"SHAME was one of my biggest mistakes!" (George Burns as God, in OH, God! the movie)

In the 1977 movie, Oh, God! God, played by George Burns at 94, says to his emissary, Jerry, the supermarket manager played by John Denver, "Shame was one of my biggest mistakes!"
Delivered in the off-hand manner which characterized much of Burns' successful comedic career, it almost passes the viewer by, given its two-second's of movie time.
Nevertheless, like other "lines" in other movies, it has a lingering, if not echoing effect on the state of the world.
Individuals, in the west, at least, are indoctrinated in what might be called "Christianity 101" with bed-time stories about creation, the Tablets from Mount Sinai, the flood and the ark, the hiding of baby Moses in the bullrushes, the many wives of Kings, the defeat of Goliath by the young David, and of course, the ruin of Sodom and Gomorrah allegedly resulting from their gross immorality. Other, New Testament stories have headlines that begin with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, the stories of his birth, his encounter with lepers, the woman at the well, with the Pharisees, his Sermon on the Mount, his gathering of disciples, his sailing on the Sea of Galilee with those disciples, his Transfiguration...
And then, stories abound from other "letters" some of which may bear the hand of the Apostle Paul...especially his line, "We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God!" among other cultural shibboleths like the most admired state is celibacy, with marriage only a poor second and others of his more prominent "teachings" depending on the brand of the christian message one's family was taught, believed and passed on to the children.
Such aphorisms as "Pride goes before a fall" (from Proverbs) and "Spare the rod, spoil the child" (by Samuel Butler, in a little poem exposing the factions in the English Civil War in 1642, and he also bears the indelible imprint of a christian "upbringing") also clutter our early beginnings, since we have hear such gems, or nuggets or "bullets" of "wisdom" from a very early age.
Those schooled in the contents of the Bible, depending on the nature of that schooling and also on the severity of the parent's obedience to that schooling, bear a remarkable and often superior attitude to that "schooling"...it ranks higher than "knowing one's times-tables from primary math classes".
And then, of course there are the Ten Commandments, second only to the caution "Do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life" in the Garden of Eden in their ancestry and power over the lives of millions of families, court and legal systems, and the concomitant punishments, mostly designed by humans, for disobedience.
God speaks, in the words of scripture, and the whole world shakes, for millenia....and the whole world is still shaking, although the more recent shakings have different weapons of enforcement, recruitment, training and also both punishments and rewards.
Nevertheless, at the heart of the matter, "Shame," focuses on the question of the worth, value, goodness, authenticity and "obedience" of individual human beings, in the eyes of God, whose "eyes" can only be a human interpretation of what God might mean. This is especially true, for many, as they advance in years, hoping for a happy landing in a Heaven they may or may not merit depending on their life here on this planet, and depending largely on their belief in and adherence to the "rules" as they understand them.
I once listened to a ninety-plus year old man, lying in his hospital bed, as he repeated to himself, and to those of us at his bedside, "I know that I have not lived a life acceptable to God!" Over and over the line ran, a recorded mantra of shame,  unworthiness, belief and perception. His spirit was anguished at his own unworthiness to meet God. He was, in short, full of shame...as he neared his death and possible encounter with God.
What if, I wondered, God has already accepted every human being, even Hitler, and Osama ben Laden, as "created in his image" as a child of God? What if our conflicts and our inhumanities to one another are merely our seeing through the glass darkly, our limited vision of what God "wants", what God means, and what God expects from each of us? What if we are and have been for millenia, focusing on the sinful aspects of our individual lives and souls, as well as on the collective indecencies and acts of revenge, murder, rape, pillage, that we have so passionately pursued, and that those passions are merely the expressions of our "emptiness" and our self-sabotaging belief, using God as our excuse for both our denigration and the heaping of officially sanctioned punishments on those we believe warrant the use of the power of the state? And that question applies to all faith communities, not only the christian!
What would the world be like if we could look into the mirror and suddenly know that every act we commit, especially in the name of God, that hurts the smallest and most vulnerable creature, even a sparrow on the clothesline, is anathema to God, to the sparrow, and to all of those who know about our insouciance?
What would the world be like if we were to be taught that God really is love, forgiveness, patience, wisdom and that God is all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful....and those attributes can not and must not be restricted to our limited human capacity to conceive, to imagine and to communicate those definitions?
What would the world  be like if God's exciting, and limitless and ever-expanding embrace, acceptance, forgiveness and championing of each of us were actually a given, as the cornerstone of all faiths and all spiritual journeys, and not the fear that we so compulsively and obsessively and neurotically embrace, as the "essence of our identity"?
"Oh, that would be a world dominated by hubris, and the Greeks taught us how tragic that would inevitably be," I hear you mouthing.
Really? Would it? Or would it be a world in which the psychiatrists couches and their pharmaceutial-industrial-military-capitalistic empires would no longer be needed, except for the few whose innate spiritual poverty required attention?
Or would it be that we could abandon our obsessive, compulsive and growing addiction to both secrecy and secret spying even on our friends, along with our bombs and our missiles, and our weapons of mass destruction, along with our dependency on those "boys-toys" that keep all governments and their peoples in extreme and growing anxiety, so that the flow of money from the sale of dependency products and services continues to grow and to feed the insatiable appetites of those in power, (READ: those with the money!)?
"Oh, how naive, and how disconnected from reality, and how child-like is this vision of a world without shame," I see your lips moving.
I don't know about you, but if and when an action of my life, or words that I may have penned, are thrown in my face, and in the faces of my enemies, without an opportunity to contextualize, without an opportunity to apologize, without an opportunity to face the music, and seemingly only for the purpose of feeding the "power and control" needs of those enemies, I feel worthless, embarrassed, cheapened, and quite literally trashed. And I am quite literally beside myself with SHAME!
And, I have not learned how that shame has served to advance my intellect, my spirit, my personal health nor my relationships with others. In fact, I believe that it has led to my withdrawal from the pursuit of relationships beyond those that could be classed as 'transactional'...the doctor, the dentist, the lawyer, the mailman, the grocer and the auto mechanic, for whose services I pay and for my needs they provide their service.
Roger Miller wrote a song once that included the words, "it's my belief pride is the chief cause in the decline in the number of husbands and wives".....and the song goes on to picture two broken hearts neither one prepared to offer forgiveness.  One is prompted to ask, Is PRIDE not the other side of the coin called SHAME?
If we were not so full of SHAME, would we be so in need of the PRIDE that breaks so many relationships?
If we were not so indoctrinated in the "evil" of mankind, by our christian churches, would we be so inclined to work out our SHAME, in the most heinous, and nefarious and reactionary manners, the range of which run the gamut from small and insidious acts of vengeance in middle schools throughout the west, to larger and more blood-spilling conflicts, wars and their snipping of the lives of so many of our "brothers and sisters"....
I agree with the George Burns' (God) line that SHAME was, indeed, one of his biggest mistakes, especially given all the self-denigration it has given way to, with hospital wards full of millions struggling, just like that ninety-plus year old man, whose spirit was one of the most brilliant, and most humble and most generous and most memorable I have ever met, or likely will meet.

"No money fighting poverty and hunger"...George Carlin

UN seeks $1 billion to feed Sahel


Syrian crisis is distracting attention from 11 million people at risk in Africa’s desolate arid zone, the UN says.

From Reuters in Toronto Star, July 4, 2013
DAKAR—The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for more than $1 billion to help feed 11 million people at risk across Africa’s arid Sahel belt, warning that the crisis in Syria was distracting donors from the Sahel humanitarian situation.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said this year’s war in northern Mali, in which a French-led military campaign destroyed an Islamist enclave, had worsened annual food shortages across the region.
Some 175,000 Malian refugees are camped in neighbouring Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger, placing strain on scant food supplies. Another 353,000 people are displaced within Mali itself, having abandoned their homes and livelihoods.
Robert Piper, the UN regional humanitarian co-ordinator for the Sahel, said donor governments had provided only $607 million from an estimated $1.7 billion needed this year to help people at risk of hunger and malnutrition across the desolate region, which runs east to west across Africa.
“Humanitarian funding is also under huge pressure now because of Syria. The amount of money required for Syria is off the chart,” Piper said, noting that $4 billion from a global UN humanitarian appeal of $9 billion was earmarked for Syria.
The conflict in Syria has killed 100,000 people and, according to the UN, driven 1.7 million more to seek sanctuary outside the country.
In our towns and cities, we have food banks to feed the hungry, supported by both business and private individuals and families,  churches and supportive charities. The hungry are right before our eyes, and their numbers are growing, as both unemployment and the costs to purchase food and other essentials continue to rise rapidly. These hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people who face extreme food shortages are a headline in a newspaper, a photo-clip on a television newscast, and an occasionaly water-cooler conversation that might go something like this:
"There are so many people who are starving in the world, I wonder what can be done about their plight?"
"Yeah, sometimes I think our governments should remember that 'charity begins at home'....."
As both individuals wander back to their work stations, without another thought about the issue...
As George Carlin says, "We have wars against any problem we see, because there is money in it for us....but there is no money in fighting poverty!"
As Chris Hedges reminds us, in his most recent book, "Days of Destruction, Days of Defeat" we have only choices, given the enmeshment of our governments and the corporations, either we will be rebels and activists or we can be slaves to the system that is generating so much wealth for a few and so much hunger, starvation, poverty, abuse and denigration for so many.
The world, at least the western world, has not yet grasped the glaring dichotomy that Hedges puts before us, and headlines like this one, and many others, linked as they so often are to military conflict and the resulting casualties, are unlikely to move either western governments or individuals or certainly corporations to ante up to help feed those without food.
It is not that the world does not produce enough food, so far at least, it is rather that the notion of each of us is our "brother's keeper" has become so tarnished with the "nanny state" political rhetoric that these issues are being left primarily to the non-profit sector. And while the numbers of non-profits are growing significantly, without government and corporate "heavy money" being shovelled into the cause, the hungry will continue to go without food.
However, it is our "out-of-sight-out-of mind" attitude to the people starving in Africa and Asia that helps insulate and isolate us from the full complexities and meaning of the situation. And so, off to work we go, if we still have work, and on the way drive through another coffee shoppe for another mojo to get our day off on the right foot...and so, apparently do those making decisions on behalf of our governments, at least with regard to topping up these funds at the United Nations, whose reputation is also slipping given the rhetoric coming from the right across Europe and North America.

Mr. Obama, take off the sheepskin gloves, put on the boxing gloves and fight the opposition to the ground..NOW!

There is something quite disconcerting about the Egyptian "coup d'etat" conducted by the military, with the support of millions of Egyptians. The leader, Morsi, was, allegedly not doing a very good job, specifically not listening to his opponents.
And so, the opponents removed him literally, physically, politically and presumably forever.
In the U.S. the opposition, the Republicans in the House especially, refuse to permit legislation to pass, even when the president deliberately includes many of his opponents' recommendations in his legislation.
They are determined to see Obama fail.
Except for gathering by the millions in the streets of Washington, has this American version of the opposition to the White House not effectively emasculated this president, beyond repair....and done it with impunity?
The Muslim Brotherhood, however, are unlikely to remain either silent or inactive with this recent development; they are likely to organize, as they did for the first elections, winning some 47% of the popular vote, and without an organized and coherent opposition, they could well bring either Morsi or some other figurehead, from their movement back to power, and do it with a vengeance having been thwarted the first time.
In the U.S. it seems that the Republican opposition to Obama and his policies, a short list follows:

• their persistent demands that Obamacare be repealed,
• their opposition to full citizenship for immigrants,
• their blocking of the president's jobs bill,
• their opposition to anything that attempts to confront global warming and climate change,
• their aggressive hike to the interest rate on student loans,
• their hawkish approach to Syria, and of course,
• their ironclad blocking of any tax hike, even for the richest 1-2%
• their support for, and then their castigation of the president for sequestration and its impacts
• their aggressive demand that billions be spent on a wall along the Mexican border that no one who fully understands the situation agrees will work
• their relentless pursuit of state legislation that will make it more difficult for blacks, the poor and the young to vote in state and federal elections

One has to ask, "Is this NOT a coup by filibuster, by denial, delay, obfuscation, twisting the truth, and outright lying?"
Obama's Mr. Niceguy approach, attempting to deal with his opponents in a manner befitting a serious mediation or even arbitration, has not, can not and will not work with this bunch of cretins.
Only by confronting the Republican opposition with strength, power, courage, even daring them to oppose will the president break this logjam....and while the Republicans have successfully created the obstruction, it is the president's task to blow it apart, as one would a beaver dam that is flooding the farmers' fields.
He needs to be bold, aggressive, and he needs to pick a front-page fight that we guarantee him and his administration 72-point headlines in every major daily newspaper, and every nightly newscast, not to mention wall-to-wall coverage on both Fox NEWS and MSNBC, both of course giving the measure opposing coverage.
And whatever measure he chooses to draw his own red line in the sand, it had better be an issue that will face the United States for decades, if not the rest of this century. And in generating a dramatic turning-point in the issue, Obama will thereby assure his second term will not be a lame-duck, as it appears to be becoming prematurely.
Take off the political gloves, Mr. Obama, and wrestle this paper tiger, the Tea Party and the Republican opposition to the ground....not through attrition, not through compromise, not through mediation, but through the overt deployment of your most aggressive and creative and intellectual "warrior"....
And do it soon!
The world is waiting!
The whole country is waiting!
Your becoming part of the Washington establishment is not the legacy that your daughters want to read about to their children!

Toronto Star urges clemency for Snowden. We concur!

Rather than risk more embarrassing U.S. behaviour being exposed, the government might be wiser to offer him clemency. He shouldn’t face a lengthy prison term for exposing government overreach. (from "Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing sparks a debate America needed to have: Editorial", Toronto Star, July 3, 2013, below)
Finally, we have a respected public media organization putting into perspective the "Snowden Affair"....pointing to the U.S. obsessive fear of terrorism and the lengths to which it goes to "protect" itself, ironically while calling itself the "land of the free and the hope of the brave"...
We concur wholeheartedly with the quote above that clemency for Snowden from the United States would demonstrate a renewal of the American "dream" in a world gone mad with both militarism and capitalism unfettered.
It is not only in its pursuit of Snowden as everything up to and including Benedict Arnold, the great American betrayer and model of treason, that the U.S. has poisoned any hope of either clemency or a fair trial, should he be brought back to American soil for an examination under the American legal system. It is also in secretly assisting in the closing of air space to the Bolivian president attempting to return home from "gas talks" (wouldn't Ron James have fun with that metaphor!) that the U.S. has further contaminated diplomatic waters, as the biggest bully on the planet. Even Russian President Putin, taking the high road, has told Snowden that should Russia grant him politician asylum, he would have to cease release of documents harmful to "our American partner".....hardly the voice of the heavy-handed pugilist, the world knows him to be.
The public debate over excessive surveillance is long overdue, the details of which will keep another "army" of drones digging in the bowels of the Homeland Security offices for decades, without turning up a shred of useful evidence for the prevention of further terror attacks. So, one is prompted to ask, with the unemployment figures so high, and so many people simply withdrawing from even seeking work, has the U.S. government not so incidentally and not so accidentally, created a make-work scheme to keep the numbers from driving Wall Street markets into the Hudson River?
The right wing "hawks" are winning the "public relations" war in the U.S. as the president and the Democrats beaver away at a pitiful attempt to out-gun them with policies and practices that seem calculated to even out-Cheney-Bush. And the repercussions on Obama's presidential legacy will be rippling negatively in history books for decades, if not centuries.

Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing sparks a debate America needed to have: Editorial

Whatever Edward Snowden’s fate, he has done his nation a service. The United States has never had an informed public debate about subordinating privacy to national security to such a degree.
Toronto Star Editorial, July 3, 2013

U.S. President Barack Obama presides over this week’s Independence Day festivities under a cloud. Fully one in two Americans no longer thinks their commander-in-chief is “honest and trustworthy,” as the full scope of Washington’s vast telecommunications surveillance program sinks in. That’s the biggest show of mistrust since he was first elected. America’s image as a nation that vigilantly cherishes civil rights is in tatters. And key European and Asian allies are unsettled at finding that they, too, are targets.

The U.S. authorities are feeling a world of hurt, and rightly so, now that whistleblower Edward Snowden has exposed just how far Washington has gone in its obsessive war on terror. As the Star noted on June 9 when this story broke, this is “surveillance gone wild.” Many Americans, especially a younger generation, were appalled to hear Obama try to shrug off the spying as “modest encroachments” on privacy. They are anything but.
The former National Security Agency contract employee leaked documents to the Guardian and Washington Post that exposed a massive dragnet of Americans’ phone records, and monitoring of the contents of foreigners’ Internet communications. It came as a shock to many Americans, who were unaware of the scope of the snooping, although the Obama administration defended it as legal under the sweeping U.S. Patriot Act, known to Congress’ security leaders and vetted by security courts.
Snowden’s latest revelation in Der Spiegel magazine that the NSA bugged European Union offices in Washington and New York has given Washington a fresh spasm of heartburn.
All this has led to pointed questions abroad, including here in Canada, about security agency activities and the degree of scrutiny they receive. Rather than accept bland assurances that all is well, Parliament should revisit the issue in the fall. Creating an Orwellian surveillance state is not the way to fight terrorism.
It is a shame that Snowden and his character have now become the story, distracting attention from the broader issues. He’s been marooned in a Moscow airport in geopolitical limbo, his U.S. passport revoked, petitioning some unsavoury regimes to grant him asylum. He’s been hailed as a whistleblower, called un-American, vilified as a traitor, mocked as a disloyal naïf and branded a thief.
U.S. officials have charged him with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person — crimes that carry 10-year prison terms.
Even if Snowden manages to reach asylum he knows U.S. agents will hunt him to the ends of the Earth. Arguably he would be better off taking his chances in a U.S. court, where he can argue that he was morally if not legally justified in alerting Congress and the world to what the administration has been up to. “My sole motive,” he told the Guardian, “is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.” Rather than risk more embarrassing U.S. behaviour being exposed, the government might be wiser to offer him clemency. He shouldn’t face a lengthy prison term for exposing government overreach.
Whatever Snowden’s fate, he has done his nation a service. The American public and many lawmakers had no idea that the government was continuously and indiscriminately collecting the phone records of most citizens and scouring U.S. Internet companies for foreign emails and social media postings. There was never an informed public debate about subordinating privacy to security to such a degree. If anything, officials tried to minimize the scope of the programs. Now they are trying to justify the snooping by saying it has prevented terror attacks.
In light of Snowden’s revelations, there have been calls for Congress and the courts to rein in this overreach to better protect freedom of expression and the press, as well as privacy rights. “I welcome this debate, and I think it’s healthy for our democracy,” Obama now says. Maybe so. Yet but for Snowden, there would have been no debate.

(Update) Egypt: Morsi under house arrest along with several of his inner circle

8:30 p.m. July 3, 2013
UPDATE: President Morsi is now under house arrest, along with several members of his inner circle, and the former Chief Justice is  now the interim leader of Egypt. The constitution has been scrapped and a road-map for the next steps has been arrived at with steps that include the re-writing of the constitution, followed by national elections.
Effectively, without a shot being fired by the Egyptian military, (financed to the tune of some $1.4 billion annually by the U.S. although some of that money is dedicated to humanitarian needs.)
So, now that the Egyptian version of the Muslim Brotherhood has been removed from power by a military that upheld former President Mubarak (an American ally and some would say puppet) will the question be asked, Was Morsi removed from power indirectly by the American-supported military leaders?
And if that becomes the national perception, after the dust settles on the latest chapter of this drama, then will the U.S. be hung with the reputation of placing fast and loose with Egyptian political life?
While there is considerable evidence that the Muslim Botherhood were extremely ineffectual in providing good governance for the people of Egypt, (the economy is still in tatters along with the standard of living of many of their people, and the peace treaty with Israel seems to be less important under Morsi that it was under Mubarak) there is also a clear indication that the Muslim Brotherhood did not and would not listen to other groups in the society, costing Morsi his job, albeit an elected post.
The world will be watching as this fluid story continues to play itself out....
And the Situation Room in the White House will be "on alert" for the foreseeable future...


6.00 a.m. July 3, 2013
Are we watching, in Cairo, the struggle between the Muslim Botherhood (Morsi's forces) and the secularists, a struggle that could see another civil war in the Middle East?
In refusing to step down, and also refusing to accept the military's ultimatum, is Morsi so determined to cling to power because he is also determined to create an Islamic state, as the western media seems to suggest?
Obama's phone call reminded Morsi that the U.S. is not a supporter of any specific political party, but is a supporter of democracy for Egypt....and urged Morsi to meet with and to negotiate new terms with his political opponents, something Obama himself has found extremely difficult in Washington, given the itransigence of the Republic opposition.
While there have already been casualties in the streets of Cairo, with both sides firing on the other, and while there seems to be some public support for the army's ultimatum in the streets, if this "Mexican stand-off" is not de-escalated through the prevailing of calmer heads, Egypt could become a boiling cauldron of civil conflict, a turn which could and would only worsen the chances that her economy and her liberty and her standing on the world stage would improve.
Anyone who thinks, naively, that "we do not have a dog in this fight" is sadly mistaken, considering the significance of another Islamic state in the Middle East. If Morsi is either permitted or forces his will on the people of Egypt, and the country morphs into another Islamic state, there will be serious consequences for other moderate countries in the region, not to mention the danger to Israel.
The world watches, seemingly helpless and seemingly only as spectators, while the streets of Cairo are brimming with human flesh, so far mainly in two separate contingents, keeping their distance, in order to prevent all-out violence.
By the end of today, the world will have some idea of which was this conflict is turning....and Morsi's threat to defend his constitutional right to hold power "with his life" is hardly a sign that he is willing to make the kind of compromises, for his country's long-term benefit, that seem to be at the centre of his opponents' demands.
A serial movie, "remove the dictator" seems to be playing out on the streets of Cairo....and Morsi's apparently "tin ear" to the demands of his opponents is doing little to resolve the mess.

U.S. Supreme Court "highly activist" in recent decisions...

Remember the political rhetoric from the Republicans during the George W. Bush "reign" against activist judges...ironically beginning with the Supreme Court's gift of the presidency to Bush himself, in spite of the facts on the ground that Al Gore had indeed more votes in Florida than his Republican opponent. And remember the debate over the Bush appointments to that same Supreme Court, of Justices Roberts and Alito, that there would  be no "judicial activism" from this court, as it would keep a strict adherence to the founders' meaning and intent in their writing of the constitution.
With the court's decisions recently, once again, it has proven itself to be little more than a rubber stamp for the long-term Republican goal of suppression of the votes in states and districts populated by predominately Democratic voters...the poor, blacks, and the young. Gutting the critical clause in the Voter Registration Act now paves the way for states to pass laws restricting voters, even though literacy tests and other abominations to keep the 'underclass' out of the voting booth were abandoned long ago.
While that blow to democracy, in favour of a political ambition on the 'right' to control both houses of Congress and the White House through voter suppession was being digested in the public media, the court then declared the federal Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional, once again leaving the matter of gay unions and marriages to the states.
This decision was supported by seven of the nine justices, whereas the VRA decision was another five-four decision in favour of the conservatives.
And now that we all know, without a shadow of a doubt, that every branch of the U.S. government is driven by party ideology, including especially the Supreme Court, how long will it take for the ordinary citizen to lose confidence in the strict adherence to the principles, protocols and practices of the legal profession, allegedly the pillars of the court's existence and its operation?
How long will it take for the political operatives to begin the information campaign to wrap the next presidential candidates with the 'appropriate' list of candidates for the court, should there be an opening in the presidential term?
How long will it take for legal scholars to begin to shred the pretense of "law" and its traditions, its long established principles and decorum, and replace those papier-mache cover-ups with the raw truth of partisanship?
Sadly, the framers of the constitution did not provide for an appeal process to the Supreme Court's decision, except for repeated attempts to bring cases previously ruled back to the court, in a different fomat, with a different plaintiff, and a different petition.
The court has, itself, without help from the political operatives, reduced its value, not to mention its platinum reputation, through such horrendous political decisions as in Bush v. Gore in 2000.
The new century ushered in a new bravado on the part of the Republicans, one that unabashedly saw the court trump the facts in favour of their political appointee to the White House, thereby literally, as well as metaphorically, denying the "facts" of the case. Weren't we all under the strong and nearly indelible impression that legal decisions resulted from the presentation of the facts, and there was clearly no lack of such compelling facts favouring Gore in 2000?
With this latest gutting of the Voter Registration Act (in Justice Ginsberg's dissenting opinion, "It is like not opening your umbrella in a rain storm because you are not getting wet."), the court has fallen further into the slough of political ideology and political "re-districting" in effect permitting those in power in state legislatures, should Congress not act to prevent this, to continue to write, promote and pass legislation making it even more difficult for Democratic voters to vote.
There are so many signs that the U.S. is a crumbling political, economic and social culture, and this latest move by the Supreme Court continues the country's slide into a deserved valley of ideology and corporatism from which it will only climb after decades of diligent repair.

We are all refugees, indigents, lepers, hungry, lonely... and still we hope

Jingoism is extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is a country's advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests. Colloquially, it refers to excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others—an extreme type of nationalism. (from Wikipedia website)
Listening  to George Carlin on PBS this weekend appearing in Madison Square Gardens, we heard Carlin refer to the U.S. as a country addicted to war, and then also heard Carlin declare that war is in essence the waving of a male body part, as an expression of inadequacy, a lack of self-confidence and a competitive method of over-compensation. He did not fail to mention that whenever the U.S. faced any 'problem' they always declared "war" on that problem: the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigrants, the war on some unarmed dictator who is currently not hurting anyone...but never, according to Carlin does the U.S. declare war on "poverty" "because there is no money to be made in such a war"!
Today, the streets around Tahrir Square in Cairo are filled with thousands of people, both demanding the expulsion of President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, and in response, pushing back in support of Morsi. Reports of deaths and injuries are, of course, seeping out of Egypt into our television screens as the violence continues.
Today, reports of more deaths, injuries and refugees continue to pour out of Syria, as the civil war in that country continues to take its toll. Some, like David Ignatius, in the Washington Post, are suggesting that President Obama's failure to "act" in the current Middle East cauldron that includes Syria, evokes images of Hamlet who failed to act in Shakespeare's famous tragedy. Perhaps, following the jingoism of George W. Bush, Obama's reluctance to rush in with arms and boots on the ground is a welcome sign to the rest of the world that the U.S. is not going to permit herself to be characterized by a former jingoism that has proven so devastating both to the invaded countries as well as to the U.S. itself.
Today also we read that President Putin has signed an "anti-gay" law in Moscow, declaring Russia one of the most vocal opponents of a life-style that is gaining support and recognition in North America and in Europe, in another form of social conflict that seems to divide the world into two camps, Africa being another region where gays and lesbians can be punished, even killed, for their sexual orientation.
In Canada, on our 'national birthday' and holiday July 1, we are again treated to the Harper version of patriotism with an increased political emphasis on our military history, along with the name change from the Canadian Navy and Air Force, to the "Royal" Canadian Navy and Air Force... a symbolic gesture that, along with the millions allocated to the celebration of the Canadian experience of the War of 1812, seems little more than a narrow and politically motivated gesture to rally votes and voters around the flag for the benefit of the Conservative party's re-election prospects....As Thomas Walkom laments, is this not merely a sign of jingoism and not authentic patriotism?
Jingoism, an excessive bias in judging one's country as superior to others, is something fostered not only by political leaders; it is a dangerous cancerous tumor in the practice of too many religious organizations....even if not known by the same "word". Excessive bias in the superiority of any faith, it says here, is merely a form of overcompensation for the purpose of attracting new converts to the cause, similar to the Carlin depiction of the overcompensation that he sees from leaders in all wars.
It probably sounds, and well may be, excessive over-simplification to suggest that military conflict, and even competition between countries, corporations, religions, ethnicities is, at root, the expression of more fear than hope, more insecurity than confidence, more scarcity than abundance, more neurosis that psychic health, and more desperation than equanimity.
And Jingoism, is merely another form of that scarcity....the scarcity that we are not recognized by others adequately, and therefore have to pump our own image of ourselves up with puffery.
And, in order to level the playing field, where such over-compensation is neither necessary nor accepted by any national or sectarian public, we have to envision a world in which differences are not used to demonstrate superiority, and thereby inferiority, to demonstrate power over, and thereby power-under.
Gays and lesbians struggle, in the minds of the Russian state, as individuals who are not welcome in their society.
Blacks for centuries struggled as individuals who were regarded, by Christians not so incidentally, as slaves.
Women were for centuries, regarded as "less than human" by other Christians (men only).
The dispossessed, in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and in many countries where the social class warfare has emerged as one of the most dramatic themes of the 21st century, are essentially voiceless and impoverished, not only on their tables, and in their beds, but over their airwaves....and are now taking to their wireless devices to tell their stories, both personal and collective....
And the elites, not surprisingly, are beginning to show signs of apprehension, even modest signs of fear....as well they should...in what signs are moving through the skies that as Bob Dylan wrote and sang, in a very different time in the late 1960's "The Times they are changing"
And, as the times change, we lend our voices to those struggling for a decent meal, a decent education, access to decent health care, access to legitimate and dignified work and to clean air, water and land....in all countries...and we must not fail in our chorus of the dispossessed....
We are all refugees,
We are all indigents,
We are all gays and lesbians
We are all lepers and victims of the
AIDS- virus
And we all are hungry
beyond words
And we are all lonely
beyond hope...
                       depending only on those sisters and brothers who are "ONE-with us"!