It's not our freedom they hate

Author’s note: Wow! You’ve got to get up early in the morning if you are going to stay a relevant blogger. (I guess that’s why people always picture bloggers in their PJs.) So I had a blog started at the office, forgot to e-mail it to myself and now it’s irrelevant and I’ve got to start over.

I was going to avoid this until next month, but after the exchange over at THH (http://thehellhole.forumup.org/about414-thehellhole.html) and the release of Oliver Stone’s film (http://www.wtcmovie.com ) I guess now is as good as time as any to start touching on the subject.

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Yeah, let’s talk about 9/11 (or 11/9 for our Brit Pals – more than willing to make accommodations for you folks, you saved a lot of American bacon last week). Background: Mother was working in the financial services industry back in ’01 – mutual funds to be exact – and I was on a business trip and subsequently stranded for a couple of days. My boss at the time was one subway stop away from WTC and was one of those people you saw on CNN trying to outrun the cloud of debris caused by the towers’ collapse. The board members I was playing stenographer to in San Francisco were all lifelong New Yorkers who had spent their careers in the finance industry. Part of my regular job was to talk to people from the big brokerage houses in Manhattan, including some at WTC. The company had an office in Midtown Manhattan where a co-worker’s husband, who worked in Tower 1, was missing for 18 hours in the confusion, while the airborne scraps of lives cut short drifted over the river and into her front yard in Brooklyn. Financial Services is a small world; everybody knows everybody. Every aspect of our working lives was affected by 9/11, in addition to, just like the rest of the country, the very personal yet very collective experience of that day.

But here we are five very long or very short years later, and people, primarily media people looking for box office and/or ratings, want to have a look back. My initial reaction is “Back??? How on earth can you look back? We are still living it, still directly in the aftermath, the foaming blood-stained wake. How can you look back on events when they are still unfolding?” But in the new media with its never-ending news cycle, events must be pared down, and we are being forced to separate the events of the single infamous day from all the fallout, though it drifts down on us daily like some eerie, radioactive snow. And even so, I shrink from looking back to that day. This isn’t yet a scar that can be displayed after a few beers on a Saturday night. It isn’t even yet a scab that can be picked at to reveal bright pink layers of newly formed skin. To me, this is still one big, national, gaping, sucking, blood-spurting wound. As a nation we are hardly out of psychological intensive care where 9/11 is concerned. Yet the anniversary approaches and CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Oliver Stone, and probably the Home Shopping Channel, are demanding we explore everything from the jagged edges of torn flesh to deepest layers of shrapnel embedded in the tendon and muscle of our still recovering country.

And so, the first thought that comes to mind is the size, how really monumental the moment felt. There was no doubt that this was a moment of enormous human historic importance. Without consciously thinking it, I knew this was going to change everything. None of us in American who were live that day would be the same when we awoke tomorrow, given we were lucky enough to have a tomorrow. The second impression was how it seemed so incomprehensible. There was a disconnect from what we all knew and accepted to be true – that we were safe within our borders. True, only a few years before homegrown terrorists had blown up a building in Oklahoma City, but that single attack, followed by the quick identification and capture of the people responsible had, in some ways reinforced our feeling of invincibility. This was the act of local, homegrown whackos – 9/11 was, is, and remains, an act of war.

I can hear some people already, saying Mother, you old peacenik you! How can you say such a thing? You sound like that Shrub in the Whitehouse! Because, children, it’s true. I don’t think many of us realized then that war had been declared on us because the first strikes were distant – the USS Cole, the bombing of Embassies, the comparatively minor first attack on WTC. We didn’t see their importance. The media swept them away in what was then a 24-hour news cycle to be replaced by cloned sheep, Chuck & Di’s divorce, how Timmy was faring at Wimbledon. We didn’t know we were at war, but our enemies did. We had treated them like flies to be swatted at. We didn’t hear them except as a faint buzzing. We didn’t listen. We didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on in far-flung regions of the world. Now, we didn’t have to. Now, the war we didn’t know existed had been dropped on our doorstep. And afterwards, some might say even right up to this moment, Americans still didn’t understand who the enemy was, why the enemy hated us, where they were from, or what their history was, and so we are destined to remain in a war, and I’m not talking about the one in Iraq, neither side can win.

The third impression I’ll save for the moment and move to the fourth – shame. Too quickly, many in our nation moved from the shock and horror of the day to hatred. Not some new hatred of some new enemy. No, these were old hatreds being allowed to come out of the closet under the guise of patriotism. These were the days when most Americans didn’t know an Arab from a Persian or a Sunni from a Shiite. Sadly, what some people did know were “camel jockeys,” “towel heads” and worse. We couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map, but we were more than willing to blow the shit out of it. I remember the impatience of the American public – when are we going to start kicking ass? What’s taking Bush so long? I guess he’s made up for that lost time by now, hasn’t he? While what felt like a slight handful of us were asking for patience, were looking for alternatives to violence -- to stop the escalating cycle of violence begetting more violence before it could start -- most of America wanted instant retribution. Suddenly our neighbors couldn’t be trusted because they were dark-skinned, spoke with a foreign accent, didn’t wear the same clothes we wore. Certain businesses suddenly had far fewer customers. Where I live, a man was pulled from his vehicle and beaten, his assailants believing him to be from the Middle East. They only realized their mistake when their victim’s pleas for help were uttered in Spanish. He was recently arrived from Mexico, the country of his attackers’ parents and grandparents. The nation was spoiling for a fight. Something needed to get blown up and fast. Subsequently, we blew up Afghanistan, we blew up Iraq, we allowed Israel to blow up Lebanon and Gaza, and for some people, apparently all this is still not enough. And the enemy, the enemy whose war we could no longer ignore five years ago, that enemy continues to grow stronger and will eventually act again with the same boldness because we still don’t seem to understand who we are fighting or why. We still don’t listen. We still don’t learn.

But let’s go back to that third impression. Impression No. 3: The hope of that day. New Yorkers pulled together. Americans pulled together. From here in the United States it felt like the whole world pulled together. There was a website that displayed messages and images of support from everywhere, from tiny Greek Islands to the island-continent of Australia, from always friendly Canada to former enemy Russia, from trusted ally Britain to not-always-trusted China. That day, wandering San Francisco in search of an open restaurant, people were friendlier. They remembered the manners their parents had taught them. People were the people they always knew they could be if they tried, and they stayed those people for weeks afterwards. Americans had the goodwill of the world, and I’d say a majority of them deserved it in those first early hours of this new world we were going to have to live in from now on. So many people died, and those who survived will always carry with them the images of those lost. To this day, I honestly, truly believe there isn’t a single American who wants those deaths to be in vain – no matter what political stripe we wear, no matter if we are pro-war or anti-war, no matter where we live or what direction our lives have taken these past five years. We want for those that suffered so terribly that day to be able to rest their spirits knowing that somehow, at some point, their deaths will have meaning. I remember thinking at the time that this new dawn would grow to shed its light on a new era of peace; that people had at last realized that we are all connected, we are a global community, and the plight of one is the plight of all.

Five years on, with all that goodwill squandered by our government and the country bogged down in an ill-advised, poorly executed, downright shameful war, that thought would be almost comical if it weren’t for the tragic truth that we are all connected and the plight of one -- be it an Iraqi shopkeeper in Baghdad, an American exchange student in Beirut, a grandmother in Tel Aviv, a stockbroker in Manhattan, a working mom in Los Angeles, a musician in Great Britain, an economics major in Denmark, or a motorcycle-riding hell-raiser in Delaware – is the plight of all, but too many people are still years of bloodshed, hatred, ignorance, and intolerance away from realizing the truth of it.

Five years ago, I wasn’t a particularly political person. Five years later, I feel a moral obligation to voice my dissent with this government. Five years ago, this country was a place for freedom and optimism. Five years later, it is a place of unreasoning fear, stained to its soul by the shame of becoming too much like its enemies. Five years ago, I couldn’t believe what was happening. Five years later, I can’t believe it hasn’t happened again. Five years ago, I couldn’t conceive of an attack within the continental US. Five year later, the next time is only a matter of time. I hope that when we are finally able to have a real look back, say in 50 years, when the whole story of 9/11 has played out, in Afghanistan, in Britain, in Iran, in Iraq, in Israel, in Lebanon, in Pakistan, in Palestine, in Somalia, in Syria, and in the United States, that this oftentimes hopeless-looking situation we face has reached its conclusion because ultimately people recognized, rescued, and recovered the hope of that day. If so, that hope, that unity, that humanity becomes the lasting legacy of 9/11.

Just a Simple Question

Do you think there are more "Terrorists" now, in mid-to-late 2006, then there were pre-September 11th, 2001?

Ok! Here's the Pictures!

Late, I know, but I've been through too many time zones in too short a time to be held to deadlines.

Minimal commentary today, I'll let the pictures do the talking:

First is my favorite, my American family meeting my English Family (save for M'Lord Lurker who was have in Spain having a fabulous time). This would be the Natural History Museum in London providing the architectural backdrop.

Please note, the child is almost as tall as the midget student! :)








This handsome fellow is a Tower of London Raven. The little one took a special interest in the Tower Ravens, having read the story of the Ravens having special import to the continuation of England as a country. (The story goes that so long as there are ravens at the Tower there shall always be an England and if the ravens ever leave then England shall fall.) Of course, I like this one because it reminds me of my hairy/feathery friend from the Midwest. Either way, we are happy to report that the Tower Ravens are alive, healthy, and seem to have no interest in looking for a new home!


Okay, after a week of playing with this thing, this is the last photo -- the little one at Regent's Park.

Sorry, kids but the interface between the digi-camera software and Blogger is giving me fits. Obviously, this blogging thing will take some getting used to.

A temporary change of direction

Next week I'll be across the pond visiting friends, sharing London with the little one for the first time, and generally on vacation. It seems an odd time to be setting out on such a wonderful adventure given the events of the past week, but on the "home front" I promised the little one two years ago that she could make this trip with me, and I believe in my heart that we will be safe. So for the next week my contributions to this space will be a haven and refuge from the events of the outside world.

Meanwhile, to quickly address events in the Middle East, which are complex and far-reaching to be sure. Two unrelated thoughts have come to mind over the past couple of days that I really haven't seen discussed elsewhere. But one I think is truly important, the other is more "gut reaction" than anything else, but both, I think, will play a role in events as they unfold.

First, given the climate of fear and isolationism that has been cultivated in the US since 9/11, I am deeply worried that the actions of the Israeli government will produce a leap in Anti-Semitism here in the States. As willing as we have been to surrender our freedoms to allow the government to "keep us safe," I, sadly, would not be surprised to find that Americans start blaming Israel for our difficulties in the Middle East and, by extension, anyone who is Jewish. Israel is our ally, hopefully an ally we can reason with, an ally that will see the greater good in backing away from a crisis that is terrifying close to escalating into the kind of war many of us hoped to leave behind in the last century. But, however Israel responds it will be a decision of the Israeli government -- nothing Jews in America, Europe, or elsewhere in the world can control, anymore that Mother has the ability to control US policy. Just as all Muslims are not terrorists, all Jews are not militants. Let us judge people by the "content of their character," which is a good segue to my other thought.

This thought has been dwelling in my head for some time based on the US public's reaction or lack thereof to our continued presence in Iraq. Two-thirds of the American public now oppose the War in Iraq. A recent poll indicated that, by a three-to-one margin, voters are dissatisfied enough with our leadership to want to vote them out of power. That's a large group of unhappy people. Except....where the hell are they? Where are the protests? Where are the marches? Are we so afraid of our own government now that we worry about publicly denouncing its policies? Or is it something else?

The Iraq War invariably draws comparisons to Vietnam War, more so now than ever. There are, of course, many differences, but I want to focus on one: There is no draft. Could it possibly be that our '60s protesters, many now turning 60 themselves, were motivated more by self-preservation than ideology? Remember these are the same people that grew up to be the "Yuppie Scum" of the '80s, and are now...well, President Bush just celebrated his 60th birthday himself...that's right, they are now the people in power. A generation that has always been in love with itself, was always convinced of its own superiority, is now holding all the power. The generation that protested against the Vietnam War is running the Iraq War. Oh the irony! But there's no chance that it's their asses that are going to get shot this time, and there's no draft to call their sons and daughters away from their safe suburban lives, so they can go on watching "American Idol" and contain their outrage to the ballot box, maybe, if they remember to vote.

So, today's post is a little jumbled, a little mix of this and that, but tomorrow I'm catching a plane to that wonderful place from which I draw so much inspiration. Perhaps being part of the magnificent living, breath, pulsing organism that is London will recharge my ability to create a cohesive post.

Until we meet again, Peace to you all.

Stargazing from the gutter

The other night, the child and I watched a documentary on Cassini -- the unmanned spacecraft, not the designer – a joint project of the US and European space agencies, sent to study Saturn and Titan, one of the planet’s moons. Two years ago, we saw the first pictures coming back, awe-inspiring stuff that could give even the most hard-boiled among us a “gee whiz” moment. A project of nearly 20 years in the planning and execution, requiring international cooperation, applying the best minds to the multitude of complex problems involved in sending a man-made craft billions of miles from earth, Cassini is a triumph of human cooperation, imagination, and inspiration.

To see what Cassini is up to now:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

Meanwhile, back home on planet Earth…

We struggle along, seemingly unable to break out of the hamster wheel of limited thinking. Across nations, there are those who believe we – all the people of this planet – need a new direction, whether it is to bring basic human rights to all people, resolving the growing conflicts between developed nations and developing nations, or ensuring the survival of our planet for future generations. And some people are just plain tired of business as usual, the same rhetoric, the same stalemates, the same poses and postures from the political left and the political right. There are speeches, there are hearings, there are blue ribbon panels and political debate, but in the end we are no further along than when we started. And that isn’t just in America, or in the West, it is a stagnation that seems to have settled over many parts of the globe. In the midst of this, I hear people say, “We need a leader, we need a Kennedy, a Martin Luther King, a Nelson Mandela.” They sit on the sidelines, their frustration turning to apathy, and they wait for The Great Man who will lead us into a new era.

Here’s the kicker…The Great Man is a lie, or at least a greatly exaggerate myth. These men emerged as leaders from movements with very common beginnings. The movements were already there, built upon foundations laid by ordinary people who had the extraordinary courage to say “enough.” These people gathered together, knew what they wanted to accomplish, and with nothing but each other began the work of changing the world, their world, our world.

Think about those nameless, faceless people for a moment and what they had to the courage to envision – civil rights for black Americans, an end to apartheid in South Africa. How many times were they called crazy, told their vision was impossible, told the problem was too big and too complex, or that people would never change? Yet they kept going and from their numbers came the people who were able to carry their vision to the larger world.

The scientists behind Cassini faced countless technological challenges on their way to fulfilling their goal. They had to do things that had never been done, anticipate as many variables as they could, even when dealing with overwhelming unknowns. But their sense of mission and their passion for what they were and are doing compelled them forward, and the results have been a magnificent glimpse into our universe.

Are you looking over your shoulder for a savior? Like Bonnie Tyler, are you “holding out for a hero”? If so, you may as well fold up the tent now. Or you can stop waiting, get off the sidelines, and start charting your own course, embracing your own mission.*




*Need a starting place? Try this: http://www.one.org/

One More Take on July 7th

To be honest, had I not been asked to make some kind of personal statement about July 7th I would not have thought twice about it. The date has no personal connection with me. I could not tell you the “real” name of any one person who lives in England. The seventh of July means the same to me as the seventh of any month.

I read about it on the interweb. After the initial thoughts of sadness for all of humanity I was struck with the feeling of solidarity. A terrorist attack that was not directed at America. We are not alone. Nobody is safe, and yet, what can anybody do?

A radical extremist who decides to make a statement through suicide bombing is not a person who can ever be reasoned with, or affected by political/religious tolerance. Should the whole world have to change to pacify the especially violent and especially radical minority?

What could England have done in hindsight to change the course of events that lead up to the tube bombing? What could America have done to “prevent” 9/11? Probably nothing. The people that become terrorists are not, by definition, people who can be reasoned with, changed, or tolerated on the same level that 99% of the rest of the worlds population can be.

What can the average person do? I have no idea. The best thing I can think of is to teach communication, toleration, and acceptance. Accept that people are different. Accept that political views are different. Accept differences in religion.

Accept the very idea that what makes us all different is what makes us all special. Do not fear the differences, embrace the differences.

A dreamer's take on terror

I moved out of my parents’ house in the end of August 2001. This was when I slowly started watching the news on TV. I remember exactly what I was doing and where I was on September 11th 2001 when America was attacked. This was the first big thing I really followed on the news. After that terror has been in the news almost every day. And every day I care less. This is part of the world I live in. This was what concerned the world when I started watching the news and it almost seems normal to me.

When Mother wanted people to write about where they were on July 7th last year and something like that, I had to ask myself what happened then. London Bombings, 56 people dead and 700 injured. I can’t remember what I was doing, where I was and I doubt it has affected me. I’ve stopped seeing it as something to remember. This is the world we live in.

The thing I think we need to see is who did the attack one year ago. They were not raised in a country where religion was dominating. Three of them were born in England one in Jamaica. People raised in our society who have managed to find so much hate against it that they blew themselves up killing 56 people. If we didn’t see it before it should be clear to us now. Attacking other countries is not the way to deal with this problem.
When the US was attacked they had to respond. The world’s only superpower can not let such an action go unpunished. Most of the world was behind the US, when a French newspaper writes “We are all Americans” you know there is support and sympathy. How the US managed to throw that support away so fast and so completely is beyond my ability to understand. It takes skill.

The US responded by launching the war on terror, introducing the patriot act and invading different countries. None of which seems to have made the world any safer. What could England do? Their terrorist had lived there all their lives. What should they do? Invade their own country? What happened in England tells us this is a problem that can’t be solved with violence and it doesn’t help simply guarding yourself against it by stripping people of their liberties. What we need is understanding. Knowing your enemy so to speak. Labelling terrorists as evil or animals, isn’t going to help either. We need to see them as humans, humans who believe they are doing the right thing. We need to understand them and change it. We need to understand the society they come. And we need to do so without using any of the tools we condemn them for using. We also need to realise that we don’t always know what’s good for the world. We need to learn from them as well.

Instead of spending so much money on wars to insure peace, we might try using the money on more peaceful measures. Food and clean water in the countries without. Fighting poverty. Making sure that people around the world are given a chance to live lives worth living.

What we need to do is to realise that we are part of the problem and really look at ourselves.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Silence.

Remembering 7/7

Today, TCK the Blog reflects upon the events that unfolded in London one year ago

today. We invite you to join with us by posting your comments, your thoughts,

and your memories.

7 July, 2005

The Day
I woke up that morning, got some coffee, fired up the computer, stepped out to the patio for my morning cigarette, came back inside and sat down to see what the world had been doing while I was asleep and answer the morning mail. The headline leaped out of the screen and clutched at my chest with the force of a shotgun blast – Terrorists Bomb London Subway, Buses. Every other thought (including the sensible one to actually check my e-mail) left me. London had been bombed, the place that is My London in the way Los Angeles will never be My Los Angeles even though I’ve lived here my whole life. Then, a quiet, timorous voice in my head said one word…Billy (of course I was thinking in real names, but screen names have been substituted to protect the privacy of these individuals).

Billy’s in London. Where were the explosions?

Suddenly, the kinda vague-on-the-details reporting of AOL News was grossly insufficient.

Where, dammit!?!

I’m furiously pointing and clicking, the mouse controlled by shaking hands (reminder here, I should have checked e-mail first), over to the BBC, which understands London is no more a single coherent city than New York is, but a collection of neighborhoods, each different from the others…

…and there! At last! A map! Notting Hill, the home environs of one Billy Oblivion, appears to be out of harm’s way, but so many places are not. There’s King’s Cross. There’s Edgeware Road. Oh no! Liverpool Street…no! If KateCat or ChasCat were coming into London…I couldn’t finish that thought. I could barely breathe. The computer monitor blurred as tears welled in my eyes.

Finally, I did check my in-box. Of course, there was word from Billy, “Don’t go into a panic, I’m fine.” Oops. And so I spent the next day and half, sending and receiving messages consisting of “are you and yours ok?” “We’re fine, but we are still looking for Aunt Sally or Uncle Bob” and on it went. So many people were lucky that day, but many were not. Fifty-two innocent people died, 700 were injured, some in the most horrible ways imaginable. Those who escaped uninjured report they are still haunted by what they saw.

The Aftermath
It took me awhile to think about those people, especially the 52 who died, so great was my relief that no one I knew had been harmed. However, they were 52 individuals who deserve to be remembered. The BBC has a page on its website at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/05/london_blasts/victims/default.stm

that tells you a little something about each individual. I’m struck by their diversity -- different ages, races, backgrounds – all these different people were enemies, according to those to set off the bombs? This thought is made even scarier given that in the last year it has been established that the attackers were not “foreigners,” but instead “homegrown,” as much akin to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as Osama bin Laden.

I’ve read the profiles of most of these people in the past year, and I’d like to talk about one in particular. Colin Morley was killed at Edgeware Road. I know this place. I’ve stopped at Edgeware Road on the way to Billy’s flat and on other adventures. I never met Mr. Morley, but like the 51 other people, Mr. Morley did not deserve to die that day. I’m not singling him out because he is more deserving of remembrance than anyone else, but because had I never read about Colin Morley I wouldn’t be writing this and you wouldn’t be reading this. It was his story that resonated with me, his story that has stayed in my mind for the past year.

He used his brilliant communication skills to try to help charities and businesses understand their brand and, on a wider scale, he tried to change the world of media and marketing into a force for social good.
His latest project, called Be The Change, encourages people and organisations to find ways to improve ethically, socially, environmentally and personally. (From the BBC website)

Our Purpose:
To get the right people talking about the right issues
To cross fertilise ideas and experience
To change the way we think about issues that are not being solved at the current level of thinking
To explore the means of achieving effective systems change
To inspire us all to make it happen (From the Be The Change website at: http://www.bethechange.org.uk/)

The world needs more Colin Morleys. It could ill afford to lose this one -- anymore than it could afford the loss of the other people who died 7/7. He believed in making a difference. He believed in change, based on a wide variety of individuals working together. He shared that belief with others. Now, I share it with you today. I hope you share it with others.

Looking Back
In reflecting on events that day and immediately after, what I remember is the enduring strength and character of so many of our British friends. From Billy staying on at his office to answer phones so that everyone else could go home to the countless stories of people helping each other throughout that day -- whether it was rescuing the injured or sharing a taxi, Londoners did what they could. And they were not broken. These people who survived The Blitz and who survived IRA attacks, showed fierce determination and indomitable spirit by quietly going right on with their lives.

A year on now, through the filter of distance, I can look back on that day and see one unexpected way the world very quietly changed, and I think it’s worth mentioning. Through technology, people were striving to communicate to the world. Images came through, not the cameras of CNN, but from mobile phones. Information was being shared P-2-P -- on blogs, forums, and messageboards. Journalists couldn’t keep up with the speed of the internet. The news cycle became instantaneous, and regular people were controlling the content. It wasn’t objective nor was it detached. It was personal, meaningful, immediate, and direct. It was a sign of things to come.

Looking Ahead
A week after 7/7, the government encouraged a moment of silence as tribute to those who died, and today they are also asking for a moment of silence. I say, with all due respect to those who lost their lives and those who lost their loved ones, to hell with that. Silence is for the fearful. Silence is for the hopeless. Silence is the sound despair makes. Raise your voice today. Say loudly and firmly that the world is united against terror. Shout so it can be heard across oceans and continents that we remember and we are not afraid.

Coming Soon

Sadly, this month begins a series of sad anniversaries....7/7, Katrina, and 9/11. Where were you that day? What were you doing? How did it affect you? What are your feelings one year later? This Friday, I'll be putting together a 7/7 post, and you can add your contributions by "Commenting."

This is for everyone -- Londoners, Brits, Yanks, Canadians, Czechs, Danes -- everyone.

The main reason for creating this blog was to bring global viewpoints together -- to create an international roundtable, so to speak. This will be our first real experiment in that direction.

Please consider contributing, and feel free to link, e-mail, spam or otherwise share this experiment with others.

Thanks.

You Say You Want a Revolution...

Tomorrow, the United States celebrates high treason. Yea for those traitors to King and Country! Yea for the slave-owning rich white male power structure! Yea for solving political differences with war instead of diplomacy!

Ok, I got that off my chest, now to move onward…

Two hundred and few years ago, a bunch of radicals got together and decided they wanted a revolution (cue “Revolution #9”). To make their point, they signed a document that, given that there was no e-mail, no fax machine, no text messaging, wouldn’t reach Britain for weeks. Why we don’t celebrate Independence Day on the day King George actually received the declaration (August 10th), I don’t know – I guess that’s a tree falling in the forest question. But it’s July 4th (which is actually about a week after the very first declaration was signed, but I guess they found some typos, then they needed to make copies and there was no Kinko’s back then, ok, I’ll stop) and we’ll just pretend everyone in Britain knew that treachery was in our hearts and minds the moment John Hancock put pen to parchment. That document was an interesting little ditty. It begins like this:

When, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.

Isn’t that cool? It says people have a natural right to separate themselves from politic associations that no longer fit. It says this is a thing that sometimes happens and sometimes needs to happen. Take, for instance, the two-party, privately financed, election system we have in the United States. It says we have a natural right to separate from it.
A little farther down, it says this:

But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

This is the bit I really like, “it is their duty…to provide new Guards for their future Security.” Duty. Not choice, not decision. If the government is no longer serving the interests of the governed, there is a duty to create change. This isn’t me saying it, this is Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams, and 50 or so other guys you never really hear about, but whose necks would have stretched just as far had they lost. And do you realize what they aren’t saying? They aren’t saying “stay the course.” They don’t call change “cut and run.” [Sidenote – isn’t interesting how much more eloquent our leaders used to be?]

Okay, just one more tidbit before I leave everybody to their barbecue and beer. After the war, a lot of the same guys who perpetrated the treason, got back together and wrote some more stuff down. This they called The Constitution, and before the ink was even dry, they decided it needed a little extra “oomph.” Well, really there was a great deal of arguing from the new states about how much power they should really allow the new federal government, so for the next few years after they wrote the Constitution, they worked out the language on the real sticking points, and these became the Bill of Rights. Here’s No. 1 on the Bill of Rights Hit Parade:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

People have the right to disagree with the government! What were they thinking? Well, they were thinking how a federal government that exerted too much authority would become tyrannical and we would end up with another King George, another long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, and…Wow! These guys would have made a fortune in the 1-900 psychic phone line business!

So, to those would think Mother hates America and is very unpatriotic for disagreeing with American policies, I say have a safe and happy Fourth, but think about two things:

1) The two documents that best illustrate the ideals of this country say dissent is very patriotic.

2) I’ve actually taken the time to read them.


Special note to Moto: Try not to blow yourself up.

...Fear Itself

When I was a kid, every day in school we saluted the flag, said the pledge of allegience, and sang a patriotic song. That's how we started the school day, every day. We were taught that our country was the greatest on earth, built on the rule of law, on the principles of personal freedom, and the will and trust of an active participating citizenry. Freedom and democracy were responsibilities we all shared and these things combine made our country strong and different from every country that had come before. We were, we were taught, the good guys.

Of course, then came the revelations that Vietnam was not our shining moment and that our president was, well, a crook. But even then, those thing were anomalies. We may have made some mistakes, but we were still the good guys. And I believed that for a very long time.

But today, the US is a country that lies, that tortures, that spies on its citizens as well as its enemies, that ignores our global neighbors on issues of diplomacy and planetary survival. We do the things we used to accuse other nations of doing. And the protections of dissenting view points are being eroded daily. That marvelous document we learned about in school, our country's Constitution, with its Bill of Rights -- ideals so strongly held, we gave them a special name -- is either being gotten around or bandied about for pet causes to keep the ruling party in power. The Bill of Rights was established to protect our country from the tyranny of the majority (I believe Tocqueville coined the phrase -- go ahead google it up and see if he didn't have a point).

People say to me, "but Mother, things are different now." What's different? We were attacked by terrorists, yes, but if we are no longer the open, democratic society we have always claimed to be -- if we change the rules of the great experiment the founding fathers laid out -- then the terrorists have won. No matter how many people die in Iraq, whether our government ever brings bin Laden to justice, they've won and we've lost. Worst, it isn't the terrorists robbing us of our freedoms, trashing our ideals, making us feel ashamed to be Americans. It isn't the terrorists, it's our own government. The government manipulates our fears, plays on the feelings we all shared on that fall day nearly five years ago. If we don't give up our freedom, if we don't undermine our ideals, they tell us, then the terrorists will strike again. And if we voice our disagreement, then we are unpatriotic at best, and complicit with the terrorists at worst.

Chances are, American has not experienced its last terrorist attack. That we had escaped terrorism as long as we had was amazing. We can't go back to a time when we felt ourselves invincible. But we can go back to feeling proud of our country, we can go back to believing in the ideals and principles they taught us in the school room, all we have to do is stop being ruled by fear, and those who exploit that fear.

Choose to be the brave our country is supposed to be home to.

Choose to be the free our country is supposed to be the land of.

Mid-term elections are coming this fall.

Choose.

Choose to take our country back from fear.

Why Bother With Forums?

A funny thing happened to me just the other day. I was lurking about a motorcycle forum I’m a member of, and happened across a thread that was in the political discussion area. The title of the thread was “Murtha says U.S. poses top threat to world peace”.

Now I’ve been a member of this forum long enough to know that many of the members are seriously hard core, conservative, republicans so I typically stay out of the debating there. But in this thread I decided to step into the ring and see what was going on.

Much to my own surprise I think I became the “Silence” to their “Moto”. I was not just playing devil’s advocate either. I truly believe in everything I posted. The funny thing is that I think much of what I thought in regards to this thread had been directly influenced by Silence, Mother, and a few others in many of the conversations at forums closer to my heart.

So I guess that rather than simply killing time in a cyber sort of way, and endlessly seeking things to debate about, I am also learning to open my mind and thoughts to differing opinions.

I’m doing my best to try to see things from a perspective other than my own.

A more “worldly” perspective is what I seek.

You guys are contagious, influential, and appreciated.

A Welcome to Any Friends Stopping By

I'll be glued to the TV for the next couple of hours as England takes on Ecuador in the World Cup, but I wanted to welcome any of you who may have received an e-mail invitation to check out this site.

Everything is brand-new and still has the new-blog smell (ahhh!) but feel free to look around, click on linky things, comment, check under the hood, and so forth.

I hope I've provided enough of a framework for everyone to see how things work, and with luck a couple of you will be interested in participating. If you are, please let me know, or e-mail/comment/pm with your questions.

Off to cheer England (politely and without damaging anyone else) to victory!

The Blog | Arianna Huffington: Setting the Record Straight: On Trolls, Moles, and Dis-Invited Bloggers | The Huffington Post

The Blog Arianna Huffington: Setting the Record Straight: On Trolls, Moles, and Dis-Invited Bloggers The Huffington Post It seems like eventually every site in cyberspace has the same to dilemmas to deal with -- transparency and censorship.

These issues seem especially important to any left-leaning citizens of cyberspace. Internet savvy lefties like to have things out in the open and censorship makes their skin crawl. We've seen it on forums and messageboards for years now. And now the issues have come up in one of the most high profile sites in the blogosphere.

Transparency means, sure, let the staff post, let anyone post -- but if there's a connection that puts their post in context it should be disclosed. For instance, even though it's very meaningless, I will disclose that Dr. Rost keeps his personal blog on the same service that this blog is kept. There's no other connection between me and any other party to this controversy, but the disclosure is there for anyone who feels that might have significance. Historically on the HuffPo site, disclosures are made about relationships between bloggers and subjects (this person wrote a blurb for my book, we went to college together, we met once at a panel discussion, etc.). The disclosure is made, the discussion moves on, and no one feels hoodwinked. It's simple and straightforward and had the HuffPo employ disclosed, there wouldn't be have the problem there is.

Censorship, on the other hand, is the tougher nut to crack, for several reasons. First, there's no 1st Amendment guarantees on the web. The owner of the website is free to be as hands-off or heavy-handed as he or she likes regarding what's posted. And owners can be as subjective as they like, allowing some people to post whatever they like while banning others for seemingly trivial infractions or for no apparent reason at all. However, for the left, censorship carries certain negative connotations -- most namely the silencing of dissenting voices be it in books, newspapers, public speaking, or any other forum. If a website is going to court liberal, progressive, reform-minded readers, than the owner needs to think two, three or more times before silencing any voice -- popular or unpopular with the readership.

I'm sure Ms. Huffington never envisioned the aggravations of blog ownership, of facing the choice of blocking access to someone she invited to post at her site, or facing the consternation of readers who felt duped by her decision to let her staff post without disclosure and offended by the dismissal of one of the tamer voices at her site. Those of us who have organized and have been a part of web communities have seen it all too often.

My bottom line on this -- if you are going to have a blog that purports to represent the left, then you need to make extra efforts to ensure transparency and even more prepared to take the heat from the few for letting someone with a different voice speak, than the heat from many for cutting that voice off.

An update: After a few days of reader ire, the Huffington Post has changed policy and will no longer allow staff members to post negative comments on guests blogs. Personally, I think a policy of allowing them to post provided they identify themselves as staff members would have been more equitably, but I imagine after the drubbing, they just want to be rid of the problem.

Aljazeera.Net - Tell us what you think...

Aljazeera.Net - Tell us what you think...

You have to click the linky thing because, given the source, the topic is not what you'd expect, especially if you are a Yank.

After reviewing the results of the latest Pew Center survey, which shows the United States' popularity throughout the world sinking like a stone, one has to wonder what a difference it might make if we put a little more effort into this particular field.

No Home, Bad Rep, Big Heart - Los Angeles Times

No Home, Bad Rep, Big Heart - Los Angeles Times

I read this a couple of weeks ago, and when I did, I wish I had a blog to put it on. Now I do.

One of my favorite parts of this story follows:

There were other rescuers: Carter, the store manager, also ran toward the wreckage. So did Tony Koester, dressed in drag as a nun --a veil, a red-and-white miniskirt, fishnet stockings and platform pumps -- a get-up he wore as a member of a gay fundraising group, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

After the week we had in politics -- the anti-gay marriage amendment, the ongoing struggle with immigration legislation, and so forth -- I was reminded of this story again.

To me, it points out that "us" and "them" are fuzzy concepts. That gay man you want to keep from marrying his partner could be your savior. That immigrant you want to throw out of the country could be the one to save the life of your wife or child.

George Bush is meeting today with a group of people to find ways to resolve the quagmire of Iraq. If I could be there and have his attention for two minutes, I'd just say this -- we would have far fewer problems with we stopped talking about Americans, Iraqis, Cubans, Russians, etc., and started referring to ourselves as Earthlings, or simply humans if that's too silly.

It's one planet, and at any given moment, for the most improbable of reasons, one of "them" could be saving your life.

Gathering Highlights Power of the Blog - New York Times

Gathering Highlights Power of the Blog - New York Times

This is something else I can do with a blog more easily than cutting and pasting to the forum.

And now I feel like the blog has the NYT seal of approval!

Takin' this baby out for a little spin around the block

So this is the TCK Blog, a place, hopefully, where I can talk you guys into posting in a more expanding form. Who knows? We could end up actually having a point of view, or at least a point.

Why does mother want a blog? It's simple. For one thing, I can do this (the easily uploaded photo you see to the left). Expanding the universe simply and easily.

For another, sometimes I actually want to say something -- about the War in Iraq, about immigration, about our fragile little planet that really needs our help -- without risk of hijacking and without changing the whole tone of what goes on at TCK The Forum, which we need as much as we need anything else in this world. Maybe we don't have cute, fluffy little icons, maybe we are a little edgier than some people would like, but it's our place to let our hair down. So a blog can be where we occasionally put our hair back up.

Basically, it's a different option for those of us who don't fit -- and don't want to fit -- into the mainstream. It's another tool in the reportoire.

So hopefully, I won't be here blogging alone long. We can figure out how to add posters, add elements, do new things to keep building those bridges in a world that insists on borders.

Ok. I guess that's it for Post No. 1. Time to see where this adventure leads.