My Life Through Music

In our path through life we sometimes comes upon one of those things we like to call "defining moments," and I had mine this evening while listening to Bob Dylan. One of my friends lost his envelope of car cd's and I was making him another one as a gift.

When you do something like this for a friend or for yourself in preparation for a driving vacation, or just filling up your Ipod, it involves not just going through your music collection, but also doing a bit of time traveling in the process.

Music has always been part of my life. My earliest memories were of what we called PWCS, or people who could sing. This meant astonishing voices filling my early years of emerging consciousness. I grew up with Mario Lanza, Bing Crosby, Patsy Cline, Nat King Cole, and Perry Como. This was added to and filled out when my aunt and uncle immigrated and brought with them entire symphonies that entered my spirit one piano note at a time, and sometimes came out as Jazz when they got together with  friends and played for fun.

There were a lot of things about growing up in Las Vegas that sucked, but music wasn't one of them. I developed a passionate love of Jazz and Blues that stays with me to this day. It's what made me think the Beatles were kind of sissy boys and instead made me hand over my pennies for The Stones, The Doors, Cream, and most everything that came out of Motown, except maybe the Supremes. I preferred Aretha and Etta James.

The patterns of my life always come with musical accompaniment. Interwoven among the memories of a very serious activist who spent her days working against the Vietnam war and choosing Dylan as my visionary spokesman over other more pretty voices. It was an interesting paradigm shift for me to choose the message now instead of the music or simply the best PWCS.

This moment of wanting music to be more than sounds on a plate, was a moment of waking up that has continued to this day. I will always believe it was not politicans who brought down the wall, but rock and roll. I will always believe without the protest songs of the 60's, the anti-war movement would not have taken root so effectively. I could go on with examples, but you get the picture. For me, music makes up a large part of the tapestry I am and will become. It comes with faces of have loved, tears I have shed, places I have lived, and dreams I saw myself taking part in. Music, unlike anything else, has the power to change the world.

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My Life Through Music

Dividing The Sheep

I realized the other day, after yet another heated virtual discussion broke out on among list members, that every single mailing list I'm on has degenerated at some point into name calling, insults, and hurt feelings. No one can talk anymore. No one can have a discussion without it deteriorating into a flame war shouting match. There's no more middle ground, no more giving way to the possibility that the other person's candidate, religion, political party, choice of relationships, place of employment might be equal or gasp! even better than one's own. We've become a nation of petulant children who must have our way or else.

It's easy to lose hope that we'll ever get along again, but I'm an optimist. It's what's kept me alive and kicking in situations that would have destroyed or even killed others. I always believe in people far more than they deserve to be believed in at times. I have to, because to believe that people really are as awful in real life as they are on mailing lists and discussion forums is to give up on the world. I'm not ready to do that yet, if ever. I'll probably go to my death still believing that we can be better than we are.

But there's some things we need to do in order to reclaim the title of human being. Here's a partial list. Feel free to add to it in the comments section as I consider this a world community project where those of us who really do want a better world are prepared to lead the way toward it.

1. Stop listening to those who insist on creating a divided world. What right do they have to create wedges between human beings, and why are you giving them the power to do so?

2. Stop perceiving human beings as being superior and inferior to each other. If you hate, if you're a bigot and harbor prejudices, then you are a tool waiting to be used. Look at History and see how people's hatreds were manipulated by those with evil intentions, by those with an insatiable hunger for power and greed. It's way too easy to stir up a crowd of people if their noses are already pointed in the direction someone wants them to go. Be aware of those who preach hate. Ask yourself what they have to gain if they succeed in making you hate along with them.

3. Make compassion the core of your being. It's a lot easier said than done because in order to know compassion, you have to receive it. So make  a point of giving it away because it is the only way to create a more compassionate world. There's nothing that can be pointed at and said this is it and this is not it. Compassion is one of those misty things that can only be felt, and if you've never felt it then it's impossible to understand.

4. Step outside your own needs and desires and pay attention to what others need and desire. Once you step outside your tiny little world, then life becomes larger, the world becomes larger. And yet it becomes interwoven once we realize we all have the same basic needs and desires. If we create a world with these as our foundation, then no one need suffer from lack of them.

5. Accept that there is only one way to create a world filled with healthy people, prosperity, knowledge, creativity, and scientific marvels and that is to do away with war. It is the single act that has prevented human beings from evolving to their full potential. We must embrace Peace with the same fervor, the same enthusiasm, the same desire as we do war, or we will never become complete human beings.

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Dividing The Sheep

Get Off Your Ass And Vote

I could only stand to watch a few minutes of the debate because there's something about McCain that sums up what bothers me about the last few years. He has that stench of entitlement to him, that arrogance that comes from living a life where no matter what happened in the past, the present becomes this insulated cushion against the outside world. And I'm the outside world he wants to be isolated from.

And please stop with that war hero stuff. No true hero wants it used as a political or other means of manipulation. I was raised by a war hero. He, like McCain, was forever destroyed as a human being by his war experiences. He nearly killed me several times as I was growing up because his war experiences only taught him how to go off and not how to stop. He was never able to ever fit into the normal world again. He was too messed up, too destroyed by what he had to do to stay alive. He was about as fucked up a human being as there is in this world, but the one positive thing I can say about him is never in his life would he allow his war experiences, his medals, his wounds to be used in the political arena. He would have rightly felt that sullied what was left of his honor. That's something that really creeps me out about McCain, how he allows what little honor he has left to be used up and frittered away as if it was meaningless.

And another point. I knew the man who raised me was messed up. He knew he was messed up. Everyone he met knew he was messed up. No one in their right mind would ever want him making a decision for them. There wasn't enough left in him that wouldn't go off on its own and start some shit somewhere. He had this look in his eyes, that look people get when they've had all the proof they can stomach that human beings sometimes really suck at being human beings. I see that look in McCain's eyes, that disgust, that barely disguised hatred of human beings.

And the man who raised me had another trait I saw tonight, he couldn't look anyone in the eyes either. He looked at them sideways like McCain did to Obama. Never once did McCain look Obama in the eyes. It was that evasive I hate humanity glance that revealed how little compassion the man truly has for anyone. The only consolation is that he probably hates himself equally. If not, then he really should. At least the man who raised me made no secret that he hated people. He felt he had earned that right. And there was no one he respected enough to look in the eyes. He was an equal opportunity hater. "I hate everyone equally," he was fond of saying.

So when I saw McCain I saw  a man who was unfit for most of the things in life that require a level head, an ability to reason outside of emotion, and compassion for fellow human beings. These are qualities that make a leader and McCain didn't show anything that I perceived as leadership. He came off as mean, evasive, sloganistic, and part of a political machine that cares about nothing except the win.

For a few minutes I felt sorry for him and then I realized how frightening it was to feel that way about him because he truly does represent his party. It's not inconceivable to me that he would vote to bail out rich cronies who gambled and lost and then justify it as saving the country, and yet at the same time refuse to extend unemployment benefits and the means to save their homes for the very victims of those whose hands he would fill with unaccountable tax dollars from me and you. He's cruel that way just as his party is cruel that way. It's all a money game to them and people are shit.

But what I also saw in his eyes was a stark ruthless win at any cost mentality that is so much a part of the Rovian politics he embraces. He and his party are dangerous because they care nothing about people, about law, about the country, about the constitution. It's all about them, about winning, about rewarding each other with keys to the piggy banks filled with our hard earned dollars. I don't doubt they will do everything in their power to disrupt the voting process, to disenfranchise voters in districts that won't go as Republican as they demand. That's why this year it is more important than ever to register to vote NOW and then get out and vote. There's too much at stake to let the bad guys win again. It's time for good to triumph over evil or the world gets out of balance forever.

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Get Off Your Ass And Vote

Me, Politics, and the Hope Ghost

In 1968 I was seventeen years old in Las Vegas. My best friend, my strange and romantic and poetic buddy who didn't have a mean gene in his entire body, died in Vietnam. As a quiet and horribly shy kid whose family spoke with funny accents, he was my only friend those first few years in the desert. His family was neither Mormon nor Catholic. That made him an outcast just like me in a community that demanded you be one or the other for acceptance. Or you could be rich. Money erased all social taboos, but we were both from dirt poor families.

We ate our sack lunches together every day on the far corner of the playground, away from everyone else. We couldn't afford school lunches and often we could only afford one lunch between us. We shared the meager contents of our bags with each other. We bonded over stale bread and supper leftovers. Without him, without his acceptance, I don't know if I would have survived those early years. He gave me life and war took him from me.

It devastated me even though I was a child of war. I knew that's what war did. It took away those you loved. I was raised by people who survived horrors most Americans will never be able to wrap their minds around. No matter how whole their bodies were, their minds, their ability to feel, their ability to love, their ability to live a normal life was taken from them by war.

But before he died, we shared politics and peace. We and a small handful of social misfits like ourselves, formed a club in school that worked for civil rights, for equality, for world peace. The other students saw us as odd and quirky and mostly avoided us.

And then the unthinkable happened. Dr. King was assassinated. In the midst of our grief a small change started to occur. During the assembly where the entire school came together to mourn, students who previously avoided us now welcomed us and started to come to our meetings. Something woke in them. Something became important that had previously lain dormant inside them.

In May of 1968 we signed up to work on Robert Kennedy's campaign. We watched him that June evening with the pride, the hope, the power of our dream starting to take shape. And then as quickly as the moment came, it went with his assassination.

Life became this awful series of shocks to our hearts and spirits. It didn't seem that things could possibly get worst, but they did. Almost a week later David was drafted, and by September he was dead.

I was young and I was angry. That is why I didn't just bury myself away and run away from the wounds of the past few months. I was raised by survivors and I wasn't going to let war defeat me either.

I don't remember how I went to my first anti-war demonstration. I suspect it had to do with David because part of that first day was camping out with a group of students on the steps of the federal building in Las Vegas. We read the names of those killed in Vietnam up to that point. It was already a long list and it took us all night to read the names with people coming up and offering to read for a while. I remember a nun came and they still dressed in black robes. She read for half hour and then left without saying anything to anyone. About 3 am, a police car pulled up and we thought we were going to be arrested, but instead he got out of his car and offered to read a few names. He had lost his son in Vietnam six months before. It was that kind of night.

It was also the kind of night when cab drivers spit at us, when people with engraged, red faces and bulging veins screamed insults at us, called us Communists, traitors, appeasers. I found my voice that night when I learned I had to read loud enough to be heard over the insults.

Those years shaped and defined me as a pacifist. I have spent my entire life since then writing about peace, making art about peace, being part of organizations and groups that worked for peace and the victims of war. In all those years I never lost hope, never gave up my dream that one day the world would know peace and reject war.

But the last eight years knocked something down in me. I fought but it was from despair instead of hope. I often felt as if an overwhelming evil had taken over America and was spreading outward. I began to understand how tyranny grew, how it fed on the dispirited souls of people too beaten down to object anymore. I understood how the Nazis happened, how the Fascists happened, how petty dictators hung on to their ill-gotten dictatorships.

That dull sense of merely existing instead of fighting back is finally starting to melt. No matter what people think of Obama, the important thing to understand is that he is a symbol of a change that is already taking place. We created him, our mass consciousness, our despair, our frustration with a world growing more cruel and more mean and more intolerant, created him from our own dreams. He is us and so is Hillary and so is Biden and so is everyone who was in that stadium tonight and who watched on television screens all around the world.

I don't know what will come of it all but I do know that for the first time in eight years that feeling of oppression is starting to lift. And because of my experience with war, with death, with survival, I know that's all it takes sometime, for someone to lift the edge of the fog and show us the way forward. Tonight I finally see the glint of daylight on the horizon and like millions of people around the world, I am daring once again to dream of a better world.



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Me, Politics, and the Hope Ghost

Getting Used For Your Love

We've been hearing a lot about Hillary's Pumas lately and will hear even more because they are an easy target to exploit as are most people who are inflexibly attached to anything. As someone who originally supported Hillary and was driven away by the nasty politics she engaged in, it wasn't that big a step to go from one Democrat to another. I know what's at stake here and I'll vote for any Democrat to rid the country of the parasitical Republicans who care only about lining their own pockets at the expense of people like me and you.

But I do know two women who are so inflexible over Hillary not getting the nomination that they will put the future of their daughters in the hands of those who will take away their right to choose, who will almost guarantee they'll be sent to fight in some war for the next line of Cheneys, and who will let lobbyists and arms merchants dictate foreign policy. This is just plain selfish.

But setting that aside because after all, these are only two women and I believe, because they are intelligent women, they won't allow themselves to remain trapped in an abusive relationship. They'll probably end up voting Libertarian once common sense kicks in and they realize their emotions are being played by the McCrazies, or they will suck it up and vote for the perpetual candidate of the disaffected, Ralph Nader. That's their right and I honor it.

Having said that, I am one of those people who remembers what I read a few months ago about some of those primary votes for Hillary. Here's a typical article on the "phenomenon" read more. I remember how hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh encouraged his listeners to go vote for Hillary, not because he had any love or respect for her or them, but because the Republicans wanted to manipulate the primaries and get rid of what they considered a serious contender: Barack Obama.

And the Republicans are so desperate right now that they will grab hold of anything to exploit. Of course with their compliant whores in the media, they will exploit exploit exploit the passion these voters feel and turn it into slime like they do everything they touch. Those two women I mentioned will be magnified into a huge division within the Democratic party. They will be featured over and over again as something to fear, to use, to manipulate, to convince voters that the Democrats are fractured and can't agree on anything. They will do things like pile a bunch of closet Republicans (that GOP sure does love closets, don't they) into a hummer and claim they are Pumas. Check out this and tell me that any decent Hillary supporter would show up in something as blatantly symbolic of Republican excess than the hummer. It's a sad, pathetic attempt to manipulate a handful of Hillary supporters and it comes off as sad, pathetic and desperate: read more

While I would have loved a woman President, I'll settle for Obama because I truly do feel he represents me and my interests. Unlike the GOP meme that gets passed around to discredit him, he does stand for much of what I believe in. I went and read his website early on in the debate instead of listening to the bought and paid for media try and convince me he stood for nothing. Shame on those who didn't and still ask in that quasi-rhetorical meme zombie tone of voice: but what DOES he mean by change? Go read for yourself and quit letting the state run media tell you what to think and believe. Then you'll understand why more than anything America needs not just someone promising change but someone who is a symbol of that change. After eight years of Bush and his idiocy, I want someone who can talk to the entire world and not just a bunch of mindless GOP cheerleaders. That to me is a real leader.




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Getting Used For Your Love

Protecting us from the white lunatics within our borders

So it starts. Home-grown terrorists climb out of their shit pile of hatred with plans to assassinate Obama. Here's a link to one of the stories read more.

Maybe Homeland Security, with the help of their ignoble asshat co-conspirators--hate radio and propaganda TV, should start going after loony white guys instead of focusing so much attention away from them by making us scared shitless of Arabs, Mexicans, Blacks, Muslims...anyone who isn't a white Christian lunatic. Last I recall McVeigh, the creepfest who blew up the Federal Building, was a crazy white guy.

Really, it's time to focus more on what's already within our borders--white Christian lunatics who are easily manipulated by the likes of Faux news and Rush "let's stir up some drug-induced hate monkey" Limbaugh into committing the kind of crimes they claim only those with brown skin commit. Those guys are the real threat from within, not some poor Mexicans trying to feed their families, or some Muslims who came to America for a better life and ran into the most intolerant fucks this side of Saudi Arabia.

Better yet, maybe the so-called mainstream media should focus less on car chases, celebutards, missing spouses, runaway children and actually report the news so America will quit holding the title as the dumbest, most poorly educated idiots on the planet.

Here's an idea for news that won't leave anyone with more than a third grade education gasping in astonishment of the collective ignorance that passes for "information" these days:

1. Darfur
2. World Hunger
3. Global Warming
4. Government policy shaped by Arms Merchants
5. Greedy fucks who don't care about people but who are playing some perverse game of who can accumulate the most money in a lifetime. (cough cough Cheney cough cough)

The list is endless and nowhere near the top are there any blond bimbos, sex lives of the white and boring, rehab tales of the rich and famous, and television "personalities" who can't even read the script tossed in front of their blank stares without gagging on their own irrelevance.

But I won't hold my breath that anything will change anytime soon. Hate is big business in America. It's the fuel that drives our politics, defines our consciousness, and makes us no better than schoolyard bullies with a vocabulary no bigger than fuck you well fuck you too you fucking fuck. And for that we need a media filled with cocaine blonds and insipid necktied young Fascists making us all very afraid and suspicious of each other so the bastards in charge can rob us blind. Nice legacy to leave the grandchildren, eh?

Protecting us from the white lunatics within our borders

What Child-Free By Choice Means

When I came of age in the 60's and 70's, one of the big issues of the day was overpopulation. It was a subject that took on new relevance with the advent of reliable birth control such as the pill. And it spun off into an idea that was radical at the time: having children was a choice not an obligation.

At the same time as the pill came on the scene, there were other factors at work such as the growing Feminist movement that also served to show women had more choices than staying home and popping out babies. Even though the idea of equality for women was not a new idea, it finally reached the mainstream in the 60's after JFK appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman of President's Commission on the Status of Women. Much of what we consider "women's issues" now, such as equality in the workplace, maternity leave, etc came from the studies conducted by the commission.

With this new awareness of women as more than baby machines it was inevitable that large numbers of us realized we could do more with our lives and leave behind a more powerful legacy of work, art, literature, music and contributions to the sciences if we remained child-free. A book that influenced many to remain child-free was Ellen Peck's The Baby Trap. She presented a powerful argument that used real world examples to show not everyone needed to breed to live and enjoy a fruitful life.

As I grew up and matured into an adult woman I had many examples of successful and child-free women to show me this was a valid choice in a world faced with hunger and wars brought on by overpopulation. The images of starvation in places like Ethiopia really affected me and a lot of people my age. We saw the devastation and accepted our role in it and knew our contributions, although small, would be large ones if more people believed as we did.

Many of us chose not to bring children into a world always at war and running out of precious resources. It allowed us to move forward and learn to create a legacy that came from our hearts and minds instead of from our physical bodies. And for the most part the rest of the population was okay with this. They considered it strange, eccentric at times, but completely and totally our choice.

One of my reasons for opening up a Cafepress store that is devoted completely to the child-free by choice is because this tolerance for "our choice" has changed in the last few years. There's almost this rage at those of us who made this choice, as if we are somehow defective or threatening to those who choose to breed. I've had less hatred directed toward my left of radical politics and my Atheism than I've had directed at me because I actively promote a child-free lifestyle.

I consider this hatred as stemming from the Entitlement Movement that believes having babies somehow gives one special powers over the rest of the population. These special powers translate into such things as forcing adults to watch only kid-oriented television, movies, and have access only to child-safe entertainment and lifestyles. The old-fashioned idea of parenting being something that took place in the home has fallen down the pit of letting the government, the schools, and the churches raise children instead of the parents. The Entitlement Movement never learned about off switches, v-chips, filtering software, or adults only, and those of us who choose a child-free lifestyle have to suffer for their ignorance and inflated sense of me-me-me.

My child-free by choice store is one way to bring the choice back to life and out of the hands of the entitlement bunch. I have a range of designs that include options such as overpopulation, anti-war philosophies, and yes, some that the breeders by choice will consider mean and insulting. The reason for those is that parents sometimes fail to get the idea that not everyone wants to interact with their children, not everyone thinks it's okay to let children run over every one's right to existence, and it draws on the old-fashioned idea that you had them so you raise them.

I will be adding designs on a more frequent basis now that it is it's own store instead of a section in Ursine Logic, and I'll also be adding cat and dog designs as many child-free humans devote a lot of time to making sure our furry companions have a good life. For those who think the child-free are selfish, just check out how many of us do support causes that deal with poverty, hunger, the environment, and saving innocent furry creatures that others have abandoned to a life of misery and death before you drop words like "selfish" so casually.

And if you have a favorite design idea or phrase you'd like to see on a t-shirt or other item, do drop me a line and I'll put it together for you because it's time we work together to save what's left of this planet's precious resources.

My email is ursinelogic at gmail dot com. Hate mail will be posted with a link to your email, and threats will be forwarded to law enforcement. On no other topic have I been forced to post that warning, which tells you how rabid breeders can get when their world view is threatened.

Peace.

What Child-Free By Choice Means

Three Steps Toward World Peace

I went for a walk today in Whatcom Falls Park, a beautiful piece of green heaven here in the Pacific Northwest. It was one of those perfect late summer days of sun, a slight breeze, and temps in low 70's. The park has some old, majestic trees and I went to photograph them to make some more calendars. It was quiet with just the sound of leaves, wind, and the many hidden things that scurry around just below our clear level of hearing.

It was such a calm and peaceful environment to be in when in so many other places the world is in a crazy turmoil of mean-spirited, warmongering hatred that never seems to end. I wanted to bottle the peace and pass it around. I wanted to say "Here! Inhale this and go be nice to each other." I wanted to spread it all around and let people know what it felt like so they would stop being so mean and so cruel.

But peace, like love, like friendship, like anything requiring a relationship between self and the outside world, depends on more than one person. I can want peace and most of the time I'm lucky to be able to find it in some form or other within a few minutes of the desire making itself known. Others who are trapped in abusive relationships, high stress situations, and war zones can't have it no matter how strong the desire. But all of us can drop a few seeds here and there that might turn into peace. Here are a few suggestions to help them grow:

1. I put this one first because it is the most important: LEARN TO THINK FOR YOURSELF. Those who let others do their thinking for them find themselves trapped in situations they never thought would turn into a trap. If you learn to question what others throw at you as absolute truth than you are less likely to get suckered into something you don't want. This applies equally to love, religion, and war. We all have the "I can be fooled if I want to gene" and it's time to knock that little creep back into the shithole where he/she/it belongs.

Those who don't question and who feel insecure about themselves can be tricked into supporting a war based on lies. They can be tricked into believing there's such a thing as compassionate conservatism. They can be tricked into believing that wrapping oneself in the flag and screaming loudly for someone's blood is Patriotism, and not ignorant and stupid bloodlust based on bigotry. Timeline that led to War

2. The second most important thing is to BE KIND. We've become a mean culture. All you have to do is look at the movies we watch, the books we read, the politicians we elect and you will see how empty our spirits have become. I often find myself shouting to the wind Kurt Vonnegut's immortal words: "There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- "God damn it, you've got to be kind."

Commit a random act of kindness today. It doesn't require very much to think of something. You can drop a bag of groceries off at the food bank. You can mow an elderly neighbor's lawn. You can spend time with people in a nursing home. You can bake cookies for someone who is sad. You can cook dinner for someone who is tired. You can save a dog or cat from your local shelter. You can feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and shelter the homeless. You can say thank you to strangers on the other end of the phone who helped you. You can let someone cut in front of you in traffic, in line at the supermarket. You can smile at a lonely person. You can hug the unhuggable. You can give the smallest gift and have it grow into the largest gesture of kindness, caring and compassion.

3. BE YOURSELF! Most of the problems in the world are caused by those who can't accept who they are because it doesn't fit the advertising propaganda we're assaulted with on a daily basis. Those who are different, outside the norm, geeks, nerds, shy, weird, untameable, and just too damn smart for this planet are the ones who have the biggest hearts. But only you can spread the word, so get out there and quit apologizing for being real in a world that has been totally screwed up by fake, cruel and insincere people.

Three Steps Toward World Peace

Peace IS Patriotic

With the upcoming Fourth of July celebrations, it's time to start reclaiming the meaning of the holiday. In case people have forgotten the meaning in the current swarm of fireworks as simulated bombings and, explosions, the smarmy excuses for hatred wrapped in the flag, and the hijacking of the term "Patriotism" to abuse many of us into submission, it was to celebrate the birth of our country and the leaving behind of religious intolerance, monarchy rule, and unfair taxation on the backs of the poor.

Here's what we need to reclaim in order to get our country back and restore our true independence:

1. Quit glorifying war. It only makes the munitions makers and arms dealers wealthier and does nothing for peace, democracy, and spreading tolerance for one another around the world. You can start by taking back the word "Peace." The right wing warmongers have turned this into a nasty four-letter word to further their own political agenda without taking into account it will be their children and grandchildren who will die in dirty little wars as a result of their ancestor's stupidity. Peace is all that will save us from the Cheneys of the world. Wear Peace. Display Peace. Speak Peace. Live Peace. By doing so you will be doing your part to put the warmongers back under their rocks of hatred where they will stink up only each other's space and not the rest of the world's.

2. Repeat after me. Peace is Patriotic. Those who tell you differently are too blinded by their own hatred to see the truth. They wrap themselves in the flag and think it will protect them from the consequences of their behavior. They have foolishly been led to believe that a piece of cloth can make up for loss of integrity, the endorsement of torture, spying on Americans who have done nothing wrong, wars fought for oil and profit instead of honor and security, and spreading hate as if it were something than shit that will eventually bury them no matter what color the shroud used to wrap around their decaying bodies. It is up to you to get the message out there that Peace is the highest form of Patriotism because it doesn't depend on killing or imprisoning or torturing someone to get them to believe what you do. A nation that tolerates and expects equality and diversity is a peaceful nation.

3. Fight back against the mono-theistic blindness that a small minority in this country is trying to inflict on everyone else. Yes, the Supreme Court has ruled that you can't challenge Bushco's faith-based crap programs. But you can fight back by expanding the meaning of faith to include other belief systems besides wacko fundamentalism that spreads and encourages and funds hatred of anyone who does not belong to that particular cult. If you are a Buddhist, a Wiccan, a Pagan, a flower worshipping cat loving peacemonger, then it is your obligation to get your beliefs defined as faith and eligible for federal dollars. Make this biased Supreme Court stacked with Bush fundies tell millions of you that your beliefs are not valid, not equal, and not part of the religious freedom guaranteed by the laws they are sworn to uphold. Demand that your beliefs are given equal status, equal money, equal respect. Start schools and day cares and after-school sessions that the fundies are using to rake in the dollars and make your beliefs equal to what they are using to get those dollars. Make this hypocritical government go on record trying to prove that what one group believes has more or less validity than another. That's what our ancestors fought and died for. Are you going to sit back and let their deaths and sacrifices become meaningless in the face of religious wackos and their big, greedy hands sucking all the funds for themselves and their political agendas?

4. Bring Democracy to America. This means reining in Cheney and the rest of Bushco. Contact your congressional representatives and make your voice heard. Let them know your vote depends on their actions. Let them know they can no longer let someone like Cheney control the fate of this country. Let them know you are paying attention and will continue to pay attention. Get loud and get heard.

5. This fourth of July, don't cringe from Patriotism. Reclaim it. Clean it up and make it shine again. Make Peace, Tolerance, Diversity, and Democracy a good thing again. Wear a button, a shirt, send a card, make a poster. Do what it takes but do something because your silence implies consent and is that a good thing for your grandchildren to one day believe about you?

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Peace IS Patriotic

Anti-War Voices

It was cold and rainy and windy here in the PNW. As we huddled together under umbrellas and rain hats and posters turned sideways to keep the rain off, many of us felt that underneath the familiar images of an anti-war protest something else was going on. It felt important and those of us who were there understood something was beginning again in this country--the stirrings of a more persistent voice for Peace. It was different than the ones previous. Those felt calm, subdued, well-behaved. This time there was an underlying anger, an energy to do more than play nice.

But we ARE nice people, nice non-violent people. Our whole reason for being there was to demonstrate against the kind of anger and rage and despair that leads to violence. No one I talked to wanted to put into words what that uncomfortable feeling inside us was. But we saw it in each other's eyes. We felt it in each other's voices, in the fed up tone of enough is enough that seeped through the crowd. We were part of a difference, a very important difference. A difference that grows as a feeling in the eyes that comes from the heart, from the depths of the heart where anger grows a shell around love to protect it from evil.

We were there because we understood The Bush War Machine is the worst of evils right now. It has an insatiable hunger not only to keep enriching itself on wars fought solely for profit, but also a hunger to protect itself from the crimes it has committed and continues to commit in that drive for profit and power. Firing prosecuters. Defaming anyone who disagrees with their addiction to wealth vast enough to buy the silence of every objector, torturing confessions out of everyone they can get their hands on until it sounds like some demented Jerry Springer show: Yes, I slept with Osama Bin Laden! I am the father of Anna Nicole's baby! I blew up the towers! I killed Kennedy!

The vast majority of the country is too disgusted with the lies continually spun by the Bushco War Machine to even laugh at the absurd desperation these sudden confessions reveal about an increasingly trapped administration facing an angry populace that is slowly starting to wake up. It's the rainbow hued terror alerts all over again. It's Karl Rove throwing tainted meat to the ignorant starving masses. Once they gobbled it up in the form of free hotdogs and Coca-Cola and support the troop rallies that were really rallies to stir up blood lust. Once they fed at the pulpit of hate as stereotypes and fear took the place of what used to be sermons and became right-wing propaganda spun doctrine. Once it worked so well and so easily. People fell asleep and became sheeple drugged subservient by the latest feel good mood pill brought to you by a subsidiary of Halliburton-Frist-Rumsfeld Incorporated.

But the stakes are higher now. And so is their desperation. It makes the Bushco War Machine very dangerous. It's a threatened beast spinning around in an ever smaller cage. The room holding it back has grown smaller and more constrained. The indictments are coming. The stench of fear is rising from the White House. From The Vice-President's Office. From those committees within committees within Pentagon death chambers. From the mockery of Justice Department. All inside these halls are desperate caged beasts hungry for a distraction, and that distraction is Iran, or Syria, North Korea or some other poor sap country that will allow itself to be drawn into the Bushco lie machine.

That is why this is the time when people must take to the streets. This is the time when it must be made very clear that the sheeple are done walking subserviently on all fours. This is the time when we must make it very clear that a diet of lies and crap isn't going to pacify the anger so easily anymore. We, who live our lives trying to convince others of the value of playing nice, have to develop a less nice backbone. We have to get louder. We have to get out in the streets every weekend instead of on approved anniversaries. We have to make it clear that we are listening every day, we are paying attention to everything, and we will express our opinion on every damn thing they throw at us.

That is what has been missing and has allowed Bushco to destroy the foundations of this country. Every time the constitution was trashed a little more, we were too busy, too dismayed, too pre-occupied. Every time more money was taken from schools, from communties, from VA hospitals, we looked away because our power was too little, too futile, too subject to being called traitor, troop hater, wimp, weak, and any number of insults those who want to continue to do evil throw around so easily. It's time to remember these are the same people who made the word Peace an obscenity and free speech an impediment.

It's time to take it all back. It's time to take to the streets seriously, not just once a week. Not just when others say so. Not when it's convenient. If you don't, the price is high, so high you may not survive. That price is war and if you think just recyling the same troops over and over again is going to satisfy the War Machine's desperate hunger, then you need to look up the meaning of the word "draft" because that's not a cold breeze closing in on you. It's your indifference, your mistaken and foolish belief that it has nothing to do with you.

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Anti-War Voices

The Gift Of Hate

I was taught early in life how to hate. My grandmother would never believe that is what she was teaching me. In her mind she was warning me about bad people who hurt her and her family. The pain in her voice was real as she described the beautiful house with the flower gardens, the many precious herbs tended for decades that both healed and brought in necessary income in times of need. And the team of white horses that identified the family carriage to anyone who saw it.

It was the horses I always remembered because when she spoke of them a shine came into her eyes, the kind of shine one gets when looking upon something so magnificent it literally brings tears to your eyes. And it was the horses, in all their majestic beauty, that was my first lesson in hate.

"So many in town hated my family for those horses," she would whisper to me as if it were such a deep and horrible secret that she didn't dare speak it aloud. And of course I felt the first stirrings of hate in my own belly as she described the injustice of having such creatures and not being able to openly enjoy them without drawing forth envy from those who resented "us" for our good fortune.

I learned these same people, one family in particular, lead the hate. "It was over politics," she would whisper as the sheer filth of that word fell from her lips. Politics. The ultimate bad guy in all her stories. It went hand in hand with hate because you couldn't have politics without hate. "They hated us for not believing what they believed, but our family was unshakable. We believed what we believed and that was it." I felt the passion of that injustice in my stomach and swore always to believe what I believed and I felt angry at these mean people who would deny me and my family that right.

Next came the real killer: religion. I come from a long line of Atheists mixed with a few religious fanatics. My family has straddled the religion fence decade after decade with a sort of blind faith that they will end up on the side that isn't lined up against the wall and shot, so it didn't surprise me that some hated them for their faith or lack of it. Why should the inner workings of my family be any different than the outer workings?

"The bastard hated us because we didn't believe in his Jesus." I felt her anger, her despair and I became ferociously Atheistic. I hated the family who judged us, the father and his son who stopped my family on the street and spit at my family and called them heathens. I could see him whenever she told this story: his hair black as his soul, his cold eyes, his crude language that no gentleman would be caught speaking. By the time I was in my teens I hated him with a passion so deep that I was certain if he was in the room with me, I could easily hurt him and feel no remorse. That is the power of hate, that is what it can convince you to to do: hurt a stranger because he did something to someone else you also never met.

But the worst part of this story was the horrible ending. "They came in the night," she told me with tears in her eyes. "First they poisoned the horses..." We always stopped to cry together at this part of the story. I loved horses as a young girl and this was a crime too horrible to ever forgive. I could see their eyes close in death as they suffered from the poison. I hated this horrible horrible man and his family and all his relatives and all the children he would bring into the world.

And then they came back and burned down the house and tore up the flower gardens and destroyed a decades old garden of medicinal herbs the town depended upon for healing. "We left and never returned," she said with that perfect note of despair that has left me feeling my entire life as if I were a homeless refugee, a displaced Atheist waiting for the first hail of bullets to strike me down for my terrible crimes of not believing in Jesus, of having politics that differed from the most powerful man in town and his evil son, and just being hated for no reason other than for who I was. The injustice of it was so strong, so much a part of how I grew up and why I became the adult I am.

My grandmother is long dead and it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I found out the truth about this family, this horrible man and his even worse son. Yes, they did all that. Yes, they were bad people. Yes, they caused my family endless and unjust suffering. I also found out they died at least a hundred years if not more before my grandmother was born. None of the bad things they did was done to her or to me or to anyone who was alive. They were long dead, but yet they lived on in this perverse way.

My grandmother was only repeating what was told to her. She gave me the only legacy she had left, the memory of an injustice committed on our family long before any of us were born. She gave me hate instead of love. It is a gift that I decided needed to die with me. I do not want to know more about this man and his son. I do not want revenge as a dish best served cold. I want him to die with the all the stories, all the unforgiven wrongs, all the hate he spread far into the future.

It ends with me. And what begins with me is a sense of peace, a feeling of moving forward in time instead of backwards, a reworking of hatred so it becomes love, a reworking of intolerance so it becomes acceptance, and a reworking of eternal and perpetual war so it finally, at last, becomes peace. It begins with me.

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The Gift Of Hate

What is Bushco really up to with this Escalation crap?

Bush is either completely delusional or this is a big fat distraction to keep our eyes off his hand...which is busy trying to start shit with Iran and Syria. The scary thing is that it is probably both...he is delusional AND he wants to start shit. If you haven't called your congressional representative, now is the time to make those phone calls and demand they make Bush come to Congress before taking military action in Iran or Syria. If we've learned anything in the last few years it is that our freedoms and rights do not disappear overnight. They leak away in hidden bills, legislation passed when no one is watching, and those insidious signing statements.

The War on Terror is just another excuse to make us subservient and cowering victims of Bushco. It is a badly refurbished version of the War on Drugs, and we all now how successful that was. All it did was make criminals of recreational users. The big drug lords are richer, more powerful, and have tons and tons of merchandise now more than ever. I would not be the least bit surprised if cocaine and heroin were once again raising money for illegal wars. After all, most of the people from Iran-Contra are now in privileged Bushco positions, and we all know how that funded that one.

As much as Bush disgusts me, what absolutely terrifies me is the idea that someone like Cheney could become President if Dubya is suddenly incapacitated, or worse, if Cheney resigns and Bush appoints someone like McCain as his replacement.

You have to look at these bastards for what they truly are: obsessed with power. Do you really think if Cheney or Bush starts to go down that they don't have an odious backup in place? Now is the time to find out exactly who those backups are, and it is also time to let Congress know you are paying attention. Make those calls now and demand that Bush must go before Congress BEFORE he can "bring democracy" to any other country. After all, 2008 is not that far away. You voted them in and you can vote their asses out the same way.

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What is Bushco really up to with this Escalation crap?