Bardic Moment

I'm listening to some music right now, while browsing through the archives of various lists, and a very profound thought has struck me. I first heard the song "Russians" by Sting as a member of HOPE. It was a song on a cd of Adara's, and we both enjoyed it, and it was played a great many times by both myself and Adara while we were working on things relating to HOPE while we lived together. It's actually been a favorite of mine since then, despite the negative association with HOPE.

Now, sitting here and listening to it again, and really taking the time to focus on what is said, I can scarcely believe the irony of it all. This song, played so frequently by us then, directly addresses the same attitudes of paranoia, agressive bravado, and ignorance which were prevalent in HOPE back then, and which indeed were characteristic of the organization throughout much of its history even after I left them. Rather an odd coincidence, if you believe in coincidences.

I really, really like this song. :)

*grins and hits the repeat single track button...*

Question:

In December of 2000, in order to disprove claims made by Adara/Silverfox/Cha'tai'naira/Sierra (Yes, she does go by a lot of names) and a spokesperson for HOPE. named Rev. John, I posted to the elven realities list two messages taken from the administrative email of HOPE, which I had access to by virtue of having made the account in the first place and the password not having been changed after I left HOPE. Those emails are in the archives of ER. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/elven-realities/message/25217) I also, around that same time, offered to send additional emails privately, to those who were interested, which further proved HOPE to be spreading false information about itself and its practices. Does anyone retain copies of those offlist emails in their personal archives, or know someone else who might? They would be useful in documenting HOPE's activities in the past, particularly the falsehoods and half-truths that it has previously offered as its public face.

Edit: Any archives of the private debate with Rev. John which occurred in an off-ER cclist during the same time period might also be helpful, if anyone has them.

Venting

*growls* You know, compiling this stuff has once again reminded me that HOPE claims to have a member named Jarin still. I've never seen any evidence of this person existing (not even posts claiming to have been made by him), and my own past experience with HOPE leads me to believe that it is a ghost-account/morph-account/sockpuppet created using my name after I left the organization. This *annoys* me. Anyone have any ideas on how we could find some solid evidence one way or another about that?

Lessons of Congruence

Being hit with an interesting lesson this evening... the lesson that groups which, in essence, have similar goals and even similar methods can bring about drastically different ends depending on how they approach the things they do. It's like one Flow is a dark mirror of the other.

The particular example that I came across tonight were two approaches used by those who are willing to die for their beliefs and to secure an end to injustice. In the middle east and many other areas, that impulse seems to have most often manifested as the suicide bomber... a practice which I think most people would have to agree is immoral and a tactic only used by terrorists, as it targets the guilty and innocent alike. But something was brought to my attention this evening which I'm surprised that I haven't heard about before... something amazingly similar to that practice, but which is not a tool of terror. In the early 1960's, Buddhist monks in Vietnam set themselves (and only themselves, no innocent victims involved in this) on fire to protest repression. These two practices seem so similar to each other... both trying to use suicide as a tool of social change, both involving people willing to give up their own lives to try to help others who will be alive after they are gone... but it's obvious that one is terribly, terribly wrong, while the other is actually rather noble.

I wonder what the world would be like if more people stopped and explored similar Flows like this, found the good ones of which the others are dark mirrors, and pursued them instead of the negative alternatives?