Monday, April 13, 2009

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Omid Memarian: Roxana Saberi and The Iranian Fast Spy-Making Machine! Top
The Iranian intelligence services are constantly announcing the capture and arrest of spies that gather classified information for the Western countries. Roxana Saberi, an American-Iranian journalist is the latest person to be facing such a charge. Most people who have been accused of spying are detained without access to a lawyer or any other fair and free judicial process including a just trial. Usually they are released from prison after a few months. Surprisingly, most of these people then leave Iran within a few more months. This has made the government in Tehran the only government on the earth that catches and releases its spies. The authorities have announced that Roxana has accepted all of the charges. No surprise! Many prisoners do accept all the charges after spending a few months in solitary confinement under huge psychological and physical pressure. To understand why, here is a joke that masterfully tells the story of how Iran's intelligence service operates: Once there was a competition between Iran, the U.S. and Russia's intelligence services. The challenge was; who could find a rabbit in the Amazon in the shortest amount of time. The Russians do their very best and they bring the rabbit back in three days. The Americans use their entire cutting edge satellite technology and they find the rabbit in 2 days. The Iranians come back after 24 hours with a bear. The Americans and the Russians say the Iranians "that's not the rabbit! Where is the rabbit?" And the Iranians say, "ask the bear." And the bear says, "I am the rabbit. Believe me, I'm the rabbit." Practically anyone in Iran who has anything to do with politics knows this story. This psychology has been used in Iran to "catch spies" showing itself of being one of the most paranoid intelligence services on the planet. ,Many countries use different techniques to obtain information. . The media reports countries finding spies all the time. Iranians should also be concerned about such activities. But the serial arrest of ordinary people accused of such activities just exemplifies the level of paranoia over normal concerns. But instead of arresting professionals, scholars and academics and forcing false confession letters and asking them not to talk about their time in prison, Iran should enhance their intelligence techniques and go after real spies. The fact that the Iranian government consistently comes up with news of the arrest of a "spy", show a great amount of incompetency and desperation in it's intelligence services. Also, the arrest of American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi shows the lack of rule of law in Iran. The Iranian judicial procedures by law must allow legal council and are not allowed to use statements taken under pressure as facts.. In almost all of the similar cases the Iranian authorities have never bothered to show any evidence on these charges and more or less, it is a case of the rabbit and the bear. Roxana Saberi will leave the prison soon, and shortly after the court will drop all the baseless charges against her and the Iranian authorities add, yet, another page to their infamous record of human rights violations. More on Iran
 
Norm Stamper: A Month of Killing, More on the Way? Top
Today, if I stare off into the middle distance and let it happen, images of homicide victims queue up, most of them cops I knew, and children. It's been a bad month for both. " Bam, bam, bam ," begins New York Times reporter Timothy Egan's April 8 must-read blog, "The Guns of Spring." Each interjection represents a dead cop: the three Pittsburgh officers recently lured to a residence and gunned down by a man with an AK-47 and several handguns. The second of Egan's paragraph starts with four bams (the Oakland cops slain on March 21), the third with five bams (for each child murdered by their own father here in Washington State), the fourth with 13 bams (the Binghampton, N.Y., immigrants and their teachers). Fifty-seven people gunned down in mass murders in less than a month. I'll always have a visceral reaction to the killing of a police officer, especially in ambush; how many times during my career did I stop a car or knock on a door not knowing whether there was a bullet waiting for me? Too many of my own colleagues met precisely that fate. And I have a special, dreaded place in my memory for all the dead kids I saw in my former line of work, many of those young lives taken by a parent. All this carnage over the past month raises once again the question of what to do with cold-blooded killers. In the logic of 36 states, the answer: kill them. I have no trouble understanding the urge to kill a killer. He has it coming, doesn't he? Take a man, for example, who kidnaps, rapes, tortures, and kills a child--how can we possibly justify punishment other than the death? His execution provides closure to loved ones, it sends a message to other would-be killers, right? The rationale for capital punishment is essentially reducible to these two reasons. An eye for an eye, and death as deterrent. But pressure to end the death penalty is mounting, and reasons for it are compelling. More and more loved ones of homicide victims are speaking out against executions. As Azim Khamisa told a reporter following the shooting death of his son, Tariq, "I know the pain of losing a child. It's like having a nuclear bomb detonate inside your body, breaking you into small pieces that can never be found. This violence scars the soul forever." But he also had this to say: "...forgiveness is a surer way to peace than an eye for an eye. The more we role-model the death penalty, the more violence and revenge there will be." A similar argument was made by Matthew Shepard's parents in Wyoming, Matthew's father adding that he wanted the men who tortured and killed their son to think each and every day, for the rest of their lives, about what they had done. This philosophical/spiritual argument is at the heart of many abolitionists's opposition to the death penalty. But there are numerous other reasons why the movement to end executions is scoring successes and building momentum. Obviously, if the state kills a killer that killer will kill no more, but will his or her death dissuade others? No. Murder rates in the 13 states that have rejected the death penalty (soon to be 14, thanks to Governor Richardson and the New Mexico state legislature) are consistently lower than in states that continue to embrace capital punishment. While it's hardly a representative sample, it's worth noting that three of the four states where last month's mass homicides took place are death penalty states. Other reasons for opposition to the death penalty? It's extravagantly expensive . The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice estimates annual costs of the death penalty system at $137 million in that state alone ($232.7 million if recommended reforms intended to assure fairness are enacted) vs. $11.5 million for a system whose maximum penalty is lifetime incarceration. By any measure, it costs far more to maintain the death penalty than to replace it with a sentence of true life imprisonment. I shared a panel with Sam Millsap in San Jose last year. Sam's an eloquent former Texas district attorney who tours the country advocating for the abolition of the death penalty. Unlike Azim Khamisa, this former prosecutor doesn't oppose executions on moral grounds. His opposition is rooted in his conclusion that all human systems are vulnerable to mistakes. He made one such mistake himself, sixteen years ago. It led to the execution of Ruben Cantu, a man later proven to be innocent. Capital case prosecutions based on a sole witness; jail house snitches; willful or unintentional mistakes by police investigators; compromise or destruction of key physical evidence; disregard of exculpatory evidence by prosecutors; shoddy and/or underfunded defense work; race and class discrimination (not a single rich person sits on death row)--any of these can affect the quality of a death penalty case. And lead to the execution of the wrong person. How in God's name can we continue to put people to death, knowing as we do that innocent people are on death row? Or have already been gassed, injected or fried to death? Lest there be any doubt, I am an abolitionist, a member of Death Penalty Focus which, along with many other fine organizations is working to end executions. The death penalty is--as most other civilized countries in the world have been trying to tell us for years--barbaric. And cowardly. Shooting an armed, hostage-holding assailant can be a life-saving act of heroism, as those extraordinary Navy seals proved off the coast of Somalia. But there's something fundamentally wrong with taking the life of someone in the state's custody. Or in killing people to demonstrate that killing is wrong.
 
Carl Pope: How Much More Do We Have to Learn? Top
In a major exposé, Salon magazine has alleged that from 2004 to 2007 the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta ignored -- whether inadvertently or not -- a major episode of lead poisoning in the District of Columbia that involved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of infants and children. The poisoning occurred from 2001 to 2004, when the level of lead in the tap water of some D.C. homes soared because of a switch from chlorination to chloramination.  In 2004, the CDC concluded that these elevated levels of lead did not constitute a public-health problem, but its analysis was based on incomplete data -- the test results for many affected children were not included. Based on that report, the CDC also told other water suppliers not to worry about elevated lead concentrations in drinking water like those that occurred in the District of Columbia. The agency claims that it released its falsely reassuring report in 2004 because the missing lab reports -- almost half the total -- were all for children with blood-lead levels of less than 10 micrograms per deciliter (mg/dl).  But the CDC knew in 2004 that the peer-reviewed literature showed substantial harmful effects for lead concentrations below 10 mg/dl and that some of the most prominent independent scientists in the field, like Dr. Herbert Needleman and Dr. Philip Landrigan, were arguing for a much lower level. California, for example, had already set a much more stringent level. Worse, when the CDC discovered that its findings had been incorrect, and that blood poisoning in the district had increased, it quietly released a new study to that effect in 2007. But until Salon blew the whistle, the agency made little effort to correct the record by publicizing the new data. Unfortunately, the lead - poisoning episode isn't the only recent example of the CDC engaging in behavior that looks suspiciously like a cover-up. The agency was heavily implicated in the effort to avoid public exposure of the potentially lethal concentrations of formaldehyde in FEMA's toxic trailer scandal. The CDC also suppressed a study it had prepared showing toxic hot spots threatening citizens of the Great Lakes region -- and fired the scientist who prepared the report. Congress is already investigating the D.C. lead-poisoning episode. It ought to dig deeper and find out what was really going on at the Centers for Disease Control during the past eight years. After three strikes, a watchdog agency like the CDC ought to be called out.
 
Leanne Shear: Q&A With Christine Coppa, Author Of Rattled Top
Christine Coppa was 26 and living the fabulous life in New York City when-- wham! --she got pregnant. In quick succession, her boyfriend of almost three months (and the baby's father) hit the road, she had a baby boy named J.D. (Jack Domenic), and got a contract to blog about the whole thing for Glamour magazine. Now, just two years later, she's publishing a more extensive memoir about becoming a surprise single mom, called Rattled. HuffPo: What's it like blogging about such a personal thing--maybe one of the most personal things--having a baby unexpectedly and out of wedlock? Christine Coppa: It's funny, I never even thought of it like that. I thought of it like a job, a second income when I really needed one. What's more, I'm a writer. Writers do write about their lives. I'm a little over people saying I'm exploiting my life for money. Am I the only writer who ever wrote a memoir or a personal essay? I'm not a mom who decided to start blogging about motherhood for fun. I'm a writer who got pregnant. Ok, fair enough. But you must have thick skin, because I'm sure there has to be some criticism involved. Gawker.com wrote about Storked!, and gave it a good review, but one commenter said I was "walking around with the biggest mistake in my belly" and she knew what it was like because like me, she got pregnant early on in a relationship, but aborted. Maybe she was looking for some other commenters to make her feel okay about her decision--she was just someone struggling with her own mistake. I'll always remember that comment. My editor told me not to read the nasty comments, but sometimes it's like a train wreck--you can't look away. The great thing about your blog is that you readily admit your own mistakes. My ex and I had sex, fully aware I was not on the pill and he was not wearing a condom and I take full responsibility for that and tell people religiously on my blog I was stupid for having sex sans protection. And by the way, having a baby isn't the only responsible version of my story. Choosing to have an abortion or adoption because you can't support the child or don't want to be a mother is also quite responsible. How did the blog evolve into a memoir? I got a Myspace message from an editor at a publishing house who asked if I was considering a book. I was, but I was also on maternity leave with a brand-new baby. It seemed like a huge undertaking, but it also seemed like an incredible opportunity. My editor at Glamour hooked me up with an agent. Rattled! was born--so to speak!--and sold to a different editor. I wrote most of it at night because I was back working full-time at First magazine [Christine returned to work when her 20-week maternity leave--8 weeks paid and 12 weeks unpaid--was up]. And I thought I was busy! [Laughs]. I have fond memories of JD sleeping in the swing next to my desk while I wrote and how when I looked over at him, his hands were tucked up under his chin. It was a very special year for me. I did a lot of proofreading and editing with JD sleeping in my lap. He smelled like formula and sometimes I had to pinch myself because the moment was so perfect...but it wasn't always easy. The book made me remember things, go places, relive them...I let a lot out through Rattled! It was shockingly therapeutic and what I consider a love story I never thought I would write. And by that I mean, I always imagined the full package. The husband, the house, then the baby. Things just happened out of order. This is how JD and I were supposed to meet. It's interesting that you are writing stuff of a highly personally nature, yet a lot of times you don't "go there." Where do you decide to draw the line between public and private information? I do go there, I think. I just think that there's nothing sensational about the reality. My son's father left when I was 11 weeks pregnant because he wasn't ready for fatherhood. In the beginning he was excited, then he wasn't, then he left. I struggle with our breakup and I try to pinpoint when we went away and it makes me feel very uneasy. Sometimes I wonder what it would like if we were still together. Were you surprised by your ex's decision to not be involved at all? At first I was angry and put on my super hero cape. A few days later, the dust settled and I thought maybe he settled a bit too. I invited him to dinner to talk things over. He didn't want to have dinner...and that was it. I was on my own and from there on out, everything changed. I think I shed my skin right then. A whole new person was born. There is Christine before JD and there is Christine after. I think it's irresponsible for "mommy bloggers" to talk smack about the child's absent father. I saw a blog once titled, "Mother's Worst Nightmare: My ex wants to see his kid." A.) The kid should not have to read that and associate "nightmare" with HIS FATHER, and B.) Why is it a nightmare? And for whom? My door is open to my son's father and he knows that. I've always been very careful about what I say and how much. Glamour didn't contract me to write about my ex. They hired me to write about single motherhood, and sure, I could write about him, but why? Talk smack to your girlfriends with a glass of wine behind closed doors. Plus, I know JD is going to read the blog and the book one day. If he wants to know things about his father, I'd rather tell him myself. Here's the thorny political question. Given that women have the right to an abortion and Plan B, do you think men should have the right to walk away if they don't want to be a parent? I think that if a baby is born then the people who made that baby should take care of him unless a mutual decision is made that absolves one parent from the picture. There is no mutual decision in my case. In the state of New Jersey, where I live, one cannot abolish their parental rights "just because." The only way for my ex to be completely, legally relieved of his rights is if I get married and JD is adopted by my husband. And nothing abolishes the bloodline or the reality. I think a lot of men, in, say, my ex's situation, make immediate decisions because they're scared. By the way, I was so scared too! Fathers choose to "abort" their kids all the time, even if they pay child support. A check doesn't make you a father. A father is around or there is some sort of open communication. And on that same note, women abandon their kids, too. I have two single dad friends that have full custody because mom didn't want to be a mom after she gave birth. I think when you put all this messy stuff aside, the most important thing is that the child is taken care of. It does take a village. My brothers are religiously mistaken as JD's dad in public and that says something wonderful about them. I don't have any sisters, but my girlfriends call themselves aunts. A mom came up to me at story time at the library a few weeks ago. She asked if my son played at the park by the lake and I said yes. She said, "I thought I recognized you--your son is such a happy baby. Always smiling and hugging everyone." I actually teared up. My son is happy, healthy and thriving--and I'm a single mom. Here's the tough question. Did you ever consider not having the JD--either having an abortion or giving him up for adoption? I got pregnant 2.5 months into a relationship. I freaked out and thought about a lot of things, but that's where it ended. My decision to keep my baby was immediate. His heartbeat was all I needed to see. I always wanted to be a mother. I didn't want to get pregnant at 26 and do it alone but it happened. In Rattled! I say, "The pregnancy was unwanted. But the child is not." The sentence probably doesn't make sense to everyone, but it makes sense to me. Photo credit Erik Asla for Glamour.
 
Jeffrey Smith: Monsanto Forced Fox TV to Censor Coverage of Dangerous Milk Drug Top
The following is the third in a series called Get Our Milk Off Drugs, written in response to pending legislation that would interfere with dairies labeling their products as free from genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH or rbST). Although the bill was passed in Kansas, it effects all national brands, since they sell within Kansas. Therefore, we ask everyone to email Governor Sebelius before April 16, urging her to veto the bill. Furthermore, since Governor Sebelius is expected to become the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, the email asks her to use her new appointment to ban this dangerous drug once and for all. The material for this series is drawn from my books Genetic Roulette and Seeds of Deception , and my 18-minute online film Your Milk on Drugs--Just Say No! . Also see Part 1 , and Part 2 . Get Our Milk off Drugs, Part 3 I know from personal experience how satisfying it is to catch some nasty multinational corporation telling lies about the safety of their product--especially when that company is Monsanto, the world's largest maker of genetically modified (GM) foods. So I could only imagine the excitement of investigative reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, who had caught a Monsanto executive on film repeatedly lying about GM bovine growth hormone (rbGH or rbST). The two worked at WTVT, a Fox television station in Tampa, Florida, and were described as a "television dream team." Akre was a former CNN anchorwoman and reporter, Wilson a three-time Emmy Award winner whom Penthouse described as "one of the most famous and feared journalists in America." Their four-part news series on rbGH was scheduled to begin on February 24, 1997. It was going to expose Monsanto's lies to the world, and show how the milk from treated cows was dangerously linked to cancer. Lies, Damn Lies, and Monsanto's Lies Monsanto's dairy research director Bob Collier, PhD, was the rbGH front man who was interviewed by Jane Akre. Here is a sample of some of his claims. Collier said, [rbGH] "is the single most-tested product in history." The reporters, however, found that "experts in the field of domestic animal science say that this claim is demonstrably false." When asked why rbGH had not been approved in Europe, he said the EU "approved it technically from a safety standpoint, but the dairy policy there was such that they still have price supports . . . it proved to be a moratorium based on market issues not health issues." In reality, health was Europe's key reason for banning the drug. A December 1994 letter from the Vice President of the Agriculture Committee of the European Commission to the director of the FDA stated, "Consumers in the European Community and their representatives in the European Parliament are apparently much more concerned about the unresolved human health issues related to [rbGH] than your agency was when it authorized the product." When Akre asked Collier whether injections "rev up" the cows, he said the hormone "does not change the basal metabolic rate, it merely increases the amount of milk produced." But his statement is contradicted even by Monsanto's literature. Injected cows also have much higher levels of udder infections, which put more pus in the milk. To treat this, farmers use more antibiotics, which also end up in the milk. But Collier claimed that increased levels of antibiotics in the milk weren't a problem, since every truckload of milk is tested. But scientists and Florida dairy officials told the reporters that each truckload is only tested for penicillin-related antibiotics. There's also a spot check for one other antibiotic every three months Such monitoring misses most of the more than 60 varieties of antibiotics used by dairy farmers. Collier also made the wild claim, "We have not opposed" voluntary labeling of products as rbGH-free. In truth, Monsanto filed lawsuits against two small dairies to force them to stop labeling their milk as rbGH-free. According to Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly "The dairies folded and Monsanto then sent letters around to other dairy organizations announcing the outcome of the two lawsuits--in all likelihood, for purposes of intimidation." Years later, as the trend towards rbGH-free milk started taking off, Monsanto asked the FDA and FTC to make such label claims illegal. When the feds turned down their request, Monsanto asked state governments to ban the labels. At one point in the interview, Akre had had enough of Collier's lies. She was not going to let him get away with it anymore. (Here is an excerpt from my book Seeds of Deception .) Akre redirected the conversation to IGF-1, the growth hormone associated with cancer . Akre recollected, "I asked about the limited testing for the effects of altered milk on humans. Collier tells me 'because the concentration of IGF-1 . . . doesn't change, there is no change in exposure, so the FDA concluded there is no indication that long-term chronic studies were justified.'" Now Akre was ready. She reached into a stack of papers on her lap--research she had collected and some of the five pounds of documents sent to her by Monsanto, which, she is sure, they didn't expect her to read. Akre pulled out an FDA report published in Science 1990, stating that Monsanto's own studies clearly show an increase of IGF-1 in milk. Colliers, who was fidgeting, clearing his throat, and stammering, was clearly uncomfortable. He reassured her that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Government Accounting Office also review the process for human safety and concluded that Monsanto's test process was correct. But Akre was ready again: "I pull out an American Medical Association report that says further study is needed as to the effects of IGF-1 on humans." She points out that the NIH also said more study is needed. Collier then tried to claim that IGF-1 is destroyed during the process of digestion, but Akre had read the studies and knew that too was false. Akre and Wilson wove Collier's lies throughout their 4-part series, which made it clear that rbGH was a potentially huge public health danger. They were sure the program would have a big impact. They were right, but it wasn't what they planned. Monsanto Threatens Fox On the Friday before Monday's air date, Monsanto's lawyer faxed a letter to Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News in New York, claiming that the series was biased and unscientific. It threatened, "There is a lot at stake in what is going on in Florida, not only for Monsanto, but also for Fox News and its owner." Rupert Murdoch, of course is the owner, and part of what was at stake was lots of Monsanto advertising dollars--for the Florida station, the entire Fox network, and Murdoch's Actmedia, a major advertising agency used by Monsanto. Fox pulled the series for "further review." After the Florida station's general manager, who had a background in investigative reporting, meticulously vetted the show, he verified that every statement was accurate and unbiased. The station re-scheduled the series for the following week. Monsanto's attorney immediately sent another, more strongly worded letter to Ailes, this time indicating that the news story "could lead to serious damage to Monsanto and dire consequences for Fox News." The airing was postponed indefinitely. The Florida station's general manager and news manager were soon fired, and according to Wilson, the new general manager was a salesman with no news experience. Wilson tried to convince him to run the rbGH story on its merits. He said Monsanto's whole PR campaign was based on the false statement that milk from rbGH-treated cows is "the same safe wholesome product we've always known." But even Monsanto's own studies showed this to be a lie, and it could be endangering the public. Wilson recounted to me, "I tried to appeal to his basic sense of why this is news. He responded, 'Don't tell me what news is. We paid $2 billion for these television stations and the news is what we say it is. We'll tell you what the news is.'" According to Wilson, the manager offered hush money to the two reporters. They would be paid the full amount of what was remaining in their contract, but they were free to go--essentially fired. But there was a catch. They were to agree never to talk about rbGH again--not for any other news organization. Wilson responded, "I'm never going to agree for any amount of money you offer me to gag myself from revealing in some other time and place what's going on here." Wilson told me, "He looked at us with this blank stare like he'd never heard such a thing. And he said, 'I don't get it. What's with you people? I just want people who want to be on TV. . . . I've never met any people like you before.' He just offered us 6 figures and to him what we were being asked to do in exchange was no big deal. Why in the world would we turn it down? And lose a chance to continue to be on TV--as if that is such a big deal that one would sell one's soul to continue to do it." The reporters offered to re-write the show to make it more palatable, but with each draft, Fox attorneys instructed them to make it more favorable to Monsanto. Over the next 6 months, they re-wrote the script 83 times. Akre and Wilson "were repeatedly instructed to include unverified and even some outright false statements by Monsanto's dairy research director." For example, they were told to include a statement that milk from rbGH-injected cows is the same and as safe as milk from untreated cows. The reporters said that management even threatened to fire them if the statement was not included. Akre told me, "We knew it was a lie. Monsanto's own study showed it was a lie. Yet we were told to leave that statement in without refutation, even though we had contrary evidence. That's falsifying the news." When they showed the evidence to Fox's lawyer that Monsanto's claims were false, according to Wilson she replied, "You guys don't get it--it isn't about whether you have your facts right or whether it's true. It's the fact that we don't want to put up $200,000 to go up against Monsanto." Fox suspended the two for "insubordination," then fired them altogether. TV News Goes to Court Akre and Wilson sued the Fox station. They based their case on Florida whistle-blower laws, which protect employees from retaliation for reporting (or threatening to report) . to a government regulatory agency. employer misconduct, which violates any law, rule or regulation speaking out (or threatening to speak out) against their employer for breaking the law. The jury awarded Akre $425,000, agreeing that her dismissal was retaliation for her threat to tell the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about the station's plan to report false information on television. Fox appealed and the case was overturned. It turns out that lying on TV is not against the law. The FCC's policy against news distortion is a policy, not a "rule, law, or regulation," so the Florida's whistle-blower law did not apply. Furthermore, in a move certain to chill future whistleblowers, the court used the "Non-Prevailing Party Pays" provision of the state's whistleblower protection act to rule that Akre and Wilson pay nearly $200,000 of Fox's legal fees. The reporters have since been the recipients of numerous awards for their ethics and courage, including the Goldman environmental prize, considered the Nobel Prize for the environment. The Fox station eventually ran a neutered report on rbGH that contained Monsanto's false statement that rbGH milk is unchanged. Fortunately, one of the earlier versions of the original Akre and Wilson series became public domain when it was used as an exhibit in their trial. With their blessing, I extracted footage from their excellent piece for my 18-minute film Your Milk on Drugs--Just Say No! , which is available online Also see Part 1 , and Part 2 of this series. Email Governor Sebelius before April 16, urging her to veto a bill that would require all national dairy brands that label their products as rbGH-free, to also place a false disclaimer, saying that there is no difference in milk from treated and non-treated cows. Jeffrey M. Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating and Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods distributed by Chelsea Green Publishing . Smith worked at a GMO detection laboratory, founded the Institute for Responsible Technology, and currently lives in Iowa—surrounded by genetically modified corn and soybeans. For more information, visit Chelsea Green .
 
Caption This Photo, Vote For Monday's Best, See Friday's Winner! Top
Original Caption: US President Barack Obama (L) thanks music pop star Fergie after she sand the US National Anthem at the 2009 White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn in Washington, DC, April 13, 2009. MONDAY'S FAVORITES: FRIDAY'S WINNER: Summers: "Maybe we should cut this short." Rubinstein: "Yeah. I'm late for my tea-bagging event anyway." By Richard22. More on Caption Contest
 
Huff TV: HuffPost's Katharine Zaleski Looks Back On 2009's White House Easter Egg Roll Top
Huffington Post Senior News Editor Katharine Zaleski appeared on MSNBC Monday morning to look back at The White House's annual Easter Egg Roll and discuss how it differed from Egg Rolls of years past. Watch the full segment below: More on Video
 
Zardari Agrees To Sharia Rule In Swat Valley Top
Pakistan's president has signed a regulation allowing the Taliban to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, in the country's northwestern Swat valley, a presidential aide has said. More on Pakistan
 
Linda Milazzo: The Murder Of Kitty Genovese Top
Mid-afternoon on Wednesday, driving along a street in the West San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, I saw this man lying on the parkway of the road. At first I drove past him because I was driving too quickly to stop. But I turned my car onto the nearest street, made a quick u-turn, and rushed back to him. While I maneuvered back, I noticed no one else was stopping. Drivers glanced over and drove right on by. Two women walked by him as I waited to turn my car. They barely looked at him. They never tried to rouse him or even stop their conversation. They felt no moral imperative to assist him. Conveniently for them he was positioned out of their way. As I made my u-turn to get to him, and finally park, a bicyclist rode by him, and he, too, never stopped. I watched in amazement as the biker peered down for a second and rode past him. That was it. All pedal, no mettle. Who are we in America?? What have we become? Americans don't live in the same war zones we enable and create. This isn't Iraq or Afghanistan or Gaza or Darfur. In those despairing places people lie on the street everyday. Of course in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Darfur, to name but some of our engineered horrors, blood usually covers their bodies. There was no blood covering this man. How lucky to be in America! Still this man, whom the pedestrians, bikers and autos passed by, could have been in diabetic shock, had a heart attack, suffered internal injuries from an accident, been unconscious from his fall, had a seizure, or been just plain drunk. A myriad possibilities could have overcome him. Yet his observers carried on despite seeing his body . How different they would feel were that body their own, or that of their loved one. But if it's not about us or those we personally love, often it just doesn't matter. We can be that selfish -- unless we are predisposed toward compassion, are taught from a previous lesson -- or both. I learned one of my most powerful lessons when I was 14 years old in New York City. I was horrified by an infamous murder that occurred in 1964 in my burough of Queens. A young woman, Kitty Genovese , was brutally attacked, raped and murdered, yet her screams for help were casually ignored by most of her own neighbors. For those who don't know this story, and for those unaccustomed to offering help, here are the gruesome details that may teach you about taking action when someone else needs help. Kitty Genovese had driven home in the late night of March 13, 1964. Arriving home at about 3:15 a.m. and parking about 100 feet (30 m) from her apartment's door, she was approached by Winston Moseley, a business machine operator.[2] Moseley ran after her and quickly overtook her, stabbing her twice in the back. Genovese screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" It was heard by several neighbors, but on a cold night with the windows closed, only a few of them recognized the sound as a cry for help. When one of the neighbors shouted at the attacker, "Let that girl alone!", Moseley ran away and Genovese slowly made her way toward her own apartment around the end of the building. She was seriously injured, but now out of view of those few who may have had reason to believe she was in need of help. Records of the earliest calls to police are unclear and were certainly not given a high priority by the police. One witness said his father called police after the initial attack and reported that a woman was "beat up, but got up and was staggering around."[6] Other witnesses observed Moseley enter his car and drive away, only to return ten minutes later. In his car, he changed his hat to a wide-rimmed one to shadow his face. He systematically searched the parking lot, train station, and small apartment complex, ultimately finding Genovese, who was lying, barely conscious, in a hallway at the back of the building, where a locked doorway had prevented her from entering the building. [7] Out of view of the street and of those who may have heard or seen any sign of the original attack, he proceeded to further attack her, stabbing her several more times. Knife wounds in her hands suggested that she attempted to defend herself from him. While she lay dying, he sexually assaulted her. He stole about $49 from her and left her dying in the hallway. The attacks spanned approximately half an hour. This horrific, perhaps preventable murder, became a blight on New York and New Yorkers for years. I took it so personally as a teenager that I wished for the longest time I'd been able to save her. Of course that was impossible since I lived at least 20 miles away. But in those days, murders seemed to have a greater social impact. They were more rare. Only organized crime and militarism were habitual. Individuals tended to take personal responsibility for communities, neighbors and family - which made the Genovese case an anomaly for its time. The psychology of the neighbors' passivity in the Genovese case has been studied for years. The two social phenomena thought by professionals to best describe the neighbors' inaction are Diffusion of Responsibility and Bystander Effect . I apply both these unfortunate social phenomena to those who oppose war, corporate crime, and other injustices, but take no personal action to stop them. Instead they want others to fight their fights. Those are the very same people who tell me, and maybe tell you, that they don't need to be active because I'm/we're active for them. The inaction from these dysfunctional social phenomena does not lead to success. It leads to the murders of innocents, endless war, corporate crime, and people lying unattended on our streets. These are the results of their inaction. In my very lay opinion, the social phenomenon that seems to apply to those who ignored Wednesday's bicycle man is Bystander Effect, although callousness and indifference are also distinct possibilities. I personally don't buy "lack of time" as an excuse in this technological era since anyone can phone for help while driving. Bystander Effect is defined as: A social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. Despite the lack of street traffic shown in the photos, there were plenty of people who saw this young man and chose not to respond. I have no idea how long he was on the street before I saw him, which increases the numbers of those who could have helped. But there is a positive end to his saga. When I got to the downed man and tapped him on the shoulder, at first he wouldn't respond. After several nudges he finally came to. He attempted to stand but he couldn't. I called the paramedics and they arrived within minutes. True to Bystander Effect, I was the only person who'd called them. The paramedics coaxed him to his feet, spoke with him for a few moments, and sent him off with his bike. He may have been drunk. I sat for a while and watched him unsteadily amble away. Here's the paramedic truck and the still disoriented man walking up the street with his bike. Why he wasn't hospitalized for further observation is an issue directed to our health care debate. Clearly this man wasn't wealthy. In the end, it doesn't matter what reason this young man was lying on the street. Be it medical or chemical, I still would have stopped. I refuse to indulge in Bystander Effect and won't live in the guilt of inaction. In part it may just be my nature, but it's also my lesson from the murder of Kitty Genovese. It would be hard to imagine any positive outcome from that brutal killing 45 years ago. But if that murder has prevented Bystander Effect or Diffusion of Responsibility in those who were offended by the human failings that resulted in Kitty's death, then Kitty Genovese was a hero whose death may have saved many lives. Author's note: I'm remembering another young hero today who should not have been murdered, and whose 30th birthday was April 10th. Happy Birthday Rachel Corrie. We continue your commitment to humanity and peace, and we wish you were with us today! More on Afghanistan
 
Ian Millhiser: Clarence Thomas' America Top
(Cross posted at Overruled .) Justice Thomas is an odd duck. Unlike the four other conservative members of the Supreme Court, Thomas makes no bones about his desire to repeal the New Deal and the Civil Rights Era and return America to the utopian days of the Hoover Administration : In a series of decisions beginning with U.S. v. Lopez , Justice Thomas would have restricted Congress' power to enact economic regulation to a point unheard of since the Great Depression. It's difficult to count the laws which would cease to exist under Thomas' approach, but one commentator lists "the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the sick leave portions of the Family and Medical Leave, the Freedom of Access to Clinics Act, as well as minimum wage and maximum hour laws" as likely suspects. In Clarence Thomas' America, whites-only lunch counters are permitted, but basic labor protections are forbidden. So I'm not particularly surprised that, at a recent speaking engagement, Thomas apparently bad-mouthed the Bill of Rights and was reluctant to identify the Fourteenth Amendment as the most significant post-Civil War development in shaping the way Americans view the Constitution. What I find most revealing about Thomas' remarks, however, is a romanticization of austerity that seems out of place this far west of Sparta. At one point, Justice Thomas asked his audience "how can you not reminisce about a childhood where you began each day with the Pledge of Allegiance as little kids lined up in the schoolyard and then marched in two by two with a flag and a crucifix in each classroom?" At another, he complained about people who think they are "owed" such audacious "luxuries" as a telephone. When you set aside the vitriol, however, Thomas' remarks are quite probative into just how the conservative mindset differs from that of other Americans. Conservatives like Thomas start from a position that deprivation is the state of nature, and that any upward departure from the most bare bones lifestyle has to be earned. Two things follow from this mindset. The first is that basic human rights like freedom from discrimination or the maxim that a fair wage is the price of labor have no place in the law. The second is the fallacy which teaches that if freedom from depravity must be earned through one's own efforts, than those who are free from depravity must have actually earned that freedom themselves. Progressives believe something different. First, while we do not believe---as Thomas suggests in his remarks---that everyone has a fundamental right to own a television, we do believe that there are certain basic needs which one is entitled to have fulfilled merely because they are a human being. Foremost among these rights are those things which enable people to take their lives into their own hands: education so that they may compete in the workforce, nutrition and medical care so that they do not grow up stunted physically or mentally, basic access to modern communications so that they can speak with potential employers and discover the opportunities that are available to them, and the ability to be judged according to their accomplishments---not because of traits they are unable to control. Clarence Thomas escaped from poverty because he worked very hard to do so, but he also escaped because a generous society rightly chose to reward his talent and hard work with scholarships; and Justice Thomas is wrong to forget this. And this, of course, leads to the second thing that differentiates progressives from conservatives. Progressives understand that hard work is an essential part of accomplishment, but we also know that wholly unaccomplished men and women enjoy stunning opulence not because of their own efforts, but because they were lucky enough to be born into the right family. Policy cannot eliminate the inequalities bred from luck, but progressives understand that a just society cannot allow birth to become destiny. We understand that by investing in education, health care and a basic safety net we can ensure that hard working Americans achieve whatever their talents will allow them---even if they were born poor---and we understand that the entire nation is enriched when its most talented members rise to the top regardless of what their parents did for a living. It's sad that, after defeating the twin dragons of racism and poverty, Thomas has spent his career working to ensure that no one will ever follow in his footsteps, but I'm also grateful for his honesty. His America is a nation of silent children marching lockstep behind the flag and the cross, or cast aside because of their unwillingness or inability to do so. It is not an appealing vision, but it is the vision conservatives offer, and I have nothing but faith that America will reject it. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are the author's own, and should not be understood as representative of any organization he may be affiliated with. More on Supreme Court
 
Thom Hartmann: Debt is Not Money Top
"Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs." --Thomas Jefferson letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. Are we standing at the edge of a Great Inflation (like Weimar Germany), a second Republican Great Depression, or a return to the middle class prosperity of the Roosevelt/Eisenhower New Deal era? Until Americans understand the difference between "money" and "debt," odds are its going to be one of the first two, at least over the next few years. Money "Money" is a convenient replacement for barter in an economy. Instead of my giving you five pounds of carrots, so you wash my car, then you trade the carrots for a new shirt, and the clothing store then trades the carrots to a trucker that brings them their inventory, we all just agree to use a ten-dollar bill. Because a nation's money supply represents that nation's "wealth" - the sum total of goods, services, and resources available in an economy/nation - it needs to have a fixed value relative to the number/amount of goods, services, and resources within the nation. As an economy grows - more factories, more goods, more services - the money supply grows so one dollar always represents the same number of carrots. (And with a fractional reserve banking system like we have, that growth is created mostly by banks lending money and creating it out of thin air in the process.) If the money supply contracts, or grows slower than the economy, then we experience deflation - the value of money increases, goods and services become less expensive (fewer dollars to buy the carrots), but because the value of money has increased it becomes harder to get. When this happens quickly, because of its economically destabilizing influence (businesses and people can't get current money - cash - or future money - credit - because money is more valuable), it's called a Depression. On the other hand, if the money supply expands or grows faster than the economy, there are more dollars than there are goods and services so the number needed to buy a pound of carrots increases. This is inflation, and when it happens suddenly and on a large scale, it's called hyperinflation. Therefore, one of the most important jobs overseen by Congress and executed by a Central Bank (or the Treasury Department if we were to go with the system envisioned by the Founders and Framers of the Constitution) is to "regulate the value" of our money (to quote Article I, Section 8.5 of our Constitution) by making sure the number of dollars in circulation always steadily tracks the size of the overall economy. If the economy grows 2%, then that year there should be 2% more dollars put into circulation. More than that will create inflation; fewer will create deflation. Debt "Debt" is not money. Instead, it's a charge against future money. But even though it's a charge against future money, it can still be spent as if it was today's money - except that it must be repaid with interest. And therefore debt must have some sort of a balanced relationship to the total size of the economy - albeit the future economy - for it not to be destabilizing. In other words, if over the next twenty years (the term of a typical and healthy mortgage) the economy is expected to grow by X percent or X number of dollars, then the total amount of twenty-year debts that can be issued should be limited to X. But if it's greater than X, then when the future arrives there won't be enough circulating money to repay the debt, because the economy (and the money supply) won't have grown as great as the debt repayment demand. The only two options are for debt holders to default (bankruptcies, foreclosures, etc. - Depression), or for the government to suddenly increase the supply of money (inflation). The same is true of one-year debt (credit cards), four- or five-year debt (car loans, typically), and all other forms of debt. In aggregate, if the amount of debt is allowed to grow faster than the economy will grow over the term of the debt, when the debt is due there will be a problem, and if it's grown hugely, a disaster. This is what we're experiencing right now. Over the past three decades - largely since Reagan - debt (both private and public/government) has expanded much more rapidly than the economy has grown. "Now" was "the future" when the debt was issued, but the economy hasn't grown to the point where there are enough dollars (in reality, enough value - goods and services) to repay that debt. Thus we are experiencing a "wringing out" of that debt - bankruptcies and foreclosures - relative to the current wealth of the economy. This is the most critical thing to see clearly - without adhering to this simple concept, a government or central bank will always either create boom/bust cycles (depressions/recessions) or inflation. Without regulating debt, a government will be taken hostage and an economy destroyed by for-profit institutions that are able to create debt without regulation (banks). Panics Although Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton - two opposite sides of the national bank debate - both understood this simple concept, it wasn't brought into the realm of law until the mid-1930s with a series of strict regulations on the abilities of banks to create debt (loan money), and strong political limits on the ability of government to go into debt outside of wartime. That's why from the founding of this nation until 1935, we experienced a "banking panic" at least once every 10 to 15 years from 1776 until 1935. Then Roosevelt took the banks in hand, by creating a series of regulatory agencies and empowering them with strict laws. The result was that for fifty years in the United States - roughly 1937 to Black Monday of 1987 - we didn't experience a single national "panic" or consequential bank failure. The stock market grew steadily (allowing for the blips surrounding WWII). It was also hard to get a credit card (short term debt), buy a car (medium-term debt), or get a mortgage (long-term debt) without proving that you would be able to repay the amount in the future - in other words, that there would be future expanded-economy dollars that you could lay claim to because of your particular job and skills. Credit was regulated. Reagan changed the rules of the game, particularly when he brought in the anti-regulation Libertarian Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Fed. He ran up a massive federal debt - greater than that of every president from George Washington to Jimmy Carter combined - in just eight years, and began the process of loosening the power of bank regulators. That process was finished by a Republican Congress (particularly Phil Gramm) and President Bill Clinton (with help from Rubin and Summers) and then booted out the door by George W. Bush, who borrowed even more than Reagan. Bush even used an obscure 19th century law to fight states' attorneys general who wanted to regulate or prosecute fraud among banks and mortgage lenders in their states (see the article by Eliot Spitzer in the Washington Post just before his being outed for sleeping with a hooker). Green Eyeshades During the "Great Stability" - that period from the 1935 onset of the New Deal and the beginning of its end with Reagan's massive tax cuts of 1981 and 1986, leading directly to the stock market crash of 1987 and the S&L debacle - banking was, as Paul Krugman noted in a recent column, "boring." Credit and currency were considered part of the commons, not something off which a small elite should profit. Like the utilities in the game Monopoly, banks provided a predictable but relatively low profit. Nobody got rich, but nobody lost anything, either. Bankers were the safe and predictable guys who wore green eyeshades at work and pocket protectors in their shirts. The nation's main products were goods and services; nobody "made money with money" in any big way. Since the serial deregulations of the financial services sector brought on by Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush, however, bankers became fabulously rich. They called themselves the "Masters of the Universe." They came to dominate contributions to politicians, and facilitated the takeover of most major US newspapers, all the while using debt as their mail tool to make money (burdening those newspapers with such debt that many are now going out of business because they can't repay it). By 2005, fully 40 percent of all corporate profits in the US came from the financial services sector - a group of people who didn't produce anything at all of value, nothing edible or usable, nothing that would survive into future generations. They invented fancy derivative "products" that they "sold" at high commission rates around the world so others could "make money with money." In fact, they weren't making money - they were taking money. Behavior that would have been criminal during the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations became "normal" and was even encouraged: more than half of all the graduates from many of America's top colleges and universities went into finance so they could get in on the very lucrative scam. They created debt. As Ellen Brown notes at www.webofdebt.com, according to the Bank of International Settlements, they created and sold at a profit over 900 trillion dollars worth of debt- and risk-based "instruments." That's a pretty mind-boggling number when you consider that the GDP of the United States is around 14 trillion and the GDP of the entire planet is around 65 trillion. All of these "products" were made and sold based on the assurance that when "then" became "now" the economy would have grown fast enough for there to be enough dollars to pay it back. But the reality of a debt bubble that exceeds the world's GDP many times over came crashing in on us in 2007 - and still hasn't fully crested - producing the "crisis" we currently face. Are we there yet? Are we recovering from it all now? Will things soon be back to normal? If by "normal" we mean like life during the "Great Stability," the answer is: "Not a chance." Back then we had in place tariffs and trade policies, first initiated in 1791 by Alexander Hamilton, that protected our domestic manufacturing industries. We still made things - in fact, the USA was the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods, and the world's largest creditor. Like today's China, for over 100 years we'd loaned other countries money so they could buy our stuff! On the other hand, if by "normal" we mean how things were over the past 28 "Reaganomics" years - a stagnating middle class, disintegrating manufacturing sector, and piles of money being made by bets and debts - then maybe. After just the first decade of Reaganomics, we went from being the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods to being the world's largest importer; we went from being the world's largest creditor to being the world's largest debtor. None of that has changed. We haven't repealed Reagan's disastrous tax cuts, which have exploded our nation's budget deficits. We haven't repudiated NAFTA and the WTO and gone back to an international trade policy that puts American interests over those of transnational corporations. We have not re-regulated the banks, and have not brought back 6000-year-old laws against usury (excessive interest rates on debt). The bankers, in fact, are fighting it tooth and nail - the financial services industry in whole has spent over $5 billion lobbying Congress over the past ten years - and their acolytes like Lawrence Summers and Tim Geithner play major and consequential roles in the Obama administration. It appears that the plan today is not to regulate the amount of debt that banks can create, but instead to both print more money and do everything possible to reinflate the debt bubble. (Lacking a return to Hamilton's national manufacturing and trade policy, as a nation we just continue to slip deeper and deeper into Third World status as an importer and debtor - this may be our only choice if we don't wake up soon.) If followed, the Summers/Geithner policy can have only one of two outcomes: inflation or another, more serious crash. It's possible we could have both. Apparently the bankers and Summers/Geithner's hope is that neither or both don't happen for at least three and a half years... Thom can be heard daily on his radio show 12pm - 3pm ET visit www.thomhartmann.com to stream live or find a station near you. More on Timothy Geithner
 
John Marshall: First Puppy Addresses Nation Top
My fellow Americans, I am thrilled to be the newest member of the Obama administration. Although not a rescue, as many of you had hoped, I did come from Ted Kennedy, and while I appreciate his service to the nation, I am pleased to no longer have to drive in a car with him. My name is Bo and I was named after Michelle's father, whose nickname was Diddley. Apparently he was named after someone who had a cobra snake for a necktie and a house made out of rattlesnake hide. Somehow this had something to do with Nike commercials. As First Puppy, I expect to get away with things the same as any other White House pet, like Socks the cat or Tim Geithner the Treasury Secretary. But I also plan to accomplish much, hopefully over two terms (14 terms in dog years). Although I hold a position of considerable influence, I do not read newspapers or watch television. Rather, I sniff trees, bushes and garbage. That is how I pick up information. Dried pee - that is my Fox News. (For some of you, I'm guessing it's yours, too). I want to be held accountable for my actions, and if I do the wrong thing I expect to be swatted on the nose with a rolled up newspaper, if any are still in business. I will use my position to set an example for other canines. For example, when it comes to chasing cars I will only pursue hybrid electric vehicles such as the Prius and will not so much as bark at a car made by an American company whose CEO flies in a private jet. In foreign policy, I will begin withdrawing dogs from the long-standing War on Mailmen and begin deploying them to other, neglected conflicts, such as the War on UPS or the War on Domino's. I cannot help apprehend pirates, but I can help ensure that when these criminals are locked up, there is a dog with the keys in his mouth sitting just out of reach beyond the bars, like in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyworld. I don't like using this term, but I will pursue a pet project - dogs. Those of who you who are debating whether to get a dog from a shelter or a breeder are missing the point. You need to get all of them. Your country is falling apart and you are in greater need of unconditional love and lack of rejection than at any time in your history. This is the key to your economic revitalization, not bailouts the size of bully sticks. But what do I know? I'm a six-month-old Portuguese water dog. It's time for my walk, but first I'd like to say that as a Democratic presidential dog I have big pawprints to fill. Buddy Clinton. Fala Roosevelt. Him and Her Johnson. But even though I am an Obama, I am also a Kennedy. So as I assume office, I say to all of you ask not what your country can hump for you, ask what you can hump for your country. For information on adopting a dog, go to www.aspca.org .
 
Mark Fidrych, Legendary Pitcher, Killed In Accident While Working On Pickup Truck Top
Mark Fidrych, a Northborough native whose aw-shucks charm and on-the-mound antics helped make him a national phenomenon as a Detroit Tigers rookie pitcher in 1976, was killed in an accident in his hometown yesterday while working on his pickup truck. He was 54.
 
Tom Morris: The Death and Rebirth of Accountability Top
Throughout the world, death and rebirth seem intimately joined. Winter gives way to spring. Economic downturns precede creative reconfigurations. Neighborhoods break up and come back. Failures can lead to success. At Easter, Christians celebrate this theme in its ultimate incarnation - the creator of all comes among us to die and arise. In recent years, we've been witnessing throughout the culture a major and disturbing social death: the death of accountability. In politics, business, and all our major institutions, people have been doing whatever they can to avoid any form of accountability for their actions, and they've unfortunately managed to achieve this on a truly disturbing scale. This phenomenon is behind so many of our highly publicized scandals, and it's at the core of our financial crisis. We can see it almost everywhere in our lives. In an increasingly complex hyper-speed world where work days are long and attention spans short, with a relentless 24-hour news cycle throwing us new stories and gossip to replace old headlines before the previous day's events have even begun to sink in, it's much tougher to insist on any form of accountability for anything that happens. And yet, how can a society function without it? We live in Waiver Nation. I was recently driving behind a dump truck with a huge sign warning: "Stay 200 Feet Back. Not Responsible for Damage." When I pulled into a parking lot, a prominent notice stated, "Not Responsible for Loss, Theft or Damage." It reminded me of the dry cleaner. Go in for any medical or professional treatment. The paperwork precedes any other process, and disclaimers abound. Simply take your kids to a water park or skating rink. But first sign the release forms. I'm surprised we don't see people all around in T-shirts emblazoned with the words, "Not Responsible in Any Way." No one will testify in court or before Congress without immunity first. And then, they'll still insist on portraying events as if they just happened, with no one in particular at fault - "Mistakes were made." The attitude is: We do something perfectly harmless, and then factors outside our control take it where they will. We can't be responsible for the outcomes. Who can? Harry Truman famously had a sign on his desk that said, "The Buck Stops Here." Everybody knew what it meant, and admired Truman for the stance it announced. President Obama recently paraphrased it and applied it to himself. But many people just seem perplexed by the notion. I once had a student from a small town in Iowa. He told me that, growing up, he never got in trouble because, as he put it, "If I ever did anything I wasn't supposed to do, five people would spank me before my mother found out about it." A barbershop in a rural town in North Carolina never locks its doors. People pay for things on the honor system. The 85 year-old proprietor says, "Everybody knows everybody. Nobody would even think about stealing, and it's not because of the police." Small towns in remote settings can even now still benefit from networks of relationships that are characterized by three qualities that strongly encourage accountability: 1. Proximity . People deal with people they live near. Face-to-face interaction is the norm. If you treat someone badly today, you'll likely see him tomorrow. 2. Longevity . Individuals tend to know each other for a long time, and may work together or do business with each other for decades. Actions can reverberate for a lifetime and affect everyone's long-term prospects, for good or ill. 3. Density . People know each other's siblings, cousins, spouses, kids, and parents. They tend to have friends in common. They socialize and work together. They may go fishing together. They've helped each other in times of need. The interconnections between their lives are many. So many developments in the past century that have increased our mobility and communications have subtly eroded these three qualities in our relationships. These developments - most beneficial in many ways - have all been vulnerable to the famous "Law of Unintended Consequences," and like many other good things, have had implications we never anticipated. Some of these results have allowed accountability to die a slow death in our time. Once we understand how this has taken place, we can act to turn it around. The death of accountability can be seen manifested in various ways, and some of the problems date from ancient times, but have been accelerated greatly in the recent past: 1. Displacement : The Bible represents a guilty Adam as saying to God in the Garden: "It wasn't me, it was the woman you gave me." Notice the double displacement in this remark, seeking to implicate both the companion and the creator in Adam's misdeed. Nothing ever happens in isolation. One way of avoiding accountability is to point to any possible influence as the real source of whatever problem is at issue. 2. Denial : Cain, who murdered Able, was asked where his brother is. He says, "Am I my brother's keeper?" He denies any responsibility regarding his sibling, and his own terrible deed. With the bold move of denial, loopholes are typically replaced by lies, and the malefactor brazenly challenges us to drop our suspicions and just move on. 3. Deflection : This may be the most classic form of the "Mistakes-were-made" strategy. There's no clear denial, or even any specific displacement of responsibility onto another particular person. Deflection is the most general misdirection ploy by which an individual seeks to step outside the spotlight and encourage our attention to be directed almost anywhere else. 4. Diffusion : This may be the problem most distinctive to recent events. Once a threshold of complexity has been crossed - in organizations, industries, or societies - it can become nearly impossible to pin responsibility on anyone in particular, even apart from bold denials, displacements, and deflections. As long as no one steps up and takes responsibility, it's exceptionally difficult in situations of great diffusion to identify where the buck stops. A climate of diffusion, of course, also allows for more effective displacements, denials, and deflections. The diffusion arising from complexity underwrote a conscious strategy used years ago at Enron: Make things complicated enough, and it will be hard to hold anyone accountable. It didn't work for long in Houston, but it's something that's increasingly exploited, and it allows for the creation of havoc, while many of those genuinely responsible for any give problem slip away. When we understand these different ways of avoiding accountability, we can spot them more easily and be better positioned to unravel their unfortunate effectiveness. But the most challenging aspect of the situation we face now is not just that of fingering individual wrong doers. We need to grapple with the more general challenge of how to recreate some version of the small town conditions for accountability that are its historic soil, and yet still do business on the large scale that our technology both allows and necessitates. It's time for a rebirth of accountability. And I sense this is a widespread feeling throughout the culture. But how will it happen? As we've seen, regulatory agencies alone aren't the full solution. They can fall to the same problems - and then who will watch the watchmen? As the Roman poet Horace once asked, "What can empty laws accomplish without moral standards?" And so the question is: how can there be a general ethos of solid and pervasive moral standards once more? We need good laws, and effective regulation. But most of all, we need to restore in our nation an overall moral culture of accountability. Having seen the consequences of its recent demise, I believe we're newly motivated to bring it back to life. To put it metaphorically, in terms of an iconic organization, perhaps Merrill Lynch needs to come to Mayberry, and not just Charlotte, or Mayberry needs to come to Merrill Lynch. More on The Recession
 
Suat Kiniklioglu: Getting Back to Work Following the U.S.-Turkey Visit Top
With President Obama's symbolic visit now one week behind us, hard work for both Turkey and the United States lies ahead in dealing with the challenges presented by the world economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, religious extremism, border disputes, energy concerns and countless other issues. And while we may not agree on the best approach to every situation, we agree on two major things. First, no country in the region is better equipped to play a central role than Turkey. And second, the time to pursue real solutions to these urgent problems is now. By choosing Turkey for his first bilateral overseas visit, Mr. Obama reaffirmed Turkey's role as a central player in global affairs. "Turkey's greatness lies in your ability to be at the center of things. This is not where East and West divide -- this is where they come together," said President Obama. His visit highlighted the opportunities partnership with Turkey offers. Turkey stands as a predominantly Muslim country, member of NATO and a democracy with a secular government. Our borders cross Asia, the Middle East and Europe, providing us with a rare transcontinental perspective and extraordinarily cultural understanding. Since 1952 Turkey has served as an active member and contributor to NATO. We've commanded the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan twice since 2002. Through our military and civilian activities, we've played a leadership role in Afghanistan -- and continue to call on others to do so as well. We've actively supported critical Israeli-Syrian negotiations and seek peace in the region. We recently hosted the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan and are making progress in establishing a working relationship between these two neighbors. Our capacity to talk to difficult actors in the Middle East is an invaluable asset. As part of the G20, we're collaborating with other major economies to confront the current crisis. And as a newly elected member to the UN Security Council we look forward to shouldering global responsibilities. Together, we can change this difficult neighborhood for the better. Now Mr. Obama calls upon Turkey to join the United States "to overcome the challenges of our time" as a "critical ally." Our conversations reminded us that our countries share many of the same foreign policy goals -- and are united by our belief that together we will be more successful in reaching them in partnership with Turkey's neighbors. A reinvigorated U.S.-Turkey relationship at this particular moment in time holds great possibilities. So now, with the photo ops concluded and the television crews departed, we are getting back to work. My colleagues and I in the Turkish Parliament are rolling up our sleeves because we feel it is time to channel the excitement of our new beginning into a momentum for real partnership. Suat Kiniklioglu is a Member of Turkish Parliament and Spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. More on Turkey
 
Rod Shrader: The Pink Slip: Women and Layoffs in the Recession Top
I noticed an interesting column in the Chicago Tribune a few days ago written by the fine journalist Greg Burns. He observed a persistent job gap that for once seemed to work in women's favor. He noted that the unemployment rate among men was about 8.8 percent compared with 7.32 percent for women. Experts told Burns that the 1.5 percent difference was likely to get even wider as the recession continues. It turns out, however, that even though women are more than holding their own in terms of staying employed, their gains are not reflected in leadership positions. And that is where another very interesting story about women in the workplace can be found. One of the people Burns interviewed for the column was a colleague of mine at the University of Illinois at Chicago's College of Business Administration, Assistant Professor of Management Jenny Hoobler who has taken a close look at promotions for women in the workplace and the glass ceiling holding them back. In a recent research project, Professor Hoobler, along with fellow UIC colleagues Professor Sandy Wayne and graduate student Grace Lemmon, found a very interesting pattern of behavior by managers that appears to explain why women are so routinely passed over for promotions. They found that bosses -- both male and female -- simply assume that women have more family-work conflicts (defined as family spilling over to affect work performance) than men. Surprisingly, these assumptions hold true even when there is clear evidence that men actually report more such conflict than women -- as was the case in their sample of Fortune 100 workers. So guess who gets the promotion? As Professor Hoobler said recently: "It's not so much your own perceptions that your family life conflicts with your work life that affects your career progress, it's your boss's perceptions." Hoobler and her colleagues did their study at one Fortune 100 corporation using 162 subjects. Even after controlling for women's actual conflicts between work and home, they found that managers still fell back on the old "think leader, think male" stereotype. In other words, it seems to be bias, not real conflict between family and work, that is holding women back from leadership positions. So here is where things seem to stand. Currently women comprise about half of professional school graduates in fields such as business and law, and they find entry level jobs in equal numbers. Men move ahead, and women remain largely stuck in middle management. Burns and Professor Hoobler got together again earlier this week when Chicago's Ilene Gordon was named president and CEO of Corn Products International, Inc. Hoobler said she'd like to see Gordon's presidency as a trend, but that her research shows otherwise. The middle management pipeline may be filled with qualified women, but the glass ceiling remains tough to crack. More on Women's Rights
 
Burglar APOLOGIZES In New Hampshire, Returns Loot! Top
PELHAM, N.H. — Police in southern New Hampshire are searching for a burglar who says he's sorry. Pelham police say a resident who pulled into his driveway Friday afternoon caught a burglar coming out of the house with jewelry boxes and electronic items. The homeowner told police that when he approached the burglar, the man apologized, then put the stolen goods back. Police say the homeowner tried to detain the burglar by engaging him in conversation, but the suspect fled by the time officers arrived.
 
Doug Struck: Geoengineering: Mankind and Reshaping the World Top
If he were a bear, John Holdren would be reaching into a bee's nest. The president's science advisor seems undeterred about stirring up an angry environmental buzz. Holdren revealed to the Associated Press this week that the administration is actively talking about geoengineering as a tool to blunt global warming. Geoengineering embraces a range of futuristic schemes, ranging from the fantastical to the merely brazen, to try to alter the environment. It includes ideas like shooting sulfur into the air to create a cooling atmospheric blanket. It includes launching micro-thin disks to create a floating sun shade a million miles out in space. It includes fake trees that would absorb carbon dioxide, fertilizing the ocean to grow huge slimes of algae, or turning the oceans upside-down with thousands if pipes reaching to cooler depths. The reaction was expectable. Those who take the Holden at his word--and the Harvard scientist is far too bright to dismiss--find the prospect of geoengineering frightening. Man does not know enough to muck around with earth's systems, they argue; surely these notions are too preposterous to be taken seriously. But in truth, man has long tried to reshape the world. We have scraped away forests where we wanted fields. We have built dams to create lakes above valleys. We have leveled hills and bored through mountains when they were in our way. We have drained swamps when we wanted to make more dry land. We have carved canals and ditches to make water flow to places it did not. Much of this was simply digging large, the exaggeration of our childhood urge to carve castles in the sand. We were a little more timid about purposely tinkering with the fundamental systems of nature. But World War II gave us hubris. The vast scale of that conflict made us think in larger terms. Suddenly, our reach was the whole world. The technology that burst--literally--from the war made us feel we could master larger forces than we had known. The war had seemed such an apocalyptic test by the gods, the winners saw our unequivocal victory as evidence we were the masters of our own fate, and certainly of our world. The science of trying to change the weather was born in that war. A high school dropout with a self-taught knack for research named Vincent J. Schaefer was trying to figure out how to counteract the ice buildup on the wings of bombers when he accidentally discovered how to create snow from dry ice. In 1946, flying in a plane over Mount Greylock, Massachusetts, he threw dry ice and silver iodide from the cockpit, and precipitation fell. From that came a generation of airborne cloud seeders who fly today in the American west to squeeze a bit more precipitation onto farms and dams below. We were emboldened by such successes to dream large. The Russians plotted to turn Siberian Rivers from the Arctic to empty on central Asian farmlands. They proposed damming the Bering Strait, pumping water into the Pacific to make the Arctic Ocean so salty the icepack would melt. They launched Sputnik to defy our earth-bound limits, and America trumped that by sending a man to the moon. Less nobly, the Pentagon secretly worked on plans to alter the climate to use as a weapon in war. When the public learned, belatedly in 1974, the Pentagon had carried out a broad and failed scheme to alter the climate over the Ho Chi Minh trail in the Vietnam War to make it impassable, and had tried to denude its forest canopy with Agent Orange, sentiment turned against what seemed like Strangelovian schemes. Talk of grand scale geophysical tinkering subsided for a while, though some scientists still made musings on the back of envelopes, doodling with what-if-we-did-this notions. By the 1980s, though, it was becoming clear that we were already doing something to change our world. We were pumping so much carbon dioxide and other industrial gases into the air that our thin atmosphere was like a scientific beaker already frantic with the results of a rogue experiment. We were heating our world. The implications were a mystery. The early results did not look good. And so, by a 1991 meeting of a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, the envelopes had come back out, revealing the figures and equations that their authors said just might save us. The geoengineering schemes were rehatched. The theorists now touting these schemes are hardly mad scientists, bent on playing god. One, Paul Crutzen, is a Nobel prizewinner who helped mend the ozone hole. The National Academy of Sciences, several respectable universities, and NASA all have put up money or support to keep the plans alive. Many of the ideas are impractical, enormously expensive, and certainly would create a political morass with other countries, not to mention our own. But the supporters of these ideas say it is foolish to blunder ahead toward predictions of climate change chaos without at least a few exit strategies, as desperate as they may seem. "We don't have the luxury," Holdren said, "of ruling any approach off the table." More on Climate Change
 
Security Council Condemns NKorea Launch, Vows To Expand Sanctions Top
UNITED NATIONS — A week after North Korea's rocket launch, the U.N. Security Council on Monday condemned the action, demanded an end to missile tests and said it will expand sanctions against the reclusive communist nation. The council's statement, agreed on by all 15 members and read at a formal meeting of the United Nations' most powerful body, said the launch violated a council resolution adopted after the North conducted a nuclear test explosion in 2006 that banned any missile tests by the country. The statement was a weaker response than a U.N. resolution, which was sought by Japan and the United States but was opposed by China and Russia. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice insisted the statement is legally binding, just like a resolution, but other diplomats and officials disagreed. North Korea warned earlier that any move to censure it at the U.N. could prompt its withdrawal from negotiations on dismantling the communist regime's nuclear weapons program. The North's talks with the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Russia are currently stalled. In the statement, the Security Council expresses support for those talks and "calls for their early resumption." It also expresses the council's desire "for a peaceful and diplomatic solution to the situation" and for efforts to achieve "the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula." U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the council's statement because it "sends a unified message of the international community on the recent launch," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said. She said Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, hopes the council's "response will pave the way for renewed efforts towards the peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues in the region, including the early resumption of the six-party talks and the inter-Korean dialogue." North Korea carried out the rocket launch in face of intense international pressure, saying it put a satellite in orbit as allowed under a U.N. space treaty. The U.S., Japan and South Korea claimed North Korea was really testing long-range missile technology, in violation of the 2006 Security Council resolution. Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, the current council president, told reporters afterward the session that Monday's statement arose from what he called "a positive compromise" among all 15 council members. The statement "condemns" the April 5 "launch" _ without specifying whether it was a missile or a satellite _ and demands that North Korea "not conduct further launches." It adds that Pyongyang must fully implement the 2006 resolution ordering the North to suspend all ballistic missile activities and "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner." In addition, the council said it "agrees" to expand sanctions under the 2006 resolution, which ordered a financial freeze on assets belonging to companies and groups tied to North Korean programs for nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction and banned the sale of specific goods used in those programs. The statement says the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea is to report by April 24 on companies, equipment and technologies that should be added to the list. If the committee fails to act, the Security Council itself will then come up with a list by April 30, the statement says. Citing an unidentified South Korean official, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said Monday that about 10 North Korean companies probably would be blacklisted under expanded sanctions. Foreign Ministry officials were not available Monday evening to confirm the report. More on United Nations
 
Jamie Foxx To Miley Cyrus: "Do Some Heroin... Catch Chlamydia... " (NSFW AUDIO) Top
Jamie Foxx had some not-so-nice words for Miley Cyrus during his weekend Sirius radio show "The Foxxhole," judging by a audio posted on YouTube and heard below. During a discussion criticizing Miley, 16, for being upset at not getting to meet Radiohead backstage at the Grammys, Foxx, 41, told her to get a gum transplant and to "make a sex tape and grow up... Get like Britney Spears and do some heroin... get some crack in your pipe... Catch chlamydia on a bicycle seat." Someone else is heard calling her a "white bitch." Foxx has a teenage daughter. LISTEN: More on Miley Cyrus
 
Leo W. Gerard: No hoax: Pass Employee Free Choice Act to revive economy Top
Americans are paying big time now for decades of buying into a hoax. And it wasn't sub-prime mortgages. It was the conservative contention that government is evil and inept. Swallowing that absurd assertion resulted in relaxation and elimination of supposedly onerous and unnecessary government regulations - from the ones that prevented banks from growing too big to fail to those that protected union organizers from illegal corporate obstruction tactics. Unfettered, Wall Street speculators went on a rampage of reckless wagering that ultimately knocked the wind out of the world economy's bubble. With unrestrained corporate threats and interference, union membership declined to 12 percent, although 58 percent of non-managment workers surveyed said they'd like to join a union. Now, that reviled institution - government - is the only one big and strong enough to rescue the economy that perpetration of the hoax devastated. How ironic. The government must also restore the ability of the American people to organize unions at their workplaces, if they so choose, by passing the Employee Free Choice Act. President Barack Obama has said he wants to make government cool again. He stood on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. on the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth and talked about why the 16th President supported the union and why concerted action is so effective. Speaking of the hoax, he said, "Such knee-jerk disdain for government - this constant rejection of any common endeavor - cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges." Common endeavor is the power of unions, whether they be unions of states or labor unions. That is why corporations across America so fear the Employee Free Choice Act. It would ease forming a labor union. It would allow workers - rather than CEOs - to decide whether to create a labor union by collecting signatures from a majority of workers or by a secret ballot election. Big business is attempting to perpetrate a second hoax on America - that the Employee Free Choice Act is no good. They've been flying a bunch of anti-union lobbyists to Washington to pressure politicians to vote against it. Sounds a lot like CEOs jetting to D.C. in private planes for bailout money. The bailout money will, of course, come from the pockets of working Americans who those very CEOs don't want to unionize. And after decades when the policies of the government-is-evil-hoax meant wealth accrued to the very richest, it turns out that the economy would have been better served if wealth had been more evenly distributed. More workers with more money to spend means more cars and houses and All-Clad pots and pans bought. Those purchases keep other workers employed, who spend more money. When those workers are unionized, studies reveal two important statistics . One is that they earn 30 percent more than non-union workers. The other is that they are 59 percent more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance. So, in the end, unionization is good for the economy. That effect was acknowledged in 1935 when the National Labor Relations Act was passed to encourage unionization and collective bargaining. It occurred in the midst of the Great Depression and followed decades rocked by lesser economic "panics" causing runs on banks. The NLRA "Declaration of Policy" says this about this law: "The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract, and employers who are organized in corporate or other forms of ownership association, substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners." Simply put, employers wield considerable strength, and workers must be able to unionize so wage and benefit negotiations occur on a more even playing field. There's power in common endeavor. In 1935, in the depth of the Great Depression, the government encouraged workers to use their power to obtain better wages. It did that because better wages to many would help end the depression for all. Since then, corporations and CEOs - the perpetrators of the great government-is-evil hoax -- have also chipped away at the NLRA. They've seized from workers the ability to determine how unions are formed. And they increasingly harass workers trying to form unions. In 2007, employers illegally harassed or coerced 29,000 workers . In the 1950s, companies illegally punished fewer that 1,000 workers a year for union activity. Thirty-six percent of workers who voted against a union said they did so because of pressure from the employer, according to an NLRB survey of 400 election campaigns in 1998 and 1999. Just like in 1935, workers now need unions to help them secure better wages, which will, in the end, be good for the country because it will improve the economy. For that to happen, though, the Employee Free Choice Act must pass. Workers must have the right, once again, to choose how they want to form their own organizations. In Obama's speech in Springfield, in which he discussed the union of states, he quoted Lincoln on the purpose of government, saying, "The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves." In this quote, labor unions could be substituted for government: "The legitimate object of unions is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves." That is why workers must vanquish the new hoax being perpetrated by conservatives, greedy CEOs and other labor union-haters. Workers must win the freedom that they had in 1935 to choose how to form their unions. Labor unions give workers the ability to do what needs to be done but which cannot be accomplished by individuals. And that includes bargaining for the better wages that, when spent throughout the economy, will help end the current great recession. More on CEOs
 
David Buckner Faints, Passes Out Live On "Glenn Beck" (VIDEO) Top
David Buckner, professor of organizational leadership at Columbia University, passed out live on Glenn Beck's Fox News show Monday afternoon. "You all right?" Beck asked Buckner in the middle of a discussion on government investments. "I'm passing out," Buckner told Beck. "Want to sit down?" he asked, before the guest fell to the floor. "We'll be back in just a second," he said, and then the show cut to commercial. Watch: Beck went on to say Buckner was receiving immediate medical attention. More on Video
 
Saudi Religious Police Apologize Over Kiss Arrest Top
Jeddah // Saudi Arabia's religious police have been forced to issue a rare apology after a member of one of the country's most influential tribes said he was beaten by police for allegedly kissing his wife in public. More on Saudi Arabia
 
Iran Offers To Train Afghan Police Top
Iran is prepared to join the international effort to train Afghanistan's police force, the Iranian police chief has said. More on Iran
 
Donna Albergotti: A Blueprint For Effective Activism Top
Book Review: The Animal Activists' Handbook: Maximizing Our Positive Impact in Today's World Matt Ball and Bruce Friedrich Lantern Books, Brooklyn, New York (2009) What happens when a wannabe rocket scientist meets a deeply religious humanitarian? They combine forces to try to convince the world that many of our problems could be solved through compassion toward animals. It may not be the expected outcome of such a pairing, but it has been very effective. The Animal Activists' Handbook is partly an autobiography, partly a case for vegetarianism, and partly a blueprint for grassroots activism. Matt Ball thought he was going to work for NASA, but a vegetarian college friend put him on a path toward advocating for farmed animals, and he now runs Vegan Outreach, a Tucson, Arizona-based animal rights organization. Bruce Friedrich dropped out of college to work at a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen on behalf of The Catholic Worker . Reading an animal rights book by an Anglican priest ultimately inspired him to work for PETA, where he is now a vice president. Ball and Friedrich write that they've decided to put their experiences down on paper "so that activists won't need to make the same frustrating missteps, but can instead go directly into effective activism." They start by arguing that true happiness comes not from material goods but from choosing meaningful actions that ultimately influence the behavior of others: "Although our decisions regarding what to eat and wear, what kind of car to drive, or for whom we should cast our vote are important, they're not as important as our influence on others," the authors write. "That is our real impact on the world." They then present methods for effective advocacy, followed by lessons on how to use them to help animals. Some ideas, such as leafleting, may seem obvious to the already socially active, but Ball and Friedrich go a little deeper, offering suggestions on what to say while handing out brochures and proposing that activists "adopt a college" to create regular leafleting opportunities. The most constructive part of the book (and possibly the most shocking to those who are only peripherally familiar with the vegetarian movement and who might therefore expect radicalism) is the authors' discussion of tolerance in all activities. For instance, they caution that if "we're at a restaurant and there's a veggie burger on the menu but we give the server the third degree about the ingredients or about how it was cooked, we're most likely doing more harm than good." They even go so far as to insist that it can be a good thing for vegetarians to date meat-eaters! With only five chapters, a reference section, and three appendices that tackle some philosophical issues surrounding animal welfare, The Animal Activists' Handbook is a quick one- to two-sitting read that could inspire its readers to a lifetime of activism in behalf of human and nonhuman animals. And while the majority of the book focuses on animal rights, the basic tenets can be applied to any kind of social change. More on Animals
 
UK Police Arrest 114 In Pre-Emptive Strike On Protesters Top
Police have carried out what is thought to be the biggest pre-emptive raid on environmental campaigners in UK history, arresting 114 people believed to be planning direct action at a coal-fired power station. The arrests - for conspiracy to commit criminal damage and aggravated trespass - come amid growing concern among campaigners about increased police surveillance and groups being infiltrated by informers. Nottinghamshire police said the raid on an independent school in Nottingham was made just after midnight this morning. The force said it seized "specialist equipment" thought to be linked to a planned protest at nearby Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, a coal plant owned by the utility company E.On. More on Energy
 
Noah St. John: Why Did Kenny Perry Choke on The Masters? Top
I feel sorry for Kenny Perry. Not because he choked in the biggest tournament of his life - The Masters , which was won in a sudden death playoff by Angel Cabrera. Not because he would have been the oldest Masters champion (at age 48). Not even because he'll be replaying the 71st and 72nd holes in his mind for the rest of his life. I feel sorry for Kenny Perry because it didn't have to be this way. For the Faithful who've been following my work and reading the various incarnations of my blog since the 90's, you know that I not only work with business owners, entrepreneurs and sales professionals who want to get rid of their head trash - I've also helped athletes and coaches who want to end the "choke" syndrome. "Choke" is the most feared word in the pro athletes' locker room, because it speaks of defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory. That's exactly what Kenny Perry did to himself at this year's Masters. But it was all too avoidable. Kenny, the affable Kentuckian, has been grinding it out on the tour for decades, always coming just thiiiiiiiiiiiis close. But he'd been at the top of the 2009 Masters leaderboard since the first round. As I watched the coverage on ESPN and CBS, I kept thinking: "He's out of his Familiar Zone. He's out of his Familiar Zone." Of course he was! By definition, if you've never done something before, you won't be familiar with it. That's why one of the success cliches I bust is that of the "comfort zone". Think about it this way: if you're holding yourself back from the success you're capable of - and you know it - that's not comfortable at all. But it is familiar. That's why you don't need to worry about breaking out of your "comfort zone" - because there's no such thing. What you need to do instead, is stretch your Familiar Zone. Sure enough, just when Kenny held golf's most important tournament in his grasp... he let it slip away like so much fairway bunker sand. And the title of 2009 Masters Champion went to the equally affable Argentinian Angel Cabrera. I only wish that Kenny had heard of the The Secret Code of Success (or even Permission to Succeed) before the weekend started. Because then he might have been able to let himself claim the victory he had worked so hard for. By the way, you may be asking, "If what you're saying is true, Noah, then how can someone win a tournament - or do anything - for the first time, if it's not in their Familiar Zone?" The answer is: they follow the Steps of the Code . That's what champions do without knowing it, because they've unconsciously given themselves permission to succeed. And so can we all. P.S. Kenny, call me and I'll send you a book. It's the least I can do. * * * Noah St. John is the author of The Secret Code of Success: 7 Hidden Steps to More Wealth and Happiness (HarperCollins). He helps people get rid of the "head trash" that's holding them back and enjoy more wealth, more freedom and more abundance in every area of life. For more information and a free book excerpt, visit SuccessClinic.com
 
Hermene Hartman: The Ever-Changing Print Medium Top
There is a saying: "Watch what you pray for, you may just get it." Then there are those who teach that you should watch what you say because the spoken word is powerful. Well, in 2008, "change" was the buzzword, and here we are. We all thought we wanted change. The word was often spoken but rarely, if ever, defined. Change from what to what? From whom to whom? I'm not sure I wanted this much change. Change. The auto industry is in dire straits. There are too many cars and not enough buyers. The car industry needs to be scaled down. We are told that it's "too big to fail," so the government must step in and rescue the industry. Change. The insurance agencies and the banking community have done very well going to Washington for bailouts. They, too, are "too big too fail." There is another industry to consider that's being overlooked, and it is too important to fail, yet it is falling down right before our very eyes: Print media is in serious trouble. Its existence is threatened. Newspapers are experiencing serious closings. Some newspaper workers are being asked to work without pay. Newspapers are closing in towns where there are two dailies. I predict by the end of the year, there will be only one newspaper per major city. Papers are filing for bankruptcy, and the world of journalism is being reinvented, reconsidered and rethought. Change. A solution has come from Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (Democrat) of Maryland. He is introducing legislation, The Newspaper Revitalization Act, that "would allow newspapers to operate as non-profits, if they choose, under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, similar to public broadcasting. Under this arrangement, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax-deductible." This Act would change the character and perhaps the very purpose of the newspaper industry. Freedom of the press is questionable, perhaps. Papers would act as educational entities, and politics might be erased from the coverage equation. This brings on a smile for some, I'm sure, but where would people get opinions and viewpoints? And what would happen to the exposés? This idea must be music to some people's ears. With advertising being tax exempt, there would perhaps be a stimulus for the advertising community, but what would happen to the ad agencies? Who would regulate them? Change. This is all a bit much, don't you think? The government might want to take a serious look at the newspaper industry as a too-vital-to-fail entity in our society and hold hearings for solutions. Free press, as we know it in the United States, is assuredly becoming an endangered species. The revolution that has occurred for newspapers comes from online and technology that allows us to deliver the paper in so many new ways that the printing press is becoming obsolete. The world of printing is constantly evolving. It is not just newspapers and magazines. Books fall into the endangered species, category, too. Kindle, the newest book-delivery technology, might erase the hard- and soft-cover book, as we know it. Kindle might be for books what the iPod is to music. Currently, the Kindle tool comes from Amazon, and most of the downloaded books cost $9.99 each. The printing process is eliminated. The text comes direct. Sony is fast approaching with its own version of Kindle and has partnered with Google for book delivery. Their books are all public domain properties and can be downloaded from $1 to $2. What happens to the author, their royalties and advances? Change. Do we really want to rid our society of the printed word? Precious books? What happens to the library? The future has it that magazines will be read over your phone or on Kindle, also. I've got the technology, but the process is so different. In essence, news deliveries are fast-forwarding. The technologies provide new mediums. I, for one, am not ready for the discard of newspapers, magazines and books. I love glossies, books and newspapers, and I love reading. I can't imagine not doing so. And now we are questioning, introducing, examining new properties and content in new formats. There seems to be too much change, but change it is. Change. Damn. More on Newspapers
 
POLAR BEAR ZOO ATTACK Caught On Tape Top
In this shocking video, polar bears at a German zoo attacked a woman who climbed into the enclosure. The Daily Mail reports : She was bitten by one of the four older polar bears in the enclosure and not by the famous Knut, who took Germany by storm as a cub after he was hand-raised by a keeper. It is not known why the woman pulled the dangerous stunt but she initially appeared to be elated as she swam towards a bear in the enclosure. Read the rest of their report here . Watch video of the attack from a German news network.
 
Michelle Lamar: Maddie Spohr: Tragic Death Inspires Web Community Top
Maddie Spohr passed away this week. She was 17-months old. Maddie was a premature baby with giant blue eyes and a crush on Matt Lauer. Maddie's tragic death has inspired a wave of good will from the Internet community to help the Spohr family . Heather Spohr, Maddie's mother, is a blogger and a dear friend of mine. She wrote about Maddie on her blog, The Spohrs are Multiplying . Heather was raising funds for the March of Dimes in honor of Maddie, who was born on November 11, 2007, over 11 weeks premature. The March of Dimes works to prevent birth defects, premature births and infant mortality. Heather is an active Twitter user. From Demi Moore-Kutcher wishing the Sphor family well to Jimmy Fallon sending messages of support, Twitter has been buzzing with messages to the Spohrs. Baby Maddie made the national news last year when Heather wrote about Maddie's mad crush on Matt Lauer, of the Today Show. Since Maddie passed, almost $24,000 has been raised for the March of Dimes. Groups of walkers are forming all over the country to March for Maddie . The overwhelming response and outpouring of love to the Spohrs from so many people, is truly amazing. The fact that so many people have reached out to Mike and Heather Spohr during this horrible time is a testament to the power of the web...and the good in people. Blog Nosh Magazine created a page dedicated to Maddie Spohr. Blog Nosh has published one of my favorite stories about Maddie-- her crush on Matt Lauer! I pray that the outpouring of love from so many people can do something to help the Spohrs but I know that there is nothing that can comfort Heather and Mike right now. Please keep my friends in your thoughts and prayers. If you are interested in helping Heather and Mike Spohr in any other way, here's what you can do: No one should ever have to bear the burden of losing a child, let alone paying for a child's funeral services. A paypal account is set up for the Spohr family, donations greatly appreciated. formaddie (at) hotmomreviews (dot) com. A P.O. Box has also been set up for cards, notes, letters for the Spohrs. 11870 Santa Monica Blvd. #106-514 West Los Angeles, CA 90025 More on Health
 
Michael Markarian: Stamp Out Extinction Top
In an era of shrinking government budgets, lawmakers are seeking out new revenue streams to help fund critical social programs. That's why a new bill introduced by Congressman Henry Brown (R-S.C.) and Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam) is a good deal for endangered species and for taxpayers. H.R. 1454, the Multinational Species Conservation Funds Semipostal Stamp Act , would create a new stamp that the U.S. Postal Service would sell at a premium price to raise additional funds for international wildlife conservation. Congress has created a number of special funds to finance programs around the world that aid African and Asian elephants, great apes, marine turtles, rhinoceros, tigers and neotropical migratory birds. These critical projects receive some federal funding, but the conservation of imperiled species would be greatly enhanced by an infusion of more resources. The legislation is modeled on the highly successful efforts to raise funds to combat breast cancer. Since 1998, the USPS has sold 802 million breast cancer semipostal stamps to the public and has raised an impressive $59.5 million from such sales.  In fact, it wouldn't be the first time a postage stamp has raised awareness about an animal protection issue. Back in 1966 , a five-cent stamp showed a lithograph of a lounging mutt named Babe underscored by the words "Humane Treatment of Animals." Then in 2001, the USPS unveiled a commemorative "Neuter or Spay" first-class stamp , featuring a puppy named Kirby and a kitten named Samantha, and educating millions of stamp users about the importance of spaying and neutering their pets to help prevent overpopulation and euthanasia of homeless dogs and cats. Ask your members of Congress to support H.R. 1454, so some of the most endangered and charismatic species on Earth will have a better chance of survival. And until those new wildlife stamps become available, you can check out Zazzle.com for a number of postage stamps that benefit HSUS programs such as promoting pet adoption and spaying and neutering, and stopping dogfighting and seal hunting. You can even upload a photo of your own pet, and show everyone that the furry face of your loved one is really first-class. More on Animals
 
The Uptake: Cap and Tirade: Bachmann Repeats Falsehood Top
Representative Michele Bachmann (MN-6) is still spreading false information regarding an MIT study on cap and trade. She held two townhalls today to discuss proposals for a cap and trade program to abet greenhouse gasses. She was joined by Chris Horner, a lawyer for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They gave prepared presentations and only took highly moderated pre-written questions. For us to know if Rep. Bachmann is "willfully lying" vs "unwittingly misrepresenting" we would have to know if she knew the author of the MIT report had spoken out on the subject. Regrettably, Rep. Bachmann refused to speak with all press today. Related stories: Michele Bachmann's Op-Ed in the Star Tribune Media advance discredited GOP calculation of Obama cap-and-trade proposal cost GOP full of hot air about Obama's "light switch tax" More on Michele Bachmann
 
Chicago Tribune To Cut Newsroom 20% Top
(Crain's) -- The Chicago Tribune plans to cut another 20% of its newsroom staff in yet another bid to reduce expenses amid continuing advertising declines. Staffers were told of the impending layoffs last week, according to three people who attended a meeting on the topic. The cuts will take place over the next several weeks, the sources said.
 
Human Rights Watch: Cuba Policy: Obama Should Extend Right To Travel To All Americans Top
(Washington, DC, April 13, 2009) - President Barack Obama's executive order ending restrictions on Cuban-Americans' travel and remittances to Cuba is a major break from an ineffective and unjust policy, but the US government should take further steps to adopt a new approach toward Cuba, Human Rights Watch said today. Congress should promptly extend to all Americans the right to travel to Cuba, Human Rights Watch said. At the same time, the Obama administration should work with allies in Europe and Latin America to forge a targeted, multilateral approach toward addressing human rights violations by the Cuban government. "If President Obama is serious about promoting change in Cuba, this executive order must be part of a larger shift away from the US's unilateral approach toward the Cuban government," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "Only by working with its allies in Latin American and Europe will the US be able to chip away at Castro's repressive machinery." On April 13, Obama issued an executive order to eliminate all limits on travel and remittances by Cuban Americans to Cuba. Previously, the US government only allowed Cuban Americans to visit the island once a year and capped the amount of support Cubans could send to relatives at $75 per month. Legislation introduced in Congress in February 2009, called the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, would extend to all Americans the right to travel to Cuba. Cuba is the only country in the world to which the US government restricts the travel of its citizens. "Not only did the restrictions cause considerable suffering and violate the rights of Cuban American families, but they completely failed to bring any change to Cuba," Vivanco said. "Congress should build on this momentum to give all Americans the right to travel to Cuba." A Human Rights Watch report, "Families Torn Apart," documented the human cost of the US restrictions on travel by Cuban Americans and found that they infringed upon the internationally recognized right to freedom of movement, and violated the international prohibition on the involuntary separation of families. Obama will meet with other Latin American leaders at the Fifth Summit of the Americas from April 17 to 19 in Trinidad and Tobago, where several countries have vowed to raise the issue of US-Cuba relations. Cuba, which was expelled from the Organization of American States in 1962, was not invited to the summit. "For decades, the US's approach toward Cuba has isolated the United States more than it has isolated the Cuban government," Vivanco said. "If President Obama wants to break from this failed policy and forge new alliances, the Summit of the Americas is the ideal place to start." To read the October 2005 Human Rights Watch report, "Families Torn Apart: The High Cost of US and Cuban Travel Restrictions," please go here. Keep in touch with Huffington Post World on Facebook and Twitter . More on Cuba
 
Goldman To Pay Back TARP, Posts Profit Top
NEW YORK — Goldman Sachs, in another sign that banks may be turning themselves around, beat Wall Street's earnings expectations as it reported a profit of $1.66 billion for the first three months of this year. The bank, long considered one of the strongest players in the industry amid the ongoing credit crisis, also said it plans to raise $5 billion in a public offering to help it pay back government bailout funds. In a report that came a day earlier than expected, the New York-based bank said it earned $3.39 per share, easily surpassing analysts' forecasts for profit of $1.64 per share. This compares with earnings of $1.47 billion, or $3.23 per share, in the quarter ended Feb. 29 of last year. When Goldman became a bank holding company last fall amid the mushrooming credit crisis, it switched its reporting cycle so its fiscal quarters were in line with calendar quarters beginning Jan. 1. To adjust its reporting schedule, Goldman began fiscal 2009 on Jan. 1 instead of Dec. 1 of last year. The bank said for the month of December, which fell between the change in reporting cycles, it lost $1 billion, or $2.15 per share. Goldman's total revenue was $11.88 billion during the quarter, compared with $18.63 billion in the prior-year quarter. Analysts forecast revenue of $7.19 billion. Goldman said profit was bolstered by strong revenue growth in its fixed income and currency businesses. Goldman said it planned a public stock offering of $5 billion which would be used, with additional resources, to pay back its government debt. Goldman received $10 billion in government funds during the downturn last fall as part of the U.S. Treasury Department's program to invest directly in hundreds of banks and try and help alleviate the nearly frozen credit markets. The company also declared a dividend of 35 cents. Shares slipped $1.90 to $128.25 in after-hours trading. Shares had jumped $5.82, or 4.7 percent, to close regular trading at $130.15. More on Goldman Sachs
 
PETA: Obama Puppy Should Be Neutered (But He Already Is) Top
Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to the White House today asking President Obama to neuter Bo, the first family's new six-month-old Portuguese Water Dog puppy. In the letter , obtained by U.S. News, the PETA president writes she is sending a "coupon good for one free sterilization at PETA's SNIP clinic." "...Money alone, unless you pour in as much as the Iraq war has cost us, cannot 'fix' the overpopulation problem.Please show that you understand this by making the first dog the last dog of his line and having Bo neutered. Sex in the White House has been the topic of past scandals, but with a simple 'snip,' the first dog can set a new tone and a great example." However, according to U.S. News, the puppy is already fixed. An entry in PETA's blog says the organization is "disappointed" the Obamas accepted the purebred puppy from the Kennedys over a rescue or shelter dog, and worries that not all Portuguese Water Dogs adopted from breeders will have the opportunity to be "re-homed," like the Obama dog, ending up in shelters instead. Let us be clear: The new first dog, Bo, is not a rescue. While he was returned to the breeder by his first owners, that subtle point is missing from or buried in most news reports and is no doubt lost on the masses of people who will be lining up at pet shops and demanding "Obama puppies." These puppies will eventually lose their appeal, once people get tired of taking care of them, but because most pet shops and many breeders don't take "returns," guess where those unwanted "Obama puppies" are going to end up? At extremely crowded, overworked shelters like D.C.'s Washington Humane Society. More on Bo Obama
 
Lucia Brawley: Part II - Mordecai's Metamorphosis: Why Arts Education is a Matter of Social Justice and Why it will Save the World Top
(Continued from last week.) Richard Florida's besteller, The Rise of the Creative Class, reveals how the "organization man" of the 1950s has given way to a new type of worker, less structured and more innovative in thought, generating an economy in which ideas hold greater currency than widgets. Another business-world bestseller, Daniel H. Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, explains how the current realities of "Abundance, Asia and Automation" are creating an American economy predicated upon "inventiveness, empathy, meaning" (http://www.danpink.com/wnm.html). In other words, we live in an abundant society that allows us room to search for meaning and the search for meaning becomes a multi-billion-dollar industry. Outsourcing and the automation of previously lucrative, more left-brain-based jobs, like IT, accounting and law, augment the demand for meaning-making, creativity-based lines of work. Historically, America, a nation of "rugged individualists," has reared great inventers, thinkers and innovators. Countries like China and India, where rote learning, based on colonial education systems, produced technically adept workers who were unable to compete with American workers in inventiveness and critical thinking. However, now, with the advent of programs such as Harvard's WIDE - Worldwide Interactive Development Education - students and workers in India, China and other Asian countries, are taking online courses to learn how to think more independently. If other nations surpass the U.S. both technically and innovatively, there will be no chance for us to stay on-course as the world's leading economy. And while as an artist I believe in equality, world citizenship, and one human race, I would nevertheless like to see the United States, with its democratic system of government and renewed commitment to rule of law, retain its global primacy. Therefore, yes, we must improve our education overall, including in the fields of science, technology and engineering. But we must also remain ever cognizant of our national genius - characterized by independent thinking and improvisation. There is no better training ground for creativity, spontaneity, effective communication, and an understanding of difference - in other words, all the skills necessary for us to perform in a global future - than in the humanities and all of the arts. Culture has always been among America's greatest exports. Without the U.S., the world would have no Ragtime, no Jazz, no Rock'n'roll, no Hip-Hop, no Joffrey Ballet or Alvin Ailey Dance Company, no Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman or Langston Hughes, no Romare Bearden or Georgia O'Keefe, no Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin or Toni Morrison, no Frank Lloyd Wright or I.M. Pei, no Tennessee Williams or August Wilson, no Humphrey Bogart or Rita Moreno, no Angela Bassett or Meryl Streep, nor international box office busters, Sam Jackson or Angelina Jolie. One major roadblock that historically has stood in the path of nation-wide arts education is the lack of studies proving that it raises achievement levels in all subjects, that it translates into a higher rate of college matriculation and better paying jobs. However, new arts-related studies have begun to proliferate. Washington's Institute for Sustainable Communities has a Leadership for a Changing World component, with web interviews, including one with Arnie Aprill, the founder of the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), in which Aprill states: The research has shown that youth 'at risk' benefit the most from arts-integrated programming. Young people living in challenging circumstances tend to be creatives because they need so much flexibility, creativity and improvisation to survive challenging circumstances. Their assets are typically enormous and under-recognized. The arts can be life-saving and life-affirming for young people who have been discarded by the culture." (http://www.leadershipforchange.org/talks/archive.php3?ForumID=33) Aprill goes on to site the research of Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford Professor of Linguistics and English, which shows, that: Young people who participate in the arts for at least three hours on three days each week through at least one full year are: • 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement • 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools • 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair • 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance • 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem Young artists, as compared with their peers, are likely to: • Attend music, art, and dance classes nearly three times as frequently • Participate in youth groups nearly four times as frequently • Read for pleasure nearly twice as often • Perform community service more than four times as often (Living the Arts through Language + Learning: A Report on Community-based Youth Organizations, Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation For the Advancement of Teaching, Americans for the Arts Monograph, November 1998) The Maine Alliance for Arts Education's Advocacy Handbook, which also cites Shirley Brice Heath's work, goes on to mention two studies -- one from UCLA and one a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Justice, National Endowment for the Arts and the advocacy group, Americans for the Arts. Both studies support the social value of arts education: The facts are that arts education... • makes a tremendous impact on the developmental growth of every child and has proven to help level the "learning field" across socioeconomic boundaries. (Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School, James S. Catterall, The UCLA Imagination Project, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA, Americans for the Arts Monograph, January 1998) • has a measurable impact on youth at risk in deterring delinquent behavior and truancy problems while also increasing overall academic performance among those youth engaged in after school and summer arts programs targeted toward delinquency prevention. (YouthARTS Development Project, 1996, U.S. Department of Justice, National Endowment for the Arts, and Americans for the Arts) So, arts education not only helps kids develop their potential, but helps make society safer as a whole. Former Republican presidential candidate and bass guitar player, Mike Huckabee, has established arts education as a bi-partisan issue, ordering studies on the value of the arts, as part of a balanced public education at a level similar to what private school and IB students receive: While there are many competing priorities in public education that are deserving of support, this choice of focus for my [Education Commission of the States] Chairman's Initiative was a simple one. It was simple because I know both from deep personal experience and from the evidence I have seen in school that arts education must be a vital part of every child's education. From improving academic and student achievement to enhancing our nation's overall economic competitiveness, the arts offer many practical benefits. In fact, I would suggest that the future of our economy is based on establishing a creative class and creating a generation of people who can think artistically. That's why an arts education has value in and of itself . . . [T]he arts are not extracurricular, extraneous or expendable, but instead an essential part of a well-rounded education for all of our students. (Governor's Commission on the Arts in Education, Findings and Recommendations,July 2006) Still, we need more research, in order to secure mainstream support for arts education's place in the education of the whole child. The government must invest in studies that show unequivocally the result of a thorough arts education, as part of a balanced overall education. This short-term commitment of investing in studies has the added benefit of requiring, at least for the moment, very little federal funding for arts education. Just start with the studies and then see if the programs are worth investing in. If they are, then you will see an enormous social, cultural and economic return on your tax dollar. But beware: please don't study our children in their educational environment as if you were testing the effectiveness of a new drug. We can't have, as Patrick Riccards, CEO of Exemplar Communications Strategies, an educational consulting company, says, "One group of children receiving an arts education and one group staring at the wall for five years." The education research community must continue devising new methodologies for studying education delivery systems, remaining ever vigilant that the subjects of these studies are breathing, growing children. Deborah Reeve, the brilliant and passionate Executive Director of the National Art Education Association (NAEA) in Washington, D.C., alerted me to an article by Elliot Eisner, the Lee Jacks Professor Emeritus of Education and Professor Emeritus of Art at Stanford University. In "What Education Can Learn from the Arts," Professor Eisner postulates that the education world has used scientific bases for improving its methods, but also stands to learn a great deal from the arts (Volume 62, No.2, Art Education, the Journal of the NAEA). "This paradigm, a scientistic paradigm, was much more interested in certainty in methods than the surprises that some methods would yield. It was more concerned with measurement than with meaning, and at times its metaphors likened education to a business," Eisner writes. He goes on to enumerate eight ways in which artistic paradigms can improve schools: 1. Education can learn from the arts that form and content cannot be separated. How something is said or done shapes the content of experience. 2. Education can learn from the arts that everything interacts; there is no content without form, and no form without content. 3. Education can learn from the arts that nuance matters. To the extent to which teaching is an art, attention to nuance is critical. 4. Education can learn from the arts that surprise is not to be seen as an intruder in the process of inquiry but as a part of the rewards one reaps when working artistically. 5. Education can learn from the arts that slowing down perception is the most promising way to see what is actually there. 6. Education can learn from the arts that the limits of language are not the limits of cognition. We know more than we can tell. 7. Education can learn from the arts that somatic experience is one of the most important indicators that someone has gotten it right. 8. Education can learn from the arts that open-ended tasks permit the exercise of imagination, and the exercise of imagination is one of the most important of human aptitudes. It is imagination, not necessity that is the mother of invention. (pp. 7-9, Vol. 62., No. 2, Art Education) In other words, not only students, but teachers, must be educated via artistic paradigms. Professional Development stands as one vital component in developing arts education standards. Last spring, Louise Music's office at the ACOE (highlighted in Part I of this article) partnered with the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association Arts Initiative and California Alliance for Arts Education to "showcase discipline-specific and integrated arts instruction, new resources for strengthening and expanding K-12 arts education in school districts, advocacy strategies, and new ideas for professional development and curriculum development . . . [through a] plenary presentation by Oakland Unified arts teachers with Arnie Aprill." (http://www.oaklandafterschool.org/?cat=16). Meanwhile, Barbara Cox, Arts Education Partnership Coordinator at Minnesota's Perpich Center for Arts Education, has helped develop an arts education partnership between Minnesota and North Dakota, in order to create inter-state standards for arts education and professional development. Arts educators around the U.S. derive inspiration, not only from each other, but also from programs abroad. Italy's Reggio Emilia approach to education reclaims so-called waste materials, i.e., interesting garbage, in order to cultivate "critical thinking, creativity, and exploration of the possibilities of changing cultural-historical perceptions over time . . . [I]t encourages children to think deeply about material culture, and can help support broader social, cognitive, and aesthetic educational goals." (p.14, NAEA's Art Education) And that is all before the children starts reconfiguring the found objects into works of art, which they will, in turn, employ their analytical and communication skills to discuss, thus developing "a diverse repertoire of languages . . . on their journey toward understanding themselves and their world." (p.15, Arts Education). As Professor Eisner says: When the going gets tough we should remember that there are few higher compliments that one can assign to an individual for his or her work than to say of that work it is a 'work of art.' Indeed, a work of art may represent one of the highest forms of human achievement, again, whether in the fine arts themselves or in the sciences. (p.9, "What Education Can Learn from the Arts," NAEA journal of Art Education) Perhaps we ascribe praise to achievement by calling it "a work of art" because we innately comprehend that art distills the meaning of our human experience in a way that resonates with every level of our being - intellectual and physical, conscious and subconscious, primal and spiritual. George C. Wolfe's Broadway production of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" and Central Park production of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest," ignited an indescribable fire in the foundations of my being when I was 16 and 17, filling my life with meaning and cementing my goal to be an actress and writer. For the inner-city graffiti artists and hip-hoppers represented in the seminal 1982 documentary "Style Wars," street art gave purpose to young lives that would otherwise have been overtaken by drugs and violence. Jessica Mele, Program Director at San Francisco's Performing Arts Workshop - which has helped inner-city kids "develop critical thinking, creative expression, and basic learning skills through the arts" since 1965 (http://www.performingartsworkshop.org/aboutUsMissionHistory.htm) -- wrote to me today: We're hearing from a lot of small family foundations who have supported us for over 25 years, that they're "changing their funding priorities" to support direct services like food banks. It seems to me that pitting domestic hunger relief and the arts against each other is exactly the wrong way to look at the current situation. Both are essential - the first, to our survival on a family level; the second, to our survival on a societal level. Now we should be strengthening arts education programs, rather than cutting them (the state of ca [sic] has made elementary arts education funding flexible at the local level - though still present in school budgets; the city of sf's [sic] arts commission just tried to eliminate the only full-time arts education position they have). If we develop a citizenry of engaged, inquisitive, creative and empathetic thinkers, we could avoid fiscal crises like the one today. Artists don't see the world in terms of profit to be made. They see the connections and the big picture, not the bottom line. (quote from a personal email) As our economy crashes, wars rage, our environment hangs in the balance, and world orders shift, human beings everywhere search for meaning. "In a
 
William Bradley: Obama's Crisis Management: Of Pirates and Missiles Top
President Barack Obama made his first public statement, very measured considering the successful outcome, about the Somali pirate crisis only today after the rescue of American freighter captain Richard Phillips. Barack Obama's management of two flashpoint crises -- both relatively minor but caught up in the now typical hysteria of our media culture -- gives us some good clues about his crisis management style. The just concluded hostage crisis off the coast of Somalia and the launch early this month of a new North Korean missile showed Obama in "no drama" mode, determined to avoid distraction and continue with his core messaging strategy. Obama actually took a lower profile public role with the more consequential of the two crises, the Somali pirate hostage crisis, than he did with the North Korean missile launch. But he seems to have spent more time behind the scenes on the crisis on which he spent the least amount of time before the cameras. American freighter captain Richard Phillips just after his dramatic Sunday rescue from Somali pirates by the US Navy. I'm told that Obama didn't want to add to the inherent drama of American freighter captain Richard Phillips in a lifeboat with four Somali pirates with public pronouncements during the standoff. In part because the insertion of his public statements would would work against the overall strategy of wearing down and disheartening the pirates, bobbing on the waves of the Indian Ocean in an out-of-gas lifeboat. And in part because the operation could have gone sideways, with dramatically bad results. That would have been especially true if Obama had paid any attention to his critics on the far right, who in their usual hysterical fashion agitated for a swift raid on the lifeboat. Ironically, the French did much the same thing on Friday, sending commandos onto a hijacked yacht. They killed all the pirates, but lost a French hostage in the bargain. Phillips, in close quarters on a much smaller lifeboat, could easily have been killed had the boat been raided early on in the stand-off, when the pirates were less tired and more pumped up on the excitement of their mission and the drama of confronting the US Navy. Early on in the stand-off, Phillips briefly escaped his Somali pirate captors. Obama and his advisors and military commanders took a different, though no less lethal, tack than the French, who have now staged three raids on ships hijacked by the Somali pirates. It was reminiscent of Obama's approach in the Democratic primaries, in which he relied on "the math" of the situation. In that case, Obama inexorably rolled up an insurmountable delegate advantage, sweeping smaller states and blocking the Clinton campaign's ability to come back with a few high-profile late primary victories. In this case, Obama used the resources of the US military and government to shut down the pirates' options and make them more vulnerable. With advice from FBI hostage negotiators, the commander of the nearest Navy ship, USS Bainbridge, Commander Frank Castellana, set in motion a plan to string the pirates along and wear them down, establishing rapport while denying their goals. Ransom for the hostage, which would set a dangerous precedent, was denied, as was safe passage for the pirates. When other pirates sought to link up with the lifeboat with their captured vessels, with other hostages aboard, the Navy blocked them. The American crew of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship successfully fended off their hijackers. But that was only the beginning of the drama. Meanwhile, choosing from a set of options, Obama ordered the insertion of a group of Navy Seal (Sea Air Land) commandos aboard the the destroyer Bainbridge. Out of sight of the pirates, the Seals executed a parachute jump into the ocean and made their way to the Bainbridge. There, with sophisticated sniper rifles, they surreptitiously took up position. On Friday, Obama gave the order for the pirates to be killed if Phillips was judged by the captain of the Bainbridge to be in terminal danger from his armed captors. Which, of course, could be seen as being true at any point. When the drifting lifeboat, which got very hot during the day and very cold at night, ran into choppy water, the pirates agreed to be taken in tow by the Navy destroyer. One pirate used his injury as an excuse to be taken aboard the Bainbridge. Meanwhile, the Bainbridge shortened the two line to less than 100 yards. The expert Seal snipers, with their sophisticated weaponry, ended the stand-off with a headshot for each of the pirates. The pirates who remained aboard the lifeboat with Phillips never knew the Seals were there. North Korea vowed to test a new long-range missile and place a satellite in orbit. The test occurred, but the mission failed. Obama gave more attention in his public statements, though less in private discussion, to the North Korean missile launch during that crisis. That's probably because North Korea, unlike the Somali pirates, is a nation-state. And because North Korea has a pretty well-established pattern of trying to get attention and validation through various missile launches and brandishings of nuclear reactors. In a sense, it was all part of an established kabuki. The launch actually failed in its mission of putting a North Korean satellite in to orbit. While the first stage of the rocket was successful, launching it over an agitated Japan, failure occurred somewhere in the second or third stages. Some over on the American right said that Obama should have stopped the North Korean launch. Obama had ordered US Navy destroyers with anti-missile capability into the area, but did not order the shoot-down. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the missile should have been stopped, if not shot down, perhaps by special operations forces. He was quite vague, actually, perhaps because what he was saying didn't make much sense. Since the missile could have been shot down, it wasn't necessary to actually do so. And North Korea - which the Bush/Cheney Administration removed from the list of threatening rogue nations after going through this sort of thing on several previous occasions - has a habit of making a spectacle of itself in order to publicize one of its few industries which actually has some success, and to try to get international aid. What it will ultimately get is some new sanctions, which will probably be ineffectual. Both crises revealed a lot about how Obama approaches crises in the form of issues he has not previously selected to focus on. Long-term solutions with regard to Somalia and North Korea? That's another matter. You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com. More on Barack Obama
 

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