A morning shopping with Rose

Rose has begun some exercises again as she has been getting noticeably fatter and flabbier lately. This morning she was up at 4:30, cooked for Claude's lunch then set off to walk across town to her father's place to give a birthday gift to her little niece Shyra. Later as I was going into town on my tricycle to do a little shopping, buy fish and onions and ovaltine, I met Rose walking back home. She wasn't aware of me until I drove the tricycle across her path and stopped. From a rather preoccupied look, her expression changed to a big smile when she saw me. I asked her if she would like to come into town with me and she said, Yes (with another big smile), so she sat in the tricycle while I pedalled it to Co Bu's supermarket. I took some downloaded pages on Quantum Techniques to the printer's to be bound into a book, then we went to Bahooka's to sit outside and eat an ice cream. After that, to the Fish market where I bought fish for us and fish for the dogs. The fish for us was Burao, a common and delicious fish here. I asked for a kilo at 70 pesos (about $1.25).The woman selling it put 1.5 kg into a bag and asked me for 105 pesos ($1.87), taking a liberty. I made her take out the half kg and give me the change from 100, which she did with a bad grace. But the fish was delicious when back at home Rose had smoked it over some smouldering coco shells.

From the introduction to "The Power of Now", by Eckhart Tolle

I have had occasion to revisit this piece today, and want to record it here as it has been an important influence on my life the last couple of years. Tolle writes:


"I have little use for the past and rarely think about it; however, I would briefly like to tell you how I came to be a spiritual teacher and how this book came into existence.
Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else's life.
One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train — everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.
"I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. "Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self that 'I' cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real."
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words "resist nothing," as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all.
That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.
For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss. After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity, or perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state. I could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had.
I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn't understand it at all. It wasn't until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had already happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left then was my true nature as the ever-present I am: consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form. Later I also learned to go into that inner timeless and deathless realm that I had originally perceived as a void and remain fully conscious. I dwelt in states of such indescribable bliss and sacredness that even the original experience I just described pales in comparison. A time came when, for a while, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy."

If the UN is "morally irredeemable", is there an alternative?

Is the UN morally irredeemable, i.e. should "evil regimes" be propped up by a world body? I have been prompted to think about this by the following piece: it is from the Ayn Rand Institute. The Institute is based in the U.S., but I wonder if it has occurred to the writer that by his standards, the U.S. might not be allowed to be a member, since many might call the present U.S. government an "evil regime".

The UN's "Virtue" Is Its Vice
The UN's vaunted neutrality props up evil regimes.

By Elan Journo

More than 170 political leaders from around the world recently met at the United Nations to consider what the New York Times called "the most sweeping institutional changes" in the organization's history. But this exercise was, predictably, hopeless. Although both detractors and defenders eagerly proposed "reforms," they skirted the UN's insuperable problem: its corrupt "ideal" of moral neutrality.

The fundamental feature of the UN is its policy of opening membership non-judgmentally to all nations--whether free or oppressive, peaceful or belligerent. This is upheld as the UN's central virtue and a vital means to peace. Admitting blatantly tyrannical regimes, proponents say, creates opportunities for "dialogue" and rehabilitation. As Kofi Annan explains, the very fact that such "nondemocratic states" sign on "to the UN's agenda opens an avenue through which other states, as well as civil society around the world, can press them to align their behavior with their commitments."

But UN membership did not prevent the USSR from herding its citizens into gulags and forced-labor camps, murdering untold numbers of them, and invading other states; nor China from crushing under its military boot pro-freedom demonstrators and peaceful ideological dissenters; nor Iran and Saudi Arabia from infusing Islamist terrorist groups with abundant financial means and the ideological zeal to wage jihad against the West.

The UN's policy of neutrality accomplishes precisely the opposite of its putative effect; it actually protects and bolsters vicious regimes.

Participation in the UN confers on them an unearned moral legitimacy. That the leaders of such regimes are routinely invited to speak before the UN rewards them with an undeserved respectability. So it was with Fidel Castro: his self-justifying UN speech after seizing power in Cuba elicited rapturous applause. He was raised to the dignity of statesman--a man who deals in reasoned argument--despite being a totalitarian ruler who brutally silences dissidents. And the unwarranted recognition of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat as a statesman arguably began when he first spoke at the UN in 1974. Though such men attain and hold power by force, though they preach murderous ideologies, though they devastate the lives of their subjects--the UN unfastidiously endorses them and their regimes.

The UN thus gives them a means to entrench their power.

Consider, for instance, the beleaguered UN Human Rights Commission, ostensibly responsible for protecting rights across the world. On the principle of neutrality, a country's brutal practices are no disqualification from joining this commission. Indeed, it has become infested with tyrannies; Syria and Cuba, two blood-soaked dictatorships, have each served as its chairman. And through the commission, notorious violators of individual rights scheme to bury any criticism of themselves. A bloc of Islamic countries, for example, self-righteously defends barbaric practices--stoning to death, crucifixion--carried out in certain states governed by Sharia. When a proposal was drafted to censure North Korea, which arbitrarily executes its enslaved citizens, the motion was soundly defeated thanks to Cuba, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and others all guilty of similar and worse atrocities. (The toothless proposal to replace the commission with a new council on rights was foreseeable. Since tyrannies have voting prerogatives on UN "reforms," they will sink any proposed council or mold it into a new shield to deflect censure of them.)

Or consider the money corrupt regimes gain access to. For years the UN has showered millions of dollars in aid on the Palestinian Authority, the interim government in Gaza and the West Bank. That aid, mostly swallowed up by the leadership, has buoyed up a brutal regime that strips its people of their rights, their wealth, their dignity, and foments terrorism against Israel. UN aid has also flowed into North Korea's belligerent Stalinist dictatorship, which starves its people in order to fund an enormous military machine and a nuclear-weapons program. What these handouts do is reinforce the walls of prison regimes like North Korea, exacerbate the misery of their citizens, and arm corrupt rulers.

That the UN benefits evil regimes is a necessary consequence of its avowed ideal of neutrality. The willful refusal to discriminate between good and evil, between freedom and slavery, can benefit only the vicious. It is only an evil regime that fears moral scrutiny, that needs to conceal its crimes, and that struggles for a veneer of moral legitimacy. The UN's policy of moral neutrality is precisely what evil desperately craves: a license to commit any depravity and escape with a reputation for being decent.

No organization can resolve conflicts if it evades the objective difference between right and wrong, and perversely treats an aggressor as the moral equal of his innocent victim. The UN is far from a means to achieving peace. Because it arms and bestows a moral sanction on vicious regimes, it is an accessory to their incalculable atrocities and murders.

No "reforms" can salvage the UN; it is morally irredeemable.

Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn Rand--best-selling author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and originator of the philosophy of Objectivism.




Copyright © 2005 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

A lovely letter from an EFT enthusiast

This letter comes via Gary Craig's weekly EFT newsletter. I liked it so much I wanted to post it here.

Hi Everyone,

Catherine O'Driscoll is a proficient user of EFT in Scotland (a non-therapist) and is particularly fond of using it on pets. I've had many correspondences with her over the past two years and find her quite creative. She recently applied EFT to herself while in a depressive state and enjoyed immediate shifts in both her demeanor and her personal insights. I think we all have had our moments like this and Catherine, in her honest message below, holds up a constructive mirror for us to look at.

Hugs, Gary

Hi Gary

Two weeks ago, things were going particularly wrong for me. I had organised two EFT workshops and publicised them amongst the members of Canine Health Concern, but the response was so poor I had to cancel one of them, in England. The other, in Dundee, would have to be cancelled if I couldn't get ten people there. This really upset me - I'm a marketing and PR consultant, so with a great therapy like EFT, I should be able to communicate its benefits. "Why don't people want to heal?" I asked myself. I was depressed - really depressed.

The evening I realised it wasn't going as I had hoped, I found myself being really angry with my husband - everything he did was wrong. In the end, I stomped off into the garden and sat with my dogs, feeling as depressed as hell.

I sat there, complaining bitterly to myself about everything my husband did wrong. And then the thought: "I am such a failure, I fail at everything I do." came into my head.

Do you know how sometimes these thoughts are so deeply ingrained that we often don't see them? But I caught it! I saw myself having this thought! So I tapped: "even though I'm a total failure". Instantly, I "forgave my husband" (who was innocent in the first place). I wasn't angry with him, I was angry with myself - the root of depression, perhaps. In fact, the more I use EFT, the more I realise that the negative thoughts I have towards other people, are rooted in negative thoughts I have about myself. I guess anger and depression are very closely related.

Then I went indoors and hugged my husband, and explained how I wasn't angry with him, I was angry with myself and I felt much better now. He was relieved!

There's a happy ending to the story, too. The EFT seminar near where I live in Dundee, Scotland, now has double the number of attendees I had hoped for. They have all come through word of mouth - and all are already healers of one type or another. I did virtually nothing, and yet all these people are coming - a miracle, perhaps? I feel strong guidance. Apart from spreading EFT, which is a dearly cherished goal, I have already met some wonderful new friends, and will meet more at the workshop this Sunday (9th July). And I am NOT a failure!

As an aside, my husband and I visited friends we hadn't seen for a year, although we keep in close contact. My friend Simon said, "Catherine, you have changed. You are still thinking of the needs of other people, but now you think of your own needs, too." This is a breakthrough for me, and I thank EFT for it. Having myself on the list of people who matter has been a long time coming, Gary. Maybe this is something I can share with the other healers I meet on Sunday.

As all my 'doing' to publicise the workshops proved, sometimes we don't need to DO it, but to trust in a Higher Power.

With love and BIG thanks,

Catherine O'Driscoll

The new fishpond completed

A couple of shots of the completed ornamental pond in our yard.



fishpond with Claude (1)

Fishpond with Claude (2)

A new fishpond

The last three weeks have seen the building of a little ornamental fishpond in our yard. I enjoy sitting by it now. I'll add another photo soon.



Fish pond taking shape, left to right: Claude, Sanny and Sanny's son Arvin.

Another shot of the plastering work in the fishpond


Filling it up on a rainy day

A New Perspective

Here's a very interesting light shed on our human condition. Found on the website http://www.kaleidos.org.uk
There is plenty more to read on this subject on this site.


Virtually all cultures preserve myths with an almost identical theme: that from a past golden age humanity has suffered a progressive degeneration. Is this near universal tradition based on real events? The answer appears to be ‘yes’. Recent scientific evidence supports the idea that we suffer from an inherited hormonal condition that has damaged part of our brain. In an unexpected twist, it is the damaged part that is not only driven to play the major role in telling us who we are but also dominates our basic biological functions.
Such a scenario explains some extraordinary anomalies that have emerged from research into how our brains function. It provides an underlying reason for the present crises in health, from the dysfunction of the immune system to the declining age of puberty. It also makes sense of the diverse mystic and religious practices that are said to lead to enlightened states or ‘oneness with God’.
If our common experience of near constant low-level fear and anxiety is actually a consequence of a neurological disorder, there may be a fundamental solution to the problem. We all know that fear, distrust and a lack of connection lead to conflict and ultimately war. Such a solution therefore could be of crucial importance to our global future.

Read more

Practical love.

For some heartening stories about practical love, try this link . I tried to copy one of the stories here but for some reason was unable to do so, so I have to leave readers with just the link.

Escape from New Orleans in the face of official obstruction, intimidation and theft.

The following account arrived in my email this morning:


"Please send the enclosed testimony to everyone you know to serve
as a wake-up call.

             -Bruce P.


Sept 5, 2005

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's
store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked.
The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was
now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk,
yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat.
The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and
prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows,
residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and
the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an
alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and
distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized
and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours
playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived
home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage
or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no
video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white
tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images
of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help
the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we
witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief
effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who
used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who
rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who
improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the
little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop
parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and
spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of
unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks
stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat
yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their
roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that
could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service
workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal
meals for hundreds of those stranded. Most of these workers had lost
their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet
they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New
Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the
French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference
attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for
safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact
with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly
told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and
scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other
resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came
up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City.
Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were
subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours
for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing
the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority
boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited
late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The
buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived at
the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was
dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street
crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out
and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to
report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered
the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The
Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the
City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health
hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other
shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and
squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite
naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the
City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our
problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This
would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and
hostile "law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and
were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not
have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass
meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the
police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and
would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City
officials. The police told us that we could not stay.

Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the
police commander came across the street to address our group. He told
us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway
and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses
lined up to take us out of the City. The crowd cheered and began to
move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that
there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was
he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to
the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are
there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with
great excitement and hope. As we marched past the convention center,
many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we
were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately
grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then
doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using
crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs.
We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to
the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our
enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line
across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak,
they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd
fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated,
a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs
in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police
commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us
there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us
to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as
there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that
the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be
no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are
poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you
were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from
the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end
decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain
Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and
Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we
would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could
wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the
same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be
turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no,
others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New
Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City
on foot.

Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and
disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw
workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car
that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape
the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery
truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so
down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations
on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping
carts.

Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation,
community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung
garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and
cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids
built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken
umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system
where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for
babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When
individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out
for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for
your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met,
people began to look out for each other, working together and
constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water
in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the
ugliness would not have set in. Flush with the necessities, we offered
food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to
stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media
was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief
and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials
were being asked what they were going to do about all those families
living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to
take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of
us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was
correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out
of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get
off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from
its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the
sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water. Once again, at
gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement
agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into
groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they
saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay
together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into
small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we
scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the
dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway
on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but
equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs
with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact
with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by
an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport
and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young
guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana
guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq
and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all
the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The
airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of
humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush
landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated
on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort
continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where
we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not
have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to
share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make
it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered
plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing
searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been
confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal
detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children,
elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically
screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt
reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline
worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the
street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome.
Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and
racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that
did not need to be lost.

Lyn H. Lofland
Research Professor
Department of Sociology University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, California 95616 USA
Telephone: 530-756-8699/752-1585
FAX: 530-752-0783
e-mail: lhlofland
ucdavis.edu "

An American sees his country from afar

This piece by retired bishop John Shelby Spong well describes the light in which the United States of America is seen from other parts of the world.

"Hurricane Katrina and American Priorities

I hesitated at first to write about Hurricane Katrina and the devastation that has been visited on the city of New Orleans and the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Television stations have been giving 24-hour-a-day coverage to this almost unimaginable disaster. American citizens have been both numbed by the tragedy and overwhelmed by frustration at their inability to help. There seems little more to be said.

Two other things fed my initial hesitancy. First, during the whole course of this storm, I had been in Europe on a lecture tour that began in Sweden on August 25 and will not conclude until September 28 in England. So I possessed only a European lens through which to view this disaster. I wondered if that limitation would hinder my ability to assess this story fairly.

My other source of hesitancy resided in the fact that my travels throughout the world in the past five years have made me aware of the unpopularity of the Bush administration on every continent and I feared that Europe's coverage of this tragedy might reflect this negative bias. Even in Great Britain, America's staunchest ally, the attitude toward our present government is overwhelmingly hostile. Tony Blair would have fallen by now if he had any viable opposition. The unpopular and ill-conceived war in Iraq is a major part of that world opinion, but that war served only to exacerbate already existing feelings of a perceived America First mentality that is insensitive to the needs of other nations. Perhaps that feeling was born on the first day of the Bush presidency when the president cut off all funding to family planning clinics around the world that might do abortion counseling. The approval of his religious constituency was placed ahead of the needs of human beings in the poorest countries of the world. Perhaps it grew with America's withdrawal from the Kyoto treaty on global warming when, right or wrong, profits for American businesses were deemed to be more important than our world's common environment. Southern Hemisphere nations are already today altering their lifestyles to deal with the reality of Antarctica's ozone depletion that stems, ironically enough, from Northern Hemisphere pollution.

The way this administration treated the United Nations in general and Hans Blix in particular fed this growing negativity. This Swedish diplomat, who chaired the UN's team investigating the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's Iraq, had reported that these weapons were in all probability nonexistent. No one in this administration was pleased with these findings, though it turned out Blix was right. Perhaps it was because this nation plunged into the Iraqi conflict unilaterally, with its "shock and awe" campaign of bombing before the Blix report was finished, with little international support and with the active opposition of France, Germany, and Russia. Perhaps this negativity was due in part to our apparent lack of concern with Iraqi civilian casualties, which to many of the world's people, whose skins are not white, was another _expression of our latent racism. No matter what the reason, no government of this nation in my memory has been viewed with such intense suspicion and hostility as this one. So I wondered if I could trust the objectivity of these European accounts.

Then it occurred to me that the people in America might be interested in how they are viewed from abroad. That would be a unique angle on this human trauma. After I had begun to work with that perspective, which was, I confess, anything but pretty, I finally came to a place where I could make computer connections and thus gain the ability to compare American coverage with European coverage. I looked at the story nationally through the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. I sampled regional press outlets from Atlanta to Houston. Finally I read the very local coverage in New Orleans itself. I discovered the details were not substantially different in America, but the tone was. In America there was an embarrassment — a sense of shame — followed by a slowly developing sadness that the face of American poverty, suffering because of the incompetence of early efforts to help, was being flashed across the world. In Europe there was more of a sense of incomprehensibility that the world's greatest military and economic power could so totally bungle the rescue task. Those nations that depended on American power for protection quaked in their boots at our apparent impotence. Those nations that have always feared American power and potential intervention felt emboldened in their independence. Everywhere people wondered why it took five days before food and water, to say nothing of medicine and medical care, could reach the people trapped in that city. Was that all our nation could do to deal with a crisis, the slow approach of which had provided ten days' warning — and at least three of those days were focused specifically on New Orleans, which was clearly in the path of the storm's eye. If this was the best effort our nation could make to deal with a well-advertised natural disaster, what confidence could anyone have that this nation was ready to handle a terrorist attack that would come with little or no warning? Is the fact that our president was vacationing in Crawford, Texas — while this storm sped across the Atlantic and into the Gulf — symbolic of this government's attitude and of its state of preparedness for any tragedy? The president left Texas as the storm drew nearer but only to give an unrelated, fund-raising speech in California. Did that represent detachment from reality?

There is always plenty of blame to go around when tragedy strikes a nation. Blame is nonpartisan. Pearl Harbor was struck in 1941 with a Democrat in the White House. September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina occurred on a Republican watch. Blame is normally diffused by claiming surprise for one's unpreparedness. It did not work at Pearl Harbor, since Japanese naval forces had been on their journey through the northern Pacific for days. It will not work now for an even more obvious reason. Several years ago the New Orleans daily newspaper, the Times-Picayune, ran a story about the state of unpreparedness of this city for meeting what it called the "inevitability of a massive hurricane making a direct hit on New Orleans" at some date in the future! That article described in eerie detail what would happen if the levees broke under the impact of the water surge from the storm. It chronicled the plight of the New Orleans poor, who, the article said, were predominantly black, and would be trapped in the city because they did not have cars in which to escape. It described the lack of plans for evacuation of the victims, for getting food and water to the survivors, for providing medical care for the chronically sick and aged. This article laid bare exactly the circumstances that have now happened. Any attempt on the part of any official to claim that no one anticipated the magnitude of this natural tragedy must be quickly dismissed as nothing more than political "backside covering."

This tragedy called into question in a very public and emotional way the values that drive this nation. The world saw in graphic detail the plight of America's poor. They visually observed what we all know, that in this country the poor are in large measure identical with America's black population, making this nation's systemic racism inescapably visible to the world. Our black population has also been identical in large measure with the unemployed and underemployed. Many are poorly educated, living without proper diet or nutrition and apart from adequate health care, which in America is a business perk for the employed. The people of the world saw racial realities that this nation has preferred to keep hidden even from itself.

Twice in the last four years our Congress has passed tax bills, lowering substantially the taxes that the richest 20 percent of our people pay, while our poorest citizens, numbering 40 million, have no health care. That same Congress also resisted mightily raising the minimum wage for our poorest citizens. Both were clear priority decisions. Then we watched middle-class jobs, which blacks have only recently begun to fill, be outsourced to cheaper labor pools in other nations, while minimum wage jobs, incapable of lifting a fully employed person above the poverty level, took their places. Americans, as well as the people of the world, know that the combination of the cost of the Iraqi war with those tax cuts has drained the capacity of this country to address its eroding infrastructure, repair its inner-city schools, or fund its No Child Left Behind educational program, all of which strengthen the lifeline of the poor. This hurricane also revealed how stretched the American armed services are, since National Guardsmen from the affected states are in Iraq and therefore not available to secure their own neighborhoods. The people of the world saw a nation that is today demonstrably incapable of stopping the violence in Iraq after more than three full years and is now being revealed as incapable of addressing violence at home also. They saw a nation that in the highly trumpeted and recently passed energy bill could not ask anyone to sacrifice or to pay extra for their Hummers and SUVs as a measure against the spiraling prices of gasoline and heating oil, which this winter will as usual land most heavily on the backs of the poor. That storm, more than anything else I could ever have imagined, revealed very publicly to the eyes of the entire world a dark side of America's life.

I shudder that this was the vision of my country that the world saw so clearly. I am embarrassed by the priorities by which this nation seems to live. Above all, I resent the fact that the rhetoric of my religious tradition is being used politically today to cover the presence of greed in high places, an insensitivity toward the poor and the marginalized, and even to justify a war that was first of all unnecessary and now seems incapable of being brought to an end.

The American people will over time, I am sure, address the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina with their usual generosity. Then I hope they will proceed to address the distorted priorities of this government by massive and immediate political pressure. If that fails I hope they will then vote for a new vision of America in the next election.

— John Shelby Spong

Prison life contrasted

A life again

Erwin James was serving a life sentence when the Guardian asked him to write regular dispatches from jail about his experiences there. He was released on parole last summer. Here, in his final column for G2, he reflects on the lessons that prison - and freedom - have taught him

Monday September 5, 2005
The Guardian

Last week, I met the man dubbed "America's toughest sheriff". Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa county, Arizona, was in Britain for a week to see if he had anything to learn from a criminal justice system that he regards as scarcely less luxurious than the Hilton hotel. The sheriff is famous in the US for his uncompromising attitude to those who break the law. His "tent city" prison in the Arizona desert - a permanent, high-fenced canvas compound - holds 2,000 prisoners in 130-degree heat without air conditioning. He puts men, women and children in chain gangs and uses them to clean the streets. His prison meals, he boasts, cost no more than the equivalent of 10p a head, and - a particular favourite punishment of the sheriff - he makes all his prisoners wear pink underwear. After all I had read and heard about him, I was, to be honest, a little apprehensive about our meeting, which took place at a programme for young offenders in east London. I expected an abrasive, unapproachable man who would have no time for the likes of me. Instead I found a charming character with a solid handshake and a ready smile.

Arpaio is not about to apologise for his methods. What did he think his chain gangs achieved, I asked him. "When good folks drive by, I want mothers to be able to say to their kids: 'Look at those bad people, honey. Behave or you'll end up just like them.'" Yet he admitted that arrests in Maricopa county remained steady at what to me sounds an alarming 300 a day, and that he had no evidence that his policies, many of which have been condemned by Amnesty International, had any reductive effect on reoffending rates. As far as I could tell, his only justification for the systematic humiliation and maltreatment of prisoners was the fact that he was responding to public will. "The public is my boss," he said. "I serve the public." On that ticket, he has been re-elected three times and served for 13 years.

I'm not convinced of the merits of Sheriff Arpaio's way. Last year, after serving 20 years of a life sentence in prison, I was released on parole. After a passage of two full decades, which took me from a standpoint of self-loathing and worthlessness to a position where I can look myself in the mirror and feel a measure of self-respect, I know that he is wrong.

Of course, many victims of crime would be only too glad for their tormentors to get a taste of Arpaio justice - and if no prisoners were ever released, it might not be such a cause for concern. But since all but two or three dozen will one day be somebody's neighbour somewhere, it seems sensible to me to ensure that all prisoners are treated in a way that tries to ensure they are better equipped and motivated to lead responsible, law-abiding lives once they are back on the streets. Considering where I'd come from, to end up having this conversation with the sheriff was almost unbelievable. I'm sure he would have struggled to grasp the magnitude of the journey that had taken me from condemned man to writer for a national newspaper.

What many people fail to understand is that convincing prisoners of their own worthlessness, which the Arpaio method is designed to do, is rarely necessary. When I walked through the prison gates at the beginning of my sentence, I knew I was the proverbial scum of the earth. At my trial I had experienced the full force of public condemnation and disgrace for my crimes. I was a guilty man, sentenced to mandatory life. The journey back to achieving a worthwhile life on the other side of the prison wall was going to be a long and difficult one. Further castigation and degradation were unnecessary. Not that the first prison officers I met as a freshly sentenced convict saw it that way.

I remember the encounter well. It was early evening in the reception area of one of the biggest prisons in London. I was locked in a small cubicle waiting to be "processed" when the shout rang out. "Next!" I had no idea it was aimed at me. There was more shouting and swearing, but I didn't know who it was directed at. All I knew was it was making me nervous.

Suddenly there was a tremendous rapping on the cubicle door. "Are you still fucking in there or what?" With my heart racing, I said yes, I was. The door opened and a laughing officer directed me to the front of a large counter with the baton he had obviously used to bang on the door. "Right, strip," said one of his colleagues. All three wore their caps with peaks slashed. When I was naked, an officer called for someone to bring me some kit, at which another prisoner appeared and handed me a too-small striped shirt, oversized denims, ill-fitting shoes, a pair of socks and some huge white underpants before retreating back to his room. Self-consciously, I dressed as fast as I could, then was ordered back into the cubicle to wait to be escorted to the wing.

The whole procedure had taken no more than a couple of hours, but the way I was treated in that short time determined my attitude towards prison officers for years to come. They made it clear that the prison was their domain and that I was going to be tolerated at best. No doubt Sheriff Arpaio would have approved. But I felt like one of the captured humans in Planet of the Apes, fearful and wary of my captors, who thought of me as another species entirely.

My first year in prison was spent in 23-hour-a-day solitary bangup. As well as having to face up to the wrong I had done, my lack of education, social skills and work skills meant that I had massive failings to overcome. I wanted to make progress, but I did not know where to start. To counter my feelings of helplessness and reduce my vulnerability, I exercised rigorously in my cell. Intimidation and violence between prisoners, during the brief periods in which we were unlocked, were widespread, while the culture of the prison officers was resolutely hard-line. As prisoners we held our defences high and trusted nobody. I was in no doubt that survival was my main concern. It was no place to inspire a man to better himself.

As the years passed, however, I learned that prisons were full of conflicting forces. A prison governor I met at my second jail, for example, told me: "My job is to get you back out there and functioning properly. That's what prison is for." These were powerful words for me to hear, and even now they ring clear in my memory. Though most of his officers would have disagreed, there were always a few who understood that prisoners were still human, and that all it took was a little respect and consideration to get the best out of us (they would invariably find themselves nicknamed "Care Bear" or "Mother Teresa" by their colleagues).

And gradually, as time passed, I came to believe that it was possible to become a better man than I had been. A couple of years into my sentence, a well-meaning professional persuaded me that I was capable of being educated; seven years later, with the support of various prison education departments, I had a degree. The instinctive rivalry among captives, endemic hard drug-related activity and the constant negotiating around the self-appointed punishers in the prison staff meant that there was no let-up in the general hostility of the environment for almost all of the 18 years I spent in closed prisons. I think this gave me a good taste of the mental equivalents of Sheriff Arpaio's chain gangs and desert heat, and it convinced me that if we kick people when they are down, we should expect little of value in return.

In 1999, after a series of coincidences and lucky breaks, the chance arose for me to write a column for the Guardian, a weekly account of the reality of prison life, to be called A Life Inside. At this stage I was a life prisoner with at least five years still to serve. I was weary of prison life, but my activities during earlier years had left me well prepared to take advantage of the opportunity.

The reaction of some members of the prison service to this opportunity highlighted the vagaries and absurdities of prison life. Even though, years earlier, when I had expressed an interest in journalism, the Prison Service had supported my application for funding for a course, the authorities in the prison I was in at the time were adamant that it wasn't going to happen. It wasn't until the prisons minister and the head of the prison service gave their personal approval that I was able to proceed.

On one occasion, shortly after I started the column, the governor was showing a visitor round. Stopping at my cell, he introduced the visitor and announced, apparently with some pride, "This is Erwin James. He writes for the Guardian." This emboldened me to ask a question I had been longing to ask of the "number one". I had been saving my prison wages, I told him, and wondered if I might be permitted to buy a word processor. "Oh no, no, no," he said. "The public wouldn't like that." Thankfully, one of his officers went out of his way to make sure I always had a plentiful supply of extra paper.

Six years later, I am a free man on life parole. And this is the last column I will write for G2, though I will continue to write for the paper in other guises. My life is no longer governed by cell walls and bars; now I look out each day on a big sky. With the encouragement of people who were prepared to help rather than hinder, I was able to turn my life around, and I'm grateful to the "do-gooders" whose kindness cancelled out those who, like Arpaio, believe there is merit in "getting tough". As far as I am concerned, I succeeded in making my prison time work in spite of most of what I encountered and not because of it.

Sheriff Arpaio and I parted on good terms with a warm handshake - and an invitation to tour his jails the next time I'm in Maricopa County. I felt, in spite of the chasm between us, that we had forged a mutual respect. But my experience has taught me that a society that offers hope of betterment and genuine rehabilitation to its prisoners is healthier than one that offers no hope at all.

· The Home Stretch and A Life Inside, Erwin James's collections of Guardian columns, are published by Guardian Books