posted May 15, 2004 01:53 PM              

i knew there was some connection. as a blue-eyed blonde, i can't very well pass for an "indian" but i have a tribal "spiritual sister" who believes me to be one

there is definitely some type of kinship there...since i was born here in america, i guess i am a "native american" of sorts

aren't you glad you are a woman in these exciting times? (guys, don't feel left out, you have a feminine side, too. just develop it a bit more and you'll feel part of this rising body of "water")

posted May 15, 2004 01:56 PM              

those clouds above which you dwell play a part in this scenario, too, you know. "raine" has broken through some very dark clouds and now the rainbow promise is manifesting

posted May 15, 2004 02:13 PM              

is this enough response to your original question?

posted May 15, 2004 02:30 PM              

quote:

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The Red Cross estimated that 9 out of 10 people being held at the prison were guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time--driving while Iraqi.

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to assume that if someone wears some different headgear, they must be throat-slitting terrorists, smacks of extreme racism. it can be very subtle, so i would suggest we monitor our thoughts and words on the subject

my own sister said, "Well, it's better than having them out there killing people" when i pointed out early on that so many of the men held in guantanamo bay had been "sold" for bounty money paid for "taliban" and "al quaida" and our government seems to have abolished everything it used to believe in, such as a swift and speedy trial. but then, some would say, "they don't deserve it" in total obliteration of the fact that they were innocent, as evidenced by mass releases after all this time subjected to inhuman treatment. by golly, i'd bet they were terrorists now, if they weren't before

it seems anyone was subject to pointed fingers; how would you feel if it were you? i am sure there would be a different tune being sung then but does that make any of this right?

some people seem to have set war up as some sort of god who will bring them peace and tranquility. if that were truly the case, we would not have millenia of historical "wars to end all wars"

here's another take:

War, the God That Failed
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Thinking back to the scandals of the Clinton years, when all of America was supposedly shocked and horrified at the thought of the president and the intern, the 1990s seem to be the Age of Innocence.

The Oval Office was relatively unstained as compared with the torture-sex scenes from a Bush administration-run prison in Iraq, documented in pictures and movies being viewed in an imperial temple by US elected officials in the imperial capital.

It is actually hard to think of a precedent for this: perhaps the Roman Empire under Caligula, whose rule combined claims of godliness with militarism, imperial marauding, political paranoia, fiscal profligacy, and extreme decadence.

We should add mass death to the list. We are right to wince and then condemn pictures of naked prisoners in dog collars; not even Paul Wolfowitz was willing to defend such practices in testimony. And yet those private groups that bother to count civilian dead point to figures that exceed 10,000 in this war alone. These figures rise by 5, 10, 20, and more per day.

These aren't deaths by injection but by machinegun bullets shot, and smart bombs dropped, by US soldiers and paid for by US taxpayers, and the US doesn't even bother to mention them much less count them. Torture is awful; but should it really be necessary to point out that the mass death of innocents is no less worse?

Why do the former strike our moral conscience while the latter seems like a bloodless number that could rise or fall a hundred or a thousand without consequence? Perhaps because these mass deaths have produced no lasting images that compare to those from Abu Ghraib.

Or maybe it is what Hollywood directors have always known. Audiences are shaken less by the image of a city being blown up than by a dinner fork slowly penetrating the cheek of a single individual. Our subjective reactions do not, however, change the objective reality.

Who are these people being imprisoned and killed? The Red Cross estimated that 9 out of 10 people being held at the prison were guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time--driving while Iraqi. But just as striking is the supposed charge against that 10th person, imprisoned for resisting an invading foreign regime that has imposed brutal martial-law for longer than a year. This same regime had been the reason for crippling trade sanctions in the previous 10 years that the UN and other organizations say account for more than a million deaths.

With all this brutality, killing, and destruction (done in the name of freedom and democracy!), the attention being given to officially tolerated torture is disproportionate, to be sure, but not unwarranted. Thanks to the prison pictures, a much-needed element has been introduced into the calculus of US foreign policy: humanitarianism. In wartime, the human element does tend to get lost.

If you have seen the video clip of the US soldiers gunning down innocents from an Apache helicopter, shooting people on the ground while looking through viewfinders of the sort you see at the video arcade, you gain insight into how the Bush administration has approached foreign relations with disregard for the right to life, and how it has produced a culture of depravity and moral degradation within the US government.

But average Iraqis have many other images hitting them on a daily basis. In Karbala, just yesterday, for example, US tanks rolled around one of Islam's holiest cemeteries in one of Islam's holiest cities, firing at anything that moved. Here is a place that is home to the shrine to Mohammad's cousin Ali Ibn Abi Talib, and Shiite teaching is that people buried here immediately enter paradise.

Anyone who believes that such activities constitute "anti-terrorist" measures is a blooming idiot. In fact, such activities, and this war in general, could not have been better designed to create and inspire global terrorism. If the US government needed an enemy to replace and outdistance Communism, it is certainly doing its best to create one.

The champions of the Iraq War are in transition phase, already assuming that history will hold them accountable for an ongoing fiasco and thereby trying to put the best spin on it. The way to think about their efforts is by analogy to the early supporters of the Bolsheviks, during the period of war communism.

The revolution had gone badly, as evidenced by starvation, misery, death, and no obvious way out apart from backing away from core doctrine. This is what Lenin ultimately did, but in the meantime, the backers of the Bolsheviks had to provide an explanation for why history's great leap forward was straight into the abyss. The trick is to do it without giving up the core ideological conviction. So too with the warmongers who must concede the failure without surrendering their attachment to the warfare state.

The supporters of the Iraq War were no less fanatical than the Bolsheviks in their conviction that power could accomplish miracles at the push of a button. People like David Brooks are now saying that the embrace of power was a mistake. "We were blinded by idealism," he explains in a manner reminiscent of every apologist for a fanatical despot in the history of the world. Idealism! When your "idealism" results in military dictatorship, mass jailings and killings, rivers of blood, and the seething anger of half the world, you need to do more than confess that you might have underestimated the "response our power would have on the people we sought to liberate."

Let us state the lesson in ways that might penetrate the brains of these scribblers. When a person's "idealism" is contingent on issuing a dictate that people must obey or be killed, and on the assumption that human beings will do what they are told to do so long as the knife is at their throat, and on the further assumption that the people paying with their money and lives will believe every lie you tell, it is time to rethink your ideals. Otherwise they will end in mass suffering and devastation.

The core problem in Iraq right now is not some rogue corporals engaged in sadomasochistic torture; the problem is the "idealists" who think nothing of attempting to reconstruct an entire region of the world using bombs and bloodshed.

War is idealism in the same way that Communism and Nazism were idealism: the fanatical dream of people who insisted that the world conform to their vicious imaginings, and just so happened to get hold of the power of the state and used it to make their "ideals" happen. They are the people who give us killing fields. War too is a god that has failed.

posted May 15, 2004 03:05 PM              

"enough with the peace talk" in other words?

this is more about global unity than the s-word-s that have permeated this site, so i hope this wasn't too disappointing

water has everything to do, both with how we will actually achieve the destined global unity, and how we will be able to extricate ourelves from the iraqi tar baby

you are welcome to join in this vision; it is bipartisan

posted May 15, 2004 05:17 PM            

I prefer to live in the here and now and transform what I can in a meaningful way..in MY own meaningful way.

In all the world there has been war, from the beginning of time to our own American History with the tribes wiping each other out. For some to idealize the "yesterdays" of our country and the people that warred is just insane and doesn't pay tribute to the reality of what was the past. I keep reading this spirituality based on the perceived peace of the American Indians, but I know of a different past that was handed down to me through my family. The Pueblo, Anasazi, Sin agua all the way down to the Apache, Comanche, Cherokee..was prone to raids and all out war.

posted May 15, 2004 05:35 PM              

But, at this point, it seems to be a maudlin dream that too few appreciate, nor know how to persue. So, alas, we still have to find a way to exist and survive among those who do not embrace it. That's the reality.

posted May 15, 2004 06:35 PM            

Hey You

Hey you, out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old
Can you feel me?
Hey you, standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles
Can you feel me?
Hey you, dont help them to bury the light
Don't give in without a fight.

Hey you, out there on your own
Sitting naked by the phone
Would you touch me?
Hey you, with you ear against the wall
Waiting for someone to call out
Would you touch me?
Hey you, would you help me to carry the stone?
Open your heart, I'm coming home.

But it was only fantasy.
The wall was too high,
As you can see.
No matter how he tried,
He could not break free.
And the worms ate into his brain.

Hey you, out there on the road
always doing what you're told,
Can you help me?
Hey you, out there beyond the wall,
Breaking bottles in the hall,
Can you help me?
Hey you, don't tell me there's no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall.

[Click of TV being turned on]
"Well, only got an hour of daylight left. Better get started"
"Isnt it unsafe to travel at night?"
"It'll be a lot less safe to stay here. You're father's gunna pick up our trail before long"
"Can Loca ride?"
"Yeah, I can ride... Magaret, time to go! Maigret, thank you for everything"
"Goodbye Chenga"
"Goodbye miss ..."
"I'll be back"

posted May 16, 2004 03:39 AM              

Nice to meet you...

..or I should perhaps greet you with a "Boozhoo" from my Ottawa language...

My father was a full blood Native American Ottawa Indian. That makes me half...since my mother was descended from the English.

Our tribe is THE LITTLE RIVER BAND OF OTTAWA INDIANS and I live on the reservation here in Michigan.

At one time our tribe was part of a confederacy called THE THREE FIRES consisting of the Ottawa, Ojibway, and Potawatomi woodland Indians...

Pidua...you said...

"I keep reading this spirituality based on the perceived peace of the American Indians, but I know of a different past that was handed down to me through my family. The Pueblo, Anasazi, Sin agua all the way down to the Apache, Comanche, Cherokee..was prone to raids and all out war."

Hon,I don't know that I, nor Raine either for that matter, said anythhing about "spirituality, based on the peace of the American Indians."

I certainly know something about the history of our native ancestors here in America and realize full well that they warred with each other. But that does NOT mean that I can't wish for peace now...I HATE war!

I think what I did mention to Raine was the fact that American Indians recognized the POWER of the feminine (since that was what we were talking about as it is pretty much tha main subject in the book, THE DA VINCI CODE.)...

I'm sure you, as an American Indian yourself, know that Native women are not allowed anywhere near ceremonies when they are "on their moon," due the the extreme power they have at that time.

Sorry if you misunderstood....

In short, I AM Native American...I'm aware of our history, and I hate war, and pray for peace, tho I'm losing faith in humanity...

Love,
Rainbow

posted May 16, 2004 07:02 AM              

thank you for demonstrating the power of peace from the feminine principle that truly is our only hope for the planet, and, yes, that was the message of hope that i had been trying to make

may that wonderful and exciting discovery find its way to iraq!

posted May 16, 2004 07:13 AM              

quote:

---

But, at this point, it seems to be a maudlin dream that too few appreciate, nor know how to persue. So, alas, we still have to find a way to exist and survive among those who do not embrace it. That's the reality.

But, this is the age of Aquarius, isn't it? I believe we are getting closer, and the concept of 'Democracy' is the frontrunner.

---

lioneye, hold that thought! yes, this IS the age of aquarius and we ARE getting closer--every day. and it is this growth of the peace movement, having swelled into millions of hearts from a few seeds years ago, that gives us hope...one heart at a time

posted May 16, 2004 12:45 PM              

I don't support the death penalty either, but please. I know plenty of pot smokers, and I'll tell ya... every one of them is too damned lazy to go to the store for munchies, much less kill TWO people.

I know you say, "it's not an excuse.... but none the less she was not in her right mind".

posted May 16, 2004 01:50 PM            

The Aquarian Age will be an age of pragmatism coupled with a vision of peace, justice, fraternity, brotherhood/sisterhood and the will to bring it about. Substance over style. Action over empty rhetoric.

Forget visions of long haired, pot smoking, tree hugging hippies solving the world's problems in their minds with talk, empty rhetoric and protests.

The Aquarian Age will begin in war and the marshaling of forces against those who threaten the stability and peace of the world. War to prevent a larger more destructive war. War to enforce peace and the principles of peace and war to display the will to remove those from power who threaten the peace and stability of the world.

There will be many arguments over when the Age of Aquarius began and even if it has already began.

You could perhaps draw a bright line across the pages of time at September 20, 2001 and say here. See how many pragmatic Aquarian principles you can find in these remarks.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html

And these:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011007-8.html

In the pragmatic real world, peace consists of more than the absence of war.

jwhop

posted May 16, 2004 02:04 PM              

the idea of "murderous marijuana smokers" is quite funny indeed, and thanks for the laugh, but you will be happy to note that that is really not what rainbow was saying at all:

quote:

---

she had been very much into drugs **starting on marijuana when but a child**

---

i think she was indeed high on something, but most likely not marijuana. that was just the drug she started on...others choose nicotine or alcohol...

i think rainbow was trying to point out that her life since early youth had been one where circumstances caused her to find relief in drugs (you know, like rush limbaugh did)

quote:

---

and people on drugs can't think straight....She was very high on drugs when the murder was committed (not that it's an excuse), but nonetheless, was not in her right mind.....

---

and this was probably true. i bumped into a former close friend of mine this week, whom i had not seen in several years, because her drug use had altered her personality so that she has rejected all of her friends and even her own grandchildren. her missing teeth and general demeanor of "missing brain cells" was truly tragic...almost as tragic as her early life

posted May 16, 2004 02:19 PM            

Thanks for bringing that up Jwhop (about AQ being masculine) - I found it ironic that they were touting the greatness of the feminine principle, saying things like:

quote:

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because i believe the feminine water principle is wearing the white hat on the horizon

---

quote:

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well, better not imprint THAT into our consciousness. it is already laden with too much testosterone!(and guys, that is truly no reflection upon your masculinity. only if you allow it to burn out of control by drying out the balancing water that keeps it harmoniously blooming is it harmful and destructive.

---

quote:

---

and they spoke of freedom and restoration of the true feminine counterpart of history. once it is restored, we can get on with the business of living happily ever afterp

---

quote:

---

thank you for demonstrating the power of peace from the feminine principle that truly is our only hope for the planet

---

and quoting the power of the coming age of Aquarius as if AQ were a water sign (and I routinely run into folks who mistakenly think AQ is a water sign because of its symbol), so I wasn't sure whether they were confused about the qualities of AQ, or if it was another attempt to feel spiritually superior through their "womanlyness"...

The feminine water principle won't save the planet, that's something women like to believe to empower themselves when they can't do so in their own realities.

It called balance. Perhaps you (Raine and Rainbow) would do well to embrace the masculine within yourselves, which seems woefully out of balance. One half cannot save the world. It takes a perfect melding of the two.

But I do find your views extremely sexist R &R.

posted May 16, 2004 03:42 PM              

quote:

---

The Aquarian Age will begin in war and the marshaling of forces against those who threaten the stability and peace of the world. War to prevent a larger more destructive war. War to enforce peace and the principles of peace and war to display the will to remove those from power who threaten the peace and stability of the world.

---

what stability and peace?

the old order of war--oxymoronically called "stability and peace"--could be stretched from the overarching fact that war has "stabilized" the planet in perpetual war mode, with intermittent periods of deceptive "peace"

but it is our collective ego invested in the "war mode" that refuses to give up without fighting the approaching "peace mode"

it rises from the belief that "we are mighty enough and "right" enough that we can solve our own problems--THEN we will welcome the age of aquarius"

wrong. the first step, it would seem, for "Aquarians Anonymous" would be to admit that we ARE powerless over this situation. all of our combined might and determination will prove no more effective in deterring war than the great wall of china

our collective ego is just the expanded version of our own personal duel with our lower nature, and there is a lot invested in the mental notion that we are mighty enough and "right" enough to fix everything

ah, the futility of clinging to the ancient idea that "THIS time, the mother of all wars will bring peace"

when will we ever learn?

whether it is the middle-eastern throat slitter or the american who justifies "a few bad apples" of the same mindset--they each demonstrate their belief in the old order of war to solve everything

but why remain on the side of war when you can be on the side of peace? why not embrace the hope that the stars give us?

putting faith in bigger and better weapons is what got us into this mess, is it not? 70% of the world believes that george w bush is the major threat to world peace

the oxymoron of war ushering in peace will yield only with the perpetuation of the aquarian acts of love and kindness displayed on 9/11

it is the mindset of war, wherever it is found, whether it is in baghdad, washington or in our own hearts, that is keeping us from living in peace

but millenial peace will continue to rise from the hearts of enough people who have had their fill of war and who now live for the greater cause

can anyone who speaks out against them for this aquarian value truly say they want peace? or is it their ego just insisting that "we can fix everything ourselves" and resisting the help of a higher power?

like the fable of the wind and the sun--the stronger the wind blew, the more determined the man was to keep on his cloak. but it was the slow and steady progress of the warming sun that caused him to shed it

yes, aquarius is male, but he is the bearer of the water, the female principle--in balance--which is the only thing that will douse the flames of war--not more fuel

we are in the aquarian penumbra now ["A partial shadow, as in an eclipse, between regions of complete shadow and complete illumination"]

only when we find ourselves in the umbra [the blackest part of a shadow from which all light is cut off] will we surrender, and create the critical mass allowing true illumination

"when we all keep lit our own little candle, what a bright world this will be"

i think the true veterans of war, who have embraced the concepts of peace because they know the difference, have earned the right to make this statement, which addresses the topic of this thread better than i can:

VETERANS FOR PEACE STATEMENT ON THE PRISONER ABUSE SCANDAL

WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

Veterans For Peace believes that the recent allegations of abuse of
Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison, and other places, by U.S.
military personnel and civilian contractors should not come as a
surprise to anyone who has been to war.

In his Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police
Brigade, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba wrote: "Â… numerous incidents
of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on
several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was
intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police
guard force"

Some of our members served in Military Intelligence, Military
Police. We were part of a culture that gives lip service to the
Geneva Conventions in training; but encourages psychological and
physical brutality in the pursuit of intelligence. In other words,
the problem has been and is systemic.

For most of our veterans the painful feeling that we have been here
before is overwhelming. We recall that such brutalities were
commonplace in Korea and Vietnam, wars fought, as is Iraq, in the
midst of a civilian populace, where combatants blend into and
disappear among communities of non-combatants.

Operating in a foreign land, hostile to our presence, coupled with
our administration's demonstrated disdain for the restraints imposed
by the Geneva Convention on prisoner treatment has led, inevitably,
to these abuses.

The abuse at military prisons is the latest step in the shameful
course that our nation has been following in Iraq. It began with an
invasion for reasons that have proven to be falsehoods and lies.
This is more than the criminal activity of a few "bad apples", it is
the brutal, systemically embedded result of a misguided national
policy.

Veterans For Peace believes it is obvious, by the widespread
incidence of reported abuses, that there has been a failure of
command responsibility up to and including the Commander In Chief.

Call for action

The United States government must admit to the unjust nature of this
war, the disastrous miscalculations of the response of the Iraqi
people to invasion and occupation (not liberation), begin the
withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and restore real self rule.

There must be a full and public Congressional investigation and
those all the way up the chain of command to General Myers and
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld should be held accountable.

A token head or two will undoubtedly roll. However, we must not hang
on to the policies that have led to these horrors, have further
compromised our nation's security and lost us the respect of the
world. They must be excised, swiftly and thoroughly.

That is the only way to restore dignity and honor to our military
and to our country.

posted May 16, 2004 04:26 PM              

quote:

---

and quoting the power of the coming age of Aquarius as if AQ were a water sign (and I routinely run into folks who mistakenly think AQ is a water sign because of its symbol), so I wasn't sure whether they were confused about the qualities of AQ, or if it was **another attempt to feel spiritually superior** through their "womanlyness"...

---

that was totally inappropriate, and if people would actually read differing opinions before they cast stones, the balance between the feminine and masculine that has everywhere been the theme of these posts might not have been missed:

quote:

---

yes, aquarius is male, but he is the bearer of the water, the female principle--in balance--which is the only thing that will douse the flames of war--not more fuel

---

isn't is wonderful that we have something to agree on?

quote:

---

The feminine water principle won't save the planet, that's something women like to believe to empower themselves when they can't do so in their own realities.
It called balance. Perhaps you (Raine and Rainbow) would do well to embrace the masculine within yourselves, which seems woefully out of balance. One half cannot save the world. It takes a perfect melding of the two. But I do find your views **extremely sexist** R &R.

---

please do not continually put words into the mouths of others, then make judgments on them

i laugh when i think how earlier today my "sexist" views caused me to write a letter challenging the assumption that women have no place in war

i did make a specific effort to include the guys, BECAUSE i believe in balance, so what's the problem? women can be brutal, too, as iraq proved

but surely one cannot blind their eyes to the male domination of the planet for millenia now...and i am sure i myself have spent many lifetimes as a male. again, balance is the key

balance is the key

and so i won't be misquoted again

quote:

---

balance is the key

---

yin/yang
nowhere does anyone promote lop-sided feminine energies--in fact, i posted earlier that they can indeed cause flood damage!

but it is the RESTORATION of the brutally suppressed feminine principle that will restore balance (remember salem and the horrors of the inquisition--efforts to eradicate teachings of the feminine counterpart of jesus wherever they surfaced now THAT is **extremely sexist**)

but if it seems 'out of balance' perhaps it is because regaining lost ground is never easy. it would be nice to have some help, rather than having to continually dodge verbal bullets from those who are supposed to be working toward global unity

or did i misinterpret the purpose of this topic?

how about it? can't you embrace at least the "concept" of peace? why would anyone want to continue to do quixotic battle, when we have such a bright celestial alternative?