blony

That was when people said I was totally insane! she says, with a great whooping laugh. They called her "the woman with the wooden vagina".

...

Agnes' defence of her girls is legendary in the Rift Valley. Everybody knows about the time an enraged father turned up at the gates of the shelter with a sword to reclaim his daughter and have her cut. The gates were sealed; the girls were gathered, unarmed, behind Agnes. The father was howling revenge -- and Agnes stood firm and shouted: Come on then! Try it! We're not afraid of you! After a moment's silence, he fled. I am a Masai woman, she says ...

...

Agnes leans forward, her hands bunched into fists. "These girls don't think [mutilation] is wrong because a white man told them so. They know it's wrong because it's their body." With that, Agnes sits back, and looks out, towards the girls playing in the yard, free at last.

Johann Hari ... Hidden War

There are probably those who knew me younger who would marvel that I might be able to think and write without passion about love.

There are probably those who knew me when I believed-bahaved that one should do anything for love.

There are, I'm sure, those who knew me when I could be devastated about love.

There are those who knew me when I knew nothing whatsoever about love except that it made me crazy. There are some who cherished that. There are others who were harmed by it. At one time or another, they were one and the same person.

And there are those who think I am cynical about love.

They would all be correct. They would all be incorrect.

It's multidimensional and the dimensions become clear only with time and experience. And that's why I may have something worthwhile to say about love.

Admiration, desire, empathy, sympathy in any combination can fuel a wild fire in a young person who is helplessly driven by how he or she feels. We are all, at least while younger, fueled by powerful, however primitive, forces of nature within the system that is a human being. That is common love, the sense of being 'in love'. That is the love I have experienced through much of my life but that is not the love I understand or know about - I never understood it. In retrospect, it is not to be understood so much as it is to be recognized, acknowledged and accepted as inevitable experience that one must be provided perspective as a defense against.

Please don't get me wrong ... to be in love is every bit as important and as valid as to give birth and nurture a child. That's because, in our very primitive psyche, the drive to procreate, to survive, to identify with, to nurture and comfort is indigenous to our nature as living creatures. It is not an intellectual process. It is a primitive drive - one that we share with every species that has not become extinct.

Yet, finally - perhaps some day, we are not primitive creatures - we think, we learn, we apply what we have learned. Does that mean we need to forsake love?

Of course not. What we must learn is to be able to differentiate between the primitive drive and our rational understanding of who and how we are and to discriminate the behavior we allow or prohibit our self from engaging in.

I've been a young boy and loved young girls. I've been a young man and loved young women. I married one and thought that was it - should be it, must be it. I and I'm sure she, died psychically a few times - or wished we had actually, as we generated and, mostly, raised a family.

You'd think I'd have learned. You'd think ... Yet I still had much more to learn. I was an older man and loved a young woman. Oh duh, she needed me. Or was it that I needed her? Bottom line: I can tell you about love:

First, love is about your self - without sufficient being, sufficient value of one's self - what one creates and produces - that you create and produce, you do not have the capacity, the abundance of sufficiency, to love others effectively.

Second, love is about power. Not the exercise of power but the recognition and acknowledgment of power - one's personal power and the ways it may affect those one might love - they, expecting love that is in their best interests will be vulnerable and trusting. Always do the right thing; avoid doing the wrong thing with respect to someone you love. Even, particularly, when it is time to let go.

Third, love is about your own vulnerability and need. Disdain these things! Be and fulfill your self. Remember, the first thing required to effectively love another is a sufficiency, an abundance, of self: to be able to give without need.

Fourth ... and here is where some consider me cynical - let go with grace and love - or even indifference - when it is time. Here is where your self love is most important.

Fifth, appropriately following fourth, act in accordance with, encourage and support the long term best interests of one you love. Do that regardless of ... anything else except by doing or allowing actual harm to your self - which could never be in the long term best interests of anyone.

Finally - and here I am - the cynic, the realist about love:

Do love! Do it well to the best of your ability. Do it over and over and over till you get it right.

Do not confuse what you perceive and what you think with how you feel but, by all means, do integrate and reconcile the two - and adjust your behavior accordingly. Always act in your own long term best interests and, believe it, you will be acting in the long term best interests of those you love.

Confused? You'll grow out of it ... or you won't. Need a guideline? Just, at every critical juncture, think - and do the right thing.

One laughs out loud at Michael Wolff's title about the aptly named Ratzinger cum Benedict.

Wolff wonders what this nut has up his sleeve.

Arguably, it’s a German thing. Certainly a German pope rescinding the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, and then promoting him to boot, takes a bit of chutzpah. And, not unlikely, it’s a broader message. A willful expression of authoritarian temperament and settling of old scores (the Catholic Church has had to eat a lot of crow about the Holocaust). For that matter, the bishop who thinks God was having his revenge on the deviants of New Orleans, Gerhard Maria Wagner, is an Austrian. So, a sort of old home week in the Vatican.

Assuming he’s not daft, what’s Benedict got up his sleeve?

We wonder: Why assume he's not daft? Indeed, how could he not be daft? After all, he's playing Pope in the 21st century having previously headed the [circa 1542] Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition since branded the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and then the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

History has been on this character's side, sort of. But said history has been ridiculously ignominious, however popularly sucked up.

Oh, duh. How to regain a toe-hold on the slippery slope as an enlightened world lifts the edge of ignorance and peers beneath and all over? Why not revert to type? It's worked over and over and over.

Barack Obama as a leader is refreshing nationally and internationally for Good Reason ... The man is Reason-based - a genuinely sane thinker and problem solver.

The Republican brand has become discredited, largely, because the mentality of those who peddle and embrace it is not reason-based but is feelings-based, driven by ideological dogma, dependent upon inducing and manipulating emotion. The brand is as recognizable as the but I really love, you man beer commercials and is disgusting for many of the same reasons.

America and the world are sick and tired of the denial of real-world reality in favor of solipsistic, aggressive, self-righteous certainty cum hypocrisy, demonizing and aggrandizing absent the challenge of self-questioning and multi-dimensional perspective necessary to integrity, real-world problem solving and effective leadership. The behavior and demeanor of these folks are not Conservative, they're anachronistic - throwbacks to old-world ignorance driven by primitive emotion.

Our founders attempted and intended to establish a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Such a government should be a framework for We the People to collaborate in the addressing of issues and the solving problems of national and common importance.

High in priority among problems and issues facing all Americans are the health and regulation of the corrupt and ailing economy, the fractured, inadequate, unfairly funded, woefully unequal education of our youth, health care, and the pristinely corrupt, blatantly fascist relationship that exists between corporations and other special interest, not only non-citizen but not-even-human, entities and our government.

Most high in priority among priority and issues facing all Americans is our responsibility and opportunity to conserve, protect, grow into and be governed by the principles and ideals our nation was founded upon. Equality under the law for each and every individual citizen is arguably the principle that most distinguishes the democratic republic. Growing into the fulfillment of that principle has led America through its bloodiest war and tumultuous, frequently violent conflict that continues even into the third century of the nation's young existence - all fueled, not by reason and principles of Constitution-based law but, by primitively anachronistic feelings-based convictions entrenched in dogmatically aggressive ignorance. One word sums it up - stupidity. One party has lately epitomized stupidity - Republican.

How do Republicans 'fix' and rebrand their party?

Stop with the great reliance upon feeling. Think critically. Get on the right side of issues with respect to the Constitution. Get on the right side of issues with respect to whom our government is intended to to be of, by and for. Get it that the individual citizen comprises We the People. Get it that there is no corporation, no religious organization, no foreign country, no god among We the People.

We the People are each and every individual citizen be he or she black, white, red, yellow, gay, straight, theist, non-theist - each has the right to Liberty and to equal protection under the law from abridgment of that Liberty by any other entity, including the government its self. Each has the right to collaborate via the framework of government in solving common problems and issues in ways that make the most sense. Each has the right to life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No corporation or religious organization has such rights. No corporation, religious organization or foreign country is a constituent.

A not-too-old black American has grown into the promise of the Declaration of Original Intent and he and all who voted for him helped stretch the USA one step further into our growth in fulfilling the principles and ideals our nation was founded upon.

Congratulations, Mr. President. And I cannot think of a better voice to herald the day than that of Pete Seeger.

Incoming Attorney General, Eric Holder, has made it clear that his predecessor, Michael Mukassey has simply played the Alberto Gonzales and Bush administration game of fuzzing the boundaries of what is criminal behavior by acknowledging that inquisition tactics [able to make one admit to shape shifting, witch craft, etc.] such as water boarding are torture.

While the entire world is well aware that repeatedly placing one in near death drowning experiences is torture, Mukassey seems a bit troubled by Holder's acknowledgement:

The Holder response was in contrast to that of Mr. Mukasey, who declined when asked the same question at his confirmation hearing in 2007. The Justice Department's office of legal counsel issued legal opinions, later rescinded, that backed the legality of harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.

"Torture is a crime," Mr. Mukasey said in an interview Friday, adding that he worried "about the effect on…the work of fine intelligence lawyers who are called on to make judgments on questions like that, often under tremendous time pressure -- not to mention the pressure of an attack that killed 3000 people [and caused worry that] maybe there was going to be another one."

Mukassey, having agreed that torture is a crime goes on to say:

"It's one thing to write opinion on matter of abstruse law. It's quite something else to write [opinions] on whether something is or isn't a crime," he said. He added that in the future, government lawyers and agents "have to be concerned that you may someday -- having given your best, most honest, most impartial advice -- have it be said of you that you sanctioned a crime."

Torture is a crime ... unless you sanctioned it

Or refuse to call it what it is.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Paul Krugman argues that the incoming Executive Branch of government has the responsibility to hold the previous administration accountable.

Probably the most compelling dimension of Krugman's position is that successive magnanimous forgiving and forgetting has encouraged a history of transgression to repeat its self.

[N]o important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration's political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won't do it all over again, given the chance?

In fact, we've already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it's giving Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off - which isn't too surprising when you bear in mind that Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.

Now, it's true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we'll guarantee that they will happen again.

Does Obama's oath of office require him to hold the Bush administration accountable?

While it's probably in [Obama's] short-term political interests to forgive and forget, next week he's going to swear to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." That's not a conditional oath to be honored only when it's convenient.

And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime. Consequences aside, that's not a decision he has the right to make.

Krugman's argument is all the more compelling given the repeated Bush claim that history will be his judge - even as he and his minions have launched a campaign to whitewash their legacy and spin history. Is it the right thing to do to allow the Bush administration to be sealed in teflon too?

Updated: How history will remember dubya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxkpm7bH7j4

Zionist Israel has a Palestinian Problem. The US is on the wrong side of history with respect to that and has been so for decades. The US refuses any healthy conscious awareness of or dialog regarding its role in supporting the state of Zionism. Such denial is a classic sign of mental illness.

As in many unhealthy situations, there is a continuous insistent effort to reinforce the denial required to maintain and shape the blindness of US citizens so they accept as normal the behavior of their government: For example, it just passes into the brain through the ear as Wolf Blitzer, former AIPAC propagandist, on CNN is unable to mention Israel without the phrase one of America's strongest allies. Over and over and over. It's as normal for Israelis to slaughter Palestinians as it was for Andrew Jackson to slaughter Native Americans.

Indeed, Jabotinsky's 1923, one might say - original, road map, Iron Wall likened what European colonialists must do to the Palestinians to what Europeans had done to the native Americans of the US. And, of course, every American knows the savage Native Americans were red-skin terrorists who killed indiscriminately when they retaliated against the usurpation of their land by entitled ahem, white settlers.

How natural the narrative sounds - a little nation of John Waynes, Gary Coopers and Jimmy Stewarts fighting the terrorists - the good guys and the, ahem, dark-skin bad guys. Of course the bad guys must be slaughtered or herded into their pens and isolated.

Israel as one of our strongest allies is a Blitzer-like blitzkreig of propaganda.

Israel is ally to no entity but its self and is self-destructive in the long term at that. Like the overindulgent, blind to truth rich parent-friend, US policy has culminated in enabling and reinforcing decades of special religious/racial elitism, brutality, duplicity and hypocrisy to meld a rogue cult-as-state into an evil entity.

The damage to the character and reputation of the US of these decades of indulgence and denial may be irreversible from an historical perspective. If it is to be redressed at all, the cost in US self-correction is likely to be of the same scale, pain and duration as that of slavery and segregation. And part of that cost will need to be inductive: the character and behavior of Israel will need to change from within and by forces from without - Israel must change or the US must become its enemy.

The unnecessary wanton slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza may not provide the watershed moment in US/Israeli history that the US needs in order to see clearly how wrong its policy and indulgence of Zionism has been. Like the emergent phenomenon of most epiphany-like realizations, the beginning of a turning point in US collective consciousness will be difficult to pinpoint but its tsunami-like force of change will be impossible to escape or reverse.

There have been signs, albeit quickly repressed, of emerging US conscious awareness of its participation in and fomenting of the wrong-headed character and nature of Zionist Israel. For example, the assertions of Howard Dean during the debates in 2003 quickly excited the uneasy schizoid roots and nature of US policy and the need to quickly ban it from consciousness and public discourse.

But the unbridled zeal of the current slaughter in Gaza on top of more than a year of horrific siege coupled with the brazen flaunting of Israeli power over US policy and behavior, and Bush's disgusting kowtow, in the age of instant world-wide visibility is a series of events and postures to be reckoned with. A serious demonstration of its schizoid mentality by the US government that, resulting in a mealy-mouthed abstention from voting on what it, in fact, led, was the clash between Rice and Bush where the Secretary of State bulldogged the President out of the shame of an outright US veto of its own sanity.

This series of events could be a tipping point. It provides the incoming President a stark picture of a crazy reality a sane man must strive to change. Will Barack Obama forfeit immediately his promise of change we can believe in by indulging in yet another cycle of denial of the wrongness of decades of US foreign policy in the Middle East? We think/hope not.

Obama's take will be wrenching for him to consume and digest but he will face reality and do what must be done. He may discreetly refrain from calling the nature and behavior of Israel by name. But he will also refrain from the poisonous kool-ade that has kept US foreign policy terribly, disastrously, evilly insane for decades, correctly assess that he must take Israel by the ear, look that spoiled-brat tyrant straight in the eye, impart truth and light, induce fear and assure it that the US is no longer going to tolerate, much less support, a state of repressive, ethnic-cleansing elitists founded in and by terrorism in the first place.

And then there must be the hope, a blue print, a beacon that, when followed, curtails and reverses evil, informs and sustains the righteous evolution of a state: The hard, clear set of principles set forth in the Declaration of Original Intent, the US Constitution and Bill of Rights are as important to any would-be modern democratic state as they are to the US.

From day one, Israel has steadfastly and purposely avoided the articulation of a foundational, inviolable law of the land, a constitution. That is because duplicity, the hypocritical shell-game of feigned righteousness while caging indigenous people, poking them with sharp sticks till they feebly respond and then zealously slaughtering them in defense requires the absence of the principles of equality under the law and personal Liberty that would protect all from oppression by states and other citizens alike. The duplicitous claim of Israeli citizenship for native Palestinians, whatever their religion, is amply and repeatedly demonstrated to be but a fluid sheen hiding the cesspool where repressive elitists defecate upon the civil rights and liberties of others.

The de facto acceptance of a Zionist state, or any state of ethnic/religious elitism at the expense of others, in the 21st century by the authoring of a so-called road map to solving Israel's Palestinian Problem is a travesty, a smearing of a bullshit facade over concrete walls to hide the much uglier Zionist flavor of elitist European colonialism that, in terms of states, most closely resembles apartheid South Africa.

A nation with government and law founded on a constitution that acknowledges and guarantees the civil rights and Liberty of all individuals regardless of race or creed is something Barack Obama is uniquely situated to provide testimony to as befitting any nation that might be called a US ally. When he takes Israel by the ear, shakes it to the bone, makes it perceive the shame of its behavior and provides the carrots and sticks by which it may redeem itself Barack Obama, a black man from the land of Lincoln becoming President in the bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth may go a long way toward becoming an equally auspicious and revered leader and American President - for similar reasons.