Hasta La Gadget!

The night the Dallas officers were killed I told my daughter that I felt as I did the night Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot. I was that emotional. I was that fearful.

Fearful for my country. Fearful for my family. Fearful for my daughter who is marrying a white man. I wondered what would happen next.

And my daughter felt it, too.

A nation on the brink.

The social unrest, combined with the political unrest, is pushing us to that brink. My grandmother used to say that if we didn’t understand history, then we would repeat it. My friends, there cannot be a repeat. The reality is that there are Americans who wish we could go back. These individuals want to revisit a time when people of color were not included in society. But our country, the United States of America, was founded on a constitution where “all men were created equal, one nation under God.”

If we really want to move beyond this mess we are in today, we must dig the poison out of our country. We can’t allow it to continue to grow. Fester. Silently spread.

It is up to you and I. To move to action. To go deep. To cut out the poison. To rid ourselves of bias and hate.

The poison of hate. The poison of those not willing to love. Those not willing to accept each other. Those who aren’t interested in admitting that white privilege is real. Those who aren’t willing to truly understanding how different the journey is for a white person versus a black person. Or to accept that slavery was a reality. That racism and all -isms still exist.

The poison is us. The poison is bias. The bias causes us not to see the beauty in each other only the bad. The bias blocks empathy. It blocks curiosity. It robs us of the opportunity to connect as humans.

If people could open their hearts to understand that blacks are not asking for a handout. We simply want the opportunity to achieve the same level of success as anyone else. We want to be included. We want to belong. We want to believe our constitution included black people.

If white people would become curious they would find out that we don’t want you to say that we are so “articulate.” It is not a compliment – it is a put-down. It’s as if you are surprised that a black person could possibly demonstrate command of the English language.

And please stop assuming that one black person can speak for the entire black population. It seems difficult for people to understand that #blacklivesmatter is not saying that only black lives matter. It is saying ALL lives matter, including black lives. For the last two hundred years in North America it has been the perception of black people that our lives don’t matter.

I will admit that we as blacks need to be more open.

We were taught by God-fearing and loving parents who didn’t want to see us lynched. Because of that, we were taught not to trust white people. Whites – especially in the South – were taught (if you are a baby boomer) not to associate with black people. This is a general statement so please take it with a grain of salt but most baby boomer white people were taught by their parents that black people were bad people. Baby boomer blacks were taught by their parents and grandparents who suffered death at the hands of white men not to trust white people. That’s the truth! Why don’t we all dare to touch our truth.

Equality is nothing to be feared.

Just as we lovingly treat our young children’s scraped knees, cuts or burns, bringing the dirt to the surface by washing and disinfecting, carefully rubbing antibiotic ointment to treat the infection – the poison. Then placing a bandage, not to temporarily cover or hide the injury, but to protect and heal it. We kiss it and send them on their way.

Our children come to us with tears in their eyes. Trusting us to make it better. Trusting us to care of it.

That is our country today. Waiting for someone else to take care of the injuries, the poison. It’s not right. WE are that someone. We, every citizen in the United States of America, represent the solution to the challenge.

But how do we get rid of this poison? It seems so deep, too overwhelming, too far gone.

But it’s not. How easy it could be if we’d just get started. Today. Taking the step, no matter the outcome. No matter how much we might fear starting the conversation. Maybe the fear is one of rejection, maybe it is one of facing the truth of our past, fear about insulting someone else, or maybe it is just fear of difference.

We need to start the conversations and keep them going. As Christians, we are called to be the light. To introduce others. To walk across the room. To meet people where they are. To speak truth in love…not hate.

As Philip Kennicot communicated in his Washington Post article, “After a month of violence, take a deep breath and listen,” :

We are all responsible for our own rhetoric. Angry rhetoric is cumulative in its volatility and can inspire mentally ill people to violence. It is essential to examine our own rhetoric for its incendiary power. When possible, it is a good idea to humbly encourage our friends to examine their own rhetoric for its power to incite violence. Telling other people, especially strangers, how they should speak, what they should or should not say, or demanding that they say things as a ritual submission to your worldview will only alienate them. Listening is better than speaking and speaking is better than shouting. No one ever wins an argument on television.

Each one reaches one. Each one teaches one. Each one lifts one.

Huffington Post contributor, Deborah Plummer, shared in her July 10, 2016, article entitled, “Black and Blue Lives Matter: Turning Us and Them into We“, THEY and THEM needs to become US and WE.

WE all have a heart. WE all know love. WE all know pain. WE all bleed red blood. And WE all want our families to experience success.

There’s only one race – the human race. US.

So why do we hate? Why do we place labels on each other? Do yourself a favor and check out this powerful video, I Am Not Black, You Are NOT White. Not only are the words powerful, but the education and understanding of how labels for races were created is astounding.

And something happens after each tragedy. Have you noticed?

We go through these periods of heightened emotional responses as we did after 9/11, after Ferguson, after the Dallas police shootings. And then the cameras go off. Some other political figure or terrorist event takes the media’s attention. And we’re right back to where we were. Lulled back into sense of comfort as a country. We accept the wrong that we know in our hearts is not right.

We scab over. And the poison just continues to spread and multiply under the surface.

No more.

We have to challenges ourselves to do more. And if you think you don’t, you’re kidding yourself. We don’t even know each other across our differences. We don’t speak to truth to power. When do we reach across the aisle? We don’t understand – or even care to understand – other people’s journeys because we think it doesn’t affect us.

We’re wrong.

We are a part of the problem. We have to take a risk. It is time to move from aspiration to action. To finally start the healing. If not for our generation, then for the sake of the generations to come. I want my grandchildren to believe in the power of diversity. I want them to be accepted for who they are. I want them to have the chance to achieve their dreams. I don’t want skin color to be the blocker.

It’s up to every one of us to move to action. To have the courageous conversation and do something that may scare us and make us nervous, just because we have not done it before. Stop talking about it and start doing it. We all learn in the doing.

What’s the more to do?

No more going back to our segregated neighborhoods and closing the garage door. Speak to your neighbors who don’t look like you. Become curious about their cultures. Accept that your way is not the only way. Believe that we are all God’s children and are created equally. Honor our country’s foundation of democracy. Study history. Accept that white Europeans came to America and killed Native American Indians.

If we don’t keep this conversation going, it will die. And with it, our country will die. Our children and grandchildren’s country.

So what action do we take today? Right now? I issue you – I issue all of US – a 30-day challenge:

Top Ten Steps to Connect Across Differences:

1. Determine your beginning position on awareness for discrimination. (Do you acknowledge that discriminatory practices exist, or are you in denial?)
2. Explore your own historical roots, beliefs and values. (Acknowledge your worldview. Are you using stereotypes? Are assumptions causing you to miss out on connecting with others?)
3. Be willing to acknowledge that your way is not the only way. Avoid the “defensive position” it’s us against them. (Become curious and intentional about understanding the viewpoint and perspective of others. Acknowledge that your culture is one of many great cultures.)
4. Respect the values and beliefs of cultures other than your own. (Get intentional about gaining real life experiences “immersion learning.”
5. Become “comfortable being uncomfortable” in learning how to adapt to other cultures.
6. Acknowledge and learn from differences.
7. Ask more questions instead of making more statements.
8. Look at how you spend time away from work. Build personal friendships with people from other cultures where you can create your own “safe” environment for learning.
9. Model the behavior of a leader who has zero tolerance for discrimination, bias, unequal treatment.
10. Teach others, engage in courageous conversations (this will build your convictions, skills and emotional investment).

Step out in a spirit of love. To begin the healing. To leave a legacy of love, not hate. The cameras may be gone, but the challenge of connecting across differences remains.

You have a choice to make. Will you be a part of the problem or a part of the solution? History is waiting!

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Today is #NationalDogDay so that means it’s time to celebrate the unique things that dogs do to make us happy. Our four legged furry friends often have the perfect way to tickle our funny bone (hah). So let’s take a look at what happens when our dogs break all the rules.

We’ve all seen a disobedient dog but today is the day to laugh together. Have you ever longed for biting commentary on videos of rebellious dogs? Long no more. This video from Ozzy Man Reviews gives the perfect added punch to these little furry jerks just doing whatever they want. While I’m sure the experience was frustrating in the moment, we can’t help but sit back and laugh today.

Next time you’re watching a dog owner struggling to get their puppy to comply, don’t help, whip out your camera phone and try to capture the next adorable viral video. You know you want it.

For more from Ozzy Man Reviews subscribe to his YouTube channel.

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If you listen to right-wing media and Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton is sick. Far too sick to be president.

She might be suffering from a language disorder called dysphasia, according to non-medical expert and Trump talking head Katrina Pierson. Or maybe it’s seizures ― at least Fox News host Sean Hannity thinks so. The Drudge Report is concerned about her coughing. Online sleuths note she’s been using an awful lot of pillows. Rudy Giuliani thinks it’s “bizarre” that she had to pee during a debate, and urged the public to Google “Hillary Clinton illness” to learn the truth.

Trump, who’s never met a conspiracy theory he doesn’t like, has insinuated that Clinton isn’t well. He declared that Clinton lacks the “mental and physical stamina” to take on ISIS. He’s characterized her as “unstable,” “unbalanced” and “totally unhinged.”

“Honestly, I don’t think she’s all there,” Trump said.

It’s hard to hear the words “unstable” and “unbalanced” and not wonder if he’s referring to her hormones. The subtext of the rumors spouted by Trump and his crew of armchair doctors is clear: Clinton is biologically unfit to lead. She’s a woman, after all.

Forty-six years ago, Edgar Berman, a retired physician and Hubert Humphrey’s close confidant, declared that women were temperamentally unsuited to hold high office because of their “raging hormonal imbalance.”

“Suppose that we had a menopausal woman president who had to make the decision of the Bay of the Pigs?” he pondered. “All things being equal, I would still rather have had a male JFK make the Cuban Missile Crisis decisions than a female of similar age.”

In 2016, it’s no longer considered acceptable for public figures to opine about how women’s menstrual cycles, or lack of them, disqualify them from high-ranking jobs. But that doesn’t meant those opinions aren’t held in private.

At the heart of many conspiracy theories is some sort of human prejudice, said Mark Fenster, a law professor at the University of Florida and the author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture.

He pointed to the implicit racial motivation behind “birtherism,” a conspiracy movement that alleges President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. and is thus ineligible to be president. Trump is a prominent peddler of this claim. 

“It was never just that he was a child of immigrants who was born elsewhere,” he said. “It was always that he was born in a Muslim country to a Muslim father. It was very specific as to what it was he represented.”

Gender bias “absolutely” plays a role in the conspiracy theories around Clinton’s health, even if it’s not the primary motivating factor, Fenster said. 

“Every part of his critique of her has a gender component to it,” he said. “I think that’s true with the health conspiracies. It’s very much mocking her as an ‘old lady.’”

Stephanie Shields, a professor at Pennsylvania State University who studies gender and emotion, said it’s not uncommon for women aspiring to positions of power to be criticized as “unstable” or “emotional” as a way of monitoring who has a right to a voice.

“Calling someone emotional is a way to police their behavior, label them as irrational, and label them as not really having a legitimate basis for speaking,” she said.

The focus on Clinton’s health, she said, also “goes back to always turning women into their bodies.”

Stretching as far back as 1900 BC, women’s reproductive systems have been associated with irrational emotions. The term “hysteria” actually comes from the Greek word for uterus. 

HuffPost reporter Catherine Pearson explains:

Hysteria was the first mental disorder attributed to women (and only women) — a catch-all for symptoms including, but by no means limited to: nervousness, hallucinations, emotional outbursts and various urges of the sexual variety…

Egyptian texts dating as far back as 1900 BC argued that hysterical disorders were caused by women’s wombs moving throughout their bodies. The ancient Greeks believed it, too. In the 5th century BC, Hippocrates (i.e., the founder of western medicine, in what may not go down as his greatest achievement) first coined the term “hysteria” — from “hystera,” or uterus — and also attributed its cause to abnormal movements of the womb in a woman’s body.

It’s easy to laugh-off female hysteria as preposterous and antiquated pseudo-science, but the fact is, the American Psychiatric Association didn’t drop the term until the early 1950s. And though it had taken on a very different meaning from its early roots, “hysterical neurosis” didn’t disappear from the DSM — often referred to as the bible of modern psychiatry — until 1980.

To Dianne Bystrom, the director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, the attacks on Clinton’s physical and mental health remind her of the arguments men used in the early 1900s to justify why women shouldn’t have the right to vote. 

“It is interesting as I sit here reflecting on suffrage today,” she said, highlighting that Friday is Women’s Equality Day. “The arguments are the same. Women are the frail sex, the ones that don’t quite have the stamina to be involved in the ugly game of politics.”

She said the gender bias by the Trump campaign towards Clinton is more extreme than she can remember in recent history, calling his tactics “vicious.” 

“In my years of studying male versus female rhetoric in politics races, I haven’t seen anyone go this far as to attack a woman for her health when there seems to be no founded reason for it,” she said. 

Let’s get real: The wild conspiracy theories around Clinton’s health are a convenient way to mask misogyny inside “legitimate” medical concerns. Her critics can’t call her crazy, so instead they use stand-ins like “unbalanced” and lacking “mental stamina.”

Trump has a long history of gendered attacks on Clinton. He has said she doesn’t “look” presidential. He doesn’t like her voice. He even made a callous joke about someone shooting her. 

Now, he’s arguing that she’s not physically or mentally up for the job. That’s sexism, plain and simple. 

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.

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As I have written recently, the $70 billion-per year global arms trade doesn’t get nearly enough coverage given its size, scope and devastating consequences. But a new report by the London-based charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) offers an important exception to that rule.

The AOAV report, followed by an excellent recent piece on the subject by the New York Times, underscores the dangers of runaway arms trafficking, much of which has been facilitated and financed by the U.S. government with little attention to where these weapons end up. As a result, U.S.-supplied weapons are now in the hands of groups like ISIS and the Taliban, as well as with jihadist groups in Libya and Syria. It is a disgraceful record that reveals the troubling underside of the U.S. role as the world’s leading arms supplier.

AOAV found that the Pentagon had issued contracts worth $40 billion for arms, ammunition, and related equipment since 2001. The contracts included at least $2.6 billion in assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in the transfer of over 1.45 million guns. Neither the public nor the press had been aware of the scale of the transfers to Iraq and Afghanistan before AOAV’s study, since only 3% of them were reported in the Pentagon’s daily contract listings.

AOAV’s executive director Iain Overton was taken aback by the sheer size of the contracts his group uncovered:

“We did not anticipate . . . finding so much money having been spent by the Department of Defence on small arms, ammunition and attachments. We are not talking aircraft carriers here; $40 billion is a huge amount of issued contracts just for guns, attachments and ammo, even over 14 years of warfare.”

As Overton further noted, even more troubling than the size of the transfers is the lack of transparency and accountability by the Pentagon in reporting such contracts, and the fact that the U.S. government is not sure where many of the guns sent into war zones have ended up.

C.J. Chivers has elaborated on the issues raised by AOVA’s report in a recent piece in the New York Times magazine. In recent years, Chivers has written some of the best pieces on the twisted path taken by U.S. arms transfers supplied to Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also done a book on the history of the ubiquitous AK-47 rifle. So his take on this issue carries particular weight.

Chivers estimates that the Pentagon has lost track of hundreds of thousands of guns in Iraq and Afghanistan. As noted above, many of these weapons have ended up with U.S. adversaries like ISIS and the Taliban. One GAO report found that the Pentagon could not say where 110,000 AK-47 rifles and 80,000 pistols it had supplied to Iraqi security forces had ended up. And the GAO report was issued in 2007, years before Iraqi forces abandoned untold quantities of arms, ammunition and military vehicles in their fight against ISIS. Chivers has pointed out the stunning fact that the potential diversions documented by the GAO alone added up to “more than one firearm for every member of the entire American military force in Iraq at any time during the war.”

U.S.-supplied rifles are now a staple of arms bazaars in Iraq, and have even been offered up for sale on Facebook. In response to Chivers’ reporting on the issue, Facebook has shut down some of the arms trafficking sites that are offering U.S. guns for sale in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, but closing them all has proven difficult.

How did this happen? Part of the answer appears to be that the Pentagon just didn’t care. As Pentagon spokesman Mark Wright told Chivers, with considerable understatement, “speed was essential in getting those nations’ security forces armed, equipped and trained to meet these extreme challenges. As a result, lapses in accountability of some of the weapons transferred occurred.” Wright claims that DoD has since cleaned up its act, but it is not clear whether these purported efforts have made a difference.

The other, and perhaps more intractable reason for the weapons losses is that the U.S. has supplied these guns to allies who are too often corrupt and unreliable. Members of U.S.-supplied Syrian opposition groups and soldiers in the Iraqi and Afghan security forces have either sold their U.S.-supplied weapons or, in the case of Syria in particular, switched sides, to the benefit of ISIS and the Taliban. And poor morale driven in part by the sectarianism and corruption that have characterized Iraqi security forces has led to the abandonment of U.S.-purchased weapons on the field of battle.

Unfortunately, the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan are not unique. A recent GAO report on U.S. efforts to track equipment it has provided to Egypt as part of its annual $1.3 billion military aid package uncovered serious flaws. Among the report’s findings were that the State Department conducted only a dozen end-use checks designed to verify the locations of U.S.-supplied weapons in Egypt between 2011 and 2015, and that “the Egyptian government’s incomplete and slow responses to some inquiries limited U.S. efforts to verify the use and security of certain equipment, including NVD’s [night vision devices] and riot-control items.” The GAO also noted that the State Department has yet to establish specific procedures for vetting the location and use of equipment provided to Egyptian security forces, in part due to “the lower priority assigned to Egypt than to other countries.” To add insult to injury, Egyptian officials refused to even meet with U.S. officials to discuss whether the government in Cairo understands and is committed to abiding by the Leahy Law, U.S. legislation that prohibits assistance to military or police units that commit gross violations of human rights The lax oversight of military aid to Egypt is inexcusable given the volume of U.S. weaponry supplied to Egyptian security forces, the abysmal human rights record of the current Egyptian government, and the risk of theft or diversion of equipment to terrorist organizations operating in the country.

On the human rights front, independent organizations like the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) have asserted that the repression under President Sisi is worse even than what occurred in the Mubarak era or during the brief rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. The organization has called for the withholding of a portion of U.S. aid to Egypt until the current government’s record on human rights and the monitoring of the end-use of U.S.-supplied equipment improves.

Most troubling of all are the cases where the U.S. government knows that its weaponry is being used to devastating effect and is continuing to facilitate those actions. This is the case with respect to the current Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, which has killed thousands of civilians while targeting hospitals, schools, marketplaces, and critical civilian infrastructure. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have asserted that the Saudi actions may constitute war crimes. Key members of Congress like Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) are seeking to stop or delay a recently announced tank deal with Saudi Arabia that will help replace U.S.-supplied tanks destroyed in the Yemen war. Rep. Lieu and Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) are circulating a letter citing the devastating consequences of Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-backed war and calling for a delay in the tank deal to allow Congress to have a full debate on the sale; as of this writing the letter had garnered 49 signatories. In the wake of a recent Saudi bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen, Sen. Murphy has noted that the steady U.S. supply of bombs and other military equipment means that “there is a U.S. imprint on every civilian death in Yemen.” Stopping the latest U.S. arms deal to Saudi Arabia would be an important first step in bringing runaway U.S. arms trading under control.

In the wake of the diversion of U.S.-supplied weapons to U.S. adversaries in Iraq, Libya, and Syria and U.S. support for the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen, the U.S. government’s assertion that its arms trafficking in the Middle East and beyond supports “stability” increasingly rings hollow. It’s time for a new approach that stops using arms sales as a tool of first resort in dealing with complex conflicts that would be better addressed through vigorous diplomacy. A diplomatic resolution of the region’s overlapping conflicts won’t be easy, but the current policy of runaway arms sales is clearly making matters worse.

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We all need help maintaining our personal spiritual practice. We hope that these Daily Meditations, prayers and mindful awareness exercises can be part of bringing spirituality alive in your life.

Today’s meditation features a song by internationally renowned Senegalese musician Baaba Maal. “Traveller” is a rousing song for all those whose hearts leap at the thought of unknown adventures to come.

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