Matt’s Cuppa

I’d like to post the text of an email I received today. Regardless of your stance (or mine) on the American presence in Iraq, I think that we must still take advantage of what opportunities we can to provide support for the soldiers stationed there, if not as soldiers, then as fellow human beings who have left family and friends behind.

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When you’re disposing of your person cell phones please keep this nonprofit
organization in mind as it benefits our soldiers stationed overseas.
Please share this email in your agency with all employees, friends and
family.

http://www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/index.html

Cell Phones for Soldiers hopes to turn old cell phones into more than 12
million minutes of prepaid calling cards for U.S. troops stationed overseas
in 2008. To do so, Cell Phones for Soldiers expects to collect 15,000 cell
phones each month through a network of more than 3,000 collection sites
across the country.

The phones are sent to ReCellular, which pays Cell Phones for Soldiers for
each donated phone - enough to provide an hour of talk time to soldiers
abroad.

“Americans will replace an estimated 130 million cell phones this year,”
says Mike Newman, vice president of ReCellular, “with the majority of
phones either discarded or stuffed in a drawer. Most people don’t realize
that the small sacrifice of donating their unwanted phones can have a
tremendous benefit for a worthy cause like Cell Phones for Soldiers.”

Cell Phones for Soldiers was founded by teenagers Robbie and Brittany
Bergquist from Norwell, Mass., with $21 of their own money. Since then, the
registered 501c3 non-profit organization has raised almost $1 million in
donations and distributed more than 400,000 prepaid calling cards to
soldiers serving overseas.

“Cell Phones for Soldiers started as a small way to show our family’s
appreciation for the men and women who have sacrificed the day-to-day
contact with their own families to serve in the U.S. armed forces,” says
the teens’ father, Bob Bergquist. “Over the past few years, we have been
overwhelmed by the generosity of others. But, we have also seen the need to
support our troops continue to grow as more troops are sent overseas for
longer assignments.”

Through increased fundraising efforts, the Bergquist family hopes to raise
more than $9 million in the next five years to fund new programs, such as
providing video phones with prepaid service to allow soldiers abroad to see
their families on a regular basis.

Link to Drop Off Sites Throughout Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota:
http://www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/locate_minnesota.html

Links/Articles supporting this organization

American Federation of Government Employees Union (AFGE) -
http://www.afge.org/index.cfm?page=VeteransAffairs&Fuse=Content&ContentID=257

Dept of Defense, Defense Link -
https://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=15806

CNN Video Story “Young People Who Rock” -
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2007/12/14/ypwr.intv.berquist.cnn?iref=videosearch

ATT - http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=7930

Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire -
http://www.csrwire.com/News/10226.html

Popularity: 25% [?]

“We can then make the ecological decision not to pollute the world with our own confusion.”

That quote is from the book The Buddha at War by Robert Sachs. What he’s referring to is our tendency to let things fall out of our mouth for reasons other than to communicate whatever it is we’ve said. For example, how many of us have dropped someone’s name at a networking function either to gain prestige or to facilitate an introduction?

I’m really drawn to this quotation because there are so many messages embedded in the words. (Being an environmental advocate, the ecological comparison won points with me as well.) I’ve spent the past few days reflecting on Sachs’ imagery. One can almost see a thick oily fog of conversation swirling around the average break room.

Sachs’ call to pay more attention to what we say to others is not a simple admonishment that we don’t lie or don’t gossip. It’s more like an invitation. He’s giving us permission to not say anything. And if you’ll pardon the pun, this like a breath of fresh air.

What Sachs’ is doing is relieving us of the burden of filling the air with sound. With this burden lifted, we begin to really notice what goes on around us. We pick up on details that were inaccessible to us before we stopped talking. And we begin to hear the real meaning beyond a person’s words.

All of this sounds good, but where’s the practical application, right? That is where things get really interesting! Chances are that if you say only what you actually mean to communicate, your conversation will be in much higher demand. Simply put, if you want to be recognized as an expert in your niche, stop offering advice on things that aren’t in your niche! Instead, use the time to observe the situation and identify the real needs.

There is an ethical responsibility that goes with Sachs’ words as well. It’s not enough to not say the wrong things. Once we’ve developed the skills to discern the difference between what is Sachs’ pollution of confusion, and what is not, we have a social obligation to use those skills to prevent harm rather than cause it. In other words, insider trading isn’t allowed!

If you’re like me you find it odd that not talking can increase your credibility and reputation. And that not speaking is a skill that must be developed. I think this highlights how mired in the pollution of our own confusion we each can get if we aren’t conscious of how we are contributing to the conversation.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Wikileaks Censored Tibet protest videos March 2008, AVI video encoding

WikiLeaks has put together a (large) collection of video footage relating to the protests in Tibet. Some of this footage is of the actual protests and some are interviews with interested persons, including H.H. The Dalai Lama.

In support of an international investigation and because the WikiLeaks servers were receiving so many hits, I posted all of these videos on one of my sites. I will also be uploading the zip archive of all videos and a html index page. If you have five minutes right now, please watch one of the videos and tell someone about it. If you have space, please download any of the videos or the archive and host them on your site. Then tell someone about it.

The Olympic Games are, from their very inception, a celebration of peace. How can we prepare for peace by unleashing violence on our closest neighbors?

Popularity: 18% [?]

[WL-News] Wikileaks releases 35 censored videos of Chinese suppresion in Tibet

Wikileaks Press Release Tue Mar 18 10:00:00 GMT 2008 Wikileaks has released 35 censored videos relating to the protests in Tibet and has called on bloggers around the world to help drive the footage through the so called ‘Great Firewall of China’. http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Censored_Tibet_March_2008_protest_videos_-_AVI_format The transparency group’s move comes as a response to the the Chinese Public Security Bureau’s carte-blanche censorship of youtube, the BBC, CNN, the Guardian and other sites carrying video footage of the Tibetan people’s recent heroic stand against the inhumane Chinese occupation of Tibet. Wikileaks has also placed the collection in two easy to use archives together with a HTML index page so they may be easily copied, placed on websites, emailed across the internet as attachments and uploaded to peer to peer networks.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Swiss bank Baer denies Web site tax scheme claims | Industries | Financial Services & Real Estate | Reuters

If you’ve been following the Wikileaks.org lawsuit in the news, you
won’t be too surprised that the site is back up. Because of the
potential First Amendment issues, they were able to draw in what BOL called
“the big guns”, including, but not limited to the American Civil
Liberties Union, the Project on Government Oversight, and the
Electronic Frontier Foundation.

And then there’s the whole Streisand Effect
thing. In the end, and regardless of the truth of their statements, BJB
is now a household name that is associated with offshore money
laundering. But this latest article really had me scratching my head. Here’s why:

The bank said the documents were
falsified and it denied the claims made in them.

and that the documents had been in the public domain since at
least 2005.

So, the documents are fakes, and have been public domain since ‘05? I’m waiting for someone to explain this to me.

Popularity: 9% [?]

If you delete a social-networking profile, does it still exist? | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

Popularity: 10% [?]

I am in the midst of reading the book Ethics for the New Millennium, a book by the Dalai Lama, which I highly recommend. In it, he talks about taking time each day to reflect on one thing we’ve done for someone in a spirit of compassion.

Following this line of thinking, I am challenging myself to come up with one thing each day that I’ve done for the environment. I’m certainly not talking about setting unrealistic expectations. However small our contribution to what is important to us, we have to begin someplace. So, every day, somehow, I will give something back.

My contribution today? Instead of running the dishwasher, we hand-washed our dishes and let them dry in the dishwasher racks. We saved water and electricity this way.

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Popularity: 20% [?]