On AlterNet: 9 Conservative Myths About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future. Posted June 20, 2009.
This article seems to be a really inclusive article on the subject of our domestic terrorism threats. Click here for complete article.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
LEGACIES AND MEMORIES
How hard some of us work in life to reach a goal we have set for ourselves. Farah Fawcett, strictly launched as a sex symbol, did a wonderful job as an abused woman in Burning Bed, a movie about an abused woman. Like all other messages in film with a painful message, we don't seem to see it replayed often. Her sad death of anal cancer is reported to have been caused by HPV (human papillomavirus).
Her death at 62 comes as a shock. Most of us would prefer our idols and friends to be around longer, as Bea Arthur did, leaving us at her 86. Michael Jackson, at 50, was surely not meant to have died when he was still practically in his prime. A friend commented that 'only in America can a cute little black boy grow up to be a rich and successful white woman'.
Do you ever find yourself wondering where an entertainer is today whom you liked? Is he/she still alive? Go to the Dead People Server. Recently, we also lost other great talents: Dom DeLuise, David Carridine, Ed McMahon...they all eventually fade. We are convinced that they achieved a particularly admirable degree of success in their craft. We may also wonder if we have achieved anything in our own lives to match them. However, most entertainers are like any other well practiced professional. Today they may live in films unlike those of a few generations ago when their colleagues failed to be born into an era of technological development such as we have for archiving today.
None of us can take 'it' with us but we can certainly leave a lot behind. If we can touch lives, make people happier and enrich them with any of our own resources we mayhave available, we too will have been successful even when we cease to be a memory as all those who knew and remembered us also die off. i once talked to a bricklayer who proudly pointed to the skyscrapers he had helped build. He beamed as he said he would be long gone but his buildings would still be there. A few years later his building met the wrecking ball for a new building to be built in its place with the builders, no doubt, living the same fantasy. Everyone who has lived leaves a mark. Some leave one so faint that a breeze erases it quickly. Others get written about and remain in history books. Does it matter to the person who is gone...quite doubtful that will ever be known.
Her death at 62 comes as a shock. Most of us would prefer our idols and friends to be around longer, as Bea Arthur did, leaving us at her 86. Michael Jackson, at 50, was surely not meant to have died when he was still practically in his prime. A friend commented that 'only in America can a cute little black boy grow up to be a rich and successful white woman'.
Do you ever find yourself wondering where an entertainer is today whom you liked? Is he/she still alive? Go to the Dead People Server. Recently, we also lost other great talents: Dom DeLuise, David Carridine, Ed McMahon...they all eventually fade. We are convinced that they achieved a particularly admirable degree of success in their craft. We may also wonder if we have achieved anything in our own lives to match them. However, most entertainers are like any other well practiced professional. Today they may live in films unlike those of a few generations ago when their colleagues failed to be born into an era of technological development such as we have for archiving today.
None of us can take 'it' with us but we can certainly leave a lot behind. If we can touch lives, make people happier and enrich them with any of our own resources we mayhave available, we too will have been successful even when we cease to be a memory as all those who knew and remembered us also die off. i once talked to a bricklayer who proudly pointed to the skyscrapers he had helped build. He beamed as he said he would be long gone but his buildings would still be there. A few years later his building met the wrecking ball for a new building to be built in its place with the builders, no doubt, living the same fantasy. Everyone who has lived leaves a mark. Some leave one so faint that a breeze erases it quickly. Others get written about and remain in history books. Does it matter to the person who is gone...quite doubtful that will ever be known.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
ANOTHER DECADE MARKED
Do we all live our lives waiting for the next birthday? None of us knows what our bodies will have done to us in a year. The fact is, my body has been kind to me. I feel much better now than I did a decade ago.
My family doesn't know what to gift me with any more. There is no reasonable need that remains unfilled in my life. Statistics would have my family shopping here for me. However, our society fosters a 'one-size-fits-all' leaning, in which case it might be more useful to shop here.
A psychologist friend of mine told me many years ago that we go through life carrying the image of ourselves as we were as 15 years. She neglected to mention that as age loses youth, it also loses memory. I have no idea what I looked like as a 15 year old. Whatever it was is certainly not what my mirror reflects back at me. No, indeed, my mother has taken total control of my life and image. She shows herself every time I look in a mirror and keeps me well hidden behind her. Naturally, to confuse me, she has let her hair grow as long as mine and she wears the same frames on her glasses as I. Or so I thought until I figured out she couldn't get into anyone's digital camera. When I saw pictures of myself I realized it is the ultimate insult Nature has handed us, not my mother at all. Our bodies change at a different rate than our brains. Our brains started with wrinkles and get younger as we get older. Our bodies start young and grow old and wrinkled. The outer skin stretches and becomes what our mother's told us to fear. Stop making faces or your face will stick that way. Yes, that has happened...all those years of girdles, bras, weight gains and losses...bodies have formed a revolution and will put up with that abuse no longer. In their revolt, they become like the picture of Dorian Gray only not out of your body...for real. We wear everything we have eaten, all the hours of sun we soaked up, the second-hand smoke before we knew better, and all the toxins our world could provide.
However, if we ignore the mirror and pictures, and just let ourselves feel as we wish to be, age becomes totally irrelevant. It is, after all, just a number that says how long we have been having fun.
My family doesn't know what to gift me with any more. There is no reasonable need that remains unfilled in my life. Statistics would have my family shopping here for me. However, our society fosters a 'one-size-fits-all' leaning, in which case it might be more useful to shop here.
A psychologist friend of mine told me many years ago that we go through life carrying the image of ourselves as we were as 15 years. She neglected to mention that as age loses youth, it also loses memory. I have no idea what I looked like as a 15 year old. Whatever it was is certainly not what my mirror reflects back at me. No, indeed, my mother has taken total control of my life and image. She shows herself every time I look in a mirror and keeps me well hidden behind her. Naturally, to confuse me, she has let her hair grow as long as mine and she wears the same frames on her glasses as I. Or so I thought until I figured out she couldn't get into anyone's digital camera. When I saw pictures of myself I realized it is the ultimate insult Nature has handed us, not my mother at all. Our bodies change at a different rate than our brains. Our brains started with wrinkles and get younger as we get older. Our bodies start young and grow old and wrinkled. The outer skin stretches and becomes what our mother's told us to fear. Stop making faces or your face will stick that way. Yes, that has happened...all those years of girdles, bras, weight gains and losses...bodies have formed a revolution and will put up with that abuse no longer. In their revolt, they become like the picture of Dorian Gray only not out of your body...for real. We wear everything we have eaten, all the hours of sun we soaked up, the second-hand smoke before we knew better, and all the toxins our world could provide.
However, if we ignore the mirror and pictures, and just let ourselves feel as we wish to be, age becomes totally irrelevant. It is, after all, just a number that says how long we have been having fun.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
RECOGNIZING AND ACCEPTING BOUNDARIES
Why am I having difficulty listening to all the people who keep saying that we should get involved with the cheating elections in Iran? I have no recollection of other countries coming to the aid of the students protesting at Kent in Ohio when a couple of students were killed? No other countries came over to the USA to make sure that the election in 2000 (or 2004, as well) when many of us were convinced that there were many illegal actions during the campaigning and balloting.
We have no business thinking we can continue to strong arm other countries. At last we have a president with the ability to gather around him like-minded people. We need to find more highly evolved ways to use our brains to sole problems rather than continuing to bully the world as we have done in the past few years. We have assisted many countries when we have been requested to help. Iran is not asking for our help nor interference. I suspect they have no intention of doing so in the future, as well.
The police have learned that interfering in domestic disputes has frequently turned the rage against them rather that continuing the fight between the original disputers. Many officers have been bloodied trying to rescue when they have misread the situation. Cheney/Bush took us to Iraq assuming that we would be welcomed as liberators for ridding the people of Iraq of Suddam Hussein. However, Americans soon learned that he was both good and bad for the Iranians, and in many ways their protector who, while in office, had not had to deal with the Taliban nor bin Laden. We didn't protect their priceless historic artifacts, their people, their infrastructure, nor did we keep them safe.
we created a generation of bitter orphans who hate America. We tortured and shamed prisoners in ways we would not wish our servicemen and women to be treated. Do people truly believe our behavior in the Middle East has been exemplary and assume people trust us or look up to us.
We should not forget we are hated. We think differently and do not share religious beliefs. We have many problems in our country that many Middle Eastern countries do not have. Why do we behave so arrogantly that we miss the values that other countries hold dear to their hearts and lifestyles? In our legal system, we cannot arrest someone for thinking about crimes. We should follow that rule and not invade or other wise interfere with our neighbors, whether we like and respect them or not.
If we are truly in some way hurt or attacked, then we can consider what our response must be. Analagous in this situation are many abused wives who are fearful of their estranged husbands. Until the husband has actually hurt them in some way which can be proved in court, the wife's fear is insufficient to obtain a restraining order from a judge following the law.
Admittedly, Iran and Iraq are not alike. Therefore it all the more incumbent on us that we not treat them in any way similarly.
Monday, June 22, 2009
WHAT DOES ALABAMA HAVE AGAINST HELPING HEALTHY SEX LIVES?
There is an article by Paul Krassner of Creis who recently published a book:In Praise of Indecency. He attacks the taboos surrounding sex and pornography. Thje article is very long but an excerpt follows though you might enjoy the whole article here.
"According to historian Rachel Maines in The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, the vibrator was originally developed to perfect and automate a function that doctors had long performed for their female patients -- the relief of physical, emotional and sexual tension through external pelvic massage, culminating in orgasm.
“Most of them did it,” said Dr. Maines, “because they felt it was their duty. It wasn’t sexual at all.”
Which brings us to Sherri Williams, a casualty of the war on pleasure. She was acquitted of the heinous crime of selling non-prescription vibrators. She had violated an Alabama statute, which bans the sale of vibrators and other sex toys. The law prohibited “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”
According to historian Rachel Maines in The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction, the vibrator was originally developed to perfect and automate a function that doctors had long performed for their female patients -- the relief of physical, emotional and sexual tension through external pelvic massage, culminating in orgasm.
“Most of them did it,” said Dr. Maines, “because they felt it was their duty. It wasn’t sexual at all.”
Which brings us to Sherri Williams, a casualty of the war on pleasure. She was acquitted of the heinous crime of selling non-prescription vibrators. She had violated an Alabama statute, which bans the sale of vibrators and other sex toys. The law prohibited “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”
But the not-guilty verdict in her case was overturned by a 2-1 decision. In the Court of Appeals, the state’s attorney general defended the statute, arguing that, “a ban on the sale of sexual devices and related orgasm-stimulating paraphernalia is rationally related to a legitimate interest in discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex.” Rationally related? Moreover, he said, “There is no constitutional right to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm.” There isn’t?
Ironically, the FDA has approved a device specifically designed to help women achieve orgasm, marking the first time that the federal government has licensed an aid for women with sexual dysfunction. “The Eros,” which uses the same basic principle as Viagra to promote sexual arousal -- stimulating blood flow to the genital area -- is a battery-operated vacuum attached to a suction cup that fits over the clitoris. The device, available only by prescription, costs $359. However, fingers, tongues and penises are all free. And still legal.
This country was founded by pioneers with a lust for freedom and by puritans with a disdain for pleasure. The problem is that those who are still burdened by that streak of anti-pleasure keep trying to impose unnecessary restrictive laws upon those who are pro-pleasure. What ever happened to “the pursuit of pleasure” mentioned in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence?
Ironically, journalist Gita Smith wrote in August 2007, “In Alabama, you can sell guns on any street corner but you can’t sell sex toys. In other words, we are free to blow ourselves up at will. We just can’t blow up a dolly with big red lips and openings in her lifelike vinyl self.
“Alabama is a vibrator-free state. Well, technically you can go across state lines and buy sex toys in Georgia and Tennessee and carry them home. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court has shown a gleam of interest in this controversial state law. At the very least, this case seems to be a restraint-of-trade case as much as anything else, since the devices are sold in all the neighboring states. I would like to be a fly on the wall when oral arguments are heard.
“Justice Antonin Scalia: You say that the sale of the Twizzler-Twister should be banned?
“Alabama Guy: Yes, Your Honor.
“Justice Samuel Alito: And the Buzzer-Master?
“Alabama Guy: Yes, that too.
“Justice Clarence Thomas: What about the Coke can with the fake pubic hair?
“Alabama Guy: That one doesn’t vibrate, so that one’s okay.
“There is, and always has been, a strong strain of paternalism among lawmakers down here. And that paternalistic attitude makes them believe that they are the keepers of the Moral Keys. Us wee folk need protecting from sexual pleasures derived from plastic thingies made in China.”
But, on the first Monday of October 2007, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys. A three-judge panel had upheld the guilty verdict of the appeals court on February 14. Happy Valentine’s Day to the roots of fascism in the private parts of America.
Sherri Williams, who faces a $10,000 fine and one year of hard labor, called the Supreme Court’s decision not to review the law “further evidence of religion in politics.” She plans to sue again, this time on First Amendment free speech grounds.
“My motto,” she says, “has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up.” "Gita Smith,
"According to historian Rachel Maines in The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, the vibrator was originally developed to perfect and automate a function that doctors had long performed for their female patients -- the relief of physical, emotional and sexual tension through external pelvic massage, culminating in orgasm.
“Most of them did it,” said Dr. Maines, “because they felt it was their duty. It wasn’t sexual at all.”
Which brings us to Sherri Williams, a casualty of the war on pleasure. She was acquitted of the heinous crime of selling non-prescription vibrators. She had violated an Alabama statute, which bans the sale of vibrators and other sex toys. The law prohibited “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”
According to historian Rachel Maines in The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction, the vibrator was originally developed to perfect and automate a function that doctors had long performed for their female patients -- the relief of physical, emotional and sexual tension through external pelvic massage, culminating in orgasm.
“Most of them did it,” said Dr. Maines, “because they felt it was their duty. It wasn’t sexual at all.”
Which brings us to Sherri Williams, a casualty of the war on pleasure. She was acquitted of the heinous crime of selling non-prescription vibrators. She had violated an Alabama statute, which bans the sale of vibrators and other sex toys. The law prohibited “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”
But the not-guilty verdict in her case was overturned by a 2-1 decision. In the Court of Appeals, the state’s attorney general defended the statute, arguing that, “a ban on the sale of sexual devices and related orgasm-stimulating paraphernalia is rationally related to a legitimate interest in discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex.” Rationally related? Moreover, he said, “There is no constitutional right to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm.” There isn’t?
Ironically, the FDA has approved a device specifically designed to help women achieve orgasm, marking the first time that the federal government has licensed an aid for women with sexual dysfunction. “The Eros,” which uses the same basic principle as Viagra to promote sexual arousal -- stimulating blood flow to the genital area -- is a battery-operated vacuum attached to a suction cup that fits over the clitoris. The device, available only by prescription, costs $359. However, fingers, tongues and penises are all free. And still legal.
This country was founded by pioneers with a lust for freedom and by puritans with a disdain for pleasure. The problem is that those who are still burdened by that streak of anti-pleasure keep trying to impose unnecessary restrictive laws upon those who are pro-pleasure. What ever happened to “the pursuit of pleasure” mentioned in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence?
Ironically, journalist Gita Smith wrote in August 2007, “In Alabama, you can sell guns on any street corner but you can’t sell sex toys. In other words, we are free to blow ourselves up at will. We just can’t blow up a dolly with big red lips and openings in her lifelike vinyl self.
“Alabama is a vibrator-free state. Well, technically you can go across state lines and buy sex toys in Georgia and Tennessee and carry them home. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court has shown a gleam of interest in this controversial state law. At the very least, this case seems to be a restraint-of-trade case as much as anything else, since the devices are sold in all the neighboring states. I would like to be a fly on the wall when oral arguments are heard.
“Justice Antonin Scalia: You say that the sale of the Twizzler-Twister should be banned?
“Alabama Guy: Yes, Your Honor.
“Justice Samuel Alito: And the Buzzer-Master?
“Alabama Guy: Yes, that too.
“Justice Clarence Thomas: What about the Coke can with the fake pubic hair?
“Alabama Guy: That one doesn’t vibrate, so that one’s okay.
“There is, and always has been, a strong strain of paternalism among lawmakers down here. And that paternalistic attitude makes them believe that they are the keepers of the Moral Keys. Us wee folk need protecting from sexual pleasures derived from plastic thingies made in China.”
But, on the first Monday of October 2007, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys. A three-judge panel had upheld the guilty verdict of the appeals court on February 14. Happy Valentine’s Day to the roots of fascism in the private parts of America.
Sherri Williams, who faces a $10,000 fine and one year of hard labor, called the Supreme Court’s decision not to review the law “further evidence of religion in politics.” She plans to sue again, this time on First Amendment free speech grounds.
“My motto,” she says, “has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up.” "Gita Smith,
Sunday, June 21, 2009
MANKIND MAKE LAWS AGAINST NATURE
It is not often that I see an article that I think should be read universally. However, there is one now. Our bodies have forever been controlled by others. We have been told by the church for centuries what Nature intended though today's science will tell us otherwise.
Laws both clerical and public have been and continue to be made in an attempt to control people from using their bodies for pleasure as well as procreation without violating another. Ellen Friedrichs (posted on AlterNet) has done her homework and demonstrates just how ridiculous some people and laws can get. Whereas, once young women married as young as 12, now it is against the law to have sex with anyone under the age of 18.
Nudity becomes an issue...it must not be public, though the world is full of Nudist Camps and beaches. In fact, it is not always an issue of nudity...modesty is a better word to inset here. Why mankind continues to have some individuals believe they should have power over all others escapes me when the issue is what one does with one's body. Personally I find tattoos distasteful but I would fight for the right for those who wish them to have them. E-mailing pictures of one's self nude in a venue that should be personal between the sender and the receiver to choose who may see it is now being considered unlawful. When photographs were being developed by someone other then the photographer, one might have considered the appropriateness. Parents taking pictures of their infants who could be seen in entirety as they were being diapered, suddenly became fodder for pedophiles and outlawed. However, what one does in the privacy of their family, digitally, not taken for profit or sold, is rather ridiculous, is it not?
While the zealots do little for the safety and healthy longevity for mankind, they march along trying to be morality police making laws to control law abiding rather than using the resources to limit and punish the people who are truly a menace to society such as rapists, pedophiles, and other sexual deviations that prey on innocents. These, who profess to be trying to stop a problem before it begins are often the people who will do nothing to make insured health care preventative medicine. Instead, treatment begins only when it endangers the life of the individual or others as in mass epidemics.
Will mankind ever get priorities straight?
Laws both clerical and public have been and continue to be made in an attempt to control people from using their bodies for pleasure as well as procreation without violating another. Ellen Friedrichs (posted on AlterNet) has done her homework and demonstrates just how ridiculous some people and laws can get. Whereas, once young women married as young as 12, now it is against the law to have sex with anyone under the age of 18.
Nudity becomes an issue...it must not be public, though the world is full of Nudist Camps and beaches. In fact, it is not always an issue of nudity...modesty is a better word to inset here. Why mankind continues to have some individuals believe they should have power over all others escapes me when the issue is what one does with one's body. Personally I find tattoos distasteful but I would fight for the right for those who wish them to have them. E-mailing pictures of one's self nude in a venue that should be personal between the sender and the receiver to choose who may see it is now being considered unlawful. When photographs were being developed by someone other then the photographer, one might have considered the appropriateness. Parents taking pictures of their infants who could be seen in entirety as they were being diapered, suddenly became fodder for pedophiles and outlawed. However, what one does in the privacy of their family, digitally, not taken for profit or sold, is rather ridiculous, is it not?
While the zealots do little for the safety and healthy longevity for mankind, they march along trying to be morality police making laws to control law abiding rather than using the resources to limit and punish the people who are truly a menace to society such as rapists, pedophiles, and other sexual deviations that prey on innocents. These, who profess to be trying to stop a problem before it begins are often the people who will do nothing to make insured health care preventative medicine. Instead, treatment begins only when it endangers the life of the individual or others as in mass epidemics.
Will mankind ever get priorities straight?
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