Pittsburgh Alpha to Omega

This morning I attended the Mass Meditation for Peace on Flagstaff Hill in Oakland.  If you haven’t participated in an outdoor mass meditation before, I highly recommend it.

The attendees meditated to the chanting song of two Mayan elders. Later, 15 Burmese monks walked around the people meditating, encircling them and saying prayers.

Sarah Bauer, a therapist from the Pittsburgh Center for Complementary Health and Healing, organized the event with the aid of others associated with the Thomas Merton Center, which helps coordinate the efforts of various activists in Pittsburgh.

She said the message came from a Vietnamese Zen master whose philosophy was “peace in oneself, peace in the world.”

Meditation, she said, allows for people to feel silence and peace within themselves, to pray for change they want to see and then “have it emanate out.”

The Pitt News

I talked with Sarah walking down Flagstaff Hill to the unfortunately punctuated Peoples’ March.

9-25-09 sarah bauer, mass meditation for peace

For all my dilettantish enthusiasm for consciousness studies and all things esoteric, my actual meditation chops, never great to begin with, have been pretty rusty lately.  The presence of so many others proficient in the art helped me slough some attention-rust this morning, whether or not the consciences of any nation-state puppet heads or central banker puppeteers kicked in as a result.  The synergy, alignment, harmonization and oneness the globalists prattle on about, abusing these terms as euphemisms for centralized control, refer to real processes and states (pardon) of being; you just need to turn down the prattle a bit in order to experience them.

Thanks to everyone present this morning for facilitating this.

Now, with regard to the prattle,

But words are still the principal instruments of control. Suggestions are words. Persuasions are words. Orders are words. No control machine so far devised can operate without words, and any control machine which attempts to do so relying entirely on external force or entirely on physical control of the mind will soon encounter the limits of control.

Burroughs, “The Limits of Control” 1978

I showed up at 5:15 at the August Wilson Center for a 5:30 press conference with Michael Froman, courtesy of G20 Voice.  Froman was late, so I ended up watching Barakhenaton address his subjects and the world, an activity I can’t recommend to non-fans of gallows humor.  As expected, and as I scribbled onto a Three Rivers Community Foundation G-20 Guide, he patted Himself & co. on the collective back, declaring that, “Our coordinated stimulus plans played an indispensable role in averting catastrophe,” and that, “We can’t wait for a crisis to cooperate,” and that, “… we will continue our stimulus efforts until our people are back to work,” as no-frills serfs, and that, “I’ve called for a new era of engagement that yields real results for our people — an era when nations live up to their responsibilities, and act on behalf of our shared security and prosperity,” which apparently includes “a new World Bank Trust Fund” and throwing the IMF $500 billion more with which to wreak its usual usurious havoc.  He also announced that we have, like, a Coalition of the Willing Iran-wise, and that, “… with respect to the military, I’ve always said that we do not rule out any options when it comes to U.S. security interests.”  I refrained from giggling throughout the news conference, but admit I nearly lost it when he said, “We went into Afghanistan not because we were interested in entering that country or positioning ourselves regionally, but because al Qaeda yada yada,” then bragged about how, “… the minute I came into office we initiated a review, and even before that review was completed, I ordered 21,000 additional troops into Afghanistan.”  Still, not a chuckle from any of the journalists assembled in the August Wilson Center, not even when he said of protesters, “They object to free markets.  One of the great things about the United States is, is that you can speak your mind and you can protest; that’s part of our tradition. But I fundamentally disagree with their view that the free market is the source of all ills,” then began his next sentence with the adverb “ironically”.  He also reassured those with climate concerns that the fossil fuel subsidy reform maybe kinda hashed out over the past two days will “… help us combat the threat posed by climate change,” and that the G-20 is “… acting to address the threat posed by climate change.”  Thanks, guys!  Though Obama did use the phrase, “global economic cooperation and governance” once and “new framework” three times, he at least showed restraint in not mentioning “9/11,” “anarchy”, “freedom” and “the planet Krypton”.

At 6pm, Obama’s old college chum, former President and CEO of CitiInsurance,

Senior Council on Foreign Relations Fellow and now Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs, Michael Froman dropped by to take bloggers’ questions, all of which were climate-related (and answered with the same vague commitments to do something somehow, at some point, moving forward, but cautiously), save mine, which pertained to central bank and G-20 secrecy.    Froman basically responded there was no time for the G-20 to discuss trifles like central banks submitting to audits and “coming clean”, as Obama insisted Iran do about their nuke program, and that the G-20 isn’t secret because, look, I’m here talking to you, Obama just said a bunch of stuff, and a lovely Leaders’ Statement was issued summarizing all the stuff the G-20 discussed in secret.  There were many cameras in the room, and I was assured the press conference was being recorded, so I decided to save batteries on my mp3 recorder and not take any notes.  Of course, now the only media I can find of this thing are some flickr photos and a blog post about his responses to some of the climate questions.  Until video or audio corroboration surfaces, you’ll just have to take my word, or not, that Froman conveyed what I said he conveyed, much as we’re asked to take on faith what was and was not discussed in the sanctum sanctorum of the Convention Center.  As above, so below, I suppose.

Awful stuff went down in Oakland yesterday after I hightailed it to Fe Gallery,

but, as of 11:11 Friday, far as I know, no one in this city has been directly killed by either the G-20 or their Starship Troopers.  Obviously, that’s not saying much.

Just glad I can say it.

Abide in loving awareness, get your story out there and cuídate.

UPDATE 9-26-01

Jessica Silver dropped by today with the footage and photos she shot and which currently inhabit this and the previous post.  If you liberate them, please give her credit.