The Age of Facebook

Awhile ago, I joined Facebook. When you first join, you have very few or no "friends". I wondered what all the fuss was about. But gradually you find people from your present and past lives, and discover other people you know on their friend lists. And so it grows.

As I add friends from my high school and college years in the 70s and 80s, I see that many of us are fairly new to this. I only note this because back in 1982-1983, one of my college roommates bought a primitive personal computer, Computer Science was on our class schedules, and it felt like we were the generation that would fully incorporate these devices into our daily lives.

Of course most of us have been using email for years, but this social networking through Facebook and LinkedIn appears to just now be rapidly spreading through those of us in the middle of our lives. Our children embraced it fully through MySpace years before we did.

I like making contact with old friends. But because it is fun, easy and free, somebody somewhere will see it as a threat to national security or to morality, and do their best to put a stop to it.

By the way, John McCain does not use email and does not use the World Wide Web. Yet he claims to understand how the world works, quite a claim for anyone. China has more internet users than the United States, most of them under 25 years old. Terrorist networks use the Internet. How can he understand the world if he doesn't understand how people communicate and share information? As Jon Stewart remarked, he may have work to do to get the "whippersnapper" vote.

Tim Russert

Tim Russert's passing is certainly a tragedy. But when we say we want to celebrate someone's life, what does that mean? To say that we want to celebrate someone's life when they die - is that a trite, easy to say idea to fall back on, when the discomfort of someone's untimely death defies honest description?

As just a person living in Seattle, I didn't know the man. But I watched him on Meet the Press, and during election coverage. There was something different about this man.

Here was a guy who loved what he was doing with his life. He was in the middle of everything, interviewing the most important people on the planet, writing books about his relationship with his father, and celebrating the college graduation of his son. He seemed to be a regular guy, extremely bright, who made it into the big leagues. Those who worked with him obviously cared for him very deeply. Kieth Olbermann, you were obviously struggling with your shock and grief, but you held it together and honored Mr. Russert by doing so. I am sure many of your viewers noticed that and were moved.

But Tim Russert, who died far too young, had a great life, with his father still alive, a career unmatched in his field, a wife he loved, and a son of whom he was very proud. He died suddenly, doing what he loved to do. Those of us with lives not quite as successful in some ways, celebrate Tim Russert because he is one of us who made it; he made it big, his enthusiasm was infectious, and it was great to see a guy doing a great job he loved.

Wasn't it Confucius who said if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life? Isn't Tim Russert the very embodiment of that idea?

We all should have had the benefit of Mr. Russert for decades to come. But if he had to leave us early, we can celebrate the success and joy of his life. We should all be so lucky to do what we love, have great relationships with family, and have children of which to be so proud.

And to his son Luke, who is unlikely to ever read these words: I am 48 years old, and lost my own father in late 1998, when I was 38 years old. I am not particularly religious, but I know something from experience. Your father will never leave you. Whether it is because he is hard-wired into you, or because he is really there, one way or another, he will always be with you, in a very real, visceral sense. And he raised you to feel his loss, but to honor him and to be the kind of man he raised you to be, even though he was taken from you far too son. Your father wants you to be there for your mother, and to show the strength he always knew you had. It is okay to cry. But he wants you to live, experience, have the highs and lows of life, and to live every moment of it with enthusiasm and energy.

These are horrible moments. But you will make it. You will survive. You will still make him proud. And he knows that, right now, you will be there for your mother, as much as she is there for you.

Dear Al Franken,

We all knew that the Republican scum machine would come after you. Don't let them win. We need you in the Senate. Because you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, people like you.

One suggestion: Ariana Huffington as your Chief of Staff. Then there would be hope for America once more.

The Dark Side

Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper The Stranger caught my eye this week with a couple of examples of what Bush and his henchmen have done to this country. From a Stranger feature called Last Days, written by David Schmader, was this:

TUESDAY, MAY 20 In bigger news: Today the U.S. Justice Department released its 370-page report detailing abuses witnessed by FBI agents at U.S.-run detention facilities overseas. To celebrate, members of Congress were treated to the testimony of Murat Kurnaz, a 26-year-old Turkish man arrested while traveling with a religious tourism group in Pakistan in late 2001 and held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay for nearly five years. Details come from ABC News: Speaking via video link from Germany, Kurnaz told the House Foreign Affairs Committee of his astoundingly awful treatment at the hands of the U.S., allegedly including electric shocks, being chained by his arms to the ceiling with his feet dangling, and, uh, "water treatment." "They stuck my head into a bucket of water and punched me in the stomach," said Kurnaz of his captors at the U.S. base in Kandahar. "I inhaled the water... It was a strong punch." Kurnaz also alleged that U.S. interrogators tried to force him to sign papers admitting his guilt, and testified that although he had no links to al Qaeda—and German intelligence services told U.S. officials that he was not a terrorist in 2002—he remained at Guantánamo (where the abuses allegedly continued) until August 2006. "I didn't think this could happen in the 21st century," said Kurnaz. "I could never have imagined that this place was created by the United States."

What makes this so distressing is that it isn't surprising anymore. We, the United States of America, are torturers. We chain people to ceilings by their arms, torture them with electric shocks, and stick their heads in buckets of water while we punch them in the stomach. After other governments have told us that the person is not a terrorist. What, exactly, are the remaining values that distinguish us from the "evildoers" we are told we must fight?

From the same issue of the Stranger is an outstanding piece entitled A Shooting Crime by Sandy Cioffi, a documentary filmmaker. Cioffi was filming a documentary entitled Sweet Crude, recording the consequences of oil production in the Niger Delta, when she was detained for a week by the Nigerian State Security Services and held, with her crew, in a military detention facility. Cioffi writes:

We would spend the next week detained by the SSS in Abuja, Nigeria, never charged or officially arrested. We weren't physically harmed, just uncomfortable and very scared. . . I had sporadic access to food and water. The lack of water was the hardest part. I am struck by and a little embarrassed at how quickly I felt weak and a bit broken in there. . . At one point, after sleeping for two hours, I was woken for interrogation. I was questioned four times total—once for six hours. A constant feature of interrogation is the fear of what might come if I failed to give them what they wanted, though I never knew what that actually was. . . What I can tell you is that intimidation yields bad information. I could not remember basic details that I had no reason to hide.

Compare what she went through, the effect it had on her, and her realization that "intimidation yields bad information". Yet what the U.S. did to Murat Kurnaz, in our names, was much worse, and we expected it to accomplish what exactly?

Cioffi further observes:

I used to make that point about torture in political arguments with friends. Many things that were once philosophical are now physical. A member of my family said, "What kind of a country detains someone without charges, who cannot see a lawyer, whom they know is not a real security threat—just to send a message, just to intimidate them, what kind of country?" Well, the United States for one, in addition to Nigeria and countless others. Illegal detention is a blight on our collective soul and has to end. And if anyone being detained is a real criminal, let's hear the evidence and bring him or her to justice.

I could not have said it any better. Yet American citizens who challenge the administration on this and other issues are labeled as unpatriotic and accused of not supporting our troops. Sickening. I try to remind myself that this is the same crowd that measures religious devotion by how hard they squint when they pray on television. Yes, a great bunch of Christians, those Bushies.

Back to Blogging

After an absence of several months, I am planning posts in the near future on politics, education, colony collapse disorder and more. Please check back here soon. I've also added my Facebook page as a link.