Evening -

I wrote but was unable to post this morning, so will place it all here a bit out of date.  I had a long, good, tiring day, and this is where it began.

Good Morning!!

I wake, excited about a Sensory Awareness workshop I will participate in today.  Actually it is a study group, and is a commitment to notice and practice each day.  I am excited. 
 

When I was in chemo, and radiation I noticed I was usually “all there for it,” as Charlotte Selver, who named and formed Sensory Awareness in this country, would say.   I didn’t have the energy to be other than “all there” for what I did. It took everything I had to wash, eat, brush my teeth.

 Now, I have more energy and focusing fully on what I am doing is more difficult.  The kittens are my teachers.  They are “all there” for what they do.  Their whole body quivers in excitement.  I feel their hearts beat and change as they respond.   Last night, as evening settled, they sat in front of the fireplace, wondering why it was dark, so I made another fire.  They watched a few minutes, and then, went on to other things.  The moon was what garnered their attention last night.  There is no pretense or dividing of attention.

 

In The Wonder of Improvisation by Al Wunder, he suggests watching your hand move, your fingers, moving with finger as prime mover, wrist.  Notice where your attention is as you move your hand.   Are you “with” the journey?   Are you focused inside, on the hand, outside, on other people, or the walls, or all at one time?   There is no right or wrong, just noticing.   Notice today.   Move your fingers and watch and feel.  What is happening for you now?

 

 
I am enthused over this news.   I personally feel that it is a disgrace that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield, who did not fight in Vietnam, should lead others in a futile fight in Iraq.   I’m glad the military is waking up, and asking for a leader who knows what it is to respond  in the midst of war.

 

Newspapers for troops call for Rumsfeld's ouster

Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, November 4, 2006

An influential chain of newspapers considered must-reading by military forces from California to Baghdad will call for the ouster of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a scathing editorial to be published Monday.

"Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt," the editorial says, according to an advance copy released Friday. "The time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth: Donald Rumsfeld must go."

The editorial will run in the 250,000 copies of Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times and Air Force Times. The newspapers are published under the umbrella Military Times Media Group by Gannett Co. Inc., not by the U.S. military, and have been popular among American forces since World War II.

"It is extremely widely read and influential for the professional military," said David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland.

 

Laura Bush in campaigning for Pombo,  says he is an environmentalist.  Well, yes, by her definition, I suppose he is.  Rachel Gordon writes this in the SF Chronicle today. 

"Pombo, 45, whose family has ranching and real estate interests in San Joaquin County, has pushed for changes to the Endangered Species Act and favors drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the nation's coastal waters. He also proposed selling off more than a dozen national parks -- an idea he retreated from quickly in the face of spirited opposition.

On Friday, Bush said that she, Pombo and her husband, President Bush, share a commitment to natural preservation. "Congressman Pombo is an enthusiastic steward of our country's national resources,'' she said.

Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, which dubbed Pombo an "eco-thug,'' wasted no time in responding.

"I know the first lady is a lover of books, and the book on Pombo's anti-environmental misdeeds is a mile thick,'' Pope said in a statement. "You would need volumes to cover the many times when Congressman Pombo has put oil, mining and other special interests above protecting natural treasures for future generations.''

 

And then there is this:

 

I WANT TO HURT SOMEBODY

by Greg Palast

Thursday, November 2, 2006 for The Guardian (London)

 

It was pure war-nography. The front page of the New York Times today splashed a four-column-wide close-up of a blood-covered bullet in the blood-soaked hands of an army medic who'd retrieved it from the brain of Lance Cpl. Colin Smith.

 

There was a 40 column-inch profile of the medic. There were photos of the platoon, guns over shoulders, praying for the fallen buddy. The Times is careful not to ruin the heroic mood, so there is no photograph of pieces of corporal Smith's shattered head. Instead, there's an old, smiling photo of the wounded soldier.

 

The reporter, undoubtedly wearing the Kevlar armor of the troop in which he's "embedded," quotes at length the thoughts of the military medic: "I would like to say that I am a good man. But seeing this now, what happened to Smith, I want to hurt people. You know what I mean?"

 

The reporter does not bother -- or dare -- to record a single word from any Iraqi in the town of Karma where Smith's platoon was, "performing a hard hit on a house."

 

I don't know what a "hard hit" is. But I don't think I'd want one "performed" on my home. Maybe Iraqis feel the way I do.

 

We won't know. The only Iraqi noted by the reporter was, "a woman [who] walked calmly between the sniper and the marines."

 

The Times reporter informs us that Lance Cpl. Smith, "said a prayer today," before he charged into the village. We're told that Smith had, "the cutest little blond girlfriend" and "his dad was his hero." Did the calm woman also say her prayers today? Is her dad her hero, too? We don't know. No one asks.

 

The reporter and his photographer did visit a home in the neighborhood -- but only after the "hit" force kicked in the door. I suppose that's an improvement over the typical level of reporting we get. In dispatches home by the few US journalists who brave beyond the Green Zone, Iraqis are little more than dark shapes glimpsed through the slots of a speeding Humvee.

 

Last month there was a big hoo-ha over the statistical accuracy of a Johns Hopkins University study estimating that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of this war.

 

I doubt the Iraqi who fired that bullet into Lance Cpl. Smith read the Hopkins study. Iraqis don't need a professor of statistics to tell them what happens in a "hard hit" on a house. Of civilians killed by the US forces the Hopkins team found 46% are younger than fifteen years old.

 

I grieve for Lance Cpl. Smith and I can't know for certain what moved the sniper to pick up a gun and shoot him. However, I've no doubt that, like the Marines who said prayers before they invaded the homes of the terrified residents of Karma, the sniper also said a prayer before he loaded the 7.62mm shell into his carbine.

 

And if we asked, I'm sure the sniper would tell us, "I am a good man, but seeing what happened, I want to hurt people."

 

*******

 

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "Armed Madhouse"   www.gregpalast.com.