I haven’t known what to say about the recent happenings in Georgia. Today our friend John summed things up pretty well:

Many folks aflutter about the goings-on in Tbilisi: protesters tear-gassed on Rustaveli Ave.; Imedi, one of Georgia’s most popular TV stations, stormed by machine-gun commandos and taken abruptly off the air; a blanket 15-day “state of emergency” covering the entire country. Naturally, I’m interested too…as I would be in dramatic developments from anyplace I was intimately familiar with and had personal connections. Nevertheless, I’m much struck by how distant and (dare I say) insignificant it seems from where I sit now. Page 5 news…laughably inconsequential when juxtaposed with the (superficially similar) Pakistani crisis, where the stakes are so very, very much higher.

It’s easy to imagine, though, how if I were still in Sakartvelo it would loom as an earth-shattering event, occupying the whole of my attention. Distance may “lend enchantment”—and my occasional nostalgia for all things ქართული still surprises me—but it also lends perspective. Georgia has fewer than 5 million people, half the population of Beijing proper, and less than a third that of Greater Beijing. Despite its tiny size and miniscule economy, Georgia does have some small strategic importance, but not nearly as much as it likes to imagine, and could fall off the map entirely without most of the world raising an eyebrow. With this in mind, despite my connection to the place, I read of the recent events there with a disconcerting detachment…as though hearing of the emotional collapse of a person I used to know well, but who had long since drifted out of touch.

Still, vindication for my ex-host-mother in Adjara, who, eyes flasing, never let an opportunity pass for cursing Saakashvili and accusing him of being a tinpot tyrant. For my part, I genuinely thought Misha had better judgment than that: it would seem that if he had any lectures in “crisis-management” during his years at Columbia he must have played hooky. How Vladimir Vladimirovich must be chuckling over a nice frothy mug of Baltica 9! Whatever the outcome of Saakashvili’s clumsy crackdown, Putin has gained invaluable propaganda with which he will doubtless ensure “демократы” (democrats) remains a dirty word in Russian for many years to come.

The Washington Post reports that Verizon has been turning over customers’ cell phone records to the federal government, without court orders. That means that all the FBI had to do was ask nicely.

This incident is illustrative of the purposes for which people use their personal power. Someone at Verizon is voluntarily giving this information to the government. Someone receives the request and makes the data transfer. Maybe that person really believes in the government’s authority to spy on the populace without a warrant. I think it’s more likely that that person “is just doing his job”.

I am also interested in the legality of this whole thing. Could Verizon customers sue? According to the Washington Post:

Carriers are facing a raft of lawsuits from individuals and privacy advocates, such as the EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union, for allegedly violating Americans’ privacy by aiding the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program.

The federal government has intervened, arguing that to continue the case would divulge “state secrets,” jeopardizing national security.

The Senate Intelligence Committee could draft a bill this week that includes relief for the carriers. The administration is seeking blanket immunity, which would extend to anyone sued for assisting the government — not just telecom carriers — in its post-Sept. 11 surveillance programs.

Yikes. A bill like the one described above would mean that companies would not have to fear reprisals for handing out clients’ personal information. So since a warrant is no longer required and companies may no longer be required to honor their contracts, the only barrier between the federal government and your information would be personal power. A company would have to take a stand and refuse to give up the data without a court order. Since Google knows pretty much everything about me (and you), let’s hope it lives up to its promise not to be evil and others follow suit.

There is a resolution coming up for vote in the House of Representatives to officially declare the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire, a genocide. Considering that this happened 90 years ago, I was wondering why Congress has suddenly decided it’s time for this resolution.

Congressman George Radanovich cleared everything up in this interview with Tucker Carlson.

Radanovich said, “We’re doing this to benefit the Turks.”

Make of that what you will.

Radanovich represents Fresno, CA (19th district), historically home to a large Armenian population.

You’ll never guess (well, maybe you will) who said this about a unipolar global ideology and one world government:

However, what is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.

It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.

And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.

It’s Vladimir Putin! Now, I’m not a fan of Russia and I’m not sure how much Putin knows about democracy, but when he directed this speech at America, I think he was right. We only get ourselves in trouble by assuming one system is right for everyone, everywhere. Sometimes our opponents can tell us things we’re not prepared to tell ourselves.

So Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe I’m confused, isn’t it supposed to be for work relating to peace?

I did a little research. According to the Nobel Foundation’s bio of Alfred Nobel:

Nobel’s will was hardly longer than one ordinary page. After listing bequests to relatives and other people close to him, Nobel declared that his entire remaining estate should be used to endow “prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.”

That doesn’t sound like it is restricted to peace related work, really it could be anything. That’s why there are prizes given in multiple fields: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Economics and Peace. Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change were awarded the Peace Prize:

“for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”

That explanation still has nothing to do with peace. Regardless of your views on the veracity of An Inconvenient Truth and climate change, it is an environmental issue. Spreading the word about global warming is not peace work. I am totally baffled as to how this could be justified.

Salon has a dubious explanation and these people are thrilled, but I’m still not convinced.

I guess the Economist sums it up best:

Evidently the committee has decided to redefine the award as the Nobel Prize for Making the World a Better Place in Some Unspecified Way. In that case, Al Gore and the IPCC seem pretty good—though controversial—choices. The IPCC has put together scientific knowledge on the subject in a form comprehensible to policymakers; Mr Gore has pushed the policymakers to take action.

I found something interesting today. The US government publishes a number of RSS feeds from a variety of departments. The directory can be found here.

G-Dub also has his own collection of feeds.

Many thanks to David Brooks at the New York Times for yesterday’s Op-Ed piece on the post-adolescent, pre-adult phase many of us 20-somethings seem to find ourselves in:

During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.

Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.

Don’t worry, parents. According to Mr. Brooks, we’ll grow out of it:

What we’re seeing is the creation of a new life phase, just as adolescence came into being a century ago. It’s a phase in which some social institutions flourish — knitting circles, Teach for America — while others — churches, political parties — have trouble establishing ties.

Maybe this helps to explain why Ron Paul is so popular out here on the internets. Technically, he is a Republican, but he is clearly not sticking to the party line. I hope that his popularity marks a real shift, rather than a passing phase. If the Millennial generation continues its support for liberty and new voices in politics, we could see big changes by the time I’m 40.

Yesterday we went to see the documentary Buddha’s Lost Children. It was a powerful film about Khru Bah, Thai boxer turned Buddhist monk who cares for orphaned and abandoned boys in northern Thailand.

Khru Bah is an inspirational person; he loves the children and he loves his work. The monastery where the children and Khru live is also home to 120 horses that the children learn to care for. Khru Bah teaches the boys life skills through hard work and discipline. Everyone contributes to the operations of the monastery. Khru Bah gives the boys hope by showing them that they are each special and capable of great things.

I especially liked the movie because Khru Bah was taking definite action to make changes in the world. One of my frustrations with Buddhism is that it sometimes seems to advocate withdrawing from the world rather than rolling up one’s sleeves and working on it. Khru Bah shows a good balance of action and non-action. He leads the boys on 100km trek to rebuild an old temple, but also teaches meditation. The boys are also trained as Thai boxers and many are covered in tattoos. Khru Bah is not the Buddhist monk I had pictured in my mind.

I think that Khru Bah’s story shows that when you are really driven to do something, you can accomplish it with whatever methods you have available. Khru Bah was a boxer, so he uses boxing to teach the boys life lessons. His methods may be unconventional, but they certainly seem to have good results. Khru Bah’s life shows that there are many paths to fulfillment and transformations are possible.

Here is the trailer for the film. It’s very cheesy, the film was not. It doesn’t appear to be on Netflix, but keep an eye out.

Our friend Steve posted this quote from a Richard Dawkins article on his blog:

Religion changes, for people, the definition of good. Atheists and humanists tend to define good and bad deeds in terms of the welfare and suffering of others. Murder, torture, and cruelty are bad because they cause people to suffer. Most religious people think them bad, too, but some religions (for example the religion of the Taliban) sanction all of them under some circumstances. For non-religious people, the behavior of consenting adults in a private bedroom is the business of nobody else, and is not bad unless it causes suffering - for example by breaking up a happy family. But many religions arrogate to themselves the right to decide that certain kinds of sexual behavior, even if they do no harm to anyone, are wrong.

The actions of the Taliban, their vile bullying of women, their sanctimonious hatred of all that might lead to enjoyment, their violence, their ignorant bigotry, their hatred of education, their cruelty, seem to me to be as close to pure evil as anything I can imagine. Yet, by the lights of their own religion they are supremely righteous %96 really good people.

Dawkins is a prominent atheist who alledges that religion can cause people to do evil things.
Is it a coincidence that the source of the quote is this Washington Post On Faith series from which I just sent an article by Sam Harris to Laura? When I read the Dawkins article, I immediately thought, “What about Stalin? What about Hitler?” They were two infamous atheists who did evil things, some might argue they did them because they were atheists. Here’s what Sam Harris has to say about it:

How many times are we going to have to counter the charge that Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot represent the endgame of atheism? I’ve got news for you, this meme is not going away… I can assure you that this bogus argument will be with us for as long as people label themselves “atheists.” And it really convinces religious people. It convinces moderates and liberals. It even convinces the occasional atheist.

I like Sam Harris. He advocates changing the dialogue by dropping the label of “atheist”:

I think that “atheist” is a term that we do not need, in the same way that we don’t need a word for someone who rejects astrology. We simply do not call people “non-astrologers.” All we need are words like “reason” and “evidence” and “common sense” and “bullshit” to put astrologers in their place, and so it could be with religion.

I would like to take this idea one step further and suggest that religious people drop their labels as well. How often do you meet a someone that says, “I’m a Christian, but I don’t believe X, Y and Z.” If you are constantly qualifying the label you’ve given yourself, maybe it’s time to drop the label.

Here is a conversation I had once:

Jimmy: What religion are you?

Emily: I’m no religion.

Jimmy: You can’t be no religion.

Emily: Yes, I can. What religion are you?

Jimmy: I’m Baptist.

Emily: And what do Baptists believe that makes them different from other Christians?

Jimmy: I don’t know.

Emily: Then how can you be Baptist?

Admittedly, Jimmy was not the brightest guy I’ve ever met, still you can see how the label superseded any system of beliefs he had. He might not know what it meant, but he was BAPTIST, by God!

The same thing happens with some atheists. They become so enamored of not believing that they sort of turn into vacuums. They claim atheisim as a belief more fervently than many religious people claim their God. But what is it they believe in? Nothing. Kind of like Jimmy, the Baptist.

I’ve been thinking about personal power lately. It started with this website about a 2,000 year-old redwood called Spooner that may be cut down by logging in interests. Activists are sitting in the tree to prevent its destruction. A legal battle ensues, of course. My question is, who are they getting to actually do the cutting?

I’m the last one to argue against private property rights and the like, but certain acts just strike me as being fundamentally wrong. Cutting down an ancient Redwood tree is one of them. Legal issues aside, I’m not sure that many people would volunteer to do the cutting. Likewise, this story about a Navy sailor whose wife may be deported while he’s deployed. Or this story about the Pedro Zapeta, an illegal immigrant whose life savings was seized as he tried to leave the US for good. Again, I am not arguing the legality of any of this, who would like to be the one to deport the sailor’s wife or steal Mr. Zapeta’s money? Not me.

In all of these cases the blame is cast off on the law or the system. Still, someone makes the final call. Someone physically fires up the chainsaw to fell a 2,000 year-old redwood. Is it you?

I do enough grouching on this blog, so today I would like to present a step in a positive direction on this issue of personal power. Every US citizen has one very special power that can make major changes: their vote, but not the one you might be thinking of.

Trial by jury is an indispensable part of our (relatively) free society. The juror is more powerful than an legislator because it is up to the juror to enforce the law. Jury nullification is the process by which a jury may find a law or its application unjust by refusing to convict. For example:

In the mid 1800s, juries in Northern states practiced nullification in prosecutions brought against individuals accused of harboring slaves in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Later, during prohibition in the 1930s, many juries acquitted individuals accused of violating alcohol control laws. In the high profile case of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the jury acquitted Dr. Kevorkian despite the uncontroverted evidence that Kevorkian had violated Michigan law by helping the deceased commit suicide.

But:

Jury nullification has its dangers as well. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s some all-white southern juries refused to convict white supremacists for killing black individuals or civil rights workers despite evidence of the defendants’ guilt.

As you can see, serving as a juror is a real test of your personal power. You are free to cast your vote based on your convictions, whatever they may be based on.

In many part of the country, notably San Francisco, most people have fairly permissive attitudes towards marijuana use. If every jury refused to convict on marijuana charges, the law would be useless and effectively nullified. The police would still be able to arrest and harass people based on the law, but once it was clear that conviction was impossible, they would likely lose interest. This principle can be applied to any case that is brought to trial.

Everything you do has some effect on the world around you. Whether you wield a chainsaw or a juror badge, you have the power to make your convictions manifest. Though it might not be easy to defy the judge’s instructions to “consider only the facts” or your boss’s instructions to deport the wife of a sailor serving our country, you have the power to make the choice to participate or not. You might think, even if I don’t do it, someone else will. That may be true. You cannot control others, but you can control yourself.

For more information on jury nullification:

Fully Informed Jury Association

The Great Oracle of Wiki

Even Fox News will tell you!