I've been working in the field of Internet safety for 17 years, and the deeper I get into it, the more I realize that Internet safety for kids and teens isn't about the Internet or really even about safety.
"Internet safety" is mostly about behavior in the blended world where kids live on and offline. How they treat themselves and others has a big impact on whether their experiences will be good or bad. And it's true for adults as well.
While there are unique aspects to protecting yourself online, many of the major online risk factors -- especially for children -- have their offline equivalents.
Cyberbullying is the most obvious example. To be sure, technology can change the way people bully, but bullying is still bullying. Whether it happens through text messages, on Facebook, in a chat room or in the schoolyard, it still involves repeated harassment and typically an imbalance of power between the victim and the bully.
Cyberbullying does have unique aspects, though -- the bully can be invisible and actions can quickly go viral, involving lots of people "piling on" a single victim. And when the victims and bullies don't know each other from the real world, there is an increased danger that the bully won't be able to understand the emotional harm inflicted on the victim, possibly causing more harm than intended.
Still, there is a major connection between physical and virtual bullying.
In an email interview, Justin Patchin of the Cyberbullying Research Center said that in a recent study of 4,400 11-to 18-year-olds, the researchers "found that 65 percent of students who reported being the target of cyberbullying in the previous 30 days were also the target of school bullying during that same time."
The research also found that "almost half of cyberbullies were school bullies as well. There clearly is a lot of overlap in bullying behaviors."
The online-offline overlap can be found with other risks.
Studies from the Crimes Against Children Research Center have repeatedly found that children who are sexually abused by people they encounter online are statistically far more likely to be taking offline risks.
Disinhibition is when people feel isolated from one another because of an artificial barrier, such as meeting online rather than in person. It's not uncommon for people to feel as if those they meet on the Internet aren't real people, so it's "OK" to be rude or abusive.
Disinhibition plays a major role in Internet behavior but also has a offline component. You're likely to say "excuse me" if you get in somebody's way while walking down the street and all will be forgiven. However, cut someone off in traffic and you're likely to get a couple of rude words and gestures.
Other factors that have been identified by researcher danah boyd (she prefers not to capitalize her name) are persistence and searchability (the Internet is a permanent and searchable archive), replicability (you can copy and paste text easily), scalability (high potential for visibility well beyond the audience you intended), invisible audiences (you never really know who's seeing, reading or watching what you post, and the blurring of public and private materials (an extension of invisible audiences because boundaries aren't clear.)
Friends of the Earth, Corporate Ethics International, and the Center for International Environmental Law just filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department and Hillary Clinton (Friends of the Earth v. State Department) over the agency's controversial handling of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal.
The suit follows an extensive effort by the environmental groups to seek information via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) about contacts between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Paul Elliott, a lobbyist for TransCanada Pipelines -- the company seeking to build the disastrous Keystone XL pipeline to carry dirty tar sands crude from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries in Texas. Secretary Clinton's State Department is mulling whether to grant a thumbs up or down to TransCanada's request for a presidential permit to build and operate the 1,959-mile tar sands pipeline.
Elliott was the national deputy director of Hillary Clinton's presidential run, assisting her efforts to win support of delegates and strengthening her ties with influential Democratic governors to win endorsements.
In his current role as a registered lobbyist for TransCanada, Elliott would obviously be in a good position to reach out to Secretary Clinton's office to lobby for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Suspicions that such lobbying pressure had occurred were stoked by Secretary Clinton's inappropriate public statements in California last fall, where she told an audience that she was "inclined to" approve the Keystone XL project.
Many environmental groups called on Clinton to recuse herself from the Keystone XL pipeline decision, noting that her tentative nod of approval was extremely premature. The State Department had not yet completed its mandated environmental impact statement, nor reviewed the huge numbers of public comments about the merits and demerits of the Keystone XL project.
So how had Secretary Clinton reached her inclination to approve the pipeline without waiting on the due diligence of her State Department staff?
While the State Department did accept a subsequent FOIA request from Friends of the Earth in February, it failed to meet the deadline to respond.
"Why is the State Department refusing to release these communications?," asked Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. "This calls into question the agency's decision to rush the review of the Keystone XL pipeline, despite its massive environmental risks and bipartisan opposition to it."
After exhausting all other options to get the State Department to come clean about its contacts with Elliott, the groups announced today that Earthjustice has filed suit on their behalf against the State Department and Hillary Clinton in her official capacity as Secretary of State.
"Clearly, TransCanada hired Mr. Elliott to take advantage of his previous service to Hillary Clinton," said Kenny Bruno with Corporate Ethics International. "We think the public has a right to know in what ways TransCanada and Mr. Elliott have attempted to influence Secretary Clinton's view of this controversial project."
It's rare for me to have a moment of pity for someone like Newt Gingrich, but I have to admit I'm feeling a little sorry for the guy this week. But before we delve into Newt's campaign problems in greater detail, it seems to me that most pundits are missing a big underlying new reality in the Republican Party. The focus has all been on Newt himself, what he said, and the subsequent ire directed at him by prominent righties. But after the dust settles on the incident itself, people are going to notice the bigger fact this fracas has illuminated: Republicans are doubling down on Paul Ryan's budget rather than backing away from it, to the point where it has now become the acid test for Republicans in 2012. Which should be good news for Democrats.
But before we get to sweeping conclusions, let's review what happened to Newt. Below is the full transcript of the relevant section of Gingrich's interview last Sunday on the NBC show Meet the Press (the video is also available):
(MODERATOR) DAVID GREGORY: What about entitlements? The Medicare trust fund, in stories that have come out over the weekend, is now going to be depleted by 2024, five years earlier than predicted. Do you think that Republicans ought to buck the public opposition and really move forward to completely change Medicare, turn it into a voucher program where you give seniors...
FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: Right.
GREGORY: ...some premium support and -- so that they can go out and buy private insurance?
GINGRICH: I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors. But there are specific things you can do. At the Center for Health Transformation, which I helped found, we published a book called "Stop Paying the Crooks." We thought that was a clear enough, simple enough idea, even for Washington. We--between Medicare and Medicaid, we pay between $70 billion and $120 billion a year to crooks. And IBM has agreed to help solve it, American Express has agreed to help solve it, Visa's agreed to help solve it. You can't get anybody in this town to look at it. That's, that's almost $1 trillion over a decade. So there are things you can do to improve Medicare.
GREGORY: But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare.
GINGRICH: I, I think that, I think, I think that that is too big a jump. I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose upon the -- I don't want to -- I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.
That's what caused all of the fuss. David Gregory, true to form, didn't realize the momentous nature of what had just been said (he quickly moved to another subject in the interview itself, failing to follow up on Gingrich's statements). There's even a new segment (for the past few weeks) at the end of Meet the Press (which takes self-reverence to new heights of absurdity) where Gregory holds aloft a printout of someone who has posted a story online -- during the show's airtime -- about something significant that was said on the show. This week, Gregory posted a tweet from someone on his interview panel sent from the green room while preparing for their appearance -- notching the self-love up even further. Significantly, Gregory didn't mention the one quote which would set the Republican world afire in the next few days.
Gingrich was roundly criticized on the right for saying what he did -- so much so that he has spent the time since attempting to walk back his statements. Many Republicans seem to be jumping on the bandwagon of "Newt's campaign is now over," which seems a little premature, at least from where I sit. The incident has also led to much hilarity on the left, who has always seen Newt as a comic figure (and who just love to watch righty infighting, no matter what they're scrapping over).
Here's a quick quiz. Which of the following is satire from a Saturday Night Live sketch, and which is a quote from Gingrich being interviewed recently?:
"Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood. Because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate."
"I just hope the lamestream media won't twist my words by repeating them verbatim."
Although the second one is obviously Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin in a mock Republican primary debate sketch (the "lamestream" kind of gives it away... ), when parsed, those two statements aren't all that different. Newt is scared that Democrats are going to use his words in political ads to point out how extreme the Ryan budget truly is on Medicare. He's right to be scared, as Chuck Schumer quite gleefully pointed out to reporters (the Washington Post blog article is titled, "Schumer: You're damn right we'll use Gingrich's criticism of Ryan against the GOP").
Gingrich's statement, parsed correctly (or "translated from politicianese" perhaps) says: "I was lying last Sunday, I've said I was lying -- and I wasn't lying that second time -- therefore if Democrats try to use my words verbatim, it is a lie, because I was lying last Sunday."
His campaign is already attacking the media, in a desperate bid to reframe the debate on more comfortable Republican grounds. Here is an extraordinary statement from Gingrich's press secretary, sent to The Huffington Post in an email, which reads like a bad fantasy/adventure novel:
The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment's cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won't be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.
Wow. You've just got to love the "billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia," and all the rest of that purple prose, don't you? This is precisely why a Newt Gingrich campaign is going to be such fun for the left. I mean, you just can't make this stuff up, folks!
Amusement aside, though, I think Senator Schumer summed the situation Newt now finds himself in the best (from that Washington Postblog article):
It was refreshing to hear such candor from a top Republican. Gingrich was saying what everyone knows to be true: The [Ryan Medicare] plan is extreme. ... He is the Republican canary in the coal mine. When that canary speaks truth, he is snuffed out. What Newt seems to realize is that it would be impossible to win the White House if they embrace the Ryan plan. If Republicans make endorsing the Ryan plan the standard in the Republican primary, it will make the nominee unelectable. I feel for Speaker Gingrich. He's entered the race only to find out that the Republican Party has been pushed considerably futher [sic] to the right than the party he led in the 1990s. His party has turned him into a political outcast.
This is true -- back in the 1990s, Newt was seen as the most radical of the Republicans. The term "bomb-thrower" was routinely used to describe him (this was pre-9/11, when such terms were used with abandon, I should mention). He was also the party's "ideas man." Since leaving Congress (under a cloud), he has striven to build up his image as "the smartest man in the room." The only problem is, now the radical ideas man in the party is Representative Paul Ryan.
The sad part -- the part that makes me actually pity Newt -- is that Gingrich was right last Sunday. He speaks from experience -- and not just general experience, but specifically on attempting to change Medicare in radical ways. He got burned back then, and his quote on Sunday seemed to acknowledge the reality that any political party seen as overreaching to the extreme will get punished by the voters. However, the Republican Party does not want to hear this right now, especially not in the midst of a primary campaign. Hence their excoriation of Newt, and hence Newt's desperate backpedaling since.
But Schumer seems to be the only one drawing the larger conclusion from the whole tiff -- that the Republican Party has now made supporting the Ryan budget its acid test for 2012. This could be suicidal, but they've decided not to back down one inch from the plan to turn Medicare into vouchers. Harry Reid is planning to hold a Senate vote on the Ryan budget before the Memorial Day break, which will put all the Republican senators on record as voting to kill Medicare as we know it. This is good politics for the Democrats.
By forcing the issue in such a major way with Gingrich, the message to the rest of the Republican candidates is loud and clear: "Support the Ryan plan -- or else." This applies to not only the presidential field, but also all the congressional candidates as well. There are other such litmus tests for Republicans, of course, but the Ryan budget is now front and center -- not just a litmus test, but the sole acid test of party acceptability for this election.
The Gingrich story will likely fade, over time. Newt's campaign is not over, no matter how many pundits declare it dead. If Sarah Palin doesn't run, Gingrich will likely be in second place soon in the polling. If he can successfully portray himself as the "anti-Romney," his campaign could become stronger over time. Should Gingrich win the nomination, his remarks may even help him in the general election campaign -- since moderation is seen in a much more positive light by independent voters than by partisan primary voters.
But whether Gingrich now rises or falls in the eyes of the Republican Party rank-and-file voters, the Ryan budget seems likely to become the front-and-center campaign issue for quite some time to come. Which should only serve to make Democrats very happy. By doubling down on the Ryan budget ideas, Republicans have chosen a position that is just not that popular with the public (outside of Republican primary voters, perhaps). Democrats have been trying to make the 2012 election all about the Ryan budget from the moment it was unveiled. The Republicans had seemed to pull back somewhat in the past few weeks (after they actually faced angry constituents in town hall meetings), but now such a position has become all but impossible for any Republican candidate. After all, who wants to go through what Newt is going through right now? Which, as I said, should prove to be good news for Democrats, for months to come.
This week's U.S. visit by People's Liberation Army Chief of General Staff Chen Bingde has sparked an outpouring of conventional wisdom about the alleged "Chinese threat." One summary of the pertinent points came in a Reuters piece published last week:
The United States, and others in the region, have watched with concern as China's military has extended its reach in Asia and built up its military prowess. In one display of military muscle, China confirmed it had held its first test flight of the J-20 stealth fighter jet during a January visit to Beijing by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. It is also possible China will launch its first aircraft carrier later this year.
Sounds scary. Until one realizes that China has no stealth fighter worthy of the name, that its aircraft carrier is a remodeled version of a ship it bought from Ukraine in 1998, and that the United States spends five to nine times what China does on its military, depending on whether one uses the Pentagon's figures or those provided by independent analysts.
On the "stealth" fighter, aircraft expert Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group told the Wall Street Journal that the plane looked like it was "cobbled together" to make it look stealthy, even though it had obvious features that would make it highly visible on radar. He estimated that Beijing could be a decade or more away from developing a genuine stealth aircraft, by which time the U.S. will have moved on to the next generation of fighters.
There is one area in which China is outspending the U.S. by a wide margin -- infrastructure, in the form of high-speed trains, urban transit systems, port facilities, and other fundamental elements of a modern economy. This is not to say that all is well with China's economic rise. Pollution, mass population dislocations, and growing inequalities of wealth and income all pose threats to the sustainability of the Chinese model. But it is clear that the Chinese leadership is far more interested in putting resources into its economy -- a planned $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over the next five years -- than into an arms race with the United States.
In short, the hawks and the representatives of the military-industrial complex who are hyping the Chinese threat to justify record military budgets are fighting the wrong war, to the detriment of our security, which is ultimately based on the strength of our economy and the health and education of our people.
William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011). For more information go here.
Hollywood gets credit for a lot of things, both good and bad, and rightly so. It's undeniable that films influence the way the world views history and other cultures. I have heard many of my Elders say that Hollywood's portrayals of American Indians are responsible for the shallow perception most folks have of their people.
It's hard to not see their point when you consider that in early films, American Indians were depicted as nothing more than bronze, half-clothed savages, sporting the stereotypical double braids, screaming Ayyyyaaaayayaaaaa as they got shot off their horses by the white heroes. It's almost comical now, but that is the only Hollywood image of American Indians I recall from growing up, until the mid- to late-1970s; and that is the image we exported to the entire world.
In early Hollywood Westerns, most of the background Indians were real Navajo people. There was a colony of Navajo Indians, living traditionally in a camp in Malibu, who were on studio pay. When Indians of any tribe were needed for a western, a bus would pull up and load up for their background work. That is why in all those films, most of the time the language you hear spoken is "Dine," one of the Athapascan dialects of the Navajo and Apache people. The major speaking roles for American Indians would still go to non-Native actors like Burt Lancaster and Charles Bronson; but thankfully, progress has been made since those days and filmmakers and audiences have become more educated.
Progress has been gradual, but somewhat steady. Jay Silverheels -- a native of the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve near Ontario, Canada -- was perhaps the first legitimate Native American television star. From 1949 to 1957, he entertained TV audiences as Tonto, the Lone Ranger's dependable -- albeit stereotypical -- Indian sidekick. The real Silverheels, though, was not limited by the stereotype. He recognized that fellow Native American actors needed to truly be masters of their craft in order to compete in the unforgiving film industry, so he founded the American Indian Actors Workshop in Echo Park, Calif., as a place where they could do that.
In 1956, John Ford's film, The Searchers, earned praise for its more balanced depiction of American Indians. But "balanced" had a different meaning back then. The Navajos in Monument Valley who worked on The Searchers -- as extras, consultants or other staff -- were payed less than their white counterparts. At that time, too, they were not even allowed to leave the reservation without written permission from the government; so the fact that they were happy to have the work must be viewed in that light. But Ford's efforts were progressive for his day and laid the groundwork for some of the more truly balanced movies to come.
It was in the 1970s that we really started seeing Indians portrayed more authentically and more prominently in film story lines. I remember seeing Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman and noticing how director Arthur Penn showed the Cheyenne people actually laughing and crying, like real human beings rather than the predictably stoic and unemotional Indians we'd seen in Hollywood features. The Indians in his film were just like any other people -- some good, some not so good. They were not demonized just because they were Indian, as Hollywood custom had been before. Chief Dan George was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award, making him the first Native American to receive the honor.
In 1975, Will Sampson delivered an uncanny performance as Chief Bromden, one of the most pivotal characters in One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest. But instead of crediting Sampson's acting skill and talent for his indelible depiction of the character (whom he made absolutely unforgettable while having almost no lines!), Hollywood press diminished his skill and talent to simply "acting Indian." Explaining why Will Sampson was overlooked for an Academy Award nomination, one director was even quoted as saying, "Why should an Indian receive an award for playing an Indian?"
That is how, in the eyes of many directors, Sampson's performance became a pattern for the big silent Indian. Sampson was typecast and did not have access to a wider range of roles that would have let us enjoy even more of his talent... a great loss for us. But Will Sampson was determined to make change, one way or another. He went on to be one of the founders of the American Indian Film Institute, producers of the American Indian Film Festival.
There were other noteworthy films in the 1970s, like A Man Called Horse. But then we had to wait until the early 1990s for Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves, that had a modern take on American Indian people and how the Lakhota people of the plains might have lived. Some claim Kevin's story showed the Indians as too uniformly benevolent and white folks as simply evil. After all, though in real life Indian nations suffered much ill treatment at the hands of the government, not all real white people were bad and not all real Indians were angelic. But the overall message of the movie was a good one. Graham Greene, with his brilliant performance as Kicking Bird, joined the ranks of Oscar nominees with a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
Hollywood also had Iron Eyes Cody. His ancestry became the center of some controversy when it became known that he was actually Italian by birth. But he did not just work as an Indian in Hollywood in the 1950s and '60s; he truly lived his life as an Indian. He can be credited as the most famous Indian in the world during that time. Even though he was not born an Indian, we should not forget that Iron Eyes Cody raised awareness for the American Indian people and also of the importance of environmentalism (Keep America Beautiful Public Service ad campaign) in a way that no one else was able to do at that time.
Nowadays, most producers do their best to hire actors that are from American Indian descent, or at least to some degree. But the issue is still a sensitive one. There is much bickering and infighting about who should get the available roles in Hollywood A-list films.
There have been mixed reactions to Johnny Depp playing the lead role of Tonto in the upcoming Lone Ranger movie; some people insist they must know, does he have Indian blood, and is it enough? The beautiful Q'Orianka Kilcher landed the lead role of Pocahontas in Terrence Malick's The New World, but some in the Native community were not pleased that she was of Peruvian and German descent. Rudy Youngblood, aka Gonzales, endured the same intense scrutiny when he got the lead role in Mel Gibson's film Apacalypto. But we don't hear much fuss about Jake Gyllynhall playing the Prince of Persia, Mel Gibson playing a Scot in Brave Heart or Anthony Quinn playing Zobra the Greek when In fact he was one hundred percent Mexican.
So if a Native from Canada can play an American Indian why can't a Mexican Indian get the same shot? Why do we insist on drawing lines between who is or is not allowed to play these roles according to boundaries on a map? Add to this the irony that these boundaries are for the most part established by European settlers or modern day governments, and the dispute becomes even more ridiculous.
These sorts of jealous conflicts between ethnic or national groups can happen anywhere. The city of Beijing banned the film Memoirs of a Geisha when both the Chinese and Japanese were offended by Chinese actresses playing traditional Japanese geishas. The actresses, Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi, were called traitors by both Japanese and Chinese people. I somehow think this reaction had little to do with the quality of their performances.
At some point, when the fight begins to be political and not creative, maybe we have to step back from interfering with the artists -- the writers, directors and actors -- and allow them to make their art according to their vision. After all, it's called acting for a reason. Actors are supposed to become other people in their roles.
The most important thing is that we do not let our American Indian stories become lost in the debate. If instead we concentrate our efforts on making sure these too long ignored stories make it to the screen, there will be more opportunities for great American Indian actors like Graham Greene, Wes Studi, Adam Beach, Raoul Trujillo and many more, to shine. And as audiences become more discerning about authenticity, there will naturally be more chances for young Native actors to get a foot in the door.
A great step in that direction is that today, more American Indian film makers are finding ways to tell their stories from their unique perspectives. A superb forum for these films is The American Indian Film Festival, headed by the tireless and talented Michael Smith, which has been running for almost 40 years. It's the oldest and largest festival of it's kind in the world.
Another encouraging change is that some of our greatest non-Indian film makers are giving us a more authentic look at American Indian characters. From first hand experience I know that Anthony Minghella, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Spike Jonze are a few who put a high priority on portraying American Indians with historical accuracy and as interesting people we can relate to. For weeks before filming began, Ron Howard had the leads in his film The Missing study the Chiricahua dialect of Apache language. This is the sort of character development we need to see more of.
Film and television are in the business of make believe, but at the end of the day we actors must be realistic. We only harm ourselves if we do not give credit to the producers and directors who take risks to broaden the cultural spectrum of modern film making, even if they don't always get it exactly right. And acting jobs will always be very limited, so we actors will survive only by accepting good roles when they happen to come along.
To stay in business, Hollywood must cast stars based mostly on their ability look the part, play the character, and generate box office dollars. After all, mere ancestry or DNA percentage does not always produce the best performance. But this is not all bad from the perspective of an American Indian actor. Won't so many more roles be opened up to us if we're also allowed to play other races if we can look authentic and pull it off?
Personally, it is what I bank on. I am a man of mixed blood and I have been extraordinarily blessed to be able portray many people from all over the world in my films. This is why I love what I do... I get to walk a thousand paths.
The week's news about the sexual conduct of politically powerful men gives me a queasy feeling of déjà vu.
As the French agonize over whether Dominique Strauss-Kahn's star power quashed past allegations, I can respond cynically: Yes, that probably happened. But we should not automatically assume that timelier reporting about Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexually aggressive behavior (including an alleged violent incident in 2002) would have slowed the 62-year old Socialist's march towards the French presidency.
I speak from experience.
Eight years ago I was dragged scowling and complaining into an investigation of allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger -- the leading candidate for governor of California -- had sexually harassed and molested women, including those who worked on his movies.
A team of reporters for the Los Angeles Times, where I then worked, had been pursuing the story for weeks and were about to publish a first piece. With the election days away, I was pulled in. At the time I was deep into an investigative project about a troubled Los Angeles hospital that had a history of harming or even killing its patients. Digging into The Terminator's salacious back story seemed a tawdry detour.
But the orders came from on high. They needed someone adept at persuading reluctant sources to share traumatic or humiliating experiences. So out I went crisscrossing Southern California in search of women groped by the Republican candidate for governor. Some declined to speak. Others brusquely said nothing had ever happened.
But several reluctantly began to describe behavior that appeared to cross every imaginable line. As I interviewed these women, I came to believe in the importance of the story. They were strong, professional, independent people, women like me: competent and assertive.
Their experiences with Schwarzenegger were double humiliations. First they suffered through the acts themselves: demeaning -- often public -- groping, unwanted, invasive kisses, crude, belittling comments.
Far worse, they felt forced by circumstance to let Schwarzenegger behave badly -- like an over-indulged toddler, as one woman put it. A complaint against the bigger-than-life moneymaker could tank their careers. Not a single woman felt anyone would have taken their side or chastised the star.
The abuse of power -- and the judgments underlying it -- were relevant facts for Californians preparing to cast a historic vote. (As was Hollywood's repeated willingness to look the other way, but that is another story).
So in urging women to go public with their accounts, I was arguing something I truly believed, which was that their stories would be of use to voters.
I went to the door of a woman in Orange County who supposedly had conceived a child with Schwarzenegger. She became teary-eyed the moment I identified myself as a reporter, repeatedly and emphatically denying that Schwarzenegger had fathered her son. Soon after, a British tabloid published her name and said she had a "love child" with the actor. We were never able to confirm this. (The 2003 story resurfaced this week when Schwarzenegger admitted he had fathered a child with a member of his household staff more than 10 years ago. The LA Times, which broke the story, described the mother as a staff member who recently retired. This does not appear to be the woman I interviewed, a former flight attendant on a charter plane.)
Ultimately, several women agreed to recount their experiences with Schwarzenegger, courageously diving into the maw of a nasty political campaign.
Three days before the election, Linnea Harwell, who had become the manager of an Atlanta art museum, described how Schwarzenegger regularly stripped naked in front of her on the 1988 Santa Fe, N.M. set of the movie Twins.
Once, Harwell recalled, he pulled her down on a bed while he was wearing only underwear and let her go only when someone called her on her walkie talkie. "He was laughing like it was all a big joke," she said then. "Well it wasn't. It was scary."
Unless his wife, Maria Shriver, was on the set, Harwell said, Schwarzenegger made rude comments without caring who heard. She recalled wondering, "Why does he think he could get away with it? But he could."
Carla Baron, a stand-in on the same movie set, said the actor and his buddy had sandwiched her between them, then forced his tongue down her throat. Another woman haltingly told me how Schwarzenegger pinned her against him and spanked her.
Schwarzenegger denied that the alleged events on the Twins set had occurred, but issued a general apology. "I have done things that were not right, which I thought then was playful," he said. His wife stood by him.
Election Day arrived and Schwarzenegger was elected by a wide margin. The Los Angeles Times was castigated for smearing Schwarzenegger close to the election. Ten thousand readers canceled their subscriptions. I received a string of vicious calls and emails. The women were branded as liars desperate for a share of fame.
One of the women called me in tears. I'd cajoled her into revealing her humiliations -- and here was yet another. The voters, like Hollywood, ignored the star's troubling behavior. I was devastated and angry, too -- and guilty for wasting their courage.
If the press had simply investigated and reported on the past allegations against Strauss-Kahn, would it have mattered?
Or did it take an arrest to change the course of French politics?
Sigh. I could tell from last week's promos that this episode was going to be depressing. It's even titled "Couples Therapy," and it's all about people fighting over things only tangentially related to their future offspring. Which isn't anything that hasn't happened before on this show, but gah. I want to watch rich pregnant women with outlandish, narcissistic demands, not marital woes. Give me someone who wants to fit her baby boy with a toupee because she hates baldness. Give me someone who wants a life-sized bronze sculpture made of her 38-week uterus. Give me someone so vain that she wants to bleach her linea negra. I don't care, Pope, just give me someone with superficial problems. I don't want to see real pain. If I wanted to see that I'd be watching 16 and Pregnant, or that horrific Biography series, I Survived (Have you seen that show? It's like MTV True Life: Saw. Someone actually had a knife hammered into her head.)
Anyway.
Rosie's first clients this week are Diana, a southern blond, and Ashley, an Englishman, who live in a two-bedroom on the Upper West Side with their daughter, Khloe (what hath the Kardashians wrought?!?) Diana is convinced that they need to move into a bigger apartment; Ashley wants to stay put. Somehow this debate fills 20 minutes of airtime. Since securing a new residence does not fall under the Pope purview, Rosie hires a real estate agent (I swear, instead of "maternity guru," she should just call herself "expensive yet useless third party." I'm waiting -- WAITING -- for the episode in which a pregnant homemaker wants to have a water birth but can't because her bathtub drain is clogged, necessitating a Pope-approved plumber). She also brings in an interior decorator who says he can transform Khloe's room to accommodate the new baby while still maintaining each child's individuality. The big suspense is supposed to be who will win out -- space-hungry Diana (haha, that just made me picture her floating around in space, eating asteroids like Pac-Man!) or stay-put Ashley, and because I hate spoilers I won't ruin it for you.
KIDDING! Who cares? It's Ashley. ("We Brits tend to win," Rosie says. "Except for that big war we lost.") Diana is pissed, but I bet she gets a five-figure push present. The interior designer covers the girls' bedroom in pink and purple (seriously, it looks like Abby Cadabby was on a suicide bomb mission in there), which, I guess, counts as distinguishing their personalities. The new kid is named Magnolia, by the way, Lola for short, even though that makes no sense. Shouldn't it be like, Nola? Or Magno? Eh. Moving on.
The second couple of the week, Rebecca and Patrick, are the real downers. Rebecca is a former opera singer (now, presumably, stay-at-home mom) who qualifies as a "cougar" at 32 because her husband, Patrick is only 24. Rebecca has a daughter from a previous relationship, a one year-old son with Patrick, and another on the way. She's freaking out because Patrick, a nutritionist, is never home and never helps and never listens. Patrick is freaking out because his cougar wife yells at him all the time. (He even gained 80 pounds from stress! But then lost it, because no one wants a fat nutritionist.) Basically they are fighting constantly, and Patrick wants to go to marriage counseling. But Rebecca wants to go on Bravo. Guess who won?
Rosie does her due diligence as the expensive yet useless third party she is and brings in a therapist, "Dr. Debbie." (I don't know about you, but I would not trust a one-named therapist unless she was practicing on Sesame Street. Well, unless it was Dr. Cher. Then maybe.) Dr. Debbie wisely notes that Rebecca doesn't let Patrick get a word in edgewise, while Patrick doesn't really listen to Rebecca. "I just feel like she doesn't love me all the time," Patrick finally sighs, staring down at his guns. And look, I feel for them, but this is like the opposite of naked horseback posing.
The good news is that after one therapy session, they are cured! Rosie takes Rebecca to sing some opera and makes Patrick do jump squats in Central Park, and they all lived happily ever after.
Also, the Pope is pregnant! It's a miracle! To celebrate I have compiled my most favorite shots of Rosie listening to Hannah on speakerphone in her Town Car. You are welcome.
Next week: A high-maintenance mom-to-be puts potential nannies through a bootcamp (now that's more like it), and Rosie coaches a terrified stay-at-home dad.
There is, perhaps, no filmmaker in history as beloved and despised as George Lucas. Beloved for the original Star Wars trilogy, which introduced the world to a mythological sci-fi fantasy space fable so mind-blowing, powerful, archetypal and universal that it spawned what is essentially a religion, with tens, if not hundreds, of millions of devoted followers around the world. And, of course despised for, as some indelicately put it, "raping their childhoods," first by literally rewriting history with the "special editions" of the original trilogy, then with the truly putrid prequels that created a crisis of faith that makes the Catholic Church's pedophilia scandal look like nitpicking over an awkwardly long hug.
So, for those of you who feel betrayed, disappointed, infuriated or traumatized by George Lucas, there's finally a movie for you, the fascinating, excellent documentary The People vs. George Lucas, which not only details the crimes Lucas has committed against his fans, but goes much deeper, examining the Star Wars phenomenon, the man who created it, its fans and the very idea of culture itself. Watch the trailer for The People vs. George Lucas below.
The film starts with Lucas' childhood, growing up in Modesto, California, getting in trouble and working on cars until he discovered film. But with his first two features, American Graffiti and THX 1138, studio interference was so invasive and onerous that it scarred him, which might explain why his next film was about a tiny band of freedom fighters battling an oppressive evil empire.
Of course, that next movie revolutionized filmmaking and became the biggest thing ever, and The People vs. George Lucas examines the phenomenon that followed, with fans around the world testifying to how seeing Star Wars changed their lives forever. Not only did fans attempt to relive the magic of the films through an endless array of Star Wars merchandise, but they did something unusual -- they began recreating, expanding and riffing on the trilogy with thousands of reenactments, spoofs, parodies, plays, art, websites and fan fiction to keep the story alive, with the film showing clips of some of the most interesting ones.
Naturally, the film relives the painful experiences freshest in our minds -- the excitement of the news that the original trilogy would be reissued, followed by the shock and disappointment at pointless and silly new scenes, the controversy over Greedo shooting first, and the defanging of the trilogy to supposedly make it safer for kids.
Then, of course came The Phantom Menace, where faith in Lucas was restored by the trailer, then dashed in the most brutal, heartbreaking way that can be summed up in five devastating words: midichlorians and Jar Jar Binks. And let us never speak of them again.
Along with commentary by a wide range of authors, critics, experts, bloggers and superfans, The People vs. George Lucas also includes the producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, the man who played Darth Vader and archival interviews of Francis Ford Coppola and Lucas himself. What's so compelling is the passion, eloquence, emotion and intelligence with which all the subjects talk about the Star Wars universe, which means so much to them, and the film never for a second makes fun of even the most extreme fans.
What emerges is a portrait of a man as contradictory as the two trilogies he created, deserving of both sympathy and scorn. An anti-corporate rebel who became the head of a multi-billion-dollar corporate empire. A creative genius who became enslaved by his greatest creation. A man who testified before Congress, condemning the colorization of black and white films, then later went back to alter his masterpieces. Someone who gave his fans the greatest gift imaginable, then took a dump on their faces.
At the heart of The People vs. George Lucas are complicated questions about art, artists and culture. Shouldn't an artist do the works he wants, regardless of what his fans demand? Is the artist the owner of his work, free to change or destroy it as he pleases, or does it belong to the culture that embraces it? For all its criticism, this film is a love letter to Lucas from fans desperate to forgive him despite what he's put them through, that I enjoyed immensely. Perhaps the only drawback (if you can call it that) is that the film rightfully assumes that those viewing it already know a lot about the Star Wars films -- if you don't, the film might not mean much to you.
And to answer the question "Did George Lucas rape my childhood?", I think my comedian friend Paul Jay put it best when he said, "George Lucas didn't rape your childhood. He just jerked off and made your childhood watch."
The People vs. George Lucas is currently playing at the Nuart Theatre in Santa Monica, CA. To find out if The People vs. George Lucas will be playing near you, visit the official website.
For more ReThink Reviews, visit ReThinkReviews.net. To subscribe to ReThink Reviews on YouTube, go here. To follow ReThink Reviews on Facebook, go here.
Ameneh Bahrami was 23 years old when an inhumane and possessive man destroyed her life. Having had his marriage proposal rejected by her, Majid Movahedi decided it was his right to pour a bucketful of sulfuric acid on her face as she was crossing a street in Tehran in 2004.
Since that incident which has left her disfigured and completely blind, Bahrami has felt it was her right to seek retaliation for the crime against her. In the last seven years, following trials and appeals interspersed with tens of surgeries to restore her face and vision (unsuccessful), Bahrami was finally granted a decision of qisas.
In Iran's legal system, there is a kind of justice called qisas -- blood money, or retaliatory punishment, that pre-dates Islam (it can be found in the Old Testament of the Bible). It's more commonly understood as "an eye for an eye" -- punishment that equals the crime, so to speak.
Qisas has two basic components: the victim can either forgive the assailant (or in the case of a murder, the victim's family can be the forgivers) and therefore be compensated financially, or a punishment that fits the crime can be administered, i.e. capital punishment for murder.
Bahrami, in a move that she hoped would draw attention to the gravity of the crime, opted for punishment. Her attacker had blinded her, so she decided it would only be fair to blind him back, thus ensuring that he not only receive the same treatment she received (minus the total disfiguration of the face, years of surgery, and indescribable pain), but that he would truly understand the depth of her suffering.
She was granted her wish and Movahedi was to be sedated in a Tehran hospital and administered 20 drops of acid in each of his eyes -- by Bahrami herself. But the punishment, which was to happen this week, was postponed at the eleventh hour, perhaps due to international outcry, or perhaps due to domestic controversy -- Iranians themselves are divided in their views on the matter.
Bahrami and the Iranian legal system are being portrayed by some as barbarians for allowing what is perceived to be archaic and cruel punishment (even though in the United States, Israel, China and elsewhere, retaliatory punishment also exists and is practiced in the form of capital punishment) but no one doubts Bahrami's reasons for wanting it.
What some people doubt is whether qisas is effective in achieving more than the satisfaction of revenge: justice and the prevention of crime. The public prosecutor who defended Bahrami's wish for the punishment said that his hope was that it would deter such crimes in the future.
But can crimes be deterred through punishment when a society itself pays so little attention to the suffering of the victim?
While Movahedi has been vilified in many segments of Iranian society, it is well known that in countries with trends of acid attacks -- such as India and Pakistan -- the commonality of the crime has rendered it ordinary and therefore often ignored. Not only are a tiny percentage of the attacks reported, but a minuscule percentage of those reported are prosecuted, and an even less detectable figure of those prosecuted actually involve any kind of punishment.
The deeper problem, then, is not only that these attackers are not made answerable for their crimes but also that they are too often accepted back in their societies when news of their crime is made known.
Some experts argue that the most effective deterrent against crimes -- especially violent crimes -- is the engendering of a culture of intolerance for them. For instance, if an acid attacker knew that he would be shunned by his society for such a crime, perhaps he would be less likely to do it.
With acid attacks in particular, this kind of reasoning makes some sense. Most of these crimes occur within the context of pride and honor so the prospect of societal rejection and dishonor would presumably be more of a deterrent than the mere personal affront of unrequited love.
Ultimately, however, debates of qisas and the controversy surrounding Bahrami's wishes are really discussions of how far the law will allow a victim to go in determining her own justice. While it's easy to judge from a distance, only a victim can know what could possibly satisfy her need for justice following a life-altering crime. Just ask any member of the staff of Depilex beauty salon in Lahore, Pakistan -- the salon is renowned for being staffed by young women who are victims of acid attacks.
It is human nature to contemplate retaliatory justice -- Hollywood has banked trillions on the notion. But laws exist in order to siphon that instinct into something that is just and deters crime. The slow fix to problems of crimes such as acid attacks is to gradually -- through laws, law enforcement, and education -- change the attitudes in societies where these crimes have become so common as to be ignored.
The quick fix, as it has always been, is an eye for an eye. Mahatma Gandhi once famously said that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" -- and he was right, of course, but he had never been the victim of an acid attack.
Multiple news organizations are reporting that Saif al-Adel, a former Egyptian special forces officer with years of operational experience in al Qaeda, has been named acting leader of the organization in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden's death. The choice of al-Adel, and the unclear status of Ayman al-Zawahiri, offer some insights into the current state of the organization and the challenges it faces in a post-bin Laden world.
The key takeaways for me are first, that the Egyptians still have a considerable degree of influence within the organization during a period of disarray. It is worth keeping in mind that bin Laden's longtime deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri is also Egyptian, and a good part of al Qaeda's early membership came from al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad group. The two organizations formally merged in June of 2001.
Second, while this may be a short-term solution for them, the fact is no one will be able to fill bin Laden's very large shoes as a leader and public figure. There are questions within the organization about the political viability of al-Zawahiri, his presumed successor. Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the London School of Economics, told the Washington Post, "There is no one else who has his weight or intellect. He is a giant among the remaining figures in al-Qaeda. But there is no doubt Ayman al-Zawahiri has been a divisive figure."
Third, while bin Laden can still inspire them posthumously and serve as a propaganda figure, the key question now will be whether al-Adel, al-Zawahiri or someone else can hold all of these different organizations together under the al Qaeda umbrella or if some will split off and focus their energies on their regional political and sectarian issues. Secession by some of the local franchises or affiliates from the main al Qaeda organization should be considered as a real possibility in the weeks and months ahead, especially if internal political disagreements can't be sorted out.
Fourth, as Peter Bergen points out, al-Adel and al-Zawahiri are going to have to deal with the fallout of the massive intelligence breach to the organization. They have to assume that the organization's most sensitive secrets have been compromised or eventually will be as U.S. intelligence officials go through the treasure trove of information recovered during the bin Laden operation. This may force them into several courses of action, including -- but not limited to -- jumping the gun on operations before they are fully ready to be carried out, or aborting planned operations because the operational security and secrecy of the plan might be compromised.
The death of bin Laden doesn't automatically mean the death of the organization he created or the ideology he inspired. Georgetown's Security Studies Program director Bruce Hoffman points out historical examples where the decapitation of terrorist organizations have not meant the end of the campaigns. Full disclosure: I am currently a graduate student in the SSP, although not in any of Hoffman's classes. But bin Laden's successors will clearly have their work cut out for them in keeping the organization as a viable force to attack the United States and its allies.
Al Qaeda's biggest problem may be in the inherent nature of the organization itself -- it has no political means of achieving its objectives, only by means of asymmetric warfare. Simply put, al Qaeda can only exist and function as a terrorist organization. As my former professor Paul Pillar said, it has no equivalent of Sinn Fein to pursue a political agenda and won't sit down at a negotiating table with domestic or international leaders. It can't be held accountable for delivering results by a political base of constituents, as Hezbollah or Hamas are. After the revolutions of the Arab Spring which forced regime changes or political reforms, al Qaeda and its ilk may simply be less appealing to people as an option when they see political objectives can be achieved by other means.
The worst thing that could happen to al Qaeda or any group like it is to become irrelevant, and that is precisely what al-Adel and al-Zawahiri have to deal with right now if they want the organization as it existed before bin Laden's death to survive.
A quiet city in the north of Afghanistan ignited today after yet another NATO night raid reportedly tore another family apart. Thousands of people took to the streets, again chanting, "Death to America!" as they pelted Karzai's billboards with mud and stones. They attacked police. They attacked the local NATO outpost. At least a dozen people were killed in the clash, which showed local rage directed at every level of the U.S.-led counterinsurgency strategy, from the local security forces, to our corrupt and feckless local "partners" in the Karzai government, to the U.S. itself.
Worse, this isn't the only civilian killing by NATO forces even just this week. On May 16, Reuters reported:
"Foreign troops killed an Afghan child and wounded four others when responding to insurgent fire in volatile eastern Kunar province, the provincial Governor said on Monday, the third accidental killing of young civilians in less than a week."
These deaths were senseless enough before Bin Laden was killed and al Qaeda driven from the country. Now, they're downright obscene. With the last rational-sounding excuse for continuing the war, bringing Bin Laden to "justice," gone, continuing this counterinsurgency campaign makes no sense, and it's making Americans and Afghans less safe while wasting precious national resources. If you agree, please join Rethink Afghanistan in calling for an end to the war in the wake of Bin Laden's death.
The uprising in Taloqan triggered by NATO's killing of civilians is a microcosm of a larger dynamic playing out across the country. When one honestly looks at the data, the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan has been, at best, a miserable failure in its stated goal of "protecting the population," or worse, a key driver in an ever-increasing cycle of violence and instability that puts civilians at risk.
Rising Violence in the Shadow of Escalation
Despite an escalation launched under the pretext of "reversing Taliban momentum" and "protecting the population," attacks launched by insurgents and civilian casualties continue to rise. U.S. military leaders expect those numbers to continue to worsen over this summer. This is a strategy, remember, that Admiral Mike Mullen said, "must -- and will -- improve security for the Afghan people and limit both future civilian and military casualties."
Both civilian and military casualties have increased sharply following the escalation, by the way.
A new report published by the Minority Rights Group International shows the price paid by Afghans for the U.S. catastrophic pursuit of escalated military action as a solution to the Afghanistan crisis. MRG says that Afghanistan's population has seen a bigger spike in risk for mass killings than any other country on the planet this year. The military-first strategy for resolving the Afghanistan conflict hasn't made Afghans safer, at best. At worst, it raised the temperature of the conflict to a boil.
We sold the Afghans a bill of goods--that a huge influx of military forces was what was needed to protect them. As Rethink Afghanistan warned at the time, there was no way an escalation was ever going to mean more safety for people caught in the crossfire. Combine that false promise with the U.S.'s continued backing of deeply corrupt thugs in Kabul, and it's easy to understand why the Afghans are angry. The longer this dynamic persists, the less safe Americans become.
Meanwhile, special forces night raids continue all over the country, generating rage, humiliation, and needless death, at the cost of more than $2 billion a week and senseless military and civilian casualties.
The uprising in Taloqan wasn't the first, and unless the U.S. begins a serious drawdown of forces and ends these night raids, it won't be the last.
In my conversations about education reform around the country, I'm often asked how I think we can get teachers unions to embrace the changes necessary to improve our schools. My answer has been surprising to some, but this is how I see it: I don't think convincing the teachers unions to do what we want them to do should be our focus. Of course, I'd love it if union leaders would call for the kind of policies I'm advocating for, such as tenure reform and ending seniority-based layoffs, but I don't expect them to do that.
The job of a teachers union is to protect the pay and privileges of its members. They are doing exactly what's expected of them. The problem, though, is that the unions have such an excessive influence over our schools. In contrast, the voices of kids and families are sometimes barely audible. Think about it -- a lot of the policies and practices that govern our educational system are there because teachers unions secured them to benefit the adults in our school system, not the kids. I believe there has to be another voice advocating just as hard for the rights and needs of children.
I recently shared my views on this topic with the former head of the Washington Teachers Union, George Parker, and the conversation that followed was interesting. George said he thought the unions had to become more reform-minded. He said it was in their interest to embrace changes that would lead to better student outcomes, not just those that shore up teacher rights. He even said teachers and their unions have to do much more to weed out those among them who aren't doing their jobs well. "Huh," I thought. "That doesn't sound like the standard union line."
As I thought about what George said, I still wasn't convinced union leaders would shift their views, but I was intrigued. I wanted to hear more, and I thought the topic merited a dialogue. So, I asked George if he'd consider becoming a senior fellow at StudentsFirst for a year. I was very glad when he said yes. I hope our fellows will provide us with different viewpoints and challenge our thinking on issues related to education. I know George will do that.
We clearly don't see eye-to-eye on everything. But we worked together when I was the D.C. schools chancellor and he was the head of the local teachers union, and I'm looking forward to working with him again in this new role. Together, he and I came up with a teachers' contract that dramatically changed how D.C. public schools operate. I hope, working together again, we can come up with ideas for improving how schools serve children nationally.
I don't have all the solutions for how to fix our schools, but I know that what we're doing now isn't good enough. Our students score in the middle of the pack or worse on international tests, and our minority and low-income students lag far behind their white, wealthier peers. We can and must do better. I look forward to working with George and others with diverse viewpoints as we try to tackle these problems and build the kind of educational system we want for our kids.
President Barack Obama's speech on U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa on Thursday, May 19th comes in the midst of a historic transformation in the region with broad implications for U.S.-Muslim world relations. The death of Osama bin Laden and the Arab Spring offer new challenges to the Obama administration and the EU to restore and strengthen U.S.-Muslim world relations. However, it will require an alternative framework for a failed decades-long paradigm. The challenge for American (and European) policymakers will be to move beyond equating protection of national interests with the stability and security of authoritarian regimes to a policy based on the pursuit of our national interests within America's principles of self-determination, democracy and human rights.
Much has changed since the Muslim world responded enthusiastically to Obama's election and Cairo speech. Initially, major polls, like that of Gallup, reported a significant spike in attitudes towards the U.S. However, many soon perceived a gap between Obama's vision and rhetoric vs. the administration's failure to deliver on his New Way Forward. There seemed little difference between Bush and Obama policies on closing Guantanamo and introduction of military courts, the significant increase of troops in Afghanistan, his backtracking and retreat from his firm stand on an end to illegal settlements in Palestine-Israel, and continued support for authoritarian regimes.
As a result, Obama faces a much more skeptical audience this time around that will not be easily wooed simply by better rhetoric. Credibility and respect requires fairness in policies in addition to culturally sensitive language.
Bin Laden's death symbolized the failure of al Qaeda and transnational terrorism to achieve their goals of mobilization and development of a mass movement to topple regimes and fight the Western presence and intervention. The Arab Spring signaled that failure when a diverse broad-based mass movement that did not look to bin Laden's model of violence and terrorism but rather opted for a non-violent populist uprising demanding greater democratization.
In some ways, the Arab Spring symbolizes the failure of both al Qaeda and America. Ironically, both were partially responsible/complicit in creating the conditions for Arab repression: the U.S. either by supporting unpopular authoritarian regimes and al Qaeda by providing them with the fuel to repress their populations through emergency laws and fear. As a result, Arabs looked to neither discredited parties for their freedom. Instead, for the first time in a generation, they looked inward for answers.
The Obama administration, like most experts and Arab governments, were caught off guard by the upheaval and rapid fall of regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. It initially seemed hesitant, trying to determine which way the wind was blowing, to walk both sides of street, expressing support for long time allies but concern about regime violence and human rights. Having now responded more effectively, it is challenged to more clearly and forcefully set out the principles of its policy: (1) that in the popular struggle against autocratic rulers the U.S. will always stand on the side of freedom, democracy, and human rights. Thus, the brutality not only of Bashar Asad and Muammar Gaddafi but also of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen and the Al Khalifa in Bahrain will need to unequivocally be condemned and (2) that the U.S. will respect the will of the people and not interfere in the internal affairs of newly-formed Arab democratic governments. This would include acceptance of mainstream Islamists, like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia's Ennahada, participation in elections and in government.
Resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains the more difficult and seemingly intractable issue. U.S. policymakers face newly empowered Arab publics (and elected governments) that will be more independent and critical of Israel's policies and the administration's perceived inability to stand up to the Netanyahu government. If, as the administration has indicated, it wishes to re-engage the peace process, it will have to move from a peace "process" to real and substantive action and consequences. Obama will need to return to and fulfill his promises in Cairo regarding illegal Israeli settlements. If Netanyahu remains intransigent and no progress is made by September, Obama needs to fulfill his promise by supporting the UN initiative for a Palestinian state within 1967 borders.
As Defense Secretary Robert Gates has noted, Osama bin Laden's death could be a "game-changer" in Afghanistan. President Obama should take this opportunity to meet his political promise to begin a draw down of troops in July, signaling the beginning of an American withdrawal from Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai and the Pakistan government's recent indication of a willingness to jointly work to bring a negotiated settlement through peace and reconciliation talks with the Taliban should be strongly encouraged by the administration.
President Obama cannot be expected to address all of the above issues in his speech on May 19. But he will need to effectively respond to the question: "Where will the US go from here?" by setting out a new US framework for US-Muslim world relations and announcing specific policies and actions to achieve his administration's goals.
This Friday, May 20, marks the 60th day since President Obama told Congress of his Libyan campaign. According to the War Powers Act, that declaration started a 60-day clock: If Obama fails to obtain congressional support for his decision within this time limit, he has only one option -- end American involvement within the following 30 days.
In light of this, Libya continues to discomfit the international community. No one in the West wants to be accused of shirking the responsibility to protect civilians in conflict zones -- whether the hundreds of thousands who died in Rwanda and Darfur, the millions who died in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the hundreds dying now in Ivory Coast, Yemen and Bahrain. "Not on our watch" was the cry uttered at the height of the "save Darfur" movement; the messaging on Libya summons this same noble feeling. In protecting vulnerable populaces, however, there are four lessons from Libya, which are particularly pertinent for U.S. policymakers.
The first lesson regards the seemingly mundane controls critical to our democracy. The War Powers Act of 1973, created after Vietnam to ensure checks and balances during wartime situations, limits the president's ability to commit armed forces to conditions that are not present in the case of Libya.
The president can only commit armed forces overseas after a declaration of war, after specific statutory authorization or after a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or armed forces. Even with a United Nations mandate, the president must get congressional approval before committing forces. If the United States wants to lead the world in setting the standard for good governance, getting our executive-legislative relationship right is critical.
The second lesson has to do with consistent U.S. policy throughout Middle East, Africa and Asia. Currently, there is little consistency. Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough claims, "we don't intervene based on precedent or based on a certain set of consistency guidelines but rather so that we can advance our interests [like energy security]."
From a moral perspective, we should be consistent with our involvement in light of similarly violent crackdowns in neighboring countries so that we do not send the message that America does not value equally the human rights and freedoms of people. From a strategic security perspective, consistency provides America with protection by undermining the criticism used to rally recruits in counter-U.S. efforts. An inconsistent track record -- U.S. humanitarian intervention in some cases but not others -- gives fodder to our foes.
The third lesson concerns our country's democratic convictions, which must be complemented by an unequivocal commitment to never again prop up autocrats like Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi. These conflict zones, rife with undemocratic rulers supported in the past by the United States, deserve all spectrum of democratic support going forward. Democracy takes time, can't be imposed at the point of a gun and won't manifest immediately. Quick remedies won't work, but quiet and patient support might. This means no more U.S.-backing of rulers like Libya's Col. Gaddafi, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak or Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh. Each autocrat was in power for decades, propped up by Western governments at the expense of democracy. We are now paying the price of past precedent. Without peaceful opportunities for revolution that democratic governance enables, our support for autocracies left populations with few alternatives to violent opposition.
The fourth lesson is tactical. In Libya, there were myriad less expensive efforts -- effective in preventing an onslaught on civilians demanding democracy -- that could have been taken before launching Tomahawk missiles. The fact that Western countries were still selling Col. Gaddafi weapons right up until the current conflict made the menace more unmanageable.
Short of ship-launched missile attacks on Libyan infrastructure and air strikes on Libyan troops, there were plenty of effective options for decisive humanitarian intervention we could have employed -- from jamming radio networks to asset freezes and sanctions to back-channel negotiations to a U.S. genocide-prevention unit suggested by a Brookings scholar. Turkey, for example, was in back-channel negotiations prior to the attack on Col. Gaddafi's forces, an effort apparently scuttled by France. These measures are substantially more affordable than the nearly $1 billion already spent in a mission that has no measurable goals.
The best preventative measure of all, however, is to ensure in the future that the United States is not propping up repressive regimes that foster this type of armed resistance. Taking the time to get it right is worth it. It means more people on your side, fewer lives lost and less money spent.
As we contemplate our country's course and commitment in conflict zones, let us reflect on these four lessons from Libya. They are relevant beyond North Africa and may offer criteria for cases post-Gaddafi. If we learn from these lessons, this doesn't have to happen again. Either way, we can't afford another autocrat -- neither can democracy. Rep Mike Honda (D-CA) is a Senior Democratic Whip and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus's Taskforce on Peace and Security. Follow Rep Honda on Facebook and Twitter.
President Barack Obama's Engagement with the Muslim World speech comes in the midst of a historic transformation in the Middle East. The death of Osama bin Laden and the Arab Spring offer new challenges to the Obama administration and the EU to restore and strengthen U.S.-Muslim world relations. However, it will require an alternative framework for a failed decades-long paradigm. The challenge for American (and European) policymakers will be to move beyond equating protection of national interests with the stability and security of authoritarian regimes to a policy based on the pursuit of our national interests within America's principles of self-determination, democracy and human rights.
Much has changed since the Muslim world responded enthusiastically to Obama's election and Cairo speech. Initially, major polls, like that of Gallup, reported a significant spike in attitudes towards the U.S. However, many soon perceived a gap between Obama's vision and rhetoric vs. the administration's failure to deliver on his New Way Forward. There seemed little difference between Bush and Obama policies on closing Guantanamo and introduction of military courts, the significant increase of troops in Afghanistan, his backtracking and retreat from his firm stand on an end to illegal settlements in Palestine-Israel, and continued support for authoritarian regimes.
As a result, Obama faces a much more skeptical audience this time around that will not be easily wooed simply by better rhetoric. Credibility and respect requires fairness in policies in addition to culturally sensitive language.
Bin Laden's death symbolized the failure of al Qaeda and transnational terrorism to achieve their goals of mobilization and development of a mass movement to topple regimes and fight the Western presence and intervention. The Arab Spring signaled that failure when a diverse broad-based mass movement that did not look to bin Laden's model of violence and terrorism but rather opted for a non-violent populist uprising demanding greater democratization.
In some ways, the Arab Spring symbolizes the failure of both al Qaeda and America. Ironically, both were partially responsible/complicit in creating the conditions for Arab repression: the U.S. either by supporting unpopular authoritarian regimes and al Qaeda by providing them with the fuel to repress their populations through emergency laws and fear. As a result, Arabs looked to neither discredited parties for their freedom. Instead, for the first time in a generation, they looked inward for answers.
The Obama administration, like most experts and Arab governments, were caught off guard by the upheaval and rapid fall of regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. It initially seemed hesitant, trying to determine which way the wind was blowing, to walk both sides of street, expressing support for long time allies but concern about regime violence and human rights. Having now responded more effectively, it is challenged to more clearly and forcefully set out the principles of its policy: (1) that in the popular struggle against autocratic rulers the U.S. will always stand on the side of freedom, democracy, and human rights. Thus, the brutality not only of Bashar Asad and Muammar Gaddafi but also of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen and the Al Khalifa in Bahrain will need to unequivocally be condemned and (2) that the U.S. will respect the will of the people and not interfere in the internal affairs of newly-formed Arab democratic governments. This would include acceptance of mainstream Islamists, like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia's Ennahada, participation in elections and in government.
Resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains the more difficult and seemingly intractable issue. U.S. policymakers face newly empowered Arab publics (and elected governments) that will be more independent and critical of Israel's policies and the administration's perceived inability to stand up to the Netanyahu government. If, as the administration has indicated, it wishes to re-engage the peace process, it will have to move from a peace "process" to real and substantive action and consequences. Obama will need to return to and fulfill his promises in Cairo regarding illegal Israeli settlements. If Netanyahu remains intransigent and no progress is made by September, Obama needs to fulfill his promise by supporting the UN initiative for a Palestinian state within 1967 borders.
As Defense Secretary Robert Gates has noted, Osama bin Laden's death could be a "game-changer" in Afghanistan. President Obama should take this opportunity to meet his political promise to begin a draw down of troops in July, signaling the beginning of an American withdrawal from Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai and the Pakistan government's recent indication of a willingness to jointly work to bring a negotiated settlement through peace and reconciliation talks with the Taliban should be strongly encouraged by the administration.
President Obama cannot be expected to address all of the above issues in his speech on May 19. But he will need to effectively respond to the question: "Where will the US go from here?" by setting out a new US framework for US-Muslim world relations and announcing specific policies and actions to achieve his administration's goals.
On Friday morning, I'll be taking part in that annual rite of passage -- the commencement speech. I'll be delivering mine at Sarah Lawrence, one of the great colleges in America.
My speech, of course, will be imbued with all the optimism and hope about the future that the occasion is steeped in. But, after looking at all the data, there is no question that "commencement" has taken on an ironic twist.
For many of the graduates spilling into the job market throughout the nation, there isn't going to be much to commence. Economically at least, this is an especially rough time to be graduating from college.
For starters, just getting to Graduation Day has become historically burdensome. For the first time, total outstanding student loan debt will be higher than total credit card debt -- going over $1 trillion. In 2000, the figure was under $200 billion.
In 2008, two-thirds of those getting their bachelor's degree had to go into debt to do so, compared to only half in 1993. And as of 2011, Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of the websites FinAid.org and Fastweb.com, estimates that the average graduate will enter the job market with a debt load of over $27,000.
This actually isn't all that surprising, given the skyrocketing cost of tuition, which has been going up at an annual rate of 5 percent. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, in 2008-2009, the total cost of attending college on-campus was over $18,000 for those going to a public school, and over $38,000 for those at a private school. When you consider that over the same period the median household income in the U.S. was $49,777, it's not hard to see why even a public college is out of reach for so many American families, at least without going deeply into debt.
And the job market won't be doing the Class of 2011 any favors in helping to repay that debt. According to the EPI study, the unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 in 2010 was 18.4 percent, the highest it's been since the number has been tracked, going back sixty years. From April of last year until March of this year, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates hovered around 9.7 percent. In 2007, it was just over 5 percent. And while the fact that we're still clawing our way out of a recession affects those figures, at roughly the same point in the last two recessions -- 1992 and 2003 -- the unemployment rate for new grads was 6.9 percent and 6.4 percent respectively.
As is the case with the overall unemployment rate, the jobs crisis isn't affecting all graduates equally. In 2007 the unemployment rate for recent white college grads was just over 5 percent, 6.6 percent for Hispanic grads and around 13 percent for black grads. By last year, those differences had grown alarmingly worse. For white grads, the unemployment rate went up 3.3 percent, for Hispanic grads it was up 7.2 percent, and for black graduates it was up 5.9 percent -- for a total black grad unemployment rate of a devastating 19 percent.
For those graduates who do manage to find jobs, their average salary will be $36,866. It 2009 it was $46,500. And a poll by the consulting firm Twentysomething, Inc. found that 85 percent of new graduates will end up moving back in with mom and dad. Unfortunately, given the obsessive focus on the deficit gripping Washington, an emphasis on job creation is unlikely any time soon.
At some point, we can hope, the recession is going to be over, and then all these recent graduates will get back on track, right? Actually, no. Abigail Wozniak, an economist at Notre Dame, found that the effects of graduating into an economic downturn far outlast the downturn itself -- sometimes as long as a decade. "A bad hand at the beginning of a game where everything is connected has lasting negative effects," says Wozniak.
And according to Carl Van Horn, of the Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, the effects of graduating into a recession go beyond dollars and cents. "They tend to be less risk-oriented," Van Horn said of recession-era grads. "They're risk-averse. If you can get that job in communications, then you're less likely to look over your shoulder and say maybe there's a better job down the road. You say, well, I better stick with this one."
There is, however, a silver lining to graduating in such tough economic times. Conventional wisdom says that today's graduates are going to be less likely to take chances, less likely to pass up the safe bird in the hand, but, in fact, there is now a higher premium on taking risks and following your dreams, creating your job instead of just looking for one.
The road ahead is definitely rockier than the Class of 2011 imagined it would be. But while this may be the most debt-burdened graduating class in history, it's also the most tech-savvy, the most connected, and the most engaged.
This year's graduates need to embrace this, and build on it, looking for innovative ways to do well for themselves while doing good for others. And, while they're at it, they should use these attributes to help hold our leaders accountable, and keep them from turning away from the mess they've made -- with so many missed opportunities and perverted priorities.
Sometime in the 1980s, my cousin Marc gave me a book called It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand, by Jerome Tuccille. At the time in spoke to me: an adolescent enamored by Rand's fiction and philosophy, yet ready for something more. For the author and for my cousin, the adult version of Rand's ideas could be found in the Libertarian Party.
I write "adult version," because in some sense I understood myself as having outgrown what I came to see as Rand's simplistic philosophy. In college in the late 1980s, I first turned to Libertarianism and then became a Progressive. And thus I am amazed at her continued and even revitalized place in our culture. Did we not all outgrow her? Apparently not.
Though Rand, who passed away in 1982, never quite fell from popularity, her name has been invoked with increasing frequency over the last two or three years -- both by anti-Obama protestors and cable television talking heads. About a year and a half ago, two new biographies of her came out, one of which was featured on the cover of the Book Review section of The New York Times. And now we have the recently released first part of a projected three-part film adaptation of Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. And events such as Ron Paul's declaration of his Presidential candidacy recall to me my years as a fan of Rand's.
Does Ayn Rand really have much to say to us today? As a former admirer, I can share my reflections.
Like a fair number of adolescents, I discovered The Fountainhead, a novel that swept me away, and then the massive Atlas Shrugged. Rand created powerful, strong, proud characters. No doubt her stories -- of bold and smart individualists, persevering against weaker people trying to sap their creativity -- gave hope to many young boys (and some girls) trying to assert themselves and to find certainty in an often alienating world.
And I fell for it: a simplistic, black and white view of the world, an unambiguous morality rooted in individualism. I arrived in Boston for college and looking for that next step, I reached out to actual Libertarians, members of a political group seeking a third party presence in government, in order to minimize that very government.
Within months, however, my world was thrown into chaos. This was in large part due to a seminar in Anthropology and Comparative Religion. I learned about other cultures and other ways of thinking, about language and meaning. I was thrust outside of my own narrow perspective, and suddenly I found I could no longer articulate a compelling defense of Libertarianism or Randian Objectivism. I had entered university as an Objectivist and become transformed into a Cultural Relativist.
It took a few years, but in time I abandoned that Cultural Relativism, though by no means the broad perspective it gave me. Nor did I abandon the Progressive politics, for that matter.
As for Libertarianism, I want to make clear that although I no longer espouse it, I do think it has its merits and can make an important contribution to our political culture. Libertarianism raises challenging questions about the proper role of government. I do not equate it with what I take to be the worldview of Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand's world is one without community, a place where rugged individuals achieve success all on their own. Rand is therefore blind to the societal infrastructure that makes the accumulation of wealth possible and makes a polity stable enough for an economy to function. I would suggest that the logical outcome of Rand's philosophy is a fractured world, where the wealthy pay paramilitary forces to protect them in their gated communities. It is a world not of some ideal, free market competition, but one in which the absence of regulations leads to monopolization, the further concentration of wealth, and the breakdown of consumer protections. And in that sort of world, the production of wealth becomes more difficult, even for the wealthy. As trite as the phrase has become, it does take a village. Individual success and triumph often requires individual initiative and perseverance, but it also depends upon so much else and so many other people to create and maintain the foundations of a stable society.
Rand's lone individual is an illusion that must be challenged, not only because it is a lie, but because it will never work, at least not in the long run. If Ron and Rand Paul and the like achieve their goals, we will not see renewed prosperity, but rather the fraying of our society and economy, as healthcare and then education and then even fire and police protection become privatized. The inequalities of opportunity will only grow, and the dream of American mobility, already not as realistic a dream as many people imagine, will become a genuine fantasy.
At that moment when my world shattered, it was no longer self-evident why Rand's principle of individualism was absolute, no idea in her atheistic world should compel anyone else, let alone society, to be bound by it. I think the balance is tricky and difficult -- I am by no means opposed to individual rights -- but I would argue, I have argued, that communal values also have a claim upon us, and we may indeed be responsible for one another, ideally or practically, if we wish to maintain a vibrant and prosperous society.
(Note: An earlier version of this essay previously appeared in the Rhode Island Jewish Voice & Herald.)
Confucius was born in the 6th Century B.C.E. in the small state of Lu, located in the present Shantung peninsula. He lived during the Chou Dynasty at a point when the central authority of the dynasty was being challenged by the growth of increasingly powerful states attempting to challenge the power of the central government. Confucius himself was a member of what was referred to as the ju, a class of people primarily occupied with the study of writing from the earliest generations of the Chou period, the writings that become known as the ching or Classics, numbering five or six, but accruing additional numbers with the passage of time. So Confucius was essentially a scholar of his time.
Confucius can be understood in his historic context. That context is the slow disintegration of the stability and order of the political order of his day. His focus is upon a series of writings that described the harmonious ways of the generations before him and even further in the past, a time when sages, sheng, brought their wisdom to the governing of the world. For Confucius the Classics were the documentation that when sages governed, the world was ordered. This concept of order was defined largely in terms of a moral code of humaneness, the concept of jen, goodness, exercised by the sage rulers toward their subjects and in turn became the governing principle for all people in society.
The contrast between what Confucius read of the records of the ancients and his own age was stark. As a result Confucius sought to bring the ways of the ancients to his own generation. For many years he traveled from state to state, often at great personal risk, to attempt to inculcate the teachings of moral goodness to the rulers of the various states. In this endeavor he was a remarkable failure! No ruler was interested in a teaching of moral goodness. Is it any different today? What a surprise, such rulers were only interested in strategies to guarantee their own sustaining power and authority! Finally with no measurable success, Confucius retired to his home state and gathered increasing numbers of students around him, teaching the moral principles of the ancient sages. The formal biography ends with his role as a teacher, but his influence began with his role as a teacher.
And what was the nature of these teachings? He stressed the need to learn, hsüeh, to engage in study of the Classics and the ways of the ancient sages. His hope was that through these teachings the world would be brought back to a state of harmony and order and all society would live at peace. What were the underlying features of these teaching? The focus was upon the cultivation of a moral self, self defined in terms goodness, caring, compassion, altruism and benevolence. There are many specific teachings corresponding to these various ideas but when Confucius was asked by his disciples whether there was not one principle idea running through his teaching, he answered by saying that the "single thread" of his teachings could best be described by the term shu, most frequently translated as reciprocity.
The term reciprocity is central to Confucian teachings. The Chinese character is composed of two parts: one part means "to be like," the second part means "heart" or "mind." Taken together the character means literally "like-hearted" or "like-minded," suggesting one shows care to another. It could be expressed by our word sympathy, but sympathy suggests condescension of attitude and that is not implied. Our word empathy, however, strikes at the quintessential meaning. So reciprocity is empathy. But Confucius himself goes on to define the term in a sentence sounding remarkably familiar to our Western ears: "Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you." Confucian teaching is articulated in no more basic moral axiom then this statement and it remains foundational throughout the history of the Confucian tradition.
Why does it matter who Confucius was? To answer this question we need to understand that in the centuries following Confucus' death, his teaching rose to a position of greater and greater prominence in two spheres. Confucian teachings became the official ideology of the Chinese state, a position it held with virtually no break until into the 20th century. On the individual level, Confucian teachings became the central focus of individual learning and moral cultivation, the goal to become a moral person modeled upon the sages of antiquity. And this aspect of Confucian teachings lasted not only into the 20th century but to our own day and presumably into the future. Historically we also witness the spread of Confucian teaching at both levels from China to both Korea and Japan and into South East Asia as well. The entire East Asian and South East Asia spheres have been dominated by Confucian values through out their history. To understand the thought and values of East and South East Asia, particularly in our own day, we simply must understand the teachings of this man Confucius.
But it goes further: to understand why Confucian teachings addressed not only the ideology of the state, but found their true focus upon the learning of the self to create a moral self, we must understand this man Confucius. Why? Is it important to create a moral self in a world not unlike the chaos of the world Confucius himself faced? Are we so very different? Have we travelled so very far from that fundamental necessity of finding the single thread of reciprocity and living by its virtue? Perhaps we all need to return to the simple teachings of Confucius to reacquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of living as a moral person and thereby creating a moral world. The message of Confucius is nothing more than the call to each person to fulfill his or her capacity of goodness, jen, and thereby, one by one, transform the world from what it is, to what can be and ought to be.
The health insurance industry's mouthpiece doesn't want the rest of us to know what Wall Street knows well -- the record-breaking profits of the health insurance companies are, in fact, excessive.
In response to astonishingly high first-quarter profit reports from health insurance companies, the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), claims it is among the least profitable health care industries. AHIP says the health insurance industry profit margin is only 4.4%, and that this "low margin" represents less than one penny out of every dollar spent on all health care in the U.S. These are simplistic and misleading statistics.
Last week the New York Times reported that the health insurance industry is enjoying record earnings while millions of Americans get less medical care. Wall Street investors are delighted with the industry's profits, and to health insurance executives, that's all that counts. Insurance CEOs want investors to buy their stock and keep share prices marching higher, and that's exactly what has happened. To achieve excessive profits, insurers are happy to gouge consumers and small businesses, do little to rein in medical costs and spend billions of our premium dollars on lobbying, secret political activities, bloated executive pay and stock buybacks.
AHIP's focus on profit margins is misleading and designed to protect their massive income by shifting attention away from their return on equity -- a key measure of profits as a percentage of the amount invested. That return is a phenomenal 16.1% as of today. By that measure, health insurers are ranked fourth highest of the 16 industries in the health care sector. They also deliver a higher return for investors than cellphone companies, beer companies, mortgage companies, life insurance companies, TV broadcasters, drug store companies or grocery stores.
AHIP likes to talk about how insurance profits are a small share of national health spending -- less then one penny of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. -- but that is an absurd, deceptive and self-serving statistic. Yet even their own chart of this data shows that the share of the health care economy sucked up by health insurance profits has more than tripled over the past decade.
One penny of the health care dollar is worth $347 billion over 10 years ending in 2019. That one penny would pay for more than one-third of the entire cost of the health reform program.
In response to a memo that Health Care for America Now (HCAN) sent to news outlets yesterday, AHIP attacked HCAN for pointing out the insurance industry's misleading use of statistics. Yet AHIP did not challenge the validity of HCAN's critique. That makes sense, because they are wrong on this issue.
The health insurance industry is also wrong to oppose the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by bankrolling the Republican repeal effort. The ACA expands coverage, ends the worst insurance company abuses, reduces health care costs, and reduces the federal deficit while building on the private insurance system.
The Republicans' relentless opposition to the law is a naked appeal to their extreme right-wing base and an attack on people already benefiting from it -- millions of seniors, children, young adults, families and small businesses. It's time for AHIP to turn away from Republican politics and vigorously support implementation of the law.
Osama bin Laden is dead but the Taliban is not. Despite nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan, the Taliban has still not been defeated completely. We cannot afford further losses of human life and treasure, but neither can we afford to withdraw unless America's basic security requirements are met. The most effective way to critically disable the Taliban is to drastically reduce their income and delegitimize them among local populations. What has not been achieved on the battlefield may yet be accomplished in the marketplace.
The Taliban is largely funded by the sale of opium, extortion of western contractors, and illegal taxation and intimidation of the Afghan people. Therefore, if the US buys and stockpiles the entire opium crop from local farmers in Afghanistan, our enemies will be deprived of funding and forced to turn to other, clearly criminal activities to survive, revealing themselves as lawless predators, not upholders of Islam.
This idea is not new. It has been considered since 2002 by the US, EU, and Canada, but was never acted upon because it was considered too costly and controversial. But now, with bin Laden gone and Al Qaeda severely weakened, it is time to revisit this idea.
Realistically, the Afghan economy is largely dependent on the income generated by poppy production. Given the climate, level of economic development, and market forces, opium is the ideal crop for farmers -- the only one that (without huge investments in price supports, irrigation and infrastructure) permits Afghan farmers to reliably support their families. Like farmers everywhere, Afghans decide what to plant based upon likely return. The farm gate price for opium has skyrocketed to $475 per kilogram. At this price, no other crop can compete.
Many Afghans deeply resent US efforts to curb the poppy trade because it is the only crop in current market conditions that provides a viable and dependable livelihood. When we fight the poppy trade, the Taliban grows in strength because the people turn to them for protection.
As long as the Taliban is the highest bidder for this lucrative crop, they will persist and expand. While an ongoing US purchase of the poppy crop will not entirely eliminate their funding, they will be forced to other avenues of extortion for financing. They will no longer be the protectors of Afghan families' livelihoods and supporters of the economic functioning of the state, but instead will be revealed as thugs preying on the innocent.
Purchasing the entire annual Afghan poppy crop would make us the clear allies of the local people, enabling them to support themselves with legitimate business, while depriving our enemies of billions of dollars in support and removing 90 percent of the illegal European heroin trade. The current poppy yield is down, but even if production were to rise again due to legitimization to its all-time high (8,200 tons), the cost at the current all-time high price of $475/kg would come to less than $4 billion annually -- an insignificant sum compared with our annual combat outlay of $108 billion.
The US and other nations currently license countries (such as Thailand and Australia) to produce opium poppy for medicinal purposes. These crops are sold to pharmaceutical companies to produce morphine for post-surgical and palliative care. The Afghan opium crop could be converted into medical grade morphine, stockpiled under guard in the US, and put at the disposal of an international body such as the World Health Organization, which could distribute it as needed, at little or no cost, for national emergencies and to medical providers in the developing world.
A poppy purchase program might not completely eliminate the insurgency or deprive the Taliban of all income. Some opium fields could be grown in ever more remote areas along the Pakistan frontier. But buying almost the entire opium crop would significantly cripple our enemies. It would also permit the development of a legitimate Afghan government, a necessity to maintain and protect our security interests in the region.
We are set to begin the drawdown of our troops this August. The defense department reported last week that while progress has been made by the surge, the situation is fragile and reversible. Withdrawing without disabling the Taliban would result in a failed narco-state in the hands of terrorist extremists.
Alternatively, we could save billions of dollars and untold thousands of lives, undermine a seemingly intractable enemy, and improve regional stability and our national security by simply buying the entire Afghan opium crop. It would cost no more per year than a single extra week of the combat mission. Instead of repeating the mistakes of Cold War conflicts, we should remember that era's larger lesson: if you can't outfight an opponent, outspend them.
Dr. Ruth Bettelheim currently practices as an Executive/Life Coach. Dr. James Nathan is Khaled bin Sultan Eminent Scholar, Auburn University at Montgomery
When asked by Amy Goodman which financial institutions were being held accountable for illegal practices, Nasiripour responds, "Nothing can really happen unless Justice brings charges. But the pressure is on the Department of Justice, because now we know the existence of these reports."
"Democracy Now!" describes Nasiripour's report on their website, writing:
The Huffington Post has revealed that a set of confidential federal audits accuse the nation's five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans. The audits conclude the banks cheated the government by overvaluing their losses on foreclosed homes and submitting faulty and defective documents to get federal reimbursement.
According to Nasiripour's report, the investigations examined Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial. The banks were found to be in violation of the False Claims Act.
During the interview, Nasiripour says, "Now we have these audits that are on the table and the banks know that essentially, the government's here to play ball, and they're not messing around."
You may have thought the Democrats controlled the Senate, but it became clear after Tuesday that the oil industry is calling the shots on Capitol Hill.
The oil industry got 48 Senators, including three Democrats, to continue handing over wasteful federal subsidies for oil drilling. That means a bill to end giveaways to the five largest oil companies failed to get the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. There were some hopeful signs, though. A majority of the Senate did vote to end the federal largesse, including two Republicans, Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
Still, the failure of the Senate to take this simple, common-sense step is staggering. Many Americans are paying more than $4 a gallon for gas. Our economy is still reeling from the worst recession in decades. And the federal budget is experiencing a deficit crisis of historic proportions.
Yet many lawmakers want to hand over our money to an industry in which the top five companies made $35 billion in the first quarter of this year alone. This same industry received $51 billion in federal subsidies and favorable tax treatment between 2002 and 2008, and yet still they ask for the subsidies to keep flowing.
They expect Americans to pay twice for oil profits: once at the pump and once on tax day.
The subsidies are bad enough, but the Republican leadership is also trying to hand over more federal waters to oil companies. The House recently passed a package of bills that would make offshore drilling rules weaker than they were before the BP oil disaster and mandate drilling from Maine to North Carolina, off Southern California, and in the Arctic Ocean and Bristol Bay.
The Senate is poised to consider its own version of two of these bills on Wednesday, and while the measure is unlikely to pass, far too many senators are likely to vote for it.
I got a close-up view of the oil industry's influence when I served on the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Through months of exhaustive investigation, I saw that not only did oil companies completely outgun regulators in the field -- in terms of size, manpower, technical expertise and money -- but they also overpowered them in Washington.
The commission's report concluded that past efforts to tighten safety requirements or expand federal oversight were either "overtly resisted or not supported by industry, members of Congress, and several administrations."
It's no mystery why oil companies command so much power. They provide a resource our economy depends upon, but they also spread their money around Capitol Hill.
The industry spent more than $145 million on Washington lobbying in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That doesn't include the millions of dollars the industry spent lobbying officials in Texas, Louisiana, Alaska and other states. Nor does it include the money spent on advertising designed to influence public opinion on climate change, offshore drilling, and fuel efficiency standards for cars.
The oil industry's influence on the political process is holding America hostage. Rather than giving handouts to fabulously wealthy companies that pollute our air and endanger our coastal communities, we should be investing in the clean, 21st century technologies that will save Americans money and cut down on dangerous pollution.
This fall, for instance, President Obama is slated to release draft clean car standards. If he raises them to 60 miles per gallon by 2025, we could cut driver bills at the pump in half. With gas at $4 a gallon, a car that gets 60 mpg would save the average American $513 this summer and $8,900 over the life of the vehicle.
These new standards would also reduce our nation's oil consumption by at least 38 billion gallons and cut at least 400 million metric tons of carbon pollution by the year 2030 -- the equivalent of taking over 100 coal-fired power plants off line. These are the kinds of solutions our lawmakers should be supporting.
We shouldn't be surprised that Big Oil keeps grasping for more taxpayer money and more access to the public's natural resources: they have received so much already. But we can be disgusted with the lawmakers who continue to hand it over in a time when so many American families are struggling.
This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.
The fix was in to let the Wall Street scoundrels off the hook for the enormous damage they caused in creating the Great Recession. All of the leading politicians and officials, federal and state, Republican and Democrat, were on board to complete the job of saving the banks while ignoring their victims... until last week when the attorney general of New York refused to go along.
Eric Schneiderman will probably fail, as did his predecessors in that job; the honest sheriff doesn't last long in a town that houses the Wall Street casino. But decent folks should be cheering him on. Despite a mountain of evidence of robo-signed mortgage contracts, deceitful mortgage-based securities and fraudulent foreclosures, the banks were going to be able to cut their potential losses to what was, for them, a minuscule amount.
In a deal that had the blessing of the White House and many federal regulators and state attorneys general -- a settlement probably for not much more than the $5 billion pittance the top financial institutions found acceptable -- the banks would be freed of any further claims by federal and state officials over their shady mortgage packaging and servicing practices and deceptive foreclosure proceedings.
At the same time, the SEC and other federal regulatory bodies are making sweetheart deals with the bankers to close off accountability for creating and collecting on more than a trillion dollars' worth of toxic mortgage-based securities at the heart of the nation's economic meltdown--a meltdown that has seen the national debt grow by more than 50 percent, stuck us with an unyielding 9 percent unemployment and left 50 million Americans losing their homes to foreclosure or clinging desperately to underwater mortgages. On top of which an all-time high of 44 million people are living below the official poverty line and fewer new homes were started in April than at any other time in the past half century. With housing values still in free fall, we continue to make the bankers whole.
As Gretchen Morgenson reported in the New York Times, the Justice Department division responsible for checking for fraud in the bankruptcy system has found a widespread pattern of deception by banks foreclosing homes, and she concluded: "So an authoritative source with access to a lot of data has identified industry practices as not only pernicious but also pervasive. Which makes it all the more mystifying that regulators seem eager to strike a cheap and easy settlement with the banks."
Not really surprising given both the enormous hold of Wall Street money over the two major political parties and the revolving door through which executives travel between firms like Goldman Sachs and the top positions in the U.S. Treasury Department and elsewhere in the government. The financial crisis occurred only because Republicans and Democrats passed the laws that Wall Street lobbyists wrote ending reasonable banking industry regulation installed in the 1930s in response to the Depression. And when the greed they enabled threatened the foundations of our economy, under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, it was the bankers who were assisted into lifeboats that had no room for ordinary people.
Not surprising then to find all of the power players in on the latest deals: the Obama administration that had bailed out the banks but not troubled homeowners; the regulators and Fed officials who all looked the other way when the housing bubble was inflated; and the state attorneys general who backed away from going after the perpetrators of robo-signed mortgages and other scams used to foreclose homes.
But now Schneiderman has a chance to derail the deals, given that he is supported by the state's tough 1921 Martin Act, which one of his predecessors as New York state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, had used to good advantage in exposing the financial behemoths that are so heavily based in New York. The Wall Street Journal describes the Martin Act as "one of the most potent prosecutorial tools against financial fraud" because, as opposed to federal law, it doesn't carry the more difficult standard of proving intent to defraud.
Last week, it was revealed that Schneiderman's office has demanded an accounting from Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as to the details of their past practice of securitizing those mortgage-based packages that proved so toxic. Maybe he will fail against such powerful forces, as did Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo after him, but it is a test worth watching, since no one else, from the White House on down, seems to be concerned with holding the bailed-out banks accountable for the massive pain and suffering they inflicted on the public.
About two weeks after Christians around the world celebrated the anniversary of Jesus' resurrection, this nation's most "controversial" pop star released the video to "Judas," the pseudo-religious follow-up to the anthemic "Born This Way."
In the song, Lady Gaga declares her love for Judas, the disciple who betrays Jesus in those famous, critical moments. In the video, she rides a motorcycle on Jesus' back while batting eyelids at the (clearly) more badass biker Judas.
The Catholic League's Bill Donahue, who can be counted on to take offense and cry bigotry for a whole host of reasons, had this to say about Gaga's latest tour de provocation:
In her "Judas" video, Lady Gaga plays fast and loose with Catholic iconography, and generates several untoward statements, but she typically dances on the line without going over it. Perhaps that is because the video is a mess. Incoherent, it leaves the viewer more perplexed than moved. The faux-baptismal scene is a curious inclusion, as is her apparent fondness for the Jesus character. But if anyone thinks the Catholic League is going to go ballistic over Lady Gaga's latest contribution, they haven't a clue about what really constitutes anti-Catholicism.
You've got to wonder what's going on when the Catholic League's response to our edgiest pop star is essentially "Are you even trying anymore?"
Clearly offending the Catholic Church is not a required step in creating art, and Gaga is a tireless performer and creator, with collaborations with fashion houses that have certainly yielded interesting results. But the video and song plainly took aim at religion, and Gaga herself has gone so far as to describe a Messianic vision of herself -- the would-be savior of her Little Monster's right to self-expression.
So, if all we have left are shoes with penis heels and motorcycle-riding disciples, is that enough?
Our rockstars are American Idol judges; our most shocking pop culture moment of the past two years was Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift. 50 Cent and Dr. Dre are making all their money off of Vitamin Water and headphones, respectively.
Another supposedly enigmatic and hyperoffensive entertainer of the moment is Tyler Okonma, better known as Tyler, the Creator, the 20-year-old brash leader of the rap group Odd Future. Odd Future, or Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All for long, has lyrics that make the Palin-scaring Common seem like James Taylor.
Tyler's lyrics, riddled with anti-gay slurs and rape fantasies are garnering critical acclaim (and even a cautiously admiring profile in the New York Times). It's all seen as so fresh, so daring -- but is it?
If Gaga as pop's Mary Magdalene is Madonna reincarnate, why isn't Tyler as rap's impossible-to-dance-to villain just a recycling of Eminem's early work?
Indeed, the Times' had this to say about Tyler's album "Goblin": "spiteful, internal, confident, vitriolic, vividly bruised stuff, a shocking -- and shockingly good -- album that bears little resemblance to contemporary hip-hop." Couldn't this have been lifted from a review of "The Marshal Mathers LP", Eminem's wake-up call from Detroit in 2000?
Turns out, it could have been. A decade-old review of that Eminem album noted that "Kim," a song the Times describes as a "murder ballad" "follow a respected path in popular music," one that stretches from "The Banks of Ohio" to Johnny Cash's "Delia's Gone" to Nick Cave's album, itself entitled "Murder Ballads."
So 2011's rape fantasies are 2000's spouse murders. Progress.
Perhaps one of the more inventive albums of the past few years was actually Kanye's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," which lived up to its insane pre-release hype not by seeking to be controversial, but by seeking to evoke honest emotion by invoking a darkness that hasn't yet been seen on tracks that also prove to be enduring club bangers (lest we forget that "All of the Lights," despite the abundance of Rihanna-vamp in the video, is a song about a broken family).
And West did it by taking up the cause of the artist, as he saw it. The cause of himself. He's at his best when he's delving into himself for inspiration, from the passing of his mother's death to the Taylor Swift media-frenzy. If loss pervades his music (even trifling songs like "Gold Digger" are ripe with hints at disloyalty and real pain), it's because he feeds off of his own emotions, rather than creating monstrosities and complicated fantasies (despite the album's name).
Gaga's efforts in the fight against 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell" were consistent, but did she have to put on Gloria Steinem glasses to make her point? And has there been any continued pressure in the wake of repeated delays?
It's the difference between Kanye's awareness of the nature of celebrity (from the "G.O.O.D. Music Cipher: "In this game you can never win / because they love you and they hate you then they love you again") and Gaga's relentless beating of the Love-Me-for-Me drum (from her newest single, "Hair": I just wanna be myself / and I want you to love me for who I am / I just wanna be myself / and I want you to know, I am my hair"). One resonates, the other makes you wonder if she changed a few lyrics and re-released "Born This Way".
As Gaga heads down an extremely talent-laden path towards attempting to shock for shock's sake, perhaps musicians can find role models not in true-pop's saccharine Katy Perry or bad boy rappers like Odd Future but in performers like West and Adele who direct their art not at offending us, but at our core.
Being a Congressman is an incredible honor -- but I won't lie, there are some tough parts to the job. One of them is the time away from my family and the constant travel. Routine helps, and mine is mostly consistent: every week after I cast my last vote for the week, I hop a flight home to see my family in Iowa.
Typically it's uneventful, and most of the time it's pretty painless with short stopovers in Chicago, Atlanta or Detroit. But last Friday, the 13th, was very different. It wasn't quite Freaky Friday... more like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but like something out of a movie nonetheless.
Here's the real-life script, which explains why I have the best job in the world:
Friday, May 13th
1:00 pm: I cast my last vote in the House, drive to the airport and board a flight to Atlanta for a short layover on my way to the Quad City Airport in Moline.
3:00 pm: I get in to Atlanta on time, but my flight to Moline is delayed for an hour.
3:15 pm: The flight board posts another delay; this time it's three hours -- the weather is horrendous in the Midwest, the airline announcement says.
I glance over and see a young man in military fatigues wearing a Red Bulls patch -- he's got to be a soldier from the 34th Infantry Division of the Iowa National Guard. I introduce myself and meet Staff Sgt. Nathan Rose from Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, who landed from Kuwait on his way home from Afghanistan for a two-week leave to see his family. He's been trying to fly home since 9 am. All his flights are cancelled. I thank him for his sacrifice, give him my card and let him know to be in touch if I can ever help.
3:30 pm: My flight to Moline is finally officially cancelled, and there are no good options to get home. I decide to jump on the 7:30 pm flight to Chicago, rent a car and drive the three hours to Moline. I notice Sgt. Rose on the phone trying to rebook his flight. I offer him a ride home from Chicago if he wants one. He accepts. We wait to get his new boarding pass.
6:00 pm: We ride the airport train to the T terminal, walk to the gate and not surprisingly, our flight to Chicago is delayed until 8:30 pm. I inform Sgt. Rose he will be joining me at a nearby restaurant so I can buy him dinner, and there will be no negotiations on this point.
7:30 pm: We're back to the gate to find out our flight is delayed until at least 10:30 pm.
9:30 pm: I get my boarding pass and see an "UP" next to my name. With all the miles I log flying between Iowa and Washington, I've been upgraded to first class.
10:00 pm: As the first class passengers start to board, I ask Sgt. Rose if he has his boarding pass and swap his for mine saying, "They're calling your row."
He tries to hand it back to me (as I knew he would) I say, "Don't make me order you," even though he knows I can't. I know his day has been far more stressful than mine.
I take his seat in 44C -- the last row of the plane -- and spend the flight next to a very harried young mother, a baby and a little boy named Eddie whom I got to know quite well.
10:45 pm (local time): We land in Chicago and walk the 20 miles through O'Hare (if you've ever been there, you know what I'm talking about) and jump on the rental car shuttle.
11:00 pm: We arrive at the rental car counter and wait in a long line of other desperate passengers who made last-minute reservations. As I fill out the paperwork, I hear someone say "Did someone leave a black gym bag on the shuttle?" I look down and realize I don't have my black gym bag.
11:30 pm: The shuttle returns with my gym bag, and it's off to the races.
11:35 pm: Sgt. Rose and I head west toward Iowa in a steady rain. He tells me about his family and his studies at the University of Iowa when he's not deployed overseas. This is his second combat tour, and he has seen grim duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sgt. Rose tells me he has a passion for foreign policy. I tell him he should be getting graduate credit for real-world academic experience. He laughs. He knows I'm right -- just as he knows it won't happen.
I met a lot of bright, compassionate young people like Sgt. Rose on my recent trip to Afghanistan. I worry that our 10-year investment in Afghanistan does not measure up to the heroic sacrifices of Sgt. Rose and his peers.
Saturday, May 14th
2:45 am: We finally arrive at Sgt. Rose's place near Iowa City, and his last last words to me are "I don't know how I can ever repay you."
I got all the thanks I needed when Sgt. Rose walked into his home and into the arms of his girlfriend. The door shut, I turned the car around, and headed back east to Davenport.
4:00 am: After a harrowing hour-long ride to Davenport, I finally make it to my hotel room.
Sixteen hours of traveling, endless delays, torrential rains -- to most travelers, this sounds like the Trip from Hell. For me, it was a trip I'll never forget, and it will always be the best Friday the 13th of my life. Spending time with Sgt. Rose and helping him get home to see his family was worth every minute.
To Sgt. Rose, I'm probably Del Griffith -- the nosy, obnoxious shower curtain ring salesman in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. All I know is I slept soundly when my head finally hit the pillow.
And that is why I have the greatest job in the world.
Imagine being thrown in jail in the United States for over four years, not because you had violated any laws, or even because the government thought you were about to commit a crime, but because government officials believed that you may engage in criminal acts at some point in the future. This is the story of Tareq Abu Fayad, a 24-year-old Palestinian who came to the United States in 2007 on a valid immigrant visa to be reunited with his family. And Abu Fayad doesn't stand alone. He is one of an untold number of Muslim immigrants deported, detained and denied immigration benefits on the basis of religious practices and associations, political beliefs and country of origin.
Upon arrival at San Francisco International Airport, Abu Fayad was denied entry into the United States when customs agents found material, including al Jazeera news stories and a 9/11 conspiracy theory video, downloaded on his laptop. The government never claimed that Abu Fayad had taken any action toward terrorist or criminal activity, but instead argued that he shouldn't be allowed within the United States because he is "likely to engage in terrorist activity" at some point in the future. This, despite Abu Fayad's repeated denunciations of terrorism. But the government's "expert" pointed to factors like his university education in computer science and clean criminal record as what made him an "exceptionally attractive target for recruitment" by Hamas, the militant group and political party that currently governs the Gaza Strip, where Abu Fayad grew up. These factors would likely subject any young Palestinian professional from Gaza to detention and deportation when entering the United States.
The government also pointed to Abu Fayad acquiring a green card as a reason to deny him entry. A green card, the government argued, would make him all the more alluring for terrorist recruiters. Given the way Muslim religious practice and political opinions critical of U.S. foreign policy have become markers for suspicion of terrorist activity, this logic creates a dangerous precedent for denying Muslims legal immigration status.
In 1984, George Orwell had Big Brother, thoughtcrime, newspeak and memory hole. The Tom Cruise flick Minority Report had Precrime, a specialized police force that apprehended individuals before the government suspected any criminal activity. Now more than ever, with an expansive set of laws and policies encouraging mass surveillance, information- sharing and unchecked enforcement, 1984 and Minority Report are less reminders of what could be, and more markers of where we are. For Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities, the results have been devastating.
Abu Fayad is only one of many Muslim immigrants since 9/11 who have been arrested, detained, deported and denied visas, green cards and citizenship based on similarly dangerous logic, false and unsubstantiated terrorism-related allegations. Last week, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) released a Briefing Paper, entitled Under the Radar: Muslims Deported, Detained, and Denied on Unsubstantiated Terrorism Allegations, demonstrating how the U.S. government has abused the immigration legal system in a way that discriminates against Muslim immigrants and violates international human rights law.
Since 9/11, the federal government has relied heavily on immigration law and policy to prosecute the so-called "War on Terror." With fewer checks and balances, it is much easier to arrest, detain and investigate an individual under immigration law than criminal law. Unlike the criminal legal system, in immigration court, an individual is not guaranteed an attorney, a right to a speedy trial in front of a jury of his peers or the necessity to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in front of an independent judiciary.
The government continues to use subtler -- though no less abusive -- practices, drawing on the vulnerability of immigrant status in the United States. Take Zuhair Mahd, a blind adaptive technologies specialist, for example. He applied for citizenship in 2004, and successfully completed his interview shortly thereafter. But then, while his naturalization application languished for years due to the mysterious Federal Bureau of Investigation name check process, the FBI visited him on multiple occasions. The FBI interrogated Mahd about his immigration status, political views and more. They repeatedly requested that he work for the FBI as an informant. On one occasion, the FBI explicitly offered to help Mahd with his naturalization application if he agreed to cooperate. Mahd consistently refused. And in 2007, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied his naturalization application. Eventually, after five years and a pro se lawsuit, USCIS reversed its decision and in 2009 Mahd was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.
Mahd's is only one of many cases in which the FBI has tried to take advantage of the vulnerable immigration status of Muslim non-citizens to coerce them into becoming informants. This practice is particularly troubling considering how the FBI has expanded its use of informants to not only gather information on Muslim communities, but also attempt to entrap Muslims in an effort to increase terrorism convictions nationwide.
When overbroad counterterrorism policies manifest in the immigration context -- where there is a void of checks and balances and a fundamental lack of transparency -- there is all the more potential for government abuse. The overall effect of the practices identified in our Briefing Paper is that religious, cultural and political affiliations and lawful activities of Muslims are being construed as dangerous terrorism-related factors to justify detention, deportation and denial of immigration benefits. The government seems to be targeting Muslim immigrants not for any particular acts, but on the basis of unsubstantiated innuendo based largely on their religious and ethnic identities, political views, employment histories and ties to their home countries.
The practices raise serious human rights concerns. The United States is failing to uphold its international human rights obligations to guarantee the rights to due process; liberty and security of person; freedom of religion; freedom of expression and opinion; and the right to privacy and family. The past ten years have unfortunately been marked by vulnerability and discrimination against Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities in the United States. With the death of Osama bin Laden, let's hope that the United States can enter a new era where Muslim immigrants are treated with the fairness and dignity that is owed to all.
This was a first for me to not agree with my favorite journalist, Fareed Zakaria. It was the "Fareed's Take" segment on his 5/15 GPS show that was of real interest to me. I wrote a book about India, Afghanistan and, in particular, Pakistan. I had even traveled through Abbottabad, where the notorious and elusive Osama bin Laden had been tracked and killed less than two weeks before Fareed's show. In the town where Osama had been residing comfortably, I only had to be partially veiled as my two Pakistani escorts, two former military gentlemen, and I made our way north. Abbottabad had a golf course; it was considered a bit affluent by Pakistani standards, where the residents felt safe. After all, the Pakistani Military Academy was located in Abbottabad. So when I made my way through that that quiet town, grateful to no longer be traveling through the more volatile and fundamentalist tribal lands of the North West Frontier, little did I know that the most infamous terrorist, less than a mile from the Academy, would finally meet his end there years later. My trip was in 1996 and 1997, before Osama bin Laden and 2001. And now, a decade later Osama is finally dead, but the game that Pakistan plays to this day is alive and well.
Like most Arab/Asian countries with ties to terrorism, I believe, as they say, they all "play both ends against the middle," "talk out of both sides of their mouth" and yes, can quite simply be "two-faced." With some, it is survival that motivates this duplicity. For others, it is profit. Even the Saud family, the leadership that we tout most as an ally, quietly pays these extremists, in the hopes that they don't become targets themselves. Our leaders know this as do our intelligence agencies. The U.S. alone has pumped more than $15 billion into Pakistan since 9/11 and in 2009 Obama committed to another $7.5 billion for the next five years. This funding was intended to support the U.S. against the threat of militant Islamists and al-Qaeda. However, there has been little accountability by the Pakistan government for much of it.
That the Pakistani leadership, its senior generals and its military were complicit in harboring bin Laden is a given. Who knew and how high up it went, I doubt that we'll ever know. With the discovery of the world's most notorious terrorist, but more importantly, America's most wanted man found and slain right in the hub of a Pakistani military community, and not in the tribal lands where Pakistan had a legitimate argument (and used it often, I'm sure) for not being able to get to Osama before us, clearly revealed not just an incompetency, or a greed for money, but a rising arrogance and even disdain for us as a legitimate partner in any counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism efforts.
Fareed Zakaria had three suggestions for Washington, the first of which was the formation of a major national commission in Pakistan, headed by a Supreme Court justice, to investigate whether bin Laden and other al-Qaeda elders have been supported and sustained by elements of the Pakistani state. The second would be a demand that the provision of the Kerry-Lugar Bill on civilian control of the military be strictly followed. And the third would be to ask to see a plan for the Pakistani military to go after the major untouched terror networks in Pakistan.
If there was ever a time that these three demands could work, it should be now. In the spirit of the "Arab Spring" it would make sense that the Pakistanis, long oppressed by their own rulers and military, should be ready to reform. But like Afghanistan, the U.S. has been there too long, enabled and empowered too much, and now we're caught in our own need to control, and the Pakistanis are onto us. I believe with all my heart that the Pakistanis will want to be true partners someday, but not now. Not yet.
Sadly, I have no confidence that there is any Supreme Court justice that would have enough power or even the will to go against the leadership, the generals and their armies. And I can't imagine that the Pakistanis response to the Kerry-Lugar Bill for stronger civilian controls would be met with any less rancor than it had when it was initially challenged in 2009. And as for demanding a plan to go after the major untouched terror networks in Pakistan... well, sounds like the failed "Road Map" between the Israelis and the Palestinians. With all the monies we have funded into the Pakistan state through the years, the fact that there are "untouched" major terrorist networks anywhere in Pakistan tells it all.
If this startling betrayal was of any benefit beyond the obvious riddance of Osama bin Laden, it should make it clear that it's also time to change the rules of this game.
The arrogance of allowing Osama to reside anywhere in Pakistan makes it evident that we might have to reconsider the use of our very precious funds these days. That we need, and should continue, ties to Pakistan is not an question. We must, but how much?
I feel the only hope we have of breaking a habit of paying a lot for too little, basically enabling an existence that the Pakistanis will not give up easily, is to pay outright for a job well done. Instead of paying Pakistan for the intelligence we have not yet received or of the captured militant who they have yet to catch or even hold (they have quite a revolving door policy when it comes to their favorite "freedom fighters/terrorists) I wonder if some of the monies given should be withheld to pay... do I dare say, once they show us the body?
No doubt there would be a backlash for withholding funds. Much like an entitled, empowered teenager of a rich parent, we should expect to face a time of "acting out" I'm sure. I don't mean this lightly, and I would be false in not saying that the unknown of that particular tantrum is daunting. But what choice do we have? We have already set a pattern that is dangerously open-ended. We should expect, at the very least, a rash of suicide bombers on our very own soil, or pipe bombs, or even kidnappings, or worse. All are possible, but to continue in this spin, to let our fears keep us from acting with strength, will only keep us and those we enable from moving forward.
Our funding strategy needs to be re-evaluated. The idea of putting some of that money into our own home security may have merit, so at the very least we can brace for what may be inevitable, while we wait and hope that the "Arab Spring" for Central Asia is not far behind.
Osama Bin Laden's death cast the fear in our politics into stark relief. One of the weirdest cultural reactions after the announcement of his killing was how the Miley Cyrus song "Party in the U.S.A" got a renewed lease on life on Youtube. That song became the unofficial anthem marking the moment. I thought at the time that the partying was mindless cheering, a sports-like spectacle over something somber and important. Yet, while I think it's generally awful to glorify killing, even in righteousness, with some more time to reflect I've changed my mind.
For over a decade, we've been running our politics on fear so often that it's hardly noticeable. Take the debt ceiling kabuki -- catastrophic economic consequences if we don't raise the ceiling, the end of America if we don't cut entitlements. This kind of fear-mongering is exactly how the banks justify any and everything to bail them out. And it's disguising the actual problems we have as a nation, the six industries strangling our freedom: health care, banking, agribusiness, defense, energy, and telecom.
The people who made "Party in the U.S.A" a hit song, twice, are mostly kids who have known nothing but a fear-based dialogue from leaders that ignore their lives and their real problems in favor of slogans about the global war on terror. There are ten-year-olds who have never lived in an America at peace, and 18-year-old soldiers that barely remember when we weren't trying to occupy Afghanistan. This is a generation that grew up on fear, and fear is very powerful.
Neuroscientists are beginning to understand that fear puts dramatic constraints on the brain, and hinders our decision-making abilities. In one recent experiment, people were told they would be given small electric shocks after a certain amount of time. It turns out, the waiting was the worst part of the process -- the person who conducted the experiment, Gregory Berns, noted that "given a choice, almost everyone preferred to expedite the shock rather than wait for it."
Fear, more than pain, induced anxiety and sucked up energy. "When the fear system of the brain is active, exploratory activity and risk-taking are turned off," Berns said. In other words, fear causes us to stop thinking, to stop exploring, and to stop caring. We immediately move into absolute lizard-brain self-preservation kill-or-be-killed mode. Blood goes to places other than the brain, in a flight-or-flight mode. Economists are recognizing that mass fear-based decision-making can lead to downward economic spirals -- that is, for instance, the essence of bank run or a financial panic. On a political level, the fear of terrorism has been a necessary solvent in creating and enlarging our national security apparatus of spies and lies.
A fearful environment is not a good way to make decisions that make a society secure or free. With Bin Laden's killing, the leverage point of fear that our government and bankers have used to keep us passive is weaker. Of course, I think it's quite clear as Glenn Greenwald notes over and over, that fear within the populace is not the only motivating factor. It's quite profitable to run a trillion dollar war machine and black box budget operation. But the fear is fundamental to making sure that we the people give our consent.
We have faced this before. Abraham Lincoln saved a country wracked by fear and bitterness, a country that enslaved a good portion of its population. His second annual message, delivered in the midst of a bitter Civil War, has words that can carry us forward today.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
So I'm hoping that the killing of Bin Laden means that the blood will come back into our brains, and we can work on solving our real problems. It's not likely that it will happen instantly. But maybe the partying after Bin Laden's death was not so much a cheer for death, as it was a cheer for an America that is free to think, live, care, and govern itself once again.
With the solid $26.2 million opening weekend of Bridesmaids officially cementing the film as a genuine hit, let us take a moment to examine one of the more consistent bits of absurdity that has surrounded the film's release: that the film was some kind of female version of The Hangover.
Of course, any one who has seen the film knows that to be a load of crap. The Hangover is about plot, while Bridesmaids is about character. One is a genuinely funny mystery film whose greatest asset is its tightly plotted narrative that plays out like a comic version of Memento. One is a genuinely funny character piece whose greatest strength is its insights into its characters and the willingness to be uncomfortably honest with its emotions. Other than the fact that they are both technically comedies, they have absolutely nothing in common whatsoever. And while some may chalk up the comparisons as a form of sexism, that you have to find something male-oriented to compare it too in order to have it be relatable, it really is just another example of the lazy tendency to compare any film to some other popular film even when they have nothing in common other than perhaps sharing the same genre.
If you recall, there were any number of reviews/articles that compared The Adjustment Bureau to Inception. Why is that? Inception was a science-fiction story concerning a team of corporate saboteurs who enters peoples' dreams and steals their secrets. The Adjustment Bureau was a science-fiction story about man who discovers that there really is some kind of external force that controls our destinies, a force that is preventing him from being with the woman he loves. Exactly the same movie, right? Yet this picture was accused of ripping off and/or trying to cash in on the success of Inception, never minding that The Adjustment Bureau was supposed to be released BEFORE Inception but was delayed due to Matt Damon's other projects. And obviously The Mummy Returns was ripping off Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with its girl-on-girl sword fighting right? Well, you'd think so if you read any number of reviews back in May of 2001. Yet no one bothered to point out that The Mummy Returns debuted its trailer, which included that scene, in November of 2000, or at least a month before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became a mainstream phenomenon. And John Woo was obviously trying to cash in on The Matrix with Mission: Impossible 2 and its scenes of sharply-dressed dudes in shades engaging in balletic gun battles. Again, too few bothered to notice or point out that John Woo basically invented that cliche, a fact freely acknowledged by the Warshowski brothers during interviews regarding their smash science-fiction action film.
What it is an inexplicable need to tear down or simplify any work of art by comparing it to some other popular picture with a token amount of relation. Inception and The Adjustment Bureau are both science fiction films, so obviously they are EXACTLY the same and the latter is just a ripoff. And Bridesmaids has an ensemble cast of women engaging in bawdy comedic situations, so of course it's EXACTLY like The Hangover (never mind that Bridesmaids was in apparently development first). Point being, there is no need to constantly compare one movie to another just to make yourself sound superior. It doesn't make you sound anything other than arrogantly uninformed. Bridesmaids isn't The Hangover for women. It's just Bridesmaids.
Why are the United States and Europe attacking Tripoli with bombs and Damascus with words? Why are they putting so much effort into bringing down Libya's brutal tyrant and so timid in their dealings with his equally cruel Syrian counterpart?
Let's start with an explanation that is as common as it is wrong: oil. Libya has a lot more of it than Syria and therefore the real reason for the military aggression against Libya is to take over its oil fields. The problem with this view is that if the West wanted reliable access to Libyan oil, Gaddafi was a far safer bet than the chaos and uncertainty resulting from NATO's armed intervention. Western oil companies operated without any major problems with Gaddafi and it is safe to assume that from their perspective there was no need for such radical regime change.
A second common way to dismiss the question is that this is just one more instance of American hypocrisy: Washington is no stranger to double standards and contradictions in its international relations. This response, however, is not very useful as it doesn't help us to understand the causes behind these contradictions.
So, why protect the butcher of Damascus instead of giving him the same treatment as his Libyan colleague? The humanitarian reasons that justified the attack on Gaddafi are equally--if not more--valid in the case of Syria.
The genocidal brutality of the Assad family is as remarkable as the almost suicidal bravery of ordinary Syrians. For two months, they have faced tanks and bullets on the streets with no weapon other than their desire for change. Demonstrators have been massacred and tortured, their families thrown into prison, and yet they have not gone away. Even in the cities devastated by the atrocities of the army and the civilian militias (the dreaded 'Shabeeah') and declared by Damascus to be under government control, people return to the streets to protest. Only to be shot at again.
While this is happening, the reaction of the United States and Europe is--to say the least--anemic. Again: why? Here are five answers.
First: Syria's military is far stronger than Libya's. Syria has one of the largest, best equipped, and trained armed forces in the Middle East. It also has chemical and biological weapons and its paramilitary forces are among the largest in the world. In contrast, Gaddafi kept the Libyan military fragmented, ill equipped, and poorly trained.
Second: War fatigue. Libya exhausted the little appetite left in the United States to engage in wars that are not justified by clear threats to its vital interests. Syrian dissidents are suffering the consequences of the long and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the recent raid on Libya. U.S. military support for remote causes will henceforth be more limited and selective. And, as far as wars are concerned, Europe won't act without Washington. This leaves the heroic Syrian dissidents all on their own.
Third: Thorny neighbors. Libya has Egypt on one side and Tunisa on the other--the jewels of the Arab Spring. Syria borders with one of the world's most volatile mixture of countries: Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey.
Fourth: No allies. Gaddafi has no friends and even his own children wanted to marginalize him. In an unprecedented move, the Arab League supported the establishment of a strictly enforced no-fly zone in Libya. In contrast, Bashar al-Assad has powerful allies inside and outside the region--starting with Iran (and, therefore, Hezbollah and Hamas). It is not even clear if Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government would welcome a chaotic transition of power in Syria. Even Vogue magazine was smitten with this family and wrote a sycophantic article about Asma Assad, "the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies" endowed with "dark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace." It's hard to bomb someone like that.
Fifth: Who to Support? Recently, two senior White House officials told the New York Times that the government's weak response to the events in Syria is in part due to the lack of interlocutors among the opposition. They just don't know who to contact. And another senior U.S. official--who requested anonymity--told me that in his estimate the chaos and carnage following the demise of the Assad regime would be far worse than what it has been so far in any of the other Arab countries undergoing a political transition.
Maybe. But the brave Syrians who continue to take to the streets do not seem to care. They want the dictator to go. At any price.
Moisés Naím is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He tweets at @moisesnaim.
In theory, self-compassion makes good, healthy sense. Go easy on yourself, the research suggests, and you'll be happier, healthier, slimmer, too. But with America's breathless pace of living, the practice of meditating on loving-kindness has been a hard sell. In our high-speed nation, which values "doing" more than "being," exhaustion more than rest, punishing discipline more than loving-kindness, many have considered self-compassion a snooze.
Several celebrities have done their part to wake up Americans to a kinder, gentler way of life, and they've succeeded in rousing interest. Think: Oprah's endorsements of spiritually enlightened ideas a la Geneen Roth, or Julia Roberts' cinematic translation of "Eat Pray Love." Most recently, Lady Gaga, the artiste formerly known as Stefani Joanne Germanotta, took it upon herself to spread the self-compassionate word on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." Time will tell the impact of this latest wake-up call, but, in the meantime, I can tell you a thing or two about the gal behind Gaga's caring message.
In case you missed the monster musician on "Ellen," let me catch you up to speed. When America's most beloved talk-show host asked the world's biggest pop star about starting the day with self-kind thoughts, Gaga explained: "My yoga teacher Tricia always says: 'Please try every day to have 15 minutes of compassionate thoughts by yourself.' I have narrowed it down to five because 15 drives me mental. It's very helpful!"
DeGeneres shared her heart-felt support with the nouveau poster child for self-compassion: "I think if everyone did that, I think the world would be a kinder place!"
When the popular princess of pop added: "Love yourself. Love who you are," self-compassion practice catapulted from good idea to real possibility for adoring fans everywhere, as well as joke fodder for at least one late-night talk show host.
On "The Late Late Show," the incorrigibly insensitive Craig Ferguson added his two Scottish shillings: "I think Lady Gaga's right actually. I think you should probably love yourself and love who you are, but I'm incapable of that. So I'm just gonna stay hatin' myself, and be angry about it, and it feels kind of comfortable."
Jokes aside, as a psychotherapist who prescribes loving-kindness for the range of eating problems, this declaration of self-compassion not only thrilled me, it inspired me to track down the yogini who got Gaga to be nicer to herself: Tricia Donegan.
Donegan, the owner and director of New York's Bikram Yoga Lower East Side, stepped out of her hot yoga studio to answer her "celly," as she calls her cell phone, and a few questions about Gaga's five minutes of self-love. (Lady Gaga isn't the only celebrity benefitting from Donegan's love-yourself prescription. The soccer star turned Bikram inspiration has influenced Robert Downey, Jr., Chelsea Clinton and George Stephanopoulos, among other celebrities, while they were sweating it out in downward-facing dog.)
Q. What prompted you to prescribe self-compassion practice to Lady Gaga?
A. I knew her before she became Lady Gaga, and she was creative, brilliant and giving. Everything she gave out was so super-generous and clear, but then she had problems with so many people wanting to be close to her. It was hard for her to distinguish who was genuine and who was not. If she were more compassionate with herself, [I told her], everything would be clearer. If she focused more on herself, she could keep giving like she did before she was Lady Gaga.
Q. Do you prescribe self-compassion for one and all?
A. Most Americans don't have a lot of self-compassion. To be successful, to improve themselves, they try to motivate themselves with self-criticism. I don't think self-criticism is motivation for change. If it were, there wouldn't be so many yo-yo diet books out there. I think self-compassion is all the motivation you need. If you do incorporate self-compassion, eating healthy is easy. If you like yourself, you put the right things in your body, and the benefits explode from there.
Q. Isn't Bikram a kick-ass style of yoga? What's self-compassion got to do with Bikram?
A. Bikram is an extremely cardiovascular, hard-working, change-your-life work-out. I have to sneak in self-compassion, but that's fine with me. I was raised in this culture by intelligent, loving, supportive, career-oriented parents. I was raised to be super-compassionate to others, but not compassionate to myself.
Q. How do you sneak in self-compassion?
A. When you spend 90 minutes with a lot of people in room that's over 120 degrees, everyone's too hot. It doesn't matter if you're a celebrity, a marathon runner or a 250-pound woman on Food Stamps, the room levels the playing field. No matter how smart you are, how much money you make, we're all the same. You're going to become more aware of others, more aware of yourself, and eventually start to see yourself as no different from anyone else. Even if you don't know why you came in, you come out nicer.
Q. Is that how self-compassion works for you?
A. Self-compassion helps you feel more connected, less isolated, [especially when times are tough, as they were for Donegan when, six months before she opened the studio, her brother died in a car accident.] Your story is my story. We're all going to feel the same way at some point. Now that I have a three-and-a-half year-old kid, self-compassion is a huge focus. She'll find self-esteem, she'll find self-confidence, she'll do what she wants to do, but I want her to be able to leave this world a better place.
Q. Do you recommend any special self-compassion practice?
A. I try to keep it simple. Every morning when you first wake up, before you get on Facebook, sit down with a cup of hot water and lemon and think compassionate thoughts about yourself. If you get stuck on critical thoughts, repeat the last [compassionate] phrase like a mantra. Do that for five minutes, 21 days in a row.
Q. Why 21 days?
A. It's less overwhelming. When I try to change something about myself, one month is too long. But I've got five minutes. I've got 21 days. Once you get your groove on in the morning, you can do it all day long.
Q. And then what?
A. After that, it'll stick. The longer you practice, the more the rest of us will feel it. Self-compassion enables us to find generosity. It helps us give more than we think we have.
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Got five minutes? Got 21 days? You probably won't look as fabulous as Lady Gaga three weeks from now, but why not try it and see?
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Jean Fain is a Harvard Medical School-affiliated psychotherapist specializing in eating issues, and the author of "The Self-Compassion Diet." For more information, see www.jeanfain.com. Got a comment? Please post it below.
This week's Supreme Court decision in Kentucky v. King has civil-libertarians and marijuana policy reformers in an uproar, and rightly so, but it's not exactly the death of the 4th Amendment. Here's a look at how this case could impact police practices and constitutional rights.
It all started when police chased a drug suspect into a building and lost him. They smelled marijuana smoke coming from an apartment and decided to check it out, so they announced themselves and knocked loudly on the door. They heard movement inside, which the officers feared could indicate destruction of evidence, so they kicked in the door and entered the apartment. Hollis King was arrested for drugs and challenged the police entry as a violation of his 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches.
In an 8-1 decision written by Justice Alito, the Court determined that an emergency search was justified to prevent destruction of evidence, even though police created the risk of such destruction by yelling "Police!" and banging on the door. The determining factor, in the Court's view, was that police had not violated the 4th Amendment simply by knocking on the door. Since the subsequent need to prevent destruction of evidence was the result of legal conduct by the officers, the events that followed do not constitute a violation of the suspect's constitutional rights.
Naturally, any fan of the 4th Amendment can look at this scenario and wonder what's to stop police from "smelling" marijuana and "hearing" evidence being destroyed any time they have an urge to enter a particular dwelling. What does destruction of evidence sound like anyway, and what doesn't it sound like? Doesn't someone jumping up to destroy evidence sound the same as someone jumping up to answer the door before police kick it down? It's hard to argue with anyone who sees this result as a blueprint for facilitating not only widespread police actions that circumvent the warrant requirement, but also more innocent people being killed in their own homes in misunderstandings that could have been prevented by just a little patience from police.
These are very valid concerns, but it's also true that in the immediate aftermath of any unfortunate Supreme Court ruling, there's a tendency to commence eulogizing the 4th Amendment and proclaiming that our freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures has been abolished once and for all. That's not the case here any more than it was with anynumberofpreviousrulings we wish had been decided differently. It's not a fatal diagnosis; it merely sucks.
The fact that police were chasing a suspect when they entered the building and the fact that they smelled marijuana coming from the defendant's apartment and the fact that they heard suspicious noises after knocking were all factors in the legal outcome. Remove any one of these conditions and the case might have been decided differently. In other words, this Supreme Court decision does not mean police can start knocking on doors randomly and bursting in any time they hear a sound coming from inside. They must already have probable cause to believe there's a crime taking place and, fortunately, any prudent citizen can take measures to prevent their home from reeking of probable cause.
Ultimately, the lesson here is something we've been emphasizing at FlexYourRights.org for a long time now: stay calm, don't expose yourself to police attention, and know your rights in case something happens. Police often knock on doors without a warrant, so your best move is just to stay calm and make an informed decision about how to handle the situation.
If you prefer not to answer, which is your legal right, then do so by waiting silently for the officers to leave. If you choose to speak with them, stepping outside is a smart way to keep them from claiming to detect criminal evidence within your home. Unless they have a warrant, they may not search or even enter the home without your permission. Don't give it to them. Finally, understand that if the officers do have a warrant, your legal options are limited to the point that you should just focus on not getting hurt. In the event of any kind of negative outcome, remain silent and discuss your options with an attorney.
It's a shame that we even have to prepare people for situations like this in what's supposed to be a free society, but modern drug enforcement practices are so prone to error and abuse that every citizen should know how to protect their constitutional rights in an emergency situation. As the Supreme Court continues to reduce the scope of our 4th Amendment protections, understanding how to properly exercise our remaining rights becomes more important than ever before.
So, the Bag was still a cartoon when Schwarzenegger ran for Governor in a special election back in '03. Still, I think we got it about right spelling out the issues that got swept under the campaign rug.
Especially, there was that March 2001 Premiere Magazine article that circulated before the election elaborating Arnold's blatant and unselfconscious urges and his unbound sexual harassment of women. Anyone who accepted the veracity of that article would have no qualms calling Arnold a pig -- a circumstance, the write-up points out, which wasn't lost on Maria Shriver, either. And then, there was the story the LA Times broke in the closing days of the quickie-election citing 16 women, 11 identified, who accused the he-man of physical humiliation. As things played out, Schwarzenegger's PR team attacked the Times scoring sympathy points before locking down the Governorship.
Why anybody, especially the media, would even bat an eye over yesterday's disclosure of Schwarzenegger's love child and at least a ten year infidelity occurring right under the nose of his wife and his family is ludicrous. As the well known still from Pumping Iron establishes, the man's core identity was defined by the illicit.
Another Bag post taking aim at Schwarzenegger was this one in June of '04, marking the release and immediate nose dive of the remake of Around the World in Eighty Days. My take was that Arnold and Team Arnold must have felt relieved when the film, shot before his election, crashed and burned. But then, just as the media and the electorate chose to buy into Schwarzenegger's daytime role as Governor of California, I imagine the response would have been similiar if Eighty Days had been a smash hit, Arnold not having to study at all for the role of the philandering prince.
During a recent innovation class at Harvard Business School, a guest made the following statement: "Value in our society is shifting from ownership to access." This comment was made in reference to video streaming, but the discussion soon shifted to how we as a society consume today. Will the next generation no longer value ownership? Are we becoming a society of renters?
If we use digital media as a starting point, most of us would agree that our consumption behaviors have already shifted. Since 2007, when Netflix first introduced its internet streaming service, DVD sales have been steadily falling; at the same time, Netflix has more than doubled its user base to 20M subscribers. Similarly, Pandora and YouTube have made on-demand music a convenient and affordable alternative to purchasing songs, either physical or digital. Many predict that the e-book market will soon follow suit, allowing unrestrained access to, rather than outright ownership of, digital books.
Things get interesting when we start to think about non-digital consumption. Rent the Runway -- a self-proclaimed 'Netflix for dresses' -- allows women to rent a $1,000 evening gown for a night at one-tenth of the price. The company has become a household name -- sorority house, that is -- and is now moving into the bridesmaid dress market. Just this week, thredUP, a start-up that allows parents to trade their children's used clothes and toys with one another, just raised $7M in VC financing. The company will swap its millionth item this month. Examples are endless. RelayRides promotes neighbor-to-neighbor car-sharing; Chegg offers textbook rentals for students.
So what does this all mean for retailers? Are these new business models the wave of the future? My opinion is a qualified yes. From a digital media standpoint, cloud computing has blurred the line between ownership and rental. If you as a consumer can access your favorite movie at any time, do you actually care whether the file is stored on your computer or on a far-away server owned by Amazon? I believe most people do not.
The qualified part of my 'yes' comes into play for non-digital consumption. As technology advances, it becomes easier for individuals to find and connect with others who share similar interests; this paves the way for 'rental' markets, such as the ones described above. At the same time, however, there is an innate human desire to own and collect things. So where does that leave us?
If we look more closely at the type of rental markets that have been successful in recent years, we notice a similarity among them. The items that are being rented have a discrete useful life to the consumer; they are being rented for a purpose. To a certain extent, these items are commodities and have little emotional value. Contrastingly, there will likely never be a wedding ring rental market.
Perhaps the answer, then, is that consumers will continue to buy things but will be more discerning about what they choose to buy. Quality and uniqueness will be at the forefront of purchase decisions; permanent ownership will be reserved for special, intimate, or emotional products. At FashionStake, we embrace this idea by hand-selecting unique products and bringing them into our marketplace. We know first-hand the joy that comes from receiving and unwrapping a beautiful new dress you 'discovered' online. And we don't think that experience can ever be replicated in a rental transaction. Just call us old fashioned, no pun intended.
I felt guilty. I felt unnatural. I felt ashamed. Finally, I broke down and confessed my dirty little secret to a girlfriend and found that she not only knew what I was talking about, but she was doing it, too. And the more I opened up about it, the more I found that I was not alone. Women in their late 30s and 40s were all having the same affair.
With an antidepressant.
I started taking Lexapro after my anxiety attacks came back and, for all intents and purposes, practically crippled me. I've always had anxiety attacks, or panic attacks as some know them, but after years of learning how to deal with them, I thought I had them under control. While my kids were little, the anxiety attacks even subsided to the point where they hardly bothered me. But at the stroke of 40, they came back worse than ever.
I couldn't get in a car, a bus and certainly not an elevator without panic overwhelming me: a crippling, terrifying sense of dread. I couldn't draw a proper breath, my heart pounded and heat flashed through my body, making me break out in sweat. To top it off, my PMS symptoms of frustration, depression and irritability stretched two to three weeks instead of the typical one.
My doctor, fully aware of my dislike for medication of any kind (please, I had two kids all natural, I could take some pain!) suggested that I deserved a break from anxiety. Rebooting the system, he called it. He also fully supported the idea that I begin talk therapy, but in the meantime, he offered me the following analogy: you can build a house with your hands, or you could use power-tools. Either way, you're building a house, right?
I had just gotten kicked off of "Dancing with the Stars" (as the first contestant) and my ego traveled back to ninth grade, when I was the least popular kid in school and just couldn't figure out what I had done wrong to be so disliked. But I had to get over myself, quick. I had children who needed me. I had a husband who needed me. I also had my novel (that took me five years to write) to finally promote. This was no time to sink under!
I knew that unless I did something drastic (far more drastic than my new and intense exercise routine and healthy diet-plus-vitamins, but less drastic then running away from home and my life, screaming, blinded by tears and rain, down, say, Fifth Ave), I would at the very least alienate all my friends, my children and my husband.
Lexapro it was.
At first, the stuff didn't seem to work. It wasn't until a few months into treatment that I realized what had happened. My world had quieted. The constant buzz of anxiety became noticeable only by its absence. It was like spending your entire life in a room buzzing with fluorescents, and then, one day, they stop. I wasn't even quite sure what to do with this silence, how to live in it.
When I had to have a physical for insurance on "America's Next Top Model," I truthfully wrote down the only medication I took, Lexapro. Writing was admitting it, and I did so with a fair bit of trepidation. Unfortunately, this was promptly broadcast all over the "ANTM" production set. It seems I couldn't be properly insured on a TV set if I was taking an antidepressant. I had just started taking it, and this reaction was exactly what I had feared. I was judged crazy. Unstable. It was almost enough to get me to stop it before it had even had a chance to work. Fortunately, the woman in charge of all this paperwork laughed and admitted that she was also taking said medication -- weren't we all? The production could just write a waiver taking their chances with crazy ol' me. And they did.
As I got braver and dared to speak more openly about what I perceived as a terrible weakness, my girlfriends, one by one, stepped up and admitted that they were also on antidepressants. At one point, I found myself at a girls-night-out dinner and discovered all eight of us were on assorted anti-depressants! One girlfriend took it because she was depressed. One took it because she got too angry. One also suffered from anxiety attacks. The reasons were diverse, but what we had in common were our age ranges and being married with children.
This shocked me. It also got me wondering. What was going on here? Was this a sort of universal malaise that hit peri-menopausal women? Without antidepressants, would we all be quietly suffering, or exercising like maniacs, having sexual affairs, turning to alcohol or drugs? Was this the female equivalent of a male midlife crisis -- Botox and antidepressants instead of the fast car and young chick?
I spent two years with my lover Lexapro; the two most mellow years of my life. My immediate frustrations were comforted, my resentments muffled, my anxiety calmed; I was wrapped in a thick, warm comforter, insulated against the sharp pangs that came with living.
But I was also insulated against or from fun things like my creativity and sexuality. I used to joke to my friends that after 24 years with my husband, we were, sexually speaking, a finely tuned precision engine. But now it felt as though I was being touched through a barrier, or, in this instance, a thick and cumbersome rug. After a while, it seemed like being intimate was just too much work for too little pay.
And as for creativity, well, with my new sense of peace, I found I had no need to actually say anything. This, for a writer, is akin to a cook who has no appetite. Sure, it's possible to work, but the results will be uninspired at best. I no longer bothered to fight with my girlfriends, or husband; I could just shrug and walk away from situations that previously had me in endless knots analyzing and discussing. And so, for two years, I learned nothing new. I felt emotionally Botoxed. Who was I under the blankets? What did I really feel like? I began to wonder and to want me back, even at the steep price of misery.
I decided that this affair had all the drawbacks of an affair: the sexual distancing from my husband, the guilt, the lies; and the benefit -- silence from the fluorescents -- didn't seem worth the price.
The weaning was predictably unpleasant, three weeks of being tired and shaky from wrangling with awful dreams. And then anxiety came creeping back: the clamminess, the suddenly speeding heart, the heat flashes, the disorientation. But this time, I also became aware of something I may have previously neglected under the loud hum of anxiety, or failed to identify, or perhaps simply didn't have: depression. It could have been circumstantial: after all, with my career at crossroads, my children no longer needing me every minute and my face and body beginning to cave under the demands of gravity, I had something to be a little down about.
I upped my exercise routine to every day. I could finally understand the drug addicts who had cleaned up but wrestled with the urge to use every day. With the drug, I didn't feel like me, but without it, I also didn't feel like me -- at least not the me I remembered, the one I wanted to be. My kids got to know a whole other side of mommy: an irrational, frustrated, weepy woman who had previously been tightly leashed and only let out when I was alone. I felt sorry for myself and then terribly guilty because I had absolutely no right to feel sorry for myself. The world seemed to be too heavy to carry by myself, but I could not ask for help, because I had never needed help before and didn't know how to ask. There were moments of sunshine, though. And I could feel its warmth and take pleasure in it rather than just noticing it.
The years since have been categorized by a fair deal of misery and soul-searching -- but also learning. I am on some sort of an accelerated life comprehension program I didn't sign up for, but nevertheless must process. This got me thinking: could it be possible that these feelings are growing pains? Perhaps they are necessary to cross to the other side where peace and confidence of age will finally triumph. After all, it's not only teenagers who have to adjust to changing hormones, and most of us can still remember the misery.
And I'm starting to wonder whether antidepressants can often be the emotional equivalent of plastic surgery. With them, we can stave off the anguish of change; we can take breaks from the afflictions of living. But is it also possible that through the serendipitous use of these brand new staver-'off'ers, we will ultimately pay a price: the price of going through life anesthetized and smooth with all the self-awareness of a slug?
I will never cease to be grateful to live in a time where knowledge has made it possible for people to no longer suffer. But would that knowledge exist without a little suffering? I'm certainly not an anti-medicine crusader, in most cases modern medicine saves lives. There must be a large percentage of people for whom an antidepressant makes the difference between life and death, or at the very least, the difference between a life worth living and a life to be endured.
But I also think that those who try to take the shortcuts -- the pill to lose weight, the pill to be happy, the pill to be smart, to sleep, to be awake, are just running up their tab. And there may not be a pill when you're presented with the bill. Which you will. (Sorry for the trite rhyming, I couldn't resist.)
My affair with an anti-depressant reinforced what I already knew: I'm not one for affairs. I'd rather fight tooth and nail to keep and restore what I have than take a break from it. But that is so much easier said and done with a Klonopin in my pocket.
Newt Gingrich is a star on political television, a status that was supposed to help his underdog presidential campaign. It's not working out that way.
That's because a new model of video consumption has fundamentally changed the payoff of political TV, as Gingrich learned this Sunday. And the very qualities that make Gingrich a popular pundit also make him a lousy candidate.
Gingrich is still "made for TV"—but in an Internet-driven, parody-refracted 24-hour multi-platform news cycle, Gingrich is the kind of pol who is made only for TV. His pundit pronouncements don't play as well in person (more on that in a moment), or when stacked against their contradictory predecessors by his online detractors, his cable colleagues, or by Fox News' reality overlords at Comedy Central.
The policy scandal currently dominating Gingrich's first week on the trail, which already led Fox News' Charles Krauthammer to declare the end of his former colleague's campaign, started on the set of the most important show in politics, "Meet The Press." Gingrich opposed Paul Ryan's budget as too radical. And he criticized its Medicare substitute as "right-wing social engineering." Conservatives flipped and now Gingrich is backpedaling.
But this is what Gingrich always does—and it's what makes him an "interesting," attention-grabbing pundit. He is a chatty celebrity chef. On Fox, he grills red meat (Obama is the "most radical" president, the "food stamp" president, the "Kenyan, anti-colonial" president), but on mainstream shows, he is quick to cleanse the palate with an even-handed amuse bouche ("I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering"). It's a shtick, and it's been Gingrich's default operation for so long, I doubt he even realizes it.
Now, some analysts were surprised that Gingrich would provoke both his base and GOP leadership in a throwaway line. He probably did not even realize, however, what was going down. After all, pundits are rewarded for challenging their party, and they are rarely held accountable for rank inconsistency. So while nobody really cared that Pundit Gingrich had already said he would vote for Ryan's plan, making him a cynical hypocrite or a waffly mind-changer, Candidate Gingrich is catching hell for saying "sure," he would vote for Ryan's plan. (The one with the social engineering.) And while pundits' track records are largely ignored by the press and public, candidates must actually listen to that huge, invisible audience on the other end of the studio cameras. Which is what makes these 16 seconds some of the most devastating pushback of the 2012 campaign season—and probably the first big citzen advocacy moment of the campaign. This Iowa voter's simple message was recorded, naturally, by pool cameras from Fox News, and is now being amplified across the Internet:
The Iowan, a Republican named Russell Fuhrman, apparently cares about the Ryan budget, and doesn't like GOP infighting. Gingrich looks like he wants out and the handshake hold is the only thing keeping him there. It's the kind of moment that can define a candidate, especially when it goes viral.
The clip was first posted by the Des Moines Register, which reported that Candidate Gingrich was "visibly stunned" by the confrontation, and is lighting up the web. It captures the core of Gingrich's vulnerability—a dated celebrity who is out of touch with his party today—and rests on a policy debate that actually matters (whether to gut Medicare for fiscal savings). The conservative blog Hot Air noted the "merriment with which" people were sharing the video online, suggesting Gingrich "is now officially RINO-in-chief for online conservatives for as long as he’s in the race." Gingrich's hasty YouTube rebuttal is no match for the unscripted chiding he got at the Dubuque Holiday Inn.
In the old days, raising big money and netting an early appearance on shows like "Meet The Press" would mint first tier candidates. Now, the soundbites that emerge from such shows can matter more than the entire appearance. And while TV reporters still give extra attention to candidates made in their image, it is easier to go from politician to pundit than the other way around. Just ask Mike Huckabee. Or Pat Buchanan. Or Sarah Palin. Or, you know, wait a few months and ask Newt Gingrich.
As the campaign to legalize same-sex civil marriage gains momentum across the country, opponents are employing new tactics to defend the status quo. Chief among those is the claim that legalizing same-sex marriage will infringe on the religious freedom of those who oppose the practice on theological grounds.
As a both a devout Catholic and a supporter of marriage equality, I would like to believe that the rights of my more conservative co-religionists and my lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender friends can be reconciled through careful legislative draftsmanship. However, the bishops of my church and their allies have demonstrated no interest in reconciliation. Rather, they have taken an uncompromising stand based on principles that they readily ignore at other times, and blurred the distinction between freedom and entitlement in troubling ways.
To be taken seriously, appeals to religious freedom must be rooted in consistent teaching and practice. The arguments advanced by opponents of marriage equality do not meet this standard.The Catholic Church, for instance, recognizes only marriages conducted under its own auspices. It does not recognize marriage after divorce, unless the partner seeking to remarry has obtained an annulment. By Catholic standards, then, most of the marriages in this country are null and void.
Yet the bishops, bankrolled in large measure by the Knights of Columbus, have spent millions of dollars to keep gay and lesbian couples and their children from achieving equality under American law, while maintaining a discreet silence about the rights of heterosexuals whose marriages do not conform to church teaching. It is easy to grasp the political reality that informs this strategy: gays and lesbians are few, while what the church regards as unsanctioned marriages are legion. But in deploying arguments rooted in religious liberty only when they are politically advantageous, the bishops have diminished the currency in which they trade.
Religious conservatives also argue that they will no longer be able to help provide essential social services if they are forced to treat same-sex couples in the same way that they treat other clients. They cannot, in good conscience, offer adoption or housing to same-sex couples, they argue, and if compelled to do so, would have to cease providing such services entirely. Intentionally or otherwise, opponents of same-sex marriage present public officials with a choice between marginalized populations -- the poor and the orphaned on one side, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people on the other.
But my bishops and their allies are not being forced to conform to laws they find morally repugnant. Rather, they are being asked to decide whether they will continue to accept significant government subsidies that come with certain strings attached. Religious organizations that do not accept such funding do not have to abandon their ministries to the poor and the needy. They can follow the lead of the Mormons -- or our own Catholic history -- and finance their ministries themselves. Nor will their refusal of government subsidies fray the social safety net, as other less ideologically rigid groups, which already compete for the same grants, will take up the slack.
In the literature on religious liberty and same-sex marriage cited by religious conservatives, several cases stand out. These tend to involve a small businessperson who has been sued for refusing to provide services at the wedding, or commitment celebration of a gay or lesbian couple. In reading these cases, one is struck first by the wish that everyone involved had used better judgment, and second by how the use of a high-flown term like religious liberty distracts from the wild asymmetry of what is at stake for the various parties. Perorations on the First Amendment notwithstanding, opponents of marriage equality are arguing that same-sex couples should be denied the emotional and legal benefits of marriage to spare theologically conservative bakers the ordeal of making them wedding cakes.
One would like to think that sufficient protections for pious cakesmiths and other interested parties could be written into law if religious conservatives were clear and candid about the ways in which their freedom might be infringed. But such clarity would open a path to the speedy legalization of same-sex marriage, and so my bishops and their allies play the victim card instead. In doing so, they demonstrate that they are not interested in protecting liberties, but in denying them.
Marianne Duddy-Burke is executive director of DignityUSA, a member of the Equally Blessed, a coalition of Catholic groups that work on behalf of LGBT people and their families.
Once again, galleries throughout the country are heavily favoring the medium of painting this month. While there was an overwhelming amount of abstraction on view in April, May seems to be the month of representational painting.
The figure fares particularly well, as artists continue to address the historically-laden subject matter with new aims and ideas. In the interest of giving attention to lesser known artists, I did not include Gagosian Gallery's incredible Picasso exhibition on this list, but his presence can be strongly felt in dozens of shows this month.
My list includes both emerging and mid-career artists, and one who turns ninety years old this year. Gaylen Hansen has been one of the Pacific Northwest's best kept secrets for decades. His humorous, but hard-won paintings first came to the attention of a wider audience in the 1970s, and he was the focus of a solo exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum in 2007. In Hansen's work, influences from outsider art to Philip Guston come together to form a language that is wholly his own.
New American Paintings magazine is a juried exhibition-in-print and the largest series of artist competitions in the United States. Working with experienced curators, New American Paintings reviews the work of thousands of emerging artists each year. Forty artists are selected to appear in each bi-monthly edition, many of whom go on to receive substantial critical and commercial success. Additional content focuses on the medium of painting, those who influence its direction, and the role contemporary painting plays within the art world.Visit New American Paintings for more information or to subscribe.
Addressing whether Newt can recover from this, Grim explained, "saying that Newt could recover from this implies that he had a chance to become president in the first place, and I don't quite buy into that to begin with. But what's really remarkable about this is that it shows that it is universally considered to be political suicide in a Republican primary to defend Medicare. I mean think about how far we've come just in a few months. You cannot defend Medicare in a Republican primary and survive. And I don't see how they can produce a viable presidential candidate through that kind of a primary process."
Grim also explained how Republican leadership now seems quite united around Ryan's Medicare proposal, which is why Gingrich faced so much push-back about his comments.
It's time to stop saying the country "can't afford" Medicare, Social Security, or other programs that benefit the middle class. If I told my mother that I "can't mow the lawn" or "I can't do all that homework" when I was a kid, she'd say: "Don't say you can't. Say you don't want to." (The outcome of these exchanges was inevitable. Hello, lawnmower ...)
Now we're told there's a "crisis" and we can no longer afford the middle-class American dream. The truth is the opposite: Our long-term problems aren't caused by the middle class, but by politicians who choose to sacrifice the middle class for wealthy interests.
All this talk about a "debt crisis" is a way for politicians to avoid telling the truth: They'd rather say they "have to" sacrifice the middle class than admit they're making a choice.
"It Needs to Happen"
A comment today from Sen. Tom Coburn reflects the 'crisis mentality' masking today's choices. Sen. Coburn reportedly withdrew from the "Gang of Six" Senators trying to craft a budget-cutting deal. According to a report in the National Journal, Coburn said the Senators "can't bridge the gap between what actually needs to happen and what people will allow to happen."
The Journal described the "gang" as "the group most likely to produce a bipartisan deal that combined deficit reduction and tax changes that would allow a rise in the nation's debt ceiling." So that, we're told, is what "needs to happen." But is it?
First, note the choice of words: "tax changes" rather than "tax increases." Tax increases for the wealthy are off the table, but they don't want to admit that. And "deficit reduction" is being used here as a euphemism for "spending cuts." We're in an artificially-generated crisis brought on by tax cuts and two wars. Their tax "changes" would hurt the already-damaged middle class even more by taking away tax deductions for health insurance, mortgages, children, and other breaks they desperately need right now.
Last week's reports from the trustees for Medicare and Social Security were a perfect illustration of how the game's being played: First, create a problem by serving the privileged few. Then use that problem to explain why we can't afford financial security for the middle class. Then do it again. Unless this cycle is broken, it will become a death spiral for the American dream.
It didn't have to be this way. It still doesn't. These changes don't "need to happen" at all.
Social Security Spin
Make no mistake: Despite what you may have read, cuts to Social Security and Medicare are still very much on the table. They're just likely to be disguised as artificial "ceilings," "triggers," or other gimmicks designed to protect politicians from accountability.
Social Security's projected long-term shortfall isn't caused by baby boomers entering retirement. Social Security has a $2.6 trillion trust fund because planners have known about the baby boom for many years (not an impressive achievement, since the last one was born in 1964).
The main reasons for the long-term shortfall are stagnating wages for most Americans, and the fact that the wealthiest Americans capture far more of our national income than at any time in modern history.[1] That's because politicians made choices - about deregulation, banking, government investment, trade, and other key issues.
A bipartisan commission led by Alan Greenspan restructured Social Security during Reagan's Presidency. It solved its financial problems, which were very real then - or it should have. But even the crusty old libertarian Greenspan didn't realize that the rich were about to hijack so much more of the nation's income, or that wage growth for everyone else would flatten so badly. Social Security is funded by a payroll tax that cuts off at a specified level (currently just above $106,000). But these changes - the result of political choices - mean it's too low to keep the program going indefinitely.
Social Security's long-term projections are slightly less favorable under the latest report. One reason is that they're now expecting people to live about six months longer. As Dean Baker points out, longer lives are a good thing. As Baker also points out, the change is trivial as far as government deficits are concerned.
But it's also important to remember that life expectancy isn't fair or democratic: People with more money have much longer lives, and white people live longer than African Americans. Those who want to cut Social Security benefits because "people are living longer" are just creating another way for middle- and lower-income Americans to lose and wealthier people to win.
Social Security's long-term finances are out of balance because politicians made choices. Now we have another choice: ask the wealthy to pay their fair share, or cut benefits for people who didn't cause the problem and can't afford to pay for the solution.
Medicare: Tougher Choices
As for Medicare - well, Medicare's The Big One. In the long run, all other government spending pales in comparison. Exploding health care costs are tomorrow's biggest problem.
They're today's problem, too: Middle-class families are struggling under the weight of exploding health care costs. Even those lucky enough to have employer health benefits are paying more of these costs out of their own pockets.
These costs are devastating for working Americans. Out-of-pocket health expenses for a family of four with insurance have more than doubled in ten years, from over $9,000 in 2002 to more than $19,000 in 2011. They went up more than $1,000 last year alone.
And remember: Those "tax changes" we hear about could cause these out-of-pocket costs to jump by twenty or thirty percent overnight.
The same health costs that are crushing American family budgets today will swamp the Federal budget in a few short decades. But Republicans aren't proposing to control these costs for Medicare. The budget passed by the House simply shifts them onto the backs of the elderly. Nobody's willing to have the discussion we we urgently need, about ways to eliminate inefficiencies, bad incentives, and excessive healthcare profits.
We'll face a tough set of choices. But the longer we wait and let ourselves be distracted by false arguments about vouchers or benefit caps, the tougher it will get.
Jobs + Growth = Healthier Entitlements
Both Social Security and Medicare took a financial hit because of unemployment, too. Right-wingers are using the increased and ongoing deficits in these programs as damning evidence that we can no longer afford financial security for middle-class Americans in their retirement years.
But unemployment didn't happen in a vacuum, either. Politicians made a choice to block more government investment in jobs and economic growth so that those tax cuts for the wealthy could be preserved.
The middle class has already endured years of record-high unemployment, wage stagnation, and sluggish growth because politicians chose to protect tax cuts for the rich, rather than investing in a thriving middle-class America. Now it's being asked to sacrifice its senior years for the same reason. An honest debate
Dave Johnson points out that today's deficit scare talk looks a lot like other manufactured debt crises, such as Canada's in 1993. Rather than letting politicians scare us, we should demand they give us an honest debate. If some of them would rather keep taxes low for the wealthy, and would sacrifice the middle class to do it, let them say so.
If other politicians - in the Democratic Party or elsewhere - recognize what's happening and disagree with it, they should say that too. They should stop being coy and start leveling with the public, even if it temporarily makes unpopular and necessary "bipartisanship" a little more difficult. The public will thank them for it.
Wealthy Americans and corporations have enormous political influence. That means it's easier for politicians to say "We can't afford today's Social Security and Medicare" than it is to raise taxes on the wealthy and move away from our dependence on for-profit healthcare. But every time they say that somebody should hit 'em with Mom's words:
"Don't say we can't. Say you don't want to." _______________________________________________________________
[1] See, for example, Bivens, L. Josh.
Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future. This post was produced as part of the Strengthen Social Security campaign. Richard also blogs at A Night Light.
About a week ago Fox News started a "Common Controversy" about whether the Chicago-based poet and rapper should have been invited to a White House poetry reading by the First Lady.
Claims surfaced that Common's lyrics promote cop killing, misogyny, and prejudice against interracial relationships. Karl Rove told the Associated Press that the White House's decision to feature Common and his work in the program "speaks volumes about President Obama and the White House staff." Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Obama were either supporting racism, misogyny and prejudice by inviting Common to perform or were letting racial affiliation cloud their better judgment and ability to lead because everyone involved is black.
As I see it there are three problems with the "Common Controversy." The first problem is context. The snippets that we're hearing of lyrics from Common's songs, especially the 2007 song "A Song for Assata," aren't quoted in their entirety. What we don't get is the end of the story, where, as Jon Stewart points out, Common promotes peace by calling for an end to the violent picture he paints in the song. Also ignored is our nation's history of racial profiling and police brutality that affects people of color.
The second problem is a dangerous mix of "post-racialism" with "laissez-faire racism." Translation: the idea that we live in an era where race and racism are dead relies on subtle and often unspoken anti-black stereotypes that actually justify or legitimate political inaction. Because mainstream press labels ours a "post-racial" era it becomes easy to frame Common as someone who can't stop speaking about or let go of the past and its racism. That's why he and his words appear violent, angry and bitter (when taken out of context). That's also why it becomes easy to associate Common with other highly criticized outspoken African-Americans like Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and Jill Scott. Like Common, Scott came under fire for addressing historical race relations and the internal "wince" she experienced regarding interracial marriage.
The third problem is perspective. By overplaying black-white racial dynamics the press winds up underreporting other demographics, particularly Native American, Pan-Asian, Pan-Hispanic, mixed race, and new immigrant communities. What's more is that the public's gaze is shifted away from more important events that deserve prime time news coverage. For instance, our ongoing involvement in three wars, reports of Libyan troops' Viagra fueled gang-rapes, investigating why more black men are in prison today than were enslaved in 1850, increasing budget cuts to education and, on a more positive note, celebrating civil rights accomplishments of the Freedom Riders.
At the end of the day the Common Controversy is exactly that ... common. It's the same old uncritical media hype dressed up in newer, cooler clothes. If the hype goes unchallenged then a large number of news consumers may actually believe these inflated interpretations of otherwise ordinary events. And, they may ignore uncommon and extraordinary events that actually affect their lives.
In a world that is at once more connected by communication technology and more fragmented by historical differences, the consequences of media-driven controversies are more profound, and the opportunities for reconciliation and honest deliberation may be smaller than ever before. That is, unless we do something about it.
401(k) plans are a great deal for employers. Their cost is subsidized by brokers and advisers, at the expense of the plan participants (employees), who are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries.
Let me give you a little primer on 401(k) plans. The plan sponsor (typically the employer) is a "fiduciary" to plan participants This means it is supposed to act in the best interest of those participants. Nice theory. The reality is quite different.
It is in the best interest of plan participants to have investment options in their plan that will generate the highest rates of return at the lowest cost. Based on reams of academic data, only index funds (including ETFs) meet this criteria. They are much lower cost than actively managed funds (where the fund manager attempts to beat the returns of a designated benchmark).
The majority of actively managed funds underperform their benchmark index over the long term. It is impossible to discern which of the outperforming actively managed funds will repeat their outperformance in the future. In fact, outperformance over most five year periods seems to be a positive indicator of underperformance in the ensuing period.
A 401(k) plan consisting only of a broad range of low management fee stock and bond index funds is in the best interest of plan participants. An even better option would be for the plan to offer broadly diversified portfolios of these funds for varying risk levels (from conservative to aggressive). Few employees have the ability to put together a risk adjusted portfolio in an appropriate asset allocation (the division of their portfolio between stocks bond and cash) on their own.
Few 401(k) plans offer these options. Indeed, as Ron Lieber discussed in a recent article in The New York Times, most 401(k) plans don't even offer a decent array of index funds. He notes that only 37 percent of plans offer index funds covering a broad domestic stock index, a broad international stock index and a broad domestic bond index. As I recommended in The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read, with just these three funds, investors can put together a portfolio that has historically outperformed the returns of 95 percent of professionally managed money.
The reason for excluding index funds is simple. Index funds don't pay brokers, advisers or insurance companies a kickback (known as "revenue sharing payments") which are the price of admission to the plan's lineup of investment options. Lieber raises the issue of whether the absence of an array of index funds in 401(k) plans might violate the fiduciary duty of the plan sponsor. He concludes that no Court has directly addressed this issue, but encourages plan sponsors to take prompt remedial action before it is too late.
Lieber correctly notes that a Court is unlikely to conclude the absence of index funds is illegal. A combination of world class lawyers retained by the securities industry and recalcitrant judges, reluctant to roil a huge retirement plan system, is the perfect storm for plan participants.
Legalities aside, what about the moral and ethical issues? The present system subsidizes the cost for employers and eviscerates the savings of plan participants. Many forward thinking employers believe this is simply wrong. They are changing their plans and retaining advisers who fully disclose their fees, take no compensation from mutual fund families, and populate their plans with investment options that are really in the best interest of plan participants.
As Lieber notes, you are not powerless. Approach your plan administrator and insist your plan include a broad array of index funds. Even better, lobby for an all-indexed plan. When you approach retirement, you will reap the fruit of your efforts.
The views set forth in this blog are the opinions of the author alone and may not represent the views of any firm or entity with whom he is affiliated. The data, information, and content on this blog are for information, education, and non-commercial purposes only. Returns from index funds do not represent the performance of any investment advisory firm. The information on this blog does not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice and is limited to the dissemination of opinions on investing. No reader should construe these opinions as an offer of advisory services. Readers who require investment advice should retain the services of a competent investment professional. The information on this blog is not an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any securities or class of securities mentioned herein. Furthermore, the information on this blog should not be construed as an offer of advisory services. Please note that the author does not recommend specific securities nor is he responsible for comments made by persons posting on this blog.
HuffPost's Howard Fineman appeared Tuesday on MSNBC's 'Hardball with Chris Matthews' to discuss Newt Gingrich.
Matthews brought up Gingrich's recent criticism of Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) Medicare proposal. Fineman, putting this topic in the context of Gingrich's political style, explained, "Newt Gingrich is by nature a bomb-thrower, he knows how to put the plastique in just the right place to blow up the bridge. And it's the way he is. Why not, since he's totally screwed everything up today, why not give him a little credit for saying, you know what, I don't agree with their [the Republicans] approach."
Analyzing the political consequences of Newt's recent comments about Ryan's plan, Fineman said, "on the one hand, Newt is going to get attacked by fellow Republicans for not being a team player and for issuing a devastating shot at the heart of the whole Republican attack plan this year. But at the same time, if Newt manages to get anywhere, which is unlikely, he's going to be attacked by the Democrats for saying he wanted to see Medicare die on the vine."
Twenty-one years ago the World Health Organization excluded homosexuality from its list of officially recognized mental illnesses. Today, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia is marked around the world to commemorate that landmark decision, and to raise awareness about the continued rights abuses -- in the form, among others, of bias-motivated violence and criminalization -- still faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) individuals.
Human Rights First (HRF) stands together with advocates for the rights of LGBTI individuals in their quest for equality. We continue to urge governments around the world to decriminalize consensual same-sex relations, to respond to homophobic violence against LGBTI persons and to ensure their right to freedom of assembly. We urge public officials to refrain from feeding popular homophobic attitudes and call out those that do.
The challenges remain daunting, but it is worth remembering, too, where there has been progress and where the rights community has come together to confront homophobia and transphobia. A few noteworthy moments from the past year include:
"Don't Ask Don't Tell" is Repealed in the U.S. HRF's Dixon Osborn, who founded the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network in 1993, said it best: "the repeal of DADT and implementation of nondiscrimination policies by the Pentagon will be judged among the pantheon of civil rights advances in our country."
Eighty-five countries call for an end to violence and human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Advancing gay rights at the U.N. has been extremely difficult, but the number of countries who have recognized fundamental principles has grown significantly. And senior UN leaders have been unequivocal and firm in recognizing gay rights as fundamental human rights.
Uganda: the Struggle Continues. The tragic murder of David Kato shocked the world in January, and members of parliament tried to advance the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Yet courageous Ugandan rights activists stood up to homophobia and discriminatory legislation in Uganda and led an international campaign against the bill, which was shelved again.
Watch our Youtube Video for Julius Kaggwa, the Ugandan activist who received HRF's Human Rights Award in 2010, explain the negative role of influential U.S. pastors in this fight.
Better Protection for LGBTI Refugees. Thousands of people from all corners of the world are forced to flee their homes on account of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This issue is relatively new to policy makers and resettlement organizations alike, but the particular concerns of LGBTI refugees have begun to garner more attention.
Pride Parades and Events Are Growing and Are Better Protected. Last year, we once again urged the 56 European and North American states that comprise the OSCE to ensure that freedom of assembly is guaranteed to all. We told governments that "with defiance, the LGBTI community had struggled through the 2001 attack on a march in Serbia, struggled through and overcame the 2005 denial of Warsaw's Parada Równości, struggled through and will overcome the multiple bans on a gay pride parade in Moscow." Today, the Belgrade authorities are working closely with LGBTI rights activists to ensure proper police protection; Europride 2010 took place in Warsaw; and the European Court of Human Rights has ruled against Russia's multiple bans of a parade in Moscow. How the Russian government will uphold its commitments will be evident in the coming days and weeks as activists make their annual attempt to hold a peaceful march at the end of May.
We'd love to hear back from you: what were the challenges and areas of progress in the past years that stood out to you? Let's talk on twitter: @humanrights1st and @0discrimination.
The number of public men destroyed of late through sexual scandals is simply staggering. Within 48 hours of each other we heard that IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who many believed would be the next President of France, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger, until a few weeks ago the Governor of the most populous state in the Union, self-destructed with sex scandals.
The stories themselves are beyond belief. An IMF chief, disciplined enough to oversee one of the world's most important banks, is alleged to have forced himself on a hotel housekeeper. Schwarzenegger, disciplined enough to rise from immigrant status with a funny accent to become one of the biggest movie stars in the world and one of the most powerful men in the United States, apparently could not muster the control to prevent himself from fathering a child with a woman who worked in his home.
The biggest mistake we make in determining why powerful men cheat is to believe they're looking for sex. If it's sex they're after they have wives who can cater to their needs. No, these men are looking for something else entirely: validation. Men cheat not out of a sense of entitlement but out of a sense of insecurity. And the bigger they are the harder they fall, not of arrogance but out of fear and weakness.
What makes men slowly climb the ladder of success is a desire to prove they're a somebody. They want to be and feel important. They seek to rise from the poverty of namelessness and the penury of anonymity. It is not the promise of their potential that drives them, but the fear of being a nonentity. They absorb the noxious lie of a culture bereft of values that only money and power will rescue them from being a nobody. Therefore, even as they ascend the ladder of 'success,' they do so with a gaping hole in their center. And whatever accomplishments they will shove into that hole -- money, fame, power -- it goes in one end and comes out the other. They never feel good about themselves. They are never content. They are defined by insatiability and characterized by voraciousness, which explains why Wall Street bankers who were earning tens of millions of dollars a year still felt it was not enough and cut corners to make even more.
The first rule of success is that there is nothing on the outside that can compensate for a feeling of failure on the inside. External accouterments of success -- from armored limousines to an army of personal bodyguards -- can never protect you from the din of demons who whisper to you that for all you have achieved you are still are a big zero.
And that's why these men turn to women to make them feel good about themselves. They want to feel desirable. They seek to silence the inner voices that taunt them as to their own insignificance. Because of its power, sex has a unique capacity to make insecure men feel -- however fleetingly -- like they're special. Having women desire them makes them feel desirable.
So why can't their wives give them this same feeling? Because the man who thinks of himself as a giant loser sees the woman dumb enough to marry him as a loser squared. She, as the woman who bears his last name and his children, is part of his entire loser package. But the woman who is not married to him, who has never aligned herself with his failures, remains eminently desirable and can thus make him feel the same.
When Tiger Woods self-destructed with an alleged 15 mistresses, I was asked to be on a TV show discussing why he did it. He had a beautiful wife. Why wasn't that enough? The male panelist next to me said, "It's simple. Men love sexual variety and Tiger had the money and the fame to get it." I responded, "If it was variety he was looking for, why did he have sex with the same woman 15 times over? Every single one of the women he allegedly cheated with looked just like his wife, a blond-haired Nordic bombshell. There was no variety. No Asian woman, no African-American woman, etc."
The explanation lay elsewhere. When he was a little boy they took Tiger, put a metal stick in his hand, and told him, "If you learn to use this better than any man who preceded you and knock that little white ball farther than anyone who competes against you, you'll be a somebody," which was another way of saying that right now you're a nobody, you're nothing.
Contrary to the Biblical message that every human being is born a child of god. Tiger heard the opposite. You are either the child of success or you don't' exist. So, no matter how many tournaments he won and how much money he earned in his mind, Tiger still remained a nobody with a lot of trophies and a lot of money. But none of that external success changed the original message: he was born a zero. So, he tuned to an endless number of woman to make him feel desirable and special. He sought someone who wanted him for his being and not his sporting prowess. And he was stupid enough to believe that any of these women would be out with him if he weren't' a champion. It was his wife alone who loved him, but in his selfishness he lost her.
This also explains why so many men who cheat end up opening up emotionally to the women they cheat with. If it was just sex they were seeking they would not be sending these women texts telling them how lonely they are and how only she, the mistress, understood them.
You may ask what this has to do with a renowned banker and politician allegedly attacking a hotel housekeeper? We don't yet know all the circumstances of the alleged assault, so I do not wish to discuss this case in particular. But I have counseled enough men in similar circumstances to know that they don't expect the woman to resist. When you inhabit a $3000 a night hotel penthouse -- yet more external accouterments of success -- and the woman in question is an immigrant cleaning up, you're convinced she'll be as impressed with the bells and whistles of success as you are and she'll melt like putty in your hands. Her resistance becomes a complete shock.
The motivation, however, remains the same. Men who inhabit the top social sphere are usually driven to get there by a constant need to prove themselves. And in taking a woman who would otherwise have no sexual interest in you and transforming her instantly into a woman who desires you, you quiet the failure demons for even a brief moment. In this sense, Strauss-Kahn's comment in an earlier interview with the French publication Liberation, after he had been caught having an affair with a subordinate -- "Yes, I love women. So what?" -- displays a stunning degree of self-ignorance. The degree to which he loves women was never the issue but rather the degree to which he hates himself.
These scandals of decent men ruining themselves either through affairs or, much more seriously, through allegedly illegally and outrageously forcing themselves on women, should serve as a wakeup call to a society that continues to have a single definition of success for men. It's not your gentlemanly behavior, sense of personal honor, or your devotion to your wife and kids that makes you special. No one really cares a hoot for all that. It's rather the level of name recognition and money you attain that really makes you hot.
Shmuley Boteach, 'America's Rabbi,' is a renowned relationships expert and broadcaster whose books on love and marriage have been translated into 17 languages, with the most recent being, "The Kosher Sutra: Eight Sacred Secrets of Erotic Desire." Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Mohammed El Senussi is the opposite of Muammar Gaddafi: he's soft-spoken, nuanced, dresses in business suits and takes daily one-hour jogs to stay fit. El Senussi is also Gaddafi's main rival. Gaddafi deposed El Senussi's great-uncle, King Idris, in the 1969 coup that brought him to power. As the heir to the throne -- King Idris died in 1983 -- Crown Prince Mohammed may take over when Gaddafi falls.
Muammar Gaddafi didn't kill Libya's royal family: he didn't want to turn them into martyrs. Instead he forced them to live a lower-middle class life in Libya, for a while even in a shack. "It was very tough," says Crown Prince Mohammed. "Gaddafi treated our family very badly. But when I see how Libyan people are being killed as we speak, my problem is nothing. Innocent people are losing the lives because of one person. What's happening in Libya is not war; it's just one crazy person attacking people. I even feel embarrassed to talk about our family's problems under Gaddafi when I see what's happening in Benghazi."
Before being forced into exile in 1988, Crown Prince Mohammed worked at Libya's Ministry of Agriculture. "I had to do it because otherwise I wouldn't have survived", he says. "Think of what happened to Jesus. I'm not Jesus, but it was a tough time. Normal people were always respectful, but the government burned down our house and other buildings that belonged to my family. But talking about my family's problem right now would be a bit embarrassing. One day everyone will read the real history of Libya, but right now we have to make sure that Gaddafi leaves the country."
For many years Crown Prince Mohammed has been trying to return to Libya, but has always been denied a visa. If he were to return now, his life would be at risk in Gaddafi-controlled areas. Metro met Crown Prince Mohammed near his home in London, where he lives with his mother, Crown Princess Fawzia bint Tahir.
Is Muammar Gaddafi your enemy? Not at all. I have nothing personal against Gaddafi. Everyone in Libya is against him not as a person but because of what he did. What he did against my family is wrong, but that doesn't mean I'll hate him as a person. He's a Libyan and he has a right to live. I'm not asking for revenge, and I'm asking my people not to revenge because that's something very bad.
What were your feelings when the rebellion broke out? Schadenfreude, perhaps? I was happy, because it's something that gives hope to the Libyan people. I don't like revenge because it means that you don't have a goal. You just want to kill. The most important thing is to free Libya from Gaddafi. That's my goal.
If people hate him so much, why hasn't there been a coup against him? He had money, he had oil, and he had the support of the international community. But now, thanks to technology, the people of Libya understand what's happening inside and outside the country. They have the internet, satellite phones and mobile phones. Especially young students are very well informed thanks to the internet, mobile phones and satellite phones.
So in the past, Libyans were also eager to get rid of Gaddafi but didn't dare to because he had the support of the international community? No. This is just the right time. Of course he killed many people in the streets and broadcast it on TV to make people scared. He's very brutal.
The outside world knows Libya as Colonel Gaddafi. What does the real Libya look like? Gaddafi has always just represented himself, not the people of Libya. Libyan people are very simple people. They'll help anyone who comes to Libya. And they're not terrorists. They just want to live like any other nation. They want to have a house, good education, a better life. They don't want war.
What should happen next in Libya? Gaddafi and his family have to leave. His time has run out. Otherwise he'll be in danger. If he doesn't leave he'll put himself in a very dangerous situation. People will catch him. He has declared war against six million people. He says that some people support him, but the reality is that nobody does. He can't win six million people over by himself, with his militia. So he should leave, but what should happen to him? Should he be put on trial? That's for lawyers to decide, but at this point he has to leave the country, with his family. He's the main problem. The killings are happening because of him. If he leaves, these kinds of crimes will stop. As a Libyan, I want to see freedom and democracy in Libya.
His sons have suggested that he should leave and they take over leadership positions. Is that a feasible solution? It's the same thing. Like son, like father. The killing has to stop and Gaddafi and his sons have to leave. He's trying to win time by advancing new ideas, but nobody believes him. He did it before and he always lied. Everybody knows he's a liar. It's better for him and Libya if he leaves.
What should happen after he leaves? When Gaddafi leaves the Interim Transitional National Council [the rebel-led semi-official government] will represent all of Libya. The ITNC will organize democratic elections so the Libyan people can decide which type of system they want. It's very simple. We don't have the right to install neither a republic nor a monarchy right now. The people have to decide through a free election.
Are you in contact with the rebels? Yes, because the ITNC looks after the interests of the Libyan people. But the ITNC is by nature temporary. When Gaddafi leaves the situation will be different.
A dilemma that countries emerging from dictatorships often face is that people who have expertise were also complicit with the dictatorship. Are Gaddafi allies who have defected to the rebels credible as potential future leaders? The ITNC is temporary. Now we need unity. The most important thing is that the killing has to stop. The situation will be very different when Gaddafi leaves.
How do you see your own role? My family has looked after the people of Libya for a long time, and I'll do the same thing. If the people choose monarchy, we're ready. If they choose republic, OK. I'll respect the choice of the Libyan people.
Did you think the day would ever come when Gaddafi would be forced out of power? We had a similar situation when Italy invaded Libya in the beginning of the 20th century and stayed there for 40 years. People lost hope and said, the Italians will never leave. When WWII began, the people of Libya came together and liberated their country from the Italians. They created a new Libya and we had a good system for 18 years, with a monarchy.
Italy has been Gaddafi's closest friend in recent years. What do you think brought about Silvio Berlusconi's change of mind? We have to make distinguish between the Italian government and the Italian people. The Italian government tried to do business with Libya and that's how they became close to Gaddafi, but they've realized they should stand side by side with the Libyan people and drop the dictator. We should look to the future. There's a chance for every country that supported Gaddafi to work with the new Libya. Everybody appreciates what France and the other countries have done for Libya in the past several weeks. Without France, Benghazi would be much messier now. They acted at the right time.
After Bulgaria's Communist rulers were ousted, King Simeon returned and ran as a political candidate. He was elected Prime Minister. If the people of Libya vote in favor of a republic, would you consider running as a political candidate? I look at myself as a servant of Libya. I respect the choice of the Libyan people, so I'm not pushing them to accept me as King. My great-uncle didn't impose himself on the people of Libya, either. They elected him King. Is democracy a good solution for Libya? We can't bring the British or any other European system to Libya. Libya is too different. We need democracy that's suitable for the Middle East. We don't need a dictator, but people need to feel safe in their homes, have good schools and hospitals, have a constitution and have the right to speak. With good education, we'll be able to teach people to understand democracy. It has taken Britain 800 years to establish the kind of democracy they have today. We have to do it step by step.
And in the meantime? For 18 years, when my great-uncle was King, we had democracy, with a constitution, a parliament and elections. It was one of the most advanced constitutions in the Middle East.
So Libya could become a democratic beacon in the Middle East? Libya is very strategically located. We're very close to Europe and are a gate to Africa. We have everything that's needed for foreign investment, a population of only six million and lots of history. This is our chance to build a Libya that could become a role model for the Middle East. When will you return to Libya? I could go today, but I have work to do in Europe and Arab countries, speaking with leaders on behalf of Libya. And I have to make sure I'm safe. There are some parts of the country that are still under Gaddafi.
What are the leaders telling you? Most of them support the people of Libya and want to see democracy in Libya. They also don't want to see Libya split into two countries. So Arab leaders are on the side of the rebels? Yes. On the side of the Libyan people.
When will Gaddafi leave? I hope today. But the good thing is that the Libyan people continue fighting. They won't let him stay because they've had enough of him for 42 years. It's not just young people who are involved in this revolution. That's why it's so powerful.
If the people vote in favor of a republic, what will your reaction be? That's democracy. I have to respect it.
And if they vote in favor of a monarchy, what will your role be? I'll be the servant of the Libyan people. That's how my family has always described itself.
Mohammed El Senussi is the opposite of Muammar Gaddafi: he's soft-spoken, nuanced, dresses in business suits and takes daily one-hour jogs to stay fit. El Senussi is also Gaddafi's main rival. Gaddafi deposed El Senussi's great-uncle, King Idris, in the 1969 coup that brought him to power. As the heir to the throne -- King Idris died in 1983 -- Crown Prince Mohammed may take over when Gaddafi falls.
Muammar Gaddafi didn't kill Libya's royal family: he didn't want to turn them into martyrs. Instead he forced them to live a lower-middle class life in Libya, for a while even in a shack. "It was very tough," says Crown Prince Mohammed. "Gaddafi treated our family very badly. But when I see how Libyan people are being killed as we speak, my problem is nothing. Innocent people are losing the lives because of one person. What's happening in Libya is not war; it's just one crazy person attacking people. I even feel embarrassed to talk about our family's problems under Gaddafi when I see what's happening in Benghazi."
Before being forced into exile in 1988, Crown Prince Mohammed worked at Libya's Ministry of Agriculture. "I had to do it because otherwise I wouldn't have survived", he says. "Think of what happened to Jesus. I'm not Jesus, but it was a tough time. Normal people were always respectful, but the government burned down our house and other buildings that belonged to my family. But talking about my family's problem right now would be a bit embarrassing. One day everyone will read the real history of Libya, but right now we have to make sure that Gaddafi leaves the country."
For many years Crown Prince Mohammed has been trying to return to Libya, but has always been denied a visa. If he were to return now, his life would be at risk in Gaddafi-controlled areas. Metro met Crown Prince Mohammed near his home in London, where he lives with his mother, Crown Princess Fawzia bint Tahir.
Is Muammar Gaddafi your enemy? Not at all. I have nothing personal against Gaddafi. Everyone in Libya is against him not as a person but because of what he did. What he did against my family is wrong, but that doesn't mean I'll hate him as a person. He's a Libyan and he has a right to live. I'm not asking for revenge, and I'm asking my people not to revenge because that's something very bad.
What were your feelings when the rebellion broke out? Schadenfreude, perhaps? I was happy, because it's something that gives hope to the Libyan people. I don't like revenge because it means that you don't have a goal. You just want to kill. The most important thing is to free Libya from Gaddafi. That's my goal.
If people hate him so much, why hasn't there been a coup against him? He had money, he had oil, and he had the support of the international community. But now, thanks to technology, the people of Libya understand what's happening inside and outside the country. They have the internet, satellite phones and mobile phones. Especially young students are very well informed thanks to the internet, mobile phones and satellite phones.
So in the past, Libyans were also eager to get rid of Gaddafi but didn't dare to because he had the support of the international community? No. This is just the right time. Of course he killed many people in the streets and broadcast it on TV to make people scared. He's very brutal.
The outside world knows Libya as Colonel Gaddafi. What does the real Libya look like? Gaddafi has always just represented himself, not the people of Libya. Libyan people are very simple people. They'll help anyone who comes to Libya. And they're not terrorists. They just want to live like any other nation. They want to have a house, good education, a better life. They don't want war.
What should happen next in Libya? Gaddafi and his family have to leave. His time has run out. Otherwise he'll be in danger. If he doesn't leave he'll put himself in a very dangerous situation. People will catch him. He has declared war against six million people. He says that some people support him, but the reality is that nobody does. He can't win six million people over by himself, with his militia. So he should leave, but what should happen to him? Should he be put on trial? That's for lawyers to decide, but at this point he has to leave the country, with his family. He's the main problem. The killings are happening because of him. If he leaves, these kinds of crimes will stop. As a Libyan, I want to see freedom and democracy in Libya.
His sons have suggested that he should leave and they take over leadership positions. Is that a feasible solution? It's the same thing. Like son, like father. The killing has to stop and Gaddafi and his sons have to leave. He's trying to win time by advancing new ideas, but nobody believes him. He did it before and he always lied. Everybody knows he's a liar. It's better for him and Libya if he leaves.
What should happen after he leaves? When Gaddafi leaves the Interim Transitional National Council [the rebel-led semi-official government] will represent all of Libya. The ITNC will organize democratic elections so the Libyan people can decide which type of system they want. It's very simple. We don't have the right to install neither a republic nor a monarchy right now. The people have to decide through a free election.
Are you in contact with the rebels? Yes, because the ITNC looks after the interests of the Libyan people. But the ITNC is by nature temporary. When Gaddafi leaves the situation will be different.
A dilemma that countries emerging from dictatorships often face is that people who have expertise were also complicit with the dictatorship. Are Gaddafi allies who have defected to the rebels credible as potential future leaders? The ITNC is temporary. Now we need unity. The most important thing is that the killing has to stop. The situation will be very different when Gaddafi leaves.
How do you see your own role? My family has looked after the people of Libya for a long time, and I'll do the same thing. If the people choose monarchy, we're ready. If they choose republic, OK. I'll respect the choice of the Libyan people.
Did you think the day would ever come when Gaddafi would be forced out of power? We had a similar situation when Italy invaded Libya in the beginning of the 20th century and stayed there for 40 years. People lost hope and said, the Italians will never leave. When WWII began, the people of Libya came together and liberated their country from the Italians. They created a new Libya and we had a good system for 18 years, with a monarchy.
Italy has been Gaddafi's closest friend in recent years. What do you think brought about Silvio Berlusconi's change of mind? We have to make distinguish between the Italian government and the Italian people. The Italian government tried to do business with Libya and that's how they became close to Gaddafi, but they've realized they should stand side by side with the Libyan people and drop the dictator. We should look to the future. There's a chance for every country that supported Gaddafi to work with the new Libya. Everybody appreciates what France and the other countries have done for Libya in the past several weeks. Without France, Benghazi would be much messier now. They acted at the right time.
After Bulgaria's Communist rulers were ousted, King Simeon returned and ran as a political candidate. He was elected Prime Minister. If the people of Libya vote in favor of a republic, would you consider running as a political candidate? I look at myself as a servant of Libya. I respect the choice of the Libyan people, so I'm not pushing them to accept me as King. My great-uncle didn't impose himself on the people of Libya, either. They elected him King. Is democracy a good solution for Libya? We can't bring the British or any other European system to Libya. Libya is too different. We need democracy that's suitable for the Middle East. We don't need a dictator, but people need to feel safe in their homes, have good schools and hospitals, have a constitution and have the right to speak. With good education, we'll be able to teach people to understand democracy. It has taken Britain 800 years to establish the kind of democracy they have today. We have to do it step by step.
And in the meantime? For 18 years, when my great-uncle was King, we had democracy, with a constitution, a parliament and elections. It was one of the most advanced constitutions in the Middle East.
So Libya could become a democratic beacon in the Middle East? Libya is very strategically located. We're very close to Europe and are a gate to Africa. We have everything that's needed for foreign investment, a population of only six million and lots of history. This is our chance to build a Libya that could become a role model for the Middle East. When will you return to Libya? I could go today, but I have work to do in Europe and Arab countries, speaking with leaders on behalf of Libya. And I have to make sure I'm safe. There are some parts of the country that are still under Gaddafi.
What are the leaders telling you? Most of them support the people of Libya and want to see democracy in Libya. They also don't want to see Libya split into two countries. So Arab leaders are on the side of the rebels? Yes. On the side of the Libyan people.
When will Gaddafi leave? I hope today. But the good thing is that the Libyan people continue fighting. They won't let him stay because they've had enough of him for 42 years. It's not just young people who are involved in this revolution. That's why it's so powerful.
If the people vote in favor of a republic, what will your reaction be? That's democracy. I have to respect it.
And if they vote in favor of a monarchy, what will your role be? I'll be the servant of the Libyan people. That's how my family has always described itself.
Eric Schneiderman has big shoes to fill as New York State Attorney General. Eliot Spitzer famously used this post to crack down on Wall Street after the excesses of the dot com era, going after the likes of Henry Blodget and AIG's Hank Greenberg. Schneiderman's immediate predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, busted up a "pay for play" operation at the New York state pension fund, sending former state comptroller Alan Hevesi and others to prison.
So how will Schneiderman make his mark? Well, judging by news reports on Tuesday, the New York AG is hoping to be the first law enforcement official to hold the big banks accountable for the subprime mortgage crisis -- starting with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.
This move confirms what many New Yorkers already know about Eric Schneiderman: He is a committed progressive and also a fighter. That's not so common in a state where top Democrats often act like moderate Republicans. (Exhibit A: Governor Cuomo's grossly unfair budget that lowers taxes on the rich while enacting draconian cuts to education and health care.)
Schneiderman is tapping into the public's deep frustration that nobody -- and I mean nobody -- has yet been held criminally responsible for the systematic deception, conflicts of interest, and excessive risk-taking that surrounded the securitization of subprime mortgage debt by Wall Street banks.
Schneiderman's intervention is clearly needed. For various reasons, detailed recently in an extraordinary New York Times investigation, federal authorities have totally dropped the ball in ensuring justice following the financial crisis. In contrast, the Savings and Loans scandal of the 1980s resulted in no fewer than 800 bank officials going to jail. Major figures in the last wave of corporate scandals also went to prison, including Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom, Jeffrey Skilling of Enron, and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco.
The Times article notes that while criminal intent is difficult to prove:
legal experts point to numerous questionable activities where criminal probes might have borne fruit and possibly still could. Investigators, they argue, could look more deeply at the failure of executives to fully disclose the scope of the risks on their books during the mortgage mania, or the amounts of questionable loans they bundled into securities sold to investors that soured.
This is where Schneiderman comes in. Thanks to the Martin Act of 1921, which was revived by Eliot Spitzer, the New York AG has wide powers to go after the banks. The Act includes a broad definition of fraud and, crucially, it doesn't require prosecutors to prove criminal intent to defraud -- which is required under federal securities laws. As a primer on the Martin Act explained in 2004:
the only elements needed to establish a Martin Act violation are a misrepresentation or omission of material fact when engaged in to induce or promote the issuance, distribution, exchange, sale, negotiation or purchase of securities.
Proving that banks shaded the truth about mortgage-backed securities should not be very hard. Many on Wall Street suspected or knew these assets were toxic even as they continued to promote them to investors. All Schneiderman needs to do, it would seem, is find evidence of these private doubts and then contrast them to public cheerleading and he has his case.
Veteran observers of Wall Street chicanery will recall the simplicity of Eliot Spitzer's case against the investment analysts Jack Grubman and Henry Blodget. Spitzer subpoenaed the email traffic of these guys and found them ridiculing the very stocks they were promoting at the behest of their investment banker masters. I bet the same kinds of emails can be found about mortgage-backed securities.
Now the bad news: Even if Schneiderman finds some smoking guns, it's unlikely that anyone will face a judge and jury, much less prison, as a result of the AG's investigation. Why? Because actually trying these cases would be hugely expensive and time consuming, requiring resources that may be beyond the AG's office. Recall that Enron's Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay spent as much as $70 million defending themselves against charges that they misrepresented Enron's financial position and the case dragged on for years before a conviction.
Even Eliot Spitzer didn't bring any Wall Street big shots to trial on criminal charges. Instead, he got them to agree to civil settlements in which they paid large penalties to the government -- although not as large as the fortunes they made. Blodget and Grubman both walked away from their confrontations with Spitzer as wealthy men. And, in their settlements with the AG, they didn't admit to any wrongdoing.
If there is justice from Schneiderman's worthy effort, it is not likely to be satisfying.
On the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, perched between North Africa and southern Europe, exhausted young men pile onto the shore from rickety boats. Those who arrived before them wait in makeshift encampments under the anxious eyes of local townspeople. No one knows when they'll be allowed to leave, or who will accept them.
This is not what democracy looks like.
When the spark of dissent caught fire in the streets of Tunisia last winter, many Europeans cheered at the prospect of democracy dawning on the Maghreb. But now the revolutionary heat is melting other barriers up north, prompting Western Europe to rethink its self-styled image as a democratic beacon in the region.
The unrest in Tunisia and Libya have turned Lampedusa into a makeshift Ellis Island. Several thousand have already arrived from Tunisia, and there is a growing wave of migrants from Libya. The latest rush includes many migrants from elsewhere in Africa or Asia, who were working in Libya when war broke out.
The desperation of the Libyan exodus reached new depths last week when a boat carrying hundreds of migrants sank off the Italian shore. Yet the tragedy was just a slice of the regional crisis, with more than 750,000 migrants fleeing Gaddafi's murderous regime and civil war fueled by NATO air strikes. According to the International Organization for Migration, other migrants are stuck at the borders of Egypt and Tunisia, countries that are themselves experiencing turmoil.
The refugees languish indefinitely day after day, awaiting food, medical care, shelter and some kind of international recognition. According to Amnesty International, the migration wave includes hundreds of unaccompanied children.
Though these people fall under Italy's jurisdiction, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi -- who has been known to pander to growing nativist sentiment -- has called for more assistance from other governments and warned of an oncoming "human tsunami." The image plays well into the narrative that the European right has fashioned to drum up xenophobia -- that immigrants are terrorists, criminals, an uncontrollable parasitic horde.
A generation ago, Europe was leading the way toward a saner approach to national boundaries, which in some ways contrasted with the militarized security phalanx along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Schengen Agreement, which covers many countries including Spain, Italy, and France, moved Western Europe toward a so-called "border-free zone" to help manage migration into and across the continent.
Now French and Italian officials are seeking to roll back Schengen and temporarily tighten borders. Denmark has joined the rising anti-migrant backlash by seeking to resurrect its border controls. And while Germany criticized Denmark's border tightening as unprincipled, last year, it was Chancellor Angela Merkel who fanned the flames of xenophobia by declaring that multiculturalism had "failed" in Germany.
Like Berlusconi, French President Nicolas Sarkozy may be pandering to right-wing voters, whose jingoistic fears have alienated France's Islamic and African communities. Tensions have flared in recent months over France's new "burqa ban," which effectively criminalized full face veils. As NATO strikes produce still more refugees in Libya, the debate has shifted from cultural symbolism to real lives hanging in the balance, with one continent struggling for liberation as another retreats from pluralism.
Daniel Korski of Council on Foreign Relations argued in the Guardian that European societies need to own up to the hypocrisy of selective liberalism:
European governments may talk about democracy and practically every European leader has enjoyed a walk through the banner-clad Tahrir Square. But when they return home, shake the sand off their trousers and start thinking of their voters, their thoughts quickly turn to managing the flow of illegal immigrants who dream of a better life in Europe.
At the tense interface between Europe and the Global South, the southern "Club Med" nations say they carry more than their fair share of migration. At a recent conference on border policy, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant declared, "it's clear that neither Italy nor France intends to receive these migrants. We are pleased about the new air of freedom and democracy in Tunisia, but there's no reason for us to accept a population of migrants coming to Europe from Tunisia."
It's the same story on both sides of the pond. Like the U.S., European countries once known for their commitment to openness have convulsed in a wave of economic anxiety, political frustration and fear of a darker Europe. And in both America and Europe, migration is driven by the destructive ripple effects of policies in the North. Migration out of Mexico is in part a byproduct of predatory "free trade" policies, for instance. Europe and NATO's actions in North Africa and the Middle East -- not only the ongoing bombing of Libya but the longstanding support for pet dictatorships -- paved the way for the current refugee crisis.
For U.S. observers, Europe today is an object lesson in how even incremental progress toward rational border policies quickly unravel when racist fears pervade domestic politics. The only people who seem to understand both sides of the dilemma are the refugees: They have no choice but to take the sweetness and the pain of revolution in equal parts as they push their way to the border.
The number on every driver's mind right now is $4.
Gas prices are hovering around $4, and are well above that in some areas. However, there are some other, much bigger numbers that also merit attention:
Those massive numbers are the profits -- from just the first quarter of 2011 -- of the five biggest oil companies: ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. All told, the big five oil companies reported $36 billion in profits for the first quarter of 2011, more than $200,000 every minute, and oil profits have soared in recent years as gas prices have skyrocketed.
Several factors make those record profits possible. Crude oil prices have jumped to around $100 per barrel. The industry is more concerned with cost than safety when building wells, often cutting corners to save money. And each year, the federal government gives about $4 billion to the oil industry to encourage it to do what it would normally do anyway.
Some of these lavish tax loopholes that give the oil industry this money began nearly a century ago, when Congress decided that it would be beneficial for the American economy to encourage the production of a new source of energy. As the industry -- and its lobbying operation -- expanded, so did the handouts. Today, the sector is so rife with giveaways that some companies earn a higher return on investments after taxes than before. What's more, most of the profits oil companies make, and therefore most of the money they receive in tax breaks, doesn't even go to exploration or drilling -- companies spend most of their profits buying their own stock to increase its value.
During the congressional debate about the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a barrel of crude oil sold for about $55. In April of that year, oil-friendly President Bush stated, "We don't need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives," and in a Senate hearing that November, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the CEOs of the five largest oil companies whether they agreed with the president. Although all five said that incentives were unnecessary, the Republican-controlled Congress extended the subsidies in the final bill.
Six years later, with oil selling for nearly twice its 2005 price (and six times the $18 per barrel it cost in 1995, when Congress expanded subsidies to encourage offshore drilling), the handouts continue. But now, these same oil companies claim they wouldn't be able to do business without them. A ConocoPhillips press release last week called proposals to end the giveaways "un-American," and CEO James Mulva -- the same CEO who told the Senate that his company did not need incentives six years ago -- stood by the statement at a Senate hearing the next day. The oil industry also says that repealing these subsidies would raise prices at the pump, but oil prices are set by global supply and demand -- direct subsidies just pad companies' profits.
A widespread, bipartisan majority of Americans support ending oil subsidies, but House Speaker John Boehner is apparently opposed to making multinational corporations pay the same effective tax rate as average citizens. Boehner previously argued that the government shouldn't "pick winners" by helping emerging renewable technologies compete. Boehner's support for dirty energy handouts shows that he has apparently already picked the winner and placed his bet: oil across the board.
The whole debate boils down to a series of simple questions: what is the government's role? Who should the government support, people or polluters? Does the government exist to provide a safety net for the disadvantaged or to pad corporate profits?
It is indefensible for our federal government to demolish the social safety net that has made this country the economic and social wonder it has been for the last fifty years, while continuing to hand out more than $200 billion in subsidies to environmentally destructive industries. As income inequality widens and the country struggles with nine percent unemployment, it is no time for the government to end assistance to those who are struggling, particularly when wealthy oil companies have yet to pay their fair share.
In the time it took you to read this article, big oil made more than $800,000. So next time you fork over $4 for a gallon of gas, think about the $4 billion that Congress willingly hands to dirty oil each year. Which is the bigger outrage?
The Senate is set to vote this week on a bill ending billions of dollars worth of oil subsidies. The bill, written by Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), is a good first step toward ending the government's support for polluting industries.
Hollywood gets credit for a lot of things, both good and bad, and rightly so. It's undeniable that films influence the way the world views history and other cultures. I have heard many of my Elders say that Hollywood's portrayals of American Indians are responsible for the shallow perception most folks have of their people. 
Even though he was not born an Indian, we should not forget that Iron Eyes Cody raised awareness for the American Indian people and also of the importance of environmentalism (
These sorts of jealous conflicts between ethnic or national groups can happen anywhere. The city of Beijing 
self-compassion practice catapulted from good idea to real possibility for adoring fans everywhere, as well as joke fodder for at least one late-night talk show host.
I was raised in this culture by intelligent, loving, supportive, career-oriented parents. I was raised to be super-compassionate to others, but not compassionate to myself. 
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