Le Chat Coffeehouse Living is a political act.

Every time a homeless person dies outside without shelter, or by violence, in King County Washington, WHEEL (a homeless women's organizing effort) and the Church of Mary Magdalene (an ecumenical day ministry) mobilize for a silent witnessing vigil, Women In Black.

Women In Black just received a new list of homeless deaths from the King County Medical Examiner's Office and Health Care for the Homeless, and learned of 14 deaths that were new to us, most of which occurred over the summer.

• Walter C. Suttles, 64, found dead of sepsis on 4/7.


• William David Smith, 65, found dead of natural causes, 5/31.
  
  
• Brandon Jerry Clement, 24, shot to death on 6/3.
  
  
• Kenneth White, 46, found dead of natural causes, 6/5.
  
  
• Harrell Eugene Rutledge, 42, stabbed to death on 6/9.
  
  
• Dale E. Foust, 46, found dead of "positional asphyxia" on 6/18.
  
  
• Adelaido Dimasrendon, 44, died of accidental asphyxia on 6/21.
  
  
• William Edward Fry, 55, committed suicide on 7/12.
  
  
• Jacob Allen Hall, 20, committed suicide on 7/13.
  
  
• Jose Medina-Santos, 53, died in what is listed as "an apparent car accident" on 7/15.
  
  
• Jeffrey Erin Tofstad, 19, committed suicide on 7/18.
  
  
• Jared Jason Settlemire, 17, committed suicide on 8/9.
  
  
• Rudolph Stuart Tyni, 61, died of accidental causes on 8/11.
  
  
• Edward Michael Costello, Jr., 60, was shot to death on 8/16.
  

This brings the total of people we have stood for this year to 36. Of those 36, at least eight were homicides, and at least five were suicides.

Standing for 14 people at once is a body blow. Our grief is compounded by the number of suicides, and that three who were so terribly young are among the suicides. If I did not have a community of women to stand with, I could not stand this; I would go into depression, become homeless again myself, and die.

And that is why so many on this list died; they did not have a community. Isolation and invisibility is the very worst part of being homeless; and it is the root of homelessness. The only way we can end this cycle of despair and death is to become a larger and a stronger community.

I had mixed feelings about the episode. I am glad that such a major news team is paying attention to violence against homeless people. I am also disappointed. I think the implication that the exploitative video series 'Bumfights' is responsible is weak investigative reporting. 'Bumfights' is one of the symptoms, hardly a primary cause. Teenage killings of homeless people go back way before 'Bumfights' videos, and it isn't anything that the American public has a right to scapegoat some fratboy producer for.

Just this week, Reuter's reported on the Homeless World Cup soccer tournament as "pitting addicts against alcoholics." In 1999, David Ballenger was stabbed to death in Seattle by teenagers, one of whom said, "It's one less homeless bum on the face of the earth." The same year, the Seattle City Attorney defended charges of unequal enforcement of city ordinances by saying, "If minorities and homeless people get a higher proportion of the tickets, what you have to ask yourself is, who is doing most of the criminal behavior?"

So, where do you think teenagers and fratboy video producers get the idea of targeting "homeless bums"?

Everybody is excited about the 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness. Key to the plan is building more housing. Besides the question of how we are going to pay for it -- where are we going to put it? We're running into a snag on that in King County, and probably elsewhere. Everybody wants homeless people off the streets. Nobody wants housing for homeless people put in their neighborhood.

We are not going to end homelessness until housed and homeless people together become one community. Until then, homeless people are going to be dying on the streets of my city, and your city. And what good does that do anybody?

Women In Black are dedicating our vigil today to Jeff Alexander. A local columnist, Danny Westneat, wrote very movingly about Jeff and his garden under a Ballard overpass, and gardens mean a great deal to us, also: one of our dreams is a Homeless Memorial Garden, where the friends and loved ones of homeless people who have died can remember and mourn those who often do not even have a headstone anywhere.

Danny first met Jeff Alexander in December 2005, while doing a report on a homeless car encampment in Ballard. He wrote again about Jeff when Jeff died this September. In that column, Danny mourned that Jeff's garden, under a Ballard bridge, was dying. It seemed a symbol of the neglect that allowed Jeff, and so many others, to die.

A few days later, though, Danny wrote about tending a garden of hope; after a call from a reader, he went out to Jeff's garden again, and found that there were, indeed, signs of new planting. He planted some new flowers himself. Hundreds of readers wrote saying they were inspired by the story of Jeff Alexander, though he died "a junkie shipped off to jail." "He was trying, readers said. If he could try, shouldn't we?"

As Danny says in the last words of that column, a garden "won't grow on hope alone." And as I like to say, faith is continuing to act in hope, even when you don't see the results. Faith doesn't mean that you always win; it just means that you never give up. And if you never give up then, eventually, you win.

We can grow a new garden, a new community, if we work at it; if we never give up working at it.

Ryan Bird was detained by airport security for 25 minutes because he wrote on the side of his little toiletries ziploc, "Kip Hawley Is An Idiot."  In response to this further demonstration of idiocy, a campaign has begun urging everybody to write Kip Hawley Is An Idiot on their airport baggies.

The comments some people made about this campaign caused me to reflect for the umpteenth time, "The kids these days don't get Civics class in school anymore, do they?"  Comments like, "Nobody has a right to take whatever they want to on the plane."

So, for all those who never got a Civics class:

Nobody has to justify having a "right" to do anything.  You have a right to do, say, think, sing, write, anything you can imagine, go anywhere you please, have whatever relationships you please, stand on your head and turn into an orange tree if you can figure out how.  The only thing that has to be justified is any limit put on anybody's rights. 

In the real, physical universe, we are never totally free to do whatever the hell we want to do.  Human beings have conflicting interests.  We even conflict with ourselves.  I want to go to bed an hour ago, and I want to finish what I am writing; I want some ice cream, and I want to lose some weight. Life is a constant process of reconciling conflicts.

The only way to maximize our freedom is to work at it; to take responsibility for our lives and our world; to learn what influences us and learn to influence back at it; to resolve conflicts in a way that expands the limits of freedom for everyone involved.

Law and government exist to mediate the inevitable conflicts between individual rights.  They are not, however, transcendent and nonhuman authorities.  The people administering law and government are as human as you and I.  Since human beings are fallible, no judgment should be accepted unquestioningly, including our own.  We can come to good judgments, but only when everybody speaks up and demands that all arguments get put on the table and all questions get answered.

If you do whatever you are told, without question, you are not just giving up your rights; you are abandoning your responsibilities, and encouraging laziness and irresponsibility on the part of those giving the orders.

The current "security" measures the U.S. government practices are not   making   us   safer.  They spend money on pork-barrel projects in the middle of Only God Knows Where We Are instead of on necessities like biohazard gear and communication equipment for first responders in highly likely target areas.  They make airline passengers take off their shoes and put their toiletries in baggies, while not screening cargo containers or tracking hazardous-waste shipments across country.

Meekly going along with whatever "security" measures someone dreams up to prove he's doing something in response to the latest headlines is aiding and abetting the terrorists, who really do exist and really do want to do us harm.  Stand on your rights and demand that anyone saying, "This is for security" PROVE that what they are doing is more effective than throwing spitwads at a cartoon of Osama bin Laden – and then you will actually be doing something to make yourself, and your country, safer.

Thank you, and good night.

I don't want to turn off the ability to post HTML and images in my Comments section. I am asking for some consideration on the part of posters, so that I do not have to.

If you post an image wider than 415 pixels, it distorts the whole page, and makes it difficult for people who have narrower screens than, perhaps, you do.

Large filesizes, and muliple images that add up to a lot of filesize, slow down page loads for people who may not have the ultra high-speed broadband connection that, perhaps, you do.

I like getting small images; most people do. For very large images, a more considerate netiquette is to post them on your own blog (or webpage) and post a link to them here.

I have deleted the largest images from my comments. They are not lost: I am reposting them here, in smaller size. After this notice, however, I may simply delete overly large images without saving them.

If you are going to take the time to post an image, please take the time to post it carefully.

The October 2, 2006 cover of Newsweek magazine:

The covers of the current edition display down the left side of the page:

The Europe, Asia, and Latin America editions all show the same cover, "Losing Afghanistan," and clicking on them takes you directly to the International Edition, with that cover story:

The U.S. edition shows a different cover story, and clicking on it takes you directly to the Entertainment section, with its heartwarming cover story on celebrity photographer Annie Liebowitz:

Now here's a question: Is this the media distracting the American public from serious problems with our foreign policy; or is this the media commenting on how little the American public cares about our foreign policy? Is this the media we want? And if it is not, what are we going to do about it?

(You can, by the way, get to The Jihadistan story from the Entertainment section, by clicking Home. You cannot get to the Annie Liebowitz story from the International section, except by way of the U.S. cover.)

Thom Hartmann's Ten Steps To Restore Democracy To America

(long sections have been shortened for this blog; more detail at TheThom Hartmann Program)

1. Human rights are for humans. Corporations are not persons. We must update the 14th Amendment to insert "natural" before the word "persons" so corporations can no longer claim the "right to lie," the "right to hide their crimes," the "right to buy politicians and influence elections," and "the right to force themselves on communities that don't want them."
   
   
2. We own our government and our commons. "Drowning  government in a bathtub" as the neo-cons recommend may have been a  good idea in the Soviet Union, but the United States is a constitutional  representative democratic republic where our government is, literally, us.  It was designed to work for us, be owned by us, exist solely by virtue of  our ongoing approval, and must answer to us. Government functions must be  transparent, and that transparency must also apply to corporations hired  by government, particularly any who handle our votes.
   
   
3. In a democratic republic, government must represent the will  of the majority of the citizens while protecting the rights of the minorities.  To make American government more democratic, we must join the rest  of the world's modern democracies and institute either proportional representation  or Instant Runoff Voting systems at local, state, and federal levels. Similarly,  human rights movements defending minorities and women against exploitation  by corporate power structures or harm from paranoids, homophobes, and racists  must be recognized, and the Equal Rights Amendment passed.
   
   
4. A strong middle class is vital to democracy. In 1792, James Madison defined government's role in promoting an American middle class, "By the silent operation of the laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence toward a state of comfort."
   
   
5. Building a civilization on liquefied fossils and then thinking  it will last forever makes no sense. According to British Petroleum,  world oil reserves are enough to sustain us only into our children's lifetimes,  and then will run out. We must institute a Manhattan Project type of effort  to create viable energy sources that are not dependent on fossil fuels,  and, in the meantime, take immediate steps to reduce use of and preserve  our precious stores before they're exhausted.
   
   
6. We are part of nature. The natural world - including our water and air - is our most vital and essential commons, and therefore must be protected from those who would despoil it for short-term profit.
   
   
7. Education is a human right, regardless of station of birth. When Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia, his vision was to provide a free education to every person interested in and capable of participating. The Founders knew that classroom education is a right - and not a requirement- for life in a democracy. Therefore, university education should be free to all who academically qualify, and primary school education should not be compulsory but neither should it be provided by for-profit corporations.
   
   
8. Health care is a human right and necessary to sustain freedom  in a democracy. America should join every other industrialized  democracy in the world by instituting a single-payer health care system.
   
   
9. America is not a kingdom, and we don't elect kings. To turn back from the "imperial presidency" and return the executive  branch to its position co-equal with the other two branches of government,we recommend disbanding the primary instrument of presidential power - the Office Of Homeland Security - and requiring the President to meet weekly in open and public discussion with all members of Congress, as is done in the United Kingdom ("Prime Minister's Questions") and most other modern democracies.
   
   
10. The US Government is an instrument of secular democracy, not a religious theocracy, and has no right in our churches, homes, or bedrooms. What we do in private, among consenting adults, is our business and our business only. Prostitution, drug abuse, alcoholism, and gambling addiction are medical problems, and thus should be handled by medical authorities, and all attempts to place these in the realm of the criminal justice system should be rescinded. Similarly, the government has no right or business using the language or beliefsof any one of our many religions, or to tell any of our religions what or how they should behave or believe.

Gerge Carlin has a genius for seeing what's right in front of us, that most people don't see, like the connection between consumerism and the dumbing down of the country -- and who profits.

I recommend that everybody read the Pope's speech for themselves. I think the man was trying to say something I actually agree with: that when we think God has commanded something that is against reason and ethics, we should think about it some more, because the One True God will not command anything that is against reason and ethics.

As an example of acting on faith in violation of reason, the Pope used the doctrine of "conversion by the sword." He then used Islam as an example of promoting that doctrine. This is where he went off the rails. While there are verses in the Koran that can be argued to support "conversion by the sword," there are also verses that condemn it, and no such doctrine has ever been declared in Islamic history, except among minority extremists -- which doesn't make it official Islamic doctrine.

Unlike Catholicism, which did have a doctrine of forced conversion, "Cognite Intrare" introduced by the great theologian St. Augustine and once widely practiced by the Catholic Church. It is good that the current Pope does not support this doctrine. To forget that it did exist is convenient historical blindness. To accuse Islam of it is called "projection" in psychology; in Christianity, it is called "bearing false witness."

To illustrate his argument with the quote, "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached," was irresponsible and thoughtless. To not acknowledge the Catholic Church's own part in spreading faith by the sword was also irresponsible and thoughtless. This does not condone violence. Protest and criticism, however, the Pope has legitimately earned.

For myself, I say that violence, intolerance, terrorism, and all of the evils of humanity are not part of Islam, Christianity, or any religion - they are part of humanity. When we struggle against those evils, we often draw on religion for strength. When we defend and support them, we often draw on religion to do so. It is us, ourselves, who are doing either good or evil. Religion is a tool - either for good, or for evil.

If we convince ourselves that Islam is the cause of violence, we raise the false hope that if everyone converts to Christianity, terrorism will disappear. If we convince ourselves that religion is the cause of violence, then we hope that if everyone becomes atheist, terrorism will disappear.

The roots of both compassion and terrorism are human, and we all share them. When we recognize that, we can build on the good in our common humanity, and stand together against the evil in our common humanity.

That is what I wish the Pope had said.

NOTE: I composed this because I do believe that the Gender Wars are Thoroughly Ridiculous and therefore a fine and proper target for Satire.

EVEN FURTHER NOTE:  If you had to be told this is satirical, you are everything that is wrong with Western  Civilization today.  That statement may, or may not, have been satirical.  Guess.

Top Ten Reasons why the Original Absolutely Perfect Golden Age Society Way Back When was a Matriarchy, with a Goddess religion:

10)    Obviously, one woman can take care of multiple men much more easily than one man can take care of multiple women. The first families would do things the most obvious way; it would only get complicated later.

9)      Tracing descent through the female line is simpler. It is rather obvious who your mother was.

8)      Human beings tend to picture God a lot like the major authority figure in their family.

7)      The original Homo WannabeSapiens (as distinguished from modern Homo WannabeSapiens) were hunter-gatherers (the term for the modern species is "sitter-consumerers").

6)      There is also a human tendency to deify one's source of food. Hence, hunter-gatherer types had a Nature Goddess, with a Horned Consort.

5)      Sexual ecstasy is very akin to religious ecstasy. It would be natural to assume that those who experienced the most sexual ecstasy were closest to Divinity.

4)      There is still a racial memory that women are divine.

3)      The Judeo-Christian mythos presents mankind's miseries, and all evil, as "all Eve's fault".

  2)    Men still blame everything on women, demonstrating a racial memory of women as figures of power.

1)      Arguments for Patriarchy and Father gods are written by men.
         Arguments for Matriarchy and Mother goddesses are written by women.
         Patriarchy is so arranged that women have to be twice as smart and write twice as well to even be heard, let alone survive to breed.

Blessed Be.
- Anitra (aka Pandora, keeper of the Interesting Box)

[September 14, 2001] At 12:34 in Seattle, the sky is still silent. The first plane has not yet taken off after the grounding of September 11. News cameras are rolling out at SeaTac to film it -- a newsworthy event, the takeoff of a plane.

In New York, there is still smoke in the air. Firefighters search rubble desperately for survivors, including their own. Families and friends keep calling hotlines, searching posted lists for the names of loved ones still missing. They wait at bedsides or haunt hospital waiting rooms. They cling to each other and grieve for those torn from them.

But even in New York and Washington D.C., people are going back to work, children are going back to school, we do the shopping and cook meals, we have other emergencies to take care of, from a stolen cell phone to a closed homeless shelter. Fruit ripens for harvest, our children bring art and stories home from school, we make love and share joy.

Will life ever really go back to "normal"? I hope and pray it won't. We have been shocked out of complacency and slammed into a world where war is not the sole prerogative of governments, where individuals have more power for both creation and destruction than ever before. The people of the United States have been shocked into awareness of our vulnerability to the terror and violence that people in the rest of the world have been living with for decades. The world has changed for all of us.

But life will continue. Comedies and love affairs will no longer seem irrelevant. Life will be our victory.

We are not alone. It's important to realize that we have more friends than we have enemies. Terrorists are not just our enemies, they are the enemies of all humanity, and if humanity unites against them, they are doomed.

It is important to remember not just how much we have been hurt, but how much we have; not just how dangerous our situation is, but how strong we are; not just death but life. The greatest offense to terrorists is not to be terrorized.

There are homeless people praying for all the people in New York, and going in to give blood. We are united in each other's suffering. People who live in poverty are giving a few dollars each to the Red Cross. Housewives stand in front of American mosques, against misdirected rage.

You, each and every one of you, is more powerful than you know, more powerful than you have ever allowed yourself to be. The people doing evil are only individual humans like you. Go out and be just as powerful a force for good.

We have all shared grief, pain, fear and rage. Now let us share our strength and hope.

Love and Virtual Hugs. Pass it on.

My friend Isa just posted his plans for today: he will be in a booth at the Puyallup Fair, telling people about Islam, and why "Islamic terrorism is as much an oxymoron as Microsoft Works." (A truly Seattle way of putting it. )

For Isa, I want to share this from the essays I wrote just after 9/11/2001:

Terrorists Are Our Enemy. Muslims Aren't.

Fear creates anger, and anger can make us irrational. When we cannot strike at an enemy directly, we will sometimes relieve our sense of helplessness by striking at a substitute that is within reach.

In response to the blow of September 11th, some have vented their pain, fear and rage on anyone of Arab descent or Moslem faith.

Most of us know that this is as wrong as the crimes of the terrorists are. But many of us still believe that war and terrorism is an expression of something fundamental to the nature of Islam and the Arab personality.

I do not feel that refraining from persecution is enough. We have been violently forced into a larger world. We now live in the state of vulnerability to pain and terror that people in many other countries have lived with for decades. We no longer have the option of hoping for peace. We must actively create peace.

To achieve peace we must sacrifice our stereotypes. Both Muslim stereotypes of Christians and Christian stereotypes of Muslims have fueled this conflict.

Education is one way to break down a stereotype. There are many good sources, including Beliefnet on the web, for information about the realities of Islam. An even better way to break down a stereotype is proximity. Getting to know local Arabs and Muslims would not only help you replace stereotyped devil-masks with individual human faces, but will help counter the ostracism and hatred they are receiving right now from the ignorant.

But we usually have a reason for holding a stereotype. We have something invested in it. The only way to really escape the stereotype is to give up the justification for it.

We only demonize others when we are uncomfortable with something in our own lives. Accepting ourselves and finding a more direct way to solve our own problems makes stereotypes unnecessary.

This makes hatred of the Satanic materialism of the Christian West understandable in people of Arab countries living in much greater poverty than even a homeless person in a New York alley experiences.

Most of us believe that the poverty of any place in the United States is more wealthy than the poverty of any place in the Middle East. But the United States has one of the highest rates of child poverty, child hunger, and child fatality in any industrialized country. There is pain here. And the shame and frustration created by never being able to afford what people immediately around you seem to take for granted, what the media project as taken for granted, is just as painful.

It is emotionally satisfactory to have an enemy to vent your anger on when you are miserable. Even more important is to have an enemy perceived as absolutely evil, when you feel ashamed.

There are many things that Muslims are raised to feel ashamed of -- and most of them, like "immodest dress" and female sensuality, are identified with the U.S. There are many things we are trained to feel ashamed of, in our own society. Ironically, one of these is our own sexuality -- which we project right back on Arab society.

We are very aware of the self-righteousness of the Shi'ite Imams, the self-perpetuating, unforgiving feuds of the Middle East in which neither side will admit to being wrong. Are we as aware of our own arrogance, the attitude that the United States can do no wrong, that we present to the rest of the world? We have repeatedly refused to sign the Declaration of Human Rights, to be subject to the moral judgement of any other country or group of countries, to be called to account or to apologize for our own actions. And yet we can see in the theater of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East that both sides have committed wrongs and both sides will have to acknowledge that and forgive themselves before they can forgive the other, and have peace.

Hunting down and eliminating the terrorists who threaten the entire world will do a great deal to increase human peace. Hunting down and eliminating the sources of hatred within our own hearts will do even more.

We must do both.

Beloved One, Most Beautiful of all beings, Your love is with us, Your peace surrounds us, Your hand supports us, even now. Your light shines in our darkness and never goes out. Your perfection chastises us, Your love opens our hearts to admit our error, Your glory leads us on to change, Your mercy forgives us and gives us forgiveness of ourselves.

There are times in my grief and terror and pain and rage when I do not feel You, I do not see You, but I know You are still with me. When I doubt, I wait, for You will restore my faith. As low as my spirit may fall You will catch me. A far as I may wander lost You will find me.

I am crying, my God, people I love are crying, people I do not know but care about are crying in pain, in loss, in fear. I hear people ask "How could God have done this?" "How could God allow this to happen?" and I know that it is humans who have done this and humans who have allowed it to happen. That only makes my agony worse.

Even now, the innocent souls who died from the violence of September 11 are in Your love and care, in a new life and joy. We will mourn their painful deaths and our painful loss, as we must, but slowly we will release them to You and keep their memory still living.

We are Your hands and Your feet, and in Your love we will bind the wounds of body and heart in the people You lead us to. I am so limited and so helpless, God, and it hurts so much not to be able to help more. I will do what You give me to do, and offer up all else to You.

Save me from using the occasion of others pain and vulnerability to preach to them. My work is my worship, my Beloved. If I feel tempted to tell anyone what my Christian mission is, make me shut my mouth, dear God, and work harder to show it.

You are perfect in Truth and Understanding -- my understanding of your truth is not perfect. I may be wrong about anything. Help me listen to the beliefs of others with the respect that I want them to listen to mine. Help me to learn from everyone.

There is hatred like smoke in the air. Give me courage, God, to stand against it. Make me strong in the will for justice, and strong in opposition to injustice. I will not beg you for the lives of people who have dedicated themselves to death. I do beg you for the lives of the innocents around them. If innocents die, it will be humans who kill them -- but Grace can open human minds and hearts to change. Your Grace has kept us from our own destruction for eons. Bear with us a little longer, Lord. Bear us up in Your Grace.

God, in Your Grace give clarity of mind and purpose to everyone in charge of finding and stopping the killers. A will for justice is not a will of anger. It is our imperfection that the only way we have to stop those who have dedicated themselves to death is to fulfill their death, to kill them. Dear God, make everyone who must kill grieve for the necessity, that we not pursue death beyond necessity. I am so terribly afraid that our purpose to protect human life and dignity will be taken over by the means we use, and our enemies will win by turning us into them. We've done it before, God, we've started out to help humans and ended up sacrificing them to the engine we created to help them. Open our hearts and minds with Your Grace and make us truly put the welfare of all ahead of our ideas of right and wrong. If we can find any other way than killing to stop further death, Lord, lead us to it.

Give me courage, please, the courage to stand against the wrongs of the terrorists and the wrongs of my country and my own wrongs.

I beg repeatedly for courage, because I am scared. I know from my own experience that if I go with Your inspiration I am not harmed, even in the midst of great danger, that I know what to say and what to do even in great emergency. But God, this is the greatest danger and the greatest emergency of my life. My country has been hurt on its own ground. On the one hand are servants of death who must be stopped before they bring the world down in flames to fuel their own ideas of glory. On the other hand are my own neighbors who cry for blood and in their helplessness and frustration turn on innocents because they cannot confront the guilty. I know what has happened to people in the past who have spoken out in criticism of their country's actions in such times of passion, and I know that the few words of anger I've received already are a faint shadow of what might happen if I continue to do as I feel I must.

Dear God, help me keep my sense of humor. I'm going to need it. Help me keep my eyes on life, and not on death; on hope, and not on fear; on love, and not on hate.

Please, please help me to root anger and hate out of my own heart. Help me to remove my own blind spots, and restore my perspective. Give me anyone whose different viewpoint can help me do that. Because God, I am so sorely angry, and You know it. I and my people have been frustrated and hurting for a long time, within this country, at street level. Hundreds of thousands of people go homeless and hungry, sick and untended, babies die every day, our men and women and children have suffered daily violence, and it has been pulling hen's teeth to get tuppence in help or relief from our government. But war gets instant billions out of Congress. I and my friends see daily injustice. People I know have been murdered, God, because they were homeless or female, people I know have been jailed or killed by police because they were homeless or mentally ill or black or Latino or a female in the wrong place, and our country gets self-righteous about another country abusing human rights!

There I go again, God, I'm getting angry. Is this anger distorting my perspective, Lord? Open my mind and my heart with Your Grace and help me learn.

My anger does not lessen my grief for all those harmed by September 11 and its consequences. My anger does not lessen the wrong of that crime, nor the responsibility of those who committed it, nor my desire to see them stopped forever. But God, my anger burns higher whenever I hear any of my neighbors speak self-righteously about Us the Good Guys who are going to wipe out all Them the Bad Guys.

I will not help any of my people by berating anyone with my anger. Rein me, Lord, and keep the purpose of serving life forefront in my mind, ahead of my desire to voice my opinions. May my voice serve life, and not the other way around.

Open my mind to my own errors and give me light to change them, so that I will not be eager to find error in others and stubborn in condemning it. Open my heart to my own shames and give me love to correct them, so that I will not be eager to find fault in others, or to demonize them. Help me live my life in joy, that I may share life and joy. Save me from harm, and from inflicting harm.

Give me courage to speak when I do find error, and make me stubborn in resisting it. Make me compassionate when I do find fault in others. For every fault I find in another, Lord, remind me where I have done the same things. Please God, help me most to do this with George W. Bush, Jr., because that is particularly hard for me.

Give me discernment to know the difference between the things I must try to change and the things that I can't. May I be silent and present for my beloved who drinks too much, until and unless he himself wants to change. If someone who is drinking tries to drive, help me stop him. If the leaders and people of my country are going to do something I believe harmful to life and the general welfare, help me stand against it. What they do that doesn't affect the life and welfare of the rest of us keep my nose out of, please, especially now.

Keep my eyes on Your Glory and keep me moving forward in life and growth. Help us to build a world in which everyone can live abundantly, in which everyone can learn and grow through their own free thinking and choices, in which everyone can live and work with and learn from others who have different cultures and beliefs. A world free of terrorism.

Amen.

"The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards."
Alexander Jablokov

I've been slowed down by physical pain lately (a combination of TMJ, several whiplash injuries, and 30 years of computer keyboarding).  ABC has managed to make me mad enough to blog. 

Jamie has posted a letter from Bill Clinton's lawyers to ABC.  Please read it.  What Clinton is asking is not that the "docudrama" simply not be aired, but that factual inaccuracies be corrected, or the show be pulled.

This is not a matter of different opinions, different inferences from the same set of facts.  This is outright false claims contradicting documented evidence.

• Conservative bloggers are crowing about the drama's claim that the CIA could have killed bin Laden, but National Security Advisor Sandy Berger told would not authorize them to shoot.  Nothing like this happened.
  
  1. No US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden;
  2. The head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was nowhere near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see bin Laden; and
  3. CIA Director Tenet said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single-sourced and there would be no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.
• The drama claims that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright refused to sanction a missile strike against bin Laden without first alerting the Pakistanis and notified them over the objections of the military. This never happened.

For the Bush-heads of the nation to portray this as "liberals censoring the media" is rank hypocrisy.  The crowd eager to see a trouncing of Bill Clinton aired was the same crowd that got a Reagan documentary pulled from the air just because it didn't glorify Ronald Reagan enough.  The Disney corporation that made this "docudrama" is the same Disney corporation that tried to block distribution of "Fahrenheit 9/11."

All ABC has to do to get the liberals off their back is to do honest reporting.

It is the alternative media's role to critically analyze the mainstream news and other statements by those in power, cover unreported stories, and advocate for minority viewpoints. By its nature, alternative media shows more variety of content, style and opinion than the mainstream media does. I believe there are standards of journalism and ethics, however, that apply to all varieties. Some of these are applicable to all media, and some are unique to the mission of the alternative media. This is my statement of those ethics.

Speak truth to power -- and make sure it's true.

I will not make false or misleading statements, nor repeat reports by others that I cannot verify. I will check facts and figures before publication. If I do print an error of fact, I will print a retraction and correction.

First do no harm.

I will not suppress facts, but neither will I report them in such a way as to damage groups or individuals who are doing good work. If a staff member at a homeless organization embezzles funds or abuses residents, for instance, I will report it, but I will not help provide ammunition to those who would attack all shelters.

Question everything.

I will not report any official statements as given without critical analysis to determine inaccuracies, omissions or bias.

Advocate up front.

I will not refrain from reporting on or advocating for causes I believe in. I will declare my affiliations and personal opinion to my readers whenever they may reasonably be expected to influence my judgment of the subject I am reporting.

A good cause is not served by bad reporting.

I will not report just one side of a controversy. The interests of whoever I am advocating for are best served by accurately reporting opposing viewpoints and intelligently critiquing them.

Serve the cause, not my ego.

I will write to communicate to people who do not yet agree with me as well as to speak for the people who do. I will not indulge in personal attacks or any other diversions that will interfere with achieving the success of the mission I support.

Stay in contact.

I will act as part of my community. I will be easy to contact and I will listen to homeless and low-income people, other activists and advocates as well as other neighbors. I will use my paper to bring people together to work on common causes.

I will provide access for others to speak.

I will speak for marginalized people; I will also provide access for them to speak for themselves.

Practice what I preach.

I will practice the same principles of justice in my private life and my paper's organization that I advocate in print.

Advertisers will not influence my reporting.

It is my choice whether to accept advertising to support my paper, and which advertisers to accept. The persons who solicit and manage advertising will not be the same people who report on any issue that involves those advertisers.

I am ultimately accountable to the public I serve.

My loyalty is to people, not to organizations.

Reported civilian deaths in the Iraq war and occupation:

The average violent deaths of citizens in Iraq:

• 20 per day in Year 1
• 31 per day in Year 2
• 36 per day in Year 3

For more detail, including named and identified victims of the Iraq war, an incident-by-incident database, and a description of the methodology (and why the IBC counter figures are lower than the Lancet study and other claims), visit the Iraq Body Count website.

"We don't do body counts"
General Tommy Franks, US Central Command

I welcome any documented evidence of a rate of civilian death in Saddam's Iraq during the three years before the U.S.-led invasion, that is equal to or greater than the rate of civilian deaths since then.

While there is evidence that U.S. and British claims of Saddam's slaughters were exaggerated, nobody argues that Saddam Hussein tortured and killed thousands of his own people. It is also true that the Anfal Campaign and other mass killings took place many years ago, with no protest at the time from the Republican U.S. administration. Life under Saddam was still terrible from 2000 through 2002. It was not as bad as it is right now.

The suffering of Iraqis in the years when Republicans didn't care to defend them is not justification for the suffering of Iraqis after the U.S. decided to invade them. Saddam's crimes are not a moral defense of America's crimes. That we want to make life better for Iraqis does not excuse making life worse for them. The greatest sacrifice we can make to materially help Iraq right now is to swallow our pride and get out.

We took out Saddam. Call it a win and leave.

Money is power. Social status depends on how much wealth you have; and increased social status brings increased wealth. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Unquestionable truths, right?

No. These things are "unquestionably true" only because they are unquestioned.

In human history, the most respected and influential people in a social group have not always been the ones with the most material goods -- nor has becoming respected and influential always inevitably led to having more material goods.

Social evolution, as well as biological evolution, selects for factors that contribute to survival. Survival, of the individual and of the group, depends on a lot more than how much wampum is piled up in your cave. When the sabretooth comes after you, the man with no wampum to carry has a survival edge over the man with too much to carry. When you are sick and laid up with fever, neighbors who like you are more likely to nurse you through it, even if you cannot pay wampum for their services. If an obnoxious man with much wampum gets sick, why work to save his life in order to be paid a few clamshells, when you could just wait until he dies and take it all?

And what about Gurg, whose sole joy in life is trying new shapes to pound rocks into? All Gurg wants in life is a warm place to sleep, an occasional bowl of soup, and a steady supply of rocks. Garg has a caveload of wampum, no rocks, and no skill in shaping them. What use is Garg's wampum to Gurg? What use, then, is it to himself? And what good is Garg to the tribe? If the food runs short, who is going to get fed first?

The useless and obnoxious neighbor with lots of wampum is, of course, not actually "wealthy." Money is a means of exchanging material goods -- it is not material goods. When someone in possession of a material good wants something for it other than money -- like a better hunting knife, or a neighbor he can trust to watch for enemies while he sleeps -- the person who can directly provide that good has a competitive edge over the one who can only offer money.

The purpose of an economy is not to produce and distribute money. The purpose of an economy is to produce and distribute goods and services -- money is just the means of doing so. There are other means; in a small community where everyone knows each other, for instance, good will can be a sufficient means of distribution. I will give you wool from my sheep in the spring, knowing that come fall you will give me a wool coat made from some of that wool. I will share food with you when you have a bad crop, knowing that you will share food with me when I have a bad season.

In a larger and more complex system, one in which the people who raise and shear sheep rarely even meet the people who make wool coats, a more abstract and uniform means of exchange develops. The downside of that is that we are Homo Wannabe Sapiens; we are capable of abstract thinking, not really good at it yet. We easily confuse the abstract with the concrete, the symbol with the thing, and the physical people producing material goods far far away quickly become less real to us than the symbols on paper in our wallet. And it becomes possible for us to consider it "profitable" to do material harm to our environment and our neighbors, if that results in more digits recorded in our bank account.

How do we counter the distorting effects of corporate money on our society and our politics? We stop respecting the power of money. We remember that real wealth is actual goods and services -- including the common goods of a clean environment, healthy people with sufficient food and housing to maintain "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," educated citizens, social bonds built by people having enough time to spend with each other to build social bonds. We vote for people who will promote those goods, and then we supervise them and make sure they do it.

Are you not getting the government, the media, the economy, or the society you want? Do something about it. You have the real power. All that the corporate elitists have is money.