Holidays Make Me Feel Like I Need Therapy.....

.... but I've never found a therapist that understands me.
In reality, I have been meeting with a therapist who does understand the human condition enough to realize that the answers to my dilemma are in my spirit and soul. He has helped me clarify that my thinking drives me away from the solutions. He has given me tools for discovering the suppressed emotions that are physically locked in my body. I'm still crazy but people close to me say they see growth and improvement.

Peace, Alan

SANTA RIOT

I found the following on yahoo new from Rueters. The above picture is a Santa who participated in the Sanarchy event in NYC.


40 drunken Santas...six geese a-laying.. Mon Dec 19,11:45 AM ET



Forty drunken Santas rampaged through central Auckland, stealing from stores and assaulting security guards, the New Zealand Herald reported on Sunday, in a protest against the commercialization of Christmas.

Police said some of the Santas threw beer bottles, one tried to climb the mooring rope of a cruise ship and a security guard was punched during the fracas.

"They came in, said 'Merry Christmas' and then helped themselves," convenience store staff member Changa Manakynda told the Herald, which reported the Santas also attacked a Christmas tree.

The event organizer, Alex Dyer, had warned the antics would only stop when someone was arrested, said the Herald, which linked the incident to "Santarchy."

Santarchy (www.santarchy.com) and online encyclopedia wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) record protests going back around 10 years in the United States, with participants marking Christmas in anti-commercial manner involving street theater, pranks and public drunkenness.

Police said identification was a key issue as they tried to sort out which of the 40 men and women had done what.

"With a number of people dressed in the same outfit, it was difficult for any witnesses to confirm the identity of who was doing what," Senior Sergeant Matt Rogers told Reuters.

Can you say Richard Nixon ?

The above photo is titled "Vietnam Mobilization
Washington, D.C., November 1969" ©1999 Ken Light

Ken Light, the photographer, and I were friends when this picture was taken. He has continued to do important work. You can see more at his website www.kenlight.com.



The following is a message I posted to a yahoo group of fellow freaks (hippies) that I have recently connected with. We are coming together to create a "Hippie Museum". You can learn more at www.hippiemuseum.org. I thought I would share it with you.

Can you say Richard Nixon?

It's the same forces that we faced off against during the Viet Nam
war. Wolfowitz(sp?) and Rumsfeld were cronies in the Ford
administration. Yes, the administration appointed by Nixon to pardon
Nixon. They began plotting the invasion of Iraq at that time. Their
strategy of that time was to establish a base for military operations
in the Middle East to protect U.S. interests (oil?). Our main enemy
at the time was the Soviet Union. Iraq, with the cooperation of
Turkey, served the strategic purpose of cutting off the Soviet Union
from Saudi Arabia and most of the Middle East.

What we as a political movement started doing was organizing at a
local level. We started in the college communities that many of us
lived in. We recognized that the same forces, driven by greed and
power, were effecting us locally and this bubbled up to a national
level. When the War ended and the immediate threat was removed, as a
counter-culture, many moved back to a self-centered approach to life.
This was fueled also by the media and a genuine need to find ourselves
spiritually.

To make a long story short, the result has been that once unifieddd
movement based on the ideals of peace, love and understanding; also
liberty, justice and brother/sisterhood has become splintered and self-
centered. The challenge is, how do we unify a movement around our
common interests, around the innate human trait of a desire for mutual
aid, not survival of the fittest.

It's easy for us to talk to each other and agree what beautiful,
amazing beings we are, but how do we unify on a broader scale?
Political agendas create room for disagreement and division around
superficial issues. The "hippies" and the "Christians" unifying
around their support for those in distress from Katrina and the
irresponsibility of the governments gives hope.

I know for me, it's important that I open up and begin once again to
carry my message by sharing myself, my heart and all my
vulnerabilities with the rest of the human community. It's also
continuing to focus on my spiritual development. For me, mind
altering substances got in the way of doing that. I used to think
marijuana was not only harmless but a boost to my spiritual state.
I've discovered, for me, that was a mistake. Being stoned gave me the
illusion of feeling closer to God, when in reality I was creating a cushion for
myself from the pain of life in a human body. I was communing with my
inflated sense of self, thinking it was God. I was viewing the world
as if I were God.

Blah, Blah, Blah. Sorry for getting off on all this, but I have few
in my life that understands what the hell I'm talking about. In many
of you I am finding my tribe that I separated from, years back. One
last thing: I have started reading a book that addresses many of these issues
for me, where I'm at now. It is "Change of Heart....The Bodhisattva
Peace Training" by Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche.

Peace and Joy,

Alan

Nothing New About Political Deception and Lies

Check out this Christmas story from U.S. history. I wonder why I don't remember this from history class. Oh yea, the education system participated in the deception.

This is from Counterpunch.

Zachary Taylor vs. the Seminoles
Remembering the First Quagmire at Christmastime
By WILLIAM LOREN KATZ

As the number of U.S. war dead edges toward three thousand, and Iraqi casualties soar into the tens of thousands, it might be useful to remember the an earlier Iraq -- the first U.S. invasion and occupation of a foreign land. The United States sunk into a quagmire soon after its troops invaded Florida in 1816 to capture runaway slaves and to close down the largest station of the underground railroad in North America which was run by escaped Africans and their Seminole allies and had been attracting thousands of enslaved people. The U.S. violent occupation lasted forty-two years, resulted in 1500 U.S. military deaths, and cost Congress and taxpayers $40,000,000, and brought devestation and misery to the penninsula.

The war's most dramatic moment came the day before Christmas in 1837 when U.S. troops under Colonel Zachary Taylor pursued a band of red and black Seminoles to the northeast corner of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida. Wild Cat and his African American sub-chief John Horse had assembled 380 to 480 fighters who awaited Taylor, their sharpshooters perched in tall grass or trees. Taylor's large army included 70 Delaware Indian mercenaries, 180 Missouri riflemen and 800 soldiers from the U.S. Sixth, Fourth, and First Infantry Regiments.

The Delawares quickly sensed disaster lurking in the tall grass, and fled. Next the Missourians broke and ran.

Taylor then ordered his U.S. troops forward only to find that pinpoint Seminole rifle fire brought down "every officer, with one exception, as well as most of the non-commissioned officers" and left "but four . . . untouched." After a two and a half hour battle Wild Cat, Horse and their Seminoles forces had made their point felt that by decimating the enemy leaders. As they fled across the lake in canoes a night of pain and loss descended on the U.S. survivors.

On Christmas Day Colonel Taylor's men awoke to find 26 U.S. dead and 112 wounded. Four dead Seminoles died and none had been captured. The battle at Lake Okeechobee was the most devestating U.S. defeat in more than four decades of Florida warfare, and one of its of the worst defeats in centuries of aggression against Native Americans.

Taylor's army limped back to Fort Gardner, and as his men tended the wounded and mourned the dead, he wrote a report that declared victory and claimed "the Indians were driven in every direction."

The U.S. Army accepted Taylor's conclusion, promoted him to General, and he used his military reputation to become the 12th President of the United States.

The Black and Red Seminoles fought on until 1858 when most of its red and black members agreed to migrate to Oklahoma. But others stayed in their Florida homes, deeply proud of their victory over the mighty United States and its armed forces.

William Loren Katz is the author of Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage. His new, revised edition of THE BLACK WEST [Harlem Moon/Random House, 2005] also includes information on the Philippine occupation, and can now be found in bookstores. He can be reached through his website: www.williamlkatz.com

ONE WORLD that's all we got!!

"Where is the Love" by Black Eyed Peas

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