American Woman: Civil Liberties and the TSA Pat Down

Our government thinks you don't care about the new TSA scans and pat down rules. They think you will allow any intrusion on your civil rights as long as the authorities tell you that it is necessary to "fight terror".

Is it?

Will you?

As a Pagan woman whose tradition has no problem with nudity, per se, I can stand to have this done to me when I travel but I completely reject the idea that my "choices" should be intrusion and radiation or being groped by strangers; all done on the orders of my government when I have done nothing wrong. Nor do I believe that TSA's newest attempt at security theater will make me one wit safer. So I plan to use my voice to protest this obscene violation of my civil rights.

All this makes me wonder: If a socially liberal, nudist beach loving eco-feminist like me feels that way, how must other, more socially conservative (or, if you prefer, modest) women feel about this intrusion? In one of the worst bits of irony to date in the "war on terror" we find our government "defending our freedom" against men who are infamous for the subjugation and abuse of women in every country where they have influence by subjecting women (and men) to sexual abuse here at home.

I keep thinking about these modest women, women who, however different their lives or world views might be from my own, I respect as human beings and might well enjoy knowing. So, here we are today: All women are now told by TSA that that if they don't like it, they don't have to fly. And why? Because patriarchal-minded extremists (both foreign and domestic) gain power from our fear. Really, TSA? Really?

Perhaps you are one of those people who believe that such measures (measures even security conscious Israel does not impose on travelers) are necessary, especially when dealing with foreigners and non-citizens. If you believe that anything goes in this fight, please imagine for a moment that it is you working as an hourly-wage TSA employee, performing sexually intrusive acts on American-born women like these:

* A Catholic lay worker flying out to serve families living in the dangerous and disease-infested camps of Haiti

* A Quaker nurse who chooses to wear modest dress, traveling to her work with AIDS patients in Africa

* A elderly Buddhist nun bringing books and toys to orphans in Nepal

* A Hindu academic traveling to a woman's conference in Switzerland who is traveling with her 12 year old daughter.

* A Muslim pediatrician whose skills are urgently needed to help child refugees after the recent earthquakes, floods and famine in Pakistan.

* A Baptist social worker using her vacation time to bring vital burn medications to the hundreds hurt in the volcanic eruptions in Indonesia.

What have such women ever done to us that we would hurt them so?

These women are fictional, if plausible, examples of people traveling right now and they are offered here to make a point which is that good people are being hurt by this rule. Already one rape survivor has been traumatized by this treatment. As reported in Newsweek:

For women and men who have already been sexually assaulted, the new screening rules—or just the threat of these rules—present a very real danger. They can be triggering events, setting off a post traumatic-stress reaction...“After a sexual assault, it seems that many survivors have difficulty having their bodies touched by other people,” says Shannon Lambert, founder of the Pandora Project, a nonprofit organization that provides support and information to survivors of rape and sexual abuse. This fear of contact even extends to partners and, often, medical professionals. “A lot of survivors do not want to be in positions where they’re vulnerable. They put up defenses so that they can be in control of their body. In cases like this, it seems like some of that control is going away.”

I, for one, agree with those who argue that full frontal nudity does not make us safer and I have to wonder how parents feel about having their children subjected to either unnecessary radiation and/or intrusive handling.

Let me end with two questions:

* Are we as a nation, willing to hand over our dignity and our civil rights to the incompetent and untrustworthy officials at TSA?

* Will you trust that your own naked-as-a-jaybird scans won't end up on the net?

Somewhere the terrorists are laughing.

Sia

Art found here

P.S. This isn't just about women, of course. Noted Humorist Dave Barry didn't find his own patdown very amusing.

Related Articles:

Nudity at Events: Our top 13 reasons why you can't always bear all

Update:

Former Bush Homeland Chief Got Sweetheart Deal Selling Scanners to TSA

And the moon visits

Today, I would like to share a poem called And the moon visits by Parvaneh Torkamani

Hecate & Belle, this one's for you.

love,

Sia

Update: We just heard the sad news about the Afghan girls who were poisoned by the Taliban for daring to go to school. So, this is for them, as well.

Jason's Positive Protest Against Hate Speech & the Westboro Baptist "Church"

Jason Connell, a student at University of Illinois at Chicago, finds a novel way to turn a visit by the Westboro Baptist Church and Fred Phelps into a positive event.

Well done, Jason, and congratulations to all organized, gave to and helped out at this event. Well done, indeed.

Sia

Youtube video: Jason's Protest

Related Articles

Supreme Court to take on Westboro Baptist Court Case

Thomas Paine 3.0

Now that the 4th of July fireworks and the parties are over and most of us are back to work, I'd like to take a look at Thomas Pain, one of the forgotten Founding Fathers, a man who still has a great deal to say to working people, including those in the earthwise community and among the digerati. In 1995 Jon Katz, writing for Wired Magazine called Pain "the moral father of the Internet" and went on to say:

...we owe Paine. He is our dead and silenced ancestor. He made us possible. We need to resurrect and hear him again, not for his sake but for ours. We need to know who he was, to understand his life and work, in order to comprehend our own revolutionary culture. Paine's odyssey made him the greatest media figure of his time, one of the unseen but profound influencers of ours. He made more noise in the information world than any messenger or pilgrim before or since. His mark is now nearly invisible in the old culture, but his spirit is woven through and through this new one, his fingerprints on every Web site, his voice in every online thread.

Recently Bill Moyers held a conversation with an historian and a journalist, one a Conservative and the other a Liberal, both of whom find much to admire in Thomas Paine. You can find both the video and the transcript of this fascinating program here. Below you'll find some excerpts from that conversation. But first, Bill Moyer's website has this to say about Thomas Paine:

More than two centuries ago, Paine's most famous book, COMMON SENSE, sold 500,000 copies. Farmers in the fields stopped to read it.

Other influential works followed including THE AMERICAN CRISIS which proclaimed, "These are times that try men's souls." George Washington took those words to heart when he ordered his troops to read Paine's passionate call for liberty as they went into battle.

Paine's extraordinary life was both glorious and tragic. He was not revered as some of our other founding fathers — and during his lifetime he was often feared and lampooned — and under threat of prison and even death. Harvey J. Kaye, who recently told his story in THOMAS PAINE AND THE PROMISE OF AMERICA, notes that Paine has again become currency in political debate because of a revolutionary idea that spread from the colonies to France and around the globe:

That the common people...that Americans could be citizens and not merely subjects. That people had it within themselves not only to listen to their superiors, but literally to speak to each other and deliberate and govern themselves.

Historian Harvey Kaye notes that

...in terms of the democratic impulse, which never ceased in America, in every generation, progressive movements, radical to liberal, reached back to the American Revolution. And who did they rediscover? Oh, yes, they honored Washington, they honored Jefferson, but the words that they reprint...the words they reclaimed were Thomas Paine's.

Kaye goes on to state that

He was a visionary of democracy. He wanted to end slavery. He wanted to grant women equality. He wanted to abolish all property requirements for citizenship. He wanted a complete separation of church and state. He wanted to establish public schools and old age pensions...he (saw) the promise of America unfolding through the years.

...it's fascinating to consider that when Abigail Adams reads "Common Sense," she sends the letter to John Adams and says, don't forget. Remember the ladies. We can't trust you men.

And Adams writes back, knowing full-- and with a touch of affection, there's no doubt about it. He says, "Not you too." You know, the black slaves are rising in North Carolina, the students are rising in these Ivy colleges, Indians on the frontier, artisans in New York, something to that effect. Now, the biggest tribe of all is demanding this kind of democratic revolution.

...later, when (Pain) did come out of prison, he wrote "Agrarian Justice." And there he lays out a social democratic vision. That's where he says, "Let us create real opportunity for young people. And not give them a life of poverty. Let us tax the landed wealth, and use that money in some kind of community chest, a national treasury, to provide stakes...grants to young people, so when they reach twenty-one, and he said that of men and women, which was a very progressive thing to do at the time. And that way, they'll have a chance to, you know, buy land, gain an education, set up a small business. And we can also then afford pensions to the elderly. So, he did very much sort of look ahead to the idea, absolutely, of economic opportunity, but in a social democratic way, I think.

I found this exchange between the three men regarding Thomas Paine's views on organized religion (Paine himself was a Deist) very interesting in light of today's concerns (1):

RICHARD BROOKHISER: But I think the big sort of turn in his reputation and in his career had to do with the "Age of Reason," his great work after the "Rights of Man." And this is his full frontal assault on organized religion and particularly on Christianity. He's not an atheist. Teddy Roosevelt called him a "filthy atheist." He wasn't an atheist. But he was a deist, and he thought organized religions were frauds and impositions and lies and all the rest of this. And he lays this out at devastating length.

BILL MOYERS: Well, just as he loathed the power of medieval kings, he loathed the influence of priests, right?

(snip)

HARVEY KAYE: If I could just say, in Paine's defense, as a believer, that Paine believed that the creation was God's presence. I mean, he was absolute about that and repeatedly pushed the idea. If we want to worship God, then we should study the creation.

(snip)

BILL MOYERS: So, is this where he fell from grace? No pun intended. I mean, is this where he really fell out of favor with the burgeoning population of this country? Because he seemed to be anti-religion?

RICHARD BROOKHISER: I would say so. And I think one reason Jefferson was such a successful politician is that even though Jefferson shared a lot of these views, he didn't run around proclaiming them. Because he knew what Americans were, he knew what the electorate was. And he wasn't going to stick his chin out there in that fashion.

Want to be inspired? Then read/watch the entire discussion, and then go and read you some Paine.

Sia

Photo of Wired Cover found here.

Related Articles:

The Age of Paine - Wired Magazine
excerpt:

Tom Paine's ideas, the example he set of free expression, the sacrifices he made to preserve the integrity of his work, are being resuscitated by means that hadn't existed or been imagined in his day - via the blinking cursors, clacking keyboards, hissing modems, bits and bytes of another revolution, the digital one. If Paine's vision was aborted by the new technologies of the last century, newer technology has brought his vision full circle. If his values no longer have much relevance for conventional journalism, they fit the Net like a glove.

Bring the Paine
excerpt:

Common Sense-a demolition job on the very concept of monarchy-swept America like an ideological firestorm. The impact was phenomenal. It sold 600,000 copies among a population of 3 million. And like Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation" 87 years later (Lincoln was a massive Paine fan), it turned a civil war into a righteous struggle for human freedom.

Without Tom Paine there would've been no revolution-and no America.

Wired, Weird and Wonderful
Thomas Paine and the Digital Revolution.

Excerpt:

The radical Scottish lawyer Thomas Muir was sentenced to 14 years transportation to Botany Bay for the principal offences of recommending Paine's writings and for allowing a fraternal speaker from the the United Irishmen to address the Friends of the People Society convention in Edinburgh in December 1792. The trial judge, Lord Braxfield, told the jury that "Mr Muir might have known that no attention could be paid to such a rabble [of ignorant weavers]. What right had they to representation?" That was what Paine railed against.

Shannon Minter and Proposition 8

Folks,

Keep a good thought for Shannon Minter today as he fights to overturn Proposition 8.

The Sacramento Bee notes that Kenneth Starr (yes, that Kenneth Starr) and Minter

will square off Thursday in the most closely watched California Supreme Court hearing in a generation. They're set to deliver oral arguments in three suits in which supporters of gay marriage contend that Proposition 8, which limits marriage to a man and a woman, is unconstitutional.

... Gay rights groups, the city of San Francisco and other local governments contend that Proposition 8 is not an amendment to the state constitution, but an illegal revision that should not have been placed on the ballot without the Legislature's approval.

Minter calls Thursday's proceedings "much bigger" than the case last May that invalidated Proposition 22; approved in 2000, it also limited marriage to a man and a woman.

"This is now about whether a majority can take away an inalienable right from one group of Californians," Minter said. "If the court were to say it's OK … then no one's rights would mean very much."

Sia

Karma, Love and Cage Free Eggs

Gay Weddings: What To Expect

Hate Crimes Towards the Other

To all the gay and lesbian kids out there....

...to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that, no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally, across this great nation of ours.

- Dustin Lance Black, accepting the Oscar for Best Screenplay for "Milk"

Care2 website writes:

The Oscars took place this weekend, and, amongst a year of incredibly strong films, Milk, a film biopic on Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected into office as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, won Best Actor for Sean Penn in the role of Harvey Milk, and Best Screenplay for young writer Dustin Lance Black.

You can read his whole acceptance speech and see the video here.

Check out the Care2 website. It's worth your time.



Sia

Videos at blog:

Dustin Black's press conference backstage at the Oscars.

Movie Trailor for Milk

Related Articles:

Joy in the Castro

It's OK To Think Dr. Who is Gay

Justice Done and Justice Denied: A Dance To Mother Kali

This video shows a lady named Pali Chandra, an exponent in the field of Kathak, one of the seven major classical dance forms from India. She is dancing a piece in praise of Goddess Kali. Kali is well-known throughout the Hindu community as the Mother of the universe and the destroyer of evil. I've been thinking about her a lot as I read both the national news and the news coming out of California.

This video shows a lady named Sister Charity telling us why Proposition 8 - the ban against gay marriage in California - cannot and will not stand:

The Arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice.
Martin Luther King

My sorrow goes out to my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters who saw their rights take a step backwards even while our country, joyfully and gratefully, took a giant step forwards.

What part of "separate is not equal" do we as a nation not understand?

The chickens in California just got more consideration then gay couples. Sad. (1)

Keith Olbermann summed it up for a lot of straights-who-don't-hate last night. Watch that special comment - it's worth your time.




For the record, my husband and I both feel that our own marriage (performed and approved in California) is now less valid because our gay and lesbian friends can't marry. If you don't want certain people to marry in your temple, mission or church, then don't perform the ceremony. But don't expect a democratic nation to follow your example.

How dare we treat love - anyone's love - as unimportant.

Sia

Related Articles

Mormons face flak for backing Prop 8

Prop 8: gay marriage divides LDS faithful

Karma, Love and Cage Free Eggs

Endnotes:

(1) I'm trying to explain this to my friends who wonder how my progressive, beloved and former home state could have voted in this way. It helps to remember that California, for all of it's tolerance, freedom and vision, is the state that gave us both Richard Nixon and Ronald Regan. Yet even Gov. Schwarzenegger is now standing up and reminding us that the fight isn't over. People can evolve; well done, Arnold.

The many spontaneous demonstrations, the split in the LDS church (which heavily financed Prop 8) and the support for gay marriage among people who care about justice - not to mention the actions of the ACLU - shows us that, as well.

Gay Weddings: What To Expect? How About An Economic Boom?

My friends in California tell me that the wedding business, something my husband refers to as the "Marital Industrial Complex" is thrilled at the thought of all those wonderful gay and lesbian weddings. Other states take note: This will indeed be a boon to the economy. Think of all those outfits, flowers, rings and cakes to be designed and bought. Not to mention all those presents. Not even to mention the honeymoon cruises and trips (the travel industry can't wait) and the halls rented, and all the money made from out-of-towners coming in to either attend a wedding of their dear friends or to have one of their own in one of California's beautiful (and tolerant) locations. (1)

As CNN notes:

"The good news for California is that in the face of probably the worst budget problems the state has ever faced, the LGBT wedding industry is going to be a financial shot in the arm," said Jeffrey Prang, mayor of West Hollywood, a popular destination for gay travelers in Southern California.

A study issued this week by UCLA's Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation and the Law projected that gay men and lesbians will spend $684 million on cakes, photographers and other services over the next three years unless voters reverse the high court's ruling in the fall.

The researchers found that about half of the state's more than 100,000 same-sex couples will get married during the next three years, and an additional 68,000 out-of-state couples will travel to California to exchange vows. The study estimated that over that period, gay weddings will generate $64 million in tax revenue for the state, $9 million in marriage-license fees for counties, and some 2,200 jobs.

[Update: 12:13 pm: A reader named Amanda just sent me a link to an article on how same sex couples can save money on their California weddings. It also has notes on how to stay debt free after you say "I do". Enjoy.]

I suppose that we can also expect some regrettable wedding trends as this cartoon suggests, like the ring bearing cat and jumping the swiffer. We can also expect a few divorces, and sadly, some custody cases. Between the pre-nups and other legal niceties lawyers across the nation are having a field day.

If New York moves forward (and it's facing some new challenges) we can expect to see some East Coast friends get married here and enjoy the benefits of a legal union there. Or vice versa. As goes California and New York, eventually so goes the nation. The Pew Research Center notes that there is less and less opposition to gay & lesbian marriage, adoption and military service over time.

About time. And, very profitable, too. That, at least, will help convince some legislators that doing well and doing good go hand-in-hand.

Sia

Image: from an ABC story titled Gay Couples Rush To Get Married

(1) From where I sit, the Pacific Northwest has many of the same tolerant (and business oriented) ideas. Same sex marriage has been legal in Oregon for some time, but only because we have no law that bans it. Look for gay and lesbian friendly travel to become more and more prominent over time. A note to my wine loving friends in other states: we have some lovely wine country out here - come on up!

The Marriage of True Minds: Gay and Lesbian Unions Now Legal in California

My favorite portrait
Originally uploaded by keribeth

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Congratulations to our friends and family in California who can finally marry.

Here in our house we drank a toast at 5 pm, and read the reports online.

This story brought tears to my eyes,

Cheers filled San Francisco's City Hall shortly after 5 p.m. as longtime lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, partners for more than 50 years, began their second wedding - and their first legal union.

Lyon, 83, and Martin, 87, were the first couple married four years ago when Newsom told the county clerk's office to start offering marriage certificates to same-sex couples. Eventually more than 4,000 same-sex couples were married in San Francisco that year, but those unions were later nullified by the court. Today, the couple, and dozens of others, had their first chance to make their unions truly legal.

...(Mayor) Newsom waited until exactly 5:01 p.m. to begin the San Francisco ceremony, the only one in San Francisco tonight. The women were declared spouses for life at 5:07 p.m. in front of about 50 friends and family members. Martin came into the area in a wheelchair but stood for the ceremony.

The couple made their way out of the office and onto the balcony area where a cake - and large crowd- was waiting. Rose petals fluttered down from the ceiling as the crowd cheered and cameras flashed.

"This is an extraordinary moment in history and extraordinary moment in time" Newsom said to the crowd. "They are extraordinary people who have lived extraordinary lives and spent half a century fighting for justice and equality."

Our love and joy go with you all,

Sia

The photo of this beautiful couple is one I found on the Lesbian Weddings pool at Flickr.

Certificate of Inequality

"I issue this Certificate of Inequality to you," the document reads, in part, "Because your choice of marriage partner displeases some people whose displeasure is, apparently, more important than principles of equality."

Thank you, Yolo County clerk Freddie Oakley. She is an evangelical Christian who believes in equal rights, and thinks that gay couples should be allowed be married, and this is her act of civil disobedience done in defense of those rights.

Consider that, dear Pagans, the next time you lump all Christians in the same group as Pat Robertson and the radical right.

The Surf Putah blog wrote this about Freddie in 2007:

An evangelical Christian who strongly supports the separation of church and state - "[...] I’m not happy about enforcing a law that is discriminatory and based on religious principles,” [...] “Religion has no place in government.” - Oakley confuses the standard media narrative that places religious folks on one side and those who support a religiously neutral secular state on the other. In reality, this is not solely an issue of religious versus secular values, but also a question of whether the state will enforce one side in a sectarian dispute; to wit, whether the state will tell Unitarians, Quakers and Congregationalists that the same sex couples that they marry are not married unless the Southern Baptists and Fundamentalists agree to it. Additionally, these laws conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, which guarantees all citizens the same rights under law. As Rich Rifkin points out in the comments after the Davis Vanguard article, it is illegal to deny business licenses to a gay or lesbian owner because of their sexual orientation; how then can it be legally defensible to deny them the legal right to marry other consenting adults?

You go, girl.

As of this writing, these couples still cannot get married and Freddie continues to give out her certificates. She has offered to pay for the marriage licenses for these gay couples (some of whom have been together over 30 years) when their union finally becomes legal.

Let's hope that day comes soon.

Sia

Links:

Freddie Oakley Under Fire From Religious Extremists

Freddie Speaks Out

Related Articles:

The Christians and the Pagans

The Radical Christian Right is Built On Suburban Dispair

Song & Viedo:

Dar Williams on Youtube singing The Christians and the Pagans

Privacy Concerns - Facebook & Google

There are serveral reasons why I won't use Facebook, but this is chief among them:

Facebook is to be quizzed about its data protection policies...The investigation follows a complaint by a user of the social network who was unable to fully delete their profile even after terminating their account.

I first heard this complaint from Rowan Fairgrove over at Second Life. Rowan is a very tech savy gal, and she found that when she left Facebook, she could not delete her information. They have indeed turned into the Hotel California- you can check out, but you can never leave. You can read more about this issue at the BBC site, in a story titled Facebook Faces Privacy Questions

I have the same sorts of concerns about Goggle Reader and Gmail. If you use Gmail, I would suggest reading When Google Is Not Your Friend by Declan McCullagh at CNET.

As Annelee Newitz noted way back when, in her article Dataopocalypse

To pay for this amazing free service, Google is serving up a few little ads with each email. No big deal.

Except these ads are context sensitive. They're generated by bots reading your email the instant you open it, discerning key concepts in the message and choosing ads that somehow fit with the content of your email. So an email from your friend about picking up some bagels will be accompanied by ads for bagel shops in your area. An email from your lover which refers to an intimate moment you had the night before might include ads for sex toys or online dating services.

These days, information surveillance is the name of the game. Companies make huge profits from collecting and selling your personal information. Money can also be made by providing wide ranging background checks for private employers and goverment agencies.

These days, your most private email can also be used against you in a court case . Gmail will give the goverment pretty much anything it wants, any time it wants it. As Brad Templeton, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, writes in his blog:

...because GMail gets your consent to be more than an e-mail delivery service -- offering searching, storage and shopping -- your mail there may not get the legal protection the ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) gives you on E-mail.

Google Reader is also problematic. Jack Schofield wrote an article for The Guardian titled Google Reader Invades Your Privacy and It's Not Going To Stop, which should be required reading for anyone who doesn't want Big Brother looking over our shoulder, checking our on-line search patterns, our reading habits, our political opinions, and our buying choices.

Alter.net says this in their recent story on society and spying:

When one of America's largest electronic surveillance systems was launched in Palo Alto a year ago, it sparked an immediate national uproar. The new system tracked roughly 9 million Americans, broadcasting their photographs and personal information on the Internet; 700,000 web-savvy young people organized online protests in just days. Time declared it "Gen Y's first official revolution," while a Nation blogger lauded students for taking privacy activism to "a mass scale." Yet today, the activism has waned, and the surveillance continues largely unabated.

Generation Y's "revolution" failed partly because young people were getting what they signed up for. All the protesters were members of Facebook, a popular social networking site, which had designed a sweeping "news feed" program to disseminate personal information that users post on their web profiles. Suddenly everything people posted, from photos to their relationship status, was sent to hundreds of other users in a feed of time-stamped updates. People complained that the new system violated their privacy. Facebook argued that it was merely distributing information users had already revealed. The battle -- and Facebook's growing market dominance in the past year -- show how social networking sites are rupturing the traditional conception of privacy and priming a new generation for complacency in a surveillance society. Users can complain, but the information keeps flowing.

So be careful out there,

Sia

Links:

Privacy International

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Electronic Communications Privacy Act

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

Art: An ancient sculpture of Maat, Egyptian Goddess of Truth, Justice and Order. Tour Egypt notes that:

The primary duty of the pharaoh was to uphold this order by maintaining the law and administering justice. To reflect this, many pharaohs took the title "Beloved of Maat," emphasizing their focus on justice and truth.

At any event in which something would be judged, Maat was said to be present, and her name would be invoked so that the judge involved would rule correctly and impartially. In the underworld, the heart of the deceased was weighed by Anubis against Maat's feather. If the heart was heavy with wicked deeds, it would outweigh the feather, and the soul would be fed to Ammit. But if the scales were balanced, indicating that the deceased was a just and honorable person in life, he would be welcomed by Osiris into the Blessed Land. Maat's presence in all worlds was universal, and all the gods deferred to her. ....Even the gods are shown praising Maat.