Immense, profound blue sky
clouds joust with poniard trees
fir bark and asymmetric limbs
send red and green pendants skyward.
A pellucid dawn
weaves its way row by row
christening the entire street,
and, out of the golden haze
of the snow capped Cascades
rises the round, lemon meringue Sun
RESURRECTION
Quit trying to resurrect tyranny, I urged our age,
follow the revered rules of ancient liberty,
when a straight, stupid sound assailed me
of dodos and dogs, owls and swine, rats and cats,
apes and asses.
Like when those amphibians, the frogs,
convened Congress to decide
who would lead the country.
Ask the crane how well that worked?
Or, the din for children, when in their mindless paranoia
they blasphemously assault our God given rights-
when the simple truth would set everyone free:
oppression is what they mean when they cry safety.
For, whoever would rule by greed and deceit,
instead of wisdom and goodness, must be a cuckoo;
observe how far they've strayed
with all their perverted pleasure, and blood splattered
gold.
THRESHOLD
Eyes that devour
death and star light;
crimson fountain,
with the blood's
dark mysteries
pulsing out
of subterranean veins
which satiate the Earth's
flowering thirst;
death transforms
its towering silence
into the forsaken aspirations
of a deserted doorway;
while, as curtains descend,
the play of time
is consecrated
transgressing the threshold
of consciousness....
RUMOR MILL
Rumor Mill thinks that the Radical Right has resurrected
Hammers. Remember during the Reagon/Bush administration, Hammers
was a synonym for C.I.A. throughout the Middle East. It became so
blatantly obvious that the Radical Right had to break up Hammers, and break
it up into various regional, national and ethnic terrorists groups. Now,
16 years later, Hammers is back with attempted terrorist attack bombings,
just when the Bush Jr. lead national economy is doing deplorably bad and
his popularity is plummeting. One only states the obvious when one
points out how awfully convenient these terrorist attacks are.
The Hammers connection, and its terrorist attacks
in Israel, accomplish three things. It panders to the established
ethnic stereotype of the bad Arab terrorists. The goal is to shore
up, for the Republican Party, the conservative Jewish vote in Florida.
It takes pressure off the factional interests of the radical right in the
oil companies, who are hated for generating cost-push inflationary
pressure due to their huge increases in the price of oil. The pretended
threat to the Mid Eastern oil does two things; first, it brings the public's
perceived interests in line with the oil industries, and, second, it generates
a sympathetic reaction from the public to the oil industry. It diverts
public attention from the failed economic policies of Bush Jr.. The
idea is to rally public support for the President by establishing a perceived
foreign threat - just like the bogus Iraq war with Bush Jr.'s dear old
dad. The one where the U.S. was supposed to pick up the tab for both
the U.S. and Iraq, and afflict the U.S. with another term of Bush as President.
The Rumor Mill contends here we go again with the Politics of Terror.
RUMOR MILL
Hopefully, you have had an opportunity to read America's rich heritage
of historical documents. There, among other milestones, on the road
to American Independence, one encounters such great documents as the Declaration
of Independence, The preamble to the Constitution, and Lincoln's Gettysburg
address. However, these are only the most recent in mankind's long
and enduring struggle for freedom. History is blessed with several
literary treasures recording man's most noble sentiments, while striving
either to attain or protect God's greatest gift of liberty. Here
is one of the finest examples of its kind a letter written by the most
noble Roman of all Brutus to Cicero, marking the end of Rome's Republic,
as it collapsed beneath the chains of tyranny that was called the "Roman
Empire". Hope you and yours have a happy and safe July 4th.
BRUTUS TO CICERO
"I haven't seen, by the
favor of Atticus, that part which concerns me in your letter to Octavius.
The affection which you there express for my person, and the pains which
you take for my safety, are great; but they give me no new joy: Your kind
offices are become as habitual for me to receive, as for you to bestow;
and, by your daily discourse and actions on my behalf, I have daily instances
of your generous regard for myself and my reputation.
"However, all this hinders
not but that the above mentioned article of your letter to octaves pierced
me with as sensible a grief as my soul is capable of feeling. In
thanking him for his services to the Republic, you have chosen a style
which shows such lowness and submission, as do but too clearly declare,
that you have still a master; and that the old tyranny, which we thought
destroyed, is revived in a new tyrant. What shall I say to you upon
this sad head? I am covered with confusion for your shameful condition,
but you have brought it upon yourself; and I cannot help showing you to
yourself in this wretched circumstance.
"You have petitioned Octavious
to have mercy upon me, and to save my life. In this you intend my
good, but sought my misery, and a lot worse that death my saving my from
it; since there is no kind of death but is more eligible to me than a life
so saved. Be so good to recollect a little the terms of your letter!
and having weighed them as you ought, can you deny that they are conceived
in the low style of an humble petition from a slave to his haughty lord,
from a subject to a king? You tell Octavious, that you have a request
to make him, and hope that he will please to grant it; namely, to save
those citizens who are esteemed by men of condition, and beloved by the
people of Rome. This is your honorable request; but what if he should
not grant it, but refuse to save us? Can we be saved by no other
expedient? Certainly, destruction itself is preferable to life by
his favor!
"I am not, however, so despondent,
as to imagine that heaven is so offended with the Roman people, or so bent
upon their ruin, that you should
thus choose, in your prayers, to apply rather to Octavious, than to
the immortal gods, for the preservation. I do not say of the deliverers
of the whole earth, but even for the preservation of the meanest Roman
citizen. This is a high tone to talk in, but I have pleasure in it:
It becomes me to show, that I scorn to pray to those whom I scorn to fear.
"Has then Octavious power
to save us, or destroy us? An while you thus own him to be a tyrant,
can you yet own yourself his friend? And while you
are mine, can you desire to see me in Rome, and at the mercy of an
usurper? And yet, that this would be my case you avow, by imploring from
a giddy boy, my permission to return. You have been rendering him
a world of thanks, and making him many compliments; pray how come they
to be due to him, if he yet want to be petitioned for our lives, and if
our liberty depend upon his sufferance? Are we bound to think it a condescension
in Octavious, that he choose that these our petitions should rather be
made to him than to Anthony? And are not such low supplications the
proper addresses to a tyrant? And yet shall we, who bodily destroyed
one, be ever brought basely to supplicate another? And can we, who
are the deliverers of the commonwealth, descend to ask what no man ought
to have it in his power to give?
"Consider the mournful effects
of that dread and despondency of yours in our public struggles; in which,
however you have too many to keep you in countenance. The commonwealth
has been lost, because it was given for lost. Hence Caesar was first
inspired with the lust of dominion; hence Mark Anthony, not terrified by
the doom of the tyrant, pants and hurries on to succeed him in his tyranny;
and hence this octavius, this green usurper, is started into such a pitch
of power, that the chiefs of the commonwealth, and the saviors of their
country, must depend for their breath upon his pleasure. Yes we must
owe our lives to the mercy of a minor, softened buy the prayers of aged
Senators!
"Alas, we are no longer
Romans! If we were, the virtuous spirit of liberty would have been
an easy over-match for the traitorous attempts of the worst of all men
rasping after tyranny; nor would even Mark Anthony, the rash and
enterprising Mark Anthony, have been so fond of Caesar's power, as frightened
by Caesar's fate.
"Remember the important
character which you sustain, the great post which you have filled: You
are a senator of Rome, you have been consul of Rome; you have defeated
conspiracies, you have destroyed conspirators. Is not Rome still
as dear to you as she was? Or, is your courage and vigilance less?
And is not the occasion greater? Or, could you suppress great traitors,
and yet tolerate greater? Recollect
what you ought to do, by what you have done. Whence proceeded
your enmity to Anthony? Was it not, that he had an enmity to liberty,
had seized violently on to the public, assumed the disposal of life and
earth into his own hands, and set up for the sole sovereign of all men?
Were not these the reasons of your enmity, and of your advice, to combat
violence by violence; to kill him, rather than submit to him? All
this
was well. But why must resistance be dropped, when there is a
fresh call for resistance? Has your courage failed you? Or,
was it not permitted to Anthony to enslave us, but another may? As
if the nature of servitude were changed, by changing names and persons.
No, we do not dispute about the qualifications of a master; we will have
no master.
"It is certain, that we
might, under Anthony, have had large shares with him in the administration
of despotic power; we might have divided its dignities, shone in its trappings.
He would have received us graciously, and met us half way. He knew
that either our concurrence or acquiescence would have confirmed him monarch
of Rome; and at what price would he have purchased either? But all
his arts, all his temptations, all his offers,
were rejected; liberty was our purpose, virtue our rule: our views
were honest and universal; our country, and the cause of mankind.
"With Octavious himself
there is still a way open for an accommodation, if we choose it.
As eager as the name of Caesar has made that raw stickler for empire to
destroy those who destroyed Caesar; yet, doubtless, he would give us good
articles, to gain our consent to that power to which he aspires, and to
which, I fear, he will arrive: Alas! what is there to hinder him?
While we only attend to the love of life, and the impulses of ambition;
while we can purchase posts and dignities with the price of liberty, and
think danger more dreadful than slavery, what remains to save us?
"What was the end of our
killing the tyrant, but to be free from tyranny? A ridiculous motive,
and an empty exploit, if our slavery survive him! Oh, who is it that
makes liberty his care? Liberty, which ought to be the care of all
men, as 'tis the benefit and blessing of all! For myself, rather
than give it up, I will stand single in its defense. I cannot lose,
but with my life, my resolution to maintain in freedom my country, which
I have set free: I have destroyed a veteran tyrant; and shall I suffer,
in a raw youth, his heir, a power to control the senate, supersede the
laws, and put chains on Rome? A power, which no personal favors,
nor even the ties of blood, could ever sanctify to me; a power, which I
could not bear in Caesar; nor, if my father had usurped it, could I have
borne in him.
"Your petition to Octavious
is a confession, that we cannot enjoy the liberty of Rome without his leave;
and can you dream that other citizens are free, where we could not live
free? Besides, having made your request, how is it to be fulfilled?
You beg him to give us our lives; and what if he do? Are we therefore
safe, because we live? Is there any safety without liberty?
or rather, can we poorly live, having lost it, and with it our honor and
glory? Is there any security in living at Rome, when Rome is no longer
free? That city, great as it is, having no security of her own, can
give me none. No, I will owe mine to my resolution and my sword;
I cannot enjoy life at the mercy of another. Caesar's death alone
ascertained my liberty to me, which before was precarious: I smote him,
to be safe. This is a Roman spirit; and whithersoever I carry it,
every place will be Rome to me; who am to a Roman are the highest of all
evils. I thought that we had been released from these mighty evils.
I thought that we had been released from these mighty evils, by the death
of him who brought them upon us; but it seems that we are not; else why
a servile petition to a youth, big with the name and the ambition of Caesar,
for mercy to those patriots, who generously revenged their country upon
that tyrant, and cleared the world of his tyranny? It was not thus
in the commonwealths of Greece, where the children of tyrants suffered,
equally with their fathers, the punishment of tyranny.
"Can I then have any appetite
to see Rome? Or, can Rome be said to be Rome? We have slain
our tyrant, we have restored her ancient liberty: But they are favors thrown
away; she is made free in spite of herself; and though she has seen a great
and terrible tyrant bereft of his grandeur and his life, by a few of her
citizens; yet, basely despondent of her own strength, she impotently dreads
the name of a dead tyrant, revived in the person of a stripling.
"No more of your petitions
to your young Caesar on my behalf; nor, if you are wise, on your own.
You have not many years to live; do not be showing that you over-rate the
short remains of an honorable life, by making preposterous and dishonourable
court to a boy. Take care that by this conduct you do not eclipse
the luster of all your glorious actions against Mark Anthony: Do not turn
your glory into reproach, by giving the malicious a handle to say, that
self-love was the sole motive of your bitterness to him; and that, had
you not dreaded him, you would not have opposed him: And yet will they
not say this, if they see, that, having declared war against Anthony, you
notwithstanding leave life and liberty at the mercy of Octavious, and tolerate
in him all the power which the other claimed? They will say that
you are not against having a master, only you would not have Anthony for
a master.
"I well approve your praises
given to Octavious for his behavior thus far; it is indeed your praises
given to Octavious for him behavior thus far; it is indeed praiseworthy;
provided his only intention has been to pull down the tyranny of Anthony,
without establishing a tyranny of his own. But if you are of opinion,
that Octavious is in such a situation of power, that it is necessary to
approach him with humble supplications to save our lives, and that it is
convenient he should be trusted with this power; I can only say, that you
life the reward of his merits far above his merits: I thought that all
his services were services done to the Republick; but you have conferred
upon him that absolute and imperial power which he pretended to recover
to the Republick.
"If, in your judgment, Octavious
has earned such laurels and recompenses for making war against Anthony's
tyranny; to what distinctions, to what rewards, would you entitle those
who exterminated, with Caesar, with tyranny of Caesar, for which they felt
the blessings and bounty of the Roman people! Has this never entered
into your thoughts? Behold here how effectually the terror of evils
to come extinguishes in the minds of men all impressions of benefits received?
Caesar is dead, and will never return to shackle or frighten the city of
Rome; so he is no more thought of, nor are they who delivered that city
from him. But Anthony is still alive, and still in arms, and still
terrifies; and so Octavious is adored, who beat Anthony. Hence it
is that Octavious is become of such potent consequence, that from his mouth
the Roman people must expect our doom, the doom of the deliverers!
And hence it is too, that we (those deliverers) are of such humble consequence,
that he must be supplicated to give us our lives!
"I, as I said, have a soul,
and I have a sword; and am an enemy to such abject supplications; so great
an enemy, that I detest those that use them, and am an avowed foe to him
that expects them. I shall at least be far away from the odious company
of slaves; and where-ever I find liberty, there I will find Rome.
And for you that stay behind, who, not satiated with many years and many
honors, can behold liberty extinct, and virtue, with us, in exile, and
yet are not sick of a wretched and precarious life; I heartily pity you.
For myself, whose should has never ebbed from its constant principles,
I shall every be happy in the consciousness of my virtue; owing nothing
to my country, towards which I have faithfully discharged my duty, I shall
possess my mind in peace; and find the reward of well-doing in the satisfaction
of having done it. What greater pleasure does the world afford, than
to despise the slippery uncertainties of life, and to value that only which
is only valuable, private virtue, and public liberty; that liberty, which
is the blessing, and ought to be the birthright, of all mankind?
"But still, I will never
sink with those who are already falling; I will never yield with those
who have a mind to submit: I will try all expedients, I will exert my utmost
prowess, to banish servitude, and set my country entirely free. If
fortune favor me as she ought, the blessing and joy will be every man's;
but if she fail me, and my best endeavors be thrown away, yet still I will
rejoice single; and so far be too hard to fortune. What, in short,
can my life be better laid out in, than in continual schemes, and repeated
efforts, for the common liberty of my country?
"As to your part in this
crisis, my dear Cicero, it is my strongest advice and request to you, not
to desert yourself: Do not distrust your ability, and your ability will
not disappoint you; believe you can remedy our heavy evils, and you will
remedy them. Our miseries want no increase: Prevent, therefore, by
your vigilance, any new accession. Formerly, in quality of consul,
you defeated, with great boldness, and warmth for liberty, a formidable
conspiracy against Rome, and saved the commonwealth; and what you did then
against Catiline, you do still against Anthony. These actions of
yours have raised your reputation high, and spread it far; but it will
be all tarnished or lost, if you do not continue to show an equal firmness
upon as great an occasion; let this render all the parts of your life equal,
and secure immortality to that glory of yours, which ought to be immortal.
"From those, who like you,
have performed great actions, as great or greater are expected: By showing
that they can serve the public, they make themselves its debtors; and it
is apt to exact strict payment, and to use them severely if they do not
pay: But from those who have performed no such actions, we expect none.
This is the difference betwixt the lot of unknown talents, and of those
which have tried; and the condition of the latter is no doubt the harder.
Hence it is, that though, in making head against Anthony, you have merited
and received great and just praises, yet you have gained no new admiration:
by so doing, you only continued, like a worthy consular, the known character
of a great and able consul. But if now at last you begin to truckle
to one as bas as him; if you abate ever so little in that vigor of mind,
and that steady courage, by which you expelled him from the senate, and
drove him out of Rome; you will never reap another harvest of glory, whatever
you may deserve; and even your past laurels will wither, and your past
renown be forgot.
"There is nothing great
or noble in events, which are the fruit of passion or chance: true fame
results only from the steady perseverance of reason in the paths and pursuits
of virtue. The care, therefore, of the commonwealth, and the defense
of her liberties, belong to you above all men, because you have done more
than all men for liberty and the commonwealth: Your great abilities, your
known zeal, your famous actions, with the united call and expectation of
all men, are your motives in this great affair; would you have greater?
"You are not, therefore,
to supplicate Octavious for our safety; do a braver thing, owe it to your
own magnanimity. Rouse the Roman genius within you; and consider
that this great and free city, which you more than once saved, will always
be great and free, provided her people do not want worthy chiefs to resist
usurpation, and exterminate traitors."
RUMOR MILL
Rumor Mill suggests that on this 4th of July, we
should take a moment to remember, least we forget: tyranny always starts
auspiciously. If not it could never establish itself in the position
of power that eventually corrupts into states of vice ridden degeneracy.
Its no wonder the Radical Right tries to stop free speech and repudiate
those who dissent by intimidation and slander. When one considers
their alleged crimes, which include perversion, child abuse, serial rape,
and murder (to name but a few) one can easily understand their their desire
to divert public attention from themselves.
The Radical Right are fast becoming as cruel and
evil as either Nero or Hitler. They, too, started out with great
approbation only to end up denoting something that is worse than wicked.
One need only to review the events of last Summer, before the fall elections,
and the cycle of violence that it has come to mean with its increasing
incidents of violence targeting ever younger victims, in order to realize
the monstrosity to which these people have descended. First, two
teenager girls were murdered in Eugene a Democratic district. Second,
in Salem a few weeks later, another Democratic district, a serial child
abuser (alleged to be subliminally set up like all the other charged perpetrators
mentioned in this communication) slit a 10 yr. old boy's throat while waiting
for sentencing on a series of child molestation charges. Third, a
few weeks later in Portland, the largest Democratic district in the state,
a two year old infant is abducted and then later found murdered after many
headlines and much closer to the elections. A measure facing the
public was the repeal of mandatory sentencing. It failed. All
so that good people will not have the right to live their loves according
to the dictates of reason and in harmony with the nature of their beings.
All so that good people can not have fun and be happy, as they define it
for themselves, to the extent that it does not prevent others from doing
the same.
RUMOR MILL
It seems that with Summer finally arriving the radical
right seems to be pushing bicycling. It appears that everyone "must"
have fun riding bicycles, whether they're physically capable or not; even
if they loath riding bicycles (ha ha). Perhaps its their solution
to the cost-push inflationary spiral we're experiencing, brought on by
their huge increases in the cost of oil, and, the incompetent measures
that they've made impairing marginal productivity.