Another reprint, but I found this well-written and thought-provoking...
by Chris Hedges, Truthdig! August 25, 2014
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_the_brutalized_become_brutal_20140824
The horrific pictures of the beheading of American reporter James Foley, the images of executions of alleged collaborators in Gaza and the bullet-ridden bodies left behind in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are the end of a story, not the beginning. They are the result of years, at times decades, of the random violence, brutal repression and collective humiliation the United States has inflicted on others.
Our terror is delivered to the wretched of the earth with industrial weapons. It is, to us, invisible. We do not stand over the decapitated and eviscerated bodies left behind on city and village streets by our missiles, drones and fighter jets. We do not listen to the wails and shrieks of parents embracing the shattered bodies of their children. We do not see the survivors of air attacks bury their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. We are not conscious of the long night of collective humiliation, repression and powerlessness that characterizes existence in Israel’s occupied territories, Iraq and Afghanistan. We do not see the boiling anger that war and injustice turn into a cauldron of hate over time. We are not aware of the very natural lust for revenge against those who carry out or symbolize this oppression. We see only the final pyrotechnics of terror, the shocking moment when the rage erupts into an inchoate fury and the murder of innocents. And, willfully ignorant, we do not understand our own complicity. We self-righteously condemn the killers as subhuman savages who deserve more of the violence that created them. This is a recipe for endless terror.
Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described what happened when he obtained a knife and confronted a German in an office. The act he carried out was no less brutal than the beheading of Foley or the executions in Gaza. Isolated from the reality he and the other inmates endured at the camp, his act was savage. Set against the backdrop of the extermination camp it was understandable.
“It’s not a decision,” Engel said. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office, and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’ ”
Any good cop, like any good reporter, knows that every criminal has a story. No one, except for perhaps a few psychopaths, wakes up wanting to cut off another person’s head. Murder and other violent crimes almost always grow out of years of abuse of some kind suffered by the perpetrator. Even the most “civilized” among us are not immune to dehumanization.
The enemies on the modern battlefield seem elusive because death is usually delivered by industrial weapons such as aerial drones or fighter jets that are impersonal, or by insurgent forces that leave behind roadside bombs or booby traps or carry out hit-and-run ambushes. This elusiveness is the curse of modern warfare. The inability of Sunni fighters in Iraq to strike back at jets and drones has resulted in their striking a captured journalist and Shiite and Kurdish civilians.
U.S. soldiers and Marines in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israeli soldiers in assaults on Gaza, have been among those who committed senseless acts of murder. They routinely have gunned down unarmed civilians to revenge killings of members of their units. This is a reaction I saw in several wars. It is not rational. Those murdered were not responsible, even indirectly, for the deaths of their killers’ comrades, just as Foley and the Shiites and Kurds executed in Iraq were not responsible for the deaths of Sunni militants hit by the U.S. Air Force.
J. Glenn Gray, who fought in World War II, wrote about the peculiar nature of vengeance in “The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle”:
When the soldier has lost a comrade to this enemy or possibly had his family destroyed by them through bombings or through political atrocities, so frequently the case in World War II, his anger and resentment deepen into hatred. Then the war for him takes on the character of a vendetta. Until he has himself destroyed as many of the enemy as possible, his lust for vengeance can hardly be appeased. I have known soldiers who were avid to exterminate every last one of the enemy, so fierce was their hatred. Such soldiers took great delight in hearing or reading of mass destruction through bombings. Anyone who has known or been a soldier of this kind is aware of how hatred penetrates every fiber of his being. His reason for living is to seek revenge; not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but a tenfold retaliation.
Those killed are not, to the killers, human beings but representations of what they fear and hate. The veneer of the victim’s humanity, they believe, is only a mask for an evil force. The drive for vengeance, for “tenfold retaliation,” among those who are deformed by violence cannot be satiated without rivers of blood—even innocent blood. And Americans do as much of this type of revenge killing as those we fight. Our instruments of war allow us to kill from a distance. We therefore often lack any real consciousness of killing. But this does not make us any less depraved.
Christopher Browning in his book “Ordinary Men” tells of a German reserve police battalion that was recruited to carry out mass executions of Jews in World War II. Browning’s book echoed the findings of the psychologist Stanley Milgram, who concluded that “men are led to kill with little difficulty.” Browning, like Milgram, illustrates how easily we become killers. This is a painful truth. It is difficult to accept. It forces us to look into the eyes of Foley’s executioners and see not monsters but ourselves.
“Few of us ever know how far fear and violence can transform us into creatures at bay, ready with tooth and claw,” Gray wrote. “If the war taught me anything at all, it convinced me that people are not what they seem or even think themselves to be.”
I am teaching inmates at a supermax prison this summer. We are reading William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Every student in my classroom was charged with murder, and, though the American judicial system imprisons its share of innocents, it is a safe bet that many if not most in my class have killed. At the same time, once you hear the stories of their lives, the terrifying domestic abuse, the crushing poverty, the cruelty of the streets, including police use of deadly force against unarmed people, the societal and parental abandonment, the frustration at not being able to live a life of dignity or find a job, the humiliation of being poorly educated—some went into prison illiterate—you begin to understand the power of the institutional racism and oppression that made them angry and finally dangerous.
Marguerite Duras in her book “The War” describes how she and other members of the French Resistance kidnapped and tortured a 50-year-old Frenchman they suspected of collaborating with the Germans. The group allows two of its members who were beaten in Montluc prison at Lyon to strip the alleged informer and repeatedly beat him as onlookers shout: “Bastard. Traitor. Scum.” Blood and mucus soon run from his nose. His eye is damaged. He moans, “Ow, ow, oh, oh. …” He crumples in a heap on the floor. Duras wrote that he had “become someone without anything in common with other men. And with every minute the difference grows bigger and more established.” She goes on: “Every blow rings out in the silent room. They’re hitting at all the traitors, at the women who left, at all those who didn’t like what they saw from behind the shutters.” She departs before finding out if he is executed. She and her small resistance band had become Nazis. They acted no differently than Hamas did when it executed more than 15 suspected collaborators last week in Gaza.
Our failure to understand the psychological mechanisms involved means that the brutality we inflict, and that is inflicted upon us, will continue in a deadly and self-defeating cycle in the Middle East as well as within poor urban areas of the United States. To break this cycle we have to examine ourselves and halt the indiscriminate violence that sustains our occupations. But examining ourselves instead of choosing the easy route of nationalist self-exaltation is hard and painful. These killings will stop only when we accept that the killers who should terrify us most are ourselves.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Saturday, August 23, 2014
"...leaders are the custodians of morality."
"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." -- Mother Teresa
reprinted from London Guardian/Observer:
Desmond Tutu: pulled out of a seminar which Tony Blair was scheduled to attend. (September 1, 2012)
Photograph: Str/REUTERS
The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history.
Instead of recognising that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.
If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth? Days before George W Bush and Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, I called the White House and spoke to Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, to urge that United Nations weapons inspectors be given more time to confirm or deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Should they be able to confirm finding such weapons, I argued, dismantling the threat would have the support of virtually the entire world. Ms Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.
On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers' circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr Bush's chief supporter, Mr Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?
The cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.
On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.
But even greater costs have been exacted beyond the killing fields, in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world.
Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?
Leadership and morality are indivisible. Good leaders are the custodians of morality. The question is not whether Saddam Hussein was good or bad or how many of his people he massacred. The point is that Mr Bush and Mr Blair should not have allowed themselves to stoop to his immoral level.
If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?
My appeal to Mr Blair is not to talk about leadership, but to demonstrate it. You are a member of our family, God's family. You are made for goodness, for honesty, for morality, for love; so are our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in the US, in Syria, in Israel and Iran.
I did not deem it appropriate to have this discussion at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg last week. As the date drew nearer, I felt an increasingly profound sense of discomfort about attending a summit on "leadership" with Mr Blair. I extend my humblest and sincerest apologies to Discovery, the summit organisers, the speakers and delegates for the lateness of my decision not to attend.
reprinted from London Guardian/Observer:
Desmond Tutu: pulled out of a seminar which Tony Blair was scheduled to attend. (September 1, 2012)
The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history.
Instead of recognising that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.
If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth? Days before George W Bush and Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, I called the White House and spoke to Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, to urge that United Nations weapons inspectors be given more time to confirm or deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Should they be able to confirm finding such weapons, I argued, dismantling the threat would have the support of virtually the entire world. Ms Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.
On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers' circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr Bush's chief supporter, Mr Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?
The cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.
On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.
But even greater costs have been exacted beyond the killing fields, in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world.
Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?
Leadership and morality are indivisible. Good leaders are the custodians of morality. The question is not whether Saddam Hussein was good or bad or how many of his people he massacred. The point is that Mr Bush and Mr Blair should not have allowed themselves to stoop to his immoral level.
If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?
My appeal to Mr Blair is not to talk about leadership, but to demonstrate it. You are a member of our family, God's family. You are made for goodness, for honesty, for morality, for love; so are our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in the US, in Syria, in Israel and Iran.
I did not deem it appropriate to have this discussion at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg last week. As the date drew nearer, I felt an increasingly profound sense of discomfort about attending a summit on "leadership" with Mr Blair. I extend my humblest and sincerest apologies to Discovery, the summit organisers, the speakers and delegates for the lateness of my decision not to attend.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
I Pledge Allegiance...
Regarding the emotionally charged issue of the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States flag, some study of the history of our nation and the history of the Pledge would seem to be in order.
The founders of our first colonies were often motivated by escape from religious persecution. Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn and the Quakers encouraged to leave Britain. Maryland under Lord Baltimore was a haven for British Catholics. Massachusetts was colonized by Puritans fleeing the Church of England. In turn the intolerance of the Pilgrims led to the founding of New Hampshire by John Mason, Connecticut by Thomas Hooker and Rhode Island by Roger Williams who was banished from Massachusetts for advocating the separation of church and state.
History is replete with stories of religious intolerance, but one should not indict all religion on the basis of its historic atrocities. Indeed, the private right to worship or think as one chooses is arguably inviolate. And in America we have secured the individual right to speak as freely as we wish on any topic. This is a direct result of our heritage, bequeathed to us in perpetuity by the authors of our country's charter. America was blessed to find many great philosophers and scholars engaged in the quest to establish our new nation free of the stifling restrictions of the Old World. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are documents carefully crafted by the diligent consideration of many great minds, and the concept of religious freedom, even freedom from religion is embodied in their writings. Thomas Paine's treatise, The Age of Reason, is particularly cogent and worth a study.
Today the concept of secular government as a hedge against the fighting of holy wars has been blurred by oil men and neo-conservatives using the specter of "Muslim Terrorists" to hijack the democratic process. They lied to Congress about the weapons of mass destruction supposedly hidden in Iraq to mount the United States' first open war of aggression, very nearly invoking a new Crusade. And the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in his famous "Cross of Iron" speech subverts both patriotism and love of God into justification for global bullying, destruction and collateral killing of innocents. These actions certainly do not endear our nation to those we affect so senselessly and profoundly. And the irony is that this carnage is done in the name of God and the establishment of democracy. We would all do well to reacquaint ourselves with the true meaning of both God and democracy!
For one, democracy does not mean rule of the many vanquishes the concerns of any group or community just because they are few in number. The halls of Congress are divided into two houses: one representing the citizenry apportioned by number, the House of Representatives, and then the Senate with two Senators per state regardless of population. And the court system is dedicated to insuring a fair and equal application of the laws in consonance with the wisdom embodied in the Constitution by our founders. Thinking people around the planet take cause for rejoice from the American Revolution and the documents it produced to guide our ship of state. In our country, one can have a minority point of view and live free of fear of reprisal from the state. The exceptions are few and quite logical: one cannot seek to overthrow the Constitution, the Government or espouse harm to our elected officials.
By the same token, a citizen is to be protected from harm by fellow citizens. We have no right to cause harm to another because we disagree with their point of view, be it political, religious, or personal. And we have no right to harm another by imposing our will on them, forcing them to activity they would otherwise choose not to perform. Various forms of slavery are reprehensible, illegal, punishable by law. The McCarthy era taught us that loyalty oaths are demeaning, destructive and illegal. Eventually we come to the conundrum that the nation that nurtures liberty, the nation that we respect and love, offers the opportunity to share our love of country in group situations through the singing of the national anthem and the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, but the latter activity has been altered to include a religious "litmus test."
There should be no problem with a public display of love for country. Every nation has an anthem, where all rise and sing. We commemorate the defense of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812 in our Star Spangled Banner. We only sing the first of four stanzas. The reference to God doesn't appear until the 4th:
O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Since we never get that far, the issue of proclaiming one's belief and praise for God in a public forum doesn't come into play when singing the anthem. But the Pledge of Allegiance is a different matter. The courts consistently find the phrase "under God" as contained in the flag pledge to be in violation of the letter and spirit of the United States Constitution. If 86% of the population has no problem with the pledge, it still means we are discomforting and scrutinizing the 14% who would prefer to simply pledge allegiance without having to claim a belief in a deity. And in a democracy of well-thought laws and a structure designed to encourage reason rather than mob rule, the majority should respect the wisdom of the court and the founding fathers.
The United States is a secular nation. It may be comprised of a majority of Christians, but one's worship should be confined to one's home and Church. There is no place in a public school, shared workplace or sporting event for a forced profession of belief in an implied Christian God. You may say that the respondents can stay silent when the "under God" phrase comes up, but what of those who will glance about to check on the participation of others, and seek retribution against those who were silent? No, it's too much like a loyalty oath. Those who are old enough to remember 1954, when the Pledge of Allegiance was changed, will tell you that it became a test. If you didn't say "under God" you were suspected of atheism or Communism or both. The pledge had a very nice rhythm and included everyone before it was changed!
The principle of separation of church and state is important, but the process of standing in a public place and either falsely proclaiming a belief or being exposed to scrutiny for not professing such a belief is not a gross violation of human rights. Not performing the full Pledge of Allegiance will not result in arrest or spark an investigation. But the pledge flowed nicely in it's 1942 incarnation, and without the "under God" phrase it would become totally acceptable for 100% of the Americans who would choose to recite it. As a matter of courtesy, grace and common sense, we should restore the pledge to its pre-1954 reading. We are all free to pray for the continued success of our country in private, in our own way. Although many people are just fine with publicly vocalizing the "under God" phrase, there are millions who are not, and we need all Americans pulling together to be truly indivisible. The McCarthy era is over, loyalty oaths are not required, the Pledge of Allegiance should be secular and all-inclusive.
Speaking pragmatically, the Pledge will stay unchanged. And if you're one of the approximately one in six Americans who find the phrase "under God" problematic, you'll just have to shrug it off and go with the consensus. Meanwhile, love your neighbors, help educate them, inform them about differences in culture and belief through casual conversation. Tolerance, empathy, understanding can be taught. Can bigotry be reversed? Perhaps through the experience of personal revelation. Peace, love and morality consistently practiced, patiently taught will prepare us to receive the divine message of equality. When we all come to live in harmony with Creation, every moment we live will be an affirmation of divinity, and the verbalization of our status "under God" will be superfluous and unnecessary.
-- Don Baraka
Some history, from Wikipedia:
Reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance is accompanied by a salute. An early version of the salute, adopted in 1892, was known as the Bellamy salute. It ended with the arm outstretched and the palm upwards. Because of the similarity between the Bellamy salute and the Nazi salute, President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted the hand-over-the-heart gesture as the salute to be rendered by civilians during the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem in the United States, instead of the Bellamy salute. This was done when Congress officially adopted the Flag Code June 22, 1942.
The Knights of Columbus in New York City felt that the pledge was incomplete without any reference to a deity. Appealing to the authority of Abraham Lincoln, the Knights felt that the words "under God" which were from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address were most appropriate to add to the Pledge. The Knights of Columbus tried repeatedly, but they were unsuccessful in their attempts to persuade the United States government to amend the pledge. Bills were introduced as early as 1953, when Representative Louis C. Rabaut of Michigan sponsored a resolution at the suggestion of a correspondent.
It was a Presbyterian minister who made the difference in 1954 by preaching a sermon about Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The minister was George MacPherson Docherty, a native of Scotland who was called to succeed Peter Marshall as pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church near the White House, where, in 1863, the same year as the address, Lincoln attended and even rented a pew. After Lincoln’s death, the pew that he rented became something of a national monument. It became customary for later United States presidents to attend services at the church and sit in the Lincoln pew on the Sunday closest to Lincoln’s birthday (February 12) each year.
As Lincoln Sunday (February 7, 1954) approached, Rev. Docherty knew not only that President Dwight Eisenhower was to be in attendance, but that it was more than just an annual ritual for him. While raised a Jehovah's Witness, Eisenhower had been baptized a Presbyterian just a year earlier. Docherty's sermon focused on the Gettysburg Address, drawing its title from the address, "A New Birth of Freedom."
Docherty’s message began with a comparison of the United States to ancient Sparta. Docherty noted that a traveler to ancient Sparta was amazed by the fact that the Spartans’ national might was not to be found in their walls, their shields, or their weapons, but in their spirit. Likewise, said Docherty, the might of the United States should not be thought of as emanating from their newly developed atomic weapons, but in their spirit, the "American way of life".
According to Docherty, what has made the United States both unique and strong was her sense of being the nation that Lincoln described: a nation "under God." Docherty took the opportunity to tell a story of a conversation with his children about the Pledge of Allegiance. Docherty was troubled by the fact that it did not include any reference to the deity. Without such reference, Docherty insisted that the Pledge could apply to just about any nation. He felt that the pledge should reflect the American spirit and way of life as defined by Lincoln.
After the service concluded, Docherty had opportunity to converse with Eisenhower about the substance of the sermon. The President expressed his enthusiastic concurrence with Docherty’s view, and the very next day, Eisenhower had the wheels turning in Congress to incorporate Docherty’s suggestion into law.
Senator Homer Ferguson, in a report to Congress on March 10, 1954, said, "The introduction of this joint resolution was suggested to me by a sermon given recently by the Rev. George M. Docherty, of Washington, D.C., who is pastor of the church at which Lincoln worshipped." Congress concurred with the Oakman-Ferguson resolution, and Eisenhower signed the bill into law on Flag Day, June 14, 1954. The fact that Eisenhower clearly had Docherty’s rationale in mind as he initiated and consummated this measure is apparent in a letter he wrote in August, 1954. Paraphrasing Docherty’s sermon, Eisenhower said:
These words [“under God”] will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded.
In the 1940s Jehovah's Witnesses, whose beliefs preclude swearing loyalty to any power lesser than God objected to policies in public schools requiring students to recite the Pledge. They objected on the grounds that their rights to freedom of religion as guaranteed by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment were being violated by such requirements.
Since the addition of the phrase "under God" to the Pledge in 1954 many critics contend that a government requiring or promoting this phrase violates protections against establishment of religion guaranteed in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
In a 2002 case brought by atheist Michael Newdow, whose daughter was being taught the Pledge in school, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the phrase "under God" an unconstitutional endorsement of monotheism when the Pledge was promoted in public school. In 2004, the Supreme Court heard Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, an appeal of the ruling, and rejected Newdow's claim on the grounds that he was not the custodial parent, and therefore lacked standing, thus avoiding ruling on the merits of whether the phrase was constitutional in a school-sponsored recitation.
On January 3, 2005, a new suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on behalf of three unnamed families. On September 14, 2005, District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled in their favor. Citing the precedent of the 2002 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Karlton issued an Order stating that, upon proper motion, he will enjoin the school district defendants from continuing their practices of leading children in pledging allegiance to "one Nation under God"
A bill was introduced in Congress in 2005 which would have stripped the Supreme Court and most federal courts of the power to consider any legal challenges to government's requiring or promoting the Pledge of Allegiance. H.R. 2389 was passed by the House of Representatives in July 2006, but failed due to the Senate's not taking it up. Proponents of the bill argued that it is a valid exercise of Congress's power to regulate the jurisdiction of the federal courts under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution. Opponents question whether Congress has the authority to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing claims based on the Bill of Rights. (Amendments postdate the original text of the Constitution and may thus implicitly limit the scope of Article III, Section 2.)
In 2006, a federal district court in Florida ruled that a 1942 state law requiring students to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. (Frazier v. Alexandre, No. 05-81142, S.D. Fla. May 31, 2006)
The founders of our first colonies were often motivated by escape from religious persecution. Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn and the Quakers encouraged to leave Britain. Maryland under Lord Baltimore was a haven for British Catholics. Massachusetts was colonized by Puritans fleeing the Church of England. In turn the intolerance of the Pilgrims led to the founding of New Hampshire by John Mason, Connecticut by Thomas Hooker and Rhode Island by Roger Williams who was banished from Massachusetts for advocating the separation of church and state.
History is replete with stories of religious intolerance, but one should not indict all religion on the basis of its historic atrocities. Indeed, the private right to worship or think as one chooses is arguably inviolate. And in America we have secured the individual right to speak as freely as we wish on any topic. This is a direct result of our heritage, bequeathed to us in perpetuity by the authors of our country's charter. America was blessed to find many great philosophers and scholars engaged in the quest to establish our new nation free of the stifling restrictions of the Old World. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are documents carefully crafted by the diligent consideration of many great minds, and the concept of religious freedom, even freedom from religion is embodied in their writings. Thomas Paine's treatise, The Age of Reason, is particularly cogent and worth a study.
Today the concept of secular government as a hedge against the fighting of holy wars has been blurred by oil men and neo-conservatives using the specter of "Muslim Terrorists" to hijack the democratic process. They lied to Congress about the weapons of mass destruction supposedly hidden in Iraq to mount the United States' first open war of aggression, very nearly invoking a new Crusade. And the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in his famous "Cross of Iron" speech subverts both patriotism and love of God into justification for global bullying, destruction and collateral killing of innocents. These actions certainly do not endear our nation to those we affect so senselessly and profoundly. And the irony is that this carnage is done in the name of God and the establishment of democracy. We would all do well to reacquaint ourselves with the true meaning of both God and democracy!
For one, democracy does not mean rule of the many vanquishes the concerns of any group or community just because they are few in number. The halls of Congress are divided into two houses: one representing the citizenry apportioned by number, the House of Representatives, and then the Senate with two Senators per state regardless of population. And the court system is dedicated to insuring a fair and equal application of the laws in consonance with the wisdom embodied in the Constitution by our founders. Thinking people around the planet take cause for rejoice from the American Revolution and the documents it produced to guide our ship of state. In our country, one can have a minority point of view and live free of fear of reprisal from the state. The exceptions are few and quite logical: one cannot seek to overthrow the Constitution, the Government or espouse harm to our elected officials.
By the same token, a citizen is to be protected from harm by fellow citizens. We have no right to cause harm to another because we disagree with their point of view, be it political, religious, or personal. And we have no right to harm another by imposing our will on them, forcing them to activity they would otherwise choose not to perform. Various forms of slavery are reprehensible, illegal, punishable by law. The McCarthy era taught us that loyalty oaths are demeaning, destructive and illegal. Eventually we come to the conundrum that the nation that nurtures liberty, the nation that we respect and love, offers the opportunity to share our love of country in group situations through the singing of the national anthem and the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, but the latter activity has been altered to include a religious "litmus test."
There should be no problem with a public display of love for country. Every nation has an anthem, where all rise and sing. We commemorate the defense of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812 in our Star Spangled Banner. We only sing the first of four stanzas. The reference to God doesn't appear until the 4th:
O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Since we never get that far, the issue of proclaiming one's belief and praise for God in a public forum doesn't come into play when singing the anthem. But the Pledge of Allegiance is a different matter. The courts consistently find the phrase "under God" as contained in the flag pledge to be in violation of the letter and spirit of the United States Constitution. If 86% of the population has no problem with the pledge, it still means we are discomforting and scrutinizing the 14% who would prefer to simply pledge allegiance without having to claim a belief in a deity. And in a democracy of well-thought laws and a structure designed to encourage reason rather than mob rule, the majority should respect the wisdom of the court and the founding fathers.
The United States is a secular nation. It may be comprised of a majority of Christians, but one's worship should be confined to one's home and Church. There is no place in a public school, shared workplace or sporting event for a forced profession of belief in an implied Christian God. You may say that the respondents can stay silent when the "under God" phrase comes up, but what of those who will glance about to check on the participation of others, and seek retribution against those who were silent? No, it's too much like a loyalty oath. Those who are old enough to remember 1954, when the Pledge of Allegiance was changed, will tell you that it became a test. If you didn't say "under God" you were suspected of atheism or Communism or both. The pledge had a very nice rhythm and included everyone before it was changed!
The principle of separation of church and state is important, but the process of standing in a public place and either falsely proclaiming a belief or being exposed to scrutiny for not professing such a belief is not a gross violation of human rights. Not performing the full Pledge of Allegiance will not result in arrest or spark an investigation. But the pledge flowed nicely in it's 1942 incarnation, and without the "under God" phrase it would become totally acceptable for 100% of the Americans who would choose to recite it. As a matter of courtesy, grace and common sense, we should restore the pledge to its pre-1954 reading. We are all free to pray for the continued success of our country in private, in our own way. Although many people are just fine with publicly vocalizing the "under God" phrase, there are millions who are not, and we need all Americans pulling together to be truly indivisible. The McCarthy era is over, loyalty oaths are not required, the Pledge of Allegiance should be secular and all-inclusive.
Speaking pragmatically, the Pledge will stay unchanged. And if you're one of the approximately one in six Americans who find the phrase "under God" problematic, you'll just have to shrug it off and go with the consensus. Meanwhile, love your neighbors, help educate them, inform them about differences in culture and belief through casual conversation. Tolerance, empathy, understanding can be taught. Can bigotry be reversed? Perhaps through the experience of personal revelation. Peace, love and morality consistently practiced, patiently taught will prepare us to receive the divine message of equality. When we all come to live in harmony with Creation, every moment we live will be an affirmation of divinity, and the verbalization of our status "under God" will be superfluous and unnecessary.
-- Don Baraka
Some history, from Wikipedia:
Reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance is accompanied by a salute. An early version of the salute, adopted in 1892, was known as the Bellamy salute. It ended with the arm outstretched and the palm upwards. Because of the similarity between the Bellamy salute and the Nazi salute, President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted the hand-over-the-heart gesture as the salute to be rendered by civilians during the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem in the United States, instead of the Bellamy salute. This was done when Congress officially adopted the Flag Code June 22, 1942.
The Knights of Columbus in New York City felt that the pledge was incomplete without any reference to a deity. Appealing to the authority of Abraham Lincoln, the Knights felt that the words "under God" which were from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address were most appropriate to add to the Pledge. The Knights of Columbus tried repeatedly, but they were unsuccessful in their attempts to persuade the United States government to amend the pledge. Bills were introduced as early as 1953, when Representative Louis C. Rabaut of Michigan sponsored a resolution at the suggestion of a correspondent.
It was a Presbyterian minister who made the difference in 1954 by preaching a sermon about Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The minister was George MacPherson Docherty, a native of Scotland who was called to succeed Peter Marshall as pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church near the White House, where, in 1863, the same year as the address, Lincoln attended and even rented a pew. After Lincoln’s death, the pew that he rented became something of a national monument. It became customary for later United States presidents to attend services at the church and sit in the Lincoln pew on the Sunday closest to Lincoln’s birthday (February 12) each year.
As Lincoln Sunday (February 7, 1954) approached, Rev. Docherty knew not only that President Dwight Eisenhower was to be in attendance, but that it was more than just an annual ritual for him. While raised a Jehovah's Witness, Eisenhower had been baptized a Presbyterian just a year earlier. Docherty's sermon focused on the Gettysburg Address, drawing its title from the address, "A New Birth of Freedom."
Docherty’s message began with a comparison of the United States to ancient Sparta. Docherty noted that a traveler to ancient Sparta was amazed by the fact that the Spartans’ national might was not to be found in their walls, their shields, or their weapons, but in their spirit. Likewise, said Docherty, the might of the United States should not be thought of as emanating from their newly developed atomic weapons, but in their spirit, the "American way of life".
According to Docherty, what has made the United States both unique and strong was her sense of being the nation that Lincoln described: a nation "under God." Docherty took the opportunity to tell a story of a conversation with his children about the Pledge of Allegiance. Docherty was troubled by the fact that it did not include any reference to the deity. Without such reference, Docherty insisted that the Pledge could apply to just about any nation. He felt that the pledge should reflect the American spirit and way of life as defined by Lincoln.
After the service concluded, Docherty had opportunity to converse with Eisenhower about the substance of the sermon. The President expressed his enthusiastic concurrence with Docherty’s view, and the very next day, Eisenhower had the wheels turning in Congress to incorporate Docherty’s suggestion into law.
Senator Homer Ferguson, in a report to Congress on March 10, 1954, said, "The introduction of this joint resolution was suggested to me by a sermon given recently by the Rev. George M. Docherty, of Washington, D.C., who is pastor of the church at which Lincoln worshipped." Congress concurred with the Oakman-Ferguson resolution, and Eisenhower signed the bill into law on Flag Day, June 14, 1954. The fact that Eisenhower clearly had Docherty’s rationale in mind as he initiated and consummated this measure is apparent in a letter he wrote in August, 1954. Paraphrasing Docherty’s sermon, Eisenhower said:
These words [“under God”] will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded.
In the 1940s Jehovah's Witnesses, whose beliefs preclude swearing loyalty to any power lesser than God objected to policies in public schools requiring students to recite the Pledge. They objected on the grounds that their rights to freedom of religion as guaranteed by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment were being violated by such requirements.
Since the addition of the phrase "under God" to the Pledge in 1954 many critics contend that a government requiring or promoting this phrase violates protections against establishment of religion guaranteed in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
In a 2002 case brought by atheist Michael Newdow, whose daughter was being taught the Pledge in school, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the phrase "under God" an unconstitutional endorsement of monotheism when the Pledge was promoted in public school. In 2004, the Supreme Court heard Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, an appeal of the ruling, and rejected Newdow's claim on the grounds that he was not the custodial parent, and therefore lacked standing, thus avoiding ruling on the merits of whether the phrase was constitutional in a school-sponsored recitation.
On January 3, 2005, a new suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on behalf of three unnamed families. On September 14, 2005, District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled in their favor. Citing the precedent of the 2002 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Karlton issued an Order stating that, upon proper motion, he will enjoin the school district defendants from continuing their practices of leading children in pledging allegiance to "one Nation under God"
A bill was introduced in Congress in 2005 which would have stripped the Supreme Court and most federal courts of the power to consider any legal challenges to government's requiring or promoting the Pledge of Allegiance. H.R. 2389 was passed by the House of Representatives in July 2006, but failed due to the Senate's not taking it up. Proponents of the bill argued that it is a valid exercise of Congress's power to regulate the jurisdiction of the federal courts under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution. Opponents question whether Congress has the authority to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing claims based on the Bill of Rights. (Amendments postdate the original text of the Constitution and may thus implicitly limit the scope of Article III, Section 2.)
In 2006, a federal district court in Florida ruled that a 1942 state law requiring students to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. (Frazier v. Alexandre, No. 05-81142, S.D. Fla. May 31, 2006)
Monday, March 24, 2014
Kill your old TV... unplug the cable!
I'm not much of a consumer. My lifestyle is comparable to what the Quakers call voluntary simplicity. After expenses I have very little disposable income, I live alone, and it doesn't make sense to pay for a membership to the discount store Costco. When I need an appliance, software or commodity item I check to see if the product I need is on sale at Fry's, a giant California based tech emporium. Fry's TVs are in a back corner -- I never look at them because I'm doing just fine with my antenna on the roof, converter box and old JVC CRT TV -- so when a friend recently took me to Costco, I was immediately captured by the big screens displayed first thing when you walk in.
Not a Luddite, I enjoy high-def TV, but what caught my eye was all the labels touting WiFi, YouTube, Facebook, Pandora , Netflix and Cinema Now. One of my friends recently bought a new DVD player with all these capabilities, and we've been so happy running Pandora that we haven't even explored the other options. But now I've been shocked out of my lethargy, and I'm wondering if a new TV hooked to a faster Internet connection might serve my interests better than the hodge podge of antenna TV, computer Internet, FM radio and DVD recorder I've been running.
I spend a lot of time practicing saxophone and piano -- a retired professional keeping my chops up. And I spend a lot of time writing -- getting older, there are things I want to say before I go. So my viewing habits are not typical. I don't kick back and watch for hours with the remote in my hand, I cherry-pick. I like PBS and NPR, and I get the great jazz station KCSM (91.1 FM, KCSM.org on the web) on channel 60-3 with my antenna and digital converter. I get the major networks, but I enjoy older syndicated shows on 4-3, 11-2, 20-2, plus the Classic Arts Showcase on 32-5 here in the San Francisco area. Looking forward to baseball season starting soon, but I have to go to a sports bar for most of the games, or better yet visit a friend with Tivo, pause near the start, then compress the time span to half with fast forward.
So maybe we're still not quite to the point where everything is available over the Web -- we still need cable for sports. But PBS streams complete shows, Netflix has movies, Internet radio can replace my FM receiver and give me access to the whole planet, and there's plenty of news on the Web, too. Depending on how much one wants to spend on new hardware, it's definitely about time to forget about cable! Of course this is easy for me to say, because I've never had cable -- initially because my local provider didn't have MTV -- later because of habit and expense. And I'm not the only one to say that out of the great number of channels on a typical cable setup there are times when nothing good is on!
The pending merger of Comcast and Time Warner means less competition and higher prices. LA Dodger fans are freaking because the only way to see the Bums this year is on Time Warner -- in the past their games were on broadcast TV. But if people start pulling their cable subscriptions, then MLB will have to move their programming -- maybe to an Internet streaming service. That could create an international audience, might even be better for business! Your viewing habits are no doubt different than mine -- but check out the new TV offerings for yourself. WiFi and the Internet may be good for you, and less costly than paying Uverse, Comcast, Dish TV or your local programming source for a bunch of stuff you'll never watch just to get a couple of good channels.
-- Don Baraka
Not a Luddite, I enjoy high-def TV, but what caught my eye was all the labels touting WiFi, YouTube, Facebook, Pandora , Netflix and Cinema Now. One of my friends recently bought a new DVD player with all these capabilities, and we've been so happy running Pandora that we haven't even explored the other options. But now I've been shocked out of my lethargy, and I'm wondering if a new TV hooked to a faster Internet connection might serve my interests better than the hodge podge of antenna TV, computer Internet, FM radio and DVD recorder I've been running.
I spend a lot of time practicing saxophone and piano -- a retired professional keeping my chops up. And I spend a lot of time writing -- getting older, there are things I want to say before I go. So my viewing habits are not typical. I don't kick back and watch for hours with the remote in my hand, I cherry-pick. I like PBS and NPR, and I get the great jazz station KCSM (91.1 FM, KCSM.org on the web) on channel 60-3 with my antenna and digital converter. I get the major networks, but I enjoy older syndicated shows on 4-3, 11-2, 20-2, plus the Classic Arts Showcase on 32-5 here in the San Francisco area. Looking forward to baseball season starting soon, but I have to go to a sports bar for most of the games, or better yet visit a friend with Tivo, pause near the start, then compress the time span to half with fast forward.
So maybe we're still not quite to the point where everything is available over the Web -- we still need cable for sports. But PBS streams complete shows, Netflix has movies, Internet radio can replace my FM receiver and give me access to the whole planet, and there's plenty of news on the Web, too. Depending on how much one wants to spend on new hardware, it's definitely about time to forget about cable! Of course this is easy for me to say, because I've never had cable -- initially because my local provider didn't have MTV -- later because of habit and expense. And I'm not the only one to say that out of the great number of channels on a typical cable setup there are times when nothing good is on!
The pending merger of Comcast and Time Warner means less competition and higher prices. LA Dodger fans are freaking because the only way to see the Bums this year is on Time Warner -- in the past their games were on broadcast TV. But if people start pulling their cable subscriptions, then MLB will have to move their programming -- maybe to an Internet streaming service. That could create an international audience, might even be better for business! Your viewing habits are no doubt different than mine -- but check out the new TV offerings for yourself. WiFi and the Internet may be good for you, and less costly than paying Uverse, Comcast, Dish TV or your local programming source for a bunch of stuff you'll never watch just to get a couple of good channels.
-- Don Baraka
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Prevent religious war, reaffirm secular governance...
Because of our reverence and respect for religious institutions, the cloak of the pious can provide cover for the bigot and refuge for scoundrels. I have no problem with pure hearts doing good works, guided by enlightened clergy. But I fear the influence of those who use their pulpit to teach anti-Semitism, foster hatred against the LGBT community or slander Muslims by suggesting all Islam is infused with the pathology of twisted jihadists. Indeed the flames of war in the Middle East are fed by states where dogma guides their body politic, but that should point to the problem of non-secular religious government, not a blanket indictment for the largest religion on the planet.
The United States of America has a carefully defined separation of church and state, but the "God is on our side" attitude that is such a comfort when we are under attack has a negative aspect that comes into play when demagogues try to lead us into aggressive action. We have a great need for the kind of excellent secular public education that will create a morally intelligent populace, keep our foreign policy free of religious bias, and teach critical thinking, lest our own sociopaths, the svengalis of talk radio and the obfuscaters who propagandize televised news will succeed in creating a puppet majority acting against their own self interest in support of the corporate controllers behind the curtain.
I just took action by writing to my U.S. Representative and Senators asking them to oppose private school voucher legislation! Support public schools by using this link to send a letter to your representatives in national government: www.au.org/our-work/legislative/action-center. And consider supporting Americans United For Separation of Church and State:
-- Don Baraka
The United States of America has a carefully defined separation of church and state, but the "God is on our side" attitude that is such a comfort when we are under attack has a negative aspect that comes into play when demagogues try to lead us into aggressive action. We have a great need for the kind of excellent secular public education that will create a morally intelligent populace, keep our foreign policy free of religious bias, and teach critical thinking, lest our own sociopaths, the svengalis of talk radio and the obfuscaters who propagandize televised news will succeed in creating a puppet majority acting against their own self interest in support of the corporate controllers behind the curtain.
I just took action by writing to my U.S. Representative and Senators asking them to oppose private school voucher legislation! Support public schools by using this link to send a letter to your representatives in national government: www.au.org/our-work/legislative/action-center. And consider supporting Americans United For Separation of Church and State:
-- Don Baraka
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
The Need For Education and Secular Ethics
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty
The first time I became aware of protest as a necessary activity was in the 50s when people were marching in the streets in San Francisco clamoring for nuclear disarmament. I was appalled that something so obviously nihilistic as the continuing development of such a horrible weapon was being promoted -- why couldn't our government see the evil inherent in manufacturing bigger, more brutal bombs?
Then came the sad stories of the freedom riders, the battles for human dignity being fought to accomplish desegregation -- it's spelled out in the very Constitution of our country that we are all equal! Why must we fight to accomplish something we already know is right -- who could possibly persist in the persecution of our negro citizens long after the matter had been settled by a great civil war?
Almost simultaneous with the civil rights struggle we witnessed the prosecution of the Vietnam war, predicated on anti-communist dogma that should have died with McCarthyism and bolstered by lies perpetuated through the filter of the chain of command. The juggernaut of conscription was feeding our disenfranchised youth into the jaws of an immoral war, and the powers administering this jabberwock were blind to their folly, so we took to the streets.
What is this perverse streak in human nature that creates such selective blindness, that for policy or profit those who are entrusted with keeping control over great institutions intended for public good lose their moral compass and instead persevere with a reductio ad absurdum that distorts their vision to the point where they allow and encourage atrocities?
I for one grow tired of the endless auto-da-fe of discompassion, the narrow conceits of conservatism, the overcompensations of liberalism, the constant need to shine the light of reason on unreasonable policies and practices. Why do we not learn, why is there no surcease to the retrograde procession of malevolence?
The age of enlightenment's finest hour was the birth of the American nation and its great Constitution and Bill of Rights. These carefully crafted documents should not be allowed to atrophy and lose their vigor, yet it seems an influence of money and media unforeseen by the founders is conspiring to allow baser elements of the human condition to come to the fore. Scoundrels rise to the catbird seat and move the levers to suit their unseen masters while a striving innocent populace is brought to suffer collateral indignities.
My text and cries of shame to the perpetrators seem so ineffectual. Squeezed by economics, distracted by electronic circuses, huddled families have no time or expectation for protest. We can sign virtual petitions on the Internet, write letters to our representatives, some can afford contributing to non-profits with well meaning charters, but we suspect the dollars are eaten up by inflated overhead.
Yet I can't give up hope. It seems the battles being waged are eternal, but there is more than duality -- good and evil, light and dark, creation and destruction -- there is the impetus of the heartbeat. We know in our own souls what is right and wrong -- this gives rise to optimism. We witness the wrongful actions of those who sin, disregarding their own divine nature, causing hurt and pain. When others hurt themselves, we of good conscience intervene, to save the foolish from their folly. But too often when these perpetrators act to harm others we rush to vilify and oppose them -- when instead we should understand, forgive and educate.
I once witnessed a North American native, homeless and begging on the street of a college town being taunted and teased by a small group of partying students who were too drunk to know better. The only response they could elicit from their unfortunate target was the phrase, "I am enemy of no man." It proved to be an adequate defense, for the youths soon moved on. But it would have been so much better if some prevention had been enacted, less alcohol imbibed, no quest for amusement at the expense of the innocent.
Much human activity takes place in the ethical framework of a peer group. The administrator, the elected representative, the CEO, the agency steward are usually isolated by their office. They feel elevated and distant from those they serve, demonstrating a smirking superiority or perhaps a resigned shrug when they twist the rules to suit expediency and enforce a reality opposed to common sense and opposite the best interests of their constituency. This conundrum leads some of us to believe the only solution to the dilemma of perversity in human nature is a religious morality. But we can't force people to accept religion, or morality, they must come to it through their own understanding.
Let us not forget the impetus for religious freedom that drove so many pilgrims to escape the tyranny of state religions, seeking the shores of a new continent where they could worship as they please. One of the great lessons written into America's governance is the separation of Church and State. This must be kept constant and serve as a beacon for this troubled planet. It may seem counter to theosophy and dogma, but we must believe in the innate human capacity for morality and ethics. Religion may enhance and assure development of the finer qualities of the individual, but forced religion leads to separation and conflict. There are as many paths to God as there are souls of human beings, let each one find their own way.
And to find our way out of the thicket, to end the constant battle between good and evil, to stop the continuous usurpation of power by vested self interest, we need a moral and ethical revolution. This means internal change -- revolution in the most benign sense of the word. No violent overthrow of institutions twisted from their purpose by the vagaries of human nature, no bricks through the window, no bombs. Instead, we can use the loving tool of education. There are those who fear the misuse of education, when it becomes propaganda rather than a furtherance of truth, but the saving grace of humanity can be found if we listen and follow the lead of sincere and insightful teachers.
When an inspired person comes up with a good idea, we should let that idea stand on its own merits, and not dismiss the concept because it comes from someone misunderstood or discredited by one's peer group. I've been astonished to hear negative reactions when mentioning thoughts from people like Bishop Desmond Tutu, or Nelson Mandela -- usually because their philosophies are universal and may not be in keeping with someone's given church doctrine. Nevertheless, let's pay attention to the Dalai Lama when he espouses the teaching of Secular Ethics. The Dalai Lama's responsibility, that he is born into, is that of the Keeper of Compassion for the planet. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the possibly arcane system of searching the Tibetan population for the reincarnated Dalai Lama -- his role, his training, personality and insight are to be respected, even venerated.
A recent broadcast of the Religion and Ethics Weekly program on PBS featured the Dalai Lama recommending the teaching of Secular Ethics in an address at Emory College. Founded by Methodists in 1836, Emory is chartered to "educate the heart as well as the mind." This is definitely in consonance with the Dalai Lama's teachings. He spoke of cultivating genuine compassion as the correct approach to ethics. He espouses the addition of Secular Ethics into all schools, not just through religious teaching, although "all religions can guide." He recommends warmheartedness -- if we relate from the heart we will realize all humans have the same goals and aspirations, and awareness of the interdependence of all life leads to gratitude, endearment and affection -- empathy.
An excellent educational system can lead the way forward, providing skills and knowledge for the work force of tomorrow, and moral and ethical guidance can be taught at the same time. I'd prefer a renaissance in the public school system, including reintroduction of the idea that an education is the birthright of every citizen in an enlightened and compassionate country. If America is to survive and prosper, we need to fund our schools, not more prisons. And let's find a way to end the absurdity of sky-high tuition -- how cruel to saddle the new graduate with a big bundle of debt. If we do things right we could even pay people to go to school -- it would be in the country's best interest to provide universal education. If we were to spend but a fraction of the cost of our over-priced machines of warfare on educating our populace it would be a much better investment. Education, not incarceration! Go to school instead of war!
-- Don Baraka
The first time I became aware of protest as a necessary activity was in the 50s when people were marching in the streets in San Francisco clamoring for nuclear disarmament. I was appalled that something so obviously nihilistic as the continuing development of such a horrible weapon was being promoted -- why couldn't our government see the evil inherent in manufacturing bigger, more brutal bombs?
Then came the sad stories of the freedom riders, the battles for human dignity being fought to accomplish desegregation -- it's spelled out in the very Constitution of our country that we are all equal! Why must we fight to accomplish something we already know is right -- who could possibly persist in the persecution of our negro citizens long after the matter had been settled by a great civil war?
Almost simultaneous with the civil rights struggle we witnessed the prosecution of the Vietnam war, predicated on anti-communist dogma that should have died with McCarthyism and bolstered by lies perpetuated through the filter of the chain of command. The juggernaut of conscription was feeding our disenfranchised youth into the jaws of an immoral war, and the powers administering this jabberwock were blind to their folly, so we took to the streets.
What is this perverse streak in human nature that creates such selective blindness, that for policy or profit those who are entrusted with keeping control over great institutions intended for public good lose their moral compass and instead persevere with a reductio ad absurdum that distorts their vision to the point where they allow and encourage atrocities?
I for one grow tired of the endless auto-da-fe of discompassion, the narrow conceits of conservatism, the overcompensations of liberalism, the constant need to shine the light of reason on unreasonable policies and practices. Why do we not learn, why is there no surcease to the retrograde procession of malevolence?
The age of enlightenment's finest hour was the birth of the American nation and its great Constitution and Bill of Rights. These carefully crafted documents should not be allowed to atrophy and lose their vigor, yet it seems an influence of money and media unforeseen by the founders is conspiring to allow baser elements of the human condition to come to the fore. Scoundrels rise to the catbird seat and move the levers to suit their unseen masters while a striving innocent populace is brought to suffer collateral indignities.
My text and cries of shame to the perpetrators seem so ineffectual. Squeezed by economics, distracted by electronic circuses, huddled families have no time or expectation for protest. We can sign virtual petitions on the Internet, write letters to our representatives, some can afford contributing to non-profits with well meaning charters, but we suspect the dollars are eaten up by inflated overhead.
Yet I can't give up hope. It seems the battles being waged are eternal, but there is more than duality -- good and evil, light and dark, creation and destruction -- there is the impetus of the heartbeat. We know in our own souls what is right and wrong -- this gives rise to optimism. We witness the wrongful actions of those who sin, disregarding their own divine nature, causing hurt and pain. When others hurt themselves, we of good conscience intervene, to save the foolish from their folly. But too often when these perpetrators act to harm others we rush to vilify and oppose them -- when instead we should understand, forgive and educate.
I once witnessed a North American native, homeless and begging on the street of a college town being taunted and teased by a small group of partying students who were too drunk to know better. The only response they could elicit from their unfortunate target was the phrase, "I am enemy of no man." It proved to be an adequate defense, for the youths soon moved on. But it would have been so much better if some prevention had been enacted, less alcohol imbibed, no quest for amusement at the expense of the innocent.
Much human activity takes place in the ethical framework of a peer group. The administrator, the elected representative, the CEO, the agency steward are usually isolated by their office. They feel elevated and distant from those they serve, demonstrating a smirking superiority or perhaps a resigned shrug when they twist the rules to suit expediency and enforce a reality opposed to common sense and opposite the best interests of their constituency. This conundrum leads some of us to believe the only solution to the dilemma of perversity in human nature is a religious morality. But we can't force people to accept religion, or morality, they must come to it through their own understanding.
Let us not forget the impetus for religious freedom that drove so many pilgrims to escape the tyranny of state religions, seeking the shores of a new continent where they could worship as they please. One of the great lessons written into America's governance is the separation of Church and State. This must be kept constant and serve as a beacon for this troubled planet. It may seem counter to theosophy and dogma, but we must believe in the innate human capacity for morality and ethics. Religion may enhance and assure development of the finer qualities of the individual, but forced religion leads to separation and conflict. There are as many paths to God as there are souls of human beings, let each one find their own way.
And to find our way out of the thicket, to end the constant battle between good and evil, to stop the continuous usurpation of power by vested self interest, we need a moral and ethical revolution. This means internal change -- revolution in the most benign sense of the word. No violent overthrow of institutions twisted from their purpose by the vagaries of human nature, no bricks through the window, no bombs. Instead, we can use the loving tool of education. There are those who fear the misuse of education, when it becomes propaganda rather than a furtherance of truth, but the saving grace of humanity can be found if we listen and follow the lead of sincere and insightful teachers.
When an inspired person comes up with a good idea, we should let that idea stand on its own merits, and not dismiss the concept because it comes from someone misunderstood or discredited by one's peer group. I've been astonished to hear negative reactions when mentioning thoughts from people like Bishop Desmond Tutu, or Nelson Mandela -- usually because their philosophies are universal and may not be in keeping with someone's given church doctrine. Nevertheless, let's pay attention to the Dalai Lama when he espouses the teaching of Secular Ethics. The Dalai Lama's responsibility, that he is born into, is that of the Keeper of Compassion for the planet. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the possibly arcane system of searching the Tibetan population for the reincarnated Dalai Lama -- his role, his training, personality and insight are to be respected, even venerated.
A recent broadcast of the Religion and Ethics Weekly program on PBS featured the Dalai Lama recommending the teaching of Secular Ethics in an address at Emory College. Founded by Methodists in 1836, Emory is chartered to "educate the heart as well as the mind." This is definitely in consonance with the Dalai Lama's teachings. He spoke of cultivating genuine compassion as the correct approach to ethics. He espouses the addition of Secular Ethics into all schools, not just through religious teaching, although "all religions can guide." He recommends warmheartedness -- if we relate from the heart we will realize all humans have the same goals and aspirations, and awareness of the interdependence of all life leads to gratitude, endearment and affection -- empathy.
An excellent educational system can lead the way forward, providing skills and knowledge for the work force of tomorrow, and moral and ethical guidance can be taught at the same time. I'd prefer a renaissance in the public school system, including reintroduction of the idea that an education is the birthright of every citizen in an enlightened and compassionate country. If America is to survive and prosper, we need to fund our schools, not more prisons. And let's find a way to end the absurdity of sky-high tuition -- how cruel to saddle the new graduate with a big bundle of debt. If we do things right we could even pay people to go to school -- it would be in the country's best interest to provide universal education. If we were to spend but a fraction of the cost of our over-priced machines of warfare on educating our populace it would be a much better investment. Education, not incarceration! Go to school instead of war!
-- Don Baraka
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Profit Sharing -- Part of the Solution
The problem of course is income inequality, and the United States needs to end the disparity between the very rich and the struggling remainder of its citizens. Fixing this problem will ensure the survival of the great egalitarian democracy our founders envisioned, and provide a model for the the future, not only for the United States, but for the world. Many alternatives to the status quo of untrammeled, and some would say immoral capitalism have been proposed and tested throughout this young nation's history. The lack of success of Soviet socialism puts the lie to capital "C" Communism, small "c" communism is unpalatable to a great majority, but "trickle down" doesn't work either! This leads to considering possible modifications to the highly successful but increasingly unfair system of capitalism we have at present.
Being totally practical, we have to continue riding the vehicle we're on, and any new ideas may be criticized as analogous to changing a tire while rolling down the road. But only the most jaded, moneyed or idyllic can deny the stress and lack of hope characterizing the state of the citizenry today. Most certainly, it will take a whole suite of ideas to improve the distribution of wealth in our country, and by our example, the planet. In that perspective, I'm offering this suggestion. Find a way to legislate mandatory profit-sharing! Let me back up and provide a few calculations based on personal experience so the reader may appreciate the genesis of this idea, that corporate profit-sharing can lift us out of the downward spiral of our overall economy and quality of life.
I graduated from Foothill College on the San Francisco peninsula in 1974, when Silicon Valley was just beginning to roar. It was difficult to find a job with "just an AS" and no experience, but luckily a fairly long strike by IBEW 1969 had drained the Lenkurt Corporation of many of its technicians, and when the strike ended I was happy to climb aboard. Although my skills were current I apparently failed their trouble-shooting test and spent 3 months inhaling lead vapors in a room full of other unfortunates doing nothing more technical than de-soldering visibly burnt or broken components from the canvas mail carts full of failed telecommunications equipment we received on a daily basis. As soon as I was eligible for re-test, I took the same trouble-shooting test, received the same module, got the same result and this time was told that I had passed and could now work as a technician. I moved to swing shift, making well above the minimum wage, plus a 10% shift differential. In spite of the dues, working hours that separated me from family and friends, and the many incongruities of the union environment, I hung in there. After almost a year witnessing employees with tenure taunting the supervisors by doing nothing, unwittingly working on units that were passed over by other technicians because they were virtually irreparable or had unrealistically low work standards, I thought it would be worth giving up the shift differential and took an opening on the day shift. That was a big mistake. I was the low man on the totem pole, had the worst gear on my bench, and actually worked in a cage with reprobates who kept obscene joke books in their half-open drawer and took turns shouting out their profanities. I asked to be returned to swing shift and in a lunch time interview when the supervisor told me it "wouldn't be a good management decision" to move me back and cost the company the 10% shift differential, in disgust and anger I threw the supervisor's sandwich at the wall! Unionism failed me -- I agree with the Volkswagen workers in Tennessee who recently voted against unionizing.
In 1975 I worked for TRW Vidar in Mountain View and was mentored by a senior components engineer. Even though my pay was less than the union job, my fellow employees were not as angry, and less profane than the union techs. As a young worker I made some mistakes, none too costly -- "When you're chopping trees you're gonna have a few chips" -- my boss told me after I erroneously cross-referenced a relay causing a purchasing return and production delay. I learned a great lesson at the expense of one of the custodians, though. It was his job to unlock the back gate a little before noon so employees could lunch and jog at a nearby park. The day that he failed to do that I was returning from my nearby rented digs on my bike, and I picked up some thorns that flattened both my tires when I went around to the front via the shoulder of the railroad tracks. Upset at this inconvenience I told his boss, and the next day I encountered a red-faced angry custodian. "You complained, sir! And my boss used that against me in my performance review. You cost me and my family a 1 1/2 percent raise!" I immediately realized that I should have taken my complaint to him -- not management. After all, it was the Human Relations department that fired me from my previous job. The great importance he attached to losing that raise made me curious, too. I discretely asked several employees how much more a year they would require to pay their bills on time and have something for unexpected expense and special occasions. My number was about $2000, and that turned out to be the consensus. I looked at the numbers from the previous fiscal year, divided the company profit by the number of employees and it equaled just about $2000! My salary was around $9K which meant a 22% higher rate would be welcome -- but if everyone got their breathing room the company would be unprofitable.
It took a few years, but I learned some very valuable methods for insuring the quality of an electronic company's purchased parts, and armed with my two-year degree and some fortunate references I eventually became a components engineer myself. I was hired by a manufacturer of computer terminals, and received continued mentoring from one of the founders, "employee number six," the documentation manager. Zentec Corporation actually made Intel based microcomputers masquerading as "glass teletypes," wrote their own code and ran it from read only memory chips. The company was known for excellent engineering and a well-thought out manufacturing methodology. Using innovative purchasing, stocking, quality assurance and manufacturing ideas, the company spirit was buoyed up by quarterly profit-sharing and an open-door policy. Rather than risk total dependence on just-in-time buying, the company cleverly used the prefix on their piece part documentation to describe a stocking location next to the assembly area. There were no part substitutions without engineering approval, and incoming inspection was reserved for sub-assemblies. Individual components went to stock if the received part numbers matched the purchase order drawn from the approvals in the data base. These policies created the lowest "DOA" rate in the business, increased profitability and the profit sharing environment made for positive motivation and constant improvement. By 1980 I was making about $19K a year plus quarterly profit sharing checks that added about $1500, an additional 7%. Unfortunately the marketing department bet the company on a series of work stations and servers running UNIX -- not a bad idea in itself -- but the design depended on the impending release of the 80186 microprocessor and Intel decided to wait 6 or 8 months, skipping to the 80286. Until fate intervened the company had financed its growth from profits, saw employees leave to start spin offs Televideo and Wyse, and never had a layoff. Even though I was spared from the first ever Zentec layoff, the spirit was gone, sales were spinning downward and I left for a "blue pasture" at GE Calma.
Within 6 months Calma was experiencing their own downturn. A manufacturer of computer aided design stations that depended on mainframe computers for their processing power, they used a questionable manufacturing and shipping process that cost them millions when customers refused to accept shipments because they wanted to wait for the next wave of minicomputers. Calma had blanket orders for their CAD systems with staggered delivery. To make their quarterly numbers look good, they would build ahead and store the systems under plastic sheeting in a 45,000 square foot warehouse. Zentec worked their numbers, too, calling a unit shipped when it went through the "hole in the wall," but GE Calma was 3 to 6 months ahead of their shipping schedule, and the costly systems languishing under yellow argon lights in the back were "shipped" when they were locked behind the cyclone fence.
Thankfully, the 16% layoff at Calma was mitigated by an employee outplacement effort, and they helped hook me up with a promotion to Quality Assurance Manager a few miles away at Amtron, a manufacturer of 19 inch precision color monitors. Amtron's main selling feature was a low selling price and a form factor that matched the mounting requirements for a popular Mitsubishi monitor. I soon learned that I had walked in the door for my interview about an hour and a half after management had met and decided they would hire the next biped who applied for QA Manager -- they had a roaring quality problem and their existing QA man was a lame duck coasting toward retirement. I passed my first test on day 3 when my boss, the Director of Manufacturing asked me if I wanted to send everyone home because we received another batch of circuit boards full of solder shorts -- or should we inspect our way through and cherry pick enough good ones to keep building? We kept the line going, but I immediately tried to find another vendor, which is difficult when your company is in bankruptcy and the bills are being paid by a financial holding company. The situation was so bad that we would get a rental truck and move all the RMAs that were stacked in the hallways to local storage lockers when prospective customers wanted to do a site inspection.
I used everything I had learned from previous mentors, senior QA men, a series of management and statistical QA courses I had taken, and stories in the trade press about successful quality programs, and crazy as it seems, we fixed the company. There were engineering meetings twice a week, concentrating on fixes for the most frequent problems. I discovered an employee altering drawings, then "fixing" problems after they occurred with great flourish of his red pen. "Tip and tell" devices inside shipping boxes led to a change in our shipper. We created a motivational program called "Murphy's Dead." But the greatest improvement came from converting end of the line inspectors to early bird monitors who checked the accuracy of kits, processes, drawings and employee readiness at the start of the day, and throughout the daily process. Within 3 or 4 months the rework caused by units failing inspection had disappeared. I was disappointed that customers who had been burned refused to give us a chance at requalification, and then a three person delegation of manufacturing employees came to visit my office. They pointed out that when they were doing rework they got 8 hours of time-and-a-half on Saturday, and 4 hours of double time pay on Sundays. Sure it was nice to get off the 7 day a week treadmill, but now they were having trouble paying their bills, they couldn't care for their families on $6.50 an hour minimum wage. I took their case to the company president who was astounded at my naivete. "I'm not going to pay people extra for doing what they were supposed to be doing in the first place! And I want you to stop the inspectors from wandering around. Put them back at the end of the line where they belong, and take down your damn signs." I did as he said, the company slid into the abyss, and I had to lay off several people before a special vice-president "subsumed" my position.
The hourly employees were grossing $260 a week (this was 1984) plus $104 from their 12 hours on the weekend. This works out to a 40% increase above the minimum wage -- curiously close to President Obama's proposed 39% lift to $10.10. I used the autobiographical examples to convince you that I'm not "just woofing" -- there is an actual need for greater wages -- but it can't be satisfied by simply raising the rate of pay. Each example I cite above has slightly different characteristics. The TRW Vidar anecdotal evidence suggests that if an employer simply gives everyone a raise to ease their financial stress, profitability goes down the drain. The Obama $10.10 number for a minimum wage is a good number in a compassionate, human sense -- would have been good years ago -- but any business that depends on entry level workers for its profitability will balk at this imposition, like the company president at Amtron. That leaves us with the Zentec model of efficient operation coupled with motivational profit-sharing as the best method for achieving both corporate profitability and employee satisfaction.
It will take a cultural shift in perception to align all the forces required to effect any great improvement, and simply passing legislation in a vacuum with no support or understanding is not a proper solution. But I firmly believe that careful, thoughtful, phased modification of the legal framework for our corporations can bring us to a point where a combination of increased employee wages and motivational profit-sharing coupled with other efficiencies can help stabilize and heal our society.
-- Don Baraka
Being totally practical, we have to continue riding the vehicle we're on, and any new ideas may be criticized as analogous to changing a tire while rolling down the road. But only the most jaded, moneyed or idyllic can deny the stress and lack of hope characterizing the state of the citizenry today. Most certainly, it will take a whole suite of ideas to improve the distribution of wealth in our country, and by our example, the planet. In that perspective, I'm offering this suggestion. Find a way to legislate mandatory profit-sharing! Let me back up and provide a few calculations based on personal experience so the reader may appreciate the genesis of this idea, that corporate profit-sharing can lift us out of the downward spiral of our overall economy and quality of life.
I graduated from Foothill College on the San Francisco peninsula in 1974, when Silicon Valley was just beginning to roar. It was difficult to find a job with "just an AS" and no experience, but luckily a fairly long strike by IBEW 1969 had drained the Lenkurt Corporation of many of its technicians, and when the strike ended I was happy to climb aboard. Although my skills were current I apparently failed their trouble-shooting test and spent 3 months inhaling lead vapors in a room full of other unfortunates doing nothing more technical than de-soldering visibly burnt or broken components from the canvas mail carts full of failed telecommunications equipment we received on a daily basis. As soon as I was eligible for re-test, I took the same trouble-shooting test, received the same module, got the same result and this time was told that I had passed and could now work as a technician. I moved to swing shift, making well above the minimum wage, plus a 10% shift differential. In spite of the dues, working hours that separated me from family and friends, and the many incongruities of the union environment, I hung in there. After almost a year witnessing employees with tenure taunting the supervisors by doing nothing, unwittingly working on units that were passed over by other technicians because they were virtually irreparable or had unrealistically low work standards, I thought it would be worth giving up the shift differential and took an opening on the day shift. That was a big mistake. I was the low man on the totem pole, had the worst gear on my bench, and actually worked in a cage with reprobates who kept obscene joke books in their half-open drawer and took turns shouting out their profanities. I asked to be returned to swing shift and in a lunch time interview when the supervisor told me it "wouldn't be a good management decision" to move me back and cost the company the 10% shift differential, in disgust and anger I threw the supervisor's sandwich at the wall! Unionism failed me -- I agree with the Volkswagen workers in Tennessee who recently voted against unionizing.
In 1975 I worked for TRW Vidar in Mountain View and was mentored by a senior components engineer. Even though my pay was less than the union job, my fellow employees were not as angry, and less profane than the union techs. As a young worker I made some mistakes, none too costly -- "When you're chopping trees you're gonna have a few chips" -- my boss told me after I erroneously cross-referenced a relay causing a purchasing return and production delay. I learned a great lesson at the expense of one of the custodians, though. It was his job to unlock the back gate a little before noon so employees could lunch and jog at a nearby park. The day that he failed to do that I was returning from my nearby rented digs on my bike, and I picked up some thorns that flattened both my tires when I went around to the front via the shoulder of the railroad tracks. Upset at this inconvenience I told his boss, and the next day I encountered a red-faced angry custodian. "You complained, sir! And my boss used that against me in my performance review. You cost me and my family a 1 1/2 percent raise!" I immediately realized that I should have taken my complaint to him -- not management. After all, it was the Human Relations department that fired me from my previous job. The great importance he attached to losing that raise made me curious, too. I discretely asked several employees how much more a year they would require to pay their bills on time and have something for unexpected expense and special occasions. My number was about $2000, and that turned out to be the consensus. I looked at the numbers from the previous fiscal year, divided the company profit by the number of employees and it equaled just about $2000! My salary was around $9K which meant a 22% higher rate would be welcome -- but if everyone got their breathing room the company would be unprofitable.
It took a few years, but I learned some very valuable methods for insuring the quality of an electronic company's purchased parts, and armed with my two-year degree and some fortunate references I eventually became a components engineer myself. I was hired by a manufacturer of computer terminals, and received continued mentoring from one of the founders, "employee number six," the documentation manager. Zentec Corporation actually made Intel based microcomputers masquerading as "glass teletypes," wrote their own code and ran it from read only memory chips. The company was known for excellent engineering and a well-thought out manufacturing methodology. Using innovative purchasing, stocking, quality assurance and manufacturing ideas, the company spirit was buoyed up by quarterly profit-sharing and an open-door policy. Rather than risk total dependence on just-in-time buying, the company cleverly used the prefix on their piece part documentation to describe a stocking location next to the assembly area. There were no part substitutions without engineering approval, and incoming inspection was reserved for sub-assemblies. Individual components went to stock if the received part numbers matched the purchase order drawn from the approvals in the data base. These policies created the lowest "DOA" rate in the business, increased profitability and the profit sharing environment made for positive motivation and constant improvement. By 1980 I was making about $19K a year plus quarterly profit sharing checks that added about $1500, an additional 7%. Unfortunately the marketing department bet the company on a series of work stations and servers running UNIX -- not a bad idea in itself -- but the design depended on the impending release of the 80186 microprocessor and Intel decided to wait 6 or 8 months, skipping to the 80286. Until fate intervened the company had financed its growth from profits, saw employees leave to start spin offs Televideo and Wyse, and never had a layoff. Even though I was spared from the first ever Zentec layoff, the spirit was gone, sales were spinning downward and I left for a "blue pasture" at GE Calma.
Within 6 months Calma was experiencing their own downturn. A manufacturer of computer aided design stations that depended on mainframe computers for their processing power, they used a questionable manufacturing and shipping process that cost them millions when customers refused to accept shipments because they wanted to wait for the next wave of minicomputers. Calma had blanket orders for their CAD systems with staggered delivery. To make their quarterly numbers look good, they would build ahead and store the systems under plastic sheeting in a 45,000 square foot warehouse. Zentec worked their numbers, too, calling a unit shipped when it went through the "hole in the wall," but GE Calma was 3 to 6 months ahead of their shipping schedule, and the costly systems languishing under yellow argon lights in the back were "shipped" when they were locked behind the cyclone fence.
Thankfully, the 16% layoff at Calma was mitigated by an employee outplacement effort, and they helped hook me up with a promotion to Quality Assurance Manager a few miles away at Amtron, a manufacturer of 19 inch precision color monitors. Amtron's main selling feature was a low selling price and a form factor that matched the mounting requirements for a popular Mitsubishi monitor. I soon learned that I had walked in the door for my interview about an hour and a half after management had met and decided they would hire the next biped who applied for QA Manager -- they had a roaring quality problem and their existing QA man was a lame duck coasting toward retirement. I passed my first test on day 3 when my boss, the Director of Manufacturing asked me if I wanted to send everyone home because we received another batch of circuit boards full of solder shorts -- or should we inspect our way through and cherry pick enough good ones to keep building? We kept the line going, but I immediately tried to find another vendor, which is difficult when your company is in bankruptcy and the bills are being paid by a financial holding company. The situation was so bad that we would get a rental truck and move all the RMAs that were stacked in the hallways to local storage lockers when prospective customers wanted to do a site inspection.
I used everything I had learned from previous mentors, senior QA men, a series of management and statistical QA courses I had taken, and stories in the trade press about successful quality programs, and crazy as it seems, we fixed the company. There were engineering meetings twice a week, concentrating on fixes for the most frequent problems. I discovered an employee altering drawings, then "fixing" problems after they occurred with great flourish of his red pen. "Tip and tell" devices inside shipping boxes led to a change in our shipper. We created a motivational program called "Murphy's Dead." But the greatest improvement came from converting end of the line inspectors to early bird monitors who checked the accuracy of kits, processes, drawings and employee readiness at the start of the day, and throughout the daily process. Within 3 or 4 months the rework caused by units failing inspection had disappeared. I was disappointed that customers who had been burned refused to give us a chance at requalification, and then a three person delegation of manufacturing employees came to visit my office. They pointed out that when they were doing rework they got 8 hours of time-and-a-half on Saturday, and 4 hours of double time pay on Sundays. Sure it was nice to get off the 7 day a week treadmill, but now they were having trouble paying their bills, they couldn't care for their families on $6.50 an hour minimum wage. I took their case to the company president who was astounded at my naivete. "I'm not going to pay people extra for doing what they were supposed to be doing in the first place! And I want you to stop the inspectors from wandering around. Put them back at the end of the line where they belong, and take down your damn signs." I did as he said, the company slid into the abyss, and I had to lay off several people before a special vice-president "subsumed" my position.
The hourly employees were grossing $260 a week (this was 1984) plus $104 from their 12 hours on the weekend. This works out to a 40% increase above the minimum wage -- curiously close to President Obama's proposed 39% lift to $10.10. I used the autobiographical examples to convince you that I'm not "just woofing" -- there is an actual need for greater wages -- but it can't be satisfied by simply raising the rate of pay. Each example I cite above has slightly different characteristics. The TRW Vidar anecdotal evidence suggests that if an employer simply gives everyone a raise to ease their financial stress, profitability goes down the drain. The Obama $10.10 number for a minimum wage is a good number in a compassionate, human sense -- would have been good years ago -- but any business that depends on entry level workers for its profitability will balk at this imposition, like the company president at Amtron. That leaves us with the Zentec model of efficient operation coupled with motivational profit-sharing as the best method for achieving both corporate profitability and employee satisfaction.
It will take a cultural shift in perception to align all the forces required to effect any great improvement, and simply passing legislation in a vacuum with no support or understanding is not a proper solution. But I firmly believe that careful, thoughtful, phased modification of the legal framework for our corporations can bring us to a point where a combination of increased employee wages and motivational profit-sharing coupled with other efficiencies can help stabilize and heal our society.
-- Don Baraka
Friday, February 21, 2014
Universal (?) Declaration of Human Rights
Please sign the petition for Project Revision. "...a petition of hope designed to inspire the good people of The United Nations to update The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to have gender-inclusive language. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights contains words like 'mankind', 'brotherhood', 'he', 'his' and ‘himself’ over 25 times and does not fairly include women in the language. Women's rights are human rights and... it is time for men and women to be included in humankind instead of limited by mankind." -- excerpt from the Avaaz website
We must stop ignoring the wealth of creativity, insight, compassion and intelligence that "womankind" has to offer. Pity that the genesis of our societies and growth of language have led to this problem with the most basic aspects of our language -- better to use phrases like "his or hers" than to keep everything male-specific with the invisible corollary "of course that includes women." Continuing the exclusive use of intrinsically male-dominant pronouns keeps women invisible and denies both their past and future contributions -- especially so when language is used as a tool of the misogynist. If women are not included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because of historically exclusionary language the UN will be perpetuating a tragedy. -- Don Baraka
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Valentine's Day -- God is Love
Valentine's Day was tough this year. As a 70 year old male living alone I have a lot of memories. I'm still connected with several wonderful women -- my mother, sister, daughter, granddaughters, a lovely neice and my sister-in-law, several smart and lovely cousins. And my second ex-wife is my best friend, someone who I can depend, my soul sister, we have a psychic bond. But this day, I was alone.
I decided to take a lengthy hike, listening to my favorite music on headphones. Five miles and about 1700 feet up the trail I immediately turned around and headed back down so I could get back to the parking lot by sundown. I was listening to Michael McDonald singing classic Motown love ballads, thinking of my personal history, the progressions of love, the supreme joys, the pain of separation. As Michael sang "Distant Lover," I remembered 1974 -- that was a tough year, too... And then I thought of my dear deceased brother, and how sad my recently widowed sister-in-law must be feeling -- they were married on Valentine's Day.
My thoughts jumped to all the widows, mothers, daughters, sisters, the relatives of departed loves, beloved family members never to be seen again. For the first time ever I felt Valentine's Day as something akin to the South American "Dia de los Muertos." As my pace picked up on the easy downhill, tears came to my eyes and rolled down my cheeks, I felt the sobs one allows when no one else can hear. I greatly miss my sweet brother, and the thought of so many other people all over the planet also racked with pain and sadness, suffering the agonies of love interrupted and denied suddenly made me angry.
The mullahs, priests, ministers, all those religious leaders, how dare they send our young men and women off to war! What is wrong with the religions of the world that they compromise their faith to endorse killing in any form? What evidence do we have that Jesus ever picked up a weapon? And what folly, to suggest that one can wreak havoc, wantonly destroy property, kill innocent people, and "martyr" oneself to gain heaven. That's the wrong way to leave this beautiful Earth. Think of those who are left behind, the pointless pain and suffering! In a religious conflict, both sides invoke God, sending men and women to die a "righteous" death. Do they all achieve paradise? More likely they are re-incarnated as rocks, to start all over, or they are given to a gloating Satan gobbling up their murderous souls.
So easy for the distant pawn masters to orchestrate conflict for political gain, solidify their "exalted" position by creating an enemy to vilify. How many reputations sullied and conflicts perpetuated by agent provocateurs and "false flag" episodes? Power tends to isolate, and power is born of creating fear and acting without conscience. Immanuel Kant examined the question and determined the end never justifies the means because the means are ends in themselves. I feel sorry for President Obama -- I'd much rather be running with him and the "Choom Gang" in an idyllic Hawaii -- compared to hanging with him and his advisers, department heads, generals, the peer group that values NSA spying, selective killing, maintaining secret dens of torture.
It's time for all religious heirarchies to consider the damage they cause by supporting a status quo that perpetuates the horrors of war, contributes to the extinction of whole species of animals and plants and threatens the future of our oceans, our atmosphere, our fragile planet. If all our religions place love above destruction, we can cease warring with each other and cooperate on building our future. Yes there is a God and He, She, It, The Creative Force, All that is Us, our shared life-force, the Godhead, the common attribute of Soul that we share, this God is Love.
One of the reasons I had hope for Barack Obama early on was his attendance at Reverend Wright's church. He was hearing rare sincerity and truth from a courageous cleric -- America is not perfect -- and I thought that knowledge would provide a fulcrum point, and Obama as president would provide the leverage to make some much needed change. But obviously his hands are tied, and he has forced himself to accept hard realities, becoming one who enforces cruelty on others to prevent even larger cruelties. This is the flaw inherent in divisive, nationalistic government -- it always becomes "us or them." And our leaders become haughty, self-aggrandizing, opportunistic. Buffered by circumstance they live in narcissistic cocoons where they are constantly reassured of their superiority. The church should be aloof from these displays of power and politic, religion a beacon of morality and a reminder that Love does not harm.
Valentine's Day should be about more than romantic love. It certainly should include romantic love, but within the context that God loves us, wants us to prosper, and this perspective absolutely does not include any act of destruction, no cruelty to animals, no domestic violence, and certainly no killing. And we should come together to soothe the grieving among us, extend our universal embrace to those who have suffered the loss of a loved one, soothe the horrible agonies of those faced with the sudden irreparable, sometimes inexplicable, seemingly unecessary death of persons beautiful and precious.
For we are all that. We are beautiful and precious. And if we value ourselves, we cannot see fit to devalue and bring harm to others. So I ask the clergy of this world, please, take a look at yourself. Are you seeking increased stature, recognition, income, personal power? What game are you serving with the "God is on our side" support for war as foreign policy? How can you rationalize supporting the killing and maiming of any of God's creatures, through war, industrial pollution, indifference to the poor, encouraging ignorance in a multitude of ways? Don't condemn me for offering criticism -- answer the questions! And be brave enough to consistently represent a truly loving God!
-- Don Baraka
I decided to take a lengthy hike, listening to my favorite music on headphones. Five miles and about 1700 feet up the trail I immediately turned around and headed back down so I could get back to the parking lot by sundown. I was listening to Michael McDonald singing classic Motown love ballads, thinking of my personal history, the progressions of love, the supreme joys, the pain of separation. As Michael sang "Distant Lover," I remembered 1974 -- that was a tough year, too... And then I thought of my dear deceased brother, and how sad my recently widowed sister-in-law must be feeling -- they were married on Valentine's Day.
My thoughts jumped to all the widows, mothers, daughters, sisters, the relatives of departed loves, beloved family members never to be seen again. For the first time ever I felt Valentine's Day as something akin to the South American "Dia de los Muertos." As my pace picked up on the easy downhill, tears came to my eyes and rolled down my cheeks, I felt the sobs one allows when no one else can hear. I greatly miss my sweet brother, and the thought of so many other people all over the planet also racked with pain and sadness, suffering the agonies of love interrupted and denied suddenly made me angry.
The mullahs, priests, ministers, all those religious leaders, how dare they send our young men and women off to war! What is wrong with the religions of the world that they compromise their faith to endorse killing in any form? What evidence do we have that Jesus ever picked up a weapon? And what folly, to suggest that one can wreak havoc, wantonly destroy property, kill innocent people, and "martyr" oneself to gain heaven. That's the wrong way to leave this beautiful Earth. Think of those who are left behind, the pointless pain and suffering! In a religious conflict, both sides invoke God, sending men and women to die a "righteous" death. Do they all achieve paradise? More likely they are re-incarnated as rocks, to start all over, or they are given to a gloating Satan gobbling up their murderous souls.
So easy for the distant pawn masters to orchestrate conflict for political gain, solidify their "exalted" position by creating an enemy to vilify. How many reputations sullied and conflicts perpetuated by agent provocateurs and "false flag" episodes? Power tends to isolate, and power is born of creating fear and acting without conscience. Immanuel Kant examined the question and determined the end never justifies the means because the means are ends in themselves. I feel sorry for President Obama -- I'd much rather be running with him and the "Choom Gang" in an idyllic Hawaii -- compared to hanging with him and his advisers, department heads, generals, the peer group that values NSA spying, selective killing, maintaining secret dens of torture.
It's time for all religious heirarchies to consider the damage they cause by supporting a status quo that perpetuates the horrors of war, contributes to the extinction of whole species of animals and plants and threatens the future of our oceans, our atmosphere, our fragile planet. If all our religions place love above destruction, we can cease warring with each other and cooperate on building our future. Yes there is a God and He, She, It, The Creative Force, All that is Us, our shared life-force, the Godhead, the common attribute of Soul that we share, this God is Love.
One of the reasons I had hope for Barack Obama early on was his attendance at Reverend Wright's church. He was hearing rare sincerity and truth from a courageous cleric -- America is not perfect -- and I thought that knowledge would provide a fulcrum point, and Obama as president would provide the leverage to make some much needed change. But obviously his hands are tied, and he has forced himself to accept hard realities, becoming one who enforces cruelty on others to prevent even larger cruelties. This is the flaw inherent in divisive, nationalistic government -- it always becomes "us or them." And our leaders become haughty, self-aggrandizing, opportunistic. Buffered by circumstance they live in narcissistic cocoons where they are constantly reassured of their superiority. The church should be aloof from these displays of power and politic, religion a beacon of morality and a reminder that Love does not harm.
Valentine's Day should be about more than romantic love. It certainly should include romantic love, but within the context that God loves us, wants us to prosper, and this perspective absolutely does not include any act of destruction, no cruelty to animals, no domestic violence, and certainly no killing. And we should come together to soothe the grieving among us, extend our universal embrace to those who have suffered the loss of a loved one, soothe the horrible agonies of those faced with the sudden irreparable, sometimes inexplicable, seemingly unecessary death of persons beautiful and precious.
For we are all that. We are beautiful and precious. And if we value ourselves, we cannot see fit to devalue and bring harm to others. So I ask the clergy of this world, please, take a look at yourself. Are you seeking increased stature, recognition, income, personal power? What game are you serving with the "God is on our side" support for war as foreign policy? How can you rationalize supporting the killing and maiming of any of God's creatures, through war, industrial pollution, indifference to the poor, encouraging ignorance in a multitude of ways? Don't condemn me for offering criticism -- answer the questions! And be brave enough to consistently represent a truly loving God!
-- Don Baraka
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
After "Occupy" -- What Next?
"Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters." -- Bob Dylan
Non-violent revolution
America needs a second revolution. Our grievances today are every bit as complete and pervasive as those that caused the split with King George. But technological advances in warfare and the concentration of armed might that the U.S. government could bring to bear against a true insurrection combine to make armed revolution a suicidal endeavor. Additionally, humanity has learned through recent experience (Korea, Viet-Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan) that war brings unnecessary grief, destroys infrastructure, bankrupts the participants and creates smoldering enmities between peoples.
This leads to the absolute necessity for non-violent revolution. When entrenched systemic attack on the people comes to affect 99% of the populace, the only discussion left is "How do we regain citizen control of our nation?"
3 points to consider
1) Keep the Constitution. Study the writing of the founding documents, the debates, the history of the concepts we adopted. Refresh and revive the spirit of our nation's beginning.
2) Recognize that our government has become corrupted. The two party system of Republicans and Democrats no longer offers a choice of philosophies. Change your voter registration to independent, unaffiliated, or a third party.
3) Work to return power to the citizenry. The robber barons and white-collar criminals wish to divide us with the false dichotomy of "right and left." They represent a dynamic of elitism that would best be described as "up versus down" -- moneyed power brokers shaking down an indentured working class -- this should be what we address!
Corollaries
By changing one's voter registration to anything but Republican or Democrat, eventually only those who are "part of the problem" -- on the take, grooming for a position of undue influence, currying favor within the party's power structure -- only those will remain. Power will shift to the "uncommitted" vote.
If we learn from history and renew the lessons taught by great thinkers, it should become apparent that perpetual warfare (war on terror, war on drugs, war for resources) and interference with the internal politics of other sovereign nations is counter-productive and results in crimes against humanity.
We must rescind "corporate personage" and purge our governance of the undue influence of lobbyists and ruling class conspiracies. End artificial subsidies, tax havens and foreign ownership of U.S. resources and property.
We must find a way to provide more than subsistence wages, manufacture and purchase goods by and for our own labor force.
The difference between socialism and rational compassion
The majority of people who embrace moral principles and retain a sense of compassion will agreeably care for their brothers and sisters, their fellow citizens, fellow humans. A properly administered retirement income program and a medical care system that realistically and cost-effectively provides for all can be instituted at manageable cost to the individual. Costs become prohibitive only when waste, corruption and indiscriminate profit-taking become rampant in every sphere. This is why citizens balk at providing for the less fortunate and "socialism" becomes a dirty word.
We are the Peaceful Center
Those in power seek to perpetuate that power. The purvey of the despot is to decrease education, increase taxation, engage in excessive profit-taking, commit our youth to wars of commerce and obfuscate the true nature of their control. This is aggression toward the very populace they should be serving. Those of us who awaken and see through the smoke screen are righteously aggravated and agitated, but great care must be taken to avoid alienating possible allies. Avoid violence, both physical and verbal. Stand up and be counted, carry placards, write. Protest mightily, continue to demonstrate. Our cause is just, we are many. We are the peaceful center.
-- Don Baraka
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that... instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the hater but you do not murder hate. In fact violence merely increases hate. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." -- Martin Luther King
Non-violent revolution
America needs a second revolution. Our grievances today are every bit as complete and pervasive as those that caused the split with King George. But technological advances in warfare and the concentration of armed might that the U.S. government could bring to bear against a true insurrection combine to make armed revolution a suicidal endeavor. Additionally, humanity has learned through recent experience (Korea, Viet-Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan) that war brings unnecessary grief, destroys infrastructure, bankrupts the participants and creates smoldering enmities between peoples.
This leads to the absolute necessity for non-violent revolution. When entrenched systemic attack on the people comes to affect 99% of the populace, the only discussion left is "How do we regain citizen control of our nation?"
3 points to consider
1) Keep the Constitution. Study the writing of the founding documents, the debates, the history of the concepts we adopted. Refresh and revive the spirit of our nation's beginning.
2) Recognize that our government has become corrupted. The two party system of Republicans and Democrats no longer offers a choice of philosophies. Change your voter registration to independent, unaffiliated, or a third party.
3) Work to return power to the citizenry. The robber barons and white-collar criminals wish to divide us with the false dichotomy of "right and left." They represent a dynamic of elitism that would best be described as "up versus down" -- moneyed power brokers shaking down an indentured working class -- this should be what we address!
Corollaries
By changing one's voter registration to anything but Republican or Democrat, eventually only those who are "part of the problem" -- on the take, grooming for a position of undue influence, currying favor within the party's power structure -- only those will remain. Power will shift to the "uncommitted" vote.
If we learn from history and renew the lessons taught by great thinkers, it should become apparent that perpetual warfare (war on terror, war on drugs, war for resources) and interference with the internal politics of other sovereign nations is counter-productive and results in crimes against humanity.
We must rescind "corporate personage" and purge our governance of the undue influence of lobbyists and ruling class conspiracies. End artificial subsidies, tax havens and foreign ownership of U.S. resources and property.
We must find a way to provide more than subsistence wages, manufacture and purchase goods by and for our own labor force.
The difference between socialism and rational compassion
The majority of people who embrace moral principles and retain a sense of compassion will agreeably care for their brothers and sisters, their fellow citizens, fellow humans. A properly administered retirement income program and a medical care system that realistically and cost-effectively provides for all can be instituted at manageable cost to the individual. Costs become prohibitive only when waste, corruption and indiscriminate profit-taking become rampant in every sphere. This is why citizens balk at providing for the less fortunate and "socialism" becomes a dirty word.
We are the Peaceful Center
Those in power seek to perpetuate that power. The purvey of the despot is to decrease education, increase taxation, engage in excessive profit-taking, commit our youth to wars of commerce and obfuscate the true nature of their control. This is aggression toward the very populace they should be serving. Those of us who awaken and see through the smoke screen are righteously aggravated and agitated, but great care must be taken to avoid alienating possible allies. Avoid violence, both physical and verbal. Stand up and be counted, carry placards, write. Protest mightily, continue to demonstrate. Our cause is just, we are many. We are the peaceful center.
-- Don Baraka
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that... instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the hater but you do not murder hate. In fact violence merely increases hate. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." -- Martin Luther King
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Ain't no trouble on the mountain, but there's trouble down here below!
American civilization must be saved before it is destroyed by greed and corruption. We must restore civil behavior and provide public agencies that will truly serve the needs of the people. We The People of the United States have secured the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but we are denied access.
Today our government recognizes two types of citizens, live persons, and corporations. Malfeasance at the corporate level has caused a great economic recession, but the massed monetary resources of the corporate "personage" makes the perpetrators immune to all but token persecution.
Citizens have lost their homes, jobs, and pensions -- real people are suffering. Food stamps have been cut, children are hungry, our tax dollars wasted -- trillions (!) for the gambling debts of major banks, trillions for illegal wars, billions for poorly placed foreign aid. Mother Earth is desecrated by the continued burning of fossil fuels, drilling in the Arctic, fracking, mountain top removal, GMO proliferation. Nuclear power has the chance for accident, the need for plutonium and other isotopes to be stored for millenia -- and how many nuclear weapons do we need? -- zero!
Our governments threaten all life on earth! The U.S. favors war and austerity, enabled by the collapse of our democratic process. The people have no voice, our "representatives" in no way represent us -- and we sit inert! Where is the rage?
With the Occupy movement stymied, silenced and co-opted by the forces arrayed against it, we nevertheless see evidence of deep rage all around us. You'll see it in the anger of a homeless veteran. It appears as domestic violence, gang loyalties, road rage, theft and thuggery. Our society has evolved to accommodate the sublimation of stress through popular entertainment, drugs, alcohol and a wink at the illicit. Our anger shows up as hopelessness, a shooting rampage, a suicidal assault on a police officer.
Our proper rage has been silenced by generations of discouragement. The disintegration of our public schools, lack of critical thinking, elevation of the quest for the dollar above all virtue, lives filled with daily struggle from dawn to dusk, all these conspire to make us incapable of feeling, or too tired to express what should be great outrage!
And there are informed citizens as well, who assess the enormity of the forces arrayed against us and remain silent, seeking solutions in a state of isolation.
Subdued by power and convention, effective rage not forthcoming, what can we do to create the change we so urgently need? How do we get the money out of politics, squelch the lobbyists, rescind corporate person-hood? It can be done, it's been done before, it will take a Constitutional Amendment to do it!
It's been suggested that if every non-profit organization added governmental reform as a second priority after their main mission, we could mobilize a majority of Americans to back a 28th Amendment, and any further legislation required to return government to the people.
Don't get mad, get even!
-- Don Baraka
Today our government recognizes two types of citizens, live persons, and corporations. Malfeasance at the corporate level has caused a great economic recession, but the massed monetary resources of the corporate "personage" makes the perpetrators immune to all but token persecution.
Citizens have lost their homes, jobs, and pensions -- real people are suffering. Food stamps have been cut, children are hungry, our tax dollars wasted -- trillions (!) for the gambling debts of major banks, trillions for illegal wars, billions for poorly placed foreign aid. Mother Earth is desecrated by the continued burning of fossil fuels, drilling in the Arctic, fracking, mountain top removal, GMO proliferation. Nuclear power has the chance for accident, the need for plutonium and other isotopes to be stored for millenia -- and how many nuclear weapons do we need? -- zero!
Our governments threaten all life on earth! The U.S. favors war and austerity, enabled by the collapse of our democratic process. The people have no voice, our "representatives" in no way represent us -- and we sit inert! Where is the rage?
With the Occupy movement stymied, silenced and co-opted by the forces arrayed against it, we nevertheless see evidence of deep rage all around us. You'll see it in the anger of a homeless veteran. It appears as domestic violence, gang loyalties, road rage, theft and thuggery. Our society has evolved to accommodate the sublimation of stress through popular entertainment, drugs, alcohol and a wink at the illicit. Our anger shows up as hopelessness, a shooting rampage, a suicidal assault on a police officer.
Our proper rage has been silenced by generations of discouragement. The disintegration of our public schools, lack of critical thinking, elevation of the quest for the dollar above all virtue, lives filled with daily struggle from dawn to dusk, all these conspire to make us incapable of feeling, or too tired to express what should be great outrage!
And there are informed citizens as well, who assess the enormity of the forces arrayed against us and remain silent, seeking solutions in a state of isolation.
Subdued by power and convention, effective rage not forthcoming, what can we do to create the change we so urgently need? How do we get the money out of politics, squelch the lobbyists, rescind corporate person-hood? It can be done, it's been done before, it will take a Constitutional Amendment to do it!
It's been suggested that if every non-profit organization added governmental reform as a second priority after their main mission, we could mobilize a majority of Americans to back a 28th Amendment, and any further legislation required to return government to the people.
Don't get mad, get even!
-- Don Baraka
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