Too Much Destruction - END THIS WAR NOW

While we continue to mourn over the hurricane, kos at Daily Kos reports on a brutal month of August in Iraq:

U.S. military deaths in the Iraq war rose in August to the highest monthly total since January, and American officials predict escalating insurgent violence... At least 84 U.S. troops were killed in August, according to a count of deaths announced by the military. Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, there have been 1,879 American military deaths in Iraq, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, with another 14,265 troops wounded.

Perhaps I give humans too much credit sometimes, but I wish that the tragedy unfolding in Louisiana and Mississippi will bring us to think about what is important in life, and make this petty oil-greed war stand out like the ugly stain upon our nation that it is, and that we end the unjust, dirty, illegal war NOW.

Technorati tags: anti-war, peace, Iraq

Rainbow World Fund

I have given to the Red Cross to support relief efforts and I vehemently urge everyone else to do the same.

Additionally, because of some of the discrimination problems with the Red Cross, I am now also strongly suggesting giving to Rainbow World Fund, an LGBT organized charity through which you can donate and specify Katrina.

See additional charity options HERE at Instapundit!!!

Technorati Tags: flood aid, Hurricane Katrina, gay

Horror in New Orleans

Left In Lowell puts into words what I am struggling to get out:

Dear. Lord. The water is still rising... ****ALL RESIDENTS ON THE EAST BANK OF ORLEANS AND JEFFERSON REMAINING IN THE METRO AREA ARE BEING TOLD TO EVACUATE AS EFFORTS TO SANDBAG THE LEVEE BREAK HAVE ENDED. THE PUMPS IN THAT AREA ARE EXPECTED TO FAIL SOON AND 9 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN THE ENTIRE EAST BANK. WITHIN THE NEXT 12-15 HOURS****

No matter how many people expected this, the devastation is too much to comprehend.

This is an unfathomable horror upon a wonderful, beautiful city with the most amazing people and just incredible food.

GIVE WHAT YOU CAN NOW:
https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp

They need all of us.

Balanced = Fiction

Reporting on an anti-gay, Christian [sic] fundamentalist "conversion" conference, massmarrier brings attention to the critical issue of the often misunderstood job of journalists:

...The Seattle Times' let's-make-nice version... looks like a rookie reporter trying to be balanced and afraid to call a schmuck a schmuck.

Besen is by far the better writer and the intellectual of the two. He notes that LWO conferences are desperate affairs. As he put it:

"...Nicolosi claims that a distant father is responsible for creating a gay son. There is absolutely no evidence to back up this theory. Sure, some fathers may create distance when their sons express more interest in ice skating than ice hockey. But it ignores the incontrovertible fact that countless gay children are close to both parents, while many heterosexuals have estranged paternal relationships.

At Love Won Out, one will also hear that homosexuality is learned, but no evidence of this is offered."

Journalists and the media serve the public well when they communicate organized facts in their reporting. Simply to portray everything as two sides that disagree, dutifully quoting each side, with no reference back to the thing called "reality" is simply a form of fiction based on things actually heard. Novelists write conversations; journalists need to tell us about real things.

I'll leave you with a (slightly) parodied report from the corporate-owned evening news:

Controversy entangled Washington today following President Bush's news conference in which he declared, "We must remember that two plus two always equals seven."

Democrats quickly fired back that they believe that the number is probably closer to four.

Aides to the President responded that these attacks were purely political and the President would have no further discussions, and simply base the national budget on the correct sum, seven.

Oh, how the "balanced" media enlighten us.

Donate Today, Educate Them Tomorrow

TODAY, it is time to donate whatever you can to the Red Cross:

https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp

After the waters have receded and lives begin to rebuild, it will be time to seriously and vigorously address the issues of anti-gay discrimination from the Red Cross. There is no better way to help people hurting very badly from the storm than giving through them, but it is unacceptable that I have to agonize over giving to an organization that will not take my healthy blood or that of my friends and loved ones just because we are gay.

August Books

I recently finished reading 1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlanski, which I highly recommend to everyone. His writing style is engaging and highly readable in a way that drew my interest powerfully from one country to another, touring the world of the year 1968, with fascinating insight:

People born during and and directly after World War II grew up in a world transformed by horror, and this made them see the world in a completely different way. The great lesson of Nazi genocide for the postwar generation was that everyone has an obligation to speak up in the face of wrong and that any excuse for silence will, in the merciless hindsight of history, appear as pathetic and culpable as the Germans in the war crimes trials, pleasing that they were obeying orders (Kulansky, 100).

I found that particular observation stunningly probable as one of the reasons that the previous generation rose up to make a better world with far more energy than mine is inclined to so far.

Next up on my reading list is Jack Kerouac's On the Road ... which I probably should have read years ago, but may be more topical to my life right now.

My Heart is With New Orleans

I am so saddened by the devastation and the heartache in the beautiful and wonderful city of New Orleans.

I am heartened by the the fact that despite some of more dire predictions, there will now still be a Big Easy, right where we left her, needing some extra love to mend the tears.

I am in debt to Brendan Loy, the Irish Trojan, who kept me informed and frightened out of my wits all through yesterday, last night, and today.

SETI and Socialism

Strong weight of scientific evidence should have led us to expect to have detected, certainly by 2005, radio evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. That we apparently have not could have any number of possible explanations, but there is one that is deeply troubling because it is particularly plausible and frightening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI

It is highly likely that there have been up to millions of civilizations in our galaxy that have developed technology at least as advanced as our own. That we have not detected them raises the distinct possibility that very few of these civilizations survive long past the point of such technology; perhaps when a species develop the ability to destroy itself with instruments like the nuclear bomb, or even
more devastating possibilities, it may be only a matter of a few decades before they do so.

I doubt that I am one of the only people who feels that it is of the most profound importance that our species survive and grow into a civilization of greater kindness and love. But we are almost completely lacking any broad impulse to discussion of
action that could lead to our survival and true progress of the spirit. And it is too dangerous a time to have a dark age; but a dark age we have.

Stalin may be one of the largest to blame. The 19th and 20th centuries flourished with vision and idealism, but men obsessed with their own power, who later twisted and perverted some of the best ideas our species has ever had, have given ammunition to those who believe we cannot do better than a cold, heartless capitalism.

Arise comrades! We have little time to establish Socialism, Peace, and Democracy across the globe lest we all join the large, cold graveyard of the galaxy.