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Okay, normally I work with Kiva, focusing on the West Bank with CHF International, but that’s no big deal compared to The Simpsons. (Mr Simpson’s one of my role models.)
Anyway, tomorrow night, Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus talks with Lisa Simpson about the use of microfinance to help small businessmen grow their businesses and create jobs.
For more, check out Microfinance Meets “The Simpsons”.
Grameen Foundation uses microfinance and innovative technology to fight global poverty and bring opportunities to the world’s poorest people. With tiny loans, financial services and technology, we help the poor, mostly women, start self-sustaining businesses to escape poverty.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

For more than thirty years Rona Barrett reported entertainment. She was the “Perez Hilton/TMZ/ShowbizTonight” of her day. If it mattered she knew it. Gossip became news if it came to us through Rona. She had an uncanny direct-to-the camera delivery that catapulted her across ABC’s line-up as the “go-to” source from all the network’s Tinseltown news.
Barrett’s talent and tenacity fed her skyrocketing inertia. She was publishing three magazines simultaneously – all with an insider’s seat to Hollywood’s stories. Anti-war, sexing, boozing, beautiful and vibrant Hollywood had a dialogue with America because Rona got the jaws flapping. From Presley, to Paul Newman, from The Rolling Stones to Raquel Welch, Rona’s conversations were famously intimate and benchmarks for Barbara Walters, Oprah, and even Larry King to follow.
Barrett moved from Hollywood in the early nineties. She ran a lavender farm just north of Santa Barbara in Santa Ynez. She blended with America on the other side of the camera and life was good – for a time. Alzheimer’s and the torment of time called Rona to her father’s side to manage his life, his daily needs, and a system of senior care she found almost impossible to negotiate. There must be a better way.
The Rona Barrett Foundation has been set up to assist seniors and to help spawn a new synergistic way of thinking about care and the community. Barrett’s idea stems from the vast need she’s found at senior centers she’s studied and her own unwavering and noble passion to make the world a better place for all of us. To benefit her foundation, she is presenting a one-woman live show, “Rona Barrett: Nothing But the Truth” on Oct 15 and 16 in Santa Ynez.
If Santa Ynez is like the show she premiered in Beverly Hills it deserves to been seen across America. Rona Barrett is as delightful, energetic, brassy, and direct as ever.
In talking with Rona I was thrown back in pleasant surprise by her perception and wit. She might not be the 16-34 demographic, but it I sure see a still-twinkling star in her eyes. Television should call her back. She would be the Judge Judy of the fame-fatale set. By showing their real side I suspect she’d pull the red carpet out from “no-talent-reality-star” flash in two seconds flat – aahhh imagine the daytime ratings!

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

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One Nation march seeks to rally US liberals
Thousands of people have been attending a rally in Washington DC in support of jobs, education and civil rights.
Organisers called it a One Nation rally, hoping to rekindle enthusiasm for the liberal causes that brought President Barack Obama to office.
Five weeks ago, conservative activists held a huge rally at the same spot to denounce the administration.
The US Democrats are expected to lose seats in Congress during mid-term elections in a month.
The One Nation event has been organised by American trade unions and other left-wing groups.
Among those on the stage were the civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, along with the singer Harry Belafonte.
They were joined by representatives from various progressive groups in the fields of education and labour relations, and a steady stream of left-wing activists.
But it was the crowd itself that offered a rare sight; liberals and progressives have kept a relatively low profile since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, says the BBC's Iain MacKenzie in Washington.
Meanwhile, the political momentum has switched to conservative groups such as the Tea Party – a vocal organisation that opposes big government and wants to reverse most of the president's reforms.
It has staged several rallies in Washington over the past year.
Organisers say the event is not intended to be political, but those attending are overwhelmingly supporters of Barack Obama's Democratic Party.
“The nation put this man in the White House in order to change things, and if we don't come together and show the people who are trying to stop us, the minority that is trying to stop us, we will never get anywhere,” said one.
If the intention of the One Nation rally was to re-energise the Democrats' supporters, it is happening very late in the day, our correspondent says.
The US mid-term elections take place in less than a month. Current polls suggest the president's party is on course to lose controlf of the House of Representatives, and possibly even the Senate.

Source:BBC

Malcolm Gladwell, author, and astute assessor of life — who I first encountered when I read The Tipping Point back in the summer of 2004 prior to entering the University of Pennsylvania for Penn’s annual reading project, has somehow missed the mark in his latest piece in The New Yorker, Oct. 4, entitled “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” As usual, Gladwell points to many facts and sources in this case to make a persuasive argument as to how social movements today are loosely tied as compared to those of those before us, most notably several movements of the 1960s, such as sit-ins and the Montgomery Bus Movement. He argues that creatures of Facebook and Twitter are commanded by simple pounds on a keyboard and stir movements by these simple pounds as opposed to actual physical participation, creating weak-ties to participatory events and lower-risk involvement in movements themselves as compared to those that occurred in the past. Participation today is thus either negligible or, it seems as Gladwell argues, drastically less significant than has previously been.
Yet, the social media movements of today are far from insignificant: the most palpable and significant in recent time, for example, based largely (not solely) on a foundation of a social media movement was the momentum of President Obama’s victory in 2008. The election of a United States President, was not only tangible, but also one of absolute high-risk — maybe not high-risk in the sense of a sit-in with the repercussions of the 1960s — but high-risk in results, as the results of a presidential election are a no low-risk matter.
When the United States Department of State used SMS text messaging as means to raise money for those impacted by the Haiti disaster, creating the largest mobile donation campaign ever at the time, this was a high-risk movement too. By texting the word “Haiti” to 90999, individuals were each able to donate $10 to the Red Cross, generating 1.7 million dollars the first 24 hours alone. The campaign spread virally across Facebook and Twitter and money kept pouring in. By January 20th, eight days after the earthquake initially struck, the campaign had passed $25 million in its total fundraising amount. This was a movement in the United States that spread across national boundaries, a point that Gladwell clearly distinguishes with the Iran elections, claiming that there was little or no revolution within Iran but instead a movement that was “Western-led.” In regard to “Text Haiti,” Haiti needed us, and they didn’t have the tools to lead the revolution. America needed to lead and did.
Gladwell touches upon societal restructuring with the assumption that we are seemingly now more apathetic. As a younger individual, I can’t help feel that some fingers are being pointed at Generations X and Y, the so-called “future of our nation.” But studies about younger generations, many of whom are glued to their screens or PDAs day-in and day-out, do not reveal this, not only at election times, but also in regard to civic participation as well.
True, pushing a button on Facebook or sending a tweet is not the same as being in the center of a sit-in or a rally. And if it were not for the generation before each generation, we would not be where we are today. This goes without saying for many generations throughout history.
I enjoy Gladwell’s books and consistently find many of his arguments intriguing and interesting. But I find his recent piece in The New Yorker to be somewhat generationally insulting — to me, it seems that he is saying that older generations knew how to create real, palpable movements; younger generations simply know how to push buttons. But Gladwell, younger generations can do both. They have: they were in the Facebook groups for President Obama and then they showed up by the thousands to the rallies and then they voted for him. And in the end, whatever you believe politically, Obama won. This was one significant, high-risk movement. And what if no physical presence occurs at all with such a movement? Look at the “Text Haiti” example: individuals raised over $25 million in eight days via this campaign. Was this high-risk or low-risk? Ask the people of Haiti.
I understand the point that Gladwell makes about joining the largest Facebook group to help save Darfur. Why do it he seemingly asks? The average donation amount is relatively low. However, the problem with this argument, Mr. Gladwell, is that it breeds a culture of cynicism in itself and falls into a cyclical nature of apathy. Just as it was unlikely to force people to join a sit-in if they didn’t want to back in the 1960s, it is unlikely to make people donate more than they are willing to, or anything at all, if there main goal is to make a point. And making a point to them might just be joining that group. Either way, these individuals are still making their own statement in their own, as you say, loosely-tied ways. And whether we like it or not, times have changed, and these are the movements of today: new societal structures have been created where people can in fact still make differences.
When Malcolm Gladwell spoke at my alma mater during the first week of classes a number of years ago, I believed in him because I thought he believed in the future generations. After reading his latest piece, I’m not so certain that he does anymore.
Mr. Gladwell: Look at all of the responses on the Internet that you have been receiving to your initial column. I have seen many. Low-risk, for sure. Loosely-connected, of course. But we care enough to write responses. And others care enough to tweet our responses or post them on their Facebook walls. And so, I end with what you ended with in your own piece: Viva la revolucin.
David Helfenbein has also posted this blog posting on his site, http://www.TheBeanPredicts.com, under his blog, The Bean Blog.

Follow David Helfenbein on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

“Social Network” is a genius film, largely due to the acting and Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay. It’s so good, you don’t notice the music, which is a true sign of a great collaboration between composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and director David Fincher. Despite all the hype about the soundtrack, which is of course extremely well done, film music is supposed to compliment, not distract.
It is near impossible to make a good film about a current topic, but “Social Network” tells the universal story of an awkward boy genius, who really just wants to win over the girl, and creates a technological revolution as a result.
In a fantastic turn as an actor, Justin Timberlake plays Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, and devilish mentor to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg).
My favorite line in the film is when Parker brags about the success of Napster, to which Zuckerberg’s then business partner Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield) replies dryly that the record labels won the $35 million lawsuit, not Napster.
Parker smiles and says, “Want to buy a Tower Records store?”
This line makes any music executive feel like they’ve been sucker punched in the gut. The truth hurts.
The record industry won the battle, but Napster won the war. Like Parker points out in the film, since the proverbial illegal file-sharing genie was let out of the bottle, physical record sales have plummeted, all major record store chains have gone bankrupt, and the industry has gone from five major label groups to four and most likely to three by the end of next year.
So what happened to the Napster movie that was planned?
The music industry vs. peer-to-peer file sharing network Napster saga transpired from 1999 to 2001. I was one of the few music journalists on the front lines. I went to all the court hearings. I saw founder Shawn Fanning go from a regular kid to a stalked, paparazzi target arriving to the courthouse in limos with bodyguards.
I spent hours with Hilary Rosen, who then ran the (Recording Industry Association of America) at the time and represented the labels who brought on the original lawsuit against Napster. No one knew this, but at the time she was getting repeated death threats for suing Napster.
I had Napster attorney David Boies (who went on to represent Al Gore during the “hanging chad” debacle) on speed dial to discuss the nuance of copyright law.
Bascially, that’s what I think happened to the Napster movie. Any film that needs to tackle the nuance of copyright law and the ridiculously complicated rights associated with recorded music, would fail miserably. The only people who would go see it would be the music industry.
MTV Films did option Shawn Fanning’s life story and had filmmaker Alex Winter, who played Bill in the “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” on board to write and possibly direct it. There was even talk that Fanning would play himself. It was supposed to be released in the 2003-2005 season. But it never saw the light of day.
I guess the other problem was no one really wanted to see a film where Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, who was vocal about his band’s suit against Napster, be portrayed as a villain. And who would play him in the film anyway?
For more music news and opinion go to TheComet.com.

Follow Tamara Conniff on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/tamarastar

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Malcolm Gladwell, author, and astute assessor of life — who I first encountered when I read The Tipping Point back in the summer of 2004 prior to entering the University of Pennsylvania for Penn’s annual reading project, has somehow missed the mark in his latest piece in The New Yorker, Oct. 4, entitled “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” As usual, Gladwell points to many facts and sources in this case to make a persuasive argument as to how social movements today are loosely tied as compared to those of those before us, most notably several movements of the 1960s, such as sit-ins and the Montgomery Bus Movement. He argues that creatures of Facebook and Twitter are commanded by simple pounds on a keyboard and stir movements by these simple pounds as opposed to actual physical participation, creating weak-ties to participatory events and lower-risk involvement in movements themselves as compared to those that occurred in the past. Participation today is thus either negligible or, it seems as Gladwell argues, drastically less significant than has previously been.
Yet, the social media movements of today are far from insignificant: the most palpable and significant in recent time, for example, based largely (not solely) on a foundation of a social media movement was the momentum of President Obama’s victory in 2008. The election of a United States President, was not only tangible, but also one of absolute high-risk — maybe not high-risk in the sense of a sit-in with the repercussions of the 1960s — but high-risk in results, as the results of a presidential election are a no low-risk matter.
When the United States Department of State used SMS text messaging as means to raise money for those impacted by the Haiti disaster, creating the largest mobile donation campaign ever at the time, this was a high-risk movement too. By texting the word “Haiti” to 90999, individuals were each able to donate $10 to the Red Cross, generating 1.7 million dollars the first 24 hours alone. The campaign spread virally across Facebook and Twitter and money kept pouring in. By January 20th, eight days after the earthquake initially struck, the campaign had passed $25 million in its total fundraising amount. This was a movement in the United States that spread across national boundaries, a point that Gladwell clearly distinguishes with the Iran elections, claiming that there was little or no revolution within Iran but instead a movement that was “Western-led.” In regard to “Text Haiti,” Haiti needed us, and they didn’t have the tools to lead the revolution. America needed to lead and did.
Gladwell touches upon societal restructuring with the assumption that we are seemingly now more apathetic. As a younger individual, I can’t help feel that some fingers are being pointed at Generations X and Y, the so-called “future of our nation.” But studies about younger generations, many of whom are glued to their screens or PDAs day-in and day-out, do not reveal this, not only at election times, but also in regard to civic participation as well.
True, pushing a button on Facebook or sending a tweet is not the same as being in the center of a sit-in or a rally. And if it were not for the generation before each generation, we would not be where we are today. This goes without saying for many generations throughout history.
I enjoy Gladwell’s books and consistently find many of his arguments intriguing and interesting. But I find his recent piece in The New Yorker to be somewhat generationally insulting — to me, it seems that he is saying that older generations knew how to create real, palpable movements; younger generations simply know how to push buttons. But Gladwell, younger generations can do both. They have: they were in the Facebook groups for President Obama and then they showed up by the thousands to the rallies and then they voted for him. And in the end, whatever you believe politically, Obama won. This was one significant, high-risk movement. And what if no physical presence occurs at all with such a movement? Look at the “Text Haiti” example: individuals raised over $25 million in eight days via this campaign. Was this high-risk or low-risk? Ask the people of Haiti.
I understand the point that Gladwell makes about joining the largest Facebook group to help save Darfur. Why do it he seemingly asks? The average donation amount is relatively low. However, the problem with this argument, Mr. Gladwell, is that it breeds a culture of cynicism in itself and falls into a cyclical nature of apathy. Just as it was unlikely to force people to join a sit-in if they didn’t want to back in the 1960s, it is unlikely to make people donate more than they are willing to, or anything at all, if there main goal is to make a point. And making a point to them might just be joining that group. Either way, these individuals are still making their own statement in their own, as you say, loosely-tied ways. And whether we like it or not, times have changed, and these are the movements of today: new societal structures have been created where people can in fact still make differences.
When Malcolm Gladwell spoke at my alma mater during the first week of classes a number of years ago, I believed in him because I thought he believed in the future generations. After reading his latest piece, I’m not so certain that he does anymore.
Mr. Gladwell: Look at all of the responses on the Internet that you have been receiving to your initial column. I have seen many. Low-risk, for sure. Loosely-connected, of course. But we care enough to write a response. And others care enough to tweet our responses or post them on their Facebook walls. And so, I end with what you ended with in your own piece: Viva la revolucin.
David Helfenbein has also posted this blog posting on his site, http://www.TheBeanPredicts.com, under his blog, The Bean Blog.

Follow David Helfenbein on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/DavidHelfenbein

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The request came from the State Department. A group of young political leaders from Lebanon would be visiting the United States as guests of our government. They were eager “to have a dialogue,” we were told. Would AJC be amenable to receiving them?
We agreed immediately. We have often hosted groups brought to America by the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program and always find these encounters valuable.
Moreover, as an organization that for years has been active in the Arab world, we attach special importance to such meetings, whether public or private, held in New York, North Africa, the Gulf, or elsewhere.
We’re always on the lookout for ways to expand points of contact and contribute to the search for peaceful coexistence. Getting together face-to-face has the potential to break down barriers and open minds. It may not be a sure-fire formula, but it certainly beats the absence of contact.
And that’s precisely what those eleven Lebanese, all university graduates and all in their twenties, hadn’t had to date — any contact with American Jews, or, as likely, Jews anywhere. Only one had ever visited this country before. Indeed, the whole point of the journey was to introduce them to relevant “current social, political, and economic issues” in the United States.
The day of the meeting came. We prepared the breakfast table and awaited their arrival. The State Department official suddenly appeared, visibly shaken. En route to AJC, he had received a call from the group notifying him that they weren’t coming. No further explanation was offered. No apology given. That was that.
Had all the parties come to the same decision? Given the diversity of the group’s affiliations — representing the range, absent Hezbollah, of Lebanon’s Balkanized political world — it’s not certain the vote would have been totally lopsided.
In that case, why didn’t some come, instead of a total boycott? Given the last-minute nature of the decision, there was no time to replace our meeting with another, so the time allocated was suddenly free. Could it have been intimidation by those strongly opposed to the encounter?
Or was it a decision taken, say, by the Lebanese government, which, having heard of the planned meeting, sent instructions to skip it?
Whatever the case, did the State Department express its displeasure to the eleven participants for their decision? At the very least, the group’s behavior was discourteous. Far more, a precious chance had been squandered to advance American interests by fostering dialogue between up-and-coming Lebanese leaders and a relevant American constituency.
In the end, we lost a chance, but, if I may say so, the Lebanese lost a bigger one. After all, we travel to the Arab world (though, regrettably, not Lebanon) and have opportunities to meet with Arab leaders.
On the other hand, these young political activists have no chance to travel to Israel and see a neighboring country with their own eyes.
They have no possibility to meet with Jews in Lebanon, as the community there, like Jewish communities throughout the Arab world, save Morocco and Tunisia, no longer exists.
They have no opportunity to attend a lecture in Beirut offering a Jewish perspective on anything, unless it’s by a Holocaust-denying, anti-Israel spokesman. Nor can they buy a book in any store that offers a non-polemical view of Jewish history or Zionism. Nor can they go to a theater and watch a film, even “Fiddler on the Roof” or “Schindler’s List,” that deals sympathetically with Jewish themes, however remote from the current Arab-Israeli conflict.
And they have no ability to fully understand America’s view of the Middle East if they refuse to talk to one of the longest-standing participants in the national — and indeed, global — discussion.
Instead, they’re fed a daily diet of demonized, distorted, and delusional portrayals of Jews and Israelis back home.
And, of course, it’s not unique to Lebanon.
As one telling example, someone I’m close to recently spent several months on a work assignment in a Gulf country. He went with an open mind. He came back shocked. Just about every conversation, he said, whether it was professional or social, included some anti-Semitic reference by his local interlocutors. It almost didn’t matter what the topic was, but hatred of Jews somehow always surfaced. Jews, he was told, were seen as responsible for just about every calamity under the sun. Yet, when asked, none of these individuals had ever met a Jew. So, where had they gotten their information? Well, they said, from the local mosque, media, school, and the like.
I have no illusion that one meeting in New York between eleven Lebanese and a handful of American Jews would have changed the world. But I also know that, without such meetings, the chances of any change are virtually nil.
It’s so reassuringly easy to harbor deeply-rooted negative views of another group when there’s no contact. Let the stereotypes fly. Let the biases reign. Let the hatred flow.
But if we’re going to turn conflict in the Middle East into cooperation, as we must, then it begins with dialogue, at least among those who profess commitment to a new era. Dialogue that challenges preconceived assumptions. Dialogue that broadens perspectives. Dialogue that, ultimately, builds links.
Our door at AJC remains wide open. Let’s hope the next visiting group chooses to walk through it.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Rick Sanchez’ regrettable and hurtful statement about Jews, elitists and the media probably helped get him fired from CNN. On a satellite radio show hosted by Pete Domincik earlier this week, the CNN host made the following comment:
He also said, Jon Stewart is a bigot “toward anybody who doesn’t agree with his point of view, which is very much a white liberal establishment point of view,” though he later moderated bigot to the word “prejudical.” Sanchez had made occasional gaffes over recent months, for which Jon Stewart was biting in his ribbing including calling the anchor “a total meathead.”
Sanchez’ probable point about perceived left leaning bias in much of the newsmedia as well as right leaning bias at Fox was lost in a self-inflicted blast of personal anger and religious stereotyping. Buried in his rant :”…[Y]ou know we have a tendency to only look at one side. I’m saying we ought to be able to look at both sides. That’s all I’m saying.” Sanchez is a Cuban immigrant who rose from humble beginnings to cable network anchor. He spoke how an executive said that Sanchez, like Mexican-American ABC reporter John Quinones was more like a correspondent than an anchor. He said that because he is Latino executives like “see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier and not the top tier.”
Sanchez, who sincerely and possibly quite reasonably contends, that he had to overcome subtle bias to get to his just lost position may have conflated some things that undermined his strongest point about the frequent closed-mindedness within small homogenous groups. First, Stewart picked on Sanchez for one primary reason, and it wasn’t his ethnicity–it was because he could get quick laughs. Another point that Sanchez muddled is that the liberal leaning of many reporters (lucky for someone like me who devotes his life to eradicating hate crime!) is far more of a socio-cultural issue than a religious one. Bill Kristol, Dennis Praeger, Michael Savage, Charles Krauthammer, and Michael Medved illustrate that there are
right wing and conservative Jewish voices that are quite noteworthy and sometimes even embarrassingly so, in media. The inartful way he made his points, left Sanchez vulnerable to accusations of being sympathetic to a more egregious form of bigotry that I sincerely doubt he really believes anyway–that of some kind of coordinated Jewish control of the media that is designed to undermine stories against “Jewish” interests.
Perhaps the point he should have made (not one I necessarily want to pursue myself by the way), is that the majority of Jewish people vote reliably and decidedly Democratic. Some of these left leaning folks, both Jewish and non-Jewish may become more inflexible to other viewpoints when they reside in closed social and employment circles as is often fond in media and academia. A similar charge is frequently made about FoxNews as well. Perhaps Jon Stewart is one of those folks who resides in those closed social circles, although from what I know about stand-up comedians is that they would sacrifice their grandmother’s reputation for a good belly laugh. The funny thing is some years ago after winning an award Stewart himself jokingly pointed out that he relied on a group of homogenous Jewish Ivy-educated writers.
The second point that Sanchez missed is that Jewish achievement and even access to high levels of society, at least historically has not shielded Jews from violent bursts of estrangement and mass slaughter from the overall societies where they live. While, obviously unlikely to ever happen here, it is a fear that many Jews, particularly older ones with European roots feel at a very deep level. In his comments Sanchez had greater empathy for the bias faced by the parents of his Jewish childhood friends, but not for them, because he probably viewed their parents struggles through his own immigrant prism, rather than that of centuries of religious persecution. Interestingly, these older Jewish people probably faced bigotry in the form of the Jewish canard of domination that Sanchez clumsily employed.
The irony of all this is that Rick Sanchez as a major cable news anchor lost the very platform he had to make his most notable, non-prejudiced intelligent point about the need for objectivity and diversity in journalism. He not only lost his show, but he also lost the moral authority to condemn stereotyping by employing it to make his point about how Jews and white bosses simply can not relate to the plight of women, immigrants and minorities. Moreover, Sanchez’ gaffe offered a great opportunity for him to host a show that could examine a real problem that our society is facing–the lack of civil discourse across intergroup lines. As someone who has been a guest of his on various occasions I feel sad, because I think Sanchez is a decent, though angry and mistaken guy, who has more to offer now since learning the hard way the error of his own prejudices.
Others have recovered from similar gaffes. Jesse Jackson mockingly referred to New York as ” hymietown,” and then initially blamed the reporting of it on conspiratorial Jews. Jackson, who also said “he was sick and tired of hearing of the Holocaust,” made one of his best speeches, at least to those of us who actually believe him, at the Democratic National Convention in 1984:
If Sanchez makes a meaningful post gaffe statement, I honestly hope he gets another shot somewhere. On a broad level, we need in this society the right to be wrong. We need to encourage honest discourse, even when it is hurtful and wrong– because it is only through honest exchange and the testing of viewpoints that true learning actually takes place. Moreover, even within seemingly wrongheaded arguments, are often doses of truth that deserve examination, once they can be isolated from prejudice and inaccuracy. To do otherwise will encourage a fake veneer of civility under which a cauldron of unanswered fears and false stereotypes are left unsaid, and untested among the public. As the U.S. Supreme Court said:
A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Terminello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4 (1949)
Sometimes, the best teachers are those who have endured experience–the hard life lessons that sometimes come partly of one’s own doing, from which they emerge better people: more humble, less angry and a dose more knowledgeable of others they once mistrusted.

Follow Brian Levin, J.D. on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/proflevin

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The US government is considering warning its citizens to stay away from crowded places in Europe because of the threat of an al-Qaeda commando-style attack, the BBC has learned.
US and UK officials have confirmed that updated guidance may be issued because of the current terror threat.
A UK official said the travel advisory would not be country-specific.
It would also not go as far as advising against travel to Europe, the official said.
The advisory will be issued in response to intelligence on an al-Qaeda plan to assemble teams of gunmen and send them into crowded places to kill western civilians, similar to the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.
After intelligence details of the plan had been leaked to the US media last week, officials said that the plan had not been stopped but that an attack was not expected to be carried out imminently.
Officials said no arrests had yet been made, and that several individuals were still under surveillance.
The suspects include British citizens of Pakistani and German citizens of Afghan origin.
Recent US drone raids in Pakistan reportedly targeted the al-Qaeda militants who inspired the plans.
US officials said that a travel alert might be issued as early as Sunday.
Such a warning could have negative consequences for European tourism if travellers fear that there is a risk of terror attacks.

Source:BBC

The problem with the education “reform” movement is that their solutions are cooked up by people who don’t really have a clue what the real problems are.
So, it’s not too surprising that the answers they come up with are ineffective and wasteful.
Bad analysis results in bad solutions.
No analysis results in even worse solutions.
Here’s an example of bad analysis, courtesy of Illinois’s self-described “independent, nonpartisan” “reform” group, Advance Illinois (AI).
Based on their own reports, which do little more than compare and contrast test scores, AI promotes the following solutions: more charter schools, more teachers from nontraditional sources such as Teach for America, tying teacher evaluations to test scores, and more testing including national standards and exams and standardized end-of-course tests.
The thing is, all of these solutions have been roundly discredited by science.
Bad analysis, bad solutions.
Now, here’s an example of no analysis, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune, which is running lists of endorsements for various seats in the November election.
n many cases, the Trib endorsement hinges on a characterization of the candidate as pro- or anti- education “reform” solely based on their vote for or against school vouchers. The Trib calls this, variously, “helping kids in Chicago’s worst schools get a better education in private schools/go to the school of their choice/choice for Chicago kids in bad schools/let 30,000 children in Chicago’s worst schools get state money to switch to a school of their choice.” Those against the bill are described as turning their backs on children.
The thing is, supporting school choice because you think it sounds like an answer to the problems of public education doesn’t make it an effective answer. In fact, as a general policy, vouchers don’t help poor children get a better education.
It’s bad enough that publicly-funded charter schools are allowed to be selective about who they enroll, and to push out they decide they don’t want. Just imagine the situation for special education, low-scoring, or other special needs children if even pickier private schools are given a crack at public money.
It’s worth noting that the sponsor of last year’s Illinois voucher bill, the Rev. Senator James Meeks, runs a Christian school refuses to enroll any student who scores below the 50th percentile in math or reading.
No analysis, worse solution.
So, what does real, oh, you know, “scientific” analysis tell us? How do we identify the real issues so that we can begin to have an intelligent discussion about what to do about them?
For example, what’s really going on with US students vis-a-vis international students? Is there a problem? If so, what is it?
Here’s what educators, Education Secretary Richard Riley, and President Bill Clinton already knew back in 1997, according to this New York Times report on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), released in 1996 by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement:
Our national obsession with test scores, which has grown exponentially under President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, has only contributed to a worsening of the problems described in that analysis. And, I’m no a scientist, but even I can figure that it’s not going to improve the situation if we hire more inexperienced teachers (like those from Teach for America) or expand teaching to the test or begin to pay teachers for test scores or take more money away from public schools to give to private schools that can pick and choose their students.
Real scientific analysis. Maybe it’s time to take a deep breath and start over with some of that instead of wasting time, money, and our children’s lives on more magical thinking.

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“Oh, art is too hard,” Andy Warhol once sighed, perhaps hinting at the struggle most artists endure to create. After all, one’s talents and gifts may be great, but the realities of the world often interfere with the process of creation and self-expression.
Which is why, for centuries, artists have depended on the kindness of patronage to support their endeavors. Now, more than ever, as governments slash arts funding to preserve other, more immediately necessary social services, the importance of forms of patronage to developing artists cannot be underestimated.
European companies and institutions have long offered competitions and prizes which support developing artists and this year at the New York City Wine & Food Festival, the five international finalists in illy issimo’s AuthentiCity photography competition, in partnership with the School of Visual Arts, will have the opportunity to present their work in front of an American art-going audience.
“It’s always great when educational and corporate entities can come together to build new audiences for art,” said Charles Traub, chair of the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts. “[We are] well-known for introducing great talent to the world, and our imaginative partnerships with the likes of illy issimo and other community innovators play a vital role in that process.”
The AuthentiCity competition challenges competing artists to explore signs of purity and authenticity in urban life. Its five finalists offer unique and original visions on life in America’s most populous and international city, New York, at a time when the effects of globalization and the broader movement of people across borders is redefining the urban landscape. Ethnicity not only travels these days–it also establishes new businesses and forms of expression, and, as the hotly debated Cordoba House demonstrates, creates conflicts that the dialog of artistic expression can help to bridge over time.
It is, then, not surprising that patronage like the AuthentiCity project comes by way of international companies looking to expand their reach and redefine their consumers.
“Illy issimo drinkers are passionate about new cultural and lifestyle experiences,” says Illaria Presotto, Marketing Manager at ILKO, illy issimo’s parent company. “By supporting these emerging artists with AuthentiCity, we are providing our consumer with the ability to experience new perspectives in art and also working to advance the conversation on urban life through photography.”
And just as the benefits of these collaborations allow companies like iily issimo to reach new consumers, they also give artists, like the five featured below, the opportunity to reach new audiences and, hopefully, new patrons who will support the continuing expression of the human experience.
The Five Finalists
Scars
Carlos Alvarez Montero, age 36, Mexico City (Mexico)
In his own words:
In SCARS I focus on body marks caused by the city in forms of tattoos, self infringe marks that have been part of human nature for centuries. It’s uses and meanings have been countless throughout history, from spiritual to vane and as moral or political statements.
For this project I chose to photograph 20 residents of Mexico city that have decided to engrave ink marks on their neck/face (body parts that cannot be hidden) as a statement of their life experiences “good or bad” in one of the largest cities in the world. At the same time this allows them to step out of the crowd, define themselves as unique, and by no means look back. Just forward. With these portraits I intend to create a projection of the city through human maps composed by scars, facial expressions and life marks of its inhabitants.
Carlos Alvarez Montero (b. 1974) is a native from Mexico city. His work focuses on the relationship between appearance and the creation of identity. After 12 years of working in Mexico City for editorial clients, ad agencies and record labels he decided to take his photography to New York, where he roamed the streets capturing the diversity of its inhabitants.
Reflections
Igor Aronov, age 38, New York (USA)
In his own words:
The city lives. It breathes. It moves. It reflects.
I walked the streets, searching for the elusive purity and simplicity of everyday life of the city and its inhabitants. I was looking for its soul hiding behind the facade of daily bustle. In reflections, I was trying to catch a glimpse of its real face. The buildings became shapes, and the lights transformed into splashes of color. I tried to get really close, as if taking a photograph of someone I see every day and finding new expressions among the familiar features.
And my city revealed itself to me.
Igor Aronov was born in 1972 in Kharkov, Ukraine and immigrated to USA in 1989. He graduated from SVA in 1997 with a BFA degree in Photography. Since then, Igor has been working as a graphic designer and a photographer. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and three children.
Picture Windows
Matthew Baum, age 36, New York (USA)
In his own words:
Many a New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country
village. Let him walk two blocks from his corner and he is in a strange land and will feel
uneasy until he gets back.
-E.B. White from the essay Here is New York
Living in New York City, day in and day out, I have become somewhat blind to what surrounds me. I walk the same pathways, visit the same places and see the same people. This routine has arisen out of work and habit – an ant marching I am – but also from a desire to feel at home, enveloped in the comfort of what is familiar. As a photographer, this numbness presents a bit of a conundrum because I rely on my sensitivity to my surroundings for inspiration. I have often thought, “I need to leave the city to see the city”, so I travel whenever possible, not only for the excitement of the new but also for the fresh eyes I will have upon my return. Unfortunately, it isn’t always practical to leave, and my eyes, my head and my heart – Cartier-Bresson’s requirements for making a good picture – are left dulled by the regularity of what I see.
This ongoing series of photographs, Picture Windows, presents a broad spectrum of panoramas that people see from their New York City homes. Taken from different residential rooftops and terraces throughout the city, the project has provided me with the opportunity to jump off my own beaten path and catch a glimpse of someone else’s intimately familiar New York. Making these pictures has shown me that I don’t need to leave the city to see the city, after all. I have simply embraced the journey into White’s “strange land”.
Matthew Baum is a photographer and teacher based in Brooklyn, NY. He earned a BA in history from Brown University in 1995 and an MFA from SVA in 2007. Matthew teaches at NYU, SVA and Hunter College and was a founder of the VisuaLife photo education program, working with underprivileged youth in NY.
The-loft-hunters
Giselle Behrens, age 27, Caracas (Venezuela)
In her own words:
NYC: SHE BREATHES
The buildings are to a city as branches are to trees. Throughout time each one evolves into a unique form with its own personality. This project is about NYC’s spunky spirit, and the representation of the different personalities she shelters under the city’s rich architecture. It tells a story by calling upon the classic B&W photography while contrasting with the essence of NYC: a surrealist twist.
Giselle was born in Caracas, Venezuela (6 September 1983). She started taking photos with a Canon AE-1 in 1999, and was self-taught using Ansel Adam’s books. She later on delved into the digital photography world and specializes in digital composites. Has a mayor in Business and Marketing, and recently finished her Masters in Digital Photography at SVA, NY.
Lisa and Tin
Caroline Shepard
In her own words:
Influenced by historical painting and inspired by the possibilities of digital technology, I looked to find a way in which I could re-envision contemporary portraiture. I wanted to speak to an audience through an already established visual language, but do so in a way that brought a contemporary perspective to my subjects who are women mostly in their 30′s. In referring to various historical paintings, either directly or inferred, I hope to illustrate that our rituals don’t necessarily change. Though the circumstances of our historical moment may differ dramatically, art often depicts that which makes us inherently human. Our emotions, needs, frustrations and desires often remain the same. What changes is how we, a contemporary audience, view and understand what we are looking at.
Caroline Shepard was born and raised in NYC, all the while exploring a visual relationship to the city through her various cameras. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, “O” the Oprah Magazine, Details, INC, Playboy and others, as well as having been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She lives in Brooklyn with her activist husband and two lovely daughters.
The work of the five finalists in the AuthentiCity photography contest is on display at the illy issimo Authenticity Lounge from Monday, October 4 through Sunday, October 10, 2010, at 632 Hudson Street. The winner of the competition’s $10,000 prize will be announced on Sunday, October 10, when the Lounge opens at 1pm.
More images from the competition may also be viewed on Flickr, by clicking here.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Well, I did not see this one coming at all. The Hollywood Reporter is, um, reporting that David E. Kelly has inked a deal with Warner Bros. Television to create a new Wonder Woman television show. No word on where the show will air or when it might premiere, but this is what happens when you spend ten years not making a movie. First Superman, which spent a decade in development hell only to have its thunder stolen by Smallville, and now Wonder Woman. Well, if the Warner Bros. feature division couldn’t get off their asses and put together a big budget Wonder Woman movie (which Warner Bros. would love to have in theaters for July 19th, 2013), then we’d might as well let one of television’s quirkier talents take a shot at the pioneering feminist superhero.
This is a fascinating move for the one-time king of television. A former real-life attorney, he made his mark by writing dozens of episodes of LA Law and then Doogie Howser MD before creating Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, and his twin-titans of the late 1990s, The Practice and Ally McBeal. Ally McBeal took some heat in its day, as pundits couldn’t decide whether its complicated, nuanced, and flawed female protagonist (played by Calista Flockhart) was a feminist icon (quite possibly) or a sexist caricature (absolutely not). Either way, it was, in its prime (seasons 1, 2, and 4) a deliciously satisfying piece of character-driven comic writing, with career-making or defining roles for Peter MacNicol, Jane Krakowski, Lucy Lui, and Portia de Rossi.
The Practice was a more straightforward legal drama, with an unflinching look at the criminal justice system from the eyes of a small and scrappy defense firm. With wip-smart writing, a sense of topicality that put even Law and Order to shame, and fine performances from the likes of Dylan McDermott, Steve Harris, and Camryn Manheim, and or a brief time it was literally the best show on network television. Even when the show’s long-running arcs went off the rails (with the firm being threatened by not one, but three serial killer clients over a few years), the show took the time to craft incisive looks at post-9/11 law enforcement. Even if the final season was a glorified backdoor pilot for five-season spin off Boston Legal (with James Spader and William Shatner in arguably a male-driven and social issue-crammed variation on Ally McBeal), the show was engaging and thoughtful to the end.
Most of David E. Kelly’s output has been in the realm of legal dramas, with the closest thing to action being the witty horror comedy Lake Placid (which ironically starred Bridget Fonda and Oliver Platt, who were his original choices for Ally McBeal and The Practice’s Bobby Donnell) and the five-episode Gina Gerswhin spy series, Snoops. One thing’s for sure, Kelly will not be shying away from the angry feminism that marks the better Wonder Woman stories, nor will it shy away from whatever topical issues that can be tossed in for good measure. The irony is that, while the merits of Kelly as a writer of women is sometimes in debate, the only more overtly feminist television writer I can think of is one Joss Whedon, who of course spent years crafting an ill-fated Wonder Woman movie for Warner Bros. Well, if you can’t make it work with the man who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you could do worse than the man who created Ally McBeal.
Okay, who do you think should play the iconic role? Jordana Brewster, Amy Acker, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Christina Hendricks, someone more of a movie star, or someone more of an unknown? That’s what the comments section is for.
Scott Mendelson

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From the moment our children are born and the doctor takes them to be weighed, measured and bundled, their health becomes one of our very highest priorities. As parents, most of us are instinctively attuned to every sneeze, scratch and sleep disruption. We are careful to never miss a check up or ignore a cough. Yet even as we worry over immunizations and stock up on hand soap for flu season, how often do we take the time to sit back and ask ourselves: how emotionally healthy are our children?
With October 4th marking Child Health Day, it’s important to not only check in on our children’s physical health, but on their mental well being. According to The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), “An estimated 21 percent of children and adolescents in the U.S. meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder…Yet, due to a shortage of pediatric mental health care providers, only 20 percent of these children receive treatment.” In June, the AAP release a toolkit along with other resources to help pediatricians more effectively identify and manage mental health issues in children.
As important as it is this to get this message to pediatricians, it is just as important to help parents, who may have trouble identifying that their kids are hurting. As parents in today’s culture, we find ourselves encouraged to center our daily lives on our kids. Yet as we focus our attention on carpools, homework and play dates, we run the risk of becoming dangerously distracted from what’s most important: how our children feel. While setting our schedules to make our children a practical priority is an act of genuine caring, nothing is as valuable or has the positive impact as staying attuned to a child’s feelings, asking her how she is and allowing her to open up about her thoughts, impressions and fears.
In general, many of our children’s emotions get overlooked, as we tend to pay more attention to how they are behaving than how they are feeling. By maintaining an awareness of our children’s psychological state and keeping in mind the following parenting principles, we can become more attuned to our children and learn ways to raise an emotionally healthy child.
- Don’t ignore signs that your child is struggling
Be aware of behavioral changes that could indicate a child is struggling. If a teacher tells us our child has had trouble getting along with other kids in class, we shouldn’t just shrug it off as being out of character and hope for the best – just as we shouldn’t chuckle at how silly our child looks while throwing a temper tantrum. What may start off as small behavioral patterns can elaborate into later behaviors that are concerning. For instance, an exaggerated focus on food or video games can be signs a child is using these things to cut off pain. If left unaddressed, these patterns can lead to obesity or an addiction to drugs and alcohol. And the fits that seem kind of cute coming from a 4-year-old will seem far less charming from a 14-year-old.
- Don’t trivialize how your child is feeling.
It is all too easy for parents to fluff off our children’s moods, chalking them up to developmental stages like the terrible twos or teenage rebellion. Though these stages do contribute to emotional behaviors, it’s important to learn to sensitively relate to our children while they are in these states, and teach them how to cope with their emotions.
When we notice an emotional change in our children, it’s important to try to understand what specifically is impacting them and to respond accordingly. Perhaps something has scared them that they themselves haven’t made sense of or that they aren’t comfortable talking about. For example, a friend of mine recently noticed his typically outgoing, independent 13-year-old daughter becoming quiet and anxious about being away from him and her mother. It was weeks before my friend realized that his daughter had been deeply shaken after a student at her school lost her parents in an accident.
As we let our children know we are interested in or concerned about their specific struggle, we invite them to investigate their own emotions and to better comprehend their source. By being open and nonjudgmental, we encourage our kids to be honest with us. When they do open up, it is important to react with both compassion and strength. Offering both of these responses helps demonstrate a constructive attitude that our kids can adopt toward themselves and thereby develop a resiliency that will serve them well in future struggles.
- Be sensitive and attuned, not reactive or parental
From the moment they speak their first words, it’s essential to encourage our kids to talk to us. When it comes to influencing our kids, just making rules never works, but maintaining an open and equal sense of communication does. However for this to work, we must be accountable: we have to live up to our word in order to gain our children’s trust. If we invite our children to talk to us honestly, then are defensive or erratic in our responses, we give them very good reasons NOT to tell us what’s really going on in their lives.
For example, a friend of mine noticed his 6-yeard-old son acting oddly angry and rebellious at the dinner table. Doing his best to react sensitively, he took the boy aside and asked if something had upset him that day. His son replied that his feelings had been hurt when his dad didn’t play baseball with him that evening, as he usually did when he came home from work. Inadvertently, my friend reacted defensively: he said that he’d had to work late that day and besides, he hadn’t promised to play catch with his son, and then he drove home the fact that just because he was disappointed was no excuse to misbehave at dinner.
Later that night my friend realized that his response had been insensitive. He immediately approached his son and initiated a second conversation with him. He told him that he knew that playing baseball together in the evening meant a lot to him. He said that it was one of his favorite times of his day and that he had also missed playing it that evening. He communicated to his son that he not only understood the boy’s disappointment but also shared it. Then he encouraged his son to talk to him the next time he felt bad, so they could avoid a scene like the one at the dinner table. He also reassured his son that he would really listen to what he was saying about himself and not respond the way he had during their first conversation. Both father and son went to bed that night feeling happy and on good terms with each other.
As parents, we should do our best not to react defensively to our children or try to talk them out of their reality. Instead, we should apologize that their feelings were hurt and help them make sense of their unique perspective and experience. Then we can share our own feelings about how they acted and enjoy an equal, honest level of interaction. If we do slip up and react in a way that is insensitive or inappropriate, it is important to go back and undo the damage that we have done to our child’s trust in being able to communicate with us.
- Invite them to spend time with you
When it comes to spending time with our kids, quality is much more important than quantity. It is advisable to set aside a specific time in which we engage in activities directed by our children; a realistic time period during which we offer our kids our uninterrupted attention and let them know they are a priority. Letting our kids decide what we do does not mean allowing them to set unrealistic expectations about activities that cost too much in time or money. Rather it is an opportunity to share an activity with our children and create a situation in which they can talk to us.
We can learn about them from what they suggest we do or games they opt to play. Parents who take the time to sit with their young children, while they play with dolls or action figures, are often surprised to hear Barbie saying the very things that Mommy does or Spiderman acting in ways that Daddy does. Games that involve make believe or pretend can be very telling when it comes to kids. And we shouldn’t be surprised when one character reflects the role – and consequently, the thoughts, feelings and behaviors – of our own children.
- If they won’t talk to you, help them find a situation they trust
Many parents wonder what to do when their kids will not open up to them. This is especially true of parents with teenage children. Yet, even if our kids refuse our offerings, it’s important to keep putting ourselves out there and to keep letting them know we are there whenever they want to talk. If we are consistently there for our kids, we never know when they may come around.
If our children do not feel comfortable talking to us, we must remember that there is no shame in helping them find someone they do trust who they can open up to. Each of us can think of someone in our lives who meant something to us as a kids – a warm uncle, a dear grandmother, an outgoing teacher. Parents aren’t always the easiest people for children to talk to, especially if their struggles involve their their parents in some way. Letting our kids know they can talk to someone besides us can help secure their trust in us and will encourage them to deal with whatever they are feeling outwardly with someone they feel comfortable to confide in.
-If they are in real trouble get them the help they need
If a child shows an unusual amount of anxiety, fear, anger, stress or pain, it is important to get him the help he needs. As parents, we must not be too prideful when it comes to raising our kids. How our children feel should always outweigh how we are viewed as their parents. The best thing we can do for our children is to be selfless in our commitment to getting their emotional needs met.
- Take care of your emotional health
Although it’s important to prioritize our kid’s needs, it’s equally important to remember that little affects our kids more than how we ourselves are feeling. Children are naturally highly attuned to their parents’ moods. Putting on a brave face or denying our frustrations will never fully mask what we are feeling, and these feelings, which our children undoubtedly perceive, are sure to impact them.
Therefore, taking care of our own mental health is a key factor in helping our kids feel happy. No matter how much we fuss over, worry about or take interest in them, if we are not feeling content and fulfilled in ourselves, we are very likely doing more bad than good in terms of our children’s emotional well being.
That is why we, as parents, have to ask ourselves: How am I feeling? Am I getting enough support in my own mental health? How do the answers to these questions influence the way I am caring for my children? Am I focusing on them too much or too little? Am I putting too much pressure on them, looking to them to meet my needs instead of the other way around? Am I relating to them in a personal way? Although we may falsely label such self-reflection as selfish, looking deeper into ourselves and focusing on what lights us up is truly beneficial to the spirits of our children.
To read more about parenting from Lisa Firestone, visit PsychAlive.org – Alive to Parenting
Join Lisa Firestone this November 16 for the free Webinar “How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children” Click here to learn more or to register

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Consider the new documentary Catfish as an Internet-era version of the Wizard of Oz, with a teasing Facebook friend as the Wizard, a bored photographer named Nev as Dorothy, and the “information superhighway” playing the Yellow Brick Road.
The protagonists’ real arrival in Oz – the “We’re not in Kansas anymore” moment – comes halfway through the movie, when Nev and his brother and friend decide to actually go visit Meagan, the Wizard, at her home, armed to the teeth with little digital cameras. And suddenly, the digital paths of their correspondence, up to now registered in Gchats and text messages and nave late night phone chats, give way to an actual road.
As with Dorothy’s Technicolor arrival in Oz, Nev’s comes with its own stylistic shift. Instead of simply shots of the interstate, most of the trip is described in zippy, zoomed-in Google Earth animation, some hypnotic fast forwarding, and then a Street View depiction of the road, jerking forward in blurry freeze frames; the navigation screen of the car’s GPS makes an appearance, as does a screen capture of the trip on Google Maps, from above, a single red line illustrating the path.
With its blurred edges and choppy, high-speed movement – an accidental correlative of the filmmakers’ own nonchalant hand-held style (or is it the other way around?) – the scenes are a far cry from the celebratory prettiness of the Hollywood cinema or the art house: this is haphazard, dull-colored, immediate, undigested, completely unadorned. And it would be shocking, if it weren’t so normal to see the world this way.
And maybe that’s what’s most shocking: that it’s not just normal to see the world like this, it’s strangely comforting. There is a sense of control to the world in virtual: think of how our smart phones have become indispensable safety blankets on even the most cursory trip across town, our guides to the world as video game, with our dot in the center. And think of how much we glean from our Facebook analysis, our Google searches: in a matter of minutes, they offer us more information about the world and the people around us than people of earlier generations could hope to gather over lifetimes of making friends.
It’s clear then, as the line pushes on and as the music pulses and the pace quickens, that entering the real world is not going to be easy. What the heavy and eye-grabbing and hypnotic use of Google travel does best is to give some hint of that anxious gap between the simulated road that we have come to expect from our gadgets’ augmented realities, and the world as we see it with our eyes and ears. The distance between “content” and substance, data and knowledge.
But even as the film makes this gap explicit – warning us, that if we abandon the Cave, things will not be as they once seemed – it also perpetuates another layer of virtuality, this one older and more complicated, but not by much: the documentary film. With its promise to show the world not as Hollywood would fantasize it but as it is, there is something as comforting in the medium of documentary as there may be in the information offered by the Internet.
In place of the lenses of Google and Facebook, which all but disappear from the film in its second act, we end up with the lens of the camera. Forcefully verite, the camerawork aims at a direct connection with reality: like some of the actual cameras, concealed under clothes or in the palms of hands, the camera in a film like this wants to be invisible. And in wanting so hard to seem real in a world laced with truthiness, with performances, with the presentations that make up the mediated life, Catfish reminds us: it’s complicated.
The questions that circulate around the film – about its veracity and accuracy and deccency – aren’t incidental to the film: they are part of its force, and they are also irrelevant. In a fact-laced story (“not based on actual events” says the motto) about truth, the question of whether the film is “true” becomes the animating force. Concern over the truth of the film is precisely the truth of the film. (Hitchcock had “the McGuffin,” but the boys of Catfish have something more meta; let’s just call it “the Catfish.”) To anyone who has really lived on the Internet – and I mean anyone who has taken the Internet as some representation of real life, who has carried out parts of real life relationships on Gtalk or trapised through the fantastic wilds of Craigslist – this uncanny relationship with the truth should sound a bit familiar.
There is Catfish’s greatest catch: the film’s metaphorical ability to capture what makes social networking so bedeviling. It’s a documentary not just about making a documentary, but about lives-as-documentaries, the identities we build, the selves we perform, the deceptions we make and to which we submit, in the name of information and “truth.” An increasingly relentless, irresistibly fascinating look at the lives of others, in all their reality, in all their contrivances, in all their heavily contrived appearance of reality. In that sense – the film as social network and vice versa – the word “documentary” betrays its weaknesses, its seams. Its makers don’t even insist on calling it a documentary.
Instead what we have is more like a carefully constructed montage, a virtualized version of the chaotic and unreal cities that our culture has triumphed since the start of the Industrial Revolution, shot appropriately in self-conscious Flip style. The film’s main locations directly echo the narrative arc that a character describes in Catfish’s truth-meets-fiction cousin, The Social Network: “We lived on farms and we moved to cities, and in the future we’ll be living on the Internet!”
All of the contemporary anxieties aside, all of its up-to-the-minute currency, the film is still a film: like any old fashioned movie, its narrative moves in a straight line towards a denouement that can be either so profound, stunning, or bewildering so as to be insightful. Facebook, with all of its pervasiveness, its penetration, its endless and many-directional streams of links and updates and pictures and videos and likes – with all of its marketing – is anything but straight. It’s more like the endless film that Walter Benjamin envisioned we would all be living in some day. So we live in this public film, we live in this city. But – and this puts aside the sometimes suspect behavior of the CEOs of Facebook and Google – we have no clear mayor, no director, other than ourselves and our friends and even perhaps people we haven’t yet met.
This is the movie’s recursive motif: the more we live in the bright white glow of our virtual world, the more the real one starts to look like a dark, cold, and haunted forest, a place we can sometimes forget how to inhabit. There are signs to alert us to oncoming dangers, but we have to know how to read them. There are more friends out there, whatever that means. And there are also more lions and tigers and bears too.
But in the endless vanity and fun house mirrors of the internet, which is what profile tinkering and Googling often reminds us it is, it can be hard to tell who is what. Finally, we’re left puzzling over not who the person on the other end really is – that gets an exhaustive investigation. The mystery is who the protagonist is, how much did the filmmakers know and when, and just what were they thinking. How clever. One of the most telling moments happens inside the Wizard’s lair, when Nev escapes to the bathroom and finally turns the camera on himself to deliver something like a status update. There’s a vanity to it, obviously, but also a manipulativeness, a performance, and a false naivete.
And here too we begin to get wind of another kind of Internet behavior ported to the screen: the sideways attempt to terrorize someone by exposing them to the world. There’s a serious documentary to be made about the people whose lives have been destroyed by the Internet, in some cases literally: last week, for instance, after his roommate posted a video of him in an intimate situation with another man, 18-year-old Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge. An hour beforehand he sent a farewell to his friends by Facebook.
By this point in the film, the title’s meaning will soon be explained, but it already echoes another term, ripped from the web. “Phishing” is a ploy that begins with an innocent email or IM from a supposed friend or customer service rep – check out this link, confirm your bank details – but ends in theft, of passwords, credit card numbers, identities.
When Nev dramatically records his commentary, it’s pretty clear the filmmakers had an upper hand from the start, that the film is a weapon of sorts, in the guise of a victim’s claim. The filmmakers are the fish and the fishermen, both the innocents but the hackers. It uses the word “documentary” the way Facebook uses the word “friend”: lazily at best, distorting at worst. In the very serious, very ironic carnivalesque funhouse of the film’s final act – which comes complete, even, with deformed children, actual freaks – it’s hard to tell where the infinite mirror of the internet ends and the infinite mirror of the film begins. It’s brilliant, and it’s sick: the stuff that Internet hits are made of.
If we had to find the film’s final hook in this dizzying series, we could look at the teasing tagline on every poster: “Don’t let anyone tell you what it is.” Echoing the promise of social networks, with all the revelations and information that comes with belonging or being accepted as a “friend,” it urges us, “Just join and then you’ll know.” But this is a pretty challenging imperative in an era of 140-character publishing and instant updates: how can we prevent the Internet from spoiling anything? When privacy is dead, secrets aren’t just passe, but they’re nearly impossible to keep.
If we dig a little deeper, the tagline offers a more interesting challenge. We never really know what “it” refers to, and even if we did, we can’t really know what “it” is. Attempts to unpack our complicated relationship with the truth, be it on the silver screen or the computer screen, the tagline tells us, are somehow doomed. It’s a key to the film’s logic, and it’s another puzzle.
The games aside, if we take life on the Internet seriously, as we increasingly should, there are some very serious implications of Catfish starting with its “playful” use of the term “documentary,” ending somewhere with its approach to an individual person. If we’ve ever done or said things online we wouldn’t do in real life, if we’ve ever fallen victim to a snide comment, a hack, or an untruth – and it’s so easy for these things to happen – we should be familiar with just how easily things can get complicated there.
We don’t have to put aside the ethical complications of the movie to enjoy it, nor do we have to cast blame on the filmmakers; on the contrary, those complications are part of what makes it so compelling. It’s the verbal subject of the tagline that makes it, like the film, like the best mysteries, so delicious, so reflective, and so uncannily close to home. It sends us for a strange loop to a place far nearer and far stranger than Oz, and it imagines the perpetrators of its fictions not as the apparent authors, whoever they are, but as all of “you,” and any of your “friends.”
Reach Alex at alex at motherboard dot tv, and follow him on Twitter. He’s also on Facebook, but he would rather you not find him there.
This piece originally appeared at Motherboard.

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They came, they talked, they listened — to each other. They were attentive and respectful, with nary a voice raised in anger. A most unconventional political gathering. No, this wasn’t a preview of Jon Stewart’s Rally To Restore Sanity. It was the first national convention for the Coffee Party, held last weekend in Louisville, Kentucky.
The Coffee Party you say? Still in its infancy, it was born with a single post on Facebook in January, its founder conveying deep dismay at what passes for political discourse in this country, and wondering if it was possible to counter alienating hyper-partisanship with something different, so we might finally get on with addressing the serious problems facing our nation today.
Tens of thousands roared their approval. By March a full fledged movement had erupted, comprised of red, blue, and purple Americans from all across the land — united by their disgust with all forms of politics-as-usual. In the ensuing months, the movement self-organized and coalesced into Coffee Party chapters in communities nationwide. Six months later, a national convention.
One wonders what’s next for this cross between a viral phenomenon and a face-to-face army of serious citizens.
The Tea Party has long been seen as self-organized to some extent, but it had the benefit (or curse) of deep pocketed funders and old political hands supporting and influencing it every step of the way. The Coffee Party is, by contrast, free of outside influence — and funded (to the extent that it is) only by its members. And somehow, miraculously, that was enough to stage a convention for the hundreds of citizen activists who flew into Louisville, and tens of thousands more who watched the whole thing unfold online via the Coffee Party’s new live Streaming Channel.
A political convention truly by and for the people.
While they rightly resist lazy media tagging them as the progressive response to the Tea Party, it is probably fair to say that a majority of Coffee Party members lean left in their personal politics. But many don’t. The movement has no interest in party or ideology, seeking instead to be as big a tent as possible. To crystallize that point, a number of prominent Republicans were invited to the convention, where they were warmly welcomed and well-received as speakers and presenters.
These included former Bush and McCain strategist Mark McKinnon, who co-chaired a mock Constitutional Convention with Harvard Law professor (and HuffPost blogger) Larry Lessig. Even Tea Party Express Amy Kremer was scheduled to speak, but apparently cancelled at the last minute.
So it is an aggressively inclusive operation. And for one shining moment in American politics, one and all gladly checked their partisan passions at the door, in deference to this decaffeinated altar of reasoned reflection.
That’s not to say these well-informed, highly opinionated folks didn’t quibble a bit here and there, as befits such an unusually diverse political gathering. But true to their founding mission statement, they discussed a hundred and one subjects in a civil and reasoned manner.
High decibel enthusiasm. But no screaming.
So what do they stand for? Simple. Small ‘d’ democracy. Not democracy as a team sport — but as an ongoing experiment in governing ourselves. One in which free individuals recognize that their own self-interest is inextricably bound up with the common good — a delicate balance that will only remain stable with the active participation of a supermajority of citizens getting in the game, getting informed, and making their reasoned voices heard — and acted upon.
In other words, the tiny task of revitalizing democracy from the ground up. Armed only with the logic that unless Americans get off the couch, we will never be able to truly fix broken government.
While they’ll ultimately use their growing numbers and influence to support simpatico candidates, they decided to turn their attention next to helping build civic muscle in the body politic.
With midterms fast approaching, they’re pulling out all the stops at their disposal to try to inspire fellow citizens not just to get out and vote, but to vote smart. Not just to choose frik or frak based on party affiliation, or snarky TV commercials, but based on where they substantively stand on issues that matter to you, issues you’ve done your homework on. And to help, local chapters are holding regular Coffee Vote meetings, and preparing informative voter guides, tailored to their own local communities, to help people in those communities get up to speed on the issues, and the stakes in the coming election.
And an ongoing series of local meetings will unfold after November as well, to help us stay awake once the heat of the election dies down. For as Bill Clinton said recently on the PBS Newshour, “Citizenship is a lifetime job.”
Idealistic? No doubt. But rather intoxicating for those who hope to reboot the American Dream for future generations.
Other groups wave their flags and spout the names of founding fathers, along with narrowly-interpreted nostrums about our founding values and Constitutional strictures — but these Coffee Partiers are doing the actual hard work of democracy, thinking through the issues, and finding ways to help shape outcomes. And they’re doing it in a manner that would make the founders truly proud.
Increasing informed participation by alienated citizens is their overarching goal. But they also focus on certain core issues that 80-90% of their members agree upon.
One such issue they’re gung ho on (along with a long list of other political groups from all sides of all aisles) is limiting the corrupting influence of big money in politics. Their current vehicle of choice is the Fair Elections Now Act, which was just voted out of committee and is awaiting word of whether it will get to the floor for a full House vote.
To underscore their commitment to this cause, several of the convention speakers and panels were devoted to this issue — featuring leading light activists like Professor Lessig and David Donnelly.
Beyond grand goals and issue initiatives, perhaps the most impressive thing about the Coffee Party is their chapters who regularly host face-to-face meetups in their communities to engage in civil discourse on political issues.
That simple act — of sitting down with your neighbors and having a rational conversation about issues that matter to you, helping each other learn more about them, then developing action plans to bring them to the attention of policy-makers –.and using the power of networking to link your local voices to amplify them nationally — well, that’s what true democracy is all about in the 21st century.
It puts the citizen back in the center of political decision-making, which is where we belong.
And it’s only serious way to effectively practice politics in modern times.
So one can only wonder about what might happen if these self-governance role models — born and bred online, and currently boasting nearly 300,000 Facebook members — could somehow inspire 300 million Americans to view democracy less as a noun than a verb. Not a place or a thing — but an aspiration of a people audacious enough to govern themselves in a productive manner.
An aspiration that we’ll probably never fully realize, but an opportunity that we can and should regard as the greatest gift any generation can ever leave to the next. As such, we all have an obligation to keep it flourishing.
And the only way we can do that is through active, informed participation. For a passive or uninformed citizenry creates a power vacuum that special interests fill with glee. If we could refill that vacuum with seriously engaged citizens, we’d crowd out monied interests overnight. It’s simple physics.
The downside to that equation is that if we don’t, we’re done.
As Coffee Party founder Annabel Park says, “Democracy is a fragile thing. It’s not something to be taken for granted. It’s a very fragile thing that we have to nurture and protect. So we have to get in there and be active.”
Yet most Americans remain stuck in the rote repetition of the stale, false, and counter-productive belief that there’s no way for us to make our voices heard, so why bother even trying. Or we justify our disengagement by asserting that we don’t have time to follow the issues (as we flip channels on the evening ‘reality’ shows). Or “that’s their job, not mine.” Well, how’s that attitude been serving us lately?
So how do we avoid subjecting our fragile and precious blessing of self-governance from decay or worse? There’s only one way — the true red, white, & blue American way — which is for each of us to take our jobs as citizens more seriously. Much more seriously.
And if you already do, then turn to those in your orbit who toil in the darkness of apathy or cynicism, and help them turn the lights on.
Because each of us has a vital role in democracy, a role that is irreplaceable if we really want it to serve the needs of all of its people. Whatever your reason for tuning out, you better pick up a cup o’ joe and tune back in. Cause it should be painfully obvious by now that there are no political superheros coming to save us. Not from the powerful forces that fill the power vacuum created by passive citizens — and not from our own righteous civic cynicism, no matter how justified it feels to think that way.
This is the core value I took from three days of listening and talking with these diverse, thoughtful, and inclusive patriots — and filming interviews with an array of convention speakers and Coffee Party activists.
Someone referred to them as the Thinking Man’s Party. Sounds about right to me. But don’t mistake intelligent and civil for boring or wonky. After the first 12-hour day of thought-provoking panels and presentations, the lights came down on a multi-genre concert featuring musician members from across the country — and they rocked the house. And the house rocked back.
Bottom line is that if the Coffee Party can contribute to even a modest increase in the number of Americans who walk the walk of the serious citizen — who shift their attitude about politics from it being a fatally flawed game rigged in favor of “them” — to a fluid, living, productive process by and about “us” — then it will have made an indelibe mark in the pantheon of political movements in America.
No matter how big or small their numbers in comparison to conventional parties, and no matter how long they last as a movement, this is the most refreshing version of political activism to emerge in a long long time. One that’s clearly tapped a nerve. Which is why I’ve little doubt that we’ll be hearing a lot more about them in the months and years to come.
Video interviews and concert performances to be posted shortly at Coffee Party USA and Song Of A Citizen.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Imagine a group of individuals armed to the teeth and trained in militant camps who believe that the American government is a symbol of greed. They are willing to lay down their lives to kill members of this government and anyone else who gets in their way. In the minds of many Americans, groups like this exist halfway across the world in war-torn countries like Afghanistan or Iraq. They practice Islamic extremism and lead disparate lives than the Americans they want to kill. The reality of the situation is that, along with networks like al-Qaeda, there are groups just like the one described above here in America.
Time magazine has a piece this week that delves into the world of these extreme groups titled, “The Secret World of Extreme Militias.” The reality of the situation, however, is that these militias are not much of a secret; they’re just in the midst of a resurgence following publicized events like the Waco siege, the Ruby Ridge incident, and the Oklahoma City Bombing.
The militias of today preach something akin to a governmental end of days, when they will actively engage in armed combat with troops in America — whether from the U.N., the United States, or some other third party. They are ready and feel that this apocalypse is on the verge of commencement. Take this quote from the Time article:
You know that the situation is serious when the man predicting overt war with the United States government within a year is portrayed as the voice of reason.
But while some may think that Kevin Terrell and his compatriots are all talk, there have been numerous examples of this type of far right extremism that have either led to violence or were narrowly prevented from leading to violence.
There is James Cummings, a neo-Nazi residing in the small town of Belfast, Maine. Cummings was shot by his wife Amber on December 9, 2008, and what investigators found in the Cummings’ home was disturbing, to say the least. Cummings, who adored Adolf Hitler and was applying to become a member of the National Socialist Movement, was stockpiling materials to create a dirty bomb. According to his wife, Cummings planned on using the dirty bomb to kill President Obama and had even practiced crossing through checkpoints with dangerous material in his motor home. For comparison, Cummings was, according to Time, “far ahead of Jose Padilla,” the American citizen initially charged with planning to detonate a dirty bomb and declared an enemy combatant by the Bush administration before finally being convicted of supporting terrorism.
Six months later a man named James Von Brunn walked into the Holocaust Museum and killed security guard Stephen Johns. Brunn, a white supremacist who had taken members of the Federal Reserve Board hostage in the 1980s, calling it a citizen’s arrest for treason, was actually targeting David Axelrod, President Obama’s top advisor. Von Brunn died before being brought to trial.
Nine months after Johns’ murder, a group of self-described “Christian warriors” called the Hutaree were arrested across the midwest on numerous charges, not the least of which included killing a police officer and attacking the funeral procession with land mines and roadside IEDs. Hutaree members partook in the kinds of paramilitary training sessions described in the Time magazine article and believed that they were preparing for the arrival of the Antichrist. They are scheduled to go to trial in February, 2011.
So why does this matter? Because it seems that what the media and government want to focus on is Islamic terrorism when we face threats from both foreign and domestic groups. We need to remember that Islamic extremist groups do not have a monopoly on terrorism, and not for some political correctness dictat, either. Terrorism is terrorism — whether committed by whites, blacks, Latinos, Christians, Jews, Muslims — and needs to be addressed.
What really struck me in the Time article was the unwillingness of federal law enforcement to speak about right wing extremist terrorism, despite the very real examples of it the past couple of years. In fact, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has forbade public discussion of the subject following a DHS report entitled “Rightwing Extremism.” According to Time, the report contained passages that could have been misconstrued to suggest a threat from normal anti-government opinions or military veterans in general.
In this post-9/11 world, when our focus tends to be on airlines (the threat level for the entire country is yellow, or elevated, yet for flights it is orange, or high) and Islamic extremism, we need to remember that no group has monopolized the threat of terrorism against this country. We need to be prepared not only for a foreign-based act, but also one that could just as easily be conceived by Americans on her own soil.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Bosnia holds elections on Sunday. The results are unlikely to quell the country’s sharp ethnic animosities and ensuing political stalemate. “Bosnia Unraveling” has become a common headline. The country’s Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, who fought a savage civil war in the 1990s, remain rivals. Bosnian Serbs continue to threaten to break away, while the country’s Croats make similar demands for autonomy.
Both the United States and Britain insist that, to keep the country from imploding, it is essential that the Balkan nation remain under the political authority of an internationally appointed “High Representative,” who governs the nation’s affairs. They are mistaken. By keeping Bosnia a ward of the West, the High Representative has prevented Bosnians from standing on their own feet and building a strong state. It’s time they were allowed to do so.
Since 1995, when the famous Dayton Peace Agreement was signed, the High Representative has tried to help Bosnia transition from warring ethnic factions into a single, stable and self-sustaining state. His supreme governing “Bonn Powers” that authorize him to oust obstructive political figures and veto divisive laws have tried to streamline the country’s complicated layers of government, including three presidents and three prime ministers. Fifteen years on, there has been little change.
Considering the pervading mistrust at the end of the war giving the High Representative governing powers was a necessary step — that was never meant to be permanent. The High Representative has outlived its usefulness, which is why the European Commission and some former holders of the office suggest it is time to transfer authority to Bosnian hands. There is good reason to support this.
With final say-so in the hands of the High Representative, Bosnian politicians have no accountability or incentive to govern. The country’s elected officials can and do ignore important matters such as a forty percent unemployment rate, a crumbling infrastructure and a crippled education system that has thirteen ministries but produces few qualified graduates.
Instead, politicians indulge endlessly in nationalist rhetoric. As Bosnians have witnessed during this bitter campaign, every issue is viewed through an ethnic prism. This has forced the High Representative to play referee rather than act as an agent for a strong Bosnian state. That has eroded his effectiveness, keeping Bosnia divided and stagnant.
Effectiveness is something Bosnians long to see. According to a poll conducted by the National Democratic Institute last year, Bosnians want to see an improved economy. Currently, it is an economy buoyed by aid, foreign aid workers and foreign missions. As a result, it has little to export and few jobs for its 4.6 million residents. The country’s best and brightest have left for Western capitals. Most of those left behind operate one of Europe’s biggest black markets in which crime and tax avoidance are rampant.
The European Union has motivated Bosnian politicians to change this. Eager to reap the benefits of EU membership, Bosnia’s three ethnic groups have surprisingly worked together, if not always smoothly, to comply with the criteria Brussels requires. This has resulted in encouraging citizens to become part of the formal economy as entrepreneurs and creating conditions for foreign investments. Still, more needs to be done.
Bosnia’s constitution needs to be reformed. That will require serious effort and encouragement, as the ultimatums Washington has previously rendered, most recently in April, have failed. Full EU membership is an incentive powerful enough to get Bosnians there. The Europeans, for their part, must be clear about the required directions on that path. They have not always been. They must also be firm that the High Representative will have no role in arranging EU membership for Bosnia. Bosnians must do that hard work.
The majority of EU member states have called for the end of the High Representative’s “Bonn Powers.” Washington and London are resistant. They are stuck in a 1990s mentality that believes that the elimination of these powers will lead to a renewed Balkan war. Though there has been an increase in ethnic tensions and incidents in Bosnia, war, by all accounts, is highly unlikely.
Bosnian Serbs no longer have an enthusiastic patron in Serbia, who through Slobodon Milosevic’s maniacal machinations engineered the 1992-1995 upheaval, and which today is focused on European integration. Similarly Croatia, which has actually signed an agreement with Brussels and become a NATO member, has said that it will not support a separatist movement in Bosnia.
International peacekeepers in the Balkan nation have fallen from an original 60,000 to the current 2,000. Military experts have said that that number can be further reduced to 200.
Bloodshed is not something Bosnians want. Neither is the continued Balkanization of its political process. If the High Representative was meant to deliver progress to Bosnia, it is high time he is allowed to step aside and let Bosnia become truly independent.
Elmira Bayrasli was the Chief Spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Mission to BiH from 2003-2005. She writes and works on global development issues.

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Recently, I heard from a client who I hadn’t spoken to for two years. So when he left a message saying he was “struggling with anxiety,” I was quick to get back to him. When we connected, the first words I heard were, “I’m depressed Jeff, I found out that I am ADD (attention deficit disorder) … and the meds I’ve been taking just seem to make the situation worse.”
“Whoa,” I replied, “What do you mean you are ADD?”
He continued, “Well, I hired a professional organizer and when I showed her my routine and environment, she declared that I ‘probably’ had ADD. She recommended a psychiatrist, whom I met for about 20 minutes. He asked me a series of questions, agreed that I had symptoms of ADD [or ADHD--attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] and prescribed a cocktail of drugs for me to take. I’ve been on the meds for a couple of months but they don’t seem to be working. I always feel uptight and wired. I do get more work done than before but I’m more irritable and edgy. I don’t know if I should go off the meds or what. Help!”
I wish I could say that I rarely hear this kind of story. But the opposite is true. More and more often, people come to me already burdened with a “diagnosis” — some form of label ascribed to them by a well-meaning doctor who must place them in a diagnostic “category” in order to satisfy the insurance company and prescribe medications.
Yet, as helpful as it may be to know your affliction by giving it a label, I’m highly suspect of this tendency to dumb down our symptoms to a simple (and rather artificially constructed) diagnostic category. Too often, we fall into a sort of trance, marching to doctor’s orders, and “I am unfocused or anxious at times” becomes, “I AM ADD.”
My client — and I think most people in similar circumstances — are much more complex than a simple one word label. This is why I appreciate the work of forward thinking psychologists who use innovative tools to help patients see through their diagnosis and reconnect to their deeper selves.
In a book called “Mindfulness and Psychotherapy,” clinical psychologists show how mindfulness practices derived from the Eastern contemplative traditions may be helpful for depression, anxiety and other psychological maladies. In one chapter, there is a wonderful anecdote about how one therapist used the power of one single raisin to break through the all-powerful diagnostic label, “clinical depression.”
A patient comes to the therapist saying that he has been depressed for years, and knows “no other state of being.” After a few sessions in which they build rapport, the therapist asks him if he is willing to do an experiment with mindfulness. In the experiment, the therapist has the patient practice 10 minutes of silence, breathing deeply, focusing attention on the breath, all while guiding him into a state of deep relaxation, so that he gains awareness of his thoughts and his physical body.
The therapist then takes a single raisin and asks the patient to put it in his mouth and slowly roll it around, to feel the sensations in his mouth, and to focus all his attention on the experience of flavor, texture and movement of the fruit. After experiencing the raisin for a few moments, the patient swallows it (we assume the patient liked raisins) and is brought back gently into a state of present awareness.
The therapist then asks the patient to describe the encounter with the raisin. The patient uses words like pleasurable, sensuous, tasty and delicious. The therapist asks the patient, “While you were savoring the raisin so intently, did you feel depressed?” The patient reflects for a moment and says, “Of course, I am always depressed.” Yet, when asked again to reflect a bit more deeply, the patient acknowledges that during the meditative moment with the raisin, he experienced pleasure, not depression. It was as if the raisin shone a light — of hope — on this patient’s overidentification with the label, “depressed.”
I love this story because it illustrates one of the foundational principles of my approach to healing and self-renewal: We are not our labels. So much of our self-worth is wrapped up in how we identify ourselves — our titles, our possessions, our jobs, even in some cases, our diagnoses! Yet, it is only when we wake up and realize that we are much more than our surface identifications that we become open to possibility and free to choose other options.
In that same call, my client with the ADD diagnosis shared that over the past two years, in spite of downsizing and a merger, he had managed to keep his job, and even finished going to night school to complete his bachelor’s degree. Perhaps, he had reason to feel anxious, scattered, even unfocused at times. Surely, he could use help with grounding and balance. But by smacking the label of “ADD” on him, and sending him off to the doctor, his personal narrative suddenly became suffused with a sense of dread, and he saw himself as “sick.”
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for helping people with medications when the pain is severe and it is truly difficult to function. But, here’s the rub: by fostering a strict bio-medical approach to mental health in which we quickly pathologize our symptoms as a clinical disorder, we risk losing touch with a deeper truth: Human beings are much more than machines of malady.
We are adaptable, flexible, bountiful sources of creative energy–mental, emotional and physical–with the freedom to reinvent our “story” at any time. The solar energy that miraculously produces a raisin runs through our veins as well.
Sometimes all it takes is a tiny, wrinkled nugget of golden sunshine to provide an opening, a space–a glimmer of hope–reminding us WHO WE REALLY ARE.
Dr J

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Saturday, October 2, marks 100 days before Sudan will decide whether or not to divide itself in two. Preparations are woefully behind and civilians are at real risk of escalating violence and a potential return to war. To draw attention to the urgency of the timetable, and to ensure that the Obama administration does all it can to ensure peace before, during and after the vote, Sudan Now, a campaign led by a group of prominent anti-genocide and human rights advocacy organizations, has launched a grassroots initiative encouraging Sudan activists around the country to take action over the next 100 days.
The first action is to sign an online petition to President Obama. Participating activists will also be asked to take actions via Twitter, Facebook, phone and email as well as offline actions throughout the 100 day period.
Participants will call upon administration officials including President Obama, Ambassador Rice, Secretary Clinton, National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and others to take specific steps to help achieve peace, protection, justice and accountability in Sudan.
Specifically, the initiative will press for the appointment of a high-level diplomat as envoy to Darfur, unimpeded access for peacekeeping and humanitarian operations and robust independent human rights monitoring throughout Sudan, the imposition of consequences for negative behavior, and support for justice and accountability including the ICC arrest warrants, including the arrest of Ahmed Harun, an architect of the genocide in Darfur and currently governor of Southern Kordofan.
“Sudan activists have been encouraged in recent weeks by the Obama administration’s increased attention to Sudan,” states Gabriel Stauring, Director of Stop Genocide Now. “However conditions on the ground in Sudan are still unacceptable and the referenda bring an increased risk of danger to civilians. Through the 100 days of action we hope that activists throughout the U.S. will help spur the administration to take further concrete steps toward peace including appointing a ambassador level envoy for Darfur and working with our international partners to bring Ahmed Harun to the Hague.”

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Kevin Kline is the “extra man” in this film, a distinguished gentleman who squires around lonely, older women. Paul Dano is the young playwright Kline takes under his wing. The character Kline plays is a complete buffoon, a real waste of his talents. Not to mention the annoying vagrant played by John C. Reilly, who speaks in falsetto throughout the film.
This is one you’re best to avoid. For my full review, click below. And for more of my reviews, check out Mayor at the Movies. And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Andrew Sullivan’s defense of President Obama’s claimed power to have American citizens assassinated nicely reveals much of the illogic behind, and many of the dangers inherent in, America’s Forever War. Let’s examine it point by point.
1. Assassination of American citizens, even if arguably extreme, has only been ordered applied, so far as we know, to four individuals.
When the government attempts to claim some controversial power, it tends to establish the alleged principle behind that power through the facts most convenient for its case. It’s no coincidence, therefore, that the government has used Anwar al-Awlaki, whose name and face are a perfect fit for the popular image of Scary Foreign Terrorist, to make its case for a presidential assassination power. From a public relations perspective, it would have been more difficult to establish the power through the announcement of the impending assassination of someone named, say, Mike Miller, a white Christian. For the same reason, Jose Padilla was a good choice for the test case the Bush administration used to establish its power to arrest American citizens on American soil, hold them incommunicado in military facilities, and try them in military commissions. Similarly, the CIA was careful to introduce the news about its torture tapes with a low number — just two or three — and then, once the principle of the tapes had been established in the public mind, to mention the real (as far as we know) number, which was ninety-two.
Imagine you’re a top West Wing spinmeister discussing how to recruit influence-makers into supporting the president’s power to assassinate American citizens. Would you claim the power as broadly as possible, right up front? Or would you soft-pedal it, by initially attaching the power to one man with a dark beard and a scary-sounding name? The answer is obvious. Then, later, once the principle has been established, you can use it more expansively, knowing the influence-makers will have a hard time reversing themselves because, after all, they’ve already supported the principle, and knowing that the public will go along because now it’s been properly inoculated against the shock of a full-blown admission.
But even leaving all that aside, the “but it was done to only a few people” argument is pretty weak. The acceptability of government conduct ought to turn on its legality, not on how many people were subjected to it. Presumably Sullivan wouldn’t offer this defense of government conduct if the conduct in question had been torture, though of course this was a primary Bush administration defense of its torture regimen — that only three people were waterboarded.
2. We know Anwar al-Awlaki is a member of al Qaeda because we can find information to this effect on Wikipedia and in independent news reports.
This argument turns on how much we ought to trust the government when it claims someone is so dangerous that the person merits extrajudicial killing (or, with regard to another power Obama claims for himself, so dangerous that he must be imprisoned forever without charge, trial, or conviction). Logically, I would expect that if the government has evidence compelling enough to justify assassinating (or imprisoning forever) an American citizen, the government would prove its case in court. And I’d be comforted if the government would take the trouble to do so, as I have an admittedly pre-9/11 attachment to the notion that, as the Fifth Amendment puts it, “No person… shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” In fact, given both the constitutional requirements and public relations imperatives in play, when the government refuses to make its case in court, I can’t help but suspect just as a matter of logic that its case is in fact weaker than one might like a case for assassination to be.
It’s especially relevant in this regard that Sullivan repeatedly bases his defense of the government’s claimed power to assassinate Awlaki on Awlaki’s alleged treason. Yet Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution provides, “No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” So it’s not just desirable that the government prove allegations like the ones against Awlaki in court; it’s constitutionally required (and Sullivan himself seems uncomfortable with his call that Awlaki be executed on the basis of a Wikipedia entry and some news articles, because later in his post he suggests that the government does have some sort of duty to “reiterate” its case in court, if only as part of a more persuasive public relations effort. And note the use of that word, “reiterate” — Sullivan seems to sense, correctly, that the news reports he cites as evidence are based, as such reports so often are, on government whispers).
So both logically and constitutionally, the government really shouldn’t be assassinating American citizens just because Wikipedia and independent news reports claim they’re doing bad things. But let’s leave logic and the Constitution aside for the moment and instead examine the empirical case for trusting governmental claims that certain people are so bad they must be deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld once assured America that the 800 or so prisoners we had locked up in Guantanamo were “the worst of the worst.” It turns out not only that most of them were innocent, but that the government knew they were innocent. And indeed, most of them have since been quietly released. Guantanamo is, of course, just one instance, and the history of successive governmental lying is so long and consistent I always find it baffling when someone reflexively treats government claims as a sufficiently trustworthy basis for imprisonment and execution.
We’ve all had the experience of knowing someone who we realize over time has a tendency to fib. When we make that discovery, immediately thereafter we begin to discount that person’s unverified claims. This is just a common-sense, automatic, adult reaction to experience in the world. And yet, when it comes to the government, no matter how many times we’re subjected to much worse than mere fibbing — whether it’s Guantanamo, or WMDs, or the scapegoating and persecution of Steven Hatfill as the anthrax killer, or the Pat Tillman coverup, to name only a few of the more recent instances of government lies — some people will continue to trust governmental assertions as though the government has an unblemished record of truth-telling. I don’t know how to explain this irrational credulity. My best guess is it has something to do with denial born of the pain of knowing someone you’d like to trust is in fact a habitual liar.
3. It’s okay for the president to order the assassination of Americans we know through Wikipedia and independent news reports are terrorists, as long as the assassinations are done abroad and not on US soil.
This is just incoherent. Why would it be okay to assassinate a treasonous, imminent threat to thousands of American lives when he’s abroad, but not okay when he’s on American soil? If anything, you’d think the treasonous, traitorous, threatening, inciting, dangerous, spiritual-advisor-to-mass-murderers (to quote Sullivan’s case against Awlaki) terrorist would be even more of a threat in closer proximity to his American targets. Why would we want to offer such a dangerous terrorist sanctuary on the very soil he seeks to soak with American blood?
I like that last line. There’s something satisfying about getting emotional and trying to whip up others, too (plus I’m a sucker for alliteration). All that logic and devotion to the Constitution was starting to tire me out. But look, the point is, if the president can order the assassination abroad of citizens because he deems them dangerous, he ought to be able to have them assassinated at home, too. Suggesting otherwise feels almost like the kind of dodge I discuss in my response to Sullivan’s first argument about the assassinations being limited in number. The message is, don’t worry, you asleep in your beds have nothing to fear from this program, which only applies abroad. But because the principle behind the power applies at home, too, eventually the program can be expanded everywhere. That’s the way I’d play it, anyway, if I were introducing the program and trying to get the public comfortable with it.
4. We are at war.
This is really Sullivan’s central claim — after all, the title of his piece is “Yes, We Are At War,” and he notes about a dozen times in the text itself that We Are At War. He offers some lip service to the notion that the war is not of the traditional variety, but the nature of this “war” is in fact the heart of the matter.
The laws of war don’t require, and we don’t expect, our soldiers to capture enemy soldiers who are firing at them on the battlefield. But what happens when we expand the concept of “war” to encompass the entire world? To continue for an indefinite period? And to include anyone, because there are no longer meaningful categories such as “soldiers” and “civilians?” That is, when there’s no way of determining where the war is being waged, or against whom, or for how long?
It’s hard to say for sure, because as far as I know outside Nineteen Eighty-Four it’s never been tried before. But I can see some worrying trends. First, many people will start ignoring the Constitution and its requirement that only Congress can declare war. Yes, there were two Authorizations for Use of Military Force — the first, against those who the President determined “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks; the second, against Iraq. The first might apply to Awlaki, but it’s telling that Sullivan doesn’t ever bother to cite it. For many people, and I suspect Sullivan is one of them, war is more a state of mind than a condition of hostilities. How else to explain his claim — which would be scary if it weren’t so obviously absurd — that, “There is no ‘due process’ in wartime”? The original legal authorization, such as it was, is forgotten, and “We Are at War!” becomes the all-purpose excuse for all government excesses and the all-purpose dismissal all civil liberties concerns.
(For more on this, I recommend Chris Hedge’s superb War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning).
Indeed, one of the things that strikes me about the resort to war (and to violence and punishment generally) is that war is more an end than it is a means. Sullivan doesn’t argue for war as a tool; he repeatedly argues for war itself:
“We are… at war with a vile, theocratic, murderous organization that would destroy this country and any of its enemies if it got the chance…
“The idea that this is not a war [is] a ludicrous, irresponsible and reality-divorced claim that I have never shared…
“I believe it is the duty of the commander in chief to kill as many of these people actively engaged in trying to kill us as possible and as accurately as possible…
“The point of targeting key agents of al Qaeda for killing is precisely to fight a war as surgically and as morally as we can…
“Treating this whole situation as if it were a civil case in a US city is not taking the threat seriously…
“And so the inclusion of Awlaki as an enemy is not an “execution”, or an “assassination”, as some of my libertarian friends hyperbolize. It is a legitimate and just act of war against a dangerous traitor at war with us and enjoining others to commit war…
“We ignore these theocratic mass murderers at our peril…
“We have every right, indeed a duty, to kill them after they have killed us by the thousands and before they kill us again.”
Rather than articulating an objective (crippling al Qaeda? Reducing the threat of terrorism to manageable levels, as we do for crime? Ending tyranny in our world? Sullivan doesn’t say), and then explaining why a given set of tactics is well-suited for achieving that objective, Sullivan repeatedly argues for war itself, and everything that war entails. And why not? War has its own logic, and with a war as all encompassing as the one we’re in, that logic takes on a powerful and seductive life of its own. Once you accept, and embrace, that “We are at War,” the rest, as they say, is just commentary.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

To whom it may concern: Actually the question is, whom does it concern?
The current events in regards to the mishandling of documents by major lenders Chase and GMAC are just the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of homeowners who have already lost their homes because of this problem as well as many, many more problems in the processing of the government Program, HAMP.
The present Administration ran an election marketing campaign that will go down in the history books; it was multi-faceted, a media darling, and a social media frenzy. If a similar effort that took place during the election campaign was used to further develop this housing Program, I believe we could begin to see results. The Administration must create a training platform that engages anyone and everyone involved in the Loan Modification process to ensure that the guidelines are followed and communicated correctly from the servicers all the way to the Hope counselors. The American public is losing countless homes due to non-compliance in procedures and incorrect answers being given to homeowners, causing them to either give up or lose their homes.
Maybe now is the right time for the Treasury Department has said they will “look into these troubling developments” they can stop turning a blind eye to those “troubling developments” and the non-compliance of the HAMP Home Affordable Modification Program.
I wonder what the point is of testifying in front of the Senate Housing Commission and putting together lengthy reports and compiling data on the inconsistencies of the Program, etc., etc., etc., if no one really cares, and no one really does anything about it. If it continues and no one is held accountable, nothing will happen when they do not follow the rules and guidelines of the Program. When mistakes are made it is not about a misapplied payment that you can fix; the mistakes are huge. We are talking about the loss of the American dream for someone and, from what I have seen first hand, no one really cares.
Here is an example. I have been working on an advocacy case for the past 3 1/2 months that is truly an instance of The Fleecing of America. During the course my case, I contacted every government agency I could think of. Most emails were deleted prior to reading, and the ones that were read were not replied to. When complaints were made, the response was there was nothing they could do, and the committees said they only do reporting. I was told the Compliance Agent for the Program need not comply with the guidelines, and in calling the major national service, one of Americas’ Largest Banks, we were hung up on. The Congresswoman would not talk to me unless I was a HUD counselor, the woman at the government-backed investor’s office said she would help, then left on vacation and never called back again. Sigtarp said they don’t get involved. All I really got was an experience of finger pointing and passing the buck, which led me to the question angrily at that point: Who then does it concern?
Paperwork is shuffled within the lenders infrastructure, misinformation is given out on a consistent basis, countless mistakes are made, incorrect income is used all the time and borrowers are railroaded into accepting modifications whether they are calculated correctly or not for fear of losing their homes even if they ask to be re-reviewed. Borrowers are blamed for missing paperwork but the servicers and lenders have no accountability and do not accept any responsibility for their own actions when they make mistakes, and the answer simply is that the entire onus is on the consumer. Go in and read one of those thick lender/servicer testimonies; the blame is on the borrower.
Wouldn’t now be a good time to look into the compliance issues with this Program?
If government officials, bank executives and investors could go into the trenches and really listen to their constituents and customers, it would be clear as day that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, and addressed soon. Maybe if servicer employees were thoroughly trained on the HAMP guidelines they could give borrowers the correct information. Maybe then, one less American homeowner would lose his home because of being given incorrect information or because of an internal mistake. Once the mistake happens there is nowhere to turn, no one to complain to, and the situation then calls for drastic measures. People must think for themselves and question authority because if they don’t, it they could cost them their homes. It is imperative that people get empowered with all the information necessary.
The American public receives notices such as “denied for NPV” that homeowners have no clue about what that means. If they request the NPV values and property values, they then find out that their servicers’ do not want to disclose the information, refuse to disclose it, or never send it as required by the Treasury’s HAMP guidelines, etc.
People are still being told that they can only get help if they are currently 60 days late and others have lost their home because of the very Program that was supposed to help them. Many homeowners actually qualified for the Program, but mistakes are made. But then again, who really cares? Nothing will happen to them anyway. There is no accountability for non-compliance.
We are talking about people losing their homes, not little mistakes that are not as detrimental to all of us. When you really listen to the stories like I do, you see that the red tape is strangling homeowners. I think the quality of their job performance is suffering, relationships are in jeopardy and their health is affected, all because the stress and worry they suffer eventually gets the best of them.
Again, if lenders and government officials saw what homeowners had to go through to obtain a modification, it would readily become apparent that applying for a modification and making sure it is being processed correctly is a full time job in itself. You need to make sure that the fax that you have to send 17 times arrived along with all 50 pages with the loan number written on each page, and that you just paid Kinko’s money you don’t have 17 times to fax the same information. On top of this, the homeowner either has to be looking for work or working a full time job for less pay, all the while trying to juggle this paperwork nightmare. Otherwise, they cannot pay the modified payment.
Then sometimes when the homeowner, after 10 attempts to save their home, finally does get either a trial modification that goes on for 10 months only to be followed by a denial, or a permanent modification that is suddenly lost, guess what? The lender now does not want to honor it. It is really no wonder that homeowners are so frustrated that they give up or they must start the process all over again. Maybe the Surgeon General should require a warning label.
I just wonder what incentives the servicers and lenders really have behind the scenes, what back room deals are happening that we don’t know about, and why it is that they would much prefer to kick a homeowner out of the house and sell at a loss at a foreclosure sale instead of working out a loan modification for their customer that simply wants an affordable payment – even when it is more profitable to help them. It is not because homeowners are deadbeats, but because of a broad spectrum of circumstances the current economy has caused. Things that make you go hmmmmm.
In light of the latest news of the mishandling of foreclosures, American homeowners need to take their power back by making sure they regain their confidence, know the Program guidelines themselves, know their numbers inside and out so they can push back when the information and answers given to them are incorrect. Verify everything more than once. You must be your own best advocate, question authority, or it could cost you your home.
So now that we are talking about the mishandling of foreclosures, I think it would also be a great time to “look into these troubling events” too!

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It was exactly four years ago today that one of the most brutal, senseless, and unforgivable acts of violence in U.S. history took place. And that day also brought one of the most extraordinary responses to unspeakable violence our culture has ever known.
The schoolchildren had just returned to their classroom from recess on the morning of October 2, 2006, when a 32-year-old milk-truck driver named Charles Carl Roberts backed his pickup truck up to the front of an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We may never be able to understand what possessed Roberts that day, but we do know, to our horror, what he did.
He walked into the classroom holding a 9mm handgun. He then ordered the male students to carry items from the back of his pickup truck into the classroom. These items included a shotgun, a stungun, wires, chains, nails, tools, and a bag which included sexual lubricant and flexible plastic ties. There was also a wood board with many sets of metal eyehooks intended to be used for securing his victims.
Roberts ordered the female children to line up against the chalkboard. He then released the male students, a pregnant woman, and three parents with infants. One female student managed to escape, leaving behind 10 hostages, all of them girls.
The teacher, who had somehow also managed to escape in the confusion, immediately raced to a nearby farm and called 911. Within a few minutes, police and emergency medical personnel began to arrive. As they did, Roberts was using plastic ties to bind the arms and legs of the schoolgirls he held hostage. A group of state troopers approached the schoolhouse, but Roberts threatened to shoot the girls if they did not leave immediately. The police backed off.
A police negotiator, using the bullhorn on his cruiser, spoke to Roberts, asking him repeatedly to put down his weapons and come out of the school house. He refused.
Barely more than 30 minutes had elapsed since Charles Carl Roberts had first driven up to the schoolhouse when the shooting began. He shot all 10 of the schoolgirls execution style, in the back of the head. When the shots rang out, the police immediately rushed the building, but the shooting stopped just as they broke through the windows and began to force their way inside. Roberts had killed himself.
Three girls died at the scene, and two others died in the next sixteen hours. Five others were left in critical condition, struggling for their lives. The victims ranged in age from six to 13.
Janice Ballenger, deputy coroner in Lancaster County, told the Washington Post that she counted two dozen bullet wounds in one child alone. “There was not one desk, not one chair, in the whole schoolroom that was not splattered with either blood or glass,” she said. “There were bullet holes everywhere, everywhere.”
There is probably no way most of us could comprehend the grief and horror that this unspeakable brutality caused the Amish community and the families of these innocent victims. There are no words that can even begin to express the violence and its devastating toll.
But somehow, these people did not respond with hate. They did not cry out for revenge. Their hearts were filled with unimaginable grief, but they sought and found ways, miraculously, to turn their misery toward compassion.
Impossibly, the Amish actually reached out to the family of the gunman. The afternoon of the shooting, the Amish grandfather of one of the girls who had been murdered publicly expressed forgiveness toward the killer. That same day, Amish neighbors visited the Roberts family to comfort them in their sorrow and pain. One Amish man held Roberts’ sobbing father in his arms for nearly an hour, comforting him.
The Amish didn’t hold a press conference. They didn’t cast blame or prepare to file lawsuits. Instead, though their hearts were filled with grief and shock, they reached out with compassion to the killers’ family.
Marie Roberts, the widow of the killer, was one of the few outsiders invited to the funeral of one of the Amish girls. Amish mourners were the majority of those gathered at the funeral of Charles Carl Roberts. And the Amish later set up a charitable fund for the family of the killer.
The story became the subject of national attention. Many reporters asked, “How could these people forgive such a terrible, unprovoked act of violence against innocent children?”
It’s a good question. Part of the answer stems from how deeply devoted the Amish are to the teachings of Jesus, who taught his followers to forgive others, to place the needs of others before themselves, and to find peace in the reality that God can bring good out of any situation.
This is who the Amish are. This what they do. They try to meet evil with good. When they are harmed, they seek to forgive. They do their best to embody Martin Luther King’s recognition that “forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”
The Amish are a people of few material possessions. I’ve heard it said, by someone obviously not drawn to these people, that they have made self-denial into a lifestyle. But could they have an inner power that is beyond the comprehension of those of us caught up in the rat race of the modern world?
Which brings up another question. We live in a world where forgiveness is often seen as a sign of weakness, a world where revenge and retaliation are taken for granted as an appropriate response to evil. Could the Amish be showing us another possibility?
The Amish may be the Michael Jordans of forgiveness. Their capacity to forgive may seem superhuman to the rest of us. But is it possible that Amish forgiveness and grace have something to teach us?
I think it’s something that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have understood, and Gandhi, too. They taught that the most effective way to counter violence was not to condone it, nor to react in kind, but to respond to it with creative nonviolence. They knew that an eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind. They taught that you can hate the sin, but you must try to love the sinner.
Becoming merciful rather than hateful is difficult work, and can seem all but impossible for those who have been taught to nurse fantasies of revenge against those who have harmed us. We do not live in a culture where forgiveness is given much value. We identify justice with payback. We have highly developed capacities for blame.
But might there be something in the Amish example that can be an antidote to the brutality and meanness of the world? If we are moved by their example, could it be because they remind us of our own capacities for mercy?
I don’t want to sound too high and mighty here. I can get as angry as the next person, and I think that a capacity for healthy and constructive anger is a necessary part of our emotional wholeness. Sometimes injustice needs to be corrected, and there are people in the world from whom we, and our children, need protection. And yet, there is something in the Amish example that strikes me with its beauty.
Maybe the Amish can remind us of this: Yes, there is unimaginable anguish and violence in the world. But when all is said and done, love might still have a strength that hate can never defeat.
Do we really need all the things we have come to believe constitute the good life? Is there something about our get-more, have-more culture that separates us from our hearts? These questions and more are explored in John Robbins’ latest book The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. His other bestsellers include The Food Revolution and Diet For A New America. John is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. For more info about his work, see johnrobbins.info

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Washington Post columnist and Pulitzer prize winner Charles Krauthammer has a new column out today in which he provides readers with his presumably expert take on the matter of Obama’s decision to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan by 30,000 soldiers while also having announced a force reduction to begin a year and a half afterwards. Noting further that Bob Woodward’s latest book confirms that Obama has meanwhile been seeking some sort of exit strategy, Krauthammer draws a number of conclusions about why Obama is doing such things and what the result will be for Afghanistan.
Krauthammer’s charitableness in allowing for the possibility that Obama is a “foreign policy novice” rather than merely a fool who disagrees with Krauthammer about the wisdom of the present Afghanistan conflict is very sweet. It also seems to be predicated on the idea that Krauthammer himself is something greater than a foreign policy novice, as well as a reliable observer of Obama’s thinking in general and his plans for Afghanistan in particular. The problem is that neither of these things are true; having gone through his output from 1998 until the present day in the course of researching the state of American punditry for my upcoming book, I will even go so far as to say that they are, in fact, rather false.
As I’ve explained elsewhere, Krauthammer’s record of predictions in the realm of foreign policy is so horrid that it would probably surprise even many of his detractors. He spent much of 1999 explaining how Clinton’s Kosovo policy would lead to a disastrous regional war along with an “irredentist” Kosovo bent on territorial conquest. Two years later, he announced that a small uprising among ethnic Albanians in Macedonia had vindicated his prediction, but then lost interest when the conflict ended with a few dozen dead. And though at that time he saw fit to refer to NATO’s continued presence in the region as a “quagmire” with parallels to Vietnam, he spent the next few years mocking anyone who applied similar characterizations to Afghanistan and Iraq. When the Iraq surge was proposed, he was among the few prominent conservatives to predict that it would fail; a year later he claimed it be a success without mentioning his previous claims that it would be a failure and promptly went about attacking others for their own opposition to the measure.
If Krauthammer had since displayed some measure of predictive competence to match his inexplicable confidence, we might decide that perhaps there is some good reason why he is one of the nation’s most influential columnists rather than just some guy. For instance, if he had lately made some prediction regarding Afghanistan, Obama, and troop levels that had turned out to be correct or at least partly so, it would be reasonable for us to pay respectful attention to any further predictions that Krauthammer cares to make on the same matter. Contrarily, if Krauthammer had lately made a prediction on this same subject that turned out to be exactly wrong, we might just as reasonably disregard his opinion and we might even go so far as to wonder why it is that The Washington Post distributes his output as if it were something worthy of merit rather than the ramblings of some incompetent fraud.
In December of 2009, Krauthammer made one of his regular appearances on Fox News, where he made a prediction regarding the Obama, Afghanistan, and the 30,000 troops in question:
Of course, Obama did end up giving the troops to McChrystal, who did not resign in honorable and Krauthammer-vindicating protest but rather stayed on until such time as he was forced to resign after having made no fundamental progress with the troops he’d ordered and after having also undermined the civilian leadership in front of author and journalist Michael Hastings.
And thus it is that Krauthammer, despite having been wrong about every major U.S. military matter of the past twelve years, and despite having more recently predicted the exact opposite development than what actually occurred in the matter of Obama, Afghanistan, and the troop buildup, has once again weighed in on Obama, Afghanistan, and the troop buildup, and The Washington Post and some untold number of other publications has once again published the result, and this dynamic will continue well into the future unless some other dynamic arises to counter it. If you would be inclined to assist in causing such a dynamic to come about, I would invite you to contact me at barriticus@gmail.com for information about Project PM.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com