Everything I believe in is being violated in Iraq, its just overwhelming the mess this country has created. I just finished reading a New York Times article, which talks about how
Shiite's and Sunni's are segregating, fleeing there homes for fear of death. 

The times reports:
The Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration estimated that at least 5,500 families have moved, with the biggest group being 1,250 families settling in the Shiite holy city of Najaf after leaving Baghdad and Sunni-dominated towns in central Iraq. "The families are living with relatives or in abandoned buildings and a crisis of food and water shortages is starting to build", officials say. 

There is no government that can stop civil war in Iraq not even if Iraq's forms a central government at this point.

The only solution may be segregation of Shiite's and Sunni's, let them form there own states and govern themselves, share in the oil revenues and have American troops, in the short term try to keep some level of peace.

I can't think of any other solution, other than civil war which will result in tens of thousands, if not millions of deaths, before a winner is declared and then that winner will governs harshly as Sadam did.

I'm sure at this point, creating an integrated society in Iraq is impossible, this is the legacy we created.

A legacy of hate, killing and segregation.

I'm not sure, once segregated Shiite's and Sunni's still won't wage war with each other. But it will be easier for American troops to manage the situation if the two sides are apart.

Segregation is a terrible solution, yet it may be the only way to prevent millions of dead people in a civil war. There is no way to stop the cycle of hate at this point. Its like separating two kids fighting, a time out, a calming down period, then after time, after they have calmed down they can try to get along.

This may be a simple analogy, yet I think it is working in the Balkans. Sometimes segregation is the only answer.

If there are other practical solutions I would love to hear them

 

Dale died this past Sunday. I knew Dale, but not on a personal level, yet her death has touched and saddened me. Dale was the mother of a friend I trained with. I haven't trained with Susan in quite some while. Yet Dale death has really saddened my soul.

I went to the funeral heard the eulogy's but before I ever got to the funeral I was grieving yet I didn't know why. The next day I went with a friend of mine to visit Susan and her family (shiver call) and got to meet Susan's sister, farther and other friends, all beautiful people.

As I sat there, I though to myself, "It wasn't my lose." Yet I was hurting, hurting badly. It was easy to be saddened when you looked into the eyes of Dale's loved ones. There was such a sense of lose and I found an emotional connection that almost brought me to tears.

Yet my grieving was personal, I was grieving and yet I didn't know why.

Dale died in a terribly violent way. She was jogging on one of the most peaceful jogging paths there is. This path travels north south across long Island. Along the way one must cross streets that go east west. Dale didn't look up, she runs sort of looking down and she just didn't look up, she got to an intersection and ran right into an oncoming car, she died almost instantly.

The morning Dale was struck I was at a race out east, if I wasn't at that race I would have been on the same jogging path as Dale, I surely would have said hello, I say hello to almost everyone. Dale would have looked up, god all she needed to do was look up and she would still be with us today. I know I probably couldn't have saved Dale; there were others on that path who knew Dale.

But I keep wondering god why didn't she look up why couldn't a stick fall a bird chirp, anything to make her look up.

I feel Dale died on my jogging path, I love that trail, I run on it every chance I get. When I'm not running I'm taking pictures of the lakes and birds in Bethpage Park.

I lost someone who shared a placed I love to go. If two people share the same space even if they didn't really know each other, then they are connected by that space; her presence is and always will be part of the Bethpage Bike path.

 I lost a fellow runner who shared a place we both loved to travel on. The trail I run will have one less person to share a hello with and I will feel a loss forever.

 

Changing the world requires living the words one preaches. If you are a Strong example of peace then people will notice you envy you and want those qualities in themselves. We must be approachable as teachers of commonsense, and caring.

To change the world you need to be out in the world, even if it's your local world. To be alone in peace doesn't spread the feeling of peace. People need to feel our peace and understanding, and not be lectured. If we project love and caring, love and caring will extend beyond ourselves. Zaadz is a way to extend our love and understanding to others though community and writing. Zaadz can be a large group of people most with an understanding  peace, so that anyone wanting to go down the road of peace won't feel alone.

I often bewildered by the behavior of humans and in awe at how terrible they behave to one another. I've asked myself many times, "how it is possible for a person to do evil and completely detach oneself from feeling the hurt they are imposing on another person?"

It's clear the word empathy doesn't come up very often, even in the context of kindness. Empathy is just not a very used or understood concept. Yet I believe it is this very concept of feeling empathy to our fellow man that can bring the human race closer to being civilized. Hurting only becomes easy when one can detaches from the feeling of others. Compounding the problem is the sense of superiority one group often feels toward another.

So it comes down to understanding the missing component in human nature that can save us from our own self destruction. Its not kindness, there is plenty of kindness in the world. The ability to empathize with others is the elements of thought that's missing. This missing element hinders our ability to reach peaceful decisions when dealing with people unlike ourselves.

It is easy to see why our institutions preach the concept of kindness because it is easy to be kind to those around us and those like us, but for there to be world peace, we as a group would have to have kindness toward those unlike us and hence be able to feel there hurt understand there pain empathize with there needs.

The most evil societies are the ones that have no feeling toward those that are different than themselves. For peace to be accepted among dissimilar societies, the concept of empathy would have to be universally accepted. It only takes one evil society to take advantage of another's higher ability of feeling leading to there hesitation to kill and hence making them vulnerable to being killed.  

There is no answer to this dilemma; it would seem the whole world would have to change at once as if driven by some great event. Yet I hope that we don't all become as one, but instead understand that we are all different, feel each others pain and have understanding for one another's uniqueness.

The moving of my feet
Running along
Alone in the grace
I push , but its not a race

Troubles can't catch me now
I've escaped the days hard foul

I enjoy the simple act
Legs pushing me along my intended track
Can't worry about the energy I lack

Thinking about the wind
The path The sky
The beauty of a tree
Simple thoughts that connect the earth and me

I just got up and I'm wondering if my morning motions are being performed by a robotic person, who is not really alive yet. I sat up in bed and couldn't figure out how to shut off the alarm clock, totally dazed I just wondered where the sound was coming from. Its a strange feeling of still being a sleep yet sitting up and dealing with a seemingly unknown reality. After drinking a cup of coffee, my reality is coming back to me and the tasks of the morning are being remembered. So now I'm just tired, awake and feeling weird as the task of the 9 to 5 job become in focus. Of course the first task is to show up at the dank building at nine. So I wonder if my morning daze and inability to go from a sleep state to a fully awake state isn't a ploy by my mind to just avoid having to start the nine to five grind. Well now I'm late because of writing this blog, so off i go.

So the other day I took a few hours experimenting with a weird lens combination. Well the pictures I showed (at another site ) drew some interesting comments. Out of the woodwork came all these people who had to tell me there was vignetting in the pictures, Like I didn't know. Then advise me that I should buy new lens, lens that cost thousands Yet I was trying to show the interesting effects the lens combination created not technically perfect images. Has digital imaging forced everyone to worry even more about lens that cost 5000 dollars and not photography as an art form. Is framing a good or I should say interesting images gone. Is intensional distortion introduced by the photographer and not done in Photoshop, just considered wrong these days?