White Light Black Light

☪

Click ☪ to subscribe to this Feed

Video blogger Josh Wolf now a real journalist

Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

(08-19) 18:27 PDT -- After Josh Wolf took a job as a general assignment reporter at the Palo Alto Daily Post last month, he had some choice words for critics who've questioned his claim of being a journalist.

"If the haters who said I wasn't a real journalist, are still lurking," Wolf wrote on his blog, "I hope you don't have too much indigestion after eating your words.' "

Wolf, 26, is the San Francisco video blogger who in 2006 began a 226-day stint in federal prison for contempt after refusing to testify before a grand jury and hand over a videotape of a protest against a G-8 summit he filmed in the Mission District in which a police officer was injured.

At the time, Wolf was harshly criticized by some mainstream journalists who suspected that the self-described "anarchist and activist" was a participant rather than an impartial news gatherer. In a court filing, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan dismissed Wolf as someone who needed "to come to grips with the fact that he was simply a person with a video camera who happened to record some public events."

The case helped fuel the debate over the definition of what constitutes journalism - in an age of blog posts and video uploads by noncredentialed amateurs - and who is entitled to press protections, specifically journalists' ability to maintain the confidentiality of an unnamed source or unpublished material. For now, Wolf said the debate concerning his professional status can be put to rest.

"I felt like it was an irrelevant argument before," Wolf said. "But it feels like it's much harder for them to make their point now that it's how I earn my paycheck."

From blog to print

The shift from only a blogger to a just-the-facts reporter at a 16,500-circulation newspaper may seem counterintuitive at a time when newspapers and their staffs are shrinking.Yet Wolf enjoys the lot of a small-town cub reporter at a traditional local newspaper, which doesn't even maintain a Web site. At the Palo Alto Daily Post, he files 10 to 15 stories a week written in standard newspaper style, devoid of personal analysis, and most of his stories are only a few hundred words long and fail to include what Wolf calls the "significant nuances" of his reporting."I could write 10,000 words on some stories," Wolf said. "But I think it's understood you're trying to get the facts of the story a reader can easily understand, and no story is free of minute details that are also important."

For the Aug. 7 edition of the Post, Wolf penned items for the police blotter ("First block of Embarcadero: Six windows were reported broken at 10:59 a.m."), wrote a lead-up to the county fair (Headline: "Cattle Drive Means it's County Fair Time") and a short item on a homeless woman who was charged with writing threats to a police officer. (Wolf had to use dashes in the family newspaper to convey the offensive word she used.)

Dave Price, the publisher and editor of the Post, said he first met Wolf after trying to dispatch a reporter for a prison interview with him in 2006. After Wolf's release in April 2006, Price said he wanted to meet "the legend among journalists" and, after a short trial period during which Wolf wrote a few stories, offered him a staff job.

Price said Wolf has displayed an ability to work as a traditional reporter, seeking out multiple sources and not allowing personal views to seep into his copy.

"That's how you have to operate in this business," Price said, who launched the paper in May to compete with Palo Alto Daily News, owned by the Denver chain MediaNews Group. "And he's shown he can do that."

Wolf got his first taste of reporting when he worked on his school paper at Serrano High School in Southern California. He wrote news briefs for the weekly Santa Barbara Independent during college and worked at Peralta Community College as a video producer before he collected his infamous video footage.

Activist or reporter?

Christine Tatum, former president of the Society of Professional Journalists, who led many of the discussions in 2006 about whether Wolf should receive the national group's support and financial backing, said debates centered on Wolf's description of himself on his blog as an anarchist and activist, not a reporter.

"We didn't see 'journalist' in that (description), and that made us wonder, 'Were we getting behind a guy who was not there to gather news but who was involved (in the protests)?' " Tatum said. "I can't speak for Josh, but there was this thinking going around at the time, 'Oh, man, down with the mainstream media.' Yet, it was the mainstream media who was right there to help Josh out."

Tatum said her group ultimately supported Wolf, making its largest donation ever of $31,000 to support his legal defense, after agreeing that his actions - gathering information for the intent to distribute it - constituted an act of journalism. "There are very few easy poster children for good causes of journalism," Tatum said, noting that every high-profile case, such as those involving Judith Miller and BALCO, has its areas of gray. "It's less important for people to debate who is a journalist and more important for people to consider: Is it journalism?"

Forging a new rep

Even though the debate played out in newspaper columns and blogs and continues at length on Wolf's Wikipedia discussion page where users haggle over his reputation - "If his only journalistic quality is that he runs around with a camera and films stuff, then a whole lot of teenagers can be considered journalists," wrote one anonymous user - the question of professional status was irrelevant in federal court, said David Greene of Oakland's First Amendment Project, one of Wolf's attorneys.

Because shield laws that protect journalists from being forced to submit to subpoena power and turn over sources do not exist at the federal level, Wolf's official job title was of little consequence.

To gain his release, Wolf and his attorneys eventually struck a deal in which he aired the entire videotape on his Web site but avoided testifying before a grand jury about his material. (He also had to declare he did not know who was involved in injuring the police officer.)

Since his release, Wolf has worked as a video producer and a volunteer reporter at the Berkeley radio station KPFA. He also unsuccessfully ran for mayor of San Francisco in 2007, though he said that was "to make a statement" against the status quo and Mayor Gavin Newsom.

He's also working on a side project, a live video news site called Local Live, where users will be alerted to updates via Twitter, a social networking site that limits exchanges to short posts, text messages or e-mail alerts. Wolf envisions Local Live cameramen will receive texts from viewers, who will then be able to relay the queries at a press conference or a breaking news event.

But for now, though still blogging, Wolf is honing his chops in a medium that began in 1605.

"The fact is that all journalism is based on solid writing," Wolf said. "And there is no better place to practice the fundamentals of journalism than at a local daily newspaper."

More on Josh Wolf

-- To follow Josh Wolf on Twitter: twitter.com/joshwolf

-- To visit his personal Web site: joshwolf.net

E-mail Justin Berton at jberton@sfchronicle.com.

Stunning 62.4% of Americans Would Like to See Better Choices of Candidates, Parties in Future

Der..why wouldn't that number 100% - I can't imagine.

~F R E E T H E R A P Y~

Banner made with BannerFans.com, hosted on ImageShack.us

Online TV show Tuesday 6pm pacific
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/happe-talk

The news media's conspiracy to narrow our choice for president

From: http://www.nolanchart.com

...
Have you ever wondered why you only hear about two candidates running for president when there are actually numerous candidates?

The money is step one. Step two is controlling the media.
...

Andrew Bacevich on Moyers (again)

"The congress no longer is able to articulate a vision of what is the common good. The Congress exists primarily to ensure the reelection of members of Congress."

...

BIL MOYERS: Here is what I take to be the core of your analysis of our political crisis. You write, "The United States has become a de facto one party state. With the legislative branch permanently controlled by an incumbent's party. And every President exploiting his role as Commander in Chief to expand on the imperial prerogatives of his office."

ANDREW BACEVICH: One of the great lies about American politics is that Democrats genuinely subscribe to a set of core convictions that make Democrats different from Republicans. And the same thing, of course, applies to the other party. It's not true. I happen to define myself as a conservative.

Well, what do conservatives say they stand for? Well, conservatives say they stand for balanced budgets. Small government. The so called traditional values.

Well, when you look back over the past 30 or so years, since the rise of Ronald Reagan, which we, in many respects, has been a conservative era in American politics, well, did we get small government?

Do we get balanced budgets? Do we get serious as opposed to simply rhetorical attention to traditional social values? The answer's no. Because all of that really has simply been part of a package of tactics that Republicans have employed to get elected and to - and then to stay in office.

Quote: Nature of Personal Reality

“An artist produces a body of work in his lifetime. Each painting is but one materialization, one focused presentation, of an endless variety of probable paintings (he could choose to paint).”

“The same sort of thing operates in the actualization of any event in which you are involved. You create your life, then.

Inner images are of great importance to the artist. He tries to project them upon his canvas or board. Again, you are each your own artist, and your inner visualizations become models for other situations and events. The artist utilizes training and mixes his colors in order to give artistic flesh to his painting. The images in your mind draw to themselves all the proper emotional energy and power needed to fill them out as physical events.

You can change the picture of your life at any time if you only realize that it is simply the one portrait of yourself that you have created from an unlimited amount of probable ones.”

“Suppose that you are unhealthy and desire health. If you understand the nature of probabilities, you will not need to pretend to ignore your present situation. You will recognize it instead as a probable reality that you have physically materialized. Taking that for granted, you will then begin the process necessary to bring a different probability into physical experience.

You will do this by concentrating upon what you want, but feeling no conflict between that and what you have, because one will not contradict the other; each will be seen as a reflection of your belief in daily life.

As it took some time to build up your present image with its unhealthy aspects, so it may take some time to change that picture. But concentration upon the present unhealthy situation will only prolong it. Period. Each condition is as real or unreal as the other.”

Ref: The Nature of Personal Reality, by Jane Roberts, pp301-302, Bantam Books

Reflections on Twenty-First Century Socialism, by James Petras

In order to explore the perspectives for socialism in the 21st century, it is essential to recover some of the basic postulates, which inform the socialist project. In addition, it is important to recover some of the basic advances achieved by 20th century socialist regimes as well as to critically reflect on their distorted structures and failed policies.

In the most basic sense it is important to remember that ‘socialism’ is a means to a better material life than under capitalism: Higher living standards, greater political freedom, social equality of conditions, and internal and external security. ‘Respect’, ‘dignity’ and ‘solidarity’ can only be understood as accompaniments of these basic material goals, not as substitutes. ‘Respect” and ‘dignity’ cannot be pursued in the face of long-term, large-scale deprivation, sacrifice and delayed fulfillment of material improvement. Governments claiming to be ‘socialist’ which idealize ‘sacrifice’ of material living standards in the name of abstract principles of justice, are more akin to ‘spiritual socialism’ of a religious order rather than a modern dynamic socialist government.

Social transformations and the replacement of capitalist owners by the socialist state can only be justified if the new order can improve the efficiency, working conditions and responsiveness to consumers of the socialist enterprise. For example, in some socialist regimes, under the guise of a ‘revolutionary offensive’, the state intervened and eliminated thousands of small and medium size retail urban enterprises in the name of ‘eliminating capitalists’. The result was a disaster: The stores remained closed; the state was incapable of organizing the multitude of small businesses and the great majority of workers were deprived of vital services.

Twentieth century socialist states built effective and successful medical, educational and security systems to serve the majority of the workers. The majority of socialist states eliminated foreign control and exploitation of natural resources and in some cases developed diversified industrial economies. On the whole, living standards rose, crime declined, employment, pensions and welfare were secured. However, 20th century socialism was divided by deep contradictions leading to profound systemic crises. Bureaucratic centralism denied freedom at the workplace and restricted public debate and popular governance. Public authority’s over-emphasis on ‘security’ blocked innovation, entrepreneurship, scientific and popular initiatives leading to technological stagnation and mass passivity. Elite material privileges based on political office led to profound inequalities, which undermined popular belief in socialist principles and led to the spread of capitalist values.

Capitalism thrives on social inequalities; socialism deepens through greater equality. Both capitalism and socialism depend on efficient, productive and innovative workers: The former in order to maximize profits, the latter to sustain an expanding welfare state.

20th Century Lessons for 21st Century Socialists

Twenty-first century socialist can learn from the achievements and failures of 20th century socialism.

First: Policies must be directed toward improving the living as well as working conditions of the people. That means massive investment in quality housing, household appliances, public transport, environmental concerns and infrastructure. Overseas solidarity and missions should not take priority over large-scale, long-term investments in expanding and deepening material improvements for the principal internal class base of the socialist regime. Solidarity begins at home.

Second: Development policies should focus on diversifying the economy with a special focus on industrializing the raw material, making major investment in industries producing quality goods of mass consumption (clothing, shoes, and so on) and in agriculture, especially becoming self-sufficient in basic essential foods. Under no conditions should socialist economies rely on single products for income (sugar, tourism, petroleum, nickel), which are subject to great volatility.

A socialist government should finance education, income and infrastructure policies, which are compatible with its high economic social and cultural priorities; this means educating agronomists and skill agricultural workers, skilled construction workers (plumbers, electricians, painters) and civil engineers, transport workers and urban and rural planners of public housing to decentralize mega-cities and substitute public for private transport. They should set up popularly elected environment and consumer councils to oversee the quality of air, water and noise levels and the availability, prices and quality of food.

Twentieth century socialist governments frequently alienated their workers by diverting large of amount of aid to overseas regimes (many of whom were not even progressive!). As a result, local needs were neglected in the name of ‘international solidarity’. The first priority of 21st century socialism is solidarity at home. Twentieth century socialists emphasized ‘welfare’ from above — government as ‘giver’ and the masses as ‘receivers’ — discouraging local action and encouraging passivity. Twenty-first century socialism must encourage autonomous class action to counter privileged ‘socialist’ bourgeois ministers and functionaries who use their office to accumulate and protect private wealth through public power. Autonomous popular organizations can expose the hypocrisy of rich ministers who attack well-paid industrial workers as ‘privileged’ while riding in chauffeured Mercedes and enjoying luxurious apartments, second and third ‘vacation homes’ and who send there children to expensive and exclusive private schools at home and abroad.

Above all socialism is about social equality: Equality in income, schools and hospitals; equality between classes and within classes. Without social equality, all talk of ‘diversity’, ‘dignity’ and ‘respect’ is meaningless. Capitalists also support ‘diversity’, as long as it does not affect their profits and wealth. Socialists support income and property equality which effectively re-distributes wealth and property to all workers, white and black, Indian farmer and urban worker, men and women, and young and old. There is no ‘dignity’ in being poor and exploited; dignity comes with struggle and the achievement of socialist goals of social equality and rising living standards.

Plan Ecuador: Practical Ideas or Lofty Ideals?

Para ver la versión en español, dirígase a Plan Ecuador: ¿Ideas prácticas o sobreestimadas?

Currently, Ecuador is confronting a wave of violence previously unknown in the country. Organized crime, sicariatos (brutal contracted killings), drug trafficking, and kidnapping contribute to increased violence. The internal conflict in neighboring Colombia has been a determining factor in the region’s growing instability that has begun to infiltrate Ecuadorian society. In response to the alarming situation that both countries are now facing, the Ecuadorian government has generated Plan Ecuador to provide for increased security and reliable development along its northern frontier region.

On April 24, 2007, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa formally introduced Plan Ecuador, which is based on the idea of “oponer la paz a la guerra” (“replacing war with peace”). The plan consists of a series of key elements that focus on strengthening international and regional relationships, social development of the area, and defense of the population and Ecuador’s national territory.

Given Ecuador’s current surge in criminal activity, the creation of a focused program to address relevant national social and security issues was considered necessary to maintain the country’s security and sovereignty. However, Correa’s proposed plan has invited criticism for failing to apply specific initiatives capable of achieving the idealistic goals built into the proposal’s grand design. Furthermore, the lack of specificity in Ecuador’s plans is unlikely to impress potential providers of international aid, whose funding is considered essential to effectively implementing the project.

The Challenging Reality of the Ecuadorian Frontier
Ecuador’s northern frontier encompasses five provinces: Esmeraldas, Carchi, Imbabura, Sucumbíos, and Orellana. According to documentation found in the 2001 report of the National Statistics and Census Institute (INEC), approximately 1.1 million people live on the northern frontier, which is predominately indigenous and spans the Colombian-Ecuadorian border.

Although its abundance of natural resources represents a potential for significant development, the region remains intrinsically poor. Despite oil found in the area, the overwhelming economic activity is subsistence farming. The unemployment rate in the region has now reached 69 percent, about 20 percent higher than the national average (INEC 2006). Unfortunately, the population has limited opportunities for education, which is essential to industrial development and attracting investment. Only half of the region’s population finishes primary school, and just a small percentage of those continue on long enough to obtain a university or technical degree (INEC 2001). These statistics demonstrate the precarious state of Ecuador’s frontier. Given the influx of drugs and organized crime infiltrating the border from Colombia and a lack of stable jobs, employment possibilities, and education in the region, its inhabitants are more likely than not to turn to some form of delinquency in order to achieve an adequate income.

Compounding such matters is the area’s lack of basic services. Waste sanitation, drainage systems, and water piping need to be improved in order to combat the spread of communicable diseases affecting the region. Furthermore, public hospitals and the rest of the health infrastructure are often unable to deal with the growing demand for medical treatment. Since the majority of clinics are private, the population is generally unable to pay for essential health services.

A growing source of stress on this already tenuous situation is the increasing influx of Colombian refugees to the region. According to the Office on Refugees in the Ministry of Foreign Relations, 45,381 immigrants applied for refugee status in Ecuador between 2000 and 2007. In addition to registered refugees, there are close to 250,000 foreign residents in the country without formal legal status. These residents do not pay taxes, exploiting Ecuador’s public health care and education systems, which already face woefully inadequate funding. Moreover, as these residents are largely undocumented, it is difficult for the state to monitor the illegal activity found in the immediate region.

Plan Ecuador is viewed as a necessity due to the aforementioned problems. The risk posed by insurgent groups and drugs entering Ecuador has increased, bringing with them a significant impact on the local economy. These complex elements make it necessary to develop an effective plan to protect the border while engaging the rural population sufficiently to discourage the entrance of the Colombian conflict into the daily life of the area’s residents.

Strategies with Little Substance
Plan Ecuador is based on seven principle ideas that together aim for the development of the provinces bordering Colombia as a non-violent method of addressing the problem of organized crime and narco-trafficking in the region. However, the strategies put forward to execute each of the seven points are idealistic and non-comprehensive, and often fail to lay out specific plans that will guarantee the effectiveness of the program. It remains to be seen whether or not it will be dependable enough to serve as a basis of public policy and to warrant international aid.

Institutional strengthening for peace and development

Reinvigorating the economy and increasing employment

Plan Ecuador

Improving the basic social infrastructure

Sustainable management of natural resources

Administration of justice and control of illicit activities and products

Plan Ecuador

Plan de Soberanía Energética

Seguridad Integral del Sistema Hidrocarburífero

Human rights, humanitarian assistance, and sheltering refugees

Protection of national sovereignty and the integrity of the state

High Expectations
Plan Ecuador’s goals are germane to the needs of the Ecuadorian population. The proposal targets security and humanitarian ideas, evidenced by the president’s efforts to take action against the proliferation of violence in the country’s northern frontier. However, when working for a society that has suffered through innumerable difficulties, it becomes crucial not to rely on vague formulations, but to present an effective and meticulously thought-out plan to solve the problems. With this in mind, the principal weakness of Plan Ecuador is that it fails to present a proposal practical enough to reach the planned objectives.

Over a ten-year time span, Plan Ecuador hopes to increase production and employment though small-scale industrialization. Although necessary for the region, this goal represents a potential contradiction to another stated goal of the plan – conservation of the various ecosystems on the frontier. Extending agriculture, oil drilling, and industrialization will negatively affect under-protected and fragile ecosystems, unless approached in the most environmentally-conscious manner. While educating the people on green technology will aid in preservation, training and providing the appropriate technical tools will undoubtedly be more expensive than Ecuadorian officials appear to be prepared to spend.

Even so, the quest to improve the quality of basic services such as water piping, sewage systems, and solid waste processing are included in the plan.

Within the next four years (coinciding with the presidential term of the current administration) Ecuador will create and impose a Strategic Operative Plan, which will allow the progress and results of Plan Ecuador to be measured. The plan will be carried out with the participation of the principle leaders from each province, along with the oversight of public opinion.

Financing Plan Ecuador
Plan Ecuador will be financed through the country’s various ministerial institutions, sectional governments, community resources, and international aid. According to declarations made on July 24, 2008 in Washington D.C. by the Minister Coordinator of Internal and External Security, Gustavo Larrea, the country can afford to spend close to US$140 million on Plan Ecuador. This year, Ecuador has received US$43 million in designated international aid.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Relations, the country hopes to receive a total of $129,603,928 in international aid. The amount is apparently the product of a minute analysis of the projects that the government hopes to put into effect; however, there is not a single mention of a detailed action in the document that would lead to the justification of this sum. Without a detailed strategy laid out for scrutiny, it is impossible to know if Ecuador’s requested funding is appropriate for the desired earmarked reforms, or no better than a pipe dream.

Following in the Footsteps of Plan Colombia?
On June 8, 1998, then-Colombian President Andres Pastrana proposed Plan Colombia in an attempt to launch “A Peaceful Policy for Change,” addressing the hugely complex drug cultivation and pattern of violence instigated by Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (The Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, FARC) and the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Colombian Self-defense Forces, AUC) paramilitary vigilantes.

The initial Plan Colombia focused on a peaceful strategy to develop the southern region of the country through economic, social, and environmental initiatives. The proposal was clearly spelled out by President Pastrana, who called for “an agricultural frontier that will be respected… offering different alternatives to drug cultivation to the campesinos (rural workers)… [and] increasing investment in the social and agricultural sectors and in regional infrastructure.” The initial proposal also promoted taking a hard-line approach to human rights violations.

Despite the gradual militarization of Plan Colombia by the end of the Clinton administration, it is impossible to ignore the similarities between the two plans, particularly at inception. Although Colombia had a much larger emphasis on coca eradication (due to the lack of symmetry in cultivation magnitudes between the two countries) both plans aimed to strengthen and modernize their security forces in order to fight drug trafficking.

Ecuador, like Colombia, will aspire to promote industrialization of the region in order to generate employment. Strengthening the judicial system and other governmental institutions to eliminate corruption and reduce impunity, especially in regard to punishing human rights abuses, is central to both plans. Finally, both plans seek international financial help and participation.

Proposals
Below is a series of proposals that might enhance the concept of Plan Ecuador:

• Carry out specific studies to identify markets that work well in the region and provide residents the greatest amount of benefits, given the capacity of the population and the available natural resources.

• Explore the possibility of aid from the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations Environmental Program, and the Food and Agriculture Organization, to learn which new technologies can best help integrate the population with the environment.

• Improve the country’s penal system so that drug traffickers cannot influence or control the system after capture and detention, and work to establish a rehabilitation program to reintegrate such individuals into society upon their release.

• Provide adequate protection for witnesses and judges in cases pertaining to human rights violations to guarantee their safety against threats and provide justice through a fair trial.

• Strengthen a specialized anti-kidnapping police force.

• Promote respect for human rights through the mass media and, if possible, train journalists in basic international human rights law.

• Follow the recommendations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ June 1998 Plan Nacional de Derechos Humanos del Ecuador (National Human Rights Plan for Ecuador), which includes proposals to increase protection of civil and political rights, foreign residents, minorities, women, and the media.

While Plan Ecuador presents numerous admirable goals, the proposal itself lacks the strong detailed structure necessary to attract international aid. Compounding the issues are amiable relations between the Ecuadorian government and such Washington adversaries as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. President Correa will have to somewhat distance himself from their more conceptualized socialist policies in order to gain substantial support from the White House. With Plan Ecuador, the Correa administration has the opportunity to prove to the people, as well as Latin America’s other governments, that peaceful methods of dealing with the conflict along Ecuador’s northern frontier can be successfully implemented.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associates Raylsiyaly Rivero and Lydia Pardini

Invisible Paths

Charles Eisenstein

"You are here because you know something. You don't know what it is, but you can feel it. Something is wrong with the world." -- Morpheus, The Matrix

As the age turns, millions of people are pioneering a transition from the old world to the new. It is a journey fraught with peril and hardship and breathtaking discovery, a journey irreducibly unique for each of us. Because we are stepping out into the new, it is also profoundly uncertain and at times lonely. I cannot map out the details of anyone's individual path, but I can fortify you as you walk it and illuminate some of its universal features. My purpose is to give voice to what you have always known (without knowing it) and always believed (without believing it), so that you may breathe a sigh of relief and say, "Ah, I was right all along."

In a sense I am not describing a path at all, since there isn't one in the new territory of the pioneer. Indeed, what I am describing is a departure from a path, the ready-made paths laid out before us, and the creation of a new one. You know the ready-made path I'm talking about. Typified by that odious board game "Life," it begins with school, traverses the territory of marriage, kids, and career, and, if all goes well, ends in a long and comfortable retirement. This program has been crumbling for decades now, as high rates of divorce and radical career change demonstrate. I, for one, am not planning for retirement; the very concept feels alien to me, as does the notion that my Golden Years are to be any time other than right now.

I will describe seven stages of the discovery and walking of this invisible path from the old world to the new. I present them in a linear narrative, but usually their progression is not strictly linear. It is, rather, fractal: each stage interpenetrates the rest, and we may skip around a lot, revisit old territory, jump ahead to new, pass through some stages in minutes and others in years. Nonetheless, I think you will recognize some of the major landmarks in your own journey.

Stage 1: Something is Wrong / Idealism

Idealism is a belief that a more beautiful world is possible; that the world as we know it is deficient, unworthy of our full participation. When idealism is not expressed as action, it turns into cynicism. It is no accident that both idealism and, today, cynicism are hallmarks of youth: young people, being newer to the world, less inculcated with the belief in its permanence, and less personally invested in its perpetuation, can see much more easily the possibility of a better one.

The idealism of youth is a seed of what is to come. The teenager looks out upon some aspect of the world and is outraged. "No force in the universe will make me accept a world in which this happens! I will not be complicit in it! I will not sell out!" Usually this attitude is unconscious, manifesting either as cynicism or as rage, an uncontrollable anger directed at whatever surrogate target is available. Those teenagers with the strongest idealism are often the angriest; we think there is something wrong with them and their anger problem, but really there is something right. Their protest is misdirected, but fundamentally valid.

Our culture fears youth even as we valorize it. We are afraid of that knowledge that the world we have invested in is wrong, and go to great lengths to suppress it, both within ourselves and externally as a war on youth. In a carrot-and-stick strategy, on the one hand we entice youth into complicity with the adult world, while on the other abashing it with patronizing dismissals and intimidating it with severe punishments for lashing out. And so, bought and cowed, we earn the badge of "maturity" and enter the adult world.

Bought and cowed, yes, but never broken. That knowledge of a more beautiful world lies latent within us, waiting for an event to reactivate it. Each time we encounter something unacceptable in our lives or in the world, something that arouses our indignation and protest, we feel our spark of youth being fanned into flame. We can and do put out the fires, repeatedly, but the invitation never stops coming, and it comes louder and louder until we can no longer ignore it. Then it launches us into the next stage, when we act on our indignation, whether consciously or not, and begin looking for the path out of the old world.

Stage 2: Refusal or Withdrawal

On some level, Stage 2 is always concurrent with Stage 1, but I will describe it separately because so many people are very nearly successful in suppressing the feeling of wrongness, suppressing the intuition of a more beautiful world that is possible, and relegating it to an inconsequential realm: their weekends, their choice of music, or most insidiously, their opinions. People have very strong opinions about what is wrong with the world and what "we" should do about it, and how life "should" be lived, but don't meaningfully act upon those opinions. They like to read about what is wrong with the world and voice their concurrence. It is as if their opinions provided a vent for the indignant anger that would otherwise power real transformation.

The suppression of the desire to transcend the old world is never entirely successful. The unexpressed energy comes out in the form of anxiety, which is none other than the feeling, "Something is wrong around here and I don't know what it is." It can also fuel addiction or escapism, substitutes for the longed-for more beautiful world. Eventually, if all goes well, these props to life-as-usual fail, initiating a withdrawal from the lives we have known.

This withdrawal can take many forms. In my previous essay I discussed depression and chronic fatigue, which are unconscious or semi-conscious refusals to participate in the world. In my own life, for many years the refusal took the form of a half-hearted participation, in which I would go along with some, but not all, of the conventions of compliance. Whether in school or in work, I did just enough to get by, unwilling to fully devote myself to a world I unconsciously knew was wrong, yet not aware enough or brave enough to repudiate it fully either. If you perceive in yourself or another such "flaws" as laziness or procrastination, you may actually be seeing the signs of a valid, noble, yet unconscious refusal.

In other people, the withdrawal takes the form of self-sabotage. You get yourself fired, you engineer an argument or an accident, you inexplicably mess up, you don't take care of yourself and get sick. These are all ways of implementing a decision that we are afraid to make consciously. So if you find yourself immersed in the wrong life but lack the courage to make a break from it, don't worry! You will exit it sooner or later, whether you have the courage to or not. On this path, fear is no more the enemy than is ego or any other New Age bogeyman. A process is grabbing hold of you that is far beyond your contrivance. Your struggles are nearly superfluous as you are being born.

Another means of withdrawal happens when you just get fed up, and you snap. "I quit!" you say. Maybe you tell the boss to shove it. Maybe you drop out of school. At this moment you feel a sense of exhilaration, maybe of satori. It does not last and it does not obviate the upcoming journey on the invisible path, but it is valuable nonetheless as a reminder of your power.

A final and very telling symptom of this stage is the experience of struggle. Because you are still trying to participate and to withdraw at the same time, life becomes exhausting. You have to expend tremendous efforts to accomplish anything. You wonder why your career is stalled, why your luck is bad, why your car keeps breaking down, why nothing seems to click, when other people's careers proceed smoothly. The reason is that unconsciously, you are expelling yourself from the world you've inhabited so you can search for another one.

Stage 3: The Search

In this stage, you are searching for something, but you don't know what it is. You begin to explore new worlds, read books you would never have been interested in before. You dabble in spirituality, in self-help books and seminars; you try different religions and different politics. You are attracted to this cause and that cause, but although they are exciting, you probably don't commit very deeply to any of them (though for a time you may convert very loudly). You try to figure things out. You want an answer, you want certainty. You want to know what to do. Sometimes you think you have found it, but after a period of intense infatuation with Zen meditation, or Reiki, or yoga, or the Landmark Forum, or shamanic journeying, you are eventually disappointed every time. Their promise of a new life and a new self is not redeemed, despite a promising beginning, and despite seeing others whose lives seemingly have transformed through these. You might conclude you just didn't try hard enough, but redoubled efforts bring no further results. Yet nothwithstanding the disappointments, you know something is out there. You know there is another world, another life, bigger and more beautiful than the one you were acculturated to. You just don't know what it is, and you have never experienced it. It is therefore a theoretical knowledge.

The search is in vain. Sometimes you give up for a while and attempt to recommit fully to the life you have withdrawn from. You join back in, but not for long. The self-evident wrongness of that world becomes more acute, and the relapse into depression, fatigue, self-sabotage, or addiction is quick and intense. You have no choice but to continue searching.

Stage 4: Doubt and Despair

The third stage morphs easily back and forth into despair or doubt, a natural response to the fruitlessness of the search. You think, "There is nothing for me. I don't belong in this world." You think, "Who am I to think I could be an exception to the universal law of sacrifice and self-control for survival's sake? Why did I give up my promising future? Why didn't I devote more energy to staying with the Program? I have made a mess of my life."

In despair, the weight of the world comes crashing down on your shoulders. The various rays of hope you found in your search are extinguished in an all-encompassing darkness. Whatever political causes or spiritual groups you joined, whatever self-help programs or health regimes, all crumble under the onslaught of the powers that seem to rule this world. Quite logically, there is no hope, nor could there be any hope.

At this point, your idealism, your refusal, your search might seem like an enormous, self-indulgent error. Yet at the same time your perception of the wrongness of the world intensifies. You cannot go back, you cannot rejoin the program; but you cannot go forward either, because there is nowhere to go. Your situation is like that of a fetus at the onset of labor. The cervix has not yet opened: there is no light, no exit, no direction to escape the titanic forces bearing down upon you. Every promise of escape, every door you explored in your search phase, is proven to be a lie, a dead end. Desperately you may resume the search, hoping against hope to find it this time, only to plunge even more completely back into despair when your new guru too shows his feet of clay, when your new group shows the same ego and politicking, when your new self-help technique, your new promising lead, turns out to the yet another loop returning you to the center of the same old labyrinth.

At its most extreme, this is an unbearable condition that must nonetheless be borne. Subjectively it feels eternal. It is from such a state that we derive our descriptions of Hell: unbearable and eternal.

Stage 5: A Glimpse

In the midst of despair, from beyond hope, from beyond possibility even, comes an unbidden glimpse of another world. It comes without figuring out an exit from doubt and despair, whose logic remains unassailable even as it becomes irrelevant. You have caught a glimpse of your destination, the thing you'd been searching for. You might observe that the effort of your search fell a million times short of the power that has finally brought you here. Your quest was impossible -- yet here you are! Perhaps it comes in the form of an intense experience of your true power and gifts, of joy and healing, of unity and simplicity, of the omnipresent providence of the universe, of the presence of the divine. It could happen through a near-death experience, a tragedy in the family, a psychedelic plant or chemical, an encounter with a being from another world, a miracle. You will be left in a state of profound gratitude and awe.

This state does not last very long: sometimes just minutes, sometimes days, rarely for weeks. It disappears faster the more you try to hold on to it, and once it is gone it will not come back by trying to replicate the circumstances through which it came before. You might slip back into doubt and despair, you might live a while longer in the old world, but there is a huge difference now. After having had this glimpse, you now know that a more beautiful world and a more beautiful life is possible. You know it in your bones, in your cells. Even if from time to time you doubt it in your mind (for the logic of its impossibility still remains), the doubts no longer seem so real, so compelling. You are leaving that world behind.

The glimpse of a new world is not necessarily a single definable event. Well, it is, but this single event might be diffracted onto linear time, spread out over a period of months or years. When it has happened, then the existence of a new life in a new world is no longer something you've just been told about. It is not a matter of religious ideology or New Age opinion. Because it is a real knowing, sooner or later (and usually sooner) it manifests as action in the world, creative action. You begin the next stage: a walk toward the destination you have been shown.

Stage 6: The Invisible Path

You have glimpsed your destination and felt its promise, but how do you get there? Now begins a real adventure, a journey without a path. Well-marked paths exist to becoming a lawyer, a professor, a doctor, or any other position in the old world, but there is no path toward the next unfolding of your true self. To be sure, you may still embark on a training program or something as part of a radical career change, but you realize that these structures are merely something you recruit into your own pathmaking, and not a path to your destination.

In this stage, real changes happen in your life. You may experience the end of a relationship, bankruptcy, career change, moving to a different part of the country, changes in your body, an entirely different social life and different kind of intimate relationship. You may continue to undergo various crises, but they don't have the apocalyptic, desperate feeling of the earlier stages, but are rather like birth contractions, and indeed your situation is much like that of a fetus in the birth canal, being propelled toward the light. As this phase progresses, you might even have the feeling of having been reborn in the same body (or different body). While some vestiges of your old life will remain, there is no doubt that you are in new territory. You often experience a sense of newness, freshness, vulnerability, and discovery.

The walk toward the state you now know exists is fraught with pitfalls, dead ends, thickets and swamps. You have no markers, no external indicators of the right way. I said there is no path in this new territory, but that is not strictly true. There is a path, but it is an invisible path, a path you work out yourself. Your guides are your own intuition and self-trust. You learn to ignore the voices that say a given choice is foolish, irresponsible, or selfish. Your self-trust is your only guide, because the voices of your old world do not know this territory. They have never been there. It is new for you. You find your own way, groping along, taking wrong turns sometimes and doubling back, only to realize that the wrong turn was not wrong after all, but the only way you could have learned the right path.

Many have preceded us into this new territory, blazing trails into new territory for the bulk of humanity to follow as the old world falls apart. We are still among the early ones, though, establishing roles that have never existed before, the roles for a new world. Only a few of them have names: healer, life coach, facilitator, and so forth. Many more are nameless, riding the vehicle of existing occupations. The form of the lawyer may remain, but she is really doing something very different. You may have encountered such people before, angels in the guise of clerks, mystics in the guise of garbage men, saints in the guise of mechanics. Any profession can be a vehicle for healing work; or you may establish an entirely new profession.

The stage of the invisible path differs from the searching stage in that now, you are actually living the new life, or learning to live it. It is no longer the wishful possibility of someone trapped in the old world and longing for the new. While doubt and despair may pay an occasional visit, they do not weigh you down, because you know better. Their logic cannot assail the felt experience of the new being that draws you down the invisible path.

Stage 7: Arrival

Here is what it feels like to have arrived at the end of the Invisible Path:

1. You do something that makes complete sense given all that you know is wrong about the world. That doesn't mean you can claim to be saving the world. It means, though, that you can look any of the victims of the earth-wrecking, culture-wrecking, spirit-wrecking machine in the eye, unapologetically, knowing that in their heart of hearts they would have you do no differently.

2. You are living in the full expression of your gifts, doing beautiful work for which you are uniquely suited. This need not be work that is commonly recognized in vocational terms. It could be invisible work done as a father, a grandmother, a friend. You may not have a job at all, or you may have an ordinary job, or an extraordinary one, but either way your life will fully engage your gifts. You will feel that you have been of service, and happily. Indeed, you can never be fully happy if your gifts are not fully expressed and received. Ultimately, this is what drives us to search for the Invisible Path to begin with. We are here for a purpose and can never know peace until we find it.

3. You wake up most days happy and excited to live your day. You can hardly stay in bed. You are full of life, because you love the life you are living, and your energy system is therefore wide open.

4. You receive clear feedback from the world that your gifts are received, and that you are participating in the creation of the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible.

The journey is not over with arrival. In a way, Stage 7 is the precursor to Stage 1. We are born into a vast new world and a vast new womb, in which we grow once more until eventually we bump up against the limits of that world, too, triggering a new birth process. After a time of exhilarating development in the new world, you may become aware of an even deeper wrongness, or to phrase it more positively, of new needs for creative expression and healing. Each time you go through this process, new gifts become manifest. You have potentialities within you that will not germinate for many many cycles of time.

I am sure that the readership of this essay comprises people in each of the seven stages I have described. Indeed, because they are not necessarily linear or discrete, you might recognize a little of each inside of you. My message to you today is therefore different depending on which stage most defines your experience at the present time.

If you are in the stage of Idealism / Something Wrong, my message to you is: You are right! The voices of normalcy are lying. Your perception of a more beautiful world is a true perception, not immaturity or youthful naiveté. So believe, and do not succumb to cynicism.

If you are in the stage of Refusal / Withdrawal, I congratulate you on your strength of spirit. That is what is behind your failures, in school, in career. Your refusal is valid, noble even, especially considering you may not even know what it is you are rejecting. And I affirm that underlying feeling: "I was not put here on earth to..."

If you are in the stage of Search, I can only offer you a paradox. You will not find what you are looking for by searching, yet only after searching will it find you. The search itself is a kind of ritual of supplication that will bring what you are looking for into your experience. Your efforts attract it to you, even though you cannot possibly find it through your efforts.

If you are in the stage of Despair, there is nothing I can do for you except to intensify it. You will never get your proof that something is there. Your logic is airtight. You certainly won't find it in this essay, or from me. You are in this territory for a reason, and the only way out is through, and part of the "through" is for it to seem that there will never be a way out, and even telling you this will not help.

If you have had the Glimpse of a new world, then my message to you is, Yes! It is real. It is not a trick. You were shown it for a reason, and would not have been shown it if there were no way to get there.

If you are walking the Invisible Path, I suggest that you trust yourself. What looks like a wrong turn is part of the path too. Trust your instincts, follow your guidance, and be brave. It is OK to make mistakes, even huge mistakes. Errors and wrong turns are part of the destiny of the pioneer.

If you have already Arrived, then I would like to invite you to take on a new job in addition to what you are doing already. When you interact with people on other parts of the journey, your job is to have complete confidence that they will arrive too, to know it so firmly that you know it for them even when they do not know it themselves. You see others as heroic and hold a space for them to arrive. This message also goes to that part of everyone that knows the new world and is witnessing your unfolding into it.

I would like to emphasize again that these seven stages are not a monotonic progression, and certainly not an ascension from ignorance to enlightenment. They are archetypes that project themselves onto our lives, often following each other in the order I have described but sometimes all mixed together. I myself could almost say that I experience all seven on a daily basis! You might move forward to Stage 6 or Stage 7, only to discover some incomplete remnant of an earlier stage to which you circle back for completion. In fact, Stage 6 includes all the rest, and the whole cycle of seven could also be called the Invisible Path.

On the Invisible Path, there are certain crossroads, waystations, resting spots where we encounter our fellow travelers and share in the mutual knowledge that yes, we are indeed headed toward a destination that is real. I would like for this to be one of those moments. In closing, I offer you a small poem describing my own experience of the Invisible Path.

Invisible Paths

None of the roads go where I'm going.
Promising paths lead nowhere.
They twist and turn,
And I arrive at my starting point
Again and again.
I strike out anew,
And now even my starting point is lost to me.
I see people walking, purposefully,
And I follow them.
They seem to know where they are going.
Are they lost too?
I cannot be sure.

They lead me to places,
But I do not feel at home there.
People look at me accusingly. I am unwelcome.
Nor do I feel at home on these endless paths.
Finally I stop.
There it is! A light!
I knew it. I knew it all along,
But the path is invisible.
I strike out through the darkness toward the soft glow of home.

The direction is clear but the light is distant.

An occasional glimmer illuminates my path for a second,

And then more darkness.

I feel my way through it,

Deep into unknown territory,

Leaving a new trail behind me.

I meet other wanderers and we share a fire

That promises of our destination.

We set off again, warm and purposeful.

The night is cold and dark and I am on my way.

Image by rileyroxx, courtesy of Creative Commons license.

6-17-08

Charles Eisenstein's blog

KnowMore.org

http://www.knowmore.org/

Question Your Goods. Vote With Your Wallet.

*

[Thanks Annette!]

Ralph on NPR Taking Questions

Neil Conan: We're talking with independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader here at the Newseum. I'm Neil Conan along with NPR Political Junkie Ken Rudin. If you'd like to join us, 800-989-8255 e-mail talk@npr.org. This is Talk of the Nation from NPR News. And let's get a question from here in the Newseum.

Patty: Hi, good afternoon. I'm Patty from San Francisco, California and as a retired public school principal I'd like to know your views on No Child Left Behind. And I'd also like to know what your education platform is.

Ralph Nader: Well the way No Child Left Behind has been implemented is not good. First of all, there are too many tests. It ruptures the relationship between teachers and students -- they've got to have a test Tuesday and a test Thursday. They're the wrong kind of tests in my opinion: A, B, C, D, "None of the above." That's not the assessment test that I think are better evaluators They make teachers teach to the test. It's this frantic test mania. It creates unnecessary anxiety among children. So I'm against it. Teachers are against it too. A lot of people think it was underfunded and I think the key thing in environmental agenda for a presidential candidate is more decent facilities -- I mean a lot of these inner-city schools are crumbling, we have gleaming stadiums funded by you the tax payer in the same cities the schools, and clinics and libraries are crumbling. The second thing is decent pay for competent teachers. They should be assessed too. And the third is citizen skills, civic skills. We should teach students connecting the classroom with their town with their community so they can learn about the history, the geography, economics, government of their town and in the process learn citizen skills. How to use the Freedom of Information Act in your state, how to build coalitions, how to get information from City Hall. How to do comparative price analysis of staples in supermarket. That's what makes student learn indirectly reading, writing and arithmetic. I hope a lot of teachers will . . . push to replace No Child Left Behind with this kind or practical and down to earth and very exciting educational process.

Neil Conan: Thanks for the question. Let's go the phones, line six, and Mike is with us from Boca Raton in Florida.

Mike: Good morning or good afternoon. Mister candidate, considering what's happened since the year 2000, don't you think that your candidacy creates too much of a risk of unintended consequences based on your past performance?

Ralph Nader: Well the social scientists who studied that say that [Al] Gore won the election, he won the popular vote. The electoral college stood in his way and the press investigations and others in Florida indicate, and Gore believes this, that he won Florida but it was taken from him before, during and after election day in all kinds of tricky ways that have been subject to documentaries and investigations, to the five Republicans in the Supreme Court who selected George Bush. I keep saying to Democrats "Look in the mirror Go after the thieves because they might do it again and there was a lot of shenanigans in Ohio -- the swing state that left Kerry behind --

Mike: You obviously can't win. Which of the two candidates would you prefer to be president. The other two candidates.

Ralph Nader: The ones that are closer to the agenda of Nader - Gonzalez and we don't have time to go through a checklist but if you want to look at VoteNader.org we have a sheet which says these are the issues on the table for Nader - Gonzalez -- like full health insurance -- and they're off the table for McCain and Obama. It's quite remarkable how similar they are on about 15 major re-directions for country and the reason is they've been dialing too much for corporate dollars and they're too close to these corporate interests.

Mike: Well you know, I'm all for anyone being able to run but candidly we can't stand another eight years of George Bush, McCain and that crowd.

Ralph Nader: Nor can we. In fact if Al Gore picked up my withering criticism in detail of Bush's record in Texas when he was governor, he'd have won even over the obstacles that these Republican illegally put in his way.

Barred from Presidential Debates

by Ralph Nader / August 17th, 2008

As you know, Nader/Gonzalez is being blocked from the Presidential debates.

The corporate controlled, so-called Commission on Presidential Debates will not let any independent candidate in unless they show 15 percent in a series of polls in September.

That’s no surprise.

What is surprising is the failure of other debates to fill the vacuum.

Part of this is due to Senator Obama’s reluctance to engage his opponents.

On May 4, Obama told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that he was willing to debate with “any of my opponents about what this country means, what makes it great.”

But earlier this month, Obama’s campaign manager backed off, saying that Obama would debate only Senator McCain, and only in the three rigged debates sponsored by the two parties and paid for by major corporations.

Senator Obama has also refused to participate in a number of other debates — including the Google debate in New Orleans, the Ft. Hood, Texas debate that is being organized by veterans groups, and the series of ten town hall meetings proposed by Senator McCain.

Senator Obama’s refusal to participate is a mistake and is costing him in the polls.

Just yesterday, the Gallup tracking polls put McCain and Obama tied at 44 percent each.

If Obama doesn’t agree to more debates, he could end up at the end of a sentence that starts with Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.

With only McCain and Obama on the stage, there will be no debate of key issues and re-directions important to the majority of the American people.

Just go down the partial list:

Single payer Medicare for all health care — supported by the majority of the American people, the majority of doctors and nurses, and just recently, unanimously, by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Obama says no. McCain says no.

Reversing U.S. policy in the Middle East — Obama says no. McCain says no.

Cut the bloated, wasteful, redundant military budget — Obama says no, McCain says no. They want a bigger military budget.

Empty the prisons of drug possessors and fill them up with corporate criminals — Obama says no, McCain says no.

Nader/Gonzalez says yes — to each.

The only way to change this systemic exclusion is for millions of Americans to become engaged now.

Ralph Nader is the author of The Seventeen Traditions. Read other articles by Ralph.

This article was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under "Third" Party, Democracy, Elections

Daisy, Tambu and Roman

White Light Black Light

Thursday, January 01, 2009

☪

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Video blogger Josh Wolf now a real journalist

From blog to print

Activist or reporter?

Forging a new rep

More on Josh Wolf

Stunning 62.4% of Americans Would Like to See Better Choices of Candidates, Parties in Future

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

~F R E E T H E R A P Y~

The news media's conspiracy to narrow our choice for president

Andrew Bacevich on Moyers (again)

Monday, August 18, 2008

Quote: Nature of Personal Reality

Reflections on Twenty-First Century Socialism, by James Petras

Plan Ecuador: Practical Ideas or Lofty Ideals?

Invisible Paths

KnowMore.org

*

Ralph on NPR Taking Questions

Barred from Presidential Debates

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Daisy, Tambu and Roman

About Me

Links

Previous Posts

Archives