Reform Government Surveillance

Everyone with a Gmail account has received this letter.  I thought I would repost it here.  If you would like to write your representatives and don't know who they are or how to contact them, visit the following pages. 

http://whoismyrepresentative.com
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments

The Letter:

You've heard the revelations about government surveillance practices, both in the U.S. and around the world. They've sparked a long-overdue debate about the true scale of government surveillance programs, and the laws that govern them. It's time to demand a change.

Today, Google is standing up with the web to call for urgent reform.

Call your members of Congress right now, and tell them you demand a change.
http://www.reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/

Google recognizes the very real threats that the U.S. and other countries face today, but we strongly believe that government surveillance programs should operate under a legal framework that has very specific rules, is transparent and accountable to oversight, and keeps users like you safe.

In Congress, the USA Freedom Act would enact many of the principles that Google and other Internet companies, organizations, and users have been demanding. The bill's sponsors, Representative Sensenbrenner and Senator Leahy, said government surveillance programs "have come at a high cost to Americans' privacy rights, business interests and standing in the international community." We couldn't agree more, and trust you do, too.

Urge your members of Congress to support the USA Freedom Act and reform government surveillance today:

http://www.reformgovernmentsurveillance.com

More soon,

Derek Slater
Google Inc.

"Why Should I Care?"

Someone asked me what I thought about the NSA and their spy policies.  The woman I was speaking to said she didn't mind the spying because she doesn't break the law (though she torrents movies online).   All I could quote was Martin Niemöller's famous quote which he wrote in a Nazi prison camp:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

The NSA "has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world."
— The New York Times

The NSA collected "almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks" in one month in 2013.
— The Guardian

The NSA is collecting the content and metadata of emails, web activity, chats, social networks, and everything else as part of what it calls "upstream" collection.
— The Washington Post

The NSA "is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans."
 — The Washington Post

The NSA "is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world."
 — The Washington Post

The NSA "is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country." — The New York Times

WHAT CAN YOU DO?  Email your legislators:

https://thedaywefightback.org

Barter Ministry

Here is a barter ministry idea for churches.  Your church would create its own barter system based upon a service provided by a member with no value placed on the service or the time spent, just a credit.  Here some examples:

I give you a piano lesson.
You dog sit for someone.
That person bakes cookies for a shut in.
A person drives someone to a doctor's appointment.
Someone else baby sits for a few hours.
Someone repairs a leaky faucet.
A woman offers a dance class twice a week.
A glazier replaces a window.
Someone changes oil.
Someone donates an hour of house cleaning.
A farmer offers a day of horseback riding.

All those services, regardless of time or skill, are worth a single point and don't cost the recipient anything unless there are materials needed such as plumbing or carpentry.  Each church would have to tweak or limit time intensive events like building a deck.

Everyone banks their points and is able to redeem them from anyone who enrolls in the program.  This may or may not be applicable to regular liturgical, church or service to the church activities such as coffee hour, ushering, cleaning, donating flowers, etcetera.  It would work best between people rather than "the church" unless you want to include service to the church as a service to the community.   YMMV.

A program such as this would greatly serve the poor but could tax the handyman (who would gain mega points, though) and  everyone could list what they are willing to offer in services and limitations.  There are two ways to promote service.  A church can have its members make a list of services they are willing to offer and someone with a need can check the list and contact that person.  The other way is to allow people to list their wants and a provider can contact them to offer that service.  Both lists would work very well simultaneously.

Each individual church would need to tweak their own by-laws and perform a few months of dry runs followed by circadian by-law updates to fix bugs, disadvantages and services offered.  It could be maintained online, in a book or by an individual.  The organizer could create a formal receipt which will be turned in to them who then updates the points.  This is not a barter from person to person but to the community.

If I only offer piano lessons and nobody takes me up on that, I will bank no points so it would behoove me to offer other services such as house sitting, shoveling snow or dog walking.  And of course, I can't offer plumbing services if there is no proof that I know anything about plumbing (although I do do my own).

So If I give you a piano lesson and earn a credit, I don't have to barter specifically with you in return for a service.  I can use that credit to take a dance lesson or have someone clean my house and they in return don't have to barter with me.  The bylaws can be tweaked in a myriad of ways such as, one is able to give their credits to another person or a certain service is worth two credits.  Maybe there would be a limit on how many credits you may give or receive each week.

Ultimately this program would work best if nobody puts a value on their service and looks simply to serve.  It would be a great opportunity for a congregation to build community, serve one another and be Christ for one another.

Silly Kids, Tricks are for Professionals

Taizé 101

The Taizé Community is an ecumenical monastic order founded in 1940 by Brother Roger Schutz in Taizé, France. It is composed of more than one hundred brothers who originate from about thirty countries around the world.

The community has become a popular site of Christian pilgrimage. Over 100,000 young people from around the world make pilgrimages to Taizé each year for prayer, Bible study, sharing, and communal work. Through the community's ecumenical outlook, they are encouraged to live in the spirit of kindness, simplicity and reconciliation.

A Taizé service is a simple prayer service centered around music from the Taizé community.  Most of the music has a short refrain which could be four, eight or sixteen bars long.  Some of the songs have verses which are generally sung by a soloist or schola and the refrains are simple and easy to memorize after a few repetitions.  The reason for the music in being easy and repetitious is so that the average person attending the service may more readily engage in sung prayer rather than reading words, notes or trying to learn the melody.

Musicians love this format for it gives them the opportunity to drop in or out and lightly improvise after the fifth, tenth or twentieth repetition.  Some music directors may stifle creativity and organize and plan arrangements regardless how the spirit is moving everyone else.  When I organize a Taizé service, I tell the musicians to go with the flow, try things, experiment, come in or out when you want, listen to the people and respond to them. I give them ownership.  Using this method, a song may have several climaxes as opposed to one  - that is arranged.

When putting together a Taizé or Taizé-like prayer service, one doesn't have to choose music from the Taizé tradition.  I like to use psalm refrains.  If you belong to a liturgical church, you probably already sing psalms every Sunday with a cantor. Psalm refrains are good to use because they are simple, short, the assembly already knows many of them.  They are scriptural, they may be comforting and as I said, psalms may already be in the musical vocabulary of most liturgical churches.

If I was in an airplane and we hit turbulence, I might pray to myself, "Be with me Lord, when I am in trouble, be with me, Lord, I pray," or "The Lord is my light and my salvation, of whom should I be afraid?" because I would have sung them during the regular liturgical year or thirty times during a Taizé service so I would know those refrains as Psalms 91 and 27 and by heart.

Churches often mistakenly offer Taizé services because they think it will attract people, especially young people.  In the turbulent 1960s, young people began to visit the Taizé community in search of spiritual answers. The first international young adults meeting was organized in Taizé with 1400 participants from 30 countries.  In 1970, in response to student protests taking place all over Europe and the world, as well as the Second Vatican Council, Brother Roger announced a "Council of Youth", whose main meeting took place in 1974.  At the end of the 1970s, the meetings and surrounding activities began to be referred to as a "Pilgrimage of Trust on Earth".  The monastic community decided to focus on youth.  Many churches, especially in Europe, send their youth and young adults to Taizé for spiritual retreats.

Faith can not be reverse engineered.  When I was a teen, my niece came to live with us because her family was moving, it was her senior year and she wanted to graduate with her class. She loved grunge rock and one day I heard her singing a Bach melody.  I asked her where she heard it and she didn't know but she said she liked it.  It was something she subconsciously heard me regularly practicing and it struck a chord with her.  If youth are exposed to the music of Taizé, they will certainly grow to like it but offering it will not attract them if they don't know what it is in the first place.  This is a conundrum that organized religion hasn't figured out yet, but, the answer is so simple.

When putting together a Taizé service, the musicians must focus on what is needed in order to encourage an hour of singing.  A successful music ministry is not one that plays for or to the people, it is one that revels in the sound of a participating and singing congregation.  The most beautiful sound a music director can hear is the sound of a singing assembly. 

Consider our services in the model of the theater;  Many church musicians mistakenly think that the congregation is the audience, the musicians are the actors and God is the prompter.   This model will surely fail in rapid entropy.  It should be that the congregation are the actors, the musicians are the prompters and God is the audience.  This is a simple mistake that many churches make and is why church is perceived as boring, because it is done -to- us as in the first model.  They reap what they sow.

Within the Taizé service there may be a couple readings and of course a healthy period of silence.  Silence can be awkward and uncomfortable for many people because our brains are often sozzled with distractions and noise.  Speech must die to serve that which is spoken.  Alternatively, I've been to restaurants where I have seen couples sit through their entire meal and barely speak to one another.  Sadly it is probably because she married for security and comfort while he married a trophy and they realized that they have nothing in common.  Taizé doesn't have to be that way as long as you don't go in looking to be entertained.  You have to enter into it empty, open and willing to be filled.  Energy begets energy and in order to get something out of it you have to put something in.

The space should be lit well enough to read.  A lot of churches turn their lights down low and light a lot of candles for atmosphere.  This is nice but one of my churches did this and a woman tripped over something because she couldn't see, she broke her hip and sued the church.  The pastor tried lying to her lawyers and encourage the staff to lie but someone who was was socially conscious told the truth.  Some churches encourage people to bring their own pillows or provide them with cushions so they can sit on the floor.  One church I knew provided tiny little water bottles for dry throats. 

The selection of music and text is important too.  Consider what is going on in the world, in the country, in the community or in the church.  What text can you sing which will break open these issues to create greater awareness or action?  Music is an expression of faith not merely entertainment.  We don't sing because we're happy, we're happy because we sing.  People don't have faith because they love music, they love music because they have faith.

Taizé may not be for everyone.  It is like Grappa, you either love it or hate it.  It may take work to feel comfortable at a Taizé service because sitting for an hour singing songs over and over can be boring for people without the patience, will or strength.  To sit and meditate on a single sentence and contemplate its veracity in their life takes conscious effort.  I can promise though, if you do sing, you will be oxygenating your blood, your heart will pump faster, your brain cells will be getting fresh oxygenated blood, your circulation will improve and you will become more alert. In essence you will leave a different person than when you came in.  Singing for an hour about thanksgiving, adoration, supplication and contrition will teach us that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.  Out of what we live and believe, our lives will become that.  Energy begets energy.  Metanoia doesn't happen to those who don't try.

Why should we think upon things that are beautiful? Because thinking determines life.  It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment.  Environment modifies life but does not govern life.  The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

Facebook and Texting Part Three of Three; We Found A Witch, May We Burn Her?

When I was a kid, some of my favorite TV shows were those animal kingdom programs.  I remember one episode which was about the mating habits of birds.  Many of the male birds would do a little dance, poof out their feathers, show off their colors and impress the female with their ritual dance and antics.

When I was in Junior High School, the same thing occurred except with teenagers.  The day would start with the boy standing at his open locker and the girl would approach and stand with her back to the lockers as close to the open door as possible in an attempt to get his full attention by being in the way.  She would then pass him a note on a piece of paper (ancient form of texting) which was neatly folded in a square and written in colored ink with hearts over the letter "i." When she passed the note to him, their hands would touch and both would get a rush of adrenaline.  The boy would read the note during first period and spend the next two classes contemplating what to write back or carefully crafting just the right response.  It was a far cry from the instant (and often regrettable) replies of today's texting phones.  Maybe his crafted written response would invite her to watch him at soccer practice after school or meet in the hallway or to call him tonight.  At lunch, she would sit with the girls and he with the boys.  Both on the outside of the table so they could catch discreet glimpses of one another.  He would go to the soda machine and she would get up too.  They may brush up against one other getting soda and he would pass her his note.  Their hands would touch.  Electric.  At practice, she would sit in the bleachers with a friend and pretend not to watch and he would puff out his feathers, taking chances, being really aggressive on the field and showing off in front of her.  Eventually, you know what happens next.  We'll just close the curtain here.

Today, kids just text one another and the magic of passing the note and standing at the locker is lost.  Kids text one another even if they are in the same room together.  They then go home and much like stalking, will check out their Facebook page and all their friends and maybe some of the friends.  Something is lost in the mating dance and ritual.  Today, texting quickly escalates into sending selfies and it is not long before one of them requests a "show me yours, I'll show you mine" text. 

Steve W. of Ohio shared nude photos between himself and his girl friend when they were 15 and he kept all her  photos.  At the age or 25 he purchased a new phone and had the sales people transfer his data - and they saw the pics.  Why would a 25 year old man have nude pictures of a 15 year old girl on his phone?  Obviously a pedophile, pervert, sicko so they called the police.  Steve got 15 years for possession of child porn.  When he gets out he will be 40 but fear not parents.  Because he won't be able to live near a school, park, playground or bus stop; this creepy 40 year old guy won't be prowling the bushes for your unattended children.

Today, many parents give their children cell phones so they can contact one another at any time.  They can activate apps such as Latitude which will display their exact location at all times.  Well, at least their phones.  There are also dozens of other spy apps.  They enable you to see all of your child's texts both sent or received, listen in on phone calls, know of their location and receive copies of the pictures they take.  If your 16 year old daughter receives a nude photo of her 16 year old boy friend, you too will get a copy of it too but don't keep it.  For, in 15 years when you get out of prison for possessing child pornography, the sex offender registry won't allow you to live near a school, church, day care, park or playground (unless you have a car, then you can drive there).  But at least our unattended children will be safe from you because we'll spend $300,000,00 each year on that glorified photo album to know where you live, but not where you are. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axJszKh0qC4

Facebook; Part Two of Three

There have also been countless studies showing that high traffic users of Facebook have diminished social and interactive skills and smaller vocabularies.  A more recent study claimed that it promotes poor memory.  From the journal Psychological Science, they suggested that the act of uploading photos to Facebook may actually diminish what we remember about objects being photographed.  People just pull out their cameras and they just don't pay attention to what they're even looking at, like just capturing the photo is more important than actually being there.

There are so many reasons to dislike Facebook:
Zuckerberg stole it for one.  He is nothing more than a thief and plagiarist.
It is a breeding ground for drug dealing, prostitution, burglary and underage sex.  24 year old David Bradt of Colonie, NY was arrested for using FaceBook to meet with teenage high school girls for sex and to sell them drugs.
It advertises what you own and when is a good time for burglars to visit you.
People post pictures of other people without their permission. 
It promotes depression because we think other people are having more fun than we are.
It cuts productivity in the work place and in peoples' personal time.  Forbes reports that nearly half a trillion dollars is lost in productivity each year because of Facebook.
Facebook steals people's data.  This occurs frequently, especially when they have a "glitch" and everyone's privacy settings are reverted to open.  Wake up Facebook users you are being exploited.
It destroys the lives of people too stupid to know what NOT to put up there or, friending their bosses or friends of their boss.  There was a local story of a man who called in sick then posted pictures of himself at a ball game.  Guess who saw the picture?  Guess who got fired?
Lastly, it promotes stalking and has turned our society into voyeurs.  C'mon, you know you've done it.

It is no secret that Facebook's data mining and relentless exploitation of users is for their own profit.  Facebook gathers a lot of information about us and sells that information.  Why do you think it is free to the user?  They get your address, birth-date, information about your friends, your mothers maiden name, the name of your pets and other information we use for passwords and security.

 On August 29, 2013, Facebook posted a blog post about changes to its privacy policy, known as its Data Use Policy.  The changes were, according to the Washington Post, that that users’ name, profile picture and information such as brands they like can be used for “commercial, sponsored or related content.” An example of this would be that a business or other company could pay Facebook to display an individual users’ name and/or profile picture without compensating individual users or getting their permission.

There is another "Facebook-type page" called Zurker and thier members' IP addresses are not stored permanently by Zurker.  While search engine DuckDuckGo is known for not storing IP addresses, Zurker is the first social network to actually take this step.  They expunge your IP information  from the logs within 72 hours. Therefore, if - for example - a government agency were to compel Zurker by court order to furnish the activity log of a particular member, that log would not contain the IP addresses of the member, making it substantially more difficult to identify the individual's name and location. Identifying a users' identity is the singular reason court orders are sought by law enforcement when cracking down on whistle-blowers.  Facebook General Counsel Ted Ullyot said the Facebook requests in the second half of last year from law enforcement sought data about somewhere between 18,000 and 19,000 individual Facebook accounts.

Zurker is taking this step because in these times, when government intrusion into the lives of citizens is basically unrestricted, it is important to provide members with a shield of privacy. Freedom of Speech is not Freedom of Speech if (a) it is censored, or (b) if the speaker is at risk of losing his/her personal liberty because of what he/she said. In an ideal world, in which the government could be trusted, expunging IP addresses from logs would not be necessary, but unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world.  As an activist and community democracy protester I applaud Zurker for this move .

As I said, Facebook promotes crime, gets people fired, wastes time and promotes stalking.  It is also a haven for bullying, online exploitation and hate speech.  Just go to any media outlet Facebook page and read some of the comments from good people like you and me.  Most of us wouldn't speak like that in public but for some reason we think that the world wide web is anonymous.

I once heard a homily about Facebook.  The pastor said "It is true, the scripture verse in Matthew which says "Who can add one day to his life by worrying?" One of my sins is envy." the cleric went on to say. "I envy people who are proclaiming on the Internet how glorious there relationship is. I should not be "following" other people too much on the Internet. That is a big temptation these days. You’re out on vacation and you want to make your friends back home jealous, so you post every detail of your itinerary on Facebook, you tweet about it on Twitter and you check yourself in on Foursquare. It’s natural. We all want to brag about how much fun we’re having.  In reality, you are providing information which can easily make you a target for burglars."

Social networks have become part of our daily lives, but people need to consider the risks of posting their location on these sites. Facebook burglaries are real and growing in popularity.  You may think that checking in at the airport is a nice way to let your friends and family know that you’re going on holiday, but in reality you are also letting people know that your home is empty and an easy target.  If you want to share your holiday plans, don’t do it in real time, wait until you are home.

Facebook has added features like a scrolling update of comments friends have made on others’ pages. Although it may be fun to see what your friends are saying to people you don’t know, that also means that people you don’t know may be able to see some of your updates -- including the ones that say, "Can’t wait to leave for Hawaii tomorrow.”

Although, who needs to fear Facebook when your iPhone automatically transmits GPS location data, which experts say can easily be used to track a user's location if it is uploaded onto a site like a blog that doesn't remove the information.

Oh Big Brother, how did you get in when we were not looking?