Re: Good post -- (and a query on The Scandal)

Good to hear from you, Jyri. (Jyri's post is attached at the end of this.)  Like yourself, I, too, am glad to be alive and well in Idaho.  You make a lot of friends in the Organizing business -- but you also, of course, make enemies as well.  The open foes are more easily combated than the shadowy and covert purveyors of defamation.  On the other hand, there have never been many enduring secrets, if any, in places like Mississippi -- so, in time, "things" do reach me.

My take on The Scandal?  Well, although the late JV Henry, a close friend and civil rights activist, used to cordially call me "the puritan of the civil rights movement," and although I readily agreed with the late Attorney Bill Kunstler when he remarked to me, in 1962 in Mississippi, "In this civil rights work, we have to be as pure as Caesar's wife," (Bill later became, for himself, a bit more flexible on that) -- I have never seen myself as a puritan-type.  I do personally  believe in observing marital vows and, as I've written in my Organizing "catechism":

"The Organizer should be relatively "pure" in the moral sense. But not
too pure -- because no one, anywhere, wants a sanctimonious conscience
hovering about. Set a good personal example. Do your recreational thing
away from the project. Wherever you are, avoid all drugs and go easy on
alcohol [if you are even into that sensitivity-dulling stuff.] Remember the
old labor adage: "You can't fight booze and the boss at the same time."
Always a special target, the organizer has to be aware of the consistent
danger of frame-ups." http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm

But I am not into moralizing and sanctimonious crusades -- and I have a libertarian  dimension when it comes to individuals and their personal affairs.

So those "morality" issues, in themselves, aren't of great concern to me.  I agree that it doesn't help the already clouded image of the United States.  But probably many people feel that a personalized transposition of the old saw, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," would be essentially applicable.

On the other hand, if national security has been actually compromised and/or if there have been "cover-ups" in higher echelons, it would become an entirely different kind of mess and one with possible, even likely, criminal and political connotations.  That could be extremely interesting.

Take care, amigo, and all best.  Hunter (Hunter Bear)

From: Jyri 
  To: [email protected] 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 9:00 AM
  Subject: Good post


  Hunter, 
  Along with a few other people, I’m also glad to hear that Dr. John Salter is alive and well in Idaho... Good piece.
  What’s your take on the Petraeus farce?  The  story of the shirtless FBI agent sending pictures of himself to the other lady involved in whatever she was involved in is just a bit too much. Lord knows there are scandals everywhere, but I think colleagues at Britain’s MI5, France’s DGSE and Russia’s FSB, not to mention former East German Stasi are probably laughing their heads off right now. Not exactly a good way to run a security organization, or to investigate one.  Seriously, not too good for the US.
  Best,
  Jyri

  . 
  HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
  Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
  Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
  www.hunterbear.org 
  (much social justice material)

  Key pieces from our big Jackson Mississippi Movement 
  scrapbook.  Three consecutive and full pages beginning with
  this Link:  http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm
  See my personal reflections on Medgar Evers:
  http://hunterbear.org/medgar_w.htm

  The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
  http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
  (Expanded, and with more photos in Fall 2012. Material on our Native
  background.)  And see Personal Background Narrative: 
  http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm  (Updated into 2012) 

  For the new (11/2011) and expanded/updated
  edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
  with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
  the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement
  of 1962-63:  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm