Received e-mail (12/30/2007):

I find it very interesting that you quote the Old Testament in your “From Swords into Plowshares” episode but not in your “Kicking the Apartheid Habit” episode. The quote I’m thinking of is Leviticus 18:22. - R.J. Grigaitis

For those of you who don’t have a Bible handy, Leviticus 18:22 says “”You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” My response to R.J.:

R.J.,

Perhaps you will also interested in Peter 2:18, Exodus 21:26, or Ephesians 6:5 - so that you will know how to treat your slaves. You do have slaves, don’t you?

Just to be clear, we consider it fair to quote from any source so long as the source is identified (so that readers can examine the context from which it was taken), and deem the quote to be valuable in some way. Quoting from a source does not imply that we must uncritically accept all other pieces of information from that same source to be the absolute truth. That would be stupid.

Bunny

A couple of days ago we hit 2.5 million episode views over at our channel at YouTube. I’m kind of surprised that a program like ours would get so many views at a place like YouTube. It’s not ha-ha funny, we don’t have any sexy pictures, etc. We originally decided to put our videos up at YouTube only because some people had written to us saying that they couldn’t watch our videos on our website (QuickTime incompatibility, etc.). Now more people watch The Pinky Show over there than over here. I bet most of the people over at YouTube don’t even know we have a website.

The other day, a human being friend came over and we were reading through some of the YouTube comments and private messages we’ve received over the past few weeks. Some of the more outrageous ones really made us roll our eyes:

“fucking fags, go watch the news the UN autherized the 2003 invasion, no terrorist in iraq? SADDAM WAS A GOD DAMN TERRORIST!!! no WMDs, go ask the kurds if he had weapons of mass destruction, fuckin dumb whore, my and cousin served proudly in Iraq and dont need any of ur hippie shit.” - YouTube user 75ranger101

“What The Fuck!!! First, you have NO RIGHT to bash the military in any way!! They fight so people can have the opinions they have, they risk there lives to protect OUR FREEDOM!!! Soldiers are given orders and they follow them, they don’t ask questions they simply do as they are told. Second, whether or not the reason’s for being in the middle east are legal or not is’nt the point. I lost family both on 9/11 and in the middle east, I find it bullshit that you would spend so much time ranting about an issue that is not up to you. Your cat looks high and your simply repeating something someone had ALREADY bitched about…..MOVE ON!!!!” - YouTube user dragonslayer9342

“FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCKS. “Educational” its all propaganda go fuck youselves you fucking pieces of shit… etc.” - YouTube user ingderf (that first sentence is almost brilliant in its simplicity…)

Afterwards she was asking us if it bothers us that we get so many YouTube messages that are filled with anger, hate, and threats. She looked surprised when I said ‘no’. I don’t really have any feeling about it other than to say that I think it’s a good resource for us. The comments - even the really stupid ones - give us some kind of idea how people out there are ‘thinking’ about the issues. I’m not surprised that there are hundreds of square miles worth of stupid people out there. And to a certain extent I’m actually kind of impressed by it. It’s a reminder that our society has had to work extremely hard to make people that stupid. I don’t believe that human beings can be born that stupid; I’m pretty sure that kind of stupidity has to be intentionally cultivated. And I’m sure it cost a lot of money too.

Actually I think it’s kind of funny that my friend was under the impression that it’s some kind of emotional burden to have a million or so people ‘out there’ hate you, wish pox on you, and so on. I had to remind her that we’re cats and we don’t care what human beings think about us.

~ pinky

I don’t answer a lot of e-mails anymore. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but to be honest, answering individual e-mails is not a good use of time. There’ll probably always be a part of me that feels like I’m being very impolite or not-nice if I ‘ignore’ even one e-mail that we receive, but lately I’ve been trying really hard to keep my feelings in check and look at things programmatically. I have to ask myself: What is our primary responsibility? Well, we’re supposed to be making educational materials. E-mail is fun and all that but since there’s only two of us working on the production end of things, every hour I spend writing e-mails takes away time from research, writing, edting, and so on. Bunny and I typically work 12-14 hour days to keep the PS project moving forward. And at the end of the day we usually just feel too brain-dead to respond to individual e-mails. Plus, I’m a terribly slow writer.

Having said that, we frequently receive e-mails that, for one reason or another, we really want to respond to. Over the past couple of years I’ve been responding to as many of these as possible, but lately there’s just been too many of them and I haven’t been able to keep up at all. So what we’re going to do is try to respond to some of the e-mails we receive here in the Diary area. Bunny does that sometimes (Bunny Mailbag), but not too often. So we’re going to try to do this more often.

Anyway, tonight I wanted to share a very nice e-mail we received a few days ago from a person named David. The things he has to say about fear is, I think, extremely important. The relationships that exist between fear and self-silencing are worth careful examination - not just for the obvious political reasons, but for a million ‘personal’ reasons as well. A few years ago, shortly after we first met, Bunny and I decided that it would be important for us to create some kind of daily practice that would allow us to continually work towards the dissolution of fear. Making The Pinky Show has been a part of that practice.

Oh, and the hot dog story is good too. It really made us laugh.

message: I like your mini shows. I like the content and the way you express it. I especially liked your one about the illegality of the American war against Iraq.

On a more personal note (don’t be scared, I am not dangerous), I want to tell you what made me actually write to you:

Two things basically.

The first one is that listening to you and your audience/contributors de-paranoided me. What I mean by that is, the information I received about in the Pinky Show’s Legality of the Iraq War combined with the link your site provided to the BBC’s “The Power of Nightmares” helped me overcome my resistance to sharing some of my strong convictions online. A week ago, it scared me to know that putting my convictions online potentially exposes me to the any of the 6 billion or so other people here.

But today, the post-Pinky version of myself realizes that my so-called leaders passionately devote considerable resources to engineering fear in the hearts of workaday schmucks like me. People like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Powell, Rice, Pearle, Wolfowitz, depend on my fear and the fear of millions like me. They depend on fear to deter ordinary citizens like me from observing and making our own conclusions about decisions they make that significantly affect the daily life of people like me.

Now that I have had a closer [sic] via your show, I’m angry enough to not care that potentially the whole world can know that I regard our “neoconservative” so-called leaders as dangerous, lying megalomaniacs. They are the mirror image of the very “evildoers who hate us because of our freedoms”. So, thank you. Your show has helped me come to value my own observation and experience enough to share it without regard to fear. You supplied the information and courageous example which inspires me to write to you.

The second thing that made me write to you was a memory evoked by your picture of a sign showing there’s 80 some odd miles to Death Valley. [ pinky’s note: the image he’s talking about is here. ]

My friend Dale and I call it the Hot Dog Water Story. When I was young and dumb, Dale and I had the brilliant idea to go for a 40-mile hike in Death Valley in August. We read about desert conditions. We also checked out an army manual about desert survival from the library. It said a person needs a gallon of water every 20 miles in the desert.

Long story short, we ran out of water anyway, in the middle of Death Valley. So we started to hitchhike. One car after another passed us by. Then a couple driving a Red VW van going in the opposite direction stopped, picked us up, turned around and drove us back to our camp. The couple was from Canada. They also had a cute little baby lying in a small, blanketed crate.

Dale and I were pretty thirsty by the time our good samaritans brought us back to camp. The only water we had left was in a cooler that contained hot dogs floating in warm water. Dale and I were so thirsty that we downed that hot dog water in nothing flat.

It turns out that our rescuers were camped close to Dale and me. We had a good talk about the whole experience when we had dinner together later that day.

So, thanks for reminding me about Hot Dog Water.

Sincerely,

David S.

Okay, that’s today’s interesting e-mail. It’s almost 3 a.m. - I’d better go to bed now. Goodnight! ~ pinky

One of the most common criticisms we receive regarding our The American War: the U.S. in Vietnam episode goes something like this: “How can you say the Gulf of Tonkin Incident never happened? It did happen! You cats are wrong! How dare you conspiracy theorists suggest that the U.S. government used a fraudulent event that never happened to plunge our nation into war… blah blah blah.”

Enter a recently declassified National Security Agency study - Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975 (download the entire report here). The study is a comprehensive analysis of U.S. codebreaking and eavesdropping work during the Vietnam war - the government’s official history of e-spying if you will - and the Gulf of Tonkin incident receives a full analysis from a signals intelligence perspective in Chapter 5. The conclusion of that analysis? The Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened.

Thank you, we will be accepting written apologies at our usual e-mail address.

But seriously, you know what’s really annoying? These people who e-mail us about how we make up stuff to back up our arguments don’t seem to do any research themselves before firing off angry e-mails. The thing is, we were able to figure out that the Tonkin Affair never happened after doing just a few days worth of research into the ‘incident’. It wasn’t difficult to find out that it never happened and we certainly don’t have any high-level security clearances that allow us access to top secret information. We just read normal books and reports that anybody can find in any decent library. So as nice as it is to have the NSA back us up on our “rediculus lies and claims”, this kind of information really is already out there.

Annoying thing #2: The release of the NSA study and its findings were not covered in any of the mainstream U.S. news outlets. None of them. Maybe there’ll be a hailstorm of reports about it next week, but I doubt it. I had to find out about it from a French newswire. Crazy huh.

~ pinky

I was reading an essay by Penny Coleman (Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War) and was especially intrigued by this section describing the psychological ‘conditioning’ of soldiers:

Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of ways to override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram their human software, overriding those characteristics that are inconvenient in a military context, most particularly the inherent resistance human beings have to killing others of their own species. “Modern combat training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli,” says Lt. Col. Peter Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, “and this maximizes soldiers’ lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so. If they are unable to justify to themselves the fact that they killed another human being, they will likely — and understandably — suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who performed their duty in combat.”

By military standards, operant conditioning has been highly effective. It’s enabled American soldiers to kill more often and more efficiently, and that ability continues to exact a terrible toll on those we have designated as the “enemy.” But the toll on the troops themselves is also tragic. Even when troops struggle honorably with the difference between a protected person and a permissible target (and I believe that the vast majority do so struggle, though the distinction is one I find both ethically and humanely problematic) in war “shit happens.” When soldiers are witness to overwhelming horror, or because of a reflexive accident, an illegitimate order, or because multiple deployments have thoroughly distorted their perceptions, or simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time — those are the moments that will continue to haunt them, the memories they will not be able to forgive or forget, and the stuff of posttraumatic stress injuries.

I’ve been thinking about this all day. Seems to me that when human beings are in their childhood-stage, the adults around them try to teach them things like how to treat each other nicely, how to discern right from wrong, how to think about the consequences of their actions, and other good stuff like that. But doesn’t this curriculum for soldiers - this ‘operant conditioning’ that teaches barely-adult human beings how to bypass the moral autonomy they (hopefully) developed as children - seem like exactly the opposite of good ‘child rearing’?

I don’t get it. If human beings think warring is so necessary, why not just avoid the possibility of confusion, horror, and trauma by training children (i.e., potential soldiers) to be killers from the start? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d rather do away with war altogether, but since most people won’t even allow themselves to seriously explore that as a possibility, perhaps it just makes more sense to speed things along a bit by not cultivating any goodness that’s only going to be have to be destroyed later.

At the very least, all of us cats will be saved the hassle of having to figure out if that human being coming towards us is going to be kind or try to hurt us.

~ pinky

[ addition: Sorry, I forgot to post the link to Ms. Coleman’s essay from which I quoted: http://www.alternet.org/story/72956/ ]

E-mail from ShapeSHFTR:

Dear Bunny, I enjoy reading your replies to e-mails. I have a question for you. I’m guessing that you guys are Democrats and not Republicans. So out of the major Democratic candidates - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards, who will you be voting for? Who do you think is the real change candidate? And don’t say Kucinich because we all know he doesn’t have a chance to win the nomination! Thanks, just curious what you guys are thinking because you haven’t been talking about the elections. - ShapeSHFTR

Bunny writes:

Hi ShapeSHFTR, I won’t pretend to represent the others, I’ll just state my own position and the others can enter their opinions below if they want.

1. As we’ve pointed out before, cats aren’t allowed to vote. If you American human beings thought about how unfair this is for even 10 seconds you’d see that that’s something that has to be changed. Who the leader of this country is has a profound effect on all animals, not only humans. I agree that some animals cannot operate a voting machine or punch a voting-card (dragonflies come to mind), but that doesn’t mean that our interests should be totally ignored at election time. If you believe in fairness go figure something about re: how to collect animal votes. And I’m not even going to get into the whole trees issue.

2. The whole “You Must Be Either a Democrat or a Republican” mentality annoys me. What happens when neither side is willing to serve the interests of the citizenry? Or to put it another way, why do people have to choose between one of just two parties when both of those parties are actively hurting the most vulnerable among us? Poor people, the elderly, children, the homeless, recent immigrants, Native peoples, and so on. I would call the narrowness of your human elections a joke if the repercussions weren’t so enormously un-funny.

3. I like some things about each of the candidates as people. All of them seem intelligent, which can be nice. Visually speaking, they all have decent smiles, et cetera. But as political candidates, the three you’ve named - Clinton, Obama, Edwards - I don’t like their politics. Just one example, their positions regarding the expansion of war-culture, an issue we have spoken about a lot here at The Pinky Show.

Hillary Clinton: To help our forces recover from Iraq and prepare them to confront the full range of twenty-first-century threats, I will work to expand and modernize the military so that fighting wars no longer comes at the expense of deployments for long-term deterrence, military readiness, or responses to urgent needs at home.

John Edwards: I will double the budget for recruitment and raise the standards for the recruitment pool so that we can reduce our reliance on felony waivers and other exceptions. In addition, I will increase our investment in the maintenance of our equipment for the safety of our troops.

Barack Obama: To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace. . . . We must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. . . . We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines. . . . I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened. We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability — to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities…

[ excerpts from Glenn Greenwald’s excellent essay at Salon ]

4. Seems like every time Kucinich’s name is mentioned, it’s in the context of some kind of mockery or dismissive “interesting but not to be taken seriously” comment. What’s funny to me is that if people would only follow-up with some critical inquiry as to why this is happening, they might actually figure out a thing or two about what’s wrong with elections here in the United States.

I’m not impressed with the American political system. You human beings will get exactly what you deserve. Unfortunately for the rest of us who also live on this planet, we’ll also get what you deserve.

Bunny

[ Kim: Grumpy as usual! ]

[ Bunny: I am not grumpy, I just don’t feel like taking extra time to figure out how to say things all fluffy-like. ]

Here is a must-read article regarding the current movement to bring U.S. universities into closer alignment with the national security/military superstructure. Please read this. All of us have to understand how our so-called public institutions are being used to further the new Americanism agenda.

The essay explains the seven steps involved in the transformation of U.S. universities and colleges:

1. Target dissidents.

2. Arm the schools.

3. Increase surveillance.

4. Data mine student records.

5. Track foreign students.

6. Take over the curriculum, classrooms, and laboratories.

7. Privatize everything.

Read the whole article here: Repress U, by Michael Gould-Wartofsky (from The Nation)

Posted by Bunny

OK, he never actually said that. But articles like this really makes me think that President Bush has a personal vendetta against nature-in-general. Do you think maybe he was bullied by trees as a child?

[ excerpt from a Washington Post story by Marc Kaufman ]

The White House yesterday sought to overrule a federal court’s decision limiting the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises, exempting the service from complying with two major environmental laws.

Environmentalists who sued to limit the use of loud, mid-frequency sonar — which can be harmful to whales and other marine mammals — said the exemptions were unprecedented and could lead to a larger legal battle over the extent to which the military has to follow environmental laws.

In a court filing yesterday, government attorneys said President Bush had determined that allowing the use of mid-frequency sonar in ongoing exercises off southern California was “essential to national security” and of “paramount interest to the United States.” …The government filings said the federal ruling limiting sonar use “profoundly interferes with the Navy’s global management of U.S. strategic forces, its ability to conduct warfare operations, and ultimately places the lives of American sailors and Marines at risk.”

…”The president’s action is an attack on the rule of law,” said Reynolds, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project. “By exempting the Navy from basic safeguards under both federal and state law, the President is flouting the will of Congress, the decision of the California Coastal Commission, and a ruling by the federal court.” …The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said the waters off southern California are especially rich in marine mammal life and are on migration paths of five species of endangered whales.

In the past these Navy sonar ‘exercises’ have left whales stranded or dead. Stop messing with whales!

Posted by Kim

Bunny and I arrived early in the morning on Sunday. What can I say? I’m just really happy to be back in Hawaii. Hawaii smells good. Everybody we’ve been meeting here has been really kind to us. I was born in Hawaii so I’m pretty familiar with the food here, but for Bunny a lot of the stuff we’ve been having on this trip so far is new and it’s been quite shocking to see how much she can eat when she likes what she sees on the table. Not that I’m suggesting that she’s fat (she’s not).

We’re here to do research and collect materials for an upcoming mini-series on Hawaii. Most people think of Hawaii as an island paradise / tourist destination. But what most people don’t realize is that Hawaii is also a settler colony. Our upcoming episodes will explain what that means and why it’s important to think about.

Financially speaking, these upcoming episodes have been made possible by two grants we recently received - mahalo (thank you) to The Hawaii People’s Fund and the Hawaii Community Foundation! Mimi had written to them asking if they’d be willing to fund an episode or two on settler colonialism, and to our surprise they actually said ‘yes’! I say ’surprised’ because: 1) the settler colonialism argument is still ‘controversial’ here in the U.S. (even though it’s so obviously true if you just consider the facts!); and 2) for the past year Mimi has been tirelessly applying to all sorts of grants but so far we have only gotten rejection letters.

So needless to say we are really happy to receive these grants. It’s not only a big financial lift but equally important for us it is also a big emotional lift. We were starting to think that foundations are allergic to cats or something. So I would like to send Mimi a special thank you for all her hard work. People don’t know that Mimi works long hours at her ‘real job’ and then after that she comes home, sits down, and then she does all the grantwriting for The Pinky Show. So she basically has almost no time in her life for play or just relaxation.

Okay, tonight I was actually going to write about GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) stuff but as you can see I got side-tracked. Since we got here Bunny and I have been learning about GMO kalo (taro) and the more I learn, the angrier I get! What’s happening here with kalo is just like what’s going on on the mainland (and elsewhere) with corporations trying to ‘own’, control, and profit from all aspects of nature. Corn, wild rice, soy, wheat, and many other things have already been deeply affected. Here in Hawaii kalo is considered to be the ancestor of the Hawaiian people. Kalo is their relative. So corporations claiming the right to own and modify kalo seems to me like a totally disrespectful and inappropriate thing to do. I’m truly disgusted by what I’m seeing. We didn’t come to Hawaii to work on an episode about kalo but hopefully next time we’ll be able to do that. In the meantime, please watch this video - it’s called Islands at Risk (30 mintutes long). Also, an excellent documentary to watch for background information about GMO is The Future of Food. This is a must-see documentary - all your perspectives about food and nature will be changed after watching this.

I have to go prepare for tomorrow now. Thank you for reading.

~ pinky

Kim filling in blogging duties again for Pinky while she is in Hawaii.

Guess what. This past Tuesday, the FDA (Food and Drug Association) approved flesh and fluids (a.k.a. ‘meat & milk’) from cloned animals:

“Meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine, and goats, and the offspring of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals.” - FDA official Randall Lutter

Considering the FDA’s dismal food safety record (especially with corporate profiteering lurking in the background), I am not feeling comforted by this recent turn of events.

The decision represents a major step towards allowing biotech corporations to put clone-derived products on supermarket shelves. And maybe even more disturbingly, the FDA has also decided that meat & milk from cloned animals do not need to be labeled as such. Here in the U.S.A., GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) foodstuffs also don’t need to be labeled, so basically no one is able to decide for themselves if they want to eat cloned-derived and GMO foods. Without labeling, none of us can know what we are eating. Or, for that matter, what’s making us sick.

[ read the Agence France-Presse article ]

Posted by Kim

Still guest blogging for Pinky until she is back from Hawaii.

In the news: On Friday, President Bush made a proclamation that kind of blew my mind. Here it is:

On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, we recognize that each life has inherent dignity and matchless value, and we reaffirm our steadfast determination to defend the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society.

America was founded on the belief that all men are created equal and have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and our country remains committed to upholding that founding principle. Since taking office, I have signed legislation to help protect life at all stages, and my Administration will continue to encourage adoption, fund abstinence education and crisis pregnancy programs, and support faith-based groups. Today, as our society searches for new ways to ease human suffering, we must pursue the possibilities of science in a manner that respects the sacred gift of life and upholds our moral values.

Our Nation has made progress in its efforts to protect human life, and we will strive to change hearts and minds with compassion and decency. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day and throughout the year, we help strengthen the culture of life in America and work for the day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Sunday, January 20, 2008, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-second.

- GEORGE W. BUSH

When I read this my first thought was, “Is this a prank?” Because really - is there anybody out there with a track record like his (human rights abuses, war criminality, shredding constitutional rights, etc.) that would allow themselves to speak publicly about “defending the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society” or “respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being”? Of course not! Any normal person would feel too ashamed.

I was confused enough that I finally called Daisy to ask him about it. Well Daisy explained to me that President Bush is not contradicting himself at all. He said that my confusion was coming from the fact that people like President Bush just have a different definition of human life. He said President Bush and his friends only believe in the sanctity of human life in that time frame beginning with conception, right up until 1 second before you’re born.

Okay, that helped a lot. You know, politics wouldn’t be so hard to understand if politicians would just include definitions and explanatory footnotes whenever they try to say something.

Posted by Kim

[ Bunny: Kim said “President Bush and his friends only believe in the sanctity of human life in that time frame beginning with conception, right up until 1 second before you’re born.” I would also add: “From the moment of birth on, your body belongs to the state.” ]

Short post today, I’m in the middle of a really good book.

Bunny has been doing a lot of research about GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) lately. I like food so of course the big question for me when I am marketing is “What should I be avoiding?”. Here is a good list that she sent me yesterday:

http://www.truefoodnow.org/shoppersguide/guide_printable.html

Also make sure you check out the rest of the True Food Network website too. It’s a good website to keep you up to date on the ongoing struggle to keep food healthy and safe.

I’ll post other good lists when I find them.

Posted by Kim.

Another blog by me, Kim.

Our friend Richard at Hawaii People’s Fund sent us an e-mail with a link to some great information today. It is called Iraq: The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, and is a section of The Center for Public Integrity’s website. There are some analytical commentaries and also an archive of ‘old’ (2002 seems like a long time ago already) video footage of Bush administration people hyping the case for war, an excellent bibliography, and so on. I just spent the last 3 or 4 hours reviewing the information and it is very good. There’s actually no “new” information here - I think we pretty much read up on this stuff while we were researching our own Iraq War episode - but I am very happy that some people are willing to take the time to put so much information together in a way that I can go back and rethink what has happened.

<– example graph from the War Card website.

Pinky is always reminding us how important it is to study history. If we don’t study history of course it’s going to be harder to see what’s being done to us right now in the present. Like Iran. If the American people do not stop their government from warring on Iran, I will be even more disgusted and angry.

Angry cats!

Now I am reading about How to Buy a President. I know I am not in a position to suggest ideas but I would like to see a companion website called How to Have Democracy. (not fake democracy)

While Bunny and Pinky enjoy the sun and ahi poke in Hawaii, I am stuck here in 40°F weather reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I’m not really complaining, it’s actually very fascinating to see what kind of impressions this man had of the United States in ‘the early years’ (~1831). For example, this part:

It is difficult to say what place is taken up in the life of an inhabitant of the United States by his concern for politics. To take a hand in the regulation of society and to discuss it is his biggest concern and, so to speak, the only pleasure an American knows. This feeling pervades the most trifling habits of life; even the women frequently attend public meetings and listen to political harangues as a recreation from their household labors. Debating clubs are, to a certain extent, a substitute for theatrical entertainments: an American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say “Gentlemen” to the person with whom he is conversing.

In some countries the inhabitants seem unwilling to avail themselves of the political privileges which the law gives them; it would seem that they set too high a value upon their time to spend it on the interests of the community; and they shut themselves up in a narrow selfishness, marked out by four sunk fences and a quickset hedge. But if an American were condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence; he would feel an immense void in the life which he is accustomed to lead, and his wretchedness would be unbearable. I am persuaded that if ever a despotism should be established in America, it will be more difficult to overcome the habits that freedom has formed than to conquer the love of freedom itself. (from Chapter 14: WHAT ARE THE REAL ADVANTAGES WHICH AMERICAN SOCIETY DERIVES FROM A DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT)

Wow. I realize a lot can change in 200+ years but to me it sounds like America has undergone a radical personality transplant.

Posted by Kim.

[ Bunny: Hi Kim, thanks for the blogging. If you have time I’d like to hear your thoughts on de Tocqueville’s chapter on the ‘three races’ in America - ‘Whites, Negroes, and Indians’. ]

[ Kim: To me, race is one of the hardest concepts for cats to understand. Why do human beings have race? Is it a power thing? Better to ask Daisy instead. ]

Back in 1982, after witnessing a million people protest nuclear weapons in New York’s Central Park, then-U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig said: “Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.”

That’s a very practical way of looking at things, isn’t it?

Well. It’s true that I don’t want to support U.S. imperialism, which of course includes imperialist wars. It’s also true that the U.S. government needs lots and lots of money to pay for imperialist wars. And I do feel sick to my stomach that over 40% of the taxes that I pay (yes, I pay taxes) are being used to buy bullets to shoot people with, and for bombs and such. I don’t want to pay for this kind of thing. So I’ve been looking for options.

Here are some links to information I’ve found so far:

Don’t Buy Bush’s War @ CodePink

War Tax Resistance info @ War Resisters League

Taxstrike @ Against the Wall Network

2008 War Tax Boycott

It would be great if us taxpayers got to choose where to send our tax dollars. Like, “divert all my money from the military and war spending and spend it on building houses for homeless people and cleaning up the environment instead”. Okay, maybe there’d be ‘too much’ money for the environment and not enough money for fixing pot holes in the roads, but overall I think that’s a minor problem compared to our very expensive addiction to death-culture.

What do you think? I’m not an economist but the idea of a war tax boycott sounds reasonable to me.

Posted by Kim.

Not! It just seems that way. Do you know why only Republicrats get to be on TV?

Just a friendly reminder:

Green Party [ www.GP.org ]

Libertarian Party [ www.LP.org ]

Socialist Party USA [ www.sp-usa.org ]

United States Marijuana Party [ www.usmjparty.com ]

And actually there are more. I’m not endorsing any particular political party, I just wanted to remind everybody that there are parties beyond just the Republicans and Democrats.

And while you’re at it, please read up on different political forms a nation can take. The United States is a constitutional republic, but what is that exactly and what does that mean? What are the alternatives?

This blog entry written by Kim.

The past few weeks Pinky has been at the library practically every night so until she is done with her Hawaii-research you get me or Kim writing blogs.

Last night I was watching some old Futurama cartoons and came across this:

That’s funny.

But it also made me think. When Bender (the robot guy) said that he can’t vote because he’s a former convicted felon, I wondered if that was something that’s based in reality or not. So I looked it up.

Come to find out, the right to vote is different from state to state. Almost every state in the U.S. does not allow people currently in prison (felony conviction) to have any voting rights. Most states reinstate their right to vote upon release from prison (in some states there is a period of time where they can’t vote right away). But in other states if you’ve ever been convicted of a felony you are barred from voting for life.

To me, this is unfair. What kind of ‘conventional wisdom’ could provide a logical argument for disenfranchising over 5 million thinking adults in this country? Universal suffrage (which I’ve heard people refer to the U.S. as having) is supposed to extend voting rights to all adults regardless of race, sex, beliefs, intelligence, economic status or social status.

So why are prisoners being singled out for exclusion? It’s not like they’re stupid. Nor are they evil (if you believe prisoners are stupid or evil you need to meet more prisoners and ex-prisoners). Do you think allowing prisoners to vote would result in the election of evil candidates? (we are not doing so well in this regard already, and they are being elected by supposedly non-evil non-ex-felons) Actually, it makes sense that we should value the votes of prisoners. I think they are a group of people who have a unique and valuable insight into matters of law, power, and the inner workings of society. They are often the people whose lives have been most directly impacted by the issues that politicians like to talk about.

Plus! If you look at who has the highest rates of convictions and incarceration in this country, I think you can make a reasonable argument that the disenfranchisement of prisoners and ex-prisoners is not only unwise but also racist and classist.

Bunny

Another blog entry by Kim.

Americans love polls. And polls love politics. Here are some polling Q&A that made my head hurt:

• Over one-third of Americans believe that America is ‘not ready’ for a woman president. (CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll, December 2006) Is there something wrong with women that I don’t know about?

• 41% of Americans would not vote for a presidential candidate if s/he were homosexual, even if s/he were well-qualified (Gallup Poll, December 2007). According to a 2006 Gallup Poll, 91% of Americans say that they believe that America is ‘not ready’ for a gay or lesbian president. (Incidentally, another poll [CNN/ORC Poll, May 2007] found that 71% of Americans feel that policies towards gays and lesbians are either “Moderately Important” [30%] or “Not That Important” [41%]!)

• 48% of Americans would not vote for an atheist. (Gallup Poll, December 2007)

• 45% of Americans say they would be ‘less likely’ to vote for a presidential candidate if they were Muslim. (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, and pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, August, 2007)

• Americans are ‘less likely’ to vote for a Mormon (29%) than someone who’s been divorced twice (26%). (ABC News/Washington Post Poll, February 2007).

• 14% of Americans say that political lobbyists have ‘too little’ power and influence in Washington D.C. 18% think nonprofit organizations have ‘too much’ power and influence. (Harris Poll, February, 2007)

• 58% of Americans feel that corruption is ‘widespread’ in Washington. (CBS News/New York Times Poll, October 2006)

• When asked “How much of what is said in commercials for or against a political candidate do you believe?”, 69% of Americans answered with ‘not much’ or ‘nothing at all’.

• A CBS news poll (January 2008) asked the question: “Which one is more important to you in a presidential candidate: having the right experience, or having fresh ideas?” Most Democrats favored ‘fresh ideas’ while most Republicans favored “right experience”. I don’t think this is a good poll because it did not provide alternative choices such as “stale ideas” or “wrong experience”, or even various permutations of the above - for example, “the right experience with wrong ideas”, which is what I would have selected had I been polled.

Okay, I lie down now.

Coming back to the desert is always nice (because I do love the desert) but after staying in Hawaii for over a month I guess I’m feeling a little sad. And cold. I don’t know exactly why I feel sad but I do. I don’t know how long this feeling will last.

We were really busy the whole time we were there so I didn’t have much time to ‘play’ or do anything that wasn’t research or production-related. A couple times Bunny or Daisy suggested that maybe I could spend some time looking for my mommy but in the end I didn’t do any of that. I wouldn’t know where to start and I don’t even know what she looks like. As you probably know lots of times kittens don’t look anything like their mommies.

Bunny, Daisy, and I all learned a huge amount from the Hawaii-people while we were there. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t summarize everything we did in Hawaii right now - it’s too much stuff to list and my head is crowded with ideas that need sorting. The noise in my head is similar to children smashing Lego with small hammers. I’ll just try to bring everything together in the Hawaii episodes we’re working on.

On the way back we stopped in Los Angeles and spent a few days there - UCLA’s research libraries in the evenings and a bunch of assorted interesting stuff during the days: we saw the Takashi Murakami exhibition at the Geffen (just amazing); visited the National Resources Defense Council offices in Santa Monica (we’re going to try to do an episode about environmental racism with them); Museum of Jurassic Technology (again, I love that place) and the Center for Land Use Interpretation (first time for me, I was really impressed) in Culver City (not far from where Bunny and I first met); and we even took a day trip up to San Simeon with our friend Tim to see Hearst Castle (truly nauseating/fascinating).

These are from the Murakami show. Thank you Pam for the lovely buttons.

Oh so ironic to find this parking sign in Los Angeles (the space was empty).

Indoor swimming pool, Hearst Castle.

Traveling can be fun but it’s a really wonderful to all be back together in one place again. I missed Mimi and Kim a lot. One nice thing about being away is that while we were gone Kim did a bunch of blogging and decided that it’s not so bad. So according to her she’ll be blogging “sometimes” from now on. It would be great if Mimi would blog too, she always has an interesting (some might say ‘bizarre’) way of looking at things. We spent a few days sorting through the mountain of material we brought back from Hawaii and I think we have a pretty good outline for how to proceed now.

I just read through this entry and it’s quite a mess with all the jumping from topic to topic, isn’t it? I’ll try again tomorrow. I think I’m tired; my eyes are throbbing. @.@

Finally, before I head off to bed, I wanted to extend my deepest ‘thank you’ to everyone that has been teaching and helping us these past few weeks and months: Eiko, Karen, Candace, Callie, Dean, Heijin, Jackie, Lianne, Bianca, Po’ohina, Bunzie, Fran, Daniela, Brian, Kekuni, Terri, Kyle, Joan & Puhipau, Paul, Richard & Nancy, Bok-dong, Nancy, Jon, Teacup, Tinkerbell, Su-Fei, Tim, Maya & Emi, Pam, Tim’s Mommy & Daddy, Jon’s Mommy & Daddy, Stan, Dennis, Lori, and Lisa. I’m sure I’ve forgotten to include everyone - my sincerest apologies.

~ pinky

From the e-mail pile:

Dear Pinky, You’ve discussed various wars on your show, but one, large war that you haven’t touched upon much is World War II… I have heard many different opinions, but I would love to hear yours… Thanks! Kachie

My   reply:

Dear Kachie, My friend Teacup has the most succinct summary-characterization of the Second World War that I have heard so far: “World War II was basically a turf war between imperial powers.” I can go with that. Thank you for your question. Bunny

Posted by Bunny.

Bunny just posted a new homepage picture and I wanted to share some background information about it.

The landscape photograph was taken at the Pali lookout on the island of Oahu, a site very popular with tourists. When you stand at the lookout and face north you have an expansive view of the windward side of the island, and it’s just breathtaking. The site itself is all concrete and railings, with a large parking lot and hundreds of tourists coming and going constantly.

It gets pretty crowded. We took this photo by standing on a wall. Most of the tourists were from Japan and the United States but we also met people from all over Europe, China, Australia, New Zealand, and more.

We thought it was interesting that a lot of the people took photographs of the sign that had a picture & explanation of the landscape spread out in front of them, but hardly anyone actually stopped to read it. Average time looking at the sign must have been something like 10 seconds or maybe even shorter.

Here’s a close-up of the sign (below, click on it for a much larger version).

In the distance (right side of photo) is Mokapu peninsula. This was, and continues to be, a sacred place for Native Hawaiians - with ancient fish ponds, springs, archaeological sites, burial sites, temples… However in 1918 the peninsula was seized by executive order of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and given to the U.S. military. Now Mokapu is occupied by a very large U.S. Marine Corps Base, which of course sits directly on top of the aforementioned everything.

In Hawaii there are 10,000 other stories that follow this kind of logic. Our upcoming Hawaii-episodes will try to explain how Hawaii became a colonial holding of the United States of America, and at the same time we’ll try to talk a little bit about some of the consequences and future implications that arise when one nation tries to erase another. I’ll post updates on our progress here in my diary (a.k.a. “blog”) for those of you who are interested in stuff like that.

~ pinky

[ note from Bunny: If you want to see something crazy, go check out the Marine Corps Base Hawaii’s website (example screen capture here). They actually have the nerve to talk about protecting and respecting sacred Native Hawaiian sites even as they bomb, build on, dump on, dig up, burn, or otherwise destroy hundreds of sacred sites throughout Hawaii. The photo of the burial mounds at Mokapu now transformed into a military golf course just blows my mind. They have no shame. ]

Hi. I received another e-mail from Daisy today, who is still in Hawaii (he’ll probably be there for another month or so). It made me think so thought I’d share it with everybody. ~ pinky

Dear Pinky,

Today was “free day” at the Honolulu Academy of Arts so I went. There is an exhibition going on there at the moment that I know you would have been very interested in. It is called The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan and is an incredible collection of 100+ Buddhist objects, mostly paintings and sculptures. I wasn’t able to photograph any of the objects in the exhibition for you, but here are a few shots from outside the museum:

There was an introductory video running as you first enter the exhibit that gives a brief overview of Bhutan. In the video it was noted that in Bhutan, the state/success of the country is measured in GNH (Gross National Happiness), rather than GNP (Gross National Product). According to an independent study, Bhutan is ranked as the 8th happiest country in the world. The U.S.A. is ranked 23rd.

Please consider the implications of this.

Daisy

[ note from Bunny: GNH seems like a good idea. Here’s a few pieces from around the internet: Gross National Happiness and Development (an e-book in pdf form by the Center for Bhutan Studies, Karma Ura and Karma Galay, editors); Gross National Happiness: Towards Buddhist Economics (presentation paper by Sander G. Tideman); Gross National Happiness (short essay by Donald Ardell); The True Measure of Success (short article by Daniel Pink, Wired magazine). There’s lots more - just Google “Gross National Happiness”. ]

[ note from Kim: Just to state the obvious - Bhutan has problems too: report from Radio Free Asia, 2006. ]

I’ve always found it a little unnerving how human beings can seem so selfish when it comes to lavishing so much care on their own children. After all, there are literally millions of starving children all over the world at this very moment, and intellectually speaking, I’m sure every parent knows this. And yet, when it comes time for parents feed their children, clothe their children, provide toys and amusements to their children and so on, people do not give their offspring as little as possible in order to have more food, clothes, and whatnot to send to all those unknown needy children. Doesn’t it seem like there’s something wrong with this kind of thinking?

But tonight, as I was giving my AntFarm™ ants some water, I caught myself feeling so happy to watch my ants contently drink their water. I was thinking to myself, “Ants, it is hot and dry out there in the desert and untold millions of your ant brothers and sisters are suffering without enough water to drink everyday. I can’t take care of all of them but I can take care of you. So drink and be happy, ants.”

That’s the same thing, isn’t it? (albeit, substituting ants for children)

Is this how we deal with the knowledge that the world is cruel and there is an incomprehensible amount of suffering going on? Do we ever give love and caring to those very close to us in order to protect ourselves from feeling too much compassion for those who are farther away? And don’t these kinds of self-protective mechanisms lead to more inaction, and ultimately more suffering?

I need to reconsider how my feelings are short-circuiting my understanding of my own responsibilities and limitations, especially as it relates to ‘helping others’. I’m sure there’s some kind of evolutionary-biological reason why such complicated emotions developed in cats and human beings, but tonight I can’t help but feel like I would be acting much more responsibly in this world if I had less feelings to contend with.

~ pinky

[ note from Bunny: That was fairly incomprehensible. What is your point? ]

[ Pinky: I don’t know. ]

[ Kim: I don’t think we have to make points. Points are overrated. ]

Via one of the more bizarre expressions of hatred against The Pinky Show we’ve encountered, I’m learning something new about internet culture (and human nature). A brief chronology of events:

1. We receive an e-mail with a link to a jumpy photo that is trying its hardest to be obscene. I’ve seen worse and just throw it away.

2. We receive a panicky e-mail that there is someone on YouTube who made a racist video in reference to our How To Solve Illegal Immigration episode. I check it out and yes, it’s racist - not a huge surprise being that this YouTuber also gives 5-star ratings to Ku Klux Klan videos and videos where people kill animals. I also happen to notice that it’s from the same person who sent us the poopy-dick e-mail (also not a surprise).

3. I did watch another video made by this same hater - Why Do People Hate Furries? - and this one was actually pretty interesting. Not because the video itself is well-made (it’s not - it’s a solid ‘9′ on the lame scale) but because I’ve never heard the term ‘furries’ before. So I looked it up.

“Furry fandom is a fandom distinguished by its enjoyment of anthropomorphic animal characters. Examples of anthropomorphism in furry fandom include the attribution of human intelligence, facial expressions, anatomy, speech, bipedalism, and clothing to otherwise animal characters. Members of this subculture are sometimes known as furry fans, furries, or simply furs…” [ from Wikipedia - read the whole entry if you wish… ]

Also fascinating are the concepts of furry ‘lifestylers’, yiffy art (erotic art featuring furries), furry-themed cybersex, terminology like ‘furfags’, etc. Nice to learn something new everyday.

I’m still trying to figure out the connection between anti-black racism, anti-furryism, and teenage YouTube hissyfits. I asked Pinky what she thought about all this but she wasn’t interested.

- Bunny

Tonight I’m just going to make a very short, direct appeal to everyone reading this diary entry. Bunny and I had a chance to see a prescreening of Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawaii. The film is absolutely amazing, but it is also not yet finished. The filmmaker, Keala Kelly, needs a little more money to wrap things up before she can send it out into the world.

We had a chance to meet Keala while we were in Hawaii and we were very impressed with her work. But tonight when we saw a draft version of her film we were just blown away. It is so powerful and people need to see this film. Please go to the Noho Hewa website to learn about the project and make a donation. It’s not often that we all have a chance to help bring something so good and relevant to completion!

Goodnight. ~ pinky

My friend told me about this video, Food Fight. Very imaginative…

My favorite part is when the one shishkabob hits the other shishkabob!

I don’t get the ending though - anybody know what it means? (the bugs) Please let me know if you figured it out.

Go here to see what countries all the different foods represent.

Posted by Kim.

[ note from Bunny: I don’t like this video. I mean, it’s definitely very clever and I can appreciate that aspect, but there’s just too many problems with the historical perspective being presented. Just one example: I think if you show Palestinian suicide bombers, at the very least you also should include the ridiculously unjust UN partition of 1947, massive land grabs by the Israelis in 1948 and 1967, and ongoing attacks on civilian Palestinians with missiles, tanks, and helicopters. ]

[ Kim: ?!? Bunny - it’s animated food! ]

[ Bunny: I know it’s food, but I’m making a point. Most Americans don’t know anything about the Palestine-Israel conflict except what the mainstream media feeds them. And in our biased media presentations the historical context of Israeli state terrorism and land seizure is always left out, or at best, grossly misrepresented. That’s how Palestinians wearing bombs on their bodies become ‘terrorists’ while Israelis driving their tanks over Palestinian families are only ‘preserving national security’. This kind of history lesson reinforces racism against Palestinians, even if it is presented in an imaginative or funny way. ]

[ Kim: How are you supposed to represent the 1947 UN partition with play-acting food??? Anyway this video is not a historical dissertation on the Palestine-Israel conflict! It covers WWII to the present in less than 6 minutes! ]

[ Bunny: Yes it’s short but it IS a history of sorts and millions of people are going to watch it. And they are going to learn something from it. I also don’t think I’d be so critical of it if it weren’t loaded with so many real historical details. All those ‘inside jokes’ lend a kind of historical authority to the presentation, and I think that’s why it comes off as being funny. All I’m saying is given the reality of Palestinian oppression and vilification, I wish the creators of this very well-made video had thought more about the implications of siding with the dominant American perspective. ]

[ Kim: How do you know they didn’t think about it? Maybe they did consider the implications and they still decided to make it like this on purpose. ]

[ Bunny: Okay, I agree - that’s entirely possible too. If they’re consciously trying to cultivate a greater misunderstanding of the Palestine-Israel conflict, and essentially, racism against Palestinians, then I think they’re doing their part. ]

[ Kim: Whatevers. I think you have done your part to make this video lose its funniness. ]

[ Bunny: Why can’t a video be problematic and funny at the same time? ]

[ Kim: WHATEVERS!!! ]

[ from Mimi: I think the ending just means that after human beings annihilate each other, the bugs will clean up the mess. That’s my guess. ]

Today President Bush participated in a video conference with military and civilian personnel engaged in the ongoing occupation (six years and counting) of Afghanistan. During the discussion, which was organized to address the many humanitarian, socio-political, economic, and military crises still raging in that country, President Bush made a series of remarks that I can only characterize as ‘borderline insane’:

“I must say, I’m a little envious… If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks.”

I have no comment other than my characterization. ~ pinky

[ note from Bunny: Why ‘borderline’…? ]

[ Kim: I believe the clinical term is ‘psycho’. ]

The first Winter Soldier hearings were organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in January/February 1971. At those hearings over a hundred fifty U.S. military veterans of that war testified publicly about war crimes and other atrocities against the Vietnamese people that they had either participated in or personally witnessed. Initially largely ignored by the mainstream media as the hearings were going on in Detroit, Winter Soldier would eventually play an important role in the transformation of Americans’ consciousness regarding the systemically criminal nature of that colonial war in Southeast Asia.

And now, thirty seven years after the first, there is a second Winter Soldier event being held at Silver Spring, Maryland. This time the U.S. military veterans coming forward with their first-hand experiences of war crimes and atrocities are recently back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The event is being organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).

As expected, the mainstream media has (again) largely ignored the event. A quick scan of today’s CNN, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and a few other big papers’ websites don’t mention the hearings on their front pages.

On the internet though, the testimonies will be archived at the IVAW website; so you’ll be able to watch them there. Today Democracy Now! had a good story on Winter Soldier (including a brief interview with two Vietnam War veterans; one testified at the original 1971 hearings), and The Real News Network will be posting excerpts from Silver Spring for the duration of the event (click here to view the intro video to the series). Please help spread the word about this very important event.

Okay, goodbye for now, I need to get to bed. Can’t seem to rid myself of this nasty cold… ~ pinky

P.S. Thank you to Brian Koontz for reminding me to post this information.

[ note from Bunny: Free Speech TV is also broadcasting the hearings live. ]

[ Pinky again: Brian just sent me links to the Winter Soldier documentary (1972): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9. ]

[ Kim, 3/15: I found a story about Winter Soldier in the Washington Post (it’s in Section B though) and there’s also a story in the Boston Herald.  The media blackout continues in the big ones - NYT, LAT, CNN, etc. ]

This is a good video I found at YouTube, I hope everybody watches it. It was made by AFSC (American Friends Service Committee - I really like those guys).

This internet video was posted by Kim.

On anniversaries like today, people tend to produce lots of numbers in an attempt to understand and reflect upon the situation. I respect numbers, but I have to admit, more often than not I have to really stare at a numerical figure for a long time before it begins to have real meaning for me.

For example, today I read (NYT article) that Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz estimates the total cost of the Iraq War at “more than four trillion dollars.” But what is four trillion dollars? I can’t really relate to that - I mean, to me, $1,000 is already a lot of money. You can write it out:

$4,000,000,000,000.00

That’s a lot of zeros. Four trillion is the same as saying four thousand billion dollars. Or four million million dollars. Wow.

But even more ‘wow’ for me was the discrepancy between this total and the Bush administration’s pre-war estimate. Before the war started, President Bush and friends said they thought it would cost between $50 and $60 billion dollars to invade Iraq, overthrow their government, and replace it with something we like better. $50~$60 billion vs. $4 trillion - that’s not close. How far off were the President’s men? Well, the difference between the two is like this: say you go to a deli and order a tomato sandwich. The sandwich guy says, “Sure, that’ll be $5 or $6 dollars.” (it’s an estimate - has to see how many tomatoes he’s going to put in it before he comes up with the final price; he’s not psychic you know) So he makes that sandwich and then when he’s done he hands it to you and says “That’ll be $400.” Proportionately speaking, that’s the same difference. So like I said, $60 million and $4 trillion are not close.

Another number-oriented piece of information I’ve encountered a few times today: since the beginning of the invasion in 2003, approximately 4,000 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq. 4,000 people! But U.S. newspapers and television news hardly seem to mention the war dead anymore - it’s almost as if they’ve gotten used to the idea and moved on. But what does this mean - “4,000 people”? Invisible to the public or not, this number can be stated in the most brutal terms:

• All together the bodies of the dead would weigh about 360 tons.

• Their brains alone would weigh over 5 tons.

• Laid end to end, their bodies would extend beyond 77 football fields; almost 4 and 1/2 miles.

• The blood from 4,000 people would fill 10 large tanker trucks.

If you want to know the human cost for Iraqis, multiply the above by a factor of about 250.

We need to find an alternative to war culture, and war vision.

~ pinky

[ Bunny: Pinky forgot to mention that all the calculations were by me. ]

[ Pinky: Sorry about that - yes, that was all Bunny. ]

[ Bunny: For those of you who asked, here’s an example tanker truck. ]

I received a letter from someone at the Jonah House today. In her letter she spoke about nuns living in their community who had been in prison for their peace actions. I just sent a letter back; hopefully we’ll be able coordinate some kind of interview or something.

I went to their website (www.jonahhouse.org) to do a bit of background reading and among other things (there is a lot to digest there) I came across a list of political prisoners, most of whom are being held here in the United States. For example:

Ft. Huachuca Witness:
Stephen Kelly (out March 2008)
Louis Vitale (out March 2008)

Cuban Five:
Gerardo Hernandez (life)
Fernando González Llort (out 04-20-2015)
Ramón Labañino Salazar (life)
René González (out 10-07-2011)
Antonio Guerrero (life)

Nuclear Resisters:
Helen Woodson (out 09-09-2011)

Native American Political Prisoner:
Leonard Peltier

Other political prisoners:
Igor Sutyagin (15 years, Russia)
Dr. Rafil Dhafir (out 04-26-2022)
Lori Berenson
Brendan Walsh (five years, out 7/15/08)
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Marilyn Buck (out 2/8/2011)

I read Leonard Peltier’s and Mumia Abu-Jamal’s prison writings a while ago, but still don’t know much about political prisoners. Actually, I just remembered: the first time I saw a “Free Mumia!” poster I thought to myself “What’s mumia and where can I get some?” It’s embarrassing to say but I guess it’s fairly indicative of how ignorant most of us are regarding political prisoners since the powers that be like to make believe that they somehow cease to exist once they are locked up.

One thing that I really liked about the above list is that it includes contact information for most of the people listed. So for example if you wanted to write a letter to Leonard Peltier, here is his address:

Leonard Peltier (#89637-132)
Lewisberg USP
P.O. Box 1000
Lewisberg, PA 17837

Somehow when I see addresses listed I feel like I need to start writing letters. As of today Mr. Peltier has done 11,739 days of illegal imprisonment. That’s over 32 years.

~ pinky

[ note from Bunny: Pinky and I had dinner with our friends Dean and Heijin last night. Dean said something like “If you really were a good citizen, everything you do would be illegal.” I’m sure I have the wording a little wrong, but I think that’s the basic idea. Think about it. ]

I’m always fascinated by how powerful people go about doing their history-changing business. I like news stories like the one below (60 Minutes, Inside the Bush White House, 2004) because they offer a nice little peek behind the closed doors of the White House.

Like, did you know that in January 2001, President Bush’s National Security Council was already trying to figure out how justify a U.S. overthrow of the Iraqi government, the best plan for occupying Iraq, and (my favorite part) how to award worldwide contracts for Iraqi oil? [3:40] No? How about this - does anybody still remember that in 1999/2000 then-presidential candidate George W. Bush ran a campaign platform that was critical of the Clinton administration’s excessive use of foreign interventionism and nation building? [6:10] Oooh the irony…

Actually, the real reason why I’m writing a diary entry today is because I’m testing a new interface that’s supposed to make it easier for us to post videos in this blog. If it works good then maybe we’ll post and discuss more videos from now on. Here’s the video.

- Bunny

You know how sometimes you won’t hear anybody say the word ’sheep’ for ages and ages but then suddenly you’ll have a few days in a row where you’ll suddenly have a bunch of conversations about sheep, or repeatedly bump into a variety of sheep-related things?

No?

Well this week has been Sheep Week for me. If you’re not into sheep you might want to stop reading this blog entry now - no politics or education commentary today.

Sheep Story #1: Sometimes when I’m feeling stressed out, I like to sew things. Lately I’ve been sewing dolls and handbags (they make good presents) and I’ve been making most of it out of felt I buy at a craft store. Well last week I was browsing the internet when I came across a supplier that sells 100% wool felt (I’d never seen ‘real’ felt before - the felt I get at the craft store is actually synthetic and fairly cheap). The wool company had sample cards that you could request, so I did. The felt samples arrived yesterday and wow, real wool felt is just flat-out gorgeous. It feels a hundred times better than the synthetic stuff and it comes in really beautiful, rich colors too. It’s expensive though - $45 per yard - but when I imagine how amazing my handbags would look if I made them out of this real felt I really want some. If I start saving some money now I’m pretty sure I can buy some later this summer. By the way, if you’re wondering what this has to do with sheep, wool comes from sheep. [I had to add this last sentence because Kim just walked by and asked me “What does this have to do with sheep?”]

Sheep Story #2: There’s a great story and photo essay in the New York Times today about sheep shearing.

Before:

After:

Ha ha!

Sheep Story #3: I just found out that my friend Teacup used to herd sheep.

- Bunny

Tonight Bunny, Mimi, and I were sitting around talking about the difficulty we sometimes have in trying to describe what The Pinky Show is. “What is your show about?” is one of the more common questions we get. You’d think this should be easy to answer, but even now, I often find myself struggling to summarize our work in just a few words.

Part of the difficulty comes from the fact that since starting up this project approximately three years ago, we’ve consciously tried to resist becoming a ’single issue oriented’ project, which is how most organizations are generally known to the public. Examples:

Greenpeace = environmentalism
CodePink = end the Iraq War
UNICEF = children.
etc.

I guess it’s natural for people to want to pidgeon-hole an organization or project in terms of a single, specific issue. After all, it does help make things easier to grasp immediately. I’m guessing this is why we often have people saying things to us like, “So the Pinky Show is an anti-war program?”, or “Oh I get it, you guys are environmentalists!” Well, we do oppose the war and occupation of Iraq. And yes, we also like trees more than pollution. But in spite of these kinds of statements of position, there’s something about self-defining our project according to these kinds of labels that doesn’t sit well with me. I think it’s because, to me, the main reason why I want to learn things is not to promote any particular policy agenda. The point of learning is to transform my world view, my consciousness. I feel like if we (all of us) were somehow more conscious as to what’s really going on around us and how the world works, we would all quite naturally start inching our way towards good and not evil. Of course we’d all have to fight it out as to exactly where we should go next, but that’s a given. First I want to be awake. I think this is why I prefer that we (Bunny, Mimi, Kim, Daisy, myself) not focus on one or even just a few ‘related’ subjects to discuss. I’d rather we keep learning about all sorts of things, together with all the complicated connections that exist between them. I don’t want to become an ‘expert’, as the word is commonly used nowadays.

I’m sure a lot of people will interpret the above as being ‘unfocused’ in a negative way, but probably this is unavoidable. What I really want to create is a good way of relating to the world and all the beings, things, and ideas in it. In the past I’ve described this as our obsession with trying to train ourselves to think and act with openness, honesty, and compassion. We are trying to guide ourselves according to these somewhat abstract principles, rather than always working within a specific issue or disciplinary boundary.

Now, it would be good if I could figure out how to say this clearly in one sentence.

~ pinky

[ note from Bunny: I don’t like the way you suggest it’s possible to somehow ‘wake up’ first, then struggle towards good things second. I think we continually develop our consciousness as we struggle along. ]

[ pinky: Okay, good point. But either way I still can’t find an elegant way to summarize our project in one or two sentences. The point is our project does not approach ‘education’ in a conventional manner, and unless Mimi has some catchy, clarifying blurbs to write in our grant applications, The Pinky Show won’t be around for much longer. ]

[ Bunny: Agreed. ]

[ Kim: Some people think that the single unifying theme of The Pinky Show is that it is always anti-American. ]

[ Bunny: Those people are idiots. ]

[ pinky: So much for the ‘compassion’ part! ]

[ Bunny: Ch! I know you think they’re idiots too… ]

[ pinky: I don’t think they’re idiots… If you believe in ideology, how can you be surprised that people would think it’s reasonable for ‘good citizens’ to be quiet and do as they’re told? ]

[ Bunny, 4/11/2008: I’ve been thinking about this some more… Maybe it would be good to identify The Pinky Show not so much as an instructional program about various topics, but rather an ongoing project that uses the form of making educational materials as a way to explore our own minds. It’s not a noun, it’s more like a verb. To me this would be a more accurate description of what we are doing. Because think about it - if you describe The Pinky Show as a bunch of online videos, then of course it’s natural for someone to ask “So what kind of things do the various episodes talk about?” But teaching others about certain topics is not the main reason why we’re doing The Pinky Show, right? The main thing is for us to keep learning. Imagine if we had zero viewers - the activity of doing research, writing, distilling down the information, and making presentations would still be an excellent process to help us think clearly about how we’re thinking. I for one would still enjoy making Pinky Shows (or Bunny Shows) even if no one ever watched our show. ]

[ Kim: Yeah, I like Bunny’s point. It’s not like the point is to be critical of specific things - X, Y, and Z. It’s more important to make critical consciousness so that we can be critical (not in a bad way) of anything and everything. This way we can know who we are and not always be getting lost. ]

[ pinky: Agreed! Although for me, I do like the idea that lots of people watch our show, because then I feel like we have company as we try to move towards good things. ]

Recently Bunny, Mimi, and I had watched Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land: The U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and thought that it was really excellent. Tonight as I was following up trying to learn a bit more about the Media Education Foundation (the people who produced this video) I found out that this documentary is actually available in its entirety (1 hr. 20 min.) via Google Video. The analysis provided in the film is extremely important - I sincerely hope everyone who reads this blog takes the time to watch the film and share it with others. Our mini-review of the film is here. ~ pinky

[ note from Bunny: One of the things I thought was extremely important in this film was how carefully it examines the use of language in creating consciousness and controlling opinions. We all ‘use’ language but generally don’t spend much time thinking specifically about exactly how we are using it or how it is connected to specific configurations of power. The Media Education Foundation has a catalog of films that deal with the politics of representation - in television, music, video games, schools, etc. Check them out: www.mediaed.org. ]

My friend Tim sent me an e-mail with this photo attached (click for a larger version):

“This is one of the new stadiums being built for the Beijing Olympics. Apparently it can only be used at night when it isn’t casting so many shadows. Oops.”

Is this for real? I’m having a hard time believing that anybody could make a mistake like this…

- Bunny

Posted by Kim.

I wouldn’t call myself a bookworm but I do love popular science books by people like Stephen Jay Gould or Carl Sagan. By the way, here’s a nice quote by Carl Sagan:

“The business of scepticism is to be dangerous. Scepticism challenges established institutions. If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of sceptical thought, they will probably not restrict their skepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials, and 35,000-year-old channelees. Maybe they’ll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Perhaps they’ll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?”

I thought about this for a while, and I wonder: Do you think high schools are spending enough time teaching young people how to use methodologies of skepticism? I never went to human beings school so I don’t know for a fact if they do or they don’t. But judging what I read in the op-ed sections of newspapers I am going to go out on a limb and guess that they’re not doing a good job with this. - Kim

[ note from Bunny: I think you’re misreading the quote. I think Sagan is implying that high schools were never intended to cultivate skepticism in students. ]

[ Kim: Oh. Okay, I guess I can accept that reading. But don’t you think it’d be great if high schools could be changed to do this? ]

[ Daisy: Schools don’t exist to teach people how to be “dangerous”; their primary function is to train young people to live their lives within the limits of state policies. Anything beyond that is variously defined as failing, substandard, non-compliant, illegitimate, abnormal, deviant, degenerate, suspect, dangerous, at-risk, criminal. Take, for example, the recent (February 2008) ruling in Califronia’s Second Court of Appeals regarding home schooling. The court ruled that education is only valid when a child is being taught by a credentialed teacher. Parents, or any other persons for that matter, who attempt to teach children without a state-issued teaching credential, will be subject to prosecution. Most parents who home school their own children do not have teaching credentials - which means that under California law these children should be classified as truants and in some cases even removed from their parents’ custody (under the guise of “educational neglect”). Some parents have been very vocal in protesting what they see as a violation of their right to home school their kids, but to me the implications are much more far-reaching. Basically the state is trying to claim that only they have the power to define what education is. Under this kind of logic, neither Einstein nor Jesus would have been qualified to teach children (I’m assuming neither ever held a California State teaching license). In fact, they would’ve been punished had they tried to impersonate “real teachers.” ]

[ Kim: O hai Daisy! ]

[ Daisy: Hi. ]

[ Bunny: Hey Daisy, two questions. Number one, how did the teachers union respond to the court ruling? Number two: Are you opposed to all forms of schooling? ]

[ Daisy: The largest teachers union in California lauded the decision. Second question: No. ][ Bunny: …? Why ‘no’? Can you elaborate? ][ Daisy: I’m not anti-school. To me a school is just a building, a place. What I object to are unimaginative and limited conceptions of what constitutes schooling (i.e., ‘formal education’). When most people say schooling, what they really mean is mind-numbing training. Dogs need training. Human beings need intellectual, ethical, cultural, and spiritual development; none of which happens as a result of being trained. If schools could be remade into authentic places of learning rather than training-buildings, I would be supportive. But at that point, we might as well call them something other than “schools.” ]

[ Pinky: Hi you guys. Here’s a quote from the judge that presided over the process, Justice H. Walter Croskey:

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

So I think it’s pretty clear that our conception of ‘public welfare’ and Justice Croskey’s are built on fundamentally different values and assumptions… And just to be clear, Daisy, don’t you think there are also many home schooling parents that are also guilty of confusing learning with training? ]

[ Daisy: Yes. ]

A mini-report by Daisy.

This is an excerpt from yesterday morning’s House Judiciary Committee meeting on Capitol Hill. Here Congressman Robert Wexler questions FBI Director Robert Mueller about FBI inaction following reports that the CIA was torturing prisoners.

[ start transcript ]

Congressman Robert Wexler: Alright, Mr. Director. An L.A. Times article from October, 2007 quotes one senior federal enforcement official as saying quote “the CIA determined they were going to torture people, and we made the decision not to be involved” end quote. The article goes on to say that some FBI officials went to you and that you quote “pulled many of the agents back from playing even a supporting role in the investigations to avoid exposing them to legal jeopardy” end quote. My question Mr. Director, I congratulate you for pulling the FBI agents back, but why did you not take more substantial steps to stop the interrogation techniques that your own FBI agents were telling you were illegal? Why did you not initiate criminal investigations when your agents told you the CIA and the Department of Defense were engaging in illegal interrogation techniques, and rather than simply pulling your agents out, shouldn’t you have directed them to prevent any illegal interrogations from taking place?

FBI Director Robert Mueller: I can go so far sir as to tell you that a protocol in the FBI is not to use coercion in any of our interrogations or our questioning and we have abided by our protocol.

Congressman Wexler: I appreciate that. What is the protocol say when the FBI knows that the CIA is engaging or the Department of Defense is engaging in an illegal technique? What does the protocol say in that circumstance?

Director Mueller: We would bring it up to appropriate authorities and determine whether the techniques were legal or illegal.

Congressman Wexler: Did you bring it up to appropriate authorities?

Director Mueller: All I can tell you is that we followed our own protocols.

Congressman Wexler: So you can’t tell us whether you brought it; when your own FBI agents came to you and said the CIA is doing something illegal which caused you to say don’t you get involved; you can’t tell us whether you then went to whatever authority?

Director Mueller: I’ll tell you we followed our own protocols.

Congressman Wexler: And what was the result?

Director Mueller: We followed our own protocols. We followed our protocols. We did not use coercion. We did not participate in any instance where coercion was used to my knowledge.

Congressman Wexler: Did the CIA use techniques that were illegal?

Director Mueller: I can’t comment on what has been done by another agency and under what authorities the other agency may have taken actions.

Congressman Wexler: Why can’t you comment on the actions of another agency?

Director Mueller: I leave that up to the other agency to answer questions with regard to the actions taken by that agency and the legal authorities that may apply to them.

Congressman Wexler: Are you the chief legal law enforcement agency in the United States?

Director Mueller: I am the Director of the FBI.

Congressman Wexler: And you do not have authority with respect to any other governmental agency in the United States? Is that what you’re saying?

Director Mueller: My authority is given to me to investigate. Yes we do.

Congressman Wexler: Did somebody take away that authority with respect to the CIA?

Director Mueller: Nobody has taken away the authority. I can tell you what our protocol was, and how we followed that protocol.

Congressman Wexler: Did anybody take away the authority with respect to the Department of Defense?

Director Mueller: I’m not certain what you mean.

Congressman Wexler: Your authority to investigate an illegal torture technique.

Director Mueller: There has to be a legal basis for us to investigate, and generally that legal basis is given to us by the Department of Justice. Any interp