yourself in others

All beings tremble before violence.
All fear death.
All love life.

See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt?
What harm can you do?

-Dhammapada 129-130

flowers and songs

"Solo asi he de irme?
Como las flores que perecieron?
Nada quedara en mi nombre?
Nada de mi fama aqui en la tierra?
Al menos flores! Al menos cantos!"

-- Cantos de Huexotzingo

==

"So this is how i go?
Such as the perishing flowers?
Nothing to remain in my name?
Nothing of my fame here on earth?
At least flowers! At least songs!"

-- Songs of Huexotzingo

familiar drum beat

"Uncle Chutzpah and his willing executioners—the media, UN and coalition of the cowardly and bribed—have isolated Iran and set her up for possible destabilization and aggression. One wouldn’t think this possible given the remarkable parallels in argument and (phony) evidence in this case and that of the failed aggression in Iraq, but the power of the aggressor and subservience of the media and international community are apparently boundless.

"It is certainly not assured that Iran will be attacked, and if it is attacked that is most likely to be by bombs only, but it can well happen. The stage is being set, and the folks likely to make those decisions are proven killers, torturers and law violators, confident in their military superiority and invulnerability to prosecution for criminal behavior and with a great capacity for righteous self-deception. And the international community is not only doing nothing to stop them, it is helping them prepare the “(im)moral” and quasi-legal groundwork . The leaders of the aggressor state are also politically astute, and recognize the political value of war as a means of retrieving political fortunes. They may be failures at home as well as abroad, but their service to the business community has been far-reaching, and those successes have protected and sustained them. To continue them, as they damage the great majority, may require forcible action. As Thorstein Veblen pointed out a hundred years ago, “The direct cultural value of a warlike business policy is unequivocal. It makes for a conservative animus on the part of the populace…At the same stroke, it directs popular interest to other, nobler, institutionally less hazardous matters than the unequal distribution of wealth” (The Theory of Business Enterprise [1904], pp. 391-3). When each day you are adding to your service to the rich and damaging the majority, war can come in handy to get folks to turn again to the “nobler, institutionally less hazardous” matters like stopping the dire threat of an Iranian bomb."

Uncle Chutzpah and His Willing Executioners on the Dire Iran Threat: With Twelve Principles of War Propaganda in Ongoing Service,
By Edward S. Herman -- Znet

Ascent

For Bobbie
   
   Last night, I awoke in hell,
   an oval bubble full of brackish acid,
   and rotting organs floating aimlessly.
   Shredded vessels and veins dangled
   like rebar ripped from its moorings.
   
   I swam like a tadpole touching my lips
   to the edges of life beyond hell's bladder.
   Then I heard my love's heartbeat, heard
   my name and suddenly I was there,
   beside her, kissing her hand.
   
   Oh, love, I will stay in your heart
   and whenever you speak my name,
   I will live and live and live.
   
   
   - Ken W. Brewer
   Providence, Utah
   2/6/06