Random Ramblings

May there be good will toward all mankind.
May there be peace in every corner of the world.

May you still have faith and believe in the good of all people.
That's the meaning of Santa, his spirit is for all ages.
He lives on in my heart, I still believe.

Have a Happy Holidays as we bid farewell to 2004
and usher in a promising New Year.

Love you all,
Gloria

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"It may seem stupid to write so much about Iraq in this space.

Most of you agree with me that this is an unwarranted, illegal, bordering-on-genocidal war that needs to end ASAP.

Those who don't won't be convinced by anything I write.

So why bang on?

I've just read a book called At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace. It's a memoir by Claude Anshin Thomas. At 17, he enlisted in the Amy and volunteered for service in Vietnam. His commanders told him he was bringing peace, but what he mostly did is kill:

...nearly every day that I was in Vietnam I was in combat. One of the many decorations I received was the Air Medal. To get an air medal, you must fly 25 combat missions and 25 combat hours. By the end of my tour, I had been awarded more than 25 air medals. That amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of 625 combat hours and combat missions. All of those combat missions killed people....by the time I was first injured in combat (two or three months into my tour), I had already been responsible for the deaths of several hundred people.

When he came home, Thomas was still driven by rage. He joined the anti-war movement. He took drugs. He drank. He wanted to die. Then he cleaned up. But he was still tormented. Fortunately, he was invited to a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh. Odd, he thought--my countrymen reject me, and yet this Vietnamese accepts me.

When Thich Nhat Hanh entered the room, Claude Thomas began to cry. 'I realized for the first time that I didn't know the Vietnamese in any way than as my enemy, and this man wasn't my enemy.'

The first great lesson of this book is something Thich Nhat Hanh tells the veterans: 'You are the light at the tip of the candle. You burn hot and bright. You understand deeply the nature of suffering.'

And then--and this is the part that has had me reeling for weeks--Thich Nhat Hanh goes on:

He told us that the nonveterans were more responsible for the war than the veterans. That because of the interconnectedness of all things, there is no escape from responsibility. That those who think they aren't responsible are the most responsible.

Consider that: 'Those who think they aren't responsible are the MOST responsible.'

That's every minister who presides over a service without mentioning Iraq. Every shopper who's 'in the holiday spirit' and doesn't want to be brought down by death and dying. Every parent who fails to talk about Iraq with the kids.

That's you. And you. And you. And, sometimes, me. And that is why--even if I'm just touching base with the choir--I need to talk about this stinking war until, finally, we get it to stop."

Jesse Kornbluth just echoed what I posted yesterday regarding taking responsibility for our actions/inactions/reactions as consumers. We are all participating in this global community. What we do and don't do affect another situation/person somewhere else. Once we lose that connectivity, we lose our personhood or humanness. No (wo)man is it's own island. (via FmH)

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There is no such thing as a right war or a just war. War is war no matter how you slice it, debate it. A life is lost, atrocity is committed.

This is what you won't see in the paper.

This is what you won't see on CNN or on MSNBC or CBS News or on any major media Web site anywhere and especially no goddamn way ever in hell will you see it within a thousand miles of Fox News.

You aren't supposed to see. You aren't supposed to know. You are to remain ignorant and shielded, and, if you're like most Americans, you have been very carefully conditioned to think Bush's nasty Iraq war is merely this ugly little firecracker-like thing happening way, way over there, carefully orchestrated and somewhat messy and maybe a little bloody but mostly still patriotic and good and necessary and sponsored by none other than God his own angry Republican self...

Funny thing is, many right-wing neocons consider the act of displaying such pictures unpatriotic, even traitorous. As if revealing the true horrors of war somehow disrespects our long-suffering soldiers, somehow harms them by depicting the full violence of what they must endure for Bush's snide and viciously isolationist policies. You think soldiers don't want the folks back home to know what they have to deal with? You think they want you numb to the truth of war and pain and death? Guess again.

Maybe this should be the rule: If you can't handle seeing what really goes on in a war, maybe you don't deserve to support it. If you can't stomach the truths of what our soldiers are doing and how brutally and bloodily they're dying and in just what manner they have to kill those innocent Iraqi civilians in the name of BushCo's desperate lurch toward greed and power and Iraqi oil fields and empire, maybe you don't have the right to stick that little flag on your oil-sucking SUV. Clear enough? Read more...

I've seen plenty of those gas-sucking SUV zipping around town and speeding up and down the interstate proudly displayed the USA flag and "I support our troops" bumper sticker. Those people just simply do not get what this war is sbout. And when they start to complain about the rising fuel price, they do not get any sympathy from me. They had a choice when they made a purchase for the car. They made the mistake of not being a conscious consumer, a responsible citizen of this world, which I strongly believe is the least we all can do to affect change from the most basic level. Vote with your dollars, it will speak louder than words sometimes. Oh, and all those gas-sucking SUV that proudly display "Keep Tahoe Blue" simply does not get it also. It's the CO2 emmision and the exhaust run-offs from your polluting unnecessary behemoth, stupid!

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In this heady age of rapid technological change, we all struggle to maintain our bearings. The developments that unfold each day in communications and computing can be thrilling and disorienting. One understandable reaction is to wonder: Are these changes good or bad? Should we welcome or fear them?

The answer is both. Technology is making life more convenient and enjoyable, and many of us healthier, wealthier, and wiser. But it is also affecting work, family, and the economy in unpredictable ways, introducing new forms of tension and distraction, and posing new threats to the cohesion of our physical communities.

Despite the complicated and often contradictory implications of technology, the conventional wisdom is woefully simplistic. Pundits, politicians, and self-appointed visionaries do us a disservice when they try to reduce these complexities to breathless tales of either high-tech doom or cyber-elation. Such polarized thinking leads to dashed hopes and unnecessary anxiety, and prevents us from understanding our own culture.

Over the past few years, even as the debate over technology has been dominated by the louder voices at the extremes, a new, more balanced consensus has quietly taken shape. This document seeks to articulate some of the shared beliefs behind that consensus, which we have come to call technorealism.

Technorealism demands that we think critically about the role that tools and interfaces play in human evolution and everyday life. Integral to this perspective is our understanding that the current tide of technological transformation, while important and powerful, is actually a continuation of waves of change that have taken place throughout history. Looking, for example, at the history of the automobile, television, or the telephone -- not just the devices but the institutions they became -- we see profound benefits as well as substantial costs. Similarly, we anticipate mixed blessings from today's emerging technologies, and expect to forever be on guard for unexpected consequences -- which must be addressed by thoughtful design and appropriate use.

As technorealists, we seek to expand the fertile middle ground between techno-utopianism and neo-Luddism. We are technology "critics" in the same way, and for the same reasons, that others are food critics, art critics, or literary critics. We can be passionately optimistic about some technologies, skeptical and disdainful of others. Still, our goal is neither to champion nor dismiss technology, but rather to understand it and apply it in a manner more consistent with basic human values. Read more...

I live in Silicon Valley and it is hard not to get swept up by all the technological hooplas. Engineers love technology and try to preach that it is the answer to everything, when in reality, technology can provide answers and also create just as much problems. Everything has its limitations and when human element is thrown into that equation, most of the time nothing is predictable, sometimes the behavior is not even what it is intended.

At my workplace, I use three computers to accomplish various tasks. I do tried to be low-tech as much as I want to in my personal life. This Mac G5 was purchase for the purpose of taking freelance design jobs, not for internet or blogging. Although I'm taking pleasure from internet information gathering and blogging, I do realize it takes away time to enjoy other activities. I do believe the less my life is slaved to gadgets, the more time I have to spend doing things I enjoy, such as the great outdoors. So for someone to convince me that I need certain gadgets, they would need to make me believe that my life will be truely enriched by the experience of what that technology can provide, not merely just owning it.

This article also makes me realize that I'm reading less and the information I do gather through the internet are more like sound bites. Although television can also do that to people, which is technology. (via rebeccablood)

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