Dimensionally Barrett

Photo credit: United Nations Like so many, I’ve been attempting to process the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a friend of mine messaged me yesterday, “We have been suffering like this for forty years.” Not that our presence assuaged any of that suffering, but withdrawing they way we are certainly isn’t helping. I haven’t looked at polls to see how this is tracking with American citizens but I do understand that Republicans are pig-piling on Biden for the mess that this exit is. Frankly, in terms of the actual mechanics and operational aspects, I wouldn’t expect anything else. Our departure from Vietnam wasn’t exactly elegant. I would argue that this is far worse, though. For humanitarian reasons alone, leaving behind a country to deal with the Taliban and now, ISIS-K, is a horrible failure of policy and a miserable act of bad faith. We are not going to be able to grant everyone safe harbor or for that matter, a guarantee of safely making it out of the country. Releasing names ...

Graphic based on Abbott photo by Bob Daemmrich from Nexstar and from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Image Library It is ludicrous and tragic what we have come to in my birth state. I resist calling it my home state because I truly do not recognize how far down the ladder leadership has willfully descended and a sizable part of the electorate with it. And I can’t say I feel at home here. That the governor of Texas has taken several unconscionable moves to not just ignore the severity of the pandemic and jeopardize the lives of the citizenry (many of whom actually vote for him), but that he has actively demonized businesses and school districts that want to enforce mask wearing and is somehow attempting to enforce some fiat against those enterprises, defies credibility and calls into question (yet again) what this man is thinking. I use the terms lightly; “thinking” and even “man”. I am tempted to believe that anyone who cannot recognize the how badly people are suf...

I was mentioning to my pal Tim Kozlowski that I was unnerved by how fast Xi - and by extension - the Chinese Communist Party - is moving on broadening his and its influence in various areas of development. The most disturbing is how quickly the CCP is moving to eradicate the Uyghurs and increasingly wipe out Tibetan culture. Likewise, China’s incursions into Bhutan, Ladakh, and its on-going dick swinging in Arunachal Pradesh should prove of greater concern, not just to players in the region, but to the rest of the world. The use of economic clout to influence pro-China favoritism is also something of a growing concern, not because “China = Bad” but because the “CCP = totalitarian/authoritarian/untrustworthy and frankly, Bad”. This is mostly an introduction to the next post will take the form of an open letter to Xi Jinping in a few days. I’ll be on a retreat through Sunday, so it’s unlikely that will be up before then. Tim asked me in reply to an earlier email, if Xi was my biggest...

In the foreground is one of Sonny’s pieces. From Artists Beyond Boundaries Group Exhibit, 2017 Not that there is anything “usual” about these Myanmar updates, but if anything, this one is more personal. One of Myanmar’s great artists passed from this world from COVID. U Sonny Nyein was a great sculptor and a fine human being. I did not know him well, but I liked him and enjoyed our limited time together.   All of these updates are personal, though. Not that I might not have acknowledged the devastation afflicting Myanmar for less personal reasons, but the simple fact is that if you spend time with people in a country so warm and welcoming, especially artist peers and colleagues, this becomes family. I don’t really want to spend much time on the Tatmadaw. I don’t want to pay them any mind today nor do I particularly want to discuss COVID and how these twin disasters are laying waste to this beautiful country and its people.  I do want to offer support to my friends and the...

Source:  https://www.citizen.org/news/texas-and-the-cost-of-climate-change/ Living in one of the premier Red States is not a joy. Being vaccinated while knowing that the state is only at 41% of the population vaccinated is not comforting . The reason you need at least 70% of the populace is to reach that herd immunity that so many of the unvaccinated, gaslit, ill-informed, my freedom over your well-being, idiots tout.   I am weary from the state’s attack on  voting rights and their fervent desire to damage and damn my home state, to reduce it to a hellhole beyond the climatic one it is swift becoming (along with much of the western and southwestern states ). Shrugging shoulders at the latest stupidity issuing from Austin is a great work-out, but a useless political stance.  Sadly, it’s not just that Texas is red because of a sizable Republican population and voter turnout is often disappointing; there really is very much an intransigent sense of “going it ...

His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Chenrezig Institute, Eudlo, Queensland, Australia, June 2011. Photo by Bonnie Jenkins. Source:  https://fpmt.org/mandala/archives/mandala-issues-for-2011/october/remembering-the-kindness-of-his-holiness-the-dalai-lama-and-the-courageous-people-of-tibet/ On July 6, 1935, the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara emanated into a small village in Amdo, Tibet. The child was recognized as the fourteenth Dalai Lama and enthroned as the leader of Tibet on his turning fifteen years of age, three years ahead of schedule.   With no exposure to the geopolitics of the world at the time and an inquisitive and far-reaching mind, Tenzin Gyatso assumed the duties of a leader of a state that was on the precipice of destruction. Mao Zedong and the People’s Republic of China had already made overtures and incursions to “peacefully liberate” the Tibetan people and bring Tibet back into the Motherland. There are enough lies in that last sentence to choke ten ...