The Point of No Return

Strongest Indian Cyclone Since 1999 Nears Coast

www.huffingtonpost.com

BHUBANESHWAR, India -- BHUBANESHWAR, India (AP) — The strongest cyclone to threaten India in more than a decade bore down on its east coast Saturday as authorities bused and trucked tens of thousands of villagers from their mud and thatch coastal homes to government shelters inland. Officials cancel...

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  Natalie Rosen

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/12/cyclone-phailin-india_n_4087945.html
  
  Climate change anyone? This cyclone in east India will make Katrina look like a summer storm.

  
  

  I surely HOPE it is NOT where their nukes are!! 

  Speaking of nukes--Fukishima had a human error accident and now it's leaking MORE, if that is possible, radiation from a broken hose. The radiation level isvery high.  But TEPCO and the government says not to worry--NOT MUCH!

  
  

  Sure let's build more nuclear plants here so that when we have continuous RepuGlican induced government shutdowns with no one to monitor them what could possibly go wrong?  Let's depend on the  ever so ethical and moral money machine nuclear power industry to keep us SO safe--NOT!

  
  

  
  

Preliminary moment of Glee -- UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER -- Hope on the Horizon

It APPEARS -- and it is not a done deal yet -- that RepubliCONS are getting their clocks cleaned. UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER of these utter know nothing immoral morons is in the works. Apparently RepubliCON poll numbers went south beyond belief and Wall Street along with big time RepubliCON spenders said STOP!

WE must HAMMER what Republicons have done to the country we love, what they have done to the poor, the sick, the disabled, to the middle class and how utterly idiotic they have behaved over and over and over and over and over again and NEVER let them forget it. 

It is SO bad for them they are split right down the middle some talking about a third party ... YES, let's encourage that. In addition a prediction: RepubliCONS are GOING DOWN in November, 2014. TOTAL and UNEQUIVOCAL takeover by Democrats of all branches of government again. FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY the president WILL take the nation out of the ditch and restore our reputation world-wide.

Not celebrating yet until it happens. For the first time in days a glimmer of hope appears on the horizon.

WHY NO LESS THAN UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER OF THE REPUBLCON PARTY IS DEMANDED AND NO LESS THAN ABSOLUTE 100% TAKEOVER OF ALL THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT IN 2014 IS A MUST. MAKE IT HAPPEN. YOU ALMOST DID NOT HAVE A NATION TO SURVIVE AND NOW THE NATION CAN SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE THESE REPUBLICAN KNOW NOTHINGS POWER!!! DO NOT!

The Substance of My Soul

I am now turning away from most all news. I cannot be angry or depressed anymore over things I cannot change. We are all in this together. What happens to one happens to all as the debt ceiling impending catastrophe will show. If not raised we are a done nation, finished, over, fighting no more so many dark things over which most of us have no control.

I am not religious. I am Jewish born but I subscribe to not faith but to Christian thought -- the humane part. I love what Christ is alleged to have taught. I love especially the profundity of his humanitarian thought. The cause I believe he celebrated is my own. "What matters if a man gain the whole world but lose his soul?" "Blessed are the peacemakers ...;" "Whatever you do unto the least of these my brethren you do unto me." Those are the tenets in which I believe. That is the substance of my soul. 

I fell asleep reading the New Testament and awoke with it next to me not because I am an ardent believer as I am a skeptical agnostic but because Christ inspires hope and I think walked the earth 2000 years ago to teach us something. We of empathy and caring can claim him too. He is not owned by the extremist right. He cared about the poor, cared about the abandoned and cared about the dispossessed. Those who are among those groups he would not have abandoned you and neither should our nation. 

To Err is Human -- Correction

I made an error in my article sent to the News, printed on Sunday, October 6 about Occupy Wall Street:
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinions/letters_to_the_editor/x1155172219/Rosen-America-needs-the-Occupy-movement

The Constitutional Amendment I used in the opinion says the US must pay its bills BUT the Article is Article 14 Section 4 : I replied to my own opinion in the Metro West News and made the correction.

Why do I bother changing it? I don't know maybe HONESTY and TRUTH! 14th Amendment Section 4: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned."

Within the ellipsis is a phrase set off by a comma. The Amendment was written after the Civil War and has a phrase "including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion."

But to me and it could be argued that this phrase is a phrase set off by a comma and a preposition (almost parenthetically) as a secondary phrase to the main sentence and meaning "the validity of the public debts of the US authorized by law shall not be questioned."

Of course the word "shall" is different from "will" which could be argued according to Oxford Dictionary -- WILL has been a stronger determination to do something than shall. On the other hand shall and will are used now interchangeably. 

Just some points to ponder when the president's constitutionality to use the 14th Amendment re: the gravity of increasing the debt ceiling is concerned. If he does use that it WILL no doubt be argued wasting more taxpayer money in impeachment by the Republicons and tried in the Senate (where the president will NOT be convicted) or it will be sent directly to the Supremes. Either way it will hopefully set precedent for this hostage holding, destructive and idiotic debt ceiling! Oh happy days!

Recovery Through the Markets

The government shutdown and impending doomsday scenario as it relates to the debt ceiling should not and cannot happen. Up until the latest Republican induced government shutdown over a bill that is law and the impending refusal to raise the debt ceiling creating a potential catastrophe, I have been calmed and satisfied with the normal up and down swings of the market. Unfortunately the rise in the market is now short lived because of one thing the markets hate uncertainty. Republicans, specifically Tea Baggers, have created great uncertainty. The markets, of course, react to that and so do I.

The Affordable Healthcare Act was legally passed by the House, passed by the Senate and deemed constitutionally valid by the Court. It is now settled law. If one wants to repeal it one must go through that process all over again. But why would anyone want to? They would not and that is another reason for the Republican strong-arm extortionist tactics over the budget and the raising of the debt ceiling.

The fight over the budget, consequential as it may be, pales in comparison to not raising the debt ceiling. That means not paying the country’s bills it already owes. It was raised 18 times under the presidency of Ronald Reagan because even corporate lover Reagan knew the importance of raising the debt ceiling to pay the country’s bills. This is what a country does. It does things the average person cannot do and that which even the corporations do not or will not do. As the president iterated today this affects businesses small and large and it affects Wall Street beyond the limits of imagination.It would be catastrophic for the country and the world at large not to raise the debt ceiling because America is the world’s biggest economy upon which the value of nations’ currency is weighed. The US cannot be considered a deadbeat nation and have its credit rating reduced. It is conceivable nations could go off the dollar standard and onto the Yen which is significantly, of course, much more stable. Why you ask? Because we have a MORONIC Republican minority of 60 in the House named Tea Baggers who are sitting on John Boehner’s head, crushing his brain and calling the shots. 

Boehner, afraid of losing his speakership has so far refused to bring a clean budget bill to a vote because he knows it would pass with Republicans abandoning these hurtful-to-the-nation positions. He is the weakest most ineffectual, immoral and historically bankrupt Speaker ever to grace the halls of Congress. He cares more about his speakership than he does about his country though the hypocrite weeps and calls himself a patriot; a lover of his country all the time. I think he is not. I think him near treasonous holding in his hands the ability to bring the budget vote to the floor but refusing. He will hold the debt ceiling hostage too and in essence tear down the nation, creating a world recession and truthfully, ruin a lot of people who depend on the full faith and credit of the US government to prevail.

Who will FINALLY teach this block of cement a reality induced lesson? Who will put some intellect in his empty tea bag polluted brain? My goodness could it be Wall Street itself? Am I saying Wall Street is my hope? I think I am.

NB: I am not an economist or financial analyst so I offer this non-professional suggestion until the budget is passed and the debt ceiling raised which it ultimately must be. IF you have investments call, write or smoke signal your investment house and/or broker, IF you have one, and if you invest with firms such as Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, Bloomberg, Capital One, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and the like tell them that you will NOT lose your principle investments. Tell them that you will be vigilant and wait to see how explosive Speaker Boehner’s action or inaction will be, how low and how unethically he will stoop before you seriously will consider taking your funds out of a market that will crash through the ceiling if the debt ceiling is not raised. There will be constant uncertainty and world-wide upheaval if it is not. We will conceivably be even vulnerable to terrorist attack with possibly chemical, biological and even radiological weaponry. I kid you not. A debt-ceiling default is that serious.

Tell them that you are DONE with the anxiety with which the Republican blackmailers imbue you and that IF you see your investments being threatened with a big Wall Street collapse you will take ALL of it out and transfer it to a bank or money market to wait out this latest insanity. It is surely better than losing it all if you are among the 98%.

Boehner is pulling one of the most unethical moves of his career showing the ugliness of right wingnut fanatics who want to take our government down because they cannot stand people who need it getting health care. Or, perhaps, they cannot stand a black man in a WHITE House giving us health care.

Wall Street may be the only thing that is able to have influence now. Who knows? What I do know is that Wall Street has TRILLIONS to lose as our nation will collapse under this Republican extortion fiasco over health care that is already settled law and cannot be changed. It is about, too, a primarily white Tea Bag Republican party loathing the thought of a black man occupying the presidency. 

Republicans lost two elections to Barack Obama and in 2012 lost two senate seats. If gerrymandering were not possible the Democrats would now be in control of the House as well and I would not be writing a desperate piece looking to Wall Street for help! Moreover, healthcare passed the Supreme Court litmus test as well with the arch conservative Chief Justice Roberts deciding its constitutionality.

If the nation is catapulted into default and a second even more impactful recession takes place it will take decades perhaps even generations to recover if the nation can ever recover at all.

The GREAT Elizabeth Warren speaks on the latest Republican extortion

I urge you to listen to it!!
Here or http://www.upworthy.com/a-senator-bluntly-says-what-were-all-thinking-about-the-awful-and-obnoxious-government-shutdown?g=3

Where is Occupy Wall Street When We Need It

Occupy Wall Street where are you? Where are you when it counts like now? Where are you protesting the ugliness of right wingnut fanatics who want to take our government down because they cannot stand people getting health care? Or, perhaps, they cannot stand a black man in a WHITE House giving us health care.

Occupy, we may be as angry as the Baggers concerning Wall Street bail outs and Main Street left outs BUT we are NOT the Tea Baggers, we are NOT racist, we are NOT destructive and we DO want government to work for those who need it. 

Where is Occupy when we need them most? Why are they not organizing, marching and vociferously CRUSHING Republican immoral ideological know nothings who want to hurt the country and hurt those programs the government Constitutionally created like the Affordable Health Care Act whereby those of little or no means can be relieved of their pain and suffering?

Rightwingnut fanatics do NOT create jobs, they do NOT provide health care, they do NOT create roads, they do NOT control guns, they do not create a path to citizenship for those who need it, they do NOT create voting rights but the president COULD and with his signature legislation the Affordable Health Care Act he did. That is funded Constitutionally approved law!

Occupy, Democrats need to gain control of that House again and now we must PUSH Congress hard to pass the budget and raise the debt ceiling. Shutting the government down and defaulting on our debt is NOT acceptable! Default especially will hurt the nation Republicans SAY they love so much. Not to raise the debt ceiling is tantamount to treason as it is written in the Fourteenth Amendment Section 4 our Founders so presciently put there that the government MUST pay its bills.

Republicans do NOT love our government they hate it which is why they are trying to sink it. Democrats are not perfect but they are a DAMN sight better than the intractable, obstructionist, hateful, and poisonous Repuglicans.

Get out there Occupy and FIGHT against right wingnut fascist-LIKE extremism of a segment of the Republican Party that is violent, racist, uncaring and downright cruel blocking the function of our nation.

Where are you, Occupy, when your country needs you the most?

Vets Storm Shuttered WWII Memorial in Protest Over Shutdown

Let the gd Republicans take the BLAME for this FIASCO!  Pass this on if you choose!!!

Breaking from Newsmax.com Vets Storm Shuttered WWII Memorial The 91 veterans on an Honor Flight from Mississippi weren’t going to be denied the chance to see the memorial built for them. Arriving on four charter buses at Washington’s National Mall this morning on the first day of a federal government shutdown, the vets found the World War II monument barricaded and its fountain idle. A sign on the fence read “Because of the Federal Government SHUTDOWN, All National Parks Are CLOSED.” With a bagpipe escort, the veterans ignored the barriers and walked or were pushed in wheelchairs to see the column for Mississippi. Park Police stood by, watching. “This is ridiculous,” said Tom Bratner, 89, who served as a Seabee during the liberation of Guam in 1944. “I hate the Republicans. They’re pulling all kinds of stuff trying to hold hostage things like this.”

United We Stand--Democracy's Last Great Hope

What is happening today with the government shutdown ready to occur tomorrow and the very threatening debt ceiling debacle looming shows that Republicans are, as I see it, the biggest threat to our nation and to all of us. In the end I think ONLY about defeating them not only here but most especially all around the country when the 2014 midterms occur. I ask you devote your efforts to that too.

Mass. is blue Democrat. I do not worry as much here but I worry in places like Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan and many other states where Republicans are killing their own states and thereby a nation. It is HUGELY important to our country that we remain united and defeat this now extremist Republican menace. They are the real threat. To that end I have dedicated my efforts.

This scourge of racism, hate and stupidity of Tea Baggers and even most of the Republicans MUST be stopped. I fervently ask you, not only here but across the country through the technologies and by any other means legally non violently and necessary we have to defeat them and send a message of your fervent opposition to what they are doing and the insanity they are creating.
We need to take a page from our adversaries book and work tirelessly for Democrats here and around the nation. Truly, the life of this nation has not been so threatened since the Civil War. The people I know in the end will stand united against this Republican malodorous threat everywhere.

It is important to elect Democrats here and throughout the nation especially in 2014. Simply turn on your TV and see what they are doing to our president and in reality to ALL of us! If Congress does not agree on a budget AND ESPECIALLY if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling we are ALL of us a doomed democracy's last great experiment.

I trust in the long run the nation will survive but it will not IF we do not help it! Give what you can and work as you are able for Democrats everywhere, stand united for democracy's last great hope and run this Republican nightmare into history's ash bin abyss where, HOPEFULLY, they are heading.

Kissing the Ground

The next time one wants to critique the US or Israel as sometimes I admittedly do think on this story and, yes, kiss the US or Israeli ground upon which you stand as Phyllis Chesler did upon her return!

My life of hell in an Afghan harem

By Phyllis Chesler

September 21, 2013 | 10:55pm

Phyllis Chesler, author of "An American Bride in Kabul," spent five months held prisoner in Afghanistan as a young bride.

Naive and in love, I married a man from Kabul — only to discover the horrible life of a fundamentalist Muslim wife.

Phyllis Chesler, 72, is a feminist scholar and a professor emerita of psychology and women’s studies at City University of New York. In her 14th book, “An American Bride in Kabul” (Palgrave Macmillan) out early next month, she shares for the first time the story of the five months she spent, as a young bride, held prisoner in a Afghan household.

I once lived in a harem in Afghanistan.

I did not enter the kingdom as a diplomat, soldier, teacher, journalist or foreign aid worker. I came as a young Jewish bride of the son of one of the country’s wealthiest men. I was held in a type of captivity — but it’s not as if I had been kidnapped.

I walked into it of my own free will.

It is 1959. I am only 18 when my prince — a dark, older, handsome, westernized foreigner who had traveled abroad from his native home in Afghanistan — bedazzles me.

We meet at Bard College, where he is studying economics and politics and I am studying literature on scholarship.

Abdul-Kareem is the son of one of the founders of the modern banking system in Afghanistan. He wears designers sunglasses and bespoke suits and when he visits New York City, he stays at the Plaza.

He is also Muslim.

I am Jewish, raised in an Orthodox home in Borough Park, Brooklyn, the daughter of Polish immigrants. My dad worked door-to-door selling soda and seltzer.

But none of this matters. We don’t talk about religion. Instead, we stay up all night discussing film, opera and theater. We are bohemians.

We date for two years. Then, when I express my desire to travel, he asks me to marry him.

Modal Trigger

The author Phyllis Chesler with her husband in 1959.

“There is no other way for us to travel together in the Muslim world,” he says.

Like a complete heartsick fool, I agree.

My parents are outraged and hysterical. They warn me that no good will come of this union. Little did I know then how right they would be. We marry in a civil ceremony in Poughkeepsie with no family present.

For our honeymoon, we travel around Europe with a plan to stop off in Kabul to meet his family. I did not know that this would be our final destination.

When we land, 30 relatives await our arrival. Among them, not one but three mothers-in-law. I am too shocked to speak, too shocked to question what these three women might mean for my future.

I learn that my real mother-in-law, Abdul-Kareem’s biological mother, is only my father-in-law’s first wife. Her name is Bebugul.

There are bear hugs and kisses all around. The family is warm and inviting — I try to forget about my husband’s glaring omission.

But before the caravan of black Mercedes-Benzes can leave, an airport official demands that I turn over my American passport.

I refuse.

Everyone stops. Both the official and my husband assure me that this is a mere formality. It will soon be returned to me, so I reluctantly relinquish it.

I will never see my passport again.

That means — I would soon learn — that I would not be able to leave Afghanistan at will. I am now subject to the laws and custom of Afghanistan, and as a Afghan woman, that means hardly any rights at all.

My husband’s father owns a compound comprised of numerous two-story European-style houses where the various families sleep with patios, expensive Afghan wool carpeting, indoor gardens, and verandas.

I am only 20, and I am now a member of this household, which consists of one patriarch, three wives, 21 children (who range in age from infancy to their 30s), two grandchildren, at least one son-in-law, one daughter-in-law and an unknown number of servants and relatives.

This is my new home. My prison. My harem.

Modal Trigger

The author’s Afghan passport, given to her after her American passport was taken. It did not allow her to escape.

Our arrival is celebrated with a feast of unending and delicious dishes. Because of my foreign stomach, the foods — kebabs, rice dishes, yogurts, nuts — are baked with Crisco instead of ghee, an evil-smelling, rancid, clarified butter that is loved by locals but wreaks havoc on a non-native’s stomach. The smell of ghee alone can make you throw up if you’re unused to it.

Abdul-Kareem comes alive during the celebration. He speaks Dari (even though I cannot) and leaves me with the other women.

I am unprepared for my first-ever Muslim prayer service. Suddenly, all the men drop to the floor on all fours, prostrating themselves. I had never seen Abdul-Kareem pray before.

When I awake the next morning, my husband is gone. I am completely alone. And I will spend every morning and afternoon that follows alone with my mother-in-law and female relatives.

As the excitement over our arrival wears off, so does my special treatment. The household meals are now only made with ghee. I can’t eat any of it. Secretly I stow away canned goods that I indulge on in the brief moments that I’m left alone.

Two weeks into my confinement and I have only left the compound twice — both times with a calvary of people guarding and watching.

I am bored, so bored.

One day, I decide to sunbathe on the private terrace that adjoins my bedroom. I don a pink bikini covered in purple polka dots. Then I hear a loud commotion that sounds like men yelling at each other.

“What are you doing? You have managed to upset all of Kabul,” my husband says.

He explains that a group of workmen a quarter-mile away caught sight of a “naked woman” and could not concentrate on work. A delegation had descended upon our house to demand that all women, especially I, be properly dressed.

I start laughing.

“Please, please just come in and put something on,” he says. “Rumors spread here quickly. By tonight, they’ll be telling their friends we are running a brothel.”

I do as I’m told.

Modal Trigger

Author Phyllis Chesler in 1959, the year she was whisked away to Afghanistan.

Later I write in my diary: “I have no freedom at all. No opportunity to meet anyone or go anywhere. His family watches me suspiciously. Am I getting paranoid?”

In fact, I have reason to be paranoid.

I discover that mother-in-law has instructed the servants to stop boiling my drinking water. Because the sewage system consists of open irrigation ditches that are used as public bathrooms and for drinking water, I contract dysentery.

Perhaps she thinks I am already “Afghan enough” to withstand any and all germs. Perhaps she wants me dead.

She then begins her conversion campaign. She gives me prayer rugs and prayer beads and urges me to convert to Islam.

If I don’t, I think, will she continue her campaign to sicken and kill me?

The next day she barges into my room with a servant and confiscates my precious hoard of canned goods.

“Our food isn’t good enough for her — she eats from cans,” she says.

I am her captive, her prisoner; she, my jailer, might treat me more decently if I find ways to please her. This is difficult for me to write about but I did it. I repeat the words: “There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed was his prophet.”

I am now a Muslim — at least in my mother-in-law’s eyes — but that still isn’t enough for her. When she is angry at me, she spits at me. She calls me “Yahud” or “Jew.” When I complain to my husband, he dismisses me as being dramatic.

I must escape.

Looking both ways, I walk out feeling like a criminal. I board a bus and notice that all the other women are at the back of the bus wearing burqas. I am horrified, slightly hysterical.

Meanwhile, all eyes are on me. I am without even a head scarf or a coat. In this country, a naked face is almost the same as fully bared breasts. I am lost and dizzy with fear. My husband is informed of my escape, and he finds me and brings me home.

But the desire to flee still nags at me.

“I have been here for three months and have been allowed out only five or six times,” I write in my diary. “Is this imprisonment meant to tame me, break me, teach me to accept my fate as an Afghan woman? I want to go home.”

Abdul-Kareem is fed up with my unhappiness. “He has begun to hit me,” I write. “Had I known something like this could ever happen, had I known that we would have to live with his mother and brothers, I would never have come here.”

I attempt a second escape to the American embassy. But once I arrive, I’m escorted away. Without a US passport, I no longer have any rights as an American.

I try twice more to escape — one with a return to the American embassy and another with the help of a friendly German expat. But before I can set any plans in action, I fall deathly ill.

My temperature climbs to 105 degrees, but I receive no sympathy from my family. After days of struggling — and falling into a coma—a local doctor is called. He diagnoses me with hepatitis, explaining there’s nothing more he can do.

This is my lowest point. I fear that if I die here I will be buried in a Muslim cemetery, forever forgotten.

I continue to fight for my survival and beg to see an American doctor. My family agrees, but only if I am closely guarded.

The doctor, however, manages to get me alone for a brief moment and tells me that I must return to the States for treatment. Then he orders a nurse to give me fluids. The next thing I remember is someone tugging at my IV line.

It’s my mother-in-law.

I call out and am rescued by a sister-in-law, who sits with me through the night. I tell my husband about his mother’s attempt on my life. He dismisses it.

But he now realizes that if I survive this disease, I will leave him. So he contrives a way to make me stay.

That night, a he climbs into my bed when I am feverish and sick and forces himself on me. I’m too weak to fight back. He is trying to impregnate me because if I am carrying his child, I will not be allowed to leave.

Slowly, I recover. But I have missed two periods.

I have to get out and it has to be now. I have only one card left to play: the royal card. I must appeal to my father-in-law, who alone has the power to return to me to my home. I send word through a servant that I would like to see him.

He arrives and almost immediately says: “I think it will be best if you leave with our approval on an Afghan passport, which I have obtained for you. You have been granted a six-month visa for reasons of health.”

He must have decided that he did not want a sick — or dead — American daughter-in-law who was trying to flee on his hands. Perhaps he never wanted a Jewish American daughter-in-law at all.

He already has the passport in hand: #17384. I have it still.

I feel saved; I feel graced. My husband grows incensed and begins to hit me and call me names. But I stand my ground. Even when I board the first plane out, he still believes that as a dutiful wife I will one day return to him.

When the plane takes off, I am filled with more fierce joy than my body can contain. And when I finally land on American soil, I literally kiss the ground.

I suffer a painful miscarriage shortly after my return. My body made that decision for me. I rush past any anguish, return to college, find a job and apply to graduate school. Two years after returning, I get my marriage to Abdul-Kareem annulled.

I’ve never told this story in detail before, but felt that I must now. Because I hear some westerners preach the tortured cultural relativism that excuses the mistreatment of women in the name of Islam. Because I see the burqa on the streets of Paris and New York and feel that Afghanistan has followed me back to America.

I call myself a feminist — but not just any feminist. My kind of feminism was forged in the fires of Afghanistan. There I received an education — an expensive, almost deadly one — but a valuable one, too.

I understand firsthand how deep-seated the hatred of women is in that culture. I see how endemic indigenous barbarism and cruelty is and unlike many other intellectuals and feminists, I don’t try to romanticize or rationalize it.

I got out, and I will never return.

 

Not about politics -- really -- AFTERLIFE -- Points to Ponder

This NYT article caught my eye as I wade through my political depression. The article is entitled "The Importance of the Afterlife -- Seriously" by Samuel Sheffler. I post it below and here. I urge you to read it.

I wrote to Dr. Sheffler a few thoughts ... naturally. I post my letter to him:

Dear Professor Scheffler. I enjoyed your article in the NYT tremendously. I happened upon it while perusing its online edition. My six decade existence has been consumed with the important questions of life. I seemed to be much more mature at 11 years old when I told my mother (who was consumed by a fear of death) that after all one gives life to children but one also gives them death. Well, perhaps I did not at 11 years old use the word "one." I digress. 

I have been consumed by not only death but religious thought and the "why" of it all. What could be a reason for all the suffering, illness and ultimately death interspersed with a few joyous moments? Why do we not only live life but why do we sentence children to this no way out existential conundrum?

My very smart partner has always thought the drumbeat of the generations after generations signifies a oneness with all humanity. I came up short in that I could not answer my own questions and still, the answers elude. Your article, though, puts a new perspective on my questions and, indeed, I will have to think on it more as the airwaves blister a cacophonous sound of people writhing in pain, screaming and our fellow man inflicting unspeakable torture and death upon innocents before many of those innocents even get a chance to see life or, as the great scientist and thinker Jay Stephen Gould called it, the non-overlapping magistaria of it all. 

Perhaps we keep life going because, well, it is so beautiful to see the grandeur of the planet and the miraculous universe around it. Perhaps we do it, too, as your article gives one pause to think, because we know whether we have children or not that life will follow into eternity or at least until the physical end of all of it. Therefore, what we say and do now has an impact on all that comes after us. It gives us purpose.

Despite not having children I have composed opinion taking a position on the political spectrum which does not center around the accumulation of gobs of money but tries rather to advocate for the poor, the disabled, the elderly and the powerless. Since I am childless why should I care? I am not sure except that I believe it is my gift, no matter how small, and my hope that future generations if they care to study our time come across my thoughts and in some small way I can convince others to be an advocate for those whom society oft discards. I have found MY purpose in that.

The philosopher Schopenhauer's centrifugal point when describing man is his will to live. I add to that a will to live a life that is kinder and gentler than what our parents bestowed upon us. That is the hope that sustains me.

Your article gives me pause for more thought. It is wonderful and magisterially done!
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/the-importance-of-the-afterlife-seriously/?hp&_r=1&

I'll Say it Again

Yes, I know most have heard my lament before. The situation in this nation is so bad with 30 million people needing life saving healthcare Republicans so cavalierly wanting to deny them so that people in essence die, it is so economically dire with 2% lopsidedly owning nearly all the wealth, the president insulted and obstructed by his near treasonous confederate white tea baggie critics so many times, the unconscionable Ted Cruzes of the country stealing the narrative so many times like the alcohol drenched evil Joe McCarthy before him, the gun insanity violence with it's all-about-the-money National Rancid Association (NRA) so completely insane, the situations emanating from horrific gun violence killing children pierces my heart so deeply that I simply for my good health must, for a while at least, retreat to old reruns of I Love Lucy, Columbo, Gilligan's Island, Dobbie Gillis and Howdie Doody because if I do not I personally will end up in The Twilight Zone. As a matter of fact maybe what I see destroying the nation is really a parallel universe of the twilight zone!

Progressives, GET A LIFE AND ACT!

Who knows how long I can go on retreat and I know I've said it before but I'm taking a break. 

Yes, Peter Finch said it all in the character of Howard Beal, news anchor in the "Network" I paraphrase:

I'm as mad as hell and CANNOT take it anymore!

We Not Only Can but We Must

I a little too hastily posted a like last evening of Iran’s President Housani because of his interview with NBC’s Ann Curry. Much to my chagrin I often wax enthusiastic especially about positive international issues when I should wait. I have a penchant for speaking and/or writing before I know more. Mea maxima culpa. I will rephrase my opinion if for nothing else but my own edification to get my rethought words on record.

I still like Iran’s President Rouhani much better than the previous Ahmadinejad. Moreover, President Rouhani did say it was “important that countries across the Middle East learn to peacefully coexist.” Kudos to at least that. BUT I will not acquiesce to his indictment of Israel for the explosiveness of the entire Middle East region. It is NOT an equitable statement and it is not, in my opinion, correct. One nation, Israel, cannot be held responsible for the tinderbox eruption-on-a-dime of that part of the world. One nation, Israel, cannot be held responsible for it all and is not responsible for it all. Further, those statements send paralyzing fear to most Jews who know the brutal and treacherous history of our people. Iranians are not responsible for the Holocaust but Iranians and others in the Islamic world must understand its impact on the Jew if peace is to prevail.

I do not ever discount the suffering of the Palestinian people nor deny the difficulty of everyday life for them. Every pour of my being wants there to be an equitable solution between Israel and the Palestinian people. But violence or terrorism by another name against Israel and the fear of a second Holocaust it engenders within most every Jew cannot stand again. It is an existential fear. Since President Housani said he does NOT deny the Holocaust then he MUST know its importance. Most Jews live every day with it and often despite its occurrence. The Holocaust is not a rationalization. It is, at its core, a truth and the reality behind the Jewish state. Israel has flourished in the desert since 1948 despite Europe’s best efforts literally at annihilating them.

Further, does President Housani, if he could waive a magic wand, think if Palestinians achieved everything they wanted that there would not be constant war between various Islamic factions fighting each other continuously to control that state or segments of it? This constancy of war in much of the Islamic world because of one sect's long-standing feud over another makes me think -- NO makes me KNOW -- what has occurred in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, the Sudan, Libya, Tunisia and elsewhere is exactly what would happen if the Jewish state were relinquished to a Palestinian majority. I shudder to think what all-too-familiar horrors would be visited upon the then Jewish minority itself in Israel.

The recognition of the Jewish state as a state must be resolved in the Islamic mind. Israel too must swallow its own bitter pill by relinquishing settlements and through negotiation on Jerusalem to achieve an equitable solution.

Still, other things President Housani said were good and I am NOT going to obviate it all. It is a beginning at least between Iran and the US which has not had relations in nearly 35 years. Iran is an admirable culture. It is as fascinating as it is ancient. I personally know an Iranian Jew and a Palestinian man who are, to say the very least, wonderful human beings. If we can recognize that fact on a singular level we can IF WE TRY recognize it between nation states. We not only can try but we must!

The Navy Yard, the Money and the Madness--a Country that Has Lost its Way

Kudos to those of humanitarian spirit who try to enact crucial legislation against horrific guns and those who own them wielding so much death and destruction on the innocent. This group who thinks the Second Amendment is Biblically untouchable is in error.  Our Founders did NOT mean it to be so.  It is more important for the murderous NRA hierarchy to urge everyone to own a gun than it is to care about all the senseless killing that occurs because of them when people who should NOT have a gun easily get one.  

Wayne LaPierre and his NRA lobby be accursed.  Our chant should be "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is for all people (except the police and the military) to have no assault weapons and magazine clips with bullets galore!"  Simple background checks everywhere should be a federal mandate not to be nullified by any state.

After yesterday's shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington I am at a loss for words which is a rare occurrence for me.  Sure, arm everyone what could possibly go wrong?  I am slowly losing my political passion for it all.  I need the incredible enthusiasm of my youth and the hope I once had for this nation to do better. The money and the madness that comes with it is the mirrored reflection of our nation.  It is too big and too powerful unless people of good will can roundly defeat its influence.  Add to the mix the malevolent cancer of racism in the marrow of country’s bones since its beginning along with years of death-wielding killer foreign policies with a volunteer military and it equals one gargantuan toxically violent nation armed to the teeth.

May God help us as it will take something much bigger than defeating the NRA and the rightwing extremist Tea Bag Republicans to redirect a country that has lost its way!

American Exceptionalism -- Another View

"America IS Exceptional And That Needs to Be Cured"

By Rob Kall of Op Ed News: 

(About the author)

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and website architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), and publisher of Storycon.org, President of Future health, Inc, and an inventor. He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

He writes:

Russian head of state Vladimir Putin wrote, in a New York Times Op-ed,

"It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation,"

But the need to feel superior seems to be very strong, for many people. Throughout history, writers have spoken of ways that "man" is superior to all the other animals, or species. But primatologist Frans de Waal has said,   "humanity never runs out of claims of what sets it apart, but it is a rare uniqueness claim that holds up for over a decade." He has shown that primates demonstrate caring, sharing, fairness and many kinds of cognition that have been attributed to "only humans."

I asked him why people have the need to feel superior to animals. He didn't really have an answer. After all, he studies primates, not people. Of course, there's religion, which puts man ahead of animals, claiming that only man is moral. But de Waal and other researchers have clearly shown that, indeed, animals are also moral, that it's built into the DNA, not just of primates but of all mammals and even birds. Still there are probably hundreds of millions if not billions who feel they are superior to animals, more deserving of being treated specially.

Daniel Quinn wrote a best-selling novel, “Ishmael” that described leavers and takers. In my interview with him earlier this year, he described what they are:

"Leavers are people who leave the rule of the world in the hands of the Gods, and takers who've taken the rule of the world into their own hands."

Quinn points out that there have been religions, animistic religions that took that "leaver" approach, but they have not fared as well as religions that advocate that humans are superior, and deserve to be the "superior" "takers." He told me, in our interview,

"I have this theory that there have been hundreds of more religions than the ones we know about, and the ones that survived are the ones that fit in with our cultural mythology: that fit in with the vision of humanity as the most important thing in the universe, that endorses the idea that humans are here to rule the rest of the living community.  The ones that didn't, for example, Animism, which was the practically the universal religion of Leaver Peoples, and still is, wherever they are still found, does not support it [our cultural mythology], and so it is not one of our religions.  It's hardly known, but it doesn't say anything about that.  Animism is a religious world view rather than a religion, a world view that sees the world as a sacred place, and humans as belonging in a sacred place.  This is not an idea that fits with our culture's vision of the world and humanity, and so it doesn't appear as a religion to us."

I asked Quinn, who also wrote a book, “Beyond Civilization," Do you think there's a possibility that the next stage beyond civilization could be a spiraling evolution up towards another bottom up way of being?"

He replied, "It has to be.  Hierarchy is the disaster."

"Hierarchy is all about superiority in different forms, about power, wealth, and control. We live in a nation that celebrates hierarchy, supposedly based on merit-- a meritocracy. But Chris Hayes, in his book, "Twilight of the Elites," and other writers and thinkers, have torn that American claim to shreds.  It is an illusion and a fraud."

Perhaps the selling job that has been done for capitalism and consumerism has worked to get many Americans to have a greater need than other nationals to feel superior to the people of the rest of the world. I would agree with Putin that this is dangerous, particularly for the ninety nine percenter Americans who have bought into this view of America, tying it to their egos and identities.

Putin says, "There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too," he wrote.  "We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

I've come to believe that American exceptionalism is bad for America. It creates a sense of privilege and a dangerous jingoism that American politicians, TV pundits and some religious leaders, in particular, seem to need to manifest.  (Emphasis added)

Putin is far from a saint. But his words are wise and worth heeding...

... Perhaps we could set some new exceptional goals-- to be humble, to be kind, and to treat all living creatures as deserving to live in a safe, ecologically healthy environment. There ARE visions out there, of equality and justice.

The fact is, the world has radically shifted, over the past two hundred some years from feudalism, monarchy and authoritarianism to democracy. Democracy its regulations and rules have been put into place not just to create fairness-- like Frans de Waal and other researchers have shown "lowly" animals demonstrate, but also to protect the majority of people in the world from the predators-- the psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists and paranoids who live to embrace hierarchy and rank, control over and domination.

We have progressed dramatically in the past two centuries. But that progress has always been fought by the top down powers, the "takers," as Quinn describes them, and in the worst cases, the psychopaths.

When it comes to Obama tapping that idea of American exceptionalism to sell his goal of an attack on Syria, he is drawing upon the darker side of America. Mythologists, symbologists and poets explore the "shadow," which we all have. The energy for American exceptionalism comes from America's "shadow." Wise, evolved, mature people get to know their shadows, and learn to manage them. America needs to do the same, starting with our leaders, instead of pandering to our shadows.

Still, there are American exceptionalism realities that we SHOULD face and talk about. There is American execeptionalism we should do something about.

We have more prisoners than any other nation-- and most of them haven't harmed anyone, but prosecuting and jailing them keeps them off the voter rolls in many states.

We have the largest military and largest military budget-- which means more money going to expenses that do not grow the economy or build the nation's inner resources and strengths.

We spend more on healthcare than any other nation, yet we are the only first world nation, the only member of the G-20 nations which does not provide health care for all citizens.

We are a nation that spends more on spying on citizens than any other nation.

We are a nation that uses more psychiatric drugs than any other nation.

We are a nation that sets the standard for voting corruptibility, with electronic tallying that is impossible to reliably recount.

The list goes on and on, and then there are all the other list items where we are low, like infant death rate, access to WIFI, educational skills...

There are people-- conservatives, liberals, Democrats-- who will say that we are the best country because of our freedoms, that we have the best medical system.

... Now, there are well over 100 democracies in the world, some with greater press freedoms, where reporters are not prosecuted for reporting the truth, or prosecuted for refusing to provide sources.

Most of the positive American exceptionalism claims apply to the one percent-- and yes, we do have more billionaires than any other nation, and we have some of the worse income inequality and inability to leave the income level you are born in, than other nations.

But most of the illusions of exceptionalism that conservatives think we have are easily disputed when cast in the light of reality.

Perhaps that's another one -- Americans are among the most duped and deluded people in the world-- by our politicians, our economic system and our mainstream media.

Putin is far from a saint. His treatment of gays and critics is abominable. His goals for writing his op-ed probably include protecting Assad and impeding Obama's efforts to support Assad's opposition. That doesn't change the fact that [some of] what he's written [has truth.]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/America-IS-Exceptional-And-by-Rob-Kall-American-Exceptionalism_Hierarchy_Psychopath-130915-856.html

The Telling Typhoon--the TRUTH of science. It behooves you to read this

This story below -- a typhoon (hurricane of the Pacific) -- is one of epic proportions and should be the lead story on every news broadcast in the world. It is yet another HUGE disaster in Japan, an already extremely compromised nation because of the Fukshima nuclear power plant explosion from the tsunami before it leaking thousands of gallons of radioactive water into the ocean. It is now affecting our shores and will affect us even more if the transparency of its horror is not shown to the people that will suffer from it -- ALL of us!

Nuclear power is unsafe at any speed and should be dead on arrival as an alternative to fossil fuels.  It cannot be made safe ESPECIALLY in our climate changed world.  Nuclear power is potentially just as destructive as fossil fuels if not more IF that is possible.

Waxing redundant the Japanese Fukishima nuclear power plant suffered one of the WORST nuclear power disasters this planet has ever seen if not THE worst. Ahuge typhoon now that is hitting Japan is seemingly catastrophic. IF the lamebrain know nothings who REFUSE to see the climate change handwriting on the wall then they are truly brain dead. The Colorado epic flood, too, is yet another nearly daily reminder that climate change is here and happening faster than anyone thought it would!  

What will it take for the religious right wingnuts to believe what science is telling them smacking all of us right in the face with its truth?!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/typhoon-man-yi-japan_n_3932634.html

Powerful Typhoon Forces 260,000 To Flee

www.huffingtonpost.com

TOKYO — A powerful typhoon lashed Japan Monday, leaving one dead and dumping torrential rains, damaging homes and flooding parts of the country's popular tourist destination of Kyoto, where 260,000 people in city