March 2008 Archives

Five former US Secretaries of State are urging that Guantanamo be closed: Powell, Kissinger, Albright, Baker and Christopher. They also urge a dialogue with Iran. They are Democrats and Republicans and want to bolster America's image abroad. They spoke at a Roundtable in Athens, Georgia.

Powell, who served as Secretary of State when Guantanamo was first opened, was first to call for its closure. He said: "Our image abroad has dropped significantly. Perhaps this administration has spoken a little too harshly in a unilateral way," and added, "There are some things the new president can do right away. I hope the new president, and it seems it will be the case, will close Guantanamo immediately. And say to the world that we are now going to go back to our traditional, respected way of dealing with people who have potentially committed crimes."

Kissinger called Guantanamo a "blot on us" and agreed it should be closed. Baker said: "It gives us a very, very bad name, not just internationally. I have a great deal of difficulty understanding how we can hold someone, pick someone up, particularly someone who might be an American citizen - even if they were caught somewhere abroad, acting against American interests - and hold them without ever giving them an opportunity to appear before a magistrate."

Meanwhile, the Navy lawyer for bin Laden's driver claims Pentagon officials are timing war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 campaign. He contends that in 2006, a White House appointee asked lawyers to consider Sept. 11, 2001, prosecutions in light of the 2008 campaign. Another high profile case (Hamdan) is on track to be the first full-blown U.S. war-crimes tribunal since World War II and it would also occur in the timeframe leading up to the election. The only Canadian at Guantanamo, held there since age 15, has a case currently being argued.

Somewhat comfortingly, all three major-party candidates still running for president —Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and Republican John McCain — have called for Guantanamo to be closed.

Secretary of State
the official responsible for foreign policy
head of the Department of State
highest-ranking member of the Cabinet
negotiates with foreign representatives
instructs U.S. embassies and consulates abroad
principal adviser to the President on foreign policy
coordination of U.S. Government overseas,
excepting certain military activities.

All About Guantanamo
Road to Guantanamo documentary trailer RoadtoGuantanamo.com
Tear It Down.org (from Amnesty International)

(During the time I wrote this, the Google site had a temporarily black background, for an environmental event - but creating a sobering reminder of the shameful atrocity of Guantanamo as I used the search engine.)

Our friends at AfterDowningStreet have announced an initiative that we encourage all of us to develop in our own districts.

(I know, it's easy for me to tell you all about this, because here in the Last Plantation/DC, we are all in agreement about the war, we KNOW what has been going on, because it is in our faces all the time, and we have no voting representation in Congress to do anything about it. But that's where YOU come in!)

As Bob Fertik says:

In April, Congress will vote to give George Bush another $102 billion blank check for Iraq - unless we finally persuade our Representatives to Just Say No.

One of the best ways to persuade a Representative is to hold a Town Hall Meeting and fill the hall with people who care and are willing to speak passionately. That gets their attention!

(Another way is to turn out a crowd for a Town Hall that your Representative is already scheduled to attend. You can follow the appropriate instructions below.)

So we're asking the 500,000 members of Democrats.com to organize Iraq Town Halls in all 435 Congressional districts on any Sunday in April. It takes just two reliable activists to get started - can you help?

Here are the basic steps for planning the Town Hall:

Have you forgotten the war in Iraq yet?

No?

Well, we all know that the people who hang out on this blog are a rather over-wrought bunch. And unlike too many of their fellow citizens, they suffer from a damaging neurological impairment: they remember stuff. Not just phone numbers, or the name of the dog, or what time the subway shuts down at night (for you people in DC, where nightlife does end).

If you take political polls about recent events on their face, most Americans do not remember much that has happened; or to put the best face on it, they only remember things that happened more than a few days ago through the lens of what they have heard or seen in the last 2 to 3 days. Anything older than that, who the hell knows.

There are lots of explanations floating around about why the American people are walking around in this amnesical haze. But in such an environment, the mass media become hyper-important. Repeated daily news coverage of a person or an event keeps stimulating the production of new memories in those with the most fleeting memories, like rewinding a clock every day, so that it keeps on ticking.

But if the media stop the stimulus, the memory starts fading, while more recent input about other topics become the object of accessible memory.

What happens if the media turns off the spigot? In the story below from the March 24 New York Times, (which ran in the Business section, far from the front page or the news section of the paper) there are references to a study of coverage of the war in Iraq by the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

Since the start of last year, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a part of the nonprofit Pew Research Center, has tracked reporting by several dozen major newspapers, cable stations, broadcast television networks, Web sites and radio programs. Iraq accounted for 18 percent of their prominent news coverage in the first nine months of 2007, but only 9 percent in the following three months, and 3 percent so far this year.

I find this drop-off in coverage to be stunning, regardless of the cause or causes.

I am going to the Seeds of Compassion website today to see if I can sign up for some Dalai Lama events. I'm hoping he'll show up, given that China is calling him a "monster with a human face," given the uptick in Chinese controversy regarding the Tibetan liberation movement".

He is to come to Seattle for five days next month with a focus on compassion - at home, in school and in the community. There are events for children, parents, teachers and therapists. On Saturday there will be a city-wide rally and on Sunday, youth from all over the state will gather to show "What Compassion Looks Like." It will also be broadcast globally via the Internet in 24 languages.Parent Map had a substantial article on it and I happened to pick it up in the lobby of the hospital where I work. As a follower of Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion, I had to take a look when I say the title, "Teaching Empathy: Seattle Launches a Compassion Movement." (See also yesterday's Seattle Times story.)

The classroom program is called Roots of Empathy and has an 11 year track record of reducing aggression and increasing empathy in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It is being used here in 10 different schools.

Every three weeks during the school year, a baby and parent visit the classroom (kindergarten to eighth grade) with a Roots of Empathy instructor. The children learn about the baby’s development and milestones. They ask questions. They follow the baby's progress. As they become engaged, they can talk about "their" baby for hours. The babies break down barriers. The children lose their self consciousness when the baby visits. The baby comes right down onto the floor. They may give it a bath. The children learn to hold it carefully, and gender distinctions melt away.

Love is the key. Children become protective of the baby, and of each other. It's the Golden Rule in Christianity and they put it into practice as they develop empathy. They refuse to allow others to be mistreated. They become able to talk about how they're feeling.

The focus is EMPATHY rather than honesty or forgiveness. Empathy is the antidote for bullying, which plagues schools. National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) called bullying a “public health problem.” In their study, as much as 85% of the time, when bullying occurs, other students are standing around watching. Centers for Disease Control found that each day, as many as 160,000 children stay home from school because they’re afraid of being bullied. Other studies show that 50% of children aren't ready for Kindergarten and what is holding them back is social incompetence. University of Chicago researchers analyzed 300 research studies and found that 50% of academic success depends on social/emotional literacy, the other 50% on intelligence.

Andrew Meltzoff at University of Washington believes empathy is hard-wired in infants, to some degree, as when they imitate (such as tongue protrusion.) He told Parent Map, “We believe that when infants imitate, they are becoming ‘like the other person’ in action, with simple body movements,” Meltzoff tells ParentMap. “Later that can flower into empathy, which is the ability to become like the other person in emotion and perspective.”

Studies on the effectiveness of the Roots of Empathy program hae shown a positive outcome. The "Seeds of Compassion" group visualizes a nationwide paradigm shift, a movement. They intend to literally "spread love." Listening Mothers teaches parents to tune into their babies' emotional needs. Seeds of Compassion will stimulate growth of similar groups and programs to nurture compassion in children. The local group will meet with the Dalai Lama again in one year, when visits again, and report on improvements in education, parenting, child care and legislation.

The current Dalai Lama’s name is Tenzin Gyatso. He is the 14th Dalai Lama and the first Dalai Lama ever to travel to the west. He promotes nonviolent struggle following China's invasion of Tibet in 1950 and in 1989, he received the Nobel Peace Prize and a Congressional Gold Medal last year. He has written more than a dozen books on compassion and kindness. President Bush gave out the Congressional Gold Medal last year, a seeming irony.

Last week I wrote about various measure of happiness. I can vouch for some of the research studies at least anecdotally just from the population I have see clinically and alot of my after-school work is teaching social skills and interaction. I also did a Post-Doc in the lab of Kuhl and Meltzoff. I was also a victim of bullying as a child, and have worked to heal and balance ever since. I've worn a solid gold Kwan Yin for fifteen years, since visiting Thailand. As a mother, I did not allow videos or toys of aggression and there were already some programs in the schools for my son, to reduce aggression. I saw the Dalai Lama in 1979 when he visited the University of Washington, Kane Hall, and the event was disrupted by Maoists. I am thrilled to be able to participate (if I can still get into a program.)

Dalai Lama site
Roots of Empathy
Seeds of Compassion
Kirlin Charitable Foundation
Listening Mothers
ILabs/Meltzoff
Talaris Research Institute
US Dept of Health & Human Services site on bullying
Casel

Books
Roots of Empathy by Mary Gordon
The Mindful Brain by Daniel Siegel
Parenting from the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell
Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting by Jon Kabat-Zinn and
Myla Kabat-Zinn
Building Moral Intelligence by Michele Borba
Teaching Empathy: A Blueprint for Caring, Compassion, and Community by David A. Levine

(cross-posted at Silenced Majority Portal

It's Sunday morning as I write this and it will be written while we drive over to Larry's (Will's) college with an easter basket, just because I miss his childhood, and the girls' as well. Easter was always a freebie, because it took so little work, there was chocolate, and we were going to do a Seder at some point anyway, being a modern 21st century ecumenical family, with so many roots there was no point in sorting them out. We just celebrated...everything. Chocolate was always involved, down to the chocolate macaroons for Passover.

It's been quite a week here in Lake Bushbegone(soon)but notsoonenough. Last weekend was the Iraq Vets Against the War Winter Soldier testimonies. Did you catch them? Of course not, no one covered it! And yet, the Washington Post managed to cover the small band of twenty war lovers outside the three-day site of testimonies, and a disruptive peace activist, without addressing any of the testimony whatsoever.

But WE can know what was stated, wept over, longed for, and ripped from memories too painful to share openly: http://ivaw.org/.

I was especially struck by Adam Kokesh's testimony because this young man has learned a great deal about presenting his story in a clear and compelling way. But truly, all of the videos are affecting and enraging.

On Tuesday, I participated in a ceremony to restore the Constitution to its rightful place in the hearts and minds of the government. hahahahahah. It was a lovely experience of chants, solemn walks, singing, poetry and invocations. We began by a fountain that sits at the corner of 6th St. Constitution, and Pennsylvania, in a triangle of shrubs and quietude. The fountain has all the signs of the zodiac around it (several of the founding fathers were masonic deists, so the references make sense). It is also directly across the street from the new Newseum, the museum of the media, whiich is set to open in this new location in a few weeks.

On the front of the Newseum, in large typeface, is the First Amendment, which we sang:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It was nice that the Newseum folks remember the text of this arcane document, but we could think of several ways in which that promise has been broken lately.

How's your retirement fund doing lately? Unless you bailed from the stock market a while ago and got into gold or oil futures, you're probably looking at a steadily shrinking number.

In the never-never-land of the free market, the "invisible hand" is supposed to whack people who make bad decisions. And if ever there were bad decisions made, the decisions made by the world's leading investment bankers, brokers, and hedge fund managers, starting with the subprime mortgage mess, would be high on the list.

But in the real world, the "invisible hand" only strikes those of us who lack the financial clout to lobby the federal government for bailouts when we make bad investments.

Thus J.P.Morgan's federally guaranteed buy-out of Bear Stearns for $2 a share.

Why J.P. Morgan?

The mainstream media are almost useless in showing us the financial/political connections that actually make the world go round.

But Micah Sifry over at techPresident did a quick little piece of research that shows how financial losers can still be winners, if they just contribute enough money.

Sifry went to that great online political contributions database, Open Secrets, and asked a simple question: how much money had the employees (and their relatives) of J.P. Morgan given to Clinton, Obama, and McCain. This research, which any reporter could have done in ten minutes or less, revealed the following:

J.P.Morgan was the #3 donor to Obama, #7 to Clinton, and #11 to McCain. In terms of the overall contributions of the securities and investment sector overall, the rankings were as follows: Clinton #2 ($6.3 million), Obama #4 ($6.0 million), and McCain #3 ($2.6 million).

Not only that, Sifry notes that Open Secrets database of investments from members of Congress shows that roughly 1 in 10 members own stock in J.P.Morgan! One in TEN!

(The now-essentially defunct Bear Stearns was Clinton's 18th largest contributor ($145,000). Obama got $29,375 and McCain received $43,850 from Bear Stearns.

Looking at these numbers, it's not hard to understand why the government might be so eager to bail out the financial industry, without requiring a single dime of restitution from the men and women who managed their way into this debacle.

I have zero patience with anyone who says that these contributions do not buy policy or votes. Of course they do: these companies are not donating out of their love for democracy. They want access, they want special treatment, they want corporate socialism, and they get it.

[A methodological note from a grizzled opposition researcher. It used to be almost impossible to come up with such insightful numbers. In the late 1980s, I (or my poor unpaid interns) would go down to the Federal Election Commission, armed with roll after roll of dimes, chaining myself to one of the TWO copying machines at the FEC and grinding through thousands and thousands of pages. Back at the office, we would take turns entering all this data (with the likelihood of introducing even more mistakes than the campaigns had already made), and then finally being able to query the resulting electronic database. Needless to say, no one in any political party, campaign, or news outlet ever tried to enter all the data, so you could never get the kinds of results that are at your fingertips today in Open Secrets.]

Economists argue about whether we are in a recession or are about to enter one. It seems like a moot point, when we hear daily about drops in market averages and value of the dollar, and rises in price of a barrel of oil or an ounce of gold. Then there are the astounding figures on home foreclosures, the montlhy expenditures in Iraq in the billions, and the staggering national debt. It was not so long ago that President Bush was campaigning on the "ownership society" and continues even now to insist that our token rebate checks this spring will stimulate the economy back to good health. It all seems like a horribly morbid joke.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is supposed to be a measure of our nation's economic health. GDP is the total value of the goods and services that we produce in a year's time in this country. It does measure the size of our economy, but it is limited in that it is analogous to weighing an enormously fat person without making any statement about their general health. The graph at the left shows what Jerome a Paris at DailyKos calls the "W Economy," where GDP increases significantly, but wages stay flat.

Another alternative measure is GPI (Genuinel Progress Indicator), and using this indicator, the US fares rather more poorly. The formula for calculating GPI starts with personal consumption (like GDP), but adjusts for income distribution (economic status) and adds positive contributions such as the value of household and volunteer work. It subtracts the loss of leisure time, the costs of crime, commuting, pollution and other factors that reduce well-being.

Tthe U.S. GDP has steadily increased since 1950 (though it may be volatile at the moment.) GPI peaked about 1975 and has been relatively flat or declining ever since. Our neighbor Canada is relatively more well-off, in terms of GPI.

LA Times provides more detail.

SWB (Subjective Well-Being) is another measure that has been used. One study was done last year which showed that SWB correlated most with health, then wealth, then education. From a global perspective, poverty put a damper on SWB. The study was the first to result in a comparative map of Global Happiness. The Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators is another measure that takes into account more wholistic factors. A systems approach is used to illustrate the dynamic state of our social, economic and environmental quality of life. The dimensions of life include: education, employment, energy, environment, health, human rights, income, infrastructure, national security, public safety, re-creation and shelter.

The LA Times article makes some practical suggestions. They point out that Bhutan, for example, recently made "gross national happiness" its explicit policy goal, that Canada is developing an Index of Well-being, and the Australian Treasury considers increasing "real well-being," rather than mere GDP, its primary goal. It's all about "values," the thing we hear so much about and need to consider more and then become advocates.

If as Americans we could measure well-being as a basis for success, rather than just size of the economy, there would be more support for reforms that we really desperately need. We could tax carbon emissions and depletion of natural resources rather than taxing goods (labor, savings, investment.) We could reduce income disparity and reform international trade so that our environment was protected, labor rights were respected and blind greed was no longer rewarded.

(Thanks to mkh for the above link, which is perfectly stated, imo).

Yesterday I spent yet another day speaking truths to power-i-ness; in other words, talking to the Democrats. The topic for the day was creative arts therapy and I accompanied my brilliant and emotionally healthy colleagues from dance therapy, drama therapy, art therapy, music therapy, and poetry therapy as they addressed two pressing concerns of our times: autism and PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder).

To be sure, we met with some of the most dedicated young staffers and we talked with them about the benefits of the creative arts to help people heal and develop their personal ways of being in the world in the most functional and expressive ways. The staffers totally got it and their bosses have been sponsors and co-sponsors of legislation that provides funding for programs that would address both issues.

But come with me while I describe the day, so you can see what we who care about democracy, access, and taking care of people need to be deeply concerned about:

I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.

Kurt Vonnegut (1971)

(graphic: Salagram.net)

How can we fathom the amount that is spent on warfare and arms? How can we help others make the connections between this skewed ratio and the problems we face in our economy? How can we prove that "the war" and "the economy" are not really "apples and oranges" that candidates can rank, rather than integrally related? How can we break through the mainstream media screen, to start some public dialogue, and do it on a shoe string?

Having just come from Mexico, I am thinking of the visual media that were used, over time, to "educate" as well as "convert" people. Some of the "art" in certain churches, as in the UNESCO site Atotonilco, was aimed at those who were not literate. Modern educational displays are still seen in churches (particularly against drugs, abortion, certain rock music) and murals in the public buildings (antiwar, having known war, or pro-labor, having had revolution.) For two beloved muralists, see Orozco and Diego Rivera. The mural shown below is Orozco's "Gods of the Modern World," painted in 1932.

Today, in our own culture, we hear of "sound bites" and the need for political messages that can be "reduced to a bumper sticker." Fast food menus are shown as pictures, with less of a cognitive load and to assure comprehension without the requirement of much reading of text. Corporations and news agencies spend big dollars to produce quickly absorbed and powerful messages.

How can we use this concept of graphic and potent visual education at the grassroots, such as to teach about the unfathomable economic (not to mention moral) cost of war? There is a local guy who appears at every street fair and spends the whole day educating people about the cost of war. He uses pie charts, spinners and a street barker approach, with "contests." Ben Cohen's political org True Majority has used stacked Oreos as well as pens with pullout charts, to educate people using quickly-digested visuals. True Majority's pie chart is shown below, along with the Oreo video. (CLICK ON THE OREO GRAPHIC, which will take you to the video.) Links and codes are provided on the site, to encourage people to educate others as to the enormous costs of war.

Since 2002, my friend Bert and I have amassed thousands of images from antiwar rallies and the like. Among them are many examples of graphic educational devices, to put war and violence into perspective, such as posters with the number of war dead, the relative costs etc. Karen has been involved in the Fear Up productions and other actions which "wake people up" and let them know what's really going on. Backbone Campaign started locally and now has the graphics, such as huge puppets of political figures, to be able to use them all over the country. Similarly, the many "art vehicles" that have travelled the country, often with travelling displays inside, educate everyone they can.

"Necessity is the mother of invention." Signs with numbers of the dead, posters showing misprioritized assets (with profits ahead of people), certain YouTube videos, blog entries, homemade documentaries, street graphics, T-shirt messages - these can all be examples of populist-driven education. The general idea is that people be "taught something they didn't know," as my son learned a few years back in a Journalism class on persuasion.

The kids are home from college this week, insatiably hungry. For some reason, our cooking, which tended to produce reactions that formerly involved bowls of cold cereal for dinner, seems to have improved to the point where anything hot with flavor has broad appeal. We hear statements like, "Wow, this tastes great!" and "Is there more?" This allows us to feel, briefly, like Good Parents, and to admire the brilliance and maturity of our kids. We are enjoying them.

Last night we watched a series of movies from my son Larry's DVD collection, while consuming mango-soaked pork chops with cashews and snow peas. As we watched, we discussed his recent essay on the use of the doppelganger in science fiction, and the music of Colin Hay. Afterwards, he went down to his old room to sleep (another thing he seems much more appreciative of now is a clean place to sleep). But before he went, we talked.

"Remember when you couldn't sleep until I read you at least a chapter from a book?", I said. He smiled. We have often reminisced about my reading to him every night, and I credit that with getting us through a great deal that came later. We are hardly alone in understanding the power of story to get us through tough times, but I see in him the ability to follow a throughline, and see around the bend a little ways, and I know we all need much more of that ability these days.

After more than 2 decades working on and off in the electoral arena, I continue to find boxing to be the most pungent source of metaphors for the blood sport of politics.

I can't really claim to be an expert on boxing. As a child growing up in the 1950s, one of my weekly thrills was watching the Friday night fights on TV with my dad, brought to us by Gillette (to look sharp, and feel sharp too, get the razor, that's right for you....I can imagine that tune still running through my brain with end stage Alzheimer's.) The undefeated Rocky Marciano, Jersey Joe Walcott, Archie Moore, Sugar Ray Robinson...even the names were special then.

It is an understatement to say that religion can become an issue in an election year in America. Candidates hire special consultants on religion, appear at churches and make sure that their affiliation and devotion is widely known. McCain is a Baptist who criticized some of the most conservative religious leaders in 2000 during his first run, but went on to court them for his 2008 run. Obama has been a member of the same church in Chicago for 20 years but fights stereotyping that he is Muslim (he is not.) Hillary Clinton makes sure to talk religion frequently, and is Protestant, as was Edwards. Huckabee is Baptist, and Romney was the lone Mormon. Giuiliani is Catholic.

Candidates find themselves endorsed by theologians that they disagree/ only partially agree with (Obama, then McCain.) In America, all of this matters.

The 148-page Pew Forum study is the first report of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which studied more than 35,000 adults selected to represent the US population. America is an overwhelmingly Christian country (80%), but fluid, as 44% of Americans have changed or dropped faiths in their lifetimes, sometimes spiritual though unaffiliated with an organized religion. We have become more pluralistic over time.

Evangelicals make up the largest tradition (26.3%), followed by Catholics (25%), with 10% of Americans being lapsed Catholics (one in three raised in the church had left.) They have been steadily replaced by new Latino immigrants, so much so that one in three Catholics is Latino. Protestants were formerly in the majority, but no longer (now at 51% overall, 43% among those 18-29). Protestants included main denominations such as Presbyterian and Methodist (18.1%), and Evangelicals such as Southern Baptists, Pentecostals (26.3%) and historic black churches (6.9%).

8.4% of Americans are Christians, 5% belong to other faith traditions and 16.1% are unaffiliated. Secular unaffiliated account for 6.3%; religious unaffiliated, 5.8%; atheists, 1.4%, agnostics, 2.4%. We are 1.7% Jewish, 0.7% Buddhist, 0.6% Muslim, 0.4% Hindhu, 0.4% New Age.

America was founded on religious freedom, therefore the principle of separation of church and state was adopted. Individuals may have professed to be of a religion, but we were founded as a nation of individuals doing so, not as a Christian or Protestant nation per se. This understanding is shared by many theologians, but not all.

As the Pew Study was presented in various newspaper articles, radio and television news shows and the like, the emphasis seemed to be on the rather surprisingly high number of Americans who chose to change their religious emphasis from the one they had grown up with. I wonder if the same might be true of political beliefs? We have all met people who have changed their political views over time, and certainly in many cases away from those of their family of origin. We are a young country. Our economy is failing, many of us are searching for something beyond our materialistic desires. Our young have grown up with change, especially in technology.

Maybe Americans really are not afraid of "change" and we have started to come through our desperate clinging to the past - now that's a provocative thought!