Thursday, December 28, 2006

Independence and the American Spirit

I believe we owe the Iraqi people a profound apology for the slaughter and destruction our policies have caused.

We owe our soldiers work that does not make us ashamed.

And we owe America a real pathway to energy independence by devoting war dollars to R&D dollars for clean renewable energy.

The energy independence I seek will be a real homeland security because it will be generated on every rooftop, captured on every windy hill and plain, derived from ocean waves, and captured from water by splitting the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen.

Just as victory gardens sprang up at an earlier time in our history - and may take root again - we can turn from huge and vulnerable energy grids to locally generated energy. I think of Rosie the Riveter, the World War 2 poster girl for the American can-do spirit. We can do this - and we must.

Let us send no more of our precious men and women to the killing fields of Iraq. We have work to do here at home, urgent work, and we better get to it.

Gail Murray 12/28/06

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Abraham on 9/11 response

Answering a question about how would Abraham respond to the September 11 attacks:

We would gather a world forum, we would ask all of the television cameras to come, and this is what we would say: It seems that this act has come in response to other actions. It seems that someone has seen this as a way of sort of leveling the playing field. And it seems to us that if we respond in kind, that all that will happen is it will stir up more of the same -- and ensure more of these pockets of disaster happening globally as time goes on. And so, we have decided that we will do the unexpected, and not respond. Not because we think that they are right -- but because we do not think that in doing that, we would be right, either.

--- Abraham
from a workshop in October 2001.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Making Other Arrangements

Dear Friends,

Here is a hopeful vision of the future as oil goes away in our lifetimes. I've been longing for someone to express what William Kunstler has so eloquently laid out for us in this article.

And coming from a lifetime of faith and discovery, I know there are vast untapped spiritual and emotional resources available to us - as individuals and as a people - that will guide us through these times.

With love,
Gail

http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/07-1om/Kunstler.html

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Energy and War

Won't someone in Washington please get real? We have no energy policy that will enable us to withdraw from our unhealthy addiction to other countries' oil. While we have been ruining the country of Iraq and spending countless lives and dollars, we have not been doing what we should have been doing all the while: DEVELOPING NEW SOURCES OF ENERGY.

This is so staggeringly obvious, I wonder at the sanity of our culture. We all drive cars every day. We heat our homes, power our lights, machines, computers, refrigerators, air conditioners, TVs with electricity - largely generated by oil.

Nuclear would seem to be the 'quick fix' for powering our civilization - quick and dirty. Hydrogen and bio-fuels exist as an embryonic hope. But we are a long way from the years of R&D it will take to develop clean, stable, ubiquitous energy delivered to wherever it is needed. Every day wasted guzzling gas and fueling war is a day lost to American peace and prosperity.

Gail Murray 12/20/06