House of the rising Moonglum

These are some poems written by Palestinians in Lutheran schools in the West Bank. Some of them are quite young and the poems are all written in English, so do not look for polish, look instead at the strength of their emotion.

What should I do?
Everyday
Every hour, every minute
Always killing or dying never stops
This is own life. -anonymous

Every day a flower dies
a child cries but no one hears
No one feels.
What should I do?
This question make me feel, as a small flower that needs some water to stay alive.
They ask me to shout, cry or write, but no one hears.
They ask me to leave my country, my house, and my family.
They always say, Palestine, but no one knows the meaning.
I ask: who is going to protect this land and always no one hears
Our Arab soul is flying in the sky asking for salah al-deen asking for peace.
Finally I wish that our sun will rise again to keep a smile on the children face. -R.B.

A number of Isralies and Palestinians have apparently decided to forget the governments and sign their own peace accord. There is of course no way this will do anything all, but it does show a yearning on both sides for peace. Who know, perhaps this can gain momentum and eventually get people in power who can actually endorse such matters.

Lots of news from Asia in space today. China has actually announced a timeline for going to the moon. We have all known that they were going to go sooner or later, but they have been keeping their cards very close to the chest in terms of any timeline at all.

In other news japan still seems to be having trouble with their space program.

I recently posted about a toy drive in Iraq being run by a soldier in Baghdad. I just found another program that looks to have gotten much more momentum, and covering a much more important set of goods. This group is trying to get school supplies for all of the schools that, while rebuilt, are not stocked with paper and pencils etc…

A deomonstration against terrorism in Iraq. This makes me think of all the demonstrations that they used to have in Berkeley when I was growing up and laugh at them. This is yearning to be free. I can only begin to imagine what it must be like there.

So, Bush seems to have visited Iraq. I have to say that I was pretty moved. It was a quick trip, but the symbology of him serving the troops could not be missed. I am also glad that he met with some representatives of the Iraqi government. I know that this was just a trick to make us feel like he is supporting the troops, but you know what, it was a good one. Even the Iraqis seem to have appreciated it.

The conspiracy theory side of me does wonder though if this was in part to counter Hillary’s trip to Afghanistan. Which I have to add was not secret and lasted a considerably longer time. But for now, I am happy with all of our leaders. Perhaps they really do just believe in our country and simply want us to succeed.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope that you were all able to share your Thanksgiving with friends and family, and have a wonderful time. I know that I did. I personally have much to be thankful for, and it was nice to take a day or two out and think about that. What a year. Hopefully there will be many more like it!

I love stories of people helping each other out regardless of where they come from. This was a very heartening story of a bunch of people working together to get a baby the care it needed.

The group of doctors that did the operation look to be a very caring group, operating mostly on poorer families from Palestine and Jordan. That is the best way to move peace forward. Helping your neighbor.

Well Eid is finally here, so happy Eid to all of you celebrating. Here is another version of Eid in Iraq. This poor girl got stuck with “Eid cleaning duty”. That is a tradition that I can relate to. (Only a few more weeks for my version.)

I just saw an article on systems of trust the other day. It was actually quite elucidating. In the US Department of Defense, a `trusted system or component’ is defined as `one which can break the security policy’. I like this way of thinking about trust. If you trust someone to keep a secret, they are the one who can break that trust, by telling someone else. However the person who he tells did not break your trust, because he could not have done it on his own.

So think about this the next time Microsoft wants to sell you a trusted computer system. The trusted system is the one that can break your security policy. I think I’d prefer to use my on security system thank you very much.

So there was a recent attack in Iraq. The Tribune has one view while a local with the government has another opinion altogether. It is so hard to know which version is the truth. And there isn’t really a truth anyway, are things going well or poorly depends entirely on where you are coming from and how things end up in the future. I’m betting the donkeys will rule us all.

Another Ramadan has come and gone. Well it is about to have come and gone anyway. This of course brings on the celebration of Eid al *mumble* (if someone reminds me of the corresponding transliteration, I’ll stick it in here). It is interesting how all it takes is knowing one person who fasts for the month for it to take on a new meaning and pretty large importance. Just watching the month progress, you can feel a real buildup and sense of importance of the “holiday”. (I don’t want to call it a holiday since it is a time of reflectance, but there you go. Now that I think about it, I wonder if this is what Lent is supposed to be like… a month of penance followed by a three day build up to a single day of celebration. Not exactly the same, but similar.)

But Eid it only a few days, so I have not seen much of how that holiday operates in practice. A number of Iraqi blogs I have been reading lately though I’m sure will chime in with their views. The first one has come in a little bit early with a sense of the flavor of what it is like in some parts of Baghdad.

“Two channels of sly movies and two channels of x-files and all you want to watch is the ‘dinner train’?”

Every year I need to figure out things to put on a Christmas list to make my mom happy. And so I have been sitting here trying to think of something to put on it. But I realized, I am married now, I don’t need anything else.

Must keep working…

Thanks to Spookyfruit for pointing this out.

As no surprise to anyone, with the exception of Bram Stoker, White Wolf is suing Sony entertainment. You can read the whole brief if you like. I really need to see this movie. I have already learned some things from it without even having seen it! (Shooting machine-guns at werewolves doesn’t help if you don’t have the silver bullet.)

The thing that makes me laugh the most about the complaint is that after 126 lines about how Underworld is derivative of White Wold’s “World of Darkness”, every point of which is of course derivative of some other work, they have the gall to say, “Werewolf: the Apocalypse is a wholly original work by White Wolf” Oh yeah. Sure. *sigh*

A lesson on forgiveness from Sadat and King Hussein Sr. This is an interesting story from and Iraqi expat, but it is one person’s view from a long time ago. I’m not really sure what to make of it: glad that some people understand, or scared that so many don’t.

Living in Andersonville I have seen a number of people out on the street agitating for the US to leave Iraq. These are obviously people who were agitating for us to not get into it in the first place. I often spend some time trying to convince them that regardless of the fallacy of the reasons given for going to war, the state now is such that it would be criminal for us to leave. This article covers much of my argument.

It is particularly hard. I actually do believe that there were good reasons for going into Iraq, but I don’t think that the government laid them out at all. They were focused on non-issues, like WMD and the connection to al-Queda (if we were really worried about WMD we would be attacking North Korea, and the al-Queda connection was always weak at best.) And I do believe that they should be “punished” for this because it really does make it seem like a thin cover for going in and getting the oil. However forcing us to leave Iraq now does nothing to hurt the current government in the US and everything to hurt the Iraqis and everyone else in the region. So my punishment to the current government will have to wait until 2004 at the ballot box. I only hope that the person who does end up in the white house doesn’t end up leaving before we finish the job (read: Lebanon and Somalia.)

So I just found a new Iraqi blog. I like this one a little more than the others because it is in both arabic and english. Not only that, but looking through some of the comments it looks like a couple people are translating the comments people post in both direction. That is a pretty amazing way of extending the number of iraqis that can reach us here. Very cool. But maybe I shouldn’t spend quite so much time reading these things. I have enough of these things to read already.

A friend just forwarded me the best article ever. So apparently Denmark is about to accept “heathens” as an accredited religion. What this means is that the Odin worshippers can marry each other and have it recognized by the state. That is pretty funny, and would be enough for a post. However, reading that article gave me a number of rather humorous insights.

First of all the state religion of Denmark is Lutheran. Wow. Well that is not too unexpected, although coming from the US I am not used to state religions. “Under Danish law, the state Evangelical Lutheran Church has sole authority to recognize other religious communities.” Oh. One would think that would actually be a “Bad Thing”™. OTOH, they did just recognize a group of people who actually call themselves “heathens”. OK, so… the Lutheran church of Denmark recognizes Odin, Freya, and Thor. (Where does the master of the hunt (the great stag horned one) come in to all this?)

But us Lutherans, we need our bylaws…

“Last year, an Ecclesiastic Affairs panel of scholars recommended that Forn Sidr, whose name mean ‘Old Custom’ in old Norse, be approved, but only if their rituals were clearly detailed in its bylaws.

“At a general assembly, we added and described our four annual heathen rituals - spring and fall equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices, and our marriage ceremony,” Jacobsen told the AP. “We then returned our application and the panel approved it.”"

But wait, there is more! Apparently if you are a member of the state church in Denmark, you have to pay a 1% state imposed income tax. So worship Odin, and avoid tax. I could see the old ways becoming very popular. Easier methods: convert to Judaism, Islam, or Catholicism. I wonder if the Missouri Synod gets out of it?

(Also makes me think I should give more on Sunday!)