Bunny Mailbag: Who's Your Favorite Candidate?

Posted by Bunny.

E-mail from ShapeSHFTR:

Dear Bunny, I enjoy reading your replies to e-mails. I have a question for you. I'm guessing that you guys are Democrats and not Republicans. So out of the major Democratic candidates - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards, who will you be voting for? Who do you think is the real change candidate? And don't say Kucinich because we all know he doesn't have a chance to win the nomination! Thanks, just curious what you guys are thinking because you haven't been talking about the elections. - ShapeSHFTR

Bunny writes:

Hi ShapeSHFTR, I won't pretend to represent the others, I'll just state my own position and the others can enter their opinions below if they want.

1. As we've pointed out before, cats aren't allowed to vote. If you American human beings thought about how unfair this is for even 10 seconds you'd see that that's something that has to be changed. Who the leader of this country is has a profound effect on all animals, not only humans. I agree that some animals cannot operate a voting machine or punch a voting-card (dragonflies come to mind), but that doesn't mean that our interests should be totally ignored at election time. If you believe in fairness go figure something about re: how to collect animal votes. And I'm not even going to get into the whole trees issue.

2. The whole "You Must Be Either a Democrat or a Republican" mentality annoys me. What happens when neither side is willing to serve the interests of the citizenry? Or to put it another way, why do people have to choose between one of just two parties when both of those parties are actively hurting the most vulnerable among us? Poor people, the elderly, children, the homeless, recent immigrants, Native peoples, and so on. I would call the narrowness of your human elections a joke if the repercussions weren't so enormously un-funny.

3. I like some things about each of the candidates as people. All of them seem intelligent, which can be nice. Visually speaking, they all have decent smiles, et cetera. But as political candidates, the three you've named - Clinton, Obama, Edwards - I don't like their politics. Just one example, their positions regarding the expansion of war-culture, an issue we have spoken about a lot here at The Pinky Show.

Hillary Clinton: To help our forces recover from Iraq and prepare them to confront the full range of twenty-first-century threats, I will work to expand and modernize the military so that fighting wars no longer comes at the expense of deployments for long-term deterrence, military readiness, or responses to urgent needs at home.

John Edwards: I will double the budget for recruitment and raise the standards for the recruitment pool so that we can reduce our reliance on felony waivers and other exceptions. In addition, I will increase our investment in the maintenance of our equipment for the safety of our troops.

Barack Obama: To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace. . . . We must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. . . . We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines. . . . I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened. We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability — to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities...

[ excerpts from Glenn Greenwald's excellent essay at Salon ]

4. Seems like every time Kucinich's name is mentioned, it's in the context of some kind of mockery or dismissive "interesting but not to be taken seriously" comment. What's funny to me is that if people would only follow-up with some critical inquiry as to why this is happening, they might actually figure out a thing or two about what's wrong with elections here in the United States.

I'm not impressed with the American political system. You human beings will get exactly what you deserve. Unfortunately for the rest of us who also live on this planet, we'll also get what you deserve.

~B.

Unlearning How to Not Kill

Posted by Pinky.

I was reading an essay by Penny Coleman (Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War) and was especially intrigued by this section describing the psychological 'conditioning' of soldiers:

Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of ways to override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram their human software, overriding those characteristics that are inconvenient in a military context, most particularly the inherent resistance human beings have to killing others of their own species. "Modern combat training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli," says Lt. Col. Peter Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, "and this maximizes soldiers' lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so. If they are unable to justify to themselves the fact that they killed another human being, they will likely — and understandably — suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who performed their duty in combat."

By military standards, operant conditioning has been highly effective. It's enabled American soldiers to kill more often and more efficiently, and that ability continues to exact a terrible toll on those we have designated as the "enemy." But the toll on the troops themselves is also tragic. Even when troops struggle honorably with the difference between a protected person and a permissible target (and I believe that the vast majority do so struggle, though the distinction is one I find both ethically and humanely problematic) in war "shit happens." When soldiers are witness to overwhelming horror, or because of a reflexive accident, an illegitimate order, or because multiple deployments have thoroughly distorted their perceptions, or simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time — those are the moments that will continue to haunt them, the memories they will not be able to forgive or forget, and the stuff of posttraumatic stress injuries.

I've been thinking about this all day. Seems to me that when human beings are in their childhood-stage, the adults around them try to teach them things like how to treat each other nicely, how to discern right from wrong, how to think about the consequences of their actions, and other good stuff like that. But doesn't this curriculum for soldiers - this 'operant conditioning' that teaches barely-adult human beings how to bypass the moral autonomy they (hopefully) developed as children - seem like exactly the opposite of good 'child rearing'?

I don't get it. If human beings think warring is so necessary, why not just avoid the possibility of confusion, horror, and trauma by training children (i.e., potential soldiers) to be killers from the start? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd rather do away with war altogether, but since most people won't even allow themselves to seriously explore that as a possibility, perhaps it just makes more sense to speed things along a bit by not cultivating any goodness that's only going to be have to be destroyed later.

At the very least, all of us cats will be saved the hassle of having to figure out if that human being coming towards us is going to be kind or try to hurt us.

~p.

....................................

Addition: Sorry, I forgot to post the link to Ms. Coleman's essay from which I quoted: http://www.alternet.org/story/72956/

Saying it again: The "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" never happened!

Posted by Pinky.

One of the most common criticisms we receive regarding our The American War: the U.S. in Vietnam episode goes something like this: "How can you say the Gulf of Tonkin Incident never happened? It did happen! You cats are wrong! How dare you conspiracy theorists suggest that the U.S. government used a fraudulent event that never happened to plunge our nation into war... blah blah blah."

Enter a recently declassified National Security Agency study - Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975 (download the entire report here). The study is a comprehensive analysis of U.S. codebreaking and eavesdropping work during the Vietnam war - the government's official history of e-spying if you will - and the Gulf of Tonkin incident receives a full analysis from a signals intelligence perspective in Chapter 5. The conclusion of that analysis? The Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened.

Thank you, we will be accepting written apologies at our usual e-mail address.

But seriously, you know what's really annoying? These people who e-mail us about how we make up stuff to back up our arguments don't seem to do any research themselves before firing off angry e-mails. The thing is, we were able to figure out that the Tonkin Affair never happened after doing just a few days worth of research into the 'incident'. It wasn't difficult to find out that it never happened and we certainly don't have any high-level security clearances that allow us access to top secret information. We just read normal books and reports that anybody can find in any decent library. So as nice as it is to have the NSA back us up on our "rediculus lies and claims", this kind of information really is already out there.

Annoying thing #2: The release of the NSA study and its findings were not covered in any of the mainstream U.S. news outlets. None of them. Maybe there'll be a hailstorm of reports about it next week, but I doubt it. I had to find out about it from a French newswire. Crazy huh.

~p.

Nice e-mail from David S.

Posted by Pinky.

I don't answer a lot of e-mails anymore. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but to be honest, answering individual e-mails is not a good use of time. There'll probably always be a part of me that feels like I'm being very impolite or not-nice if I 'ignore' even one e-mail that we receive, but lately I've been trying really hard to keep my feelings in check and look at things programmatically. I have to ask myself: What is our primary responsibility? Well, we're supposed to be making educational materials. E-mail is fun and all that but since there's only two of us working on the production end of things, every hour I spend writing e-mails takes away time from research, writing, edting, and so on. Bunny and I typically work 12-14 hour days to keep the PS project moving forward. And at the end of the day we usually just feel too brain-dead to respond to individual e-mails. Plus, I'm a terribly slow writer.

Having said that, we frequently receive e-mails that, for one reason or another, we really want to respond to. Over the past couple of years I've been responding to as many of these as possible, but lately there's just been too many of them and I haven't been able to keep up at all. So what we're going to do is try to respond to some of the e-mails we receive here in the Diary area. Bunny does that sometimes (Bunny Mailbag), but not too often. So we're going to try to do this more often.

Anyway, tonight I wanted to share a very nice e-mail we received a few days ago from a person named David. The things he has to say about fear is, I think, extremely important. The relationships that exist between fear and self-silencing are worth careful examination - not just for the obvious political reasons, but for a million 'personal' reasons as well. A few years ago, shortly after we first met, Bunny and I decided that it would be important for us to create some kind of daily practice that would allow us to continually work towards the dissolution of fear. Making The Pinky Show has been a part of that practice.

Oh, and the hot dog story is good too. It really made us laugh.

message: I like your mini shows. I like the content and the way you express it. I especially liked your one about the illegality of the American war against Iraq.

On a more personal note (don't be scared, I am not dangerous), I want to tell you what made me actually write to you:

Two things basically.

The first one is that listening to you and your audience/contributors de-paranoided me. What I mean by that is, the information I received about in the Pinky Show's Legality of the Iraq War combined with the link your site provided to the BBC's "The Power of Nightmares" helped me overcome my resistance to sharing some of my strong convictions online. A week ago, it scared me to know that putting my convictions online potentially exposes me to the any of the 6 billion or so other people here.

But today, the post-Pinky version of myself realizes that my so-called leaders passionately devote considerable resources to engineering fear in the hearts of workaday schmucks like me. People like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Powell, Rice, Pearle, Wolfowitz, depend on my fear and the fear of millions like me. They depend on fear to deter ordinary citizens like me from observing and making our own conclusions about decisions they make that significantly affect the daily life of people like me.

Now that I have had a closer [sic] via your show, I'm angry enough to not care that potentially the whole world can know that I regard our "neoconservative" so-called leaders as dangerous, lying megalomaniacs. They are the mirror image of the very "evildoers who hate us because of our freedoms". So, thank you. Your show has helped me come to value my own observation and experience enough to share it without regard to fear. You supplied the information and courageous example which inspires me to write to you.

The second thing that made me write to you was a memory evoked by your picture of a sign showing there's 80 some odd miles to Death Valley. [ pinky's note: the image he's talking about is here. ]

My friend Dale and I call it the Hot Dog Water Story. When I was young and dumb, Dale and I had the brilliant idea to go for a 40-mile hike in Death Valley in August. We read about desert conditions. We also checked out an army manual about desert survival from the library. It said a person needs a gallon of water every 20 miles in the desert.

Long story short, we ran out of water anyway, in the middle of Death Valley. So we started to hitchhike. One car after another passed us by. Then a couple driving a Red VW van going in the opposite direction stopped, picked us up, turned around and drove us back to our camp. The couple was from Canada. They also had a cute little baby lying in a small, blanketed crate.

Dale and I were pretty thirsty by the time our good samaritans brought us back to camp. The only water we had left was in a cooler that contained hot dogs floating in warm water. Dale and I were so thirsty that we downed that hot dog water in nothing flat.

It turns out that our rescuers were camped close to Dale and me. We had a good talk about the whole experience when we had dinner together later that day.

So, thanks for reminding me about Hot Dog Water.

Sincerely,
David S.

Okay, that's today's interesting e-mail. It's almost 3 a.m. - I'd better go to bed now. Goodnight! ~p.

Hawaii: Who's Going

Posted by Pinky.

Bunny and I are tentatively scheduled to fly to Hawaii to start work on our series of episodes on Hawaii on Jan 13 (that's a Sunday). I'm pretty good at disguising myself as a suitcase but I think Bunny better start practicing otherwise this whole trip is not going to happen.​

Kim and Mimi will be coming to help out whenever they can, but probably won't be able to be there most of the time. They both have regular jobs as well as an upcoming non-Pinky Show project for which they have to be in India for a couple of weeks in February.

Daisy will meet us in Hawaii a little later. Right now he's somewhere in France for who knows what.

~p.

2.5 Million Views

Posted by Pinky.

A couple of days ago we hit 2.5 million episode views over at our channel at YouTube. I'm kind of surprised that a program like ours would get so many views at a place like YouTube. It's not ha-ha funny, we don't have any sexy pictures, etc. We originally decided to put our videos up at YouTube only because some people had written to us saying that they couldn't watch our videos on our website (QuickTime incompatibility, etc.). Now more people watch The Pinky Show over there than over here. I bet most of the people over at YouTube don't even know we have a website.

The other day, a (human) friend came over and we were reading through some of the YouTube comments and private messages we've received over the past few weeks. Some viewers are upset:

"fucking fags, go watch the news the UN autherized the 2003 invasion, no terrorist in iraq? SADDAM WAS A GOD DAMN TERRORIST!!! no WMDs, go ask the kurds if he had weapons of mass destruction, fuckin dumb whore, my and cousin served proudly in Iraq and dont need any of ur hippie shit." - YouTube user 75ranger101

"What The Fuck!!! First, you have NO RIGHT to bash the military in any way!! They fight so people can have the opinions they have, they risk there lives to protect OUR FREEDOM!!! Soldiers are given orders and they follow them, they don't ask questions they simply do as they are told. Second, whether or not the reason's for being in the middle east are legal or not is'nt the point. I lost family both on 9/11 and in the middle east, I find it bullshit that you would spend so much time ranting about an issue that is not up to you. Your cat looks high and your simply repeating something someone had ALREADY bitched about.....MOVE ON!!!!" - YouTube user dragonslayer9342

"FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCKS. "Educational" its all propaganda go fuck youselves you fucking pieces of shit... etc." - YouTube user ingderf

Afterwards she was asking us if it bothers us that we get so many YouTube messages that are filled with anger, hate, and threats. She looked surprised when I said 'not really'. I don't really have any strong feelings about it other than to say that it's actually a good resource for us. The comments - especially the really outrageous ones - give us some kind of reminder how people out there are thinking/feeling about the issues. I'm not surprised that there are hundreds of square miles worth of angry replies out there. It's a reminder that certain sectors of society has had to work extremely hard to create this level of conformity. I don't believe that human beings can be born “stupid”; I'm pretty sure that the mainstreaming of stupid ideas has to be intentionally cultivated. And I'm sure it costs a lot of money too.

Actually I think it's kind of funny that my friend was under the impression that it's some kind of emotional burden to have a million people 'out there' hate you, wish pox on you, and so on. I thought cats are famous for being self-absorbed?

~p.

Bunny Mailbag: Quoting the Bible

Posted by Bunny.

Received e-mail (12/30/2007):

I find it very interesting that you quote the Old Testament in your "From Swords into Plowshares" episode but not in your "Kicking the Apartheid Habit" episode. The quote I'm thinking of is Leviticus 18:22. - R.J. Grigaitis

For those of you who don't have a Bible handy, Leviticus 18:22 says ""You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination." My response to R.J.:

R.J.,

Perhaps you will also interested in Peter 2:18, Exodus 21:26, or Ephesians 6:5 - so that you will know how to treat your slaves. You do have slaves, don't you?

Just to be clear, we consider it fair to quote from any source so long as the source is identified (so that readers can examine the context from which it was taken), and deem the quote to be valuable in some way. Quoting from a source does not imply that we must uncritically accept all other pieces of information from that same source to be the absolute truth. That would be stupid.

~B.

Happy New Year

Posted by Bunny.

Pinky the genius stepped in a hole and stress fractured her leg. So we had to come back early (Wednesday). So instead of a peaceful walk in the desert we will continue our new year planning from our boring kitchen (dining room table). Pinky forgot to mention in her diary that she stepped in a hole only about 10 seconds after saying "Wow look at all these holes!" ~B.

2008: Cats to Hawaii

Posted by Pinky.

Hi everybody - Happy New Year!

Bunny and I got back from our desert walk yesterday - a few days sooner than we had originally planned. What happened was I accidentally stepped in a hole and hurt my leg. I can't walk so well now so we came back. Not a great way to start out the new year but as Bunny pointed out, at least I wasn't run over by a car or get bitten on the face by a rattlesnake. That's Bunny - always looking on the bright side.

We did get some things resolved though. For one thing, a rough schedule for the first part of this year has been mapped out. I've been wanting to learn more about where I've come from. Not just literally ("I'm from Hawaii"), but also I feel like I need to understand more about where I've been and why I am the way I am, before I can clearly see the path I need to follow in the future.

I think I mentioned it before that I was born (somewhere) in Hawaii, right? Well I left Hawaii when I was pretty small because I was feeling really curious and wanted to see the U.S. mainland. That's when I left home and not too long after that I met Bunny, we traveled around for a while, and then afterwards we settled here in the desert and started doing The Pinky Show. But lately I've been thinking about Hawaii more and more. There's a little voice inside my head that keeps telling me that there's something there that I need to understand before I'm going to be able to really understand the United States.

I called up my good friend in Hawaii (I lived with her before, when I was still kind of like a kitten) and asked her if we could stay with her while we do some research about Hawaii. She said we can stay as long as we like. We still have to figure out some of the details and there's a few things that need to be wrapped up before we can go anywhere, but I'm already starting to feel excited about going back and getting started.

Kim and Mimi haven't decided yet if they want to go to Hawaii or stay here in the desert. They want to go but they also want to be here for the desert flowers they think might be blossoming this spring (we had lots of rain this winter). I told them there's lots of flowers in Hawaii - all the time. o.O

Daisy said he'll come along if we need his help. I said "Of course we need your help."

I know what you guys are wondering - if you all go to Hawaii, who's going to take care of the ants? I think the ants can run around free for a few months, they'll be just fine.

~p.