“As soon as strong initiative is taken to change our nature toward refinement, a new inner process begins to take place. The forces of positive accomplishment from each of our past lives begin to manifest in this one. These good deeds are vibrations in the ether substance of our memory patterns, because each of us, right now, is a sum total of all previous experience.”

-Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

I know we have all had it up to here with the Iraq war, but when I saw this article (“War Costs and Costs and Costs” by Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz) on GlobalResearch.ca today, it made me stop and think about it again in a new way.

“The Bush administration said the war would cost $50bn. The US now spends that amount in Iraq every three months. To put that number in context: for one-sixth of the cost of the war, the US could put its social security system on a sound footing for more than a half-century, without cutting benefits or raising contributions…

The war has had only two winners: oil companies and defense contractors. The stock price of Halliburton, vice-president Dick Cheney's old company, has soared. But even as the government turned increasingly to contractors, it reduced its oversight…

The largest cost of this mismanaged war has been borne by Iraq. Half of Iraq's doctors have been killed or have left the country, unemployment stands at 25%, and, five years after the war's start, Baghdad still has less than eight hours of electricity a day. Out of Iraq's total population of around 28 million, 4 million are displaced and 2 million have fled the country.

The thousands of violent deaths have inured most westerners to what is going on: a bomb blast that kills 25 hardly seems newsworthy anymore. But statistical studies of death rates before and after the invasion tell some of the grim reality. They suggest additional deaths from a low of around 450,000 in the first 40 months of the war (150,000 of them violent deaths) to 600,000.

With so many people in Iraq suffering so much in so many ways, it may seem callous to discuss the economic costs. And it may seem particularly self-absorbed to focus on the economic costs to America, which embarked on this war in violation of international law. But the economic costs are enormous, and they go well beyond budgetary outlays.

Americans like to say that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Nor is there such a thing as a free war. The US - and the world - will be paying the price for decades to come.”

I'm not sure where I found this mandala, but I'm feeling it big time. Something about it just reaches out and grabs me. Hope you dig it, too.