User:Bfw 001

Elizabeth Veronica Rose (U.S. Citizen who uses the First Amendment CONSTANTLY.)

Nickname: Turtle (yes, like the guy on Entourage, except I'm a girl). As for the screen name - long story. But it works great every time, it's always unique.

Age: You're only as old as you feel.

Here Because: I love Lostpedia. But as I explore the Wikia community, I may find others things to love as well. I enjoy a little bit of everything, history, the arts, science, etc. And of course, science fiction. Especially anything related to time travel. (Hence my love of Lost. I'm also one of the few Trekkies who also loved Voyager for the same reason.)  One brother is a poet, so he's helped me to learn to love poetry, and my other brother is an artist, mythologist and theologan. My older sister is a biologist by training, and has helped me appreciate environmental issues. My younger sister is a great shopper. Since I hate shopping, she's pretty handy to have around when I need new clothes.

Day Job: Political Advisor on economic policy issues. But don't blame me for the crisis, I was screaming back in college (and ever since) that the loosening of regulations would lead us to an economic crisis. So I'm a bit of a Cassandra too, and channel that into Social/Economic Justice activism. I'm also very interested in the environment and social anthropology. I do some writing and have contributed to various blogs. I had my own back before blogs became so popular, but stopped doing it, because I don't like doing the same thing as everyone else. Right now, I'm writing a book instead about how the economic and environmental impacts of climate change and unsustainable behavior in the developed world will, in the words of the late great George Carlin, prompt Mother Nature, "to shake [humans] off like a bad case of fleas." It is possible to live in a marketplace economy sustainably, but as long as corporations have a stranglehold on the politicians who should be working for us, it won't happen.

Night Job: Lostophile and aspiring Renaissance Woman. Love books, movies, and music.

Personal Belief System: Humans will die if they do not use their God-given talents to learn to shift the paradigm from a warrior attitude to an attitude of community interdependence and sustainability. We have to stop the trauma that is passed from one generation to the next, both at the Macro level (like the re-creation of a concentration camp in Gaza) to individual family dynamics. And we have to stop using secrecy, propaganda, jingoism, and taboo to perpetuate these behaviors. We'll never lose our predisposition to fight or flight, nor will we likely ever live in a world where personal, community and national defense are crucial, but we have to use our brains better to learn to channel our behavior more constructively. Like for example, to save and protect people at risk, rather than taking the easy route and just killing them in war. I believe in the attitude of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who - not unlike President Eisenhower (one of the first to see through the idiocy of the Cold War and the "intelligence apparatus" as it had been created in 1948, when it had used Stalin's brutality as an excuse) - reminds us that war mentality keeps us fighting wars, but making peace an organizing principle will encourage us to work as hard at peace as we do at war (and it is hard work), so we can eventually supplant war with peace as a way of life rather than a word we use casually during the holidays. (It will also help us to stop spending our grandchildren's money on DOD.) Everyone must understand that the greatest casualties of wars are ALWAYS civilians, war was created and designed that way, no matter what the modern technology does or its proponents tell you. "Modern" warfare (that is the kind designed using technology to create mass casualties) was designed by people 3000 to 5000 years ago who wanted to usurp or co-opt people to attain resources and impose their own societal and religious norms in new areas (usually because they had ecologically destroyed the area they lived in previously). Rape, slavery, and child conscription have always been tools of war (and the behavior likely originated in its modern form with modern warfare). The technology may be modern today but the principles and motives that drive it have never changed.

Other causes: Universal Health Care in the U.S, protecting Endangered Species, ending the right-wing assault on dissent (e.g., referring to environmental activists as "eco-terrorists"), and seeing that the elitist Old Boyz Network of the Western World is disbanded once and for all, and the alleged traitors in the network stand before a jury of their peers. Too many get away with the worst kinds of treason, collaborating with enemies, fomenting coups in foreign nations, duping others into agreeing to preventive invasion of foreign nations, propping up dictators under the hypocritical banner of democracy, etc. (This is not a political party thing, I'm independent and think the political parties are part of the problem.) Then they use their elitist connections to see that their spoiled brat progeny also attain power. It's time to end this kind of greed for power and money, this modern form of colonialism and empire-building. It's time the developed nations focused on helping poor nations rather than invading or privatizing them (which means the IMF and World Bank have to either go or end neoliberalism), and focused on the poor in our own countries rather than perpetuating poverty in the name of "economic policy" that is hidden behind corporate control and the Black Budget veil of "National Security." It's time the propaganda machine that operates by "do as we say, not as we do," to be shut down forever. It's all a big lie and it needs to end.

A Few Personal Heroes: Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Mother Jones, Alice Paul and the Silent Sentinels of the Suffragist Movement, Simon Bolivar, Robert LaFollette, Eugene Debs, Cesar Chavez, Joseph Campbell, Dr. Elaine Pagels, Dr. Jared Diamond, Dr. Sarah Blaffer-Hrdy, Dr. Robert Reich (who should be Obama's chief economic advisor), Rachel Carson, Dr. Gerda Lerner, Dr. M. Scott Peck, Dr. Rosemary Ruether, The Rev. Dr. Lee Alison Crawford (Episcopal Church Canon for El Salvador), The Rev. Dr. Michael Ramsey-Musolf (physicist and Episcopal Priest), Dr. Vandana Shiva, Rigoberta Menchú, Aung San Suu Kyi, Wangari Maathai, Maude Barlow (water expert), Michael Pollan (food expert), E.O. Wilson, Paul Hawkins, Dr. David Suzuki, Dr. Samantha Powers (foreign policy expert and historian), Dr. Paul Krugman (who should be Obama's John Maynard Keynes), Amy Goodman, the Scientists for 911 Truth, the Beatles, and the great movie directors (especially Hitchcock and Kubrick). I expect J.J. Abrams to join that group in a few years.

Favorite Music: A little bit of everything from classical to jazz to blues to R&B, hip-hop, and rock, but mostly indie, contemp folk-rock and post-rock. Current faves: Lupe Fiasco and Emily Haines (Metric). Always faves: U2 and Mary Chapin Carpenter. (Although U2's current album is not my cup of tea, while hers are great as usual.)

Personal Quote: "Our doubts are traitors,/Making us lose the good we oft might win,/by fearing to attempt." Shakespeare, Measure for Measure