Difficult Balance

OK Another Try at Comments Interconnecting

Does this connect me to Tom's comment on William Bentley?

And if so, will it trackback?

Let's Try Trackback

I think that last post over at Write 4 real is REALLY stupid!

Will This Have A Comment Section?

I'm experimenting with Trackback. Let's see if this works.

Can I See This?

Let's see if we can see the Buddha here

Schedule for Barre Insight Meditation Center

Schedule: "Sep. 6
(Saturday)
03-JG
$60Joseph GoldsteinFear and Trust
In both meditation practice and our lives, we often come to the edge or boundary of what is comfortable, of what we can easily be with. The limits of our acceptance may reveal themselves in conditions of the body, in difficult emotions, in the imminence of death. At these boundaries, fear may arise as we face what is outside our more usual comfort zone. In this day of talks, discussion and meditation, we will explore the causes and nature of fear and how it might be transformed through our understanding into trust, confidence and wisdom."

Sep 14
(Sunday)
03-LG
$60 Narayan & Michael Liebenson Grady Inner Freedom and Non-Reactivity
In dharma practice we learn to respond with awareness and an open heart rather than habitually reacting with clinging or aversion. During this day-long workshop, we explore ways to cultivate equanimity and liberating wisdom when facing inner difficulties and challenging conditions that we meet in everyday life.

Nov 8
(Saturday)
03-JE
$60 Jack Engler Seeking the Seeker: A Direct Inquiry Into “Who Am ‘I’”
In Buddhist practice, there are three ‘doors’ to liberation: anicca (impermanence), dukkha (anguish), and anatta (non-self). A deep, direct encounter with any one of the three has the potential to end grasping and bring freedom. Anattà is often the most elusive, yet the most intimate and challenging to our normal sense of self. During this workshop, we use vipassana as a method of active investigation rather than passive witnessing to inquire into this self we take ourselves to be. The focus of the day is on learning to practice with this disturbing but ever-present question: Who am I? Who am ‘I’? There will be opportunity for questions and discussions as we work together to probe this question of questions.
Nov 9
(Sunday)
03-SS
$60 Sharon Salzberg Meditation: Tools for Awakening Courage, Faith and Compassion
This day-long program focuses on the practical tools that help us go beyond our constricting habitual patterns, such as fear and denial. Awakening the inner capacities we all have, meditation allows us to transform our worldview from one of isolation and confusion to one of connection, clarity and compassion. Especially in times of uncertainty, meditation opens us to a power of faith and courage based on seeing things just as they are. Suitable for both new and experienced meditators, the course consists of guided meditations, talks and time for questions and answers.

PR Professionals Influence National Events, NPR's "The Marketplace"

Marketplace for July 22, 2003: "The fate of Saddam�s sons�Pvt. Jessica Lynch comes home�Needless to say, it has been a busy day for the folks assigned press relations duty at the Pentagon. But is there a distinction between the dissemination of news and what has come to be known as �spin?� John Stauber, the co-author of a new book about how the Bush administration marketed the war in Iraq, uses a tougher word than 'marketing� -- he labels it 'propaganda.'
Reporter: David Brancaccio talks with PR expert John Stauber "

Weapons of Mass Deception

Marketplace for July 22, 2003: Marketing the War

Marketplace for July 22, 2003: " PR professionals influence national events
The fate of Saddam�s sons�Pvt. Jessica Lynch comes home�Needless to say, it has been a busy day for the folks assigned press relations duty at the Pentagon. But is there a distinction between the dissemination of news and what has come to be known as �spin?� John Stauber, the co-author of a new book about how the Bush administration marketed the war in Iraq, uses a tougher word than 'marketing� -- he labels it 'propaganda.'
Reporter: David Brancaccio talks with PR expert John Stauber
Related media
Listen to the full John Stauber interview
Stauber's book 'Weapons of Mass Deception' is available for purchase on Amazon.com. Your purchase helps support Marketplace.
Listen to the archive of full interviews
Online resource
www.prwatch.org: PR Watch, a project of John Stauber�s Center for Media & Democracy "

AlterNet: War on Iraq

AlterNet: War on Iraq: "No Niger documents before SOTU speech
The CIA did not have access to the documents (later proved to be forged) that showed Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger until after the State of the Union speech. In fact, Langley had tried unsuccessfully to remove a reference to such purchases from a State Department fact sheet in December. It also objected to its inclusion in the SOTU speech.

The Boston Globe reports, 'Bush administration officials have also said other information pointed to possible Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But Tenet has called these reports 'fragmentary' a term in intelligence circles for unconfirmed information of suspect accuracy.'
Posted on July 16, 2003 @ 3:48PM."

AlterNet: Personal Voices: The Unalienable Right to Independent Thought

AlterNet: Personal Voices: The Unalienable Right to Independent Thought

"The Declaration of Independence itself provides notable guidance about what it means to think independently and about what modes of discourse encourage such thinking. In his new biography, "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life," Walter Isaacson points out how Franklin edited Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson had "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable," and Franklin changed it to " We hold these truths to be self-evident."

Isaacson argues that this change emphasizes a rational rather than a religious basis for these truths; but let's look at it from a slightly different angle. "Sacred" suggests a hierarchy of some kind, in which there are certain truths that are set apart, perhaps handed down to us from above, and thus they are separate from us, and may need to be controlled. There would always be an anxiety about such a truth, an embattled quality, a need to defend. "Self-evident" truths, meanwhile, are evident without proof of reasoning. That is, self-evident truths are intuitively available to all of us at all times, whoever and wherever we are.

The "self-evident" truths thus resemble the "unalienable" rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that they name: neither the truths about the rights nor the rights themselves can be alienated from us; that is, they cannot be transferred to another.

The right to be independent and to think independently can therefore be taken away in a given circumstance but not alienated from us. They still always exist as our rights even if we are enslaved, tortured, terrorized, killed, repressed. That is what Amnesty International is all about: the power of creating a community to recognize human beings as human beings, to remember that they exist even if they are hidden away and repressed for thinking and speaking independently, and to recognize the wrongful acts of those who try to take away these rights. "

WBUR: At MIT, a Projector that Shows the Bigger Picture (2003-07-07)

WBUR: At MIT, a Projector that Shows the Bigger Picture (2003-07-07): "BOSTON, MA (2003-07-07) A group of four students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is leaving for Mali, in Western Africa. Their mission is to test a portable microfilm-based library and projector system, designed to cut down on the cost of literacy programs in Asia and Africa.

Design that Matters (DtM) is an independent, non-profit organization launched at MIT. DtM aims to partner student innovations with projects for sustainable development in the real world. Co-founder Timothy Prestero is leading the team to Mali. "

See Also: Design That Matters: "Design that Matters (DtM) inspires young people to act as agents of change for improving the world. We also guide the development of products and services that will have an immediate impact on the lives of communities in need."

BoondocksNet.com

Hyphenated Patriotism

Hyphenated Patriotism: "My sympathies from the first were pro-American; not only because I love America above every country in the world, but because it seems to me that to be pro-American is the nearest which humanity has as yet come to being pro-human.
I have nothing but loathing for this 'foul and unthinkable war,' for I have lived where it was bred, and I have watched the dastardly and damnable process. A generation of men was begotten and trained, to be fodder for cannon and to walk joyously into that hell. There was aroused in them the very noblest emotion of which the human heart is capable, and then it was poisoned by hate, to be used for the base purpose of human slaughter.
I refuse to be patriotic in the European sense -- which means to believe everything bad about other nations and nothing but good about your own, and to hate with desperate hatred the people living yonder, where they have painted another colour on the custom house barrier.
If to be an American, a real American, and a patriot, is merely that same thing, then frankly I am neither an American nor a patriot; for in America I have been emancipated from the patriotism of hate. I have found that here men work together harmoniously for the common good and the glory of a great country, though their historic roots lie buried in different lands and colonies, among people with different religious and social ideals, living in states which have conflicting economic interests, speaking diverse languages and expressing their faith in God through different creeds."

"I am not afraid of war; not afraid that house and home, reared in the joy of love and labour, may be destroyed.

I am not afraid of dying: -- I should rather be riddled by bullets than eaten by cancer. I should sooner perish by a submarine than from Bright's disease.

I do fear, frankly fear, killing and destroying. Most of all, I am afraid of demolishing the structure we have reared here; a rare commonwealth made up of the flotsam and jetsam of the world, which has drifted in through the longer and shorter years. We are a nation -- a great nation -- a united nation, although composed of the most diverse materials."

Race Patriotism - William Dean Howells

Race Patriotism - William Dean Howells: "It is natural to contemn and suspect the stranger always, but in this matter of race-patriotism it will be well for the intending patriot to ask himself why the Anglo-Saxon race should stand at the head of human affairs, or why some other races should be convicted of all the vices and despised for all the foibles which deform mankind. "

True Patriotism at the Children's Theater - Mark Twain

True Patriotism at the Children's Theater - Mark Twain

""Citizenship? We have none! In place of it we teach patriotism which Samuel Johnson said a hundred and forty or a hundred and fifty years ago was the last refuge of the scoundrel -- and I believe that he was right. I remember when I was a boy I heard repeated and repeated time and time again the phrase, 'My country, right or wrong, my country!' How absolutely absurd is such an idea. How absolutely absurd to teach this idea to the youth of the country.'"

"The true citizenship is to protect the flag from dishonor -- to make it the emblem of a nation that is known to all nations as true and honest and honorable. And we should forever forget that old phrase -- 'My country, right or wrong, my country!'"

"We say we have public opinion in America. We have none. We only think second hand. How many of us are there to-day who know whether it is better for the country to have a tariff or free trade? The only opinions most of us have on this subject are the opinions derived second hand from certain men who seek to influence us to their way of thinking, and their way of thinking is generally in a direction that will subserve their own private ends or the ends of the party which they represent. So, you see, we have no citizenship, and our so-called patriotism is a patriotism that is employed for the benefit of political parties and is made a party cry."

True Patriotism - Charles Eliot Norton

Monarchical and Republican Patriotism - Mark Twain

An International Patriotism - Jane Addams

Difficult Balance

Saturday, May 29, 2004

OK Another Try at Comments Interconnecting

Let's Try Trackback

Will This Have A Comment Section?

Friday, March 19, 2004

Can I See This?

Saturday, July 26, 2003

Schedule for Barre Insight Meditation Center

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

PR Professionals Influence National Events, NPR's "The Marketplace"

Weapons of Mass Deception

Marketplace for July 22, 2003: Marketing the War

Thursday, July 17, 2003

AlterNet: War on Iraq

Thursday, July 10, 2003

AlterNet: Personal Voices: The Unalienable Right to Independent Thought

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

WBUR: At MIT, a Projector that Shows the Bigger Picture (2003-07-07)

BoondocksNet.com

Hyphenated Patriotism

Race Patriotism - William Dean Howells

True Patriotism at the Children's Theater - Mark Twain

True Patriotism - Charles Eliot Norton

Monarchical and Republican Patriotism - Mark Twain

An International Patriotism - Jane Addams

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