Exausted In My Brain

I have spent the entire day so far looking at campaign websites, archived news paper articles, and weird blogs, and finally feel like I can vote in the IL primaries today (AHH!) and still look the Lincoln Memorial in the face- with the down side that I think my eyeballs are going to fall out of my head followed by my brain. Sheesh. All those stupid pictures that politicians post of themselves. In this area they usually put corn in the back ground and a gullible little dupe of a farmer who looks like he's going to fall into a hole in the ground if The Politician doesn't hold his hand through the next step he takes. Adding to this the fact that you can almost count on anyone who can get themselves elected is some kind of monetary reptile snake, no matter what they or anyone else says about them. Argh.

Anyway- in all my hopeless wanderings I wound up on the friendly atheist web site. the part I was in was talking about what some fink politician trying to get the nominal Christian vote had done or not done to friendly atheist christmas poster that was (Literally!) about how the religions of the world were out to enslave and deceive people and the atheists are about affirming and caring for people. Interesting. Not really to the point. But then, at the end of all my hopeless wanderings, I checked my email, and found a news article from Open Doors (not the same group that I got my previous horrifying post from). It was about how North Korea is reacting to the prospect of widespread famine by instituting "100 Days of Combat": nation wide intense labor, where anyone without a permit to be in the street is dragged off to a forced labor camp, and children are falling over dead in the streets. This was sufficiently horrifying that I looked up the 100 days of combat- all of the news articles that came up (before the list disintegrated into "Obama's first 100 days in office") were on Christian sites or by Christian groups- except one- and that one was Buddist!

My method is by no means conclusive, but just at a glance, and as far as human rights go- Atheists care my foot. Religion rocks.

Now I have to go vote. O sweet heavens, this is surely a mistake. But the Lincoln Memorial!

Can't really describe this

This is a story I read today, that was put out by an organization called china aid. The President of China aid is Bob Fu, who was a proteseter at Tianamen Square.


Testimony for Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission Hearing
November 10, 2009
Wujian, citizen of the People’s Republic of China
- MY "LITTLE FOOT," MY LIFELONG PAIN -
My name is Wujuan.1I was born in a small village in northern China. During my daily life, I tried to smile at everyone while at the bottom of my heart there is engraved a record of an unforgettable experience from hell.
1 an alias.
It was the spring of 2004 when I found out that I was pregnant. It was beautiful to sense this life growing inside of me: what a miracle! Meanwhile, I was also very fearful since I did not have the Permit for Pregnancy the Birth Permit, which means, according to Chinese law, this baby was not allowed to be born into this world. This baby would have to die in my womb. During that time in my hometown, this was the law decided by the Chinese Family Planning policy which brought fear on every family. Not only were my parents and family at risk, but also my other relatives.
Time flew as the little baby grew daily in my womb. While the baby moved more and more actively in my body, the maternal love also increased. The word "MOM" was not just a word anymore; it became a reality in my life. My baby and I were one, sharing the same blood.
Pretty soon, my lower stomach began to bulge. In order to protect my baby, I had to hide myself in a very old, shabby house in a remote area. There was no electricity at all in the room, and it was very dark even during the day. Fear and loneliness filled me every day, but as long as I could have my baby, I could stand anything. Many times, I was wakened at night by nightmares, as I dreamed that I was hunted and arrested by the Family Planning government officials and forced to have an abortion.
Eventually, the Family Planning government officials found out about my pregnancy. So they searched all over trying to arrest me, and while they could not find me, then they caught my father instead. They put my father into the detention center and beat him every day. On the fourth day after they caught my father, one neighbor came and told me that my father was dying: they would continue beating my father – even to death – until I went to the local hospital to get abortion. My heart was broken into pieces as I faced this terrifying dilemma: either my father or my baby, one of them had to die, and I had to make the decision.
Very soon after this, the worst thing happened: when several Family Planning government officials broke into the house where I was hiding, and without any words, they drug me into their van.
As soon as I got into the van, I found that another Mom was already inside the van. She told me she was carrying her first baby, and that she was 28 years old. She did not have the Permit of Pregnancy or the Birth Permit, and she was 7 months pregnant. She was so eager to keep this baby that she was fighting with the government officers in the van. Suddenly, one government official at his 20's slapped her on the face and immediately her mouth began to bleed. Being thus insulted, she screamed like a lion and fought with the Family Planning government officials.
About one hour later, the van stopped in the hospital. As soon as I was drug out of the van, I saw hundred of pregnant Moms there – all of them, just like pigs in the slaughterhouse. Immediately I was drug into a special room, and without any preliminary medical examination, one nurse did Oxytocin injection intravenously. Then I was put into a room with several other Moms.
The room was full of Moms who had just gone through a forced abortion. Some Moms were crying, some Moms were mourning, some Moms were screaming, and one Mom was rolling on the floor with unbearable pain.
I was not very sensitive to the oxytocin injection, and then I was pulled into another small room. One nurse pulled out one, big, 8-inch long needle for intramuscular injection. I had never seen such big, long needle in my life. As soon as they pulled away my clothes, the nurse put her hand around my lower stomach; the fear and her cold hand caused my abdominal muscle to spasm. Because of that, for a while, the nurse could not do the injection.
At that moment, I was the only Mom in the room. I began begging the nurse while I cried, , "I have already had the oxytocin injection, please let me go; I will go as far away as possible and I will not tell anyone else what you had done for me and I will be grateful for you for the rest of my life." The nurse did not respond to my begging—she looked like wood.
Then I kept saying to her, "You are an angel, as a nurse or a doctor who is helping people and saving peoples’ life; how could you become a killer by killing people every day?" I could hardly see her face because she wearied a big mask. Soon she became very angry at what I said, and told me that I talked too much. She also told me that there was nothing serious about this whole thing for her. She did these all year. She also told me that there were over 10,000 forced abortions in our county just for that year, and I was having just one of them. I was astonished by her words and I realized that my baby and I were just like a lamb on the cutting board. Finally, she put the big, long needle into the head of my baby in my womb. At the moment, it was the end of the world for me and I felt even time had stopped. I hardly knew that something worse would happen later.
After the injection, my baby became very quiet for a whole day. I was so naive that I thought I could leave the hospital because I had finished the forced injection. I wondered if perhaps my baby was lucky enough that s/he could survive.
To my great surprise, the next evening I was drug into a surgical room. I was asked to lie down on a surgical table; it was the Guillotine for me and for my baby. While I was lying down on the surgical table I found that there was bloody fingerprint on the wall, left by other Moms during their surgery of a forced abortion.
One doctor told me that I brought too much trouble to them already because my baby was supposed to flow out by itself after the injection. Since it did not come out as expected, they decided to cut my baby into pieces in my womb with scissors, and then suck it out with a special machine.
What I had done in my life that made me deserve this kind of punishment? What evil thing was this all about? Even a wild animal like a tiger will give her life to save their own baby tiger. As a Mom and a human being, could I not even protect the life of my baby?
I did not have any time to think as this most horrifying surgery began by force. I could hear the sound of the scissors cutting the body of my baby in my womb. I could feel that, little by little,
my baby was cut into pieces; s/he was separated from my body. S/he was the flesh of my flesh, the bone of my bone, a part of my body. That kind of pain not only killed my body, but also killed my emotions and my feelings.
"How could I be a Mom? What’s wrong with me?" I cried while talking to my baby and I preferred to die together with my baby at that moment. Nothing sounded meaningful at all for me in this world: In fact, part of me had already died – part of me was already gone and gone forever!
Eventually the journey in hell, the surgery was finished, and one nurse showed me part of a bloody foot with her tweezers. Through my tears, the picture of the bloody foot was engraved into my eyes and into my heart, and so clearly I could see the five small bloody toes. Immediately the baby was thrown into a trash can…
Finally, I was allowed to go home from the hospital. I did not eat anything, or even drink any water, for several days. I barely talked with anyone. From time to time at home, I could hear the mourning of my father. He was released after I was caught, but he had been beaten terribly; it took him over a month to recover physically. Looking at my father, thinking of my dead baby, I cried day and night, and frequently the picture of the little bloody foot came up in my mind. Physically I recovered after about one month, but psychologically and spiritually – never!
At that time, I got a migraine headache, and it is with me up to today.
Some people have said that time is the best medicine and time can heal everything. But this is not the case for me: as time goes on, the suffering is getting worse and worse and memory is getting clearer and clearer.
Thank God I became a Christian; God did help me and healed me. The Bible teaches us that as long as we confess our sin, we will be forgiven. Frequently I come to the Lord, asking for forgiveness. I know God has already forgiven my sin, but very often I could not forgive myself. I do believe that I will meet my baby again in heaven. If God allows, I will ask the forgiveness from my baby when I see him/her in heaven.
As a Chinese saying says, whenever you have broken your tooth, you swallow it by yourself. I never shared this experience with anyone before, because the scars in my heart are one million times more painful than the scars on my body!
While I was writing this short testimony, several times I cried out and I could not continue writing. I knew that there are millions of Chinese sisters are suffering and will suffer the same thing that I suffered.
Who could help them? Who could save them? The one-child policy and forced abortion policy have killed millions of innocent lives in China. How could this inhuman crime be stopped? When could this inhuman crime be stopped?
May God forgive me, that on that day I will meet my baby in heaven!

Note for the Day

And just because I'm into being morbid about famous dates in recent history, the Berlin wall fell today. (Despite so many people thinking that the Cold War would end with nuclear exchange. ) Happy birthday, Germany! Happy birthday everyone! I'm glad we're all alive!

Keep it real.

The other day, someone at work was getting rid of a stack of slick magazines. I don't look at these very often, and I am curious about things I don't do, so I took some.

In the back of one of these there was a full page advertisement for Renewable Accessories. These were things like bracelets made out of old newspapers and cloth shopping bags with slogans about Green being Hip.

This amused me for three reasons. First, the magazine this ad was in was very mainstream and very entirely about movie stars- except in Illinois the people who I mostly see reading about movie stars- well, they don't care about the environment very much, to put it nicely. 2)As far as I know, newsprint would make terrible jewelry because the ink would rub off into your skin and give you blood poisoning or something, and "If You Were a Real Hippy/Punk You Would Make Your Own Newsprint Jewelry" And of course, 3) in the same magazine was a blurb about how people were reporting their clothing bags were much more unsanitary than disposable ones. The solution offered? Wash them between use, like you would any other soiled cloth article. Apparently the Star Chasing Get Hip Get Green crowd doesn't understand how to renew their own personal resources. I am forced to wonder what they know about the world's resources.

Now, I know there are die-hard recyclers out there who actually know what they are doing, and I am entirely in favor of not expending the environment for the sake of our petty and all consuming obsession with comfort. The popularized version of Green, though, that seems to be the rage right now is really getting on my nerves (Noooooo!!!!!! I sound like a Goth whining about Hot Topic!!!!!!!!). Its a fad like any other; a disguise used by people who don't care but want to appear attractive; and this particular fad/disguise is the disguise of caring about about something.

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversery of Tianamen Square.

If you happen to go walking in Tianamen square tomorrow, you can wear white- the color of mourning- and the police will arrest you.

Give to Caesar

"Responding to the news, Patrick J. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition told LifeNews.com that Obama's making taxpayers fund abortion takes away from his claims to want to govern from the center and find common ground on abortion.

Mahoney said "it would greatly increase abortions around the world. It would also create a scenario in which American evangelicals and Catholics would be paying for abortion referrals through their tax dollars."

"If President-elect Obama reverses this policy, it would show a complete and blatant disregard for the faith values of millions of American Christians as well as expanding the violence and tragedy of abortion worldwide. America should be exporting justice and human rights, not brutality and violence," he said."

http://www.lifenews.com/nat4559.html

I don't know what I think of this article. On the one hand, its hard to figure out if America is ever not exporting violence. Everyone seems to have their own least favorite form of violence, (wars, abortion, an imperialistic consumer mindset, violent video games, movies, whatever) and to them that is the real evil that America should be blasted by lighting from heaven for exporting. People who can justify the other guy's least favorite kind are perfectly willing to condemn him for liking their own least favorite. Was Patrick J. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition this angry about Gitmo? If you listen to them all, we're just sunk- but maybe listening to everyone is too simplistic.

(But what makes 'them all' assume that violence is bad? I... am not sure.)

On the other hand, since I believe abortion is a form of disrespect for human life, and that human life ultimately should not be disrespected, more funding for it seems like a bad thing. Also, making people who believe that abortion is an evil against humanity (and God!) help pay for it, forcing them to go against their conscience and actually participate it what they believe to be wrong, seems like nothing short of oppressive ideology at work.

Then again, along with pet peeves about evil violence, anyone who gets into power and acts on their beliefs seems to have an ideology that oppresses someone else. For instance, many people feel the wars we are fighting now aren't right, and their tax dollars are paying for that. I almost wish there was some way of conscientious objection- so the individual could work for the perceived good of the community without taking part in its perceived evil. Of course, in practice, that would probably turn into either slave labor camps or terrorist acts against the state, so scratch that idea.

On the fourth and final hand, I wonder if funding for abortion really matters. All the funding in the world could only offer abortions. If no one wanted them, the abortion clinics would be the best funded empty places in the world. I don't believe this justifies abortion- since Saddam Hussein and his sons wanted to torture and kill dissidents and naysayers, and apparently so did we. Those things aren't justified. But are there CNA's at the nursing home where I work who aborted because they felt abandoned and that they didn't have a future? I honestly don't know. Of course, whether or not you believe you have a future is a choice I can't make for you. But if I knew I had done everything in my power to serve the people around me, born and unborn- if I knew that there was no need for abortion clinics, I would with a clean conscious give them any amount of taxes (though not with a very happy wallet!). If I have given to God what is God's, what can Caesar do?

But I have to ask, have I given it? That's the million dollar question.

Home again!

Hello! I'm back from Germany! Just a few notes, because life is short.

1) In Germany, people don't cross when the crosswalk light is red- even if there are no cars. I suspect this is a metaphor for all of German culture, although the Germans were somewhat dismissive of the phenomena.

2)The Dom in Bamberg(?) is currently my favorite church building ever.

3)It was lovely to see Eugene people again, even for a couple days

4) Trollywood. Eisley.

5) My current plan is to find some way to make money, and to continue the War against Crickets.

6)If it is true that people are criticizing Palin for keeping her Downs baby (if its true she had a Downs baby), I think I'll vote for McCain. (my current level of political thought)(sad really. I should try to care)

That's all for now.

After not blogging all summer, I am about to go to Germany. Today, I mean. I just wanted to tell you all that I will not blog in Germany either. Just so you know. When I get back though...