Terrorism and the USA

I'm thinking about the news stories out of Paris.

I'm remembering

1) this blog I wrote in August: Iran: Bitter Harvest

2) estimates of 500k dead from our second invasion of Iraq: civilian casualties in Iraq

3) estimates of 500k CHILDREN dead in Iraq due to the economic boycott we led between the Iraq wars: Economic sanctions kill children

4) all these public shootings that are purely domestic: domestic shootings rise

How dare we accuse others of being terrorists?  How dare we?

We talk about stopping terrorism?  How about stopping our own horrible behavior that gives rise to terrorism?

On dealing with death

These are some comments I wrote recently to a sponsee relating to dealing with death.

For me, it's part of the disease to always focus on the negative and never the positive.

I like the Hindu trinity: Brahma; Vishnu; Shiva -- it's a cycle: create, sustain, destroy/transform, respectively.  When I first heard about it, I thought that Shiva, the destroyer/transformer, must be a bad guy -- like our Satan.  I was quite surprised to discover that Hindus regard him as a loving God -- the cosmic declutterer. 

Once I attended a seminar at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the earth sciences, graduate campus of Columbia University.  I heard a presentation about disaster hotspots: places where natural disasters are closely located to population centers.  These disasters include floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, and storms. The worst disaster hotspot in the world was in the Ganges valley of India. 

It made sense to me then how they had to include Shiva in their trinity.

In the western tradition, we always refer to HP as "creator."  That's incomplete.

We're still in a time in our world when more people are being born than are dying, though.

Another interesting thing that I heard was when I attended a seminar on fear at a local yoga ashram.  The speaker said that fear is often associated with fear of loss.  Then she said, "if we truly believe that we are part of a universal whole, than we must believe that nothing is ever truly lost," or something to that effect.  I may be distressed because things are redistributed somewhere where I personally cannot access them, but that is a selfish distress.

For instance, in physics we learn that time is a dimension, just like the physical dimensions of our visible world.  We humans have not learned to travel in time.  Presumably, tho, an omniscient HP can do so.  Therefore, people who seem lost to us do not seem lost to HP.  It's just that we personally cannot access them according to our current perspective.

I find these thoughts helpful in dealing with loss.

@wsj article about alliance against the Islamic State

9/28/15 There was an article on the front page of @wsj, talking about an alliance between Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria to fight the Islamic State militants.

The POV for the article was that somehow this was reducing USA influence in the Middle East and therefore hurting us.

Hello?

Why aren't we cheering? Don't we want the Islamic State militants eliminated?  Aren't they the wicked terrorists?  Isn't it great that this diverse group is assembling to accomplish just exactly what we're hoping for? 

Why do we have to make everything be about us -- about our giant egos getting bent out of shape?

Why does every article about China or Russia in the mainstream USA media have to be with the "see no good, hear no good, speak no good" framework?  Can't we stop this negative knee jerk reaction and notice when these people are doing something good?  Are we so simple minded that we can see no nuance, no complexity, no evolution? 

@wsj should be ashamed of itself for arousing people into fear and hostility over this.

Equal Rights Amendment

I see that NOW is going for the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) again.

This was the text of the failed ERA:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification

This amendment floundered before for 2 main reasons

1. People did not want co-ed restrooms
2. People did not want to see women drafted or put in combat -- and did not want to compel the military to do that.

Also there were concerns about maternity leave and special protections for moms.

Let's fix this amendment before re-presenting it. Let's add some things

Section 1 Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of [sex] gender, provided however that this provisions shall not be interpreted to
a)  prohibit gender segregation of sleeping, bathing, or toilet facilities;
b) require conscription of females;
c) require the military services to put females in combat or in combat units with males; or
d) relate to provision of beneficial health or work accommodations or services, where those are necessarily biologically gender specific.

You'll notice that the American language has changed.  The word "sex" now commonly refers to sexual acts, rather than the gender of individuals.  The word "sex" is no longer appropriate to this amendment.

Sometimes issues are complex and need more consideration.

I do foresee difficulties because of the gender reassignment trend that is currently so much in the public eye.  It may be that additional language will have to be considered to cover this situation.

Iran: The Bitter Harvest

[this essay was written in support of an agreement that Barack Obama reached with Iran in August of 2015, but many of the points continue to be applicable after that issue has passed from the public consciousness]

We, in the USA,  find ourselves reaping the bitter fruits of a long period of misguided foreign policy, policy that has been as evil as it has been stupid. We have supported brutal, unpopular regimes around the world to advance short term interests, ignoring the ill will we were sowing in the people affected. We have repeatedly abused our super power status.

First, there was the anti-communist period.

Iran is only one country that has been the object of such treatment. Our CIA helped overthrow a popular government in Iran in favor of a shah, whose policies were more palatable to us.

This action totally ignored the future. Most Iranians were furious about our actions. Eventually they wrested control back to an elected government. This government, being a reaction to anger over our actions, was angry at the USA and unpleasantly conservative, more so than it might have been if we had not intervened.

We did something worse in Chile, where we conspired to destroy an 84 year old democracy, because the elected president was a communist. The resulting brutal dictatorship was known for "disappearing" large numbers of people.  This became the topic of a popular song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESSbVYHHS0o

Worse still was our intervention in Viet Nam, where we fought for years to prevent a popular election, because we feared that communists would be elected. The result was untold carnage. Fortunately those people are Buddhists and seem to have forgiven us.

With the passage of time, we have come to see that our domino theory ideas, which led us into many of these actions, did not come to fruition. Politics is much more complex than black and white dotted toys. We also did not recognize that a communist government, popularly elected through a constitutional democracy, might be a very different thing from the Soviet Union or Maoist China.

I don't really understand the history of Korea, but whatever we did there has at least contributed to the survival of the fiendish lunacy that they call a government there.

More recently there has been the period of attacking Muslim regions.

The evil folly of our intervention in Iraq is fresher in our memory. First, we took the side of Kuwait in an oil dispute, ignoring the fact that Kuwait was one of those countries where women were held as slaves, while Iraq was a country where women had relatively better status. Women's rights have never taken a sufficiently important role in our considerations of foreign policy.

Then Bush II, and Cheney, conspired to deceive the American people into participating in a second war in Iraq that benefited Cheney's company at horrendous expense, both in money and in human lives. They overthrew a stable government that kept terror under control, in favor of violent anarchy. They violated the Geneva convention, relating to war criminals, a treaty our country self-righteously imposed on others, by authorizing torture and refusing international inspection. They are war criminals, yet they walk free.

Afghanistan is a strange story. Our fear of the Soviet Union was so great that we backed and trained the mujahideen, an insurgent group that opposed Soviet influence in the region. We didn't look too closely at who we were training, because we trained the likes of Osama bin Laden.

I remember reading an interview with a mujahideen member in Time magazine back in the early eighties. The fighter was asked why he opposed the USSR. He replied that they wanted to educate women and girls, which he opposed. It immediately occurred to me that, in our blind fear of the Soviets, we had rushed to help the bad guys. We saw that later, when the Taliban arose, saw too late the folly of our actions.

Then we rushed to install Karzai in Afghanistan, one of Bush II's oil industry cronies, becoming involved on the pretext that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan, when it now appears that he was in Pakistan. While this action seemed temporarily successful, we see the Taliban coming back now -- those same women haters who we helped back in the 70's and 80's.

Ever since WWII, our military adventurism has been mostly evil and stupid, earning us much enmity all over the world.

People in the Middle East, in particular, remember military adventurism from other countries as well, notably European countries, not only in modern times, but also in ancient times,  especially during the crusades – which is still a topic frequently mentioned by terrorists, and which provokes a lot of negative emotions in the minds of Middle Easterners.

I remember being in seventh grade social studies and having Mrs. Raymond, at Cherokee Junior High School, teaching us about the Monroe Doctrine.  For those of you who don’t remember, this was a policy instituted during the early history of the USA.  We undertook to protect other Western Hemisphere countries against European military incursions. 

I asked her, “Who is going to protect them from us?”

She said “No one needs to be protected from us.”

Really, Mrs. Raymond?  Really? Why are we studying in a school called "Cherokee?"  What did we do to the native peoples?

So now we find, "Gee whiz! Iran is actually a fairly powerful, wealthy country. They're developing nuclear capability, and they hate us."

As I stood on 8/10/15 in front of the Manhattan building where Schumer has an office, protesting Schumer's stance on Obama's agreement with Iran, I heard a counter protestor shouting, “do you trust Iran?” He was talking to someone else. I didn’t say anything,

Afterwards, I thought “No, I don’t.  Do you trust the government of the USA? If you do, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.”

Still, my sense is that Iran is not part of the “axis of evil,” the way Bush II characterized it.  They have a democracy – granted not perfect, but still a democracy of sorts.  The people there do have a deep concern about morality – maybe not our sense, but still a sense.  They’re not at all like North Korea, where the people are held in slavery to a mythical king.

One question is whether Iran is less to be trusted with nuclear weapons than countries that  already have them, such as Russia, China, Pakistan, India, France, the UK, Israel, and North Korea.  I would personally rate them as more trustworthy than North Korea and Pakistan – possibly on a level with China and India, in terms of the quality of people who are in government. 

We should note that, as afraid as we were of Russia using nuclear weapons against us, it has never happened.  Please note my prior blog about Russia Russia v Ukraine a Dissenting View

What is the only country that has used nuclear weapons in war?  The USA!

What moral authority do we have to say that we should have nuclear weapons – and other weapons of mass destruction – while others cannot? My view is none – no moral authority whatsoever.  Our history is shameful -- as I've listed above.  We're just international bullies.

The real problem here is that Israel is afraid that Iran is going to attack them.  It’s not the nuclear weapons exactly – after all Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons itself, though I don’t think that’s been officially confirmed.  The problem is that Iran has committed to wiping Israel out. 

It’s a unfortunate that we’re arguing about nuclear weapons rather than the real issue.

It would be more cool if Iran were committing not to invade/bomb Israel, much more cool, but what we have is this proposed agreement.  It’s remarkable, given that we have had this ignominious history of perfidy with respect to Iran, and so many others, that they’re willing to talk to us at all.  That’s to be celebrated.  That we got any kind of concessions out of them at all is a miracle.

Can we trust them?  No.  Can they trust us?  No.  Will they abide by the agreement?  Who knows?  Will we? Who knows?

Still it’s progress. It’s a commitment not to go into nuclear weapons.  That’s cool.  It should be supported.

The alternative seems to me to be war – short-sighted, evil, misguided war – a reflection of the short-sighted, evil pattern that we’ve been exhibiting for so very long. Let's stop this pattern.  Let's stop trying to control the world.

*******

Addendum 8/26/15 Here is a link to the FCNL flyer on the topic of the Iran deal FCNL FLYER

*******

I was at a protest demonstration in front of Chuck Schumer's office and an obnoxious person came up and started making outrageous statements which I later realized were sardonic critiques of Obama's Iran Deal.  She claimed he would do well as Hitler, and wanted to wipe out Jews.

I found this offensive.  My father was a refugee from the Holocaust, because his ancestry was Jewish.  

I do not want to wipe out Jews.

I think that we have a better chance of negotiating with Iran about Iran's position on Israel if we have good relations with them.  This deal is a good step in that direction.

Also she implied that Iran is like North Korea. NO.  I don't think so, not at all.

Thoughts about how to process resentments under step 4 of the AABB

The resentment form has 3 main parts.

1. The first part is a description of the resentment.  This requires a detailed acknowledgement of what you are feeling.  (see AABB p. 65) 

 

This has 3 sub-parts.

a) the name of the resentment

b) a description of the resentment -- why you have this resentment

c) a list of what is affected.

It is very important to acknowledge your feelings and write them down.  Stuffing down feelings is part of the disease

2. The second part of the form is the prayer (AABB top of p. 67).  This is VERY important.

"God please help me show ________ [person, place, thing resented] the same tolerance, pity, and patience I would cheerfully grant a sick friend.  He/she/it is a sick person/place/thing. How can I be helpful to him/her/it? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done."

This is a spiritual form of recovery. This prayer is supposed to lift the resentment and help you see the person, place or thing resented as sick.  Visualize them with a band-aid on their forehead.

You cannot see your own character defects.  HP has to help you.  This is a spiritual method of recovery.You especially cannot see your character defects until the resentment is lifted. 

If this prayer does not work to lift the resentment, try the two week resentment prayer AABB (4th ed) p. 551-2

3. The third part of the resentment form is the "turnarounds." Where was a selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and afraid? (AABB p. 67) 

 

These are the "character defects," maladaptive thinking that gives rise to resentments.  Resentments are fatal.  Any thinking that gives rise to resentment is also fatal.

I am attaching:

an example of the resentment form (in the style of oabigbook.info, made up the way I think it should be made up, as applied to the story of Jim (the man who drank the whisky with the milk) in the AABB pp 35-36.  You may want to click on this image to see it larger.

 

More about "selfish" 

When I do a BB style inventory, I list the things I want under "selfish." I do not understand "selfish" to be an insult the way it is used outside program. Instead, it is just the things that I want.

It is normal to want things.  What is bad is if I want things so much that I get sick if I don't get those things.  Also, when I want things I cannot have, I am not surrendered.

Before program I did not allow myself to say or even know many of the things I wanted. I spoke indirectly, all around what I meant or felt.  The things I said were not honestly related to what was going on inside me.  I blew up a lot, because I had so much bottled up, but my blowups were mysterious and sudden, without people having the opportunity to understand what they might have done to offend me – and without me even understanding what was bothering me.

Through repetition in program, by doing this inventory process, I have learned to identify what I want and list those things calmly.  This means that I know myself better than I used to.  I am not stuffing down.  I am being honest.  Since I list things calmly and rationally, I am more likely to get what I want than if I isolate or get sullen & resentful as I used to.  I have become a better negotiator, because of the Big Book process.

Also, because I know and am comfortable with myself, I find it easier to listen to and understand other people.  Their concerns are less likely to destabilize me than before.

Understanding selfishness has helped me feel saner and more integrated with the human race.  

I had a friend in program who had been severely abused by his father.   He wanted his father to love him. He had never felt that his father loved him.  Of course, it is natural for one to want one's father to love one; but, in this case, it was something that he could not have.  He was not able to accept that he could not have it.  (see e.g. Serenity Prayer) He ended up dying from this disease.  Surrender means that we have to accept that we are not in charge and that we don't get what we want all the time.

I have a friend who has wanted to stop the genocide in Darfur.  Now, really, if there is anything that she is powerless over, it's the genocide in Darfur, but she could not accept that.  She had a sign in her front yard that said "not on my watch: stop the genocide in Darfur."  Social activists are often overweight, because they cannot get what they want.  They might be acting selflessly by the standards of the outside world, but not by the standards of program.

For me, the most basic formulation of "selfish" was "I want people, places, and things to be different so I can be more comfortable."

More about "dishonest"

The Dishonest category was something I really did not understand at first. I thought it only related to lies that I told other people or stealing.  I did not understand that it included lies I was telling myself.  These are the harder ones to see.

For me, dishonesty includes: not accepting how much can be accomplished in a day, how much can be accomplished in a lifetime, how much sleep I need, how much time for self care.  I make myself crazy over these things.

Some other categories of dishonest that I had trouble seeing were:

• I don't accept people, places, and things the way HP made them. I think I know better than HP.
• Allowing other people to esteem and value me, e.g. "people pleasing" In fact, HP is the one who should esteem and value me. If I am allowing others' opinions of me to make me miserable, I am making other people into HP
• I thought it was my responsibility to make others happy.  No, it is my responsibility to keep my side of the street clean, using the steps.  If I do that, and others are unhappy with me, then that is not my problem.  It's their problem.  Only HP can make others happy.  If I think I can make others happy, then I'm thinking I'm HP.

More about self-seeking

This category is particularly troublesome, as to what it means.  How is it different from "selfish?"

I heard 3 explanations of this

1. It is the same as selfish and is just listed as "elegant variation," a writing style thing, in the list.

2. It is "seeking yourself in others," i.e. people pleasing.  I personally put this category under "dishonest."

3. How I acted out.  That's the one I prefer.  What did I do as a result of being selfish, dishonest, and afraid? There are a lot of things that could be put in here. 

The most common for female compulsive overeaters is constantly putting out a cloud of negative emotions, which makes everyone miserable.  As with everything in program, there is a spectrum here.  We want to find a happy medium between: being constantly negative and being falsely cheerful, which is emotionally dishonest.  The truth is somewhere in between.  Black & white thinking is not good.

Another way of acting out is somatizing.  I learned more about this when I did ACA.  If I have psychosomatic symtoms, e.g. nervous stomach, blushing, rapid heartbeat, (or in my case also eczema and back spasms can also result from stress) that can often be my first warning that I need to do some stepwork.  My body is warning me. I put that under here because it's important to be aware of body warning signals.

Afraid

I'm hoping to put this in a separate blog (see e.g. AABB p. 68)

Journalling about my career change

I was at a Quaker retreat a year ago.  They asked us to draw pictures.  That seems to be a common activity at Quaker workshops.  I don’t remember what the topic was.  I do remember what I drew.

I drew a picture of me in church, fuming, because I had to listen to a preacher, whose preachings I found insipid, annoying, lacking profundity.  This was one of my motivations for becoming a Quaker — to get onto the other side of the pulpit — to become one of the ministers — and all Friends are ministers.

Below the picture of me in church, I drew a picture of me, looking at my computer screen, fuming, because I had to watch material, much of which I found annoying for some of the same reasons — but also some other reasons.  This was one of my motivations for getting into acting and performing.  I wanted to get on the other side of the screen.

There were other reasons as well.  I love performing.  I feel it comes naturally to me. 

Yet, as I try to get into the entertainment industry, I find myself continuing to dislike the very things that drew me to want to change it.

I have been studying improv comedy for two and a half years.  I love improvising.  I love getting on stage and making things up.  So far, tho, they haven’t let me into conservatory level courses at the my school. 

I was just at the theater run by my school last night, watching a show, by one of my preferred groups.  The show was raunchy.  That seems to be the norm.

I don’t like raunchy.  I am not laughing.  I respect the talent of the people on stage.  They’re bouncy, energetic, working well together.  They’re great singers.  They are nice people off stage.  I really want to be their friend.  But I didn’t like the show.

I also don’t like the widespread use of profanity in improv.  I don’t like profanity. 

I’m taking an acting course at an acting studio.  We’re working on a classic play called “All My Sons,” by Arthur Miller.  It’s a great play.  But my character has to use some profanity.  I don’t like it. 

I get e-mails offering me courses with casting directors who are casting for TV shows that I’ve never watched.  I’m not a TV watcher.  I went completely cold turkey off video in college, because it seemed like a dangerous, addictive drug to me.  I was only recently drawn back into video, because of my computer — the lure of YouTube videos, videos that are shorter, geared to my interests by an artificial intelligence algorithm. 

TV still doesn’t lure me, tho. I would rather be creating content than consuming it, so it’s hard for me to get motivated to go to casting directors who are casting for things that I know little about and probably wouldn’t enjoy.

I’m drawn to sci-fi fantasy villains.  I like the idea of scaring people.  Probably that’s because I’m a timid person.  I don’t feel badly about being a villain, because usually the villain gets killed.  It’s just a role.

I auditioned for a horror musical recently.  The director saw on my resume that I’m religious, so he wondered if I would fit into horror.  I’m drawn to scaring people, so I’m drawn to horror. I told him that I thought that horror is often very moralistic — often more so than other genres — and draws conclusions that are very basic ethically.  There was no moral conclusion to the musical improv comedy show I saw last night at all.

Still, I was most drawn to Dark Shadows as a child, because Barnabas wanted to reform.  That’s part of what I really liked about Star Wars, Darth Vader was redeemed at the end.  Redemption is a theme that I like, much more so than killing the victim.  Tho I don’t consider myself a traditional Christian, I was impressed with the Christian idea that we are trying to save people spiritually, to get them to repent and reform rather than just punishing them.

I also liked Star Trek, as a kid, partly because Captain Kirk always regretted having to kill sentient aliens.  He did not take pleasure in it.  He wanted to avoid it.

I like to watch movies based on comic books.  There’s little or no profanity there.  There are scary villains that I would like to play, but they don’t have to swear.  Also, I like watching sexy men in tights, if it’s only slightly suggestive, and not raunchy.

One of the things that drew me to Quakers was the historical testimony of plainness.  Historical Quakers felt that spending time decorating themselves was wasteful, that that time and energy should be spent helping the poor.  For me, it’s a bit different.  I don’t like the feeling that women have to spend huge amounts of time and energy decorating themselves, because they feel insecure about themselves, particularly with respect to men.  Also, I feel that society generally compensates women less than men and women are expected to spend scarce resources on their appearances.

I got into a big debate on Facebook recently about Bruce Jenner’s transition, where I was disturbed that he felt comfortable with his natural appearance  while being interviewed by Sawyer so long as that was identified as “male,” but identifying as “female” and becoming “she,” involved wearing makeup, hyper-sexualized clothing and styled hair — a male fantasy of what a woman is — not the natural appearance of a person in the process of transitioning from male to female, with mixed features and body attributes.

The person who got most upset about my post was a successful actress, who does buy into the whole makeup, clothing, hair thing.  She felt threatened, apparently, by my opinion that Jenner’s way of defining female involved all this beauty enhancement stuff. 

The first transgender people I met were Quakers.  They, like me, were not so into the commercialization of female beauty and tended to be fairly plain.  They made me curious.  I tend to be drawn to gay and transgender men.  I wanted to know more about them.

Jenner is different.  Women in his life as a straight man included the Kardashians.  Jenner buys into that view of women. I’m still curious about Jenner, as most everyone seems to be, but I don’t like the way Jenner defines female.

But this brings me back to my friend who is a successful actress, who is not into “plain” the way I am.  In some sense, she represents my fears about what I would have to become to be successful as a performer. 

I’m not going into this to become like everyone else.  I don’t want to have to do roles that include profanity.  I don’t want to have to buy into this definition of female that includes spending huge amounts of time and energy on commercial beauty products and fashion.

Still I find myself buying some pretty clothes — drawn to them.  I used to like to wear grey and black a lot .  I don’t like it so much any more.

Part of this is my realization that grey and black clothing is still dyed.  Dyes are applied in toxic processes.  The whole dying industry has been mostly moved outside the USA, because modern commercial dying cannot be accomplished in compliance with OSHA and EPA regulations.  We’ve shipped the toxicity to the third world.

Jonathan Woolman, a historical Quaker, insisted on wearing undyed cloth, because even then toxicity was a huge issue for workers.  I have a few pieces of clothing that are made of undyed cloth.  They show stains very badly.  They’re ecru in color.  They don’t feel practical because of the way they show stains.

So I’m wearing dyed cloth and feeling schizo about it.

I feel like I’m on a slippery slope.  I’m practicing a role where I have to use some profanity.  I’m wearing some dyed clothing.  I’m anxious not to alienate a successful professional actress who is happy with her makeup and hair styling. 

I don’t want to become what I hate in order to succeed.  I don’t like the influence some people have on me. 

I’m not sure where I’m going with this.  I feel like I have moral concerns that no one else shares, a Don Quixote of sorts.