jimrigby.org

Reverend Clovis Jones had taught his daughter bible verses since she was young enough to speak. He had aspirations of her becoming a great biblical scholar some day. He imagined her having a biblical answer for every question anyone might ask.

When his daughter Amy got to be a teenager, she refused to learn any more bible verses. She began to object to his answers for her life. Eventually she moved out and stopped going to church. The minister was crushed.

Turning to an old friend, Reverend Jones asked Texas Buddha for advice. Pulling out a Lone Star Beer to offer his friend TB began to speak:

“Math books sometimes have answers to homework assignments in the back. A student who spends the semester copying the answers in the back will have no idea how to respond when the actual exam comes because he or she has learned answers instead of the principles of math.

“I know that you look at the bible as an answer book, but think about it. When believers are told not to think or struggle, but just to memorize the answers, they are helpless to respond when life presents its exams. Answers have no meaning if we have not first learned how to ask the questions.

“Go back to your daughter and ask her what is happening in her life that has made her outgrow your answers. Your daughter has grown up. The only way you can influence her now is to become her student as well as her teacher.”

The George Bush Library will open this weekend. Absent in local news coverage of the event has been the recollection that his administration deceived our nation to lead us to a war that conservative estimates say cost 100.000 lives and 3.1 trillion dollars.

The theme for opening week is “Day of Fire.” The hell unleashed as “Shock and Awe’ upon an innocent people will again be celebrated as a kind of video game. The images will be flashed around twisted metal beams from the World Trade Center, again conflating 9-11 with our revenge upon a people who had nothing to do with it.

CODEPINK attempted to break through the newspapers worship of the Bush years by inserting a paid ad:

President Bush repeated many times that the reason terrorists hate us is because they are jealous of our freedoms. Tell that to CODEPINK who was not even able to pay for the right of free speech.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/bushs-legacy-atrocities-nowhere-be-seen-his-new-library-and-local-paper-wont?paging=off

Prayer and mediation are not forms of magic, they are a certain vulnerability and openness.  Prayer and mediation are ways of remembering that we are not orphans of the universe, but the intersection point of infinite invisible threads stretching out everywhere.

Praying or meditation recognizes the harmony between the pulses of our bodies and the one pulse underneath it all.  Prayer or meditation is aligning the intelligence in our heads to the intelligent web that runs through us, but also through the whole of reality. It is a moment of dissolving into the larger life, and then, coming back to our smaller life attuned to life and open to a much larger context for living.

Jesus taught before the edifice we now call the church was built.  His concern was much more basic than that of many theologians. He wanted to teach us how to tune our hearts to the common life. His teachings can be helpful whether or not one becomes a Christian. I don’t think he would have the slightest interest in converting anyone to the institutional church. He wouldn’t be against the church either, so long as it teaches universal love and not sectarian dogma. I suspect most religious sages are vastly greater than the organizations that now speak in their names.

For some, prayer is a conversation with God, for others, who don’t believe in God, “prayer” is more like a reverent awareness without any personification. Either way, the aim of prayer is attunement. Whether it consists of words or of attentive silence, prayer is deepening and broadening our shallow concerns until they become compassion for all beings, and acceptance of reality as it is. When we rise from that prayer, we will have the heart that Christ had, the mind that Buddha had, and the calling of Moses to serve the people. When all of that happens inside us, we will know that our prayer has been answered.

I doubt anyone was surprised by the news the Koch brothers are considering buying several media outlets, among them the LA Times. Outside the Internet, our sources of information have been reduced to a few outlets owned by a very few people.

What we are seeing may be described as the endgame of capitalism. Monopolies now span the globe. Any attempt to protect human beings or the earth from corporate rapine have been drowned by the charge of “socialism.” Any third world leaders who seek to protect their people and culture from economic invasion by foreign investors are eventually met with the charge of “terrorist.” Any leader who makes it to the top, almost assuredly, is a proven lobbyist for the rich. They speak of the aspirations of the masses and deliver the goods to the few.

Capitalism was not originally a political system. To Adam Smith, it was an economic theory. He assumed there would always be some other, more basic, political system to mitigate the toll of the market upon human affairs. Originally, that system was described as a represenative form of democracy. But an economic system based on entrepreneurial spirit and individual responsibility (euphemisms for greed and selfishness) will not wish to stay in its cage. It will seek to corner every market and rid itself of any leash to democratic control. We are now a market driven nation that gets to vote only on which corporate lobbyist we will pretend represents us.

Just like it seeks to buy the democratic process, capitalism predictably is buying up the news media which, for them, represent the last whimpers of democracy. We will ultimately have to choose between democracy and capitalism. They can exist as uneasy bedfellows, but only one of them can make our decisions. Ultimately we will have to decide which is more fundamental, property rights or human rights?

Last year Alan Chambers, a leader of Exodus International renounced “reparative” therapy for GLBT people. Now another such leader has seen the light:

Paulk founded Love Won Out, an organization that ran a series of conferences around the country, supported by Focus on the Family, preaching against gays and lesbians. He was also a chairman of the board for Exodus. Paulk and his “ex-lesbian” wife Anne once appeared on the cover of Newsweek and have been on shows like Oprah and 60 Minutes to spread the ex-gay message to anyone who would listen.

It’s the same old story. Gay basher gets caught in gay bar.

Stephen Cassell, a public relations expert and queer activist approached Paulk and challenged him to renounce his support for ex-gay therapy and speak out against it. Paulk told him he couldn’t for fear of ruining his relationship with his sons.

“I told him by not saying anything he validates the work that his wife does against our community,” Cassell recalled. “He then offered me an apology for the damage he caused if he hurt me. He was tearing up.”

Paulk then sent the following email to a newspaper:

“I have been on a journey during the last few years in trying to understand God, myself, and how I can best relate to others. During this journey I have made many mistakes and I have hurt many people including people who are close to me.”

As a straight person, I do not trust my “gaydar” but I am absolutely convinced that the most homophobic men I have met over the years are not afraid of GLBT people, per se. The typical homophobic male is afraid that he will be thought gay if he does not distance himself from such people. And, sometimes,  the homophobic male is most afraid of the gay man he is trying not to see in the mirror.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/candacechellew-hodge/7052/once_poster_child_for_ex_gay_industry__john_paulk_renounces_his_support/

We have a short memory here in the old US of A. Not long ago DynCorp was accused of providing Afghan police with drugs and child prostitutes. For the most part, the story was ignored in the US but, after being leaked by Wikileaks, it was reported by the UK Guardian in 2010:

“A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young “dancing boys” to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try and “quash” the story, according to one of the US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks.”

“There is a long tradition of young boys dressing up as girls and dancing for men in Afghanistan, an activity that sometimes crosses the line into child abuse with Afghans keeping boys as possessions.”

“The story had been held back after the warning that it would “endanger lives.” The Afghan government asked the US to military to maintain oversight over its mercenary forces only to find that that would violate their contract.”

Corpwatch has long been critical of DynCorp:

“The world’s premier rent-a-cop business runs the security show in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the US-Mexico border. They also run the coca crop-dusting business in Colombia, and occasional sex trafficking sorties in Bosnia. But what can you expect from a bunch of mercenaries?”

“Indeed a group of Ecuadoran peasants filed a class action against the company in September 2001. The suit alleges that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, withering legitimate crops, causing human and livestock illness, and, in several cases, killing children. Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers intervened in the case right away telling the judge the lawsuit posed “a grave risk to US national security and foreign policy objectives.”

“What’s more, Kathryn Bolkovac, a U.N. International Police Force monitor filed a lawsuit in Britain in 2001 against DynCorp for firing her after she reported that Dyncorp police trainers in Bosnia were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex trafficking. Many of the Dyncorp employees were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity. But none were prosecuted, since they enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia.”

“Earlier that year Ben Johnston, a DynCorp aircraft mechanic for Apache and Blackhawk helicopters in Kosovo, filed a lawsuit against his employer. The suit alleged that that in the latter part of 1999 Johnson “learned that employees and supervisors from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in] other immoral acts.”  –Corpwatch, 2005

I am providing all this history to contextualize the news that the Obama administration has hired Dyncorp at a tax payer price of 48 million dollars to train 110 advisors and to “provide logistics” support to the Haitian Police. The Center for Economic and Policy Research provides the following warning:

But the awarding of the contract to DynCorp is also problematic given the company’s terrible track record in the same exact program areas where they will now operate in Haiti.

In Bosnia in the late ‘90s, DynCorp was contracted by the State Department to provide “peacekeepers” for the U.N. police there, just as in Haiti now. One employee, Kathryn Bolkovac, was eventually fired after blowing the whistle to her superiors at DynCorp on the participation of her colleagues in sex trafficking, among other abuses. The case was the basis for the 2011 Hollywood movie, The Whistleblower.

Additionally, DynCorp has a history of waste, fraud and abuse, including under U.S. government contracts to provide police training in Afghanistan and Iraq, similar to their program in Haiti. In 2010, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction issued a report which found that the State Department and DynCorp could not account for $1 billion dollars spent training the Iraq police. At the time, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said “[INL has]been managing this contract in Iraq since 2004 and, according to this report, they have no idea where any of the money went… What’s even worse is that these are the same people responsible for police training in Afghanistan, so I don’t have any confidence that they’re doing a better job there.”

Sure enough, in 2011 DynCorp was slammed by a joint audit from the State Department and Department of Defense over their work training the Afghan police.  It wasn’t the first time. Also In 2011, according to the Project on Government Oversight’s Contractor Misconduct Database, DynCorp paid $7.7 million to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit after a whistleblower alleged that the company had inflated claims under a “contract with the State Department to provide civilian police training in Iraq.”

Back in the days of earlier scandals, US Rep. Janice Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat asked a question that I think answers itself:

“Is the US military privatizing its missions to avoid public controversy or to avoid embarrassment – to hide body bags from the media and shield the military from public opinion?”

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/despite-track-record-us-hires-contractor-to-provide-troops-to-un-haiti-mission

http://www.corpwatch.org/section.php?id=18

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/foreign-contractors-hired-dancing-boys

It’s been a hard week. The bombing at the Boston Marathon shook our nation once again. Nothing can justify what the bombers did, still it is important to at least try to understand the whole story. When I heard the men were from Chechnya, a memory stirred of earlier CIA mischief in that area of the world.

I found an old Reuter’s story from 2009:

Former rebel-turned-Moscow-ally Ramzan Kadyrov said in comments to Zavtra newspaper reprinted on his official website that he had seen the U.S. driving licence of a CIA operative who was killed in a security operation he led. Chechen authorities have previously said insurgents following the radical Wahabist form of Islam receive support from international Islamist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but have not accused the West of instigating violence.

If the reports were accurate they would merely repeat what we know of earlier CIA activities elsewhere in the world. The US has aided terrorist groups who would work against our enemies. Some of our assassin friends turned against us, many people in those nations resented our violence against them, and our enemies took it from there.

The New York Times yesterday had a story where Russia challenged the US to rethink that strategy:

Russia has long warned the Americans that flirting with various separatist and terrorist organizations of the North Caucasus would not lead to anything good,” Sergei Mikheyev, a political analyst, told the Pravda news Web site.

Looking back to Russia’s two military campaigns against Chechen separatists in the 1990s, Mr. Mikheyev said, “It is an open secret that separatists enjoyed the support from external forces for quite a long period of time, including the Americans and their allies from other countries.”

After 9-11 the US turned its fury against Iraq. It was a nation that had nothing to do with hijacking the planes and crashing them into the twin towers, but they were a Muslim nation upon which we could exact revenge.

We think of ourselves as a peaceful nation, but consider the sheer number of military actions we have launched since world war two. We think of ourselves as an ethical nation, but consider the national shrug that takes place when we hear of civilians killed in other nations in our pursuit of terrorism the world over.

The most horrifying truth of all is that people in other nations are just like us. After the Boston tragedy there were voices saying that all Muslims were responsible and should be punished. There are those in Muslim nations that feel the same way about us

Like us, people from other nations are fairly numb to foreign suffering and hyper vigilant to their own. This maxim gives us much guidance for the future. If we would like people from Muslim nations to stop killing our  innocent civilians, perhaps one place to start would be for us to stop killing theirs.

.

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/after-boston-and-tsarnaevs-russians-urge-u-s-to-rethink-chechnya/

Imagine being an Arab or Muslim citizen in the United States. Every time a terrorist attack happens you would immediately be a suspect in the eyes of some.

Now imagine the horror of Salah Marhoum, a 17 year old student, seeing his and a friend’s picture plastered on the New York Post with the headline:

“Bag men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.”

The Post later reported that the two were not in fact suspects, but young Salah now lives in fear:

But Barhoum, a track runner at Revere High School, said he is convinced some will blame him for the bombings, no matter what.

He said he was so fearful on Thursday that he ran back to the high school after a track meet when he saw a man in a car staring at him, talking into a phone. He said he won’t feel safe until the bombers are caught.

“I’m going to be scared going to school,” Barhoum said. “Workwise, my family, everything is going to be scary.”

Barhoum’s father, El Houssein Barhoum, who moved his family from Morocco five years ago, said he is worried his son will be shot and fears for his wife and two young daughters. He said he can’t go to his job as a baker in Boston.

“Right now, we are not secure,” he said. “So, the news (media), when they put something, they should be sure about the information.”

The true suspects have been caught or killed,  but I suspect Salah will be watching his back for some time, just like countless other Arab and Muslim Americans.

http://start.lenovo.com/news/read/category/Top%20News/article/ap-teen_stunned_at_portrayal_as_bombing_sus-ap

It’s been a hard week. The bombing at the Boston Marathon shook our nation once again. Nothing can justify what the bombers did, still it is important to at least try to understand the whole story. When I heard the men were from Chechnya, a memory stirred of earlier CIA mischief in that area of the world.

I found an old Reuter’s story from 2009:

Former rebel-turned-Moscow-ally Ramzan Kadyrov said in comments to Zavtra newspaper reprinted on his official website that he had seen the U.S. driving licence of a CIA operative who was killed in a security operation he led. Chechen authorities have previously said insurgents following the radical Wahabist form of Islam receive support from international Islamist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but have not accused the West of instigating violence.

If the reports were accurate they would merely repeat what we know of earlier CIA activities elsewhere in the world. The US has aided terrorist groups who would work against our enemies.

The New York Times yesterday had a story where Russia challenged the US to rethink that strategy:

Russia has long warned the Americans that flirting with various separatist and terrorist organizations of the North Caucasus would not lead to anything good,” Sergei Mikheyev, a political analyst, told the Pravda news Web site.

Looking back to Russia’s two military campaigns against Chechen separatists in the 1990s, Mr. Mikheyev said, “It is an open secret that separatists enjoyed the support from external forces for quite a long period of time, including the Americans and their allies from other countries.”

After 9-11 the US turned its fury against Iraq. It was a nation that had nothing to do with hijacking the planes and crashing them into the twin towers, but they were a Muslim nation upon which we could exact revenge.

We think of ourselves as a peaceful nation, but consider the sheer number of military actions we have launched since world war two. We think of ourselves as an ethical nation, but consider the national shrug that takes place when we hear of civilians killed in other nations in our pursuit of terrorism the world over.

The most horrifying truth of all is that people in other nations are just like us. After the Boston tragedy there were voices saying that all Muslims were responsible and should be punished. There are those in Muslim nations that feel the same way about us

Like us, people from other nations are fairly numb to foreign suffering and hyper vigilant to their own. This maxim gives us much guidance for the future. If we would like people from Muslim nations to stop killing our  innocent civilians, perhaps one place to start would be for us to stop killing theirs.

.

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/after-boston-and-tsarnaevs-russians-urge-u-s-to-rethink-chechnya/