The Same Thing Said In 27 Different Ways

Perhaps mankind's most reliable source of conflict over the course of history is religion. My god is better than your god, and I am going to save you from hell if I have to send you there myself in the process. Christians hate Muslims. Muslims hate Christians. Islam has a standing death sentence to anyone who abandons Islam for some other faith. Both Christians and Muslims hate the Jews. The athiests hate everybody. Everybody hates the athiests. Factions within a particular faith hate each other. And we haven't even gotten into the non-Abrahamic faiths.

Personally, I belong to a Lutheran church, which on a day-to-day basis is just about as low-key and laid-back a Christian sect as you're likely to find. Getting absolved of all your sins basically involves going to church. Sometime during the congregation, you will be relieved of all your sins. That is literally it. No Hail Maries, no pilgrimages, no tithing, no confessions, no real spiritual exertion whatsoever.

But Lutheranism isn't really the end of it for me. Along the way, I also picked up a belief in karma. Not really a pure good-deeds-lead-to-good-fortune, bad-deeds-lead-to-bad-fortune cause-and-effect-- there's far too much evidence to the contrary for that, and when it does happen, the proximity of act to reciprocation is all over the place-- but more of a system where your deeds get played against your well-being at the end, deeds getting more weight. Humanity gets a chance to sort it all out on its own, and then metaphysics accounts for any imbalance at the end. Which basically means the ones who got away with it in life get it the worst in the afterlife.

But more importantly, I feel that it really does not matter, in the slightest, what you believe so long as you parlay that belief into being a generally decent human being that can on some level get along with as many people as possible. In short, if heaven doesn't have room for Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Socrates, all at the same time, I don't want to go there.

It all comes back around to the Golden Rule, and no matter what you believe, if you believe, or where you come from, there is almost assuredly a Golden Rule for you. Some would claim that karma itself is simply an enforced Golden Rule. As much as the moral codes of all the world's faiths and cultures differ, the Golden Rule is remarkably- and thankfully- resilient.

Some present it multiple times, but we'll keep it to one telling per faith (as best reckoned)...

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Akkadian
"Do not return evil to your adversary; requite with kindness the one who does evil to you, maintain justice for your enemy, be friendly to your enemy."

Bahá'í Faith
"Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou doest not." "Blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself." (Baha'u'llah)

Brahmanism
"This is the sum of Dharma [duty]: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you". (Mahabharata, 5:1517)

Buddhism
"Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." (Udana-Varga 5:18)

Christianity
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12, King James Version)

Confucianism
"Tse-kung asked, 'Is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?' Confucius replied, 'It is the word 'shu' -- reciprocity. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.'" (Doctrine of the Mean 13.3)

Ancient Egyptian
"Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do." (The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, 109 - 110)

Hinduism
"This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you." (Mahabharata 5:1517)

Islam
"None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." (Number 13 of Imam "Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths.")

Jainism
"A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated." (Sutrakritanga 1.11.33)

Judaism
"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)

Mozism
"If people regarded other people's families in the same way that they regard their own, who then would incite their own family to attack that of another? For one would do for others as one would do for oneself." (Mozi)

Native American Spirituality
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.” (Chief Seattle)

Paganism, Greek
"Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you." (Socrates)

Paganism, Roman
“The law imprinted on the hearts of all men is to love the members of society as themselves.”

Samaritanism
This one was founded off of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. Need I say more? I mean, really?

Scientology
"Try to treat others as you would want them to treat you." (The Way to Happiness, by L. Ron Hubbard)

Secular
"Don't be a dick." (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_a_dick)

Shintoism
"Be charitable to all beings, love is the representative of God." (Ko-ji-ki Hachiman Kasuga)

Sikhism
"We obtain salvation by loving our fellow man and God." (Granth, Japji XXI)

Sufism
“The basis of Sufism is consideration of the hearts and feelings of others. If you haven't the will to gladden someone's heart, then at least beware lest you hurt someone's heart, for on our path, no sin exists but this.” (Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order)

Taoism
"Regard your neighbor's gain as your gain and your neighbor's loss as your loss." (Tai-shang Kang-ying P'ien)

Vedism
"This is the sum of duty. Do not unto others that which would cause you pain if done to you." (Mahabharata 5:1517)

Unitarianism
“We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” (Unitarian principle)

Wicca
“A'in it harm no one, do what thou wilt” (i.e., do whatever you want to, as long as it harms nobody, including yourself). (The Wiccan Rede)

Yoruba (Nigeria)
“One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts.”

Zorostrianism
"That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself." (Avesta, Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5)

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In conclusion, here's a guy that completely misses the point.

Soccer, Technically

Sorry for no post yesterday; Charter decided that it didn't feel like providing Internet service for long enough to get anything fired off. They like to do that a lot lately.

Anyway.

On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile over Salvadore Allende. Pinochet's reputation, hopefully, precedes him. In the course of seizing power, he immediately went to work "disappearing" or just outright killing his opponents. Many of the opponents were shipped to Estadio Nacional, where they were tortured, raped, beaten, and often killed.

Meanwhile, the 1974 World Cup was looming, and Chile and the Soviet Union were paired against each other in a playoff. Winner goes to the Cup in West Germany.

It was a two-legged tie. The two tied 0-0 in Moscow, and Chile picked Estadio Nacional as the venue for the second leg. The Soviets- even they had standards- were horrified. The national federation appealed to FIFA for a change of venue.

The Soviets learned of the atrocities through a visit from a human-rights organization which, for some reason, Pinochet had allowed to visit. Things were spruced up for the visit, but the human-rights organization didn't buy it for a second.

FIFA organized a fact-finding mission, which given their findings, generated approximately zero actual facts, writing (pdf file, page 13):

In reply to our precise question concerning the stadium, [minister of National Defense Patricio Carvajal Prado] said that in a couple of days the stadium will be at the disposal of the sports organizations as it is expected that the interrogation of the remaining detainees will be terminated (our italics) and most of them will have gone home (p.4).

And in visiting Estadio Nacional:

As mentioned before, the stadium is at present being used as a 'clearing station' and the people in there are not prisoners but merely detainees whose identity has to be established (a large number of foreigners without valid documents)...The stadium is under military guard and entry is only with a special pass. Inside the outer fencing everything seemed to be normal and gardeners are working on the gardens. Inside the stadium itself the seats and pitch were empty and the remaining detainees were in the dressing and other rooms. The grass on the pitch is in perfect condition as were the seating arrangements (p.4).

The match was ordered to go ahead as scheduled, seeing as "life is back to normal". The Soviets fired off a telegram stating that they would not show up, with federation head Granatkin stating that "Soviet sportsmen cannot at present play at stadium stained with blood of Chilean patriots". Similar sentiments poured in from other countries, but FIFA stuck with its line.

The Soviets stayed home. The Chileans showed up.



That was not a highlight. That was the entire match.

FIFA head Sir Stanley Rous would be voted out of office just prior to the World Cup, with this episode part of a larger tendency to be tone-deaf towards world politics, and was replaced by Joao Havelange. Chile would be bounced in the group stage after three boring matches, including two draws, and forward Carlos Caszely would become the first player to receive a red card in a World Cup (they were introduced in 1970, but nobody was sent off then).

In Which We Throw Another Immigration Proposal Onto The Pile

Immigration is and always has been a thorny subject in this country. I've long figured that there are 20,000 different ways to handle immigration, and listening to any debate on the topic, you will find every single one of them to be wrong.

One of the big problems behind that is that immigration, by its very nature, does not deal with people coming from anything even remotely resembling equivalent backgrounds. Billionaires immigrate. Penniless political refugees immigrate. Some people are essentially stateless. Some people don't really have a concept of geopolitical borders. No one way of handling things works for everyone.

The result, at least for the United States, is that there is what can be a decade-long process sorting out who is who-- in this particular story, the wait is actually 17 years- and for many of your more desperate cases, they simply cannot afford to wait that long. They're too poor. They're fleeing political instability. There's someone back home looking for their head. Something that makes them unable to go the over-the-counter route to citizenship because the wait makes them far too likely to die trying.

With no guarantee that they'll actually get accepted.

And then there's the matter of children who had no choice in the matter whatsoever because their parents were the ones making the decision, and simply dragged them over the border.

The real tragedy comes every time one of these children dragged over the border by their parents decides to make the most of it, turns out to be a prodigy that does something like pull a 4.0 GPA and snares a scholarship to the Ivy League, and just generally proves themselves to be a much better citizen than some of our actual citizens, and just then someone finds out they're an illegal immigrant and immediately the calls come to deport them just like everyone else. What was the child to do, fend off their parents with a stick so they could go the legal route? Go back home by themselves, sans parents, to God knows what? Say 'Mommy, I don't wanna go', assuming they were even old enough to speak at the time?

I won't speak for the situation of the proverbial parents here. The proposal I'm about to float would cover the proverbial child prodigy.

Well, maybe the parents too. It depends on how they've got on since they crossed.

The proposal is to introduce a group of what I call 'fasttrackers'. Their job would be to identify those people who are showing themselves to be not only worthy American citizens, but exemplary ones at that, and in fact so worthy that the United States could use them right this very second. A fasttracker, once they have identified such a person, would be able to permit their find to bypass the rest- or all- of the immigration process and, with a small bit of substitute paperwork (because there does have to be SOMETHING), singlehandedly bestow citizenship themselves. One stroke of the pen from them and all the red tape is gone.

Essentially, the fasttracker would be able to tell the immigration people, "It's cool. They're with me." That substitute paperwork would suffice until the rest of the now-citizen's documents can be obtained.

These would be people in the State Department- one under the employ of every foreign embassy and consulate the United States has, as well as, within the United States, one per state, as well as one for DC and each of the territories. By my count, that's 213 foreign fasttrackers, plus 55 domestic (50 states, DC, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam), for a grand total of 268 worldwide. (I didn't count the diplomats in the international organizations.) That's about the right number. You want enough to make sure the whole planet is adequately covered, but not so many that you just have this constant stream of people coming in. It needs to be a special thing, handed out rarely in the grand scheme of things. Attainable, but rare.

So you're aware, the current spread of embassies as shown on the Wikipedia page gives these countries more than one fasttracker:

23- Mexico
9- Brazil
8- Canada
7- China, France, Italy
6- Germany, Japan
5- India
4- Australia, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom
3- Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Iraq, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Turkey
2- Colombia, Ecuador, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam

They'd be based in the embassies, anyway. If they chose, they could get out of the office and do some milling about, or they could be homebodies and wait for people to come to them. It's their call how they want to go about looking... and, in fact, what qualifies as 'exemplary'. They can use whatever criteria they see fit, and admit as many or as few people as they like.

And in the event of the proverbial child prodigy 'too bad they're illegal' story, it wouldn't necessarily fall to the local fasttracker. If the person's in Texas, the Texas fasttracker wouldn't have to step in. It could be the one from Vermont, or Sweden, or Fiji, if they happened to get there first. Not every country has diplomatic recognition, and not every country we're on friendly terms with has an embassy, so you need to be fairly laissez-faire when figuring out who's fasttracking who. Whoever gets there first.

They don't want to go crazy, though. No walking up to a refugee camp and giving every single person within citizenship, though one might get soft-hearted enough to want to do so at some point. As far as job security goes, that is a death wish. Among that substitute paperwork is enough documentation to track the new citizen and tie them to the fasttracker. The citizen doesn't have to worry about it. The fasttracker does. They would be held responsible for the actions of each and every person they bring into the country.

If they are truly admitting the exemplary, the people we'd be proud to have as Americans, there's nothing to worry about. But remember this is supposed to be used only for the cream of the immigration crop. If one of the fasttracked citizens turns out later to be a drug dealer or racks up six DUI's or something else to make it clear the fasttracker chose poorly, there will be hell for the fasttracker to pay. It won't take very many wrong decisions for the fasttracker to be fired and for someone else to take his place. Which means a fasttracker would have to do their own due diligence when determining who to let in.

In short, they could bring in whoever they want whenever they want, but they damn well better be right.

It would only clear out a tiny amount of the immigration backlog. You'd still have a whole bunch of drugs and violence on the border with Mexico, you'd still have millions of people to deal with, you'd still have people waiting a decade-plus on the over-the-counter route. But a little- a very stellar little- is better than nothing.

Barbie's Resume

Barbie has had a lot of careers since 1959. Some very prestigious ones at that. Just in the year 2000, she became not only President of the United States (you don't remember that election? Funny that), but also a Starfleet officer and a paratrooper. In 1991, she served as an officer simultaneously in the Marine Corps and the Navy, one year after she became an Air Force jet pilot, a commercial pilot, and a UNICEF diplomat.

In 2008 alone, she was a swim teacher, a pediatrician, a veteranarian, a baker, a hairdresser, a designer, a pet stylist, a TV chef, a Presidential candidate, and a cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys.

And all this is in addition to her ongoing jobs as fashion model, ballerina and princess.

She has to sleep, right? And consider that just about all the jobs Barbie takes are full-time affairs, many going far beyond the 40-hour-a-week standard. You can hold one, at MOST two at a time and have any time left for eating, sleeping, living in a house, or anything else.

And yet she still finds all this time to play around with Ken in her Malibu dream house, or the beach, or the mall, or whatever.

There is only one conclusion: she is terrible at every single job (at least every job that isn't model, ballerina or princess) and Mattel doesn't mention that she is constantly getting fired. This explains why, for example, she was President in 2000, but merely a 'candidate' in 2004 and 2008. She was thrown out of office, either by the voters in a re-election bid or by being impeached and removed in the middle of the term, and she hasn't taken the hint yet.

Perhaps this is why she is currently resorting to burglary.

Another Look At The Boston Tea Party

Let's talk Tea Party today. Specifically, let's talk the rationale behind calling it the Tea Party.

No, not the fact that calling themselves 'teabaggers' at first backfired spectacularly and provided easy rationale for their opposition to keep calling them that even after they realized their mistake and changed the name.

Something more basic. As popular history tells, the Boston Tea Party- that which served as the underlying story behind both names- was conducted in 1773 as a protest against British taxation under the Tea Act. Protesters dressed up as Indians, boarded a ship loaded with tea from the British East India Company, and flung the tea into Boston Harbor.

The Boston Tea Party happened, to be sure. But the reason behind it wasn't simply to protest British taxation.

You see, the American colonists had a tea trade going. A black-market tea trade. 90% of colonial tea was smuggled in, with the mast majority of that smuggled in by one John Hancock.

Hancock wasn't anything special; a lot of colonists dabbled in smuggling. The American taxes were worse than the ones the British imposed; in fact, were one to play by the rules, import duties, which could reach 100%, would quickly drive them out of business. Hancock just happened to be better at it than anyone else.

He was the one that stood to lose the most to the British East India Company, because even with the three-pence tax to be imposed, the Tea Act served to lower prices on British tea: along with the tax, the British East India Company was to be refunded a 25% duty they were paying importing the tea into Britain on the way to America. With that subsidization, Bohea tea bound for the colonies- the most common type- would see its price come down from three shillings per pound to two.

According to Benajmin Woods Labaree's book The Boston Tea Party, Hancock's price was two shillings, one pence.

Bohea tea made up 91.6% of the tea sent into Boston Harbor.

That was what kicked off the Boston Tea Party. The aim wasn't to protest taxes. It was more to protest competition than anything else.

So... There's Still These Hikers.

Back in April, I mentioned here three hikers being held in Iran- Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal.

It is now July, and they are still over there; it's been 343 days now. They could still, obviously, use any support they could get- spread the word, sign their petition, donate some money to help pay for various things, whatever. (If you're so inclined to do something more advanced, like host a vigil or fundraiser, there's a guy on Facebook running things named Brendan McShane Creamer. He knows what he's doing; he was a sizable part of the successful effort to retrieve Laura Ling and Euna Lee last year. You'll want to go talk to him.)

Random News Generator- Latvia

We land in Latvia today, which, if you'll recall, was a part of the Soviet Union. You will also recall that the Soviets fought against the Germans in World War 2.

Which made it, to say the least, a poor decision to attempt to hold a parade last week commemorating the 1941 arrival of the Nazis in Riga. Commemorate. As in, weren't those the good old days.

Only about 20 revelers ahowed up, mostly the elderly, and four were arrested by police, as the person who petitioned for the parade was not present and it was therefore illegal under Latvian law. (It is probably not a coincidence that said organizer had been brought in for questioning at the time of the parade, making it impossible for him to attend.)

So why in the world would someone celebrate this? Luckily, someone thought to ask.

Despite the official halting of the event, some individuals did continue the walk to the nearby Freedom Monument individually. Sixty-eight-year-old Lotte Laurina from Riga placed a German flag on the monument.

When asked why she had done so, she replied that the Nazi occupation of Latvia had been "one hundred times better" than the Soviet occupations that preceded and succeeded it.

Other stories on the event elicit similar responses from other paradegoers: they're not saying the Nazis were rainbows and puppies, but the Soviets were worse, and in fact had incorporated Latvia into the Soviet Union not long prior.

One really should not have to point out that just because Option A is better than Option B, that doesn't make Option A any good- anyone who's ever voted in a democratic election will attest to that- but apparently it needs saying.