See You in 2009

I'll be in South Africa from December 12 - 31. I am guessing it will be difficult to post as I will be mostly in the bush. See you in the new year. Some good news to watch while I am gone:

Simply Criminal

It troubles me greatly that our democratically elected government consciously decided to torture detainees and imprison Iraqis and others indefinitely (using my tax dollars). These are not American values. We are better than this. Many experts and soldiers in the field strongly believe that torture does not yield positive results. Even John McCain lied while being tortured.

Here is a link to an excellent opinion piece in the Washington Post from a US soldier who witnessed our soldiers torturing Iraqis. This soldier, who uses the fake name Matthew Alexander for protection (from our own soldiers?), conducted over 300 interrogations and oversaw over 1,000. His team found one of the most wanted men in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And he didn't use torture.

This is a great article, and it is not too long. You should click on the link above, but if you don't have time, here are a few excerpts:

I'm not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work.

The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators' bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules -- and often break them. I don't have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information.

Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war's biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi's associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader's location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

How did we get Here Again?

Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., 38th president of the USA

I turned my computer on this morning to this lead story on the BBC.com:

US job losses reach 34-year high

US unemployment rose by 533,000 in November, official figures show, the biggest one-month rise since 1974.

Not exactly remembering who was president when I was seven, I Googled:

president 1974

I actually Googled "presedent 1974" as I'm not a great speller, but that's beside the point. And I guessed Nixon and for the first seven months of 1974, Nixon was pres. But I digress.

Ford took over when Nixon resigned. The first link that appeared in my search was the USA government website on Gerald R. Ford. This was the third paragraph:

Ford was confronted with almost insuperable tasks. There were the challenges of mastering inflation, reviving a depressed economy, solving chronic energy shortages, and trying to ensure world peace.

So it was Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th president of the United States, who brought us to a place not too unlike today. And my next thought is, "The GOP: destroying the USA for the masses (at least in my lifetime)." But we keep on electing these people. Nixon, Reagan, Bush & Bush. And the same thing always happens: more USA instigated wars around the world, more economic hardship in the United States (for everyone not in the top 2% economically at least).

My friend Oliver once told me part of the definition of insanity is, "doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome," or something along those lines. And this makes sense. America must be insane.

My assistant as school recently told me that he heard SUV sales are on the rise again since gas has gone bellow $3 a gallon. Insane.

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more...

See my November 21st Posting for more things Christians who voted for Prop 8 can't do

(thanks for sending this Van)

Are we Living Life to the Fullest?

Pretty heavy duty to learn that a high school classmate of yours just died of cancer.

I read about it on Facebook and saw the tribute video that was made on the request of the dying classmate of mine on YouTube. How the times have changed.

I didn't know Tracy Ann Leonardo very well and over twenty years have passed since I have even seen here in the halls of Northport High School, but seeing the posting on Facebook stopped all my thoughts. Here is someone who I once sat in class with and now I am reading about her final days on her blog. I am thinking about the husband and son and immediate family and extended family, friends and acquaintances left to grieve her passing and it makes all of my gripes with work, our government, and my dirty kitchen seem so petty.

Even though, as a Buddhist, I fully embrace and am at peace with the fact that life is impermanent and that my mother, my sisters, my nephew, my father and my friends will all leave this life at some time, it is sobering to learn of one of my high school classmates dying.

From her blog, it seems she lead a happy and fulfilling life. Makes me stop, reconsider my priorities and think if I am living my life to the fullest.

Hate to Say, "I Told You So"

Add, "We are not in a recession" to the nonsense from the right. Put it in the same bucket as "global warming is a myth," "Obama is a Marxist/terrorist," "Evolution is false," "Fox News is fair and balanced," and "the world is flat." I listen & read to a lot of news and it has been amusing to hear all these "experts" shout that we are not in a recession for the last year.

We don't know we are "in a recession" until the the NBER (see below) tell us we are, and guess what? We have been in recession for the last twelve months!!! If I knew this, why didn't so many economists know it?

Excerpts from the BBC:

US recession 'began last year'

Machinary" border="0" height="170" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="226"> US manufacturing has now contracted for four months in a row

The US entered a recession in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Its business cycle dating committee, which is considered the arbiter of whether the US is in recession, met on Friday to make the decision.

The NBER says that the US economic expansion lasted 73 months, from November 2001, before contracting.

It used a broad range of economic indicators, such as employment and production, to make this judgement.

In a statement, the committee said that the "decline in economic activity in 2008 met the standard for a recession".

It said that employment peaked in December 2007 and has been falling every since.

And it said that personal income all began falling in the first quarter of 2008, while industrial production peaked in January 2008.

The NBER uses key monthly indicators of economic output, including employment, industrial production, real personal income, and wholesale and retail sales - to determine when economic growth has turned negative, rather than relying solely on two quarterly declines in GDP.

It defines a recession as a "significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income and other indicators."

Although a private sector body, the NBER has been dating the business cycle since 1929.

It does not forecast the length of the recession.