Public policy, social issues, gender politics, religion, civitas, and other taboo topics fall under the hammer of Shava's iconoclasmic force of natural philosophy.
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Will the Senator from Utah please take the stand?
Monday, October 27, 2003
9:36 AM
Today, a friend of mine who collects quotes and threads from current news sent me this:
"I will not stand for it. ... Anything that has to do with 9/11, we have to see it —- anything. There are a lot of theories about 9/11, and as long as there is any document out there that bears on any of those theories, we're going to leave questions unanswered. And we cannot leave questions unanswered."
- Thomas Kean, chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 2001 attacks, about the White House continuing to withhold key documents from the investigation, and that they will be forced to issue subpoenas to obtain them. Lest you think this is a partisan publicity stunt, Kean is the former Republican governor of New Jersey.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/national/26KEAN.html
When Bush signed the legislation establishing the commission, he said that the "investigation should carefully examine all the evidence and follow all the facts, wherever they lead."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/11/20021127-1.html
According to Larry Klayman, chairman of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch "This Administration is the most secretive of our lifetime, even more secretive than the Nixon Administration. They don't believe the American people or Congress have any right to information."
http://www.misleader.com/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df10272003.html
Well, this all makes me very aggravated...
In all these 9/11 investigations, why don't they just call Orrin Hatch to tell what he knows? It was Hatch who first tipped the DC press that Bin Laden and his network were responsible for the 9/11 plane hijackings -- within a few hours of the first plane hitting the WTC.
In this MSNBC article written in 1998 soon after the Al-Qaeda bombings of the African embassies, Hatch is quoted:
Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. “It was worth it,” he said.
“Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union,” he said.
With Senator Hatch so intimate with the affair that it was he who cued us in to his boy-gone-bad's involvement, why don't we just put the man under oath and ask him what he knows?
UN Resolutions of Mass Deception
Thursday, October 16, 2003
10:19 PM
Mr. Secretary General, members of the Security Council, I would like to speak today about the recent UN resolution 1511 concerning international support for the stabilization of Iraq...
I have to say I have reservations. In the United States, we see a country whose delivery of social services -- education, support for the poor, even the maintenance of infrastructure such as the electrical grid and public transportation -- has been in decline. Yet we expect that they will assume the leadership in rebuilding Iraq, when all major contracts are going to their own corporations, in blatant disregard for local custom and standards. The money to rebuild Iraq would be more wisely managed by nearly any country in the world except perhaps Argentina.
Yet the competence of the obese and bloated corporatists of the American occupation crony capitalists is hardly coming into question in this world forum.
We have not only tolerated their occupation of Iraqi territory, but we have agreed to aid them in cleaning up their mess, to their profit.
It is in the spirit of prior UN Resolutions that I call into question our willingness to give humanitarian aid to an aggressive power who will only use that aid to free up funding for their own military interests in the region. I believe that the current dictator in Iraq (since the US has taken control of affairs, and there is no real democracy) is being treated with extraordinary courtesy compared to the prior dictator in Iraq.
Iraq is one of the largest sources of petroleum in the world. But the US, as a nation of consumers, is the largest source of commerce of any country in the world. Is it because we can not afford to turn away the dollar from our borders that we are caving to the empire-building interests of the bully of the West?
I say this with great respect for the American people, who seem unable to evict a neoconservative junta from their capital, despite election standards that would have voided diplomatic and trade relations with any country of the global south. I see the people of the United States as the victims, but perhaps too much the co-operating victims, in their own country's fall from respect in the greater world.
How shall we, the many peoples of the many nations, view this late acquiescence to a bad measure? What was it that transpired this week that caused the members of the security council to turn 180 degrees around on this question?
There are people all over the world who are waiting to see the next cascade of bad developments in this affair. We only pray for the best to come from it.
living an open life
Sunday, October 12, 2003
11:44 AM
A friend of mine was a little shocked that I'd have a map to my house online -- admittedly listed by another organization.
She wrote:
> Shava
> do you really want this to come up in a Google search!?!
>
> http://www.porsfis.org/altmtg/shava.html
Actually, I point to that page for people trying to find the house all the time. You can also find my name (in full) and address in the phone book, on online resumes, and various places. (although interestingly googling "shava nerad portland oregon" comes up with my info from 2001 before I moved to this house...) It would be hard to hide it! Why spend time worrying about it?
I don't think this is what Socrates meant when he said the unexamined life is not worth living -- but the life spent evading examination is a life spent in fear. Won't worry about it, as a matter of principle. If I ever do something good enough that someone wants to come hurt me, they will find me anyway. "Locks are made for honest men."
====
I find that people spend a lot of time concerned about their privacy, and I consider huge swaths of this concern to be "locking the barn door when the horse is gone."
I grew up in a small town as a minister's daughter. My privacy was compromised from the day I was born. Most people in public life have their privacy compromised constantly. To many this is a huge disincentive to participating in the civic sphere.
I find that I like my privacy on a moment to moment basis -- but my reaction to being self-actualized is to be secure in my own belief that the way I am living is beyond others' judgement. I don't worry that someone will dig up something from my past or whatever for my sake, though I sometimes am concerned for my mother's or my son's sensibilities.
People should not be shy to live publically regardless of how they choose to live. I am not ashamed -- as the person I am today -- of any action I've taken in the past. Those that I had reason to be ashamed of at the time, I've made peace with them. And none of them are so bad.
When my father died, I said at his funeral, "My father is my hero. He taught me that you can be flawed, and a role model, and accomplish great good." We need to stop making heros of anti-heros, and stop declining to venerate human, imperfect, effective good people.
Part of that is for those of us who wish to do good in the world to live our lives openly, courageously, and with confidence.
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