Sudden Solitude in a Crowded Desert

Here I elaborate on a poem by Peter Schreiner: “Earth.”  Its text, contained in the graphic below, is available on Schreiner’s web-site Crows Head Soup. A state of being viewed with the vegan in mind. Awareness replaces normalcy, the gentle side of being aware is naturally repelled by flesh, fur and bone when known as resources, nourishment, craving. Normality is the unquestioning exploitation of fellow sentient beings alive today on this planet. 99% “living” in factory-fresh farms.

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Borrowing a favorite phrase from a seldom followed play of T.S. Eliot,  The Family Reunion. A Greek chorus explains the characters contained on the theater stage.

Sudden Solitude in a Crowded Desert

The concept became a byline for me one day while listening to the audio for this play. I was on the back porch, it was the late 90’s. Days of very early social media connected my life with others by a 1200 baud modem. Three States and a river. OH IN KY.

Very few Google searches yield much information on the Unix box located in a small room at the local phone company, TriState Online.

This link takes you to the full text at archive.org. You can search for “sudden solitude” there.

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Sir Alec Guinness’ excerpt is central to the theme of the play.

Sudden Solitude played into a concept in that poem “Earth.” The mashup that occurs when you imagine the inexplicable in everyday life.  Things unquestioned in a polite society proud of its dominion. All matters familiar, ordinary and comforting (comfort food) in a moment of unexpected insight. A spinning coin flipped skyward that reveals the unanticipated: solitude/crowded.

Privileged consumer of all things animal from marrow to fur, then quite suddenly you become a witness, then a consumer of no thing animal.

Cognitive dissonance sets in when you identify enlightenment from the vegan point of view. At this point I fervently hope that readers remaining to read this far are not already convicted vegans. Dismissal out of hand is something you must expect when promoting marginal epiphanies. billziegler1947 is a tribute to the music of the crickets, I’m actually proud of that tribute.

My comment on “Earth”:

“Secular lands” evokes imposed national borders for me. Each sentient being I meet opens a complex but complete universe contained in one transient body: distinct personages/animalages. Borders are as much cage bars as they are expressions of nationality, but they are all arbitrary. Anyway that’s my reader reaction. Hope it makes sense to readers of these words.

It feels good to revive Sudden Solitude in a Crowded Desert, a thread to weave into the discussion here.

Thanks for reading.

Chris Hedges Interviews Stanley Cohen

I now report back on my favorite human rights attorney (bar none), Stanley Cohen. I am here to put his name forward. A good place to start is his blog: Caged but Undaunted. Chris Hedges interviewed Stanley on RT last month and it’s posted at On Contact.

So what’s new? Attica lives, written 4 days ago, is. Here we have a retrospective from 2016 on the prison riot of 1971.  This Friday, September 9, marks the 45th anniversary of the rebellion. Long penetrating read. Five stars.

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In Caged but Undaunted

You can tune in to @StanleyCohenLaw for live coverage and commentary first hand. I have not posted much on Twitter recently, but what I’ve written and recommended there is @billziegler1947. 

Possession of a human soul is the resource Stanley uses to represent super marginalized people (like Palestinians) trapped by powers that still be. His clients are people who speak truth to power, I recommend that muchly. 

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The IRS is still a go-to place in the federal government for expedient rulings requested by other arms of the federal government.  Their long arm searched for secreted funds but found nothing. That did not stop them from incarcerating Mr. Cohen in the Canaan PA prison-industrial facilities while they continued their search. By the way, they still haven’t found anything on him. 

No one touches the thief with multiple billion dollar caches and über high-level positions. Think large in this environment and expect things to come your way, such as the Presidency.

The idea was to silence him. Instead they gave Stanley Cohen insight into the inside. His witness is invaluable for all of us out there who believe that justice is not deferrable in a human society.

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Attica 1971

 

To paraphrase Joe Friday “Just none of the facts ma’am, just none of the facts.”

#UpTheRebels

Thanks for reading.

The Tyranny of the Majority

Majority rule is an expedient way to exercise authority over the unwanted and to marginalize unpopular ethnic groups, such as Native Palestinians in Palestine.

That guy on the $20 bill made the South safe for democracy. Somewhere in Jacksonian Democracy lies a lesson, one learned by 10,000 despots: if undesirables are out of the picture, they are not a problem. Future generations can safely and comfortably observe “mistakes were made.”

After the Trail of Tears, America was made safe for slaveholders again. Cherokees are for westerns or in teepees next to a Stuckeys. Have you heard this one: “I’m 1/24th Cherokee.” Really?

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Look up Nakba for a similar trail of tears.

America was great I hear. But them Indians got it made now, every tribe has a casino. Sad to say, they’re fat and lazy and coddled by Washington. Things never change, I guess. Wink. Nod.

Grocery stores near reservations are food deserts. If a vehicle becomes available a real supermarket is only 70 miles away. While you are 70 miles away from home you can stock up on health care services and relax a while at the local casino. Chill with your fellow ingrates.

Native Americans are number one in death by police.(The Counted: 2016) among all ethnic groups.

The Guardian compiles this database, but for some reason such information is not collected in the US.

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DJT is not a reader, but profound ignorance is no barrier to enormous wealth or monstrous feats of racism. Just a casual side note.

Ethnic cleansing silences voices of dissent.

Israel expelled 700,000 native Palestinians in 1948. Today the growth of settlements in the West Bank make population distribution look a lot like reservations in the formerly unoccupied American West.

NYT: All The News They Didn’t Print

I just read an article in  TimesWarp, a site that reports biased coverage in the New York Times of human rights violations in occupied Palestine. But never ever mention Palestine.

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Map provided in a brochure for a tour of the Holy Land in July 2016. Misinformation taken to the ultimate desired state.

Whitewashing Israeli War Crimes: the NYT Turns its Back on Survivors and Critics. It refers to bias on the part of Isabel Kershner in her New York Times article. It’s actually a pretty good textbook example of the fallacy of the middle ground. I think it is more than significant that her son is in the Israeli Army.

David Brooks may be the best known reporter for the Times. He is über well respected and considered a moderate and thoughtful writer. The guy has street cred. From his profile:

— David Brooks became an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times in September 2003. His column appears every Tuesday and Friday. He is currently a commentator on “PBS NewsHour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He also has a son in the Israeli army.  Do you think it might influence his reporting, well of course not. Why even bring it up?

Stories about Palestine are sanitized to remove any hint of a voice from a land destroyed in 1948 (The Nakba) and then further occupied in 1967 (The Naksa). It is still occupied as I write this. I was 8 months old on the day of Nakba (May 14, 1948), 19 years old on the day of Naksa (June 5, 1967).

Misinformation on Palestine has run rampant 24/7 for the last 24,943 days.

Journalists are rare and they seem to have left the building.

OK, let’s see how CAMERA.org views the New York Times. Here we have a monstrous and monstrously sized billboard below.

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CAMERA is an acronym for The “Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.” OK I’m dumbstruck by their understanding of Joseph Goebbels and Newspeak.

The NYT provides absolutely no reporting from within the occupied territories. Not good news if you are a reader of The Gray Lady, newspaper of record.

Last February Mondoweiss printed a parody of the New York Times that contained “all the news we didn’t print.”

ny.times.parody.mondoweiss
Map provided in a brochure for a tour of the Holy Land in July 2016. Misinformation taken to the ultimate desired state.

CAMERA explains the inaccuracies in the Mondoweiss parody. OK I’m dumbstruck again.

My humble gratitude to visitors identified on my WordPress analytics page as located in the “Palestinian Territories.” However, when I float an arrow cursor to find out where it is the names Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan pop up.  Hey, where in the world is Palestine? 

 

For freedom from misinformation know your sources.What about corporately sponsored media? …coming soon.

Thanks for reading.