DiCaprio's The 11th Hour

I just learned about this movie today (not sure how it escaped me), but it looks like it will be one of the must-see movies of the summer.



Link:

11th Hour Website

Firefighters Union releases anti-Giuliani video

I have never found much to like about Rudy Giuliani. I heard soon after 9/11 about how the firefighters and police didn't have the radio systems they needed to be able to talk to one another, and more recently kept hearing about how Giuliani had located his terrorism response center in the twin towers, a known terrorist target.

I recently have been reading a piece in the American Prospect about Giuliani and have found that there is much else to not like, but that the Republicans might be desperate enough to settle on him, even though many of his views don't fit neatly in a cultural conservative box.

At any rate, this video is affecting and worth passing along.



Link:

"If you knew Rudy like I know Rudy..." by Michael Tomasky, from the American Prospect

Michael Moore defending "Sicko" on CNN

This video has been out and about, but in case you haven't seen it it's well worth watching. CNN does a little smear piece on Sicko, with Michael Moore there in the studio. Michael gets pretty pissed off, and does some ranting about CNN's failure to tell the American people the truth about so many things, including, and predominantly, the war in Iraq.



The follow up video (broadcast the day after the first but filmed together with it) courtesy of Crooks and Liars:



This is Michael Moore's "Truth Squad" response to the CNN allegations:

'SiCKO' Truth Squad Sets CNN Straight

When Fear Falls Away

A book came home the other day. My Significant Other ran across it in the library and brought it home. We've both been reading it. It's a fascinating tale of metamorphosis, of the disappearing of an old way of life and the welcoming of a mysterious new one, a new life without fear and suffering.

The author is a writer named Jan Frazier, who was facing an annual mammogram after a couple of breast cancer scares. She was terrified--and then she asked for the fear to be taken away. Mysteriously, miraculously, she not only awoke with no fear but found that a profound change had come over her life, something that changed everything.

Now, this transformation didn't exactly come out of nowhere--she had been studying with some adherents of Siddha yoga, under the tutelage of an Indian mystic named Gurumayi. Still, her transformation was sudden, and unexpected in its completeness.

I haven't spent a lot of time contemplating enlightenment as a goal. It has always seemed like the kind of thing that is so unlikely, it's not really worth all the painful years spent meditating and eating tofu in some temple, hoping to get there. Either that, or something like what happened to Byron Katie or Eckhart Tolle after seeing their lives fall completely apart. Not something you exactly strive for, because you have to go through all that mess first.

Yet, you hear all this stuff about an evolution in consciousness. And it makes me wonder if this might be paving the way for this kind of stuff to become more--mainstream, more commonplace. I don't know. I don't know if I want to be some enlightened being, because that sounds kind of freaky and way out there. But the idea of not worrying about death, and illness, and having some amazing reserve of love and compassion, that doesn't worry about whether your coworkers like you, for example--that doesn't have any worries, but only the desire to help relieve suffering in others--well, that might be all right.

At any rate, it's a fascinating read, I think, for anyone who knows what it is to live with fear, especially those special fears that come about by being a mother, by bringing vulnerable children into this world, and thereby learning what it is to fear loss of all kinds. I remember when my son was just a few days old, and I heard a news report of some children killed in a school bus accident or something, and I thought, What have I done? How could I go and have this baby when it would destroy me to lose him? What was I thinking? There is a part in the book where she is facing a breast cancer scare, and she thinks, I would be OK, if I weren't a mother. And she hears a voice, the voice of Gurumayi, saying "You must be OK, even though you are a mother." Sometimes I think I could face all the fears I have of the future so much easier--if I did not have a son. But I do have a son. And I don't regret that decision. But it makes how I face the future that much more critical, and makes this book all that more meaningful, and reading this book has made me think about enlightenment, and what it might mean, in a whole new way.

Link:
When Fear Falls Away website

Peak Oil, Climate Change, and Spiritual Emergencies

We had our first circle group meeting the other night, and in introducing myself I talked a bit about how my understanding of peak oil opened up my eyes to the fact that the future won't simply be a continuation of the past. This led to a opening of my eyes to other realities that will change our future, namely the indebtedness of our country and our families, and in the longer term climate change -- the greatest risk to the generations that will follow mine.

All of this created something of a spiritual emergency within me, leading me to question what's the point of it all, what does it all mean. In the end, I'm not sure that all of these current and future problems matter a great deal. I will always have the moment, I believe the birds will always be singing in the forest, and the optimist in me believes that when we really need to, we can adapt and come together more as a country and as communities as we face challenges in the future. (This is one of the problems I have with diehard peak oil gloom and doomers, they will accept no alternative other than complete societal breakdown, chaos, civil war, etc. etc.) I believe these people are largely ignoring the influence of women in this scenario they are painting...

I read an interview of Peter Russell which really spoke to me. He discusses the nature of consciousness, especially in light of our challenges--how we still need to act, and how we also need to have fun along the way. I also feel intrigued by the idea of preparing our local communities for the energy descent, which seems inevitable.

The Limitations of Nonviolence

I've always thought that nonviolence as a tactic was absolutely brilliant--force the opponent to show their brutality, and it will be clear to all who is in the right and who is in the wrong. The church I was part of for some time got very interested in Non-Violent Communication, the Marshall Rosenberg program that says that what is important is owning one's needs and communicating them in a way that is gentle and non-threatening enough to allow one to be heard. The method is useful, I think--it's good to be able to own your reactions, so for example, instead of saying "You make me so crazy when you refuse to listen to me," you say, "When you left the room without saying anything, I felt scared and sad." It can be a useful tool, but some of the proponents of NVC want to use it as a way to solve big world problems, and my Significant Other, being from a state which was formerly a colony and having seen first hand the results of empire, has influenced me to be suspicious of the method for such a use. He's been afraid that it would become a tool of power--that those in power would use listening as a way to mollify and preserve the status quo.

I bought the June edition of Utne Reader some time back--they had a cover story called "The Future of Protest: Why Your Voice Still Matters" that was of interest to me. I picked up the magazine last night while I was waiting for some water to boil, and flipped open to an article entitled "Arms and the Movement: Pacifism equals pacified to this activist," by a guy named Peter Gelderloos. The article was excerpted from his new book, How Nonviolence Protects the State. I've read a few things about Rachel Corrie recently--the young woman who was mowed down by an Israeli bulldozer, trying to block the destruction of a Palestinian home. So I was interested, and read the article. It was disturbing to read--and at the end, I felt like my understanding of non-violence was probably too simplistic.

This article made me think about several things--Gandhi in India, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam war--in a new light. His stance is that although nonviolence had its part to play, that first that what happened in these cases was less clearly a victory for those who resisted nonviolently than the coming together of a multitude of factors, some of which were in fact violent. Second, that the outcome wasn't as rosy as we've been accustomed to think--in India, colonialism gave way to neocolonialism, and he says that the British had a heavy part to play in fomenting violence between different religious sects as a way of neutralizing the perceived threat that a united, independent India might pose. That yes, the civil rights movement won some important victories for blacks in this country, but it certainly didn't result in real equality:

In short, the largest victory of the civil rights movement came when black people demonstrated that they would not remain peaceful forever. Faced with the two alternatives, the white power structure chose to negotiate with the pacifists, and we have seen the results: The movement was successful in ending de jure segregation and expanding the minuscule black petty bourgeoisie, but fell far short of full political and economic equality, to say nothing of black liberation from white imperialism.

And then he talks about Iraq, and how hopeless it was to think that the peace movement could have stopped that war. He sums up:

From India to Birmingham, nonviolence has failed to sufficiently empower its practitioners, whereas the use of a diversity of tactics got results. Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system that is based on centralized coercion and violence.

I am still not sure what to think about all this. I have walked; I have protested war. I have walked for action against global warming. I walked on Inauguration Day in January 2001, when I was full of despair about the selection of George W. Bush. I didn't know if it was doing any good. It felt better to do something than nothing. But then, I didn't walk during the Battle of Seattle. I thought about it, but I had a baby at home. I watched the news and I was scared. I think what Rachel Corrie did was heroic--and yet, they are still bulldozing settlements.

At any rate, the article was thought-provoking. It made me question things that I thought that I knew. That process is always uncomfortable. The more you understand, the less you are sure of. But maybe that is a good thing. If you're sure you know the truth, you stop trying to find it.

Link:
"Arms and the Movement" by Peter Gelderloos