-month gestation period - many sacred creations seem to take 9 months, don't they? - she decided "to construct something, rather than act in opposition." That "something" would become LysistrataProject.org.

So in the summer of 2002, Dollar went to school, but this time as a student. She enrolled in a web design course at a local community college to learn the bits and bytes of the Internet. Last fall, she set up her website; and almost immediately it struck a chord that resonated in the hearts and minds of like-minded souls around the world.

Dollar's Lysistrata Project calls for an "heroic alliance" among the millions of men and women who are helping to create a world of "people over profit, a woman's full worth over controlled reproductive function, partnership over dominance." The immediate challenge, however, is to resist America's pending war in Iraq and current assault on our civil liberties.

Lisa Dollar was born in Nicaragua and moved to San Francisco at the age of five. She graduated JFK University and earned her Masters in Education from the University of San Francisco. In 1984, she spent two months traveling through Africa and came back "a changed person, after meeting the generous, giving people of Malawi, Botswana and Tanzania." In 1990, she went to the testing grounds at Semipalatinsk in the former Soviet Union as part of a 3-week international anti-nuclear protest.

In 1991, America's Gulf War "built up a lot of anger" in her, so in 1992, Dollar went to live in a small town in Costa Rica through World Teach. There she tutored English, studied Buddhism, Plato -- even the Bible, the latter "only out of curiosity," she's quick to add. "Like the Dalai Lama, my religion is kindness."

The Lysistrata Project (San Francisco) is today both a catalyst for action and a magnet for some of the most compelling original content on the web. Written by both men and women, the articles, action alerts and inspirations bridge interfaith spirituality with social and political activism.

"Lysistrata is an archetype, an emblem for women to stand up and be counted," Dollar said in explaining her website's namesake. It reflects "the huge swelling of women stepping out, speaking up and beginning to take action in one way or another. From that, women and men will be more in partnership."

You can contact Lisa Dollar at the Lysistrata Project (San Francisco) via Email.

And Finally, Kudos to the Playwright

Lest we forget, the writer who first put pen to papyrus to create the story of Lysistrata was Aristophanes who, along with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, is considered one of the giants of Western theater. Born in the 440s BC, Aristophanes is the most famous writer of Greek comedies. He lived in Athens through the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) and died in the 380s BC. Of the 44 comedies he wrote, eleven survive, including Lysistrata, from which its protagonist speaks the following lines:

"We need only sit indoors with painted cheeks, and meet our mates lightly clad in transparent gowns of Amorgos silk, and perfectly depilated; they will get their tools up and be wild to lie with us. That will be the time to refuse, and they will hasten to make peace, I am convinced of that!"

And that, dear friends, is the Heart of the matter.

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Bobby Heart is a contributing writer and editor at Oasis TV. Title illustration is by Barbara Watermann Peters. The bust of Aristophanes is from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Photo collage created by Humberto Robles from various sources.

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A Hopi Elder Speaks


"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour,
now youmust go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.
And there are things to be considered ...
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader."
Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said,
"This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle
of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above water.
And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all,
ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we've been waiting for."

Oraibi, Arizona
Hopi Nation

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Path to a world free from want and fear

J. Kirk Boyd
Thursday, February 12, 2004


In mid-January, 70,000 people from 50 countries gathered in Mumbai, India, for the World Social Forum. The discussion of pressing global issues led to a simple recommendation: We need more rights, not fewer.

There is nothing new about this approach. Before the United States even entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt analyzed what is essential for peace. He distilled it into four basic freedoms that he presented to Congress in his State of the Union address on Jan. 6, 1941. Many Americans are familiar with them -- they are etched in marble at the Roosevelt memorial in Washington: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

The problem clearly identified at the World Social Forum is that in the past 50 years, freedom from want has never been realized. One of the primary reasons for this, which I have witnessed year after year at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, is that the United States actively opposes the recognition of economic and social rights, such as education and health care - - the essence of freedom from want.

Moreover, the United States gives very little to help remedy the terrible squalor and misery of billions of people living without clean water or electricity and with disease and death as a frequent part of everyday life. As pointed out at one of many scholarly panels at the forum, the United States ranks 20th among the 22 richest countries when it comes to aid. The internationally recognized aid target is 0.7 percent of gross national income. The U.S. contribution is only 0.12 percent -- roughly one-seventh of the goal.

Americans are not a greedy people. So what's wrong? How can one of our past leaders lay out such a clear path and then have our government stray so far from it in a manner that is inconsistent with American character? This answer was also provided at the forum: The false impression being drummed into Americans by today's leadership is that there is greater security in weapons and the military than in freedom from want. The truth is we will never reach the fourth freedom, freedom from fear, if we rely on the military alone. We should support a simple "1 percent rule" whereby the United States directs 1 percent of gross domestic product to building schools and hospitals as part of the realization of economic and social rights.

Our international situation is similar to what the United States faced in 1900, when workers were severely exploited and regulation was necessary to allow for market competition, but with a bottom line of protection for basic rights. The same is true now. Capitalism has prevailed as the world's economic model, which is a good thing, but we also need to create a new bottom line of protection for workers and the environment.

The way to create such a bottom line was also discussed at the forum -- it is through an International Bill of Rights. The content of this bill has been written by professors from many disciplines for several years at the University of California; it is now embodied in a draft booklet created by the International Bill of Rights Project. The document is patterned after the European Bill of Rights, which applies in 45 countries.

The Bill of Rights Project booklet was translated into Hindi and 10,000 copies, along with 3,000 copies in English, were distributed at the forum. The document, along with its economic and social rights to achieve freedom from want, could have just as easily been distributed at the World Economic Forum, a gathering of economic-powerhouse countries and corporations, in Davos, Switzerland, late last month. Distributing the document would have been especially appropriate, because the multinational companies that have a genuine concern for the well-being of their workers are being severely undercut by those companies with no scruples.

There is nothing inherently wrong with international business or with globalization. But unless the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization and other meetings come around to addressing freedom from want, then we will all spend more and more on the military (now more than $1 trillion a year) and never achieve freedom from fear.

J. Kirk Boyd is executive director of the International Bill of Rights Project (www.ibor.org).

San Francisco Chronicle

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Original meaning & power of Mother's Day


Mothers' Day Proclamation
Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870, followed by a bit of history (or should I say "herstory"):

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Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From
the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons
of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a
great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that
a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be
appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and
at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the
alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of
international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

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Mother's Day for Peace
by Ruth Rosen.


Honor Mother with Rallies in the Streets.The holiday began in activism; it needs rescuing from commercialism and platitudes.

Every year, people snipe at the shallow commercialism of Mother's Day. But to ignore your mother on this holy holiday is unthinkable. And if you are a
mother, you'll be devastated if your ingrates fail to honor you at least one
day of the year.

Mother's Day wasn't always like this. The women who conceived Mother's Day would be bewildered by the ubiquitous ads that hound us to find that "perfect gift for Mom." They would expect women to be marching in the streets, not eating with their families in restaurants. This is because Mother's Day began as a holiday that commemorated women's public activism, not as a celebration of a mother's devotion to her family.

The story begins in 1858 when a community activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis organized Mothers' Works Days in West Virginia. Her immediate goal was to improve sanitation in Appalachian communities. During the Civil War, Jarvis pried women from their families to care for the wounded on both sides. Afterward she convened meetings to persuale men to lay aside their
hostilities.

In 1872, Juulia Ward Howe, author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic",
proposed an annual Mother's Day for Peace. Committed to abolishing war, Howe wrote: "Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage... Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs".

For the next 30 years, Americans celebrated Mothers' Day for Peace on June 2.

Many middle-class women in the 19th century believed that they bore a special responsibility as actual or potential mothers to care for the casualties of society and to turn America into a more civilized nation. They played a
leading role in the abolitionist movement to end slavery. In the following
decades, they launched successful campaigns against lynching and consumer
fraud and battled for improved working conditions for women and protection for children, public health services and social welfare assistance to the poor.
To the activists, the connection between motherhood and the fight for social
and economic justice seemed self-evident.

In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother's Day. By then, the growing consumer culture had successfully redefined women as
consumers for their families. Politicians and businessmen eagerly enbraced
the idea of celebrating the private sacrifices made by individual mothers. As
the Florists' Review, the industry's trade jounal, bluntly put it, "This was a
holiday that could be exploited."

The new advertising industry quickly taught Americans how to honor their
mothers - by buying flowers. Outraged by florists who were seling carnations
for the exorbitant price of $1 apeice, Anna Jarvis' duaghter undertook a
campaging against those who "would undermine Mother's Day with their greed." But she fought a losing battle. Within a few years, the Florists' Review
triumphantly announced that it was "Miss Jarvis who was completely squelched."

Since then, Mother's Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry.

Americans may revere the idea of motherhood and love their own mothers, but not all mothers. Poor, unemployed rmothers may enjoy flowers, but they also need child care, job training, health care, a higher minimum wage and paid parental leave. Working mothers may enjoy breakfast in bed, but they also need the kind of governmental assistance provided by every other
industrialized society.

With a little imagination, we could restore Mother's Day as a holiday that
celebrates women's political engagement in society. During the 1980's, some
peace groups gathered at nuclear test sites on Mother's Day to protest the
arms race. Today, our greatest threat is not from missilies but from our
indifference toward human welfare and the health of our planet. Imagine, if
you can, an annual Million Mother March in the nation's capital. Imagine a
Mother's Day filled with voices demanding social and economic justice and a
sustainable future, rather than speeches studded with syrupy platitudes.

Some will think it insulting to alter our current way of celebrating Mother's
Day. But public activism does not preclude private expressions of love and
gratitude. (Nor does it prevent people from expressing their appreciation all
year round.)

Nineteenth century women dared to dream of a day that honored women's civil activism. We can do no less. We should honor their vision with civic
activism.

Ruth Rosen is a professor of history at UC Davis.
Reprinted with permission

www.Peace.com

Proposals/ Solutions


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Shut Up And Vibrate Already

Because you just know it's not all toxic war and BushCo and homophobic senators, right?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 2, 2003

So you look straight out into that winking sunset or up at that star-gashed sky or over at that frolicking goofy mutt in the park or at that funky yellow Mini Cooper or deep into the rich burgundy flesh of that goblet of wine or over at the soft gorgeous rhythmic rise and fall of your lover's chest as s/he sleeps and you think, this is proof, isn't it?

This is proof that there's something more, something richer and more divine and far, far more profound and enthralling and cosmic and worthy and wet and delicious about this damnable existence, right? You can just feel it, that divine kick, that lick, that juice? Of course you can.

You just know, in other words, that this can't be all there is.

Surely, you think, it's not all smirking inarticulate presidents and gutted economies and bogus wars and international resentment, factories belching venom into the sky and the oceans with decreasing federal restriction and increasing corporate glee.

Surely it's not all rabid psychopatriots and fear-happy Bible huggers and homophobic Republican senators promoting their tyranny of sexless ignorance, garbage-food conglomerates consciously poisoning the population with toxic foodstuffs far more full of synthetic goo and Agent Orange by-products and bioengineered rat dung than actual food from which the body can draw life and energy and funk and satisfied karmic burps.

You think: No way can it be all about thuggish 8 MPG SUVs and inexplicably dying sea otters and 45 percent of the country actually believing Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 9/11. Can it?

Millions of people invoking the name of God as justification for war and hate and death, more homeless, more poverty, more rampant population growth, more bitch-slapped civil rights, political corruption and bizarre viral disease and Dick Cheney making you question the very definition of sympathetic animate biped?

Because it's just so easy to forget. It's so easy to let the crush and rush and chain-saw babble of the world, of the major media's prepackaged hysteria, overwhelm your senses and numb your id and pile-drive your innate ability to look, really look at the world around you, and ultimately let them effectively asphyxiate what you deeply sense to be true.

Not simply that everything is connected. Not simple that there is a throbbing pulsing extant ever-present scientifically proven energetic vibration to every damn thing on the planet, animate and inanimate, breathing or not, each and every organism radiating forth its sacredness and its profanity and just waiting for you to raise your consciousness just a little so you can receive your divine epiphanic ass-slap.

It's not just that. It's that you, right now, at this moment, are much less removed from those pulsing vibrational things than They want you to believe. You are closer than you think.

Here is the basic formula: The more They get you to ignore and detach from and hurl sticks of dismissive ignorance at that divine interconnectedness, the more you feed the common tyranny of fear, the collective cultural moan, and the easier it is for corporations and the government and the masters of televised dread to convince you to buy into, say, a noxious war. Or toxic fast food. Or ultraviolent entertainment. Or Celine Dion.

Conversely, the more you work to feel nature, imbibe it, soak up that juicy interconnectedness like wine into a mattress, suck up that vibrational hum and awe and kiss, the more you realize the value of protecting and preserving and treading lightly, actually taking the time to taste your food, integrate with those objects, feel that breath of your lover. Simple, really.

And, hence, the less you require of the material world. This is what scares them the most. This is why They don't want you to notice, to feel, to remember, or to question their motives.

Because the less you believe that everything around you is just a tedious lifeless resource to be consumed and shrugged off, the less you feel the need to share in the massive force-fed belief that we are here to devour as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and blow the living crap out of everything that gets in our way.

And then you take the idea one step further. You realize that by soaking up that interconnected juice and raising that vibrational consciousness just that little bit, on a day-to-day basis, you are directly and immediately affecting everything around you, inspiring it, them, us to do exactly the same.

The final kicker: It's all accessible right now. All you gotta do is ask. Invite it in. Literally. Just ask.

Want to be healthy? Strong? More open and lickable and less bitter and baffled and cynical? Ask for it, place some divine intent behind it and breath it in and imagine what it would feel like to radiate health and sexual vibrancy and self-defined joy and really cool taste in shoes. That's how you start.

Because this is the biggest collective delusion of all, that you can't get at it, that it's so much wimpy tofu-hugging BS, so much fluffy New Age psychobabble. What a convenient excuse that is to remain wallowing and acidic and humming at a simplistically low, want-based pitch, happily drunk on the disinfo They want to sell you. It's just too easy. And lazy.

And it does require work. It takes some concentrated and open-hearted effort to raise that awareness, to tune in on that level, sift through the bogus media and healers and teachers and pretentious yoga classes, gurus, smarmy inane Chicken Soupy books to find the authentically divine heat and rush and thrust.

You gotta get off your ass. You gotta question everything. You gotta see the world anew, always, every moment, to progress and evolve and vibrate higher. And, to be sure, it can be a total divinely annoying pain in the ass.

But, really, when you get right down to it, what else is there?

Subscribe to Mark's deeply skewed, mostly legal Morning Fix newsletter.
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

San Francisco Chronicle

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This image expresses our sadness...


Guernica under the bombs

...over war    
and the loss of innocent lives    

~~~~~~~~~~

Images inform how we think about things.
Photos of the Iraq "war" offered by mainstream
media avoided the horror unleashed on Iraqi civilians.
Pictures: Victims of the Anglo-American Aggression

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U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation

February 27, 2003

The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation
to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat
who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan.

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.

It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.

The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.

The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to do to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?

We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.

We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has “oderint dum metuant” really become our motto?

I urge you to listen to America’s friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?

Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.

New York Times

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What would Martin do?

by Martin Luther King, Jr.

(Adapted from his writings and public statements by Clayborne Carson)
Sunday, February 23, 2003


On a beautiful afternoon in 1959, Coretta and I journeyed from our hotel in Beirut to take a plane for Jerusalem. After about two hours in the air we were notified to fasten our seat belts -- we were beginning to descend for the airport in Jerusalem. Because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this city has been divided.
And so this was a strange feeling -- to go to the ancient city of God and see the tragedies of man's hate and evil which causes him to fight and live in conflict.

Israel's right to exist as a state in security is incontestable. At the same time the great powers have the obligation to recognize that the Arab world is in a state of imposed poverty and backwardness that must threaten peace and harmony. Until a concerted and democratic program of assistance is affected, tensions cannot be relieved. So there is a need for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East.

At the heart of the problem are oil interests. As the American Jewish Congress has stated, "American policies in the Middle East have been motivated in no small measure by the desire to protect the $2.5 billion stake which U.S. oil companies have invested in the area." Some Arab feudal rulers are no less concerned for oil wealth and neglect the plight of their own peoples.

The solution will have to be found in statesmanship by Israel and progressive Arab forces who, in concert with the great powers, recognize that fair and peaceful solutions are the concern of all of humanity. Neither military measures nor a stubborn effort to reverse history can provide a permanent solution.

As I said in my Nobel Peace Prize Lecture: Nations are not reducing, but rather increasing, their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The proliferation of nuclear weapons has not been halted. The fact that most of the time human beings put the risk of nuclear war out of their minds because it is too painful does not alter the risk of such a war. Man's proneness to engage in war is still a fact, but wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete.

If we assume that life is worth living, that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative. In a day when guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory in war. A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil and political disillusionment. A world war, God forbid, would leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony to the human race whose folly led to ultimate death. If modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war, he will transform his earthly habitat into an inferno even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must shift the arms race into the peace race.

In 1967, when I took my stand against the war in Vietnam, I recounted that I had lived in the ghettos of Chicago and Cleveland, and I knew the hurt, the cynicism and the discontent. As I walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I told them Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I tried to offer my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.

But they asked, and rightly so, "What about Vietnam?" They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. This need to maintain social stability for our investments . . . tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. . . .

It is with such activities in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. He said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.

Clayborne Carson is director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University.
-- © Estate of The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

San Francisco Chronicle

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Presque Isle, Maine Peace Rally Speech

February 15, 2003 - St. Mary’s Church

by Charlotte Aldebron

When people think about bombing Iraq, they see a picture in their heads of Saddam Hussein in a military uniform, or maybe soldiers with big black mustaches carrying guns, or the mosaic of George Bush Sr. on the lobby floor of the Al-Rashid Hotel with the word “criminal”. But guess what? More than half of Iraq’s 24 million people are children under the age of 15. That’s 12 million kids. Kids like me. Well, I’m almost 13, so some are a little older, and some a lot younger, some boys instead of girls, some with brown hair, not red. But kids who are pretty much like me just the same. So take a look at me—a good long look. Because I am what you should see in your head when you think about bombing Iraq. I am what you are going to destroy.

If I am lucky, I will be killed instantly, like the three hundred children murdered by your “smart” bombs in a Baghdad bomb shelter on February 16, 1991. The blast caused a fire so intense that it flash-burned outlines of those children and their mothers on the walls; you can still peel strips of blackened skin—souvenirs of your victory—from the stones.

But maybe I won’t be lucky and I’ll die slowly, like 14-year-old Ali Faisal, who right now is on the “death ward” of the Baghdad children’s hospital. He has malignant lymphoma—cancer—caused by the depleted uranium in your Gulf War missiles. Or maybe I will die painfully and needlessly like18-month-old Mustafa, whose vital organs are being devoured by sand fly parasites. I know it’s hard to believe, but Mustafa could be totally cured with just $25 worth of medicine, but there is none of this medicine because of your sanctions.

Or maybe I won’t die at all but will live for years with the psychological damage that you can’t see from the outside, like Salman Mohammed, who even now can’t forget the terror he lived through with his little sisters when you bombed Iraq in 1991. Salman’s father made the whole family sleep in the same room so that they would all survive together, or die together. He still has nightmares about the air raid sirens.

Or maybe I will be orphaned like Ali, who was three when you killed his father in the Gulf War. Ali scraped at the dirt covering his father’s grave every day for three years calling out to him, “It’s all right Daddy, you can come out now, the men who put you here have gone away.” Well, Ali, you’re wrong. It looks like those men are coming back.

Or I maybe I will make it in one piece, like Luay Majed, who remembers that the Gulf War meant he didn’t