Dreams

I'm on the road to getting involved with the kind of organization I've dreamed of creating. It's everything I would have hoped it would be, and it's going to be wonderful to learn and watch it grow. I'm so excited! If I can someday create something that's half as cool as TYFA, I'll have something to be proud of.

Check out their website, and especially the public service announcement video that's on the home page. It's very, very cool and touching.

htpp://www.imatyfa.org

Whistle blowers

It's quite interesting how all whistle-blowers tend to have in common an unwavering, idealistic, almost naive attachment to truth and justice. I've always admired those who looked past their own personal safety to turn in a person, company, etc. that was doing something wrong. However, despite the huge uproar caused by the Abu Ghraib torture incidents, I wasn't aware of the whiste-blower that exposed what was going on and turned in photos of the torture until tonight, when I saw the story about Joe Darby on 60 Minutes. And dude. The guy blows me away.

Darby inadvertently came across photos of the torture, photos that have become famous, and was shocked when he realized that the MPs in the pictures, people that he knew and had known for a long time, were forcing prisoners to do these things. As the article on the CBS News website put it:

At first, Darby thought the pictures were maybe of American soldiers goofing off. "I laughed. I looked at it and I laughed. And then the next photo was of Graner and England standing behind them. And I was like, 'Wait a minute. This is the prison. These are prisoners.' And then it kind of sunk in that they were doing this to prisoners. This was people being forced to do this," Darby recalls. (my emphasis)

It looks like in this case, the whole wartime idea of making the enemies seem like less than people to make it easier to kill them didn't work on Darby. But that's another story. After he turned the photos in, anonymously, Darby lived in fear until he was told that he was being sent back to the States. However, when Darby told the Army that he wanted to go back to his hometown of Asshole, Maryland (it's really a town called Cumberland), he was told that they had done a safety assesment of the town and found that it wouldn't be safe for him and his wife to go back there. They told him it wasn't an option.

From the article:
The commander of the local VFW post, Colin Engelbach, told 60 Minutes what people were calling Darby. "He was a rat. He was a traitor. He let his unit down. He let his fellow soldiers down and the U.S. military. Basically he was no good," Engelbach says. Asked if he agrees with that, Engelbach says, "I agree that his actions that he did were no good and borderline traitor, yes." "What he says in his defense is 'Look. I’m an MP. And this is something which was illegal,'" Cooper remarks. "Right. But do you put the enemy above your buddies? I wouldn’t," Engelbach replies.

Jesus. So Darby and his wife were forced to choose someplace else to live, which they don't even tell interviewers out of fear that someone will come looking to hurt them.

Wrapping up the article and the interview on 60 Minutes, here's that idealistic love of truth that I admire so much:
"Do you wish that it wasn't you who was given the CDs?" Cooper asks.
"No, because if they had been given to somebody else, it might not have been reported," Darby says.
"And would that have been so bad, if it had never been reported?" Cooper asks.
"Ignorance is bliss they say but, to actually know what they were doing, you can't stand by and let that happen," Darby replies.
"There's still a lot of people though that'll say 'Look, you know, so what they did this. You know, Saddam did things that were much worse,'" Cooper remarks.
"We're Americans, we're not Saddam," Darby says. "We hold ourselves to a higher standard. Our soldiers hold themselves to a higher standard."

Asked if he'd do it again, Darby says, "Yes. They broke the law and they had to be punished."
"And it's that simple?" Cooper asks. "It's that simple," he replies.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/07/60minutes/main2238188.shtml

http://www.whistleblowers.org/

Upside-down

Oh. My god. I never thought this would happen. I'm agreeing with Cathi Herrod. I belong to the listserv thingie for the Center for Arizona Policy, the group that wrote the Protect Marriage Amendment (that we defeated, HAHAHAHA LOSERS!!!!!!!!). Yeah, it makes me want to hurl most of the time, but I think it's important to know what their bigoted little minds are up to at any given time. Anyway, Cathi Herrod *cough*bitch*cough* wrote today about the whole French thing where they have banned people wearing religious symbols (although I thought that was only banned in schools... I don't trust Herrod as far as I can throw her), and how it may happen at some future point here in America. And basically about how that's a negative thing, and how it means losing religious freedoms.

Um, holy shit? Something that I actually agree with her on! Ok, yes, I'm agnostic, and yes, I believe that religion is responsible for a good part of the world's ills... but I still think that we should uphold one of the founding ideas of this country, religious freedom. Sure, we don't actually uphold it as it is- we seem to have forgotten about the separation of church and state completely- but at least the theory is there, and if we don't preserve it as much as possible, we're going to end up not with a state completely intolerant of religion, but more likely with a state completely intolerant of all but a specific religion (I'm too lazy to look up Bush's particular branch of lunacy right now).

Again, I truly believe that much of organized religion is exclusive, bigoted, and destructive. However, I'd rather work to change those things, or to educate people on the hypocricy of using religion for hatred, than to ban religious symbols to reduce the strife that religion causes. Let's treat the cause of the problems, not the symptoms of them. The next thing to go may be something written on one of my bumper stickers, or, as in the case of a neighborhood association somewhere that Alden posted an article about, a wreath with a peace symbol on it. If all of us aren't free, none of us are free.

Murders

Here is an article about the recent increase in the murders of transgender people in Guatemala. I´d be interested to know more about the LGBT organizations mentioned and quoted in it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061123/ts_nm/guatemala_transvestites_dc

The Tucson Trans-Awareness week has been really great so far, I think. Last night I went to the last half of Ask-A-Tranny-Anything, and had an epiphany. It's nothing profound, or new, or anything I didn't necessarily know before, but it just kind of hit me: We could make the lives of trans people so much easier, as easy as the lives of everyone else plus a fairly major surgery, if we were just to accept being trans as one of the normal kinks in life. If parents made it clear that they were fine with it if their child turns out to not be the gender they expected and helped them on their journey, if people's reaction to the words, "I'm transitioning," was as blase as if the person had said, "I'm getting a haircut," if we FUCKING COVERED SRS AND HORMONES ON INSURANCE!!!! as routinely as we cover an appendectomy... Just to be clear, I don't mean that transitioning is on the same level as getting a haircut- there's a risk to the hormones, the surgery, and the fear that goes along with all that- but if we were all understanding and accepting of people's realizations that they're not the right sex and decisions to transition, it would make their lives so much easier, taking away the fear of how society will react to the change, and adding in unconditional support from family and friends. The depression resulting from knowing they won't be accepted by most, the fear and indecision about whether it's worth it to go through the societal pressure not to do it and policing of gender, we could take that all away.

It would be so damn simple to make the whole process so much more simple, but we aren't there yet. And it's so frustrating.

Voting today!!!!!!

Everyone please remember to vote today! If you live in Arizona, please, please vote NO ON 107 to save domestic partnerships, health care, and hospital visitation rights, and VOTE YES ON 204 to stop animal cruelty and give pregnant pigs and veal calves room to turn around and lay down in their cages!

This morning I woke up well before the ass-crack of dawn to stand at a polling place with a sign and literature for Vote No on 107. The polling places chosen by Arizona Together where our people are volunteering are the ones with a lot of traffic in the heart of enemy territory- we're talking Republican conservative central here. And yet, although there were many people who expressed general annoyance when I asked them if they wanted some literature, the vast majority of people who talked to me about which side they were going to be voting said that they were voting no! Yay! Of course, I wouldn't necessarily expect the people who disagreed with me and my big ass sign to actually say so to my face, but even the one single solitary person who said she was voting yes added, "But I admire you for standing out here." I got lots of "thank you for being out here!"s, lots of thumbs up, and lots of, "don't worry, I already voted/ will be voting NO!". It was so awesome. There were several negative experiences, but for every one negative experience there were five positive ones. Thank you to all of the people in Tucson, in Arizona, and that went to that particular polling place for your support and your vote! I feel about as positive as I can feel that we're going to win this one because of the compassion and intelligence of so many voters out here. Here's to being (I hope) the FIRST STATE TO DEFEAT A "MARRIAGE AMENDMENT"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Here's to equality and a better world for all of us!

On Bush's alleged religious influences

It's not that I don't think Bush does what he does based on his religion- but you have to wonder exactly what kind of god he's listening to. Good song.

"When The President Talks To God"- Bright Eyes

When the president talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women’s' rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs, the ghetto's broke
No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That's what God recommends
When the president talks to God

Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess god just calls a spade a spade
When the president talks to God

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?
I doubt it