The Blame Game

I dont entirely agree with this philosophy in that it doesn't take into account the role of compassion and group identity. But it is not a bad place to start if people are to take their power back and create governments which will make citizen welfare a priority,

There Is No Injustice

by Michael Goodspeed
Source

All judgment reveals itself to be self-judgment in the end, and when this is understood a larger comprehension of the nature of life takes its place.”

~David R. Hawkins

In the final sequence of the 1999 Oscar-winning film American Beauty, 40-year old Lester Burnham has just been murdered. After getting shot by his neighbor, Lester is reviewing the events of his life, from birth to death. He serenely narrates, “I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world…I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.”

I’ve seen this movie at least a half-dozen times, and always have a hard time achieving Lester’s Zen-like forgiveness for the nutball who shot him. I feel contempt for the murderer throughout the film, and resent the fact we never see him brought to justice. But I remind myself that Lester has moved beyond the human condition into something vast and infinite, where indignation is laid aside like so much fool’s gold. He concludes his narrative by kindly telling the audience, “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? Don’t worry...You will someday.”

This lesson resonates deeply, for I’ve spent a great many years raging against life’s “injustices” — both real or imaginary — suffered by me, and all “innocent” people. I’ve looked at the world and seen evil thriving where the powerful rule the meek.

Over the years, I’ve encountered many who see the world as an intrinsically unjust domain where nice guys finish last and bullies receive the spoils. What I’ve observed in these compadres in misery is disturbing. Invariably, these people seem to walk through life in a perpetual state of resentment and annoyance. They don’t appear able to live in the present moment and find joy in any activity. They see cause for indignation in every situation, no matter how innocuous.

Observing such unpleasant characteristics in others has caused me to re-assess my own feelings about “injustice.” At some point, one has to wonder if his chronic complaining about life has less to do with the world than his own state-of-mind.

Many of history’s great spiritual teachers advised against trying to change the external world, but rather focus on changing our PERCEPTION of the world.

Mahatma Ghandi said, “The only devils in this world are those running around inside our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought.”

A similar insight was expressed by David R. Hawkins in his book The Eye of the I: “We change the world not by what we say or do, but as a consequence of what we have become.”

I don’t think either Hawkins or Ghandi is suggesting we ignore or condone the mistreatment of others. But remember, even the most well-intentioned “activists” will do more harm than good if they haven’t, as Ghandi said, addressed the devils in their own hearts.

As we look around there seems to be a validation of the widely-held principle that we receive from the world what we project outwards. According to Hawkins, “Everybody is like a magnet. You attract to yourself reflections of that which you are. If you’re friendly then everybody else seems to be friendly too.”

If this principle is true, then logically, there can be no real “victims.” Nothing in life just “happens” to anyone. For instance, what is it that impels a person to remain in an abusive relationship? And, if they leave, why do they seem to repeat the same pattern and fall into a similar scenario?

What about the most blameless “victims,” including children? Are they, at the deepest level, willing participants in their own suffering? What if a child born into abuse, poverty and famine has designed the scenario for the sake of his or her spiritual evolution?

We’ve all heard the cliché “you create your own reality,” yet how many of us ponder the full ramifications of this? And, I ask you to consider that even the most brutal hardships offer enormous opportunities for profound revelations and self-discovery.

Many resist this philosophy of self-responsibility and self-choice; however, when they can see their way to stop blaming exterior circumstances as something “separate” from them and their choices, then victimhood ceases to exist.

We can sit in judgment of what we perceive as evil and unjust or we can endeavor to make the world a better place, to end suffering and be of service to others by taking a higher road.

Remember, assuming our responsibility as creators of everything we see and attract to ourselves will change our world. When this is accomplished, external events no longer have the power to affect us, and the actions of others can be viewed in an objective light.

Defeat Israel: One penny at a time

Here is Naomi Klein's newest article on Gaza, reprinted here for your convenience.

I have been harping for years on the power of boycotts to make the will of the people known and to take back our power from fascist countries and corporations. Profits are the life blood of corporations and despots alike: and we control the profits. We don't need to demonstrate, or arm ourselves or take over the media.

All we need do is be selective how we spend the money in our pockets. And it wouldn't hurt one bit to fire off an email to the product vendors you are boycotting.

Remember, one person is a crank. Two complainers are a conincidence; but three disgruntled consumers constitute a movement. We can make the world they way we want it just by watching our pennies and who we give them to. It's the only power we have: why not use it?

Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction
January 8th, 2009
By Naomi Klein
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—BDS for short—was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.

1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures—quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non–Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes of South African apartheid in the occupied territories: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid." That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Coming up with our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."

Ramsey says that his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

This column was first published in The Nation

Further Information:
The only international news network covering every aspect of the war on Gaza is Al Jazeera English. The station isn't available in North America but you can watch it live in high-quality through www.livestation.com (player download is required).

Disengagement and the Frontiers of Zionism by Darryl Li

Bilbao Initiative

The 'Dubya' in All of Us

November 16, 2008
by Donald M. Mihaloew
Until now, it has been easy criticizing George "Dubya" Bush, for he, and his people, has made a debacle of their administration. Criticizing him as president has been an attractive alternative to looking at us as citizens.

For few of us would want to admit that any of this administration's dishonesty and incompetence would reside in us as well.

Though still wealthy and strong, America is in decline. It has moved beyond mere wealth acquisition and comfort seeking into a fear-based attitude that requires satiation. It's as though cornering personal and corporate markets has become the acceptable norm, where our necessities need to be luxurious and our luxuries necessary.

No longer is it only an economic issue; but now has become a psychosocial matter giving way to a craving that, in turn, always brings on decadence. It's not about material any more; it's about mindset. It raises the question of just how much is enough and can be defined as "a little more than I had yesterday."

When will it end? If it doesn't, we probably will. Are we there already? Why is the American dream at stake? Precisely because it wasn't a bona fide dream in the first place but rather a fantasy vision based in a sense of insecure scarcity and manifested in a craving, manipulative push for everyone to "get theirs," otherwise known as greed.

And greed comes directly from believing there isn't enough, as though America isn't rich enough. Why have we criticized Bush and his entire entourage? The seeds of decay, now fully evident in a pitifully failed and pernicious administration in D.C., are now showing up in an apparently failed society in the rest of America as well. Note the banking industry as only one example. But no one ambitious person or group can be successful in any endeavor at any time without tacit, though cryptic, agreement and co-operation from the general populace.

The question here is: Is this administration simply a manifested excess of what the overall population secretly desires? If possibly so, each of us has to look deeply in ourselves to find the answer to this inevitable, near sudden collapse of the American lifestyle. The issue is too complex for any single factor to be suspect, but nothing will change unless we look inward before outward.

This kind of introspection has not been nor will it ever come from Dubya. We have possibly all been co-conspirators and silent partners with this quasi-government, not conservative in philosophy, but rather narcissistic. Even if you did not vote for him, we are all still somewhat responsible for allowing the baseness of this regime to rise to the top of the vessel that once contained all the necessary elements of sustainability.

This sustainability is all but gone now and will take decades to redevelop. This redevelopment will not come only from any newly elected president or Congress, nor should it. For while competent leadership is essential, each of us must re-examine our values and begin choosing to live in a manner that befits continued mutual respect for other people, nations and for our total planet. What is the Dubya that exists in all of us? Perhaps it stands for Wanton, maybe even Wasteful, and maybe even just plain Wrong. It could stand for Waking Up, or being Watchful, or Wrestling honestly with ourselves and others in respectful dialogue. George "W" Bush needs to but won't see the "W's" that still exist in others who care to change a debilitative life style into something that allows for a Willingness to examine values, a Widening of perspective, and a Welcoming of a commitment to Wellness.

Dubya, and the Dubya in all of us, needs a fuller appreciation of what life in this country could be without the craving. Will we do it? Or will we continue criticizing him, others and future presidents for not providing us with satiation? It would be beneficial to start measuring wealth in terms of character, integrity and gratitude rather than only in commodities, possessions and investments.

Thus the decline in America will stop if we redefine wealth as worthy citizenship. What we pay attention to determines what we miss. As H.L. Mencken once said, "As the office of the presidency is perfected, it represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people." Clearly, we are missing what is already "writ large" in past, present and future history. Bush may leave office, but we citizens remain. Let's get on with the necessary due diligence of change, growth, and evolution.

©1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Donald M. Mihaloew is a marriage and family therapist and teaches at Portland State University.

Source