free tibet?

“It is not clear how many people were arrested. All of the main streets have been blocked by military. The soldiers have been checking for everybody’s ID. Specially, people who were wearing Tibetan clothes were searched thoroughly. Soldiers forced their way in civilian homes to arrest people. They were using stick to beat those who have been arrested, and teargas to drive away onlookers

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Ghost Forest Solitude

Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message, just as doing nothing is an act.
Let who you are ring out
& resonate in every word & every deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There’s no sidestepping your own being or your own responsibility.
What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message. You are the message.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse -

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign, is Solitude. -William Wordsworth

Another progressive for Obama

I was a John Edwards supporter. I am a green progressive. I will not vote for HC. His energy/ enviro policy needs some teeth, but I like his new style of politics - like a breath of fresh air. We’ll do it for a generation yet to come. With the right VP, they will crush all-comers.

There has never been anything false about Hope.

Calling So.Cal Buddha’s

Hey all ~ we’re on a mission, and wondering if you have any ideas / contacts that might be helpful:

We’re trying to help a Buddhist Nun from Burma. She was supposed to return to Burma when her visa ran out, but because of the strife and danger in Burma right now, she cannot go home. She has been granted refuge status in California, so she can remain here in America for awhile longer. But, she is in need of a place to live somewhere in the Southern California area. They are able to pay about $500 a month, and we’re hoping to connect with someone who might be willing to rent a room to her for a few months (maybe longer if it all works out). She cannot come to Oregon because her refuge status is only granted in California.

It would be ideal to find someone who was connected with the Buddhist community; but anyone who is spiritually minded and willing to engage with someone like her would also be greatly appreciated. She does speak English, is 36, has been a nun her entire life, and does have a car.

Please respond with any thoughts/idea/avenues to pursue that might occur to you. Many thanks for any help.

cartoon, cartoon - do it

AAEC - Political Cartoon by Larry Wright, Detroit News - 01/11/2008:

Wounded Knee, war, and debt

A good friend of mine passed a book on to me last fall, which I have only recently picked up and am yet barely 70 pages into. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown, an Indian history of the American West; and I understand there may be an (HBO?) movie which I have not seen.
A passage I read through last night struck me directly, particularly considering current circumstances - Little Crow, a Santee Sioux, August 1862:

Why was it that the Americans talked so much of peace, and yet they themselves waged such a savage war that they had no money left to pay their debts?

slimy politicians and slick hilly

ms. clinton can copy the tone and style of Obama all she wants, even pick up the message of Edwards all she wants. at the end of the day, all she does is reveal herself as the “i’ll say and do anything to get elected, even feign a tear if i have to, and copy those better than me” slimy slick hilbil she really is.

anyone believing her as-of-yesterday populism attempt at sounding progressive is a sucker who’s getting duped - don’t be naive.

in NH, what we see, is peak-hillary, her firewall and longtime typical new england traditional liberal democratic base - once she leaves the region, she’ll be exposed for what she is.

that’s all i have to say about it, really.

Three things

After all the speculation and commentary beetween Iowa and NH, I have to throw a few comments into the mess.

First off, everyone in both parties seems be bantering around about “change.” But I feel we should clarify what is meant and understood as change. Change is not so simple as ‘not Bush.’ There is a bigger and deeper csense of change afoot, one could call it ‘Change’ - emphasis on the capital ‘C’. You can talk about change all day, like yesterday is different from today is not tomorrow, and call that “change.” This flavor of change is exemplified by the likes of hillary, romney, and abc news, the national party powers-that-be.

Then there is the “Change” as embodied by Edwards, Obama, and Huckabee, Ron Paul. This is a much more fundamental kind of change, not simply other than bushco, but non-establishment itself.

So hillary and the like can speak the pretty words of change, but she can never get it in her soul, nor come across as really being in touch with it, because she ain’t it, abc ain’t it, romney ain’t it - and they just don’t get that, they are in thier own blind spot. Maybe it was said best in the Nation article, “is like slapping a Greenpeace bumper sticker on a Hummer.

Secondly, immigration is not a real issue. Yes, there are concerns there that need to be addressed, but this is mostly a manufactured issue by the right because it’s really all they have - and even then they’re split. One might say they have Iraq also, but I think it’s come that they have lost that too.

On this note, let’s be clear and define amnesty: a general pardon for offenders. Imposing a penalty, i.e. going home or paying a fine, is not a pardon, it’s a penalty, a punishment. So let’s quit mincing our words trying to straddle the issue.

Lastly, I think something generally missed in most discussions, though now beginning to come to some light is the generational aspect of the primaries. What I see is a split from the baby boomers and everyone thereafter - the same split that is old politics and the new politics of change and hope and rising above all the Crap.

The problem the boomers have is they are all still trying to fight out the battle of the 60’s and the positions have only hardened since then, which was exemplified in the last election. Now we have the genX and beyond candidates mixing in, offering a new direction, and lighting a different path. How refreshing.

#27

YES, the rain is quite cleansing and frogs see the day go by, half here, half there sharing light and dark at just the proper time, a nice balance i agree. so maybe i missed your last letter, i don’t know. you are lucky to be there so close to my beloved montana and lakota country. other than that, maybe it is just mostly nonsense.

in any case, i should ask milt to buy me oil futures for october, say around $160 would be fine - i’ll stash away some pennies for another rainy day. but i digress. there was a time when i lived up to myself, up in the north land where it is far more rain than here, so this is pleasantly dry and bright for me; unlike the global class war as it goes on to a new president like the old, already bought and paid for and sold for a nice profit and the shareholders. though i should not rant on into politics or economics as it might lead me to drink - but we should keep these most harmful drugs legal and cheap, lest the cia get involved.

so i will just keep to my shovel and rake and an occasionally good book, plant some seeds here and there and keep my fingers crossed - remembering of course my pocket knife so i may clean the dirt from my nails now and again. but again i digress, oh yes, the rains . . . so dreadful i ought to just find my gun and be done with it all, i mean what is the point of it all anyway? really? here or there or now or later, no difference, just flying through the night like a blind owl or a deaf wolf or that tall crane standing silently, smilingly, relentlessly whispering this old rain song over and over and over - nearly mumbling under it’s breath while stewing in it’s nearly perfect filth or stillness, like the sun and moon dancing that broken record waltz.

but this stranger keeps going on about the lunar man and this alpha female, butting heads and facing opposite directions, never touching - just hurling insults at each other through spacetime. back to back they stab each other and keep singing in new seasons with their bamboo leaf swords, fluttering in the wind like fairy windchimes. that is, until they break and dawn shows her face again as they say hello and goodbye, neither coming nor going - just me here in this dizzy center hurtling through cold space dust. so what?! you say. hmmph. however you wish, i should just keep walking. maybe we’ll run in another time, maybe not.

THEN WINKS - by HAFIZ

Everything is clapping today,

Light,
Sound,
Motion,
All movement.

A rabbit I pass pulls a cymbal
>From a hidden pocket
Then winks.

This causes a few planets and I
To go nuts
And start grabbing each other.

Someone sees this,
Calls a
Shrink,

Tries to get me
Committed
For
Being too
Happy.

Listen: this world is the lunatic’s sphere,
Don’t always agree it’s real,

Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door

My address is somewhere else.