Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Y! Alert: The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Picasa Update Can Tag Faces With New Photo Recognition Feature (VIDEO) Top
**Scroll down for video** Picasa 3.5's latest update is more Big Brother than handy. The photo sharing site has just launched a new facial-recognition feature that will automatically scan your photos and then tag faces it recognizes using names from your Google contacts. Each time you add new photos, Picasa will attempt to tag the faces it has seen before. As Google engineer Todd Bogdan explains in a blog post , "When you first launch Picasa 3.5, it will start scanning the photos in your computer's collection to create groups of similar faces. It puts all these groups into the 'Unnamed People' album, from where you can easily add a name tag to a set of faces by clicking 'Add a name' and typing the person's name." In other words, erasing Bachelor party misdeeds just got that much more impossible. And the sins of the past aren't safe either. ReadWriteWeb notes, "The service is so good at finding your mug and tagging it that wild photos from yesteryear can resurface and wreak havoc on your reputation. [...] At this point, facial recognition software and batch tagging is making it tougher to put on the facade of being a respectable human being. It looks like underground speakeasys are about to see a resurgence." Read more about the update and its additional features on the Google Photos Blog and InformationWeek. WATCH: Follow HuffPostTech On Facebook And Twitter! More on Google
 
Michelle Kraus: The Two Presidents Are In Sync Using the Media to Deliver the Message: CGI Opens in NYC. Top
Something is really going on over the last few days. You can smell it in the air like springtime. There is hope. The two Presidents are dueling for prime time television spots, and romancing the American public. Aha, these two are showing the loggerheads in the media how it should be done. Obama did the grand slam on the Sunday shows from Meet the Press to Face the Nation and  This Week  attempting to defuse the acrimony over his health care agenda, and it went very well. Good going! And if that were not enough now former President Clinton waltzed through the television networks with his global message for the opening of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City held during the convening of the United Nations. This is really impressive in its attempt to right the media machine, and put it back on track. There is no controversy here, and yet the story has legs. It is the President who kicks off the convening of the Clinton Global Initiative embracing the world leaders and the fundamentals of world health, global poverty alleviation, education and climate intervention. This is a magnificent prelude to the meetings to be held later in the week with the Chinese government and other world leaders at the United Nations. This is a true gesture of unity. It is powerful and provoking as Obama steps up to regain leadership in the eyes of his country and world. Notably, there is no one more skilled than the former President Clinton to extend his hands to the new President. Consider the implications of the trilogy of President Obama, his Secretary of State Madam Hillary Clinton and the former President Bill Clinton. If the media cannot get this right without stirring the proverbial pot, they never will. This is the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, an event that brings together global leaders from business, government, academia, science, religion, and non-governmental organizations, including numerous heads of state, former heads of state, CEO’s of multinational corporations, and prominent philanthropists. This evening President Clinton announced that more than 60 current and former heads of state, 500 business leaders, and 400 leaders from nongovernmental and philanthropic organizations will be attending the meeting, representing 84 countries. "In the midst of a global financial crisis, it doesn't surprise me that more people are attending this meeting than ever before,"” President Clinton said. “"Since 2005, it has become clear that CGI has found an effective model for addressing challenges around the world….” Consider this in light of the irony of the cameo appearance last evening of former Majority Leader Tom Delay on Dancing With The Stars . The media has been handed one of the stories that will change our lives. Hopefully, they will run with it and return to good journalism. More on United Nations
 
Mark Kirk's Support Shaky Among Conservatives: Rival Poll Top
There are chinks in Mark Kirk's conservative armor, but are there enough to keep the Republican Congressman from winning his party's 2010 Senate nomination? A new poll released by rival candidate Patrick Hughes, a Hinsdale developer, shows pronounced ambivalence among conservatives to support Kirk, the GOP frontrunner in the race for Barack Obama's former seat. The poll of 500 likely Republican Primary voters, conducted September 14-15 by Market Research Insight , found Kirk's favorability rating at just 27 percent, with only 23 percent of respondents willing to commit to voting for him in a primary with seven other candidates. The polled voters labeled themselves as 69 percent conservative and 26 percent moderate, a potentially troubling number for Kirk, who voted in favor of the president's cap-and-trade bill and supports abortion rights. A full 63 percent said they oppose the cap-and-trade bill and only 12 percent support it. Upon being told that Kirk was one of eight Republicans who voted for the cap-and-trade bill, 68 percent said that makes them more likely to vote against him. Kirk has since walked away from his vote, saying that if the same bill comes to a vote in the Senate he would vote against it (which could have its own consequences in a general election). Perhaps most revealing of the gulf between Illinois Republican voters and the national party were the answers to this question: "If most of the top Republicans in Washington supported Kirk's Senate bid would that encourage you to vote for or against Mark Kirk?" Only 19 percent of respondents said the national push would encourage them a lot to vote for Kirk and 24 percent said encourage them a little. Another 13 percent wanted to vote against Kirk should Washington Republicans back him, with 44 percent saying the Washington support would have no influence on them. The survey had a 4.5 percent margin of error Read the poll memo: Patrick Hughes Campaign Polling Results - More on Senate Races
 
Kevin Morris and Glenn Altschuler: Doctorow's Bleak House Top
Review of Homer & Langley. By E.L. Doctorow. Random House. 209 pages, $26.00 Don't let book jacket summaries fool you. Homer & Langley , E.L Doctorow's ambitious new novel, isn't anything like his richly detailed historical narratives, Ragtime , The Book of Daniel , and The March . His subjects, of course, are the New York City nutball Collyer brothers and their activities in - mostly in - and around their Upper Fifth Avenue mansion. The narrator is Homer, "the blind brother," who recounts a progression from the Manner to madness. But Doctorow makes no pretense in this novel to verisimilitude. Indeed, he extends their lives from 1947 to the late 1970s. Although (as the book jacket claims), "the epic events" of the twentieth century - "wars, political movements, technological advances" - do pass through the Collyers' cluttered house - Doctorow isn't really interested, as he's been so often before, in illuminating America's past. After a wealthy childhood, Homer tells us, Langely ships out "Over There." He returns home with scars to his body and mustard gas in his lungs, but it is the damage to his soul which provides the book its historically familiar - and philosophically challenging - subject: Langley's post-World War I disillusionment. Langely becomes a full-blown eccentric. He is - as the real life Langely was - a compulsive hoarder, venturing out into the city each day and returning with junky treasures. Homer is, well, a home-bound "homer" (and, of course, a "Homer"). With the exception of a stint as the piano player at a silent movie house and fast walks around the neighborhood, he spends most of his time exploring the tactile sensations of the residence. There is a halcyon time for the brothers, just before the moon landing, when Homer resumes his piano playing and Langley takes up painting. But they quickly return to outer space. As a story, the novel moves briskly. Love interests such as Perdita Spence, Mary Elizabeth Riordan and Jacqueline Roux, along with a collection of other characters, weave through, emblems of their times. These folks can be compelling, especially the Collyers' cook, Granmama Robileaux and her grandson, Harold, a gifted musician who is killed in WW II. But some, like Vincent the gangster, who befriends the boys at a speakeasy, sends call girls as a gift, and then does the Collyers a bad turn, are B-movie stereotypes. It must also be said that some references, like the one to a Pulitzer prize winning photo of Langley, seem culled from the historical record and pasted in. But even when he throws pitches low and outside, you're willing to give Doctorow a free pass. As time goes by, the Collyer's brownstone fills with more and more miscellanea. The most fantastic object is a Ford Model T, which Langley sets up in the vast dining room, a perfect metaphor for Homer's imagined world, with its blurred line between inside and out, Langley's crackpot attempts at control, and the breathtaking technological transformation of New York City during the century. Already world-weary, Homer and Langley seem to pass the point of no return with news of Harold's death. The brothers slumber, sleepwalk, and stagger through the fifties, sixties and seventies, collecting crap, encountering hippies and fighting with just about everybody. Langley whacks out and Homer withers within. What's going on here? Would Doctorow mail in a March of Time ? Why would the master of the "deep verticals" of historical fiction write a laterally moving novella about bizarre brothers who overstuffed their brownstone? Homer & Langely , as we read it, is a philosophical reflection, best understood as a meditation on the distinction between the universal and the particular. Convinced that "doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle," Langley is a self-appointed Modern Day Platonist: he collects every New York City newspaper each day, aiming to create a single edition. In doing so, he thinks he can demonstrate that every person, event, and phenomenon is but a pale copy of an Ideal Form, thus justifying his decision to stave off despair by isolating himself. "All those census records," he tells his brother, "all those archives, attest only to the self-importance of the human being who gives himself a name and a pat on the back and doesn't admit how irrelevant he is to the turnings of the planet." Homer, for his part, keeps reaching, albeit episodically and ineffectually, toward the particular, the unique. He lives through music and he yearns for love. Although he is, ultimately, at the mercy of the sighted Langley, Homer parries his brother's beliefs reluctantly but resolutely. Are individuals irrelevant? Is there nothing new under the sun? "I wasn't prepared to go that far, for if you felt that way what was the use of living in the world." For "someone who had no regard for his own distinctiveness," he observes, shrewdly, Langley "certainly was putting up quite a struggle, holding off the city agencies, the creditors, the neighbors and the press and relishing the battles." Properly framed, the book considers ultimate questions. And they ain't easy. What explains modern life? Does a Langley-like acknowledgment of evil, imperfect communications, and death lead to the conclusion that one should foreswear human connections? If you subordinate the particular to the universal, as Langley does, will you end up powerless - and with a Model T in your living room? Does Platonism end in a darkness darker than Homer's? Throughout the novel, there is the haunting presence of Doctorow sitting in Homer's seat at the typewriter, and a sad feeling that we are reading his final argument. Without shrinking from the bleakness, Doctorow surely casts his vote for Homer and for a love and not Love. "If what mattered was the universal form of Dear Girl," Homer opines, "and if each Dear Girl was only a particular expression of the universal, any of them might serve equally well, and could replace another as our morally insufficient nature demanded. And if that were the case how could I ever be educated to love anyone for a lifetime?" Homer, it's clear, wants to love someone for a lifetime - and he might even settle for some good moments, hours, or days. In the end, though, Doctorow chooses to remain a bit elusive. When a failing Homer is visited by "Jacqueline Roux," the novelist doesn't make clear whether she is actually "there" or present in his mind as an Ideal Form. "I don't remember the sex," Homer confesses. "I felt her heart beating. I remember her tears under our kisses. I remember holding her in my arms and absolving God of meaningless." And even more ambiguously - and achingly - Doctorow has Homer wish for himself a madness akin to his brother's as the only relief against "an unremitting consciousness" that is "irredeemably aware of itself" - and, at the same time, desire, desperately, the touch, the very particular touch, of his brother's hand. In Homer & Langley - and for Homer and Langley...and maybe E.L. Doctorow - such philosophical questions come at the end of the line, when deep historical narratives no longer seem adequate.
 
Brendan DeMelle: PG&E Quits U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Nike Fed Up Too Top
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) announced today that the utility giant is dumping its membership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, citing the business group’s "extreme position on climate change." Announcing the pull-out in a company blog titled " Irreconcilable Differences ," PG&E says that its Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Darbee told the Chamber in a letter today that: "We find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored. In our opinion, an intellectually honest argument over the best policy response to the challenges of climate change is one thing; disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of these challenges are quite another." Bravo to PG&E for taking a stand. Pete Altman at NRDC reports that Nike is equally displeased with the U.S. Chamber’s head-in-the-sand approach to climate change threats.  The company issued a statement yesterday stating that Nike “fundamentally disagrees with the US Chamber of Commerce's position on climate change.” Referring to the U.S. Chamber’s recent boneheaded call for the EPA to hold " the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century " to debate whether climate change is man-made, Nike berates the Chamber in its statement : “Nike believes that climate change is an urgent issue affecting the world today and that businesses and their representative associations need to take an active role to invest in sustainable business practices and innovative solutions to address the issue. It is not a time for debate but instead a time for action and we believe the Chamber's recent petition sets back important work currently being undertaken by EPA on this issue.”   There is little chance that the Chamber will suddenly stop working on behalf of its major fossil fuel constituent companies to kill the climate bill.  The Chamber is much too stubborn for that. Nike should take a queue from PG&E and exit the Chamber’s roster immediately, and hopefully others will follow. As Daily Kos contributor David Brodwin observes : “This crucial announcement from PG&E is the beginning of a massive reframing, away from jobs vs. polar bears, and focusing on the growing divide within the business community: innovative and forward-looking companies that "get it" vs. old line extraction companies that cling to the past.”   It is up to conscientious companies like PG&E and the recent defectors from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity to distance their companies from the Chamber and all industry front groups fighting to protect the status quo.  A lot of companies who pay dues to the Chamber have stated their commitment to work on passing meaningful clean energy legislation.  If they are genuine in that conviction, they must cancel all memberships with the Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, and any other group working to derail federal action on climate. PG&E has broken the seal by leaving the Chamber.  Who will be next?   Read the PG&E statement " Irreconcilable Differences ."
 
Jim Watkins: The Media On The Media On The Media Top
I had a bit of a revelation a couple of days ago, about the nature of national television news as it stands today, at least as it concerns political/public policy stories. Lots of you have probably had this revelation already, but, hey, I work in the media, and sometimes can't see the forest for the trees. I knew President Obama was going to do a grand sweep of the Sunday morning talk shows to push his health care reform plan. I also knew there was no way I'd be able to watch any of those shows; that sort of leisurely Sunday morning television viewing ended for me three children ago. So I figure I'd catch the highlights, so to speak, on one of the network evening news programs. Lots of times, there isn't a lot of big news on Sundays, so rehashes of the morning panel shows are pretty common. And I really wanted to find out what Obama was saying about rescuing health care reform--what changes he would accept in the bill, what he would consider unacceptable, etc. So at 6:30, my wife and I sat down to watch ABC News. What we found out about the policy points of the health care legislation as it stood at that moment was exactly, precisely, NOTHING. Instead, the coverage immediately began with commentary about whether President Obama was overexposing himself by being on so many programs at the same time. Media experts followed political consultants talking about how it was or wasn't a good political move for the White House to be doing this, and how it was impacting the polls, and how the rest of the media was responding to those polls... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.. Not a word from any doctors, patients, uninsured people, or people dropped by their insurance companies. It was just the horse race, just the politics, with none of the policy. When they went back to the studio after the video report, there were two people joining the anchor at the desk. Finally, I thought, some policy or medical or insurance experts who can actually bring me up to date on the status and content of the legislation itself, and how the President was presenting it. But I was wrong. It was two more media people--Matt Taibbi, a very good reporter for "Rolling Stone," and a young woman, whose name I don't remember, whose qualification for being there seemed to be that she had a website. We watched as they proceeded to spend two or three more network television minutes debating how the media was responding to the President's appearances and what effect this would have in the polls. It was the media analyzing the media analyzing the polls measuring people's responses to.....the media. I learned nothing about the health care bill. This is what has come of network news cutbacks on hard news gathering, and the pumping up of the cheaper-to-produce opinion gabfests that now fill the cable news channels, and, increasingly, as I discovered Sunday, the network news programs themselves: namely, lots of talk--not many facts. People have long criticized local news, where I've spent my career, for focusing too much on crime and fires and weather, and certainly some of those criticisms are justified. But at least when we tell you about a fire, we're telling you about the fire, not about how the fire is being covered by the media or how it impacts the fire commissioner's approval ratings; it's the news, the facts, the lives it impacts..and that's pretty much it. After what I saw on ABC Sunday night, I've never been so proud to be in the sector of the media I'm in. Try this out: whatever national news you watch, whatever programs on whatever cable channel, pledge to only watch the segments that give you the hard facts or discussions about the hard facts concerning any particular story. The minute the focus changes to "let's see what the media is saying about the media coverage of this topic," turn it off, or change the channel. I think you'll find you have some extra time on your hands. Maybe more time to hang out with your family on Sunday morning.
 
Gloria Duffy: Ethical Explosion Over Scotland Top
The dilemma underlying many ethically challenging issues is selecting the better of two competing moral goods - or opting for the least bad between two negative choices. Scotland's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, convicted of killing 270 people in 1988 by placing a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103, was a choice that clearly involved such tradeoffs. In August, Scotland released the Lockerbie bomber, a former Libyan secret service agent, on the grounds that he has terminal cancer and less than 3 months to live. Scottish law allows the release of prisoners on the grounds of compassion. The tradeoff to be weighed was between the humane treatment of one individual, and the safety of the society against which he was convicted of committing a terrorist act. Unfortunately, the Scots made the tradeoff in the wrong direction. Here are just a few of the flaws in the thinking behind this decision. It is ridiculous to believe that a medical prediction of exactly 3 months to live can be made confidently, especially about the long-working and gradually fatal disease of prostate cancer. That the Libyan government apparently paid for a medical review of al-Megrahi's condition to arrive at his prognosis makes it even more dubious. This man may live for some time. Even if he is at death's door, to argue for releasing al-Megrahi from prison on humanitarian grounds ignores the magnitude of his crime. This is not someone who killed one victim during a robbery. Such a person would be unlikely to incite others to kill or to kill again themselves, so the risk of releasing them would be small. But terrorists fall into a special category, because they are part of a global movement seeking to kill large numbers of people and destabilize organized societies. To release al-Megrahi ignores the damage he can do as a symbol for terrorists from Al Qaeda to the Taliban, in his remaining time alive. Witness the hero's welcome al-Megrahi received when he returned to Libya. He can have a significant negative impact in just a few months, as proof that terrorism may have its penalties, but in the end the punishment can be waived on humanitarian grounds. This is a bad message to convey to terrorists. Some people believe al-Megrahi was wrongly convicted, based on the circumstantial evidence that a shirt he allegedly purchased was found wrapped around bomb fragments recovered from Flight 103. But the solution to this is to retry his case. As it stands, he has been convicted and that consigns him to prison for life - meaning until death. To argue that release from prison is mandated on humanitarian grounds, one would have to argue that Scottish prisons are inhumane. Given modern European prison standards, that is incorrect. Three meals a day, the right to visitors in a controlled setting, television, access to reading material, the right to practice one's religious beliefs - are all features of the Scottish prison system. So why is it more humane to release this man to go home to Libya to die than to allow him to die in prison? Given the inappropriateness of these ethical tradeoffs, why then did the Scottish government decide to release al-Megrahi? British Foreign Minister Jack Straw has acknowledged that British desire to protect their oil and gas concessions with Libya may have driven the bomber's release. The Libyan government had apparently communicated to Britain that the commercial relationship between the two countries could suffer if al-Megrahi died in prison. The image of independent governance for Scotland may not always be accurate; in this case British officials seem to have pressured their Scottish counterparts. But why choose to release a terrorist to protect trade with Libya? Couldn't the British have provided another gesture to the Libyans to shore up their oil and gas leases? Lifting international sanctions, promoting tourism to Libya and supporting science and technology development are all benefits Libya has sought from other countries in recent years. Surely the British could have found incentives in these or other areas to provide Libya in order to protect their oil and gas deals. This whole episode displays bad government decision-making. The wrong ethical choice was made under the guise of humanitarianism, and financial interests may have intervened to further skew the outcome. The Scottish parliament should review Scotland's compassionate release law and it should not be allowed in cases involving the crime of terrorism. And our good friends the British should in the future consider more carefully the costs and benefits of the ways in which they seek to protect Britain's trade interests. Financial advantages would hardly be worthwhile if the decision to release a prominent terrorist led to a flare-up in terrorist activity.
 
Johann Hari: It Is Five Minutes To Environmental Midnight. We Need To Act - Urgently Top
We are - at the same time - thrillingly close and sickeningly far from solving our planetary fever. The world's leaders huddled in New York City yesterday to discuss man-made global warming, in a United Nations building that will soon be underwater if they fail. They all know what has to happen: their scientists have told them, plainly and urgently. As man-made warming rises up to 2.4 degrees Celsius, all sorts of awful things happen - whole island-states in the South Pacific will drown, for example - but we can stop it. If we turn off the warming gases, the temperature will stabilize. But if we go beyond 2.4 degrees , global warming will run away from us, and we will have lost the Stop button. The Amazon rainforest will dry out and burn down, releasing all the carbon stored in the trees; the vast amounts of warming gases stored in the Arctic will be belched into the atmosphere; and so three degrees will turn ineluctably to four degrees, which will turn to five degrees, and the planet will rapidly become a place we do not recognize. To stay the right side of this climatic Point of No Return, global emissions need to start falling by 2015 - just six years from now - and drop by 85 percent by 2050. Our leaders need to agree this at the climate talks in Copenhagen in December. The scientific debate is over. The answer is in sight. Indeed, each one of the leaders could feel the solution on their skin and in their hair yesterday: it lies in the awesome power of the sun. Each day, the sun bombards our planet with 9000 times more power than we need to run every car, warm every home, and power every electrical appliance on earth. If we can capture just a sliver of one percent of it, we can kick fossil fuels into the melting dustbin of history. The technology exists. It is there, waiting for us. Professor Anthony Patt has shown that all the energy Europe needs could be provided by lining 0.3 percent of the Sahara desert - an area the size of Belgium - with concentrating solar power technology. A consortium of Germany's leading corporations is raring to go. They just need the money. It costs a lot up front - $50bn - but this is nothing like as much we would spend chasing the last dribbles of oil into warzones, and defending ourselves as the planet go into meltdown. Every continent has the same option. The entire energy needs of the US could be met by covering 200 square kilometres of its empty deserts with solar plants: it would cost about ten years' worth of oil purchases, with none of the wars, tyrannies, or blow-back Islamism. China and India have similar options. It is achievable, with the kind of great effort we made to defeat the Nazis. We too could be a great generation - one that came close to the brink, but then came together in a great collective effort to change course. We would leave a lean, green civilization that will run for millennia. But instead, our leaders are fiddling with the old dirty technologies, too addicted and too addled to move us on and up. In Britain, we are actually turning back to coal, mining 15 percent more this year than last. Professor Jim Hansen, the head of NASA and the world's leading climatologist, calls coal power-stations "death factories" that condemn millions to drown or starve or burn. Across Europe, solar power is being allowed to wither: Germany's biggest solar company, Q-Cells, has seen its stock fall from 100 euros to 10 euros in a year. The other market-leader, Spain, has seen a similarly disastrous fallback. The World Bank - which receives £400m of your taxes every year - is promoting this soot-streaked vision across the planet . They have just spent $5bn helping poor countries to build power plants that will destroy them. Indeed, it just bankrolled the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in earth - a coal plant in Gujarat, western India. How can this possibly be defended? US and European governments are engaged in the collective fantasy that coal can be rendered "clean" by "scrubbing" its carbon emissions from the chimney-stacks, and storing them somewhere forever. In the real world, one of the largest "clean coal" pilot plants in operation, the Latrobe Valley's Hazelwood, catches just 0.05 percent of its carbon emissions. Professor Howard Herzog, the renowned expert on this technology, was recently asked what the chances of the technology achieving the cuts we need is. He replied: "Zero." But a small number of people make a lot of money on coal and oil and gas. A shift to reaping power from the sun and the wind and the waves would render the rocks and barrels they have spent a fortune mining worthless - so they are prepared to pay politicians to keep the system working in their favour, and lavish billions on misinformation campaigns to keep us confused. You can see this process working most clearly in the United States. Barack Obama is a highly intelligent man who has appointed some of the best scientists in the world to explain to him what needs to happen now. But he is trapped in a political system soaked in petrol. The lackey-filled House of Representatives has passed a woefully inadequate "Cap and Trade" bill, which - if it worked perfectly - would cut emissions by 6 percent below 1990 levels. Even that won't happen: many of the permits oil companies are supposed to pay for will now be given away for nothing, producing no reductions at all. And even this feeble, sickly bill may not make it through Congress. Meanwhile, China has hinted it would agree to more substantial restraint at Copenhagen if the rich world - responsible for 90 percent of all the warming gases belched into the atmosphere so far - agrees to give 1 percent of its GDP annually to poor countries to adjust to clean fuels. There's a lot to criticise the Chinese dictatorship for, but this isn't one of them. It's a reasonable request for simple justice. Poor countries have done very little to cause this crisis, but they will feel the worst, first. They deserve our reparations. Yet both the EU and US have damned this sane proposal as "totally unrealistic." So are we as a species condemned to fall into the historical crack between a world powered by fossil fuels, and one powered by the sun? Will the fossil record discovered millions of years from now show we were just too irrational and too primitive to make that leap? If we despair and wait glumly for the meltdown, we will make it so. Then we will have little choice but to try to survive as best we can in a radically altered landscape. But there is still a slim window in which sanity can prevail - and I believe, perhaps madly, that it can. It will require a global mass movement of extraordinary tenacity, pressuring governments everywhere, and over-powering the fossil fools. We can still change the tale of the twenty-first century from one of collapse to one of a species finding a way to live with its ecosystem, rather than against it. It can be done. It must be done. Copenhagen is in three months. There, and in the years after when the deal must be implemented, we will learn something profound about ourselves. Are we a great generation - or the worst of all? Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here . You can email him at johann -at- johannhari.com To read an archive of Johann's articles about the environment, click here . More on UN General Assembly
 
David Segal: The Commerce Secretary From Boeing Top
A recent decision by the World Trade Organization, and an upcoming one, could have major implications for the budgets and economies of our 50 states -- effects which should be welcomed by progressives who are typically critical of that secretive regulatory body. United States trade officials and politicians are praising last week's ruling that certain European subsidies to Airbus violate international trade law. It is seen as a boon to US-based Boeing, but the celebration may be premature -- a forthcoming decision will determine whether billions of dollars in government aid to Boeing is also illegal. We should hope the WTO sides with Airbus and the E.U. this time: These grants and tax breaks are busting state budgets, at a time when every last penny is precious. There's a war among the states to lure in businesses; our federal government should mediate it, but it could be the WTO that forces a cease-fire. Washington State was the long-time home of Boeing, and the state's elected officials have paid due deference to that behemoth of airplanes and military machinery for generations. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson earned his nickname as "The Senator From Boeing" -- and worse ones -- for doing Boeing's bidding in the halls of Congress. More recently it was Gary Locke, Washington's governor from 1997 to 2005, who worked hard to minister to the needs of the hometown corporation. Since being appointed by President Obama as secretary of commerce, he has an even higher perch from which he can do so. Locke made a telling comment about corporate subsidies at this summer's National Conference of State Legislatures. Asked by a reporter if legislators had complained to him about the vicious competition between states for businesses, and the billions of dollars localities have conceded in tax revenue to entice their presence, he answered, "I really think that's a states-rights issue ... I understand companies wanting to move, looking for a better business climate." Large corporations have become adept at pitting state and city governments against each other to secure ever bigger budget-busting tax concessions and subsidies, ever threatening to locate their facilities in some more 'business-friendly' state. In fact, many fellow state legislators and I were lamenting these wasteful tax breaks, the race to the bottom they have precipitated, and the harm they have done in this era of budgetary crises. More than ever, we need those squandered dollars for schools and public works and social services. It is unfortunate that our concerns did not reach the Secretary's ear. While disappointing, Locke's reply to the reporter's query was not surprising: As governor, he oversaw perhaps the greatest boondoggle (so far) in the history of tax giveaways to corporations. It damaged local pride when Boeing moved its corporate headquarters from Seattle in 2001, holding Washington State hostage while securing $60 million in tax breaks and subsidies from Illinois and Chicago to relocate. Increasingly sophisticated at extracting tax breaks from its easy prey, in 2003 Boeing spread word that it would manufacture its new 787 mega-jetliner in whichever state offered it the deepest subsidy. Stricken with Stockholm Syndrome, Washington State, under Governor Locke's leadership, ponied up a projected $3 billion to secure the few-thousand jobs promised with the factory, out-bidding about 20 other states. (In practice, it appears that the subsidy package will cost perhaps two-thirds of what was anticipated -- while creating an even smaller fraction of the promised jobs.) The 787 has yet to leave the ground. The Washington State tax break plan is now a key plank in the E.U.'s complaint against the U.S. and Boeing. It is one thing to support such tax breaks as the executive of a single state, recently spurned by a major employer, desperate for new jobs, and wanting to save face. States are trapped in a paradigm wherein it seems to make sense to lure in new corporations, or hold onto old ones, by dangling goodies in front of them -- there's nothing more likely to win a potential vote than securing or saving the job of he or she who shall cast it. A solitary governor ought to lament that corporations regularly hold him or her over the barrel, pitted against governors of neighboring states; it is tragic, but understandable, when he or she succumbs to such pressures by forking over precious public funds. But a Democratic commerce secretary with a birds-eye view of these United States, and a responsibility to act in the interest of all of its citizens, should take a very different stance. As states swipe employers from each other with tax breaks, businesses are moved around and countless tax dollars are lost, but on the net, few new jobs are created. The Boeing plant would be built somewhere, no matter what. If we care about all Americans equally -- as should any cabinet secretary -- it's clear that it would have been better for the public if it had been built without a mammoth subsidy, even if not in Washington State. The same phenomenon, on a somewhat smaller scale, manifests countless of times over, as states and cities compete for factories, stadiums and their sports teams, and corporate headquarters. Public coffers throughout the nation are poorer for it. Locke suggested such interstate competition is a matter of "states' rights." One could argue, however, that it's really a matter of interstate commerce, and hence under the purview of the federal government; the Constitution's commerce clause empowers Congress to regulate commerce "among the several states." Unfortunately, the courts have made it unclear who, if anybody, has standing to force a ruling on the matter. Regardless of its constitutionality, the phenomenon is a destructive one. Rather than encourage the practice, the secretary of commerce should facilitate cooperation among the states -- via federal legislation or an interstate compact -- to reduce corporations' abilities to extract subsidies by playing states and their residents off of each other, as states sprint past one another, into ever deeper deficits. We ought to celebrate the WTO's recent decision not because it hurts Airbus and Europe, but because it reduces pressure to cede public money to corporate giants like Boeing. A ruling against Boeing in coming months could circumvent a complacent administration and commerce secretary and force a reorientation of tax policy that will leave cities and states across our country better off.
 
Meg Whitman For Governor: Campaign Official For Ex-eBay CEO (VIDEO) Top
**Watch Meg's Ad Below** Republican Meg Whitman underscored the advantage of wealth in the 2010 race for governor, launching paid advertisements today for her campaign nine months before GOP voters will determine their nominee. WATCH:
 
Katherine Gustafson: Matt Damon's Commitment to Bill Clinton Top
The best thing about Matt Damon? Good question. The smile? The middle name? (Paige, for the record). Believe it or not, there's something even better. The best thing about Matt Damon is that he just announced that his non-profit, Water.org , will provide clean water to 50,000 people in Haiti. OK, clearly that's a judgment call, but when he made that announcement at the opening plenary session of the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting today, the room did erupt in applause. The Clinton Global Initiative is an annual conference that gathers politicians, philanthropists, scholars, NGO and business leaders - and, apparently, Oscar-wining actors - to figure out ways to solve the world's most intransigent problems. Serving as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, the event's host, has a special interest in encouraging commitments to help Haiti at this year's conference. Water.org's co-founders, Damon and engineer Gary White, stated that the organization will provide clean water and sanitation to the Western Hemisphere's poorest country in part through Water.org's innovative WaterCredit Initiative . The Initiative is the first microfinance program targeting the water and sanitation sector. On the stage this afternoon, Damon and White appeared serious in front of a vast audience of Earth's notable rainmakers. After Clinton's introduction, White leaned into the microphone to describe Water.org's innovative approach. "Five years ago," White said, "the conventional wisdom was that the billions of people lacking access to water and sanitation were too poor to tackle their own solutions." Water.org disagreed, and developed a micro-lending solution to put the power in poor people's hands. At his turn to speak, Damon revealed a dry humor: "Thank you Gary for whipping the crowd into a frenzy," he said, to a ripple of laughter. Predictably handsome in a blue suit, he laid out his organization's promise: "Water.org will deliver at least $2 million to fund this commitment." Helping Haiti According to Water.org, about half of the Haitian population lacks access to clean water. The nation is categorized as "water-stressed," meaning that people there have access to less than one percent of existing water, which is piped to only 21 percent of Haiti's urban areas. Public water treatment facilities are just about nonexistent. Cartels in Haitian cities run black markets in water, fleecing citizens and exerting terrifying control over people's health and livelihoods. To implement its commitment to improve this situation, Water.org will be offering a traditional grant-making program to provide funding to organizations engaged on the ground, as well as exploring various micro-financing options to see what will work in the Haitian context. The poverty is so extreme in the country, however, that there will be limited opportunity for employing micro-credit. The project, unofficially called "Haiti Challenge" but referred to on the record as "Safe Water and Sanitation For the People of Haiti," will involve raising funds from a variety or sources. The EKTA Foundation has already announced that it will be providing grant support. A social media focused "friend-raising" campaign will be part of the project, mobilizing the general public to contribute as much as possible -- hopefully up to $100,000 -- through Water.org's Haiti Challenge Website . Damon even challenged the world's notables in today's audience to join the fun. "We want to challenge everyone here in this room tonight to support this commitment to the people of Haiti by visiting Water.org," he said. Beyond the Red Carpet Matt Damon is not new to water issues, but it has taken him a while to figure out how to be most effective. He had previously founded a different water-oriented organization, H2O Africa, but, according to an article in Esquire magazine, it bothered him that it served mostly as a funnel for donations. He wondered: Was offering handouts to a bunch of smaller NGOs the best way to change things in a big way? When Damon met White, an engineer with a life-long dedication to solving the developing world's sanitation problems and an innovative method of using micro-lending to improve water infrastructure, he knew the answer to that question was no. By granting microloans to help people in developing countries run pipe and install water taps at their houses, White's NGO, WaterPartners International, was empowering people in need to address their own needs Damon and White developed a relationship and eventually decided to merge their two organizations into the new entity, Water.org, the goal of which is "to draw attention to the world's number one health problem, unsafe and inadequate water supplies, and to raise funds to help fight this immense problem - one community at a time." While Damon is an old hand in the water arena, this isn't his first foray into Haitian aid either. Last September, he traveled there with Haitian-born singer Wylclef Jean to deliver food to communities overwhelmed by tropical storms and hurricanes. The pair helped the UN raise $100 million to provide aid to around 800,000 Haitians. So as good as his movies are -- including, no doubt the newest, called The Informant! , released on Friday -- and as dazzling as his hundred-watt smile, I believe I have a case to make that the best thing about Matt Damon lies beyond the red carpet. Stay tuned to Tonic all week for special, live coverage of the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative. (Photos: Matt Damon by STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images. Woman collecting contaminated water in Haiti courtesy of Water.org.)
 
Dawn Teo: AZ Politician Arrested on 93 Felony Charges, Allegedly Used Campaign Funds as Personal Slush Fund Top
Phoenix, AZ -- Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley was arrested and booked into jail Monday morning by the Marciopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) on 93 felony counts and 7 misdemeanor counts. According to the official statement from MCSO, Stapley's response when picked up by officers was, "you've got to be kidding me." That's because Stapley was indicted late last year on 118 counts for failing to disclose various financial dealings to the public. Almost half of those counts were thrown out in August, and Stapley's lawyer moved on Friday for the remainder of the case to be thrown out. MCSO says these charges are new and unrelated to the case currently being appealed. They are the result of an eight month investigation, “Our investigation began in January of this year and concluded just days ago," says Sheriff Joe Arpaio. MCSO says Stapley was engaged in "fraudulent schemes involving his mortgage and loan business, campaign account fraud, tax return fraud, and campaign fraud." Charges specifically allege that Stapley used campaign funds to pay personal bills and pad personal accounts. Stapley has not been indicted by a grand jury. Rather, deputies filed charges and arrested Stapley based on probable cause. Neither the Maricopa County Attorney's Office nor the nearby Yavapai County Attorney's Office (both of whom were involved in the original case currently under appeal) were involved in today's arrest. According to the local ABC affiliate, an unnamed source says charges include, "fraudulent schemes, prohibited acts of a public official, theft, and perjury," and that the charges "stem from monies that were allegedly transferred back and forth between several campaign accounts and personal accounts." The source goes on to elaborate, Supervisor Stapley allegedly used $100 from a political campaign account called “Stapley for Supervisor” to establish a separate campaign account called “Stapley for NACo” (National Association of Counties), according to an ABC15 source. Stapley is on the board of directors of NACo. According to the source, Stapley then raised more than $140,000 for the NACo account. Contributors included friends, local businesses, lobbyists, investment groups and a waste management company. The source said Stapley used some of those funds to pay for personal items like furniture and high-end electronics from Bang & Olufsen. The source tells ABC15 the most serious charges against Stapley apparently stem from a loan he took out. According to the source, financial records reveal Supervisor Stapley transferred tens of thousands of dollars from the NACo account to a personal account so he could qualify for a loan. After qualifying for the loan, Stapley allegedly transferred that money back to his Stapley for NACo account. Stapley is currently in jail waiting for arraignment, which is expected to take place this afternoon.
 
Gloria Duffy: Rethinking the Value of Work Top
A few years ago, just as the dot-com recession was beginning to ease, I gave one of my least well-received commencement speeches. It was to graduates of the College of Marin. My message to these community college graduates was to take a lesson from the previous few years, during which many young people had gambled on the success of dot-com businesses, then lost their jobs when those enterprises crumbled. Choose professions, I argued, that might not be as glamorous, but which offer more stable long-term prospects. Be a little bit hesitant to jump off into a start-up company. Look carefully at the business model of new enterprises to determine whether they make sense and have the ability to survive, whether they have the capital and resources available to grow. I warned against the boom mentality that had driven the dot-com cycle. Usually I give more uplifting commencement speeches, and normally the graduates are pleased. But when I finished this speech, the applause was weak and the graduates looked less than thrilled by this cautionary message. But here we are again, as we attempt to clamber out of the greatest economic trough since the depression of the 1930s. Some heartening signs are appearing - the Conference Board and the Economic Cycles Research Institute both point out that leading economic indicators have increased now for three months in a row, which has always before presaged the end of a recession. Yet California unemployment is a startling 12%, and some analysts are referring to this as a recession with an "L-shaped" economic path; that is, one where the recession may bottom out, but the upward swing may be a long time in coming. The level of employment we have enjoyed at the height of the recent (and somewhat false) economic booms may never be recovered, at least through jobs of the type that existed at the peaks of the booms. Over the past couple of decades, many workers have been lured, by the prospects of easy money, into new internet businesses, real estate speculation, and participating in too-good-to-be-true financial deals. While new developments and directions are essential for a growing economy, I return to my unpopular commencement message of a few years ago. Our workforce needs to develop a more skeptical attitude towards schemes that promise leaps in wealth but are hollow at the core, and likely to leave workers stranded before long. This raises the question of what kind of workforce we need in the United States. I believe we need to rediscover the honor of more traditional forms of work, such as manufacturing things, fixing things, providing services, doing manual labor, growing crops, creating value perhaps in more incremental ways than we have sought recently. Even as white collar employment declines, we have unmet needs in our economy where traditionally blue collar skills are in demand. And as is often said now, the beauty of many of these jobs is that they cannot be exported. For example, I recently took my bike to a shop for some work, and was told that there would be a two month wait because they didn't have enough mechanics to keep up with their repair orders. It is always difficult to find people to fix things around the house. We are shipping fresh food in from other countries, expending great amounts of energy for transportation, when we can easily grow these crops in our fertile Santa Clara and Central Valleys. Work that promises big dividends is not the only type of labor that has value. Rather than regarding the changes in their employment possibilities as a sign of downward mobility, some people who were employed in the real estate industry, or state government or finance or other sectors that have cut back might reevaluate certain types of labor that they may have previously dismissed as low-status. And who is to say that white collar work should have greater status than blue collar work, anyway? I often think of a friend, Robert McCormick Adams. A distinguished anthropologist, he was Secretary of the Smithsonian from 1984-1994. He also built his home in Colorado entirely by hand, collecting the stone from the surrounding countryside and placing it himself, cutting and finishing every piece of wood, laying every piece of tile. He has blended the white collar and blue collar in his own life. Even for those who have had white collar jobs, honor and satisfaction can be found in being a chef, a farmer, a gardener, a builder, a carpenter, a potter, a painter, a mechanic. There are ways to add value, devise new methods, exercise creativity and create excellence in each of these vocations. And who knows, they might become the next Julia Child, or Thomas Jefferson, who was a farmer long before becoming President of the United States. More on Labor
 
Saul Segan: Tort Reform -- Another Dangerous Scapegoat Top
It is amazing how often the subject of tort reform rears its ugly head at convenient times as a means of finding a path to the goal of public change. Not only is Tort reform a red herring, it is one that has been laid out in the sun for so long a period of time that it is polluting the air and clear thinking with odorous excess. Statistics have shown time and time again that the contribution to medical costs of malpractice claims or other tort litigation is minuscule and by their elimination will deprive the public of astronomically more than it will provide any benefit. There is no question that overwhelming percentage of medical providers are dedicated and caring as well as meticulously and compassionately careful. Frivolous lawsuits cannot be brought. The cost of doing so is more frivolous than the litigation. The public has no conception of the expense of managing a medical malpractice case or any personal injury case... These matters cannot proceed without the employment of experts to determine whether or not the errors claimed to be committed deviated from the applicable medical standards that were requisite at the time. Just reviewing a case can costs tens of thousands of dollars before suit is even started. Court costs and the costs of depositions are also monumental. There are also affidavits required to be provided by the lawyers in question in most states that a case has merit. And believe or not, there are very strong ethical requirements to which lawyers carefully adhere and want to adhere. (I refer our readers to the sage comments of Judge H. Lee Sarokin and of "permalink" in the September 11 edition of HuffPost) "Scapegoat causes" are the result of political desperation and always cause more harm than any possible good they are summoned to produce. Legislated caps on pain and suffering or non-economic damages have been a disaster where enacted. The Lone Star State is one agonizing example. Texas experience has been fine for some of the professionals who are now shielded from accountability, but disastrous for the citizenry. Insurance premiums have gone up, not down, and there is never any guarantee, or probably the faintest notion, that insurance companies would even consider passing on a savings to its policyholders. It has been stated by a multitude of impartial organizations who have studied the impact of tort liability on health care costs and the percentage of such influence or effect is minuscule. In most states where the number of malpractice cases have diminished, the medical malpractice premiums have continued to rise. There is no reasonable cause and effect between the costs of health care and the rendering of jury verdicts. The only item that seems to go up are the insurance premiums. On the contrary, the suffering occasioned by serious medical errors which can totally ruin all of a person's life is barely compensable in any range of verdicts. Medical errors are said to be the third leading cause of death in the United States according to the American Medical Association. The mystique of attorneys is so unfair and inaccurate that there is a tendency to believe that if lawyers oppose something, it must be good for the public. People have been made to be afraid of lawyers and the court system which creates a false notion that dealing with lawyers can be expensive, and valuable rights will be lost, when the converse is true. The sooner an individual contacts a lawyer, the more likely, the particular issue can be resolved more cheaply and with a minimum of hassle. Injury or malpractice cases are handled on a contingent fee basis, so that if there is no recovery, there is no fee. Lawyers are among the most sensitive and caring people in the world. I have shared many an experience with my colleagues in which we expressed our deep concerns about some of our clients and their particular ordeals which we were handling. Many a night has been spent sleeplessly worrying about the outcome of a case and how the particular individual and the family unit could be affected. Many lawyers stay with a client even when they've run out of money and fight on to the bitter end. The truth is, that even though it is a professional relationship, you can have no better friend than a lawyer who is fighting for you and for your rights and welfare. I am not trying to elevate us to sainthood. I am afraid that is truly the impossible dream. What I am concerned about is the danger that those who need us the most will be discouraged from coming to us at an early stage when we are needed the most. Lawyers are a popular target, because our citizenry suffers from epidemic jealousy of anyone who has the potential to make a lot of money. However, without lawyers and courts, the wealthy and the oppressors cannot be combatted. Years ago when no-fault insurance was introduced in Pennsylvania, the authors and proponents of the measure stressed that everyone would be required to carry insurance and lower premiums would be mandated. That was all the people heard. They had no conception of their limitations to sue, the essence of the legislation regarding one's own insurance company paying for certain medical bills or other features that could or could not be helpful. just as they are hearing a minimum of features of the proposed health care reforms, all of which can be legislated by themselves, and are in danger of being blindsided by the dangers ("Unintended consequences", I think they are called?) which will be disproportionate to any benefits they might accrue. And no matter how eloquently our President may express the cause he believes in, and eloquence is one of his greatest attributes, our society is heading in a frightening direction. Many of our basic rights are dangerously eroding. Tort reform is just one more step in that ominous direction.
 
CTA Shakeup: Board Chair Carole Brown, Vice Chair Susan Leonis Resign Top
CTA Board Chairwoman Carole Brown and her co-hort, Vice Chair Susan Leonis, resigned today, creating a leadership vacuum at the chronically-troubled mass transit agency.
 
Kevin Morris and Glenn Altschuler: Doctorow's Bleak House Top
Review of Homer & Langley. By E.L. Doctorow. Random House. 209 pages, $26.00 Don't let book jacket summaries fool you. Homer & Langley , E.L Doctorow's ambitious new novel, isn't anything like his richly detailed historical narratives, Ragtime , The Book of Daniel , and The March . His subjects, of course, are the New York City nutball Collyer brothers and their activities in - mostly in - and around their Upper Fifth Avenue mansion. The narrator is Homer, "the blind brother," who recounts a progression from the Manner to madness. But Doctorow makes no pretense in this novel to verisimilitude. Indeed, he extends their lives from 1947 to the late 1970s. Although (as the book jacket claims), "the epic events" of the twentieth century - "wars, political movements, technological advances" - do pass through the Collyers' cluttered house - Doctorow isn't really interested, as he's been so often before, in illuminating America's past. After a wealthy childhood, Homer tells us, Langely ships out "Over There." He returns home with scars to his body and mustard gas in his lungs, but it is the damage to his soul which provides the book its historically familiar - and philosophically challenging - subject: Langley's post-World War I disillusionment. Langely becomes a full-blown eccentric. He is - as the real life Langely was - a compulsive hoarder, venturing out into the city each day and returning with junky treasures. Homer is, well, a home-bound "homer" (and, of course, a "Homer"). With the exception of a stint as the piano player at a silent movie house and fast walks around the neighborhood, he spends most of his time exploring the tactile sensations of the residence. There is a halcyon time for the brothers, just before the moon landing, when Homer resumes his piano playing and Langley takes up painting. But they quickly return to outer space. As a story, the novel moves briskly. Love interests such as Perdita Spence, Mary Elizabeth Riordan and Jacqueline Roux, along with a collection of other characters, weave through, emblems of their times. These folks can be compelling, especially the Collyers' cook, Granmama Robileaux and her grandson, Harold, a gifted musician who is killed in WW II. But some, like Vincent the gangster, who befriends the boys at a speakeasy, sends call girls as a gift, and then does the Collyers a bad turn, are B-movie stereotypes. It must also be said that some references, like the one to a Pulitzer prize winning photo of Langley, seem culled from the historical record and pasted in. But even when he throws pitches low and outside, you're willing to give Doctorow a free pass. As time goes by, the Collyer's brownstone fills with more and more miscellanea. The most fantastic object is a Ford Model T, which Langley sets up in the vast dining room, a perfect metaphor for Homer's imagined world, with its blurred line between inside and out, Langley's crackpot attempts at control, and the breathtaking technological transformation of New York City during the century. Already world-weary, Homer and Langley seem to pass the point of no return with news of Harold's death. The brothers slumber, sleepwalk, and stagger through the fifties, sixties and seventies, collecting crap, encountering hippies and fighting with just about everybody. Langley whacks out and Homer withers within. What's going on here? Would Doctorow mail in a March of Time ? Why would the master of the "deep verticals" of historical fiction write a laterally moving novella about bizarre brothers who overstuffed their brownstone? Homer & Langely , as we read it, is a philosophical reflection, best understood as a meditation on the distinction between the universal and the particular. Convinced that "doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle," Langley is a self-appointed Modern Day Platonist: he collects every New York City newspaper each day, aiming to create a single edition. In doing so, he thinks he can demonstrate that every person, event, and phenomenon is but a pale copy of an Ideal Form, thus justifying his decision to stave off despair by isolating himself. "All those census records," he tells his brother, "all those archives, attest only to the self-importance of the human being who gives himself a name and a pat on the back and doesn't admit how irrelevant he is to the turnings of the planet." Homer, for his part, keeps reaching, albeit episodically and ineffectually, toward the particular, the unique. He lives through music and he yearns for love. Although he is, ultimately, at the mercy of the sighted Langley, Homer parries his brother's beliefs reluctantly but resolutely. Are individuals irrelevant? Is there nothing new under the sun? "I wasn't prepared to go that far, for if you felt that way what was the use of living in the world." For "someone who had no regard for his own distinctiveness," he observes, shrewdly, Langley "certainly was putting up quite a struggle, holding off the city agencies, the creditors, the neighbors and the press and relishing the battles." Properly framed, the book considers ultimate questions. And they ain't easy. What explains modern life? Does a Langley-like acknowledgment of evil, imperfect communications, and death lead to the conclusion that one should foreswear human connections? If you subordinate the particular to the universal, as Langley does, will you end up powerless - and with a Model T in your living room? Does Platonism end in a darkness darker than Homer's? Throughout the novel, there is the haunting presence of Doctorow sitting in Homer's seat at the typewriter, and a sad feeling that we are reading his final argument. Without shrinking from the bleakness, Doctorow surely casts his vote for Homer and for a love and not Love. "If what mattered was the universal form of Dear Girl," Homer opines, "and if each Dear Girl was only a particular expression of the universal, any of them might serve equally well, and could replace another as our morally insufficient nature demanded. And if that were the case how could I ever be educated to love anyone for a lifetime?" Homer, it's clear, wants to love someone for a lifetime - and he might even settle for some good moments, hours, or days. In the end, though, Doctorow chooses to remain a bit elusive. When a failing Homer is visited by "Jacqueline Roux," the novelist doesn't make clear whether she is actually "there" or present in his mind as an Ideal Form. "I don't remember the sex," Homer confesses. "I felt her heart beating. I remember her tears under our kisses. I remember holding her in my arms and absolving God of meaningless." And even more ambiguously - and achingly - Doctorow has Homer wish for himself a madness akin to his brother's as the only relief against "an unremitting consciousness" that is "irredeemably aware of itself" - and, at the same time, desire, desperately, the touch, the very particular touch, of his brother's hand. In Homer & Langley - and for Homer and Langley...and maybe E.L. Doctorow - such philosophical questions come at the end of the line, when deep historical narratives no longer seem adequate.
 
John Hope Bryant: The Crisis in America Today is Not Economic -- It is a Crisis of Virtues and Values Top
We must choose to prosper as a society, not just as individuals. As unlikely as it sounds, the best way to get ahead is to figure out what you have to give to a world seemingly obsessed with only one question: "what do I get?" In my new book, Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World I've identified the current environment as wracked by fear, and fear as "the ultimate prosperity killer." As an alternative, I share the lessons and practices of love-based leaders, including my own experiences, in Love Leadership: The New Way To Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass, Sept 2009). Love Leadership recognizes that you want to do well in life, but it also suggests that the best way to do well and to achieve true wealth over the long term is to do good, and you'll never be wrong doing right. For example: Bill Gates is off to his second big idea, with his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Doing well by doing good. But right now we look around and it is apparent that our great nation, and its leaders, have simply "lost our story line" and, about 20 years ago, started focusing on the me instead of the we. It isn't a matter of "love vs hate," that takes too much energy. It is a matter of indifference that we can correct. Take, for example, Steve Bartlett, CEO of FINANCIAL SERVICES ROUNDTABLE. Steve does not simply reject every piece of legislation and regulation that impacts banks. He actually reflects on whether it is good for America, consumers, and yes, his banks too, and tries to find the happy medium; the balanced response. He also makes sure the a big part of FSR's commitment is giving back and reinvesting in communities that his banks serve. It is simply smart business. We've lost track of the vision that made America great in the 20th century, such as that of Henry Ford. Henry Ford innovated the automobile, he was not the inventor. Ford made cars, and then paid workers enough to purchase the cars they were making. Smart business. These days, it is too easy for people to wake up in the morning with the wrong question on their minds; saying, "I want to make more money" is the easy path to success -- or so we have been lead to believe. And who can blame us? It is hard to keep from putting ourselves first, when it seems like that's what's all around us, versus the idea that made this nation great in the 20th century: "I have an idea, and it will advance society," and then individuals along with it. Warren Buffett cannot seem to give his billions away fast enough, and done without ruining his own kids by giving them too much of anything they have not earned with their own effort, and was never focused on making money for the purpose of making money in the first place. Or my friend Oprah, who started her Angel Network and foundation to give back to those making a difference with their live in helping others and to educate young girls in South Africa. Love Leadership shares what I've learned about love-based leading into five fundamental laws: 1. Loss Creates Leaders. The storms of life offer an opportunity to respond in one of three ways to personal tragedy or failure: you can give up, you can try to cope using whatever dulls the pain, or you can grow and create something useful out of your experience or loss. The choice lies between legitimate suffering now and illegitimate suffering later. Only the last option allows you to harness fear and turn it into the strength to lead with love. 2. Fear Fails. We have all faced plenty of situations where it would be easier to allow a lack of self-awareness and high energy to bring down the people around us. But doing so is a reaction of fear: fear of oneself, fear of imperfection, fear of failing. Fear doesn't work. In the long term, letting fear motivate your actions - how you treat others, how you conduct business, how you live your life - leads to failure. 3. Love Makes Money. Over the long term, to succeed and to be happy simultaneously, you need to lead with love. If you lead with love for the long term, people will follow you forever, wherever - for their own good as well as yours - and you will be remembered as a person of greatness. 4. Vulnerability is Power. Admitting weakness and owning up to mistakes have counterintuitive benefits. When you are honest, people are more likely to forgive you for any weaknesses and mistakes. You are also able to make a stronger connection with others. Ultimately, this gives you an ability to persuade and influence people, which in turn strengthens your ability to lead. 5. Giving is Getting. Giving is a long-term commitment to others. When we start serving those who work in our organization and expanding out to serving partners, vendors, and customers it translates to success. No great business was ever built on giving the bare minimum. Doing good for others pays off. The "thing" that is going to get us there, the thing that powers the American ideal according to my friend and Accenture CEO William Green, is our collective "special sauce." Sure, America is a country. But it is also an idea -- a powerful, emotional, and even inspirational, idea that attracts people with hope for more from all over the world. We are not in the midst of a recession. It is a global reset - and America will lead the world out of it, just like we led the world into it. And in doing so, we will refashion capitalism and free enterprise so that it actually serves, empowers, and informs people - not just the gilded elite - and it will add value too. I call that Good Capitalism. More on Warren Buffett
 
Bob Lingvall: There Is a Beauty Within You #7: Where Is This Self of Soap Opera and Love Song? Top
Where is this self that demands so much time and attention, fixing and cajoling, encouraging and pampering? Where is this self of tragedy and drama, soap opera and love song? Is it only a phantom -- merely a stream of thoughts and sense impressions triggering memories and habits, hopes and fears? We want to find out because, real or not, we serve it with our time and attention. And so we return to the purpose and strategy of our exercises -- reduce the attachment to the idea of our self we refer to when we say "I" and instead turn our attention toward our self as the perceiver -- a point of self-conscious awareness ( see There Is a Beauty With You #4: Sculpting Tools For Freeing the Angel Within ). Exercise: In this exercise we will turn our attention to the inside of our head and to our brain. Here is the location of the idea we refer to when we say "I". Let's look for it and see its reality. Never do this particular exercise while you are driving or performing any task demanding your immediate response. A podcast of this exercise will soon be available. Intention: The intention of this exercise is to strengthen the direct insight and experience of being a point of silent, conscious awareness, while at the same time weakening our identification with the idea of our self referred to when we say "I". Silence: Become conscious of the location of yourself behind your eyes looking out at the world around you. See yourself inside your head looking out through your eyes ( see previous exercise: There Is a Beauty Within You #6: Consciously Being Awareness Carried Within a Body ) Stay focused on being inside your head behind your eyes. Now instead of looking out through your eyes, shift your focus and look at the back of your eyes. See the light streaming in from the outside. Stay here a moment looking from the inside of your head at the back of your eye balls. Now turn your attention to the inside surface of your head. See the walls of your head. Notice the ridges in the bone. See the curve of the head from the inside. The light streaming in through your eye sockets is filling the inside of your head with light. Now focus on your brain. Notice how it fills the inside of your head. See the gray folds and grooves of your brain. Your brain is covered in a clear cerebral fluid completely filling your head at this very moment. Be aware of having a head filled with a brain. Next turn you attention to yourself as a point of silent awareness in the middle of your head. You are aware of all of this. Be a point of silent awareness looking out through your eyes, listening with your ears, using a brain and body to sense and navigate the world around you. Be here as long as you are comfortable. When you find yourself losing this focus gently renew your intention by visualizing being a point of silent awareness in the center of your head filled with a brain. Inquiry: Now let me pose some questions to you. Where was the self you refer to when saying "I"? There was awareness. But what else did you find? Only the gray folds and grooves of the brain bathed in clear, water-like cerebral fluid. What did you experience? Being a point of awareness. Let's try some standard phrases and see how they sound now. "You hurt me by saying that!" Who was hurt? "I demand respect." Who is demanding respect? "I am not good enough." Who is not good enough? The brain cells? The neurons within your brain? The electro-chemical reactions between the neurons? Where is this self we refer to when we say, "I"? What is its reality? Intention Renewal: Allow the intention of this exercise to continue. Give this insight and experience time to deepen. Allow yourself to be a point of silent, conscious awareness using a brain and body to sense and navigate the world around you. Practice this exercise during your everyday activities, especially during those moments of stress and anxiety. Simply focus on being awareness. Service: The wants and needs, priorities and concerns of our ego fill up our day, but what becomes of our self as a point of awareness? Allow yourself to experience simply being in the world, not as a self, but as awareness. Try serving awareness with your time and attention. Unlike our ego, our awareness is in touch with a universe grounded in compassion and bliss. See what it is like. Be available. Wait. Listen. Watch. You might find yourself engaged in simple acts of friendliness or kindness, or perhaps find yourself feeling a certain peace or happiness. But don't force it, just be available and aware; be a simple, conscious point of awareness. Background Reading: Talks with Ramana Mahrashi - On Realizing Abiding Peace and Happiness, Inner Directions Publishing, 2001, (www.InnerDirections.org ). More on Spirituality
 
Amjad Atallah: A Middle East Peace for Americans Top
An informal group of American citizens, including prominent Christian leaders, has just released a letter today making the point that they will stand behind President Obama as he works to secure America's national interests in the Middle East. All appear to agree that America's national interest, Israel's and the Arab world's, should be in sync, but take President Obama's perspective that a comprehensive peace agreement is definitely an American national security imperative. The full text of the letter follows below. The letter comes at an important point as the President today indicated his shift from unsuccessful negotiations with Israel and Arab countries on confidence building measures to permanent status negotiations. The President may find in the days and weeks ahead that the same challenges that he faced in negotiating a settlement freeze will dog America if we attempt to leave the process to the parties or attempt piecemeal solutions. The good news is that the President will likely find strong support among Americans as he goes for the gold. The signatories of today's letter seem to be part of a trend among Americans with ethnic or religious ties to the Middle East to increasingly place American national interests as a priority in their advocacy. Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans understand this phenomenon, being forced to grapple with emotional loyalties when America has been in conflict with countries in the Middle East. One advantage we have had, ironically, is that we rarely agree with how various Arab or Muslim governments interpret their own national interests - or Islam for that matter. This has made it easier to "love the people, but hate the government." Ask any Iranian-American. Jewish Americans seem to fall in the same pattern. Almost 78% of American Jews voted for Obama even though there was a concerted campaign to paint him as a threat to Israel because he opposed the US starting a war with Iran and stated his support for a peace agreement between Israel and the Arab states. In fact, despite the fact that many Israelis expressed support for the McCain/Palin ticket , Jews in America made it clear which principles they supported. This is true with Christians in America who have closely followed events in the Holy Land. Yes, there is a rich powerful vocal minority represented by John Hagee and Pat Robertson that almost literally want to hug Israel to death. But there is also a majority that deeply loves both Israelis and Palestinians but loathes the occupation, the extremism it creates, and the threat it poses to American values and interests. This concern for American interests and political values, above all else, is perhaps the deepest cause for empathy and common cause among American communities with religious or ethnic links to the Middle East, and may help tie them more firmly to realists in US decision making circles in the months ahead. In other words, Obama's struggle for peace, through an end to the occupation, can end up being another unifying factor among diverse groups of Americans. The full text of the letter: Letter in Support of a Comprehensive Middle East Peace: An American National Interest Imperative We come from varied ethnic backgrounds and religious faiths that are diverse. We are Democrats and Republicans. We are veterans of war and of the struggle for peace. Together, we are all Americans. We find common cause in supporting strong U.S. leadership to achieve a negotiated, sustainable resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict - a fundamental American interest that crosses racial, ethnic and religious lines. We support President Obama's determination to provide sustained, hands-on diplomatic leadership to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an end through the creation of two viable, secure and independent states living side by side in peace and security. The President has made resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a top priority since his very first day in office, and we commend his leadership. We applaud the vision the President has laid out for peace in the Middle East and the challenge he has laid down to all of us to help work for peace and a more positive future for the people of the region and the world. This is a moment of great opportunity and urgency. After decades of tragic conflict, many Israelis and Palestinians despair of the possibility of peace. While the international community and majorities of the Israeli and Palestinian people are committed to a two-state solution as the best option for achieving peace and security, the window of opportunity is rapidly closing. We express our support for U.S. leadership to chart a path to a better future and to the following principles: • We support both Israel's right to exist in security and the right of the Palestinian people to a viable, sovereign and secure state of their own. • A peace agreement will need to fulfill UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and resolve critical issues of importance to the parties including refugees, borders, Jerusalem, settlements, and security. • The Israelis and Palestinians, however, have not - on their own - been able to reach agreement. After nearly two decades of negotiations, we believe bold American leadership can help Israelis and Palestinians make the difficult decisions necessary to achieve lasting peace and hold the parties to account should they fail to honor their commitments. • We support the sense of real urgency that the President brings to the issue and his determination to reach a negotiated resolution to the conflict during his first term in office. • At the appropriate time, we will support the Administration if it decides to present proposals for a just and equitable solution that provides dignity, security and sovereignty for both peoples. • Finally, we believe a peace agreement should be comprehensive - encompassing Syria and Lebanon as well as normalization of relations between Israel and the countries of the Arab world. We support the idea of a comprehensive regional peace that builds on the Arab Peace Initiative, with its offer of recognition and normalization of relations between Israel and all Arab nations in exchange for resolution of all outstanding issues. Both sides must take steps to move the process forward, and we support the President's efforts to end Israeli settlement growth and to halt Palestinian violence and incitement. It is now time to move to the next stage of diplomacy and to address the tough issues that must be resolved to bring this conflict to an end. There are many who will attempt to block the path to peace. They may believe that the status quo favors their interests or that time is on their side. The President should know that we understand the status quo is unsustainable and time is of the essence. We will stand with him as he promotes a fair and just resolution to this long-standing conflict and asks all parties to make the difficult but ultimately necessary compromises for peace. We pledge to work with the President, to forge the path to peace and security for the Middle East. We also pledge to work with those in both societies who seek peace, justice, and security, and to stand up for those who hope for a better future for themselves and for the generations that follow. Sincerely, Frank Anderson Former Chief, Southeast Asian Division, CIA President, Middle East Policy Council Dr. Ziad Asali President, American Task Force on Palestine Robert Barkin President, Jewish Reconstructionist Federation Jeremy Ben-Ami Executive Director, J Street Ambassador Warren Clark Executive Director, Churches for Middle East Peace Debra DeLee President, Americans for Peace Now The Rev. Mark Hanson Presiding Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America President, Lutheran World Federation Father Theodore Hesburgh President Emeritus, Notre Dame University The Most Rev. Howard J. Hubbard Bishop of Albany Chairman, Committee on International Justice and Peace United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Dr. Joel C. Hunter Senior Pastor, Northland Church Member, Executive Committee of the National Association of Evangelicals Rev. Bill Hybels Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church Lynne Hybels Advocate for Global Engagement, Willow Creek Community Church Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon General Secretary, National Council of Churches Rabbi Peter Knobel Former President, Central Conference of American Rabbis Rabbi Charles Kroloff Former President, Central Conference of American Rabbis Imam Mohamed Magid Imam and Executive Director, All Dulles Area Muslim Society, ADAMS Center, in Sterling, Virginia Salam Al-Marayati Executive Director, Muslim Public Affairs Council Rev. John McCullough Executive Director and CEO, Church World Service Rev. Peter Morales President, United Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations Cardinal Theodore McCarrick Archbishop Emeritus of Washington David Neff Editor in Chief, Christianity Today Rev. Gradye Parsons Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (USA) Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf Imam of Masjid al-Farah, New York City Dr. Bob Roberts, Jr. Senior Pastor, NorthWood Church, Dallas, TX Hon. George R. Salem, Esq. Chairman, Arab-American Institute Strategic Advisor, DLA Piper LLP Roland Santiago Executive Director, Mennonite Central Committee The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church Ron Sider President, Evangelicals for Social Action Rev. John Thomas General Minister and President, United Church of Christ Dr. James Zogby President, Arab American Institute **This letter reflects the opinions of the individual signatories. Institutions are listed for identification purposes only** More on Israel
 
Nathan Gardels: EU's Barroso to G-20: Financial Markets Must Not Return to "Bad Old Ways" Top
Last week, Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission (the executive branch of the European Union) sent a letter to the new prime minister of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama, welcoming his recent essay on globalization, saying that Europe's and Japan's visions were "converging." Hatoyama had criticized U.S.-led "market fundamentalism" in that essay (which appeared in Huffington Post) and said European integration was a model for a new Asian community. At the UN on Tuesday, Hatoyama raised his vision of an East Asian community with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Like Hatoyama, Barroso believes that, after the crash caused by the excesses of unregulated financial markets, globalization requires global governance. Here is what he had to say for the Global Viewpoint Network in advance of the G-20 meeting: By Jose Manuel Barroso BRUSSELS -- The crisis that we face is not just an economic crisis. It is a crisis for the values of our societies. At the G20 summit in Pittsburgh this week, world leaders must respond by demonstrating our commitment to a greener, more ethical, more equitable and better-balanced world economy. This "new globalization" requires global governance, based on universal human values and reflecting the reality of economic interdependence. The G20 gives us the chance to shape globalization. The chance to develop a sustainable model to replace the one brought to its knees by the failure of financial markets. I believe Europe has a lot to offer as we develop this new global architecture. We have been for 60 years a laboratory for cross-border supranational cooperation. The European model of society strives to surpass the destructive dichotomy of unregulated markets or over-powerful states. In Europe, before each G20 meeting, European Union leaders have publicly adopted a clear and united position. We have sought to build partnership, further cementing the ever-closer transatlantic relationship and our rapidly developing links with emerging nations. We cannot and should not seek to stop globalization. It has created enormous wealth and pulled much of the world out of poverty. Business dealings and cultural exchange have replaced isolationism and mistrust. Previous economic crises have led to rampant protectionism -- and, at worst, to conflicts that have killed tens of millions. This time, in the globalized age, we are working together around the table, rather than facing each other on the battlefield. There are signs that, with the right policy decisions, we can achieve gradual recovery in 2010. But the noble rhetoric of change must not revert to "business as usual" once immediate economic pressure relents. If recovery is to last, the G20 must step up a gear in reforming financial markets, with zero tolerance for any return to the "bad old ways." Europeans are horrified by banks -- some reliant on taxpayers' money -- once again paying exorbitant bonuses. In Pittsburgh, the EU will call for coordinated action to stop this, building on measures already taken in Europe and elsewhere. This is not a witch-hunt against bankers. More effective regulation is in the interests of any responsible financial sector, and prudent financial institutions must not be at the mercy of their competitors' recklessness. On the eve of the G20, the European Commission is pushing forward a blueprint for a European system of cross-border financial supervision. We believe that it can serve as inspiration for a global system based on similar principles. Meanwhile, we must keep our resolve. We must carry through the economic stimulus that has ensured recession has not turned to depression. Our number-one priority must be saving and creating sustainable jobs. But the G20 must also commit to coordinated exit strategies when the time comes, to get government finances back to health. G20 members must also take responsibility for rebalancing global growth and demand to help prevent future crises. There should be a strong role for the International Monetary Fund. We have now delivered the promise made at the London summit of $500 billion of new resources at the IMF's disposal. The EU will be providing over a third of this. The Pittsburgh meeting must put more flesh on the IMF's reinforced surveillance role. The G20 must also make progress on reforming IMF quotas and representation. All the world's largest economies should have a voice commensurate to their size. They must also shoulder the responsibilities that go with that. Europe will be pushing hard for significant progress in the fight against climate change. If we do not win that fight, economic progress will ultimately count for nothing. We are less than 80 days away from the Copenhagen climate change conference in December, and it is time to get serious. I am worried about the lack of ambition in the negotiations. To make progress, we need to talk figures. We have already put on the table our ideas on climate finance. Others must contribute proportionately. This is not the time to have our cards close to our chests. Europe's message to the developing world is that if you are serious about the challenge of cutting emissions, we will be there to help. Not with a blank check, but with a fair proposal. Our message to the developed world is that we need to make a credible financial commitment to the developing world together with our own mitigation commitments. The equation is straightforward: no money, no deal. But no actions, no money! We need to put in place a proper global carbon market, not as an optional extra but as a prerequisite for turning commitments into cuts in emissions. The text that is currently on the table contains 200 pages with a feast of alternatives and a forest of square brackets. Let's be clear: If we do not sort this out, it risks becoming the longest suicide note in history. The message I will bring to my fellow members of the G20 in Pittsburgh is clear. We must inspire the world with our vision of a future where open markets and the freedom to create wealth are framed within clear ethical and environmental principles, backed by strongly enforced global rules. (C) 2009 GLOBAL VIEWPOINT NETWORK/TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES. HOSTED ON LINE BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR.
 
Nate Silver: Health Care Is Hazardous To Poll Numbers For Grassley, Other Senators Top
One of the things about the so-called Gang of Six -- the group of Senators to which Max Baucus issued an exclusive invitation to participate in health care negotiations -- is that each one started out the year in a place of seeming electoral invincibility. Baucus, Kent Conrad, Jeff Bingaman, Olympia Snowe, Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi won re-election with an average of 72 percent of the vote as of their last election, and none had a challenger that came closer than 39 points. More on Max Baucus
 
Daoud Kuttab: Obama Should Publicly Declare Israel's Failure to Honor International Obligation Top
The summit meeting called for by President Obama on the eve of the opening of the UN general council is both good and bad news for Palestinians. President Obama should use the occasion to pressure the Israelis to live up to their obligations. It is always good when senior U.S. officials take personal interest in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. God knows that the two parties have failed miserably in trying to solve the conflict between them. If any party is able to bridge the gap it is the U.S. And if anyone in Washington can move this deadlocked conference, the president is certainly the one to do that. But this summit comes at a time that the Israelis have refused to fulfill their responsibilities as stated in the Road Map, ironically which have been encoded in a security council resolution. The road map lays out clear responsibilities on both Israelis and Palestinians. In Phase I, Palestinians are expected to take care of the security situation, on the other hand Israel is supposed to suspend all its settlement activities "including natural growth" and return the status of the Palestinian territories to the pre-October 2000 situation. Since 2000 Israel has set up nearly 500 different manned and unmanned checkpoints suffocating Palestinian business and life by making it difficult to move goods and people throughout the occupied West Bank. Palestinians, with strong advice and support from the American General Dayton have had impressive results in meeting their security obligations. Senior Israeli Army officials have publicly admitted to the improved security situation in the West Bank. With security dramatically improving, the rule of law in Palestinian areas is starting to take shape. Palestinian Prime Minsiter Salam Fayyad's pro active approach has ensured that Palestinians begin in fact taking control over their own social, economic and civilian affairs. He has publicized his government's two year plan to declare a defacto Palestinian state whether or not negotiations lead to an end of the Israeli occupation. Ever since President Obama took office, he lifted the Palestinian Israeli conflict by appointing a special envoy, former senator George Mitchell. President Obama in numerous statements, the latest of which was his speech in cairo publicly stated the illegitimacy of Israeli settlements and called on Israel to fulfill its obligations in the Road Map by freeze any further settlement activity as a prelude to the restart of negotiations. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has praised the U.S. president's public requests on both parties to honor their commitments and has insisted on the need for Israel to fulfill their obligation to freeze settlement activities. Senior Palestinian negotiators repeated insisted that this was not a Palestinian demand but an international obligation on Israel. Palestinians insisted that their can be no compromise on this issue. Mahmoud Abbas, himself, has a strong reason to insist on this issue. Back in 1993 Israeli leaders refused Palestinian demands on a total settlement freeze, saying that it is not important since in five years the occupied territories will become part of the Palestinian state. Palestinian statehood never materialized, Israeli leader Rabin was assassinated and since 1993 the number of settlers living in the occupied territories has doubled. Months of shuttle diplomacy has failed to get the Israeli government to agree to freeze settlement activities. In fact, a rush to add more exclusive Jewish houses in occupied Palestinian territories seem to have increased because of the potential of a possible freeze. When the Washington called and asked Palestinians to attend a three party summit, Ramallah had little choice but to agree. Palestinian leaders were not about to deny a request from the Obama White House even though such a decision makes Palestinians to appear that they have capitulated to Israel and its refusal to freeze its illegal settlement activity. U.S. President Barack Obama will have his photo opportunity despite the obvious Israeli disregard to demands of the international community in respect to the Road Map. While Obama, Abbas and Netanyahu are posing for the photos, President Obama should use the presence of the press to state what the Road Map obliges the Quartet to do. Publicly point his finger to the party which has not fulfilled its obligation to the international will.
 
Ariel Gonzalez: Pat Buchanan, William F. Buckley Jr., and Right-Wing Anti-Semitism Top
A column commemorating the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II has raised, for the umpteenth time, the question of whether or not Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite. The column, "Did Hitler Want War?", is a misleading and distasteful exercise in revisionism which paints the Fuhrer as a reluctant warlord. Later I'll address this historical howler, but for now I'd like to look at William F. Buckley Jr.'s reponse to Buchanan's penchant for criticizing Jews and Israel, and the glaring difference between Buckley's intellectual honesty and the timidity of the present conservative leadership. In December 1991, Buckley's magazine, the National Review , devoted its entire issue to his 40,000-word essay, "In Search of Anti-Semitism." The piece opened with two startling admissions about Buckley's wealthy Irish-Catholic family: his father was an anti-Semite; and in 1937, the year before Kristallnacht, four of his siblings burned a cross outside a Jewish resort near their family estate in Sharon, Connecticut. But Buckley himself was instrumental in ostracizing anti-Semites from the conservative movement in the 1950s and 60s. He denounced the John Birch Society and barred contributors to the Jew-baiting American Mercury from appearing in the National Review . So he was being consistent when he decided that his old comrade-in-ideological arms Buchanan was guilty of more than "mischievous generalizations" after attacking four prominent American Jews -- Henry Kissinger, A.M. Rosenthal, Richard Perle, and Charles Krauthammer -- for their support of Desert Storm. Buckely cited four other vocal hawks who were spared Buchanan's poison pen: James J. Kilpatrick, George Will, Frank Gaffney, and Alexander Haig. But their Christian faith presumably exempted them from suspicion. For this is the thing about Buchanan: he believes Jews can't be fully trusted because they have divided loyalties. They will always place Israel's interests above those of the United States. (Of course Buchanan has no problem with the divided loyalties of right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami, many of whom call Cuba their " patria .") A hallmark of anti-Semitism is the insistence that Jews are unassimilable; they are forever alien, no matter how many generations their families have resided in a country. Buckley condemned Buchanan's coded prediction that "kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzalez, and Leroy Brown" would be the ones bleeding and dying in Iraq: "There was no way to read that sentence without concluding that Pat Buchanan was suggesting that American Jews manage to avoid personal military exposure even while advancing military policies they (uniquely?) engender." Buckley was unequivocal in his assessment: Buchanan was an anti-Semite. And he understood that the conservative movement would lose credibility if it abided such vileness. But today there's no one of comparable stature to take on Rush Limbaugh, whose racism has become shrill and blatant since President Obama's inauguration. Andrew Sullivan, David Frum, and David Brooks have tried to raise the alarm, but they can't be heard above the clamor of fear and hatred. Meanwhile, Buchanan remains a fixture at MSNBC. Oh, every now and then he's put in the penalty box until something he says or writes blows over. This happened after his row with Rachel Maddow over the Sotomayor confirmation, during which he made the outrageous claim that white people were almost wholly responsible for the greatness of America. But soon he's back on Morning Joe and Hardball , wheezing and tomahawk-chopping and interrupting at whim. Outside the studio he's reputedly the ideal dinner party guest. But as David Frum put it, we must measure him by his words, "and not in his friends' polite comments about what an affable chap he is." Such words can be found in "Did Hitler Want War?" Here we are told that the Fuhrer didn't want to invade Poland. He was pushed into doing it by the Poles, who unreasonably refused to cede one of their cities, Danzig, to Germany. The Poles were emboldened by a promise from the British to come to their defense should the Nazis attack. "Was Danzig worth a war?" asks Buchanan. "Comes the reponse: The war guarantee was not about Danzig, or even about Poland. It was about the moral and strategic imperative 'to stop Hitler' after he showed, by tearing up the Munich pact and Czechoslovakia with it, that he was out to conquer the world. And the Nazi beast could not be allowed to do that." So how does Buchanan explain Hitler's desire for Lebensraum , "living space"? In his brilliant and comprehensive study of the Nazi economy, The Wages of Destruction , Adam Tooze writes that Hitler felt Germany could only compete with the United States, whose superpower status he foresaw, by organizing "one last great land grab in the East." U.S. hegemony was a racial and cultural threat. In Hitler's mind, the Jews controlled everything: Hollywood, Wall Street, the White House (FDR was their puppet). War was never in doubt. And after the land was taken, the indigenous peoples would be exterminated or enslaved. By September 1939, Hitler was ready; he'd strengthened his western fortifications and signed a nonaggression pact with Stalin. There was nothing to stop him from implementing his plan to establish a contiguous empire. World conquest was a pipe dream, but Buchanan's whitewashing is an unconscionable distortion of the truth. Why did Hitler invade Poland? Easy. Because it was there. More on Rachel Maddow
 
Pelosi Nixes Health Care Deal With Blue Dogs, Prepares For Floor Vote Top
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is nixing a deal she cut with centrists to advance health reform, said a source familiar with negotiations. Pelosi's decision to abandon the agreement that was made with a group of Blue Dogs to get the bill out of committee would steer the healthcare legislation back to the left as she prepares for a floor vote. More on Nancy Pelosi
 
Mother Rekha Kumari-Baker Jailed For 33 Years For Killing Daughters With Kitchen Knives Top
A woman was jailed for 33 years by a UK court for murdering her two teenage daughters with kitchen knives while they slept, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported. A hotel waitress, Rekha Kumari-Baker stabbed 16-year-old Davina 37 times, and 13-year-old Jasmine 29 times on June 13, 2007, in what her ex-husband calls "an act of calculated viciousness," the Guardian reported. The 33-year sentence was one of the longest jail terms given to a woman in recent times, the BBC reported. David Baker, the 41-year-old woman's husband, said that the woman killed their daughters to hurt him, the BBC added. She had bought the knives at a local supermarket two days before the attack. Quoting the ex husband's court statement, the Guardian says: "Having them taken away from me in such a brutal way and by the woman who was their mother ... has had an incalculable effect," he said in a statement read out at Cambridge crown court: "I am haunted by the horror of the events of that night and probably will remain so for a very long time." Baker said he was having a hard time getting over his daughters deaths. The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Kumari-Baker was apparently upset over her own breakup with a boyfriend and a new relationship her husband had just gotten into. Kumari-Baker admitted to the killings but argued that she suffered from "diminished responsibility", the BBC reported. The court however took 35 minutes to find her guilty of murder. Kumari-Baker has already spent more than two years in jail, and will remain there until at least 2040. She will be 72. More on Crime
 
Ahmadinejad UN Speech Will Play Better On Arab Street Than Inside Iran: Analysis Top
By Mohamad Bazzi | GlobalPost NEW YORK, New York -- When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses the United Nations on Wednesday, he will speak past the world leaders gathered in the cavernous hall of the General Assembly. His message will be crafted to improve his standing in the Muslim world and bolster his reputation as a Third World hero. In a region ruled by kings and despots, Ahmadinejad has worked hard to cultivate his image as a pan-Islamic populist leader who is not afraid to stand up to the West. He quickly became more popular with Arabs than among his own people, who were frustrated by his inability to improve a stagnant economy, root out corruption, and redistribute oil wealth. When Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust or threatens Israel, his rhetoric resonates more with Arabs than Iranians, who are Persian and have few cultural attachments to their Arab neighbors and far less at stake in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Ahmadinejad revels in being an international provocateur. Before the rigged presidential election and popular uprising in Iran, the controversy generated by his remarks would appease conservatives inside Iran and win over the wider Muslim world. But today Ahmadinejad is just another despot in the Middle East -- and he needs to use his United Nations platform to win back some credibility. He won't be able to erase the stain of a stolen election and his power grab. But he can rail against Israel and Western domination, emphasize the plight of the Palestinians, and claim to speak for the downtrodden everywhere. In September 2007, when Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University during a visit to the United Nations, I argued that the best response was for the West to ignore him because he was not the true source of power in the Iranian regime. Under Iran's theocratic system, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has final say in all political and national security matters. But Ahmadinejad's role has changed: he has seized far more authority than he had a few years ago and he is working tirelessly to eliminate his political opponents. It's much harder to ignore his antics and poisonous rhetoric. Ahmadinejad's struggle to burnish his credibility mirrors the entire Iranian regime's quest for renewed legitimacy. After the June election, many in the West predicted that the Iranian ruling clique, if it survived, would be weakened by internal problems and would have to abandon its regional ambitions. True, the clerical hierarchy and military apparatus in Tehran do need to shore up their Islamic and populist credentials. But contrary to the conventional wisdom, their best chance at doing that is to focus outward: an imperial Iran trying to extend its dominance over the Persian Gulf and the region as a whole. As it seeks to maintain its grip on power, the Iranian regime will be tempted to engage in more, not less, adventurism abroad. This will further polarize the Middle East between the so-called "axis of resistance" (anti-imperialist, anti-Western, led by Iran and its allies Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas) and the "axis of accommodation" (Sunni Arab states allied with the United States). The "axis of resistance" has always represented itself as the true paladin of the majority of people in the Arab and Muslim worlds, many of whom are stifled under regimes that "sold out" to the United States. But that image has been shaken by the Iranian election and violent suppression of protesters. Can Ahmadinejad win back some of his lost luster? That will be the main goal of his United Nations speech. Many Arabs -- used to leaders who build ostentatious palaces for themselves and rarely rub shoulders with the average Joe -- still admire Ahmadinejad's man of the people persona. He has struck a chord with the Arab masses as no other Iranian leader has since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the charismatic cleric who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Ahmadinejad is a Shiite Muslim and a Persian in a region dominated by Sunni Arabs. Historically, Arabs have been fearful of Iran's cultural and political influence. But he plays the anti-American and anti-Israel cards in an attempt to transcend the Persian-Arab rift and Sunni-Shiite tensions, which are on the rise because of the Iraq war. In whispers, Arabs describe how the Iranian leader is different from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, who are dependent on American support to stay in power. Arabs admire Ahmadinejad because he is willing to confront the Unites States and Israel, he is mindful of his people's interests, and he is in touch with the common man -- it helps that he has a tendency to wear sport jackets. "He has the courage to stand up to America and Israel," an Egyptian civil servant told me over sips of mint tea in a Cairo coffee house in 2007. "What other leader in the world is doing that?" Ahmadinejad knows how to exploit the schism between Arabs and their rulers. Since 2003, the traditional centers of power in the Arab world -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states -- have been extremely nervous about the growing influence of Iran: its nuclear ambitions, its sway over the Iraqi government and Shiite militias, its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and its alliance with Syria. Arab leaders are not worried that Iran will export the cultural aspects of Shiism; rather, they are afraid of political Shiism spreading to the Arab world through groups like Hezbollah. The group's strong performance against a far superior Israeli military during the July 2006 war has electrified the Arab world, and it offers a stark contrast to Arab rulers appeasing the United States. Arab regimes fear that their Sunni populations will be seduced by a new and potent admixture of Arabism and Shiite identity -- by Iran and Hezbollah's message of empowering the dispossessed. Expect Ahmadinejad to tap into that theme. In the process, he will seek to burnish his Third World credentials as a leader who is not afraid to venture into the lion's den -- emerging unscathed and ever audacious. Read more from GlobalPost. More on UN General Assembly
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)