121Contact

March 25 2012 Dick Cheney's Heart

Dear Doctor,

I hereby give legal consent for the recovery of my organs, tissues and eyes for the purposes of transplantation at the time of my death except for the following:

• The appropriately named Dick Cheney,
• Donald Bombsfeld,
• ...

Aug 17 2011 In remembranceof Mitch Wallace, and so many others...

Somewhere a cop is being yelled at for taking too long to get there trying to save the life of a total stranger; holding their bladder because his Radio just went off; starving because they missed a meal; having to keep a stone face at an accident scene where there's 2 dead kids; and now its 4 am, and they're missing Their family while taking care of Yours.

Re-post if you are a cop, love a cop, are a parent of a cop or appreciate their sacrifice.

Aug 3 2011 Islam, women, reformation and freedom; Snatches of conversation of Arabic/Islamic women:

Recorded Aug 3, 2011 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Snatches of conversation of Arabic/Islamic women:

While it is true that women in many Islamic countries lack much of their civil rights, it is not a homogeneous condition of all Islamic countries. And where some rights in some areas are broad in one country, these same rights may be heavily proscribed in others.

In the Iranian culture if a woman is westernized then there is shame in this. 35% of the Iranian Parliament were women as recently as 10 years ago. The backsliding has been considerable. Iran under the shah was very free for the upper classes. Of course the poor suffered, and the culture kept many poor women from the rights that rich women enjoy[ed].

Muslim women do not need to fight for their rights. Islam gave them the rights. Of course anything that has to do with the body is different. These things are not discussed. But inheritance, law, property...all  this was written as new justice for women.

In Iraq there was never this idea. Women wore a wide range of styles of clothing, covered or not. Women were given a great deal of latitude. We had a wonderful life with freedoms that no other Islamic country has seen.

We can have friends, even boys, even men. I travelled outside of the country by myself. We were able to shop and meet friends and go out of the  house alone.

A teacher in a Brooklyn madras quit her job. Why? The atmosphere was too religiously strict; too fundamental. She is a Turkish-American who wanted to go to college in Turkey.They insisted she take off her hijab. She refused and instead chose to leave her family and friends andd come to America where she heard things were freer.  She said, "It was not a religious decision. I just did not want to be told what to do." 

Freedom means different things to different people and the culture in which one grows and lives determines a lot of how one thinks about freedom. Imagine a boy in his  early 20's and he never talked to a girl. Since he was 5 years he was kept from females not his mom or aunts or sisters. In his teens he feels his hormones rise but has no idea of what to do. He has only male friends and spends no time with young women. Then comes the father who tells him he found a suitable wife.  The boy will  be very happy. He will not question this decision as tying his freedom. His culture shows him this is not even an issue to be raised.

When Islam came along it was a tremendous liberation for women; a revolution of women's rights. But this was 14th century. Now is a new time for a new Islam.

You can't even discuss 'the book', making changes to Islam, a reformation in Islam. It is not allowed. And yet there are progressive Imams who speak of a new way. At the same time there are those like that Iraqi Imam who made fatwa for  killing Christians...as a good thing, a duty under what he calls Islam.

Perhaps in this time we are beyond religion; beyond the organized mosque/church/synagogue of religion.

 

 

 

 

 

The Porcelain Unicorn

http://www.porcelainunicorn.com/

Writopia and the Persistence of Greatness

May 22, 2011 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

There lives within all great literature the capacity to awaken within ourselves the fire of empathy. When we choose to leave this world and dare to enter the realm of an artist’s creation we expect to be rewarded with experiential pleasure. Such compensation poured forth at a recent evening of short plays written by the students of Writopia, in Manhattan’s off Broadway last night.

In twelve short plays by twelve young writers (Writopia is an after school writer’s workshop that is home to students from 8 to 18 years old) we found ourselves caught in the swirl of emotions that flood  the lives of pre-teens and adolescents. Sometimes shocking in language and content, often sad, these diverse pieces had a remarkable common element: if you had not known the ages of the authors you would have never guessed!  Arc of character, humor, pacing, and a deep, brave revelation of feeling…all were present.                                                                                {click to see the full photo}

How Writopia enables these young writers to achieve such greatness is a testament to founder Rebecca Wallace-Segall’s vision and talent, not only in teaching students, but in training and mentoring the other Writopia teachers as well.  These authors obviously had no fear of delving into their innermost feelings and then expressing themselves with extraordinary clarity.

 Those who fear the death of literature in the face of tweeting and texting and reportedly shortened attention spans need only visit Writopia’s web pages to sample some of our next generation of great writers. Kudos to all.

 

 

110122 Make my day

Go  ahead, make my day

January 22, 2011 by Bruce Wallace

 

Go ahead, make my day

With your breakfast routine daily news over

Egg-whites and toast,

Cuppa black coffee and

A list of chores.

 

Go ahead, make my day

With your holocaust of lies.

Salt me with President-speak and

Pepper me with political-rant.

Newsprint shrouds me under bloodless snow.

 

Burning car,

Burning man,

Go ahead, make my day

With your fiery passions that rail

Against the momentum

Of tyranny.

June 14 2010 Texas Textbooks Tell Truth, at last...the last stop on road to madness

Bruce K. sent this in and I couldn't resist passing it on.

You may have heard about the Texas Board of Education approving a new history textbook.

Here are some of the chapter titles they might include.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Native Kentuckian or Kenyan ?

 

THE WAR ON INDIAN AGGRESSION

 

THE ALAMO: Mission Accomplished

 

The Texas Contribution to the Revolutionary War

 

HARRIET TUBMAN: Employee of the Week

 

PEARL HARBOR: God's Punishment on a New Deal President

 

JOE McCARTHY: The humble senator who saved us from

                           Communist takeover.

 

GEORGE BUSH: The Misunderestimated Leader

 

LIBERALS GONE WILD: The Women's and Civil Rights Movements

 

HOW GAY MARRIAGE LED TO 9/11

 

1835-1850: Americans Liberate Texas Territory From Illegal

                 Mexican Immigrants

March 10 2010 An old joke from Baghad

Bush: Why did that guy throw 2 shoes at me?

Almaliky: Well, because he didn't have 3!

Feb 23 2010 Martin Kramer Goes Blind advocating Palestinian Genocide

In another example of racist spin the uneminent Martin Kramer evidently has gone blind. He is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and at the Olin Institute, Harvard University who worked most of his life at Tel Aviv University.

He sees population growth among Muslims as a threat to peace, but this idea is not his to claim. Population control of Palestinians has been part of Israeli policy for a long time. Yitzhak Rabin set the percentage goals and public support of increasing orthodox birth rates has followed. Rabin: "“The red line for Arabs is 20% of the population, that must not be gone over…I want to preserve the Jewish character of the State of Israel not by name only, but also in action, values, language and culture…” This was despite creation of the the Demographic Center, tasked with implementing the Committee’s natality proposals in 1968. These policies continue. In March 1983, the Law for Families Blessed with Children, rewarded large families. To those families with at least four children, the government endowed multiple subsidies and grants.

Kramer's blindness toward Israeli policy is typical of racist propaganda. He begins with some facts and cleverly hides the evidence that the truth is the exact opposite of what he portrays.

Kramer's fear-mongering is admirable. The specter of an overwhelming growth of Palestinians falls quite flat since Arab Israelis continue to make up approximately 20% of the population as they did in 1948. 

Kramer's support of curbing Palestinian birth rates is a public call for genocide. Shalem and Harvard ought to do the right thing by immediately dismissing him and separating themselves from words that have now gone beyond the rights of free speech.

Some sources of this loosely researched rant:

http://www.focusanthro.org/archive/2005-2006/katz0506.pdf 

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC10.php?CID=37

http://www.stimson.org/rv/pdf/Transnational_Trends/Stimson_ch4.pdf

Feb 10 2010 Iraqi Students: Insomnia

What do you think when you can't sleep at night?

"well i feel really bad cuase i have to wake up early to go to college and sometimes when i try to sleep i hear weird sounds ''fires, explosions'' and that scares the hell outta me! i think that its my bad luck that i was born in iraq and being here! i tell myself ''it'll be quite soon'' but it doesnt! it really really sucks to feel that!"