Tannishblog

There’s so much suffering these days. Every day one can find a new worthy cause begging for funds or for time, two of the most valuable commodities for most of us. There are almost as many groups trying to better the world, one issue at a time, as there are problems. Any person of average compassion can find a cause to call her own.

Even my hardened, black heart has an issue near-and-dear to me: The systematic, state-sanctioned murder of the Alaskan wolf population. The theory is that the wolves are over breeding in comparison to the natural prey in the area. The truth is that if any species is over populating, it is humans. Whose going to bring down our numbers by systematic slaughter? Oh, right, we’re doing that already. I digress…

Picture, if you will, a low flying small plane skimming the treetops in search of wolves. In the back are a couple of "hunters," barrels pointing out either side of the craft. Once found, the wolf is harassed into running by a near miss, then the pilot follows the fleeing canine until one of two things occur: the wolf staggers in exhaustion and is shot, or the wolf is shot while still running. How challenging is this for those "hunters"? Such behavior is both ignoble and cowardly, typical of the degeneration of human moral structures.

Some might argue this is sport. It is, after all, legal to "hunt" this way. This is no more sport than pumping quarters into a NASCAR simulator and testing the virtual asphalt. This is no more sport than blasting carnivorous aliens in the latest Half Life episode. Besides, it has all the moral qualities of intentionally shooting children in a war zone.

Please take a minute to sign a petition in defense of the wildlife. If you have a bit more time, consider writing a check for the good people trying to save one of the noblest species known to man. I say noble, because it’s a fair bet they wouldn’t choose to kill anything in such a craven manor as we do to them.

Via Digg.com, by way of the Huffington Post, Marty Kaplan shows us all How to Hack a Diebold Voting Machine. This is so beautiful in its simplicity that literally anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of computers can do this. Whether your flash drive has any data on it or not, to so easily override election data is amazing considering how important the information is to the nation.

One half of my brain starts thinking of conspiracy theories, but the other contends that our administration, as a whole, is not that subtle, nor as tech-savvy. Besides, any corporation actually trying to create a voting system with any integrity would have a tough time passing the notion off to congress. The time it would take to explain the safeguards would slow lawmaking to a standstill not unlike a filibuster. These guys just don't get it!

Pass me a pencil…

As reported in The Independent:

Another Miserable Milestone for Bush’s War

A miserable milestone was passed the other day. America’s (and Britain’s) disastrous war in Iraq has now lasted longer than the US involvement in the Second World War. Yes, this conflict has outlasted a war that ended with total victory over Nazi Germany. Hitler declared war on the US on 11 December 1941. Exactly 1,244 days later, on 7 May 1945, Germany surrendered. The US invaded Iraq on 19 March 2003, and this weekend it is 1,267 days later, with no end in sight.

Sticklers among you will have noted that the interval between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrender on 2 September, 1945 was 1,364 days. But even that record will tumble at the start of December. And if you do measure Iraq against the longer American war with Japan, the contrast is even starker. Victory in the Pacific was even more conclusive than in Europe. It produced no post-war entanglement with the Soviets and no Berlin airlift. The Iraq war unfolded the other way round: Baghdad fell barely three weeks after the invasion. Since then, however, it’s been downhill all the way.

[…]

(I)f you start a war that lasts as long as the Second World War, you’d better have something to show for it. George Bush does not.

Truth hurts, don’t it?

Via the Democracy for Illinois newsletter, I find a video every American must see: Votergate - The Movie. I also discover the blog Get In Their Face which scopes out the Republican agenda of deceit, corruption and cronyism which has characterized our electorate since the turn of the century.

Share this clip with your friends. Even if they’re die-hard backers of our tyranny, they should be offered the seeds of doubt. Perhaps they’ll grow - with all the BS they’re being fed, their minds should be fertile enough.

Watching the video, I’m stuck by one thing: Basing a "mission critical" software package on Microsoft Windows is a fool’s mission. Nothing can be more critical than the tabulation of our votes. To put such data on an insecure platform is ludicrous. Windows has proven for over fifteen years it’s lack of security - a whole industry of virus protection and spyware detection has sprung from that fact. At the very least, a UNIX clone would be acceptable for the tabulation of our nation’s most important data.

Despite the technical aspects, I can’t believe our leaders are so removed from reality as to believe the salesmanship of companies like Diebold. Can anyone believe that any publicly-traded organization has any motives beyond turning a profit? Certainly, the sanctity of America’s voting rights, the security or accuracy of information is not a requisite. "Buyer’s remorse" just doesn’t say it. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s time we eliminate a professional political caste in this country.

It’s a beautiful morning - sunny, warm instead of hot, a bit hazy, quiet. Through the picture window I see some leaves edged in brown; I welcome the thought of Autumn. I grab a coffee and sit in my armchair, laptop ready, hearing the crickets in the forsythia bush outside the window.

Today’s news is warmed-over, almost like the world is holding it’s breath or sleeping in like my family is this morning. Either trying to catch a few more moments of blessed sleep or waiting for the next big story to hit. My bookmarks are a mess. I begin organizing them and stumble across a link I’ve not visited in a while: Baghdad Burning. One click and I’m in another world. I catch up on the last few post by Riverbend. I feel her despair, applaud her spirit, cheer her bravery. I’m grateful for the Internet as an uncensored conduit of information human’s need to hear,  pondering the irony of how tools of empirical Capitalism work to expose atrocities committed for the sake of greed and gain.

Words leap from the page:

(On the Lebannon war)
And the world wonders how ‘terrorists’ are created! A 15-year-old Lebanese girl lost five of her siblings and her parents and home in the Qana bombing… Ehud Olmert might as well kill her now because if he thinks she’s going to grow up with anything but hate in her heart towards him and everything he represents, then he’s delusional.

[…]

(On the Haditha rape-and-slaughter)
It’s like Baghdad is no longer one city, it’s a dozen different smaller cities each infected with its own form of violence. It’s gotten so that I dread sleeping because the morning always brings so much bad news. The television shows the images and the radio stations broadcast it. The newspapers show images of corpses and angry words jump out at you from their pages, "civil war… death… killing… bombing… rape…"

Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it’s not really the latest- it’s just the one that’s being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don’t report rapes here, they avenge them. We’ve been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can’t believe their ‘heroes’ are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?

In the news they’re estimating her age to be around 24, but Iraqis from the area say she was only 14. Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes… Raise your heads high supporters of the ‘liberation’ - your troops have made you proud today. I don’t believe the troops should be tried in American courts. I believe they should be handed over to the people in the area and only then will justice be properly served. And our ass of a PM, Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an ‘independent investigation’, ensconced safely in his American guarded compound because it wasn’t his daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands of furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.

It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It’s been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can’t bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can’t bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can’t bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can’t bring myself to care because it’s difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they’ll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?

Now, the sublime sunlight is strained. I get more coffee and glance at the newspaper open to an almost-finished crossword. The facing page celebrates a local theatre’s upcoming program of music, dance and comedy revues. It’s surreal. Am I on the same planet as Riverbend? Certainly mine is a different world. As I breath the welcome weekend breeze, resting up from another five-day episode of sweat, toil and backache that barely keeps the family fed, I read what others must live through so I can have the privilege of driving to work.

Oil fuels my world; oil is bought with blood. Therefore, oil is blood. We gather the blood of innocents and burn it for electricity, for logistics, for gasoline. Because of death, I can type on my computer, drive to the store and ogle the latest consumer gadgetry. My food is brought to me by blood-burning trucks; my home is cooled by generators fueled by blood; my comfort is assured by the blood of others.

The sun is not-so-bright, now. The haze outside a sign of pollution, not moisture. The weatherman says it might get up to 92 degrees today - the average temperature of fresh blood. Surreal.

Anyone who looks out from his or her sanctuary occasionally can see our world is full of hate in all it’s manifestations. I sometimes think the negativity, the aggression is getting worse as we age, but it could be that I’m just paying more attention. As a child, one is blessed with ignorance of worldly affairs and politics, perhaps with reason. As one ages, the nastiness of our world encroaches. By the teen years, one makes a conscious decision either to become involved in bettering our world or to look away.

I took the second path. I believe many teens today do the same for the same reason: it’s easier to ignore than to battle global insanity, easier to focus on ourselves than on others. It is possible to live most of one’s live in self-imposed ignorance. Eventually, I believe, one necessarily must become involved. For me, it took a convergence of two factors: raising a child (something I used to be adamant against) and George W. Bush.

No joke. Until the 2000 election cycle, I never bothered to vote. I’m not proud of it, but there it is; I still clung to my aversion of global affairs and the habit of ignorance right into middle-age. Then I saw GWB’s infamous smirk for the first time, and something snapped inside my head. I hated this man more than I hated politics. He must not be president, I thought. I signed on to vote.

There’s another lesson in that, perhaps better saved for another day.

This story brings us to today’s Zen posting about how to see through all the negative expressions of this world to its core of goodness and love, as is taught in Buddhist traditions. First, we must realize what we are fed by media is a lopsided picture of our world. So much is edited out for the sake of sales and profit. Little is heard about compassionate acts and heroic expressions of charity. If one embroils oneself in headlines, the world indeed looks un-savable.

From a book by HH the Dalai Lama, Live in a Better Way, a compilation of his words from several interviews and teachings, comes a query on this topic presented in question-and-answer format:

How can one continue to believe in inherent human goodness when one sees the suffering man inflicts on his fellow man?

If you take a wider perspective, all human beings as a people have survived due to the care of their mother or a mother figure for whom they have cared and have compassionate feelings. Without mutual care, compassion and feeling, one cannot survive. The survival of 5.7 billion people is proof of this fact. Another reason is our human body: negative emotions are very bad for health. Positive emotions or peace of mind are a positive influence on this body. This is the basis of my belief. This does not mean that we have no negative aspects to our nature. I think another explanation is that the most effective way to change others’ minds is with affection, and not anger. It is very difficult to survive without compassionate feeling. Without anger, not only is survival easier, life itself is much happier. However, without affection, one cannot survive. Therefore, I feel that affection is the dominant force in our lives.

How refreshing! As tough as it may seem, to keep this attitude in mind as you interact with whomever you come in contact, the concept proves itself. Simply by maintaining an open, respectful stance with coworkers, cashiers, other drivers, whomever, stress and negativity subsides. People act differently toward you, and life generally smoothes out. Try it. As the Buddha says: Don’t take my word for it.

There’s a silent battle on your computer screen. So much effort is being allocated to a single court ruling, so many opposing opinions, a poor fool like me can’t hope to find reality.

This week Blogtopia is divided (as usual) over the ruling of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor against the NSA goings-on. While the left is pumping fists in the air, perhaps prematurely, the right is on smear-campaign war-footing, as usual. My Righty-blogger friend, Leucanthemum, who also write for her town paper, tries to undermine the judgment against the NSA by playing it off as a childish whim. She points to a few like-minded "experts" to fuel her argument. One, the Volokh Cabal, makes extensive use of a posting by Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who writes a great deal to prove his point. He’s a professor, alright. After a ten-page soliloquy, he ends with:

Conclusion. Anyway, that’s my tentative take; I hope it’s helpful. It’s entirely possible that I goofed the analysis somewhere along the way; FISA, the AUMF, and Article II aren’t my area of expertise, so we should consider this post a work in progress. I look forward to comments — civil and respectful, please.

Another link points to a NY Times article (I didn’t know she reads such trash) also dissing the embattled Michigan judge, wherein Mr. Kerr is quoted again. The author, Ann Althouse, is another professor of law who, give Mr. Kerr more credentials that he is willing to admit to himself. Her point is the transparency of Judge Taylor’s bias within her ruling. Hmm, I’ve heard this before…

To further heat up the bile against her on the right, Gateway Pundit makes sure to mention her connection to Jimmy Carter. Surely a liability in the eyes of  all repugnants. Further, he posts a picture of the good Judge to inform (subtly, I think not) the masses of exurbian xenophobes that she’s black while mentioning how she ruled in favor of the case, brought before her by the ACLU. To further aid the aforementioned masses, who may or may not have the patience to read while a good program is waiting on the tube, he emboldens a few choice lines to hammer his bias home.

Meanwhile, on the left of the spectrum, Glenn Greenwald has several interesting counters to the self-Righteous character assassins. Unfortunately for the Pundit, Glenn has serious street credentials. First, a primer on Polite Washington Discourse, and why the good Judge shattered them. Next, he posits Two Critical Under-recognized Points about Judge Taylor’s ruling. and , yep, the critics missed pointing them out. Then he Grades the Law Professors, and expects that apologies are due. I hope he won’t hold his breath. Finally, he berates the same NY Times article my friend found so credible.

I’d find more if I bothered, but why? Mr. Greenwald does such a good job holding up the left all by himself; few others could add more. the sheer volume of verbiage in the subject would keep me awake until New Years.

My point is so much is being said, mostly by hacks and ignoramuses (I’ll let you sort out who is whom) disguised as fact-writ-large, that the majority of us, who have an interest in this debate and no previous knowledge of the intricacies of the matter, cannot hope to gain anything useful. Is there anyone in America alive today who will not be affected by such a momentous decision? Even the young, who don’t like to think about our twisted politics, will have to live with the consequences of the Bush administration for decades. Just as we are all still paying out for previous administrations, left or right.

In an attempt to enlighten, the blogosphere obscures. So many voices, all whom are so sure of themselves, so full of themselves, who look so professional in their blog-templated finery. Because bloggers all love to string words together, and because they all believe themselves the only rational voice in Blogtopia, the uninitiated, the unwary and the under-informed are often victims of assumed credibility. The result is, of course, that a reader can only make time to read what is agreeable. As for sifting for the truth - what’s a soul to think?

Christian conservatives are getting their knickers in a twist over *gasp* hotel porn. CNN notes a gathering of 13 groups, including the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, are asking their buddies in the Justice Department to "look into" hotel video services to se if they violate federal and state obscenity laws.

I can almost hear the phone call: "We got you your jobs, now go to work. We want you to get rid of filthy pornography so we don’t have to worry about what our kids are watching in the hotel rooms while we’re downstairs getting drunk and gambling."

Ahhh… There’s no substitute for applied parenting…

My daughter is almost 16. She has already gone through three regimens of "health" courses masquerading as "hygiene" or some such, which deal primarily with human reproductive systems: sixth grade; eighth grade; and ninth grade. By now, I’m sure she knows how things fit together. She won’t need to ask us anything, public schools have done it all. That’s what our tax dollars are for. Nevermind that we’re the strange sort of parents who wouldn’t be embarrassed to discuss avians and insects with her… like I said, we’re strange…

For the rest, especially  for the sexually repressed, uptight and paranoid parents who cannot handle procreative topics, it is better to legislate them into our schools and out of our vacation spots. Better yet to avoid the subject altogether. Then we can finish turning our children into neurotic messes when they find out about pregnancy accidentally and the parental hammer falls on them. It sure beats a warm, family discussion about just how they got here in the first place.

Oh, yeah… storks. Right.

These days such a title could mean anything, from US-Iraq "relations" to Arab-Jew hostility, from Chinese-American economic tussles to German cyber attacks on neo-Nazi sites. This post deals with a hidden culture within the US, and it’s history of repression and ostracism by our protestant underpinnings of denied prurience.

In Salt Lake City, children of stable, polygamist families speak out in favor of their upbringing. while only a tiny minority of Utah’s - some 250 supporters came to City Hall - they have the right to speak out against a history of human rights abuses, losses of freedoms, and intolerance. They suffer these indignities at the hands of a Christian majority pathologically incapable of a healthy respect for human procreation. They can’t talk to their children about it; they deny their teenagers to explore their sexuality; they refuse to let others choose a lifestyle that differs from the perceived norm; they can’t even talk to their spouses about their own desires. Christian attitudes toward sexuality is an illness in itself.

Today’s youth, expressing themselves in a truly Democratic fashion, are challenging authority unlike anything seen since the 1960’s. This is perhaps as replay of the upheaval of the Boomers, a continuation on a smaller scale of social progression and cultural maturity, kick-started then abandoned by the teens of the sixties in favor of profits and creature comforts.

What is wrong with Polygamy? I neither endorse nor condemn the practice. If consenting adults agree to such an arrangement, so be it. A stable family is a happy family. Any resulting children, if raised in openness and awareness of its surroundings, will thrive and be capable of making healthy lifestyle choices of their own.

Have there been unbecoming behavior associated with polygamy? Yes, but any other lifestyle can claim its own collection of tyrants. What the Christian majority has proselytized against is no more evil than bouts of ethnic cleansing that allowed Mormons to settle in Utah in the first place. Didn’t Jesus say: "He without sin may cast the first stone"? Something like that.

Just a few of many word spoken by the man most revered by Christians worldwide that are ignored in modern life.

A poor black man in a rented van, during an extensive police chase, crashed into a car filled with affluent, white suburban teens in Wheeling, IL., killing one. the driver of the van is now indicted for murder along with several other charges. His trail and sentencing is likely to be swift, partly because of the details of the incident and partly because he is black.

I know. It’s just not politic to point this out. We cannot acknowledge our latent racism, or our history of slavery and segregation outside the sterile confines of the classroom. We must remain in denial about how our concepts of race factor into all of our interactions between blacks and whites in America. But, as is sung in the Broadway musical Avenue Q, "Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist".

As I see it, the harm from racism comes from our denial of it. I hurts everyone. White are forever shadowed by a specter of the Master Race ethos. Blacks, in turn, suffer from the stigmata of oppression with its attendant  - and also unacknowledged - low cultural self-esteem. This poor cultural image gives rise to urban black’s insistence on creating a unique mark on American culture, thereby giving themselves credibility they don’t feel they already have.

This feeling is as unfortunate as it is false. Already, many black men and women have made substantial positive impacts on American society, without which we wouldn’t be the nation we are today. Many more will emerge. Too slowly perhaps are curricula changing to celebrate the vast legacy of black Americans, but it is happening.

Whites, meanwhile, still cling to the illusion of lordship. This too still plays out in our education system. While immigration continues in our "melting pot" of a nation, bringing people from non-European countries, white Americans - especially those who have chosen to distance themselves from diverse neighborhoods - are becoming edgy. They feel encroached upon. As my work friend and red-stater said yesterday, "Mexico is invading." He worries needlessly about the state of the union. I see it as making America stronger, and perhaps more importantly, more representative of the global community. Such a melange of cultural viewpoints may temper our latent racism by forcing people to learn to live with differences instead of arming themselves against them. That would really be the spreading of Democracy.

Meanwhile if impoverished inner-city blacks continue to cause havoc, stereotypes will prevail in media and in the justice department. The Wheeling tragedy is sad, all the more so because it was avoidable. Not by the police, perhaps (who are being sued by the family of the victim in what I see as a shameless ploy to profit from their tragedy by trading the life of their son for possible financial gain), but by common sense among communities and an outreach between cultures. Fist, however, we must admit our racial biases before any progress is made.