Month: October 2005

First of all,I am no writing expert. I am however, a lifelong student of human communication, in all it’s glory and all it’s flaws. Much of what I know about written communication, I have learned by doing it all wrong first, facing the negative results, then learning better ways.  

One of my major flaws as a writer, (and as born whistle blower type)  was generalizing WAY too much, WAY too often, and pissing off WAY too many people.  Time and time again, reacting to one awful injustice after another, I’d leap upon my white horse (ok, white keyboard), and charge off to wake people the hell up. I have a strong and passsonate voice when I am astride my white horse, and the wrongs were so big!

But it kept back-firing, more often than not. People I thought would be glad to know about what was really going on, reacted as if I’d attacked THEM.  But I hadn’t, not really. Were they nuts?

No. They weren’t. They were reacting to my generalizations that scattershot the  “blame” for the situation all over them, too.  The buckskhot  hit every vulnerable area: for some of them, it hit the place where  they knew they’d stayed silent too long. Some of it hit those who WERE working like heck to change the situation, (but not as hard, or as fast.. as “I” thought they should be!)

In any case, I pissed a lot of people off..and once that happened  that’s all they could tihnk about. My orignal burning issue that  I wanted tended to, more often that not was buried under the resultant “war” my generalizing tendencies had  caused.

I still fall into this one now and then on the blogs, when I don’t wait until I am past the “emotionally reactive”  phase I can’t seem to avoid these days.

What this taught me is this: if I have a message I really want others to hear, I need to remember who my readers are, and write in ways that will engage them, not make them want to kill me.  (I don’t know how many lives a “messenger” actually has, but I am pretty sure I’ve used most of them up.  🙂

I’ve come to see the value of qualifying  words, such as “many”  or “most” or “some”.  If I need to fling accusations or judgements about, I try to remember to paint a clear and identifiable “target picture” so the readers know for sure who my target is.

Havng been a workshop presentor/instructor for many years, I also have to reread what I write to make sure it hasn’t come across as a “lecture”, because while those don’t get me killed, they do tend to make readers slip into a como like state.

On the blogs, as a commentor, I hd to learn the hard way again..NOT to write comments in the heat of one of my famous emotional reactions.  Ohh..that is so hard to do. It feels SO good to just “let fly”, from this safe, anonymous perch. (For about five minutes, till I reread what I wrote, and see the boomrang missiles heading back at me.) (Ok,  on special occasions I do enjoy this too!)    

Do I always remember all of this?  Hell no.
But I am still “here”, which means I must have learned something along the way.        

Update:

This constant bashing of the military and america is evil and americans are evil is way to much for me right now. See you later.

I need to get away from here before I cross that line of becoming a prick.
This constant bashing of the military and America and particularly this every American is evil is to much for me.

I simply refuse to allow myself to become a prick and if I keep reading this horseshit I will cross that line and destroy something I respect.

see you all around the campus sometime in the near future.

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I will admit that I have aggressively defended my family, my friends and my country in some of the diaries I posted comments within over the last few days.  I am not an apologist for my nation, I am will not be labeled as an American purist or a Bushco sympathizer.  My country is in the throes of a fascist takeover, perpetuated by the PNACers, which want nothing more than to make the rest of the world subservient to the US and its policies.  I despise these fascists and have fought within every legal means I know to prevent and mitigate their destruction of my nation and its constitution.  I am going to offer you a little background as to why I am so vehemently opposed to blanket statements that paint all people with the same broad strokes as being lazy, stupid, ignorant, criminal or willfully negligent.

Having had the dishonor of growing up in a home that espoused a distinctly KKK aroma of hatred and disrespect for anyone who was not an WASP, who hated jews, blacks, hispanics, catholics, indians and all the other sub human species of the human race, I was quickly indoctrinated that I was unworthy because my mother was part native american.

As I grew up and became more acquainted with drugs and alcohol, I also became an equal opportunity bigot; I hated everyone equally and used racial slanders as a mighty weapon.  I willfully went out of my way to start fights with anyone whom I felt was less than me and that was everyone because I had such a fever to prove that I was one of the superior humans on this planet.  

More below the fold

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Looks like Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee is very interested in what the White House, more specifically Karl Rove, told FOF frontman James (Squarepants) Dobson to allay his fears about supreme court nominee Harriet Miers and earn at least a lukewarm endorsement from Dobson.

Courtesy of the New York Times and as seen on “This Week” with George Stephanopolous, Dobson said in his radio address last week that he had been told things he probably shouldn’t know, but he couldn’t divulge them, and what he had been told convinced him to support the nomination of Harriet Miers to the SCOTUS.

Specter is quoted as saying:

Dobson acknowledged talking to Rove before making his statement.

It’s fun to see the growing chorus of suspicion surrounding this administration and Karl Rove in particular.  The president is clearly using code language to calm the fears of evangelical christians, and it certainly appears as if Rove crossed another ethical line in making Dobson privvy to information that the rest of us apparently don’t have the right to know.

Hopefully it will be a fun week watching Rove circle the drain.

[From the diaries by susanhu.] Today, October 10th, is the world day against the death penalty. While the civilised world (including New Zealand) has abolished capital punishment, 74 countries still retain the death penalty. The world day against the death penalty is the day we work to change that.

This year, the focus is on Africa.  Out of 53 African nations, 12 have abolished capital punishment, and 20 observe a practical moratorium. But 21 still execute people, including Nigeria, Ethiopia, Botswana and Egypt. The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty has an electronic petition, which you can sign here. It’s a small gesture, but the more people who sign it, the more weight it will carry.

Idiot/Savant
No Right Turn – New Zealand’s liberal blog

Cross-posted at EuroTrib.com.

The IAEA has a “contradictory role, as nuclear policeman and nuclear salesman,” said Greenpeace International’s Mike Townsley (AFP), criticizing the choice of Mohammed ElBaradei and the IAEA as recipients of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. (Take the POLL BELOW: Do you agree?) Townsley did acknowledge that ElBaradei has been “‘a voice of sanity’ in his advocacy of a nuclear-free Middle East.”

PHOTO CAPTION: ” Greenpeace activists attach a 60-metre long (65 yards) banner and a balloon in the shape of a nuclear bomb in front of the United Nations building in Vienna September 26, 2005. The activists denounced the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying it promoted the use of nuclear power and thereby aiding the spread of nuclear weapons.” (Yahoo/Reuters)

A French group, Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear) accuses IAEA of promoting civilian nuclear plants while giving “countries the means to build atomic bombs” and “hoodwinking” the public while nuclear proliferation accelerates. (Yahoo/AFP Photo : ‘Sortir du Nucleaire’ activists demonstrate on a Brittany beach in July 2004.)

Equally severe was The Guardian columnist George Monbiot:

George Monbiot … said the 2005 prize to the IAEA and its boss “was a reward for failure in an age of rampant proliferation.”

He saw a parallel with the controversial awarding of the 1973 Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. The former US secretary of state and national security advisor helped extend the Vietnam War to Laos and Cambodia before negotiating the conflict’s end.

“The currency (of the Nobel Peace Prize) is beginning to be devalued,” Monbiot said.

ElBaradei like Henry Kissinger? Well …

As Meteor Blades said in his recommended diary — “A Nobel Bush Won’t Love” — here on October 7, much of our initial satisfaction came from the fact that the ElBaradei had not only survived Dick Cheney and George Bush’s attempts to throw him out of the IAEA, he also proved them and the Neocons wrong on Iraq, and more:

Whoever’s on the Nobel committee this year, let me give you a big kiss. Choosing Mohammed El Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency to receive the 2005 Peace Prize warms my heart for three reasons: 1) both have deserved it for years; 2) its recognition that the smirky American rightwing attitude toward international agencies is gravely misplaced; and 3) it pokes Washington in the eye, but that is redundant.

“In addition to their traditional worries about nuclear proliferation,” reports AFP, “environmentalists are concerned that the civilian nuclear industry — dealt a crippling blow by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — is on the rise once more.”

Nuclear power is becoming eagerly pursued in China and India to help meet surging energy needs at a time of expensive, vulnerable oil supplies.

And in Europe, some countries that vowed to scrap or freeze their nuclear power programmes are now discreetly looking at reviving them to meet their commitments on greenhouse-gas pollution from fossil fuels.

I suppose you in the U.S. have seen the new, dreamy TV ads about the need for more nuclear energy. Well?