one of us?

was she one of us once? we wonder
as someone pulls off the newspapers

they shake their heads and nod and fill out forms
has this become some kind of stark ritual- cold emotionless?
or simply common?

she has no identification but marks and rings- cheap and tarnished
all her fingers yes, her veins collapsed from intra-venous
dear God! such prison bars and now such freedom!

her hair thick and clotted- oh! with who knows what?
i have not seen this type of thing so much i think
once a man lay face down in the street
curled like a fetus –I won’t go on –
i saw two men beating on one.
we stood high up
the seventh floor the office building where i worked
having coffee at the windows watching

what can be done? this woman dead – i wonder
not how she could come to die
but that she lived so long.

image!! no, not now! not while i stand in uniform!
go! get away! i bat at you and blink my mind
re-focus upon the faces and my routine
go! i’m not afraid of you! just ashamed

the tightening of my throat the welling behind my eyes
the trembling coming up my spine now showing clearly in my fingers
look away! oh God! don’t cry of all things! some fool!
you’re supposed to be a professional
your purpose is to gather the facts
you’ve come to gather information: what story?
what story?

i am sorry i speak to no one
the trap was well laid for me
the image draws me in,
i hear it crying, soft and ancient
wistfully speaking to me:
“i am not a presence … i am only you
the song you sing is the song of ages
born anew each moment
come, come now, come in, come see
come; for we scarcely have this moment”

and though no one sees i am folding
like the empty aged newspaper from yesterday
bending along the well-worn creases and blown at the edges
trying to hang onto my familiar shape
i am going despite my resistance
despite my heart-felt reluctance
my soul screams at me that
i am also the victim

and far, far away in time, in ages past
in other worlds than this – a tender girl
hair shining and brightly tied in pigtails
bouncing balls about a play yard
one big and shiny red comes softly to meet her palms
and then rebounds and comes again

and now still petite, a taller, slimmer one
sitting on wooden bench
learns to write in alphabet and speak in grammar
come night she scrubs her face and assumes her proper habits
and in moonlight sits with dolls – old familiar play things
and dreams of what? becoming a woman? and more?

yes!! but a day comes. things fall
and the tender green shoot is bent
as another tree is plowed under at the foundation
come a vile night, atrocities fall
deathly rings dance and sting
depression comes in floods
blackening waters swirl, a turgid spin
we lose perspective

and suddenly violently like steel striking against steel
again and again that same darkness the lightness of day
surge and flow now in maddening disarray

see! just see how this hallowed body is plundered
for this lifetime!

and what are we to expect from one another?
i cast my eyes upon myself – so much indifference?
the pride in things we’re given and what we take
what we call our accomplishments
the pleasures of our good fortune and the time of day?
a quickness in our gait
a professional demeanor?

i walk away from the scene, now stung bitterly into silence
i am a story-teller
a giver of facts and many fables
i move not earth or sky, nor barely shape the wind
i have a chance to hold onto myself
perhaps i will

and was she one of us once?
indeed! a beggar at the wealthy gate
i’ve passed her way many times before
Thanks Emery. Yes.
Thanks Butterfly for your kind comments and analysis. That’s basically what I see, what you said.
Ah Granny Jill. If you like it, I am fine. Just fine. Hope to write something that you enjoy. Really.
Peace, you’re reaaly an angel. Poetry may be in the technique for some people, but I think the sentiment is more important..

Technorati Tags: coffee, creases, dear god, don t cry, emotionless, faces, fetus, fingers, fool, freedom, heart, newspapers, presence, prison bars, reluctance, resistance, shape, spine, two men, veins

Would it make Sense to do Hand Scans of all Visa Applicants?
The veins in the hand are totally unique to each individual, and they don’t change. A scan can be digitized. That digital record can then be stored, transmitted, searched, and compared in real time to a newly generated scan.

So here’s a guy who wants to get on a plane. He puts his hand on the scanner. It generates a digitized record, which can then be compared to the hand scan record in his official documents, including his visa.

The stupid US State Department made a spelling error inputting Mr. Abdulmuttalab’s name into their computer, so they did not realize they had given him a visa. That’s why his visa was never cancelled.

With a digitized biometric measurement — you really do know who you are dealing with. You can be sure that the visa applicant is the same person as gets on the plane and is the same person that shows up in court and is the same person as goes to jail. All one person — all one scan — one set of numbers that becomes a part of all official documents generated about that person.

Without biometrics we have no idea who we are dealing with. It’s bad enough that we can’t tell our friends from our enemies, but that problem is greatly compounded if we can’t even identify the same human being two days in a row. We also can’t reliably search databases for a specific human being if we have no way to positively identify that specific human being.

This probably all seems like a detail. Not anything that anyone needs to care about. But if that’s not how you feel, then go ahead and print out this post and send it to your Congressman or Senator. If only a few hundred people on Capitol Hill had knowledge about the requirements of national security, then probably with three of four years there could be some marginal improvements. Within a few decades we could actually have a good system at State and DHS, assuming that 100% of the relevant Committee Chairmen became well-informed.

So, do your part if you think hand vein scans would make sense. Do you?

Technorati Tags: biometrics, capitol hill, committee chairmen, congressman, decades, dhs, enemies, hand scan, hand scans, marginal improvements, measurement, national security, relevant committee, scanner, search databases, spelling error, us state department, veins, visa applicant, visa applicants

The veins in the hand are totally unique to each individual, and they don’t change. A scan can be digitized. That digital record can then be stored, transmitted, searched, and compared in real time to a newly generated scan.

So here’s a guy who wants to get on a plane. He puts his hand on the scanner. It generates a digitized record, which can then be compared to the hand scan record in his official documents, including his visa.

The stupid US State Department made a spelling error inputting Mr. Abdulmuttalab’s name into their computer, so they did not realize they had given him a visa. That’s why his visa was never cancelled.

With a digitized biometric measurement — you really do know who you are dealing with. You can be sure that the visa applicant is the same person as gets on the plane and is the same person that shows up in court and is the same person as goes to jail. All one person — all one scan — one set of numbers that becomes a part of all official documents generated about that person.

Without biometrics we have no idea who we are dealing with. It’s bad enough that we can’t tell our friends from our enemies, but that problem is greatly compounded if we can’t even identify the same human being two days in a row. We also can’t reliably search databases for a specific human being if we have no way to positively identify that specific human being.

This probably all seems like a detail. Not anything that anyone needs to care about. But if that’s not how you feel, then go ahead and print out this post and send it to your Congressman or Senator. If only a few hundred people on Capitol Hill had knowledge about the requirements of national security, then probably with three of four years there could be some marginal improvements. Within a few decades we could actually have a good system at State and DHS, assuming that 100% of the relevant Committee Chairmen became well-informed.

So, do your part if you think hand vein scans would make sense. Do you?

Technorati Tags: biometrics, capitol hill, committee chairmen, congressman, decades, dhs, enemies, hand scan, marginal improvements, measurement, national security, real time, relevant committee, scanner, search databases, spelling error, us state department, veins, visa applicant, would make sense

Would Positive Identification of Foreigners Be Too Politically Incorrect to Do?
Would it make Sense to do Hand Scans of all Visa Applicants?
The veins in the hand are totally unique to each individual, and they don’t change. A scan can be digitized. That digital record can then be stored, transmitted, searched, and compared in real time to a newly generated scan.

So here’s a guy who wants to get on a plane. He puts his hand on the scanner. It generates a digitized record, which can then be compared to the hand scan record in his official documents, including his visa.

The stupid US State Department made a spelling error inputting Mr. Abdulmuttalab’s name into their computer, so they did not realize they had given him a visa. That’s why his visa was never cancelled.

With a digitized biometric measurement — you really do know who you are dealing with. You can be sure that the visa applicant is the same person as gets on the plane and is the same person that shows up in court and is the same person as goes to jail. All one person — all one scan — one set of numbers that becomes a part of all official documents generated about that person.

Without biometrics we have no idea who we are dealing with. It’s bad enough that we can’t tell our friends from our enemies, but that problem is greatly compounded if we can’t even identify the same human being two days in a row. We also can’t reliably search databases for a specific human being if we have no way to positively identify that specific human being.

This probably all seems like a detail. Not anything that anyone needs to care about. But if that’s not how you feel, then go ahead and print out this post and send it to your Congressman or Senator. If only a few hundred people on Capitol Hill had knowledge about the requirements of national security, then probably with three of four years there could be some marginal improvements. Within a few decades we could actually have a good system at State and DHS, assuming that 100% of the relevant Committee Chairmen became well-informed.

So, do your part if you think hand vein scans would make sense. Do you?

Technorati Tags: biometrics, capitol hill, congressman, decades, dhs, enemies, foreigners, hand scan, hand scans, marginal improvements, measurement, national security, real time, scanner, search databases, spelling error, us state department, veins, visa applicant, visa applicants

Does "Change" include Upgrading Our National Security Methods?
Would Positive Identification of Foreigners Be Too Politically Incorrect to Do?
Would it make Sense to do Hand Scans of all Visa Applicants?
The veins in the hand are totally unique to each individual, and they don’t change. A scan can be digitized. That digital record can then be stored, transmitted, searched, and compared in real time to a newly generated scan.

So here’s a guy who wants to get on a plane. He puts his hand on the scanner. It generates a digitized record, which can then be compared to the hand scan record in his official documents, including his visa.

The stupid US State Department made a spelling error inputting Mr. Abdulmuttalab’s name into their computer, so they did not realize they had given him a visa. That’s why his visa was never cancelled.

With a digitized biometric measurement — you really do know who you are dealing with. You can be sure that the visa applicant is the same person as gets on the plane and is the same person that shows up in court and is the same person as goes to jail. All one person — all one scan — one set of numbers that becomes a part of all official documents generated about that person.

Without biometrics we have no idea who we are dealing with. It’s bad enough that we can’t tell our friends from our enemies, but that problem is greatly compounded if we can’t even identify the same human being two days in a row. We also can’t reliably search databases for a specific human being if we have no way to positively identify that specific human being.

This probably all seems like a detail. Not anything that anyone needs to care about. But if that’s not how you feel, then go ahead and print out this post and send it to your Congressman or Senator. If only a few hundred people on Capitol Hill had knowledge about the requirements of national security, then probably with three of four years there could be some marginal improvements. Within a few decades we could actually have a good system at State and DHS, assuming that 100% of the relevant Committee Chairmen became well-informed.

So, do your part if you think hand vein scans would make sense. Do you?
Note to Synful Visions:

The idea that not all terrorists fall into the Moslem foreigners mode was first proposed to me by Norm Mineta, and later by John English when you were in diapers riding on your tricycle.

Now I learn that no stupid idea ever dies, they always come round and round again, decades later, from the mouths of babes.

Yes, it is true that Tim McVeigh was not a moslem foreigner.

What’s also true is that 95% of the terrorists in the past ten year have been moslem foreigners.

So recognizing that connect is the path of reason.

We give more careful scrutiny to 23 year old males from Jordan than to 83 year old nuns from Australia.

Does this mean that some people get a pass and are not looked at?

No everyone is looked at.

Some with a higher level of detail.

Now comes this Synful person to tell me that if I ever take an interest in security matters maybe I can learn from him or his favorite author.

You see how brash people are today!

Technorati Tags: biometrics, capitol hill, congressman, decades, enemies, foreigners, hand scan, hand scans, marginal improvements, measurement, national security, real time, scanner, search databases, security methods, spelling error, us state department, veins, visa applicant, visa applicants

Has the USA learned anything about Perimeter Security in the Past Decade?
Case #1: The USS Cole — a man in a small boat who has not been identified in any way approaches to within 10 yards of the USS Cole. He looks like he might be delivering vegetables. But actually his boat contains a bomb. Many US lives are lost.

Case #2 Ten years later a man approaches a CIA Camp in Afghanistan. He is unidentifed, but he is wearing the uniform of the Aghanistan Army. He’s allowed into the camp. Under his uniform he’s wearing an explosive vest. Many US lives are lost.

Now, you may be thinking, yes but why didn’t you tell the government about perimeter security right after the USS Cole incident. I did, as a consultant to NCIS, at the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, I did.

Since that time the methods available for very reliable biometric identification have gotten cheaper, simpler and faster. They rely on the veins in the hand, which are just as distinctive as the iris of the eye, or the structure of the face.

That CIA camp in Afghanistan only had a few dozen people who were authorized to be in the camp at all. Let’s say 100 people. Well, that data could be stored in .0000000001% of a chip, in a very small battery power machine. It’s not a budget buster for the US government to get that done. With such a machine, and a single gate, there would be no need to speculate about somebody’s identity based on their uniform. Any person gaining ingress into the camp would be positively identified. Total cost, amortized over say 10,000 hand scans, about 17 cents per scan.

Hillary’s got 0 Billion to drop on the enviros at Copenhagen, but we can’t find 17 cents to keep patriots and heros safe from harm. In 10 years we have learned nothing, nada, nihil, zip, zilch about perimeter security. We can’t keep bombers off our planes, crashers out of White House dinner parties. We are hapless, lame, feckless.

We accept this because we are not very political people. Most of us just don’t care. In a more mentally alert nation, like Switzerland for example, the kind of failures we routinely have would be corrected. Someone would take steps — fixes would be put in place. If I gave my perimeter security presentation to the Swiss, they would have done something about it. Caring is actually important to getting things done.

Technorati Tags: battery power, bombers, budget buster, case 2, copenhagen, dinner parties, enviros, hillary, ingress, patriots, perimeter security, safe from harm, secretary of the navy, small boat, us government, uss cole, uss cole incident, veins, vest, zilch

Case #1: The USS Cole — a man in a small boat who has not been identified in any way approaches to within 10 yards of the USS Cole. He looks like he might be delivering vegetables. But actually his boat contains a bomb. Many US lives are lost.

Case #2 Ten years later a man approaches a CIA Camp in Afghanistan. He is unidentifed, but he is wearing the uniform of the Aghanistan Army. He’s allowed into the camp. Under his uniform he’s wearing an explosive vest. Many US lives are lost.

Now, you may be thinking, yes but why didn’t you tell the government about perimeter security right after the USS Cole incident. I did, as a consultant to NCIS, at the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, I did.

Since that time the methods available for very reliable biometric identification have gotten cheaper, simpler and faster. They rely on the veins in the hand, which are just as distinctive as the iris of the eye, or the structure of the face.

That CIA camp in Afghanistan only had a few dozen people who were authorized to be in the camp at all. Let’s say 100 people. Well, that data could be stored in .0000000001% of a chip, in a very small battery power machine. It’s not a budget buster for the US government to get that done. With such a machine, and a single gate, there would be no need to speculate about somebody’s identity based on their uniform. Any person gaining ingress into the camp would be positively identified. Total cost, amortized over say 10,000 hand scans, about 17 cents per scan.

Hillary’s got 0 Billion to drop on the enviros at Copenhagen, but we can’t find 17 cents to keep patriots and heros safe from harm. In 10 years we have learned nothing, nada, nihil, zip, zilch about perimeter security. We can’t keep bombers off our planes, crashers out of White House dinner parties. We are hapless, lame, feckless.

We accept this because we are not very political people. Most of us just don’t care. In a more mentally alert nation, like Switzerland for example, the kind of failures we routinely have would be corrected. Someone would take steps — fixes would be put in place. If I gave my perimeter security presentation to the Swiss, they would have done something about it. Caring is actually important to getting things done.

Technorati Tags: battery power, bombers, budget buster, case 2, copenhagen, dinner parties, enviros, hillary, ingress, patriots, perimeter security, safe from harm, secretary of the navy, small boat, us government, uss cole, uss cole incident, veins, vest, zilch

Has the USA learned anything about Perimeter Security in the Past Decade?
Case #1: The USS Cole — a man in a small boat who has not been identified in any way approaches to within 10 yards of the USS Cole. He looks like he might be delivering vegetables. But actually his boat contains a bomb. Many US lives are lost.

Case #2 Ten years later a man approaches a CIA Camp in Afghanistan. He is unidentifed, but he is wearing the uniform of the Aghanistan Army. He’s allowed into the camp. Under his uniform he’s wearing an explosive vest. Many US lives are lost.

Now, you may be thinking, yes but why didn’t you tell the government about perimeter security right after the USS Cole incident. I did, as a consultant to NCIS, at the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, I did.

Since that time the methods available for very reliable biometric identification have gotten cheaper, simpler and faster. They rely on the veins in the hand, which are just as distinctive as the iris of the eye, or the structure of the face.

That CIA camp in Afghanistan only had a few dozen people who were authorized to be in the camp at all. Let’s say 100 people. Well, that data could be stored in .0000000001% of a chip, in a very small battery power machine. It’s not a budget buster for the US government to get that done. With such a machine, and a single gate, there would be no need to speculate about somebody’s identity based on their uniform. Any person gaining ingress into the camp would be positively identified. Total cost, amortized over say 10,000 hand scans, about 17 cents per scan.

Hillary’s got 0 Billion to drop on the enviros at Copenhagen, but we can’t find 17 cents to keep patriots and heros safe from harm. In 10 years we have learned nothing, nada, nihil, zip, zilch about perimeter security. We can’t keep bombers off our planes, crashers out of White House dinner parties. We are hapless, lame, feckless.

We accept this because we are not very political people. Most of us just don’t care. In a more mentally alert nation, like Switzerland for example, the kind of failures we routinely have would be corrected. Someone would take steps — fixes would be put in place. If I gave my perimeter security presentation to the Swiss, they would have done something about it. Caring is actually important to getting things done.

Technorati Tags: battery power, bombers, budget buster, case 2, copenhagen, dinner parties, enviros, hillary, ingress, patriots, perimeter security, safe from harm, secretary of the navy, small boat, us government, uss cole, uss cole incident, veins, vest, zilch

Has the USA learned anything about Perimeter Security in the Past Decade?
Case #1: The USS Cole — a man in a small boat who has not been identified in any way approaches to within 10 yards of the USS Cole. He looks like he might be delivering vegetables. But actually his boat contains a bomb. Many US lives are lost.

Case #2 Ten years later a man approaches a CIA Camp in Afghanistan. He is unidentifed, but he is wearing the uniform of the Aghanistan Army. He’s allowed into the camp. Under his uniform he’s wearing an explosive vest. Many US lives are lost.

Now, you may be thinking, yes but why didn’t you tell the government about perimeter security right after the USS Cole incident. I did, as a consultant to NCIS, at the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, I did.

Since that time the methods available for very reliable biometric identification have gotten cheaper, simpler and faster. They rely on the veins in the hand, which are just as distinctive as the iris of the eye, or the structure of the face.

That CIA camp in Afghanistan only had a few dozen people who were authorized to be in the camp at all. Let’s say 100 people. Well, that data could be stored in .0000000001% of a chip, in a very small battery power machine. It’s not a budget buster for the US government to get that done. With such a machine, and a single gate, there would be no need to speculate about somebody’s identity based on their uniform. Any person gaining ingress into the camp would be positively identified. Total cost, amortized over say 10,000 hand scans, about 17 cents per scan.

Hillary’s got 0 Billion to drop on the enviros at Copenhagen, but we can’t find 17 cents to keep patriots and heros safe from harm. In 10 years we have learned nothing, nada, nihil, zip, zilch about perimeter security. We can’t keep bombers off our planes, crashers out of White House dinner parties. We are hapless, lame, feckless.

We accept this because we are not very political people. Most of us just don’t care. In a more mentally alert nation, like Switzerland for example, the kind of failures we routinely have would be corrected. Someone would take steps — fixes would be put in place. If I gave my perimeter security presentation to the Swiss, they would have done something about it. Caring is actually important to getting things done.

Technorati Tags: battery power, bombers, budget buster, case 2, copenhagen, dinner parties, enviros, hillary, ingress, patriots, perimeter security, safe from harm, secretary of the navy, small boat, us government, uss cole, uss cole incident, veins, vest, zilch