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Last Wednesday I went to the Center for Global Development for the launch of my friend Devesh Kapur’s new book Diaspora, Development, and Democracy. Book launches in Washington, especially about public policy, can be either mind-numbingly boring or maddeningly partisan, and I generally avoid them. But the minute I walked in the door over at CGD, I was happy to be there.
Why? Because CGD is one of the rare places where smart people with often sharply different perspectives and positions come to listen to – rather than talk at – each other. When you are there, you have a real sense that people have come to learn from one another to understand the world better. Unlike so many other places in Washington, in the blogs, and on TV, people don’t come to CGD only to score points or to win intellectual arguments. Instead, they come to present their arguments and listen to others and then go away and refine their own thinking.
I sat there on Wednesday wondering how CGD came to be this way. Part of it is due to Nancy Birdsall, the co-founder, who cares less about winning arguments and more about the truth than almost anyone I know. Ed Scott, the other co-founder and core funder, has a similar personality. He is gruff and opinionated, but in the end he cares about what works, not about ideology. Together, they have recruited exceptional fellows and staff, all of whom have their policy disagreements and petty disputes but who feel (to the outsider, at least) like a family. Many of those of us who attend CGD events feel like part of an extended family.
CGD has become the leading think tank on development because of the social capital that it has built over the last ten years. Other academic institutions and think tanks have impressive rosters of scholars, but the whole is often less than the sum of the parts. (Don’t even get me started on talk radio and TV talk shows.) CGD is the opposite – the whole is far more than the sum of its parts because the parts respect and listen to each other.
After the discussion, I went out for drinks with a couple of former classmates, including Devesh. We joked about the paper he and I recently published on aid accountability. Devesh and I see the world very differently, to say the least, and from the outset I questioned my sanity at having agreed to write a paper with him. At times, we both felt like strangling the other over one point or another. Yet despite (and maybe because of) these differences, we persevered and wrote a paper that, hopefully, sheds a little new light on the topic. And that reminds me of the initial question I had for Devesh when he asked me to do it:
“Why on earth do you think we should write a paper together?” I asked.
“Maybe so we will learn something,” he replied.
And he turned out to be right.
www.globalgiving.org, Pulling for the Underdog

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The case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian born detainee at Guantanamo Bay prison on trial by military commission for alleged crimes he committed at the age of fifteen, should be cause for American reflection on our values. There is talk that a plea bargain agreement is in the works, but the true negotiation that has taken place is between Americans and their values. There is little time remaining to set things right.
The America that I know, love, and served stands for the rule of law, justice, and our principles. It does not stand for revenge. Yet, there is only one conclusion in evaluating the U.S. government’s actions in the case of Khadr, the first child soldier ever tried by a western nation for war crimes: America is motivated by vengeance. This is evidenced by the torture and abuse of Khadr in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, including solitary confinement for extended periods of time and other abusive treatment such as the use of military working dogs to intimidate and threats of rape.
This is in contradiction to America’s moral voice in the international community on the treatment of child soldiers. The United States is in violation of The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (“Optional Protocol”), which we ratified in 2002 and requires rehabilitation for child soldiers, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, international juvenile justice standards, and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It’s inconsequential what acts Khadr committed as a child soldier. The United States government has decried as much in public in other cases of child soldiers. In a speech on September 16, 2010, Ambassador Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, at a Security Council debate on Somalia, stated:
The United States strongly condemns the use of children as well to pursue violent agendas. We call upon all parties to immediately release all children within their ranks, to halt child recruitment, and to provide for the proper reintegration into civilian life of former child soldiers.

Support for Khadr’s trial is driven by a demand for justice for Army Sergeant First Class Christopher Speers who died from a grenade explosion during Khadr’s capture (it’s not clear if Khadr threw the grenade due to conflicting witness statements). We should mourn the deaths of our brothers-in-arms, but justice for Speers will not come from the trial of a former child soldier. Justice is trial and punishment for those who trained him. If they are lawful enemy combatants in Afghanistan, then it would justify military action. Some justice was served on October 2, 2003, in South Warziristan, Pakistan, when Omar Khadr’s father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an Al Qaeda supporter who was responsible for his son’s militancy, was killed in a raid by Pakistani forces.
While leading interrogations in Iraq, I faced a similar situation when a known Al Qaeda operations officer who groomed suicide bombers was killed when those same suicide bombers detonated themselves during a raid of his home by my task force. His surviving orphaned sons were brought to our prison while we attempted to locate relatives. Instead of using abusive interrogation techniques, the boys were coddled and comforted, resulting in one of them providing a wealth of accurate and timely intelligence information. That information led to numerous successful missions against Al Qaeda’s suicide bombing network. If Khadr had been treated similarly, who knows what information he may have provided based on knowledge of his father’s activities. Instead, we’re left with a stain on our American image as a country that tortures child soldiers and then prosecutes them. This is another tool in the box for Al Qaeda recruiters.
The case of Omar Khadr represents the continuation of Bush-era policies that run in complete contradiction to both our operational objectives in defeating Al Qaeda and in preserving our principles in the face of an enemy that calls us hypocrites. Our compassion for child soldiers should compel us to repatriate Omar Khadr to Canada. The man that trained him is dead and justice has been served. What’s left to do now is rehabilitate, both ourselves and Khadr. It is time to release and repatriate him to Canada.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

First run at thenation.com
Was National Public Radio correct to fire Juan Williams, their National News Analyst, for saying [1], “…when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous”? The answer is a simple one: you betchya. This is, as the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan wrote [2], “anti-religious bigotry in its purest, clearest form.” How could NPR employ an ostensibly unbiased “National News Analyst” who admits an irrational bias against Arabs and Muslims? What would our reaction be had he voiced similar sentiments toward any other religion or ethnicity? As salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald made plain [3], “If we’re going to fire or otherwise punish people for expressing prohibited ideas against various groups, it’s long overdue that those standards be applied equally to anti-Muslim animus, now easily one of the most — if not the single most — pervasive, tolerated and dangerous forms of blatant bigotry in America.”
It’s no coincidence that Williams happened to express these views on Fox News. In the Obama era, the cable network has chosen to become a fully functioning engine of racism [4], operating what can be described as a 50 state Southern strategy, playing to white anxieties about an increasingly multicultural America. Sure enough, Fox gave Juan Williams, the day after his firing, a two million dollar contract. Islamophobia pays, especially when voiced by an African American who touts his own liberal credentials. (As Fox Anchor Brit Hume said affectionately of Juan Williams on Sunday, he’s a “Bill Cosby Liberal.” [5] Nope, no racism at Fox.)
In addition to being very well compensated, Williams has received full-throated support from the usual suspects of intolerance [6]. Figures of the right like Fox News employees Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Karl Rove along with the utterly repellent professional Islamophobe Pam Gellar have rushed to Williams’ defense on 1st amendment grounds. These figures, to put it mildly, lack a degree of credibility on any issue pertaining to “free speech.” They all celebrated [6]the firing of CNN correspondent Octavia Nasr for tweeting sympathies after the death of Lebanon’s Ayatollah Mohammad Hussain Fadlallah, a cleric who became the spiritual leader of the Lebanese resistance after the 1982 Israeli invasion. They laughed it up when Helen Thomas was forced to retire in disgrace after saying that Jews should “Get the hell out of Israel.” But when Dr. Laura Schlessinger was pushed out after using the n-word repeatedly on the air, Palin rushed to her defense [7] and now as Juan Williams is punished for expressing his Islamic paranoia, Fox & Friends reveal the only kind of speech they fight to defend.
The usual suspects of intolerance don’t defend Islamophobia because they’re bigots, although that certainly helps. There is a wing of the political establishment with a pressing stake in Anti-Muslim-paranoia this election season. Candidates around the country like Nevada Senatorial candidate Sharron Angle are running for office on idiotic planks of fending off creeping “Sharia Law” in the United States and stopping a “ground zero mosque” in New York City that is neither a mosque nor at “ground zero.” While Fox News has of course been the engine of breathless coverage against Muslim Americans, this has not just been the province of the right. Both Democratic Senatorial Majority Leader Harry Reid and liberal favorite Howard Dean have luridly railed against the “ground zero mosque.” As for President Obama, we are still trying to decipher his position.
Beneath the election year fear-mongering lies an even more ugly and genocidal reality. More than a million Arabs and Muslims have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, since the bipartisan Global War on Terror began nine years ago. The Obama administration has of course upped the ante in Afghanistan while while accelerating deadly drone attacks in Pakistan and we know from Wikileaks that accidental deaths of civilians in these countries is a regular reality. Racism and Islamophobia is primarily about dehumanizing Arabs and Muslims. A significant portion of the United States can only accept the horrific crimes against humanity in the Middle East if there is consensus that those dying are less than human.
As for Williams he has not only refused to apologize. He has taken this moment of infamy to burnish his credentials for his new bosses on Fox. He has made the rounds decrying “political correctness” and “left wing orthodoxy” at NPR, calling them “worse than Nixon.” [8] He has even called for his employer of 15 years to be defunded. In doing so, he has joined calls by Tea Party leader Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina who announced that he is introducing legislation to “defund NPR.” The bill calls to “end subsidies” and make NPR “play by the rules of the free market.” That might sound great on Fox News (subsidized by Rupert Murdoch), but the problem is that congress doesn’t actually fund NPR, which gets just 2% of it’s funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. By piously defending free speech while demogoguing against NPR, DeMint sounds like his Tea Party brethren who rail to “keep the Government out of my Medicare!”
To be clear there is nothing “left wing” about National Public Radio. This is the network that gave airtime to right wing ideologue David Horowitz [9] the day after the death of Howard Zinn, as an authority to assess the beloved historian’s legacy. Yet in this case they were absolutely correct. Finally, at long last, an institution drew a line against the ceaseless media bigotry faced by Arabs and Muslims.
A quarter of a century ago, there was a person who would have been part of drawing that line. Tragically he is no longer with us. He was a principled anti-racist who wrote the classic civil rights text Eyes on the Prize. In 1986 he said, “Racism is a lazy man’s substitute for using good judgment… Common sense becomes racism when skin color becomes a formula for figuring out who is a danger to me. [2]” His name was Juan Williams. It would be nice if he were still around.
—————————————————————————
Links:
[1] http://conversations.blackvoices.com/entertainment/99435682aaea4564b24369ed6fc90973/NPR-FIRES-JUAN-WILLIAMS/16a26f915d5d4c32984814cc481ee4e1?sn=1
[2] http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/10/juan-williams-busted.html
[3] http://mobile.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/10/21/williams/index.html
[4] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/27/144314/954
[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/24/brit-hume-juan-williams_n_772960.html?ir=Politics
[6] http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/dont-cross-the-jews-do-cross-the-muslims-the-juan-williams-story.php
[7] http://www.ontheredcarpet.com/2010/08/sarah-palin-tweets-support-for-dr-laura-schlessinger.html
[8] http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/10/22/juan-williams-npr-worse-than-nixon/
[9] http://topics.npr.org/article/09SS86z55P81n?q=NPR

This Blogger’s Books from
Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love
by Dave Zirin

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Silicon Alley Insider wrote on October 18: “Speaking at Y-combinator event over the weekend, the real Mark Zuckerberg said that the biggest difference between the movie and real life stems from the fact that movie-makers ‘can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.’”
Zuckerberg’s comment reflects a few of the points made by Daniel Pink in his brilliant book Drive: The Surprising Truth About Motivates Us that most normal people are not motivated primarily by money except when they do repetitious, routine tasks, but they are motivated by autonomy (self-direction), mastery (getting really good at something), and purpose (doing something worthwhile).
For those who can’t take the time to read Drive, check out this excellent summary of the main points in the book on YouTube by RSAnimate.
Of course, Hollywood and Wall Street types aren’t normal people. In these arenas of twisted values, fueled by the most addictive drugs of all – power and money – winning isn’t everything, greedy lust for the two-headed devil of power and money is everything.
In “Social Network” Mark Zuckerberg is depicted as a computer programming nerd who is vindictive and greedy – he wants Facebook all for himself and tries to cut out his friend Eduardo Saverin of the vast majority of rightful ownership of Facebook. Zuckerberg is portrayed as duplicitous and greedy by the Hollywood producers, director, and writer of the movie.
This story line is certainly to be expected from Hollywood. In psychology, it isn’t called a story line, it’s called projection, the tendency of people to project their own negative characteristics on everyone else. The thief thinks everyone is trying to steal from him because that’s what he does. Politicians accuse other politicians of lying all the time. Ummm?
So Hollywood can’t understand a story of a young software genius (the movie does depict Zuckerberg as a genius) who builds Facebook because he wants to do something cool that will help young people connect and enhance society. Like Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) in “The Princess Bride,” I can hear the Hollywood types screaming, “inconceivable!”, or repeatinem>g yet again Jack Warner’s line, “if you want to give a message, send a telegram.”
These greedy, self-absorbed types think the purpose of a making a movie is to make them rich, just like most Wall Street types and media moguls think the purpose of a business is to make a profit. They never read “the father of modern management,” Peter Drucker’s, piece of wisdom that “There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.”
“Social Network” is based mostly on a sensationalist book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, by Ben Mezrich in which the author takes the side of Eduardo Saverin and makes up a good story.
Respected journalist and FORTUNE magazine senior editor David Kirkpatrick’s well-researched book The Facebook Effect portrays Zuckerberg as an idealistic software genius and Saverin as a pampered son of a Brazilian businessman bully of a father. Kirkpatrick’s Saverin is not a sympathetic character because he is more interested in making money on Facebook than creating a cool product that has an easy-to-navigate user experience like Zuckerberg wants.
Kirkpatrick’s Zuckerberg seems to take a concept from the movies, the iconic “build it and they will come” from “Field of Dreams” (appropriately), while Saverin seem to take the opposite concept from the movies, that “greed is good” from “Wall Street” (appropriately).
Those, like Joe Nocera of the New York Times in his “Talking Business” column, who think that Ben Mezrich’s view of human nature is more accurate than David Kirkpatrick’s and that Zuckerberg and most human beings can’t be motivated by a meaningful purpose and are greedy, should probably look very carefully in the mirror – or perhaps in the eye of a projector.

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As we all know, U.S. students score pretty low on international math tests—24th out of 29 industrialized countries. What can we do to get kids really excited about math? One thing is to make it relevant to the world today. How about learning to program your cell phone, for example, just to start?
Many groups have been working to improve teacher effectiveness and student engagement in math. There are lots of resources on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics website as well as on Math Forum for math teachers website.
A wonderful new resource for math and science teachers and for parents just appeared last week on Google called Exploring Computational Thinking. The goal of these resources is make the study of computational thinking, math, computer science, science, and social science more exciting for K-12 students and more applicable to today’s world.
These resources were developed by math and science teachers in cooperation with Google engineers
It involves a set of problem-solving skills and techniques that software engineers use to write programs that underlay the computer applications you use such as search, email, and maps. Specific techniques include: problem decomposition, pattern recognition, pattern generalization to define abstractions or models, algorithm design, and data analysis and visualization.
If you are not a math teacher or a K12 teacher, you might want to share this link with a math or science teacher. We all need to work together to help students everywhere be better mathematicians and scientists.

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There’s a very old fable of unknown origin that goes something like this…
A scorpion comes upon a river and asks a friendly frog for a ride to the other side. The frog laughs and says something like, “Are you nuts? You’re a scorpion. You’ll sting me!”
The scorpion replies, “Why would I do that? If I stung you, we’d both go down.”
The frog shrugs in agreement and begins to carry the scorpion across the river. Halfway to the other side however, the scorpion stings the frog, dooming them both. Just before they go under, the frog asks, “Why?” to which the scorpion replies, “I’m a scorpion; it’s my nature.”
A variation of that story played out last week when National Public Radio fired news analyst Juan Williams for comments he made about Muslims to Bill O’Reilly on Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor, last Monday (Oct. 18).
O’Reilly asked Williams if America had a “Muslim dilemma.” “The cold truth is that in the world today, jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”
“I mean, look, Bill,” Williams said, “I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
To begin with, O’Reilly is a self-absorbed provocateur, a professional malcontent whose chief objective is getting a controversial, on-air reaction from anyone he interviews. Anyone who saw his recent dust-up on ABC’s The View knows this first-hand. There’s always a sly smile on O’Reilly’s face when he sees the reaction he’s getting from people. But that’s an issue for another day.
Then there’s Williams’ statement itself that might indicate that the news analyst has a bias against Muslims. However, acknowledging a feeling – worry, nervousness – is not the same as actively demonstrating disrespect or bias.
Nonetheless, public speaking is an act, and if you are a public figure, your words carry influence and can hurt. Like it or not, Williams is a public figure, and as such should have attempted to steer the conversation into a discussion about profiling. To his credit, Williams tried to bring some clarity to his own comments, but was continually shut down by O’Reilly’s habitual style of talking over his own guests. In the case of last Monday’s show, three people were talking at once.
Then, there’s the reaction by NPR’s management.
CEO Vivian Schiller said that “News analysts may not take personal public positions on controversial issues; doing so undermines their credibility as analysts, and that’s what’s happened in this situation.”
NPR does have a comprehensive ethics code. Under section four, “Conflicts of Interest,” it states:
“1. Conducting ourselves in a manner that inspires confidence in us as independent and fair means avoiding actual and apparent conflicts of interest or engaging in outside activities, public comment or writing that calls into question our ability to report fairly on a subject.
“2. A conflict of interest in its simplest dictionary term is a conflict between the private interests and the professional responsibilities of a person in a position of trust… All of us are in positions of trust with our audience. To maintain that trust requires that there be no real or perceived overlap between the private interests and opinions of NPR journalists and their professional responsibilities.”
Under those rules, Mr. Williams violated the principle of trust between himself and his audience. By publically implying that fear of Muslims was somehow acceptable, he put into question his ability to report fairly on any story relating to Muslims in his professional duties at NPR.
On the surface, it looks as if NPR could have handled the whole mess much better than they did, but ultimately made the right call in firing Williams. But there’s another question that’s been largely ignored. Why did NPR grant permission for Williams to repeatedly appear on The O’Reilly Factor knowing O’Reilly’s M.O.?
Alicia Shepard, NPR’s Ombudsman, writes in her blog, “This was far from an isolated incident.
“Management said [Williams had] been warned several times that O’Reilly is a professional provocateur and to be careful.
“In early 2009, Williams said on O’Reilly of Michelle Obama: ‘She’s got this Stokely Carmichael-in-a-designer-dress thing going. If she starts talking . . . her instinct is to start with this blame America, you know, I’m the victim. If that stuff starts to coming out, people will go bananas and she’ll go from being the new Jackie O. to being something of an albatross.’”
After on-air comments like that, why didn’t NPR rescind Williams’ permission to go on O’Reilly’s show? Why would they continue to put the news analyst and their own credibility in harm’s way?
While Juan Williams’ statement to O’Reilly calls into question the news analyst’s trust and credibility, NPR raised their own questions of credibility in allowing him to opinionate on Fox to begin with.
In my version of the Scorpion and the Frog, NPR is the frog who, in spite of clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, continued to put O’Reilly on their back.
As O’Reilly might say, “I’m O’Reilly; it’s my nature!”
Jim Lichtman writes and speaks on ethics. His commentaries can be found at www.EthicsStupid.com.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

There’s no need to force people to work longer by raising Social Security’s retirement age. Many Americans already are doing so — by choice.
President Obama’s debt commission appears set to recommend a gradual increase in Social Security’s retirement age, perhaps to 70, to help bring the system’s finances into long-term balance. But why use sticks when carrots could do? Making it easier and more appealing for more people to keep working could help balance the system’s books while minimizing any benefit cuts.
The continued tax revenue from longer working lives makes such a voluntary initiative a serious policy option. Raising the median age at which Americans actually leave the workforce to 67 — already Social Security’s “normal retirement age” for those born in 1960 or later – would cut Social Security’s long-term shortfall nearly in half, according to Stephen Goss, Social Security’s chief actuary.
Of course, most people won’t extend their working lives in order to rescue Social Security. They’ll stay on the job, or find a new one, to bolster their personal financial security. Or to stay connected, make a contribution or pursue a passion.
The trend is well underway. In 1988, about 55 percent of Americans aged 55 to 64 were still in the labor force; now, nearly 65 percent are. Among people aged 65 to 74, the percentage who are still working (or seeking to) has climbed from 16 to 25.
“Folks are making these employment arrangements already,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said at a hearing in July on “Choosing to Work During Retirement and the Impact on Social Security” that was called to “examine whether we can make it easier for these arrangements to happen.”
Unlike an across-the-board increase, a voluntary initiative would take advantage of the increased longevity and better health that allows many people to work longer, without disadvantaging those who can’t or don’t want to.
Small changes in Social Security could nudge people to re-up rather than retire. Employers could adopt more flexible arrangements that allow employees to work part-time or part-year. Reformed pension rules could enable people to draw partial benefits as they reduce their hours.
New “encore career” opportunities that last seven, 10 or even 15 years could boost the average retirement age even more dramatically. Investments in career-transition programs at community colleges and new financial services — call them “Individual Purpose Accounts” — could help people prepare for their encore transitions. “Encore fellowships,” such as those authorized in last year’s Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act and those already offered by a handful of companies could help people make the switch.
A public-private encore career initiative could catalyze accessible and attractive work opportunities by making the talent and experience of older Americans central to fulfilling national priorities in health, education, energy and other areas. Patient navigators, adjunct teachers, job trainers, youth mentors and the like could help reduce health care costs, increase graduation rates, cut energy use and meet other common goals.
By emphasizing personal satisfaction and social contribution, encore careers help redefine working longer as an aspiration, not a punishment. The debt commission, which is due to issue its report in December, can accelerate the beneficial trends by calling a generation to its encore.
The commission may understandably be loath to credit any revenue windfall from such a dramatic shift in social behavior. But what if the commission let us put our labor where our mouths are? By delaying any recommended hike in the retirement age, policymakers could see whether Americans are indeed opting to work longer on their own.
By choosing to work longer, those who are able and willing could help themselves and their communities, and help preserve Social Security as well.
David Bank is vice president of Civic Ventures, a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Today 44 volunteer ‘reclamation workers’ (activists) illegally marched onto a supposedly reclaimed mine site to plant trees. Why? Because the ‘reclamation’ efforts done by the mining company resulted in a barren hillside with sparse grass and baking sun – a far cry from the lush and diverse forest destroyed in the process.
After negotiating with the police and planting all the trees, all 44 were allowed to leave the site without repurcussions.
The fight over mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia revolves around jobs. Even though the highly mechinized practice has drastically reduced the number of people employed in the mining industry, the proponents of mining say that West Virginia is poor and needs the jobs. Opponents say healthy and prosperous economies can be created in the area if only the destructive and poisionsous processes of the coal companies are stopped and the natual wealth is not destroyed.
John Johnson, forester and environmentalist said, “The coal industry does not attempt to return the landscape to its previous biodiversity – leaving it up to the citizens to reclaim it themselves. Fixing the ruined landscape will provide long term jobs for those put out of work by the abolition of mountaintop removal.”
At 12:30 today, hundreds of people rallied at Stanley Heirs Park, adjacent to Larry Gibson’s home on Kayford Mountain. Statesman Ken Hechler and Kayford Mountainkeeper Larry Gibson, along with two miners from Colombia lead the march to the mine site, with participants aged 18 to 96 years old.
Lifelong Coal River Valley resident Junior Walk says, “Coal companies sure as hell aren’t going to take it upon themselves to do something about it – some one’s got to do it.”
44 people walked out onto the mine site to plant 30 hemlocks, pen oak and tulip poplar trees, as well as planting chesnuts, walnuts, acorns. Some deployed a banner reading: “EPA We’re Doing Your Job – Over 500 Mountains Destroyed – Reclamation Jobs Now!”
Mine security vehicles and police showed up moments later and negotiated with the activists. By 3:30pm all the trees had been planted and the protesters left the site without repurcussions. While technically tresspassing, it looks like the police didn’t have the taste for arresting folks who are calling attention to what the mining companies should be doing.
To see just how agregious this shortcoming is of mining company policy towards reclamation, check out this report from NRDC earlier this year:
Coal country politicians have largely supported the mining industry, even to the extreme detriment of American heritage, community health and the economic well being of Appalachia. In an election where Democrats and Republicans alike are rushing to bow at the altar of coal, voters in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennesee, Virginia and elsewhere are often left to regulartory agencies like the Office of Surface Mining, the EPA, state DEP agencies and Mining and Mineral Services. Just getting them to do their job enforcing existing laws (like requiring reclamation) will be a huge victory in the fight to end mountaintop removal.
Want to help?
1.Email chfo@osmre.gov (Roger Calhoun chfo@osmre.gov Head field operator of Office of Surface Mining and Reclamaiton) Ask him why people are threatened with arrest for reclaiming mine sites? Shouldn’t we be paying Appalachian residents to do reclamation work, not arresting them? Send them a link to this blog, or a photo or article, and make sure they feel the heat.
2. Go to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and fill out their online form, asking the same questions.
For updates, check climategroundzero.org, follow @app_rising and @coalisfilthy, and check facebook.com/apprising. For more photos visit the Photobucket Album All photos taken by Jacob Mack-Boll

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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas can and should be impeached. The case and the grounds for impeachment proceedings against him are virtually iron-clad. The evidence is compelling that Thomas perjured himself in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his court confirmation hearings in 1991. The evidence is equally compelling that this constituted lying under oath to Congress during the hearings.
The impeachment case against Thomas is not based on personal or political disagreement over his views, decisions, opinions and rulings on the bench, his penchant for pornographic material, or for sexual harassment. It is based on clear legal and constitutional grounds, precedents, and Congressional mandates. Article III, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution explicitly states that a Supreme Court Justice that “lacks good behavior” can be impeached. This is not an ambiguous, subjective term. It has been interpreted by the courts to equate to the same level of seriousness as the ‘high crimes and misdemeanors” clause that unequivocally mandates that the House of Representatives initiate impeachment proceedings against any public official, or federal judge in violation of that provision.
The Constitutional precept is the first legal ground for impeachment proceedings against Thomas. The second is Title 18 of the U.S. Code. It states that any official of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the government of the United States who knowingly and willfully falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact, makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry can be impeached. In other words lying to Congress is not only an impeachable offense. It’s also illegal.
It’s also clearly established that a public official whether the president, presidential appointees, or judges can be punished for giving false information and that’s any false information of any nature to the House or Senate.
The Nixon impeachment debates and Clinton impeachment hearings were ample proof that the constitutional phrase of “good behavior” embraces not only indictable crimes but “conduct … grossly incompatible with the office held and subversive of that office and of our constitutional system of government.”
Thomas was asked directly by Utah senator Orin Hatch during his confirmation hearings about Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct and whether he used sexually suggestive language. Thomas answered: “I deny each and every single allegation against me today that suggested in any way that I had conversations of a sexual nature or about pornographic material with Anita Hill, that I ever attempted to date her, that I ever had any personal sexual interest in her, or that I in any way ever harassed her. ”
Thomas was emphatic, “If I used that kind of grotesque language with one person, it would seem to me that there would be traces of it throughout the employees who worked closely with me, or the other individuals who heard bits and pieces of it or various levels of it.” This was stated under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Thomas’s sworn testimony was clearly contradicted even then in public statements by witnesses. The witnesses were not called to testify. The one witness that contradicted Thomas’s sworn testimony, Angela Wright, did testify. She worked with Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and was emphatic that Thomas sexually harassed her and used explicit and graphic sexual language. Her story was corroborated by a former EEOC speechwriter who told investigators about Thomas’ penchant for improper sexual talk. Letters to the committee from other women who worked with Thomas confirmed that he was a serial sexual harasser and had a penchant for sexually perverse talk. The Senate panel had other sources to corroborate the Hill-Wright charge that Thomas engaged in sexual harassment and obsessive interest in sexual smut. These sources were ignored too.
Two decades later Thomas’s apparent perjured testimony to Congress is now squarely back on the legal table. Lillian McEwen put it there. Her legal credentials are impressive. She is a former assistant U.S. attorney and Senate Judiciary Committee counsel. She also dated Thomas. In interviews, she again confirmed that Hill and the other women’s allegations that Thomas engaged in sexual harassment, was addicted to pornography, and talked incessantly and graphically about it and women were truthful.
Thomas’s personal warped sexual predilections and perversions are not the issue as personally reprehensible as some may find them. The issue is his apparent perjured testimony to a congressional body about his words and conduct. There is no statute of limitations on bringing impeachment proceedings against officials who lie to Congress. The U.S. Code and the Constitution clearly spell out that when there’s evidence a Supreme Court justice may have lied under oath the House must bring articles of impeachment to determine guilt or innocence.
The ball is now squarely in the court of House judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers Jr. He is legally bound to do his and the House’s legal and Constitutional duty and begin impeachment proceedings immediately against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

In the aftermath of Juan Williams’ firing from his NPR contract, many public commentators have taken sides on whether he should have been allowed to express his personal sentiments about Muslims, or been fired.
Speaking to Fox News’ Bill O’Reily, Williams said the following, “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. …You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. … But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Here’s a well known secret, we are all much more prejudiced than we think, we just don’t know it … or maybe we just don’t want to admit it. Ask yourself a few questions: Is it possible to have Muslim friends and still be prejudiced toward Muslims? Is it possible to dislike the person you are married to, or dating, but still stick around? Is it possible to hate your job, but continue to do it for 20 years? Is it possible to dislike a political candidate, but still vote for them? Here’s an easy one, do you think it’s possible for an American icon like Thomas Jefferson to be sexually intimate with a slave, but still be racist? Despite whatever common beliefs you hold, the answer to all of these questions is yes.
Actually, it’s pretty common for individuals to dislike things they continue to associate themselves with; however, it doesn’t mean they have sinister motives. It simply shows how we have learned to balance our need to express our feelings with our need to conform to social rules. Psychologists are very familiar with this process of handling dissonant (i.e., conflicting) feelings and beliefs, especially as it pertains to intergroup relations.
While we may feel uncomfortable around certain types of people, we also know it’s not always proper to express the discomfort. So, in order to balance things, we find reasons to justify our socially undesirable behaviors. These justifications are typically framed as “rights” or “reactions” in the wake of some real or perceived threat.
It’s ironic that much of what has been reported in the news actually supports Williams NOT being fired. The common rational is that we should appreciate free speech and open dialog, or that Williams is right because of the events of 9/11. But what if we were all Muslims, would we feel the same? Is it possible that simply because most Americans are NOT Muslim that we neglect the effects of Williams’ comments on how Muslims feel? Worse, does our identification as non-Muslim lead us to actually tolerate prejudice?
Williams felt quite comfortable commenting in front of O’Reilly, and in front of the Fox News audience; but, would he have said the same thing in front of a group of Muslims? Probably not, and the important question is why?
The answer is, “bias.” Now, before anyone raises a stink about the “big 3″–racism, prejudice, and discrimination–let’s clarify a few terms.
Yes, Juan Williams expressed a bias, but he is not necessarily a bigot (he got that part right); the former suggests a lack of impartiality and the latter suggests inflexible intolerance. Juan Williams also expressed a “prejudice,” but he did not express racism; the former is an attitudinal evaluation connected to feelings, and the latter is a belief in the inherent inferiority of a group. Finally, Juan Williams did not actually discriminate against Muslims, but he did discriminate in terms of what belief(s) he presented to O’Reily, Fox News’ audience, and millions of others who have seen his words. In essence, he only mentioned the times he is uncomfortable with Muslims, not the times when he is comfortable.
For instance, if a Muslim person is NOT wearing “Muslim garb” is that okay? Or, if a person dressed like Timothy McVeigh, does that also make him nervous when he’s in a federal building? If the McVeigh analogy does not raise the heart of the issue, then it’s likely that another bias might be kicking in to your own mind as you read this.
Social psychologists have studied societal biases for years and there’s a growing consensus that implicit beliefs and feelings–those that you are unaware of–are just as (if not more) powerful as explicit beliefs and feelings–the ones you intentionally activate and express. So, even if Williams says he’s got plenty of Muslim friends, it doesn’t mean that he is free of prejudice toward Muslims.
Indeed, Williams may not even know the extent of his prejudice toward Muslims, and we (non-Muslims) may not know how much our own prejudices are influencing where we stand on NPR’s decision to fire him. Yet, it’s clear that if you are thinking more about the unfairness applied to Williams, and less about how Muslim’s feel as a results of his widely public comments and the amount of agreement with the comments, then you should take a moment to understand the subtle bias that plays a role in your own evaluations.
One could also argue the same is true if you feel overly sympathetic to Muslims, after all bias is bias. The key is to give equal weight to the competing sides when both are adhering to the rules. In the Williams case, he essentially walked too close to the lines of his NPR contract with his repeated commentary on Fox.
I tend to think there is not enough policing of bias in reporting and from reporters, given that there are some clear standards. But, one thing is certain, Juan Williams is free to say whatever he wants, just not as a representative of NPR. There’s no doubt that we should protect and encourage free speech, but we shouldn’t always applaud it, right?
If you do not applaud free speech like flag burning, Koran burning, and protesting at the funerals of those killed in defense of their country, it’s probably because you sympathize with the victims targeted with the forms of expression. Conversely, if you applaud the free speech related to Juan Williams’ comments, then you likely DO NOT sympathize with Muslims. Regardless of your justification, it simply is what it is, bias.

Follow David C. Wilson on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

I was emailing a friend about family care giving. I hope that this gives Huffpo readers a flavor for the weird challenges this sometimes poses. (for more of my writing in this area, I hope you visit www.samefacts.com)
Some months ago, the residents in my brother-in-law Vincent’s group home all received eye exams. Several received glasses. Vincent did, too. I don’t know whether he really needed them or just got them to fit in with the other guys. He can’t really communicate what he sees on the eye chart. So his prescription could be wildly wrong. On the other hand, when I asked him what he sees better with his glasses, he responded fairly reasonably: “the sky.” We took him to a univesity eye doctor, who produced a similar prescription. So who knows….
Vincent loves his glasses. That’s the problem. With a combination of strong, impatient fingers and poor fine motor skills, he destroys many physical objects most dear to him. He washes his electric razor and other trinkets that don’t survive being immersed in water. He fingerpaints the pretty drapes in my niece’s playroom. He tears his favorite books and magazines. He’s angry with me because I keep taking him to the Dollar Store when he’s made clear that he really wants an ipod and a cell phone. I won’t buy these for him. He would just destroy them.
He takes on and off the glasses to play with them, to wash them frequently, to open and close or bend them, to feel the texture of the lenses. These bring predictable results. He’s apparently entitled to two pair per year at Medicaid’s expense. Despite our best efforts, that won’t be enough. Each pair costs about $100. Residents on Social Security or SSI are allowed to keep $50/month in discretionary personal expenses–everything from a trip to McDonald’s to a comb, a lunch box, or a new pair of pants. So $100 is a lot of money in his world.
$100 is not a big deal for us–except that strictly-speaking, we aren’t supposed to pay for glasses. It’s not clear that anyone is allowed to pay for them. When Vincent went on Medicaid, we signed an affidavit that we would not pay for medical goods and services for him. He has a special needs trust. That, too, is apparently enjoined from such expenditures. We’ve faced similar dilemmas, for example when we discovered that his standard-issue Medicaid dentist was prescribing prophylactic antibiotics rather than actually cleaning Vincent’s teeth.
In the scheme of things, these are minor problems. For starters, it’s not clear that anyone would know or care whether his teeth are cleaned or whether he actually wears his glasses. On a practical level, we can pretty much do what we want. Still, these bureaucratic challenges exemplify the arbitrary way one contorts to live within the constraints Medicaid imposes.
If you are sufficiently educated and affluent, you address these contortions through a lawyer who specializes in such matters, who prepares the proper paperwork. If you can’t afford that, or you are relatively unsophisticated you turn to a goodhearted but inexperienced personal lawyer, who may or may not do things right. Either way, families spend time and energy attending to such things, worrying about staying within the rules, dealing with bureaucracy and paperwork.
Indeed the day-to-day action items are generally addressed. The teeth usually get cleaned. The glasses are usually replaced or fixed. This presumes that some attentive family member remains in the mix. One of Vincent’s friends expresses the hope that his mom would send him a Christmas card. Does the person being paid $8.75/hr to watch him pay the same degree of care that we do for Vincent? Is anyone available for him to make that extra phone call to fix a problem in his care? Many caregivers would say that this question answers itself.
Our own weird episodes and challenges highlight the Catch-22 aspect of means-tested aid. People with disabilities need the ability to save. They need the right to openly hold money to address immediate needs that can’t specifically be foreseen in public policy. They also need the opportunity to pursue a dignified long-term plan. Such planning is constrained by their specific physical and cognitive limitations. It is also constrained by the contours of public aid. In some ways, the more explicit the long-term plan, the more likely it is to run afoul of the letter or the spirit of rules imposed by some program you really need.
In some wealthy democracies, the disabled are allowed to establish life development accounts. These assets are not considered in programmatic eligibility for health care and key services. In the U.S., you might be able to do this if you can get by on Social Security and Medicare. It’s much harder if you require Medicaid, as so many people living with serious disabilities do.
The street-level bureaucrats who operate these programs operate pretty day-to-day, too. When case workers make the annual visit to Vincent’s workshop, they seem relieved to find that we don’t ask for scarce services and resources. We sign the papers, and they move on. They do provide lifesaving help in an emergency, but they can’t be proactive. They don’t have the time or the personal relationships they would need to provide active long-term help to more than a fraction of the families they serve. They don’t have the ready services, either. As of July, 20,824 children and adults with intellectual disabilities are on the Prioritization of Urgency of Need for Services (PUNS) waiting list for services in Illinois.
The odd crisis such as broken eyeglasses is also upsetting because it reminds families that their loved one is, effectively, a pauper. For sure, Vincent gets three square meals a day, medical care, a roof over his head. He and his housemates have private rooms, though this is not assured with looming budget cuts. Those without family help can see a movie, buy a new shirt, or a hamburger. They can’t do all three in the same month. The luckier or the more-connected still must negotiate the modest resources required for a pair of glasses. And that’s the way things will be for the rest of their lives. The lucky ones will retain some relative in tow, so that someone is there over the next 30 or 40 years to notice when there is a problem, and to do whatever else needs to be done.
At this point, caring for Vincent is a pretty easy gig for me. He is gentle and caring. He’s basically healthy. He does not require much help with basic physical activities. Much my own day-to-day involvement consists of taking him to Appleby’s or the toy store. My wife does the heavy lifting, the emotional heavy lifting, too. After all, Vincent is her brother. That makes a difference.
Now the pressing issue is eyeglasses. Next month, it will be something else, hopefully something equally non-catastrophic. As these challenges unfold, I’m often the onlooker, struck by the simple weirdness of what we confront.

This Blogger’s Books from
Making Americans Healthier: Social and Economic Policy As Health Policy (National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy)

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

If Democrats want to know what women want this election season, I encourage their campaign gurus to start talking about an issue that has strong consistent support from women of all ages, races, and locations: gun control.
Recent stories and surveys have highlighted the apparent narrowing of the “gender gap,” which used to give Democratic candidates a significant percentage of the votes from women.
According to the Washington Post, female voters “are now about evenly split,” something that has led Democratic campaigns to release a “torrent of gender-based ads” on topics such as “legalized abortion and other women’s health issues.
On Friday, the Obama administration issued a 26-page report that highlights dozens of policies that it claims have “promoted women’s economic security.”
But the White House appears to have overlooked the widespread support from women for policies that increase security from gun violence for their families and communities.
When the Brady Campaign had Lake Research Partners do a national poll in late April about people carrying loaded guns in public, they found that 76 percent of women of color, 68 percent of urban women and also older women, 59 percent of suburban women, 55 percent of younger women, and a majority of rural women opposed the open carrying in public of guns.
The same poll found that 63 percent of women said they were less likely to vote for a candidate for elected office who wanted to make it easier for people to carry loaded guns openly in public (with only 18 percent saying it would make them more likely to vote for such a candidate).
According to Lake Research Partners, the gender gap on whether allowing guns to be openly carried in public makes people feel more or less safe “is one of the largest divides seen on current issues.”
Similarly, a poll done of voters nationwide for the Brady Campaign by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc. in the November 2008 election found that 83 percent of female voters supported “the passage of laws placing reasonable restrictions on guns” (something that 68 percent of male voters supported). Eighty six percent of women supported criminal background checks on all gun sales (79 percent of men supported this).
Women voters’ desires for tighter restrictions don’t stop there. Seventy three percent of women (and 63 percent of men) supported registration and licensing of gun owners. Seventy percent of women (60 percent of men) supported restrictions on military-style assault weapons). Sixty seven percent of women (63 percent of men) supported a waiting period of five days for handgun sales. And, 60 percent of women (46 percent of men) supported limiting the number of guns that can be bought at one time.
With more than 100,000 getting shot or killed by guns each year in this country, voters – particularly women voters – are looking for candidates who will work to reduce gun violence. Since the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that near-total gun bans are off the table, now is the time for candidates to propose and support common sense restrictions that make it harder for dangerous people to guns. This would be good policy – and good politics — particularly for those seeking to widen the “gender gap.”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

For many of us, Sunday nights without Mad Men will be difficult. (And what about Monday mornings analyses and commenting with other “madmenmaniacs”?) We’ll have to wait many months to see if Megan really becomes Mrs. Draper, if the ad agency will prosper or fail, if Sally and Glen will runaway and join a cult.
I offer five suggestions to ease our pain and keep MM in our lives. Please, use your clever brains and contribute others. We can use all we can get.
Throw a Mad Men Halloween party
For starters there’s still time to create a festive party with a Mad Men theme to keep the buzz going until the end of October. Some ideas: Bobbing for apples in a punchbowl of Seagram’s 7. Creating scary masks of Glen and Lane and a jilted Faye. Wearing a sheet with sunglasses and a wig as the ghost of Mrs. Blankenship. Another easy costume idea for women or men: Joan, with red wig, and red dress, over three well-placed balloons, emphasizing her pregnancy.
Analyze another TV show
Boardwalk Empire is perhaps the best possibility. True, Steve Buscemi as Nucky Thompson is no Jon Hamm as Don/Dick, but the HBO series set in the 1920s in Atlantic City during prohibition offers the same details of real time and place. The irony may be missing and the subtle symbolism, and the violence will remind you of The Sopranos, but maybe you could discuss the evolution of Al Capone and the pitfalls of abstinence, an inversion of Mad Men.
Other possible series to analyze: Breaking Bad? The Real Housewives Series? Dora the Explorer?
OK, I give up. Nothing compares to MM.
Read. You remember? b…o…o…k
You now have an hour or two every Sunday to read. If you are too far-gone, try titles that may remind you of the series, including Little Women, Far from the Madding Crowd, and The Mad Woman of Chaillot. Seriously, Rona Jaffe’s book The Best of Everything is a great read from that era about office romance, where secretaries longed to marry their bosses.
Go back to the beginning
Remember during the first Mad Men seasons when every conversation wasn’t analyzed the next day and every look wasn’t interpreted? You could now return to the beginning of the series and after each show, analyze it with friends, aware of course of what will be coming in the future. Could be surreal fun. Also, note the progression of hairstyles, clothing, attitudes.
Create the Mad Men game
Think up questions, and challenge other “madmenmaniacs” in a trivia game. Sample questions, both easy and difficult:
How many brunettes, how many blondes and how many redheads has Don schtupped since the series began? (Also, any four-legged creatures? Inanimate objects?)
She may look 27, but how old is Sally supposed to be in 1965?
What is Sally’s friend Glen’s last name?
A hard one: The Sound and The Fury and Ship of Fools are books mentioned in the series. What are two others?
An easy one: What is the name of Don’s youngest child?
You get the idea. All of these kinds of facts can be googled. Play along, fill your Sundays with fun, and next year it will be 1966 in Mad Men time!)

Follow Lea Lane on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/lealane

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

A pivotal moment occurred recently when a friend – only 45 years old! – was hospitalized for diabetes related complications. And then the outcome – an amputation, an even more restricted diet and more medication…
According to Reuters, it is projected that the prevalence of diabetes in the next 40 years will increase from 1 in 10 adults to one-third of the adult population (when the odds are 1 in 3 people, it is a scary moment!) learning of a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis.
In general, diabetes is part of the aging process as more people lead sedentary lives and forget to change their diet from one of colas, chips and high-fructose snacks. With people living longer, and the lack of attention paid to this crisis, it is hoped that when people learn the following statistics, it will be a wake-up call to modify their diets and to exercise a bit more.
Did You Know This about Diabetes?
It is the #1 cause of new cases of blindness among adults under age 75
It is the #1 cause of kidney failure
It is the #1 cause of amputations for feet and legs not caused by injury
It is highly prevalent among African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, as well as the aged population
According to the American Diabetes Association, type 2 diabetes occurs when either the body does not produce enough insulin or the cells ignore the insulin, which means that sugars and starches used by the body for energy are not broken down and the glucose (sugars) build up in the blood.
The biggest issue is the population that is undiagnosed. Often by the time someone is diagnosed, there is significant damage done to ones body. For many people, they are in pre-diabetic stage and they do not modify their diet enough by continuing to drink alcohol (sugar!), eat candy (sugar!) or drink high-fructose corn syrup products like colas and juice (sugar!).
Before this happens to you or a loved one…think about my 45-year old friend who is still in the hospital. Please go to your doctor and get tested, and get your family tested…it could save your life or your limb!

This Blogger’s Books from
Kennedy Green House: Designing an Eco-Healthy Home from the Foundation to the Furniture
by Robin Wilson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (foreword by)

Follow Robin Wilson on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/robinwilsonhome

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The discovery of “taste receptors” in the lungs rather than on the tongue could point the way to new medicines for asthma, it is suggested.
Experiments in mice revealed that bombarding the receptors with bitter-tasting compounds helped open the airways, which could ease breathing.
The University of Maryland study, published in Nature Medicine, may have implications for other lung diseases.
Asthma UK warned that any new drug would not arrive for some time.
The “taste receptors” discovered in the smooth muscle of the lungs are not the same as those clustered in taste buds in the mouth.
They do not send signals to the brain, and yet, when exposed to bitter substances, they still respond.
It was the nature of that response that surprised researchers, who assumed their presence was as a defence against noxious gases, triggering a tightening of the airways and coughing.
In fact, the mouse experiments revealed that exactly the reverse was true.
When airway tissue from mice was treated with bitter substances, then exposed to allergens, there appeared to be a protective response.
Dr Stephen Liggett, leading the research, said: “They all opened the airway more profoundly than any known drug that we have for the treatment of asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”
In asthma, and other lung diseases, the smooth muscle lining the airway contracts, narrowing it, and drugs such as salbutamol help relax and open it, restoring normal breathing.
Dr Liggett said that an inhaler based on bitter substances such as quinine or even saccharine, which has a bitter after-taste, could “replace or enhance” current treatment.
He warned that simply eating bitter foods would not help protect from or relieve an asthma attack.
Dr Yassine Amrani, an asthma researcher at the University of Leicester, said the research was very “encouraging”, potentially offering a new target for treatment.
He said future studies could focus on trying to reproduce the effect in human as well as mouse airway tissues, and making sure that the substances did not produce unwanted side effects such as inflammation.
He said: “The concept of having bitter taste receptors in the smooth muscle of the airways is a new one, and activating this receptor could offer a new way to relax them.”
Leanne Metcalf, director of research at Asthma UK said that a significant number of the 5.4m asthmatics in the UK did not control their symptoms using existing drugs, and that research into new, more effective treatments, was “vital”.
She said: “The effectiveness of bitter substances at overcoming the airway narrowing that causes asthma symptoms has so far only been tested in mice, however this somewhat surprising approach does make sense in terms of what we already know about the cell signalling processes involved in asthma.
“With further in-depth research, this approach could potentially pave the way for a new range of asthma treatments based on bitter substances which could either supplement or replace existing asthma treatments but if this were possible, it would be a long way into the future.”

Source:BBC

On Saturday afternoon we visited St. Nicolas Hospital in St. Marc, the current center of the cholera outbreak.
It was awful.
I spoke to a middle-aged man, Robert Raphael, whose family lives between St. Marc and Gonaives. Over the past week he has lost a brother, niece, nephew, and “five or six” cousins to cholera. Five or six — he’d lost count.
The scene was controlled chaos. People of all ages were spread out in the front courtyard, inside an urgent care building, and in open air alcoves. I’d estimate we saw several hundred people, and there were those we couldn’t see inside the hospital, where we weren’t allowed. About half of the patients I saw had IVs.
There was loud, incongruously happy-sounding music blaring from a large loudspeaker just outside the front gate. I asked about it and was told it’s a just-written Creole song promoting hand washing and teaching that kids are especially vulnerable to cholera.
While we were there, Robert Raphael’s aunt who looked in her 70s arrived holding her stomach; I knelt down to talk to her and she was clearly distraught.
I met three wonderful doctors — three women (two from Spain, one from Italy) who were rushing about treating patients. One told me they are no longer testing for cholera but making the diagnosis clinically (based on symptoms and physical exam) because, “It’s an epidemic.”
They clearly need more doctors and nurses, but seemed to have enough oral rehydration solution and IV fluids for now. They obviously need specialized supplies like “cholera beds” — cots with holes cut in them for easier defecation.
I asked an 8-year-old named Ritchie if it was hard to “faire toilette” in public (it’s all out in the open), and he looked embarrassed and said, “Yes.” That got to me.
Clearly this hospital is max-ed out, but nevertheless making a huge difference. Ritchie and a 10-year-old girl I spoke to no longer needed the IVs they were getting initially.
Entrance to the city of St. Mark, the current epicenter of the cholera outbreak.
About 10 people came during the two hours we were there. A few kids were carried in by their parents. One four-year-old boy was able to drink oral rehydration solution as he sat in his father’s lap.
But I saw an infant who was so dehydrated he needed an IV. Like any child, he cried in anticipation of the needle stick. But the dead giveaway that he was terribly sick was the absence of any tears — he was too dry to have any.
So many of the kids were glassy-eyed and sad-looking. A few managed weak smiles. It was all absolutely gut-wrenching.
How much pain and suffering can one country stand?
Read my first report from Haiti here.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

A Walmart employee sent me a link to a website called “Walmart Community Votes,” which allegedly exists to help inform employees about political candidates. This employee drew my attention to a specific page that really doesn’t do much to inform. Really, it appears to exist to propagandize on behalf of the Republican candidate:
I’ve contacted Sestak’s office to ask if: A) He received a questionnaire, and B) If he did, why did he fail to fill it out? It’s possible that Sestak chose not to return the questionnaire, but that seems like a stupid move, especially considering how the Pennsylvania race is tightening.
Ironically, the Democratic candidate Sestak owns stock in Walmart, and the company has recently shifted campaign contributions in favor of Democrats, though historically Walmart has opposed the Democratic Party’s pro-union platform.
But the problem isn’t just on the Pennsylvania questionnaire page. I got the same result when I checked out Georgia’s questionnaire:
There was an identical void of information on Alexander Giannoulias’s (IL-D) questionnaire page:
Aaaand Lee Fisher’s (OH-D) page
If I was one of the 1.6 million Walmart employees that accessed this website, I might think that the hoity-toity Democrats consider themselves too good to fill out a simple questionnaire for the benefit of “real American” voters. Or maybe voters won’t think those nefarious thoughts, and simply “educate” themselves using the available Republican platform. Both scenarios spell death for Democrats.
I’ve contacted all the candidates above to ask if they received the questionnaires. I hope some of them reply.
Cross-posted from allisonkilkenny.com

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Most weeks I pick up two or three random books (from a local store that sells used books). Some of them I read cover to cover, others – I skim. I find this routine of mine to be an essential part of my mind’s hygiene. Random informational inputs challenge and change my mindware (my assumptions, my fund of knowledge, my association networks).
Here are two thought-notes (that I came across in my readings this past week) that struck a cord with me…
David Weinberger, in his 2002 book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined (about the Web), voices a note of digital-age hope:
Ultimately, matter doesn’t matter. If we can be together so successfully in a [virtual] world [of the Web] that has no atoms, no space, no uniform time, no management, and no control, then maybe we’ve been wrong about what matters in the real world in the first place.
Colin Turnbull, in his 1962 book, The Forest People: a Study of the Pygmies of the Congo, quotes a note of stone-age acceptance:
There is darkness all around us; but if darkness is, and the darkness is of the forest, then the darkness must be good.
The hope of the digital age and the acceptance of the modern-day-stone-age… What a curious clash!
Hope – in its future-focus – is a rejection of what currently is. A fellow mind I know is in the habit of saying that “hope is a mind killer.” In some ways it indeed is, particularly, when in its intensity hope approximates the urgency of wishing, yearning, and longing for reality to be different from what it is.
Acceptance, on the other hand, is all about the here-and-now. Unlike hope, acceptance nails you down to the forest of the present, day and night, both in light and in darkness. If these two – hope and acceptance – were road signs, they’d pointing in two very different temporal directions. And yet – as I see it – there is no hope for the hopes of the digital age without the stone-age know-how of acceptance…
Hope and acceptance – the two dialectic strings that make the mind hum.
Resonate!

This Blogger’s Books from
Present Perfect: A Mindfulness Approach to Letting Go of Perfectionism and the Need for Control
by Pavel G. Somov
The Lotus Effect: Shedding Suffering and Rediscovering Your Essential Self
by Pavel G., Ph.D. Somov

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Once when I was a young actor in New York, a casting director recommended me to an agent. I was very excited. The agent was well established and had a nice office. I felt sure that if I could convince her to represent me, I’d be well on my way to stardom. I was maybe 22 years old at the time and had very little experience with the “business” side of show business. At that tender age, I didn’t know how to recognize the first signs of trouble. Like for instance when I was kept waiting for 40 minutes in a waiting area directly across from the agent’s office. Her door was open and I could clearly see she was cleaning out her purse and occasionally staring out the window for a few minutes at a time. Every time her assistant alerted her that she had an incoming call, the agent would simply say “Take a message.” A couple of times the assistant glanced at me with a look that, in hindsight, was probably her way of trying to warn me that if I valued my dignity, I should leave now. Finally, I was summoned in.
The agent glanced over my resume. “You were in ‘The Rimers of Eldritch?’” she asked. “Yes!” I replied enthusiastically. She frowned. “I don’t remember you.” “Oh,” I said, a little hurt. “Actually, I was one of the leads.” “Uh huh,” she replied sullenly. Her eyes returned to my resume where she could find nothing that interested her. Finally, she looked up at me with a resentful glare. “Look, “she said bitterly, “I go to the theatre six nights a week and I only represent people that I have a very special feeling about. And frankly, I don’t have that feeling about you.” I was stunned by her frankness. “Oh, okay,” I said awkwardly and started to stand. “Well, thanks for seeing me…” “Wait!” she bellowed, clearly irritated by my thoughtless interruption. “Have you got a monologue? Close the door and do it for me.”
Being young and desperate for an agent, I closed the door and performed my monologue for her. When I finished, she stared silently at me with glassy eyes. Thirty seconds passed. Finally, I cleared my throat. “I’m done,” I said cautiously. “So, you’re good,” she said in a voice as flat as paper. “Does that mean I should represent you?” Slowly, I began backing toward the door. “It’s okay. Really! You don’t have to represent me.” “Sit down!” she commanded. I sat down. “I could if I wanted to…” she said. “You could what?” I asked. “I could represent you, without having that ‘special feeling’…” This time, my innate human instinct for survival kicked in and I managed to escape, all the while thanking her repeatedly for her time and swearing on my grandmother’s grave that I would “be in touch.”
The following week, an ambulance was called by her coworkers and the agent was removed from her office and taken to the local psyche ward where she spent the next few weeks. This was my first experience with “show business crazy.”
Nobody truly knows whether show business attracts crazy people or simply takes fairly normal people and makes them crazy. I know that crazy happens in every profession, but the difference is that in my business it often goes unaddressed for years at a time. If the crazy person is a star who is making heaps of money, you can bet that there will be at least one person (if not many) whose job it is to clean up the messes and spin the nutty behavior as boring run-of-the-mill eccentricity. But once your client is found hiding in the bushes without their teeth or hurling racial slurs on YouTube, crazy gets a little hard to sell. Sadly, there are sometimes drug or alcohol problems involved. If not addressed, truly nutty behavior eventually overwhelms any and all goodwill the celebrity may have amassed over their careers. Just this week, MegaMess Mel Gibson (who never met a minority group he didn’t loathe) was yanked from a tiny cameo role in “Hangover 3″ because cast and crew members refused to work with him.
But Hollywood Crazy reared its head in an even more spectacular way on Friday when it was announced that veteran character actor Randy Quaid and his wife, Evi are now seeking refugee status in Canada. The Quaids were arrested Thursday in Vancouver after police responded to an “incident” on a street corner. Given the couple’s long and loony history, one can only guess what went down. Mr. Quaid, brother of the wonderfully-sane Dennis Quaid and a once-terrific actor in his own right, has a resume that includes many notable films like “The Last Picture Show,” “Paper Moon,” “The Last Detail,” “Midnight Express,” “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “Brokeback Mountain” and the cult favorite “Kingpin.” He also holds the almost-unheard-of distinction of being one of the few actors ever thrown out of the stage actors union, Actors Equity for disruptive and violent behavior toward his fellow cast members in 2007.
And what were the Quaids doing in Canada? It might have something to do with the fact that they are currently wanted on $500,000 bench warrants for allegedly squatting in their former home in California back in September (and doing $5,000 worth of damage to the property). This follows walking out on a $10,000 bill at a luxury hotel in Santa Barbara, resisting arrest and ducking their subsequent court dates. When they finally did appear before the judge, Randy, for reasons no one could quite explain, brought the Golden Globe Award he won for playing former President Lyndon Johnson with him.
When asked by Canadian authorities why they were seeking asylum, the Quaids replied that they feared that a group of “Star Whackers,” (a shadowy group of assassins the Quaids claim are responsible for the “murders” of Heath Ledger and David Carradine), were now after them. Evi Quaid told the CBC that “Randy has known eight close friends murdered in odd, strange manners … We feel that we’re next.”
I suspect that what’s next for the Quaids is a very, very long stretch of unemployment. This recent string on insanity is nothing new for Mr. and Mrs. Quaid. 15 years ago, I knew a couple of people involved in a film project the Quaids managed to sell to a major Hollywood producer. The pitch (called “The Debtors”) was about a group of people who checked into luxury hotels and used credit cards to purchase shit they couldn’t pay for. Sound familiar? Gradually, Evi took over the writing of the script and eventually assumed the duties of the director as well; occasionally I’m told, directing in the nude. When a group of extras filled a suit, claiming that their personal clothing was ruined in a scene where fake semen was sprayed on the crowd, the film’s investors removed the Quaids from the project. This, however, didn’t stop the couple from stealing the original prints and taking them to Canada where they re-edited the film, ignored the American “cease and desist” orders and managed to show the film in the Toronto Film Festival under a different name. God bless them. The Quaids have enjoyed a long run as one of Hollywood’s scarier running jokes, but I think that ride is over now. Never fear. This is show business. Someone will soon arrive to take their place.
Several years after the incident with the agent that I referred to earlier, I saw her at a party. I valiantly tried to avoid her, but she eventually cornered me at the bar. “I know you from somewhere,” she said. I had no ax to grind with this woman so I chose my words carefully, saying we had “met once” when she was at her former agency. I saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes, but she didn’t flinch. She apologized. She looked great, having lost easily 20 pounds and she no longer had the look of a haggard slaughterhouse employee. She was again working in the industry, but not as an agent. “It wasn’t for me,” she said. I congratulated her. It was (is) nice to be reminded that show business is filled with human beings; all of us a little nuts; but most of us capable of bouncing back with a little care and reevaluation. Good luck, Randy and Evi. And goodluck, Canada.
Copyright 2010 Quitcher-Bitchyn Entertainment, Inc.
David Dean Bottrell is an actor (“Boston Legal”) and screenwriter (“Kingdom Come”) who writes a weekly blog about being strangely middle-class in Hollywood at http://www.partsandlabor.tv

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The worlds of professional sports and poetry rarely collide. And when they do, we wonder why in God’s name they did. In this case, they did because Miami is waist-deep in LeBron James hagiography.
As background for those of you who don’t follow the NBA–and since you’re reading a poetry column there’s a good chance that includes you–James recently announced his intention to leave Cleveland’s professional basketball team to “take his talents” to Miami, breaking Cleveland’s heart in the process.
Given the opportunity, professional athletes usually choose to bolt for bigger cities (and bigger media markets), but James is an Ohio native, so Clevelanders held out hope that he would stay. And when they learned that James would be announcing his decision during a one-hour ESPN event entitled simply, “The Decision,” well, surely he wouldn’t break their hearts on national TV, would he? That would be a profoundly horrible PR move! Well that’s just what James did, and in that moment he went from being one of the most well-liked athletes on the planet to one of the most vilified.
Just don’t tell that to the people of Miami.
This past week, the Miami Herald and Miami radio station WRLN sponsored a poetry contest to commemorate James’ arrival. The winner will receive tickets to a Miami Heat game and will have the chance to read their poem at a Miami poetry festival and on the air.
Mike Moffitt of the SFGate pointed out that, historically, cities “have paid tribute to their heroes after they do something heroic.” But Miami won’t let that stand in the way of their excitement.
Organizers seem to be taking the contest quite seriously. The rules, at least, are amusingly detailed:
The poem can utilize any poetic form (haiku, rhyming couplets, limerick, free verse, etc.) but it cannot exceed six lines (LeBron’s jersey is #6).
That last rule also spares the judges from having to read Lebron James-themed poems longer than six lines.
Not surprisingly, when spurned Clevelanders got wind of the contest, they flooded the web with their own entries. Here are a few from the Cleveland fans (who weren’t so kind). From the poignant and straightforward:
Lebron has no ring
Yet he calls himself the king
To the rhythmically challenged:
No one in Cleveland likes you anymore.
They think you’re empty at the core.
The city looked to you for rescues,
But you lost all your values,
Now you’re filthy rich, but dirt poor.
To my personal favorite (it’s mean but it’s so funny):
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
I Hope You Sustain a Career Ending Injury
Alas, I am not the judge. The judge is a Miami Herald employee who has already been quoted complaining about words that don’t quite rhyme. His decision promises to be at least as successful as LeBron’s.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Have you ever stopped to think about your house, and the rooms within it, as a metaphor of your life? What is your relationship with your space — do you love it, just live in it, or wish it could be different? How do you feel emotionally in the different rooms of your home? According to Jill Butler, author of Create the Space You Deserve, taking the time to explore how we feel in different rooms can become a profound inner journey.
Butler went through a divorce, downsized, and documentd her “Extreme Makeover” process of creating her dream space — the space she deserved. Transition is often a time that triggers the need or desire for a new living space — any sort of inner shift, celebration or milestone — and while for some it is a new house, for others it starts with a single room.
“Take a moment and think about your favorite room in your house,” Butler said, “And notice how you feel when you are in there.” For me, my favorite room is my dining room, of all places. It was recently painted, has big windows, lots of light, and I love the family gatherings we have there.
Next, Butler advises that you think about the space in your house that you most dislike. How is it not working for you, and how do you feel in this space? For me, it is the joint office I share with my husband. Overloaded with unused software boxes, kid memorabilia, and papers everywhere, the space has a definite feeling of chaos. Often when I am writing, I just avoid it all together and sneak into my dining room with my laptop for my most creative work.
“This question about your relationship to your space is not a problem-solving issue but a naming issue,” said Butler. “There is a reason people leave junk in their bedroom for 10 years that is deeper than simply being too lazy to shove them in the basement. It is reflection of something bigger.”
Interestingly enough, some of the issues we grapple with in our lives are clearly reflected in these trouble spots within our homes. One woman shared that her basement was the space she struggled with. “Everything else is light and just the way I want it be,” she mused, “but the inner world, the deepest inside parts of me, are not so bright and cheery at all.” She later shared a revelation she had: her basement was linked to an inablilty to let go of worrying about her children, even though they were grown and gone. She is now considering revamping her basement into an art studio, just for herself.
For some, the challenge with a particular space is not so much the room itself but the stuff in it. “I think the whole country is re-evaluating their relationship with their stuff,” said Butler. “We are all realizing we cannot afford so much stuff, and it doesn’t make us happy in the end. Clearing crud is one of the hardest parts until we realize it drags down our energy and makes us feel bad about ourselves.”
One couple decided that they had to “clear the clutter” in a spare room that doubled as a storage space and an office all at once. The husband had lost his job and was studying for a Master’s degree. “I couldn’t concentrate there!” he laughed. The coupled decided to have a “dumpster party.” They pulled up a huge dumpster to the base of their house, opened up the window screens, and literally threw junk out the window, delighting in the sound of the crash as unwanted items landed in an ever-growing heap of relief. Sure enough, once the room was cleared, the thesis paper was completed in record time, and a job offer immediately followed.
With the foreclosure rate the way it is, many Americans have lost their homes or have had to consciously downsize. But the term “downsize” has such a negative connotation. Rather, how about “right-sizing” our homes? For Butler herself, moving from a 5,000-square-foot home to a 1,400-square-foot home was a celebration. “It is very freeing to let go.”
Try out the exercise of identifying a room in your house that you dislike, and imagine what you can do to make friends with this space once again — how can you “repair the relationship”? Here are a few ideas to get you started:
1) Decide: Decide to change the space in some small way to get started, or in a large way like grabbing a dumpster. Making a choice to make a change in your physical space also initiates the inner process of change.
2) Look Around: Step back into that room with a fresh awareness of how it has become a reflection or metaphor for a part of your life that needs changing. Without having to spend a lot of money, what needs to be done first?
3) Rearrange: Sometimes nothing drastic has to be done, just a little rearranging. Maybe a single piece of furniture has to be moved around, removed, recovered or added to change everything entirely. I had a room that no one ever used, and I couldn’t figure out why. By accident, we inherited a new leather chair I had no idea what to do with, and shoved it in this room temporarily. To my surprise, it created a harmony that was not there before, and suddenly the kids started reading in there, my husband and I started having after-dinner chats, and the room came to life.
4) Make Friends with What Is: Sometimes you inherit a house or a room that you can’t stand, and there is nothing much you can do about it but change your attitude. One woman shared a story about how she sold her dream home to move out of state, hated it, and came back. The only house she could find was not at all her taste, but she had taken it and had silently resented it for years. With a new awareness that it was time to make peace with her house, she bought some sage, smudged the space, painted one room, bought some flowers, and that was enough. She claimed her space.
How about you, HuffPost readers? Is there a space in your house that is a “problem child?” what insights can it offer, and how have you changed your space structurally that led to a change personally? Love to hear your comments below.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The Republican Party has finally taken the step of merging with giant corporations to create a new enterprise – RepubliCorp. With the stated slogan “Buying Democracy, One Race at a Time,” Republicorp has wasted no time influencing the upcoming elections. Check out their website here: www.RepubliCorp.us and watch their recent advertisement.
RepubliCorp representatives have also been going around the country endorsing candidates who steadfastly look out for the well-being of the top 2% of Americans. Watch:

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Satiristas: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians
by Paul Provenza, Dan Dion
The BIGfib Book Of Bollocks – The Best Satire From BIGfib.Com 2005
by Nick Alexander, Lee Camp, Alan Lord

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This week, NPR fired Juan Williams for saying that airline passengers in “Muslim garb” make him nervous.
There has been a lot of talk about what NPR should have done in response to Williams’ comments. I’ve been wondering what would have happened if, instead of firing Williams, NPR had invited him onto Morning Edition to analyze his own remarks . . .
Renee Montagne: And now we’re joined by NPR news analyst Juan Williams, who is here to talk about remarks he made on FoxNews this weekend about people who wear “Muslim garb” on airplanes. Hi Juan!
Juan Williams: Hi Renee!
Montagne: Juan, as our listeners may know, you said on FoxNews that when you board an airplane and see a person in “Muslim garb,” it makes you nervous, in light of what happened on 9/11. My question is this: “Muslim garb”? Could have picked a more dismissive and derisive term?
Williams: Well, Renee, I was just making a general statement. That, you know, when I go on a plane, and I see someone wearing some sort of Muslim scarf, or jewelry, or what have you — you know, they have those headdress-like things they sometimes wear — and they are identifying themselves first and foremost as a Muslim. . .
Montagne: So all Muslims are basically the same to you.
Williams: Well, yes, Renee, that was my point . . .
Montagne: And everyone who wears a scarf is a Muslim?
Williams: Well, also, they usually have brown skin, Renee. Let’s not forget that.
Montagne: I think I get it. And all such people must be seeking to identify themselves “first and foremost” as Muslims? They’re not expressing their taste for fashion, or expressing their individuality in some other way?
Williams: What I’m saying is, you go on a plane, and all you can think about is 9/11, and that they are out to get you. And then there’s this woman wearing a black scarf, and you instantly think, “Muslim.” There’s no other reaction you can have but fear.
Montagne: And this has bothered you for nine years? You haven’t confronted these feelings and dealt with them in all that time?
Williams: But you know me, Renee. I’m not a bigot.
Montagne: But prejudice comes with its own blinders, Juan. Plus, it’s not really an excuse for what you said.
Williams: I’m just saying . . .
Montagne: You’re saying you don’t like Muslim people. They make you nervous.
Williams: Renee, can we move on?
Montagne: Here’s a question. The next time you feel this way on an airplane, why not approach the other person and politely say hello? You might discover that he or she is actually very friendly, and that you have more in common that you think. That might be a way of dealing with your issue.
Williams: But I don’t have a problem, Renee. Why is this about me?
Montagne: Because you’re the news analyst, Juan. This is your job. To analyze the news.
Williams: All I did was honestly admit a fear we all have . . .
Montagne: But isn’t that another aspect of your prejudice, your assumption that it’s universal?
Williams: But who hasn’t felt this way?
Montagne: Well, the one-fourth of the world’s population that is Muslim, just for starters . . .
Williams: But they don’t count, Renee. They’re not part of this discussion.
Montagne: I think we’re at the heart of it now.
Williams: You know, Renee, when I made those remarks, I was only trying to sympathize with Bill O’Reilly . . .
Montagne: Maybe that was your mistake. Do you think you owe the Muslims of the world an apology? That might be another first step.
Williams: Renee, I am sorry. I am sorry I ever made those remarks. I am sorry for acting as an apologist for anti-Muslim bigotry on Fox. And, yes, your questions have made me think that I might have some issues to work on.
Montagne: Thanks, Juan. And I understand you have a new assignment?
Williams: Yes, Renee. NPR is sending me to India, Indonesia, Northern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, and select London and Parisian suburbs.
Montagne: Good luck!
Williams: Thanks, Renee.
Montagne: That was recently-disgraced NPR news analyst Juan Williams, talking about bigoted comments he made on FoxNews about his fear of Muslims. I’m Renee Montaigne and this . . . is Morning Edition.

This Blogger’s Books from
The McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes (Vintage)
by McSweeney’s
Stumbling And Raging: More Politically Inspired Fiction

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The headlines read “Oliver Stone Hails Michael Douglas’ Brave Cancer Fight” and “Brave Brett Michaels wins Celebrity Apprentice.” Even as Belgian action movie actor Jean-Claude Van Damme recovers this week from his recent heart attack, I’m sure his friends are saying he is being brave about even the admission of this attack, which came just one day after his 50th birthday while filming a kickboxing movie.
Are those who suffer from stage-four cancer, such as actor Michael Douglas, brave? Are those of us who live with the chaos of chronic illness, such as musician Brett Michaels, who is one of 23 million insulin-dependent diabetics, brave? Are these individuals more courageous than actors Patrick Swayze or Farrah Fawcett, who lost their battles to cancer last year?
Does our society create grand expectations that exemplify bravery and courage as the only acceptable response to an illness crisis? Celebrities coping with health crises are just like the rest of us. They get up each morning and put one foot in front of the other, whether that means an unpleasant medical treatment or going to the grocery store — but these actions are typically photographed and labeled as signs of “bravery.”
I am sympathetic to the friends of celebrities who appear as a guest on a television shows such as The View and are asked to reveal how their celebrity friend with illness is “really doing.” There is no appropriate answer. If someone is truly a friend, as Danny Devito is to Michael Douglas, he is not going to say, “He feels terrible and isn’t looking too hot either.” Instead he will comment on how brave his friend is. It’s a considerate response to an awkward question, and it does contain a hint of truth.
Is there an alternative to being brave?
While there are tools online such as an illness symptom checker, there are few ways to understand how one is coping emotionally with a disease. If those of us with illnesses were to sit in bed and sob uncontrollably, how long would it take until our friends stopped calling us brave and said we were a basket case? Can a good cry be a sign of bravery, too? Who among us is not brave while fighting a disease that threatens to take away our quality of life or life itself?
What exactly is bravery?
The definition of the word “brave” includes possessing or displaying courage, being able to face and deal with danger or fear without flinching, and making a fine appearance.
I believe anyone has dealt with the fears of a health crisis certainly has moments of bravery. But let us not forget that emotions are fragile at times; allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and let some emotions through is not only acceptable but a healthy coping tool. Tears do not signify a lack of bravery.
When our loved ones see us look the doctor in the eye and ask, “How long do I have to live?” they are seeing us “make a fine appearance” as the definition of bravery possesses. They may not see the tears that fall uncontrollably in the lonely moments at 3 AM. Brett Michaels’ Rock of Love show may have been a successful indulgence, but when he was fighting for his life, it was his daughter’s fear of growing up without him that “gave me this unsinkable strength,” he declared on Oprah on May 19, 2010. “It gave me this amazing courage to want to survive.”
How does one show bravery in the midst of illness?
In 2009 I spent eight days in the hospital when I contracted the flesh-eating bacteria in an ankle wound that quickly spread up my leg. To be honest, I felt brave at times. I did not shed a single tear. My husband brought my then-five-year-old son to the hospital to play with the electric bed and eat mac-and-cheese from the hospital cafeteria. I gritted my teeth every couple of hours when another medical professional would visit my room with the intent of causing some kind of pain.
So, within the context of the definition of bravery, I made a fine appearance. I don’t know if I possessed courage, but I tried to display it. When faced with danger (like the daily debriding of the wound) I did my best not to flinch. But what choice did I have? The needles, IVs, MRIs, and pain medication disbursement were not in my control. I tried to be brave, but most of the time I was just choosing to “act” brave, despite my fear of the procedures and pain, frustration of the circumstances, and even panic over the possibility of losing a limb or even my life.
Can faking bravery can be enough to get us through?
In conclusion, let us remember that bravery can be a choice. Even if we do not feel courage, we can still seek to display it, we can attempt to face danger without flinching, and we can make a fine appearance. At the same time, let us not forget that we are human beings who were designed to feel fear, need affirmation and loving support, and shed tears. For myself, this is intertwined with my faith in God and knowing when to surrender to the emotions and when to surrender them over. Finding the right balance between putting on a brave front, and being true to our own emotions is, I believe, one of the best coping tools we can discover for the journey of chronic illness.
Bravery comes in many forms, not all of them gallant or daunting tasks. Michael Douglas’ films list is likely not important to him at the moment. Despite side effects of treatment for stage-four cancer, he recently walked his daughter to school, reveling in the moment that he was able to do so and wanting to treasure the simple moments. His bravery came in venturing out into the public eye, where his appearance and strength could be observed and discussed. Each of us must decide our own definition of bravery, and for those of us who know how much we suffer in silence, it may be as simple as making a fine appearance and then being our true selves around those we love and trust the most.
Lisa Copen is the founder of National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week and Rest Ministries, the largest Christian organization that specifically serves the chronically ill. Visit IFoundLisaAtHuffPost.com to for the current featured free download that will help you or someone you love cope better with chronic illness.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com