Published on November 30, 2007
in politics.
Back on topic
Another aspect of the movement Durden-Smith discusses is the extreme paranoia the members felt because of the rumors that spies had been planted in the movement. Also, there had been several prosecutions were members had turned states evidence against a conspirator. Several people in the movement had disappeared mysteriously, some obviously murdered and some either left to avoid consequences of spying or left because they didn’t feel they could trust the members of the movement.
The whole thing reminds me of the stories you heard in communist countries. Members of “freedom movements” have never been able to be assured they are not being spied on. You never knew if your neighbor was secret police or a radical, either that may kill you or turn you in depending on how they viewed your actions. Secret police worked for the state and the radicals worked for the overthrow of the state. If it was viewed that you supported radical thought you were in danger from the state and if you seemed to support the state too fervently you had to worry about radicals trying to eliminate someone they viewed as an obstacle. Both seemed to be happening in California. Durden-Smith was not from the movement. He was an outsider who sympathized but was not known to the insiders. He felt his life was in danger constantly. He began to do things, like buy a gun, that he never thought he would do when he was just an ideologue in England. It wasn’t until he got into the movement he began to be paranoid.
This seems to be the lesson. Radical movements tend to breed paranoia amongst themselves. Trust is never guaranteed. A similar theme runs through Herbert Philbricks autobiography I Led Three Lives about a man who infiltrated the communist movement in New England during the forties. Again paranoia reigns supreme. Paranoia will tear apart any movement because trust is gone. Only mutual trust amongst the participants will keep a movement strong because then you can be open about your objectives. If you can’t trust the person beside you to fervently agree with your objectives you will never be able to truly move forward because you don’t know if the person beside you will move with you. And as the old saying goes, united we stand, divided we fall.
Published on November 29, 2007
in society.
I was going to write about Jo Durden-Smith some more but then I discovered this on another blog called Neatorama.
Meet the women who won’t have babies – because they’re not eco friendly
Oh my, I can completely support a person that doesn’t want children, but to view children as a parasite to the planet? I am some what speechless.
Published on November 28, 2007
in work.
The gentleman whose wallet was “stolen” found it later buried deep in his bag. I told him twice he should probably search his bag again, but no he said he had already done it and didn’t want to. After all the accusations that flew about the Y and myself I feel I am owed an apology but I probably will never get one.
Published on November 28, 2007
in politics.
The whole situation made me think of how we treat news, in general. When I hear about car bombings and murders I don’t really think about the people. Unless you identify with a person it is hard to sympatize with them. It wasn’t until 9/11 that we truly could understand the devastation a terrorist attack has on a nation. We had not felt the pain for some time. You could point to Oklahoma City and the original terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. Those were the most recent and they had been six years or more previous to 9/11. The tragedies were great but not to the scale of 9/11. If you think about it, it was three attacks in about a 10 year period. It is not everyday, like it is for many. But 9/11 should be the touchstone we use to understand their suffering. The car bombings in the Middle East are just as horrible for them as 9/11 was for us. They, however, get attacked almost daily. The fear we felt after 9/11 is the fear they feel everyday. It is when we realize what they experience daily, we can truly feel their pain and finally identify with them.
More thoughts this book spawned tomorrow.
Published on November 27, 2007
in politics.
Something I enjoy about working at a school is the chance to check out a variety of books. There are many older books that haven’t been checked out in a while. Many of these books end up being insightful. One I read recently was Who Killed George Jackson? by Jo Durden-Smith. The story is about the death of a prison radical, George Jackson, during a riot and whether or not he had been set up or not. The book is divided into three sections. The first is the official story about the events, the next is Durden-Smith’s investigation into the conspiracy theory, and the third is a psychological look at the left at the time. The first two sections are disjointed and hard to follow. He jumps around too often in the story and refers back to conversations he hasn’t written extensively about. The last section, though, was fascinating.
What really struck me was a comment by a prisoner about how easy it was to kill guards and other prisoners that were not part of your group. The point was the guards and the other groups were just ideas, not people, to the prisoners. It is easy to kill an idea and as long as you did not get to know the guards or people from the opposite group you could kill with no conscience. Durden-Smith makes realized part of the problem was the way the prison was run. For many years the prisoners had direct contact with guards. They got to know them and in some ways become friends. With the advent of new technology that allowed less contact between the two groups, the guards now longer were familiar with prisoners and prisoners were able to separate the guards in their minds from people and made them symbols of the system they saw as unfair. Many of the prisoners were radicals from the civil rights movement who saw the system as corrupt. They saw not only the guards, white or black, but also the white prisoners as part of the problem.
Tomorrow more thoughts.
Published on November 27, 2007
in holidays.
The holidays have been busy. I haven’t had a chance to post the last couple of days. I hope everyone’s Thanksgiving was wonderful and you spent time with family and loved ones, or at least tolerated those you had to spend time with, which seems to be the case for many people.
Published on November 21, 2007
in work.
I have to say I had an interesting night at work. It is such a long story. At about 5:30 a man asked the front desk if we found his wallet which he had lost. We hadn’t and apologized. I didn’t think more of it. about an hour later he checked again, we still didn’t have it. I decided to try to help him. Usually I find things by retracing my steps, so I thought if we retraced his steps we would find his wallet. Thus the trip down the rabbit hole begins. We went into the locker room to double check the whole place and found nothing. In the process he tells me his wallet was in his pants and they had been locked up at the time. Now my mind goes from lost wallet to stolen wallet. I don’t want to panic the gentleman so I don’t say anything yet. I continue to look in hopes that maybe he left it somewhere else, but knowing I probably won’t find it. After awhile we finally call it stolen. He decides he wants to file a police report. In the process I informed the duty officer about what was going on and she took over helping search some more. In the mean time I call the police and inform them of what is happening. The give me a number for the man to call. They tell me they will be able to file the report over the phone. So I give the man the number and he calls the police. He gives the police our address and phone number and they inform him someone will be out to see him. I think nothing more of it for awhile. After about 45 mins the man is still in the lobby and waiting. I tell him he may want to call the police again to find out what is going on. He calls and they inform him they had called back to the Y and left a message on our machine. So I check messages, no message from the police. After going through them twice I decide to call the police and let them know we had no message. They tell me they will call again, I don’t know why they couldn’t just talk to the man or get the info they needed right then, since I am not familiar with procedure. So we wait for about 10 minutes still no call. About this time the mans cell phone rings. He talks for a second then hands to me and says his wife wants to talk to me. She begins to ream me out because of the delay. She says obviously the Y has no regards for her and her husband, the police have little regard for the Y because they haven’t come to check on the guy yet, and all kinds of family problems that they have and why her husband needs to come home. I try to gently inform her that we are doing all we can, we don’t know why the police had not shown up yet etc… After about 10 minutes or so of this I give the phone back to the man and get someone to call the duty officer back up. We call the police again and again are informed they had called and were told there was no one by the man’s name at the facility. We know they haven’t called us because all calls are routed to the front desk. The duty officer gets on the phone with the police and talks to them trying to figure out what’s going on. In the mean time the man’s wife calls back on the main line and again we get into it. She tells me she had called the police and got the same story from them we were getting that they had called and got no answer or were told the man wasn’t there. By this time everyone is a little frazzled. Finally the woman asks what a certain phone number is, and i realize it is the main number for our other facility. She tells me this was the number the police were calling. Now I understand why they were getting the response they were getting, they are calling the wrong number. At the same time I hear the duty officer go that’s out other facility, so it is dawning on the police and her what is going on. We finally straighten out the whole mess and the officer says they will have someone to our facility soon. The man’s wife is having none of it. She says she needs him home to help get their kids in bed. They will get the police to come to their house and settle it there. There is a whole back story I can’t explain just know it is a legitimate request. So the man leaves. Now we have to call the police and tell them not to come out because the man has left. In all of this we still don’t know how the police got the number for the other facility since neither us or the man gave them that number. The duty officer and I did get praised for staying cool under fire which was nice. Actually it was exhilarating and fun dealing with the problem. As Vin Deisel says in XXX “I live for this s***”
That was the major problem, other things happened to like the lifeguard accidentally turn off the water flow tot he sprinklers and setting off the fire alarm. Also holiday traffic and miscommunication caused a lot of parents to be late to pick up their kids. Swim lessons being cancelled but we didn’t know that at first. All kinds of things. I can say it helped my night go faster.
Published on November 20, 2007
in religion.
I was reading one of my favorite authors Terry Pratchett when I came upon a quote about atheism. The dialogue goes like this:
“Atheism Is Also A Religious Position,” Dorfl rumbled.
“No it’s not!” said Constable Visit. “Atheism is a denial of a god.”
“Therefore It Is A Religious Position,” said Dorfl. “Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms Of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.”*
My point summed up exactly. Pratchett is a proclaimed atheist and he seems to get the point that Atheism is a belief system. What annoys me about atheists in general is, they do not want to be identified by as having a belief system. They don’t seem to understand there is just as much faith in the denial of God as there is in proclaiming his existence. They tend to couch their beliefs in the terms of reason, which is a belief system that requires faith in mans innate goodness. I’m not sure man is innately good. If man is good, than what drags him down to the level of violence and selfishness that we see from most people? Why does he not continue to be good? I would like to get some answers to that question.
(*Dorfl is a golem. Pratchett distinguishes his speech by capitalizing every word)
Published on November 19, 2007
in sports.
I am frustrated with Bobby Petrino. I am trying to understand why you would bench a quarterback that just led your team to two wins in a row, especially with a quarterback that is coming off ankle surgery and has mobility issues already. I know Joey Harrington doesn’t have a good history but he hasn’t played poorly this season. He has had a better season than Leftwich so far. I don’t know if this is Harrington finally showing his potential or if it is an aberration. I hope Harrington doesn’t fall apart. I wonder if Petrino is trying to angle for a high draft pick so he can pick up another QB or if he is trying to ruin his season so he can go back to college with little fanfare. Whatever it is, as a fan, I say start Joey, please!
Published on November 18, 2007
in politics.
I was wondering how long it would be before someone made the point that President Bush helped the people in California because they were wealthy not poor like New Orleans residents. October 25, at least that is the date for this article on alternet.org and this editorial on Associated Content which appeared Nov 1. The reason the response to the wildfires was better than Katrina was because the area of devastation was so much smaller and the infrastructure was not as damaged. It has nothing to do with race or socio-economic status, it is about the ability of supplies to reach the necessary locations. Martin Savidge explains this in his editorial on MSNBC. From the Beyond Katrina website we get these facts1,875 homes destroyed by the California wildfires vs. 300,000 homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by the storm.
In California, fires consumed roughly 475,000 acres; more than 52 million acres were affected in the Gulf Coast.
Early estimates for the California fires are about 2% of the damage wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita – 91 billion vs. 2 billion!
Death toll – 2, 000 for Katrina, 11 for the California fires
The two disasters do not compare.