~ i n s h a d e s o f g r a y ~

halo clan crazy

2006-01-07T14:19:00.000-05:00

so, i'm in a great clan called the ttl gunslingers. check out our founder's blog at tiedtheleader.blogspot.com

here's a logo

back...again?

2005-05-10T23:19:00.000-04:00

Well...No idea why I've returned to the blog world. I initially started the blog so that I could feel in some way to be a participant in the election cycle of which I was so eagerly hoping would end up differently than it did. Alas, what is done is done.

Sometimes, although 99% of those times I do nothing, I feel the urge to write. I'm not a writer by trade nor a writer by want, but there are times when write I do and I suppose, write I must. There's a sense in blogging that one is communicating to an audience that might "understand." You have a notion that others are connecting to what you are saying and experiencing in a way that almost makes it feel as if you are connecting with yourself in a powerful sense. This thought is comforting, and therefore I'll just pretend for the current post that no one is really opposed to my words or cares one way or the other about my ramblings. Instead, you are all here--as in with me, connected and united as one common community front. Enough.

Recently I tried explaining to my father my reasons for not being a part of the organized church. There is a much longer back story to this conversation, but to put it in a much shorter fashion I explained that I had reached a point in my journey as a human being where I felt no longer a part of that paradigm. I have come to experience the journey of faith as one narrative way of making meaning in life amidst a plethora of stories and volumes. In a sense, I came to view my experience with the church as one views a book by Dickens in the local library.

Libraries are amazing and often frightening places. In fact, I am more and more frightened of libraries the older I get. So much knowledge...so much word dumping. It's like a massive landfill of the things we used to find important. Somehow, they ended up in one place with other people's important stuff and they're all mingling together just waiting for us to either 1)forget or 2)find our own use for them. Even for the writers there can no longer function as they once did. For me, the church became one of those stories.

Once you view one's old paradigm as being one amongst the many it's pretty much over. And here, I believe, lies the crux of our contemporary lives. We are in a constant state of multiple signification library realization syndrome. Yuck. Once you have your first taste of the library syndrome of history you can't go back to being a mere peruser of the shelves. Oh no. You're pretty much screwed at this point cause now you can SEE the names and READ the titles and (gasp) UNDERSTAND the differences in volumes.

And now, I too add to the stacks. Place this blog in the catalog. We keep doing it cause it's one of those fights for permanancy. We're fighting for being every friggin day, and there's no stopping it. The babies keep coming. The mind keeps humming. We made machines in our image after all. We will create. We will un/ravel and march. We will.

For me:
The glass has been broken and the cup has been laid waste.

For all that remains the earth will have her fill.

I too--one day--hope to be a/part. To be the chalice I once threw down.

Bin Laden

2004-11-02T14:10:00.000-05:00

I've had a near impossible time finding the full transcript of the Osama bin Laden video that recently came out. When I first read a transcript in a local paper, I was curious to know whether or not there was more material. A recent web search finally turned up the full version which I encourage you to read here. Apparently, the Washington Post has a full transcript as well.

It's convenient for us to call those who oppose us terrorists while we ignore the terror that we bring to parts of the world every day. The real question becomes one of who started the conflict first? Who infringed on the other's privacy, sovereignty, government, and society's way of life first? This is a complicated issue, and from all I can most of the arrows seem to point to the Arab/Israeli conflict--of which the U.S. plays a very partisan part. There is a strong, pro-Israel, Zionist movement in this country that needs to be understood, examined, and critiqued in a healthy way by the American public. The odd thing is that rarely, if ever, has the Israeli/Palestinian issue surfaced in this election cycle. In fact, by all accounts the Israeli issue has been squelched. I read an article recently that talked about how the Kerry website started banning any posts related to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that were pro-Palestine.

Why is this country so staunchly supportive of Israel? Believe me, I have no animosity towards the Jewish people. I do, however, have a problem with a government who overwhelmingly condones and supplies another country with the weapons of war to elimate in a systematic way a particular group of people. What we tried to prevent in World War II and Bosnia is what we are now supporting in the Israeli governments daily attack upon the Palestinian people. Are the Palestinians blameless? Hardly. But do people deserve to have a land that they can call their own--with the legitimacy of the world community--absolutely.

You may not agree with bin Laden's tactics, but his analysis is fairly logical and insightful for those Americans who choose to blindly believe that whatever the U.S. does is purely "good" and that those who oppose us are simply "evil." The world, I'm afraid, is just too complex for that kind of analysis.

Explosive!

2004-10-25T11:15:00.000-04:00

Well, this post is a long time coming. I've been following the news points on a daily basis, and while there's certainly been "news" none of it has really been of the kind to grab one's attention...until today.

According to the Iraq government it appears that approximately 380 tons of highly explosive military grade materials were looted from Iraq during the invasion by the grand Coalition of the Killing. Apparently, the International Atomic Energy Agency knew of this explosives cache (its location, size, etc.) and even warned the administration about it--however, nothing was done to protect this stockpile of explosives which had been monitoried by the IAEA during the sanctions regime and were allowed to be used by the Iraqi government for various building projects.

There is even evidence to suggest that Bush Administration officials have been suppressing the release of this information to the press for quite some time (the explosives have been missing for months). Finally, it is likely, although not proven, that this explosive material is what is being used for the various suicide bombing attempts by the Iraqi resistence. Just so you have a picture of what kind of quantity of explosives we're talking about here--it's the equivalent of nearly 10 tractor-trailer rigs worth of material.

Now, I don't know about you, but when an agency actually tells you where this stuff is and you do absolutely nothing to protect it from looting (and remember, it's not like they could just break a window and load this stuff in napsacks) then by most standards your lack of attention qualifies as an extreme case of incompetence and ineptitude.

Go Bush go! Treat yourself to a dose of reality.

It's something

2004-10-18T22:50:00.000-04:00

Even though there is plenty of stuff going on to post about, nothing is strong enough to suit my fancy.

So, to the chagrin of many, i'm putting up a link here to a flash video raising questions about what really hit the Pentagon on September 11th. The photos are pretty convincing to me, but you be the judge.

Go and brush your shoulders off

2004-10-12T23:30:00.000-04:00

I'm hoping this will be the start of a weekly post on religious issues in the nation. I have come to notice in recent years the links between charismatic leadership, religion, and politics.

Many often wonder how it is that the religious right can so easily support the republican party despite issues that might conflict with a "Christian" ethic or worldview. It has always been interesting to me that, for the Christian right, the most important issues in this election are 1)abortion and 2)gay marriage. They often claim that between the two presidential choices they're going to vote for the one with the most moral (substitute biblical(substitute Old Testament(substitute Levitical))) worldview. Apparently, waging an unjust war that kills thousands of innocent Iraqis, afghans, and Palestinians is just an unfortunate by-product of being a Christian superpower.

The real issue, for these folks, is not abortion or gay marriage (although they are important). The real issue is authority. For the past several years there has been a strong shift underway in the country from evangelical Protestantism to radical fundamentalism. Under the paradigm of fundamentalism, followers crave a leader who will maintain the boundaries of right and wrong, hold fast to his/her (mostly his) convictions even in the face of logical contradiction, and reject the findings of modern science in favor of a more ancient (although metaphorical) creation narrative.

All three of these facets of fundamentalist thinking can be found in a Bush administration view of the world. This is why it should come as no surprise that radical fundamentalist preachers like Jerry Falwell are fervently endorsing a vote for George.

Particularly disturbing is how quickly and openly these groups will support a particular political candidate. For them, it's not another normal election cycle. What is at stake is the future of the universe--the cosmic battle between good and evil. Scarier still is the fact that Bush, in this way of looking at life, is not only the president but also the priest. Bush speaks both for the country and...for God.

It's no coincidence, my friends, that both pimps and priests have a thing for robes and jewelry.

the price of being on top

2004-10-11T16:43:00.000-04:00

This will be a short post...primarily cause you'll have to do most of the reading. So sorry for you.

For me, one of the more disturbing realities about the U.S. military presence in the Middle East is the affect that it is having upon our soldiers. While you can sell a country on a cause for war, it's usually the soldiers who fight the war that find out eventually whether or not they've been fed a load of candy or a load of crock. I'll let some of them who were there speak for themselves--you decide what they've had for dinner.

And, finally, if they haven't realized it yet, they soon will--the future of America is all about black gold.

Time to move to Beverly...Hills that is.

A place to start

2004-10-10T23:43:00.000-04:00

an important step towards meaningful political involvemnt is to support what our third parties have been telling us all along--tout party reforms!

Who's on First?

2004-10-10T18:40:00.000-04:00

So, the Dems want to claim that Kerry has all the right answers. The Repubs are shooting for a Bush that's on fire but not all-consuming. The pundits are all looking for THE TRUTH with every major news site claiming a fact checker or at the minimum a reference to factcheck.org. What the heck is really going on?

For the majority of this election process, if not all of American presidential elections, it feels like we're watching a ping pong match between two candidates that we don't even know--all we know is that one wears blue, one wears red, and we have a favorite between the two. When are the politicians going to put down their ball-knockers and start telling it like it is? And, more importantly, if they do decide to play honest Abe with the public how will we be able to put them to the test?

The Nation recently published an excerpt from a piece by Eric Alterman worth reading. The main gist of the story is that the political system in a democracy is predisposed to hiding information from the public, and that the only way for that to change is for either a)the politicians to start telling the real truth or b)for the public to wake up and understand that reality is often more complicated than we might like to believe. Alterman details how it is usually in the politician's best interest to fib outright and deal with the consequences in the distant political future.

People...this has got to change. My biggest fear is that despite all of the gains the public has made in recent years in bringing forth a critical voice to the current administration, once a Kerry administration takes office that voice of critique and skepticism will simply fade into the background. Will it be a relief to have Dubya out of the picture for the next four years? In my opinion, yes. But the real test will be how and to what extent the public engages the next presidency. The level of civic discourse and participation has got to go up, or else we'll always be stuck with "more of the same."

never thought i'd do this

2004-10-10T13:26:00.000-04:00

following the yellow brick road...i'm off to see the wizard of blog.

-more (later)-