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I was lucky enough to see Utah Phillips tonight, he was at the Lewiston-Auburn branch of USM. Utah is part historian, part storyteller, part folksinger, part anarchist, part peace activist, part wobbly organizer, part elder; in short, Utah is the modern-day embodiment of the bard.

He is, by his own admission, Socratic in his methodology through-and-through, as he puts it, “I love books, but I keep them in their proper place.” He’s more about storytelling and listeners than the written word. My first exposure to Utah was through a collaboration with Ani DiFranco called The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, which still ranks among my favorite albums of all time. I remember my daughter, barely old enough to speak, walking around the house singing “you’ve got to mess with people, day and night, you’ve got to mess with people”; one of my favorite nuggets of wisdom from Utah.

It is also from Utah that I learned to think about politics from two perspectives: top-down and bottom-up. The top-down perspective is the dominant one in our culture, and is hugely depressing for those of us who pay attention. How can one be optimistic about the state of power politics, empire-building, and militarism/nationalism dominant in the US?

But from a bottom-up perspective, we are surrounded by optimism, hope, and goodwill. People come together despite differences, live and learn together, form communities, and all that other goodwill-hippie stuff.

So tonight, there was a small room, with perhaps 75-100 people listening to his stories. There were several nuggets there — including a beautiful moment where he pretty much voiced an opinion I’ve held for a long time, the essence of which is that most Christians aren’t very Christian — that caused probably a dozen people to get up and walk out of the room. Heh.

But the one quote that resonated most strongly with me is in the title of this entry. And it got me thinking about my pessimism regarding people coming together in our divided society. The problem is, Americans are by and large still far too comfortable in their ignorant, wageslaving existence to think about alternatives. But as things continue to worsen — and I don’t feel I’m pessimistic to believe that Things(tm) will continue to get worse before they get better — more and more people will share in this sense of human degradation, providing a powerful motivation to come together and organize, to move from a state of passive acceptance to direct action, which for Utah is the only way to make a difference in bottom-up politics.

So when Things(tm) get bad, they in a sense will really only start to get good, because that will be the switch when people finally are able to let go of the paradigm of dominance, of exploitation, of competition, of systematic violence and oppression, and of nationalism, and will finally be able to embrace cooperation, and community, and justice, and equality. So without attachment to the current dominant paradigm, one can very much have hope for a better future when the paradigm crashes and burns. I just hope that there are enough of us who survive this crashing and burning.

So yeah. Due to various health problems, Utah isn’t travelling as much as he used to, but if you ever get a chance to see him for yourself, I highly recommend it.

I remember being surprised at how little we in the states heard about the US assault on Fallujah last year. Well, new stories are finally coming out about that assault:

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

So add white phosphorus to the horrid weapons historically used by the US military, joining napalm, nuclear weapons, depleted uranium, and who knows what else.

What is so horrible about white phosphorus?

“Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone … I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for.”

A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: “A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact.”

The US government admits that it used phosphorus, but it claims it only used it “for illumination purposes.” Uh-huh. And now the BuShites are advocating torture, trying to set a precedent for treating detainees and/or prisoners, yet their policies are already causing unimaginable pain to their victims, without regard to the political consequences of such brutality.

And now people wonder why Bush’s approval rating is so low.

Like many, I’ve been hearing a lot about the riots in France, but I wasn’t sure what the riots were about. And I have had neither the time nor the inclination to investigate, until today.

There are several things one must understand about this. First of all, France has the highest Muslim population (about 5 million) in Europe. Secondly, much of this population, who are largely derived from centuries of French colonialism in North Africa, exists in poverty:

The growing violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many immigrants and their French-born children live on society’s margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimination and despair — fertile terrain for crime of all sorts.

In case there was any doubt about “Muslim extremists” (nee “Terrorists”), it is important to note the following:

France’s biggest Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that forbade all those “who seek divine grace from taking part in any action that blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others.”

So it seems that much of the unrest comes from the horrible poverty, unemployment, and racism that exists in France, that has existed for a long time. To put this in perspective, the largely Muslim areas where the rioting is mostly happening have a much higher unemployment rate than the rest of France, nearly 40%, compared to the national average in France of 10%.

It is also important to note that the rioting is not new:

… riots like those going on right now have been going on for years, on and off, in towns and suburbs far outside of Paris, led by disaffected children of immigrants, black, Muslim or both, and for the usual reasons: high unemployment, nothing to do, resentment of racism. The difference this time is that the trashing and burning and assaults that have broken out over the past ten days in the northern suburbs of Paris are too close to ignore. What’s new is a desperate desire to make sense of these events.

So I’m not alone. These events are somewhat inexplicable; those in power are by definition those of privilege, and are not accustomed to systematic racism affecting their means of survival. So they don’t really know how to respond, except to protect their privilege (ie, their property) with overwhelming force, promising further violence and punishment for rioters. Yeah, that’ll help.

The violence seems to be spreading, for right now to Belgium and Germany. It will be interesting to see how the US government responds if/when unrest of this sort comes to the US.

Well, I’m at work, where they only have Internet Exploder installed. Since this horrible excuse for a browser still commands overwhelming market share, I was eager to see how the new design looks from this browser.

Grade: F

It doesn’t render the site correctly, because IE does not adhere to web standards in terms of how it renders HTML and CSS. For those of you who don’t know what this means, basically IE doesn’t render web pages correctly. It’s a problem because so many people use IE, that they think this broken, ill-conceived piece of “innovation” (ha, ha) is actually correct.

Furthermore — and I absolutely LOVE this — this little ol’ web page seems to crash IE. Of course I’ve had no problems whatsoever with Firefox, further testament to the power of Free software over proprietary software.

I think I’ll keep this page as is. If you’re using IE, you should stop. This page is proof of why. Get a better alternative.

Obviously, this site has a new design. I started with a freely-available template called Smoke and Fire and customized it to taste.

I think I like it! I’ll keep it for a while, but of course I have the old template archived. I can always go back to that. Do people like it? Leave a comment….

I’m officially bored with the layout of this website. I designed this page when I created this blog 2 years ago, and I’ve modified it slightly a few times. But I’m officially looking for a new template to use. I can, of course, always revert to this if I don’t like the new site design…

I’ve written before that I conceive of health in terms of Mind, Body, and Spirit. All of these are necessary for total health. When I went back to school in 1998, obviously I spent a lot of time focusing on Mind. Since I graduated in 2002, I’ve reasserted Spirit, a practice that continues to this day. And of course this year I’ve been highly focused on Body.

Perhaps my first realization through this purification is that my mind is not as well-trained as it has been in the past. Not that I’m suddenly stupid or anything (or at least stupider than my standard stupidity level), but spending a few dozen hours per week working through a philosophy text and writing about it, focusing one’s thoughts, is like mental calisthenics. That’s a practice I’ve largely stopped. I do occasionally read philosophy, but not with the rigor or discipline of a formal, dedicated student. So I’ve missed that in a way. I’m also finding that while I remain aware of the political situation, I’m just not as invested in it as I have been; my outrage levels have faded into something like detached amusement. I still care, but I just don’t want to invest energy into being outraged anymore.

I also think my “strategy” in terms of social change has shifted somewhat. Rather than rage against the machine, I think living my life in a way that makes sense to me and promotes goodness and health is the best thing I can do to combat the fascist reality that exists today in America and the world. I sometimes wonder if this is just putting my head in the sand. But I truly believe that the best thing I can do to Change The World(tm) is to continue to focus on my music. It’s been a long, slow birthing process, but once our music is widely available I have no doubt that the message of optimism, entrainment, and reality-creation implicit in our music will effect wave after wave of positive change.

Damn, what a hippie I have become…. heh heh heh.

The purification ritual still goes well. It’s not as difficult as I thought it might be, actually. But then again, in terms of body, I’m feeling better now than I have in many years. I bought a new sledgehammer last week, an upgrade in weight so that my exercise routine is a bit more challenging, something that I welcome.

I’m healthier now than I’ve ever been as an adult. I have more muscle mass, I’m stronger, and I’m at my lowest weight in over a decade. I feel very good, yet I still think there is a long way to go. It is the difference between goal-oriented thinking, and process-oriented thinking. This time, I’m focusing on the process, on developing a healthy routine, as opposed to wishing I were at a specific goal in terms of health/weight etc.

Sustainability is so important, on so many levels. I continue to try to purify myself, in the interest of long-term sustainable health.

For several years running, a close friend of mine has undergone a purification ritual at the beginning of each (pagan) year, from Samhain to Yule. This year I’ve decided to join him, a somewhat austere yet quite healthy program to purify the body and forge the will. I’m a few days into it now, and it’s going well thus far, though it is not without its challenges.

I was talking with another friend of mine that “purification” seems to be a central theme this season. Indeed it is so. This past year has been a huge challenge on many levels for me, and now that much of the negativity has been cleared, it seems as if I’m purifying the space that’s left, cultivating sacred space in my life/energy system in which to place new endeavors looking forward. Ritual purification indeed.

Also, I’ve been feeling the Norse Old Ones calling to me lately. I figured it was a matter of time, given the large percentage of Norwegian blood flowing through my veins. One nice thing about neopaganism is that one is free to associate/identify with any chosen aspect of deity; yet that ancestral calling can definitely resonate strongly.

I went to a Halloween party dressed as Thor recently. I can especially hear Thor beckoning to me on some level; I’ve been wearing Thor’s holy symbol around my neck for several days, and of course I’ve been having fun with my own version of Mjolnir for several months now.

But in many ways, Thor represents the aspects of masculinity that I have always had the hardest time identifying with. Thor was the best warrior, and the strongest, yet I am a pacifist. Thor was quick to anger and frustration and violence, all qualities I have tried to quieten within myself. Yet, Thor was also the protector of the gods, the one who took care of the most challenging tasks.

I don’t know much about Thor yet, but I’m learning, and I’ve put the energy out there for Thor to teach me what I need to learn from him.

So I need to beware huge serpents encircling the Earth, giant cats that cannot be lifted, and drinking horns with one end connected to the sea. Or something.

John Chuckman strikes again:

The name War on Terror is itself perhaps the darkest example of Bushspeak. You cannot have a war on ideas, or a war on religious beliefs, or even a war on people’s feelings of grievance and injustice. The War on Terror is code for belligerent interference in the Middle East. It is also code for the suppression of dissent in America, something dear to the kind of people with which Bush surrounds himself, people who lie, cheat, and profit from billions of dollars being squandered. And all this crashes over us as a result of what the intelligence community calls blowback from bad policies and neglect of years ago.

The above is the final paragraph of this article, which literally deconstructs an entire recent speech by George Dubya. Essential reading for those who are easily mystified or are lulled to sleep by BuShite rhetoric….