It’s a skunk hunt!

Lately as I've been trying to filter out the real news of the day from all the background accusations, I've noticed a suspicious odor permeating the process. My Dad would have called this tendency to chase after the wrong target a skunk hunt. It seems everybody is obsessed with hunting skunks these days. There's little truth involved in the activity, but a definite smell now permeates the nation's households and newsrooms with charges and countercharges, guilt by association, and labeling with buzzwords. It dominates national talk media, sneaks into NPR, pervades The Gazette, and even creeps into the opinion page of the Big Horn County News.

This style of public rhetoric reminds me of a late night hunt back in the 50's. It was a miserable event I vowed never to repeat. Blue was our two neighbor boys' new coonhound, of the famous Blue Tick breed. He was a great dog, but young and inexperienced (like us). The moonless night darkened deeply as we four shucked our manure boots after chores and pulled on our hunting boots. We checked our 4-D-cell flashlights, ammo and 22 rifles, and lit off for the woods. It didn't take long. Blue bayed under a tree barely a hundred yards into the river bottom woods, and our lights picked out the coon eyes. My brother dropped him, one shot. We skinned the coon, marveling at the fur, "That pelt will bring at least ten bucks!"

Unfortunately, the ruckus raised the interest of our own mongrel stock dog back at the barn, and in no time he was running shotgun with Blue. We hoped the exemplary rationality of a real coonhound might heal this wretch of chasing skunks instead of coons. With heightened enthusiasm for a lucrative night, we headed off after the next baying of Blue, now suddenly out-voiced in intensity by the mongrel's yipping. Things didn't go so well this time. We saw the eyes of the animal in the tree and somebody shot. The report was still sounding when a horrendous mist descended and enveloped us all as the skunk's body came crashing down almost on our noses.

We argued about whether it was worth skinning a skunk, but recovered enough to hold our noses and just do it. Then we tied a leash on the mongrel and headed on, still hopeful. We wanted to give Blue had a second chance, with the mongrel reined in. It didn't work. He had reprogrammed Blue's story line. We learned later he was too young to have the proper story imprinted on his dog brain: "When leading hunters with guns and lights, you attack and tree coons, not skunks."

When we got home with one coonskin and too many skunk hides, our odor had already drifted to the farm buildings and into Dad's nostrils. We were halted firmly before the door, led to the well where we stripped, soaped and scrubbed, and got sprayed off with a cold hose. We threw our clothes into the cornfield by the barn. The odor wouldn't wash off. Soon the entire family was awake, cursing us and our odor. It was an important lesson to learn as a youngster.

I got similar advice from an octogenarian friend of mine years later. He was carrying on about the horrific stink of government, politicians, pundits and the elite inciting us into irrational emotion instead of hunting down real causes of corruption, cheating, waste and abuse threatening all of us. "Observe what you see. Take time to study carefully and honestly. You can head off mistakes, heartache and destruction."

He didn't know he almost quoted Thucydides, from The History of the Peloponnesian War, over 2,000 years ago, "So little pains do the shallow take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Let's take these lessons seriously.

Our nation's skunk hunts occupy our frenzied emotions so that we can't pay attention to reality. For example, one of our favorite arms suppliers, at a billion a year of our taxpayer money, is the Russian multinational Rosoboronexport, a primary supplier of weapons to Assad of Syria. This company just sold 36 fighter jets to Assad, capable of hitting ground targets. Fortunately, seventeen US senators last week signed a letter of protest to Secretary Panetta expressing "grave concern" over this serious policy problem. Unfortunately, only seventeen did. So this real problem will probably be ignored.

http://www.outlookseries.com/A0993/Security/3847_Cornyn_Durbin_End_Relationship_Rosoboronexport_Russian.htm

The following is not included in the Big Horn County News opinion page of March 28, 2012. More real 2012 election year crises are named with research links listed below. Follow the link at the end of my blog to post any comments.

What happens when skunk hunting gets uncovered...This from Sojo.net:

Former NSA Employee Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack on Whistleblower Crackdown

Amy Goodman, Video Report: Thomas Drake, National Security Agency whistle-blower. He’s the winner of the 2011 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award. Jesselyn Radack, a former ethics adviser to the United States Department of Justice. She is currently the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower organization. Her new book is called TRAITOR: The Whistleblower and the "American Taliban"
Here's a link to the book
http://www.amazon.com/TRAITOR-Whistleblower-American-Foreword-Greenwald/dp/0983992800/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3FYED64DSXKF4&colid=2UL2N592BVKVD

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/27/healthcare_debate_as_supreme_court_hears

Affordable Care for All, known as Obamacare, is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. The impact of this decisions matters little, because it's all window dressing to a reality that writing of legislation is no longer an open transparent process. because ALEC, the American Legislative Council, does the job for our elected representatives. http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com/2012/03/krugman-writes-about-alec.html

ALEC most likely has already written Santoramcare, Romneycare, or who-ever-wins-care. And regardless of who wins, the basic outline of healthcare reform as written by the giant health care commercial corporations will remain the same. All the players—read hunters—have been avoiding the most productive question: How can we quit wasting hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money on bureaucracies and excessive profits instead of health care benefits for citizens? Only this can reduce our price gouging in health care to a par with the rest of the world. Specifically the legal wrangling almost totally ignores the single payer option, scorned by both Obama and the Republicans. Why? Do they not know it would solve the problems of our insolvent health care system, of the individual mandate controversy, and of our need for affordable care?

My pessimist mind predicts what happens next: Medicare will become LBJ-care, social security will become Roosevelt-security, and Affordable Care for All will remain unknown in obscurity remembered only as Obamacare. And we will remain a nation ridden with hostility over our failed health care delivery system because of frenzied fears of it being structured like our socialized roads and highways, our public schools, our libraries, our parks, and our loss of prioritizing public enterprise over private enterprise. We have forgotten this economic tradition at the very heart of our American tradition of capitalism.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/nsa-whistleblower/

The country's biggest spy center is being built. Watch what you say. Notice the frenzy of paranoia cultivated by our governing elite.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/8095-chris-hedges-%7C-totalitarian-systems-always-begin-by-rewriting-the-law Read and watch how the supreme court and our executive branch, with the collusion of our representatives in Congress, have been rewriting laws deleting or weakening some of the most sacred provisions of our constitutional form of democracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn-jEVYVVw0&feature=player_embedded&edufilter=alBR4_i-mntXVjn41K157g

Why would an innocent mother of five be beaten do death because she is a Muslim? Because we have allowed Christian rhetoric of intolerance to escalate into violence, a violence prone criminal mind has picked up the rhetoric and applied it to a real mother and her five children. Let's repudiate religious bigotry of any and every kind.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/krugman-lobbyists-guns-and-money.html?_r=1

This opinion in the New York Times explains ALEC's role in the "Stand-Your-Ground-Law" and how big money has contributed to a skunk-hunt mentality leading to the racial-profiled murder of a young teenager in Florida.

http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2012/03/22/an-administration-gone-rogue/

Here is our war in Afghanistan, assessed by Dr. Ron Paul. Any thoughts pro or con?

http://www.truth-out.org/occupying-democracy-moral-revolution-social-justice/1331912885

The center of the occupy movement is a strong repudiation of skunk hunting. This is in spite of the fringy skunk-hunter elements attracted to the movement. excellent assessment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=general&src=me

An indictment of the whole Wall Street mentality because it has drastically changed. Is this valid? The story of Greg Smith, financier and prominent executive at Goldman Sachs.

http://www.alternet.org/story/154597/5_ways_america_is_betraying_its_best_values_in_conflicts_with_rest_of_the_world?page=entire

Compare this with Jesus in John 5: 1-16

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/20/1075943/-President-Obama-s-Propaganda-Wars

Obama made a call to Yemen asking them to keep a tortured journalist in custody. He was imprisoned for speaking the truth about a drone attack on a wedding party and President Sala's military campaign killing an ethnic minority of his own people with American collusion, because he has successfully labeled these poor subsistence farmers as terrorists.

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/03/22/did-the-founders-hate-government/

Connect our current anger at our American government with our American form of government. What about America is still loved in the radical right wing of American politics?

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT
graberdb@gmail.com

Bible lessons in piney woods

Many of us were outraged by the sexually explicit and racist language used by public figures to denigrate women and African Americans last week. Unfortunately, we have come to expect extreme and inaccurate characterizations of those who disagree with various political positions. However, the language used to describe Sandra Fluke and our President's mother was particularly offensive. It echoes the types of vicious rhetoric that has been used to oppress women and those of color for generations.

As a young man, I learned firsthand about the appalling nature of disrespect and disempowerment of women. In 1970 I spent an enlightening summer teaching Bible School to a group of vibrant and inspiring teenaged girls in Southern Mississippi. Initially, I wasn't impressed with the task that had been laid before me. I accompanied my father-in-law as he drove, deep into the piney woods of Harrison County. We were recruiting for summer Bible school students. I was to be the Bible school superintendent for three scattered class sites, and teacher of high school age students at one. We arrived at a clearing where smoke was rising from the tin chimney of one of three small houses set on cement blocks. A sawed-off half-barrel oaken washtub with a faded galvanized washboard sat in place near the well. A large pot steamed on the kitchen woodstove, relishing the sun shining through the open door. One faded grey outhouse near the kitchen leaned over, unusable; another with fresh rough-sawn siding stood ready. On the edge of the clearing a tethered cow grazed on remnants of grass pushing through the red sandy soil.

I was not impressed. The scene was a little too reminiscent of my grandparent's place in Oklahoma in the 1940's. Having progressed in my early teens into electric lights, flush toilets and milking machines for our dairy herd, I knew the folks who lived here were not of my class. Furthermore, I couldn't help noticing they were black, very dark skinned, and the kids were dirty. Dad walked right up to the kitchen door, hat in hand, did not knock, but called out, "I'm Reverend Orlo Kaufman wishing to speak with Ms. Betsy." An elderly black woman cheerily walked to the open door, greeting him warmly as "Mr. Orlo." After a short visit both of them looked at me. Too shy to leave the car, I simply waved. The racist attitudes I grew up with in Southern Iowa were only beginning to creep into my consciousness.

The following Monday under the spreading branches of a live oak, a picnic table provided my classroom furniture. For ten morning sessions, ten girls, all teenagers, took over the benches. We started reading the assigned Bible passage. They managed very well taking turns, helping each other as needed in writing the exercises. After midmorning recess I got out my Ebony magazine copies, acquired in bulk from the publisher, and passed them around. We read some articles, but they mostly looked at the pictures, especially family pictures. The questions flew, "Are these real people? Are the pictures painted?" They had never seen pictures of black people except their own family portraits. Life Magazine, the model for the publishers of Ebony, had just begun color photos but continued the policy of no "colored people" models. Ebony magazine had "colored people" for models, but only in black and white.

My education was just beginning. I had been warned by one of the grandmothers, "Those girls will talk you to death; shut them up and make them listen to you." Instead of shutting them down, I decided to listen. So they talked. I learned about the long history of abuse of Black women and girls in Harrison County, Miss. As I listened to their stories, I learned why the Harrison County Sheriff was the highest paid publicly elected official in the entire United States of America in 1962. He later was indicted on federal charges of tax evasion, but the illegal gambling, prostitution and hard liquor in North Gulfport remained for at least a decade.

Hideous racial, economic and gender bias was just a fact of life for these lovely young women and their families. They often used humor to cope with the racial stereotyping, sometimes at the expense of their slow-witted teacher. For example, one day they insisted on being photographed holding slices of watermelon. The set-up seemed rehearsed. They lined up, each with a slice of melon, held it in front of their faces, grinned big, and insisted I take their picture. "Why should I waste my camera on watermelon slices?" I demanded; "Put those down." They said "no, we're n… girls. And n…s love watermelons, didn't you know?" They all giggled hilariously, and finally agreed to peek around the drippy red slices.

That picture has stayed in my mind all these years. I'd like to be the kind of person who is always aware of what I do to support or detract from the dignity and worth of others. Since that day I have resolved to give no quarter, no compromise, to the moral values that built our nation. I don't believe that the views expressed by Rush Limbaugh and Judge Cebull reflect the base of the Republican party or the values of our nation as a whole. Let's be vigilant in defending our true civil, Christian, and family values and support those who are disempowered and verbally abused for the entertainment of others.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
graberdb@gmail.com

Bugs Bunny, Jihad and Lent

 

Lately I've been thinking about our human tendencies to mistrust and fear those people we see as fundamentally different from ourselves.  It's nothing new, but seems to become even more apparent during times of world unrest and political debate.  I'm wondering whether laughter can help us restore the reasonable civil conversations that maintained our democracy in the past. The epidemic of war and insurrection, using the world's best technology to kill, does not make it easy to laugh and repudiate our irrationality.  In the world today, both entertainment and the news have made our fears, laughable in cartoons, realistically bloody. 

 

These ruminations got me to remembering some of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons I used to watch with my 10 year old son back in the 70's.  We laughed hysterically at the ridiculous antics of that bunny, who, at his best, reflected the funniest parts of ourselves.  I dug around online and found some cartoons.  I'll tell you about one that really resonated with me:  "Bugs the Bullfighter," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvy_s-GfDxA

 

But first, If you have already ready the column you may be interested in a Muslim/Christian dialogue with Bible study in Hardin. Please call or contact me at graberdb@gmail.com for information on location and time we are meeting. We have already been in contact with one Muslim interested in this dialogue. We will focus on listening to life stories for understanding instead of discussing differences or debating. Anyone desiring civil, respectful dialogue as an alternative to the flood of arguments for/against Islam in the media and in our community is welcome.  The column continues:

 

While burrowing through miles of terrain Bugs makes a wrong turn, left or right isn't clear, in Albuquerque. He ends up in a Mexican bullfight arena just as the bull breaks through the gate and charges the matador's cape. The trembling matador chooses flight over fight, and races around the arena with the bull breathing down his neck. Desperate to get back to Albuquerque, Bugs easily strides up beside the fleeing matador, map in hand, trying to pry out the location of Albuquerque.

 

With his narrowed focus the matador doesn't even see Bugs. But the Bull does; he switches attention to the fancy cottontail wagging ferociously in his face. Bugs stops suddenly to read his map against the arena wall. The bull charges right up to his fancy backside, his noisy breath flattening the fibers. Bugs repeatedly swipes the map at the bull's nose, yelling for him to stop wrinkling his tailpiece, each yell and swipe escalating. Finally the bull marches to the center of the arena and turns as Bugs contemplates his map, cottontail facing the bull. The bull's ferocious charge launches him into the stratosphere, his cottontail mutilated. On the way down past the clouds he is heard to announce, "This! —means! —war!" In a moment Bugs pops up in matador regalia complete with cape. And there, still pawing the dirt, is the enemy the original matador fled. The war commences with scene after humorous scene of total annihilation impossibly survived every time to fight again.

 

 

I wonder whether we can continue to bombard each other with hateful rhetoric in the media day after day and jump up unscathed as a nation. A recent lent-related survey of elderly Americans, quoted last Sunday by a local pastor, asked this question, "What failure do you regret most in the span of your life?" The response with the highest rate was, "my preoccupation with fears that never became reality." We are conditioned to believe Bugs' response to his encounter in the arena is the only one possible. Our ability to laugh at ourselves has waned over time and we no longer find Bugs Bunny as funny as we used to.

 

Islamic extremists, assuming the worst of Christians and our Bible, are teaching millions that Christians want to exterminate Muslims because the Bible tells them so. Actual Islamic extremist rhetoric is no longer easily accessible. This atheist site quotes repulsively violent Bible passages: http://godisimaginary.com/video2.htm

 

Such information, now accessed by Islamist extremists, has spread over the world's media, and in the materials burned recently at Bagram Air Base, along with copies of the Koran. This is not the first time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8Q3dOWomVI

 

Christians hear the same types of distorted assumptions about Muslim beliefs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9kzQQf-G0

 

The popular book, God's War on Terror, by Walid Shoebat, formerly an Islamist trained in a terrorist school, was recently sold out on Amazon. It asserts that the Koran teaches all Muslims to annihilate Jews and Christians . http://www.amazon.com/Gods-War-Terror-Islam-Prophecy/dp/0977102181/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330370912&sr=8-1)

 
The result of these parallel tactics is to spin the "enemy" in monstrous terms, and then, since for every action there is a reaction, we spin ourselves into acting out our enemy's worst behavior. Extremist Islamists have twisted understanding of the term "Jihad"—intended to be an internal spiritual struggle against such an evil bent of our human nature—into a battle of flesh and blood against human enemies.

I have a bias that we Christians have the best answer the world can know to the problem of dealing with people different from ourselves, made laughable by Bugs Bunny, deadly serious by jihadists, and answered for all eternity by Jesus in his ministry and teachings. The story that ended with a walk to the Roman cross and a victorious resurrection was not a cartoon. Jesus' teachings take us in the opposite direction of fear-mongering jihad.  He commands us to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, and to overcome evil with good.  Those who follow Jesus' commands show the enemy pure humanity, thereby taking the wind out of sails of hate-filled distortions. 

 

We who claim Jesus as Lord and Savior can, with Him, resist the temptation to dehumanize another race or religion. This is the old-fashioned Gospel of Jesus. A compelling new biography by Ahmed Ali Haile, Teatime in Mogadishu, brings Jesus' Lenten story into recent times. Born and raised a Muslim in Somalia, Haile became a Christian, yet retained a deep respect for his Muslim tradition. He recounts in life events how the Koran, like the Hebrew Old Testament, pointed him to Jesus.  As Easter approaches, let's strive to be more like Haile and less like Bugs Bunny. 

 

The book by Haile includes a Bible study and guide for Christian groups interested in understanding the experiences of Muslims behind their religion.  The goal in the book is to get accurate information and begin civil dialogue. This could spark a movement to avert our next war, and keep our next Big Horn County generation from harms way in Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia or any other Muslim majority nation with oil.  Our expectation is to use this book as a guide to our dialogue because it helps focus on useful questions and relevant Bible passages promoting a rational, Christ-centered peace instead of war.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034

graberdb@gmail.com
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Losing the war on drugs

After spending almost a trillion taxpayer dollars and stuffing prisons to the highest incarceration rates in the world, The American drug war is tragically ineffective. This is the theme of the new winning documentary, "This Is My House," at the Sundance Film Festival last month. Along with many folks in our neighborhood in and near Big Horn County, it calls for a change of focus in the struggle.

A central finding of the film is that we have addressed the wrong problem. For forty years the war on drugs has focused narrowly on drug-related behaviors criminal in nature, applying punishment via our retributive justice system. Here the belief is that inflicting pain and separation from family will deter drug abuse and trafficking.

It hasn't worked. Rather it has compounded the cost in lives and treasure, extending a dragnet devastating families far beyond our national borders.

Proponents of the war on drugs point to the contraband seized, corridor tunnels sealed on the border, 45 million arrests, sellers and kingpins incarcerated or executed, and burgeoning corporate profits building stock market investments. The war on drugs is now big business and growing.

Of course those in jail or dead will not oppress us again. But a real count shows availability and demand continue to rise, and drugs are purer, cheaper, and more available than ever before. Of course, our businesses in America don't profit directly from the sale of illegal drugs, but they do nonetheless from the oppressive system set up to fight drugs unsuccessfully. So can our market-owned media and politicians honestly examine this wrong-headed approach?

If we view our chemical addictions instead as a public health issue, then the solution focuses on restoration of health and wellbeing to those who suffer from addictions, whether families or abusers. This builds health in the community.

We in Big Horn County also are struggling with this issue. But we also have resources common to the ancient heritages of our two nations. These point to the spiritual way for recovery of life and hope from the chaos of broken families, a recovery that focuses on restoration to life and health.  Stories that reflect this path can be found in Plains Indian culture and in the Bible.

One of the best examples of the power of choosing restoration over retribution comes from the Biblical story of Joseph, the last of the Patriarchs in Genesis.  Joseph sits on the seat of power, head of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh, and in charge of Egypt's reserves of grain in the midst of a famine.  Then his ten half-brothers-- the ones who out of jealousy had sold him into slavery--arrive to ask for food.  Now Joseph is in position to pay his brothers back for their wrong.  But instead his brothers, not recognizing Joseph, express anguish over the harm done to him and refuse to abandon Joseph's younger brother to slavery in Egypt by offering to take his place.  As the perpetrators take full responsibility for their crime, their former victim sees the awesome hand of God empowering him to forgive and to bring his whole family to healing and wholeness.    

While retributive measures against Joseph's brothers were warranted and even expected, such action would have destroyed Israel.  God's more powerful justice—full, truthful responsible, and forgiving—enabled the healing and restoration of a broken family (Genesis chapters 37 to 50).

Restorative justice, the seed strategy imbedded in the two heritages of Big Horn County, is clarified in "This is my house" as a new healing direction. It's time to end the war on drugs and plant this seed in good soil so sufferers caught in this major family dysfunction of our time can find healing.

Currently, centers of research and application of restorative justice principles are demonstrating the strength of this option in combating crime.

THE FOLLOWING IS CONTINUED FROM THE BIG HORN COUNTY NEWS Feb. 15, 2012

Retributive Justice:

Payback, or punishment, for wrongs, causes the guilty to suffer. This best brings closure victims, according to proponents. Across our county and the world, retributive justice systems are now dominant for drug-related crime, with increasing incarceration, punishment imposing pain and suffering, civil or extra-judicial executions and broken family relationships. The foundational belief is that humans will be more civil to each other when they fear pain and death, or the ultimate breaking of the circle of life.

 

Restorative Justice:

Forgiveness upon full acknowledgement of wrong, with just compensation where possible, restores both victim and perpetrator to family or community. This brings closure to both. Both the Bible and ancient Montana tribal systems emphasize restorative justice, so family members caught in dysfunction and crime find restoration of their life circle through this growing alternative criminal justice system. The foundational belief is that people will be more civil to each other through this alternative to our retributive justice system. U of Minnesota has good research links: http://www.cehd.umn.edu/ssw/rjp/resources/Research_Annotated_Bibliography/AB_Title.asp

 

Wikipedia has concise summaries and links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice

 

In early Christianity the whole Bible was read for its literal content of repentance and righteousness bringing forgiveness that restores human families, as reflected in Joseph's remarkable change of mindset. He left the schemes, tricks, evil deeds and deception practiced in his dysfunctional family. Jesus in the New Testament models this seed.  The Creator, in the first chapters of Genesis, is portrayed as having the totally good intentions characteristic of this seed, in contrast to the creation stories of other gods of the time. This was understood then as the central salvation agenda of Scripture, unlike today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Wink

Or, http://www.amazon.com/Powers-That-Be-Theology-Millennium/dp/0385487525

 

In St. John's Revelation, at the end of the Bible, all creation returns to this seed, through the triumph of the War of the Lamb. The prophets from Isaiah to Malachi emphasize the restoration of the circle of life through building the relationship circle with character traits emphasized in the Welbriety programs, and reinforced in the Bible.

 

Two sites with White Buffalo resources for wellbriety: http://www.rainbowspiritualeducationcenter.org/MW12.html

http://www.whitebison.org/wellbriety_movement/index.html

 

Other information on Native American restorative justice strategies:

Dr. Val Napoleon, Cree, adopted Gitksan member, associate Professor of Native Studies and Law at the U of Alberta.  Wrote for the Jan-March 2012 issue of the MCC Program Development Department Publications, "learning about justice and law through stories"

Use this link: http://peace.mcc.org/peace_office_newsletter and find Vol 42, No 1,  Partnering for Change, open the PDF file and find the article near the end.

 

The following book contains case studies for legal scholars on aboriginal law. It's old and well documented for law students, but with some good and some crazy stories:

http://www.amazon.com/Cheyenne-Way-Conflict-Primitive-Jurisprudence/dp/1575887177/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329242383&sr=1-1

 

 

Much modern American theology does not take Jesus literally for his strong message of nonviolent love for enemies. Jesus' words are interpreted as irrelevant, either for another dispensation, or for Jesus being a bit naïve in face of the modern evil America must fight. Early Christians accepted the literal words of scripture addressing this problem as theirs to obey. Unlike today's Christians, they saw such obedience as part and parcel of God's gift of salvation itself, inseparable from Christ's work on the Roman cross. They did not see their obedience as a legalistic requirement to achieve salvation. Rather they saw it as God's gift to participate in the work of salvation by allowing them the holy privilege to "suffer as Christ suffered."  Here's one site:

http://community.beliefnet.com/go/thread/view/44041/26688917/The_Difficult_Sayings_of_Jesus

 

The new book cited above with excellent research:

http://www.amazon.com/Taught-God-Making-Difficult-Sayings/dp/1933275510/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329240316&sr=1-2

 

The original early church understandings of Christ's atoning sacrifice were less intellectual and more practical, i.e. Christians were identified as those actually imitating Christ even to the point of his death:

http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/kuhns-atonement.shtml

 

A recent book illustrating the above paradigm of restorative justice, and focusing on one man's encounter with the current wave of Islamophobia in the West and violent Jihadism in the Middle East:

Teatime in Mogadishu: My Journey as a Peace Ambassador in the World of Islam Ahmed Ali Haile

 

Most of us in America think of justice as payback for wrongs or crimes. This has been scientifically researched and used to reform justice systems in several pilot locations in our country. But it's controversial because most politicians reinforce the human desire for vengeance, a desire not reinforced in restorative justice. Look up one of the earliest programs, one in Fresno California: http://www.vorp.org/

 

More resources from VORP links:

Center for Peacemaking and Conflict Studies, Fresno Pacific University

California Administrative Office of the Courts

• A Summary of the Evaluations of Six California Victim Offender Reconciliation Programs
• Balanced and Restorative Justice: An Information Manual for California

 

Harvard University Law School supports a training curriculum for conflict study, with many materials illustrating restorative justice available on line:

http://www.thirdside.org/

 

Over 200 graduate and undergraduate programs in peace studies in the US have addressed the restorative justice concept. http://www.gradschools.com/search-programs/conflict-peace-studies

 

Note on the Joseph story:

He struggled long and hard with the dilemma, certainly in his memories of trauma.  Here God had clearly delivered his brothers into his hands. His law, recorded in Genesis and Exodus, provided ample reason to let them suffer death for their crimes.  Yet he agonized to find God's way of forgiveness with restoration, the only way his family circle could be restored and he could see his father again.

 

He is slow to change his mind. He avoids the decision and drifts into schemes patterned in his dysfunctional family. He tricks them into the appearance of theft, asserting power over his brothers who had schemed to get rid of him. In the end, after a night of turmoil, he recovers the image of the good God of Creation, and finds the power to forgive. The family circle is completed again, a gift from God.

 

Bible scholars consider this story a precursor to the story of Jesus, and a reflection of the story of Creation (see Walter Wink above, Bible scholar) In all these, God is acting in human affairs to free humankind from human-induced chaos, violence and dysfunction, named "sin" in scripture.

 

Genesis' original transcribers and oral historians were traumatized by the dysfunction of ancient warring city-states of the Tigris-Euphrates delta of present day Iraq. Environmental destruction from overpopulation when grain storage allowed city living caused famine and flood, and wars when empire ambitions for food security placed gods into evil divine relationship with humans.

 

Terah and his family including Abraham departed city life with flocks and herds. Following God's direction for their posterity they returned to a nomadic life. There they struggled like we do today between following and departing from God's way to live, sometimes choosing life, portrayed as God's way of righteousness which would complete the circle of life, sometimes not, which damages that circle and threatens the hope of posterity.

 

Joseph's story and Jesus' story began in Genesis, where Jesus was present with the good God's Creation Story, affirming his character traits of goodness, compassion, trust, faithfulness, mercy. This contrasts markedly with the other creator gods' stories of capriciousness, deception, greed and violence that destroy human families, tribes and nations. But the battle continues. We as a nation and a world are still largely blind both to our science and our religious heritages.

 

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Responsibility, the price of freedom

We must question government. We haven't. We trusted our governing politicians and their media mouthpieces. That got us in trouble. They drifted toward those with the most money and got input from them, investing less and less of the long term interests of our whole nation in selecting information for dissemination. They become more and more beholden to a few extremely wealthy.

 

We the people fell under media-supported political pressure to trust that alliance between our elected representatives and powerful interests.  Under their media pressure, we have fallen to their catch phrases like "smaller government is better." Thus American government, along with much of what many patriots hold dear, has diminished, not only in our minds, but in reality.

 

This led to abdicating our primary citizen role, the oversight of the regulatory function of our government, to a tiny elite. Having abdicated, we defaulted to blaming. The government was no longer ours, or us. The gap between our government and its citizens opened a power vacuum. Wealthy interests moved in. Soon sensible regulation was removed, and new regulations set in place undermining our government's capacity to protect our citizenry.

 

The result was loss of the means to work for life and liberty regardless of class or race. This remains a problem of government both too large and too small, for which better words are "disconnected" and "bumbling."

 

Now our international respect has been attacked, our taxes raised, our profits sunk and access to economic success drastically curtailed for most of us. Tragically, warfare has descending upon us, warfare benefiting the elite, and human tragedy and suffering have multiplied.

 

ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is the formal organization of the 1% elite orchestrating these destructive changes. This behind-closed-doors assembly writes almost all the legislation passed by congress, wrote Obamacare, and will write, if Obama would be defeated, the almost identical provisions of health legislation to replace Obamacare.  Most members of congress have joined or are beholden to this organization.

 

Our founding fathers knew they had to change the European paradigm set in citizens' minds then: that concentration of wealth and power among a few citizens is simply inevitable. They struggled to write a constitution defying this paradigm. Liberty was what they wanted, and they knew this European paradigm would easily rise up and destroy American liberty again.

 

Now here we are, 2012. The old European paradigm is back. Once again we trust a few elite to govern. Once again, nearly all government decision making concentrates at the top. Most of all, we trust an illusory notion that smaller government is always better.  So we have reduced government's functions benefiting the 99% of us, and expanded those benefiting the 1%.

 

Many of us now are concerned our nation's experiment with democracy is dying. We don't discuss our conflict between the European paradigm and our constitution. Our disagreements instead are those our politicians and media have inflamed among our populace, poisoning our reservoir well of American good will necessary to bring us the needed reforms.  Stressed, we revert to reptile thinking: winner-take-all. We go at each other's throats, as is being choreographed in the 2012 electioneering campaigns in debates and other politicking. This sideshow element of our election year will certainly reach a record prominence in just a few months.

 

So these are the two root elements, essential to our American republican form of government, steadily eroding for decades: (1) Citizen oversight of (2) the regulatory function of government.

 

Losing these is why this congress has the lowest approval rating in American history. That's also why this 2012 election should and may well become an unprecedented tidal wave of change in congress. Either our election will tip toward a looming catastrophe, or, if a paradigm of citizen responsibility arises among the disenfranchised, disenchanted majority of our citizens, we'll move toward healing. Our two-party system, now bent toward adversarial discourse, seems unable to build that consensus.

 

The most hopeful trend is a small segment of patriotic American elite who, like Warren Buffet, recognize the dangers and really want to help our citizens restore the values and heritage that made us great. That's the genius of Lawrence Lessig's new book, Republic, Lost.

 

The following is continued from BigHornCountyNews.com:

 

This book rings with hope this mess can be turned around. Lessig is a long-time Republican leader, former clerk in the Supreme Court for Justice Scalia, and current philosophy, law and economics professor at Harvard. This is one of several reviews on Amazon:

 

October 22, 2011 This review is from: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It (Hardcover) from Amazon.com copied Jan. 28, 2012

 

Lessig explores the concept of a government responsible to the PEOPLE, as the Constitution calls for, and how the current system of campaign finance has warped it so much toward being a government responsible to the CONTRIBUTORS that even the Supreme Court used those words (in the infamous Citizens United corporation-as-a-person decision). The picture he draws of moneyed influence is truly appalling--all the more so as the influence is almost never overt bribery, but often just hints and signals (as in "if you aren't able to vote for X, I'll have to contribute $1,000,000 to your opponent").

 

Can it be cured? Lessig offers several possible prescriptions, the most useful of which is a National Constitutional Convention…. There are many good ideas here, and the arguments are rich and comprehensive.

 

The other reviews Amazon has posted on line are well worth reading, if the book is unavailable at the library.  I just lent my copy out.

 

Read this book if you want to understand what's really wrong with government, why nothing gets done, why the posturing and pandering grows and grows, and why life is getting steadily worse for the 99% of the population who aren't rich. And--especially--read it if you want to know what you can do to make things better.

 

Here's Fox News reporting on the cost to millions of Americans of deregulating the housing industry, specifically Freddie Mac. Will they point out the deregulation of the mortgage industry and loss of Glass Steagal and associated regulations from the 30's depression?

http://nation.foxnews.com/freddie-mac/2012/01/30/freddie-mac-bets-billions-against-struggling-homeowners

 

The Glass Steagal act figures prominently according to many economists in the collapse of 2008.  Many analyses are available looking it up on line. Here's another:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/10-years-later-looking-at-repeal-of-glass-steagall/

 

Our republican form of democracy originally prioritized encouraging citizens to participate in and question government.  Abraham Lincoln spelled it out, "…that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." Back in Jefferson's days the European paradigm needed to change. Our nation was born, and we the citizens have taken just pride.

 

 

The framers of the Constitution were fed up with state "sovereignty" and decided on a strong central government, a judgment that has served the United States well, writes Robert Parry. Check this out on

http://consortiumnews.com

 

Still under the radar of politicians and media talk shows, "Americans Elect" a non-political party, has almost completed registration in 50 states for their selection of two candidates, for the offices of president and vice president, which cannot be from the same political party. This organization now boasts almost 3 million members, mostly delegates poised to join in the national convention on line in June. In that convention the delegates will make their final selection of president and vice president candidates, at a micro-miniscule cost in American politics, but with amazing openness and access to the process by ordinary Americans. Check out their web link, or do a search for a variety of opinion on this movement. It could drastically alter the two party landscape of American politics.

 

http://www.americanselect.org/about

 

Our government's invulnerability to regulation oversight by citizens has led to enormously costly deception in our country.  Following is a short list:

 

War on Drugs.   We have spent over a trillion dollars and sent a million people to prison, yet illegal drugs are cheaper and more prevelant than ever. See the review of this new documentary http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/31/the_house_i_live_in_new

 

War hype. The most lie-infused function of government, one we as a nation have given the most unquestioning trust, is the function to make war.  This function consumes a huge portion of our of tax dollars, demands loyalty to the death of our bravest and strongest, and continues to successfully demand unquestioned support of the citizenry.  Very few American leaders promote rational discussion of the cost to the nation and the world, and the strong evidence this imbalance, while posturing enormous military strength, in fact has undermined our true long-term national security at home and abroad at least since the Viet Nam war.

 

Foreign cash financing elections. We forget so easily. Remember Richard Nixon's demise? Remember the public outrage over the discovery of suitcase loads of cash flown in from foreign sources for the financing of his re-election? His practice of foreign funding of American political campaigns surreptitiously is not over.

 

Tax reform to cheat the rest of us. Citizens for Tax Justice has calculated that President Obama's "Buffett Rule" would, if in effect this year, raise $50 billion in a single year and affect only the richest 0.08 percent of taxpayers. http://www.nationofchange.org/analysis-buffett-rule-will-raise-50-billion-year-affect-just-008-percent-taxpayers-1327766301

 

"If you take the figures given by Romney - He made $45,000,000 last year, and paid taxes at the rate of 13.7% = $6,165,000. At the minimum proposed by Obama at 30%=$13,500,000. That's an ADDITIONAL $7,335,000 Romney would have to pay. I think that's fair - when I was working, even with my itemized deductions, at $40,000/year, I was paying close to 40%. On my paltry income. THAT ain't fair! No way. No how!"  ——Ronni85 on Nation of Change comment blog Jan 28, 2012.

 

Lets put that into perspective. If this American citizen's 40% tax rate were reduced to Romney's rate at 15%, he would be paying about $1200. If Romney's rate were raised to 30%, still well under the Reagan rates, the 13.5 million he would pay would multiply an inch (6-8 lines of BHCnews print) at 22" a page would stretch out to over 500 pages, enough to reach almost a city block. This difference is what the right wing trumpets, supporting the rich.

 

Now Romney is of course wealthier, and pays much more in taxes. So let's compare the wealth difference to the above tax difference, with Ronni85's wealth, $40,000 a year for an inch of BHC news page, with Romney's 45 million. See the difference? Ronni pays more than double the amount of taxes Romney pays in percentage of income.  The pages would reach across more than two city blocks. 

 

That difference is what makes the last decades of tax breaks for the wealthy obscenely unfair, and has compounded our debt crisis.

 

"…It's worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They "fired" the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different. Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty…."  That poverty cycle has been broken by citizen oversight of the unfair policies of the rich, the policies Obama rightly labels class warfare against the poor.

http://www.nationofchange.org/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-power-1-percent-1327762223

 

Food stamps presidents. It turns out the Bush administration oversaw the greatest rise in food stamps use this country has known, while the Obama administration has overseen a slight decrease. But neither president could really shake either the economic quagmire or the emotional ranting and raving around food stamps. Remember the quip of Newt Gingerich, "Obama the Food Stamp President?" Recall the chants emanating from the crowd gathered by Gingerich in Florida this week  (CNN and MSNBC) when he tried to get them to send Obama back to Chicago, they said, "Send Obama to Kenya!" Any racism there? What about sending Newt to the Moon? Maybe he asked for that one.

 

Study after study affirms that citizens below the poverty level who could work if given a chance would gladly get off food stamps and other welfare provisions. It's a nasty tale that this policy, however in need of reform, figures prominently as and important cause of our current economic woes.

 

To quote words of President Johnson, "The poor don't need a handout. They need a hand up." Virtually everyone with any sense knows this. Pushing the fable of the welfare queen at the bottom of our economy blurs our vision so see the huge subsidy for the few welfare queens at the top. Of course, it's both.  So the argument is useless and derogatory.

 

Others of our problems attributable to lies and deception in the media, usually originating from our government.  These sites are some:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/21/1057176/-Citizens-United:-How-Did-it-Happen-%28VIDEO%29?via=search

 

Innocents in Guatanamo. One of the cheapest watches, available around the world and worn by millions, is a casio digital watch on the CIA's secret terrorist assessing list. Many Guantanamo prisoners were caught falsely when they innocently wore one on their wrist. A prime origin of many of the 70% innocents sent to Gauntanamo.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,758913,00.html

 

http://www.truth-out.org/ten-years-guantanamo-what-bush-cheney-and-rumsfeld-knew/1326049233

 

Bush's torture policy: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/061808a.html

 

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/061808a.html

 

mistreatment of war prisoners in Iraq  http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/041609a.html

 

Guantanamo

guard reunited with ex-inmates http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8452937.stm

 

Terry Carrico, Ex-Guantánamo Prison Commander, Says Facility Should Close

Jan 6, 2012 4:45 AM EST

A decade after the prison camp opened, its first warden speaks out against U.S. detention policies in the war on terror and tells Aram Roston the facility should be closed.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/06/terry-carrico-ex-guantanamo-prison-commander-says-facility-should-close.html

 

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/Retired-Generals-Admirals-on-Ten-Year-Anniversary-of-GTMO.pdf

 

http://www.truth-out.org/army-accuses-reservist-classified-information-truthout-guantanamo/1314206461

 

Iran. Our media has unanimously endorsed a lie supporting war hysteria against Iran. In fact, most if not all Israeli and American defense intelligence experts admit or actively state their observation that there is no evidence Iran is building, or even has an intent to build a nuclear weapon. All that's clear, with plenty of evidence to back, is that if inspectors are given free reign by Iran they will either be fired if they are truthful, like Hans Blix in Iran, or they will have to make up evidence. http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/24/usisrael-iran-not-building-nukes/

 

USDA and organic farming. Another government agency with long regulatory arms can be a threat to small organic farms, the greatest growth industry in farming in America gauged per capita:

http://www.cornucopia.org/2012/01/largest-corporate-dairy-biotech-firm-and-usda-accused-of-conspiring-to-corrupt-rulemaking-and-pollute-organics/

 

 

David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Why America needs Dr. Martin Luther King again

Are we losing our civil rights in America today?

Is racism gaining a stronger foothold?

 

Here in Big Horn County, we have racial diversity that is unique among the rural counties of Montana. We benefit from the legacy of Dr. King’s struggle for our nation’s freedom, but we can easily be drawn into the recent national degradation of civil rights. This unfortunate trend is making a mockery of the gains those of us experienced with neighbors and friends back in the 60’s. Our loss of civil rights is most concentrated in our prisons. Our county has one of the highest incarceration rates in Montana, if not the entire U.S.

 

We have a tradition in America of listening to God’s words on behalf of the civil rights of those who suffer, and hearing the Godly path to real security. Jesus’ Sabbath reading from Isaiah at the Nazareth synagogue around 32 A.D. alludes to this central agenda of the prophets, including Jesus, as recorded by Evangelist St. Luke.

 

Luke 4:16 – “Now Jesus … stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.'”

 

Two present day intellectuals, Randall Robinson and Michelle Anderson, point out that our “get tough on crime” rhetoric has led to class warfare in America. The title of Anderson’s new book captures the hidden nature of this new apartheid in America – “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

 

Of course real people sometimes wrongly suffer regardless of race in our criminal justice system, but the racial bias in prison, courts and law enforcement mocks the justice and freedom concepts written into our constitution. A few tidbits from Anderson’s and Robinson’s books:

 

Twelve percent of all non-violent drug arrests involve black people, yet 56 percent of all drug prosecutions are of blacks. While drug use and selling rates are the same among races nationwide, African Americans are incarcerated at rates more than double those of other races.

 

A higher percentage of blacks are imprisoned in America now than were imprisoned in South Africa at the height of apartheid. Today, there are more African Americans under correctional control, whether in prison or jail, on probation or on parole, than there were enslaved in 1850. To add insult to injury, our national incarceration rate is an almost laughable shame when compared to other civilized nations.

 

No other nation disenfranchises prisoners like we do. Even those who have served their time, reformed and returned as productive citizens, are banned from voting. More blacks are disenfranchised from voting now in America than were banned from voting in the registration laws of 1870, found unconstitutional.

 

Most devastating for slaves in America was the loss of family and even family memories because of forced separation of parents and children. Today, this family destruction is returning. Those freed from incarceration cannot return and recover their provider status with their families. They cannot get food stamps, cannot live with their families without the whole family being evicted from public housing, cannot get jobs, cannot get a car loan. They also live under pressure to return to crime and unfortunately, many succumb. Our criminal justice system has abysmal recidivism rates.

 

For generations, Montana prisoners have manufactured license plates. This is overseen by our government to guarantee no profiteering from the vulnerability of prisoners like in China or, thirty years ago, the Soviet Union. Everywhere else, that’s all changing.

 

Historically, prison-labor programs have allowed prisoners to work for the public sector, for example, to manufacture lisence plates.  Advocates of prison labor point to reduced costs to the state, vocational training, and work ethic as benefits of such programs.  However recent changes, promoted by ALEC, allow prison labor for private sector products and open the door to profiteering.    The new prisons for profit program promoted in our twisted private enterprise system gives prisoners jobs.  Absenteeism is not an issue.  Workers can be controlled effectively, and have little recourse.   Benefits, such as health care, are paid by the tax payer, as are room, board, and security.  How will legitimate employers hope to compete with this no-cost, no union labor force?  

 

With new laws and our massive American incarceration rates there is never a lack of workers.  The multi-billionaire Koch brothers have significant investments in for-profit prisons also invest millions in media and policy think-tanks.  To read about the return of slavery in America’s prisons, use the links below and pray/work for deliverance of those in captivity. Alternatively, have a rational fear session, from a prophet speaking in the tradition of the Bible’s prophets about judgment under God. Watching Dr. King’s 1968 speech on Viet Nam is useful for those who believe the Bible’s spirituality speaks to politics today:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U

or read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

Click on the link “Viet Nam War”

 

­­‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑Other Sources:

 

Michelle Alexander, civil rights advocate and the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which has just been re-released in paperback. She won a 2005 Soros Justice Fellowship and now holds a joint appointment at the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Alexander served for several years as the director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California, which spearheaded the national campaign against racial profiling. At the beginning of her career she served as a law clerk on the United States Supreme Court for Justice Harry Blackmun. She lives outside Columbus, Ohio.

 

Randall Robinson, founder and past president of TransAfrica and a law professor at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of An Unbroken Agony and the national best sellers The Debt, The Reckoning, Quitting America, and Defending the Spirit, as well as the novel The Emancipation of Wakefield Clay. He is the creator, co-producer, and host of the public television human rights series World on Trial. Robinson lives with his wife Hazel in St. Kitts, West Indies.

 

Our national incarceration rates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

 

ALEC and prison labor profits:

http://www.thenation.com/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor

 

Michelle Alexander’s new book on the growing racial bias of our criminal justice system:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Michelle-Alexander/dp/1595586431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326516207&sr=8-1

 

Video of interview with Michelle Alexander and Randall Robinson:

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/13/on_eve_of_mlk_day_michelle

 

Public schools in low income communities inadvertently teach criminal mentality, preparing students for incarceration instead of success in America. http://www.truth-out.org/stop-school-prison-pipeline/1326636604

 

John Paul Lederach was a fellow student of mine in college. His experience and ideas are relevant to the dominant culture’s paradigm of conflict handling on the res. This I contend is near the root of the despair over racism, abuse, dysfunction and poverty around us.  It’s a useful problem to address in health education, because the habits associated with the paradigm are so pervasive, concentrated in relational behaviors at all levels of society in this county, and the irrationality makes it a prime agenda for education.

http://blog.onbeing.org/post/15823286942/the-art-of-peace-from-conflict-resolution-to

 

 

--
David Graber
RR 1 Box 1211D
631 Woodley Ln
Hardin, MT  59034

406 665-3373
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
Bonnie's email graberbj@gmail.com