Author: spiderleaf

Al Gore has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

But Marisacat on the FP is so much more fun, ain’t it?

This is the story the world is talking about. This is the real news. This was your President.

So how are you going to help him? Up here in Canada our politicos have been talking Kyoto and Climate Change all day. We ain’t perfect by any means, but at least we’re talking. So… what are you, or your leaders going to do to save our planet?

They should talk to Gore… he has a boatload of good ideas imo.

Former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to draw the world’s attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday. “A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference,” said Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment. Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen of the Socialist Left Party to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier before the deadline expired Thursday. The winner is announced in mid October.

I grew up with Harry Chapin instead of TV. I’ve been missing him a lot lately and found this song remarkably similar to the current situation.

Think of me what you will, but Harry was pure. He died a year after Lennon. The year peace and compassion was overtaken by the Ronnie revolution.

Please help save our planet. I beg you.

Peace… and reality… it’s all we’ve got left.

Do what you do.
Do what you do.

The Smoke Witch says – Wahoo!
And the Wise Man says – Me too!
And the Guru says – Wazoo!
So do what you do

The priests stand in their pulpits
The Pope sits on his throne
The parishes are empty
And the choirboys on their own
Until the Second Coming
Yes, They’re leaving us alone
And God in his Heaven
Has decided to keep mum
Because He’s just another traveller
On the Road to Kingdom Come.

And all is said and done, he’s just another one.

Pity Mr. President
He can’t do a thing
He says everywhere he went
We’ve tried to make him sing
Our lonely White House resident
Says we should have made him King
Maybe then he could have saved us
From the truth we were hiding from
But he’s just another traveller
On the Road to Kingdom Come.

And all is said and done.

He was just another one.

The General’s in his game room
But his Soldier won’t salute
Ever since he was promoted
He can’t pop his chute
His shrink says he is paranoid
‘Bout communistic roots
So unfurl the flag boys
Start beating his drum
We’ve got to get another straggler
On the Road to Kingdom Come.

When all is said and done, he was just another one.
Yes, another one.

And the Smoke Witch says – Wahoo!
And the Wise Man says – Me too!
And the Guru says – Wazoo!
So do what you do!

Woah! The lead Singers raucous
As he screams out the truth
Then the band holds a caucus
And decides to sell their youth
Our Manager he’ll hawk us
As along as we’re uncouth
And we’ll call it revolution
But we’ll crank out Bubble Gum
‘Cause that’s the marching tune for travellers
On the Road to Kingdom Come.

When all is said and done, we’re just some other ones

Grampa swung into the orgy
It was his last hope
He was dressed to the nines
In deodorant and Scope
He found himself a woman
She brought Vaseline and soap
Well it started out exciting
But it ended up ho hum
She said – I thought that you could take me
All the way to Kingdom Come.

When all was said and done
You were just another one grandpa

So Billy sells hot sermons
And cold wars through the mails
While Mr. Big is selling out
His business never fails
King Kennedy like Chaucer’s
Chasing Canterbury Tales
And though the brain is still a virgin
The rest of me’s well done
Don’t you know we’re all just travellers
On the Road to Kingdom Come
I’m just another one
When all is said and done
Just another one.

The Smoke Witch says – Wahoo!
And the Wise Man says – Me too!
And the Guru says – Wazoo!
So do what you do!

Inspired by ejmw’s excellent “A Simple Reminder”, this is an imagined conversation that could be happening anywhere in Iraq or Afghanistan now. And my heart is breaking.
“Mommy, can I go play outside today?”

“No dear, it isn’t safe.”

“Why mommy, are the bad men back?”

“Yes honey, they are. There are men with guns on the roof honey because one of our neighbours is suspected of being part of the resistance.”

“Just like daddy?”

“Yes, just like daddy.”

“When is he coming home mommy?”

“Sweetheart, mommy explained to you already that daddy isn’t coming home. Daddy died in the market baby. You know that, you were there. In the car.”

“The bad men did it. With their big bomb. I hate them.”

“Me too baby, me too. One day we’ll be free again and then they will pay.”

“I want to help mommy.”

“When you’re bigger you can.”

What is deplorable? Is it the targeting of civilians and UN peacekeepers in Lebanon?

No. Apparently it is Kofi Annan’s words about the Israeli attacks on the UNIFIL outpost in Southern Lebanon Tuesday in which observers from Canada, China, Austria, and Finland were killed.

Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., called Annan’s reaction “deplorable.” He said the observers were caught in crossfire between Hezbollah and Israel.

And what was his reaction that was so “deplorable”? What were those horrible words that dared not be spoken?

“I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defence Forces of a UN observer post in southern Lebanon that has killed two UN military observers, with two more feared dead,” Annan said from Rome.

…

Annan said the attack took place “despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire.”

Struger [spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon known as UNIFIL] said there had been 14 other incidents of firing close to this position from the Israeli side Tuesday afternoon.

“The firing continued even during the rescue operation,” he said.

The UN base has been in operation since 1972 and co-ordinates the organization’s activities in southern Lebanon.

Yes, I can see how that statement would be deplorable. Annan and the international community are starting to not tow the party line. And that makes these statements dangerous to the ‘official’ story the Americans and Israelis are trying to sell back home.

The UNIFIL team in action (slideshow).

[UNFICYP peacekeepers help Tyre evacuees on board M.V. Serenade’s tenders for shore-to-ship transfer, Tyre, Southern Lebanon, 20 July 2006]

Peace.

{Crossposted @ Jaded Reality}

Al Gore continues to march on and is interviewed in the upcoming Rolling Stone about Bush, Global Warming, Iraq, the Democrats, and what is needed to move forward with serious grassroots political change in the U.S.

I’m not going to provide any commentary, nor huge blockquotes because you really need to read the whole interview… it’s Gore, he talks alot…

But here are a few choice quotes:

because the path to a solution lies through changing the minds of the American people. Not just on the facts — they’re almost there on the facts — but in the sense of urgency that’s appropriate and necessary. Once that happens, then things that seem impossible now politically are going to be imperative. I believe there is a hunger in the country to be part of a larger vision that changes the way we relate to the environment and the economy.

But Bush is insulated — his staff smiles a lot and only gives him the news that he wants to hear. Unfortunately, they still have this delusion that they create their own reality. As George Orwell wrote, we human beings are capable of convincing ourselves of something that’s not true long after the accumulated evidence would convince any reasonable person that it’s wrong. And when leaders persist in that error, sooner or later they have a collision with reality, often on a battlefield. That, in essence, is exactly what happened in Iraq.

Do you still consider yourself a Democrat?
Oh, yeah. I mean, I still consider myself a Baptist too, even though the denomination has tried to run me off with their attitude toward women and so forth!

Cross posted @ Jaded Reality

That is the tagline of the new ad campaign for Amnesty International in Sweden Switzerland [thx ask!].

The ads use transparent outdoor billboards that will blow your mind. They put the human rights abuse into your own context and environment. Shocking use of imagery.

Send Amnesty some love and appreciation for putting this out there fearlessly.

On a day when the European govts are being chastized for aiding and abetting the secret prisons, when Darfur is still a living hell, where Haditha can be allowed to happen and Gitmo still exists, this campaign is an in-your-face reminder that we can’t keep silent.

Peace.

crossposted at My Left Wing

Why do I feel comfortable `attacking’ the Dems sometimes and not Republicans? (or the Liberals or NDP up here in Canada vs. the PCs) Why am I not part of `the problem’ for doing so? Why do I not give a flying fuck if my criticism of my/ our party somehow helps a Republican get into office?

Because that’s my job as a voter. To make them (i.e. the people who are getting paid to represent me) understand my position on the issues and where I think they’ve gone horribly, horribly wrong. They don’t own my vote. I own my vote. They are supposed to work for my vote. They’re supposed to represent me. Oh, and I also own my value system. You know, the one which dictates who I feel comfortable loaning my vote to for 4 years.

The Republicans can take care of themselves, and hoo boy do they ever. How the hell do you think the country GOT so far right to begin with? Because the `base’ of the GOP wouldn’t shut the fuck up about their issues. And stayed home on election night or voted for Perot, or Buchanan, etc. And stopped fundraising for them. The party establishment got the message. And it brought them born again George W. Bush. With a smidge of warmongering Dick Cheney to represent the military-corporate-industrial complex for good measure.

The party decided to cater to their BASE and their base rewarded them. And they were clear cut about the other issues they stood for to bring the more moderates of the country along with them. They were an opposition party. Go figure. And look where it got them. All 3 branches of gov’t.

For fucks sake, seriously. How blind do the dkos kids and the like have to be to the winning tactics of the right? What’s that old adage… why re-invent the wheel? Come on now. Everyone talks about how `brilliant’ Karl Rove is and yet claim time and again that they have a better recipe than him for winning elections if only us whiny lefties would get with the program and let them run anti-choice, pro-war pseudo Democrats. Now do I think we should replicate all his tactics and start claiming Hilary has a black baby and is a traitor so we can get Gore elected in South Carolina? No. But I do think that perhaps giving voters a clear alternative to the GOP candidate might be a good place to start.

It’s so funny to hear people claim, for instance, that we on the left should not be so stupid as to let a single issue like women’s control over their own body be a determining factor in how we vote on a candidate, yet the argument FOR that particular candidate is that the other voters in that state WILL vote for, or against, the candidate based on a single issue. God damn it makes your head spin.

So no, I won’t shut up. No, I won’t throw away my convictions and values to elect someone who would take away my equal rights or continue the war in Iraq. No I won’t vote for someone who condoned torture. Or voted for Hayden. Or voted for Gonzales. Or, basically, DOES NOT represent my values. Why should I? If you’re not actually in opposition to the party in power when they’re in power, why should I trust you’d do the right thing when you are? Hell, at least I know what the GOP stands for. What was that my mom always said to me… actions speak louder than words.

Oh, and that my vote was sacred.

As is my right to free speech.

And sometimes that right to speak means telling the person I loaned my vote to that they suck at honouring it and not to expect it again unless they shape up.

Seems completely reasonable to me. But then again I’m just a girl, so what do I know.

Man, this guy never ceases to amaze me. He has become just fearless and with the combo of smarts and experience he is a force to be reckoned with. He is everywhere these days… and he ain’t pulling any punches.  

So… today comes the news that Gore has partnered with MySpace to promote his climate change film. This is big news… MySpace has 70 million members. And they spend a lot of time there…

MySpace’s campaign… includes a custom-designed site where the community’s more than 70 million registered members can meet and exchange ideas. Among other features, the page offers a “personal environmental impact calculator” for users to assess their personal contribution to global warming.

… the campaign will culminate in a 10-city MySpace theater buyout on June 16, with free tickets going to select members of ” An Inconvenient Truth”‘s MySpace community.

In addition, MySpace’s music channel is featuring an artist-on-artist interview between the former vice president and a to-be-announced rock-star who also happens to be part of the MySpace community. The MySpace movies channel will spotlight an interview with the film’s director, Davis Guggenheim.

~ via 3i marketing blog

The website for the film totally rocks as well, has a ton of resources to spread the word and take action, a pledge to see the film on opening day and has a  blog 🙂

Go forth and show Gore and our planet some love people!

Well, here I am, better late than never imnsho. So what is it that has kept me up late into the night, banging my ears and screeching incoherently? No, it’s not Bush. Nope, not my assine job either although that runs a close second.

It’s community. This one in particular.

Whaaaa! you are now screaming NO! Not more meta community conversations!

To you I say bah. Or maybe, yeah, no doubt I’m sick of them too.

Either way, if you’ve gotten this far then you have more time on your hands than is reasonable or you really enjoy my quirky sense of humour. Probably both.

Now on to my wisdom and glorious insight….
Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t been very active in the pond recently. Most probably have not.

Actually, the majority of you are probably wondering who the hell this spiderleaf person is to presume to lecture them on community or botany… but I digress. Or do I.

[I have been around you know. Lurking. Reading. Hit and run sporadic postings…. just so we’re clear that I’m not just pretending to know who you are or anything.]

Man, I should probably just call this post digression ‘r us or something… hmmm. anyhoo.

So what’s with all the fuss about community and the notion we have to “keep it” or “protect it” or “it ain’t what it used to be”. Well, for the most part, I know most of the active posters here on the site. Or those who used to be active and have now gone elsewhere. But pretty much, that’s a small subset of the number of registered users on the site. Probably not more than 100 or so people out of 4k. Really small percentage all told.

Hell, I might even be able to list them all here from memory (no, don’t worry, I’m not that intoxicated to get that sidetracked). So what’s my point you ask?

Well, it’s this.

Communities are, as a rule, no larger than 150 people. There are scientific studies to back that up. Ask the Pentagon if you want (or maybe the nice data analyst reading this post would be kind enough to post a comment and validate my research)… the military purposefully limits battalions to 200. After that order tends to break down and people start bitching.

Why? Because you can’t really know more than 150 people and care about their opinions, or have a sense of their character, beliefs or humanity.

For a good primer on this theory I suggest “The Tipping Point” by Malcom Gladwell. I’ll quote a paragraph from the book to illustrate my point.

“The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship…”

Dunbar has combed through anthropological literature and found that the number 150 pops up again and again. For example, he looks at 21 different hunter-gatherer societies for which we have solid historical evidence, from the Walbiri of Australia to the Tauade of New Guinea… and found that the average number of people in their villages was 148.4. The same pattern holds true for military organization. “Over the years military planners have arrived at a rule of thumb which dictates that functional fighting units cannot be substantially larger than 200 men,” Dunbar writes….
It is still possible, of course, to run an army with larger groups. But at a bigger size you have to impose complicated hierarchies and rules and regluations… But below 150, Dunbar argues, it is possible to achieve these same goals informally…

Then there is the example of the religious group known as the Hutterites, who for hundreds of years have lived in self-sufficient agricultural colonies in Europe and, since the early twentieth century, in North America. The Hutterites… have a strict policy that every time a colony approaches 150, they split it in two and start a new one…. “When things get larger than that, people become strangers to one another…

“What happens when you get that big is that the group starts, just on its own, to form a sort of clan.”… “You get two or three groups within the larger group.”  

So what does that mean for our beloved Frog Pond? Not much really other than how we choose to label ourselves. (this would apply to ‘community’ blogs in general too) I tend to see blogs as a network of communities. Some with a small member base, in which case the community ‘elders’ set the tone and attract similar personality types, or those with complimentary skills or beliefs. Some with a larger community base, like dkos segment into cliques, or communities of like minded individuals who are in turn linked in to the broader network of cliques, or communities on the site. Quick test – how often do you find yourself giving the same group of people a ‘4’? Or responding to their comment? Or reading their diary (ahem, clique of spiderleaf is obviously immune from this test thank you very much).

Some of these cliques will clash with the others. All in all it’s much easier to police or deal with a conflict internally if you understand the perspective of the person you are interacting with. This is much more likely if it’s a person you’ve been chatting with in the Cafe everyday. Or hanging out in the Lounge with drinking your sorrows away… ummm… having meaningful conversations with.

You get what I’m saying.

We won’t all agree, even within our smaller communities. And the medium and technology makes this much more difficult to navigate. If I’ve never seen the twinkle in your eyes it’s much more likely I’m not picking up on it in your comment… unless we’ve interacted a lot in the past… and even then it’s not a guarantee.

We also have a unique thing going here whereas we’ve self-selected to join this community. I didn’t get an invite from a friend to go to a dinner party, start chatting with the social director of the group and the host and find myself invited back the next time. There really is no auditioning process for membership…. people either talk to you, or they don’t. Or maybe they do one day and not the other. Or maybe you don’t post at all and are really just eavesdropping on a conversation around the water cooler. In any case, the ‘group’ didn’t invite you in, you invited yourself in. And once you did, you brought your life history and experiences with you. And 9.5 times out of 10 it is not a history or experiences I share. I can relate to, sure, but we are not identical. We all didn’t go to UCLA and participate in Frosh week together. Or volunteer for the Sierra Club. Or have the same taste in music and literature. Nope, I have no idea where you’re coming from unless you tell me. And sometimes you’ll tell me something that to me, seems to come from left field and to you, was there all along.

See the problems inherent in this?

So, to make a long story short… and to continue on a theme I raised in catnip’s diary…

If we all stop worrying about making everyone ‘fit’ into our perception of what our community is and just realize we’re one big network, some of us closer to some more than others, and that we all have our own stuff going on… perhaps we can keep our smaller communities and continue to interact and learn from each other in the larger network that is BooMan Trib and the liberal blogosphere.

I know I don’t always agree with everyone, but I have stopped trying to make everyone fit into my ideal of the perfect liberal. Or human being. Because we are all fucked. And we all have horrible, painful, character changing and perception forming events in our past and present. And it would be exhausting for me to try and prepare my comments to make sure I don’t offend them all. I for one do not have the reverse gift of a DuctapeFatwa. So, if you get my goat, I may indeed get pissed off, I may tell you that I’m offended, and horribly so. But then I’ll walk away, go get some fresh air and realize that in the grand scheme of things that I don’t know you and you don’t know me. We’re just blips in the wide world of the internets. And if we can’t figure out how to have a conversation and not kill each other than I have no idea how I’m supposed to figure out how to hook the vcr up to the toaster…

Now onto the burning question… why did I write this now, when it’s not a hot topic in the community and I’m not likely to go shooting up the reco list while generating hundreds of comments? So that maybe, in a small way, if we think about things proactively rather than reactively, we don’t have to have those diaries up there and can talk about other stuff… well, one can hope can’t one? 😉

But enough about me, how you doin’?

I lied to Dammit Janet in her diary. I didn’t think I was but I did. I said I was glad I had never experienced that kind of trauma. And I didn’t. But I did. I just had a few near misses.
Holy fuck I don’t want to talk about this. I feel so exposed. I am a very private person actually. I’ve had to be for various reasons including my mom’s paranoid schizophrenia. But that’s another story.

The one I’m willing myself to tell today is one that has never been pieced together into the story of a life yet. I’ve shared at different points, individual episodes, but never in one sitting.

But I have to. Reading all the incredibly brave posts by women I have deep respect and admiration for really brings it home for me. Talking about it and using our voices is the only thing we have left.

I have been very fortunate to have had wonderful and caring and supporting men in my life & I have never once hated all men. But I don’t get it. I really don’t.

I’m sorry to be piling on and continuing the string of diaries, but I am going to anyway because I’m stubborn.

The first time I was 9. My mother had recently re-married. He was an abusive fuck and liked to get his kicks when he wasn’t beating my mom by making me stand at the foot of their bed while they watched tv for hours on end as punishment. I learned that my imagination was a lot of fun when I needed to escape.

Then one day he decided we should all take a shower together. My mother agreed. He was hard the whole time and made me wash it. My mother did not object. I was really messed up by the whole thing. I was 9. I didn’t tell anyone. Who could I tell? My real dad was a junkie living in a hooker hotel downtown. He used to beat my mom and left us when I was 1 1/2. I only saw him when he cleaned himself up enough to get a job for 6 months or so. So he was out. I didn’t know his side of the family since they disowned him at age 9 by moving without telling him while he was at hockey practice. Not a good year to be alive in my family it would seem. My other grandparents would have died. I didn’t want to hurt them.  

A few months later I went into a convenience store to play a video game because I didn’t want to go home (surprise, surprise eh). While I was playing the man who owned the store locked the door and then came up behind me and offered to teach me a trick on how to play. He stuck his thigh up between mine. I was so scared. I let him do it for a while and then asked him what time it was. I don’t know how, but I concocted a story about my dad waiting for me in a coffee shop across the street and that he would come looking for me if I didn’t get back. The man let me go. I went home and went to the laundry mat with my mom and step-dad. I didn’t tell anyone.

The next near miss was when I was 16 and at a girlfriends house for a party. We were young and stupid and doing shots of vodka. I passed out on the couch in the basement. I remember the 5 boys coming in to the room and I could hear them talking about me but I literally could not move. I’ve never been that drunk and high again. Their talk moved into actually having at me. And they started to. I couldn’t move. I whispered no over and over but that was all I could do. My top went up as did my bra. I felt two different hands on me. Then my pants started to come off. Miraculously at that moment my girlfriend burst into the room because her parents had come home early and she wanted me to wake up. She was followed by a few of my other friends.

They pulled my shirt down and picked me up. Funny thing is, they never mentioned anything or said anything to the guys. They just told them to go out the back and pulled me upstairs. And that was it. What if her parents hadn’t come home. I don’t even want to imagine it, but it nearly happened.

And these were all guys I went to school with. They were drunk and horny and didn’t see anything wrong with gang-raping me. Do I think that’s normal? No. Do I think any of the subsequent men in my life would do that? No. But unless we continue to talk about it and our men speak up to their friends about it when one of them objectifies a woman in a derogatory way (I don’t mind some objectification, it’s a sex drive and men are visual creatures) we will, as a society, continue to raise little boys who grow up to get drunk at a party and at the very least feel up a girl who is passed out.

So that’s my story. Or stories. Both time periods completely different. One child abuse and one woman abuse. But both unacceptable.

So I never wound up at a hospital which is how I responded to Janet. I was never raped. But I lied nonetheless because it hurts too. And it’s not okay.

But I am.

Thanks for listening.