Thursday, January 06, 2005

I don't think we are responding from supremacy of empire, but from The Wizard of Oz. Schwartneger wants to eleiminate all retirement funds for california employees, simnply because the state can't afford these. (I havnt read the speech but got this email. "The Gov in his state of the state address proposes to close the budget gap this year, by not raising taxes, but by paying teachers on merit, not on agreed contracts. The bottom line , of course , is to get his hands on the huge pension funds held for teachers and state employees, perhaps even by taking a voteon it to the people. What a con artist! He is vilifying a group ofcalifornia citizens for his own hidden agenda, under the rubric of budget reform." One might guess that the strategy of our leaders is to remake basic arrangements, under the impact of real decline, so their cash low remains as constant as possible. The problem for leaders is, we don't know what to do about poverty. I wrote a few weeks ago in another place snip Government and leadership are not adequate to the task. government does not map onto the real problems that surround us. Our political parties fight on the wrong issues, and the electorate is given choices whose outcome makes no difference to the issues of deep concern. The media looks for a fight because we as readers respond when they find one. We are in a collective culture that has the makings of a bad dream.   Advances in historical understanding  is an opportunity to rethink how we got here and where we are.  The South Asia Tsunami reminds us how interconnected we are and how poorly coordinated we are. Humanity's history on earth is a kind of Tsunami. We are a late arriving species, spilling across the planet, and in same danger of a collapse. We never fully understand what is happening And we live with always incomplete knowledge. How then should we govern ourselves, as individuals and as larger communities?   We have throughout human presence on the planet we have tried to organize ourselves to do better. But ideology serving the needs of leaders to govern has blinded us to a fuller picture.   From earliest times our leaders organized us with a mixture of self-serving interest and a vision of the common good that organized society to support their own interests. But as society grew more complex and leadership more remote "the peop1e" were organized in increasingly harsh ways to meet needs and opportunities as perceived by those who governed. Agriculture society needed farmers and armies. Later industrialization's leaders needed to shift agricultural  workers to factories and trades and so people were forced off of farms and into a cash economy where survival required wages.   But with the larger field of competition of the postindustrial made possible by electronic communication, cost became a driving factor and people were paid less, or pushed out of the systems. The organic connection of need that connected population with elites has been coming apart. held together as consumers through the media rather than as citizens through informed participation.   end snip   So the spetre of the poor in SE asia is an accute embarrassment, and we have to look like we are taking care of them because we don't wnat our own to get uppity.   I wonder, when reconstruction is done, how much we will end by having corporations where now we have independent peasant fihermen and shop keepers? Certainly the shift to corporate franchise seems to be a likely outcome in Iraq.   We need to look for fragile signs of new thinking. Certainly the world sympathy, like for Diana's campaign against land mines, is real and palpable. Can it be organized? Posted by douglass carmichael 4:11:50 PM    comment []

1/6/2005 1/6/2005 Iraq and Tsunami   I give my gift to you My life I give The metal of the bursting grenade Enters my body, my soul Blood, scattering flesh Brain bursts Heart sags My marionette limbs Spread noodles on the ground This phallic Made in Tennessee I read on the internet A woman who came to work A few months ago Watched TV and Bush Sweat flowed off her dripping husband As the bed shook And breath Oh to have another breath My Lungs shattered like spilled popcorn Her breath picked up speed Sperm and deed And at work recalled All thought back None forward To imagine Entering me Releasing me From hope Fear I give my gift My life On a dusty road Last glimpse of Others ripped too We are to be Unremembered Togeth…   I give me gift This life This flesh This beautiful skin The quick water Rose up Like a man over a woman And more and more Like a heavy breeze with a load of anger Hit like a fist And my body yields Learned standing on earth My father my mother my childhood to water to instinctive swimming Head back for air But water Sun and sea Day after day Shimmering  fish Nets repaired Need to get to the market Nose full Taste of salt This is the food of death Don't swallow My wife my son I swallow Eyes open In swirling mud and sand mother Sounds of all sounds Enter my ears I reach In the whirling Submerging Down Crash against Something dull hard Unconscious of me I yield My gift My only Life Allah Somebody Grab me I gi…. Everything...                 Posted by douglass carmichael 9:26:22 AM    comment []