ARMED FORCES DAY: Those People
Early last year, Anthony Swofford, the author of Jarhead, gave a reading at Powell’s on Hawthorne. In the standing-room-only audience waiting for the reading to begin, I found myself next to an attractive, nicely dressed, fiftyish woman and we struck up a conversation. No doubt mistaking me for a fellow member of the anti-war crowd (I do tend to look like a hippie), she offered her observations on how “those people see everything in black and white”. Those people? “The right-wingers, the Bush crowd.” It was good to know who “those people” were; but what of the fighting men? “Well, you know, when you take some 19-year-old kid from Nebraska who doesn’t have any choices, and tell him ‘This is what it means to be a man’, I guess it must sound pretty appealing.”
I spent ten years in the enlisted ranks of America’s armed forces: six years in the Air Force, mostly as a communications specialist and later four years in the Marine Corps as a missileman in an armored infantry unit. My liberal parents did not, I am quite sure, ever picture me in the Marines, but they were quite supportive when I enlisted at age 26 ... at least, once they got over the initial shock.
The Air Force hitch came right after high school: I had really good test scores, and I went in on a contract enlistment to become a translator (a “208” in Air Force jargon). I finished the rigorous Korean Basic program at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, but wasn’t quite equal to the advanced training at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas, which involved long, tedious hours of listening to ... well, never mind, you’re not missing anything. The Government had already spent tons of money getting me a secuirty clearance, so I was reassigned to a job in telecommunications – and that was what I did for the rest of my six years in the USAF.
After hanging up my blue shirt I moved to San Francisco, where I made a living – barely – as an office clerk. I struggled to make ends meet, living in a ten-foot hotel room with a bathroom in the hall, roaches on the floor, and crackheads roaming the halls. The cost of living in San Francisco kept going up, and my paycheck didn’t, so in 1989 I found myself in the recruiter’s office once again, and this time – sort of on a dare to myself – I enlisted in the Marines.
I’ve written elsewhere about my experiences in Desert Storm. Here I’ll just say that I’m proud of my role in liberating Kuwait, and sorry only that we did not finish the job and liberate Iraq then. But my four years in the Marines were among the most rewarding of my life, and I regret none of it.
What I wish is that our well-dressed, well-educated liberals would make the effort to get rid of their stereotypes about who joins the military and why. By dismissing me as “some kid from Nebraska” or whatever part of the country you consider to be where the hicks and rednecks live, you only betray your own ignorance and prejudice. After all, "those people" don't really believe in working for the greater good, do they?
This is for you, the lady who holds me and my fellow veterans in contempt: How dare you? How dare you imagine that your university degree and your liberal credentials give you the right to think for me?
2004-05-17
The Iraqi Holocaust
THE IRAQI HOLOCAUST: More from Sam's charge sheet:
13. Burning body by Cigarettes
14. Hanging body from the arms which are tied to the back and hanging a heavy stone in the penis and the testes which could be increased until he confesses.
15. Udy and Qusay Saddam and Some other relatives like the brothers of Sajeda Telfah Saddam's wife used to go to Abo Ghareeb Prison and select haphazardly a group from the prisoners and execute them while laughing in front of the others.
This is what the peace protesters marched to defend. Let's think about that for a moment. These are the things that the "Don't Attack Iraq" crowd devoted their energies to preserve. But wait; it gets better.
16. Decapitating children in front of their mothers.
Are you proud of yourselves, ANSWER, for defending this?
13. Burning body by Cigarettes
14. Hanging body from the arms which are tied to the back and hanging a heavy stone in the penis and the testes which could be increased until he confesses.
15. Udy and Qusay Saddam and Some other relatives like the brothers of Sajeda Telfah Saddam's wife used to go to Abo Ghareeb Prison and select haphazardly a group from the prisoners and execute them while laughing in front of the others.
This is what the peace protesters marched to defend. Let's think about that for a moment. These are the things that the "Don't Attack Iraq" crowd devoted their energies to preserve. But wait; it gets better.
16. Decapitating children in front of their mothers.
Are you proud of yourselves, ANSWER, for defending this?
Chemical Weapons Found in Iraq
I know. I'm as shocked as you are.
A Small Victory is on the case.
Oh, and don't miss this. Have you ever - well, never mind, I won't ask. I'll just confess for myself: Yes, I do admit to occasionally, still, even now, humming the tune to Neil Diamond's "America". OK, now stop laughing and go read ASV. This post is magnificent.
A Small Victory is on the case.
Oh, and don't miss this. Have you ever - well, never mind, I won't ask. I'll just confess for myself: Yes, I do admit to occasionally, still, even now, humming the tune to Neil Diamond's "America". OK, now stop laughing and go read ASV. This post is magnificent.
Taheri: Say No to the UN
"From 1990 to 2003, the U.N. was officially at war against Saddam Hussein; it passed 18 mandatory resolutions on Iraq. But it did nothing to implement any of those resolutions, except through the Oil-for-Food scam in which $4 billion disappeared in corrupt deals that involved senior U.N. officials.
So what is the rationale for putting the U.N. in charge in Iraq, even for a single day?"
This from the latest article by Amir Taheri. Taheri, who recently told us more than we really needed to know about the long history of decapitation, brings us up to speed on the battle between Iraq's people and its would-be occupiers. The skinny: don't let the UN take over. Read the whole article at the link.
So what is the rationale for putting the U.N. in charge in Iraq, even for a single day?"
This from the latest article by Amir Taheri. Taheri, who recently told us more than we really needed to know about the long history of decapitation, brings us up to speed on the battle between Iraq's people and its would-be occupiers. The skinny: don't let the UN take over. Read the whole article at the link.
Shy No More
Recently returned from an idyllic spring vacation in Shiraz, one of the writers at View From Iran notes that "it's fun not to be shy" among the outgoing Iranians. She also describes her encounters with the numerous Western tourists, including a Dutch lad named Joop.
A Day in the Life
Ginmar prefers to avoid explosions. (Really, what's WRONG with her?!)
Also don't miss her latest posts at A View From A Broad.
Also don't miss her latest posts at A View From A Broad.
Hope for Seven Iraqi Amputees
The indispensable Fayrouz brings us news of seven Iraqi men whose hands were amputated by Saddam's regime. Why doesn't their story interest the media?
The L Word: Are you a lberal?
THE L WORD: LIBERALISM IN CRISIS
Are you a liberal?
Do you believe in freedom?
Do you believe in a future where women, gays, and people of all faiths and traditions are free to be who they are without fear?
Do you believe in the beautiful and infinite diversity of humankind, our cultures and our individual lives?
Do you reject the failures of the past, and do you despise the regimes that keep entire nations in chains?
Do you believe that the smiling, clean-cut collaborators share the perpetrators’ guilt?
Do you hold a healthy skepticism for the institutions of “culture”, and do you yet believe that the richness of our lives comes from the wealth of culture, high and low, that is available to us?
Do you chafe at the pretensions of the elite classes, and do you still believe that all people, mighty and humble, may partake of the humanity that makes us divine and the divinity that makes us human?
Do you rebel against the abuse of power, and do you still believe that power may be used wisely and justly?
Do you believe that we can change for the better, that with good will, faith, careful thought, and courage we can build the world we want?
And do you remember that the word “liberal” means a believer in freedom?
Are you a liberal?
Do you believe in freedom?
Do you believe in a future where women, gays, and people of all faiths and traditions are free to be who they are without fear?
Do you believe in the beautiful and infinite diversity of humankind, our cultures and our individual lives?
Do you reject the failures of the past, and do you despise the regimes that keep entire nations in chains?
Do you believe that the smiling, clean-cut collaborators share the perpetrators’ guilt?
Do you hold a healthy skepticism for the institutions of “culture”, and do you yet believe that the richness of our lives comes from the wealth of culture, high and low, that is available to us?
Do you chafe at the pretensions of the elite classes, and do you still believe that all people, mighty and humble, may partake of the humanity that makes us divine and the divinity that makes us human?
Do you rebel against the abuse of power, and do you still believe that power may be used wisely and justly?
Do you believe that we can change for the better, that with good will, faith, careful thought, and courage we can build the world we want?
And do you remember that the word “liberal” means a believer in freedom?
Upcoming Events
As noted below, I'm going to be taking a short break from writing Morning Report. Sifting through the news headlines on a daily basis is more gruelling than you might think. Nevertheless I consider MR an important part of this blog and intend to continue posting it regularly, resuming on Sunday.
Meanwhile, I'm preparing posts on the following topics:
- gay marriage
- Armed Forces Day
- the continuation of my series on Kabbalah
- liberalism and the freedom movement
- Oregon events, including the Spain suspect and the Goldschmidt scandal
- and of course, unfolding events in the Mideast and around the world.
If I can get all of that under control by the end of the week, I may even take a short break from blogging.
Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I'm preparing posts on the following topics:
- gay marriage
- Armed Forces Day
- the continuation of my series on Kabbalah
- liberalism and the freedom movement
- Oregon events, including the Spain suspect and the Goldschmidt scandal
- and of course, unfolding events in the Mideast and around the world.
If I can get all of that under control by the end of the week, I may even take a short break from blogging.
Stay tuned.
2004-05-16
The Kabbalah
THE KABBALAH – Part 2
When I was in my mid-teens, my mother gave me my first book about Kabbalah. It was “The Book of Letters” by Lawrence Kushner. You have to see this book: it’s bound in natural colored cloth, printed on cream-colored paper; it’s not typeset, but written in the author’s hand in plain and elegant English and Hebrew calligraphy. There is a copy of the book on my lap, next to my computer keyboard, as I write this. I cannot imagine being without this book.
“Alef is the first letter. It has no sound ...” So begins the book, quietly, like the first letter. “Open your mouth and begin to make a sound. STOP! That is Alef.” At once, intuitively, you know where Kushner is taking you. You’re going to go to the beginning, the place before sound, the place before thought. You’re going to learn new words – and not just the words themselves, or even just their meanings, you are going to learn a new way of thinking.
Over the next fifty-five pages (it is a short book) we learn more than 200 Hebrew words: words like echad (one), bayit (house), hinneni (here I am), sefer (book), and tzedek (righteousness). We also learn that “you cannot pronounce the letter Tet until you go out early in the spring morning and see the dew (tal). Only when you secretly confess to yourself that you really do not understand how the tiny droplets of water have come to be, are you permitted to be cleansed in them.”
Growing up in Rabbi Kushner’s New England, I knew well the chill of the dew on bare feet in the morning, at that time in spring when school is not quite over, but you can at least forget about it long enough to watch the shimmer of the early sun on those droplets. And maybe you weren’t happy in school, and maybe your home life wasn’t so good either, but could put it out of your mind when you saw the dew glistening on the blades of grass.
What was I feeling at those moments? I don’t know. I know that at other times, I was feeling “Shevirat ha-Kelim. The discord and confusion which is the beginning of growing. And then trying to get it all back together again.” So life was not meant to be easy: this much was clear. But what could be broken and shattered could also be mended: “Tikkun. Mending. The repair of the universe.” I didn’t understand what it all meant, but I wanted to find out.
Now there’s another book in front of me: big, square, and slick, printed in eye-popping day-glow colors and metallic silver. The title is “The 72 Names of God – Technology for the Soul (TM)” and the dust jacket informs me that the book is a “National Bestseller”. Its author, Yehuda Berg, is “an ordained Rabbi and is internationally-renowned as a leading authority of Kabbalah.”
The Forword informs us that “the 72 Names are a technology for asserting the power of human consciousness over physicality.” The book is quite emphatic about the “technology” aspect, in fact, using the word ten times in the two-page foreword (and four times in the first paragraph alone).
So it is a technology. Well. If it is a technology, then it must be practical, efficient, and reliable. I certainly hope it works better than my AOL dial-up or Windows Millennium Edition.
But if it is a technology, then it must also be inscrutable. Anything technological has already been theorized, understood, studied, researched and developed, and is now in full production, ready for consumer use. Science – or what used to be called “natural philosophy” – belongs to the conjoined realms of understanding and experience. Technology, by definition, does not ask to be understood or even thought about; only used. Did your computer come with a brochure explaining the fine points of silicon doping and photolithography? Neither did mine.
What are the 72 Names? They are combinations of three Hebrew letters each, derived from Exodus 14:19-21 by a simple algorithm (one letter from each verse, in order, reading the middle verse backward). The book promises that by meditating faithfully on the various letter combinations, certain specific effects can be achieved. Of course, there is a stipulation: the Names will not do anything for you unless you commit to “proactive behavior” and renounce “ego games”.
Well and good: the 72 Names of God help them who help themselves. But these little tricks – being proactive and dealing with that nuisance called the ego – does the book offer us any practical advice regarding these things? Is it not astonishing that whole shelves of self-help books, even entire religions, have been devoted to these tasks, yet Berg offers us not so much as a handful of pointers for keeping the mind and body still during meditation, or winning friends and influencing people?
And conversely: once we’ve got will and ego under control, what will the 72 Names do for us that mere meditation, prayer, study, and action alone will not? On this point, too, the book is resolutely silent.
But let me stop nitpicking over the book; now I want to visit Yossi Kein Halevi’s article on Yehuda Berg and his Kabbalah Centre.
(End of Part 2)
When I was in my mid-teens, my mother gave me my first book about Kabbalah. It was “The Book of Letters” by Lawrence Kushner. You have to see this book: it’s bound in natural colored cloth, printed on cream-colored paper; it’s not typeset, but written in the author’s hand in plain and elegant English and Hebrew calligraphy. There is a copy of the book on my lap, next to my computer keyboard, as I write this. I cannot imagine being without this book.
“Alef is the first letter. It has no sound ...” So begins the book, quietly, like the first letter. “Open your mouth and begin to make a sound. STOP! That is Alef.” At once, intuitively, you know where Kushner is taking you. You’re going to go to the beginning, the place before sound, the place before thought. You’re going to learn new words – and not just the words themselves, or even just their meanings, you are going to learn a new way of thinking.
Over the next fifty-five pages (it is a short book) we learn more than 200 Hebrew words: words like echad (one), bayit (house), hinneni (here I am), sefer (book), and tzedek (righteousness). We also learn that “you cannot pronounce the letter Tet until you go out early in the spring morning and see the dew (tal). Only when you secretly confess to yourself that you really do not understand how the tiny droplets of water have come to be, are you permitted to be cleansed in them.”
Growing up in Rabbi Kushner’s New England, I knew well the chill of the dew on bare feet in the morning, at that time in spring when school is not quite over, but you can at least forget about it long enough to watch the shimmer of the early sun on those droplets. And maybe you weren’t happy in school, and maybe your home life wasn’t so good either, but could put it out of your mind when you saw the dew glistening on the blades of grass.
What was I feeling at those moments? I don’t know. I know that at other times, I was feeling “Shevirat ha-Kelim. The discord and confusion which is the beginning of growing. And then trying to get it all back together again.” So life was not meant to be easy: this much was clear. But what could be broken and shattered could also be mended: “Tikkun. Mending. The repair of the universe.” I didn’t understand what it all meant, but I wanted to find out.
Now there’s another book in front of me: big, square, and slick, printed in eye-popping day-glow colors and metallic silver. The title is “The 72 Names of God – Technology for the Soul (TM)” and the dust jacket informs me that the book is a “National Bestseller”. Its author, Yehuda Berg, is “an ordained Rabbi and is internationally-renowned as a leading authority of Kabbalah.”
The Forword informs us that “the 72 Names are a technology for asserting the power of human consciousness over physicality.” The book is quite emphatic about the “technology” aspect, in fact, using the word ten times in the two-page foreword (and four times in the first paragraph alone).
So it is a technology. Well. If it is a technology, then it must be practical, efficient, and reliable. I certainly hope it works better than my AOL dial-up or Windows Millennium Edition.
But if it is a technology, then it must also be inscrutable. Anything technological has already been theorized, understood, studied, researched and developed, and is now in full production, ready for consumer use. Science – or what used to be called “natural philosophy” – belongs to the conjoined realms of understanding and experience. Technology, by definition, does not ask to be understood or even thought about; only used. Did your computer come with a brochure explaining the fine points of silicon doping and photolithography? Neither did mine.
What are the 72 Names? They are combinations of three Hebrew letters each, derived from Exodus 14:19-21 by a simple algorithm (one letter from each verse, in order, reading the middle verse backward). The book promises that by meditating faithfully on the various letter combinations, certain specific effects can be achieved. Of course, there is a stipulation: the Names will not do anything for you unless you commit to “proactive behavior” and renounce “ego games”.
Well and good: the 72 Names of God help them who help themselves. But these little tricks – being proactive and dealing with that nuisance called the ego – does the book offer us any practical advice regarding these things? Is it not astonishing that whole shelves of self-help books, even entire religions, have been devoted to these tasks, yet Berg offers us not so much as a handful of pointers for keeping the mind and body still during meditation, or winning friends and influencing people?
And conversely: once we’ve got will and ego under control, what will the 72 Names do for us that mere meditation, prayer, study, and action alone will not? On this point, too, the book is resolutely silent.
But let me stop nitpicking over the book; now I want to visit Yossi Kein Halevi’s article on Yehuda Berg and his Kabbalah Centre.
(End of Part 2)
The Kabbalah
THE KABBALAH – Part 1
You remember how it was when you were a small child? How everything was new and full of wonder? Even if you had a hard childhood, your mind would open from time to time, everything around you would fall away, and you felt yourself joined with something higher. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.
Even as a young adult, when you were first exploring new books and music, love and sex, you had the nagging feeling that there was something behind it all, some kind of secret – not quite like the secret codes you played with as a child, but still a way of changing and hiding a deeper message. And maybe you tried to find clues to this message in your Scriptures, or in science, or in art and literature, and you felt you almost had it, but it still eluded you.
And there were bills to pay, kids to raise, endless meetings and interviews and hasty late-night dinners in front of the television before you dropped off to sleep exhausted. You found the answers that worked for you, and they worked well enough, and you stopped asking the questions, not because you didn’t care anymore, but just because you had other things to do.
So here you are. Maybe now you’re at what they call middle age (whatever that means) and you start counting your birthdays in terms of how many down, how many to go. You wonder what comes next. In those private moments you’ve never spoken of to anyone, you wonder why you bother at all. You’re tired – tired of everything, all the time. You catch yourself thinking that if something happened to you, and you didn’t have to do this anymore, perhaps it wouldn’t be an altogether bad thing. An early retirement, you could say ... and then the alarm clock rings, and it’s time to do it all again.
What brought us here, and why? We’ve looked for answers to these questions in books, you and I, and we know that none of the answers we’ve found have been satisfactory. What we need is not for someone to hand us a diagram with our place clearly marked in the Master Plan (although let’s admit it, that would be nice, woudn’t it?) – what we really need is to learn a new way of thinking. Or maybe it’s an old way of thinking. Or maybe it’s a way of not-thinking.
Or maybe ...
(End of Part 1)
You remember how it was when you were a small child? How everything was new and full of wonder? Even if you had a hard childhood, your mind would open from time to time, everything around you would fall away, and you felt yourself joined with something higher. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.
Even as a young adult, when you were first exploring new books and music, love and sex, you had the nagging feeling that there was something behind it all, some kind of secret – not quite like the secret codes you played with as a child, but still a way of changing and hiding a deeper message. And maybe you tried to find clues to this message in your Scriptures, or in science, or in art and literature, and you felt you almost had it, but it still eluded you.
And there were bills to pay, kids to raise, endless meetings and interviews and hasty late-night dinners in front of the television before you dropped off to sleep exhausted. You found the answers that worked for you, and they worked well enough, and you stopped asking the questions, not because you didn’t care anymore, but just because you had other things to do.
So here you are. Maybe now you’re at what they call middle age (whatever that means) and you start counting your birthdays in terms of how many down, how many to go. You wonder what comes next. In those private moments you’ve never spoken of to anyone, you wonder why you bother at all. You’re tired – tired of everything, all the time. You catch yourself thinking that if something happened to you, and you didn’t have to do this anymore, perhaps it wouldn’t be an altogether bad thing. An early retirement, you could say ... and then the alarm clock rings, and it’s time to do it all again.
What brought us here, and why? We’ve looked for answers to these questions in books, you and I, and we know that none of the answers we’ve found have been satisfactory. What we need is not for someone to hand us a diagram with our place clearly marked in the Master Plan (although let’s admit it, that would be nice, woudn’t it?) – what we really need is to learn a new way of thinking. Or maybe it’s an old way of thinking. Or maybe it’s a way of not-thinking.
Or maybe ...
(End of Part 1)
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