When I realized that I could download the OPML file from the Power 150 site and then hack it around into a contact list of over 900 of the top advertising, marketing, PR, and SEO bloggers on the planet, I did so.

Ever since, I have been scheduling calls with all of the folks I have been admiring on a daily basis. Two days ago I spent an hour on the horn with Lee Hopkins, “one of Australia’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment,” who is, in fact, one of the World’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment.  We had a great chat — and amazing talk!

At the end, Lee asked me if he could blog the conversation and I jumped at the opportunity and late last night Lee published Is email marketing still relevant in a 2.0 world? which is not only the most complete description of what we at Abraham Harrison LLC do on a daily basis but it is said in a better, more comprehensive, way than I could even conceive of doing myself.  Here it is, in full.  Be sure to visit (and subscribe to) Better Communication Results, Lee Hopkin’s blog.

Is email marketing still relevant in a 2.0 world?

G’day – thanks for returning!

I just finished a fantastic conversation with Chris Abraham, the President and COO of AbrahamHarrison.

If you’ve been around the internet for a while, especially in the ‘marcoms’ (marketing communications) space, you would certainly have heard of Chris; if not of the man himself then certainly of one of his marketing and outreach programs.

Chris is one of those select few online marketers who’s text doesn’t read like a traditional online direct mail piece – you know, with LOTS OF CAPITALS and heaps of bold text and yellow highlighting and italics and

• bullet
• points
• a-
• plenty

and testimonials by the kazillion…

I could point you to a zillion of those sites – which is not to say that the style of marketing they use is not successful; it is, otherwise they wouldn’t keep doing it. But you know as soon as you see the huge, bold, bright red and often in CAPS headline what to expect for the rest of the (very) long toilet roll of a page.

Chris takes a much softer approach, always has done, and it seems to work for him and his style of copywriting.

Video, the radio star and plain ol’ bandwagon idjuts

With the advent of Web2.0/Social Media there were many ill-informed and just plain ‘bandwagon’ pundits who hailed the death of traditional communication tools such as email, web1.0 sites and – gasp – newspaper, magazine, radio and television.

Much as television didn’t kill radio as force it to rethink its place and find its niche, so too with Social Media. Every new technology platform or societal change brings with it a change in how all that came before it must view themselves and continue to offer relevancy.

Radio didn’t die, newspapers haven’t been killed off, I can still pick up plenty of magazines that appeal to all demographics and both genders from my local newsagent, and email hasn’t disappeared off the radar (if my bulging inbox every morning is anything to go by).

So it was fantastic to finally chat with someone who, like me, believes that email is STILL a fundamental part of the marketing toolkit.

In talking with Chris today, he was genuinely flattered that a fellow copywriter would find his material engaging; I thought it was brilliant reading and his deployment strategies for his clients brilliantly executed.

You see, Chris, like me, believes that email won’t go away, but WILL have to change in order to survive in the new communication landscape. Our shared view is that it will have to evolve in a couple of ways:

1. Shorter emails will be the best way of getting people’s attention
2. Long-form emails are best saved for newsletters; trying to ‘sell’ via email will become even harder to excel at.

If you’ve ever received one of Chris’ emails, you will be stunned by several things:

1. They are short – only 2-3 paragraphs
2. They link off to a SMNR (Social Media News Release) that gives a far more in-depth level of information (and all the material you might need to help you spread the word or get involved)
3. If you email Chris or anyone of his team back you WILL get a response, usually within 24 hours (Chris says they try to get back within the hour, but time zones can sometime defeat them)
4. The emails ‘read’ like they were written by a human being, not by a ‘PR’ flack or a ex-journalist hack; they aren’t full of ‘me, me, me’ stuff telling you how wonderful I (the company) am, but neither do they ‘strip-tease tantalise’ you so that when you do click on the link you end up feeling cheated
5. You get the very real feeling that there’s someone real at the end of the email.

Here’s an example (taken from my post about the Fresh Air Fund):

Hello again, Lee

On Sunday I asked if you would kindly help me spread the word about 200 inner-city children I have yet to place with host families in August. I apologize for following up so soon, but time is of the essence and you know how funny email can be. To make things simple, everything is collected into an online resource page http://freshair.smnr.us

This appeal comes straight from the top, so please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Yours sincerely,

Sara

–
Sara Wilson
Fresh Air Fund
sara@freshair.org
www.freshair.org

Sara is a real person, not a ‘fake’ character. I sent her an email yesterday, wondering if her ears were burning, because Chris and I were talking about her:

G’day Sara,
Just finished the phone call with Chris — oh boy! Were your ears burning? They should have been!!!
Kindests,
Lee

From: Sara Wilson [mailto:swilson@chrisabraham.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 24 February 2009 2:02 AM
To: Lee@leehopkins.com
Subject: Re: Fellow Power 150 blogger

Hello Lee,
Just a quick note to re-confirm that Chris will be calling you at 10 am, your time, tomorrow (Tuesday).
No need to reply unless something has come up on your end, otherwise he will speak to you in about 7.5 hours!
Best,
Sara

In reply, Sara said,

Lee,
And I thought it was just hot where I was last night … 
It’s very kind of you to mention it, thanks.   Chris is a great guy to work for, and generous with compliments, but it’s always nice to know that someone appreciates you, isn’t it?
Cheers,
Sara

Controversy

Because Chris and his team start any campaign with an email-based blogger outreach, some of the ‘holier than thou’ social media purists occasionally give him ‘stick’, or snicker behind his back and call him a ‘spammer’. Not true – the team are very hot on ensuring only a good taste remains in the mouth of any blogger they contact, and of only offering bloggers something of actual value to the blogger.

Which is a behaviour totally unlike the hapless, clueless and insulting PR flacks who regularly show up on The Bad Pitch Blog and who attempt to fill my inbox with material about electronics, or sanitary napkins, or (ahem) extension kits, or pharmaceuticals shipped from Canada. Thank goodness I have SpamArrest to filter them out before they hit my inbox!

Chris and his team have painstakingly built up a list of nearly 35,000 bloggers across several different demographics and topic areas of interest. Visiting their blogs, they harvest their email address. They then politely email them once to offer them something of interest – if the blogger likes it, they very often blog about it; it they don’t then they don’t. What is fascinating is the response rate Chris gets for his clients.

Word of mouth and gossip-sharing amongst internet marketers has the average rate of sales of anything (be it a blog post or an ebook or a ‘course you cannot live without’) as around 0.01-0.05% from an initial mailing, with the follow-up mailings increasing that to, perhaps, 1.0-2.0%…

Chris and his team regularly get a takeup in the order of 5%, which is phenomenal. In addition, once you start developing an email relationship with anyone in their team (as I have with Sara Wilson) then all future mailings will receive much more attention than would otherwise be the case. A case in point is my own, later, post on the illegal cluster bombing being carried out in South Ossetia and The Survivor Corps run by activist and author of the very powerful book,  I Will Not Be Broken, Jerry White. It is only because Sara had taken the time to develop a relationship with me over previous months that I read and responded to the material from Jerry White. Without that relationship I would never have bothered with a topic outside of my normal areas of interest.

It is the classic ‘relationship marketing’ that Social Media Marketing pundits claim to aim for but rarely achieve.

Goodness, if I could have a dollar for every new ‘expert’ that’s popped up in the Social Media space I would retire a very rich trillionaire (and at the same time wondering how you could be a trillionaire and not be very rich – I guess if you were living in Zimbabwe you wouldn’t be…).

You wouldn’t believe the number of ‘leading social networking and social media marketing experts’ who have suddenly come out of the woodwork and set up communities in places like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, etc. Curiously, I’ve never heard of these folks before. Most of them don’t even have blogs, or if they do those blogs have only been around for less than a year. Curious, hey?

But Chris, on the other hand, has been around for a long time, has figured out what works and what doesn’t, and as evidence offers the following case studies:

• Energy Bill 2007 Case Study
• Financial Services Reputation Defense Case Study
• Firebrand TV Case Study
• Fresh Air Fund Case Study
• International Medical Corps Case Study
• Movie Producer Reputation Defense Case Study
• Snapple Antioxidant Water Case Study
• Survivor Corps Book Promotion Case Study

If you want to see the sort of posts that are associated with Chris’ kind of blogger PR pitch outreach, here are some examples:

• Thank You Operation Survivor Bloggers
• Thank You All Who Supported International Medical Corps!
• Thank You Again Survivor Corps Bloggers
• Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers
• Thank You Fresh Air Fund Holiday Bloggers
• Thank You Fresh Air Fund Bloggers
• Thank You Fresh Air Fund Camp Counselor Bloggers!
• The Powerful SEO Benefits of Blogger PR Outreach
• Happy Thanksgiving from Abraham Harrison

Here are some examples of client SMNRs from Chris and his team that I especially like:

• http://anamigo.smnr.us
• http://freshair.smnr.us
• http://banclusterbombs.smnr.us
• http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us
• http://survivorcorps.smnr.us
• http://iwillnotbebroken.smnr.us
• http://internationalmedicalcorps.smnr.us

So what???

The whole point of this post is NOT to fawn at the feet of someone who clearly knows what he is doing.

The whole point IS to let you know that you don’t need to throw out your baby with the bathwater:

• Don’t jump on the Social Media bandwagon without educated advice
• Don’t take advice from a pimply 17 year old fresh out of high school
• Don’t take advice from a less-pimply 23 year old fresh out of university
• Don’t ditch all of your understanding of how ‘people’ and networks work
• Don’t take advice from someone who doesn’t even blog themselves, or Twitter, or Facebook… (see my post about Social Media Gurus)
• Don’t take advice from someone who has been blogging less than 24 months

Instead:

1. Download Todd Defren’s absolutely superb ‘Brink’ guide to Social Media and Richard Meyer’s great presentation, ‘Social Media : What you’re afraid to admit you didn’t know’ (he also has a great pharma and biotech-focused pdf presentation). Download and read Trevor Cook’s and my ‘Social Media Report’.
2. Talk to someone who actually knows what they are doing – in Australia that means folks like Stephen Collins, Laurel Papworth, Trevor Cook, Darren Rowse, Gavin Heaton and, humbly, yours truly. If WE can’t help you, we can certainly put you in touch with someone who can. Unlike the USA, where there seems to be a spirit of “You’ll prize my rolodex out of my frozen dead fingers!”, there is no fierce spirit of competition here in Australia – we have  ‘co-opertition’ wherein we all help each other out if the ‘fit’ seems better for the client.
3. Stick to reading the seasoned ‘pros’ of the online marketing and/or business communication space: you cannot go wrong if you start at folks like any of the above, or Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, Mitch Joel, Joe Jaffe , Laura Fitton and Chris Abraham himself; see who they link to. Follow your nose from them – all the way along the path you will be reading ‘the good oil’ as we say here in Australia
4. Examine Chris’ examples above and see for yourself how simple but effective your online marketing can be if you do it with the right intention – of helping out the blogger, not flogging stuff for your client. Get the relationship right and you will flog stuff for your client anyway, trust me!

---

Technorati Tags: chris abraham, laura fitton, joe jaffe, mitch joel, darren rowse, chris brogan, neville hobson, shel holtz, gavin heaton, trevor cook, laurel papworth, stephen collins, richard meyer, todd defren, sara wilson, fresh air fund, chrisabraham, bad pitch blog, social media, blogger relations, social marketing, email marketing, email, spam, spam arrest, spamarrest, business communication

Currently listening to ‘Next’ by The Necks from the album ‘Next’. Superb jazz funk from one of Australia’s great cult bands.

… and all I could get is this lousy t-shirt. Actually, this is an amazing T — you should surely get one: I survived the bush administration t-shirt, $16 from Print Liberation (via Constant Siege and Boing Boing):

The future of Social Network Services (SNS) can be discovered on High School and College campuses. I believe that topic-specific “vertical” SNS’s are very important, but I also think that the model needs to be University-like – a modularized SNS. There needs to be a campus “brand” (or University) within which the topic-specific “clubs,” “houses,” “fraternities,” “dorms,” and “interest groups” can interact – somewhere where crossovers, cross-fertilization, and aggregation are encouraged – no, needs – to happen. I hate SNS sites like boompa.com – a site devoted to your favorite cars – because I am not JUST a car guy.

I am a car guy for sure but I am also interested in rowing, in biking, in Thomas Pynchon, and in talk radio – Boompa might be successful in the short term, but in the long-term, the real power would come from creating a open, creative, resource-rich platform/campus/university/high school and maybe create a school of engineering, a liberal arts school, a law school, a dining hall, and so forth, but then allow the SNS to find itself.

To allow the SNS and its members to find their own voice, their own interests, and their own passions – which may well be very different from what is first assumed by the creator. Google gets this, though not yet within the construct of the SNS’s. What Google did do successfully was to buy USENET – the original newsgroups – and then build an superstructure on top of that – make it modern, sustainable, durable, and more readable.

Google returned USENET to relevance in a world that considered newsgroups and IRC to be dead or dying. Each and every one of communities on USENET is amazingly vertical, but they could all back up and back out to the larger USENET community – to the equivalent of the “welcome new students??? meetings and gatherings colleges offer to entering Freshmen.

Communities that are too vertical tend to shoe horn the “general topics??? conversations into hidden “off topic??? eddies. That is just the opposite of what should be done. The conversation should be general, cross-pollinating, and then move, after a conversation starts, into another room.

Start with an amazing platform, collect users, listen and watch them to see how they’re playing with the software application objects, widgets, and tools (are they playing with the toy or the box?), and then build for the users base, withholding judgment. Digg is a case study for this: start small, grow organically, and allow your members to find themselves.

The developers of Digg realized that after initial vertical growth based on the general members of Slashdot (techie, geeky, teens, boys), digg would suffer from the same sort of vulnerabilities that Slashdot suffered when Slashdot didn’t evolve and grow and broaden itself.

People love talking about Linux, but when happens when the Dow drops or the elections come? Where will the conversation happen? Where is the “kitchen??? at the party where every eventually goes to just talk about general interest stuff? Unless there are opportunities to express and share so-called “off-topic??? conversation right there, within the community in which members are already committed, with members to whom they’re already committed, then they are bound to go elsewhere.

Starting small and allowing the community to design itself is much different than starting big and losing one’s focus. Other mistakes happen when community builders make assumptions as to what participants, members, and lurkers want. Another mistake is putting a wall up around the community so that non-members cannot get a full feeling for the community from without.

The best SNS’s, virtual worlds, and online communities are honeypots. By honeypot, I am not suggesting, “a server that is configured to detect an intruder by mirroring a real production system. It appears as an ordinary server doing work, but all the data and transactions are phony. Located either in or outside the firewall, the honeypot is used to learn about an intruder’s techniques as well as determine vulnerabilities in the real system.” Although I am, sort of. The best SNS needs to be appealing, attractive, sweet, and compelling. Community-builders and SNS ASP developers need to be willing learn about member techniques, interests, processes, and needs, as well as determine “vulnerabilities” in the SNS platform that may repel, turn off, or limit the evolution and growth of the community.

To channel Chauncey Gardener for a second, one must do whatever one must to make sure that the earth in the garden is moist and well fed, one must seed well and completely, one must keep the garden in sun and water, one must encourage the garden to grow as it will for only in its growth will the garden be successful, and then, after rigorous growth, pruning and weeding must be done, only in order to allow the garden to be healthy, not to turn the garden into topiary. Okay, I am done.

Digg allows all of these things. Digg is perfectly useful and compelling even as an alien, but it is way more fun and interesting when you’re a citizen, that’s for sure. An SNS community needs to be as attractive as possible because exclusivity is no longer essential or even valuable. What is valuable is “useful,??? “interesting,??? and “authentic.??? They also have to have community buy-in and the best enjoy a certain fanatical devotion. Just like the best Universities and Colleges.

And Digg allowed its member to tell it when it was time to evolve past tech and geek news. Digg did not limit its scope or define itself too tightly with being “gear for geeks??? or “news for nerds.??? That would have ultimately been the death of Digg.

What the best Universities (such as Yale) understand is that it is not the student who is blessed and honored by being accepted by a top college (Yale College) but rather it is the college that should be blessed and honored (and should be grateful) that such a quality student is accepting its offers and actually attending – choosing – their particular school: Yale instead of Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, etc…

Harvard, too, is aware that although in the short-term Harvard makes the Harvard Man, over the long term, it is Harvard Men who made Harvard and continue to make Harvard. “Who have you graduated recently???? Unless the quality and character of its students and alumni remain top-drawer, Harvard is not guaranteed its position as “top three??? in USA Today alongside Princeton and Yale. No matter how grand its endowment.

So, Harvard and Yale spoil their students rotten! My friends who attended Harvard or Yale college swoon over those 4 years like I swoon over my first love.

Likewise, SNS’s, virtual worlds, and virtual communities need to realize that at any one point, their brand is only as good as the collective that is manifest in the users, the members, the lurkers, the stewards, and the alumni of the property.

This isn’t only true in SNS’s. The same thing can be said of the most successful message boards and online communities. The most important distinction, I think, is that all of these “rooms” and all of these “clubs” and all of these spaces where (and are) defined and created by the communities themselves. Sui generis. And this sort of ownership – “for us by us,??? as the slogan goes over as Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms community – should never be underestimated.

The Well has Howard Rheingold as a member and alumnus, for example, and the credibility of all that he has made and done; over time, more and more virtual communities, virtual worlds, and SNS will be known for their members as well: who studies, who studied, and who wants to join.

“What’s in it for me??? (WIIFM) and the concept of pride of ownership are important – essential – ingredients of a sustainable, deep, thriving, and healthy community. The success of MySpace and of Facebook is that the verticals are not (were not) defined for them by their grand architects – they are self-creating, self-forming, and also self-destructing. They form, reform, mutate and disperse after they hit a limit of general conversation and then either break off and reform into an “interest group” or “club” or they self-check and work to “get back on topic.”

SNS’s and communities in general tend to be formed in one of two ways: like Paris or like London. Intelligence Design (architecture) or Emergent Design. The later never looks very beautiful or the way people – or the creators, investors, and architects – expect (or want) it to look, because investors and designers tend to not be able to control it – and when they do try to impost order, often in a heavy-handed way, they also tend to scare off all of their members, too.

This organic revolution has proven its success online time and time again. The Internet does not respond (well or at all) to command and control. The smartest Web 2.0 platforms allow the “masses of asses” (yes, the customer; yes, us) to define the platform and the experience – their own and collective environment and experience.

MySpace does this amazingly well and so does Facebook. Until recently, Friendster suffered from a vision and used command and control tactics to try to coerce its users that “it didn’t really want to do things that way??? and Friendster members abandoned in droves to platforms and experiences not so monitored by “mom and dad.???

A command and control grand vision doesn’t work when you develop an environment that needs to be truly both attractive and compelling much more than it needs to be informational or instructional. An SNS needs to be attractive, diversional, compelling, amusing, and entertaining – never limiting.

My analogy of college and high school never mentioned classrooms or classes for training or learning. People do enough of that at school and at work. An SNS needs to give its users a university campus without any expectations or concepts of dropping out, getting judged, doing homework, or being held accountable for anything.

A good SNS should be all late-night wine-influenced discussions of Descartes and Plato and the summer afternoons on the quad and the time playing Xbox with your roommates.

When I go onto my long-term online communities, the Well, The Meta Network, USENET, and Brainstorms, there are many very deep and very vertical communities, discussing things as frivolous as fashion and video games and as deep as how to survive cancer, how to get a post doc grant, and very deep discussions on “spirit,” “chaos theory,” and “world politics.”

What makes this amazing and sustainable is that there are an infinite number of ways to get along, to move into a space of intense conversation, and then to pull back into common areas, just to see who’s around. In a university setting, this could be the dining hall, the quad, the commons, etc. These spaces are very important.

If you think about all of this in terms of evolution, then we can think about the way things evolve in the most perverse ways when isolated from others of its kinds. So, if there are impervious walls – gaps or voids, mountains or ridges – between these vertical markets, SNS’s, and communities, then there may be an initial success, but there can also be a terrible volatility. One plague or drought can decimate a population completely.

Having a commons allows members and visitors to have a place to meet new people, have new experiences, and learn of new clubs, new opportunities, and new places – inbreeding versus crossbreeding. Ultimately, a diversity of visitors helps build a more resilient, invested, and self-identifing community. They will become “students for life??? at best and proud alums at worst. They will carry the brand awareness, even if their lives become too busy to participate any more.

They will become life long brand ambassadors for your community. Proud alumni.

And, in terms of “viral marketing,” it is also important when it comes to a member of an SNS “inviting his friends” – not all of my friends have the same vertical interests that I do… They could have very different interests – but as I explore the “commons” of an SNS, I can note that there are things happening online that “friend x” and “friend y” would love, and that would be my incentive to invite them on board.

Boompa? I am the only person I know in my entire community – that is not true, my buddy has an Audi S4 – who is into cars. My buddy is an Audi driver and I am a BMW driver. Does that mean we’re both drivers? Does that mean we love cars or our particular car? Do we cross over on performance sedans? On German cars? On luxury cars?

You have to offer the tools to allow the market to choose for itself, otherwise, you might never find out that the SNS needs all three, or none at all.

A “Modularized SNS” should be neutral like a university (unlike MySpace, which is pretty pre-defined as to what the demographic is), and there are lots of “vertical niche SNS’s” (e.g. car enthusiasts, gourmet cooking, travel, Rolex fans, Republican politicos, etc.) That way, everyone can form a SNS experience that actually fits them by modularly assembling the groups of people who have similar interests, (not just friends-in-common!)

While I have already thanked all of the wonderful, generous bloggers who have blogged about Operation Survivor since Labor Day, there has been a countinued outpouring of support. As a result, I have added all of the new posts, banners, Twitters in addition to the initial posts — as of 25 November, this is everyone.

1. 5 Minutes Around the World via 5 Minutes for Mom.
2. Banner via A Disgruntled Republican.
3. Survivor Corps Program-Help! via Swimming Against the Red Tide.
4. Survivor Corps: Founds Operation Survivor Project to Assist U.S. Military Combat Veterans in Transitioning to Civilian Life via A DC Observer.
5. Survivor Corps. Rise Above. Give Back via All 4 My Gals.
6. Banner via American and Proud.
7. Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day via American Thinker.
8. Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day via Americanthinker.
9. Returning Troops…a Noble Cause via Dodgeblogium.
10. Indigenist News Items for: 11-14-2008 via Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo.
11. They don’t go away when Veterans Day ends via Around the Island.
12. Survivor Corps via Assoluta Tranquillita.
13. Survivor Corps via Jake’s Life.
14. Banner via Bearing Drift.
15. Vast Write Wing via Be Logical.
16. Survivor Corps Operation Survivor: A Worthwhile Cause to Consider via Mount Virtus.
17. Someone alerted me to the good work that Survivor Corps via Big Bark.
18. Standing up for Max Cleland on Veteran’s Day via Big Bark.
19. Twittered via How to Change the World.
20. Do Not Abandon Our Vets via understanding the effects of unresolved abandonment issues.
21. Help Our Troops This Veterans Day via Locust Fork Blog.
22. Soldiers Angels Web Surfing via MySpace: Kathie’s Soldiers Angels Account.
23. Banner via Blog Mommas.
24. An Appeal via Don Surber’s blog.
25. Survivor Corps: Help a veteran break the cycle of violence via Hormone-Colored Days.
26. Support the Survivor Corps via Burbsblogs.
27. Veterans Day via Bodhi Baby.
28. Supporting Our Troops via Booker Rising.
29. Operation Survivor via Britannica.
30. As Per Request via Budget Nomad – US Ex – Pat on the Move.
31. Per a Request via Budget Nomad – US Ex – Pat on the Move.
32. Help veterans through Survivor Corps via South by Southwest.
33. Remembrance Day via Around the World in beautiful Shoes.
34. Veteran’s Day via Danny Fisher.
35. Survivor Corps via Charming Just Charming.
36. Veterans Day via Chip’s Quips.
37. Please Help Me Support Our Troops on Veteran’s Day via Chris Abraham.
38. I Will Not Be Broken via For the Heck of It.
39. Ray via Notes from the Cookie Jar.
40. Survivor Corps Helps Injured Vets Cope via Connecticut Bob.
41. Help Our Troops This Veteran’s Day via Culture11.
42. Supporting Our Troops: Operation Survivor via Culture Kitchen.
43. Supporting Our Troops: Operation Survivor via The Daily Gotham.
44. Donate to help our Troops via Make it Happen.
45. Survivor Corp-Returning Troops via What’s Delmer Look Like?.
46. Banner via Popcorn and Sushi.
47. Banner via Supercozy WorldHome.
48. Supporting Returning Troops via Donklephant.
49. Operation Survivor-Survivor Corps and TroopTube via Where the Hell Am I?.
50. In Their Boots via Holly’s Fight for Justice.
51. In Their Boots via Holly’s Fight to Stop Violence.
52. Banner via Gapers Block.
53. Banner via Gary Presley.
54. Operation Survivor via The Political Junkie.
55. Veterans Day via On the Fringe.
56. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and Their Families via GoMekong.com.
57. Support Our Troops NOW via MamaBugs…Homeschooling Where the Air Force Sends Us!.
58. Soldiers Angels Web Surfing via Hooah Wife & Friends.
59. Breaking the Cycle of Violence via Another Opinion.
60. New Book from the founder of Survivor Corps via The IAVA Blog.
61. Some Odds and Ends of the Election via The Liberal Life of a Navy Wife .
62. cross-post via Personal Injury and Social Security Disability Blog.
63. Banner via Iraq The Model.
64. In Honor of Veterans’ Day via James Kotecki.
65. Survivorcorps.org via Jelly Mom.
66. Banner via Into the Woods, Living Deliberately.
67. Survivor Corps via A Leg Up.
68. Standing up for Max Cleland on Veteran’s Day via Informed Comment.
69. Helping Veterans (a day late) via Just Enjoy Him: Ramblings of a Mid-Life Mom.
70. Soldiers Angels Web Surfing via Mail Call! Supporting the Troops.
71. Survivor Corps via Kung Fu Monkey.
72. Banner via Kim Stagliano.
73. Survivor Corps via Knee Deep in the Hooah.
74. Banner via Kentucky Progress.
75. Courage via Last One Speaks.
76. Banner via Leucadia Blog.
77. Iraq snapshot (The Common Ills) via Like Maria Said Paz.
78. Banner via Lisa’s Cookbook.
79. For a Good Cause via The Local Crank.
80. Banner via LooneyBin4Sure.
81. Tis the season to help our troops via Manatee’s Military Moms.
82. Thoughts of a conservative mind: A worthwhile charity via A different kind of Conservative Blog.
83. Banner via Married to the Army.
84. Veterans Day via State of Ohio Blogger Alliance.
85. Veteran’s Day via Weapons of Mass Discussion.
86. Operation Survivor via Big Blueberry Eyes.
87. Survivor Corps offers peer support to injured vets via Media Dis&Dat.
88. Survivor Corps via Tanker Bothers – Soldiers in the War on Terror.
89. Survivor Corps via Tanker Brothers.
90. Miss Beths Victory Dance via Miss Beth’s Victory Dance.
91. Survivor Corps via Miss Cellania Blog.
92. side bar Banner via Mommy Bytes.
93. Survivor Corps. Help for Surviving Troops via Mommy Does it All.
94. Operation Survivor via My American-Iraq Life.
95. Banner via Myrtus.
96. Mine removal personal ambition for Missouri State instructor via News-Release.com.
97. Survivor Corps: Support for returning heroes via News Blaze.
98. Veterans Deserve Your Help via New Zeal.
99. Supporting Returning Troops via Northloop Neighborhood.
100. Read Terrance D.C. via Oh Boy it Never Ends.
101. Banner via only red head in taiwan.
102. Banner via On the Upside.
103. Banner via Papamoka Straight Talk.
104. Banner via Pardon Me For Asking.
105. Survivors of War via Ponderings on a Faith Journey.
106. posted link on blogroll via Political Grind.
107. Survivor Corps: Operation Survivor via Political Reps.
108. A Day To Honor Those Who Have Served Their Country via Political Vindication.
109. Banner via Praise and Coffee.
110. Banner via Preemptive Karma.
111. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Progressive Independent.
112. cross post via Quick Quotes Online.
113. In Banner Rotation via Redline.
114. Veteran’s deserve not just a word, but also a hand: Operation Survivor via Rich Kirkpatrick.
115. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Right Michigan.
116. Banner via Rightwingchamp.
117. Katrina Vanden Heuvel is an Idiot via Ruth’s Report.
118. Katrina vanden Heuvel is an idiot via Ruth’s Report.
119. Survivor Corps via Sanbans Lymphorama.
120. Helping the Walking Wounded on November 11 via Serge the concierge.
121. Banner via Seven Wheelchairs.
122. palin, survivor corps, heroes and more via Sex and Politics and Creeds and Attitudes.
123. Links, Awards and Other Good Blogishness via She Lives.
124. Peace, be still. It’s Armistice Day. via Short Woman.
125. Sick of It via SICKOFITRADLZ.
126. posted Banner and review of I will not be broken via Writing in FaithWriting in Faith: Previews and Reviews.
127. Banner via Socialism.
128. Survivor Corps – Electronic Media News Releases via Soldiers Angels Network.
129. Survivor Corps via Soldiers Angels New York.
130. Survivor Corps via Soldiers’ Angels New York.
131. Need a little Inspiration? via My Life As A Military Spouse.
132. Banner via Stepping Right Up!.
133. Survivor Corps via Straight, Not Narrow.
134. Veterans Day via The Adventures of Super Mommy & Spitup Boy.
135. Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day – American Thinker via Survivor.
136. Operation Survivor – excerpt from website via Arthriticyoungthing.
137. posted Banner via Screw Politically Correct B.S..
138. Banner via The Political Jungle.
139. Survivor Corps via Tao of Katie.
140. Help veterans through Survivor Corps via The Reaction.
141. The bridge, the sacrifice, more via The Common Ills.
142. Banner via The Inside Dope.
143. A Belated Veterans (Day) Post via The Moderate Voice.
144. A Belated Veterans (Day) Post via Funny Blog.
145. Veterans and PTSD via Where There’s a Will There’s a Way.
146. Tuesday, November 11. 2008. via This French Life.
147. we posted? via This Fucking War.
148. Survivor Corps Website via Untreatable Online.
149. cross post via News Updated Frequently.
150. Survivor Corps via Unveal Blues.
151. Banner via VDog and Little Man.
152. Banner via Virginia Left Wing.
153. cross post via Today on Vot3r.
154. Banner via mikesmercurialmaddness.
155. As Long as We’re Bailing Out CEOs… via World-O-Crap.
156. Wake Up Americans via Wake Up America.
157. Survivor Corps via Wake Up America.
158. Xyence via The Xyience Diet Resource.
159. Please Help the Veterans via Yaw and Mog.
160. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Young Philly Politics.
161. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Vets and Their Families! via Zimbio.
162. Mojo Mom says thank you to military families via Mojo Mom.

I daresay we’ll be get more so there might very well be another thank you email. Again, both Abraham Harrison and Survivor Corps thank you very much for all of your continued generosity and support!

Veteran’s Day this year is especially poignant since it has been 5 years since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. Thank you to everyone who helped Survivor Corps get the message out about Operation Survivor and all the amazing work that Survivor Corps does for vets, for returning troops, and for their families. Here’s a list of all of your fine work:

• Please Help Me Support Our Troops on Veteran’s Day via Chris Abraham.
• banner via On the Upside.
• Veterans and PTSD via Where There’s a Will There’s a Way.
• Support Our Troops NOW via MamaBugs…Homeschooling Where the Air Force Sends Us!.
• Peace be still. It?s Armistice Day. via Short Woman.
• Do Not Abandon Our Vets via understanding the effects of unresolved abandonment issues.
• Helping the Walking Wounded on November 11 via Serge the concierge.
• Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day via Americanthinker.
• Veterans Day via Bodhi Baby.
• Veterans Day via The Adventures of Super Mommy & Spitup Boy.
• Operation Survivor via Britannica.
• Veteran’s Day via Danny Fisher.
• Donate to help our Troops via Make it Happen.
• Remembrance Day via Around the World in beautiful Shoes.
• Operation Survivor via Big Blueberry Eyes.
• In Their Boots via Holly’s Fight for Justice.
• In Their Boots via Holly’s Fight to Stop Violence.
• Veterans Day via Chip’s Quips.
• Help Our Troops This Veterans Day via Locust Fork Blog.
• Banner via Socialism.
• In Banner Rotation via Redline.
• Veteran’s Day via Weapons of Mass Discussion.
• Help Our Troops This Veteran’s Day via Culture11.
• side bar banner via Mommy Bytes.
• Veteran’s deserve not just a word but also a hand: Operation Survivor via Rich Kirkpatrick.
• Survivor Corps: Help a veteran break the cycle of violence via Hormone-Colored Days.
• Veterans Day via On the Fringe.
• The bridge the sacrifice more via The Common Ills.
• Someone alerted me to the good work that Survivor Corps via Big Bark.
• Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and Their Families via GoMekong.com.
• Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day – American Thinker via Survivor.
• Helping Veterans (a day late) via Just Enjoy Him: Ramblings of a Mid-Life Mom.
• Survivor Corps: Operation Survivor via Political Reps.
• Survivor Corps Website via Untreatable Online.
• Survivor Corps Operation Survivor: A Worthwhile Cause to Consider via Mount Virtus.
• Veterans Day via State of Ohio Blogger Alliance.
• A Day To Honor Those Who Have Served Their Country via Political Vindication.
• Courage via Last One Speaks.
• banner via A Disgruntled Republican.
• An Appeal via Don Surber’s blog.
• Mojo Mom says thank you to military families via Mojo Mom.
• Survivor Corps via Miss Cellania Blog.
• For a Good Cause via The Local Crank.
• Operation Survivor-Survivor Corps and TroopTube via Where the Hell Am I?.
• In Honor of Veterans’ Day via James Kotecki.
• banner” via Into the Woods Living Deliberately.
• Survivor Corps Supports Returning Vets and Their Families! via Zimbio.
• Please Help the Veterans via Yaw and Mog.
• posted banner and review of I will not be broken” via Writing in FaithWriting in Faith: Previews and Reviews.
• banner’ via Pardon Me For Asking.
• Veterans Deserve Your Help via New Zeal.
• I Will Not Be Broken via For the Heck of It.
• Per a Request via Budget Nomad – US Ex – Pat on the Move.
• banner’ via Blog Mommas.
• banner via Myrtus.
• banner via Married to the Army.
• Survivor Corps. Rise Above. Give Back via All 4 My Gals.
• Re: Vast Write Wing – November 2008 via Be Logical.
• Survivor Corps. Help for Surviving Troops via Mommy Does it All.
• Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Right Michigan.
• Indigenist News Items for: 11-14-2008 via Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo.
• banner via Gary Presley.
• banner via Seven Wheelchairs.
• Operation Survivor via The Political Junkie.
• Need a little Inspiration? via My Life As A Military Spouse.
• Banner via Preemptive Karma.
• Operation Survivor – excerpt from website via Arthriticyoungthing.
• banner via Rightwingchamp.
• Survivor Corp-Returning Troops via What’s Delmer Look Like?.
• posted banner via Screw Politically Correct B.S..
• palin survivor corps heroes and more via Sex and Politics and Creeds and Attitudes.
• banner via Bearing Drift.
• banner via Kentucky Progress.
• Supporting Returning Troops via Donklephant.
• banner via Gapers Block.
• Katrina vanden Heuvel is an idiot via Ruth’s Report.
• Supporting Our Troops via Book Errising.
• Survivor Corps – Electronic Media News Releases via Soldiers Angels Network.
• A Belated Veterans (Day) Post via The Moderate Voice.
• posted link on blogroll via Political Grind.
• They don’t go away when Veterans Day ends via Around the Island.
• Survivor Corps offers peer support to injured vets via Media Dis&Dat.
• Survivor Corps via A Leg Up.
• Supporting Our Troops: Operation Survivor via The Daily Gotham.
• Survivor Corps: Founds Operation Survivor Project to Assist U.S. Military Combat Veterans in Transitioning to Civilian Life via A DC Observer.
• banner via Iraq The Model.
• Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Young Philly Politics.
• banner via The Inside Dope.
• Survivors of War via Ponderings on a Faith Journey.
• Survivor Corps via Charming Just Charming.
• Survivor Corps via Knee Deep in the Hooah.
• Tis the season to help our troops via Manatee’s Military Moms.
• A Belated Veterans (Day) Post via Funny Blog.
• Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day via American Thinker.
• Supporting Returning Troops via Northloop Neighborhood.
• As Per Request via Budget Nomad – US Ex – Pat on the Move.
• Some Odds and Ends of the Election via The Liberal Life of a Navy Wife .
• Returning Troops…A Noble Cause via Dodgeblogium.
• Survivor Corps Website via Untreatable Online.
• Standing up for Max Cleland on Veteran’s Day via Informed Comment.
• Standing up for Max Cleland on Veteran’s Day via Big Bark.
• Read Terrance D.C. via Oh Boy it Never Ends.
• Katrina Vanden Heuvel is an Idiot via Ruth’s Report.
• Iraq snapshot (The Common Ills) via Like Maria Said Paz.
• Tuesday November 11. 2008. via This French Life.
• Survivor Corps Program-Help! via Swimming Against the Red Tide.
• Survivor Corps via Kung Fu Monkey.
• banner via Leucadia Blog.
• banner via Bearing Drift.

You have done an amazing thing for the vets and also for the mission of Survivor Corps domestically and around the world. Thank you for your posts and for your banner placement. Never hesitate to contact me personally or my team at Abraham Harrison. Also, always please feel free to contact the entire Survivor Corps team.

This news is from the hasn’t this already happened before department?  Also, from the I can’t believe it took this long department. Via the Washington Post.

Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang will step down, the company announced last night, as the once-highflying Internet portal struggles to steady itself in the turbulent environment for Web media.

Yahoo! should be one of the coolest brands on the block.  With Flickr and del.icio.us, Yahoo really should be #2 — and it could be #1 if it would stop with the self-loathing — and it is not. Why?  Because Yahoo isn’t nearly shameless enough to survive in the 2008 Internet.  It is no longer the world of wizened Unix gurus who would easily define what is and isn’t couth on the Internet. Yahoo! is stuck in the days when it was uncool to splash your own brand on the brands you own (so is AOL); Yahoo! is stuck in the Internet of the 90s, an Internet wherein being good enough was good enough.

If Yahoo! was trying not to become gauche or become an ugly American in the Europe of the Internet, then it was successful! Yahoo! has become irrelevant. At least people hate Microsoft & AOL. Hell, I have nothing at all to say about Yahoo! except I adore del.icio.us and Flickr.  How could the owner of two of the Internet’s coolest properties never be able to harnest the gravity of these two major celestial bodies and slingshot themselves into #1?

Maybe there is too much modesty, not enough braggadocio, in the halls of Yahoo!  Maybe if you look closely, Yahoo! is the company that does no harm and does no evil.  Maybe the company who’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” is actually pretty shameless and far from modest. Maybe on the modern Internet (and in modern business) it is more important to say you’re doing good, being good, and being modest than it is to actually be modest.

Yahoo!, Yahoo!, Yahoo! please try your darnedest to spend more time sharing yourself with the world and less time being the best of the good citizens.  Google is absolutely shameless when it comes to all the good work they’re doing.  They are not keeping their religion to themselves, they’re not praying quietly to themselves in a bare cell, away from prying eyes!  Google is on the soapbox!  Google is bragging!  Google is sharing the Holy Spirit with the world!

If you keep on slipping those alms into the alms box of Internet Good Works by dark of night you will actually become irrelevant.  Nobody is against you but nobody is for you, either. Nobody cares.

What’s worse, I don’t think enough people even really think much about Flickr and del.icio.us being Yahoo! properties.

Yes, you make folks become Yahoo! members, but that’s not enough. In DC and Virginia, everyone has a Safeway card but nobody like to shop at Safeway — it’s only because Safeway makes it super-easy to become a member.  There is no brand loyalty, there is no passion behind the brand (OK, OK, Safeway Select pasta sauce is awesome — it is like Safeway’s Flickr), even if everyone has a Safeway scan card on their key ring.

Anyway, Yahoo!, I am so sorry for the rant.  Oh, also, why is it that all of my geeky friends in the Zope and Python world all want to work for Google and not for Yahoo!?  How come all of my PHP and MySQL friends ache to work for Google and not for Yahoo!  How pissed you must be to suffer that Google drank your milkshake.  They took you toys!  You, Yahoo!, where supposed to be that success story!  I mean, you were the first search engine, after all!  You were the first directory, right?

Well, it is time to get off your pity pot, kick Jerry to the curb, and again become the Yahoo! I have known you since 1994 and have loved you (although I have not used your email address since Gmail came out, sorry) and I really want you to get you some smarts.  Give me a call at +1 (202) 352-5051 or +49 (0)151 52579077 — I would be more than happy to try to help you turn this ship around!

Viel Glück

Today is Veteran’s Day, a day that pays homage to every man and woman who has served in the United States Armed Forces, in times of war and peace.  Please consider donating any amount today to help our returning troops.  If you donate now your funds will be matched dollar for dollar!

I have personally pledged to raise $1,000 of the $10,000 that Survivor Corps is raising this week to help returning soldiers in remembrance of Veteran’s Day, today — please help me make my goal. Honestly, a couple-bucks is cool — feel free to donate whatever you want. There is always the “Other” tab. If we have lots of small donations, it all adds up!  Please join me over on Facebook Cause in support of my pledge.

Our soldiers need our help now. Which is why, this Veterans Day, I’m asking you to honor their service with a modest gift to Survivor Corps’ program for U.S. Armed Forces veterans, Operation Survivor.

Survivor Corps is aiming to raise $10,000 over the next week, with your help. We currently have just over 600 members in the cause. If each member donated just $20, we would have well over $12,000. In addition, Survivor Corps is currently running a matching-gift program so your donation will be doubled for the returning troops! Please join Survivor Corps on Facebook Causes to help them reach their goal of $10,000!

Right now, about 620,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injuries (TBI), major depression, or a combination of the three. Many returning veterans are facing family, employment, and other community reintegration issues. Using our ten years of experience helping survivors of violent conflict find a way back to peace, within their own bodies and minds, and in their communities, Survivor Corps founded Operation Survivor to provide the same kind of life-changing services to American veterans.

NEWS FACTS
Within the United States there are over one and a half million service members that have served in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over thirty thousand have been physically wounded, but many more have experienced less visible, psychological wounds. Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have emerged as signature injuries of these conflicts, with recent reports suggesting an increase in rates of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, and domestic violence among returning service members and veterans.

These traumatic affects of conflict, left unaddressed, could have far-reaching negative consequences for the individuals affected, their families, and our country. Survivor Corps’ work in some of the most conflict affected countries in the world has shown community reintegration to be the key factor in those that overcome their traumatic experiences, and those that are consumed by them.

• 1.6 million servicemembers have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001
• 300,000 have reported symptoms of PTSD and major depression. (RAND)
• Over 5,391 service members haveben killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 (hostile and non-hostile)4,447 killed in Iraq, 944 killed in Afghanistan (iCasualties, 06 AUG 08)
• Over 30,000 injured
• Over 1,000 lost limbs
• Walter Reed Amputee Center serves 100 veterans daily

The main issues for returning soldier since WWI have been:

• Major depressive disorder
• Alcohol abuse
• Domestic violence
• Suicide
• Homelessness
• Unemployment

All of these issues repeat after each war, and are symptoms of the much greater problem facing Veterans: How to reintegrate into families and communities upon return. We’ve seen these issues in our overseas networks, US citizens have seen these symptoms after past conflicts, and we are seeing these same symptoms again today..

PTSD:

• 53% of soldiers with PSTD receive treatment. (RAND)

SUICIDE:

• Since 2002 suicide attempts have risen from 350 to approximately 2,100 in 2007. (VA)
• The Army is committing $1.4 billion this year to add to the quality of life of a soldier including an informal peer support program through distribution of ACE of hearts playing cards.
• ACE cards: Ask your buddy, Care for your buddy, Escort your buddy.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE:
According to the Department of Defense heavy drinking occurred in 18.5% of those individuals from the U.S. Armed Forces surveyed.

• 41% of veterans who drank reported problems at work
• 24.7% of veterans who drank reported problems at home
• 31.2% of veterans who drank reported depression

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE:
A study conducted by the National Institute of Health showed returning veterans listed alcohol as the second most frequent cause of spouse violence.

UNEMPLOYMENT:

• 11.2% of returning young male veterans are unemployed (US Dept. of Labor)

HOMELESSNESS:

• 40% of homeless men are veterans. (National Coalition for the Homeless)
• 200,000 veterans are homeless. (NCH)
• Already 600 returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have sought transitional housing services from the VA. (NCH)
• Women are 2 to 4 times more likely to become homeless. (NCH)
• After Vietnam, it generally took 9 to 12 years for veterans’ to become homeless…Returning veterans from Iraq are seeking housing services only months after returning. (NCH)

OPERATION SURVIVOR

Ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are creating a generation of veterans in the United States from all branches of the armed services and all 50 states who are struggling to overcome physical and psychosocial injuries. Most combat veterans convalescing in military hospitals across the country will survive physically, but getting on with their lives after returning home to their families and communities is proving a significant challenge for hundreds of thousands. Among the 1.6 million who have served since 2001, suicide is on the rise, as is unemployment and incidents of substance abuse and domestic violence.

The successful reintegration of returning service members is an issue that will have a long-lasting impact on American society, and may become the single defining struggle facing this new generation of veterans. Survivor Corps and its partners are determined to avoid the mistakes made when veterans returned from Vietnam, which resulted in tens of thousands of post-war suicides and over 200,000 men and women living on the streets.

To head off this tragic outcome, Survivor Corps will build peer support programs at the community level that will bring service members and veterans together for mutual support and encourage both individual responsibility and collective action to help others in need.

Survivor Corps is offering an alternative “treatment” that can be made readily available in all communities, regardless of proximity to traditional military or govern¬ment centers of support. Our approach is nimble enough to address the needs of individual survivors, while still broad enough to build a coalition of survivors and service providers working to effect long-term positive change.

This new program will help the recovery and reintegration of hundreds of thousands of returning U.S. service members at a critical time for them and their country.

• Survivor Corps – Peer Support
  (tags: ping.fm)
• Charity Folks | Online Auctions
  (tags: ping.fm)
• Netvantage Marketing Blog
  Let’s face it, we’re in a recession. In the past five weeks, the stock market has tanked, the credit market has dried up, and a very large rescue/bailout plan has seemingly had little effect. Companies are now cutting back and employees are being let go.
• Daily Herald – Before and After
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.
• DEFENSE STANDARD: Wounded Not Broken
  Her husband, Capt. Scott Quilty, lost an arm and a leg and spent two years at Walter Reed recovering. She wants the patients she sees to live the life her husband now enjoys.
• Before and after Iraq – Los Angeles Times
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.
• * photo op at Walter Reed – pics – Democratic Underground
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
• KarlfromNH.com Weekly Columns
  This interview was followed by yet another inspirational young man on my June 1st radio show. Captain Scott Quilty, a Francestown, NH native and son of friends of mine, related his experiences in the military
• Briefing on the importance of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
  Scott Quilty, Program Manager for Survivor Corps; and Anne Somers, Policy Counsel for the American Association of Persons with Disabilities.
• Organizing Committee Contacts
  Survivor Corps
  Contact Scott Quilty 202.250.3946 squilty@survivorcorps.org
• Johns Hopkins University | Today’s News
  Capt. Scott Quilty, a rifle platoon leader with the 10th Mountain Division, had been in Iraq for two months on Oct. 2, 2006, when he stepped on an improvised explosive device while on patrol near Baghdad. Surgeons amputated his right arm below the elbow and his right leg below the knee.
• Bush Issues Apology Over Conditions At Walter Reed | National Security Network
  At Walter Reed, Bush awarded 10 Purple Heart medals and chatted with patients. In a physical therapy exercise room, he shook Lt. Scott Quilty’s prosthetic right hand, hopped onto an elliptical exercise machine next to Staff Sgt. Gregory Robinson (who lost a leg) and admired a naked woman tattoo on Sgt. Mark Ecker’s left shoulder.
• ON EDUCATION; Graduating Into the Real World, And Preparing to Take Up Arms – New York Times
  These 17 had entered R.O.T.C. for different reasons. Cassandra Crosby could not have afforded college without the program’s scholarship. Benjamin Keating had absorbed ”the idea of citizenship” in his classics courses. Scott Quilty and Megan McGrevey embodied the third generation in military families.
• Survivor Corps – Survivor Corps Staff
• Welcome to New Hampshire and to the homepage of Karl from New Hampshire.
  On June 1st, 2008, I was joined in the studio by Capt. Scott Quilty of Francestown, NH.
  Capt. Quilty suffered the loss of his right arm and leg, below the elbow and knee, respectively, while gallantly serving his country in Iraq.
  He is now involved with SurvivorsCorps, a non-profit organization based in Washinton, DC which is developing programs to reach out to other injured veterans to help them realign their lives.
  Scott currently lives in Maryland with his wife, also a veteran.
• Iraq Today: War News for Friday, July 04, 2008
  Scott Quilty, 28, lost his right arm and leg in October 2006 to a roadside bomb while serving in Iraq.
• June 3rd Briefing on Capitol Hill | RatifyNow.org
  Scott Quilty, U.S. Program Manager, Survivor Corps; Disabled U.S. Veteran
• At Ease!
  Scott Quilty, a 28-year-old Iraqi war veteran who lost part of an arm and leg while on foot patrol in Baghdad, presented the award to Lee Woodruff, who said she accepted it on behalf of all caregivers, parents and wives of those who have been injured in war and on behalf of anyone serving in the military.
• M?u Thân 68
  Ba tháng sau l?i tiên tri toán pháp này ?ng d?ng vào ??i úy Scott Quilty, 26 tu?i; anh d?n trung ??i ?i tu?n ti?u t?i Rustimullah, m?t th? tr?n phía Nam Baghdad, ngày mùng 2 tháng M??i 2006. Quân Iraq cho n? m?t qu? mìn, anh b? m?t tay m?t và chân m?t.
• ??? PoEnglish: Bush Apologizes for Poor Conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, 30 Mar 2007
• Bush Apologizes for Poor Conditions on Visit to Walter Reed Army Hospital «
  March 30: President Bush shakes hands with 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to the Walter Reed Army Center.
• \jeff{krimmel} » Blog Archive » Americans Dying at Alarming Rate in Ira
  First Lt. Scott Quilty, 26, had to have his right leg amputated below the knee and his right arm amputated below the elbow, his father told The Sentinel.
• Nashuatelegraph.com: Benefit bake sale rescheduled
  MILFORD – The bake sale to benefit the family of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty has been rescheduled to this Saturday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. It will be in front of the Toadstool Bookshop, Lorden Plaza, Route 101A, Milford.
• President Bush shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty · Scaz.Net
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007.
• Today in Iraq
  Lieutenant Scott Quilty, a native of Francestown, was injured in Iraq Sunday night when an improvised explosive device was detonated while he was on a dismounted patrol with the Army platoon he led. As a result of his injuries, Quilty, 26, had his right arm amputated below the elbow and his right leg removed below the knee, according to his father, R. Scott Quilty, who said he had not been told where in Iraq the attack had occurred. A state lawmaker stationed in Iraq has been injured.
• Bush Apologizes for Poor Conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, 30 Mar 2007
• LJWorld.com / Bush apologizes at Walter Reed
  President Bush meets Army 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, D.C. Quilty has a prosthetic arm because of injuries suffered during his Army service.
• reaching out «
  March 30: President Bush shakes hands with 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to the Walter Reed Army Center.
• Before and after Iraq — O Papel dos EUA no Sistema Internacional Pós-1989
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.
• U.S. Programs Office of Survivor Corps
• Roadfood.com Forums – For a Debt That Can Never Be Repaid
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.
• Survivor Corps – Programs – United States
  Scott Quilty
  Survivor Corps
  2100 M St. NW Suite 302
  Washington DC 20037
  Ph: 202.250.3946
  F: 202.464.0011
  squilty@survivorcorps.org
• Acinetobacter Baumannii in Iraq the Casualties
  First Lt. Scott Quilty
  “Doctors had to amputate a portion of one of Quilty’s arms, and part
  of one leg.
  He is really battling infection, so he has a very high fever. He is still
  in critical condition
• BLOG.DEFENSESTANDARD.COM
  For Quilty, the motivation to come to work each day is intensely personal.
  Her husband, Capt. Scott Quilty, lost an arm and a leg and spent two years at Walter Reed recovering. She wants the patients she sees to live the life her husband now enjoys.
• Untitled Document
  Brotheres, Just finished reading the 31st. Inf newsletter. I was disconcerted to find out that, on 9/19/o6, Spec. Bobby Callahan from Jamestown, N.C was killed in iraq, when the vehicle he was in turned over. On Oct.1st.P.F.C Satieon V “T” Greenleewas killed by sniper fire in Baghdad, he was from Pemdleton, S.C. Also on the 1st., Lt. Scott Quilty lost an arm and leg (improvised explosive device) while on dismounted patrol. These men were and are with A/4/31, the unit, since 2001, has had four combat tours. Our’ brother Polar Bears are still under the hammer. With deep regret, Ed. Pro Patria.
• Military & Veterans: Politics for the deserving: 5/11/08 – 5/18/08
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.

  The best worst injury

• Photo from AP Photo by Gerald Herbert – Daylife
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007.
• President George W. Bush watches U.S. Army 1st Lt. Scott Anthony Quilty of Francetown, N.H., demonstrate his walking abilities Friday, March 30, 2007, during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Standing with the President is Lt.
  President George W. Bush watches U.S. Army 1st Lt. Scott Anthony Quilty of Francetown, N.H., demonstrate his walking abilities Friday, March 30, 2007, during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Standing with the President is Lt. Quilty’s wife U.S. Army Capt. AnnMarie Dora Quilty. Lt. Quilty was later awarded the Purple Heart by President Bush. White House photo by Eric Draper
• President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007. At center is his wife Annmarie Quilty,
• President Bush watches as 1st Lt. Scott Quilty goes through his exercises as he visits with patients
  President Bush watches as 1st Lt. Scott Quilty goes through his exercises as he visits with patients in the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007. Between them is his wife Annmarie Quilty.
• Bush Apologizes for Poor Conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, 30 Mar 2007
• The UNH Connection: An Electronic Newsletter
  PROUD VETERAN
  In 2006, while serving in Iraq, Scott Quilty ’04 (pictured with President Bush at Walter Reed Army Medical Center) lost his right arm and leg in a roadside bombing. But he didn’t lose his commitment or his hope. He tackled his rehabilitation process with determination, married his high school sweetheart, AnnMarie Dora Wilcox Quilty ’03 (also pictured), and today is leading a pilot program that will help train other survivors of traumatic injury. Focusing on his blessings is a poignant exercise for Quilty, whose close friend and UNH roommate, Ben Keating ’04, lost his life while serving in Afghanistan. “Knowing that for whatever reason I was still here and a guy like Ben isn’t — who was my better on every measurable level — kind of solidified within me that I needed to, regardless of the situation, push through the darker periods to rise above being a victim of it all,” Quilty says.
• The long road back for a wounded warrior
  There were dark days, but a retired Army captain who was injured by a roadside bomb feels lucky to be alive. First of two parts
• Soldier wounded in Iraq bombing
  FRANCESTOWN (AP) – A Francestown soldier serving in Iraq was seriously wounded over the weekend in a roadside bombing.

  First Lt. Scott Quilty, 26, had to have his right leg amputated below the knee and his right arm amputated below the elbow, his father told The Sentinel.

• A Need to Take the World Seriously
  Capt. Benjamin Keating ’04 and 1st Lt. Scott Quilty ’04 began their UNH journey together in 2000, when they enrolled in the Army ROTC program. They participated in countless early morning field exercises, spent many a late night studying for exams, and, as seniors, became roommates. By 2006, they had something else in common: both were assigned to serve in war zones, Keating in Afghanistan and Quilty in Iraq.
• U.S. Programs Office of Survivor Corps
  Survivor Corps and the global consulting firm Booz Allen Hamiliton are hosting an Initiators Conference on the Community Reintegration of Service Members and Veterans in an effort to bring together the leaders of key government, business, nonprofit, and academic institutions currently engaged on this issue. Booz Allen Hamilton, which has a long history of commitment to America’s service members and veterans, has joined us in this effort, bringing their extensive experience in helping leaders and organizations collaborate to address complex issues across sectors.
• Scott Quilty with George W Bush — PHOTO
  Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed on Friday.
• Bush promises vets a better Walter Reed – USATODAY.com
  Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed on Friday.
• Rockingham Ambulance Online – News
  Two Stars of Life proudly represented Rockingham Regional Ambulance, Inc. this year. EMT – Intermediate Scott Hurst and Operations Center Coordinator Scott Quilty were selected by their peers and managers to represent both Rockingham Ambulance and the State of NH at this annual event.
• LSN – Landmine Survivors Network – Bios
  Scott Quilty – U.S. Program Manager
• UnionLeader.com – New Hampshire news, business and sports
  Capt. Scott Quilty, center, and his wife, Capt. AnnMarie Dora Wilcox Quilty, pose with President Bush during Scott’s Purple Heart ceremony at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. (COURTESY)
• PC World – Unlocked G1: Not (Yet) Worth the Effort
• Scott Quilty ’04 – UNH Alumni Association
  In early October 2006, Scott Quilty ’04 was seriously wounded in a roadside bombing in Iraq. Read more
• Facebook | Scott Quilty
• Neighbors Working To Help Family Of Injured Soldier – New Hampshire News Story – WMUR Manchester
  Neighbors are reaching out to help the family of an Army soldier from Francestown who was seriously injured in Iraq.

  First Lt. Scott Quilty was on foot patrol near Baghdad last week when he was taken down by an explosion. Doctors had to amputate a portion of one of Quilty’s arms, and part of one leg.

  “He is really battling infection, so he has a very high fever. He is still in critical condition,” said Raisa Marshall, Quilty’s neighbor.

• A MEMORABLE MEMORIAL DAY – KarlfromNH.com Weekly Columns
  On October 1st, 2006 after being in Iraq for just six weeks, Scott was struck by a roadside bomb while on patrol. He was a platoon leader, 30 men, and he had trained at Fort Drum in Watertown, New York. They were members of the 10th Mountain Division, a Combat Infantry Unit. At the tender age of 26, Scott was to lose a leg and an arm. He was lucky to have survived at all. Flown first to Germany, and then later to Walter Reed, he is still in rehabilitation there. Not once, through any of this ordeal, did he complain or regret his service. His family stood by him for months as he underwent over 15 surgeries. Skin grafts, closing of wounds, countless procedures undoubtedly painful beyond reason, and still never even a hint of “poor me”.
• Does the board wish to help out? – Viper Alley – Dodge Viper Forum
  Neighbors are reaching out to help the family of an Army soldier from Francestown who was seriously injured in Iraq.First Lt. Scott Quilty was on foot patrol near Baghdad last week when he was taken down by an explosion.

  Doctors had to amputate a portion of one of Quilty’s arms, and part of one leg.”He is really battling infection, so he has a very high fever. He is still in critical condition,” said Raisa Marshall, Quilty’s neighbor.

  Quilty is now at Walter Reed Medical Center. His mother and father have rushed to his side. Quilty’s mother quit her job at a New Hampshire Inn, anticipating his need for care when he returns home.”It’s time for the community to step up.

  It’s time for the community to take responsibility, help take the burden off of Janet and Scott’s shoulders so that they can focus on their son, not worry about the electrical bill,” said Marshall.Marshall decided to help by writing a compelling letter outlining financial needs.

  The letter was emailed to dozens of peo

• GI SPECIAL 4J5 – 5/10/06
  Francestown Soldier Injured In Iraq

  Lt. Scott Quilty, 26, a UNH graduate, had his right arm amputated below the elbow and his right leg removed below the knee.

  Oct. 4, 2006 By STEPHEN BEALE, Union Leader Correspondent

  Lieutenant Scott Quilty, a native of Francestown, was injured in Iraq Sunday night when an improvised explosive device was detonated while he was on a dismounted patrol with the Army platoon he led.

  As a result of his injuries, Quilty, 26, had his right arm amputated below the elbow and his right leg removed below the knee, according to his father, R. Scott Quilty, who said he had not been told where in Iraq the attack had occurred.

  “He had only been there six weeks and they have been moving him around,” Quilty said today in an interview. “He didn’t have any permanent station at the time.”

  Quilty said that his son was initially taken to a hospital northwest of Iraq and then transported to a military medical facility in Germany on Monday. He is scheduled to arrive a

• U.S. President George W. Bush Visits Walter Reed Army Medical Center | Article from Getty Images (by Event) Individuals | HighBeam Research
• Francestown soldier injured in Iraq
  Lieutenant Scott Quilty, a native of Francestown, was injured in Iraq Sunday night when an improvised explosive device was detonated while he was on a dismounted patrol with the Army platoon he led.
• Shindig benefits injured GI’s family
  Go back about a month ago, for instance, and put yourself in the shoes of Scott and Janet Quilty, well-known residents of the tiny Monadnock village of Francestown. Early one Monday morning, some of that dreaded news found them: Their son, Army First Lt. Scott Quilty, 26, a college scholar who’d gone to Iraq just six weeks before, had been seriously injured when a roadside booby trap blew up his platoon.
• Survivor Corps US Program Update
  Last week was a busy one for the Survivor Corps US Program. On August 18th and 19th, Survivor Corps hosted a round table discussion for organizations serving the recovery and reintegration needs of US Veterans. Participants discussed the value of connecting newly returned service members and veterans with other veterans who had been through the same experience for support. This type of relationship helps both individuals to overcome traumatic experiences and participate in community.
• A Day in the Life of President Bush (with the troops at Walter Reed): 3-30-07
  A Day in the Life of President Bush (with the troops at Walter Reed): 3-30-07
• The long road back for a wounded warrior
  Scott Quilty has always been a leader who shows us how to beat our own doubts
• Hosted by Siteleader.com
  (tags: ping.fm)
• Roger Wolfson: Why Obama Supporters Need to Do More than Vote
  (tags: ping.fm)

If you have not been keeping on top of all of the great comments streaming in to the AH Poll entitled “If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Palin be competent to be President?” you are really missing out! Some of them are the most insightful, thoughtful, and brilliant collection of thoughts representing the best and the worst of the right and the left! Roll up your sleeves and batten your hatches because you’re going to have one hell of a ride. Oh, also, these comments are in reverse-chronological order so the most recent are at the top. If you want to keep track of them live, please go visit them where they love and breathe. Read below for the most amazing Sarah Palin comment thread of the Internets!

And, here’s an embed of the poll, if I’ve piqued your interest by now:

Project ID: OZH1P1

Giving starving children food is not enough – the food needs to contain the vitamins, micronutrients, and calories a developing child needs to survive. New ready-to-use food (RUF) provides this. It is individually packaged, is stable in hot climates, does not need to be mixed with water (no risk of contamination), and even tastes good. Children recover in about one month and RUF is cost-effective. With this treatment there is simply no reason for children to die of starvation any more.

A reputable health organization estimates there are 178 million children that are malnourished across the globe, and at any given moment, 20 million who are suffering from the most severe form of malnutrition. Each year, this contributes to between 3.5 and 5 million deaths of children under 5. It is estimated that only 3% of children suffering from malnutrition receive the lifesaving treatment they need.

We’ve all seen so many photographs of malnourished children that it has become a problem that we assume can never be solved. But with RUF, there is no reason for children to die. One organization treated more than 122,000 children in 2007 in 22 countries with nutrient-rich therapeutic and supplementary food. The cure rate for children receiving RUF is more than 90%. Tens of thousands of children could receive life saving RUF in places such as DRC, Ethiopia, Sudan, Niger, and around the world.

A friend in Haiti recently reminded me that children there and many other countries are either dying of malnutrition or given away by their parents because food and medical care is so scare. As a parent in the US, this is heartbreaking. However, the achievable solution to this children’s crisis inspired me to submit this project.

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I would have never guessed that Camille Paglia would be in awe of Sara Palin or perceive her as follows, “Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.” Whoa. (Via Salon.com)

Fresh blood for the vampire

Rip tide! Is the Obama campaign shooting out to sea like a paper boat?

It’s heavy weather for Obama fans, as momentum has suddenly shifted to John McCain — that hoary, barnacle-encrusted tub that many Democrats like me had thought was full of holes and swirling to its doom in the inky depths of Republican incoherence and fratricide. Gee whilikers, the McCain vampire just won’t die! Hit him with a hammer, and he explodes like a jellyfish into a hundred hungry pieces.

Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain’s imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain’s credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain’s sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let’s turn the damned page.We need a new generation of leadership with fresh ideas and an expansive, cosmopolitan vision — which is why I support Barack Obama and have contributed to his campaign. My baby-boom generation — typified by the narcissistic Clintons — peaked in the 1960s and is seriously past it. But McCain, born before Pearl Harbor, is even older than we are! Why would anyone believe that he holds the key to the future? And why would anyone swallow that preening passel of high-flown rhetoric about “country above all” coming from a seething, short-fused character whose rampant egotism, zigzagging principles, and currying of the gullible press were the distinguishing marks of his senatorial career?

Having said that, I must admit that McCain is currently eating Obama’s lunch. McCain’s weirdly disconnected persona (beady glowers flashing to frozen grins and back again) has started to look more testosterone-rich than Obama’s easy, lanky, reflective candor. What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren’s public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance — where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness — began his alarming slide.

As I said in my last column, I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama’s efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin’ his g’s like there’s no tomorrow. It’s analogous to the way stodgy, portly Al Gore (evidently misadvised by the women in his family and their feminist pals) tried to zap himself up on the campaign trail into the happening buff dude that he was not. Both Gore and Obama would have been better advised to pursue a calm, steady, authoritative persona. Forget the jokes — be boring! That, alas, is what reads as masculine in the U.S.

The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick — there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly — though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into “Star Wars” — a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.

After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.

Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy — one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama’s triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football — or one of the great light-saber duels in “Star Wars.” (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in “The Phantom Menace.”) This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation — a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.

As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women’s studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me — and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).

Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America’s pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War — long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did — which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.

Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics — which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama’s campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don’t see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.

One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones — nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they’re sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along — poor dears!

It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin’s boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.

Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was an all-American version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother’s generation — agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.

Here’s one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, “Stop her!” as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, “Men!”

Now that’s the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism — a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.

Here’s another example of the physical fortitude and indomitable spirit that Palin as an Alaskan sportswoman seems to represent right now. Last year, Toronto’s Globe and Mail reprinted this remarkable obituary from 1905:

Abigail Becker Farmer and homemaker born in Frontenac County, Upper Canada, on March 14, 1830

A tall, handsome woman “who feared God greatly and the living or dead not at all,” she married a widower with six children and settled in a trapper’s cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie. On Nov. 23, 1854, with her husband away, she single-handedly rescued the crew of the schooner Conductor of Buffalo, which had run aground in a storm. The crew had clung to the frozen rigging all night, not daring to enter the raging surf. In the early morning, she waded chin-high into the water (she could not swim) and helped seven men reach shore. She was awarded medals for heroism and received $350 collected by the people of Buffalo, plus a handwritten letter from Queen Victoria that was accompanied by £50, all of which went toward buying a farm. She lost her husband to a storm, raised 17 children alone and died at Walsingham Centre, Ont.

Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today’s pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.

But what of Palin’s pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God’s plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We’ll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don’t believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

Let’s take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women’s movement — leading to feminists’ McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women — an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.

But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, “Sexual Personae,”) has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature’s fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.

The gigantic, instantaneous coast-to-coast rage directed at Sarah Palin when she was identified as pro-life was, I submit, a psychological response by loyal liberals who on some level do not want to open themselves to deep questioning about abortion and its human consequences. I have written about the eerie silence that fell over campus audiences in the early 1990s when I raised this issue on my book tours. At such moments, everyone in the hall seemed to feel the uneasy conscience of feminism. Naomi Wolf later bravely tried to address this same subject but seems to have given up in the face of the resistance she encountered.

If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society’s acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life. If McCain wins the White House and then drops dead, a President Palin would have the power to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, but she could not control their rulings.

It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism — one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.

But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

Camille Paglia’s column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.

Thank you to all of the bloggers who have blogged about the Fresh Air Fund on their blogs over the last couple weeks!  Please explore the posts below:

• Fresh Air Fund Needs Host Families posted by Jane at Above Average Jane
• Help Give A Kid A Break This Summer (US readers) posted by Lindsay at Activity Village Blog
• Blog Business, and, Announcing a Big Birthday Bash Blogging Break posted by Alissa at Life’s Little Adventures
• Fresh Air posted by Frank Almeida at Sugar & Spice
• Fresh Air Fund posted by Baggage at Baggage
• Help Low Income Kids have a great summer. posted by Michael Green at Bikeblog
• Asking Bloggers to Blog posted by Ron McDaniel at Buzzodle
• Support the Fresh Air fund posted by Clay Newton at Integrating Good
• Fresh Air Fund Needs Your Help posted by someone at Blonde Mom Blog
• Fresh Air Fund In Need of Host Families posted by Dawn at So a Blonde Walks Into a Review
• Fresh Air Fund Needs Host Families posted by Toby at Diva Marketing Blog
• Help These Children – In any way you can, please. posted by Steven at Bored Dad’s Roar
• The Fresh Air Fund: an appeal for host families posted by Ruth at Brand Strategy
• A Major Digression posted by Teresa at Brooklyn Backstretch
• The Fresh Air Fund – call for host families posted by Camy Tang at Camy’s Loft
• (Hot) Thursday Thoughts posted by Dan at Cerulean Sanctum
• Help Children from Disadvantaged Communities Find Host Families for a Summer Program posted by Danny Fisher at Danny Fisher
• I Need 200 Families Willing to Host a Child in August posted by Chris Abraham at Chris Abraham
• Boing Boing Shout Out to the Fresh Air Fund posted by Chris Abraham at Chris Abraham
• Charity needs host families posted by Eric at Christifideles
• A Midsummer Start for Ceviches at Brooklyn Fields posted by Emily S. Rueb at The New York Times
• Dream Big, Little Girl posted by Liza at Cool Mom Picks
• A breath of Fresh Air posted by Christine at Mama’s Musings
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by someone at Did You Ever Notice?
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by Doug Rice at Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, and beyond
• City Mice posted by Mike Dresser at The Dresser Cooperative
• Do Something Good This Summer! posted by Shelah Davis at Ec’s Margaritaville
• Fresh Air Fund Needs Your Help Helping City Kids posted by Faithful Progressive at Faithful Progressive
• Give low-income city kids a chance to experience rural reality. posted by someone at Glamour Strip Poker : Streep Online Games Poker
• Slideshow posted by someone at In Search Of Fatherhood(R)
• Give low-income city kids a chance to experience rural reality. posted by Xeni Jardin at Best of the Green Web
• Jesp In Tanzania posted by “Jesper Guhle Mogensen
• ” at Give a Kid a Break
• Heart Crossings posted by someone at Fresh Air Fund
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by someone at Hellesbelles Misconceptions on Life
• Inner City Kids Get Some Fresh Air! posted by Leesa Garcia at News From France
• Where Does Milk Come From? posted by someone at Jakartass
• Fresh Air: the SM news release done right! posted by Lee Hopkins at Better Communication Results
• Our Fresh Air Fund Experience posted by someone at The Weekly Muse from Love 2B Homeschoolers
• Happy campers—not. posted by Bill Green at Make the Logo Bigger
• Fresh Air Fund Appeal on Boing Boing posted by Chris Abraham at Marketing Conversation
• Fresh Air Fund Needs Your Help posted by someone at Fresh Air Fund Needs Your Help by Mom blog
• Give a Kid Some Fresh Air! posted by “Heidi Hess Saxton” at Mommy Monsters Inc.
• Give a Kid Some Fresh Air! posted by “Heidi Hess Saxton” at Mommy Monsters Inc.
• Can you host a city kid? posted by someone at Mom said nobody cares…
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by Susthama at “Beyond the Clouds”
• Fresh Air: the SM news release done right! posted by Wilson at Advisable
• Remember summer vacations as a kid? posted by Sue Cramer at Praise and Coffee
• The Fresh Air Fund program posted by someone at Jesus and Dark Chocolate
• Fresh Air posted by Rick McKinley at Scituatedrev
• Please help a City child. posted by Claude Scales at Self-Absorbed Boomer
• Help Some Kids – Be A Fresh Air Host! posted by Phillip J Rhoades at Semjaza
• Helping Children posted by Sharon at Keeper of the Home
• Can You Help a Child Next Month? posted by Karen Hossink at Surviving Motherhood
• Help Find Hosts For Fresh Air Fund Kids posted by Karl at Public Service/Community Announcements – at Tcritic The Daily T-Shirt Fasion and Design blog
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by Julie at Teacherjulie.com
• A breath of Fresh Air posted by Pieter de Waal at The 3rd Cord
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by Court Stroud at The Existential Lip
• Community – Fresh Air Funds Need Your Help posted by Ben at The Father Life
• Fresh Air for Life posted by Sharon at reservoir
• Fresh Air Fund posted by Lee Oden at LeeOdden
• Fresh Air Fund posted by Sean Howard at
• Fresh Air Fund posted by Ben at Thefatherlife
• PSA for the FAF posted by Rachel at Velveteen Rabbi
• Sunflowers, Marigolds, and Fresh Air posted by Rachel Carter at VermontVibes
• Sunflowers, Marigolds, and Fresh Air posted by Rachel Carter at VermontVibes
• 5 Minutes Around the Blogosphere – Week posted by Erica Stall at 5 Minutes for the Mom
• Fresh Air posted by Frank at Sugar & Spice
• Fresh Air Fund Needs You posted by someone at BaristaNet
• Beyond Words posted by Kathy at Fresh Air Fund Needs Your Help Helping City Kids
• Offer them some fresh air posted by Gabrielle at Bloody Brilliant
• Give low-income city kids a chance to experience rural reality. posted by Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing
• Fresh Air posted by Crista Acosta at Crista Acosta
• Hit The Books (Surviving Your Child’s Summer Vacation For Pennies A Day) posted by Chag at Cynical Dad
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by Dave at Daves Bargain
• Fresh Air Fund posted by Ben at The Father Life
• Fresh Air Fund Needs Host Families posted by Toby at Find Tech Blogs
• From Fresh Air Fund posted by Peter at Freaked Out Fathers
• Fresh Air Program posted by Amy at In Pursuit of Prov. 31
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by Jeff at Jeff Bar’s Blog
• The Fresh Air Fund Needs Your Help posted by Megan at Jumping Monkey’s
• Every Kid Deserves a Summer Vacation posted by Kenneth Walsh at Kennth In the 212
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by Doug at Marketing Tech Blog
• Urgent: A Quick Note From the Fresh Air Fund posted by Matthew at Matthewktabor
• Adopt a Kid… For a Week posted by Rebecca at Fish Bowl Ny
• Fresh Air For Urban Kids posted by someone at Meta-Dad
• Links for 2008-07-14 posted by Douglas K at New With Me
• Help a child have a great summer camp experience – Fresh Air Fund posted by Kate Trgovac at My Name is Kate
• 200 Inner City Kids need a Vacation Home in August: Give the Fresh Air Fund a Hand posted by Leconcierge at Now Public
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by Willy Franzen at One Day One Internship
• The Fresh Air Fund posted by someone at Craphammer
• Fresh Air Fund Needs 200 More Families Willing to Host a Child in August posted by someone at Pr News Now
• Fresh Air Fund Needs 200 More Families Willing to Host a Child in August posted by someone at Pr Web
• Fresh Air Fund posted by Julia at Red Book
• Fresh Air Fund seeking hosts for disadvantaged kids in the Northeast in August posted by Ross at Rossputin.com
• 200 Inner City Kids need a Vacation Home in August: Give the Fresh Air Fund a Hand posted by Serge at Serge the Concierge
• Can You Help Give Kids Some Fresh Air? posted by Gavin at Servant of Chaos
• Camp Day! posted by Aja T. Marsh at Stem + Leaf
• The Fresh Air Fund Could Use Your Help posted by John Wall at Ronin Marketeer
• Fresh Air program gives vacation for NYC kids posted by someone at Boedus Travel Blog – Web Digest of Travel Resources
• Fresh Air Fund posted by someone at
• Do you have a spare bed? posted by Gunner at This Is Smyrna, TN
• the FRESHAIR fund posted by someone at Parenting Cares
• Fresh Air For Urban Kids posted by David at Metadad Fatherhood Evolving
• Is there room in your family for one more this August? posted by Domenico Bettilnelli jr. at Bettnett.com
• Give a kid the gift of fresh air posted by someone at Marketing Conversation
• Fresh Air Fund posted by Bobbi/Brian at Revolution of Love.com Blog

All of these posts have been collected since we started the campaign on July 16th!

I must say that my firm, Abraham Harrison, and I are much obliged!  I must also add that so are the folks over at the Fresh Air Fund. We at Abraham Harrison are super-happy to have this opportunity to work with the Fresh Air Fund in their time of need. If you want to learn more about our appeal, please check out the informational page over at freshair.smnr.us, We have over 200 children scheduled for Fresh Air trips this summer and need your help to host or find hosts!

Our client, Jerry White, co-founder of Survivor Corps, just guest-blogged over at the Anderson Cooper 360 blog, How to stop the violence: Feel the pain, check it out:

The morning papers and nightly news are filled with reminders the world can be an unpredictably dangerous place. Earthquakes in China, cyclones in Myanmar, tornados in the heartland, war in the Middle East and gang violence in our cities. There are fundamentally three types of threats to human survival and security: disasters, disease or violence. The third is the most disturbing—deliberate victimization and cruelty.

We are at war, and the number of people engaged in violence is growing daily. At the moment, there are 39 armed conflicts raging, and more than 80 percent of those injured and killed are civilians, not soldiers. To stop this man-made epidemic, we must work together. No one survives alone.

I’ve wrestled with the issues of how to overcome crisis and suffering throughout my life. When I was 20, I stepped on a landmine while hiking in northern Israel. I lost my leg, and spent months recovering in an Israeli hospital, learning firsthand what it takes to overcome. I wrote about what I have learned about survivorship and resilience in I Will Not Be Broken: 5 Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis.

There are five basic steps a person must undergo in order to complete the cycle of recovery from trauma. First, we must face facts: this awful thing has happened and we can’t turn back the clock. Second, we must choose life. It is still worth living, but we must actively choose and hope for a better future. Third, we must reach out – isolation will kill us; we need each other. Fourth, we must get moving – no one else can do our physical or emotional rehab for us. Finally, we must give back. Turning around to help those who are struggling alongside us will boost our serotonin levels and complete the cycle of our own healing. Givers, not takers, end up thriving.

It’s hard to read the papers and watch the news at times… tempting to turn the channel. But empathy is key to our personal and global survival. Only by recognizing the pain in ourselves do we begin to see others in pain as our brothers and sisters. As we work through our own pain, we find it satisfying, and even healing, to reach out and help others, replacing the cycle of violence and suffering with one of growth and peace.

–Jerry White, cofounder of Survivor Corps – a worldwide network of people helping each other overcome the effects of war and violence—and author of I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis. All net proceeds from sales of I Will Not Be Broken benefit Survivor Corps programs to help survivors recover worldwide.

If you are interested in an online reputation management, defensive SEO, reputation defense campaign, please call us at +1 202-657-4769 or email us at info@chrisabraham.com, and we’ll be more than happy to help you!

Abraham Harrison Online Reputation Management and Defense Services

When it comes down to it, reputation defense and crisis management demands engagement: resistance is futile. Here’s some excellent advice from Local Advertising Journal about the risks and rewards of Online Reputation Management: Eliminate the Negative:

A negative review of your business or product is detrimental to your online reputation, but if it is managed correctly you can negate some of its worst impacts. When you find a negative review about your business, under no circumstances should you knee-jerk a reply defending your business. This can quickly devolve into a nasty thread of replies that will in perpetuity online, for anyone to read. You would not want have a heated argument in front of your customers in public, and make no mistake, an online post war is public indeed.

This is an excellent addition to what I have written in the past about online reputation defense and management:

Some things to consider when you’re cleaning negative returns on Google and the other search engines: cleaning is easier after the body has been removed. If you are in the middle of a maelstrom of bad press and online vitriolic hatred, then you probably need to weather the storm for a while before the counter messaging and the defensive SEO strategy starts working.

That said, messaging, controlling your brand, your reputation, and your results on Google — promotional SEO — should be started well before you ever get smeared online. Getting your message, your intent, your true self, your words, you interests, your true bio, your positive images, your press packets, and everything you have ever published online well before sladerous things happen is essential.

Otherwise, you will be too vulnerable. The best defense is a fantastic offense, to be sure.

One thing that one really needs to consider before entering into a reputation war is whether or not to engage at all.  One thing that I learned during my short stay at Edelman was that the very best PR consultants know when not to engage.  That’s the magic.

Also, if you have a choice, to not engage the attack unless it is in your own terms. If you enter into an engagement in the other party’s terms, you are doomed to failure. Most often, no matter how tempting it may be, do not try to do crisis management in a blogger’s comments unless you have an attitude of mea maxima culpa and a strong solution — a solution that will seriously win hearts and minds — and that does not include being defensive or fighting back.

What I recommend in cases like this is counter-messaging, using either a platform you control or a neutral platform, such as YouTube, Twitter, Digg or whatnot.  In this way, you will be able to convey your truths and the truths of your company and brand without getting to wrapped up in the tarbaby of the commenters and supporters who will, undoubtedly, flock around you like Piranha.

Otherwise, as I said before, no time like the present to start working up your online brand reputation with some of your own energy, positivity, passion, case studies, bios, experience, sharing, teaching, participating, engaging, and learning well before anything happens in your space, online or otherwise.

When it comes down to it, it all comes down to whether you’re known or unknown. If you are attempting to defend your reputation as an Internet unknown against an Internet Celeb, you’re toast and you probably need to quickly contact me and my firm right away — things are going to get ugly fast.  Even if you’re known but not necessarily adored, you will still be part of the accountability loop. People tend not to attack someone they know. If you can make sure your “captors” know your face and know who you are, you’re more likely to survive any sort of slander and online attack much more than a nameless, faceless, and detached corporate globalist.

I don’t know if you’ve been online much, but the worst thing ever to be online is a detached corporate globalist. Even if you and your brand has a history of tending towards detached corporate globalism, you can at least become an engaged corporate localist with the name Jack or Phil or Mike or Sheila, and that’s better that just being a Trademark, a Copyright, and a pack of hungry lawyers!

Abraham Harrison LLC’s Online Reputation Management Defense Services

You are not helpless in the face of negative search results. A directed, well-executed, diligent campaign will place your desired results high in the list, pushing undesirable results down to irrelevant pages where the majority of Internet users do not bother to look. 90% of searchers never look past the first page — i.e. the first 10 results. 99% of searchers never look beyond the second page. We will work to get the undesirable results as far from those first two pages as possible.

At Abraham Harrison, LLC, our proven and well-refined methods as well as our long-established credibility gives us particular efficacy in influencing top search results. We don’t engage the negative results, as this actually makes them more attractive to the search engines. We employ an assortment of tactics to chaff and flare, to draw the search engines’ attention to positive and neutral results, and away from the problematic negative results .

It is not possible to make information on the Internet disappear unless the people who put the information online in the first place take it back down again — even then, the data is often mirrored elsewhere or cached and re-served by the likes of Google and The Wayback Machine. The method is to make the undesirable results needles in haystacks — it can be there, but only people really intent on finding it will come across it.

An online search results sanitization campaign is a long-term commitment, much like treating a cancer. It begins with a period of intense assault on the problem to beat the negatives down followed by a on-going low-level maintenance regime to keep them down. A campaign is heavily front-loaded with the ongoing maintenance being very low cost — we can also turn those maintenance operations over to you, together with any infrastructure, content, and domain names we may have set up during the campaign.

Unlike many other companies in this field, we have no interest in holding you hostage over the years by keeping control of the mechanisms of the treatment. We are happy to turn that over to you once we get you in the clear, or if you prefer, provide you the service of keeping up the defense, however you prefer.

An online search results sanitization campaign requires subtlety convincing the search engines that what they previously believed — i.e. that the currently highly-ranked negative results are indeed some of the most valuable and relevant results — is no longer true, and that the neutral and positive content that we identify or create is far more valuable and relevant and therefore should rank highly, pushing the negative results down into the obscurity of lower rankings.

This requires a bit of time, 6-8 weeks of concerted effort generally, to get results moving away from where the search engines have long believed them legitimately to stand, toward the new state that we desire, with those negative results far below the neutral and positive ones.

Once we get the results moving and out of stasis, we keep them moving until we are happy with the results, then maintain them in place, so that the negative results (which naturally have their own legitimacy in the eyes of the search engines) do not move back up again. It is a bit like braces on a child’s teeth which are then followed by a retainer that keeps them straight and prevents them from slipping back to their original crooked state.

Even the largest, well-known companies have used defensive SEO tactics in the face of crisis and unfavorable publicity. It works for them, and it will work for you. Negative search results are a controllable problem that can be solved with diligence and know-how. Unlike other common types of crises, negative search results will not disappear without action. However, unfavorable publicity that you may have received years ago that is still affecting perceptions about your brand can be dealt with and have its negative impact neutralized.

We have resolved difficult SEO solutions — probably far worse than yours – in the past and come out on top. With our vast network and effective systems, we are able to provide an viable, permanent solution to most online reputation problems, and we will help with yours as well.

Generally, campaigns run a year, with the bulk of the effort in the first 4 months. After the first five to six months have passed and we have achieved a stable new order with the negative results well-buried, we will be happy to turn the maintenance over to you, if you wish, or we can continue to maintain the defensive systems for you until the end of the year.  After the first year, we’re happy to continue monitoring your online reputation and maintaining your defensive systems for as long as you choose to retain our services.

That said, all of the work, all the domain names, and all the IP we generate for you is yours and we’re happy to turn it over to you if you like, after the year-long contract is completed.

Abraham Harrison, LLC, bills on a retainer basis, i.e. at the beginning of the month before beginning operations. As mentioned, the effort, and the billing is front-loaded to allow an aggressive attack to beat down the negative results soundly, then backing off over time focusing over more on the lower-resource work of stabilizing the results in order to allow you to save money.

This is an op-ed written by Jerry White, founder of Survivor Corps and author of I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis, on the Fourth of July, 2008:

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.” These are not the words of a pacifist or peacenik. General George Washington, the canny military strategist and first leader of the American army, recognized that war is a horror. While we bask in our independence today, let us also recognize the price paid by those—then and now—who fight for it. After the Revolution, 25,000 Americans lay dead. About 25,000 more were seriously wounded or disabled. That is a high price, indeed, for our freedom. Since 1776, the world has fought more than 300 wars, and nearly 40 conflicts still rage. The cost remains steep.

Today, 1.6 million Americans have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Over 4,000 are dead. Those who return are missing limbs, are disfigured, are coping with traumatic brain injuries. Still others have less visible wounds. Over 300,000 now exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress and alienation here at home. They have broken marriages, unchecked anger, thoughts of suicide. Their military service may be over, but they and their families (including over two million children) remain profoundly affected. The costs related to stress and depressive disorders may reach $6 billion over the next two years, according to a recent study by Rand.

And that’s where we, as civilians, must activate. We must commit ourselves as everyday people to reach out to these wounded warriors to help them overcome. Because I am here to tell you, nobody survives trauma alone.

I have spent the past twelve years building a global network of people helping each other overcome the terrible cost of war—helping “victims” become “survivors.” In over 116,000 peer visits across the war-torn regions of the world, we have learned a few things about what separates those who lie down and embrace their suffering, and those who rise above, rebuild their lives, and rejoin their communities.

Survivors who successfully overcome traumatic injuries follow five basic steps. First, they Face Facts. These people don’t run from the truth of what’s happened to them. They don’t deny injuries, or disfigurement, or anger. They look at them, and incorporate them into their lives.

Second, they consciously Choose Life. It is crucial to remind ourselves and each other why life is worth living. Rising suicide rates must be addressed head on, because most of these individuals don’t want to die as much as they want their pain and despair to end.

Third, true survivors Reach Out. They reject isolation and divisiveness. They know that, to move out of a war victim mentality and onto the path of positive survivorship, they must drop their shell of anger and resentment.

Fourth, survivors have to Get Moving. Those traumatized by war, whatever the condition of their bodies, must get active. We all must take responsibility to do what it takes to “get in shape” for whatever the future may hold.

The fifth—and perhaps most crucial key to resilience and recovery—is to Give Back. Survivors recognize that it’s better to be a benefactor, not just a beneficiary. Everyone can have a role to play and contribute in big and small ways to our families and neighborhoods. To the veterans who served in war, I say learn to serve again. Become active members of your communities. Show your strength, creativity and work ethic to your friends and neighbors. You may look different, you may feel different, but you can still contribute.

And to the United States, as we struggle to recover from the war trauma we experience as a nation, I offer the same practical advice: Face Facts. Choose Life. Reach Out. Get Moving. Give Back. Families and citizens remain divided over whether we should have gone into Iraq in the first place. The Revolutionary War was no different—many wanted to avoid war or align with England. (Benjamin Franklin’s own son, William, the Governor of New Jersey, remained loyal to Britain throughout the war, as did nearly 20% of the colonists.) But at the end of the war, then as now, we emerge as Americans.

When we can admit our imperfections and share our strength as survivors, as Americans, we are united. Certainly, as victims of war we have pain. We know loss and sacrifice. But we are still strong. Because it is more than just pain that unites us. It is our shared hope for humanity—our ability to overcome—that binds us together.

I am convinced that within each human being lies an inextinguishable flame, an irrepressible voice whose refrain is unmistakable: I choose freedom. I will not choose to hate, to wallow in self-pity, to retaliate. I instead choose to live, to thrive. I believe that this is the American way. Some say we are becoming less resilient and more cynical as a nation. And, if we keep making excuses and pushing our responsibilities to each other away, that is the path we will be on. But, I think we are better than that. I believe strength and generosity can be found within each and every one of us.

So, let’s honor our Day of Independence by uniting in empathy and support for families struggling with fresh wounds. In our mutual survivorship, there is no “us” and “them”—no civilian versus military, democrat versus republican, victim versus survivor. We are united in our commitment to one another. Choose resilience and optimism. Choose to reach out to those who are suffering. Let our lost loved ones, and their memories, cheer us onward and upward. And as fireworks explode behind the Washington Monument this July 4^th, let it commemorate and shout out America’s characteristic optimism and can-do confidence that we can and will overcome this “plague of mankind.”

George Carlin was my first adult comedian. My dad — my parents — loved him. He was a true disruptor and free thinker, using comedy as his platform. Please check out George Carlin’s Wikipedia entry and the lovely obituary from the New York Times.

George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71.The cause of death was heart failure. Mr. Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, went into the hospital on Sunday afternoon after complaining of heart trouble. The comedian had worked last weekend at The Orleans in Las Vegas.

Recently, Mr. Carlin was named the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He was to receive the award at the Kennedy Center in November. “In his lengthy career as a comedian, writer, and actor, George Carlin has not only made us laugh, but he makes us think,” said Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Kennedy Center chairman. “His influence on the next generation of comics has been far-reaching.”

Mr. Carlin began his standup comedy act in the late 1950s and made his first television solo guest appearance on “The Merv Griffin Show” in 1965. At that time, he was primarily known for his clever wordplay and reminiscences of his Irish working-class upbringing in New York.

But from the outset there were indications of an anti-establishment edge to his comedy. Initially, it surfaced in the witty patter of a host of offbeat characters like the wacky sportscaster Biff Barf and the hippy-dippy weatherman Al Sleet. “The weather was dominated by a large Canadian low, which is not to be confused with a Mexican high. Tonight’s forecast . . . dark, continued mostly dark tonight turning to widely scattered light in the morning.”

Mr. Carlin released his first comedy album, “Take-Offs and Put-Ons,” to rave reviews in 1967. He also dabbled in acting, winning a recurring part as Marlo Thomas’ theatrical agent in the sitcom “That Girl” (1966-67) and a supporting role in the movie “With Six You Get Egg-Roll,” released in 1968.

By the end of the decade, he was one of America’s best known comedians. He made more than 80 major television appearances during that time, including the Ed Sullivan Show and Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show; he was also regularly featured at major nightclubs in New York and Las Vegas.

That early success and celebrity, however, was as dinky and hollow as a gratuitous pratfall to Mr. Carlin. “I was entertaining the fathers and the mothers of the people I sympathized with, and in some cases associated with, and whose point of view I shared,” he recalled later, as quoted in the book “Going Too Far” by Tony Hendra, which was published in 1987. “I was a traitor, in so many words. I was living a lie.”

In 1970, Mr. Carlin discarded his suit, tie, and clean-cut image as well as the relatively conventional material that had catapulted him to the top. Mr. Carlin reinvented himself, emerging with a beard, long hair, jeans and a routine that, according to one critic, was steeped in “drugs and bawdy language.” There was an immediate backlash. The Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas terminated his three-year contract, and, months later, he was advised to leave town when an angry mob threatened him at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club. Afterward, he temporarily abandoned the nightclub circuit and began appearing at coffee houses, folk clubs and colleges where he found a younger, hipper audience that was more attuned to both his new image and his material.

By 1972, when he released his second album, “FM & AM,” his star was again on the rise. The album, which won a Grammy Award as best comedy recording, combined older material on the “AM” side with bolder, more acerbic routines on the “FM” side. Among the more controversial cuts was a routine euphemistically entitled “Shoot,” in which Mr. Carlin explored the etymology and common usage of the popular idiom for excrement. The bit was part of the comic’s longer routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” which appeared on his third album “Class Clown,” also released in 1972.

“There are some words you can say part of the time. Most of the time ‘ass’ is all right on television,” Mr. Carlin noted in his introduction to the then controversial monologue. “You can say, well, ‘You’ve made a perfect ass of yourself tonight.’ You can use ass in a religious sense, if you happen to be the redeemer riding into town on one — perfectly all right.”

The material seems innocuous by today’s standards, but it caused an uproar when broadcast on the New York radio station WBAI in the early ’70s. The station was censured and fined by the FCC. And in 1978, their ruling was supported by the Supreme Court, which Time magazine reported, “upheld an FCC ban on ‘offensive material’ during hours when children are in the audience.” Mr. Carlin refused to drop the bit and was arrested several times after reciting it on stage.

By the mid-’70s, like his comic predecessor Lenny Bruce and the fast-rising Richard Pryor, Mr. Carlin had emerged as a cultural renegade. In addition to his irreverent jests about religion and politics, he openly talked about the use of drugs, including acid and peyote, and said that he kicked cocaine not for moral or legal reasons but after he found “far more pain in the deal than pleasure.” But the edgier, more biting comedy he developed during this period, along with his candid admission of drug use, cemented his reputation as the “comic voice of the counterculture.”

Mr. Carlin released a half dozen comedy albums during the ’70s, including the million-record sellers “Class Clown,” “Occupation: Foole” (1973) and “An Evening With Wally Lando” (1975). He was chosen to host the first episode of the late-night comedy show “Saturday Night Live” in 1975. And two years later, he found the perfect platform for his brand of acerbic, cerebral, sometimes off-color standup humor in the fledgling, less restricted world of cable television. By 1977, when his first HBO comedy special, “George Carlin at USC” was aired, he was recognized as one of the era’s most influential comedians. He also become a best-selling author of books that expanded on his comedy routines, including “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?,” which was published by Hyperion in 2004.

Pursuing a Dream

Mr. Carlin was born in New York City in 1937. “I grew up in New York wanting to be like those funny men in the movies and on the radio,” he said. “My grandfather, mother and father were gifted verbally, and my mother passed that along to me. She always made sure I was conscious of language and words.”

He quit high school to join the Air Force in the mid-’50s and, while stationed in Shreveport, La., worked as a radio disc jockey. Discharged in 1957, he set out to pursue his boyhood dream of becoming an actor and comic. He moved to Boston where he met and teamed up with Jack Burns, a newscaster and comedian. The team worked on radio stations in Boston, Fort Worth, and Los Angeles, and performed in clubs throughout the country during the late ’50s.

After attracting the attention of the comedian Mort Sahl, who dubbed them “a duo of hip wits,” they appeared as guests on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar. Still, the Carlin-Burns team was only moderately successful, and, in 1960, Mr. Carlin struck out on his own.

During a career that spanned five decades, he emerged as one of the most durable, productive and versatile comedians of his era. He evolved from Jerry Seinfeld-like whimsy and a buttoned-down decorum in the ’60s to counterculture icon in the ’70s. By the ’80s, he was known as a scathing social critic who could artfully wring laughs from a list of oxymorons that ranged from “jumbo shrimp” to “military intelligence.” And in the 1990s and into the 21st century the balding but still pony-tailed comic prowled the stage — eyes ablaze and bristling with intensity — as the circuit’s most splenetic curmudgeon.

During his live 1996 HBO special, “Back in Town,” he raged over the shallowness of the ’90s “me first” culture — mocking the infatuation with camcorders, hyphenated names, sneakers with lights on them, and lambasting white guys over 10 years old who wear their baseball hats backwards. Baby boomers, “who went from ‘do your thing’ to ‘just say no’ …from cocaine to Rogaine,” and pro life advocates (“How come when it’s us it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken it’s an omelet?”), were some of his prime targets. In the years following his 1977 cable debut, Mr. Carlin was nominated for a half dozen Grammy awards and received CableAces awards for best stand-up comedy special for “George Carlin: Doin’ It Again (1990) and “George Carlin: Jammin’ ” (1992). He also won his second Grammy for the album “Jammin” in 1994.

Personal Struggles

During the course of his career, Mr. Carlin overcame numerous personal trials. His early arrests for obscenity (all of which were dismissed) and struggle to overcome his self-described “heavy drug use” were the most publicized. But in the ’80s he also weathered serious tax problems, a heart attack and two open heart surgeries.

In December 2004 he entered a rehabilitation center to address his addictions to Vicodin and red wine. Mr. Carlin had a well-chronicled cocaine problem in his 30s, and though he was able to taper his cocaine use on his own, he said, he continued to abuse alcohol and also became addicted to Vicodin. He entered rehab at the end of that year, then took two months off before continuing his comedy tours.

“Standup is the centerpiece of my life, my business, my art, my survival and my way of being,” Mr. Carlin once told an interviewer. “This is my art, to interpret the world.” But, while it always took center stage in his career, Mr. Carlin did not restrict himself to the comedy stage. He frequently indulged his childhood fantasy of becoming a movie star. Among his later credits were supporting parts in “Car Wash” (1976), “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989), “The Prince of Tides” (1991), and “Dogma” (1999).

His 1997 book, “Brain Droppings,” became an instant best seller. And among several continuing TV roles, he starred in the Fox sitcom “The George Carlin Show,” which aired for one season. “That was an experiment on my part to see if there might be a way I could fit into the corporate entertainment structure,” he said after the show was canceled in 1994. “And I don’t,” he added.

Despite the longevity of his career and his problematic personal life, Mr. Carlin remained one of the most original and productive comedians in show business. “It’s his lifelong affection for language and passion for truth that continue to fuel his performances,” a critic observed of the comedian when he was in his mid-60s. And Chris Albrecht, an HBO executive, said, “He is as prolific a comedian as I have witnessed.”

Mr. Carlin is survived by his wife, Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law, Bob McCall, brother, Patrick Carlin and sister-in-law, Marlene Carlin. His first wife, Brenda Hosbrook, died in 1997.

Although some criticized parts of his later work as too contentious, Mr. Carlin defended the material, insisting that his comedy had always been driven by an intolerance for the shortcomings of humanity and society. “Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”

Still, when pushed to explain the pessimism and overt spleen that had crept into his act, he quickly reaffirmed the zeal that inspired his lists of complaints and grievances. “I don’t have pet peeves,” he said, correcting the interviewer. And with a mischievous glint in his eyes, he added, “I have major, psychotic hatreds.”

In memory of George Carlin, here they are:

• Shit
• Piss
• Fuck
• Cunt
• Cocksucker
• Motherfucker
• Tits

My friend Momotaro, the fellow who created the banner for Memes.org, was so amused by the first comment that someone posted onto my blog post, Don’t Save the Whales and Don’t Save the Rainforest Either, that he created the following anthology of really intelligent put-downs, I Hope a Whale Beaches Itself On You — it is bloody brilliant!

1. 1. jenn wrote:

      i think you are a fucked up person considering you dont care about anything but your self i hope a whale beaches it self on you

      Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 6:46 pm #

   2. Saul wrote:

      One thing is true if you are an extremist you are off balance. If you are a fundamentalist in any direction you are off balance. All this needs is a holistic approach. Make money, but don’t sacrifice your children for it. Save whales but make sure to not be depressed by the fact that you might not. Fucked up is what happens when you forget what is most important to your existence and your families existence – which is in the here and now.

      Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 7:14 pm #

   3. johndoe@aol.com wrote:

      blow me, bitch! you need a brain.

      Tuesday, January 15, 2008 at 4:04 am #

   4. Chris wrote:

      johndoe@aol.com »

      Charming.

      Tuesday, January 15, 2008 at 5:06 am #

   5. Jessie wrote:

      I just happened to come across this essay because I was looking for an animal to write about for English class. I clicked on the logo because I am absolutely terrified of whales. I think your writing is very good, and I do agree that one should not focus on one single cause, forgetting about one’s loved ones. However, there are a large host of people who manage to care very deeply about vital causes such as hunger or poverty, and still put much devotion into family and personal life. I think I am going to traverse your writings, Chris.

      Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 10:38 pm #

   6. taylor wrote:

      u r sick and u should not be so cruel u selfish thing!

      Tuesday, February 5, 2008 at 10:17 am #

   7. John wrote:

      Good job! A+

      Friday, February 8, 2008 at 6:19 pm #

   8. noneyabuisness wrote:

      YOUR STUPID. YOU MUST BE AN ANIMAL HATER YOU FACKOO. how can you not feel bad for them? your such a…gosh

      P.S. (save the polar bears) wolfs are awesome!

      Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 3:00 am #

   9. logan wrote:

      save the d*** whales this guy dosen’t now what he is talking about the dumb A** what the H**l is your prob. beach a whale on him.

      Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 6:57 pm #

   10. logan wrote:

       jhon shut the heck up you dumb A** gosh!

       Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 6:58 pm #

   11. logan wrote:

       jessie you shut up to what is your guyzes problem save whales

       Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 7:00 pm #

   12. Jennifer wrote:

       WAT DA HELL IS UR FUKIN PROBLEM U DUMASS UR SICK AND STUPID!!! HOW DO U NOT FEEL BAD FOR THEM, U DON’T HAVE A FUKIN HEART AND AND UR SELFISH SO GO TO HELL!!! IT’S FOR PEOPLE LIKE YOU THAT WHALES ARE IN DANGER
       GO SUCK A DICK!!!!!

       Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 10:53 pm #

   13. Saul wrote:

       Jennifer – you really made me laugh. You are so eloquent in your deep discussion of a relevant topic. What have you done for the whales today?

       Monday, February 25, 2008 at 8:48 am #

   14. Chelsea wrote:

       I think you are the biggest low life i have ever heard of the Whales and the rainforests deserve to be saved. how dare you write that appalling colunm it’s disgusting!!!!!!! I’m 13 and i think thats saying something

       Monday, March 3, 2008 at 8:12 am #

   15. Chris wrote:

       Chelsea »

       Cheslea, did you read the article?

       Monday, March 3, 2008 at 10:00 am #

   16. Emiily Scott wrote:

       Hey you need to seriously sort ya self out! Why the hell don’t you care about anything but yourself! I hope you sometime need a transplant and dont get one and then ypu need someone but nooo we shouldn’t SAVE YOU!

       Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 3:00 pm #

   17. Nancy wrote:

       YOUUUUUUUUUU ARE GAYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

       Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 3:01 pm #

   18. Abe wrote:

       BAHHHH HUMBUG!!!
       SAVE THE WHALES!
       NOT YOU!
       YA STUPID WITCH

       Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 3:02 pm #

   19. Ben wrote:

       Not that i agree with him, but he has every right to express his opinion on the subject, he does have some good points, but…

       Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 12:51 am #

   20. Sydney wrote:

       KILL THE CHRIS!! KILL THE CHRIS!! cMON EVERYBODY, DONT SAVE THE CHRIS ABRAHAMS!!! considering he doesnt care about anything but himself. hes gonna ruin the world!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

       Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 1:42 pm #

   21. Sydney wrote:

       SCREW U TOO BEN!!

       Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 1:42 pm #

   22. Chris wrote:

       Sydney, you mean “Kill the Humans,” right? I never named any particular whale, such as Shamu or Willy, right?

       Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 6:19 pm #

   23. Chris wrote:

       Oh, and I should also add, “Don’t Save the Humans,” either.

       Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 6:19 pm #

   24. Cecily wrote:

       I AGREE WITH JENIFER!!! WHOO-HOO! I SAY EVERTHING SHE SAYS!!!

       Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 9:00 pm #

   25. sydney wrote:

       u r a total psycho!!! If u dont want to help save the wonderful, beautiful, gorgeous planet god gave u to live on, u have mental issues!! U shouldbe locked up somewhere in SOLITARY DETENTION!!!!! SAVE THE WHALES!!!!!!!! and dont listen to this stupid idiot fag chris abraham, who says “kill the children!!” u were a kid once, how would u feel if u were a kid browsing the web, and came cross a site saying ‘kill the children’?? Whats wrong with you?? ur momma musta dropped u on ur head or something when u were a kid. peace!!

       Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 9:22 pm #

   26. korney wrote:

       ur a fag it is porple like u that kill the world off!! if someone to have there world stay around for awhile then that is there buisness dont tell them how to live there life so go kill ur self

       Sunday, March 9, 2008 at 12:01 am #

   27. Tookie wrote:

       i think that u should have a heart for creatures lives and u should balance it out with ur family. whales and other animals have lives just like us and have families too but r being hunted and seperated from them. u can do simple things at home too u know. by the way, why did u bring this subject up anyway sam? is it something related to u?

       Sunday, March 9, 2008 at 8:40 am #

   28. Tookie wrote:

       hey jerks! leave him alone! mhe can freely express himself. i dont agree with but dont put him down for his personal opion!

       Sunday, March 9, 2008 at 8:55 am #

   29. Bobby wrote:

       Tookie, we are not jerks, WE are just freely expressing ourselves, and i think that when Chris was a baby his momma dropped him on his head, fed him stupid juice, and then sucked his brain out with a vaccum. TO CHRIS: YOU ARE A STUPID RETARDED A** H***!!! I hope one day, you need serious help, but the people say “No we are using that to save the whales.” Than ‘technically’ we are not sayng “KILL THE CHRIS” But we are still killing you. Go to hell. I agree with anyone who says chris is a dick.

       Sunday, March 9, 2008 at 3:59 pm #

   30. Thomas wrote:

       I agree with Bobby, if he means a DIRTY dick.

       Sunday, March 9, 2008 at 5:23 pm #

   31. Andrew wrote:

       You are a FART, SHIT

       Monday, March 10, 2008 at 8:21 am #

   32. and wrote:

       You DA BIAN

       Monday, March 10, 2008 at 8:22 am #

   33. Chris wrote:

       I call all you crazy 14-year-olds the Whale-Qaeda!

       Monday, March 10, 2008 at 12:10 pm #

   34. Melissa wrote:

       okay i think there needs to be a balance. You should be able to spend the majority of your time in your life, but also take the time to help others, including the whales. Yes, the theme of saving yourself first and the world will follow suit, is a popular one, and if you think about it, it makes sense. You can do your best and until you can be your best, and that includes home life.

       so i agree with you Chris (guys don’t freak out on me), but maybe you could have said this in a less offending and extreme way.

       Save the whales, but save yourself and the people in your life too, is what i think you’re trying to say.

       okay i’m done ahha

       Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 8:36 pm #

   35. Sydney’s BFF wrote:

       Whatever Chris you’re a jerk. There’s a difference between expressing your opinion gently and then there’s just insanity. You’re nowhere in between, you’re a psycho person. In your quest to kill off the children and whales and all things beautiful just because you’re not, you have proved to everyone who visits this psycho site that you actually do care by attracting more attention to the cause. Thanks Chris, for helping save the whales, but you still belong in a strait jacket somewhere until you see a poor whale being harpooned and you’ll see what it’s really like. Until then, read all these messages people leave you and PLEASE, PLEASE reconsider you opinion. Suppose someone was looking for a house in your neighborhood and shot and killed you because they wanted your house to be yours. Well that’s what it’s like to be harpooned by some jerk-off fishermen
       SERIOUSLY DUDE TAKE SOME DEEP THINKING TIME FOR YOURSELF AND RECONSIDER. SAVE THE WHALES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

       Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 11:55 pm #

   36. Sydney’s BFF wrote:

       Oh and in my previous message I meant to say they wanted your house to be theirs.

       Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 11:56 pm #

   37. Lasse wrote:

       wow, thats what i call a discussion! @ all you radical americans talking about saving the world while driving huge ass cars to the next steak house drive-in; whales are just animals and they deserve to live and than to be eaten like any pig and cow you guys have for breakfast. enjoy everybody

       Friday, March 14, 2008 at 4:49 pm #

   38. elly wrote:

       ur an ass.fuck u

       Sunday, March 16, 2008 at 9:14 pm #

   39. Chris wrote:

       What does “ur” mean and what is “u?” Fuck University? What are you trying to say to me, Elly?

       Monday, March 17, 2008 at 12:04 am #

   40. fsdasjkfsdfjk@hotmai wrote:

       thats rite dont save those bastards

       Monday, March 17, 2008 at 2:51 am #

   41. Sydney wrote:

       “ur” is an abbreviation of youre and “u” is an abbreviation of you. idiot.

       Friday, March 21, 2008 at 5:04 pm #

   42. Chris wrote:

       Duh.

       Friday, March 21, 2008 at 7:16 pm #

   43. What the hell wrote:

       u sicko how could you be so fucking fucked up in the head. whales deserve a right to live, unlike you. fuck you

       Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 10:33 am #

   44. Chris wrote:

       You did not read the article, did you? Can you read? I am beginning to think that we need to save the children, save the teens, and work on sub-literacy and illiteracy in the US, Australia, and other English-speaking nations that suffer under the weight of such ignorant activists.

       Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 12:31 pm #

   45. Syzmatomtia wrote:

       98% of all species on earth have fallen to extinction, without the help of man. The other 2% will eventually face extinction as well. It is indeed a natural progression of any ecosystem for old species to pass away and new species to be born.

       Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 4:17 pm #

   46. Ashley wrote:

       U R A ass hole 4 not saving the whales u should be more caring. U need to get a life and a personality.&&&&&&U should go and fuck yourself…………….
       ……………………
       THANK 4 NOT CARING ABOUT ANYTHING BUT YOURSELF (((((NOT))))

       Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 2:48 am #

   47. J. Miller wrote:

       Request permission to use the image ‘don’t save the whales’ for a university newsletter cover with theme ‘taboo’. Please.

       Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 4:34 am #

   48. Chris wrote:

       Yes, please use it as often and as freely as you like!

       Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 10:46 am #

   49. Lila wrote:

       People’s pathedic lives are not half as important as that of the whales, rainforests, and etc. Go fuck yourself and save the fucking whales you cock sucker

       Friday, March 28, 2008 at 12:04 am #

   50. Monica wrote:

       Is this a social experiment?

       Friday, March 28, 2008 at 12:16 am #

   51. sarah wrote:

       Dude, love the whales and stop being a hater. How would you feel if people took you out of your home and killed you?! It wouldn’t feel good would it?

       Friday, March 28, 2008 at 5:10 pm #

   52. Chris wrote:

       sarah »

       That was a very persuasive argument.

       Friday, March 28, 2008 at 5:50 pm #

   53. Ashely wrote:

       WHAT THE SAM HELL R U THINKING DUMBO IF U WANNA THREAT THOSE ENDANGERED CREATURES U’LL HAVE TO GO THROUGH ME AND THE OTHER PEOPLE THAT WROTE ABOUT UR STUPID PARAGRAPH AND JUST SO U KNOW WHALES R MY FAVORITE ANIMALS SO INSTEAD OF NOT SAVING THE WHALES LET’S KICK U OFF OF EARTH AND NOT SAVE U!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!U SHOULD DO A WEBSITE CALLED http://WWW.CHECK OUT HOW STUPID I AM.COM U SHOULD REALLY DO THAT U WILL NEVER WIN

       Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 12:08 am #

   54. Chris wrote:

       Did you read the article? Do you know how to spell? Can you take your finger off the shift key, please?

       Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 8:58 am #

   55. Smilee wrote:

       rele have u got nuffin better to do wiv ur life than write horrible stuff about whales. if u hate whales so much y not keep it 2 urself?? anyways i love whales and i dont kno how any1 can want them 2 b killed … so plz stop writin horrible stuff!!!

       Monday, April 7, 2008 at 5:25 pm #

   56. alley wrote:

       You are a sick person. Don’t save whales? How cruel. You should think twice.

       Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 2:15 am #

   57. Aman wrote:

       Chris Abraham kill that bicth.

       Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:24 pm #

   58. Aman wrote:

       Theres a bicth named Chris Abraham
       He should die

       Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:25 pm #

   59. Aman wrote:

       Chris Abraham does not have the right to live.

       Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:28 pm #

   60. Chris wrote:

       Whale-Qaeda!

       Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 4:32 pm #

   61. nunyabusiness wrote:

       Chris, I understand the ability to express your feelings, but maybe you should do it in a better way. I AM A CHILD, AND WHAT YOU JUST SAID SICKENS ME!!! I also feel the need to say that whales are my favorite animals, and this is so out of line and wrong. They are part of our ecosystem and you should be ashamed of yourself. What people are doing is taking mothers away from their babies, or taking away a wife or husband. Do you have a wife? A kid? A mom? How would you feel if someone shot one of them? Not to good, huh? I think that you should really reconsider and think about how whales are one of the smartest mamals and have feelings and families too before you write such things.

       Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 3:49 pm #

   62. nunyabusiness wrote:

       oh, by the way, I’m not the same “NONEYABUSINESS” as one of the earlier ones, I didn’t see that one. By the way, I also agree with sarah.

       Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 3:52 pm #

   63. Chris wrote:

       What you you mean by child? 8? That is the age of a child.

       Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 10:30 pm #

   64. nunyabusiness wrote:

       actually, I’m seven. so think of how smart i am— unlike you. i was looking for whales because i like them, and i found this.

       Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 11:46 pm #

   65. nunyabusiness wrote:

       oh, and you also, you must have no come back because all you said was the child thing.

       Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 11:47 pm #

   66. chris abraham wrote:

       It was not a come back. 7 is very young and you are brilliant. No, I would not want my family to be shot. And, if you’ll read the article I wrote, I never said one thing about hurting whales. I sort of said, “don’t let your family get shot before you save the whales.” My blog is too sophisticated for someone your age. I am pretty sure my site is blocked by the net nanny software your parents should be using.

       Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 9:11 am #

   67. bree wrote:

       wow ur fucked up whales are the best and its because of ass holes like you that our animals are becoming endangered and extinct

       Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 12:11 am #

   68. Dannii wrote:

       You are so mean, and i hope u rot in hell bcoz u r so mean n u dont vcare about anyone but yourself bcoz ur so selfish!!!!

       Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 11:04 am #

   69. Kaitlyn and McKenna wrote:

       CRAP YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

       Monday, April 28, 2008 at 8:02 pm #

   70. Chris wrote:

       Crap me?

       Monday, April 28, 2008 at 9:26 pm #

   71. shmo wrote:

       YES U!!!! WHAT DO U THINK!! U ARE SOOOOOO RETARDEDLY STUPID!! I WISH I COULD MEET U IN PERSON WIT SOME OF THE PEOPLE THAT HATE YOU SO WE COULD SERIOUSLY DAMAGE UR FACE!!!!!

       Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 10:23 pm #

   72. SHMO wrote:

       good job nonyebussiness, i spelled that wrong. its good that young people are taking an intrest in saving our world!! keep it up!

       Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 10:25 pm #

   73. shmo wrote:

       hey anyone who hates chris lets almost kill him to see howq he likes it them feed him to the whales!!!! that will show him!!!

       Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 10:30 pm #

   74. Chris wrote:

       Yes. That would be fantastic, you Whale-Qaeda!

       Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 11:52 pm #

   75. Chris wrote:

       Shmo, you amuse me.

       Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 11:54 pm #

   76. shmo wrote:

       glad i do cause i will be writing stuff quite often. FYI!!!

       P.S. what does Whale-Qaeda mean?

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 12:04 am #

   77. shmo wrote:

       ugh.. u piss me off soooo much!!!! u arogant, retarded, stupid fool!!!!

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 12:05 am #

   78. Chris wrote:

       

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 12:35 am #

   79. wafflez wrote:

       i cant believe that u would make a website based on not saving the whales…u wanna kill whales? u might as well just fuckin kill me! better yet, kill urself! the world doesnt need bastards like u here to ruin it! ppl wanna help keep the world a better place and help the enviornment!

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 12:44 am #

   80. SHMO!!!! wrote:

       WOO HOO!!!! I LOVE U WAFFELZ! ( THATS ONLY CAUSE I KNOW U!) WE SAID! WE DONT NEED TO CHRIS, GO DIE IN A HOLE. AND I AM VERY LITERATE THANK U VERY MUCH!

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 1:33 am #

   81. SHMO wrote:

       ooops! spelling errors. it says well said.
       and we dont need u chris

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 2:05 am #

   82. Cola wrote:

       you are one fucked up person. people like you should be extinct. i’d much rather have whales, rhinos, manatees, pandas, koalas, tigers, dolphins, elephants, ect. than assholes like you!

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 2:58 am #

   83. LOEN! wrote:

       seriously.. where does all this hate cum from? answer that!! ugh u r so fukin retarded! GO TO REHAB!!!!!

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 3:02 am #

   84. I LOVE WHALES!!! wrote:

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 3:15 am #

   85. I LOVE WHALES!!! wrote:

       [IMG]http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii46/xoxlucylou11xox/my%20sayings/whales-1.gif[/IMG]

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 3:18 am #

   86. I LOVE WHALES!!! wrote:

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 3:18 am #

   87. SHMO!!! wrote:

       GO TO THIS AND READ IT!!!! IT TOTALLY APPLIES!!!

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 3:19 am #

   88. I LOVE WHALES!!! wrote:

       GO TO HELL!!!

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 3:22 am #

   89. I LOVE WHALES!!! wrote:

       CLICK ON MY NAME AND READ IT U BASTARD!

       Friday, May 2, 2008 at 3:22 am #

   90. I LOVE WHALES!!! wrote:

       Click on this! how does that make you feel? what if you were a whale? do u want me to HARPOON u?! huh?!

       http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.all-creatures.org/anex/whales-sl-06_small.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.all-creatures.org/anex/whales.html&h=273&w=200&sz=9&hl=en&start=46&tbnid=Ea4oBdMsazeAsM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=83&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkilling%2Bof%2Bwhales%26start%3D40%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

       Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 1:50 am #

   91. Queso wrote:

       you are a fucking dick hole and you need to go die in hell!!!!!!!! how would you feel if i came to your house and used all your fat for oil ( the world would never run out) so wat we cant save our own problems ( im 14 i dont have a family so if i want to save the world nothing is stopping me) go to HELL FAG

       Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 2:01 am #

   92. SHMO!! wrote:

       WOO HOO!!!! U SAID IT QUESO! ugh!! chris u r such an asshole!! i f dont care about this planet, then y dont u die!!! cause noone would miss u and its people like u killing the world, while my frends and i are trying to save it!!

       Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 3:19 am #

   93. kerryraine@yahoo.com wrote:

       you are pathetic, and i was not going to respond at all, you are one person, on this planet, you are just a protazoa, a germ, and most of all insignifficant , do you honestly thibk that what you say means anything to anyone.

       Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 10:10 am #

   94. Chris wrote:

       No, Kerry, I don’t.

       Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 5:23 pm #

   95. Chris wrote:

       You guys make me crazy but I just laugh. Please, read the article.

       Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 5:57 pm #

   96. Phillip J Rhoades wrote:

       I LOVE WHALES!!!, those photos make me hungry. I only eat dolphin aggressive tuna.

       Queso and SHMO!!, the world doesn’t need your saving. Get over your sense of human importance. Get over the idea that extinction isn’t natural. It is natural. We are natural superpredators and it is our purpose to cause extinction. 98% of every life form that has ever been on this planet has become extinct, even before we arrived.

       yes Kerry, we are all unimportant, so is the whale in the ocean, and the sea turtle, and the great bald eagle. They are just species waiting for the natural end, and that end is extinction. It will come with or without us.

       Death is normal. Creatures attacking and eating other creatures is natural. This is life. This is nature. And as part of nature this is also what we do.

       Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 9:09 pm #

   97. Queso wrote:

       we make a choice to kill or not so if i want to save the world I WILL AND I CAN so you can go fuck chris abraham! you are perfect for each other! how can whales and dolphins taste good? they are blubber…you are a disgusting pig!

       Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 10:08 pm #

   98. I LOVE WHALES!!! wrote:

       are you kidding me?! THOSE PICTURES MADE ME GO FUCKING VEGETARIAN YOU FAT CANIBLE! YOU MIGHT AS WELL GO EAT YOUR DOG OR YOUR MOM! AFTER SEEING THAT MEAT IS DISGUSTING AND I REGRET EVER EATING IT! OMFG YOU MOTHER FUCKER DICK SUCKERS ARE SO GROSS!

       Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 10:12 pm #

   99. SHMO!!! wrote:

       WHAT THE HELL IS UR FUCKIN PROBLEM PHILIP!!! YES EXTINCTION IS NATURAL, BUT THE REASON THAT THE WHALES ARE GOING EXCTINCT, IS BECAUSE OF FUCKIN DICK SUCKERS LIKE YOU THAT EAT THEM!! THAT IS WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO PREVENT! WITHOUT ASS HOLES LIKE YOU!, THERE WOULD BE NO PROBLEM!! YEA… U AND CHRIS SHOULD GO OUT, ITS PERFECT. UGH!!! U PEOPLE ARE SO FUCKIN SCREWED UP!! GO DIE IN A HOLE U ASS HOLES!!

       Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 1:05 am #

   100. Chris wrote:

        Mark, is that you? Mark, are you SHMO? You’re SHMO, right? Come on, you can tell me. It’s so good! You almost had be fooled. Good one!

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 2:46 am #

   101. Shmo! wrote:

        WHAT THE HELL U RETARD?!?!? MY NAME IS NOT MARK! I SWEAR TO THE WHALES THAT WE ARE TRYING TO SAVE!
        I’M NOT MARK

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 2:59 am #

   102. Phillip J Rhoades wrote:

        We are natural too. It doesn’t matter if we’re the cause for extinction or not, because all species meet extinction at some point or another. It is normal and natural for species to become extinct.

        Also, I (like two thirds of the world) have no problem eating dog meat. A dog is just another beast and just more food for me.

        The world doesn’t need saving, because the world will continue without you, without whales, without any of what is now. All that is now will fade away. All that is now will move on into non-existence. It is normal. It is natural for what is to pass away, to give way to what comes after.

        Let me say this one more time:

        Extinction is natural.

        We are natural.

        We are a natural cause of natural extinction.

        It is okay for things to die and species to end.

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 7:50 am #

   103. Phillip J Rhoades wrote:

        It is only the human ego that makes us believe we are the caretakers or destroyers of the world. We are not so important.

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 8:03 am #

   104. Queso wrote:

        God made us to be the caretakes of the world he did not want us to be the destroyers of this wonderful world we have made into a a living HELL for every thing that we think is not as smart as us so yes it is up to us to save animals from dum fucking dicks like you all.Phillip, if your so hungry why i dont come HARPOON you and your family so then you all and have a nice big dinner! how would that make you feel! oh you would be ded so i guess that would not matter!!!!! and i would feel just fine!!!

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 2:23 pm #

   105. shmo! wrote:

        Phillip, it is niot our ego that wants to save the world, we simply want to preserve it! becuase of retards like u and chris, the world and many of it animals are going to die, NOT IN A NATURAL WAY!!! THEY ARE DIYING BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LKE YOU THAT WANT TO EAT THE WHALES! WITHOUT PEOPLE LIKE YOU IN THIS WORLD… THERE WOULD BE NO PROBLEM!! get it? or is that to confuzing for your stupid little head? u r such a fuckin pig!! u need help if u want to eat ur dog. yea y dont we just cum harpoon u and chris and them feed u to the whales?? HUH??? how does that sound?
        and dont talk to us like we are five! we are very intellegent teenagers THAT ARE TRYING TO PRESERVE OUR WORLD UNLIKE DICK SUCKER LIKE U!!!

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 4:22 pm #

   106. penny wrote:

        so u Kill the Manatees, Kill the Children, Kill the Tigers, Kill the Dolphins, Kill the Bay, Kill the World, Kill the Koala, Kill the Pandas, Kill the Rhinos, Kill the Elephant or Kill the Whales. Y???? if u kill them, then u will die too! ever thought of that smart ass? yea cause even if we loose plankton, our whole ecosystem will be screwed up!! so if u kill all those animals then u will die and go to hell! God would not want u to be in his kingdom later for u to screw that up to.

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 5:08 pm #

   107. penny wrote:

        so u Kill the Manatees, Kill the Children, Kill the Tigers, Kill the Dolphins, Kill the Bay, Kill the World, Kill the Koala, Kill the Pandas, Kill the Rhinos, Kill the Elephant and Kill the Whales. Y???? if u kill them, then u will die too! ever thought of that smart ass? yea cause even if we loose plankton, our whole ecosystem will be screwed up!! so if u kill all those animals then u will die and go to hell! God would not want u to be in his kingdom later for u to screw that up to.

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 5:09 pm #

   108. Phillip J Rhoades wrote:

        It does not matter if humanity becomes extinct. We are also a natural creature and that is an end we must face. So, no I don’t care if the current world passes away. There is no problem. People cause extinction, like any dominant animal in an ecosystem it will cause a hardship on the other creatures. This is normal and natural. We are natural creatures and eating and killing other creatures is natural behavior for human beings. Stasis is not natural. The world changes. Life forms and species pass away and new species are born from what is left behind. The survival of any species currently on this planet (including the human species) is not of paramount importance. The ecosystem will recover. It will change into something new, with life forms that have never existed before. Species die out and it is normal and natural. When they die out from us (a natural creature just like any other creature) it is also normal and natural. When we meet our own extinction it will be normal and natural. Life on this planet does not need us and will continue despite what we do to the current set of plants and animals on this planet. The worst we can do is end what is, but that does not end the future of life on this planet. Life has survived ice ages, meteors, volcanic ash laden skies, and more. This world will survive us. the individual species that exist now do not matter. Their fate, our fate, it is of no consequence. The world will simply change and grow, old will pass away and new will thrive. Weak will become extinct and strong will evolve. What you lack is a full vision of the world, of life, of the universe.

        Humanity is a natural creature.

        Extinction is natural.

        Extinction caused by a natural creature (such as humanity) is natural, normal, and okay.

        The extinction of the human species (or any species) is of no great importance in the world.

        The continuation of the human species (or any species) is of no great importance either.

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 7:25 pm #

   109. shmo wrote:

        SHUT THE HELL UP!! O my god.. yes it is natural, but the way that the whales and other animals are dyeing is NOT! so shut up! idc if its natural, th whales and other marine animals cannot go extinct if we want our ecosystem to survive without major issues. stop acting like a smart ass!

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 7:59 pm #

   110. Phillip J Rhoades wrote:

        The current ecosystem will simply be replaced by a new one. The whales may not be a part of it, we may not be a part of it. That does not matter. Change is normal. Extinction is part of that natural change. We are part of the natural order. That which we do is natural.

        The way the whales are dying is in fact natural. It is caused by the natural creature that is humanity.

        Species dying out is normal, natural, and okay. It is the way things have always been. It was this way before the human creature arrived, and will be this way long after we depart.

        The mistake in your thinking, is the idea that humanity is somehow not a natural creature. The idea that humanity is somehow outside of nature. That is simply untrue. WE are a natural product of the ecosystem. We are a natural result of what came before. What we do is part of nature.

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 8:19 pm #

   111. shmo! wrote:

        there is no dounght in my mind that we are natural, but they way that the whales are dying IS NOT NATURAL!without us, they would be fine! how do u not c this? yes things die and new things replace them, but in this case when a certain species hat is sellfish becuase they want to eat an endangered aimals, this is not natural. WHY ARE U THE ONLY ONE THAT DOES NOT SEE THIS?

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 9:07 pm #

   112. shmo wrote:

        How old r u any way? cause u act like u r some old smart fart! but ur not!

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 9:08 pm #

   113. Phillip J Rhoades wrote:

        Without us they would simply die off from some other reason or creature. Species eat and decimate other species. It is in fact natural for one species to obliterate other species. Why are there so few who realize this? The reason would be the mass media propagation of the idea that ecological stasis is the norm. In fact, ecological stasis is neither normal or natural.

        Ecological change, disaster, and rebirth are normal.

        Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 9:15 pm #

   114. shmo wrote:

        so u get it? that without the humans they would not by extinct right now? o finally ur stupid liitle brain takes in some sense. that i what i have been trying to say, that yes the whales would have died without us, but the fact of the matter is that they are dying right now! yes all creatures eat eachother, but the human race is way to universal and we eat creatures that we dont need to eat, and that are supposed to live longer. GET IT YET??? if not i will be back later!!

        Monday, May 5, 2008 at 2:08 am #

   115. Phillip J Rhoades wrote:

        The point being, it does not matter if humans are the cause or a meteor or some other creature. Extinction is normal and natural. Human beings are a natural creature leading to the natural extinction of other creatures. We are not outside of the ecosystem. We are part of the ecosystem. Nothing that we do is unnatural. Everything that we do is a natural extension of the ecological system. If we’re causing an extinction or many extinctions that is only a normal and natural progression of life and evolution. We are not above nature, and what we do is a part of the natural cycle.

        It is completely and totally okay in the grand and massive scheme of life on this planet for creatures to become extinct. yes, it’s even okay for a natural creature, like humans, to cause the extinction of other creatures. It is the norm. It is the way it has always been. It doesn’t matter if it’s us or something else. Everything meets extinction eventually.

        Monday, May 5, 2008 at 4:14 am #

   116. somebody wrote:

        This is awfull. of course we must save the whales!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

        Monday, May 5, 2008 at 6:32 am #

   117. no name wrote:

        SAVE THE WHALES!!! I am with shmo we HAVE 2 HELP THEM I MEAN WITHOUT THE HUMANS WHALES WOULD BE FINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

        Monday, May 5, 2008 at 6:35 am #

   118. Will Litchfield wrote:

        Don’t save the whales?

        What the hell is wrong with you, jesus christ. If whales are the devils servants then you are the devil!

        Monday, May 5, 2008 at 3:38 pm #

   119. Chris wrote:

        Will Litchfield » What does that even mean? And, please don’t call me Jesus Christ.

        Monday, May 5, 2008 at 7:44 pm #

   120. Chris wrote:

        somebody » How are you saving the whales today?

        Monday, May 5, 2008 at 7:44 pm #

   121. shmo! wrote:

        thank you no name! as to you phillip… i dont inderstand why you need to wirte such long blogs, its really qite annoying! we need to save the whales becuase someone said before even if we loose plankton, you know those tiny miniscule things in our ocean, we willl be in big trouble. so imagine what would happen if we lost the whales or the manatees, or penguins, polor bears, etc. get my onsomble?

        Chris will litchfield is just a name it doesnt mean anything, dont be a wise ass. and i bet “somebody” is figuring out what to do, you cant expect everyone to just start something right away!

        Monday, May 5, 2008 at 9:43 pm #

   122. 36987 wrote:

        wow! that was insightful!

        Monday, May 5, 2008 at 10:32 pm #

   123. shmo wrote:

        ok i think that was a waste of time and space if i do say so myself

        Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 2:21 am #

   124. Chris wrote:

        shmo! » That logic doesn’t work, Shmo. The lower the order the more important the species is: plankton and coral are essential ingredients of undersea life while whales and manatees; penguins and polar bears, higher up in the chain, are really less essential. Losing bees is a big deal, losing man isn’t. Losing algae is a big deal, losing the blue whale isn’t. That said, as we have been discussing via email, I am not a proponent of whale-killing and am in fact more of a green freak now that I have ever been. I moved to Europe, gave up a car, ride by bike, go to the green grocers and buy veggies without plastic bags and carry them home in a reusable cotton bag. When I need to go far, I choose the train, when I need to go close, I take the subway or mount my bike. My footprint is low and I am active in my community.

        What have you done for he whales or for the environment lately — besides attacking me?

        Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 6:46 am #

   125. Chris wrote:

        shmo » Well, I am some old smart fart! I am 38! 38 is old!

        Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 6:48 am #

   126. shmo wrote:

        geeezz!! what the heck! someones angry today?! thats good and i am gld that u are doing that. it doesnt madder where on the food chain the whales are. they obviously had a purpose on this earth, or they would not be here. why is that so hard for people to understand?? it doesnt madder where they are they are here and important, maybe not as important as other species, but they are still. After reading ur “posts” my friends were very alarmedd, and so we have been making flyers, that we are actually going to give out at school today! what do u think about that? huh? public awarness? we arent adults, so we cannot do as much, but we ARE DOING ALL THAT WE CAN WITH WHAT WE ARE GIVEN!!!!
        O and by the way, about my last six blogs were not directed to you, they were to Phillip! but thank you for telling me ur age, becuase i was wondering about that!

        Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 12:47 pm #

   127. Chris wrote:

        shmo » I appreciate you for engaging with me and for opening yourself up to this conversation and for calling me out on being controversial — really, the title of my article has very little to do with the whales or the rain forests, it has to do with family, but I knew that “Don’t Save the Whales” and the graphic would get a lot of attention. How old are you?

        Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 1:53 pm #

   128. shmo wrote:

        it doesnt madder what the objective is, you diplayed this on the iternet,and now you have to live with the consequences.
        I don not need to reveal my age, that is of no importance.

        Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 5:53 pm #

   129. Chris wrote:

        shmo » Well, je ne regret rien.

        Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 10:33 pm #

   130. shmo wrote:

        what the heck does that mean?

        Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 10:40 pm #

   131. Chris wrote:

        shmo » “je ne regret rien” means, “I regret nothing.” In French.

        Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 2:31 pm #

   132. shmo wrote:

        and how do u think that i would know that?

        well ok then, becuase u better be prepared for people to continue hating you for what you have said and posted, especially if the whale situation becomes worse.

        Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 10:04 pm #

   133. Chris wrote:

        shmo » Well, I do expect illiterate and ignorant people to continue to write poorly-written sub-literate comments full of swearing and very little thought, that’s for sure. It has been happening for well over 3 years.

        Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 8:16 am #

   134. shmo wrote:

        i think that the people that write on here are very literate, intellegent, and that swearing is common, becuase of the posts that u have posted. just shut up… u write on here too!

        Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 1:00 pm #

   135. shmo wrote:

        and there is a lot of thought that goes into writing, i should think that u know that… but maybe not!

        Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 1:00 pm #

   136. Chris wrote:

        shmo » There is no literacy or intelligence. The English and grammar is appalling — including your grammar and spelling. You should be ashamed. I hope you get into college.

        Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 3:06 pm #

   137. shmo wrote:

        what the heck! this is only cause it doesnt madder! if i was turning in a paper for a grade then it would be good. when people are on here we dont care if the spelling is wrong!
        I’m not ashamed! idc.
        and i will get into college. there is still thought that goes into it, whether u believe it or not!

        Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 11:39 pm #

   138. kevin wrote:

        BLOW ME!!!!!!………. A BUBLE!!! I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING THAT SHMO HAS SAID! THERE IS THOUGHT THAT GOES INTO THESE (WELL NOT REALY MINE) BUT WIT EVERYONE ELSES! AND YES I AM NOT USING GOOD LANGUAGE, BECUASE I DONT CARE WHAT U THINK! U NEED TO RECONSIDER UR IDEAS AND HOW U DISPLAY THEM!

        Friday, May 9, 2008 at 3:21 am #

   139. shmo wrote:

        well thank u for ur agreeing, but ur words did not really prove my point. but thats ok! thanks! i think so too!

        Friday, May 9, 2008 at 3:22 am #

   140. Chris wrote:

        shmo » You undermine all of your arguments because you communicate sub-literally… it really does madder (sic) — all the time. There is never a time when it doesn’t madder (sic). The entire world will dismiss comments like these — dismissing you as poorly-versed and poorly-informed. Ignorant, really, although I know you aren’t, Shmo.

        Friday, May 9, 2008 at 7:04 am #

   141. shmo wrote:

        shut up!! therea re times where u can use akranims and poor spelling ( like i just did) cause it

        Friday, May 9, 2008 at 9:43 pm #

   142. shmo wrote:

        noone cares!i am not poorly literate! infact i love to write and english is one of my best subjects. i will admit that i am a bad speller, but thats ok, cause WHEN I CARE ABOUT IT… i will fix it and re-read my work, but on here, iam not going to waste my time! get it?

        Friday, May 9, 2008 at 9:46 pm #

   143. shmo wrote:

        no one cares!i am not poorly literate! infact i love to write and english is one of my best subjects. i will admit that i am a bad speller, but thats ok, cause WHEN I CARE ABOUT IT… i will fix it and re-read my work, but on here, iam not going to waste my time! get it?

        Friday, May 9, 2008 at 9:46 pm #

   144. lizzy wrote:

        well, i would first like to say that i have borwsed this web all over and have read every blog, so that chris could not call my uninfromed.
        Now, why would you evoke such an image on the web if ur point was totally different? i guess for attention- public awarness- but dont complain now.
        My family is complete. i have two wonderful children, i live in australia where i am a marine biologist, and my husband studies mamal existence. so why should we not save the world? even if my family was messed up, i would still save the world, becuase i care. all the “stupid wahle queadas” as u say are doing the same thing, but in smaller picture, as they cannot do as much as us adults. i do not agree that you descriminate against them, becuase they are trying to make our future bright and becuase they care. if we dont trust them… then who will? and who will fix our previous mistakes?
        as i have read these blogs, i can agree with both sides. not the family issues, but if we should get involved. as few have said, god has made us care takers of this world, but is it our job to fix it? i mean there are two sides, a) that god has everything planned out that we fix what has been odne, or b) that he has the future organized that we dont need to help. now to decide which one to go with, you need to follow what you believe, and stick with it, dont give up.
        as to the teenagers, keep up your commitment to our planet and follow you dreams, they will come true.
        Chris, i would appreciate if you would stop bashing my fututre and yours. they are literate and i see shmos point of how puncuation and speeling doesnt madder, i dont care right now either.
        Phillip~ i have to agree that you have some excelletn points! but then again i am back to my spiritual ways of believe what you believe.
        chris i must say that your arrogance is very… excentutating. it shows that you will commit to what you have started, and that is good even though you get so much grief. i do believe however that the grief you get is very apprehensive and undersatndable.
        thank you for reading my long speil, feel free to blog back to me for info and advice of how you can help.

        Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 4:02 am #

   145. shmo wrote:

        wow! lizzy i am so glad that you have said that! you are seriously living my dream, i mean australia, thats my goal! well thank you, i am glad that adults see us as a bright beacon for them in the future! and that some think we contribute a lot! thank you

        Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 4:04 am #

   146. Chris wrote:

        lizzy » How can you be an adult woman with children and a scientist husband and be able to write like this, “My family is complete. i have two wonderful children, i live in australia where i am a marine biologist, and my husband studies mamal (sic) existence. so why should we not save the world?” Mammal! Mammal! The job your husband does every day is studying Mammals, with two els. Besides, “excentutating” isn’t even a word, so I don’t even know what my arrogance is! Egad! The future is ruined if the entire island of Australia is subliterate, even the wives of marine biologists! Good lord! Please tell me that you’re a 14-year-old girl just pretending to be a mom and wife because otherwise you’ll make my cry.

        Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 7:28 am #

   147. Chris wrote:

        shmo » What is an “akranims?”

        Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 7:29 am #

   148. shmo wrote:

        see like i said, i am bad at spelling. like a.k.a. or t.t.y.l how they satnd for stuff. c’mon use some common sense and sound it out.

        Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 1:33 pm #

   149. lizzy wrote:

        i hope you do cry, i am speaking like this to prove a point. i’m not going to say what it is, or you would never have to find out. we also have differnet ways of speaking, learn that you bone head!

        Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 1:36 pm #

   150. cody wrote:

        yes, why try and save the world. After all it is the only planet in the solar system capable of supporting life!

        Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 12:51 am #

   151. shmo wrote:

        thank you! exactly! well… actually so far! but thats still so true!

        Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 1:48 am #

   152. Chris wrote:

        lizzy » There may be different ways of speaking but there is a dictionary for a reason and when speaking English, mammal is always spelled mammal and never mamal, especially when that personal supposedly has a husband who studies aquatic mammals. So, you’re just plain wrong, sub-literate, and — to be frank — either lazy or wrong.

        Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 12:59 pm #

   153. Chris wrote:

        shmo » I will use common sense next time if you spend the little bit of time trying to sort out what I am trying to say, too. Meet me half-way.

        Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 12:59 pm #

   154. shmo wrote:

        no! ok i am done trying to undertand what is wrong with you.
        to everyone that reads these, dont listen to chris abraham, do as much as you can to help our world and dont let anyone stear you away from what you believe.

        Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 7:14 pm #

   155. Chris wrote:

        shmo » Oh, egad!

        Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 10:49 pm #

   156. lizzy wrote:

        i am with shmo, there is no point in this website. afternoon chap! good bye!

        Monday, May 12, 2008 at 1:58 am #

   157. Chris wrote:

        lizzy » I appreciate it. Thanks for coming.

        Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 2:35 pm #