Big duh!

We train em, teach em, and send em out into the world...then we wonder what happened when Frankenstein's monster emerges from these teachings...

Gentlemen frankly what else did you expect?

Great...

Perhaps I picked a good day to come back to the blog world...then again perhaps not. It seems that 'innocent until proven guilty' is just not the case in Canada anymore - see the 'gun crime punishment increased' section of this article from the CBC.

Thanx Stevie H. I really 'appreciate' this conservative 'protection'. What a hero it takes to undermine the judiciary and the most important principle for our system of law - I feel so much 'safer' having to prove my innocence.

Witch burnings anyone?

Nothing really changes

Writing on September 23 2005 I posted a scathing review of the Taser Fad in Canada...

Today the CBC reports on an editorial article from the Canadian medical association journal that calls for the review of taser use and notes that the proponents of taser-mania are in fact those who profit from the sale and manufacturing of these handy little devices...

shocking isn't it?

Some time comin!

Amazing how two years can pass without notice - or rather how two years can happen without the inspiration to post.

This blog is much like my diary - spotted, spontaneous and sporadic :)

Good to be back - post some content soon :)

Nuclear Neurosis

WOW! It's certainly been a while....I've been enjoying the sabbatical from political life, expunged from the human drama, though never the spectacle. However, there are times when one simply must contribute to the (un)usual drivel.

Today an article from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, hidden away on a side column of page A13 no less, gives brief summary of a new draft resolution against Iran's nuclear program going up for debate by the UN security council. The article reads:

Ban Iranians from studying nuclear physics, draft says
Washington. The United States and three European allies have given Russia and China a draft text
for a Security Council resolution against Iran's nuclear program. The proposal
includes the extraordinary step of preventing Iranian students from studying
nuclear physics at foreign universities and colleges. The draft resolution also
would prohibit any technical or financial assistance that could benefit Iran's
nuclear program, and would impose a visa ban on any Iranians involved in nuclear
activities. UN ambassadors from six countries - the five permanent members of
the Security Council and Germany - are scheduled to meet today to debate the
resolution, officials said. NYT

Basically then, it appears the UN Security Council is actually trying to limit the study of a particular subject by people of a particular nationality... So what's my big problem? After all, we're supposed to do our part to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons right? That's exactly the problem - the study of nuclear physics is not the creation of nuclear weapons! It is only the global propaganda mechanism instigated by Bush Co. which links these two ideas directly, with the 'axis' as the country of Iran - or apparently the country's scholars and scientists. If nuclear physics is not the creation of nuclear bombs then what is it? According to Wikipedia's page on nuclear physics:

"Nuclear physics is the branch of physics concerned with the nucleus of the
atom. It has three main aspects: probing the fundamental particles (proton and
neutrons) and their interactions, classifying and interpreting the properties of
nuclei, and providing technological advances".

Notice the words 'weapon' and 'bomb' are absent from the above? Perhaps 'technological advances' should be further examined in order to establish just what so called 'advances' have come from the study of nuclear physics. Wikipedia's article concludes that:

"Experiments with nuclei continue to contribute to the understanding of basic
interactions. Investigation of nuclear properties and the laws governing the
structure of nuclei is an active and productive area of research, and practical
applications, such as nuclear power, smoke detectors, cardiac pacemakers, and
medical imaging devices, have become common".

That's right - and according to The ABC's of Nuclear Science produced by the Nuclear Science Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory the study of nuclear physics contributes to thousands of technologically and socially responsible advancements. Condensed into a handy chart are only some of the broader fields nuclear physics has a hand in.

Here is a direct link to this chart in context.

It seems that nuclear science does a whole lot more than contribute to weapons.

Restricting access to the materials through which a nuclear weapon could be composed is one thing, banning an entire line of scientific inquiry is another. This is the distinction the UN Security Council is apparently on the verge of missing.

Since we can conclude that blocking scientists and scholars of Iranian nationality from studying nuclear physics will not contribute to global security - can someone tell me what exactly the UN Security Council is doing? Are they suffering a form of nuclear neurosis? What they really need is Mel Brooks to scream "We've gotta protect our phoney baloney jobs, gentlemen!"

But I digress...

Soldier Sex

Well it's good we're finally getting some real numbers regarding the troops....

Freedom to what?

From this CBC article -Freedom of speech does not entail the freedom to disrespect the beliefs of others which are different from your own. It would do many of us - especially here in the 'west' - a great deal of good to remember that.

When I grow up...

Recently I was conversing with a co-worker, also in her early 20's and the question of what to 'be' when we 'grew up' was raised. (Pardon the pun)

So what do I want to be when I grow up?

Well, I think that's a question we spend our whole lives answering. Perhaps we never really 'grow up'. That is, reaching a state of being where we 'know' the 'answers' to our biggest questions.

Perhaps being a 'grown up' is more about pursuing what author Sharon Parks terms "big questions, and worthy dreams".

Sharon Daloz Parks' article, "How then shall we live? Suffering and Wonder in the New Commons" which appears in the larger work "Living the Questions: Essays Inspired by the Work and Life of Parker J. Palmer" addresses the battle and difficulty of coming to terms with these types of questions in our early adulthood and beyond.

Parks writes about the importance of engaging with the "big questions" encouraging "encounters with otherness" to shape and shift our world view - to shape and shift our collective and individual selves.

She writes:

"We are now being invited to become responsive and responsible citizens in the life of this new commons - a place that is complex, diverse, and vast. We are discovering that the formation of citizenship for this new commons requires transforming encounters with 'otherness'. When we encounter those other than our own 'tribe' in a manner that awakens our empathy and compassion and enlarges our sense of belonging, power, and hope, then 'us versus them' is transformed into 'we'" (p.300).

Parks continues in her call for engagement with 'big questions' describing her experiences as a professor researching with students at the Harvard Business School.

"No one had asked them to consider: What do I really want the future to look like, for me, for others, for my planet? Why is there a growing gap between the haves and have-nots? In this society, why do gross patterns of injustice continue to be legitimated by skin color? Why are antidepressants being prescribed for an increasing number of children? Why is the prison population growing in our society? What are the reasons for climate change? How will we heal the rupture between science and religion? How shall we practice commerce and design governance in the life of the new commons? They had not been offered the gift of encounters with otherness that could awaken them to beckoning questions stretching us and prompting formation of the capacity to reach for more than a job, a career, or a lifestyle. Only live encounters that evoke big enough questions give rise to worthy dreams...too many young adults are being offered dreams of their future that are not worthy of the promise of thier lives"(p. 301).

Parks speaks to the difficulty of negotiating our 'new commons' when she continues:

"I have a choice. I can read and deflect the new knowlege into a mental bin of 'interesting information'. Or, in contrast, I can take it in and allow it to become alive in me. If I do so, I become connected with a people, a region, and dimensions of suffering and courage different from my own...I find myself saying 'There has to be a way,' which gives rise to the courage to risk" (p.303).

The most important of her points is that she urges us to truely ENGAGE with the world, to take the time to reflect and think about ourselves, others, and our mutual positions in the world.

This, for me, is the marker of adulthood - perhaps better phrased the marker of true human capacity and potential. In taking the time to ponder -what do I want to be when I grow up - and ponder it always we must - we are asking more fundamentally, what the meaning of our lives should be, how we will be remembered both individually and collectively. Asking ourselves -What legacy then, do we leave?

In quoting author Parker Palmer, Parks writes that:

"'Contemplation is not the special skill of a disciplined few who have mastered some esoteric set of techniques. Contemplation is any way of penetrating illusion and touching reality. We arrive in this world with an inborn contemplative capacity...that helps us survive and thrive by keeping us grounded in reality, if we will let it.' If we will let it."(p.304).

Our contemplation perhaps suggests the true fulfillment of human capacity and potential. I don't have the answer - what I want to be when I grow up - but the answer is not nearly so important as exploring the question. (and of course, remaining open to the ever-changing answers!)

Asking what to be when we grow up is the beginning of a marvellous engagement with ourselves, the world, and ultimately our potentials. Perhaps it's not so bad, or so much cause for alarm to be without an answer to our biggest questions - they lead to worthy dreams.

Refreshing vision

As the Canadian election campaign gears up I have to take a moment and send out my support to a Saskatchewan candidate in the Saskatoon-Blackstrap riding this year.

Mike Fornssler of the Green Party has undertaken a venture to film a documentary regarding his candidacy and the process of running for federal office. The CBC ran a story on this December 22 2005 titled "Lights, Camera...election!".

So why is it important for everyone to see? I mean it's not even your riding right?

Well, aside from the fact that Mike is my brother, his approach is novel. He's seeking to bring an important aspect of Canadian society into the lime-light, so to speak. Our political processes are often a complete mystery to those who are not involved directly and many have no idea what it takes, who to talk with, or how to go about becoming a Member of Parliament in this country. One thing I have always appreciated about Mike is his unique vision for the world, his ability to sort through the political BS to the core of the issue, and more than anything his unending sense of humor - which I believe to be the most important for a candidate in his position. And you may write this off as a proud, perhap boastful, sister of similar political mind - but when it comes to the seriousness of the leadership hopefuls in this country I make no false claims. Mike Fornssler is going to change the face of politics in this country, one film, one election, one speech, one interview at a time. Thank you Mike, we need your vision.

They thought they were free...

Just finished reading some blogs and I discovered a wonderful passage quoted by CathiefromCanada in her entry titled "Getting worse" posted Wednesday December 21, 2005.

The quote is linked to another blog called "My left wing". In the post titled "Slouching Toward Kristallnacht" author Maryscott O'Connor references Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933 - 1945. Here is a selection of what Mayer's wrote as quoted by O'Connor:

". . . one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none . . . in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in "43" had come immediately after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in "33". But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying "Jew swine," collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in, your nation, your people is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing) . . . You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or "adjust" your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."
I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say . . . "Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was "defeatism." You assumed that there were lists of those who would be "dealt with" later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a "victory orgy" to "take care of" those who thought that their "treasonable attitude" had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.
"Once the war began, the government could do anything "necessary" to win it; so it was with the "final solution" of the Jewish problem, which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its "necessities" gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."

It seems more than accurate in describing the uncertainty and inaction that I, and many like me, are experiencing.

So, in heeding this warning, where do we start?