e-Bomb, the fire cracker in a small package. e-Bomb, the philosopher. e-Bomb, the late bloomer staging her own life revolution. e-Bomb, the history watcher. e-Bomb, the lover. e-Bomb, the friend.
Welcome to My World. Here's my story.
I was procrastinating and came across this "About Me" blurb on an old schoolmate's Facebook profile:
I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is visited by aliens on a regular basis... I believe that the future sucks and the future rocks... I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold... I believe that jade is dried dragon sperm and that it's areodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly... I believe in a personal god who cares about me and oversees everything I do and an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know I'm alive... I believe in a woman's right to chose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system... I believe in a universe of casual chaos, sheer blind luck, and background nosie... I believe life is a game, life is a cruel joke and life is what happens when you're alive so you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
These are some very cute and very awkward-looking pictures. haha!! GObama!
May 9, 2008
May 30, 2008
Jul. 4, 2008
Feb. 10, 2007
Feb. 10, 2007
Aug. 1, 2004
Feb. 28, 2008
Feb. 9, 2008 **This is such a cute picture!
Dec. 29, 2007
Mar. 2, 2008
Mar. 3, 2008
Mar. 3, 2008
Mar. 17, 2008
May 3, 2008
May 17, 2008 Democratic presidental hopeful U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) holds a baby during a campaign rally at Roseburg High School May 17, 2008 in Roseburg, Oregon. Sen. Obama is campaigning through Oregon and Kentucky ahead of Tuesday's primaries.
May 17, 2008 Democratic presidental hopeful U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) holds a baby during a campaign rally at Roseburg High School May 17, 2008 in Roseburg, Oregon. Sen. Obama is campaigning through Oregon and Kentucky ahead of Tuesday's primaries.
May 18, 2008 Barack Obama Campaigns Throughout Oregon Ahead Of State's Primary
May 16, 2008
May 31, 2008
For credits, please visit: http://redeye.chicagotribune.com/red-obamababy-storylink,0,6843396.storylink
What do you think about religion? What is it to you?
Here's what Bill Maher thinks:
God? Afterlife? THE TRUTH? Well, ya know, it's OK to believe in something, but it's also OK to say that you don't REALLY REALLY know how it works, exactly.
... at least that's what I believe in anyway.
Religulous in theaters on October 3.
Also visit http://disbeliefnet.com I found myself rather entertained ... especially with the large Scientology icons and ads everywhere on the site.
I see this YouTube video everywhere, and it's been around for quite some time. Today, being totally bored out of my mind, I decided to look Christian the lion up. The result is a touching recount of the story, courtesy of The Daily Mail from London.
Christian, the lion who lived in my London living room By VICTORIA MOORE Last updated at 23:24 04 May 2007
"He travelled by Bentley, ate in fine London restaurants and spent his days lounging in a furniture shop. The story of Christian the pet lion - and his eventual release into the wild - is as moving as it is incredible."
The furniture shop was on the King's Road in London. It sold tables, wardrobes, chairs and desks - but anybody peering through its plate-glass window on a Sunday might have noticed something rather more unusual.
Amid all the pine and oak, stretched out languidly on a bench, there was a lion. And it wasn't stuffed.
Tiger feet: Christian enjoyed living in swinging London
"Christian used to lie beside me while I did the accounts at weekends," remembers Jennifer Mary Taylor, who worked there.
"And every so often, if I'd ignored him for too long, he'd sock me across the head with one of his great big paws.
"He was very loving and affectionate - he liked to stand and put his paws on your shoulders. But he was...", she pauses. "I mean, he was a lion. Does that sound silly?"
Christian the lion (named by someone with a Biblical sense of humour) arrived in Chelsea at a time when the King's Road - home to Mick Jagger - was the very heart of the Swinging Sixties.
For a year, the Big Cat was part of it all, cruising the streets in the back of a Bentley, popping in for lunch at Casserole, a local restaurant, even posing for a Biba fashion advert.
He eventually grew too big to be kept as a pet and was taken to Kenya, where he was rehabilitated into the wild by the 'Lion Man', George Adamson.
Now, his story is to be told in a new book, written by the Australian John Rendall who, along with his friend Ace Berg, bought Christian from Harrods in 1969.
London pride: At home in John Rendall's Chelsea flat
So what possessed them to buy a lion cub in the first place?
"A friend had been to the 'exotic animals' department at Harrods and announced, rather grandly, that she wanted a camel," says Rendall.
"To which the manager very coolly replied: 'One hump or two, madam?'
"Ace and I thought this was the most sophisticated repartee we'd ever heard, so we went along to check it out - and there, in a small cage, was a gorgeous little lion cub. We were shocked. We looked at each other and said something's got to be done about that."
Harrods, it turned out, was also quite keen to be rid of Christian, who had escaped one night, sneaked into the neighbouring carpet department - then in the throes of a sale of goatskin rugs - and wreaked havoc.
The store, which had acquired the cub from Ilfracombe zoo, happily agreed to part with him for 250 guineas. So began Christian's year as an urban lion.
Today, it would be unthinkable for a shop to take such a cavalier attitude towards selling exotic animals (though Harrods did, at least, provide Ace and Rendall with diet sheets).
And it is hard to imagine either the animal rights lobby or any local council condoning a shop as a suitable habitat for a lion. But, back then, no one minded at all.
Christian was given his own living quarters (and a very large kitty-litter tray, which he used unfailingly) in the basement of the appropriately named Sophistocat furniture shop.
"He had a beautiful musky smell that was very distinct," says Rendall. "But he was clean."
The vicar of the Moravian Chapel nearby was approached to allow Christian the run of the graveyard, and every day he was taken there to roar around and play football.
Once, when he was brought along to a seaside picnic, he dipped his toes reluctantly in the water and intimated with a shudder that it was disagreeably cold. But he was eventually persuaded to swim in the English Channel.
"He was a lot of work," says Rendall. "It took all four of us - me, my then girlfriend Jennifer Mary, Ace Berg and an actress called Unity Jones - to look after him.
Cat's pyjamas: Christian, rummaging through the drawers
"He also ate a lot, four meals (two liquid, two solid) plus supplements every day, which cost about £30 a week - a lot of money back then."
He pauses, then adds, "And he had a very good sense of humour."
Really?
"Oh yes. Sometimes, he'd see people staring at him through the back window of the car, keep very still on purpose - and then, just when they were convinced he was a stuffed toy, he would very slowly turn his head and freak them out."
Everyone loved Christian and he became a popular local figure. In 1970, when Chelsea beat Leeds in the FA Cup Final, Sophistocat received a call from a policeman, 'The football fans are going to be boisterous, so you'd better get your bloody lion out of the window or they'll smash it in,' he warned.
Christian himself was beautifully behaved, and though he never hurt anyone, you underestimated his strength at your peril.
Jennifer Mary remembers taking a friend to see him, "after I'd had one or two glasses of wine -and when he put his paws on my shoulders, one of them slipped, his claw caught my dress and he pulled the whole front of it off."
He grew and grew - from 35lb when he first arrived to a rather more serious and imposing 185lb a year later - and he was beginning to acquire a mane that made him look more fearsome.
He clearly could not stay with his two young owners for ever.
His future was decided by a chance encounter - when the actors Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna walked into the shop to buy a pine desk.
They had recently starred in the film Born Free, which tells the true story of the wildlife conservationist George Adamson and his wife Joy, who raised a lion cub called Elsa in Kenya then rehabilitated it into the wild.
And they immediately suggested that Adamson might be able to help.
Certainly, the conservationist was intrigued by the challenge of introducing a King's Road lion to the wilds of Africa.
"But," he warned, '"ou must be prepared for this not to work. Elsa was born in Africa and she knew its smells. Taking a British-born lion, whose parents were also raised in captivity, is going to be a very different thing."
Christian was flown to Kenya in a specially-made crate emblazoned with the words, 'East African Airways. London-Nairobi. Christian - male lion, 12 months'. John and Ace went with him.
"I think George Adamson got quite a shock when he met us," says Rendall. "Straight from the King's Road, in all our gear - flares from Granny Takes A Trip, and with hair everywhere.
"We looked rather different from everyone else in Nairobi. But then so did Christian. He'd come from winter in England, so had a very thick coat - he was almost as hairy as we were."
Adamson wanted to drive straight to the Kora Reserve, close to the Tana river, where there was no human habitation. This, he felt, would be the ideal spot to build a camp.
Because lions live and hunt in prides, and it is hard to impose a new male on an existing one, the plan was to introduce Christian into the wild in tandem with Boy, one of the tame beasts who had starred in Born Free.
Together, they would form the nucleus of a new pride - and the whole project would be funded by a TV programme.
Christian was marshalled into the back of a Land Rover, with straw on the floor and chicken-wire separating him from his friends on the front seat. It was all rather confusing for a lion accustomed to the butter-soft leather of a Bentley. And he was hot. And dusty. And confused.
Not long into the journey, Rendall ventured, "Mr Adamson, he needs to go to the loo."
Adamson was impatient.
"We're miles from anywhere. If we stop here and he runs away, we will never, ever catch him."
"Mr Adamson," promised Rendall, "that is not going to happen."
The great Lion Man turned his head, sucked on his pipe and pulled over on the dirt road.
Rendall opened the back of the car, and Christian jumped out to take his first real steps on African soil.
To his evident disgust, it was prickly and hot. He clearly didn't like it one bit.
Rendall picks up the story, "So he went tip-toeing along and went to the loo.
Considerably. Then he looked around and I said, 'OK, come on, back in,' pointed back at the car - and in he jumped.
"I got back in the car, too, shut the door and George Adamson turned round and said to me, 'That is quite remarkable. You may call me George.'"
Kora, an area that now has National Park status, lies about 220 miles to the north-east of Nairobi. The scenery is rugged - densely packed with knotty thorn bushes, with just a narrow corridor of greenery that follows the course of the Tana river.
And so Christian arrived at the camp, which Adamson's brother had built from macuti - palm fronds - chicken-wire and mud.
The conservationist went off again and returned a couple of days later with Boy, the lion from Born Free.
At that time, Boy was very fragile, as his shoulder had been shattered in a nasty encounter with a buffalo. But he was the first fully-grown lion that Christian had seen since leaving Ilfracombe zoo as a cub.
The first meeting was explosive. Normal lion protocol dictates that the younger male should be subservient to the dominant male.
But Christian, more schooled in Sloane than feline etiquette, sashayed fearlessly towards Boy.
Fortunately, Christian and Boy, though in adjacent compounds, were separated by a wire fence. In fury at the perceived slight, Boy flung himself against it - until Christian, suddenly realising his faux pas, slunk away with his belly close to the ground.
This process was repeated over and over again until Adamson felt confident enough to allow the pair to meet without the safety barrier of the fence.
"First, Boy left his compound," recalls Rendall. "Then Christian went out to meet him.
"Boy took one look - and he clobbered him. Christian didn't fight back. He rolled over on his back. That went on for day after day, until Boy was obviously satisfied that Christian knew who was boss - and they became totally inseparable."
Adamson had also acquired a female lion cub, Katania, to add to the pride, and she seemed to act as an intermediary between the two males.
Each day, the three lions would go out for a walk in the bush, Boy first, Katania in the middle, then Christian - with Adamson, carrying a rifle in case he needed to scare anything off, at the rear.
For Christian, there were some tricky moments, such as the time he spied a rhino and tried to stalk it, only for the beast to hurl him through the air in a cloud of dust.
"I saw Boy turn and look at Christian," says Rendall. "There was a look on his face, as if to say: 'You absolute fool. What a howler of a blunder.'"
Slowly, progress was made. The biggest threat to Christian and Boy were the wild lions that stalked the reserve, which Boy was fighting to establish as his territory.
Then, one day, there was a tragedy that caused the whole project to be called into question. A chef called Stanley had left the safety of the compound to look for wild honey. He hadn't realised Boy was nearby, and when he saw him, he tried to flee.
Running away was the worst action he could have taken. Adamson, hearing Stanley's screams, came running and shot Boy through the heart - but it was too late. Stanley had been bitten through the jugular and died an hour later.
The outcry that followed almost brought the lion project to a halt, but Adamson found some support for his work among other conservationists, dug in his heels and carried on.
John Rendall and Ace Berg continued to make sporadic visits to Kenya, but mostly they followed Christian's adventures from afar.
Finally, in 1974, George Adamson wrote to say that the pride was self-sufficient. Christian was defending it. There was a litter of cubs. They were feeding themselves and rarely returned to camp.
The King's Road lion had finally adapted to the wild.
This was a bittersweet moment for all concerned. Rendall and Ace decided to travel to Kora one last time, in the hope of being able to say goodbye, though Adamson warned them that it would almost certainly be a wasted mission.
"Christian hasn't been here for nine months. We have no reason to think he's dead - there have been no reports of lions poached or killed. But he may never come back," he said.
Rendall recalls, "We said: 'OK. We appreciate that, but we'll come anyway and see you.'"
They flew to Nairobi then took a small plane to the camp in Kora, where Adamson came out to meet them.
"Christian arrived last night, " he said simply. "He's here with his lionesses and his cubs. He's outside the camp on his favourite rock. He's waiting for you."
Adamson and his wife Joy often talked about the mysterious, apparently telepathic communication skills of lions - particularly between lions and men.
Both believed that lions were possessed of a sixth sense and George was convinced that a scientific explanation would one day be found.
And here, it seemed, was the proof.
"Christian stared at us in a very intense way," says Rendall. "I knew his expressions and I could see he was interested. We called him and he stood up and started to walk towards us very slowly.
"Then, as if he had become convinced it was us, he ran towards us, threw himself on to us, knocked us over, knocked George over and hugged us, like he used to, with his paws on our shoulders.
"Everyone was crying. We were crying, George was crying, even the lion was nearly crying."
"The lionesses were far from pleased. There was a lot of growling and spitting," continues Rendall.
"'George said: 'This isn't safe - we'd better go.' So we each put a hand on Christian's back and he walked with us back to camp."
The reunion party went on all night and into the morning. Leaving his exhausted companions to go to their beds, Christian returned to his pride.
"We watched him go back to the two lionesses, who were not at all happy with this man, smelling of nicotine, whisky and humans," says Rendall.
"He just walloped the two of them with his paw, then collapsed."
And that was the last anyone ever saw of him.
For the next 14 years, George Adamson remained at Kora, rehabilitating several other lions and ignoring warnings from the authorities, who did not consider it safe for him to stay.
Then, in 1989, he was ambushed and murdered by bandits.
He died with a gun in his hand and, in accordance with his wishes, was buried at Kora.
Following his death, his supporters formed the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust, which now does work in Kora as well as in Tanzania, where it is reintroducing the endangered black rhino and hunting dog.
The trust's chief aim is keep alive Adamson's dream of a place where animals can roam free - a fitting epitaph not just for the great conservationist but also for the lion who once lived in Chelsea.
Find this story at www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-452820/Christian-lion-lived-London-living-room.html
PS. Yeah, if I have an orange cat, his name will be Christian.
When was the last time a person who is not a president went over to another country and delivered a speech like this? When was the last time anyone actually looked forward to a speech made by some guy you haven't really heard of until fairly recently (I know he's been around for a while, but for the majority of the world ...)?
And when was the last time anyone DARED to ask for the support of another country's troops??
Here it is. Let's give it up for Barack Obama!
July 24, 2008 Transcript Obama's Speech in Berlin
The following is the prepared text of Senator Barack Obama in Berlin, Germany, as provided by his presidential campaign.
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.
I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.
I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning – his dream – required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.
That is why I'm here. And you are here because you too know that yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.
Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.
On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin. The rubble of this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be remade.
This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.
The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.
And that's when the airlift began – when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.
The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold.
But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city's mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. "There is only one possibility," he said. "For us to stand together united until this battle is won…The people of Berlin have spoken. We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty…People of the world, look at Berlin!"
People of the world – look at Berlin!
Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle.
Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security.
Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity.
People of the world – look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.
Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril. When you, the German people, tore down that wall – a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope – walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened. Markets opened too, and the spread of information and technology reduced barriers to opportunity and prosperity. While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history.
The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers – dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.
The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.
As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.
In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we're honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.
In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe's role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth – that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.
Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more – not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.
So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.
That is why America cannot turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn inward. America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And this is the moment when our nations – and all nations – must summon that spirit anew.
This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York. If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.
This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO's first mission beyond Europe's borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.
This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.
This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday. In this century, we need a strong European Union that deepens the security and prosperity of this continent, while extending a hand abroad. In this century – in this city of all cities – we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past, and resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must, and to seek a partnership that extends across this entire continent.
This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.
This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East. My country must stand with yours and with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions. We must support the Lebanese who have marched and bled for democracy, and the Israelis and Palestinians who seek a secure and lasting peace. And despite past differences, this is the moment when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.
This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations – including my own – will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one.
And this is the moment when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world. We must remember that the Cold War born in this city was not a battle for land or treasure. Sixty years ago, the planes that flew over Berlin did not drop bombs; instead they delivered food, and coal, and candy to grateful children. And in that show of solidarity, those pilots won more than a military victory. They won hearts and minds; love and loyalty and trust – not just from the people in this city, but from all those who heard the story of what they did here.
Now the world will watch and remember what we do here – what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?
Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words "never again" in Darfur?
Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?
People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.
I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived – at great cost and great sacrifice – to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom – indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.
These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people – everywhere – became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation – our generation – must make our mark on the world.
People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.
In this economic tough times, many of us are going through the wringer: we see that people are less able to afford not just the luxuries, but also basic needs, some go through poverty, children go hungry silently, optimism dims ... and, as men are getting hit just as hard, we also see the fruits of the women's movement being washed away.
My friends in the workforce, let's count our blessings.
July 22, 2008 Poor Economy Slows Women in Workplace By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Across the country, women in their prime earning years, struggling with an unfriendly economy, are retreating from the work force, either permanently or for long stretches.
They had piled into jobs in growing numbers since the 1960s. But that stopped happening this decade, and as the nearly seven-year-old recovery gives way to hard times, the retreat is likely to accelerate.
Indeed, for the first time since the women's movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. In each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960, the recovery ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.
When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.
But now, a different explanation is turning up in government data, in the research of a few economists and in a Congressional study, to be released Tuesday, that follow the women's story through the end of 2007.
After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for awhile.
"When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids," Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. "We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was."
Hard times in manufacturing certainly sidelined Tootie Samson of Baxter, Iowa. Nine months after she lost her job on a factory assembly line, Ms. Samson, 48, is still not working. She could be. Jobs that pay $8 or $9 an hour are easy enough to land, she says. But like the men with whom she worked at the Maytag washing machine factory, now closed, near her home, she resists going back to work at less than half her old wage.
Ms. Samson knows she will have to get another job at some point. She and her husband still have a teenage daughter to put through college, and his income as a truck driver is not enough. So Ms. Samson, now receiving unemployment benefits, is going to college full time — leaving the work force for more than two years — hoping that a bachelor's degree will enable her to earn at least her old wage of $20 an hour.
"A lot of women I know, all they did was work at the Maytag factory," said Ms. Samson, who joined Maytag's assembly line 11 years. "They can't find another job like it and they deal with this loss by dropping out."
The Joint Economic Committee study cites the growing statistical evidence that women are leaving the work force "on par with men," and the potentially disastrous consequences for families.
"Women bring home about one-third of family income," said Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York and vice chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. "And only those families with a working wife have seen real improvement in their living standards."
The proportion of women holding jobs in their prime working years, 25 to 54, peaked at 74.9 percent in early 2000 as the technology investment bubble was about to burst. Eight years later, in June, it was 72.7 percent, a seemingly small decline, but those 2.2 percentage points erase more than 12 years of gains for women. Four million more in their prime years would be employed today if the old pattern had prevailed through the expansion now ending.
The pattern is roughly similar among the well-educated and the less educated, among the married and never married, among mothers with teenage children and those with children under 6, and among white women and black.
The women, in sum, are for the first time withdrawing from work with the same uniformity as men in their prime working years. Ninety-six percent of the men held jobs in 1953, their peak year. That is down to 86.4 percent today. But while men are rarely thought of as dropping out to run the household, that is often the assumption when women pull out.
"A woman gets laid off and she stays home for six months with her kids," Ms. Boushey said. "She doesn't admit that she is staying home because she could not get another acceptable job."
The biggest retreat has been in manufacturing, where more than one million women have disappeared from payrolls since 2001. Like men, many have not returned to jobs in other sectors.
Wage stagnation often discourages them from pursuing new jobs, says Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. "While pay was rising solidly in the 1990s, you had women continuing to move into the work force," Mr. Katz said.
Pay is no longer rising smartly for women in the key 25-to-54 age group. Just the opposite, the median pay — the point where half make more and half less — has fallen in recent years, to $14.84 an hour in 2007 from $15.04 in 2004, adjusted for inflation, according to the Economic Policy Institute. (The similar wage for men today is two dollars more.)
Not since the 1970s has that happened to women for so long a stretch — and because this is a new experience for them, "women may be even more reluctant than men to accept declining wages," said Nancy Folbre, an economist at the University of Massachusetts.
Joyce Call, 39, of Howell, Mich., near Detroit, certainly fits that description. She took an accounting job in January 2006 at Forming Technologies, which supplies plastic to auto companies.
The pay, $14 an hour — more than $25,000 a year — was acceptable, she said, but not the raises, which came to only 28 cents an hour over two years, or the Christmas bonus: $150 the first year and nothing the second.
"I was treated poorly," she said, explaining her departure.
For the moment, Ms. Call is home-schooling one of her two sons, falling back on her husband's $70,000 income as a plumber, and looking for another job, to return to a work force she has seldom left since finishing high school in 1988.
"People are just not hiring in Michigan," she said. What's more, she is reluctant because of the high cost of gasoline to commute more than an hour each way to the next job. "It would be a tough decision to accept a job that required me to go farther," she said, adding that she and her husband were cutting back on discretionary spending until she is employed again.
What helped drive up the percentage of women in the work force were the thousands who came off welfare and took jobs in the 1990s, pushed to do so by the welfare-to-work legislation. A strong economy eased the way. So did tax credits and more subsidized child care. Now as the economy weakens and employers shrink their payrolls, many of these women struggle to find work.
Lisa Craig, 42, is among them. Raising three sons in her native Chicago, she had worked only occasionally since high school and started receiving welfare benefits in 1993. For the next seven years she took courses in office skills, was a volunteer in a day care center and served for a while as an unpaid intern for a college vice president.
And then in 2000 she went to work. For most of that year she earned $10 an hour as a salesclerk at a duty-free shop at O'Hare Airport, selling luxury items, but left the job to move to Milwaukee with her children to be near her sister.
"I was in a bad marriage," she said, "and I was getting a divorce."
Over the last seven years in Milwaukee she has worked only sporadically although, as she puts it, she has applied for hundreds of jobs, struggling to supplement a $628-a-month welfare check that goes almost entirely to rent and $500 a month in vouchers. The longest tenure, 11 months, was as a salesclerk earning $7.75 an hour at a Goodwill Industries clothing store.
She lost that job last November, but is volunteering at the Milwaukee office of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, hoping to draw a modest salary soon as a community intern.
Ms. Samson, the former Maytag worker, says she can afford to stay off work because she qualified under the terms of the plant closing for two years of unemployment benefits as long as she is a full-time student. She lost health insurance but shifted to her husband's policy.
His $40,000 income as a truck driver and her $360 a week in jobless benefits gets them by while she takes an accelerated program at a William Penn University campus near her home. Graduation is scheduled for January 2010.
"If I were a single parent or did not have benefits," Ms. Samson said, "I would have had to find a job. I could not have gone back to school to get my degree and the promise it holds of a better job."
That for Ms. Samson is a good reason to drop out. Just working, which she has done nearly all of her adult life, is unappealing, she says. Even interior design, for which she once earned an associate's degree, does not excite her anymore, she says, mainly because people can no longer afford to fix up their homes.
"A business degree will put me in a position to work for any company," Ms. Samson said, "and put me in a position to work up into a well-paid human resources job."
Tonight, I'm dreaming of feeling the heat and sand of Africa, of seeing their people, of seeing the good and bad of mutual human impact throughout history, of standing in the midst of a completely different skin color, of smelling a different air.
I also dream of riding the short, stubby horses of Mongolia where Genghis Khan once rode, of feeling the speedy wind hastily comb through my hair, of feeling the vastness of open grass lands that stretch out to the ends of a once great empire and watch history trickle through the movie screen of my mind.
Today's been kind of weird. For the past week, my mind has been moving so fast -- I almost thought that I could be a smartypants. But today, everything changed. My mind is dull today. Thinking pretty much hurt my head. The proposal that I need to crank out is still in the works. And I have very little input for the record label stuff today.
Dull is the only word I can come up with to describe my brain today.
It's been almost a week since I received your e-mail, and much has happened since: I have moved and settled in to a new place, started my two new jobs, and thought about my life in different ways.
My new house is gorgeous. I didn't think I would have such a new and nice place to live, honestly. I also have a very cool roommate, and, at least so far, we get along great. Through my new roommate, I am slowly, but surely, expanding my social circle to beyond the one that Nora introduced me to. I am eager to see what else there is. I might also be introducing someone new into my life: a cat. haha! Yes, I believe that it's time I have a companion animal.
Speaking of my job, well, it's been interesting. Yes, Nora will be a gear reviewer, and she's also responsible for selling advertisement space during her review sessions. I am glad to know that Nora's enthused about her job, and I believe she will contribute a great deal to the team. My role is similar, but different. I am also responsible for selling advertisement spaces -- but for the entire company in general. So, just as Nora's special assignment is to make gear reviews, mine is to put together the company's overall marketing plans. With that, part of my job is also to manage some public relations duties.
It is interesting watching Nora work. From these observations, I noticed just how different we are. And from these differences, I have come to learn even more about myself.
Honestly, Nora is not easy to work with. Throughout my quarter-century lifetime, I have work with a number of people from many different parts of the world and many different walks of life. And I will have to say that Nora is one of the least tactful. Surely, tact can work against you to the point where you are just not saying what you need to say to get the job done. But when used appropriately, tact can smoothen out your life, period. It's definitely more beneficial to have tact than not. So, it's quite an experience to work with someone as high-strung and boisterous as Nora is. I understand that she is excited to bring income to her family, to have the freedom of work, to have creative, emotional and intellectual fulfillment, and the space to flex her ambitions. But she's also eager to please, so to prove herself worthy. In the process of that, I noticed that she's "coming on too strong," "crowding" the boss, and she's isolating old team members (telling the boss that other people are "not getting their job done" is, frankly, not our job -- boss already knows. move on.) What she believes "should be" sometimes comes in the way of her "openness," BOTH on the career front and personal front ... she takes for granted what common ground can do in any relations and is too eager to "be right." What I've gathered is that, sometimes, it's more advantageous to have one fewer enemy than to have one more friend. No matter how smart and able and wise you are, it's better to be patient, lay low and be humble at first ... or you will do the "open mouth, insert foot" trick before you know it. Very Chinese, but the Chinese are not the only ones to believe that. Sooner or later down the road, she will find out for herself ... but it must be something for her to find out in her own way. And I will be there ... NOT to say, "I told you so!" Nora's sense of toughness is signature of kids that basically "brought themselves up," when their parents were preoccupied with their own lives, when there weren't much guidance. With that said, I also learned so much about myself and what I need to learn. There are too few that know to admire the good of those they dislike, and to tolerate the bad of those they love. As much as I dislike certain things that Nora brings to the table, I realize that those are the same things that make her good; her weaknesses are also her strength, and vice versa. So, I will use my empathy to create tolerance and acceptance. I await to witness her next transformation ....
And I ... well, let's just say that I have come to be thankful for the sense of diplomacy and clarity I've learned from my family, from years of guidance by all those around me, and from observation and practice. Firmness does not need to be loud; strength and intensity can come in very quiet and subtle ways. Tonight, I exclaimed to myself that I LOVE the way I am ... I am solid, though gently, but surely. To voice one's opinion is a skill, but to keep silent is an art. I am poised and graceful. I am, and always have been, a crouching panther.
Nora used to be "my rock," as I used to call her. It seemed to me as if she always had the answers, and I actually believed her, and was a bit hurt, when she told me that I am "couple of years behind her" in terms of personal growth. But now, I realize that I am my own. If I am actually a couple years behind (what? I didn't think we are in a competition!), then I'm glad that I am, because during those years, I learned some golden lessons that make me shine. Perhaps, now it is my turn to be her rock (who will not pretend that she knows more than she does, but will be there for unconditional support).
I thank the Universe for giving me all that I need -- even though I don't know what exactly I have, I know it's there. So, I must learn to stop doubting myself and actually GIVE MYSELF SOME PATIENCE. If Buddha sits under a tree to wait, then I am definitely waiting, too ... just climbing up and down the tree, picking at its leaves, watching the ants and birds move about WHILE waiting. :)
I am restless at the moment. It's an aimless kind of restlessness -- there is not one thing that I can think of that can truly, fully satisfy me right now -- not climbing, not reading, not working, not talking, not partying, not eating, not sleeping (though it might help), not the sun nor the moon, ....
But, on the less pathetic side, I must say what is making me smile is every time I hear owls hooting from neighborhood trees. Watching small treasure blue birds hop up the trunk of the Ponderosa Pine in front of my office window is also a treat. Today is not particularly warm even in the midst of Central Oregon's high desert summer. In fact, cool breeze takes away the heat and raises chilly goosebumps. I am here, not alone -- with little 1-year-old Aeva Bellie -- but feeling a little bit lonely. I once proclaimed -- perhaps in exaggeration -- that I never feel true loneliness because I have friends as companions and, if nothing else, the air around me. Well, maybe I had envisioned loneliness to be a lot like Greek tragedy plays -- dramatic in pathos -- that's worthy of soliloquies before the lonely tragic heroine falls into a never-waking slumber. In reality, or at least mine, loneliness is much more subtle than that. Loneliness is exactly this sort of aimless restlessness that creeps into your waking moments, making you pace up and down the hallway, wander around the neighborhood, click on internet links that seem to spark a hazy slice of memory, but not clear enough to know what it is that you are really looking for.
Maybe I'm waiting for the day that I can let go and be content. No, I'm not greedy enough to be waiting for happiness yet, for it is never free; happiness requires work, lots of work, and care. Contentment is just the opposite; it is when you let go and care less. So perhaps I was wrong before: I thought that happiness is achieved after reaching contentment, when it could very well be just the other way around.
Maybe I'm just restless because I'm not sure yet how to just be.
How in the world is this breaking news, worthy of being a front headliner? What about all the people that are starving, countries that are warring, Olymics a-playing, science that is changing, ... ok, Wimbledon -- fine, talk more about Wimbledon! But THIS? This only reminds me of the embarrassing moment when NYTimes putting Eliot Spitzer's escort's MySpace profile link just several months ago and described it like a "journalist" on the National Enquirer would.
What's happened to our news? Is The New York Times aiming to have future generations believe that the name "NYTimes" is synonymous to "tabloid gossip and propaganda/ninth-tier journalism"?
Read for yourselves.
July 2, 2008 China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret "alternative" interrogation methods.
Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.
But committee investigators were not aware of the chart's source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War" and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.
Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been "brainwashed," and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies' harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.
In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that "every American would be shocked" by the origin of the training document&183;
"What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions," Mr. Levin said. "People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don't need false intelligence."
A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col Patrick Ryder, said he could not comment on the Guantánamo training chart. "I can't speculate on previous decisions that may have been made prior to current D.O.D. policy on interrogations," Colonel Ryder said. "I can tell you that current D.O.D. policy is clear — we treat all detainees humanely."
Mr. Biderman's 1957 article described "one form of torture" used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand "for exceedingly long periods," sometimes in conditions of "extreme cold." Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.
The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including "Semi-Starvation," "Exploitation of Wounds," and "Filthy, Infested Surroundings," and with their effects: "Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator," "Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist," and "Reduces Prisoner to 'Animal Level' Concerns."
The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: "Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance."
The documents released last month include an e-mail message from two SERE trainers reporting on a trip to Guantánamo from Dec. 29, 2002, to Jan. 4, 2003. Their purpose, the message said, was to present to interrogators "the theory and application of the physical pressures utilized during our training."
The sessions included "an in-depth class on Biderman's Principles," the message said, referring to the chart from Mr. Biderman's 1957 article. Versions of the same chart, often identified as "Biderman's Chart of Coercion," have circulated on anti-cult sites on the Web, where the methods are used to describe how cults control their members.
Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who also studied the returning prisoners of war and wrote an accompanying article in the same 1957 issue of The Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, said in an interview that he was disturbed to learn that the Chinese methods had been recycled and taught at Guantánamo.
"It saddens me," said Dr. Lifton, who wrote a 1961 book on what the Chinese called "thought reform" and became known in popular American parlance as brainwashing. He called the use of the Chinese techniques by American interrogators at Guantánamo a "180-degree turn."
The harshest known interrogation at Guantánamo was that of Mohammed al-Qahtani, a member of Al Qaeda suspected of being the intended 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Qahtani's interrogation involved sleep deprivation, stress positions, exposure to cold and other methods also used by the Chinese.
Terror charges against Mr. Qahtani were dropped unexpectedly in May. Officials said the charges could be reinstated later and declined to say whether the decision was influenced by concern about Mr. Qahtani's treatment.
Mr. Bush has defended the use the interrogation methods, saying they helped provide critical intelligence and prevented new terrorist attacks. But the issue continues to complicate the long-delayed prosecutions now proceeding at Guantánamo.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Qaeda member accused of playing a major role in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, was charged with murder and other crimes on Monday. In previous hearings, Mr. Nashiri, who was subjected to waterboarding, has said he confessed to participating in the bombing falsely only because he was tortured.
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