The Talking Stick

Continuous chatter and multicolor alerts reverberate against a background of more subtle wars. Assaults on human rights that should they succeed in their aim would likely in the end claim more lives and certainly promote more suffering than the once unthinkable strategy of "Shock and Awe".

The most powerful law enforcement officers in the land respond to evidence of abuses of human rights by the Executive and the Militaryt branches of government by asking the Congress to enact them into legal status. The son of the Secretary of State restricts even further access for small independents to the major venues for news.

CNN meticulously documented the success of the military mission, "Secure the Oil Fields". The treasures from the beginning of civilization looted, unprotected. The persuasive justification for the pre-emptive violent invasion, imminent danger from nuclear and other horrible weapons and a known source of nuclear materials remained unguarded from looters, fatally poisoning desperate civilians seeking containers for water.

Everyone is familiar with the numbers at four years hence. There has been no decrease in deployment of U S troops. U S and civilian casualties continue to accelerate.The Red Cross, Doctors Without Frontiers and even the U.N. have found the violence too great for their work and leave only skeleton crews. Violent unrestrained civil war is branded "sectarian" conflict.

Condolezza Rice, the Secretary of State, tells a CNBC interviewer (David Gregory, Aug 4, 2006) "They are learning to relate to each other."

And still, only a few among the loyal opposition (even with elections looming in the year) can raise courage to speak louder than in a whisper and unambivalently -- that our human and material treasure was given over to and squandered by leaders securing trust through deception and lies.

Sorry, your browser doesn't support Java. Go to http://gamountains.net/talkingstick/index2.html for java free page.

We gather together, to take courage from each other. To speak out. To talk. To listen. To plan.

Flourishing in the spirit of the "Talking Stick," The Peace Pipe, the Coffee House and my own family's "palaver," personal web pages springing up around the world give voice to these "volunteer" garden flowers. Talking, coming to know the other, reflecting and coming upon the beauty and joy that is always there, no matter the darkness of the atmosphere -- insistently refuting and gradually dismantling the power of looters and undoing ravages through discovery; ultimately discovery of the "other" as understandable and more alike than not.

One can be overwhelmed and discouraged by the size of the community that we all, by choice or not, interface with daily. But as the darkness falls, eyes and ears become adjusted the lights and sounds of a myriad of other souls come into focus. This often harassing, always intrusive leviathan, the global network is realized as an interconnecting web that cannot be broken and our multitasking children, long experienced lead us to each other. ~ wlw