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I am homeless. This is the second time in a year that I've been so. It ain't easy.

Just about a year ago, I was laid off from a job I had held for four years. It was a pretty good job, doing research, geographic information systems, and data analysis for an institute at a local university. The layoff was unexpected. I drew unemployment for awhile, had an apartment.

Not long after the layoff, however, I went into a deep clinical depression, was hospitalized for awhile and have needed to spend a time recovering. Financially, however, I was a mess, lost my apartment, and spent several weeks in a local homeless shelter. Boy, did I learn a lot.

I got back on my feet, started looking for a job, got an apartment. I was doing all right, then got hit with another bout of depression and had to be hospitalized again.

Hospital bills, other unforeseen expenses, etc. I lost my apartment again about two months ago. So I'm homeless again, living in a shelter program.

I'm pretty lucky. (What?!! . . . "lucky"?!)

Yeah, lucky. Because the county I live in has a shelter which also provides a lot of services: substance abuse/alcoholism counseling, 12 step meetings, mental health care, including a psychiatrist, a case manager, job-hunting assistance, money management counseling, transitional housing, and connections to other services, like medical care. For free. It's not a great place, of course: dormitory living with people in a very wide range of situations, like real street bums, active alcoholics, junkies, crackheads, mentally ill folks, folks in crisis like me, folks who lost their jobs and can't find new ones, folks who lost relationships and/or got divorced and really screwed because of it, disabled veterans, released prisoners, and just damn unlucky, confused, and lonely folks.

But the place is fairly safe and the staff work hard. It got really fucking cold last week and the shelter crammed in as many folks as would fit. Food, clothing, shelter in a life-threatening situation.

This isn't true in a lot of areas in this country. But you probably know that. I read an article yesterday about a homeless man who was beaten to death by a gang of suburban kids. This has happened often in the past few years. It seems it's a brutal sport.

"Street people" are severely marginalized. Prejudices are still ubiquitous. Once in the circle, it's hard to get out. Many cities and communities either arrest homeless folks or just push them outta town (this is called "passing the trash"). Many places have no shelter or programs, other have just the bare minimum. Charity and humanity is in short supply. I know I'll make it through (with some help), because I'm smart, very employable, and resilient. There's sometimes very little hope for many of my brothers and sisters out here.

There aren't many, but there are some folks on our side:

Just Neighbors . . .

The Just Neighbors Mission

The mission of Just Neighbors is to raise awareness of the root causes of poverty and homelessness.

Just Neighbors brings to its participants a deep understanding of the reality of poverty and a deep empathy for people living in poverty. Congregations, nonprofit organizations, colleges, universities, and high schools are using the program to change attitudes, to recruit volunteers, and to empower them as advocates for their neighbors in need.

The entire Just Neighbors experience is designed to foster a sense of community among the participants. It is an engaging, thought-provoking curriculum that offers a wealth of resources and materials along with the flexibility to make the program work in the widest possible range of settings and organizations.

National Coalition for the Homeless.

The National Coalition for the Homeless, founded in 1984, is a national network of people who are currently experiencing or who have experienced homelessness, activists and advocates, community-based and faith-based service providers, and others committed to a single mission. That mission, our common bond, is to end homelessness. We are committed to creating the systemic and attitudinal changes necessary to prevent and end homelessness. At the same time, we work to meet the immediate needs of people who are currently experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of doing so. We take as our first principle of practice that people who are currently experiencing homelessness or have formerly experienced homelessness must be actively involved in all of our work.

Core Principles

* Every member of society, including people experiencing homelessness, has a right to basic economic and social entitlements of which safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing is a definitive component.

* It is a societal responsibility to provide safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing for all people, including people experiencing homelessness, who are unable to secure such housing through their own means.

* All people, including people experiencing homelessness, who are able to secure safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing through their own means need economic and social supports to enable them to do so.

* People experiencing homelessness deserve access to safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing through the same systems and programs available to people with housing.

* People experiencing homelessness have unique needs and life circumstances that may be addressed through housing programs designed specifically for them.

* All people should have equal access to safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing regardless of their unique needs or life circumstances.

* Universal access to safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing is a measure of a truly just society.

National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Our Work
The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a leading voice on the issue of homelessness. The Alliance analyzes policy and develops pragmatic, cost-effective policy solutions. We work collaboratively with the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to build state and local capacity, leading to stronger programs and policies that help homeless individuals and families make positive changes in their lives. We provide data and research to policymakers and elected officials in order to inform policy debates and educate the public and opinion leaders nationwide.

The Ten Year Plan
Guiding our work is A Plan: Not a Dream—How to End Homelessness in Ten Years. The Alliance’s Ten Year Plan identifies our nation's current challenges in addressing the problem and lays out practical steps that can be taken to change its present course and truly end homelessness. The announcement of this plan started a snowball effect that is now felt across the country. The Administration and Congress have adopted significant parts of the Ten Year Plan as policy goals. Opinion leaders have begun to echo the language and key concepts of the plan and communities and states across the nation have taken up the challenge to end homelessness. Hundreds of communities are developing or have implemented plans to end homelessness within ten years. Across the country, the movement is growing. Now more than ever, our nation is poised to end homelessness.

Homelessness is fundamentally an economic problem. These and other groups, agencies, and programs are trying to address this. Especially under the regime of the Doubleduh-Chainey Gang, it seems an impossible task. But we must try.

On a personal note, we're doing a fundraiser here at P!to keep me alive (and in cigarettes and bus fare) as I look for a job. My finances are trashed and I can use whatever help I can get. Please. Just donate what you can, if you can - I'll be more grateful than you can imagine.

Thank you.

Be at peace.

"LBJ took the IRT down to Fourth Street USA, When he got there what did he see? The youth of America on LSD! LBJ ... USA ... FBI ...CIA ..."

(Lyrics from original HAIR Musical)

For a moment, forty years ago, it looked like the radicalizing political effect of the Vietnam War together with the US Civil Rights movement would synthesize with the upcoming 'drop out', psychedelic culture that swept the youth of North America.

BBC News 24, the international version of Blair TV's media war machine, has just announced a decision by the British Ministry of Defence to 'allow' the 15 navy ex-detainees to sell their stories to the press. This will only be permitted after the stories are vetted by their commanding officers!

What blatant propaganda from the British corporate state!

One thing is certain, Tony Blair's idiotic behaviour during the Anglo-Iranian maritime dispute did no one any favours, least of all the 15 British service personnel who were detained in Iran for just under a fortnight.

Blair and his cohorts did a lot of huffing and puffing, insisting that the Iranians had grabbed the sailors whilst in Iraqi waters. This is the front that the British, with an orgy of jingoism from its media, have put up all along.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] Diversion and deceit may not be the primary reasons that The Doubleduh-Cheney Gang keeps us in Iraq, but clearly the war is great cover. If you read Part 3 of this series you learned, I hope, that the smog of war does veil the continuing neocon march toward its real goal: the destruction of the United States. In this light, we can see that 9/11's effect was not primarily to allow The Gang to invade Iraq, although it certainly did that. Once there, however, they have benefited from the war's ability to mass-capture the attention and energy of those who might otherwise effectively organize against militant globalization. Leave it not to the Left, but the jingoist, ultra-paranoid militia-types like The Minutemen to see the point . . . [more at P!]

Kudos to Ned Lamont and the anti-war movement in Connecticut. With 34 days until the Sept. 12 Primary, we have plenty of work to do here in Rhode Island to get Carl elected. We need your help! <. . . (Carl is) an articulate voice for a strong and growing element of the Democratic Party which ought to be heard. So I did a little research and put together a set of questions covering the major issues, and got these interesting and sometimes surprising answers.>

Last Monday evening, I watched an atrocious programme on Islam, 'What Muslims Want', on Dispatches, C4 (UK) with that pompous idiot, John Snow. Frankly, even as a non-Muslim I found it not only offensive but full of perversions and assumed truths.

Stuff like this is sheer disinformation propaganda by the British Secret State, 'psy ops' as practised by the CIA. Yet this is the kind of poison that is being incessantly churned out by the Mainstream Media which, no doubt, is receiving directives from the secret state and MI5 so to do.

This made me think deeper on the question of public brain-washing through the media (particularly tv).

Although difficult to prove, I believe there is definitely a conspiracy between the State, MI5 and the Mainstream Media (MSM) to produce a never-ending stream of disinformation through, for example, TV programmes such as the C4 Snow Dispatches programme, in order to brainwash the public into believing State propaganda.

Sabbatical's over. You might be my 10,000th victim visitor.

It's great to be here, and to announce two great new progressive blogs: The Save The Ribble Blog is a campaigning blog - using blogging as a new technique in community activism to defend the local river from rapacious development plans that include building a barrage in our ecologically significant river, and building over 4000 houses on land that is both greenbelt and floodplain, and is currently used for farming, football, cricket and by allotment holders. My more personal blog is Humantide here I develop my ideas on a variety of subjects, all relating to the problems of being human in the 21st Century, in the context of social division, war, poverty and environmental destruction. Sav

An old saying in Stalinist eastern Europe about media propaganda went something like this: whatever the Government says believe the opposite and you won't be far wrong. When BBC television deliberately blacked out the annual CND anti-war march last week it added a typically English "if you don't like it, ignore it and hope it goes away" flavour to the encroaching practice of news censorship in vogue with the Corporation's apparatchiks.

Hello world.

My name is Paul, and I do most of my blogging on Brainshrub.com.

That's all I have to say for now.

French fries, freedom fries. French toast, freedom toast. Danish pastries, Roses of Mohammed pastries. It's all much of a muchness. Or--is it? Is freedom of speech WORTH all that (pardon my neologism) "FREEDOMINESS"?

More here.

I got this anonymous letter that I have to share with you>>>>I know, I accuse!*There follows a long list of email address of supposed journalists and elected representatives I have moved that list to the bottom of the letter.- Eugene Weixel;

This is an important story, and needs attention.   Any readers with blogs, and websites, please post about this, apparently some newspapers will be running with this story, according to the author we need to get more people to post and talk about this:

To summarise, very very briefly, Bill Saxon, a Dallax, Texas oil boss, and close friend of Bush got involved in a business venture, and assisted one half brother and his wife to steal a sawmill in Honduras from a man called Richard Nolan Thomas.

Richard's half brother, Gary, and his wife, Ollie, basically screwed Richard out of a whole load of money. 

Gary had apparently agreed to  approximately $7.8 million in notes for the mill. The letter also ensured that Saxon's $880,000 investment would be paid off first, with any remaining funds going to the other partners in the deal.

"Think for yourself. Question authority.

Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we're going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities: the political, the religious, the educational authorities, who have attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rule, regulations.

Informing, forming in our minds an inner view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to immerse yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness-- chaotic, confused vulnerability to which you owe yourself.

AN URGENT CALL TO THE GRASS ROOTS

Last December, a small but effectively organized group of individuals (Campaign Iran) succeeded in passing unanimously a resolution to commit the UK anti-war movement to campaign actively against the danger of any military intervention against Syria or Iran.

The venue was the International Peace Conference, organized by the UK Stop the War Coalition.

WHAT 'IRAN' IS REALLY ALL ABOUT

Threat of Nuclear War

Any intelligent, informed person will have realized by now that the sabre-rattling warmongers in Washington DC and 10 Downing Street are planning a military attack against Iran in the near future.

The Israelis are noisy enough in their threats to conduct an air-strike on Iran by the end of next March and since June 2005 US strategic forces have been prepared to launch an attack using not only conventional weapons but so-called 'tactical' nukes and nuclear 'city-busters'.

A fatwa for transsexuals
One woman's courage in appealing to the late Ayatollah Khomeini has made Tehran the unlikely sex
change capital of the world.

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By Robert Tait

After a bout with severe illness (and resulting hiatus as Coordinating Editor of P!), ddjango's back.

(My favorite blogger and marsupial...)

In addition to maintaining A Mockingbird's Medley and contributing in all too seldom fashion to the PBA (shame on me -- shame!), I'm also a guest blogger for skippy the bush kangaroo. I mention this because skippy is less than 12,000 hits away from the one million hit mark, he really wants it, and he truly deserves it. He's been posting from the left side of blogtopia (yes! Skippy coined that phrase!*) for three years now -- why not drop in and let a little love show? He'll be delighted if you do, believe me...

(*: for those of you who don't know, crediting skippy for coining "blogtopia" is half an unwritten rule, half a jab at bloggers who sit around in their pajamas staring at their computers, drinking coffee, and bitching about the state of the world, yet simultaneously believing that they're the only ones standing between Western civilization and utter ruin...)