History Train

Here's something I’ve been thinking about lately --

People, regular people -- in day to day life -- don’t seem to want to talk about Iraq. The news doesn’t give it much play. Flip on the TV now and what will you see? Probably some crap about OJ or Brittany Spears or the Move On ad about General Betray Us but little about Iraq. If you’re lucky, Jon Stewart will make a joke about it.

In the papers, maybe there is something about Iraq or Afghanistan, buried beneath the same type of bullshit stories as on the TV except with local car wrecks and small crimes thrown in for good measure and spice.

Even stranger, is the almost total silence about Afghanistan. Remember the US sent a few thousand soldiers over there BEFORE they invaded Iraq. Now what? Not a peep.

Anyway, I was thinking about how I try to engage people around me in conversations about Iraq and what is going on there and usually I don’t get too far before I hit a wall of utter disinterest.

The “war” in Iraq isn’t fun. It isn’t titillating. There are no movie stars getting drunk or divorced or adopting kids there. There is no one to vote for to win best singer or dancer awards. Humans are getting killed in Iraq and that’s not nice. So people don’t want to talk about it. They’re just not interested. It’s not their problem. It’s boring. It’s negative. It’s “over there.” Who cares?

So I was thinking about this apathy. And then it dawned on me that it is these people -- the people who avoid the issue of Iraq, who are losing out.

There is a big event, an epic, happening right here and right now. We are lucky (or perhaps unlucky) enough to be alive to witness it. People--US citizens and Iraqi’s, are dying, losing limbs and brain matter. They are having their lives and personalities changed forever. There are major occurrences connected to this “war” (invasion) unfolding everywhere. Our country is undergoing something momentous. If life were a text book, here is where you would use your highlighter. Now. Today.

And so this brings me to my thought. I suddenly realized that these people, the Avoiders, are doing themselves a great disservice.

Instead of ignoring the Iraq war, they should be turning over every rock, scrambling for details. They ought to be seeing it while it's fresh, while it's going on. They should be taking notes for their grandchildren. History is roaring past them like a locomotive and these people stand next to the tracks with their eyes closed. Mute.

What a waste.

Nukes on a Plane, part 2

I am still very interested in the incident involving the “lost” nuclear warheads which traveled from North Dakota’s Minot AFB to Louisiana’s Barksdale AFB on August 30th. I have been following the incident in the news and on the net ever since.

While I was researching some reports that several Air Force people at Minot and Barksdale AFB’s, who had some connection to the incident, have (coincidentally) died in accidents over the past week or so, I happened upon an article which took a whole different slant on the event.

The author, Chuck Simpson, did such a good job of laying out his argument that I’m not going to rehash all the details here in my blog. However, I strongly encourage you to read his article for yourself. It is intelligent and very well written. You can read it at: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread302187/pg1

The article is titled:
Barksdale Missile Number Six: The Stolen Nuclear Weapon

In the article Simpson offers some very educational insights about how nuclear weapons are customarily handled by the US military. The facts, once presented, make it very easy to see that the reported scenario of how the incident allegedly went down--the official explanation which is being offered to the public, is highly unusual and even suspect. Simpson is lead to a very disturbing hypothesis about the so-called “B-52 bomber and nukes mistake.” In his summation he states:

“Six nuclear weapons disappeared from Minot AFB in North Dakota.
Five nuclear weapons were discovered at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
Which leads to my chilling conclusion:
Someone, operating under a special chain of command within the United States Air Force, just stole a nuclear weapon.”

At first glance, the number discrepancy (5 vs 6 warheads) seems a casual, even minor detail -- the error could be attributed to media misreporting or any number of mundane reasons. But when this discrepancy is viewed in context, when it is added to the large list of other discrepancies related to the incident, then it becomes significant. Further, it becomes more than just another small thread woven in a bigger cloak of misinformation and misdirection, it becomes sinister.

Fugitive Safe Surrender and the Taliban

The Taliban -- Coming to Your Town Soon

Remember the Taliban? Here's a little refresher just in case you forgot some of the details.

Information about Taliban gleaned from InfoPlease.com

The Taliban: Who are they and where did they come from?

In Afghanistan, groups of Taliban ("religious students") were loosely organized on a regional basis during the Soviet occupation (1979-89). During the occupation a civil war which broke out. The Taliban grew in power, especially after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. And although the Taliban represented a potentially huge force, the group didn't emerge as a united entity until 1994. At that time, they went on to take over the city of Kandahar, beginning a surprising advance that ended with the capture of Kabul in September 1996.

Thus the Taliban, aka the "Students of Islamic Knowledge Movement," fully took over Afghanistan in 1996. The Taliban remained in power until it was ousted in December 2001 by the U.S. military and Afghan opposition forces in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the U.S.. The group was not eradicated, however, it simply moved underground, where it continues to wage war on it’s enemies -- the Shite Muslims and the US to this day.

What was life like under the Taliban regime?

Afghans, weary of conflict and anarchy, were relieved to see corrupt and often brutal warlords replaced by the devout Taliban, who had some initial success in eliminating corruption, restoring peace, and allowing commerce to resume.

Under the direction of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban brought about order through the institution of a very strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. Public executions and punishments (such as floggings) became regular events at Afghan soccer stadiums. Frivolous activities, like kite-flying, were outlawed. In order to root out "non-Islamic" influence, television, music, and the Internet were banned. Men were required to wear beards, and subjected to beatings if they didn't.

Most shocking was the Taliban's treatment of women. When the Taliban took Kabul, they immediately forbade girls to go to school. Moreover, women were barred from working outside the home, precipitating a crisis in health care and education. Women were also prohibited from leaving their home without a male relative—those that did so risked being beaten, even shot, by officers of the "ministry for the protection of virtue and prevention of vice." A woman caught wearing fingernail polish may have had her fingertips chopped off. All this, according to the Taliban, was to safeguard women and their honor.

On the Internet and in history books, much more information can be found about the horrific life the Taliban imposed on the people of Afghanistan. It was a nightmare, a too real nightmare which Afghans will not soon forget.

What is the warning in this story?

It is the example of what can happen when there is a meshing of Church and State. This is exactly the type of situation the original signers of our constitution were trying to protect our country from when they wrote the first amendment to the US Constitution:

“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.”

This amendment established the separation of Church from State.

Today, in the US, we have the Church and State joining forces to administer a Federal program, titled Fugitive Safe Surrender. This program is ran by the US Marshall's Office. It has been implemented in several states. They are now trying to bring it to Austin, Texas as well as many other cities and states.

You can read about this program on:

US Marshall's Safe Surrender Program

Austin American Statesman Newspaper

In the Safe Surrender program, the Church works with and for the police and courts to set up pseudo court rooms and booking stations. These Federal and State run operations are set up AT THE CHURCH. Citizens with outstanding warrants are instructed to come to these sites, these churches, to surrender themselves. Church members actually meet the “offenders” at the door and walk them into the mock court room or booking station where they receive resolution to their pending case or are arrested. The article on the US Marshall’s website paints a glowing picture of this program. Many people will think it is a wonderful idea also. But let’s not forget, initially the Afghans thought the Taliban was the solution to their problems too.

The Fugitive Safe Surrender program is the melding of church and state. It is an undoing of our the First Amendment and a danger to our constitution and our country.

If we allow this program to continue, what is next? What other functions will our government let the Church take over? Will we have church members riding in police cars, punishing, arresting and castigating sinners as the Taliban did to Afghan citizens? Will the Church BE the police?

Nukes on a Plane

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
Albert Einstein

"For want of a nail, the shoe is lost; for want of a shoe the horse is lost; and for want of a horse the rider is lost."
George Herbert

So, the US government had these really cool nuclear warheads, bombs really, in North Dakota. They loved them but the little bombies were getting old and needed some sprucing up. The problem was, to do the sprucing, the g-men needed to get their lovely babies down to Louisiana by Thursday. How to do it? Hmmm. Put them on a high-tech, ultra safe, specially designed cargo plane and fly them via a secret route which has been mapped out and planned perfectly? Or maybe, a safety equipped and highly monitored train? Or how about wrapped in bubble wrap, slapped in a box and UPS’d? (At least you can track them via UPS.)

No, they decided to strap them to the wings of a B52 bomber and just send them on their way cross country; sans monitoring, authorization, tracking, etc. (They kept their fingers crossed for safety measures, I’m sure.)

Unfortunately, believe it or not, this method may have a few tiny flaws. The main booboo being the warheads (which the military assures us are TOTALLY safe, gosh) were missing...oh, just say it..LOST, for over three hours! Yes, these toys of Armageddon were absent, unaccounted for, awol as it were, during a flight which crossed from the top to the bottom of our country. Ooops!

FYI, each of the bombs which were “strapped to pylons on the wings” of the planes equaled between 5 to 150 kilotons of TNT. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945 was approximately 15 kilotons.

I don’t know about you, but bombs, especially nuclear ones scare the crappola out of me. Ever since I saw the movie,The Day After, in the early 80’s I’ve been jumpy about the whole issue. Something about the vision of the world being hit with a searing blast which dissolves us all into one big mass of ultimate destruction and pain (ie. Hell) that bothers me. I guess I’m just a crybaby like that.

But I feel, the real point of this story, like those bombs, is missing. The really scary thing here is not that our government just lost a few potentially world destroying pieces of equipment. It’s that our government...many governments...have at their finger tips the ability to lay waste to the planet. Nukes, that’s what’s scary.

I say, lets not just get a better system or better workers to handle the nukes. Let’s get rid of the nukes, ALL nukes, including nuclear power plants.

Bumper stickers I’ve come up with:
Thank you very much, but I’ll pass on the nukes today.
Nuke free for me.
Go nature, not nukes.
Nukes suck.


Read `em and weep....

New York Times: Loose Nukes: Warheads in the Sky, By Mike Nizza

AP:'Military Times' Scoop: U.S. Plane Carried Nuclear Warheads to Louisiana

Aljazeera News: B-52 in US 'nuclear error' flight

Strategic Security Blog: A project of the Federation of American Scientists--
Flying Nuclear Bombs

Britain drops nuclear bomb. Fortunately it doesn’t go off

Article: U.S. Nuclear Stockpile Today and Tomorrow

How I Came To Be An Atheist

Sometimes people ask me how I came to be an atheist. This is the story I tell them. It's all true.

Like lots of other people, I was drafted into religion as a little kid. My mom got involved with Jehovah's Witnesses because my aunt, or neighbor, or someone else of influence, convinced her it would help her deal with her crappy life choices (IE. my dad) if she went to the Kingdom Hall and got "right" with God. She didn't have the guts to kill my drunken insane father so, she went. I guess she hoped God would help her put up with his shit, or maybe she just hoped God would kill him for her, if she played her cards right. Who knows?

Since I was just a kid, with no say-so in the matter, several times a week I was shamed into donning a little itchy dress with a fru-fru slip and roll down socks. I was told to act "ladylike" and sit quietly on a cold metal folding chair which cut into the back of my knees. Both evening and day, I sat and listened to adults drone on about things I didn't understand, while glaring florescent lights beat down on me. The meeting rooms were decorated in 60's ultra-bleak -- joyless wood paneling and carpet the color of depression. Dentist waiting rooms were more animated and cheerful than the inside of the Kingdom Hall.

Still, I was a good little girl, a compliant little girl. So I patiently sat through the meetings, pretending I was happy to be there.

Unlike some religions which only expect you to show up once a week and sing or chant or act devout, the Truth (what the JW's call their religion) became a lifestyle, a full-time-24/7-no-vacations-or-days-off job. It was the Blob of religions--sucking me in, absorbing my time and my life, removing all traces of individuality and free thought, as it rolled along looking for other victims to eat.

Years passed, and I trudged on in the Christian way. As a teenager, I got baptized. I adopted the attitudes and "facts" of the Truth as my own. I educated myself in the Christian rules and regulations by reading the Bible beginning to end and going to "bible study" sessions three times a week. I tried to do "good works" on a regular basis. I became one with the Blob.

Being physically disabled, the good works part was particularly hard on me. As a JW, it was expected by the congregation (and evidently, Jehovah himself) that each of us log a minimum of 20 hours of ministry a month. While ministering or "Witnessing" to the "Worldly" (non-JW's) was supposed to be joyful and voluntary, there was a lot of peer pressure involved. In the literature and in the talks (sermons) of the Elders, I was repeatedly reminded that good works were important in order to score God points, which could eventually be cashed in for the grand prize -- "eternal life in an earthly paradise." IE. If I wanted to live, I had to "Witness."

Witnessing consisted of walking door-to-door, hawking 10 cent magazines to complete strangers in order to entice them into the "Truth." Although it sounds like a load o' fun, it wasn't. Because, despite my pert little nose, my sweet young smile and my shiny, full-length crutches, many of those unexpectedly called upon strangers had no problem slamming their doors in my face.

Summer was the worst. Hobbling door-to-door in a polyester pantsuit, lugging a book bag of Watchtowers and Awakes, I trudged for blocks at a time. Almost as soon as I climbed out of the car and began my route (sometimes alone, sometimes with a partner) I started to get red-faced, sweat rolling down my back. Panting like a dog on the outside, on the inside I was nervously rehearsing my spiel I had to say at the next door. I had to remind myself to smile and be nice, no matter what. With each step (or hop), my book bag bounced, hitting the side of my crutch and threatened to throw me off balance. And as I crutched along in my uncomfortable dress shoes and sweaty pantsuit, bag bouncing, the pressure and friction of the wooden handles of my crutches eventually wore calluses on the palms of my hands. Later, the calluses would blister and then burst open to leak watery stuff, leaving raw spots -- a sure reminder of (and reward for) all my "good works" if ever there was one. If I had believed in hell (the JW's rejected the Hell concept), it would have been an eternal repetition of those hot summer days spent pimping for Jehovah.

Anyway, it was somewhere around my eighteenth birthday when my golden chimera of religious certainty started to fissure. From the beginning, I had been indoctrinated about "God's Plan" for humanity, for the planet, for the universe. Over and over, it was preached and praised. There were FAQ's and charts. Every answer was covered by JW literature but if there was one which could not be molded to fit the "Truth," then the old God-works-in-mysterious-ways rule was pulled out and slapped on like a faith bandaid. It had all worked . . . for awhile.

But it wasn't long until I began to feel very dissatisfied with the no answer answer. One thought took hold of me and wouldn't let go. I thought, if God is so smart and good, why is there so much misery in the world?

I studied this question. The answer was in the FAQ. According to the "Truth," two jerks had screwed things up for everybody way back when things first got started in "The Garden." So, because of this incident and a few others, God had devised this great plan for the future of humanity. And in that plan, well, we had to wait for stuff to happen and as a by-product people were slated to suffer. It was not God's fault, it was those other two assholes. Really, what could He do? It just wasn't in His plan to get "involved" yet. His hands were tied.

It didn't make sense to me. I was thinking, well, if it's His plan--why doesn't he just CHANGE it? I was confused but a seed of doubt had been planted.

Then another thought bubbled up and refused to leave. I thought--So, it's His plan. He could change it. He just didn't WANT to!

This last bit of reasoning started to piss me off. I began to think God was an egotistical asshole. I was mad that his plan was more important to Him than any amount of suffering of anyone else. To me, nothing seemed able to justify God's apparent apathy and cruelty toward His "creations." Once sprouted, my anger at Yehweh began to grow.

Still, I was (at that time) a good girl and I never vocalized my negative thoughts about God out loud. And then came an epiphany.

I was sitting in the Kingdom Hall one day, like hundreds of times before, surrounded by dreary furnishings and listening to tedious "talks" about Jehovah, the Truth, how to avoid sins or even thinking about sins and it came -- my awakening. Something clicked. A light switched on inside my head and I suddenly could see what was in front of me all along. And more importantly, I knew what I had to do. I looked up from the book in my lap and gazed around the room at the bowed heads of my "brothers" and "sisters."

"I would rather die than live forever with these people and their God," I thought. I felt instant relief.

It was not long after that, I left the Jehovah's Witnesses and all religion, for good.

Though I had separated myself from religion, I still had a belief in, and thus anger toward, God. For years I held on to this anger and I called myself an agnostic. Then, several years ago I was watching Austin cable access TV and a local atheist group broadcast their show. It was called the The Atheist Experience. It was a new experience for me--to see and hear atheists. I thought it was great that these people were loud and proud of their no-god stance. Everything they said on the show made perfect sense. It was stuff that was so obvious and rational, that I wondered why I didn't see it myself. I decided I was an atheist too.

It was a little scary at first, to decide to be and to out myself as an atheist, but a weird thing happened when I did. The anger toward God evaporated. It was a burden removed.

Now, I just say to people who accuse me of "hating" god and thus rejecting him -- How can you hate a Unicorn? Or a Frankenstein? Or Zeus? Or the Toothfairy? You just can't.

So, I don't.

Birthday present suggestion #1

My birthday is in a few days and usually I struggle to come up with an answer when people ask me what I want for a present. Well, not this year. I know just what I want.

I want a kevlar lined stab-resistant t-shirt, in black. sigh. Heavenly.

And for those of you looking for a present for your kids/grand kids, how about a Kevlar lined Hooded Top (aka hoodie) in their school colors? As the description says on the manufacturer's (Bladerunner) website:

“Bladerunner Kevlar lined Hooded Top
PRICE INCLUDES POSTAGE !”

“Bladerunner Kevlar lined hooded top gives extra protection to the upper body and arms from cuts and slashes from knives, broken glass and sharp metal etc”.

The description goes on to say, ”With zip up front and two front pockets these hooded tops are perfect for the modern urban environment.”

Of course. Gosh, who doesn't drool over such "perfection?" And best of all, now they come in kid sizes.

According to the Austin American Statesman news and The Guardian, this company, Bladerunner, is selling “anti-stab” and “anti-bullet” clothing to parents for their kids to wear to school. They even design them to look like school uniforms.

Bad idea or good idea? Or just an idea who’s time has come? hmmm.

Either way. Who cares, I WANT one! Safety first, ya know.