The Meditations of Pholkhero

[ed. note: I use 'God' to denote the common, Judeo-Christian deity; i use 'god' to denote my own belief, which views god as the Ultimate Source, the Godhead, the One, the True, the Good and the Beautiful]

There is a common misconception in American culture about God. Most Americans believe in a God that is a paternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, benevolent watcher from afar, residing in Heaven, judging us all worthy of salvation. This is false.

God does not exist in a far-off place, detached and removed from us nor can he be found in any one book. God is not a separate being; god is the inner essence of all things. God exists within all people, in your family, your neighbors and your enemies. God resides in each and every sparrow and fish, plant and animal, in every mountain and ocean. God is here, all around us, everyday. All things and events in this universe, all things that we are witness to, are the infinite manifestations of god, and the souls of men are no different. It is in this way that god is our own true mode of being, and our most authentic selves.

Once the individual has reached this level of understanding, he has achieved a mystical union between his self and god and recognizes the universal nature of the universe. This recognition is the highest form of Freedom for the individual. (Yet, god is not dependent upon our recognition; god existed before humanity evolved and will exist after we have passed on.) However, to recognize that humanity is part of a larger whole, you must also recognize that we are more than our individual selves.

It also means that our true authentic selves are not our individual egos, but are a general self (i.e., god), common to us all, and that our identity should not be sought merely in the individual, but also in the whole, the “one-ness” that is the universe and god. It seems to me that all great religious traditions can be traced back to this original experience by their founders or reformers and that a truly religious person should strive after this holistic sense of unity.

But what did not make it into the tape or national attention was that Davis is just one of more than nearly a thousand people who have suffered in a horrific place the police call "Camp Amtrak," an improvised jail in what used to be the New Orleans bus terminal.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans authorities are arresting hundreds on minor charges such as breaking curfew or public intoxication, housing them in brutal conditions and then pushing them through a court process that forces most into working on clean-up projects at police facilities, according to numerous interviews and documents obtained by TNS.
At the converted Greyhound terminal, which now serves as a different kind of way station, no passengers arrive with luggage. Instead, police bring people in and book them at what used to be a ticket counter. In the back, where travelers used to board buses, police now push detainees into wire pens where they sleep on the concrete in the open air.
In interviews both inside and outside of Camp Amtrak, people who had been through the process told harrowing accounts of police brutality and harsh conditions. Some of them, like Davis, had visible injuries. Many said police had attacked them or others in their cells with pepper spray. All recounted trying to sleep on the concrete floor of the bus parking lot with just one blanket – or in some cases no blanket – to protect them from the cold and the mosquitoes which swoop in on randomly alternating nights here. None was given a phone call or access to an attorney.
"They treat us like shit," ....
snip
Jack, a black immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, said police had arrested him on his own property and charged him with violating curfew, which in most neighborhoods here is still in affect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. "I was in my yard, and a young white guy came by the gate and I was talking to him and the police came and arrested both of us," he recounted. "He was outside breaking curfew; I was inside… behind the gate. The police broke my gate down with a pick-ax. They broke it completely off the fence."
[snip]
"They’re steamrolling the whole process without giving you any legal representation."

Freelander, Resovsky and Jack all said that in the mornings after their arrest, they were taken to a courtroom upstairs where most prisoners were pressured into pleading guilty and accepting between 40 and 80 hours of unpaid labor....In the end, given the choice between unpaid work and continued incarceration, nearly all chose to plead guilty.

According to documents obtained by The NewStandard, most who pass through Camp Amtrak are brought in on charges of possession of stolen property, looting or violating curfew. But the vast majority of those interviewed or observed in court this week were arrested for alleged curfew violations or public intoxication.

snip

He continued: "The police are basically arresting people for curfew violations and public intoxication and just using it as a way to get free labor to clean up the prisons and court houses and the police stations. They’re just using it as a way to get people to do their dirty work for free."

snip

All of the interviews quoted and conditions described by the journalist are fully documented on audio and/or videotape. Documents used were provided by Camp Amtrak officials.

The NewStandard will be running stories from correspondent Jessica Azulay in New Orleans for at least the next two weeks, as well as weblog entries provding more background about gathering this story and eyewitness testimony from sources.

i stop posting...perhaps I can step it up a bit again, and not lose my 'audience'

Previously, I had assumed that our long national nightmare would be over in one of three ways, either with Bush somehow managing to finish his term, with him being impeached, convicted and run out of Washington, or with him being impeached, convicted and then refusing to leave, precipitating a constitutional crisis and even, possibly, a civil war. Now I see a fourth very real possibility. . . What if all of a sudden, it sucks being president? Why bother, then? It is clear now that one way the Bush administration might end would be with the president's resignation, in order for him to duck into more tranquil quarters. Who knows, maybe he could spend his days getting tanked in Crawford, not writing another book, or going into exile, perhaps in the south of France.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who has established his credentials as a conservative Republican from a moderate state, is beginning to wear on the White House's patience, according to a report Tuesday in Roll Call, RAW STORY can reveal.

I guess this is part of his election strategy.

A great article dispelling the meme that belief in God is necessary for a healthy society,

“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

but my favorite is this line:

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

It's so sad, but we really are a developing democracy...

The board president, Sheila Harkins, said in an interview during a break, "The whole thought behind it was to encourage critical thinking."

Yes, we encourage critical thinking by explaining away phenemenom as the result of some master planner ~ look no further for explanation, God did it.

Billions of dollars of reconstruction contracts awarded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are being investigated amid concerns of cronyism and abuse. More than 80% of the $1.5bn (£850m) in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) were awarded without bidding or with only limited competition, including enormous deals with Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - the former employer of vice-president Dick Cheney - and the Shaw Group. The lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, George Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of Fema, has represented both companies.

More of the same from King George II ~ can anybody not have any doubt that he feels himself to really be the dictator of this country?? I mean everywhere you look in his regime are friends, friends of friends, family, donators . . .

CBS News: there is an undeclared civil war already underway in Iraq, between the Sunni minority who ruled this country under Saddam and the Shiite majority.

Undeclared?!? Are you serious? Did you miss Zarqawi declaring war on all Shiites a week or two ago? It's already a declared civil war. We started it.

I think i may have flip-flopped...
With the gulf as warm as it is now, perhaps many more hurricanes are going to reach this strength (is there a higher category?) and as the globe gets warmer, it really may be a lot better to abandon parts of the coast so that we aren't rebuilding these places year after year. Give it up, people...Mother Nature has our number, she'll win everytime, and we can't (nor should we) try to change it.
That is, of course, if this isn't a part of the "weather weapon" thing and they're using Rita to counteract Katrina's disasterious ending. Now he can look like the big hero...it is pretty convenient, but . . .

"I don't know if it's bad construction or bad design, but whoever the contractor is has a problem," said Livingston, now a lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

from page 4:

From Bush's lonely walk to the podium, to the cathedral over his shoulder lit up like Disneyland, to his wooden delivery before an audience of none, there was something particularly off key about all the White House stagecraft imported into the ghostly center of a still half-drowned town. And it was, indeed, literally imported. The New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller, acting as pool reporter, informed colleagues yesterday that all the lights and generators needed to create the desired effect were flown in by the White House. Reporters were not allowed out of their vans while the president spoke, but they demanded a quick tour of the area beforehand. "Bobby DeServi and Scott Sforza were on hand as we drove up about 8 p.m. or so EDT handling last-minute details of the stagecraft," Bumiller wrote. DeServi is the White House's chief lighting designer; Sforza is in charge of visuals. "Bush will be lit with warm tungsten lighting, but the statue [of Andrew Jackson] and cathedral will be illuminated with much brighter, brighter lights . . . like the candlepower that DeServi and Sforza used on Sept. 11, 2002, to light up the Statue of Liberty for Bush's speech in New York Harbor," she wrote. "Here's a quote from DeServi on the lit up cathedral: 'Oh, it's heated up. It's going to print loud.' "