they're going to get us all killed

one way or another, the bush administration is going to kill all the little people.

"Mr. Burnett’s letter said the council 'requested that I work with C.D.C. to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change.'"

cheney's office had people from the epa remove from the official testimony on climate change any mention of the negative effects that it will have on human health.

i don't understand why they would do that or why in the world you would want to prevent fixing the problem. i mean, unless the bush administration members are not human. which, i'm not saying is impossible considering ...

ahmed writes home

Hope is all that I have left right now, and I pray to God every day to see it happen. I hope to come back to Baghdad and be able to drive in its streets without fear and without the concrete blocks the army have put everywhere, without seeing any guns, and without hearing about explosions and dead bodies being found every day.

To be able to park and go to a shop without anyone asking me to move my car because it may be a car bomb. To be able to sit on the Tigris bank and enjoy eating a fish with my children, to be able to visit the museum and show my kids the glorious history of their ancestors, to be able to smell the roses in its gardens and to see its sun fall and hug the waves of its river. And the most important of all, is to see the faces of the people whom I love.

ahmed regularly files an audio diary, and he also works for the ny times. he posted that in his blog today because he has left baghdad and is now here, in the town and state where i live. i cannot imagine what it must be like for him - going from a city like baghdad that has been ripped to shreds, its history destroyed, its people and their lives shattered, everything they knew decimated, to a city like the one that i live in. small. college town. people speaking english, white people speaking english everywhere.

i am thankful. i am regretful that i can't and haven't done more.

sober reminders come from people like ahmed. people who you will never fully understand because you haven't walked in their shoes, but people who are willing to share their story so that you can take a glimpse inside their world and maybe begin to comprehend what life must be like for them.

thank you ahmed.

exposed

saw an interesting article on the front page of the ny times this morning
it's from a girl named emily who used to be employed by gawker. and she has blogged about her personal life. several times over. now she's over-exposed herself (her words, roughly) by talking about the whole thing in a front page ny times magazine article.

over-exposure. gotta be careful on that one. makes me wonder and think about all those times that my mother tried to wonder aloud to me about the fact that my generation puts it all out there online and how dangerous that was when you're looking for a job, etc. or anything really, i guess. anyone can google you. i used to be so much more anonymous because i used only my nickname. thanks to facebook i'm not really maintaining that separation anymore i suppose.

food for thought. considering people with addictions usually spill over into another addiction after "handling" another without dealing with the feelings that go with them.

good thing i'm making a heartfelt attempt at dealing with the feelings.