democracycellproject

On Bloggers & "Real" Journalists

2008-06-30T12:08:36Z

Recently I attended the regional blogger conference sponsored by Northwest Progressive Institute. One of the most provocative topics was the relationship between "real" journalists and bloggers. The more prolific bloggers who cover local stories, particularly of a political nature, discussed the relative warmth ranging to animosity of their interactions with the local press. There were instances in which the blogger was the one who got the news scoop, the exclusive interview.

When I was at the first YearlyKos convention in Las Vegas in 2006, the reporters of the "mainstream media" showed up in droves for the bigger-name speakers such as Harold Reid and Howard Dean. I asked one of them whether he was going to stay for some of the panels, which were substantive. He snorted, "I have a deadline." By the second convention, in Chicago last summer, I expected the press to behave in this manner and focussed instead on photographing the bloggers, who seemed comfortable and adaptable. Change is happening fast as newspaper readership is down, on-line participation is up, and most newspapers now have their own blogs, popular comments sections and reporters with their own blogs. Campaigns have blogs with a bigger role for each successive election, funds are raised on the internet and YouTube is a player as well.

In three weeks, Net Roots Nation will meet in Austin and the month after that, the DNC convention in Denver will include a Big Tent for all types and levels of professional and citizen journalists. Ironically, they will cover the candidate who is comfortable with a computer who is running against a candidate who is computer illiterate. At issue will be who is most qualified to help draw the line between the civil liberty and free speech vs surveillance and security in the age of information.

Roy Greenslade wrote about the relationship between bloggers and journalists, in a Guardian-UK blog article which is excerpted below.

WHY JOURNALISTS MUST LEARN THE VALUES OF THE BLOGGING REVOLUTION

The debate over blogging's usefulness to journalism tends to get stuck in a cul de sac, mainly because too few people - well, too few journalists - treat it seriously. At conferences I've attended recently, speakers have referred to blogging as little more than a sad ego trip. It is not regarded as having any real public service value. I'll scream if I hear yet again that the blogosphere is a form of anarchy, a cacophony of self-centred and mischievous voices who are either talking to each other or talking to no-one at all. I'm not denying that aspect, though I don't see why people sitting at computer terminals day after day and downloading their thoughts should threaten civilisation as we know it.

What is also clear, most obviously in peer to peer blogging, is that people are engaged with each other as never before. Without any institutional or corporate coaxing, people are forming cyber communities in which they converse endlessly about their interests. I say this as a preliminary to explaining why journalists, especially print veterans like me, are so suspicious of bloggers. We have spent our lives dominating conversations. No, that's wrong of course. We did not converse at all. We lectured. We provided the information that people feasted on in order to hold their own conversations.

DEPOSING THE SECULAR PRIESTS

But, the odd "letter to the editor" aside, we were largely unaware of the content of those conversations. We moved on. We were the secular priests who decided what information to give the great unwashed and even told them how they should react to that information, what to think and what to do. Public service performed. Job done. How clever were were. How privileged. In that old paradigm - to which many editors and journalists still cling - news was one-way traffic. We conceived it. We gathered it. We published it and broadcast it. It was justification enough that people bought our newspapers or tuned in to our radio and TV channels.

Blogging turns that model on its head. It allows people to question the information we provide. It allows them to produce their own information. It offers them a space to air their own views. The congregation is no longer in awe of the priests. Our supremacy is crumbling. Rightly, journalists point out that there is no perfect example of journalists and bloggers working in harmony. That's because journalism is undergoing a more profound change than traditionalists can bear to imagine. I've been as guilty of this reactionary thinking too.

I have tended to predict that future news organisations will consist of a small hub of "professional journalists" at the centre with bloggers (aka amateur journalists/citizen journalists) on the periphery. In other words, us pros will still run the show. I'm altogether less certain about that model now. First, I wonder whether us pros are as valuable as we think. Second, and more fundamentally, I wonder whether a "news organisation" is as perfect a model as we might think. The growth of media in the last century or so has been dominated by the growth of big media, which really means the growth of big media people, whether they be individual entrepreneurs or corporate chiefs. It is entirely conceivable that the digital revolution may, in the fullness of time, sweep the media mogul aside.

UNDERSTANDING THE IDEALISTS

Though I long ago rejected Marxist orthodoxy, I retain an affection for, and understanding of, the idealism of those who originally espoused revolutions. In most cases the majority were enthused to overturn the established order because they genuinely believed in democracy (and were then let down, of course, by a new form of totalitarianism). But the joy of the digital revolution is that it is bloodless, and democracy is at its heart. However, as with political revolutions, the establishment views it as anarchy and therefore dangerous. In fact, as everyone should surely know, democracy is rather messy. It is often chaotic. It is often illogical. It does not obey rules.

I think journalists are failing to grasp that truth. Blogging, though democratic in spirit, does threaten the established order of journalism. I was inspired to write this after reading a blog posting by Adam Tinworth (courtesy of a tip from Kristine Lowe. Many thanks). Tinworth writes: "Most media people don't realise that blogging is a community strategy. They think of it as a publishing process... They certainly don't think of it as a conversation." Here are some more highlights:

Blogging is all about personal voices interacting with one another, not about personal voices lecturing. And that's something that the media usually misses...
It's all too easy for people from a traditional media background to see community as a place - something off to the side where the readers go, while the journalists sit over here in the real part of the site. They are content-focused, not people-focused. After all, that's what the job's been all about for the last century or so. Sure, they may occasionally deign to join in a few threads. Or include a letters page in the print title. But, usually, it's very much "them and us".

When we journalists talk about integration we generally mean, integrating print and online activities. But the true integration comes online itself. The integration between journalists and citizens. Of course, there should be no distinction between them. But journalists still wish to see themselves as a class apart. We have to open ourselves up to a new thought process. There is no us and them. I had a sudden thought to end this posting with a Marxist-style call to arms: "Bloggers of the world unite". But it is the lack of unity that makes blogging so vibrant, so critical and also so self-critical. And, of course, so revolutionary.

How Many Dead? (Don't Ask Our Media)

2008-06-23T13:32:27Z

I hadn't written anything yet for this week because I'd been at a regional blogger conference and was still mentally processing and mulling over alot of things in my head. I saw these symbolic grave markers and stopped, but soon realized that it would be impossible to photograph them. When I took a photo encompassing all that would fit in, and then moved to where that photo ended and took another one (with the hope of connecting them for a panorama), it took me twenty photos. When walking back, I decided to film them. It took me a few seconds short of five minutes just to walk by and capture the graves of Arlington West, which are here in Seattle for the fifth year. For shame!

Meanwhile, as Matthew Carnicelli alerted us to, the networks are avoiding war coverage. They may be tired of it, but those of us who haven't forgotten should remember when we vote next.

Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner

Getting a story on the evening news isn’t easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network.

“Generally what I say is, ‘I’m holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,’ ” she said last week in an appearance on “The Daily Show,” referring to the initials for rocket-propelled grenade. “ ‘It’s aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don’t put my story on the air, I’m going to pull the trigger.’ ”

Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.

“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” Ms. Logan said.

- more -

N Y Times

From the above article:

Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The "CBS Evening News" has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC's "World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News." (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

Meanwhile, US taxpayers have funded with $500 million dollars a propaganda network in the middle east, designed to counteract sources there, with failed results. (see Middle East Hearts and Minds)

Lakoff on the Political Mind

2008-06-16T15:20:39Z

George Lakoff was recently in Seattle at Town Hall to talk about his book "The Political Mind." Prior to speaking, staff from Northwest Progressive Institute had dinner with him. I was invited but found the email when it was too late to arrange to go. By the time I got back to town, I would not even be able to get into Town Hall to hear him speak. Luckily, there were reviews.

He spoke about his book, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain.

Lakoff's thesis is that the progressive movement has been stifled by a faulty theory of mind and that progressives think arguments are won using facts and reason whereas conservatives have poured money into think tanks. Therein, they made up neo-con terms like "tax relief" which are then parroted by the media.

Lakoff likes Barack Obama's "hope" strategy. Elections are about values and identity, he said. Conventional thinkers might be skeptical of Obama's "cult of personality" but historically, people relate more to ideals than to campaign promises. He felt that Hillary Clinton realized this late in the game and that people connected with her as a person after awhile but that her "run to the center" strategy was not well timed for this election.

Lakoff believes that there is not so much a pure left and right, but that progressives and conservative frames are activated for a variety of issues. Obama thus has a central theme which is empathetic and people can say that it's just "rhetoric" but it doesn't look good to attack someone who is showing empathy with others.

As for Lakoff and cognitive linguistics, he also goes on in his book to discuss "mirror neurons", which exist in our body which relate to empathy. "Mirror neurons" happen to be something I've been reading about with respect to autism. I may just have to read Lakoff's book.

I did turn to a review in New Scientist.

According to this interpretation, Lakoff wishes to employ wisdom from cognitive science in order to defeat the conservatives in November, which seems a worthy proposition. His take is that progressives buy into the 18th century Enlightment view that humans are thinkers: rational, logical and attentive to facts. I know that I would certainly like to buy into that view.

Yet he argues then that humans are not rational but affective, imperfect and easy to trick since we combine passion and emotion with thought. Karl Rove obviously learned this a long time ago. As Lakoff says, "There is a name for those who use this knowledge to gain power. In America they are called Republicans."

Rather than changing minds through arguments and evidence, politicians often configure people's neural pathways through repetition, comforting words and appealing narratives as well as mantras and mottos. "Politicans who control brains win elections."

Americans like "redemption." According to Lakoff, Bush had been an alcoholic with DUIs, an avoider of service and a failure in business but his team portrayed him as a redeemed man and people bought it. They have carefully framed ways of talking about taxation as theft of the fruits of labor and a war that is supposedly against terror itself. Lakoff thinks this was all no accident, as repetition of phrases like "war on terror" strengthens neural connections.

As in his last book, he goes back to the family as a metaphor and compares the strict father with the nurturing parents. Conservatives knuckle under to authority who then is to protect us from evil, using force if necessary. The strict father thus doesn't need to win public approval, as he knows best. Progressives are moved by empathy and Lakoff would like to help them set up progressive think tanks to make and push policy using frames that will capitalize on their strengths.

This is why Lakoff would have been having dinner with the Northwest Progressive Institute and I am looking forward to hearing a firsthand report about what I missed.

Remembering RFK

2008-06-09T13:20:34Z

I remember the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. very well because I was part of the "Children's Campaign" of his primary opponent, Eugene McCarthy, in South Dakota. We would pull into a small town, hoping to start a McCarthy headquarters, and there would already be a shining new RFK headquarters much more impressive than our campaign could muster. We had the homemade signs, they had the slick ones. We were impressed and we were envious. Of course, we would have supported him. The McCarthy and RFK platforms were very similar and we knew it. We respected him, but he was our opponent. Then Humphrey emerged from the convention, to be beaten by Nixon. I remember this much more clearly at the conclusion of this contentious primary season, and a few days after the 40th anniversary of RFK's assassination.

I was impressed by this passage, written by one of RFK's surviving children, in the New York Times, at a time when we face not only crucial national and local elections, but are at war for no good reason, with our economy in tatters.

There was no quality my father admired more than courage, save perhaps love. I remember when one night after dinner he picked up the battered poetry book that was always somewhere at his side and read aloud Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade." We listened aghast to the story of the soldiers whose commander orders them to ride into an ambush. They know they will be slaughtered, but they obey the command anyway. My father then explained that he and my mother were going on a trip and challenged us to memorize the poem while they were away. I did not win that contest, but one famous stanza has remained with me:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the valley of death

Rode the six hundred.

You may wonder why a father would ask his expanding brood of what would become 11 children to memorize a poem about slaughter and war. I think there were three reasons. He wanted us to share his love of literature and he wanted us to embrace challenges that appear daunting. But most of all, he believed it imperative to question authority, and those who failed that lesson did so at their peril.

Kerry Kennedy

UNCOUNTED: Lest We Forget

2008-06-02T13:53:23Z

I got a message a couple of weeks ago from a local progressive organizer saying that when he read the newspaper, he recognized names of people from our group that had worked together previously, and his heart sank as he read. The thing he had warned against had happened .. Obama supporters were very vocal. Clinton supporters were just as vocal. Support of one's candidate was fine, but this unique campaign had brought negativism down into the mud.

Then he began to remember - about the other side - the conservatives who want the negatives to go on right through the convention and election. If we hate each other, who wins? He thought about the voting machines and disenfranchisement. Then he took action. He got ahold of a film and invited everyone to see it.

The invitation to the film:

The film I am showing exposes how deep the election corruption goes. Democrats are not the only ones getting crushed by this corruption juggernaut. You may not want to hear about it or maybe you think you know all about it. I was wrong. So is everyone else. This is a much larger issue. I never wished this happened, but the proof is in this film. I spent my own money to purchase this DVD. I am not a rich person, but all I ask here is come and watch this film and talk about what this means to you.

This is the film:

UnCounted:The Movie

This is the trailer:

UnCounted:The Trailer

This is the "blurb":

UNCOUNTED is an explosive new documentary that shows how the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 - and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election. This controversial feature length film by Emmy award-winning director David Earnhardt examines in factual, logical, and yet startling terms how easy it is to change election outcomes and undermine election integrity across the U.S. Noted computer programmers, statisticians, journalists, and experienced election officials provide the irrefutable proof.

UNCOUNTED shares well documented stories about the spine-chilling disregard for the right to vote in America. In Florida, computer programmer Clint Curtis is directed by his boss to create software that will “flip” votes from one candidate to another. In Utah, County Clerk Bruce Funk is locked out of his office for raising questions about security flaws in electronic voting machines. Californian Steve Heller gets convicted of a felony after he leaks secret documents detailing illegal activities committed by a major voting machine company. And Tennessee entrepreneur, Athan Gibbs, finds verifiable voting a hard sell in America and dies before his dream of honest elections can be realized.

UNCOUNTED is a wakeup call to all Americans. Beyond increasing the public’s awareness, the film inspires greater citizen involvement in fixing a broken electoral system. As we approach the decisive election of 2008, UNCOUNTED will change how you feel about the way votes are counted in America.

This is from the Co-Producer:

Global Acceptance
We just received notice that Uncounted was accepted into the Globians Film Festival in Potsdam, Germany in August with an additional screening in Berlin at Babylon:Mitte, Berlin's preeminent art-house facility, in September.

Uncounted, International Film of Mystery!
But it's not just this one festival that has us excited. Uncounted has been shown by groups like Democrats Abroad at screenings in Germany, France, India, Spain, Mexico, Japan, Cambodia, and England, and individual copies of the DVD have also sold in Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Switerland, South Africa, and Egypt. Upcoming international screenings include Melbourne, Australia at The Loop on May 28, Gottingen (Germany), Brussels (Belgium), Oxford and Cambridge (England), and Mubai and Chennai (India).

The Plural of Chad is Chad
Kevin Spacey was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann to promote Recount, the HBO movie about the Florida recount during the 2000 election. I know Kevin Spacey isn't an expert on all matters electoral, but it was still disappointing that Keith didn't take the interview one step further - the 2008 election. And its not just Olbermann. With all the publicity surrounding Recount, now would be the perfect time for the media to take the national conversation to the next level and ask the most logical follow up questions, 1) Why wasn't our electoral process equipped to handle margins of victory so small and margins of error so big in 2000?, and 2) Are we equipped to do so now? Watch the video...

--
Mary Mancini
Co-producer, "Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections"
If you have not yet seen "Uncounted," please find a way to do so. Your vote is supposed to count and you expect it to count toward the candidate you support. But the voting machines are not reliable and they can be manipulated. They have been manipulated. Our democracy depends on the fair process of elections. This is not paranoid ranting. See the film. Then call your state and federal representatives. Insist that a paper ballot be available for each one of our votes in November.

Moving Day

2008-06-01T12:15:42Z

Sunday Morning, 7:48 A.M. We've already been up for an hour, working on organizing the day, so that when the three college students arrive (our own kids) we can appear to be efficient and ready. There will be pancakes, which will give them at least a nominal reason to get out of bed this fine morning. Their job: moving boxes and taking apart furniture. We are taking bets on: 1.) How late they will be (they were summoned for 9:30 AM) and 2.) How long they will last (this will vary. Richard's daughters are more the fast-twitch types--short spurts and fast burnout; mine is definitely slow-twitch--slow to start but with some stamina, if not attention-span).

7:52 A.M. Richard opens the Sunday new York Times and reads this aloud:

When the Golden Rule Insurance Company rejected her application for health coverage last year, Peggy Robertson was mystified.

“It made no sense,” said Ms. Robertson, 39, who lives in Centennial, Colo. “I’m in perfect health.”

She was turned down because she had given birth by Caesarean section. Having the operation once increases the odds that it will be performed again, and if she became pregnant and needed another Caesarean, Golden Rule did not want to pay for it. A letter from the company explained that if she had been sterilized after the Caesarean, or if she were over 40 and had given birth two or more years before applying, she might have qualified. (Barbara P. Fernandez for The New York Times)

"Another reason we are leaving," he says.

8:00 A.M Richard shifts to the Washington Post and reads this:

U.S. Campaign to Promote Abstinence Begins
Groups Are Enlisting Parents in Effort to Lobby for Changes in Sex Education

Proponents of sex education programs that focus on encouraging abstinence are launching a nationwide campaign aimed at enlisting 1 million parents to support the controversial approach.

The National Abstinence Education Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that it sent e-mails last week to about 30,000 supporters, practitioners and parents to try to recruit participants and plans to e-mail 100,000 this week as part of the first phase of the $1 million campaign.

The e-mail is promoting the Parents for Truth campaign, which the group hopes will eventually involve 1 million parents nationwide to lobby local schools to adopt sex education programs focusing on abstinence and to work to elect local, state and national officials who support the approach.

"There are powerful special interest groups who can far outspend what parents can in terms of promoting their agenda. But we recognize that parents more than make up for that by their determination and motivation to protect their own children," said Valerie Huber, the group's executive director. By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer)

I don't know about you, but we now feel we have to stop pouring so much of our money and energy into promoting UNSAFE sex for our kids. We don't want all those PRO-TEEN-SEX organizations to outspend Parents for Truth, after all...

Richard and I agree to tell the kids we are joining the abstinence-only movement...just for the momentary looks on their faces.

8:10 am: I start calling the kids. No answers on their cells. I wake Larry's father and ask him to engage with our son. This is going to be a PROCESS...

Updates to follow. Meanwhile, feel free to share the news of the day, as we will be moving on from the instant news cycle...
***

9:15 AM: The drama continues. Will Larry make the 9:20 train? He has called three times already, trying to renegotiate the deal he agreed to, proposing an 11:30 am arrival instead of the 10 am arrival he was supposed to achieve. Who does he think he is? Harold Ickes? His Dad is on the case and on the job, promising me that he WILL be on that train...

9:19: The girls just called. They are "running late." Pancakes will be at 10 am instead of 9:30...shocking. Also, they asked "how long this will take." I told them no more than 10-15 hours.

Iran Through the Back Door

2008-05-26T13:35:39Z

Rick Steves, the travel guru who is based in Edmonds, WA, has made a career of travel, with his unconventional travel guides PBS documentaries. His philosophy has always been to travel "close to the ground" and to get to know the real people and in so doing, to be a cultural ambassador. He is also politically active and opened his travel agency as a call center during the last election and has raised money for causes he believes in. He has inspired me to travel in the past, and I have now been invited to go to Russia as a People to People Ambassador, a life's dream, but need to decide whether to accept (due to practicalities related to money and time.)

A peek at Tehran, and ourselves is the name of the recent article written by Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times:

Rick Steves likes to say that travel is more than a vacation. It's a political act. He means each journey abroad is micro-scale diplomacy, opening a mind at a time to our common humanity. Quiet politics. Quiet is not how anyone would describe the Edmonds travel guru's own latest junket.

Steves, known for enthusiastically sipping and sampling his way across Europe, has gone in-your-face gonzo. Last week, he set off on a 10-day TV foray into a country we won't even talk to, Iran. The goal, he wrote, is to "give 'collateral damage' a face." To humanize an enemy so as to pre-empt a war before it starts. "If I can help avert an extra war — even just a little bit — this will be a brilliant personal investment — and lots of people will owe me big-time," Steves wrote on his Web site, ricksteves.com.

That's about when the shootout started here at home.

"Sounds like a fun trip," one man wrote Steves. "See if you can interview the Iranians coming back from Iraq. Get a count of the American soldiers they have killed." "Perhaps they will take you on a tour of a terrorist training facility or show you the place they kept the hostages while Carter was president?" wrote another. "Good for you, Rick," said another. "In your discussions with Iranians, you might want to avoid your positions on legalized marijuana or prostitution (or for that matter, gay marriage). They don't tend to be as tolerant about differing opinions there."

Hundreds of his customers posted opinions, many lauding him for going beyond the "Axis of Evil" caricature of Iran. But others unloaded, calling him a propaganda tool. Jane Fonda, off to Hanoi. One mother of a U.S. soldier in Iraq said she's a huge Rick Steves fan. But his "condescension" toward America made her livid. "So long Rick," she wrote. "From now on, I'm traveling without you."

Steves is still in Iran and not available to comment. So far, his Web reports are not puff pieces. The shots of him grinning with soldiers or hijab-wearing women are interspersed with commentary on the "creepy" authoritarian feel or "Death to America" posters. Still, the reaction to his trip makes me wonder: Are we even ready for cross-cultural diplomacy in this country? It has been clear for some time that the Bush doctrine — you're either with us or against us — is over. But what will we replace it with?

If a travel guide can't go to Iran without being branded a traitor, what'll it be like for a new president who wants to reach out?

Now, Steves did bring some of the vitriol on himself. Mostly by comparing himself to the "strong-hearted Americans" who enlisted in the military after 9/11. "While the fire in my gut is just as hot and the concern in my heart just as real, my choice of weapons is different," he writes. "Like them, I don't care about my safety, the cost or the work ... I want to do this. I have to do this." Uh, Rick? You're filming a travel show at the invitation of a country open for tourism. It's hardly house-to-house combat. Still, the reaction to Steves' trip is worrisome. When will we change our posture toward the world, if not after so colossally failing at being the globe's bully? Traveling, like talking, is not appeasement. It seems like a more confident country would get that.

Rick is blogging his trip to Iran. From Rick's Blog:

Sometimes you don’t see an excess in your own world until you find a different world without that excess. Traveling in Iran, it’s clear to me that in the US, our religion is freedom...and materialism. Just about everywhere we look, we are inundated by advertising encouraging us to consume. Airports are paid to drone ads on loud TVs. Magazines are beefy with slick ads. Sports stars wear corporate logos. Our media are driven by corporate marketing. In Iran the religion is Islam. And — at the expense of the economy — billboards, Muzak, TV programming, and young peoples’ education preaches the teaching of great Shiite holy men.

Still, I am impressed by how unreligious this famously religious place is. Unlike other Muslim cities I've visited, such as Istanbul and Cairo, there are almost no minarets breaking the skyline, and there's no noisy call to prayer. I've barely heard a call to prayer since we arrived.

In this theocracy, the women must stay covered. Trying to grasp this in Christian terms, I imagined living in a society where every woman is forced to be a nun. Seeing spunky young Muslim women chafing at their modesty requirements, I kept humming, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Pondering the time Pat Robertson ran for president — and had millions of supporters — I wondered what our own country would look like if he had won and dominated Congress. Many people would have been ecstatic, and many would have been oppressed. It seems to me that’s the state of Iran today under Ahmadinejad.

I asked my guide if, in Iran, you must be religious. He said, “In Iran you can be whatever religion you like, as long as it is not offensive to Islam.” Christian? “Sure.” Jewish? “Sure.” Bahá'i? “No, we believe Mohammad — who came in the seventh century — was the last prophet, and the Bahá'i prophet (Bahá'u'lláh) came in the 19th century. The Bahá'i faith is offensive to Islam. Except for that, we have religious freedom.”
I asked, “But what if you want to get somewhere in the military or government?” My guide answered, “Then you better be a Muslim.” I added, “A practicing Shiite Muslim?” He said, “Yes.”

Do We Have A Free Press?

2008-05-19T11:46:22Z

Discussion of US media is germane to many of the concerns expressed at the blog on this site. Media in this country are primarily controlled by large for-profit corporations who derive revenue from advertising, with music programming and entertainment being a huge component along with "news." This is in large part thanks to deregulation and to consolidation of ownership over time. We rank somewhere in the middle for press freedom, and like other nations, our press freedom is heavily affected by economics as interrelated with matters of war and peace.

What We Are Offered

Our FCC-regulated television has three traditional (NBC, ABC, CBS) and four new networks (Fox, CW, MyNetwork, ION), and one noncommercial network (PBS). We have small local stations (most belong to big networks) and public access on local and Hispanic local channels, with subscription cable or satellite services like HBO and CNN. Radio has also consolidated, and most stations are profit-oriented, with the exception of noncommercial ones such as NPR. Young people tend to use comedic news parodies (such as Jon Stewart or Steven Colbert) as actual news providers. Talk radio "exploded" after the FCC Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987 so that "balanced" news programming was no longer standard. Subscription satellite radio is heavily consolidated and are not regulated by the FCC. Cinema is one of our big exports, as manufacturing and agriculture decline, and documentaries have grown in popularity.

Newspapers continue to decline and as the cost of producing them has increased, most now rely on wire services such as AP or Reuters, for their national and world coverage. This explains the "watered down" or sketchy coverage we sometimes get. US newspapers are privately owned by big chains like Gannett or McClatchy, for the most part. Smaller communities tend to have "weeklies" and larger cities often have "alternative weeklies" such as the Village Voice in NYC or The Stranger in Seattle. Many large cities are no longer "two newspaper towns" as their advertising revenue has been squeezed by Web sites like eBay, Craigslist and Monster.com. Magazines serve the specialty markets but most are owned by the same media conglomerates that own the other media. We have three main news magazines: TIME, Newsweek and US News and World Report which are said to strive for objectivity, but in practice have political biases that are fairly easy to see.

Do We Have A Free Press?

Reporters Without Borders compiles a Free Press ranking each year and last year, the US ranked 48th. We are not the best or worst, but somewhere in the middle.

The top fourteen were European, and though G8 countries had showed improvement, only two G8 members made the top 20 - Canada (18th) and Germany (20th). The Netherlands fell from number one to 12th via locking up two journalists who would not reveal their sources. France (31st) had its record marred by concerns about labor/demonstration coverage, and journalist confidentiality. Italy (35) had too much mafia influence over the press. Japan (37th) improved slightly, as quarrels between the press and militant nationalists died down. In the US (48th), a blogger (Josh Wold) spent 224 days in prison and a cameraman from Sudan was detained at Guantanamo (since 2002), which brought down our score. Bulgaria (51) and Poland (56) were Europe's low players, as journalists were attacked or given harsh sentences.

The US scored not much better than certain young democracies, such as Mauritania (50th), and we were beat by Uruguay (37th) and Nicaragua (47th), though El Salvador dropped (64). Benin (53) and Mali (52) fell in ranking after imprisoning journalists for insulting the president. Russia (144) did not progress, as journalists were murdered and not punished, and diversity was lacking.

The Internet and Press Freedom

Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of violations of the free flow of online news and information. In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or blocked. At least 64 persons are currently imprisoned worldwide because of what they posted on the Internet, 50 of whom are in China, eight in Vietnam and one in Egypt. (Where are the other five?)

War and News

War and conflict meant low rankins for Somalia (159th) and Sri Lanka (156th), as it has become hard for journalists to work. The battle between Hamas and Fatah led to press freedom violations in the Palestinian Territories (158th). In Iraq (157th), armed groups targeted journalists. (More than 200 journalists and media assistants have been killed since the US-led invasion in March 2003). Meanwhile, Nepal (137th) jumped up 20 places, as the end of war and return to democracy improved the status of the media there.

Alternatives

The internet has added a capacity to look up old news, via subscription or for free. Add bloggers, and we are writing our history as it happens. We need to seek out truth, wherever that lies, and it will take work. It takes diligence to find the facts and patterns amongst the hype and sensationalism. It takes discipline to do something useful with the information, rather than making gossip go viral or supporting conspiracy. Most of all, it takes detachment to "fight the frame" and to look at the forest or the individual trees, by consciously shifting perspective.

Here are some of the organizations who perform a "watchdog" function on the media:

Adbusters - Foundation with goal of changing the way society and the mass media interact.
Alternative Media Watch - Media group showcasing underreported news stories and issues.
American Journalism Review - National magazine covering all aspects of print, television, radio and online media.
Center for Media and Democracy - A wiki-based investigative journalism collaborative focused on the public relations industry and whistle-blowing manipulative or misleading practices. Contribute to a quarterly investigative journal, the Weekly Spin listserv, donate or draw on newsfeeds.
Center for Media and Public Affairs - Nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization in Washington, D.C., conducting scientific studies of the news and entertainment media.
Columbia Journalism Review - Publication serving as a watchdog of the press in all its forms.
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) - National media watchdog group advocating independence and criticism in journalism.
Global Media Monitoring Project - A twice-a-decade study of the media’s news coverage to be undertaken worldwide with the aim of documenting the participation and portrayal of men and women in the world’s news media.
Independent Press Councils (IPC) - Containing details of press councils who have successfully adapted the idea of self-regulation to their own cultural and political context, to facilitate the exchange of views and information, and to promote and support self-regulation.
Media Matters for America - A non-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Founded by David Brock, a conservative media insider.
Media Monitors Network - Grass roots watchdog of media coverage which seeks to uncover journalistic and media bias and provide contrary information and opinions.
Media Research Center- Conservative group founded to bring political balance to the news media and responsibility to the entertainment media.
Media Transparency - Watchdog organization tracing funding sources of many media and political organizations.
Media Watch - Organization focusing on media literacy and the challenging of stereotypes commonly found in the media.
Media Watch (ABC TV) - A leading forum for Australian media analysis. Summary, news, bungled stories and viewable episodes of the weekly program, plus archive of previous coverage.
MediaChannel.org - Nonprofit site dedicated to the political, social, and cultural impacts of the media.
National Institute on Media and the Family - Providing research and education on the media's effect on families and children.
NewsTrust - Online social network that aims to help people identify quality journalism. Sign-in to rate news and opinions.
On the Media - Site representing weekly, one-hour National Public Radio program devoted to media criticism and analysis.
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press - Independent opinion research group studying attitudes toward the press, politics and public policy issues.
PR Watch - Investigative reporting on the practices of public-relations and public affairs industry, from the Center for Media and Democracy.
Project Censored - Locating stories about significant issues of which the public should be aware, but is not, for one reason or another.
Stats - Weblog and articles highlight abuses of science and statistics regarding policy issues.

African Americans, This Way to the (Menthol) Gas

2008-05-14T20:03:00Z

What does it feel like to wake up in the morning, get out of bed, have a little breakfast, and then head off to work knowing that this day, like all the days before, what you do will send yet more African Americans to a slow but certain death?

In her book on Adolph Eichmann, Hannah Arendt coined the off-repeated phrase, “the banality of evil,” in her attempt to describe how apparently normal, seemingly non-insane people could so easily participate in the monstrousness of the Final Solution.

Banality is where you find it.

Just the other day, in a burst of pseudo-military bravado, Hillary Clinton reared back and vomited up this little gem. Asked what the U.S. should do if Iran were at attack Israel with nuclear weapons, she replied that the U.S. would “be able to totally obliterate” Iran in reply.

There are 65 million men, women, and children in Iran, all of whom Clinton would apparently be willing to murder. Clinton took a brief round of criticism for this blood-drenched remark, but no one called for her to be taken immediately to a mental hospital for a thorough work-up.

But committing genocidal murder can be so much more subtle. Take that seemingly benign little chemical flavoring, menthol.
]]> That august temple of banality, the United States Congress, is currently considering a bill to give the Food and Drug Administration the legal authority to regulate tobacco. (Never mind the absurdity that the FDA has never had such authority in the first place.)

The bill bans the sale of candy-flavored cigarettes, less than 1 percent of the market. (Let us leave aside for now the question of what level of hell is reserved for those men and women who decided that using such flavored cigarettes to suck in young, first-time smokers, was an ethical act.)

But the bill does not ban the sale of menthol cigarettes. And what, you may ask, is so special about menthol as a cigarette additive, that it has to be protected above all other flavorings for cigarettes?

Would you believe…money? Here’s what the NY Times reports:

“The reason menthol is seen as politically off limits, despite those concerns, is that mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. They make up more than one-fourth of the $70 billion American cigarette market and are becoming increasingly important to the industry leader, Philip Morris USA, without whose lobbying support the legislation might have no chance of passage.”

Menthol is not just any flavoring. It’s the flavoring of choice for cigarettes consumed by African Americans: more than 70% of black smokers use menthol brands, compared with only about 30% of white smokers. The tobacco industry has spent untold millions promoting menthol cigarettes in black communities and media. And there’s evidence that it is harder for menthol smokers to quit, and that menthol smokes who try to quit have a very high relapse rate.

According to a scientific paper by Phillip S. Gardiner published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research in 2004:

This unique social phenomenon was principally occasioned by the tobacco industry’s masterful manipulation of the burgeoning Black, urban, segregated, consumer market in the 1960s. Through the use of television and other advertising media, coupled with culturally tailored images and messages, the tobacco industry ‘‘African Americanized’’ menthol cigarettes. The tobacco industry successfully positioned mentholated products, especially Kool, as young, hip, new, and healthy. During the time that menthols were gaining a large market share in the African American community, the tobacco industry donated funds to African American organizations hoping to blunt the attack on their products.

Here's just one sample of what Gardiner found about how the tobacco industry's advertising juggernaut to insinuate menthol cigarettes into the African American media:

Between 1963 and 1965, cigarette advertising more than tripled in the pages of Ebony, one of the main African American magazines (Pollay et al., 1992). By 1962, Ebony carried twice as many cigarette ads (57) as did Life (28) (Pollay et al., 1992).

Read Gardiner’s article for more details than I have room for here about the techniques employed by the tobacco industry to wage what might be called a genocidal war against African-Americans, genocidal in the sense that the purveyors had reason to suspect that the normal use of their product would kill disproportionate numbers of African-Americans.

According to a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official, there is no doubt about the link between menthol and increased mortality in African-Americans:

“I think we can say definitively that menthol induces smoking in the African-American community and subsequently serves as a direct link to African-American death and disease,” said the former official, Robert G. Robinson, who retired two years ago as an associate director in the office of smoking and health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

All of the above are bad enough. But what I find truly horrifying is that many anti-smoking groups and Congressional supporters are so desperate to get a bill, any bill, that many of them have accepted the menthol exemption in the legislation, in the hopes that the FDA, an already over-worked and all-too-often toothless watchdog, will then figure out some way to regulate menthol cigarettes later on. (The chances of this bill becoming law are uncertain, with strong opposition from tobacco-state legislators, and the possibility that President Bush may veto it if it ever passes.)

So we’ve got an industry and a Congress who, in the face of evidence that producing menthol cigarettes leads to a disproportionate increase in the deaths of African Americans, are likely to win the fight to keep this murderous racially-selective product on the market. Every day, the CEOs of these companies, their employees, their lobbyists, and their bought-and-paid-for members of Congress get up in the morning, look in their mirrors, and go off to work another day, happy to be about making the world safe for their racially selective, poison gas-delivering product.

Toward A More Civil (Less Barbaric) Society

2008-05-12T13:53:05Z

Civility is the glue that allows people to live together peacefully, especially in big, diverse nations. Canadians are usually civil. Many Americans try to be civil, but we do seem to have alot of horrific role models.

Jeffrey Feldman has written a book called Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy. Feldman also has a blog called Frameshop, which deconstructs the way the American right uses language. In his book, he dissects the mass of hateful spew into seven specific types of us and them rhetoric. For each of the seven bad ways to talk and act, he uses a conservative talking head as an example.

Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association has a vision of the world in which a "command-obedience" relationship exists between the governors and the governed and the use of force is dispensed under the authority of the governors. People are silenced in the presence of arms.

Pat Buchanan leads the charge against immigrants, which he sees an a Mexican invasion of America as revenge for our defeating them 160 years ago at Santa Anna. This framing aids corporate conservatives as it takes the focus off their takeover of immigration policy and instead, blames the immigrants.

Ann Coulter justifies violence against the target of her choice. Liberals are traitors who need to be eliminated because of their collaboration with Al Quaida. She is the ultimate "my way or the highway" advocate and thus closes off any discourse.

Bill O'Reilly blusters so that there is no way to talk about national security or other issues. John Gibson assaults the idea of diversity with his "War on Christmas," and James Dobson extends ideas about child discipline and family authority to the greater society. Dinesh D'Souza blames liberals for all the wrongs of the world, from 9/11 to the war itself.

Collectively, the right wing pundits have almost destroyed the concept of civility.

Discussing the same article, Sara Robinson says:

Somehow, we need to find our way back to each other. And, as simple as it sounds, it may start with a determined resolution that we are going to be civil to each other. Always. Even to your obnoxious Dittohead neighbor. Even to your annoying fundamentalist sister-in-law. Even to that jerk with the faded W'04 bumper sticker who stole your parking space. Even to the whinging concern troll in the comments thread. Catharsis feels like a birthright in our I-want-it-now society; but it's a luxury that progressives can no longer afford. Every time we give into it, the culture splits a little wider, and our odds of ever healing again it grow a bit more remote. It's time for progressives to step up and show the rest of the country how grownups behave. We've got an example to set, and a hundred million people to educate.

If we want democracy, we need to be able to see our fellow citizens as human beings, possessed of their own inherent worth and dignity.

If we want justice, we need to grant them the same rights and respect we feel entitled to - even when they're strenuously disagreeing with us, or when their interests and ours line up on opposite poles.

If we want security, we must first learn to be safe with each other, and trust ourselves as guardians of our collective well-being.

If we want to rebuild the country, we need to remember that we are all heirs to the same vast trust of social, political, and physical capital built up by previous generations; that our livelihood and liberties depend entirely on how well we can manage to sustain that common legacy; and that we share a duty to ensure our children's future by passing all of that on to them, not only intact but richer yet.

Our Democratic primaries have been an exercise in how NOT to conduct ourselves civilly, though it is pretty easy to analyze which candidate(s) took the higher road. Negativity has been said to be more powerful than positivity in political contests, but given our record, we need to try a new model.

Why We're Leaving: UPDATES and Thoughts

2008-05-10T11:40:44Z

Last Saturday, as I was fielding comments on Daily Kos about the piece Why We're Leaving, prospective buyers were traipsing through the house, opening the doors of newly-cleaned out closets, perusing the half-empty book shelves, and asking the occasional question about the plumbing. The traipsing continued through Sunday, even though we did not even have a For Sale sign in the front yard yet.

On Monday, we had four offers to buy. We accepted the one from the nice young couple who will have a baby in three months. They seemed to be the hopeful choice: they had saved their money for ten years, had lost out on another house they had loved, and were so so positivel about our house. They bid high. They won.

And thus our own sense of doing the right thing at the right time was validated.

We have found a sweet little (tiny, small, teensy) apartment to rent for a year, about a mile from our current location, and a mile from the Capitol as well. Our chances of running into Members of Congress at the supermarket are slim, our proximity to the halls of power reduced, our privileged views a thing of the past.

I cannot tell you how freed I feel. Tears of relief rise up in me, and have all week.

My friend in England said to me last night (on Skype), "But what if Obama wins?" An ex-pat American, who divides her time between Norway, Spain, and England, she is not bitter and she has hope, now, at last. I told her that if Obama wins, that would be wonderful, in my opinion, because it would mean that the American voters have managed to overcome our natural inclination to elect the person we would rather get drunk with rather than someone who can actually govern the country. But it is still going to be a nasty nasty struggle, and the forces working against the common good are well-funded and effective.

Those forces have too many of the Washington insiders in thrall. You can see it in their eyes: alternately vacant and worried. Avuncular men state "all is not lost!" to each other, and pound the upper arms of the distressed. Staffers slink around, busying themselves with press releases and policy statements so they don't have to think too much about the ramifications of those statements. The members of the Progressive Caucus try to be cheerful as they watch their own hard work undermined, over and over again, by the Blue Dogs, who are in turn, defensive and determined.

The last thing any of them want in their day: activists. Activists disrupt the flow of business. First of all, there are not enough of them around to make much of a difference, except as they impede one's progress along a corridor, and secondly, they tend to ask uncomfortable questions. And they actually want answers.
]]> After the 2006 election, I wrote a congratulatory email to a friend inside Congress and asked him how he felt. He said he felt like "the dog who chases the car and finally catches the car. Now what?" Now what indeed.

Several of the commenters last week accused us of abandoning the movement and the efforts to re-democratize the country. But to my mind the abandonment happened, has been happening, maybe was always happening, because deep down, it is so difficult to be inconvenienced. I concur, you know, I never missed a class or a meeting for a protest or an action. I have always met my obligations to my kids, my students, my colleagues. My fasting with the Code Pink women in front of the White House? July. Planning for Camp Democracy? August. Teaching activist workshops? Spring break.

Howard Zinn, in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, says that he always had difficulty being arrested because he really liked going home to his wife and kids at the end of the day.

We are a nation of some privilege, but that privilege comes with obligations as well. My beautiful house near the halls of power, with the proximity to schools, museums, culture, great libraries required me to work hard at my job, and to find additional sources of income when possible. My connections into the culture of power demand that I speak up and speak out when possible as well. But it is far safer for me to speak up from my blog, or to poor Rep. McGovern as he buys milk at the corner store, than it is for any of the ambitious holding-onto-idealism kids who work inside Congress to effect a change in the location of a comma in a memo.

We went out to dinner the other night: after we netted about $27.00 at our yard sale, we blew it all on spaghetti at the local bistro. It was late so the other tables were filled with young staffers, eating pizza (What? They don't get enough pizza during the day?) and talking about their bosses, the internal struggles in the offices, and the opposing political party. (We pride ourselves on trying to guess which party their boss is from; it's a lot easier to tell that than it is to decipher which part of the country they represent and that, my friends, is worth thinking about). The ambition is on their faces like excess pizza sauce. They are not bitter, but they are cynical, and they are determined. They have smarts but not a shred of perspective.

I just can't watch this anymore.

But I can write about it, and distance will help. I can open up a little, breathe, and reflect. We can stop worrying about money and we can reduce our own privileged footprint on the planet. We are lucky, lucky and the universe is nodding yes, go, speak from knowledge and perspective.

I am reminded:

The Waking - Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go

We will learn by going.

Three Pieces on the Dollar

2008-05-05T14:41:51Z

Today I am going to summarize three articles I have received recently which have to do with the US dollar. I've been watching this closely for about ten years, as our original plan was to retire early and expatriate. The plan was to have a better life yet spend less money, but we may have missed the window of opportunity. I am often reminded of all the stories I heard as a child, about growing up in the Great Depression. To make it all more creepy, I know people struggling to live abroad, and people on the USS Lincoln (off the coast of Iran), which makes our current economic mess all the more personal and ominous.

Dollar's fall forces new standard of frugality

Americans have been living large, often on borrowed money, as consumer spending represented more than 70% of our commerce and we bought more than we made and sold. Our trade deficit is $800,000,000,000, about 7% of the economy, aside from our budget deficit and national debt. Our news is all about what is rising (debt, unemployment, price of oil, war fatalities) and falling (value of the dollar, quality of life.) Foreigners are wary of investing in our economy, after lending us money to stop til we dropped and joining us in propping up sub-prime lending. As the feds push down interest rates, investors yank their money and put it to work where there is a higher rate of return. The dollar has lost 17% against the euro in one year's time. Our economy had grown since the end of WW2 but now it's the turn of China, India, a united Europe and Latin America.

As a country, we are tightening the belt on our collective fat stomach. Sales are up for rice, down for casinos. People do not normally cut back their standard of living. When food and fuel go up, values of homes and retirement funds drop, and it's hard to get credit, French wines, restaurant meals and imported cars go first. With increases in oil and foodstuffs, basic necessities are also affected. Credit is harder to get, which affects home buyers, those needing cars to get to work, and students needing to borrow money for school. Assets like home value and retirement funds shrink, so cannot be drawn on and no longer represent as much security. The upside is that people may actually have to put money down to buy a house. They may be given credit based on their actual ability to pay back loans. There may be more enthusiasm for clean energy and buying local.

The Dollar's Down But We're Not

Americans living abroad, such as those who work for foreign companies and pay in dollars, are having a hard time. They report cutting out mineral water, then restaurant meals, even at small neighborhood bistros. By now, those in Europe are absorbing the equivalent of a 50% pay cut. A Parisian quotes these prices: $50 for a dozen croissants, farmed salmon for $23/pound, $4 for a newspaper. Wine and soda are both too expensive, and some people have bought potted plants as they can't afford flowers any more. Many are selling their cars or even returning to the states (which means quitting jobs or stopping studies.) Any trips or returns to the States mean hours on-line, desperately seeking bargains or ways to cash in frequent flier miles.

A woman in Paris says:
"I think of stopping our subscription to Le Figaro, but not to the International Herald Tribune, without which we'd be lost. Cooperatives for exchanging the New Yorker have sprung up. I pass on my Times Literary Supplements and New York Reviews of Books to my friend Eric in Germany."

On top of it, people at home may not be sympathetic, not realizing that expats have to pay taxes in both countries and don't want to uproot their kids. Some specialities do not translate into jobs in the US. Doesn't the envy also suggest that people wonder if there might be places better to live than the US? Some people will accept fairly major reductions in quality of life in order to stay in Europe.

US Beats War Drum as Iran Dumps the Dollar

Let's hope this doesn't mean what it sounds like. A "senior military official" leaked to the press plans to publicly reveal evidence of weapons caches found in Iraq which can be traced directly back to Iran. They are the type of roadside bombs often used against occupying US forces. The plan to present this evidence of Iranian support for Shiite militias inside Iraq comes at the same time that Iran has dumped the dollar for oil trades. They will deal, like a certain supermodel, in Euros or yuan, rather than the dollar.

A second US aircraft carrier has arrived off the coast of Iran. Gates calls the carrier a "reminder" and not a threat elevation. Another "anonymous senior official" says the USS Lincoln replaces the USS Truman, which is returning to its home base. Some analysts believe that Saddam Hussein's decision to switch from the dollar to the euro precipitated "regime change," to protect American interests. Others wonder if others around the world may follow suit and dump some of their reserves of US Federal Reserve notes. This would bring the dollar down further and the cost of fuel upwards.

(graffiti from Belgium & Spain, where the dollar is currently worth US $.6459)

Why We're Leaving

2008-05-03T11:54:41Z

When did we know we had to leave?

Certainly the first indication was right before the 2004 election, after a year-plus of working hard, 24X7, to elect a smart, good, thoughtful, honest man to the White House. Richard and I were sitting in the car on the Sunday prior to election day. He hesitated before turning on the car. "I have a bad feeling," he said. "I have a sense that in churches all over America, people are being told to vote for Bush."

My mind reeled. I had been operating under the assumption that the good guys would win this time. I was much more concerned about what would happen to us WHEN John Kerry and John Edwards were elected. I was concerned because I genuinely respected and liked very few of the folks who were high up in the campaign at that point in time. It seemed to me that they were spending more energy on casting themselves in key roles inside the White House than they were in actually winning the hearts and minds of voters. Few of them seemed to even like or respect John Kerry himself. My concerns were split: that Richard would not find a place of integrity inside the new administration and/or that he WOULD and we would have to hang out with these sleazebags for years.

My concerns were unfounded, his were not.

It was on November 4, 2004 that I found the website for homes in Canada. There was a converted church listed, and it sat on the water, serenely overlooking lapping waves. It was open; it had flow and history.

I looked at the church until it disappeared, then noted when it returned, and then when it returned again.

Meanwhile, the political insiders who made up the bulk of our social lives split up and found camps to join: the MoveOn folks, the policy organizations, various NGOs, Media Matters, the Campaign for America's Future, etc., and, of course, various campaigns. We had a difficult time with all of the organizations; having begun the Democracy Cell Project, we found ourselves competing with much larger and sexier communities. No one believed in the power of a few knowledgeable and motivated folks to change the world, despite Margaret Mead's oft-quoted belief in that possibility. But most significantly, no one believed in the community management skills we had honed over the course of the Kerry Blog. What they did believe in: scaling, page views, market share.

We had nothing to offer on those fronts. Having worked in an atmosphere of the high-touch interactions, and having spent a lot of time and energy on learning how to shift perceptions and manage difficult people, we were uninterested in either the circle jerk of insiders or the ATM machines-for-change that were set up. We proposed helping the Congressional Progressive Caucus build a community and they passed. We advised the Kerry people on how to utilize the loyal supporters they had and were more-or-less ignored.

But we noted that both the Obama and Edwards campaigns were picking up on aspects of what we had promoted, and that felt validating.

As the Clinton campaign got rolling, we watched them make mistake after mistake, online and off. Our friends who were working there were uninterested in our perspectives, and that was OK. The message back to us was that we were a little quaint, under-informed, and possibly disloyal.

We went to Nova Scotia and visited the church, for sale again. it was old and needed work, but the perspective, the water, the distance from insanity, felt marvelous. We made an offer. A few minutes later, another offer came in, without our conditions. We lost the church.
]]> In the past four years, we have also worked with many grassroots, on-the-ground organizations as well: Code Pink, the World Can't Wait, the Backbone Campaign, AfterDowningStreet, etc. We have found a number of folks who truly believe in right action and the inspired moment. Our political insider friends are disdainful about right actions and inspired moments; they believe in data and rolodexes.

Lately, since losing the church as an escape option, watching the activists lose court battles, face, and sometimes heart, and smelling the decaying roadkill of the presidential election, we have come up with a new plan.

A friend once told us of friends of theirs who had fled Nazi Germany. "How did you know when to leave?" they were asked. "It's not that we knew when to leave, but at some point, you realize that you must leave, and then you look for the opportunity to leave."

I have thought about that quote often in the past year. Our insider friends stopped calling us long ago, and the events I have attended that were put on by those organizations, the campaigns, the gatherings, etc. have been tepid enough to convince me that they are not being effective. The Clinton campaign, which has taken a very very bad turn of late, has managed, with more cooperation and less insight than we could have imagined, to drag several of our friends into sordid situations, some of which have become public. The loyalty argument has evolved into something that appears to be even more Mafioso-like than that of the Republicans, which, if you think about it, is stunning and horrific.

Our activist friends are frustrated as well, realizing that Obama is better than Clinton, especially as her campaign's tactics and strategies emerge as ever-more-desperate, but that a President Obama cannot evolve the country back into a true democracy, or even a decent Republic, in any real time. Protests are small and ineffective, actions alienate those trying to move incrementally, incrementalism is slippery.

The blogosphere is equally fragmented, civil discourse is increasingly scarce, management of message is disingenuous and highly controlled, and the progress towards the Democratic nomination is sporadic, random, and without enough soul or heart. We search for truth in piles of manure, sift through crap to find nuggets of hope and vision. Meanwhile, gas is up, food sources are down, jobs are gone, and people are frantic.

We have a beautiful house. I have a very good job. My work is meaningful and useful. Richard's work is truth-telling and has integrity, something few around us can say, but which allows him to sleep better at night than they deserve to. So why are we leaving this house?

We cannot afford to stay. It is that simple. It's not that we are persecuted, like our friend's friends were under the Nazis. It's not that we are unpatriotic or disloyal, as some would say. It's not even that we are so discouraged that we must crawl away to a distant place to lick our wounds. We are not frightened, we are not retreating from battle.

We're just out of resources, and the struggle for resources is draining us from doing the work we know needs to be done. The most valuable resource we have is the house; it is in a great location and now, with a new paint job and a yard sale this morning to eliminate excess material goods, it might sell quickly and at a price high enough that we can take the opportunity to do the right action.

For us, we are thinking that we will buy some land and build a solar house. We will write about it. We will continue to observe the struggle for democracy and to offer advice when asked, when compensated, and when we can help others be effective. But we will not be enmeshed, close observers of the debacle. There are things we already wish we did not know, and we will not have to know about the new ones. This, we hope, will free us to write about the things we do know, and which need to be shared.

The selling of our house provides us the opportunity to leave. It is the moment to take the opportunity.

Why Are Americans Hoarding Rice?

2008-04-28T12:29:02Z

I read that Sam's Club and then Costco were starting to ration rice. I heard on NPR that the big discount grocers didn't want to raise prices, because they make their money mostly on memberships, and prefer to keep bulk prices low. Both insisted that they were merely trying to assure that all of their stores had enough rice for their customers and there was no real rice shortage in the United States, which produces 88% of its own rice. A friend in Oregon City, OR noticed last night that the shelf which usually holds rice in her local grocer was empty. Someone else asked how long Basmati white rice took to steam, after they bought it for the first time in ten years. Why were people panicking? Should I rush out and stockpile rice?

The rationing occurred at a time of rising energy prices, high fertilizer cost, financial speculation, drought in some rice producing regions and increasing demand. The price of certain types of rice rose 50% in just a few months' time, much harder to absorb in the poorest parts of the world than in the US. In our own hemisphere, in Haiti, more expensive rice sparked food riots that required government intervention to quell. There were food riots in Egypt, a general strike in Burkina Faso, and distribution by the military in the Philippines. Some countries banned exports, to keep more supply at home. Overall, prices rose 68% from baseline.

The World Bank warned recently that higher food prices could push 100 million people in poorer developing countries further into poverty. Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank related the demand for ethanol and other biofuels to soaring food prices around the world. He held up a bag of rice during his press conference as he said, "In Bangladesh a two-kilogram bag of rice ... now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family; the price of a loaf of bread ... has more than doubled. Poor people in Yemen are now spending more than a quarter of their incomes just on bread." He added that many people in the world were moving from one meal a day to two at a time when biofuels were expanding. (In the past two years, the price of corn more than doubled in the US, partly because of the demand for ethanol.) He projected that food prices would stay high or go higher over the next couple of years.

Salon asked my question: "Where has all the rice gone?," and suggested one possible alternative:

The suggested that corn price hikes could be attributed to biofuels and wheat increses to bad weather, but that world rice production was actually up so that the culprit may be primarily population growth and increased consumption. They further reported that the China-Africa Development Fund had pledged five billion dollars over the next fifty years for investment in African agriculture, specifically for rice production. That won't change rice prices much in the short term, but it shows that China is thinking ahead in promoting Africa as a next breadbasket for the world. We also need to plan carefully for biofuel expansion, and make sure that crops for eating aren't being pushed out too fast (and in the wrong places) in favor of ways to continue using far too much energy.

Doug Tarnapol from Free Expressions blog mused:

Upon Glancing at the Providence Journal Today...nowhere will you find word one about the international food crisis. Meanwhile, the "liberals" (not all, of course) are pushing biofuels: fill your tank with food from people's mouths, for the benefit of the Archer Daniels Midland Corp (not the "Jeffersonian farmer" Monsanto is currently suing out of existence for not paying for their naturally -- or intentionally -- dispersed, copyrighted GMOs). After the coming economic cataclysm (already here for most people), ya think people will finally rise up and overthrow the global neoliberal regime? Think Obama will lead that fight here in the US?

I think South America is the brightest spot, relatively speaking, in the world right now: they are pointing, messily, toward the only possible future for the species. (Example of "messy": Lula is pro-biofuels -- and not the non-edible kind, either. Even non-edible biofuels will displace all other crops due to rising demand, and not just in the US/EU but in India, China, everywhere.) Basically, if we, the species, do not rein in our consumption, we are in for a Malthusian "correction" that will literally rival the Black Plague. Yet, readers of the New York Times, a.k.a., "the people that matter," think they can buy their way out of any crisis.

Oh, but ProJo is all over the big story of the pie thrown at Tom "How Much Blood Is On My Hands?" Friedman. Should have been a brick, in my opinion: we should send that tub of propagandistic lard over to India to try farming in view of the wonderful laboratories and golf courses he loves so. With any luck, he'll join the thousands of farmers who have committed suicide under the "flat-earth" policies he's been touting. When will people finally realize that the Owners consider us the enemy, and act accordingly?

To which I replied with this quote:

'We are grateful to the Washington Post, the NY Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But now the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supra national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.'

David Rockefeller, Private Banker, Council on Foreign Relations, June 1991...

Taking Prostitutes Off the Expense Account

2008-04-23T13:51:42Z

So just how bad is it out there?

Airline companies are dropping like flies. According to one news report, Southwest Airlines is going to replace its jet fleet with shuttle buses:

"The future is now," announced Southwest CEO Gary Kelly, gesturing to a 30-foot bus painted in the company's signature red, yellow, and blue. "With these amazing new buses, traveling from New York to Los Angeles takes as little as three days. That's less than half the time it took passengers to get there on our old planes."

Ok, ok, that report did run in The Onion.

But I repeat: just how bad is it out there?

My friends, the global economy is getting so bad that the giant (78,000 employees) German Deutsche Bank has been forced to tighten up its operations: corporate executives will no longer be able to write off their visits to prostitutes on their expense accounts! And the execs are going to have to dip into their pockets to pay for TV porn in their hotel suites! The horror!

From the official memo from management at the bank:

“Deutsche Bank does not approve of any adult entertainments and such expenditures will not be reimbursed.”

Well damn.

If cutting off these frisky bank executives counts as belt-tightening in the face of the subprime meltdown, how much could this change help the bank's bottom line? (For the mathematically inclined, here's a little word problem: assuming Spitzer rates--$4,000/hour--how many one-hour "visits" would 1,000 Deutsche Bank execs have to make to cost the bank $1 billion?)

I assume the bank memo is not a joke. Der Speigel broke this story, and it’s been picked up by major papers.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania has come, and gone, and the Democratic primary campaign grinds on, which some may argue is yet another sign of just how bad things are out there.

What do you see when you look around the world? What is your favorite marker (like Deutsche Bank) that people are beginning, in however ridiculous a manner, to deal with our planet’s many mounting problems?