I got elected vice-chair of the precinct. That maybe better than chair, since I get to go to all the Democratic meetings in the state, and it involves less work. I guess how much work it is depends on how much I want to do. I do plan on working on promoting the Democratic party in the precinct, and pushing the state and local Democratic party to be progressive instead of corporate suck-ups.
I was horrified at the suicide bombing yesterday in al Hilla, Iraq. It is such a tragic loss of life. I am posting a clip from another blog's comments section on why someone might feel inclined to do such a thing in Iraq today:
"No-one is going to undertake such an action lightly, to willingly end your own life in such a brutal and life-denying way, without some very good reason. Under Saddam I don't recall ever hearing of a suicide bomber inside Iraq, even among the Shias when Saddam was militarily suppressing them as the Americans are doing across the whole country today (apart from de facto Kurdistan). So what has changed? One thing that occurred to me a few weeks ago (and that I briefly aired in this forum) is that he number of available suicide bombers in Iraq today approximates the number of Iraqi men released from captivity in a system that was specifically designed to mortally humiliate and degrade them. It was (is?) official US policy when dealing with suspected 'Islamic terrorists' to focus on their sexuality, to confront the captives with culturally and religiously impossible acts - their nakedness in front of, and humiliation by female soldiers, and particularly the sado-homo acts forced on them by grinning infidels. This regimen is designed to 'break' the unfortunates swept into its ugly gaping maw, and I think it has largely succeeded. The 'broken' men are already dead, in fact they are worse than dead and death would be a release from the pain, shame and humiliation which is so far beyond their cultural and religious rubicon to be unreconcilable. I don't know the numbers of these men, it is certainly in the thousands, but I would suggest that most of them are now planning their bloody release from utter torment. -Prime Minister Tony Quisling"
Our US culture is awash in sexuality, almost all of it inappropriate and almost none of it respectful of the spiritually inherent in our sexuality. In Muslim cultures, sexuality is much more repressed, but it is also treated (from my perspective) much more respectfully. They do not condone nudity, using sexuality to sell everything under the sun, premarital or extramarital sex, or any form of sexuality that is not absolutely heterosexual. They will sometimes kill a women who has been raped (which I totally condemn)... and I guess that would hold for a man who has been raped too, but I don't know. I don't think that happens much there. I am sure there is incest and sexual abuse and rape in Muslim cultures, but I strongly suspect it is much less than in our culture. It seems to me that in our culture, sexuality is either shameless or shameful. This is not healthy. Muslim culture has a high degree of shameful, but little public shameless behavior - there are too many cultural restrictions on that.
I have heard that Muslims who die as a martyr will receive 72 virgins. What is less well know is that the virgins are "made of light". Rather a different cast on things, with that information.
Anyway, getting back to the gay S & M torture and abuse that US troops did on Iraqi citizens to "soften them up".... (another example of shameless sexual behavior, by the way)... I am certain that this really would mess with anyone's head, and make one suicidal. On top of that, it would leave one feeling that any of one's fellow citizens who cooperated with such an entity (the USA, in this case) who would do such things, are most likely headed to hell themselves. So, killing one's self ends the pain, redeems them in the eyes of their religion, and when they take "cooperators" with the Americans with them, that saves the "cooperators" too.
Timothy McVeigh thought it was quite acceptable to bomb US citizens who cooperated (ie: worked for) the US government, in retaliation for the wrongs such government did in Waco. (I condemn McVeigh, what the US authorities did in Waco, and those who handed out the death penalty to McVeigh. I am consistent: killing people is wrong.) So, this tendency to see this behavior in a certain light is not particular to any nationality or religion. (McVeigh killed 169 people, by the way, so he is still a better killer than the Iraqi bombers.)
I don't think McVeigh should have been given the death penalty. He should have been put in prison for life, no parole, and no attention either. Maybe one day he would have realized what he did was so very evil, and that he did not correct the evil done at Waco at all. Maybe. Killing him denies him the opportunity.
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