Post-Election Depression Continues

While you may be putting money
in the offering plate, taxes are
also taking a big chunk of your
money and using it on military
hardware. Should you have a
say in all this?

It's one week after the election ....

And I'm still feeling a sense of deep, dark gloom. The United States has chosen the direction it wants to go in the next four years — right over a cliff.

There is no sense of world community, working with the United Nations, getting serious about Mideast peace, healing our environment, or laying the groundwork for a sustainable future.

As usual, the ironies of our country continue to make me crazy. Our president talks about a Culture of Life while he engages in war and death. The moral masses of our country scream out against "perverts" getting married. Now, I find the marriage of Charlton Heston, Kenneth Lay, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell MUCH more perverted than a same sex marriage. The marriage of religious America, corporate America, and gun America is the marriage that should be outlawed!

Now, if you're are a religious conservative, you are probably reading this and laughing SO HARD that you're blowing milk out your nose. Yep, I LOST, and it's no fun to be on the losing side. However, 48 percent of America is on the losing side with me. I find like-minded people everywhere I go, including work, the voting line, and especially in the environmental groups I belong too. We is pissed.

A lot of us are also getting angrier and angrier about this war. I say BRING HOME THE TROOPS TOMORROW! And you are saying, "That would just throw Iraq into turmoil, and then the country would become a breeding ground for terrorism. And then, gosh, some Ayatollah will take over and turn the nation into a religious fundamentalist dictatorship."

Well, that's already happening in the United States, and the same will happen in Iraq — with or without troops and rebuilding funds. So, let's just save a thousand American lives and billions of our tax dollars and end it now. It was all a VERY BAD mistake. Why do we have a Department of Defense and a Secretary of Defense when we are waging offensive war? Everything is twisted and upside down.

Some of us, well at least me, are also getting angry at the continual attempts to intertwine Christianity with the "American Lifestyle." Believe me, this American Lifestyle isn't a good thing. Look at us — most of us are overweight and we pump ourselves up with drugs for anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, obesity, headaches, and the list goes on. Look at our video addict kids — they down four Cokes a day, play video games for nine hours, and then we load them with Ritalin and send them to bed.

Well..

So maybe all of us progressives in this country are just depressed people anyway, and we just needed an excuse to feel glum. Or maybe we are all too smart and over educated. Maybe having an IQ of above 100 and having the ability to think for yourself and question is a curse. Maybe it is more peaceful to go through life in an ignorant bliss and just accept everything the "entrenched institutions" tell you. Maybe it's better to let Fox Network just spoon feed you the applesauce, while you say, "Yum, yum, that's right. We conservatives are under attack by those evil, baby-killing liberals who want to take our religion and guns away from us."

From the song "Jesus of Suburbia" by Green Day:

I'm the son of rage and love
The Jesus of suburbia
From the bible of none of the above
On a steady diet of soda pop and Ritalin
No one ever died for my sins in hell
As far as I can tell
At least the ones I got away with

And there's nothing wrong with me
This is how I'm supposed to be
In a land of make believe
That don't believe in me

Load Your Gun, Reject Your Child - For God

She coalesces with the NRA yet has ostracized her only daughter because she is gay.

...I find it deeply troubling that the Christian Coalition of Georgia and the National Rifle Association regularly cooperate. On at least two occasions, the Christian Coalition has sent out Action Alerts on behalf of the NRA, and the two groups once sat on a discussion panel together.

I find it even more troubling that Sadie Fields, the president of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, has ostracized her only daughter because she is gay.

...As a Church member for most of my life and the child of fundamentalist Christian parents, one of the most wonderful things I learned about my faith was "unconditional love." Sadie Fields, who most recently published a scathing article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that supported the gay marriage ban, is NOT showing unconditional love to her own daughter, yet she is a Christian leader ("Can't Let the Few Hurt Society As A Whole," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 25).

...Lesbian daughter Tess Fields on mother Sadie's bigotry Tess Fields, the lesbian daughter of Georgia Christian Coalition leader Sadie Fields, who has led the state's same-sex marriage constitution amendment ban, has come out strongly against the measure just days before Tuesday's referendum. In a highly personal public letter to The Atlanta Journal- Constitution's editorial page, Tess Fields also criticized what she called her mother's "bigotry" and "abject hostility toward gay and lesbian people."

...Sadie Fields said her daughter's sexuality and their strained relationship is deeply painful for her. The Christian Coalition leader, who also has two sons, said that she loves her daughter and prays for her daily.... Sadie Fields said she would continue to support the constitutional amendment because she says it's the right thing to do.

...At least I have some respect for Vice President Dick Cheney, who has accepted, supported, and defended his lesbian daughter.

...When I ask conservative folks about the strange relationship between God and guns in this country, the common response is: "Christians have a right to defend themselves."... I suppose that when the Christian-Industrial coalition pushes the disenfranchised masses to the point of rebellion, they will need their assault weapons to defend themselves and their One Right Way.

Sadie Fields, is president of the Christian

Coalition of Georgia, and another great
role model for hypocrites. She coalesces with
the NRA yet has ostracized her only
daughter because she is gay.

I find it troubling...

I find it deeply troubling that the Christian Coalition of Georgia and the National Rifle Association regularly cooperate. On at least two occasions, the Christian Coalition has sent out Action Alerts on behalf of the NRA, and the two groups once sat on a discussion panel together.

I find it even more troubling that Sadie Fields, the president of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, has ostracized her only daughter because she is gay. So, instead of coddling her own 35-year-old daughter, she instead coddles the NRA.

As a Church member for most of my life and the child of fundamentalist Christian parents, one of the most wonderful things I learned about my faith was "unconditional love." Sadie Fields, who most recently published a scathing article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that supported the gay marriage ban, is NOT showing unconditional love to her own daughter, yet she is a Christian leader ("Can't Let the Few Hurt Society As A Whole," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 25).

A few days later, her excommunicated lesbian daughter wrote a response to her mother's column. The following is a summary:


Lesbian daughter Tess Fields on mother Sadie's bigotry
Tess Fields, the lesbian daughter of Georgia Christian Coalition leader Sadie Fields, who has led the state's same-sex marriage constitution amendment ban, has come out strongly against the measure just days before Tuesday's referendum. In a highly personal public letter to The Atlanta Journal- Constitution's editorial page, Tess Fields also criticized what she called her mother's "bigotry" and "abject hostility toward gay and lesbian people." Sadie Fields found out Tess was a lesbian when Tess was 24. "My mother came over to where I worked, screaming, and told me I was 'dead' to the family. She called me 'sick,' 'crazy,' and 'of the devil,' " Tess Fields wrote.

Here is Ms. Field's response, excerpted from the Associated Press:

Sadie Fields said her daughter's sexuality and their strained relationship is deeply painful for her. The Christian Coalition leader, who also has two sons, said that she loves her daughter and prays for her daily. "I would give my life for her, but I can't affirm her in her choices," she said. Sadie Fields said she would continue to support the constitutional amendment because she says it's the right thing to do. "The amendment issue is larger than just one relationship," Sadie Fields said. "It's not just about me and my daughter. It's about the future of this country."

Yeah, right. At least I have some respect for Vice President Dick Cheney, who has accepted, supported, and defended his lesbian daughter. I have zero respect for Sadie Fields, who is really all about partisan politics and pushing a hard right agenda.



Canary Comment ...

When I ask conservative folks about the strange relationship between God and guns in this country, the common response is: "Christians have a right to defend themselves." But Christians are actually defending the status quo, the corporate-industrial complex, and their own brand of morals. I suppose that when the Christian-Industrial coalition pushes the disenfranchised masses to the point of rebellion, they will need their assault weapons to defend themselves and their One Right Way.

Hope

Just when I was starting to get depressed...

Leave it to some wonderful author to come and cheer me up. Last weekend I read a great article on this book and I can hardly wait to buy it. You see, this book is about the hard work of advocating social change. That's what I'm trying to do — I'm trying to promote sustainability. The way we are living now is totally unsustainable and if we don't change our ways in about 50 years we'll be in trouble.

I know that movements take time. I know that I will have to spend my entire life working on this movement, and I will likely not see the results of my work in my lifetime. But many social movements take several generations. Think of the liberation of British rule in India or the end to apartheid in South Africa, or civil rights in the U.S. These were long slow movements and there were many martyrs and much suffering before dreams were realized.

The book, titled "The Impossible Will Take A Little While" is a stirring collection of essays aimed at folks like me who are still crazy enough to believe that ordinary people can change the world. Featured in the book is a collection of 50 inspirational stories and essays from such activists as Wendell Berry, Congressman John Lewis, and author Tony Kushner. Also included are the voices of other, unknown activists in faraway lands. For these activists, instead of getting awards they often get killed.

According to author Paul Rogat Loeb, the idea of the book is to inspire people who feel too overwhelmed by the world's problems. The following are some quotes from his interview in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"Apathy kills the soul. Activism reawakens it — no matter how hopeless the cause may seem."

"When we know things are wrong, we literally have to kill some part of ourselves to accept that. When we take action for justice, we're congruent with the core of our being. Our values and actions align. And we're part of a community, a stream of justice extending forward and backward."

"History shows that even seemingly miraculous advances are in fact the result of many people taking small steps together over a long period of time."

"Every act of defiance somehow pays off in the end. Don't look for a moment of total triumph. See engagement as an ongoing struggle with victories and defeats, but in the long run, slow progress ... Understand that even when you don't 'win' there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that you have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile."

"You have to have some sense of something larger than yourself, no matter how you name it."

"In today's fiercely partisan political climate people often try to denigrate social justice activists as relics from another era. That's because many powerful people don't want people to push past the clichés to learn more about social-justice movements. It's a dangerous example because if more people started following them and saying, "Look at what they did: we can do that, too' it would encourage people to question entrenched institutions of power today."



The Canary Adds One More Thought...

This comes from John Brown, who led a failed slave revolt in October 1859 and was hung two months later. This week, for some reason, the passage has taken on a new meaning for me:


. . . I believe to have interfered as I have done, . . . in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done."

They Don't Understand

The election was a few days ago on Tuesday...

And I'm still recovering from the shock. What I learned, I suppose, is that the United States is a REALLY religious country. That's alright because there's nothing wrong with being Christian or religious, I suppose. But it's the hypocrisy that absolutely kills me. It's like one narrow set of twisted morals have been thrust upon this land — and the Americans are trying to push them on the world as well.

I never thought I'd see the day when Christians form a coalition with gun owners and rich industrialists. What is moral about guns? What is moral about giant rich corporations that plunder the environment and screw the workers? Why do the Christians give their loyalty to industrialists, who are busy outsourcing American jobs overseas?

What is so Christian about tax breaks for the rich, which makes our country so financially strapped that we can't help the poor? What is Christian about cutting taxes and leaving the national debt for our children to pay? What is so Christian about war? Who are these people in the American Heartland who are so eager for vengeance?

What is so Christian about an American lifestyle that is based on selfishness, comfort, and the worship of materialism?

Yet, myself and the nearly half the country who voted for Kerry are the scums. We are the poor, the jobless, the disenfranchised, the minorities, the gays, the liberal intellectuals, and the lowly progressives like myself. We are the "out" crowd and there's not enough of us to stand up against the Heartland.

The Walmart shoppers — the God-fearing citizens of the small towns and suburbs have spoken. "Let us roll over the gays, feminists, environmentalists, Iraqis, Iranians, and whoever else stands in our way. Let us crush them with our tank treads, for we are the people of God."

When a thief steals a loaf of bread or some crack head buys some dope, the Christian Taliban puts him in jail and throws away the key. But what about the corporate polluters? Or the Ivy League boys who get nice jobs in glass towers and then spend their lives cooking the books? What about the tainted public officials who only serve the masters with the deepest pockets?

Where is the justice? Where is the dignity?

Of course, it all comes back to the evils of gay marriage — shit, imagine two people who love each other getting married. How sick is that? Or it comes to abortion ... let us show no mercy for those women who are poor, desperate, and have no one to help or care about them. Now they are pregnant and the Christian Right wants to throw them in jail. "No, we only want to go after the abortion providers," they say. But there were only a few of them to begin with, and now they are all gone ... so it's time to go after the young women.

All I ask, all I've EVER asked, is that we all make our decisions based on long-term sustainability.

But we are going in the wrong direction. The people of the Heartland put on their Christian Halloween masks, and then they condone environmental rape, global climate change, exploitation of the downtrodden, and the perpetuation of a system that is based on "ME" instead of other Americans and the World Community.

So, yes, come tell me what it means to be a Christian. Lead me to Christ. Tell me what a rotten, wretched person I am. Please, I believe I've missed something here and I really need to know.

Yellow Canary

What I learned

Me in front of the Berlin Wall, well a part of it that was
brought to the United States.

Maybe I shouldn't be trying to save the world after all. Maybe I'm missing the entire point. I mean, I'm thinking, if we are extinct, who's going to really care? Who's going to miss us? What is the purpose of perpetuating ourselves forever? Maybe this whole thing isn't about perpetuation, but maybe it's about LOVE. In this crazy world we live in with pain and death and daily surprises, LOVE appears the only constant. It is some strange, higher-evolved emotion that only humans, and maybe a few monkeys, can experience. But what if the LOVE keeps evolving until we are all warm fuzzy hippies? Is that the fate of mankind? We hug, love one another, and then turn to face our extinction?

Okay, allow me to be more pragmatic. MAYBE the reason I'm trying to save the world is for fairness — so future generations can still see and experience the same beauty that I have enjoyed. Maybe the little kids of the future are entitled to a patch of woods and a creek to play in.

Or, maybe it's a principle. Maybe it's not FAIR for humans to explode their numbers and consume every corner of the Earth like mindless parasites. MAYBE that's not fair to the millions of other species we share the Planet with.

Maybe, hell, maybe I just like the natural world. Maybe I'm just selfish and want to make it last.

And now, a little deep rambling...

The success of our country is due to our strong Economic Machine, which has brought most of us some degree of material wealth and comfort. Maybe the Republicans are the anointed caretakers of this engine. They are like little robed monks who walk around oiling, tuning, and generally pampering the Machine. Of course, the Machine makes a lot of nasty waste, which harms both people and nature. It is obviously wrong but when the Environmental Whackos complain, the Guardians circle the wagons and scream, "You cannot mess with our Machine!"

And the Whackos respond, "But the thing is poisoning us; it's slowly killing us and our children."

"But the Machine brings you wealth and prosperity," they say. "Without it we could not have the American Way that we all enjoy."

"But, but, what about the future?" you ask. "You are destroying the very world that sustains us."

"Don't worry about it because God will take care of that."

Truth Is A Lie, And A Lie Is Truth

Truth Is A Lie, and A Lie Is Truth

Breathe in,
Breathe out.
What you thought might be today
Is really tomorrow.

And the truth you twisted
Became my reality.

I listened, I listened until the night turned to day.
Capturing thoughts on paper, trying to capture life.
It's all too much.

Spinning cosmos and trying to understand it all.
I trusted you, but you betrayed me.
You listened to the corporate whore; you said you needed more.

Little tin soldiers marching in the desert, dying in the desert.
Muddled thoughts try to make sense of it all.

But the speed, the pace, the passion. Far too intense.
Because what is truth today becomes a lie tomorrow.

So, lay there and sleep.
And sip on the holy water to drown your sorrow.

As for me, I spin wildly in the abyss.
While I think about lost loves, victories, and all the things that I miss.

Breathe in, breathe out.
Take me away.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Don't let me stay.

A Wonderful Week For Canaries

Wangari Mathai, one
of my great heros.

I squealed with delight when I heard that Wangari Maathai had won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize last week. An environmental activist from Kenya, she typifies a great Yellow Canary in every way. As leader of the Green Belt Movement , she has helped to improve the environment, empower women, and fight corruption for nearly 30 years.

She is currently Kenya's Deputy Environmental Minister and the first black African woman to ever win a Nobel Prize. She is best known for leading a campaign to plant 30 million trees to counter deforestation.

"Many of the wars in Africa are fought over natural resources," she said. "Ensuring they are not destroyed is a way of ensuring there is no conflict."

This is a major discovery I made in January 1998, and it is a premise of this website and blog — that environmental protection and peacemaking go hand-and-hand.

In receiving the award, Dr. Maathai continued by saying:

"Don't farm in forests ... because we will lose our forests. We have been given the responsibility of caring for future generations, and the younger ones, so that they may have water."

This is exactly what I've been trying to say in different ways throughout my website and blog. Notice her beautiful phrase, "responsibility of caring for future generations." This is such a key part of what it's all about.

Here is what my greatest of all heros, Jimmy Carter, had to say about Dr. Maathai's award:

"She has fought courageously to protect the environment and human rights, in the face of severe governmental pressures to silence her often lonely voice. As an outstanding woman leader, she is a role model for other women throughout Africa struggling to improve the well-being of their families and communities."

And here's what the Nobel committee had to say in presenting the award:

"We believe that Maathai is a strong voice speaking for the best forces in Africa to promote peace and good living conditions on that continent."

In 1977, as a member of the National Council of Women of Kenya, she abandoned her promising career as a biology professor to pursue her environmental projects. She has since dedicated her life to making the world a better place.



A Message from the Canary...

Now, really, sometimes I have no idea why I'm keeping this blog, but this week I've gotten a better idea why. I know that I am not destined for greatness like Dr. Maathai and others that I have mentioned on this blog. However, there are young people around the world like Julia Butterfly and others who may be searching and who may stumble onto this blog. I hope that, if anything, my contribution to the world is to inspire some up-and-coming Canaries. All of us are like clay, and our lives are molded by our experiences — things we see, read, and hear. My hope is that this blog can provide one positive sound bite to some great, rising leader in our movement.

Ultimately, I do believe that we Canaries will prevail in our goal to promote peace and global sustainability. But, I also know that the institutions we are pushing against will persecute us, imprison us, and sometimes kill us. There are many Canaries around the world who are far greater than I because they are risking their lives to do what is right. From Thailand to Nigeria and from Mexico to Colombia, they are standing up against exploitation, hate, war, and inequality. These are the people who are going to ultimately save the Earth. I thank these true super heros for giving me hope, and I ask God to bless them.

— Sources: Associated Press, National Public Radio

Duck People: The Story Continues

Hey, this place is full of quacks! And, hey,
it's so crowded here the water is dirty and
I can't find a place to lay eggs. Maybe having
so many of us in this finite place isn't such
a good idea.

Okay, so the story continues ... in 1996 I was a loyal Republican and church leader. I spent four and a half years planting a church for the unchurched, but then I began thinking, "If this religion I was born into is so right, then why is everything so wrong?" I looked around and couldn't make sense of what was going on in the world. I was fiddling while Rome was burning.

So, I spent from July 1997 to November 2003 as an environmental activist, with a particular interest in population. I did volunteer work for Planned Parenthood, National Wildlife Federation, Population Connection, and spent massive hours helping the Sierra Club. I worked in political campaigns, held signs at demonstrations, attended endless meetings, and built coalitions. I volunteered with a passion, neglected my family, and won five awards. I held local, state, and national positions with the Sierra Club — every moment of my day I was busy doing something. I was totally driven.

This year, I rotated off most of my Sierra Club positions and have cut back on my volunteer time. This has allowed me to pursue my two other passions — Macintosh computers and tennis. But more importantly, it has given me valuable time to think. The thing I love about the Sierra Club is the wonderful people I have met — both the volunteers and staff. A really cool thing about the Club is that it operates about 200 e-mail discussion lists, so you can sign up for any environmental topic you want and have discussions with and make friends with people around the country.

Protecting the environment is extremely difficult because it is in our cultural DNA to continually grow and expand, usually with no regard for nature or the future. After six years of swimming against the tide of Mother Culture, and after years of banging my head against the wall, I have concluded that a new approach is needed.

For much of this year I have been in learning mode. Two areas that I have spent months studying are indigenous societies and human history. What I learned about indigenous peoples is that there have been thousands of small societies around the world that have lived sustainably for thousands of years. In just a few hundred years, Western Culture, along with its Industrial Revolution and One-Right-Way religion, has either severely disrupted or destroyed nearly all of these communities.

In regards to human history, I have learned that much about our behavior is determined by the past. When 9/11 struck America, we dug into our DNA and reverted to a primordial "panic" state. For the past three years our nation has not behaved rationally, rather we are in "fight and flee" mode. When you study history, you can better understand why we are acting the way we are.

Even more fascinating in my studies has been the evolution of religion. I am starting to see that the faith of the Hebrews was not written down by a few Jewish fathers, but rather Judaism, and its offshoot Christianity, are a collection of many ancient ideas and influences. Ancient Egyptian religion, in particular, seemed to serve as an incubator for many of the ideas now found in today's Big Three religions.

What I have concluded is that, hmm, well, I guess that religion is all about the human interpretation of God. In many respects, religion is either good or benign, but there is also some bad. As a great Canary once said at a lecture, "Religion has done some good and some bad, but mostly bad."

My interest at this point is to perhaps begin an outreach to religious fundamentalists. Right now I have no idea how to approach this, since the gap between me and a fundamentalist is vast, the topic of discussion is charged with emotion, and they are not really interested in what I have to say anyway. I know where they are coming from because I was once one of them. I will continue to listen to them, but I'm not so sure they will listen to me.

I have no idea how I became a Yellow Canary and became different from the Yellow Ducks. I have no idea why I became a progressive idealist instead of an unquestioning follower. I really don't. But I had lunch today with another Canary who is just like me, and that is reassuring.

Maybe I am insane, but maybe I'm not. Only God knows.

Yellow Canary

Yellow Canaries Are Everywhere

Let's put him on the mantel. No, let's
set him over the toilet. Yeah, that's a
good idea. Yeah, that Canary was
a tortured soul. Poor guy.

The Good News...

Is that there are actually thousands of Yellow Canaries around the world, just like me. These are people who care about the future and do great things to make the world better. They are writers, poets, politicians, ministers, corporate leaders, and lowly grunts like me. All of us have one thing in common — we care. We worry about what the world will be like in seven generations or in 100 years. We really don't WANT to see humans destroy both themselves and their home Planet. But with our nukes, sloppy land use policies, and indifference toward the Natural World, we seem determined to kill ourselves.

I can always spot a Canary out in a crowd. Always when I meet them, I find we have similar views about life. Whether they are trying to help kids out in the inner city or building solar windmills, I immediately respect and admire them. I have the deepest respect for humans that try to make my world better.

The Canaries who've been at this for a long time usually "see the light" and become concerned about SUSTAINABILITY. Simply defined, sustainability is living in such a way that we leave the world in as good or better shape for the next generation. That's all there is to it, and that's all I ask. There are hundreds of indigenous societies that have lived this way for thousands of years, but they are small. Western Capitalism, on the other hand, is a huge locust that consumes everything in its path. Armed with an accommodating religion, Western Capitalism consumes, rapes, and destroys. In return for our allegiance to this Whore, we get a house, color TV, and a can of beans.

But some people are questioning the Mother Culture that we worship. They are saying, "Wow, if we melt the polar caps then the poor island nations won't have a place to live." But Mother Culture says, "Buy that Hummer because God has blessed you and whip out those credit cards because it's Christmastime."

Interestingly, Canaries are more concentrated in some areas more than others. The Scandinavian nations, for example, are modern societies that appear truly committed to sustainability. They are leading the way for the rest of us. Even in some parts of the United States, there are concentrations of Canaries, such as in New England and the Pacific states. But in the so-called Bible Belt states, Canaries are an extreme rarity.

If you think I'm suggesting a correlation between fundamentalist Christianity and a disregard for sustainability, well, sadly, I am. My biggest goal in life is to get the conservative faith community to embrace sustainability. That is it. Sadly, my particular denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, was making small steps toward this goal before being seized by extremists in the mid 1990s. Most of the moderates have been purged from my denomination, and these were the men and women who provided hope.

Who the hell are these Christian extremists? I tend to think that they are people who are scared. At the very least they are scared of change, and at worse they are terrified of seeing their traditional religious paradigm crumbling.

Okay, well, I'm rambling. There's nothing worse than a rambling canary. So, I will end my post with an excerpt from a great Scandinavian Canary. It is from Gro Harlem Brundtland, MD. Dr. Brundtland is the past prime minister of Norway and recently completed a term as secretary general of the World Health Organization. When I first read one of her essays, I just started crying. I had never read anything more powerful.

From Gro Harlem Brundtland, one of the world's greatest Canaries:

Although modern transportation and communication systems are bringing the world closer together, the economic and social gaps between us are still widening. Our knowledge may have taken man to the moon, but our mismanagement and over-exploitation of the world's natural resources have brought life on Earth closer to extinction.

For the first time in history, human activities are having a severe, possibly irreversible, impact on nature and the living conditions of all the species on our Planet. Global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, lack of clean water, extensive loss of species and biological diversity, acceleration of deforestation, and desertification are all signs of the global crisis now approaching.

And that, my friends, is the crux of my problem. And whether you choose to accept it or not, it is your problem too.

Are We God's Mistake?

Yum, yum, more drugs to keep us alive so that we
can pay taxes. We all want to live as long as we can
even if it means pumping ourselves up with chemicals.
But if heaven is so wonderful, why are we all so
afraid to die?


Well, why write when my Canary Friend Alan can say it all so much better:


I think I'll change sides.

I'll vote for Bush, buy a gas-guzzler; encourage all women to have as many children as humanly possible (I think that's 26). Buy more and more stuff, greed is good, war is good, other countries are happier when we dominate them. After all God meant for America to own all the world's oil.

Yep, lets get it over with. The sooner the Planet's eco-system crashes and humans become extinct the better. Maybe God will be a bit more careful with his/her next big brain experiment, or on second thought maybe one is enough.

Are We Programmed?

Prepare me for the afterlife and
don't steal my religion. It's mine!

Are we programmed? How can we tell if we're programmed? We may think we are freethinkers, but are we really?

Maybe we are programmed in certain ways to keep our society orderly. Maybe our leaders want to program us in a specific way to better meet their ends.

The best example in history of a re-programming was when General Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome to help unify the failing empire. The plan worked better than Constantine could have EVER imagined.

One of the shocking and even chilling discoveries I have recently made is how closely modern Christianity resembles Ancient Egyptian religion. Both religions feature an afterlife, demons, a judgment day, a similar creation story and more. Much to my recent surprise, our modern religion just didn't appear in the First Century, rather it appears to have evolved over thousands of years.

However, one constant in our continually evolving religion is that it always personifies humans. Only 150 years ago, religion in the U.S. was used to justify slavery and then in 1960s it was used to justify civil rights. Today, religion is used to justify the persecution of gays, but some denominations are challenging this "norm" and moving society forward. The conservatives have circled the wagons and are mounting one last offensive with the gay marriage ban, just like conservatives in the South resisted school integration in the early 1960s.

So, like we learned from Emperor Constantine, religion is a great way to "program" the people and ensure an orderly society. Of course, the Romans borrowed these ideas from the greatest society of all — the Ancient Egyptians. Their society lasted a stunning three thousand years. A few simple programming tricks include making your leaders God-like and keeping the people united with an elaborate religion — preferably one that focuses on an afterlife. What a great way to keep the citizens preoccupied. What a great strategy: Let the government handle current affairs — you need to focus on heaven!

Though the U.S. has only been around a paltry 200+ years, our leaders are learning too. Our politicians use religion and fear to keep us controlled and compliant. They masterfully play the abortion card to get the single-issue voters out en masse. The single-issue voters then put more "conservatives" in power, who, in turn, dismantle labor and environmental laws as a way to repay corporate donors. What a wonderful marriage of convenience.

But one thing is wrong ...

The one big difference I see with the Ancient Egyptians and today's religions is that the ancients appeared to be genuinely happy. Despite common myth, the Pyramids were built by skilled workers, NOT SLAVES. They were well fed, many lived with their families, and they built the Pyramids as a labor of LOVE, NOT FEAR.

Yet, after the Roman Empire collapsed and the Dark Ages began, the "joy" of religion seems to have become tempered with endless guilt and fear. Why was God always punishing people? Why was life so hard? What did we do to deserve the Black Death? Actually, it wasn't God that devastated Europe with the Bubonic Plague, rather it was the little Oriental Rat Flea. And it was not God that destroyed the Twin Towers — it was a group of young, middle class Saudi males.

Maybe when we fight Saddam and terrorists, we are really fighting a form of symbolic evil. Maybe our government is using this as an opportunity to "unite" us, when, in fact, they are really just programming us.

free·think·er n Somebody who refuses to accept established views or teachings, especially on religion, and forms opinions as a result of independent inquiry.
—Encarta World English Dictionary

Our Many Gods

I don't like you for what you've done to me. You pumped up my country's
children on Ritalin because you didn't want to deal with them. You
medicated their minds to prepare them for the New World Order. You
are trying to re-program America but I will resist.


Just one God? Don't be silly. We have many Gods in the United States. Allow me to name a few:

Prozac
Cipramil
Aropax
Zoloft
Tofranil
Pertofram
Deptran
Aurorix
Arima
Nardil
Parnate

Welcome to America, the land of antidepressants and LOTS of depression. Why are we so unhappy? The United States is the land of plenty, of opportunity, come on! How can anyone be miserable?

In Atlanta there are shiny new fences on all the overpasses. Everywhere I drove yesterday they were all over the place. Some are curved inward and all are high. The fences are to keep people from jumping off.

Two apparent suicide tries forced the closing of two Atlanta area interstates Tuesday, raising concern among officials that media reports are fueling a copycat trend. The two incidents were the third and fourth times in three months a metro interstate has been closed because of suicide threats.
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6/16/04

Jumping off bridges? Come on, we are in the land of utopia where tanks rumble in the desert and conservative religious leaders touch the "abortion button" to mobilize their legions for the November vote.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell boasted Friday that evangelical Christians, after nearly 25 years of increasing political activism, now control the Republican Party and the fate of President Bush in the November election.
— Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 9/25/04

Oh, yeah, so why are people trying to jump off bridges in Atlanta? Well, one of the jumpers comes from my hometown. Fortunately, he survived the 30-foot jump.

In Cobb County, Gregory Layne Light, 26, of Powder Springs stood on the edge of the Windy Hill Road bridge over I-75 for more than two hours at midday May 27, prompting officials to close the interstate in both directions for much of the afternoon. He told negotiators he had no job and no money and that everything had gone wrong in his life.
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6/16/04


Meanwhile, the Republican Party, now controlled by the hard-right Christians and Industrialists are amassing their forces for the final kill. Their goal is to exterminate the Democratic Party and create a one-party fundamentalist state, similar to Iran.

"I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night."
— Ralph Reed, Bush-Cheney '04 Southeast Regional Director, past interview

Having worked in political campaigns against Republican Candidates, I can assure you that the zealots now working for the Republicans lie, mislead, and deceive to achieve their ends.

The Democrats are taking a beating, perhaps because they are too principled to fight back. Maybe it's too much of a shock to see the way that Karl Rove and Ralph are now playing the game. All I know is that the cynicism and ill will they are creating is destroying what's left of our ailing democracy. But, isn't that the ultimate goal anyway?

Maybe Jerry, Ralph, and Karl should come to Powder Springs and hang out with Gregory Light and try to find out why he jumped off the bridge. Maybe then, the world will begin to change.

But in reality, the doctors will just pump Gregory with Prozac and Zoloft and send him on his merry way. In the meantime, the Department of Transportation is spending $3.5 million to build fences on Atlanta overpasses. That money could buy a lot of Prozac, or it could even pay Gregory's power bill. But building fences is how we react to problems here in America.

Unless we change our ways, we are doomed.