Helpful Hands:

• The Red Cross.
  Addition prompted by the earthquake in Turkey this month (8/99).
• Doctors Without Borders
  Prompted by the same tragedy as above. Doctors Without Borders is a branch of the international Médecins Sans Frontières, which sends volunteer doctors around the world to work in extremely hazardous and minimalist conditions.

The Hunger Site, a button-click a day provides food
to starving people somewhere in the world.

A few worthy Gay, Lesbian, or Bi websites:

• Bisexual Options
  Bisexuality and links.
• Blacklist
  Black lesbigay people from around the world. Information, links.
• Lesbian.Org
  A massive amount of information and links.
• Anything That Moves
  A major bisexual link, associated with the magazine of the same name.
• Human Rights Campaign: Working for Lesbian & Gay Equal Rights
  Information and more on current issues pertaining to gays and lesbians.

Internet freedom-of-speech organizations:

• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Voters Telecomm Watch, which hosts the Citizen's Internet Empowerment Coalition. No longer being updated.
• Center for Democracy and Technology
• Feminists Against Censorship. A British organisation (informal).
• Feminists for Free Expression. An American organization, likewise I think informal.

The Internet Privacy Coalition, for the right to privacy.

An all-round worthwhile organization devoted to civil liberties
(watch that we don't phobia ourselves into letting them disappear...)
is the American Civil Liberties Union.

AIDS awareness:

• An index of AIDS resources.
• Stop AIDS, this site based in San Francisco.

Some Other Sites to Flounder into, just for the Halibut, for a Whale of an interesting time:

• The Sandman. I always wanted an Australian connection. Herein lie GIF's and JPEG's of Death and Dream, and various other items from Neil Gaiman's comic book series, Sandman.
  (The Sandman's run is done, although the books are still available. Meanwhile, I find myself reading The Invisibles, The Books of Magic, Preacher, and Transmetropolitan.)
• Stone Pages. Here we find information about European megaliths and ancient archaological sites. The photography is outstanding.
• The Chauvet Caves, France. An excellent resource (despite some annoying Java) concerning the prehistoric cave art discovered in 1994.
• The Crop Circle Connector. Fun stuff, and the design patterns are often fascinating and skillfully executed. I'm really not convinced that these were created by aliens/extraterrestrials/what-have-you, but there's been a lot of quality work and care put into this site.
• Legends. From King Arthur to beyond.
• I've been enjoying some ventures up into Northampton, western Massachusetts, of late. This site is pretty informative about that town.

Pleiades

Really Scary Stuff:

1. Matt Shepard's murder in Wyoming in the fall of 1998. There's now a website, Matthew Shepard Online Resources, which talks about the situation, and about an overall ambiance of hate, and how this can serve to "excuse" unacceptable behavior.

2. James Byrd, Jr.'s senseless murder in Jaspar Texas. Hate is still not a family value that anyone should espouse.

3. Women's Rights in Afghanistan. Visit this site to learn about how the Taliban is sweeping away any vestige of women's rights, and what (little) you might be able to do.

   A second site, published by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, is a native group putting their lives on the line to get the word out, working hard to help their people. Strongly recommended.

4. What would you say to a person who said, "If you love me, you will obey what I command"? You'd probably tell them to buzz off, politely or impolitely. If it were a spouse stating this to his or her partner, you'd recognize that that relationship had serious communications troubles, to put it mildly. If a child told you ("If you really love me, mom, you'd let me have that..."), depending upon the age of that child, you'd recognize that this is the way a very young child thinks, and you'd deal accordingly depending upon her or his age.

   That quote, however, is the Promise Keepers' theme for 1997, and is taken from John 14:15 as allegedly spoken by Jesus, and is at least somewhat out of context. According to the Promise Keepers, this is what God demands. They are filling stadiums across the country with men who are taking in the message that it is all right to bring back some of the less savory family traditions -- ie, the wife is subordinate to the man; the man is subordinate to higher ups in the "PK" hierarchy. If you love them, you will obey them. There's a serious logical fallacy here. You can indeed love without obeying. And indeed, whatever happened to the principle of reciprocity? Does this mean that this "head man" need have no love for his wife, since he is under no obligation to obey her in return?

   I think one can make and keep one's own promises regardless of gender without this evident and inherent compromise to integrity.

Somewhat Scary Stuff:

1. There's a fellow named Bob Barr who is an elected member of Congress. A trip to his website declares that he is in favor of individual freedom, whatever that means. I wonder, as at the same site he voted in favor of the "Defense" of Marriage bill -- which doesn't defend marriage by doing rational stuff like getting at the causes of divorce, spousal abuse and the like, but "defends" it by limiting who can use the institution on a basis of chromosomes, not lack of love. As if two heterosexual people who love each other and wish to get married are in any ways limited or threatened by any other people chosing consensually what to do in their own lives somewhere else. (Not that the legal system can responsibly get into the act of defining the emotion of love to begin with...)

   Well, that's not a battle that's going to be won in my lifetime.

   Individual freedom for Bob Barr also doesn't seem to relate to religion, either.

   An army base down in Texas has permitted religious observations for a number of religions -- well, if you permit one, you really do have to permit them all. Obviously, methods of observation, if illegal for their own well-defined reasons, may indeed limit how these particular celebrations are observed. But Bob Barr doesn't see it that way. The Army is sticking to its guns (ahem, pardon the pun), and continues to support the rights of minority religions to be celebrated. Indeed, the Army Chaplain's handbook (1978 edition -- is there a more recent edition as well???) contains sections describing religious practices for two Witchcraft groups, as well as for a variety of other minority religions.

   But I still wonder what the hell the "Honorable" Barr considers to be an "individual freedom"? Could it be really only based on what he wants for himself?

2. This could be potentially really scary stuff, but just take a look at the Skeleton Closet, brought to you by Real People for Real Change -- they minimize their own personal political biases to bring you the dirt on all the US presidential candidates and wannabees. While some of the dirt is merely a smudging, the word HYPOCRISY looms large on both sides of the bench. That means you can't trust 'em any further than you can throw 'em -- big surprise there, but it's nice to have the details at one's fingertips.

3. Earlier this summer, a school district in Mississippi banned a student from wearing the Star of David (he was Jewish), stating it was a gang symbol, or close enough. Perhaps. I'd like to see a gang take up the wearing of a cross (right side up), somewhere, somehow, some gang is no doubt already doing this. Anyhow, this decision was reversed, probably due to adverse publicity.

   Now, there's a school district in Roswell, NM, which is banning the wearing of pentagrams, due to whatever nefarious reasons you can imagine. Never mind that this, too, is a symbol of a set of religious beliefs. I'm guessing it will take a whole lot longer to get this decision reversed. Let's hope it gets reversed. Or maybe, a Modest Proposal (a la Jonathan Swift): ALL religious symbols get the axe on our nation's schoolchildren. A better idea: let the Roswell school district take a lesson from Mississippi, and reverse their tune. At any rate, does anyone seriously believe that making all students dress alike will end or modify scapegoating, gangs, bullying, and the like??? (As a former student who went to both public and parochial schools, I laugh hard and cynically at that silly notion...)

4. White Plains, New York, September 1999 ce: There is a dispute in a school system their about the use of an altar during school time for Earth Day awareness (an Earth-worship activity, over and above a conservationist/ecology message that the date can provide on its own). Three sets of Catholic families filed a lawsuit against the school for this (saying this and other in-class activities promoted Satanism, the occult, and New Age religion). While I obviously don't believe these activities promoted that eternal bugaboo, Satanism, the parents have a central point here -- the freedom of religion for these families was indeed violated by these activities. The school district is appealing (news item Sept. 15) the decision of a Federal judge that they were in violation. I'm with the judge and the parents on this one. We Pagans who want to be treated as part of a series of serious religions; well, we gotta play it ethically.