Top Articles on AWEARNESS Blog for July 2008
Big Oil's Bet Against Oil
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In the midst of photographing a 'Key Leader Engagement', training for high level US officers to learn how to interact/engage Afghan leaders, I took this shot. The overall training method is 'theater immersion', designed to replicate all facets of life in Afghanistan at Fort Bragg. At first I found myself trying to get a shot without the other photojournalist. Then I realized that the inclusion and or influence we might have on the meeting should be represented. The current conflicts are a new era in the relationship between news media and the military. As the war takes a turn for the worse, we need more coverage to bring the American public's attention to this conflict, so they can democratically decide between more troops or getting our soldiers out ASAP.
Having recently moved to Austin from San Francisco just about everything I experienced was somewhat of a culture shock. My parents were visiting from the Bay Area when I decided to take them to downtown Austin and show there where their son had decided to start the next phase of his life. This photo was taken in front of the new Austin City Hall. Again, coming from San Francisco it was quite a shock to see a "no guns" symbol on the door, and coupled with the word "Welcome", I couldn't resist not taking a photo.
With all the talk in recent years about immigration, the plight of native Americans has virtually disappeared from the headlines. But those problems haven't gone away.
Hence the relevance and power of Kent MacKenzie's 1961 film The Exiles, a documentary about a group of young native Americans who left their reservations in the late 1950s to live in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles. MacKenzie's film, which opened last Friday at the IFC Center in New York, couldn't find distribution when it was made and fell into obscurity, seen only by a handful of cinephiles over the past 47 years.
After a restored print was screened at the Berlin Film Festival in February, the film finally got the recognition it deserves.
Very much of its time, The Exiles straddles the line between documentary and fiction, featuring non-actors and authentic scenarios, but often staged, directed, and scripted by MacKenzie for dramatic effect.
Film afficionados will see a trace of Jean Rouch, Jean-Luc Godard, and even Robert S. Flaherty in this artful work of cinema. Its subjects appear to live their lives candidly, as if caught unawares by the cameras that follow them through the alleyways, squalid apartments, and nightclubs of their small piece of LA. Meanwhile, voiceovers remind us that, yes, this is a documentary and not a fiction film.
But as the best documentaries prove, there is no real difference. Both forms, when done right, have the power to teach us something about humanity, to affect us both intellectually and emotionally, and to show us life as it may be lived.
And The Exiles does all three with a light touch.MacKenzie does not go on and on about his subjects and their problems, or lay blame on those who displaced them. Rather, he simply presents their lives and lets them speak for themselves.
The Exiles may be a product of the early 1960s, but its message transcends history. No doubt, few will take the time to see the film during its brief run at the IFC, but those who do will be glad they took a chance on this near-forgotten documentary.
[Image: The Exiles film stills]
Jay Smooth breaks it down for the rest of us in, How To Tell People They Sound Racist.
Everybody has been in one conversation or another where you just had to make a double take because what came out of the mouth of your acquantaince, friend, family or lover was not just stupid but also bordered on racist.
Jay explains the importance of distinguishing between addressing the "what they did" conversation as opposed to the "what they are" conversation. Or as I've referred to my own writing on race, the difference between the actions and the intentions.
You may have not intended to be a racist. The thought may even revolt you. And yet, you'll say something so offensive to a person of color that you're reaction is to defend the purity of your heart. Yet that's the problem: for the offended, there is no way to measure anything other than the action. Actions live outside of the actor. Intentions are emotions and they are completely subjective.
Watch the video. Jay does a fantastic job at establishing a simple strategy for dealing with the unexpected Public Display Of Ignorace (or PDI).
Jay Smooth is the publisher of ill Doctrine, a hip-hop video blog and the seminal HipHopMusic.com. He is also founder of New York's longest running hip-hop radio show, WBAI's Underground Railroad.
Around the country people are reacting to the ever-increasing price of gasoline in ways that just 10 years ago would have seemed like the premise of a dystopian sci-fi thriller, or maybe a dark comedy.
Here's a sampling:
Recently, drivers in Holly Springs, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta, who are stopped for speeding now have to pay a $12 surcharge to cover the gasoline costs of the cops who stop them.
A Kentucky woman was arrested for prostituting herself in exchange for a $100 Speedway Gas Card.
Nevada brothels are offering $50 and $100 gas cards to improve their declining business (mostly from truckers). These "double your stimulus" incentives are for anyone who spends $300 or $500 at the brothels, respectively.
And finally, in New York City, taxi drivers are pleading the Taxi and Limousine Commission to institute a $1.00 surcharge on every fare to cover the rising price of gasoline, which in New York is around $4.38 per gallon right now. Compare that to $1.80 in 2004, and you can see where the cabbies are coming from.
I'm glad I live in New York and don't own a car, as opposed to one of the other places mentioned above. Still, I'm not looking forward to those inevitable, even more crowded subway rides.
[Image: Derek Jensen on Wikimedia Commons]
WARNING: You may find the image of teenage kids rebelling against the establishment by playing backyard baseball with heavy metal rock blaring in the background either pathetically cute or appallingly endearing.
Build a Wiffle Ball Field and Lawyers Will Come "BACK before we lost our collective minds and began shrieking with horror at the thought of kids having fun on their own (as in not part of an official league or otherwise organized activity), they used to do things like find a vacant field, turn it into a makeshift diamond and spend glorious hours in the summer sun," the local newspaper, Greenwich Time, wrote in an editorial in support of the youths on Wednesday.
The regular players, mostly high school boys but including Tara Currivan, 15 (who swings a mean bat and brings lemonade to the field), and Scott Atkinson, 13, seem a little befuddled by the whole thing.
"They think we're a cult," said Jeff Currivan, 17. "People think we should be home playing 'Grand Theft Auto.' "
And they seem to get the fact that many adults are taken with the idea of kids' doing something that's not structured, not organized and not oriented toward improving your SAT scores.
"It's just old-fashioned fun," said Vincent Provenzano. "We did it on our own. Maybe people think that's unusual."
Groan!
I don't even know how to start with this one.
The New York Times reported about a brouhaha in Connecticut over a case of wiffle baseball. You see, the Connecticutians in the story are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore because teenagers in the neighborhood took over a city-owned lot (aided and abetted by a couple of parents, mind you), cleaned it up and turned it into a backyard baseball playground.
Yes, this is a case of neighbors yelling, "get off my lawn" to a group of clean-cut punks who want to have some clean-cut fun in walking distance and within their own neighborhood. They are actually complaining about the potential loss in property values or risk of liability by having kids and teenagers playing safely in a rescued abandoned lot in their own neighborhood.
And what kills me is the comment by the 17 year-old: That the adults would rather have them zombified in front of a computer game than seeing them out and about playing backyard baseball.
Am appalled by this, especially after writing about the incredible hardship the Uganda Skateboarders' Association went through to make a simple ramp out of mud in one of their poverty stricken suburbs. Compare that to this suburb in Connecticut and ... ugh. All am left with is a sigh.
Sigh.
This week's cover of the New Yorker, right, is barely off the presses and already has people talking, bloggers blogging, and presidential hopefuls on both sides of the fence agreeing that in this case, the magazine has simply gone too far.The cartoonist claims he wanted to illustrate the preposterous claim that Obama is unpatriotic, or worse, a terrorist. The magazine itself, no stranger to social satire but always respected for its intelligence and depth compared to other, increasingly shallow media, is nevertheless in hot water over this one.
Tell us what you think.
[Image: New Yorker cover illustration by Barry Blitt, Issue: July 21, 2008, AP photo]
It seems like everything has gone green these days - including the traditional school fundraiser. Thanks to new "earth-friendly" fundraising companies such as Greenraising, schoolchildren are now raising money for school activities by selling environmentally-correct products - including recycled wrapping paper, environmentally-safe cleaning products and fair trade coffee - instead of cookies and candy. As the Wall Street Journal recently explained in a feature article, these new types of fundraising activities not only tap into the whole green movement - they are also a response to other factors, such as the obesity problem in America.
For more on these green fundraising activities, check out Green Students Fundraising, Greenraising and Higher Grounds Trading.
[image: Green Students Fundraising]
The image above is a sample from the Transportation Security Administration's latest airport screening technology, the millimeter wave scanner. It and a backscatter x-ray machine were tested last year in Phoenix and are being rolled out in 10 of the country's busiest airports including LAX, JFK, DFW, ORD and others, as part of the TSA's "checkpoint evolution."
The agency says these devices will make it easier to screen for small but powerful explosives hidden against a passenger's body, and serve to replace hand pat-downs. The TSA assures that images will not be stored or transmitted, passengers' faces are blurred for privacy and that the screener viewing the revealing full-body scans will be isolated from public view. But privacy activists are crying foul. The American Civil Liberties Union has come out against the program, citing a laundry list of reasons they don't trust the system, and bloggers are shuddering at the thought of TSA agents seeing them essentially naked.
Although the images aren't saved in any system, you have to wonder how long before someone sneaks a digital camera in to snap photos of their favorites. On the other hand, CBS News in Chicago has been investigating claims of overzealous TSA agents at O'Hare, reporting stories of women being made to take nipple rings out and disabled men having their pants removed. If these scanners can eliminate situations such as these, maybe it is a privacy sacrifice worth making.
[Image Credit: Transportation Security Administration]
Steve Wyatt, Associate Creative Director at Kenneth Cole Productions, linked to a new documentary about the Homeless World Cup
Farhad Warasta uploaded a photograph from a U.S. military training event in Afghanistan
David Alm mused on the future of race, social satire and the candidacy of Barack Obama and alerted New York-area readers to an oasis floating in the Hudson River
Kenneth Cole employee Evan Greenberg shared details of a plan by T. Boone Pickens to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil
Andrew Huff weighed in on the newest scandal at FEMA
Liza Sabater linked to a video that explains how to deal with racism in everyday life
Heather Dumford, Media Marketing Manager at Kenneth Cole Productions, pointed out interesting new TV programs on Sundance and PBS
He is reported as saying that there's no question there's Life as we know it out in the universe because we have indeed have what J. Allen Hynek has described as a "close encounter of the third kind". It's a coincidence that just this past weekend I had watched the Steven Spielberg movie by the same name. This comes, by the way, after it was announced that the Mars rover Phoenix has discovered evidence of the existence of water on the planets soil.
I had seen the 1977 movie as a child so there's a 31 year gap between the first time I saw it and last Sunday. Can I just tell you how incredibly impressed I am with Steven Spielberg's early work? I can't understand the "Spielberg hate" among academic and intellectuals. I was entering college in the 1980s and I remember vividly how "not cool" was it to watch anything written, directed or produced by Steven Spielberg because he was "too commercial".
Well, the movie may be famous for it's alien musical conversation scene, but in my book, the movie is worth every single ounce of your attention for it's first 10 minutes.
I heard somewhere that you know a movie is going to be good in those first 10 minutes. I completely agree. Not only does Spielberg establishes this movie as a modern fairy tale by wrapping the set in a cloud of dust. The movie is very much about how humans protect themselves from that which we cannot explain easily.
In those first 10 minutes, an alien contact is being recorded by the radar of an air traffic control room in the local airport. The back and forth between the people in the room and the airplane pilots is amazingly action packed even though what we're seeing is the conversation and some blips on the radar. The pilots "survive" the something that almost hits their airplanes and yet, when the air traffic controller asks "Do you want to report a UFO", the pilots all decline with a terse "No". In the end he too concedes and decides not to report what had just happened. As a defense mechanism against that which they couldn't explain, it is understandable. You can see that telegraphed on the faces of everybody in that air traffic control room.
Which makes me wonder ...
The last 8 years we've had an administration that had secret prisons and secret memos condoning and encouraging the use of torture and secret strategies for illegally wiretapping civilians. You've got to wonder what with all the news coming in of yet another cover-up or yet another "untruth" involving our foreign policy if instead of scoffing at Dr. Mitchell's claims of a cover-up about alien life if people are making a double take and actually considering them plausible. After so many lies about real tangibles happening here on Earth why shouldn't we believe his comments may indeed have more than an ounce of truth.
I mean, if we've been lied about the reasons for going into a war in the Middle East, wouldn't the government lie about contacts with alien life?
Last year, 4.6 million Botox procedures were performed in the United States. Yes, that's a lot: it's a 488 percent increase over the number performed in 2000, and it shows little sign of stopping, even in the economic slowdown -- even as other plastic surgeries have dropped like a stone.But a new lawsuit may raise some eyebrows (well, for those still can). More than a dozen Botox users and their relatives are suing manufacturer Allergan, claiming the company hasn't warned patients of the potentially serious side effects of treatment. The plaintiffs claim at least three deaths have been caused by the drug, which is based on the botulinum nerve toxin, as well as an array of ailments including blurred vision, numbness, breathing difficulties, muscle weakness and more.
This lawsuit is just the latest in a string of bad news for the beauty treatment of the stars. In January the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen asked the FDA to put a "black box" warning, the strongest warning possible on Botox labeling; the FDA is currently considering that option, and put out an alert to physicians about the dangers of the drug. Frightening stories of unqualified technicians overdosing patients have surfaced, while the Humane Society complains that its development is cruel to animals.
[Image: Ron Heflin for the Associated Press]
Scientists have just unlocked one of life's great wonders: why we laugh. Maybe you don't want to know, but don't worry: knowing why you laugh isn't going to stop you from laughing.
It's quite simple, really, according to the study by Alistaire Clark (which as far as I can tell isn't funny at all): We laugh because our brains encounter patterns they don't recognize, and in the process of computing -- or understanding -- the pattern, the physiological response of laughter just happens, involuntarily.
Could this mean there's an evolutionary function to those guffaws, chortles, and tee-hees? After all, why else would we need to express to the world that our brains just encountered a new pattern? It could be a survival mechanism, or a means of coping with sudden confusion, allowing us a pleasurable sensation while we figure out how to negotiate this strange new information.
In any case, I have a few questions for Mr. Clark: First, if laughter is caused by encountering a new pattern, why do we laugh at the same joke -- or line quoted from a favorite comedy -- over and over again? Second, why don't all foreign patterns register as humorous? Some are outright terrifying, like when a monster in a horror movie has eyes on its knuckles and seventeen tentacles growing out of its chest. That's certainly a new pattern for an earthly lifeform -- but it ain't funny. Unless, of course, it's on The Simpsons. But why is it funny then, but not in a John Carpenter film?
And what about learning algebra? I don't remember doing a lot of laughing then. Or getting tickled... What kind of new pattern is that?
[Image Credit: David Alm]
The New York Times ran a little piece in its "City Visible" section on Wayne Starks, a 52-year-old man who has had AIDS for the past 23 years, and who in 2001 received a scholarship to study art at the Educational Alliance Art School on the Lower East Side.
Before long, he realized that hidden beneath years of hardship -- poverty, heroin addiction, and a failed marriage -- lay a prodigious gift for sculpture.
Click here to view a slideshow of Starks and his work, in one of the newspaper's truly outstanding online features.
[Image Credit: Francesca Cao, for the New York Times]
Mars, Inc., the largest chocolate candies company in the world, has just begun a five-year research project to analyze the genome of one of nature's most storied and treasured gifts: the cocoa bean. What's more, the company solicited the help of another corporate giant, IBM, to help.
Intrigued? Or maybe just dumbfounded...
When we're in the midst of a food crisis -- rice costs are at an all-time high, simple foods like tomatoes are posing serious health risks, and the politics surrounding US beef has South Korea in a state of panic -- how on earth can anyone justify spending five years and untold millions researching a "food" that delights more than it sustains?
Simple: understanding the genome of cocoa will help produce better beans, more resilient to disease, and thereby benefit the estimated 6.5 million farmers who provide us with the raw material to make those delectable treats.
Of those farmers, around 70 percent are in Africa, a poverty- and disease-stricken continent that can use all the help it can get. If the project benefits those African cocoa farmers, their economies can only become stronger in return. That is, provided Mars and IBM share the wealth.
The prognosis on that is positive, too: the Mars company says it will make its research freely available via the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture, which supports agricultural innovation for humanitarian and small-scale commercial projects.
[Image Credit: Andre Karwath on Wikimedia Commons]
The Massachusetts Legislature was the first to legalize gay marriage, in 2003, but now that historic, New England state is taking cues from its young, liberal counterpart across the continent.
Following California's lead, the Massachusetts state senate voted Tuesday on whether it would allow couples -- gay or straight -- to marry in Massachusetts even if the marriage would not be sanctioned in that couple's home state. If passed, the law will require the Legislature to repeal a law passed in 1913 mandating the opposite, and comes just one month after the governor's 18-year-old daughter announced publicly that she is a lesbian.
The original 1913 law was in place mainly to bar interracial marriage, which only makes it seem further irrelevant in today's world. Still, opponents of the new law argue that Massachusetts should respect the laws of other states and not intentionally undermine them by allowing people to marry when their home states will not.
As with many things in today's world, however, money is a factor. With only two states in the union where gay couples can marry, those states will see a kind of gay marriage boom in their economies. This is already true in California, and Massachusetts anticipates the same for itself.
It might not be the most inspiring catalyst for gay rights, but at least it's a strong one.
[Image Credit: Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto on Wikimedia Commons]
Mak Erot may not be a household name in the Western hemisphere, but the 101-130-year-old Indonesian woman (reports on her age vary) was nothing short of her country's Dr. Ruth until she died last week.
Famous throughout Indonesia for allegedly enlarging men's penises through herbal treatment, Islamic prayer, and supernatural methods, Erot drew fire for her controversial work in a predominantly Muslim country. But she also inspired countless imitators and pop-culture spoofs, and she was featured frequently in advertisements. Again, not unlike Ms. Westheimer.
However successful she may have been, Erot was noteworthy for at least improving Indonesian men's self-esteem. It's a shame, though, that they need it.
What is it about China and dams?
First it was the earthquake, which may or may have not been caused by the creation of the largest river damn project in the world. Then it was the flooding that followed when earthquake lakes were formed by falling mountain rocks that dammed rivers.
Now we have a water shortage in the area around Beijing because most of the water needed for irrigation is being diverted to the capital due to the Olympics. Of course, the environmental and economic consequences are devastating.
Watch the clip.
My friend Shireen Mi of Digital Sistas, kind of summed it up when she twittered, "it seems that Van Jones is hot now. He has been at every progressive conference". Indeed, the founder of Green For All seems to be everywhere making the connections between poverty, stagflation and global warming.
Green For All's mission is simple : If the root of poverty is the lack of employment among a mostly unskilled, "unemployable" labor force; and if the root of the climate crisis is in the lack of comprehensive of green practices and policies; then the opportunity is to develop a comprehensive economic development program that would champion the creation of green collar jobs and pathways out of poverty while saving the environment.
At Netroots Nations last Sunday he spoke about how when energy prices rise as they have, they throw the economy in disarray and into stagflation. Since the rise of energy prices go up as well as the cost and consumption of basics like food and shelter, there's a "beginning of the end" effect where jobs are lost, people become homeless, hunger and public health rise. In other words, the economy along with people's lives go into a tailspin and into poverty.
We can't drill and burn our way out of this economic mess, warned Jones. As he says in this video from his appearance at Personal Democracy Forum 2008, the solution is in the redevelopment of the US economy through green policies.
"We need a Green Marshall Plan" he has said. A plan that would create millions of jobs through the weatherizing of houses and building across the country. Green-collar jobs based on the re-planting of millions of trees across the country; the implementation of solar panels on houses of wind mills in power plants. Green-collar jobs "gardenization" of millions of rooftops in cities across the country.
Included here in Van Jones speech at PDF2008 but you should also listen to his presentation at Netroots Nation. It has Gavin Newson introducing him and Van Jones opening his speech with a wonderful anecdote about visiting the Arctic Circle with Jimmy Carter.
This week PBS has a great schedule of programming featuring political topics current and historical. Highlights include a program on the crisis in Darfur and a look back at Election Day 2004.
Tonight at 9pm, the season premiere of Wide Angle's Heart of Darfur presents an account of what the U.N. Secretary-General has called "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world." Wide Angle examines "the desperation of daily life, from a sprawling Sudanese refugee camp to volatile rebel-held areas seldom reached by Western reporters."
Following Heart of Darfur at 10pm, PBS presents a new program entitled P.O.V Election Day. The program assembles 12 stories -- all of them shot simultaneously on Election Day, November 2, 2004 -- into "an entertaining, inspiring and sometimes unsettling tapestry of citizens determined to make their votes count."
PBS is offering a new program for all who are curious about Japanese electoral politics. Campaign, which airs this Tuesday, July 29th at 10 pm, provides "a startling insider's view of Japanese electoral politics" as it highlights a Japanese man "plucked from obscurity by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to run for a critical seat on a suburban city council."
Later in the week on PBS, China from the Inside will feature another episode of the documentary exploring China through Chinese eyes. On Friday, August 1st at 10pm, episode three, Shifting Nature, will examine in greater detail the environmental problems China is facing: "China's environment is in trouble, but solutions often seem as harsh as the problems. China is trying to feed 20 percent of the world's population on 7 percent of the world's arable land."
Since the 1960s, every decade has had a cause -- or even a few: racial justice, the Vietnam War, feminism, equal opportunity. You can chart the last 50 years along such a timeline of social progress, despite a few mis-steps and detours along the way (remember the Bell Curve anyone?)
What, then, is the cause of the oughts? Arguably, there are several. But I'll suggest that the most far-reaching, all-encompassing, ever-pressing one is clear: the environment.
And so it comes as little surprise that an enduring icon of the past 50 years, a man who helped spawn the folk-rock music scene and played an instrumental role (no pun intended, seriously) in the birth of protest music, is now making waves near his home in Upstate New York (okay, that pun was intended).
Pete Seeger, along with several friends, introduced his latest effort to change the world last week -- a pool submerged in the Hudson River, which filters filthy water through an intricate network of mesh filters to create a clean, contained oasis for up to 20 people to swim in just off the coast of Beacon, NY.
The idea is to draw attention to the polluted river, and inspire others to follow suit -- either in making their own pools, or more ideally, light a fire under the policy makers in Albany to start realizing the deferred dream of making the Hudson clean in time for the 400 year anniversary of Henry Hudson's historic journey up his namesake waterway. (For those of you who don't specialize in local history, that's next year.)
Thanks, Pete. I'll do my best to venture to Beacon this summer. I still haven't been to the art museum -- maybe the promise of dipping my toes in your pool will finally get me there.
Sounds like a pretty nice day-trip, no?
[Image Credit: Unknown, from the pool's Website]
Six major film studios have agreed to include anti-smoking public service announcements on DVDs rated G, PG, and PG-13, in an attempt to discourage children from smoking. The PSAs will be produced by the California Health and Human Services Agency, and were proposed by the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a non-profit that aims to reduce the presence of tobacco on the big screen (or, in this case, the smaller one).
The foundation also proposed an R rating for any film that depicts smoking, but was unsuccessful.
"This is a strong and responsible step on the part of the entertainment industry that will go a long way toward countering the influence of tobacco use in films," said Kim Belshe, secretary of the California Health and Human Services. "With this agreement, we will be able to promote the benefits of living tobacco-free to millions of viewers at no cost to taxpayers, while encouraging important conversations between parents and their children about the dangers of smoking."
You can expect to see these PSAs in the opening minutes of DVDs soon, or view them online here.
Michael Gregg isn't among the most famous AIDS researchers, but he was one of the first. Back in 1981, when a mysterious illness seemed to be targeting gay men, Gregg made the call to cover it for the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (talk about a niche publication...), where he was the editor.
The Morbidity and Mortaility Weekly Report is a federal medical bulletin on all things fatal, or potentially fatal, offering scholarly research on how to contend with epidemics and disease.
In 1981, AIDS was understood to be a strange combination of pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma -- a rare form of skin cancer. It had shown up in a handful of gay men in the Los Angeles area, and Dr. Gregg, who was also an epidemiologist, and his staff argued extensively about the apparent disease before publishing the short piece.
They weren't sure if there was any causal relationship between the disease and the sexual orientation of those who had it. In fact, they believed it might have just been a "statistical quirk," according to Dr. Richard A. Goodman, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control.
Fortunately, they went ahead and published the article, despite their confusion over its origins and causes.
It was the first step in the long, hard work-in-progress known as AIDS awareness.
Dr. Gregg died on Sunday at age 78 of congestive heart failure.
Next week the indispensable International Criminal Court in The Hague celebrates its fifth anniversary (Happy Birthday, Cancer). The Rome Statute, which authorized the Court's establishment, took place on July 17th, 1998. Although it was conceived with the best of intentions, The ICC has had its share failures as it navigates, for the first time in history, the depths of Man's inhumanity against Man.
Also, three countries -- Russia, China and, alas, the Bush administration here in these United States -- have undermined the Court's performance. Further, the lack of a viable police force -- but a preponderance of prosecutors and judges - suggests more "paper tiger" status than mighty international law enforcement organization. Human Rights Watch recently issued a scathing report on the barely 10 year old organization. From Radio Netherlands:
"A good example is the ICC's first real criminal case, against Congo's Thomas Lubanga. It had been due to get under way at the end of June but was postponed indefinitely when the judge found that prosecutors may have withheld mitigating evidence. For a short time, it appeared that Lubanga might even have to be released.
"The report presents a possible cause of this type of problem, positing that the prosecutors are simply overloaded with work. In recent years, many experienced legal experts have left the ICC before their term of office was up, and Human Rights Watch is calling for new appointments to be made. But international legal expert and ICC watcher Heikelien Verrijn Stuart thinks this might be easier said than done.."
Still, the ICC is the best hope for bringing the tyrants and the slavers and the pirates and genocidists and Mafioso to justice within their lifetime - the Lord willing -- and improving the quality of life of human civilization against the negative anti-force within humanity.
Now, some good news (and you didn't think I was going to leave here without dropping a ray of light): In addition to the already 120 countries that have signed on board, The National Commission on Human Rights in Jakarta has urged Indonesia, a nation that is no stranger to the international crime of terrorism, to join.
UPDATE: Today, Friday July 11, the International Criminal Court prosecutors announced that they will seek the arrest of Sudan President Omar al-Beshir for genocide in Darfur.
[Image: Global Foreign Policy]
Continuing this Tuesday, July 15, on the Sundance Channel, The Green night of programming will begin with Outrageous Wasters and end with Big Ideas for a Small Planet.
This week at 9pm, Outrageous Wasters episode 3 will feature the Fowlers, a family of 4 living in Dunkirk. They will be taken to the House of Correction due to their wasteful habits including an overuse of video games, a shocking number of TVs and lack of recycling. When the family returns to Glasgow, they find their "extravagant farmhouse transformed into an eco-playground complete with a dedicated game room. The Fowlers learn that they have to radically reduce their electricity and automotive usage - and make their regular house-party a carbon neutral event."
Also featured during the night of Green programming is the POWER episode of Big Ideas for a Small Planet, at 11:40pm. POWER explores "the booming field of alternative energy as it introduces several individuals who are working to develop clean, renewable energy from resources both well-known and left-field."
Not much, except for a passion for harnessing the wind to decrease our dependence on oil.
The Dutch Mills project is a plan to re-introduce an iconic structure of that land -- the windmill -- but this time, they won't be used to grind grain. The Dutch government has just approved the restoration of 120 mills (or in some cases, building new mills) of the 1,040 that still dot the Dutch countryside in order to create wind-generated energy.
T. Boone Pickens has the same idea, only his takes place on the more heated grounds -- both physically and politically -- of our own Panhandle State: Texas. Pickens plans to build the largest wind power plant in the world for $10 billion, and his mills -- or "turbines," as they're more accurately called -- will be placed around the state and stand twice as high as the Statue of Liberty and feature blades as wide as those of a jumbo jet.
[Image Credit: Nynke Vallinga, from Wikimedia Commons]
"How does the Communist Party exert control over 1.3 billion Chinese? How do you run China?"
As PBS explains in its new special on China, "Do it successfully, and have a hugely prosperous, innovative and powerful empire to rival any the world has seen. Mess it up and the chaos is vast and terrible." PBS continues to provide an in-depth look at "China through Chinese eyes to see how their history has shaped them- and where their present is taking them" during a four-part series entitled China From the Inside.
Part One in the series, Power and the People, will air this Friday, July 18, at 10pm. Tune in to see "patrols along China's border with Kazakhstan, Party meetings, officials in Tibet trying to impose authority at the grass-roots, a village election, and a corrupt embezzler in prison, reprieved from a death sentence. Chinese people throughout, from farmer to Minister, speak frankly about the problems the country faces and the ways forward."
[Image: "China From the Inside: Voters at Polling Booths" by Jonathan Lewis]
Maybe the old saws about Russian monks living to be 100 on nothing but yogurt have a small bit of truth to them. New research finds that a restricted calorie diet actually increases life span and reduces free radical production in our cells.
The calorie restriction diet has been around for awhile, and this new study simply confirms that it works at least in theory. The basic idea? Gradually reduce your calorie intake by 15-30 percent over time -- 1,800 daily calories instead of the 2,500 recommended for an adult male by the FDA -- by eating lots of veggies and avoiding saturated fats and chemicals.
Hard-core CR fanatics often weigh their food on a scale and run their meal plans through software designed to ensure their getting the right nutrients. The danger of eating this way without carefully measuring and calculating is essentially anorexia, which is far less healthy than overshooting one's calorie goal for a day. Lose weight too quickly or fail to get enough salt or other essential vitamins and minerals, and health benefits fall away and the risks mount quickly. For instance, while CR has been found effective in reducing atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), rapid weight-loss reduces muscle mass and could shrink the heart, heightening the risk of a heart attack from overexertion. Reduced bone density and osteoporosis, anemia, memory loss and dizziness are among the other risks.
In fact, some critics see CR as little more than scientifically backed anorexia -- or something teetering on the verge of it. It's worth taking a look at this fascinating in-depth feature from New York Magazine from a couple years ago to get a picture of what living the calorie restricted lifestyle can be like. Judge for yourself if you think living a couple years longer is worth the work -- and the risks.
I've played football (aka soccer) since I was about the same height as a size five ball. After playing for many different teams at varying levels, one observation I've always made is the fact that from the minute you step on to the field, it's just 11 vs. 11; 8 vs. 8; 7 vs. 7; 6 vs. 6; or 5 vs. 5. Nothing else matters. It's plumbers kicking neurosurgeons, lawyers slide-tackling mechanics, and ice cream truck drivers scoring past recruitment consultants. Nobody cares about vocation, background or status - it's all about the game and trying to put that damn ball in the opposition's net more times than they put it in yours. It's what some people refer to as a "leveler."
Everyone is welcome and being part of a team provides players with a sense of camaraderie, loyalty and belonging. Nobody wants to let their team down. Everyone wants to be fit, healthy and strong so they can perform to the best of their ability. But what if the entire team was living on the streets. What if every player in the competition was not only homeless but also battling alcohol and drug addiction? Can they kick it? Yes they can.
Check out the poignant documentary, Kicking It, about the Homeless World Cup, where 20,000 homeless people are "competing for the right to be recognized as human beings." There's no way I, or any teammates I've known, could walk away from the field without thinking about how desperately hard their lives become again the second the referee blows the full-time whistle.
[video: "Kicking It" trailer]
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's notorious trailers were in the news again this weekend: units being used by flood victims in Iowa and Indiana were found to contain mold.
In none of the cases did the mold appear health-threatening, but it's another black eye for FEMA's temporary housing solution of choice -- and raises concerns about whether the agency has done enough to ensure safety and quality. Earlier this month Congress grilled manufacturers on the toxic levels of formaldehyde found in many of the trailers used in the Gulf Coast following hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The high levels of formaldehyde have been blamed on cheap materials and poor ventilation on the trailers, some of which had levels four to 11 times as high as the typical home. CBS News posted an online-only interview with two former Gulf Stream Coach workers about the company's lack of concern for the health of its employees and eventual inhabitants of the hastily built trailers.
But rest assured, FEMA is a different agency today.
Seated near the center of the United States, Sioux Falls, South Dakota is not particularly known for its popularity among presidential campaign stops. It is, however, directly associated with former Senator Tom Daschle, who has played a critical, if underplayed, role in Senator Obama's run for the White House. While not a crowd of 200,000, as Barack Obama received in Berlin, Germany, this "small" gathering of 7,000 eagerly arrived to witness the message from a man known world-wide for his compelling and charismatic oratory skills. An opportunity such as this does not present itself very often here, and we were fortunate enough to be seated behind the podium. The image encapsulates the truly personable nature Obama displayed on stage.
This week PBS has two must-see programs, including one that looks at the future of stem cell research and another that examines the role of women in modern-day China.
On Wednesday, July 23 at 9pm, NOVA's ScienceNow will take you through a new way of creating embryonic-like stem cells -- without the embryo: "Though the new method offers a potential alternative to the ethically charged work of using human embryos to isolate these important stem cells, the technique still has a number of obstacles to overcome and has scientists warning this is certainly not the end of the debate."
On Friday, July 25 at 10pm, PBS is airing the next episode of the documentary by filmmaker Jonathan Lewis, China From the Inside. In this segment, Women of the Country examines the role of women in China, focusing on the disparity in the existence of women in urban versus rural areas of the country.
[image: Stem Cells via NOVA scienceNOW]
This is ridiculous on many levels.
First, it's misleading to say that Barack Obama disapproves of drilling for oil in the US. His position is against drilling offshore, a key word in this debate.
Second, he and McCain both champion the development of alternative energy sources -- such as wind and solar power -- to help curb our dependence on oil and gas period, not just foreign. This ad blatantly ignores that, and chooses to make those our only options, and their rising costs look like Obama's fault.
And that raises the third glaring problem with this ad: Fuel prices have been rising beyond the standard rate of inflation for ten years; Barack Obama has been in public office for just four -- none of which, of course, have been as president. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal published a list of 50 reasons for the drastic rise. Senator Obama is not on the list.
Here's a plea, not just to the McCain campaign, but to people everywhere who attempt smearing someone's reputation with false allegations: If you're going to do it, don't make claims that can be refuted with two minutes and a decent search engine. That's just stupid.
New America Media is one of the most important aggregator of news from the "diversosphere", the regional and national ethnic media outlets that cover many of the stories happening across the country that rarely get equal play on "mainstream" media. It's why I was perusing it, on the look out for some more uplifting stories.
So lo and behold, I see Dr. Alfredo Quiñones Hinojosa's mug, demanding my attention from the bottom of the NAM front page. In an article titled, Undocumented Farm Worker Becomes Brain Surgeon, Dr. Quiñones tells his story of coming to the United States with his parents when he was 19 years old and working his way out of the back breaking world of a being a farm hand through community college and university work.
Yet it's this video from "The Big Think" that give us more information. Like the fact that one of his grandmothers was a curandera and partera -- a folk healer and midwife. His love for science and for helping people didn't come from anybody with a college degree, but from a country midwife and healer.
Yet what most captured my attention was the title of the story. New American Media has been at the forefront (and for a good reason) of reporting the success stories and the human rights violations stories that are coming out of the "war against illegal immigration".
In their editorial practice, NAM refers to people w/o citizenship or visa who work in our country as exactly what they are "undocumented workers". They stay away from the now mainstream non-sequitur "illegal immigration" because it is a term introduced to politics and media by nativist and anti-immigration groups, most of them with white supremacist histories. And there is no better example of why wanting the dignity of a job, no matter how lowly, and the dignity of a education, no matter how basic, should not be denied to anybody coming into our country.
Sure, Dr. Quiñones is the exception to the rule of the thousands of poor and undereducated immigrants who come to our country in search of a better life. We really can't expect many of them to become neurosurgeons. Yet Dr. Quiñones proves that when we treat people with respect and dignity and the basic precepts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everybody wins. To respect the Humans Rights of every single person on US soil,no matter their citizenship of residency status is indeed needed for the greater good.
It's the only way we may well indeed see more farm hands turning into neurosurgeons.
Kenneth Cole suggested an alternative way for the U.S. government to stimulate the economy
Andrew Huff commented on the invisible problem of homeless teenagers and pointed to scary evidence about America's drug problem
Brooke Anderson uploaded a photo from a political rally in Oakland
Liza Sabater directed readers to an issue generating unwanted attention for Barack Obama
David Alm commented on the issue of free public transportation for the homeless
Kenneth Cole Media Marketing Manager Heather Dumford linked to two new TV environmental specials from the Sundance Channel
Ron Mwangaguhunga commented on the morality of home demolition - even if those homes might belong to terrorists
Suze Orman, financial diva, goes on the record at CNN and asks the questions that a lot of people have been asking of a lot of different players in the Bush Administration : "Why aren't the people who were supposed to be watching going to jail?"
You see, IndyMac is the second bank in the country to go under in less than six months. The first one this year was Bear Stearns. Since deaths come in threes, one has to wonder which bank will be the third one this year to hit rock bottom.
IndyMac was taken over by the Federal Reserve over the weekend. What is ironic about this crisis is that Republicans controlled much of Congress since the Reagan administration (1980s) and the advent of "trickle down economics" and "compassionate conservatism". This means that the Republican-led Congress controlled much of the legislation (or lack thereof) that laid the groundwork for the out-of-control lending that's been happening aggressively since the middle of the 1990s. And in many ways, they also changed the ideological composition of the Democrats who supported them. To get elected as a Democrat many politicians took "free-market" positions on matters of economic policy, ennabling Republicans to dismantle any oversight mechanisms and brand any regulation as "evil".
And yet it looks like the Republican's banking legacy will be indeed one of "socialized" and highly regulated institutions.
It was bound to happen. There is no way that the housing and mortgage lunacy could be sustained forever.
Do you know what a NINA is? It's a "No Income, No Asset" load. Yup. Banks couldn't give out enough of these loans to people.
Even though banks like IndyMac knew the people who were taking out these loans couldn't pay them back, they would wash their hands and make a a killing by selling out these bad loans in bulk to other financial institutions who would then make money when the mortgages would enter their adjustable rate phase. It's in the adjustable rate payment period that a lot of banks made a lot of money.
At the height of the lunacy, people were taking out second mortgages to pay the first one because housing values were skyrocketing all over the country. And as long as property values were up, the banks had everything to gain from one bad loan to another.
In other words, the banks got away with lending money under fraudulent pretenses all the while the different oversight agencies in the government where looking away, happy to let things be as long as people were making money.
It's why Suzie Orman asks why aren't these people going to jail.
The Federal Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) is one of those pieces of legislation that most people not only have not heard but due to its technicalities may not care about either. Yet FISA has become the bane of many a civil libertarian's existence not only for the fact that it gives the executive branch unfettered ability to spy on citizens without a warrant. It has become the lightning rod for the kind of "back tracking" legislation that are a step away from a constitutional amendments denying citizens the right to privacy.
In other words, Bush and his administration spent 8 years spying on US citizens illegally. They broke the law and now they're trying to remedy without due process by amending the law in such a way that would allow for the formerly illegal spying, all the while granting retroactive immunity from prosecution to the phone and telecommunications companies and government officials who aided and abetted the Bush administration.
When Barack Obama was running for the nomination, he spent a year saying he wouldn't grant immunity to the telcos. Now he's "flip flopped" on the issue and the civil libertarians of the Democratic Party are angry as hell.
So bloggers from sites like Daily Kos, Open Left, and other sites did what they do best : swarm in political actions online. They have bandied together to literally crash the gates at Barack Obama's party on the web by forming a group at MyBarackObama.com called Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right.
Given that the Obama gives people the tools to easily log into their address books at Google, Yahoo or any other web-based email service, groups at MyBarackObama.com can grow exponentially. Add to that the fact that the sites involved have the traffic to mobilize the first 1,000 it is then not shocking to see that the group has grown to over 10,000 members.
Some people are looking at this as if it is one of the biggest acts of civil disobedience online. I don't believe it is although, granted, it is "revolutionary" but only in the sense that it is the first time this has ever happened because, it is the first time any candidate has had this type of community organizing website set-up.
What is interesting to me is the fact that the Obama people are letting the group grow. It is a damn if you do, damn if you do moment for them. Yet I honestly believe that they look at this as a win given that now they will be able to compile data profiles of the malcontents.
In other words, the "protest" works to Obama's advantage because his people have now the permission from each registrant to be spied (while on the site) by the campaign.
Where do I stand in all of this? I think Obama's making a huge mistake and he shouldn't cave into the surveillance demands of the Bush administration. So am all for the civil libertarians cause.
Did you know the New York City Police Department has had a "cash-for-guns" program in place since 2002? Actually, their on-going effort could be described as two different programs.
The "Cash For Guns" program is an open invitation for any New Yorker to drop by any of our police precincts at any time of the day and drop-off any firearms (guns, shotguns, rifles, semi-automatic weapons, etc.). In return, people will not only NOT be personally thanked by the NYPD. Individuals who turn in weapons will receive a "Thank You" letter from the NYPD, along with a voucher for $100, redeemable for cash at any of eight "Cash for Guns" central locations throughout the City.
Then there is the rather interesting "Operation Gun-Stop". They are paying $1,000 for every anonymous tip reported to 1-866-GUN-STOP that leads to the arrest of someone who possesses or sells illegal guns.
So last weekend the NYPD and the Brooklyn DAs office took these programs one step further. With $300,000 at their disposal, they took the programs out of the precincts and into the churches of NYC's King's County.
The logic is obviously simple : Even though the C4G program is open 24/7 in all NYPD precincts, Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes believed that by holding the program in churches, people would feel less intimidated about delivering these guns. They even went as far as giving out ATM cards right on the spot, so people wouldn't have to way for payment.
The question is, do these programs work?
I found a study [Download PDF] that suggests the benefit it minimal given that the prototypical gun-exchange participant tends to be older than the national average of gun owners and, more importantly, most participants are women getting rid of guns owned by someone else. Indeed, the study claims that those who did exchange and yet went back to owning a gun did so because they were most likely active users that either carried a firearm or kept one loaded in their homes.
The Brooklyn program netted 660 weapons from 6 churches in a 5 hour period. That's more than 100 firearms an hour. What did Commissioner Raymond Kelly had to say? "It's remarkable, but it's also worrisome as an indication of what's out there. The city is awash in guns."
And that's where maybe the success of these programs lies : Not in the taking a few guns off the street, but in using these buy-backs as a way to gauge how many guns and to get a sense of who, beyond the common thief or gang banger, has a gun hidden in their closet.
Interesting piece of trivia: The guns will be melted and turned into clothes hangers.
David Alm commented on the absurdity of the current gas situation and pointed to a "satirical" political cartoon that made national headlines
Scott Stater uploaded a photo from Austin City Hall that is sure to be unpopular with cigarette smokers
Heather Dumford, the Media Marketing Manager at Kenneth Cole, pointed to two environmentally-conscious programs on the Sundance Channel
Andrew Huff highlighted one good reason why people may think twice about getting a Botox treatment
Liza Sabater explained how the Bush Administration may be at least indirectly responsible for the current mortgage crisis and highlighted a curious case of teenage rebellion
Michael Karnjanaprakorn invited readers to raise a glass for a good cause
Ron Mwangaguhunga pointed to an unlikely group of yoga practitioners
With gas above $4 a gallon just about nationwide right now, people who wouldn't normally be interested in hybrid cars are changing their minds. I was sitting in my Prius the other day telling my wife about a valet who asked a bunch of questions about our car, when an ex-Marine in a Mercedes SUV pulled up next to us and asked if we really got 50+ miles per gallon. He looked pretty jealous when we confirmed that yes, we do (although it's more like 42-45 MPG in the city).Even the Big Three auto manufacturers in Detroit are rushing to replace their gas-guzzling SUVs with smaller cars, and developing new hybrids and electric cars.Toyota has announced plans to produce its popular Prius in the U.S. to help keep up with demand and reduce costs, while Honda is about to launch its first hybrid-only car. (Tangentially, Nissan's dealers now have so many Titan pickups sitting around unsold that Nissan is sending them solar chargers to keep the batteries from dying out of disuse!)
And the message at the Plug-In 2008 conference was that 100 MPG cars are just around the corner. If have a hybrid and you're willing to break your warranty, you could already have a 100 MPG car. But short of major modifications, you'll probably have to wait a couple years for an off-the-lot version.
In GOOD Magazine, Cliff Kuang says we should forget about a 100 MPG car for now anyway: "If you really think about it, the 100-miles-per-gallon innovation isn't as immediately effective as making a simple switch from a Suburban to a Civic. Just do the math: If you raise a guzzler's fuel efficiency from 15 miles per gallon to 35 miles per gallon, you save almost four gallons per 100 miles. But boost a fairly efficient car from 35 mpg to 100 mpg, and you save less than two gallons in the same distance. More importantly, the technology for all cars to reach 35 mpg is already here. The same innovations that in the last 30 years have made family cars into muscle cars can be easily deployed to save gas rather than boost performance."
There's a gene known as the Duffy Antigen Receptor for Chemokines (DARC). A variant, known as "DARC-negative," is found exclusively in people of black African descent, and provides its possessors extra resistance to malaria -- much like the gene that causes sickle cell anemia does. Unfortunately, much like sickle cell anemia, it has a major downside: the DARC-negative variant leaves its carriers more vulnerable to HIV infection, a new study shows.About 90 percent of blacks in Africa have this variant; researchers estimated it may account for about 11 percent of HIV infections on the continent. An estimated 70 percent of African-Americans carry the gene.
"The big message of this paper is that something that protected people against malaria in the past is now leaving them more susceptible to HIV," said Robin Weiss of University College London. "After thousands of years of adaptation, this Duffy variant rose to high frequency because it helped protect against malaria," added Matthew Dolan of the Wilford Hall United States Air Force Medical Center and San Antonio Military Medical Center. "Now, with another global pandemic on the scene, this same variant renders people more susceptible to HIV. It shows the complex interplay between historically important diseases and susceptibility in contemporary times."
Interestingly, however, the DARC-negative variant slows the progression of HIV, allowing people to live about two years longer than average. The study results -- and the discovery in 2005 of a genetic mutation that grants HIV immunity to certain Northern European descendants -- may point to a new track of HIV treatment that's more personalized to one's own genetics.
[Image credit: CDC on Wiki Commons]
Friday July 18th marks the 90th birthday of former South African President Nelson Mandela's. Mandela celebrated his ninth decade on the planet -- nearly three of which were spent as a political prisoner at -- in Qunu, his childhood home, described by The Australian as " the humble rural homestead where he was born and once herded cattle." Mandela gave this birthday message to the world:
"There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty. Poverty has gripped our people. If you are poor, you are not likely to live long."
The former President also asked young South Africans to be "disciplined" in their lives. The twin themes of the disciplined life and the fight against global poverty have preoccupied Mr. Mandela since the end of the totalitarian rule of Apartheid. It was Mandela's own passion for organizational discipline that led, in part, to the ultimate triumph of the African National Congress as South Africa's ruling party.
[image: NelsonMandela.org]
This weekend -- July 12-13 -- negotiators will try once again to get terrorist rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, the LRA, to keep their word on their commitment to surrender to the government of Uganda for reconciliatory treatment. The talks will be held at a remote location in southwestern Sudan in a region rife with geopolitical pandemonium. I have written previously on this blog on the twenty year war that ravaged Uganda, the country where I was born.
It is, of course, hard to talk turkey and negotiate with Joseph Kony, who believes, among other things, that he is receiving "messages" from The Holy Spirit. "Messages," we cannot fail to note, that okay the conscription of child soldiers and sex slavery for young girls. But if we have learned anything in recent days it is that negotiation - even with those perceived to our sworn enemy - should never be taken off the table altogether.
The International Criminal Court, ICC, has already indicted Kony. The enigmatic rebel and his cohorts are wanted in The Hague for crimes against humanity. In the spirit of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and, moreover, a sheer existential weariness of the situation as well as a desire to bring peace to the northern Ugandan countryside, Uganda has instigated peace talks offering accords that would have the east African nation creating a special war crimes tribunal that would apparently supplant the much-harsher ICC indictment. A nice deal if you can get it, quite frankly. In the two years of talks between officials from the Ugandan government and the LRA, there has been, mirabile dictu, a nearly unprecedented - at least in recent memory -- peace.
Unfortunately, Kony, who was slated to finalize the agreement with his signature, failed to show in April and May. Such are the vagaries of War and Peace. An unnamed 18 year old whose family has been affected by the rebel atrocities tells the Institute For War And Peace Reporting:
"'We don't want any war again. Those who say peace talks have failed and are bound to collapse ... want to keep us in a circle of poverty.
"'We don't want this useless war to continue. It must stop so that we also compete with other regions in terms of education, health and development.'"
Here's to hoping that this weekend, finally, the elusive Kony shows his face and graces the papers with his signature.
[Image: International Criminal Court]
Not since the days of Tip O'Neill have I been so fascinated by the role of The Speaker Of The House.
There is something refreshing about Nancy Pelosi, even if I don't agree with everything she does. Like taking the Impeachment of George W. Bush off the table in 2006. Or letting her party give George W. Bush a final victory by giving retroactive immunity to phone companies for breaking the law under his watch with the latest approval of the Federal Intelligence & Surveillance Act known also as FISA.
If I push that aside though, I have the same reaction that Michelle Cottle has about her when writing one of the best profiles of The Madam Speaker :
Now, having smiled, sweated, and strategized her way to the top, the speaker is savoring her burgeoning reputation as a power broker and all-around political badass. While she may not be the person who killed the Bush presidency (that honor goes to the president himself), Pelosi has of late emerged as the chief figure propelling his slide into political oblivion-- blocking his bills, stiff-arming his congressional compatriots, and reminding everyone of how lame the duck has become. In much the same fashion, her status as party eminence has been burnished, particularly on the left, by her tie-ups and stare-downs with Team Hillary. Thwarting the will of both an opposition president and the most fearsome political machine in her own party, Pelosi is now being touted as one of the most powerful speakers in modern history. It is a particularly sweet victory for a woman who has spent her political career striving to prove she can hold her own with the big boys.
One of the things I've learned about Nancy Pelosi is that she is a fast learner and a woman who is not afraid to try new things. She was one of the first people in Congress to actually staff a blog, even dropping in on it and writing posts herself from time to time. She also was one of the first higher ups on The Hill to get an online outreach director to work bloggers and other political digiterrati. She particularly keen on what organizations like The Sunlight Foundation are doing to open up the political process in Congress to citizens-at-large.
So it's with interest and curiosity that I urge you to check out AskTheSpeaker.org. It is a website put together by the good people of Netroots Nation, the largest gathering of online activists in the United States.
Gina Cooper scored a victory by getting Nancy Pelosi to appear on the event as one of the keynote speakers. They will "gather around breakfast" on Saturday the 19th at 9:00 in the morning and shoot the breeze about politics over bagels and coffee. Well, at least the attendees will.
To make sure that the community of activists got an opportunity to choose the questions to be asked to Ms. Pelosi, they set up a site where people can pose their questions and have anybody vote for them. All you have to do is register with the site, write up your questions and encourage others to vote for it up.
What's interesting is that it's a concept that I heard Pelosi is interested to see unfold. It's the kind of new tools she asks her staff take note for potential future implementation in their work.
If only she had had that before voting for that FISA bill.
The third annual gathering of the Netroots (formerly known as the YearlyKos Convention) will be held July 17-20 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. Netroots Nation 2008 will include panels led by national and international experts; identity, issue and regional caucuses; prominent political, issue and policy-oriented speakers; a 26,000-square-foot interactive exhibit hall; a progressive film screening series; and the most concentrated gathering of progressive bloggers to date.
Child obesity is a hot topic these days, but one question that has remained unanswered is when it begins. According to one new study, between the ages of nine and 15.
Recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study reveals that while nine-year-olds exercise on average about three hours per day, by age 15, that number drops to 49 minutes on weekdays and just 35 minutes or less on Saturdays and Sundays. (Those additional minutes on Monday through Friday are no doubt forced on the kids by a reviled gym teacher in spandex shorts, a whistle around his neck, and an annoying gum-chewing habit.)
Combine that with a fast-food diet, the Internet for entertainment, and parents who don't encourage exercise, and you've got a sure-fire recipe for sloth.
These are interesting numbers, but I'm not sure they're cause for alarm across the board. Teenagers are tired a lot -- it's part of adolescence. When I was a kid, I was outside as much as possible: riding bikes, swimming, playing in the yard, or skateboarding.
By 15, I was more concerned with hitching a ride to the record store to buy the latest Jane's Addiction CD than I was with my neglected 10-speed. One of my greatest high school coups was obtaining an open-ended doctor's note excusing me from gym -- which I milked for my entire sophomore year.
But that got old, and I re-discovered the joys of having arms, legs, and a cardiovascular system. Now I run marathons...
Obviously, this won't be everyone's tale, but I do think a certain degree of laziness among America's teens is inevitable, and possibly for the best. You have to want to exercise, and when you choose to do it as an adult, it means so much more than when you were forced to as a surly kid. Some of the most active people I know were morbidly obese when they were teenagers. They clearly got tired of it and wanted to feel better.
There's also the matter of time. By the time a kid is 15, he or she has a lot busier schedule than a nine-year-old. There's more homework, after school jobs, and a more active social life.
Moreover, some classmates of mine growing up who played every sport they could are now inactive and overweight.
In short, studies like this can be good for discussion, and keeping people aware of children's health, but they don't necessarily mean anything in the long run. In the end, it comes down to the individual, and the fact that nothing is permanent.
[Image Credit: David Joles, Star Tribune]
Anthony Famigilietti, a New York-area elite runner who qualified for the Olympics with his impressive victory in the 3,000 meter steeplechase in Oregon last week, seriously considered boycotting the games next month as a protest against China's record of human rights abuses and the country's policies regarding Tibet.
But after some thought, and no doubt some degree of temptation, Famiglietti decided to go ahead and compete. In the end, he told the press, it's not China as a whole we should blame, but the Chinese government.
This is an important statement, and one many others would be wise to repeat when protesting China.
In 1980, when the US government boycotted the Olympic games in Moscow, America's best athletes were denied the chance of a lifetime -- to compete against the best from other nations around the world. And to participate in a tradition that historically has set politics aside to embrace the purity of sport.
Famiglietti contends that we should indeed protest China's government, but not its people or its rich cultural history.
And more power to him if he achieves Olympic glory to boot.
[Image Credit: Xiaowei on Wikimedia Creative Commons]
PBS is offering a great lineup of programming this week with shows hosted by WIDE ANGLE and P.O.V.
Tonight at 9pm, Japan's About Face will highlight the shifting role of the Japanese military in post-War Japanese society: "With troops in Iraq and sophisticated new fighter jets, Japan is reconsidering its rules of engagement. This program follows academy cadets preparing for possible overseas deployment and meets a group of peace demonstrators."
Later tonight, at 10pm, Tommy Lee Jones will narrate a new documentary about "a young man mistaken for a drug runner and killed by the U.S Marines patrolling the Texas- Mexico border. He became the first American killed by U.S military forces on native soil since the 1970 Kent state shootings." The Ballad of Esequiel Hernandez will explore Hernandez's death and "its torturous aftermath."
[image: The Ballad of Esequiel Hernandez[
The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency has defined "Environmental Justice" as follows : Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies..
It is no coincidence that some of the most inspiring leaders of the environmental justice movement are women of color like US Congress Rep. Hilda Solís, Winona LaDuke and Majora Carter.
From the first time I saw her at a Drum Major Institute presentation of her work through Sustainable South Bronx, to her stint on IFC's The Green, to her moving 2006 presentation at the world renowned conference TED, Majora Carter just never ever ceases to amaze me. She speaks about the issues of pollution and it's consequences with a clarity that is refreshing and with a passion that can be so powerful it will move you to tears. If you have the time, please spend the next 18.5 minutes of your life watching her presentation at TED.
In this video she speaks about what happens to her community first and then the rest of the nation when you flush your toilet. There's a reference about orange juice that will surprise you. Also the fact that the host is none other than Jonathan Demme.
Watch it.
Have you decided for whom you're voting this November? If so, did you make your choice based on how aligned your views are with the candidate of choice? Or is your choice based on gut or emotions? Have your parents always voted republican (or democrat) so your choice follows suit?
All of these methods may work for you...and who's to say they are wrong. However, with how close the last election was, how fragile our economy, our status as a country in the world, and our morale as a nation is, shouldn't it be based on a bit more than gut feelings and historic party affiliation. If you agree (or would like to become more educated on the candidates), you should check out glassbooth.org, a site dedicated to connecting you to the 2008 presidential candidate that represents your views best. Glassbooth is unique in that it is a "nonprofit organization that creates innovative ways to access nonbiased political information." Their site includes a quiz revealing your 'matching' candidate, details on the candidates' views on various issues (including video clips and voting records), a blog to share your thoughts and see what other people are saying, and ways to contribute to help glassbooth continue their efforts.
So, before jumping to conclusions about which candidate to back, check to see if your views align. Your results might just surprise you.
It's Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour magazine, here. A few weeks ago, we arm twisted Kenneth into guest-blogging on glamour.com's political blog, Glamocracy, and I told him I'd return the favor here.
I figure plenty of you reading this blog are women --- so, really, is there anything to write about right now except Hillary Clinton? Now that the dust is cleared and the Democrats finally have a nominee, I've been shocked at how NEGATIVE all the coverage of Hillary's presidential run has been, and I'm worried about the downbeat message that negativity sends to other women considering a political career. While Hillary's supporters say they're still progressing through "the stages of grief," media watchers are bemoaning the "feral" quality of the sexism she faced during the campaign---a theme that's come up repeatedly over the last six months. "If Hillary can't even get the nomination," said one political expert at a March 30 panel in Boston, "I don't think we'll see another woman run and win until my daughter is a grandparent."
Seriously? Women are supposed to feel discouraged about what happened to Hillary? Now, I'm a girl-power girl all the way, with a five-year-old daughter who's always saying, "Mommy, when you get done being an editor, can you be president?" (For the record, sweetie, no. Mommy had a little too much fun in college.) I spend my professional life cheering young women on to pursue their dreams and break through barriers. But to me, Hillary's riveting, neck-and-neck race looked like a victory --- not because of how short she came up, but because of how far she got to begin with.
I remember the early days, right before the explosion, when the streets of New York were littered with black and brown men (and some women) covered with the lesions of HIV. It didn't matter if they were gay or heroin addicts, they were almost invariably poor and homeless.
Then the epidemic struck the middle class gay men and all of a sudden the face of AIDS changed drastically and so it's activism which has turned the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender community an advocacy and political force to reckon with in our country. Numerous organizations were created, including AMfar, and a huge push for medical research and pharmaceutical development happened all throughout the 1990s.
The strategy has paid off.
Although 50% of all HIV patients are composed by mostly white, gay men, they're survival rate is the highest when compared to Latinos and African Americans. A lot of that is due to the critically important activism by organizations Gay Men's Task Force.
Yet the truth also is tainted by the stain of prejudice against racial and ethnic minorities by the country's medical establishment. In our country many medical practices and pharmaceutical R&D projects have been focused on serving mostly middle class and "white" patients; considering race and ethnicity as "deviations" from the norm. It's why, for example, AIDS prevention and therapy policies have failed miserably among the fastest victims of the disease, black and brown women and children.
Yet, just to be clear, medical prejudice is not just an issue with AIDS. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, the list of ailments that affect black and brown racial and ethnic minorities harder than whites in this country, continues to grow. They grow in part due to medical culture that discriminated against blacks and other colored professionals.
For example, up until the 1990s, many hospitals wouldn't hire any doctors that were not members of the American Medical Association. And yet, many chapters would not so much bar their entrance as such much as put barriers to entry that would either make it easy for them to reject minority doctors or discourage them from applying for membership.
It's for these shamefully racist and bigoted practices that the American Medical Association officially apologized for this week:
AMA apologizes for history of racial inequality and works to include and promote minority physicians
The American Medical Association (AMA) today apologizes for its past history of racial inequality toward African-American physicians, and shares its current efforts to increase the ranks of minority physicians and their participation in the AMA. In 2005, the AMA convened and supported an independent panel of experts to study the history of the racial divide in organized medicine, and the culmination of this work prompted the apology. Details of the panel's work will be made public next week on the Web site of the AMA's Institute for Ethics to coincide with publication in a scientific journal.
"The AMA is proud to support research about the history of the racial divide in organized medicine because by confronting the past we can embrace the future," said AMA Immediate-Past President Ronald M. Davis, M.D. "The AMA is committed to improving its relationship with minority physicians and to increasing the ranks of minority physicians so that the workforce accurately represents the diversity of America's patients."
What is great about this very public apology is that it's a formality that comes 5 years after the organization formally started to really work towards changing it's practices. Since 2003 the AMA, along with the National Medical Association and the National Hispanic Medical Association has been working on the Commission to End Health Care Disparities. The Commission, coming into its 4th year of work, has been actively working to create guidelines for more inclusive medical policies as well as encourage new forms of scientific research that would take into consideration the demographic diversity of our country.
So hoorah for the AMA. It's such a rare thing for a US organization to acknowledge their past mistakes. It's truly a refreshing sight to these jaundiced by cynicism.
If you're not satisfied with either Barack Obama or John McCain for president, you should know that you've got another option -- OK, two if you count Ralph Nader. The Green Party held its national convention this past weekend in Chicago, choosing Cynthia McKinney as its presidential nominee.
The nomination makes her the first African-American in history to be an official nominee for president. (Obama won't be official until the Democratic National Convention in August.) She's not, however, the first woman to be an official nominee -- and neither would Hilary Clinton have been. That honor goes to Victoria Claflin Woodhull in 1872, running on the Equal Rights Party ticket.
McKinney served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2003 and 2005 to 2007 as a Democrat; she switched to the Green Party after finishing her most recent term. She's probably best known for an incident in 2006 in which she punched a Capitol Hill police officer who didn't recognize her at a security checkpoint. Rosa Clemente, a hip-hop artist, journalist and activist, will be McKinney's vice-presidential running mate. Read her acceptance speech here.
It's hard to imagine McKinney having much of an effect on the chances of either Obama or McCain -- the Green Party boasts only about 300,000 registered members, and received just 0.1 percent of the vote in 2004, compared with 3 percent for Nader in 200. But with both her and Nader doing their best to keep the Iraq War, the environment and other socially liberal topics at the forefront, Election 2008 is shaping up to be one of the most interesting in decades.
No, according to the dozens of homeless men who daily use the M35 in Harlem to and from their homeless shelters on Wards Island.
When your livelihood consists of pan-handling for change, dropping what may take hours to earn for a single ride seems like a cruel requirement. Two dollars is a lot of money for the people who live in the shelters, and many of the MTA drivers who cover the M35 route agree.
So they've stopped charging them, suggesting that they instead drop a single penny in the box as a show of good faith (and to at least appear like they're paying to ride the bus).
But that doesn't mean the NYPD can't or will not arrest someone for not paying, if they are caught. Still, according to David Greene, who took the above photograph, during a demonstration on June 5th by half-a-dozen people from Picture the Homeless, a non-profit homeless advocacy group, police officers witnessed several people board the bus without paying the full fare but chose not to arrest them. Greene speculates that this may be simply because a photojournalist was present.
The Department of Homeless Services says it distributes about 150 MetroCards to residents of Wards Island's four shelters, and Volunteers for America, which runs three shelters, says it also helps in the effort.
But clearly, the efforts aren't enough if people are still protesting, or worse, immobilized by a prohibitive fare.
[Image: David Greene]
Tomatoes became the target of a nation-wide panic last month, when the FDA started checking off the states from which the vegetable/fruit should be avoided due to a salmonella outbreak that was posing serious health risks to the elderly, the young, and the infirm.
But now the FDA says that jalapeno and serrano peppers may have been to blame all along. Meanwhile, WebMD warns that tomatoes may still pose a risk, and should be eaten with caution -- that is, avoid commercially grown tomatoes in favor of smaller, organic farm produce and heirloom tomatoes.
The FDA has also added cilantro to the list of foods to be avoided until more information is in, suggesting to this writer that the government has no idea what caused the outbreak that sickened more than 900 people nation wide.
Maybe someone just has something against pico de gallo. Whatever the case, I'm not about to stop eating Mexican food.
Just eat wisely, and stay healthy.
[Image Credit: Tilman Baumann on Wikimedia Commons]
Warning : This Amnesty International advertisement about torturing by waterboarding may be too upsetting for some of our readers.
Christopher Hitchens is the curmudgeonly self-described polemicist and intellectual that most recently has been stationed at Slate.com. From his cyber column, he's been known to throw atheist molotovs to the theocrats of the American right wing and verbal judo blows to two of his most detested foes, the Clintons.
Yet even though he's no friend of the extreme right, he's been a defender of George Bush's foreign policy and a rabid apologist for the invasion of Iraq. Not of Abu Ghraib or torture techniques, but certainly for the war.
Which is why I find it fascinating (although not shocking given his propensity for pulling self-promoting stunts) that when asked by Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter if he'd like to be tortured with waterboarding by former military Special Forces, he gladly accepted :
You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it "simulates" the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning--or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The "board" is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and--as you might expect--inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don't want to tell you how little time I lasted.
The men and women who show them their techniques for resisting waterboarding were training in the art of SERE, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Their lessons they learned in waterboarding were for survival. The didn't learn waterboarding so they could torture enemy combatants. They were taught waterboarding so they could survive it in the event they became prisoners of war.
Hitchens may be fool to support the Iraq War but he is not an unethical fool. His article is an argument for respecting the Geneva Convention and for the most basic respect for human rights even in the middle of a terrible war.
I have a lot of problems with a lot of what Hitchens writes but it's when he writes articles like this one that he earns my respect.
Kenneth Cole weighed in on how to solve the economic malaise in America
Guest contributor Andrew Huff highlighted an innovative new milk jug that may help save the environment
Louise Reid Ritchie contributed a photo from a Barack Obama rally in Oregon
Kenneth Cole Media Marketing Manager Heather Dumford profiled two politically-themed programs on PBS
Marc Schiller uploaded the trailer for a new documentary film about the Amazon
According to data on drug usage from the first 17 countries participating in the World Health Organization's World Mental Health Survey Initiative, the United States leads in the use of tobacco, marijuana and cocaine, and is in the top 10 for alcohol consumption. Wow.
The numbers for cocaine and marijuana are particularly striking: 16.2 percent of American survey respondents said they'd used cocaine in their lifetime. New Zealand and Spain were a distant second and third, with 4.3 percent and 4.1 percent respectively. New Zealand is almost as big of a pothead country as we are, with 41.9 percent using the drug versus our 42.4 percent; the two are way ahead of the rest of the world, with the Netherlands — where marijuana is legal only in state-licensed cannabis cafes — coming in third at 19.8 percent.
It makes you wonder — are our drug laws really working? It's hard to imagine they'd be higher without the War on Drugs — $26 billion spent and counting, and still not a success — but could the high rate be in part a result of it?
[image credit: Gawker]
Environmental awareness television continues once again this Tuesday with The Green on the Sundance Channel. The night will kick-off at 9pm with the second episode of Outrageous Wasters, followed by Garbage Warrior and ending the night with the great series It's Not Easy Being Green.
This week on Outrageous Wasters the affluent Buchanan family of four will be forced to discover "the carbon impact of their culinary ways", and find out the waste involved with the use of their enormous spa bathtub. The experiences that the Buchanans undergo as they understand the full scope of their energy waste have given the family "food for thought and a mission that involves local farms."
Garbage Warrior begins at 10:10 pm, an eco-documentary which features architect Michael Reynolds:
"[Reynolds] has spent thirty years developing radically original models of self-sustaining housing -- Earthships -- near Taos, New Mexico. Working with a crew of like-minded idealists and professionals, Reynolds has channeled his unstoppable imagination into strange yet functional dwellings that are made from garbage like old tires and beer cans. With the ingenuity and environmentally friendly techniques, this might just be our modern day utopia...once you get past the smell of burnt rubber and stale beer."
As a for the Strawbridge family, it has been 9 months since they moved to Cornwall, and "much has been done to make New House Farm self-sufficient in terms of food, water, electricity and heat." Now that the renovation budget is gone, tune in at 11:40pm for episode 8 of It's Not Easy Being Green, to find out how cost-efficient their new green lifestyle truly is.
Continue reading Sundance Specials on July 8th: Outrageous Wasters and Garbage Warrior.
It's Tuesday, which continues to stand for all that is green on Sundance. At 9pm, the fourth episode of Outrageous Wasters will air. At 11:35pm, the tenth episode of Big Ideas for a Small Planet will conclude an evening filled with entertaining and educational programming yet again.This week on Outrageous Wasters, a family of five that constantly runs loads of laundry and indulges in baths daily is taken to the House of Correction to learn water conservation and the benefits of organic products.
The Decorate episode of Big Ideas for a Small Planet focuses on finding stylish furnishings without polluting the earth. You will meet several designers whose creations are "inspired by nature and made from natural materials."
[image: Outrageous Wasters]
Chances are, there's a gallon of milk in your fridge. And if you do, it's probably the same plastic jug you've known and loved for decades. But an unusual new design may be coming to replace it, (theoretically) contributing to a greener world in the process.
Wal-Mart has introduced a new milk jug in some Sam's Club stores. It's taller, squarer and can be stacked without the aid of milk crates, which means it's easier and cheaper to ship, reducing the time from udder to your cereal and reducing the fuel required to transport them. This also results in lower prices — Wal-Mart shaves 20 cents off a gallon of milk with the new jugs, a big deal in the current economy. They're also fully recyclable.
The downside is that they're difficult to pour; they lack a proper spout, so there's more risk of spillage. Sam's has taken to holding pouring demonstrations in stores where the new jugs are sold to help shoppers get used to the new method. And, of course, they're new and different — that alone has turned off some customers.
How well will people take to a jug that looks suspiciously like a bottle of laundry detergent? Time will tell, but Wal-Mart is betting the cost savings will make up for the unfamiliarity. In the meantime, shoppers in England are getting used to an even more radical repackaging.
[Image: David Maxwell for The New York Times]
Thomas Beatie, "the pregnant man," gave birth to a baby girl last week. Beatie is a transgendered man, born Tracy Lagondino and a former model and Miss Hawaii Teen pageant contestant, who underwent gender reassignment surgery (though, importantly, retained his female reproductive organs) and legally changed genders and in 2003 married his wife Nancy, a divorced mother of two. Beatie had his breasts surgically removed and began twice-weekly testosterone treatments. He stopped taking testosterone about two years ago when he decided to get pregnant via artificial insemination using his own eggs.
Beatie is not the first transgendered man to give birth, but most others have preferred secrecy to the media glare. Beatie's willingness to tell his story — including an appearance on "Oprah" — brought dramatic attention to the phenomenon and with it quite a bit of criticism.
It has raised the question in general about what defines motherhood and fatherhood. It has also unleashed a debate among the transgender community over whether The Pregnant Man was beneficial to transgender awareness, or just another unfortunate sideshow in the media circus.
As we all continue to be concerned about "our standing" and our personal and national security, it's worth stepping back and reflecting on who exactly is the enemy, where do they hide and what are their weapons?In case enough opinions haven't been exchanged on this subject, the battlefield is here, the enemy is us, and the weapon of mass destruction? It's the economy, stupid.
I mentioned Franklin Roosevelt in my previous post. We need something like his new deal now, and who knows about new deals better than a retailer like me? After all, our industry offers a new deal just about every fifteen minutes.
Our economic New Deal needs to be about investing more than about spending. The $300 (for an individual) and $600 (for a couple) rebates that recently went out, costing the government $152 billion, make about as much sense as handing out condoms in the Vatican or selling fur coats at a PETA conference, because that money won't go into the economy. It will likely be used to pay down debt, or stowed for a rainy day (though it's looking increasingly cloudy recently).
Even if you wanted to spend it, with the cost of gas as it is, how many fewer Americans can even afford to drive to the store to spend their rebate, let alone drive to work? And if you do spend that rebate on gas, the money isn't going to our economy; it's going to the Middle East. Or, if you can make it to the local store to buy basic household needs, if not electronics, or maybe something to wear, that money is probably going to China.
The economy can't "get going", as I also said in the last message, unless people start spending, or, better yet investing -- and they aren't going to do either unless they think it has already "gotten going."
If our government actually invested in our economy what's being spent every day in Iraq (estimated to be $720 million, when you factor in things like the costs of future health care for veterans), we could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the American Friends Service Committee.
Add to it the $152 billion they're sending out in the mail, and you could provide $10,000 grants to 150 million college students... or purchase a $100,000 home for 1.5 million homeless people in America.
Probably as important as any one of these things, we might actually be able to kick start our economy, which would help all Americans
We need to invest. And if by chance we are not sure as to how and where it is best to do so, I happen to have inventory on just the right product that is guaranteed to "improve the standing" of all Americans. How about a chicken in every pot and the finest in footwear on every foot?
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it (for now).
[Image Source: New York Stock Exchange, December 2007, by ThreeOneFive on wikipedia.org]
This Tuesday, July 29th Sundance will be providing another night of Green television. The next season of It's Not Easy Being Green will kick off at 9pm: "In the borough of Wirral in northwest England, Dick meets Helen and Russel Keenan, who have ambitious plans for a self-sufficient eco-compound." Be sure to watch season 2, as the Strawbridge family hits the road and "Britain's favorite do-it-yourself green engineer" assists others in "achieving an eco-friendly lifestyle."
Greening of Southie will air at 9:35pm. Documentary filmmaker Ian Cheney will tell the "unlikely story of Boston's first residential green building and how it united a tight-knit community." This documentary goes behind the scenes to follow the construction process. The creation of Macallen is "an odd addition to South Boston" but its creation "spurred construction workers and environmentalists to think about the city of the future."
Big Ideas for a Small Planet will air episode 11, Water, at 11:05pm. This week's episode explores how and why water is "likely to be a flash point in the 21st century, as population growth collides with droughts and dwindling reserves." Creative solutions to the looming shortage of drinking water are proposed by three creative people. Be sure to tune in to see how you can do your part.
A meditative state is probably the best position to consider the present state of United States economy. Green MBA's have been growing in buzz and influence, but how about the idea of yoga at business schools? On the face of things these two concepts seem incommensurable - one otherworldly and the other veering towards the materialistic. Business schools are not known for providing a nurturing environment for the temperament of the yogi. The stresses of the business world, however, lend themselves nicely to the tonic nature of yoga. Business Week today notes the growing popularity of yoga at, of all places, some of the most competitive and hard-edged business schools: the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, MIT's Sloan School of Management, Harvard Business School and the Kellogg School of Management. From Business Week:
"Like many other practitioners of yoga, (Second year MIT grad student Matthew) McGarvey says the discipline helps him achieve inner focus. He began practicing yoga while starting a social enterprise in Tibet as a way to find relief from his work-related stress. In business school, McGarvey says yoga helped him stay centered. 'I found that during my first semester I was having to reexamine a lot of my life goals and priorities,' he says. 'Having a yoga practice helped sort through the white noise.'
".. Several MBAs have enrolled in the course, Barry says, which serves as a respite from the otherwise-busy life of MBA students. 'They tend to be extremely self-driven and highly competitive,' Barry says. 'To have an hour [that's] not about self-improvement prevents burnout to get through the hectic part of the semester'"
Interestingly enough, Indian MBA programs are quite familiar with the dicipline, where recruiting companies regard a yoga certificate as a plus point. As Professor J.M. Subramanya of the SDM Institute for Management Development told The India Tribune in January, "Companies see the yoga certificate as something positive about the candidate." More Business Week here.
[image:yogaeducationinsitute]
Side by side alongside anxious pols working the crowd and cutting deals in the Mile High city of Denver at the Democratic National Convention will be .. non-partisan yogis? Yoga Month Denver Health Festival, sponsored by the DNC Host Committee and The City of Denver Office of Cultural Affairs will sponsor the non-partisan Yoga Month Denver Health Festival. From The Rocky Mountain News:
"'It's all about health, a healthy lifestyle and yoga,' said Johannes Fisslinger, president of Yoga Health Foundation, the nonprofit organization in charge of the festival. 'We want to invite people to attend and learn about healthy living and yoga, and the health benefits of yoga especially.'"
Off the top of our heads we can think of quite a few pols that could benefit from a soothing yoga workout at the Minsuk Cho Architectural Pavilion for Public Discourse. Proceeds from the events which take place on August 24 and 25 will benefit Youth Health Alliance, a charity that provides free yoga inspired enrichment classes to underserved youth and their families.
[image: yogamonth]
Rise above from Nick Dentamaro on Vimeo.
Many people are told to stand tall in the face of serious illness. Neil Sauter took the phrase literally. The 25-year-old college instructor just completed a walk across the state of Michigan — on stilts — to raise funds for United Cerebral Palsy of Michigan.
Sauter, who suffers from a mild case of cerebral palsy that causes his ankles to turn inward, walked 830 miles and raised $64,000 in direct and matching grants, which will be used to purchase wheelchairs for others with the disorder.
"If I can use stilts to get all the way across Michigan, imagine what someone who needs a wheelchair can do if they have it," he said.
Among just about everyone over 25 that I know, there's a certain degree of skepticism about social networking sites, and the potential threats the information age poses to the minds of developing children and young adults.
And that skepticism increases proportionally to the years beyond 25 a person is.
For years, I've wondered if this is just another classic scenario of old-fuddy-duddyism -- that is, the "older" generation shaking its heads ruefully at the poor, misguided kids. And just as each generation seems to overcome this stigma by not only keeping society running, but by improving it and achieving great things, I have tried to believe that my own fears about a generation raised on the Internet that has learned to write by text-messaging are alarmist and irrational.
But now it seems my fears are supported by a leading psychologist in Great Britain. Dr. Himanshu Tyagi announced at the Royal College of Pysychiatrists annual meeting last Thursday that he believes social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace lead children to have less of a grasp on reality than they would if they never developed a so-called "second life" online.
He also said they can lead to impulsive acts and even suicide, presumably because they blur the line between real and virtual experience, and confuse young minds about the distinction -- and the consequences of real action.
Dr. Tyagi's theories are, frankly, in line with my own concerns about a generation for whom making and "deleting" friends is matter of just clicking a mouse button. Tyagi also alerts us to the fact that our current crop of psychologists may not be equipped to deal with the kinds of psychological problems that may result from existing -- from birth -- in an online, mediated world.
In my own experience as a professor at a New York city college, I've found that college students often have a hard time not using text-messaging short-hand when writing academic papers, but because they are slightly older than the children Dr. Tyagi is concerned with, I haven't yet experienced anything more severe.
So a plea to readers: If any of you have children born after 1990 who regularly use sites like MySpace and Facebook, I'm curious to know your thoughts.
[Image Credit: Jean-Marie Favre on Wikimedia Commons]
Milton Friedman, who died in November 2006, has been called the most influential economist of the 20th Century. His support of free markets and "laissez faire" capitalism -- i.e. minimal government control -- had an enormous impact on Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and many other governmental heavyweights around the world.
These once-world leaders were inspired by Friedman's intelligent, theory-driven arguments for a world economy that would follow a natural course determined by opportunity and drive, and as a side-benefit, necessarily correct many political and social problems in the process.
Obviously, these beliefs -- however brilliantly articulated they were -- made Friedman a controversial figure. And as Reagan, Pinochet, and other champions of the free market ideology have gained more foes than friends over the past 20 years, Friedman's association with them hasn't exactly helped his legacy.
But this hasn't stopped the University of Chicago from proposing that a research institute be named after Friedman, who taught there for most of his career and played a central role in developing the so-called Chicago school of economics.
More than 100 faculty members are protesting the decision, with a signed petition, arguing that however influential Friedman was, his beliefs were simply too problematic to be immortalized by such an honor. Naturally, many of these protesters are from the Humanities division of the university, representing the English, Philosophy, and Religion departments -- all historically more morally concerned than schools of economics. (One professor from the school of business called the petition "drivel.")
The entire faculty hasn't met on a single issue since 1986, when Chicago's professors gathered together to decide whether the university should divest its holdings in South Africa during the height of apartheid in that country.
The faculty who are against the Friedman institute hope their petition will result in another faculty-wide meeting, proving that for many among the current crop of academic elites, this is a serious matter.
For them, ideology trumps fame, and Friedman's ideologies were not ones we should carry with us into the future.
[Image Credit: Crimson3981 from Wikimedia Commons]
Recently, a group of current and formerly homeless teenagers staged a protest outside Milwaukee's city hall to draw attention to the plight of homeless teens in the city. Homelessness advocates claimed more than 400 teenagers live on the streets in Milwaukee, unable to find a place to sleep at night because only 16 beds are set aside specifically for them in area shelters.
"The issue of teen homelessness in Milwaukee is a shadow issue. It's an invisible issue," Daniel Magnusen from the Counseling Center of Milwaukee said.
Not just in Milwaukee: it's estimated that one in three homeless people in the US is aged 18 or under. Exact figures are hard to come by. Some are former foster children, others are runaways, and many are homeless along with a parent or sibling.
Because they may not be as obviously homeless as some other populations — they're generally not raving in the street, after all — it's harder to spot them. And finding a way out is tougher for teens, since they usually lack the work experience to get a job.
The Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, which provides federal funding to programs that help disconnected youth, is set to expire on September 30. Last month, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to renew it, and the Senate is expected to vote on it sometime this summer. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has recommendations on amendments to the law; take a look and contact your senator.
[image credit: WTMJ-TV]
Over the past twenty years, Kenneth Cole has been one of the most important voices when it comes to raising public awareness about HIV/AIDS. We created this video as part of a broader effort to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS using online media tools - such as Internet video - that didn't exist two decades ago. We started this video in an attempt to answer the question: "Why are HIV infection rates still on the rise?" AIDS is no longer the disease it was in the 80s. The treatments as well the public's understanding of the virus has changed. It is no longer a gay men's disease. In fact it has become a disease that targets women and young minority members.
Both of us grew up during the 90s and received a great deal of education on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but with the virus nearing its third decade it seems that younger generations are forgetting the epidemic that defined the sexual habits and values of the generation before them.
In the process of making this video we became acquainted with facets of the city that had existed for years in the cause against AIDS like ASC (AIDS Service Center) and amFar but were previously unknown to the two of us. In fact it was the amFar campaign "We are forgetting AIDS" placed on buses in New York City last fall that really sparked our interest in this topic. Something about it seemed to be very true. Not only are recent clinical studies saying something similar but interactions with other our peers also in their low 20s are saying the same thing.
We enlisted Jack Mackenroth, a former season 4 Project Runway cast member and an outspoken figure in the HIV/AIDS community who has been HIV+ for the past 18 years to conduct man-on-the-street interviews with young people in lower Manhattan. And we also took a look at the corporate and community based initiatives and that New York City has to offer.
If you think food prices in American supermarkets are bad consider for a moment how tough it must be in East Africa. In countries like Ethiopia and Somalia, where poverty and drought and civil war are the norm, the rise in food prices is hitting particularly hard. According to Oxfam International, 2.6 million people in Somalia and 4.6 million people in Ethiopia require emergency assistance. Banff-born pop star Sandi Thom joined Oxfam Scotland workers as they put up an 11,000-litre water tank as an example of how donations can help.
From the BBC: "Ms Thom said: 'The water tank we have built today gives people an idea of where their money goes and how Oxfam responds in an emergency. Drought and rising food prices are some of the main causes that are propelling millions of people in East Africa towards severe hunger and destitution. The work that Oxfam is doing in East Africa is essential and sadly necessary.'"
You can donate to Oxfam's East Africa Appeal here.
[Image: BBC]
I'll come right out and say it: If any kind of disaster strikes my Brooklyn neighborhood -- whether natural or man-made -- both my girlfriend and I are screwed.
I don't think of myself as a vulnerable person, but truthfully, I'm so unprepared for a calamity that I might as well be an unclothed baby in the middle of a Los Angeles Expressway at rush hour.
And I just found this out, by taking a very short click-through exam: What's Your RQ (readiness quotient). As of this morning, I was still blissfully unaware of how unprepared I really am.
I scored 1 out of 10 -- compared to 4.7 out of 10 among my Park Slope neighbors, meaning no one on my block should be asking me for help or advice in the event of an emergency.
Curious to know where you stand? Take the test and find out.
[Image Credit: Jean-Michel Roche, from Wikimedia Commons]
If you want to be impressed with one hell of a new golf resort, click here. If you want to know why this course is causing no small amount of panic in Scotland, just north of Aberdeen, read on.
Donald Trump, one of the wealthiest and most ruthless real estate developers of all time, has had designs on a fragile tract of land along Scotland's northeast coast for some time. In fact, the project has been in the works for the past few years, and already it's seen a fair bit of controversy.
But last week, the murmerings of dissent were a little louder than they have been, and for good reason. It seems the area on which Trump intends to build "the world's greatest golf course" is an officially designated "Site of Special Scientific Interest."
Moreover, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds argued that the land should be preserved for its natural habitat, to which Trump swiftly countered that 2,500 birds are shot over that land each year, and that locals are using the site as a personal garbage dump.
As with most things, money is likely to determine the outcome of this battle. Or maybe it won't, and the environmentalists will win. However unlikely that may be, this story draws attention to a part of the world that you might never have thought about, even if you visit the "world's greatest golf course" that could occupy that space one day. Every day we encounter buildings, freeways, strip-malls, and myriad other man-made constructions that obscure the earth beneath and around them.
Maybe this story will inspire us to pay more attention to those pieces of land that aren't yet hosting a piece of "civilization" -- and maybe we'll be inclined to fight if we see one of those pieces literally losing ground against a corporate plan.
[Image Credit: Dave Souza from Wikimedia Commons]
Does bulldozing the homes of Palestinian terrorists deter further attacks against the state of Israel? Is the act of razing their houses a just punishment for militants who endanger thousands? The practice of demolishing the homes of terrorists' families, which has been condemned internationally as a violation of human rights -- and, quite possibly, also a violation against international law -- was discontinued in 2005. From The Forward:
"The measure, introduced by the British during the mandate period and continued by Israel, was standard practice until three-and-a-half years ago. Some 270 homes were destroyed during the second intifada alone. Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz discontinued the policy in 2005, while he served as Defense minister. Mofaz was following the still-secret recommendations of the so-called Shani Committee. The military committee, which is headed by Udi Shani, a major general, is widely believed to have questioned the deterrent effect of home demolition."
So why then is the question of home demolition back on the radar screen of Israeli politics? On July 2, East Jerusalem Palestinian Hossam Dwayyat, a construction worker, drove a bulldozer into oncoming traffic reportedly yelling 'Allahu akhbar,' killing three women and wounding dozens in the process. It could have been much worse, considering the attack took place on a busy weekday in Jerusalem. Dwayyat, who has a criminal record, aimed his front-end loader at bus full of commuters. Moshe Plesser, an off-duty officer, shot Dwayyat at close range putting an end to the rampage. Hours later, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who may or may not have further political ambitions, answering public outrage, ordered the Israel Defense Forces to prepare to raze the homes of terrorists who attack Jerusalem. The deceased Hossam Dwayyat's home is to be the first.
Israel is presently debating whether or not such an action moral. A community leader from Dwayyat's village told Israeli Parliament's Internal Affairs Committee that Dwayyat, who acted alone, was mentally impaired. Since Dwayyat is already dead, a demolition would directly impact and punish his family. From ABCNews:
"According to the Holy Bible, you don't take revenge on the sons because of the sins of the fathers," (Israeli news anchor Yaron London) told ABC News. "This is a very ancient and just principle of Judaism and Christians. You just don't do it."
Still, public outrage and concern over this brazen attack in the capital city during peak hours are legitimate. A quarter of a million Palestinians live in East Jerusalem. Already there are calls for an eye for an eye, or, more brutally stated, a bulldozer for a front-end loader. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz last week concluded that razing of the homes of terrorists is legal. But the question citizens of Israel are presently asking: Is it moral?
[image: Tuftsgloballeadership]
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was first published, in 1948, world leaders finally had a concise, functional document with which they could agree on the proper and ethical treatment of our species. It overlooked cultural rituals and beliefs to ensure humane treatment of the populations governed by the United Nations.
It raised awareness about genital mutilation, torture, and slavery around the world, and helped put a stop to many of those practices.
Its writers thought a lot about the "rights" part of the equation, but not so much the "human." After all, isn't that self-explanatory?
Not according to the Spanish government, which has just passed a bill granting apes many of the same rights as human beings. The movement began 15 years ago as a fringe, far-left animal rights initiative, but over the years it gained momentum and supporters, until late June, when what began as a dream became law.
While apes will still be housed in zoos, their treatment and conditions will be improved. It is now illegal to harm or kill an ape unless in self-defense.
This clearly raises more questions than it answers. Why apes and not horses? What about llamas, chickens, and most pointedly (for Spain, anyway), bulls?
When slaves were first granted partial human rights in the US, they were to be considered 3/5 human -- that is, not quite animals, but not really people either. The essential debate was over whether or not Africans possessed a soul, and the same question arises regarding the treatment of animals.
Is this just a case of granting rights to animals that most closely resemble us in DNA and demeanor? We treat cows with greater humanity than we do chickens, or even calves. Is that because by the time a cow is fully grown, it's more "human" than when it's a newborn?
I certainly don't fault Spain for this decision. I just wonder about its implications. We may have come a long way from a racist past, but, to make up a word, aren't we now just being specieist?
[Image Credit: Aaron Logan on Wikimedia Commons]
I took this photo after learning about the plight of truck drivers at the Port of Oakland and the struggle of West Oakland residents, in whose community the Port operates.
Talking to drivers - most of whom are immigrants - I learned that many make a mere $8/hour after costs, have no health insurance, routinely working 12 and 16-hour days away from their families, and are often sick from the diesel fumes of their out-dated trucks which they cannot afford to maintain. Talking to community residents in West Oakland, people cough while telling you about the latest neighbor who has fallen from cancer or how their kids can't play long in the yard before coming in to use a breathing machine because of the air pollution from the trucks driving through their neighborhoods. These residents who live amidst the toxic diesel fumes from port trucks are expected to die 10 years earlier than Oaklanders who live in the hills. Their children have the highest asthma hospitalization rate in the Bay Area. Dirty air is largely to blame for both.
Now truck drivers, residents, labor leaders, and environmental health and justice organizations have united to change the broken truck industry in Oakland and five other ports across the country. Calling for both good jobs and clean air at the Port of Oakland, the coalition's proposal would bring truck drivers into the middle class with good, family-supporting wages while drastically reducing the port's pollution. This would tackle two of the most important issues of our generation: poverty and global warming. I was inspired by this important effort and hoped to capture some of the energy of the movement in this photo. If you're inspired by it too, please visit this website, Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports.
After talking to hundreds of creative professionals about philanthropy and social change, I noticed two recurring themes. One, the majority of them wanted to do good. And two, they didn't want to do it by giving up their weekend to plant trees in the local park. Over a pint of Abita Beer in New Orleans, with a couple of other friends, we brainstormed on how we could combine doing good and having fun at the same time. A couple of beers later, Cause for Drinks was born.
Cause for Drinks is a series of bi-monthly happy hours we've hosted in a dozen cities across the country. It's a pretty simple idea. People in each city gather for happy hour at their local watering hole and $2 from every drink goes to a selected charity. So far, we've connected thousands of individuals and raised over $10,000 for charities like the New Orleans Kid Camera Project and Burma Lawyer's Association.
What started as an idea to connect the social and creative community together has become something much bigger. Throughout the process, we noticed that raising awareness about non-profit organizations wasn't enough for the creative community. They wanted to do more. They want to do something. Anything to make a difference. At our past events, we've had people submit ideas, volunteer their services, and of course, drink for a cause. While our mission is still to get the world full on good, we've tweaked it to always inspire action. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you say, but what you do!
The next Cause for Drinks will be held on Wednesday, July 16th in 7 major cities across the country, click here for more details.
When I lived in Chicago, in 2003, a man was walking down the street and accidentally shoulder-bumped another man going the opposite direction. The second man promptly turned around, pulled out a gun, and shot the first man in the head, killing him instantly.
Keep that in mind as you read the following...
Immediately following the Supreme Court's decision to allow handguns last month, the National Rifle Association responded by swiftly suing five US cities that have handgun bans of any kind (including partial bans, such as San Francisco's on guns in public housing).
Chicago and three of its suburbs have also fallen under the NRA's attack, resulting in the suburbs repealing their bans. Granted, Evanston, Morton Grove, and Oak Park may not be the roughest parts of the city, but they aren't without risk of gun violence, with gang activity prominent in Chicagoland overall.
This clip sums up Chicago's position quite well:
As the United Nations Security Council prepares today to vote on renewing the mandate for peacekeeping troops in Darfur, the Save Darfur Coalition issued a report titled "Grounded: the International Community's Betrayal of UNAMID." According to the United Nations over 300,000 Darfurians have died and more than 2.2 million have been displaced since February 2003. Thomas Withington, an aviation expert who wrote the report and is acutely aware of the advantage of helicopters judiciously employed in the theatre to stave off genocide, came to the conclusion:
"-- Of the 18 transport helicopters required by the force, not a single one has yet been offered; this compares to an estimated 350 such helicopters in use in Iraq.
"-- The report identifies more than 20 countries with surplus aircraft that could be made available for the mission.
"-- The six countries best placed to provide transport helicopters, Italy, Ukraine, India, Spain, Romania and the Czech Republic, between them have an estimated 71 helicopters available, four times the requirement.
"-- NATO member states alone could jointly provide 104 such helicopters, almost six times the requirement."
In other Darfur-related news China slammed a censure resolution by a bipartisan group of members of Congress for Beijing's human rights record. The full report on helicopters and Darfur can be downloaded here.
[Image:BBC]
In many ways the ugly trend of Balkanization that so polarized the 90s is, while still strong, facing now the idealistic post-tribal politics of Senator Barack Obama. And while, yes, people are still strongly influenced in their vote by the black magnetism of their tribal affiliation, Senator Obama's sunny campaign appeal has throughout favored idealism over the politics of blood identity.
What role, though, did tribe play in the Democratic party primary? The Washington Post did an interesting story about racial incidents that occurred on the campaign trail (that were, we cannot fail to note, deliberately downplayed by the Obama campaign). And it was the nearly overwhelming African-American vote - polarized, to be sure, by Bill Clinton's questionable post-South Carolina remarks -- that buoyed Obama throughout the rest of the primaries, negating the questions of "Is-he-black-enough?" Senator Hillary Clinton, who ran an incredible race, pivoted towards the white working-class vote, her last hope -- with nearly victorious results -- after the African-American vote was all but lost to the Clinton campaign as a result of those off-the-cuff remarks by her husband. In courting those white working class voters, race became a factor. Finally, let's not forget the Jeremiah Wright jeremiad, which so cacophonously clashed with Obama's campaign of idealism that it forced the Senator to break his relative silence on the subject and deliver his Philadelphia speech on race. Clearly we are not at a post-tribal American moment yet in America.
Still, that sea of 200,000 colorful and hopeful faces in Berlin gives one pause. Josef Joffe, the skeptical editor of Germany's Die Zeit told Brian Lehrer on WNYC this morning that if Senator Obama were running for Chancellor of Germany, or Prime Minister of Britain, he would win resoundingly. The world has come a long way when a "skinny but tough" man from Illinois, born in Kansas, educated in Hawaii and at Harvard - how American is that? -- could draw such crowds in "Old Europe." As Martin Luther King said in that eternally American I Have A Dream Speech, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." If that's not an appeal to post-tribalism - Obama-esque idealism -- then I don't know what is.
[image: LATimes]
Recently, AWEARNESS and The New Yorker magazine partnered to host a humorous discussion about political satire titled, "Politickled."
Part 1: Andy's Introduction
The panel featured: Scott Dikkers, founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Onion; David Rees, author of the hit Rolling Stone comic strip Get Your War On; and Robert Lanham, author of The Hipster Handbook.
This unruly panel of seething wit was moderated by the lingual gymnast, Andy Borowitz, founder of The Borowitz Report.
These four satirical brains were way too big to be confined to a small theater so we filmed the whole event for you to watch right here.
Part 2: How did you get into political satire?
There are ten episodes in total and we'll be showing two per week for the next five weeks.
The first two are "Andy's Intro" and "How Did You Get Into Political Satire"?
So sit back, relax and let the sarcastic battle of bitterness begin (all in the name of fun, of course.)
Continue reading POLITICKLED? YES WE WERE..
At this year's annual NAACP conference in Cincinnati, New York governor David Paterson appealed to Obama supporters to not celebrate the presumptive nominee's achievement so much to let it blind them to the existing problems and prejudice that still plague black Americans.
Case in point: the New Yorker's magazine cover featuring Barack and Michelle Obama, dressed as a Muslim terrorist and Black Panther, respectively, with a framed portrait of Osama Bin Laden on the wall and a blazing American flag in the fireplace.
Paterson told the NAACP he found the cover "tasteless, Islamaphobic, mean-spirited, and racially offensive."
Presumably, a liberal pub like the New Yorker isn't trying to be racially offensive, let alone anything else we're more likely to associate with the right wing. But I take Paterson's point to be that such cases of racism pose an even greater threat than if they weren't "satirical" -- i.e., if they came from people we expect to be racist, or at least anti-Democrat.
If we pass something like the New Yorker cover off as social satire, how will we make any progress towards a "post-racial" world? Satire or no, commentary like the cartoon in question brings race to the fore, and raises a lot of ire. And once that happens, minds -- both Democrat and Republican, black and white, rich and poor -- tend to close.
[Image Credit: Al Behrman for AP]
All Americans are concerned, most are asking, and the two candidates are debating whether it's possible to turn our economy around, and, if so, how? Last week's stock market slide has only intensified that concern.
We're in a classic catch 22, not unique in our history. The dilemma is that until we believe the economy has already gotten better, it can't get better.
Until enough of people are comfortable that all is stable and the worst is behind us, they won't feel comfortable relinquishing (spending or investing) their precious remaining dollars. However, until they do, the economy can't get better.
The inverse of this is also true. The economy will continue to get worse if people simply believe it isn't getting better.
There is only one other circumstance I can think of where perception similarly must precede reality, and while it potentially trivializes this message, it's fashion. Unless people who are cool decide to wear something they believe is cool, is it?
In regard to the realities of America's Great Depression (which was about the state of our economy, not our wardrobes) President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the perception issue when he said that "the only we have to fear is fear itself."
So, ironically, in looking to choose our new leaders, it does matter, because he who can most likely inspire us best to feel best about our realities (real realities or perceived ones) as well as about our potential, is the one who can most likely get the economy onto its feet.
We need to remember that the stakes are high, and that it's important to be conscious of for what we stand, as well as in what we stand.
[Image Credit: USA-satellite.jpg by U.S. Government from Wikipedia]
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it (for now).
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- Welcome to the AWEARNESS Blog.
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- Photo Finish: Aaron Spicer (44)
- Big Oil's Bet Against Oil (26)
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