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I usually smile when life in America reminds me of Nigeria. Even the recent heat wave made me fondly nostalgic for my childhood home, but the recent wave of hate sweeping the country is also reminding me of Nigeria, and I’m scared.
My uncle has a panic room. He is the pastor of a church in Muslim-majority Northern Nigeria, and from time to time, religious-ethnic tensions boil over into violence, and he and his family retreat into their panic room for safety. And with American anti-Muslim sentiment stronger now than it was in the fall of 2001, many American Muslims have been retreating from the public sphere into anonymity, silence, and fear. Many public celebrations of ‘Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, have been canceled this year, and many thousands of American Muslims walk the streets in fear, not just of being profiled by their government, but of being attacked by their fellow citizens.
And with good reason. In Nigeria, you can usually tell when religious violence is about to erupt. First come the wild accusations and conspiracy theories spread by e-mail, text message, and word-of-mouth (“Christians are luring Muslim women into church and raping them” or “Muslims captured a church bus and beheaded everyone inside”). Next follow acts of symbolic provocation and desecration (burning a church, cursing a religious leader). Finally the spark of violence comes, setting off a bloody cycle of retribution.
I have seen a similar cycle on this side of the Atlantic in the irresponsible and absurd “terror baby” and “terrorist training camp” conspiracy theories thrown around by right-wing politicians and demagogues such as Louie Gohmert and Glenn Beck. I have seen it in the hate-fueled protests outside of mosques from Manhattan to Murfreesboro, the desecration of mosques in California and the “Burn the Koran Day” stunt in Florida. And tragically, I have seen it in the “random” acts of violence such as the stabbing of a Muslim cab driver in New York City.
But this cycle of paranoia, provocation, and persecution is not random at all. Americans now feel comfortable and are even applauded for saying things about Islam and Muslims that would be unconscionable about any other group in this day and age. From the New York Times, to Fox News, Western media seems to see Muslims on a continuum from “westernized” nominal Muslims to non-threatening “moderate” Muslims who still pray and avoid beer and pork chops, but are more concerned with their family lives than the global jihad, to scary “radical” or “extremist” Muslims who are plotting to blow themselves up until they destroy the civilized world and replace it with a medieval theocracy ruled by draconian laws. In this view, “radical” Muslims take their Islam too far, “moderate” Muslims are somewhere between assimilation and planning the West’s annihilation, and “westernized” Muslims are “ordinary” people who just happen to have Arabic last names.
Not only is this continuum false, but it is a pernicious assumption that prevents people from understanding how the majority of American Muslims can be deeply committed to both their faith and the United States of America. Even worse, it portrays the beliefs and practices of a violent fringe element as the most “real,” “fundamental” or “non-Western” form of Islam, when in fact the popularity of these ideologies owes much to the influence of Western scientific rationalism.
The reasons for the popularity of this false continuum are manifold, but two stand out as particularly important to consider. First, in the Muslim world, Islam is such a strong and ubiquitous cultural force that it pervades everything from soccer celebrations to graffiti to political rhetoric. If you want to do anything on a large scale in the Muslim world, you need to appeal to Islam, much as in 19th-century America, people sought Biblical justification for both slavery and its emancipation. So the leaders of violent, exclusivist groups in the Muslim world look to the Quran for justification because if they didn’t, no one would listen to them.
This is not a uniquely Islamic issue — Buddhist priests encouraged Japanese kamikaze missions during World War II, Israeli forces draw inspiration from Old Testament accounts of conquest and slaughter, and Christians nearly annihilated the indigenous peoples of the New World purportedly in the name of Christ. If the Muslim world were full of Marxists, then those groups who resort to violent means of addressing political and socio-economic grievances would appeal to Fanon, Mao, and Lenin for justification instead of the Quran. So most terrorist organizations, as well as social justice and community service organizations from Morocco to Pakistan tend to be Islamically-inspired and influenced. Bombings and beheadings make better press than cooperative societies and soup kitchens, so many in the West only hear the Quran and Shariah law invoked to justify acts of violence, and are unfamiliar with the incredible acts of charity, compassion, and generosity that they inspire and enjoin.
The second reason is that although the Western, non-Muslim world is increasingly plural, its primary response to its diversity is mere “tolerance.” Compared to its (largely Muslim) neighbors in the South and East, Christian Europe has had a very homogeneous ethnic and religious history. Consequently, diversity/difference has been viewed as a problem that must be either eliminated or tolerated. But diversity is much more than a problem; it can be a great source of strength and the impetus for incredible creativity and productivity.
You tolerate a toothache or a stone in your shoe, but we should treasure and take pride in our nation’s religious diversity. Minorities preserve our freedoms by preventing majority tendencies from becoming law, and religious minorities in particular help safeguard that most elusive and precious of freedoms without which all other freedoms would be meaningless: the freedom of thought. Muslims and other religious minorities present the West with different ways of understanding and coming to terms with life’s most important questions. And in fields as diverse as music and microbiology, fashion and physics, the confrontation of and conversation between different perspectives inevitably leads to new developments and understandings.
Mere tolerance, on the other hand, easily gives way to discomfort and mistrust, which can quickly slip into hatred. We need to cultivate the appreciation of our nation’s differences and diversity. We would all do well to contemplate the hadith: “In the divergence of opinion, there is a mercy for my community.”
In conclusion, if we want to keep America’s religious tensions from erupting as they have in Nigeria, we need to move beyond mere tolerance and begin valuing and reaping the benefits of our nation’s diverse religious landscape. We also cannot take a peaceful civil society for granted. We need to fight for peace by having civil conversations with people who disagree with us and by learning about one another’s faiths, not to prove our own superiority, but to learn about and from each other. And most urgently, we need to resist the cheap demagoguery that seeks to generate and mine religious tension for short-term political advantage.
There are those who would seek to blow up our plural civil structure in the hopes that the explosion would toss them on top of the rubble. In this way, terrorists who claim to be Muslim and the politicians who see them behind every corner have much in common. This country’s radical religious right is right: the greatest threat to America does lie within its borders, but it’s not sleeper cells or “radical mosques,” it is home-grown ignorance and mere tolerance that prevents us from knowing and appreciating one another both for what unites us and for what divides us.
And to all those well-meaning Americans who have been deceived into thinking that protesting outside of mosques is a productive use of their time, I can only quote one of this century’s greatest American Muslims, “You’ve been had. You’ve been took. You’ve been hoodwinked, led astray, run amok.”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Today, the House Energy and Commerce Committee conducted a hearing on this summer’s massive egg recall, and witnesses included the owners of the factory farms that spawned the Salmonella crisis and a couple of the downstream victims — consumers who ate foods containing eggs contaminated with Salmonella and nearly died. The testimony of some of the victims was chilling, and it even prompted one congressman, Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, to declare he’s now switching to cage-free eggs.
He’s got the right instinct. The central problem is not that there were a couple of reckless factory farm operators, though it’s certainly true that Jack DeCoster, owner of one of the two farms linked to the Salmonella outbreak, has had a history of cutting corners at his egg farms across the country. It’s really a systemic problem — with the industry as a whole adopting battery cage confinement systems that victimize every creature confined in these cages and create an overcrowded, unhealthy environment that is high-risk for the spread of pathogens like Salmonella.
The HSUS
We don’t just need to wash eggs better, or only make sure rodents haven’t colonized these places or that dead birds are removed from cages. We need to get rid of the cages and give animals more space. By giving them more space, we are better to the animals and reduce excessively high stocking densities that are among the root causes of the food safety problems, too.
And the evidence linking cages to unsanitary and inhumane conditions is hardly new. In fact, The Humane Society of the United States’ investigation of Iowa egg factories earlier this year found nearly identical conditions to those found during the FDA’s inspection of the companies responsible for the current recall.
Our diet matters. We vote for or against cruelty, and for or against food safety, with our own food choices every day. That’s why I was also struck by the comments of former President Bill Clinton, who has adopted a nearly vegan diet. He told Wolf Blitzer of CNN that he’s now eating a plant-based diet, that he’s lost 24 pounds since he started it, and that’s he’s studied the issue very carefully, reading the works of Drs. Dean Ornish, Colin Campbell, and others. He’s said he feels like he’s now part of the experiment to prove that eating a plant-based diet is a way to improve the functioning of arteries and to deal with problems of cholesterol and fat.
When we are conscious eaters, we can help animals, protect the environment, enhance food safety, and protect our own health. We have an opportunity to live a healthy life and create the society we want through our actions, and one of the best opportunities is with our food choices every day.
This post originally appeared on Pacelle’s blog, A Humane Nation.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Apparently, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in an interview on American television network ABC last Saturday, seems to have “forgotten” that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani had been sentenced to be stoned to death.
And, in a conversation with Charlie Rose, on PBS, the sainted man even went as far as to suggest, hand on his heart, that he was opposed to the death penalty in general and to stoning in particular.
Well, no matter that the Iranian president is given–case in point–to boldfaced lies.
It’s not important that he denies the terms of the verdict pronounced on September 10th, 2006, by the judges of the 6th section of the provincial court of Tabriz as well as the ruling of the Supreme Court which, in response to the appeal by Sakineh’s original counsel, Sohrab Samangar, confirmed the sentence.
Or, more exactly, this is of import only in the eyes of history, and of those who will one day take it upon themselves to relate the story (which is why, moreover, we wish to publish here, and for your information, the facsimiles, translations, and commentaries concerning the nine official documents that have marked this affair and that, unfortunately, leave no doubt as to the barbarism of the punishment that may sanction an act of adultery in present-day Iran).
The essential, for the time being, is that the powers that be have by these very denials begun to retreat.
The essential, the great news, is that Ahmadinejad found it appropriate, immediately upon his arrival in New York and on the eve of the “great speech” he is supposed to give on the floor of the United Nations, to open the exit door a crack.
And a thousand times more eloquent than the lie is the extraordinary avowal of weakness this disavowal of the judges constitutes, a way of saying without actually saying, all the while saying that the sentence is one thing, its execution quite another.
Sakineh, nonetheless, is not out of the woods.
And nothing indicates that, once back in Tehran, the man will not announce to us that, in this case, hanging, for example, is an adequate substitute punishment, or even that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, her spirit broken by a campaign of international opinion that would have done her more harm than good, has been found dead, a suicide, in her prison cell.
But a step has been taken.
Words have been pronounced that we must take literally and that, when the time comes, we must not be afraid to recall.
And it is truly the proof that, as we have stated here from the very beginning, mobilisation pays and compels tyranny to give way.
Let us not weaken.
Let us not, at any price, diminish the pressure.
Now, the innocence of Sakineh must be recognized.
Now we must very rapidly ensure that her life, and then liberty, will be hers.
The fight continues.
It will be a head-on, twisted struggle.
Merciless, but filled with tricks and traps, laid by the Iranian authorities.
And so much the worse — or the better — if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not allow us to win without a means of saving face for himself.
Bernard-Henri Lvy
Sakineh, Ahmadinejad’s lie
Last Saturday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared in an interview on American television network ABC that the Iranian woman, “Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani had never been condemned to death by stoning”. And he added, “This is misinformation that has been created and, unfortunately, the American media have been influenced by their politicians to fabricate this news.”
Javid Houtan Kian, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s attorney, gave his reactions following these declarations on the telephone, from the city of Tabriz. “How can the president make such claims, when all the judicial authorities of the country as well as the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have repeated several times over that the sentence of stoning had been suspended, in response to protests against the condemnation of my client?”
For the time being, a reliable source in Iran, who wishes to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisals, has given us a series of five documents that are part of the prosecution’s file of charges of adultery against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, stamped by the Iranian authorities, which contradict Ahmadinejad’s assertions.
The first, document n 11, dated May 15, 2006, is the decree of the condemnation of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashitiani to 99 lashes of the whip for “illicit relations” with two men, Ali et Nasser Nojoumi. The two other accused, Nasser Nojoumi and Ali Nojoumi, are condemned respectively to 40 and 20 lashes. Moreover, it is indicated that the punishment must be immediately applied and cannot be “bought”, in other words, in Iranian law, execution of the sentence cannot be avoided by paying a fine of a certain sum of money. It is even stipulated that the whippings must be carried out in the Interior courtyard of the Palace of Justice, and that the condemned subjects must be dressed in “normal clothing” in a “temperate climate”.
The second document, n 7, dated 10 September 2006, is even more interesting. It concerns the vote by the Head of section n6 of the provincial court as well as two of his advisors who carry as much weight as he (Mssrs Imani, Seif Amadi, and Moussavi) in favor of the condemnation of Sakineh to stoning. The word one reads on the document is the Arab term Rajam (terms in Arabic are sometimes used in the Iranian legal vocabulary, as is the particular case here). It is interesting to note that, according to this document, the penalty of stoning is pronounced by the three judges uniquely due to Sakineh’s “illicit relations” with several men. The accusation of “complicity in murder”, repeated many times by the Iranian regime to justify her punishment, is mentioned nowhere in the document.

Document n8 is the follow-up to n7, thus also dated 10 September 2006. It concerns the votes of two other advisors to section n6 of the provincial court (Mssrs Kazemi and Hamdolahi), who are demanding the acquittal of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. They maintain that, having already been judged and sentenced to 99 lashes for adulterous relations with the Nojoumi brothers, the accused cannot be prosecuted anew, at least not as long as the first condemnation has not been annulled. They cite the fact that an individual can be prosecuted only once for the same accusation of crime. Moreover, the two advisors indicate that there exists no confession, nor any deposition by a witness, thus no legal justification for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to be condemned anew; therefore, they request the liberation of the Iranian woman. The Bench refuses to listen to the observations of these two advisors and supports the decision of theHead of section n6 and this two advisors of document n7. Sakineh will thus be, indeed, condemned to stoning for “illicit relations”.
Document n9, dated July 22, 2007, is as interesting as the previous one, since it concerns the letter of recourse of Sakineh’s first Court-appointed attorney, Sohrab Samangar, submitted to the Supreme Court of the country. For the first time, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is cited and declares that she has carried on no illicit relations with anyone. Her attorney confirms that his client carried on no illicit relations with Issa Tahri (her husband’s murderer) and that neither the latter nor Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani have made any confession.
The attorney, Sohrab Samangar, states that the legal and legitimate evidence of adultery on the part of his client is not probative in the least, since there exists no witness and since his client made no confession before the judge. Yet, according to the attorney, only the testimony of witnesses or four confessions offered on several different occasions by his client, in full possession of her faculties, before the judge, can be deemed authentic. In this case and only in this case, the judge could have confirmed the legal character of the confession and thus pronounced sentence. This is not the case, Sohrab Samangar maintains, in Sakineh’s case file.

Besides this, and still according to the attorney, the confession of one of the Nojoumi brothers affects only his own case and can in no way incriminate Sakineh. Sohrab Samangar concludes that all of these elements throw doubt and uncertainty on the actual execution of a sentence, now based, as a result, only on the judge’s own suspicions.
At the bottom of the document, the attorney repeats that, according to Articles 63, 83, and 105 of the Islamic penal code, his client has been condemned to Rajam, stoning in Arabic, but that this vote is subject to contest by the counsels of the accused, and for this reason he is appealing, on this day, to this branch of the Supreme Council of the country.
Despite this appeal presented by the attorney, the Supreme Court’s decision following the appeal confirms the verdict of stoning against Sakineh (document n 10). In view of the contents of the file, in view of the fact that the “wisdom” of the judges is a valid and justifiable means, and in view, finally, of the fact that the appellate attorney has presented no serious argument to annul the vote, and that this vote was conducted and issued without any legal flaw, the Supreme Court confirms the sentence of stoning and declares it executable at any moment.
Armin Arefi

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

With hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on political campaigns in 2010, shedding light on the money trail would take a cadre of investigators working around the clock. Transparency is a long-stated but often unmet goal in American politics. At Aristotle we believe one of the best ways to shed light on campaigns is to put the flashlight in your hands.
That’s the reason we’re partnering with The Huffington Post to launch Fundrace.org, a site dedicated to lifting the veil on 2010 political contributions.
This empowering tool can also bring a bit of fun. Did you know in 2008 Ben Stiller contributed $6,900 dollars to the Hillary Clinton campaign or that the Ron Paul campaign received $2,300 dollars from Barry Manilow? While celebrities are known to contribute their big bucks in support, what about your neighbors? Your boss? By the way, there have been no reported contributions from Nicole Polizzi (aka Snooki), yet. But when she does become politically active weighs in on any electoral contest, you could be the first to know.
Starting today, visitors to the Huffington Post will have access to information like this in just a few clicks. If you’re a campaign manager for a House race, an opposition researcher or you want to see which candidate your boss is supporting in order to show that you, too, are among the enlightened, Fundrace.org makes it easy.
While a number of outlets provide fact-checking throughout the campaign, Fundrace.org allows you to follow the money on your own. And with political contributions going back 10 years, you’ll also be able to track trends in campaign money. Fundrace.org is the kind of useful election tool that we believe every American, whether on the left or the right or somewhere in the middle, will come to value as a mainstay of every election season.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

In my Sep. 14 post I wrote about what I considered to be false accusations against Mission Essential Personnel, which provides translators and interpreters to the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other government agencies.
However, that is not to say that everything in that industry is fine. In fact, one would have to assume simply on the basis of the money that has been shoveled into the language translation and interpretation sector since the 9/11 attacks that there has been some waste and fraud. Like so many other aspects of private military and security contracting when you scale up your operations several fold and do not have proper oversight and accountability procedures problems are inevitable.
Now as I am not particularly familiar with this sector I would normally not try to provide further detail. But fortunately for us there is Common Sense Advisory an independent Massachusetts-based market research company. Among its goals it helps innovate industry best practices in translation and interpreting. Last December it produced a report “Language Services and the U.S. Federal Government: A Detailed Look at Uncle Sam’s Translation Spending Habits.”
The report analyzed 20 years of federal government data, from January 1, 1990 through December 11, 2009. One of its very first points makes it easy to understand why doing proper oversight is easier said than done.
Federal government agencies spent a total of US$4.5 billion on translation and interpreting services from 1990 through 2009. However the bulk of that is clearly attributable to what happened after 9/11. The massive amount of spending on language services by the U.S. government is a relatively recent phenomenon – 92 percent of this expenditure (US$4.2 billion) took place in the past decade alone, from 2000 to 2009. In fact, 47 percent of this money (US$2.1 billion) was paid out to language service providers in the past two years.
In 2001, the amount spent on language services more than doubled from the previous year, from US$67.6 million to US$160.51 million. Language services contracts continued to grow – in size and number – in the years that followed. Another dramatic increase took place in 2008, when total federal spending on language services doubled yet again, from US$453.69 million in 2007 to US$1.96
billion in 2008.
Who were some of the top spenders? The top twenty included:
Agency
Amount spent on language services
Department of the Army 2,587,428,206
Virginia Contracting Agency 385,380,319 *
Drug Enforcement Agency 259,079,703
Department of the Air Force 146,783,605
U.S. Special Operations Command 140,192,216
Department of State 108,142,963
Department of the Navy 38,989,968
Agency for International Development 19,381,630
Federal Prison System 17,919,454
Defense Logistics Agency 14,367,629
* The Virginia Contracting Agency buys language services for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
On average, these 20 organizations spent a cumulative amount of US$217.71 million per year on outsourced language services. However, if we remove the Department of the Army from the equation, the average amount drops to less than half that amount – US$92.99 million annually. In other words, the Department of the Army accounts for more than half (57%) of the federal government’s translation and interpreting spending.
Historically, the Department of the Army has held the number one spot in terms of language services expenditures more years than any other organization – a total of 13 out of the 20 years reviewed.
Thirty companies earned US$17 million or more by providing language services to the U.S. federal government over the past two decades. Very few of these companies operate in the commercial market. Some firms, such as Berlitz and Bowne Global, were absorbed into other Language Service Providers (LSP) through mergers and acquisitions. Others had multiple points of participation through other entities such as McNeil’s partner share in Global Linguist Solutions.
Companies Contracts Obtained Amount Awarded
1 Global Linguist Solutions, LLC 55 1,051,646,448
2 Aegis Mission Essential Personnel, LLC 167 520,678,259
3 BTG, Inc. 164 303,879,709
4 TRW, Inc. 24 219,839,926
5 SM Consulting, Inc. 78 148,348,254
6 Shee Atika Languages, LLC 90 131,662,819
7 Berlitz International, Inc. 66 125,626,424
8 Allworld Language Consultants, Inc. 1,479 121,676,792
9 Northrop Grumman Corp. 203 114,704,525
10 Chenega Federal Systems, LLC 72 110,093,518
11 Techtrans International, Inc. 95 97,055,726
12 McNeil Technologies, Inc. 1,049 90,949,937
13 Bowne Global Solutions, Inc. 45 89,559,211
14 Metropolitan Interpreters & Translators, Inc. 3,319 82,710,784
15 Calnet, Inc. 177 73,549,486
16 BDM International, Inc. 30 67,181,105
17 Comprehensive Technologies, Inc. 1,793 53,544,848
18 Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions, LLC 1,435 44,114,173
19 Worldwide Language Resources, Inc. 78 41,162,120
20 SOS International, Ltd. 1,927 38,742,384
21 Schreiber Translations, Inc. 507 27,799,608
22 ZKD, Inc. 23 27,727,100
23 Nangwik Services, LLC 13 26,800,435
24 Miscellaneous Foreign Contractors 2,583 26,013,382
25 Diplomatic Language Services, LLC 1,048 20,854,433
26 Thomas Computer Solutions, LLC 103 19,843,274
27 Stuart B. Consultants, Inc. 512 19,233,858
28 AM General Corp. 59 19,140,476
29 Lionbridge Global Solutions 31 18,096,563
30 MPRI, Inc. 18 17,742,553
Just to pick a few years at random, after a slight dip in 2002 compared to 2001, the government experienced an enormous increase in language services spending in 2003 to US$394.4 million, well more than triple the amount spent in 2002 (US$106.3 million). Nearly US$270 million of the 2003 total was generated by the Department of the Army, and another US$37.4 million came from the Virginia Contracting Agency
By 2005, the word was out – more companies than ever were hovering like bees around the hive of federal government language services opportunities. Thirty-three companies earned more than one million dollars in language services.
The final year of the two-term Bush administration ended with a bang – the federal government spent more than one billion dollars on language services in 2008. The Department of the Army spent the most (US$833.6 million), followed by U.S. Special Operations Command (US$51.6 million). These two agencies issued 827 contracts – on average, worth more than one million dollars each.
The analysis by Common Sense Advisory shows that after the attacks of September 11, 2001, there was a sharp increase in spending on language services, followed by a decrease in 2005, after which the numbers rose again from 2006 through 2008. One of the most dramatic rises in the overall federal budget took place between 2007 and 2008. Interestingly, this was also by far the largest increase in the language services budget. Meanwhile, the defense budget grew at a more predictable and steady pace… Language services expenditures appear to be linked to both overall federal and defense spending.
Those who believe in spending U.S. tax dollars in America can take heart that there is a strong tendency to “buy American.” Just over US$17 million in federal contracts were awarded to non-U.S. vendors from 1990 through 2009.
Although buying American is a bit geographically restricted. Federal agencies tended to buy from U.S. suppliers, and the majority of these have offices right in the Washington, DC area or in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. In total, 52 percent of all contracts (24,727) over the 20-year period we analyzed went to DC-area providers.
How does the future look for the industry? Quite good. The report says, “The lessons of the past 20 years are clear. For the most part, spending goes up every 12 months. Under Republicans, more of that outlay traditionally underwrites defense- and intelligence-related activities, but President Obama’s embrace of the “just war” theory anticipates at least equal spending in these areas for years to come.”
There are lots of business opportunities for the canny company. The report concludes, “In summary, the past 20 years of federal government spending have been very kind to the world of language service providers. Globalization guarantees that the next two decades will be equally beneficial.”

Follow David Isenberg on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/vanidan

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

cross-posted from Not Eating Out in New York
It’s a ubiquitous side on the sushi restaurant menu, but “seaweed salad” is just weeds from the sea, tossed with dressing. Often, it’s made from dried and reconstituted seaweed sheets, shred into ribbons. You can get packages of the dried stuff at any Japanese grocery. Or, if you’re at the beach, you’ll come across it, fresh, for sure.
Well, I was at a beach last week and couldn’t help but pick up several types of washed-up seaweed. We’ve gone over foraging for wild edibles in the park here, and I’ve digressed on the wonder of finding wild oysters on Mark Bittman’s blog, too. But I have to admit, this was something that even I had to muster a little courage to eat. I’ve never picked up seaweed, cleaned it, and eaten it before.
Neither had my mom, though she’d be more apt to, having grown up in Asia where seaweed is much more commonly eaten. “You can eat that?” she asked, apprehensive, as I collected the choicest greens from the beach (as if I knew what that should entail). There were plenty of thin, rubbery sheets of “sea lettuce,” the shocking lime-green type with ruffled edges like its namesake. I also picked up snarled clumps brown seaweed, which is perhaps less favored by eaters and looks like a delicate mess of coral.
“Of course,” I shrugged her off, pretending that I knew way more than she. As I continued to pick up, feel, and sniff various translucent, rubbery sheets, I was encouraged by a few things. For one, the stretch of Connecticut shore we were standing on was privately owned, and there wasn’t another soul on it the whole morning. The water looked clear enough, and I’ve eaten plenty of fish, mollusks and crustaceans from this same Long Island sound. Also, a few weeks ago at a barbecue, a friend had taken dried seaweed sheets from a package and let it soak. She then drained it and tossed it with sesame dressing, and it was a big hit on the spread. I’d wanted to copy this since, but hadn’t made it to the Asian market to get the seaweed yet. (Which is invariably dried wakame seaweed, a popular deep-green type slightly thicker than my sea lettuce.) Finally, at a seafood market down the street, they were selling packages of “local” seaweed salad.
So what was the difference between foraging for weeds from the land and the sea? As with wild foraging for anything, you do want to be extra-cautious of what you collect. Would you eat fish or other seafood that lives in these waters, too? Are there signs of meddling by any other life forms on this stuff? You want to be the first one to get your hands on it. A good rule of thumb from an expert forager I’ve learned is to never go overboard on eating something new the first time. Have a little, and wait a day. If nothing happens to you, you’re good to go forth and eat more.
Though I’d collected the most gelatinous, non-dried out pieces, I still soaked my seaweed in a big bowl for an hour or so. The sand sunk to the bottom, and I let that (or most of it) drain. I tried to cut the sea lettuce into thin ribbons but it was a bit too slippery to do a great job. With the brown seaweed, I removed any extra-tough bits and separated it into loose strands. Thank goodness my mother always travels with sesame oil and soy sauce, which I doused the rinsed and sliced seaweed with. Then, I let it chill to marinate for a bit.
I took my first bite tenaciously. Soft yet unmistakably crunchy, this seaweed salad tasted like the real thing. It could have maybe used a little rice vinegar, and some toasted sesame seeds for garnish. But otherwise, it was seaweed salad alright. And nothing happened to me (or my mom, who dug in appreciatively) the next day.
So yes, you can make your own seaweed salad, and it doesn’t have to cost you a dime. Here’s a recipe with a slightly better dressing for it. The main flavor, though, is in the nutrient-rich weeds themselves.
Wild Seaweed Salad
(makes about 4 side-dish servings)
about 2 cups fluffy, fully soaked and drained seaweed
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon sugar
toasted sesame seeds (for garnish)
Finely slice or shred seaweed into thin ribbons. Whisk together the remaining ingredients to create a dressing. Toss with the seaweed. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds.

Follow Cathy Erway on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/cathyerway

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

I have been witness to my mother having grand epileptic seizures since I was five and remember it was terrifying, like how watching a werewolf come slowly to rabid life would be… at first. Her guttural squall that funneled out of her throat as she went blue and wet herself, her rolling around on our Persian carpets, eyes fished upwards into the deep socket of her skull, jerking back and forth, back and forth. I didn’t know what it was that I had done. Been a bad girl. Exasperated her too much with my bossy-boot demands of bride dolls and rides on the Ferris wheel.
It would take 20 minutes for her to gain consciousness, recognition. In her dazed state of semi-consciousness, she would slur that I must blanket her with cuddles, and she would whimper and babble nonsensically: “I love you” over and over again. My mummy was alive, my tummy would simmer with relief. And that’s all I knew when I was give years old.
A I grew older her epileptic seizures became a monthly or sometimes even weekly events. “Wahhhhhhhhhh,” I’d hear her caterwauling in the concrete yard, and quietly I knew it was my mother having one of her “turns.” Tiptoeing towards where the stifled chokes were coming from I’d see my grandmother and relatives standing over her and tut tutting. It became a fear I learned to live with… it flowed seamlessly into the quilting of my insides, my makeup.
The fear. It was a monster I dreamt about at nights when I would lie silently next to her and just wait for the seizure to begin. I was on standby mode every night, especially if she had had an upsetting day or had not got enough sleep. I knew she would have a fit for sure. I would lie in the purple-black of night, fear ballooning up my throat, ready to burst my neck.
As I became a teenager, the fear became my friend, the only thing that felt natural to me. By now it had also become embarrassment. Embarrassment of neighbors seeing it, of other people, of pretty boys I wanted to impress. And still, my mother refused to take her medication.
She didn’t agree with taking any medication for anything. It was wrong you see, putting chemicals into your body. But it was not wrong to make your daughter live in terror every day. Terror that her mother might at any time have a seizure and plummet down the stairs, or fall in the middle of a busy road or amidst a family meal.
Over the years all her seizures caused her to have various black eyes, bruised and broken limbs and a wiped-out memory. Her refusal to take medication caused me to fear her every bath-time, her every tired day, her every lone walk in the woods. I lived on the edge of a dagger, waiting, listening, on 24-hour alert to leap to action just in case she had a fit. She told me to mind my own business when I begged her to please take her medication.
When I myself bit my tongue down to the deep wells of its root as I had a seizure in 2005, I had broken the last taboo. I was with a rock band in a trashed hotel room, the remnants of debauched sex smoldering on the floor. There had been cocaine and booze. I lost all my porn star-ish ness within those three minutes. I was an epileptic retard and had well and truly shamed myself.
I closed my eyes and wished it had been a cocaine seizure. Even temporary death would have been more rock n roll. But no such luck. The neurologist confirmed my shame. Drugs had triggered epilepsy in me. Not a cool, overdosing, crack-whore seizure, which was more appropriate to rock n’ roll, but an epileptic one. Damn. I had fallen onto the pile with the fat balding middle-age dads who come to see rock bands; the disabled; and the spotty teenage boys.
I could tell no other rock band of this hideous wart of a secret. There was so much stigma attached to being epileptic that surely I would be outcast in the rock n’ roll world. All they would think was how could they let an epileptic slut perform oral sex on them knowing that at any time she could chomp it off during a fit? I was a hazard. I took round purple horse pills hoping that funny feeling I kept getting would dissolve into fairytale land. I sucked through straws for my tongue was still limping away, dented with the ditches of my teeth marks. I slept all days and nights and tried to get better. This stigma, this “sacred disease” as the ancients called it, was associated with being mad, mentally retarded, a freak show. I couldn’t leave my home for months out of fear of showing my freakishness to the world.
Yesterday I was older than a teenager, quite grown up actually. I found my mother in a giant pool of blood. She had cracked her head on the concrete floor of a superstore. Lying still as a doll, eyes heavenward, surrounded by paramedics and such. The food hall was drenched in her blood, shopping bags splashed. She had had another seizure, falling on the back of her head and cracking it. Her memory was not in place. She vomited what looked like blood. In the ambulance on the way to ER I saw her drenched in blood pouring down her neck and I went: “Oh.” This is what it will be like forever. I may as well get used to it.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

With the November elections just weeks away, a growing number of
Americans are being tricked by a sinister con game that’s morphing into a
bizarre new threat. The swindle known as “Gram Scam” is going political.
Until recently, this deception was aimed at senior citizens. In a
typical scenario, the victim gets a frantic message from someone posing as a
favorite grandchild. The caller claims he or she has been arrested in a
foreign country, needs money immediately to pay a lawyer, and the caller
also implores “Grandpa” not to tell anyone else about the situation because
it’s so embarrassing.
Now, however, the scheme is exploding with epidemic velocity. According
to numerous police departments, the polarized political climate gripping the
US has created a perfect storm of expanded opportunity for Gram Scammers.
“New cases are being reported daily,” said one FBI fraud specialist,
“and frankly we’re not surprised. Grifters manipulate emotional responses
by using code words and crisis signals, causing the victim to hit a mental
flash point that overwhelms logic and common sense. Old folks have a soft
spot for their grand kids. Now the perps have discovered flash points for
voters who are passionate about issues and candidates.”
One of those voters is a woman named Lois, a nurse in Los Angeles who
doesn’t want her last name revealed. “I worked as a block captain for the
Obama team,” she explains, “and that’s probably how the creeps got my name,
by hacking into some campaign database.
“They definitely knew how to push my buttons,” Lois admits. “I mean, a
phone call from the first lady — I was stunned. She said my name, she knew
where I lived, it was amazing!”
More amazement quickly followed when ‘Michelle Obama’ explained that she
was being detained on trumped up charges in the Dominican Republic.
“She said she was involved in a top secret diplomatic operation,” Lois
recalls, “and I had to promise to keep everything quiet or it would be ruin
her husband, so she was was putting their trust, and hope, in me. Of
course I agreed.”
What happened next was a classic combination of drama and deceit. Lois
was spellbound as ‘Michelle’ told how she’d been pulled over by a traffic
cop, forced to blow into a breath analyzer, and then charged with DUI.
“She told me it was false reading,” Lois says, “probably caused by cough
medicine she’d been taking for a scratchy throat. Then she said to wire
$4500 dollars right away, to an attorney, and he would pay the fine and fix
everything. And she would phone back to let me know the payment got
through. I asked why she didn’t call the embassy, and she said nobody in
the state department knew she was there, and she was using a fake name, and
time was running out.”
Lois, thoroughly ensnared, quickly wired the money. One hour later the
phone rang again, with a new voice on the other end.
“This man said he was Michelle’s lawyer,” Lois continues, “and told me
the messenger bringing the cash to the police station had been hit by a bus
and the money disappeared, so I needed to send another $4500 dollars or they
would put Michelle into solitary confinement.”
In a state of near-panic, Lois told the man to hold on and called a
friend on her cell phone. “I didn’t have enough money in the bank for
another payment,” she says, “but I knew one of my co-workers from the
campaign could help. I just blurted the story out the moment she answered,
and the first thing she said was, ‘You got to be kidding! I sent Michelle
Obama $6000 two days ago!’ It turned out her fake Michelle claimed to be in
a hospital with flesh-eating bacteria, and they needed to buy special
antibiotics or Barack would have to fly down there in Air Force One and he’d
never get re-elected!”
Lois has no plans to try and recover her money. In fact, she professes
to feel mostly relief that the entire episode was fabricated. “I’m just
glad to know Michelle isn’t being traumatized in some grimy jail cell,” she says. “That’s much more important to me than my bank balance.”
In Miami, a car wash operator and Tea Party activist named Dale was
targeted by scammers trolling the opposite end of the political spectrum.
“The call happened right while I was recording the Messiah on CNN,
blathering his socialist agenda to a bunch of union goons,” Dale recalls.
“So I answer the phone and this guy says, ‘I’m Todd Palin and we’re about to
nail Obama’s ass to the wall–do you want to help save America?’ Man, I
about jumped though the roof!”
The help Dale needed to provide was, of course, monetary and covert.
‘Todd’ explained that his wife had secretly traveled to Nairobi and was, at that
very moment, in possession of Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate. Even
more enticing was his assertion that Obama was also in Kenya, and ‘Sarah’
had used her cell phone to take pictures of him worshipping at a local
mosque wearing a turban and tribal robes.
“Hey, I wasn’t born yesterday,” Dale adds. “I asked the guy how the
Messiah could be in Kenya when CNN was showing him live at this union rally,
and he said it was simple — the person on my TV screen was a double. He said
Obama uses them all the time when he sneaks back to his homeland.”
By sheer luck, Dale avoided being stung. “This phony Todd person told
me they needed $3300 dollars to bribe the guards at the border crossing, and
I was supposed to get a money order, and a messenger would pick it up and
take it to an overseas banking office somewhere downtown.
“And right then,” Dale says, “I happen to glance down to the floor
beside my chair. See, I had just hooked up the phone to one of those voice
stress monitors. My ex-wife calls all the time and I wanted to see if she’s
jerkin’ me around when she calls and says her purse got snatched, or the car
got robbed, and she’s gonna get evicted if she doesn’t pay the rent. All
the time she hassles me for extra dough.
“Anyway, I look down, and the dang voice stress gizmo is going bonkers!
Thank goodness for modern technology — I can’t tell you how great it felt to
just give that SOB imposter an earful of my mind and hang up.”
Dale is now in the process of warning his friends to be on the alert
every time their phones ring. “I’m not pulling any punches,” he says. “I’m
telling ‘em these scammers are real pros and they’ve done their homework.
Like the fact that Obama often uses a double — I was impressed because that
isn’t common knowledge and the lame-stream press never reports it.
“It’s actually kind of scary,” he admits, “to realize that a bunch of
rotten, low-life, scumbags are almost as smart as we are!”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

During yesterday’s opening of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a new Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a broad-based, public-private initiative to provide affordable solar-powered stoves to 100 million homes around the world by 2020. She was joined by Lisa Jackson of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and representatives of the UN Foundation, which will oversee the initiative. As a topic leader of CGI’s Girls and Women Action Area this year, and as one who has long been interested in the transformative potential of cookstoves and other solar technologies for women’s health, security, development, and the environment (see, for example, these articles from July 2009 and June 2010), it was exciting and rewarding to see this issue take center stage.
The challenges posed by traditional biomass cookstoves have long been known. Every year, nearly two million women and children die prematurely due to smoke inhalation from traditional stoves – more than die from malaria. Many more contract deadly illnesses like pneumonia and lung cancer. Repeated exposure to cook-smoke also leads to low birthweights and a host of other health problems. According to the World Health Organization, this is the fourth greatest threat to health in developing countries. Moreover, as women must search farther and farther from home for firewood, they are often subjected to sexual violence and other threats to their safety. The time they spend collecting firewood not only puts their safety at risk, but also limits more productive activities like attending school.
Traditional cook stoves also place a double strain on the environment, as trees are depleted for firewood and harmful gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon are emitted by stoves into the atmosphere. Scientists estimate that traditional cook stoves and fires are the second-leading cause of climate change after industrial emissions.
What was sorely missing until now was an affordable, scalable solution. Thanks to continuing innovation, clean, efficient stoves can cost as little as $25. This might still seem like a lot for those living on $2 a day, but when you factor in the health and productivity costs for poor families of traditional cook stoves, the return on investment of a solar cookstove with a three- to five-year lifespan becomes clearer. The saved money can be used for any variety of things, like paying school fees, buying textbooks, or starting a small business.
The other positive factor in the new cookstove initiative is the breadth and robustness of the partnership behind it. An array of U.S. government agencies is joined by the governments of Germany, Norway, and Peru, international and local NGOs, including several UN agencies, and private corporations like Morgan Stanley and Shell. Of these, the U.S. government will contribute $50 million to the project in the next five years, and other partners will add another $10 million. As Secretary Clinton has already noted, this commitment alone will not eradicate the problem, but it is a positive start, and it is particularly significant to have the resources of the private sector on-board when pursuing the larger target of raising $250 million in the next ten years.
Perhaps the most encouraging part of this new initiative is that it is supported by a coherent, long-term plan moving forward on three parallel tracks. Specifically, it provides for continued research and development to make stoves even more affordable and efficient. It also seeks to create a self-sustaining market for the stoves that fits with local cooking practices, and merges distribution of the stoves with existing development efforts. The goal is to encourage local businesses to manufacture and sell the stoves, contributing to economic growth on top of all the health, security, environmental, and time-saving benefits.
Clean cookstoves are a win on all fronts – including environmental, health, economic, and educational. Women and children will be the greatest beneficiaries, and by extension, the whole community. It is a welcome new initiative at a time when affordable, effective, cross-cutting development strategies are needed more than ever.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The recent report that 23 percent of students taking ACT and SAT tests do not qualify for college-level courses has reignited criticism of the education profession for “failing” to solve the problems plaguing the nation’s schools.
While the need for improvement is beyond question, those of us working in the profession have ample reasons for challenging the measures of accountability currently being imposed on us by so-called “national standards.”
Rather than working cooperatively with those of us engaged in meeting the countless challenges children are facing, the administration in Washington, like the one before it, is imposing a business performance model on educators that is as ill advised as it is ill suited for solving the problems we confront.
Leading is a principal’s job, to be sure. But leading successfully is about creating a better democracy. We don’t need Taylorite management techniques that amount to telling us, “Get in line and march.” We need time, money and a voice in policy changes necessary for building a path to success.
When Washington applauds school boards for firing principals and teachers without due process, as was done in Central Falls, Rhode Island and continues to be done in less publicized systems, it not only violates the legal rights of educators covered by collective bargaining agreements, it reduces the complex task of administering improvements to the crude, pass-fail simplicity of a Donald Trump TV show.
Those of us who have dedicated ourselves to improving the lives of children in our public schools are not neophytes to be dictated to and dismissed like Trump’s apprentices. We are in many ways the heart of the communities we serve, often victimized by the constant experiments of policymakers who have never walked in our shoes and, worse yet, seldom bother to consult us on what changes might be made to improve prospects for students whose development we hold dear.
By constantly imposing new, experimental programs on us — no matter how well intentioned — they are breeding failure. How do they expect children to succeed when there’s no stability in the approaches Washington is foisting on us, and no continuity in teaching programs from one year to the next?
To impose a business model of performance on our schools only increases the odds of failure. First and foremost, it ignores the unique contributions that administrators make by dealing on a daily basis with the economic and social stresses weighing on parents and their children; for, whatever is ailing the communities we serve is also ailing our schools. We have to cope with these realities in ways business leaders seldom do, in no small part because they live far removed from the more distressed communities where achieving improvement is most challenging.
The fact is, we’re an easy mark for academics and Washington policy wonks, because no one sees the principal as having a relationship to the growth of a child. Much of the work we do, so essential for keeping the system functioning, such as maintaining the physical plant or coping with the environment outside the school, is invisible to the public. We’re seen solely in relation to teachers.
As a result, we’re forced to deal with the contentiousness inherent in the business model that says, “If it doesn’t work, throw it out.” Approaches like these aren’t turnaround plans; they simply turn a blind eye to the reality educators must confront, especially in communities where poverty and crime are more pervasive.
Rather than glib condemnations, what’s needed is a new spirit of cooperation, one in which all the stakeholders in public education — especially school administrators — are consulted on solutions rather than being targeted for vilification. Instead, we’ve been completely shut out of policy decisions.
We’re the ones at ground zero in public education, directly involved in communities throughout the country. Parents send us what they hold most precious, their children, and we’re charged with sending them back a better person.
Yet policy makers seem blind to the realities we face, primary among them the fact that our children aren’t machines. Some of them are struggling before they ever get to school. Many of them come to us from dysfunctional families and have totally different levels of readiness that don’t lend themselves to standardized, near-term tests as true measures of success. In some cases, success means teaching a child just to learn to read and write.
But what we need most of all is hope, and ironically that’s not what we’re getting from the current administration. Instead we’re getting sermons about the need for standardized plans, without even the conviction to fund them promptly. Of the 40 states that have submitted plans to quality for Race to the Top, only two had been funded before September.
Constantly condemning the school administrators and teachers who are struggling to cope with the complex challenges we face does little but cause the public to lose all hope that we can succeed. If there’s no hope in the community, there’s no hope in the school. So, the question that cries out is: What hope is there for the child?
Diann Woodard is president of the American Federation of School Administrators

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

In yesterday’s post regarding the schedule for this cycle’s negotiations, I said that SAG and AFTRA would be jointly negotiating basic cable starting on November 7. Sources close to AFTRA and SAG have corrected me on this–and provided more details.
My take on this was based on a misreading of a SAG press release from 11 days ago. The actual language in the release was:
The Basic Cable Live Action, Basic Cable Animation and TV Animation contracts negotiations with producers are tentatively scheduled to begin November 7, 2010. As part of the Basic Cable Live Action agenda item, the SAG National Board voted to explore the possibility of coordinated bargaining with AFTRA in the area of live action basic cable programming.
The source close to SAG confirms that SAG has indeed reserved time starting on Nov. 7 for basic cable discussions. So SAG will presumably be having basic cable discussions with the companies unless something unexpected happens. The AMPTP will be present, and the sessions will be at AMPTP headquarters, but the discussions are technically with “authorizers,” which appears to mean some of the AMPTP members plus other companies.
Will AFTRA be a part of those negotiations? That’s where it gets more complicated. Sources close to both unions confirmed that there have been emails and conversations between the two unions, with one source implying that these informal communications have been between the National Executive Directors of the two organizations, David White (SAG) and Kim Roberts Hedgepeth (AFTRA).
Have those communications progressed beyond the informal stage? The source close to AFTRA says they haven’t, and that s/he would expect a formal letter if things were to continue to move forward. The source close to SAG was a bit doubtful that such a letter was even necessary, but wasn’t completely sure.
Regardless of formality, is AFTRA receptive to the idea of coordinated bargaining? The source close to AFTRA said yes, in theory. The caveat was that AFTRA would want to be sure that coordinated bargaining would increase the likelihood of members actually working. S/he added that AFTRA would consider any SAG proposal on coordinated bargaining very seriously.
That comment points out a difference in philosophy between the two unions, at least to date. SAG has a single basic cable agreement. Companies are offered they agreement, and that’s what they have to sign if they want to use SAG members in their productions. Only in rare circumstances are waivers granted.
AFTRA in contrast has four basic cable templates, one of which is similar to the SAG basic cable contract. Two of the contracts are used with smaller networks, such as the CW, while other are used with full-fledged networks. In each situation, there is a choice of two approaches to residuals. Additionally, the templates are subject to negotiation, which is why they’re “templates” (or “contract forms”) rather than “contracts.” The result is so-called “one production only” deals.
The difference in philosophy is this: AFTRA believes that these OPO deals are the best opportunity to prevent shows from going non-union or being produced in Canada. The source close to AFTRA says the union has statistics on this. There were some statistics of this sort in AFTRA’s 2007 magazine article on basic cable. I’m not sure if there are more recent figures as well.
SAG, in contrast, believes that promulgating a single contract is the best way to ensure that guild members receive the full benefit of SAG’s power to negotiate on their behalf, and that a union’s job is to set minimums.
There’s a also a perception, among at least some leaders on the SAG side, that AFTRA does not pursue contract grievances as aggressively as SAG does. Producers and management-side lawyers generally share this belief, and often prefer to deal with AFTRA rather than SAG.
It doesn’t go unnoticed, either, that AFTRA’s approach has enabled the union to achieve greater market share in basic cable. Whether this comes at the expense of SAG, as some believe, or is simply captures programs that would have gone non-union or fled to Canada, is difficult to say.
In any case, the fundamental difference in opinion is clear, and the question is, should a union focus more on obtaining work for members or more on setting minimums? Compromises between these two extremes are obviously possible, but the two goals are obviously in tension with each other.
The importance of coordinated negotiations, and achieving a synchronization of the two unions’ approach to basic cable is that this helps advance the cause of merger. A single, merged union obviously can’t have only one contract and never deviate from it, while simultaneously having four templates and negotiating OPO deals.
The most likely solution is to meet in the middle, and, for instance, have two contracts rather than one or four. Or there might be four contracts but now deviations from them (i.e., no OPO deals, just a choice of contracts). And, perhaps, two of those contracts might b phased out over the next several years. There are all sorts of compromises one might envision, but it’s obvious why the matter is sensitive.
Another reason the matter is sensitive, of course, is that SAG is in the position of asking AFTRA whether it will join SAG and bargain in a coordinated way. This conceptually makes SAG the suitor, and AFTRA the decision maker (or the “decider,” in George Bush’s charming locution). That’s not a comfortable place for SAG to be in and will require delicate maneuvering to avoid bruised egos. Indeed, it’s perhaps a bit surprising that SAG’s board voted to explore coordinated bargaining without assurance that AFTRA’s board would adopt a similar resolution at its board meeting, which was held on the same day as SAG’s.
SAG, AFTRA and the AMPTP had no comment.
Stay tuned for my piece later this week looking at the issues in play for SAG and AFTRA. And watch for my new book “Hollywood on Strike!,” due out next month.
————–
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

There has been a lot of attention around Sarah Shourd’s release from Iran’s Evin Prison in the past few days. My heart goes out to Sarah, and I am truly happy for her safe return to her family. I am the other Sarah, the daughter of Robert “Bob” Levinson, the American citizen who went missing in Iran three and a half years ago. I am getting married in 6 days, and, as of this moment, my father will not be there to walk me down the aisle. I ask you to remember him too.
My father disappeared on March 9, 2007 on Iran’s Kish Island, while he was on private business investigating cigarette smuggling. There is no evidence that he ever left Iran – his passport has never appeared in any other country and his name has not appeared on any flight manifests leaving Iran. A few weeks after his disappearance, Press TV, an Iranian government-sanctioned media outlet, reported that my dad was “in the hands of Iranian security forces.” No other details were provided, and the Iranian government has never delivered the full report of the investigation promised to us three years ago. We have no more information today than when my father first disappeared, and as my wedding day quickly approaches, the thought of my father’s absence pains me to the depths of my soul.
I thank God every day that at least I still have hope, at least there is a chance that, by some miracle, the government of Iran will find my father and send him home to us, in time for him to walk me down the aisle and give me away. Time is running out though.
Still, even though my father’s case has mostly fallen out of the public eye, even though I’m not sure what more I can say to get action from those in Iran’s government that can help me, even though we have no more information than we did when my dad went missing on March 9, 2007, I have a small glimmer of hope that Iran’s Supreme Leader and President will do what is right, and intensify their government’s efforts to find my father and send him home in the next 6 days. I have hope that my and my family’s prayers will soon be answered, and that my father will be by my side at my wedding.
Even with this hope, I still find myself fighting back tears constantly. It hurts to talk to my mother as I hear the pain in her voice when we plan what is supposed to be a happy occasion. It is absolutely unbearable to tell the florist that we might not need a Father of the Bride boutonnire, to make back up plans with the Church for my brother to give me away, or to tell the DJ that there might not be a Father-Daughter dance. How am I supposed to explain these things when I know my father is still alive in Iran? And when worse still, I know that he is suffering somewhere there just waiting and praying to come home to us?
My heart aches now writing this – it has been three and a half long years since my father disappeared on Kish Island, off the coast of mainland Iran. I never thought he wouldn’t be able to come home to us. I never thought there was a chance he wouldn’t be there one day to walk me down the aisle.
My heart aches even more when I consider the emails my family has received into our website, www.helpboblevinson.com, detailing sightings of my father in Iran, and telling us of the related health issues that he has faced. In addition to my father’s existing ailments of diabetes, hypertension and gout, we have been told of several illnesses he has suffered from over these past three and a half years, including a peptic ulcer, a recurring eye infection, a severe, persistent cough, a significant weight loss, and perhaps most troubling, the infliction of a diabetic coma. I know my father is alive, and I worry every day for his health based on these reports.
The joy of life has all but disappeared for my family. Graduations have lost significance. Birthdays are incomplete. Anniversaries are insufferable. The happiness has disappeared from my mother’s eyes, and the laughter that once filled our house has been silenced. Each of the past 1,290 days has been longer than the day prior, each hour more painful than the previous, and each occasion marked with more despair than the one before. I don’t want what is supposed to be the happiest day of my life to suffer the same fate.
For the rest of my life, I don’t want to wonder if I did everything I could to bring my father home in time for my wedding. I desperately plead once more with both the government of Iran and the government of the United States to do everything they can in the next 6 days to find my father and send him home, with time enough to walk me down the aisle and give me away to the love of my life. My father always told me that the happiest day of his life was the day he married my mother. I once again implore anyone who has the power to help, please do everything possible to make my fianc’s and my wedding day the happiest day of our lives too.
Sarah Levinson, 30, is the 3rd-oldest daughter of Robert Levinson, the American citizen missing in Iran since March 2007. Sarah has six brothers and sisters. She works in the financial services industry and lives in New Jersey.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Upon the conclusion of the UN’s major summit on the Millennium Development Goals, we are pleased to share the following statement that has been jointly signed by our friends and colleagues around the world.
- Johann Olav Koss & John W McArthur
***
This week world leaders are gathering at the United Nations for the last major check-point summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) before the 2015 deadline. The Goals were set by world leaders a decade ago at the Millennium Summit, and they have spurred great progress in tackling the challenges of extreme poverty around the world. Bill Gates has called them “the best idea for focusing the world on fighting global poverty that [he has] ever seen.”
At this important juncture, we call on world leaders to fulfill their MDG commitments through clear, practical, targeted, and measurable initiatives, matched by clear points of accountability and transparency for ensuring successes and challenges can be understood by all. At the same time, we recognize that the MDGs require leadership from all segments of the global community, not just governments. The world is ever more interconnected, and ever more able to leverage the ingenuity and efforts of individuals, companies, and non-governmental organizations from all corners of the globe in tackling the challenges of extreme poverty.
Recognizing the opportunity and responsibility that everyone has to contribute to the Goals, we have all agreed to make our own practical, measurable, and time-bound MDG pledges — whether through direct implementation, public advocacy, or the mobilization of financial support. These pledges are not a substitute for government action, but we hope they will make real contributions to the achievement of the Goals. Moreover, we hope that our range of pledges, from small to large, will help spur others to make their own MDG pledges. Such commitments can be particularly important in spurring momentum amidst global sentiments of economic strain.
Our MDG pledges are all published on the new website www.mdgpledges.org . We encourage others around the world to join this public registry by making their own MDG pledges, and in turn sharing them with members of their community and encouraging friends and colleagues to do the same. With five years to go, we pledge our own best efforts to work with communities around the world to help ensure the MDGs are achieved.
Signed,
Alberto C. Vollmer
Andy Freire
Ayla Goksel
Francois P Champagne
Daniel Lubetzky
David McWilliams
Esther Duflo (Director, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab)
Jennifer Corriero (Co-Founder, TakingItGlobal)
Jo Cox (Director Maternal Mortality Campaign)
Johann Koss (President and CEO, Right To Play)
John Battelle
John W McArthur (CEO, Millennium Promise Alliance)
Kate Roberts (Vice President, PSI)
Kristin J Forbes (Professor, MIT-Sloan School of Management
Mack Gill (President, SunGard Global Services)
Marco De La Rosa (CEO, AES Dominicana)
Michael Kremer (Professor of Economics, Harvard University)
Mina Al-Oraibi
Muna AbuSulayman (Secretary General, Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation)
Nancy Lublin (CEO, DoSomething.org)
Henrik Naujoks
Nikolay Pryanishnikov
Orzala Ashraf Nemat
Patrick McWhinney
Salimah Y Ebrahim
Vuyo Jack (Africa Empowered)

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

They’re outsiders, they’re angry and they’re winning key GOP primary elections. They’re the Tea Party All-Stars like Sharron Angle, Rand Paul and Christine O’Donnell. But what they also are is terrified; scared to death of going before the national mainstream media’s cameras, and hence scrutiny, as they attempt to convince voters that they have the qualifications to serve the United States Senate.
And the reason for this monumental fear of the press? It’s because they’re all woefully lacking knowledge of policy and the issues; cannot articulate their positions; and most of all, are radical fringe wingnuts who get into an embarrassing heap o’ trouble every time they open their mouths (can you say “mice have fully functioning human brains?”)
O’Donnell, the Sarah Palin protege (or should we say clone) went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program Tuesday night to defend her decision–urged by Palin–to shun the national news media’s talk shows. Apparently, this self-imposed gag-order excludes friendly outlets like the “fair and balanced” Fox, where her segment with Hannity seemed more like a paid campaign commercial than a serious, legitimate interview by a respectable, objective journalist. Let’s just keep it all in the family I suppose, right?
So this is what it comes down to, huh? This cabal of “grass-roots” everymen and women who shake in their bootstraps as they cower from the press and voters. Who only show their faces and espouse their substance-lacking incendiary rhetoric at small town churches and halls to adoring extremists who lob softballs and give these empty-suited frauds an opportunity to bash the opposition to rousing applause.
O’Donnell canceled all her Sunday morning interviews last weekend. So did Paul after his victory last Spring. And Angle makes like Jesse Owens and high-tails it to the exit door whenever she sees a press badge headed her way.
Just what are these Tea Baggers so afraid of, anyway? I thought they have all the answers as to fixing America’s problems? You’d think they’d just jump at the chance then to share all this wisdom and insight over CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS too, right? And, aren’t politicians supposed to be thick-skinned, able to be in the hot seat and explain their positions without losing their composure or cool as they discuss decisions that impact the health, welfare and national security of America? These are the same people who want us to believe they have the character, depth and gravitas to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Ahmadinejad, Qaddafi, Kim Jong Ill and Putin when they’re utterly terrified of facing David Gregory, Bob Schieffer and Wolf Blitzer?

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Interstate egg baron Austin “Jack” DeCoster offered an apology this afternoon during a congressional hearing into the mass recall last August of 550 million factory-farmed eggs contaminated with salmonella.
“We were horrified to learn that our eggs may have made people sick,” DeCoster told the panel. “We apologize to everyone who may have been sickened by eating our eggs. I pray several times each day for all of them and for their improved health.”
Seeing as two victims of DeCoster’s slovenly egg production system were witnesses at the hearing, the apology was appropriate and welcome. But it was not nearly enough. We need tougher laws; not more contrite factory farmers.
More than 1,600 people were reportedly sickened by eggs from DeCoster’s Wright County Egg and from Orland Bethel’s Hillandale Farms, both from Iowa — though the true number is probably many times greater than that.
But when it comes to eggs and other animal food products raised in huge, industrialized, often unsanitary factory farms, we need more than apologies: We need inspection, enforcement, and accountability.
Rep. Henry Waxman, the powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose oversight subcommittee convened today’s hearing, promised tough questions for DeCoster and Bethel (Bethel took the Fifth and refused to answer any questions). He decried the “filthy conditions that caused food poisoning in thousands of consumers across the country,” and charged that “these facilities operate with a shocking level of disregard for basic food safety controls.”
How filthy were those conditions? Decide for yourself. This is from the hearing’s Briefing Memo:
It’s enough to make you sick. And no apology, no matter how welcomed and sincerely delivered, will prevent it from happening somewhere else.
As Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said in his opening statement, DeCoster is probably not the only bad egg actor in this whole mess: “There are many egg producing facilities with corporate ties that have not yet been inspected by the FDA,” Markey said. “The corporate fox is in charge of the henhouse.”
DeCoster’s son Peter said he believes “at this time” that contaminated chicken feed, and not conditions in the barns, is what led to the outbreak. But the FDA “has not reached this conclusion,” said FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua M. Sharfstein.
FDA investigators, he testified:
Sharfstein said that any number of factors could have contributed to the introduction and spread of the disease, and added that a newly adopted FDA “egg rule” will require “certain types of preventive measures that will keep salmonella from getting in eggs,” including better rodent control, refrigeration and testing.
Currently, the FDA has “no ability to subpoena, the information they seek has to be given voluntarily, there is no obligation by the farms to report to the FDA even when they know there are food safety issues,” Waxman charged. “This is unthinkable.”
Waxman’s committee unanimously approved the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which was overwhelmingly passed by the full House. The bill, which remains stalled in the Senate, would give the FDA new, sharp teeth to enforce inspections and mandate recalls of contaminated foods, including fruits, vegetables, seafood, milk and eggs.
As good as that bill is, it apparently would not cover inspections and recalls of meat, poultry and processed egg products, which fall under the auspices of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.
But the Food Safety Enhancement Act is clearly a necessary step toward protecting American consumers from food-borne illnesses, especially if this country is going to remain addicted to cheap meat, milk and eggs produced at gargantuan “concentrated animal feeding operations” (CAFOs), better known as factory farms (traditional farms, while not free of these problems, are less likely to have such large outbreaks).
Democrats charge that Sen. Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, is singlehandedly holding up the bill in the Senate, something that GOP members of the House committee denied today.
Whoever is responsible for holding up this critical bill, just like DeCoster, owe the American people an apology — and an explanation.
David Kirby is author of Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment. (St. Martin’s Press)
He was interviewed about the egg hearings on Grit TV with Laura Flanders on Tuesday.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid abruptly changed his mind late yesterday. After consistently stating that Kevin Kolb is his No. 1 quarterback, he abruptly changed his tune by handing Michael Vick the keys to the car and naming him the starter.
Reid suggests the decision has nothing to do with Kolb’s health. It is simply a matter of how Vick is playing right now. After reviewing the film, the coaching staff came to the conclusion Vick is playing too well to be second fiddle to Kolb. Reid stated. “When someone is playing at the level Michael Vick is playing, you have to give him an opportunity.” He continued, “this isn’t about Kevin Kolb’s play. You’re talking about Michael Vick as one the best quarterbacks in the NFL right now.”
What a difference a day makes.
Everything fell in place for Vick, but he was prepared. When opportunity called, he prevailed.
After Vick played well against Green Bay, he suggested the Eagles would have won if he were in the game. He added that he feels he can be a starter in NFL again.
Reid agrees with Vick’s assertions, saying “an ex-superstar has regained his ability.”
Vick exuded confidence in his post-game interview after Green Bay, but was more contrite after the Detroit Lions game. I think this helped make the Eagles’ decision easier. Vick stated he was fine being the back-up and referred to Kolb as the leader. He also suggested that he would gladly step in when needed.
Had Vick came out voiced displeasure about the decision to start Kolb, things may have been different. Instead, Vick exercised a level of maturity in saying the right things at the right time. Taking the high road on this occasion afforded Vick the opportunity to get back in the saddle again.
This opportunity has come about because of Vick’s play. He’s paid his societal debt by being incarcerated for 18 months. He’s paid his debt by being subject to consistent ridicule from the press and fans across the country. Despite the latter, Vick stayed focus on honing his skills. And now, he’s once again a starting quarterback in the NFL.
Not to be lost in all this is the Philadelphia Eagles organization. They provided Vick an opportunity when few others would last year. They allowed Vick to regain a sense of belonging and an opportunity to get his life together. The decision by owner Jeffery Lurie, President Joe Banner and Reid to bring Vick aboard is now paying dividends.
As I have consistently stated, it’s crystal clear Vick gives the Eagles the best chance to win. It does not make sense to play a quarterback in Kolb because you committed to him after you foolishly released Donovan McNabb. Obviously, things have changed. Any intelligent coach would know you owe it your team to put the best players on the field, and Kolb isn’t one of their best options to win.
Reid surprised a lot of people. He typically sticks to his guns. But Vick’s play made it next to impossible for him to stand by a quarterback that doesn’t give his team the best chance to win. As head coach, he owes it to the organization to put his best team on the field, instead of honoring a commitment that no longer makes sense.
Reid echoed the latter by stating, “It’s my obligation to make the proper decision.”
It is good that Reid finally came to his senses.
What a difference a day makes.
Email Dexter directly and follow him on Twitter. Please read about Sports & More from Dexter. For Media Requests please contact Public Relations.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

I never thought I’d say it, let alone do it: I’m keeping a gratitude journal.
It’s hard for me to even write those words because I know they conjure a lemming-like embrace of the latest self-help stunt. We’ve all heard the guarantee: “Write about gratitude and you’ll start feeling more grateful…which will then change your perspective on life.”
Pablum, right? Well, this is one time I’ve embraced my inner pablum. Because that’s exactly what happened to me. I started writing down sweet moments. And life started feeling lighter.
The journal experiment began by accident. Last July, my family and in-laws were browsing the quaint main street of Bolton Landing near Lake George after eating too much at a seafood restaurant called Son of a Sailor. My husband took the kids to an ice cream stand, and I wandered into a kitschy gift shop. Amid the miniature plastic canoes and bad photos of sailboats and sunsets, I spotted a small orange bound book, whose cover title read simply: “Gratitude. A Journal.”
I picked it up and the first page introduction already had my number: “If you’re anything like me, you probably spend more time thinking about your problems than you do reflecting on the good things in your life.” It was true. I’d never call myself angst-ridden, but my mind does tend to go to what’s wrong instead of what’s right. It continued: “It makes sense – problems need to be solved, whereas good things are, well, good. So of course the bad stuff winds up getting more of our attention.”
The brief introduction suggested a simple exercise: each day, write down something nice that happened; it offered blank space –18 lines –on each 3″x4″page, with a place to fill in the date on top. The limited canvas was reassuring: they weren’t asking for a novel. Actually there wasn’t room to say very much at all. Which means I’d only have to jot down a moment or two, the briefest snapshot of when I’d felt lucky or thankful that day.
I held the book in my hands. I liked the sturdy smallness of it. The plain orange cover with three sparse dandelion drawings. The plainness of the assignment. I put the book back down. I picked it back up. I put it down. The dialogue in my head was predictable:
This is dumb. If you want to keep a journal, start typing entries in your laptop.
Don’t fool yourself. You’ll never type a journal entry every day and you’ll lose track of where it’s located in all your hard-drive files.
Who actually writes in long-hand anymore? It will be a chore.
What’s hard about writing with a pen? You wrote in a diary for 20 solid years — age 8 to 28.
That was 15 years ago. I’d feel embarrassed to keep this by my bedside.
You can turn it over so no one sees the title.
I circled the store, deciding finally to skip the purchase and join my cone-eating family.
But then I circled back to the book. And suddenly I’d bought it.
As soon as I owned it, I cherished it.
As soon as I started writing in it, something began to change. That’s the surprising thing: the effect was immediate. I found myself noticing moments throughout each day when I felt good, and thinking, “That will go on today’s page;” “That was the moment.” But then there’d be another one. Maybe even three. And by the time I opened the book before bed, (now my inviolable evening ritual), I had more gems than I had space, and wrote in shorthand to squeeze it all in. But the greater revelation wasn’t that there were more happy moments than I expected; it was that there was one. Every single day. Before I started the journal, if someone had asked me whether I experienced at least one kind of mini-joyful instant every single day, I’d have answered no. But I’d have been wrong. Because there they were. Page after page, moment after moment. Tiny or vital. Mostly tiny. Even if I’d had a “bad day,” there was always a good hour or minute or afternoon shining from the mud.
The journal didn’t become a date book. I disciplined myself not to simply recount activities or events. The prerequisite for inclusion was gratitude: if I wasn’t particularly grateful for it, if a moment hadn’t given me that jolt of well-being, then it didn’t belong in the book. If I’d gone somewhere or had a conversation that maybe should have made me feel good but didn’t, it shouldn’t make the cut.
As the pages accumulated, I’d sometimes go back to re-read – which had its own powerful effect: it crystallized how much happiness I’d been having. I enjoyed reliving the highlight reel, and was startled by how instantaneously – and vividly – the moment came back to life.
Many of the snapshots are utterly mundane. Something I ate. A view. Something my daughter said. Watching my son do something he hadn’t enjoyed in a while. A bike ride with my husband. Believe me, you’d be bored to read my little orange book. Only I know why these particular nuggets were exquisite. And I’m sure yours would be similarly specific and maybe just as inscrutable and dull. But I love that these jewels are now preserved in ink. So, unless I lose the little orange book, I’ll never forget these pure, insignificant highs, and otherwise might have lost them, because they weren’t important enough to retain. I’ve learned that the bricks of blessing can be haphazard, and surprisingly ordinary.
These days, when I’m about to turn off my light at night, I’m aware of feeling a certain buoyancy and calm instead of the old weight of the checklist – that tally of all the ways I’d fallen short that day.
I joke to my husband next to me, if he’s been teasing about something, that he’s about to get excised from my gratitude journal.
Zeroing in on the day’s joy each night doesn’t make me self-conscious when I’m living it, but it does make me conscious. Conscious of when “the moment” happens, curious about when it will next appear. And yes, it may sound too good be true but my perspective has been torqued so that I generally see a brighter picture. When, at the end of each day, I might have focused on all the deficiencies and shortcomings, something reminds me to look at how much glimmers. I’ve now got the book to prove it.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

As children here in America head back to the school, they are diving into the 3Rs – Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. It’s a good thing since our students need to do better at the basics as standardized tests remind us. But interestingly, many children in the world are struggling with a different R.
Restrooms.
This might sound glib, but it’s an enormous problem that most of us never think about and fails to capture the public imagination. However, a child in the developing world never gets a chance to think about that new school uniform or a nifty backpack if the school lacks a simple toilet, let alone a sink or wash basin. For millions of pre and school-age girls and boys in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the absence of this basic facility is a very real threat to their health, education, and future.
From a health perspective, improper sanitation – not having a toilet – causes illness and suffering on an almost unimaginable scale. According to UNICEF, 400 million school-aged children are infected annually by intestinal worms that sap their learning abilities. Beyond the discomfort, a staggering number of children die from this situation. Diarrhea alone will kill 1.4 million children this year, all before their 5th birthday. It might be hard to grasp the scope of this tragedy, but consider this: the world loses 70,000 classrooms of kindergarteners every year due to this entirely preventable condition.
It’s also an issue that hits young girls particularly hard. CARE estimates that some 150 million children do not complete primary school. How can we achieve gender equality at a global level and a common dignity for all when girls constitute more than two-thirds of that number? Its common to meet middle-aged women in developing world who left school when they reached puberty due to the practical and personal considerations of menstruation. For what its worth, many of these women also started collecting water around the same age.
During a week when the world is talking about the MDGs, this solution can be sketched out with a fair amount of clarity. In contrast, an issue like universal literacy is an incredibly complex challenge. It seems very much affected by a stew of factors including widespread poverty, cultural norms, parental literacy, educational materials, local logistics, public finances and the list goes on. Despite these daunting concerns, innovative social entrepreneurs are tearing down the barriers to progress and bringing education to those in the far corners of the world once consigned to ignorance and illiteracy.
There are numerous examples in this area. Room to Read has achieved remarkable results in its quest to educate impoverished communities, building libraries at the amazing rate of one every four hours while spawning local language children’s publishing around the world. New initiatives like the micro-student loan program just launched by Kiva might help a new generation to enroll or stay in school.
These ventures have demonstrated scalable models to attack a highly complicated and layered problem. If we can apply entrepreneurship and innovation to this issue, we should be able to do the same for sanitation. There might even be smart models to consider in the realm of cross-sector partnerships.
For example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC) at CGI this week. It’s an ambitious program intended to ignite a robust worldwide market for clean and efficient household cook stoves, serving 100 million households by 2020 and delivering commercial and environmental sustainability. By bringing together an unlikely set of players including Morgan Stanley, Shell, the UN Foundation as well as a number of foreign aid agencies and UN bureaus, the GACC hopes to develop financing mechanisms and distribution models to deliver these products to those who need them.
So why not a Global Alliance for Sanitation in Schools? Its not hard to imagine. The best and brightest minds from design and entrepreneurship could raise seed capital from foundations and social angels to pilot new ideas on how to build latrines and systems supported by operating models to ensure their maintenance and usage. Public and private actors could be engaged to provide funding to scale projects that demonstrate proof of concept. Fascinating alliances could emerge along the way between groups advocating for universal education, gender equity, and global health, all of whom see how sanitation access can advance their own agendas.
Sanitation is a basic need that could enable a new destiny for billions of people. It can accelerate progress in numerous other areas of human development. Far too few philanthropic dollars and entrepreneurial energies are focused on it. It is time to apply the same degree of innovation and ingenuity to this problem that has been brought to bear in other fields.
Lets not wait another generation. We need to summon the talent and ignite the will now. When we do so, we should be able to cross the 4th R off our back-to-school shopping list and better the lives of billions in need.

Follow Jonathan Greenblatt on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

A US man has pleaded not guilty to a knife attack on a Muslim cab driver that prosecutors say was a hate crime.
Michael Enright told police he had drunk a bottle of scotch before allegedly attacking New York cabbie Ahmed Sharif, court documents say.
His lawyer said he was suffering from stress after visiting Afghanistan.
The attack added to the tense atmosphere surrounding debate over a proposed Islamic centre near the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York.
In court documents released on Wednesday, prosecutors said Mr Enright, 21, got into Mr Sharif's cab, then asked if he was Muslim and uttered an Arabic greeting.
Prosecutors say he taunted Mr Sharif with remarks about proscribed sexual practices during the holy month of Ramadan before attacking him with a folding knife.
Mr Sharif barely escaped with his life, prosecutors said.
Arrested minutes after the attack, Mr Enright had an empty bottle of scotch in his bag, police said. He told officers he had drunk “a pint of scotch” earlier.
Prosecutors said he told police: “I am a patriot, and I want representation”, complained police “allow them to blow up buildings in this country”, and derided an officer as a coward because “you weren't over there”.
Mr Enright, an art student, is being held without bail in a psychiatric hospital. His lawyer Lawrence Fisher has said Mr Enright has a drinking problem and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from experiences with US troops during a trip to Afghanistan to film a documentary.

Source:BBC

US Republicans have vowed to cut taxes and government spending and repeal President Obama's healthcare law if they win power in the mid-term polls.
The “Pledge to America” manifesto, circulated to House Republicans on Wednesday, emphasises job creation and spending control.
It attacks the Democratic-controlled government as “out-of-touch”.
Polls indicate Republicans may win control of the House of Representatives in the November elections.
The minority party has made Mr Obama and the Democrats' stewardship of the economy the key issue in the election campaign.
Democrats, meanwhile, have said the Republicans would bring back policies from the administration of George W Bush that they maintain brought the US into its current economic troubles.

Source:BBC

With the publication of my new novel, Mirror Image, a lot of people have asked why I set the mystery thriller in Pittsburgh. My usual, somewhat facetious answer is that New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami were all taken.
The real answer, apart from the fact that I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, is that my home town provides the best setting possible for a contemporary novel, and for the most obvious of reasons: it represents what is happening to many cities throughout the country. At least, the ones that are struggling to survive the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, from an industrial and manufacturing-based economy to a digitial and information-based one.
When we think of eastern cities, we think of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Detroit. Burly, muscular cities whose very foundations were laid by immigrant men and women, hard workers whose daily toil fueled those cities’ economic engines.
Pittsburgh was an exemplar of that depiction. With the accent on was. Famous for its steel mills and factories—and for the resultant smoky air and soot-coated buildings—the Pittsburgh I knew as a child has undergone a renaissance in the past thirty years.
For example, the seventeen miles of steel mills that once lined its converging rivers are no more. (I remember them well; for two summers during my undergraduate days at Pitt I shoveled coal into the blast furnace at J&L Steel on Second Avenue, popping salt pills to stave off dehydration.) Moreover, with the arrival of software companies and the proliferating financial institutions, the downtown has sprouted shining new towers and off-loaded many of its older, WW-II era structures. And the air is pretty clean and soot-free.
What makes Pittsburgh an interesting phenomenon is the way it’s handling this transition. Not that it hasn’t been, nor continues to be, rocky. Nor without its casualities—primarily blue collar workers and their families. What Billy Joel sang about in “Allentown” is true for most of Pittsburgh’s small outlying communities and cities whose survival depended on the steel and coal industries. Even at the newly gentrified core of downtown Pittsburgh, the Steel City itself, what new steel there is—embedded in freshly-poured concrete—is imported from Japan.
But, like it or not, in today’s economy—let alone today’s global marketplace—eastern industrial cities have to change or die. Pittsburgh is changing—has changed—and this resulting mix of old and new actually gives the city a fresh opportunity to grow. When you add to this its rich bounty of endowments
from such heavy-weights as the Mellons, the Scaifes and the Carnegies, as well as its nationally-known universities and hospitals, Pittsburgh is well-positioned to be as relevant as any other American city. Plus, it boasts the Steelers!
Of course, change is a mixed blessing, especially for those of us whose lives straddled both “eras” of Pittsburgh. A fact I make use of in Mirror Image. After a traumatic experience involving one of his patients, the novel’s narrator, a psychologist named Daniel Rinaldi, is musing on how mixed that blessing is as he heads home…
“We made the turn onto my street, whose edge fell away onto a panoramic view of the Three Rivers and the glistening lights of contemporary Pittsburgh. Gone were the steel mills and factories; in their place stood razor-thin buildings of glass and chrome, of software and bond trading.
“The city had changed a lot since I was a kid, a shot-and-a-beer town colliding with the Information Age. Though sometimes, like tonight, I missed the Pittsburgh I grew up in. Forged by immigrants. Musty like the smell of damp wool. A mosaic of thick accents and old neighborhoods, clanging trolleys and cobblestone streets. Before mini-malls and decaf lattes. Before spaghetti became pasta.”
I guess, in the end, though a blessing may be mixed, it’s still a blessing. In these difficult, uncertain times, that’s something every Pittsburgh native—even if reluctantly—has come to understand.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

In yesterday’s post, I listed a number of foods that have vanished from America’s tables since Mark Twain included them on a long fantasy menu written while traveling around Europe. The foods on today’s list come from a more hopeful category–those Twain enjoyed that can still be found and savored today.
Maple Syrup
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Maple syrup remains, fundamentally, a wild food. The trees take some forty years to grow large enough to tap without damage, far too long to be practical as plantings in most cases. The majority of sapand therefore syrupcomes from wild trees. And, as the sad story of the American chestnut show us, the thriving of a single species in our forests should never be taken for granted. Maple syrup remains a sustainable, historic, culturally significant, and utterly delicious North American food.
(Photo from Flickr: My Lil’ Rotten)
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Well, it appears that some of the nation’s leading economists have proclaimed that the recession is over. Of course, these were the best and brightest who failed to warn us of the Great Recession in the first place, but I don’t want to sidetrack you with trivialities.
So, let us pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate.
I suppose that if you are one of those billion-dollar hedge fund managers, this piece of information could actually mean something to you. However, if you are one of those struggling souls in that Dickens novel known as twenty-first century America, it means little or nothing to you.
That anyone can actually utter the words “the recession is over” at a time of mass unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness and general despair tells you all you need to know about America. The nation actually exists as two nations: the few that have, and the many who don’t. The former group does not depend on the well-being of the latter in order to thrive, and arguably thrives on its misfortunes. Ultimately, the American dream is exactly that — a dream. And as millions of people are waking up to stark realities, they long to resume their slumber.
Currently, as the Census Bureau reported, 43.6 million people, or 14.3 percent of the U.S. population live in poverty. For people of color it is even worse. While 9.4 percent of whites are in poverty, 25.3 percent of Latinos and 25.8 percent of blacks are poor. And childhood poverty has risen to an alarming 20.7 percent. To be sure, it hasn’t been this bad since the 1960s. Some people say that all we need to do to alleviate poverty is to grow the economy. But what good will creating a larger pie do for us, with the top 1 percent still taking the lion’s share of the pie?
Establishment conservatives are so transparent in their greed that their only solution is to keep the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans making over $250,000. Meanwhile, the Tea Party gangsters are so heartless that their extremist solutions — to abolish unemployment insurance and reduce dependence on government — would amount to pouring salt in an open wound.

Amidst all of the suffering we’re witnessing during this recent crisis in the world’s largest economy, this awkwardly named land of opportunity, the number of billionaires has soared. The gap between the top 1 percent and everyone else hasn’t been this large since the 1920s. The top 1 percent claim 33.8 percent of the wealth, and the bottom half of Americans own a negligible 2.5 percent of the economic pie. Real average earnings have not increased in half a century, and the last two decades were great, if you were a CEO, that is.
The fact is that Republican tax policies have widened the gulf between rich and poor, with the rich paying less and less in taxes. Despite the longstanding, folkloric national rhetoric regarding opportunity — or perhaps even because of it — the fact is that it is harder to make it in America than anywhere else in the industrialized world. Upward economic mobility is far more elusive in the U.S. than in those so-called evil socialist nations of Scandinavia and the rest of Western Europe. If you are poor in the “land of the free,” chances are that you will stay that way. But unlike those Europeans, at least you’ll have your guns to protect you, right? Yeah, right.
The Obama administration is at a crossroads with the selection of Elizabeth Warren to get the consumer protection agency up and running. Even some of the most diehard fans of this president were losing faith, with the daily parade of white male Wall Street front men advising Obama into the abyss of one-term presidential status. They have served him poorly, and would do for the U.S. economy what they already have done for the U.S. economy, which is to wreck it further and collect their spoils.
But perhaps now, there is a chance that the people might win for a change. The middle class has been hollowed out and wiped out, while the poor is even more entrenched than ever. And yet one gets the sense that it cannot remain like this. Something’s gotta give, one way or another. The question is how we will let this all play out as a country — with widespread destitution, social unrest and uprisings, or with responsive government action that seeks to bring about equity and justice to the many. Call it a new New Deal, call it socialism, call it democracy, call it what you will. But one thing is clear: American-style capitalism is eating the people alive, and now is the time to put it in check.
David A. Love is the Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com, and a contributor to The Progressive Media Project and theGrio. He is based in Philadelphia, and is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His blog is davidalove.com.

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On January 4, 2007 my daughter Desiree came home with tears in her eyes, and wearing a button showing Rosie the Riveter over the words:
“A Woman’s Place is in the House–as Speaker!”
Nancy Pelosi had just been named Speaker of the House of Representatives, the first woman to achieve that level of power.
In California, of course, we knew her as a woman of strength and character, who could (and would) fight tooth and nail during the campaign season, but then sit right down afterwards, and work with the same person whom she had just been battling.
When she said, “I accept this gavel in the spirit of partnership, not partisanship…In this House, we may belong to different parties, but we serve one country,” it was not just talk.
Example: George Bush. No modern Republican has so infuriated Democrats, particularly about the war he began in Iraq. When he committed America’s might to that invasion, he sacrificed the blood of our sons and daughters, and the wealth which had taken the previous administration years to build into a surplus–which Bush reduced to an ocean of red ink– on the basis of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
Many called for Bush to be impeached. Certainly there was cause. To usurp Congress’s authority to wage war–and to do it under false pretenses?
Republicans had impeached Bill Clinton for comparatively trivial offenses, marital misdeeds which embarrassed him and his family, but did no harm to the country.
Pelosi’s personal feelings might be judged by her response to Mr. Bush’s sneering attack on Congress in 2008, saying “America deserves better”.
She responded strongly, referring to the Bush Presidency as:
“A total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the war, the economy, on energy, you name the subject…” adding that Congress had been “sweeping up after his mess over and over again.”–CNN, July 18, 2008
There was huge pressure on Pelosi to impeach George Bush.
But she would not do it. “It’s off the table,” she said. Why?
Perhaps just as the Clinton impeachment had been used by Republicans to distract America from much needed healthcare reform, a Bush impeachment could tie up the Democrats’ opportunity to improve health insurance law.
She had set her sights on a goal, and she was determined to deliver it, for the good of the country.
When Edward Kennedy died, and a Republican took his place, many thought that was the end for health care insurance.
But Pelosi never faltered. She was there, fighting every inch of the way. Largely because of her leadership, American children can no longer be denied insurance on the basis of a pre-existing condition.
And for my number one issue, stem cell research, which could someday allow my paralyzed son Roman Reed to walk again?
When the Stem Cell Enhancement Act of 2005 and 2007 was proposed, Republican leadership tried to shoot it down. But Pelosi put her strength behind it. Where the smoke of battle was the thickest, there she was. From Congressman to Congressman she went, on both sides of the aisle, asking their vote– both times, she carried the House–and both times, a Republican president vetoed it.
But she would not be discouraged. She would just keep on.
As she said of another effort she advanced, the cause of women’s equality:
“Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle: …not just waiting,… but working.. to redeem the promise of America.”
And when at last a Democratic President put pen to paper, restoring both scientic freedom and the hope of cure, March 9, 2009, Nancy Pelosi had this to say:
“By lifting the executive ban on federal funding for stem cell research, President Obama has given hope, and potentially health, to millions. Every family in America is just one diagnosis, one phone call, or one accident away from needing the benefits of embryonic stem cell research….
“If we have a scientific opportunity to treat and cure disease, we have a moral opportunity to support it. That is why Congress will move to pass legislation to make this executive order the law of the land.”
Today, when all seems lost: when not only a carefully planned lawsuit seems poised to block federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and the Republicans have pledged to “ban all embryonic stem cell research, public and private,” and the good old boy network of conservatives thinks to re-take control of the House of Representatives:
One slender woman stands in their way.
“No,” she says, “We will not lose the House.”
Proud of Pelosi?
Of course. And so should every American be, proud of the woman who broke the glass ceiling, advancing women’s rights and freedoms, who will stand up for what is right–but who is also never afraid to sit down and talk, and figure out a better way.
Remember in November.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com