Top Articles on AWEARNESS Blog for March 2010

A few months ago I was invited to tour the Stuph Clothing office in Orlando, FL. After being in the building for only a few moments, I felt completely drawn in by the heart of the company. It was then that I learned of their nonprofit organization appropriately named "Change This World" and their efforts to see children across the world fed, clothed, and given clean water.

Within hours of the recent earthquake in Haiti, the entire Stuph Clothing/CTW team, along with an ever-growing staff of volunteers, began assembling meal packaging events all across Florida. The image below is one of the very first events that we hosted at the Stuph Clothing office. Since then we have done many other packaging events, which are now reaching well beyond the Florida state line. We are continuing to grow in our mission as more and more people learn of our cause and choose to selflessly become a part of it by giving of their time, finances, and devotion.

Since I've had the honor of joining this amazing team, I have also had the incredible opportunity to utilize my personal passion - photography - to communicate the immense need for an awareness of what is really going on beyond the security and comfort in which we live here every day. There is a hurting world beyond ours. But together, we truly can Change This World.

At least that's what Quansa Thompson is trying to claim. She's a smart cookie exotic dancer from Washington, DC who is suing her former "employer" for not paying her and her fellow dancers a wage. I put employer in quotes in this context because the owner of the club claims that "he treats dancers as if they were patrons, charging them $20 admission, then letting them keep whatever they earn without any additional fees."

No matter what your stance is on strippers or exotic dancers, I hope that you agree that they are working. They are providing entertainment that draws people in to pay real money to enter an establishment and buy food and drinks. Sure they get paid a lot (at least the ones in the WaPo article do) to entertain, but that doesn't mean that employers should get off the hook. Thompson says that she might start a magazine; I think she should enroll in law school. There are a lot of other women out there who need a gutsy woman like her, who is willing to speak out for her rights as an employee, to stand by them!

And thanks WaPo for an educational and entertaining article. I can't figure out if my favorite line was about Warren Buffet or the safety net.

[Image: Washington Post]

A small boy was caught on tape controlling air traffic at JFK International Airport in New York two weeks ago. You can easily tell that the boy was being coached by his father and others in the air traffic control room, and it's clear that the pilots themselves were more amused than concerned. But the FAA isn't laughing.

There was no harm done, of course -- we are, after all, learning about this because of the that recording and not a terrible, multi-plane accident that left hundreds dead or injured. And the boy spoke only with pilots while they were still on the ground. Even so, the stunt compromised the solemn responsibility of controlling air traffic, the FAA says, even if no one was ever in real danger from having a small boy giving them their final instructions.

President Obama had a special meeting with John Walsh, host of America's Most Wanted, this weekend to recognize the "more than 1,000 lives" that have been positively affected by that show since its premier in 1988. Commemorating 1,000 episodes in the past 20 years, Mr. Obama praised Walsh for the tireless work he has done to help the victims of abduction -- not just the abducted, but their families -- and to promise funds for the "Adam Walsh Act," a law passed in 2006 that mandates stricter lifetime tracking of convicted sex offenders.

Invoking his own daughters to express his concern in child safety in the United States, the president appealed to Mr. Walsh as both a fellow dad and a politician with enormous influence. John Walsh's son, Adam, was abducted at a Florida mall in 1981.

Child abduction and sex crimes against minors are horrific offenses, no doubt about it. And while I agree with Obama that America's Most Wanted has done society an invaluable service, I have to wonder if the show has also helped increase hysteria and a kind of witch-hunting mentality. Mark Bowden wrote a fascinating piece for Vanity Fair last year recounting the case of a sting operation on an alleged online child predator who was, by some accounts, entrapped by the undercover detective who set the bait that led to his arrest. "A Crime of Shadows" does an outstanding job of revealing how our desire to avenge the helpless victims of child predation can cloud our thinking about who, in fact, poses an actual threat. The subjects of his study turn the tables on who committed the greater sin: the detective becomes the wrongdoer, and the convict becomes an innocent, if troubled, man who merely fell into a trap.

Unfortunately, decent embeddable footage of the interview is hard to find. The below video of the interview filmed directly off of someone's television has OK quality, but for a clear and concise clip visit this site.

While at the gym yesterday, I noticed a news headline on one of the televisions exclaim that women who drink alcohol gain less weight than those of us who don't. Say what? I practically fell off the treadmill (a machine I was on in part to burn calories from drinking alcohol over the weekend) in surprise. As a woman, this goes against just about everything I've ever been told about drinking, that I should watch my alcohol intake unless I want to put on pounds (something men are rarely told, but that's for a different blog post). Could it be true?

A new study from Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital tells us that yes, it could be. The results (gathered over 13 years from a sample of nearly 20,000 women) show that the risk of becoming overweight or obese decreases as alcohol consumption increases, even when factors such as smoking, fruit and vegetable consumption, and physical activity are taken into account. The full results of the study can be found in the latest Archives of Internal Medicine.

Now this may be good news for those of us who like to drink on occasion, but there's no reason to go hitting the bottle just yet. "It won't change recommendations for my patients, I can say that for certain," Scott Kahan, M.D., the co-director of the George Washington University Weight Management Program, in Washington, D.C. told CNN. "If you don't drink, there's no reason to start."

But, he adds, "I think [the study] suggests that there's no need to quit or avoid alcohol if it's something you enjoy."

CBS News had a similar message for their Early Show viewers yesterday:

OK, so I won't be investing in a new wine cellar anytime soon, and I probably shouldn't cancel that gym membership. Still, in an era where we're told more often than not that the foods and drinks we enjoy are slowly killing us, it's nice to get some good news. Now, pass the wine please.

If you saw The Cove, which won this year's Academy Award for best documentary, you're probably glad you're not at student at a Japanese grammar school. In certain parts of that country, dolphin meat is served to children, falsely identified as whale meat. Adults, too, are often served dolphin when they order whale, a staple especially in fishing communities in Coastal Japan.

Now, the filmmakers have set their sights on sushi restaurants in the U.S., namely one in California that was rumored to be serving whale meat, which is illegal here. With stiff fines up to $20,000 and as much as one year in prison, most Japanese restaurants stick with the standards: California rolls, spicy tuna, eel, etc.

But at The Hump in Los Angeles, patrons who ordered "omakase" -- or "chef's choice" -- were being served a helping of whale along with their sashimi, edamame, and fish roe.

The sting operation actually began last October, but took time to execute. The State of California has promised swift action, but has not disclosed exactly what the punishment will be. "This isn't just about saving the whales," says the film's director, Louie Psihoyos. "It's about saving the planet."

[Image: NYTimes.com]

Is Ushahidi the new paradigm in humanitarian work? The small Kenyan-born organization is, in the words of The New York Times, "Africa's Gift to Silicon Valley." Ushahidi, which means testimony in Swahili, started in the wake of Kenya's disputed election in 2007. It uses common mapping software usually used for social purposes for targeted humanitarian work. From The Times:

A prominent Kenyan lawyer and blogger, Ory Okolloh, who was based in South Africa but had gone back to Kenya to vote and observe the election, received threats about her work and returned to South Africa. She posted online the idea of an Internet mapping tool to allow people anonymously to report violence and other misdeeds. Technology whizzes saw her post and built the Ushahidi Web platform over a long weekend.

The site collected user-generated cellphone reports of riots, stranded refugees, rapes and deaths and plotted them on a map, using the locations given by informants. It collected more testimony -- which is what Ushahidi means in Swahili -- with greater rapidity than any reporter or election monitor.

Since then, Ushahidi's mandate has expanded dramatically. What started as a wiki tool allowing people to anonymously report election irregularities is now used as a crisis map in natural disasters, track votes in the Indian elections, and following medicine shortages. Because cellphone penetration is heavy even in the third world, the rapidly evolving Ushahidi's dev community has developed a mobile strategy. Ushahidi has become a humanitarian force -- albeit digitally -- in both the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes, where victims text messages to better organize relief. In the new paradigm, according to the Times, "victims supply on-the-ground data; a self-organizing mob of global volunteers translates text messages and helps to orchestrate relief; journalists and aid workers use the data to target the response."

Ushahidi, which had no venture-capital backing and uses open-source software, is tailor-made for re-engineering to each particular crisis in the developing world. The question that inevitably arises is: How many more *Ushahidi's* are possible should young people in the developing world received a better tech education? Can technology -- and, more important, a technology education -- lessen the gap between the Haves in the West and Asia and the Have Nots in the developing world? What do you think?

I'll admit that I was delighted to wake up Friday morning to several inches of pristine, untouched white powder outside my front door. After I forced open the gate leading to my three-flat home in Park Slope, I enjoyed an utterly silent walk through the pre-dawn light. It was one of those mornings that makes you feel like a kid again, full of wonder and content to trudge along with great effort through mounds upon mounds of freshly fallen snow.

But snowfalls like we received in New York City Friday morning can wreak havoc on our local economy, and prevent thousands of people from getting to work or even keeping their jobs. According to this report from CBS News, New York City has already spent the $41 million it had reserved for winter cleanup efforts, and it's not alone. Pennsylvania and Virginia are either near or over their annual budgets in snow removal.

Add to this the number of people who've been laid off because they couldn't make the commute to work, and as a result have had to apply for unemployment, and it becomes clear that one person's winter wonderland is another's winter hell.

As the U.S. Postal Service struggles to justify itself in the age of electronic communication, those of us who actually look forward to our daily mail delivery are about to be denied that pleasure one more day every week.

The USPS announced this week that it will most likely cancel Saturday delivery, putting the daily mail on what I like to call a corporate schedule: Monday through Friday.

It's not that big a deal to not get mail on Saturdays, but the reason for the cancellation is. The USPS has been hit by the recession just as hard as everyone else, and with the number of parcels it handles each year in rapid decline, the Pony Express might just make a comeback in the 2010s. Just four years ago, 213 billion letters and packages were sent via the post; last year, that number had dropped to 177 billion.

Experts are predicting that by 2020, only 150 parcels will be sent each year, but even that seems like a high number considering the diminishing numbers between 2006 and 2009.

Meanwhile, the number of delivery points is growing each year. Today, there are 150 million places in the country that receive mail, up from 135 million in 2000. What gives?

Presumably, we've become at once more demanding and more high-tech. We seem to want it all, and if our services don't meet our needs, we get testy. So will there be a revolt over the loss of Saturday mail? I doubt it. As Americans, we're pretty complacent, too. As long as we have high-speed Internet, I trust the sun will continue to rise each morning. Just make sure you get your Netflix queue updated in time for the weekend.

[Image: Pony Express rider from Wikpedia]

The CARDIA study released on Monday suggests that "policies aimed at altering the price of soda or away-from-home pizza may be effective mechanisms to steer US adults toward a more healthful diet and help reduce long-term weight gain or insulin levels over time." And in this moment of exigency where state budgets are billions of dollars in shortfall, why not consider taxing soda to promote wellness?

The advocacy of former President Bill Clinton -- who has wrestled with his relationship with food all his life -- and a growing movement to tax sugary drinks is resulting in ground gained in the battle to reduce childhood obesity. "I have to admit I'm stunned by the results," Bill Clinton said. "There has been an 88 percent reduction in the total beveraged calories shipped to schools." This, after the Clinton Initiative is half way into its ten-year plan to get beverage companies to reduce the sugar in the drinks they serve in school cafeterias.

Sugary drink taxes are probably now an idea whose time has come. Colorado and Illinois are already taxing the drinks. My colleague David Alm recently wrote about Governor David Patterson's attempt to impose a penny per ounce tax on sweetened beverages passed through the New York state legislature. Three quarters of New Yorkers recently polled are for such a tax. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been at the forefront of such a plan, has estimated that such a tax could potentially raise a billion dollars.

The First Lady has also gotten in on the action. Aside from her important work with military families, Michelle Obama -- she of the White House victory garden and the magnificently toned arms -- recently took to the Huckabee Show on Fox to speak on the prevention of childhood obesity. Former Governor Huckabee, though on the other side of the political spectrum from the Obamas, suffers from type-II diabetes and, like fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton, has wrestled with his weight all his life. Promoting healthy habits for our kids (and ourselves) is an issue we can all agree upon, even in these hyper-partisan times.

Imagine that you are a New York City resident and the victim of theft. You ask the police for help, but because the thief who stole from you returned your property, they say their hands are tied. You press charges, but the judge tells you the same thing.

Sounds far fetched, doesn't it? Think again. This exact scenario is being played out right now in NYC Housing Court. The role of the Thief is being played by a landlord, Laurence Gluck of Stellar Management, and the role of You is being played by, well, YOU. Your understudies are the tenants of Independence Plaza North, who have been fighting for what's right for years now. They have been fighting, the way the tenants of Stuyvesant Town fought. The way those at Starrett City fought. And Co-op City, too. They fight for themselves and for their stolen stabilized rents. But they fight for you too. And for a city that may become unrecognizable in a decade or less if someone doesn't speak out.

The long story short is that Gluck took J-51 tax abatement money from the government and then went ahead and destabilized the rents at Independence Plaza North. This is illegal. Once caught, he tried to give the money back. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development apparently helped him do just that. They went in and retroactively changed the paperwork to make it look as if the landlord gave the taxpayer money - your money, OUR money - back at an earlier date. Something that might be called aiding and abetting.

But for Laurence Gluck, a landlord hell-bent on getting the poor and middle class out of his buildings, HPD bent over backwards to change the paperwork. And change it they did, there's no question. If not for a group of intrepid IPN tenants who smelled a rat, Stellar and HPD might have gotten away with it too. But not so fast. These tenants, many of them paying fair market rent, brought a lawsuit against Gluck. They knew that he wasn't allowed to take tax abatement money AND destabilize rents at IPN. And so the battle was joined. The sides were clear: Tenant vs. Landlord. But who would these housing agencies, the ones that are supposed to PRESERVE and DEVELOP housing units in our city, support in this fight? The man who stole from them or the people he stole from?

Former HPD Commissioner and YOUR Housing Secretary under Barack Obama, Shaun Donovan, looked at the same evidence I just outlined for you and wrote that it would be a "disaster" for landlord/tenant negotiations going forward if the rents at IPN were to be stabilized because of Stellar's illegal actions. What?! The only disaster is that Donovan's pro-landlord-at-all-costs stance cost many good, hard-working people their homes. Donovan's HPD is the actual agency that GAVE Gluck the money - YOUR money, OUR money - they drove the getaway car - and then he turns around and says, Well, it's OK. Is it OK with YOU?

And what did The Division of Housing and Community Renewal determine? They determined that they have no say in this and passed the buck, but not before saying that Stellar didn't steal the money, in their estimation, because when he was frisked he no longer had it on him. What?! These determinations defy all law and all logic. Ya know, if we didn't know better, we might draw the conclusion that these Government Agencies defend Stellar's stealing ways because in the end, they don't want affordable housing in NYC. Hmm...

So back to Court it goes. Now for a trial. A final battle in this long war. Meanwhile, the casualties pile up: those evicted because they couldn't pay the illegal rent increase imposed by Stellar (which was allowed by HPD and DHCR), those who moved out after their rents were raised, and those who died, seeing their apartments go back to the landlord and to illegal fair market rates.

There is a new development in all this, beyond the tenant's battle. It seems that the Feds are now involved. Apparently, some of that HPD money Stellar stole belonged to them. The Feds don't like to be stolen from and they are now investigating the landlord. You can steal from citizens. You can steal from ineffectual city agencies. But don't steal from Uncle Sam. Maybe that's the lesson of this tale.

Hopefully when the final word in this case is written and the courts do their job, there will be one more lesson: That stealing is stealing, no matter how many bureaucrats look the other way and say it isn't. Maybe then and only then will tenants who've committed no crime be given the justice they deserve. Maybe then will a small part of our city be ours again. Maybe.

Being a gay teenager isn't easy. And when a gay teenager is told by adults who are in positions of authority that being gay is wrong, the seeds can be planted for a lifetime of self-hatred and hurt. We're hoping that isn't the case for Constance McMillen.

McMillen is an 18-year-old high school senior in northern Mississippi who wanted to attend her school's prom on April 2 with her girlfriend, dressed in a tuxedo, after the school released a memo saying that no same-sex couples were allowed to attend the prom together. When the American Civil Liberties Union got involved on McMillen's behalf, the school district announced on Wednesday that the prom, which was to be held at Itawamba County Agricultural High School, would be canceled.

"A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it's really retaliation," McMillen told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss.

In a statement, the Itawamba County school district said they hope someone will organize a private event for the students, but could not hold the official prom "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events." Officials did not specifically cite McMillen as the cause for the event's cancellation.

The ACLU, however, says that the school district is just trying to wash its hands of the situation, rather than treat McMillen as an equal student.

"But that doesn't take away their legal obligations to treat all the students fairly," Kristy Bennett, legal director for the ACLU of Mississippi, told The Associated Press. "On Constance's behalf, this is unfair to her. All she's trying to do is assert her rights."

The ACLU filed a suit Thursday against the school district in federal court, demanded that the prom be re-instated and McMillen be able to attend with her girlfriend.

A rural area near the Alabama state line, Itawamba County boasts a population of 23,000.

We're hoping that McMillen will not be seen as the villain to her fellow students, and that this will be a lesson to them about the harm that fear and ignorance can bring. We're proud of you, Constance, for fighting for what you believe in.

[Image: Matthew Sharpe/Special to The Clarion-Ledger]

Happy International Women's Day!

Over the past 18 months I've written for AWEARNESS, I've written a lot about women's rights. For International Women's Day Gender Across Borders wants to know what "equal rights for all" means to me.

Equal rights for me means just that, equal rights. As a human being with two X chromosomes I should have the same access to education, jobs and safety as humans with only one X chromosome. That access goes far beyond any city, state or national border too.

My activism is rooted in my early education of human rights though working with Amnesty International. The U.S. Congress could pass every law feminists could think of, every judge could believe women when they ask for protection against violence and the police would enforce everything and I still wouldn't be satisfied.

I would relish that our job was done here in the U.S.A. and it left me with more time to fight for the education of my sisters abroad, for them to be free of forced marriage, for them to be healed from fistula and for their work to be honored around the world.

As long as there is a young girl trafficked, denied her education and forced to bear a child at way too young of an age, I will be there to fight for her. It's not enough for women in one country to enjoy freedom.

If you want to work on international women's issues, any one of these organizations would be happy to have your support:

• CARE

• Fistula Foundation

• Half the Sky Movement

• Heifer International

• MADRE

Have your own favorite? Please share it here!

[Image: Gender Across Borders]

Washington D.C. on Wednesday became the sixth area of the country to legally marry same-sex couples, with the D.C. Superior Court beginning to accept marriage license applications from gay couples. Processing of the applications takes three days (the same as with all marriage licenses) so same-sex couples can begin officially tying the knot on Tuesday.

Wednesday morning, more than 50 couples were lined up to apply for licenses. Second in line were Rocky Galloway and Reggie Stanley, who have been together for six years.
"I didn't want to get married anywhere else," Galloway told The Washington Post. "This is my city standing up for marriage equality."

The court was opened at 7 a.m., and officials handed out numbered tickets to the couples who were waiting. By 9 a.m., about 60 couples were in line, the Washington Post reported. Ten couples were allowed to enter at a time.

All couples need to do is fill out an application, pay a $35 application fee and $10 for the license. Couples who are already registered in the District as domestic partners only need to pay the $10 license fee.

The D.C. council approved the bill legalizing same-sex marriage in December, and Mayor Adrian Fenty quickly signed it. It then had to go through a 30-day waiting period during which Congress had the right to intervene. The 30-day period was extended due to record snowfall in the D.C. area over the past month that shut down the city for days. Congress, though, chose not to step in.

The fight for marriage equality in D.C. began last May, when the Council voted to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. The Council first approved the bill to legalize same-sex marriage on Dec. 1. A second vote on Dec. 16 was needed in order to send it to the mayor for approval.

Opponents of marriage equality made a last ditch effort on Tuesday to get the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, but the court refused.

D.C. joins Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Iowa in allowing same-sex couples to marry.

We're proud of D.C. lawmakers today and congratulate all those who fought so hard to make marriage equality a reality in our nation's capital.

Video: courtesy of The Washington Post

Rose Nylund rocks. Actress Betty White is a white hot property right about now, a genuine A-Lister. And it only took the Beverly Hills High Class of '38 graduate half a century, give or take a little, to reach this stage. The rise of Ms. White is an interesting pop-cultural phenomenon considering that actresses Betty White's age are routinely ignored by the shallow Hollywood suits.

The pendulum swings. Tens of thousands of fans have been pushing for the 88-years young star of "The Golden Girls" to host the hip, comparatively upstart Saturday Night Live. The fans have spoken -- on Facebook -- and NBC is, ultimately, listening. On May 8, the former Mary Tyler Moore regular will host a pre-Mother's Day SNL episode also featuring appearances from six not-yet-ready-for-prime-time alumnae comediennes. "I don't know where that came from," Betty White told the Los Angeles Times, sounding remeniscent of Rose Nylund. "That came out of left field. I understand they've had all of these hits."

"The depth of feeling for her at the show and particularly among the women who are coming back was very deep," SNL's Executive Producer Lorne Michaels said in a telephone interview on Thursday with The New York Times. The buzz has been building for some time. Over the summer she played beer pong with Jimmy Fallon. This past January, Betty White won a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. A month after that she appeared in a Superbowl ad for Snickers that scored the highest with USA TODAY's Ad Meter focus groups. By March TV Land had greenlit the series Hot In Cleveland, in which she appears in the pilot. Let's face it: It's Betty White's world -- we just live in it.

"In 1836 "Free Frank" McWorter purchased his freedom from a Kentucky plantation owner and headed North. When he reached Illinois, he planted roots, started a town, and sold enough property to purchase the rest of his family out of slavery. Now farmers' fields cover this dramatic testament to victory over enslavement. The local landowners, descendants of the town's residents, and the McWorter family want to uncover what remains of New Philadelphia to commemorate its place in history. Time Team America joins in the search for the pre-Civil War schoolhouse where New Philadelphia's African American children learned to read and write in freedom."

Watch this episode of Time Team America tonight, Monday, March 15 at 9:00pm EST.

[image: PBS Pressroom: Time Team America]

In New York last week General Petraeus and his wife Holly were honored for their work with homeless veterans by HELP USA (my employer):

He delivered a sensitive and yet powerful message about the intolerable number of veterans who are homeless. It was appropriate.

Veterans constitute one third of the nation's homeless population according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA estimates that on any given night, 300,000 homeless vets are on the streets and in shelters. The VA acknowledges that many more veterans are dangerously close to becoming homeless or are living in poor conditions. That's 10 times the amount of service men and women that we just approved to send to Afghanistan over the next year.

Without even mentioning the expected surge in numbers related to PTSD in the aftermath of middle east combat, these numbers raise serious questions about how we are managing the homeland we are so fiercely protecting abroad.

If we agree that this scenario is disgraceful, what needs to be done to remedy it? How high a priority should Homeless Veterans be on the national agenda? Should homeless veterans be a higher priority than other people who are homeless?

If you're reading this, you're online. Whether you're using a desktop, laptop, iPhone, or some other gizmo I've yet to hear about -- there are many -- you are fulfilling the daily prophesy of those who deem the Internet one of the most valuable tools of all time.

But is it a tool for peace? Yes, say some of the men and women who have the privilege of making nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize each year. The scientists, academics, former winners, and other select members of the intelligentsia had been fielding requests from groups lobbying for the Internet's nomination for months, but only last Tuesday did the committee officially do so.

Nearly 50 years ago, Marshall McCluhan described technology and the "mass media" -- a term he coined -- as "extensions of man," which enable our whims and ambitions. He could never have imagined the Internet of today, making his prescience all the more uncanny. The Internet is doubtless the most far-reaching, powerful "extension of man" created to date.

This isn't to say the Internet will win the peace prize -- there were a record 237 nominations this year -- but its nomination says a lot. While the Internet has facilitated innumerable good things, and indeed it has been used as a tool for peace, hasn't it also been used for the opposite? Each time a hate crime is committed, authorities mine the hard drives and online activities of the crime's perpetrator. For every positive the Internet facilitates, it seems to facilitate a negative.

Just this week, I logged on to Facebook to see that an old classmate from graduate school had posted a link to an article about a right-wing e-zine he just launched, Alternative Right. The article, titled "The 'New' Racist Right," posted on FrumForum.com, made a strong argument against Alternative Right for being a racist rant against anything that isn't lily white with a pronounced set of XY chromosomes.

From the comments posted, it was clear that AltRight has a number of passionate devotees. And of course, they use the Internet to rant against immigration, multiculturalism, feminism, interracial relationships, and pretty much everything else they view as a threat to their ethos of "radical traditionalism."

And that's pretty small fry, compared with other hate groups that rely on the Internet for their communication and recruitment efforts.

Yes, the Internet has done wonders for societies worldwide, improved people's lives, and been generally used in the name of progress. But isn't it also merely a tool for the wills of those who use it? A building can be used to shelter the homeless, or to build bombs. Likewise, the Internet is neither good nor evil -- it is merely an extension of mankind.

[Image: IICD from Wikimedia Commons]

In the spring issue of Bitch magazine on page 11 is an interview I did of Rana Husseini, a Jordanian journalist. I'm not pointing it out to AWEARNESS readers because I wrote it, rather it's because you should know about Rana and her courage to raise awareness of so-called honor killings.

The main focus of the interview how "Western" feminists can work on cases of honor killings in Western countries without coming off as arrogant and offensive. In Husseini's book, Murder in the Name of Honor, she talks a lot about how Jordanians accused her of being a puppet of Westerners when she advocated for stiffer penalties for men who kill their female relatives "in the name of honor." The question of how far should Western feminists go was raised soon after First Lady Laura Bush's radio address about Afghani women and when former President Bush invoked "rape rooms" as part of his justification for invading Iraq.

As the United States and other countries continue to insert themselves in the matters of other countries, especially those in the Middle East, I think it's imperative that we listen to the voices of those, like Husseini, who also want to see change, but know the terrain better than us.

[Image: Bitch Media]

As a runner, I'm surprised (and somewhat embarrassed) that for the past two and a half years I've managed to miss the news about Jenny Crain, a once-competitive runner and Olympic hopeful who was struck by a car in August of 2007, ending her running career but not her life -- barely.

This weekend, I stumbled across an article about Crain in last November's Runner's World , and I was riveted by her tale of loss, perseverance, and survival. At 39, Crain had the kind of running résumé that most runners can only dream of. But on a routine training run in downtown Milwaukee, where she lived, she got hit by the side of a car moving 30mph, sending Crain flying and fracturing her vertebrae, crushing part of her skull, and causing severe brain damage.

Now, Crain lives in a wheelchair and is under constant care. Ironically, her story is the sort that made me become a runner in the first place: to do what so many people wish they could do but can't, either because of physical defects, disease, or debilitating injury.

But I always pictured those who could never run as my inspiration, not a world-class athlete and four-time Olympic Trials qualifier. Just now returning to my sport of choice after a two-month hiatus due to injury myself, I was already grateful to just be able to logging miles again. After learning about Crain, I am both humbled and inspired to make 2010 my best year yet.

[Image: RunnersCookBook.com]

There have been whispers among the chattering classes that President Barack Obama is not a fan of Gordon Brown -- or Britain for that matter -- because of their colonialist history with his ancestral home, Kenya. Much ado was made of the President's gift of an iPod to the Queen. And in Dreams of My Father, the future President famously expressed open disdain for British imperialism. Obama certainly has treated Brown somewhat roughly, considering America's "special relationship" with Britannia. Sarkozy and France appear to have replaced Britain as America's "special friend" on the Continent. And pundits on both sides of the Atlantic have read -- maybe too much -- into the fact that President Obama removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office (Maybe it was just a symbolic act, removing something beloved to Dubya).

Does the President have lingering resentments over British imperialism?

It is probably all just rumors and here say, this idea that the President has lingering resentment over British colonialism and his family's past on his father's side. A President -- particularly of Obama's character -- is beyond such petty things. Still, it is too sexy and tantalizing a story to be ignored, whether factual or not, in this digital age in search of eyeballs. As a Ugandan-born person, though, I will say that British imperialism has had a lingering effect on the older generations, but to the younger generation -- and I put Obama in this category -- it is an increasingly distant factor in daily life.

[Image: Wikimedia Commons]

Has NATO outlived its usefulness? Does NATO have a future? Fareed Zakaria's GPS -- hands down the smartest hour on television -- tackled the problems facing the embattled North Atlantic Treaty Organization. After the Cold War, NATO, the most successful collective security agreement in the history of the West, appears almost entirely rudderless. The "War on Terror" is viewed as more of an American problem than one facing Western Europe. After 50 years it is entirely possible that the marriage has fizzled. European countries' participation in NATO is not what President Obama or Secretary Gates would like. The Defense Secretary ruffled feathers on the other side of the Atlantic on Europe's role in NATO, saying, "The demilitarization of Europe -- where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it -- has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st century."

Zakaria says, among other things, that America spends roughly twice as much of a percentage of GDP as Europe does on NATO. Further, he compares European involvement in NATO to "welfare state jobs," and not deployable land forces. Increasingly, arguments about ending NATO are rising to the surface. What do you think? Is NATO outdated? Is the very existence of NATO an impediment to a more peaceful world?

It probably goes without saying that I've never taken birth control pills. But I've dated women who have, and they often talked about their potential side effects and the dangers of staying on them for too long. Their OB/GYNs recommended that they take periodic breaks from the pill to avoid causing irreparable damage to their reproductive systems, and to allow their bodies to regain some natural balance.

But is that wisdom outdated? Some sources suggest that breaks from birth control pills are unnecessary, and according to a 40-year-long study in England, women who take the pill are less likely to die from any cause, including heart disease and cancer.

The study began in 1968, when the pills being prescribed to subjects were different than those used today, giving the results a margin of error worth noting. The scientists behind the study say that older women who took the pill during the 70s and 80s can take comfort in the findings, while the effects of newer forms are difficult to gauge.

This may also be one of those misleading studies that fails to acknowledge that women who take the pill may, on average, be more health conscious in general, and therefore more likely to take care of themselves overall, reducing their chances of developing illness.

As with most medical studies, this one is bound to be challenged by other doctors and some women who take the pill. And regardless of whether they take the pill or not, women should educate themselves about their reproductive cycles. But it does give us something to think about.

[Image: Ceridwen from Wikimedia Commons]